native races and the war, by josephine e. butler. london: gay & bird. newcastle-on-tyne: mawson, swan, & morgan. . dedicated to my children and grandchildren. i. apology for "yet another book" on the south african question. future peace must be based on justice,--to coloured as well as white men. difference between legalized slavery and the subjection of natives by individuals. the transvaal in : its bankruptcy: its annexation by great britain: its liberation from great britain in . convention of signed at pretoria. british commissioners' audience with native chiefs. speeches and sorrowful protests of the chiefs. royal commission appointed to take evidence. evidence of natives and others concerning slavery in the transvaal. appeal of the christian king khama. letter of m'plaank, nephew of cetewayo. prevalence of contempt for the native races. sympathy of a native chief with the sufferings of christ. in the midst of the manifold utterances and discussions on the burning question of to-day,--the war in south africa,--there is one side of the subject which, it seems to me, has not as yet been considered with the seriousness which it deserves,--and that is the question of slavery, and of the treatment of the native races of south africa. though this question has not yet in england or on the continent been cited as one of the direct causes of the war, i am convinced,--as are many others,--that it lies very near to the heart of the present trouble. the object of this paper is simply to bring witnesses together who will testify to the past and present condition of the native races under british, dutch, and transvaal rule. these witnesses shall not be all of one nation; they shall come from different countries, and among them there shall be representatives of the native peoples themselves. i shall add little of my own to the testimony of these witnesses. but i will say, in advance, that what i desire to make plain for some sincere persons who are perplexed, is this,--that where a government has established by law the principle of the complete and final abolition of slavery, and made its practice illegal for all time,--as our british government has done,--there is hope for the native races;--there is always hope that, by an appeal to the law and to british authority, any and every wrong done to the natives, which approaches to or threatens the reintroduction of slavery, shall be redressed. the abolition of slavery, enacted by our government in , was the proclamation of a great principle, strong and clear, a straight line by which every enactment dealing with the question, and every act of individuals, or groups of individuals, bearing on the liberty of the natives can be measured, and any deviation from that straight line of principle can be exactly estimated and judged. when we speak of injustice done to the natives by the south african republics, we are apt to be met with the reproach that the english have also been guilty of cruelty to native races. this is unhappily true, and shall not be disguised in the following pages;--but mark this,--that it is true of certain individuals bearing the english name, true of groups of individuals, of certain adventurers and speculators. but this fact does not touch the far more important and enduring fact that _wherever british rule is established, slavery is abolished, and illegal_. this fact is the ground of the hope for the future of the missionaries of our own country, and of other european countries, as well as of the poor natives themselves, so far as they have come to understand the matter; and in several instances they have shown that they do understand it, and appreciate it keenly. those english persons, or groups of persons, who have denied to the native labourers their hire (which is the essence of slavery), have acted on their own responsibility, and _illegally_. this should be made to be clearly understood in future conditions of peace, and rendered impossible henceforward. that future peace which we all desire, on the cessation of the present grievous war, must be a peace founded on justice, for there is no other peace worthy of the name; and it must be not only justice as between white men, but as between white men and men of every shade of complexion. a speaker at a public meeting lately expressed a sentiment which is more or less carelessly repeated by many. i quote it, as helping me to define the principle to which i have referred, which marks the difference between an offence or crime committed by an individual _against_ the law, and an offence or crime sanctioned, permitted, or enacted by a state or government itself, or by public authority in any way. this speaker, after confessing, apparently with reluctance, that "the south african republic had not been stainless in its relations towards the blacks," added, "but for these deeds--every one of them--we could find a parallel among our own people." i think a careful study of the history of the south african races would convince this speaker that he has exaggerated the case as against "our own people" in the matter of deliberate cruelty and violence towards the natives. however that may be, it does not alter the fact of the wide difference between the evil deeds of men acting on their own responsibility and the evil deeds of governments, and of communities in which the governmental authorities do not forbid, but sanction, such actions. as an old abolitionist, who has been engaged for thirty years in a war against slavery in another form, may i be allowed to cite a parallel? that anti-slavery war was undertaken against a law introduced into england, which endorsed, permitted, and in fact, legalized, a moral and social slavery already existing--a slavery to the vice of prostitution. the pioneers of the opposition to this law saw the tremendous import, and the necessary consequences of such a law. they had previously laboured to lessen the social evil by moral and spiritual means, but now they turned their whole attention to obtaining the abolition of the disastrous enactment which took that evil under its protection. they felt that the action of government in passing that law brought the whole nation (which is responsible for its government) under a sentence of guilt--a sentence of moral death. it lifted off from the shoulders of individuals, in a measure, the moral responsibility which god had laid upon them, and took that responsibility on its own shoulders, as representing the whole nation; it foreshadowed a national blight. my readers know that we destroyed that legislation after a struggle of eighteen years. in the course of that long struggle, we were constantly met by an assertion similar in spirit to that made by the speaker to whom i have referred; and to this day we are met by it in certain european countries. they say to us, "but for every scandal proceeding from this social vice, which you cite as committed under the system of governmental regulation and sanction, we can find a parallel in the streets of london, where no governmental sanction exists." we are constantly taunted with this, and possibly we may have to admit its truth in a measure. but our accusers do not see the immense difference between governmental and individual responsibility in this vital matter, neither do they see how additionally hard, how hopeless, becomes the position of the slave who, under the government sanction, has no appeal to the law of the land; an appeal to the government which is itself an upholder of slavery, is impossible. the speaker above cited concluded by saying: "the best precaution against the abuse of power on the part of whites living amidst a coloured population is to make the punishment of misdeeds come home to the persons who are guilty of those misdeeds; and if he could but get his countrymen to act up to that view he believed we should really have a better prospect for the future of south africa than we had had in the past." with this sentiment i am entirely in accord. it is our hope that the present national awakening on the whole subject of our position and responsibilities in south africa will--in case of the re-establishment of peace under the principles of british rule--result in a change in the condition of the native races, both in the transvaal, and at the hands of our countrymen and others who may be acting in their own interests, or in the interests of commercial societies. i do not intend to sketch anything approaching to a history of south african affairs during the last seventy or eighty years; that has been ably done by others, writing from both the british and the boer side. i shall only attempt to trace the condition of certain native tribes in connection with some of the most salient events in south africa of the century which is past. in , as my readers know, the transvaal was annexed by sir theophilus shepstone. there are very various opinions as to the justice of that annexation. i will only here remark that it was at the earnest solicitation of the transvaal leaders of that date that an interference on the part of the british commissioner was undertaken. the republic was in a state of apparently hopeless anarchy, owing to constant conflicts with warlike native tribes around and in the heart of the country. the exchequer was exhausted. by the confession of the president (burgers) the country was on the verge of bankruptcy.[ ] the acceptance of the annexation was not unanimous, but it was accepted formally in a somewhat sullen and desponding spirit, as a means of averting further impending calamity and restoring a measure of order and peace. whether this justified or not the act of annexation i do not pretend to judge. the results, however, for the republic were for the time, financial relief and prosperity, and better treatment of the natives. the financial condition of the country, as i have said, at the time of the annexation, was one of utter bankruptcy. "after three years of british rule, however, the total revenue receipts for the first quarter of and amounted to £ , and £ , respectively. that is to say, that, during the last year of british rule, the revenue of the country more than doubled itself, and amounted to about £ , a year, taking the quarterly returns at the low average of £ , ."[ ] trade, also, which in april, , was completely paralysed, had increased enormously. in the middle of , the committee of the transvaal chamber of commerce pointed out that the trade of the country had in two years risen to the sum of two millions sterling per annum. they also pointed out that more than half the land-tax was paid by englishmen and other europeans. in , the transvaal (under mr. gladstone's administration) was liberated from british control. it was given back to its own leaders, under certain conditions, agreed to and solemnly signed by the president. these are the much-discussed conditions of the convention of , one of these conditions being that slavery should be abolished. this condition was indeed, insisted on in every agreement or convention made between the british government and the boers; the first being that of , called the sand river convention; the second, a convention entered into two years later called the bloemfontein convention (which created the orange free state); a third agreement as to the cessation of slavery was entered into at the period of the annexation, ; a fourth was the convention of ; a fifth the convention of . i do not here speak of the other terms of these conventions, i only remark that in each a just treatment of the native races was demanded and agreed to. the retrocession of the transvaal in has been much lauded as an act of magnanimity and justice. there is no doubt that the motive which prompted it was a noble and generous one; yet neither is there any doubt, that in certain respects, the results of that act were unhappy, and were no doubt unanticipated. it was on the natives, whose interests appeared to have had no place in the generous impulses of mr. gladstone, that the action of the british government fell most heavily, most mournfully. in this matter, it must be confessed that the english government broke faith with the unhappy natives, to whom it had promised protection, and who so much needed it. in this, as in many other matters, our country, under successive governments, has greatly erred; at times neglecting responsibilities to her loyal colonial subjects, and at other times interfering unwisely. in one matter, england has, however, been consistent, namely, in the repeated proclamations that slavery should never be permitted under her rule and authority. the formal document of agreement between her majesty's government and the boer leaders, known as the convention of , was signed by both parties at pretoria on the afternoon of the rd august, in the same room in which, nearly four years before, the annexation proclamation was signed by sir t. shepstone. this formality was followed by a more unpleasant duty for the commissioners appointed to settle this business, namely, the necessity of conveying their message to the natives, and informing them that they had been handed back by great britain, "poor canaanites," to the tender mercies of their masters, the "chosen people," in spite of the despairing appeals which many of them had made to her. some three hundred of the principal native chiefs were called together in the square at pretoria, and there the english commissioner read to them the proclamation of queen victoria. sir hercules robinson, the chief commissioner, having "introduced the native chiefs to messrs. kruger, pretorius, and joubert," having given them good advice as to indulging in manual labour when asked to do so by the boers, and having reminded them that it would be necessary to retain the law relating to passes, which is, in the hands of a people like the boers, almost as unjust a regulation as a dominant race can invent for the oppression of a subject people, concluded by assuring them that their "interests would never be forgotten or neglected by her majesty's government." having read this document, the commission hastily withdrew, and after their withdrawal the chiefs were "allowed" to state their opinions to the secretary for native affairs. in availing themselves of this permission, it is noticeable that no allusion was made by the chiefs to the advantages they were to reap under the convention. all their attention was given to the great fact that the country had been ceded to the boers, and that they were no longer the queen's subjects. i beg attention to the following appeals from the hearts of these oppressed people. they got very excited, and asked whether it was thought that they had no feelings or hearts, that they were thus treated as a stick or piece of tobacco, which could be passed from hand to hand without question. umgombarie, a zoutpansberg chief, said: "i am umgombarie. i have fought with the boers, and have many wounds, and they know that what i say is true. i will never consent to place myself under their rule. i belong to the english government. i am not a man who eats with both sides of his jaw at once; i only use one side. i am english. i have said." silamba said: "i belong to the english. i will never return under the boers. you see me, a man of my rank and position; is it right that such as i should be seized and laid on the ground and flogged, as has been done to me and other chiefs?" sinkanhla said: "we hear and yet do not hear, we cannot understand. we are troubling you, chief, by talking in this way; we hear the chiefs say that the queen took the country because the people of the country wished it, and again, that the majority of the owners of the country did not wish her rule, and that therefore the country was given back. we should like to have the man pointed out from among us black people who objects to the rule of the queen. we are the real owners of the country; we were here when the boers came, and without asking leave, settled down and treated us in every way badly. the english government then came and took the country; we have now had four years of rest, and peaceful and just rule. we have been called here to-day, and are told that the country, our country, has been given to the boers by the queen. this is a thing which surprises, us. did the country, then, belong to the boers? did it not belong to our fathers and forefathers before us, long before the boers came here? we have heard that the boers' country is at the cape. if the queen wishes to give them their land, why does she not give them back the cape?" umyethile said: "we have no heart for talking. i have returned to the country from sechelis, where i had to fly from boer oppression. our hearts are black and heavy with grief to-day at the news told us. we are in agony; our intestines are twisting and writhing inside of us, just as you see a snake do when it is struck on the head. we do not know what has become of us, but we feel dead. it may be that the lord may change the nature of the boers, and that we will not be treated like dogs and beasts of burden as formerly; but we have no hope of such a change, and we leave you with heavy hearts and great apprehension as to the future."[ ] in his report, mr. shepstone (secretary for native affairs) says, "one chief, jan sibilo, who had been personally threatened with death by the boers after the english should leave, could not restrain his feelings, but cried like a child." in , the year of the retrocession of the transvaal, a royal commission was appointed from england to enquire into the internal state of affairs in the south african republic. on the th may of that year, an affidavit was sworn to before that commission by the rev. john thorne, of st. john the evangelist, lydenburg, transvaal. he stated: "i was appointed to the charge of a congregation in potchefstroom when the republic was under the presidency of mr. pretorius. i noticed one morning, as i walked through the streets, a number of young natives whom i knew to be strangers. i enquired where they came from. i was told that they had just been brought from zoutpansberg. this was the locality from which slaves were chiefly brought at that time, and were traded for under the name of 'black ivory.' one of these slaves belonged to mr. munich, the state attorney." in the fourth paragraph of the same affidavit, mr. thorne says that "the rev. dr. nachtigal, of the berlin missionary society, was the interpreter for shatane's people, in the private office of mr. roth, and, at the close of the interview, told me what had occurred. on my expressing surprise, he went on to relate that he had information on native matters which would surprise me more. he then produced the copy of a register, kept in the landdrost's office, of men, women, and children, to the number of four hundred and eighty ( ), who had been disposed of by one boer to another for a consideration. in one case an ox was given in exchange, in another goats, in a third a blanket, and so forth. many of these natives he (mr. nachtigal) knew personally. the copy was certified as true and correct by an official of the republic."[ ] on the th may, , a native, named frederick molepo, was examined by the royal commission. the following are extracts from his examination:-- "(_sir evelyn wood_.) are you a christian?--yes. "(_sir h. de villiers_.) how long were you a slave?--half-a-year. "how do you know that you were a slave? might you not have been an apprentice?--no, i was not apprenticed. "how do you know?--they got me from my parents, and ill-treated me. "(_sir evelyn wood_.) how many times did you get the stick?--every day. "(_sir h. de villiers_.) what did the boers do with you when they caught you?--they sold me. "how much did they sell you for?--one cow and a big pot." on the th may, , amongst the other documents-handed in for the consideration of the royal commission, is the statement of a headman, whose name also it was considered advisable to omit in the blue book, lest the boers should take vengeance on him. he says, "i say, that if the english government dies i shall die too; i would rather die than be under the boer government. i am the man who helped to make bricks for the church you see now standing in the square here (pretoria), as a slave without payment. as a representative of my people, i am still obedient to the english government, and willing to obey all commands from them, even to die for their cause in this country, rather than submit to the boers. "i was under shambok, my chief, who fought the boers-formerly, but he left us, and we were _put up to auction_ and sold among the boers. i want to state this myself to the royal commission. i was bought by fritz botha and sold by frederick botha, who was then veldt cornet (justice of the peace) of the boers." many more of such extracts might be quoted, but it is not my motive to multiply horrors. these are given exactly as they stand in the original, which may all be found in blue books-presented to parliament. it has frequently been denied on behalf of the transvaal, and is denied at this day, in the face of innumerable witnesses to the contrary, that slavery exists in the transvaal. now, this may be considered to be verbally true. slavery, they say, did not exist; but apprenticeship did, and does exist. it is only another name. it is not denied that some boers have been kind to their slaves, as humane slave-owners frequently were in the southern states of america. but kindness, even the most indulgent, to slaves, has never been held by abolitionists to excuse the existence of slavery. mr. rider haggard, who spent a great part of his life in the transvaal and other parts of south africa, wrote in : "the assertion that slavery did not exist in the transvaal is made to hoodwink the british public. i have known men who have owned slaves, and who have seen whole waggon-loads of black ivory, as they were called, sold for about £ a piece. i have at this moment a tenant, carolus by name, on some land i own in natal, now a well-to-do man, who was for twenty years a boer slave. he told me that during those years he worked from morning till night, and the only reward he received was two calves. he finally escaped to natal." going back some years, evidence may be found, equally well attested with that already quoted. on the nd august, , khama, the christian king of the bamangwato (bechuanaland), one of the most worthy chiefs which any country has had the good fortune to be ruled by, wrote to sir henry de villiers the following message, to be sent to queen victoria:--"i write to you, sir henry, in order that your queen may preserve for me my country, it being in her hands. the boers are coming into it, and i do not like them. their actions are cruel among us black people. we are like money; they sell us and our children. i ask her majesty to pity me, and to hear that which i write quickly. i wish to hear upon what conditions her majesty will receive me, and my country and my people, under her protection. i am weary with fighting. i do not like war, and i ask her majesty to give me peace. i am very much distressed that my people are being destroyed by war, and i wish them to obtain peace. i ask her majesty to defend me, as she defends all her people. there are three things which distress me very much--war, selling people, and drink. all these things i find in the boers, and it is these things which destroy people, to make an end of them in the country. the custom of the boers has always been to cause people to be sold, and to-day they are still selling people. last year i saw them pass with two waggons full of people whom they had bought at the river at tanane (lake ngate).--khama." the visit of king khama to england, a few years ago, his interview with the queen, and his pathetic appeals on behalf of his people against the intrusion of any aggressors (drink being one of them), are fresh in our memory. coming down to a recent date, i reproduce here a letter from a zulu chief, which appeared in the london press in november, . this letter is written to a gentleman, who accompanied it by the following remarks:--"after i had read this very remarkable letter, i found myself half unconsciously wondering what place in the scheme of south african life will be found for zulus such as this nephew of the last of the zulu kings. one thing i am fully certain of, that there are few natives in the cape colony (where they are full-fledged voters) capable of inditing so sensible an epistle. this communication throws a most welcome light upon the attitude of his people with respect to the momentous events that are in progress, and also it reveals to what a high standard of intellectual culture a pure zulu may attain." "duff's road, durban, november rd, . sir,--i keenly appreciate your generous tribute to the loyalty of the zulu nation during the fierce crisis of english rule in south africa. it is the first real test of the loyalty of the zulus, and as a zulu who was once a chief, i rejoice to see that the loyalty and gratitude of my people is appreciated by the white people of natal. it is, as you say, respected sir, a tribute, and a magnificent one, to england's just policy to the zulus. i dare to assert it is even a finer tribute to the natives' appreciation, not only of benefits already conferred, but of the spirit that actuated england in her dealings with him. i may disagree as to the lessons taught by maxim guns, hollow squares, and the 'thin red line.' i think no one can have read colonial history, chronicling as it does, the rise again and again of the native against imperial forces, without feeling that he is influenced far less by england's prowess in war than by her justice in peace. my zulu fellow-countrymen understand as clearly as anyone the weakness and the strength of the present time. if the zulu wished to remember kambula and ulundi, this would be his supreme opportunity to rise and hurl himself across the natal frontier. but i, having just returned from my native country, have been able to report to the government at pietermaritzburg that there is not the slightest symptom of disloyalty, not the idea of lifting a finger against the white subjects of the great and good queen. there is among the chiefs and indunas of my people an almost universal hope that the imperial arms will be victorious, and that a government which, by its inhumanity and relentless injustice, and apparent inability to see that the native has any rights a white man should respect, has forfeited its place among the civilised governments of the earth, and should therefore be deprived of powers so scandalously abused--formerly by slavery, and in later years by disallowing the native to buy land, and utterly neglecting his intellectual and spiritual needs. there are wrongs to be redressed, and we zulus believe that england will be more willing to redress them than any other power. there is still much to be done in the way of educating and civilizing the mass of the zulu nation. we chiefs of that nation have observed that wherever england has gone there the missionary and teacher follow, and that there exists sympathy between the authority of her majesty and the forces that labour for civilization and christianity. we zulus have not yet forgotten what we owe to the late bishop colenso's lifelong advocacy, or to lady florence dixie's kindly interest. these are things that are more than fear of england's might, that keep our people quiet outside and loyal inside. this is not a passive loyalty with us. speaking for almost all my fellow-countrymen in zululand, i believe if a great emergency arises in the course of this history-making war, in which england might find it necessary to put their loyalty to the test, they would respond with readiness and enthusiasm equal to that when they fought under king cetewayo against lord chelmsford's army. again assuring you that the zulu people are turning deaf ears to boer promises, as well as threats, i remain, with the most earnest hope for the ultimate triumph of general buller--who fought my king for half a year. your humble and most obedient servant, m'plaank, son of maguendé, brother of cetewayo." there is unhappily a tendency among persons living for any length of time among heathen people, to think and speak with a certain contempt for those people, at whose moral elevation they may even be sincerely aiming. they see all that is bad in these "inferior races," and little that is good. this was not so in the case of the greatest and most successful missionaries. they never lost faith in human nature, even at its lowest estate, and hence they were able to raise the standard of the least promising of the outcast races of the world. this faith in the possibility of the elevation of these races has been firmly held, however, by some who know them best, and have lived among them the longest. mr rider haggard writes thus on this subject:--"so far as my own experience of natives has gone, i have found that in all the essential qualities of mind and body they very much resemble white men. of them might be aptly quoted the speech shakespeare puts into shylock's mouth: 'hath not a jew eyes? hath not a jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?' in the same way, i ask, has a native no feelings or affections? does he not suffer when his parents are shot, or his children stolen, or when he is driven a wanderer from his home? does he not know fear, feel pain, affection, hate, and gratitude? most certainly he does; and this being so, i cannot believe that the almighty, who made both white and black, gave to the one race the right or mission of exterminating or of robbing or maltreating the other, and calling the process the advance of civilization. it seems to me, that on only one condition, if at all, have we the right to take the black men's land; and that is, that we provide them with an equal and a just government, and allow no maltreatment of them, either as individuals or tribes, but, on the contrary, do our best to elevate them, and wean them from savage customs. otherwise, the practice is surely undefensible. "i am aware, however, that with the exception of a small class, these are sentiments which are not shared by the great majority of the public, either at home or abroad." a french gentleman, who has been for many years connected with the _missions evangéliques_ of france, related recently in my presence some incidents of the early experience of french missionaries in south africa. one of these had laboured for years without encouragement. the hearts of the native people around him remained unmoved. one day, however, he spoke among them especially of calvary, of the sufferings of christ on the cross. a chief who was present left the building in which the teacher was speaking. at the close, this chief was found sitting on the ground outside, his back to the door, his head bent forward and buried in his arms. he was weeping. when spoken to, he raised his arm with a movement of deprecation, and, in a voice full of pity and indignation, said--"to think that there was no one even to give him a drink of water!" that poor savage had known what thirst is. this one awakened chord of human sympathy with the human christ was communicative. other hearts were touched, and from that time the missionary began to reap a rich harvest from his labours. in the midst of the elaborate services of our fashionable london churches is there often to be found so genuine a feeling as that which shook the soul of this chief, and broke down the barrier of coldness and hardness in his fellow-countrymen which had before prevented the acceptance of the message of salvation and of the practical obligations of christianity among them? men who are capable of rising to the knowledge and love of divine truth cannot be supposed to be impervious to the influence of _civilization_ properly understood. footnotes: [footnote : the financial resources of the country at that time amounted to s. d.] [footnote : quoted from parliamentary blue book.] [footnote : report made on the spot by mr. shepstone (not sir theophilus shepstone), secretary for native affairs.] [footnote : the name of that official was held back from publication at the time, as if his act were known by the boers, it was believed it might have cost the man his life.] ii. the causes of the war date far back. the faults of england to be sought in the past. a revised verdict needed. downing street government and successive colonial governors. m. mabille and m. dieterlen, french missionaries. early history of cape colony. abolition of slavery by great britain. compensation to slave owners. first trek of the burghers. there is nothing so fallacious or misleading in history as the popular tendency to trace the causes of a great war to one source alone, or to fix upon the most recent events leading up to it, as the principal or even the sole cause of the outbreak of war. the occasion of an event may not be, and often is not, the cause of it. the occasion of this war was not its cause. in the present case it is extraordinary to note how almost the whole of europe appears to be carried away with the idea that the causes of this terrible south african war are, as it were, only of yesterday's date. the seeds of which we are reaping so woeful a harvest were not sown yesterday, nor a few years ago only. we are reaping a harvest which has been ripening for a century past. at the time of the indian mutiny, it was given out and believed by the world in general that the cause of that hideous revolt was a supposed attempt on the part of england to impose upon the native army of india certain rules which, from their point of view, outraged their religion in some of its most sacred aspects; (i refer to the legend of the greased cartridges). after the mutiny was over, sir herbert edwardes, a true seer, whose insight enabled him to look far below the surface, and to go back many years into the history of our dealings with india in order to take in review all the causes of the rebellion, addressed an exhaustive report to the british government at home, dealing with those causes which had been accumulating for half-a-century or more. this was a weighty document,--one which it would be worth while to re-peruse at the present day; it had its influence in leading the home government to acknowledge some grave errors which had led up to this catastrophe, and to make an honest and persevering attempt to remedy past evils. that this attempt has not been in vain, in spite of all that india has had to suffer, has been acknowledged gratefully by the native delegates to the great annual congress in india of the past year. in the case of the indian mutiny, the incident of the supposed insult to their religious feelings was only the match which set light to a train which had been long laid. in the same way the honest historian will find, in the present case, that the events,--the "tragedy of errors," as they have been called,--of recent date, are but the torch that has set fire to a long prepared mass of combustible material which had been gradually accumulating in the course of a century. in order to arrive at a true estimate of the errors and mismanagement which lie at the root of the causes of the present war, it is necessary to look back. those errors and wrongs must be patiently searched out and studied, without partisanship, with an open mind and serious purpose. many of our busy politicians and others have not the time, some perhaps have not the inclination for any such study. hence, hasty, shallow, and violent judgments. never has there occurred in history a great struggle such as the present which has not had a deep moral teaching. england is now suffering for her past errors, extending over many years. the blood of her sons is being poured out like water on the soil of south africa. wounded hearts and desolated families at home are counted by tens of thousands. but it needs to be courageously stated by those who have looked a little below the surface that her faults have not been those which are attributed to her by a large proportion of european countries, and by a portion of her own people. these appear to attribute this war to a sudden impulse on her part of imperial ambition and greed, and to see in the attitude which they attribute to her alone, the provocative element which was chiefly supplied from the other side. there will have to be a revision of this verdict, and there will certainly be one; it is on the way, though its approach may be slow. it will be rejected by some to the last. the great error of england appears to have been a strange neglect, from time to time, of the true interests of her south african subjects, english, dutch, and natives. there have been in her management of this great colony alternations of apathy and inaction, with interference which was sometimes unwise and hasty. some of her acts have been the result of ignorance, indifference, or superciliousness on the part of our rulers. the special difficulties, however, in her position towards that colony should be taken into account. it has always been a question as to how far interference from downing street with the freedom of action of a self-governing colony was wise or practicable. in other instances, the exercise of great freedom of colonial self-government has had happy results, as in canada and australia. far from our south african policy having represented, as is believed by some, the self-assertion of a proud imperialism, it has been the very opposite. it seems evident that some of the greatest evils in the british government of south africa have arisen from the frequent changes of governors and administrators there, _concurrently with changes in the government at home_. there have been governors under whose influence and control all sections of the people, including the natives, have had a measure of peace and good government. such a governor was sir george grey, of whose far-seeing provisions for the welfare of all classes many effects last to this day. the nature of the work undertaken, and to a great extent done, by sir george grey and those of his successors who followed his example, was concisely described by an able local historian in :--"the aim of the colonial government since ," he said, "has been to establish and maintain peace, to diffuse civilization and christianity, and to establish society on the basis of individual property and personal industry. the agencies employed are the magistrate, the missionary, the school-master, and the trader." of the years dating from the commencement of sir george grey's administration, it was thus reported:--"during this time peace has been uninterruptedly enjoyed within british frontiers. the natives have been treated in all respects with justice and consideration. large tracts of the richest land are expressly set apart for them under the name of 'reserves' and 'locations.' the greater part of them live in these locations, under the superintendence of european magistrates or missionaries. as a whole, they are now enjoying far greater comfort and prosperity than they ever did in their normal state of barbaric independence and perpetually recurring tribal wars, before coming into contact with europeans. the advantages and value of british rule have of late years struck root in the native mind over an immense portion of south africa. they believe that it is a protection from external encroachment, and that only under the _ægis_ of the government can they be secure and enjoy peace and prosperity. influenced by this feeling, several tribes beyond the colonial boundaries are now eager to be brought within the pale of civilized authority, and ere long, it is hoped, her majesty's sovereignty will be extended over fresh territories, with the full and free consent of the chiefs and tribes inhabiting them."[ ] it maybe of interest to note here that one of these territories was basutoland, which lies close to the south eastern border of the orange free state. between the basutos and the orange free state boers war broke out in , to be followed in by a temporary and incomplete pacification. the struggle continued, and in , and again in , when war was resumed, and all basutoland was in danger of being conquered by the boers, moshesh, their chief, appealed to the british government for protection. it was not till , after a large part of the country had passed into boer hands, that sir philip wodehouse, sir george grey's successor, was allowed to issue a proclamation declaring so much as remained of basutoland to be british territory. it was sir george grey who first saw the importance of endeavouring to bring all portions of south africa, including the boer republics and the native states, into "federal union with the parent colony" at the cape. he was commissioned by the british government to make enquiries with this object ( .) he had obtained the support of the orange free state, whose volksraad resolved that "a union with the cape colony, either on the plan of federation or otherwise, is desirable," and was expecting to win over the transvaal boers, when the british government, alarmed as to the responsibilities it might incur, vetoed the project. (such sudden alarms, under the influence of party conflicts at home, have not been infrequent.) for seven years, however, this good governor was permitted to promote a work of pacification and union. i shall refer again later to the misfortunes, even the calamities, which have been the result of our projecting our home system of _government by party_ into the distant regions of south africa. there are long proved advantages in that system of party government as existing for our own country, but it seems to have been at the root of much of the inconsistency and vacillation of our policy in south africa. as soon as a good governor (appointed by either political party) has begun to develop his methods, and to lead the dutch, and english, and natives alike to begin to believe that there is something homogeneous in the principles of british government, a general election takes place in england. a new parliament and a new government come into power, and, frequently in obedience to some popular representations at home, the actual colonial governor is recalled, and another is sent out. lord glenelg, for example, had held office as governor of the cape colony for five years,--up to . his policy had been, it is said, conciliatory and wise. but immediately on a change of party in the government at home, he was recalled, and sir harry smith superseded him, a recklessly aggressive person. it was only by great pains and trouble that the succeeding governor, sir george cathcart, a wiser man, brought about a settlement of the confusion and disputes arising from sir harry smith's aggressive and violent methods. and so it has gone on, through all the years. allusion having been made above to the assumption of the protectorate of basutoland by great britain, it will not be without interest to notice here the circumstances and the motives which led to that act. it will be seen that there was no aggressiveness nor desire of conquest in this case; but that the protection asked was but too tardily granted on the pathetic and reiterated prayer of the natives suffering from the aggressions of the transvaal. the following is from the biography of adolphe mabille, a devoted missionary of the _société des missions evangéliques_ of paris, who worked with great success in basutoland. his life is written by mr. dieterlen (a name well known and highly esteemed in france), and the book has a preface by the famous missionary, mr. f. coillard.[ ] "the boers had long been keeping up an aggressive war against the basutos ( to ), so much so that mr. mabille's missionary work was for a time almost destroyed. the boers thought they saw in the missionaries' work the secret of the steady resistance of the basutos, and of the moral force which prevented them laying down their arms. they exacted that mr. mabille should leave the country at once, which theoretically, they said, belonged to them. "this good missionary and his friends were subjected to long trials during this hostility of the boers. moshesh, the chief of the basutos, had for a long time past been asking the governor of cape colony to have him and his people placed under the direction of great britain. the reply from the cape was very long delayed. moshesh, worn out, was about to capitulate at last to the boers. lessuto (the territory of basutoland) was on the point of being absorbed by the transvaal. at the last moment, however, and not a day too soon, there came a letter from the governor of the cape announcing to moshesh that queen victoria had consented to take the basutos under her protection. it was the long-expected deliverance,--it was salvation! at this news the missionaries, with moshesh, burst into tears, and falling on their knees, gave thanks to god for this providential and almost unexpected intervention." the boers retained a large and fertile tract of lessuto, but the rest of the country, continues m. dieterlen, "remained under the protectorate of a people who, provided peace is maintained, and their commerce is not interfered with, know how to work for the right development of the native people whose lands they annex." mr. dieterlen introduces into his narrative the following remarks,--which are interesting as coming, not from an englishman, but from a frenchman,--and one who has had close personal experience of the matters of which he speaks:-- "stayers at home, as we frenchmen are, forming our opinions from newspapers whose editors know no more than ourselves what goes on in foreign countries, we too willingly see in the british nation an egotistical and rapacious people, thinking of nothing but the extension of their commerce and the prosperity of their industry. we are apt to pretend that their philanthropic enterprises and religious works are a mere hypocrisy. courage is absolutely needed in order to affirm, at the risk of exciting the indignation of our _soi-disant_ patriots, that although england knows perfectly well how to take care of her commercial interests in her colonies, she knows equally well how to pre-occupy and occupy herself with the moral interests of the people whom she places by agreement or by force under the sceptre of her queen. those who have seen and who know, have the duty of saying to those who have not seen, and who cannot, or who do not desire to see, and who do not know, that these two currents flowing from the british nation,--the one commercial and the other philanthropic,--are equally active amongst the uncivilized nations of africa, and that if one wishes to find colonies in which exist real and complete liberty of conscience, where the education and moralisation of the natives are the object of serious concern, drawing largely upon the budget of the metropolis, it is always and above all in english possessions that you must look for them. "under the domination of the boers, lessuto would have been devoted to destruction, to ignorance, and to semi-slavery. under the english régime reign security and progress. lessuto became a territory reserved solely for its native proprietors, the sale of strong liquors was prohibited, and the schools received generous subvention. catholics, protestants, anglicans, french and english missionaries, could then enjoy the most absolute liberty in order to spread, each one in his own manner, and in the measure in which he possessed it, evangelic truth. "it is for this reason that the french missionaries feared to see the basutos fall under the boers' yoke, and that they hailed with joy the intervention of the english government in their field of work, hoping and expecting for the missionary work the happiest fruits. their hope has not been deceived by the results." the clash of opposing principles, and even the violence of party feeling continued to send its echoes to the far regions of south africa, confusing the minds of the various populations there, and preventing any real coherence and continuity in our government of that great colony. a good and successful administrator has sometimes been withdrawn to be superseded by another, equally well-intentioned, perhaps, but whose policy was on wholly different lines, thus undoing the work of his predecessor. this has introduced not only confusion, but sometimes an appearance of real injustice into our management of the colony. in all this chequered history, the interests of the native races have been too often postponed to those of the ruling races. this was certainly the case in connexion with mr. gladstone's well-intentioned act in giving back to the transvaal its independent government. it has been an anxious question for many among us whether this source of vacillation, with its attendant misfortunes, is to continue in the future. * * * * * the early history of the south african colony has become, by this time, pretty well known by means of the numberless books lately written on the subject. i will only briefly recapitulate here a few of the principal facts, these being, in part, derived from the annals and reports of the aborigines protection society, which may be considered impartial, seeing that that society has had a keen eye at all times for the faults of british colonists and the british government, while constrained, as a truthful recorder, to publish the offences of other peoples and governments. i have also constantly referred to parliamentary papers, and the words of accredited historians and travellers. the first attempt at a regular settlement by the dutch at the cape was made by jan van riebeck, in , for the convenience of the trading vessels of the netherlands east india company, passing from europe to asia. almost from the first these colonists were involved in quarrels with the natives, which furnished excuse for appropriating their lands and making slaves of them. the intruders stole the natives' cattle, and the natives' efforts to recover their property were denounced by van riebeck as "a matter most displeasing to the almighty, when committed by such as they." apologising to his employers in holland for his show of kindness to one group of natives, van riebeck wrote: "this we only did to make them less shy, so as to find hereafter a better opportunity to seize them-- , or , in number, and about cattle, the best in the whole country. we have every day the finest opportunities for effecting this without bloodshed, and could derive good service from the people, _in chains_, in killing seals or in labouring in the silver mines which we trust will be found here." the netherlands company frequently deprecated such acts of treachery and cruelty, and counselled moderation. their protests however were of no avail. the mischief had been done. the unhappy natives, with whom lasting friendship might have been established by fair treatment, had been converted into enemies; and the ruthless punishment inflicted on them for each futile effort to recover some of the property stolen from them, had rendered inevitable the continuance and constant extension of the strife all through the five generations of dutch rule, and furnished cogent precedent for like action afterwards,[ ] after , colonists of the baser sort kept arriving in cargoes, and gradually the netherlands company allowed persons not of their own nation to land and settle under severe fiscal and other restrictions. among these were a number of french huguenots, good men, driven from their homes by the revocation of the edict of nantes in . then flemings, germans, poles, and others constantly swelled the ranks. all these europeans were forced to submit to the arbitrary rules of the netherlands company's agents, scarcely at all restrained from amsterdam. unofficial residents, known as burghers, came to be admitted to share in the management of affairs. it was for their benefit chiefly, that as soon as the hottentots were found to be unworkable as slaves, negroes from west africa and malays from the east indies began to be imported for the purpose. in , when the settlement was a hundred and twenty years old, and had been in what was considered working order for a century, cape town and its suburbs had a population of , officials and servants of the company, , male and , female colonists, and , slaves. in these figures no account is taken of the hottentots and others employed in menial capacities, nor of the black prisoners, among whom, in , a swedish traveller saw men, women, and children of the bushman race, who had been captured about a hundred and fifty miles from cape town in a war brought about by encroachment on their lands.[ ] the aborigines protection society endorses the following statement of sparrman (visit to the cape of good hope, , vol. ii, p. ,) who says, "the slave business, that violent outrage against the natural rights of man, which is always a crime and leads to all manner of wickedness, is exercised by the colonists with a cruelty that merits the abhorrence of everyone, though i have been told that they pique themselves upon it; and not only is the capture of the hottentots considered by them merely as a party of pleasure, but in cold blood they destroy the bands which nature has knit between husband and wife, and between parents and their children. does a colonist at any time get sight of a bushman, he takes fire immediately, and spirits up his horse and dogs, in order to hunt him with more ardour and fury than he would a wolf or any other wild beast.". "i am far from accusing all the colonists," he continues, "of these cruelties, which are too frequently committed. while some of them plumed themselves upon them, there were many who, on the contrary, held them in abomination, and feared lest the vengeance of heaven should, for all their crimes, fall upon their posterity." the inability of the amsterdam authorities to control the filibustering zeal of the colonists rendered it easy for the people at the cape to establish among themselves, in , what purported to be an independent republic. one of their proclamations contained the following resolution, aimed especially at the efforts of the missionaries--most of whom were then moravians--to save the natives from utter ruin: "we will not permit any moravians to live here and instruct the hottentots; for, as there are many christians who receive no instruction, it is not proper that the hottentots should be taught; they must remain in the same state as before. hottentots born on the estate of a farmer must live there, and serve him until they are twenty-five years old, before they receive any wages. all bushmen or wild hottentots caught by us must remain slaves for life."[ ] i have given these facts of more than a hundred years ago to show for how long a time the traditions of the usefulness and lawfulness of slavery had been engrained in the minds of the dutch settlers. we ought not, perhaps, to censure too severely the boer proclivities in favour of that ancient institution, nor to be surprised if it should be a work of time, accompanied with severe providential chastisement, to uproot that fixed idea from the minds of the present generation, of boer descent. the sin of enslaving their fellow-men may perhaps be reckoned, for them, among the "sins of ignorance." nevertheless, the recording angel has not failed through all these generations to mark the woes of the slaves; and the historic vengeance, which sooner or later infallibly follows a century or centuries of the violation of the divine law and of human rights, will not be postponed or averted even by a late repentance on the part of the transgressors. it is striking to note how often in history the sore judgment of oppressors has fallen (in this world), not on those who were first in the guilt, but on their successors, just as they were entering on an amended course of "ceasing to do evil and learning to do well." in , cape town was formally ceded by the prince of orange to great britain, as an incident of the great war with france, for which, six million pounds sterling was paid by great britain to holland. british supremacy was formally recognized in this part of south africa by a convention signed in , which was confirmed by the treaty of paris in . british rule for some thirty years after was perforce despotic, but for the most part, with some exceptions, it was a benevolent despotism. "they had the difficult task of controlling a straggling white community, at first almost exclusively composed of boers, who had been too sturdy and stubborn to tolerate any effective interference by the netherlands company and other authorities in holland, and who resented both english domination and the advent of english colonists which more than doubled the white population in less than two decades." "the governors sent out from downing street had tasks imposed upon them which were beyond the powers of even the wisest and worthiest. most of the english colonists found it easier to fall in with the thoughts and habits of the boers than to uphold the purer traditions of life and conduct in the mother country, and it is not strange that many of the officials should have been in like case."[ ] great britain abolished the slave trade in , which prevented the further importation of slaves, and the traffic in them. the great emancipation act, by which great britain abolished slavery in all lands over which she had control, was passed in . the great grievance for the burghers was this abolition of slavery by great britain. according to a parliamentary return of march, , the slaves of all sorts liberated in cape colony numbered , . the british parliament awarded as compensation to the slave owners throughout the british dominions a sum of £ , , , of which, nearly £ , , fell to the share of the burghers. concerning this act of compensation there have been very divided opinions; there is not a doubt that the british government intended to deal fairly by the former slave owners, but it is stated that there was great and culpable carelessness on the part of the british agents in distributing this compensation money. it seems that many of the burghers to whom it was due never obtained it, and these considered themselves aggrieved and defrauded by the british government. on the other hand, there are persons who have continually disapproved of the principle of compensation for a wrong given up, or the loss of an advantage unrighteously purchased. it is however to be regretted, that an excuse should have been given for the boers' complaints by irregularities attributed to the british in the partition of the compensation money. it has often been asserted that the first great dutch emigration from the cape was instigated simply by love of freedom on their part, and their dislike of british government. but why did they dislike british government? there may have been minor reasons, but the one great grievance complained of by themselves, from the first, was the abolition of slavery. they desired to be free to deal with the natives in their own manner. taking with them their household belongings and as much cattle as they could collect, they went forth in search of homes in which they hoped they would be no longer controlled, and as they thought, sorely wronged by the nation which had invaded their colony. but they did not all trek; only about half, it was estimated, did so. the rest remained, finding it possible to live and prosper without slavery. they crossed the orange river, and finally trekked beyond the vaal. from , cape colony, under british rule, began to be endowed with representative institutions. in , the magna charta of the hottentots, as it was called, was created. it was a measure of remarkable liberality. "it conferred on all hottentots and other free persons of colour lawfully residing in the colony, the right to become burghers, and to exercise and enjoy all the privileges of burghership. it enabled them to acquire land and other property. it exempted them from any compulsory service to which other subjects of the crown were not liable, and from 'any hindrance, molestation, fine, imprisonment or other punishment' not awarded to them after trial in due course of law, 'any custom or usage to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding.' among other provisions it was stipulated that wages should no longer be paid to them in liquor or tobacco, and that, in the event of a servant having reasonable ground of complaint against his master for ill-usage, and not being able to bear the expense of a summons, one should be issued to him free of charge. by this ordinance a stop was put, as far as the law could be enforced, to the bondage, other than admitted and legalized slavery, by which through nearly two centuries the dutch farmers and others had oppressed the natives whom they had deprived of their lands."[ ] the boers who had trekked resented every attempt at interference with them on the part of the cape government with a view to their acceptance of such principles of british government as are expressed above. wearied by its hopeless efforts to restore order among the emigrant farmers, the british government abandoned the task, and contented itself with the arrangement made with andries pretorius, in , called the sand river convention. this convention conceded to "the emigrant farmers beyond the vaal river" "the right to manage their own affairs and to govern themselves, without any interference on the part of her majesty the queen's government." it was stipulated, however, that "no slavery is or shall be permitted or practised in the country to the north of the vaal river by the emigrant farmers." this stipulation has been made in every succeeding convention down to that of . these conventions have been regularly agreed to and signed by successive boer leaders, and have been as regularly and successively violated. footnotes: [footnote : south africa, past and present ( ), by noble.] [footnote : adolphe mabille, published in paris, .] [footnote : these and other details which follow are taken from dutch official papers, giving a succinct account of the treatment of the natives between and . these papers were translated from the dutch by lieut. moodie ( ). see moodie's "_record_."] [footnote : thunberg. "travels in europe, africa, and asia, between and ."] [footnote : sir john barrow (travels in south africa, .) vol ii. p. .] [footnote : mr. fox bourne, secretary of the aborigines protection society.] [footnote : parliamentary paper quoted by mr. fox bourne. "black and white," page .] iii. dr. livingstone's experiences in the transvaal and in surrounding native districts. letter of dr. moffat in . letter of his son, rev. j. moffat, . report of m. dieterlen to the committee of the missions' evangÉliques of paris. the following is an extract from the "missionary travels and researches in south africa," of the venerable pioneer, david livingstone.[ ] "an adverse influence with which the mission had to contend was the vicinity of the boers of the cashan mountains,[ ] otherwise named 'magaliesberg.' these are not to be confounded with the cape colonists, who sometimes pass by the name. the word 'boer,' simply means 'farmer,' and is not synonymous with our word boor. indeed, to the boers generally the latter term would be quite inappropriate, for they are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry. those, however, who have fled from english law on various pretexts, and have been joined by english deserters, and every other variety of bad character in their distant localities, are unfortunately of a very different stamp. the great objection many of the boers had, and still have, to english law, is that it makes no distinction between black men and white. they felt aggrieved by their supposed losses in the emancipation of their hottentot slaves, and determined to erect themselves into a republic, in which they might pursue, without molestation, the 'proper treatment' of the blacks. it is almost needless to add, that the 'proper treatment' has always contained in it the essential element of slavery, namely, compulsory unpaid labour. "one section of this body, under the late mr. hendrick potgeiter, penetrated the interior as far as the cashan mountains, whence a zulu chief, named mosilikátze, had been expelled by the well known kaffir dingaan, and a glad welcome was given these boers by the bechuana tribes, who had just escaped the hard sway of that cruel chieftain. they came with the prestige of white men and deliverers; but the bechuanas soon found, as they expressed it, 'that mosilikátze was cruel to his enemies, and kind to those he conquered; but that the boers destroyed their enemies, and made slaves of their friends." the tribes who still retain the semblance of independence are forced to perform all the labour of the fields, such as manuring the land, weeding, reaping, building, making dams and canals, and at the same time to support themselves. i have myself been an eye-witness of boers coming to a village, and according to their usual custom, demanding twenty or thirty women to weed their gardens, and have seen these women proceed to the scene of unrequited toil, carrying their own food on their heads, their children on their backs, and instruments of labour on their shoulders. nor have the boers any wish to conceal the meanness of thus employing unpaid labour; on the contrary, every one of them, from mr. potgeiter and mr. gert kruger, the commandants, downwards, lauded his own humanity and justice in making such an equitable regulation. 'we make the people work for us, in consideration of allowing them to live in our country.' "i can appeal to the commandant kruger if the foregoing is not a fair and impartial statement of the views of himself and his people. i am sensible of no mental bias towards or against these boers; and during the several journeys i made to the poor enslaved tribes, i never avoided the whites, but tried to cure and did administer remedies to their sick, without money and without price. it is due to them to state that i was invariably treated with respect; but it is most unfortunate that they should have been left by their own church for so many years to deteriorate and become as degraded as the blacks, whom the stupid prejudice against colour leads them to detest. "this new species of slavery which they have adopted serves to supply the lack of field labour only. the demand for domestic servants must be met by forays on tribes which have good supplies of cattle. the portuguese can quote instances in which blacks become so degraded by the love of strong drink as actually to sell themselves; but never in any one case, within the memory of man, has a bechuana chief sold any of his people, or a bechuana man his child. hence the necessity for a foray to seize children. and those individual boers who would not engage in it for the sake of slaves, can seldom resist the twofold plea of a well-told story of an intended uprising of the devoted tribe, and the prospect of handsome pay in the division of captured cattle besides. it is difficult for a person in a civilized country to conceive that any body of men possessing the common attributes of humanity, (and these boers are by no means destitute of the better feelings of our nature,) should with one accord set out, after loading their own wives and children with caresses, and proceed to shoot down in cold blood, men and women of a different colour, it is true, but possessed of domestic feelings and affections equal to their own. i saw and conversed with children in the houses of boers who had by their own and their master's account been captured, and in several instances i traced the parents of these unfortunates, though the plan approved by the long-headed among the burghers is to take children so young that they soon forget their parents and their native language also. it was long before i could give credit to the tales of bloodshed told by native witnesses, and had i received no other testimony but theirs, i should probably have continued sceptical to this day as to the truth of the accounts; but when i found the boers themselves, some bewailing and denouncing, others glorying in the bloody scenes in which they had been themselves the actors, i was compelled to admit the validity of the testimony, and try to account for the cruel anomaly. they are all traditionally religious, tracing their descent from some of the best men (huguenots and dutch) the world ever saw. hence they claim to themselves the title of 'christians,' and all the coloured race are 'black property' or 'creatures.' they being the chosen people of god, the heathen are given to them for an inheritance, and they are the rod of divine vengeance on the heathen, as were the jews of old. "living in the midst of a native population much larger than themselves, and at fountains removed many miles from each other, they feel somewhat in the same insecure position as do the americans in the southern states. the first question put by them to strangers is respecting peace; and when they receive reports from disaffected or envious natives against any tribe, the case assumes all the appearance and proportions of a regular insurrection. severe measures then appear to the most mildly disposed among them as imperatively called for, and, however bloody the massacre that follows, no qualms of conscience ensue: it is a dire necessity for the sake of peace. indeed, the late mr. hendrick potgeiter most devoutly believed himself to be the great peace-maker of the country. "but how is it that the natives, being so vastly superior in numbers to the boers, do not rise and annihilate them? the people among whom they live are bechuanas, not kaffirs, though no one would ever learn that distinction from a boer; and history does not contain one single instance in which the bechuanas, even those of them who possess firearms, have attacked either the boers or the english. if there is such an instance, i am certain it is not generally known, either beyond or in the cape colony. they have defended themselves when attacked, as in the case of sechele, but have never engaged in offensive war with europeans. we have a very different tale to tell of the kaffirs, and the difference has always been so evident to these border boers that, ever since 'those magnificent savages,' (the kaffirs,) obtained possession of firearms, not one boer has ever attempted to settle in kaffirland, or even face them as an enemy in the field. the boers have generally manifested a marked antipathy to anything but 'long-shot' warfare, and, sidling away in their emigrations towards the more effeminate bechuanas, they have left their quarrels with the kaffirs to be settled by the english, and their wars to be paid for by english gold. "the bechuanas at kolobeng had the spectacle of various tribes enslaved before their eyes;--the bakatla, the batlo'kua, the bahúkeng, the bamosétla, and two other tribes of bechuanas, were all groaning under the oppression of unrequited labour. this would not have been felt as so great an evil, but that the young men of those tribes, anxious to obtain cattle, the only means of rising to respectability and importance among their own people, were in the habit of sallying forth, like our irish and highland reapers, to procure work in the cape colony. after labouring there three or four years, in building stone dykes and dams for the dutch farmers, they were well content if at the end of that time they could return with as many cows. on presenting one to the chief, they ranked as respectable men in the tribe ever afterwards. these volunteers were highly esteemed among the dutch, under the name of mantátees. they were paid at the rate of one shilling a day, and a large loaf of bread among six of them. numbers of them, who had formerly seen me about twelve hundred miles inland from the cape, recognised me with the loud laughter of joy when i was passing them at their work in the roggefelt and bokkefelt, within a few days of cape town. i conversed with them, and with elders of the dutch church, for whom they were working, and found that the system was thoroughly satisfactory to both parties. i do not believe that there is a boer, in the cashan or magaliesberg country, who would deny that a law was made, in consequence of this labour passing to the colony, to deprive these labourers of their hardly-earned cattle, for the very urgent reason that, "if they want to work, let them work for us, their masters," though boasting that in their case their work would not be paid. "i can never cease to be most unfeignedly thankful that i was not born in a land of slaves. no one can understand the effect of the unutterable meanness of the slave system on the minds of those who, but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered, would be equal in virtue to ourselves." after giving his experience of eight years in sechele's country, in bechuanaland, livingstone continues:--"during that time, no winter passed without one or two of the tribes in the east country being plundered of both cattle and children by the boers. the plan pursued is the following: one or two friendly tribes are forced to accompany a party of mounted boers. when they reach the tribe to be attacked, the friendly natives are ranged in front, to form, as they say, 'a shield;' the boers then coolly fire over their heads till the devoted people flee and leave cattle, wives and children to their captors. this was done in nine cases during my residence in the interior, and on no occasion was a drop of boer's blood shed. news of these deeds spread quickly among the bechuanas, and letters were repeatedly sent by the boers to sechele, ordering him to come and surrender himself as their vassal, and stop english traders from proceeding into the country. but the discovery of lake ngami, hereafter to be described, made the traders come in five-fold greater numbers, and sechele replied, 'i was made an independent chief and placed here by god, and not by you. i was never conquered by mosilikátze, as those tribes whom you rule over; and the english are my friends; i get everything i wish from them; i cannot hinder them from going where they like.' those who are old enough to remember the threatened invasion of our own island, may understand the effect which the constant danger of a boer invasion had on the minds of the bechuanas; but no others can conceive how worrying were the messages and threats from the endless self-constituted authorities of the magaliesberg boers, and when to all this harassing annoyance was added the scarcity produced by the drought, we could not wonder at, though we felt sorry for, their indisposition to receive instruction. "i attempted to benefit the native tribes among the boers of magaliesberg by placing native teachers at different points. 'you must teach the blacks,' said mr. hendrick potgeiter, the commandant in chief, 'that they are not equal to us.' other boers told me 'i might as well teach the baboons on the rocks as the africans,' but declined the test which i proposed, namely, to examine whether they or my native attendants could read best. two of their clergymen came to baptize the children of the boers, so, supposing these good men would assist me in overcoming the repugnance of their flock to the education of the blacks, i called on them, but my visit ended in a _ruse_ practised by the boerish commandant, whereby i was led, by professions of the greatest friendship, to retire to kolobeng, while a letter passed me, by another way, to the missionaries in the south, demanding my instant recall for 'lending a cannon to their enemies.'[ ] "these notices of the boers are not intended to produce a sneer at their ignorance, but to excite the compassion of their friends. "they are perpetually talking about their laws; but practically theirs is only the law of the strongest. the bechuanas could never understand the changes which took place in their commandants. 'why, one can never know who is the chief among these boers. like the bushmen, they have no king--they must be the bushmen of the english.' the idea that any tribe of men could be so senseless as not to have an hereditary chief was so absurd to these people, that in order not to appear equally stupid, i was obliged to tell them that we english were so anxious to preserve the royal blood that we had made a young lady our chief. this seemed to them a most convincing proof of our sound sense. we shall see farther on the confidence my account of our queen inspired. the boers, encouraged by the accession of mr. pretorius, determined at last to put a stop to english traders going past kolobeng, by dispersing the tribe of bechuanas, and expelling all the missionaries. sir george cathcart proclaimed the independence of the boers. a treaty was entered into with them; an article for the free passage of englishmen to the country beyond, and also another, that _no slavery should be allowed in the independent territory_, were duly inserted, as expressive of the views of her majesty's government at home. 'but what about the missionaries?' enquired the boers. '_you may do as you please with them_,' is said to have been the answer of the commissioner. this remark, if uttered at all, was probably made in joke: designing men, however, circulated it, and caused the general belief in its accuracy which now prevails all over the country, and doubtless led to the destruction of three mission stations immediately after. the boers, in number, were sent by the late mr. pretorius to attack the bechuanas in . boasting that the english had given up all the blacks into their power, and had agreed to aid them in their subjugation by preventing all supplies of ammunition from coming into the bechuana country, they assaulted the bechuanas, and, besides killing a considerable number of adults, carried off of our school children into slavery. the natives, under sechele, defended themselves till the approach of night enabled them to flee to the mountains; and having in that defence killed a number of the enemy, the very first ever slain in this country by bechuanas, i received the credit of having taught the tribe to kill boers! my house, which had stood perfectly secure for years under the protection of the natives, was plundered in revenge. english gentlemen, who had come in the footsteps of mr. cumming to hunt in the country beyond, and had deposited large quantities of stores in the same keeping, and upwards of eighty head of cattle as relays for the return journeys, were robbed of all; and when they came back to kolobeng, found the skeletons of the guardians strewed all over the place. the books of a good library--my solace in our solitude--were not taken away, but handfuls of the leaves were torn out and scattered over the place. my stock of medicines was smashed; and all our furniture and clothing carried off and sold at public auction to pay the expenses of the foray. i do not mention these things by way of making a pitiful wail over my losses, in order to excite commiseration; for though i feel sorry for the loss of lexicons, dictionaries, &c., &c., which had been the companions of my boyhood, yet, after all, the plundering only set me entirely free for my expedition to the north, and i have never since had a moment's concern for anything i left behind. the boers resolved to shut up the interior, and i determined to open the country." * * * * * mr. a. mcarthur, of holland park, wrote on march nd of this year:-- "when looking over some old letters a few days ago, i found one from the late venerable dr. moffat, who was one of the best friends south africa ever had. it was written in answer to a few lines i wrote him, informing him that the transvaal had been annexed by the british government. i enclose a copy of his letter." dr. moffat's letter is as follows:--july th, . "my dear friend, "i have no words to express the pleasure the late annexation of the transvaal territory to the cape colony has afforded me. it is one of the most important measures our government could have adopted, as regards the republic as well as the aborigines. i have no hesitation in pronouncing the step as being fraught with incalculable benefits to both parties,--i.e., the settlers and the native tribes. a residence of more than half a century beyond the colonial boundary is quite sufficient to authorize one to write with confidence that lord carnarvon's measure will be the commencement of an era of blessing to southern africa. i was one of a deputation appointed by a committee to wait on sir george clarke, at bloemfontein, to prevent, if possible, his handing over the sovereignty, now the free state, to the emigrant boers. every effort failed to prevent the blunder. long experience had led many to foresee that such a course would entail on the native tribes conterminous oppression, slavery, _alias_ apprenticeship, etc. many a tale of woe could be told arising, as they express it, from the english allowing their subjects to spoil and exterminate. hitherto, the natives have been the sufferers, and might justly lay claim for compensation. with every expression of respect and esteem, i remain, yours very sincerely, robert moffat." * * * * * a letter from a son of dr. moffat may have some interest here. it is dated december th, . the rev. john moffat, son of the famous dr. moffat, and himself for a long time resident in south africa, has sent to a friend in london a letter regarding the relations of the british and dutch races previous to the war. mr. moffat, throughout his varied experiences, has been a special friend to the natives. one of his younger sons, howard, is with a force of natives miles south west of khama's town (at the time of writing, december th), and dr. alford moffat, another son, was medical officer to volunteers occupying the mangwe pass, to prevent a boer raid into rhodesia at that point. he writes:-- " . _had steyn sat still and minded his own business_ no one would have meddled with him. had kruger confined himself strictly to self-defence, and _we_ had invaded _him_, we might have had to blame ourselves. " . to have placed an adequate defensive force on our borders before we were sure that there was going to be war would have been accepted (perhaps justly) by the boers as a menace. we did not do it, out of respect for their susceptibilities. " . to most people in south africa who knew the boers it was quite plain that kruger was all along playing what is colloquially known as the game of 'spoof.' he never intended to make the slightest concession. " . take them as a whole, the boers are not pleasant people to live with, especially to those who are within their power, as the natives have found out sufficiently, and as the british have found out ever since majuba, and the retrocession of the transvaal. the wrongs of the uitlanders were only one symptom of a disease which originated at pretoria in , and was steadily spreading itself all over south africa. " . with regard to the equal rights question, it is quite true that all is not as it ought to be in the cape colony. but the condition of the native in the transvaal is years behind that of our natives in the cape colony, and you may take it as a broad fact that in proportion as boer domination prevails the gravitation of the native towards slavery will be accelerated." in conclusion, mr. moffat has this to say of the "boer dream of afrikander predominance": "we, who have been living out here, have been hearing about this thing for years, but we have tried not to believe it. we felt, many of us, that the struggle had to come, but we held our peace because we did not want to be charged with fomenting race hatred." he refers to ben viljoen's manifesto of september th, and to president steyn's manifesto, and state secretary reitz's proclamation of october th, and says, "when i read these in conjunction with the history of south africa for the last years, i see that the cause of peace was hopeless in such hands." * * * * * almost contemporaneously with the expression of opinion of dr. moffat (in ), the following report was written by m. dieterlen, to the committee of the _missions evangéliques de paris_:-- "lessouto, june th, . "gentlemen, "i must give you details of the journey which i have just made with four native evangelists; for no doubt you will wish to know why a missionary expedition, begun under the happiest auspices, and with the good wishes of so many christians, has come to grief, on account of the ill-will of certain men, and has been, from a human point of view, a humiliating failure. having placed myself at the head of the expedition, and being the only white man in the missionary group, i must bear the whole responsibility of our return, and if there is anyone to blame it is i. "from our departure from leriba, as far as the other side of pretoria, our voyage was most agreeable. we went on with energy, thinking only of our destination, the banyaïs country, making plans for our settling amongst those people, and full of happiness at the thought of our new enterprise. an excellent spirit prevailed in our little troop,--serious and gay at the same time; no regrets, no murmurings; with a presentiment, indeed, that the transvaal government might make some objection to our advance, but with the certainty that god was with us, and would over-rule all that man might try to do. we crossed the orange free state without hindrance, we passed the vaal, and continued our route towards the capital of the transvaal; we reached the first village through which we must pass--heidelberg--and encamped some distance from there. there they told us that the boers knew that we were about to pass, and if they wished to stop us, it would be there they would do it. let us take courage, therefore, we said, and be ready for everything. we unharnessed, and walked through the village in full daylight, posting our letters, etc. no one stopped us or spoke to us, and we retired to our encampment, thanking god that he had kept us through this critical moment. some days later, we approached a charming spot, within three hours of pretoria, near a clear stream, surrounded with lovely trees and flowers; we took the communion together, strengthening each other for the future. monday, at nine o'clock, we reached pretoria. we were looked at with curiosity; they read our names on the sides of my waggon, they seemed surprised, and held discussions among themselves; the field cornet himself saw us pass, they told me sometime later. but we passed through the town without opposition. "we continued our way to the north-east full of thankfulness, saying to each other that after all the government of the transvaal was not so ill-disposed towards us. our oxen continued to walk with sturdy steps; we had not yet lost one, although the cattle plague was prevalent at the time. wednesday, at four o'clock in the evening, we left the house of an english merchant, with whom we had passed a little time, and who had placed at our disposal everything which we needed. towards eight o'clock, by a splendid moonlight, i was walking in front of my waggon with asser (one of the native missionaries), seeking a suitable place where we could pass the night, when two horsemen galloped up, and drawing bridle, brusquely asked for my papers, and seeing that i had not the papers that they desired, ordered us to turn round and go back to pretoria. one of these men was the sheriff, who showed me a warrant for my arrest, and putting his hand on my shoulder, declared me to be his prisoner. this, i may say in passing, made little impression on me. we retraced our steps, always believing that when we had paid some duty exacted for our luggage and our goods, we should be allowed to go in peace. towards midnight they permitted us to unharness near a farm. the next morning these gentlemen searched all through the waggon of the native evangelists, and put any objects which they suspected aside. all this, with my waggon, must be sent back to pretoria, there to be inspected by anyone who chose. "that same day i arrived in pretoria in a cart, seated between the field cornet and the sheriff, who were much softened when they saw that i did not reply to them in the tone which they themselves adopted, and that i had not much the look of a smuggler. the secretary of the executive council exacted from me bail to the amount of £ sterling, for which a german missionary from berlin, mr. grüneberger, had the goodness to be my guarantor. i made a deposition, saying who we were, whence we came, and where we were going, insisting that we had no merchandise in our waggon, only little objects of exchange by which we could procure food in countries where money has no value. we had no intention of establishing ourselves within the limits of the transvaal; we were going beyond the limpopo, and consequently were simple travellers, and were not legally required to take any steps in regard to the government, nor even to ask a passport. all this was written down and addressed to the executive committee, who took the matter in hand. "as they, however, accused us of being smugglers, and having somewhere a cannon, they proceeded to the examination of my waggon. they opened everything, ran their hands in everywhere, into biscuit boxes, among clothes, among candles, etc., and found neither cannon nor petroleum. the comedy of the smuggling ended, they took note of the contents of my boxes, and then attacked us from another side. they decided to treat me as a missionary. the solicitor-general said to me that the government did not care to have french missionaries going to the other side of the limpopo. i said, 'these countries do not belong to the transvaal;' to which they replied, 'do you know what our intentions are? have you not heard of the treaties which we have been able to make with the natives and with the portuguese?' there! that is the reply which they made to me. they took good care not to inscribe it in the document in which they ordered us to leave the transvaal immediately. these are things which they do not care to write, lest they should awaken the just susceptibilities of other governments, or arouse the indignation of all true christians. but there is the secret of the policy of the transvaal in regard to us missionaries; they feared us, because they know our attachment to the natives, and our devotion to their interests. "they then ordered me to retrace at once my steps, threatening confiscation of our goods and the imprisonment of our persons if we attempted to force a passage through the country. i had to pay £ sterling for the expenses of this mock trial. they brought the four native evangelists out of the prison where they had spent two nights and a day in a very unpleasant manner; they gave me leave to take our two waggons out of the square of the hotel de ville where they had been put, together with the transvaal artillery, some pieces of ordnance, a large prussian cannon and a french mitrailleuse from berlin. "we were free, we were again united, but what a sorrowful reunion! we could hardly believe that all was ended, and that we must retrace our steps; so many hopes dissipated in a moment! and the thought of having to turn back after having arrived so near to our destination, was heart breaking. we were all rather sad, asking each other if we were merely the sport of a bad dream or if this was indeed the will of god. t resolved to make one more effort and ask an interview with the president of the transvaal, mr. burgers. it was granted to me. i went therefore to the cabinet of the president and spoke a long time with the solicitor-general, protesting energetically against the force they had used against us, and i discussed the matter also with the president himself, but without being able to obtain any reasonable reply to the objections i raised. i saw clearly that i had to do with men determined to have their own way, and putting what they chose to consider the interests of the state above those of all divine and human laws. "their parliament (raad) was sitting, and i addressed myself to two of its members whom i had seen the day before, and who had seemed annoyed at the conduct of the government towards us. i besought them for the honour of their country, to bring before their parliament a question on the subject; but they dared not consent to this, declaring that if the government were to put the matter before the representatives of the country these latter would decide in our favour, but that they could never take the initiative. "i had now exhausted all the means at my disposal. i did all i could to obtain leave to continue our journey, and only capitulated at the last extremity. i received a written order from the government telling me to leave the soil of the republic immediately. "these gentlemen had made me wait a long time, perhaps because they found it more difficult and dangerous to put down on paper orders which it was much easier to give vocally. this note was only a reproduction of the accusations they had made against us from the beginning. they declared to us that we were driven from the country because we had introduced guns, ammunition, and a great quantity of merchandise, and because we had entered the transvaal without a passport, in spite of the government itself having recently proclaimed a passport unnecessary for evangelists going through the country. in this document they systematically misrepresented and violated the right which every white man had had until then of travelling without permission. from the beginning to the end of this document it was open to criticism, which the feeblest jurist could have made; but in the transvaal, as elsewhere, might dominates right, and we have to suffer the consequences of this odious principle. "we sorrowfully retraced the route towards the vaal; this time no more joyous singing around our fire at night, no more cheerful projects, no more the hope of being the first to announce the glad evangel among pagan populations. the veldt we traversed seemed to have lost its poetry and to have become desolate. to add to our misfortunes the epidemic seized our oxen. we lost first one and then a second,--altogether eight. those which were left, tired and lean, dragged slowly and with pain the waggons which before they had drawn along with such vigour. at last we were in sight of mabolela, and arrived at our destination, sorrowful, yet not unhappy, determined not to be discouraged by this first check. and now we were again at lessouto, waiting for god to open to us a new door." footnotes: [footnote : the extract commences at chapter ii, page .] [footnote : near pretoria.] [footnote : livingstone had given to the chief, sechele, a large iron pot for cooking purposes, and the form of it excited the suspicions of the boers, who reported that it was a cannon. that pot is now in the museum, at cape town.] iv. interview with dr. james stewart, moderator ( ) of the free church of scotland. letter of mr. bellows to senator hoar, u.s.a. the rev. c. phillips. extracts from the "christian age," and from m. elisÉe reclus, geographer. retrocession of the transvaal. mr. gladstone's action. its effect on the transvaal leaders, and its consequences for the native subjects of great britain. the rev. dr. james stewart, of lovedale mission institute, south africa, who, in may, , was elected moderator of the general assembly of the scotch free church, imparted his views with regard to the transvaal question to a representative of the _new york tribune_ on the occasion of his visit to washington in the autumn of , to attend the pan-presbyterian council as a delegate from the free church of scotland. dr. stewart's title to speak on matters connected with the transvaal rests upon thirty years' residence in south africa. on the morning of his election as moderator of the general assembly the _scotsman_ coupled his name with that of dr. livingstone as the men to whom the british central africa protectorate was due. the interview was published in the _tribune_ of september th, . dr. stewart said:-- "as to the principle politically in dispute, the british government asks nothing more than this--that british subjects in the transvaal shall enjoy--i cannot say the same privileges, but a faint shadow of what every dutchman, as well as every man, white and black, in the cape colony enjoys. every dutchman in the cape colony is treated exactly as if he were an englishman; and every subject of her majesty the queen, black and white, is treated in the transvaal, and has always been, as a man of an alien and subject race. the franchise is only one of many grievances, and it is utterly a mistake to suppose that england is going to war over a question of mere franchise. let us be just, however. there are in the cape colony and out of it loyal dutchmen, loyal as the day, to the british power, which is the ruling power. they know the freedom they enjoy under it, and the folly and futility of trying to upset it. "no superfluous pity or sympathy need be wasted on president kruger or the transvaal republic. the latter (republic) is a shadow of a name, and as great a travesty and burlesque on the word as it is possible to conceive. "paul kruger is at the present moment the real troubler of south africa. if the spirit and principles which he himself and his government represent were to prevail in this struggle, it would arrest the development of the southern half of the continent. it is too late in the day by the world's clock for that type of man or government to continue. "the plain fact is this:--president kruger does not mean to give, never meant to give, and will not give anything as a concession in the shape of just and necessary rights, except what he is forced to give. he wants also to get rid of the suzerainty. that darkens and poisons his days and disturbs his nights by fearful dreams. there is no excuse for him, and, as i say, there need be no sentiment wasted on the subject. let president kruger and his supporters do what is right, and give what is barely and simply and only necessary as well as right, and the whole difficulty will pass into solution, to the relief of all concerned and the preservation of peace in south africa. if not, the blame must rest with him. "i am sorry i cannot give any information or express any views different from what i have now stated. they are the result of thirty years' residence in africa. but i would ask your readers to believe that the british government are rather being forced into war than choosing it of their own accord. i would also ask your readers to believe that sir alfred milner, the present governor of cape colony, though undoubtedly a strong man, is also one of the least aggressive, most cautious, and pacific of men; and that he has the entire confidence of the whole british population of the cape colony. i know also that when he began his rule three years ago, he did so with the expectation that by pacific measures the dutch question was capable of a happier and better solution than that in which the situation finds it to-day. the question and trouble to-day is, briefly, whether the british government is able to give protection and secure reasonable rights for its subjects abroad." * * * * * the following was addressed by mr. john bellows of gloucester, to senator hoar, united states, america, and was published in the _new york tribune_, feb. nd, . mr. bellows, on seeing the publication of his letter, wrote the following postscript, to senator hoar:-- "as the foregoing letter was headed by the editor of the _new york tribune_, 'a quaker on the war,' i would say, to prevent misunderstanding, that i speak for myself only, and not for the society of friends, although i entirely believe in its teaching, that if we love all men we can under no circumstances go to war. there is, however, a spurious advocacy of peace, which is based, not upon love to men so much as upon enmity to our own government, and which levels against it untrue charges of having caused the transvaal war. it was to show the erroneousness of these charges that i wrote this letter." the following is the text of the letter:-- "dear friend, i am glad to receive thy letter, as it gives me the opportunity of pointing out a misconception into which thou hast fallen in reference to the transvaal and its position with respect to the present war. "thou sayest: 'i am myself a great lover of england; but i do not like to see the two countries joining hands for warlike purposes, and especially to crush out the freedom of small and weak nations.' "to this i willingly assent. i am certain that war is in all circumstances opposed to that sympathy all men owe one to another, and to that greater source of love and sympathy in which 'we live and move and have our being.' where this bond has been broken, we long for its restoration; but it cannot but tend to retard this restoration, to impute to one or other of the parties concerned motives that are entirely foreign to its action. peace, to be lasting, must stand on a foundation of truth; and there is no truth whatever in the idea that the english government provoked the present war, or that it intended, at any time during the negotiations that preceded the war, an attack on the independence either of the transvaal or of the orange free state. it is true that president kruger has for many years carefully propagated the fear of such an attempt among the dutch in south africa, as a means of separating boers and englishmen into two camps, and as an incentive to their preparing the colossal armament that has now been brought into play, not to keep the english out of the transvaal, but to realise what is called the afrikander programme of a dutch domination over the whole of south africa. thus, he a short time ago imported from europe , rifles--nearly five times as many as the whole military population of the transvaal--clearly with a view to arming the cape dutch in case of the general rising he hoped for. the jameson raid gave him exactly the grievance he wanted--to persuade these cape dutch that england sought to crush the transvaal. "an examination of the 'blue book,' which contains the whole of the correspondence immediately preceding the war, will at once show the patient efforts put forth by the london cabinet to maintain peace. there are no irritating words used, and the last despatch of importance before the outbreak of hostilities, dealing with the insinuations just alluded to, is not only most courteous and conciliatory in tone, but it states that the queen's government will give the most solemn guarantees against any attack upon the independence of the transvaal either by great britain or the colonies, or by any foreign power. i am absolutely certain that no american reading that despatch would say that president kruger was justified in seizing the netherlands railway line within one week after he had received it, and cutting the telegraph wires, to prepare for the invasion of british territory, in which act of violence lay his last and only hope of forcing england to fight; his last and desperate chance of setting up a racial domination instead of the freedom and equality of the two races that prevail in the cape and natal, and that did prevail in the orange free state. "the cause of the dispute was this: in a convention was agreed on between great britain and the transvaal, acknowledging the independence of the transvaal, subject to three conditions: that the boers should not make treaties with foreign powers without the consent of the paramount power in south africa, i.e., england; that they should not make slaves of the native tribes; and that they should guarantee equal treatment for all the white inhabitants of the country as respects taxation. as the whole war has risen out of kruger's persistent refusal to keep his promises, both verbal and in writing, that he would observe this condition, i append the clause giving rise to the contention:-- "article xiv. ( convention).--'all persons other than natives conforming themselves to the laws of the south african republic will not be subject in respect to their persons or property or in respect of their commerce and industry to any taxes, whether general or local, other than those which are or may be imposed upon citizens of the said republic. "the mines brought so large a population to johannesburg that it at last outnumbered by very far the entire boer burghers in the state. kruger, seeing that the inevitable effect of such an increase must be the same amalgamation of the new and old populations which was going on in natal and cape colony, and to a smaller extent in the orange free state, unless artificial barriers could be devised to keep the races apart, at once set to to scheme modes of taxation that should evade article xiv. of the convention, throwing the entire burden on the uitlanders, and letting the boers, who were nearly all farmers, escape scot free. farmers, for example, use no dynamite, miners do; and president kruger gave a monopoly of its supply to a german, non-resident in the country, who taxed the miners for this article alone $ , , a year beyond the highest price it could otherwise have been bought for. this was his own act, the volksraad not being consulted. besides the high price, the quality of the explosive was bad, often causing accident or death. when it did cause accident or death, the miners were prosecuted by the government, from whose agent they were compelled to buy it, and fined for having used it! "at the time the convention was signed, in , the franchise was obtainable after one year's residence. president kruger determined to serve the uitlanders, however, as george iii.'s government served the american colonists, that is, tax them while refusing them representation in the control of the taxes. he went on at one and the same time increasing their burdens monstrously, while he prolonged the period of residence that qualified for a vote from one year to five, and so on, till he made it fourteen years--or fourteen times as long as when the convention was signed. nor was this all. he reserved the right personally to veto any uitlander being placed on the register even after the fourteen years if he thought he was for any reason objectionable. that is, the majority of the taxpayers were disfranchised for ever! these uitlanders had bought and paid for per cent. of all the property in the transvaal, and per cent. of the taxes were levied from them; an amount equal to giving every boer in the country $ a year of plunder. "is a country that is so governed justly to be called a 'republic?' "but even the boers themselves have been adroitly edged out of power by paul kruger. the grondwet, or constitution, provided that to prevent abuses in legislation, no new law should be passed until the bill for it had been published three months in advance. to evade this, kruger passed all kinds of measures as amendments to existing laws; which, as he explained, not being new laws, required no notification! finally, however, he got the volksraad to rescind this article of the grondwet; and now, as for some time past, any law of any sort can be passed by a small clique of kruger's in secret session of the raad _without notice of any sort, and without the knowledge or assent of the people_. the boers have no more voice in such legislation than if they were chinese. the transvaal is only a republic in the same sense that a nutshell is a nut, or a fossil oyster shell is an oyster. "all that the british government has ever contended for with president kruger has been the fair and honourable observance of his engagement in respect of equal rights in article xiv. of the convention. this he has persistently and doggedly refused, while he has been using the millions of money he has wrung from the uitlanders to purchase the material for the war he has been long years preparing on such a colossal scale to drive the english out of those colonies in which they have given absolute equality to all. it is this very equality which has upset his calculations, by its leaving too few malcontents among the dutch population to make any general rising of them possible in natal or the cape, on which rising kruger staked his hope of success in the struggle. as for the transvaal boers, the only part they have in the war is to fight for their independence, which was never threatened until they invaded british territory, and thus compelled the queen's government to defend it. "the only alternative left to england to refuse fighting would have been the ground that all war is wrong; but as neither england nor any other nation has ever taken this christian ground, there was in reality no alternative. is it fair to stigmatise england as endeavouring to crush two small and weak nations because they have been so small in wisdom and weak in common sense as to become the tools of the daring and crafty autocrat who has decoyed both friend and foe into this war?--i am, with high esteem, thy friend,--john bellows." it does not come within the scope of this treatise to deal with the case of the uitlanders, but i have given the foregoing, because it is a clear and concise statement of that case, and because it expresses the strong conviction that i and many others have had from the first, that the worst enemy the boers have is their own government. a government could scarcely be found less amenable to the principles of all just law, which exists alike for rulers and ruled. these principles have been violated in the most reckless manner by president kruger and his immediate supporters. the boers are suffering now, and paying with their life-blood for the sins of their government. pity and sympathy for them, (more especially for those among them who undoubtedly possess higher qualities than mere military prowess and physical courage,) are consistent with the strongest condemnation of the duplicity and lawlessness of their government. * * * * * the rev. charles phillips, who has been eleven years in south africa, has given his opinion on the native question. it was part of the constitution of the transvaal that no equality in church or state should be permitted between whites and blacks. in cape colony, on the contrary, the constitution insisted that there should be no difference in consequence of colour. mr. phillips enumerates the oppressive conditions under which the natives live in the transvaal. they may not walk on the sidepaths, or trade even as small hucksters, or hold land. until two years ago there was no marriage law for the blacks, and that which was then passed was so bad--a £ fee being demanded for every marriage, with many other difficulties placed in the way of marriage--that the missionaries endeavoured to procure its abolition, and to return to the old state of things. no help is given towards the education of native children, though the natives pay per cent. of the revenue, the boers paying - / , and the uitlanders - / . the natives have, therefore, actually been helping to educate the boer children. "in ," says mr. phillips, "only £ was granted to the schools of those who paid nine-tenths of the revenue, £ , being spent upon the boer schools. in other words, the uitlander child gets s. d., the boer child £ s. d. the uitlander pays £ per head for the education of every boer child, and he has to provide in addition for the education of his own children." * * * * * the following extract is from a more general point of view, but one which it is unphilosophical to overlook. the _christian age_ reproduces a communication from an american gentleman residing in the transvaal to the new york _independent_. "the boers," mr. dunn says, "are, as a race--with, of course, individual exceptions--an extraordinary instance of an arrested civilisation, the date of stoppage being somewhere about the conclusion of the seventeenth century. but they have not even stood still at that point. they have distinctly and dangerously degenerated even from the general standard of civilisation existing when jan van riebeck hoisted the flag of the dutch east india company at cape point. the great cardinal fact in connection with the uitlander population is that, owing to their numbers and activity, they have brought in their train an influx of new wealth into the transvaal of truly colossal dimensions. thus, to sum up the distinctive and divergent characteristics of the two classes into which the population of the south african republic is divided--the boers, or old population, are conservative, ignorant, stagnant, and a minority; the uitlanders, or new population, are progressive, full of enterprise, energy and work, and constitute a large majority of the total number of inhabitants. "it has so happened, therefore, that the boers, as the ruling and dominant class, have hopelessly failed to master or comprehend the new conditions with which they have been called upon to deal. they have not, as a body, shown either capacity or desire to treat the new developments with even a remote appreciation of their inherent value and inevitable trend. the boer has simply set his back against the floodgates, apparently oblivious or indifferent to the fact that the hugely accumulating forces behind must one day burst every barrier he may choose to set up. that is the whole transvaal situation in a sentence. "it is necessary to point out, further, that this blind and dogged determination on the part of the boers to 'stop the clock' affects not merely the transvaal; it is vitally and perniciously affecting the whole of south africa. but for the obstructiveness and obscurantism of the transvaal boers, the rate of progress and development which would characterise the whole south african continent would be unparalleled in the history of any other country. the reactionary policy of the transvaal is the one spoke in the wheel. it must therefore be removed in the name of humanity and civilisation." * * * * * m. elisée reclus, the great geographer, an able and admittedly impartial historian, wrote some years ago in his "africa," vol. , page :-- "the patriotic boers of south africa still dream of the day when the two republics of the orange and the transvaal, at first connected by a common customs union, will be consolidated in a single 'african holland,' possibly even in a broader confederacy, comprising all the afrikanders from the cape of good hope to the zambesi. the boer families, grouped in every town throughout south africa, form, collectively, a single nationality, despite the accident of political frontiers. the question of the future union has already been frequently discussed by the delegates of the two conterminous republics. but, unless these visions can be realized during the present generation, they are foredoomed to failure. owing to the unprogressive character of the purely boer communities and to the rapid expansion of the english-speaking peoples by natural increase, by direct immigration, and by the assimilation of the boers themselves, the future 'south african dominion' can, in any case, never be an 'african holland.' whenever the present political divisions are merged in one state, that state must sooner or later constitute an 'african england,' whether consolidated under the suzerainty of great britain or on the basis of absolute political autonomy. but the internal elements of disorder and danger are too multifarious to allow the european inhabitants of austral africa for many generations to dispense with the protection of the english sceptre. "possessing for two centuries no book except the bible, the south african dutch communities are fond of comparing their lot with that of the 'chosen people.' going forth, like the jews, in search of a 'promised land,' they never for a moment doubted that the native populations were specially created for their benefit. they looked on them as mere 'canaanites, amorites, and jebusites,' doomed beforehand to slavery or death. "they turned the land into a solitude, breaking all political organization of the natives, destroying all ties of a common national feeling, and tolerating them only in the capacity of 'apprentices,' another name for slaves. "in general, the boers despise everything that does not contribute directly to the material prosperity of the family group. despite their numerous treks, they have contributed next to nothing to the scientific exploration of the land. "of all the white intruders, the dutch afrikanders show themselves, as a rule, most hostile to their own kinsmen, the netherlanders of the mother country. at a distance the two races have a certain fellow-feeling for each other, as fully attested by contemporary literature; but, when brought close together, the memory of their common origin gives place to a strange sentiment of aversion. the boer is extremely sensitive, hence he is irritated at the civilized hollanders, who smile at his rude african customs, and who reply, with apparent ostentation, in a pure language to the corrupt jargon spoken by the peasantry on the banks of the vaal or limpopo." no impartial student of recent south african history can fail, i think, to see that the results of mr. gladstone's policy in the retrocession of the transvaal have been unhappy, however good the impulse which prompted his action. to his supporters at home, and to many of his admirers throughout europe, his action stood for pure magnanimity, and seemed a sort of prophetic instalment of the christian spirit which, they hoped, would pervade international politics in the coming age. to the transvaal leaders it presented a wholly different aspect. it meant to them weakness, and an acknowledgment of defeat. "now let us go on," they felt, "and press towards our goal, i.e., the expulsion of the british from south africa." the attitude and conduct of the transvaal delegates who came to london in , and of their chiefs and supporters, throws much light on this effect produced by the act of mr. gladstone. there can be no doubt that the desire to supplant british by dutch supremacy has existed for a long time. president kruger puts back the origin of the opposition of the two races to a very distant date. in , he said, "in the cession of the cape of good hope by the king of holland to england lies the root out of which subsequent events and our present struggle have grown." the dutch believe themselves,--and not without reason,--capable of great things, they were moved by an ambition to seize the power which they believed,--and the retrocession fostered that belief,--was falling from england's feeble and vacillating grasp. "long before the present trouble" says a member of the british parliament well acquainted with south african affairs, "i visited every town in south africa of any importance, and was brought into close contact with every class of the population; wherever one went, one heard this ambition voiced, either advocated or deprecated, but never denied. it dates back some forty or fifty years."[ ] the first reference to it is in a despatch of governor sir george grey, in ; and it is to be found more definitely in the speeches of president burgers in the transvaal raad in before the annexation, and in his _apologia_ published after the annexation. the movement continued under the administration of sir bartle frere, who wrote in a despatch (published in blue book) in , "the anti-english opposition are sedulously courting the loyal dutch party (a great majority of the cape dutch) in order to swell the already considerable minority who are disloyal to the english crown here and in the transvaal." mr. theodore schreiner, the brother of the cape premier, in a letter to the "cape times," november, , described a conversation he had some seventeen years ago with mr. reitz, then a judge, afterwards president of the orange free state, and now state secretary of the transvaal, in which mr. reitz admitted that it was his object to overthrow the british power and expel the british flag from south africa. mr. schreiner adds; "during the seventeen years that have elapsed i have watched the propaganda for the overthrow of british power in south africa being ceaselessly spread by every possible means, the press, the pulpit, the platform, the schools, the colleges, the legislature; and it has culminated in the present war, of which mr. reitz and his co-workers are the origin and the cause." the retrocession of the transvaal ( ) gave a strong impulse to this movement, and encouraged president kruger in his persistent efforts since that date to foster it. a friend of the late general joubert,--in a letter which i have read,--wrote of mr. kruger as "the man who, for more than twenty years past, has persistently laboured to drive in the wedge between the two races. it has been his deliberate policy throughout." i always wish that i could separate the memory of that truly great man, mr. gladstone, from this act of his administration. few people cherish his memory with more affectionate admiration than i do. independently of his great intellect, his eloquence, and his fidelity in following to its last consequences a conviction which had taken possession of him, i revered him because he seemed like king saul, to stand a head and shoulders above all his fellows,--not like king saul in physical, but in moral stature. pure, honourable and strong in character and principles, a sincere christian, he attracted and deserved the affection and loyalty of all to whom purity and honour are dear. i may add that i may speak of him, in a measure also as a personal friend of our family. i have memories of delightful intercourse with him at oxford, when he represented that constituency, and later, in other places and at other times. i recall, however, an occasion in which a chill of astonishment and regret fell upon me and my husband (politically one of his supporters), in hearing a pronouncement from him on a subject, which to us was vital, and had been pressing heavily on our hearts. i allude to a great speech which mr. gladstone made in liverpool during the last period of the civil war in america, the abolitionist war. our friend spoke with his accustomed fiery eloquence wholly in favour of the spirit and aims of the combatants of the southern states, speaking of their struggle as one on behalf of liberty and independence, and wishing them success. not one word to indicate that the question which, like burning lava in the heart of a volcano, was causing that terrible upheaval in america, had found any place in that great man's mind, or had even "cast its shadow before" in his thoughts. it appeared as though he had not even taken in the fact of the existence of those four millions of slaves, the uneasy clanking of whose chains had long foreboded the approach of the avenging hand of the deliverer. this obscured perception of the question was that of a great part, if not of the majority, of the press of that day, and of most persons of the "privileged" classes; but that _he_, a trusted leader of so many, should be suffering from such an imperfection of mental vision, was to us an astonishment and sorrow. as we left that crowded hall, my companion and i, we looked at each other in silent amazement, and for a long time we found no words. as i look back now, there seems in this incident some explanation of mr. gladstone's total oblivion of the interests of our loyal native subjects of the transvaal at the time when he handed them over to masters whose policy towards them was well known. these poor natives had appealed to the british government, had trusted it, and were deceived by it. i recollect that mr. gladstone himself confessed, with much humility it seemed to us, in a pamphlet written many years after the american war, that it "had been his misfortune" on several occasions "not to have perceived the reality and importance of a question _until it was at the door_." this was very true. his noble enthusiasm for some good and vital cause so engrossed him at times that the humble knocking at the door of some other, perhaps equally vital question, was not heard by him. the knocking necessarily became louder and louder, till at last the door was opened; but then it may have been too late for him to take the part in it which should have been his. footnote: [footnote : speech of mr. drage, m.p., at derby, december, .] v. visit of transvaal delegates to england. the lord mayor's refusal to receive them at the mansion house. dr. dale's letter to mr. gladstone. mr. mackenzie in england. meetings and resolutions on transvaal matters. manifesto of boer delegates. speeches of w.e. forster, lord shaftesbury, sir fowell buxton, and others. the london convention ( ). in , two years after the retrocession of the transvaal, the boers, encouraged by the hesitating policy of the british government, sent a deputation to london of a few of their most astute statesmen, to put fresh claims before mr. gladstone, and lord derby, then colonial minister. they did not ask the repeal of the stipulations of the convention of --that was hardly necessary, as these stipulations had neither been observed by them nor enforced by our government, but what they desired and asked was the complete re-establishment of the republic, freed from any conditions of british suzerainty. this would have given them a free hand in dealing with the natives, a power which those who knew them best were the least willing to concede. sir r.n. fowler was at that time lord mayor of london. according to the custom when any distinguished foreigners visit our capital, of giving them a reception at the mansion house, these transvaal delegates were presented for that honour. but the door of the mansion house was closed to them, and by a quaker lord mayor, renowned for his hospitality! the explanation of this unusual act is given in the biography of sir r. fowler, written by j.s. flynn, (page .) the following extract from that biography was sent to the _friend_, the organ of the society of friends, in november, , by dr. hodgkin, himself a quaker, whose name is known in the literary world:--"the scene of sir r. fowler's travels in was south africa, where he went chiefly for the purpose of ascertaining how he could best serve the interests of the native inhabitants. he left no stone unturned in his search for information--visiting sir hercules robinson, the governor of the cape, sir theophilus shepstone, sir evelyn wood, colonel mitchell, bishops colenso and macrorie, the zulu king cetewayo, the principal statesmen, the military, the newspaper editors, the workers at the diamond-fields, and many others. the result of his inquiries was to confirm his belief of the charges which were made against the transvaal boers of wronging and oppressing the blacks. "it was the opinion of many philanthropists that the only way to insure good government in the transvaal--justice to the natives, the suppression of slavery, the security of neighbouring tribes--was by england's insisting on the boer's observance of the treaty which had been made to this effect, and the delimitation of the boundary of their territory in order to prevent aggression. with this object in view meetings were held in the city, petitions presented by members of parliament, resolutions moved in the house; and when at last it was discovered that mr. gladstone's government was unwilling to fulfil its pledges in reference to south africa, and that in consequence the native inhabitants would not receive the support they had been led to expect, considerable indignation was felt amongst the friends of the aborigines. the demand which they made seems to have been moderate. the transvaal, which before the war, had been reckoned, for its protection, a portion of the british dominions, was now made simply a state under british suzerainty, with a debt to england of about a quarter of a million (in lieu of the english outlay during the three years of its annexation), and a covenant for the protection of the , natives in the state, and the zulu, bechuana, and swazi tribes upon its borders. the english sympathisers with these natives simply asked that the covenant should be adhered to. there was little chance of the debt being paid, and that they were willing to forego; but they maintained that honour and humanity demanded that the boers should not be allowed to treat their agreement with us as so much waste paper. "the prime minister and the secretary of state for the colonies received the transvaal delegates graciously, but the doors of the mansion house were shut against them. its occupant at that time would neither receive them into his house nor bid them god-speed. he had made a careful study of the south african question, and he felt no doubt that this deputation represented a body of european settlers who were depriving the natives of their land, slaying their men, and enslaving their women and children. he desired to extend the hospitality of the mansion house to visitors from all countries, and to all creeds and political parties; but the line must be drawn somewhere, and he would draw it at the boers. the boldness of his action on this occasion startled some even of his friends. he was, of course, attacked by that portion of the press which supported the government. on the other hand, he had numerous sympathisers. approving letters and telegrams came from many quarters, one telegram coming from the 'loyalists of kimberley' with 'hearty congratulations.' as for his opponents, he was not in the least moved by anything they said. he held it to be impossible for any respectable person who knew the boers to support them. this was no doubt strong language, but it was not stronger than that of moffat and livingstone; not a whit stronger either than that used by w.e. forster, who had been a member of the gladstonian government." dr. hodgkin prefaced this extract by the following lines, addressed to the editor of the _friend_: "dear friend,--in re-perusing a few days ago the life of my late brother-in-law, sir r.n. fowler, i came upon the enclosed passage, which i think worthy of our consideration at the present time. of late years the disputes between our government and the african republic have turned so entirely on questions connected with the status of the settlers in and around johannesburg, that we may easily forget the old subjects of dispute which existed for a generation before it was known that there were any workable goldfields in south africa, and before the word "uitlander" had been mentioned amongst us. i must confess that for my part i had forgotten this incident of sir r.n. fowler's mayoralty, and i think it may interest some of your readers to be reminded of it at the present time. i am, thine truly,--thomas hodgkin. barmoor, northumberland." * * * * * the late dr. dale, of birmingham, was one of those whose minds were painfully exercised on the matter of the abandonment of the natives of the transvaal to the boers. an extract from his life was sent in february this year to the _spectator_, with the following preface:-- "sir,--i have been greatly impressed by the justice of much that has been said in the _spectator_ on the fact that the present war is a retribution for our indifference and apathy in . we failed in our duty then. we have taken it up now, but at what a cost! in reading lately the life of dr. dale, of birmingham, i was struck by his remarks (pp. and ) on the convention of pretoria. these remarks have such a bearing on the present situation that i beg you will allow me to quote them:"-- "in relation to south african affairs he (dr. dale) felt silence to be impossible. he had welcomed the policy initiated by the convention of pretoria ( ) conceding independence to the transvaal, but imposing on the imperial government responsibility for the protection of native races within and beyond the frontiers. in correspondence with members of the house of commons and in more than one public utterance, he expressed his satisfaction that the freedom of the boers did not involve the slavery of the natives. at first the outlook was hopeful, but the boers soon began to chafe against the restrictions to which they were subjected.... the rev. john mackenzie brought a lamentable record of outrage and cruelty.... dr. dale particularly urged that the government should insist on carrying out the th article of the convention of pretoria. 'the policy of the government seemed to me both righteous and expedient, singularly courageous and singularly christian. but that policy included two distinct elements. it restored to the boers internal independence, it reserved to the british government powers for the protection of native races on the transvaal frontier. it is not unreasonable for those who in the face of great obloquy supported the government in recognising the independence of the transvaal, to ask that it should also use its treaty powers, and use them effectively for the protection of the natives.' to this statement the _pall mall_ (john morley) replied that the suzerainty over the transvaal maintained by us was a 'shadowy term,' and that those who demanded that our reserved rights should be enforced were bound to face the question whether they were willing to fight to enforce them. was dr. dale ready to run the risk of a fresh war in south africa? dr. dale replied, should the british government and british people regard with indifference the outrages of the boers against tribes that we had undertaken to protect?... 'if the government of the republic cannot prevent such crimes as are declared to have been committed in the bechuana country, and if we are indifferent to them, we shall have the south african tribes in a blaze again before many years are over, and for the safety of our colonists we shall be compelled to interfere.' in the ensuing session the ministerial policy was challenged in both houses of parliament, and in the commons mr. forster indicted the government for its impotence to hold the transvaal republic to its engagements. dr. dale wrote a long letter to mr. gladstone:--'if it had been said that power to protect the natives should be taken but not used, it is at least possible that a section of the party might have declined to approve the ministerial policy.... the one point to which i venture to direct attention is the contrast, as it appears to me, between the declaration of ministers in ' , in relation to the native races generally, and the position which has been taken in the present debate.' mr. gladstone's reply was courteous, but not reassuring." * * * * * mr. mackenzie, british commissioner for bechuanaland, came to england in . in the following year the delegates from the transvaal came to london, and in the convention was signed, which was called the "london convention." these years included events of great interest. mr. mackenzie wrote:--"on my way to england i met a friend who had just landed in south africa from england. he warned me 'if you say a good word for south africa, mr. mackenzie, you will get yourself insulted. they will not hear a word on its behalf in england; they are so disgusted with the mess that has been made.' 'they had good reason to be disgusted, but i want all the same to tell them a number of things about the true condition of the country.' 'they will not listen,' my friend declared, 'they will only swear at you.' this was not very encouraging, but it was not far from the truth as to the public feeling at that time. being in the----counties of england i was offered an introduction to the editor of a well-known newspaper, who was also a pungent writer on social questions under a _nom de plume_ which had got to be so well known as no longer to serve the purpose of the writer's concealment of identity. 'you come from south africa, do you,' said the great man; 'a place where we have had much trouble, but mean to have no more.' 'trouble, however,' i answered, 'is inseparable from empire. whoever governs south africa must meet with some trouble and difficulty, although not much when honestly faced.' 'i assure you,' he broke in, 'we are not going to try it again after the one fashion or the other. we are out of it, and we mean to remain so.' 'you astonish me,' i answered; 'what about the convention recently signed at pretoria ( )? what about the speeches still more recently made in this country in support of it?' 'as to the convention, i know we signed something; people often do when they are getting out of a nasty business. we never meant to keep it, nor shall we.' i believe i whistled a low whistle just to let off the steam, and then replied calmly, 'will you allow me to say that by your own showing you are a bad lot, a very bad lot, as politicians.' 'that may be, but it does not alter the fact, which is as i state.' 'well, i am an outsider, but i assure you that the english people, should they ever know the facts, will agree with me in saying that you are a bad lot. such doctrines in commerce would ruin us in a day. you know that.' 'the people are with us. they are disgusted and heart-sore with the whole business.' 'i grant you that such is their frame of mind, but i think their attitude will be different when they come to consider the facts, and face the responsibilities of our position in south africa. the only difficulty with me is to communicate the truth to the public mind.' i was much impressed by this interview. did this influential editor represent a large number of english people? were they in their own minds out of south africa, and resolved never to return? ... 'i do not know what you think, mr. mackenzie, but we are all saying here that mr. gladstone made a great mistake in not recalling sir bartle frere at once. in fact, we are of opinion that frere should have been tried and hanged.' the speaker was a fine specimen of an englishman, tall, with a good head, intelligent and able as well as strong in speech. he was a large manufacturer, and a local magnate. his wife was little and gentle, and yet quite fearless of her grim-looking lord. she begged that i would always make a deduction when her husband referred to south africa. he could never keep his temper on that subject, my host abruptly demanded, 'but don't you think that frere should have been hanged?' 'my dear, you will frighten mr. mackenzie with your vehemence, and you know you do not mean it a bit.' 'mean it! isn't it what everybody is saying here? at any rate i have given mr. mackenzie a text, and he must now give me his discourse.' i then proceeded to sketch out the work which sir bartle frere had had before him, its fatal element of haste, with its calamitous failures in no way chargeable to him. 'in short, i concluded, but for the grave blunders of others you would have canonized sir bartle frere instead of speaking of him as you do. he is the ablest man you ever sent to south africa. as to his personal character, i do not know a finer or manlier christian.' ... 'i am quite bewildered,' said my host, at the end of a long conversation. 'i know more of south africa than i knew before. but we shall not believe you unless you pitch into someone. you have not done that yet; you have only explained past history, and have had a good word for everybody.' 'then, sir,' i quickly answered, 'i pitch into you, and into your governments, one after another, for not mastering the facts of south african life. why do you now refuse to protect your own highway into the interior, and at the same time conserve the work of the missionaries whom you have supported for two generations, and thus put an end to the freebooting of the boers, and of our own people who joined them? at present there is a disarmed coloured population, disarmed by your own laws on account only of their colour; and there is an armed population, armed under your laws, because they are white; and you decline to interfere in any way for the protection of the former. you will neither protect the natives nor give them fair play and an open field, so that they may protect themselves.' 'now, my dear,' said the little wife, 'i wonder who deserves to be hanged now? i am sure we are obliged to mr. mackenzie for giving us a clear view of things.' 'no, no, you are always too hasty,' said my host, quite gravely. 'the thing gets very serious. do i rightly understand you, mr. mackenzie, that practically we englishmen arm those freebooters (from the transvaal,) and practically keep the blacks disarmed, and that when the blacks have called on us for protection and have offered themselves and their country to the queen we have paid no heed? is this true?' 'every word true,' i replied. 'then may i ask, did you not fight for these people? you had surely got a rifle,' said my host, turning right round on me. 'my dear, you forget mr. mackenzie has been a missionary,' said his wife. 'you yourself, as a director of the london missionary society, would have had him cashiered if he had done anything of the kind.' 'nonsense, you don't see the thing. i assure you i could not have endured such meanness and injustice. i should have broken such confounded laws. i should have shouldered a rifle, i know,' said the indignant man as he paced his room. 'my dear, you would have got shot, you know,' said his wife. 'shot! yes, certainty, why not?' said my host; and added gravely, 'a fellow would know _why_ he was shot. is it true, mr. mackenzie, that those blacks were kind to our people who fled to them from the transvaal, and that they there protected them?' 'quite true,' i rejoined. 'then by heaven,' said mr.----, raising his voice-- 'let us go to supper,' broke in the gentle wife, 'you are only wearying mr. mackenzie by your constant wishes to hang some one.' "i trust my friends will forgive me for recalling this conversation, which vividly pictures the state of people's mind concerning south africa in . i found that most people were incredulous as to the facts being known at the colonial office, and there was a uniform persuasion that mr. gladstone was ignorant that such things were going on." i have given these interviews (much abridged) because they illustrate in a rather humourous way a state of mind which unhappily has long existed and exists to some degree to this day in england--an impatience of responsibility for anything concerning interests lying beyond the shores of our own island, a certain superciliousness, and a habit of expressing and adhering to suddenly formed and violent opinions without sufficient study of the matters in question,--such opinions being often influenced by the bias of party politics. our countrymen are now waking up to a graver and deeper consideration of the tremendous interests at stake in our colonies and dependencies, and to a greater readiness to accept responsibilities which once undertaken it is cowardice to reject or even to complain of. at the request of the london missionary society, mr. mackenzie drew up an extended account of the bechuanaland question, which had a wide circulation. he did not enter into party politics, but merely gave evidence as to matters of fact. there was surprise and indignation expressed wherever the matter was carefully studied and understood. many resolutions were transmitted to the colonial secretary from public meetings; one which came from a meeting in the town hall of birmingham was as, follows:-- "this meeting earnestly trusts that the british government will firmly discharge the responsibilities which they have undertaken in protection of the native races on the transvaal border." among the people who took up warmly the cause of the south african natives were dr. conder, mr. baines, and mr. yates of leeds (who addressed themselves directly to mr. gladstone), dr. campbell and dr. duff of edinburgh, the rev. arnold thomas and mr. chorlton of bristol, mr. howard of ashton-under-lyne, mr. thomas rigby of chester, and others. a resolution was sent to the colonial office by the secretary of the congregational union of england and wales, which had been passed unanimously at a meeting of that body in bristol:-- "that the assembly of the congregational union, recognising with devout thankfulness the precious and substantial results of the labours of two generations of congregational christian missionaries in bechuanaland, learns with grief and alarm that the lawless incursions of certain boers from the transvaal threaten the utter ruin of peace, civilization, and christianity in that land. this assembly therefore respectfully and most urgently entreats her majesty's government, in accordance with the express provision of the convention by which self-government was granted to the boers, to take such steps as shall eventually put a stop to a state of things as inconsistent with the pledged word of england as with the progress of the bechuanaland nations." signed at bristol, oct. . "these," says mr. mackenzie, "were not words of war, but of peace; they were not the words of enemies, but of friends of the transvaal, many of whom had been prominent previously in agitating for the boers getting back their independence. they felt that this was the just complement of that action; the boers were to have freedom within the transvaal, but not licence to turn bechuanaland (and other neighbouring native states) into a pandemonium." there was a closer contact in edinburgh with south africa than elsewhere, owing to the constant presence at that university of a large number of students from south africa. a public meeting was held in edinburgh, among the speakers whereat were bishop cotterill, who had lived many years in south africa; mr. gifford, who had been a long time in natal; professor calderwood, and dr. blaikie, biographer of dr. livingstone. the venerable mr. cullen, the first missionary traveller in bechuanaland, who had often entertained dr. moffat and dr. livingstone in his house, was present to express his interest in that country. there were the kindest expressions used towards our dutch fellow-subjects; but grave condemnation was expressed of the transvaal policy towards the coloured people in making it a fundamental law that they were not to be equal to the whites either in church or state. a south african committee was formed in london from which a largely supported address was presented to mr. gladstone. the high commissioner for bechuanaland gave his impressions at several different times during that and the preceding year on the subject of the constant illegal passing of the western boundary line of the transvaal by the boers. readers will remember that the delimitation of the western boundary of the transvaal was a fixed condition of the convention of , a convention which was continually violated by the boers. no rest was permitted for the poor natives of the different tribes on that side, the boers' land-hunger continuing to be one of their strongest passions. the high commissioner wrote, "if montsioa and mankoroane were now absorbed, banokwani, makobi and bareki would soon share the same fate. haseitsiwe and sechele would come next. so long as there were native cattle to be stolen and native lands to be taken possession of, the absorbing process would be repeated. tribe after tribe would be pushed back and back upon other tribes or would perish in the process until an uninhabitable desert or the sea were reached as the ultimate boundary of the transvaal state."[ ] the manifesto presented by the transvaal delegates to the english people convinced no one, and its tone was calculated rather to beget suspicion. the following is an extract from that document: "the horrible misdeeds committed by spain in america, by the dutch in the indian archipelago, by england in india, and by the southern planters in the united states, constitute an humiliating portion of the history of mankind, over which we as christians may well blush, confessing with a contrite heart our common guiltiness." "the labours of the anti-slavery and protection of aborigines societies which have been the means of arousing the public conscience to the high importance of this matter cannot be, according to our opinion, sufficiently lauded and encouraged." the manifesto then goes on to meet the charges concerning slavery and ill-treatment of natives brought against the transvaal by a flat denial. "they may be true," they say, "as to actions done long ago, and they humbly pray to the lord god to forgive them the sins that may have been committed in hidden corners. believe us, therefore, gentlemen, when we say that the opposition to our government is caused by prejudice, and fed by misunderstanding. if you leave us untrammelled, we hope to god that before a new generation has passed, a considerable portion of our natives in the transvaal will be converted to christianity; at least our government is preparing arrangements for a more thorough christian mission among them." a public meeting was held at the mansion house, called by the lord mayor, sir r. fowler, at which the right hon. w.e. forster, referring to the sand river and the other conventions said: "can anything be more grossly unfair and unjust than on the one hand, to hand over these native people to the transvaal government, and on the other hand to do our utmost to prevent them from defending themselves when their rights are attacked? i cannot conceive any provision more contrary to that principle of which we are so proud--british fair play." speaking of the treatment of the bechuanaland people by the boers he said: "the story of these men is a very sad one; i would rather never allude to it again." he then referred to "the settlement of the western boundary of the transvaal by governor keate, and the immediate repudiation of it by the transvaal rulers. then came the pretoria convention only two years ago which added a large block of native land to the transvaal. that was not enough. freebooters came over, mostly from the transvaal, and afterwards from other parts of the country. representations and remonstrances were made to the transvaal government. there was a non possumus reply. 'we cannot stop them;' we seem to have good ground for believing that the freebooters were stimulated by the officers of the transvaal government. the result was that the native chiefs of the people lost by far the larger portion of their land. they appealed to our government, and we did nothing; there came again and again despairing appeals to england, and how were they met? i can only believe it was through ignorance of the question that it was possible to meet them as we did. it was proposed to meet them by a miserable compensation in money or in land, not to the people but to the few chiefs, who to their credit, as a lesson to us, a great christian country said: 'we will not desert our people even if you desert us.' then there followed utter disorder and disorganisation in bechuanaland. then came in the transvaal government and virtually said: 'give us the country and we will maintain order; if owners of the land object we will put them down as rebels; we will take their land as we have taken mapoch's, and apprentice their children. you have got tired of these quarrels, leave them to us; we will put a stop to them by protecting the robbers who have taken the land.' "that practically is the demand. are you prepared to grant it? i for my part say, that rather than grant it i would (a voice in the meeting--'fight!') yes, if necessary, fight; but i will do my utmost to persuade my fellow countrymen to make the declaration that, if necessary, force will be used, which, if it was believed in, would make it unnecessary to fight. "the transvaal boers know our power, and the delegates know our power. it is our will that they doubt. if i could not persuade my fellow countrymen that they meant to show that they would never grant such demands as these, i would rather do--what i should otherwise oppose with all my might,--withdraw from south africa altogether. i am not so proud of our extended empire as to wish to preserve it at the cost of england refusing to discharge her duties. if we have obligations we must meet them, and if we have duties we must fulfil them; and i have confidence in the english people that first or last they will make our government fulfil its obligations. but there is much difference between first and last; last is much more difficult than first, and more costly than first. the cost increases with more than geometrical progression. there are people who say, (but the british nation will not say it;) 'leave us alone, let these colonists and boers and natives whom we are tired of, fight it out as best they can; let us declare by our deeds, or rather by our non deeds that we will not keep our promise nor fulfil our duty.' such a course as that would be as extravagantly costly as it would be shamefully wrong. this _laissez faire_ policy tends to make things go from bad to worse until at last by a great and most costly effort, and perhaps by a really bloody and destructive war, we shall be obliged to do in the end at a greater cost, and in a worse way, that which we could do now. it is not impossible to do it now. a gentleman in the meeting said it was a question of fighting. i do not believe this; but though born a quaker, i must admit that if there be no other way by which we can protect our allies and prevent the ungrateful desertion of those who helped us in the time of need, than by the exercise of force, i say force must be exercised." readers will remark how extraordinarily prophetic are these words of mr. forster, spoken in . the "venerable and beloved lord shaftesbury," as mr. mackenzie calls him, spoke as follows:-- "this morning has been put into my hands the reply of the transvaal delegates to the aborigines protection society. i read it with a certain amount of astonishment and of comfort too,--of astonishment that men should be found possessing such a depth of christianity, such sentiments of religion, such love for veracity, and such regard for the human race as to put on record and to sign with their own hands such a denial of the atrocities and cruelties which have been recorded against them for so many years. it is most blessed to contemplate the depth of their religious sentiments; they express the love they bear to our lord and saviour, and their desire to walk in his steps. all this is very beautiful, and, _if true_, is the greatest comfort ever given us concerning the native races. i will take that document as a promise for the future that they will act upon these principles, that they are christians, and that they will act on christian principles, and respect the rights of the natives. that is perhaps the most generous view to take of the matter; but, nevertheless, we shall be inclined to doubt until we _see_ that they have put these principles into practice. "let me come to the laws of the transvaal. it is a fundamental law of that state that there can be no equality either in church or in state between white and coloured men. no native is allowed to hold land in the transvaal with such a fundamental law. it is nothing more than a necessary transition to the conclusion that the coloured people should be contemned as being of an inferior order, and only fit for slavery. that is a necessary transition, and it is for englishmen to protest against it, and to say that all men, of whatever creed, or race, or colour, are equal in church and state, and in the sight of god, and to assert the principle of civil and religious liberty whenever they have the opportunity. i have my fears at times of the consequences of democratic action; but i shall never feel afraid of appealing to the british democracy on a question of civil and religious liberty. that strikes a chord that is very deep and dear to every briton everywhere. they believe,--and their history shows that they act upon the belief,--that the greatest blessing here below that can be given to intellectual and moral beings is the gift of civil and religious liberty. sensible of the responsibility we have assumed, we appeal to the british public, and i have no doubt what the answer will be. it will be that by god's blessing, and so far as in us lies, civil and religious liberty _shall_ prevail among all the tribes of south africa, to the end that they may become civilized nations, vying with us in the exercise of the gifts that god has bestowed upon us." sir henry barkly, who had held the office of governor of the cape colony, and of high commissioner for a number of years, said:-- "apart from other considerations, it is essential in the interests of civilization and of commerce that the route to the interior of the dark continent should be kept in our hands. it has been through the stations planted by our missionaries all along it, as far as matabeleland, that the influence of the gospel has been spread among the natives, and that the way has been made safe and easy for the traveller and the trader. can we suppose that these stations can be maintained if we suffer the road to fall within the limits of the transvaal? we need not recall our melancholy experience of the past in this region. i would rather refer to the case of the paris evangelical society, whose missionaries were refused leave only a short time ago to teach or preach to the basuto-speaking population within the transvaal territory." the hon. k. southey said:-- "i concur entirely with what has been said by the right hon. mr. forster with regard to slavery. it must be admitted that the institution does not exist in name; but in reality something very closely allied to it exists, for in that country there is no freedom for the coloured races. the road to the interior must be kept open, not only for the purposes of trade, but also as a way by which the gospel may be carried from here to the vast regions beyond her majesty's possessions in that part of the world. if we allow the transvaal state to annex a territory through which the roads to the interior pass, not only will there be difficulties put in the way of our traders, but the missionary also will find it no easy task to obey the injunction to carry the gospel into all lands, and to preach it to all peoples." sir fowell buxton presented the following thought, which might with advantage be taken to heart at the present time:-- "we know how in the united states they have lately been celebrating the events that recall the time a century ago of the declaration of their independence. i will ask you to consider what would have been the best advice that we could have given at that time to the government at washington? do we not know that in regard to all that relates to the well-being of the country, to mere matters of wealth and property, the best advice to have given them would have been, to deliver their country at once from all connection with slavery in the days when they formed her constitution." * * * * * sir william m'arthur, m.p., said:-- "i have never seen in the mansion house a larger or more enthusiastic meeting, and i believe that the feeling which animates this meeting is animating the whole country. any course of action taken by her majesty's ministers towards the transvaal will be very closely watched. i myself am for peace, but i am also for that which maintains peace, viz., a firm and decided policy." * * * * * the poor chief, mankoroane, having heard that the transvaal delegates would discuss questions of vital importance to his people, left bechuanaland and went as far as cape town on his way to england to represent his case there. lord derby, however, sent him word that he could not be admitted to the conference in london, where the ownership of his own country was to be discussed. mankoroane then begged mr. mackenzie to be his representative, but was again told that neither personally nor by representative could he be recognised at the conference in downing street, but that any remarks which mr. mackenzie might make on his behalf would receive the attention of government. (blue book , .) the first and great question which the transvaal delegates desired to settle in their own interests was that of the western boundary line, amended by themselves, which was represented on a map. they were informed that their amended treaty was "neither in form nor in substance such as her majesty's government could adopt," there being "certain chiefs who had objected, on behalf of their people, to be included in the transvaal, and there being a strong feeling in london in favour of the independence of these natives, or (if they, the natives, desired it) of their coming under british rule." there was now brought before the delegates a map showing the addition of land which was eventually granted to the transvaal, but the delegates would not agree to any such arrangement. her majesty's government were giving away to them some , square miles of native territory, concerning which there was no clear evidence that its owners wished to be joined to the transvaal. but this was nothing to the transvaal demand, as shown by a map which they put in, and which included an _additional_ block of , square miles. not finding agreement with the government possible, the delegates then turned from that position, and took up the question of the remission of the debt which the transvaal owed to england, saying that the wishes of the native chiefs should be consulted first about the boundary line. this was a bold stroke; they were professing to be representing the interests of certain chiefs, which was not the case. lord derby telegraphed to the cape on the th of feb. , the result of the protracted labours of the conference at downing street, mentioning:--"british protectorate established outside the transvaal, with delegates' consent. debt reduced to quarter of a million."[ ] to many persons it seems that the convention of , rather than the convention of , was the real blunder. it is remarkable, however, as illustrating the small attention which south african affairs then received, that no party controversy was aroused over this later instrument. very soon afterwards, however, the question became acute, owing to the action of mr. kruger; and then, it must be remembered, that mr. gladstone did not hesitate to appeal to the armed strength of the empire in order to defend british interests and prevent the extension of boer rule. that there was not war in was due only to the fact that mr. kruger at that time did not choose to fight. the raiders and filibusters were put down before by sir charles warren's force, but mr. gladstone had taken every precaution in view of the contingency of a collision. the conditions laid down in the convention did not satisfy the delegates, although they formally assented to them. their disappointment began to be strongly manifested. they had stoutly denied that slavery existed in their country. this denial was challenged by the secretary of the aborigines protection society, who brought forward some very awkward testimonies and facts of recent date. it was suggested that president kruger should for ever silence the calumniators by demanding a commission of enquiry on this subject which would take evidence within and round the transvaal as they might see fit. the delegates took good care not to accept this challenge. the firmness of the british government at that moment was fully justified by the actual facts of the case which came so strikingly before them, and their attitude was supported by public opinion, so far as this public opinion in england then existed. it was the transvaal deputation itself which had most effectually developed it when they first arrived in london, though it was known they had many friends, and that numbers of the public were generally quite willing to consider their claims.[ ] they sat for three months in conference with members of her majesty's government before coming to any decision. that decision was known as the london convention of . the displeasure of the boer delegates matured after their return to the transvaal, and was expressed in a message sent by the volksraad to our government not many months after the signing of the convention in london. in this document the boers seem to regard themselves as a victorious people making terms with those they had conquered. it is interesting to note the articles of the convention to which they particularly object. in the telegram which was sent to "his excellency, w.e. gladstone," the volksraad stated that the london convention was not acceptable to them. they declared that "modifications were desirable, and that certain articles _must_ be altered." they attached importance to the native question, declaring that "the suzerain (great britain) has not the right to interfere with their legislature, and that they cannot agree to article , which gives the suzerain a voice concerning native affairs, nor to article , by virtue of which natives are to be allowed to acquire land, nor to that part of article , by which it is provided that white men of a foreign race living in the transvaal shall not be taxed in excess of the taxes imposed on transvaal citizens." it should be observed here that this reference to unequal and excessive taxation of foreigners in the transvaal, pointing to a tendency on the part of the boers to load foreigners with unjust taxation, was made before the development of the goldfields and the great influx of uitlanders. the message of the volksraad was finally summed up in the following words: "we object to the following articles, , , , and , because to insist on them is hurtful to our sense of honour." (sic.) now what are the articles to which the boer government here objects, and has continued to object? article enacts that _no slavery or apprenticeship shall be tolerated_. article provides for religious toleration (for natives and all alike.) article provides for the free movement, trading, and residence of all persons, other than natives, conforming themselves to the laws of the transvaal. article gives to all, (natives included,) the right of free access to the courts of justice. putting the "sense of honour" of the transvaal volksraad out of the question, past experience had but too plainly proved that these articles were by no means superfluous. footnotes: [footnote : "austral africa, ruling it or losing it," p. .] [footnote : when the transvaal was annexed, in , the public debt of that country amounted to £ , . "under british rule this debt was liquidated to the extent of £ , , but the total was brought up by a parliamentary grant, a loan from the standard bank, and sundries to £ , , which represented the public debt of the transvaal on the st december, . this was further increased by monies advanced by the standard bank and english exchequer during the war, and till the th august, , (during which time the country yielded no revenue,) to £ , . to this must be added an estimated sum of £ , for compensation charges, pension allowances, &c., and a further sum of £ , , the cost of the successful expedition against secocoemi, that of the unsuccessful one being left out of account, bringing up the total public debt to over a million, of which about £ , was owing to this country. this sum the commissioners (sir evelyn wood dissenting) reduced by a stroke of the pen to £ , , thus entirely remitting an approximate sum of £ , or £ , . to the sum of £ , still owing must be added say another £ , for sums lately advanced to pay the compensation claims, bringing up the actual amount owing to england to about a quarter of a million."--report of assistant secretary to the british agent for native affairs. (blue book , .)] [footnote : "austral africa." mackenzie.] vi. the career and recall of sir bartle frere. unfortunate effect in south africa of party spirit in politics at home. death of sir bartle frere. the great principles of british government and law. hope for south africa if these are maintained and observed. words of mr. gladstone on the colonizing spirit of englishmen. the case of sir bartle frere illustrates forcibly the inexpediency of allowing our party differences at home to sow the seeds of discord in a distant colony, and the apparent injustices to which such action may give rise. while in england sir bartle frere was being censured and vilified, in south africa an overwhelming majority of the colonists, of whatever race or origin, were declaring, in unmistakable terms, that he had gained their warmest approbation and admiration. town after town and village after village poured in addresses and resolutions in different forms, agreeing in enthusiastic commendation of him as the one man who had grasped the many threads of the south african tangle, and was handling them so as to promise a solution in accordance with the interests of all the many and various races which inhabited it. "in our opinion," one of these resolutions (from cradock) says, "his excellency, sir bartle frere, is one of the best governors, if not the best governor, this colony has ever had, and the disasters which have taken place since he has held office, are not due to any fault of his, but to a shameful mismanagement of public affairs before he came to the colony, and the state of chaos and utter confusion in which he had the misfortune to find everything on his arrival; and we are therefore of opinion that the thanks of every loyal colonist are due to his excellency for the herculean efforts he has since made under the most trying circumstances to south africa...."[ ] another, from kimberley says:--"it has been a source of much pain to us that your excellency's policy and proceedings should have been so misunderstood and misrepresented.... the time, we hope, is not far distant when the wisdom of your excellency's native policy and action will be as fully recognized and appreciated by the whole british nation as it is by the colonists of south africa."[ ] at pretoria, the capital of the transvaal, a public meeting was held (april th), which resolved that:-- "this meeting reprobates most strongly the action of a certain section of the english and colonial press for censuring, without sufficient knowledge of local affairs, the policy and conduct of sir b. frere; and it desires not only to express its sympathy with sir b. frere and its confidence in his policy, but also to go so far as to congratulate most heartily her majesty the queen, the home government, and ourselves, on possessing such a true, considerate, and faithful servant as his excellency the high commissioner." a public dinner also was given to sir b. frere at pretoria, at which his health was drunk with the greatest enthusiasm; there was a public holiday, and other rejoicings. sir bartle frere was intending to go to bloemfontein, in the orange free state, to visit president brand, with whom he was on cordial terms, and with whom he wished to talk over his plans for the transvaal; but instructions came from sir michael hicks-beach to proceed to cape town. he therefore left pretoria on may st. he was welcomed everywhere with the utmost cordiality and enthusiasm. at potchefstroom there was a public dinner and a reception. on approaching bloemhof he was met by a large cavalcade, and escorted into the township, where a triumphal arch had been erected, and an address was presented. "at kimberley he had been sworn in as governor of griqualand west. fifteen thousand people, it was estimated, turned out to meet and welcome him. from thence to cape town his journey was like a triumphal progress, the population at each place he passed through receiving him in flag-decorated streets, with escorts, triumphal arches, illuminations, and addresses. at worcester, where he reached the railway, there was a banquet, at which sir gordon sprigg was also present. at paarl, which was the head-quarters of the dutch afrikander league, and where some of the most influential dutch families live, a similar reception was given him. finally, at cape town, where, if anywhere, his policy was likely to find opponents among those who regarded it from a provincial point of view, the inhabitants of all classes and sections and of whatever origin, gave themselves up to according him a reception such as had never been surpassed in capetown. "in england, complimentary local receptions and addresses to men in high office or of exalted rank do not ordinarily carry much meaning. party tactics and organization account for a proportion of such manifestations. but the demonstration on this occasion cannot be so explained. there was no party organization to stimulate it. it was too general to confer notoriety on any of its promoters, and sir b. frere had not personally the power, even if he had had the will, to return compliments. and what made it the more remarkable was that there was no special victory or success or event of any kind to celebrate."[ ] on reaching cape town, a telegraphic message was handed to him, preparing him for his recall, by the statement that sir h. bulwer was to replace him as high commissioner of the transvaal, natal, and all the adjoining eastern portion of south africa, and that he was to confine his attention for the present to the cape colony. to deprive him of his authority as regarded natal, zululand, the transvaal--the transvaal, which almost by his single hand and voice he had just saved from civil war--and expressly to direct colonel lanyon to cease to correspond with him, was to discredit a public servant before all the world at the crisis of his work. sir bartle frere's great object had been to bring about a confederation of all the different states and portions of south africa, an object with which the home government was in sympathy. what was wanting to bring about confederation was confidence, founded on the permanent pacification and settlement of zululand, the transvaal, the transkei, pondoland, basutoland, west griqualand, and the border generally. how could there, under these circumstances, be confidence any longer? there was no doubt what he had meant to do. by many a weary journey he had made himself personally known throughout south africa. his aims and intentions were never concealed, never changed. in confederating under his superintendence all men knew what they were doing. but he was now to be superseded. was his policy to be changed, and how?[ ] it was expected by the political majority in england that as soon as mr. gladstone came into power, sir bartle frere, whose policy had been so strongly denounced, would be at once recalled. when the new parliament met in may, the government found many of their supporters greatly dissatisfied that this had not been done. notice of motion was given of an address to the crown, praying for sir b. frere's removal. certain members of parliament met together several times at the end of may, and a memorial to mr. gladstone was drawn up, which was signed by about ninety of them, and sent to him on june rd, to the following effect:-- "to the right hon. w.e. gladstone, m.p., first lord of the treasury." "we the undersigned, members of the liberal party, respectfully submit that as there is a strong feeling throughout the country in favour of the recall of sir bartle frere, it would greatly conduce to _the unity of the party and relieve many members from the charge of breaking their pledges to their constituents if_ that step were taken."[ ] the first three signatures to this document were those of l.l. dillwyn, wilfrid lawson, and leonard courtney. this has been called not unjustly, "a cynically candid document." the "unity of the party," and "pledges to constituents" are the only considerations alluded to in favour of the recall of a man to whose worth almost the whole of south africa had witnessed, in spite of divided opinions concerning the zulu war, for which he was only in a very minor degree responsible. the memorial to the government had its effect; the successor of sir bartle frere was to be sir hercules robinson. he was in new zealand, and could not reach the cape at once; therefore sir george strahan was appointed _ad interim_ governor, sir bartle being directed not even to await the arrival of the latter, but to leave by the earliest mail steamer. at the news of his recall there arose for the second time a burst of sympathy from every town, village, and farm throughout the country, in terms of mingled indignation and sorrow.[ ] the addresses and resolutions, being spontaneous at each place, varied much, and laid stress on different points, but in all there was a tone of deep regret, of conviction that sir b. frere's policy and his actions had been wise, just, and merciful towards all men, and of hope that the british government and people would in time learn the truth.[ ] one from farmers of east london concludes: "may god almighty bless you and grant you and yours a safe passage to the mother country, give you grace before our sovereign lady the queen, and eloquence to vindicate your righteous cause before the british nation."[ ] the address of the natives of mount cake is pathetic in its simplicity of language. "our hearts are very bitter this day. we hear that the queen calls you to england. we have not heard that you are sick; then why have you to leave us? by you we have now peace. we sleep now without fear. old men tell us of a good governor durban (sir benjamin durban) who had to leave before his good works became law; but red coals were under the ashes which he left. words of wicked men, when he left, like the wind blew up the fire, and the country was again in war. so also sir george grey, a good governor, good to tie up the hands of bad men, good to plant schools, good to feed the hungry, good to have mercy and feed the heathen when dying from hunger, he also had to leave us. we do not understand this. but your excellency is not to leave us. natal has now peace by you; we have peace by you because god and the queen sent you. do not leave us. surely it is not the way of the queen to leave her children here unprotected until peace is everywhere. we shall ever pray for you as well as for the queen. these are our words to our good governor, though he turns his back on us." the malays and other orientals, of whom there is a considerable population at capetown, looked upon frere, a former indian statesman, as their special property. the address from the mahommedan subjects of the queen says:-- "we regret that our gracious queen has seen fit to recall your excellency. we cannot help thinking it is through a mistake. the white subjects of her majesty have had good friends and good rulers in former governors, but your excellency has been the friend of white and coloured alike."[ ] * * * * * the following letter is from sir john akerman, a member of the legislative council of natal:-- "august th, . "having become aware of your recall to england from the office of governor of the cape of good hope, etc., etc., i cannot allow your departure to take place without conveying to you, which i hereby do, the profound sense i have of the faithful and conscientious manner in which you have endeavoured to fulfil those engagements which, at the solicitation of great britain, you entered upon in . the policy was not your own, but was thrust upon you. having given in london, in , advice to pursue a different course in south africa from the one then all the fashion and ultimately confided to yourself, it affords me the greatest pleasure to testify to the consistency of the efforts put forth by you to carry out the (then) plan of those who commissioned you, and availed themselves of your acknowledged skill and experience. as a public man of long standing in south africa, i would likewise add that since the days of sir g. grey, no governor but yourself has grasped the _native question here at all_, and i feel confident that had your full authority been retained, and not harshly wrested from you, even at the eleventh hour initiatory steps of a reformatory nature with respect to the natives would have been taken, which it is the duty of britain to follow while she holds her sovereignty over these parts." sir gordon sprigg wrote:-- "august th, . "i don't feel able yet to give expression to my sentiments of profound regret that her majesty's government have thought it advisable to recall you from the post which you have held with such conspicuous advantage to south africa. they have driven from south africa 'the best friend it has ever known.' for myself i may say that in the midst of all the difficulties with which i have been surrounded, i have always been encouraged and strengthened by the cheerful view you have taken of public affairs, and that i have never had half-an-hour's conversation with your excellency without feeling a better, and, i believe, a wiser man." madame koopmans de wet, a lady of an old family, dutch of the dutch, wrote to him, nov. th, :-- "it is with feelings of the deepest sorrow that i take the liberty of addressing these lines to you.... what is to be the end of all this now? for now, particularly, do the cape people miss _their_ governor, for now superior qualities in everything are wanted. dear sir bartle, you know the material we have; it is good, but who is to guide? it is plain to every thinking mind that our position is becoming more critical every day.... "but with deep sorrow let me say, england's, or rather downing street's treatment, has not tightened the bonds between the mother country and us. you know we have a large circle of acquaintances, and i cannot say how taken aback i sometimes am to hear their words. see, in all former wars there was a moral support in the thought that england, our england, was watching over us. now there is but one cry, 'we shall have no imperial help.' why is this? we have lost confidence in a government who could play with our welfare; and among the many injuries done us, the greatest was to remove from among us a ruler such as your excellency was." "as the day drew near, the cape town people were perplexed how to express adequately their feelings on the occasion. it was suggested that on the day he was to embark, the whole city should mourn with shops closed, flags half-mast high, and in profound silence. but more cheerful counsels prevailed. "he was to leave by the _pretoria_ on the afternoon of sept. th. special trains had brought in contingents from the country. the open space in front of government house, plein street, church square, adderley street, the dock road, the front of the railway station, the wharves, the housetops, and every available place, whence a view of the procession could be procured, was closely packed. the governor's carriage left government house at half-past four,--volunteer cavalry furnishing the escort, and volunteer rifles, engineers, and cadets falling in behind,--and amid farewell words and ringing cheers, moved slowly along the streets gay with flags and decorations. at the dock gates the horses were taken out and men drew the carriage to the quay, where the _pretoria_ lay alongside. here the general, the ministers, and other leading people, were assembled; and the st regiment, which had been drawn up, presented arms, the band played "god save the queen," and the volunteer artillery fired a salute as the governor for the last time stepped off african soil. "there had been some delay at starting, the tide was ebbing fast, the vessel had been detained to the last safe moment, and she now moved out slowly, and with caution, past a wharf which the malays, conspicuous in their bright-coloured clothing, had occupied, then, with a flotilla of boats rowing alongside, between a double line of yachts, steam-tugs and boats, dressed out with flags, and dipping their ensigns as she passed, and lastly, under the stern of the _boadicea_ man-of-war, whose yards were manned, and whose crew cheered. the guns of the castle fired the last salute from the shore, which was answered by the guns of the _boadicea_; and in the still bright evening the smoke hung for a brief space like a curtain, hiding the shores of the bay from the vessel. a puff of air from the south-east cleared it away, and showed once more in the sunset light the flat mass of table mountain, the "lion's head" to its right, festooned with flags, the mountain slopes dotted over with groups thickening to a continuous broad black line of people, extending along the water's edge from the central jetty to the breakwater basin. the vessel's speed increased, the light faded, and the night fell on the last, the most glorious, and yet the saddest day of sir bartle frere's forty-five years' service of his queen and country. "for intensity of feeling and unanimity it would be hard in our time to find a parallel to this demonstration of enthusiasm for a public servant. the cape town people are by race and habit the reverse of demonstrative; yet it was noticed that day, as it had been noticed when frere left sattara (india) thirty years before, and again when he left sind twenty-one years before--a sight almost unknown amongst men of english or german race in our day--that _men_ looking on were unable to restrain their tears. at sattara and in sind the regret at losing him was softened by the knowledge that his departure was due to a recognition of his merit; that he was being promoted in a service in which his influence might some day extend with heightened power to the country he was leaving. it was far otherwise when he left the cape. on that occasion the regret of the colonists was mingled with indignation, and embittered with a sense of wrong."[ ] the writer just quoted makes the following remarks:-- "no one who has not associated with colonists in their homes can rightly enter into the mixed feelings with which they regard the mother country. as with a son who is gone forth into the world, there is often on one side the conceit of youth and impatience of restraint, shown in uncalled for acts of self-assertion or in dogmatic speech; and on the other side a supercilious want of sympathy with the changed surroundings, the pursuits and the aspirations of the younger generation. it seems as if there were no bond left between the two. but a day of trial comes; parent or offspring is threatened by a stranger; and then it is seen that the old instinct and yearnings are not dead, but only latent. the mother country had hitherto not been forgetful of its natural obligations to its south african offspring." "but those" he goes on to say, "who on that fateful evening watched the hull of the _pretoria_ slowly dipping below the western horizon felt that if, as seemed only too probable, dismemberment of the british empire in south africa were sooner or later to follow, the fault did not lie with the colonists." the mother country had, he asserts, sacrificed the interests of her loyal sons abroad to those which were at that moment pre-occupying her at home, and appearing to her in such dimensions as to blot out the larger view which later events gradually forced upon her vision. the words above quoted are strong, perhaps too strong, but if we are true lovers of our country and race and of our fellow creatures everywhere, we shall not shrink from any such warnings, though their wording may seem exaggerated. for we have a debt to pay back to south africa; and if we cannot resume our solemn responsibilities towards her and her millions of native peoples, in a chastened, a wiser and a more determined spirit than that which for some time has prevailed, it would be better to relinquish them altogether. but we are beginning to understand the lesson written for our learning in this solemn page of contemporary history which is to-day laid open before our eyes and before those of the whole world. i have recorded some few of the many testimonies in favour of sir bartle frere, because he,--a man beloved and respected by many of us,--was the subject of a hastily formed judgment which continues in a measure even to this day, to obscure the memory of his worth. a friend writes: "his letters are admirable as showing his statesmanlike and humane view of things, and his courage and patience under exasperating conditions. he returned to england under a cloud, and died of a broken heart." mr. mackenzie, writing of his own departure from england in to return to south africa, says:-- "the farewell which affected me most was that of sir bartle frere, who was then stretched on what turned out to be his death-bed. he was very ill, and not seeing people, but was so gratified that what he had proposed in as to bechuanaland should be carried out in , that lady frere asked me to call and see him before i sailed. "the countenance of this eminent officer was now thin, his voice was weaker; but light was still in his eye and the mind quite unclouded. 'here i am, mackenzie, between living and dying, waiting the will of god.' 'i expressed my hope for his recovery.' 'we won't talk about me. i wanted to see you. i feel i can give you advice, for i am an old servant of the queen. i have no fear of your success now on the side of government. sir hercules robinson, having selected you, will uphold you with a full support. the rest will depend on your own character and firmness and tact. i am quite sure you will succeed. your difficulties will be at the beginning. but you will get them to believe in you--the farmers as well as the natives. they will soon see you are their friend. now remember this: get good men round you; get, if possible, godly men as your officers. what has been done in india has been accomplished by hard-working, loyal-hearted men, working willingly under chiefs to whom they were attached. get the right stamp of men round you and the future is yours.' "this was the last kindly action and friendly advice of a distinguished, noble-minded, and self-forgetful christian man, who had befriended me as an obscure person,--our meeting-ground and common object being the future welfare of all races in south africa. i went forth to complete my life work: he remained to die." it was a costly sacrifice made on the altar of party. my friends have sometimes asked me, what then is the ground of my hope for the future of our country and all over whom our queen reigns? i reply,--my hope lies in the fact that above all party differences, above all private and political theories, above all the mere outward forms of government and the titles given to these, there stand, eternally firm and unchangeable, the great principles of our constitution which are the basis of our jurisprudence, and of every law which is inherently just. i use these words deliberately--"eternally firm and unchangeable." a long and deep study of these principles, and some experience of the grief and disaster caused by any grave departure from them, have convinced me that these principles are founded on the highest ethics,--the ethics of christ. the great charter of our liberties was born, as all the most precious things are, through "great tribulation," at a time when our whole nation was groaning under injustice and oppression, and when sorrow had purified the eyes of the noble "seers" of the time, and their appeal was to the god of justice himself, and to no lower tribunal. these seers were then endowed with the power to bend the will of a stubborn and selfish monarch, and to put on record the stern principles of our "immortal charter." i have often longed that every school-boy and girl should be taught and well-grounded in these great principles. it would not be a difficult nor a dry study, for like all great things, these principles are simple, straight, and clear as the day. it is when, we come to intricacies and technicalities of laws, even though based on these great fundamental lines, that the study becomes dry, useful to the professional lawyer, but not to the pupil in school or the public generally. the principles of our constitution have been many times in the course of our national history disregarded, and sometimes openly violated. but such disregard and such violation have happily not been allowed to be of long duration. sometimes the respect of these principles has been restored by the efforts of a group of enlightened statesmen, but more frequently by the awakened "common sense"[ ] of the people, who have become aware that they, or even some very humble section of them, have been made to suffer by such violation. again and again the gallant "ship of our constitution," carrying the precious cargo of our inalienable rights and liberties, has righted herself in the midst of storms and heavy seas of trouble. having been called for thirty years of my life to advocate the rights of a portion of our people,--the meanest and most despised of our fellow citizens,--when those rights had been destroyed by an act of parliament which was a distinct violation of the constitution, and having been driven, almost like a ship-wrecked creature to cling, with the helpless crew around me, during those years to this strong rock of principle, and having found it to be political and social salvation in a time of need, i cannot refrain, now in my old age, from embracing every opportunity i may have of warning my fellow countrymen of the danger there is in departing from these principles. my hope for the future of south africa, granting its continuance as a portion of our colonial empire, is in the resurrection of these great principles from this present tribulation, and their recognition by our rulers, politicians, editors, writers, and people at large as the expression of essential justice and morality. france possesses, equally with ourselves, a record of these principles in its famous "declaration of the rights of man," born also in a period of great national tribulation. that document is in principle identical with our own great charter. but france has only possessed it a little more than a century, whereas our own charter dates back many centuries; hence the character of our people has been in a great measure formed upon its principles, and they have been made sensitive to any grave or continued violation of them. in france, earnest and sometimes almost despairing appeals are now made to these fundamental principles expressed in their own great charter by a minority of men who continue to see straight and clearly through the clouds of contending factions in the midst of which they live; but for a large portion of the nation they are a dead letter, even if they have ever been intelligently understood. how far has south africa been governed on these principles? i boldly affirm that on the whole, since the beginning of the last century, it is these principles of british government and law, so far as they have been enforced, which have saved that colony from anarchy and confusion, and its native populations from bondage or annihilation. but they have not been sufficiently strongly enforced. they have not been brought to bear upon those englishmen, traders, speculators, company-makers, and others whose interests may have been in opposition to these principles. a swiss missionary who has lived a great part of his life in south africa, writes to me:--"the whole of south africa is to blame in its treatment of the natives. take the british merchant, the boer and dutch official, the german colonist, the french and swiss trader,--there is no difference. the general feeling among these is against the coloured race being educated and evangelized.... only what can and must be said is this, that _the laws of the english colonies are just_; those of the boer states are the negation of every right, civil and religious, which the black man ought to have." i have similar testimonies from missionaries (not englishmen); but i regret to say that these good men hesitate to have their names published,--not from selfish reasons,--but from love of their missionary work and their native converts, to whom they fear they will never be permitted to return if the ascendancy of the present transvaal government should continue, and mr. kruger should learn that they have published what they have seen in his country. it is to be hoped that these witnesses will feel impelled before long to speak out. the writer just quoted, says:--"i firmly believe that the native question is at the bottom of all this trouble. the time is coming when, cost what it will, we missionaries must speak out." in connection with this subject, i give here a quotation from the "daily news," march st, . the article was inspired by a thoughtful speech of sir edward grey. the writer asks the reason of the loss of the capacity in our liberal party to deal with colonial matters; and replies: "it is to be found, we think, in want of imagination and in want of faith. there are many among us who have failed, from want of imagination, to grasp that we have been living in an age of expansion; or who, recognising the fact, have from want of faith seen in it occasion only for lamentation and woe. failure in either of these respects is sure to deprive a british party of popular support. for the 'expansion of england' now, as in former times, proceeds from the people themselves, and faith in the mission of england is firmly planted in the popular creed." we recall a noble passage in which mr. gladstone stated with great clearness the inevitable tendency of the times in which we live. "there is," he said, "a continual tendency on the part of enterprising people to overstep the limits of the empire, and not only to carry its trade there, but to form settlements in other countries beyond the sphere of a regularly organized government, and there to constitute a civil government of their own. let the government adopt, with mathematical rigour if you like, an opposition to annexation, and what does it effect? it does nothing to check that tendency--that perhaps irresistible tendency--of british enterprise to carry your commerce, and to carry the range and area of your settlement beyond the limits of your sovereignty.... there the thing is, and you cannot repress it. wherever your subjects go, if they are in pursuit of objects not unlawful, you must afford them all the protection which your power enables you to give." "there the thing is." (but many liberals have lacked the imagination to see it.) and being there, it affords a great opportunity; for "to this great empire is committed (continued mr. gladstone) a trust and a function given from providence as special and as remarkable as ever was entrusted to any portion of the family of man." but not all liberals share mr. gladstone's faith. they thus cut themselves off from one of the chief tendencies and some of the noblest ideals of the time. liberalism must broaden its outlook, and seek to promote "the large and efficient development of the british commonwealth on liberal lines, both within and outside these islands." footnotes: [footnote : blue book, c. p. , .] [footnote : blue book, c. , p. .] [footnote : life and correspondence of sir bartle frere, by j. martineau.] [footnote : life and correspondence of sir bartle frere, by j. martineau.] [footnote : the italics are my own.] [footnote : there are between sixty and seventy resolutions and addresses recorded in the blue-book, all passed unanimously except in one case, at stellenbosch where a minority opposed the resolution. the spokesman of the minority, however, based his opposition not on frere's general policy, still less on his character, but as a protest against an excise act, which was one of mr. spring's measures.] [footnote : life and correspondence of sir bartle frere.] [footnote : blue book, c. , p. .] [footnote : blue book, c. , p. .] [footnote : life and correspondence of the right hon. sir bartle frere, by martineau.] [footnote : in the sense in which the great lord chatham used the words.] vii. transvaal policy since . delimitation of boundary agreed to and not observed. the chief montsioa. his country placed under british protection. transvaal law. the grondwet or constitution. the high courts of justice subservient to the volksraad or parliament. article of the grondwet referring to natives. native marriage laws. the pass system. misplaced governmental titles,--republic, empire, etc. the boer policy towards the natives did not undergo any change for the better from and onwards. at the time of the rising of the boers against the british protectorate, which culminated in the battle of majuba hill and the retrocession of the transvaal, a number of native chiefs in districts outside the transvaal boundary, sent to the british commissioner for native affairs to offer their aid to the british government, and many of them took the "loyals" of the transvaal under their protection. one of these was montsioa, a christian chief of the barolong tribe. he and other chiefs took charge of government property and cattle during the disturbances, and one had four or five thousand pounds in gold, the product of a recently collected tax, given him to take care of by the commissioner of his district, who was afraid that the money would be seized by the boers. _in, every instance the property entrusted to their charge was returned intact_. the loyalty of all the native chiefs under very trying circumstances, is a remarkable proof of the great affection of the kaffirs, and more especially those of the basuto tribes, who love peace better than war, for the queen's rule. i will cite one other instance among many of the gladness with which different native races placed themselves under the protection of the queen. in may, , in the discharge of his office as deputy commissioner in bechuanaland, and on behalf of her majesty, the queen, mr. mackenzie entered into a treaty with the chief, montsioa, by which his country (the barolong's country) was placed under british protection, and also with moshette, a neighbouring chief, who wrote a letter to mr. mackenzie asking to be put under the same protection as the other barolong.[ ] mr. mackenzie wrote:[ ]--"whatever may have been the feelings of disapproval of the british protectorate entertained by the transvaal people, i was left in no manner of doubt as to the joy and thankfulness with which it was welcomed in the barolong country itself. "the signing of the treaty in the courtyard of montsioa, at mafeking, by the chief and his headmen, was accompanied by every sign of gladness and good feeling. the speech of the venerable chief montsioa was very cordial, and so cheerful in its tone as to show that he hoped and believed that the country would now get peace. "using the formula for many years customary in proclamations of marriages in churches in bechuanaland, montsioa, amid the smiles of all present, announced an approaching political union, and exclaimed with energy, "let objectors now speak out or henceforth for ever be silent." there was no objector. "i explained carefully in the language of the people, the nature and object of the protectorate, and the manner in which it was to be supported. "montsioa then demanded in loud tones: "barolong! what is your response to the words that you have heard?" "with one voice there came a great shout from one end of the courtyard to the other, "we all want it." "the chief turned to me and said, "there! you have the answer of the barolong, we have no uncertain feelings here." as i was unfolding the views of her majesty's government that the protectorate should be self-supporting, the chief cried out, 'we know all about it, mackenzie, we consent to pay the tax.' i could only reply to this by saying that that was just what i was coming to; but, inasmuch as they knew all about it, and saw its importance, i need say no more on the subject. "montsioa, in the first instance, did not like the appearance of moshette's people in his town. i told him i was glad they had come, and he must reserve his own feelings, and await the results of what was taking place. i was pleased, therefore, when in the public meeting in the courtyard, just before the signing of the treaty, montsioa turned to the messengers of moshette and asked them if they saw and heard nicely what was being done with the barolong country? they replied in the affirmative, and thus, from a native point of view, became assenting parties. in this manner something definite was done towards effacing an ancient feud. the signing of the treaty then took place, the translation of which is given in the blue book. "after the treaty had been signed, the old chief requested that prayer might be offered up, which was accordingly done by a native minister. the satisfaction of the great event was further marked by the discharge of a volley from the rifles of a company of young men told off for the purpose; and the old cannon of montsioa, mounted between the wheels of an ox-waggon, was also brought into requisition to proclaim the general joy and satisfaction. "but alas! such feelings were destined to be of short duration. while we were thus employed at mafeking, the openly-declared enemies of the imperial government, and of peace and order in bechuanaland, had been at their appropriate work elsewhere within the protectorate. before sunset the same evening, i was surprised to hear the bechuana war cry sounded in montsioa's town, and shortly afterwards i saw the old chief approaching my waggon, followed by a large body of men. "'monare makence!' (mr. mackenzie), 'the cattle have been lifted by the boers,' was his first announcement. i shall never forget the scene at that moment. the excitement of the men, some of whom were reduced to poverty by what had taken place, and also their curiosity as to what step i should take, were plainly enough revealed on the faces of the crowd who, with their chief, now stood before me. "'mr. mackenzie,' said montsioa, 'you are master now, you must say what is to be done. we shall be obedient to your orders.' 'we have put our names on your paper, but the boers have our cattle all the same,' said one man. another shouted out with vehemence, 'please don't tell us to go on respecting the boundary line. why should we do so when the boers don't?' 'who speaks about a boundary line?' said another speaker, probably a heavy loser. 'is it a thing that a man can eat? where are our cattle?' "as i have already said, i shall never forget the scene in which these and similar speeches were made at my waggon as the sun went down peacefully--the sun which had witnessed the treaty-signing and the rejoicings at mafeking. its departing rays now saw the cattle of the barolong safe in the transvaal, and the barolong owners and her majesty's deputy commissioner looking at one another, at mafeking."[ ] mr. mackenzie then resolved what to do, and announced that he would at once cross the boundary and go himself to the nearest transvaal town to demand redress. there was a hum of approval, with a sharp enquiry from montsioa,--did he really mean to go himself? "having no one to send, i must go myself," mackenzie replied. the old chief, in a generous way, half dissuaded him from the attempt. "the boers cannot be trusted. what shall i say if you do not return?" "all right, montsioa," replied mackenzie, "say i went of my own accord. i will leave my wife under your care." "poor old fellow," writes mackenzie, "brave-hearted, though 'only a native,' he went away full of heaviness, promising me his cart and harness, and an athletic herd as a driver, to start early next morning." mr. mackenzie had little success in this expedition. he was listened to with indifference when he represented to certain landdrosts and field cornets that he had not come to talk politics, but to complain of a theft. those to whom he spoke looked upon the cattle raid not as robbery, but as "annexation" or "commandeering." a man, listening to the palaver, exclaimed: "well, anyhow, we shall have cheap beef as long as montsioa's cattle last." at the hotel of the place mr. mackenzie met some europeans, who were farming or in business in the transvaal. they said to him: "mr. mackenzie, we are sorry to have to say it to you, for we have all known you so long, but, honestly speaking, we hope you won't succeed; the english government does not deserve to succeed after all that they have made us--loyal colonists--suffer in the transvaal. for a long time scarcely a day has passed without our being insulted by the more ignorant boers, till we are almost tired of our lives, and yet we cannot go away, having invested our all in the country." "many such speeches were made to me," says mackenzie, "i give only one." i cannot find it in my heart to criticize the character of the boers at a time when they have held on so bravely in a desperate war, and have suffered so much. there are boers and boers,--good and bad among them,--as among all nations. we have heard of kind and generous actions towards the british wounded and prisoners, and we know that there are among them men who, in times of peace, have been good and merciful to their native servants. but it is not magnanimity nor brutality on the part of individuals which are in dispute. our controversy is concerning the presence or absence of justice among the boers, concerning the purity of their government and the justice of their laws, or the reverse. i turn to their laws, and in judging these, it is hardly possible to be too severe. law is a great teacher, a trainer, to a great extent, of the character of the people. the boers would have been an exceptional people under the sun had they escaped the deterioration which such laws and such government as they have had the misfortune to live under inevitably produce. a pamphlet has lately been published containing a defence of the boer treatment of missionaries and natives, and setting forth the efforts which have been made in recent years to christianize and civilize the native populations in their midst. this paper is signed by nine clergymen of the dutch reformed church, and includes the name of the rev. andrew murray, a name respected and beloved by many in our own country. it is welcome news that such good work has been undertaken, that the president has himself encouraged it, and that a number of zulus or kaffirs have recently been baptized in the dutch reformed church of the transvaal. but the fact strikes one painfully that in this pleading, (which has a pathetic note in it,) these clergymen appear to have obliterated from their mind and memory the whole past history, of their nation, and to have forgotten that the harvest from seed sown through many generations may spring up and bear its bitter fruit in their own day. they do not seem to have accepted the verdict, or made the confession, "we and our fathers have sinned." they seem rather to argue, "our fathers may have sinned in these respects, but it cannot be laid to our charge that we are continuing in their steps." no late repentance will avail for the salvation of their country unless justice is now proclaimed and practised;--justice in government and in the laws. their grondwet, or constitution, must be removed out of its place for ever; their unequal laws, and the administrative corruption which unequal laws inevitably foster, must be swept away, and be replaced by a very different constitution and very different laws. if this had been done during the two last decades of transvaal history, while untrammelled (as was desired) by british interference, the sincerity of this recent utterance would have deserved full credit, and would have been recognized as the beginning of a radical reformation. the following is from the last report of the aborigines protection society (jan., ). its present secretary leans towards a favourable judgment of the recent improvements in the policy of the transvaal, and condemns severely every act on the part of the english which does not accord with the principles of our constitutional law, and therefore this statement will not be regarded as the statement of a partisan: "it is laid down as a fundamental principle in the transvaal grondwet that there is no equality of rights between white men and blacks. in theory, if not in practice, the boers regard the natives, all of whom they contemptuously call kaffirs, whatever their tribal differences, pretty much as the ancient jews regarded the philistines and others whom they expelled from palestine, or used as hewers of wood and drawers of water, but with added prejudice due to the difference of colour. so it was in the case of the early dutch settlers, and so it is to-day, with a few exceptions, due mainly to the influence of the missionaries, whose work among the natives has from the first been objected to and hindered. it is only by social sufferance, and not by law, that the marriage of natives with christian rites is recognised, and it carries with it none of the conditions as regards inheritance and the like, which are prescribed by the dutch roman code in force with white men. as a matter of fact, natives have no legal rights whatever. if they are in the service of humane masters, mindful of their own interests and moral obligations, they may be properly lodged and fed, not overworked, and fairly recompensed; but from the cruelties of a brutal master, perpetrated in cold blood or a drunken fit, the native practically has no redress." the rev. john h. bovill, rector of the cathedral church, lorenço marquez, and sometime her majesty's acting consul there, has worked for five years in a district from which numbers of natives were drawn for work in the transvaal, has visited the transvaal from time to time, and is well acquainted with boers of all classes and occupations. he has given us some details of the working out--especially as regards the natives--of the principles of the grondwet or constitution of the transvaal. to us english, the most astonishing feature, to begin with, of this constitution, is that it places the power of the judiciary below that of the raad or legislative body. the judges of the highest court of law are not free to give judgment according to evidence before them and the light given to them. a vote of the raad, consisting of a mere handful of men in secret sitting, can at any time override and annul a sentence of the high court. this will perhaps be better understood if we picture to ourselves some great trial before lord russell and others of our eminent judges, in which any laws bearing on the case were carefully tested in connection with the principles of our constitution; that this supreme court had pronounced its verdict, and that the next day parliament should discuss, with closed doors, the verdict of the judges, and by a vote or resolution, should declare it unjust and annul it. let us imagine, to follow the matter a little further on the lines of transvaal justice, that our sovereign had power to dismiss at will from office any judge or judges who might have exercised independence of judgment and pronounced a verdict displeasing to parliament or to herself personally! such is law and justice in the transvaal; and that country is called a republic! "this is transvaal justice," says m. naville; "a mockery, an ingenious legalizing of tyranny. there are no laws, there are only the caprices of the raad. a vote in a secret sitting, that is what binds the judges, and according to it they will administer justice. the law of to-day will perhaps not be the law to-morrow. the fifteen members of the majority, or rather president kruger, who influences their votes, may change their opinion from one day to the next--it matters not; their opinion, formulated by a vote, will always be law. woe to the judge who should dare to mention the constitution or the code, for there is one: he would at once be dismissed by the president who appointed him." it was prescribed by the grondwet that no new law should be passed by parliament (the volksraad) unless notice of it had been given three months in advance, and the people had had the opportunity to pronounce upon it. this did not suit the president; accordingly when desirous of legalizing some new project of his own, he adopted the plan of bringing in such project as an addition or amendment to some existing law, giving it out as _no new law_, but only a supplementary clause. law no. of was manipulated in this manner. by this law, the judges of the high court were formally deprived of the right to test the validity of any law in its relation to the constitution, and they were also compelled to accept as law, without question or reservation of any kind, any resolution passed at any time and under any circumstances by the volksraad. this law no. of was passed through all its stages in three days, without being subjected in the first instance to the people. but i am especially concerned with what affects the natives. article of this section says:--a native must not own fixed property. ( ) he must not marry by civil or ecclesiastical process. ( ) he must not be allowed access to civil courts in any action against a white man. article of the grondwet is not only adhered to, but is exaggerated in its application as follows:--"the people shall not permit any equality of coloured persons with white inhabitants, neither in the church, nor in the state." "these principles" says mr. bovill, "are so engrained in the mind of an average boer that we can never expect anything to be done by the volksraad for the natives in this respect. it appears inconceivable," he continues, "that a government making any pretence of being a civilized power, at the end of the nineteenth century, should be so completely ignorant of the most elementary principles of good government for such a large number of its subjects." as to the access by the natives to the courts of law. "if you ask a native he will tell you that access to the law-courts is much too easy, but they are the criminal courts of the field cornets and landdrosts. he suffers so much from these, that he cannot entertain the idea that the higher courts are any better than the ordinary field cornets' or landdrosts'. however, there are times when with fear and trepidation he does appeal to a higher court. with what result? if the decision is in favour of the native, the burghers are up in arms, crying out against the injustice of a judgment given in favour of a black against a white man; burghers sigh and say that a great disaster is about to befall the state when a native can have judgment against a white man. the inequality of the blacks and superiority of the white (burghers) is largely discussed. motions are brought forward in the volksraad to prohibit natives pleading in the higher courts. such is the usual outcry. summary justice (?) by a landdrost or field cornet is all the boer would allow a native. no appeal should be permitted, for may it not lead to a quashing of the conviction? the landdrost is the friend of the boer, and he can always "square" him in a matter against a native. "it was only to prevent an open breach with england that these appeals to the higher courts were permitted in a limited degree."[ ] no. .--the native marriage laws. "think," says mr. bovill, "what it would mean to our social life in england if we were a conquered nation, and the conquerors should say: 'all your laws and customs are abrogated; your marriage laws are of no consequence to us; you may follow or leave them as you please, but we do not undertake to support them, and you may live like cattle if you wish; we cannot recognise your marriage laws as binding, nor yet will we legalise any form of marriage among you.' such is in effect, the present position of the natives in the transvaal. "i occasionally took my holidays in johannesburg, and assisted the vicar, during which time i could take charge of christian native marriages, of which the state took no cognisance. a native may marry, and any time after leave his wife, but the woman would have no legal claim on him. he could marry again as soon as he pleased, and he could not be proceeded against either for support of his first wife or for bigamy. and so he might go on as long as he wished to marry or could get anyone to marry him. the same is applicable to all persons of colour, even if only slightly coloured--half-castes of three or four generations if the colour is at all apparent. all licenses for the marriage of white people must be applied for personally, and signed in the presence of the landdrost, who is very cautious lest half-castes or persons of colour should get one. colour is evidently the only test of unfitness to claim recognition of the marriage contract by the transvaal state. "the injustice of such a law must be apparent; it places a premium on vice.[ ] it gives an excuse to any 'person of colour' to commit the most heinous offences against the laws of morality and social order, and protects such a one from the legal consequences which would necessarily follow in any other civilised state." mr. bovill has an instructive chapter on the "compound system," and the condition of native compounds. this is a matter which it is to be hoped will be taken seriously to heart by the chartered company, and any other company or group of employers throughout african mining districts." the compound system of huddling hundreds of natives together in tin shanties is the very opposite to the free life to which they are accustomed. if south african mining is to become a settled industry, we must have the conditions of the labour market settled, and also the conditions of living. we cannot expect natives to give up their free open-air style of living, and their home life. they love their homes, and suffer from homesickness as much as, or probably more than most white people. the reason so many leave their work after six months is that they are constantly longing to see their wives and children. many times have they said to me, 'it would be all right if only we could have our wives and families with us.'" "the result of this compound life is the worst possible morally.".... "we must treat the native, not as a machine to work when required under any conditions, but as a raw son of nature, very often without any moral force to control him and to raise him much above the lower animal world in his passions, except that which native custom has given him." the writer suggests that "native reserves or locations should be established on the separate mines, or groups of mines, where the natives can have their huts built, and live more or less under the same conditions as they do in their native kraals. if a native found that he could live under similar conditions to those he has been accustomed to, he will soon be anxious to save enough money to bring his wife and children there, and remain in the labour district for a much longer period than at present is the case. "it would be a distinct gain to the mining industry as well as to the native." mr. bovill goes into much detail on the subject of the "pass laws." i should much desire to reproduce his chapter on that subject, if it were not too long. that system must be wholly abolished, he says: "it is at present worse than any conditions under which slavery exists. it is a criminal-making law. brand a slave, and you have put him to a certain amount of physical pain for once, but penalties under the pass law system mean lashes innumerable at the direction of any boer field cornet or landdrost. it is a most barbarous system, as brutal as it is criminal-making, alone worthy of a boer with an exaggerated fear of and cowardly brutality towards a race he has been taught to despise." treating of the prohibition imposed on the natives as to the possession in any way or by any means of a piece of land, he writes: "many natives are now earning and saving large sums of money, year by year, at the various labour centres. they return home with every intention of following a peaceful life; why should they not be encouraged to put their money into land, and follow their 'peaceful pursuits' as well as any boer farmer? they are capable of doing it. besides, if they held fixed property in the state, it would be to their advantage to maintain law and order, when they had everything they possessed at stake. with no interest in the land, the tendency must always be to a nomadic life. they are as thoroughly well capable of becoming true, peaceful, and loyal citizens of the state as are any other race of people. their instincts and training are all towards law and order. their lives have been disciplined under native rule, and now that the white man is breaking up that rule, what is he going to give as a substitute? anarchy and lawlessness, or good government which tends to peace and prosperity? "we can only hope for better times, and a more humane government for the natives, to wipe out the wrong that has been done to both black and white under a bastard civilization which has prevailed in pretoria for the past fifteen years. the government which holds down such a large number of its subjects by treating them as cut-throats and outlaws, will one day repent bitterly of its sin of misrule."[ ] * * * * * tyranny has a genius for creeping in everywhere, and under any and every form of government. this is being strikingly illustrated in these days. under the name of a republic, the traditions of a military oligarchy have grown up, and stealthily prevailed. when a nation has no recorded standard of guiding principles of government, it matters not by what name it may be called--empire, republic, oligarchy, or democracy--it may fall under the blighting influence of the tyranny of a single individual, or a wealthy clique, or a military despot. too much weight is given just now to mere names as applied to governments. the acknowledged principles which underlie the outward forms of government alone are vitally important, and by the adherence to or abdication of these principles each nation will be judged. the revered name of _republic_ is as capable of being dragged in the mire as that of the title of any other form of government. mere names and words have lately had a strange and even a disastrous power of misleading and deceiving, not persons only, but nations,--even a whole continent of nations. it is needful to beware of being drawn into conclusions leading to action by associations attaching merely to a name, or to some crystallized word which may sometimes cover a principle the opposite of that which it was originally used to express. such names and words are in some cases being as rapidly changed and remodelled as geographical charts are which represent new and rapidly developing or decaying groups of the human race. yet names are always to a large part of mankind more significant than facts; and names and appearances in this matter appeal to france and to switzerland, and in a measure to the american people, in favour of the boers. among the concessions made by lord derby in the convention of , none has turned out to be more unfortunate than that of allowing the transvaal state to resume the title of the "south african republic." in south africa it embodied an impossible ideal; to the outside world it conveyed a false impression. the title has been the reason of widespread error with regard to the real nature of the transvaal government and of its struggle with this country. if "republican independence" had been all that mr. kruger was striving for, there would have been no war. he adopted the name, but not the spirit of a republic. the "independence" claimed by him, and urged even now by some of his friends in the british parliament, is shown by the whole past history of the transvaal to be an independence and a freedom which _involve the enslavement of other men._ a friend writes:--"in order to satisfy my own mind i have been looking in latin dictionaries for the correct and original meaning of 'impero,' (i govern,) and 'imperium.' the word 'empire' has an unpleasant ring from some points of view and to some minds. one thinks of roman emperors, domitian, nero, tiberius,--of the word 'imperious,' and of the french 'empire' under napoleon i. and napoleon iii. the latin word means 'the giving of commands.' all depends on whether the commands given are _good_, and the giver of them also good and wise. the ten commandments are in one sense 'imperial.' now, i think the word as used in the phrase _british empire_ has, in the most modern and best sense, quite a different savour or flavour from that of napoleon's empire, or the turkish or mahommedan empires of the past. it has come to mean the 'dominion of freedom' or the 'reign of liberty,' rather than the giving of despotic or tyrannical or oligarchic commands. in fact, our imperialism is freedom for all races and peoples who choose to accept it, whilst boer _republicanism_ is the exact opposite. how strangely words change their weight and value! "and yet there still remains the sense of 'command' in 'empire;' and in the past history of our government of the cape colony there has been too little wholesome command and obedience, and too much opportunism, shuffling off of responsibility, with self-sufficient ignorance and doctrinaire foolishness taking the place of knowledge and insight. want of courage is, i think, in short, at the bottom of the past mismanagement." * * * * * the assertion is repeatedly made that "england coveted the gold of the transvaal, and hence went to war." it is necessary it seems, again and again, to remind those who speak thus that england was not the invader. kruger invaded british territory, being fully prepared for war. england was not in the least prepared for war. this last fact is itself a complete answer to those who pretend that she was the aggressor. in regard to the assertion that "england coveted the gold of the transvaal," what is here meant by "england?" ours is a representative government. are the entire people, with their representatives in parliament and the government included in this assertion, or is it meant that certain individuals, desiring gold, went to the transvaal in search of it? the expression "england" in this relation, is vague and misleading. the search for gold is not in itself a legal nor a moral offence. but the inordinate desire and pursuit of wealth, becoming the absorbing motive to the exclusion of all nobler aims, is a moral offence and a source of corruption. wherever gold is to be found, there is a rush from all sides; among some honest explorers with legitimate aims, there are always found, in such a case, a number of unruly spirits, of scheming, dishonest and careless persons, the scum of the earth, cheats and vagabonds. the outlanders who crowded to the rand were of different nations, french, belgians and others, besides the english who were in a large majority. the presence and eager rush of this multitude of gold seekers certainly brought into the country elements which clouded the moral atmosphere, and became the occasion of deeds which so far from being typical of the spirit of "england" and the english people at large, were the very reverse, and have been condemned by public opinion in our country. but, admitting that unworthy motives and corrupting elements were introduced into the transvaal by the influx of strangers urged there by self-interest, it is strange that any should imagine and assert that the "corrupting influence of gold," or the lust of gold told upon the british alone. the disasters brought upon the transvaal seem to be largely attributable to the corrupting effect on president kruger and his allies in the government, of the sudden acquisition of enormous wealth, through the development, by other hands than his own, of the hidden riches within his country. what are the facts? in the revenue of the transvaal state was a little over £ , . this rose, owing to the outlanders' labours, and the taxes exacted from them by the transvaal government to £ , , (in ). thus they have increased in the proportion of to . "if the admirers of the transvaal government, who place no confidence in documents emanating from english sources, will take the trouble to open the _almanack de gotha_, they will there find the financial report for . there they will read that of these £ , , , salaries and emoluments amount to nearly one-quarter--we will call it £ , , ,--that is, £ per head per adult boer, for it goes without saying that in all this the outlanders have no share. if we remember that the great majority of the boers consist of farmers who do not concern themselves at all about the administration, and who consequently get no slice of the cake, we can judge of the size of the junks which president kruger and the chiefly foreign oligarchy on which he leans take to themselves. the president has a salary of £ , --(the president of the swiss confederation has £ )--and besides that, what is called "coffee-money." this is his official income, but his personal resources do not end there. the same table of the _almanack de gotha_ shows a sum of nearly £ , entitled "other expenses." under this head are included secret funds, which in the budget are stated at a little less than £ , (more than even england has), but which always exceed that sum, and in reached about £ , . secret service funds!--vile name and viler reality--should be unknown in the affairs of small nations. is not honesty one of the cardinal virtues which we should expect to find amongst small nations, if nowhere else? what can the chief of a small state of , inhabitants do with such a large amount of secret funds? "we can picture to ourselves what the financial administration of the boers must be in this plethora of money, provided almost entirely by the hated outlander. an example may be cited. the raad were discussing the budget of , and one of the members called attention to the fact that for several years past advances to the amount of £ , , had been made to various officials, and were unaccounted for. that is a specimen of what the boer _régime_ has become in this school of opulence."[ ] m. naville continues:--"we do not consider the boers, as a people, to be infected by the corruption which rules the administration. the farmers who live far from pretoria have preserved their patriarchal virtues: they are upright and honest, but at the same time very proud, and impatient of every kind of authority.... they are ignorant, and read no books or papers--only the old testament; but kruger knew he could rouse these people by waving before them the spectre of england, and crying in their ears the word 'independence.' and this is what disgusts us, that under cover of principles so dear to us all, independence and national honour, these brave men are sent to the battlefield to preserve for a tyrannical and venal oligarchy the right to share amongst themselves, and distribute as they please, the gold which is levied on the work of foreigners." footnotes: [footnote : parliamentary blue book, , .] [footnote : austral africa, chap. , pages - .] [footnote : austral africa, p. and on.] [footnote : natives under the transvaal flag. revd. john h. bovill.] [footnote : it is stated on the authority of _the sentinel_ (london, june, ), that mr. kruger was asked some years ago to permit the introduction in the johannesburg mining district of the state regulation of vice, and that mr. kruger stoutly refused to entertain such an idea. very much to his credit! yet it seems to me that the refusal to legalize native marriages comes rather near, in immorality of principle and tendency, to the legalizing of promiscuous intercourse.] [footnote : natives under the transvaal flag, by rev. j. bovill.] [footnote : la question du transvaal, by professor ed. naville, of geneva.] viii. the theology of the boers. exploitation of natives by capitalists. british colonizing.--its causes and nature. character of paul kruger as a ruler. the moral teachings of the war. our responsibilities. hasty judgments. denunciations of england by englishmen. the open book. my last word is for the native races. even in these enlightened days there seems to be in some minds a strange confusion as to the understanding of the principle of equality for which we plead, and which is one of the first principles laid down in the charter of our liberties. what is meant in that charter is _equality of all before the law_; not by any means social equality, which belongs to another region of political ideas altogether. a friend who has lived in south africa, and who has had natives working for and with him, tells me of this confusion of ideas among some of the more vulgar stamp of white colonists, who, my friend observes, amuse themselves by assuming a familiarity in intercourse with the natives, which works badly. it does not at all increase their respect for the white man, but quite the contrary, while it is as little calculated to produce self-respect in the native. my friend found the natives naturally respectful and courteous, when treated justly and humanely, in fact as a _gentleman_ would treat them. above all things, they honour a man who is just. they have a keen sense of justice, and a quick perception of the existence of this crowning quality in a man. livingstone said that he found that they also have a keen eye for a man of pure and moral life. the natives in the transvaal have never asked for the franchise, or for the smallest voice in the government. in their hearts they hoped for and desired simple legal justice; they asked for bread, and they received a stone. it does not seem desirable that they should too early become "full fledged voters." some sort of education test, some proof of a certain amount of civilization and instruction attained, might be applied with advantage; and to have to wait a little while for that does not seem, from the englishwoman's point of view at least, a great hardship, when it is remembered how long our agricultural labourers had to wait for that privilege, and that for more than fifty years english women have petitioned for it, and have not yet obtained it, although they are not, i believe, wholly uncivilized or uneducated. the theology of the boers has been much commented upon; and it is supposed by some that, as they are said to derive it solely from the old testament scriptures, it follows that the ethical teaching of those scriptures must be extremely defective. a swiss pastor writes to me: "it is time to rescue the old testament from the boer interpretation of it. we have not enough of old testament righteousness among us christians." this is true. those who have studied those scriptures intelligently see, through much that appears harsh and strange in the mosaic prescriptions, a wisdom and tenderness which approaches to the christian ideal, as well as certain severe rules and restrictions which, when observed and maintained, lifted the moral standard of the hebrew people far above that of the surrounding nations. when christ came on earth, he swept away all that which savoured of barbarism, the husk which often however, contained within it a kernel of truth capable of a great development. "ye have heard it said of old times," he reiterated, "_but i say unto you_"--and then he set forth the higher, the eternally true principles of action. yet if the transvaal teachers and their disciples had read impartially (though even exclusively) the old testament scriptures, they could not have failed to see how grossly they were themselves offending against the divine commands in some vital matters. i cite, as an example, the following commands, given by moses to the people, not once only, but repeatedly. had these commands been regarded with as keen an appreciation as some others whose teaching seems to have an opposite tendency, it is impossible that the natives should have been treated as they have been by boer law, or that slavery or serfdom should have existed among them for so many generations. the following are some of the often-repeated commands and warnings: ex. xii. _v_ .--"one law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you." num. ix. _v_ .--"if a stranger shall sojourn among you, ... ye shall have one ordinance, both for the stranger, and for him that was born in the land." num. xv. _v_ .--"one ordinance shall be both for you of the congregation, and also for the stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance for ever in your generation: as ye are so shall the stranger be before the lord." verse .--"one law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you." lev. xix. _v_ .--"and if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him." verse .--"but the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of egypt." verse .--"ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in mete-yard, in weight, or in measure." although the natives of the transvaal were the original possessors of the country, they have been reckoned by the boers as strangers and foreigners among them. they have treated them as the ancient jews treated all gentiles as for ever excluded from the commonwealth of israel,--until in the "fulness of time" they were forced by a great shock and terrible judgments--to acknowledge, with astonishment, that "god had also to the gentiles granted repentance unto life," and that they also had heard the news of the glorious emancipation of all the sons of god throughout the earth. not only is the non-payment, but even delay in the payment of wages condemned by the law of moses. is it possible that boer theologians, who quote scripture with so much readiness, have never read the following? lev. xix. _v_ .--"thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning." deut. xxiv. _v_ .--"thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of the strangers that are in thy land, within thy gates." verse .--"at his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the lord, and it be sin unto thee." jer. xxii. _v_ .--"woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work." mal. iii. _v_ .--"and i will come near to you to judgment; and i will be a swift witness against ... those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the lord of hosts." the following is from the new testament, but it might have come under the notice of boer theologians and law makers:-- the epistle of st. james v. _v_ .--"behold the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the lord of sabaoth." verse .--"your gold and your silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you." jer. xxxv. _v_ .--"because ye have not proclaimed liberty every man to his neighbour, behold i proclaim liberty for you, saith the lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine." i am aware that there will be voices raised at once in application to certain english people of the very commands here cited; and justly so, so far as that application is made to individuals or groups of persons who have transgressed not only biblical law but the law of our land in their dealings with native races; and the warning conveyed to us in such recriminations must not and, i believe, will not be unheeded. the following occurs in a number of the "ethical world," published early in the present year:--"we know that capitalists, left to themselves, would mercilessly exploit the labour of the coloured man. that is precisely the reason why they should not be left to themselves, but should be under the control of the british empire. it is a reason why crown colonies should supersede chartered companies; it is a reason for much that is often called 'shallow imperialism.' if the present war had been staved off, and if, by mere lapse of time and increase of numbers _without british intervention_, the outlanders had come to be the masters of the south african republic, they might have established a system of independent government quite as bad as that now in existence, though not hardened against reform by the same archaic traditions." to my mind some of the published utterances of the originator and members of the "chartered company" are not such as to inspire confidence in those who desire to see the essential principles of british law and government paramount wherever great britain has sway. there is the old contemptuous manner of speaking of the natives; and we have heard an expression of a desire to "eliminate the imperial factor." this elimination of the imperial factor is precisely that which is the least desired by those who see our imperialism to mean the continuance of obedience to the just traditions of british law and government. the granting of a charter to a company lends the authority (or the appearance of it) of the queen's name to acts of the responsible heads of that company, which may be opposed to the principles of justice established by british law; and such acts may have disastrous results. it is to be hoped that the present awakening on the subject of past failures of our government to enforce respect for its own principles may be a warning to all concerned against any transgression of those principles. continental friends with whom i have conversed on the subject of the british colonies have sometimes appeared to me to leave out of account some considerations special to the subject. they regard british colonization as having been accomplished by a series of acts of aggression, solely inspired by the love of conquest and desire for increased territory. this is an error. i would ask such friends to take a map of europe, or of the world, and steadily to regard it in connection with the following facts. our people are among the most prolific,--if not the most prolific,--of all the nations. energy and enterprise are in their nature, together with a certain love of free-breathing, adventure and discovery. now look at the map, and observe how small is the circumference of the british isles. "our empire has no geographical continuity like the russian empire; it is that larger venice with no narrow streets, but with the sea itself for a high-road. it is bound together by a moral continuity alone." what are our sons to do? must our immense population be debarred from passing through these ocean tracts to lands where there are great uninhabited wastes capable of cultivation? what shall we do with our sons and our daughters innumerable, as the ways become overcrowded in the mother land, and energies have not the outlets needful to develop them. shall we place legal restrictions on marriage, or on the birth of children, or prescribe that no family shall exceed a certain number? you are shocked,--naturally. it follows then that some members of our large british families must cross the seas and seek work and bread elsewhere. the highest and lowest, representing all ranks, engage in this kind of initial colonization. our present prime minister, a "younger son," went out in his youth,--as others of his class have done,--with his pickaxe, to australia, to rank for a time among "diggers" until called home by the death of the elder son, the heir to the title and estate. this necessity and this taste for wandering and exploring has helped in some degree to form the independence of character of our men, and also to strengthen rather than to weaken the ties of affection and kinship with the motherland. many men, "nobly born and gently nurtured," have thus learned self-dependence, to endure hardships, and to share manual labour with the humblest; and such an experience does not work for evil. then when communities have been formed, some sort of government has been necessitated. an appeal is made to the mother country, and her offspring have grown up more or less under her regard and care, until self-government has developed itself. the great blot on this necessary and natural expansion is the record (from time to time) of the displacement of native tribes by force and violence, when their rights seemed to interfere with the interests of the white man. of such action we have had to repent in the past, and we repent more deeply than ever now when our responsibilities towards natives races have been brought with startling clearness before those among us who have been led to look back and to search deeply into the meanings of the present great "history-making war." the personality of paul kruger stands out mournfully at this moment on the page of history. mr. fitzpatrick wrote of him in , as follows:-- "_l'etat c'est moi_, is almost as true of the old dopper president as it was of its originator; for in matters of external policy and in matters which concern the boer as a party, the president has his way as completely as any anointed autocrat. to anyone who has studied the boers and their ways and policy ... it must be clear that president kruger does more than represent the opinion of the people and execute their policy: he moulds them in the form he wills. by the force of his own strong convictions and prejudices, and of his indomitable will, he has made the boers a people whom he regards as the germ of the afrikander nation; a people chastened, selected, welded, and strong enough to attract and assimilate all their kindred in south africa, and thus to realize the dream of a dutch republic from the zambesi to cape town. "in the history of south africa the figure of the grim old president will loom large and striking,--picturesque as the figure of one who, by his character and will, made and held his people; magnificent as one who, in the face of the blackest fortune, never wavered from his aim or faltered in his effort ... and it maybe, pathetic too, as one whose limitations were great, one whose training and associations,--whose very successes had narrowed and embittered and hardened him;--as one who, when the greatness of success was his to take and to hold, turned his back on the supreme opportunity, and used his strength and qualities to fight against the spirit of progress, and all that the enlightenment of the age pronounces to be fitting and necessary to good government and a healthy state. "to an english nobleman, who in the course of an interview remarked, 'my father was a minister (of the queen),' the dutchman answered, 'and my father was a shepherd!' it was not pride rebuking pride; it was the ever present fact which would not have been worth mentioning but for the suggestion of the antithesis. he, too, was a shepherd,--a peasant. it may be that he knew what would be right and good for his people, and it may be not; but it is sure that he realized that to educate would be to emancipate, to broaden their views would be to break down the defences of their prejudices, to let in the new leaven would be to spoil the old bread, to give to all men the rights of men would be to swamp for ever the party which is to him greater than the state. when one thinks of the one century history of that people, much is seen which accounts for their extraordinary love of isolation, and their ingrained and passionate aversion to control; much, too, that draws to them a world of sympathy; and when one realizes the old president hemmed in once more by the hurrying tide of civilization, from which his people have fled for generations--trying to fight both fate and nature--standing up to stem a tide as resistless as the eternal sea--one realizes the pathos of the picture. but this is as another generation may see it. we are now too close--so close that the meaner details, the blots and flaws, are all most plainly visible, the corruption, the insincerity, the injustice, the barbarity--all the unlovely touches that will bye and bye be forgotten--sponged away by the gentle hand of time, when only the picturesque will remain."[ ] and now that his sun is setting in the midst of clouds, and the great ambition of his life lies a ruin before him, and age, disappointment, and sorrow press heavily upon him, reproach and criticism are silenced. compassion and a solemn awe alone fill our hearts. a late awakening and repentance may not serve to maintain the political life of a party or a nation; but it is never too late for a human soul to receive for itself the light that may have been lacking for right guidance all through the past, and god does not finally withdraw himself from one who has ever sincerely called upon his name. i beg to be allowed to address a word, in conclusion, more especially to certain of my own countrymen,--among whom i count some of my valued fellow-workers of the past years. these latter have been very patient with me at times when i have ventured a word of warning in connection with the abolitionist war in which we have together been engaged, and perhaps they will bear with me now; but whether they will do so or not, i must speak that which seems to me the truth, that which is laid on my heart to speak. i refer especially to the temper of mind of those whose present denunciations of our country are apparently not restrained by considerations derived from a deeper and calmer view of the whole situation. when god's judgments are in the earth, "the people of the world will learn righteousness." are we learning righteousness? am i, are you, friends, learning righteousness? i desire, at least, to be among those who may learn something of the mind of god towards his redeemed world, even in the darkest hour. but you will tell me perhaps that there is nothing of the divine purpose in all this tribulation, that god has allowed evil to have full sway in the world for a time. others among us, as firmly believe that there is a divine permission in the natural vengeance which follows transgression, that we are never the sport of a senseless fate, and that god governs as well as reigns. "god's fruit of justice ripens slow; "men's souls are narrow; let them grow, "my brothers, we must wait." many among us are learning to see more and more clearly that the present "tribulation" is the climax of a long series,--through almost a century past,--of errors of which till now we had never been fully conscious,--of neglect of duty, of casting off of responsibility, of oblivion of the claims of the millions of native inhabitants of africa who are god's creatures and the redeemed of christ as much as we,--of ambitions and aims purely worldly, of a breathless race among nations for present and material gain. there are hasty judges it seems to me who look upon this war as the _initial crime_, a sudden and fatal error into which our nation has leapt in a fit of blind passion aroused by some quite recent event, and chiefly chargeable to certain individuals living among us to-day, who represent, in their view, a deplorable deterioration of the whole nation. the evils (which are not chiefly attributable to our nation) which have led up to this war, and made it from the human point of view, inevitable, are all ignored by these judges. like the servant in one of the parables of christ, who said "my lord delayeth his coming," (god is nowhere among us,) and began to beat and abuse his fellow-servants, they fall to inflicting on their fellow citizens unmeasured blows of the tongue and pen, because of this war. their hearts are so full of indignation that they cannot see anything higher or deeper than the material strife. they judge the combatants, our poor soldiers, the first victims, with little tenderness or sympathy. when king david was warned by god of approaching chastisement for his sins as a ruler, he pleaded that that chastisement should fall upon himself alone, saying, "these sheep (the people) what have they done?" we may ask the same of the rank and file of our army. what have they done? it was not they who ordained the war, and so far as personal influence may have gone to provoke war, many of those who sit at home at ease are more to blame than the men who believe that they are obeying the call of duty when they offer themselves for perils, for hardships, wounds, sickness, and lingering as well as sudden death. god's thoughts, however, are "not as our thoughts," nor "his ways as our ways." the record i might give of spiritual awakening and extraordinary blessing bestowed by him at this time in the very heart of this war on these, the "first victims" of it, would be received i fear with complete incredulity by those to whom i now address myself. be it so. the sources of my information are from "the front," they are many and they are trustworthy. it seems to me that in visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, or of rulers on the people, the great father of all, in his infinite love has said to these multitudes: "your bodies are given to destruction, but i have set wide open for you the door of salvation; you shall enter into my kingdom through death." and many have so entered.[ ] the following is the expression of the thought of many of our humble people at home, who are neither "jingoes" nor yet impatient judges of others. the journal from which the extract is taken represents not the wealthy nor ambitious part of society, but that of the middle class of people, dependent on their own efforts for their daily bread, among whom we often find much good sense:--"some persons are humiliated for the sins and mistakes they see in other people. as for themselves, their one thought is 'if my advice had been taken the country would never have been in this pass!' this is the expression of an utterly un-christian self-conceit. others, again, take delight in recording the sins of the nation. that our ideals have been dimmed, that a low order of public morality has been openly defended in the highest places, and that the reckoning has come to us we fully believe. yet it is possible to judge the heart of our people far too harshly. it is a sound heart when all is said and done. we fix our eyes upon the great and wealthy offenders; but it must be remembered that the british people are not wealthy. the number of rich men is small. most of us, in fact, are very poor. even those who may be called well off depend on the continuance of health and opportunity for their incomes. the vast majority of those who believe that our cause is righteous are not exultant jingoes, neither are they millionaires. they are care-worn toilers, hard-worked fathers and mothers of children. they have in many cases given sons and brothers and husbands to our ranks; their hearts are aching with passionate sorrow for the dead. many more are enduring the racking agony of suspense. multitudes, besides, spend their lives in a hard fight to keep the wolf from the door. already they are pinched, and they know that in the months ahead their poverty will be deeper. yet they have no thought of surrender. they do not even complain, but give what they can from their scanty means to succour those who are touched still more nearly. it is quite possible to slander a nation when one simply intends to tell it plain truths. the british nation, we are inclined to believe, is a great deal better and sounder than many of its shrillest censors of the moment. and, for our part, we find among our patient, brave, and silent people great seed-beds of trust and hope."[ ] these are noble words, because words of faith--worthy of the roman, varro--to whom his fellow-citizens presented a public tribute of gratitude because "he had not despaired of his country in a dark and troubled time." it can hardly be supposed that i underrate the horrors of war. i have imagination enough and sympathy enough to follow almost as if i beheld it with my eyes, the great tragedy which has been unfolded in south africa. the spirit of jingoism is an epidemic of which i await the passing away more earnestly than we do that of any other plague. i deprecate, as i have always done, and as strongly as anyone can do, rowdyism in the form of violent opposition to free speech and freedom of meeting. it is as wholly unjustifiable, as it is unwise. nothing tends more to the elucidation of truth than evidence and freedom of speech from all sides. good works on many hands are languishing for lack of the funds and zeal needful to carry them on. the public press, and especially the pictorial press, fosters a morbid sentiment in the public mind by needlessly vivid representations of mere slaughter; to all this may be added (that which some mourn over most of all) the drain upon our pockets,--upon the country's wealth. all these things are a part of the great tribulation which is upon us. they are inevitable ingredients of the chastisement by war. i see frequent allusions to the "deplorable state of the public mind," which is so fixed on this engrossing subject, the war, that its attention cannot be gained for any other. i hear our soldiers called "legalized murderers," and the war spoken of as a "hellish panorama,"[ ] which it is a blight even to look upon. but,--i am impelled to say it at the risk of sacrificing the respect of certain friends,--there is to me another view of the matter. it is this. in this present woe, as in all other earthly events, god has something to say to us,--something which we cannot receive if we wilfully turn away the eye from seeing and the ear from hearing. it is as if--in anticipation of the last great judgment when "the books shall be opened,"--god, in his severity and yet in mercy (for there is always mercy in the heart of his judgments) had set before us at this day an open book, the pages of which are written in letters of blood, and that he is waiting for us to read. there are some who are reading, though with eyes dimmed with tears and hearts pierced with sorrow--whose attitude is, "speak, lord, for thy servant heareth." you "deplore the state of the public mind." may not the cloud of celestial witnesses deplore in a measure the state of _your_ mind which leads you to turn your back on the opened book of judgment, and refuse to read it? does your sense of duty to your country claim from you to send forth such a cry against your fellow-citizens and your nation that you have no ears for the solemn teachings of providence? might it not be more heroic in us all to cease to denounce, and to begin to enquire?--with humility and courage to look god in the face, and enquire of him the inner meanings of his rebukes, to ask him to "turn back the floods of ungodliness" which have swelled this inundation of woe, rather than to use our poor little besoms in trying to sweep back the atlantic waves of his judgments. it is good and necessary to protest against war; but at the same time, reason and experience teach that we must, with equal zeal, protest against other great evils, the accumulation of which makes for war and not for peace. war in another sense--moral and spiritual war--must be doubled, trebled, quadrupled, in the future, in order that material war may come to an end. we all wish for peace; every reasonable person desires it, every anxious and bereaved family longs for it, every christian prays for it. but _what_ peace? it is the peace of god which we pray for? the peace on earth, which he alone can bring about? his hand alone, which corrects, can also heal. we do not and cannot desire the peace which some of those are calling for who dare not face the open book of present day judgment, or who do not wish to read its lessons! such a peace would be a mere plastering over of an unhealed wound, which would break out again before many years were over. there seems to me a lack of imagination and of christian sympathy in the zeal which thrusts denunciatory literature into all hands and houses, as is done just now. it would, i think, check such action and open the eyes of some who adopt it, if they could see the look of pain, the sudden pallor, followed by hours and days of depression of the mourners, widows, bereaved parents, sisters and friends, when called upon to read (their hearts full of the thought of their beloved dead) that those who have fought in the ranks were morally criminal, legalized murderers, "full of hatred," actors in a "hellish panorama." some of these sufferers may not be much enlightened, but they know what love and sorrow are. would it not be more tender and tactful, from the christian point of view, to leave to them their consoling belief that those whom they loved acted from a sense of duty or a sentiment of patriotism; and not, just at a time of heart-rending sorrow, to press upon them the criminality of all and every one concerned in any way with war? i commend this suggestion to those who are not strangers to the value of personal sympathy and gentleness towards those who mourn. no, we are not yet looking upon hell! it may be, it _is_, an earthly purgatory which we are called to look upon; a place and an hour of purging and of purifying, such as we must all, nations and individuals alike, pass through, before we can see the face of god. mr. fullerton, speaking in the melbourne hall, leicester, on jan. th of this year, said:--"the valley of achor (trouble), may be a door of hope." "you say the transvaal belongs to the boers; i say it belongs to god. if it belongs specially to any, it belongs to the zulus and kaffirs, on whom, for years, there have been inflicted wrongs worthy of arab slave dealers. what has the boer done to lift these people? nothing. as a missionary said the other day, 'a nation that lives amongst a lower race of people, and does not try to lift them, inevitably sinks.' the boers needed to be chastised; only thus could they be kept from sinking; only thus can there be hope for the native races. who shall chastise them? another nation, which god wishes also to chastise. is therefore god for one nation and not for another? may he not be for one, and for the other too? if both pray, must he refuse one? perhaps god is great enough to answer both, and bringing both through the fire, purge and teach them." it would have been bad for us if we had won an early or an easy victory. we should have been so lifted up with pride as to be an offence to high heaven. but we have gone and are going through deep waters, and the wounds inflicted on many hearts and many homes are not quickly healed. in this we recognise the hand of god, who is faithful in chastisement as in blessing. many have, no doubt, read, and i hope some have laid to heart, the words which lord rosebery recently addressed to the press, but which are applicable to us all at this juncture. they are wise and statesmanlike words. taking them as addressed to the nation and not to the press only, they run thus: "at such a juncture we must be sincere, we must divest ourselves of the mere catchwords and impulses of party.... we must be prepared to discard obsolete shibboleths, to search out abuse, to disregard persons, to be instant in pressing for necessary reforms--social, educational, administrative, and if need be, constitutional. "moreover, with regard to a sane appreciation of the destinies and responsibilities of empire, we stand at the parting of the ways. will britain flinch or falter in her world-wide task? how is she best to pursue it? what new forces and inspiration will it need? what changes does it involve? these are questions which require clear sight, cool courage, and freedom from formula."[ ] in the conscientious study which i have endeavoured to make of the history of the past century of british rule in south africa, nothing has struck me more than the unfortunate effects in that colony of our varying policy inspired by political party spirit in the mother country; and consequently i hail with thankfulness this good counsel to "divest ourselves of mere catchwords and impulses of party, to discard obsolete shibboleths, to free ourselves from formula, and to disregard persons," even if these persons are or have been recognized leaders, and to abide rather by principles. "what new forces and inspiration do we need," lord rosebery asks, for the great task our nation has before it? this is a deep and far-reaching question. the answer to it should be sought and earnestly enquired after by every man and woman among us, who is worthy of the name of a true citizen. my last word must be on behalf of the natives. when, thirty years ago, a few among us were impelled to take up the cause of the victims of the modern white slavery in europe, we were told that in our pleadings for principles of justice and for personal rights, we ought not to have selected a subject in which are concerned persons who may deserve pity, but who, in fact, are not so important a part of the human family as to merit such active and passionate sympathy as that which moved our group. to this our reply was: "we did not _choose_ this question, we did not ourselves deliberately elect to plead for these persons. the question was _imposed upon us_, and once so imposed, we could not escape from the claims of the oppressed class whose cause we had been called to take up. and generally, (we replied,) the work of human progress has not consisted in protecting and supporting any outward forms of government, or the noble or privileged classes, but in undertaking the defence of the weak, the humble, of beings devoted to degradation and contempt, or brought under any oppression or servitude." it is the same now. my father was one of the energetic promoters of the abolition of slavery in the years before , a friend of clarkson and wilberforce. the horror of slavery in every form, and under whatever name, which i have probably partly inherited, has been intensified as life went on. it is my deep conviction that great britain will in future be judged, condemned or justified, according to her treatment of those innumerable coloured races, heathen or partly christianized, over whom her rule extends, or who, beyond the sphere of her rule, claim her sympathy and help as a christian and civilizing power to whom a great trust has been committed. it grieves me to observe that (so far as i am able to judge) our politicians, public men, and editors, (with the exception of the editors of the "religious press,") appear to a great extent unaware of the immense importance of this subject, even for the future peace and stability of our empire, apart from higher interests. it _will_ be "imposed upon them," i do not doubt, sooner or later, as it has been imposed upon certain missionaries and others who regard the divine command as practical and sensible men should do: "go ye and teach _all_ nations." all cannot _go_ to the ends of the earth; but all might cease to hinder by the dead weight of their indifference, and their contempt of all men of colour. dr. livingstone rebuked the boers for contemptuously calling all coloured men kaffirs, to whatever race they belonged. englishmen deserve still more such a rebuke for their habit of including all the inhabitants of india, east and west, and of africa, who have not european complexions, under the contemptuous title of "niggers." race prejudice is a poison which will have to be cast out if the world is ever to be christianized, and if great britain is to maintain the high and responsible place among the nations which has been given to her. "it maybe that the kaffir is sometimes cruel," says one who has seen and known him,--"he certainly requires supervision. but he was bred in cruelty and reared in oppression--the child of injustice and hate. as the springbok is to the lion, as the locust is to the hen, so is the kaffir to the boer; a subject of plunder and leaven of greed. but the kaffir is capable of courage and also of the most enduring affection. he has been known to risk his life for the welfare of his master's family. he has worked without hope of reward. he has laboured in the expectation of pain. he has toiled in the snare of the fowler. yet shy a brickbat at him!--for he is only a kaffir! "however much the native may excel in certain qualities of the heart, still, until purged of the poison of racial contempt, that will be the expression of the practical conclusion of the white man regarding him; "shy a brickbat at him. he is only a nigger." a merely theoretical acknowledgment of the vital nature of this question, of the future of the native races and of missionary work will not suffice. the father of the great human family demands more than this. "is not this the fast that i have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?" (isaiah lviii. .) i have spoken, in this little book, as an abolitionist,--being a member of the "international federation for the abolition of the state regulation of vice." but i beg my readers to understand that i have here spoken for myself alone, and that my views must not be understood to be shared by members of the federation to which i refer. my abolitionist friends on the continent of europe, with very few exceptions, hold an opinion absolutely opposed to mine on the general question here treated. it is not far otherwise in england itself, where many of our abolitionists, including some of my oldest and most valued fellow-workers, stand on a very different ground from mine in this matter. i value friendship, and i love my old friends. but i love truth more. i have very earnestly sought to know the truth in the matter here treated. i have not rejected evidence from any side, having read the most extreme as well as the more moderate writings on different sides, including those which have reached me from holland, france, switzerland, germany, and the transvaal, as well as those published in england. having conscientiously arrived at certain conclusions, based on facts, and on life-long convictions in regard to some grave matters of principle, i have thought it worth while to put those conclusions on record. j.e.b. footnotes: [footnote : the transvaal from within. fitzpatrick.] [footnote : this may also be true of the boer combatants sacrificed for the sins of their rulers, but i prefer only to attest that of which i have full proof.] [footnote : "british weekly."] [footnote : an expression reported to have been used by mr. morley.] [footnote : _daily news_, june th, .] darkwater voices from within the veil w.e.b. du bois originally published in by harcourt, brace and company, new york. ad ninam may , postscript these are the things of which men think, who live: of their own selves and the dwelling place of their fathers; of their neighbors; of work and service; of rule and reason and women and children; of beauty and death and war. to this thinking i have only to add a point of view: i have been in the world, but not of it. i have seen the human drama from a veiled corner, where all the outer tragedy and comedy have reproduced themselves in microcosm within. from this inner torment of souls the human scene without has interpreted itself to me in unusual and even illuminating ways. for this reason, and this alone, i venture to write again on themes on which great souls have already said greater words, in the hope that i may strike here and there a half-tone, newer even if slighter, up from the heart of my problem and the problems of my people. between the sterner flights of logic, i have sought to set some little alightings of what may be poetry. they are tributes to beauty, unworthy to stand alone; yet perversely, in my mind, now at the end, i know not whether i mean the thought for the fancy--or the fancy for the thought, or why the book trails off to playing, rather than standing strong on unanswering fact. but this is alway--is it not?--the riddle of life. many of my words appear here transformed from other publications and i thank the _atlantic_, the _independent_, the _crisis_, and the _journal of race development_ for letting me use them again. w.e. burghardt du bois. new york, . contents chapter page postscript ix _credo_ i. the shadow of years _a litany at atlanta_ ii. the souls of white folk _the riddle of the sphinx_ iii. the hands of ethiopia _the princess of the hither isles_ iv. of work and wealth _the second coming_ v. "the servant in the house" _jesus christ in texas_ vi. of the ruling of men _the call_ vii. the damnation of women _children of the moon_ viii. the immortal child _almighty death_ ix. of beauty and death _the prayers of god_ x. the comet _a hymn to the peoples_ _credo_ i believe in god, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do dwell. i believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development. especially do i believe in the negro race: in the beauty of its genius, the sweetness of its soul, and its strength in that meekness which shall yet inherit this turbulent earth. i believe in pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves; in pride of lineage so great as to despise no man's father; in pride of race so chivalrous as neither to offer bastardy to the weak nor beg wedlock of the strong, knowing that men may be brothers in christ, even though they be not brothers-in-law. i believe in service--humble, reverent service, from the blackening of boots to the whitening of souls; for work is heaven, idleness hell, and wage is the "well done!" of the master, who summoned all them that labor and are heavy laden, making no distinction between the black, sweating cotton hands of georgia and the first families of virginia, since all distinction not based on deed is devilish and not divine. i believe in the devil and his angels, who wantonly work to narrow the opportunity of struggling human beings, especially if they be black; who spit in the faces of the fallen, strike them that cannot strike again, believe the worst and work to prove it, hating the image which their maker stamped on a brother's soul. i believe in the prince of peace. i believe that war is murder. i believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio of oppression and wrong, and i believe that the wicked conquest of weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows the death of that strength. i believe in liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls, the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love. i believe in the training of children, black even as white; the leading out of little souls into the green pastures and beside the still waters, not for pelf or peace, but for life lit by some large vision of beauty and goodness and truth; lest we forget, and the sons of the fathers, like esau, for mere meat barter their birthright in a mighty nation. finally, i believe in patience--patience with the weakness of the weak and the strength of the strong, the prejudice of the ignorant and the ignorance of the blind; patience with the tardy triumph of joy and the mad chastening of sorrow. i the shadow of years i was born by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills, five years after the emancipation proclamation. the house was quaint, with clapboards running up and down, neatly trimmed, and there were five rooms, a tiny porch, a rosy front yard, and unbelievably delicious strawberries in the rear. a south carolinian, lately come to the berkshire hills, owned all this--tall, thin, and black, with golden earrings, and given to religious trances. we were his transient tenants for the time. my own people were part of a great clan. fully two hundred years before, tom burghardt had come through the western pass from the hudson with his dutch captor, "coenraet burghardt," sullen in his slavery and achieving his freedom by volunteering for the revolution at a time of sudden alarm. his wife was a little, black, bantu woman, who never became reconciled to this strange land; she clasped her knees and rocked and crooned: "do bana coba--gene me, gene me! ben d'nuli, ben d'le--" tom died about , but of him came many sons, and one, jack, who helped in the war of . of jack and his wife, violet, was born a mighty family, splendidly named: harlow and ira, cloë, lucinda, maria, and othello! i dimly remember my grandfather, othello,--or "uncle tallow,"--a brown man, strong-voiced and redolent with tobacco, who sat stiffly in a great high chair because his hip was broken. he was probably a bit lazy and given to wassail. at any rate, grandmother had a shrewish tongue and often berated him. this grandmother was sarah--"aunt sally"--a stern, tall, dutch-african woman, beak-nosed, but beautiful-eyed and golden-skinned. ten or more children were theirs, of whom the youngest was mary, my mother. mother was dark shining bronze, with a tiny ripple in her black hair, black-eyed, with a heavy, kind face. she gave one the impression of infinite patience, but a curious determination was concealed in her softness. the family were small farmers on egremont plain, between great barrington and sheffield, massachusetts. the bits of land were too small to support the great families born on them and we were always poor. i never remember being cold or hungry, but i do remember that shoes and coal, and sometimes flour, caused mother moments of anxious thought in winter, and a new suit was an event! at about the time of my birth economic pressure was transmuting the family generally from farmers to "hired" help. some revolted and migrated westward, others went cityward as cooks and barbers. mother worked for some years at house service in great barrington, and after a disappointed love episode with a cousin, who went to california, she met and married alfred du bois and went to town to live by the golden river where i was born. alfred, my father, must have seemed a splendid vision in that little valley under the shelter of those mighty hills. he was small and beautiful of face and feature, just tinted with the sun, his curly hair chiefly revealing his kinship to africa. in nature he was a dreamer,--romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable. he had in him the making of a poet, an adventurer, or a beloved vagabond, according to the life that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little. his father, alexander du bois, cloaked under a stern, austere demeanor a passionate revolt against the world. he, too, was small, but squarish. i remember him as i saw him first, in his home in new bedford,--white hair close-cropped; a seamed, hard face, but high in tone, with a gray eye that could twinkle or glare. long years before him louis xiv drove two huguenots, jacques and louis du bois, into wild ulster county, new york. one of them in the third or fourth generation had a descendant, dr. james du bois, a gay, rich bachelor, who made his money in the bahamas, where he and the gilberts had plantations. there he took a beautiful little mulatto slave as his mistress, and two sons were born: alexander in and john, later. they were fine, straight, clear-eyed boys, white enough to "pass." he brought them to america and put alexander in the celebrated cheshire school, in connecticut. here he often visited him, but one last time, fell dead. he left no will, and his relations made short shrift of these sons. they gathered in the property, apprenticed grandfather to a shoemaker; then dropped him. grandfather took his bitter dose like a thoroughbred. wild as was his inner revolt against this treatment, he uttered no word against the thieves and made no plea. he tried his fortunes here and in haiti, where, during his short, restless sojourn, my own father was born. eventually, grandfather became chief steward on the passenger boat between new york and new haven; later he was a small merchant in springfield; and finally he retired and ended his days at new bedford. always he held his head high, took no insults, made few friends. he was not a "negro"; he was a man! yet the current was too strong even for him. then even more than now a colored man had colored friends or none at all, lived in a colored world or lived alone. a few fine, strong, black men gained the heart of this silent, bitter man in new york and new haven. if he had scant sympathy with their social clannishness, he was with them in fighting discrimination. so, when the white episcopalians of trinity parish, new haven, showed plainly that they no longer wanted black folks as fellow christians, he led the revolt which resulted in st. luke's parish, and was for years its senior warden. he lies dead in the grove street cemetery, beside jehudi ashmun. beneath his sternness was a very human man. slyly he wrote poetry,--stilted, pleading things from a soul astray. he loved women in his masterful way, marrying three beautiful wives in succession and clinging to each with a certain desperate, even if unsympathetic, affection. as a father he was, naturally, a failure,--hard, domineering, unyielding. his four children reacted characteristically: one was until past middle life a thin spinster, the mental image of her father; one died; one passed over into the white world and her children's children are now white, with no knowledge of their negro blood; the fourth, my father, bent before grandfather, but did not break--better if he had. he yielded and flared back, asked forgiveness and forgot why, became the harshly-held favorite, who ran away and rioted and roamed and loved and married my brown mother. so with some circumstance having finally gotten myself born, with a flood of negro blood, a strain of french, a bit of dutch, but, thank god! no "anglo-saxon," i come to the days of my childhood. they were very happy. early we moved back to grandfather burghardt's home,--i barely remember its stone fireplace, big kitchen, and delightful woodshed. then this house passed to other branches of the clan and we moved to rented quarters in town,--to one delectable place "upstairs," with a wide yard full of shrubbery, and a brook; to another house abutting a railroad, with infinite interests and astonishing playmates; and finally back to the quiet street on which i was born,--down a long lane and in a homely, cozy cottage, with a living-room, a tiny sitting-room, a pantry, and two attic bedrooms. here mother and i lived until she died, in , for father early began his restless wanderings. i last remember urgent letters for us to come to new milford, where he had started a barber shop. later he became a preacher. but mother no longer trusted his dreams, and he soon faded out of our lives into silence. from the age of five until i was sixteen i went to a school on the same grounds,--down a lane, into a widened yard, with a big choke-cherry tree and two buildings, wood and brick. here i got acquainted with my world, and soon had my criterions of judgment. wealth had no particular lure. on the other hand, the shadow of wealth was about us. that river of my birth was golden because of the woolen and paper waste that soiled it. the gold was theirs, not ours; but the gleam and glint was for all. to me it was all in order and i took it philosophically. i cordially despised the poor irish and south germans, who slaved in the mills, and annexed the rich and well-to-do as my natural companions. of such is the kingdom of snobs! most of our townfolk were, naturally, the well-to-do, shading downward, but seldom reaching poverty. as playmate of the children i saw the homes of nearly every one, except a few immigrant new yorkers, of whom none of us approved. the homes i saw impressed me, but did not overwhelm me. many were bigger than mine, with newer and shinier things, but they did not seem to differ in kind. i think i probably surprised my hosts more than they me, for i was easily at home and perfectly happy and they looked to me just like ordinary people, while my brown face and frizzled hair must have seemed strange to them. yet i was very much one of them. i was a center and sometimes the leader of the town gang of boys. we were noisy, but never very bad,--and, indeed, my mother's quiet influence came in here, as i realize now. she did not try to make me perfect. to her i was already perfect. she simply warned me of a few things, especially saloons. in my town the saloon was the open door to hell. the best families had their drunkards and the worst had little else. very gradually,--i cannot now distinguish the steps, though here and there i remember a jump or a jolt--but very gradually i found myself assuming quite placidly that i was different from other children. at first i think i connected the difference with a manifest ability to get my lessons rather better than most and to recite with a certain happy, almost taunting, glibness, which brought frowns here and there. then, slowly, i realized that some folks, a few, even several, actually considered my brown skin a misfortune; once or twice i became painfully aware that some human beings even thought it a crime. i was not for a moment daunted,--although, of course, there were some days of secret tears--rather i was spurred to tireless effort. if they beat me at anything, i was grimly determined to make them sweat for it! once i remember challenging a great, hard farmer-boy to battle, when i knew he could whip me; and he did. but ever after, he was polite. as time flew i felt not so much disowned and rejected as rather drawn up into higher spaces and made part of a mightier mission. at times i almost pitied my pale companions, who were not of the lord's anointed and who saw in their dreams no splendid quests of golden fleeces. even in the matter of girls my peculiar phantasy asserted itself. naturally, it was in our town voted bad form for boys of twelve and fourteen to show any evident weakness for girls. we tolerated them loftily, and now and then they played in our games, when i joined in quite as naturally as the rest. it was when strangers came, or summer boarders, or when the oldest girls grew up that my sharp senses noted little hesitancies in public and searchings for possible public opinion. then i flamed! i lifted my chin and strode off to the mountains, where i viewed the world at my feet and strained my eyes across the shadow of the hills. i was graduated from high school at sixteen, and i talked of "wendell phillips." this was my first sweet taste of the world's applause. there were flowers and upturned faces, music and marching, and there was my mother's smile. she was lame, then, and a bit drawn, but very happy. it was her great day and that very year she lay down with a sigh of content and has not yet awakened. i felt a certain gladness to see her, at last, at peace, for she had worried all her life. of my own loss i had then little realization. that came only with the after-years. now it was the choking gladness and solemn feel of wings! at last, i was going beyond the hills and into the world that beckoned steadily. there came a little pause,--a singular pause. i was given to understand that i was almost too young for the world. harvard was the goal of my dreams, but my white friends hesitated and my colored friends were silent. harvard was a mighty conjure-word in that hill town, and even the mill owners' sons had aimed lower. finally it was tactfully explained that the place for me was in the south among my people. a scholarship had been already arranged at fisk, and my summer earnings would pay the fare. my relatives grumbled, but after a twinge i felt a strange delight! i forgot, or did not thoroughly realize, the curious irony by which i was not looked upon as a real citizen of my birth-town, with a future and a career, and instead was being sent to a far land among strangers who were regarded as (and in truth were) "mine own people." ah! the wonder of that journey, with its faint spice of adventure, as i entered the land of slaves; the never-to-be-forgotten marvel of that first supper at fisk with the world "colored" and opposite two of the most beautiful beings god ever revealed to the eyes of seventeen. i promptly lost my appetite, but i was deliriously happy! as i peer back through the shadow of my years, seeing not too clearly, but through the thickening veil of wish and after-thought, i seem to view my life divided into four distinct parts: the age of miracles, the days of disillusion, the discipline of work and play, and the second miracle age. the age of miracles began with fisk and ended with germany. i was bursting with the joy of living. i seemed to ride in conquering might. i was captain of my soul and master of fate! i _willed_ to do! it was done. i _wished!_ the wish came true. now and then out of the void flashed the great sword of hate to remind me of the battle. i remember once, in nashville, brushing by accident against a white woman on the street. politely and eagerly i raised my hat to apologize. that was thirty-five years ago. from that day to this i have never knowingly raised my hat to a southern white woman. i suspect that beneath all of my seeming triumphs there were many failures and disappointments, but the realities loomed so large that they swept away even the memory of other dreams and wishes. consider, for a moment, how miraculous it all was to a boy of seventeen, just escaped from a narrow valley: i willed and lo! my people came dancing about me,--riotous in color, gay in laughter, full of sympathy, need, and pleading; darkly delicious girls--"colored" girls--sat beside me and actually talked to me while i gazed in tongue-tied silence or babbled in boastful dreams. boys with my own experiences and out of my own world, who knew and understood, wrought out with me great remedies. i studied eagerly under teachers who bent in subtle sympathy, feeling themselves some shadow of the veil and lifting it gently that we darker souls might peer through to other worlds. i willed and lo! i was walking beneath the elms of harvard,--the name of allurement, the college of my youngest, wildest visions! i needed money; scholarships and prizes fell into my lap,--not all i wanted or strove for, but all i needed to keep in school. commencement came and standing before governor, president, and grave, gowned men, i told them certain astonishing truths, waving my arms and breathing fast! they applauded with what now seems to me uncalled-for fervor, but then! i walked home on pink clouds of glory! i asked for a fellowship and got it. i announced my plan of studying in germany, but harvard had no more fellowships for me. a friend, however, told me of the slater fund and how the board was looking for colored men worth educating. no thought of modest hesitation occurred to me. i rushed at the chance. the trustees of the slater fund excused themselves politely. they acknowledged that they had in the past looked for colored boys of ability to educate, but, being unsuccessful, they had stopped searching. i went at them hammer and tongs! i plied them with testimonials and mid-year and final marks. i intimated plainly, impudently, that they were "stalling"! in vain did the chairman, ex-president hayes, explain and excuse. i took no excuses and brushed explanations aside. i wonder now that he did not brush me aside, too, as a conceited meddler, but instead he smiled and surrendered. i crossed the ocean in a trance. always i seemed to be saying, "it is not real; i must be dreaming!" i can live it again--the little, dutch ship--the blue waters--the smell of new-mown hay--holland and the rhine. i saw the wartburg and berlin; i made the harzreise and climbed the brocken; i saw the hansa towns and the cities and dorfs of south germany; i saw the alps at berne, the cathedral at milan, florence, rome, venice, vienna, and pesth; i looked on the boundaries of russia; and i sat in paris and london. on mountain and valley, in home and school, i met men and women as i had never met them before. slowly they became, not white folks, but folks. the unity beneath all life clutched me. i was not less fanatically a negro, but "negro" meant a greater, broader sense of humanity and world-fellowship. i felt myself standing, not against the world, but simply against american narrowness and color prejudice, with the greater, finer world at my back urging me on. i builded great castles in spain and lived therein. i dreamed and loved and wandered and sang; then, after two long years, i dropped suddenly back into "nigger"-hating america! my days of disillusion were not disappointing enough to discourage me. i was still upheld by that fund of infinite faith, although dimly about me i saw the shadow of disaster. i began to realize how much of what i had called will and ability was sheer luck! _suppose_ my good mother had preferred a steady income from my child labor rather than bank on the precarious dividend of my higher training? _suppose_ that pompous old village judge, whose dignity we often ruffled and whose apples we stole, had had his way and sent me while a child to a "reform" school to learn a "trade"? _suppose_ principal hosmer had been born with no faith in "darkies," and instead of giving me greek and latin had taught me carpentry and the making of tin pans? _suppose_ i had missed a harvard scholarship? _suppose_ the slater board had then, as now, distinct ideas as to where the education of negroes should stop? suppose _and_ suppose! as i sat down calmly on flat earth and looked at my life a certain great fear seized me. was i the masterful captain or the pawn of laughing sprites? who was i to fight a world of color prejudice? i raise my hat to myself when i remember that, even with these thoughts, i did not hesitate or waver; but just went doggedly to work, and therein lay whatever salvation i have achieved. first came the task of earning a living. i was not nice or hard to please. i just got down on my knees and begged for work, anything and anywhere. i wrote to hampton, tuskegee, and a dozen other places. they politely declined, with many regrets. the trustees of a backwoods tennessee town considered me, but were eventually afraid. then, suddenly, wilberforce offered to let me teach latin and greek at $ a year. i was overjoyed! i did not know anything about latin and greek, but i did know of wilberforce. the breath of that great name had swept the water and dropped into southern ohio, where southerners had taken their cure at tawawa springs and where white methodists had planted a school; then came the little bishop, daniel payne, who made it a school of the african methodists. this was the school that called me, and when re-considered offers from tuskegee and jefferson city followed, i refused; i was so thankful for that first offer. i went to wilberforce with high ideals. i wanted to help to build a great university. i was willing to work night as well as day. i taught latin, greek, english, and german. i helped in the discipline, took part in the social life, begged to be allowed to lecture on sociology, and began to write books. but i found myself against a stone wall. nothing stirred before my impatient pounding! or if it stirred, it soon slept again. of course, i was too impatient! the snarl of years was not to be undone in days. i set at solving the problem before i knew it. wilberforce was a colored church-school. in it were mingled the problems of poorly-prepared pupils, an inadequately-equipped plant, the natural politics of bishoprics, and the provincial reactions of a country town loaded with traditions. it was my first introduction to a negro world, and i was at once marvelously inspired and deeply depressed. i was inspired with the children,--had i not rubbed against the children of the world and did i not find here the same eagerness, the same joy of life, the same brains as in new england, france, and germany? but, on the other hand, the ropes and myths and knots and hindrances; the thundering waves of the white world beyond beating us back; the scalding breakers of this inner world,--its currents and back eddies--its meanness and smallness--its sorrow and tragedy--its screaming farce! in all this i was as one bound hand and foot. struggle, work, fight as i would, i seemed to get nowhere and accomplish nothing. i had all the wild intolerance of youth, and no experience in human tangles. for the first time in my life i realized that there were limits to my will to do. the day of miracles was past, and a long, gray road of dogged work lay ahead. i had, naturally, my triumphs here and there. i defied the bishops in the matter of public extemporaneous prayer and they yielded. i bearded the poor, hunted president in his den, and yet was re-elected to my position. i was slowly winning a way, but quickly losing faith in the value of the way won. was this the place to begin my life work? was this the work which i was best fitted to do? what business had i, anyhow, to teach greek when i had studied men? i grew sure that i had made a mistake. so i determined to leave wilberforce and try elsewhere. thus, the third period of my life began. first, in , i married--a slip of a girl, beautifully dark-eyed and thorough and good as a german housewife. then i accepted a job to make a study of negroes in philadelphia for the university of pennsylvania,--one year at six hundred dollars. how did i dare these two things? i do not know. yet they spelled salvation. to remain at wilberforce without doing my ideals meant spiritual death. both my wife and i were homeless. i dared a home and a temporary job. but it was a different daring from the days of my first youth. i was ready to admit that the best of men might fail. i meant still to be captain of my soul, but i realized that even captains are not omnipotent in uncharted and angry seas. i essayed a thorough piece of work in philadelphia. i labored morning, noon, and night. nobody ever reads that fat volume on "the philadelphia negro," but they treat it with respect, and that consoles me. the colored people of philadelphia received me with no open arms. they had a natural dislike to being studied like a strange species. i met again and in different guise those curious cross-currents and inner social whirlings of my own people. they set me to groping. i concluded that i did not know so much as i might about my own people, and when president bumstead invited me to atlanta university the next year to teach sociology and study the american negro, i accepted gladly, at a salary of twelve hundred dollars. my real life work was done at atlanta for thirteen years, from my twenty-ninth to my forty-second birthday. they were years of great spiritual upturning, of the making and unmaking of ideals, of hard work and hard play. here i found myself. i lost most of my mannerisms. i grew more broadly human, made my closest and most holy friendships, and studied human beings. i became widely-acquainted with the real condition of my people. i realized the terrific odds which faced them. at wilberforce i was their captious critic. in philadelphia i was their cold and scientific investigator, with microscope and probe. it took but a few years of atlanta to bring me to hot and indignant defense. i saw the race-hatred of the whites as i had never dreamed of it before,--naked and unashamed! the faint discrimination of my hopes and intangible dislikes paled into nothing before this great, red monster of cruel oppression. i held back with more difficulty each day my mounting indignation against injustice and misrepresentation. with all this came the strengthening and hardening of my own character. the billows of birth, love, and death swept over me. i saw life through all its paradox and contradiction of streaming eyes and mad merriment. i emerged into full manhood, with the ruins of some ideals about me, but with others planted above the stars; scarred and a bit grim, but hugging to my soul the divine gift of laughter and withal determined, even unto stubbornness, to fight the good fight. at last, forbear and waver as i would, i faced the great decision. my life's last and greatest door stood ajar. what with all my dreaming, studying, and teaching was i going to _do_ in this fierce fight? despite all my youthful conceit and bumptiousness, i found developed beneath it all a reticence and new fear of forwardness, which sprang from searching criticisms of motive and high ideals of efficiency; but contrary to my dream of racial solidarity and notwithstanding my deep desire to serve and follow and think, rather than to lead and inspire and decide, i found myself suddenly the leader of a great wing of people fighting against another and greater wing. nor could any effort of mine keep this fight from sinking to the personal plane. heaven knows i tried. that first meeting of a knot of enthusiasts, at niagara falls, had all the earnestness of self-devotion. at the second meeting, at harper's ferry, it arose to the solemnity of a holy crusade and yet without and to the cold, hard stare of the world it seemed merely the envy of fools against a great man, booker washington. of the movement i was willy-nilly leader. i hated the role. for the first time i faced criticism and _cared_. every ideal and habit of my life was cruelly misjudged. i who had always overstriven to give credit for good work, who had never consciously stooped to envy was accused by honest colored people of every sort of small and petty jealousy, while white people said i was ashamed of my race and wanted to be white! and this of me, whose one life fanaticism had been belief in my negro blood! away back in the little years of my boyhood i had sold the springfield _republican_ and written for mr. fortune's _globe_. i dreamed of being an editor myself some day. i am an editor. in the great, slashing days of college life i dreamed of a strong organization to fight the battles of the negro race. the national association for the advancement of colored people is such a body, and it grows daily. in the dark days at wilberforce i planned a time when i could speak freely to my people and of them, interpreting between two worlds. i am speaking now. in the study at atlanta i grew to fear lest my radical beliefs should so hurt the college that either my silence or the institution's ruin would result. powers and principalities have not yet curbed my tongue and atlanta still lives. it all came--this new age of miracles--because a few persons in determined to celebrate lincoln's birthday properly by calling for the final emancipation of the american negro. i came at their call. my salary even for a year was not assured, but it was the "voice without reply." the result has been the national association for the advancement of colored people and _the crisis_ and this book, which i am finishing on my fiftieth birthday. last year i looked death in the face and found its lineaments not unkind. but it was not my time. yet in nature some time soon and in the fullness of days i shall die, quietly, i trust, with my face turned south and eastward; and, dreaming or dreamless, i shall, i am sure, enjoy death as i have enjoyed life. _a litany at atlanta_ o silent god, thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful days-- _hear us, good lord!_ listen to us, thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery in thy sanctuary. with uplifted hands we front thy heaven, o god, crying: _we beseech thee to hear us, good lord!_ we are not better than our fellows, lord; we are but weak and human men. when our devils do deviltry, curse thou the doer and the deed,--curse them as we curse them, do to them all and more than ever they have done to innocence and weakness, to womanhood and home. _have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!_ and yet, whose is the deeper guilt? who made these devils? who nursed them in crime and fed them on injustice? who ravished and debauched their mothers and their grandmothers? who bought and sold their crime and waxed fat and rich on public iniquity? _thou knowest, good god!_ is this thy justice, o father, that guile be easier than innocence and the innocent be crucified for the guilt of the untouched guilty? _justice, o judge of men!_ wherefore do we pray? is not the god of the fathers dead? have not seers seen in heaven's halls thine hearsed and lifeless form stark amidst the black and rolling smoke of sin, where all along bow bitter forms of endless dead? _awake, thou that sleepest!_ thou art not dead, but flown afar, up hills of endless light, through blazing corridors of suns, where worlds do swing of good and gentle men, of women strong and free--far from the cozenage, black hypocrisy, and chaste prostitution of this shameful speck of dust! _turn again, o lord; leave us not to perish in our sin!_ from lust of body and lust of blood,-- _great god, deliver us!_ from lust of power and lust of gold,-- _great god, deliver us!_ from the leagued lying of despot and of brute,-- _great god, deliver us!_ a city lay in travail, god our lord, and from her loins sprang twin murder and black hate. red was the midnight; clang, crack, and cry of death and fury filled the air and trembled underneath the stars where church spires pointed silently to thee. and all this was to sate the greed of greedy men who hide behind the veil of vengeance! _bend us thine ear, o lord!_ in the pale, still morning we looked upon the deed. we stopped our ears and held our leaping hands, but they--did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody jaws: _cease from crime!_ the word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes while we do cure one. _turn again our captivity, o lord!_ behold this maimed and broken thing, dear god; it was an humble black man, who toiled and sweat to save a bit from the pittance paid him. they told him: _work and rise!_ he worked. did this man sin? nay, but someone told how someone said another did--one whom he had never seen nor known. yet for that man's crime this man lieth maimed and murdered, his wife naked to shame, his children to poverty and evil. _hear us, o heavenly father!_ doth not this justice of hell stink in thy nostrils, o god? how long shall the mounting flood of innocent blood roar in thine ears and pound in our hearts for vengeance? pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed brutes, who do such deeds, high on thine altar, jehovah jireh, and burn it in hell forever and forever! _forgive us, good lord; we know not what we say!_ bewildered we are and passion-tossed, mad with the madness of a mobbed and mocked and murdered people; straining at the armposts of thy throne, we raise our shackled hands and charge thee, god, by the bones of our stolen fathers, by the tears of our dead mothers, by the very blood of thy crucified christ: what meaneth this? tell us the plan; give us the sign! _keep not thou silent, o god!_ sit not longer blind, lord god, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb suffering. surely thou, too, art not white, o lord, a pale, bloodless, heartless thing! _ah! christ of all the pities!_ forgive the thought! forgive these wild, blasphemous words! thou art still the god of our black fathers and in thy soul's soul sit some soft darkenings of the evening, some shadowings of the velvet night. but whisper--speak--call, great god, for thy silence is white terror to our hearts! the way, o god, show us the way and point us the path! whither? north is greed and south is blood; within, the coward, and without, the liar. whither? to death? _amen! welcome, dark sleep!_ whither? to life? but not this life, dear god, not this. let the cup pass from us, tempt us not beyond our strength, for there is that clamoring and clawing within, to whose voice we would not listen, yet shudder lest we must,--and it is red. ah! god! it is a red and awful shape. _selah!_ in yonder east trembles a star. _vengeance is mine; i will repay, saith the lord!_ thy will, o lord, be done! _kyrie eleison!_ lord, we have done these pleading, wavering words. _we beseech thee to hear us, good lord!_ we bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little children. _we beseech thee to hear us, good lord!_ our voices sink in silence and in night. _hear us, good lord!_ in night, o god of a godless land! _amen!_ in silence, o silent god. _selah!_ ii the souls of white folk high in the tower, where i sit above the loud complaining of the human sea, i know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the souls of white folk. of them i am singularly clairvoyant. i see in and through them. i view them from unusual points of vantage. not as a foreigner do i come, for i am native, not foreign, bone of their thought and flesh of their language. mine is not the knowledge of the traveler or the colonial composite of dear memories, words and wonder. nor yet is my knowledge that which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist of artisan. rather i see these souls undressed and from the back and side. i see the working of their entrails. i know their thoughts and they know that i know. this knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious. they deny my right to live and be and call me misbirth! my word is to them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. and yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and i see them ever stripped,--ugly, human. the discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing,--a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. the ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. the middle age regarded skin color with mild curiosity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, universal man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more than birth. today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful! this assumption that of all the hues of god whiteness alone is inherently and obviously better than brownness or tan leads to curious acts; even the sweeter souls of the dominant world as they discourse with me on weather, weal, and woe are continually playing above their actual words an obligato of tune and tone, saying: "my poor, un-white thing! weep not nor rage. i know, too well, that the curse of god lies heavy on you. why? that is not for me to say, but be brave! do your work in your lowly sphere, praying the good lord that into heaven above, where all is love, you may, one day, be born--white!" i do not laugh. i am quite straight-faced as i ask soberly: "but what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?" then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, i am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, amen! now what is the effect on a man or a nation when it comes passionately to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this? that nations are coming to believe it is manifest daily. wave on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of our time. its first effects are funny: the strut of the southerner, the arrogance of the englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who vicariously leads your mob. next it appears dampening generous enthusiasm in what we once counted glorious; to free the slave is discovered to be tolerable only in so far as it freed his master! do we sense somnolent writhings in black africa or angry groans in india or triumphant banzais in japan? "to your tents, o israel!" these nations are not white! after the more comic manifestations and the chilling of generous enthusiasm come subtler, darker deeds. everything considered, the title to the universe claimed by white folk is faulty. it ought, at least, to look plausible. how easy, then, by emphasis and omission to make children believe that every great soul the world ever saw was a white man's soul; that every great thought the world ever knew was a white man's thought; that every great deed the world ever did was a white man's deed; that every great dream the world ever sang was a white man's dream. in fine, that if from the world were dropped everything that could not fairly be attributed to white folk, the world would, if anything, be even greater, truer, better than now. and if all this be a lie, is it not a lie in a great cause? here it is that the comedy verges to tragedy. the first minor note is struck, all unconsciously, by those worthy souls in whom consciousness of high descent brings burning desire to spread the gift abroad,--the obligation of nobility to the ignoble. such sense of duty assumes two things: a real possession of the heritage and its frank appreciation by the humble-born. so long, then, as humble black folk, voluble with thanks, receive barrels of old clothes from lordly and generous whites, there is much mental peace and moral satisfaction. but when the black man begins to dispute the white man's title to certain alleged bequests of the fathers in wage and position, authority and training; and when his attitude toward charity is sullen anger rather than humble jollity; when he insists on his human right to swagger and swear and waste,--then the spell is suddenly broken and the philanthropist is ready to believe that negroes are impudent, that the south is right, and that japan wants to fight america. after this the descent to hell is easy. on the pale, white faces which the great billows whirl upward to my tower i see again and again, often and still more often, a writing of human hatred, a deep and passionate hatred, vast by the very vagueness of its expressions. down through the green waters, on the bottom of the world, where men move to and fro, i have seen a man--an educated gentleman--grow livid with anger because a little, silent, black woman was sitting by herself in a pullman car. he was a white man. i have seen a great, grown man curse a little child, who had wandered into the wrong waiting-room, searching for its mother: "here, you damned black--" he was white. in central park i have seen the upper lip of a quiet, peaceful man curl back in a tigerish snarl of rage because black folk rode by in a motor car. he was a white man. we have seen, you and i, city after city drunk and furious with ungovernable lust of blood; mad with murder, destroying, killing, and cursing; torturing human victims because somebody accused of crime happened to be of the same color as the mob's innocent victims and because that color was not white! we have seen,--merciful god! in these wild days and in the name of civilization, justice, and motherhood,--what have we not seen, right here in america, of orgy, cruelty, barbarism, and murder done to men and women of negro descent. up through the foam of green and weltering waters wells this great mass of hatred, in wilder, fiercer violence, until i look down and know that today to the millions of my people no misfortune could happen,--of death and pestilence, failure and defeat--that would not make the hearts of millions of their fellows beat with fierce, vindictive joy! do you doubt it? ask your own soul what it would say if the next census were to report that half of black america was dead and the other half dying. unfortunate? unfortunate. but where is the misfortune? mine? am i, in my blackness, the sole sufferer? i suffer. and yet, somehow, above the suffering, above the shackled anger that beats the bars, above the hurt that crazes there surges in me a vast pity,--pity for a people imprisoned and enthralled, hampered and made miserable for such a cause, for such a phantasy! conceive this nation, of all human peoples, engaged in a crusade to make the "world safe for democracy"! can you imagine the united states protesting against turkish atrocities in armenia, while the turks are silent about mobs in chicago and st. louis; what is louvain compared with memphis, waco, washington, dyersburg, and estill springs? in short, what is the black man but america's belgium, and how could america condemn in germany that which she commits, just as brutally, within her own borders? a true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons and lowers. say to men, earnestly and repeatedly: "honesty is best, knowledge is power; do unto others as you would be done by." say this and act it and the nation must move toward it, if not to it. but say to a people: "the one virtue is to be white," and the people rush to the inevitable conclusion, "kill the 'nigger'!" is not this the record of present america? is not this its headlong progress? are we not coming more and more, day by day, to making the statement "i am white," the one fundamental tenet of our practical morality? only when this basic, iron rule is involved is our defense of right nation-wide and prompt. murder may swagger, theft may rule and prostitution may flourish and the nation gives but spasmodic, intermittent and lukewarm attention. but let the murderer be black or the thief brown or the violator of womanhood have a drop of negro blood, and the righteousness of the indignation sweeps the world. nor would this fact make the indignation less justifiable did not we all know that it was blackness that was condemned and not crime. in the awful cataclysm of world war, where from beating, slandering, and murdering us the white world turned temporarily aside to kill each other, we of the darker peoples looked on in mild amaze. among some of us, i doubt not, this sudden descent of europe into hell brought unbounded surprise; to others, over wide area, it brought the _schaden freude_ of the bitterly hurt; but most of us, i judge, looked on silently and sorrowfully, in sober thought, seeing sadly the prophecy of our own souls. here is a civilization that has boasted much. neither roman nor arab, greek nor egyptian, persian nor mongol ever took himself and his own perfectness with such disconcerting seriousness as the modern white man. we whose shame, humiliation, and deep insult his aggrandizement so often involved were never deceived. we looked at him clearly, with world-old eyes, and saw simply a human thing, weak and pitiable and cruel, even as we are and were. these super-men and world-mastering demi-gods listened, however, to no low tongues of ours, even when we pointed silently to their feet of clay. perhaps we, as folk of simpler soul and more primitive type, have been most struck in the welter of recent years by the utter failure of white religion. we have curled our lips in something like contempt as we have witnessed glib apology and weary explanation. nothing of the sort deceived us. a nation's religion is its life, and as such white christianity is a miserable failure. nor would we be unfair in this criticism: we know that we, too, have failed, as you have, and have rejected many a buddha, even as you have denied christ; but we acknowledge our human frailty, while you, claiming super-humanity, scoff endlessly at our shortcomings. the number of white individuals who are practising with even reasonable approximation the democracy and unselfishness of jesus christ is so small and unimportant as to be fit subject for jest in sunday supplements and in _punch_, _life_, _le rire_, and _fliegende blätter_. in her foreign mission work the extraordinary self-deception of white religion is epitomized: solemnly the white world sends five million dollars worth of missionary propaganda to africa each year and in the same twelve months adds twenty-five million dollars worth of the vilest gin manufactured. peace to the augurs of rome! we may, however, grant without argument that religious ideals have always far outrun their very human devotees. let us, then, turn to more mundane matters of honor and fairness. the world today is trade. the world has turned shopkeeper; history is economic history; living is earning a living. is it necessary to ask how much of high emprise and honorable conduct has been found here? something, to be sure. the establishment of world credit systems is built on splendid and realizable faith in fellow-men. but it is, after all, so low and elementary a step that sometimes it looks merely like honor among thieves, for the revelations of highway robbery and low cheating in the business world and in all its great modern centers have raised in the hearts of all true men in our day an exceeding great cry for revolution in our basic methods and conceptions of industry and commerce. we do not, for a moment, forget the robbery of other times and races when trade was a most uncertain gamble; but was there not a certain honesty and frankness in the evil that argued a saner morality? there are more merchants today, surer deliveries, and wider well-being, but are there not, also, bigger thieves, deeper injustice, and more calloused selfishness in well-being? be that as it may,--certainly the nicer sense of honor that has risen ever and again in groups of forward-thinking men has been curiously and broadly blunted. consider our chiefest industry,--fighting. laboriously the middle ages built its rules of fairness--equal armament, equal notice, equal conditions. what do we see today? machine-guns against assegais; conquest sugared with religion; mutilation and rape masquerading as culture,--all this, with vast applause at the superiority of white over black soldiers! war is horrible! this the dark world knows to its awful cost. but has it just become horrible, in these last days, when under essentially equal conditions, equal armament, and equal waste of wealth white men are fighting white men, with surgeons and nurses hovering near? think of the wars through which we have lived in the last decade: in german africa, in british nigeria, in french and spanish morocco, in china, in persia, in the balkans, in tripoli, in mexico, and in a dozen lesser places--were not these horrible, too? mind you, there were for most of these wars no red cross funds. behold little belgium and her pitiable plight, but has the world forgotten congo? what belgium now suffers is not half, not even a tenth, of what she has done to black congo since stanley's great dream of . down the dark forests of inmost africa sailed this modern sir galahad, in the name of "the noble-minded men of several nations," to introduce commerce and civilization. what came of it? "rubber and murder, slavery in its worst form," wrote glave in . harris declares that king leopold's régime meant the death of twelve million natives, "but what we who were behind the scenes felt most keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the congo was desolation and murder in the larger sense. the invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people dumb with horror--in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and immorality overwhelmed the congo tribes." yet the fields of belgium laughed, the cities were gay, art and science flourished; the groans that helped to nourish this civilization fell on deaf ears because the world round about was doing the same sort of thing elsewhere on its own account. as we saw the dead dimly through rifts of battlesmoke and heard faintly the cursings and accusations of blood brothers, we darker men said: this is not europe gone mad; this is not aberration nor insanity; this _is_ europe; this seeming terrible is the real soul of white culture--back of all culture,--stripped and visible today. this is where the world has arrived,--these dark and awful depths and not the shining and ineffable heights of which it boasted. here is whither the might and energy of modern humanity has really gone. but may not the world cry back at us and ask: "what better thing have you to show? what have you done or would do better than this if you had today the world rule? paint with all riot of hateful colors the thin skin of european culture,--is it not better than any culture that arose in africa or asia?" it is. of this there is no doubt and never has been; but why is it better? is it better because europeans are better, nobler, greater, and more gifted than other folk? it is not. europe has never produced and never will in our day bring forth a single human soul who cannot be matched and over-matched in every line of human endeavor by asia and africa. run the gamut, if you will, and let us have the europeans who in sober truth over-match nefertari, mohammed, rameses and askia, confucius, buddha, and jesus christ. if we could scan the calendar of thousands of lesser men, in like comparison, the result would be the same; but we cannot do this because of the deliberately educated ignorance of white schools by which they remember napoleon and forget sonni ali. the greatness of europe has lain in the width of the stage on which she has played her part, the strength of the foundations on which she has builded, and a natural, human ability no whit greater (if as great) than that of other days and races. in other words, the deeper reasons for the triumph of european civilization lie quite outside and beyond europe,--back in the universal struggles of all mankind. why, then, is europe great? because of the foundations which the mighty past have furnished her to build upon: the iron trade of ancient, black africa, the religion and empire-building of yellow asia, the art and science of the "dago" mediterranean shore, east, south, and west, as well as north. and where she has builded securely upon this great past and learned from it she has gone forward to greater and more splendid human triumph; but where she has ignored this past and forgotten and sneered at it, she has shown the cloven hoof of poor, crucified humanity,--she has played, like other empires gone, the world fool! if, then, european triumphs in culture have been greater, so, too, may her failures have been greater. how great a failure and a failure in what does the world war betoken? was it national jealousy of the sort of the seventeenth century? but europe has done more to break down national barriers than any preceding culture. was it fear of the balance of power in europe? hardly, save in the half-asiatic problems of the balkans. what, then, does hauptmann mean when he says: "our jealous enemies forged an iron ring about our breasts and we knew our breasts had to expand,--that we had to split asunder this ring or else we had to cease breathing. but germany will not cease to breathe and so it came to pass that the iron ring was forced apart." whither is this expansion? what is that breath of life, thought to be so indispensable to a great european nation? manifestly it is expansion overseas; it is colonial aggrandizement which explains, and alone adequately explains, the world war. how many of us today fully realize the current theory of colonial expansion, of the relation of europe which is white, to the world which is black and brown and yellow? bluntly put, that theory is this: it is the duty of white europe to divide up the darker world and administer it for europe's good. this europe has largely done. the european world is using black and brown men for all the uses which men know. slowly but surely white culture is evolving the theory that "darkies" are born beasts of burden for white folk. it were silly to think otherwise, cries the cultured world, with stronger and shriller accord. the supporting arguments grow and twist themselves in the mouths of merchant, scientist, soldier, traveler, writer, and missionary: darker peoples are dark in mind as well as in body; of dark, uncertain, and imperfect descent; of frailer, cheaper stuff; they are cowards in the face of mausers and maxims; they have no feelings, aspirations, and loves; they are fools, illogical idiots,--"half-devil and half-child." such as they are civilization must, naturally, raise them, but soberly and in limited ways. they are not simply dark white men. they are not "men" in the sense that europeans are men. to the very limited extent of their shallow capacities lift them to be useful to whites, to raise cotton, gather rubber, fetch ivory, dig diamonds,--and let them be paid what men think they are worth--white men who know them to be well-nigh worthless. such degrading of men by men is as old as mankind and the invention of no one race or people. ever have men striven to conceive of their victims as different from the victors, endlessly different, in soul and blood, strength and cunning, race and lineage. it has been left, however, to europe and to modern days to discover the eternal world-wide mark of meanness,--color! such is the silent revolution that has gripped modern european culture in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. its zenith came in boxer times: white supremacy was all but world-wide, africa was dead, india conquered, japan isolated, and china prostrate, while white america whetted her sword for mongrel mexico and mulatto south america, lynching her own negroes the while. temporary halt in this program was made by little japan and the white world immediately sensed the peril of such "yellow" presumption! what sort of a world would this be if yellow men must be treated "white"? immediately the eventual overthrow of japan became a subject of deep thought and intrigue, from st. petersburg to san francisco, from the key of heaven to the little brother of the poor. the using of men for the benefit of masters is no new invention of modern europe. it is quite as old as the world. but europe proposed to apply it on a scale and with an elaborateness of detail of which no former world ever dreamed. the imperial width of the thing,--the heaven-defying audacity--makes its modern newness. the scheme of europe was no sudden invention, but a way out of long-pressing difficulties. it is plain to modern white civilization that the subjection of the white working classes cannot much longer be maintained. education, political power, and increased knowledge of the technique and meaning of the industrial process are destined to make a more and more equitable distribution of wealth in the near future. the day of the very rich is drawing to a close, so far as individual white nations are concerned. but there is a loophole. there is a chance for exploitation on an immense scale for inordinate profit, not simply to the very rich, but to the middle class and to the laborers. this chance lies in the exploitation of darker peoples. it is here that the golden hand beckons. here are no labor unions or votes or questioning onlookers or inconvenient consciences. these men may be used down to the very bone, and shot and maimed in "punitive" expeditions when they revolt. in these dark lands "industrial development" may repeat in exaggerated form every horror of the industrial history of europe, from slavery and rape to disease and maiming, with only one test of success,--dividends! this theory of human culture and its aims has worked itself through warp and woof of our daily thought with a thoroughness that few realize. everything great, good, efficient, fair, and honorable is "white"; everything mean, bad, blundering, cheating, and dishonorable is "yellow"; a bad taste is "brown"; and the devil is "black." the changes of this theme are continually rung in picture and story, in newspaper heading and moving-picture, in sermon and school book, until, of course, the king can do no wrong,--a white man is always right and a black man has no rights which a white man is bound to respect. there must come the necessary despisings and hatreds of these savage half-men, this unclean _canaille_ of the world--these dogs of men. all through the world this gospel is preaching. it has its literature, it has its secret propaganda and above all--it pays! there's the rub,--it pays. rubber, ivory, and palm-oil; tea, coffee, and cocoa; bananas, oranges, and other fruit; cotton, gold, and copper--they, and a hundred other things which dark and sweating bodies hand up to the white world from pits of slime, pay and pay well, but of all that the world gets the black world gets only the pittance that the white world throws it disdainfully. small wonder, then, that in the practical world of things-that-be there is jealousy and strife for the possession of the labor of dark millions, for the right to bleed and exploit the colonies of the world where this golden stream may be had, not always for the asking, but surely for the whipping and shooting. it was this competition for the labor of yellow, brown, and black folks that was the cause of the world war. other causes have been glibly given and other contributing causes there doubtless were, but they were subsidiary and subordinate to this vast quest of the dark world's wealth and toil. colonies, we call them, these places where "niggers" are cheap and the earth is rich; they are those outlands where like a swarm of hungry locusts white masters may settle to be served as kings, wield the lash of slave-drivers, rape girls and wives, grow as rich as croesus and send homeward a golden stream. they belt the earth, these places, but they cluster in the tropics, with its darkened peoples: in hong kong and anam, in borneo and rhodesia, in sierra leone and nigeria, in panama and havana--these are the el dorados toward which the world powers stretch itching palms. germany, at last one and united and secure on land, looked across the seas and seeing england with sources of wealth insuring a luxury and power which germany could not hope to rival by the slower processes of exploiting her own peasants and workingmen, especially with these workers half in revolt, immediately built her navy and entered into a desperate competition for possession of colonies of darker peoples. to south america, to china, to africa, to asia minor, she turned like a hound quivering on the leash, impatient, suspicious, irritable, with blood-shot eyes and dripping fangs, ready for the awful word. england and france crouched watchfully over their bones, growling and wary, but gnawing industriously, while the blood of the dark world whetted their greedy appetites. in the background, shut out from the highway to the seven seas, sat russia and austria, snarling and snapping at each other and at the last mediterranean gate to the el dorado, where the sick man enjoyed bad health, and where millions of serfs in the balkans, russia, and asia offered a feast to greed well-nigh as great as africa. the fateful day came. it had to come. the cause of war is preparation for war; and of all that europe has done in a century there is nothing that has equaled in energy, thought, and time her preparation for wholesale murder. the only adequate cause of this preparation was conquest and conquest, not in europe, but primarily among the darker peoples of asia and africa; conquest, not for assimilation and uplift, but for commerce and degradation. for this, and this mainly, did europe gird herself at frightful cost for war. the red day dawned when the tinder was lighted in the balkans and austro-hungary seized a bit which brought her a step nearer to the world's highway; she seized one bit and poised herself for another. then came that curious chorus of challenges, those leaping suspicions, raking all causes for distrust and rivalry and hatred, but saying little of the real and greatest cause. each nation felt its deep interests involved. but how? not, surely, in the death of ferdinand the warlike; not, surely, in the old, half-forgotten _revanche_ for alsace-lorraine; not even in the neutrality of belgium. no! but in the possession of land overseas, in the right to colonies, the chance to levy endless tribute on the darker world,--on coolies in china, on starving peasants in india, on black savages in africa, on dying south sea islanders, on indians of the amazon--all this and nothing more. even the broken reed on which we had rested high hopes of eternal peace,--the guild of the laborers--the front of that very important movement for human justice on which we had builded most, even this flew like a straw before the breath of king and kaiser. indeed, the flying had been foreshadowed when in germany and america "international" socialists had all but read yellow and black men out of the kingdom of industrial justice. subtly had they been bribed, but effectively: were they not lordly whites and should they not share in the spoils of rape? high wages in the united states and england might be the skilfully manipulated result of slavery in africa and of peonage in asia. with the dog-in-the-manger theory of trade, with the determination to reap inordinate profits and to exploit the weakest to the utmost there came a new imperialism,--the rage for one's own nation to own the earth or, at least, a large enough portion of it to insure as big profits as the next nation. where sections could not be owned by one dominant nation there came a policy of "open door," but the "door" was open to "white people only." as to the darkest and weakest of peoples there was but one unanimity in europe,--that which hen demberg of the german colonial office called the agreement with england to maintain white "prestige" in africa,--the doctrine of the divine right of white people to steal. thus the world market most wildly and desperately sought today is the market where labor is cheapest and most helpless and profit is most abundant. this labor is kept cheap and helpless because the white world despises "darkies." if one has the temerity to suggest that these workingmen may walk the way of white workingmen and climb by votes and self-assertion and education to the rank of men, he is howled out of court. they cannot do it and if they could, they shall not, for they are the enemies of the white race and the whites shall rule forever and forever and everywhere. thus the hatred and despising of human beings from whom europe wishes to extort her luxuries has led to such jealousy and bickering between european nations that they have fallen afoul of each other and have fought like crazed beasts. such is the fruit of human hatred. but what of the darker world that watches? most men belong to this world. with negro and negroid, east indian, chinese, and japanese they form two-thirds of the population of the world. a belief in humanity is a belief in colored men. if the uplift of mankind must be done by men, then the destinies of this world will rest ultimately in the hands of darker nations. what, then, is this dark world thinking? it is thinking that as wild and awful as this shameful war was, _it is nothing to compare with that fight for freedom which black and brown and yellow men must and will make unless their oppression and humiliation and insult at the hands of the white world cease. the dark world is going to submit to its present treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer._ let me say this again and emphasize it and leave no room for mistaken meaning: the world war was primarily the jealous and avaricious struggle for the largest share in exploiting darker races. as such it is and must be but the prelude to the armed and indignant protest of these despised and raped peoples. today japan is hammering on the door of justice, china is raising her half-manacled hands to knock next, india is writhing for the freedom to knock, egypt is sullenly muttering, the negroes of south and west africa, of the west indies, and of the united states are just awakening to their shameful slavery. is, then, this war the end of wars? can it be the end, so long as sits enthroned, even in the souls of those who cry peace, the despising and robbing of darker peoples? if europe hugs this delusion, then this is not the end of world war,--it is but the beginning! we see europe's greatest sin precisely where we found africa's and asia's,--in human hatred, the despising of men; with this difference, however: europe has the awful lesson of the past before her, has the splendid results of widened areas of tolerance, sympathy, and love among men, and she faces a greater, an infinitely greater, world of men than any preceding civilization ever faced. it is curious to see america, the united states, looking on herself, first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral protagonist in this terrible time. no nation is less fitted for this rôle. for two or more centuries america has marched proudly in the van of human hatred,--making bonfires of human flesh and laughing at them hideously, and making the insulting of millions more than a matter of dislike,--rather a great religion, a world war-cry: up white, down black; to your tents, o white folk, and world war with black and parti-colored mongrel beasts! instead of standing as a great example of the success of democracy and the possibility of human brotherhood america has taken her place as an awful example of its pitfalls and failures, so far as black and brown and yellow peoples are concerned. and this, too, in spite of the fact that there has been no actual failure; the indian is not dying out, the japanese and chinese have not menaced the land, and the experiment of negro suffrage has resulted in the uplift of twelve million people at a rate probably unparalleled in history. but what of this? america, land of democracy, wanted to believe in the failure of democracy so far as darker peoples were concerned. absolutely without excuse she established a caste system, rushed into preparation for war, and conquered tropical colonies. she stands today shoulder to shoulder with europe in europe's worst sin against civilization. she aspires to sit among the great nations who arbitrate the fate of "lesser breeds without the law" and she is at times heartily ashamed even of the large number of "new" white people whom her democracy has admitted to place and power. against this surging forward of irish and german, of russian jew, slav and "dago" her social bars have not availed, but against negroes she can and does take her unflinching and immovable stand, backed by this new public policy of europe. she trains her immigrants to this despising of "niggers" from the day of their landing, and they carry and send the news back to the submerged classes in the fatherlands. * * * * * all this i see and hear up in my tower, above the thunder of the seven seas. from my narrowed windows i stare into the night that looms beneath the cloud-swept stars. eastward and westward storms are breaking,--great, ugly whirlwinds of hatred and blood and cruelty. i will not believe them inevitable. i will not believe that all that was must be, that all the shameful drama of the past must be done again today before the sunlight sweeps the silver seas. if i cry amid this roar of elemental forces, must my cry be in vain, because it is but a cry,--a small and human cry amid promethean gloom? back beyond the world and swept by these wild, white faces of the awful dead, why will this soul of white folk,--this modern prometheus,--hang bound by his own binding, tethered by a fable of the past? i hear his mighty cry reverberating through the world, "i am white!" well and good, o prometheus, divine thief! is not the world wide enough for two colors, for many little shinings of the sun? why, then, devour your own vitals if i answer even as proudly, "i am black!" _the riddle of the sphinx_ dark daughter of the lotus leaves that watch the southern sea! wan spirit of a prisoned soul a-panting to be free! the muttered music of thy streams, the whisper of the deep, have kissed each other in god's name and kissed a world to sleep. the will of the world is a whistling wind, sweeping a cloud-swept sky, and not from the east and not from the west knelled that soul-waking cry, but out of the south,--the sad, black south--it screamed from the top of the sky, crying: "awake, o ancient race!" wailing, "o woman, arise!" and crying and sighing and crying again as a voice in the midnight cries,-- but the burden of white men bore her back and the white world stifled her sighs. the white world's vermin and filth: all the dirt of london, all the scum of new york; valiant spoilers of women and conquerers of unarmed men; shameless breeders of bastards, drunk with the greed of gold, baiting their blood-stained hooks with cant for the souls of the simple; bearing the white man's burden of liquor and lust and lies! unthankful we wince in the east, unthankful we wail from the westward, unthankfully thankful, we curse, in the unworn wastes of the wild: i hate them, oh! i hate them well, i hate them, christ! as i hate hell! if i were god, i'd sound their knell this day! who raised the fools to their glory, but black men of egypt and ind, ethiopia's sons of the evening, indians and yellow chinese, arabian children of morning, and mongrels of rome and greece? ah, well! and they that raised the boasters shall drag them down again,-- down with the theft of their thieving and murder and mocking of men; down with their barter of women and laying and lying of creeds; down with their cheating of childhood and drunken orgies of war,-- down down deep down, till the devil's strength be shorn, till some dim, darker david, a-hoeing of his corn, and married maiden, mother of god, bid the black christ be born! then shall our burden be manhood, be it yellow or black or white; and poverty and justice and sorrow, the humble, and simple and strong shall sing with the sons of morning and daughters of even-song: black mother of the iron hills that ward the blazing sea, wild spirit of a storm-swept soul, a-struggling to be free, where 'neath the bloody finger-marks thy riven bosom quakes, thicken the thunders of god's voice and lo! a world awakes! iii the hands of ethiopia "_semper novi quid ex africa_," cried the roman proconsul, and he voiced the verdict of forty centuries. yet there are those who would write world history and leave out of account this most marvelous of continents. particularly today most men assume that africa is far afield from the center of our burning social problems and especially from our problem of world war. always africa is giving us something new or some metempsychosis of a world-old thing. on its black bosom arose one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of self-protecting civilizations, which grew so mightily that it still furnishes superlatives to thinking and speaking men. out of its darker and more remote forest fastnesses came, if we may credit many recent scientists, the first welding of iron, and we know that agriculture and trade flourished there when europe was a wilderness. nearly every human empire that has arisen in the world, material and spiritual, has found some of its greatest crises on this continent of africa, from greece to great britain. as mommsen says: "it was through africa that christianity became the religion of the world." in africa the last flood of germanic invasions spent itself within hearing of the last gasp of byzantium, and it was through africa that islam came to play its great rôle of conqueror and civilizer. with the renaissance and the widened world of modern thought africa came no less suddenly with her new-old gift. shakespeare's "ancient pistol" cries: a foutre for the world and worldlings base! i speak of africa and golden joys! he echoes a legend of gold from the days of punt and ophir to those of ghana, the gold coast, and the rand. this thought had sent the world's greed scurrying down the hot, mysterious coasts of africa to the good hope of gain, until for the first time a real world-commerce was born, albeit it started as a commerce mainly in the bodies and souls of men. the present problem of problems is nothing more than democracy beating itself helplessly against the color bar,--purling, seeping, seething, foaming to burst through, ever and again overwhelming the emerging masses of white men in its rolling backwaters and held back by those who dream of future kingdoms of greed built on black and brown and yellow slavery. the indictment of africa against europe is grave. for four hundred years white europe was the chief support of that trade in human beings which first and last robbed black africa of a hundred million human beings, transformed the face of her social life, overthrew organized government, distorted ancient industry, and snuffed out the lights of cultural development. today instead of removing laborers from africa to distant slavery, industry built on a new slavery approaches africa to deprive the natives of their land, to force them to toil, and to reap all the profit for the white world. it is scarcely necessary to remind the reader of the essential facts underlying these broad assertions. a recent law of the union of south africa assigns nearly two hundred and fifty million acres of the best of natives' land to a million and a half whites and leaves thirty-six million acres of swamp and marsh for four and a half-million blacks. in rhodesia over ninety million acres have been practically confiscated. in the belgian congo all the land was declared the property of the state. slavery in all but name has been the foundation of the cocoa industry in st. thome and st. principe and in the mines of the rand. gin has been one of the greatest of european imports, having increased fifty per cent. in ten years and reaching a total of at least twenty-five million dollars a year today. negroes of ability have been carefully gotten rid of, deposed from authority, kept out of positions of influence, and discredited in their people's eyes, while a caste of white overseers and governing officials has appeared everywhere. naturally, the picture is not all lurid. david livingstone has had his successors and europe has given africa something of value in the beginning of education and industry. yet the balance of iniquity is desperately large; but worse than that, it has aroused no world protest. a great englishman, familiar with african problems for a generation, says frankly today: "there does not exist any real international conscience to which you can appeal." moreover, that treatment shows no certain signs of abatement. today in england the empire resources development committee proposes to treat african colonies as "crown estates" and by intensive scientific exploitation of both land and labor to make these colonies pay the english national debt after the war! german thinkers, knowing the tremendous demand for raw material which would follow the war, had similar plans of exploitation. "it is the clear, common sense of the african situation," says h.g. wells, "that while these precious regions of raw material remain divided up between a number of competitive european imperialisms, each resolutely set upon the exploitation of its 'possessions' to its own advantage and the disadvantage of the others, there can be no permanent peace in the world. it is impossible." we, then, who fought the war against war; who in a hell of blood and suffering held hardly our souls in leash by the vision of a world organized for peace; who are looking for industrial democracy and for the organization of europe so as to avoid incentives to war,--we, least of all, should be willing to leave the backward world as the greatest temptation, not only to wars based on international jealousies, but to the most horrible of wars,--which arise from the revolt of the maddened against those who hold them in common contempt. consider, my reader,--if you were today a man of some education and knowledge, but born a japanese or a chinaman, an east indian or a negro, what would you do and think? what would be in the present chaos your outlook and plan for the future? manifestly, you would want freedom for your people,--freedom from insult, from segregation, from poverty, from physical slavery. if the attitude of the european and american worlds is in the future going to be based essentially upon the same policies as in the past, then there is but one thing for the trained man of darker blood to do and that is definitely and as openly as possible to organize his world for war against europe. he may have to do it by secret, underground propaganda, as in egypt and india and eventually in the united states; or by open increase of armament, as in japan; or by desperate efforts at modernization, as in china; but he must do it. he represents the vast majority of mankind. to surrender would be far worse than physical death. there is no way out unless the white world gives up such insult as its modern use of the adjective "yellow" indicates, or its connotation of "chink" and "nigger" implies; either it gives up the plan of color serfdom which its use of the other adjective "white" implies, as indicating everything decent and every part of the world worth living in,--or trouble is written in the stars! it is, therefore, of singular importance after disquieting delay to see the real pacifist appear. both england and germany have recently been basing their claims to parts of black africa on the wishes and interests of the black inhabitants. lloyd george has declared "the general principle of national self-determination applicable at least to german africa," while chancellor hertling once welcomed a discussion "on the reconstruction of the world's colonial possessions." the demand that an africa for africans shall replace the present barbarous scramble for exploitation by individual states comes from singularly different sources. colored america demands that "the conquered german colonies should not be returned to germany, neither should they be held by the allies. here is the opportunity for the establishment of a nation that may never recur. thousands of colored men, sick of white arrogance and hypocrisy, see in this their race's only salvation." sir harry h. johnston recently said: "if we are to talk, as we do, sentimentally but justly about restoring the nationhood of poland, about giving satisfaction to the separatist feeling in ireland, and about what is to be done for european nations who are oppressed, then we can hardly exclude from this feeling the countries of africa." laborers, black laborers, on the canal zone write: "out of this chaos may be the great awakening of our race. there is cause for rejoicing. if we fail to embrace this opportunity now, we fail to see how we will be ever able to solve the race question. it is for the british negro, the french negro, and the american negro to rise to the occasion and start a national campaign, jointly and collectively, with this aim in view." from british west africa comes the bitter complaint "that the west africans should have the right or opportunity to settle their future for themselves is a thing which hardly enters the mind of the european politician. that the balkan states should be admitted to the council of peace and decide the government under which they are to live is taken as a matter of course because they are europeans, but no extra-european is credited, even by the extremist advocates of human equality, with any right except to humbly accept the fate which europe shall decide for him." here, then, is the danger and the demand; and the real pacifist will seek to organize, not simply the masses in white nations, guarding against exploitation and profiteering, but will remember that no permanent relief can come but by including in this organization the lowest and the most exploited races in the world. world philanthropy, like national philanthropy, must come as uplift and prevention and not merely as alleviation and religious conversion. reverence for humanity, as such, must be installed in the world, and africa should be the talisman. black africa, including british, french, belgian, portuguese, italian, and spanish possessions and the independent states of abyssinia and liberia and leaving out of account egypt and north africa, on the one hand, and south africa, on the other, has an area of , , square miles and a population well over one hundred millions of black men, with less than one hundred thousand whites. commercial exploitation in africa has already larger results to show than most people realize. annually $ , , worth of goods was coming out of black africa before the world war, including a third of the world's supply of rubber, a quarter of all of the world's cocoa, and practically all of the world's cloves, gum-arabic, and palm-oil. in exchange there was being returned to africa one hundred millions in cotton cloth, twenty-five millions in iron and steel, and as much in foods, and probably twenty-five millions in liquors. here are the beginnings of a modern industrial system: iron and steel for permanent investment, bound to yield large dividends; cloth as the cheapest exchange for invaluable raw material; liquor to tickle the appetites of the natives and render the alienation of land and the breakdown of customary law easier; eventually forced and contract labor under white drivers to increase and systematize the production of raw materials. these materials are capable of indefinite expansion: cotton may yet challenge the southern united states, fruits and vegetables, hides and skins, lumber and dye-stuffs, coffee and tea, grain and tobacco, and fibers of all sorts can easily follow organized and systematic toil. is it a paradise of industry we thus contemplate? it is much more likely to be a hell. under present plans there will be no voice or law or custom to protect labor, no trades unions, no eight-hour laws, no factory legislation,--nothing of that great body of legislation built up in modern days to protect mankind from sinking to the level of beasts of burden. all the industrial deviltry, which civilization has been driving to the slums and the backwaters, will have a voiceless continent to conceal it. if the slave cannot be taken from africa, slavery can be taken to africa. who are the folk who live here? they are brown and black, curly and crisp-haired, short and tall, and longheaded. out of them in days without date flowed the beginnings of egypt; among them rose, later, centers of culture at ghana, melle, and timbuktu. kingdoms and empires flourished in songhay and zymbabwe, and art and industry in yoruba and benin. they have fought every human calamity in its most hideous form and yet today they hold some similar vestiges of a mighty past,--their work in iron, their weaving and carving, their music and singing, their tribal government, their town-meeting and marketplace, their desperate valor in war. missionaries and commerce have left some good with all their evil. in black africa today there are more than a thousand government schools and some thirty thousand mission schools, with a more or less regular attendance of three-quarters of a million school children. in a few cases training of a higher order is given chiefs' sons and selected pupils. these beginnings of education are not much for so vast a land and there is no general standard or set plan of development, but, after all, the children of africa are beginning to learn. in black africa today only one-seventeenth of the land and a ninth of the people in liberia and abyssinia are approximately independent, although menaced and policed by european capitalism. half the land and the people are in domains under portugal, france, and belgium, held with the avowed idea of exploitation for the benefit of europe under a system of caste and color serfdom. out of this dangerous nadir of development stretch two paths: one is indicated by the condition of about three per cent of the people who in sierra leone, the gold coast, and french senegal, are tending toward the path of modern development; the other path, followed by a fourth of the land and people, has local self-government and native customs and might evolve, if undisturbed, a native culture along their own peculiar lines. a tenth of the land, sparsely settled, is being monopolized and held for whites to make an african australia. to these later folk must be added the four and one-half millions of the south african union, who by every modern device are being forced into landless serfdom. before the world war tendencies were strongly toward the destruction of independent africa, the industrial slavery of the mass of the blacks and the encouragement of white immigration, where possible, to hold the blacks in subjection. against this idea let us set the conception of a new african world state, a black africa, applying to these peoples the splendid pronouncements which have of late been so broadly and perhaps carelessly given the world: recognizing in africa the declaration of the american federation of labor, that "no people must be forced under sovereignty under which it does not wish to live"; recognizing in president wilson's message to the russians, the "principle of the undictated development of all peoples"; recognizing the resolution of the recent conference of the aborigines protection society of england, "that in any reconstruction of africa, which may result from this war, the interests of the native inhabitants and also their wishes, in so far as those wishes can be clearly ascertained, should be recognized as among the principal factors upon which the decision of their destiny should be based." in other words, recognizing for the first time in the history of the modern world that black men are human. it may not be possible to build this state at once. with the victory of the entente allies, the german colonies, with their million of square miles and one-half million black inhabitants, should form such a nucleus. it would give black africa its physical beginnings. beginning with the german colonies two other sets of colonies could be added, for obvious reasons. neither portugal nor belgium has shown any particular capacity for governing colonial peoples. valid excuses may in both cases be advanced, but it would certainly be fair to belgium to have her start her great task of reorganization after the world war with neither the burden nor the temptation of colonies; and in the same way portugal has, in reality, the alternative of either giving up her colonies to an african state or to some other european state in the near future. these two sets of colonies would add , , square miles and eighteen million inhabitants. it would not, however, be fair to despoil germany, belgium, and portugal of their colonies unless, as count hertling once demanded, the whole question of colonies be opened. how far shall the modern world recognize nations which are not nations, but combinations of a dominant caste and a suppressed horde of serfs? will it not be possible to rebuild a world with compact nations, empires of self-governing elements, and colonies of backward peoples under benevolent international control? the great test would be easy. does england propose to erect in india and nigeria nations brown and black which shall be eventually independent, self-governing entities, with a full voice in the british imperial government? if not, let these states either have independence at once or, if unfitted for that, be put under international tutelage and guardianship. it is possible that france, with her great heart, may welcome a black france,--an enlarged senegal in africa; but it would seem that eventually all africa south of twenty degrees north latitude and north of the union of south africa should be included in a new african state. somaliland and eritrea should be given to abyssinia, and then with liberia we would start with two small, independent african states and one large state under international control. does this sound like an impossible dream? no one could be blamed for so regarding it before . i, myself, would have agreed with them. but since the nightmare of - , since we have seen the impossible happen and the unspeakable become so common as to cease to stir us; in a day when russia has dethroned her czar, england has granted the suffrage to women and is in the act of giving home rule to ireland; when germany has adopted parliamentary government; when jerusalem has been delivered from the turks; and the united states has taken control of its railroads,--is it really so far-fetched to think of an africa for the africans, guided by organized civilization? no one would expect this new state to be independent and self-governing from the start. contrary, however, to present schemes for africa the world would expect independence and self-government as the only possible end of the experiment at first we can conceive of no better way of governing this state than through that same international control by which we hope to govern the world for peace. a curious and instructive parallel has been drawn by simeon strunsky: "just as the common ownership of the northwest territory helped to weld the colonies into the united states, so could not joint and benevolent domination of africa and of other backward parts of the world be a cornerstone upon which the future federation of the world could be built?" from the british labor party comes this declaration: "with regard to the colonies of the several belligerents in tropical africa, from sea to sea, the british labor movement disclaims all sympathy with the imperialist idea that these should form the booty of any nation, should be exploited for the profit of the capitalists, or should be used for the promotion of the militarists' aims of government. in view of the fact that it is impracticable here to leave the various peoples concerned to settle their own destinies it is suggested that the interests of humanity would be best served by the full and frank abandonment by all the belligerents of any dreams of an african empire; the transfer of the present colonies of the european powers in tropical africa, however, and the limits of this area may be defined to the proposed supernational authority, or league of nations." lloyd george himself has said in regard to the german colonies a word difficult to restrict merely to them: "i have repeatedly declared that they are held at the disposal of a conference, whose decision must have primary regard to the wishes and interests of the native inhabitants of such colonies. none of those territories is inhabited by europeans. the governing considerations, therefore, must be that the inhabitants should be placed under the control of an administration acceptable to themselves, one of whose main purposes will be to prevent their exploitation for the benefit of european capitalists or governments." the special commission for the government of this african state must, naturally, be chosen with great care and thought. it must represent, not simply governments, but civilization, science, commerce, social reform, religious philanthropy without sectarian propaganda. it must include, not simply white men, but educated and trained men of negro blood. the guiding principles before such a commission should be clearly understood. in the first place, it ought by this time to be realized by the labor movement throughout the world that no industrial democracy can be built on industrial despotism, whether the two systems are in the same country or in different countries, since the world today so nearly approaches a common industrial unity. if, therefore, it is impossible in any single land to uplift permanently skilled labor without also raising common labor, so, too, there can be no permanent uplift of american or european labor as long as african laborers are slaves. secondly, this building of a new african state does not mean the segregation in it of all the world's black folk. it is too late in the history of the world to go back to the idea of absolute racial segregation. the new african state would not involve any idea of a vast transplantation of the twenty-seven million negroids of the western world, of africa, or of the gathering there of negroid asia. the negroes in the united states and the other americas have earned the right to fight out their problems where they are, but they could easily furnish from time to time technical experts, leaders of thought, and missionaries of culture for their backward brethren in the new africa. with these two principles, the practical policies to be followed out in the government of the new states should involve a thorough and complete system of modern education, built upon the present government, religion, and customary laws of the natives. there should be no violent tampering with the curiously efficient african institutions of local self-government through the family and the tribe; there should be no attempt at sudden "conversion" by religious propaganda. obviously deleterious customs and unsanitary usages must gradually be abolished, but the general government, set up from without, must follow the example of the best colonial administrators and build on recognized, established foundations rather than from entirely new and theoretical plans. the real effort to modernize africa should be through schools rather than churches. within ten years, twenty million black children ought to be in school. within a generation young africa should know the essential outlines of modern culture and groups of bright african students could be going to the world's great universities. from the beginning the actual general government should use both colored and white officials and later natives should be worked in. taxation and industry could follow the newer ideals of industrial democracy, avoiding private land monopoly and poverty, and promoting co-operation in production and the socialization of income. difficulties as to capital and revenue would be far less than many imagine. if a capable english administrator of british nigeria could with $ , build up a cocoa industry of twenty million dollars annually, what might not be done in all africa, without gin, thieves, and hypocrisy? capital could not only be accumulated in africa, but attracted from the white world, with one great difference from present usage: no return so fabulous would be offered that civilized lands would be tempted to divert to colonial trade and invest materials and labor needed by the masses at home, but rather would receive the same modest profits as legitimate home industry offers. there is no sense in asserting that the ideal of an african state, thus governed and directed toward independence and self-government, is impossible of realization. the first great essential is that the civilized world believe in its possibility. by reason of a crime (perhaps the greatest crime in human history) the modern world has been systematically taught to despise colored peoples. men of education and decency ask, and ask seriously, if it is really possible to uplift africa. are negroes human, or, if human, developed far enough to absorb, even under benevolent tutelage, any appreciable part of modern culture? has not the experiment been tried in haiti and liberia, and failed? one cannot ignore the extraordinary fact that a world campaign beginning with the slave-trade and ending with the refusal to capitalize the word "negro," leading through a passionate defense of slavery by attributing every bestiality to blacks and finally culminating in the evident modern profit which lies in degrading blacks,--all this has unconsciously trained millions of honest, modern men into the belief that black folk are sub-human. this belief is not based on science, else it would be held as a postulate of the most tentative kind, ready at any time to be withdrawn in the face of facts; the belief is not based on history, for it is absolutely contradicted by egyptian, greek, roman, byzantine, and arabian experience; nor is the belief based on any careful survey of the social development of men of negro blood to-day in africa and america. it is simply passionate, deep-seated heritage, and as such can be moved by neither argument nor fact. only faith in humanity will lead the world to rise above its present color prejudice. those who do believe in men, who know what black men have done in human history, who have taken pains to follow even superficially the story of the rise of the negro in africa, the west indies, and the americas of our day know that our modern contempt of negroes rests upon no scientific foundation worth a moment's attention. it is nothing more than a vicious habit of mind. it could as easily be overthrown as our belief in war, as our international hatreds, as our old conception of the status of women, as our fear of educating the masses, and as our belief in the necessity of poverty. we can, if we will, inaugurate on the dark continent a last great crusade for humanity. with africa redeemed asia would be safe and europe indeed triumphant. i have not mentioned north and south africa, because my eye was centered on the main mass of the negro race. yet it is clear that for the development of central africa, egypt should be free and independent, there along the highway to a free and independent india; while morocco, algeria, tunis, and tripoli must become a part of europe, with modern development and home rule. south africa, stripped of its black serfs and their lands, must admit the resident natives and colored folk to its body politic as equals. the hands which ethiopia shall soon stretch out unto god are not mere hands of helplessness and supplication, but rather are they hands of pain and promise; hard, gnarled, and muscled for the world's real work; they are hands of fellowship for the half-submerged masses of a distempered world; they are hands of helpfulness for an agonized god! * * * * * twenty centuries before christ a great cloud swept over seas and settled on africa, darkening and well-nigh blotting out the culture of the land of egypt. for half a thousand years it rested there, until a black woman, queen nefertari, "the most venerated figure in egyptian history," rose to the throne of the pharaohs and redeemed the world and her people. twenty centuries after christ, black africa,--prostrated, raped, and shamed, lies at the feet of the conquering philistines of europe. beyond the awful sea a black woman is weeping and waiting, with her sons on her breast. what shall the end be? the world-old and fearful things,--war and wealth, murder and luxury? or shall it be a new thing,--a new peace and a new democracy of all races,--a great humanity of equal men? "_semper novi quid ex africa_!" _the princess of the hither isles_ her soul was beautiful, wherefore she kept it veiled in lightly-laced humility and fear, out of which peered anxiously and anon the white and blue and pale-gold of her face,-beautiful as daybreak or as the laughing of a child. she sat in the hither isles, well walled between the this and now, upon a low and silver throne, and leaned upon its armposts, sadly looking upward toward the sun. now the hither isles are flat and cold and swampy, with drear-drab light and all manner of slimy, creeping things, and piles of dirt and clouds of flying dust and sordid scraping and feeding and noise. she hated them and ever as her hands and busy feet swept back the dust and slime her soul sat silver-throned, staring toward the great hill to the westward, which shone so brilliant-golden beneath the sunlight and above the sea. the sea moaned and with it moaned the princess' soul, for she was lonely,--very, very lonely, and full weary of the monotone of life. so she was glad to see a moving in yonder kingdom on the mountainside, where the sun shone warm, and when the king of yonder kingdom, silken in robe and golden-crowned and warded by his hound, walked down along the restless waters and sat beside the armpost of her throne, she wondered why she could not love him and fly with him up the shining mountain's side, out of the dirt and dust that nested between the this and now. she looked at him and tried to be glad, for he was bonny and good to look upon, this king of yonder kingdom,--tall and straight, thin-lipped and white and tawny. so, again, this last day, she strove to burn life into his singularly sodden clay,--to put his icy soul aflame wherewith to warm her own, to set his senses singing. vacantly he heard her winged words, staring and curling his long mustaches with vast thoughtfulness. then he said: "we've found more gold in yonder kingdom." "hell seize your gold!" blurted the princess. "no,--it's mine," he maintained stolidly. she raised her eyes. "it belongs," she said, "to the empire of the sun." "nay,--the sun belongs to us," said the king calmly as he glanced to where yonder kingdom blushed above the sea. she glanced, too, and a softness crept into her eyes. "no, no," she murmured as with hesitating pause she raised her eyes above the sea, above the hill, up into the sky where the sun hung silent and splendid. its robes were heaven's blue, lined and broidered in living flame, and its crown was one vast jewel, glistening in glittering glory that made the sun's own face a blackness,--the blackness of utter light. with blinded, tear-filled eyes she peered into that formless black and burning face and sensed in its soft, sad gleam unfathomed understanding. with sudden, wild abandon she stretched her arms toward it appealing, beseeching, entreating, and lo! "niggers and dagoes," said the king of yonder kingdom, glancing carelessly backward and lighting in his lips a carefully rolled wisp of fragrant tobacco. she looked back, too, but in half-wondering terror, for it seemed-- a beggar man was creeping across the swamp, shuffling through the dirt and slime. he was little and bald and black, rough-clothed, sodden with dirt, and bent with toil. yet withal something she sensed about him and it seemed,-- the king of yonder kingdom lounged more comfortably beside the silver throne and let curl a tiny trail of light-blue smoke. "i hate beggars," he said, "especially brown and black ones." and he then pointed at the beggar's retinue and laughed,--an unpleasant laugh, welded of contempt and amusement. the princess looked and shrank on her throne. he, the beggar man, was--was what? but his retinue,--that squalid, sordid, parti-colored band of vacant, dull-faced filth and viciousness--was writhing over the land, and he and they seemed almost crouching underneath the scorpion lash of one tall skeleton, that looked like death, and the twisted woman whom men called pain. yet they all walked as one. the king of yonder kingdom laughed, but the princess shrank on her throne, and the king on seeing her thus took a gold-piece from out of his purse and tossed it carelessly to the passing throng. she watched it with fascinated eyes,--how it rose and sailed and whirled and struggled in the air, then seemed to burst, and upward flew its light and sheen and downward dropped its dross. she glanced at the king, but he was lighting a match. she watched the dross wallow in the slime, but the sunlight fell on the back of the beggar's neck, and he turned his head. the beggar passing afar turned his head and the princess straightened on her throne; he turned his head and she shivered forward on her silver seat; he looked upon her full and slow and suddenly she saw within that formless black and burning face the same soft, glad gleam of utter understanding, seen so many times before. she saw the suffering of endless years and endless love that softened it. she saw the burning passion of the sun and with it the cold, unbending duty-deeds of upper air. all she had seen and dreamed of seeing in the rising, blazing sun she saw now again and with it myriads more of human tenderness, of longing, and of love. so, then, she knew. she rose as to a dream come true, with solemn face and waiting eyes. with her rose the king of yonder kingdom, almost eagerly. "you'll come?" he cried. "you'll come and see my gold?" and then in sudden generosity, he added: "you'll have a golden throne,-up there-when we marry." but she, looking up and on with radiant face, answered softly: "i come." so down and up and on they mounted,-the black beggar man and his cavalcade of death and pain, and then a space; and then a lone, black hound that nosed and whimpered as he ran, and then a space; and then the king of yonder kingdom in his robes, and then a space; and last the princess of the hither isles, with face set sunward and lovelight in her eyes. and so they marched and struggled on and up through endless years and spaces and ever the black beggar looked back past death and pain toward the maid and ever the maid strove forward with lovelit eyes, but ever the great and silken shoulders of the king of yonder kingdom arose between the princess and the sun like a cloud of storms. now, finally, they neared unto the hillsides topmost shoulder and there most eagerly the king bent to the bowels of the earth and bared its golden entrails,-all green and gray and rusted-while the princess strained her pitiful eyes aloft to where the beggar, set 'twixt death and pain, whirled his slim back against the glory of the setting sun and stood somber in his grave majesty, enhaloed and transfigured, outstretching his long arms, and around all heaven glittered jewels in a cloth of gold. a while the princess stood and moaned in mad amaze, then with one wilful wrench she bared the white flowers of her breast and snatching forth her own red heart held it with one hand aloft while with the other she gathered close her robe and poised herself. the king of yonder kingdom looked upward quickly, curiously, still fingering the earth, and saw the offer of her bleeding heart. "it's a negro!" he growled darkly; "it may not be." the woman quivered. "it's a nigger!" he repeated fiercely. "it's neither god nor man, but a nigger!" the princess stepped forward. the king grasped his sword and looked north and east; he raised his sword and looked south and west. "i seek the sun," the princess sang, and started into the west. "never!" cried the king of yonder kingdom, "for such were blasphemy and defilement and the making of all evil." so, raising his great sword he struck with all his might, and more. down hissed the blow and it bit that little, white, heart-holding hand until it flew armless and disbodied up through the sunlit air. down hissed the blow and it clove the whimpering hound until his last shriek shook the stars. down hissed the blow and it rent the earth. it trembled, fell apart, and yawned to a chasm wide as earth from heaven, deep as hell, and empty, cold, and silent. on yonder distant shore blazed the mighty empire of the sun in warm and blissful radiance, while on this side, in shadows cold and dark, gloomed the hither isles and the hill that once was golden, but now was green and slimy dross; all below was the sad and moaning sea, while between the here and there flew the severed hand and dripped the bleeding heart. then up from the soul of the princess welled a cry of dark despair,--such a cry as only babe-raped mothers know and murdered loves. poised on the crumbling edge of that great nothingness the princess hung, hungering with her eyes and straining her fainting ears against the awful splendor of the sky. out from the slime and shadows groped the king, thundering: "back--don't be a fool!" but down through the thin ether thrilled the still and throbbing warmth of heaven's sun, whispering "leap!" and the princess leapt. iv of work and wealth for fifteen years i was a teacher of youth. they were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. they were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder. the teacher's life is a double one. he stands in a certain fear. he tends to be stilted, almost dishonest, veiling himself before those awful eyes. not the eyes of almighty god are so straight, so penetrating, so all-seeing as the wonder-swept eyes of youth. you walk into a room: to the left is a tall window, bright with colors of crimson and gold and sunshine. here are rows of books and there is a table. somber blackboards clothe the walls to the right and beside your desk is the delicate ivory of a nobly cast head. but you see nothing of this: you see only a silence and eyes,--fringed, soft eyes; hard eyes; eyes great and small; eyes here so poignant with beauty that the sob struggles in your throat; eyes there so hard with sorrow that laughter wells up to meet and beat it back; eyes through which the mockery and ridicule of hell or some pulse of high heaven may suddenly flash. ah! that mighty pause before the class,--that orison and benediction--how much of my life it has been and made. i fought earnestly against posing before my class. i tried to be natural and honest and frank, but it was a bitter hard. what would you say to a soft, brown face, aureoled in a thousand ripples of gray-black hair, which knells suddenly: "do you trust white people?" you do not and you know that you do not, much as you want to; yet you rise and lie and say you do; you must say it for her salvation and the world's; you repeat that she must trust them, that most white folks are honest, and all the while you are lying and every level, silent eye there knows you are lying, and miserably you sit and lie on, to the greater glory of god. i taught history and economics and something called "sociology" at atlanta university, where, as our mr. webster used to say, we professors occupied settees and not mere chairs. i was fortunate with this teaching in having vivid in the minds of my pupils a concrete social problem of which we all were parts and which we desperately desired to solve. there was little danger, then, of my teaching or of their thinking becoming purely theoretical. work and wage were thrilling realities to us all. what did we study? i can tell you best by taking a concrete human case, such as was continually leaping to our eyes and thought and demanding understanding and interpretation and what i could bring of prophecy. * * * * * st. louis sprawls where mighty rivers meet,--as broad as philadelphia, but three stories high instead of two, with wider streets and dirtier atmosphere, over the dull-brown of wide, calm rivers. the city overflows into the valleys of illinois and lies there, writhing under its grimy cloud. the other city is dusty and hot beyond all dream,--a feverish pittsburg in the mississippi valley--a great, ruthless, terrible thing! it is the sort that crushes man and invokes some living superman,--a giant of things done, a clang of awful accomplishment. three men came wandering across this place. they were neither kings nor wise men, but they came with every significance--perhaps even greater--than that which the kings bore in the days of old. there was one who came from the north,--brawny and riotous with energy, a man of concentrated power, who held all the thunderbolts of modern capital in his great fists and made flour and meat, iron and steel, cunning chemicals, wood, paint and paper, transforming to endless tools a disemboweled earth. he was one who saw nothing, knew nothing, sought nothing but the making and buying of that which sells; who out from the magic of his hand rolled over miles of iron road, ton upon ton of food and metal and wood, of coal and oil and lumber, until the thronging of knotted ways in east and real st. louis was like the red, festering ganglia of some mighty heart. then from the east and called by the crash of thunderbolts and forked-flame came the unwise man,--unwise by the theft of endless ages, but as human as anything god ever made. he was the slave for the miracle maker. it was he that the thunderbolts struck and electrified into gasping energy. the rasp of his hard breathing shook the midnights of all this endless valley and the pulse of his powerful arms set the great nation to trembling. and then, at last, out of the south, like a still, small voice, came the third man,--black, with great eyes and greater memories; hesitantly eager and yet with the infinite softness and ancient calm which come from that eternal race whose history is not the history of a day, but of endless ages. here, surely, was fit meeting-place for these curiously intent forces, for these epoch-making and age-twisting forces, for these human feet on their super-human errands. yesterday i rode in east st. louis. it is the kind of place one quickly recognizes,--tireless and with no restful green of verdure; hard and uneven of street; crude, cold, and even hateful of aspect; conventional, of course, in its business quarter, but quickly beyond one sees the ruts and the hollows, the stench of ill-tamed sewerage, unguarded railroad crossings, saloons outnumbering churches and churches catering to saloons; homes impudently strait and new, prostitutes free and happy, gamblers in paradise, the town "wide open," shameless and frank; great factories pouring out stench, filth, and flame--these and all other things so familiar in the world market places, where industry triumphs over thought and products overwhelm men. may i tell, too, how yesterday i rode in this city past flame-swept walls and over gray ashes; in streets almost wet with blood and beside ruins, where the bones of dead men new-bleached peered out at me in sullen wonder? across the river, in the greater city, where bronze st. louis,--that just and austere king--looks with angry, fear-swept eyes down from the rolling heights of forest park, which knows him not nor heeds him, there is something of the same thing, but this city is larger and older and the forces of evil have had some curbing from those who have seen the vision and panted for life; but eastward from st. louis there is a land of no taxes for great industries; there is a land where you may buy grafting politicians at far less rate than you would pay for franchises or privileges in a modern town. there, too, you may escape the buying of indulgences from the great terminal fist, which squeezes industry out of st. louis. in fact, east st. louis is a paradise for high and frequent dividends and for the piling up of wealth to be spent in st. louis and chicago and new york and when the world is sane again, across the seas. so the unwise men pouring out of the east,--falling, scrambling, rushing into america at the rate of a million a year,--ran, walked, and crawled to this maelstrom of the workers. they garnered higher wage than ever they had before, but not all of it came in cash. a part, and an insidious part, was given to them transmuted into whiskey, prostitutes, and games of chance. they laughed and disported themselves. god! had not their mothers wept enough? it was a good town. there was no veil of hypocrisy here, but a wickedness, frank, ungilded, and open. to be sure, there were things sometimes to reveal the basic savagery and thin veneer. once, for instance, a man was lynched for brawling on the public square of the county seat; once a mayor who sought to "clean up" was publicly assassinated; always there was theft and rumors of theft, until st. clair county was a hissing in good men's ears; but always, too, there were good wages and jolly hoodlums and unchecked wassail of saturday nights. gamblers, big and little, rioted in east st. louis. the little gamblers used cards and roulette wheels and filched the weekly wage of the workers. the greater gamblers used meat and iron and undid the foundations of the world. all the gods of chance flaunted their wild raiment here, above the brown flood of the mississippi. then the world changed; then civilization, built for culture, rebuilt itself for wilful murder in europe, asia, america, and the southern seas. hands that made food made powder, and iron for railways was iron for guns. the wants of common men were forgotten before the groan of giants. streams of gold, lost from the world's workers, filtered and trickled into the hands of gamblers and put new power into the thunderbolts of east st. louis. wages had been growing before the world war. slowly but remorselessly the skilled and intelligent, banding themselves, had threatened the coffers of the mighty, and slowly the mighty had disgorged. even the common workers, the poor and unlettered, had again and again gripped the sills of the city walls and pulled themselves to their chins; but, alas! there were so many hands and so many mouths and the feet of the disinherited kept coming across the wet paths of the sea to this old el dorado. war brought subtle changes. wages stood still while prices fattened. it was not that the white american worker was threatened with starvation, but it was what was, after all, a more important question,--whether or not he should lose his front-room and victrola and even the dream of a ford car. there came a whirling and scrambling among the workers,--they fought each other; they climbed on each others' backs. the skilled and intelligent, banding themselves even better than before, bargained with the men of might and held them by bitter threats; the less skilled and more ignorant seethed at the bottom and tried, as of old, to bring it about that the ignorant and unlettered should learn to stand together against both capital and skilled labor. it was here that there came out of the east a beam of unearthly light,--a triumph of possible good in evil so strange that the workers hardly believed it. slowly they saw the gates of ellis island closing, slowly the footsteps of the yearly million men became fainter and fainter, until the stream of immigrants overseas was stopped by the shadow of death at the very time when new murder opened new markets over all the world to american industry; and the giants with the thunderbolts stamped and raged and peered out across the world and called for men and evermore,--men! the unwise men laughed and squeezed reluctant dollars out of the fists of the mighty and saw in their dream the vision of a day when labor, as they knew it, should come into its own; saw this day and saw it with justice and with right, save for one thing, and that was the sound of the moan of the disinherited, who still lay without the walls. when they heard this moan and saw that it came not across the seas, they were at first amazed and said it was not true; and then they were mad and said it should not be. quickly they turned and looked into the red blackness of the south and in their hearts were fear and hate! what did they see? they saw something at which they had been taught to laugh and make sport; they saw that which the heading of every newspaper column, the lie of every cub reporter, the exaggeration of every press dispatch, and the distortion of every speech and book had taught them was a mass of despicable men, inhuman; at best, laughable; at worst, the meat of mobs and fury. what did they see? they saw nine and one-half millions of human beings. they saw the spawn of slavery, ignorant by law and by deviltry, crushed by insult and debauched by systematic and criminal injustice. they saw a people whose helpless women have been raped by thousands and whose men lynched by hundreds in the face of a sneering world. they saw a people with heads bloody, but unbowed, working faithfully at wages fifty per cent. lower than the wages of the nation and under conditions which shame civilization, saving homes, training children, hoping against hope. they saw the greatest industrial miracle of modern days,--slaves transforming themselves to freemen and climbing out of perdition by their own efforts, despite the most contemptible opposition god ever saw,--they saw all this and what they saw the distraught employers of america saw, too. the north called to the south. a scream of rage went up from the cotton monopolists and industrial barons of the new south. who was this who dared to "interfere" with their labor? who sought to own their black slaves but they? who honored and loved "niggers" as they did? they mobilized all the machinery of modern oppression: taxes, city ordinances, licenses, state laws, municipal regulations, wholesale police arrests and, of course, the peculiarly southern method of the mob and the lyncher. they appealed frantically to the united states government; they groveled on their knees and shed wild tears at the "suffering" of their poor, misguided black friends, and yet, despite this, the northern employers simply had to offer two and three dollars a day and from one-quarter to one-half a million dark workers arose and poured themselves into the north. they went to the mines of west virginia, because war needs coal; they went to the industries of new jersey and pennsylvania, because war needs ships and iron; they went to the automobiles of detroit and the load-carrying of chicago; and they went to east st. louis. now there came fear in the hearts of the unwise men. it was not that their wages were lowered,--they went even higher. they received, not simply, a living wage, but a wage that paid for some of the decencies, and, in east st. louis, many of the indecencies of life. what they feared was not deprivation of the things they were used to and the shadow of poverty, but rather the definite death of their rising dreams. but if fear was new-born in the hearts of the unwise men, the black man was born in a house of fear; to him poverty of the ugliest and straitest type was father, mother, and blood-brother. he was slipping stealthily northward to escape hunger and insult, the hand of oppression, and the shadow of death. here, then, in the wide valley which father marquette saw peaceful and golden, lazy with fruit and river, half-asleep beneath the nod of god,--here, then, was staged every element for human tragedy, every element of the modern economic paradox. * * * * * ah! that hot, wide plain of east st. louis is a gripping thing. the rivers are dirty with sweat and toil and lip, like lakes, along the low and burdened shores; flatboats ramble and thread among them, and above the steamers bridges swing on great arches of steel, striding with mighty grace from shore to shore. everywhere are brick kennels,--tall, black and red chimneys, tongues of flame. the ground is littered with cars and iron, tracks and trucks, boxes and crates, metals and coal and rubber. nature-defying cranes, grim elevators rise above pile on pile of black and grimy lumber. and ever below is the water,--wide and silent, gray-brown and yellow. this is the stage for the tragedy: the armored might of the modern world urged by the bloody needs of the world wants, fevered today by a fabulous vision of gain and needing only hands, hands, hands! fear of loss and greed of gain in the hearts of the giants; the clustered cunning of the modern workman, skilled as artificer and skilled in the rhythm of the habit of work, tasting the world's good and panting for more; fear of poverty and hate of "scabs" in the hearts of the workers; the dumb yearning in the hearts of the oppressed; the echo of laughter heard at the foot of the pyramids; the faithful, plodding slouch of the laborers; fear of the shadow of death in the hearts of black men. we ask, and perhaps there is no answer, how far may the captain of the world's industry do his deeds, despite the grinding tragedy of its doing? how far may men fight for the beginning of comfort, out beyond the horrid shadow of poverty, at the cost of starving other and what the world calls lesser men? how far may those who reach up out of the slime that fills the pits of the world's damned compel men with loaves to divide with men who starve? the answers to these questions are hard, but yet one answer looms above all,--justice lies with the lowest; the plight of the lowest man,--the plight of the black man--deserves the first answer, and the plight of the giants of industry, the last. little cared east st. louis for all this bandying of human problems, so long as its grocers and saloon-keepers flourished and its industries steamed and screamed and smoked and its bankers grew rich. stupidity, license, and graft sat enthroned in the city hall. the new black folk were exploited as cheerfully as white polacks and italians; the rent of shacks mounted merrily, the street car lines counted gleeful gains, and the crimes of white men and black men flourished in the dark. the high and skilled and smart climbed on the bent backs of the ignorant; harder the mass of laborers strove to unionize their fellows and to bargain with employers. nor were the new blacks fools. they had no love for nothings in labor; they had no wish to make their fellows' wage envelopes smaller, but they were determined to make their own larger. they, too, were willing to join in the new union movement. but the unions did not want them. just as employers monopolized meat and steel, so they sought to monopolize labor and beat a giant's bargain. in the higher trades they succeeded. the best electrician in the city was refused admittance to the union and driven from the town because he was black. no black builder, printer, or machinist could join a union or work in east st. louis, no matter what his skill or character. but out of the stink of the stockyards and the dust of the aluminum works and the sweat of the lumber yards the willing blacks could not be kept. they were invited to join unions of the laborers here and they joined. white workers and black workers struck at the aluminum works in the fall and won higher wages and better hours; then again in the spring they struck to make bargaining compulsory for the employer, but this time they fronted new things. the conflagration of war had spread to america; government and court stepped in and ordered no hesitation, no strikes; the work must go on. deeper was the call for workers. black men poured in and red anger flamed in the hearts of the white workers. the anger was against the wielders of the thunderbolts, but here it was impotent because employers stood with the hand of the government before their faces; it was against entrenched union labor, which had risen on the backs of the unskilled and unintelligent and on the backs of those whom for any reason of race or prejudice or chicane they could beat beyond the bars of competition; and finally the anger of the mass of white workers was turned toward these new black interlopers, who seemed to come to spoil their last dream of a great monopoly of common labor. these angers flamed and the union leaders, fearing their fury and knowing their own guilt, not only in the larger and subtler matter of bidding their way to power across the weakness of their less fortunate fellows, but also conscious of their part in making east st. louis a miserable town of liquor and lust, leaped quickly to ward the gathering thunder from their own heads. the thing they wanted was even at their hands: here were black men, guilty not only of bidding for jobs which white men could have held at war prices, even if they could not fill, but also guilty of being black! it was at this blackness that the unions pointed the accusing finger. it was here that they committed the unpardonable crime. it was here that they entered the shadow of hell, where suddenly from a fight for wage and protection against industrial oppression east st. louis became the center of the oldest and nastiest form of human oppression,--race hatred. the whole situation lent itself to this terrible transformation. everything in the history of the united states, from slavery to sunday supplements, from disfranchisement to residence segregation, from "jim-crow" cars to a "jim-crow" army draft--all this history of discrimination and insult festered to make men think and willing to think that the venting of their unbridled anger against , , humble, upstriving workers was a way of settling the industrial tangle of the ages. it was the logic of the broken plate, which, seared of old across its pattern, cracks never again, save along the old destruction. so hell flamed in east st. louis! the white men drove even black union men out of their unions and when the black men, beaten by night and assaulted, flew to arms and shot back at the marauders, five thousand rioters arose and surged like a crested stormwave, from noonday until midnight; they killed and beat and murdered; they dashed out the brains of children and stripped off the clothes of women; they drove victims into the flames and hanged the helpless to the lighting poles. fathers were killed before the faces of mothers; children were burned; heads were cut off with axes; pregnant women crawled and spawned in dark, wet fields; thieves went through houses and firebrands followed; bodies were thrown from bridges; and rocks and bricks flew through the air. the negroes fought. they grappled with the mob like beasts at bay. they drove them back from the thickest cluster of their homes and piled the white dead on the street, but the cunning mob caught the black men between the factories and their homes, where they knew they were armed only with their dinner pails. firemen, policemen, and militiamen stood with hanging hands or even joined eagerly with the mob. it was the old world horror come to life again: all that jews suffered in spain and poland; all that peasants suffered in france, and indians in calcutta; all that aroused human deviltry had accomplished in ages past they did in east st. louis, while the rags of six thousand half-naked black men and women fluttered across the bridges of the calm mississippi. the white south laughed,--it was infinitely funny--the "niggers" who had gone north to escape slavery and lynching had met the fury of the mob which they had fled. delegations rushed north from mississippi and texas, with suspicious timeliness and with great-hearted offers to take these workers back to a lesser hell. the man from greensville, mississippi, who wanted a thousand got six, because, after all, the end was not so simple. no, the end was not simple. on the contrary, the problem raised by east st. louis was curiously complex. the ordinary american, tired of the persistence of "the negro problem," sees only another anti-negro mob and wonders, not when we shall settle this problem, but when we shall be well rid of it. the student of social things sees another mile-post in the triumphant march of union labor; he is sorry that blood and rapine should mark its march,--but, what will you? war is life! despite these smug reasonings the bare facts were these: east st. louis, a great industrial center, lost , laborers,--good, honest, hard-working laborers. it was not the criminals, either black or white, who were driven from east st. louis. they are still there. they will stay there. but half the honest black laborers were gone. the crippled ranks of industrial organization in the mid-mississippi valley cannot be recruited from ellis island, because in europe men are dead and maimed, and restoration, when restoration comes, will raise a european demand for labor such as this age has never seen. the vision of industrial supremacy has come to the giants who lead american industry and finance. but it can never be realized unless the laborers are here to do the work,--the skilled laborers, the common laborers, the willing laborers, the well-paid laborers. the present forces, organized however cunningly, are not large enough to do what america wants; but there is another group of laborers, , , strong, the natural heirs, by every logic of justice, to the fruits of america's industrial advance. they will be used simply because they must be used,--but their using means east st. louis! eastward from st. louis lie great centers, like chicago, indianapolis, detroit, cleveland, pittsburg, philadelphia, and new york; in every one of these and in lesser centers there is not only the industrial unrest of war and revolutionized work, but there is the call for workers, the coming of black folk, and the deliberate effort to divert the thoughts of men, and particularly of workingmen, into channels of race hatred against blacks. in every one of these centers what happened in east st. louis has been attempted, with more or less success. yet the american negroes stand today as the greatest strategic group in the world. their services are indispensable, their temper and character are fine, and their souls have seen a vision more beautiful than any other mass of workers. they may win back culture to the world if their strength can be used with the forces of the world that make for justice and not against the hidden hates that fight for barbarism. for fight they must and fight they will! rising on wings we cross again the rivers of st. louis, winding and threading between the towers of industry that threaten and drown the towers of god. far, far beyond, we sight the green of fields and hills; but ever below lies the river, blue,--brownish-gray, touched with the hint of hidden gold. drifting through half-flooded lowlands, with shanties and crops and stunted trees, past struggling corn and straggling village, we rush toward the battle of the marne and the west, from this dread battle of the east. westward, dear god, the fire of thy mad world crimsons our heaven. our answering hell rolls eastward from st. louis. * * * * * here, in microcosm, is the sort of economic snarl that arose continually for me and my pupils to solve. we could bring to its unraveling little of the scholarly aloofness and academic calm of most white universities. to us this thing was life and hope and death! how should we think such a problem through, not simply as negroes, but as men and women of a new century, helping to build a new world? and first of all, here is no simple question of race antagonism. there are no races, in the sense of great, separate, pure breeds of men, differing in attainment, development, and capacity. there are great groups,--now with common history, now with common interests, now with common ancestry; more and more common experience and present interest drive back the common blood and the world today consists, not of races, but of the imperial commercial group of master capitalists, international and predominantly white; the national middle classes of the several nations, white, yellow, and brown, with strong blood bonds, common languages, and common history; the international laboring class of all colors; the backward, oppressed groups of nature-folk, predominantly yellow, brown, and black. two questions arise from the work and relations of these groups: how to furnish goods and services for the wants of men and how equitably and sufficiently to satisfy these wants. there can be no doubt that we have passed in our day from a world that could hardly satisfy the physical wants of the mass of men, by the greatest effort, to a world whose technique supplies enough for all, if all can claim their right. our great ethical question today is, therefore, how may we justly distribute the world's goods to satisfy the necessary wants of the mass of men. what hinders the answer to this question? dislikes, jealousies, hatreds,--undoubtedly like the race hatred in east st. louis; the jealousy of english and german; the dislike of the jew and the gentile. but these are, after all, surface disturbances, sprung from ancient habit more than from present reason. they persist and are encouraged because of deeper, mightier currents. if the white workingmen of east st. louis felt sure that negro workers would not and could not take the bread and cake from their mouths, their race hatred would never have been translated into murder. if the black workingmen of the south could earn a decent living under decent circumstances at home, they would not be compelled to underbid their white fellows. thus the shadow of hunger, in a world which never needs to be hungry, drives us to war and murder and hate. but why does hunger shadow so vast a mass of men? manifestly because in the great organizing of men for work a few of the participants come out with more wealth than they can possibly use, while a vast number emerge with less than can decently support life. in earlier economic stages we defended this as the reward of thrift and sacrifice, and as the punishment of ignorance and crime. to this the answer is sharp: sacrifice calls for no such reward and ignorance deserves no such punishment. the chief meaning of our present thinking is that the disproportion between wealth and poverty today cannot be adequately accounted for by the thrift and ignorance of the rich and the poor. yesterday we righted one great mistake when we realized that the ownership of the laborer did not tend to increase production. the world at large had learned this long since, but black slavery arose again in america as an inexplicable anachronism, a wilful crime. the freeing of the black slaves freed america. today we are challenging another ownership,-the ownership of materials which go to make the goods we need. private ownership of land, tools, and raw materials may at one stage of economic development be a method of stimulating production and one which does not greatly interfere with equitable distribution. when, however, the intricacy and length of technical production increased, the ownership of these things becomes a monopoly, which easily makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. today, therefore, we are challenging this ownership; we are demanding general consent as to what materials shall be privately owned and as to how materials shall be used. we are rapidly approaching the day when we shall repudiate all private property in raw materials and tools and demand that distribution hinge, not on the power of those who monopolize the materials, but on the needs of the mass of men. can we do this and still make sufficient goods, justly gauge the needs of men, and rightly decide who are to be considered "men"? how do we arrange to accomplish these things today? somebody decides whose wants should be satisfied. somebody organizes industry so as to satisfy these wants. what is to hinder the same ability and foresight from being used in the future as in the past? the amount and kind of human ability necessary need not be decreased,--it may even be vastly increased, with proper encouragement and rewards. are we today evoking the necessary ability? on the contrary, it is not the inventor, the manager, and the thinker who today are reaping the great rewards of industry, but rather the gambler and the highwayman. rightly-organized industry might easily save the gambler's profit and the monopolist's interest and by paying a more discriminating reward in wealth and honor bring to the service of the state more ability and sacrifice than we can today command. if we do away with interest and profit, consider the savings that could be made; but above all, think how great the revolution would be when we ask the mysterious somebody to decide in the light of public opinion whose wants should be satisfied. this is the great and real revolution that is coming in future industry. but this is not the need of the revolution nor indeed, perhaps, its real beginning. what we must decide sometime is who are to be considered "men." today, at the beginning of this industrial change, we are admitting that economic classes must give way. the laborers' hire must increase, the employers' profit must be curbed. but how far shall this change go? must it apply to all human beings and to all work throughout the world? certainly not. we seek to apply it slowly and with some reluctance to white men and more slowly and with greater reserve to white women, but black folk and brown and for the most part yellow folk we have widely determined shall not be among those whose needs must justly be heard and whose wants must be ministered to in the great organization of world industry. in the teaching of my classes i was not willing to stop with showing that this was unfair,--indeed i did not have to do this. they knew through bitter experience its rank injustice, because they were black. what i had to show was that no real reorganization of industry could be permanently made with the majority of mankind left out. these disinherited darker peoples must either share in the future industrial democracy or overturn the world. of course, the foundation of such a system must be a high, ethical ideal. we must really envisage the wants of humanity. we must want the wants of all men. we must get rid of the fascination for exclusiveness. here, in a world full of folk, men are lonely. the rich are lonely. we are all frantic for fellow-souls, yet we shut souls out and bar the ways and bolster up the fiction of the elect and the superior when the great mass of men is capable of producing larger and larger numbers for every human height of attainment. to be sure, there are differences between men and groups and there will ever be, but they will be differences of beauty and genius and of interest and not necessarily of ugliness, imbecility, and hatred. the meaning of america is the beginning of the discovery of the crowd. the crowd is not so well-trained as a versailles garden party of louis xiv, but it is far better trained than the sans-culottes and it has infinite possibilities. what a world this will be when human possibilities are freed, when we discover each other, when the stranger is no longer the potential criminal and the certain inferior! what hinders our approach to the ideals outlined above? our profit from degradation, our colonial exploitation, our american attitude toward the negro. think again of east st. louis! think back of that to slavery and reconstruction! do we want the wants of american negroes satisfied? most certainly not, and that negative is the greatest hindrance today to the reorganization of work and redistribution of wealth, not only in america, but in the world. all humanity must share in the future industrial democracy of the world. for this it must be trained in intelligence and in appreciation of the good and the beautiful. present big business,--that science of human wants--must be perfected by eliminating the price paid for waste, which is interest, and for chance, which is profit, and making all income a personal wage for service rendered by the recipient; by recognizing no possible human service as great enough to enable a person to designate another as an idler or as a worker at work which he cannot do. above all, industry must minister to the wants of the many and not to the few, and the negro, the indian, the mongolian, and the south sea islander must be among the many as well as germans, frenchmen, and englishmen. in this coming socialization of industry we must guard against that same tyranny of the majority that has marked democracy in the making of laws. there must, for instance, persist in this future economics a certain minimum of machine-like work and prompt obedience and submission. this necessity is a simple corollary from the hard facts of the physical world. it must be accepted with the comforting thought that its routine need not demand twelve hours a day or even eight. with work for all and all at work probably from three to six hours would suffice, and leave abundant time for leisure, exercise, study, and avocations. but what shall we say of work where spiritual values and social distinctions enter? who shall be artists and who shall be servants in the world to come? or shall we all be artists and all serve? _the second coming_ three bishops sat in san francisco, new orleans, and new york, peering gloomily into three flickering fires, which cast and recast shuddering shadows on book-lined walls. three letters lay in their laps, which said: "and thou, valdosta, in the land of georgia, art not least among the princes of america, for out of thee shall come a governor who shall rule my people." the white bishop of new york scowled and impatiently threw the letter into the fire. "valdosta?" he thought,--"that's where i go to the governor's wedding of little marguerite, my white flower,--" then he forgot the writing in his musing, but the paper flared red in the fireplace. "valdosta?" said the black bishop of new orleans, turning uneasily in his chair. "i must go down there. those colored folk are acting strangely. i don't know where all this unrest and moving will lead to. then, there's poor lucy--" and he threw the letter into the fire, but eyed it suspiciously as it flamed green. "stranger things than that have happened," he said slowly, "'and ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars ... for nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.'" in san francisco the priest of japan, abroad to study strange lands, sat in his lacquer chair, with face like soft-yellow and wrinkled parchment. slowly he wrote in a great and golden book: "i have been strangely bidden to the val d' osta, where one of those religious cults that swarm here will welcome a prophet. i shall go and report to kioto." so in the dim waning of the day before christmas three bishops met in valdosta and saw its mills and storehouses, its wide-throated and sandy streets, in the mellow glow of a crimson sun. the governor glared anxiously up the street as he helped the bishop of new york into his car and welcomed him graciously. "i am troubled," said the governor, "about the niggers. they are acting queerly. i'm not certain but fleming is back of it." "fleming?" "yes! he's running against me next term for governor; he's a firebrand; wants niggers to vote and all that--pardon me a moment, there's a darky i know--" and he hurried to the black bishop, who had just descended from the "jim-crow" car, and clasped his hand cordially. they talked in whispers. "search diligently," said the governor in parting, "and bring me word again." then returning to his guest, "you will excuse me, won't you?" he asked, "but i am sorely troubled! i never saw niggers act so. they're leaving by the hundreds and those who stay are getting impudent! they seem to be expecting something. what's the crowd, jim?" the chauffeur said that there was some sort of chinese official in town and everybody wanted to glimpse him. he drove around another way. it all happened very suddenly. the bishop of new york, in full canonicals for the early wedding, stepped out on the rear balcony of his mansion, just as the dying sun lit crimson clouds of glory in the east and burned the west. "fire!" yelled a wag in the surging crowd that was gathering to celebrate a southern christmas-eve; all laughed and ran. the bishop of new york did not understand. he peered around. was it that dark, little house in the far backyard that flamed? forgetful of his robes he hurried down,--a brave, white figure in the sunset. he found himself before an old, black, rickety stable. he could hear the mules stamping within. no. it was not fire. it was the sunset glowing through the cracks. behind the hut its glory rose toward god like flaming wings of cherubim. he paused until he heard the faint wail of a child. hastily he entered. a white girl crouched before him, down by the very mules' feet, with a baby in her arms,-a little mite of a baby that wailed weakly. behind mother and child stood a shadow. the bishop of new york turned to the right, inquiringly, and saw a black man in bishop's robes that faintly re-echoed his own. he turned away to the left and saw a golden japanese in golden garb. then he heard the black man mutter behind him: "but he was to come the second time in clouds of glory, with the nations gathered around him and angels--" at the word a shaft of glorious light fell full upon the child, while without came the tramping of unnumbered feet and the whirring of wings. the bishop of new york bent quickly over the baby. it was black! he stepped back with a gesture of disgust, hardly listening to and yet hearing the black bishop, who spoke almost as if in apology: "she's not really white; i know lucy--you see, her mother worked for the governor--" the white bishop turned on his heel and nearly trod on the yellow priest, who knelt with bowed head before the pale mother and offered incense and a gift of gold. out into the night rushed the bishop of new york. the wings of the cherubim were folded black against the stars. as he hastened down the front staircase the governor came rushing up the street steps. "we are late!" he cried nervously. "the bride awaits!" he hurried the bishop to the waiting limousine, asking him anxiously: "did you hear anything? do you hear that noise? the crowd is growing strangely on the streets and there seems to be a fire over toward the east. i never saw so many people here--i fear violence--a mob--a lynching--i fear--hark!" what was that which he, too, heard beneath the rhythm of unnumbered feet? deep in his heart a wonder grew. what was it? ah, he knew! it was music,--some strong and mighty chord. it rose higher as the brilliantly-lighted church split the night, and swept radiantly toward them. so high and clear that music flew, it seemed above, around, behind them. the governor, ashen-faced, crouched in the car; but the bishop said softly as the ecstasy pulsed in his heart: "such music, such wedding music! what choir is it?" v "the servant in the house" the lady looked at me severely; i glanced away. i had addressed the little audience at some length on the disfranchisement of my people in society, politics, and industry and had studiously avoided the while her cold, green eye. i finished and shook weary hands, while she lay in wait. i knew what was coming and braced my soul. "do you know where i can get a good colored cook?" she asked. i disclaimed all guilty concupiscence. she came nearer and spitefully shook a finger in my face. "why--won't--negroes--work!" she panted. "i have given money for years to hampton and tuskegee and yet i can't get decent servants. they won't try. they're lazy! they're unreliable! they're impudent and they leave without notice. they all want to be lawyers and doctors and" (she spat the word in venom) "ladies!" "god forbid!" i answered solemnly, and then being of gentle birth, and unminded to strike a defenseless female of uncertain years, i ran; i ran home and wrote a chapter in my book and this is it. * * * * * i speak and speak bitterly as a servant and a servant's son, for my mother spent five or more years of her life as a menial; my father's family escaped, although grandfather as a boat steward had to fight hard to be a man and not a lackey. he fought and won. my mother's folk, however, during my childhood, sat poised on that thin edge between the farmer and the menial. the surrounding irish had two chances, the factory and the kitchen, and most of them took the factory, with all its dirt and noise and low wage. the factory was closed to us. our little lands were too small to feed most of us. a few clung almost sullenly to the old homes, low and red things crouching on a wide level; but the children stirred restlessly and walked often to town and saw its wonders. slowly they dribbled off,--a waiter here, a cook there, help for a few weeks in mrs. blank's kitchen when she had summer boarders. instinctively i hated such work from my birth. i loathed it and shrank from it. why? i could not have said. had i been born in carolina instead of massachusetts i should hardly have escaped the taint of "service." its temptations in wage and comfort would soon have answered my scruples; and yet i am sure i would have fought long even in carolina, for i knew in my heart that thither lay hell. i mowed lawns on contract, did "chores" that left me my own man, sold papers, and peddled tea--anything to escape the shadow of the awful thing that lurked to grip my soul. once, and once only, i felt the sting of its talons. i was twenty and had graduated from fisk with a scholarship for harvard; i needed, however, travel money and clothes and a bit to live on until the scholarship was due. fortson was a fellow-student in winter and a waiter in summer. he proposed that the glee club quartet of fisk spend the summer at the hotel in minnesota where he worked and that i go along as "business manager" to arrange for engagements on the journey back. we were all eager, but we knew nothing of table-waiting. "never mind," said fortson, "you can stand around the dining-room during meals and carry out the big wooden trays of dirty dishes. thus you can pick up knowledge of waiting and earn good tips and get free board." i listened askance, but i went. i entered that broad and blatant hotel at lake minnetonka with distinct forebodings. the flamboyant architecture, the great verandas, rich furniture, and richer dresses awed us mightily. the long loft reserved for us, with its clean little cots, was reassuring; the work was not difficult,--but the meals! there were no meals. at first, before the guests ate, a dirty table in the kitchen was hastily strewn with uneatable scraps. we novices were the only ones who came to eat, while the guests' dining-room, with its savors and sights, set our appetites on edge! after a while even the pretense of meals for us was dropped. we were sure we were going to starve when dug, one of us, made a startling discovery: the waiters stole their food and they stole the best. we gulped and hesitated. then we stole, too, (or, at least, they stole and i shared) and we all fattened, for the dainties were marvelous. you slipped a bit here and hid it there; you cut off extra portions and gave false orders; you dashed off into darkness and hid in corners and ate and ate! it was nasty business. i hated it. i was too cowardly to steal much myself, and not coward enough to refuse what others stole. our work was easy, but insipid. we stood about and watched overdressed people gorge. for the most part we were treated like furniture and were supposed to act the wooden part. i watched the waiters even more than the guests. i saw that it paid to amuse and to cringe. one particular black man set me crazy. he was intelligent and deft, but one day i caught sight of his face as he served a crowd of men; he was playing the clown,--crouching, grinning, assuming a broad dialect when he usually spoke good english--ah! it was a heartbreaking sight, and he made more money than any waiter in the dining-room. i did not mind the actual work or the kind of work, but it was the dishonesty and deception, the flattery and cajolery, the unnatural assumption that worker and diner had no common humanity. it was uncanny. it was inherently and fundamentally wrong. i stood staring and thinking, while the other boys hustled about. then i noticed one fat hog, feeding at a heavily gilded trough, who could not find his waiter. he beckoned me. it was not his voice, for his mouth was too full. it was his way, his air, his assumption. thus caesar ordered his legionaries or cleopatra her slaves. dogs recognized the gesture. i did not. he may be beckoning yet for all i know, for something froze within me. i did not look his way again. then and there i disowned menial service for me and my people. i would work my hands off for an honest wage, but for "tips" and "hand-me-outs," never! fortson was a pious, honest fellow, who regarded "tips" as in the nature of things, being to the manner born; but the hotel that summer in other respects rather astonished even him. he came to us much flurried one night and got us to help him with a memorial to the absentee proprietor, telling of the wild and gay doings of midnights in the rooms and corridors among "tired" business men and their prostitutes. we listened wide-eyed and eager and wrote the filth out manfully. the proprietor did not thank fortson. he did not even answer the letter. when i finally walked out of that hotel and out of menial service forever, i felt as though, in a field of flowers, my nose had been held unpleasantly long to the worms and manure at their roots. * * * * * "cursed be canaan!" cried the hebrew priests. "a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." with what characteristic complacency did the slaveholders assume that canaanites were negroes and their "brethren" white? are not negroes servants? _ergo_! upon such spiritual myths was the anachronism of american slavery built, and this was the degradation that once made menial servants the aristocrats among colored folk. house servants secured some decencies of food and clothing and shelter; they could more easily reach their master's ear; their personal abilities of character became known and bonds grew between slave and master which strengthened from friendship to love, from mutual service to mutual blood. naturally out of this the west indian servant climbed out of slavery into citizenship, for few west indian masters--fewer spanish or dutch--were callous enough to sell their own children into slavery. not so with english and americans. with a harshness and indecency seldom paralleled in the civilized world white masters on the mainland sold their mulatto children, half-brothers and half-sisters, and their own wives in all but name, into life-slavery by the hundreds and thousands. they originated a special branch of slave-trading for this trade and the white aristocrats of virginia and the carolinas made more money by this business during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than in any other way. the clang of the door of opportunity thus knelled in the ears of the colored house servant whirled the whole face of negro advancement as on some great pivot. the movement was slow, but vast. when emancipation came, before and after , the house servant still held advantages. he had whatever education the race possessed and his white father, no longer able to sell him, often helped him with land and protection. notwithstanding this the lure of house service for the negro was gone. the path of salvation for the emancipated host of black folk lay no longer through the kitchen door, with its wide hall and pillared veranda and flowered yard beyond. it lay, as every negro soon knew and knows, in escape from menial serfdom. in , per cent of the negroes were servants and serfs. in , per cent were servants and per cent were serfs. the percentage of servants then rose slightly and fell again until per cent were in service in and, doubtless, much less than per cent today. this is the measure of our rise, but the negro will not approach freedom until this hateful badge of slavery and mediaevalism has been reduced to less than per cent. not only are less than a fifth of our workers servants today, but the character of their service has been changed. the million menial workers among us include , upper servants,--skilled men and women of character, like hotel waiters, pullman porters, janitors, and cooks, who, had they been white, could have called on the great labor movement to lift their work out of slavery, to standardize their hours, to define their duties, and to substitute a living, regular wage for personal largess in the shape of tips, old clothes, and cold leavings of food. but the labor movement turned their backs on those black men when the white world dinned in their ears. _negroes are servants; servants are negroes._ they shut the door of escape to factory and trade in their fellows' faces and battened down the hatches, lest the , should be workers equal in pay and consideration with white men. but, if the upper servants could not escape to modern, industrial conditions, how much the more did they press down on the bodies and souls of , washerwomen and household drudges,--ignorant, unskilled offal of a millionaire industrial system. their pay was the lowest and their hours the longest of all workers. the personal degradation of their work is so great that any white man of decency would rather cut his daughter's throat than let her grow up to such a destiny. there is throughout the world and in all races no greater source of prostitution than this grade of menial service, and the negro race in america has largely escaped this destiny simply because its innate decency leads black women to choose irregular and temporary sexual relations with men they like rather than to sell themselves to strangers. to such sexual morals is added (in the nature of self-defense) that revolt against unjust labor conditions which expresses itself in "soldiering," sullenness, petty pilfering, unreliability, and fast and fruitless changes of masters. indeed, here among american negroes we have exemplified the last and worst refuge of industrial caste. menial service is an anachronism,--the refuse of mediaeval barbarism. whey, then, does it linger? why are we silent about it? why in the minds of so many decent and up-seeing folks does the whole negro problem resolve itself into the matter of their getting a cook or a maid? no one knows better than i the capabilities of a system of domestic service at its best. i have seen children who were spiritual sons and daughters of their masters, girls who were friends of their mistresses, and old servants honored and revered. but in every such case the servant had transcended the menial, the service had been exalted above the wage. now to accomplish this permanently and universally, calls for the same revolution in household help as in factory help and public service. while organized industry has been slowly making its help into self-respecting, well-paid men, and while public service is beginning to call for the highest types of educated and efficient thinkers, domestic service lags behind and insists upon seeking to evolve the best types of men from the worst conditions. the cause of this perversity, to my mind, is twofold. first, the ancient high estate of service, now pitifully fallen, yet gasping for breath; secondly, the present low estate of the outcasts of the world, peering with blood-shot eyes at the gates of the industrial heaven. the master spoke no greater word than that which said: "whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant!" what is greater than personal service! surely no social service, no wholesale helping of masses of men can exist which does not find its effectiveness and beauty in the personal aid of man to man. it is the purest and holiest of duties. some mighty glimmer of this truth survived in those who made the first gentlemen of the bedchamber, the keepers of the robes, and the knights of the bath, the highest nobility that hedged an anointed king. nor does it differ today in what the mother does for the child or the daughter for the mother, in all the personal attentions in the old-fashioned home; this is service! think of what friend has meant, not simply in spiritual sympathies, but in physical helpfulness. in the world today what calls for more of love, sympathy, learning, sacrifice, and long-suffering than the care of children, the preparation of food, the cleansing and ordering of the home, personal attendance and companionship, the care of bodies and their raiment--what greater, more intimate, more holy services are there than these? and yet we are degrading these services and loathing them and scoffing at them and spitting upon them, first, by turning them over to the lowest and least competent and worst trained classes in the world, and then by yelling like spoiled children if our babies are neglected, our biscuits sodden, our homes dirty, and our baths unpoured. let one suggest that the only cure for such deeds is in the uplift of the doer and our rage is even worse and less explicable. we will call them by their first names, thus blaspheming a holy intimacy; we will confine them to back doors; we will insist that their meals be no gracious ceremony nor even a restful sprawl, but usually a hasty, heckled gulp amid garbage; we exact, not a natural, but a purchased deference, and we leave them naked to insult by our children and by our husbands. i remember a girl,--how pretty she was, with the crimson flooding the old ivory of her cheeks and her gracious plumpness! she had come to the valley during the summer to "do housework." i met and walked home with her, in the thrilling shadows, to an old village home i knew well; then as i turned to leave i learned that she was there alone in that house for a week-end with only one young white man to represent the family. oh, he was doubtless a "gentleman" and all that, but for the first time in my life i saw what a snare the fowler was spreading at the feet of the daughters of my people, baited by church and state. not alone is the hurt thus offered to the lowly,--society and science suffer. the unit which we seek to make the center of society,--the home--is deprived of the help of scientific invention and suggestion. it is only slowly and by the utmost effort that some small foothold has been gained for the vacuum cleaner, the washing-machine, the power tool, and the chemical reagent. in our frantic effort to preserve the last vestiges of slavery and mediaevalism we not only set out faces against such improvements, but we seek to use education and the power of the state to train the servants who do not naturally appear. meantime the wild rush from house service, on the part of all who can scramble or run, continues. the rules of the labor union are designed, not simply to raise wages, but to guard against any likeness between artisan and servant. there is no essential difference in ability and training between a subway guard and a pullman porter, but between their union cards lies a whole world. yet we are silent. menial service is not a "social problem." it is not really discussed. there is no scientific program for its "reform." there is but one panacea: escape! get yourselves and your sons and daughters out of the shadow of this awful thing! hire servants, but never be one. indeed, subtly but surely the ability to hire at least "a maid" is still civilization's patent to respectability, while "a man" is the first word of aristocracy. all this is because we still consciously and unconsciously hold to the "manure" theory of social organization. we believe that at the bottom of organized human life there are necessary duties and services which no real human being ought to be compelled to do. we push below this mudsill the derelicts and half-men, whom we hate and despise, and seek to build above it--democracy! on such foundations is reared a theory of exclusiveness, a feeling that the world progresses by a process of excluding from the benefits of culture the majority of men, so that a gifted minority may blossom. through this door the modern democrat arrives to the place where he is willing to allot two able-bodied men and two fine horses to the task of helping one wizened beldam to take the morning air. here the absurdity ends. here all honest minds turn back and ask: is menial service permanent or necessary? can we not transfer cooking from the home to the scientific laboratory, along with the laundry? cannot machinery, in the hands of self-respecting and well-paid artisans, do our cleaning, sewing, moving, and decorating? cannot the training of children become an even greater profession than the attending of the sick? and cannot personal service and companionship be coupled with friendship and love where it belongs and whence it can never be divorced without degradation and pain? in fine, can we not, black and white, rich and poor, look forward to a world of service without servants? a miracle! you say? true. and only to be performed by the immortal child. _jesus christ in texas_ it was in waco, texas. the convict guard laughed. "i don't know," he said, "i hadn't thought of that." he hesitated and looked at the stranger curiously. in the solemn twilight he got an impression of unusual height and soft, dark eyes. "curious sort of acquaintance for the colonel," he thought; then he continued aloud: "but that nigger there is bad, a born thief, and ought to be sent up for life; got ten years last time--" here the voice of the promoter, talking within, broke in; he was bending over his figures, sitting by the colonel. he was slight, with a sharp nose. "the convicts," he said, "would cost us $ a year and board. well, we can squeeze this so that it won't be over $ apiece. now if these fellows are driven, they can build this line within twelve months. it will be running by next april. freights will fall fifty per cent. why, man, you'll be a millionaire in less than ten years." the colonel started. he was a thick, short man, with a clean-shaven face and a certain air of breeding about the lines of his countenance; the word millionaire sounded well to his ears. he thought--he thought a great deal; he almost heard the puff of the fearfully costly automobile that was coming up the road, and he said: "i suppose we might as well hire them." "of course," answered the promoter. the voice of the tall stranger in the corner broke in here: "it will be a good thing for them?" he said, half in question. the colonel moved. "the guard makes strange friends," he thought to himself. "what's this man doing here, anyway?" he looked at him, or rather looked at his eyes, and then somehow he felt a warming toward him. he said: "well, at least, it can't harm them; they're beyond that." "it will do them good, then," said the stranger again. the promoter shrugged his shoulders. "it will do us good," he said. but the colonel shook his head impatiently. he felt a desire to justify himself before those eyes, and he answered: "yes, it will do them good; or at any rate it won't make them any worse than they are." then he started to say something else, but here sure enough the sound of the automobile breathing at the gate stopped him and they all arose. "it is settled, then," said the promoter. "yes," said the colonel, turning toward the stranger again. "are you going into town?" he asked with the southern courtesy of white men to white men in a country town. the stranger said he was. "then come along in my machine. i want to talk with you about this." they went out to the car. the stranger as he went turned again to look back at the convict. he was a tall, powerfully built black fellow. his face was sullen, with a low forehead, thick, hanging lips, and bitter eyes. there was revolt written about his mouth despite the hang-dog expression. he stood bending over his pile of stones, pounding listlessly. beside him stood a boy of twelve,--yellow, with a hunted, crafty look. the convict raised his eyes and they met the eyes of the stranger. the hammer fell from his hands. the stranger turned slowly toward the automobile and the colonel introduced him. he had not exactly caught his name, but he mumbled something as he presented him to his wife and little girl, who were waiting. as they whirled away the colonel started to talk, but the stranger had taken the little girl into his lap and together they conversed in low tones all the way home. in some way, they did not exactly know how, they got the impression that the man was a teacher and, of course, he must be a foreigner. the long, cloak-like coat told this. they rode in the twilight through the lighted town and at last drew up before the colonel's mansion, with its ghost-like pillars. the lady in the back seat was thinking of the guests she had invited to dinner and was wondering if she ought not to ask this man to stay. he seemed cultured and she supposed he was some acquaintance of the colonel's. it would be rather interesting to have him there, with the judge's wife and daughter and the rector. she spoke almost before she thought: "you will enter and rest awhile?" the colonel and the little girl insisted. for a moment the stranger seemed about to refuse. he said he had some business for his father, about town. then for the child's sake he consented. up the steps they went and into the dark parlor where they sat and talked a long time. it was a curious conversation. afterwards they did not remember exactly what was said and yet they all remembered a certain strange satisfaction in that long, low talk. finally the nurse came for the reluctant child and the hostess bethought herself: "we will have a cup of tea; you will be dry and tired." she rang and switched on a blaze of light. with one accord they all looked at the stranger, for they had hardly seen him well in the glooming twilight. the woman started in amazement and the colonel half rose in anger. why, the man was a mulatto, surely; even if he did not own the negro blood, their practised eyes knew it. he was tall and straight and the coat looked like a jewish gabardine. his hair hung in close curls far down the sides of his face and his face was olive, even yellow. a peremptory order rose to the colonel's lips and froze there as he caught the stranger's eyes. those eyes,--where had he seen those eyes before? he remembered them long years ago. the soft, tear-filled eyes of a brown girl. he remembered many things, and his face grew drawn and white. those eyes kept burning into him, even when they were turned half away toward the staircase, where the white figure of the child hovered with her nurse and waved good-night. the lady sank into her chair and thought: "what will the judge's wife say? how did the colonel come to invite this man here? how shall we be rid of him?" she looked at the colonel in reproachful consternation. just then the door opened and the old butler came in. he was an ancient black man, with tufted white hair, and he held before him a large, silver tray filled with a china tea service. the stranger rose slowly and stretched forth his hands as if to bless the viands. the old man paused in bewilderment, tottered, and then with sudden gladness in his eyes dropped to his knees, and the tray crashed to the floor. "my lord and my god!" he whispered; but the woman screamed: "mother's china!" the doorbell rang. "heavens! here is the dinner party!" exclaimed the lady. she turned toward the door, but there in the hall, clad in her night clothes, was the little girl. she had stolen down the stairs to see the stranger again, and the nurse above was calling in vain. the woman felt hysterical and scolded at the nurse, but the stranger had stretched out his arms and with a glad cry the child nestled in them. they caught some words about the "kingdom of heaven" as he slowly mounted the stairs with his little, white burden. the mother was glad of anything to get rid of the interloper, even for a moment. the bell rang again and she hastened toward the door, which the loitering black maid was just opening. she did not notice the shadow of the stranger as he came slowly down the stairs and paused by the newel post, dark and silent. the judge's wife came in. she was an old woman, frilled and powdered into a semblance of youth, and gorgeously gowned. she came forward, smiling with extended hands, but when she was opposite the stranger, somewhere a chill seemed to strike her and she shuddered and cried: "what a draft!" as she drew a silken shawl about her and shook hands cordially; she forgot to ask who the stranger was. the judge strode in unseeing, thinking of a puzzling case of theft. "eh? what? oh--er--yes,--good evening," he said, "good evening." behind them came a young woman in the glory of youth, and daintily silked, beautiful in face and form, with diamonds around her fair neck. she came in lightly, but stopped with a little gasp; then she laughed gaily and said: "why, i beg your pardon. was it not curious? i thought i saw there behind your man"--she hesitated, but he must be a servant, she argued--"the shadow of great, white wings. it was but the light on the drapery. what a turn it gave me." and she smiled again. with her came a tall, handsome, young naval officer. hearing his lady refer to the servant, he hardly looked at him, but held his gilded cap carelessly toward him, and the stranger placed it carefully on the rack. last came the rector, a man of forty, and well-clothed. he started to pass the stranger, stopped, and looked at him inquiringly. "i beg your pardon," he said. "i beg your pardon,--i think i have met you?" the stranger made no answer, and the hostess nervously hurried the guests on. but the rector lingered and looked perplexed. "surely, i know you. i have met you somewhere," he said, putting his hand vaguely to his head. "you--you remember me, do you not?" the stranger quietly swept his cloak aside, and to the hostess' unspeakable relief passed out of the door. "i never knew you," he said in low tones as he went. the lady murmured some vain excuse about intruders, but the rector stood with annoyance written on his face. "i beg a thousand pardons," he said to the hostess absently. "it is a great pleasure to be here,--somehow i thought i knew that man. i am sure i knew him once." the stranger had passed down the steps, and as he passed, the nurse, lingering at the top of the staircase, flew down after him, caught his cloak, trembled, hesitated, and then kneeled in the dust. he touched her lightly with his hand and said: "go, and sin no more!" with a glad cry the maid left the house, with its open door, and turned north, running. the stranger turned eastward into the night. as they parted a long, low howl rose tremulously and reverberated through the night. the colonel's wife within shuddered. "the bloodhounds!" she said. the rector answered carelessly: "another one of those convicts escaped, i suppose. really, they need severer measures." then he stopped. he was trying to remember that stranger's name. the judge's wife looked about for the draft and arranged her shawl. the girl glanced at the white drapery in the hall, but the young officer was bending over her and the fires of life burned in her veins. howl after howl rose in the night, swelled, and died away. the stranger strode rapidly along the highway and out into the deep forest. there he paused and stood waiting, tall and still. a mile up the road behind a man was running, tall and powerful and black, with crime-stained face and convicts' stripes upon him, and shackles on his legs. he ran and jumped, in little, short steps, and his chains rang. he fell and rose again, while the howl of the hounds rang louder behind him. into the forest he leapt and crept and jumped and ran, streaming with sweat; seeing the tall form rise before him, he stopped suddenly, dropped his hands in sullen impotence, and sank panting to the earth. a greyhound shot out of the woods behind him, howled, whined, and fawned before the stranger's feet. hound after hound bayed, leapt, and lay there; then silently, one by one, and with bowed heads, they crept backward toward the town. the stranger made a cup of his hands and gave the man water to drink, bathed his hot head, and gently took the chains and irons from his feet. by and by the convict stood up. day was dawning above the treetops. he looked into the stranger's face, and for a moment a gladness swept over the stains of his face. "why, you are a nigger, too," he said. then the convict seemed anxious to justify himself. "i never had no chance," he said furtively. "thou shalt not steal," said the stranger. the man bridled. "but how about them? can they steal? didn't they steal a whole year's work, and then when i stole to keep from starving--" he glanced at the stranger. "no, i didn't steal just to keep from starving. i stole to be stealing. i can't seem to keep from stealing. seems like when i see things, i just must--but, yes, i'll try!" the convict looked down at his striped clothes, but the stranger had taken off his long coat; he had put it around him and the stripes disappeared. in the opening morning the black man started toward the low, log farmhouse in the distance, while the stranger stood watching him. there was a new glory in the day. the black man's face cleared up, and the farmer was glad to get him. all day the black man worked as he had never worked before. the farmer gave him some cold food. "you can sleep in the barn," he said, and turned away. "how much do i git a day?" asked the black man. the farmer scowled. "now see here," said he. "if you'll sign a contract for the season, i'll give you ten dollars a month." "i won't sign no contract," said the black man doggedly. "yes, you will," said the farmer, threateningly, "or i'll call the convict guard." and he grinned. the convict shrank and slouched to the barn. as night fell he looked out and saw the farmer leave the place. slowly he crept out and sneaked toward the house. he looked through the kitchen door. no one was there, but the supper was spread as if the mistress had laid it and gone out. he ate ravenously. then he looked into the front room and listened. he could hear low voices on the porch. on the table lay a gold watch. he gazed at it, and in a moment he was beside it,--his hands were on it! quickly he slipped out of the house and slouched toward the field. he saw his employer coming along the highway. he fled back in tenor and around to the front of the house, when suddenly he stopped. he felt the great, dark eyes of the stranger and saw the same dark, cloak-like coat where the stranger sat on the doorstep talking with the mistress of the house. slowly, guiltily, he turned back, entered the kitchen, and laid the watch stealthily where he had found it; then he rushed wildly back toward the stranger, with arms outstretched. the woman had laid supper for her husband, and going down from the house had walked out toward a neighbor's. she was gone but a little while, and when she came back she started to see a dark figure on the doorsteps under the tall, red oak. she thought it was the new negro until he said in a soft voice: "will you give me bread?" reassured at the voice of a white man, she answered quickly in her soft, southern tones: "why, certainly." she was a little woman, and once had been pretty; but now her face was drawn with work and care. she was nervous and always thinking, wishing, wanting for something. she went in and got him some cornbread and a glass of cool, rich buttermilk; then she came out and sat down beside him. she began, quite unconsciously, to tell him about herself,--the things she had done and had not done and the things she had wished for. she told him of her husband and this new farm they were trying to buy. she said it was hard to get niggers to work. she said they ought all to be in the chain-gang and made to work. even then some ran away. only yesterday one had escaped, and another the day before. at last she gossiped of her neighbors, how good they were and how bad. "and do you like them all?" asked the stranger. she hesitated. "most of them," she said; and then, looking up into his face and putting her hand into his, as though he were her father, she said: "there are none i hate; no, none at all." he looked away, holding her hand in his, and said dreamily: "you love your neighbor as yourself?" she hesitated. "i try--" she began, and then looked the way he was looking; down under the hill where lay a little, half-ruined cabin. "they are niggers," she said briefly. he looked at her. suddenly a confusion came over her and she insisted, she knew not why. "but they are niggers!" with a sudden impulse she arose and hurriedly lighted the lamp that stood just within the door, and held it above her head. she saw his dark face and curly hair. she shrieked in angry terror and rushed down the path, and just as she rushed down, the black convict came running up with hands outstretched. they met in mid-path, and before he could stop he had run against her and she fell heavily to earth and lay white and still. her husband came rushing around the house with a cry and an oath. "i knew it," he said. "it's that runaway nigger." he held the black man struggling to the earth and raised his voice to a yell. down the highway came the convict guard, with hound and mob and gun. they paused across the fields. the farmer motioned to them. "he--attacked--my wife," he gasped. the mob snarled and worked silently. right to the limb of the red oak they hoisted the struggling, writhing black man, while others lifted the dazed woman. right and left, as she tottered to the house, she searched for the stranger with a yearning, but the stranger was gone. and she told none of her guests. "no--no, i want nothing," she insisted, until they left her, as they thought, asleep. for a time she lay still, listening to the departure of the mob. then she rose. she shuddered as she heard the creaking of the limb where the body hung. but resolutely she crawled to the window and peered out into the moonlight; she saw the dead man writhe. he stretched his arms out like a cross, looking upward. she gasped and clung to the window sill. behind the swaying body, and down where the little, half-ruined cabin lay, a single flame flashed up amid the far-off shout and cry of the mob. a fierce joy sobbed up through the terror in her soul and then sank abashed as she watched the flame rise. suddenly whirling into one great crimson column it shot to the top of the sky and threw great arms athwart the gloom until above the world and behind the roped and swaying form below hung quivering and burning a great crimson cross. she hid her dizzy, aching head in an agony of tears, and dared not look, for she knew. her dry lips moved: "despised and rejected of men." she knew, and the very horror of it lifted her dull and shrinking eyelids. there, heaven-tall, earth-wide, hung the stranger on the crimson cross, riven and blood-stained, with thorn-crowned head and pierced hands. she stretched her arms and shrieked. he did not hear. he did not see. his calm dark eyes, all sorrowful, were fastened on the writhing, twisting body of the thief, and a voice came out of the winds of the night, saying: "this day thou shalt be with me in paradise!" vi of the ruling of men the ruling of men is the effort to direct the individual actions of many persons toward some end. this end theoretically should be the greatest good of all, but no human group has ever reached this ideal because of ignorance and selfishness. the simplest object would be rule for the pleasure of one, namely the ruler; or of the few--his favorites; or of many--the rich, the privileged, the powerful. democratic movements inside groups and nations are always taking place and they are the efforts to increase the number of beneficiaries of the ruling. in th century europe, the effort became so broad and sweeping that an attempt was made at universal expression and the philosophy of the movement said that if all ruled they would rule for all and thus universal good was sought through universal suffrage. the unrealized difficulty of this program lay in the widespread ignorance. the mass of men, even of the more intelligent men, not only knew little about each other but less about the action of men in groups and the technique of industry in general. they could only apply universal suffrage, therefore, to the things they knew or knew partially: they knew personal and menial service, individual craftsmanship, agriculture and barter, taxes or the taking of private property for public ends and the rent of land. with these matters then they attempted to deal. under the cry of "freedom" they greatly relaxed the grip of selfish interests by restricting menial service, securing the right of property in handiwork and regulating public taxes; distributing land ownership and freeing trade and barter. while they were doing this against stubborn resistance, a whole new organization of work suddenly appeared. the suddenness of this "industrial revolution" of the th century was partly fortuitous--in the case of watt's teakettle--partly a natural development, as in the matter of spinning, but largely the determination of powerful and intelligent individuals to secure the benefits of privileged persons, as in the case of foreign slave trade. the result was on the one hand a vast and unexampled development of industry. life and civilization in the late th and early th century were industry in its whole conception, language, and accomplishment: the object of life was to make goods. now before this giant aspect of things, the new democracy stood aghast and impotent. it could not rule because it did not understand: an invincible kingdom of trade, business, and commerce ruled the world, and before its threshold stood the freedom of th century philosophy warding the way. some of the very ones who were freed from the tyranny of the middle age became the tyrants of the industrial age. there came a reaction. men sneered at "democracy" and politics, and brought forth fate and philanthropy to rule the world--fate which gave divine right to rule to the captains of industry and their created millionaires; philanthropy which organized vast schemes of relief to stop at least the flow of blood in the vaster wounds which industry was making. it was at this time that the lowest laborers, who worked hardest, got least and suffered most, began to mutter and rebel, and among these were the american negroes. lions have no historians, and therefore lion hunts are thrilling and satisfactory human reading. negroes had no bards, and therefore it has been widely told how american philanthropy freed the slave. in truth the negro revolted by armed rebellion, by sullen refusal to work, by poison and murder, by running away to the north and canada, by giving point and powerful example to the agitation of the abolitionists and by furnishing , soldiers and many times as many civilian helpers in the civil war. this war was not a war for negro freedom, but a duel between two industrial systems, one of which was bound to fail because it was an anachronism, and the other bound to succeed because of the industrial revolution. when now the negro was freed the philanthropists sought to apply to his situation the philosophy of democracy handed down from the th century. there was a chance here to try democratic rule in a new way, that is, against the new industrial oppression with a mass of workers who were not yet in its control. with plenty of land widely distributed, staple products like cotton, rice, and sugar cane, and a thorough system of education, there was a unique chance to realize a new modern democracy in industry in the southern united states which would point the way to the world. this, too, if done by black folk, would have tended to a new unity of human beings and an obliteration of human hatreds festering along the color line. efforts were begun. the th and th amendments gave the right to vote to white and black laborers, and they immediately established a public school system and began to attack the land question. the united states government was seriously considering the distribution of land and capital--" acres and a mule"--and the price of cotton opened an easy way to economic independence. co-operative movements began on a large scale. but alas! not only were the former slave-owners solidly arrayed against this experiment, but the owners of the industrial north saw disaster in any such beginnings of industrial democracy. the opposition based its objections on the color line, and reconstruction became in history a great movement for the self-assertion of the white race against the impudent ambition of degraded blacks, instead of, in truth, the rise of a mass of black and white laborers. the result was the disfranchisement of the blacks of the south and a world-wide attempt to restrict democratic development to white races and to distract them with race hatred against the darker races. this program, however, although it undoubtedly helped raise the scale of white labor, in much greater proportion put wealth and power in the hands of the great european captains of industry and made modern industrial imperialism possible. this led to renewed efforts on the part of white european workers to understand and apply their political power to its reform through democratic control. whether known as communism or socialism or what not, these efforts are neither new nor strange nor terrible, but world-old and seeking an absolutely justifiable human ideal--the only ideal that can be sought: the direction of individual action in industry so as to secure the greatest good of all. marxism was one method of accomplishing this, and its panacea was the doing away with private property in machines and materials. two mighty attacks were made on this proposal. one was an attack on the fundamental democratic foundation: modern european white industry does not even theoretically seek the good of all, but simply of all europeans. this attack was virtually unanswered--indeed some socialists openly excluded negroes and asiatics from their scheme. from this it was easy to drift into that form of syndicalism which asks socialism for the skilled laborer only and leaves the common laborer in his bonds. this throws us back on fundamentals. it compels us again to examine the roots of democracy. who may be excluded from a share in the ruling of men? time and time again the world has answered: the ignorant the inexperienced the guarded the unwilling that is, we have assumed that only the intelligent should vote, or those who know how to rule men, or those who are not under benevolent guardianship, or those who ardently desire the right. these restrictions are not arguments for the wide distribution of the ballot--they are rather reasons for restriction addressed to the self-interest of the present real rulers. we say easily, for instance, "the ignorant ought not to vote." we would say, "no civilized state should have citizens too ignorant to participate in government," and this statement is but a step to the fact: that no state is civilized which has citizens too ignorant to help rule it. or, in other words, education is not a prerequisite to political control--political control is the cause of popular education. again, to make experience a qualification for the franchise is absurd: it would stop the spread of democracy and make political power hereditary, a prerequisite of a class, caste, race, or sex. it has of course been soberly argued that only white folk or englishmen, or men, are really capable of exercising sovereign power in a modern state. the statement proves too much: only yesterday it was englishmen of high descent, or men of "blood," or sovereigns "by divine right" who could rule. today the civilized world is being ruled by the descendants of persons who a century ago were pronounced incapable of ever developing a self-ruling people. in every modern state there must come to the polls every generation, and indeed every year, men who are inexperienced in the solutions of the political problems that confront them and who must experiment in methods of ruling men. thus and thus only will civilization grow. again, what is this theory of benevolent guardianship for women, for the masses, for negroes--for "lesser breeds without the law"? it is simply the old cry of privilege, the old assumption that there are those in the world who know better what is best for others than those others know themselves, and who can be trusted to do this best. in fact no one knows himself but that self's own soul. the vast and wonderful knowledge of this marvelous universe is locked in the bosoms of its individual souls. to tap this mighty reservoir of experience, knowledge, beauty, love, and deed we must appeal not to the few, not to some souls, but to all. the narrower the appeal, the poorer the culture; the wider the appeal the more magnificent are the possibilities. infinite is human nature. we make it finite by choking back the mass of men, by attempting to speak for others, to interpret and act for them, and we end by acting for ourselves and using the world as our private property. if this were all, it were crime enough--but it is not all: by our ignorance we make the creation of the greater world impossible; we beat back a world built of the playing of dogs and laughter of children, the song of black folk and worship of yellow, the love of women and strength of men, and try to express by a group of doddering ancients the will of the world. there are people who insist upon regarding the franchise, not as a necessity for the many, but as a privilege for the few. they say of persons and classes: "they do not need the ballot." this is often said of women. it is argued that everything which women with the ballot might do for themselves can be done for them; that they have influence and friends "at court," and that their enfranchisement would simply double the number of ballots. so, too, we are told that american negroes can have done for them by other voters all that they could possibly do for themselves with the ballot and much more because the white voters are more intelligent. further than this, it is argued that many of the disfranchised people recognize these facts. "women do not want the ballot" has been a very effective counter war-cry, so much so that many men have taken refuge in the declaration: "when they want to vote, why, then--" so, too, we are continually told that the "best" negroes stay out of politics. such arguments show so curious a misapprehension of the foundation of the argument for democracy that the argument must be continually restated and emphasized. we must remember that if the theory of democracy is correct, the right to vote is not merely a privilege, not simply a method of meeting the needs of a particular group, and least of all a matter of recognized want or desire. democracy is a method of realizing the broadest measure of justice to all human beings. the world has, in the past, attempted various methods of attaining this end, most of which can be summed up in three categories: the method of the benevolent tyrant. the method of the select few. the method of the excluded groups. the method of intrusting the government of a people to a strong ruler has great advantages when the ruler combines strength with ability, unselfish devotion to the public good, and knowledge of what that good calls for. such a combination is, however, rare and the selection of the right ruler is very difficult. to leave the selection to force is to put a premium on physical strength, chance, and intrigue; to make the selection a matter of birth simply transfers the real power from sovereign to minister. inevitably the choice of rulers must fall on electors. then comes the problem, who shall elect. the earlier answer was: a select few, such as the wise, the best born, the able. many people assume that it was corruption that made such aristocracies fail. by no means. the best and most effective aristocracy, like the best monarchy, suffered from lack of knowledge. the rulers did not know or understand the needs of the people and they could not find out, for in the last analysis only the man himself, however humble, knows his own condition. he may not know how to remedy it, he may not realize just what is the matter; but he knows when something hurts and he alone knows how that hurt feels. or if sunk below feeling or comprehension or complaint, he does not even know that he is hurt, god help his country, for it not only lacks knowledge, but has destroyed the sources of knowledge. so soon as a nation discovers that it holds in the heads and hearts of its individual citizens the vast mine of knowledge, out of which it may build a just government, then more and more it calls those citizens to select their rulers and to judge the justice of their acts. even here, however, the temptation is to ask only for the wisdom of citizens of a certain grade or those of recognized worth. continually some classes are tacitly or expressly excluded. thus women have been excluded from modern democracy because of the persistent theory of female subjection and because it was argued that their husbands or other male folks would look to their interests. now, manifestly, most husbands, fathers, and brothers will, so far as they know how or as they realize women's needs, look after them. but remember the foundation of the argument,--that in the last analysis only the sufferer knows his sufferings and that no state can be strong which excludes from its expressed wisdom the knowledge possessed by mothers, wives, and daughters. we have but to view the unsatisfactory relations of the sexes the world over and the problem of children to realize how desperately we need this excluded wisdom. the same arguments apply to other excluded groups: if a race, like the negro race, is excluded, then so far as that race is a part of the economic and social organization of the land, the feeling and the experience of that race are absolutely necessary to the realization of the broadest justice for all citizens. or if the "submerged tenth" be excluded, then again, there is lost from the world an experience of untold value, and they must be raised rapidly to a place where they can speak for themselves. in the same way and for the same reason children must be educated, insanity prevented, and only those put under the guardianship of others who can in no way be trained to speak for themselves. the real argument for democracy is, then, that in the people we have the source of that endless life and unbounded wisdom which the rulers of men must have. a given people today may not be intelligent, but through a democratic government that recognizes, not only the worth of the individual to himself, but the worth of his feelings and experiences to all, they can educate, not only the individual unit, but generation after generation, until they accumulate vast stores of wisdom. democracy alone is the method of showing the whole experience of the race for the benefit of the future and if democracy tries to exclude women or negroes or the poor or any class because of innate characteristics which do not interfere with intelligence, then that democracy cripples itself and belies its name. from this point of view we can easily see the weakness and strength of current criticism of extension of the ballot. it is the business of a modern government to see to it, first, that the number of ignorant within its bounds is reduced to the very smallest number. again, it is the duty of every such government to extend as quickly as possible the number of persons of mature age who can vote. such possible voters must be regarded, not as sharers of a limited treasure, but as sources of new national wisdom and strength. the addition of the new wisdom, the new points of view, and the new interests must, of course, be from time to time bewildering and confusing. today those who have a voice in the body politic have expressed their wishes and sufferings. the result has been a smaller or greater balancing of their conflicting interests. the appearance of new interests and complaints means disarrangement and confusion to the older equilibrium. it is, of course, the inevitable preliminary step to that larger equilibrium in which the interests of no human soul will be neglected. these interests will not, surely, be all fully realized, but they will be recognized and given as full weight as the conflicting interests will allow. the problem of government thereafter would be to reduce the necessary conflict of human interests to the minimum. from such a point of view one easily sees the strength of the demand for the ballot on the part of certain disfranchised classes. when women ask for the ballot, they are asking, not for a privilege, but for a necessity. you may not see the necessity, you may easily argue that women do not need to vote. indeed, the women themselves in considerable numbers may agree with you. nevertheless, women do need the ballot. they need it to right the balance of a world sadly awry because of its brutal neglect of the rights of women and children. with the best will and knowledge, no man can know women's wants as well as women themselves. to disfranchise women is deliberately to turn from knowledge and grope in ignorance. so, too, with american negroes: the south continually insists that a benevolent guardianship of whites over blacks is the ideal thing. they assume that white people not only know better what negroes need than negroes themselves, but that they are anxious to supply these needs. as a result they grope in ignorance and helplessness. they cannot "understand" the negro; they cannot protect him from cheating and lynching; and, in general, instead of loving guardianship we see anarchy and exploitation. if the negro could speak for himself in the south instead of being spoken for, if he could defend himself instead of having to depend on the chance sympathy of white citizens, how much healthier a growth of democracy the south would have. so, too, with the darker races of the world. no federation of the world, no true inter-nation--can exclude the black and brown and yellow races from its counsels. they must equally and according to number act and be heard at the world's council. it is not, for a moment, to be assumed that enfranchising women will not cost something. it will for many years confuse our politics. it may even change the present status of family life. it will admit to the ballot thousands of inexperienced persons, unable to vote intelligently. above all, it will interfere with some of the present prerogatives of men and probably for some time to come annoy them considerably. so, too, negro enfranchisement meant reconstruction, with its theft and bribery and incompetency as well as its public schools and enlightened, social legislation. it would mean today that black men in the south would have to be treated with consideration, have their wishes respected and their manhood rights recognized. every white southerner, who wants peons beneath him, who believes in hereditary menials and a privileged aristocracy, or who hates certain races because of their characteristics, would resent this. notwithstanding this, if america is ever to become a government built on the broadest justice to every citizen, then every citizen must be enfranchised. there may be temporary exclusions, until the ignorant and their children are taught, or to avoid too sudden an influx of inexperienced voters. but such exclusions can be but temporary if justice is to prevail. the principle of basing all government on the consent of the governed is undenied and undeniable. moreover, the method of modern democracy has placed within reach of the modern state larger reserves of efficiency, ability, and even genius than the ancient or mediaeval state dreamed of. that this great work of the past can be carried further among all races and nations no one can reasonably doubt. great as are our human differences and capabilities there is not the slightest scientific reason for assuming that a given human being of any race or sex cannot reach normal, human development if he is granted a reasonable chance. this is, of course, denied. it is denied so volubly and so frequently and with such positive conviction that the majority of unthinking people seem to assume that most human beings are not human and have no right to human treatment or human opportunity. all this goes to prove that human beings are, and must be, woefully ignorant of each other. it always startles us to find folks thinking like ourselves. we do not really associate with each other, we associate with our ideas of each other, and few people have either the ability or courage to question their own ideas. none have more persistently and dogmatically insisted upon the inherent inferiority of women than the men with whom they come in closest contact. it is the husbands, brothers, and sons of women whom it has been most difficult to induce to consider women seriously or to acknowledge that women have rights which men are bound to respect. so, too, it is those people who live in closest contact with black folk who have most unhesitatingly asserted the utter impossibility of living beside negroes who are not industrial or political slaves or social pariahs. all this proves that none are so blind as those nearest the thing seen, while, on the other hand, the history of the world is the history of the discovery of the common humanity of human beings among steadily-increasing circles of men. if the foundations of democracy are thus seen to be sound, how are we going to make democracy effective where it now fails to function--particularly in industry? the marxists assert that industrial democracy will automatically follow public ownership of machines and materials. their opponents object that nationalization of machines and materials would not suffice because the mass of people do not understand the industrial process. they do not know: what to do how to do it who could do it best or how to apportion the resulting goods. there can be no doubt but that monopoly of machines and materials is a chief source of the power of industrial tyrants over the common worker and that monopoly today is due as much to chance and cheating as to thrift and intelligence. so far as it is due to chance and cheating, the argument for public ownership of capital is incontrovertible even though it involves some interference with long vested rights and inheritance. this is being widely recognized in the whole civilized world. but how about the accumulation of goods due to thrift and intelligence--would democracy in industry interfere here to such an extent as to discourage enterprise and make impossible the intelligent direction of the mighty and intricate industrial process of modern times? the knowledge of what to do in industry and how to do it in order to attain the resulting goods rests in the hands and brains of the workers and managers, and the judges of the result are the public. consequently it is not so much a question as to whether the world will admit democratic control here as how can such control be long avoided when the people once understand the fundamentals of industry. how can civilization persist in letting one person or a group of persons, by secret inherent power, determine what goods shall be made--whether bread or champagne, overcoats or silk socks? can so vast a power be kept from the people? but it may be opportunely asked: has our experience in electing public officials led us to think that we could run railways, cotton mills, and department stores by popular vote? the answer is clear: no, it has not, and the reason has been lack of interest in politics and the tyranny of the majority. politics have not touched the matters of daily life which are nearest the interests of the people--namely, work and wages; or if they have, they have touched it obscurely and indirectly. when voting touches the vital, everyday interests of all, nominations and elections will call for more intelligent activity. consider too the vast unused and misused power of public rewards to obtain ability and genius for the service of the state. if millionaires can buy science and art, cannot the democratic state outbid them not only with money but with the vast ideal of the common weal? there still remains, however, the problem of the majority. what is the cause of the undoubted reaction and alarm that the citizens of democracy continually feel? it is, i am sure, the failure to feel the full significance of the change of rule from a privileged minority to that of an omnipotent majority, and the assumption that mere majority rule is the last word of government; that majorities have no responsibilities, that they rule by the grace of god. granted that government should be based on the consent of the governed, does the consent of a majority at any particular time adequately express the consent of all? has the minority, even though a small and unpopular and unfashionable minority, no right to respectful consideration? i remember that excellent little high school text book, "nordhoff's politics," where i first read of government, saying this sentence at the beginning of its most important chapter: "the first duty of a minority is to become a majority." this is a statement which has its underlying truth, but it also has its dangerous falsehood; viz., any minority which cannot become a majority is not worthy of any consideration. but suppose that the out-voted minority is necessarily always a minority? women, for instance, can seldom expect to be a majority; artists must always be the few; ability is always rare, and black folk in this land are but a tenth. yet to tyrannize over such minorities, to browbeat and insult them, to call that government a democracy which makes majority votes an excuse for crushing ideas and individuality and self-development, is manifestly a peculiarly dangerous perversion of the real democratic ideal. it is right here, in its method and not in its object, that democracy in america and elsewhere has so often failed. we have attempted to enthrone any chance majority and make it rule by divine right. we have kicked and cursed minorities as upstarts and usurpers when their sole offense lay in not having ideas or hair like ours. efficiency, ability, and genius found often no abiding place in such a soil as this. small wonder that revolt has come and high-handed methods are rife, of pretending that policies which we favor or persons that we like have the anointment of a purely imaginary majority vote. are the methods of such a revolt wise, howsoever great the provocation and evil may be? if the absolute monarchy of majorities is galling and inefficient, is it any more inefficient than the absolute monarchy of individuals or privileged classes have been found to be in the past? is the appeal from a numerous-minded despot to a smaller, privileged group or to one man likely to remedy matters permanently? shall we step backward a thousand years because our present problem is baffling? surely not and surely, too, the remedy for absolutism lies in calling these same minorities to council. as the king-in-council succeeded the king by the grace of god, so in future democracies the toleration and encouragement of minorities and the willingness to consider as "men" the crankiest, humblest and poorest and blackest peoples, must be the real key to the consent of the governed. peoples and governments will not in the future assume that because they have the brute power to enforce momentarily dominant ideas, it is best to do so without thoughtful conference with the ideas of smaller groups and individuals. proportionate representation in physical and spiritual form must come. that this method is virtually coming in vogue we can see by the minority groups of modern legislatures. instead of the artificial attempts to divide all possible ideas and plans between two great parties, modern legislatures in advanced nations tend to develop smaller and smaller minority groups, while government is carried on by temporary coalitions. for a time we inveighed against this and sought to consider it a perversion of the only possible method of practical democracy. today we are gradually coming to realize that government by temporary coalition of small and diverse groups may easily become the most efficient method of expressing the will of man and of setting the human soul free. the only hindrance to the faster development of this government by allied minorities is the fear of external war which is used again and again to melt these living, human, thinking groups into inhuman, thoughtless, and murdering machines. the persons, then, who come forward in the dawn of the th century to help in the ruling of men must come with the firm conviction that no nation, race, or sex, has a monopoly of ability or ideas; that no human group is so small as to deserve to be ignored as a part, and as an integral and respected part, of the mass of men; that, above all, no group of twelve million black folk, even though they are at the physical mercy of a hundred million white majority, can be deprived of a voice in their government and of the right to self-development without a blow at the very foundations of all democracy and all human uplift; that the very criticism aimed today at universal suffrage is in reality a demand for power on the part of consciously efficient minorities,--but these minorities face a fatal blunder when they assume that less democracy will give them and their kind greater efficiency. however desperate the temptation, no modern nation can shut the gates of opportunity in the face of its women, its peasants, its laborers, or its socially damned. how astounded the future world-citizen will be to know that as late as great and civilized nations were making desperate endeavor to confine the development of ability and individuality to one sex,--that is, to one-half of the nation; and he will probably learn that similar effort to confine humanity to one race lasted a hundred years longer. the doctrine of the divine right of majorities leads to almost humorous insistence on a dead level of mediocrity. it demands that all people be alike or that they be ostracized. at the same time its greatest accusation against rebels is this same desire to be alike: the suffragette is accused of wanting to be a man, the socialist is accused of envy of the rich, and the black man is accused of wanting to be white. that any one of these should simply want to be himself is to the average worshiper of the majority inconceivable, and yet of all worlds, may the good lord deliver us from a world where everybody looks like his neighbor and thinks like his neighbor and is like his neighbor. the world has long since awakened to a realization of the evil which a privileged few may exercise over the majority of a nation. so vividly has this truth been brought home to us that we have lightly assumed that a privileged and enfranchised majority cannot equally harm a nation. insane, wicked, and wasteful as the tyranny of the few over the many may be, it is not more dangerous than the tyranny of the many over the few. brutal physical revolution can, and usually does, end the tyranny of the few. but the spiritual losses from suppressed minorities may be vast and fatal and yet all unknown and unrealized because idea and dream and ability are paralyzed by brute force. if, now, we have a democracy with no excluded groups, with all men and women enfranchised, what is such a democracy to do? how will it function? what will be its field of work? the paradox which faces the civilized world today is that democratic control is everywhere limited in its control of human interests. mankind is engaged in planting, forestry, and mining, preparing food and shelter, making clothes and machines, transporting goods and folk, disseminating news, distributing products, doing public and private personal service, teaching, advancing science, and creating art. in this intricate whirl of activities, the theory of government has been hitherto to lay down only very general rules of conduct, marking the limits of extreme anti-social acts, like fraud, theft, and murder. the theory was that within these bounds was freedom--the liberty to think and do and move as one wished. the real realm of freedom was found in experience to be much narrower than this in one direction and much broader in another. in matters of truth and faith and beauty, the ancient law was inexcusably strait and modern law unforgivably stupid. it is here that the future and mighty fight for freedom must and will be made. here in the heavens and on the mountaintops, the air of freedom is wide, almost limitless, for here, in the highest stretches, individual freedom harms no man, and, therefore, no man has the right to limit it. on the other hand, in the valleys of the hard, unyielding laws of matter and the social necessities of time production, and human intercourse, the limits on our freedom are stern and unbending if we would exist and thrive. this does not say that everything here is governed by incontrovertible "natural" law which needs no human decision as to raw materials, machinery, prices, wages, news-dissemination, education of children, etc.; but it does mean that decisions here must be limited by brute facts and based on science and human wants. today the scientific and ethical boundaries of our industrial activities are not in the hands of scientists, teachers, and thinkers; nor is the intervening opportunity for decision left in the control of the public whose welfare such decisions guide. on the contrary, the control of industry is largely in the hands of a powerful few, who decide for their own good and regardless of the good of others. the making of the rules of industry, then, is not in the hands of all, but in the hands of the few. the few who govern industry envisage, not the wants of mankind, but their own wants. they work quietly, often secretly, opposing law, on the one hand, as interfering with the "freedom of industry"; opposing, on the other hand, free discussion and open determination of the rules of work and wealth and wages, on the ground that harsh natural law brooks no interference by democracy. these things today, then, are not matters of free discussion and determination. they are strictly controlled. who controls them? who makes these inner, but powerful, rules? few people know. others assert and believe these rules are "natural"--a part of our inescapable physical environment. some of them doubtless are; but most of them are just as clearly the dictates of self-interest laid down by the powerful private persons who today control industry. just here it is that modern men demand that democracy supplant skilfully concealed, but all too evident, monarchy. in industry, monarchy and the aristocracy rule, and there are those who, calling themselves democratic, believe that democracy can never enter here. industry, they maintain, is a matter of technical knowledge and ability, and, therefore, is the eternal heritage of the few. they point to the failure of attempts at democratic control in industry, just as we used to point to spanish-american governments, and they expose, not simply the failures of russian soviets,--they fly to arms to prevent that greatest experiment in industrial democracy which the world has yet seen. these are the ones who say: we must control labor or civilization will fail; we must control white labor in europe and america; above all, we must control yellow labor in asia and black labor in africa and the south, else we shall have no tea, or rubber, or cotton. and yet,--and yet is it so easy to give up the dream of democracy? must industry rule men or may men rule even industry? and unless men rule industry, can they ever hope really to make laws or educate children or create beauty? that the problem of the democratization of industry is tremendous, let no man deny. we must spread that sympathy and intelligence which tolerates the widest individual freedom despite the necessary public control; we must learn to select for public office ability rather than mere affability. we must stand ready to defer to knowledge and science and judge by result rather than by method; and finally we must face the fact that the final distribution of goods--the question of wages and income is an ethical and not a mere mechanical problem and calls for grave public human judgment and not secrecy and closed doors. all this means time and development. it comes not complete by instant revolution of a day, nor yet by the deferred evolution of a thousand years--it comes daily, bit by bit and step by step, as men and women learn and grow and as children are trained in truth. these steps are in many cases clear: the careful, steady increase of public democratic ownership of industry, beginning with the simplest type of public utilities and monopolies, and extending gradually as we learn the way; the use of taxation to limit inheritance and to take the unearned increment for public use beginning (but not ending) with a "single tax" on monopolized land values; the training of the public in business technique by co-operation in buying and selling, and in industrial technique by the shop committee and manufacturing guild. but beyond all this must come the spirit--the will to human brotherhood of all colors, races, and creeds; the wanting of the wants of all. perhaps the finest contribution of current socialism to the world is neither its light nor its dogma, but the idea back of its one mighty word--comrade! the call in the land of the heavy laden came once a dreary day. and the king, who sat upon the great white throne, raised his eyes and saw afar off how the hills around were hot with hostile feet and the sound of the mocking of his enemies struck anxiously on the king's ears, for the king loved his enemies. so the king lifted up his hand in the glittering silence and spake softly, saying: "call the servants of the king." then the herald stepped before the armpost of the throne, and cried: "thus saith the high and mighty one, who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy,--the servants of the king!" now, of the servants of the king there were a hundred and forty-four thousand,--tried men and brave, brawny of arm and quick of wit; aye, too, and women of wisdom and women marvelous in beauty and grace. and yet on this drear day when the king called, their ears were thick with the dust of the enemy, their eyes were blinded with the flashing of his spears, and they hid their faces in dread silence and moved not, even at the king's behest. so the herald called again. and the servants cowered in very shame, but none came forth. but the third blast of the herald struck upon a woman's heart, afar. and the woman straightway left her baking and sweeping and the rattle of pans; and the woman straightway left her chatting and gossiping and the sewing of garments, and the woman stood before the king, saying: "the servant of thy servants, o lord." then the king smiled,--smiled wondrously, so that the setting sun burst through the clouds, and the hearts of the king's men dried hard within them. and the low-voiced king said, so low that even they that listened heard not well: "go, smite me mine enemies, that they cease to do evil in my sight." and the woman quailed and trembled. three times she lifted her eyes unto the hills and saw the heathen whirling onward in their rage. and seeing, she shrank--three times she shrank and crept to the king's feet. "o king," she cried, "i am but a woman." and the king answered: "go, then, mother of men." and the woman said, "nay, king, but i am still a maid." whereat the king cried: "o maid, made man, thou shalt be bride of god." and yet the third time the woman shrank at the thunder in her ears, and whispered: "dear god, i am black!" the king spake not, but swept the veiling of his face aside and lifted up the light of his countenance upon her and lo! it was black. so the woman went forth on the hills of god to do battle for the king, on that drear day in the land of the heavy laden, when the heathen raged and imagined a vain thing. vii the damnation of women i remember four women of my boyhood: my mother, cousin inez, emma, and ide fuller. they represented the problem of the widow, the wife, the maiden, and the outcast. they were, in color, brown and light-brown, yellow with brown freckles, and white. they existed not for themselves, but for men; they were named after the men to whom they were related and not after the fashion of their own souls. they were not beings, they were relations and these relations were enfilmed with mystery and secrecy. we did not know the truth or believe it when we heard it. motherhood! what was it? we did not know or greatly care. my mother and i were good chums. i liked her. after she was dead i loved her with a fierce sense of personal loss. inez was a pretty, brown cousin who married. what was marriage? we did not know, neither did she, poor thing! it came to mean for her a litter of children, poverty, a drunken, cruel companion, sickness, and death. why? there was no sweeter sight than emma,--slim, straight, and dainty, darkly flushed with the passion of youth; but her life was a wild, awful struggle to crush her natural, fierce joy of love. she crushed it and became a cold, calculating mockery. last there was that awful outcast of the town, the white woman, ide fuller. what she was, we did not know. she stood to us as embodied filth and wrong,--but whose filth, whose wrong? grown up i see the problem of these women transfused; i hear all about me the unanswered call of youthful love, none the less glorious because of its clean, honest, physical passion. why unanswered? because the youth are too poor to marry or if they marry, too poor to have children. they turn aside, then, in three directions: to marry for support, to what men call shame, or to that which is more evil than nothing. it is an unendurable paradox; it must be changed or the bases of culture will totter and fall. the world wants healthy babies and intelligent workers. today we refuse to allow the combination and force thousands of intelligent workers to go childless at a horrible expenditure of moral force, or we damn them if they break our idiotic conventions. only at the sacrifice of intelligence and the chance to do their best work can the majority of modern women bear children. this is the damnation of women. all womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins. the future woman must have a life work and economic independence. she must have knowledge. she must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion. the present mincing horror at free womanhood must pass if we are ever to be rid of the bestiality of free manhood; not by guarding the weak in weakness do we gain strength, but by making weakness free and strong. the world must choose the free woman or the white wraith of the prostitute. today it wavers between the prostitute and the nun. civilization must show two things: the glory and beauty of creating life and the need and duty of power and intelligence. this and this only will make the perfect marriage of love and work. god is love, love is god; there is no god but love and work is his prophet! all this of woman,--but what of black women? the world that wills to worship womankind studiously forgets its darker sisters. they seem in a sense to typify that veiled melancholy: "whose saintly visage is too bright to hit the sense of human sight, and, therefore, to our weaker view o'er-laid with black." yet the world must heed these daughters of sorrow, from the primal black all-mother of men down through the ghostly throng of mighty womanhood, who walked in the mysterious dawn of asia and africa; from neith, the primal mother of all, whose feet rest on hell, and whose almighty hands uphold the heavens; all religion, from beauty to beast, lies on her eager breasts; her body bears the stars, while her shoulders are necklaced by the dragon; from black neith down to "that starr'd ethiop queen who strove to set her beauty's praise above the sea-nymphs," through dusky cleopatras, dark candaces, and darker, fiercer zinghas, to our own day and our own land,--in gentle phillis; harriet, the crude moses; the sybil, sojourner truth; and the martyr, louise de mortie. the father and his worship is asia; europe is the precocious, self-centered, forward-striving child; but the land of the mother is and was africa. in subtle and mysterious way, despite her curious history, her slavery, polygamy, and toil, the spell of the african mother pervades her land. isis, the mother, is still titular goddess, in thought if not in name, of the dark continent. nor does this all seem to be solely a survival of the historic matriarchate through which all nations pass,--it appears to be more than this,--as if the great black race in passing up the steps of human culture gave the world, not only the iron age, the cultivation of the soil, and the domestication of animals, but also, in peculiar emphasis, the mother-idea. "no mother can love more tenderly and none is more tenderly loved than the negro mother," writes schneider. robin tells of the slave who bought his mother's freedom instead of his own. mungo park writes: "everywhere in africa, i have noticed that no greater affront can be offered a negro than insulting his mother. 'strike me,' cries a mandingo to his enemy, 'but revile not my mother!'" and the krus and fantis say the same. the peoples on the zambezi and the great lakes cry in sudden fear or joy: "o, my mother!" and the herero swears (endless oath) "by my mother's tears!" "as the mist in the swamps," cries the angola negro, "so lives the love of father and mother." a student of the present gold coast life describes the work of the village headman, and adds: "it is a difficult task that he is set to, but in this matter he has all-powerful helpers in the female members of the family, who will be either the aunts or the sisters or the cousins or the nieces of the headman, and as their interests are identical with his in every particular, the good women spontaneously train up their children to implicit obedience to the headman, whose rule in the family thus becomes a simple and an easy matter. 'the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.' what a power for good in the native state system would the mothers of the gold coast and ashanti become by judicious training upon native lines!" schweinfurth declares of one tribe: "a bond between mother and child which lasts for life is the measure of affection shown among the dyoor" and ratzel adds: "agreeable to the natural relation the mother stands first among the chief influences affecting the children. from the zulus to the waganda, we find the mother the most influential counsellor at the court of ferocious sovereigns, like chaka or mtesa; sometimes sisters take her place. thus even with chiefs who possess wives by hundreds the bonds of blood are the strongest and that the woman, though often heavily burdened, is in herself held in no small esteem among the negroes is clear from the numerous negro queens, from the medicine women, from the participation in public meetings permitted to women by many negro peoples." as i remember through memories of others, backward among my own family, it is the mother i ever recall,--the little, far-off mother of my grandmothers, who sobbed her life away in song, longing for her lost palm-trees and scented waters; the tall and bronzen grandmother, with beaked nose and shrewish eyes, who loved and scolded her black and laughing husband as he smoked lazily in his high oak chair; above all, my own mother, with all her soft brownness,--the brown velvet of her skin, the sorrowful black-brown of her eyes, and the tiny brown-capped waves of her midnight hair as it lay new parted on her forehead. all the way back in these dim distances it is mothers and mothers of mothers who seem to count, while fathers are shadowy memories. upon this african mother-idea, the westward slave trade and american slavery struck like doom. in the cruel exigencies of the traffic in men and in the sudden, unprepared emancipation the great pendulum of social equilibrium swung from a time, in ,--when america had but eight or less black women to every ten black men,--all too swiftly to a day, in ,--when there were nearly eleven women to ten men in our negro population. this was but the outward numerical fact of social dislocation; within lay polygamy, polyandry, concubinage, and moral degradation. they fought against all this desperately, did these black slaves in the west indies, especially among the half-free artisans; they set up their ancient household gods, and when toussaint and cristophe founded their kingdom in haiti, it was based on old african tribal ties and beneath it was the mother-idea. the crushing weight of slavery fell on black women. under it there was no legal marriage, no legal family, no legal control over children. to be sure, custom and religion replaced here and there what the law denied, yet one has but to read advertisements like the following to see the hell beneath the system: "one hundred dollars reward will be given for my two fellows, abram and frank. abram has a wife at colonel stewart's, in liberty county, and a mother at thunderbolt, and a sister in savannah. "william roberts." "fifty dollars reward--ran away from the subscriber a negro girl named maria. she is of a copper color, between thirteen and fourteen years of age--bareheaded and barefooted. she is small for her age--very sprightly and very likely. she stated she was going to see her mother at maysville. "sanford thomson." "fifty dollars reward--ran away from the subscriber his negro man pauladore, commonly called paul. i understand general r.y. hayne has purchased his wife and children from h.l. pinckney, esq., and has them now on his plantation at goose creek, where, no doubt, the fellow is frequently lurking. "t. davis." the presbyterian synod of kentucky said to the churches under its care in : "brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives, are torn asunder and permitted to see each other no more. these acts are daily occurring in the midst of us. the shrieks and agony often witnessed on such occasions proclaim, with a trumpet tongue, the iniquity of our system. there is not a neighborhood where these heartrending scenes are not displayed. there is not a village or road that does not behold the sad procession of manacled outcasts whose mournful countenances tell that they are exiled by force from all that their hearts hold dear." a sister of a president of the united states declared: "we southern ladies are complimented with the names of wives, but we are only the mistresses of seraglios." out of this, what sort of black women could be born into the world of today? there are those who hasten to answer this query in scathing terms and who say lightly and repeatedly that out of black slavery came nothing decent in womanhood; that adultery and uncleanness were their heritage and are their continued portion. fortunately so exaggerated a charge is humanly impossible of truth. the half-million women of negro descent who lived at the beginning of the th century had become the mothers of two and one-fourth million daughters at the time of the civil war and five million grand-daughters in . can all these women be vile and the hunted race continue to grow in wealth and character? impossible. yet to save from the past the shreds and vestiges of self-respect has been a terrible task. i most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire. alexander crummell once said of his sister in the blood: "in her girlhood all the delicate tenderness of her sex has been rudely outraged. in the field, in the rude cabin, in the press-room, in the factory she was thrown into the companionship of coarse and ignorant men. no chance was given her for delicate reserve or tender modesty. from her childhood she was the doomed victim of the grossest passion. all the virtues of her sex were utterly ignored. if the instinct of chastity asserted itself, then she had to fight like a tiger for the ownership and possession of her own person and ofttimes had to suffer pain and lacerations for her virtuous self-assertion. when she reached maturity, all the tender instincts of her womanhood were ruthlessly violated. at the age of marriage,--always prematurely anticipated under slavery--she was mated as the stock of the plantation were mated, not to be the companion of a loved and chosen husband, but to be the breeder of human cattle for the field or the auction block." down in such mire has the black motherhood of this race struggled,--starving its own wailing offspring to nurse to the world their swaggering masters; welding for its children chains which affronted even the moral sense of an unmoral world. many a man and woman in the south have lived in wedlock as holy as adam and eve and brought forth their brown and golden children, but because the darker woman was helpless, her chivalrous and whiter mate could cast her off at his pleasure and publicly sneer at the body he had privately blasphemed. i shall forgive the white south much in its final judgment day: i shall forgive its slavery, for slavery is a world-old habit; i shall forgive its fighting for a well-lost cause, and for remembering that struggle with tender tears; i shall forgive its so-called "pride of race," the passion of its hot blood, and even its dear, old, laughable strutting and posing; but one thing i shall never forgive, neither in this world nor the world to come: its wanton and continued and persistent insulting of the black womanhood which it sought and seeks to prostitute to its lust. i cannot forget that it is such southern gentlemen into whose hands smug northern hypocrites of today are seeking to place our women's eternal destiny,--men who insist upon withholding from my mother and wife and daughter those signs and appellations of courtesy and respect which elsewhere he withholds only from bawds and courtesans. the result of this history of insult and degradation has been both fearful and glorious. it has birthed the haunting prostitute, the brawler, and the beast of burden; but it has also given the world an efficient womanhood, whose strength lies in its freedom and whose chastity was won in the teeth of temptation and not in prison and swaddling clothes. to no modern race does its women mean so much as to the negro nor come so near to the fulfilment of its meaning. as one of our women writes: "only the black woman can say 'when and where i enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole negro race enters with me.'" they came first, in earlier days, like foam flashing on dark, silent waters,--bits of stern, dark womanhood here and there tossed almost carelessly aloft to the world's notice. first and naturally they assumed the panoply of the ancient african mother of men, strong and black, whose very nature beat back the wilderness of oppression and contempt. such a one was that cousin of my grandmother, whom western massachusetts remembers as "mum bett." scarred for life by a blow received in defense of a sister, she ran away to great barrington and was the first slave, or one of the first, to be declared free under the bill of rights of . the son of the judge who freed her, writes: "even in her humble station, she had, when occasion required it, an air of command which conferred a degree of dignity and gave her an ascendancy over those of her rank, which is very unusual in persons of any rank or color. her determined and resolute character, which enabled her to limit the ravages of shay's mob, was manifested in her conduct and deportment during her whole life. she claimed no distinction, but it was yielded to her from her superior experience, energy, skill, and sagacity. having known this woman as familiarly as i knew either of my parents, i cannot believe in the moral or physical inferiority of the race to which she belonged. the degradation of the african must have been otherwise caused than by natural inferiority." it was such strong women that laid the foundations of the great negro church of today, with its five million members and ninety millions of dollars in property. one of the early mothers of the church, mary still, writes thus quaintly, in the forties: "when we were as castouts and spurned from the large churches, driven from our knees, pointed at by the proud, neglected by the careless, without a place of worship, allen, faithful to the heavenly calling, came forward and laid the foundation of this connection. the women, like the women at the sepulcher, were early to aid in laying the foundation of the temple and in helping to carry up the noble structure and in the name of their god set up their banner; most of our aged mothers are gone from this to a better state of things. yet some linger still on their staves, watching with intense interest the ark as it moves over the tempestuous waves of opposition and ignorance.... "but the labors of these women stopped not here, for they knew well that they were subject to affliction and death. for the purpose of mutual aid, they banded themselves together in society capacity, that they might be better able to administer to each others' sufferings and to soften their own pillows. so we find the females in the early history of the church abounding in good works and in acts of true benevolence." from such spiritual ancestry came two striking figures of war-time,--harriet tubman and sojourner truth. for eight or ten years previous to the breaking out of the civil war, harriet tubman was a constant attendant at anti-slavery conventions, lectures, and other meetings; she was a black woman of medium size, smiling countenance, with her upper front teeth gone, attired in coarse but neat clothes, and carrying always an old-fashioned reticule at her side. usually as soon as she sat down she would drop off in sound sleep. she was born a slave in maryland, in , bore the marks of the lash on her flesh; and had been made partially deaf, and perhaps to some degree mentally unbalanced by a blow on the head in childhood. yet she was one of the most important agents of the underground railroad and a leader of fugitive slaves. she ran away in and went to boston in , where she was welcomed into the homes of the leading abolitionists and where every one listened with tense interest to her strange stories. she was absolutely illiterate, with no knowledge of geography, and yet year after year she penetrated the slave states and personally led north over three hundred fugitives without losing a single one. a standing reward of $ , was offered for her, but as she said: "the whites cannot catch us, for i was born with the charm, and the lord has given me the power." she was one of john brown's closest advisers and only severe sickness prevented her presence at harper's ferry. when the war cloud broke, she hastened to the front, flitting down along her own mysterious paths, haunting the armies in the field, and serving as guide and nurse and spy. she followed sherman in his great march to the sea and was with grant at petersburg, and always in the camps the union officers silently saluted her. the other woman belonged to a different type,--a tall, gaunt, black, unsmiling sybil, weighted with the woe of the world. she ran away from slavery and giving up her own name took the name of sojourner truth. she says: "i can remember when i was a little, young girl, how my old mammy would sit out of doors in the evenings and look up at the stars and groan, and i would say, 'mammy, what makes you groan so?' and she would say, 'i am groaning to think of my poor children; they do not know where i be and i don't know where they be. i look up at the stars and they look up at the stars!'" her determination was founded on unwavering faith in ultimate good. wendell phillips says that he was once in faneuil hall, when frederick douglass was one of the chief speakers. douglass had been describing the wrongs of the negro race and as he proceeded he grew more and more excited and finally ended by saying that they had no hope of justice from the whites, no possible hope except in their own right arms. it must come to blood! they must fight for themselves. sojourner truth was sitting, tall and dark, on the very front seat facing the platform, and in the hush of feeling when douglass sat down she spoke out in her deep, peculiar voice, heard all over the hall: "frederick, is god dead?" such strong, primitive types of negro womanhood in america seem to some to exhaust its capabilities. they know less of a not more worthy, but a finer type of black woman wherein trembles all of that delicate sense of beauty and striving for self-realization, which is as characteristic of the negro soul as is its quaint strength and sweet laughter. george washington wrote in grave and gentle courtesy to a negro woman, in , that he would "be happy to see" at his headquarters at any time, a person "to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficial in her dispensations." this child, phillis wheatley, sang her trite and halting strain to a world that wondered and could not produce her like. measured today her muse was slight and yet, feeling her striving spirit, we call to her still in her own words: "through thickest glooms look back, immortal shade." perhaps even higher than strength and art loom human sympathy and sacrifice as characteristic of negro womanhood. long years ago, before the declaration of independence, kate ferguson was born in new york. freed, widowed, and bereaved of her children before she was twenty, she took the children of the streets of new york, white and black, to her empty arms, taught them, found them homes, and with dr. mason of murray street church established the first modern sunday school in manhattan. sixty years later came mary shadd up out of delaware. she was tall and slim, of that ravishing dream-born beauty,--that twilight of the races which we call mulatto. well-educated, vivacious, with determination shining from her sharp eyes, she threw herself singlehanded into the great canadian pilgrimage when thousands of hunted black men hurried northward and crept beneath the protection of the lion's paw. she became teacher, editor, and lecturer; tramping afoot through winter snows, pushing without blot or blemish through crowd and turmoil to conventions and meetings, and finally becoming recruiting agent for the united states government in gathering negro soldiers in the west. after the war the sacrifice of negro women for freedom and uplift is one of the finest chapters in their history. let one life typify all: louise de mortie, a free-born virginia girl, had lived most of her life in boston. her high forehead, swelling lips, and dark eyes marked her for a woman of feeling and intellect. she began a successful career as a public reader. then came the war and the call. she went to the orphaned colored children of new orleans,--out of freedom into insult and oppression and into the teeth of the yellow fever. she toiled and dreamed. in she had raised money and built an orphan home and that same year, in the thirty-fourth year of her young life, she died, saying simply: "i belong to god." as i look about me today in this veiled world of mine, despite the noisier and more spectacular advance of my brothers, i instinctively feel and know that it is the five million women of my race who really count. black women (and women whose grandmothers were black) are today furnishing our teachers; they are the main pillars of those social settlements which we call churches; and they have with small doubt raised three-fourths of our church property. if we have today, as seems likely, over a billion dollars of accumulated goods, who shall say how much of it has been wrung from the hearts of servant girls and washerwomen and women toilers in the fields? as makers of two million homes these women are today seeking in marvelous ways to show forth our strength and beauty and our conception of the truth. in the united states in there were , , women of negro descent; over twelve hundred thousand of these were children, another million were girls and young women under twenty, and two and a half-million were adults. as a mass these women were unlettered,--a fourth of those from fifteen to twenty-five years of age were unable to write. these women are passing through, not only a moral, but an economic revolution. their grandmothers married at twelve and fifteen, but twenty-seven per cent of these women today who have passed fifteen are still single. yet these black women toil and toil hard. there were in two and a half million negro homes in the united states. out of these homes walked daily to work two million women and girls over ten years of age,--over half of the colored female population as against a fifth in the case of white women. these, then, are a group of workers, fighting for their daily bread like men; independent and approaching economic freedom! they furnished a million farm laborers, , farmers, , teachers, , servants and washerwomen, and , in trades and merchandizing. the family group, however, which is the ideal of the culture with which these folk have been born, is not based on the idea of an economically independent working mother. rather its ideal harks back to the sheltered harem with the mother emerging at first as nurse and homemaker, while the man remains the sole breadwinner. what is the inevitable result of the clash of such ideals and such facts in the colored group? broken families. among native white women one in ten is separated from her husband by death, divorce, or desertion. among negroes the ratio is one in seven. is the cause racial? no, it is economic, because there is the same high ratio among the white foreign-born. the breaking up of the present family is the result of modern working and sex conditions and it hits the laborers with terrible force. the negroes are put in a peculiarly difficult position, because the wage of the male breadwinner is below the standard, while the openings for colored women in certain lines of domestic work, and now in industries, are many. thus while toil holds the father and brother in country and town at low wages, the sisters and mothers are called to the city. as a result the negro women outnumber the men nine or ten to eight in many cities, making what charlotte gilman bluntly calls "cheap women." what shall we say to this new economic equality in a great laboring class? some people within and without the race deplore it. "back to the homes with the women," they cry, "and higher wage for the men." but how impossible this is has been shown by war conditions. cessation of foreign migration has raised negro men's wages, to be sure--but it has not only raised negro women's wages, it has opened to them a score of new avenues of earning a living. indeed, here, in microcosm and with differences emphasizing sex equality, is the industrial history of labor in the th and th centuries. we cannot abolish the new economic freedom of women. we cannot imprison women again in a home or require them all on pain of death to be nurses and housekeepers. what is today the message of these black women to america and to the world? the uplift of women is, next to the problem of the color line and the peace movement, our greatest modern cause. when, now, two of these movements--woman and color--combine in one, the combination has deep meaning. in other years women's way was clear: to be beautiful, to be petted, to bear children. such has been their theoretic destiny and if perchance they have been ugly, hurt, and barren, that has been forgotten with studied silence. in partial compensation for this narrowed destiny the white world has lavished its politeness on its womankind,--its chivalry and bows, its uncoverings and courtesies--all the accumulated homage disused for courts and kings and craving exercise. the revolt of white women against this preordained destiny has in these latter days reached splendid proportions, but it is the revolt of an aristocracy of brains and ability,--the middle class and rank and file still plod on in the appointed path, paid by the homage, the almost mocking homage, of men. from black women of america, however, (and from some others, too, but chiefly from black women and their daughters' daughters) this gauze has been withheld and without semblance of such apology they have been frankly trodden under the feet of men. they are and have been objected to, apparently for reasons peculiarly exasperating to reasoning human beings. when in this world a man comes forward with a thought, a deed, a vision, we ask not, how does he look,--but what is his message? it is of but passing interest whether or not the messenger is beautiful or ugly,--the _message_ is the thing. this, which is axiomatic among men, has been in past ages but partially true if the messenger was a woman. the world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, "what else are women for?" beauty "is its own excuse for being," but there are other excuses, as most men know, and when the white world objects to black women because it does not consider them beautiful, the black world of right asks two questions: "what is beauty?" and, "suppose you think them ugly, what then? if ugliness and unconventionality and eccentricity of face and deed do not hinder men from doing the world's work and reaping the world's reward, why should it hinder women?" other things being equal, all of us, black and white, would prefer to be beautiful in face and form and suitably clothed; but most of us are not so, and one of the mightiest revolts of the century is against the devilish decree that no woman is a woman who is not by present standards a beautiful woman. this decree the black women of america have in large measure escaped from the first. not being expected to be merely ornamental, they have girded themselves for work, instead of adorning their bodies only for play. their sturdier minds have concluded that if a woman be clean, healthy, and educated, she is as pleasing as god wills and far more useful than most of her sisters. if in addition to this she is pink and white and straight-haired, and some of her fellow-men prefer this, well and good; but if she is black or brown and crowned in curled mists (and this to us is the most beautiful thing on earth), this is surely the flimsiest excuse for spiritual incarceration or banishment. the very attempt to do this in the case of negro americans has strangely over-reached itself. by so much as the defective eyesight of the white world rejects black women as beauties, by so much the more it needs them as human beings,--an enviable alternative, as many a white woman knows. consequently, for black women alone, as a group, "handsome is that handsome does" and they are asked to be no more beautiful than god made them, but they are asked to be efficient, to be strong, fertile, muscled, and able to work. if they marry, they must as independent workers be able to help support their children, for their men are paid on a scale which makes sole support of the family often impossible. on the whole, colored working women are paid as well as white working women for similar work, save in some higher grades, while colored men get from one-fourth to three-fourths less than white men. the result is curious and three-fold: the economic independence of black women is increased, the breaking up of negro families must be more frequent, and the number of illegitimate children is decreased more slowly among them than other evidences of culture are increased, just as was once true in scotland and bavaria. what does this mean? it forecasts a mighty dilemma which the whole world of civilization, despite its will, must one time frankly face: the unhusbanded mother or the childless wife. god send us a world with woman's freedom and married motherhood inextricably wed, but until he sends it, i see more of future promise in the betrayed girl-mothers of the black belt than in the childless wives of the white north, and i have more respect for the colored servant who yields to her frank longing for motherhood than for her white sister who offers up children for clothes. out of a sex freedom that today makes us shudder will come in time a day when we will no longer pay men for work they do not do, for the sake of their harem; we will pay women what they earn and insist on their working and earning it; we will allow those persons to vote who know enough to vote, whether they be black or female, white or male; and we will ward race suicide, not by further burdening the over-burdened, but by honoring motherhood, even when the sneaking father shirks his duty. * * * * * "wait till the lady passes," said a nashville white boy. "she's no lady; she's a nigger," answered another. so some few women are born free, and some amid insult and scarlet letters achieve freedom; but our women in black had freedom thrust contemptuously upon them. with that freedom they are buying an untrammeled independence and dear as is the price they pay for it, it will in the end be worth every taunt and groan. today the dreams of the mothers are coming true. we have still our poverty and degradation, our lewdness and our cruel toil; but we have, too, a vast group of women of negro blood who for strength of character, cleanness of soul, and unselfish devotion of purpose, is today easily the peer of any group of women in the civilized world. and more than that, in the great rank and file of our five million women we have the up-working of new revolutionary ideals, which must in time have vast influence on the thought and action of this land. for this, their promise, and for their hard past, i honor the women of my race. their beauty,--their dark and mysterious beauty of midnight eyes, crumpled hair, and soft, full-featured faces--is perhaps more to me than to you, because i was born to its warm and subtle spell; but their worth is yours as well as mine. no other women on earth could have emerged from the hell of force and temptation which once engulfed and still surrounds black women in america with half the modesty and womanliness that they retain. i have always felt like bowing myself before them in all abasement, searching to bring some tribute to these long-suffering victims, these burdened sisters of mine, whom the world, the wise, white world, loves to affront and ridicule and wantonly to insult. i have known the women of many lands and nations,--i have known and seen and lived beside them, but none have i known more sweetly feminine, more unswervingly loyal, more desperately earnest, and more instinctively pure in body and in soul than the daughters of my black mothers. this, then,--a little thing--to their memory and inspiration. _children of the moon_ i am dead; yet somehow, somewhere, in time's weird contradiction, i may tell of that dread deed, wherewith i brought to children of the moon freedom and vast salvation. i was a woman born, and trod the streaming street, that ebbs and flows from harlem's hills, through caves and cañons limned in light, down to the twisting sea. that night of nights, i stood alone and at the end, until the sudden highway to the moon, golden in splendor, became too real to doubt. dimly i set foot upon the air, i fled, i flew, through the thrills of light, with all about, above, below, the whirring of almighty wings. i found a twilight land, where, hardly hid, the sun sent softly-saddened rays of red and brown to burn the iron soil and bathe the snow-white peaks in mighty splendor. black were the men, hard-haired and silent-slow, moving as shadows, bending with face of fear to earthward; and women there were none. "woman, woman, woman!" i cried in mounting terror. "woman and child!" and the cry sang back through heaven, with the whirring of almighty wings. wings, wings, endless wings,-- heaven and earth are wings; wings that flutter, furl, and fold, always folding and unfolding, ever folding yet again; wings, veiling some vast and veiléd face, in blazing blackness, behind the folding and unfolding, the rolling and unrolling of almighty wings! i saw the black men huddle, fumed in fear, falling face downward; vainly i clutched and clawed, dumbly they cringed and cowered, moaning in mournful monotone: o freedom, o freedom, o freedom over me; before i'll be a slave, i'll be buried in my grave, and go home to my god, and be free. it was angel-music from the dead, and ever, as they sang, some wingéd thing of wings, filling all heaven, folding and unfolding, and folding yet again, tore out their blood and entrails, 'til i screamed in utter terror; and a silence came-- a silence and the wailing of a babe. then, at last, i saw and shamed; i knew how these dumb, dark, and dusky things had given blood and life, to fend the caves of underground, the great black caves of utter night, where earth lay full of mothers and their babes. little children sobbing in darkness, little children crying in silent pain, little mothers rocking and groping and struggling, digging and delving and groveling, amid the dying-dead and dead-in-life and drip and dripping of warm, wet blood, far, far beneath the wings,-- the folding and unfolding of almighty wings. i bent with tears and pitying hands, above these dusky star-eyed children,-- crinkly-haired, with sweet-sad baby voices, pleading low for light and love and living-- and i crooned: "little children weeping there, god shall find your faces fair; guerdon for your deep distress, he shall send his tenderness; for the tripping of your feet make a mystic music sweet in the darkness of your hair; light and laughter in the air-- little children weeping there, god shall find your faces fair!" i strode above the stricken, bleeding men, the rampart 'ranged against the skies, and shouted: "up, i say, build and slay; fight face foremost, force a way, unloose, unfetter, and unbind; be men and free!" dumbly they shrank, muttering they pointed toward that peak, than vastness vaster, whereon a darkness brooded, "who shall look and live," they sighed; and i sensed the folding and unfolding of almighty wings. yet did we build of iron, bricks, and blood; we built a day, a year, a thousand years, blood was the mortar,--blood and tears, and, ah, the thing, the thing of wings, the wingéd, folding wing of things did furnish much mad mortar for that tower. slow and ever slower rose the towering task, and with it rose the sun, until at last on one wild day, wind-whirled, cloud-swept and terrible i stood beneath the burning shadow of the peak, beneath the whirring of almighty wings, while downward from my feet streamed the long line of dusky faces and the wail of little children sobbing under earth. alone, aloft, i saw through firmaments on high the drama of almighty god, with all its flaming suns and stars. "freedom!" i cried. "freedom!" cried heaven, earth, and stars; and a voice near-far, amid the folding and unfolding of almighty wings, answered, "i am freedom-- who sees my face is free-- he and his." i dared not look; downward i glanced on deep-bowed heads and closed eyes, outward i gazed on flecked and flaming blue-- but ever onward, upward flew the sobbing of small voices,-- down, down, far down into the night. slowly i lifted livid limbs aloft; upward i strove: the face! the face! onward i reeled: the face! the face! to beauty wonderful as sudden death, or horror horrible as endless life-- up! up! the blood-built way; (shadow grow vaster! terror come faster!) up! up! to the blazing blackness of one veiléd face. and endless folding and unfolding, rolling and unrolling of almighty wings. the last step stood! the last dim cry of pain fluttered across the stars, and then-- wings, wings, triumphant wings, lifting and lowering, waxing and waning, swinging and swaying, twirling and whirling, whispering and screaming, streaming and gleaming, spreading and sweeping and shading and flaming-- wings, wings, eternal wings, 'til the hot, red blood, flood fleeing flood, thundered through heaven and mine ears, while all across a purple sky, the last vast pinion. trembled to unfold. i rose upon the mountain of the moon,-- i felt the blazing glory of the sun; i heard the song of children crying, "free!" i saw the face of freedom-- and i died. viii the immortal child if a man die shall he live again? we do not know. but this we do know, that our children's children live forever and grow and develop toward perfection as they are trained. all human problems, then, center in the immortal child and his education is the problem of problems. and first for illustration of what i would say may i not take for example, out of many millions, the life of one dark child. * * * * * it is now nineteen years since i first saw coleridge-taylor. we were in london in some somber hall where there were many meeting, men and women called chiefly to the beautiful world's fair at paris; and then a few slipping over to london to meet pan-africa. we were there from cape colony and liberia, from haiti and the states, and from the islands of the sea. i remember the stiff, young officer who came with credentials from menelik of abyssinia; i remember the bitter, black american who whispered how an army of the soudan might some day cross the alps; i remember englishmen, like the colensos, who sat and counseled with us; but above all, i remember coleridge-taylor. he was a little man and nervous, with dark-golden face and hair that bushed and strayed. his fingers were always nervously seeking hidden keys and he was quick with enthusiasm,--instinct with life. his bride of a year or more,--dark, too, in her whiter way,--was of the calm and quiet type. her soft contralto voice thrilled us often as she sang, while her silences were full of understanding. several times we met in public gatherings and then they bade me to their home,--a nest of a cottage, with gate and garden, hidden in london's endless rings of suburbs. i dimly recall through these years a room in cozy disorder, strewn with music--music on the floor and music on the chairs, music in the air as the master rushed to the piano now and again to make some memory melodious--some allusion real. and then at last, for it was the last, i saw coleridge-taylor in a mighty throng of people crowding the crystal palace. we came in facing the stage and scarcely dared look around. on the stage were a full orchestra, a chorus of eight hundred voices, and some of the world's famous soloists. he left his wife sitting beside me, and she was very silent as he went forward to lift the conductor's baton. it was one of the earliest renditions of "hiawatha's wedding feast." we sat at rapt attention and when the last, weird music died, the great chorus and orchestra rose as a man to acclaim the master; he turned toward the audience and then we turning for the first time saw that sea of faces behind,--the misty thousands whose voices rose to one strong shout of joy! it was a moment such as one does not often live. it seemed, and was, prophetic. this young man who stepped forth as one of the most notable of modern english composers had a simple and uneventful career. his father was a black surgeon of sierra leone who came to london for study. while there he met an english girl and this son was born, in london, in . then came a series of chances. his father failed to succeed and disappeared back to africa leaving the support of the child to the poor working mother. the child showed evidences of musical talent and a friendly workingman gave him a little violin. a musician glancing from his window saw a little dark boy playing marbles on the street with a tiny violin in one hand; he gave him lessons. he happened to gain entrance into a charity school with a master of understanding mind who recognized genius when he saw it; and finally his beautiful child's treble brought him to the notice of the choirmaster of st. george's, croyden. so by happy accident his way was clear. within his soul was no hesitation. he was one of those fortunate beings who are not called to _wander-jahre_, but are born with sails set and seas charted. already the baby of four little years was a musician, and as choir-boy and violinist he walked unhesitatingly and surely to his life work. he was graduated with honors from the royal academy of music in , and married soon after the daughter of one of his professors. then his life began, and whatever it lacked of physical adventure in the conventional round of a modern world-city, it more than gained in the almost tempestuous outpouring of his spiritual nature. life to him was neither meat nor drink,--it was creative flame; ideas, plans, melodies glowed within him. to create, to do, to accomplish; to know the white glory of mighty midnights and the pale amen of dawns was his day of days. songs, pianoforte and violin pieces, trios and quintets for strings, incidental music, symphony, orchestral, and choral works rushed from his fingers. nor were they laboriously contrived or light, thin things made to meet sudden popularity. rather they were the flaming bits that must be said and sung,--that could not wait the slower birth of years, so hurried to the world as though their young creator knew that god gave him but a day. his whole active life was scarcely more than a decade and a half, and yet in that time, without wealth, friends, or influence, in the face of perhaps the most critical and skeptical and least imaginative civilization of the modern world, he wrote his name so high as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten. and this was but one side of the man. on the other was the sweet-tempered, sympathetic comrade, always willing to help, never knowing how to refuse, generous with every nerve and fiber of his being. think of a young musician, father of a family, who at the time of his death held positions as associate of the royal college of music, professor in trinity college and crystal palace, conductor of the handel choral society and the rochester choral society, principal of the guildhall school of music, where he had charge of the choral choir, the orchestra, and the opera. he was repeatedly the leader of music festivals all over great britain and a judge of contests. and with all this his house was open in cheering hospitality to friends and his hand ever ready with sympathy and help. when such a man dies, it must bring pause to a reasoning world. we may call his death-sickness pneumonia, but we all know that it was sheer overwork,--the using of a delicately-tuned instrument too commonly and continuously and carelessly to let it last its normal life. we may well talk of the waste of wood and water, of food and fire, but the real and unforgivable waste of modern civilization is the waste of ability and genius,--the killing of useful, indispensable men who have no right to die; who deserve, not for themselves, but for the world, leisure, freedom from distraction, expert medical advice, and intelligent sympathy. coleridge-taylor's life work was not finished,--it was but well begun. he lived only his first period of creative genius, when melody and harmony flashed and fluttered in subtle, compelling, and more than promising profusion. he did not live to do the organized, constructive work in the full, calm power of noonday,--the reflective finishing of evening. in the annals of the future his name must always stand high, but with the priceless gift of years, who can say where it might not have stood. why should he have worked so breathlessly, almost furiously? it was, we may be sure, because with unflinching determination and with no thought of surrender he faced the great alternative,--the choice which the cynical, thoughtless, busy, modern world spreads grimly before its greater souls--food or beauty, bread and butter, or ideals. and continually we see worthier men turning to the pettier, cheaper thing--the popular portrait, the sensational novel, the jingling song. the choice is not always between the least and the greatest, the high and the empty, but only too often it is between starvation and something. when, therefore, we see a man, working desperately to earn a living and still stooping to no paltry dickering and to no unworthy work, handing away a "hiawatha" for less than a song, pausing for glimpses of the stars when a world full of charcoal glowed far more warmly and comfortably, we know that such a man is a hero in a sense never approached by the swashbuckling soldier or the lying patriot. deep as was the primal tragedy in the life of coleridge-taylor, there lay another still deeper. he smiled at it lightly, as we all do,--we who live within the veil,--to hide the deeper hurt. he had, with us, that divine and african gift of laughter, that echo of a thousand centuries of suns. i mind me how once he told of the bishop, the well-groomed english bishop, who eyed the artist gravely, with his eye-glass--hair and color and figure,--and said quite audibly to his friends, "quite interesting--looks intelligent,--yes--yes!" fortunate was coleridge-taylor to be born in europe and to speak a universal tongue. in america he could hardly have had his career. his genius was, to be sure, recognized (with some palpitation and consternation) when it came full-grown across the seas with an english imprint; but born here, it might never have been permitted to grow. we know in america how to discourage, choke, and murder ability when it so far forgets itself as to choose a dark skin. england, thank god, is slightly more civilized than her colonies; but even there the path of this young man was no way of roses and just a shade thornier than that of whiter men. he did not complain at it,--he did not "wince and cry aloud." rather the hint here and there of color discrimination in england aroused in him deeper and more poignant sympathy with his people throughout the world. he was one with that great company of mixed-blooded men: pushkin and dumas, hamilton and douglass, browning and many others; but he more than most of these men knew the call of the blood when it came and listened and answered. he came to america with strange enthusiasm. he took with quite simple and unconscious grace the conventional congratulations of the musical world. he was used to that. but to his own people--to the sad sweetness of their voices, their inborn sense of music, their broken, half-articulate voices,--he leapt with new enthusiasm. from the fainter shadowings of his own life, he sensed instinctively the vaster tragedy of theirs. his soul yearned to give voice and being to this human thing. he early turned to the sorrow songs. he sat at the faltering feet of paul laurence dunbar and he asked (as we sadly shook our heads) for some masterpiece of this world-tragedy that his soul could set to music. and then, so characteristically, he rushed back to england, composed a half-dozen exquisite harmonies haunted by slave-songs, led the welsh in their singing, listened to the scotch, ordered great music festivals in all england, wrote for beerbohm tree, took on another music professorship, promised a trip to germany, and at last, staggering home one night, on his way to his wife and little boy and girl, fell in his tracks and in four days was dead, at the age of thirty-seven. they say that in his death-throe he arose and facing some great, ghostly choir raised his last baton, while all around the massive silence rang with the last mist-music of his dying ears. he was buried from st. michael's on september , , with the acclaim of kings and music masters and little children and to the majestic melody of his own music. the tributes that followed him to his grave were unusually hearty and sincere. the head of the royal college calls the first production of "hiawatha" one of the most remarkable events in modern english musical history and the trilogy one of the most universally-beloved works of modern english music. one critic calls taylor's a name "which with that of elgar represented the nation's most individual output" and calls his "atonement" "perhaps the finest passion music of modern times." another critic speaks of his originality: "though surrounded by the influences that are at work in europe today, he retained his individuality to the end, developing his style, however, and evincing new ideas in each succeeding work. his untimely death at the age of thirty-seven, a short life--like those of schubert, mendelssohn, chopin, and hugo wolf--has robbed the world of one of its noblest singers, one of those few men of modern times who found expression in the language of musical song, a lyricist of power and worth." but the tributes did not rest with the artist; with peculiar unanimity they sought his "sterling character," "the good husband and father," the "staunch and loyal friend." and perhaps i cannot better end these hesitating words than with that tribute from one who called this master, friend, and whose lament cried in the night with more of depth and passion than alfred noyes is wont in his self-repression to voice: "through him, his race, a moment, lifted up forests of hands to beauty, as in prayer, touched through his lips the sacramental cup and then sank back, benumbed in our bleak air." yet, consider: to many millions of people this man was all wrong. _first_, he ought never to have been born, for he was the mulatto son of a white woman. _secondly_, he should never have been educated as a musician,--he should have been trained, for his "place" in the world and to make him satisfied therewith. _thirdly_, he should not have married the woman he loved and who loved him, for she was white and the niece of an oxford professor. _fourthly_, the children of such a union--but why proceed? you know it all by heart. if he had been black, like paul laurence dunbar, would the argument have been different? no. he should never have been born, for he is a "problem." he should never be educated, for he cannot be educated. he should never marry, for that means children and there is no place for black children in this world. * * * * * in the treatment of the child the world foreshadows its own future and faith. all words and all thinking lead to the child,--to that vast immortality and the wide sweep of infinite possibility which the child represents. such thought as this it was that made the master say of old as he saw baby faces: "and whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea." and yet the mothers and fathers and the men and women of my race must often pause and ask: is it worth while? ought children be born to us? have we any right to make human souls face what we face today? the answer is clear: if the great battle of human right against poverty, against disease, against color prejudice is to be won, it must be won, not in our day, but in the day of our children's children. ours is the blood and dust of battle; theirs the rewards of victory. if, then, they are not there because we have not brought them into the world, we have been the guiltiest factor in conquering ourselves. it is our duty, then, to accomplish the immortality of black blood, in order that the day may come in this dark world when poverty shall be abolished, privilege be based on individual desert, and the color of a man's skin be no bar to the outlook of his soul. if it is our duty as honest colored men and women, battling for a great principle, to bring not aimless rafts of children to the world, but as many as, with reasonable sacrifice, we can train to largest manhood, what in its inner essence shall that training be, particularly in its beginning? the first temptation is to shield the child,--to hedge it about that it may not know and will not dream of the color line. then when we can no longer wholly shield, to indulge and pamper and coddle, as though in this dumb way to compensate. from this attitude comes the multitude of our spoiled, wayward, disappointed children. and must we not blame ourselves? for while the motive was pure and the outer menace undoubted, is shielding and indulgence the way to meet it? some negro parents, realizing this, leave their children to sink or swim in this sea of race prejudice. they neither shield nor explain, but thrust them forth grimly into school or street and let them learn as they may from brutal fact. out of this may come strength, poise, self-dependence, and out of it, too, may come bewilderment, cringing deception, and self-distrust. it is, all said, a brutal, unfair method, and in its way it is as bad as shielding and indulgence. why not, rather, face the facts and tell the truth? your child is wiser than you think. the truth lies ever between extremes. it is wrong to introduce the child to race consciousness prematurely; it is dangerous to let that consciousness grow spontaneously without intelligent guidance. with every step of dawning intelligence, explanation--frank, free, guiding explanation--must come. the day will dawn when mother must explain gently but clearly why the little girls next door do not want to play with "niggers"; what the real cause is of the teacher's unsympathetic attitude; and how people may ride in the backs of street cars and the smoker end of trains and still be people, honest high-minded souls. remember, too, that in such frank explanation you are speaking in nine cases out of ten to a good deal clearer understanding than you think and that the child-mind has what your tired soul may have lost faith in,--the power and the glory. out of little, unspoiled souls rise up wonderful resources and healing balm. once the colored child understands the white world's attitude and the shameful wrong of it, you have furnished it with a great life motive,--a power and impulse toward good which is the mightiest thing man has. how many white folk would give their own souls if they might graft into their children's souls a great, moving, guiding ideal! with this power there comes, in the transfiguring soul of childhood, the glory: the vision of accomplishment, the lofty ideal. once let the strength of the motive work, and it becomes the life task of the parent to guide and to shape the ideal; to raise it from resentment and revenge to dignity and self-respect, to breadth and accomplishment, to human service; to beat back every thought of cringing and surrender. here, at last, we can speak with no hesitation, with no lack of faith. for we know that as the world grows better there will be realized in our children's lives that for which we fight unfalteringly, but vainly now. so much for the problem of the home and our own dark children. now let us look beyond the pale upon the children of the wide world. what is the real lesson of the life of coleridge-taylor? it is this: humanly speaking it was sheer accident that this boy developed his genius. we have a right to assume that hundreds and thousands of boys and girls today are missing the chance of developing unusual talents because the chances have been against them; and that indeed the majority of the children of the world are not being systematically fitted for their life work and for life itself. why? many seek the reason in the content of the school program. they feverishly argue the relative values of greek, mathematics, and manual training, but fail with singular unanimity in pointing out the fundamental cause of our failure in human education: that failure is due to the fact that we aim not at the full development of the child, but that the world regards and always has regarded education first as a means of buttressing the established order of things rather than improving it. and this is the real reason why strife, war, and revolution have marked the onward march of humanity instead of reason and sound reform. instead of seeking to push the coming generation ahead of our pitiful accomplishment, we insist that it march behind. we say, morally, that high character is conformity to present public opinion; we say industrially that the present order is best and that children must be trained to perpetuate it. but, it is objected, what else can we do? can we teach revolution to the inexperienced in hope that they may discern progress? no, but we may teach frankly that this world is not perfection, but development: that the object of education is manhood and womanhood, clear reason, individual talent and genius and the spirit of service and sacrifice, and not simply a frantic effort to avoid change in present institutions; that industry is for man and not man for industry and that while we must have workers to work, the prime object of our training is not the work but the worker--not the maintenance of present industrial caste but the development of human intelligence by which drudgery may be lessened and beauty widened. back of our present educational system is the philosophy that sneers at the foolish fathers who believed it self-evident, "that all men were created free and equal." surely the overwhelming evidence is today that men are slaves and unequal. but is it not education that is the creator of this freedom and equality? most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery. they do not want equality because the thrill of their happiness comes from having things that others have not. but may not human education fix the fine ideal of an equal maximum of freedom for every human soul combined with that minimum of slavery for each soul which the inexorable physical facts of the world impose--rather than complete freedom for some and complete slavery for others; and, again, is not the equality toward which the world moves an equality of honor in the assigned human task itself rather than equal facility in doing different tasks? human equality is not lack of difference, nor do the infinite human differences argue relative superiority and inferiority. and, again, how new an aspect human differences may assume when all men are educated. today we think of apes, semi-apes, and human beings; tomorrow we may think of keir hardies, roosevelts, and beethovens--not equals but men. today we are forcing men into educational slavery in order that others may enjoy life, and excuse ourselves by saying that the world's work must be done. we are degrading some sorts of work by honoring others, and then expressing surprise that most people object to having their children trained solely to take up their father's tasks. given as the ideal the utmost possible freedom for every human soul, with slavery for none, and equal honor for all necessary human tasks, then our problem of education is greatly simplified: we aim to develop human souls; to make all intelligent; to discover special talents and genius. with this course of training beginning in early childhood and never ceasing must go the technical training for the present world's work according to carefully studied individual gifts and wishes. on the other hand, if we arrange our system of education to develop workmen who will not strike and negroes satisfied with their present place in the world, we have set ourselves a baffling task. we find ourselves compelled to keep the masses ignorant and to curb our own thought and expression so as not to inflame the ignorant. we force moderate reformers and men with new and valuable ideas to become red radicals and revolutionists, since that happens to be the only way to make the world listen to reason. consider our race problem in the south: the south has invested in negro ignorance; some northerners proposed limited education, not, they explained, to better the negro, but merely to make the investment more profitable to the present beneficiaries. they thus gained wide southern support for schools like hampton and tuskegee. but could this program be expected long to satisfy colored folk? and was this shifty dodging of the real issue the wisest statesmanship? no! the real question in the south is the question of the permanency of present color caste. the problem, then, of the formal training of our colored children has been strangely complicated by the strong feeling of certain persons as to their future in america and the world. and the reaction toward this caste education has strengthened the idea of caste education throughout the world. let us then return to fundamental ideals. children must be trained in a knowledge of what the world is and what it knows and how it does its daily work. these things cannot be separated: we cannot teach pure knowledge apart from actual facts, or separate truth from the human mind. above all we must not forget that the object of all education is the child itself and not what it does or makes. it is here that a great movement in america has grievously sinned against the light. there has arisen among us a movement to make the public school primarily the hand-maiden of production. america is conceived of as existing for the sake of its mines, fields and factories, and not those factories, fields and mines as existing for america. consequently, the public schools are for training the mass of men as servants and laborers and mechanics to increase the land's industrial efficiency. those who oppose this program, especially if they are black, are accused of despising common toil and humble service. in fact, we negroes are but facing in our own children a world problem: how can we, while maintaining a proper output of goods and furnishing needed services, increase the knowledge of experience of common men and conserve genius for the common weal? without wider, deeper intelligence among the masses democracy cannot accomplish its greater ends. without a more careful conservation of human ability and talent the world cannot secure the services which its greater needs call for. yet today who goes to college, the talented or the rich? who goes to high school, the bright or the well-to-do? who does the physical work of the world, those whose muscles need the exercise or those whose souls and minds are stupefied with manual toil? how is the drudgery of the world distributed, by thoughtful justice or the lash of slavery? we cannot base the education of future citizens on the present inexcusable inequality of wealth nor on physical differences of race. we must seek not to make men carpenters but to make carpenters men. colored americans must then with deep determination educate their children in the broadest, highest way. they must fill the colleges with the talented and fill the fields and shops with the intelligent. wisdom is the principal thing. therefore, get wisdom. but why am i talking simply of "colored" children? is not the problem of their education simply an intensification of the problem of educating all children? look at our plight in the united states, nearly years after the establishment of a government based on human intelligence. if we take the figures of the thirteenth census, we find that there were five and one-half million illiterate americans of whom , , were white. remembering that illiteracy is a crude and extreme test of ignorance, we may assume that there are in the united states ten million people over ten years of age who are too ignorant either to perform their civic duties or to teach industrial efficiency. moreover, it does not seem that this illiteracy is disappearing rapidly. for instance, nine percent of american children between ten and nineteen years of age cannot read and write. moreover, there are millions of children who, judging by the figures for the school year - , are not going to learn to read and write, for of the americans six to fourteen years of age there were , , who were not in school a single day during that year. if we take the eleven million youths fifteen to twenty years of age for whom vocational training is particularly adapted, we find that nearly five per cent of these, or , , are absolutely illiterate; it is not too much to assume that a million of them have not acquired enough of the ordinary tools of intelligence to make the most of efficient vocational training. confining ourselves to the white people, over fifteen per cent of the white children six to fourteen years of age, or , , , did not attend school during the school year - . of the native white children of native parents ten to fourteen years of age nearly a tenth were not in school during that year; , native white children of native parents, fifteen to nineteen years of age, were illiterate. if we continue our attention to the colored children, the case is, of course, much worse. we cannot hope to make intelligent workmen and intelligent citizens of a group of people, over forty per cent of whose children six to fourteen years of age were not in school a single day during - ; for the other sixty per cent the school term in the majority of cases was probably less than five months. of the negro children ten to fourteen years of age . per cent were illiterate; of those fifteen to nineteen years of age . per cent were illiterate; of those ten to fourteen years of age . per cent did not go to school a single day in - . what is the trouble? it is simple. we are spending one dollar for education where we should spend ten dollars. if tomorrow we multiplied our effort to educate the next generation ten-fold, we should but begin our bounden duty. the heaven that lies about our infancy is but the ideals come true which every generation of children is capable of bringing; but we, selfish in our own ignorance and incapacity, are making of education a series of miserable compromises: how ignorant can we let a child grow to be in order to make him the best cotton mill operative? what is the least sum that will keep the average youth out of jail? how many months saved on a high school course will make the largest export of wheat? if we realized that children are the future, that immortality is the present child, that no education which educates can possibly be too costly, then we know that the menace of kaiserism which called for the expenditure of more than thousand millions of dollars was not a whit more pressing than the menace of ignorance, and that no nation tomorrow will call itself civilized which does not give every single human being college and vocational training free and under the best teaching force procurable for love or money. this world has never taken the education of children seriously. misled by selfish dreamings of personal life forever, we have neglected the true and practical immortality through the endless life of children's children. seeking counsels of our own souls' perfection, we have despised and rejected the possible increasing perfection of unending generations. or if we are thrown back in pessimistic despair from making living folk decent, we leap to idle speculations of a thousand years hereafter instead of working steadily and persistently for the next generation. all our problems center in the child. all our hopes, our dreams are for our children. has our own life failed? let its lesson save the children's lives from similar failure. is democracy a failure? train up citizens that will make it succeed. is wealth too crude, too foolish in form, and too easily stolen? train up workers with honor and consciences and brains. have we degraded service with menials? abolish the mean spirit and implant sacrifice. do we despise women? train them as workers and thinkers and not as playthings, lest future generations ape our worst mistake. do we despise darker races? teach the children its fatal cost in spiritual degradation and murder, teach them that to hate "niggers" or "chinks" is to crucify souls like their own. is there anything we would accomplish with human beings? do it with the immortal child, with a stretch of endless time for doing it and with infinite possibilities to work on. is this our attitude toward education? it is not--neither in england nor america--in france nor germany--with black nor white nor yellow folk. education to the modern world is a burden which we are driven to carry. we shirk and complain. we do just as little as possible and only threat or catastrophe induces us to do more than a minimum. if the ignorant mass, panting to know, revolts, we dole them gingerly enough knowledge to pacify them temporarily. if, as in the great war, we discover soldiers too ignorant to use our machines of murder and destruction, we train them--to use machines of murder and destruction. if mounting wealth calls for intelligent workmen, we rush tumultuously to train workers--in order to increase our wealth. but of great, broad plans to train all men for all things--to make a universe intelligent, busy, good, creative and beautiful--where in this wide world is such an educational program? to announce it is to invite gasps or brobdingnagian laughter. it cannot be done. it will cost too much. what has been done with man can be done with men, if the world tries long enough and hard enough. and as to the cost--all the wealth of the world, save that necessary for sheer decent existence and for the maintenance of past civilization, is, and of right ought to be, the property of the children for their education. i mean it. in one year, , we spent $ , , , for war. we blew it away to murder, maim, and destroy! why? because the blind, brutal crime of powerful and selfish interests made this path through hell the only visible way to heaven. we did it. we had to do it, and we are glad the putrid horror is over. but, now, are we prepared to spend less to make a world in which the resurgence of such devilish power will be impossible? do we really want war to cease? then educate the children of this generation at a cost no whit less and if necessary a hundred times as great as the cost of the great war. last year, , education cost us $ , , . next year it ought to cost us at least two thousand million dollars. we should spend enough money to hire the best teaching force possible--the best organizing and directing ability in the land, even if we have to strip the railroads and meat trust. we should dot city and country with the most efficient, sanitary, and beautiful school-houses the world knows and we should give every american child common school, high school, and college training and then vocational guidance in earning a living. is this a dream? can we afford less? consider our so-called educational "problems"; "how may we keep pupils in the high school?" feed and clothe them. "shall we teach latin, greek, and mathematics to the 'masses'?" if they are worth teaching to anybody, the masses need them most. "who shall go to college?" everybody. "when shall culture training give place to technical education for work?" never. these questions are not "problems." they are simply "excuses" for spending less time and money on the next generation. given ten millions of dollars a year, what can we best do with the education of a million children? the real answer is--kill nine hundred and ninety thousand of them quickly and not gradually, and make thoroughly-trained men and women of the other ten thousand. but who set the limit of ten million dollars? who says it shall not be ten thousand millions, as it ought to be? you and i say it, and in saying it we sin against the holy ghost. we sin because in our befuddled brains we have linked money and education inextricably. we assume that only the wealthy have a real right to education when, in fact, being born is being given a right to college training. our wealth today is, we all know, distributed mainly by chance inheritance and personal favor and yet we attempt to base the right to education on this foundation. the result is grotesque! we bury genius; we send it to jail; we ridicule and mock it, while we send mediocrity and idiocy to college, gilded and crowned. for three hundred years we have denied black americans an education and now we exploit them before a gaping world: see how ignorant and degraded they are! all they are fit for is education for cotton-picking and dish-washing. when dunbar and taylor happen along, we are torn between something like shamefaced anger or impatient amazement. a world guilty of this last and mightiest war has no right to enjoy or create until it has made the future safe from another arkansas or rheims. to this there is but one patent way, proved and inescapable, education, and that not for me or for you but for the immortal child. and that child is of all races and all colors. all children are the children of all and not of individuals and families and races. the whole generation must be trained and guided and out of it as out of a huge reservoir must be lifted all genius, talent, and intelligence to serve all the world. almighty death[ ] softly, quite softly-- for i hear, above the murmur of the sea, faint and far-fallen footsteps, as of one who comes from out beyond the endless ends of time, with voice that downward looms thro' singing stars; its subtle sound i see thro' these long-darkened eyes, i hear the light he bringeth on his hands-- almighty death! softly, oh, softly, lest he pass me by, and that unquivering light toward which my longing soul and tortured body through these years have writhed, fade to the dun darkness of my days. softly, full softly, let me rise and greet the strong, low luting of that long-awaited call; swiftly be all my good and going gone, and this vast veiled and vanquished vigor of my soul seek somehow otherwhere its rest and goal, where endless spaces stretch, where endless time doth moan, where endless light doth pour thro' the black kingdoms of eternal death. then haply i may see what things i have not seen, then i may know what things i have not known; then may i do my dreams. farewell! no sound of idle mourning let there be to shudder this full silence--save the voice of children--little children, white and black, whispering the deeds i tried to do for them; while i at last unguided and alone pass softly, full softly. [footnote : for joseph pulitzer, october , .] ix of beauty and death for long years we of the world gone wild have looked into the face of death and smiled. through all our bitter tears we knew how beautiful it was to die for that which our souls called sufficient. like all true beauty this thing of dying was so simple, so matter-of-fact. the boy clothed in his splendid youth stood before us and laughed in his own jolly way,--went and was gone. suddenly the world was full of the fragrance of sacrifice. we left our digging and burden-bearing; we turned from our scraping and twisting of things and words; we paused from our hurrying hither and thither and walking up and down, and asked in half-whisper: this death--is this life? and is its beauty real or false? and of this heart-questioning i am writing. * * * * * my friend, who is pale and positive, said to me yesterday, as the tired sun was nodding: "you are too sensitive." i admit, i am--sensitive. i am artificial. i cringe or am bumptious or immobile. i am intellectually dishonest, art-blind, and i lack humor. "why don't you stop all this?" she retorts triumphantly. you will not let us. "there you go, again. you know that i--" wait! i answer. wait! i arise at seven. the milkman has neglected me. he pays little attention to colored districts. my white neighbor glares elaborately. i walk softly, lest i disturb him. the children jeer as i pass to work. the women in the street car withdraw their skirts or prefer to stand. the policeman is truculent. the elevator man hates to serve negroes. my job is insecure because the white union wants it and does not want me. i try to lunch, but no place near will serve me. i go forty blocks to marshall's, but the committee of fourteen closes marshall's; they say white women frequent it. "do all eating places discriminate?" no, but how shall i know which do not--except-- i hurry home through crowds. they mutter or get angry. i go to a mass-meeting. they stare. i go to a church. "we don't admit niggers!" or perhaps i leave the beaten track. i seek new work. "our employees would not work with you; our customers would object." i ask to help in social uplift. "why--er--we will write you." i enter the free field of science. every laboratory door is closed and no endowments are available. i seek the universal mistress, art; the studio door is locked. i write literature. "we cannot publish stories of colored folks of that type." it's the only type i know. this is my life. it makes me idiotic. it gives me artificial problems. i hesitate, i rush, i waver. in fine,--i am sensitive! my pale friend looks at me with disbelief and curling tongue. "do you mean to sit there and tell me that this is what happens to you each day?" certainly not, i answer low. "then you only fear it will happen?" i fear! "well, haven't you the courage to rise above a--almost a craven fear?" quite--quite craven is my fear, i admit; but the terrible thing is--these things do happen! "but you just said--" they do happen. not all each day,--surely not. but now and then--now seldom, now, sudden; now after a week, now in a chain of awful minutes; not everywhere, but anywhere--in boston, in atlanta. that's the hell of it. imagine spending your life looking for insults or for hiding places from them--shrinking (instinctively and despite desperate bolsterings of courage) from blows that are not always but ever; not each day, but each week, each month, each year. just, perhaps, as you have choked back the craven fear and cried, "i am and will be the master of my--" "no more tickets downstairs; here's one to the smoking gallery." you hesitate. you beat back your suspicions. after all, a cigarette with charlie chaplin--then a white man pushes by-- "three in the orchestra." "yes, sir." and in he goes. suddenly your heart chills. you turn yourself away toward the golden twinkle of the purple night and hesitate again. what's the use? why not always yield--always take what's offered,--always bow to force, whether of cannon or dislike? then the great fear surges in your soul, the real fear--the fear beside which other fears are vain imaginings; the fear lest right there and then you are losing your own soul; that you are losing your own soul and the soul of a people; that millions of unborn children, black and gold and mauve, are being there and then despoiled by you because you are a coward and dare not fight! suddenly that silly orchestra seat and the cavorting of a comedian with funny feet become matters of life, death, and immortality; you grasp the pillars of the universe and strain as you sway back to that befrilled ticket girl. you grip your soul for riot and murder. you choke and sputter, and she seeing that you are about to make a "fuss" obeys her orders and throws the tickets at you in contempt. then you slink to your seat and crouch in the darkness before the film, with every tissue burning! the miserable wave of reaction engulfs you. to think of compelling puppies to take your hard-earned money; fattening hogs to hate you and yours; forcing your way among cheap and tawdry idiots--god! what a night of pleasure! * * * * * here, then, is beauty and ugliness, a wide vision of world-sacrifice, a fierce gleam of world-hate. which is life and what is death and how shall we face so tantalizing a contradiction? any explanation must necessarily be subtle and involved. no pert and easy word of encouragement, no merely dark despair, can lay hold of the roots of these things. and first and before all, we cannot forget that this world is beautiful. grant all its ugliness and sin--the petty, horrible snarl of its putrid threads, which few have seen more near or more often than i--notwithstanding all this, the beauty of this world is not to be denied. casting my eyes about i dare not let them rest on the beauty of love and friend, for even if my tongue were cunning enough to sing this, the revelation of reality here is too sacred and the fancy too untrue. of one world-beauty alone may we at once be brutally frank and that is the glory of physical nature; this, though the last of beauties, is divine! and so, too, there are depths of human degradation which it is not fair for us to probe. with all their horrible prevalence, we cannot call them natural. but may we not compare the least of the world's beauty with the least of its ugliness--not murder, starvation, and rapine, with love and friendship and creation--but the glory of sea and sky and city, with the little hatefulnesses and thoughtfulnesses of race prejudice, that out of such juxtaposition we may, perhaps, deduce some rule of beauty and life--or death? * * * * * there mountains hurl themselves against the stars and at their feet lie black and leaden seas. above float clouds--white, gray, and inken, while the clear, impalpable air springs and sparkles like new wine. last night we floated on the calm bosom of the sea in the southernmost haven of mount desert. the water flamed and sparkled. the sun had gone, but above the crooked back of cumulus clouds, dark and pink with radiance, and on the other sky aloft to the eastward piled the gorgeous-curtained mists of evening. the radiance faded and a shadowy velvet veiled the mountains, a humid depth of gloom behind which lurked all the mysteries of life and death, while above, the clouds hung ashen and dull; lights twinkled and flashed along the shore, boats glided in the twilight, and the little puffing of motors droned away. then was the hour to talk of life and the meaning of life, while above gleamed silently, suddenly, star on star. bar harbor lies beneath a mighty mountain, a great, bare, black mountain that sleeps above the town; but as you leave, it rises suddenly, threateningly, until far away on frenchman's bay it looms above the town in withering vastness, as if to call all that little world petty save itself. beneath the cool, wide stare of that great mountain, men cannot live as giddily as in some lesser summer's playground. before the unveiled face of nature, as it lies naked on the maine coast, rises a certain human awe. god molded his world largely and mightily off this marvelous coast and meant that in the tired days of life men should come and worship here and renew their spirit. this i have done and turning i go to work again. as we go, ever the mountains of mount desert rise and greet us on our going--somber, rock-ribbed and silent, looking unmoved on the moving world, yet conscious of their everlasting strength. about us beats the sea--the sail-flecked, restless sea, humming its tune about our flying keel, unmindful of the voices of men. the land sinks to meadows, black pine forests, with here and there a blue and wistful mountain. then there are islands--bold rocks above the sea, curled meadows; through and about them roll ships, weather-beaten and patched of sail, strong-hulled and smoking, light gray and shining. all the colors of the sea lie about us--gray and yellowing greens and doubtful blues, blacks not quite black, tinted silvers and golds and dreaming whites. long tongues of dark and golden land lick far out into the tossing waters, and the white gulls sail and scream above them. it is a mighty coast--ground out and pounded, scarred, crushed, and carven in massive, frightful lineaments. everywhere stand the pines--the little dark and steadfast pines that smile not, neither weep, but wait and wait. near us lie isles of flesh and blood, white cottages, tiled and meadowed. afar lie shadow-lands, high mist-hidden hills, mountains boldly limned, yet shading to the sky, faint and unreal. we skirt the pine-clad shores, chary of men, and know how bitterly winter kisses these lonely shores to fill yon row of beaked ice houses that creep up the hills. we are sailing due westward and the sun, yet two hours high, is blazoning a fiery glory on the sea that spreads and gleams like some broad, jeweled trail, to where the blue and distant shadow-land lifts its carven front aloft, leaving, as it gropes, shades of shadows beyond. * * * * * why do not those who are scarred in the world's battle and hurt by its hardness travel to these places of beauty and drown themselves in the utter joy of life? i asked this once sitting in a southern home. outside the spring of a georgia february was luring gold to the bushes and languor to the soft air. around me sat color in human flesh--brown that crimsoned readily; dim soft-yellow that escaped description; cream-like duskiness that shadowed to rich tints of autumn leaves. and yet a suggested journey in the world brought no response. "i should think you would like to travel," said the white one. but no, the thought of a journey seemed to depress them. did you ever see a "jim-crow" waiting-room? there are always exceptions, as at greensboro--but usually there is no heat in winter and no air in summer; with undisturbed loafers and train hands and broken, disreputable settees; to buy a ticket is torture; you stand and stand and wait and wait until every white person at the "other window" is waited on. then the tired agent yells across, because all the tickets and money are over there-- "what d'ye want? what? where?" the agent browbeats and contradicts you, hurries and confuses the ignorant, gives many persons the wrong change, compels some to purchase their tickets on the train at a higher price, and sends you and me out on the platform, burning with indignation and hatred! the "jim-crow" car is up next the baggage car and engine. it stops out beyond the covering in the rain or sun or dust. usually there is no step to help you climb on and often the car is a smoker cut in two and you must pass through the white smokers or else they pass through your part, with swagger and noise and stares. your compartment is a half or a quarter or an eighth of the oldest car in service on the road. unless it happens to be a thorough express, the plush is caked with dirt, the floor is grimy, and the windows dirty. an impertinent white newsboy occupies two seats at the end of the car and importunes you to the point of rage to buy cheap candy, coco-cola, and worthless, if not vulgar, books. he yells and swaggers, while a continued stream of white men saunters back and forth from the smoker to buy and hear. the white train crew from the baggage car uses the "jim-crow" to lounge in and perform their toilet. the conductor appropriates two seats for himself and his papers and yells gruffly for your tickets before the train has scarcely started. it is best not to ask him for information even in the gentlest tones. his information is for white persons chiefly. it is difficult to get lunch or clean water. lunch rooms either don't serve niggers or serve them at some dirty and ill-attended hole in the wall. as for toilet rooms,--don't! if you have to change cars, be wary of junctions which are usually without accommodation and filled with quarrelsome white persons who hate a "darky dressed up." you are apt to have the company of a sheriff and a couple of meek or sullen black prisoners on part of your way and dirty colored section hands will pour in toward night and drive you to the smallest corner. "no," said the little lady in the corner (she looked like an ivory cameo and her dress flowed on her like a caress), "we don't travel much." * * * * * pessimism is cowardice. the man who cannot frankly acknowledge the "jim-crow" car as a fact and yet live and hope is simply afraid either of himself or of the world. there is not in the world a more disgraceful denial of human brotherhood than the "jim-crow" car of the southern united states; but, too, just as true, there is nothing more beautiful in the universe than sunset and moonlight on montego bay in far jamaica. and both things are true and both belong to this our world, and neither can be denied. * * * * * the sun, prepared to cross that awful border which men call night and death, marshals his hosts. i seem to see the spears of mighty horsemen flash golden in the light; empurpled banners flame afar, and the low thunder of marching hosts thrills with the thunder of the sea. athwart his own path, screening a face of fire, he throws cloud masses, masking his trained guns. and then the miracle is done. the host passes with roar too vast for human ear and the sun is set, leaving the frightened moon and blinded stars. in the dusk the green-gold palms turn their star-like faces and stretch their fan-like fingers, lifting themselves proudly, lest any lordly leaf should know the taint of earth. out from the isle the serpent hill thrusts its great length around the bay, shouldering back the waters and the shadows. ghost rains sweep down, smearing his rugged sides, yet on he writhes, undulant with pine and palm, gleaming until his low, sharp head and lambent tongue, grown gray and pale and silver in the dying day, kisses the molten gold of the golden sea. then comes the moon. like fireflies nesting in the hand of god gleams the city, dim-swathed by fairy palms. a long, thin thumb, mist-mighty, points shadowy to the spanish main, while through the fingers foam the seven seas. above the calm and gold-green moon, beneath the wind-wet earth; and here, alone, my soul enchained, enchanted! * * * * * from such heights of holiness men turn to master the world. all the pettiness of life drops away and it becomes a great battle before the lord. his trumpet,--where does it sound and whither? i go. i saw montego bay at the beginning of the world war. the cry for service as high as heaven, as wide as human feeling, seemed filling the earth. what were petty slights, silly insults, paltry problems, beside this call to do and dare and die? we black folk offered our services to fight. what happened? most americans have forgotten the extraordinary series of events which worked the feelings of black america to fever heat. first was the refusal to accept negro volunteers for the army, except in the four black regiments already established. while the nation was combing the country for volunteers for the regular army, it would not let the american negro furnish even his proportionate quota of regular soldiers. this led to some grim bantering among negroes: "why do you want to volunteer?" asked many. "why should you fight for this country?" before we had chance to reply to this, there came the army draft bill and the proposal by vardaman and his ilk to except negroes. we protested to washington in various ways, and while we were insisting that colored men should be drafted just as other citizens, the bill went through with two little "jokers." first, it provided that negroes should be drafted, but trained in "separate" units; and, secondly, it somewhat ambiguously permitted men to be drafted for "labor." a wave of fear and unrest spread among negroes and while we were looking at both these provisions askance, suddenly we received the draft registration blank. it directed persons "of african descent" to "tear off the corner!" probably never before in the history of the united states has a portion of the citizens been so openly and crassly discriminated against by action of the general government. it was disheartening, and on top of it came the celebrated "german plots." it was alleged in various parts of the country with singular unanimity that germans were working among the negroes, and it was further intimated that this would make the negroes too dangerous an element to trust with guns. to us, of course, it looked as though the discovery and the proposition came from the same thinly-veiled sources. considering carefully this series of happenings the american negro sensed an approaching crisis and faced a puzzling dilemma. here was evidently preparing fertile ground for the spread of disloyalty and resentment among the black masses, as they were forced to choose apparently between forced labor or a "jim-crow" draft. manifestly when a minority group is thus segregated and forced out of the nation, they can in reason do but one thing--take advantage of the disadvantage. in this case we demanded colored officers for the colored troops. general wood was early approached and asked to admit suitable candidates to plattsburg. he refused. we thereupon pressed the government for a "separate" camp for the training of negro officers. not only did the war department hesitate at this request, but strong opposition arose among colored people themselves. they said we were going too far. "we will obey the law, but to ask for voluntary segregation is to insult ourselves." but strong, sober second thought came to our rescue. we said to our protesting brothers: "we face a condition, not a theory. there is not the slightest chance of our being admitted to white camps; therefore, it is either a case of a 'jim-crow' officers' training camp or no colored officers. of the two things no colored officers would be the greater calamity." thus we gradually made up our minds. but the war department still hesitated. it was besieged, and when it presented its final argument, "we have no place for such a camp," the trustees of howard university said: "take our campus." eventually twelve hundred colored cadets were assembled at fort des moines for officers' training. the city of des moines promptly protested, but it finally changed its mind. des moines never before had seen such a class of colored men. they rapidly became popular with all classes and many encomiums were passed upon their conduct. their commanding colonel pronounced their work first class and declared that they presented excellent material for officers. meantime, with one accord, the thought of the colored people turned toward colonel young, their highest officer in the regular army. charles young is a heroic figure. he is the typical soldier,--silent, uncomplaining, brave, and efficient! from his days at west point throughout his thirty years of service he has taken whatever task was assigned him and performed it efficiently; and there is no doubt but that the army has been almost merciless in the requirements which it has put upon this splendid officer. he came through all with flying colors. in haiti, in liberia, in western camps, in the sequoia forests of california, and finally with pershing in mexico,--in every case he triumphed. just at the time we were looking to the united states government to call him to head the colored officers' training at des moines, he was retired from the army, because of "high blood pressure!" there is no disputing army surgeons and their judgment in this case may be justified, but coming at the time it did, nearly every negro in the united states believed that the "high blood pressure" that retired colonel young was in the prejudiced heads of the southern oligarchy who were determined that no american negro should ever wear the stars of a general. to say that negroes of the united states were disheartened at the retirement of colonel young is to put it mildly,--but there was more trouble. the provision that negroes must be trained separately looked simple and was simple in places where there were large negro contingents, but in the north with solitary negroes drafted here and there we had some extraordinary developments. regiments appeared with one negro where the negro had to be separated like a pest and put into a house or even a village by himself while the commander frantically telegraphed to washington. small wonder that one poor fellow in ohio solved the problem by cutting his throat. the whole process of drafting negroes had to be held up until the government could find methods and places for assembling them. then came houston. in a moment the nation forgot the whole record of one of the most celebrated regiments in the united states army and its splendid service in the indian wars and in the philippines. it was the first regiment mobilized in the spanish-american war and it was the regiment that volunteered to a man to clean up the yellow fever camps when others hesitated. it was one of the regiments to which pershing said in december: "men, i am authorized by congress to tell you all that our people back in the states are mightily glad and proud at the way the soldiers have conducted themselves while in mexico, and i, general pershing, can say with pride that a finer body of men never stood under the flag of our nation than we find here tonight." the nation, also, forgot the deep resentment mixed with the pale ghost of fear which negro soldiers call up in the breasts of the white south. it is not so much that they fear that the negro will strike if he gets a chance, but rather that they assume with curious unanimity that he has _reason_ to strike, that any other persons in his circumstances or treated as he is would rebel. instead of seeking to relieve the cause of such a possible feeling, most of them strain every effort to bottle up the black man's resentment. is it inconceivable that now and then it bursts all bounds, as at brownsville and houston? so in the midst of this mental turmoil came houston and east st. louis. at houston black soldiers, goaded and insulted, suddenly went wild and "shot up" the town. at east st. louis white strikers on war work killed and mobbed negro workingmen, and as a result colored soldiers were hanged and imprisoned for life for killing whites at houston, while for killing negroes in east st. louis, white men were imprisoned, none for more than years, and colored men with them. * * * * * once upon a time i took a great journey in this land to three of the ends of our world and over seven thousand mighty miles. i saw the grim desert and the high ramparts of the rocky mountains. three days i flew from the silver beauty of seattle to the somber whirl of kansas city. three days i flew from the brute might of chicago to the air of the angels in california, scented with golden flowers, where the homes of men crouch low and loving on the good, broad earth, as though they were kissing her blossoms. three days i flew through the empire of texas, but all these shall be tales untold, for in all this journey i saw but one thing that lived and will live eternal in my soul,--the grand cañon. it is a sudden void in the bosom of the earth, down to its entrails--a wound where the dull titanic knife has turned and twisted in the hole, leaving its edges livid, scarred, jagged, and pulsing over the white, and red, and purple of its mighty flesh, while down below--down, down below, in black and severed vein, boils the dull and sullen flood of the colorado. it is awful. there can be nothing like it. it is the earth and sky gone stark and raving mad. the mountains up-twirled, disbodied and inverted, stand on their peaks and throw their bowels to the sky. their earth is air; their ether blood-red rock engreened. you stand upon their roots and fall into their pinnacles, a mighty mile. behold this mauve and purple mocking of time and space! see yonder peak! no human foot has trod it. into that blue shadow only the eye of god has looked. listen to the accents of that gorge which mutters: "before abraham was, i am." is yonder wall a hedge of black or is it the rampart between heaven and hell? i see greens,--is it moss or giant pines? i see specks that may be boulders. ever the winds sigh and drop into those sun-swept silences. ever the gorge lies motionless, unmoved, until i fear. it is a grim thing, unholy, terrible! it is human--some mighty drama unseen, unheard, is playing there its tragedies or mocking comedy, and the laugh of endless years is shrieking onward from peak to peak, unheard, unechoed, and unknown. one throws a rock into the abyss. it gives back no sound. it falls on silence--the voice of its thunders cannot reach so far. it is not--it cannot be a mere, inert, unfeeling, brute fact--its grandeur is too serene--its beauty too divine! it is not red, and blue, and green, but, ah! the shadows and the shades of all the world, glad colorings touched with a hesitant spiritual delicacy. what does it mean--what does it mean? tell me, black and boiling water! it is not real. it is but shadows. the shading of eternity. last night yonder tesselated palace was gloom--dark, brooding thought and sin, while hither rose the mountains of the sun, golden, blazing, ensanguined. it was a dream. this blue and brilliant morning shows all those burning peaks alight, while here, shapeless, mistful, brood the shadowed towers. i have been down into the entrails of earth--down, down by straight and staring cliffs--down by sounding waters and sun-strewn meadows; down by green pastures and still waters, by great, steep chasms--down by the gnarled and twisted fists of god to the deep, sad moan of the yellow river that did this thing of wonder,--a little winding river with death in its depth and a crown of glory in its flying hair. i have seen what eye of man was never meant to see. i have profaned the sanctuary. i have looked upon the dread disrobing of the night, and yet i live. ere i hid my head she was standing in her cavern halls, glowing coldly westward--her feet were blackness: her robes, empurpled, flowed mistily from shoulder down in formless folds of folds; her head, pine-crowned, was set with jeweled stars. i turned away and dreamed--the cañon,--the awful, its depths called; its heights shuddered. then suddenly i arose and looked. her robes were falling. at dim-dawn they hung purplish-green and black. slowly she stripped them from her gaunt and shapely limbs--her cold, gray garments shot with shadows stood revealed. down dropped the black-blue robes, gray-pearled and slipped, leaving a filmy, silken, misty thing, and underneath i glimpsed her limbs of utter light. * * * * * my god! for what am i thankful this night? for nothing. for nothing but the most commonplace of commonplaces; a table of gentlewomen and gentlemen--soft-spoken, sweet-tempered, full of human sympathy, who made me, a stranger, one of them. ours was a fellowship of common books, common knowledge, mighty aims. we could laugh and joke and think as friends--and the thing--the hateful, murderous, dirty thing which in american we call "nigger-hatred" was not only not there--it could not even be understood. it was a curious monstrosity at which civilized folk laughed or looked puzzled. there was no elegant and elaborate condescension of--"we once had a colored servant"--"my father was an abolitionist"--"i've always been interested in _your people_"--there was only the community of kindred souls, the delicate reverence for the thought that led, the quick deference to the guest. you left in quiet regret, knowing that they were not discussing you behind your back with lies and license. god! it was simply human decency and i had to be thankful for it because i am an american negro, and white america, with saving exceptions, is cruel to everything that has black blood--and this was paris, in the years of salvation, . fellow blacks, we must join the democracy of europe. * * * * * toul! dim through the deepening dark of early afternoon, i saw its towers gloom dusky toward the murk of heaven. we wound in misty roads and dropped upon the city through the great throats of its walled bastions. there lay france--a strange, unknown, unfamiliar france. the city was dispossessed. through its streets--its narrow, winding streets, old and low and dark, carven and quaint,--poured thousands upon thousands of strange feet of khaki-clad foreigners, and the echoes threw back awkward syllables that were never french. here was france beaten to her knees yet fighting as never nation fought before, calling in her death agony across the seas till her help came and with all its strut and careless braggadocio saved the worthiest nation of the world from the wickedest fate ever plotted by fools. * * * * * tim brimm was playing by the town-pump. tim brimm and the bugles of harlem blared in the little streets of maron in far lorraine. the tiny streets were seas of mud. dank mist and rain sifted through the cold air above the blue moselle. soldiers--soldiers everywhere--black soldiers, boys of washington, alabama, philadelphia, mississippi. wild and sweet and wooing leapt the strains upon the air. french children gazed in wonder--women left their washing. up in the window stood a black major, a captain, a teacher, and i--with tears behind our smiling eyes. tim brimm was playing by the town-pump. the audience was framed in smoke. it rose ghost-like out of memories--bitter memories of the officer near dead of pneumonia whose pain was lighted up by the nurses waiting to know whether he must be "jim-crowed" with privates or not. memories of that great last morning when the thunders of hell called the ninety-second to its last drive. memories of bitter humiliations, determined triumphs, great victories, and bugle-calls that sounded from earth to heaven. like memories framed in the breath of god, my audience peered in upon me--good, brown faces with great, kind, beautiful eyes--black soldiers of america rescuing beloved france--and the words came in praise and benediction there in the "y," with its little stock of cigarettes and candies and its rusty wood stove. "_alors_," said madame, "_quatre sont morts_"--four dead--four tall, strong sons dead for france--sons like the sweet and blue-eyed daughter who was hiding her brave smile in the dusk. it was a tiny stone house whose front window lipped the passing sidewalk where ever tramped the feet of black soldiers marching home. there was a cavernous wardrobe, a great fireplace invaded by a new and jaunty iron stove. vast, thick piles of bedding rose in yonder corner. without was the crowded kitchen and up a half-stair was our bedroom that gave upon a tiny court with arched stone staircase and one green tree. we were a touching family party held together by a great sorrow and a great joy. how we laughed over the salad that got brandy instead of vinegar--how we ate the golden pile of fried potatoes and how we pored over the post-card from the lieutenant of the senegalese--dear little vale of crushed and risen france, in the day when negroes went "over the top" at pont-à-mousson. * * * * * paris, paris by purple façade of the opera, the crowd on the boulevard des italiens and the great swing of the champs elysées. but not the paris the world knows. paris with its soul cut to the core--feverish, crowded, nervous, hurried; full of uniforms and mourning bands, with cafés closed at : --no sugar, scarce bread, and tears so interwined with joy that there is scant difference. paris has been dreaming a nightmare, and though she awakes, the grim terror is upon her--it lies on the sand-closed art treasures of the louvre. only the flowers are there, always the flowers, the roses of england and the lilies of france. * * * * * new york! behind the liberty that faces free france rise the white cliffs of manhattan, tier on tier, with a curving pinnacle, towers square and twin, a giant inkwell daintily stoppered, an ancient pyramid enthroned; beneath, low ramparts wide and mighty; while above, faint-limned against the turbulent sky, looms the vast grace of that cathedral of the purchased and purchasing poor, topping the world and pointing higher. yonder the gray cobwebs of the brooklyn bridges leap the sea, and here creep the argosies from all earth's ends. we move to this swift home on dun and swelling waters and hear as we come the heartbeats of the new world. * * * * * new york and night from the brooklyn bridge: the bees and fireflies flit and twinkle in their vast hives; curved clouds like the breath of gods hover between the towers and the moon. one hears the hiss of lightnings, the deep thunder of human things, and a fevered breathing as of some attendant and invincible powers. the glow of burning millions melts outward into dim and fairy outlines until afar the liquid music born of rushing crowds drips like a benediction on the sea. * * * * * new york and morning: the sun is kissing the timid dew in central park, and from the fountain of plenty one looks along that world street, fifth avenue, and walks toward town. the earth life and curves graciously down from the older mansions of princes to the newer shops of luxury. egypt and abyssinia, paris and damascus, london and india caress you by the way; churches stand aloof while the shops swell to emporiums. but all this is nothing. everything is mankind. humanity stands and flies and walks and rolls about--the poor, the priceless, the world-known and the forgotten; child and grandfather, king and leman--the pageant of the world goes by, set in a frame of stone and jewels, clothed in scarlet and rags. princes street and the elysian fields, the strand and the ringstrasse--these are the ways of the world today. * * * * * new york and twilight, there where the sixth avenue "l" rises and leaps above the tenements into the free air at th street. it circles like a bird with heaven and st. john's above and earth and the sweet green and gold of the park beneath. beyond lie all the blue mists and mysteries of distance; beneath, the city rushes and crawls. behind echo all the roar and war and care and maze of the wide city set in its sullen darkening walls, flashing weird and crimson farewells. out at the sides the stars twinkle. * * * * * again new york and night and harlem. a dark city of fifty thousand rises like magic from the earth. gone is the white world, the pale lips, the lank hair; gone is the west and north--the east and south is here triumphant. the street is crowd and leisure and laughter. everywhere black eyes, black and brown, and frizzled hair curled and sleek, and skins that riot with luscious color and deep, burning blood. humanity is packed dense in high piles of close-knit homes that lie in layers above gray shops of food and clothes and drink, with here and there a moving-picture show. orators declaim on the corners, lovers lark in the streets, gamblers glide by the saloons, workers lounge wearily home. children scream and run and frolic, and all is good and human and beautiful and ugly and evil, even as life is elsewhere. * * * * * and then--the veil. it drops as drops the night on southern seas--vast, sudden, unanswering. there is hate behind it, and cruelty and tears. as one peers through its intricate, unfathomable pattern of ancient, old, old design, one sees blood and guilt and misunderstanding. and yet it hangs there, this veil, between then and now, between pale and colored and black and white--between you and me. surely it is a thought-thing, tenuous, intangible; yet just as surely is it true and terrible and not in our little day may you and i lift it. we may feverishly unravel its edges and even climb slow with giant shears to where its ringed and gilded top nestles close to the throne of god. but as we work and climb we shall see through streaming eyes and hear with aching ears, lynching and murder, cheating and despising, degrading and lying, so flashed and fleshed through this vast hanging darkness that the doer never sees the deed and the victim knows not the victor and each hates all in wild and bitter ignorance. listen, o isles, to these voices from within the veil, for they portray the most human hurt of the twentieth cycle of that poor jesus who was called the christ! * * * * * there is something in the nature of beauty that demands an end. ugliness may be indefinite. it may trail off into gray endlessness. but beauty must be complete--whether it be a field of poppies or a great life,--it must end, and the end is part and triumph of the beauty. i know there are those who envisage a beauty eternal. but i cannot. i can dream of great and never-ending processions of beautiful things and visions and acts. but each must be complete or it cannot for me exist. on the other hand, ugliness to me is eternal, not in the essence but in its incompleteness; but its eternity does not daunt me, for its eternal unfulfilment is a cause of joy. there is in it nothing new or unexpected; it is the old evil stretching out and ever seeking the end it cannot find; it may coil and writhe and recur in endless battle to days without end, but it is the same human ill and bitter hurt. but beauty is fulfilment. it satisfies. it is always new and strange. it is the reasonable thing. its end is death--the sweet silence of perfection, the calm and balance of utter music. therein is the triumph of beauty. so strong is the spell of beauty that there are those who, contradicting their own knowledge and experience, try to say that all is beauty. they are called optimists, and they lie. all is not beauty. ugliness and hate and ill are here with all their contradiction and illogic; they will always be here--perhaps, god send, with lessened volume and force, but here and eternal, while beauty triumphs in its great completion--death. we cannot conjure the end of all ugliness in eternal beauty, for beauty by its very being and definition has in each definition its ends and limits; but while beauty lies implicit and revealed in its end, ugliness writhes on in darkness forever. so the ugliness of continual birth fulfils itself and conquers gloriously only in the beautiful end, death. * * * * * at last to us all comes happiness, there in the court of peace, where the dead lie so still and calm and good. if we were not dead we would lie and listen to the flowers grow. we would hear the birds sing and see how the rain rises and blushes and burns and pales and dies in beauty. we would see spring, summer, and the red riot of autumn, and then in winter, beneath the soft white snow, sleep and dream of dreams. but we know that being dead, our happiness is a fine and finished thing and that ten, a hundred, and a thousand years, we shall lie at rest, unhurt in the court of peace. _the prayers of god_ name of god's name! red murder reigns; all hell is loose; on gold autumnal air walk grinning devils, barbed and hoofed; while high on hills of hate, black-blossomed, crimson-sky'd, thou sittest, dumb. father almighty! this earth is mad! palsied, our cunning hands; rotten, our gold; our argosies reel and stagger over empty seas; all the long aisles of thy great temples, god, stink with the entrails of our souls. and thou art dumb. above the thunder of thy thunders, lord, lightening thy lightnings, rings and roars the dark damnation of this hell of war. red piles the pulp of hearts and heads and little children's hands. allah! elohim! very god of god! death is here! dead are the living; deep--dead the dead. dying are earth's unborn-- the babes' wide eyes of genius and of joy, poems and prayers, sun-glows and earth-songs, great-pictured dreams, enmarbled phantasies, high hymning heavens--all in this dread night writhe and shriek and choke and die this long ghost-night-- while thou art dumb. have mercy! have mercy upon us, miserable sinners! stand forth, unveil thy face, pour down the light that seethes above thy throne, and blaze this devil's dance to darkness! hear! speak! in christ's great name-- i hear! forgive me, god! above the thunder i hearkened; beneath the silence, now,-- i hear! (wait, god, a little space. it is so strange to talk with thee-- alone!) this gold? i took it. is it thine? forgive; i did not know. blood? is it wet with blood? 'tis from my brother's hands. (i know; his hands are mine.) it flowed for thee, o lord. war? not so; not war-- dominion, lord, and over black, not white; black, brown, and fawn, and not thy chosen brood, o god, we murdered. to build thy kingdom, to drape our wives and little ones, and set their souls a-glitter-- for this we killed these lesser breeds and civilized their dead, raping red rubber, diamonds, cocoa, gold! for this, too, once, and in thy name, i lynched a nigger-- (he raved and writhed, i heard him cry, i felt the life-light leap and lie, i saw him crackle there, on high, i watched him wither!) _thou?_ _thee?_ _i lynched thee?_ awake me, god! i sleep! what was that awful word thou saidst? that black and riven thing--was it thee? that gasp--was it thine? this pain--is it thine? are, then, these bullets piercing thee? have all the wars of all the world, down all dim time, drawn blood from thee? have all the lies and thefts and hates-- is this thy crucifixion, god, and not that funny, little cross, with vinegar and thorns? is this thy kingdom here, not there, this stone and stucco drift of dreams? help! i sense that low and awful cry-- who cries? who weeps? with silent sob that rends and tears-- can god sob? who prays? i hear strong prayers throng by, like mighty winds on dusky moors-- can god pray? prayest thou, lord, and to me? _thou_ needest me? thou _needest_ me? thou needest _me_? poor, wounded soul! of this i never dreamed. i thought-- _courage, god, i come!_ x the comet he stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down broadway. few noticed him. few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. he was outside the world--"nothing!" as he said bitterly. bits of the words of the walkers came to him. "the comet?" "the comet----" everybody was talking of it. even the president, as he entered, smiled patronizingly at him, and asked: "well, jim, are you scared?" "no," said the messenger shortly. "i thought we'd journeyed through the comet's tail once," broke in the junior clerk affably. "oh, that was halley's," said the president; "this is a new comet, quite a stranger, they say--wonderful, wonderful! i saw it last night. oh, by the way, jim," turning again to the messenger, "i want you to go down into the lower vaults today." the messenger followed the president silently. of course, they wanted _him_ to go down to the lower vaults. it was too dangerous for more valuable men. he smiled grimly and listened. "everything of value has been moved out since the water began to seep in," said the president; "but we miss two volumes of old records. suppose you nose around down there,--it isn't very pleasant, i suppose." "not very," said the messenger, as he walked out. "well, jim, the tail of the new comet hits us at noon this time," said the vault clerk, as he passed over the keys; but the messenger passed silently down the stairs. down he went beneath broadway, where the dim light filtered through the feet of hurrying men; down to the dark basement beneath; down into the blackness and silence beneath that lowest cavern. here with his dark lantern he groped in the bowels of the earth, under the world. he drew a long breath as he threw back the last great iron door and stepped into the fetid slime within. here at last was peace, and he groped moodily forward. a great rat leaped past him and cobwebs crept across his face. he felt carefully around the room, shelf by shelf, on the muddied floor, and in crevice and corner. nothing. then he went back to the far end, where somehow the wall felt different. he sounded and pushed and pried. nothing. he started away. then something brought him back. he was sounding and working again when suddenly the whole black wall swung as on mighty hinges, and blackness yawned beyond. he peered in; it was evidently a secret vault--some hiding place of the old bank unknown in newer times. he entered hesitatingly. it was a long, narrow room with shelves, and at the far end, an old iron chest. on a high shelf lay the two missing volumes of records, and others. he put them carefully aside and stepped to the chest. it was old, strong, and rusty. he looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on the hinges. they were deeply incrusted with rust. looking about, he found a bit of iron and began to pry. the rust had eaten a hundred years, and it had gone deep. slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and with a last, low groan lay bare its treasure--and he saw the dull sheen of gold! "boom!" a low, grinding, reverberating crash struck upon his ear. he started up and looked about. all was black and still. he groped for his light and swung it about him. then he knew! the great stone door had swung to. he forgot the gold and looked death squarely in the face. then with a sigh he went methodically to work. the cold sweat stood on his forehead; but he searched, pounded, pushed, and worked until after what seemed endless hours his hand struck a cold bit of metal and the great door swung again harshly on its hinges, and then, striking against something soft and heavy, stopped. he had just room to squeeze through. there lay the body of the vault clerk, cold and stiff. he stared at it, and then felt sick and nauseated. the air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong, peculiar odor. he stepped forward, clutched at the air, and fell fainting across the corpse. he awoke with a sense of horror, leaped from the body, and groped up the stairs, calling to the guard. the watchman sat as if asleep, with the gate swinging free. with one glance at him the messenger hurried up to the sub-vault. in vain he called to the guards. his voice echoed and re-echoed weirdly. up into the great basement he rushed. here another guard lay prostrate on his face, cold and still. a fear arose in the messenger's heart. he dashed up to the cellar floor, up into the bank. the stillness of death lay everywhere and everywhere bowed, bent, and stretched the silent forms of men. the messenger paused and glanced about. he was not a man easily moved; but the sight was appalling! "robbery and murder," he whispered slowly to himself as he saw the twisted, oozing mouth of the president where he lay half-buried on his desk. then a new thought seized him: if they found him here alone--with all this money and all these dead men--what would his life be worth? he glanced about, tiptoed cautiously to a side door, and again looked behind. quietly he turned the latch and stepped out into wall street. how silent the street was! not a soul was stirring, and yet it was high-noon--wall street? broadway? he glanced almost wildly up and down, then across the street, and as he looked, a sickening horror froze in his limbs. with a choking cry of utter fright he lunged, leaned giddily against the cold building, and stared helplessly at the sight. in the great stone doorway a hundred men and women and children lay crushed and twisted and jammed, forced into that great, gaping doorway like refuse in a can--as if in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they had rushed and ground themselves to death. slowly the messenger crept along the walls, wetting his parched mouth and trying to comprehend, stilling the tremor in his limbs and the rising terror in his heart. he met a business man, silk-hatted and frock-coated, who had crept, too, along that smooth wall and stood now stone dead with wonder written on his lips. the messenger turned his eyes hastily away and sought the curb. a woman leaned wearily against the signpost, her head bowed motionless on her lace and silken bosom. before her stood a street car, silent, and within--but the messenger but glanced and hurried on. a grimy newsboy sat in the gutter with the "last edition" in his uplifted hand: "danger!" screamed its black headlines. "warnings wired around the world. the comet's tail sweeps past us at noon. deadly gases expected. close doors and windows. seek the cellar." the messenger read and staggered on. far out from a window above, a girl lay with gasping face and sleevelets on her arms. on a store step sat a little, sweet-faced girl looking upward toward the skies, and in the carriage by her lay--but the messenger looked no longer. the cords gave way--the terror burst in his veins, and with one great, gasping cry he sprang desperately forward and ran,--ran as only the frightened run, shrieking and fighting the air until with one last wail of pain he sank on the grass of madison square and lay prone and still. when he rose, he gave no glance at the still and silent forms on the benches, but, going to a fountain, bathed his face; then hiding himself in a corner away from the drama of death, he quietly gripped himself and thought the thing through: the comet had swept the earth and this was the end. was everybody dead? he must search and see. he knew that he must steady himself and keep calm, or he would go insane. first he must go to a restaurant. he walked up fifth avenue to a famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous, ghost-haunted halls. he beat back the nausea, and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the street and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights. "yesterday, they would not have served me," he whispered, as he forced the food down. then he started up the street,--looking, peering, telephoning, ringing alarms; silent, silent all. was nobody--nobody--he dared not think the thought and hurried on. suddenly he stopped still. he had forgotten. my god! how could he have forgotten? he must rush to the subway--then he almost laughed. no--a car; if he could find a ford. he saw one. gently he lifted off its burden, and took his place on the seat. he tested the throttle. there was gas. he glided off, shivering, and drove up the street. everywhere stood, leaned, lounged, and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence. on he ran past an automobile, wrecked and overturned; past another, filled with a gay party whose smiles yet lingered on their death-struck lips; on past crowds and groups of cars, pausing by dead policemen; at nd street he had to detour to park avenue to avoid the dead congestion. he came back on fifth avenue at th and flew past the plaza and by the park with its hushed babies and silent throng, until as he was rushing past nd street he heard a sharp cry, and saw a living form leaning wildly out an upper window. he gasped. the human voice sounded in his ears like the voice of god. "hello--hello--help, in god's name!" wailed the woman. "there's a dead girl in here and a man and--and see yonder dead men lying in the street and dead horses--for the love of god go and bring the officers----" and the words trailed off into hysterical tears. he wheeled the car in a sudden circle, running over the still body of a child and leaping on the curb. then he rushed up the steps and tried the door and rang violently. there was a long pause, but at last the heavy door swung back. they stared a moment in silence. she had not noticed before that he was a negro. he had not thought of her as white. she was a woman of perhaps twenty-five--rarely beautiful and richly gowned, with darkly-golden hair, and jewels. yesterday, he thought with bitterness, she would scarcely have looked at him twice. he would have been dirt beneath her silken feet. she stared at him. of all the sorts of men she had pictured as coming to her rescue she had not dreamed of one like him. not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her thought. yet as she looked at him curiously he seemed quite commonplace and usual. he was a tall, dark workingman of the better class, with a sensitive face trained to stolidity and a poor man's clothes and hands. his face was soft and slow and his manner at once cold and nervous, like fires long banked, but not out. so a moment each paused and gauged the other; then the thought of the dead world without rushed in and they started toward each other. "what has happened?" she cried. "tell me! nothing stirs. all is silence! i see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of god,--and see----" she dragged him through great, silken hangings to where, beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a little french maid lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay prone in his livery. the tears streamed down the woman's cheeks and she clung to his arm until the perfume of her breath swept his face and he felt the tremors racing through her body. "i had been shut up in my dark room developing pictures of the comet which i took last night; when i came out--i saw the dead! "what has happened?" she cried again. he answered slowly: "something--comet or devil--swept across the earth this morning and--many are dead!" "many? very many?" "i have searched and i have seen no other living soul but you." she gasped and they stared at each other. "my--father!" she whispered. "where is he?" "he started for the office." "where is it?" "in the metropolitan tower." "leave a note for him here and come." then he stopped. "no," he said firmly--"first, we must go--to harlem." "harlem!" she cried. then she understood. she tapped her foot at first impatiently. she looked back and shuddered. then she came resolutely down the steps. "there's a swifter car in the garage in the court," she said. "i don't know how to drive it," he said. "i do," she answered. in ten minutes they were flying to harlem on the wind. the stutz rose and raced like an airplane. they took the turn at th street on two wheels and slipped with a shriek into th. he was gone but a moment. then he returned, and his face was gray. she did not look, but said: "you have lost--somebody?" "i have lost--everybody," he said, simply--"unless----" he ran back and was gone several minutes--hours they seemed to her. "everybody," he said, and he walked slowly back with something film-like in his hand which he stuffed into his pocket. "i'm afraid i was selfish," he said. but already the car was moving toward the park among the dark and lined dead of harlem--the brown, still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the silence--the wild and haunting silence. out of the park, and down fifth avenue they whirled. in and out among the dead they slipped and quivered, needing no sound of bell or horn, until the great, square metropolitan tower hove in sight. gently he laid the dead elevator boy aside; the car shot upward. the door of the office stood open. on the threshold lay the stenographer, and, staring at her, sat the dead clerk. the inner office was empty, but a note lay on the desk, folded and addressed but unsent: dear daughter: i've gone for a hundred mile spin in fred's new mercedes. shall not be back before dinner. i'll bring fred with me. j.b.h. "come," she cried nervously. "we must search the city." up and down, over and across, back again--on went that ghostly search. everywhere was silence and death--death and silence! they hunted from madison square to spuyten duyvel; they rushed across the williamsburg bridge; they swept over brooklyn; from the battery and morningside heights they scanned the river. silence, silence everywhere, and no human sign. haggard and bedraggled they puffed a third time slowly down broadway, under the broiling sun, and at last stopped. he sniffed the air. an odor--a smell--and with the shifting breeze a sickening stench filled their nostrils and brought its awful warning. the girl settled back helplessly in her seat. "what can we do?" she cried. it was his turn now to take the lead, and he did it quickly. "the long distance telephone--the telegraph and the cable--night rockets and then--flight!" she looked at him now with strength and confidence. he did not look like men, as she had always pictured men; but he acted like one and she was content. in fifteen minutes they were at the central telephone exchange. as they came to the door he stepped quickly before her and pressed her gently back as he closed it. she heard him moving to and fro, and knew his burdens--the poor, little burdens he bore. when she entered, he was alone in the room. the grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in cryptic, sphinx-like immobility. she seated herself on a stool and donned the bright earpiece. she looked at the mouthpiece. she had never looked at one so closely before. it was wide and black, pimpled with usage; inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves. it looked--she beat back the thought--but it looked,--it persisted in looking like--she turned her head and found herself alone. one moment she was terrified; then she thanked him silently for his delicacy and turned resolutely, with a quick intaking of breath. "hello!" she called in low tones. she was calling to the world. the world _must_ answer. would the world _answer_? was the world---- silence! she had spoken too low. "hello!" she cried, full-voiced. she listened. silence! her heart beat quickly. she cried in clear, distinct, loud tones: "hello--hello--hello!" what was that whirring? surely--no--was it the click of a receiver? she bent close, she moved the pegs in the holes, and called and called, until her voice rose almost to a shriek, and her heart hammered. it was as if she had heard the last flicker of creation, and the evil was silence. her voice dropped to a sob. she sat stupidly staring into the black and sarcastic mouthpiece, and the thought came again. hope lay dead within her. yes, the cable and the rockets remained; but the world--she could not frame the thought or say the word. it was too mighty--too terrible! she turned toward the door with a new fear in her heart. for the first time she seemed to realize that she was alone in the world with a stranger, with something more than a stranger,--with a man alien in blood and culture--unknown, perhaps unknowable. it was awful! she must escape--she must fly; he must not see her again. who knew what awful thoughts-- she gathered her silken skirts deftly about her young, smooth limbs--listened, and glided into a sidehall. a moment she shrank back: the hall lay filled with dead women; then she leaped to the door and tore at it, with bleeding fingers, until it swung wide. she looked out. he was standing at the top of the alley,--silhouetted, tall and black, motionless. was he looking at her or away? she did not know--she did not care. she simply leaped and ran--ran until she found herself alone amid the dead and the tall ramparts of towering buildings. she stopped. she was alone. alone! alone on the streets--alone in the city--perhaps alone in the world! there crept in upon her the sense of deception--of creeping hands behind her back--of silent, moving things she could not see,--of voices hushed in fearsome conspiracy. she looked behind and sideways, started at strange sounds and heard still stranger, until every nerve within her stood sharp and quivering, stretched to scream at the barest touch. she whirled and flew back, whimpering like a child, until she found that narrow alley again and the dark, silent figure silhouetted at the top. she stopped and rested; then she walked silently toward him, looked at him timidly; but he said nothing as he handed her into the car. her voice caught as she whispered: "not--that." and he answered slowly: "no--not that!" they climbed into the car. she bent forward on the wheel and sobbed, with great, dry, quivering sobs, as they flew toward the cable office on the east side, leaving the world of wealth and prosperity for the world of poverty and work. in the world behind them were death and silence, grave and grim, almost cynical, but always decent; here it was hideous. it clothed itself in every ghastly form of terror, struggle, hate, and suffering. it lay wreathed in crime and squalor, greed and lust. only in its dread and awful silence was it like to death everywhere. yet as the two, flying and alone, looked upon the horror of the world, slowly, gradually, the sense of all-enveloping death deserted them. they seemed to move in a world silent and asleep,--not dead. they moved in quiet reverence, lest somehow they wake these sleeping forms who had, at last, found peace. they moved in some solemn, world-wide _friedhof_, above which some mighty arm had waved its magic wand. all nature slept until--until, and quick with the same startling thought, they looked into each other's eyes--he, ashen, and she, crimson, with unspoken thought. to both, the vision of a mighty beauty--of vast, unspoken things, swelled in their souls; but they put it away. great, dark coils of wire came up from the earth and down from the sun and entered this low lair of witchery. the gathered lightnings of the world centered here, binding with beams of light the ends of the earth. the doors gaped on the gloom within. he paused on the threshold. "do you know the code?" she asked. "i know the call for help--we used it formerly at the bank." she hardly heard. she heard the lapping of the waters far below,--the dark and restless waters--the cold and luring waters, as they called. he stepped within. slowly she walked to the wall, where the water called below, and stood and waited. long she waited, and he did not come. then with a start she saw him, too, standing beside the black waters. slowly he removed his coat and stood there silently. she walked quickly to him and laid her hand on his arm. he did not start or look. the waters lapped on in luring, deadly rhythm. he pointed down to the waters, and said quietly: "the world lies beneath the waters now--may i go?" she looked into his stricken, tired face, and a great pity surged within her heart. she answered in a voice clear and calm, "no." upward they turned toward life again, and he seized the wheel. the world was darkening to twilight, and a great, gray pall was falling mercifully and gently on the sleeping dead. the ghastly glare of reality seemed replaced with the dream of some vast romance. the girl lay silently back, as the motor whizzed along, and looked half-consciously for the elf-queen to wave life into this dead world again. she forgot to wonder at the quickness with which he had learned to drive her car. it seemed natural. and then as they whirled and swung into madison square and at the door of the metropolitan tower she gave a low cry, and her eyes were great! perhaps she had seen the elf-queen? the man led her to the elevator of the tower and deftly they ascended. in her father's office they gathered rugs and chairs, and he wrote a note and laid it on the desk; then they ascended to the roof and he made her comfortable. for a while she rested and sank to dreamy somnolence, watching the worlds above and wondering. below lay the dark shadows of the city and afar was the shining of the sea. she glanced at him timidly as he set food before her and took a shawl and wound her in it, touching her reverently, yet tenderly. she looked up at him with thankfulness in her eyes, eating what he served. he watched the city. she watched him. he seemed very human,--very near now. "have you had to work hard?" she asked softly. "always," he said. "i have always been idle," she said. "i was rich." "i was poor," he almost echoed. "the rich and the poor are met together," she began, and he finished: "the lord is the maker of them all." "yes," she said slowly; "and how foolish our human distinctions seem--now," looking down to the great dead city stretched below, swimming in unlightened shadows. "yes--i was not--human, yesterday," he said. she looked at him. "and your people were not my people," she said; "but today----" she paused. he was a man,--no more; but he was in some larger sense a gentleman,--sensitive, kindly, chivalrous, everything save his hands and--his face. yet yesterday---- "death, the leveler!" he muttered. "and the revealer," she whispered gently, rising to her feet with great eyes. he turned away, and after fumbling a moment sent a rocket into the darkening air. it arose, shrieked, and flew up, a slim path of light, and scattering its stars abroad, dropped on the city below. she scarcely noticed it. a vision of the world had risen before her. slowly the mighty prophecy of her destiny overwhelmed her. above the dead past hovered the angel of annunciation. she was no mere woman. she was neither high nor low, white nor black, rich nor poor. she was primal woman; mighty mother of all men to come and bride of life. she looked upon the man beside her and forgot all else but his manhood, his strong, vigorous manhood--his sorrow and sacrifice. she saw him glorified. he was no longer a thing apart, a creature below, a strange outcast of another clime and blood, but her brother humanity incarnate, son of god and great all-father of the race to be. he did not glimpse the glory in her eyes, but stood looking outward toward the sea and sending rocket after rocket into the unanswering darkness. dark-purple clouds lay banked and billowed in the west. behind them and all around, the heavens glowed in dim, weird radiance that suffused the darkening world and made almost a minor music. suddenly, as though gathered back in some vast hand, the great cloud-curtain fell away. low on the horizon lay a long, white star--mystic, wonderful! and from it fled upward to the pole, like some wan bridal veil, a pale, wide sheet of flame that lighted all the world and dimmed the stars. in fascinated silence the man gazed at the heavens and dropped his rockets to the floor. memories of memories stirred to life in the dead recesses of his mind. the shackles seemed to rattle and fall from his soul. up from the crass and crushing and cringing of his caste leaped the lone majesty of kings long dead. he arose within the shadows, tall, straight, and stern, with power in his eyes and ghostly scepters hovering to his grasp. it was as though some mighty pharaoh lived again, or curled assyrian lord. he turned and looked upon the lady, and found her gazing straight at him. silently, immovably, they saw each other face to face--eye to eye. their souls lay naked to the night. it was not lust; it was not love--it was some vaster, mightier thing that needed neither touch of body nor thrill of soul. it was a thought divine, splendid. slowly, noiselessly, they moved toward each other--the heavens above, the seas around, the city grim and dead below. he loomed from out the velvet shadows vast and dark. pearl-white and slender, she shone beneath the stars. she stretched her jeweled hands abroad. he lifted up his mighty arms, and they cried each to the other, almost with one voice, "the world is dead." "long live the----" "honk! honk!" hoarse and sharp the cry of a motor drifted clearly up from the silence below. they started backward with a cry and gazed upon each other with eyes that faltered and fell, with blood that boiled. "honk! honk! honk! honk!" came the mad cry again, and almost from their feet a rocket blazed into the air and scattered its stars upon them. she covered her eyes with her hands, and her shoulders heaved. he dropped and bowed, groped blindly on his knees about the floor. a blue flame spluttered lazily after an age, and she heard the scream of an answering rocket as it flew. then they stood still as death, looking to opposite ends of the earth. "clang--crash--clang!" the roar and ring of swift elevators shooting upward from below made the great tower tremble. a murmur and babel of voices swept in upon the night. all over the once dead city the lights blinked, flickered, and flamed; and then with a sudden clanging of doors the entrance to the platform was filled with men, and one with white and flying hair rushed to the girl and lifted her to his breast. "my daughter!" he sobbed. behind him hurried a younger, comelier man, carefully clad in motor costume, who bent above the girl with passionate solicitude and gazed into her staring eyes until they narrowed and dropped and her face flushed deeper and deeper crimson. "julia," he whispered; "my darling, i thought you were gone forever." she looked up at him with strange, searching eyes. "fred," she murmured, almost vaguely, "is the world--gone?" "only new york," he answered; "it is terrible--awful! you know,--but you, how did you escape--how have you endured this horror? are you well? unharmed?" "unharmed!" she said. "and this man here?" he asked, encircling her drooping form with one arm and turning toward the negro. suddenly he stiffened and his hand flew to his hip. "why!" he snarled. "it's--a--nigger--julia! has he--has he dared----" she lifted her head and looked at her late companion curiously and then dropped her eyes with a sigh. "he has dared--all, to rescue me," she said quietly, "and i--thank him--much." but she did not look at him again. as the couple turned away, the father drew a roll of bills from his pockets. "here, my good fellow," he said, thrusting the money into the man's hands, "take that,--what's your name?" "jim davis," came the answer, hollow-voiced. "well, jim, i thank you. i've always liked your people. if you ever want a job, call on me." and they were gone. the crowd poured up and out of the elevators, talking and whispering. "who was it?" "are they alive?" "how many?" "two!" "who was saved?" "a white girl and a nigger--there she goes." "a nigger? where is he? let's lynch the damned----" "shut up--he's all right-he saved her." "saved hell! he had no business----" "here he comes." into the glare of the electric lights the colored man moved slowly, with the eyes of those that walk and sleep. "well, what do you think of that?" cried a bystander; "of all new york, just a white girl and a nigger!" the colored man heard nothing. he stood silently beneath the glare of the light, gazing at the money in his hand and shrinking as he gazed; slowly he put his other hand into his pocket and brought out a baby's filmy cap, and gazed again. a woman mounted to the platform and looked about, shading her eyes. she was brown, small, and toil-worn, and in one arm lay the corpse of a dark baby. the crowd parted and her eyes fell on the colored man; with a cry she tottered toward him. "jim!" he whirled and, with a sob of joy, caught her in his arms. _a hymn to the peoples_ o truce of god! and primal meeting of the sons of man, foreshadowing the union of the world! from all the ends of earth we come! old night, the elder sister of the day, mother of dawn in the golden east, meets in the misty twilight with her brood, pale and black, tawny, red and brown, the mighty human rainbow of the world, spanning its wilderness of storm. softly in sympathy the sunlight falls, rare is the radiance of the moon; and on the darkest midnight blaze the stars-- the far-flown shadows of whose brilliance drop like a dream on the dim shores of time, forecasting days that are to these as day to night. so sit we all as one. so, gloomed in tall and stone-swathed groves, the buddha walks with christ! and al-koran and bible both be holy! almighty word! in this thine awful sanctuary, first and flame-haunted city of the widened world, assoil us, lord of lands and seas! we are but weak and wayward men, distraught alike with hatred and vainglory; prone to despise the soul that breathes within-- high visioned hordes that lie and steal and kill, sinning the sin each separate heart disclaims, clambering upon our riven, writhing selves, besieging heaven by trampling men to hell! we be blood-guilty! lo, our hands be red! not one may blame the other in this sin! but here--here in the white silence of the dawn, before the womb of time, with bowed hearts all flame and shame, we face the birth-pangs of a world: we hear the stifled cry of nations all but born-- the wail of women ravished of their stunted brood! we see the nakedness of toil, the poverty of wealth, we know the anarchy of empire, and doleful death of life! and hearing, seeing, knowing all, we cry: save us, world-spirit, from our lesser selves! grant us that war and hatred cease, reveal our souls in every race and hue! help us, o human god, in this thy truce, to make humanity divine! [illustration: "i give you back the wedding ring."--_page ._] the bondwoman by marah ellis ryan, author of "told in the hills," "a pagan of the alleghanies," etc. chicago and new york: rand, mcnally & company, publishers. mdcccxcix. copyright, , by rand, mcnally & co. all rights reserved. entered at stationers' hall, london. the bondwoman chapter i. near moret, in france, where the seine is formed and flows northward, there lives an old lady named madame blanc, who can tell much of the history written here--though it be a history belonging more to american lives than french. she was of the caron establishment when judithe first came into the family, and has charge of a home for aged ladies of education and refinement whose means will not allow of them providing for themselves. it is a memorial founded by her adopted daughter and is known as the levigne pension. the property on which it is established is the little levigne estate--the one forming the only dowery of judithe levigne when she married philip alain--marquis de caron. there is also a bright-eyed, still handsome woman of mature years, who lives in our south and has charge of another memorial--or had until recently--a private industrial school for girls of her own selection. she calls herself a creole of san domingo, and she also calls herself madame trouvelot--she has been married twice since she was first known by that name, for she was never the woman to live alone--not she; but while the men in themselves suited her, their names were uncompromisingly plain--did not attract her at all. she married them, proved a very good wife, but while one was named johnson, and another tuttle, the good wife persisted in being called madame trouvelot, either through sentiment or a bit of irony towards the owner of that name. but, despite her vanities, her coquetries, and certain erratic phases of her life, she was absolutely faithful to the trust reposed in her by the marquise; and who so capable as herself of finding the poor girls who stood most in need of training and the shelter of charity? she, also, could add to this history of the woman belonging both to the old world and the new. there are also official records in evidence of much that is told here--deeds of land, bills of sale, with dates of marriages and deaths interwoven, changed as to names and places but-- there are social friends--gay, pleasure-loving people on both sides of the water--who could speak, and some men who will never forget her. one of them, kenneth mcveigh, he was only lieutenant mcveigh then!--saw her first in paris--heard of her first at a musicale in the salon of madame choudey. madame choudey was the dear friend of the countess helene biron, who still lives and delights in recitals of gossip belonging to the days of the second empire. the countess helene and mrs. mcveigh had been school friends in paris. mrs. mcveigh had been claire villanenne, of new orleans, in those days. at seventeen she had married a col. mcveigh, of carolina. at forty she had been a widow ten years. was the mother of a daughter aged twelve, and a six-foot son of twenty-two, who looked twenty-five, and had just graduated from west point. as he became of special interest to more than one person in this story, it will be in place to give an idea of him as he appeared in those early days;--an impetuous boy held in check, somewhat, by military discipline and his height--he measured six feet at twenty--and also by the fact that his mother had persisted in looking on him as the head of the family at an age when most boys are care-free of such responsibilities. but the responsibilities had a very good effect in many ways--giving stability and seriousness to a nature prone, most of all, to pleasure-loving if left untrammelled. his blue eyes had a slumberous warmth in them; when he smiled they half closed and looked down on you caressingly, and their expression proved no bar to favor with the opposite sex. the fact that he had a little mother who leaned on him and whom he petted extravagantly, just as he did his sister, gave him a manner towards women in general that was both protecting and deferential--a combination productive of very decided results. he was intelligent without being intellectual, had a very clear appreciation of the advantages of being born a mcveigh, proud and jealous where family honor was concerned, a bit of an autocrat through being master over extensive tracts of land and slaves by the dozen, many of them the descendents of africans bought into the family from new england traders four generations before. such was the personality of the young american as he appeared that day at madame choudey's; and he looked like one of the pictured norse sea kings as he towered, sallow and bronzed, back of the vivacious frenchmen and their neighbors of the latin races. _the_ solo of the musicale had just ended. people were thronged about the artiste, and others were congratulating madame choudey on her absolute success in assembling talent. "all celebrities, my lad," remarked fitzgerald delaven as he looked around. the delavens and the mcveighs had in time long past some far-out relationship, and on the strength of it the two young men, meeting thus in a foreign country, became at once friends and brothers;--"all celebrities and no one so insignificant as ourselves in sight. well, now!--when one has to do the gallant to an ugly woman it is a compensation to know she is wondrous wise." "that depends on the man who is doing the gallant," returned the young officer, "i have not yet got beyond the point where i expect them all to be pretty." "faith, lieutenant, that is because your american girls are all so pretty they spoil you!--and by the same token your mother is the handsomest woman in the room." the tall young fellow glanced across the chattering groups to where the handsomest woman was amusing herself. she certainly was handsome--a blonde with chestnut hair and grey eyes--a very youthful looking mother for the young officer to claim. she met his glance and smiled as he noticed her very courtier-like attendant of the moment, and raised his brows quizzically. "yes, i feel that i am only a hanger-on to mother since we reached france," he confessed. "my french is of the sort to be exploited only among my intimates, and luckily all my intimates know english." "anglo-saxon," corrected delaven, and lieutenant mcveigh dropped his hand on his friend's shoulder and laughed. "you wild irishman!--why not emphasize your prejudices by unearthing the celtic and expressing yourself in that?" "sure, if i did i should not call it the irish language," retorted the man from dublin. they both used the contested tongue, and were evidently the only ones in the room who did. all about them were the softened syllables of france--so provocative, according to lord lytton, of the tender sentiments, if not of the tender passion. "there is dumaresque, now," remarked delaven. "we are to see his new picture, you know, at the marquise de caron's;--excuse me a moment," and he crossed over to the artist, who had just entered. kenneth mcveigh stood alone surveying the strange faces about. he had not been in france long enough to be impervious to the atmosphere of novelty in everything seen and heard. back of him the soft voice of madame choudey, the hostess, could be heard. she was frankly gossiping and laughing a little. the name of the marquise de caron was mentioned. delaven had told him of her--an aristocrat and an eccentric--a philanthropist who was now aged. for years herself and her son had been the patrons--the good angels of struggling genius, of art in every form. but the infamous d of december had ended all that. he was one of the "provisionally exiled;" he had died in rome. madame la marquise, the dowager marquise now, was receiving again, said the gossips back of him. the fact was commented on with wonder by madame choudey;--with wonder, frank queries, and wild surmises, by the little group around her; for the aged marquise and her son alain--dead a year since--had been picturesque figures in their own circle where politics and art, literature and religion, met and crossed swords, or played piquet! and now she was coming back, not only to paris, but to society; had in fact, arrived, and the card madame choudey held in her white dimpled hand announced the first reception at the caron establishment. "after years of the country and rome!" and sidonie merson raised her infantile brows and smiled. "oh, yes, it is quite true--though so strange; we fancied her settled for life in her old vine-covered villa; no one expected to see the paris house opened after alain's death." "it is always the unexpected in which the old marquise delights," said big lavergne, the sculptor, who had joined sidonie in the window. "then how she must have reveled in alain's marriage--a death-bed marriage!" "yes; and to an italian girl without a dot." "oh--it is quite possible. the marriage was in rome. both the english and americans go to rome." "italian! i heard it was an english or american!" "surely, not so bad as that!" "but only those who have money;--or, if they have not the money, our sons and our brothers do not marry them." "good!" and lavergne nodded with mock sagacity. "we reach conclusions; the newly made marquise de caron is either not anglo-saxon or was not without wealth." "i heard from dumaresque that she had attended english schools; that no doubt gives her the english suggestion." "oh, i know more than that;" said another, eager to add to the knowledge of the group. "between fontainbleau and moret is the levigne chateau. two years ago the dowager was there with a young beauty, judithe levigne, and that is the girl alain married; the dowager was also a levigne, and the girl an adopted daughter." "what is she like now? has no one seen her?" "no one more worldly than her confessor--if she possess one, or the nuns of the convent to which she returned to study after her marriage and widowhood." "heavens! we must compose our features when we enter the presence!" "but we will go, for all that! the dowager is too delightful to miss." "a religieuse and a blue stocking!" and the smile of lavergne was accompanied by a doubtful shrug. "i might devote myself to either, if apart, but never to both in one. is she then ugly that she dare be so superior?" "greek and latin did not lessen the charm of heloise for abelard, monsieur." sidonie glanced consciously out of the window. even the dust of six centuries refuses to cover the passion of heloise, and despite the ecclesiastical flavor of the romance--demoiselles were not supposed to be aware--still--! lavergne beckoned to a fair slight man near the piano. "we will ask loris--loris dumaresque. he is god-son of the dowager. he was in rome also. he will know." "certainly;" and madame choudey glanced in the mirror opposite and leaned her cheek on her jeweled hand, the lace fell from her pretty wrist and the effect was rather pleasing. "loris; ah, pardon me, since your last canvas is the talk of paris we must perhaps say monsieur dumaresque, or else--master." "the queen calls no man master," replied the newcomer as he bent over the pretty coquette's hand. "the humblest of your subjects salutes you." "my faith! you have not lost in rome a single charm of the boulevardes. we feared you would come back a devotee, and addicted to rosaries." "i only needed them when departing from paris--and you." his eyes alone expressed the final words, but they spoke so eloquently that the woman of the world smiled; attempted to blush, and dropping her own eyes, failed to see the amusement in his. "your gallantry argues no lack of practice, monsieur loris," she returned; glancing at him over her fan. "who was she, during those months of absence? come; confess; was she some worldly soul like the kora of your latest picture, or was it the religieuse--the new marquise about whom every one is curious?" "the marquise? what particular marquise?" "one more particular than you were wont to cultivate our first season in rome," remarked lavergne. "oh! oh! monsieur dumaresque!" and the fan became a shield from which madame peered at him. sidonie almost smiled, but recovered herself, and gave attention to the primroses. "you see!--madame choudey is shocked that you have turned to saintliness." "madame knows me too well to suppose i have ever turned away from it," retorted dumaresque. "do not credit the gossip of lavergne. he has worked so long among clays and marbles that he has grown a cold-blooded cynic. he distrusts all warmth and color in life." "then why not introduce him to the marquise? he might find his ideal there--the atmosphere of the sanctuary! i mean the new marquise de caron." "oh!" dumaresque looked from one to the other blankly and then laughed. "it is madame alain--the marquise de caron you call the devotee? my faith--that is droll!" "what, then, is so droll?" "why should you laugh, monsieur loris? what else were we to think of a bride who chooses a convent in preference to society?" "it was decided she must be very ugly or very devout to make that choice." "a natural conclusion from your point of view," agreed dumaresque. "will you be shocked when i tell you she is no less a radical than alain himself?--that her favorite prophet is voltaire, and that her books of devotion are not known in the church?" "horror!--an infidel!--and only a girl of twenty!" gasped the demure sidonie. "chut!--she may be a veteran of double that. alain always had a fancy for the grenadiers--the originals. but of course," he added moodily, "we must go." "take cheer," laughed dumaresque, "for i shall be there; and i promise you safe conduct through the gates when the grenadier feminine grows too oppressive." "do you observe," queried madame, slyly, "that while monsieur loris does speak of her religion, he avoids enlightening us as to her personality?" "what then do you expect?" returned dumaresque. "she is the widow of my friend; the child, now, of my dear old god-mother. should i find faults in her you would say i am jealous. should i proclaim her virtues you would decide i am prejudiced by friendship, and so"--with a smile that was conciliating and a gesture comprehensive he dismissed the subject. "clever dumaresque!" laughed lavergne--"well, we shall see! is it true that your picture of the kora is to be seen at the dowager's tomorrow?" "quite true. it is sold, you know; but since the dowager is not equal to art galleries i have given it a rest in her rooms before boxing it for the new owner." "i envy him," murmured madame; "the picture is the pretty octoroon glorified. so, madame, your god-mother has two novelties to present tomorrow. usually it is so difficult to find even one." when delaven returned he found lieutenant mcveigh still in the same nook by the mantel and still alone. "well, you are making a lonesome time of it in the middle of the crowd," he remarked. "how have you been amused?" "by listening to comments on two pictures, one of a colored beauty, and one of an atheistical grand dame." "and of the two?" "of the two i should fancy the last not the least offensive. and, look here, delaven, just get me out of that engagement to look at dumaresque's new picture, won't you? it really is not worth while for an american to come abroad for the study of pictured octoroons--we have too many of the originals at home." chapter ii. whatever the dowager's eccentricities or heresies, she was not afraid of the sunlight, figuratively or literally. from floor to ceiling three great windows let in softened rays on the paneled walls, on the fluted columns of white and gold, and on the famous frescoes of the first empire. she had no feeling for petite apartments such as appeal to many women; there must, for her, be height and space and long vistas. "i like perspective to every picture," she said. "i enjoy the groupings of my friends in my own rooms more than elsewhere. from my couch i have the best point of view, and the raised dais flatters me with its suggestion of a throne of state." she looked so tiny for a chair of state; and with her usual quaint humor she recognized the fact. "but my temperament brings me an affinity with things that are great for all that," she would affirm. "one does not need to be a physical colossus in order to see the stars." the morning after her first reception she was smiling rather sardonically at a picture at the far end of the great salon--that of a very handsome young woman who laughed frankly at the man who leaned towards her and spoke. the man was dumaresque. "no use in that, loris," commented his god-mother, out of his hearing. "it will do an artist no harm, but it will end nowhere." their attitude and their youth did make them appear sentimental; but they were not really so. he was only telling her what a shock she had been to those parisians the day before. "i understand, now, the regard of madame choudey and her pretty, prim niece, sidonie. they will never forgive me." "you, madame!" "me, monsieur. their fondness will preclude resentment towards you, but against myself they will feel a grievance that i am not as they pictured me. come; you must tell maman." the dowager nodded as one who understood it all. "they will not forget you, that is sure," she said, smiling; but the girl--for she was only a girl, despite the madame--shrugged her shoulders. "myself, i care little for their remembrance," she replied, indifferently; "they were only curious, not interested, i could see." "you put my picture in the shadow at all events," protested dumaresque, pointing to a large canvas hung opposite; "my picture over which art lovers raved until you appeared as a rival." "how extravagant you are, monsieur dumaresque, a true gascon! to think of rivaling that!" as she faced the canvas the dowager watched her critically, and nodded her approval to dumaresque, who smiled and acquiesced. evidently they were both well satisfied with the living picture of the salon. the new marquise de caron had lived, probably, twenty years. she was of medium height, with straight, dark brows, and dark, long-lashed eyes. the eyes had none of the shyness that was deemed a necessity to beauty in that era of balloon skirts and scuttle bonnets under which beauty of the conventional order hid. but that she was not conventional was shown by the turban of grey resting on her waved, dark hair, while the veil falling from it and mingling with the folds of her dress, suggested the very artistic draperies of the nuns. not a particle of color was in her apparel, and but little in her face; only the lips had that thread of scarlet sung of by solomon, and the corners of them curved upwards a trifle as she surveyed the canvas. the turban was loosened and held in her hands as she stood there looking. the picture evidently attracted her, though it did not please. at last she turned to the artist. "why do you paint pictures like that?" "like that? pouf! you mean beautiful?" "no, it is not beautiful," she said, thoughtfully, as she seated herself on the dais by the dowager's couch. "to be truly beautiful a thing must impress one with a sense of fitness to our highest perceptive faculties. a soulless thing is never beautiful." "what then, of dogs, horses, lions, the many art works in metal or on canvas?" "you must not raise that wall against her words, loris, unless you wish to quarrel," said the dowager in friendly warning. "judithe is pantheist enough to fancy that animals have souls." "but the true artist does not seek to portray the lowest expression of that soul," persisted dumaresque's critic. "across the atlantic there are thousands who contend that a woman such as this kora whom you paint, has no soul because of the black blood in her veins. they think of the dark people as we think of apes. it is all a question of longitude, monsieur dumaresque. the crudeness of america is the jest of france. the wisdom of france is the lightest folly of the brahims; and so it goes ever around the world. the soul of that girl will weigh as heavily as ours in the judgment that is final; but, in the meantime, why teach it and others to admire all that allurement of evil showing in her eyes as she looks at you?" "judithe!" protested the dowager. "oh!--i do not doubt in the least, maman, that the woman kora looked just so when she sat for the picture," conceded the girl; "but why not endeavor to awaken a higher, stronger expression, and paint _that_, showing the better possibilities within her than mere seductiveness?" "what fervor and what folly, marquise!" cried dumaresque. "it is a speech of folly only because it is i whom you ask to be the missionary, and because it is the pretty kora you would ask me to convert--and to what? am i so perfect in all ways that i dare preach, even with paint and brush? heavens! i should have all paris laughing at me." "but judithe would not have you that sort of extremist," said the dowager, laughing at the dismay in his face. "she knows you do well; only she fears you do not exert yourself enough to perceive how you might do better." "she forgets; i did once; only a few weeks ago," he said briefly; and the girl dropped her hands wearily and leaned her head against the dowager's couch. "maman, our good friend is going to talk matrimony again," she said plaintively; "and if he does, i warn you, though it is only mid-day, i shall go asleep;" and her eyes closed tightly as though to make the threat more effective. "you see," said the old lady, raising one chiding finger, "it is really lamentable, loris, that your sentimental tendencies have grown into a steady habit." "i agree," he assented; "but consider. she assails me--she, a saintly little judge in grey! she lectures, preaches at me! tells me i lack virtue! but more is the pity for me; she will not remember that one virtue was most attractive to me, and she bade me abandon it." "tell him," said the girl with her eyes still closed, "to not miscall things; no one is all virtue." "pardon; that is what you seemed to me, and i never before fancied that the admirable virtues would find me so responsive, when, pouf! with one word you demolished all my castle of delight and now condemn me that i am an outlaw from those elevating fancies." he spoke with such a comical air of self-pity that the old lady laughed and the young marquise opened her eyes. "a truce, monsieur loris; you are amusing, but you like to pose as one of the rejected and disconsolate when you have women to listen. it is all because you are just a little theatrical, is it not? how effective it must be with your parisiennes!" "my faith!" he exclaimed, turning to the dowager in dismay; "and only three months since she emerged from the convent! what then do they not teach in those sanctuaries!" the girl arose, made him a mocking obeisance, and swinging the turban in her hand passed into the alcoved music room; a little later an italian air, soft, dreamy, drifted to them from the keys of the piano. "she will make a sensation," prophesied dumaresque, sagely. "you mean socially? no; if left to herself she would ignore society; it is not necessary to her; only her affection for me brings her from her studies now. should i die tomorrow she would go back to them next week." "but why, why, why? if she were unattractive one could understand; but being what she is--" "being what she is, she has a fever to know all the facts of earth and all the guesses at heaven." "and bars out marriage!" "not for other people," retorted the dowager. "but to what use then all these accomplishments, all this pursuit of knowledge? does she mean to hide it all in some convent at last?" "i would look for her rather among some savage tribes, doing missionary work." "yes, making them acquainted with voltaire," he said, laughingly. "but you are to be envied, god-mother, in having her all to yourself; she adores you!" the dark old face flushed slightly, and the keen eyes softened with pleasure. "it was alain's choice, and it was a good one," she said, briefly. "what of the english people you asked to bring today?" "they are not english; one is american and one is irish." "true; but their anglo-saxon makes them all english to me. i hear there are so many of them in paris now; comtesse biron brings one today; there is her message, what is the name?" dumaresque unfolded the pink sheet, glanced at it and smiled. "my faith; it is the mother of the young lieutenant whom i asked to bring, madame mcveigh. so, she was a school friend of the comtesse helene, eh? that seems strange; still, this madame mcveigh may be a french woman transplanted." "i do not know; but it will be a comfort if she speaks french. the foreigners of only one language are trying." * * * * * mrs. mcveigh offered no linguistic difficulties to the dowager who was charmed with her friend's friend. "but you are surely not the english-americans of whom we see so much these days? i cannot think it." "no, madame. i am of the french-americans--the creoles--hence the speech you are pleased to approve. my people were the villanennes of louisiana." "ah! a creole? the creoles come here from the west indies also--beautiful women. my daughter has had some as school friends; only this morning she was explaining to an english caller the difference between a creole and that personality;" and the dowager waived her hand towards the much discussed picture of kora. the fine face of the american woman took on a trace of haughtiness, and she glanced at the speaker as though alert to some covert insult. the unconsciousness in the old face reassured her, though she could not quite banish coldness from her tones as she replied: "i should not think such an explanation necessary in enlightened circles; the creole is so well known as the american born of the latin races, while that," with a gesture towards the oriental face on the canvas, "is the offspring of the african race--our slaves." "with occasionally a caucasian father," suggested the dowager wickedly. "i have never seen this new idol of the ballet--kora; but her prettiness is the talk of the studios, though she does not deny she came from your side of the sea, and has the shadows of africa in her hair." "a quadroon or octoroon, no doubt. it appears strange to find the outcasts of the states elected to that sort of notice over here--as though the old world, tired of civilization and culture, turned for distraction to the barbarians." "barbarians, indeed!" laughed the countess biron--the countess helene, as she was called by her friends. she laughed a great deal, knew a great deal, and never forgot a morsel of parisian gossip. "this barbarian has only to show herself on the boulevards and all good citizens crane their necks for a glimpse of her. the empress herself attracts less attention." the dowager clicked the lid of her snuff box and shrugged her shoulders. "that spanish woman--tah! as _mademoiselle d'industrie_ i do not see why she should claim precedence. the blonde spaniard is no more beautiful than the brown american." "for all that, louis napoleon has placed her among the elect," remarked the countess helene, with a mischievous glance towards the marquise, each understanding that the mention of the second empire was like a call to war, in that salon. "louis!" and the dowager shrugged her shoulder, and made a gesture of contempt. "that accident! what is he that any one should be exalted by his favor? mademoiselle de montijo was--for the matter of that--his superior! her family had place and power; her paternity was undisputed; but this louis--tah! there was but one bonaparte; that subaltern from corsica; that meteor. he was, with all his faults, a worker, a thinker, an original. he would have swept into the sea the envious islanders across the channel to whom this bonaparte truckled--this man called bonaparte, who was no bonaparte at all--a vulture instead of an eagle!" so exclaimed the dowager, who carried in her memory the picture of the streets of paris when neither women nor children were spared by the bullets and sabres of his slaughterers--the hyena to whom the clergy so bowed down that not a mass for the dead patriots could be secured in paris, from either priest or archbishop, and the republicans piled in the streets by hundreds! mrs. mcveigh turned in some dismay to the countess helene. the people of the western world, the women in particular, knew little of the bitter spirit permeating the politics of france. the united states had very knotty problems of her own to discuss in . "tah!" continued the dowager, "i startle you! well, well--it profits nothing to recite these ills. many a man, and woman, too, has been put to death for saying less;--and the exile of my son to remember--yes; all that! he was republican--i a legitimist; i of the old, he of the new. republics are good in theory; france might have given it a longer trial but for this trickster politician, who is called emperor--by the grace of god!" "do they add 'defender of the faith' as our cautious english neighbors persist in doing?" asked the girlish marquise with a smile. "your country, madame mcveigh, has no such cant in its constitution. you have reason to be proud of the great men, the wise, far-seeing men, who framed those laws." mrs. mcveigh smiled and sighed in self-pity. "how frivolous american women will appear to you, madame! few of us ever read the constitution of our country. i confess i only know the first line:--'when in the course of human events it becomes necessary,' but what they thought necessary to do is very vague in my mind." then, catching the glance of the marquise bright with laughter, she laughed also without knowing well at what. "well; what is it?" "only that you are quoting from the declaration of independence, and fancy it the constitution." "that is characteristic of american women, too," laughed mrs. mcveigh; "declarations of independence is one of our creeds. but i shall certainly be afraid of you, marquise. at your age the learning and comparing of musty laws would have been dull work for me. it is the age for dancing and gay carelessness." the marquise smiled assent with her curious, dark eyes, in which amber lights shown. she had a certain appealing meekness at times--a sweet deference that was a marked contrast to the aggressiveness with which she had met dumaresque in the morning. the countess helene, observing the deprecating manner with which she received the implied praise for erudition, found herself watching with a keener interest the girl who had seemed to her a mere pretty book-worm. "she is more than that," thought the astute worldling. "alain's widow has a face for tragedy, the address of an ingenue, and the _tout en semble_ of a coquette." the dowager smiled at mrs. mcveigh's remarks. "she cares too little for dancing, the natural expression of healthy young animalism; but what can i do?--nothing less frivolous than a salon a-la-madame d'agoult is among her ambitions." "let us persuade her to visit america," suggested mrs. mcveigh. "i can, at least, prescribe a change promising more of joyous festivity--life on a carolina plantation." "what delight for her! she loves travel and new scenes. indeed, alain, my son, has purchased a property in your land, and some day she may go over. but for the brief remnant of my life i shall be selfish and want her always on my side of the ocean. what, child? you pale at the mention of death--tah! it is not so bad. the old die by installments, and the last one is not the worst." "may it be many years in the future, maman," murmured the young marquise, whose voice betrayed a certain effort as she continued: "i thank you for the suggestion, madame mcveigh; the property maman refers to is in new orleans, and i surely hope to see your country some day; my sympathies are there." "we have many french people in the south; our own part of the land was settled originally by the cavaliers of france. you would not feel like a stranger there." "not in your gracious neighborhood, madame;"--her face had regained its color, and her eyes their brilliant expression. "and there you would see living pictures like this," suggested the countess helene; "what material for an artist!" "oh, no; in the rice fields of south carolina they do not look like that. we have none of those oriental effects in dress, you know. our colored women look very sober in comparison; still they have their attractions, and might be an interesting study for you if you have never known colored folks." "oh, but i have," remarked the marquise, smiling; "an entire year of my life was passed in a school with two from brazil, and one from your country had run away the same season." "judithe; child!" the dowager fairly gasped the words, and the marquise moved quickly to her side and sank on the cushion at her feet, looking up with an assuring smile, as she caressed the aged hand. "yes, it is quite true," she continued; "but see, i am alive to tell the tale, and really they say the american was a most harmless little thing; the poor, imprisoned soul." "how strange!" exclaimed mrs. mcveigh; "do you mean as fellow pupils?--colored girls! it seems awful." "really, i never thought of it so; you see, so many planters' daughters come from the west indies to paris schools. many in feature and color suggest the dark continent, but are accepted, nevertheless. however, the girl i mention was not dark. her mother had seven white ancestors to one of black. yet she confided her story to a friend of mine, and she was an american slave." the dowager was plainly distressed at the direction of the conversation, for the shock to mrs. mcveigh was so very apparent, and as her hostess remembered that slavery was threatening to become an institution of uncompromising discord across the water, all reference to it was likely to be unwelcome. she pressed the fingers of the marquise warningly, and the marquise smiled up at her, but evidently did not understand. "can such a thing be possible?" asked mrs. mcveigh, incredulously; "in that case i shall think twice before i send _my_ daughter here to school, as i had half intended--and you remained in such an establishment?" "i had no choice; my guardians decided those questions." "and the faculty--they allowed it?" "they did not know it. she was represented as being the daughter of an american planter; which was true. i have reason to believe that my friend was her only confidant." "and for what purpose was she educated in such an establishment?" "that she might gain accomplishments enhancing her value as companion to the man who was to own her." "madame!" "marquise!" the two exclamations betrayed how intent her listeners were, and how full of horror the suggestion. there was even incredulity in the tones, an initiative protest against such possibilities. but the marquise looked from one to the other with unruffled earnestness. "so it was told to me," she continued; "these accomplishments meant extra thousands to the man who sold her, and the man was her father's brother." "no, no, no!" and mrs. mcveigh shook her head decidedly to emphasize her conviction. "i cannot believe that at the present day in our country such an arrangement could exist. no one, knowing our men, could credit such a story. in the past century such abuses might have existed, but surely not now--in all my life i have heard of nothing like that." "probably the girl was romancing," agreed the marquise, with a shrug, "for you would no doubt be aware if such a state of affairs had existence." "certainly." "then your men are not so clever as ours," laughed the countess; "for they manage many little affairs their own women never suspect." mrs. mcveigh looked displeased. to her it was not a matter of cleverness, but of principle and morality; and in her mind there was absolutely no comparison possible without jarring decidedly on the prejudices of her gallic friends, so she let the remark pass without comment. "yes," said the marquise, rising, "when i heard the story of the girl rhoda i fancied it one the white mistresses of america seldom heard." "rhoda?" "yes, that was the name the girl was known by in the school--rhoda larue--the larue was a fiction; slaves, i am told, having no legal right to names." "heavens! what horrors you fancy! pray give us some music child, and drive away the gloomy pictures you have suggested." "an easy penance;" and the marquise moved smilingly towards the alcove. "what!" cried the countess helene, in protest, "and the story unfinished! why, it might develop into a romance. i dote on romances in real life or fiction, but i like them all spelled out for me to the very end." "instead of a romance, i should fancy the girl's life very prosaic wherever it is lived," returned the marquise. "but before her year at the convent had quite expired she made her escape--took no one into her confidence; and when her guardian, or his agent, came to claim her, there were storms, apologies, but no ward." "and you do not call that a romance?" said the countess. "i do; it offers all sorts of possibilities." "yes, the possibility of this;" and mrs. mcveigh pointed to the picture before them. the marquise halted, looked curiously at the speaker, then regarded the oriental face on the canvas thoughtfully, and passed her hand over her brow with a certain abstraction. "i never thought of that," she said slowly. "you poor creature!" and she took a step nearer the picture. "i--never--thought of that! maman, madame mcveigh has just taught me something--to be careful, careful how we judge the unfortunate. they say this kora is a light woman in morals; but suppose--suppose somewhere the life that girl told of in the convent really does exist, and suppose this pretty kora had been one of the victims chosen! should we dare then to judge her by our standards, maman? i think not." without awaiting an opinion she walked slowly into the alcove, and left the three ladies gazing at each other with a trifle of constraint mingled with their surprise. "another sacred cause to fight for," sighed the dowager, with a quaint grimace. "last week it was the jews, who seem to me quite able to take care of themselves! next week it may be hindoo widows; but just now it is kora!" "she should have been born a boy in the age when it was thought a virtue to don armor and do battle for the weak or incapable; that would have suited judithe." "not if it was the fashion," laughed the countess helene; "she would insist on being original." "the marquise has a lovely name," remarked mrs. mcveigh; "one could not imagine a weak or unattractive person called judithe." "no; they could not," agreed her friend, "it makes one think of the tragedy of holofernes. it suggests the strange, the fascinating, the unusual, and--it suits madame la marquise." "your approval is an unconscious compliment to me," remarked the dowager, indulging herself in a tiny pinch of snuff and tapping the jeweled lid of the box; "i named her." "indeed!" and mrs. mcveigh smiled at the complacent old lady, while the countess helene almost stared. evidently she, also, had heard the opinions concerning the young widow's foreign extraction. possibly the dowager guessed what was passing in her mind, for she nodded and smiled. "truly, the eyes did it. though she was not so fully developed as now, those slumbrous, oriental eyes of hers suggested someway that beauty of bethulia; the choice was left to me and so she was christened judithe." "she voices such startlingly paganish ideas at times that i can scarcely imagine her at the christening font," remarked the countess. "in truth her questions are hard to answer sometimes. but the heart is all right." "and the lady herself magnetic enough without the added suggestion of the name," remarked mrs. mcveigh; then she held up her finger as the countess was about to speak, for from the music room came the appealing legato notes of "suwanee river," played with great tenderness. "what is it?" asked the dowager. "one of our american folk songs," and the grey eyes of the speaker were bright with tears; "in all my life i have never heard it played so exquisitely." "for a confirmed blue stocking, the marquise understands remarkably well how to make her little compliments," said the countess helene. mrs. mcveigh arose, and with a slight bow to the dowager, passed into the alcove. at the last bar of the song a shadow fell across the keys, and the musician saw their american visitor beside her. "i should love to have you see the country whose music you interpret so well," she said impulsively; "i should like to be with you when you do see it." "you are kind, and i trust you may be," replied the marquise, with a pretty nod that was a bow in miniature. she was rising from the piano, when mrs. mcveigh stopped her. "pray don't! it is a treat to hear you. i only wanted to ask you to take my invitation seriously and come some time to our south carolina home; i should like to be one of your friends." "it would give me genuine pleasure," was the frank reply. "you know i confessed that my sympathies were there ahead of me." the smile accompanying the words was so adorable that mrs. mcveigh bent to kiss her. the marquise offered her cheek with a graciousness that was a caress in itself, and thus their friendship commenced. after the dowager and her daughter-in-law were again alone, and with an assurance that even the privileged dumaresque would not break in on their evening, the elder lady asked, abruptly, a question over which she had been puzzling. "child, what possessed you to tell to a southern woman of the states that story reflecting on the most vital of their economic institutions? had you forgotten their prejudices? i was in dread that you might offend her, and i am sure helene biron was quite as nervous." "i did not offend her, maman," replied the marquise, looking up from her embroidery with a smile, "and i had not forgotten their prejudices. i only wanted to judge if she herself had ever heard the story." "madame mcveigh!--and why?" "because rhoda larue was also a native of that particular part of carolina to which she has invited me, and because of a fact which i have never forgotten, the young planter for whom she was educated--the slave owner who bought her from her father's brother was named mcveigh. my new friend is delightful in herself but--she has a son." "my child!" gasped the dowager, staring at her. "such a man the son of that charming, sincere woman! yes, i had forgotten their name, and bid you forget the story; never speak of it again, child!" "i should be sorry to learn it is the same family," admitted the marquise; "still, i shall make a point of avoiding the son until we learn something about him. it is infamous that such men should be received into society." the dowager relapsed into silence, digesting the troublesome question proposed. occasionally she glanced towards the marquise as though in expectation of a continuation of the subject. but the marquise was engrossed by her embroideries, and when she did speak again it was of some entirely different matter. chapter iii. two mornings later m. dumaresque stood in the caron reception room staring with some dissatisfaction across the breadth of green lawn where the dryad and faun statues held vases of vining and blooming things. he had just been told the dowager was not yet to be seen. that was only what he had expected; but he had also been told that the marquise, accompanied, as usual, by madame blanc, had been out for two hours--and that he had not expected. "did she divine i would be in evidence this morning?" then he glanced in a pier glass and grimaced. "gone out with that plain madame blanc, when she might have had a treat--an hour with me!" while he stood there both the marquise and her companion appeared, walking briskly. madame blanc, a stout woman of thirty-five, was rather breathless. "my dear marquise, you do not walk, you fly," she gasped, halting on the steps. "you poor dear!" said the marquise, patting her kindly on the shoulder. "i know you are faint for want of your coffee," and at the same time her strong young arms helped the panting attendant mount the steps more quickly. once within the hall madame blanc dropped into the chair nearest the door, while the marquise swept into the reception room and hastily to a window fronting on the street. "how foolish of me," she breathed aloud. "how my heart beats!" "allow me to prescribe," said dumaresque, stepping from behind the screen of the curtain, and smiling at her. she retreated, her hands clasped over her breast, her eyes startled; then meeting his eyes she began to laugh a little nervously. "how you frightened me!" "and it was evidently not the first, this morning." she sank into a seat, indicated another to him, away from the window, removed her hat and leaned back looking at him. "no, you are not," she said at last. "but account for yourself, monsieur loris! the sun is not yet half way on its course, yet you are actually awake, and visible to humanity--it looks serious." "it is," he agreed, smiling at her, yet a trifle nervous in his regard. "i have taken advantage of the only hour out of the twenty when there would be a chance of seeing you alone. so i made an errand--and i am here." "and--?" "and i have determined that, after the fashion of the americans or the english, i shall no longer ask the intervention of a third person. i decided on it last night before i left here. i have no title to offer you--you coldest and most charming of women, but i shall have fame; you will have no reason to be ashamed of the name of dumaresque. put me on probation, if you like, a year, two years!--only--" "no; no!" she said pleadingly, putting out her hands with a slight repellant gesture. "it is not to be thought of, monsieur loris, maman has told you! twice has the same reply been given. i really cannot allow you to continue this suppliance. i like you too well to be angry with you, but--" "i shall be content with the liking--" "but i should not!" she declared, smilingly. "i have my ideals, if you please, monsieur. marriage should mean love. it is only matrimony for which liking is the foundation. i do not approve of matrimony." "pardon; that is the expression of the romance lover--the school girl. but that i know you have lived the life of a nun i should fear some one had been before me, some one who realized those ideals of yours, and that instead of studying the philosophies of life, you have been a student of the philosophy of love." he spoke lightly--half laughingly, but the flush of pink suffusing her throat and brow checked his smile. he could only stare. she arose hastily and walked the length of the room. when she turned the color was all gone, but her eyes were softly shining. "all philosophy falls dead when the heart speaks," she said, as she resumed her chair; "and now, monsieur loris, i mean to make you my father confessor, for i know no better way of ending these periodical proposals of yours, and at the same time confession might--well--it might not be without a certain benefit to myself." he perceived that while she had assumed an air of raillery, there was some substance back of the mocking shadow. "i shall feel honored by your confidence, marquise," he was earnest enough in that. "and when you realize that there is--some one else--will you then resume your former role of friend?" "i shall try. who is the man?" she met his earnest gaze with a demure smile, "i do not know, monsieur." "what, then?--you are only jesting with me?" "truly, i do not know his name." "yet you are in love with him?" "i am not quite certain even of that," and she smiled mockingly; "sometimes i have a fancy it may be witchcraft. i only know i am haunted--have been haunted four long weeks by a face, a voice, and two blue eyes." "blue?" dumaresque glanced in the mirror--his own eyes were blue. "yes, monsieur loris--blue with a dash of grey--the grey of the sea when clouds are heavy, and the blue of the farthest waves before the storm breaks--don't you see the color?" "only the color of your fancy. he is the owner of blue eyes, a haunting voice, and--what else is my rival?" "a foreigner, and--monsieur incognito." "you have met?" "three times;" and she held up as many white fingers. the reply evidently astounded dumaresque. "you have met three times a man whose name you do not know?" "we are even on that score," she said, "for he has spoken to me three times and does not know what i am called." "but to address you--" "he called me mademoiselle unknown." "bravo! this grows piquant; an adventure with all the flavor of the eighteenth instead of the nineteenth century. a real adventure, and you its heroine! oh, marquise, marquise!" "ah! since you appreciate the humor of the affair you will no longer be oppressed by sentimental fancies concerning me;" and she nodded her head as though well pleased with the experiment of her confession. "you perceive how wildly improper i have been; still, i deny the eighteenth century flavor, monsieur. then, with three meetings the cavalier would have developed into a lover, and having gained entrance to a lady's heart, he would have claimed also the key to her castle." "astute pupil of the nuns!--and monsieur incognito?" "he certainly does not fancy me possessed of either castle or keys. i was to him only an unpretentious english companion in attendance on madame blanc in the woods of fontainbleau." "english! since when are you fond enough of them to claim kindred?" "he was english; he supposed me so when i replied to him in that tongue. he had taken the wrong path and--" "and you walked together on another, also the wrong path." "no, monsieur; that first day we only bowed and parted, but the ghost of his voice remained," and she sighed in comical self-pity. "i see! you have first given me the overture and now the curtain is to rise. who opens the next scene?" "madame blanc." "my faith! this grows tragical. blanc, the circumspect, the dowager's most trusted companion. has your stranger bewitched her also?" "she was too near sighted to tell him from the others. i was making a sketch of beeches and to pass the time she fed the carp. a fan by which she set store, fell into the water. she lamented until monsieur incognito secured it. of course i had to be the one to thank him, as she speaks no english." "certainly!--and then?" "then i found a seat in the shade for madame blanc and her crochet, and selected a sunny spot myself, where i could dry the fan." "alone?" "at first, i was alone." "delicious! you were never more charming, marquise; go on." "when he saw madame blanc placidly knitting under the trees, while i spread her fan to dry, he fancied i was in her service; the fancy was given color by the fact that my companion, as usual, was dressed with extreme elegance, whilst i was insignificant in an old school habit." "insignificant--um! there was conversation i presume?" "not much," she confessed, and again the delicious wave of color swept over her face, "but he had suggested spreading the fan on his handkerchief, and of course then he had to remain until it was dry." "clever englishman; and as he supposed you to be a paid companion, was he, also, some gentleman's gentleman?" she flashed one mutinous glance at him. "the jest seemed to me amusing; his presence was an exhilaration; and i did not correct his little mistake as to mistress and maid. when he attempted to tell me who or what he was i stopped him; that would have spoiled the adventure. i know he had just come from england; that he was fascinating without being strictly handsome; that he could say through silence the most eloquent things to one! it was an hour in arcady--just one hour without past or future. they are the only absolutely joyous ones, are they not?" "item: it was the happiest hour in the life of madame la marquise," commented dumaresque, with an attempt at drollery, and an accompaniment of a sigh. "well--the finale?" "the hour ended! i said 'good day, monsieur incognito.' he said, 'good night, mademoiselle unknown.'" "good night! heavens--it was not then an hour, but a day!" "it was an hour, monsieur! that was only one way of conveying his belief that all the day was in that hour." "blessed be the teachings of the convent! and you would have me believe that an englishman could make such speeches? however, i am eager for the finale--the next day?" "the next day i surprised monsieur and madame blanc by declaring the sketch i was doing of the woods there, was hopelessly bad--i would never complete it." "ah!" and dumaresque's exclamation had a note of hope; "he had been a bore after all?" "the farthest thing possible from it! when i woke in the morning it was an hour earlier than usual. i found myself with my eyes scarcely open, standing before the clock to reckon every instant of time until i should see him again. well, from that moment my adventure ceased to be merely amusing. i told myself how many kinds of an idiot i was, and i thrust my head among the pillows again. i realized then, monsieur, what a girl's first romance means to her. i laughed at myself, of course, as i had laughed at others often. but i could not laugh down the certainty that the skies were bluer, the birds' songs sweeter, and all life more lovely than it had ever been before." "and by what professions, or what mystic rhymes or runes, did he bring about this enchantment?" "not by a single sentence of protestation? an avowal would have sent me from him without a regret. if we had not met at all after that first look, that first day, i am convinced i should have been haunted by him just the same! there were long minutes when we did not speak or look at each other; but those minutes were swept with harmonies. now, monsieur loris, would you call that love, or is it a sort of summer-time madness?" "probably both, marquise; but there was a third meeting?" "after three days, monsieur; days when i forced myself to remain indoors; and the struggle it was, when i could close my eyes and see him waiting there under the trees!" "ah! there had been an appointment?" "pardon, monsieur; you are perhaps confounding this with some remembered adventure of your own. there was no appointment. but i felt confident that blue-eyed ogre was walking every morning along the path where i met him first, and that he would compel me to open the door and walk straight to our own clump of bushes so long as i did not send him away." "and you finally went?" she nodded. "he was there. his smile was like sunshine. he approached me, but i--i did not wait. i went straight to him. he said, 'at last, mademoiselle unknown!'" "pardon; but it is your words i have most interest in," reminded her confessor. "but i said so few. i remember i had some violets, and he asked me what they were called in french. i told him i was going away; i had fed the carp for the last time. he was also leaving. he had gathered some wild forget-me-nots. he was coming into paris." "and you parted unknown to each other?" "how could i do else? when he said, 'i bid you good-bye, mademoiselle unknown, but we shall meet again.' then--then i did correct him a little; i said _madame_ unknown, monsieur." "ah! and to that--?" "he said not a word, only looked at me; _how_ he looked at me! i felt guilty as a criminal. when i looked up he turned away--turned very politely, with lifted hat and a bow even you could not improve upon, monsieur loris, i watched him out of sight in the forest. he never halted; and he never turned his head." "you might at least have let him go without the thought that you were a flirtatious matron with a husband somewhere in the back-ground." "yes; i almost regret that. still, since i had to send him away, what matter how? it would have been so common-place had i said: 'we receive on thursdays; find loris dumaresque when you reach paris; he will present you.' no!"--and she shook her head laughingly, "the three days were quite enough. he is an unknown world; a romance only suggested, and the suggestion is delicious. i would not for the world have him nearer prosaic reality." "you will forget him in another three weeks," prophesied dumaresque; "he has been only a shadow of a man; a romantic dream. i shall refuse to accept any but realities as rivals." "i assure you, no reality has been so appealing as that dream," she persisted. "i am telling you all this with the hope that once i have laughed with you over this witchcraft it will be robbed of its potency. i have destroyed the sacred wall of sentiment surrounding this ghost of mine because i rebel at being mastered by it." "mastered?--you?" "oh, you laugh! you think me, then, too cold or too philosophic, in spite of what i have just told you?" "not cold, my dear marquise. but if you will pardon the liberty of analysis i will venture the opinion that when you are mastered it will be by yourself. your very well-shaped head will forever defend you from the mastery of others." "mastered by myself? i do not think i quite understand you," she said, slowly. "but i must tell you the extreme limit of my folly, the folly of the imagination. each morning i go for a walk, as i did this morning. each time i leave the door i have with me the fancy that somewhere i shall meet him. of course my reason tells me how improbable it is, but i put the reason aside and enjoy my walk all the more because of that fancied tryst. now, monsieur loris, you have been the victim of my romance long enough. come; we will join madame blanc and have some coffee." "and this is all you have to tell me, marquise?" "all but one little thing, monsieur," and she laughed, though the laugh was a trifle nervous; "this morning for an instant i thought the impossible had happened. only one street from here my ogre materialized again, or some one wondrously like him. how startled i was! how i hurried poor madame blanc! but we were evidently not discovered. i realized, however, at that moment, how imprudent i had been. how shocked maman would be if she knew. yet it was really the most innocent jest, to begin with." "they often begin that way," remarked dumaresque, consolingly. "well, i have arrived at one conclusion. it is only because i have met so few men, that _one_ dare make such an overwhelming impression on me. i rebel; and shall amaze maman by becoming a social butterfly for a season. so, in future bring all your most charming friends to see me; but no tall, athletic, blue-eyed englishmen." "so," said dumaresque, as he followed her to the breakfast room, "i lay awake all night that i may make love to you early in the morning, and you check-mate me by thrusting forward a brawny englishman." "pardon; he is not brawny;" she laughed; "i never said so; nevertheless, monsieur loris, i can teach you one thing: when love has to be _made_ it is best not to waste time with it. the real love makes itself and will neither be helped or hindered; and the love that can be conquered is not worth having." he shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. "in a year and a day i shall return to the discussion. i give you so long to change your mind and banish your phantasy; and in the meantime i remain your most devoted visitor." madame blanc was already in evidence with the coffee, and dumaresque watched the glowing face of the marquise, surprised and puzzled at this new influence she confessed to and asked analysis for. this book-worm; this reader of law and philosophy; how charming had been her blushes even while she spoke in half mockery of the face haunting her. if only such color would sweep over her cheek at the thought of him--dumaresque! but he had his lesson for the present. he would not play the sighing strephon, realizing that this particular amaryllis was not to be won so. as he received the coffee from her hand he remarked, mischievously, "marquise, you did not quite complete the story. what became of the forget-me-nots he gathered?" but the marquise only laughed. "we are no longer in the confessional, monsieur," she said. chapter iv. mrs. mcveigh found herself thinking of the young marquise very often. she was not pleased at the story with which she had been entertained there; yet was she conscious of the fact that she would have been very much more displeased had the story been told by any other than the fascinating girl-widow. "do you observe," she remarked to the countess helene, "that young though she is she seems to have associated only with elderly people, or with books where various questions were discussed? it is a pity. she has been robbed of childhood and girlhood by the friends who are so proud of her, and who would make of her only a lovely thinking-machine." "you do not then approve of the strong-minded woman, the female philosopher." "oh, yes;" replied mrs. mcveigh, dubiously; "but this delightful creature does not belong to that order yet. she is bubbling over with enthusiasm for the masses because she has not yet been touched by enthusiasm for an individual. i wish she would fall in love with some fine fellow who would marry her and make her life so happy she would forget all the bad laws of nations and the bad morals of the world." "hum! i fancy suitors have not been lacking. her income is no trifle." "in our country a girl like that would need no income to insure her desirable suitors. she is the most fascinating creature, and so unconscious of her charms." her son, who had been at a writing desk in the corner, laid down his pen and turned around. "my imperfect following of your rapid french makes me understand at least that this is a serious case," he said, teasingly. "are you sure, mother, that she has not treated you to enchantment? i heard the same lady described a few days ago, and the picture drawn was that of an atheistical revolutionist, an unlovely and unlovable type." "ah!" said the countess helene. "you also are opposed to beautiful machines that think." "i have never been accustomed to those whose thoughts follow such unpleasant lines, madame," he replied. "i have been taught to revere the woman whose foundation of life is the religion scorned by the lady you are discussing. a woman without that religion would be like a scentless blossom to me." the countess smiled and raised her brows slightly. this severe young officer, her friend's son, took himself and his tastes very seriously. looking at him she fancied she could detect both the hawk and the dove meeting in those clear, level eyes of his. though youthful, she could see in him the steadiness of the only son--the head of the house--the protector and the adored of his mother and sister, who were good little women, flattering their men folks by their dependence. and from that picture the lady who was studying him passed on to the picture of the possible bride to whom he would some day fling his favors. she, also, must be adoring and domestic and devout. her articles of faith must be as orthodox as his affection. he would love her, of course, but must do the thinking for the family. because the lieutenant lacked the buoyant, adaptable french temperament of his mother, the countess was inclined to be rather severe in her judgment of him. he was so young; so serious. she did not fancy young men except in the pages of romances; even when they had brains they appeared to her always over-weighted with the responsibility of them. it is only after a man has left his boyhood in the distance that he can amuse a woman with airy nothings and make her feel that his words are only the froth on the edge of a current that is deep--deep! mrs. mcveigh, unconscious of the silent criticism being passed on her son, again poised a lance in defence of the stranger under discussion. "it is absurd to call her atheistical," she insisted; "would i be influenced by such a person? she is an enthusiast, student of many religions, possibly; but people should know her before they judge, and you, kenneth, should see her before you credit their gossip. she is a beautiful, sympathetic child, oppressed too early with the seriousness of life." "at any rate, i see i shall never take you home heart whole," he decided, and laughed as he gathered up letters he had been addressing and left the room. "one could fancy your son making a tour of the world and coming back without a sentimental scratch," said the countess, after he had gone. "i have noticed him with women; perfectly gallant, interested and willing to please, but not a flutter of an eyelid out of form; not a tone of the voice that would flatter one. i am not sure but that the women are all the more anxious to claim such a man, the victory seems greater, yet it is more natural to find them reciprocal. perhaps there is a betrothed somewhere to whom he has sworn allegiance in its most rigid form; is that the reason?" mrs. mcveigh smiled. she rather liked to think her son not so susceptible as frenchmen pretended to be. "i do not think there are any vows of allegiance," she confessed; "but there is someone at home to whom we have assigned him since they were children." "truly? but i fancied the parents did not arrange the affairs matrimonial in your country." "we do not; that is, not in a definite official way. still, we are allowed our little preferences, and sometimes we can help or hinder in our own way. but this affair"--and she made a gesture towards the door of her son's room, "this affair is in embryo yet." "good settlements?" "oh, yes; the girl is quite an heiress and is the niece of his guardian--his guardian that was. their estates join, and they have always been fond of each other; so you see we have reason for our hopes." "excellent!" agreed her friend, "and to conclude, i am to suppose of course she is such a beauty that she blinds his eyes to all the charms arrayed before him here." "well, we never thought of gertrude as a beauty exactly; but she is remarkably good looking; all the lorings are. i would have had her with me for this visit but that her uncle, with whom she lives, has been very ill for months. they, also, are of colonial french descent with, of course, the usual infusions of anglo-saxon and european blood supposed to constitute the new american." "the new--" "yes, you understand, we have yet the original american in our land--the indian." "ah!" with a gesture of repulsion; "the savages; and then, the africans! how brave you are, claire. i should die of fear." mrs. mcveigh only smiled. she was searching through a portfolio, and finally extracted a photograph from other pictures and papers. "that is miss loring," she said, and handed it to the countess, who examined it with critical interest. "very pretty," she decided, "an english type. if she were a parisian, a modiste and hairdresser would do wonders towards developing her into a beauty of the very rare, very fair order. she suggests a slender white lily." "yes, gertrude is a little like that," assented mrs. mcveigh, and placed the photograph on the mantel beside that of the very charming, piquant face of a girl resembling mrs. mcveigh. it was a picture of her daughter. "only six weeks since i left her; yet, it seems like a year," she sighed; and fitzgerald delaven, who had entered from the lieutenant's room, sighed ponderously at her elbow. "well, dr. delaven, why are you blowing like a bellows?" she asked, with a smile of good nature. "out of sympathy, my lady," replied the young irishman. "now, how can you possibly sympathize understandingly with a mother's feelings, you irish pretender?" she asked with a note of fondness in her tones. "i sigh because i have not seen my little evilena for six weeks." "and i because i am never likely to see that lovely duplicate of yourself at all, at all! ah, you laugh! but have you not noticed that each time i am allowed to enter this room i pay my devotions to that particular corner of the mantel?" "a very modern shrine," observed the countess; "and why should you not see the original of the picture some day. it is not so far to america." "true enough, but i'll be delving for two years here in the medical college," he replied with lamentation in his tone. "and after that i'll be delving for a practice in some modest corner of the world, and all the time that little lady will be counting her lovers on every one of her white fingers, and, finally, will name the wedding day for a better boy than myself, och hone! och hone!" both the ladies laughed over his comical despair, and when lieutenant mcveigh entered and heard the cause of it he set things right by promising to speak a good word for delaven to the little girl across the water. "you are a trump, lieutenant; sorry am i that i have no sister with which to return the compliment." "she might be in the way," suggested the countess, and made a gesture towards the other picture. "you perceive; our friend need not come abroad for charming faces; those at home are worth courting." "true for you, madame;" he gave a look askance at the lieutenant, and again turned his eyes to the photograph; "there's an excuse for turning your back on the prettiest we have to offer you!" and then in an undertone, he added: "even for putting aside the chance of knowing our so adorable marquise." the american did not appear to hear or to appreciate the spirit of the jest regarding the pictures, for he made no reply. the countess, who was interested in everybody's affairs, wondered if it was because the heiress was a person of indifference to him, or a person who was sacred; it was without doubt one or the other for which the man made of himself a blank wall, and discouraged discussion. her carriage was just then announced; an engagement with mrs. mcveigh was arranged for the following morning, and then the countess descended the staircase accompanied by the lieutenant and delaven. she liked to make progress through all public places with at least two men in attendance; even a youthful lieutenant and an untitled medical student were not to be disdained, though she would, of course, have preferred the lieutenant in a uniform, six feet of broad shouldered, good-looking manhood would not weigh in her estimation with the glitter of buttons and golden cord. the two friends were yet standing on the lower step of the hotel entrance, gazing idly after her carriage as it turned the corner, when another carriage containing two ladies rolled softly towards their side of the street, as if to stop at a jeweler's two doors below. delaven uttered a slight exclamation of pleasure, and stepped forward as if to speak, or open the door of their carriage. but the occupants evidently did not see him, and, moreover, changed their minds about stopping, for the wheels were just ceasing to revolve when the younger of the ladies leaned forward, spoke a brief word, and the driver sent the horses onward at a rapid trot past the hotel, and delaven stepped back with a woeful grimace. "faith! no chance to even play the lackey for her," he grumbled. "there's an old saying that 'god is good to the irish;' but i don't think i'm getting my share of it this day; unless its by way of being kept out of temptation, and sure, its never a delaven would pray for that when the temptation is a lovely woman. now wasn't she worth a day's journey afoot just to look at?" he turned to his companion, whose gaze was still on the receding carriage, and who seemed, at last, to be aroused to interest in something parisian; for his eyes were alight, his expression, a mingling of delight and disappointment. at delaven's question, however, he attempted nonchalance, not very successfully, and remarked, as they re-entered the house, "there were two of them to look at, which do you mean?" "faith, now, did you suppose for a minute it was the dowager i meant? not a bit of it! madame alain, as i heard some of them call her, is the 'gem of purest ray serene.' what star of the heavens dare twinkle beside her?" "don't attempt the poetical," suggested the other, unfeelingly. "i am to suppose, then, that you know her--this madame alain?" "do i know her? haven't i been raving about her for days? haven't you vowed she belonged to the type abhorrent to you? haven't i had to endure your reflections on my sanity because of the adjectives i've employed to describe her attractions? haven't you been laughing at your own mother and myself for our infatuation?--and now--" he stopped, because the lieutenant's grip on his shoulder was uncomfortably tight, as he said: "shut up! who the devil are you talking about?" "by the same power, how can i shut up and tell you at the same time?" and delaven moved his arm, and felt of his shoulder, with exaggerated self-pity. "man! but you've got a grip in that fist of yours." "who is the lady you call madame alain?" "faith, if you had gone to her home when you were invited you'd have no need to ask me the question this day. her nearest friends call her madame alain, because that was the given name of her husband, the saints be good to him! and it helps distinguish her from the dowager. but for all that she is the lady you disdained to know--madame la marquise de caron." mcveigh stared at him moodily, even doubtfully. "you are not trying to play a practical joke, i reckon?" he said at last; and then without waiting for a reply, walked over to the office window, where he stood staring out, his hands in his pockets, his back to delaven, who was eyeing him calmly. directly, he came back smiling; his moody fit all gone. "and i was idiot enough to disdain that invitation?" he asked; "well, fitz, i have repented. i am willing to do penance in any agreeable way we can conjure up, and to commence by calling tomorrow, if you can find a way." delaven found a way. finding the way out of, or into difficulties was one of his strong points and one he especially delighted in, if it had a flavor of intrigue, and was to serve a friend. since his mother's death in paris, several years before, he had made his home in or about the city. he was without near relatives, but had quite a number of connections whose social standing was such that there were few doors he could not find keys to, or a password that was the equivalent. his own frank, ingenuous nature made him quite as many friends as his social and diplomatic connections; so that despite the fact of a not enormous income, and that he meant to belong to the professions some day, and that he was by no means a youth on matrimony bent--with all these drawbacks he was welcomed in a social way to most delightful circles, and when he remarked to the dowager that he would like to bring his friend, the lieutenant, at an early day, she assured him they would be welcome. she endeavored to make them so in her own characteristic way, when they called, twenty-four hours later, and they spent a delightful twenty minutes with her. she could not converse very freely with the american, because of the difficulties of his french and her english, but their laughter over mistakes really tended to better their acquaintance. he was conscious that her eyes were on him, even while she talked with delaven, whose mother she had known. he would have been uncomfortable under such surveillance but for the feeling that it was not entirely an unkindly regard, and he had hopes that the impression made was in his favor. loris dumaresque arrived as they were about to take their departure, and lieutenant mcveigh gathered from their greeting that he was a daily visitor--that as god-son he was acting as far as possible in the stead of a real son, and that the dowager depended on him in many ways since his return to paris. the american realized also that the artist would be called a very handsome man by some people, and that his gaiety and his self confidence would make him especially attractive to women. he felt an impatience with women who liked that sort of impudence. delaven did not get a civil word from him all the way home. madame la marquise--madame alain--had not appeared upon the scene at all. chapter v. "but he is not at all bad, this american officer," insisted the dowager; "such a great, manly fellow, with the deference instinctive, and eyes that regard you well and kindly. your imagination has most certainly led you astray; it could not be that with such a face, and such a mother, he could be the--horrible! of that story." "all the better for him," remarked her daughter-in-law. "but i should not feel at ease with him. he must be some relation, and i should shrink from all of the name." "but, madame mcveigh--so charming!" "oh, well; she only has the name by accident, that is, by marriage." the dowager regarded her with a smile of amusement. "shall you always regard marriage as merely an accident?" she asked. "some day it will be presented to you in such a practical, advantageous way that you will cease to think it all chance." "advantageous?" and the marquise raised her brows; "could we be more happy than we are?" the old face softened at the words and tone. "but i shall not be always with you," she replied; "and then--" "alain knew," said the girl, softly. "he said as a widow i could have liberty. i would need no guardian; i could look after all my affairs as young girls could not do. each year i shall grow older--more competent." "but there is one thing alain did not foresee: that your many suitors would rob you of peace until you made choice of some particular one. these late days i have felt i should like the choice to be made while i am here to see." "maman! you are not ill?" and in a moment she was beside the couch. "no; i think not; no, no, nothing to alarm you. i have only been thinking that together--both of us to plan and arrange--yet i need loris daily. and if there should be only one of us, that remaining one would need some man's help all the more, and if it were you, who then would the man be? you perceive! it is wise to make plans for all possibilities." "there are women who live alone." "not happy women," said the dowager in a tone, admitting of no contradiction; "the women who live alone from choice are cold and selfish; or have hurts to hide and are heart-sick of a world in which their illusions have been destroyed; or else they have never known companionship, and so never feel the lack of it. my child, i will not have you like any of these; you were made to enjoy life, and life to the young should mean--well, i am a sentimentalist. i married the one man who had all my affection. i approve of such marriages. if the man comes for whom you would care like that, i should welcome him." "he will never come, maman," and the smile of the marquise someway drifted into a sigh. "i shall live and die the widow of alain." the dowager embraced her. "but for all that i do not approve," she protested. "your reasons for not marrying do not convince me, and i promise my support to the most worthy who presents himself. have you an ideal to which nothing human may reach?" "for three years your son has seemed ideal to me," said the marquise, after a moment's hesitation. the dowager regarded her attentively. "he was?" she asked; "your regard for him does you credit; but, amber eyes, it is not for a man who has been dead a year that a woman blushes as you blush now." "oh!" began the marquise, as if in protest; and then feeling that the color was becoming even more pronounced, she was silent. the dowager smiled, well pleased at her cleverness. "there was sure to be some one, some day," she said, nodding sagaciously; "when you want to talk of it i will listen, my judithe. i could tell it in the tone of your voice as you sang or laughed; yes, there is nothing so wonderful in that," she explained, as the girl looked up, startled. "you have always been a creature of aims, serious, almost ponderous. suddenly you emerge like sunshine from the shadows; you are all gaiety and sudden smiles; unconsciously you sing low songs of happiness; you suggest brightness and hope; you have suddenly come into your long-delayed girlhood. you give me affectionate glimpses of the woman god meant you to be some day. it can only be a man who works such a miracle in an ascetic of nineteen years. when the lucky fellow gathers courage to speak, i shall be glad to pass judgment on him." the marquise was silent. the light, humorous tone of the dowager had disarmed her; yet she had of her own accord, and influenced by some wild mood, told dumaresque all that was only guesswork to the friend beside her. how could she have confessed it to him? she had wondered at herself that she had dared, and after all it had been so entirely useless; it had not driven away the memory of the man at fontainbleau, even for one little instant. madame blanc entered with some message for the dowager, and the question of marriage, also the more serious one of love, were put aside for the time. but judithe was conscious that she was under a kindly surveillance, and suspected that dumaresque, also, was given extra attention. her confession of that unusual fascination had made them better comrades, and the dowager was taking note that their tone was more frank, and their attitude suggested some understanding. it was like a comedy for her to watch them, feeling so sure that their sentiments were very clear and that she could see the way it would all end. judithe would coquette with him awhile, and then it would be all very well; and it would not be like a stranger coming into the family. the people who came close enough to see her often, realized that the journey back to paris had not been beneficial to the dowager. it had only been an experiment through which she had been led to open her house, receive her friends, introduce her daughter; but the little excitement of that had vanished, and now that the routine of life was to be followed, it oppressed her. the ghosts of other days came so close--the days when alain had been beside her. at times she regretted rome, but the physician forbade her return there until autumn. she had fancied that a season in the old house at fontainbleau would serve as a restorative to health--the house where alain was born; but it was a failure. her days there were days of tears, and sad, far-away memories. so to paris she went with the assertion that there alone, life was to be found. she meant to live to the last minute of her life, and where so well as in the one city inexhaustible? "maman is trying to frighten me into marriage," thought the marquise after their conversation; "she wants some spectacular ceremony to enliven the house for a season, and cure her ennui; paris has been a disappointment, and loris is making himself necessary to her." she was thinking of the matter, and of the impossibility that she should ever marry loris, when a box of flowers was brought--one left by a messenger, who said nothing of whence they came, and no name or card attached suggested the sender. "for maman," decided the marquise promptly. but madame blanc thought not. "you, madame, are the marquise." "oh, true! but the people who would send me flowers would not be so certain their own names would not be forgotten. i have no old, tried, and silent friends to remember me so." while she spoke she was lifting out the creamy and blush-tinted roses; maman should see them arranged in the prettiest vase, they must go up with the chocolate--she would take it herself! so she chattered while madame blanc arranged the tray. but suddenly the chatter ceased. the marquise had lifted out the last of the roses, and under the fragrant screen lay the cause of the sudden silence. it was a few sprays of dew-wet forget-me-nots! her heart seemed to stop beating. forget-me-not! there was but one person who had any association in her mind with that flower. did this have a meaning relating to him? or was it only chance? she said nothing to madame blanc about the silent message in the bottom of the box. all that day she moved as in a dream. at times she was oppressed by the terror of discovery, and again it was with a rebellious, delicious feeling of certainty that he had not forgotten! he had searched for her--found her! she meant to ignore him if they should meet; certainly she must do that! his assurance in daring to--yet--yes, she rather liked the daring--still----! she remembered some one saying that impertinence gained more favors from women than respect, and he--yes, certainly he was impertinent; she must never recognize him, of course--never! her cheek burned as she fancied what he must think of her--a girl who made friends with strangers in the park! yet she was glad that since he had not let her forget, he also had been forced to remember. she told herself all this, and much more; the task occupied so much of her time that she forgot to go asleep that night, and she saw the morning star shine out of the blue haze beyond the city, and it belonged to a dawn with a meaning entirely its own. never before or after was a daybreak so beautiful. the sun wheeled royally into view through the atmosphere of her first veritable love romance. chapter vi. even the card of lieutenant mcveigh could not annoy her that morning. he came with some message to the dowager from his mother. at any other time the sound of his name would have made a discord for her. the prejudices of judithe were so decided, and so independent of all accepted social rules, that the dowager hoped when she did choose a husband he would prove a diplomat--they would need one in the family. "madame blanc, will you receive the gentleman?" she asked. "maman has not yet left her room, and i am engaged." and for the second time the american made his exit from the caron establishment without having seen the woman his friends raved about. descending the steps he remembered the old saw that a third attempt carried a charm with it. he smiled, and the smile suggested that there would be a third attempt. the marquise looked at the card he left, and her smile had not so much that was pleasant in it. "maman, my conjecture was right," she remarked as she entered the room of the dowager; "your fine, manly american was really the youth of my carolina story." "carolina story?" and the dowager looked bewildered for a moment; when one has reached the age of eighty years the memory fails for the things of today; only the affairs of long ago retain distinctness. "exactly; the man for whom rhoda larue was educated, and of whom you forbade me to speak--the man who bought her from matthew loring, of loringwood, carolina." "you are certain?" "here is the name, kenneth mcveigh. it is not likely there are two kenneth mcveighs in the same region. how small the world is after all! i used to fancy the width of the ocean was as a barrier between two worlds, yet it has not prevented these people from crossing, and coming to our door!" she sank into a seat, the card still in her hand. "judithe," said the dowager, after watching her moody face thoughtfully, "my child, i should be happier if you banished, so far as possible, that story from your memory. it will have a tendency to narrow your views. you will always have a prejudice against a class for the wrong done by an individual. put it aside! it is a question outside of your life, outside of it always unless your sympathies persist in dragging you into such far-away abuses. we have the paris poor, if you must think and do battle for the unfortunate. and as to the american, consider. he must have been very young, perhaps was influenced by older heads. he may not have realized--" the marquise smiled, but shook her head. "you are eloquent, maman, but you do not convince me. he must be very handsome to have won you so completely in one interview. for me, i do not believe in his ignorance of the evil nor in his youthful innocence. i think of the women who for generations have been the victims of such innocence, and i should like to see your handsome young cadet suffer for his share of it!" "tah!" and the dowager put out her hand with a gesture of protest and a tone of doubt in her voice. "you say so judithe, but you could not see any one suffer, not even the criminal. you would come to his defense with some philosophical reason for the sin--some theory of pre-natal influence to account for his depravity. collectively you condemn them; individually you would pardon every one rather than see them suffer--i mean, than stand by and actually see the suffering." "i could not pardon that man," insisted the marquise; "ugh! i feel as if for him i could have the hand of judithe as well as the name." "and treat him a-la-holofernes? my child, sometimes i dislike that name of judithe for you; i do not want you to have a shadow of the character it suggests. i shall regret the name if it carries such dark influences with it. as for the man--forget him!" "with all my heart, if he keeps out of my way," agreed the marquise; "but if the old jewish god of battles ever delivers him into my hands--!" she paused and drew a deep breath. "well?" "well--i should show him mercy such as the vaunted law-giver, the chosen of the lord, the man of meekness, showed to the conquered midianites--no more!" and her laugh had less of music in it than usual. "i instinctively hate the man, kenneth mcveigh--kenneth mcveigh!--even the name is abhorrent since the day i heard of that awful barter and sale. it seems strange, maman, does it not, when i never saw him in my life--never expected to hear his name again--that it is to our house he has found his way in paris; to our house, where an unknown woman abhors him. ah!" and she flung the card from her. "you are right, maman; i am too often conquered by my own moods and feelings. the american need be nothing to us." the dowager was pleased when the subject was dropped. she had seen so many battles fought, in theory, by humanitarians who are alive to the injustice of the world. but her day was over for race questions and creeds. judithe was inspiring in her sympathies, but the questions that breathe living flame for us at twenty years, have burned into dead ashes at eighty. "tah! i would rather she would marry and let me see her children," she grumbled to madame blanc; "if she does not, i trust her to your care when i am gone. she is different since we reached paris--different, gayer, and less of the student." "but no more in touch with society," remarked the attentive companion; "she accepts no invitations, and goes only to the galleries and theatres." "um!--pictured people, and artificial people! both have a tendency to make her an idealist instead of a realist." to dumaresque she made the same remark, and suggested he should help find attractions for her in real life. "she is too imaginative, and i do not want her to be of the romantic women; the craze for romance in life is what fills the columns of the journals with new scandals each month." "madame judithe is safe from that sort of romance," declared her god-son. "yet with her face and those glorious eyes one should allow her some flights in the land of the ideal. she suggests all old italy at times, but she has never mentioned her family to me." "because it was a topic which both alain and i forbade her, when she was younger, to discuss. naturally, she has not a joyous temperament and memories of her childhood can only have an unhappy effect, which accounts for our decision of the matter. her father died before she could remember him, and the mother, who was of greek blood, not long after. a relative who arranged affairs left the daughter penniless. at the little chateau levigne she was of great service to me when she was but sixteen. madam blanc, who tried to reach me in time, declares the child saved my life. it was a dog--a mad one. i was on the lawn when he broke through the hedge, snapped alain's mastiff, ponto, and came straight for me. i was paralyzed with terror; then, just as he leaped at me, the child swung a heavy chair over her head. tah! she looked like a young tigress. the dog was struck helpless, his back broken. the gardener came and killed him, and ponto, too, was killed, when he showed that the bite had given him the poison. ah, it was terrible, that day. then i wrote alain and we decided she should never leave us. i made over to her the income of the little lavigne estate, thus her education was carried on, and when we went to rome--well, alain was not satisfied until he could do even more for her." the old lady helped herself to snuff and sighed. her listener wondered if, after all, that death-bed marriage had been entirely acceptable to the mother. some suggestion of his thought must have come to her, for she continued: "not that i disapproved, you must understand. no daughter could be more devoted. i could not be without her now. but i had a hope--a mother's foolish hope--that perhaps it might be a love affair; that the marriage would renew his interest in life and thus accomplish what the physicians could not do--save him." "good old alain," said dumaresque, with real feeling in his tones. "he deserved to live and win her. i can imagine no better fortune for a man." "but it was an empty hope, and a sad wedding," continued the dowager, with a sigh. "that was, to her, a day of gloom, which to others is the one day to look forward to through girlhood and backward to from old age. oh, yes; it is not so much to be wondered at that she is a creature of moods and ideals outlined on a background of shadow." the voice of the marquise sounded through the hall and up the stairs. she was singing, joying as a bird. the eyes of the two met, and dumaresque laughed. "oh! and what is that but a mood, too?" demanded the dowager; "a mood that is pleasant, i grant you, and it has lasted longer than usual--ever since we came to paris. i enjoy it, but i like to know the reason of things. i guess at it in this case; yet it eludes me." dumaresque raised his brows and smiled as one who invites further confidences. but he received instead a keen glance from the old eyes, and a question: "loris, who is the man?" "what! you ask me?" "there is no other to ask; you know all the men she has met; you are not a fool, and an artist's eye is trained to observe." "it has not served me in this case, my god-mother." "which means you will not tell. i shall suspect it is yourself if you conspire to keep it from me." "pouf! when it is myself i shall be so eager to let it be known that no one will have time to ask a question." "that is good," she said approvingly. "i must rest now. i have talked so long; but a word, loris; she likes you, she trusts you, and that--well, that goes far." and all the morning her assurance made for him hours of brightness. the stranger of fontainbleau had drifted into the background, and should never have real place in their lives. she liked and trusted _him_; and that would go far. he was happy in imagining the happiness that might be, forgetful of another lover, one among the poets, who avowed that the happiness of the future was the only real happiness of the world. he was pleased that his god-mother had confided to him these little facts of family history. he remembered how intensely eager the dowager had been for alain's marriage, years before, that there might be an heir; and he remembered, in part, the cause--her detestation of a female relative whose son would inherit the marquisate should a son be born to her, and alain die without children. he could see how eagerly the dowager would have consented to a marriage with even the poorest of poor relations if both the marquisate and alain might be saved by it. poor alain! he remembered the story of why he had remained single; a story of love forbidden, and of a woman who entered a convent because, in the world, she could not live with her lover, and would not live with the man whose name she bore. it was an old story; she had died long ago, but alain had remained faithful. it had been the one great passion he had known of, outside of a romance, and the finale of it was that the slight girlish protegee was mistress of his name and fortune, though her heart had never beat the faster for his glance. and the greek blood doubtless accounted for her readiness of speech in different tongues; they were so naturally linguists--the greeks. he had met her first in rome, and fancied her an italian. delaven had asked if she were not english; and now in the heart of france she appeared to him entirely parisian. a chameleon-like wife might have her disadvantages, he thought, as he walked away after the talk with his god-mother; yet she would not be so apt as others to bore one with sameness. at nineteen she was charming; at twenty-five she would be magnificent. the streets were alive that morning with patriotic groups discussing the victory of the french troops at magenta. the first telegrams were posted and crowds were gathered about them. dumaresque passed through them with an unusually preoccupied air. then a tall man, leaning against a pillar and viewing the crowd, bowed to him in such a way as to arrest his attention. it was the american, of the smiling, half sleepy eyes, and the firm mouth. the combination appealed to dumaresque as an artist; also the shape of the head, it was exceedingly good, strong; even his lounging attitude had the grace suggestive of strength. he remembered seeing somewhere the head of a young lion painted with just those half closed, shadowy eyes. lieutenant mcveigh was regarding him with something akin to their watchfulness, the same slow gaze travelling from the feet to the head as they approached each other; it was deliberate as the measuring of an adversary, and its finale was a smile. "glad to see a man," he remarked. "i have been listening to the jabbering and screeches of the crowd until they seem only manikins." dumaresque laughed. "you come by way of england, i believe; do you prefer the various dialects of that land of fog?" "no, i do not; have a cigar?" dumaresque accepted the offer. mcveigh himself lighted one and continued: "their stuffiness lacks the picturesque qualities possessed by even the poorest of france, and then they bore one with their wranglings for six-pences, from parliament down to peasant. they are always at it in brittania the gem of the ocean, wrangling over six-pences, and half-pennies and candle ends." "you are finding flaws in the people who call you cousin," remarked the artist. "yes, i know they do," said the other, between puffs. "but i can't imagine a real american helping them in their claims for relationship. our history gives us no cause for such kindly remembrances." "unless on the principle that one has a kindly regard for a man after fighting with him and not coming out second best," remarked dumaresque. "i have an errand in the next street; will you come?" mcveigh assented. they stalked along, chattering and enjoying their cigars until they reached a florists, where dumaresque produced a memorandum and read off a list of blossoms and greenery to be delivered by a certain date. "an affair for the hospitals to be held in the home of madame dulac, wife of general dulac," he explained; "it is to be all very novel, a bazaar and a ball. madame is an old friend of my god-mother, the dowager marquise de caron, whom you have met." mcveigh assented and showed interest. "we have almost persuaded madame alain, her daughter, to preside over one of the booths. ah! it will be a place to empty one's pockets; you must come." "not sure about invitations," confessed mcveigh, frankly. "it is a very exclusive affair, i believe, and a foreigner will be such a distinctive outsider at such gatherings." "we will undertake to prevent that," promised dumaresque, "and in the interests of charity you will find both dames and demoiselles wonderfully gracious to even a lonely, unattached man. if you dance you can win your own place." "oh, yes; we all dance in our country; some of us poorly, perhaps; still, we dance." "good! you must come. i am assisting, after a fashion, in planning the decorations, and i promise to find you some one who is charming, and who speaks your language delightfully." there was some further chat. mcveigh promised he would attend unless his mother had made conflicting engagements. dumaresque informed him it was to be a fancy dress affair; uniforms would be just the thing; and he parted with the american much more pleased with him than in the salons where they had met heretofore. kenneth mcveigh sauntered along the avenue, tall, careless, reposeful. his expression was one of content, and he smiled as he silently blessed loris dumaresque, who had done him excellent service without knowing it--had found a method by which he would try the charm of the third attempt to see the handsome girl who had passed them that day in the carriage. he entered the hotel late that night. paris, in an unofficial way, was celebrating the victory of magenta by shouting around bon-fires, laughing under banners, forming delegations no one remembered, and making addresses no one listened to. late though it was, mrs. mcveigh had not retired. from a window she was looking out on the city, where sleep seemed forgotten, and her beautiful eyes had a seriousness contrasting strangely with the joyous celebrations of victory she had been witnessing. "what is it, mother?" he asked, in the soft, mellow tones of the south, irresistible in their caressing qualities. the mother put out her hand and clasped his without speaking. "homesick?" he ventured, trying to see her face as he drew a chair closer; "longing for that twelve-year-old baby of yours? evilena certainly would enjoy the hubbub." "no, kenneth," she said at last: "it is not that. but i have been watching the enthusiasm of these people over a victory they have helped win for italy's freedom--not their own. we have questions just as vital in our country; some day they must be settled in the same way; there seems no doubt of it--and then--" "then we will go out, have our little pass at each other, and come back and go on hoeing our corn, just as father did in the mexican campaign," he said with an attempt at lightness; but she shook her head. "many a soldier left the corn fields who never came back to them." "why, mother, what is it, dear? you've been crying, crying here all alone over one war that is nothing to us, and another that may never happen; come! come!" he put his arm about her as if she were a child to be petted. her head sank on his shoulder, though she still looked away from him, out into the brilliantly lighted street. "it was not the--the political justice or injustice of the wars," she confessed after a little; "it was not of that i was thinking. but a woman screamed out there on the street. they--the people--had just told her the returns of the battle, and her son was among the killed--poor woman! her only son, kenneth, and--" "yes, dear, i understand." he drew her closer and lifting her head from her lap, placed it on his shoulder. she uttered a tremulous little sigh of content. and then, with his arms about her, the mother and son looked out on paris after a victory, each thinking of their own home, their own capital cities, and their own vague dread of battles to be in the future. chapter vii. as morning after morning passed without the arrival of other mysterious boxes of flowers or of significant messages, the marquise began to watch loris dumaresque more than was usual with her. he was the only one who knew; had he, educated by some spirit of jest, been the sender of the blossoms? and inconsistent as it may appear when one remembers her avowed fear of discovery, yet from the moment that suspicion entered her mind the charm was gone from the blossoms and the days to follow, and she felt for the first time a resentment towards monsieur incognito. her reason told her this was an inevitable consequence, through resentment forgetfulness would come. but her heart told her--? her presence at the charitable fete held by madame la general at the hotel dulac was her first response, in a social way to the invitations of her parisian acquaintances. a charity one might support without in any way committing oneself to further social plunges. she expected to feel shy and strange; she expected to be bored. but since maman wished it so much--! there is nothing so likely to banish shyness as success. the young marquise could not but be conscious that she attracted attention, and that the most popular women of the court who had been pleased to show their patronage by attendance, did not in the least eclipse her own less pretentious self. people besieged madame dulac for introductions, and to her own surprise the debutante found herself enjoying all the gay nothings, the jests, the bright sentences tossed about her and forming a foundation for compliments delicately veiled, and the flattering by word or glance that was as the breath of life to those people of the world. she was dressed in white of medieval cut. heavy white silk cord was knotted about the slender waist and touched the embroidered hem. the square neck had also the simple finish of cord and above it was the one bit of color; a flat necklace of etruscan gold fitted closely about the white throat, holding alternate rubies and pearls in their curiously wrought settings. on one arm was a bracelet of the same design; and the linked fillet above her dark hair gleamed, also, with the red of rubies. it was the age of tarletan and tinsel, of delicate zephyrs and extremes in butterfly effects. hoop-skirts were persisted in, despite the protests of art and reason; so, the serenity of this dress, fitting close as a habit, and falling in soft straight folds with a sculpturesque effect, and with the brown-eyed italian face above it, created a sensation. dumaresque watched her graciously accepting homage as a matter of course, and smiled, thinking of his prophecy that she would be magnificent at twenty-five;--she was so already. some women near him commented on the simplicity of her attire. "oh, that is without doubt the taste of the dowager; failing to influence the politics of the country she consoled herself with an attempt to make a revolution in the fashions of the age." "and is this sensation to illustrate her ideas?" asked another. "she has rather a good manner--the girl--but the dress is a trifle theatrical, suggestive of the pages of tragedies and martyred virgins." "suggestive of the girl cleopatra before she realized her power," thought the artist as he passed on. he knew that just those little remarks stamped her success a certainty, and was pleased accordingly. the dowager had expressed her opinion that judithe would bury herself in studies if left to herself, perhaps even go back to the convent. he fancied a few such hours of adulation as this would change the ideas of any girl of nineteen as to the desirability of convents. he noticed that the floral bower over which she presided had little left now but the ferns and green things; she had been adding money to the hospital fund. once he noticed the blossoms left in charge of her aides while she entered the hall room on the arm of the most distinguished official present, and later, on that of one of the dowager's oldest friends. she talked with, and sold roses to the younger courtiers at exorbitant prices, but it was only the men of years and honors whom she walked beside. madame dulac and dumaresque exchanged glances of approval; as a possible general in the social field of the future, she had commenced with the tactics of absolute genius. dumaresque wondered if she realized her own cleverness, or if it was because she honestly liked best to talk or listen to the men of years, experience, and undoubted honors. mrs. mcveigh was there, radiant as aurore and with eyes so bright one would not fancy them bathed in tears so lately, or the smooth brow as containing a single anxious motherly thought. but the marquise having heard that story of the son, wondered as she looked at her if the handsome mother had not many an anxious thought the world never suspected. she was laughing frankly to the marquise over the future just read in her palm by a picturesque egyptian, who was one of the novelties added to madame dulac's list for the night. nothing less than an adoring husband had been promised her, and with the exception of a few shadowed years, not a cloud larger than the hand of a man was to cross the sky of her destiny. "i am wishing kenneth had come--my son, you know. something has detained him. i certainly would have liked him to hear that promise of a step-father. our southern men are not devoid of jealousy--even of their mothers." then she passed on, a glory of azure and silver, and the marquise felt a sense of satisfaction that the son had not come; the prejudice she felt against that unabashed american would make his presence the one black cloud across the evening. while she was thinking of him the party about her separated, and she took advantage of a moment alone to slip the alcove back of the evergreens. it seemed the one nook unappropriated by the glittering masses of people whose voices, near and far, suggested the murmur of bees to her as she viewed it from her shadowy retreat, while covered from sight herself. the moonlight was shining through the window of the little alcove screened by the tall palms. the music of a tender waltz movement drifted softly across to her and made perfect her little retreat. she was conscious that it had all been wonderfully and unexpectedly perfect; the success, the adulation, had given her a new definite faith in herself. how maman would have enjoyed it. maman, who would want every little detail of the pleasant things said and done. she wondered if it was yet too early to depart, she might reach home before the dowager slept, and tell her all the glories of it. so thinking, she turned to enter again the glare of light to find madame dulac, or madame blanc, who had accompanied her, to tell them. but another hand pushed aside the curtain of silk and the drooping fronds of gigantic fern. looking up she saw a tall, young man, wearing a dark blue uniform, who bowed with grace, and stood aside that she might pass if she chose. he showed no recognition, and there was the pause of an instant. she could feel the color leave her face. then, with an effort, she raised her eyes, and tried to speak carelessly, but the voice was little more than a whisper, in which she said: "you!" his face brightened and grew warm. the tone itself told more than she knew; a man would be stupid who could not read it, and this one, though youthful, did not look stupid. "madame unknown," he murmured, in the voice she had not been able to forget, "i am not so lost here as at fontainbleau. may i ask some one to present me to your notice?" at that she smiled, and the smile was contagious. "you may not," she replied frankly, recovering herself, and assuming a tone of lightness to conquer the fluttering in her throat. "the list of names i have had to remember this evening is most formidable, another one would make the last feather here," and she tapped her forehead significantly. "i was just about to flee from it all when--" she hesitated and looked about her in an uncertain way. he at once placed a chair for her. she allowed her hand to rest on the back of it as if undecided. "you will not be so unkind?" he said; and his words held a plea. she answered it by seating herself. "well?" at the interrogation he smiled. "will you not allow me, madame, to introduce myself?" "but, monsieur incognito, consider; i have remembered you best because you have not done so; it was a novelty. but all those people whose names were spoken to me this evening--pouf!" and she blew a feathery spray of fern from her palms, "they have all drifted into oblivion like that. do you wish, then, to be presented and--to follow them?" "i refuse to follow them there--from you." his tones were so low, so even, so ardent, that she looked startled and drew her breath quickly. "you are bold, monsieur," and though she strove to speak haughtily she was too much of a girl to be severe when her eyes met his. "why not?" he asked, growing bolder as she grew more timid. "you grant me one moment out of your life; then you mean to close the gates against me--if you can. in that brief time i must condense all that another man should take months to say to you. i have been speaking to you daily, however, for six weeks and--" "monsieur! six weeks?" "every day," he assented, smiling down at her. "of course you did not hear me. i was very confidential about it. i even tried to stop it entirely when i was allowed to believe that mademoiselle was madame." "but it is quite true--she is madame." "certainly; yet you let me think--well, i forgive you for it now, since i have found you again." "monsieur!"--she half arose. "will mademoiselle have her fortune told?" asked a voice beside them, and the beringed egyptian pushed aside the palms, "or monsieur, perhaps?" "both of us," he assented with eagerness; "that is, if mademoiselle chooses." he dropped two pieces of gold in the beaded purse held out. "come," he half whispered to the marquise, "let me see if oblivion is really the doom fate reads against me." she half put out her hand, thinking that after all it was only a part of the games of the night--the little amusements with which purses were filled for charity; then some sudden after thought made her draw it back. "you fear the decision?" he asked. she did not fear the decision he meant, but she did fear-- "no, monsieur, i am not afraid. oh, yes; she may read my palm, it is all a jest, of course." the egyptian held the man's hand at which she had not yet glanced. she took the hand of the marquise. "pardon, madame, it is no jest, it is a science," she said briefly, and holding their hands, glanced from one to the other. "firm hands, strong hands, both," she said, and then bent over that of the marquise; as she did so the expression of casual interest faded from her face; she slowly lifted her head and met the gaze of the owner. "well, well? am i to commit murders?" she asked; but her smile was an uneasy one; the gaze of the egyptian made her shrink. "not with your own hand," said the woman, slowly studying the well-marked palm; "but you will live for awhile surrounded by death and danger. you will hate, and suffer for the hate you feel. you will love, and die for the love you will not take--you--" but the marquise drew her hand away petulantly. "oh! i am to die of love, then?--i!" and her light laugh was disdainful. "that is quite enough of the fates for one evening;" she regarded the pink palm doubtfully. "see, monsieur, it does not look so terrible; yet it contains all those horrors." "naturally it would not contain them," said the egyptian. "you will force yourself to meet what you call the horrors. you will sacrifice yourself. you will meet the worst as the women of ' ascended the guillotine--laughing." "ah, what pictures! monsieur, i wish you a better fortune." "than to die of love?" he asked, and met her eyes; "that were easier than to live without it." "chut!--you speak like the cavalier of a romance." "i feel like one," he confessed, "and it rests on your mercy whether the romance has a happy ending." she flashed one admonishing glance at him and towards the woman who bent over his hand. "oh, she does not comprehend the english," he assured her; "and if she does she will only hear the echo of what she reads in my hand." "proceed," said the marquise to the egyptian, "we wait to hear the list of monsieur's romances." "you will live by the sword, but not die by the sword," said the woman. "you will have one great passion in your life. twice the woman will come in your path. the first time you will cross the seas to her, the second time she comes to you--and--ah!--" she reached again for the hand of the marquise and compared them. the two young people looked, not at her, but at each other. in the eyes of the marquise was a certain petulant rebellion, and in his the appealing, the assuring, the ardent gaze that met and answered her. "it is peculiar--this," continued the woman. "i have never seen anything like it before; the same mark, the same, mademoiselle, monsieur; you will each know tragedies in your experience, and the lives are linked together." "no!"--and again the marquise drew her hand away. "it is no longer amusing," she remarked in english, "when those people think it their duty to pair couples off like animals in the ark." her face had flushed, though she tried to look indifferent. the egyptian had stepped back and was regarding her curiously. "do not cross the seas, mademoiselle; all of content will be left behind you." "wait," and the monsieur incognito put out his hand. "you call the lady 'mademoiselle,' but your guess has not been good;" and he pointed to a plain ring on the hand of the marquise. "i call her mademoiselle because she never has been a wife, and--she never will be a wife. there are marriages without wedding rings, and there are wedding rings without marriages; pardon!--" and passing between the ferns and palms she was gone. "that is true!" half whispered the marquise, looking up at him; "her words almost frighten me." "they need not," and the caress in his eyes made her drop her own; "all your world of paris knows the romance of your marriage. you are more of a celebrity than you may imagine; my knowledge of that made me fear to approach you here." "the fear did not last long," and she laughed, the coquetry of the sex again uppermost. "for how many seconds did you tremble on the threshold?" "long enough to avoid any friends who had planned to present me." "and why?" "lest it might offend to have the person thrust on you whom you would not know among less ceremonious surroundings." "yet you came alone?" "i could not help that, i _had_ to see you, even though you refused to recognize me; i had to see you. did i not prophecy there in the wood that we should meet again? even the flowers you gave me i--" "monsieur, no more!" and she rose from the chair with a certain decision. "it was a thoughtless, childish farce played there at fontainbleau. but--it is over. i--i have felt humiliated by that episode, monsieur. young ladies in france do not converse with strangers. pray go back to england and forget that you found one so indiscreet--oh! i know what you would say, monsieur," as he was about to speak. "i know many of these ladies of the court would only laugh over such an episode--it would be but a part of their amusements for the day; but i, i do not belong to the court or their fashions. i am only ashamed, and ask that you forget it. i would not want any one to think--i mean that i--" she had commenced so bravely with her wise, firm little speech, but at the finale she wavered and broke down miserably. "don't!"--he broke in as a tear fell on the fan she held; "you make me feel like a brute who has persecuted you; don't cry. come here to the window; listen to me. i--i loved you that first day; you just looked at me, spoke to me and it was all over with me. i can't undo it. i can go away, and i _will_, rather than make you unhappy; but i can't forget you. i have never forgotten you for an hour. that was why. oh, i know it is the wildest, maddest, most unpardonable thing i am saying to you. your friends would want to call me out and shoot me for it, and i shall be happy to give them the chance," he added, grimly. "but don't, for heaven's sake, think that my memory of you would be less than respectful. why, i--i adore you. i am telling it to you like a fool, but i only ask you to not laugh until i am out of hearing. i--will go now--and do not even ask your forgiveness, because--well i can't honestly say i am sorry." sorry! she thought of those days when she had wakened to a new world because his eyes and his voice haunted her; she heard him acknowledge the same power, and he spoke of forgiveness as though convicted of a fault. well, she had not been able to prevent the same fault, so, how dared she blame him? he need not know, of course, how well she had remembered; yet she might surely be a little kind for all that. "monsieur incognito!" her voice had an imperious tone; she remembered she must not be too kind. he was already among the palms, in the full light of the salon, and he was boy enough for all the color to leave his face as he heard the low command. she had heard him declare his devotion, yet she had recalled him. "madame," he said, and stood stubbornly the width of the alcove from her, though he was conscious of all tender words rushing to his lips. she was so adorable; a woman in mentality, but the veriest girl as to the emotions his words had awakened. "monsieur," she said, without looking at him, "i do not truly believe you meant to offend me; therefore i have nothing to forgive." "you angel!" he half whispered, but she heard him. "no, i am not that," and she flashed a quick glance at him, "only i think i comprehend you, and to comprehend is to forgive, is it not? i--i cannot listen to the--affection you speak of. love and marriage are not for me. did not the egyptian say it? yes; that was quite true. but i can shake hands in good-bye, monsieur incognito. your english people always do that, eh? well, so will i." she held out her hand; he took it in both his own and his lips touched it. "no! no!" she said softly, and shook her head; "that is not an english custom." he lifted his head and looked at her. "why do you call me english?" he asked, and she smiled, glad to break that tenseness of feeling by some commonplace. "it was very simple, monsieur; first it was the make of your hat, i read the name of the maker in the crown that day in the park; then you spoke english; you said you had just arrived from england; and the english are so certain to get lost unless they go in groups--therefore!" she had enumerated all those reasons on her white fingers. she glanced at him, with an adorable smile as a finale, so confident she had proven her case. "and you french have no fondness for the english people," he said slowly, looking at her. "i wear an american uniform tonight; suppose i am an american? i am tempted to disobey and tell you who i am, in hopes you will not send me into exile quite so soon." "no, no, _no_!" she breathed hurriedly. "you must go; and you must remain monsieur incognito; thus it will be only a comedy, a morsel of romance. but if i knew you well--ah! i do not know what it would be then. i am afraid to think. yes, i confess it, monsieur, you make me afraid. i tell myself you are a foreign ogre, yet when you speak to me--ah!" she put out her hands as he came close. but he knelt at her feet, kissing her hands, her wrists, the folds of her dress, then lifted his face glowing, ardent, to her own. "i shall make you love me some day," he whispered; "not now, perhaps, but some day." she stared at him without a word. she had received proposals of marriage, dignified, ceremonious affairs submitted to her by the dowager, but from this stranger came the first avowal of love she had ever listened to. a stranger; yet he held her hand; she felt herself drawn towards him by a force she could not combat. her other arm was over the back of a chair, slowly she lifted it, then he felt her hand touch his hair and the touch was a caress. "my queen!" "co--now," she said so lowly. it was almost a whisper. he arose, pressed her hand to his lips and turned away, when a woman's voice spoke among the palms: "did you say in this corner, madame? i have not found him; kenneth!" "it is my mother," he said softly, and was about to draw back the alcove draperies when the marquise took a step towards him, staring strangely into his face. "_your mother!_" and her tones expressed only doubt and dread. "no, no! why, i--i know the voice; it is madame mcveigh; she called kenneth, her son--" he smiled an affirmative. "yes; you will forgive me for having my name spoken to you after all? but there seems to be no help for it. so you see i am not english despite the hat, and my name is kenneth mcveigh." his smile changed to quick concern as he noticed the strange look on her face, and the swaying movement towards the chair. he put out his hand, but she threw herself back from him with a shuddering movement of repulsion. and a moment later the palms parted beside mrs. mcveigh, and she was startled at sight of her son's face. "kenneth! why, what is wrong?" "a lady has fainted there in the alcove," he said, in a voice which sounded strange to her; "will you go to her?" "fainted? why, kenneth!--" "yes; i think it is the marquise de caron." chapter viii. the dowager was delighted to find that the one evening of complete social success had changed her daughter-in-law into a woman of society. it had modified her prejudices. she accepted invitations without her former protests, and was only careful that the people whom she visited should be of the most distinguished. dumaresque watched her with interest. there seemed much of deliberation back of every move she made. the men of mark were the only ones to whom she gave encouragement, and she found several so responsive that there was no doubt, now, as to whether she was awake to her own power--more, she had a mind to use it. she was spoken of as one of the beauties of the day. the mcveighs had gone to italy, the mother to visit a relative, the son to view the late battle fields on the other side of the pyrenees and acquaint himself with military matters wherever he found them. he had called on the marquise the day following the fete at the hotel dulac. she had quite recovered her slight indisposition of the preceding evening, and there had been no hesitation about receiving him. she was alone, and she met him with the fine, cool, gracious manner reserved for the people who were of no importance in her life. looking at her, listening to her, he could scarcely believe this could be the girl who had provoked him into a declaration of love less than a day ago, and in whose eyes he had surprised a fervor responding to his own. she called him lieutenant mcveigh, with an utter disregard of the fact that she had ever called him anything else. when in sheer desperation he referred to their first meeting, she listened with a chill little smile. "yes," she agreed; "fontainbleau was beautiful in the spring time. maman was especially fond of it. she, herself, had been telling a friend lately of the very unconventional meeting under the bushes of the mademoiselle and monsieur incognito, and he--the friend--had thought it delightfully amusing, good enough for the thread of a comedy." then she sent some kindly message to mrs. mcveigh, but refused to see the wonder--the actual pain--in the eyes where before she had remembered those half slumberous smiles, or that brief space of passionate pleading. he interrupted some cool remark by rising. "it is scarcely worth while--all this," he said, abruptly. "had you closed your doors against me after last night i should have understood--i should have gone away adoring you just the same. but to open them, to receive me, and then--" his voice trembled in spite of himself. all at once he appeared so much more boyish than ever before--so helpless in a sort of misery he could not account for, she turned away her head. "with the ocean between us my love could not have hurt you. you might have let me keep that." he had recovered control of his voice and his eyes swept over her from head to foot like blue lightning. "i bid you good-day, madame." she made an inclination of the head, but did not speak. she had reached the limit of her self control. his words, "_you might have let me keep that_," were an accusation she dared not discuss. when the door closed behind him she could see nothing, for the blur of tears in her eyes. madame la marquise received no other callers that day. in the days following she compared him with the courtiers, the diplomats, the very clever men whom she met, and told herself he was only a boy--a cadet of twenty-two. why should she remember his words, or forget for one instant that infamy with which his name was connected? "he goes on his knees to me only because he has grown weary of the slave-women of the plantations," she told herself in deepest disgust. sometimes she would look curiously at the hands once covered by his kisses. and once she threw a withered bunch of forget-me-nots from her window, at night, and crept down at daybreak next morning and found it, and took it back to her room. it looked as though the boy was holding his own despite the diplomats. when she saw him again it was at an auction of articles donated for a charity under the patronage of the empress, and open to the public. cotton stuffs justled my lady's satins, and the half-world stared at short range into the faces whose owners claimed coronets. many leading artists had donated sketches of their more pretentious work. it was to that department the marquise made her way, and entering the gallery by a side door, found that the crowd had separated her from the countess biron and the rest of their party. knowing that sooner or later they would find her there, she halted, examining some choice bits of color near the door. a daintily dressed woman, who looked strangely familiar, was standing near with apparently the same intent. but she stood so still; and the poise of her head betrayed that she was listening to something. the something was a group of men back of them, where the black and white sketches were on exhibition. the corridor was not wide, and their conversation was in english and not difficult to understand if one gave attention. the marquise noted that dumaresque was among them, and they stood before his donation of sketches, of which the principal one was a little study of the octoroon dancer, kora. then in a flash she understood who the person was who listened. she was the original of the picture, drawn there no doubt by a sort of vanity to hear the artistic praise, or personal comment. but a swift glance showed her it had been a mistake; the dark brows were frowning, the full lip was bitten nervously, and the small ungloved hand was clenched. the men were laughing carelessly over some argument, not noticing that they had a listener; the people moving along the corridor, single and in groups, hid the two who remained stationary, and whose backs were towards them. it was most embarrassing, and the marquise was about to move away when she heard a voice there was no mistaking--the voice she had not been able to forget. "no, i don't agree with you;" he was saying, "and you would not find half so much to admire in the work if the subject were some old plantation mammy equally well painted. come over and see them where they grow. after that you will not be making celebrities of them." "if they grow many like that i am most willing, monsieur." "i, too. when do we start? i can fancy no land so well worth a visit but that of mohammed." the first speaker uttered an exclamation of annoyance, but the others laughed. "oh, we have seen other men of your land here," remarked dumaresque. "they are not all so discreet as yourself. we have learned that they do not usually build high walls between themselves and pretty slaves." "you are right," agreed the american. "sorry i can't contradict you. but these gorgeous koras and phrynes remind me of a wild blossom in our country; it is exquisite in form, beautiful to the eye, but poison if touched to the lips. it is called the yellow jasmine." "no doubt you are right," remarked one of the men as kora dropped her veil over her face. "you are at all events poetical." "and the reason of their depravity?" "the fact that they are the outgrowth of the worst passions of both races--at least so i have heard it said by men who make more of a study of such questions than i." a party of people moved between the two women and the speakers. the marquise heard kora draw a sobbing breath. she hesitated an instant, her own eyes flashing, her cheeks burning. _he_ to sit in judgment on others--he! then she laid her hand on the wrist of kora. "come with me," she said, softly, in english, and the girl with one glance of tear-wet eyes, obeyed. the marquise opened the door beside her, a few steps further and another door led into an ante-room belonging to a portion of the building closed for repairs. "why do you weep?" she asked briefly, but the kindly clasp of her wrist told that the questioner was not without sympathy, and the girl strove to compose herself while staring at the other in amazement. "you--i have seen you--i remember you," she said, wonderingly, "the marquise de caron!" "yes;" the face of the marquise flushed, "and you are the dancer--kora. why did you weep at their words?" "since you know who i am, madame, i need not hesitate to tell you more," she said, though she did hesitate, and looked up, deprecatingly, to the marquise, who stood a few paces away leaning against the window. there was only one chair in the room. kora perceived for the first time that it had been given to her while the marquise stood. she arose to her feet, and with a deference that lent a subtile grace to her expression, offered it to her questioner. "no; resume your seat;" the command was a trifle imperious, but it was softened the next instant by the smile with which she said: "a dear old lady taught me that to the burdened horse we should always give the right of way. we must make easier the way of those who bear sorrows. you have the sorrow today--what is it?" "i am not sure that you will understand, madame," and the girl's velvety black eyes lifted and then sought the floor again. "but you, perhaps, heard what they said out there, and the man i--i--well, he was there." the lips of the marquise grew a trifle rigid, but kora was too much engaged with her own emotion to perceive it. "i suppose i shouldn't speak of him to a--a lady who can't understand people who live in a different sort of world. but you mean to be kind, and i suppose have some reason for asking?" and she glanced at the lady in the window. "so--" the marquise looked at her carefully; yes, the girl was undeniably handsome; a medium sized, well-turned figure, small hands and feet, graceful in movement, velvety oriental eyes, and the deep cream complexion over which the artists had raved. she had the manner of one well trained, but was strangely diffident before this lady of the other world. the marquise drew a deep breath as she realized how attractive she could be to a man who cared. "you are a fool," she said, harshly, "to care for a man who speaks so of your people." "oh, madame!" and the graceful form drooped helplessly. "i knew you could never understand. but if folks only loved where it was wise to love, all the trouble of the world would be ended." the hand of the marquise went to her throat for an instant. "and then it is true, all they said there," continued kora; "that is why--why i had let you see me cry; what he said is true--and i--i belong in his country where the yellow jasmine grows. there are times when i never stop to think--weeks when i am satisfied that i have money and a fine apartment. then, all at once, in a minute like this, i see that it does not weigh down the one drop of black blood in my hand there. sometimes i would sell my soul to wipe it out, and i can't! i can't!" her emotions were again overwhelming her. the marquise watched her clench the shapely hands with their tapering fingers and many rings, the pretty graceful bit of human furniture in an establishment for such as _he_! "an oriental prince was entertained by the empress last week," she remarked, abruptly. "his mother was a black woman, yours was not." "i know; i try to understand it--all the difference that is made. i can't do it; i have not the brain. i can only"--and she smiled bitterly--"only learn to dance a little, and you don't need brain for that. my god! how can they expect us to have brain when our mothers and grandmothers had to live under laws forbidding a slave to dispute any command of a white man? madame, ladies like you--ladies of france--could not understand. i could not tell you. sometimes i think money is all that can help you in this world. but even money can't kill the poison he spoke of. we might be free for generations but the curse would stay on us, because away back in the past our people had been slaves." "so have the ancestors of those men you listened to," said the marquise, and the girl looked at her wonderingly. "_they!_ why, madame!" "it is quite true. everyone of them is the descendant of slaves of the past. every ancient race was at some time the slaves of some stronger nation. many of the masters of today are the descendants of people who were bought and sold with the land for hundreds of years. think of that when they taunt you with slavery!" "oh! madame!" "and remember that every king and queen of egypt for centuries, every one told of in their bibles and histories, would look black beside the woman who was your mother! chut! do not look so startled! the caucassian of today is now believed by men of science to be only a bleached negro. to be sure, it has taken thousands of years, and the ice-fields and cave dwellings of the north to do the bleaching. but man came originally from the orient, the very womb of the earth from which only creatures of color come forth." "you!--a white lady! a noble! say this to comfort me; why?" asked the girl. she had risen again and stood back of the chair. she looked half frightened. "i say it because, if you study such questions earnestly, you will perceive how the opinion of those self-crowned judges will dwindle; they will no longer loom above you because of your race. my child, you are as royal as they by nature. it is the cultivation, the training, the intellect built up through generations, by which they are your superiors today. if your own life is commendable you need not be ashamed because of your race." kora turned her head away, fingering the rings on her pretty hands. "you--it is no use trying to make a lady like you understand," she muttered, "but you know who i am, and it is too late now!" she attempted to speak with the nonchalance customary to her, but the entire interview, added to the conversation in the corridor, had touched depths seldom stirred, and never before appealed to by a woman. what other woman would have dared question her like that? and it was not that she had been awed by the rank and majesty in which this marquise moved; she, kora--who had laughed in the face of a princess whose betrothed was seen in kora's carriage! no; it was not the rank, it was the gentle, yet slightly imperious womanliness, back of which could be felt a fund of sympathy new and strange to her; it appealed to her as the reasoning of a man would appeal; and man was the only compelling force hitherto acknowledged by kora. the marquise looked at her thoughtfully, but did not speak. she was too much of a girl herself to understand entirely the nature before her or its temptations. they looked, really, about the same age, yet for all the mentality of the marquise, she knew kora was right--the world of emotions that was an open book to the bewitching octoroon was an unknown world to her. "the things i do not understand i will not presume to judge," she said, at last, very gently; "but is there no one anywhere in this world whose affection for you would be strong enough to help you live away from these people who speak of you as those men spoke, yet who are themselves accountable for the faults over which they laugh together." "oh, what you have said has turned me against that trouvelot--that dandy!" she said, with a certain vehemence. "he is only a count of yesterday, after all; i'll remember that! still; it is all the habit of life, madame, and i never knew any other. look here; when i was twelve i was told by an old woman to be careful of my hands, of my good looks every way, for if i was handsome as my mother, i would never need to do housework; that was the beginning! well!" and she smiled bitterly, "i have not had to do it, but it was through no planning of theirs." "and your mother?" "dead; and my father, too. he was her master." "it is that spendthrift--trouvelot, you care for?" "not this minute," confessed the girl; "but," and she shrugged her shoulders, "i probably shall tomorrow! i know myself well enough for that; and i won't lie--to you! you saw how he could make me cry? it is only the man we care for who can hurt us." the marquise did not reply; she was staring out of the window. kora, watching her, did not know if she heard. she had heard and was angry with herself that her heart grew lighter when she heard the name of kora's lover. "i--i will not intrude longer, madame," said the girl at last. "what you've said will make me think more. i never heard of what you've told me today. i wish there were women in america like you; oh, i wish there were! there are good white ladies there, of course, but they don't teach the slaves to think; they only tell them to have faith! they teach them from their bible; and all i could ever remember of it was: 'servants, obey your masters;' and i hated it. so you see, madame, it is too late for me; i don't know any other life; i--" "i will help you to a different life whenever you are willing to leave paris," said the marquise. "you would do that, madame?" kora dropped into the chair again, covering her face with her hands. after a little she looked up, and the cunning of her class was in her eyes. "is it to separate me from _him_?" she asked, bluntly. "i know they want him to marry; are you a friend of his family?" the marquise smiled at that. "i really do not know if he has a family," she replied. "i am interested because it seems so pitiful that a girl should never have had a chance to live commendably. it is not too late. in your own country a person of your intelligence and education should be able to do much good among the children of the free colored people. you would be esteemed. you--" "esteemed!" kora smiled skeptically, thinking no doubt of the half-world circle over which she was a power in her adopted city; she, who had only to show herself in the spectacle to make more money than a year's earnings in american school teaching. she knew she could not really dance, but she did pose in a manner rather good; and then, her beauty! "i was a fool when i came here--to paris," she said woefully. "i thought everybody would know i was colored, so i told. but they would not know," and she held out her hand, looking at the white wrist, "i could have said i was a west indian, a brazilian, or a spanish creole--as many others do. but it is all too late. america was never kind to my people, or me. you mean to be kind, madame; but you don't know colored folks. they would be the first to resent my educational advantages; not that i know much; books were hard work for me, and paris was the only one i could learn to read easy. as for america, i own up, i'm afraid of america." the marquise thought she knew why, but only said: "if you change your mind you can let me know. i have a property in new orleans. some day i may go there. i could protect you if you would help protect yourself." she looked at the lovely octoroon with meaning, and the black velvety eyes fell under that regard. "you can always learn where i am in paris, and if you should change your mind--" at the door she paused and said kindly: "my poor girl, if you remain here he will break your heart." "they usually do when a woman loves them, madame," replied kora, with a sad little smile; she had learned so much in the book of paris. the friends of the marquise were searching for her when she emerged from the ante-room. the countess biron confessed herself in despair. "in such a mixed assembly! and all alone! how was one to know what people you might meet, or what adventures." "oh, i am not adventurous, countess," was the smiling reply; "and let me whisper: i have been talking all of the time with one person, one very pretty person, and it has been an instructive half hour." "pretty? well, that is assurance as to sex," remarked madame choudey, with a glance towards one of the others of the party. "and if you will watch that door you will be enlightened as to the individual," said the marquise. three pair of eyes turned with alertness to the door. at that moment it opened, and kora appeared. the lace veil no longer hid her beautiful eyes--all the more lovely for that swift bath of tears. she saw the marquise and her friends, but passed as if she had never seen one of them before; kora had her own code. "are you serious, judithe de caron?" gasped the countess helene. "were you actually--conversing--with that--demi-mondaine?" "my dear marquise!" purred madame choudey, "when she does not even _pretend_ to be respectable!" "it is because she does not pretend that i spoke with her. honesty should receive some notice." "honesty! good heavens!" cried madame ampere, who had not yet spoken, but who expressed horror by her eyes, "where then do you find your standards for such judgment?" "now, listen!" and the marquise turned to the three with a quizzical smile, "if kora lived exactly the same life morally, but was a ruler of the fashionable world, instead of the other one; if she wore a crown of state instead of the tinsel of the varieties, you would not exclaim if she addressed me." "oh, i must protest, marquise," began madame ampere in shocked remonstrance, but the marquise smiled and stopped her. "yesterday," she said slowly, "i saw you in conversation with a man who has the panels of his carriage emblazoned with the hydrangea--also called the hortensia." the shocked lady looked uncomfortable. "what then? since it was the emperor's brother." "exactly; the brother of the emperor, and both of them the sons of a mother beside whom beautiful kora is a thing of chastity." "the children could not help the fact that they were all half-brothers," laughed the countess helene. "but this so-called duke could help parading the doubtful honor of his descent; yet who fails to return his bow? and i have yet to learn that his mother was ignored by the ladies of her day. those hortensias on his carriage are horrible to me; they are an attempt to exalt in a queen the immorality condemned in a subject." "ah! you make my head swim with your theories," confessed the countess. "how do you find time to study them all?" "they require no study; one meets them daily in the street or court. the difficulty is to cease thinking of them--to enjoy a careless life when justice is always calling somewhere for help." "i refuse to be annoyed by the calls, yet am comfortable," said madame choudey. "the people who imagine they hear justice calling have had, too often, to follow the calls into exile." "that is true," agreed her friend; "take care marquise! your theories are very interesting, but, truly, you are a revolutionist." their little battle of words did not prevent them parting with smiles and all pleasantry. but the countess biron, to whose house the marquise was going, grimaced and looked at her with a smile of doubt when they were alone. "do you realize how daring you are judithe?--to succeed socially you should not appeal to the brains of people, but to their vanities." "farewell, my social ambitions!" laughed the marquise. "dear countess, pray do not scold! i could not help it. why must the very respectable world see only the sins of the unfortunate, and save all their charity for the heads with coronets? maman is not like that; she is always gentle with the people who have never been taught goodness; though she is severe on those who disgrace good training. i like her way best; and alain? well, he only told me to do my own thinking, to be sure i was right before i spoke, and to let no other consideration weigh at all." "yes! and he died in exile because he let no worldly consideration weigh," said the countess helene grimly. chapter ix. at the entrance to the gallery the marquise saw dumaresque on the step, and with him kenneth mcveigh. she entered the carriage, hoping the countess would not perceive them; but the hope was in vain, she did, and she motioned them both to her to learn if mrs. mcveigh had also unexpectedly returned. she had not. italy was yet attractive to her, and the lieutenant had come alone. he was to await her arrival, whenever she chose, and then their holiday would be over. when they left paris again it would be for america. he smiled in the same lazy, yet deferential way, as the countess chatted and questioned him. he confessed he did not remember why he had returned; at least he could not tell in a crowd, or with cynical dumaresque listening to him. "invite him home, and he will vow it was to see you," said the artist. "i mean to," she retorted; "but do not judge all men by yourself, monsieur loris, for i suspect lieutenant mcveigh has a conscience." "i have," he acknowledged, "too much of one to take advantage of your invitation. some day, when you are not tired from the crowds, i shall come, if you will allow me." "no, no; come now!" insisted the countess, impulsively; "you will rest me; i assure you it is true! we have been with women--women all morning! so take pity on us. we want to hear all about the battle grounds and fortresses you were to inspect. the marquise, especially, is a lover of wars." "and of warriors?" queried dumaresque; but the countess paid no attention to him. "yes, she is really a revolutionist, monsieur; so come and enlighten us as to the latest methods of those amiable patriots." the marquise had given him a gracious little bow, and had politely shown interest in their remarks to such an extent that the countess did not notice her silence. but during the brief glance she noticed that the blue eyes had dark circles under them, but they were steady for all that. he looked tired, but he also looked more the master of himself than when they last met; she need fear no further pleading. the countess prevailed, and he entered the carriage. dumaresque was also invited, but was on some committee of arrangements and could not leave. as they were about to drive away the marquise called him. "oh, monsieur loris, one moment! i want the black and white sketch of your kora. pray have it bid in for me." it was the first time she had ever called him loris, except in her own home, and as a partial echo of the dowager. his eyes thanked her, and kenneth mcveigh received the benefit both of her words and the look. "but, my dear marquise, it will give me pleasure to make you something finer of the same subject." "no, no; only the sketch. i will value it as a souvenir of--well--do not let any one else have it." then she bowed, flashed a rare smile at him, and they wheeled away with mcveigh facing her and noting with his careless smile every expression of her coquetry. he had gone away a boy--so she had called him; but he had come back man enough to hide the hurts she gave him, and willing to let her know it. someway he appeared more as he had when she met him first under the beeches; then he had seemed so big, so strong, so masterful, that she had never thought of his years. but she knew now he was younger than he looked. she had plenty of time to think of this, and of many other things, during the drive. the countess monopolized the young officer with her questions. he endeavored to make the replies she invited, and neither of them appeared to note that the share of the marquise was limited to an interested expression, and an occasional smile. she studied his well-formed, strong hands, and thought of the night they had held her own--thought of all the impetuous, passionate words; try as she would to drive them away they came back with a rush as his cool, widely different tones fell on her ear. what a dissembler the fellow was! all that evil nature which she knew about was hidden under an exterior so engaging! "_if one only loved where it was wise to love, all the sorrows of the world would be ended,_" those words of the pretty figureante haunted her, with all their meaning beating through her brain. what a farce seemed the careless, empty chatter beside her! it grew unbearable, to feel his careless glance sweep across her face, to hear him laugh carelessly, to be conscious of the fact that after all he was the stronger; he could face her easily, graciously, and she did not dare even meet his eyes lest he should, after all, see; the thought of her weakness frightened her; suppose he should compel her to the truth. suppose-- she felt half hysterical; the drive had never before been so long. she feared she must scream--do something to break through this horrible chain of circumstances, linking them for even so short a space within touch of each other. and he was the man she had promised herself to hate, to make suffer, to-- some one did scream; but it was the countess. out of a side street came a runaway team, a shouting man heralding their approach. at that point street repairs had left only a narrow carriage-way, and a wall of loose stone; there was no time to get out of the way; no room to turn. there was a collision, a crash! the horses of the countess leaped aside, the right front wheel struck the heap of stone, flinging the driver from his seat. he fell, and did not move again. at that sight the countess uttered a gasp and sank to the bottom of the carriage. the marquise stooped over her only for an instant, while the carriage righted itself and all four wheels were on a level once more; the horses alone had been struck, and were maddened with fear, and in that madness lay their only danger now. she lifted her head, and the man opposite, in her instant of shrinking, had leaped over the back of the seat to secure the lines of the now thoroughly wild animals. one line was dragging between them on the ground. someway he maintained his footing on the carriage pole long enough to secure the dragging line, and when he gained the driver's seat the marquise was beside him. she knew what lay before them, and he did not--a dangerous curve, a steep embankment--and they had passed the last street where they could have turned into a less dangerous thoroughfare. people ran out and threw up their hands and shouted. she heard him fling an oath at them for adding fury to the maddened animals. "it is no use," she said, and laid her hand on his. he turned and met her eyes. no veil of indifference was between them now, no coquetry; all pretense was swept aside and the look they exchanged was as a kiss. "you love me--now?" he demanded, half fiercely. "now, and always, from the first hour you looked at me!" she said, with her hand on his wrist. his grip tightened on the lines, and the blood leaped into his face. "my love, my love!" he whispered; and she slipped on her knees beside him that she might not see the danger to be faced. "it is no use, kenneth, kenneth! there is the bank ahead--they cannot stop--it will kill us! it is just ahead!" she was muttering disjointed sentences, her face averted, her arms clasping him. "kill us? don't you believe it!" and he laughed a trifle nervously. "look up, sweetheart; the danger is over. i knew it when you first spoke. see! they are going steady now." they were. he had gained control of them in time to make the dangerous curve in safety. they were a quarter of the way along the embankment. workmen there stared at the lady and gentleman on the coachman's seat, and at the rather rapid gait; but the real danger was over. they halted at a little cafe, which was thrown into consternation at sight of a lady insensible in the bottom of the carriage; but a little wine and the administrations of the marquise aided her recovery, and in a short time enabled her to hear the account of the wild race. the driver had a broken arm, and one of the horses was slightly injured. lieutenant mcveigh had sent back about the man, and secured another team for the drive home. he was now walking up and down the pavement in front of the cafe, in very good spirits, and awaiting the pleasure of the countess. they drove home at once; the countess voluably grateful to kenneth, and apparently elated over such a tremendous adventure. the young officer shared her high spirits, and the marquise was the only silent member of the party. after the danger was passed she scarcely spoke. when he helped her into the carriage the pressure of his hand and one whispered word sent the color sweeping over her face, leaving it paler than before. she scarcely lifted her eyes for the rest of the drive, and after retiring for a few moments' rest, apparently, broke down entirely; the nervous strain had proven rather trying, and she was utterly unable--to her own regret--to join them at lunch. lieutenant mcveigh begged to withdraw, but the countess biron, who declared she had never been the heroine of a thrilling adventure, before, insisted that she at least was quite herself again, and would feel cheated if their heroic deliverer did not remain for a lunch, even though it be a tete-a-tete affair; and she, of course, wanted to hear all the details of the horror; that child, judithe, had not seemed to remember much; she supposed she must have been terribly frightened. "yet, one never knew how the marquise would be effected by _any_ thing! she was always surprising people; usually in delightful ways, of course." "of course," assented her guest, with a reminiscent gleam and a wealth of absolute happiness in the blue eyes. "yes, she is rather surprising at times; she surprised me!" * * * * * "judithe, my child, it was an ideal adventure," insisted the countess, an hour after the lieutenant had left her, and she had repaired to the room where the marquise was supposed to be resting. her nervousness had evidently not yet abated, for she was walking up and down the floor. "an absolutely ideal adventure, and a heroic foreigner to the rescue! what a god-send that i invited him! and i really believe he enjoyed it. i never before saw him so gay, so charming! there are men, you know, to whom danger is a tonic, and my friend's son is like that, surely. did he not seem at all afraid?" "not that i observed." "did he not say anything?" "y--yes; he swore at the people who shouted and tried to stop the horses." "you should not have let yourself hear that," said the countess, reproachfully. "i thought he was so perfect, and was making my little romance about him--or could, if you would only show a little more interest. ah! at your age i should have been madly in love with the fine fellow, just for what he did today; but _you_! still, it would be no use, i suppose. he is fiancee, you know. yes; the mother told me; a fine settlement; i saw her picture--very pretty." "american--i suppose?" "oh, yes; their lands join, and she is a great heiress. the name--the name is loring--genevieve? no--gertrude, mademoiselle gertrude loring. ah! so strong he was, so heroic. if she loves him she should have seen him today." "yes," agreed the marquise, with a curious little smile, "she should." * * * * * two hours later she was on her knees beside the dowager's couch, her face hidden and all her energy given to one plea: "maman--maman! do not question me; only give me your trust--let us go away!" "but the man--tah! it is only a fancy; why should you leave for that? whoever it is, the infatuation grew quickly and will die out the same way--so--" "no! if i remain i cannot answer for myself. i am ashamed to confess it, but--listen, maman--but put your arms around me first; he is not worthy, i know it; yet i love him! he vows love to me, yet he is betrothed; i know that, _also_; but i have no reason left, and my folly will make me go to him if you do not help me. listen, maman! i--i will do all you say. i will marry in a year--two years--when this is all over. i will obey you in everything, if you will only take me away. i cannot leave you; yet i am afraid to stay where he is." "afraid! but, judithe, my child, no one shall intrude upon you. your friends will protect you from such a man. you have only to refuse to see him, and in a little while--" "refuse! maman, what can i say to make you understand that i could never refuse him again? yet, oh, the humiliation! maman, he is the man i despised--the man i said was not fit to be spoken to; it was all true, but when i hear his voice it makes me forget his unworthiness. listen, maman! i--i confessed to him today that i loved him; yet i know he is the man who by the laws of america is the owner of rhoda larue, and he is now the betrothed of her half-sister; i heard the name of his fiancee today, and it told me the whole story. he is the man! _now_, will you take me away?" the next morning the dowager, marquise de caron, left her paris home for the summer season. her destination was indefinitely mentioned as switzerland. her daughter-in-law accompanied her. and to kenneth mcveigh, waiting impatiently the hour when he might go to her, a note was given: "monsieur: "my words of yesterday had no meaning. i was frightened and irresponsible. when you read this i will have left paris. by not meeting again we will avoid further mistakes of the same nature. "this is my last word to you. "judithe caron." for two weeks he tried in vain to find her. then he was recalled to paris to meet his mother, who was ready for home. she was shocked at his appearance, and refused to believe that he had not been ill during her absence, and had some motherly fears regarding parisian dissipations, from which she decided to remove him, if possible. he acknowledged he would be glad to go--he was sick of europe any way. the last day he took a train for fontainbleau, remained two hours under the beeches, alone, and got back to paris in time to make the train for havre. after they had got comfortably established on a homeward-bound vessel, and he was watching the land line grow fainter over the waters, mrs. mcveigh came to him with a bit of news read from the last journal brought aboard. the dowager, marquise de caron, had established herself at geneva for the season, accompanied by her daughter, the present marquise, whose engagement to monsieur loris dumaresque had just been announced. chapter x. long before the first gun had been fired at fort sumter, madame la marquise was able to laugh over that summer-time madness of hers, and ridicule herself for the wasted force of that infatuation. she was no longer a recluse unacquainted with men. the prophecy of madame, the dowager, that if left alone she would return to the convent, had not been verified. the death of the dowager occurred their first winter in paris, after geneva, and the marquise had not yet shown a predilection for nunneries. she had seen the world, and it pleased her well enough; indeed, the portion of the world she came in contact with did its best to please her, and with a certain feverish eagerness she went half way to meet it. people called her a coquette--the most dangerous of coquettes, because she was not a cold one. she was responsive and keenly interested up to the point where admirers declared themselves, and proposals of marriage followed; after _that_, every man was just like every other one! yet she was possessed of an idea that somewhere there existed a hitherto undiscovered specimen who could discuss the emotions and the philosophies in delightful sympathy, and restrain the expression of his own personal emotions to tones and glances, those indefinite suggestions that thrill yet call for no open reproof--no reversal of friendship. so, that was the man she was seeking in the multitudes--and on the way there were surely amusements to be found! dumaresque remonstrated. she defended herself with the avowal that she was only avenging weaker womanhood, smiled at, won, and forgotten, as his sex were fond of forgetting. "but we expect better things of women," he declared warmly; "not a deliberate intention of playing with hearts to see how many can be hurt in a season. judithe, you are no longer the same woman. where is the justice you used to gauge every one by? where the mercy to others weaker than yourself?" "gone!" she laughed lightly; "driven away in self-defense! i have had to put mercy aside lest it prove my master. the only safeguard against being too warm to all may be to be cool to all. you perceive that would never--never do. so--!" "end all this unsatisfied, feverish life by marrying me," he pleaded. "i will take you from paris. with all your social success you have never been happy here; we will travel. you promised, judithe, and--" "chut! loris; you are growing ungallant. you should never remember a woman's promise after she has forgotten it. we were betrothed--yes. but did i not assure you i might never marry? maman was made happy for a little while by the fancy; but now?--well, matrimony is no more appealing to me than it ever was, and you would not want an indifferent wife. i like you, you best of all those men you champion, but i love none of you! not that i am lacking in affection, but rather, incapable of concentrating it on one object." "once, it was not so; i have not forgotten the episode of fontainbleu." "that? pouf! i have learned things since then, loris. i have learned that once, at least, in every life love seems to have been born on earth for the first time; happy those whom it does not visit too late! well! i, also, had to have my little experience; it had to be _some_ one; so it was that stranger. but i have outgrown all that; we always outgrow those things, do we not? i compare him now with the men i have known since, and he shrinks, he dwindles! i care only for intellectual men, and the artistic temperament. he had neither. yes, it is true; the girlish fancies appear ridiculous in so short a time." dumaresque agreed that it was true of any fancy, to one of fickle nature. "no, it is not fickleness," she insisted. "have you no boyish loves of the past hidden away, each in their separate nook of memory? confess! are you and the world any the worse for them? certainly not. they each contributed a certain amount towards the education of the emotions. well; is my education to be neglected because you fear i shall injure the daintily-bound books in the human library? i shall not, loris. i only flutter the leaves a little and glance at the pictures they offer, but i never covet one of them for my own, and never read one to the finale, hence--" dumaresque left soon after for an extended artistic pilgrimage into northern africa, and people began to understand that there would be no wedding. the engagement had only been made to comfort the dowager. judithe de caron regretted his departure more than she had regretted anything since the death of the woman who had been a mother to her. there was no one else with whom she could be so candid--no man who inspired her with the same confidence. she compared him with the american, and told herself how vastly her friend was the superior. had mcveigh been one of the scholarly soldiers of europe, such as she had since known--men of breadth and learning, she could have understood her own infatuation. but he was certainly provincial, and not at all learned. she had met many cadets since, and had studied them. they knew their military tactics--the lessons of their schools. they flirted with the grissettes, and took on airs; they drank and had pride in emptying more glasses and walking straighter afterwards than their comrades. they were very good fellows, but heavens! how shallow they were! so _he_ must have been. she tried to remember a single sentence uttered by him containing wisdom of any sort whatever--there had not been one. his silences had been links to bind her to him. his glances had been revelations, and his words had been only: "i adore you." so many men had said the same thing since. it seemed always the sort of thing men said when conversation flagged. but in those earlier days she had not known that, hence the fact that she--well, she knew now! twice she had met that one-time bondwoman, kora, and the meeting left her thoughtful, and not entirely satisfied with herself. how wise she could be in advice to that pretty butterfly! how plainly she could work out a useful life to be followed by--some one else! her more thoughtful moods demanded: why not herself? her charities of the street, her subscriptions to worthy funds, her patronage of admirable institutions, all these meant nothing. dozens of fashionables and would-be fashionables did the same. it was expected of them. those charities opened a door through which many entered the inner circles. she had fitful desires to do the things people did not expect. she detested the shams of life around her in that inner circle. she felt at times she would like to get them all under her feet--trample them down and make room for something better; but for what? she did not know. she was twenty-one, wealthy, her own mistress, and was tired of it all. when she drove past laughing kora on the avenue she was more tired of it than ever. "how am i better than she but by accident?" she asked herself. "she amuses herself--poor little bondslave, who has only changed masters! i amuse myself (without a master, it is true, and more elegantly, perhaps), but with as little usefulness to the world." she felt ashamed when she thought of alain and his mother, who seemed to have lived only to help others. they had given over the power to her, and how poorly she had acquitted herself! once--when she first came with the dowager to paris--the days had been all too short for her plans and dreams of usefulness; how long ago that seemed. now, she knew that the owner of wealth is the victim of multitudinous schemes of the mendicant, whether of the street corner or the fashionable missions. she had lost faith in the efficacy of alms. no cause came to her with force enough to re-awaken her enthusiasms. everything was so tame--so old! one day she read in a journal that the usefulness of kora as a dancer was over. there had been an accident at the theatre, her foot was smashed; not badly enough to call for amputation, but too much for her ever to dance again. the marquise wondered if the fair-weather friends would desert her now. she had heard of trouvelot, an exquisite who followed the fashions in everything, and kora had succeeded in being the fashion for two seasons. she was just as pretty, no doubt--just as adorable, but-- as the weeks of that winter went by rumors from the western world were thick with threats of strife. state after state had seceded. the south was marshalling her forces, training her men, urging the necessity of defending state rights and maintaining their power to govern a portion as ably as they had the whole of the united states during the eighty years of its governmental life. the north, with its factories, its foreign commerce, and its manifold requirements, had bred the politicians of the country. but the south, with its vast agricultural states, its wealth, and its traditions of landed ancestry, had produced the orators--the statesman--the men who had shone most brilliantly in the pages of their national history. from the shores of france one could watch some pretty moves in the games evolving about that promise of civil war; the creeping forward of england to help widen the breach between the divided sections, and the swift swinging of russian war vessels into the harbors of the atlantic--the silent bear of the russias facing her hereditary english foe and forbidding interference, until the lion gave way with low growlings, not daring to even roar his chagrin, but contenting himself with night-prowlings during the four years that followed. all those wheels within wheels were discussed around the marquise de caron in those days. her acquaintance with the representatives of different nations and the diplomats of her own, made her aware of many unpublished moves for advantage in the game they surveyed. the discussion of them, and guesses as to the finale, helped to awake her from the lethargy she had deplored. remembering that the mcveighs belonged to a seceding state, she asked many questions and forgot none of the replies. "madame la marquise, i was right," said a white moustached general one night at a great ball, where she appeared. "was it not a rose you wagered me? i have won. war is declared in america. in south carolina, today, the confederates won the first point, and secured a federal fort." "general! they have not dared!" "madame, those southerons are daring above everything. i have met them. their men are fighters, and they will be well officered." well officered! she thought of kenneth mcveigh, he would be one of them; yes, she supposed that was one thing he could do--fight; a thing requiring brute strength, brute courage! "so!" said the countess biron, who seldom was acquainted with the causes of any wars outside those of court circles, "this means that if the northern states should retaliate and conquer, all the slaves would be free?" "not at all, countess. the north does not interfere with slavery where it exists, only protests against its extension to greater territory." "oh! well; i understood it had something to do with the africans. that clever young delaven devoted an entire hour to my enlightenment yesterday. and my poor friend, madame mcveigh, you remember her, judithe? she is in the carolinas. i tremble to think of her position now; an army of slaves surrounding them, and, of course, only awaiting the opportunity for insurrection." "and louisiana seceded two months ago," said the marquise, and then smiled. "you will think me a mercenary creature," she declared, "but i have property in new orleans which i have never seen, and i am wondering whether its value will rise or fall because of the proposed change of government." "you have never seen it?" "no; it was a purchase made by my husband from some home-sick relative, who had thought to remain there, but could not live away from france. i have promised myself to visit it some day. it would be exceedingly difficult to do so now, i suppose, but how much more spirited a journey it would be; for each side will have vessels on guard all along the coast, will they not?" "there will at least be enough to deter most ladies from taking adventurous pilgrimages in that direction. i shall not advise you to go unless under military escort, marquise." "i shall notify you, general, when my preparations are made; in the meantime here is your rose; and would not my new yacht do for the journey?" so, jesting and questioning, she accepted his arm and made the circle of the rooms. everywhere they heard fragments of the same topic. americans were there from both sections. she saw a pretty woman from alabama nod and smile, but put her hands behind her when a hitherto friendly new yorker gave her greeting. "we women can't do much to help," she declared, in those soft tones of the south, "but we can encourage our boys by being pronounced in our sympathies. i certainly shall not shake hands with a northerner who may march with the enemy against our men; how can i?" "suppose we talk it over and try to find a way," he suggested. then they both smiled and passed on together. judithe de caron found herself watching them with a little ache in her heart. she could see they were almost, if not quite, lovers; yet all their hopes were centered on opposite victories. how many--many such cases there must be! * * * * * before spring had merged into summer, a lady, veiled, and giving no name, was announced to the marquise. rather surprised at the mysterious call, she entered the reception room, and was again surprised when the lifted veil disclosed the handsome face of the octoroon, kora. she had lost some of her brilliant color, and her expression was more settled, it had less of the butterfly brightness. "you see, madame, i have at last taken you at your word." the marquise, who was carefully noting the alteration in her, bowed, but made no remark. the face of the octoroon showed uncertainty. "perhaps--perhaps i have waited too long," she said, and half rose. "no, no; you did right to come. i expected you--yes, really! now be seated and tell me what it is." "first, that you were a prophetess, madame," and the full lips smiled without merriment. "i am left alone, now that i have neither money nor the attraction for the others. he only followed the crowd--to me, and away from me!" "well?" "well, it is not about _that_ i come! but, madame, i am going to america; not to teach, as you advised, but i see now a way in which i can really help." "help whom?" her visitor regarded her with astonishment; was it possible that she, the woman whose words had aroused the first pride of race in her, the first thought of her people unlinked with shame! that she had so soon forgotten? had she remembered the pupil, but failed to recall the lesson taught? "you have probably forgotten the one brief conversation with which you honored me, madame. but i mean the people we discussed then--my people." "you mean the colored people." "certainly, madame." "but you are more white than colored." "oh, yes; that is true, but the white blood would not count in america if it were known there was one drop of black blood in my mother. but no one need know it; i go from france, i will speak only french, and if you would only help me a little." she grew prettier in her eagerness, and her eyes brightened. the marquise smiled at the change enthusiasm made. "you must tell me the object for which you go." "it is the war, madame; in time this war must free the colored folks; it is talked of already; it is said the north will put colored soldiers in the field; that will be the little, thin edge of the wedge, and if i could only get there, if you would help me to some position, or a recommendation to people in new orleans; any way so that people would not ask questions or be curious about me--if you would only do that madame!" "but what will you do when there?" the girl glanced about the room and spoke more softly. "i am trusting you, madame, without asking who you side with in our war, but even if you are against us i--i trust you! they tell me the south is the strongest. they have been getting ready for this a long time. the north will need agents in the south. i have learned some things here--people talk so much. i am going to washington. from there i will go south. no one will know me in new orleans. i will change my name, and i promise not to bring discredit on any recommendation you may give me." "it is a plan filled with difficulties and dangers. what has moved you to contemplate such sacrifices?" "you, madame!" the marquise flushed slightly. "from the time you talked to me i wanted to do something, be something better. but, you know, it seemed no use; there was no need of me anywhere but in paris. that is all over. i can go now, and i have some information worth taking to the federal government. the south has commissioners here now. i have learned all they have accomplished, and the people they have interested, so if i had a little help--" "you shall have it!" declared the marquise. "i have been dying of ennui. your plan is a cure for me--better than a room full of courtiers! but if i give you letters it must be to my lawyers in new orleans--clever, shrewd men--and i should have to trust you entirely, remember." "i shall not forget, madame." "very good; come tomorrow. what can you do about an establishment such as mine? ladies maid? housekeeper? governess?" "any of those; but only governess to very small children." "come tomorrow. i shall have planned something by then. i have an engagement in a few minutes, and have no more time today. by the way, have you ever been in georgia or south carolina?" kora hesitated, and then said: "yes, madame." "have you any objection to going back there?" the octoroon looked at her in a startled, suspicious way. "i hesitate to reply to that, madame, for reasons! i don't mind telling you, though, that there is one place in america where i might be claimed, if they knew me. i am not anxious to visit that place." "naturally! tomorrow at eleven i will see you, and you can tell me all about it. if i am to act as your protectress i must know all you can tell me--_all_! it is the only way. i like the mystery and intrigue of the whole affair. it promises new sensations. i will help you show that government that you are willing to help your people. come tomorrow." a few days later the marquise set her new amusement on foot by bidding adieu to a demure, dark eyed, handsome girl, who was garbed most sedately, and whose letters of introduction pronounced her--oh, sentiment or irony of women--madame louise trouvelot, an attache of the caron establishment, commissioned by the marquise to inspect the dwellings on the caron estate in new orleans, and report as to whether any one of them would be suitable for a residence should the owner desire to visit the city. if none should prove so, louise trouvelot, who comprehended entirely the needs of the marquise, was further commissioned to look up such a residence with a view to purchase, and communicate with the marquise and with her american lawyers, who were to give assistance to louise trouvelot in several business matters, especially relating to her quest. chapter xi. on the salkahatchie. scarce a leaf quivered on the branches of the magnolias, or a tress of gray-green moss on the cypress boughs. all the world of the salkahatchie was wrapped in siesta. the white clouds drifting on palest turquoise were the only moving things except the water flowing beneath, and its soft swish against the gunnels of the floating wharf made the only sound. the plantation home of loringwood, facing the river, and reached through the avenue of enormous live oaks, looked an enchanted palace touched with the wand of silence. from the wide stone steps to the wide galleries, with their fluted pillars, not a murmur but the winged insects droning in the tangled grasses, for the wild luxuriance of rose tree and japonica, of lawn and crape myrtle, betrayed a lack of pruning knives in the immediate season past; and to the south, where the rice fields had reached acre beyond acre towards the swamps, there were now scattered patches of feathering young pine, creeping everywhere not forbidden to it by the hand of man. spring time and summer time, for almost a century, had been lived through under its sloping, square, dormer-windowed roof. but all the blue sky and brilliant sunshine above could not save it from a suggestion of autumn, and the shadows lengthening along the river were in perfect keeping with the entire picture--a picture of perpetual afternoon. "row-lock," "row-lock," sounded the dip and click of paddles, as a boat swept close to the western bank, where the shadows fell. two afro-americans bent in rhythmic motion--bronze human machines, whose bared arms showed nothing of effort as they sent the boat cutting through the still water. a middle-aged woman in a voluminous lavender lawn and carrying a parasol of plaid silk-green, with faded pink bars, sat in the after part of the boat, while a slight brown-haired girl just in front amused herself by catching at branches of willows as they passed. "evilena, honey, you certainly are like to do yourself a hurt reaching out like that, and if you _should_ go over!" "but i shan't, aunt sajane. do you reckon i'd risk appearing before gertrude loring in a draggled gown just when she has returned from the very heart of the civilized world? goodness knows, we'll all look dowdy enough to her." aunt sajane (mistress sarah jane nesbitt) glanced down at her own immaculate lawn, a little faded but daintily laundered, and at her own trim congress-gaitered feet. "oh, i didn't mean you," added the girl, laughing softly. "aunt sajane, i truly do believe that if you had nothing but gunny sacks for dresses you'd contrive to look as if you'd just come out of a bandbox." "i'd wear gunny sacks fast enough if it was to help the cause," agreed aunt sajane, with a kindly smile. "so would you, honey." "honey" trailed her fingers in the waters, amber-tinted from the roots of the cypress trees. "if a letter from mama comes today we will just miss it." "only by a day. brother gideon will send it." "but suppose he's away somewhere on business, or up there at columbia on state councils or conventions, or whatever they are, as he is just now?" "then pluto will fetch it right over," and she glanced at one of the black men, who showed his teeth for an instant and bent his head in assent. "don't see why judge clarkson was _ever_ named gideon," protested the girl. "it's a hard, harsh sort of name, and he's as--as--" "soft?" queried the judge's sister, with an accompaniment of easy laughter. the youngest of the two oarsmen grinned. pluto maintained a well-bred indifference. "no!" and the girl flung a handful of willow leaves over the lavender lawn. "he is--well--just about right, the judge is; so gentle, so considerate, so altogether magnificent in his language. i've adored him as far back as when he fought the duel with the northern man who reflected some way on our customs; that was starting a war for his state all alone, before anyone else thought of it, i reckon. i must have been very little then, for i just recollect how he used to let me look in his pockets for candy, and i was awfully afraid of the pistols i thought he must carry there to shoot people with," and she smiled at the childish fancy. "i tell you, aunt sajane, if my papa had lived there's just one man i'd like him to favor, and that's our judge. but he didn't, did he?" "no, he didn't," said aunt sajane. "the mcveigh men were all dark, down to kenneth, and he gets his fairness from your ma." then she added, kindly, "the judge will be very proud of your admiration." "hope he'll care enough about it to hurry right along after us. he does put in a powerful lot of his time in charleston and columbia lately," and the tone was one of childish complaint. "why, honey, how you suppose our soldier boys would be provided for unless some of the representative men devote their time to the work? it's a consolation to me that gideon is needed for civil service just now, for if he wasn't he wouldn't be so near home as he is; he'd be somewhere north with a regiment, and i reckon that wouldn't suit you any better." "no, it wouldn't," agreed the girl, "though i do like a man who will fight, of course. _any_ girl does." "oh, honey!" "yes they do, too. but just now i don't want him either fighting or in legislature. i want him right along with us at loringwood. if he isn't there to talk to mr. loring it won't be possible to have a word alone with gertrude all the time we stay. how he _does_ depend on her, and what an awful time she must have had all alone with him in paris while he was at that hospital, or whatever it was." "not many girls so faithful as gertrude loring," agreed aunt sajane. "not that he has ever shown much affection for her, either, considering she is his own brother's child. but she certainly has shown a christian sense of duty towards him. well, you see, they are the only ones left of the family. it's natural, i suppose." "_i_ would think it natural to run away and leave him, like aleck and scip did." aunt sajane cast a warning glance towards the two oarsmen. "well, i would," insisted the girl. "i wonder no more of them ran away when they thought he was coming home. how he must have raved! _i_ shouldn't wonder if it prostrated him again. you know old doctor allison said it was just a fit of temper caused--" "yes, yes, honey; but you know we are to sleep under his roof tonight." "i'll sleep under gertrude's half of it," laughed the girl. "it's no use reminding me of my bad manners, aunt sajane. but as long as i can remember anyone, i've had two men in my mind. one always grunted at me and told me to take my doll somewhere else or be quiet. that was kenneth's guardian, matthew loring. the other man always had sugar kisses in his pocket for me and gave me my first dog and my only pony. that was judge clarkson. you see if my judge had not been so lovely the other would not have seemed so forbidding. it was the contrast did it. i wonder--i wonder if he ever had a sweetheart?" "gideon clarkson? lots of them," said his sister, promptly. "i meant mr. loring." "nonsense, honey, nonsense." "and nonsense means no," decided the girl. "i thought it would be curious if he had," then an interval of silence, broken only by the dip of the oars. "gertrude's note said a paris doctor is with them, a friend of kenneth and mama. well, i only hope _he_ isn't a crusty old sweetheartless man. but of course he is if mr. loring chose him. i'm wild to know how they got through the blockade. oh, dear, how i wish it was ken!" "i don't suppose you wish it any more than the boy himself," said aunt sajane, with a sigh. "there's a good many boys scattered from home, these days, who would be glad to be home again." "but not unless they gain what they went for," declared the girl in patriotic protest. the older woman sighed, and said nothing. her enthusiasms of a year ago had been shrouded by the crape of a mourning land; the glory of conquest would be compensation, perhaps, and would be gained, no doubt. but the price to be paid chilled her and left her without words when evilena revelled in the glories of the future. "loringwood line," said pluto, motioning towards a great ditch leading straight back from the river. evilena shrugged her shoulders with a little pretense of chill, and laughed. "that is only a reminder of what i used to feel when gertrude's uncle came to our house. i wonder if this long dress will prevent him from grunting at me or ordering me out of the room if i talk too much." "remember, evilena, he has been an invalid for four years, and is excusable for almost any eccentricity." "how did you all excuse his eccentricities before he got sick, aunt sajane?" receiving no reply, the girl comforted herself with the appreciative smile of the oarsmen, who were evidently of her mind as to the planter under discussion, and a mile further they ran the boat through the reeds and lily pads to the little dock at loringwood. mrs. nesbitt shook out the folds of her crisp lawn, adjusted her bonnet and puffs and sighed, as they walked up the long avenue. "i can remember when the lily pads never could get a chance to grow there on account of the lot of company always coming in boats," she said, regretfully, "and i've heard that the old lorings lived like kings here long ago; wild, reckless, magnificent men; not at all like the lorings now; and oh, my, how the place has been neglected of late. not a sign of life about the house. now, in _tom_ loring's time--" they had reached the foot of the steps when the great double doors swung back and a woman appeared on the threshold and inclined her head in greeting. "well, margeret, i am glad to see some one alive," declared mrs. nesbitt; "the place is so still." "yes; just look at pluto and bob," said evilena, motioning towards the boatmen. "one would think a ghost had met them at the landing, they are so subdued." the brown eyed, grey haired woman in the door glanced at the two colored men who were following slowly along a path towards the back of the house. "yes, miss lena, it is quiet," she agreed. "please step in mistress nesbitt. i'll have raquel show you right up to your rooms, for miss loring didn't think you could get here for an hour yet, and she felt obliged to ride over to the north corner, but won't be gone long." "and mr. loring--how is he?" "mr. loring is very much worn out. he's gone asleep now. doctor says he's not to be seen just yet." "oh, yes; the doctor. i'll see him directly after i've rested a little. he speaks english, i hope. are you coming up, honey?" "not yet. i'll keep a lookout for gertrude." margeret had touched a bell and in response a little black girl had appeared, who smiled and ducked her head respectfully. "howdy, miss sajane? howdy, miss lena?" she exclaimed, her black eyes dancing. "i dunno how come it come, i nevah heerd you all, for i done got--" "raquel, you show mistress nesbitt to the west room," said the quiet tones of margeret, and raquel's animation subsided into wordless grins as she gathered up the sunshade, reticule and other belongings, and preceded mistress nesbitt up the stairs. "if there's anything i can do for you just send raquel for me." "thank you, margeret. i'll remember." margeret crossed the hall to the parlor door and opened it. "if you'd rather rest in here, miss lena--" "no, no; i'll go look for gertrude. don't mind me. i remember all the rooms well enough to make myself at home till she comes." margeret inclined her head slightly and moved along the hall to the door of the dining room, which she entered. evilena looked after her with a dubious smile in the blue-gray eyes. "i wonder if i could move as quietly as that even with my feet _bare_," and she tried walking softly on the polished oak floor, but the heels of her shoes would persist in giving out little clicking sounds as margeret's had not. "it's no use. no living person with shoes on could walk silently as that woman. she's just a ghost who--_a-gh-gh_!" her attempt at silent locomotion had brought her to the door of the library, directly opposite the dining room. as she turned to retrace her steps that door suddenly opened and a hand grasped her shoulder. "oh, ho! this time i've caught you, have i? you--oh, murder!" her half uttered scream had been checked by the sound of a voice which memory told her was not that of her bugbear, the invalid master of the house. it was, instead, a strange gentleman, who was young, and even attractive; whose head was a mass of reddish curls, and whose austere gaze changed quickly to an embarrassed stare as her hat slipped back and he saw her face. the girl was the first to recover herself. "yes, you certainly did catch me this time," she gasped. "my dear young lady, i'm a blundering idiot. i beg your pardon most humbly. i thought it was that raquel, and i--" "oh, raquel?" and she backed to the opposite wall, regarding him with doubt and question in her eyes. "exactly. allow me to explain. raquel, in company with some other imps of all shades, have developed an abnormal interest in the unpacking of various boxes today, and especially a galvanic battery in here, which--" "battery? in _there_?" and evilena raised on her tip-toes to survey the room over his shoulder. "i know some boys of battery b, but i never saw them without uniforms." "uniform, is it? well, now, you see, i've only been a matter of hours in the country, and small chance to look up a tailor. are--are they a necessity to the preservation of life here?" he spoke with a doubtful pretense of timidity, and looked at her quizzically. she smiled, but made a little grimace, a curve of the lips and nod of the head conveying decision. "you will learn it is the only dress for a man that makes life worth living, for him, around here," she replied. "every man who is not superannuated or attached to the state government in some way has to wear a uniform unless he wants his loyalty questioned." the un-uniformed man smiled at her delightful patriotic frankness. "faith, now, i've no objection to the questions if you are appointed questioner. but let me get you a chair. even when on picket duty and challenging each new comer, you are allowed a more restful attitude than your present one, i hope. you startled me into forgetting--" "_i_ startled _you_? well!" "oh, yes. i was the one to do the bouncing out and nabbing you, wasn't i? well, now, i can't believe you were the more frightened of the two, for all that. have this chair, please; it is the most comfortable. you see, i fancied raquel had changed under my touch from dusky brown to angelic white. the hat hid your face, you know, until you turned around, and then--" "well?" at the first tone of compliment she had forgotten all the strangeness of their meeting, and remembered only the coquetry so naturally her own. with or without the uniform of her country, he was at least a man, and there had been a dearth of men about their plantation, "the terrace," of late. "well," he repeated after her, "when you tipped the hat back i thought in a wink of all the fairy stories of transformation i used to hear told by the old folks in ireland." "do you really mean that you believe fairy stories?" her tone was severe and her expression chiding. "on my faith i believed them all that minute." her eyes dropped to the toe of her slipper. it was all very delightful, this tete-a-tete with the complimentary unknown, and to be thought a fairy! she wished she had gone up with aunt sajane and brushed her hair. still-- "i was sure it was mr. loring who had hold of me until i looked around," she confessed, "and that frightened me just as much as the wickedest fairy or goblin could ever do." "indeed, now, would it?" she glanced around to see if her indiscreet speech had been overheard and then nodded assent. "oh, you needn't smile," she protested; and his face at once became comically grave. "_you_ didn't have him for a bug-a-boo when you were little, as i did. that doctor of his gave orders that no one was to see him just now, and i am glad gertrude will be back before we are admitted. with gertrude to back me up i could be brave as--as--" "a sheep," suggested the stranger. "i was going to say a lion, but lions are big, and i'm not very." "no, you are not," he agreed. "sad, isn't it?" then they both laughed. she was elated, bubbling over with delight, at meeting some one in loringwood who actually laughed. "gertrude's note last night never told us she had company, and i had gloomy forebodings of uncle matthew and uncle matthew's doctor, to whom i would not dare speak a word, and the relief of finding real people here is a treat, so please don't mind if i'm silly." "i shan't--when you are," he agreed, magnanimously. "but pray enlighten me as to why you will be unable to exchange words with the medical stranger? he's no worse a fellow than myself." "of _course_ not," she said, with so much fervor that her listener's smile was clearly a compromise with laughter. "but a doctor from paris! our old doctor allison is pompous and domineering enough, and he never was out of the state, but this one from europe, he is sure to oppress me with his wonderful knowledge. indeed, i don't know who he will find to talk to here, now, except judge clarkson. the judge _will_ be scholarly enough for him." "and does he, also, oppress you with his professional knowledge?" evilena's laugh rang out clear as a bird's note. "the judge? never! why i just love him. he is the dearest, best--" "i see. he's an angel entirely, and no mere mortal from paris is to be mentioned in the same breath." "well, he is everything charming," she insisted. "you would be sure to like him." "i wish i could be as sure you might change your mind and like the new-comer from paris." "do you? oh, well, then, i'll certainly try. what is he like, nice?" "i really can't remember ever having heard any one say so," confessed the stranger, smiling at her. "well," and evilena regarded him with wide, astonished eyes, "no one else likes him, yet you hoped i would. why, i don't see how--" the soft quick beat of horse hoofs on the white shelled road interrupted her, or gave opportunity for interrupting herself. "i hope it's gertrude. oh, it _is_! you dear old darling." she flounced down the steps, followed by the man, who was becoming a puzzle. he gave his hand to miss loring, who accepted that assistance from the horse block, and then he stepped aside that the embrace feminine might have no obstacle in its path. "my dear little girl," and the mistress of loringwood kissed her guest with decided fondness. "how good of you to come at once--and mrs. nesbitt, too? i'm sorry you had to wait even a little while for a welcome, but i just had to ride over to the quarters, and then to the far fields. thank you, doctor, for playing host." "_doctor_?" gasped evilena, gripping miss loring's arm. there was a moment of hesitation on the part of all three, when she said, reproachfully, looking at the smiling stranger, "then it was you all the time?" "was there no one here to introduce you?" asked miss loring, looking from one to the other. "this is dr. delavan, dear, and this, doctor, is kenneth's sister." "thanks. i recognized her at once, and i trust you will forgive me for not introducing myself sooner, mademoiselle, but--well, we had so many other more interesting things to speak of." evilena glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and with her arm about gertrude walked in silence up the steps. she wanted time to think over what awful things she had said to him, not an easy thing to do, for evilena said too many things to remember them all. margeret was in the hall. evilena wondered by what occult messages she learned when any one ascended those front steps. she took miss loring's riding hat and gloves. "mistress nesbitt is just resting," she said, in those soft even tones. "she left word to call her soon as you got back--she'd come down." "i'll go up and see her," decided miss loring. "will you excuse us, doctor? and margeret, have chloe get us a bit of lunch. we are all a little tired, and it is a long time till supper." "i have some all ready, miss gertrude. was only waiting till you got back." "oh, very well. in five minutes we will be down." then, with her arm about evilena, miss loring ascended the wide stairway, where several portraits of vanished lorings hung, none of them resembling her own face particularly. she was what the countess biron had likened her to when the photograph was shown--a white lily, slender, blonde, with the peculiar and attractive combination of hazel eyes and hair of childish flaxen color. her features were well formed and a trifle small for her height. she had the manner of a woman perfectly sure of herself, her position and her own importance. her voice was very sweet. sometimes there were high, clear tones in it. delaven had admired those bell-like intonations until now, when he heard her exchange words with margeret. all at once the mellow, contralto tones of the serving woman made the voice of the lovely mistress sound metallic--precious metal, to be sure, nothing less than silver. but in contrast was the melody, entirely human, soft, harmonious, alluring as a poet's dream of the tropics. chapter xii. "how that child is petted on, gideon," and mrs. nesbitt looked up from her work, the knitting of socks, to be worn by unknown boys in gray. even the material for them was growing scarce, and she prided herself on always managing, someway, to keep her knitting needles busy. at present she was using a coarse linen or tow thread, over which she lamented because of its harshness. miss loring, who appeared very domestic, with a stack of household linen beside her, glanced up, with a smile. "rather fortunate, isn't it, considering--" an arch of the brows and a significant expression were allowed to finish her meaning. mrs. nesbitt pursed up her lips and shook her head. "i really and truly wonder sometimes, gertrude, if it's going on like this always. ten years if it's a day since he commenced paying court there, and what she allows to do, at least is more than i can guess." "marry him, no doubt," suggested gertrude, inspecting a sheet carefully, and then proceeding to tear it in widths designated by dr. delaven for hospital bandages. "she certainly esteems him very highly." "oh, esteem!" and mrs. nesbitt's tone was dubious. "well, people don't think much of getting married these days, where there is fighting and mourning everywhere." the older lady gave her a quick glance over the tow yarn rack, but the fair face was very serene, and without a trace of personal feeling on the subject. "yes, that's so," she admitted, "but i used to think they were only waiting till kenneth came of age, or until he graduated. but my! i didn't see it make a spec of difference. they danced together at the party given for him, and smiled, careless as you please, and now the dancing is ended, they keep on friendly and smiling, and i'm downright puzzled to know what they do mean." "maybe no more than those two, who are only amusing themselves," said gertrude, with a glance towards the lawn where evilena and delaven were fencing with long stalks of a wild lily they had brought from the swamps, and when evilena was vanquished by the foe her comforter was a white-haired gentleman, inclined to portliness, and with much more than an inclination to courtliness, whom evilena called "my judge." it was two weeks after the descent of aunt sajane and evilena upon loringwood. the former, after a long consultation with dr. delaven, had returned to her own home, near the mcveigh plantation, and putting her household in order for a more prolonged visit than at first intended, she had come back to be near gertrude in case-- none of them had put into words to each other their thought as to matthew loring's condition, but all understood the seriousness of it, and gertrude, of course, must not be left alone. dr. delaven had meant only to accompany the invalid home, consult with their local physician, and take his departure after a visit to mrs. mcveigh, and possibly a sight of their new battlefield beside kenneth, if his command was not too far away. kenneth mcveigh was col. mcveigh now, to the great delight of the sister, who loved men who could fight. on his return from paris he had, at his own request, and to the dismay of his family, been sent to the frontier. at the secession of his state he was possessed of a captaincy, which he resigned, returned home, and in six weeks tendered a regiment, fully equipped at his own expense, to the confederate government. his offer had been accepted and himself made a colonel. his regiment had already seen one year of hard service, were veterans, with a colonel of twenty-five--a colonel who had been carried home wounded unto death, the surgeons said, from the defeat of fort donaldson. he had belied their prophecies of death, however, and while not yet equal to the rigors of camp life, he had accepted a commission abroad of decided importance to his government, and became one of the committee to deal with certain english sympathizers who were fitting out vessels for the confederate navy. mrs. mcveigh had been called to mobile by the serious illness of an aged relative and had been detained by something much less dreary, the marriage of her brother, who had command of a garrison at that point. thus barred from seeing either of his former parisian friends, delaven would have gone back to charleston, or else gone north or west to view a new land in battle array. but mr. loring's health, or miss loring's entreaties had interfered with both those plans. he could not desert a young lady on an isolated plantation with only the slaves about her, and a partial paralytic to care for, especially when all the most capable physicians were at military posts, and no one absolutely reliable nearer than charleston. so he had promised to stay, and had advised miss loring to induce mrs. nesbitt to remain until a few weeks' rest and the atmosphere of home would, he hoped, have a beneficial influence on the invalid. all his suggestions had been carried out. aunt sajane (who had not a niece or nephew in the world, yet was "aunt" to all the young folks) was to remain, also evilena, until the return of mr. mcveigh, after which they all hoped mr. loring could be persuaded to move up the river to a smaller estate belonging to gertrude, adjoining the terrace, as the nearness of friends would be a great advantage under the circumstances. the isolation of loringwood had of late become oppressive to its mistress, who strongly advocated its sale. they had enough land without, and she realized it was too large a tract to be managed properly or to profit so long as her uncle was unable to see to affairs personally. but above all else, the loneliness of it was irksome since her return. "though we never did use to think loringwood isolated, did we, gideon?" asked mrs. nesbitt, who remembered the house when full of guests, and the fiddles and banjos of the colored musicians always ready for dance music. "relentless circumstances over (he called it ovah, and delaven delighted in the charming dialect of the south, as illustrated by the judge) which we have no control have altered conditions through this entire (entiah) commonwealth. but, no. i should not call loringwood exactly isolated, with the highway of the salkahatchie at its door." "but when no one travels the highway?" said delaven, whose comments had aroused the discussion. "no one but black hunters in log canoes have i seen come along it for a week, barring yourselves. faith, i should think their presence alone would be enough to give a young lady nervous chills, the daily and nightly fear of insurrection." the judge smiled, indulgently, willing to humor the fancies of foreigners, who were not supposed to understand american institutions. "your ideas would be perfectly sound, my dear sir, if you were dealing with any other country, where the colored man is the recognized servant of the land and of the land owners. but we of the south, sir, understand their needs and just the proper amount of control necessary to be enforced for mutual protection. they have grown up under that training until it is a part of themselves. there are refractory blacks, of course, just as there are worthless demoralized whites, but i assure you, sir, i voice the sentiments of our people when i state that the families of southern planters feel much more secure when guarded by their colored folk than they would if surrounded by a troop of northern soldiery. there have been no cases where white women and children have had reason to regret having trusted to the black man's guardianship, sir. in that respect i believe we southrons hold a unique place in history. the evils of slavery, perfectly true in many lands, are not true here. the proofs of it are many. their dependence on each other is mutual. each understands and respects that fact, sir, and the highest evidence of it is shown when the master marches to meet their common enemy, and leaves his wife and children to the care of the oldest or most intelligent of his bondsmen. "i tell you, sir, the people of europe cannot comprehend the ties between those two races, because the world has seen nothing like it. the northern people have no understanding of it, because, sir, their natures are not such as to call forth such loyalty. they are a cold, unresponsive people, and the only systematic cruelty ever practiced against the colored folks by americans has been by the new england slavers, sir. the slave trade has always been monopolized by the northern folks in this country--by the puritanical new englanders who used to sell the pickaninnies at so much a pound, as cattle or sheep are sold. "they are no longer able to derive a profit from it, hence their desire to abolish the revenue of the south. i assure you, sir, if the colored man could endure the climate of their bleak land there would be no shouting for abolition." it was only natural that delaven should receive a good deal of information those days from the southern side of the question. much of it was an added education to him--the perfect honesty of the speakers, the way in which they entered heart and soul into the discussion of their state's rights, the extreme sacrifices offered up, the lives of their sons, the wealth, the luxury in which they had lived, all given up without protest for the cause. women who had lived and ruled like queens over the wide plantations, were now cutting their living expenses lower and lower, that the extra portion saved might be devoted to their boys at the front. the muslins and linens for household purposes were used as gertrude loring was using them now; everything possible was converted into bandages for hospital use. "i simply don't dare let the house servants do it," she explained, in reply to the judge's query. "they could do the work, of course, but they never have had to practice economy, and i can't undertake to teach it to them as well as myself, and to both at the same time. oh, yes, margeret is capable, of course, but she has her hands full to watch those in the cook house." her smile was very bright and contented. it hinted nothing of the straightened circumstances gradually surrounding them, making a close watch in all directions absolutely necessary. affairs were reaching a stage where money, except in extravagant quantities, was almost useless. the blockade had raised even the most simple articles to the price of luxuries. all possessions, apart from their home productions, must be husbanded to the utmost. "you are a brave little woman, miss gertrude," said the judge, bowing before her with a certain reverence. "all the battles of this war are not fought to the sound of regimental music, and our boys at the front shoot straighter when they have at home women like you to guard. our women of the south are an inspiration--an inspiration!" no courtier of storied castile could have rivaled the grace of manner with which the praise was spoken, so thought delaven, for all his mental pictures of castillian courtesies revealed them as a bit theatrical, while the judge was sincerity itself. as he spoke, the soft sound of wheels was heard in the hall, and matthew loring, in his invalid chair, was rolled slowly out on the veranda by his man, ben. margeret followed with a light robe over her arm, and a fan. "not there, ben," she said, in the low tone of one giving an order entirely personal and not intended to be heard by the others, "the draught does seem to coax itself round that corner, and--" "not a bit of it," broke in the master of loringwood, abruptly. "no more draught there than anywhere else. it's all right, ben, wheel me to that railing." margeret silently spread the robe over his knees, laid the fan in his lap, adjusted the cushion back of his head, and re-entered the house with a slight gesture to ben, who followed her. "she's a puzzle entirely," remarked delaven, who was watching them from the rustic seat nearest the steps. evilena was seated there, and he stood beside her. "margeret? why?" she asked, in the same low tone. "i'll tell you. not thirty minutes ago i told her he could be brought out and have his chair placed so that the sun would be on his limbs, but not on his head. now, what does she do but pilot him out and discourage him from going to just the corner that was best." "and you see the result," whispered the girl, who was laughing. "margeret knows a lot. just see how satisfied he is, now, the satisfaction of having had to fight some one. if he knew it was anybody's orders, even yours, he would not enjoy that corner half so much. that is the sweet disposition of our uncle matthew." overhanging eyebrows of iron-gray were the first thing to arrest attention in matthew loring's face. they shadowed dark expressive eyes in a swarthy setting. his hair and mustache were of the same grey, and very bushy. he had the broad head and square jaw of the aggressive type. not a large man, even in his prime, he looked almost frail as he settled back in his chair. he was probably sixty, but looked older. "still knitting socks, mistress nesbitt?" he inquired, with a caustic smile. "charming occupation. do you select that quality and color for any beauties to be found in them? i can remember seeing your mother using knitting needles on this very veranda thirty--yes, forty years ago. but i must say i never saw her make anything heavier than lace. and what's all this, gertrude? do you entertain your visitors these days by dragging out the old linen for their inspection? why are you dallying with the servants' tasks?" "no; it is my own task, uncle," returned his niece, with unruffled serenity. "not a very beautiful one, but consoling because of its usefulness." "usefulness--huh! in your mother's day ladies were not expected to be useful." "alas for us that the day is past," said the girl, tearing off another strip of muslin. "now, do you wonder that i adore my judge?" whispered evilena to delaven. chapter xiii. despite his natural irritability, to which no one appeared to pay much attention, mr. loring grew almost cordial under the geniality and hopefulness emanating from judge clarkson, whom he was really very glad to see, and of whom he had numberless queries to ask regarding the hostilities of the past few months. the enforced absence abroad had kept him in a highly nervous condition, doing much to counteract the utmost care given him by the most learned specialists of europe. half his fortune had been lost by those opening guns at sumter. his warehouses, piled with great cotton bales for shipment to england, had been fired--burned to the ground. the capture of beaufort, near which was another plantation of his, had made further wreck for him, financially, and whatever the foreign doctors might to with his body, his mind was back in carolina, eager, questioning, combative. he was burning himself up with a fever of anxiety. "it is all of no use, mademoiselle," said the most distinguished specialist whom she had consulted, "monsieur, your uncle will live for many years if but the mind is composed--no shocks, no heavy loads to carry. but the mind, you perceive--it is impossible for him to allow himself to be composed away from his country. we have done all that can be done here. to return to his own land under the care of a competent physician, of course, would be now the best arrangement i could suggest. he may live there for many years; here, he will most certainly die." at loring's request dr. delaven was the physician who had been approached with the proposal to accompany him to carolina. why, it would be hard to guess, for they were totally unlike in every way--had not, apparently, a single taste in common. but the physician in charge of the hospital approved his judgment. "it is a most wise one, monsieur loring. dr. delaven has shown as his specialty cases similar to your own, and has proven most successful. withal, he is adventurous. he will enjoy the new country, and he is of your own language. all i could do for you he can do, perhaps more; for i am old, while he is young and alive with enthusiasms with which to supplement his technical knowledge." gertrude only delayed their departure long enough to write col. mcveigh, who was in london. he secured for them transportation to nassau under the guardianship of an official who would take most extreme care that the party be conveyed from there by some blockade runner to be depended upon. and that the federal blockade often failed of its purpose was evidenced by the fact that they were quietly landed one night in a little inlet south of charleston, which they reached by carriage, and rested there a few days before attempting the journey overland. the doctors were correct as to the beneficial results of the home coming of loring. it acted like a tonic and the thought of outwitting the yankees of that blockade pleased him immensely. he never gave a thought to the girl who watched with pale face and sleepless eyes through that dash for the shore. delaven mentally called him a selfish brute. the visit of judge clarkson was partially an affair of business, but after a private interview with delaven he decided to dismiss all idea of business settlements until later. nothing of an annoying or irritating nature must be broached to the convalescent just yet. the judge confessed that it was an affair over which mr. loring had been deeply chagrined--a clear loss of a large sum of money, and perhaps it would be safer, under the circumstances, to await col. mcveigh's return. col. mcveigh was equally interested, and neither he nor the judge would consent to risk an attack similar to that experienced by mr. loring during the bombardment of port royal entrance. he was at that time on his beaufort plantation, where the blue coats overran his place after they landed, and it was known to have been nothing else than a fit of rage at their victory, and rage at the planters who fled on all sides of him, which finally ended in the prostration for which the local physicians could find no remedy. then it was that gertrude took him abroad, with the result described. it was understood the prostration had taught him one useful lesson--he no longer cultivated the rages for which he had been locally famous. as he was unable to stamp and roar, he compromised on sneers and caustic retorts, from which he appeared to derive an amount of satisfaction tonical in its effects. the judge was giving delaven the details of the beaufort affair when ben wheeled his master into the room. there was an awkward pause, a slight embarrassment, but he had caught the words "port royal entrance," and comprehended. "huh! talking over that disaster, judge?" he remarked. "i tell you what it is, you can't convey to a foreigner anything of the feeling of the south over those misfortunes; to have sherman's tramps go rough-shod over your lawns and rest themselves with braggadocio at your tables--the most infernal riff-raff--" "one moment," interposed the judge, blandly, with a view to check the unpleasant reminiscences. "did i not hear you actually praise one of those yankees?--in fact, assert that he was a very fine fellow?" "yes, yes; i had forgotten him. a yankee captain; ordered the blue-coats to the right-about when he found there was only a sick man and a girl there; and more than that, so long as those scavengers were ashore and parading around beaufort he kept men stationed at my gates for safeguard duty. a fine fellow, for a yankee. i can only account for it by the fact that he was a west point graduate, and was thus thrown, to a certain extent, into the society and under the influences of our own men. kenneth, col. mcveigh, had known monroe there--his name was monroe--captain john monroe--at beaufort his own men called him captain jack." "just as she was stepping on ship board: 'your name i'd like to know?' and with a smile she answered him, 'my name is jack monroe!'" sang a fresh voice outside the window, and then the curtain was pushed aside and evilena's brown head appeared. "i really could not help that, mr. loring," she said, laughingly. "the temptation was too great. did you never whistle 'jack monroe' when you were a boy?" "no, i can't say i ever did," he replied, testily. "it's intensely interesting," she continued, seating herself on the window sill and regarding him with smiling interest, made bold by the presence of her champion, the judge. "aunt sajane taught it to me, an old, old sailor song. it's all about her sweetheart, jack, not aunt sajane's sweetheart, but the girl's. her wealthy relatives separate them by banishing him to the wars somewhere, and she dressed up in boy's clothes to follow him. "'she went unto a tailor and dressed in men's array, and thence unto a sailor and paid her fare away.'" recited evilena, with uplifted finger punctuating the sentences. "wasn't she brave? well, she found him, and they were married. there are seven verses of it." "i--i should think that quite enough," he remarked, dropping his head forward and looking at her from under the overhanging brows. "do you mean to sing them all to me?" "perhaps, some day," she promised, showing all her teeth and dropping the curtain. "so now this couple's married, despite their bitter foe, and she's back again in england with her darling, jack monroe." the two visitors laughed outright as this information was wafted to them from the veranda, the old song growing more faint as the singer circled the house in search of gertrude. "a true daughter of the south, dr. delaven," said the judge, with a tender cadence betraying how close to his heart was his pride in all southern excellence--"child and woman in one, sir--a charming combination." "right you are, judge, in that; may their numbers never be less." evilena had found gertrude and at once confessed her daring. "don't know how i ever did have courage to pop my head in there. aunt sajane--but he talked of jack monroe just as i passed the window, and i pretended i thought he meant the old song (i do wonder if he ever--ever sang or whistled?) then i told him what it was all about, and promised to sing it to him some day, and i know by the sort of smile he had that he wanted to order me out of the room as he used to when i was little." "lena, lena!" and gertrude shook her head admonishingly at the girl, though she smiled at the recital. "oh, you are an angel, gertrude; so you never have temptations to do things for pure mischief. but i wish you'd tell me who this jack monroe is." "a federal officer who was of service to us when beaufort was taken." "a _yankee_!"--and her horror was absolute. "well, i should not think you'd accept service from such a person." "honey!" said aunt sajane, in mild chiding. "we had no choice," said gertrude, quietly; "afterwards we learned he and kenneth had been friends at west point; so he was really a gentleman." "and in the _yankee army_?" queried the irrepressible. "good-bye, jack monroe, i shan't sing you again." "you might be faithful to one verse for gertrude's sake," ventured aunt sajane. "gertrude's sake?" "why, yes; he protected them from the intrusion of the yankees." "oh--h! aunt sajane, i really thought you were going to ferret out a romance--a romeo and juliet affair--their families at war, and themselves--" "evilena!" "when gertrude says 'evilena' in _that_ tone i know it is time to stop," said the girl, letting go the kitten she was patting, and putting her arm around gertrude. "you dear, sensible gertrude, don't mind one word i say; of course i did not mean it. just as if we did not have enough romeos in our own army to go around." the significant glance accompanying her words made gertrude look slightly conscious. "you are a wildly romantic child," she said, smoothing the chestnut tinted waves of the girl's hair, "and pray, tell us how many of our military romeos are singing 'sweet evilena,' and wearing your colors?" dr. delaven passed along the hall in time to hear this bantering query, and came opposite the door when this true daughter of the south was counting all the fingers of one pretty hand. "just make it a half dozen," he suggested, "for i'm wearing yet the sunflower you gave me," and he pointed to the large daisy in his buttonhole. "no, i'm always honest with gertrude, and she must have the true number. we are talking of military men, and all others are barred out." "so you informed me the first day of our acquaintance," he assented, arranging the daisy more to his liking. "and i've never forgiven you for that first day," she retorted, nodding her head in a way suggestive of some dire punishment waiting for him in the future. "it was dreadful, the way he led me on to say things, aunt sajane, for how was i to guess he was the doctor? i was expecting a man like--well, like dr. allison, only more so; very learned, very severe, with eye glasses through which he would examine us as though we were new specimens discovered in the wilds of america. i certainly did not expect to find a frivolous person who wore daisies, and--oh!" as she caught a glimpse of some one coming up the path from the landing--"there comes nelse. gertrude, _can't_ i have him in here?" "may i ask if nelse is one of the five distinguished by your colors?" asked delaven. "nelse is distinguished by his own colors, which is a fine mahogany, and he is the most interesting old reprobate in carolina--a wizard, if you please--a sure enough voodoo doctor, and the black historian of the salkahatchie. may i call him?" "i really do not think uncle likes to have him around," said gertrude, dubiously; "still--oh, yes, call him if you like. don't let him tire you with his stories; and keep him out of uncle's way. he would be sure to tell him about those late runaways." "i promise to stand guard in that case myself, miss loring; for i have a prejudice against allowing witch-doctors access to my patients." mrs. nesbitt arose as if to follow gertrude from the room, hesitated, and resumed her chair. "when i was a girl we young folks were all half afraid of nelse--not that he ever harmed any one," she confessed. "the colored folks said he was a wizard, but i never did give credit to that." "aunt chloe, she says he is!" "oh, yes; and aunt chloe sees ghosts, and talks with goblins, to hear her tell the story; but that old humbug is just as much afraid of a mouse as--as i am." "nelse is a free nigger," explained evilena, turning from the window after having motioned him to enter. "he was made free by his old master, marmaduke loring, and the old rascal--i mean nelse, bought himself a wife, paid for her out of his jockey earnings, and when she proved a disappointment what do you think he did?" delaven could not get beyond a guess, as the subject of her discourse had just then appeared in the door. he was a small, black man, quite old, but with a curious attempt at jauntiness, as he made his three bows with his one hand on his breast, the other holding his cane and a jockey cap of ancient fashion. it contrasted oddly with the swallow-tailed coat he wore, which had evidently been made for a much larger man; the sleeves came to his finger tips, and the tails touched his heels. the cloth of which it was made was very fine dark blue, with buttons of brass. his waistcoat of maroon brocade came half way to his knees. warm as the day was he wore a broad tie of plaid silk arranged in a bow, above which a white muslin collar rose to his ears. he was evidently an ancient beau of the plantations in court dress. "yo' servant, miss sajane, miss lena; yo' servant, mahstah," he said with a bow to each. "i done come pay my respects to the family what got back. i'm powerful glad to heah they got safe ovah that ocean." "oh, yes; you're very thankful when you wait two whole weeks before you come around to say 'howdy.' have you moved so far into the swamp you can't even hear when the family comes home? sit down, you're tired likely. tell us all the news from your alligator pasture." "my king! miss lena, you jest the same tant'lizin' little lady. yo' growen' up don't make you outgrow nothen' but yo' clothes. my 'gatah pasture? i show yo' my little patch some o' these days--show yo' what kind 'gatahs pasture theah; why, why, i got 'nigh as many hogs as mahs matt has niggahs these days." "yes, and he hasn't so many as he did have," remarked mrs. nesbitt, significantly. "you know anything about where scip and aleck are gone?" "who--me? miss sajane? you think i keep time on all the runaway boys these days? they too many for me. it sutenly do beat all how they scatter. yo' all hear tell how one o' cynthy's boys done run away, too? suah as i tell you--that second boy, steve! ole mahs masterson got him dogs out fo' him--tain't no use; nevah touched the track once. he'll nevah stop runnen' till he reach the nawth an' freeze to death. i alles tole cynthy that steve boy a bawn fool." "do you mean your son steve, or your grandson?" queried mrs. nesbitt. "no'm, 'taint little steve; his mammy got too much sense to let him go; but that gal, cynthy--humph!" and his disdain of her perceptive powers was very apparent. "but, uncle nelse, just remember aunt cynthy must be upwards of seventy. steve is fifty if he is a day. how do you suppose she could control him, even if she knew of his intention, which is doubtful." "she nevah would trounce that rascal, even in his youngest days," asserted nelse, earnestly; "and as the 'bush is bent the tree's declined.' i use to kote that scripper to her many's the day, but how much good it do to plant cotton seed on stony groun' or sow rice on the high lan'? jes' that much good scripper words done cynthy, an' no more." his tone betrayed a sorrowful but impersonal regret over the refractory cynthia, and their joint offspring. evilena laughed. "where did you get so well acquainted with the scripture, nelse?" she asked. "i know you never did learn it from your beloved old mahs duke loring. i want you to tell this gentleman all about the old racing days. this is dr. delaven (nelse made a profound bow). he has seen great races abroad and hunted foxes in ireland. i want you to tell him of the bear hunts, and the horses you used to ride, and how you rode for freedom. the race was so important, dr. delaven, that marmaduke loring promised nelse his freedom if he won it, and he had been offered three thousand, five hundred dollars for nelse, more than once." "nevah was worth as much to myself as i was to mahs duke," said nelse, shaking his head. "i tell yo' true, freedom was a sure enough hoodoo, far as i was concerned; nevah seemed to get so much out o' the horses after i was my own man; nevah seemed to see so much money as i owned befo', an' every plum thing i 'vested in was a failure from the start; there was that gal o' mahs masterson's--that there cynthy--" the old man's garrulity was checked by the noiseless entrance of margeret. he gave a distinct start as he saw her. "i--i s'lute yo', miss retta," he said, sweeping his cap along the floor and bowing from where he sat. she glanced at him, bent her head slightly in acknowledgment, but did not address him. "miss loring asks to see you in the dining room, mistress nesbitt," she said softly; then drawing a blind where the sun was too glaring, and opening another that the breeze might be more apparent, she passed silently out. the old man never spoke until she disappeared. "my king!--she get mo' ghost-like every yeah, that retta," he said, while evilena gathered up the ball of stocking yard and wound it for mrs. nesbitt; "only the eyes o' that woman would tell a body who she is, these days; seems like the very shape o' her face been changed sence she--" "nelse," said mrs. nesbitt, a trifle sharply, "whatever you do you are not to let mr. loring know about those runaways; maybe you better keep out of his sight altogether this visit, for he's sure to ask questions about everything, and the doctor's orders are that he is not to see folks or have any business talks--you understand? and nothing ever does excite him so much as a runaway." "oh, yes, miss sajane, i un'stan'; i'll keep out. hearen' how things was i jes' come down to see if miss gertrude needs any mo' help looken' after them field niggahs. they nevah run away from _me_." "well"--and she halted doubtfully at the door--"i'll tell her. and if you want dr. delaven to hear about the old racing days, honey, hadn't you better take him into the library where the portraits are? i'm a trifle uneasy lest mr. loring should take a notion to come in here. since he's commenced to walk a little he is likely to appear anywhere but in the library. he never does seem to like the library corner." delaven glanced at the library walls as the three advanced thereto--walls paneled in natural cedar, and hung with large gilt frames here and there between the cases of books. "i should think any man would like a room like this," he remarked, "especially when it holds one's own family portraits. there is a picture most attractive--a fine make of a man." "that mahs tom loring, miss gertrude's father," explained nelse. "jest as fine as he looks theah, mahs tom was, and ride!--king in heaven! but he could ride. 'taint but a little while back since he was killed, twenty yeahs maybe--no, eighteen yeahs come christmas. he was followen' the houn's, close on, when his horse went down an' mahs tom picked up dead, his naik broke. his wife, miss leo masterson, she was, she died some yeahs befo', when miss gertrude jest a little missy. so they carried him home from larue plantation--that wheah he get killed--an' bury him back yonder beside her," and he pointed to a group of pines across the field to the north; "so, after that--" "oh, nelse, tell about live things--not dead ones," suggested evilena, "tell about the races and your mahs duke, how he used to go horseback all the way to virginia, to the races, and even to philadelphia, and how all the planters gathered for hundreds of miles, some of the old ones wearing small clothes and buckled shoes, and how--" "seems like you done mind them things so well 'taint no use tryen' to rake up the buried reck'lections o' the pas' times," said the old man, rebukingly, and with a certain pomposity. "i reckon now you 'member all the high quality gentlemen. the new market jockey club, an' how they use to meet reg'lar as clock-work the second tuesday in may and october; an' how my mahs duke, with all the fine ruffles down his shirt front, an' his proud walk, an' his voice soft as music, an' his grip hard as steel, was the kingpin o' all the sports--the grandest gentleman out o' calliny, an' carried his head high as a king ovah all jerusalem--i reckon you done mind all that theah, miss lena." "i will, next time," laughed the girl, "go on, nelse, we would rather hear what you remember." "i don't reckon the names o' the ole time sportin' gentlemen, an' old time jockeys, an' old time stock, would count much with a gentleman from foreign lan's," said the old man, with a deprecating bow to delaven. "but my mahs duke loring nevah had less than six horses in trainen' at once. i was stable-boy, an' jes' trained up with the colts till mahs duke saw i could ride. i sartainly had luck with racin' stock, seein' which he gave me clean charge o' the whole racin' stable; 'sides which, keepen' my weight down to eighty pounds let me in for the jockey work--them was days. i was sent ovah into kaintucky, an' up nawth far as long island, to ride races fo' otha gentlemen--friends o' mahs duke's, an' every big race i run put nigh onto a hundred dollar plump into my own pocket. money?--my king! i couldn't see cleah how i evah could spend all the money i got them days, cause i didn't have to spend a cent fo' clothes or feed, an' i had mo' presents give to me by the quality folks what i trained horses fer than i could count or reck'lect. "the ride miss lena done tole yo' of--that happen the yeah mahs duke imported lawd chester, half brother to bonnie bell, that won the sweepstakes at petersburg, an' sire o' glenalven out o' lady clare, who was owned by mahs hampton ovah in kaintucky. well, sah, the yeah he imported chester was the yeah he an' mr. enos jackson had the set-to 'bout their two-yeah-olds--leastwise the colts _seemed_ to be the cause; but i don't mind tellen', now, that i nevah did take stock in that notion, my own self. women folks get mixed up even in race fights an' i mind one o' the han'some high steppers o' philadelphia way down theah that time, an' mistah jackson he got a notion his chances mighty good, till long come mahs duke an' glance out corner of his eye, make some fine speeches, an'--farwell, mistah jackson! mistah jackson wa'nt jes' what you'd call the highest quality, though he did own powerful stretches o' lan'--three plantations in nawth calliny, 'sides lots o' other property. he had a colt called darker he 'lowed nothen' could keep in sight of, an' he _was_ good stuff--that colt. mistah jackson would a had easy riden' fo' the stakes if me an' mahs duke hadn't fetch betty pride up to show 'em what we could do. well, the upshot of it was that part on account o' that nawthen flirtatious young pusson what liked mahs duke the best, an' part on account o' betty pride, mistah jackson act mighty mischievous-like, an' twenty minutes afo' time was called i 'scovered that boy, jim peters, what was to ride betty pride, had been drugged--jest a trifle, not enough to leave him stupid--but too much to leave him ride, bright as he need be that day. he said mistah jackson's stable boss had give him a swallow o' apple jack, an' king heaven!--but mahs duke turn white mad when i tole him. he say to jim's brother mose--mose was his body servant--'moses, fetch me my pistols,' jest quiet like that; 'moses, fetch me my pistols.' whew!--but i was scared, an' i says, 'no, sah,' i says, 'mahs duke, fo' heaven's sake, don't stop the race, an' i'll win it fo' you yet. mistah jackson betten nigh bout all he own on darker; get yo' frien's to take all bets fo' you, an' egg him on. betty pride ain't been tampered with!--take my word fo' it, she'll win even with my extra weight--now, mahs duke, fo' god's sake,' says i, 'go out theah an' fool them rascals; don't let on you know 'bout their trick; take all theah bets, an' trust me. i trained that colt, an' we'll _win_, mahs duke--if we don't--well, sah, you can jest use them pistols on _me_.' i mos' got down on my knees a' beggen' him, an' his blue eyes, like steel, measuren' me an' weighen' my words, then he said: 'i'll risk it, nelse, but--heaven help yo' if yo' fail me!' "i knew good enough i'd need _some_ powerful help if i come in second, fo' he had a monstrous temper, but kindest man you evah met when things went his way. well, jest as i was jumpen' into my clothes, an' mahs duke had started to the ring, i called out, half joken: 'oh, mahs duke, i'm a dead niggah if i come in second, but what yo' gwine to give me if i come in first?' "he turned at that an' said, sharp an' quick an' decided--'yo' freedom, nelse.' my king!--that made me shaky, i could scarce get into my clothes. i knew he been offered big money fo' me, many's the time, an' now i was gwine to get it all my own self. "mahs duke done jes' like i begged him--kep' steady an' cool an' take up all mistah jackson's bets, and _he_ was jest betten wild till he saw who was on betty pride, an' i heah tell he come a nigh fainten' when he got sight o' me; but mahs duke's look at 'im must a jes' propped him up an' sort o' fo'ced him to brave it out till we come aroun'. it was a sweepstakes an' repeat, an' betty pride come in eighteen inches ahead, an' that nawthen lady what conjure mistah jackson so, she fastened roses in betty pride's bridle, an' gave me a whole bouquet--with one eye on mahs duke all the time, of course, but lordy!--he wan't thinken' much about ladies jes' that minute. he won ovah thousand dollars in money, 'sides two plantations off mistah jackson, who nevah dared enter the jockey club aftah that day. an' mahs duke was good as his word 'bout the freedom--he give it to me right theah; that's my mahs duke." "and a fine sort of a man he was, then," commented delaven, looking more closely at the strong, fine pictured face, and the bushy, leonine shock of tawny hair and the eyes that smiled down with a twinkle of humor in their blue depths. there was a slight likeness to matthew loring in the heavy brows and square chin, but the smile of the father was genial--that of the son, sardonic. "yes, sah," agreed nelse, when comment was made upon the likeness, "mahs matt favor him a mite, but none to speak of. mahs tom more like him in natur'. mahs matt he done take mo' likeness to his gran'ma's folks, who was french, from l'weesiana. a mighty sharp eye she got, an' all my mahs duke's niggahs walk straight, i tell yo', when she come a visiten' to we all. i heard tell how _her_ mother was some sort o' great lady from french court, packed off to l'weesiana 'cause o' some politics like they have ovah theah; an' in her own country she was a princess or some high mightiness, an' most o' her family was killed in some rebeloution--woman, too! all saved her was getten to orleans, an' _her_ daughter, she married ole matthew loring, the daddy o' them all, so far back as i know." the old man had warmed to his task, as floods of reminiscences came sweeping through his memory. he grew more important, and let fall the borrowed cloak of servility; his head was perched a little higher and a trifle askew as he surveyed them. the reflected grandeur of past days was on him, and in comparison modernity seemed common-place. all these brilliant, dashing, elegant men and women of his youth were gone. he was the only human echo left of their greatness, and his diminutive person grew more erect as he realized his importance as a landmark of the past. "there!" said evilena, triumphantly, "isn't that as interesting as your irish romances? where would you find a landlord of england or ireland who would make a free gift of three thousand dollars to a servant? they simply could not conceive of such generosity unless it were the gift of a king or a prince, and then it would be put down in their histories for all men to remember." "true for you," assented delaven, with the brogue he was fond of using at times when with those elected to comradeship; "true for you, my lady, but you folks who are kings and queens in your own right should be a bit easy on the unfortunates who can be only subjects." "they don't need to be subjects," she insisted; "they could assert their independence just as we did." "oh, sometimes it isn't so bad--this being a subject. i've found life rather pleasant down here in the south, where you are all in training for the monarchy you mean to establish. i don't mind being a subject at all, at all, if it's to the right queen." "but we didn't come in here to talk politics," she said, hastily. "uncle nelse, do tell dr. delaven about your freedom days, and all. he is a stranger here and wants to learn all about the country and customs. you've traveled, nelse, so you can tell him a lot." "yes, reckon i could. yes, sah, i done travelled considerable; the onliest advantage i could conjure up in freedom was goen' wherever the fit took me to go--jes' runnen' roun' loose. my king! i got good an' tiahed runnen, i tell yo'. went cleah out to the mississippi river, i did--spent all my money, an' started back barefoot, deed i did, an' me worth three thousan' five hundred dollars! nevah did know how little sense i got till i was free to get myself in trouble if i liked, an' didn't have no mahs duke to get me out again. more'n that, seem like i done lost my luck some way--lost races i had no right to lose, till seem like owners they got scary 'bout me, an' when i git far away from my own stamping groun', seem like i wasn't no sort o' use at all. bye and bye i fell in with judge warner, who was a great friend o' mahs dukes, and i jes' up an' tells him i done been conjured along o' that freedom mahs duke done give me. my king!--how he did laugh. he offered me a good berth down on his place, but i say, 'no, sah; all i want is mahs duke an' old calliny'; so he helps me to some races an' seems like the very notion o' goen' home done fetch me good luck right off, 'cause i made good winnen' on his bay filly, creole, an' soon as i got some money i bid far'well to wanderen' an' made fo' home. "i alles spishuned mahs duke know mo' 'bout my travels than he let on, fo' he jes' laughed when he see me an' say: 'all right, nelse, i been looken' fo' you some time. now if yo' done got yo' fill o' seen' the world, 'spose yo' go down an' look at the new colt i got, an' take yo' ole place in the stable. yo' jes' got back in time to spruce up the carriage team fo' my wedden'. "well, sah, yo' could a' knocked me down with a feathah. mahs duke was thirty-five, an' ovah, an' had kep' his own bachelor place fo' ten yeah, loose an' free. then all at once a new family come down heah from marylan'. they was the mastersons, an' a miss bar'bra vaughn come to visit them, an' it was all ovah with mahs duke. she jest won in a walk--that little lady. "an' he done took her all the way to orleans fo' wedden' trip. i didn't go 'long. i was done tired out with travel an' 'sides that, i'd been riden' ovah an' back to the masterson plantation fo' mahs duke till i took up with a likely brown gal they fetched with them from up nawth, an' of all niggahs, nawthen niggahs is the off-scourins o' the yeath--copy aftah theh masters, i reckon, fo' all the real, double-distilled quality folks i met up with in all my travels were gentlemen o' the south, sah. yes, sah, they may breed good quality somewheahs up theah, but all o' them sent down heah as samples ain't nowhars with the home-bred article, sah. "but i didn't know all that them days, an' that cynthy o' mistah masterson's look mighty peart an' talk mighty knowen', an' seem like as we both hed travelled considerable we both hed a heap of talk 'bout; an' the upshot of it was i felt boun' an' sot to buy that gal, if so be they'd give me a fair chance an' plenty o' time. well, sah, i talk it ovah with mahs duke, an' he fix it so i can have cynthy fo' three hundred dollars. "seem like it's a mighty small price to ask fo' a likely young gal like her, but i so conjured with the notion o' buyen' her i nevah stopped to study into the reasons why o' things, special as i had part o' the money right by me to pay; a pocket full o' money gets a man into mo' trouble mostly than an empty one. "well, sah, i hadn't owned her no time, till i was mo' sot in my mind than evah as how freedom was a hoodoo. if i hadn't been free i'd nevah took the notion to have a free wife o' my own, an' i'd a been saved a lot o' torment, _i_ tell yo'. "she jest no good no how--that cynthy. how they got work out o' her ovah on the masterson plantation i don't know, fo' _i_ couldn't. think she'd even cook vittels fo' her own self if she could help it? no, sah! she too plum lazy. she jes' had a notion that bein' free meant doen' nothen' 'tall fo' no body. it needed a whole meeten' house full o' religion to get along with that gal, 'thout cussen' at her, an' as i'd done trained in the race course an' not in a pulpit, seem like i noways fit for the 'casion. but i devilled along with her for three yeahs, and she had two boys by that time--didn't make no sort o' difference. she got worse 'stead o' better o' her worthlessness, but i tried to put up with it till she jest put the cap sheaf on the hull business by getten' religion up thah in the gum tree settlement, an' i drew the line at that, _i_ tell yo.' thah she was, howlen' happy every night in the week 'long-side o' brother peter mosely. brother mosely's wife didn't seem to favah their religion no more'n i did; so, seen' as i couldn't follow roun' aftah her with a hickory switch, an' couldn't keep her home or at work no othah way, i just got myself a divorce, an' settled down alone on a patch o' lan' i bought o' mahs duke, an' i kep' on looken' aftah his stables long as he kept any. he died just afore young mahs tom married miss leo masterson." "but what of the divorce? did it improve her religion or cure her laziness?" asked delaven, who found more of novelty in the black man's affairs than the master's. "who--cinthy? i just sold her right back to mistah john masterson fo' twenty-five dollar less than i paid, an' the youngsters they went into the bargain; fo' i tell yo', sah, them nawthen niggahs is bad stock to manage--if they's big or little; see what happened that steve o' hern; done run off, he has, an' him ole enough to know bettah. oh, yes, sah, i up an' i sold the whole batch; that how come i get my money back fo' her, an' stock my little patch o' groun'. yes, sah, she got scared an' settle down when i done sold her back again. mahs masterson he got mo' work out o' her than i could; he knew mo' 'bout managen' them nawthen niggahs." "wouldn't he be a find for those abolitionists?" asked evilena, laughing. "nelse, you've been very entertaining, and if your miss gertrude needs you to stay about the place we'll steal hours to hear about old times." "thanky, miss lena; yo' servant, sah; it sartainly does do me good to get in heah an' see all these heah faces again--mighty fine they are. i mind when some o' them was painted. mahs duke's was done in orleans; so was miss bar'bra, it's in the parlah. but mahs tom--he had an artis' painter come down from wash'nton to do miss gertrude's, once when she just got ovah sick spell--he scared lest she die an' nevah have no likeness; her ma, she died sudden that-a-way. we all use to think it bad luck to get likenesses; i nevah had none; mahs matt nevah had none; an' we're a liven' yet. all the rest had 'em took an' wheah are they?" "now, uncle nelse, you don't mean to say it shortens people's lives to have their picture taken?" "don't like to say, miss lena, but curious things do happen in this world. that artist man, his name, mistah madden, he made mahs tom's likeness, an' mahs tom got killed! an' all time mahs tom's likeness was bein' done, an' all time miss gertrude's was a doin', that mistah madden he just go 'stracted to paint one o' retta to take 'way with him. all the niggahs jest begged her not to let him, but she only laughed--she laughed most o' the time them days; an' mahs tom he sided with mistah madden, so she give consent, an' he painted two--one monstrous big one to take 'way with him, an' then a teeny one fo' a breastpin; he give it to retta 'cause she set still an' let him make the big one. an' now what happened? within a yeah mahs tom, he was killed, an' retta caris, she about died o' some crazy brain fever, an' it was yeahs afore she knew her own name again; yes, went 'wildered like--she did; an' that's what two likenesses done to my sutain knowledge." "then i've hoodooed dr. delaven, for i made a pencil picture of him only this morning." "and if i should fall down stairs, or into the salkahatchie, you will know the primal reason for it." old nelse shook his head at such frivolity. "jes' 'cause you all ain't afraid don't take yo' no further off danger," he said, soberly. then he followed evilena to the kitchen, where his entrance was greeted with considerable respect. when nelse appeared at loringwood in his finest it was a sort of state affair in the cook house. he was an honored guest with the grown folks, because the grandeurs he had witnessed and could tell of, and he was a cause of dread to the pickaninnies who were often threatened with banishment to the unc. nelse glade, and they firmly believed he immediately sold all the little darkies who put foot in his domain. "isn't he delightfully quaint?" asked the girl, rejoining delaven. "gertrude never does seem to find him interesting; but i do. she has been used to him always, of course, and i haven't, and she thinks it was awful for him to sell cynthia, just because she got religion and would not behave. now, i think it's funny; don't you?" "your historian has given me so many side-lights on slavery that i'm dazzled with the brilliancy of them; whether serious or amusing, it is astonishing." "only to strangers," said the girl; "to us they are never puzzling; they are only grown-up children--even the wisest--and need to be managed like children. those crazy abolitionists should hear nelse on the 'hoodoo' of freedom; i fancy he would astonish them." "not the slightest doubt of it," agreed delaven, who usually did agree with evilena--except when argument would prolong a tete-a-tete. chapter xiv. gertrude promptly assured old nelse that the plantation needed no extra caretakers just then, the work was progressing very well since their return. nelse swept the jockey cap over his feet in a profound bow, and sauntered around the house. the mistress of loringwood asked evilena to see if he had gone to his canoe. she did so, and reported that he had gone direct to the stables, where he had looked carefully over all the horses, and found one threatened with some dangerous ailment requiring his personal ministrations. he had announced his intention of staying right there until that horse was "up an' doin' again." at that minute he was seated on a half bushel measure as on a throne from which he was giving his orders, and all the young niggers were fairly flying to execute them. "it is no use, gertrude," said mrs. nesbitt, with a sigh; "as soon as i saw that vest and your grandfather's coat with the brass buttons, i knew nelse had come to stay a spell, and stay he will in spite of us." which statement gave the man from dublin another sidelight on the race question! one of the servants announced a canoe in sight, coming from up the river, and anticipating a probable addition to their visitors, delaven escaped by a side door, until the greetings were over, and walking aimlessly along a little path back from the river, found it ended at a group of pines surrounded by an iron railing, enclosing, also, the high, square granite and marble abodes of the dead. it was here nelse had pointed when telling of tom loring's sudden death and burial. he opened the gate, and as he did so noticed a woman at the other side of the enclosure. remembering how intensely superstitious the colored folks were said to be, he wondered at one of them coming alone into the grove so nearly darkened by the dense covering of pine, and with only the ghostly white of the tombs surrounding her. he halted and stood silent beside a tree until she arose and turned towards the gate, then he could see plainly the clear, delicate profile of the silent margeret. of all the people he had met in this new country, this quiet, pale woman puzzled him most. she seemed to compel an atmosphere of silence, for no one spoke of her. she moved about like a shadow in the house, but she moved to some purpose, for she was a most efficient housekeeper, even the pickaninnies from the quarters--saucy and mischievous enough with any one else--were subdued when margeret spoke. after she had passed out of the gate he went over where he had seen her first. two tombs were side by side, and of the same pattern; a freshly plucked flower lay on one. he read the name beneath the flower; it was, _thomas loring, in the thirtieth year of his age_; the other tomb was that of his wife, who had died seven years earlier. but it was on tom loring's tomb the blossom had been laid. was it merely an accident that it was the marble on which the fragrant bit of red had been let fall? or-- he walked slowly back to the house, feeling that he had touched on some story more strange than any evilena had asked him to listen to of the old days, and this one was vital, human, fascinating. he wondered who she was, yet felt a reluctance to ask. to him she appeared a white woman. yet an intangible something in miss loring's manner to her made him doubt. he remembered hearing matthew loring on the voyage complain many times that margeret would have arranged things for his comfort with more foresight than was shown by his attendants, but when he had reached loringwood, and margeret gave silent, conscientious care to his wants, there was never a word of praise given her. he--delaven--felt as if he was the only one there who appreciated her ministrations; the others took them as a matter of course. he saw old nelse hitching along, with his queer little walk, coming from the direction of the stables. he motioned to him, and seated himself on a circular bench, backed by a great, live oak, and facing the river. nelse proved that his sight was good despite his years, for he hastened his irregular shuffle and drew near, cap in hand. "did the canoe from up the river bring visitors?" asked delaven, producing one cigar which he lighted, and another which he presented to the old man, who received it with every evidence of delight. "i can't even so much as recollect when i done put my hands on one o' these real cubas; i thank yo' kindly, sah. we all raise our own patches o' tobacco, and smoke it in pipes dry, so! an' in course by that-a-way we 'bleeged to 'spence with the julictious flavor o' the cubas. no, sah; ain't no visitors; just mrs. mcveigh's man, pluto, done fetched some letters and chloe--chloe's cook, heah--she tell me she reckon miss gertrude try get mahstah matt to go up there fo' good 'fore long, fo' mrs. mcveigh, she comen' home from mobile right away, now; done sent word. an' miss lena, she jest in a jubilee ovah the letter, fo' her ma gwine fotch home some great quality folks a visiten'. judge clarkson, he plan to start in the mawnen' for savannah, he gwine meet 'em there." "and in the meantime we can enjoy our tobacco; sit down. i've been so much interested in your stories of long ago that i want to ask you about one of the present time." the smile of nelse broadened. he felt he was appreciated by miss gertrude's guests, even though miss gertrude herself was not particularly cordial. he squatted on the grass and waited while delaven took two or three puffs at his cigar before speaking again. "now, in the first place, if there is any objection to answering my question, i expect you to tell me so; you understand?" nelse nodded solemnly, and delaven continued: "i have one of the best nurses here that it has ever been my luck to meet. you spoke of her today as in someway deprived of her senses for a long time. i can't quite understand that, for she appears very intelligent. i should like to know what you meant." "i reckon o' course the pussen to who you pintedly make reference is retta," said the old man, after a pause. "you are the only one i've heard call her that--the rest call her margeret." "humph--yes, sah; that mahstah matt's doens, i reckon! not but what marg'ret alles was her real sure-'nough name, but way back, when mahstah tom was a liven', no one evah heard tell o' her been' called any name but retta; an' seem like it suit her them days, but don't quite suit her now so well." delaven made no reply, and after another thoughtful pause, the old man continued: "no, sah; i've been thinken' it ovah middlen' careful, an' i can't see--considerin' as yo's a doctah, an' a 'special friend o' the family--why i ain't free to tell you retta's story clean through; an' seen' as yo' have to put a lot o' 'pendance on her 'bout carryen' out you ordahs fo' mahstah matt, seems to me like a bounden' duty fo' _some_ one to tell yo', fo' theah was five yeahs--yes--six of 'em, when retta wasn't a 'nigh this plantation at all. she was stark, raven, crazy--dangerous crazy--an' had to be took away to some 'sylum place; we all nevah knew where; but when she did come back she was jest what you see--jest the ghost of a woman, sensible 'nough, seem like, but i mind the time when she try to kill herself an' her chile, an' how we to know that fit nevah find her again?" "she--killed her child?" "oh, no, sah; we all took the baby; she wan't but five yeah ole, from her, an' got the knife out o' her hands; no, no one got hurt. but i reckon i better go 'way back an' tell yo' the reason." "very well; i was wondering if she was really a colored person," remarked delaven. "retta's an octoroon, mahstah," said the old man, with a certain solemnity of tone. "i done heard old mahstah jean larue swear that if folks are reckoned as horses are, retta'd be counted a thoroughbred, 'cause far back as they can count theah wan't no scrub stock in her pedigree. "long 'bout hundred yeahs ago folks come in colony fashion from some islands 'way on other side the sea. they got plantations in florida, an' mahs duke he knew some o' them well. i only rec'lect hearen' one o' the names they was called--an' mighty hard some o' them was to say!--but the one i mind was andros, or ambrose lacaris, an' he was a greek gentleman; an'--so it was said--retta was his chile; his nat'ral daughter, as mahs larue call it, an' she was raised in his home jest like as ef she gwine to be mistress some day." delaven's cigar was forgotten, and its light gone out. the pedigree was more interesting than he had expected. a greek! all the beauty of the ancient world had come from those islands across the sea. the romances, the poems, the tragedies! and here was one living through a tragedy of today; that flower on the tomb under the pines--it suggested so much, now that he heard what she was. "mahs lacaris, from what i could heah, was much the turn o' my mahs duke, but 'thout mahs duke's money to back him; an' one day all his business 'rangements, they go smash! an' sheriff come take all his lan' and niggahs fo' some 'surance he'd gone fo' some one. well, sah, they say he most went 'stracted on head o' that smash up; an' 'special when he found they took stock o' retta, just like any o' the field hands. but theah wan't no help fo' it, 'cause retta's mammy was a quadroon gal; jest made a pet o' the chile, an' was so easy goen' he nevah took a thought that anything would ever change his way o' liven'. "mahs tom, he jes' got married to miss leo masterson an' took her down florida fo' wedden' trip; that how he come to be theah when all mahs lacaris' belongings was put up fo' sale. seem like mahs lacaris had hope he could get mo' money back in his own country, an' he was all planned to start, an' he beg mahs tom to buy his little retta an' keep her safe till he come back. "_now_, mahs tom was powerful good-hearted--jest like his daddy. so he totes the chile home, an' i know hester (miss leo's maid) was ragen' mad about it, 'cause she had to wait on her the whole enduren' trip home, fo' seem like that chile nevah had been taught to wait on herself. "well, sah, massa lacaris, he nevah did come back; that ship he went in nevah was heard tell of again from that day to this, an' theah wan't nothin' fo' mahs tom to do but jest keep her. he did talk about sendin' her 'way to some school, fo' she mighty peart with books, an' then given' her a chance to buy herself if so be she wanted to. but miss leo object to that, flat foot down; she hadn't no sort o' use fo' 'ristocrat book-learned niggahs. "hester, she heard miss leo say them words, an' was mighty glad to tattle 'em! hester--she was maryland stock, same as cynthy. well, sah, they worried along fo' 'bout a yeah not deciden' jest what to do with that young stray, then miss gertrude she come to town an' it did'n take no time to fine out what to do with her, _then_! "miss gertrude wan't no 'special stout chile, an' took a heap o' care an' pamperin' an' when none o' the othahs could do a trick with her, retta would jest walk in, take her in her arms, an' the wah was ended fo' that time! fust time mahs tom see that performance he laugh hearty, an' then he say, 'retta, we jest find out what we do need you fo'; yo' gwine to be installed as governess at lorinwood from this time on.' an' retta she was powerful pleased an' so happy, she alles a laughen' an' her eyes a shinen'. "long 'bout a yeah after that, it was, when miss leo die. mahs tom, he went way then fo' a long spell, cause the place too lonesome, an' when he come back, retta, she ovah seventeen, an' she jest manage the whole house fine as she manage that baby, an' all the quality folks what come an' go praise her mightily an' talk 'bout how peart she was. "then mahs matt, he come up from orleans, whah he been cutten' a wide swath, if all folks told true, an' fust thing his eyes caught was that gal retta, an' he up an' tole mahs tom what a fool he was not to sell her down in orleans whah she'd fetch mo' money than would buy six nuss gals or housekeepers. "mahs tom cussed at him powerful wicked when he say that! i heard that my own self--it was down at the stable an' i was jest putten' a saddle on fo' mahs tom, an' then right in the middle o' his cussin' an' callen' names he stopped short off an' says--says he: 'don't you evah open youah mouth to me 'bout that again so long as yo' live. if retta takes care o' my gertrude till she ten yeahs old, i made up my mine to give her freedom if she want it, that gal wan't bought for no slave an' she ain't gwine to be one heah--yo' un'stan'? you un'stan' if you got any notion o' stayen' at lorinwood!' an' then with some more mighty uncivil sayen's he got in the saddle an' rode like jehu, an' i don' reckon mahs matt evah did make mention of it again, fo' they got 'long all good 'nough so long as he stayed. "well, sah, haven' to take her part a-way made him think mo' 'bout the gal i reckon; anyway he say plain to more'n one that he sure gwine give retta her freedom. "he gwine do it jest aftah her chile was bawn, then theah was some law fusses raised 'bout that time consarnnen' mahstahs freen' slaves, an' mahs matt was theah then, an' he not say a word again _freen'_ her, only he say, 'wait a spell, tom.' "retta, she wan't caren' then; she was young an' happy all day long while her chile that was jest as white as miss gertrude dar be. "things went on that-a-way five yeahs, her chile was five yeahs ole when he start fo' a business visit down to charleston, an' he say fo' he start that retta gwine have her freedom papers fo' christmas gift. well, sah, he done been gone two weeks in charleston when he start home, an' then mahs larue persuade him to stay ovah night at his plantation fo' a fox hunt in the mawnen'. mahs matt was theah, an' some othah friends, so he staid ovah an' next we heard mahs matt sent word mahs tom killed, an' we all was to be ready to see aftah the relations an' othah quality folks who boun' to come to the funeral. "an' now, sah, you un'stan' what sort o' shock it was made retta lose her mind that time. she fainted dead away when she heard it, but then she kind o' pulled herself togethah, as a horse will for a spurt, an' she looked aftah the company an' took mahs matt's orders 'bout 'rangements, but we all most scared at the way she look--jest a watching mahs matt constant, beggen' him with her eyes to tell her 'bout them freedom papers, but seems like he didn't un'stan', an' when she ask him right out, right 'long side o' dead mahs tom, he inform her he nevah heah tell 'bout them freedom papers, mahs tom not tole him 'bout them, so she b'long to the 'state o' loring jest same as she did afore, only now miss gertrude owned her 'stead o' mahs tom. "that when she tried to kill herself, an' try to kill the chile; didn't know anybody, she didn't, i tell yo' it make a terrible 'miration 'mongst the quality folks, an' i b'lieve in my soul mahs matt would a killed her if he dared, fo' it made all the folks un'stan' jest what he would 'a tried to keep them from. "an' that, sah, is the whole 'count o' the reason leaden' up to the sickness whah she lost her mine. we all sutten sure mahs matt sell her quick if evah her senses done come back, but she really an' truly b'long to miss gertrude, an' miss gertrude, she couldn't see no good reason to let go the best housekeeper on the plantation, an' that how come she come to stay when she fetched back cured by them doctors. she ain't nevah made a mite o' trouble--jest alles same as yo' see her, but o' course yo' the best judge o' how far to trust her 'bout special medicine an' sech." "yes," agreed delaven, thoughtfully. he arose and walked back and forth several times. until now he had only come in contact with the pleasant pastoral side of life, given added interest because, just now, all its peace was encircled by war; but it _was_ peace for all that--peace in an eminently christian land, a land of homes and churchly environment, and made picturesque by the grotesque features and humor of the dark exiles. he had only laughed with them until now and marveled at the gaiety of the troops singing in the rice fields, and suddenly another window had been opened and through it one caught glimpses of tragedies. "and the poor woman's child?" he asked, after a little. "mahs matt done send her down to mahs larue's georgy plantation, an' we all nevah seen her no mo'. mahs larue done sold that georgy plantation 'bout five yeahs back an' move up fo' good on one his wife own up heah. an' little while back i hear tell they gwine sell it, too, an' flit way cross to mexico somewhah. this heah war jest broke them up a'ready." "and the child was sold?--do you mean that?" "deed we all nevah got a sure story o' what come o' that baby; only when retta come back mahs matt tell her little rhoda dead long time ago--dead down in georgy, an' no one evah heah her ask a word from that day to this. but one larue's niggahs _tole me_"--and the voice and manner of nelse took on a grotesquely impressive air--"they done raise a mighty handsome chile 'bout that time what was called rhoda, an' she went to ferren parts with mahs larue an' his family an' didn't nevah come back, no mo', an' mahs matt raise some sort o' big row with mahs jean larue ovah that gal, an' they nevah was friends no mo'. to be suah maybe that niggah lied--_i_ don't know. but he let on as how mars larue say that gal gwine to fetch a fancy price some day, an' i thought right off how mahs matt said retta boun' to fetch a fancy price in orleans; an' taken' it all roun' i reckoned it jest as well retta keep on thinken' that chile died." delaven agreed. from the house he could hear the ladies talking, and evilena's laugh sang out clear as a bird's song. he wondered if they also knew the story of the silent deft-handed bondwoman?--but concluded it was scarcely likely. mrs. nesbitt might know something of it, but who could tell tom loring's daughter?--and evilena, of course, was too much of a child. "i should like to see the picture you spoke of," he said at last, "the small one the painter left." "i reckon that picture done sent away with little rhoda's things. i ain't nevah heard tell of it since that time. but it don't look a mite like her now. all the red gone out o' her cheeks an' lips, all the shine out o' her eyes, an' her long brown hair has mo' white than brown in it these days. this woman marg'ret ain't retta; they jest as yo' might say two different women;" then, after a pause, "any othah thing you want ask me, sah? i see jedge clarkson comen' this way." "no, that is all; thank you, old fellow." he left nelse ducking his head and fingering a new coin, while he sauntered to meet the judge. "how much he give you, uncle nelse?" asked a guarded voice back of the old man, and he nearly fell over backwards in his fright. a large, middle-aged colored man arose from the tall grass, where he has been hidden under the bank. "wha--what you mean--yo' pluto? what fo' you hide theah an' listen?" "i wan't hiden'," replied the man, good naturedly. "i jest lay to go sleep in the shade. yo' come 'long an' talk--talk so i couldn't help hear it all," and he smiled shrewdly. "i alles was curious to know the true way 'bout that marg'ret--i reckon there was a heap that wan't told to neighbors. an' reason why i ask you how much he give you fo' the story is 'cause i got that picture you tole 'bout. i married mahs larue's rosa what come from georgy with them. she been daid ovah a yeah now, but it's some whar 'mongst her b'longings. reckon that strange gentleman give me dollar for it?--the frame is mighty pretty--what you think?" chapter xv. "do tell me every blessed thing about her--a real marquise--i love titles;" and evilena clasped her hands rapturously. "do you, now? faith, then i'm glad i secured mine before i came over," and the laughing irish eyes met hers quizzically. "oh, i never meant titles people earn themselves, mr. doctor, for--" "then that puts the judge and col. kenneth and myself on the outside of your fence, does it? arrah now! i'll be looking up my pedigree in hopes of unearthing a king--every true irishman has a traditional chance of being the descendant of rulers who ran barefoot, and carried a club to teach the court etiquette." she made a mutinous little grimace and refused to discuss his probable ancestors. "does not the presence of a french marquise show how europe sides with us?" she demanded, triumphantly. "quantities of noblemen have been the guests of the south lately, and isn't general wolseley, the most brilliant officer of the british army, with our general lee now? i reckon all _that_ shows how we are estimated. and now the ladies of title are coming over. oh, tell me all about her; is she very grand, very pretty?" "grand enough for a queen over your new monarchy," replied delaven, who derived considerable enjoyment from teasing the girl about affairs political--"and pretty? no, she's not that; she's just beauty's self, entirely." "and you knew her well in paris?" asked evilena, with a hesitating suspicion as to why he had not announced such a wonderful acquaintance before--this woman who was beauty's self, and a widow. she wondered if she had appeared crude compared with those grand dames he had known and forgotten to mention. "oh, yes, i knew her while the old marquise was living, that was when your mother and col. kenneth met her, but afterwards she took to travel for a change, and has evidently taken your south on her way. it will be happiness to see her again." "and brother ken knew her, too?" asked the girl, with wide-open eyes; "and _he_ never mentioned her, either--well!" "the rascal!--to deprive you of an account of all the lovely ladies he met! but you were at school when they returned, were you not?--and ken started off hot foot for the west and indian fighting, so you see there were excuses." "and kenneth does not know you are here still, and will not know the beautiful marquise is here. won't he be surprised to see you all?" "i doubt if i cause him such a shock," decided delaven; "when he gets sight of judithe, marquise de caron, he will naturally forget at once whether i am in america or ireland." "indeed, then, i never knew kenneth to slight a friend," said the girl, indignantly. "but maybe you never saw him face to face with such a temptation to make a man forget the universe." "sh--h!" she whispered, softly. gertrude had come out on the veranda looking for the judge. seeing him down at the landing she walked leisurely in that direction. "you do say such wild, extravagant things," continued evilena, "that i just had to stop you until gertrude was out of hearing. i suppose you know she and kenneth are paired off for matrimony." "are they, now? well, he's a lucky fellow; when are we to dance at the wedding?" "oh, they never tell me anything about serious things like that," complained evilena. "there's aunt sajane; she can tell us, if any one can; everybody confides love affairs to her." "do they, now? might i ask how you know?" "yes, sir; you may _ask_!" then she dropped that subject and returned to the first one. "aunt sajane, when do you reckon we can dance at kenneth's wedding--his and gertrude's? doctor delaven and i want to dance." "evilena--honey!" murmured aunt sajane, chidingly, the more so as matthew loring had just crept slowly out with the help of his cane, and a negro boy. his alert expression betrayed that he had overheard the question. "you know," she continued, "folks have lots to think of these days without wedding dances, and it isn't fair to gertrude to discuss it, for _i_ don't know that there really has been any settled engagement; only it would seem like a perfect match and both families seem to favor it." she glanced inquiringly at loring, who nodded his head decidedly. "of course, of course, a very sensible arrangement. they've always been friends and it's been as good as settled ever since they were children." "settled by the families?" asked delaven. "exactly--a good old custom that is ignored too often these days," said mr. loring, promptly. "who is so fit to decide such things for children as their parents and guardians? that boy's father and me talked over this affair before the children ever knew each other. of course he laughed over the question at the time, but when he died and suggested me as the boy's guardian, i knew he thought well of it and depended on me, and it will come off right as soon as this war is over--all right." "a very good method for this country of the old french cavaliers," remarked delaven, in a low tone, to the girl, "but the lads and lassies of ireland have to my mind found a better." evilena looked up inquiringly. "well, don't you mean to tell me what it is?" she asked, as he appeared to have dropped the subject. he laughed at the aggrieved tone she assumed. "whist! there are mystical rites due to the telling, and it goes for nothing when told in a crowd." "you have got clear away from kenneth," she reminded him, hastily. "did you mean that he was--well, in love with this magnificent marquise?" low as she tried to speak, the words reached loring, who listened, and delaven, glancing across, perceived that he listened. "in love with the marquise? bless your heart, we were all of course." "but my brother?" insisted evilena. "well, now he might have been the one exception--in fact he always did get out of the merely social affairs when he could, over there." "showed his good sense," decided loring, emphatically. "i don't approve of young people running about europe, learning their pernicious habits and customs; i've had my fill of foreign places and foreign people." mrs. nesbitt opened her lips with a shocked expression of protest, and as promptly closed them, realizing the uselessness of it. evilena laughed outright and directed an eloquent glance towards the only foreigner. "me, is it?" he asked, doubtingly. "oh, don't you believe it. i've been here so long i'm near a southerner myself." "how near?" she asked, teasingly. "well, i must acknowledge you hold me at arms length in spite of my allegiance," he returned, and in the laugh of the others, mr. loring's tirade against foreigners was passed over. it was only a few hours since pluto arrived with the letter from mobile telling of the early arrival of mrs. mcveigh and her guest. noting that the letter had been delayed and that the ladies might even now be in savannah, judge clarkson proposed starting at once to meet them, but was persuaded to wait until morning. pluto was also told to wait over--an invitation gladly accepted, as visits to loringwood were just now especially prized by the neighboring darkies, for the two runaways were yet subjects of gossip and speculation, and uncle nelse scattered opinions in the quarters on the absolute foolishness in taking such risks for freedom, and dire prophesies of the repentance to follow. that his own personal feeling did not carry conviction to his listeners was evidenced by the sullen silence of many who did not think it wise to contradict him. pluto was the only person to argue with him. but this proved to be the one subject on which pluto could not be his natural good-natured self. his big black eyes held threatening gleams, rebellious blood throbbed through every vein of his dark body. he championed the cause of the runaways; he knew of none who had left a good master; old man masterson was unreasonable as matthew loring; he did not blame them for leaving such men. "i got good a mistress--good a master as is in all carolina," he stated, bluntly, "but you think i stay here to work for any of them if it wan't for my boy?--my rose's baby? no, i wouldn't! i'd go north, too! i'd never stop till i reached the men who fight against slave states. you all know what keeps me here. i'd never see my boy again. i done paid eighteen dollars towards rose's freedom when she died. then i ask mr. jean larue if he wouldn't let that go on the baby. he said yes, right off, an' told me i could get him for hundred fifty dollars; _that_ why i work 'long like i do, an' let the other men fight fo' freedom but i ain't contented so long as any man can sell me an' my child." none of the other blacks made any verbal comment on his feelings or opinions, but old nelse easily saw that pluto's ideas outweighed his own with them. "i un'stan' you to say mahs jean larue promise he keep yo' boy till such time as the money is raised?" he asked, cautiously. "that's the way it was," assented pluto. "i ain't been to see him--little zekal--for nigh on two months now. i'm goen', sure, soon as mrs. mcveigh come home an' get settled. it's quite a jaunt from our place to mahs larue's--thirty good mile." aunt chloe poured him out some more rye and corn-meal coffee and insisted on him having more sweet potato pie. she swept an admonishing glance towards the others as she did so. "i did heah some time ago one o' the larue's gwine way down to the mexico country," she remarked, carelessly. "i don't reckon though it is this special larue. i mind they did have such a monstrous flock o' them larue boys long time back; some got killed in this heah war what's maken' trouble all roun'. how much you got paid on yo' little boy, pluto?" "most thirty dollars by time i make next trip over. takes mighty long time to save money these days, quarters scarcer than dollars use to be." his entertainers agreed with him; then the little maid raquel entered to say pluto was wanted by miss sajane soon as his lunch was over. and as he walked across the grounds evilena pointed him out to delaven. "that is our pluto," she said, with a certain note of pride in her tone; "three generations of his family belonged to us. mama can always go away feeling the whole plantation is safe so long as pluto is in charge. we never do have trouble with the folks at the quarters as mr. loring does. he is so hard on them i wonder they don't all run away; it would be hard on gertrude, though--lose her a lot of money. did you know loringwood is actually offered for sale? isn't it a shame? the only silver lining to the cloud is that then gertrude will have to move to the pines--i don't mean to the woods"--as he turned a questioning glance on her. "i mean to gertrude's plantation joining ours. it is a lovely place; used to belong to the masterson tracts, and was part of the wedding dowery of that miss leo masterson uncle nelse told of--gertrude's mother, you know. it is not grand or imposing like loringwood, but i heard the judge say that place alone was enough to make gertrude a wealthy woman, and the loveliest thing about it is that it joins our plantation--lovely for gertrude and kenneth, i mean. look here, doctor delaven, you roused my curiosity wonderfully with that little remark you made about the beautiful marquise; tell me true--were they--did ken, even for a little while, fall in love with her?" she looked so roguishly coaxing, so sure she had stumbled on some fragment of an adventure, and so alluringly confident that delaven must tell her the rest, that there is no telling how much he might have enlightened her if miss loring had not entered the room at that moment through a door nearest the window where they stood. her face was serene and self possessed as ever. she smiled and addressed some careless remark to them as she passed through, but delaven had an uncomfortable feeling that she had overheard that question, and evilena was too frightened to repeat it. chapter xvi. the warm summer moon wheeled up that evening through the dusk, odorous with the wild luxuriance of wood and swamp growths. a carriage rolled along the highway between stretches of rice lands and avenues of pines. in the west red and yellow showed where the path of the sun had been and against it was outlined the gables of an imposing structure, dark against the sky. "we are again close to the salkahatchie," said mrs. mcveigh, pointing where the trees marked its course, "and across there--see that roof, marquise?--that is loringwood. if the folks had got across from charleston we would stop there long enough to rest and have a bit of supper. but the road winds so that the distance is longer than it looks, and we are too near home to stop on such an uncertainty. gertrude's note from charleston telling of their safe arrival could say nothing definite of their home coming." "that, no doubt, depends on the invalid relative," suggested her guest; "the place looks very beautiful in this dim light; the cedars along the road there are magnificent." "i have heard they are nearly two hundred years old. years ago it was the great show place of the country, but two generations of very extravagant sportsmen did much to diminish its wealth--generous, reckless and charming men--but they planted mortgages side by side with their rice fields. those encumbrances have, i fancy, prevented gertrude from being as fond of the place as most girls would be of so fine an ancestral home." "possibly she lacks the gamester blood of her forefathers and can have no patience with their lack of the commercial instinct." "i really do believe that is just it," said mrs. mcveigh. "i never had thought of it in that way myself, but gertrude certainly is not at all like the lorings; she is entirely of her mother's people, and they are credited with possessing a great deal of the commercial instinct. i can't fancy a masterson gambling away a penny. they are much more sensible; they invest." the cedar avenues had been left a mile behind, and they had entered again the pine woods where even the moon's full radiance could only scatter slender lances of light. the marquise leaned back with half-shut slumberous eyes, and confessed she was pleased that it would be later, instead of this evening, that she would have the pleasure of meeting the master and mistress of loringwood--the drive through the great stretches of pine had acted as a soporific; no society for the night so welcome as king morpheus. the third woman in the carriage silently adjusted a cushion back of madame's head. "thank you, louise," she said, yawning a little. "you see how effectually i have been mastered by the much remarked languor of the south. it is delightfully restful. i cannot imagine any one ever being in a hurry in this land." mrs. mcveigh smiled and pointed across the field, where some men were just then running after a couple of dogs who barked vociferously in short, quick yelps, bespeaking a hot trail before them. "there is a living contradiction of your idea," she said; "the southerners are intensity personified when the game is worth it; the game may be a fox chase or a flirtation, a love affair or a duel, and our men require no urging for any of those pursuits." they were quite close to the men now, and the marquise declared they were a perfect addition to the scene of moonlit savannas backed by the masses of wood now near, now far, across the levels. two of them had reached the road when the carriage wheels attracted attention from the dogs, and they halted, curious, questioning. "why, it's our pluto!" exclaimed mrs. mcveigh; "stop the carriage. pluto, what in the world are you doing here?" pluto came forward smiling, pleased. "welcome home, mrs. mcveigh. i'se jest over loringwood on errend with yo' all letters to miss lena an' miss sajane. letters was stopped long time on the road someway; yo' all get here soon most as they did. judge clarkson--he aimen' to go meet yo' at savannah--start in the mawning at daybreak. he reckoned yo' all jest wait there till some one go fo' escort." "evilena is at loringwood, you say? then miss loring and her uncle have got over from charleston?" "yes, indeedy!--long time back, more'n a week now since they come. why, how come you not hear?--they done sent yo' word; i _know_ miss lena wrote you, 'cause she said so. yes'm, the folks is back, an' miss sajane an' judge over there this minute; reckon they'll feel mighty sorry yo' all passed the gate." "oh, but the letter never reached me. i had no idea they were home, and it is too far to go back i suppose? how far are we from the house now?" "only 'bout a mile straight 'cross fields like we come after that 'possum, but it's a good three miles by the road." "well, you present my compliments and explain the situation to miss loring and the judge. we will drive on to the terrace. say i hope to see them all soon as they can come. evilena can come with you in the morning. tell miss gertrude i shall drive over soon as i am rested a little--and mr. loring, is he better?" "heap better--so miss gertrude and the doctor say. he walks roun' some. miss gertrude she mightily taken with dr. delaven's cure--she says he jest saved mahs loring's life over there in france." "dr. delaven!" uttered the voice of the marquise, in soft surprise--"_our_ dr. delaven?" and as she spoke her hand stole out and touched that of the handsome serving woman she called louise; "is he also a traveller seeking adventure in your south?" "did i not tell you?" asked mrs. mcveigh. "i meant to. gertrude's note mentioned that her uncle was under the care of our friend, the young medical student, so you will hear the very latest of your beloved paris." "charming! it is to be hoped he will visit us soon. this little woman"--and she nodded towards louise--"must be treated for homesickness; you observe her depression since we left the cities? dr. delaven will be an admirable cure for that." "your louise will perhaps cure herself when she sees a home again," remarked mrs. mcveigh; "it is life in a carriage she has perhaps grown tired of." "madame is pleased to tease me as people tease children for being afraid in the dark," explained louise. "i am not afraid, but the silence does give one a chill. i shall be glad to reach the door of your house." "and we must hasten. remember all the messages, pluto; bring your miss lena tomorrow and any of the others who will come." "i remember, sure. glad i was first to see yo' all back--good night." the other colored men in the background had lost all interest in the 'possum hunt, and were intent listeners to the conversation. old nelse, who had kept up to the rest with much difficulty, now pushed himself forward for a nearer look into the carriage. mrs. mcveigh did not notice him. but he startled the marquise as he thrust his white bushy head and aged face over the wheel just as they were starting, and the woman louise drew back with a gasp of actual fear. "what a stare he gave us!" she said, as they rolled away from the group by the roadside. "that old man had eyes like augers, and he seemed to look through me--may i ask if he, also, is of your plantation, madame?" "indeed, he is not," was mrs. mcveigh's reassuring answer. "but he did not really mean to be impertinent; just some childish old 'uncle' who is allowed special privileges, i suppose. no; you won't see any one like that at the terrace. i can't think who it could be unless it is nelse, an old free man of loring's; and nelse used to have better manners than that, but he is very old--nearly ninety, they say. i don't imagine he knows his own age exactly--few of the older ones do." pluto caught the old man by the shoulder and fairly lifted him out of the road as the carriage started. "what the matter with yo', anyway, a pitchen' yo'self 'gainst the wheel that-a-way?" he demanded. "yo' ain't boun' and sot to get run over, are yo'?" some of the other men laughed, but nelse gripped pluto's hand as though in need of the support. "fo' god!--thought i seen a ghost, that minute," he gasped, as the other men started after the dogs again; "the ghost of a woman what ain't dead yet--the ghost o' retta." "yo' plum crazy, ole man," said pluto, disdainfully. "how the ghost o' that marg'ret get in my mistress carriage, i like to know?--'special as the woman's as live as any of us. yo' gone 'stracted with all the talken' 'bout that marg'ret's story. now, _i_ ain't seen a mite of likeness to her in that carriage at all, i ain't." "that 'cause yo' ain't nevah see retta as she used to be. i tell yo' if her chile rhoda alive at all i go bail she the very likeness o' that woman. my king! but she done scairt me." "don't yo' go talk such notions to any other person," suggested pluto. "yo' get yo'self in trouble when yo' go tellen' how mrs. mcveigh's company look like a nigger, yo' mind! why, that lady the highest kind o' quality--most a queen where she comes from. how yo' reckon mrs. mcveigh like to hear such talk?" "might'nt a' been the highest quality one i meant," protested nelse, strong in the impression he had received; "it wa' the othah one, then--the one in a black dress." all three occupants of the carriage had worn dark clothes, in the night all had looked black. nelse had only observed one closely; but pluto saw a chance of frightening the old man out of a subject of gossip so derogatory to the dignity of the terrace folks, and he did not hesitate to use it. "what other one yo' talken' 'bout?" he demanded, stopping short, "my mistress mcveigh?" "naw!--think me a bawn fool--you? i mean the _otha_ one--the number three lady." "this here moonlight sure 'nough make you see double, ole man," said pluto, with a chuckle. "yo' better paddle yo'self back to your own cabin again 'stead o' hunten' ghost women 'round lorin'wood, 'cause there wan't only two ladies in that carriage--two _live_ ladies," he added, meaningly, "an' one o' them was my mistress." "fo' gawd's sake!" the old man appeared absolutely paralyzed by the statement. his eyes fairly bulged from their sockets. he opened his lips again, but no sound came; a grin of horror was the only describable expression on his face. all the superstition in his blood responded to pluto's suggestion, and when he finally spoke it was in a ghostly whisper. "i--i done been a looken' for it," he gasped, "take me home--yo'! it's a sure 'nough sign! last night ole whippo'will flopped ovah my head. three nights runnen' a hoot owl hooted 'fore my cabin. an' now the ghost of a woman what ain't dead yet, sot there an' stare at me! i ain't entered fo' no mo' races in this heah worl', boy; i done covah the track fo' las' time; i gwine pass undah the line at the jedge stan', i tell yo'. i got my las' warnen'--i gwine home!" chapter xvii. pluto half carried the old man back to loringwood, while the other darkies continued their 'possum hunt. nelse said very little after his avowal of the "sign" and its relation to his lease of life. he had a nervous chill by the time they reached the house and pluto almost repented of his fiction. finally he compromised with his conscience by promising himself to own the truth if the frightened old fellow became worse. but nothing more alarming resulted than his decision to return at once to his own cabin, and the further statement that he desired some one be despatched at once for "that gal cynthy," which was done according to his orders. the women folk--old chloe at their head--decided uncle nelse must be in some dangerous condition when he sent the command for cynthia, whom he had divorced fifty years before. the rumors reached dr. delaven, who made a visit to nelse in the cabin where he was installed temporarily, waiting for the boatmen who were delegated to row him home, he himself declining to assist in navigation or any other thing requiring physical exertion. he was convinced his days were numbered, his earthly labors over, and he showed abject terror when margeret entered with a glass of bitters mrs. nesbitt had prepared with the idea that the old man had caught a chill in his endeavor to follow the dogs on the oppossum hunt. "i told you all how it would be when i heard of him going," she asserted, with all a prophet's satisfaction in a prophecy verified. "pluto had to just about tote him home--following the dogs at his age, the idea!" but for all her disgust at his frivolity she sent the bitters, and delaven could not comprehend his shrinking from the cup-bearer. "come--come, now! you're not at all sick, my man; what in the wide world are you shamming for? is it for the dram? sure, you could have that without all this commotion." "i done had a vision, mahs doctor," he said, with impressive solemnity. "my time gwine come, i tell you." he said no more until margeret left the room, when he pointed after her with nervous intensity. "it's that there woman i seen--the ghost o' that woman what ain't dead--the ghost o' her when she was young an' han'some--that's what i seen in the mcveigh carriage this night, plain as i see yo' face this minute. but no such _live_ woman wa' in that carriage, sah. pluto, he couldn't see but two, an' _i_ saw three plain as i could see one. sure as yo' bawn it's a death sign, mahs doctor; my time done come." "tut, tut!--such palaver. that would be the queerest way, entirely, to read the sign. now, i should say it was margeret the warning was for; why should the likeness of her come to hint of your death?" nelse did not reply at once. he was deep in thought--a nervous, fidgety season of thought--from which he finally emerged with a theory evidently not of comfort to himself. "i done been talken' too much," he whispered. "i talk on an' on today; i clar fo'got yo' a plum stranger to we all. i tell all sorts o' family things what maybe mahs duke not want tole. i talked 'bout that gal retta most, so he done sent a ghost what look like retta fo' a sign. till day i die i gwine keep my mouth shut 'bout mahs duke's folks, i tell yo', an' i gwine straight home out o' way o' temptations." so oppressed was he with the idea of mahs duke's displeasure that he determined to do penance if need be, and commenced by refusing a coin delaven offered him. "no, sah; i don' dar take it," he said, solemnly, "an' i glad to give yo' back that othar dollar to please mahs duke, only i done turned it into a houn' dog what ben sold me, and chloe--she ben's mammy--she got it from him, a'ready, an' paid it out fo' a pair candlesticks she been grudgen' ole m'ria a long time back, so i don' see how i evah gwine get it. but i ain't taken' no mo' chances, an' i ain't a risken' no mo' ghost signs. jest as much obliged to yo' all," and he sighed regretfully, as delaven repocketed the coin; "but i know when i got enough o' ghosts." pluto had grace enough to be a trifle uneasy at the intense despondency caused by his fiction in what he considered a good cause. the garrulity of old nelse was verging on childishness. pluto was convinced that despite the old man's wonderful memory of details in the past, he was entirely irresponsible as to his accounts of the present, and he did not intend that the mcveigh family or any of their visitors should be the subject of his unreliable gossip. pride of family was by no means restricted to the whites. revolutionary as pluto's sentiments were regarding slavery, his self esteem was enhanced by the fact that since he was a bondman it was, at any rate, to a first-class family--regular quality folks, whose honor he would defend under any circumstances, whether bond or free. his clumsily veiled queries about the probable result of uncle nelse's attack aroused the suspicions of delaven that the party of hunters had found themselves hampered by the presence of their aged visitor, who was desirous of testing the ability of his new purchase, the hound dog, and that they had resorted to some ghost trick to get rid of him. he could not surmise how the shade of margeret had been made do duty for the occasion, her subdued, serious manner giving the denial to any practical joke escapades. but the news pluto brought of mrs. mcveigh's homecoming dwarfed all such episodes as a scared nigger who refused to go into details as to the scare, and in his own words was "boun' an' sot" to keep his mouth shut in future about anything in the past which he ever had known and seen, or anything in his brief earthly future which he might know or see. he even begged delaven to forget immediately the numerous bits of history he, nelse, had repeated of the loring family, and delaven comforted him by declaring that all he could remember that minute was the horse race and he would put that out of his mind at once if necessary. nelse was not sure it was necessary to forget _that_, because it didn't in any way reflect discredit on the family, and he didn't in reason see why his mahs duke should object to that story unless it was on account of the high-flier lady from philadelphia what mahs duke won away from mr. jackson without any sort of trouble at all, and if mahs duke was hovering around in the library when miss evilena and mahs doctor listened to that story, mahs duke ought to know in his heart, if he had any sort of memory at all, that he, nelse, had not told half what he might have told about that northern filly and mahs duke. and taking it all in all nelse didn't see any reason why delaven need put that out of his remembrance--especially as it was mighty good running for two-year-olds. evilena had peeped in for a moment to say good-bye to their dusky homer. but the call was very brief. all her thoughts were filled with the folks at the terrace, and dawn in the morning had been decided on for the ten-mile row home, so anxious was she to greet her mother, and so lively was her interest in the wonderful foreigner whom dr. delaven had described as "beauty's self." that lady had in the meantime arrived at the terrace, partaken of a substantial supper, and retired to her own apartments, leaving behind her an impression on the colored folks of the household that the foreign guest was no one less than some latter day queen of sheba. never before had their eyes beheld a mistress who owned white servants, and the maid servant herself, so fine she wore silk stockings and a delaine dress, had her meals in her own room and was so grand she wouldn't even talk like folks, but only spoke in french, except when she wanted something special, at which time she would condescend to talk "united states" to the extent of a word or two. all this superiority in the maid--whom they were instructed to call "miss"--reflected added glory on the mistress, who, at the supper table, had been heard say she preferred laying aside a title while in america, and to be known simply as madame caron; and laughingly confessed to mrs. mcveigh that the american republic was in a fair way to win her from the french empire, all of which was told at once in the kitchen, where they were more convinced than ever that royalty had descended upon them. this fact did not tend to increase their usefulness in any capacity; they were so overcome by the grandeur and the importance of each duty assigned to them that the wheels of domestic machinery at the terrace that evening were fairly clogged by the eagerness and the trepidation of the workers. they figuratively--and sometimes literally--fell over each other to anticipate any call which might assure them entrance to the wonderful presence, and were almost frightened dumb when they got there. mrs. mcveigh apologized for them and amused her guest with the reason: "they have actually never seen a white servant in their lives, and are eaten up with curiosity over the very superior maid of yours, her intelligence places her so high above their ideas of servitors." "yes, she is intelligent," agreed the marquise, "and much more than her intelligence, i value her adaptability. as my housekeeper she was simply perfect, but when my maid grew ill and i was about to travel, behold! the dignity of the housekeeper was laid aside, and with a bewitching maid's cap and apron, and smile, she applied for the vacant position and got it, of course." "it was stupid of me not to offer you a maid," said mrs. mcveigh, regretfully; "i did not understand. but i could not, of course, have given you any one so perfect as your louise; she is a treasure." "i shall probably have to get along with some one less perfect in the future," said the other, ruefully. "she was to have had my yacht refurnished and some repairs made while i was here, and now that i am safely located, may send her back to attend to it. she is worth any two men i could employ for such supervision, in fact, i trust many such things to her." "pray let her remain long enough to gain a pleasant impression of plantation life," suggested mrs. mcveigh, as they rose from the table. "i fancied she was depressed by the monotony of the swamp lands, or else made nervous by the group of black men around the carriage there at loringwood; they did look formidable, perhaps, to a stranger at night, but are really the most kindly creatures." judithe de caron had walked to the windows opening on the veranda and was looking out across the lawn, light almost as day under the high moon, a really lovely view, though both houses and grounds were on a more modest scale than those of loringwood. they lacked the grandeur suggested by the century-old cedars she had observed along the loring drive. the terrace was much more modern and, possibly, so much more comfortable. it had in a superlative degree the delightful atmosphere of home, and although the stranger had been within its gates so short a time, she was conscious of the wonder if in all her varied experience she had ever been in so real a home before. "how still it all is," remarked mrs. mcveigh, joining her. "tomorrow, when my little girl gets back, it will be less so; come out on the veranda and i can show you a glimpse of the river; you see, our place is built on a natural terrace sloping to the salkahatchie. it gives us a very good view." "charming! i can see that even in the night time." "three miles down the river is the clarkson place; they are most pleasant friends, and miss loring's place, the pines, joins the terrace grounds, so we are not so isolated as might appear at first; and fortunately for us our plantation is a favorite gathering place for all of them." "i can quite believe that. i have been here two--three hours, perhaps, and i know already why your friends would be only too happy to come. you make them a home from the moment they enter your door." "you could not say anything more pleasing to my vanity, marquise," said her hostess, laughingly, and then checked herself at sight of an upraised finger. "oh, i forgot--i do persist in the marquise." "come, let us compromise," suggested her guest, "if madame caron sounds too new and strange in your ears, i have another name, judithe; it may be more easily remembered." "in europe and england," she continued, "where there are so many royal paupers, titles do not always mean what they are supposed to. i have seen a russian prince who was a hostler, an english lord who was an attendant in a gambling house, and an italian count porter on a railway. over here, where titles are rare, they make one conspicuous; i perceived that in new orleans. i have no desire to be especially conspicuous. i only want to enjoy myself." "you can't help people noticing you a great deal, with or without a title," and mrs. mcveigh smiled at her understandingly. "you cannot hope to escape being distinguished, but you shall be whatever you like at the terrace." they walked arm in arm the length of the veranda, chatting lightly of parisian days and people until ten o'clock sounded from the tall clock in the library. mrs. mcveigh counted the strokes and exclaimed at the lateness. "i certainly am a poor enough hostess to weary you the first evening with chatter instead of sending you to rest, after such a drive," she said, in self accusation. "but you are such a temptation--judithe." they both laughed at her slight hesitation over the first attempt at the name. "never mind; you will get used to it in time," promised the marquise, "i am glad you call me 'judithe.'" then they said good night; she acknowledged she did feel sleepy--a little--though she had forgotten it until the clock struck. mrs. mcveigh left her at the door and went on down the hall to her own apartment--a little regretful lest judithe should be over wearied by the journey and the evening's gossip. but she really looked a very alert, wide-awake young lady as she divested herself of the dark green travelling dress and slipped into the luxurious lounging robe mademoiselle louise held ready. her brows were bent in a frown of perplexity very different from the gay smile with which she had parted from her hostess. she glanced at her attendant and read there anxiety, even distress. "courage, louise," she said, cheerily; "all is not lost that's in danger. horrors! what a long face! look at yourself in the mirror. i have not seen such a mournful countenance since the taking of new orleans." "and it was not your mirror showed a mournful countenance that day, marquise," returned the other. "i am glad some one can laugh; but for me, i feel more like crying, and that's the truth. heavens! how long that time seemed until you came." "i know," and the glance of her mistress was very kind. "i could feel that you were walking the floor and waiting, but it was not possible to get away sooner. get the other brush, child; there are wrinkles in my head as well as my hair this evening; you must help me to smooth them." but the maid was not to be comforted by even that suggestion, though she brushed the wavy, dusky mane with loving hands--one could not but read tenderness in every touch she gave the shining tresses. but her sighs were frequent for all that. "me of help?" she said, hopelessly. "i tell you true, marquise, i am no use to anybody, i'm that nervous. i was afraid of this journey all the time. i told you so before you left mobile; you only laughed at my superstitious fears, and now, even before we reach the place, you see what happened." "i see," asserted the marquise, smiling at her, teasingly, "but then the reasons you gave were ridiculous, louise; you had dreams, and a coffin in a teacup. come, come; it is not so bad as you fear, despite the prophetic tea grounds; there is always a way out if you look for paths; so we will look." "it is all well for you, marquise, to scoff at the omens; you are too learned to believe in them; but it is in our blood, perhaps, and it's no use us fighting against presentiments, for they're stronger than we are. i had no heart to get ready for the journey--not a bit. we are cut off from the world, and even suppose you could accomplish anything here, it will be more difficult than in the cities, and the danger so much greater." "then the excitement will provide an attraction, child, and the late weeks have really been very dull." the hair dressing ceased because the maid could not manipulate the brush and express sufficient surprise at the same time. "heavens, madame! what then would you call lively if this has been dull? i'm patriotic enough--or revengeful enough, perhaps--for any human sort of work; but you fairly frighten me sometimes the way you dash into things, and laughing at it all the time as if it was only a joke to you, just as you are doing this minute. you are harder than iron in some things and yet you look so delicately lovely--so like a beautiful flower--that every one loves you, and--" "every one? oh, louise, child, do you fancy, then, that you are the whole world?" the maid lifted the hand of the mistress and touched it to her cheek. "i don't only love you, i worship you," she murmured. "you took me when i was nothing, you trusted me, you taught me, you made a new woman of me. i wouldn't ever mind slavery if i was your slave." "there, there, louise;" and she laid her hand gently on the head of the girl who had sunk on the floor beside her. "we are all slaves, more or less, to something in this world. our hearts arrange that without appeal to the law-makers." "all but yours," said the maid, looking up at her fondly and half questioningly, "i don't believe your heart is allowed to arrange anything for you. your head does it all; that is why i say you are hard as iron in some things. i don't honestly believe your heart is even in this cause you take such risks for. you think it over, decide it is wrong, and deliberately outstrip every one else in your endeavor to right it. that is all because you are very learned and very superior to the emotions of most people;" and she touched the hand of the marquise caressingly. "that is how i have thought it all out; for i see that the motives others are moved by never touch you; the others--even the high officials--do not understand you, or only one did." her listener had drifted from attention to the soft caressing tones of the one time parisian figurante, whose devotion was so apparent and whose nature required a certain amount of demonstration. the marquise had, from the first, comprehended her wonderfully well, and knew that back of those feminine, almost childish cravings for expression, there lived an affectionate nature too long debarred from worthy objects, and now absolutely adoring the one she deemed her benefactress; all the more adoring because of the courage and daring, that to her had a fascinating touch of masculinity about it; no woman less masterful, nor less beautiful, could have held the pretty kora so completely. the dramatic side of her nature was appealed to by the luxurious surroundings of the marquise, and the delightful uncertainty, as each day's curtain of dawn was lifted, whether she was to see comedy or tragedy enacted before the night fell. she had been audience to both, many times, since the marquise had been her mistress. just now the mistress was in some perplexed quandary of her own, and gave little heed to the flattering opinions of the maid, and only aroused to the last remark at which she turned with questioning eyes, not entirely approving: "whom do you mean?" she asked, with a trifle of constraint, and the maid sighed as she selected a ribbon to bind the braid she had finished. "no one you would remember, marquise," she said, shaking her head; "the trouble is you remember none of them, though you make it impossible that they should forget you. many of those fine gallants of orleans i was jealous of and glad to see go; but this one, truly now, he seemed to me well worth keeping." "had he a name?" asked the marquise, removing some rings, and yawning slightly. "he had," said the girl, who was unfolding a night robe and shaking the wrinkles from the very parisian confection of lawn and lace and tiny pink ribbons accenting neck and wrist. when she walked one perceived a slight halt in her step--a reminder of the injury through which her career in paris had been brought to an end. "he had, my marquise. i mean the federal officer, monroe--captain jack, the men called him. of all the orleans gentlemen he was the only one i thought fit for a mate for you--the only one i was sorry to see you send away." "send? what an imaginative romancer you are! he went where his duty called him, no doubt. i do not remember that i was responsible. and your choice of him shows you are at least not worldly in your selections, for he was a reckless sort of ranger, i believe, with his sword and his assurance as chief belongings." "you forget, marquise, his courage." "oh, that!" and judithe made a little gesture of dismissal; "it is nothing in a man, all men should have courage. but, to change the subject, which of the two men have most interest for us tonight, captain jack or dr. delaven? the latter, i fancy. while you have been chattering i have been making plans." the maid ceased her movements about the room in the preparations for the night, and, drawing a low stool closer, listened with all attention. "since you are afraid here and too much oppressed by your presentiments to be useful"--she accompanied this derogatory statement with an amused smile--"i conclude it best for you to return to the sea-board at once--before dr. delaven and the rest pay their duty visit here. "i had hoped the change in your appearance would place you beyond danger of recognition, and so it would with any one who had not known you personally. madame mcveigh has been vaguely impressed with your resemblance to monsieur dumaresque's picture. but the impression of dr. delaven would probably be less vague--his remembrance of you not having been entirely the memory of a canvas." "that is quite true," agreed the other, with a regretful sigh. "i have spoken with him many times. he came with--with his friend trouvelot to see me when i was injured. it was he who told me the physicians were propping me up with falsehoods, and taking my money for curing a lameness they knew was incurable. yes, he was my good friend in that. he would surely remember me," and she looked troubled. "so i supposed; and with rumors abroad of an unknown in the heart of the south, who is a secret agent for the federals, it is as well not to meet any one who could suggest that the name you use is an assumed one, it might interfere with your usefulness even more than your dismal presentiments," and she arched her brows quizzically at the maid, who sighed forlornly over the complications suggested. "so, you must leave at once." "leave, alone--without you?" and the girl's agitation was very apparent. "madame, i beg you to find some reason for going with me, or for following at once. i could send a dispatch from savannah, you could make some excuse! you, oh, marquise! if i leave you here alone i would be in despair; i would fear i should never, never see you again!" "nonsense, child! there is absolutely no ground for your fears. if you should meet trouble in any way you have only to send me word and i will be with you. but your imaginary terrors you must yourself subdue. come, now, be reasonable. you must go back--it is decided. take note of all landmarks as we did in coming; if messengers are needed it is much better that you inform yourself of all approaches here. wait for the yacht at savannah. buy anything needed for its refurnishing, and see that a certain amount of repairing is done there while you wait further orders. i shall probably have it brought to beaufort, later, which would be most convenient if i should desire to give my good friends here a little salt water excursion. so, you perceive, it is all very natural, and it is all decided." "heavens, marquise, how fast you move! i had only got so far i was afraid to remain, and afraid to excite wonder by leaving; and while i lament, you arrange a campaign." "exactly; so you see how easily it is all to be done, and how little use your fears." "i am so much more contented that i will see everything as you wish," promised the girl, brightly. "savannah, after all, is not very far, and beaufort is nearer still. but after all, you must own, my presentiments were not all wrong, marquise. it really was unlucky--this journey." "we have heretofore had only good fortune; why should we complain because of a few obstacles now?" asked her mistress. "to become a diplomat one needs to be first a philosopher, and prepared at all times for the worst." "i could be more of a philosopher myself over these complications," agreed the girl, smiling, "if i were a foreigner of rank seeking amusement and adventure. but the troubles of all this country have come so close home to the people of my race that we fear even to think what the worst might be." the marquise held up an admonishing finger and glanced towards the door. "of course no one hears, but it is best never to allow yourself the habit of referring to family or personal affairs. even though we speak a language not generally understood in this country, do not--even to me--speak of your race. i know all, understand it all, without words; and, for the people we have met, they do not doubt you are a san domingo creole. you must be careful lest they think differently." "you are right; what a fool i am! my tongue ever runs ahead of my wit. marquise, sometimes i laugh when i remember how capable i thought myself on leaving paris, what great things i was to do--i!" and she shrugged her plump shoulders in self derision. "why, i should have been discovered a dozen times had i depended on my own wit. i am a good enough orderly, but only under a capable general," and she made a smiling courtesy to the marquise. "chatterbox! if i am the general of your distinguished selection, i shall issue an order at once for your immediate retirement." "oh, marquise!" "to bed," concluded her mistress, gayly, "go; i shall not need you. i have work to do." the girl first unlaced the dark boots and substituted a pair of soft pink slippers, and touched her cheek to the slender foot. "i shall envy the maid who does even that for you when i am gone," she said, softly. "now, good rest to you, my general, and pleasant dreams." "thanks; but my dreams are never formidable nor important," was the teasing reply as the maid vanished. the careless smile gave way to a quick sigh of relief as the door closed. she arose and walked back and forth across the room with nervous, rapid steps, her hands clasped back of her head and the wide sleeves of the robe slipped back, showing the perfect arms. she seemed a trifle taller than when in paris that first springtime, and the open robe revealed a figure statuesque, perfect as a sculptor's ideal, yet without the statue's coldness; for the uncovered throat and bosom held delicious dimples where the robe fell apart and was swept aside by her restless movements. but her own appearance was evidently far from her thoughts at that moment. several of mrs. mcveigh's very affectionate words and glances had recurred to her and brought her a momentary restlessness. it was utterly absurd that it should be so, especially when she had encouraged the fondness, and meant to continue doing so. but she had not counted on being susceptible to the same feeling for kenneth mcveigh's mother--yet she had come very near it, and felt it necessary to lay down the limits as to just how far she would allow such a fondness to lead her. and the fact that she was in the home of her one-time lover gave rise to other complex fancies. how would they meet if chance should send him there during her stay? he had had time for many more such boyish fancies since those days, and back of them all was the home sweetheart she heard spoken of so often--gertrude loring. how very, very long ago it seemed since the meetings at fontainbleau; what an impulsive fool she had been, and how childish it all seemed now! but judithe de caron told herself she was not the sort of person to allow memories of bygone sentiment to interfere for long with practical affairs. she drew up a chair to the little stand by the window and plunged into the work she had spoken of, and for an hour her pen moved rapidly over the paper until page after page was laid aside. but after the last bit of memoranda was completed she leaned back, looking out into the blue mists of the night--across his lands luxuriant in all the beauty of summer time and moonlight, the fields over which he had ridden, the trees under which he had walked, with, perhaps, an occasional angry thought of her--never dreaming that she, also, would walk there some day. "but to think that i _am_ actually here--here above all!" she murmured softly. "maman, once i said i would be judithe indeed to that man if he was ever delivered into my hands. yet, when he came i ran away from him--ran away because i was afraid of him! but now--" her beautiful eyes half closed in a smile not mirthful, and the sentence was left unfinished. chapter xviii. what embraces, ejaculations and caresses, when evilena, accompanied by pluto and the delighted raquel, arrived at the terrace next morning! judithe, who saw from the veranda the rapturous meeting of mother and daughter, sighed, a quick, impatient catching of the breath, and turned to enter the library through the open french windows. reconsidering her intention, she halted, and waited at the head of the broad steps where kenneth's sister saw her for the first time and came to her with a pleased, half shy greeting, and where kenneth's mother slipped one arm around each as they entered the house, and between the two she felt welcomed into the very heart of the mcveigh family feminine. "oh, and mama!"--thus exclaimed evilena as she was comfortably ensconced in the same chair with that lady--"there is so much news to tell you i don't know where to begin. but gertrude sends love--please don't go, madame caron--i am only going to talk about the neighbors. and they are all coming over very soon, and the best of all is, gertrude has at last coaxed uncle matthew (a roguish grimace at the title) to give up loringwood entirely and come to the pines. and dr. delaven--he's delightful, mama, when he isn't teasing folks--he strongly advises them to make the change soon; and, oh, won't you ask them all over for a few weeks until the pines is ready? and did you hear about two of their field hands running off? well, they did. scip and aleck; isn't it too bad? and mr. loring doesn't know it yet, no one dares tell him; and masterson's cynthia had a boy run off, too, and went to the yankees, they suppose. and old nelse he got scared sick at a ghost last night while they were 'possum hunting. and, oh, mama, have you heard from ken?--not a word has come here, and he never even saw gertrude over there. he must be powerful busy if he could not stop long enough to hunt friends up and say 'howdy.'" "lena, lena, child!" and the mother sank back in her chair, laughing. "have they enforced some silent system of existence on you since i have been down at mobile? i declare, you fairly make my head swim with your torrent of news and questions. judithe, does not this young lady fulfill the foreign idea of the american girl--a combination of the exclamation and interrogation point?" evilena stopped further criticism by kisses. "i will be good as goodness rather than have madame caron make up her mind i am silly the very first day," she promised, "but, oh, mama, it _is_ so good to have you to talk to, and so delightful of madame to come with you"--this with a swift, admiring side glance at their visitor--"and, altogether, i'm just in love with the world today." later she informed them that judge clarkson would probably drive over that evening, as he was going to columbia or savannah--she had forgotten which--and had to go home first. he would have come with her but for a business talk he wanted to have, if mr. loring was able, this morning. "gertrude coaxed him to stop over and settle something about selling loringwood. she's just grieving over the wreck and ruin there, and mr. loring never will be able to manage it again. they've been offered a lot of money for it by some orleans people, and gertrude wants it settled. aunt sajane is going to stay until they all come to the pines." "if judge clarkson should be going to savannah you could send your maid in his charge, since she is determined to leave us," suggested mrs. mcveigh. "she would, no doubt, be delighted to go under such escort," said judithe, "but her arrangements are made to start early in the morning; it is not likely your friend would be leaving so soon. then, mademoiselle has said she is not sure but that it is to some other place he goes." "columbia?--yes; and more than likely it _is_ columbia," assented mrs. mcveigh. "he is there a great deal during these troublous times." a slight sigh accompanied the words, and judithe noticed, as she had done often before, the lack of complaint or bewailings of the disasters so appalling to the south, for even the victories were so dearly bought. there was an intense eagerness for news from the front, and when it was read, the tears were silent ones. the women smiled bravely and were sure of victory in the end. their faith in their men was adorable. evilena undertook to show the marquise around the terrace, eagerly anxious to become better acquainted with the stranger whose beauty had won her quite as quickly as it had won her brother. looking at her, and listening to the soft tones with the delicious accent of france, she wondered if ken had ever really dared to fall in love with this star from a foreign sky, or if dr. delaven had only been teasing her. of course one could not help the loving; but brave as she believed ken to be, she wondered if he had ever dared even whisper of it to judithe, marquise de caron; for she refused to think of her as simply madame caron even though she did have to say it. the courtesy shown to her own democratic country by the disclaiming of titles was altogether thrown away on evilena, and she comforted herself by whispering softly the given name _zhu-dette--zhudette_, delighted to find that the french could make of the stately name a musical one as well. raquel came breathlessly to them on the lawn with the information that "mistress mcveigh ast them to please come in de house right off case that maid lady, miss weesa, she done slip on stairs an' hurt her foot powerful." "thanks, yes; i will come at once," said miss weesa's mistress in so clear and even a tone that evilena, who was startled at the news, was oppressed by a sudden fear that all the warmth in the nature of her fascinating marquise was centered in the luminous golden brown eyes. as judithe followed the servant into the house there came a swift remembrance of those lamentable presentiments. was there, after all, something in the blood akin to the prescience through which birds and wild things scent the coming storms?--some atavism outgrown by the people of intellectual advancement, but yet a power to the children of the near sun? miss louisa's foot certainly was hurt; it had been twisted by a fall on the stairs, and the ankle refused to bear the weight; the attempt to step on it caused her such agony that she had called for help, and the entire household had responded. it was pluto who reached her first, lifting her in his arms and carrying her to a bed. she had almost fainted from pain or fright, and when she opened her eyes again it was to meet those of her mistress in one wild appeal. pluto had not moved after placing her on the bed, though the other darkies had retired into the hall, and judithe's first impression of the scene was the huge black eyes fairly devouring the girl's face with his curious gaze. he stepped back as mrs. mcveigh entered with camphor and bandages, but he saw that pleading, frightened glance. "never mind, louise, it will all be well," said her mistress, soothingly; "this has happened before," she added, turning to mrs. mcveigh. "it needs stout bandages and perfect rest; in a week it will be forgotten." "a week!"--moaned the girl with pale lips, "but tomorrow--i _must_ go tomorrow!" "patience, patience! you shall so soon as you are able, louise, and the less you fret the sooner that may be." judithe herself knelt by the bed and removed tenderly the coquettish shoe of soft kid, and, to the horror of the assembled maids at the door, deliberately cut off the silk stocking, over which their wonder had been aroused when the short skirts of louise had made visible those superfine articles. the pieces of stocking, needless to say, were captured as souvenirs and for many a day shown to the scoffers of neighboring plantations, who doubted the wild tales of luxury ascribed to the foreign magnate whose servants were even dressed like sure enough ladies. "we must bandage it to keep down the swelling," said judithe, working deftly as she spoke; "it happened once in new orleans--this, and though painful, is not really serious, but she is so eager to commence the refurnishing of the yacht that she laments even a day's delay." louise did not speak again--only showed by a look her comprehension of the statement, and bore patiently the binding of the ankle. it was three days before she could move about the room with help of a cane, and during those days of feverish anxiety her mistress had an opportunity to observe the very pointed and musical interest pluto showed in the invalid whose language he could not speak. he was seldom out of hearing or her call and was plainly disturbed when word came from loringwood that the folks would all be over in a few days. he even ventured to ask evilena if mr. loring's eyesight hadn't failed some since his long sickness, and was well satisfied, apparently, by an affirmative reply. he even went so far as to give louise a slight warning, which she repeated to her mistress one day after the judge and delaven had called, and louise had promptly gone to bed and to sleep, professing herself too well now for a doctor's attention. "pluto is either trying to lay a trap for me to see if i do know english, or else he is better informed than we guess--which it is, i cannot say, marquise," she confided, nervously. "when he heard his mistress say i was to start thursday, he watched his chance and whispered: 'go wednesday--don't wait till visitors come, go wednesday.'" "visitors?--then he means the lorings, they are to be here thursday," and judithe closed the book she had been reading, and looked thoughtfully out of the window. louise was moving about the room with the aid of a cane, glancing at her mistress now and then and waiting to hear her opinion. "i believe i would take his advice, louise," she said at last. "i have not noticed the man much beyond the fact that he has been wonderfully attentive to your wants. what do you think of him--or of his motives?" "i believe they are good," said the girl, promptly. "he is dissatisfied; i can see that--one of the insurrection sort who are always restless. he's entirely bound up in the issue of the war, as regards his own people. he suspects me and because he suspects me tries to warn me--to be my friend. when i am gone you may need some one here, and of all i see he is the one to be most trusted, though, perhaps, dr. delaven--" "is out of the question," and judithe's decision was emphatic. "these people are his friends." "they are yours, too, marquise," said the girl, smiling a little; but no smile answered her, a slight shade of annoyance--a tiny frown--bent the dark brows. "yes, i remember that sometimes, but i possess an antidote," she replied, lightly. "you know--or perhaps you do not know--that it is counted a virtue in a gypsy to deceive a georgio--well, i am fancying myself a gypsy. in the mohammedan it is a virtue to deceive the christian, and i am a mohammedan for the moment. in the christian it was counted for centuries a mark of special grace if he despoil the jew, until generations of oppression showed the wanderer the real god held sacred by his foes--money, my child, which he proceeded to garner that he might purchase the privileges of other races. so, with my jewish name as a foundation, i have created an imaginary jewish ancestor whose wrongs i take up against the people of a christian land; i add all this debt to the debt africa owes this enlightened nation, and i shall help to pay it." the eyes of louise widened at this fantastical reason. she was often puzzled to determine whether the marquise was entirely serious, or only amusing herself with wild fancies when she touched on pondrous questions with gay mockery. just now she laughed as she read dismay in the maid's face. "oh, it is quite true, louise, it _is_ a christian land--and more, it is the most christian portion of a christian land, because the south is entirely orthodox; only in the north will you find a majority of skeptics, atheists, and agnostics. though they may be scarcely conscious of it themselves, it is because of their independent heterodox tendencies that they are marching today by thousands to war against a slavery not their own--the most righteous motive for a war in the world's history; but it cannot be denied that they are making war against an eminently christian institution." and she smiled across at louise, whose philosophy did not extend to the intricacies of such questions. "i don't understand even half the reasons back of the war," she confessed, "but the thing i do understand is that the black man is likely to have a chance for freedom if the north wins, and that's the one question to me. miss evilena said yesterday it was all a turmoil got up by yankee politicians who will fill their pockets by it." "oh, that was after judge clarkson's call; she only quoted him in that, and he is right in a way," she added; "there is a great deal of political jugglery there without a vestige of patriotism in it, but they do not in the least represent the great heart of the people of the north; _they_ are essentially humanitarians. so you see i weigh all this, with my head, not my heart," she added, quizzically, "and having done so--having chosen my part--i can't turn back in the face of the enemy, even when met by smiles, though i confess they are hard weapons to face. it is a battle where the end to be gained justifies the methods used." "_ma belle_, marquise," murmured the girl, in the untranslatable caress of voice and eyes. "sometimes i grow afraid, and you scatter the fear by your own fearlessness. sometimes i grow weak, and you strengthen me with reasons, reasons, reasons!" "that is because the heart is not allowed to hamper the head." "oh, you tease me. you speak to me like a guardian angel of my people; your voice is like a trumpet, it stirs echoes in my heart, and the next minute you laugh as though it were all a play, and i were a child to be amused." "'and each man in his time plays many parts,'" quoted judithe, thoughtfully, then with a mocking glance she added: "but not so many as women do." "there--that is what i mean. one moment you are all seriousness and the next--" "but, my child, it is criminal to be serious all the time; it kills the real life and leads to melancholia. you would grow morbid through your fears if i did not laugh at them sometimes, and it would never--never do for me to approve them." she touched the girl's hand softly with her own and looked at her with a certain affectionate chiding. "you are going away from me, louise, and you must not go in dread or despondency. it may not be for long, perhaps, but even if it should be, you must remember that i love you--i trust you. i pity you for the childhood and youth whose fate was no choice of yours. never forget my trust in you; when we are apart it may comfort you to remember it." the girl looked at her with wide black eyes, into which the tears crept. "marquise," she whispered, "you talk as if you might be sending me away for always. oh, marquise--" judithe raised her hand warningly. "be a soldier, child," she said, softly, "each time we separate for even a day--you and i--we do not know that we will ever meet again. these are war times, you know." "i know--but i never dreaded a separation so much; i wish you were not to remain. perhaps that pluto's words made me more nervous--it is so hard to tell how much he guesses, and those people--the lorings--" "i think i shall be able to manage the lorings," said her mistress, with a reassuring smile, "even the redoubtable matthew--the tyrannical terror of the county; so cheer up, louise. even the longest parting need only be a lifetime, and i should find you at the end of it." "and find me still your slave," said the girl, looking at her affectionately. "that's a sort of comfort to think, marquise; i'm glad you said it. i'll think of it until me meet again." she repeated it wednesday morning when she entered the boat for the first stage of her journey to savannah, and the marquise nodded her comprehension, murmured kindly words of adieu, and watched the little vessel until a bend in the river hid it from view, when she walked slowly back to the house. since her arrival in america this was the first time she had been separated from the devoted girl for more than a day, and she realized the great loss it would be to her, though she knew it to be an absolutely necessary one. as for louise, she watched to the last the slight elevation of the terrace grounds rising like an island of green from the level lands by the river. when it finally disappeared--barred out by the nearer green of drooping branches, she wept silently, and with a heavy heart went downward to pocotaligo, oppressed by the seemingly groundless fear that some unknown evil threatened herself or the marquise--the dread lest they never meet again. chapter xix. "hurrah! hurrah! for southern rights hurrah! hurrah! for the bonney blue flag, that bears the single star!" evilena was singing this stirring ditty at the top of her voice, a very sweet voice when not overtaxed, but dilsey, the cook, put both hands to her ears and vowed cooking school would close at once if that "yapping" was not stopped; she could not for the life of her see why miss lena would sing that special song so powerful loud. "why, dilsey, it is my shout of defiance," explained the girl, stirring vigorously at a mass in a wooden bowl which she fondly hoped would develop into cookies for that evening's tea, when the party from loringwood were expected. "it does not reach very far, but i comfort myself by saying it good and loud, anyway. that yankee general who has marched his followers into orleans fines everybody--even if its a lady--who sings that song. i can't make him hear me that far off, but i do my best." "good lawd knows you does," agreed dilsey. "but when you want to sing in this heah cookhouse i be 'bleeged if yo' fine some song what ain't got no battles in it. praise the lawd, we fur 'nough away so that yankee can't trouble we all." "madam caron saw him once," said the amateur cook, tasting a bit of the sweetened dough with apparent pleasure, "but she left orleans quick, after the yankees came. of course it wouldn't be a place for a lady, then. she shut her house up and went straight to mobile, and i just love her for it." "seems to me like she jest 'bout witched yo' all," remarked dilsey; "every blessed nigger in the house go fallen' ovah theyselves when her bell rings, fo' feah they won't git thah fust; an' pluto, he like to be no use to any one till aftah her maid, miss louise, get away, he jest waited on her, han' an' foot." dilsey had heretofore been the very head and front of importance in the servants' quarters on that plantation, and it was apparent that she resented the comparative grandeur of the marquise's maid, and especially resented it because her fellow servants bowed down and paid enthusiastic tribute to the new divinity. "well, dilsey, i'm sure she needed waiting on hand and foot while she was so crippled. i know mama was mighty well pleased he was so attentive; reckon maybe that's why she let him go riding with madame caron this morning." "pluto, he think plenty o' hisself 'thout so much pamperen," grumbled dilsey. "seem like he counted the whole 'pendence o' the family since mahs ken gone." evilena prudently refrained from expressing an opinion on the subject, though she clearly perceived that dilsey was possessed of a fit of jealousy; so she proceeded to flatter the old soul into a more sunny humor lest dinner should go awry in some way, more particularly as regarded the special dishes to which her own little hands had added interest. she was yet in the cookhouse when the guests arrived, and doffing the huge apron in which she was enveloped, skurried into the house, carrying with her the fragrance of cinnamon and sweet spices, while a dust of flower on curls and chin gave her a novel appearance, and the confession that she had been cooking was not received with the acclamation she had expected, though there was considerable laughter about it. no one appeared to take the statement seriously except matthew loring, who took it seriously enough to warn margeret he would expect her to supervise all dishes _he_ was to partake of. his meals were affairs not to be trifled with. margeret and ben had accompanied the party. others of the more reliable house servants of loringwood, were to commence at once work at the pines, and gertrude was almost enthusiastic over the change. "you folks really _live_ over here," she declared to mrs. mcveigh, "while at loringwood--well, they tell me life used to be very gay there--but i can't remember the time. it seems to me that since the day they carried papa in from his last hunting field the place has been under a cloud. nothing prospers there, nobody laughs or sings; i can't be fond of it, and i am so glad to get away from it again." "still, it is a magnificent estate," said mrs. mcveigh, thoughtfully; "the associations of the past--the history of your family--is so intimately connected with it, i should think you would be sorry to part with it." "i should not!" said gertrude, promptly, "the money just now would do me a great deal more good than family records of extravagance which all the lorings but uncle matthew seem to have been addicted to; and he is the exact opposite, you know." mrs. mcveigh did know. she remembered hearing of him as a one-time gamester long ago in new orleans, a man without the conviviality of his father or his brother tom; a man who spent money in dissipations purely selfish, carrying the spirit of a speculator even into his pursuit of social enjoyment. then, all at once, he came back to loringwood, settled down and became a model in deportment and plantation management, so close a calculator of dimes as well as dollars that it was difficult to believe he ever had squandered a penny, and a great many people refused to credit those ancient orleans stories at all. kenneth's father was one of them. "i don't believe i am very much of a loring, anyway," continued gertrude with a little sigh. "they were a wild, reckless lot so far back as i can learn, and i--well, you couldn't call me wild and reckless, could you?" mrs. mcveigh smiled at the query and shook her head. "not the least little bit, and we are glad of it." she walked over to the window looking across the far fields where the road showed a glimpse of itself as it wound by the river. "i thought i saw some one on horseback over there, and every horseman coming our way is of special interest just now. i look for word from kenneth daily--if not from the boy himself; he has had time to be home now. his stay has already been longer than he expected." gertrude joined her and gave her attention to the head of the road. "it may be your visitor from france, evilena said she had gone riding. of course you know we are all eager to meet her. dr. delaven sings her praises to us until it has become tantalizing." "we should have driven over to see you but for that accident to her maid--the poor thing, except a few words, could only speak her own language, and we could not leave her entirely to the servants. madame caron seemed quite impressed with the brief glance she got of loringwood, and when she heard it was likely to be sold she asked a great many interested questions concerning it. she is wealthy enough to humor her fancies, and her latest one is a carolina plantation near enough to water for her yacht, which mobile folks say is the most beautiful thing--and the combahee would always be navigable for so small a craft, and the salkahatchie for most of the year." "she certainly must be able to humor any sort of fancy if she keeps a yacht of her own; that will be a new departure for a woman in carolina. it sounds very magnificent." "it is; and it suits her. that is one reason why i thought she might be the very best possible purchaser for loringwood. she would resurrect all its former glories, and establish new ones." matthew loring entered the sitting room, moving somewhat haltingly with the help of a cane. gertrude arranged a chair near the window, in which he seated himself slowly. "do you feel tired after the ride, uncle?" "no," he said, fidgetting with the cushion back of his head, and failing to adjust it to suit him, either let it fall or threw it on the floor. gertrude replaced it without a word, and mrs. mcveigh smiled quietly, and pretended not to see. "i think i can promise you a pleasant visitor, mr. loring," she remarked, turning from the window. "a gentleman just turned in at our gate, and he does look like judge clarkson." gertrude left the room to join the others who were talking and laughing in the arbor, a few steps across the lawn. mrs. mcveigh busied herself cutting some yellowing leaves from the plants on the stand by the window. loring watched her with a peculiar peering gaze. his failing sight caused him to pucker his brows in a frown when he desired to inspect anything intently, and it was that regard he was now directing toward mrs. mcveigh, who certainly was worth looking at by any man. the dainty lace cap she wore had tiny bows of violet showing among the lace, and it someway had the effect of making her appear more youthful instead of adding matronliness. the lawn she wore had violet lines through it, and the flowing sleeves had undersleeves of sheer white gathered at the wrist. the wide lace collar circled a throat scarcely less white, and altogether made a picture worth study, though matthew loring's view of it was rather blurred because of the failure of vision which he denied whenever opportunity offered; next to paralysis there was nothing he dreaded so much as blindness, and even to delaven he denied--uselessly--any tendency in that direction. "hum!" he grunted, at last, with a cynical smile; "if gid clarkson keeps up his habit of visiting you regularly, as he has done for the past ten years, you ought to know him a mile away by this time." "oh!"--mrs. mcveigh was refastening her brooch before the mirror, "not ten years, quite." "well, long enough to be refused three times to my certain knowledge; why, he doesn't deny it--proud to let the country know his devotion to the most charming of her sex," and he gave an ironical little nod for which she exchanged one of her sweetest smiles. "glad you looked at me when you said that," she remarked, lightly; "and we do depend on judge clarkson so much these days i don't know what i ever would do if his devotion dwindled in the least. but i fancy his visit this morning is on your account instead of mine." at that moment the white hat of clarkson could be seen above the veranda railing, and mrs. mcveigh threw open the glass doors as he appeared at the top of the steps with an immense boquet held with especial care--the judge's one hobby in the realm of earth-grown things was flowers. he bowed when he caught sight of the mistress of the terrace, who bestowed on him a quaint courtesy such as the good nuns of orleans taught their pupils thirty years before, she also extended her hand, which he kissed--an addition to fine manners the nuns had omitted--probably they knew how superfluous such training would be, all southern girls being possessed of that knowledge by right of birth. "good morning, judge." "mistress mcveigh!" loring uttered an inarticulate exclamation which was first cousin to a grunt, as the judge's tone reached his ear, and the profound bow was robbed of its full value by the judge straightening, and glancing sideways. "my delight, madame, at being invited over this morning is only to be expressed in the silent language of the blossoms i bring. you will honor me by accepting them?" "with very great pleasure, judge; here is mr. loring." "heartily pleased to see you have arrived," and the judge moved over and shook hands. "i came within bowing distance of miss gertrude as i entered, so i presume she has induced you to come over to the pines for good. your position, mr. loring, is one to be envied in that respect. your hours are never lonely for lack of womanly grace and beauty in your household;" he glanced at mrs. mcveigh, who was arranging the flowers in a vase, "i envy you, sir, i envy you." "oh, gertrude is well enough, though we don't unite to spoil each other with flattering demonstrations," and he smiled cynically at the other two, and peered quizzically at mrs. mcveigh, who presented him with a crimson beauty of a rose, for which he returned a very gracious, "thank you," and continued: "yes, gertrude's a very good girl, though it's a pity it wasn't a boy, instead, who came into the loring family that day to keep up the old name. and what about that boy of yours, mistress mcveigh? when do you expect him home?" "very soon, now. his last message said they hoped to reach charleston by the twentieth--so you see the time is short. i am naturally intensely anxious--the dread of that blockade oppresses me." "no need, no need," and loring's tone was decided and reassuring. "we got out through it, and back through it, and never a yankee in sight; and those men on a special commission will be given double care, you may be sure." "certainly; the run from nassau has kept the mail service open almost without a break," assented clarkson, "and we have little reason for anxiety now that the more doubtful part of the undertaking has been successfully arranged." "most successfully; he writes that the english treat our people with extreme consideration, and heartily approve our seceding." "of course they do, and why shouldn't they?" demanded loring. "i tell you, they would do much more than give silent sympathy to our cause if it were not that russia has chosen to send her warships into yankee harbors just now on guard against the interference of any of our friends, especially against great britain's interference, which would be most certain and most valuable." "quite true, quite true," assented the judge, with a soothing tone, calculated to allay any combative or excited mood concerning that or any other subject; "but even their moral support has been a wonderful help, my dear sir, and the securing of an important addition to our navy from them just now means a very great deal i assure you; once let us gain a foothold in the north--get into washington--and she will be the first to acknowledge us as a power--a sovereign power, sir!" "i don't understand the political reasons of things," confessed their hostess, "but i fear kenneth has imbibed the skepticism of the age since these years of military associations; he suggests that england's motive is really not for our advantage so much as her own. i dislike to have my illusions dispelled in that respect; yet i wonder if it is all commercialism on their part." "most assuredly," said the judge. "england's policy has always been one of selfishness where our country was concerned. we must not forget she was the bitterest foe of our fathers. she has been sent home from our shores badly whipped too often to feel much of the brotherly love she effects just now for her own purposes. we must not expect anything else. she is of help to us now for purposes of revenue, only, and we will have to pay heavy interest for all favors. the only thought of comfort to us in the matter is that our cause is worth paying that interest for." loring acknowledged the truth of the statements, and mrs. mcveigh sighed to think of the duplicity of the nation she had fancied single-hearted. and to a woman of her trustful nature it was a shock to learn that the british policy contained really none of the sweetly domestic and fraternal spirit so persistently advertised. to change the conversation the judge produced a letter just received--a proposal for loringwood at mr. loring's own price. "already?" asked mrs. mcveigh; and loring, who realized that his own price was a remarkably high one, showed surprise at the ready acceptance of it. "the offer is made by a law firm in new orleans, hart & logan," continued clarkson. "but the real purchaser is evidently some client of theirs." "well, i certainly hope the client will prove a pleasant personage if he is to locate at loringwood," remarked mrs. mcveigh. "some one in new orleans? possibly we know them." "i am led to believe that the property is desired for some educational institution," said clarkson, handing the letter to loring, who could not decipher two lines of the fine script, but refrained from acknowledging it. "i must say the offer pleases me greatly." he nodded his head and uttered a sigh of satisfaction; "a school or seminary, no doubt, i like that; so will gertrude. speak to her, and then write or telegraph the acceptance, as they prefer. this is remarkably quick work; i feared it would be a long while before a purchaser could be found. this is most fortunate." "then i congratulate you, mr. loring," said mrs. mcveigh, who was grateful to the judge for bringing news likely to make the entertainment of the invalid an easier affair. "but your fortunate offer from new orleans dispels a hope i had that my friend, madame caron, might buy it. she seemed quite impressed with it. i was just saying so to gertrude." "yes, we've all been hearing considerable about this charming foreigner of yours, who is daring enough to cross to a war-ridden country to pay visits." "she owns a fine property in new orleans, but left there in disgust when the yankees took possession. i was delighted to find her in mobile, and persuaded her to come along and see plantation life in our country. we met her first in paris--kenneth and i. he will be delightfully surprised to find her here." "no doubt, no doubt," but loring's assent was not very hearty; he remembered those first comments on her at loringwood. "dr. delaven, also, was among her parisian acquaintances, so you will have quite a foreign colony at the terrace." "i was much pleased with that fine young fellow, dr. delaven," remarked the judge, "and really consider you most fortunate to secure his services--a very superior young man, and possessed, i should say, of very remarkable talent, and of too gay a heart to be weighed down with the importance of such special knowledge, as is too often the case in young professional men--yes, sir; a very bright young man." mrs. mcveigh, hearing laughter, had stepped out on the veranda, and smiled in sympathy with the couple who appeared on the step. the very talented young man just mentioned was wreathed in blossoms and wild vines; he carried aunt sajane's parasol, and was guided by reins formed of slender vines held in miss evilena's hands; the hat he wore was literally heaped with flowers, and he certainly did not appear to be weighed by the importance of any special knowledge at that moment. at sight of the judge, evilena dropped her improvised lines and ran to him. "oh, judge, it is right kind of you to come over early today. aunt sajane is coming, she was down to the river with us; she laughed too much to walk fast. we were getting wild flowers for decorating--and here is dr. delaven." "yes, i'm one of the things she's been decorating," and he entered from the veranda, shook hands with clarkson, and stood for inspection. "don't i look like a lamb decked for the sacrifice? but faith it was the heart of a lion i needed to go into the moccasin dens where she sent me this day. the blossoms desired by your daughter were sure to grow in the wildest swamps." "i didn't suppose a bog-trotter would object to that," remarked the girl, to loring's decided amusement. "lena!" and at the look of horror on her mother's face she fled to the veranda. "ah--mrs. mcveigh, i'm not hurt at all, but if she had murthered me entirely your smile would give me new life again; it's a guardian angel you are to me." "you do need assistance," she replied, endeavoring to untwine the vines twisted about his shoulders, "now turn around." he did, spinning in top fashion, with extended arms, while evilena smiled at the judge from the window. his answering smile grew somewhat constrained as his hostess deliberately put her pretty arm half way around the young man's shoulder in her efforts to untangle him. "i say, judge, isn't it in fine luck i am?--the undoing of delaven!" but the judge did not respond. he grew a trifle more ceremonious as he turned from the window. "mistress mcveigh, i shall step out on the lawn to meet my sister and miss loring, and when you have concluded your present task, would you permit me to see the autumn roses you were cultivating? as a lover of flowers i certainly have an interest in their progress." "autumn roses--humph!" and loring smiled in a grim way only discernible to delaven, who had grown so accustomed to his sardonic comments on things in general that they no longer caused surprise. "of course, judge; i'll show them to you myself," and mrs. mcveigh let fall the last of the vines and joined him at the window--"so charming of you to remember them at all." "don't you want to go along and study the progress of autumn roses?" asked evilena, peering around the window at delaven, who laughed at the pretended demureness and timidity with which she invested the question. "not at this moment, my lady. autumn roses, indeed!--while there's a wild flower in sight--not for the o'delavens!" and the o'delaven's bright irish eyes had so quizzical a smile in them the girl blushed and was covered with confusion as with a mantle, and gathering the blossoms in her arms seated herself ostentatiously close to mr. loring's chair while she arranged them, and delaven might content himself with a view of one pink ear and a delicious dimple in one cheek, which he contemplated from the lounging chair back of her, and added to his occupation by humming, very softly, a bit of the old song: "ten years have gone by and i have not a dollar; evilena still lives in that green grassy hollow; and though i am fated to marry her never, i'm sure that i'll love her for ever and ever!" "for ever and ever! i say, miss evilena, how do you suppose the fellow in the song could be so dead sure of himself, for ever and ever?" "probably he wasn't an irishman," suggested the girl, bending lower over the blossoms that he might not see her smiling. "arrah, now, i had conjured up a finer reason than that entirely; it had something to do with the charms of your namesake, but i'll not be telling you of it while you carry a nettle on your tongue to sting poor harmless wanderers with." his pondrous sigh was broken in on by her laughter, and the beat of hoofs on the drive. while they looked at each other questioningly the voice of judithe was heard speaking to pluto, and then humming the refrain of evilena's favorite, "bonnie blue flag," she ran up to the veranda where mrs. mcveigh met her. "oh, what a glorious gallop i had. good morning, judge clarkson. how glad i am that you came right over soon as you got home. you are to us a recruit from the world whom we depend on to tell us all about doings there, and it is so good of you." "it argues no virtue in a man, madame, that he comes where beauty greets him," and the judge's bow was a compliment in itself. "charming--is it not, madame mcveigh? truly your southern men are the most delightful in the world." "ah, madame," and delaven arose from his chair with a lugubrious countenance, "for how am i to forgive you for adopting the fancy that ireland is out of the world entirely?" judithe laughed frankly and put out her hand; she was exceedingly gay and gracious that morning; there was a delightful exhilaration in her manner, and it was contagious. matthew loring half turned in his chair and peered out at the speaker as she turned to delaven. "not out of the world of our hearts, dr. delaven, and for yourself, you really should not have been born up where the snow falls. you really belong to the south--we need you here." "faith, it was only a little encouragement i was needing, marquise. i'll ask the judge to prepare my naturalization papers in the morning." "other friends have arrived during your ride, judithe," and her hostess led her into the sitting room. "allow me to present our neighbor, mr. loring, of the loringwood you admired so greatly." "and with such good reason," said judithe, with gracious bend of her head, and a charming smile. "i have looked forward to meeting you for some time, mr. loring, and your estate really appealed to me--it is magnificent. after riding past it i was conscious of coveting my neighbor's goods." "it is our loss, madame, that you did ride past," and loring really made an effort to be cordial and succeeded better than might have been expected. he was peering at her from under the heavy brows very intently, but she was outlined against the flood of light from the window, and it blurred his vision, leaving distinct only the graceful, erect form in its dark riding habit. "had you entered the gates my niece would have been delighted to entertain you." "what a generous return for my envy," exclaimed judithe. "the spirit of hospitality seems ever abroad in your land, mr. loring." he smiled, well pleased, for his pride in his own country, his own state, was very decided. he lifted the forgotten rose from the arm of his chair. "i will have to depend on our friend, the judge, to present you fine phrases in return for that pretty speech, madame; i can only offer a substitute," and to evilena's wide-eyed astonishment he actually presented the rose to the marquise. "she simply has bewitched him," protested the girl to delaven, later. "i never knew him to do so gallant a thing before. i could not have been more surprised if he had proposed marriage to her before us all." delaven confessed he, too, was unprepared for so much amiability, but then he admitted he had known men to do more astonishing things than that, on short notice, for a smile from madame judithe. she accepted the rose with a slight exclamation of pleasure. "you good people will smother me with sweets and perfumes," she protested, touching her cheek with the beautiful flower; then, as she was about to smell it, they were astonished to see it flung from her with a faint cry, followed by a little laugh at the consternation of the party. "how unpardonable that i discover a worm at the heart of your first friendly offering to me, mr. loring;" and her tones were almost caressing as she smiled at him; "the poor, pretty blossom, so lovely, and so helpless in the grasp of its enemy, the worm." pluto had entered with a pitcher of water which he placed on the stand. he had witnessed the episode of the rose, and picked it up from where it had been tossed. "margeret told me to see if you wanted anything, mr. loring," he said, gently, and mr. loring's answer was decided, brusque and natural. "yes, i do; i want to go to my room; get my stick. mistress mcveigh, if you have no objection to me breaking up your party, i would like to have judge clarkson go along; we must settle these business matters while i am able." "at your service, sir, with your permission, madame," and the judge glanced at mrs. mcveigh, who telegraphed a most willing consent as she passed out on the veranda after evilena and delaven. judithe stood by the little side table, slowly pulling off her gauntlets, when she was aware that the colored man pluto was regarding her curiously, and she perceived the reason. he had looked into the heart of the rose, and on the floor where it had fallen, and had found no living thing to cause her dread of the blossom. he dropped his eyes when she looked at him, and just then a bit of conversation came to him as the judge offered his arm to loring and assisted him to rise. "i certainly am pleased that you feel like looking into the business matters," clarkson was saying, "and the rhoda larue settlement cannot be postponed any longer; colonel mcveigh may be back any time now, and we must be ready to settle with him." loring made some grumbling remark in which "five thousand dollars" was the only distinguishable thing, and then they passed out, and pluto followed, leaving the marquise alone, staring out of the window with a curious smile; she drew a deep breath of relief as the door closed. chapter xx. mrs. mcveigh entered the sitting room some time after and was astonished to find her still there and alone. "why, judithe, i fancied you had gone to change your habit ages ago, and here you are, plunged in a brown study." "no--a blue and green one," was the smiling response. "have you ever observed what a paintable view there is from this point? it would be a gem on canvas; oh, for the talent of our dumaresque!" "your dumaresque," corrected mrs. mcveigh. "i never can forgive you, quite, for sending him away; oh, helene wrote me all about it--and he _was_ such a fine fellow." "yes, he was," and judithe gave a little sigh ending in a smile; "but one can't keep forever all the fine fellows one meets, and when they are so admirable in every way as dumaresque, it seems selfish for one woman to capture them." mrs. mcveigh shook her head hopelessly over such an argument, but broke a tiny spray of blossom from a plant and fastened it in the lapel of judithe's habit. "it is not so gorgeous as the rose, but it is at least free from the pests." judithe looked down at the blossom admiringly. "i trust mr. loring will forgive my panic--i fear it annoyed him." "oh, no--not really. he is a trifle eccentric, but his invalidism gains him many excuses. there is no doubt but that you made a decided impression on him." "i hope so," said judithe. margeret entered the room just then, and with her hand on the door paused and stared at the stranger who was facing her. judithe, glancing up, saw a pair of strange dark eyes regarding her. she noticed how wraith-like the woman appeared, and how the brown dress she wore made the sallow face yet more sallow. a narrow collar and cuffs of white, and the apron, were the only sharp tones in the picture; all the rest was brown--brown hair tinged with grey rippling back from the broad forehead, brown eyes with a world of patience and sadness in them and slender, sallow-looking hands against the white apron. she looked like none of the house servants at the terrace--in fact judithe was a trifle puzzled as to whether she was a servant at all. she had not a feature suggesting colored blood, was much more caucasian in appearance than louise. it was but a few seconds they stood looking at each other, when margeret made a slight little inclination of her head and a movement of the lips that might have been an apology, but in that moment the strange woman's face fairly photographed itself on judithe's mind--the melancholy expression of it haunted her afterwards. mrs. mcveigh, noticing her guest's absorbed gaze, turned and saw margeret as she was about to leave the room. "what is it, margeret?" she asked, kindly, "looking for miss gertrude?" "yes, mistress mcveigh; mr. loring wants her." "i think she must have gone to her room, she and mistress nesbitt went upstairs some time ago." margeret gently inclined her head, and passed out with the noiseless tread evilena had striven to emulate in vain that day at loringwood. "one of miss loring's retainers?" asked judithe; "i fancied they only kept colored servants." "margeret _is_ colored," explained mrs. mcveigh, "that is," as the other showed surprise, "although her skin does not really show color, yet she is an octoroon--one-eighth of colored ancestry. she has never been to the terrace before, and she had a lost sort of appearance as she wandered in here, did she not? she belongs to miss loring's portion of the estate, and is very capable in her strange, quiet way. there have been times, however, when she was not quite right mentally--before we moved up here, and the darkies rather stand in awe of her ever since, but she is entirely harmless." "that explains her peculiar, wistful expression," suggested judithe. "i am glad you told me of it, for her melancholy had an almost mesmeric effect on me--and her eyes!" all the time she was changing her dress for lunch those haunting eyes, and even the tones of her voice, remained with her. "those poor octoroons!" and she sighed as she thought of them, "the intellect of their white fathers, and the bar of their mothers' blood against the development of it--poor soul, poor soul--she actually looks like a soul in prison. oh!"--and she flung out her hands in sudden passion of impotence. "what can one woman do against such a multitude? one look into that woman's hopeless face has taken all the courage from me. ah, the resignation of it!" but when she appeared among the others a little later, gowned in sheer white, with touches of apple green here and there, and the gay, gracious manner of one pleased with the world, and having all reason to believe the world pleased with her, no one could suspect that she had any more serious problem to solve than that of arranging her own amusements. just now the things most interesting to her were the affairs of the confederacy. judge clarkson answered all her questions with much good humor, mingled with amusement, for the marquise, despite her american sympathies, would get affairs hopelessly mixed when trying to comprehend political and military intricacies; and then the gallant judge would explain it all over again. whether from columbia or charleston, he was always in touch with the latest returns, hopes, plans of the leaders, and possibilities of the southern confederacy, together with all surreptitious assistance from foreign sources, in which great britain came first and spain close behind, each having special reasons of their own for widening the breach in the union of states. from mobile there came, also, through letters to mrs. mcveigh, many of the plans and possibilities of the southern posts--her brother being stationed at a fort there and transmitting many interesting views and facts of the situation to his sister on her more northern plantation. thus, although they were out of the whirl of border and coast strife, they were by no means isolated as regards tidings, and the fact was so well understood that their less fortunate neighbors gathered often at the terrace to hear and discuss new endeavors, hopes and fears. "i like it," confessed judithe to delaven, "they are like one great family; in no country in the world could you see such unanimous enthusiasm over one central question. they all appear to know so many of the representative people; in no other agricultural land could it be so. and there is one thing especially striking to me in comparison with france--in all this turmoil there is never a scandal, no intrigues in high places such as we are accustomed to in a court where madame, the general's wife, is often quite as much of a factor in the political scene as the general himself; it is all very refreshing to a foreigner." "our women of the south," said the judge, who listened, "are more of an inspiration because they are never associated in our minds with any life but that of the home circle and its refining influences. when our women enter the arena, it is only in the heart and memory of some man whose ideals, madame, are higher, whose ambitions are nobler, because she exists untouched by the notoriety attaching itself to the court intrigues you mention, the notoriety too often miscalled fame." "right you are, judge," said delaven, heartily. "after all, human nature is very much alike whether in kingdom or republic, and men love best the same sort of women the world over." matthew loring entered the room just then, leaning on the arm of gertrude, whose fair hair made harmony with the corn-colored lawn in which she looked daintily pretty, and as the two ladies faced each other the contrasted types made a most effective picture. "you have not met the marquise de caron?" he asked of gertrude; and then with a certain pride in this last of the lorings, he continued: "madame la marquise, allow me to present my niece, miss loring." the blue eyes of the carolina girl and the mesmeric amber eyes of the parisian met, with the slight conventional smile ladies favor each other with, sometimes. there was decided interest shown by each in the other--an interest alert and questioning. judithe turned brightly to loring: "in your democratic land, my dear sir, i have dispensed with 'la marquise.' while here i am madame caron, very much at your service," and she made him a miniature bow. "we shall not forget your preference, madame caron," said gertrude, "it is a pretty compliment to our institutions." then she glanced at delaven, "did we interrupt a dissertation on your favorite topic, doctor?" "never a bit; it's yourself is an inspiration to continue the same topic indefinitely," and he explained the difference madame caron had noticed in political matter with and without the feminine element. "for all that, there _are_ women in the political machines here, also," said loring, testily--"too many of them, secret agents, spies, and the like. gertrude, what was it captain masterson reported about some very dangerous person of that sort in new orleans?--a woman whose assistance to the yankees was remarkable, and whose circle of acquaintances was without doubt the very highest--did he learn her name?" "why, no, uncle matthew; don't you remember he was finding fault with _our_ secret agents because they had not established her identity--in fact, had only circumstantial evidence that it was a woman, though very positive evidence that the person belonged to the higher social circle there." "faith, i should think the higher circle would be in a sorry whirl just then--not knowing which of your neighbors at dinner had a cup or dagger for you." "the daggers were only figurative," said the judge, "but they were none the less dangerous, and the shame of it! each innocent loyal southerner convinced that a traitor had been made as one of themselves--trusted as is the nature of southerners when dealing with friends, just as if, in this eden-like abode, mistress mcveigh should be entertaining in any one of us, supposed to be loyal southerners, a traitor to his country." "how dreadful to imagine!" said judithe, with a little gesture of horror, "and what do they do with them--those dangerous serpents of eden?" "it isn't nice at all to hear about, madame caron," spoke aunt sajane, who was, as usual, occupied with the unlovely knitting. "it gave me chills to hear phil masterson say how that spy would be treated when found--not even given time for prayers!" "captain masterson is most loyal and zealous, but given to slight extravagancies in such matters," amended the judge. "no woman has ever suffered the extreme penalty of military law for spy work, in this country, and especially would it be impossible in the south. imprisonment indefinitely and the probable confiscation of all property would no doubt be the sentence if, as in this suspected case, the traitoress were a southern woman of means. but that seems scarcely credible. i have heard of the affair mentioned, but i refuse to believe any daughter of the south would so employ herself." "thank you, judge," said gertrude, very prettily; "any daughter of the south would die of shame from the very suspicion against her." "who is to die?" asked mrs. mcveigh, coming in; "all of you, and of hunger, perhaps, if i delay tea any longer. come right on into the dining room, please, and let me hear this discussion of southern daughters, for i chance to be a daughter of the south myself." captain philip masterson, from an adjoining plantation, arrived after they were seated at the table, and was taken at once into the dining room, where judithe regarded with interest this extremist who would not allow a secret agent of the north time for prayers. he did not look very ferocious, though his manner had a bluntness not usual in the southern men she had met--a soldier above and beyond everything else, intelligent, but not broad, good looking with the good looks of dark, curly hair, a high color, heavy mustache, which he had a weakness for caressing as he talked, and full, bold eyes roaming about promiscuously and taking entire advantage of the freedom granted him at the terrace, where he had been received as neighbor since boyhood. he was a cousin of gertrude's, and it was not difficult to see that she was the first lady in the county to him, and the county was the center of philip masterson's universe. he was stationed at charleston and was absent only for some necessary business at columbia, and hearing judge clarkson was at the terrace he had halted long enough to greet the folks and consult the judge on some legal technicality involved in his journey. pluto, who had seen that the captain's horse had also been given refreshment, came thoughtfully up the steps, puzzling his head over the perfect rose cast aside on a pretense. it puzzled him quite as much as the problem of louise; and the only key he could find to it was that this very grand lady knew all about the identity of louise, and knew why she had hurried away so when old nelse recognized her. he wished he had that picture of margeret, brought by rosa from georgia. but it was still with a lot of rosa's things over at the larue plantation, with the child. he counted on going over to see the boy in a week at the furthest. as he reached the top of the steps he could see margeret through the open window of the sitting room. her back was towards him, and she was so absorbed in regarding the party in the dining room that he approached unnoticed, and she turned with a gasp as of fear when he spoke: "you're like to see more gay folks like that over here than you have at loringwood," he remarked. "i reckon you glad to move." "no," she said, and went slowly towards the veranda; then she turned and looked at him questionably, and with an interest seldom shown for anyone. "you--you heard news from larue plantation?" she asked, hesitatingly. "who, me? no, i aint had no news. i aint"--then he stopped and stared at her, slowly comprehending what news _might_ come from there. "fo' god's sake, tell me! my zekal; my--" she lifted her finger for silence and caught his arm. "they hear you--they will," she said, warningly, "come in here." she opened the door into the library and he followed; she could feel his hand tremble, and his eyes were pleading and full of terror. the light chatter and laughter in the dining room followed them. "sick?" and his eyes searched her face for reply, but she slowly shook her head and he caught his breath in a sob, as he whispered: "daid! my baby, oh--" "sh-h! he's alive--your boy. it's worse than that, maybe--and they never let you know! mr. larue had gone down to mexico, and the overseer has published all his slaves to be sold--all sold, and your child--your little boy--" "god a'mighty!" he was silent after that half-whispered ejaculation. his face was covered with his hands, while the woman stood regarding him, a world of pity in her eyes. "they can't sell zekal," he said, at last, looking up. "mahs larue tole me plain he give me chance. i got some o' the money, that eighteen dollah i paid on rosa's freedom--that gwine be counted in--then i got most nine dollah 'sides that yet, an' i gwine mahs jean larue an' go down my knees fo' that boy, i will! he only pickaninny, my zekal, an' i promise rosa 'fore she died our boy gwine be free; so i gwine mahs larue, i--" margeret shook her head. "he's gone, i tell you--gone to mexico, more miles away than you could count; sold to the sugar plantation and left the colored folks for lawyer and overseer to sell. they all to be sold--a sale bill came to loringwood yesterday. men like overseers and lawyers never take account of one little pickaninny among a hundred. one same as another to them--one same as another!" her voice broke and she covered her face with her hands, rocking from side to side, overcome by memories of what had been. pluto looked at her and realized from his own misery what hers had been. again the laughter and tinkle of tea things drifted in to them; some one was telling a story, and then the laughter came more clearly. pluto listened, and his face grew hard, brutish in its sullen hate. "and they can laugh," he muttered, sullenly, "while my baby--my rosa's baby--is sold to the traders, sold away where i nevah can find him again; sold while the white folks laugh an' make merry," and he raised his hand above his head in a fury of suppressed rage. "a curse on every one of them! a curse--" margeret caught his arm with a command to silence. "hush! you got a kind master--a kind mistress. the people who laugh at that table are not to blame on account of rosa's master, who holds your child." "you stand up fo' the race that took yo' chile from yo?" he demanded, fiercely. "that held yo' a slave when yo' was promised freedom? that drove yo' wild fo' years with misery? the man is in that room who did all that, an' yo' stan' up fo' him along of the rest?" he paused, glowering down at her as if she, too, were white enough to hate. when she spoke it was very quietly, almost reprovingly. "my child died. what good was freedom to me without her? where in all this wide world would i go with my freedom if i had it? free and alone? no," and she shook her head sadly, "i would be like a child lost from home--helpless. the young folks laughing there never hurt me--never hurt you." the people were leaving the dining room. captain masterson, who had time for but a brief call, was walking along the veranda in low converse with the judge. judithe had separated herself from the rest and walked through the sitting room into the library, when she halted, surprised at those two facing each other with the air of arrested combat or argument. she recovered her usual manner enough to glance at the clock, and as her eyes crossed margeret's face she saw traces of tears there. "it is time, almost, for the mail up from pocotaligo today, is it not, pluto?" she said, moving towards a book-case. receiving no reply, she stopped and looked at him, at which he recovered himself enough to mutter, "yes, mist'ess," and turned towards the door, his trembling tones and the half-groping movement as he put his hand out before him showed he was laboring under some emotion too intense for concealment, and involuntarily she made a gesture of command. "wait! you have grief--some sad misfortune?" and she glanced from his face to that of margeret, questioningly. "poor fellow--is it a death?" "no death, and nothing to trouble a white lady with," he said, without turning, and with hopeless bitterness in his voice; "not fit to be told 'long side o' white folks merry-maken', only--only rosa, my boy's mother, died yeah ago ovah on larue plantation, an' now the chile hisself--my rosa's baby--gwine to be sold away--gwine to be sold to the traders!" his voice broke in a sob; all the bitterness was drowned in the wave of grief under which his shoulders heaved, and his broken breaths made the only sound in the room, as judithe turned questioningly to margeret, who bent her head in confirmation of his statement. "but," and the questioner looked a trifle bewildered, "a little child, that would not mean a great expense, surely if your mistress, or your master, knew, they would help you." margeret shook her head, and pluto spoke more calmly. "not likely; this war done crippled all the folks in money; that why mahs jean larue sell out an' go ovah in mexico; that why loren'wood up fo' sale to strangers; that why judge clarkson done sell out his share in cotton plantation up the river; ain't _nobody_ got hundreds these days, an' lawyers won't take promises. i done paid eighteen dollars on rosa when she died, but i ain't got no writin'," he went on, miserably, "that was to go on zekal, an' i have 'nigh onto nine dollars 'sides that. i gwine take it ovah to mahs larue nex' week, sure, an' now--an'--now--" his words were smothered in a sigh; what use were words, any way? judithe felt that margeret's eyes were on her face as she listened--wistful, questioning eyes! would the words be of no use? "the jean larue estate," she said, meditatively, seating herself at the table and picking up a pen, "and your wife was named rosa?" "yes'm." he was staring at her as a man drowning might stare at a spar drifting his way on a chance wave; there was but the shadow of a hope in his face as he watched with parted lips the hand with the pen--and back of the shadow what substance! "and she is dead--how long?" "a yeah gone now." "and mr. larue asks how much for her child?" "hundred 'n' fifty dollar--this what he _said_, but, god knows, lawyers got hold o' things now, maybe even more 'n that now, an' anyway--" his words sounded vague and confused in his own ears, for she was writing, and did not appear to hear. "where is this larue place?" she asked, glancing up. "i heard of a jean larue plantation across in georgia--is this it?" "no'm," and he turned an eager look of hope towards margeret at this pointed questioning, but her expression was unchanged; she only looked at the strange lady who questioned and showed sympathy. "no, mist'ess, this mahs jean larue did stay on they georgy plantation till five yeah back, then they move ovah to callina again; that how i come to meet up with rosa. larue place down river towards beaufort--a whole day's walken'." "what did you say this child was named?" she asked, without ceasing the movement of the pen over the white paper. "his name ezekal, but we ain't nevah call him anything but zekal--he's so little yet." "and when is this sale to be?" pluto looked helplessly towards margeret. "tomorrow week, madame caron," she said, speaking for the first time, though her steady gaze had almost made judithe nervous. it had a peculiar, appealing quality, which judithe, with a little grimace, assured herself was so appealing it was compelling; it left her no choice but to do what she was doing and for which she could take no credit whatever to herself--the wistful eyes of the pale-faced bondwoman did it all. "in a week there is plenty of time to arrange it," she said, turning kindly to pluto. "you can rest in peace about your rosa's boy. i will attend to it at once, and the traders shall never have him." margeret drew a sharp, inward breath of relief. "yo' mean _you'll_ buy him in?" and pluto's voice was scarcely more than a whisper. "yo' mean i'll have a chance, maybe, to buy him back some day?" "not 'some day,' my good fellow," and judithe folded the paper she had been writing; "from the day he is bought from the larue estate he will have his freedom. he will never be bought or sold again." the man stared at her, helplessly. no hope of his had ever reached so high as _that_! he tried to speak--failed--and his face was covered by his sleeve, as he went slowly out of the room. "don't--don't you think pluto ain't thankful, madame caron," said the soft tones of margeret, and they were not quite steady tones, either. judithe did not look up for fear she should see tears in the melancholy, dark eyes; "that black boy just so thankful he can't speak. he'll worship you for what you've done for him, and well he may." there was a soft rustle beside her--the presence of lips on her hand, and then judithe was alone in the room, and stronger than when she had entered it so short a while since, braced by the certainty that here, at least, she had been of use--practical use her own eyes could see, and all the evening a bird sang in her heart, and the grateful touch of the bondwoman's lips gave her more pleasure than she could remember through the same tribute of any courtier. chapter xxi. when pluto brought her mail, an hour later, he tried to express more clearly in words the utter happiness showing through every feature of his dark face, but she stopped him with a little gesture. "i see you are glad--no need to tell it," she remarked, briefly; "if you want to thank me do it by helping any of your people whom you find in trouble. there are many of them, no doubt." and when mrs. mcveigh thanked her for doing what she could not have done on such short notice, judithe put the question aside quite as lightly. "the man is a very good groom," she remarked. "i enjoyed my ride the more today for having him along to answer all my curious questions of the country. i meant to give him 'backsheesh,' as the orientals call it, so why not select what the fellow most wants--even though it be a pickaninny?" "well, he certainly is singing your praises down in the cook-house. i even heard several 'hallelujas' from aunt dilsey's particular corner. judge clarkson has endorsed the check and will send a white man horseback with it to larues in the morning. pluto starts tonight on foot across country--says he can't sleep, any way--he's so happy. the women are arguing already as to which shall have the special care of zekal. altogether, you have created a sensation in the household, and we all love you for it." "what further recompense to be desired? it really is not worth so much of praise." "kenneth will not think so when he comes home," and kenneth's mother slipped her arm around the girl's shoulder affectionately, not noticing how her careless expression changed at mention of the name. "oh! will he, then, be interested in such small things as pickaninnies?" and her light words belied the look in her eyes. "will he? well, i should think so! you have done just what he would want done--what he would do if it were possible. for two generations the mcveighs have neither bought nor sold slaves"--judithe's eyes shot one disdainful flash--"just kept those inherited; but i'm sure that boy of mine would have broken the rule for his generation in this case, and he'll be so grateful to you for it. pluto was his playmate and respected monitor as a child, and pluto's zekal certainly will have a place in his affections." judithe picked up one of several letters, over which she had glanced, and remarked that she would expect a visitor within a week--possibly in a day or two, the master of her yacht, which from a letter received, she learned had reached savannah before louise. a storm had been encountered somewhere along the southern coast, and he would submit the list of damages--not heavy, yet needing a certain amount of refitting. "fortunate louise did go down," she said, with a certain satisfaction, as she laid down the communication. "she will be perfectly happy, even hobbling around with a cane, if she is only buying things; she delights in spending money;" then, after a pause, "i presume col. mcveigh's return is still uncertain?" "yes, rather; yet i fancy each morning he will come before night, and each night that he may waken me in the morning. i have been living in that delightful hopefulness for a week." lena called them and they went out to the rustic seat circling the great live oak at the foot of the steps. the others were there, and the judge was preparing to drive the three miles home with his sister. now that the invalid was better, and the wanderer returned from mobile, aunt sajane bethought herself of the possible sixes and sevens of her own establishment, and drove away with promises of frequent visits on both sides. long after the others had retired for the night judithe's light burned, and there was little of the careless butterfly of fashion in her manner as she examined one after another of the letters brought her by the last mail, and wrote replies to some she meant to take to the office herself during her early morning ride; it was so delightful to have an errand, and pluto had shown her the road. after all the others were done she picked up again the communication she had shown to mrs. mcveigh--the report from the yacht master, and from the same envelope extracted a soft silken slip of paper with marks peculiar--apparently mere senseless scratches of a thoughtless pen, but it was over that paper and the reply most of the evening was spent. it was the most ancient method of secret writing known to history, yet, apparently, so meaningless that it might pass unnoticed even by the alert, or be turned aside as the ambitious scrawlings of a little child. each word as deciphered she had pencilled on a slip of paper, and when complete it read: "courant brings word mcv. is likely to be of special interest. if he travels with guard we can't interfere on road from coast, and you will be only hope. a guard of federals will be landed north of beaufort and await your orders. messenger will communicate soon as movements are known. you may expect pierson. we await your orders or any suggestions." there was no signature. her orders or suggestions were written in the same cipher, and required much more time and thought than had been given to the buying and freeing of pluto's pickaninny, after which she destroyed all unnecessary writings, and retired with the satisfied feeling of good work done and better in prospect, and in a short time was sleeping the calm, sweet sleep of a conscienceless child. she rode even further next morning than she had the preceding day, when pluto was her guide, and she rode as straight east as she could go towards the coast. when she met colored folk along the road she halted, and spoke with them, to their great delight. she asked of the older ones where the road led to, and were the pine woods everywhere along it, and what about swamps and streams to ford, etc., etc. altogether, she had gained considerable knowledge of that especial territory by the time she rode back to the terrace and joined the rest at the late breakfast. she had been in the saddle since dawn, and recounted with vivacity all the little episodes of her solitary constitutional; the novelty of it was exhilarating. that it appeared a trifle eccentric to a southerner did not suggest itself to her; all her eccentricities were charming to the mcveigh household, and delaven lamented he had not been invited as proxy for pluto, and amused the breakfast party by anecdotes of hunting days in ireland, and the energy and daring of the ladies who rode at dawn there. several times during the day judithe attempted to have a tete-a-tete with mrs. mcveigh, and learn more about miss loring's silent maid, who was the first person she saw on her return from the ride that morning. the absolute self-effacement of an individual whose repose suggested self-reliance, and whose well shaped head was poised so admirably as to suggest pride, made the sad-faced servant a fascinating personality to any one interested in questions concerning her race. no other had so won her attention since she made compact with kora in paris. but mistress mcveigh was a very busy woman that day. pluto's absence left a vacancy in the establishment no other could fill so intelligently. miss loring had promptly attached herself as general assistant to the mistress of the house. delaven noticed how naturally she fell into the position of an elder daughter there, and, remembering evilena's disclosures at loringwood, and matthew loring's own statement, he concluded that the wedding bells might sound at any time after kenneth's return, and he fancied they had been delayed, already, three years longer than suited the pleasure of her uncle. delaven, as well as judithe, was attracted by the personality of margeret. in the light, or the shadow, of the sad story he had listened to, she took on a new interest, an atmosphere of romance surrounded her. he pictured what her life must have been as a child, amid the sunshine of florida, the favorite of her easy-living, easy-loving greek father, the sole relic of some pretty slave! as she walked silently along the halls of the terrace, he tried to realize nelse's description of her gayety, once, in the halls of loringwood. and when he observed the adoring eyes with which she regarded the marquise after the pickaninny episode, he understood it was another child she was thinking of--a child who should have been freed, and was not, and the feelings of pluto were as her own. two entire days passed without pluto's return. there was some delay, owing to the absence of the overseer from the larue estate; then, zekal was ailing, and that delayed him until sundown of the second day, when he took the child in his arms--his own child now--and with its scanty wardrobe, and a few sundry articles of rose's, all saved religiously by an old "aunty," who had nursed her--he started homeward on his long night tramp, so happy he scarce felt the weight of the boy in his arms, or that of the bundle fastened with a rope across his shoulders. he had his boy, and the boy was free! and when he thought of the stranger who had wrought this miracle his heart swelled with gratitude and the tears blinded him as he tramped homeward through the darkness. the first faint color of dawn was showing in the east when he walked into dilsey's cook-house and showed the child asleep in his arms. what a commotion! as the other house servants mustered in, sleepily, and straightway were startled very wide awake indeed, and each insisted on feeling the weight of the newcomer, just, dilsey said, as if there never was a child seen on that plantation before. and all had cures for the "brashy" spell the little chap had been afflicted by, and which seemed frightened away entirely, as he looked about him with eyes like black beads. all the new faces, and the petting, were a revelation to zekal. dilsey put up with it till everything else seemed at a standstill in the morning's work, when she scattered the young folks right and left to their several duties, got pluto an excellent breakfast, and gave the child in charge of one of the mothers in the quarters till "mist'ess" settled about him. "yo' better take his little duds, too, lucy," suggested pluto, as the boy was toddling away with her, contentedly, rich in the possession of two little fists full of sweet things; "they're tied up in that bandana--not the blue one! that blue one got some o' his mammy's things i gwine look over; maybe might be something make him shirts or aprons, an' if there is a clean dress in that poke i--i like to have it put on 'im 'fore she sees him--madame caron, an', an' mist'ess, o' course! i like her to see he's worth while." then he asked questions about what all had been done in his absence, and learned there had been company coming and going so much mahs loring had his meals in his own room, "'cause o' the clatter they made." margeret had been over at the pines with miss loring to see about the work already commenced there, and madame caron and miss lena and dr. delaven just amused themselves. he learned that the mail had been detained and no one had gone for it, and, tired though he was, started at once. he had noticed madame caron's mail was of daily importance, and it should not be neglected by him even if company did make the others forgetful. he was especially pleased that he had gone, when the postmaster handed over to him, besides several other letters and papers, a large, important-looking envelope for the marquise de caron--a title difficult for pluto to spell; though he recognized it at sight. the lady herself was on the veranda, in riding garb, when he presented himself, and she smiled as she caught sight of that special envelope among the rest. "margeret tells me you brought back the boy," she said, glancing up, after peering in the envelope and ascertaining its contents, "and, pluto, you paid me for zekal when you brought this letter to me--so the balance is even." pluto made no comment--only shook his head and smiled. he could not comprehend how any letter, even a big one, could balance zekal. she retired to her room to examine the other letters, while pluto placed the mail for the rest at their several places on the breakfast table. judithe unfolded the large enclosure and gave a sigh of utter content as her eyes rested on the words there. they conveyed to the marquise de caron, of france, an estate in south carolina outlined and described and known as loringwood. the house was sold furnished as it stood, and there followed an inventory of contents, excepting only family china and portraits. "not such an unlucky journey, after all, despite the coffins in the tea cups," and she smiled at the fearful fancies of louise, as she laid the paper aside; for the time it had made her forget there were other things equally important. there was another letter, without signature. it said: "mcveigh is in charleston, detained by official matters. pierson leaves with particulars. mail too irregular to be reliable. your latest word from columbia most valuable; we transmitted it as you suggested. your location fortunate. the powers at w. delighted with your success, but doubtful of your safety--unhealthy climate except for the natives! report emancipation will be proclaimed, but nothing definite heard yet." she removed her habit and joined the rest at the breakfast table, clad in the daintiest of pink morning gowns, and listened with pleased surprise to mrs. mcveigh's information that her son, the colonel, might be expected at any time. they had passed the blockade successfully, reached charleston two nights before; were detained by official matters, and hoped, surely, to reach home within twenty-four hours after the letter. his stay, however, would have to be brief, as he must move north at once with his regiment. and in the midst of the delight, judithe created a sensation by remarking: "well, my good people, i am not going to allow the colonel all the surprise. i have had one of my own this morning, and i can scarcely wait to share it with you. it is the most astonishing thing!" and she glanced around at the expectant faces. "if it's of interest to you, it will be the wide world's worth to us," affirmed delaven, with exaggerated show of devotion, at which she laughed happily, and turned to her hostess. "you remember i informed you in mobile i meant to sell my orleans property, as i would not occupy it under existing rule;" to which explanation matthew loring actually beamed commendation, "well, i left it in the hands of my business man with orders to invest the money from the sale in some interior plantations not under federal control. i wanted a house furnished, colonial by choice--some historical mansion preferred. the particular reason for this is, i have no relatives, no children to provide for, and the fancy has come to me for endowing some educational institution in your land, and for such purpose a mansion such as i suggested would, in all ways be preferable. well, they forwarded me a list of properties. i sent them back unread lest i should covet them all, for they all would cost so little! i repeated to them the description madame mcveigh had given me of your ancestral home, my dear sir, and told them to secure me a property possessing just such advantages as yours does--near enough to the coast for yachting, and far enough from cities to be out of social chains, except the golden one of friendship," she added, letting her eyes rest graciously on her listeners. "well, can you surmise the result of that order?" each looked at the other in wonder; her smile told half the truth. "i am afraid to put my surmise in words," confessed mrs. mcveigh, "for fear of disappointment." "i'm not!" and evilena flourished her napkin to emphasize her delight, "its loringwood! oh, oh, madame caron, you've bought loringwood!" margeret was entering the room with a small tray containing something for mr. loring, whose meals she prepared personally. delaven, who was facing her, saw her grow ashen, and her eyes closed as though struck a physical blow; a glass from the tray shivered on the floor, as he sprang up and saved her from falling. "what ails you, margeret?" asked gertrude, with the ring of the silver sounding through her tones. "there--she is all right again, dr. delaven. don't come into the dining room in future unless you feel quite well. uncle can't endure crashes, or nervous people, about him." "i know; i beg pardon, miss gertrude, mistress mcveigh," and margeret's manner was above reproach in its respectful humility, though delaven observed that the firm lips were white; "the kitchen was very warm. i--i was faint for a minute." "never mind about the glass, caroline will pick it up," said mrs. mcveigh, kindly; "you go lay down awhile, it is very warm in the kitchen. dilsey always will have a tremendous fire, even to fry an egg on; go along now--go rest where it's cool." margeret bent her head in mute acknowledgment of the kindness, and passed out of the room. mr. loring had pushed his plate away with an impatient frown, signifying that breakfast was over for him, any way. delaven, noticing his silence and the grim expression on his face, wondered if he, too, was doubtful of that excuse uttered by the woman. the kitchen, no doubt, was warm, but he had seen her face as she heard evilena's delighted exclamation; it was the certainty that loringwood was actually sold--loringwood, and that grave under the pines? possibly she had fostered hope that it might not be yet--not for a long time, and the suddenness of it had been like a physical shock to the frail, devoted woman. he had reasoned it out like that, and his warm, irish heart ached for her as she left the room, and, glancing about the table, he concluded that only matthew loring and himself suspected the truth, or knew the real reason of her emotion, though the eyes of the marquise did show a certain frank questioning as they met his own. "margeret's fit just frightened the plantation away for a minute," resumed evilena, "but do own up, madame caron, is it loringwood?" "yes," assented judithe, "the letter from my lawyer, this morning, informs me it is really loringwood." "i am very much pleased to hear it, madame," and matthew loring's tone was unusually hearty. "since we part with it at all, i am pleased that no scrub stock gets possession. the place is perfectly adapted to the use you have planned, and instead of falling into neglect, the old home will become a monument to progress." "so i hope," replied judithe, with a subtle light, as of stars, in the depths of her eyes; "i am especially delighted to find that the old furnishings remain; it would be difficult for me to collect articles so in keeping with the entire scheme of arrangement, and it would make a discord to introduce new things from the shops." "you will find no discords of _that_ sort at loringwood," said gertrude, speaking for the first time; "and, i hope, not many of any kind. many of the heavy, massive old things i disliked to part with, but they would be out of place at the pines, or, in fact, in any house less spacious. like uncle, i am pleased it goes into the keeping of one who appreciates the artistic fitness of the old-fashioned furnishings." "which she has never seen yet," supplemented evilena, as judithe received this not very cordial compliment with a little bow and a brilliant smile. "we will remedy that just as soon as we can secure an invitation from the present lady of the manor," she said, in mock confidence to evilena, across the table, at which the rest laughed, and mr. loring declared that now she was the lady of the manor herself, and his one regret was that he and his niece were not there to make her first entrance a welcome one. "that would certainly add to the pleasure of the visit," and her smile was most gracious. "but even your wish to welcome me makes it all the more delightful. i shall remember it when i first enter the door." gertrude made an effort to be cordial, but that it was an effort mrs. mcveigh easily discerned, and when they were alone, she turned to her in wonder: "what is it, dear? are you displeased about the sale? i feel so responsible for it; but i fancied it would be just what you would want." "so it is, too; but--oh, i had no idea it could all be settled so quickly as this!" "when people never hesitate to telegraph, even about trifles, and judithe never does, they can have business affairs moved very quickly," explained mrs. mcveigh; "but what possible reason have you for objecting to the settlement?" "i don't object, but--you will think me silly, perhaps--but, i am sorry it is out of our hands before kenneth returns. i should like to have him go over the old place, just once, before strangers claim it." "never mind, dear, the nearer you are to the terrace the better that kenneth will like it, and the pines is a great improvement in that way." "yes; still it was at loringwood i first saw him. do you remember? you folks had just moved here from mobile; it was my tenth birthday, and i had a party. kenneth was the beau of the whole affair, because he was a new-comer, and a 'town boy,' and, i remember, we compared ages and found that he was three months older than i, and for a long time he assumed superior airs in consequence," and she smiled at the remembrance. "well, uncle matthew is delighted, and i suppose i should be. it ends all our money troubles for awhile, any way. now, what are you planning for kenneth's home coming? all the people will want to see him." "and so they shall. we certainly can depend on him for tomorrow night, and we will have a party. pluto shall start with the invitations at once." and pluto did, just as soon as he had brought zekal around for an inspection, which proved so entirely satisfactory that evilena threatened to adopt him right away. he should be her own especial boy soon as he was big enough to run errands, which statement appeared to make an impression on zekal not anticipated, for he so delighted to gaze on the pretty young white lady who petted him, that he objected lustily to being removed from the light of her countenance; and delaven gave him a coin and informed him that he felt like himself, often. this remark, made in the presence of madame caron, who laughed, brought on a tilt at hostilities between himself and miss evilena, who declared he was mocking her, and trying to render her ridiculous in the eyes of the only foreigner she admired excessively! he endeavored to persuade her to extend the last by warbling "sweet evilena," which she declared she could not endure to hear for three distinct reasons. "let's hear them," he suggested, continuing the low humming: "ten years have gone by and i have not one dollar; evilena still lives in that green grassy hollow." "there! what sort of man would he be, any way?" she demanded, "a man who couldn't earn a dollar in ten years!" "arrah, now! and there's many a one of us travels longer and finds less, and never gets a song made about him, either; so, that's your first reason, is it?" "and a very good one, too!" affirmed the practical damsel; "do you want to hear the second?" "an' it please your sovereign grace!" "well, it doesn't, for you can't sing it," and she emphasized the statement by flaunting her garden hat at every word. "me, is it? ah, now, listen to that! i can't sing it, can't i? well, then, i'll practice it all day and every day until you change your mind about that, my lady!" "i shan't; for i've heard it sung so much better--and by a boy _who wore a uniform_--and that's the third reason." after that remark she walked up the steps very deliberately, and was very polite to him when they met an hour later, which politeness was the foundation for a feud lasting forty-eight hours; she determined that his punishment should be nothing _less_ than that; it would teach him not to make her a laughing stock again. he should find he had not an irish girl to tease, and--and make love to--especially before other folks! and to shorten the season of her displeasure, he evolved a plan promising to woo the dimples into her cheeks again, for, if nothing but a uniformed singer was acceptable to her, a uniformed singer she should have. for the sake of her bright eyes he was willing to humor all her reasonable fancies--and most of her unreasonable ones. the consequences of this particular one, however, were something he could not foresee. chapter xxii. the o'delaven, as he called himself when he was in an especially irish mood, was mistress mcveigh's most devoted servant and helper in the preparations for the party. in fact, when judge clarkson rode over to pay his respects, a puzzled little frown persistently crept between his brows at the gallantry and assiduity displayed by this exile of erin in carrying out the charming lady's orders, to say nothing of the gayety, the almost presumption, with which he managed affairs to suit his own fancy when his hostess was not there to give personal attention; and the child evilena was very nearly, if not quite ignored, or at any rate, was treated in a condescending manner almost parental in its character, and which he perceived was as little relished by the girl as by himself. he was most delighted, of course, to learn who was the purchaser of loringwood--it was such an admirable transaction he felt everybody concerned was to be congratulated; even war news was forgotten for a space. all the day passed and no kenneth! his mother decided he would be there the following morning, and, with flags draped over walls, and all the preparations complete for his reception, she retired, weary and happy from the day's labors. judithe eyed those flags with the same inscrutable smile sometimes given to matthew loring's compliments. she pointed to them next morning, when delaven and herself stood in the hall waiting for their horses. she had accepted him as cavalier for the time, and they were going for a ride in the cool of the morning before the others were stirring. margeret was in sight, however--judithe wondered if she _ever_ slept--and she came to them with delicious coffee and crisp toast, and watched them as they rode away. it was while sipping the steaming coffee the flags were noticed, and judithe remarked: "those emblems mean so much down here, yet i never hear you discuss them, or what they stand for. your nation is one always in rebellion against its unsympathetic governess. i should think you would naturally tend towards the seceders here." "i do--towards several, individually," and he looked at her over the rim of the cup with quizzical blue eyes. "but i find three factions here instead of two, and my people have been too long under the oppressor for me not to appreciate what freedom would mean to these serfs in the south, and how wildly they long for it. no; i like the southerners better than the northerners, because i know them better; but in the matter of sympathy, faith! i forget both the warring factions and only think of sambo and sambo's wife and children." judithe raised her finger, as margeret entered with the toast and quietly vanished. "i was afraid she would hear you. i fancy they must feel sensitive over the situation; speak french, please. what was it the judge was saying about emancipation last evening? i noticed the conversation was changed as mr. loring grew--well, excited." "oh, the old story; rumors again that the federal government mean to proclaim freedom for the blacks. but when it was done in two states by the local authorities, it was vetoed at washington; so it is doubtful after all if it is true, there are so many rumors afloat. but if it is done there will be nothing vague about it. i fancy it will be said so good and loud that there will be a panic from ocean to ocean." "insurrection?" "no; the judge is right; there is a peculiar condition of affairs here precluding the possibility of that unless in isolated instances, a certain personal sympathy between master and slave which a foreigner finds difficult of comprehension." "what about the runaways?" she asked, with a little air of check, "several of them have escaped the sympathetic bonds in that way; in fact, they tell me mr. loring, or his niece, has lately lost some very valuable live stock through that tendency." "whisper now!--though i believe it is a very open secret in the community, the gentleman in question, my dear marquise, is one of the isolated instances. if you are studying social institutions in this country you must make a note of that, and underline it with red ink. he is by no means the typical southerner. he is, however, a proof of the fact that it is a dangerous law which allows every one possessing wealth an almost unlimited power over scores of human beings. to be sure, he is mild as skim-milk these days of convalescence, but there are stories told of the use he made of power when he dared, that would warrant the whole pack taking to their heels if they had the courage. they are not stories for ladies' ears, however, and i doubt if miss loring herself is aware of them. but in studying the country here, don't forget that my patient is one in a thousand--better luck to the rest." "so!" and she arose, drawing on her glove slowly, and regarding him with a queer little smile; "you _have_ been giving thought to something besides the love songs of this new country? your ideas are very interesting. i shall remember them, even without the red ink." then they mounted the impatient horses and rode out in the pink flush of the morning--the only hours cool enough for the foreigners to exercise at that season. they were going no place in particular, but when the cross-country road was reached leading to loringwood, she suddenly turned to him and proposed that he conduct her to her new purchase--introduce her to loringwood. "with all the pleasure in life," he assented gaily, somewhat curious to see how she would like the "pig in a poke," as he designated her business transaction. when they reached the gate she dismounted and insisted on walking through the long avenue she had admired. he was going to lead the horses, but she said, "no, tie them to the posts there, they were both well behaved, tractable animals;" she could speak for her mount at any rate. pluto had told her it was col. mcveigh's favorite, trained by himself. she wore a thin silken veil of palest grey circling her hat, covering her face, and the end fastened in fluffy loops on her bosom. her habit was of cadet grey, with a military dash of braid on epaulettes and cuff; the entire costume was perfect in its harmonious lines, and admirably adapted to the girlish yet stately figure. delaven, looking at her, thought that in all the glories of the parisian days he had never seen la belle marquise more delightful to the eye than on that oft-to-be-remembered september morning. she was unusually silent as they walked along the avenue, but her eyes were busy and apparently pleased at the prospect before her, and when they reached the front of the house she halted, surveyed the whole place critically, from the lazy wash of the river landing to the great pillars of the veranda, and drew a little breath of content. "just what i expected," she remarked, in reply to his question. "i hope the river is not too shallow. can we go in? i should like to, but not as the owner, please. they need not know of the sale until the lorings choose to tell them." little raquel had opened the door, very much pleased at their arrival. she informed them "aunt chloe laid up with some sort of misery, and betsey, who was in the cook-house, she see them comen' an' she have some coffee for them right off," and she was proceeding with other affairs of entertainment when judithe interrupted: "no coffee, nothing for me. now, doctor, if you want to show me the library; you know we must not linger, this is to be a busy day at the terrace." they had gone through the lower rooms, of which she had little to say. he had shown her the dashing portrait of marmeduke loring and given her a suggestion of the character as heard from nelse. he had shown her the pretty, seraphic portrait of gertrude as a little child, and the fair, handsome face of tom loring, as it looked down from the canvas with a smile for all the world in his genial eyes. they had made no further progress when raquel appeared upon the scene again with a request from aunt chloe, "would mahs doctor come roun' an' tell her jest what ailed her most, she got so many cu'eous compercations." he followed to see what the complications were, and thus it happened that judithe was left alone to look around her new possessions. but she did not look far. after a brief glance about she returned to the last portrait, studying the frank, handsome face critically. "and thou wert the man," she murmured. "why don't such men bear faces to suit their deeds, that all people may avoid the evil of them? fair, strong, and appealing!" she continued, enumerating the points of the picture, "and a frank, honest gaze, too; but the painter had probably been false in that, and idealized the face. yet i have seen eyes that were as honest looking, cover a vile soul, so why not this one?" the eyes that were as honest looking were the deep sea-blue eyes she had described once to dumaresque, confessing with light mockery their witchcraft over her; she thanked god those days were over. she had now something more to dream over than sentimental fancies. she heard the quick beat of horse hoofs coming up the avenue and stopping at the door; then, a man's voice: "good morning, jeff--any of our folks over from the terrace?" "yes, sah; good mawn, sah; leastwise i jest saw miss gertrude go in; they all stayen' ovah at terrace; i reckon she rode back for something. i reckon you find her in library; window's open thah." the man's voice replied from the hall, "all right," and he opened the door. "good morning, little woman," he said, cheerily, boyishly. "when i saw hector at the gate with the side saddle i thought--" what he thought was left unfinished. the slender figure in grey turned from the window, and throwing back the veil with one hand extended the other to him, with an amused smile at his mistake. "_judithe_!" he had crossed the room; he held her hand in both of his; he could not otherwise believe in the reality of her presence. in dreams he had seen her so often thus, with the smile and the light as of golden stars deep in the brown eyes. "welcome to loringwood, col. mcveigh," she said, softly. "your welcome could make it the most delightful homecoming of my life," he said, looking down at her, "if i dared be sure i was quite welcome to your presence." "i am your mother's guest," and she met his gaze with cordial frankness; "would that be so if--oh, yes, you may be very sure i am pleased to see you home again, and especially pleased to see you here." "you are? judithe, i beg pardon," as she raised her brows in slight question. "i am not accountable this morning, marquise; with a little time to recover myself in, i may grow more rational. to find you here is as much a surprise as though i had met you alone at sea in an open boat." "alone--at sea--in an open boat," she repeated, with a curious inflection; "but you perceive, col. mcveigh, the situation is not at all like that. i am under my own roof tree, and a very substantial one it is," with a comprehensive glance about the imposing apartment; "and you are the first guest i have welcomed here--i am much pleased that it happened so." when he stared at this bit of information she continued: "i have just made purchase of the estate from your friends, the lorings--this is my first visit to it, and you are my first caller. you perceive i am really your neighbor, monsieur." his eyes were bent on her with mute question; it all seemed so incredible that she should come there at all--to his country, to his home. he had left france cursing her coquetry; he had, because of her, gone straight to the frontier on his return to america, and lived the life of camps ever since; he had fancied no woman would ever again hold the sway over him she had held for that one brief season. yet the graciousness of her tone, the frank smile in her eyes, and the touch of her hand--the beautiful hand!-- delaven came in, and there were more explanations; then, to the regret of raquel and betsey, they left for the terrace without partaking of the specially prepared coffee. col. mcveigh had ridden from the coast with a party of the state guard, who were going to the river fortifications. seeing his own saddle horse at the gate he had let them go on to the terrace without him, while he stopped, thinking to find his mother or sister there. the new mistress of loringwood listened with an interested expression to this little explanation, and no one would have thought there was any special motive in leaving the horse tied there on the only road he would be likely to come, or that his statement that he traveled with a party of military friends conveyed a distinct message to her of work to be done. she did not fail to notice that col. mcveigh was a much handsomer man than the lieutenant had been. he appeared taller, heavier--a stalwart soldier, who had lost none of his impetuousness, and had even gained in self confidence, but for all that the light of boyhood was in his eyes as he looked at her, and she, well satisfied that it was so, rode happily to the terrace beside him, only smiling when he pointed out a clump of beeches and said he never passed without thinking of the trees at fontainbleau. "and," with a little mocking glance, "do the violets and forget-me-nots also grow among the bushes here?" "yes;" and he returned her mocking look with one so deliberate that her eyes dropped, "the forget-me-not is hardy in my land, you know; it lives always if encouraged." "heavens!--will the man propose to me again before we reach the house or have breakfast?" she thought, and concluded it more wise to drop such dangerous topics. until her expected messenger came she could not quite decide what was to be done or what methods employed. "forget-me-nots, is it?" queried delaven, in strict confidence with himself; "oh, but you've been clever, the pair of you, to get so far as forget-me-nots, and no one the wiser;" then aloud he said, "i've an idea that the best beloved man on the plantation this day will be the one who announces your coming, colonel; so if you'll look after madame la marquise--" and then he dashed ahead congratulating himself on the way he was helping the colonel. "it's well to have a friend at court," he decided, "and it's myself may need all i can get--for pill boxes are a bad balance for plantations, fitz; faith, they'll be flung to the moon at first tilt." the two left alone had three miles to go and seemed likely to make the journey in silence. she was a trifle dismayed at delaven's desertion, and could find no more light words. she attempted some questions concerning the blockade, but his replies showed his thoughts were elsewhere. "it is no use," he said, abruptly. "i have only forty-eight hours to remain; i may not see you again for a year, perhaps, never, for i go at once to the front. there is only one thought in my mind, and you know what it is." "to conquer the yankees?" she hazarded. "no, to conquer some pride or whim of the girl who confessed once that she loved me." "take my advice, monsieur," she said with a cool little smile. "no doubt you have been fortunate enough to hear those words many times--i should think it quite probable," and she let her eyes rest approvingly for a moment on his face; "but it is well to consider the girls who make those avowals before you place full credence on the statement--not that they _always_ mean to deceive," she amended, "but those three words have a most peculiar fascination for girlhood--they like to use them even when they do not comprehend the meaning." he shook his head as he looked at her. "it is no use, madame la marquise," he said, and the ardent eyes met her own and made her conscious of a sudden fear. "you reason it out very well--philosophy is one of your hobbies, isn't it? i always detested women with hobbies--the strong-minded woman who reasons instead of feeling; and now you are revenging the whole army of them by making me feel beyond reason. but you shan't evade me by such tactics. do you remember what your last spoken words to me were, three years ago?" her face paled a little, she lifted the bridle to urge her horse onward, but he laid his hand on her wrist. "no, pardon me, but i must speak to you--day and night i have thought of them, and now that you are here--oh, i know you sent me away--that is, you hid from me; and why, judithe? i believe on my soul it was because you meant those words when you said: '_i love you now, and from the first moment you ever looked at me!_' i told myself at first, when i left france, that it was all falsehood, coquetry--but i could not keep that belief, for the words rang too true--you thought you were going over that bank to death, and all your heart was in your voice and your eyes. that moment has come back to me a thousand times since; has been with me in the thick of battle, singing through my ears as the bullets whistled past. '_i love you now, and from the first moment you ever looked at me._' it is no use to pretend you did not mean those words then. i know in my heart you did. you were bound in some way, no doubt, and fancied you had no right to say them. the announcement of your engagement suggested that. but you are free now, or you would not be here, and i must be heard." "be satisfied then," she replied, indifferently, though her hand trembled on the bridle, "you perceive you have, thanks to your stronger arm, an audience of one." "you are angry at my presumption--angry at the advantage i have taken of the situation?" he asked. "i grant you are right; but remember, it is now or perhaps never with me; and it is the presumption of love--a woman should forgive that." "they usually do, monsieur," she replied, with a little shrug and glance of amusement. for one bewildered instant she had lost control of herself, and had only the desire to flee; but it was all over now, she remembered another point to be made in the game--something to postpone the finale until she had seen pierson. "it is not just to me," he said, meeting her mocking glance with one that was steadfast and determined. "however your sentiments have changed, i know you cared for me that day, as i have cared for you ever since, and now that you have come here--to my own country, to my mother's house, i surely may ask this one question: why did you accept the love i offered, and then toss it away almost in the same breath?" "i may reply by another question," she said, coolly. "what right had you to make any offers of love to me at any time? what right have you now?" "what right?" "yes; does your betrothed approve? is that another of the free institutions in your land of liberties?" "what do you mean?--my betrothed?" "your betrothed," she said, and nodded her head with that same cool little smile. "i heard her name that evening of the drive you remember so well; our friend, the countess helene, mentioned it to me--possibly for fear my very susceptible heart might be won by your protection of us," and she glanced at him again, mockingly. "you had forgotten to mention it to me, but it really does not matter, i have learned since then that gentlemen absolutely cannot go around reciting the lists of former conquests--it is too apt to prevent the acquisition of new ones. i did not realize it then--there were so many things i could not realize; and i felt piqued at your silence; but," with an expressive little gesture and a bright smile, "i am no longer so. i come to your home; i clasp hands with you; i meet your bride-elect, miss loring--she is remarkably pretty, monsieur, and i am quite prepared to dance at your wedding; therefore--" "marquise, on my honor as a man," he did not see the scornful light in her eyes as he spoke of his honor; "there has never been a word of love between gertrude loring and myself; it is nothing but family gossip dating from the time we were children, and encouraged by her uncle for reasons entirely financial. we have both ignored it. we are all fond of her, and i believe my mother at one time did hope it would be so arranged, but i hope she wins a better fellow than myself; she cares no more for me than i for her." they had turned into the terrace grounds. evilena was running out to meet them. she was so close now she could hear what he said if it were not for her own swiftness. "judithe! one word, a look; you believe me?" she said nothing, but she did flash one meaning glance at him, and then his sister was at the stirrup and he swung out of the saddle to kiss her. chapter xxiii. "of course we are anxious to hear all you dare tell us about the success of your mission over there," said his mother, an hour later, when the riders had done justice to a delightful breakfast. "are all the arrangements made by our people entirely satisfactory?" "entirely, mother. this is the twenty-second of september, isn't it? well, it is an open secret now. the vessel secured goes into commission today, and will be called the alabama." "hurrah for the alabama!" cried evilena, who was leaning on the back of her brother's chair. he put his arm around her and turned to judithe. "have you become acquainted with the patriotic ardor of my little sister?" he asked. "i assure you we have to fight these days if we want to keep the affections of our southern girls." gertrude smiled across the table at him. "i can't fancy you having to fight very hard battles along that line, monsieur," replied judithe, in the cool, half mocking tone she had adopted for all questions of sentiment with him; and gertrude, who saw the look exchanged between them, arose from the table. "uncle matthew asked to see you when you have time, kenneth." "thanks, yes; i'll go directly. mother, why not ask the boys of the guard to stop over for your party? they are of phil masterson's company--all carolina men." "of course, i shall invite them personally," and she left the room to speak to the men who were just finishing breakfast under an arbor, and congratulating themselves on the good luck of being travelling companions of colonel mcveigh. evilena waltzed around the table in her delight at the entire arrangement; boys in uniform; the longed-for additions to the festivities, and they would have to be a formidable lot if she could not find one of their number worth dancing with; she would show dr. delaven that other men did not think her only a baby to be teased! "now, madame caron, we can show you a regular plantation jubilee, for the darkies shall have a dance at the quarters. you'll like that, won't you?" "anything that expresses the feminine homage to returning heroes," replied judithe, with a little bow of affected humility, at which colonel mcveigh laughed as he returned it. she passed out of the door with his sister and he stood looking after her, puzzled, yet with hope in his eyes. his impetuousness in plunging into the very heart of the question at once had, at any rate, not angered her, which was a great point gained. he muttered an oath when he realized that but for the countess biron's gossip they might never have been separated, for she did love him then--he knew it. even today, when she would have run away from him again, she did not deny _that_! forty-eight hours in which to win her--and his smile as he watched her disappear had a certain grim determination in it. he meant to do it. she had grown white when he quoted to her her own never forgotten words. well, she should say them to him again! the hope of it sent the blood leaping to his heart, and he turned away with a quick sigh. gertrude, who had only stepped out on the veranda when she left the table, and stood still by the open glass door, saw the lingering, intense gaze with which he followed the woman she instinctively disliked--the woman who was now mistress of loringwood, and had made the purchase as carelessly as though it were a new ring to wear on her white hand--a new toy to amuse herself with in a new country; the woman who threw money away on whims, had the manner of a princess, and who had aroused in gertrude loring the first envy or jealousy she had ever been conscious of in her pleasant, well-ordered life. from the announcement that loringwood had passed into the stranger's possession her heart had felt like lead in her bosom. she could not have explained why--it was more a presentiment of evil than aught else, and she thought she knew the reason of it when she saw that look in kenneth mcveigh's eyes--a look she had never seen there before. and the woman who had caused it all was walking the floor of her own apartment in a fever of impatience. if the man she expected would only come--then she would have work to do--definite plans to follow; now all was so vague, and those soldiers staying over, was it only a chance invitation, or was there a hidden purpose in that retained guard? her messenger should have arrived within an hour of colonel mcveigh, and the hour was gone. as she passed the mirror she caught sight of her anxious face in it, and halted, staring at the reflection critically. "you are turning coward!" she said, between her closed teeth. "you are afraid to be left to yourself an hour longer--afraid because of this man's voice and the touch of his hand. aren't you proud of yourself--you! he is the beast whose name you hated for years--the man for whom that poor runaway was taught the graces and accomplishments of white women--in this house you heard matthew loring mention the price of her and the portion to be forfeited to kenneth mcveigh because the girl was not to be found. do you forget that? do you think i shall let you forget it? i shan't. you are to do the work you came here to do. you are to have no other interest in the people of this house." she continued her nervous walk back and forth across the room. she put aside the grey habit and donned a soft, pretty house-gown of the same color. her hands were trembling. she clasped and unclasped them with a despairing gesture. "it is not love," she whispered, as though in wild argument against the fear of it. "not love--some curse in the blood--that is what it is. and to think that after three years--three years!--it all comes back like this. oh, you fool, you fool! love," she continued, in more clear, reasoning tones, speaking aloud slowly as though to impress it on her mind, as a child will repeat a lesson to be learned; "love must be based on respect--what respect can you have for this buyer of young girls?--this ardent-eyed animal who has the good fortune, to be classed as a gentleman. love in a woman's heart should be her religion; what religion could be centered on so vile a creature? to look up to such a man, how low a woman would have to sink." evilena knocked at the door to show some little gift brought by her brother from across the ocean, and judithe turned to her feverishly, glad of some companionship to drive away her dread and suspense until the expected messenger arrived--the minutes were as long as hours, now! colonel mcveigh had scarcely more than greeted loring when pluto announced captain masterson and some other gentleman. evilena saw them coming from the window and reported there were two soldiers besides captain masterson, and a man in blue clothes, who aroused her curiosity mightily. they were out of range before judithe reached the window, but her heart almost stopped beating for an instant; the man she expected wore a blue yachting suit, and this sudden gathering of soldiery at the terrace? colonel mcveigh greeted masterson cordially and turned to the others. two were men in confederate uniform, just outside the door, and the third was a tall man in the uniform of a federal captain. his left wrist was bandaged. he was smiling slightly as mcveigh's glance became one of doubt for an instant, and then brightened into unmistakable recognition. "by jove, this is a surprise!" and he shook hands cordially with the stranger. "captain monroe, i am delighted to see you in our home." "thank you; i'm glad to get here," replied monroe, with a peculiar look towards masterson, who regarded the cordial greeting with evident astonishment, "i had not expected to call on you this morning, but--captain masterson insisted." he smiled as he spoke--a smile of amusement, coolly careless of the amazement of masterson, and the inquiry in the glance of mcveigh. "colonel mcveigh, he is a prisoner," said masterson, in reply to that glance, and then, as the prisoner himself maintained an indifferent silence, he explained further, "we caught sight of him galloping ahead of us through the pines, a few miles back. realizing that we were near enough to the coast for the federals to send in men for special service, we challenged him, got no explanation except that he rode for his own pleasure; so i put him under arrest." "well, well! since luck has sent you into our lines i'm glad it has done us a good turn and sent you to our home," said mcveigh, though he still looked mystified at the situation. "i've no doubt satisfactory explanations can be made, and a parole arranged." "that's good of you, colonel," said the prisoner, appreciatively; "you are a good sort of friend to meet when in trouble--brother fred used to think so up at the point; but in this case it really isn't necessary--as i have one parole." he drew a paper from an inner pocket and passed it to mcveigh, who looked relieved. "yes, certainly, this is all right," and he looked inquiringly at masterson, "i don't understand--" neither did that officer, who turned in some chagrin to the prisoner, who glanced from one to the other in evident indifference. "may i ask," said masterson, with cold courtesy, "why you did not state when taken prisoner that you were paroled?" "certainly," and the easy nonchalance of the other was almost insolent; evidently masterson had not picked up an affinity. "i was coming your way; had been riding alone for several hours, and feared i should be deprived of the pleasure of your society if i allowed you to know how harmless i was." he paused for a moment--smiled in a quizzical way at mcveigh, and continued: "then i heard your orderly mention colonel mcveigh, whose place you were bound for, and i did not object in the least to being brought to him for judgment. but since you see i am paroled, as well as crippled," and he motioned to the arm which he moved carefully, "incapable in any way of doing harm to your cause, i trust that a flag of truce will be recognized by you," and he extended his hand in smiling unconcern. but to captain masterson there was something irritating in the smile, and he only bowed coldly, ignoring the flag of truce, upon which captain monroe seemed quietly amused as he turned to mcveigh and explained that he was wounded and taken prisoner a month before over in tennessee by morgan's cavalry, who had gathered in johnson's brigade so effectively that general johnson, his staff, and somewhere between two and three hundred others had been taken prisoners. he, monroe, had found a carolina relative badly wounded among morgan's boys, had secured a parole, and brought the young fellow home to die, and when his own wound was in a fair way to take care of itself he had left the place--a plantation south of allendale, and headed for the coast to connect with the blockading fleet instead of making the journey north through richmond. it was a very clear statement, but masterson listened to it suspiciously, without appearing to listen at all. mcveigh, who had known both monroe and his family in the north, and was also acquainted with the carolina family mentioned, accepted the federal's story without question, and invited him to remain at the terrace so long as it suited him to be their guest. "i have only two days at home until i leave for my regiment," he explained; "but my mother has enough pleasant people here to make your visit interesting, i hope. she will be delighted to welcome you, and some beaufort acquaintances of yours are here--the lorings." captain monroe showed interest in this information, and declared it would give him pleasure to stop over until mcveigh left for the front. "good! and you, captain masterson?" masterson glanced coldly towards monroe, evidently desirous of a private interview with mcveigh. but seeing little chance of it without a pointed request, he took two packets from a case carefully fastened in his pocket, and presented them. "i am detailed to convey to you some important papers, and i congratulate you on your promotion to brigadier-general," he said, with a bow. "brigadier? well, well; they are giving me a pleasant reception," and his face showed his pleasure as he looked at the papers. "thank you, captain masterson. by the way, how much time have you?" "until tomorrow night; i meant to ride over to the plantation after delivering this." "the ladies won't hear to that when they get sight of you. they are giving a party tonight and need all the uniforms we can muster; a squad of your men on their way to the forts below have stopped over for breakfast, and they've even captured them, and you'll be welcome as the flowers of may." masterson glanced at monroe and hesitated. "those men are needed at one of the fortifications," he said guardedly; "they had better take some other time for a party. with your permission i'll send them on, and remain in their place with one orderly, if convenient." "certainly; glad to have you; give your own orders about the men. i do not know that they have accepted the invitation to linger, i only know that the ladies wanted them to." he rang for pluto, who was given orders concerning rooms for captain monroe, and for captain masterson, who left to speak with the men waiting orders without. he made a gesture towards the packet in mcveigh's hand and remarked: "i have reason apart from the commission to think the contents are important. our regiment is to be merged in your brigade, and all pressed to the front. towards what point i could not learn at columbia, but your information will doubtless cover all that, general." "colonel will answer until i find my brigade," said mcveigh, with a smile. "you stay over until i learn, since we are to go together, and i will look them over soon as possible." he himself showed monroe the room he was to occupy, to the chagrin of pluto, who was hanging about in a fever of curiosity and dread at sight of a northern soldier--the first he had ever seen, and the rumor that he was brought there a prisoner suggested calamities to the army through which, alone, his own race dared hope for freedom; and to hear the two men chat and laugh over west point memories was an aggravation to him, listening, as he was, for the news of today, and the serious questions involved. only once had there been allusion to the horrors of war--when mcveigh inquired concerning his former classmate, monroe's brother, fred, and was told he had been numbered with the dead at shiloh. the door was open and pluto could hear all that was said--could see the bronzed face of the northerner, a face he liked instinctively though it was not exactly handsome--an older face than mcveigh's. he was leaving west point as the young southerner entered--a man of thirty years, possibly--five of them, the hard years of the frontier range. a smile lit up his face, changing it wonderfully. his manner was neither diffident nor overconfident--there was a certain admirable poise to it. his cool, irritating attitude towards the zealous masterson had been drawn out by the innate antagonism of the two natures, but with mcveigh only the cordial side was appealed to, and he responded with frank good will. pluto watched them leave the room and enter the apartments of mr. loring, where mrs. mcveigh, miss gertrude and delaven were at that time, and the latter was entertained by seeing one of the northern wolves welcomed most cordially by the southern household. fred monroe had been kenneth's alter-ego during the west point days. mrs. mcveigh had photographs of them together, which she brought out for inspection, and kenneth had pleasant memories of the monroe home where he had been a guest for a brief season after graduation; altogether it was an interesting incident of the war to delaven, who was the one outsider. he was sorry the marquise was not there to observe. the marquise was, however, making observations on her own account, but not particularly to her satisfaction. she walked from one window to another watching the road, and the only comforting view she obtained was the departure of the squad of soldiers who had breakfasted in the arbor. they turned south along the river, and when they passed through the terrace gates she drew a breath of relief at the sight. they would not meet pierson, who was to come over the road to the east, and they would leave on the place only the orderlies of colonel mcveigh and captain masterson, and the colored men whose quarters were almost a half mile in the rear of the terrace. she was glad they were at that distance, though she scarcely knew why. pierson's delay made her fear all sorts of bungling and extreme measures--men were such fools! evilena had flitted away again to look up a dress for the party, and did not return, so she was left alone. she heard considerable walking about and talking in the rooms below and on the veranda. no one came along her corridor, however, so she could ask no questions as to the latest arrivals. for reasons of her own she had dispensed with a personal attendant after the departure of louise; there was no maid to make inquiries of. an hour passed in this feverish suspense, when she went to the mirror with an air of decision, arranged her hair becomingly, added a coral brooch to the lace at her throat, slipped some glimmering rings on her white fingers, and added those little exquisite touches to the toilet which certain women would naturally linger over though it be the last hour on earth. then she opened the door and descended the stairs, a picture of beauty and serenity--a trifle of extra color in the cheeks, perhaps, but it would be a captious critic who would object to the added lustre. captain monroe certainly did not, as he halted in the library at sight of her, and waited to see if she passed out on the veranda, or-- she looked out on the veranda; no one was there; with an impatient sigh she turned, pushed the partly opened door of the library back, and was inside the room before she perceived him. involuntarily she shut the door back of her. "oh--h!" and she held out her hand with a quick, pretty gesture of surprise and pleasure--"well met, captain jack!" he took the hand she offered and looked at her with a certain questioning directness. "i hope so, madame caron," and the gaze was so steady, his grasp so firm, that she drew her hand away with a little laugh that was a trifle nervous. "your voice and face reassure me! i dare breathe again!" she said, with a mock sigh of relief; "my first glimpse of your uniform made me fear a descent of the enemy." "have you need to fear any special enemy here?" he asked, bluntly. she put her hand out with a little gesture of protest as she sank back into the chair he offered. "why should you be so curious on a first meeting?" she asked, with a quizzical smile. "but i will tell you, monsieur, for all that; i am, of course, very much afraid of the northern armies. i left orleans rather than live under the federal government, if you please! i have bought a very handsome estate a few miles from here which, of course, binds my interests more closely to the south," and she flashed a meaning, mocking glance up at him. "do not look so serious, my friend, it is all very beautifully arranged; i had my will made as soon as the deed was signed, of course; no matter what accidents should happen to me, all my southern properties will be held intact to carry on the plans for which they were purchased. i am already building my monuments," and she unfurled a silken fan the color of her corals and smiled across it at him. their backs were towards the window. she was seated in the deep chair, while he stood near her, leaning on the back of another one and looking down in her face. pluto, who was still hovering around with the hope of getting speech with a "sure enough lincum man," had come noiselessly to the open window and only halted an instant when he saw the stranger so pleasantly occupied, and heard the musical voice of madame caron say "my friend." it was to him the sweetest voice in the world now, and he would gladly have lingered while she spoke, but the rest of the words were very soft and low, and miss loring was moving towards him coming slowly up the steps, looking at him as though the veranda was no place for a nigger to lounge when unemployed--a fact he was well enough aware of to walk briskly away around the corner of the house, when he found her eye on him. she had reached the top of the steps and was thinking the colored folks at the terrace were allowed a great many privileges, when she heard the low tones of a man's voice. supposing it was kenneth and possibly his mother, she stepped softly towards the window. before she reached it she perceived her mistake--the man wore a blue uniform, and though she could not see madame caron, she could see the soft folds of her dress, and the white hand moving the coral fan. disappointed, and not being desirous of joining the woman whose charm evidently enthralled every one but herself, she stepped quietly back out of range, and passed on along the veranda to the sitting room, where evilena was deeply engaged over the problem of a dress to be draped and trimmed for the party. and the two talked on within the closed doors of the library, the man's voice troubled, earnest; the woman's, careless and amused. "i shall tell you what i wish, captain jack," she said, tapping the fan slowly on the palm of her hand and looking up at him, "i am most pleased to see you, but for all that i wish you had not come to this particular house, and i wish you would go away." "which means," he said, after a pause, "that you are in some danger?" "oh, no! if it were that," and her glance was almost coquettish, "i should ask you to remain as my champion." "pardon, madame," and he shook his head, doubtfully, "but i remember days in new orleans, and i know you better than that." she only raised her brows and smiled. he watched her for a moment and then said: "colonel mcveigh is a friend; i should not like to think that your presence means danger to him." "what an idea!" and she laughed heartily; "am i grown such a thing of terror that i dare not enter a door lest danger follow? who could be oppressed with political schemes in this delightful life of the plantation? it is really eden-like; that is why i have purchased one of the places for my own; it is worth seeing. if you remain i shall invite you over; shall you?" "for some reason you wish i would not; if i only knew what the reason is!" "a few months ago you did not question my motives," she said, reprovingly; then in a lower tone, "your commander has never questioned, why should you? your president has sent me messages of commendation for my independent work. one, received before i left mobile, i should like you to see," and she rose from the chair. he put out his hand to stop her. "not if it has connection with any plot or plan of work against the people on this side of the line; remember, i am on parole." "oh, i shall respect your scruples," she said, lightly. "but you need have no dread of that sort. i would not keep by me anything dangerous; it is not compromising to the marquise de caron in any way." she halted at the door and added, "will you wait?" "yes, i will wait," he said; "but i can't approve, and i don't need the evidence of any one else in order to appreciate your value," he added, grimly; "but be careful, remember where you are." "i could not forget it if i tried, captain jack," she declared, with a peculiar smile, of which the meaning escaped him until long after. that ride from loringwood in the morning, and the nervous expectancy after, had evidently tended to undermine her own self-confidence and usual power of resource, for when she returned to the room a few minutes later, and found gertrude and her uncle there, she halted in absolute confusion--could not collect her thoughts quickly enough for the emergency, and glanced inquiringly towards monroe, as one looks at a stranger, while he, after one look as she entered, continued some remark to mr. loring. for an instant gertrude's eyes grew narrow as she glanced from one to the other; then she recovered her usual sweet manner, as she turned to judithe: "pardon me, i fancied you two had met. madame caron, permit me to present captain monroe, one of our recent acquisitions." both bowed; neither spoke. colonel mcveigh entered at that moment. he had changed the grey travelling suit in which he arrived, for the grey uniform of his regiment, and judithe, however critical she tried to be, could not but acknowledge that he was magnificent; mentally she added, "magnificent animal; but what of the soul, the soul?" there was no lack of soul in his eyes as he looked at her and crossed the room, as though drawn by an invisible chain, and noted, as a lover ever notes, that the dress she wore had in its soft, silvery folds, a suggestion of sentiment for the cause he championed. but when he murmured something of his appreciation, she dropped her eyes to the fan she held, and when she glanced slowly up it was in a manner outlawing the tete-a-tete. "i realize now, colonel mcveigh, that you are really a part of the army," she remarked in the tone of one who makes the conversation general. "you were a very civilian-looking person this morning. i have, like your southern ladies, acquired a taste for warlike trappings; the uniform is very handsome." "thanks; i hope you will find my next one more becoming, since it is to be that of brigadier-general." although matthew loring's sight was impaired, his locomotion slow, and his left hand and arm yet helpless, his sense of hearing was acute enough to hear the words even across monroe's conversation, for his sunken eyes lit up as he twisted his head towards the speaker: "what's that, kenneth? you to command a brigade?" "so they tell me," assented mcveigh. "the commission just reached me." "good enough! do you hear that, gertrude? a brigadier-general at twenty-five. well, i don't see what more a man could want." "i do," he said, softly, to judithe, so softly that she felt rather than heard the words, to which his eyes bore witness. then he turned to reply to mr. loring's questions of military movements. "no, i can't give you much special information today," and he smiled across at monroe, when loring found fault with the government officials who veiled their plans and prospects from the taxpayers--the capitalists of the south who made the war possible. "but the instructions received lead me to believe a general movement of much importance is about to be made in our department, and my opportunities will be all a soldier could wish." "so you have become a brigadier-general instead of the lieutenant we knew only three years ago," and judithe's eyes rested on him graciously for an instant, as monroe and gertrude helped loring out to the wheeled chair on the lawn. "you travel fast--you americans! i congratulate you." she had arisen and crossed the room to the little writing desk in the corner. he followed with his eyes her graceful walk and the pretty fluttering movements of her hands as she drew out note paper and busied herself rather ostentatiously. he smiled as he noticed it; she was afraid of a tete-a-tete; she was trying to run away, if only to the farther side of the room. "i shall consider myself a more fit subject for congratulation if you prove more kind to the general than you were to the lieutenant." "people usually are," she returned lightly. "i do not fancy you will have much of unkindness to combat, except from the enemy." evilena entered the room humming an air, and her brother remarked carelessly that the first of the enemy to invade their domain was not very formidable at present, though captain jack monroe had made a fighting record for himself in the western campaign. judithe did not appear particularly interested in the record of the northern campaign, but evilena, who had been too much absorbed in the question of wardrobe to keep informed of the late arrivals, fairly gasped at the name. "really and truly, is that yankee here?" she demanded, "right here in the house? caroline said it wasn't a yankee--just some friend of yours." "so he is." "and--a--_yankee_?" he nodded his head and smiled at her. judithe had picked up a pen and was writing. evilena glanced towards her for assistance in this astonishing state of affairs, but no one appeared to be shocked but herself. "well!" she said, at last, resignedly, "since we are to have any yankee here, i'm glad it's the one gertrude met at beaufort. i've been conjuring up romances about them ever since, and i am curious to see if he looks like the jack monroe in the song." "not likely," said her brother, discouragingly, "he is the least romantic hero for a song you can imagine; but if you put on your prettiest dress and promise not to fight all the battles of the war over with him, i'll manage that you sit beside him at dinner and make romances about him at closer range, if you can find the material." "to think of _me_ dressing my prettiest for a yankee! and oh, ken, i can't dress so astonishingly pretty, either. i'm really," and she sighed dejectedly, "down to my last party dress." "well, that's better than none." "none!" she endeavored to freeze him with a look, but his smile forbade it, and she left the room, singing "just as she stepped on ship board, 'your name i'd like to know?' and with a smile she answered, 'my name is jack monroe.'" "thanks; glad to find so charming a namesake," said a deep voice, and she looked up to see a tall man gazing down at her with a smile so kindly she should never have guessed he was a yankee but for the blue uniform. "oh!" she blushed deliciously, and then laughed. there really was no use trying to be dignified with a stranger after such a meeting as that. "i never did mean to steal your name, captain monroe," she explained, "for you are captain monroe?" "yes, except when i am jack," and then they both smiled. "oh, i've known jack was your name, too, for this long time," she said, with a little air of impressing him with her knowledge; "but i couldn't call you that, except in the song." "may i express the hope that you sing the song often?" he asked, with an attempt at gravity not entirely successful. "but you don't know who i am, do you?" and when he shook his head sadly she added, "but of course you've heard of me; i'm evilena." "evilena?" "evilena mcveigh," she said, with a trifle of emphasis. "oh, kenneth's sister?" and he held out his hand. "i'm delighted to know you." "thank you." she let her hand rest in his an instant, and then drew it away, with a little gasp. "there! i've done it after all." "anything serious?" he inquired. she nodded her head; "i've broken a promise." "not past repair, i hope." "oh, it's only a joke to you, but it really is serious to me. when the boys i know all started north with the army i promised i'd never shake hands with a yankee." "promised them all?" he asked, and without waiting for a reply, he continued: "now, that's a really extraordinary coincidence; i entertained the same idea about johnnie rebs." "really?" and she looked quite relieved at finding a companion in iniquity; "but you did shake hands?" "yes." "are you sorry?" "no; are you?" "n--no." and when delaven went to look for evilena to tell her they were to have lunch on the lawn (mrs. mcveigh had installed him as master of ceremonies for the day), he found her in the coziest, shadiest nook on the veranda, entertaining a sample copy of the enemy, and assuring him that the grey uniforms would be so much more becoming than the blue. chapter xxiv. noon. colonel mcveigh had been at the terrace already a half day, and no sign had come from pierson--no message of any sort. judithe called pluto and asked if the mail did not leave soon for down the river, and suggested that when he took it to the office he would ask the man in charge to look carefully lest any letters should have been forgotten from the night before. "yes'm, mail go 'bout two hours now," and he looked up at the clock. "i go right down ask 'bout any letters done been fo'got. but i don' reckon any mail to go today; folks all too busy to write lettahs." "no; i--i--i will have a letter to go," and she turned toward the desk. "how soon will you start?" "hour from now," said pluto, "that will catch mail all right;" and with that she must be content. at any other time she would have sent him at once without the excuse of a letter to be mailed. those easy-going folk who handled the mail might easily have overlooked some message--a delay of twenty-four hours would mean nothing in their sleepy lives. but today she was unmistakably nervous--all the more reason for exceeding care. she had begun the letter when colonel mcveigh came for her to go to lunch; she endeavored to make an excuse--she was not at all hungry, really, it appeared but an hour since the breakfast; but perceiving that if she remained he would remain also, she arose, saying she would join their little festival on the lawn long enough for a cup of tea, she had a letter to get ready for the mail within an hour. she managed to seat herself where she could view the road to the south, but not a horseman or footman turned in at the terrace gate. she felt the eyes of monroe on her; also the eyes of gertrude loring. how much did they know or suspect? she was feverishly gay, though penetrated by the feeling that the suspended sword hung above her. pierson's non-appearance might mean many things appalling--and louise! all these chaotic thoughts surging through her, and ever beside her the voice of kenneth mcveigh, not the voice alone, but the eyes, at times appealing, at times dominant, as he met her gaze, and forbade that she be indifferent. "why should you starve yourself as well as me?" he asked, softly, when she declined the dishes brought to her, and made pretense of drinking the cup of tea he offered. "you--starving?" and the slight arching of the dark brows added to the note of question. "yes, for a word of hope." "really? and what word do you covet?" "the one telling me if the countess biron's gossip was the only reason you sent me away." mrs. mcveigh looked over at the two, well satisfied that kenneth was giving attention to her most distinguished guest. gertrude loring looked across to the couple on the rustic seat and felt, without hearing, what the tenor of the conversation was. kenneth mcveigh was wooing a woman who looked at him with slumbrous magnetic eyes and laughed at him. gertrude envied her the wooing, but hated her for the laughter. all her life kenneth mcveigh had been her ideal, but to this finished coquette of france he was only the man of the moment, who contributed to her love of power, her amusement. for the girl, who was his friend, read clearly the critical, half contemptuous gleams, alternating at times the graciousness of madame caron's dark eyes. she glanced at monroe, and guessed that he was no more pleased than herself at the tete-a-tete there, and that he was quite as watchful. and the cause of it all met colonel mcveigh's question with a glance, half alluring, half forbidding, as she sipped the tea and put aside the cup. "how persistent you are," she murmured. "if you adopt the same methods in warfare i do not wonder at your rapid promotions. but i shan't encourage it a moment longer; you have other guests, and i have a letter to write." she crossed to mrs. mcveigh, murmured a few words of excuse, exchanged a smile with evilena, who declared her a deserter from their ranks, and then moved up the steps to the veranda and passed through the open window into the library, pausing for a little backward glance ere she entered; and the people on the lawn who raised their glasses to her, did not guess that she looked over their heads, scanning the road for the expected messenger. looking at the clock she seated herself, picked up the pen, and then halted, holding her hand out and noting the trembling of it. "oh, you fool! you _woman_!" she said, through her closed teeth. she commenced one letter, blotted it in her nervous impatience, turned it aside and commenced another, when captain monroe appeared at the window with a glass of wine in his hand. "why this desertion from the ranks?" he asked, jestingly, yet with purpose back of the jest. she recognized, but ignored it. "that you might be detailed for special duty, perhaps, captain jack," she replied, without looking around. "i have to look up stragglers," and he crossed to the desk where she sat. "i even brought you a forgotten portion of your lunch." she looked up at that, saw the glass, and shook her head; "no, no wine for me." "but it would be almost treasonable to refuse this," he insisted. "in the first place it is native carolina wine we are asked to take; and in the second, it is a toast our bear of the swamps--mr. loring--has proposed, 'our president.' i evaded my share by being cup-bearer to you." he offered the glass and looked at her, meaningly, "will you drink?" "only when you drink with me," she said, and smiled at the grim look touching his face for an instant. "to the president of the southern confederacy?" he asked. "no!--to _our_ president!" she took the glass, touched the wine to her lips, and offered the remainder to him, just as colonel mcveigh entered from the lawn. he heard captain monroe say, "with all my heart!" as he emptied the glass. the scene had such a sentimental tinge that he felt a swift flash of jealousy, and realized that monroe was a decidedly attractive fellow in his own cool, masterful way. "ah! a tryst at mid-day?" he remarked, with assumed lightness. "no; only a parley with the enemy," she said, and he passed out into the hall, picking up his hat from the table, where he had tossed it when he entered in the morning. monroe walked up to the window and back again. she heard him stop beside her, but did not look up. "i have almost decided to take your advice, and remain only one night instead of two," he said, at last. "i can't approve what you are doing here. i can't help you, and i can't stay by and be witness to the enchantment which, for some reason, you are weaving around mcveigh." "enchantment?" "well, i can't find a better word just now. i can't warn him; so i will leave in the morning." "i really think it would be better," she said, looking up at him frankly. "of all the american men i have met i value your friendship most; yes, it is quite true!" as he uttered a slight exclamation. "but there are times when even our good angels hamper us, and just now i am better, much better, alone." "if i could help you--" "you could not," she said hastily. "even without the barrier of the parole, you could not. but i cannot talk. i am nervous, not myself today. you saw how clumsy i was when i brought the letter to show?--and after all did not get to show it. well, i have been like that all day. i have grown fearful of everything--distrustful of every glance. did you observe the watchfulness of miss loring on the lawn? still, what does it matter?" she leaned her head on her hands for a few moments. he stood and looked at her somberly, not speaking. when she turned towards him again it was to ask in a very different tone if he would touch the bell--it was time for pluto to start with the mail. when he entered she found that a necessary address book had been left in her own apartments. "you get the mail bag while i go for it, pluto," she said after tossing the papers about in a vain search; "and captain monroe, will you look over this bit of figures for me? it is an expense list for my yacht, i may need it today and have a wretched head for business details of that sort. i am helpless in them." then she was gone, and monroe, with a pencil, noted the amount, corrected a trifling mistake, and suddenly became conscious that the grave, most attentive, black man, was regarding him in a manner inviting question. "well, my man, what is it?" he asked, folding up the paper, and speaking with so kindly a smile that pluto stumbled eagerly into the heart of questions long deferred. "jes' a word, mahs captain. is it true you been took prisoner? is it true the linkum men are whipped?" "well, if they are they don't know it; they are still fighting, any way." "if--if they win," and pluto looked around nervously as he asked the question, "will it free us, mahs captain? we niggahs can't fine out much down heah. yo' see, sah, fust off they all tell how the nawth free us sure if the nawth won the battles. then--then word done come how mahsa linkum nevah say so. tell me true, mahs captain, will we be free?" his eagerness was so intense, monroe hesitated to tell him the facts. he understood, now, why the dark face had been watching him so hungrily ever since his arrival. "the men who make the laws must decide those questions, my man," he said, at last. 'in time freedom certainly will be arranged for--but--" "but mahsa linkum ain't done said it yet--that it, mahsa?" "yes, that's it." "thank yo', sah," and monroe heard him take a deep breath, sad as tears, when he turned into the hall for the mail bag. a stranger was just coming up the steps, a squarely built, intelligent-eyed man, with a full dark beard; his horse, held by one of the boys under a shade tree, showed signs of hard riding, and the fact that he was held instead of stabled, showed that the call was to be brief. the servants were clearing away the lunch things. mrs. mcveigh had entered the house. delaven and gertrude were walking beside loring's chair, wheeled by ben, along the shady places. evilena was coming towards them from across the lawn, pouting because of an ineffectual attempt to catch up with ken, whom she fancied she saw striding along the back drive to the quarters, but he had walked too fast, and the hedge had hidden him. she came back disappointed to be asked by delaven what sort of uniform she was pursuing this time, to which he very properly received no reply except such as was vouchsafed by silent, scornful lips and indignant eyes. masterson, who was walking thoughtfully alone, noted this distribution of the people as the stranger dismounted, inquired of caroline for madame caron, and was received by pluto at the door. the man wore a dark blue suit, plain but for a thin cord of gold on collar and sleeve. he did not recognize it as a uniform, yet instinctively associated it with that other blue uniform whose wearer had caused him an annoyance he would not soon forget. he was there alone now with madame caron for whom this stranger was asking. he wondered if colonel mcveigh was there also, but concluded not, as he had seen him on the western veranda with his hat on. all these thoughts touched him and passed on as he stood there looking critically at the dusty horse. at the same moment he heard the thud, thud of another horse turning in at the terrace gates; the rider was leaning forward as though urging the animal to its utmost. at sight of masterson he threw up his hand to attract attention, and the others on the lawn stared at this second tumultuous arrival and the haste captain masterson made to hear what he had to say--evidently news of importance from the coast or the north. loring hoped it meant annihilation of some yankee stronghold, and evilena hoped it did not mean that kenneth must leave before the party. * * * * * the man whom pluto showed into the library with the information that madame caron would be down at once, glanced about him quickly, and with annoyance, when he found there was another man in the room. but the instant monroe's face was seen by him, he uttered an exclamation of pleasure. "by jove! captain jack?" and he turned to him eagerly, after noting that pluto had left the door. "i don't think i know you, sir, though you evidently know one of my names," and his tone was not particularly cordial as he eyed the stranger. "don't you remember the night run you made on the yacht _marquise_, last march?" and the man's tone was low and hurried. "i had no beard then, which makes a difference. this trip is not quite so important, but has been more annoying. i've been followed, have doubled like a hare for hours, and don't believe i've thrown them off the track after all. i have a message to deliver; if i can't see madame alone at once you get it to her." "can't do it; don't want to see it!" and monroe's tone was quick and decided as the man's own. "i am on parole." "parole!" and the stranger looked at him skeptically. "look here, you are evidently working with madame, and afraid to trust me, but it's all right. i swear it is! i destroyed the message when i saw i was followed, but i know the contents, and if you will take it--" "you mistake. i have absolutely no knowledge of madame's affairs at present." "then you won't take it?" and the man's tones held smothered rage. "so, when put to the test, captain jack monroe is afraid to risk what thousands are risking for the cause, at the front and in secret--a life!" "it is just as well not to say 'afraid,' my good fellow," and monroe's words were a trifle colder, a shade more deliberate. "do you know what a parole means? i excuse your words because of your present position, which may be desperate. if you are her friend i will do what i can to save you; but the contents of the dispatch i refuse to hear." judithe entered the door as he spoke, and came forward smilingly. "certainly; it was not intended that you should. this is the captain of my yacht, and his messages only interest me." "madame caron!" and monroe's tones were imploring, "consider where you are. think of the risks you run!" "risks?" and she made a little gesture of disdain. she felt so much stronger now that the suspense was over--now that the message was really here. "risks are fashionable just now, monsieur, and i always follow the fashions." he shook his head hopelessly; words were of no use. he turned away, and remembering that he still held the slip with her account on, he halted and handed it to the stranger, who was nearest him. "i presume these figures were meant for the master of your yacht," he remarked, without looking at her, and passed out on the veranda, where he halted at sight of masterson running up the steps, and the dusty rider close behind. judithe had seated herself at the desk and picked up the pen. but as monroe stepped out on the veranda she turned impatiently: "the despatch?" and she held out her hand. "i was followed--i read and destroyed it." "its contents?" "too late, madame," he remarked, in a less confidential tone, as he laid the slip monroe had given him on the desk. he had seen masterson at the door and with him the other rider! judithe did not raise her head. she was apparently absorbed in her task of addressing an envelope. "i will speak with you directly," she said, carelessly sealing the letter. he bowed and stood waiting, respectfully. glancing up, she saw captain masterson, who had entered from the veranda, and bestowed on him a careless, yet gracious smile. pluto brought the mail bag in from the hall, and she dropped the letter in, also a couple of papers she took from the top of the desk. "there, that is all. make haste, please, pluto," and she glanced at the clock. "i should not like that letter to miss the mail; it is important." "yes'm, i gwine right away now," and he turned to the door, when masterson stepped before him, and to his astonishment, took the bag from his hand. "you can't take this with you," he said, in a tone of authority. "go tell colonel mcveigh he is needed here on business most important." pluto stared at him in stupid wonder, and judithe arose from her chair. "go, by all means, pluto," she said, quietly, "captain masterson's errand is, no doubt, more important than a lady's could be," and she moved towards the door. "i apologize, madame caron, for countermanding your orders," said masterson, quickly, "but circumstances make it necessary that no person and no paper leave this room until this man's identity is determined," and he pointed to the messenger. "do you know him?" "certainly i know him; he is in my employ, the sailing master of my yacht." pluto came in again and announced, "mahs kenneth not in the house; he gone somewhere out to the quarters." masterson received the news with evident annoyance. there was a moment of indecision as he glanced from the stranger to monroe, who had sauntered through the open window, and across to judithe, who gave him one glance which he interpreted to mean she wished he was somewhere else. but he only smiled and--remained. "there is only one thing left for me to do in colonel mcveigh's absence," said masterson, addressing the group in general, "and that is to investigate this affair myself, as every minute's delay may mean danger. madame caron, we are forced to believe this man is a spy." judithe smiled incredulously, and he watched her keenly as he continued: "more, he is associated with a clever french creole called louise trouvelot, who says she is your maid and who is at present under surveillance in savannah, and they both are suspected of being only agents for a very accomplished spy, who has been doing dangerous work in the south for many months. i explain so you will comprehend that investigation is necessary. this man," and he pointed to the other stranger, who now stepped inside, "has followed him from the coast under special orders." "what a dangerous character you have become!" said judithe, turning to her messenger with an amused smile. "i feared that beard would make you look like a pirate, but i never suspected _this_ of you--and you say," she added, turning to masterson, "that my poor maid is also under suspicion? it is ridiculous, abominable! i must see to it at once. the girl will be frightened horribly among such evidences of your southern chivalry," and she shrugged her shoulders with a little gesture of disdain. "and what, pray, do you intend doing with my sailor here?" the man had been staring at masterson as though astounded at the accusations. but he did not speak, and the confederate agent never took his eyes off him. "ask him his name," he suggested, softly, to masterson, who took paper and pencil from the desk and handed it to the suspect. "write your name there," he said, and when it was quickly, good naturedly done, the self-appointed judge read it and turned to judithe. "madame caron, will you please tell me this man's name?" and the messenger himself stared when she replied, haughtily: "no, captain masterson, i will not!" "ah, you absolutely refuse, madame?" "i do; you have accused my employe of being a spy, but your attitude suggests that it is not he, but myself, whom you suspect." "madame, you cannot comprehend the seriousness of the situation," and masterson had difficulty in keeping his patience. "every one he speaks with, everything concerning him is of interest. these are war times, madame caron, and the case will not admit of either delays or special courtesies. i shall have to ask you for the paper he placed in your hands as i entered the room." judithe picked up the paper without a word and reached it to him, with the languid air of one bored by the entire affair. he glanced at it and handed it back. as he did so he perceived an unfinished letter on the desk. in a moment his suspicions were aroused; that important letter in the mail bag! "you did not complete the letter you were writing?" "no," and she lifted it from the desk and held it towards him. "you perceive! i was so careless as to blot the paper; do you wish to examine that?" his face flushed at the mockery of her tone and glance. he felt it more keenly, that the eyes of monroe were on him. the task before him was difficult enough without that additional annoyance. "no, madame," he replied, stiffly, "but the situation is such that i feel justified in asking the contents of the envelope you sealed and gave to the servant." "but that is a private letter," she protested, as he took it from the mail bag; "it can be of no use to any government or its agents." "that can best be determined by reading it, madame. it certainly cannot go out in this mail unless it is examined." "by you?--oh!" and judithe put out her hand in protest. "captain masterson!" "sir!" and masterson turned on monroe, who had spoken for the first time. as he did so judithe deliberately leaned forward and snatched the letter from his hand. "you shall not read it!" she said, decidedly, and just then evilena and her brother came along the veranda, and with them delaven. judithe moved swiftly to the window before any one else could speak. "colonel mcveigh, i appeal to you," and involuntarily she reached out her hand, which he took in his as he entered the room. "this--gentleman--on some political pretense, insists that i submit to such examinations as spies are subject to. i have been accused in the presence of these people, and in their presence i demand an apology for this attempt to examine my private, personal letters." "captain masterson!" and the blue steel of mcveigh's eyes flashed in anger and rebuke. but masterson, strong in his assurance of right, held up his hand. "you don't understand the situation, colonel. that man is suspected of being the assistant to a most dangerous, unknown spy within our lines. he has been followed from beaufort by a confederate secret service agent, whom he tried to escape by doubling on the road, taking by-ways, riding fully twenty miles out of his course, to reach this point unobserved." for the first time the suspected man spoke, and it was to judithe. "that is quite true, madame. i mean that i rode out of my way. but the reason of it is that i came over the road for the first time; there were no sign-boards up, and my directions had not been explicit enough to prevent me losing my way. that is my only excuse for not being here earlier. i am not landsman enough to make my way through the country roads and timber." "you perceive, colonel mcveigh, the man is in my employ, and has come here by my orders," said judithe, with a certain impatience at the density of the accuser. "that should be credential enough," and mcveigh's tone held a distinct reprimand as he frowned at masterson's senseless accusation, but that officer made a gesture of protest. he was being beaten, but he did not mean to give up without a hard fight. "colonel, there were special reasons for doubt in the matter. madame caron, apparently, does not know even the man's name. i asked him to write it--here it is," and he handed mcveigh the paper. "i asked her to name him--she refused!" "yes; i resented the manner and reason for the question," assented judithe; "but the man has been the master of my yacht for over a year, and his name is pierson--john t. pierson." "correct," and mcveigh glanced at the paper on which the name was written. "will you also write the name of madame caron's yacht, mr. pierson?" and he handed him a book and pencil. "pardon me," and he smiled reassuringly at judithe, "this is not the request of suspicion, but faith." he took the book from pierson and glanced at the open page and then at her--"the name of your yacht is?--" "_the marquise_," she replied, with a little note of surprise in her voice, as she smiled at evilena, who had slipped to her side, and understood the smile. evilena and she had made plans for a season of holidays on that same yacht, as soon as the repairs were made. colonel mcveigh tossed the book indignantly on the table. "thank you, madame! captain masterson, this is the most outrageous thing i ever knew an officer to be guilty of! you have presumed to suspect a lady in my house--the guest of your superior officer, and you shall answer to me for it! mr. pierson, you are no longer under suspicion here, sir. and you," he added, turning to the confederate secret agent, "can report at once to your chief that spies are not needed on the mcveigh plantation." "colonel mcveigh, if you had seen what i saw--" "madame caron's word would have been sufficient," interrupted mcveigh, without looking at him. and judithe held out the letter. "i am quite willing you should see what he saw," she said, with a curious smile. "he saw me, after the arrival of mr. pierson, seal an envelope leaving him in ignorance of its contents. the seal is yet unbroken--will you read it?" "you do not suppose i require proof of your innocence?" he asked, refusing the letter, and looking at her fondly as he dare in the presence of the others. "but i owe it to myself to offer the proof now," she insisted, "and at the same time i shall ask mr. pierson to offer himself for personal search if captain masterson yet retains suspicion of his honesty;" she glanced towards pierson, who smiled slightly, and bowed without speaking. then she turned to delaven, who had been a surprised onlooker of the scene. "dr. delaven, in the cause of justice, may i ask you to examine the contents of this letter?" and she tore open the envelope and offered it. "anything in the wide world to serve you, madame la marquise," he answered, with a shade more than usual of deference in his manner, as he took it. "are the contents to be considered professionally, that is, confidentially?" she had taken evilena by the hand, bowed slightly to the group, and had moved to the door, when he spoke. monroe, who had watched every movement as he stood there in a fever of suspense for her sake, drew a breath of relief as she replied: "oh, no! be kind enough to read it aloud, or captain masterson may include you in the dangerous intrigues here," and, smiling still, she passed out with evilena to the lawn. but a few seconds elapsed, when a perfect shout of laughter came from the library. the special detective did not share in it, for he thrust his hands into his pockets with a curse, and masterson turned to him with a frowning, baffled stare--an absolutely crestfallen manner, as he listened to the following, read in delaven's best style: "to madame smith, "mobile, ala.: "the pink morning gown is perfect, but i am in despair over the night robes! i meant you to use the lace, not the embroidery, on them; pray change them at once, and send at the same time the flounced lawn petticoats if completed. i await reply. "judithe de caron." chapter xxv. "certainly, i apologize," and masterson looked utterly crushed by his mistaken zeal; "apologize to every one concerned, collectively and individually." even mcveigh felt sorry for his humiliation, knowing how thoroughly honest he was, how devoted to the cause; and mrs. mcveigh was disconsolate over "loyal, blundering phil masterson," whom, she could not hope, would remain for the party after what had occurred, and she feared judithe would keep to her room--who could blame her? such a scene was enough to prostrate any woman. but it did not prostrate judithe. she sent for mrs. mcveigh, to tell her there must on no account be further hostilities between colonel mcveigh and captain masterson. "it was all a mistake," she insisted. "captain masterson no doubt only did his duty when presented with the statements of the secret service man; that the statements were incorrect was something captain masterson could not, of course, know, and she appreciated the fact that, being a foreigner, she was, in his opinion, possibly, more likely to be imposed upon by servants who were not so loyal to the south as she herself was known to be." all this she said in kindly excuse, and mrs. mcveigh thought her the most magnanimous creature alive. her only anxiety over the entire affair appeared to be concerning her maid louise, who, also, was suffering the suspicion attaching to foreigners who were non-residents; it was all very ridiculous, of course, but would necessitate her going personally to savannah. she could not leave so faithful a creature in danger. mrs. mcveigh prevailed upon her to send word with mr. pierson to the authorities, and remain herself for two days longer--until kenneth and his men left for the front, which judithe consented to do. masterson, who for the first time in his life found the mcveighs lacking in cordiality to him (evilena, even, disposed to look on him as dead and buried so far as she was concerned), felt his loyal heart go out to gertrude, who was the only one of them all who frankly approved, and who was plainly distressed at the idea of him going at once to join his company. "don't go, phil," she said, earnestly; "something is wrong here--terribly wrong; i can't accuse anyone in particular--i can't even guess what it really means, but, phil," and she glanced around her cautiously before putting the question, "what possible reason could madame caron and captain monroe have for pretending they met here as strangers, when it was not a fact?" whereupon gertrude told him of her discovery in that direction. "i can't, of course, mention it to kenneth or mrs. mcveigh, now," she whispered; "they are so infatuated with her, kenneth in particular. but i do hope you will put aside your personal feelings; make any and every sort of apology necessary, but remain right here until you see what it all means. you may prove in the end that you were not entirely mistaken today. what do you think of it?" think! his thoughts were in a whirl. if madame caron and captain monroe were secretly friends it altered the whole affair. monroe, whose conduct on arrest was unusual; who had a parole which might, or might not, be genuine; who had come there as by accident just in time to meet pierson; who had been in the room alone with pierson before madame caron came down the stairs--he knew, for he had been in sight when she crossed the hall. he had been a fool--right in theory, but wrong as to the individual. he would remain at the terrace, and he would start on a new trail! mrs. mcveigh was very glad he would remain; she believed implicitly in his profound regret, and had dreaded lest the question be recalled between the two men after they had gone to the front; but, if phil remained their guest, she hoped the old social relations would be completely restored, and she warned evilena to be less outspoken in regard to her own opinions. so, captain masterson remained, and remained to such purpose that during the brief hour of mr. pierson's stay he was watched very closely, and the watcher was disappointed that no attempt was made at a private interview with captain monroe, who very plainly (masterson thought, ostentatiously) showed himself in a rather unsocial mood, walking thoughtfully alone on the lawn, and making no attempt to speak, even with madame caron. pierson had a brief interview with her, rendered the more brief that he was conscious of masterson's orderly lounging outside the window, but plainly within hearing, and the presence of mrs. mcveigh, who was all interest and sympathy concerning louise. when he said: "don't be at all disturbed over the work to be done, madame; there is plenty of time in which to complete everything," the others present supposed, of course, he referred to the repairs on the yacht; and when he said, in reply to her admonitions, "no fear of me losing the road again, i shall arrive tonight," they supposed, of course, he referred to his arrival at the coast. judithe knew better; she knew it meant his return, and more hours of uncertainty for her. colonel mcveigh helped to keep those hours from dragging by following up his love-making with a proposal of marriage, which she neither accepted or declined, but which gave her additional food for thought. all the day pluto brooded over that scene in the library. he was oppressed by the dread of harm to madame caron if some one did not at once acquaint her with the fact that the real spy was madame's maid, who had fled for fear of recognition by the lorings. he had been curious as to what motive had been strong enough to bring her back to the locality so dangerous to her freedom. he was puzzled no longer--he knew. but, how to tell madame caron? how could a nigger tell a white lady that story of rhoda and rhoda's mother? and if part was told, all must be told. he thought of telling dr. delaven, who already knew the history of margeret, but dr. delaven was a friend to the lorings, and how was a nigger to know what a white man's honor would exact that he do in such a case? and pluto was afraid to ask it. instinctively his trust turned to the blue uniformed "linkum soldier." no danger of him telling the story of the runaway slave to the wrong person. and he was madame caron's friend. pluto had noted how he stepped beside her when masterson brought his accusation against her, or her agent, pierson. monroe had been a sort of divinity to him from the moment the officer in blue had walked up the steps of the terrace, and pluto's admiration culminated in the decision that he was the one man to warn madame caron of her maid's identity without betraying it to any other. the lady who caused all this suppressed anxiety was, apparently, care-free herself, or only disturbed slightly over the report concerning louise. she knew the girl was in no real danger, but she knew, also, that at any hint of suspicion louise would be in terror until joined by her mistress. she heard matthew loring had sent over for judge clarkson to arrange some business affairs while kenneth was home, and despite mrs. mcveigh's statement that they neither bought nor sold slaves, she fancied she knew what one of the affairs must be. judge clarkson, however, was not at home--had been called across the country somewhere on business, but aunt sajane sent word that they would certainly be over in the evening and would come early, if gideon returned in time. but he did not. several of the guests arrived before them; colonel mcveigh was employed as host, and the business talk had to be deferred until the following morning. altogether, the sun went down on a day heavy with threats and promises. but whatever the rest experienced in that atmosphere of suppressed feeling, kenneth mcveigh was only responsive to the promises; all the world was colored by his hopes! and monroe, who saw clearly what the hopes were, and who thought he saw clearly what the finale would be, had little heart for the festivities afoot--wished himself anywhere else but on the hospitable plantation of the mcveighs, and kept at a distance from the charming stranger who had bewitched the master of it. twilight had fallen before pluto found the coveted opportunity of speaking with him alone. monroe was striding along the rose arbor, smoking an after-supper cigar, when he was suddenly confronted by the negro who had questioned him about the federal policy as to slavery. he had been running along the hedge in a stooping position so as not to be seen from the windows of the dining room, where the other servants were working, and when he gained the shadows of an oleander tree, straightened up and waited. "well," remarked monroe, as he witnessed this maneuver, "what is it?" pluto looked at him steadily for an instant, and then asked, cautiously: "mahs captain, you a sure enough friend of madame caron?" "'sure enough' friend--what do you mean?" "i mean madame caron gwine to have trouble if some sure enough friend don't step in an' tell her true who the spy is they all talk 'bout today." "indeed?" said monroe, guardedly; his first thought was one of suspicion, lest it be some trick planned by masterson. "yes, sah; i find out who that woman spy is, but ain't no one else knows! i can't tell a white lady all that story what ain't noways fitten' fo' ladies to listen to, but--but somebody got to tell her, somebody that knows jest how much needs tellen', an' how much to keep quiet--somebody she trusts, an' somebody what ain't no special friend o' the lorings. fo' god's sake, mahsa captain, won't yo' be that man?" monroe eyed him narrowly for an instant, and then tossed away the cigar. "no fooling about this business, mind you," he said, briefly; "what has madame caron to do with any spy? and what has matthew loring?" "madame not know she got _anything_ to do with her," insisted pluto, eagerly, "that gal come heah fo' maid to madame caron, an' then ole nelse (what lorings use to own) he saw her, an' that scare her plum off the place. an' the reason why mahsa loring is in it is 'cause that fine french maid is a runaway slave o' his--or maybe she b'long to miss gertrude, _i_ don' know rightly which it is. any how, she's margeret's chile an' ought to a knowed more'n to come a 'nigh to loring even if she is growd up. that why i know fo' suah she come back fo' some special spy work--what else that gal run herself in danger fo' nothen'?" "you'd better begin at the beginning of this story, if it has one," suggested monroe, who could see the man was intensely in earnest, "and i should like to know why you are mixing madame caron in the affair." "she bought my baby fo' me--saved him from the trader, mahsa captain," and pluto's voice trembled as he spoke. "yo' reckon i evah fo'get that ar? an' now seems like as how she's got mixed up with troubles, an' i come to yo' fo' help 'cause yo' a linkum man, an' 'cause yo' her frien'." it was twenty minutes later before pluto completed his eager, hurried story, and at its finish monroe knew all old nelse had told delaven, and more, too, for confidential servants learn many hidden things, and rosa--afterwards pluto's wife--knew why margeret's child was sent to the larue estate for training. mistress larue, whose conscience was of the eminently conventional order, seldom permitting her to contest any decision of her husband, yet did find courage to complain somewhat of the child's charge and her ultimate destination--to complain, not on moral, but on financial grounds--fully convinced that so wealthy a man as matthew loring could afford to pay more for her keeping than the sum her husband had agreed to, and that the youth, kenneth mcveigh, to whose estate the girl was partly sold, could certainly afford more of recompense than his guardian had agreed to. pluto told that portion of the story implicating his master with considerable reluctance, yet felt forced to tell it all, that monroe should be impressed with the necessity of absolute secrecy to every one except madame caron, and she, of course, must not hear that part of it. "name o' god, no!" burst out pluto, in terror of what such a revelation would mean. "what yo' reckon madame caron think o' we all ef she done heah _that_? don't reckon his own ma evah heard tell a whisper o' that ar; all mahs matt loring's doin's, that sale was--_must_ a been! mahs ken wan't only a boy then--not more'n fifteen, so yo' see--" monroe made no comment, though he also had a vision of what it would mean if madame caron--she of all women!--should hear this evidently true story just as pluto related it. he walked along the rose hedge and back again in silence, the colored man regarding him anxiously; finally he said: "all right, my man. i'll speak to madame and be careful not to tell her too much. you are all right, pluto; you did right to come to me." some one called pluto from the window. he was about to go when monroe asked: "what about that picture you said your wife had of the girl? madame caron may not be easy to convince. you'd better let me have it to show her. is it a good likeness?" "'fore god i don' know! i only reckon it is, 'cause nelse took her, on sight, fo' margeret's ghost, which shows it must be the plain image of her! i done been so upset since i got back home with zekal i nevah had a minute to look ovah rosa's b'longens', but the likeness is in that bundle somewhere; rosa alles powerful careful o' that locket thing, an' kep' it put away; don't mind as i evah seen it but once, jest when we fust married. i'd a clean fo'got all 'bout it, only fo' an accident--an' that's the woman now it was painted from." he pointed to a window where margeret stood outlined for an instant against the bright background. "don't look more like her now, i reckon," he continued, "all her trouble must a' changed her mightily, fo' the ole folks do say she was counted a beauty once. little rhoda went a'most crazy when some one stole the locket, so rosa said; then by and by the gal what took it got scared--thought it was a hoodoo--an' fetched it back, but rhoda gone away then. my rosa took it an' kep' it faithful, waiten' fo' that chile to come back, but she nevah come back while rosa lived." monroe was staring still at the figure of margeret, seen dimly, now, through the window. "look here!" he said, sharply, "if the old man recognized the likeness, how comes it that the mother herself did not see it?" "why, margeret she not get here till nex' day after madame caron's maid start down the river to take the cars fo' savannah," explained pluto. "then miss gertrude come a visiten' an' fetch margeret along. yo' see, sah, that woman done been made think her chile dead a long time ago, an' when margeret went clean 'stracted the word went down to larues that she dead or dyen'--one! any way my rosa nevah know'd no different till larues moved back from georgy, so there wan't no one heah to 'dentify her, an' there wan't no one heah to let that gal know she _had_ a liven mammy." again caroline called pluto. "go on," said monroe, "but get me the picture soon as you can. i leave in the morning." "i be right heah with it in hour's time," promised pluto; "don' reckon i can slip away any sooner, a sight o' quality folks a' comen'." chapter xxvi. as monroe entered the hall judithe came down the stairs, a dainty vision in palest rose. she wore armlets and girdle of silver filagree, a silver comb in the dark tresses, and large filagree loops in her ears gave the beautiful face a half-oriental character. admire her though he must, he felt an impatience with her, a wonder that so beautiful a being, one so blest with all the material things of life, should forsake harmony, home, and her own land, for the rude contests where men fought, and plotted, and died--died ingloriously sometimes, for the plots and intrigues through which she claimed to find the only escape from ennui. she saw him, hesitated an instant, and then came towards him, with a suggestion of daring in her eyes. "i might as well hear the worst, first as last," she said, taking his arm. "is not the veranda more cool than in here? come, we shall see. i prefer to be out of hearing of the people while you lecture me for today's mishap." she glanced up at him with a pretense of dread such as a child might show; she was pleased to be alluringly gracious, but he could feel that she was more nervous than she had ever shown herself before--the strain was telling on her. her beautiful eyes were not so slumbrous as usual; they were brilliant as from some inward fever, and, though she smiled and met his sombre gaze with a challenge, she smothered a sigh under her light words. "i shan't lecture you, madame caron; i have no right to interfere with what you call your--amusements," and he glanced down at her, grimly; "but i leave in the morning because by remaining longer i might gain knowledge which, in honor, i should feel bound to report." "to colonel--or, shall we say, general--mcveigh?" he bent his head, and answered: "i have given you warning. he is my friend." "and i?" she asked, glancing at him with a certain archness. he looked down at her, but did not speak. "and i?" she repeated. "no," he said, after a pause. "you, madame, would have to be something more, or something less. the fates have decreed that it be less--so," he made a little gesture dismissing the subject. "pardon me, but i did not mean to attack you in that fashion. i came to look for you to ask you a question relating to the very pretty, very clever, maid you had in new orleans, and whom, i hear, you brought with you on your visit here." "oh! you are curious as to her--and you wish me to answer questions?" "if you please, though it really does not matter to me. are you aware that the woman was a runaway slave, and liable to recapture in this particular vicinity?" "in this particular vicinity?" she repeated, questioningly. "yes, if matthew loring should once get suspicion of the fact that your maid was really his girl rosa--no, rhoda--it would be an awkward fact allied to the episode here today," and he made a gesture towards the library window they were just passing. "come, we will go down the steps," she suggested. they did so, and were promenading under the trees, lantern lit, on the lawn, when colonel mcveigh came out on the veranda and felt a momentary envy of monroe, who was free from a host's duties. they were clear of the steps and of probable listeners before judithe asked: "where did you get this information?" "from a slave who wanted you warned that you without knowing it, are probably harboring the spy whom captain masterson spoke of today." "ah, a slave?" she remarked, thoughtfully; and the curious, intense gaze of margeret was recalled to her, only to be followed by the memory of pluto's anxiety that louise should leave before the arrival of the lorings; it was, then, without doubt, pluto who gave the warning; but she remembered zekal, and felt she had little to be anxious over. "you probably are not aware," he continued, "what a very serious affair it is considered here to assist in hiding a slave of that sort under assumed names or occupations. but if it is discovered it would prove ruinous to you just now." "in three days i shall be out of the country," she answered, briefly. "i go down to savannah, secure louise from this blunder--for there is really nothing to be proven against her as a spy--and then, farewell, or ill, to carolina. i do not expect to enter it again. my arrangements are all made. nothing has been forgotten. as to my good louise, your informer has not been made acquainted with all the facts. it is true she was a georgian slave, but is so no longer. for over a year she has been in possession of the papers establishing her freedom. her own money, and a clever lawyer, arranged all that without any trouble whatever. what monsieur loring would do if he knew i had a maid whose name was assumed, i neither know nor care. he could not identify her as the girl rhoda larue, even if he saw her. his sight has failed until he could not distinguish you from colonel mcveigh if across the room. i learned that fact through madame mcveigh before leaving mobile, so, you perceive, i have not risked so much in making the journey with my pretty maid; and i shall risk no more when i make my adieus the day after tomorrow." she laughed, and looked up in his face. he looked down in her's, but he did not laugh. "and the estate you have just purchased in order to enjoy this eden-like plantation life?" "the purpose for which it was purchased will be carried out quite as well without my presence," she said, quietly. "i never meant to live there." "well, that beats me!" he said, halting, and looking squarely down at her. "you spend thousands to establish yourself in the heart of a seceding country, and gain the confidence of the natives, and then toss it all aside as though it were only a trifle! you must have spent fortunes from your own pocket to help the federals!" "so your president was good enough to say in the letter i tried to show you--and did not," she replied, and then smiled, as she added, "but you are mistaken, captain monroe; it was only one fortune spent, and i will be recompensed." "when?" "when that long-talked-of emancipation is announced." the bright music of a mazurka stole out of the open windows, and across the level could be seen a blaze of fat pine torches tied to poles and shedding lustre and black pitch over the negro quarters--they also were celebrating "mahs ken's" return. above the dreamy system of the parlor dances they could hear at times the exuberant calls and shouts of laughter where the dark people made merry. judge clarkson, who was descending the steps, halted to listen, and drew monroe's attention to it. "happy as children they are, over there tonight," he remarked. "most contented people on earth, i do believe." he addressed some gallant words to judithe, and then turned to monroe. "mr. loring has been inquiring for you, captain monroe. you understand, of course, that you are somewhat of a lion and one we cannot afford to have hidden. he is waiting to introduce you to some of our carolina friends, who appreciate you, sir, for the protection shown a daughter of the south, and from your magnanimous care of a carolina boy this past month--oh, your fame has preceded you, and i assure you, sir, you have earned for yourself a hearty welcome." evilena joined them, followed by delaven, who asked for a dance and was flouted because he did not wear a uniform. she did present him with a scarlet flower from her boquet, with the remark that if decked with something bright he might be a little less suggestive of funerals, and, attaching herself to monroe, she left to look up matthew loring. delaven looked ruefully at the scarlet flower. "it's a poor substitute for herself," he decided, "but, tell me now, marquise, if you were fathoms deep in love, as i am this minute, and had so much of encouragement as a flower flung at you, what would you advise as the next move in cupid's game?" she assumed a droll air of serious contemplation for an instant, and then replied, in one word: "propose." "i'll do it," he decided; "ah, you are a jewel of a woman to give a man courage! i'll lay siege to her before i'm an hour older. judge, isn't it you would lend a boy a hand in a love affair? i'm bewitched by one of the fair daughters of the south you are so proud of; i find i am madly jealous of every other lad who leads her onto the dancing floor this night, but every one of them has dollars where i have dimes," and he sighed like a furnace and glanced from one to the other with a comical look of distress; "so is it any wonder i need all the bracing up my friends can give me?" "my dear sir," said the judge, genially, "our girls are not mercenary. you are a gentleman, so need fear comparison with none! you have an active brain, a high degree of intelligence, a profession through which you may win both wealth and honors for the lady in question--so why procrastinate?" "judge, you are a trump! with you to back me up with that list of advantages, i'll dare the fates." "i am your obedient servant, sir. i like your enthusiasm--your determination to put the question to the test. i approve of early marriages, myself; procrastination and long engagements are a mistake, sir--a mistake!" "they are," agreed delaven, with a decision suggestive of long experience in such matters. "faith, you two are life preservers to me. i feel light as a cork with one of you on each side--though it was doleful enough i was ten minutes ago! you see, judge, the lady who is to decide my fate has valued your friendship and advice so long that i count on you--i really do, now, and if you'd just say a good word to her--" "a word! my dear sir, my entire vocabulary is at your service in an affair of the heart." the judge beamed on delaven and bowed to madame caron as though including her in the circle where love's sceptre is ever potent. "faith, when america becomes a monarchy, i'll vote for you to be king," and delaven grasped the hand of the judge and shook it heartily; "and if you can only convince mrs. mcveigh that i am all your fancy has pictured me, i'll be the happiest man in carolina tonight." "what!" judge clarkson dropped his hand as though it had burned him, and fairly glared at the self-confessed lover. "i would that!--the happiest man in carolina, barring none," said the reckless irishman, so alive with his own hopes that he failed to perceive the consternation in the face of the judge; but judithe saw it, and, divining the cause, laughed softly, while delaven continued: "you see, judge, mrs. mcveigh will listen to you and--" "young man!" began clarkson, austerely, but at that moment the lady in question appeared on the veranda and waved her fan to delaven. "doctor, as a dancing man your presence in the house would be most welcome," she said, coming slowly down the steps towards them. "madame, both my feet and my heart are at your disposal," he said, hastening to meet her, and passing on to find some unpartnered damsels she suggested. "what a charming young man he is," remarked their hostess, "and exceedingly skillful in his profession for so young a physician. don't you consider him very bright, judge?" "i, madame--i?" and judithe retired, convulsed at the situation; "on my word, i wouldn't trust him to doctor a sick cat!" mrs. mcveigh looked astonished at the intensity of his words and was fairly puzzled to see judithe laughing on the seat under the tree. "why, judge! i'm actually surprised! he is most highly esteemed professionally, and in paris--" "pardon me, but i presume his hair was the same color in paris that it is here," said the judge, coldly, "and i have never in my life known a red-headed man who had any sense, or--" "oh!" mrs. mcveigh glanced slowly from the judge to judithe and then smiled; "i remember one exception, judge, for before your hair became white it was--well, auburn, at least." the judge ran his fingers through the bushy curls referred to. the man usually so eloquent and ready of speech, was checkmated. he could only stammer something about exceptions to rules, and finally said: "you will probably remember, however, that my hair was very dark--a dark red, in fact, a--a--brown red." judithe, to hide her amusement, had moved around to the other side of the tree circled by the rustic seat. her hostess turned one appealing glance towards her, unseen by the judge, who had forgotten all but the one woman before him. "no matter if he had hair all colors of the rainbow he is not worthy of you, madame," he blurted out, and mrs. mcveigh took a step away from him in dismay; in all her knowledge of judge clarkson, she had never seen him show quite so intense a dislike for any one. "why, judge! what is the matter tonight?" she asked, in despair. "you mean dr. delaven; not worthy of me?" "he aspires to your hand," blurted out the judge, angrily. "such an ambition is a worthy one; it is one i myself have cherished for years, but you must confess i had the courage to ask your hand in person." "yes, judge; but--" "this fellow, on the contrary, has had the affrontery to come to me--to me! with the request that i use my influence in negotiating a matrimonial alliance with you!" mrs. mcveigh stared at him a moment, and then frankly laughed; she suspected it was some joke planned by evilena. but the indignation of the judge was no joke. "well, judge, when i contemplate a matrimonial alliance, i can assure you that no one's influence would have quite so much weight as your own;" she had ascended the steps and was laughing; at the top she leaned over and added, "no matter who you employ your eloquence for, judge;" and with that parting shot she disappeared into the hall, leaving him in puzzled doubt as to her meaning. but the question did not require much consideration. the remembrance of the smile helped clear it up wonderfully. he clasped his hands under his coat tails, threw back his shoulders, walked the length of the veranda and back with head very erect. he was a very fine figure of a man. "the irishman's case is quashed," he said, nodding emphatically and confidentially to the oleander bush; "the fact that a woman, and that woman a widow, remembers the color of the plaintiff's hair for twenty years, should convince the said plaintiff if he is a man possessed of a legal mind, that his case is still on the calendar. i'll go and ask for the next dance." he had scarcely reached the steps when judithe saw a flutter of white where the shadows were heaviest under the dense green shrubbery. she glanced about her; no one was in hearing. the veranda, for the instant, was deserted, and past the windows the dancers were moving. the music of stringed instruments and of laughter floated out to her. she saw masterson in the hallway; he was watching monroe. she saw kenneth mcveigh speaking to his mother and glancing around inquiringly; was he looking for her? she realized that her moments alone now would be brief, and she moved swiftly under the trees to where the signal had been made. a man had been lying there flat to the ground. he arose as she approached, and she saw he was dressed in confederate uniform, and that he wore no beard--it was pierson. "why did you leave the place without seeing me again?" she demanded. "this suspense seems to me entirely unnecessary." "it was the best i could do, madame," he answered, hurriedly. "masterson, unknown to the mcveighs, had spies within hearing of every word between us, and to write was too great a risk. his man followed me beyond the second fortification." "and you eluded him?" "no; i left him," answered pierson, grimly. "i wore his uniform back--he did not need it." judithe drew a deep, shuddering breath, but made no comment. "give me the contents of the destroyed despatch," was all she said. "mcveigh received official notification of promotion today. important instructions were included as to the movements of his brigade. these instructions must be received by us tonight in order to learn their plans for this wing of the army." "and you depend on me?" "no other way to secure them quickly, but some of our men have been landed north of beaufort. they are under cover in the swamp and cane brakes awaiting your commands--so if it can't be done quietly there is another way--a raid for any purpose you may suggest, and incidentally these instructions would be among the souvenirs from this especial plantation." "colonel mcveigh only remains over tomorrow night. suppose i succeed, how shall i communicate with you or with the detachment of federals?" "i will return tonight after the house is quiet. i shall be in sight of the balcony. you could drop them from there; or, if you have any better plan of your own i will act on it." she could see kenneth on the veranda, and knew he was looking for her. the moments were precious now; she had to think quick. "it may not be possible to secure them tonight; the time is so short; and if not i can only suggest that the commander of the landed troops send a detachment tomorrow, capture colonel mcveigh and captain masterson, and get the papers at the same time. there are also official documents in mcveigh's possession relating to the english commissions for additions to the confederate navy. i must go; they are looking for me. you can trust a black man here called pluto--but do not forget that a detachment of confederates came today to the fortifications below here, don't let our men clash with them; good bye; make no mistake." she moved away as she spoke, and the man dropped back unseen into the shadows as she went smilingly forward to meet the lover, whose downfall she was debating with such cool judgment. and the lover came to meet her with ardent blue eyes aglow. "have you fled to the shadows to avoid us all?" he demanded, and then as he slipped her hand through his arm and looked down in her face, he asked, more tenderly, "or may i think you only left the crowd to think over my audacity." she gave him one fleeting, upward glance, half inviting, half reproving--it would help concentrate his attention until the man in the shadows was beyond all danger of discovery. "you make use of every pretext to avoid me," he continued, "but it won't serve you; no matter what cool things you say now, i can only hear through your words the meaning of those fontainbleau days, and that one day in paris when you loved me and dared to say it. judithe, give me my answer. i thought i could wait until tomorrow, but i can't; you must tell me tonight; you must!" "must?" she drew away from him and leaned against a tall garden vase overrun with clustering vines. they were in the full blaze of light from the windows; she felt safer there where they were likely to be interrupted every minute; the man surely dared not be wildly sentimental in full view of the crowd--which conclusion showed that she was not yet fully aware of what kenneth mcveigh would dare do where a woman--or the woman was in question. "an hour ago you said: 'will you?' now it is: 'you must!'" she said, with a fine little smile. "how quick you are to assume the tone of master, monsieur." "if you said slave, the picture would have been more complete," he answered. "i will obey you in all things except when you tell me to leave you;" he had possessed himself of her hand, under cover of the vines; "it's no use, judithe, you belong to me. i can't let you go from me again; i won't!" all of pleading was in his voice and eyes. moved by some sudden impulse not entirely guileless, she looked full at him and let her hand remain in his. "well, since you really cannot," she murmured. "judithe! you mean it?" and in an instant both his hands were clasping hers. "you are not coquetting with me this time? judithe!" she attempted to draw her hand away, but he bent his head, and kissed the warm palm. margeret who was lighting an extinguished lantern, saw the caress and heard the low, deep tones. she turned and retraced her steps instead of passing them. "do you realize that all who run may read the subject of your discourse?" she asked, raising her brows and glancing after the retreating woman. "let them, the sooner they hear it the better i shall be pleased; come, let us tell my mother; i want to be sure of you this time, my beautiful judithe. what time more fitting than this for the announcement--come!" "what is it you would tell her?" she asked, looking straight ahead of her into the shadows on the lawn. her voice sounded less musical than it had a moment before. her eyes avoided his, and for one unguarded instant the full sculpturesque lips were tense and rigid. "what is it?" he repeated, "why, that i adore you! that you have been the one woman in the world to me ever since i met you first; that i want you for my wife, and that you--confess it again in words, judithe--that you love me." she shook her head slowly, but accompanied that half denial with a bewildering smile. "entirely too much to announce in one evening," she decided; "do you forget they have had other plans for you? we must give your family more time to grow accustomed to me and to--your wishes." "_our_ wishes," he said, correctively, and she dropped her eyes and bent her head in assent. she was adorable in the final surrender. he murmured endearing, caressing words to her, and the warm color merged across her face, and receding, left her a trifle pale. all her indifference had been a pretense--he knew it now, and it strengthened his protests against delay. he drew her away from the steps as the dance ended, and the people came chattering and laughing out from the brilliantly lit rooms. "you talk of haste, but forget that i have waited three years, judithe; remember that, won't you? put that three years to my credit; consider that i wooed you every day of every year, and i would if i had been given the chance! you talk of time as if there were oceans of it for us, and you forget that i have but one more day to be with you--one day; and then separation, uncertainty. i can't leave you like that, now that i know you care for me--i won't." "oh--h!" and she met his look with a little quizzical smile. "you mean to resign your commission for the sake of my society? but i am not sure i should admire you so much then. i am barbarian enough to like a fighter." "i should fight all the better for knowing it was a wife i was leaving behind instead of a sweetheart, judithe; marry me tomorrow!" she made a little gesture of protest, but he clasped her hand in his and held it close to prevent her from repeating it. "why not?" he continued. "no one need know unless you wish; it can be kept secret as the engagement would be. then, wherever the fortunes of war may send me, i can carry with me the certainty of your love. speak to me, judithe! say yes. i have waited three years; i want my wife!" "your wife! _your_--oh!"--and she flung out her hands as though putting the thought away from her. a tear fell on his hand--she was weeping. "judithe, sweetheart!" he murmured, remorsefully. "tomorrow--not tonight," she half whispered. "i must think, so much is to be considered." "no! only one thing is to be considered;" he held her hands and looked in her face, with eyes ardent, compelling; "only one thing, judithe, and that is, do you love me--now?" "now, and from the first day we ever met," she answered, looking up at him; her eyes were like stars glimmering through the mist of late tears. there came to them both the remembrance of that other avowal, behind those plunging horses in the paris boulevard. they had unconsciously repeated the words uttered then. for an instant his arms were about her--such strong, masterful, compelling arms. a wild temptation came to her to remain in that shelter--to let all the world go by with its creeds, its plots, its wars of right and wrong--to live for love, love only, love with him. "my queen!" he whispered, as her head bent in half avoidance of his caresses even while her hand clasped his closely, convulsively, "it has all been of no use; those three years when you kept me away. it is fate that we find each other again. i shall never let you go from me--never! do you hear me, judithe? you are so silent; but words matter little since you belong to me. do you realize it?--that you must belong to me always!" the words over which he lingered, words holding all of hope and happiness to him brought to her a swift revulsion of feeling. she remembered those other human creatures who belonged to him--she remembered-- a moment later and he stood alone in the sweet dusk of the night. she had fairly run from him along the little arbor to the side door, where she vanished unseen by the others. how she was for all her queenly ways! what a creature of moods, and passions, and emotions! the hand on which her tear had fallen he touched to his cheek. why had she wept at his confession of love for her? she had not wept when the same words were spoken on that never-to-be-forgotten day in paris! chapter xxvii. the love affair of colonel mcveigh was not the only one under consideration that evening. delaven was following up the advice of the judge and madame caron to the extent of announcing to mistress mcveigh during a pause in the dance that his heart was heavy, though his feet were light, and that she held his fate in her hands, for he was madly in love, which statement she had time to consider and digest before the quadrille again allowed them to come close enough for conversation, when she asked the meaning of his mystery. "first, let me know, mrs. mcveigh, which you would prefer if you had a choice--to have me for your family physician, or a physician in your family?" she smiled at the excentric question, but as the dance whisked him off just then she waited for the next installment of his confidence. "you must tell me, first, what relationship you seek to establish," she demanded, as he came up for his answer. he looked at her quizzically, and seeing a slight gleam of humor in her fine eyes, he launched into the heart of the question. "what relationship? well, i should say that of husband and wife, if i was not afraid of being premature;" he glanced at her and saw that she was interested and not in the least forbidding. "to be sure, i am poor, while you are wealthy, but i'm willing to overlook that; in fact, i'm willing to overlook anything, and dare all things if you would only consider me favorably--as a son-in-law." "you are actually serious?" "serious, am i--on my faith, it's a life and death affair with me this minute!" "and my little evilena the cause?" "yes, our evilena, who does not feel so small as you may imagine. look at her now. could a dozen seasons give her more confidence in her own powers than she has this minute by reason of those uniformed admirers?--to say nothing of my own case." "_our_ evilena?" and mrs. mcveigh raised her brows inquiringly--"then you have proposed?" "indeed, no! i have not had the courage until tonight; but when i see a lot of lads daft as myself over her, i just whispered in the ear of delaven that he'd better speak quick. but i would not propose without asking your permission." "and if i refused it?" "you could not be so hard-hearted as that?" "but suppose i could--and should?" he caught the gleam of teasing light in her eyes, and smiled back at her: "i should propose just the same!" "well," said evilena's mother, with a combination of amusement and sympathy in her expression, "you may speak to her and let me know the result." "i'd get down on my knees to kiss the toe of your slipper, this minute," he whispered, gratefully, "but the judge would scalp me if i dared; he is eyeing me with suspicion already. as to the result--well, if you hear a serenade in the wee small hours of the night, don't let it disturb you. i've got the guitar and the uniform all ready, and if i fail it will not be because i have overlooked any romantic adjuncts to successful wooing. i'll be under your daughter's window singing 'sweet evilena,' rigged out like a cavalier in a picture-book. i'm wishing i could borrow a feather for the hat." she laughed at the grotesque picture he suggested, but asked what he meant by the uniform, and laughed still more when he told her he was going to borrow one for the occasion from kenneth, as evilena had announced her scorn for all ununiformed men, and he did not mean to risk failure in a dress suit. later he had an idea of applying for a uniform of his own as surgeon in the army. "if you could introduce _that_ into your serenade i have no fear my little girl would refuse you," said mrs. mcveigh, encouragingly, "at least not more than two or three times." on leaving mrs. mcveigh he stumbled against masterson, who was in the shadow just outside the window within which monroe was in interested converse with matthew loring and some other residents of the county. he had been deliberately, and, in his own opinion, justifiably, a listener to every sentence advanced by the suspected northerner, whom he felt was imposing on the hospitality of the south only to betray it. earnest as his convictions were he had not yet been able to discern the slightest trace of double intent in any of monroe's remarks, which were, for the most part, of agricultural affairs, foreign affairs, even the possible future of the seminoles in the florida swamp; of everything, in fact, but the very vital question of the day surrounding them, which only tended to confirm his idea that the man was remarkably clever, and he despaired of securing sufficient evidence against him in the brief time at his disposal. he had just arrived at that conclusion when delaven, high-hearted with hope, saw only the stars over his head as he paced the veranda, and turning the corner stumbled on masterson. there was an exclamation, some words of apology, and involuntarily masterson stepped backward into the stream of light from the open window, and monroe, looking around, read the whole situation at a glance. masterson still suspected him, and was listening! monroe frankly laughed and made a little sound, the mere whisper of a whistle, as he met masterson's baffled look with one of cool mockery; it was nonchalant to the verge of insolence, and enraged the southerner, strong in his convictions of right, as a blow could not have done. for a blow a man could strike back, but this mockery! delaven walked on, unconscious of the suppressed feeling between the two. masterson was handicapped by the fact that he dared not again mention his suspicions to the mcveigh family, and he strode down the steps to the lawn, furious at the restraint put upon him, and conscious, now, that surveillance was useless, since the northerner had been put upon his guard. his impatience filled him with rage. he was honest, and he was a fighter, but of what use was that since he had blundered? he had dealt clumsy strokes with both hands, but the other had parried each thrust with a foil. he was worsted--the game was up, but he at least meant to let the interloper know that however clever he might be, there were some people, at least, whom he could not deceive. that was the humor he was in when he saw monroe excuse himself to loring, step through the window, and light a cigar, preparatory to a stroll towards the tryst with pluto. masterson watched him sauntering carelessly down the steps. he had removed the cigar and was whistling very softly, unconsciously, as one who is deep in some quandary, but to masterson it seemed the acme of studious carelessness to ignore his own presence; it seemed insolent as the mocking glance through the window, and it decided him. his shoulders unconsciously squared as he stepped forward. "captain monroe, i want a word with you," and his tone was a challenge in itself. monroe turned his head, slowly, finished the bar he was whistling in a slightly louder tone--loud enough to distinguish that it was "rally 'round the flag," whistled very badly. monroe had evidently little music in his soul, however much patriotism he had in his heart. "only one, i hope," he said, carelessly, with an irritating smile. "you may have to listen to several before you get away from here!" "from--you?" and there was perceptible doubt in the tone; it added to masterson's conviction of his own impotence. he dared not fight the man unless monroe gave the challenge, though it was the one thing he wanted to do with all his heart. "from those in authority over this section," he said, sternly. "ah!--that is a different matter." "you may find it a very serious matter, captain monroe." "oh, no; i shan't find it, i'm not looking for it," and monroe softly resumed, _"the union forever."_ "if you take my advice," began masterson, angrily, "you'll"--but monroe shook his head. "i shan't, so don't mention it," he said, blandly. masterson's wordy anger showed him that he was master of the situation, so he only smiled as he added, "advice, you know, is something everybody gives and nobody takes," and monroe resumed his whistle. "you think yourself cursedly clever," and it was an effort for masterson to keep from striking the cool, insolent face. "you thought so today when madame caron was suspected instead of yourself." "madame caron!" monroe ceased the whistle and looked at him with a momentary frown, which masterson welcomed as a sign of anger. "ah, that touches you, does it?" "only with wonder that you dare speak of her after your failure to make her the victim of your spies today," and monroe's tone was again only contemptuous. "first you arrest me, then accuse madame caron. evidently you are out of your sphere in detective work; it really requires considerable cleverness, you know. yet, if it amuses you--well"--he made a little gesture of indifference and turned away, but masterson stepped before him. "you will learn there is enough cleverness here to comprehend why you came to this plantation a willing prisoner," he said, threateningly. monroe resumed his _"rally once again,"_ and raised his brows inquiringly, "and also why you ignored a former acquaintance with madame caron and had to be introduced. before you are through with this business, captain monroe, you'll whistle a different tune." "oh, no, i shan't; i don't know any other," said monroe, amiably, and sauntered away as some of the guests, with gay good nights, came down the steps. the evening, delightful as it had been, fraught with emotion as it had been, was passing. the late hour reminded monroe that he must no longer delay seeing pluto if he was to see him at all. they had exchanged glances several times, but the black man's duties had kept him occupied every minute, and they had found no opportunity to speak unobserved. judithe stood beside mrs. mcveigh on the veranda exchanging good nights with some of the people, who expected to be her neighbors in the near future, and who were delighted with the prospect. she had been a decided success with the warm-hearted southerners, and had entered the rooms a short time after her interview with her host, so gay, so bright, that he could scarcely believe those brilliant eyes were the ones he had seen tear-wet in the dusk. she had not avoided him, but she had made a tete-a-tete impossible; for all that he could only remember the moment when she had leaned upon his breast and confessed that the love was not all on his side; no after attempt at indifference could erase an iota of that! monroe stopped to look at her, himself unseen, and as she stood there smiling, gracious, the very star of the evening, he thought he had never before seen her so absolutely sparkling. he had always known her beautiful; tonight she was regal beyond comparison. always in the years to follow he thought of her as she stood there that night, radiant, dominant, at the very pinnacle of success in all things. he never again saw her like that. as he passed on he relit the cigar, forgotten during his meeting with masterson, and pluto, who had been on nettles of anxiety to get away from his duties all the evening, seized the opportunity when no one was looking, and followed closely the light of the cigar as it moved along the hedge past the dining room windows. he carried the treasured bag holding the dead rosa's belongings. "couldn't get away a mite sooner, not to save me, mahsa captain," he said, breathlessly; "had to run now to get 'way from them niggahs in the kitchen, who wanted to know what i was toten. i had this here hid in the pantry whah i had no chance to look through it, so if you'll s'cuse me i jest gwine dump em out right heah; the picture case, it's plum down in the bottom; i felt it." monroe smoked in silence while the darky was making the search. he no longer needed the picture in order to convince madame caron of the truth of pluto's story, yet concluded it best that she have possession of so compromising a portrait until her clever maid was out of the country. he could hear colonel mcveigh asking for pluto, and caroline offering information that "pluto jest gone out through the pantry." "you'd better hurry, my man," suggested monroe, "they'll be looking for you." "they will that--folks all gwine home, an' need a sight o' waiten' on; thah's the likeness, mahs captain;" he handed him a small oval frame, commenced crowding the other articles hurriedly back into the bag; "fo' god's sake, be careful o' that; i don' want it to fetch harm to that gal, but i don' allow neither fo' madame caron to be made trouble if i can help it." "you're a faithful fellow; there's a coin in exchange for the picture; you'd better go. i'll see you in the morning." pluto was profuse in his thanks, while monroe hunted for a match with which to view the picture. he struck a light and opened the little closed frame as pluto started for the side door. an instant later he snapped it shut again, and as the darky reached the steps monroe's hand was on his shoulder: "wait a bit," he said, briefly. "you say that is the picture of rhoda's mother? now tell me again what her name is." "who?--margeret? why, her name margeret loring, i reckon, but nelse did say her right name was 'caris--lacaris. retta lacaris what she called when she jest a young gal an' mahs tom loring fust bought her." monroe repeated the name in order to impress it on his memory. he took a pencil and note book out of his pocket. pluto half offered his hand for the little oval frame, for there was enough light where they stood to see it by, but monroe slipped it with the note book into an inner pocket. "the colonel will want you; you had better go," he said, turning away, and walking directly from the house he crossed the lawn out of sight and hearing of the departing guests. all the gay chatter jarred on him, oppressed as he was with the certainty of some unknown calamity overhanging those laughing people on the veranda. what it was he did not know, but he would leave in the morning. he had been gone an hour. he was missed, but no one except masterson took any special notice of it, and he was wary about asking questions, remembering colonel mcveigh's attitude in the morning over the disputed question. but as he was enjoying a final cigar with judge clarkson on the lawn--the judge was the very last to leave and was waiting for his horse--all his suspicions were revived with added strength as mcveigh strode hurriedly across the veranda towards them. "phil, i was looking for you," and his tone betrayed unusual anxiety reflected in his face as he glanced around to see if there were possible listeners. but the rooms on the first floor were deserted--all dark but for a solitary light in the hall. in the upper rooms little gleams stole out from the sleeping rooms where the ladies had retired for the night. "anything wrong, colonel?" asked masterson, speaking in a suppressed tone and meeting him at the foot of the steps. "who is that with you, the judge?" asked mcveigh first. "good! i'm glad you are here. something astounding has occurred, gentlemen. the papers, the instructions you brought today, together with some other documents of importance, have been stolen from my room tonight!" "ah-h!" masterson's voice was scarcely above a whisper. all his suspicions blazed again. now he understood monroe's presence there. "but, my dear boy," gasped the judge, thunderstruck at the news, "your commission stolen? why, how--" "the commission is the least important part of it," answered mcveigh hopelessly. he was pacing back and forth in decided agitation. "the commission was forwarded me with instructions to take charge of the entire division during the temporary absence of the major general commanding." "and you have lost those instructions?" demanded masterson, who realized the serious consequences impending. "yes," and mcveigh halted in his nervous walk, "i have lost those instructions. i have lost the entire plan of movement! it has been stolen from my room--is perhaps now in the hands of the enemy, and i ignorant of the contents! i had only glanced at them and meant to go over them thoroughly tonight. they are gone, and it means failure, court martial, disgrace!" he had dropped hopelessly on the lower step, his face buried in his hands; the contrast to the joy, the absolute happiness of an hour ago was overwhelming. masterson stood looking at him, thinking fast, and wondering how much he dared express. "when did you discover the loss, colonel?" "just now," he answered, rising and commencing again the nervous pacing. "i had gone to my room with dr. delaven to find an old uniform of mine he had asked to borrow. then i found the drawer of my desk open and my papers gone. i said nothing to him of the loss. any search to be made must be conducted without publicity." "certainly, certainly," agreed judge clarkson, "but a search, kenneth, my boy? where could we begin?" mcveigh shook his head, but masterson remembered that delaven was also an outsider--and delaven had borrowed a confederate uniform! "colonel," he asked, with a significance he tried ineffectually to subdue, for all subterfuge was difficult to his straightforward nature, "may i ask for what purpose that uniform was borrowed?" the tone was unmistakable. mcveigh turned as if struck. "captain masterson!" "colonel, this is no time to stand on ceremony. some one who was your guest tonight evidently stole those papers! most of the guests were old, tried friends, but there were exceptions. two are foreigners, and one belongs to the enemy. it is most natural that the exceptions be considered first." clarkson nodded assent to this very logical deduction and masterson felt assured of his support. "the borrowing of the uniform in itself is significant, but at this time is especially so." "no, no, no!" and his superior officer waved aside the question impatiently. "dr. delaven is above suspicion; he is about to offer his services as surgeon to our cause--talked to me of it tonight. the uniform was for some jest with my sister. it has nothing whatever to do with this." "what became of the man you suspected as a spy this morning?" asked the judge, and mcveigh also looked at masterson for reply. "no, it was not he," said the latter, decidedly. "he was watched every minute of his stay here, and his stay was very brief. but colonel mcveigh--kenneth; even at the risk of your displeasure i must remind you that dr. delaven is not the only guest here who is either neutral or pledged to the cause of our enemies--i mean captain jack monroe." "impossible!" said mcveigh; but masterson shook his head. "if the name of every guest here tonight were mentioned you would feel justified in saying the same thing--impossible, yet it has been possible, since the papers are gone. who but the federals would want them? captain monroe of the federal army allowed himself to be taken prisoner this morning and brought to your home, though he had a parole in his pocket! the careless reason he gave for it did not satisfy me, and now even you must agree that it looks suspicious." mcveigh glanced from one to the other in perplexity. he felt that the judge agreed with masterson; he was oppressed by the memory of the accusation against the sailor that morning. spies and traitors at mcveigh terrace! he had placed his orderly on guard in the room so soon as he discovered the rifled drawer, and had at once come to masterson for consultation, but once there no solution of the problem suggested itself. there seemed literally no starting point for investigation. the crowd of people there had made the difficulty greater, for servants of the guests had also been there--drivers and boatmen. yet who among them could have access to the rooms of the family? he shook his head at masterson's suggestion. "your suspicions against captain monroe are without foundation," he said decidedly. "the papers had not yet reached me when he arrived. he had no knowledge of their existence." "how do we know that?" demanded masterson. "do you forget that he was present when i gave you the papers?" mcveigh stopped short and stared at him. by the thin edge of the wedge of suspicion a door seemed forced back and a flood of revelations forced in. "by jove!" he said, slowly, "and he heard me speak of the importance of my instructions!" "where is he now?" asked the judge. "i have not seen him for an hour; but there seems only one thing to be done." "certainly," agreed masterson, delighted that mcveigh at last began to look with reason on his own convictions. "he should be arrested at once." "we must not be hasty in this matter, it is so important," said mcveigh. "phil, i will ask you to see that a couple of horses are saddled. have your men do it without arousing the servants' suspicions. i am going to my room for a more thorough investigation. come with me, judge, if you please. i am glad you remained. i don't want any of the others to know what occurred. i can't believe it of monroe--yet." "kenneth, my boy, i don't like to crush any lingering faith you have in your northern friend," said clarkson, laying his hand affectionately on mcveigh's arm as they reached the steps, "but from the evidence before us i--i'm afraid he's gone! he'll never come back!" at that moment a low, lazy sort of whistle sounded across the lawn, so low and so slow that it was apparently an unconscious accompaniment to reverie or speculation. it was quite dark except where the light shone from the hall. all the gaudy paper lanterns had been extinguished, and when the confidential notes of "rally 'round the flag, boys," came closer, and the whistler emerged from the deeper shadows, he could only distinguish two figures at the foot of the steps, and they could only locate him by the glow of his cigar in the darkness. there was a moment's pause and then the whistler said, "hello! friends or foes?" "captain jack!" said mcveigh, with a note of relief in his voice, very perceptible to the judge, who felt a mingling of delight and surprise at his failure as a prophet. "oh, it's you, is it, colonel?" and monroe came leisurely forward. "i fancied every one but myself had gone to bed when i saw the lights out. i walked away across your fields, smoking." the others did not speak. they could not at once throw aside the constraint imposed by the situation. he felt it as he neared the steps, but remarked carelessly: "cloudy, isn't it? i am not much of a weather prophet, but feel as if there is a storm in the air." "yes," agreed mcveigh, with an abstracted manner. he was not thinking of the probable storm, but of what action he had best take in the matter, whether to have the suspected man secretly watched, or to make a plain statement of the case, and show that the circumstantial evidence against him was too decided to be ignored. "well, colonel, you've helped me to a delightful evening," continued the unsuspecting suspect. "i shall carry away most pleasant memories of your plantation hospitality, and have concluded to start with them in the morning." there was a slight pause, then he added: "sorry i can't stay another day, but i've been thinking it over, and it seems necessary for me to move on to the coast." "not going to run from the enemy?" asked clarkson, with a doubtful attempt at lightness. "not necessary, judge; so i shall retreat in good order." he ascended the steps, yawning slightly. "you two going to stay up all night?" "no," said mcveigh, "i've just been persuading judge clarkson to remain; we'll be in presently." "well, i'll see you in the morning, gentlemen. good night." they exchanged good nights, and he entered the house, still with that soft whisper of a whistle as accompaniment. it grew softer as he entered the house, and the two stood there until the last sound had died away. "going in the morning, kenneth," said the judge, meaningly. "now, what do you think?" "that masterson is right," answered mcveigh. "he is the last man i should have suspected, but there seems nothing to do except make the arrest at once, or put him secretly under surveillance without his knowledge. i incline to the latter, but will consult with masterson. come in." they entered the hall, where mcveigh shut the door and turned the light low as they passed through. pluto was nodding half asleep in the back hall, and his master told him to go to bed, he would not be needed. though he had formed no definite plan of action he felt that the servants had best be kept ignorant of all movements for the present. somebody's servants might have helped with that theft, why not his own? in the upper hall he passed margeret, who was entering the room of miss loring with a pitcher of water. the hall was dark as they passed the corridor leading to the rooms of madame caron, evilena, miss loring and captain monroe. light showed above the doors of miss loring and monroe. the other rooms were already dark. the two men paused long enough to note those details, then mcveigh walked to the end of the corridor and bolted the door to the balcony. monroe was still softly whistling at intervals. he would cease occasionally and then, after a few moments, would commence again where he had left off. he was evidently very busy or very much preoccupied. to leave his room and descend the stairs he would have to pass mcveigh's room, which was on the first landing. the orderly was on guard there, within. mcveigh sent him with a message to masterson, who was in the rear of the building. the man passed out along the back corridor and the other two entered the room, but left the door ajar. in the meantime a man who had been watching monroe's movements in the park for some time now crept closer to the house. he watched him enter the house and the other two follow. he could not hear what they said, but the closing of the door told him the house was closed for the night. the wind was rising and low clouds were scurrying past. now and then the stars were allowed to peep through, showing a faint light, and any one close to him would have seen that he wore a confederate uniform and that his gaze was concentrated on the upper balcony. at last he fancied he could distinguish a white figure against the glass door opening from the corridor. assuring himself of the fact he stepped forward into the open and was about to cross the little space before the house when he was conscious of another figure, also in gray uniform, and the unmistakable cavalry hat, coming stealthily from the other side of the house. the second figure also glanced upwards at the balcony, but was too close to perceive the slender form above moving against one of the vine-covered pillars when the figure draped in white bent over as though trying to decipher the features under the big hat, and just as the second comer made a smothered attempt to clear his throat, something white fell at his feet. "sweet evilena!" he said, picking it up. "faith, the mother has told her and the darling was waiting for me. delaven's private post office!" he laid down the guitar and fumbled for a match, when the watcher from the shadows leaped upon him from behind, throttling him that no sound be made, and while he pinned him to the ground with his knee, kept one hand on his throat and with the other tried to loosen the grasp of delaven's hand on the papers. "give me that paper!" he whispered fiercely. "give it to me or i'll kill you where you lay! give it to me!" in the struggle delaven struck the guitar with the heel of his boot, there was a crash of resonant wood, and a wail of the strings, and it reached the ears of masterson and the orderly, who were about to enter the side door from the arbor. masterson halted to listen whence the crash came, but the orderly's ears were more accurate and he dashed towards the corner. "captain," he called in a loud whisper, as he saw the struggling figures, and at the call and the sound of quick steps pierson leaped to his feet and ran for the shrubbery. "halt!" called masterson, and fired one shot from his revolver. the fugitive leaped to one side as the order rang out and the bullet went whistling past. he had cleared the open space and was in the shrubbery. the orderly dashed after him as masterson caught delaven, who was scrambling to his feet, feeling his throat and trying to take a full breath. "who are you?" demanded masterson, shaking him a trifle to hasten the smothered speech. "doctor delaven! you! who was that man?" "it's little i can tell you," gasped the other, "except that he's some murderous rival who wanted to make an angel of me. man, but he has a grip!" margeret suddenly appeared on the veranda with a lamp held high above her head, as she peered downward in the darkness, and by its light masterson scanned the appearance of delaven with a doubtful eye. "why did the man assault you?" he demanded, and delaven showed the long envelope. "he was trying to rob me of a letter let fall from the balcony above, bad luck to him!" at that moment the orderly came running back to say that the man had got away; a horse had been tied over in the pines, they could hear the beat of its hoofs now on the big road. "get a horse and follow him," ordered masterson briefly, as mcveigh and clarkson came down the stairs and past margeret. "arrest him, shoot him, fetch him back some way!" then he turned again to the would-be cavalier of romance, who was surveying the guitar disconsolately. "doctor delaven, what are you doing in that uniform?" "i was about to give a concert," returned that individual, who made a grotesque figure in the borrowed suit, a world too large for him. mcveigh laughed as he heard the reply and surveyed the speaker. masterson's persistent search for spies had evidently spoiled delaven's serenade. mrs. mcveigh opened a window and asked what the trouble was, and masterson assured her it was only an accident--his revolver had gone off, but no one was hurt, on which assurance she said good night and closed the window, while the group stood looking at each other questioningly. masterson's manner showed that it was something more than an accident. "what is the meaning of this?" asked mcveigh in a guarded tone; and masterson pointed to the package in delaven's hand. "i think we've found it, colonel," he said, excitedly. "doctor delaven, what is in that envelope?" "faith, i don't know, captain. the fellow didn't give me time to read it." "give it to me." "no, i'll not," returned delaven, moving towards the light. "and why not?" demanded masterson, suspiciously. "because it's from a lady, and it's private." he held the envelope to the light, but there was no name or address on it. he tore off the end and in extracting the contents two papers slipped out and fell on the ground. masterson picked them up and after a glance waved them triumphantly, while delaven looked puzzled over the slip in his hands. it was only something about military matters,--the furthest thing possible from a billet-doux. "i thought myself it was the weightiest one ever launched by cupid," he remarked as he shook his head over the mystery. but masterson thrust the papers into mcveigh's hands. "your commission and instructions, colonel!" he said, jubilantly. "what a run of luck. see if they are all right." "every one of them," and in a moment the judge and masterson were shaking hands with him, while delaven stood apart and stared. he was glad they were having so much joy to themselves, but could not see why he should be choked to obtain it for them. "understand one thing," said masterson, when the congratulations were over; "those papers were thrown from that balcony to dr. delaven by mistake. the man they were meant for tried to strangle the doctor and has escaped, but the man who escaped, colonel, was evidently only a messenger, and the real culprit, the traitor, is in your house now, and reached the balcony through that corridor door!" the wind blew margeret's lamp out, leaving them, for an instant, in darkness, but she entered the hall, turned up the light there so that it shone across the veranda and down the steps; then she lit the lamp in the library and went softly up the stairs and out of sight. "come into the library," suggested mcveigh. "you are right, phil, there is only one thing to be done in the face of such evidence by jove! it seems incredible. i would have fought for jack monroe, sworn by him, and after all--" a leisurely step sounded on the stairs and monroe descended. he wore no coat or vest and was evidently prepared for bed when disturbed. "what's all the row about?" he asked, yawning. "oh, are you in it, colonel?" there was a slight pause before mcveigh said: "captain monroe, the row is over for the present, since your confederate has escaped." "my--confederate?" he glanced in inquiry from one to the other, but could see no friendliness in their faces. delaven looked as puzzled as himself, but the other three regarded him coldly. he tossed his half finished cigar out of the door, and seemed to grow taller, as he turned toward them again. "may i ask in what way i am linked with a confederacy." "in using your parole to gain knowledge of our army for the use of the federal government," answered mcveigh, bluntly. monroe made a step forward, but halted, drew a long breath, and thrust his uninjured hand into his pocket, as if to hamper its aggressive tendencies. "is it considered a part of southern hospitality that the host reserves the right to insult his guests?" he asked slowly. masterson's face flushed with anger at the sweeping suggestion, but mcveigh glanced at him warningly. "this is not a time for useless words, captain monroe, and it seems useless to discuss the rights of the hospitality you have outraged." "that is not true, colonel mcveigh," and his tones were very steady as he made the denial. his very steadiness and cool selfcontrol angered mcveigh, who had hoped to see him astonished, indignant, natural. "not true?" he demanded. "is it not true that you were received here as a friend, welcomed as a brother? that you listened this morning when those military dispatches reached me? that you heard me say they were very important? that as soon as they were stolen from my room tonight you announced that you could not prolong your stay, your object in coming having evidently been accomplished? is it not true that today you managed to divert suspicion from yourself to an innocent lady? the authorities were evidently right who had that sailor followed here; but unknown to her it was not his employer he came here to meet, but _you_, his confederate! he was only the messenger, while you were the real spy--the officer who has broken his parole of honor." monroe had listened with set teeth to the accusation, a certain doggedness in his expression as the list of his delinquencies were reviewed, but at the final sentence the clenched hand shot forward and he struck mcveigh a wicked blow, staggering him back against the wall. "you are a liar and a fool, colonel mcveigh," he said in a choked voice, his face white with anger. the judge and masterson interposed as mcveigh lunged forward at him, and then he controlled his voice enough to say, "captain monroe, you are under arrest." and the commotion and deep breathing of the men prevented them hearing the soft rustle of a woman's dress in the hall as judithe slipped away into the darkness of the sitting room, and thence up the back stairs. she had followed monroe as he passed her door. she heard all their words, and the final ones: "_captain monroe, you are under arrest!_" rang in her ears all night as she tossed sleepless in the darkness. that is what kenneth mcveigh would say to her if he knew the truth. well, he should know it. captain monroe was sacrificing himself for her. how she admired him! did he fancy she would allow it? yet that shot alarmed her. she heard them say pierson had escaped, but had he retained the papers? if she was quite sure of _that_ she would announce the truth at once and clear him. but the morning was so near. she must wait a few hours longer, and then--then kenneth mcveigh would say to her, "_you are under arrest_," and after all her success would come defeat. she had never yet met defeat, and it was not pleasant to contemplate. she remembered his words of love--the adoration in his eye; would that love protect her when he learned she was the traitor to his home and country? she smiled bitterly at the thought, and felt that she could see clearly how _that_ would end. he would be patriot first and lover after, unless it was some one of his own family--some one whose honor meant his honor--some one-- then in the darkness she laughed at a sudden remembrance, and rising from the couch paced feverishly the length of the room many times, and stood gazing out at the stars swept by fleecy clouds. out there on the lawn he had vowed his love for her, asked her to marry him--marry him at once, before he left to join his brigade. she had not the slightest idea of doing it then; but now, why not? it could be entirely secret--so he had said. it would merely be a betrothal with witnesses, _and_ it would make her so much a part of the mcveigh family that he must let captain jack go on her word. and before the dawn broke she had decided her plan of action. if he said, "_you are under arrest_" to her, it should be to his own wife! she plunged into the idea with the reckless daring of a gamester who throws down his last card to win or lose. it had to be played any way, so why not double the stakes? she had played on that principle in some of the most fashionable gaming places of europe in search of cure for the ennui she complained of to captain jack; so why not in this more vital game of living pawns? she had wept in the dark of the garden when his lips had touched her; she had said, wild, impulsive things; she had been a fool; but in the light of the new day she set her teeth and determined the folly was over--only one day remained. military justice--or injustice--moved swiftly, and there was a man's life to be saved. chapter xxviii. the sun was just peeping, fiery red and threatening, above the bank of clouds to the east when delaven was roused from sweet sleep by the apparition of colonel mcveigh, booted, spurred and ready for the saddle. "i want you to come riding with me, and to come quick," he said, with a face singularly bright and happy, considering the episode of the night before, and the fact that his former friend was now a prisoner in a cottage back of the dwelling house, guarded by the orderlies. he had dispatched a courier for a detachment of men from one of the fortifications along the river. he would send monroe in their charge to charleston with a full statement of the case before he left to join his brigade--and ere that time:-- close to his heart lay the little note pluto had brought him less than an hour before, the second written word he had ever received from judithe. the first had sent him away from her--but this! so delaven dressed himself quickly, ate the impromptu breakfast arranged by the colonel's order, and joined judithe at the steps as the horses were brought around. she was gracious and gay as usual, and replied to his gallant remarks with her usual self-possession, yet he fancied her a trifle nervous, as was to be expected, and that she avoided his gaze, looking over him, past him, every place but in his eyes, at which he did not wonder especially. of all the women he had known she was the last to associate with a hurried clandestine marriage. of course it was all explained by the troublous war times, and the few brief hours, and above all by the love he had always fancied those two felt for each other. they had a five mile ride to the country home of a disabled chaplain who had belonged to mcveigh's regiment--had known him from boyhood, and was home now nursing a shattered arm, and was too well used to these hurried unions of war times to wonder much at the colonel's request, and only slightly puzzled at the added one of secrecy. at the terrace no one was surprised at the early ride of the three, even though the morning was not a bright one. madame caron had made them accustomed to those jaunts in the dawn, and mrs. mcveigh was relieved to learn that kenneth had accompanied her. shocked as she was to hear of monroe's arrest, and the cause of it, she was comforted somewhat that kenneth did not find the affair serious enough to interfere with a trifle of attention to her guest. in fact the colonel had not, in the note hastily scribbled to his mother, given her anything like a serious account of the case. captain monroe had for certain military reasons been placed under guard until an escort could arrive and accompany him to charleston for some special investigations. she was not to be disturbed or alarmed because of it; only, no one was to be allowed to see or speak with him without a special permit. he would explain more fully on his return, and only left the note to explain why captain monroe would breakfast alone. matthew loring also breakfasted alone. he was in a most excitable state over the occurrence of the night before, which judge clarkson was called on to relate, and concerning which he made all the reservations possible, all of them entirely acceptable to his listeners with the exception of miss loring, who heard, and then sent for phil masterson. she was talking with him on the lawn when the three riders returned, and when kenneth mcveigh bent above judithe with some laughing words as he led her up the steps, the heart of his girl-playmate grew sick within her. she had feared and dreaded this foreign exquisite from the first; now, she knew why. evilena was also watching for their return and gave delaven a cool little nod in contrast to the warm greeting given her brother and madame caron. but instead of being chilled he only watched his opportunity to whisper: "i wore the uniform!" she tossed her head and found something interesting in the view on the opposite side of the lawn. he waited meekly, plucked some roses, which he presented in silence and she regarded with scorn. but as she did not move away more than two feet he took heart of grace and repeated: "i wore the uniform!" "yes," she said, with fine scorn, "wore it in our garden, where you were safe!" "arrah! was i now?" he asked in his best brogue. "well, it's myself thought i was anything but safe for a few minutes. but i saved the papers, and your brother was good enough to say i'd saved his honor." "you!" "just me, and no other," he affirmed. "didn't i hold on to those instructions while that yankee spy was trying to send me to--heaven? and if that was not helping the cause and risking my life, well now, what would you call it?" "oh!" gasped evilena, delightedly, "i never thought of that. why, you were a real hero after all. i'm so glad, i--" then realizing that her exuberance was little short of caressing, and that she actually had both hands on his arm, she drew back and added demurely that she would always keep those roses, and she would like to keep the guitar, too, just as it was, for her mama agreed that it was a real romance of a serenade--the serenade that was not sung. after which, he assured her, the serenades under her window should not always be silent ones, and they went in search of the broken guitar. judge clarkson was pacing the veranda with well concealed impatience. colonel mcveigh's ride had interfered with the business talk he had planned. matthew loring was decidedly irritable over it, and he, clarkson, was the one who, with gertrude, had to hear the complaints. but looking in kenneth's happy face he could not begrudge him those brief morning hours at beauty's side, and only asked his consideration for the papers at the earliest convenient moment, and at the same time asked if the cottage was really a safe place for so important a prisoner as monroe. "perfectly safe," decided mcveigh, "so safe that there is no danger of escape; and as i think over the whole affair i doubt if on trial anything in this world can save him." "well, i should hate to take his chances in the next," declared the judge; "it seems so incredible that a man possessed of the courage, the admirable attributes you have always ascribed to him, should prove so unworthy--a broken parole. why, sir, it is--is damnable, sir, damnable!" colonel mcveigh agreed, and clarkson left the room without perceiving that madame caron had been a listener, but she came in, removing her gloves and looking at the tiny band of gold on her third finger. "the judge referred to captain monroe, did he not?" she asked, glancing up at him. "kenneth"--and her manner was delightfully appealing as she spoke his name in a shy little whisper, "kenneth, there may be some horrible mistake. your friend--that was--may be innocent." "scarcely a chance of it, sweetheart," and he removed her other glove and kissed her fingers, glancing around first, to see that no one was in sight. she laughed at his little picture of nervousness, but returned to the subject. "but if it were so?" she persisted; "surely you will not counsel haste in deciding so serious a matter?" "at any rate, i mean to put aside so serious a subject of conversation on our wedding morning," he answered, and she smiled back at him as she said: "on our wedding morning, sir, you should be mercifully disposed towards all men." "we never class traitors as men," and his fine face grew stern for an instant, "they are vampires, birds of prey. a detail has been sent for to take him to court-martial; there is little doubt what the result will be, and--" "suppose," and she glanced up at him with a pretty appeal in her eyes, "that your wife, sir, should ask as a first favor on her wedding day that you be merciful, as the rules of war allow you to be, to this poor fellow who danced with us last night? even supposing he is most horribly wicked, yet he really did dance with us--danced very well, and was very amusing. so, why not grant him another day of grace? no?" as he shook his head. "well, monsieur, i have a fancy ill luck must come if you celebrate our wedding day by hastening a man to meet his death. let him remain here under guard until tomorrow?" he shook his head, smilingly. "no, judithe." "not even for me?" "anything else, sweetheart, but not that. it is really out of my power to delay, now, even if i wished. the guard will come for him some time this evening. i, myself, shall leave at dawn tomorrow; so, you see!--" she glanced at him in playful reproach, a gay irresponsible specimen of femininity, who would ignore a man's treason because he chanced to be a charming partner in the dance. "my very first request! so, monsieur, this is how you mean to love, honor and obey me?" he laughed and caught the uplifted forefinger with which she admonished him. "i shall be madly jealous in another minute," he declared, with mock ferocity; "you have been my wife two full hours and half of that precious time you have wasted pleading the cause of a possible rival, for he actually did look at you with more than a passing admiration, judithe, it was a case of witchery at first sight; but for all that i refuse to allow him to be a skeleton at our feast this morning. there comes phil masterson for me, i must go; but remember, this is not a day for considerations of wars and retribution; it is a day for love." "i shall remember," she said, quietly, and walked to the window looking out on the swaying limbs of the great trees; they were being swept by gusts of wind, driving threatening clouds from which the trio had ridden in haste lest a rain storm be back of their shadows. the storm monroe had prophesied the night before had delayed and grumbled on the way, but it was coming for all that, and she welcomed the coming. a storm would probably delay that guard for which mcveigh had sent, and even the delay of a few hours might mean safety for captain monroe; otherwise, she-- she had learned all about the adventures of the papers, and had made her plans. some time during that day or evening there would be a raid made on the terrace by federals in confederate uniform. they would probably be thought by the inmates a party of daring foragers, and would visit the smoke houses, and confiscate the contents of the pantry. incidentally they would carry colonel mcveigh and captain masterson back to the coast as prisoners, if the required papers were not found, otherwise nothing of person or property would be molested by them; and they would, of course, free captain monroe, but force him, also, to go with them until within federal lines and safety. she had planned it all out, and knew it would not be difficult. the coast was not far away, a group of men in confederate uniform could ride across the country to the salkahatchie, at that point, unobserved. the fortifications on the river had men coming and going, though not thoroughly manned, and just now the upper one had no men stationed there, which accounted for the fact that colonel mcveigh had to send farther for extra men. he could not spare his own orderlies, and masterson's had not yet returned from following pierson. unless the raiders should meet with a detachment of bona-fide confederates there was not one chance in fifty of them being suspected if they came by the back roads she had mapped out and suggested; and if they reached the terrace before the confederate guard, monroe would be freed. she had not known there was that hope when she wrote the note consenting to the marriage. she heard they had sent down to the fort for some men and supposed it was the first fort on the river--merely an hour's ride away. it was not until they were in the saddle that she learned it would be an all day's journey to the fort and back, and that the colored carrier had just started. she knew that if it were a possible thing some message would be sent to her by the federals as to the hour she might expect them, but if it were not possible--well-- she chafed under the uncertainty, and watched the storm approaching over the far level lands of the east. blue black clouds rolled now where the sun had shot brief red glances on rising. somewhere there under those heavy shadows the men she waited for were riding to her through the pine woods and over the swamp lands; if she had been a praying woman she would have prayed that they ride faster--no music so longed for as the jingle of their accoutrements! she avoided the rest and retired to her own room on the plea of fatigue. colonel mcveigh was engaged with his mother and judge clarkson on some affairs of the plantation, so very much had to be crowded into his few hours at home. money had to be raised, property had to be sold, and the salable properties were growing so few in those days. masterson was waiting impatiently for the colonel, whom he had only seen for the most brief exchange of words that morning. it was now noon. he had important news to communicate before that guard arrived for monroe; it might entail surprising disclosures, and the minutes seemed like hours to him, while judge clarkson leisurely presented one paper after another for kenneth's perusal and signature, and mrs. mcveigh listened and asked advice. judithe descended the stairs, radiant in a gown of fluffy yellow stuff, with girdle of old topaz and a fillet of the same in quaint dull settings. the storm had grown terrific--the heavy clouds trailing to the earth and the lightning flashes lit up dusky corners. evilena had proposed darkening the windows entirely, lighting the lamps to dispel the gloom, and dressing in their prettiest to drive away forgetfulness of the tragedy of the elements; it was kenneth's last day at home; they must be gay though the heavens fell. thus it was that the sitting room and dining room presented the unusual mid-day spectacle of jewels glittering in the lamplight, for gertrude also humored evilena's whim to the extent of a dainty dress of softest sky blue silk, half covered with the finest work of delicate lace; she wore a pretty brooch and bracelet of turquoise, and was a charming picture of blonde beauty, a veritable white lily of a woman. dr. delaven, noting the well-bred grace, the gentle, unassuming air so truly refined and patrician, figuratively took off his hat to the colonel, who, between two such alluring examples of femininity, two women of such widely different types as the parisian and the carolinian, had even been able to make a choice. for he could see what every one but kenneth could see plainly, that while miss loring was gracious and interested in her other men friends, he remained, as ever, her one hero, apart from, and above all others, and if judithe de caron had not appeared upon the scene-- gertrude looked even lovelier than she had the night before at the party. her cheeks had a color unusual, and her eyes were bright with hope, expectation, or some unspoken cause for happiness; it sounded in the tones of her voice and shone in the happy curves of her lips as she smiled. "look at yourself in the glass, gertrude," said evilena, dragging her to the long mirror in the sitting room, "you are always lovely, dear, but today you are entrancingly beautiful." "today i am entrancingly happy," returned miss loring, looking in the mirror, but seeing in it not herself, but judithe, who was crossing the hall, and who looked like a spanish picture in her gleam of yellow tissues and topazes. "wasn't it clever of me to think of lighting the lamps?" asked evilena in frank self-laudation, "just listen how that rain beats; and did you see the hail? well, it fell, lots of it, while we were dressing; that's what makes the air so cool. i hope it will storm all the rain down at once and then give us a clear day tomorrow, when kenneth has to go away." "it would be awful for any one to be out in a storm like this," remarked the other as the crash of thunder shook the house; "what about captain monroe having to go through it?" "caroline said the guard has just got here, so i suppose he will have to go no matter what the weather is. well, i suppose he'd just as soon be killed by the storm as to be shot for a spy. only think of it--a guest of ours to be taken away as a spy!" "it is dreadful," assented gertrude, and then looking at judithe, she added, "i hope you were not made nervous by the shot and excitement last night; i assure you we do not usually have such finales to our parties." "i am not naturally timid, thank you," returned judithe, with a careless smile, all the more careless that she felt the blue eyes were regarding her with unusual watchfulness; "one must expect all those inconveniences in war times, especially when people are located on the border land, and i hear it is really but a short ride to the coast, where your enemies have their war vessels for blockade. did i understand you to say the military men have come for your friend, the federal captain? what a pity! he danced so well!" and with the careless smile still on her lips, she passed them and crossed the hall to the library. evilena shook her head and sighed. "_i_ am just broken hearted over his arrest," she acknowledged, "but it is because--well, it is _not_ merely because he was a good dancer! gertrude, i--i did something horrid this morning, i just _could_ not eat my breakfast without showing my sympathy in some way. you know those last cookies i baked? well, i had some of those sent over with his breakfast." "poor fellow!" and delaven shook his head sadly over the fate of monroe. evilena eyed him suspiciously; but his face was all innocence and sympathy. "it is terrible," she assented; "poor mama just wept this morning when we heard of it; of course, if he really proves to be a spy, we should not care what happened to him; but mama thinks of his mother, and of his dead brother, and--well, we both prayed for him this morning; it was all we could do. kenneth says no one must go near him, and of course kenneth knows what is best; but we are both hoping with all our hearts that he had nothing to do with that spy; funny, isn't it, that we are praying and crying on account of a man who, after all, is a real yankee?" "faith, i'd turn yankee myself for the same sweet sympathy," declared delaven, and received only a reproachful glance for his frivolity. judithe crossed the hall to the library, the indifferent smile still on her lips, her movements graceful and unhurried; under the curious eyes of gertrude loring she would show no special interest in the man under discussion, or the guard just arrived, but for all that the arrival of the guard determined her course. all her courage was needed to face the inevitable; the inevitable had arrived, and she was not a coward. she looked at the wedding ring on her finger; it had been the wedding ring of the dowager long ago, and she had given it to kenneth mcveigh that morning for the ceremony. "maman would approve if she knew all," she assured herself, and now she touched the ring to remind her of many things, and to blot out the remembrance of others, for instance, the avowal of love under the arbor in the dusk of the night before! "but _that_ was last night," she thought, grimly; "the darkness made me impressionable, the situation made of me a nervous fool, who said the thing she felt and had no right to feel. it is no longer night, and i am no longer a fool! do not let me forget, little ring, why i allowed you to be placed there. i am going to tell him now, and i shall need you and--maman." so she passed into the library; there could be no further delay, since the guard had arrived; monroe should not be sacrificed. she closed the door after her and looked around. a man was in the large arm chair by the table, but it was not colonel mcveigh. it was matthew loring, whose man ben was closing a refractory banging shutter, and drawing curtains over the windows, while pluto brought in a lighted lamp for the table, and both of them listened stoically to loring's grumbling. for a wonder he approved of the innovation of lamps and closed shutters. he had, in fact, come from his own room because of the fury of the storm. he growled that the noise of it annoyed him, but would not have acknowledged the truth, that the force of it appalled him, and that he shrank from being alone while the lightning threw threats in every direction, and the crashes of thunder shook the house. "no, kenneth isn't here," he answered, grumpily. "they told me he was, but the nigger lied." "mahsa kenneth jest gone up to his own room, madame caron," said pluto, quietly. "mist'ess, she went, too, an' judge clarkson." "humph! clarkson has got him pinned down at last, has he?" and there was a note of satisfaction in his tone. "i was beginning to think that between this fracas with the spy, and his galloping around the country, he would have no time left for business. i should not think you'd consider it worth while to go pleasure-riding such a morning as this." "oh, yes; it was quite worth while," she answered, serenely; "the storm did not break until our return. you are waiting for colonel mcveigh? so am i, and in the meantime i am at your service, willing to be entertained." "i am too much upset to entertain any one today," he declared, fretfully; "that trouble last night spoiled my rest. i knew the woman margeret lied when she came back and said it was only an accident. i'm nervous as a cat today. the doctors forbid me every form of excitement, yet they quarter a yankee spy in the room over mine, and commence shooting affairs in the middle of the night. it's--it's outrageous!" he fell back in the chair, exhausted by his indignation. judithe took the fan from pluto's hand and waved it gently above the dark, vindictive face. his eyes were closed and as she surveyed the cynical countenance a sudden determination came to her. if she _should_ leave for savannah in the morning, why not let matthew loring hear, first, of the plans for loringwood's future? she knew how to hurt kenneth mcveigh; she meant to see if there was any way of hurting this trafficker in humanity, this aristocratic panderer to horrid vices. "you may go, pluto," she said, kindly. "i will ring if you are needed." both the colored men went out, closing the door after them, and she brought a hassock and placed it beside his chair, and seated herself, after taking a book from the shelf and opening it without glancing at the title or pages. "since you refuse to be entertainer, monsieur loring, you must submit to being entertained," she said, pleasantly; "shall i sing to you, read to you, or tell you a story?" her direct and persistent graciousness made him straighten up in his chair and regard her, inquiringly; there was a curious mocking tone in her voice as she spoke, but the voice itself was forgotten as he looked in her face. the light from the lamp was shining full on her face, and the face was closer to him than it had ever been before. if she designed to dazzle him by thus arranging a living picture for his benefit she certainly succeeded. he had never really seen her until now, and he caught his breath sharply and was conscious that one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen in his life was looking at him with a strange smile touching her perfect mouth, and a strange haunting resemblance to some one once known, shining in her dark eyes. "what sort of stories do you prefer--love stories?" she continued, as he did not speak--only stared at her; "or, since we have had a real adventure in the house last night, possibly you would be interested in the intrigue back of that--would you?" "do you mean," he asked, eagerly, "that you could give me some new facts concerning the spy--monroe?" "yes, i really think i could," she said, amiably, "as there happen to be several things you have not been well informed upon." "i know it!" he said, tapping the arm of the chair, impatiently, "they never tell me half what is going on, now!--as if i was a child! and when i ask the cursed niggers, they lie so. well, well, go on; tell me the latest news about this yankee--monroe." "the very latest?" and she smiled again in that strange mocking way. "well, the latest is that he is entirely innocent; had nothing whatever to do with the taking of the papers." "madame caron!" "yes, i am quite serious. i was just about to tell colonel mcveigh, but we can chat about it until he comes;" and she pretended not to notice the wonder in his face, and went serenely on, "in fact, it was not a man who took the papers at all, but a woman; yes, a woman," she said, nodding her head, as a frown of quick suspicion touched his forehead and his eyes gleamed darkly on her, "in fact a confidential agent, whom captain masterson designated yesterday as most dangerous to the confederate cause. i am about to inform colonel mcveigh of her identity. but i do not fancy that will interest you nearly so much as another story i have for you personally." she paused and drew back a little, to better observe every expression of his countenance. he was glaring at her and his breath was coming in broken gasps. "there are really two of those secret federal agents in this especial territory," she continued, "two women who have worked faithfully for the union. i fancied you might be especially interested in the story of one of them, as she belongs to the loring family." "to our family? that is some cursed yankee lie!" he burst out fiercely, "every loring is loyal to the south! to _our_ family? let them try to prove that statement! it can't be done!" "you are quite right, monsieur loring," she agreed, quietly, "it _would_ be difficult to prove, even if you wished to do it." he fairly glared at the possibility that he should want to prove it. "but it may have an interest to you for all that, since the girl in question was your brother's daughter." "my brother's--!" he seemed choking, and he gazed at her with a horrible expression. the door opened and mrs. mcveigh entered rather hastily, looking for something in the desk. loring had sunk back in the chair, and she did not see his face, but she could see judithe's, and it was uplifted and slightly smiling. "have you found something mutually interesting?" she asked, glancing at the book open on judithe's knee. "yes; a child's story," returned her guest, and then the door closed, and the two were again alone. "there is a woman to be loved and honored, if one could only forget the sort of son she has trained," remarked judithe, thoughtfully, "with my heart i love her, but with my reason i condemn her. can you comprehend that, monsieur loring? i presume not, as you do not interest yourself with hearts." he was still staring at her like a man in a frightened dream; she could see the perspiration standing on his forehead; his lips were twitching horribly. "you understand, of course," she said, continuing her former discussion, "that the daughter in the story is not the lovely lady who is your heiress, and who is called miss loring. it is a younger daughter i refer to; she had no surname, because masters do not marry slaves, and her mother was a half greek octoroon from florida; her name was retta lacaris, and your brother promised her the freedom she never received until death granted her what you could not keep from her; do you remember that mother and child, monsieur loring?--the mother who went mad and died, and the child whom you sold to kenneth mcveigh?--sold as a slave for his bachelor establishment; a slave who would look like a white girl, whom you contracted should have the accomplishments of a white girl, but without a white girl's inconvenient independence, and the power of disposing of herself." "you--you dare to tell me!--you--" he was choking with rage, but she raised her hand for silence, and continued in the same quiet tone: "i have discussed the same affair in the salons of paris--why not to you? it was in paris your good friend, monsieur larue, placed the girl for the education kenneth mcveigh paid for. it was also your friend who bribed her to industry by a suggestion that she might gain freedom if her accomplishments warranted it. but you had forgotten, matthew loring, that the child of your brother had generations of white blood--of intellectual ancestry back of her. she had heard before leaving your shores the sort of freedom she was intended for, and your school was not a prison strong enough to hold her. she escaped, fled into the country, hid like a criminal in the day, and walked alone at night through an unknown county, a girl of seventeen! she found a friend in an aged woman, to whom she told her story, every word of it, matthew loring, and was received into the home as a daughter. that home, all the wealth which made it magnificent, and the title which had once belonged to her benefactress, became the property of your brother's daughter before that daughter was twenty years old. now, do you comprehend why one woman has crossed the seas to help, if possible, overthrow an institution championed by you? now do you comprehend my assurance that captain monroe is innocent? now, dare you contest my statement that one of the loring family is a federal agent?" "by god! i know you at last!" and he half arose from his chair as if to strike her with both upraised shaking hands. "i--i'll have you tied up and whipped until you shed blood for every word you've uttered here! you wench! you black cattle! you--" "stop!" she said, stepping back and smiling at his impotent rage. "you are in the house of colonel mcveigh, and you are speaking to his wife!" he uttered a low cry of horror, and fell back in the chair, nerveless, speechless. "i thought you would be interested, if not pleased," she continued, "and i wanted, moreover, to tell you that your sale of your brother's child was one reason why your estate of loringwood was selected in preference to any other as a dowered home for free children--girl children, of color! your ancestral estate, monsieur loring, will be used as an industrial home for such young girls. the story of your human traffic shall be told, and the name of matthew loring execrated in those walls long after the last of the lorings shall be under the sod. that is the monument i have designed for you, and the design will be carried out whether i live or die." he did not speak, only sat there with that horrible stare in his eyes, and watched her. "i shall probably not see you again," she continued, "as i leave for savannah in the morning, unless colonel mcveigh holds his wife as a spy, but i could not part without taking you into my confidence to a certain extent, though i presume it is not necessary to tell you how useless it would be for you to use this knowledge to my disadvantage unless i myself should avow it. you know i have told you the truth, but you could not prove it to any other, and--well, i think that is all." she was replacing the book in the case when gertrude entered from the hall. judithe only heard the rustle of a gown, and without turning her head to see who it was, added, "yes, that is all, except to assure you our tete-a-tete has been exceedingly delightful to me; i had actually forgotten that a storm was raging!" chapter xxix. miss loring glanced about in surprise when she found no one in the room but her uncle and madame caron. "oh, i did not know you had left your room," she remarked, going towards him; "do you think it quite wise? and the storm; isn't it dreadful?" "i have endeavored to make him forget it," remarked judithe, "and trust i have not been entirely a failure." she was idly fingering the volumes in the book-case, and glanced over her shoulder as she spoke. her hands trembled, but her teeth were set under the smiling lips--she was waiting for his accusation. "i have no doubt my uncle appreciates your endeavors," returned gertrude, with civil uncordiality, as she halted back of his chair, "but he is not equal to gayeties today; last night's excitement was quite a shock to him, as it was to all of us." "yes," agreed judithe; "we were just speaking of it." "phil masterson tells me the men will be here some time today for captain monroe," continued gertrude, still speaking from the back of his chair, over which she was leaning. "phil's orderly just returned from following the spy last night. caroline made us think at first it was the guard already from the fort, but that was a mistake; she could not see clearly because of the storm. and, uncle, he came back without ever getting in sight of the man, though he rode until morning before he turned back; isn't it too bad for--" something in that strange silence of the man in the chair suddenly checked the speech on her lips, and with a quick movement she was in front of him, looking in his face, into the eyes which turned towards her with a strange, horrible expression in them, and the lips vainly trying to speak, to give her warning. but the blow of paralysis had fallen again. he was speechless, helpless. her piercing scream brought the others from the sitting room; the stricken man was carried to his own apartment by order of dr. delaven, who could give them little hope of recovery; his speech might, of course, return as it had done a year before, after the other paralytic stroke, but-- mrs. mcveigh put her arm protectingly around the weeping girl, comprehending that even though he might recover his speech, any improvement must now be but a temporary respite. at the door gertrude halted and turned to the still figure at the book case. "madame caron, you--you were talking to him," she said, appealingly, "you did not suspect, either?" "i did not suspect," answered judithe, quietly, and then they went out, leaving her alone, staring after them and then at the chair, where but a few minutes ago he had been seated, full of a life as vindictive as her own, if not so strong; and now--had she murdered him? she glanced at the mirror back of the writing desk, and saw that she was white and strange looking; she rubbed her hands together because they were so suddenly cold. she heard some one halt at the door, and she turned again to the book-case lest whoever entered should be shocked at her face. it was evilena who peered in wistfully in search of some one not oppressed by woe. "kenneth's last day home," she lamented, "and such a celebration of it; isn't it perfectly awful? just as if captain monroe and the storm had not brought us distress enough! of course," she added, contritely, "it's unfeeling of me to take that view of it, and i don't expect you to sympathize with me." there was a pause in which she felt herself condemned. "and the house all lit up as for a party; oh, dear; it will all be solemn as a grave now in spite of the lights, and our pretty dresses; well, i think i'll take a book into the sitting room. i could not possibly read in here," and she cast a shrinking glance towards the big chair. "is that not romeo and juliet under your hand? that will do, please." judithe took down the volume, turned the leaves rapidly, and smiled. "you will find the balcony scene on the tenth page," she remarked. and then they both laughed, and evilena beat a retreat lest some of the others should enter and catch her laughing when the rest of the household were doleful, and she simply could not be doleful over matthew loring; she was only sorry kenneth's day was spoiled. the little episode, slight as it was, broke in on the unpleasant fancies of judithe, and substituted a new element. she closed the glass doors and turned towards the window, quite herself again. she stepped between the curtains and looked out on the driving storm, trying to peer through the grey sheets of falling rain. the guard, then, according to miss loring, had not yet arrived, after all, and the others, the federals, had a chance of being first on the field; oh, why--why did they not hurry? the pelting of the rain on the window prevented her from hearing the entrance of colonel mcveigh and the judge, while the curtain hid her effectually; it was not until she turned to cross the room into the hall that she was aware of the two men beside the table, each with documents and papers of various sorts, which they were arranging. the judge held one over which he hesitated; looking at the younger man thoughtfully, and finally he said: "the rest are all right, kenneth; it was not for those i wanted to see you alone, but for this. i could not have it come under your mother's notice, and the settlement has already been delayed too long, but your absence, first abroad, then direct to the frontier, and then our own war, and mr. loring's illness--" he was rambling along inconsequently; mcveigh glanced at him, questioningly; it was so rare a thing to see the judge ill at ease over any legal transaction, but he plainly was, now; and when his client reached over and took the paper from his hand he surrendered it and broke off abruptly his rambling explanation. mcveigh unfolded the paper and glanced at it with an incredulous frown. "what is the meaning of this agreement to purchase a girl of color, aged twelve, named rhoda larue? we have bought no colored people from the lorings, nor from any one else." "the girl was contracted for without your knowledge, my boy, before your majority, in fact; though she is mentioned there as a girl of color she was to all appearances perfectly white, the daughter of an octaroon, and also the daughter of tom loring." the woman back of the curtain was listening now with every sense alert, never for one instant had it occurred to her that kenneth mcveigh did not know! how she listened for his next words! "and why should a white girl like that be bought for the mcveigh plantation?" there was a pause; then clarkson laid down the other papers, and faced him, frankly: "kenneth, my boy, she was never intended for the mcveigh plantation, but was contracted for, educated, given certain accomplishments that she might be a desirable personal property of yours when you were twenty." mcveigh was on his feet in an instant, his blue eyes flaming. "and who arranged this affair?--not--my father?" "no." "thank god for that! go on, who was accountable?" "your guardian, matthew loring. he explains that he made the arrangement, having in mind the social entanglement of boys within our own knowledge, who have rushed into unequal marriages, or--or associations equally deplorable with scheming women who are alert where moneyed youth is concerned. mr. loring, as your guardian, determined to forestall such complications in your case. from a business point of view he did not think it a bad investment, since, if you for any reason, objected to this arrangement, a girl so well educated, even accomplished, could be disposed of at a profit." mcveigh was walking up and down the room. "so!" he said, bitterly, "that was matthew loring's amiable little arrangement. that girl, then, belonged not to his estate, but to gertrude's. he was her guardian as well as mine; he would have given me the elder sister as a wife, and the younger one as a slave. what a curse the man is! it is for such hellish deeds that every southerner outside of his own lands is forced to defend slavery against heavy odds. the outsiders never stop to consider that there is not one man out of a thousand among us who would use his power as this man has used it in this case; the many are condemned for the sins of the few! go on; what became of the girl?" "she was, in accordance with this agreement, sent to a first-class school, from which she disappeared--escaped, and never was found again. the money advanced from your estate for her education is, therefore, to be repaid you, with the interest to date; you, of course, must not lose the money, since loring has failed to keep his part of the contract." "good god!" muttered mcveigh, continuing his restless walk; "it seems incredible, damnable! think of it!--a girl with the blood, the brain, the education of a white woman, and bought in my name! i will have nothing--nothing to do with such cursed traffic!" neither of them heard the smothered sobs of the woman kneeling there back of that curtain; all the world had been changed for her by his words. she did not hear the finale of their conversation, only the confused murmur of their voices came to her; then, after a little, there was the closing of a door, and colonel mcveigh was alone. he was seated in the big chair where matthew loring had received the stroke which meant death. the hammock was still beside it, and she knelt there, touching his arm, timidly. he had not heard her approach, but at her touch he turned from the papers. "well, my sweetheart, what is it?" he said, and with averted face she whispered: "only that--i love you!--no," as he bent towards her, "don't kiss me! i never knew--i never guessed." "never guessed that you loved me?" he asked, regarding her with a quizzical smile. "now, i guessed it all the time, even though you did run away from me." "no, no, it is not that!" and she moved away, out of the reach of his caressing hands. "but i was there, by the window; i heard all that story. i had heard it long ago, and i thought you were to blame. i judged you--condemned you! now i see how wrong i was--wrong in every way--in every way. i have wronged you--_you_! oh, how i have wronged you!" she whispered, under her breath, as she remembered the men she looked for, had sent for--the men who were to take him away a prisoner! "nonsense, dear!" and he clasped her hands and smiled at her reassuringly. "you are over-wrought by all the excitement here since yesterday; you are nervous and remorseful over a trifle; you could not wrong me in any way; if you did, i forgive you." "no," she said, shaking her head and gazing at him with eyes more sad than he had ever seen them; "no, you would not forgive me if you knew; you never will forgive me when you do know. and--i must tell you--tell you everything--tell you now--" "no, not now, judithe," he said, as he heard masterson's voice in the hall. "we can't be alone now. later you shall tell me all your sins against me." he was walking with her to the door and looking down at her with all his heart in his eyes; his tenderness made her sorrows all the more terrible, and as he bent to kiss her she shrunk from him. "no, not until i tell you all," she said again, then as his hands touched hers she suddenly pressed them to her lips, her eyes, her cheek; "and whatever you think of me then, when you do hear all, i want you to know that i love you, i love you, i _love_ you!" then the door closed behind her and he was standing there with a puzzled frown between his eyes when masterson entered. her intense agitation, the passion in her words and her eyes!--he felt inclined to follow and end the mystery of it at once, but masterson's voice stopped him. "i've been trying all morning to have a talk, colonel," he said, carefully closing the door and glancing about. "there have been some new developments in monroe's case, in fact there have been so many that i have put in the time while waiting for you, by writing down every particle of new testimony in the affair." he took from his pocket some written pages and laid them on the table, and beside them a small oval frame. "they are for your inspection, colonel. i have no opinion i care to express on the matter. i have only written down miss loring's statements, and the picture speaks for itself." mcveigh stared at him. "what do you mean by miss loring's statement?--and what is this?" he had lifted the little frame, and looked at masterson, who had resolutely closed his lips and shook his head. he meant that mcveigh should see for himself. the cover flew back as he touched the spring, and a girl's face, dark, bright, looked out at him. it was delicately tinted and the work was well done. he had a curious shock as the eye met his. there was something so familiar in the poise of the head and the faint smile lurking at the corner of the mouth. there was no mistaking the likeness; it looked as judithe might possibly have looked at seventeen. he had never seen her with that childish, care-free light of happiness in her eyes; she had always been thoughtful beyond her years, but in this picture-- "where did you get this?" he asked, and his face grew stern for an instant, as masterson replied: "in captain monroe's pocket." he opened his lips to speak, but masterson pointed to the paper. "it is all written there, colonel; i really prefer you should read that report first, and then question me if you care to. i have written each thing as it occurred. you will see miss loring has also signed her name to it, preferring you would accept that rather than be called upon for a personal account. your mother is, of course, ignorant of all this--" mcveigh seemed scarcely to hear his words. _her_ voice was yet sounding in his ears; her remorseful repetition, "you will never forgive me when you do know!"--was this what she meant? he laid down the picture and picked up the papers. masterson seated himself at the other side of the room with his back to him, and waited. there was the rustle of paper as mcveigh laid one page after another on the table. after a little the rustle ceased. masterson looked around. the colonel had finished with the report and was again studying the picture. "well?" said masterson. "i cannot think this evidence at all conclusive." there was a pause and then he added, "but the situation is such that every unusual thing relating to this matter must, of course, be investigated. i should like to see margeret and captain monroe here; later i may question madame caron." his voice was very quiet and steady, but he scarcely lifted his eyes from the picture; something about it puzzled him; the longer he looked at it the less striking was the likeness--the character of judithe's face, now, was so different. he was still holding it at arm's length on the table when margeret noiselessly entered the room. she came back of him and halted beside the table; her eyes were also on the picture, and a smothered exclamation made him aware of her presence. he closed the frame and picked up the report masterson had given him. "margeret," he said, looking at her, curiously, "have you seen madame caron today?" "yes, colonel mcveigh;" she showed no surprise at the question, only looked straight ahead of her, with those solemn, dark eyes. he remembered the story of her madness years ago, and supposed that was accountable for the strange, colorless, passive manner. "did she speak to you?" "no, sir." judithe opened the door and looked in; seeing that mcveigh was apparently occupied, and not alone, she was about to retire when he begged her to remain for a few minutes. he avoided her questioning eyes, and offered her a chair, with that conventional courtesy reserved for strangers. she noted the papers in his hand, and the odd tones in which he spoke; she was, after all, debarred from confessing; she was to be accused! "a slight mystery is abroad here, and you appear to be the victim of it, madame," he said, without looking at her. "margeret, last night when miss loring sent you into the corridor just before the shot was fired, did you see any of the ladies or servants of the house?" "no, sir." there was not the slightest hesitation in the reply, but judithe turned her eyes on the woman with unusual interest. colonel mcveigh consulted his notes. "miss loring distinctively heard the rustle of a woman's dress as her door opened; did you hear that?" "no, sir." "you saw no one and heard no one?" "no one." there was a pause, during which he regarded the woman very sharply. judithe arose. "only your sister or myself could have been in that corridor without passing miss loring's door; is miss loring suspicious of us?--miss loring!"--and her tone was beyond her control, indignant; of all others, miss loring! "margeret, whatever you saw, whatever you heard in that corridor, you must tell colonel mcveigh--tell him!" margeret turned a calm glance towards her for a moment, and quietly said, "i have told him, madame caron; there was no one in the corridor." "very well; that is all i wanted to know." his words were intended for dismissal, but she only bent her head and walked back to the window, as masterson entered with monroe. the latter bowed to judithe with more than usual ceremony, but did not speak. then he turned a nonchalant glance towards mcveigh, and waited. the colonel looked steadily at judithe as he said: "captain monroe, did you know madame caron before you met her in my house? you do not answer! madame caron, may i ask you if you knew captain monroe previous to yesterday?" "quite well," she replied, graciously; there was almost an air of bravado in her glance. she had meant to tell him all; had begged him to listen, but since he preferred to question her before these men, and at the probable suggestion of miss loring--well! masterson drew a breath of relief as she spoke. his colonel must now exonerate him of any unfounded suspicions; but monroe regarded her with somber, disapproving eyes. "then," and his tone chilled her; it has in it such a suggestion of what justice he would mete out to her when he knew all; "then i am, under the circumstances, obliged to ask why you acknowledged the introduction given by miss loring?" "oh, for the blunder of that i was accountable, monsieur," and she smiled at him, frankly, the combative spirit fully awake, now, since he chose to question her--_her_!--before the others, "i should have explained, perhaps--i believe i meant to, but there was conversation, and i probably forgot." "i see! you forgot to explain, and captain monroe forgot you were acquainted when he was questioned, just now." "captain monroe could not possibly forget the honor of such acquaintance," retorted monroe; "he only refused to answer." the two men met each other's eyes for an instant--a glance like the crossing of swords. then mcveigh said: "where did you get the picture found on your person last night?" "stole it," said monroe, calmly, and mcveigh flushed in quick anger at the evident lie and the insolence of it; he was lying then to shield this woman who stood between them--to shield her from her husband. "madame caron," and she had never before heard him speak in that tone; "did you ever give captain monroe a picture of yourself?" "never!" she said, wonderingly. margeret had taken a step forward and stood irresolutely as though about to speak; she was very pale, and monroe knew in an instant who she was--not by the picture, but from pluto's story last night. the terror in her eyes touched him, and as mcveigh lifted the picture from the table, he spoke. "colonel mcveigh, i will ask you to study that picture carefully before you take for granted that it is the face of any one you know," he said, quietly; "that picture was made probably twenty years ago." "and the woman?" "the woman is dead--died long ago." margeret's eyes closed for an instant, but none of them noticed her. judithe regarded monroe, questioningly, and then turned to mcveigh: "may i not see this picture you speak of, since--" but monroe in two strides was beside the table where it lay. "colonel mcveigh, even a prisoner of war should be granted some consideration, and all i ask of you is to show the article in question to no one without first granting me a private interview." again the eyes of the men met and the sincerity, the appeal of monroe impressed mcveigh; something might be gained by conceding the request--something lost by refusing it, and he slipped the case into his pocket without even looking at judithe, or noticing her question. but monroe looked at her, and noted the quick resentment at his speech. "pardon, madame," he said, gently; "my only excuse is that there is a lady in the question." "a lady who is no longer living?" she asked, mockingly. she was puzzled over the affair of the picture, puzzled at the effect it had on mcveigh. in some way he was jealous concerning it--jealous, how absurd, when she adored him! monroe only looked at her, but did not reply to the sceptical query. gertrude loring came to the door just then and spoke to mcveigh, who went to meet her. she wanted him to go at once to her uncle. he was trying so hard to speak; they thought he was endeavoring to say "ken--ken!" it was the only tangible thing they could distinguish, and he watched the door continually as though for someone's entrance. mcveigh assured her he would go directly, but she begged him to postpone all the other business--anything! and to come with her at once; he might be dying, he looked like it, and there certainly was _some_ one whom he wanted; therefore-- he turned with a semi-apologetic manner to the others in the room. "i shall return presently, and will then continue the investigation," he said, addressing masterson; "pending such action captain monroe can remain here." then he closed the door and followed gertrude. judithe arose at that calm ignoring of herself and moved to the table. she guessed what it was the dying man was trying to tell kenneth--well, she would tell him first! pen and paper were there and she commenced to write, interrupting herself to turn to masterson, who was looking out at the storm. "is there any objection to captain monroe holding converse with other--guests in the house?" she asked, with a little ironical smile. masterson hesitated, and then said: "i do not think a private interview could be allowed, but--" "a private interview is not necessary," she said, coolly. "you can remain where you are. margeret, also, can remain." she wrote a line or two, and then spoke without looking up, "will you be so kind, captain monroe, as to come over to the table?" "at your service, my lady." he did so, and remained standing there, with his hands clasped behind him, a curious light of expectancy in his eyes. "you have endured everything but death for me since last night," she said, looking up at him. she spoke so low masterson could not hear it above the beat of the rain on the window. but he could see the slight bend of monroe's head and the smile with which he said: "well--since it was for you!" "oh, do not jest now, and do not think i shall allow it to go on," she said, appealingly. "i have been waiting for help, but i shall wait no longer;" she pointed to the paper on the table, "colonel mcveigh will have a written statement of who did the work just as soon as i can write it, and you shall be freed." "take care!" he said, warningly; "an avowal now might only incriminate you--not free me. there are complications you can't be told--" "but i must be told!" she interrupted. "what is there concerning me which you both conspire to hide? he shall free you, no matter what the result is to me; did you fancy i should let you go away under suspicion? but, that picture! you must make that clear to me. listen, i will confess to you, too! i have wronged him--colonel mcveigh--it has been all a mistake. i can never atone, but"--and her voice sank lower, "it was something about that picture made him angry just now, the thought i had given you some picture. i--i can't have him think that--not that you are my lover." "suppose it were so--would that add to the wrongs you speak of?" his voice was almost tender in its gentleness, and his face had a strange expression, as she said: "yes, it would, captain jack." "you mean, then--to marry him?" something in the tenseness of his tones, the strange look of anxiety in his eyes, decided her answer. "i mean that i have married him." she spoke so softly it was almost a whisper, but if it had been trumpet-like he could not have looked more astonished. his face grew white, and he took a step backward from her. masterson, who noticed the movement, walked down to the desk, where he could hear. margeret was nearer to them than he. all he heard was madame caron asking if captain monroe would not now agree that she should see the picture since it was necessary to defend herself. but monroe had gone back to his chair, where he sat looking at her thoughtfully, and looking at margeret, also, who had remained near the door, and gave no sign of having heard their words--had she? "no, madame caron," he said, quietly, "if there is any evidence in my favor you can communicate to colonel mcveigh, i shall be your debtor, but the picture is altogether a personal affair of my own. i will, if i can, prevent it from being used in this case at all, out of consideration for the lady whom i mentioned before." chapter xxx. kenneth mcveigh walked the floor of his own room, with the bitterest thoughts of his life for company. loyal gentleman that he was, he was appalled at the turn affairs had taken. it had cost him a struggle to give up faith in the man he had known and liked--but all that was as nothing compared to the struggle in which his own love fought against him. in that room where death apparently stood on the threshold, and the dying man had followed him about the room with most terrible, appealing eyes, he had heard but few of the words spoken--all his heart and brain were afire with the scene he had just left; that, and the others preceding it! every word or glance he had noticed between monroe and the woman he loved returned to him! trifles light as air before, now overwhelmed him with horrible suggestions; and her pleading for him that morning--all the little artifices, the pretended lightness with which she asked a first favor on her wedding morning--their wedding morning! for whatever she was or was not, she was, at least, his wife! that fact must be taken into consideration, he could not set it aside; her disgrace meant his disgrace--god! was that why she had consented to the hurried marriage?--to shield herself under his name, and to influence his favor for her lover? the spirit of murder leaped in his heart as he thought of it! he heard gertrude send to the library for margeret, and he sent word to masterson he was detained and would continue the investigation later. when pluto returned, after delivering the message, he inquired if madame caron was yet in the library, and pluto informed him madame caron had gone to her room some time ago; no one was in the library now, the gentleman had gone back to the cottage. he meant to see her alone before speaking again with monroe, to know the worst, whatever it was, and then-- he used a magnifying glass to study the little picture; he took it from the frame and examined the frame itself. the statement of monroe as to its age seemed verified. certain things in the face were strange, but certain other things were wonderfully like judithe as a happy, care-free girl--had she ever been such a girl? the chance that, after all, the picture was not hers gave him a sudden hope that the other things, purely circumstantial, might also diminish on closer examination; the picture had, to him, been the strongest evidence against her; a jealous fury had taken possession of him at the sight of it; he was conscious that his personal feelings unfitted him for the judicial position forced upon him, and that he must somehow conquer them before continuing any examination. an hour had passed; he had decided the picture was not that of his wife, but if monroe were not her lover, why did he treasure so a likeness resembling her? and if she were not in love with him, why ignore their former acquaintance, and why intercede for him so persistently? all those thoughts walked beside him as he strode up and down the room, and beyond them all was the glory of her eyes and the remembrance of her words: _"whatever you think of me when you know all, i want you to know that i love you--i love you!"_ they were the words he had waited for through long days and nights; they had come to him at last, and after all-- a knock sounded on the door and pluto entered with a large sealed envelope on which his name was written. "from madame caron, sah; she done tole me to put it in yo' own han'," he said. when alone again he opened the envelope. several papers were in it. the first he unfolded was addressed to his wife and the signature was that of a statesman high in the confidence of the northern people. it was a letter of gratitude to her for confidential work accomplished within the confederate lines; it was most extreme in commendation, and left no doubt as to the consideration shown her by the most distinguished of the federal leaders. it was dated six months before, showing that her friendship for his enemies was not a matter of days, but months. there was one newly written page in her own writing. he put that aside to look at last of all, then locked the door and resumed the reading of the others. and the woman to whom they were written moved restlessly from room to room, watching the storm and replying now and then to the disconsolate remarks of evilena, who was doleful over the fact that everybody was too much occupied for conversation. kenneth had shut himself up entirely, and all the others seemed to be in attendance on mr. loring. captain masterson was in and out, busy about his own affairs, and not minding the rain a particle, and she was full of questions concerning captain monroe, and why he had paid the brief visit to the library. judithe replied at random, scarcely hearing her chatter, and listening, listening each instant for his step or voice on the stair. while she stood there, looking out at the low, dark clouds, a step sounded in the hall and she turned quickly; it was only pluto; ordinarily she would not have noticed him especially, but his eyes were directed to her in so peculiar a manner that she gave him a second glance, and perceived that he carried a book she had left on a table in her own room. "look like i can't noway find right shelf fo' this book," he said, with some hesitation. "i boun' to ax yo' to show me whah it b'longs." she was about to do so, but when the door of the bookcase opened, he handed her the book instead of placing it where she directed. "maybe yo' put it in thah fo' me," he suggested. she looked at him, remembering she had told pierson he could be trusted, and took the book without a word. evilena was absorbed in juliet's woes, and did not look up. pluto muttered a "thank yo'," and disappeared along the hall. she took the book into the alcove before opening it, and found there what she had expected--a slip of paper with some pencilled marks. it was a cipher, from which she read, _"all is right; we follow close on this by another road. be ready. lincoln"_--she sank on her knees as she read the rest--_"lincoln has issued the proclamation of emancipation!"_ it was margeret who found her there a few minutes later. she was still kneeling by the window, her face covered by her hands. "you likely to catch cold down there, madame," said the soft voice. "i saw you come in here a good while ago, an' i thought i'd come see if i could serve you some way." judithe accepted the proffered hand and rose to her feet. for an instant margeret's arms had half enfolded her, and the soft color swept into the woman's face. judithe looked at her kindly and said: "you have already tried to serve me today, margeret; i've been thinking of it since, and i wonder why?" "any of the folks here would be proud to serve you, madame caron," said the woman, lapsing again into calm reticence. judithe looked at her and wondered what would become of her and the many like her, now that freedom was declared for the slaves. she could not understand why she had denied seeing her in the corridor, for they had met there, almost touched! perhaps she was some special friend of pluto's, and because of that purchase of the child-- "i leave tomorrow for savannah," said judithe, kindly. "come to my room this evening, and if there is anything i can do for you--" margeret's hands were clasped tightly at the question, and those strange, haunting eyes of hers seemed to reach the girl's soul. "there is one thing," she half whispered, "not now, maybe, not right away! but you've bought loringwood, and i--i lived there too many years to be satisfied to live away from it. they--miss gertrude--wouldn't ask much for me now, and--" "i see," and judithe wished she could tell her that there would never be buying or selling of her again--that the law of the land had declared her free! "i promise you, loringwood shall be your home some day, if you wish." "god forever bless you!" whispered margeret, and then she pushed aside the curtains and went through the library and up the stairs, and judithe watched her, thoughtfully wondering why any slave should cling to a home where matthew loring's will had been law. was it true that certain slavish natures in women--whether of caucasian or african blood--loved best the men who were tyrants? was it a relic of inherited tendencies when all women of whatever complexion were but slaves to their masters--called husbands? but something in the delicate, sad face of margeret gave silent negative to the question. whatever the affection centered in loringwood, she could not believe it in any way low or unworthy. as she passed along the upper hall pluto was on the landing. "any visitors today through all this storm?" she asked, carelessly. "no out an' out company," he said, glancing around. "a boy from the harris plantation did stop in out o' the rain, jest now. he got the lend of a coat, an' left his wet one, that how--" he looked anxiously at the slip of paper yet in her fingers. she smiled and entered her own room, where everything was prepared for her journey the following day. she glanced about grimly and wondered where that journey would end--it depended so much on the temper of the man who was now reading the evidence against her--the proof absolute that she was the federal agent sought for vainly by the confederate authorities. she had told him nothing of the motive prompting her to the work--it had been merely a plain statement of work accomplished. her door was left ajar and she listened nervously for his step, his voice. it seemed hours since she had sent him the message--the time had really not been long except in her imagination. and the little slip of paper just received held a threat directed towards him! in an hour, at most, the men she had sent for would be there; she had laid the plan for his ruin, and now was wild to think she could noways save him! if she had dared to go to him, plead with him to leave at once, persuade him through his love for her--but it seemed ages too late for that! and she could only await his summons, which she expected every moment; she could not even conjecture what he meant to do. * * * * * neither could captain masterson, who stood in mcveigh's room, staring incredulously at his superior officer. "colonel, are you serious in this matter? you actually mean to let captain monroe go free?" "absolutely free," said mcveigh, who was writing an order, and continued writing without looking up. "i understand your surprise, but we arrested an innocent man." "i don't mean to question your judgment, colonel, but the evidence--" "the evidence was circumstantial. that evidence has been refuted by facts not to be ignored." masterson looked at him inquiringly, a look comprehended by mcveigh, who touched the bell for pluto. "i must have time to consider before i decide what to do with those facts," he continued. "i shall know tonight." "and in the meantime what are we to do with the squad from down the river?" asked masterson, grimly. "they have just arrived to take him for court martial; they are waiting your orders." "i will have their instructions ready in an hour." "they bring the report of some definite action on the slavery question by the federal authorities," remarked masterson, with a smile of derision. "lincoln has proclaimed freedom for our slaves, the order is to go into effect the first of the year, unless we promise to be good, lay down our arms, and enter the union." "the first of the year is three months away, plenty of time to think it over;" he locked his desk and arose. "excuse me now, phil," he said, kindly, "i must go down and speak with captain monroe." he paused at the door, and masterson noticed that his face was very pale and his lips had a strange, set expression. whatever task he had before him was not easy to face! "you might help me in this," he added, "by telling my mother we must make what amends we can to him--if any amends are possible for such indignities." he went slowly down the stairs and entered the library. monroe was wiping the rain from his coat collar and holding a dripping hat at arm's length. "since you insist on my afternoon calls, colonel mcveigh, i wish you would arrange them with some regard to the elements," he remarked. "i was at least dry, and safe, where i was." but there was no answering light in mcveigh's eyes. he had been fighting a hard battle with himself, and the end was not yet. "captain monroe, it is many hours too late for apologies to you," he said, gravely, "but i do apologize, and--you are at liberty." "going to turn me out in a storm like this?" inquired his late prisoner, but mcveigh held out his hand. "not so long as you will honor my house by remaining," and monroe, after one searching glance, took the offered hand in silence. mcveigh tried to speak, but turned and walked across to the window. after a moment he came back. "i know, now, you could have cleared yourself by speaking," he said; "yes, i know all," as monroe looked at him questioningly. "i know you have borne disgrace and risked death for a chivalrous instinct. may i"--he hesitated as he realized he was now asking a favor of the man he had insulted--"may i ask that you remain silent to all but me, and that you pardon the injustice done you? i did not know--" "oh, the silence is understood," said monroe, "and as for the rest--we will forget it; the evidence was enough to hang a man these exciting times." "and you ran the risk? captain, you may wonder that i ask your silence, but you talked with her here; you probably know that to me she is--" monroe raised his hand in protest. "i don't know anything, colonel. i heard you were a benedict, but it may be only hearsay; i was not a witness; if i had been you would not have found me a silent one! but it is too late now, and we had better not talk about it," he said, anxious to get away from the strained, unhappy eyes of the man he has always known as the most care-free of cadets. "with your permission i will pay my respects to your sister, whom i noticed across the hall, but in the meantime, i don't know a thing!" as he crossed the hall gertrude loring descended the stairs and paused, looking after him wonderingly, and then turned into the library. colonel mcveigh was seated at the table again, his face buried in his hands. "kenneth!" he raised his head, and she hesitated, staring at him. "kenneth, you are ill; you--" "no; it is really nothing," he said, as he rose, "i am a trifle tired, i believe; absurd, isn't it? and--and very busy just now, so--" "oh, i shan't detain you a moment," she said, hastily, "but i saw captain monroe in the hall, and i was so amazed when phil told us you had released him." "i knew you would be, but he is an innocent man, and his arrest was all a mistake. pray, tell mother for me that i have apologized to captain monroe, and he is to be our guest until tomorrow. i am sure she will be pleased to hear it." "oh, yes, of course," agreed gertrude, "but kenneth, the guard has arrived, and who will they take in his place for court-martial?" she spoke lightly, but there was a subtle meaning back of her words. he felt it, and met her gaze with a sombre smile. "perhaps myself," he answered, quietly. "oh, kenneth!" "there, there!" he said, reassuringly; "don't worry about the future, what is, is enough for today, little girl." he had opened the door for her as though anxious to be alone; she understood, and was almost in the hall when the other door into the library opened, and glancing over her shoulder she saw judithe standing there gazing after her, with a peculiar look. she glanced up at kenneth mcveigh, and saw his face suddenly grow white, and stern; then the door closed on her, and those two were left alone together. she stood outside the door for a full minute, amazed at the strange look in his eyes, and in hers, as they faced each other, and as she moved away she wondered at the silence there--neither of them had spoken. they looked at each other as the door closed, a world of appeal in her eyes, but there was no response in his; a few hours ago she meant all of life to him--and now!-- with a quick sigh she turned and crossed to the window; drawing back the curtain she looked out, but all the heavens seemed weeping with some endless woe. the light of the lamp was better, and she drew the curtains close, and faced him again. "you have read--all?" he bent his head in assent. "and captain monroe?" "captain monroe is at liberty. i have accepted your confession, and acted upon it." "you accept that part of my letter, but not my other request," she said, despairingly. "i begged that you make some excuse and leave for your command at once--today--do you refuse to heed that?" "i do," he said, coldly. "is it on my account?" she demanded; "if so, put me under arrest; send me to one of the forts; do anything to assure yourself of my inability to work against your cause, though i promise you i never shall again. oh, i know you do not trust me, and i shan't ask you to; i only ask you to send me anywhere you like, if you will only start for your command at once; for your own sake i beg you; for your own sake you must go!" all of pleading was in her eyes and voice; her hands were clasped in the intensity of her anxiety. but he only shook his head as he looked down in the beautiful, beseeching face. "for your sake i shall remain," he said, coldly. "kenneth!" "your anxiety that i leave shows that the plots you confessed are not the only ones you are aware of," he said, controlling his voice with an effort, and speaking quietly. "you are my wife; for the plots of the future i must take the responsibility, prevent them if i can; shield you if i cannot." "no, no!" and she clasped his arm, pleadingly; "believe me, kenneth, there will be no more plots, not after today--" "ah!" and he drew back from her touch; "not after today! then there _is_ some further use you have for my house as a rendezvous? do you suppose i will go at once and leave my mother and sister to the danger of your intrigues?" "no! there shall be no danger for any one if you will only go," she promised, wildly; "kenneth, it is you i want to save; it is the last thing i shall ever ask of you. go, go! no more harm shall come to your people, i promise you, i--" "you promise!" and he turned on her with a fury from which she shrank. "the promise of a woman who allowed a loyal friend to suffer disgrace for her fault!--the promise of one who has abused the affection and hospitality of the women you assure protection for! a spy! a traitor! _you_, the woman i worshipped! god! what cursed fancy led you to risk life, love, honor, everything worth having, for a fanatical fight against one of two political factions?" he dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. as he did so a handkerchief in his pocket caught in the fastening of his cuff, as he let his hand fall the 'kerchief was dragged from the pocket, and with it the little oval frame over which he had been jealous for an hour, and concerning which he had not yet had an explanation. it rolled towards her, and with a sudden movement she caught it, and the next instant the dark, girlish face lay uncovered in her hand. she uttered a low cry, and then something of strength seemed to come to her as she looked at it. her eyes dilated, and she drew a long breath, as she turned and faced him again with both hands clasped over her bosom, and the open picture pressed there. all the tears and pleading were gone from her face and voice, as she answered: "because to that political question there is a background, shadowed, shameful, awful! through the shadows of it one can hear the clang of chains; can see the dumb misery of fettered women packed in the holds of your slave ships, carried in chains to the land of your free! from the day the first slave was burned at the stake on manhattan island by your christian forefathers, until now, when they are meeting your men in battle, fighting you to the death, there is an unwritten record that is full of horror, generations of dumb servitude! did you think they would keep silence forever?" he arose from the chair, staring at her in amazement; those arguments were so foreign to all he had known of the dainty woman, patrician, apparently, to her finger tips. how had she ever been led to sympathize with those rabid, mistaken theories of the north? "you have been misled by extravagant lies!" he said, sternly; "abuses such as you denounce no longer exist; if they ever did it was when the temper of the times was rude--half savage if you will--when men were rough and harsh with each other, therefore, with their belongings." "therefore, with their belongings!" she repeated, bitterly, "and in your own age all that is changed?" "certainly." "certainly!" she agreed. "slaves are no longer burned for insubordination, because masters have grown too wise to burn money! but they have some laws they use now instead of the torch and the whip of those old crude days. from their book of laws they read the commandment: _'go you out then, and of the heathen about you, buy bondmen and bondmaids that they be servants of your household;'_ and again it is commanded: _'servants be obedient unto your masters!'_ the torch is no longer needed when those fettered souls are taught god has decreed their servitude. god has cursed them before they were born, and under that curse they must bend forever!" "you doubt even the religion of my people?" he demanded. "yes!" "you doubt the divinity of those laws?" "yes!" "judithe!" "yes!" she repeated, a certain dauntless courage in her voice and bearing. she was no longer the girl he had loved and married; she was a strange, wild, beautiful creature, whose tones he seemed to hear for the first time. "a thousand times--yes! i doubt any law and every law shackling liberty of thought and freedom of people! and the poison of that accursed system has crept into your own blood until, even to me, you pretend, and deny the infamy that exists today, and of which you are aware!" "infamy! how dare you use that word?" and his eyes flamed with anger at the accusation, but she raised her hand, and spoke more quietly. "you remember the story you heard here today--the story of your guest and guardian, who sold the white child of his own brother? and the day when that was done is not so long past! it is so close that the child is now only a girl of twenty-three, the girl who was educated by her father's brother that she might prove a more desirable addition to your bondslaves!" "god in heaven!" he muttered, as he drew back and stared at her. "your knowledge of those things, of the girl's age, which _i_ did not know! where have you gained it all? when you heard so much you must know i was not aware of the purchase of the girl, but that does not matter now. answer my questions! your words, your manner; what do they mean? what has inspired this fury in you? answer--i command you!" _"'servants, be obedient unto your masters!'"_ she quoted, with a strange smile. "my words oppress you, possibly, because so many women are speaking through my lips, the women who for generations have thought and suffered and been doomed to silence, to bear the children of men they hated; to have the most sacred thing of life, mother-love, desecrated, according to the temper of their masters; to dread bringing into the world even the children of love, lest, whether white or black, they prove cattle for the slave market!" "judithe!" he caught her hand as though to force silence on her by the strength of his own horror and protest. she closed her eyes for an instant as he touched her, and then drew away to leave a greater space between them, as she said: "all those women are back of me! i have never lived one hour out of the shadow of their presence. their cause is my cause, and when i forget them, may god forget me!" "_your_ cause!--my wife!" he half whispered, as he dropped her hand, and the blue eyes swept her over with a glance of horror. "who are you that their cause should be yours?" "until this morning i was madame la marquise de caron," she said, making a half mocking inclination of her head; "in the bill of sale you read today i was named rhoda larue, the slave girl who--" "no!" he caught her fiercely by the shoulder, and his face had a murderous look as he bent above her, "don't dare to say it! you are mad with the desire to hurt me because i resent your sympathy with the north! but, dear, your madness has made you something more terrible than you realize! judithe, for god's sake, never say that word again!" "for god's sake, that is, for truth's sake, i am telling you the thing that is!" he half staggered to the table, and stood there looking at her; her gaze met his own, and all the tragedy of love and death was in that regard. "_you_!" he said, as though it was impossible to believe the thing he heard. "you--of all women! god!--it is too horrible! what right have you to tell me now? i was happy each moment i thought you loved me; even my anger against you was all jealousy! i was willing to forgive even the spy work, shield you, trust you, _love_ you--but--now--" he paused with his hand over his eyes as though to shut out the sight of her, she was so beautiful as she stood there--so appealing. the dark eyes were wells of sadness as she looked at him. she stood as one waiting judgment and hoping for no mercy. "you have punished me for a thing that was not my fault," he continued. "i destroyed it--the accursed paper, and--" "and by destroying it you gave me back to the loring estate," she said, quietly. all the passion had burned itself out; she spoke wearily and without emotion. "that is, i have become again, the property of my half sister, my father's daughter! are the brutal possibilities of your social institution so very far in the past?" he could only stare at her; the horror of it was all too sickening, and that man who was dying in the other room had caused it all; he had moved them as puppets in the game of life, a malignant fate, who had made all this possible. "now, will you go?" she asked, pleadingly. "you may trust me now; i have told you all." but he did not seem to hear her; only that one horrible thought of what she was to him beat against his brain and dwarfed every other consideration. "and you--married me, knowing this?" "i married you because i knew it," she said, despairingly. "i thought you and matthew loring equally guilty--equally deserving of punishment. i fought against my own feelings--my own love for you--" "love!" "love--love always! i loved you in paris, when i thought hate was all you deserved from me. i waited three years. i told myself it had been only a girlish fancy--not love! i pledged myself to work for the union of these states and against the cause championed by kenneth mcveigh and matthew loring; for days and nights, weeks and months, i have worked for my mother's people and against the two men whose names were always linked together in my remembrance. the thought became a monomania with me. well, you know how it is ended! every plan against you became hateful to me from the moment i heard your voice again. but the plans had to go on though they were built on my heart. as for the marriage, i meant to write you after i had left the country, and tell you who you had given your name to. then"--and all of despair was in her voice--"then i learned the truth too late. i heard your words when that paper was given to you here, and i loved you. i realized that i had never ceased to love you; that i never should!" "the woman who is my--wife!" he muttered. "oh, god!--" "no one need ever know that," she said earnestly. "i will go away, unless you give me over to the authorities as the spy. for the wrong i have done you i will make any atonement--any expiation--" "there is no atonement you could make," he answered, steadily. "there is no forgiveness possible." "i know," she said, whisperingly, as if afraid to trust her voice aloud, "i know you could never forgive me. i--i do not ask it; only, kenneth, a few hours ago we promised to love each other always," her voice broke for an instant and then she went on, "i shall keep that promise wherever i go, and--that is all--i think--" she had paused beside the table, where he sat, with his head buried in his hands. "i give you back the wedding ring," she continued, slipping it from her finger, but he did not speak or move. she kissed the little gold circlet and laid it beside him. "i am going now," she said, steadily as she could; "i ask for no remembrance, no forgiveness; but--have you no word of good-bye for me?--not one? it is forever, kenneth--_kenneth_!" her last word was almost a scream, for a shot had sounded just outside the window, and there was the rush of feet on the veranda and the crash of arms. "go! go at once!" she said, grasping his arm. "they will take you prisoner--they will--" "so!" he said, rising and reaching for the sword on the rack near him; "this is one of the plots you did _not_ reveal to me; some of your federal friends!" "oh, i warned you! i begged you to go," she said, pleadingly; again she caught his arm as he strode towards the veranda, but he flung himself loose with an angry exclamation: "let your friends look to themselves," he said, grimly. "my own guard is here to receive them today." as he tore aside the curtains and opened the glass door she flung herself in front of him. on the steps and on the lawn men were struggling, and shots were being fired. men were remounting their horses in hot haste and a few minutes later were clattering down the road, leaving one dead stranger at the foot of the steps. but for his presence it would all have seemed but a tumultuous vision of grey-garbed combatants. it was, perhaps, ten minutes later when kenneth mcveigh re-entered the library. all was vague and confused in his mind as to what had occurred there in the curtained alcove. she had flung herself in front of him with her arms about him as the door opened; there had been two shots in quick succession, one of them had shattered the glass, and the other-- he remembered tearing himself from her embrace as she clung to him, and he remembered she had sunk with a moan to the floor; at the time he thought her attitude and cry had meant only despair at her failure to stop him, but, perhaps-- he found her in the same place; the oval portrait was open in her hand, as though her last look had been given to the pretty mother, whose memory she had cherished, and whose race she had fought for. margeret was crouched beside her, silent as ever, her dark eyes strange, unutterable in expression, were fixed on the beautiful face, but the stray bullet had done its work quickly--she had been quite dead when margeret reached her. * * * * * monroe told mcveigh the true story of the portrait that night. the two men sat talking until the dawn broke. delaven was admitted to the conference long enough to hear certain political reasons why the marriage of that morning should continue to remain a secret, and when the mistress of loringwood was laid to rest under the century-old cedars, it was as judithe, marquise de caron. in settling up the estate of matthew loring, who died a few days later, speechless to the last, judge clarkson had the unpleasant task of informing gertrude that for nearly twenty years one of the slaves supposed to belong to her had been legally free. evidence was found establishing the fact that tom loring had given freedom to margeret and her child a few days previous to that last, fatal ride of his. matthew loring had evidently disapproved and suppressed the knowledge. gertrude made slight comment on the affair, convinced as she was that the woman was much better off in their household than dependent on herself, and was frankly astonished that margeret returned at once to loringwood, and never left it again for the three remaining years of her life. gertrude was also surprised at the sudden interest of kenneth in her former bondwoman, and when the silent octoroon was found dead beside the tomb of her master, it was kenneth mcveigh who arranged that she be placed near the beautiful stranger who had dwelt among them for awhile. a year after the war ended gertrude, the last of the once dominant lorings, married an alabama man, and left carolina, to the great regret of mrs. judge clarkson and sweet evilena delaven. they felt a grievance against kenneth for his indifference in the matter, and were disconsolate for years over his persistent bachelorhood. when he finally did marry, his wife was a pretty little woman, who was a relative of jack monroe, and totally different from either gertrude or judithe loring. jack monroe, who was major monroe at the close of the war, makes yearly hunting trips to the land of the salkahatchie, and when twitted concerning his state of single blessedness, declares he is only postponing matrimony until delaven's youngest daughter grows up, but the youngest has been superseded by a younger one several times since he first made the announcement. the monument planned by judithe has existed for many years; but only a few remember well the builder; she has become a misty memory--part of a romance the older people tell. she was a noted beauty of france and she died to save general mcveigh, who was young, handsome, and, it was said, her lover. he never after her death was heard to speak her name and did not marry until twenty years later--what more apt material for a romance? none of them ever heard of her work for the union of the states. but when the local historians tell of the former grandeur of the lorings, the gay, reckless, daring spirits among them, and end the list with handsome tom, there are two veterans, one of the blue and the other of the grey, who know that the list did not end there, and that the most brilliant, most daring, most remarkable spirit of them all, was the one of their blood, who was born a slave. the end. all rights reserved. standard and popular books for sale by booksellers or will be sent postpaid on receipt of price. rand, mcnally & co., publishers, chicago and new york. a new novel by opie read judge elbridge cloth, mo. $ . . some late publications. baldoon. by le roy hooker. a wonderful canadian romance, which can be appreciated only by being read. cloth, mo. price, $ . . launching of a man. by stanley waterloo. the latest story by this popular author, and one of the few novels whose pages make good the title of the book. cloth, mo. price, $ . . a married man. by frances aymar mathews. this book has few equals in late fiction as an example of a wisely chosen, well-balanced plot, and a keen analysis and picturesque presentment of some impressive types of human nature. cloth, mo. price, $ . . sense and satire. by wm. l. breyfogle. illustrated. unique in its plan, this book will give the reader something short, sharp, and epigrammatic in the way of either sense or satire on a great variety of subjects. cloth, mo. price, $ . . in hampton roads. by charles eugene banks and george cram cook. a thrilling and powerful american historical romance of the civil war. cloth, mo. price, $ . . living in the world, and other poems and lyrics. by frank putnam. these verses are varied in theme, and run the gamut of humor, satire, and pathos. cloth, mo. price, $ . . in satan's realm. by edgar c. blum. a story with a unique plot, full of power, and along new lines. cloth, mo. price, $ . . sword and cross, and other poems. by charles eugene banks. a collection of charming verses, on themes both grave and gay, by this well-known and popular chicago poet. cloth, mo. price, $ . . outlooks and insights. by humphrey j. desmond. a book of racy and elegant short essays on subjects of everyday interest. cloth, cents. knight conrad of rheinstein. by julius ludovici. illustrated. a romance of chivalry in feudal times, setting forth the adventures of a youthful knight who seeks his fortunes in the world. cloth, mo. price, $ . . mists of fire, and some eclogs. by coates kinney. the poems possess the flavor of true inspiration, and have been compared favorably with some of browning's best works. cloth, mo. price, $ . . rand, mcnally & co., publishers, chicago and new york. standard and popular books. a b c of mining and prospectors' handbook. by charles a. bramble, d. l. s. baedecker style. $ . . accidents, and how to save life when they occur. pages; 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of a good height, as could be seen even from the seated figure, the upper part of which was held erect with the unconscious ease which one associates with military training. his closely cropped brown hair had the slightest touch of gray. the spacious forehead, deep-set gray eyes, and firm chin, scarcely concealed by a light beard, marked the thoughtful man of affairs. his face indeed might have seemed austere, but for a sensitive mouth, which suggested a reserve of humour and a capacity for deep feeling. a man of well-balanced character, one would have said, not apt to undertake anything lightly, but sure to go far in whatever he took in hand; quickly responsive to a generous impulse, and capable of a righteous indignation; a good friend, a dangerous enemy; more likely to be misled by the heart than by the head; of the salt of the earth, which gives it savour. mr. french sat on one side, mr. kirby on the other, of a handsome, broad-topped mahogany desk, equipped with telephones and push buttons, and piled with papers, account books and letter files in orderly array. in marked contrast to his partner's nervousness, mr. french scarcely moved a muscle, except now and then to take the cigar from his lips and knock the ashes from the end. "nine fifty!" ejaculated mr. kirby, comparing the clock with his watch. "only ten minutes more." mr. french nodded mechanically. outside, in the main office, the same air of tense expectancy prevailed. for two weeks the office force had been busily at work, preparing inventories and balance sheets. the firm of french and company, limited, manufacturers of crashes and burlaps and kindred stuffs, with extensive mills in connecticut, and central offices in new york, having for a long time resisted the siren voice of the promoter, had finally faced the alternative of selling out, at a sacrifice, to the recently organised bagging trust, or of meeting a disastrous competition. expecting to yield in the end, they had fought for position--with brilliant results. negotiations for a sale, upon terms highly favourable to the firm, had been in progress for several weeks; and the two partners were awaiting, in their private office, the final word. should the sale be completed, they were richer men than they could have hoped to be after ten years more of business stress and struggle; should it fail, they were heavy losers, for their fight had been expensive. they were in much the same position as the player who had staked the bulk of his fortune on the cast of a die. not meaning to risk so much, they had been drawn into it; but the game was worth the candle. "nine fifty-five," said kirby. "five minutes more!" he strode over to the window and looked out. it was snowing, and the march wind, blowing straight up broadway from the bay, swept the white flakes northward in long, feathery swirls. mr. french preserved his rigid attitude, though a close observer might have wondered whether it was quite natural, or merely the result of a supreme effort of will. work had been practically suspended in the outer office. the clerks were also watching the clock. every one of them knew that the board of directors of the bagging trust was in session, and that at ten o'clock it was to report the result of its action on the proposition of french and company, limited. the clerks were not especially cheerful; the impending change meant for them, at best, a change of masters, and for many of them, the loss of employment. the firm, for relinquishing its business and good will, would receive liberal compensation; the clerks, for their skill, experience, and prospects of advancement, would receive their discharge. what else could be expected? the principal reason for the trust's existence was economy of administration; this was stated, most convincingly, in the prospectus. there was no suggestion, in that model document, that competition would be crushed, or that, monopoly once established, labour must sweat and the public groan in order that a few captains, or chevaliers, of industry, might double their dividends. mr. french may have known it, or guessed it, but he was between the devil and the deep sea--a victim rather than an accessory--he must take what he could get, or lose what he had. "nine fifty-nine!" kirby, as he breathed rather than spoke the words, threw away his scarcely lighted cigarette, and gripped the arms of his chair spasmodically. his partner's attitude had not varied by a hair's breadth; except for the scarcely perceptible rise and fall of his chest he might have been a wax figure. the pallor of his countenance would have strengthened the illusion. kirby pushed his chair back and sprung to his feet. the clock marked the hour, but nothing happened. kirby was wont to say, thereafter, that the ten minutes that followed were the longest day of his life. but everything must have an end, and their suspense was terminated by a telephone call. mr. french took down the receiver and placed it to his ear. "it's all right," he announced, looking toward his partner. "our figures accepted--resolution adopted--settlement to-morrow. we are----" the receiver fell upon the table with a crash. mr. french toppled over, and before kirby had scarcely realised that something was the matter, had sunk unconscious to the floor, which, fortunately, was thickly carpeted. it was but the work of a moment for kirby to loosen his partner's collar, reach into the recesses of a certain drawer in the big desk, draw out a flask of brandy, and pour a small quantity of the burning liquid down the unconscious man's throat. a push on one of the electric buttons summoned a clerk, with whose aid mr. french was lifted to a leather-covered couch that stood against the wall. almost at once the effect of the stimulant was apparent, and he opened his eyes. "i suspect," he said, with a feeble attempt at a smile, "that i must have fainted--like a woman--perfectly ridiculous." "perfectly natural," replied his partner. "you have scarcely slept for two weeks--between the business and phil--and you've reached the end of your string. but it's all over now, except the shouting, and you can sleep a week if you like. you'd better go right up home. i'll send for a cab, and call dr. moffatt, and ask him to be at the hotel by the time you reach it. i'll take care of things here to-day, and after a good sleep you'll find yourself all right again." "very well, kirby," replied mr. french, "i feel as weak as water, but i'm all here. it might have been much worse. you'll call up mrs. jerviss, of course, and let her know about the sale?" when mr. french, escorted to the cab by his partner, and accompanied by a clerk, had left for home, kirby rang up the doctor, and requested him to look after mr. french immediately. he then called for another number, and after the usual delay, first because the exchange girl was busy, and then because the line was busy, found himself in communication with the lady for whom he had asked. "it's all right, mrs. jerviss," he announced without preliminaries. "our terms accepted, and payment to be made, in cash and bonds, as soon as the papers are executed, when you will be twice as rich as you are to-day." "thank you, mr. kirby! and i suppose i shall never have another happy moment until i know what to do with it. money is a great trial. i often envy the poor." kirby smiled grimly. she little knew how near she had been to ruin. the active partners had mercifully shielded her, as far as possible, from the knowledge of their common danger. if the worst happened, she must know, of course; if not, then, being a woman whom they both liked--she would be spared needless anxiety. how closely they had skirted the edge of disaster she did not learn until afterward; indeed, kirby himself had scarcely appreciated the true situation, and even the senior partner, since he had not been present at the meeting of the trust managers, could not know what had been in their minds. but kirby's voice gave no hint of these reflections. he laughed a cheerful laugh. "if the world only knew," he rejoined, "it would cease to worry about the pains of poverty, and weep for the woes of wealth." "indeed it would!" she replied, with a seriousness which seemed almost sincere. "is mr. french there? i wish to thank him, too." "no, he has just gone home." "at this hour?" she exclaimed, "and at such a time? what can be the matter? is phil worse?" "no, i think not. mr. french himself had a bad turn, for a few minutes, after we learned the news." faces are not yet visible over the telephone, and kirby could not see that for a moment the lady's grew white. but when she spoke again the note of concern in her voice was very evident. "it was nothing--serious?" "oh, no, not at all, merely overwork, and lack of sleep, and the suspense--and the reaction. he recovered almost immediately, and one of the clerks went home with him." "has dr. moffatt been notified?" she asked. "yes, i called him up at once; he'll be at the mercedes by the time the patient arrives." there was a little further conversation on matters of business, and kirby would willingly have prolonged it, but his news about mr. french had plainly disturbed the lady's equanimity, and kirby rang off, after arranging to call to see her in person after business hours. mr. kirby hung up the receiver with something of a sigh. "a fine woman," he murmured, "i could envy french his chances, though he doesn't seem to see them--that is, if i were capable of envy toward so fine a fellow and so good a friend. it's curious how clearsighted a man can be in some directions, and how blind in others." mr. french lived at the mercedes, an uptown apartment hotel overlooking central park. he had scarcely reached his apartment, when the doctor arrived--a tall, fair, fat practitioner, and one of the best in new york; a gentleman as well, and a friend, of mr. french. "my dear fellow," he said, after a brief examination, "you've been burning the candle at both ends, which, at your age won't do at all. no, indeed! no, indeed! you've always worked too hard, and you've been worrying too much about the boy, who'll do very well now, with care. you've got to take a rest--it's all you need. you confess to no bad habits, and show the signs of none; and you have a fine constitution. i'm going to order you and phil away for three months, to some mild climate, where you'll be free from business cares and where the boy can grow strong without having to fight a raw eastern spring. you might try the riviera, but i'm afraid the sea would be too much for phil just yet; or southern california--but the trip is tiresome. the south is nearer at hand. there's palm beach, or jekyll island, or thomasville, asheville, or aiken--somewhere down in the pine country. it will be just the thing for the boy's lungs, and just the place for you to rest. start within a week, if you can get away. in fact, you've _got_ to get away." mr. french was too weak to resist--both body and mind seemed strangely relaxed--and there was really no reason why he should not go. his work was done. kirby could attend to the formal transfer of the business. he would take a long journey to some pleasant, quiet spot, where he and phil could sleep, and dream and ride and drive and grow strong, and enjoy themselves. for the moment he felt as though he would never care to do any more work, nor would he need to, for he was rich enough. he would live for the boy. phil's education, his health, his happiness, his establishment in life--these would furnish occupation enough for his well-earned retirement. it was a golden moment. he had won a notable victory against greed and craft and highly trained intelligence. and yet, a year later, he was to recall this recent past with envy and regret; for in the meantime he was to fight another battle against the same forces, and others quite as deeply rooted in human nature. but he was to fight upon a new field, and with different weapons, and with results which could not be foreseen. but no premonition of impending struggle disturbed mr. french's pleasant reverie; it was broken in a much more agreeable manner by the arrival of a visitor, who was admitted by judson, mr. french's man. the visitor was a handsome, clear-eyed, fair-haired woman, of thirty or thereabouts, accompanied by another and a plainer woman, evidently a maid or companion. the lady was dressed with the most expensive simplicity, and her graceful movements were attended by the rustle of unseen silks. in passing her upon the street, any man under ninety would have looked at her three times, the first glance instinctively recognising an attractive woman, the second ranking her as a lady; while the third, had there been time and opportunity, would have been the long, lingering look of respectful or regretful admiration. "how is mr. french, judson?" she inquired, without dissembling her anxiety. "he's much better, mrs. jerviss, thank you, ma'am." "i'm very glad to hear it; and how is phil?" "quite bright, ma'am, you'd hardly know that he'd been sick. he's gaining strength rapidly; he sleeps a great deal; he's asleep now, ma'am. but, won't you step into the library? there's a fire in the grate, and i'll let mr. french know you are here." but mr. french, who had overheard part of the colloquy, came forward from an adjoining room, in smoking jacket and slippers. "how do you do?" he asked, extending his hand. "it was mighty good of you to come to see me." "and i'm awfully glad to find you better," she returned, giving him her slender, gloved hand with impulsive warmth. "i might have telephoned, but i wanted to see for myself. i felt a part of the blame to be mine, for it is partly for me, you know, that you have been overworking." "it was all in the game," he said, "and we have won. but sit down and stay awhile. i know you'll pardon my smoking jacket. we are partners, you know, and i claim an invalid's privilege as well." the lady's fine eyes beamed, and her fair cheek flushed with pleasure. had he only realised it, he might have claimed of her any privilege a woman can properly allow, even that of conducting her to the altar. but to him she was only, thus far, as she had been for a long time, a very good friend of his own and of phil's; a former partner's widow, who had retained her husband's interest in the business; a wholesome, handsome woman, who was always excellent company and at whose table he had often eaten, both before and since her husband's death. nor, despite kirby's notions, was he entirely ignorant of the lady's partiality for himself. "doctor moffatt has ordered phil and me away, for three months," he said, after mrs. jerviss had inquired particularly concerning his health and phil's. "three months!" she exclaimed with an accent of dismay. "but you'll be back," she added, recovering herself quickly, "before the vacation season opens?" "oh, certainly; we shall not leave the country." "where are you going?" "the doctor has prescribed the pine woods. i shall visit my old home, where i was born. we shall leave in a day or two." "you must dine with me to-morrow," she said warmly, "and tell me about your old home. i haven't had an opportunity to thank you for making me rich, and i want your advice about what to do with the money; and i'm tiring you now when you ought to be resting." "do not hurry," he said. "it is almost a pleasure to be weak and helpless, since it gives me the privilege of a visit from you." she lingered a few moments and then went. she was the embodiment of good taste and knew when to come and when to go. mr. french was conscious that her visit, instead of tiring him, had had an opposite effect; she had come and gone like a pleasant breeze, bearing sweet odours and the echo of distant music. her shapely hand, when it had touched his own, had been soft but firm; and he had almost wished, as he held it for a moment, that he might feel it resting on his still somewhat fevered brow. when he came back from the south, he would see a good deal of her, either at the seaside, or wherever she might spend the summer. when mr. french and phil were ready, a day or two later, to start upon their journey, kirby was at the mercedes to see them off. "you're taking judson with you to look after the boy?" he asked. "no," replied mr. french, "judson is in love, and does not wish to leave new york. he will take a vacation until we return. phil and i can get along very well alone." kirby went with them across the ferry to the jersey side, and through the station gates to the waiting train. there was a flurry of snow in the air, and overcoats were comfortable. when mr. french had turned over his hand luggage to the porter of the pullman, they walked up and down the station platform. "i'm looking for something to interest us," said kirby, rolling a cigarette. "there's a mining proposition in utah, and a trolley railroad in oklahoma. when things are settled up here, i'll take a run out, and look the ground over, and write to you." "my dear fellow," said his friend, "don't hurry. why should i make any more money? i have all i shall ever need, and as much as will be good for phil. if you find a good thing, i can help you finance it; and mrs. jerviss will welcome a good investment. but i shall take a long rest, and then travel for a year or two, and after that settle down and take life comfortably." "that's the way you feel now," replied kirby, lighting another cigarette, "but wait until you are rested, and you'll yearn for the fray; the first million only whets the appetite for more." "all aboard!" the word was passed along the line of cars. kirby took leave of phil, into whose hand he had thrust a five-dollar bill, "to buy popcorn on the train," he said, kissed the boy, and wrung his ex-partner's hand warmly. "good-bye," he said, "and good luck. you'll hear from me soon. we're partners still, you and i and mrs. jerviss." and though mr. french smiled acquiescence, and returned kirby's hand clasp with equal vigour and sincerity, he felt, as the train rolled away, as one might feel who, after a long sojourn in an alien land, at last takes ship for home. the mere act of leaving new york, after the severance of all compelling ties, seemed to set in motion old currents of feeling, which, moving slowly at the start, gathered momentum as the miles rolled by, until his heart leaped forward to the old southern town which was his destination, and he soon felt himself chafing impatiently at any delay that threatened to throw the train behind schedule time. "he'll be back in six weeks," declared kirby, when mrs. jerviss and he next met. "i know him well; he can't live without his club and his counting room. it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks." "and i'm sure he'll not stay away longer than three months," said the lady confidently, "for i have invited him to my house party." "a privilege," said kirby gallantly, "for which many a man would come from the other end of the world." but they were both mistaken. for even as they spoke, he whose future each was planning, was entering upon a new life of his own, from which he was to look back upon his business career as a mere period of preparation for the real end and purpose of his earthly existence. _two_ the hack which the colonel had taken at the station after a two-days' journey, broken by several long waits for connecting trains, jogged in somewhat leisurely fashion down the main street toward the hotel. the colonel, with his little boy, had left the main line of railroad leading north and south and had taken at a certain way station the one daily train for clarendon, with which the express made connection. they had completed the forty-mile journey in two or three hours, arriving at clarendon at noon. it was an auspicious moment for visiting the town. it is true that the grass grew in the street here and there, but the sidewalks were separated from the roadway by rows of oaks and elms and china-trees in early leaf. the travellers had left new york in the midst of a snowstorm, but here the scent of lilac and of jonquil, the song of birds, the breath of spring, were all about them. the occasional stretches of brick sidewalk under their green canopy looked cool and inviting; for while the chill of winter had fled and the sultry heat of summer was not yet at hand, the railroad coach had been close and dusty, and the noonday sun gave some slight foretaste of his coming reign. the colonel looked about him eagerly. it was all so like, and yet so different--shrunken somewhat, and faded, but yet, like a woman one loves, carried into old age something of the charm of youth. the old town, whose ripeness was almost decay, whose quietness was scarcely distinguishable from lethargy, had been the home of his youth, and he saw it, strange to say, less with the eyes of the lad of sixteen who had gone to the war, than with those of the little boy to whom it had been, in his tenderest years, the great wide world, the only world he knew in the years when, with his black boy peter, whom his father had given to him as a personal attendant, he had gone forth to field and garden, stream and forest, in search of childish adventure. yonder was the old academy, where he had attended school. the yellow brick of its walls had scaled away in places, leaving the surface mottled with pale splotches; the shingled roof was badly dilapidated, and overgrown here and there with dark green moss. the cedar trees in the yard were in need of pruning, and seemed, from their rusty trunks and scant leafage, to have shared in the general decay. as they drove down the street, cows were grazing in the vacant lot between the bank, which had been built by the colonel's grandfather, and the old red brick building, formerly a store, but now occupied, as could be seen by the row of boxes visible through the open door, by the post-office. the little boy, an unusually handsome lad of five or six, with blue eyes and fair hair, dressed in knickerbockers and a sailor cap, was also keenly interested in the surroundings. it was saturday, and the little two-wheeled carts, drawn by a steer or a mule; the pigs sleeping in the shadow of the old wooden market-house; the lean and sallow pinelanders and listless negroes dozing on the curbstone, were all objects of novel interest to the boy, as was manifest by the light in his eager eyes and an occasional exclamation, which in a clear childish treble, came from his perfectly chiselled lips. only a glance was needed to see that the child, though still somewhat pale and delicate from his recent illness, had inherited the characteristics attributed to good blood. features, expression, bearing, were marked by the signs of race; but a closer scrutiny was required to discover, in the blue-eyed, golden-haired lad, any close resemblance to the shrewd, dark man of affairs who sat beside him, and to whom this little boy was, for the time being, the sole object in life. but for the child the colonel was alone in the world. many years before, when himself only a boy, he had served in the southern army, in a regiment which had fought with such desperate valour that the honour of the colonelcy had come to him at nineteen, as the sole survivor of the group of young men who had officered the regiment. his father died during the last year of the civil war, having lived long enough to see the conflict work ruin to his fortunes. the son had been offered employment in new york by a relative who had sympathised with the south in her struggle; and he had gone away from clarendon. the old family "mansion"--it was not a very imposing structure, except by comparison with even less pretentious houses--had been sold upon foreclosure, and bought by an ambitious mulatto, who only a few years before had himself been an object of barter and sale. entering his uncle's office as a clerk, and following his advice, reinforced by a sense of the fitness of things, the youthful colonel had dropped his military title and become plain mr. french. putting the past behind him, except as a fading memory, he had thrown himself eagerly into the current of affairs. fortune favoured one both capable and energetic. in time he won a partnership in the firm, and when death removed his relative, took his place at its head. he had looked forward to the time, not very far in the future, when he might retire from business and devote his leisure to study and travel, tastes which for years he had subordinated to the pursuit of wealth; not entirely, for his life had been many sided; and not so much for the money, as because, being in a game where dollars were the counters, it was his instinct to play it well. he was winning already, and when the bagging trust paid him, for his share of the business, a sum double his investment, he found himself, at some years less than fifty, relieved of business cares and in command of an ample fortune. this change in the colonel's affairs--and we shall henceforth call him the colonel, because the scene of this story is laid in the south, where titles are seldom ignored, and where the colonel could hardly have escaped his own, even had he desired to do so--this change in the colonel's affairs coincided with that climacteric of the mind, from which, without ceasing to look forward, it turns, at times, in wistful retrospect, toward the distant past, which it sees thenceforward through a mellowing glow of sentiment. emancipated from the counting room, and ordered south by the doctor, the colonel's thoughts turned easily and naturally to the old town that had given him birth; and he felt a twinge of something like remorse at the reflection that never once since leaving it had he set foot within its borders. for years he had been too busy. his wife had never manifested any desire to visit the south, nor was her temperament one to evoke or sympathise with sentimental reminiscence. he had married, rather late in life, a new york woman, much younger than himself; and while he had admired her beauty and they had lived very pleasantly together, there had not existed between them the entire union of souls essential to perfect felicity, and the current of his life had not been greatly altered by her loss. toward little phil, however, the child she had borne him, his feeling was very different. his young wife had been, after all, but a sweet and pleasant graft upon a sturdy tree. little phil was flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. upon his only child the colonel lavished all of his affection. already, to his father's eye, the boy gave promise of a noble manhood. his frame was graceful and active. his hair was even more brightly golden than his mother's had been; his eyes more deeply blue than hers; while his features were a duplicate of his father's at the same age, as was evidenced by a faded daguerreotype among the colonel's few souvenirs of his own childhood. little phil had a sweet temper, a loving disposition, and endeared himself to all with whom he came in contact. the hack, after a brief passage down the main street, deposited the passengers at the front of the clarendon hotel. the colonel paid the black driver the quarter he demanded--two dollars would have been the new york price--ran the gauntlet of the dozen pairs of eyes in the heads of the men leaning back in the splint-bottomed armchairs under the shade trees on the sidewalk, registered in the book pushed forward by a clerk with curled mustaches and pomatumed hair, and accompanied by phil, followed the smiling black bellboy along a passage and up one flight of stairs to a spacious, well-lighted and neatly furnished room, looking out upon the main street. _three_ when the colonel and phil had removed the dust and disorder of travel from their appearance, they went down to dinner. after they had eaten, the colonel, still accompanied by the child, left the hotel, and following the main street for a short distance, turned into another thoroughfare bordered with ancient elms, and stopped for a moment before an old gray house with high steps and broad piazza--a large, square-built, two-storied house, with a roof sloping down toward the front, broken by dormer windows and buttressed by a massive brick chimney at either end. in spite of the gray monotone to which the paintless years had reduced the once white weatherboarding and green venetian blinds, the house possessed a certain stateliness of style which was independent of circumstance, and a solidity of construction that resisted sturdily the disintegrating hand of time. heart-pine and live-oak, mused the colonel, like other things southern, live long and die hard. the old house had been built of the best materials, and its woodwork dowelled and mortised and tongued and grooved by men who knew their trade and had not learned to scamp their work. for the colonel's grandfather had built the house as a town residence, the family having owned in addition thereto a handsome country place upon a large plantation remote from the town. the colonel had stopped on the opposite side of the street and was looking intently at the home of his ancestors and of his own youth, when a neatly dressed coloured girl came out on the piazza, seated herself in a rocking-chair with an air of proprietorship, and opened what the colonel perceived to be, even across the street, a copy of a woman's magazine whose circulation, as he knew from the advertising rates that french and co. had paid for the use of its columns, touched the million mark. not wishing to seem rude, the colonel moved slowly on down the street. when he turned his head, after going a rod or two, and looked back over his shoulder, the girl had risen and was re-entering the house. her disappearance was promptly followed by the notes of a piano, slightly out of tune, to which some one--presumably the young woman--was singing in a high voice, which might have been better had it been better trained, _"i dreamt that i dwe-elt in ma-arble halls with vassals and serfs at my si-i-ide."_ the colonel had slackened his pace at the sound of the music, but, after the first few bars, started forward with quickened footsteps which he did not relax until little phil's weight, increasing momentarily, brought home to him the consciousness that his stride was too long for the boy's short legs. phil, who was a thoroughbred, and would have dropped in his tracks without complaining, was nevertheless relieved when his father's pace returned to the normal. their walk led down a hill, and, very soon, to a wooden bridge which spanned a creek some twenty feet below. the colonel paused for a moment beside the railing, and looked up and down the stream. it seemed narrower and more sluggish than his memory had pictured it. above him the water ran between high banks grown thick with underbrush and over-arching trees; below the bridge, to the right of the creek, lay an open meadow, and to the left, a few rods away, the ruins of the old eureka cotton mill, which in his boyhood had harboured a flourishing industry, but which had remained, since sherman's army laid waste the country, the melancholy ruin the colonel had seen it last, when twenty-five years or more before, he left clarendon to seek a wider career in the outer world. the clear water of the creek rippled harmoniously down a gentle slope and over the site where the great dam at the foot had stood, while birds were nesting in the vines with which kindly nature had sought to cloak the dismantled and crumbling walls. mounting the slope beyond the bridge, the colonel's stride now carefully accommodated to the child's puny step, they skirted a low brick wall, beyond which white headstones gleamed in a mass of verdure. reaching an iron gate, the colonel lifted the latch, and entered the cemetery which had been the object of their visit. "is this the place, papa?" asked the little boy. "yes, phil, but it is farther on, in the older part." they passed slowly along, under the drooping elms and willows, past the monuments on either hand--here, resting on a low brick wall, a slab of marble, once white, now gray and moss-grown, from which the hand of time had well nigh erased the carved inscription; here a family vault, built into the side of a mound of earth, from which only the barred iron door distinguished it; here a pedestal, with a time-worn angel holding a broken fragment of the resurrection trumpet; here a prostrate headstone, and there another bending to its fall; and among them a profusion of rose bushes, on some of which the early roses were already blooming--scarcely a well-kept cemetery, for in many lots the shrubbery grew in wild unpruned luxuriance; nor yet entirely neglected, since others showed the signs of loving care, and an effort had been made to keep the walks clean and clear. father and son had traversed half the width of the cemetery, when they came to a spacious lot, surrounded by large trees and containing several monuments. it seemed less neglected than the lots about it, and as they drew nigh they saw among the tombs a very black and seemingly aged negro engaged in pruning a tangled rose tree. near him stood a dilapidated basket, partially filled with weeds and leaves, into which he was throwing the dead and superfluous limbs. he seemed very intent upon his occupation, and had not noticed the colonel's and phil's approach until they had paused at the side of the lot and stood looking at him. when the old man became aware of their presence, he straightened himself up with the slow movement of one stiff with age or rheumatism and threw them a tentatively friendly look out of a pair of faded eyes. "howdy do, uncle," said the colonel. "will you tell me whose graves these are that you are caring for?" "yas, suh," said the old man, removing his battered hat respectfully--the rest of his clothing was in keeping, a picturesque assortment of rags and patches such as only an old negro can get together, or keep together--"dis hyuh lot, suh, b'longs ter de fambly dat i useter b'long ter--de ol' french fambly, suh, de fines' fambly in beaver county." "why, papa!" cried little phil, "he means----" "hush, phil! go on, uncle." "yas, suh, de fines' fambly in cla'endon, suh. dis hyuh headstone hyuh, suh, an' de little stone at de foot, rep'esents de grave er ol' gin'al french, w'at fit in de revolution' wah, suh; and dis hyuh one nex' to it is de grave er my ol' marster, majah french, w'at fit in de mexican wah, and died endyoin' de wah wid de yankees, suh." "papa," urged phil, "that's my----" "shut up, phil! well, uncle, did this interesting old family die out, or is it represented in the present generation?" "lawd, no, suh, de fambly did n' die out--'deed dey did n' die out! dey ain't de kind er fambly ter die out! but it's mos' as bad, suh--dey's moved away. young mars henry went ter de norf, and dey say he's got rich; but he ain't be'n back no mo', suh, an' i don' know whether he's ever comin' er no." "you must have been very fond of them to take such good care of their graves," said the colonel, much moved, but giving no sign. "well, suh, i b'longed ter de fambly, an' i ain' got no chick ner chile er my own, livin', an' dese hyuh dead folks 'pears mo' closer ter me dan anybody e'se. de cullud folks don' was'e much time wid a ole man w'at ain' got nothin', an' dese hyuh new w'ite folks wa't is come up sence de wah, ain' got no use fer niggers, now dat dey don' b'long ter nobody no mo'; so w'en i ain' got nothin' e'se ter do, i comes roun' hyuh, whar i knows ev'ybody and ev'ybody knows me, an' trims de rose bushes an' pulls up de weeds and keeps de grass down jes' lak i s'pose mars henry'd 'a' had it done ef he'd 'a' lived hyuh in de ole home, stidder 'way off yandah in de norf, whar he so busy makin' money dat he done fergot all 'bout his own folks." "what is your name?" asked the colonel, who had been looking closely at the old man. "peter, suh--peter french. most er de niggers change' dey names after de wah, but i kept de ole fambly name i wuz raise' by. it wuz good 'nuff fer me, suh; dey ain' none better." "oh, papa," said little phil, unable to restrain himself longer, "he must be some kin to us; he has the same name, and belongs to the same family, and you know you called him 'uncle.'" the old negro had dropped his hat, and was staring at the colonel and the little boy, alternately, with dawning amazement, while a look of recognition crept slowly into his rugged old face. "look a hyuh, suh," he said tremulously, "is it?--it can't be!--but dere's de eyes, an' de nose, an' de shape er de head--why, it _must_ be my young mars henry!" "yes," said the colonel, extending his hand to the old man, who grasped it with both his own and shook it up and down with unconventional but very affectionate vigour, "and you are my boy peter; who took care of me when i was no bigger than phil here!" this meeting touched a tender chord in the colonel's nature, already tuned to sympathy with the dead past of which peter seemed the only survival. the old man's unfeigned delight at their meeting; his retention of the family name, a living witness of its former standing; his respect for the dead; his "family pride," which to the unsympathetic outsider might have seemed grotesque; were proofs of loyalty that moved the colonel deeply. when he himself had been a child of five or six, his father had given him peter as his own boy. peter was really not many years older than the colonel, but prosperity had preserved the one, while hard luck had aged the other prematurely. peter had taken care of him, and taught him to paddle in the shallow water of the creek and to avoid the suck-holes; had taught him simple woodcraft, how to fish, and how to hunt, first with bow and arrow, and later with a shotgun. through the golden haze of memory the colonel's happy childhood came back to him with a sudden rush of emotion. "those were good times, peter, when we were young," he sighed regretfully, "good times! i have seen none happier." "yas, suh! yas, suh! 'deed dem wuz good ole times! sho' dey wuz, suh, sho' dey wuz! 'member dem co'n-stalk fiddles we use' ter make, an' dem elderberry-wood whistles?" "yes, peter, and the robins we used to shoot and the rabbits we used to trap?" "an' dem watermillions, suh--um-m-m, um-m-m-m!" "_y-e-s_," returned the colonel, with a shade of pensiveness. there had been two sides to the watermelon question. peter and he had not always been able to find ripe watermelons, early in the season, and at times there had been painful consequences, the memory of which came back to the colonel with surprising ease. nor had they always been careful about boundaries in those early days. there had been one occasion when an irate neighbour had complained, and major french had thrashed henry and peter both--peter because he was older, and knew better, and henry because it was important that he should have impressed upon him, early in life, that of him to whom much is given, much will be required, and that what might be lightly regarded in peter's case would be a serious offence in his future master's. the lesson had been well learned, for throughout the course of his life the colonel had never shirked responsibility, but had made the performance of duty his criterion of conduct. to him the line of least resistance had always seemed the refuge of the coward and the weakling. with the twenty years preceding his return to clarendon, this story has nothing to do; but upon the quiet background of his business career he had lived an active intellectual and emotional life, and had developed into one of those rare natures of whom it may be truly said that they are men, and that they count nothing of what is human foreign to themselves. but the serenity of peter's retrospect was unmarred by any passing cloud. those who dwell in darkness find it easier to remember the bright places in their lives. "yas, suh, yas, suh, dem watermillions," he repeated with unction, "i kin tas'e 'em now! dey wuz de be's watermillions dat evuh growed, suh--dey doan raise none lack 'em dese days no mo'. an' den dem chinquapin bushes down by de swamp! 'member dem chinquapin bushes, whar we killt dat water moccasin dat day? he wuz 'bout ten foot long!" "yes, peter, he was a whopper! then there were the bullace vines, in the woods beyond the tanyard!" "sho' 'nuff, suh! an' de minnows we use' ter ketch in de creek, an' dem perch in de mill pon'?" for years the colonel had belonged to a fishing club, which preserved an ice-cold stream in a northern forest. for years the choicest fruits of all the earth had been served daily upon his table. yet as he looked back to-day no shining trout that had ever risen to his fly had stirred his emotions like the diaphanous minnows, caught, with a crooked pin, in the crooked creek; no luscious fruit had ever matched in sweetness the sour grapes and bitter nuts gathered from the native woods--by him and peter in their far-off youth. "yas, suh, yas, suh," peter went on, "an' 'member dat time you an' young mars jim wilson went huntin' and fishin' up de country tergether, an' got ti'ed er waitin' on yo'se'ves an' writ back fer me ter come up ter wait on yer and cook fer yer, an' ole marster say he did n' dare ter let me go 'way off yander wid two keerliss boys lak you-all, wid guns an' boats fer fear i mought git shot, er drownded?" "it looked, peter, as though he valued you more than me! more than his own son!" "yas, suh, yas, suh! sho' he did, sho' he did! old marse philip wuz a monstus keerful man, an' _i_ wuz winth somethin', suh, dem times; i wuz wuth five hundred dollahs any day in de yeah. but nobody would n' give five hundred cents fer me now, suh. dey'd want pay fer takin' me, mos' lakly. dey ain' none too much room fer a young nigger no mo', let 'lone a' ol' one." "and what have you been doing all these years, peter?" asked the colonel. peter's story was not a thrilling one; it was no tale of inordinate ambition, no odyssey of a perilous search for the prizes of life, but the bald recital of a mere struggle for existence. peter had stayed by his master until his master's death. then he had worked for a railroad contractor, until exposure and overwork had laid him up with a fever. after his recovery, he had been employed for some years at cutting turpentine boxes in the pine woods, following the trail of the industry southward, until one day his axe had slipped and wounded him severely. when his wound was healed he was told that he was too old and awkward for the turpentine, and that they needed younger and more active men. "so w'en i got my laig kyo'ed up," said the old man, concluding his story, "i come back hyuh whar i wuz bo'n, suh, and whar my w'ite folks use' ter live, an' whar my frien's use' ter be. but my w'ite folks wuz all in de graveya'd, an' most er my frien's wuz dead er moved away, an' i fin's it kinder lonesome, suh. i goes out an' picks cotton in de fall, an' i does arrants an' little jobs roun' de house fer folks w'at 'll hire me; an' w'en i ain' got nothin' ter eat i kin gor oun' ter de ole house an' wo'k in de gyahden er chop some wood, an' git a meal er vittles f'om ole mis' nichols, who's be'n mighty good ter me, suh. she's de barbuh's wife, suh, w'at bought ouah ole house. dey got mo' dan any yuther colored folks roun' hyuh, but dey he'ps de po', suh, dey he'ps de po'." "which speaks well for them, peter. i'm glad that all the virtue has not yet gone out of the old house." the old man's talk rambled on, like a sluggish stream, while the colonel's more active mind busied itself with the problem suggested by this unforeseen meeting. peter and he had both gone out into the world, and they had both returned. he had come back rich and independent. what good had freedom done for peter? in the colonel's childhood his father's butler, old madison, had lived a life which, compared to that of peter at the same age, was one of ease and luxury. how easy the conclusion that the slave's lot had been the more fortunate! but no, peter had been better free. there were plenty of poor white men, and no one had suggested slavery as an improvement of their condition. had peter remained a slave, then the colonel would have remained a master, which was only another form of slavery. the colonel had been emancipated by the same token that had made peter free. peter had returned home poor and broken, not because he had been free, but because nature first, and society next, in distributing their gifts, had been niggardly with old peter. had he been better equipped, or had a better chance, he might have made a better showing. the colonel had prospered because, having no peters to work for him, he had been compelled to work for himself. he would set his own success against peter's failure; and he would take off his hat to the memory of the immortal statesman, who in freeing one race had emancipated another and struck the shackles from a nation's mind. _four_ while the colonel and old peter were thus discussing reminiscences in which little phil could have no share, the boy, with childish curiosity, had wandered off, down one of the shaded paths. when, a little later, the colonel looked around for him, he saw phil seated on a rustic bench, in conversation with a lady. as the boy seemed entirely comfortable, and the lady not at all disturbed, the colonel did not interrupt them for a while. but when the lady at length rose, holding phil by the hand, the colonel, fearing that the boy, who was a child of strong impulses, prone to sudden friendships, might be proving troublesome, left his seat on the flat-topped tomb of his revolutionary ancestor and hastened to meet them. "i trust my boy hasn't annoyed you," he said, lifting his hat. "not at all, sir," returned the lady, in a clear, sweet voice, some haunting tone of which found an answering vibration in the colonel's memory. "on the contrary, he has interested me very much, and in nothing more than in telling me his name. if this and my memory do not deceive me, _you_ are henry french!" "yes, and you are--you are laura treadwell! how glad i am to meet you! i was coming to call this afternoon." "i'm glad to see you again. we have always remembered you, and knew that you had grown rich and great, and feared that you had forgotten the old town--and your old friends." "not very rich, nor very great, laura--miss treadwell." "let it be laura," she said with a faint colour mounting in her cheek, which had not yet lost its smoothness, as her eyes had not faded, nor her step lost its spring. "and neither have i forgotten the old home nor the old friends--since i am here and knew you the moment i looked at you and heard your voice." "and what a dear little boy!" exclaimed miss treadwell, looking down at phil. "he is named philip--after his grandfather, i reckon?" "after his grandfather. we have been visiting his grave, and those of all the frenches; and i found them haunted--by an old retainer, who had come hither, he said, to be with his friends." "old peter! i see him, now and then, keeping the lot in order. there are few like him left, and there were never any too many. but how have you been these many years, and where is your wife? did you bring her with you?" "i buried her," returned the colonel, "a little over a year ago. she left me little phil." "he must be like her," replied the lady, "and yet he resembles you." "he has her eyes and hair," said his father. "he is a good little boy and a lad of taste. see how he took to you at first sight! i can always trust phil's instincts. he is a born gentleman." "he came of a race of gentlemen," she said. "i'm glad it is not to die out. there are none too many left--in clarendon. you are going to like me, aren't you, phil?" asked the lady. "i like you already," replied phil gallantly. "you are a very nice lady. what shall i call you?" "call her miss laura, phil--it is the southern fashion--a happy union of familiarity and respect. already they come back to me, laura--one breathes them with the air--the gentle southern customs. with all the faults of the old system, laura--it carried the seeds of decay within itself and was doomed to perish--a few of us, at least, had a good time. an aristocracy is quite endurable, for the aristocrat, and slavery tolerable, for the masters--and the peters. when we were young, before the rude hand of war had shattered our illusions, we were very happy, laura." "yes, we were very happy." they were walking now, very slowly, toward the gate by which the colonel had entered, with little phil between them, confiding a hand to each. "and how is your mother?" asked the colonel. "she is living yet, i trust?" "yes, but ailing, as she has been for fifteen years--ever since my father died. it was his grave i came to visit." "you had ever a loving heart, laura," said the colonel, "given to duty and self-sacrifice. are you still living in the old place?" "the old place, only it is older, and shows it--like the rest of us." she bit her lip at the words, which she meant in reference to herself, but which she perceived, as soon as she had uttered them, might apply to him with equal force. despising herself for the weakness which he might have interpreted as a bid for a compliment, she was glad that he seemed unconscious of the remark. the colonel and phil had entered the cemetery by a side gate and their exit led through the main entrance. miss laura pointed out, as they walked slowly along between the elms, the graves of many whom the colonel had known in his younger days. their names, woven in the tapestry of his memory, needed in most cases but a touch to restore them. for while his intellectual life had ranged far and wide, his business career had run along a single channel, his circle of intimates had not been very large nor very variable, nor was his memory so overlaid that he could not push aside its later impressions in favour of those graven there so deeply in his youth. nearing the gate, they passed a small open space in which stood a simple marble shaft, erected to the memory of the confederate dead. a wealth of fresh flowers lay at its base. the colonel took off his hat as he stood before it for a moment with bowed head. but for the mercy of god, he might have been one of those whose deaths as well as deeds were thus commemorated. beyond this memorial, impressive in its pure simplicity, and between it and the gate, in an obtrusively conspicuous spot stood a florid monument of granite, marble and bronze, of glaring design and strangely out of keeping with the simple dignity and quiet restfulness of the surroundings; a monument so striking that the colonel paused involuntarily and read the inscription in bronze letters on the marble shaft above the granite base: "'_sacred to the memory of joshua fetters and elizabeth fetters, his wife._ "'_life's work well done, life's race well run, life's crown well won, then comes rest._'" "a beautiful sentiment, if somewhat trite," said the colonel, "but an atrocious monument." "do you think so?" exclaimed the lady. "most people think the monument fine, but smile at the sentiment." "in matters of taste," returned the colonel, "the majority are always wrong. but why smile at the sentiment? is it, for some reason, inappropriate to this particular case? fetters--fetters--the name seems familiar. who was fetters, laura?" "he was the speculator," she said, "who bought and sold negroes, and kept dogs to chase runaways; old mr. fetters--you must remember old josh fetters? when i was a child, my coloured mammy used him for a bogeyman for me, as for her own children." "'look out, honey,' she'd say, 'ef you ain' good, ole mr. fettuhs 'll ketch you.'" yes, he remembered now. fetters had been a character in clarendon--not an admirable character, scarcely a good character, almost a bad character; a necessary adjunct of an evil system, and, like other parasites, worse than the body on which he fed; doing the dirty work of slavery, and very naturally despised by those whose instrument he was, but finding consolation by taking it out of the negroes in the course of his business. the colonel would have expected fetters to lie in an unmarked grave in his own back lot, or in the potter's field. had he so far escaped the ruin of the institution on which he lived, as to leave an estate sufficient to satisfy his heirs and also pay for this expensive but vulgar monument? "the memorial was erected, as you see from the rest of the inscription, 'by his beloved and affectionate son.' that either loved the other no one suspected, for bill was harshly treated, and ran away from home at fifteen. he came back after the war, with money, which he lent out at high rates of interest; everything he touched turned to gold; he has grown rich, and is a great man in the state. he was a large contributor to the soldiers' monument." "but did not choose the design; let us be thankful for that. it might have been like his father's. bill fetters rich and great," he mused, "who would have dreamed it? i kicked him once, all the way down main street from the schoolhouse to the bank--and dodged his angry mother for a whole month afterward!" "no one," suggested miss laura, "would venture to cross him now. too many owe him money." "he went to school at the academy," the colonel went on, unwinding the thread of his memory, "and the rest of the boys looked down on him and made his life miserable. well, laura, in fetters you see one thing that resulted from the war--the poor white boy was given a chance to grow; and if the product is not as yet altogether admirable, taste and culture may come with another generation." "it is to be hoped they may," said miss laura, "and character as well. mr. fetters has a son who has gone from college to college, and will graduate from harvard this summer. they say he is very wild and spends ten thousand dollars a year. i do not see how it can be possible!" the colonel smiled at her simplicity. "i have been," he said, "at a college football game, where the gate receipts were fifty thousand dollars, and half a million was said to have changed hands in bets on the result. it is easy to waste money." "it is a sin," she said, "that some should be made poor, that others may have it to waste." there was a touch of bitterness in her tone, the instinctive resentment (the colonel thought) of the born aristocrat toward the upstart who had pushed his way above those no longer strong enough to resist. it did not occur to him that her feeling might rest upon any personal ground. it was inevitable that, with the incubus of slavery removed, society should readjust itself in due time upon a democratic basis, and that poor white men, first, and black men next, should reach a level representing the true measure of their talents and their ambition. but it was perhaps equally inevitable that for a generation or two those who had suffered most from the readjustment, should chafe under its seeming injustice. the colonel was himself a gentleman, and the descendant of a long line of gentlemen. but he had lived too many years among those who judged the tree by its fruit, to think that blood alone entitled him to any special privileges. the consciousness of honourable ancestry might make one clean of life, gentle of manner, and just in one's dealings. in so far as it did this it was something to be cherished, but scarcely to be boasted of, for democracy is impatient of any excellence not born of personal effort, of any pride save that of achievement. he was glad that fetters had got on in the world. it justified a fine faith in humanity, that wealth and power should have been attained by the poor white lad, over whom, with a boy's unconscious brutality, he had tyrannised in his childhood. he could have wished for bill a better taste in monuments, and better luck in sons, if rumour was correct about fetters's boy. but, these, perhaps, were points where blood _did_ tell. there was something in blood, after all, nature might make a great man from any sort of material: hence the virtue of democracy, for the world needs great men, and suffers from their lack, and welcomes them from any source. but fine types were a matter of breeding and were perhaps worth the trouble of preserving, if their existence were compatible with the larger good. he wondered if bill ever recalled that progress down main street in which he had played so conspicuous a part, or still bore any resentment toward the other participants? "could your mother see me," he asked, as they reached the gate, "if i went by the house?" "she would be glad to see you. mother lives in the past, and you would come to her as part of it. she often speaks of you. it is only a short distance. you have not forgotten the way?" they turned to the right, in a direction opposite to that from which the colonel had reached the cemetery. after a few minutes' walk, in the course of which they crossed another bridge over the same winding creek, they mounted the slope beyond, opened a gate, climbed a short flight of stone steps and found themselves in an enchanted garden, where lilac bush and jessamine vine reared their heads high, tulip and daffodil pushed their way upward, but were all dominated by the intenser fragrance of the violets. old peter had followed the party at a respectful distance, but, seeing himself forgotten, he walked past the gate, after they had entered it, and went, somewhat disconsolately, on his way. he had stopped, and was looking back toward the house--clarendon was a great place for looking back, perhaps because there was little in the town to which to look forward--when a white man, wearing a tinned badge upon his coat, came up, took peter by the arm and led him away, despite some feeble protests on the old man's part. _five_ at the end of the garden stood a frame house with a wide, columned porch. it had once been white, and the windows closed with blinds that still retained a faded tint of green. upon the porch, in a comfortable arm chair, sat an old lady, wearing a white cap, under which her white hair showed at the sides, and holding her hands, upon which she wore black silk mits, crossed upon her lap. on the top step, at opposite ends, sat two young people--one of them a rosy-cheeked girl, in the bloom of early youth, with a head of rebellious brown hair. she had been reading a book held open in her hand. the other was a long-legged, lean, shy young man, of apparently twenty-three or twenty-four, with black hair and eyes and a swarthy complexion. from the jack-knife beside him, and the shavings scattered around, it was clear that he had been whittling out the piece of pine that he was adjusting, with some nicety, to a wooden model of some mechanical contrivance which stood upon the floor beside him. they were a strikingly handsome couple, of ideally contrasting types. "mother," said miss treadwell, "this is henry french--colonel french--who has come back from the north to visit his old home and the graves of his ancestors. i found him in the cemetery; and this is his dear little boy, philip--named after his grandfather." the old lady gave the colonel a slender white hand, thin almost to transparency. "henry," she said, in a silvery thread of voice, "i am glad to see you. you must excuse my not rising--i can't walk without help. you are like your father, and even more like your grandfather, and your little boy takes after the family." she drew phil toward her and kissed him. phil accepted this attention amiably. meantime the young people had risen. "this," said miss treadwell, laying her hand affectionately on the girl's arm, "is my niece graciella--my brother tom's child. tom is dead, you know, these eight years and more, and so is graciella's mother, and she has lived with us." graciella gave the colonel her hand with engaging frankness. "i'm sure we're awfully glad to see anybody from the north," she said. "are you familiar with new york?" "i left there only day before yesterday," replied the colonel. "and this," said miss treadwell, introducing the young man, who, when he unfolded his long legs, rose to a rather imposing height, "this is mr. ben dudley." "the son of malcolm dudley, of mink run, i suppose? i'm glad to meet you," said the colonel, giving the young man's hand a cordial grasp. "his nephew, sir," returned young dudley. "my uncle never married." "oh, indeed? i did not know; but he is alive, i trust, and well?" "alive, sir, but very much broken. he has not been himself for years." "you find things sadly changed, henry," said mrs. treadwell. "they have never been the same since the surrender. our people are poor now, right poor, most of them, though we ourselves were fortunate enough to have something left." "we have enough left for supper, mother," interposed miss laura quickly, "to which we are going to ask colonel french to stay." "i suppose that in new york every one has dinner at six, and supper after the theatre or the concert?" said graciella, inquiringly. "the fortunate few," returned the colonel, smiling into her eager face, "who can afford a seat at the opera, and to pay for and digest two meals, all in the same evening." "and now, colonel," said miss treadwell, "i'm going to see about the supper. mother will talk to you while i am gone." "i must be going," said young dudley. "won't you stay to supper, ben?" asked miss laura. "no, miss laura; i'd like to, but uncle wasn't well to-day and i must stop by the drug store and get some medicine for him. dr. price gave me a prescription on my way in. good-bye, sir," he added, addressing the colonel. "will you be in town long?" "i really haven't decided. a day or two, perhaps a week. i am not bound, at present, by any business ties--am foot-loose, as we used to say when i was young. i shall follow my inclinations." "then i hope, sir, that you'll feel inclined to pay us a long visit and that i shall see you many times." as ben dudley, after this courteous wish, stepped down from the piazza, graciella rose and walked with him along the garden path. she was tall as most women, but only reached his shoulder. "say, graciella," he asked, "won't you give me an answer." "i'm thinking about it, ben. if you could take me away from this dead old town, with its lazy white people and its trifling niggers, to a place where there's music and art, and life and society--where there's something going on all the time, i'd _like_ to marry you. but if i did so now, you'd take me out to your rickety old house, with your daffy old uncle and his dumb old housekeeper, and i should lose my own mind in a week or ten days. when you can promise to take me to new york, i'll promise to marry you, ben. i want to travel, and to see things, to visit the art galleries and libraries, to hear patti, and to look at the millionaires promenading on fifth avenue--and i'll marry the man who'll take me there!" "uncle malcolm can't live forever, graciella--though i wouldn't wish his span shortened by a single day--and i'll get the plantation. and then, you know," he added, hesitating, "we may--we may find the money." graciella shook her head compassionately. "no, ben, you'll never find the money. there isn't any; it's all imagination--moonshine. the war unsettled your uncle's brain, and he dreamed the money." "it's as true as i'm standing here, graciella," replied ben, earnestly, "that there's money--gold--somewhere about the house. uncle couldn't imagine paper and ink, and i've seen the letter from my uncle's uncle ralph--i'll get it and bring it to you. some day the money will turn up, and then may be i'll be able to take you away. meantime some one must look after uncle and the place; there's no one else but me to do it. things must grow better some time--they always do, you know." "they couldn't be much worse," returned graciella, discontentedly. "oh, they'll be better--they're bound to be! they'll just have to be. and you'll wait for me, won't you, graciella?" "oh, i suppose i'll have to. you're around here so much that every one else is scared away, and there isn't much choice at the best; all the young men worth having are gone away already. but you know my ultimatum--i must get to new york. if you are ready before any one else speaks, you may take me there." "you're hard on a poor devil, graciella. i don't believe you care a bit for me, or you wouldn't talk like that. don't you suppose i have any feelings, even if i ain't much account? ain't i worth as much as a trip up north?" "why should i waste my time with you, if i didn't care for you?" returned graciella, begging the question. "here's a rose, in token of my love." she plucked the flower and thrust it into his hand. "it's full of thorns, like your love," he said ruefully, as he picked the sharp points out of his fingers. "'faithful are the wounds of a friend,'" returned the girl. "see psalms, xxvii: ." "take care of my cotton press, graciella; i'll come in to-morrow evening and work on it some more. i'll bring some cotton along to try it with." "you'll probably find some excuse--you always do." "don't you want me to come?" he asked with a trace of resentment. "i can stay away, if you don't." "oh, you come so often that i--i suppose i'd miss you, if you didn't! one must have some company, and half a loaf is better than no bread." he went on down the hill, turning at the corner for a lingering backward look at his tyrant. graciella, bending her head over the wall, followed his movements with a swift tenderness in her sparkling brown eyes. "i love him better than anything on earth," she sighed, "but it would never do to tell him so. he'd get so conceited that i couldn't manage him any longer, and so lazy that he'd never exert himself. i must get away from this town before i'm old and gray--i'll be seventeen next week, and an old maid in next to no time--and ben must take me away. but i must be his inspiration; he'd never do it by himself. i'll go now and talk to that dear old colonel french about the north; i can learn a great deal from him. and he doesn't look so old either," she mused, as she went back up the walk to where the colonel sat on the piazza talking to the other ladies. _six_ the colonel spent a delightful evening in the company of his friends. the supper was typically southern, and the cook evidently a good one. there was smothered chicken, light biscuit, fresh eggs, poundcake and tea. the tablecloth and napkins were of fine linen. that they were soft and smooth the colonel noticed, but he did not observe closely enough to see that they had been carefully darned in many places. the silver spoons were of fine, old-fashioned patterns, worn very thin--so thin that even the colonel was struck by their fragility. how charming, he thought, to prefer the simple dignity of the past to the vulgar ostentation of a more modern time. he had once dined off a golden dinner service, at the table of a multi-millionaire, and had not enjoyed the meal half so much. the dining-room looked out upon the garden and the perfume of lilac and violet stole in through the open windows. a soft-footed, shapely, well-trained negro maid, in white cap and apron, waited deftly upon the table; a woman of serious countenance--so serious that the colonel wondered if she were a present-day type of her race, and if the responsibilities of freedom had robbed her people of their traditional light-heartedness and gaiety. after supper they sat out upon the piazza. the lights within were turned down low, so that the moths and other insects might not be attracted. sweet odours from the garden filled the air. through the elms the stars, brighter than in more northern latitudes, looked out from a sky of darker blue; so bright were they that the colonel, looking around for the moon, was surprised to find that luminary invisible. on the green background of the foliage the fireflies glowed and flickered. there was no strident steam whistle from factory or train to assault the ear, no rumble of passing cabs or street cars. far away, in some distant part of the straggling town, a sweet-toned bell sounded the hour of an evening church service. "to see you is a breath from the past, henry," said mrs. treadwell. "you are a fine, strong man now, but i can see you as you were, the day you went away to the war, in your new gray uniform, on your fine gray horse, at the head of your company. you were going to take peter with you, but he had got his feet poisoned with poison ivy, and couldn't walk, and your father gave you another boy, and peter cried like a baby at being left behind. i can remember how proud you were, and how proud your father was, when he gave you his sword--your grandfather's sword, and told you never to draw it or sheath it, except in honour; and how, when you were gone, the old gentleman shut himself up for two whole days and would speak to no one. he was glad and sorry--glad to send you to fight for your country, and sorry to see you go--for you were his only boy." the colonel thrilled with love and regret. his father had loved him, he knew very well, and he had not visited his tomb for twenty-five years. how far away it seemed too, the time when he had thought of the confederacy as his country! and the sword, his grandfather's sword, had been for years stored away in a dark closet. his father had kept it displayed upon the drawing-room wall, over the table on which the family bible had rested. mrs. treadwell was silent for a moment. "times have changed since then, henry. we have lost a great deal, although we still have enough--yes, we have plenty to live upon, and to hold up our heads among the best." miss laura and graciella, behind the colonel's back, exchanged meaning glances. how well they knew how little they had to live upon! "that is quite evident," said the colonel, glancing through the window at the tasteful interior, "and i am glad to see that you have fared so well. my father lost everything." "we were more fortunate," said mrs. treadwell. "we were obliged to let belleview go when major treadwell died--there were debts to be paid, and we were robbed as well--but we have several rentable properties in town, and an estate in the country which brings us in an income. but things are not quite what they used to be!" mrs. treadwell sighed, and nodded. miss laura sat in silence--a pensive silence. she, too, remembered the time gone by, but unlike her mother's life, her own had only begun as the good times were ending. her mother, in her youth, had seen something of the world. the daughter of a wealthy planter, she had spent her summers at saratoga, had visited new york and philadelphia and new orleans, and had taken a voyage to europe. graciella was young and beautiful. her prince might come, might be here even now, if this grand gentleman should chance to throw the handkerchief. but she, laura, had passed her youth in a transition period; the pleasures neither of memory nor of hope had been hers--except such memories as came of duty well performed, and such hopes as had no root in anything earthly or corruptible. graciella was not in a reflective mood, and took up the burden of the conversation where her grandmother had dropped it. her thoughts were not of the past, but of the future. she asked many eager questions of new york. was it true that ladies at the waldorf-astoria always went to dinner in low-cut bodices with short sleeves, and was evening dress always required at the theatre? did the old knickerbocker families recognise the vanderbilts? were the rockefellers anything at all socially? did he know ward mcallister, at that period the beau brummel of the metropolitan smart set? was fifth avenue losing its pre-eminence? on what days of the week was the art museum free to the public? what was the fare to new york, and the best quarter of the city in which to inquire for a quiet, select boarding house where a southern lady of refinement and good family might stay at a reasonable price, and meet some nice people? and would he recommend stenography or magazine work, and which did he consider preferable, as a career which such a young lady might follow without injury to her social standing? the colonel, with some amusement, answered these artless inquiries as best he could; they came as a refreshing foil to the sweet but melancholy memories of the past. they were interesting, too, from this very pretty but very ignorant little girl in this backward little southern town. she was a flash of sunlight through a soft gray cloud; a vigorous shoot from an old moss-covered stump--she was life, young life, the vital principle, breaking through the cumbering envelope, and asserting its right to reach the sun. after a while a couple of very young ladies, friends of graciella, dropped in. they were introduced to the colonel, who found that he had known their fathers, or their mothers, or their grandfathers, or their grandmothers, and that many of them were more or less distantly related. a little later a couple of young men, friends of graciella's friends--also very young, and very self-conscious--made their appearance, and were duly introduced, in person and by pedigree. the conversation languished for a moment, and then one of the young ladies said something about music, and one of the young men remarked that he had brought over a new song. graciella begged the colonel to excuse them, and led the way to the parlour, followed by her young friends. mrs. treadwell had fallen asleep, and was leaning comfortably back in her armchair. miss laura excused herself, brought a veil, and laid it softly across her mother's face. "the night air is not damp," she said, "and it is pleasanter for her here than in the house. she won't mind the music; she is accustomed to it." graciella went to the piano and with great boldness of touch struck the bizarre opening chords and then launched into the grotesque words of the latest new york "coon song," one of the first and worst of its kind, and the other young people joined in the chorus. it was the first discordant note. at home, the colonel subscribed to the opera, and enjoyed the music. a plantation song of the olden time, as he remembered it, borne upon the evening air, when sung by the tired slaves at the end of their day of toil, would have been pleasing, with its simple melody, its plaintive minor strains, its notes of vague longing; but to the colonel's senses there was to-night no music in this hackneyed popular favourite. in a metropolitan music hall, gaudily bedecked and brilliantly lighted, it would have been tolerable from the lips of a black-face comedian. but in this quiet place, upon this quiet night, and in the colonel's mood, it seemed like profanation. the song of the coloured girl, who had dreamt that she dwelt in marble halls, and the rest, had been less incongruous; it had at least breathed aspiration. mrs. treadwell was still dozing in her armchair. the colonel, beckoning miss laura to follow him, moved to the farther end of the piazza, where they might not hear the singers and the song. "it is delightful here, laura. i seem to have renewed my youth. i yield myself a willing victim to the charm of the old place, the old ways, the old friends." "you see our best side, henry. night has a kindly hand, that covers our defects, and the starlight throws a glamour over everything. you see us through a haze of tender memories. when you have been here a week, the town will seem dull, and narrow, and sluggish. you will find us ignorant and backward, worshipping our old idols, and setting up no new ones; our young men leaving us, and none coming in to take their place. had you, and men like you, remained with us, we might have hoped for better things." "and perhaps not, laura. environment controls the making of men. some rise above it, the majority do not. we might have followed in the well-worn rut. but let us not spoil this delightful evening by speaking of anything sad or gloomy. this is your daily life; to me it is like a scene from a play, over which one sighs to see the curtain fall--all enchantment, all light, all happiness." but even while he spoke of light, a shadow loomed up beside them. the coloured woman who had waited at the table came around the house from the back yard and stood by the piazza railing. "miss laura!" she called, softly and appealingly. "kin you come hyuh a minute?" "what is it, catherine?" "kin i speak just a word to you, ma'am? it's somethin' partic'lar--mighty partic'lar, ma'am." "excuse me a minute, henry," said miss laura, rising with evident reluctance. she stepped down from the piazza, and walked beside the woman down one of the garden paths. the colonel, as he sat there smoking--with miss laura's permission he had lighted a cigar--could see the light stuff of the lady's gown against the green background, though she was walking in the shadow of the elms. from the murmur which came to him, he gathered that the black woman was pleading earnestly, passionately, and he could hear miss laura's regretful voice, as she closed the interview: "i am sorry, catherine, but it is simply impossible. i would if i could, but i cannot." the woman came back first, and as she passed by an open window, the light fell upon her face, which showed signs of deep distress, hardening already into resignation or despair. she was probably in trouble of some sort, and her mistress had not been able, doubtless for some good reason, to help her out. this suspicion was borne out by the fact that when miss laura came back to him, she too seemed troubled. but since she did not speak of the matter, the colonel gave no sign of his own thoughts. "you have said nothing of yourself, laura," he said, wishing to divert her mind from anything unpleasant. "tell me something of your own life--it could only be a cheerful theme, for you have means and leisure, and a perfect environment. tell me of your occupations, your hopes, your aspirations." "there is little enough to tell, henry," she returned, with a sudden courage, "but that little shall be the truth. you will find it out, if you stay long in town, and i would rather you learned it from our lips than from others less friendly. my mother is--my mother--a dear, sweet woman to whom i have devoted my life! but we are not well off, henry. our parlour carpet has been down for twenty-five years; surely you must have recognised the pattern! the house has not been painted for the same length of time; it is of heart pine, and we train the flowers and vines to cover it as much as may be, and there are many others like it, so it is not conspicuous. our rentable property is three ramshackle cabins on the alley at the rear of the lot, for which we get four dollars a month each, when we can collect it. our country estate is a few acres of poor land, which we rent on shares, and from which we get a few bushels of corn, an occasional load of firewood, and a few barrels of potatoes. as for my own life, i husband our small resources; i keep the house, and wait on mother, as i have done since she became helpless, ten years ago. i look after graciella. i teach in the sunday school, and i give to those less fortunate such help as the poor can give the poor." "how did you come to lose belleview?" asked the colonel, after a pause. "i had understood major treadwell to be one of the few people around here who weathered the storm of war and emerged financially sound." "he did; and he remained so--until he met mr. fetters, who had made money out of the war while all the rest were losing. father despised the slavetrader's son, but admired his ability to get along. fetters made his acquaintance, flattered him, told him glowing stories of wealth to be made by speculating in cotton and turpentine. father was not a business man, but he listened. fetters lent him money, and father lent fetters money, and they had transactions back and forth, and jointly. father lost and gained and we had no inkling that he had suffered greatly, until, at his sudden death, fetters foreclosed a mortgage he held upon belleview. mother has always believed there was something wrong about the transaction, and that father was not indebted to fetters in any such sum as fetters claimed. but we could find no papers and we had no proof, and fetters took the plantation for his debt. he changed its name to sycamore; he wanted a post-office there, and there were too many belleviews." "does he own it still?" "yes, and runs it--with convict labour! the thought makes me shudder! we were rich when he was poor; we are poor and he is rich. but we trust in god, who has never deserted the widow and the fatherless. by his mercy we have lived and, as mother says, held up our heads, not in pride or haughtiness, but in self-respect, for we cannot forget what we were." "nor what you are, laura, for you are wonderful," said the colonel, not unwilling to lighten a situation that bordered on intensity. "you should have married and had children. the south needs such mothers as you would have made. unless the men of clarendon have lost their discernment, unless chivalry has vanished and the fire died out of the southern blood, it has not been for lack of opportunity that your name remains unchanged." miss laura's cheek flushed unseen in the shadow of the porch. "ah, henry, that would be telling! but to marry me, one must have married the family, for i could not have left them--they have had only me. i have not been unhappy. i do not know that i would have had my life different." graciella and her friends had finished their song, the piano had ceased to sound, and the visitors were taking their leave. graciella went with them to the gate, where they stood laughing and talking. the colonel looked at his watch by the light of the open door. "it is not late," he said. "if my memory is true, you too played the piano when you--when i was young." "it is the same piano, henry, and, like our life here, somewhat thin and weak of tone. but if you think it would give you pleasure, i will play--as well as i know how." she readjusted the veil, which had slipped from her mother's face, and they went into the parlour. from a pile of time-stained music she selected a sheet and seated herself at the piano. the colonel stood at her elbow. she had a pretty back, he thought, and a still youthful turn of the head, and still plentiful, glossy brown hair. her hands were white, slender and well kept, though he saw on the side of the forefinger of her left hand the telltale marks of the needle. the piece was an arrangement of the well-known air from the opera of _maritana_: _"scenes that are brightest, may charm awhile, hearts which are lightest and eyes that smile. yet o'er them above us, though nature beam, with none to love us, how sad they seem!"_ under her sympathetic touch a gentle stream of melody flowed from the old-time piano, scarcely stronger toned in its decrepitude, than the spinet of a former century. a few moments before, under graciella's vigorous hands, it had seemed to protest at the dissonances it had been compelled to emit; now it seemed to breathe the notes of the old opera with an almost human love and tenderness. it, too, mused the colonel, had lived and loved and was recalling the memories of a brighter past. the music died into silence. mrs. treadwell was awake. "laura!" she called. miss treadwell went to the door. "i must have been nodding for a minute. i hope colonel french did not observe it--it would scarcely seem polite. he hasn't gone yet?" "no, mother, he is in the parlour." "i must be going," said the colonel, who came to the door. "i had almost forgotten phil, and it is long past his bedtime." miss laura went to wake up phil, who had fallen asleep after supper. he was still rubbing his eyes when the lady led him out. "wake up, phil," said the colonel. "it's time to be going. tell the ladies good night." graciella came running up the walk. "why, colonel french," she cried, "you are not going already? i made the others leave early so that i might talk to you." "my dear young lady," smiled the colonel, "i have already risen to go, and if i stayed longer i might wear out my welcome, and phil would surely go to sleep again. but i will come another time--i shall stay in town several days." "yes, _do_ come, if you _must_ go," rejoined graciella with emphasis. "i want to hear more about the north, and about new york society and--oh, everything! good night, philip. _good_ night, colonel french." "beware of the steps, henry," said miss laura, "the bottom stone is loose." they heard his footsteps in the quiet street, and phil's light patter beside him. "he's a lovely man, isn't he, aunt laura?" said graciella. "he is a gentleman," replied her aunt, with a pensive look at her young niece. "of the old school," piped mrs. treadwell. "and philip is a sweet child," said miss laura. "a chip of the old block," added mrs. treadwell. "i remember----" "yes, mother, you can tell me when i've shut up the house," interrupted miss laura. "put out the lamps, graciella--there's not much oil--and when you go to bed hang up your gown carefully, for it takes me nearly half an hour to iron it." "and you are right good to do it! good night, dear aunt laura! good night, grandma!" mr. french had left the hotel at noon that day as free as air, and he slept well that night, with no sense of the forces that were to constrain his life. and yet the events of the day had started the growth of a dozen tendrils, which were destined to grow, and reach out, and seize and hold him with ties that do not break. _seven_ the constable who had arrested old peter led his prisoner away through alleys and quiet streets--though for that matter all the streets of clarendon were quiet in midafternoon--to a guardhouse or calaboose, constructed of crumbling red brick, with a rusty, barred iron door secured by a heavy padlock. as they approached this structure, which was sufficiently forbidding in appearance to depress the most lighthearted, the strumming of a banjo became audible, accompanying a mellow negro voice which was singing, to a very ragged ragtime air, words of which the burden was something like this: _"w'at's de use er my wo'kin' so hahd? i got a' 'oman in de white man's yahd. w'en she cook chicken, she save me a wing; w'en dey 'low i'm wo'kin', i ain' doin' a thing!"_ the grating of the key in the rusty lock interrupted the song. the constable thrust his prisoner into the dimly lighted interior, and locked the door. "keep over to the right," he said curtly, "that's the niggers' side." "but, mistah haines," asked peter, excitedly, "is i got to stay here all night? i ain' done nuthin'." "no, that's the trouble; you ain't done nuthin' fer a month, but loaf aroun'. you ain't got no visible means of suppo't, so you're took up for vagrancy." "but i does wo'k we'n i kin git any wo'k ter do," the old man expostulated. "an' ef i kin jus' git wo'd ter de right w'ite folks, i'll be outer here in half a' hour; dey'll go my bail." "they can't go yo' bail to-night, fer the squire's gone home. i'll bring you some bread and meat, an' some whiskey if you want it, and you'll be tried to-morrow mornin'." old peter still protested. "you niggers are always kickin'," said the constable, who was not without a certain grim sense of humour, and not above talking to a negro when there were no white folks around to talk to, or to listen. "i never see people so hard to satisfy. you ain' got no home, an' here i've give' you a place to sleep, an' you're kickin'. you doan know from one day to another where you'll git yo' meals, an' i offer you bread and meat and whiskey--an' you're kickin'! you say you can't git nothin' to do, an' yit with the prospect of a reg'lar job befo' you to-morrer--you're kickin'! i never see the beat of it in all my bo'n days." when the constable, chuckling at his own humour, left the guardhouse, he found his way to a nearby barroom, kept by one clay jackson, a place with an evil reputation as the resort of white men of a low class. most crimes of violence in the town could be traced to its influence, and more than one had been committed within its walls. "has mr. turner been in here?" demanded haines of the man in charge. the bartender, with a backward movement of his thumb, indicated a door opening into a room at the rear. here the constable found his man--a burly, bearded giant, with a red face, a cunning eye and an overbearing manner. he had a bottle and a glass before him, and was unsociably drinking alone. "howdy, haines," said turner, "how's things? how many have you got this time?" "i've got three rounded up, mr. turner, an' i'll take up another befo' night. that'll make fo'--fifty dollars fer me, an' the res' fer the squire." "that's good," rejoined turner. "have a glass of liquor. how much do you s'pose the squire'll fine bud?" "well," replied haines, drinking down the glass of whiskey at a gulp, "i reckon about twenty-five dollars." "you can make it fifty just as easy," said turner. "niggers are all just a passell o' black fools. bud would 'a' b'en out now, if it hadn't be'n for me. i bought him fer six months. i kept close watch of him for the first five, and then along to'ds the middle er the las' month i let on i'd got keerliss, an' he run away. course i put the dawgs on 'im, an' followed 'im here, where his woman is, an' got you after 'im, and now he's good for six months more." "the woman is a likely gal an' a good cook," said haines. "_she'd_ be wuth a good 'eal to you out at the stockade." "that's a shore fact," replied the other, "an' i need another good woman to help aroun'. if we'd 'a' thought about it, an' give' her a chance to hide bud and feed him befo' you took 'im up, we could 'a' filed a charge ag'inst her for harborin' 'im." "well, i kin do it nex' time, fer he'll run away ag'in--they always do. bud's got a vile temper." "yes, but he's a good field-hand, and i'll keep his temper down. have somethin' mo'?" "i've got to go back now and feed the pris'ners," said haines, rising after he had taken another drink; "an' i'll stir bud up so he'll raise h--ll, an' to-morrow morning i'll make another charge against him that'll fetch his fine up to fifty and costs." "which will give 'im to me till the cotton crop is picked, and several months more to work on the jackson swamp ditch if fetters gits the contract. you stand by us here, haines, an' help me git all the han's i can out o' this county, and i'll give you a job at sycamo' when yo'r time's up here as constable. go on and feed the niggers, an' stir up bud, and i'll be on hand in the mornin' when court opens." when the lesser of these precious worthies left his superior to his cups, he stopped in the barroom and bought a pint of rotgut whiskey--a cheap brand of rectified spirits coloured and flavoured to resemble the real article, to which it bore about the relation of vitriol to lye. he then went into a cheap eating house, conducted by a negro for people of his own kind, where he procured some slices of fried bacon, and some soggy corn bread, and with these various purchases, wrapped in a piece of brown paper, he betook himself to the guardhouse. he unlocked the door, closed it behind him, and called peter. the old man came forward. "here, peter," said haines, "take what you want of this, and give some to them other fellows, and if there's anything left after you've got what you want, throw it to that sulky black hound over yonder in the corner." he nodded toward a young negro in the rear of the room, the bud johnson who had been the subject of the conversation with turner. johnson replied with a curse. the constable advanced menacingly, his hand moving toward his pocket. quick as a flash the negro threw himself upon him. the other prisoners, from instinct, or prudence, or hope of reward, caught him, pulled him away and held him off until haines, pale with rage, rose to his feet and began kicking his assailant vigorously. with the aid of well-directed blows of his fists he forced the negro down, who, unable to regain his feet, finally, whether from fear or exhaustion, lay inert, until the constable, having worked off his worst anger, and not deeming it to his advantage seriously to disable the prisoner, in whom he had a pecuniary interest, desisted from further punishment. "i might send you to the penitentiary for this," he said, panting for breath, "but i'll send you to h--ll instead. you'll be sold back to mr. fetters for a year or two tomorrow, and in three months i'll be down at sycamore as an overseer, and then i'll learn you to strike a white man, you----" the remainder of the objurgation need not be told, but there was no doubt, from the expression on haines's face, that he meant what he said, and that he would take pleasure in repaying, in overflowing measure, any arrears of revenge against the offending prisoner which he might consider his due. he had stirred bud up very successfully--much more so, indeed, than he had really intended. he had meant to procure evidence against bud, but had hardly thought to carry it away in the shape of a black eye and a swollen nose. _eight_ when the colonel set out next morning for a walk down the main street, he had just breakfasted on boiled brook trout, fresh laid eggs, hot muffins and coffee, and was feeling at peace with all mankind. he was alone, having left phil in charge of the hotel housekeeper. he had gone only a short distance when he reached a door around which several men were lounging, and from which came the sound of voices and loud laughter. stopping, he looked with some curiosity into the door, over which there was a faded sign to indicate that it was the office of a justice of the peace--a pleasing collocation of words, to those who could divorce it from any technical significance--justice, peace--the seed and the flower of civilisation. an unwashed, dingy-faced young negro, clothed in rags unspeakably vile, which scarcely concealed his nakedness, was standing in the midst of a group of white men, toward whom he threw now and then a shallow and shifty glance. the air was heavy with the odour of stale tobacco, and the floor dotted with discarded portions of the weed. a white man stood beside a desk and was addressing the audience: "now, gentlemen, here's lot number three, a likely young nigger who answers to the name of sam brown. not much to look at, but will make a good field hand, if looked after right and kept away from liquor; used to workin', when in the chain gang, where he's been, off and on, since he was ten years old. amount of fine an' costs thirty-seven dollars an' a half. a musical nigger, too, who plays the banjo, an' sings jus' like a--like a blackbird. what am i bid for this prime lot?" the negro threw a dull glance around the crowd with an air of detachment which seemed to say that he was not at all interested in the proceedings. the colonel viewed the scene with something more than curious interest. the fellow looked like an habitual criminal, or at least like a confirmed loafer. this must be one of the idle and worthless blacks with so many of whom the south was afflicted. this was doubtless the method provided by law for dealing with them. "one year," answered a voice. "nine months," said a second. "six months," came a third bid, from a tall man with a buggy whip under his arm. "are you all through, gentlemen? six months' labour for thirty-seven fifty is mighty cheap, and you know the law allows you to keep the labourer up to the mark. are you all done? sold to mr. turner, for mr. fetters, for six months." the prisoner's dull face showed some signs of apprehension when the name of his purchaser was pronounced, and he shambled away uneasily under the constable's vigilant eye. "the case of the state against bud johnson is next in order. bring in the prisoner." the constable brought in the prisoner, handcuffed, and placed him in front of the justice's desk, where he remained standing. he was a short, powerfully built negro, seemingly of pure blood, with a well-rounded head, not unduly low in the brow and quite broad between the ears. under different circumstances his countenance might have been pleasing; at present it was set in an expression of angry defiance. he had walked with a slight limp, there were several contusions upon his face; and upon entering the room he had thrown a defiant glance around him, which had not quailed even before the stern eye of the tall man, turner, who, as the agent of the absent fetters, had bid on sam brown. his face then hardened into the blank expression of one who stands in a hostile presence. "bud johnson," said the justice, "you are charged with escaping from the service into which you were sold to pay the fine and costs on a charge of vagrancy. what do you plead--guilty or not guilty?" the prisoner maintained a sullen silence. "i'll enter a plea of not guilty. the record of this court shows that you were convicted of vagrancy on december th, and sold to mr. fetters for four months to pay your fine and costs. the four months won't be up for a week. mr. turner may be sworn." turner swore to bud's escape and his pursuit. haines testified to his capture. "have you anything to say?" asked the justice. "what's de use er my sayin' anything," muttered the negro. "it won't make no diff'ence. i didn' do nothin', in de fus' place, ter be fine' fer, an' run away 'cause dey did n' have no right ter keep me dere." "guilty. twenty-five dollars an' costs. you are also charged with resisting the officer who made the arrest. guilty or not guilty? since you don't speak, i'll enter a plea of not guilty. mr. haines may be sworn." haines swore that the prisoner had resisted arrest, and had only been captured by the display of a loaded revolver. the prisoner was convicted and fined twenty-five dollars and costs for this second offense. the third charge, for disorderly conduct in prison, was quickly disposed of, and a fine of twenty-five dollars and costs levied. "you may consider yo'self lucky," said the magistrate, "that mr. haines didn't prefer a mo' serious charge against you. many a nigger has gone to the gallows for less. and now, gentlemen, i want to clean this case up right here. how much time is offered for the fine and costs of the prisoner, bud johnson, amounting to seventy-five dollars fine and thirty-three dollars and fifty-fo' cents costs? you've heard the evidence an' you see the nigger. ef there ain't much competition for his services and the time is a long one, he'll have his own stubbornness an' deviltry to thank for it. he's strong and healthy and able to do good work for any one that can manage him." there was no immediate response. turner walked forward and viewed the prisoner from head to foot with a coldly sneering look. "well, bud," he said, "i reckon we'll hafter try it ag'in. i have never yet allowed a nigger to git the better o' me, an', moreover, i never will. i'll bid eighteen months, squire; an' that's all he's worth, with his keep." there was no competition, and the prisoner was knocked down to turner, for fetters, for eighteen months. "lock 'im up till i'm ready to go, bill," said turner to the constable, "an' just leave the irons on him. i'll fetch 'em back next time i come to town." the unconscious brutality of the proceeding grated harshly upon the colonel's nerves. delinquents of some kind these men must be, who were thus dealt with; but he had lived away from the south so long that so sudden an introduction to some of its customs came with something of a shock. he had remembered the pleasant things, and these but vaguely, since his thoughts and his interests had been elsewhere; and in the sifting process of a healthy memory he had forgotten the disagreeable things altogether. he had found the pleasant things still in existence, faded but still fragrant. fresh from a land of labour unions, and of struggle for wealth and power, of strivings first for equality with those above, and, this attained, for a point of vantage to look down upon former equals, he had found in old peter, only the day before, a touching loyalty to a family from which he could no longer expect anything in return. fresh from a land of women's clubs and women's claims, he had reveled last night in the charming domestic, life of the old south, so perfectly preserved in a quiet household. things southern, as he had already reflected, lived long and died hard, and these things which he saw now in the clear light of day, were also of the south, and singularly suggestive of other things southern which he had supposed outlawed and discarded long ago. "now, mr. haines, bring in the next lot," said the squire. the constable led out an old coloured man, clad in a quaint assortment of tattered garments, whom the colonel did not for a moment recognise, not having, from where he stood, a full view of the prisoner's face. "gentlemen, i now call yo'r attention to lot number fo', left over from befo' the wah; not much for looks, but respectful and obedient, and accustomed, for some time past, to eat very little. can be made useful in many ways--can feed the chickens, take care of the children, or would make a good skeercrow. what i am bid, gentlemen, for ol' peter french? the amount due the co't is twenty-fo' dollahs and a half." there was some laughter at the squire's facetiousness. turner, who had bid on the young and strong men, turned away unconcernedly. "you'd 'a' made a good auctioneer, squire," said the one-armed man. "thank you, mr. pearsall. how much am i offered for this bargain?" "he'd be dear at any price," said one. "it's a great risk," observed a second. "ten yeahs," said a third. "you're takin' big chances, mr. bennet," said another. "he'll die in five, and you'll have to bury him." "i withdraw the bid," said mr. bennet promptly. "two yeahs," said another. the colonel was boiling over with indignation. his interest in the fate of the other prisoners had been merely abstract; in old peter's case it assumed a personal aspect. he forced himself into the room and to the front. "may i ask the meaning of this proceeding?" he demanded. "well, suh," replied the justice, "i don't know who you are, or what right you have to interfere, but this is the sale of a vagrant nigger, with no visible means of suppo't. perhaps, since you're interested, you'd like to bid on 'im. are you from the no'th, likely?" "yes." "i thought, suh, that you looked like a no'the'n man. that bein' so, doubtless you'd like somethin' on the uncle tom order. old peter's fine is twenty dollars, and the costs fo' dollars and a half. the prisoner's time is sold to whoever pays his fine and allows him the shortest time to work it out. when his time's up, he goes free." "and what has old peter done to deserve a fine of twenty dollars--more money than he perhaps has ever had at any one time?" "'deed, it is, mars henry, 'deed it is!" exclaimed peter, fervently. "peter has not been able," replied the magistrate, "to show this co't that he has reg'lar employment, or means of suppo't, and he was therefore tried and convicted yesterday evenin' of vagrancy, under our state law. the fine is intended to discourage laziness and to promote industry. do you want to bid, suh? i'm offered two yeahs, gentlemen, for old peter french? does anybody wish to make it less?" "i'll pay the fine," said the colonel, "let him go." "i beg yo' pahdon, suh, but that wouldn't fulfil the requi'ments of the law. he'd be subject to arrest again immediately. somebody must take the responsibility for his keep." "i'll look after him," said the colonel shortly. "in order to keep the docket straight," said the justice, "i should want to note yo' bid. how long shall i say?" "say what you like," said the colonel, drawing out his pocketbook. "you don't care to bid, mr. turner?" asked the justice. "not by a damn sight," replied turner, with native elegance. "i buy niggers to work, not to bury." "i withdraw my bid in favour of the gentleman," said the two-year bidder. "thank you," said the colonel. "remember, suh," said the justice to the colonel, "that you are responsible for his keep as well as entitled to his labour, for the period of your bid. how long shall i make it?" "as long as you please," said the colonel impatiently. "sold," said the justice, bringing down his gavel, "for life, to--what name, suh?" "french--henry french." there was some manifestation of interest in the crowd; and the colonel was stared at with undisguised curiosity as he paid the fine and costs, which included two dollars for two meals in the guardhouse, and walked away with his purchase--a purchase which his father had made, upon terms not very different, fifty years before. "one of the old frenches," i reckon, said a bystander, "come back on a visit." "yes," said another, "old 'ristocrats roun' here. well, they ought to take keer of their old niggers. they got all the good out of 'em when they were young. but they're not runnin' things now." an hour later the colonel, driving leisurely about the outskirts of the town and seeking to connect his memories more closely with the scenes around him, met a buggy in which sat the man turner. after the buggy, tied behind one another to a rope, like a coffle of slaves, marched the three negroes whose time he had bought at the constable's sale. among them, of course, was the young man who had been called bud johnson. the colonel observed that this negro's face, when turned toward the white man in front of him, expressed a fierce hatred, as of some wild thing of the woods, which finding itself trapped and betrayed, would go to any length to injure its captor. turner passed the colonel with no sign of recognition or greeting. bud johnson evidently recognised the friendly gentleman who had interfered in peter's case. he threw toward the colonel a look which resembled an appeal; but it was involuntary, and lasted but a moment, and, when the prisoner became conscious of it, and realised its uselessness, it faded into the former expression. what the man's story was, the colonel did not know, nor what were his deserts. but the events of the day had furnished food for reflection. evidently clarendon needed new light and leading. men, even black men, with something to live for, and with work at living wages, would scarcely prefer an enforced servitude in ropes and chains. and the punishment had scarcely seemed to fit the crime. he had observed no great zeal for work among the white people since he came to town; such work as he had seen done was mostly performed by negroes. if idleness were a crime, the negroes surely had no monopoly of it. _nine_ furnished with money for his keep, peter was ordered if again molested to say that he was in the colonel's service. the latter, since his own plans were for the present uncertain, had no very clear idea of what disposition he would ultimately make of the old man, but he meant to provide in some way for his declining years. he also bought peter a neat suit of clothes at a clothing store, and directed him to present himself at the hotel on the following morning. the interval would give the colonel time to find something for peter to do, so that he would be able to pay him a wage. to his contract with the county he attached little importance; he had already intended, since their meeting in the cemetery, to provide for peter in some way, and the legal responsibility was no additional burden. to peter himself, to whose homeless old age food was more than philosophy, the arrangement seemed entirely satisfactory. colonel french's presence in clarendon had speedily become known to the public. upon his return to the hotel, after leaving peter to his own devices for the day, he found several cards in his letter box, left by gentlemen who had called, during his absence, to see him. the daily mail had also come in, and the colonel sat down in the office to read it. there was a club notice, and several letters that had been readdressed and forwarded, and a long one from kirby in reference to some detail of the recent transfer. before he had finished reading these, a gentleman came up and introduced himself. he proved to be one john mclean, an old schoolmate of the colonel, and later a comrade-in-arms, though the colonel would never have recognised a rather natty major in his own regiment in this shabby middle-aged man, whose shoes were run down at the heel, whose linen was doubtful, and spotted with tobacco juice. the major talked about the weather, which was cool for the season; about the civil war, about politics, and about the negroes, who were very trifling, the major said. while they were talking upon this latter theme, there was some commotion in the street, in front of the hotel, and looking up they saw that a horse, attached to a loaded wagon, had fallen in the roadway, and having become entangled in the harness, was kicking furiously. five or six negroes were trying to quiet the animal, and release him from the shafts, while a dozen white men looked on and made suggestions. "an illustration," said the major, pointing through the window toward the scene without, "of what we've got to contend with. six niggers can't get one horse up without twice as many white men to tell them how. that's why the south is behind the no'th. the niggers, in one way or another, take up most of our time and energy. you folks up there have half your work done before we get our'n started." the horse, pulled this way and that, in obedience to the conflicting advice of the bystanders, only became more and more intricately entangled. he had caught one foot in a manner that threatened, with each frantic jerk, to result in a broken leg, when the colonel, leaving his visitor without ceremony, ran out into the street, leaned down, and with a few well-directed movements, released the threatened limb. "now, boys," he said, laying hold of the prostrate animal, "give a hand here." the negroes, and, after some slight hesitation, one or two white men, came to the colonel's aid, and in a moment, the horse, trembling and blowing, was raised to its feet. the driver thanked the colonel and the others who had befriended him, and proceeded with his load. when the flurry of excitement was over, the colonel went back to the hotel and resumed the conversation with his friend. if the new franchise amendment went through, said the major, the negro would be eliminated from politics, and the people of the south, relieved of the fear of "nigger domination," could give their attention to better things, and their section would move forward along the path of progress by leaps and bounds. of himself the major said little except that he had been an alternate delegate to the last democratic national nominating convention, and that he expected to run for coroner at the next county election. "if i can secure the suppo't of mr. fetters in the primaries," he said, "my nomination is assured, and a nomination is of co'se equivalent to an election. but i see there are some other gentlemen that would like to talk to you, and i won't take any mo' of yo' time at present." "mr. blake," he said, addressing a gentleman with short side-whiskers who was approaching them, "have you had the pleasure of meeting colonel french?" "no, suh," said the stranger, "i shall be glad to have the honour of an introduction at your hands." "colonel french, mr. blake--mr. blake, colonel french. you gentlemen will probably like to talk to one another, because you both belong to the same party, i reckon. mr. blake is a new man roun' heah--come down from the mountains not mo' than ten yeahs ago, an' fetched his politics with him; but since he was born that way we don't entertain any malice against him. mo'over, he's not a 'black and tan republican,' but a 'lily white.'" "yes, sir," said mr. blake, taking the colonel's hand, "i believe in white supremacy, and the elimination of the nigger vote. if the national republican party would only ignore the coloured politicians, and give all the offices to white men, we'll soon build up a strong white republican party. if i had the post-office here at clarendon, with the encouragement it would give, and the aid of my clerks and subo'dinates, i could double the white republican vote in this county in six months." the major had left them together, and the lily white, ere he in turn made way for another caller, suggested delicately, that he would appreciate any good word that the colonel might be able to say for him in influential quarters--either personally or through friends who might have the ear of the executive or those close to him--in reference to the postmastership. realising that the present administration was a business one, in which sentiment played small part, he had secured the endorsement of the leading business men of the county, even that of mr. fetters himself. mr. fetters was of course a democrat, but preferred, since the office must go to a republican, that it should go to a lily white. "i hope to see mo' of you, sir," he said, "and i take pleasure in introducing the honourable henry clay appleton, editor of our local newspaper, the _anglo-saxon_. he and i may not agree on free silver and the tariff, but we are entirely in harmony on the subject indicated by the title of his newspaper. mr. appleton not only furnishes all the news that's fit to read, but he represents this county in the legislature, along with mr. fetters, and he will no doubt be the next candidate for congress from this district. he can tell you all that's worth knowin' about clarendon." the colonel shook hands with the editor, who had come with a twofold intent--to make the visitor's acquaintance and to interview him upon his impressions of the south. incidentally he gave the colonel a great deal of information about local conditions. these were not, he admitted, ideal. the town was backward. it needed capital to develop its resources, and it needed to be rid of the fear of negro domination. the suffrage in the hands of the negroes had proved a ghastly and expensive joke for all concerned, and the public welfare absolutely demanded that it be taken away. even the white republicans were coming around to the same point of view. the new franchise amendment to the state constitution was receiving their unqualified support. "that was a fine, chivalrous deed of yours this morning, sir," he said, "at squire reddick's office. it was just what might have been expected from a southern gentleman; for we claim you, colonel, in spite of your long absence." "yes," returned the colonel, "i don't know what i rescued old peter from. it looked pretty dark for him there for a little while. i shouldn't have envied his fate had he been bought in by the tall fellow who represented your colleague in the legislature. the law seems harsh." "well," admitted the editor, "i suppose it might seem harsh, in comparison with your milder penal systems up north. but you must consider the circumstances, and make allowances for us. we have so many idle, ignorant negroes that something must be done to make them work, or else they'll steal, and to keep them in their place, or they would run over us. the law has been in operation only a year or two, and is already having its effect. i'll be glad to introduce a bill for its repeal, as soon as it is no longer needed. "you must bear in mind, too, colonel, that niggers don't look at imprisonment and enforced labour in the same way white people do--they are not conscious of any disgrace attending stripes or the ball and chain. the state is poor; our white children are suffering for lack of education, and yet we have to spend a large amount of money on the negro schools. these convict labour contracts are a source of considerable revenue to the state; they make up, in fact, for most of the outlay for negro education--which i approve of, though i'm frank to say that so far i don't see much good that's come from it. this convict labour is humanely treated; mr. fetters has the contract for several counties, and anybody who knows mr. fetters knows that there's no kinder-hearted man in the south." the colonel disclaimed any intention of criticising. he had come back to his old home for a brief visit, to rest and to observe. he was willing to learn and anxious to please. the editor took copious notes of the interview, and upon his departure shook hands with the colonel cordially. the colonel had tactfully let his visitors talk, while he listened, or dropped a word here and there to draw them out. one fact was driven home to him by every one to whom he had spoken. fetters dominated the county and the town, and apparently the state. his name was on every lip. his influence was indispensable to every political aspirant. his acquaintance was something to boast of, and his good will held a promise of success. and the colonel had once kicked the honourable mr. fetters, then plain bill, in presence of an admiring audience, all the way down main street from the academy to the bank! bill had been, to all intents and purposes, a poor white boy; who could not have named with certainty his own grandfather. the honourable william was undoubtedly a man of great ability. had the colonel remained in his native state, would he have been able, he wondered, to impress himself so deeply upon the community? would blood have been of any advantage, under the changed conditions, or would it have been a drawback to one who sought political advancement? when the colonel was left alone, he went to look for phil, who was playing with the children of the landlord, in the hotel parlour. commending him to the care of the negro maid in charge of them, he left the hotel and called on several gentlemen whose cards he had found in his box at the clerk's desk. their stores and offices were within a short radius of the hotel. they were all glad to see him, and if there was any initial stiffness or shyness in the attitude of any one, it soon became the warmest cordiality under the influence of the colonel's simple and unostentatious bearing. if he compared the cut of their clothes or their beards to his own, to their disadvantage, or if he found their views narrow and provincial, he gave no sign--their hearts were warm and their welcome hearty. the colonel was not able to gather, from the conversation of his friends, that clarendon, or any one in the town--always excepting fetters, who did not live in the town, but merely overshadowed it--was especially prosperous. there were no mills or mines in the neighbourhood, except a few grist mills, and a sawmill. the bulk of the business consisted in supplying the needs of an agricultural population, and trading in their products. the cotton was baled and shipped to the north, and re-imported for domestic use, in the shape of sheeting and other stuffs. the corn was shipped to the north, and came back in the shape of corn meal and salt pork, the staple articles of diet. beefsteak and butter were brought from the north, at twenty-five and fifty cents a pound respectively. there were cotton merchants, and corn and feed merchants; there were dry-goods and grocery stores, drug stores and saloons--and more saloons--and the usual proportion of professional men. since clarendon was the county seat, there were of course a court house and a jail. there were churches enough, if all filled at once, to hold the entire population of the town, and preachers in proportion. the merchants, of whom a number were jewish, periodically went into bankruptcy; the majority of their customers did likewise, and thus a fellow-feeling was promoted, and the loss thrown back as far as possible. the lands of the large farmers were mostly mortgaged, either to fetters, or to the bank of which he was the chief stockholder, for all that could be borrowed on them; while the small farmers, many of whom were coloured, were practically tied to the soil by ropes of debt and chains of contract. every one the colonel met during the afternoon had heard of squire reddick's good joke of the morning. that he should have sold peter to the colonel for life was regarded as extremely clever. some of them knew old peter, and none of them had ever known any harm of him, and they were unanimous in their recognition and applause of the colonel's goodheartedness. moreover, it was an index of the colonel's views. he was one of them, by descent and early associations, but he had been away a long time, and they hadn't really known how much of a yankee he might have become. by his whimsical and kindly purchase of old peter's time--or of old peter, as they smilingly put it, he had shown his appreciation of the helplessness of the negroes, and of their proper relations to the whites. "what'll you do with him, colonel?" asked one gentleman. "an ole nigger like peter couldn't live in the col' no'th. you'll have to buy a place down here to keep 'im. they wouldn' let you own a nigger at the no'th." the remark, with the genial laugh accompanying it, was sounding in the colonel's ears, as, on the way back to the hotel, he stepped into the barber shop. the barber, who had also heard the story, was bursting with a desire to unbosom himself upon the subject. knowing from experience that white gentlemen, in their intercourse with coloured people, were apt to be, in the local phrase; "sometimey," or uncertain in their moods, he first tested, with a few remarks about the weather, the colonel's amiability, and finding him approachable, proved quite talkative and confidential. "you're colonel french, ain't you, suh?" he asked as he began applying the lather. "yes." "yes, suh; i had heard you wuz in town, an' i wuz hopin' you would come in to get shaved. an' w'en i heard 'bout yo' noble conduc' this mawnin' at squire reddick's i wanted you to come in all de mo', suh. ole uncle peter has had a lot er bad luck in his day, but he has fell on his feet dis time, suh, sho's you bawn. i'm right glad to see you, suh. i feels closer to you, suh, than i does to mos' white folks, because you know, colonel, i'm livin' in the same house you wuz bawn in." "oh, you are the nichols, are you, who bought our old place?" "yes, suh, william nichols, at yo' service, suh. i've own' de ole house fer twenty yeahs or mo' now, suh, an' we've b'en mighty comfo'table in it, suh. they is a spaciousness, an' a air of elegant sufficiency about the environs and the equipments of the ed'fice, suh, that does credit to the tas'e of the old aristocracy an' of you-all's family, an' teches me in a sof' spot. for i loves the aristocracy; an' i've often tol' my ol' lady, 'liza,' says i, 'ef i'd be'n bawn white i sho' would 'a' be'n a 'ristocrat. i feels it in my bones.'" while the barber babbled on with his shrewd flattery, which was sincere enough to carry a reasonable amount of conviction, the colonel listened with curiously mingled feelings. he recalled each plank, each pane of glass, every inch of wall, in the old house. no spot was without its associations. how many a brilliant scene of gaiety had taken place in the spacious parlour where bright eyes had sparkled, merry feet had twinkled, and young hearts beat high with love and hope and joy of living! and not only joy had passed that way, but sorrow. in the front upper chamber his mother had died. vividly he recalled, as with closed eyes he lay back under the barber's skilful hand, their last parting and his own poignant grief; for she had been not only his mother, but a woman of character, who commanded respect and inspired affection; a beautiful woman whom he had loved with a devotion that bordered on reverence. romance, too, had waved her magic wand over the old homestead. his memory smiled indulgently as he recalled one scene. in a corner of the broad piazza, he had poured out his youthful heart, one summer evening, in strains of passionate devotion, to his first love, a beautiful woman of thirty who was visiting his mother, and who had told him between smiles and tears, to be a good boy and wait a little longer, until he was sure of his own mind. even now, he breathed, in memory, the heavy odour of the magnolia blossoms which overhung the long wooden porch bench or "jogging board" on which the lady sat, while he knelt on the hard floor before her. he felt very young indeed after she had spoken, but her caressing touch upon his hair had so stirred his heart that his vanity had suffered no wound. why, the family had owned the house since they had owned the cemetery lot! it was hallowed by a hundred memories, and now!---- "will you have oil on yo' hair, suh, or bay rum?" "nichols," exclaimed the colonel, "i should like to buy back the old house. what do you want for it?" "why, colonel," stammered the barber, somewhat taken aback at the suddenness of the offer, "i hadn' r'ally thought 'bout sellin' it. you see, suh, i've had it now for twenty years, and it suits me, an' my child'en has growed up in it--an' it kind of has associations, suh." in principle the colonel was an ardent democrat; he believed in the rights of man, and extended the doctrine to include all who bore the human form. but in feeling he was an equally pronounced aristocrat. a servant's rights he would have defended to the last ditch; familiarity he would have resented with equal positiveness. something of this ancestral feeling stirred within him now. while nichols's position in reference to the house was, in principle, equally as correct as the colonel's own, and superior in point of time--since impressions, like photographs, are apt to grow dim with age, and nichols's were of much more recent date--the barber's display of sentiment only jarred the colonel's sensibilities and strengthened his desire. "i should advise you to speak up, nichols," said the colonel. "i had no notion of buying the place when i came in, and i may not be of the same mind to-morrow. name your own price, but now's your time." the barber caught his breath. such dispatch was unheard-of in clarendon. but nichols, a keen-eyed mulatto, was a man of thrift and good sense. he would have liked to consult his wife and children about the sale, but to lose an opportunity to make a good profit was to fly in the face of providence. the house was very old. it needed shingling and painting. the floors creaked; the plaster on the walls was loose; the chimneys needed pointing and the insurance was soon renewable. he owned a smaller house in which he could live. he had been told to name his price; it was as much better to make it too high than too low, as it was easier to come down than to go up. the would-be purchaser was a rich man; the diamond on the third finger of his left hand alone would buy a small house. "i think, suh," he said, at a bold venture, "that fo' thousand dollars would be 'bout right." "i'll take it," returned the colonel, taking out his pocket-book. "here's fifty dollars to bind the bargain. i'll write a receipt for you to sign." the barber brought pen, ink and paper, and restrained his excitement sufficiently to keep silent, while the colonel wrote a receipt embodying the terms of the contract, and signed it with a steady hand. "have the deed drawn up as soon as you like," said the colonel, as he left the shop, "and when it is done i'll give you a draft for the money." "yes, suh; thank you, suh, thank you, colonel." the barber had bought the house at a tax sale at a time of great financial distress, twenty years before, for five hundred dollars. he had made a very good sale, and he lost no time in having the deed drawn up. when the colonel reached the hotel, he found phil seated on the doorstep with a little bow-legged black boy and a little white dog. phil, who had a large heart, had fraternised with the boy and fallen in love with the dog. "papa," he said, "i want to buy this dog. his name is rover; he can shake hands, and i like him very much. this little boy wants ten cents for him, and i did not have the money. i asked him to wait until you came. may i buy him?" "certainly, phil. here, boy!" the colonel threw the black boy a silver dollar. phil took the dog under his arm and followed his father into the house, while the other boy, his glistening eyes glued to the coin in his hand, scampered off as fast as his limbs would carry him. he was back next morning with a pretty white kitten, but the colonel discouraged any further purchases for the time being. * * * * * "my dear laura," said the colonel when he saw his friend the same evening, "i have been in clarendon two days; and i have already bought a dog, a house and a man." miss laura was startled. "i don't understand," she said. the colonel proceeded to explain the transaction by which he had acquired, for life, the services of old peter. "i suppose it is the law," miss laura said, "but it seems hardly right. i had thought we were well rid of slavery. white men do not work any too much. old peter was not idle. he did odd jobs, when he could get them; he was polite and respectful; and it was an outrage to treat him so. i am glad you--hired him." "yes--hired him. moreover, laura. i have bought a house." "a house! then you are going to stay! i am so glad! we shall all be so glad. what house?" "the old place. i went into the barber shop. the barber complimented me on the family taste in architecture, and grew sentimental about _his_ associations with the house. this awoke _my_ associations, and the collocation jarred--i was selfish enough to want a monopoly of the associations. i bought the house from him before i left the shop." "but what will you do with it?" asked miss laura, puzzled. "you could never _live_ in it again--after a coloured family?" "why not? it is no less the old house because the barber has reared his brood beneath its roof. there were always negroes in it when we were there--the place swarmed with them. hammer and plane, soap and water, paper and paint, can make it new again. the barber, i understand, is a worthy man, and has reared a decent family. his daughter plays the piano, and sings: _'i dreamt that i dwelt in marble halls, with vassals and serfs by my side.'_ i heard her as i passed there yesterday." miss laura gave an apprehensive start. "there were negroes in the house in the old days," he went on unnoticing, "and surely a good old house, gone farther astray than ours, might still be redeemed to noble ends. i shall renovate it and live in it while i am here, and at such times as i may return; or if i should tire of it, i can give it to the town for a school, or for a hospital--there is none here. i should like to preserve, so far as i may, the old associations--_my_ associations. the house might not fall again into hands as good as those of nichols, and i should like to know that it was devoted to some use that would keep the old name alive in the community." "i think, henry," said miss laura, "that if your visit is long enough, you will do more for the town than if you had remained here all your life. for you have lived in a wider world, and acquired a broader view; and you have learned new things without losing your love for the old." _ten_ the deed for the house was executed on friday, nichols agreeing to give possession within a week. the lavishness of the purchase price was a subject of much remark in the town, and nichols's good fortune was congratulated or envied, according to the temper of each individual. the colonel's action in old peter's case had made him a name for generosity. his reputation for wealth was confirmed by this reckless prodigality. there were some small souls, of course, among the lower whites who were heard to express disgust that, so far, only "niggers" had profited by the colonel's visit. the _anglo-saxon_, which came out saturday morning, gave a large amount of space to colonel french and his doings. indeed, the two compositors had remained up late the night before, setting up copy, and the pressman had not reached home until three o'clock; the kerosene oil in the office gave out, and it was necessary to rouse a grocer at midnight to replenish the supply--so far had the advent of colonel french affected the life of the town. the _anglo-saxon_ announced that colonel henry french, formerly of clarendon, who had won distinction in the confederate army, and since the war achieved fortune at the north, had returned to visit his birthplace and his former friends. the hope was expressed that colonel french, who had recently sold out to a syndicate his bagging mills in connecticut, might seek investments in the south, whose vast undeveloped resources needed only the fructifying flow of abundant capital to make it blossom like the rose. the new south, the _anglo-saxon_ declared, was happy to welcome capital and enterprise, and hoped that colonel french might find, in clarendon, an agreeable residence, and an attractive opening for his trained business energies. that something of the kind was not unlikely, might be gathered from the fact that colonel french had already repurchased, from william nichols, a worthy negro barber, the old french mansion, and had taken into his service a former servant of the family, thus foreshadowing a renewal of local ties and a prolonged residence. the conduct of the colonel in the matter of his old servant was warmly commended. the romantic circumstances of their meeting in the cemetery, and the incident in the justice's court, which were matters of public knowledge and interest, showed that in colonel french, should he decide to resume his residence in clarendon, his fellow citizens would find an agreeable neighbour, whose sympathies would be with the south in those difficult matters upon which north and south had so often been at variance, but upon which they were now rapidly becoming one in sentiment. the colonel, whose active mind could not long remain unoccupied, was busily engaged during the next week, partly in making plans for the renovation of the old homestead, partly in correspondence with kirby concerning the winding up of the loose ends of their former business. thus compelled to leave phil to the care of some one else, he had an excellent opportunity to utilise peter's services. when the old man, proud of his new clothes, and relieved of any responsibility for his own future, first appeared at the hotel, the colonel was ready with a commission. "now, peter," he said, "i'm going to prove my confidence in you, and test your devotion to the family, by giving you charge of phil. you may come and get him in the morning after breakfast--you can get your meals in the hotel kitchen--and take him to walk in the streets or the cemetery; but you must be very careful, for he is all i have in the world. in other words, peter, you are to take as good care of phil as you did of me when i was a little boy." "i'll look aftuh 'im, mars henry, lak he wuz a lump er pyo' gol'. me an' him will git along fine, won't we, little mars phil?" "yes, indeed," replied the child. "i like you, uncle peter, and i'll be glad to go with you." phil and the old man proved excellent friends, and the colonel, satisfied that the boy would be well cared for, gave his attention to the business of the hour. as soon as nichols moved out of the old house, there was a shaking of the dry bones among the mechanics of the town. a small army of workmen invaded the premises, and repairs and improvements of all descriptions went rapidly forward--much more rapidly than was usual in clarendon, for the colonel let all his work by contract, and by a system of forfeits and premiums kept it going at high pressure. in two weeks the house was shingled, painted inside and out, the fences were renewed, the outhouses renovated, and the grounds put in order. the stream of ready money thus put into circulation by the colonel, soon permeated all the channels of local enterprise. the barber, out of his profits, began the erection of a row of small houses for coloured tenants. this gave employment to masons and carpenters, and involved the sale and purchase of considerable building material. general trade felt the influence of the enhanced prosperity. groceries, dry-goods stores and saloons, did a thriving business. the ease with which the simply organised community responded to so slight an inflow of money and energy, was not without a pronounced influence upon the colonel's future conduct. when his house was finished, colonel french hired a housekeeper, a coloured maid, a cook and a coachman, bought several horses and carriages, and, having sent to new york for his books and pictures and several articles of furniture which he had stored there, began housekeeping in his own establishment. succumbing willingly to the charm of old associations, and entering more fully into the social life of the town, he began insensibly to think of clarendon as an established residence, where he would look forward to spending a certain portion of each year. the climate was good for phil, and to bring up the boy safely would be henceforth his chief concern in life. in the atmosphere of the old town the ideas of race and blood attained a new and larger perspective. it would be too bad for an old family, with a fine history, to die out, and phil was the latest of the line and the sole hope of its continuance. the colonel was conscious, somewhat guiltily conscious, that he had neglected the south and all that pertained to it--except the market for burlaps and bagging, which several southern sales agencies had attended to on behalf of his firm. he was aware, too, that he had felt a certain amount of contempt for its poverty, its quixotic devotion to lost causes and vanished ideals, and a certain disgusted impatience with a people who persistently lagged behind in the march of progress, and permitted a handful of upstart, blatant, self-seeking demagogues to misrepresent them, in congress and before the country, by intemperate language and persistent hostility to a humble but large and important part of their own constituency. but he was glad to find that this was the mere froth upon the surface, and that underneath it, deep down in the hearts of the people, the currents of life flowed, if less swiftly, not less purely than in more favoured places. the town needed an element, which he could in a measure supply by residing there, if for only a few weeks each year. and that element was some point of contact with the outer world and its more advanced thought. he might induce some of his northern friends to follow his example; there were many for whom the mild climate in winter and the restful atmosphere at all seasons of the year, would be a boon which correctly informed people would be eager to enjoy. of the extent to which the influence of the treadwell household had contributed to this frame of mind, the colonel was not conscious. he had received the freedom of the town, and many hospitable doors were open to him. as a single man, with an interesting little motherless child, he did not lack for the smiles of fair ladies, of which the town boasted not a few. but mrs. treadwell's home held the first place in his affections. he had been there first, and first impressions are vivid. they had been kind to phil, who loved them all, and insisted on peter's taking him there every day. the colonel found pleasure in miss laura's sweet simplicity and openness of character; to which graciella's vivacity and fresh young beauty formed an attractive counterpart; and mrs. treadwell's plaintive minor note had soothed and satisfied colonel french in this emotional indian summer which marked his reaction from a long and arduous business career. _eleven_ in addition to a pronounced attractiveness of form and feature, miss graciella treadwell possessed a fine complexion, a clear eye, and an elastic spirit. she was also well endowed with certain other characteristics of youth; among them ingenuousness, which, if it be a fault, experience is sure to correct; and impulsiveness, which even the school of hard knocks is not always able to eradicate, though it may chasten. to the good points of graciella, could be added an untroubled conscience, at least up to that period when colonel french dawned upon her horizon, and for some time thereafter. if she had put herself foremost in all her thoughts, it had been the unconscious egotism of youth, with no definite purpose of self-seeking. the things for which she wished most were associated with distant places, and her longing for them had never taken the form of envy of those around her. indeed envy is scarcely a vice of youth; it is a weed that flourishes best after the flower of hope has begun to wither. graciella's views of life, even her youthful romanticism were sane and healthful; but since she had not been tried in the furnace of experience, it could only be said of her that she belonged to the class, always large, but shifting like the sands of the sea, who have never been tempted, and therefore do not know whether they would sin or not. it was inevitable, with such a nature as graciella's, in such an embodiment, that the time should come, at some important crisis of her life, when she must choose between different courses; nor was it likely that she could avoid what comes sometime to all of us, the necessity of choosing between good and evil. her liking for colonel french had grown since their first meeting. he knew so many things that graciella wished to know, that when he came to the house she spent a great deal of time in conversation with him. her aunt laura was often busy with household duties, and graciella, as the least employed member of the family, was able to devote herself to his entertainment. colonel french, a comparatively idle man at this period, found her prattle very amusing. it was not unnatural for graciella to think that this acquaintance might be of future value; she could scarcely have thought otherwise. if she should ever go to new york, a rich and powerful friend would be well worth having. should her going there be delayed very long, she would nevertheless have a tie of friendship in the great city, and a source to which she might at any time apply for information. her fondness for colonel french's society was, however, up to a certain time, entirely spontaneous, and coloured by no ulterior purpose. her hope that his friendship might prove valuable was an afterthought. it was during this happy period that she was standing, one day, by the garden gate, when colonel french passed by in his fine new trap, driving a spirited horse; and it was with perfect candour that she waved her hand to him familiarly. "would you like a drive?" he called. "wouldn't i?" she replied. "wait till i tell the folks." she was back in a moment, and ran out of the gate and down the steps. the colonel gave her his hand and she sprang up beside him. they drove through the cemetery, and into the outlying part of the town, where there were some shaded woodland stretches. it was a pleasant afternoon; cloudy enough to hide the sun. graciella's eyes sparkled and her cheek glowed with pleasure, while her light brown hair blown about her face by the breeze of their rapid motion was like an aureole. "colonel french," she said as they were walking the horse up a hill, "are you going to give a house warming?" "why," he said, "i hadn't thought of it. ought i to give a house warming?" "you surely ought. everybody will want to see your house while it is new and bright. you certainly ought to have a house warming." "very well," said the colonel. "i make it a rule to shirk no plain duty. if i _ought_ to have a house warming, i _will_ have it. and you shall be my social mentor. what sort of a party shall it be?" "why not make it," she said brightly, "just such a party as your father would have had. you have the old house, and the old furniture. give an old-time party." * * * * * in fitting up his house the colonel had been animated by the same feeling that had moved him to its purchase. he had endeavoured to restore, as far as possible, the interior as he remembered it in his childhood. at his father's death the furniture had been sold and scattered. he had been able, through the kindly interest of his friends, to recover several of the pieces. others that were lost past hope, had been reproduced from their description. among those recovered was a fine pair of brass andirons, and his father's mahogany desk, which had been purchased by major treadwell at the sale of the elder french's effects. miss laura had been the first to speak of the desk. "henry," she had said, "the house would not be complete without your father's desk. it was my father's too, but yours is the prior claim. take it as a gift from me." he protested, and would have paid for it liberally, and, when she would take nothing, declared he would not accept it on such terms. "you are selfish, henry," she replied, with a smile. "you have brought a new interest into our lives, and into the town, and you will not let us make you any return." "but i am taking from you something you need," he replied, "and for which you paid. when major treadwell bought it, it was merely second-hand furniture, sold under the hammer. now it has the value of an antique--it is a fine piece and could be sold in new york for a large sum." "you must take it for nothing, or not at all," she replied firmly. "it is highway robbery," he said, and could not make up his mind to yield. next day, when the colonel went home, after having been down town an hour, he found the desk in his library. the treadwell ladies had corrupted peter, who had told them when the colonel would be out of the house and had brought a cart to take the desk away. when the house was finished, the interior was simple but beautiful. it was furnished in the style that had been prevalent fifty years before. there were some modern additions in the line of comfort and luxury--soft chairs, fine rugs, and a few choice books and pictures--for the colonel had not attempted to conform his own tastes and habits to those of his father. he had some visitors, mostly gentlemen, and there was, as graciella knew, a lively curiosity among the ladies to see the house and its contents. the suggestion of a house warming had come originally from mrs. treadwell; but graciella had promptly made it her own and conveyed it to the colonel. * * * * * "a bright idea," he replied. "by all means let it be an old-time party--say such a party as my father would have given, or my grandfather. and shall we invite the old people?" "well," replied graciella judicially, "don't have them so old that they can't talk or hear, and must be fed with a spoon. if there were too many old, or not enough young people, i shouldn't enjoy myself." "i suppose i seem awfully old to you," said the colonel, parenthetically. "oh, i don't know," replied graciella, giving him a frankly critical look. "when you first came i thought you _were_ rather old--you see, you are older than aunt laura; but you seem to have grown younger--it's curious, but it's true--and now i hardly think of you as old at all." the colonel was secretly flattered. the wisest man over forty likes to be thought young. "very well," he said, "you shall select the guests." "at an old-time party," continued graciella, thoughtfully, "the guests should wear old-time clothes. in grandmother's time the ladies wore long flowing sleeves----" "and hoopskirts," said the colonel. "and their hair down over their ears." "or in ringlets." "yes, it is all in grandmother's bound volume of _the ladies' book_," said graciella. "i was reading it only last week." "my mother took it," returned the colonel. "then you must have read 'letters from a pastry cook,' by n.p. willis when they came out?" "no," said the colonel with a sigh, "i missed that. i--i wasn't able to read then." graciella indulged in a brief mental calculation. "why, of course not," she laughed, "you weren't even born when they came out! but they're fine; i'll lend you our copy. you must ask all the girls to dress as their mothers and grandmothers used to dress. make the requirement elastic, because some of them may not have just the things for one particular period. i'm all right. we have a cedar chest in the attic, full of old things. won't i look funny in a hoop skirt?" "you'll look charming in anything," said the colonel. it was a pleasure to pay graciella compliments, she so frankly enjoyed them; and the colonel loved to make others happy. in his new york firm mr. french was always ready to consider a request for an advance of salary; kirby had often been obliged to play the wicked partner in order to keep expenses down to a normal level. at parties débutantes had always expected mr. french to say something pleasant to them, and had rarely been disappointed. the subject of the party was resumed next day at mrs. treadwell's, where the colonel went in the afternoon to call. "an old-time party," declared the colonel, "should have old-time amusements. we must have a fiddler, a black fiddler, to play quadrilles and the virginia reel." "i don't know where you'll find one," said miss laura. "i'll ask peter," replied the colonel. "he ought to know." peter was in the yard with phil. "lawd, mars henry!" said peter, "fiddlers is mighty sca'ce dese days, but i reckon ole 'poleon campbell kin make you shake yo' feet yit, ef ole man rheumatiz ain' ketched holt er 'im too tight." "and i will play a minuet on your new piano," said miss laura, "and teach the girls beforehand how to dance it. there should be cards for those who do not dance." so the party was arranged. miss laura, graciella and the colonel made out the list of guests. the invitations were duly sent out for an old-time party, with old-time costumes--any period between and permissible--and old-time entertainment. the announcement created some excitement in social circles, and, like all of colonel french's enterprises at that happy period of his home-coming, brought prosperity in its train. dressmakers were kept busy making and altering costumes for the ladies. old archie christmas, the mulatto tailor, sole survivor of a once flourishing craft--mr. cohen's universal emporium supplied the general public with ready-made clothing, and, twice a year, the travelling salesman of a new york tailoring firm visited clarendon with samples of suitings, and took orders and measurements--old archie christmas, who had not made a full suit of clothes for years, was able, by making and altering men's garments for the colonel's party, to earn enough to keep himself alive for another twelve months. old peter was at archie's shop one day, and they were talking about old times--good old times--for to old men old times are always good times, though history may tell another tale. "yo' boss is a godsen' ter dis town," declared old archie, "he sho' is. de w'ite folks says de young niggers is triflin' 'cause dey don' larn how to do nothin'. but what is dere fer 'em to do? i kin 'member when dis town was full er black an' yaller carpenters an' 'j'iners, blacksmiths, wagon makers, shoemakers, tinners, saddlers an' cab'net makers. now all de fu'nicher, de shoes, de wagons, de buggies, de tinware, de hoss shoes, de nails to fasten 'em on wid--yas, an' fo' de lawd! even de clothes dat folks wears on dere backs, is made at de norf, an' dere ain' nothin' lef' fer de ole niggers ter do, let 'lone de young ones. yo' boss is de right kin'; i hopes he'll stay 'roun' here till you an' me dies." "i hopes wid you," said peter fervently, "i sho' does! yas indeed i does." peter was entirely sincere. never in his life had he worn such good clothes, eaten such good food, or led so easy a life as in the colonel's service. even the old times paled by comparison with this new golden age; and the long years of poverty and hard luck that stretched behind him seemed to the old man like a distant and unpleasant dream. * * * * * the party came off at the appointed time, and was a distinct success. graciella had made a raid on the cedar chest, and shone resplendent in crinoline, curls, and a patterned muslin. together with miss laura and ben dudley, who had come in from mink run for the party, she was among the first to arrive. miss laura's costume, which belonged to an earlier date, was in keeping with her quiet dignity. ben wore a suit of his uncle's, which the care of old aunt viney had preserved wonderfully well from moth and dust through the years. the men wore stocks and neckcloths, bell-bottomed trousers with straps under their shoes, and frock coats very full at the top and buttoned tightly at the waist. old peter, in a long blue coat with brass buttons, acted as butler, helped by a young negro who did the heavy work. miss laura's servant catherine had rallied from her usual gloom and begged the privilege of acting as lady's maid. 'poleon campbell, an old-time negro fiddler, whom peter had resurrected from some obscure cabin, oiled his rheumatic joints, tuned his fiddle and rosined his bow, and under the inspiration of good food and drink and liberal wage, played through his whole repertory, which included such ancient favourites as, "fishers' hornpipe," "soldiers' joy," "chicken in the bread-tray," and the "campbells are coming." miss laura played a minuet, which the young people danced. major mclean danced the highland fling, and some of the ladies sang old-time songs, and war lyrics, which stirred the heart and moistened the eyes. little phil, in a child's costume of , copied from _the ladies' book_, was petted and made much of for several hours, until he became sleepy and was put to bed. "graciella," said the colonel to his young friend, during the evening, "our party is a great success. it was your idea. when it is all over, i want to make you a present in token of my gratitude. you shall select it yourself; it shall be whatever you say." graciella was very much elated at this mark of the colonel's friendship. she did not dream of declining the proffered token, and during the next dance her mind was busily occupied with the question of what it should be--a ring, a bracelet, a bicycle, a set of books? she needed a dozen things, and would have liked to possess a dozen others. she had not yet decided, when ben came up to claim her for a dance. on his appearance, she was struck by a sudden idea. colonel french was a man of affairs. in new york he must have a wide circle of influential acquaintances. old mr. dudley was in failing health; he might die at any time, and ben would then be free to seek employment away from clarendon. what better place for him than new york? with a position there, he would be able to marry her, and take her there to live. this, she decided, should be her request of the colonel--that he should help her lover to a place in new york. her conclusion was really magnanimous. she might profit by it in the end, but ben would be the first beneficiary. it was an act of self-denial, for she was giving up a definite and certain good for a future contingency. she was therefore in a pleasant glow of self-congratulatory mood when she accidentally overheard a conversation not intended for her ears. she had run out to the dining-room to speak to the housekeeper about the refreshments, and was returning through the hall, when she stopped for a moment to look into the library, where those who did not care to dance were playing cards. beyond the door, with their backs turned toward her, sat two ladies engaged in conversation. one was a widow, a well-known gossip, and the other a wife known to be unhappily married. they were no longer young, and their views were marked by the cynicism of seasoned experience. "oh, there's no doubt about it," said the widow. "he came down here to find a wife. he tried a yankee wife, and didn't like the breed; and when he was ready for number two, he came back south." "he showed good taste," said the other. "that depends," said the widow, "upon whom he chooses. he can probably have his pick." "no doubt," rejoined the married lady, with a touch of sarcasm, which the widow, who was still under forty, chose to ignore. "i wonder which is it?" said the widow. "i suppose it's laura; he spends a great deal of time there, and she's devoted to his little boy, or pretends to be." "don't fool yourself," replied the other earnestly, and not without a subdued pleasure in disabusing the widow's mind. "don't fool yourself, my dear. a man of his age doesn't marry a woman of laura treadwell's. believe me, it's the little one." "but she has a beau. there's that tall nephew of old mr. dudley's. he's been hanging around her for a year or two. he looks very handsome to-night." "ah, well, she'll dispose of him fast enough when the time comes. he's only a poor stick, the last of a good stock run to seed. why, she's been pointedly setting her cap at the colonel all the evening. he's perfectly infatuated; he has danced with her three times to once with laura." "it's sad to see a man make a fool of himself," sighed the widow, who was not without some remnants of beauty and a heart still warm and willing. "children are very forward nowadays." "there's no fool like an old fool, my dear," replied the other with the cheerful philosophy of the miserable who love company. "these fair women are always selfish and calculating; and she's a bold piece. my husband says colonel french is worth at least a million. a young wife, who understands her business, could get anything from him that money can buy." "what a pity, my dear," said the widow, with a spice of malice, seeing her own opportunity, "what a pity that you were older than your husband! well, it will be fortunate for the child if she marries an old man, for beauty of her type fades early." old 'poleon's fiddle, to which one of the guests was improvising an accompaniment on the colonel's new piano, had struck up "camptown races," and the rollicking lilt of the chorus was resounding through the house. _"gwine ter run all night, gwine ter run all day, i'll bet my money on de bobtail nag, oh, who's gwine ter bet on de bay?"_ ben ran out into the hall. graciella had changed her position and was sitting alone, perturbed in mind. "come on, graciella, let's get into the virginia reel; it's the last one." graciella obeyed mechanically. ben, on the contrary, was unusually animated. he had enjoyed the party better than any he had ever attended. he had not been at many. colonel french, who had entered with zest into the spirit of the occasion, participated in the reel. every time graciella touched his hand, it was with the consciousness of a new element in their relations. until then her friendship for colonel french had been perfectly ingenuous. she had liked him because he was interesting, and good to her in a friendly way. now she realised that he was a millionaire, eligible for marriage, from whom a young wife, if she understood her business, might secure the gratification of every wish. the serpent had entered eden. graciella had been tendered the apple. she must choose now whether she would eat. when the party broke up, the colonel was congratulated on every hand. he had not only given his guests a delightful evening. he had restored an ancient landmark; had recalled, to a people whose life lay mostly in the past, the glory of days gone by, and proved his loyalty to their cherished traditions. ben dudley walked home with graciella. miss laura went ahead of them with catherine, who was cheerful in the possession of a substantial reward for her services. "you're not sayin' much to-night," said ben to his sweetheart, as they walked along under the trees. graciella did not respond. "you're not sayin' much to-night," he repeated. "yes," returned graciella abstractedly, "it was a lovely party!" ben said no more. the house warming had also given him food for thought. he had noticed the colonel's attentions to graciella, and had heard them remarked upon. colonel french was more than old enough to be graciella's father; but he was rich. graciella was poor and ambitious. ben's only assets were youth and hope, and priority in the field his only claim. miss laura and catherine had gone in, and when the young people came to the gate, the light still shone through the open door. "graciella," he said, taking her hand in his as they stood a moment, "will you marry me?" "still harping on the same old string," she said, withdrawing her hand. "i'm tired now, ben, too tired to talk foolishness." "very well, i'll save it for next time. good night, sweetheart." she had closed the gate between them. he leaned over it to kiss her, but she evaded his caress and ran lightly up the steps. "good night, ben," she called. "good night, sweetheart," he replied, with a pang of foreboding. in after years, when the colonel looked back upon his residence in clarendon, this seemed to him the golden moment. there were other times that stirred deeper emotions--the lust of battle, the joy of victory, the chagrin of defeat--moments that tried his soul with tests almost too hard. but, thus far, his new career in clarendon had been one of pleasant experiences only, and this unclouded hour was its fitting crown. _twelve_ whenever the colonel visited the cemetery, or took a walk in that pleasant quarter of the town, he had to cross the bridge from which was visible the site of the old eureka cotton mill of his boyhood, and it was not difficult to recall that it had been, before the war, a busy hive of industry. on a narrow and obscure street, little more than an alley, behind the cemetery, there were still several crumbling tenements, built for the mill operatives, but now occupied by a handful of abjectly poor whites, who kept body and soul together through the doubtful mercy of god and a small weekly dole from the poormaster. the mill pond, while not wide-spreading, had extended back some distance between the sloping banks, and had furnished swimming holes, fishing holes, and what was more to the point at present, a very fine head of water, which, as it struck the colonel more forcibly each time he saw it, offered an opportunity that the town could ill afford to waste. shrewd minds in the cotton industry had long ago conceived the idea that the south, by reason of its nearness to the source of raw material, its abundant water power, and its cheaper labour, partly due to the smaller cost of living in a mild climate, and the absence of labour agitation, was destined in time to rival and perhaps displace new england in cotton manufacturing. many southern mills were already in successful operation. but from lack of capital, or lack of enterprise, nothing of the kind had ever been undertaken in clarendon although the town was the centre of a cotton-raising district, and there was a mill in an adjoining county. men who owned land mortgaged it for money to raise cotton; men who rented land from others mortgaged their crops for the same purpose. it was easy to borrow money in clarendon--on adequate security--at ten per cent., and mr. fetters, the magnate of the county, was always ready, the colonel had learned, to accommodate the needy who could give such security. he had also discovered that fetters was acquiring the greater part of the land. many a farmer imagined that he owned a farm, when he was, actually, merely a tenant of fetters. occasionally fetters foreclosed a mortgage, when there was plainly no more to be had from it, and bought in the land, which he added to his own holdings in fee. but as a rule, he found it more profitable to let the borrower retain possession and pay the interest as nearly as he could; the estate would ultimately be good for the debt, if the debtor did not live too long--worry might be counted upon to shorten his days--and the loan, with interest, could be more conveniently collected at his death. to bankrupt an estate was less personal than to break an individual; and widows, and orphans still in their minority, did not vote and knew little about business methods. to a man of action, like the colonel, the frequent contemplation of the unused water power, which might so easily be harnessed to the car of progress, gave birth, in time, to a wish to see it thus utilised, and the further wish to stir to labour the idle inhabitants of the neighbourhood. in all work the shiftless methods of an older generation still survived. no one could do anything in a quarter of an hour. nearly all tasks were done by negroes who had forgotten how to work, or by white people who had never learned. but the colonel had already seen the reviving effect of a little money, directed by a little energy. and so he planned to build a new and larger cotton mill where the old had stood; to shake up this lethargic community; to put its people to work, and to teach them habits of industry, efficiency and thrift. this, he imagined, would be pleasant occupation for his vacation, as well as a true missionary enterprise--a contribution to human progress. such a cotton mill would require only an inconsiderable portion of his capital, the body of which would be left intact for investment elsewhere; it would not interfere at all with his freedom of movement; for, once built, equipped and put in operation under a competent manager, it would no more require his personal oversight than had the new england bagging mills which his firm had conducted for so many years. from impulse to action was, for the colonel's temperament, an easy step, and he had scarcely moved into his house, before he quietly set about investigating the title to the old mill site. it had been forfeited many years before, he found, to the state, for non-payment of taxes. there having been no demand for the property at any time since, it had never been sold, but held as a sort of lapsed asset, subject to sale, but open also, so long as it remained unsold, to redemption upon the payment of back taxes and certain fees. the amount of these was ascertained; it was considerably less than the fair value of the property, which was therefore redeemable at a profit. the owners, however, were widely scattered, for the mill had belonged to a joint-stock company composed of a dozen or more members. colonel french was pleasantly surprised, upon looking up certain musty public records in the court house, to find that he himself was the owner, by inheritance, of several shares of stock which had been overlooked in the sale of his father's property. retaining the services of judge bullard, the leading member of the clarendon bar, he set out quietly to secure options upon the other shares. this involved an extensive correspondence, which occupied several weeks. for it was necessary first to find, and then to deal with the scattered representatives of the former owners. _thirteen_ in engaging judge bullard, the colonel had merely stated to the lawyer that he thought of building a cotton-mill, but had said nothing about his broader plan. it was very likely, he recognised, that the people of clarendon might not relish the thought that they were regarded as fit subjects for reform. he knew that they were sensitive, and quick to resent criticism. if some of them might admit, now and then, among themselves, that the town was unprogressive, or declining, there was always some extraneous reason given--the war, the carpetbaggers, the fifteenth amendment, the negroes. perhaps not one of them had ever quite realised the awful handicap of excuses under which they laboured. effort was paralysed where failure was so easily explained. that the condition of the town might be due to causes within itself--to the general ignorance, self-satisfaction and lack of enterprise, had occurred to only a favoured few; the younger of these had moved away, seeking a broader outlook elsewhere; while those who remained were not yet strong enough nor brave enough to break with the past and urge new standards of thought and feeling. so the colonel kept his larger purpose to himself until a time when greater openness would serve to advance it. thus judge bullard, not being able to read his client's mind, assumed very naturally that the contemplated enterprise was to be of a purely commercial nature, directed to making the most money in the shortest time. "some day, colonel," he said, with this thought in mind, "you might get a few pointers by running over to carthage and looking through the excelsior mills. they get more work there for less money than anywhere else in the south. last year they declared a forty per cent. dividend. i know the superintendent, and will give you a letter of introduction, whenever you like." the colonel bore the matter in mind, and one morning, a day or two after his party, set out by train, about eight o'clock in the morning, for carthage, armed with a letter from the lawyer to the superintendent of the mills. the town was only forty miles away; but a cow had been caught in a trestle across a ditch, and some time was required for the train crew to release her. another stop was made in the middle of a swamp, to put off a light mulatto who had presumed on his complexion to ride in the white people's car. he had been successfully spotted, but had impudently refused to go into the stuffy little closet provided at the end of the car for people of his class. he was therefore given an opportunity to reflect, during a walk along the ties, upon his true relation to society. another stop was made for a gentleman who had sent a negro boy ahead to flag the train and notify the conductor that he would be along in fifteen or twenty minutes with a couple of lady passengers. a hot journal caused a further delay. these interruptions made it eleven o'clock, a three-hours' run, before the train reached carthage. the town was much smaller than clarendon. it comprised a public square of several acres in extent, on one side of which was the railroad station, and on another the court house. one of the remaining sides was occupied by a row of shops; the fourth straggled off in various directions. the whole wore a neglected air. bales of cotton goods were piled on the platform, apparently just unloaded from wagons standing near. several white men and negroes stood around and stared listlessly at the train and the few who alighted from it. inquiring its whereabouts from one of the bystanders, the colonel found the nearest hotel--a two-story frame structure, with a piazza across the front, extending to the street line. there was a buggy standing in front, its horse hitched to one of the piazza posts. steps led up from the street, but one might step from the buggy to the floor of the piazza, which was without a railing. the colonel mounted the steps and passed through the door into a small room, which he took for the hotel office, since there were chairs standing against the walls, and at one side a table on which a register lay open. the only person in the room, beside himself, was a young man seated near the door, with his feet elevated to the back of another chair, reading a newspaper from which he did not look up. the colonel, who wished to make some inquiries and to register for the dinner which he might return to take, looked around him for the clerk, or some one in authority, but no one was visible. while waiting, he walked over to the desk and turned over the leaves of the dog-eared register. he recognised only one name--that of mr. william fetters, who had registered there only a day or two before. no one had yet appeared. the young man in the chair was evidently not connected with the establishment. his expression was so forbidding, not to say arrogant, and his absorption in the newspaper so complete, that the colonel, not caring to address him, turned to the right and crossed a narrow hall to a room beyond, evidently a parlour, since it was fitted up with a faded ingrain carpet, a centre table with a red plush photograph album, and several enlarged crayon portraits hung near the ceiling--of the kind made free of charge in chicago from photographs, provided the owner orders a frame from the company. no one was in the room, and the colonel had turned to leave it, when he came face to face with a lady passing through the hall. "are you looking for some one?" she asked amiably, having noted his air of inquiry. "why, yes, madam," replied the colonel, removing his hat, "i was looking for the proprietor--or the clerk." "why," she replied, smiling, "that's the proprietor sitting there in the office. i'm going in to speak to him, and you can get his attention at the same time." their entrance did not disturb the young man's reposeful attitude, which remained as unchanged as that of a graven image; nor did he exhibit any consciousness at their presence. "i want a clean towel, mr. dickson," said the lady sharply. the proprietor looked up with an annoyed expression. "huh?" he demanded, in a tone of resentment mingled with surprise. "a clean towel, if you please." the proprietor said nothing more to the lady, nor deigned to notice the colonel at all, but lifted his legs down from the back of the chair, rose with a sigh, left the room and returned in a few minutes with a towel, which he handed ungraciously to the lady. then, still paying no attention to the colonel, he resumed his former attitude, and returned to the perusal of his newspaper--certainly the most unconcerned of hotel keepers, thought the colonel, as a vision of spacious lobbies, liveried porters, and obsequious clerks rose before his vision. he made no audible comment, however, but merely stared at the young man curiously, left the hotel, and inquired of a passing negro the whereabouts of the livery stable. a few minutes later he found the place without difficulty, and hired a horse and buggy. while the stable boy was putting the harness on the horse, the colonel related to the liveryman, whose manner was energetic and business-like, and who possessed an open countenance and a sympathetic eye, his experience at the hotel. "oh, yes," was the reply, "that's lee dickson all over. that hotel used to be kep' by his mother. she was a widow woman, an' ever since she died, a couple of months ago, lee's been playin' the big man, spendin' the old lady's money, and enjoyin' himself. did you see that hoss'n'-buggy hitched in front of the ho-tel?" "yes." "well, that's lee's buggy. he hires it from us. we send it up every mornin' at nine o'clock, when lee gits up. when he's had his breakfas' he comes out an' gits in the buggy, an' drives to the barber-shop nex' door, gits out, goes in an' gits shaved, comes out, climbs in the buggy, an' drives back to the ho-tel. then he talks to the cook, comes out an' gits in the buggy, an' drives half-way 'long that side of the square, about two hund'ed feet, to the grocery sto', and orders half a pound of coffee or a pound of lard, or whatever the ho-tel needs for the day, then comes out, climbs in the buggy and drives back. when the mail comes in, if he's expectin' any mail, he drives 'cross the square to the post-office, an' then drives back to the ho-tel. there's other lazy men roun' here, but lee dickson takes the cake. however, it's money in our pocket, as long as it keeps up." "i shouldn't think it would keep up long," returned the colonel. "how can such a hotel prosper?" "it don't!" replied the liveryman, "but it's the best in town." "i don't see how there could be a worse," said the colonel. "there couldn't--it's reached bed rock." the buggy was ready by this time, and the colonel set out, with a black driver, to find the excelsior cotton mills. they proved to be situated in a desolate sandhill region several miles out of town. the day was hot; the weather had been dry, and the road was deep with a yielding white sand into which the buggy tires sank. the horse soon panted with the heat and the exertion, and the colonel, dressed in brown linen, took off his hat and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. the driver, a taciturn negro--most of the loquacious, fun-loving negroes of the colonel's youth seemed to have disappeared--flicked a horsefly now and then, with his whip, from the horse's sweating back. the first sign of the mill was a straggling group of small frame houses, built of unpainted pine lumber. the barren soil, which would not have supported a firm lawn, was dotted with scraggy bunches of wiregrass. in the open doorways, through which the flies swarmed in and out, grown men, some old, some still in the prime of life, were lounging, pipe in mouth, while old women pottered about the yards, or pushed back their sunbonnets to stare vacantly at the advancing buggy. dirty babies were tumbling about the cabins. there was a lean and listless yellow dog or two for every baby; and several slatternly black women were washing clothes on the shady sides of the houses. a general air of shiftlessness and squalor pervaded the settlement. there was no sign of joyous childhood or of happy youth. a turn in the road brought them to the mill, the distant hum of which had already been audible. it was a two-story brick structure with many windows, altogether of the cheapest construction, but situated on the bank of a stream and backed by a noble water power. they drew up before an open door at one corner of the building. the colonel alighted, entered, and presented his letter of introduction. the superintendent glanced at him keenly, but, after reading the letter, greeted him with a show of cordiality, and called a young man to conduct the visitor through the mill. the guide seemed in somewhat of a hurry, and reticent of speech; nor was the noise of the machinery conducive to conversation. some of the colonel's questions seemed unheard, and others were imperfectly answered. yet the conditions disclosed by even such an inspection were, to the colonel, a revelation. through air thick with flying particles of cotton, pale, anæmic young women glanced at him curiously, with lack-luster eyes, or eyes in which the gleam was not that of health, or hope, or holiness. wizened children, who had never known the joys of childhood, worked side by side at long rows of spools to which they must give unremitting attention. most of the women were using snuff, the odour of which was mingled with the flying particles of cotton, while the floor was thickly covered with unsightly brown splotches. when they had completed the tour of the mills and returned to the office, the colonel asked some questions of the manager about the equipment, the output, and the market, which were very promptly and courteously answered. to those concerning hours and wages the replies were less definite, and the colonel went away impressed as much by what he had not learned as by what he had seen. while settling his bill at the livery stable, he made further inquiries. "lord, yes," said the liveryman in answer to one of them, "i can tell you all you want to know about that mill. talk about nigger slavery--the niggers never were worked like white women and children are in them mills. they work 'em from twelve to sixteen hours a day for from fifteen to fifty cents. them triflin' old pinelanders out there jus' lay aroun' and raise children for the mills, and then set down and chaw tobacco an' live on their children's wages. it's a sin an' a shame, an' there ought to be a law ag'inst it." the conversation brought out the further fact that vice was rampant among the millhands. "an' it ain't surprisin'," said the liveryman, with indignation tempered by the easy philosophy of hot climates. "shut up in jail all day, an' half the night, never breathin' the pyo' air, or baskin' in god's bright sunshine; with no books to read an' no chance to learn, who can blame the po'r things if they have a little joy in the only way they know?" "who owns the mill?" asked the colonel. "it belongs to a company," was the reply, "but old bill fetters owns a majority of the stock--durn, him!" the colonel felt a thrill of pleasure--he had met a man after his own heart. "you are not one of fetters's admirers then?" he asked. "not by a durn sight," returned the liveryman promptly. "when i look at them white gals, that ought to be rosy-cheeked an' bright-eyed an' plump an' hearty an' happy, an' them po' little child'en that never get a chance to go fishin' or swimmin' or to learn anything, i allow i wouldn' mind if the durned old mill would catch fire an' burn down. they work children there from six years old up, an' half of 'em die of consumption before they're grown. it's a durned outrage, an' if i ever go to the legislatur', for which i mean to run, i'll try to have it stopped." "i hope you will be elected," said the colonel. "what time does the train go back to clarendon?" "four o'clock, if she's on time--but it may be five." "do you suppose i can get dinner at the hotel?" "oh, yes! i sent word up that i 'lowed you might be back, so they'll be expectin' you." the proprietor was at the desk when the colonel went in. he wrote his name on the book, and was served with an execrable dinner. he paid his bill of half a dollar to the taciturn proprietor, and sat down on the shady porch to smoke a cigar. the proprietor, having put the money in his pocket, came out and stepped into his buggy, which was still standing alongside the piazza. the colonel watched him drive a stone's throw to a barroom down the street, get down, go in, come out a few minutes later, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, climb into the buggy, drive back, step out and re-enter the hotel. it was yet an hour to train time, and the colonel, to satisfy an impulse of curiosity, strolled over to the court house, which could be seen across the square, through the trees. requesting leave of the clerk in the county recorder's office to look at the records of mortgages, he turned the leaves over and found that a large proportion of the mortgages recently recorded--among them one on the hotel property--had been given to fetters. the whistle of the train was heard in the distance as the colonel recrossed the square. glancing toward the hotel, he saw the landlord come out, drive across the square to the station, and sit there until the passengers had alighted. to a drummer with a sample case, he pointed carelessly across the square to the hotel, but made no movement to take the baggage; and as the train moved off, the colonel, looking back, saw him driving back to the hotel. fetters had begun to worry the colonel. he had never seen the man, and yet his influence was everywhere. he seemed to brood over the country round about like a great vampire bat, sucking the life-blood of the people. his touch meant blight. as soon as a fetters mortgage rested on a place, the property began to run down; for why should the nominal owner keep up a place which was destined in the end to go to fetters? the colonel had heard grewsome tales of fetters's convict labour plantation; he had seen the operation of fetters's cotton-mill, where white humanity, in its fairest and tenderest form, was stunted and blighted and destroyed; and he had not forgotten the scene in the justice's office. the fighting blood of the old frenches was stirred. the colonel's means were abundant; he did not lack the sinews of war. clarendon offered a field for profitable investment. he would like to do something for humanity, something to offset fetters and his kind, who were preying upon the weaknesses of the people, enslaving white and black alike. in a great city, what he could give away would have been but a slender stream, scarcely felt in the rivers of charity poured into the ocean of want; and even his considerable wealth would have made him only a small stockholder in some great aggregation of capital. in this backward old town, away from the great centres of commerce, and scarcely feeling their distant pulsebeat, except when some daring speculator tried for a brief period to corner the cotton market, he could mark with his own eyes the good he might accomplish. it required no great stretch of imagination to see the town, a few years hence, a busy hive of industry, where no man, and no woman obliged to work, need be without employment at fair wages; where the trinity of peace, prosperity and progress would reign supreme; where men like fetters and methods like his would no longer be tolerated. the forces of enlightenment, set in motion by his aid, and supported by just laws, should engage the retrograde forces represented by fetters. communities, like men, must either grow or decay, advance or decline; they could not stand still. clarendon was decaying. fetters was the parasite which, by sending out its roots toward rich and poor alike, struck at both extremes of society, and was choking the life of the town like a rank and deadly vine. the colonel could, if need be, spare the year or two of continuous residence needed to rescue clarendon from the grasp of fetters. the climate agreed with phil, who was growing like a weed; and the colonel could easily defer for a little while his scheme of travel, and the further disposition of his future. so, when he reached home that night, he wrote an answer to a long and gossipy letter received from kirby about that time, in which the latter gave a detailed account of what was going on in the colonel's favourite club and among their mutual friends, and reported progress in the search for some venture worthy of their mettle. the colonel replied that phil and he were well, that he was interesting himself in a local enterprise which would certainly occupy him for some months, and that he would not visit new york during the summer, unless it were to drop in for a day or two on business and return immediately. a letter from mrs. jerviss, received about the same time, was less easily disposed of. she had learned, from kirby, of the chivalrous manner in which mr. french had protected her interests and spared her feelings in the fight with consolidated bagging. she had not been able, she said, to thank him adequately before he went away, because she had not known how much she owed him; nor could she fittingly express herself on paper. she could only renew her invitation to him to join her house party at newport in july. the guests would be friends of his--she would be glad to invite any others that he might suggest. she would then have the opportunity to thank him in person. the colonel was not unmoved by this frank and grateful letter, and he knew perfectly well what reward he might claim from her gratitude. had the letter come a few weeks sooner, it might have had a different answer. but, now, after the first pang of regret, his only problem was how to refuse gracefully her offered hospitality. he was sorry, he replied, not to be able to join her house party that summer, but during the greater part of it he would be detained in the south by certain matters into which he had been insensibly drawn. as for her thanks, she owed him none; he had only done his duty, and had already been thanked too much. so thoroughly had colonel french entered into the spirit of his yet undefined contest with fetters, that his life in new york, save when these friendly communications recalled it, seemed far away, and of slight retrospective interest. every one knows of the "blind spot" in the field of vision. new york was for the time being the colonel's blind spot. that it might reassert its influence was always possible, but for the present new york was of no more interest to him than canton or bogota. having revelled for a few pleasant weeks in memories of a remoter past, the reaction had projected his thoughts forward into the future. his life in new york, and in the clarendon of the present--these were mere transitory embodiments; he lived in the clarendon yet to be, a clarendon rescued from fetters, purified, rehabilitated; and no compassionate angel warned him how tenacious of life that which fetters stood for might be--that survival of the spirit of slavery, under which the land still groaned and travailed--the growth of generations, which it would take more than one generation to destroy. in describing to judge bullard his visit to the cotton mill, the colonel was not sparing of his indignation. "the men," he declared with emphasis, "who are responsible for that sort of thing, are enemies of mankind. i've been in business for twenty years, but i have never sought to make money by trading on the souls and bodies of women and children. i saw the little darkies running about the streets down there at carthage; they were poor and ragged and dirty, but they were out in the air and the sunshine; they have a chance to get their growth; to go to school and learn something. the white children are worked worse than slaves, and are growing up dulled and stunted, physically and mentally. our folks down here are mighty short-sighted, judge. we'll wake them up. we'll build a model cotton mill, and run it with decent hours and decent wages, and treat the operatives like human beings with bodies to nourish, minds to develop; and souls to save. fetters and his crowd will have to come up to our standard, or else we'll take their hands away." judge bullard had looked surprised when the colonel began his denunciation; and though he said little, his expression, when the colonel had finished, was very thoughtful and not altogether happy. _fourteen_ it was the week after the colonel's house warming. graciella was not happy. she was sitting, erect and graceful, as she always sat, on the top step of the piazza. ben dudley occupied the other end of the step. his model stood neglected beside him, and he was looking straight at graciella, whose eyes, avoiding his, were bent upon a copy of "jane eyre," held open in her hand. there was an unwonted silence between them, which ben was the first to break. "will you go for a walk with me?" he asked. "i'm sorry, ben," she replied, "but i have an engagement to go driving with colonel french." ben's dark cheek grew darker, and he damned colonel french softly beneath his breath. he could not ask graciella to drive, for their old buggy was not fit to be seen, and he had no money to hire a better one. the only reason why he ever had wanted money was because of her. if she must have money, or the things that money alone would buy, he must get money, or lose her. as long as he had no rival there was hope. but could he expect to hold his own against a millionaire, who had the garments and the manners of the great outside world? "i suppose the colonel's here every night, as well as every day," he said, "and that you talk to him all the time." "no, ben, he isn't here every night, nor every day. his old darky, peter, brings phil over every day; but when the colonel comes he talks to grandmother and aunt laura, as well as to me." graciella had risen from the step, and was now enthroned in a splint-bottomed armchair, an attitude more in keeping with the air of dignity which she felt constrained to assume as a cloak for an uneasy conscience. graciella was not happy. she had reached the parting of the ways, and realised that she must choose between them. and yet she hesitated. every consideration of prudence dictated that she choose colonel french rather than ben. the colonel was rich and could gratify all her ambitions. there could be no reasonable doubt that he was fond of her; and she had heard it said, by those more experienced than she and therefore better qualified to judge, that he was infatuated with her. certainly he had shown her a great deal of attention. he had taken her driving; he had lent her books and music; he had brought or sent the new york paper every day for her to read. he had been kind to her aunt laura, too, probably for her niece's sake; for the colonel was kind by nature, and wished to make everyone about him happy. it was fortunate that her aunt laura was fond of philip. if she should decide to marry the colonel, she would have her aunt laura come and make her home with them: she could give philip the attention with which his stepmother's social duties might interfere. it was hardly likely that her aunt entertained any hope of marriage; indeed, miss laura had long since professed herself resigned to old maidenhood. but in spite of these rosy dreams, graciella was not happy. to marry the colonel she must give up ben; and ben, discarded, loomed up larger than ben, accepted. she liked ben; she was accustomed to ben. ben was young, and youth attracted youth. other things being equal, she would have preferred him to the colonel. but ben was poor; he had nothing and his prospects for the future were not alluring. he would inherit little, and that little not until his uncle's death. he had no profession. he was not even a good farmer, and trifled away, with his useless models and mechanical toys, the time he might have spent in making his uncle's plantation productive. graciella did not know that fetters had a mortgage on the plantation, or ben's prospects would have seemed even more hopeless. she felt sorry not only for herself, but for ben as well--sorry that he should lose her--for she knew that he loved her sincerely. but her first duty was to herself. conscious that she possessed talents, social and otherwise, it was not her view of creative wisdom that it should implant in the mind tastes and in the heart longings destined never to be realised. she must discourage ben--gently and gradually, for of course he would suffer; and humanity, as well as friendship, counselled kindness. a gradual breaking off, too, would be less harrowing to her own feelings. "i suppose you admire colonel french immensely," said ben, with assumed impartiality. "oh, i like him reasonably well," she said with an equal lack of candour. "his conversation is improving. he has lived in the metropolis, and has seen so much of the world that he can scarcely speak without saying something interesting. it's a liberal education to converse with people who have had opportunities. it helps to prepare my mind for life at the north." "you set a great deal of store by the north, graciella. anybody would allow, to listen to you, that you didn't love your own country." "i love the south, ben, as i loved aunt lou, my old black mammy. i've laid in her arms many a day, and i 'most cried my eyes out when she died. but that didn't mean that i never wanted to see any one else. nor am i going to live in the south a minute longer than i can help, because it's too slow. and new york isn't all--i want to travel and see the world. the south is away behind." she had said much the same thing weeks before; but then it had been spontaneous. now she was purposely trying to make ben see how unreasonable was his hope. ben stood, as he obscurely felt, upon delicate ground. graciella had not been the only person to overhear remarks about the probability of the colonel's seeking a wife in clarendon, and jealousy had sharpened ben's perceptions while it increased his fears. he had little to offer graciella. he was not well educated; he had nothing to recommend him but his youth and his love for her. he could not take her to europe, or even to new york--at least not yet. "and at home," graciella went on seriously, "at home i should want several houses--a town house, a country place, a seaside cottage. when we were tired of one we could go to another, or live in hotels--in the winter in florida, at atlantic city in the spring, at newport in the summer. they say long branch has gone out entirely." ben had a vague idea that long branch was by the seaside, and exposed to storms. "gone out to sea?" he asked absently. he was sick for love of her, and she was dreaming of watering places. "no, ben," said graciella, compassionately. poor ben had so little opportunity for schooling! he was not to blame for his want of knowledge; but could she throw herself away upon an ignoramus? "it's still there, but has gone out of fashion." "oh, excuse me! i'm not posted on these fashionable things." ben relapsed into gloom. the model remained untouched. he could not give graciella a house; he would not have a house until his uncle died. graciella had never seemed so beautiful as to-day, as she sat, dressed in the cool white gown which miss laura's slender fingers had done up, and with her hair dressed after the daintiest and latest fashion chronicled in the _ladies' fireside journal_. no wonder, he thought, that a jaded old man of the world like colonel french should delight in her fresh young beauty! but he would not give her up without a struggle. she had loved him; she must love him still; and she would yet be his, if he could keep her true to him or free from any promise to another, until her deeper feelings could resume their sway. it could not be possible, after all that had passed between them, that she meant to throw him over, nor was he a man that she could afford to treat in such a fashion. there was more in him than graciella imagined; he was conscious of latent power of some kind, though he knew not what, and something would surely happen, sometime, somehow, to improve his fortunes. and there was always the hope, the possibility of finding the lost money. he had brought his great-uncle ralph's letter with him, as he had promised graciella. when she read it, she would see the reasonableness of his hope, and might be willing to wait, at least a little while. any delay would be a point gained. he shuddered to think that he might lose her, and then, the day after the irrevocable vows had been taken, the treasure might come to light, and all their life be spent in vain regrets. graciella was skeptical about the lost money. even mrs. treadwell, whose faith had been firm for years, had ceased to encourage his hope; while miss laura, who at one time had smiled at any mention of the matter, now looked grave if by any chance he let slip a word in reference to it. but he had in his pocket the outward and visible sign of his inward belief, and he would try its effect on graciella. he would risk ridicule or anything else for her sake. "graciella," he said, "i have brought my uncle malcolm's letter along, to convince you that uncle is not as crazy as he seems, and that there's some foundation for the hope that i may yet be able to give you all you want. i don't want to relinquish the hope, and i want you to share it with me." he produced an envelope, once white, now yellow with time, on which was endorsed in ink once black but faded to a pale brown, and hardly legible, the name of "malcolm dudley, esq., mink run," and in the lower left-hand corner, "by hand of viney." the sheet which ben drew from this wrapper was worn at the folds, and required careful handling. graciella, moved by curiosity, had come down from her throne to a seat beside ben upon the porch. she had never had any faith in the mythical gold of old ralph dudley. the people of an earlier generation--her aunt laura perhaps--may once have believed in it, but they had long since ceased to do more than smile pityingly and shake their heads at the mention of old malcolm's delusion. but there was in it the element of romance. strange things had happened, and why might they not happen again? and if they should happen, why not to ben, dear old, shiftless ben! she moved a porch pillow close beside him, and, as they bent their heads over the paper her hair mingled with his, and soon her hand rested, unconsciously, upon his shoulder. "it was a voice from the grave," said ben, "for my great-uncle ralph was dead when the letter reached uncle malcolm. i'll read it aloud--the writing is sometimes hard to make out, and i know it by heart: _my dear malcolm: i have in my hands fifty thousand dollars of government money, in gold, which i am leaving here at the house for a few days. since you are not at home, and i cannot wait, i have confided in our girl viney, whom i can trust. she will tell you, when she gives you this, where i have put the money--i do not write it, lest the letter should fall into the wrong hands; there are many to whom it would be a great temptation. i shall return in a few days, and relieve you of the responsibility. should anything happen to me, write to the secretary of state at richmond for instructions what to do with the money. in great haste_, _your affectionate uncle,_ ralph dudley" graciella was momentarily impressed by the letter; of its reality there could be no doubt--it was there in black and white, or rather brown and yellow. "it sounds like a letter in a novel," she said, thoughtfully. "there must have been something." "there must _be_ something, graciella, for uncle ralph was killed the next day, and never came back for the money. but uncle malcolm, because he don't know where to look, can't find it; and old aunt viney, because she can't talk, can't tell him where it is." "why has she never shown him?" asked graciella. "there is some mystery," he said, "which she seems unable to explain without speech. and then, she is queer--as queer, in her own way, as uncle is in his. now, if you'd only marry me, graciella, and go out there to live, with your uncommonly fine mind, _you'd_ find it--you couldn't help but find it. it would just come at your call, like my dog when i whistle to him." graciella was touched by the compliment, or by the serious feeling which underlay it. and that was very funny, about calling the money and having it come! she had often heard of people whistling for their money, but had never heard that it came--that was ben's idea. there really was a good deal in ben, and perhaps, after all---- but at that moment there was a sound of wheels, and whatever graciella's thought may have been, it was not completed. as colonel french lifted the latch of the garden gate and came up the walk toward them, any glamour of the past, any rosy hope of the future, vanished in the solid brilliancy of the present moment. old ralph was dead, old malcolm nearly so; the money had never been found, would never come to light. there on the doorstep was a young man shabbily attired, without means or prospects. there at the gate was a fine horse, in a handsome trap, and coming up the walk an agreeable, well-dressed gentleman of wealth and position. no dead romance could, in the heart of a girl of seventeen, hold its own against so vital and brilliant a reality. "thank you, ben," she said, adjusting a stray lock of hair which had escaped from her radiant crop, "i am not clever enough for that. it is a dream. your great-uncle ralph had ridden too long and too far in the sun, and imagined the treasure, which has driven your uncle malcolm crazy, and his housekeeper dumb, and has benumbed you so that you sit around waiting, waiting, when you ought to be working, working! no, ben, i like you ever so much, but you will never take me to new york with your uncle ralph's money, nor will you ever earn enough to take me with your own. you must excuse me now, for here comes my cavalier. don't hurry away; aunt laura will be out in a minute. you can stay and work on your model; i'll not be here to interrupt you. good evening, colonel french! did you bring me a _herald_? i want to look at the advertisements." "yes, my dear young lady, there is wednesday's--it is only two days old. how are you, mr. dudley?" "tol'able, sir, thank you." ben was a gentleman by instinct, though his heart was heavy and the colonel a favoured rival. "by the way," said the colonel, "i wish to have an interview with your uncle, about the old mill site. he seems to have been a stockholder in the company, and we should like his signature, if he is in condition to give it. if not, it may be necessary to appoint you his guardian, with power to act in his place." "he's all right, sir, in the morning, if you come early enough," replied ben, courteously. "you can tell what is best to do after you've seen him." "thank you," replied the colonel, "i'll have my man drive me out to-morrow about ten, say; if you'll be at home? you ought to be there, you know." "very well, sir, i'll be there all day, and shall expect you." graciella threw back one compassionate glance, as they drove away behind the colonel's high-stepping brown horse, and did not quite escape a pang at the sight of her young lover, still sitting on the steps in a dejected attitude; and for a moment longer his reproachful eyes haunted her. but graciella prided herself on being, above all things, practical, and, having come out for a good time, resolutely put all unpleasant thoughts aside. there was good horse-flesh in the neighbourhood of clarendon, and the colonel's was of the best. some of the roads about the town were good--not very well kept roads, but the soil was a sandy loam and was self-draining, so that driving was pleasant in good weather. the colonel had several times invited miss laura to drive with him, and had taken her once; but she was often obliged to stay with her mother. graciella could always be had, and the colonel, who did not like to drive alone, found her a vivacious companion, whose naïve comments upon life were very amusing to a seasoned man of the world. she was as pretty, too, as a picture, and the colonel had always admired beauty--with a tempered admiration. at graciella's request they drove first down main street, past the post-office, where she wished to mail a letter. they attracted much attention as they drove through the street in the colonel's new trap. graciella's billowy white gown added a needed touch of maturity to her slender youthfulness. a big straw hat shaded her brown hair, and she sat erect, and held her head high, with a vivid consciousness that she was the central feature of a very attractive whole. the colonel shared her thought, and looked at her with frank admiration. "you are the cynosure of all eyes," he declared. "i suppose i'm an object of envy to every young fellow in town." graciella blushed and bridled with pleasure. "i am not interested in the young men of clarendon," she replied loftily; "they are not worth the trouble." "not even--ben?" asked the colonel slyly. "oh," she replied, with studied indifference, "mr. dudley is really a cousin, and only a friend. he comes to see the family." the colonel's attentions could have but one meaning, and it was important to disabuse his mind concerning ben. nor was she the only one in the family who entertained that thought. of late her grandmother had often addressed her in an unusual way, more as a woman than as a child; and, only the night before, had retold the old story of her own sister mary, who, many years before, had married a man of fifty. he had worshipped her, and had died, after a decent interval, leaving her a large fortune. from which the old lady had deduced that, on the whole, it was better to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave. she had made no application of the story, but graciella was astute enough to draw her own conclusions. her aunt laura, too, had been unusually kind; she had done up the white gown twice a week, had trimmed her hat for her, and had worn old gloves that she might buy her niece a new pair. and her aunt had looked at her wistfully and remarked, with a sigh, that youth was a glorious season and beauty a great responsibility. poor dear, good old aunt laura! when the expected happened, she would be very kind to aunt laura, and repay her, so far as possible, for all her care and sacrifice. _fifteen_ it was only a short time after his visit to the excelsior mills that colonel french noticed a falling off in the progress made by his lawyer, judge bullard, in procuring the signatures of those interested in the old mill site, and after the passing of several weeks he began to suspect that some adverse influence was at work. this suspicion was confirmed when judge bullard told him one day, with some embarrassment, that he could no longer act for him in the matter. "i'm right sorry, colonel," he said. "i should like to help you put the thing through, but i simply can't afford it. other clients, whose business i have transacted for years, and to whom i am under heavy obligations, have intimated that they would consider any further activity of mine in your interest unfriendly to theirs." "i suppose," said the colonel, "your clients wish to secure the mill site for themselves. nothing imparts so much value to a thing as the notion that somebody else wants it. of course, i can't ask you to act for me further, and if you'll make out your bill, i'll hand you a check." "i hope," said judge bullard, "there'll be no ill-feeling about our separation." "oh, no," responded the colonel, politely, "not at all. business is business, and a man's own interests are his first concern." "i'm glad you feel that way," replied the lawyer, much relieved. he had feared that the colonel might view the matter differently. "some men, you know," he said, "might have kept on, and worked against you, while accepting your retainer; there are such skunks at the bar." "there are black sheep in every fold," returned the colonel with a cold smile. "it would be unprofessional, i suppose, to name your client, so i'll not ask you." the judge did not volunteer the information, but the colonel knew instinctively whence came opposition to his plan, and investigation confirmed his intuition. judge bullard was counsel for fetters in all matters where skill and knowledge were important, and fetters held his note, secured by mortgage, for money loaned. for dirty work fetters used tools of baser metal, but, like a wise man, he knew when these were useless, and was shrewd enough to keep the best lawyers under his control. the colonel, after careful inquiry, engaged to take judge bullard's place, one albert caxton, a member of a good old family, a young man, and a capable lawyer, who had no ascertainable connection with fetters, and who, in common with a small fraction of the best people, regarded fetters with distrust, and ascribed his wealth to usury and to what, in more recent years, has come to be known as "graft." to a man of colonel french's business training, opposition was merely a spur to effort. he had not run a race of twenty years in the commercial field, to be worsted in the first heat by the petty boss of a southern backwoods county. why fetters opposed him he did not know. perhaps he wished to defeat a possible rival, or merely to keep out principles and ideals which would conflict with his own methods and injure his prestige. but if fetters wanted a fight, fetters should have a fight. colonel french spent much of his time at young caxton's office, instructing the new lawyer in the details of the mill affair. caxton proved intelligent, zealous, and singularly sympathetic with his client's views and plans. they had not been together a week before the colonel realised that he had gained immensely by the change. the colonel took a personal part in the effort to procure signatures, among others that of old malcolm dudley and on the morning following the drive with graciella, he drove out to mink run to see the old gentleman in person and discover whether or not he was in a condition to transact business. before setting out, he went to his desk--his father's desk, which miss laura had sent to him--to get certain papers for old mr. dudley's signature, if the latter should prove capable of a legal act. he had laid the papers on top of some others which had nearly filled one of the numerous small drawers in the desk. upon opening the drawer he found that one of the papers was missing. the colonel knew quite well that he had placed the paper in the drawer the night before; he remembered the circumstance very distinctly, for the event was so near that it scarcely required an exercise, not to say an effort, of memory. an examination of the drawer disclosed that the piece forming the back of it was a little lower than the sides. possibly, thought the colonel, the paper had slipped off and fallen behind the drawer. he drew the drawer entirely out, and slipped his hand into the cavity. at the back of it he felt the corner of a piece of paper projecting upward from below. the paper had evidently slipped off the top of the others and fallen into a crevice, due to the shrinkage of the wood or some defect of construction. the opening for the drawer was so shallow that though he could feel the end of the paper, he was unable to get such a grasp of it as would permit him to secure it easily. but it was imperative that he have the paper; and since it bore already several signatures obtained with some difficulty, he did not wish to run the risk of tearing it. he examined the compartment below to see if perchance the paper could be reached from there, but found that it could not. there was evidently a lining to the desk, and the paper had doubtless slipped down between this and the finished panels forming the back of the desk. to reach it, the colonel procured a screw driver, and turning the desk around, loosened, with some difficulty, the screws that fastened the proper panel, and soon recovered the paper. with it, however, he found a couple of yellow, time-stained envelopes, addressed on the outside to major john treadwell. the envelopes were unsealed. he glanced into one of them, and seeing that it contained a sheet, folded small, presumably a letter, he thrust the two of them into the breast pocket of his coat, intending to hand them to miss laura at their next meeting. they were probably old letters and of no consequence, but they should of course be returned to the owners. in putting the desk back in its place, after returning the panel and closing the crevice against future accidents, the colonel caught his coat on a projecting point and tore a long rent in the sleeve. it was an old coat, and worn only about the house; and when he changed it before leaving to pay his call upon old malcolm dudley, he hung it in a back corner in his clothes closet, and did not put it on again for a long time. since he was very busily occupied in the meantime, the two old letters to which he had attached no importance, escaped his memory altogether. the colonel's coachman, a young coloured man by the name of tom, had complained of illness early in the morning, and the colonel took peter along to drive him to mink run, as well as to keep him company. on their way through the town they stopped at mrs. treadwell's, where they left phil, who had, he declared, some important engagement with graciella. the distance was not long, scarcely more than five miles. ben dudley was in the habit of traversing it on horseback, twice a day. when they had passed the last straggling cabin of the town, their way lay along a sandy road, flanked by fields green with corn and cotton, broken by stretches of scraggy pine and oak, growing upon land once under cultivation, but impoverished by the wasteful methods of slavery; land that had never been regenerated, and was now no longer tilled. negroes were working in the fields, birds were singing in the trees. buzzards circled lazily against the distant sky. although it was only early summer, a languor in the air possessed the colonel's senses, and suggested a certain charity toward those of his neighbours--and they were most of them--who showed no marked zeal for labour. "work," he murmured, "is best for happiness, but in this climate idleness has its compensations. what, in the end, do we get for all our labour?" "fifty cents a day, an' fin' yo'se'f, suh," said peter, supposing the soliloquy addressed to himself. "dat's w'at dey pays roun' hyuh." when they reached a large clearing, which peter pointed out as their destination, the old man dismounted with considerable agility, and opened a rickety gate that was held in place by loops of rope. evidently the entrance had once possessed some pretensions to elegance, for the huge hewn posts had originally been faced with dressed lumber and finished with ornamental capitals, some fragments of which remained; and the one massive hinge, hanging by a slender rust-eaten nail, had been wrought into a fantastic shape. as they drove through the gateway, a green lizard scampered down from the top of one of the posts, where he had been sunning himself, and a rattlesnake lying in the path lazily uncoiled his motley brown length, and sounding his rattle, wriggled slowly off into the rank grass and weeds that bordered the carriage track. the house stood well back from the road, amid great oaks and elms and unpruned evergreens. the lane by which it was approached was partly overgrown with weeds and grass, from which the mare's fetlocks swept the dew, yet undried by the morning sun. the old dudley "mansion," as it was called, was a large two-story frame house, built in the colonial style, with a low-pitched roof, and a broad piazza along the front, running the full length of both stories and supported by thick round columns, each a solid piece of pine timber, gray with age and lack of paint, seamed with fissures by the sun and rain of many years. the roof swayed downward on one side; the shingles were old and cracked and moss-grown; several of the second story windows were boarded up, and others filled with sashes from which most of the glass had disappeared. about the house, for a space of several rods on each side of it, the ground was bare of grass and shrubbery, rough and uneven, lying in little hillocks and hollows, as though recently dug over at haphazard, or explored by some vagrant drove of hogs. at one side, beyond this barren area, lay a kitchen garden, enclosed by a paling fence. the colonel had never thought of young dudley as being at all energetic, but so ill-kept a place argued shiftlessness in a marked degree. when the carriage had drawn up in front of the house, the colonel became aware of two figures on the long piazza. at one end, in a massive oaken armchair, sat an old man--seemingly a very old man, for he was bent and wrinkled, with thin white hair hanging down upon his shoulders. his face, of a highbred and strongly marked type, emphasised by age, had the hawk-like contour, that is supposed to betoken extreme acquisitiveness. his faded eyes were turned toward a woman, dressed in a homespun frock and a muslin cap, who sat bolt upright, in a straight-backed chair, at the other end of the piazza, with her hands folded on her lap, looking fixedly toward her _vis-à-vis_. neither of them paid the slightest attention to the colonel, and when the old man rose, it was not to step forward and welcome his visitor, but to approach and halt in front of the woman. "viney," he said, sharply, "i am tired of this nonsense. i insist upon knowing, immediately, where my uncle left the money." the woman made no reply, but her faded eyes glowed for a moment, like the ashes of a dying fire, and her figure stiffened perceptibly as she leaned slightly toward him. "show me at once, you hussy," he said, shaking his fist, "or you'll have reason to regret it. i'll have you whipped." his cracked voice rose to a shrill shriek as he uttered the threat. the slumbrous fire in the woman's eyes flamed up for a moment. she rose, and drawing herself up to her full height, which was greater than the old man's, made some incoherent sounds, and bent upon him a look beneath which he quailed. "yes, viney, good viney," he said, soothingly, "i know it was wrong, and i've always regretted it, always, from the very moment. but you shouldn't bear malice. servants, the bible says, should obey their masters, and you should bless them that curse you, and do good to them that despitefully use you. but i was good to you before, viney, and i was kind to you afterwards, and i know you've forgiven me, good viney, noble-hearted viney, and you're going to tell me, aren't you?" he pleaded, laying his hand caressingly upon her arm. she drew herself away, but, seemingly mollified, moved her lips as though in speech. the old man put his hand to his ear and listened with an air of strained eagerness, well-nigh breathless in its intensity. "try again, viney," he said, "that's a good girl. your old master thinks a great deal of you, viney. he is your best friend!" again she made an inarticulate response, which he nevertheless seemed to comprehend, for, brightening up immediately, he turned from her, came down the steps with tremulous haste, muttering to himself meanwhile, seized a spade that stood leaning against the steps, passed by the carriage without a glance, and began digging furiously at one side of the yard. the old woman watched him for a while, with a self-absorption that was entirely oblivious of the visitors, and then entered the house. the colonel had been completely absorbed in this curious drama. there was an air of weirdness and unreality about it all. old peter was as silent as if he had been turned into stone. something in the atmosphere conduced to somnolence, for even the horses stood still, with no signs of restlessness. the colonel was the first to break the spell. "what's the matter with them, peter? do you know?" "dey's bofe plumb 'stracted, suh--clean out'n dey min's--dey be'n dat way fer yeahs an' yeahs an' yeahs." "that's mr. dudley, i suppose?" "yas, suh, dat's ole mars ma'com dudley, de uncle er young mistah ben dudley w'at hangs 'roun miss grac'ella so much." "and who is the woman?" "she's a bright mulattah 'oman, suh, w'at use' ter b'long ter de family befo' de wah, an' has kep' house fer ole mars' ma'com ever sense. he 'lows dat she knows whar old mars' rafe dudley, _his_ uncle, hid a million dollahs endyoin' de wah, an' huh tongue's paralyse' so she can't tell 'im--an' he's be'n tryin' ter fin' out fer de las' twenty-five years. i wo'ked out hyuh one summer on plantation, an' i seen 'em gwine on like dat many 'n' many a time. dey don' nobody roun' hyuh pay no 'tention to 'em no mo', ev'ybody's so use' ter seein' 'em." the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of ben dudley, who came around the house, and, advancing to the carriage, nodded to peter, and greeted the colonel respectfully. "won't you 'light and come in?" he asked. the colonel followed him into the house, to a plainly furnished parlour. there was a wide fireplace, with a fine old pair of brass andirons, and a few pieces of old mahogany furniture, incongruously assorted with half a dozen splint-bottomed chairs. the floor was bare, and on the walls half a dozen of the old dudleys looked out from as many oil paintings, with the smooth glaze that marked the touch of the travelling artist, in the days before portrait painting was superseded by photography and crayon enlargements. ben returned in a few minutes with his uncle. old malcolm seemed to have shaken off his aberration, and greeted the colonel with grave politeness. "i am glad, sir," he said, giving the visitor his hand, "to make your acquaintance. i have been working in the garden--the flower-garden--for the sake of the exercise. we have negroes enough, though they are very trifling nowadays, but the exercise is good for my health. i have trouble, at times, with my rheumatism, and with my--my memory." he passed his hand over his brow as though brushing away an imaginary cobweb. "ben tells me you have a business matter to present to me?" the colonel, somewhat mystified, after what he had witnessed, by this sudden change of manner, but glad to find the old man seemingly rational, stated the situation in regard to the mill site. old malcolm seemed to understand perfectly, and accepted with willingness the colonel's proposition to give him a certain amount of stock in the new company for the release of such rights as he might possess under the old incorporation. the colonel had brought with him a contract, properly drawn, which was executed by old malcolm, and witnessed by the colonel and ben. "i trust, sir," said mr. dudley, "that you will not ascribe it to any discourtesy that i have not called to see you. i knew your father and your grandfather. but the cares of my estate absorb me so completely that i never leave home. i shall send my regards to you now and then by my nephew. i expect, in a very short time, when certain matters are adjusted, to be able to give up, to a great extent, my arduous cares, and lead a life of greater leisure, which will enable me to travel and cultivate a wider acquaintance. when that time comes, sir, i shall hope to see more of you." the old gentleman stood courteously on the steps while ben accompanied the colonel to the carriage. it had scarcely turned into the lane when the colonel, looking back, saw the old man digging furiously. the condition of the yard was explained; he had been unjust in ascribing it to ben's neglect. "i reckon, suh," remarked peter, "dat w'en he fin' dat million dollahs, mistah ben'll marry miss grac'ella an' take huh ter new yo'k." "perhaps--and perhaps not," said the colonel. to himself he added, musingly, "old malcolm will start on a long journey before he finds the--million dollars. the watched pot never boils. buried treasure is never found by those who seek it, but always accidentally, if at all." on the way back they stopped at the treadwells' for phil. phil was not ready to go home. he was intensely interested in a long-eared mechanical mule, constructed by ben dudley out of bits of wood and leather and controlled by certain springs made of rubber bands, by manipulating which the mule could be made to kick furiously. since the colonel had affairs to engage his attention, and phil seemed perfectly contented, he was allowed to remain, with the understanding that peter should come for him in the afternoon. _sixteen_ little phil had grown very fond of old peter, who seemed to lavish upon the child all of his love and devotion for the dead generations of the french family. the colonel had taught phil to call the old man "uncle peter," after the kindly southern fashion of slavery days, which, denying to negroes the forms of address applied to white people, found in the affectionate terms of relationship--mammy, auntie and uncle--designations that recognised the respect due to age, and yet lost, when applied to slaves, their conventional significance. there was a strong, sympathy between the intelligent child and the undeveloped old negro; they were more nearly on a mental level, leaving out, of course, the factor of peter's experience, than could have been the case with one more generously endowed than peter, who, though by nature faithful, had never been unduly bright. little phil became so attached to his old attendant that, between peter and the treadwell ladies, the colonel's housekeeper had to give him very little care. on sunday afternoons the colonel and phil and peter would sometimes walk over to the cemetery. the family lot was now kept in perfect order. the low fence around it had been repaired, and several leaning headstones straightened up. but, guided by a sense of fitness, and having before him the awful example for which fetters was responsible, the colonel had added no gaudy monument nor made any alterations which would disturb the quiet beauty of the spot or its harmony with the surroundings. in the northern cemetery where his young wife was buried, he had erected to her memory a stately mausoleum, in keeping with similar memorials on every hand. but here, in this quiet graveyard, where his ancestors slept their last sleep under the elms and the willows, display would have been out of place. he had, however, placed a wrought-iron bench underneath the trees, where he would sit and read his paper, while little phil questioned old peter about his grandfather and his great-grandfather, their prowess on the hunting field, and the wars they fought in; and the old man would delight in detailing, in his rambling and disconnected manner, the past glories of the french family. it was always a new story to phil, and never grew stale to the old man. if peter could be believed, there were never white folks so brave, so learned, so wise, so handsome, so kind to their servants, so just to all with whom they had dealings. phil developed a very great fondness for these dead ancestors, whose graves and histories he soon knew as well as peter himself. with his lively imagination he found pleasure, as children often do, in looking into the future. the unoccupied space in the large cemetery lot furnished him food for much speculation. "papa," he said, upon one of these peaceful afternoons, "there's room enough here for all of us, isn't there--you, and me and uncle peter?" "yes, phil," said his father, "there's room for several generations of frenches yet to sleep with their fathers." little phil then proceeded to greater detail. "here," he said, "next to grandfather, will be your place, and here next to that, will be mine, and here, next to me will be--but no," he said, pausing reflectively, "that ought to be saved for my little boy when he grows up and dies, that is, when i grow up and have a little boy and he grows up and grows old and dies and leaves a little boy and--but where will uncle peter be?" "nem mine me, honey," said the old man, "dey can put me somewhar e'se. hit doan' mattuh 'bout me." "no, uncle peter, you must be here with the rest of us. for you know, uncle peter, i'm so used to you now, that i should want you to be near me then." old peter thought to humour the lad. "put me down hyuh at de foot er de lot, little mars' phil, unner dis ellum tree." "oh, papa," exclaimed phil, demanding the colonel's attention, "uncle peter and i have arranged everything. you know uncle peter is to stay with me as long as i live, and when he dies, he is to be buried here at the foot of the lot, under the elm tree, where he'll be near me all the time, and near the folks that he knows and that know him." "all right, phil. you see to it; you'll live longer." "but, papa, if i should die first, and then uncle peter, and you last of all, you'll put uncle peter near me, won't you, papa?" "why, bless your little heart, phil, of course your daddy will do whatever you want, if he's here to do it. but you'll live, phil, please god, until i am old and bent and white-haired, and you are a grown man, with a beard, and a little boy of your own." "yas, suh," echoed the old servant, "an' till ole peter's bones is long sence crumble' inter dus'. none er de frenches' ain' never died till dey was done growed up." on the afternoon following the colonel's visit to mink run, old peter, when he came for phil, was obliged to stay long enough to see the antics of the mechanical mule; and had not that artificial animal suddenly refused to kick, and lapsed into a characteristic balkiness for which there was no apparent remedy, it might have proved difficult to get phil away. "there, philip dear, never mind," said miss laura, "we'll have ben mend it for you when he comes, next time, and then you can play with it again." peter had brought with him some hooks and lines, and, he and phil, after leaving the house, followed the bank of the creek, climbing a fence now and then, until they reached the old mill site, upon which work had not yet begun. they found a shady spot, and seating themselves upon the bank, baited their lines, and dropped them into a quiet pool. for quite a while their patience was unrewarded by anything more than a nibble. by and by a black cat came down from the ruined mill, and sat down upon the bank at a short distance from them. "i reckon we'll haf ter move, honey," said the old man. "we ain't gwine ter have no luck fishin' 'g'ins' no ole black cat." "but cats don't fish, uncle peter, do they?" "law', chile, you'll never know w'at dem critters _kin_ do, 'tel you's watched 'em long ez i has! keep yo' eye on dat one now." the cat stood by the stream, in a watchful attitude. suddenly she darted her paw into the shallow water and with a lightning-like movement drew out a small fish, which she took in her mouth, and retired with it a few yards up the bank. "jes' look at dat ole devil," said peter, "playin' wid dat fish jes' lack it wuz a mouse! she'll be comin' down heah terreckly tellin' us ter go 'way fum her fishin' groun's." "why, uncle peter," said phil incredulously, "cats can't talk!" "can't dey? hoo said dey couldn'? ain't miss grac'ella an' me be'n tellin' you right along 'bout bre'r rabbit and bre'r fox an de yuther creturs talkin' an' gwine on jes' lak folks?" "yes, uncle peter, but those were just stories; they didn't really talk, did they?" "law', honey," said the old man, with a sly twinkle in his rheumy eye, "you is de sma'tes' little white boy i ever knowed, but you is got a monst'us heap ter l'arn yit, chile. nobody ain' done tol' you 'bout de black cat an' de ha'nted house, is dey?" "no, uncle peter--you tell me." "i didn' knowed but miss grac'ella mought a tole you--she knows mos' all de tales." "no, she hasn't. you tell me about it, uncle peter." "well," said peter, "does you 'member dat coal-black man dat drives de lumber wagon?" "yes, he goes by our house every day, on the way to the sawmill." "well, it all happen' 'long er him. he 'uz gwine long de street one day, w'en he heared two gent'emen--one of 'em was ole mars' tom sellers an' i fuhgot de yuther--but dey 'uz talkin' 'bout dat ole ha'nted house down by de creek, 'bout a mile from hyuh, on de yuther side er town, whar we went fishin' las' week. does you 'member de place?" "yes, i remember the house." "well, as dis yer jeff--dat's de lumber-wagon driver's name--as dis yer jeff come up ter dese yer two gentlemen, one of 'em was sayin, 'i'll bet five dollahs dey ain' narry a man in his town would stay in dat ha'nted house all night.' dis yer jeff, he up 'n sez, sezee, 'scuse me, suh, but ef you'll 'low me ter speak, suh, i knows a man wat'll stay in dat ole ha'nted house all night.'" "what is a ha'nted house, uncle peter?" asked phil. "w'y. law,' chile, a ha'nted house is a house whar dey's ha'nts!" "and what are ha'nts, uncle peter?" "ha'nts, honey, is sperrits er dead folks, dat comes back an' hangs roun' whar dey use' ter lib." "do all spirits come back, uncle peter?" "no, chile, bress de lawd, no. only de bad ones, w'at has be'n so wicked dey can't rest in dey graves. folks lack yo' gran'daddy and yo' gran'mammy--an' all de frenches--dey don' none er _dem_ come back, fer dey wuz all good people an' is all gone ter hebben. but i'm fergittin' de tale. "'well, hoo's de man--hoo's de man?' ax mistah sellers, w'en jeff tol' 'im dey wuz somebody wat 'ud stay in de ole ha'nted house all night. "'i'm de man,' sez jeff. 'i ain't skeered er no ha'nt dat evuh walked, an' i sleeps in graveya'ds by pref'ence; fac', i jes nach'ly lacks ter talk ter ha'nts. you pay me de five dollahs, an' i'll 'gree ter stay in de ole house f'm nine er clock 'tel daybreak.' "dey talk' ter jeff a w'ile, an' dey made a bahgin wid 'im; dey give 'im one dollah down, an' promus' 'im fo' mo' in de mawnin' ef he stayed 'tel den. "so w'en he got de dollah he went uptown an' spent it, an' 'long 'bout nine er clock he tuk a lamp, an' went down ter de ole house, an' went inside an' shet de do'. "dey wuz a rickety ole table settin' in de middle er de flo'. he sot de lamp on de table. den he look 'roun' de room, in all de cawners an' up de chimbly, ter see dat dey wan't nobody ner nuthin' hid in de room. den he tried all de winders an' fastened de do', so dey couldn' nobody ner nuthin' git in. den he fotch a' ole rickety chair f'm one cawner, and set it by de table, and sot down. he wuz settin' dere, noddin' his head, studyin' 'bout dem other fo' dollahs, an' w'at he wuz gwine buy wid 'em, w'en bimeby he kinder dozed off, an' befo' he knowed it he wuz settin' dere fast asleep." "w'en he woke up, 'long 'bout 'leven erclock, de lamp had bu'n' down kinder low. he heared a little noise behind him an' look 'roun', an' dere settin' in de middle er de flo' wuz a big black tomcat, wid his tail quirled up over his back, lookin' up at jeff wid bofe his two big yaller eyes. "jeff rub' 'is eyes, ter see ef he wuz 'wake, an w'iles he sot dere wond'rin' whar de hole wuz dat dat ole cat come in at, fus' thing he knowed, de ole cat wuz settin' right up 'side of 'im, on de table, wid his tail quirled up roun' de lamp chimbly. "jeff look' at de black cat, an' de black cat look' at jeff. den de black cat open his mouf an' showed 'is teef, an' sezee----" "'good evenin'!' "'good evenin' suh,' 'spon' jeff, trimblin' in de knees, an' kind'er edgin' 'way fum de table. "'dey ain' nobody hyuh but you an' me, is dey?' sez de black cat, winkin' one eye. "'no, suh,' sez jeff, as he made fer de do', _'an' quick ez i kin git out er hyuh, dey ain' gwine ter be nobody hyuh but you!_'" "is that all, uncle peter?" asked phil, when the old man came to a halt with a prolonged chuckle. "huh?" "is that all?" "no, dey's mo' er de tale, but dat's ernuff ter prove dat black cats kin do mo' dan little w'ite boys 'low dey kin." "did jeff go away?" "did he go 'way! why, chile, he jes' flew away! befo' he got ter de do', howsomevuh, he 'membered he had locked it, so he didn' stop ter try ter open it, but went straight out'n a winder, quicker'n lightnin', an' kyared de sash 'long wid 'im. an' he'd be'n in sech pow'ful has'e dat he knock' de lamp over an' lack ter sot de house afire. he nevuh got de yuther fo' dollahs of co'se, 'ca'se he didn't stay in de ole ha'nted house all night, but he 'lowed he'd sho'ly 'arned de one dollah he'd had a'ready." "why didn't he want to talk to the black cat, uncle peter?" "why didn' he wan' ter talk ter de black cat? whoever heared er sich a queshtun! he didn' wan' ter talk wid no black cat, 'ca'se he wuz skeered. black cats brings 'nuff bad luck w'en dey doan' talk, let 'lone w'en dey does." "i should like," said phil, reflectively, "to talk to a black cat. i think it would be great fun." "keep away f'm 'em, chile, keep away f'm 'em. dey is some things too deep fer little boys ter projec' wid, an' black cats is one of 'em." they moved down the stream and were soon having better luck. "uncle peter," said phil, while they were on their way home, "there couldn't be any ha'nts at all in the graveyard where my grandfather is buried, could there? graciella read a lot of the tombstones to me one day, and they all said that all the people were good, and were resting in peace, and had gone to heaven. tombstones always tell the truth, don't they, uncle peter?" "happen so, honey, happen so! de french tombstones does; an' as ter de res', i ain' gwine to 'spute 'em, nohow, fer ef i did, de folks under 'em mought come back an' ha'nt me, jes' fer spite." _seventeen_ by considerable effort, and a moderate outlay, the colonel at length secured a majority of interest in the eureka mill site and made application to the state, through caxton, for the redemption of the title. the opposition had either ceased or had proved ineffective. there would be some little further delay, but the outcome seemed practically certain, and the colonel did not wait longer to set in motion his plans for the benefit of clarendon. "i'm told that fetters says he'll get the mill anyway," said caxton, "and make more money buying it under foreclosure than by building a new one. he's ready to lend on it now." "oh, damn fetters!" exclaimed the colonel, elated with his victory. he had never been a profane man, but strong language came so easy in clarendon that one dropped into it unconsciously. "the mill will be running on full time when fetters has been put out of business. we've won our first fight, and i've never really seen the fellow yet." as soon as the title was reasonably secure, the colonel began his preparations for building the cotton mill. the first step was to send for a new england architect who made a specialty of mills, to come down and look the site over, and make plans for the dam, the mill buildings and a number of model cottages for the operatives. as soon as the estimates were prepared, he looked the ground over to see how far he could draw upon local resources for material. there was good brick clay on the outskirts of the town, where bricks had once been made; but for most of the period since the war such as were used in the town had been procured from the ruins of old buildings--it was cheaper to clean bricks than to make them. since the construction of the railroad branch to clarendon the few that were needed from time to time were brought in by train. not since the building of the opera house block had there been a kiln of brick made in the town. inquiry brought out the fact that in case of a demand for bricks there were brickmakers thereabouts; and in accordance with his general plan to employ local labour, the colonel looked up the owner of the brickyard, and asked if he were prepared to take a large contract. the gentleman was palpably troubled by the question. "well, colonel," he said, "i don't know. i'd s'posed you were goin' to impo't yo' bricks from philadelphia." "no, mr. barnes," returned the colonel, "i want to spend the money here in clarendon. there seems to be plenty of unemployed labour." "yes, there does, till you want somethin' done; then there ain't so much. i s'pose i might find half a dozen niggers round here that know how to make brick; and there's several more that have moved away that i can get back if i send for them. if you r'al'y think you want yo'r brick made here, i'll try to get them out for you. they'll cost you, though, as much, if not more than, you'd have to pay for machine-made bricks from the no'th." the colonel declared that he preferred the local product. "well, i'm shore i don't see why," said the brickmaker. "they'll not be as smooth or as uniform in colour." "they'll be clarendon brick," returned the colonel, "and i want this to be a clarendon enterprise, from the ground up." "well," said barnes resignedly, "if you must have home-made brick, i suppose i'll have to make 'em. i'll see what i can do." colonel french then turned the brick matter over to caxton, who, in the course of a week, worried barnes into a contract to supply so many thousand brick within a given time. "i don't like that there time limit," said the brickmaker, "but i reckon i can make them brick as fast as you can get anybody roun' here to lay 'em." when in the course of another week the colonel saw signs of activity about the old brickyard, he proceeded with the next step, which was to have the ruins of the old factory cleared away. "well, colonel," said major mclean one day when the colonel dropped into the hotel, where the major hung out a good part of the time, "i s'pose you're goin' to hire white folks to do the work over there." "why," replied the colonel, "i hadn't thought about the colour of the workmen. there'll be plenty, i guess, for all who apply, so long as it lasts." "you'll have trouble if you hire niggers," said the major. "you'll find that they won't work when you want 'em to. they're not reliable, they have no sense of responsibility. as soon as they get a dollar they'll lay off to spend it, and leave yo' work at the mos' critical point." "well, now, major," replied the colonel, "i haven't noticed any unnatural activity among the white men of the town. the negroes have to live, or seem to think they have, and i'll give 'em a chance to turn an honest penny. by the way, major, i need a superintendent to look after the work. it don't require an expert, but merely a good man--gentleman preferred--whom i can trust to see that my ideas are carried out. perhaps you can recommend such a person?" the major turned the matter over in his mind before answering. he might, of course, offer his own services. the pay would doubtless be good. but he had not done any real work for years. his wife owned their home. his daughter taught in the academy. he was drawn on jury nearly every term; was tax assessor now and then, and a judge or clerk of elections upon occasion. nor did he think that steady employment would agree with his health, while it would certainly interfere with his pleasant visits with the drummers at the hotel. "i'd be glad to take the position myself, colonel," he said, "but i r'aly won't have the time. the campaign will be hummin' in a month or so, an' my political duties will occupy all my leisure. but i'll bear the matter in mind, an' see if i can think of any suitable person." the colonel thanked him. he had hardly expected the major to offer his services, but had merely wished, for the fun of the thing, to try the experiment. what the colonel really needed was a good foreman--he had used the word "superintendent" merely on the major's account, as less suggestive of work. he found a poor white man, however, green by name, who seemed capable and energetic, and a gang of labourers under his charge was soon busily engaged in clearing the mill site and preparing for the foundations of a new dam. when it was learned that the colonel was paying his labourers a dollar and a half a day, there was considerable criticism, on the ground that such lavishness would demoralise the labour market, the usual daily wage of the negro labourer being from fifty to seventy-five cents. but since most of the colonel's money soon found its way, through the channels of trade, into the pockets of the white people, the criticism soon died a natural death. _eighteen_ once started in his career of active benevolence, the colonel's natural love of thoroughness, combined with a philanthropic zeal as pleasant as it was novel, sought out new reforms. they were easily found. he had begun, with wise foresight, at the foundations of prosperity, by planning an industry in which the people could find employment. but there were subtler needs, mental and spiritual, to be met. education, for instance, so important to real development, languished in clarendon. there was a select private school for young ladies, attended by the daughters of those who could not send their children away to school. a few of the town boys went away to military schools. the remainder of the white youth attended the academy, which was a thoroughly democratic institution, deriving its support partly from the public school fund and partly from private subscriptions. there was a coloured public school taught by a negro teacher. neither school had, so far as the colonel could learn, attained any very high degree of efficiency. at one time the colonel had contemplated building a schoolhouse for the children of the mill hands, but upon second thought decided that the expenditure would be more widely useful if made through the channels already established. if the old academy building were repaired, and a wing constructed, for which there was ample room upon the grounds, it would furnish any needed additional accommodation for the children of the operatives, and avoid the drawing of any line that might seem to put these in a class apart. there were already lines enough in the town--the deep and distinct colour line, theoretically all-pervasive, but with occasional curious exceptions; the old line between the "rich white folks" or aristocrats--no longer rich, most of them, but retaining some of their former wealth and clinging tenaciously to a waning prestige--and the "poor whites," still at a social disadvantage, but gradually evolving a solid middle class, with reinforcements from the decaying aristocracy, and producing now and then some ambitious and successful man like fetters. to emphasise these distinctions was no part of the colonel's plan. to eradicate them entirely in any stated time was of course impossible, human nature being what it was, but he would do nothing to accentuate them. his mill hands should become, like the mill hands in new england towns, an intelligent, self-respecting and therefore respected element of an enlightened population; and the whole town should share equally in anything he might spend for their benefit. he found much pleasure in talking over these fine plans of his with laura treadwell. caxton had entered into them with the enthusiasm of an impressionable young man, brought into close contact with a forceful personality. but in miss laura the colonel found a sympathy that was more than intellectual--that reached down to sources of spiritual strength and inspiration which the colonel could not touch but of which he was conscious and of which he did not hesitate to avail himself at second hand. little phil had made the house almost a second home; and the frequent visits of his father had only strengthened the colonel's admiration of laura's character. he had learned, not from the lady herself, how active in good works she was. a lady bountiful in any large sense she could not be, for her means, as she had so frankly said upon his first visit, were small. but a little went a long way among the poor of clarendon, and the life after all is more than meat, and the body more than raiment, and advice and sympathy were as often needed as other kinds of help. he had offered to assist her charities in a substantial way, and she had permitted it now and then, but had felt obliged at last to cease mentioning them altogether. he was able to circumvent this delicacy now and then through the agency of graciella, whose theory was that money was made to spend. "laura," he said one evening when at the house, "will you go with me to-morrow to visit the academy? i wish to see with your eyes as well as with mine what it needs and what can be done with it. it shall be our secret until we are ready to surprise the town." they went next morning, without notice to the principal. the school was well ordered, but the equipment poor. the building was old and sadly in need of repair. the teacher was an ex-confederate officer, past middle life, well taught by the methods in vogue fifty years before, but scarcely in harmony with modern ideals of education. in spite of his perfect manners and unimpeachable character, the professor, as he was called, was generally understood to hold his position more by virtue of his need and his influence than of his fitness to instruct. he had several young lady assistants who found in teaching the only career open, in clarendon, to white women of good family. the recess hour arrived while they were still at school. when the pupils marched out, in orderly array, the colonel, seizing a moment when miss treadwell and the professor were speaking about some of the children whom the colonel did not know, went to the rear of one of the schoolrooms and found, without much difficulty, high up on one of the walls, the faint but still distinguishable outline of a pencil caricature he had made there thirty years before. if the wall had been whitewashed in the meantime, the lime had scaled down to the original plaster. only the name, which had been written underneath, was illegible, though he could reconstruct with his mind's eye and the aid of a few shadowy strokes--"bill fetters, sneak"--in angular letters in the printed form. the colonel smiled at this survival of youthful bigotry. yet even then his instinct had been a healthy one; his boyish characterisation of fetters, schoolboy, was not an inapt description of fetters, man--mortgage shark, labour contractor and political boss. bill, seeking official favour, had reported to the professor of that date some boyish escapade in which his schoolfellows had taken part, and it was in revenge for this meanness that the colonel had chased him ignominiously down main street and pilloried him upon the schoolhouse wall. fetters the man, a goliath whom no david had yet opposed, had fastened himself upon a weak and disorganised community, during a period of great distress and had succeeded by devious ways in making himself its master. and as the colonel stood looking at the picture he was conscious of a faint echo of his boyish indignation and sense of outraged honour. already fetters and he had clashed upon the subject of the cotton mill, and fetters had retired from the field. if it were written that they should meet in a life-and-death struggle for the soul of clarendon, he would not shirk the conflict. "laura," he said, when they went away, "i should like to visit the coloured school. will you come with me?" she hesitated, and he could see with half an eye that her answer was dictated by a fine courage. "why, certainly, i will go. why not? it is a place where a good work is carried on." "no, laura," said the colonel smiling, "you need not go. on second thought, i should prefer to go alone." she insisted, but he was firm. he had no desire to go counter to her instincts, or induce her to do anything that might provoke adverse comment. miss laura had all the fine glow of courage, but was secretly relieved at being excused from a trip so unconventional. so the colonel found his way alone to the schoolhouse, an unpainted frame structure in a barren, sandy lot upon a street somewhat removed from the centre of the town and given over mainly to the humble homes of negroes. that his unannounced appearance created some embarrassment was quite evident, but his friendliness toward the negroes had already been noised abroad, and he was welcomed with warmth, not to say effusion, by the principal of the school, a tall, stalwart and dark man with an intelligent expression, a deferential manner, and shrewd but guarded eyes--the eyes of the jungle, the colonel had heard them called; and the thought came to him, was it some ancestral jungle on the distant coast of savage africa, or the wilderness of another sort in which the black people had wandered and were wandering still in free america? the attendance was not large; at a glance the colonel saw that there were but twenty-five pupils present. "what is your total enrolment?" he asked the teacher. "well, sir," was the reply, "we have seventy-five or eighty on the roll, but it threatened rain this morning, and as a great many of them haven't got good shoes, they stayed at home for fear of getting their feet wet." the colonel had often noticed the black children paddling around barefoot in the puddles on rainy days, but there was evidently some point of etiquette connected with attending school barefoot. he had passed more than twenty-five children on the streets, on his way to the schoolhouse. the building was even worse than that of the academy, and the equipment poorer still. upon the colonel asking to hear a recitation, the teacher made some excuse and shrewdly requested him to make a few remarks. they could recite, he said, at any time, but an opportunity to hear colonel french was a privilege not to be neglected. the colonel, consenting good-humouredly, was introduced to the school in very flowery language. the pupils were sitting, the teacher informed them, in the shadow of a great man. a distinguished member of the grand old aristocracy of their grand old native state had gone to the great north and grown rich and famous. he had returned to his old home to scatter his vast wealth where it was most needed, and to give his fellow townsmen an opportunity to add their applause to his world-wide fame. he was present to express his sympathy with their feeble efforts to rise in the world, and he wanted the scholars all to listen with the most respectful attention. colonel french made a few simple remarks in which he spoke of the advantages of education as a means of forming character and of fitting boys and girls for the work of men and women. in former years his people had been charged with direct responsibility for the care of many coloured children, and in a larger and indirect way they were still responsible for their descendants. he urged them to make the best of their opportunities and try to fit themselves for useful citizenship. they would meet with the difficulties that all men must, and with some peculiarly their own. but they must look up and not down, forward and not back, seeking always incentives to hope rather than excuses for failure. before leaving, he arranged with the teacher, whose name was taylor, to meet several of the leading coloured men, with whom he wished to discuss some method of improving their school and directing their education to more definite ends. the meeting was subsequently held. "what your people need," said the colonel to the little gathering at the schoolhouse one evening, "is to learn not only how to read and write and think, but to do these things to some definite end. we live in an age of specialists. to make yourselves valuable members of society, you must learn to do well some particular thing, by which you may reasonably expect to earn a comfortable living in your own home, among your neighbours, and save something for old age and the education of your children. get together. take advice from some of your own capable leaders in other places. find out what you can do for yourselves, and i will give you three dollars for every one you can gather, for an industrial school or some similar institution. take your time, and when you're ready to report, come and see me, or write to me, if i am not here." the result was the setting in motion of a stagnant pool. who can measure the force of hope? the town had been neglected by mission boards. no able or ambitious negro had risen from its midst to found an institution and find a career. the coloured school received a grudging dole from the public funds, and was left entirely to the supervision of the coloured people. it would have been surprising had the money always been expended to the best advantage. the fact that a white man, in some sense a local man, who had yet come from the far north, the land of plenty, with feelings friendly to their advancement, had taken a personal interest in their welfare and proved it by his presence among them, gave them hope and inspiration for the future. they had long been familiar with the friendship that curbed, restricted and restrained, and concerned itself mainly with their limitations. they were almost hysterically eager to welcome the co-operation of a friend who, in seeking to lift them up, was obsessed by no fear of pulling himself down or of narrowing in some degree the gulf that separated them--who was willing not only to help them, but to help them to a condition in which they might be in less need of help. the colonel touched the reserves of loyalty in the negro nature, exemplified in old peter and such as he. who knows, had these reserves been reached sooner by strict justice and patient kindness, that they might not long since have helped to heal the wounds of slavery? "and now, laura," said the colonel, "when we have improved the schools and educated the people, we must give them something to occupy their minds. we must have a library, a public library." "that will be splendid!" she replied with enthusiasm. "a public library," continued the colonel, "housed in a beautiful building, in a conspicuous place, and decorated in an artistic manner--a shrine of intellect and taste, at which all the people, rich and poor, black and white, may worship." miss laura was silent for a moment, and thoughtful. "but, henry," she said with some hesitation, "do you mean that coloured people should use the library?" "why not?" he asked. "do they not need it most? perhaps not many of them might wish to use it; but to those who do, should we deny the opportunity? consider their teachers--if the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch?" "yes, henry, that is the truth; but i am afraid the white people wouldn't wish to handle the same books." "very well, then we will give the coloured folks a library of their own, at some place convenient for their use. we need not strain our ideal by going too fast. where shall i build the library?" "the vacant lot," she said, "between the post-office and the bank." "the very place," he replied. "it belonged to our family once, and i shall be acquiring some more ancestral property. the cows will need to find a new pasture." the announcement of the colonel's plan concerning the academy and the library evoked a hearty response on the part of the public, and the _anglo-saxon_ hailed it as the dawning of a new era. with regard to the colonel's friendly plans for the negroes, there was less enthusiasm and some difference of opinion. some commended the colonel's course. there were others, good men and patriotic, men who would have died for liberty, in the abstract, men who sought to walk uprightly, and to live peaceably with all, but who, by much brooding over the conditions surrounding their life, had grown hopelessly pessimistic concerning the negro. the subject came up in a little company of gentlemen who were gathered around the colonel's table one evening, after the coffee had been served, and the havanas passed around. "your zeal for humanity does you infinite credit, colonel french," said dr. mackenzie, minister of the presbyterian church, who was one of these prophetic souls, "but i fear your time and money and effort will be wasted. the negroes are hopelessly degraded. they have degenerated rapidly since the war." "how do you know, doctor? you came here from the north long after the war. what is your standard of comparison?" "i voice the unanimous opinion of those who have known them at both periods." "_i_ don't agree with you; and i lived here before the war. there is certainly one smart negro in town. nichols, the coloured barber, owns five houses, and overreached me in a bargain. before the war he was a chattel. and taylor, the teacher, seems to be a very sensible fellow." "yes," said dr. price, who was one of the company, "taylor is a very intelligent negro. nichols and he have learned how to live and prosper among the white people." "they are exceptions," said the preacher, "who only prove the rule. no, colonel french, for a long time _i_ hoped that there was a future for these poor, helpless blacks. but of late i have become profoundly convinced that there is no place in this nation for the negro, except under the sod. we will not assimilate him, we cannot deport him----" "and therefore, o man of god, must we exterminate him?" "it is god's will. we need not stain our hands with innocent blood. if we but sit passive, and leave their fate to time, they will die away in discouragement and despair. already disease is sapping their vitals. like other weak races, they will vanish from the pathway of the strong, and there is no place for them to flee. when they go hence, it is to go forever. it is the law of life, which god has given to the earth. to coddle them, to delude them with false hopes of an unnatural equality which not all the power of the government has been able to maintain, is only to increase their unhappiness. to a doomed race, ignorance is euthanasia, and knowledge is but pain and sorrow. it is his will that the fittest should survive, and that those shall inherit the earth who are best prepared to utilise its forces and gather its fruits." "my dear doctor, what you say may all be true, but, with all due respect, i don't believe a word of it. i am rather inclined to think that these people have a future; that there is a place for them here; that they have made fair progress under discouraging circumstances; that they will not disappear from our midst for many generations, if ever; and that in the meantime, as we make or mar them, we shall make or mar our civilisation. no society can be greater or wiser or better than the average of all its elements. our ancestors brought these people here, and lived in luxury, some of them--or went into bankruptcy, more of them--on their labour. after three hundred years of toil they might be fairly said to have earned their liberty. at any rate, they are here. they constitute the bulk of our labouring class. to teach them is to make their labour more effective and therefore more profitable; to increase their needs is to increase our profits in supplying them. i'll take my chances on the golden rule. i am no lover of the negro, _as_ negro--i do not know but i should rather see him elsewhere. i think our land would have been far happier had none but white men ever set foot upon it after the red men were driven back. but they are here, through no fault of theirs, as we are. they were born here. we have given them our language--which they speak more or less corruptly; our religion--which they practise certainly no better than we; and our blood--which our laws make a badge of disgrace. perhaps we could not do them strict justice, without a great sacrifice upon our own part. but they are men, and they should have their chance--at least _some_ chance." "i shall pray for your success," sighed the preacher. "with god all things are possible, if he will them. but i can only anticipate your failure." "the colonel is growing so popular, with his ready money and his cheerful optimism," said old general thornton, another of the guests, "that we'll have to run him for congress, as soon as he is reconverted to the faith of his fathers." colonel french had more than once smiled at the assumption that a mere change of residence would alter his matured political convictions. his friends seemed to look upon them, so far as they differed from their own, as a mere veneer, which would scale off in time, as had the multiplied coats of whitewash over the pencil drawing made on the school-house wall in his callow youth. "you see," the old general went on, "it's a social matter down here, rather than a political one. with this ignorant black flood sweeping up against us, the race question assumes an importance which overshadows the tariff and the currency and everything else. for instance, i had fully made up my mind to vote the other ticket in the last election. i didn't like our candidate nor our platform. there was a clean-cut issue between sound money and financial repudiation, and _i_ was tired of the domination of populists and demagogues. all my better instincts led me toward a change of attitude, and i boldly proclaimed the fact. i declared my political and intellectual independence, at the cost of many friends; even my own son-in-law scarcely spoke to me for a month. when i went to the polls, old sam brown, the triflingest nigger in town, whom i had seen sentenced to jail more than once for stealing--old sam brown was next to me in the line. "'well, gin'l,' he said, 'i'm glad you is got on de right side at las', an' is gwine to vote _our_ ticket.'" "this was too much! i could stand the other party in the abstract, but not in the concrete. i voted the ticket of my neighbours and my friends. we had to preserve our institutions, if our finances went to smash. call it prejudice--call it what you like--it's human nature, and you'll come to it, colonel, you'll come to it--and then we'll send you to congress." "i might not care to go," returned the colonel, smiling. "you could not resist, sir, the unanimous demand of a determined constituency. upon the rare occasions when, in this state, the office has had a chance to seek the man, it has never sought in vain." _nineteen_ time slipped rapidly by, and the colonel had been in clarendon a couple of months when he went home one afternoon, and not finding phil and peter, went around to the treadwells' as the most likely place to seek them. "henry," said miss laura, "philip does not seem quite well to-day. there are dark circles under his eyes, and he has been coughing a little." the colonel was startled. had his growing absorption in other things led him to neglect his child? phil needed a mother. this dear, thoughtful woman, whom nature had made for motherhood, had seen things about his child, that he, the child's father, had not perceived. to a mind like colonel french's, this juxtaposition of a motherly heart and a motherless child seemed very pleasing. he despatched a messenger on horseback immediately for dr. price. the colonel had made the doctor's acquaintance soon after coming to clarendon, and out of abundant precaution, had engaged him to call once a week to see phil. a physician of skill and experience, a gentleman by birth and breeding, a thoughtful student of men and manners, and a good story teller, he had proved excellent company and the colonel soon numbered him among his intimate friends. he had seen phil a few days before, but it was yet several days before his next visit. dr. price owned a place in the country, several miles away, on the road to mink run, and thither the messenger went to find him. he was in his town office only at stated hours. the colonel was waiting at home, an hour later, when the doctor drove up to the gate with ben dudley, in the shabby old buggy to which ben sometimes drove his one good horse on his trips to town. "i broke one of my buggy wheels going out home this morning," explained the doctor, "and had just sent it to the shop when your messenger came. i would have ridden your horse back, and let the man walk in, but mr. dudley fortunately came along and gave me a lift." he looked at phil, left some tablets, with directions for their use, and said that it was nothing serious and the child would be all right in a day or two. "what he needs, colonel, at his age, is a woman's care. but for that matter none of us ever get too old to need that." "i'll have tom hitch up and take you home," said the colonel, when the doctor had finished with phil, "unless you'll stay to dinner." "no, thank you," said the doctor, "i'm much obliged, but i told my wife i'd be back to dinner. i'll just sit here and wait for young dudley, who's going to call for me in an hour. there's a fine mind, colonel, that's never had a proper opportunity for development. if he'd had half the chance that your boy will, he would make his mark. did you ever see his uncle malcolm?" the colonel described his visit to mink run, the scene on the piazza, the interview with mr. dudley, and peter's story about the hidden treasure. "is the old man sane?" he asked. "his mind is warped, undoubtedly," said the doctor, "but i'll leave it to you whether it was the result of an insane delusion or not--if you care to hear his story--or perhaps you've heard it?" "no, i have not," returned the colonel, "but i should like to hear it." this was the story that the doctor told: * * * * * when the last century had passed the half-way mark, and had started upon its decline, the dudleys had already owned land on mink run for a hundred years or more, and were one of the richest and most conspicuous families in the state. the first great man of the family, general arthur dudley, an ardent patriot, had won distinction in the war of independence, and held high place in the councils of the infant nation. his son became a distinguished jurist, whose name is still a synonym for legal learning and juridical wisdom. in ralph dudley, the son of judge dudley, and the immediate predecessor of the demented old man in whom now rested the title to the remnant of the estate, the family began to decline from its eminence. ralph did not marry, but led a life of ease and pleasure, wasting what his friends thought rare gifts, and leaving his property to the management of his nephew malcolm, the orphan son of a younger brother and his uncle's prospective heir. malcolm dudley proved so capable a manager that for year after year the large estate was left almost entirely in his charge, the owner looking to it merely for revenue to lead his own life in other places. the civil war gave ralph dudley a career, not upon the field, for which he had no taste, but in administrative work, which suited his talents, and imposed more arduous tasks than those of actual warfare. valour was of small account without arms and ammunition. a commissariat might be improvised, but gunpowder must be manufactured or purchased. ralph's nephew malcolm kept bachelor's hall in the great house. the only women in the household were an old black cook, and the housekeeper, known as "viney"--a negro corruption of lavinia--a tall, comely young light mulattress, with a dash of cherokee blood, which gave her straighter, blacker and more glossy hair than most women of mixed race have, and perhaps a somewhat different temperamental endowment. her duties were not onerous; compared with the toiling field hands she led an easy life. the household had been thus constituted for ten years and more, when malcolm dudley began paying court to a wealthy widow. this lady, a mrs. todd, was a war widow, who had lost her husband in the early years of the struggle. war, while it took many lives, did not stop the currents of life, and weeping widows sometimes found consolation. mrs. todd was of clarendon extraction, and had returned to the town to pass the period of her mourning. men were scarce in those days, and mrs. todd was no longer young, malcolm dudley courted her, proposed marriage, and was accepted. he broke the news to his housekeeper by telling her to prepare the house for a mistress. it was not a pleasant task, but he was a resolute man. the woman had been in power too long to yield gracefully. some passionate strain of the mixed blood in her veins broke out in a scene of hysterical violence. her pleadings, remonstrances, rages, were all in vain. mrs. todd was rich, and he was poor; should his uncle see fit to marry--always a possibility--he would have nothing. he would carry out his purpose. the day after this announcement viney went to town, sought out the object of dudley's attentions, and told her something; just what, no one but herself and the lady ever knew. when dudley called in the evening, the widow refused to see him, and sent instead, a curt note cancelling their engagement. dudley went home puzzled and angry. on the way thither a suspicion flashed into his mind. in the morning he made investigations, after which he rode round by the residence of his overseer. returning to the house at noon, he ate his dinner in an ominous silence, which struck terror to the heart of the woman who waited on him and had already repented of her temerity. when she would have addressed him, with a look he froze the words upon her lips. when he had eaten he looked at his watch, and ordered a boy to bring his horse round to the door. he waited until he saw his overseer coming toward the house, then sprang into the saddle and rode down the lane, passing the overseer with a nod. ten minutes later dudley galloped back up the lane and sprang from his panting horse. as he dashed up the steps he met the overseer coming out of the house. "you have not----" "i have, sir, and well! the she-devil bit my hand to the bone, and would have stabbed me if i hadn't got the knife away from her. you'd better have the niggers look after her; she's shamming a fit." dudley was remorseful, and finding viney unconscious, sent hastily for a doctor. "the woman has had a stroke," said that gentleman curtly, after an examination, "brought on by brutal treatment. by g--d, dudley, i wouldn't have thought this of you! i own negroes, but i treat them like human beings. and such a woman! i'm ashamed of my own race, i swear i am! if we are whipped in this war and the slaves are freed, as lincoln threatens, it will be god's judgment!" many a man has been shot by southern gentlemen for language less offensive; but dudley's conscience made him meek as moses. "it was a mistake," he faltered, "and i shall discharge the overseer who did it." "you had better shoot him," returned the doctor. "he has no soul--and what is worse, no discrimination." dudley gave orders that viney should receive the best of care. next day he found, behind the clock, where she had laid it, the letter which ben dudley, many years after, had read to graciella on mrs. treadwell's piazza. it was dated the morning of the previous day. an hour later he learned of the death of his uncle, who had been thrown from a fractious horse, not far from mink run, and had broken his neck in the fall. a hasty search of the premises did not disclose the concealed treasure. the secret lay in the mind of the stricken woman. as soon as dudley learned that viney had eaten and drunk and was apparently conscious, he went to her bedside and took her limp hand in his own. "i'm sorry, viney, mighty sorry, i assure you. martin went further than i intended, and i have discharged him for his brutality. you'll be sorry, viney, to learn that your old master ralph is dead; he was killed by an accident within ten miles of here. his body will be brought home to-day and buried to-morrow." dudley thought he detected in her expressionless face a shade of sorrow. old ralph, high liver and genial soul, had been so indulgent a master, that his nephew suffered by the comparison. "i found the letter he left with you," he continued softly, "and must take charge of the money immediately. can you tell me where it is?" one side of viney's face was perfectly inert, as the result of her disorder, and any movement of the other produced a slight distortion that spoiled the face as the index of the mind. but her eyes were not dimmed, and into their sombre depths there leaped a sudden fire--only a momentary flash, for almost instantly she closed her lids, and when she opened them a moment later, they exhibited no trace of emotion. "you will tell me where it is?" he repeated. a request came awkwardly to his lips; he was accustomed to command. viney pointed to her mouth with her right hand, which was not affected. "to be sure," he said hastily, "you cannot speak--not yet." he reflected for a moment. the times were unsettled. should a wave of conflict sweep over clarendon, the money might be found by the enemy. should viney take a turn for the worse and die, it would be impossible to learn anything from her at all. there was another thought, which had rapidly taken shape in his mind. no one but viney knew that his uncle had been at mink run. the estate had been seriously embarrassed by roger's extravagant patriotism, following upon the heels of other and earlier extravagances. the fifty thousand dollars would in part make good the loss; as his uncle's heir, he had at least a moral claim upon it, and possession was nine points of the law. "is it in the house?" he asked. she made a negative sign. "in the barn?" the same answer. "in the yard? the garden? the spring house? the quarters?" no question he could put brought a different answer. dudley was puzzled. the woman was in her right mind; she was no liar--of this servile vice at least she was free. surely there was some mystery. "you saw my uncle?" he asked thoughtfully. she nodded affirmatively. "and he had the money, in gold?" yes. "he left it here?" yes, positively. "do you know where he hid it?" she indicated that she did, and pointed again to her silent tongue. "you mean that you must regain your speech before you can explain?" she nodded yes, and then, as if in pain, turned her face away from him. viney was carefully nursed. the doctor came to see her regularly. she was fed with dainty food, and no expense was spared to effect her cure. in due time she recovered from the paralytic stroke, in all except the power of speech, which did not seem to return. all of dudley's attempts to learn from her the whereabouts of the money were equally futile. she seemed willing enough, but, though she made the effort, was never able to articulate; and there was plainly some mystery about the hidden gold which only words could unravel. if she could but write, a few strokes of the pen would give him his heart's desire! but, alas! viney may as well have been without hands, for any use she could make of a pen. slaves were not taught to read or write, nor was viney one of the rare exceptions. but dudley was a man of resource--he would have her taught. he employed a teacher for her, a free coloured man who knew the rudiments. but viney, handicapped by her loss of speech, made wretched progress. from whatever cause, she manifested a remarkable stupidity, while seemingly anxious to learn. dudley himself took a hand in her instruction, but with no better results, and, in the end, the attempt to teach her was abandoned as hopeless. years rolled by. the fall of the confederacy left the slaves free and completed the ruin of the dudley estate. part of the land went, at ruinous prices, to meet mortgages at ruinous rates; part lay fallow, given up to scrub oak and short-leaf pine; merely enough was cultivated, or let out on shares to negro tenants, to provide a living for old malcolm and a few servants. absorbed in dreams of the hidden gold and in the search for it, he neglected his business and fell yet deeper into debt. he worried himself into a lingering fever, through which viney nursed him with every sign of devotion, and from which he rose with his mind visibly weakened. when the slaves were freed, viney had manifested no desire to leave her old place. after the tragic episode which had led to their mutual undoing, there had been no relation between them but that of master and servant. but some gloomy attraction, or it may have been habit, held her to the scene of her power and of her fall. she had no kith nor kin, and her affliction separated her from the rest of mankind. nor would dudley have been willing to let her go, for in her lay the secret of the treasure; and, since all other traces of her ailment had disappeared, so her speech might return. the fruitless search was never relinquished, and in time absorbed all of malcolm dudley's interest. the crops were left to the servants, who neglected them. the yard had been dug over many times. every foot of ground for rods around had been sounded with a pointed iron bar. the house had suffered in the search. no crack or cranny had been left unexplored. the spaces between the walls, beneath the floors, under the hearths--every possible hiding place had been searched, with little care for any resulting injury. * * * * * into this household ben dudley, left alone in the world, had come when a boy of fifteen. he had no special turn for farming, but such work as was done upon the old plantation was conducted under his supervision. in the decaying old house, on the neglected farm, he had grown up in harmony with his surroundings. the example of his old uncle, wrecked in mind by a hopeless quest, had never been brought home to him as a warning; use had dulled its force. he had never joined in the search, except casually, but the legend was in his mind. unconsciously his standards of life grew around it. some day he would be rich, and in order to be sure of it, he must remain with his uncle, whose heir he was. for the money was there, without a doubt. his great-uncle had hid the gold and left the letter--ben had read it. the neighbours knew the story, or at least some vague version of it, and for a time joined in the search--surreptitiously, as occasion offered, and each on his own account. it was the common understanding that old malcolm was mentally unbalanced. the neighbouring negroes, with generous imagination, fixed his mythical and elusive treasure at a million dollars. not one of them had the faintest conception of the bulk or purchasing power of one million dollars in gold; but when one builds a castle in the air, why not make it lofty and spacious? from this unwholesome atmosphere ben dudley found relief, as he grew older, in frequent visits to clarendon, which invariably ended at the treadwells', who were, indeed, distant relatives. he had one good horse, and in an hour or less could leave behind him the shabby old house, falling into ruin, the demented old man, digging in the disordered yard, the dumb old woman watching him from her inscrutable eyes; and by a change as abrupt as that of coming from a dark room into the brightness of midday, find himself in a lovely garden, beside a beautiful girl, whom he loved devotedly, but who kept him on the ragged edge of an uncertainty that was stimulating enough, but very wearing. _twenty_ the summer following colonel french's return to clarendon was unusually cool, so cool that the colonel, pleasantly occupied with his various plans and projects, scarcely found the heat less bearable than that of new york at the same season. during a brief torrid spell he took phil to a southern mountain resort for a couple of weeks, and upon another occasion ran up to new york for a day or two on business in reference to the machinery for the cotton mill, which was to be ready for installation some time during the fall. but these were brief interludes, and did not interrupt the current of his life, which was flowing very smoothly and pleasantly in its new channel, if not very swiftly, for even the colonel was not able to make things move swiftly in clarendon during the summer time, and he was well enough pleased to see them move at all. kirby was out of town when the colonel was in new york, and therefore he did not see him. his mail was being sent from his club to denver, where he was presumably looking into some mining proposition. mrs. jerviss, the colonel supposed, was at the seaside, but he had almost come face to face with her one day on broadway. she had run down to the city on business of some sort. moved by the instinct of defense, the colonel, by a quick movement, avoided the meeting, and felt safer when the lady was well out of sight. he did not wish, at this time, to be diverted from his southern interests, and the image of another woman was uppermost in his mind. one moonlight evening, a day or two after his return from this brief northern trip, the colonel called at mrs. treadwells'. caroline opened the door. mrs. treadwell, she said, was lying down. miss graciella had gone over to a neighbour's, but would soon return. miss laura was paying a call, but would not be long. would the colonel wait? no, he said, he would take a walk, and come back later. the streets were shady, and the moonlight bathed with a silvery glow that part of the town which the shadows did not cover. strolling aimlessly along the quiet, unpaved streets, the colonel, upon turning a corner, saw a lady walking a short distance ahead of him. he thought he recognised the figure, and hurried forward; but ere he caught up with her, she turned and went into one of a row of small houses which he knew belonged to nichols, the coloured barber, and were occupied by coloured people. thinking he had been mistaken in the woman's identity, he slackened his pace, and ere he had passed out of hearing, caught the tones of a piano, accompanying the words, _"i dreamt that i dwelt in marble halls, with vassals and serfs at my s-i-i-de."_ it was doubtless the barber's daughter. the barber's was the only coloured family in town that owned a piano. in the moonlight, and at a distance of some rods, the song sounded well enough, and the colonel lingered until it ceased, and the player began to practise scales, when he continued his walk. he had smoked a couple of cigars, and was returning toward mrs. treadwells', when he met, face to face, miss laura treadwell coming out of the barber's house. he lifted his hat and put out his hand. "i called at the house a while ago, and you were all out. i was just going back. i'll walk along with you." miss laura was visibly embarrassed at the meeting. the colonel gave no sign that he noticed her emotion, but went on talking. "it is a delightful evening," he said. "yes," she replied, and then went on, "you must wonder what i was doing there." "i suppose," he said, "that you were looking for a servant, or on some mission of kindness and good will." miss laura was silent for a moment and he could feel her hand tremble on the arm he offered her. "no, henry," she said, "why should i deceive you? i did not go to find a servant, but to serve. i have told you we were poor, but not how poor. i can tell you what i could not say to others, for you have lived away from here, and i know how differently from most of us you look at things. i went to the barber's house to give the barber's daughter music lessons--for money." the colonel laughed contagiously. "you taught her to sing-- _'i dreamt that i dwelt in marble halls?'_" "yes, but you must not judge my work too soon," she replied. "it is not finished yet." "you shall let me know when it is done," he said, "and i will walk by and hear the finished product. your pupil has improved wonderfully. i heard her singing the song the day i came back--the first time i walked by the old house. she sings it much better now. you are a good teacher, as well as a good woman." miss laura laughed somewhat excitedly, but was bent upon her explanation. "the girl used to come to the house," she said. "her mother belonged to us before the war, and we have been such friends as white and black can be. and she wanted to learn to play, and offered to pay me well for lessons, and i gave them to her. we never speak about the money at the house; mother knows it, but feigns that i do it out of mere kindness, and tells me that i am spoiling the coloured people. our friends are not supposed to know it, and if any of them do, they are kind and never speak of it. since you have been coming to the house, it has not been convenient to teach her there, and i have been going to her home in the evening." "my dear laura," said the colonel, remorsefully, "i have driven you away from your own home, and all unwittingly. i applaud your enterprise and your public spirit. it is a long way from the banjo to the piano--it marks the progress of a family and foreshadows the evolution of a race. and what higher work than to elevate humanity?" they had reached the house. mrs. treadwell had not come down, nor had graciella returned. they went into the parlour. miss laura turned up the lamp. * * * * * graciella had run over to a neighbour's to meet a young lady who was visiting a young lady who was a friend of graciella's. she had remained a little longer than she had meant to, for among those who had called to see her friend's friend was young mr. fetters, the son of the magnate, lately returned home from college. barclay fetters was handsome, well-dressed and well-mannered. he had started at one college, and had already changed to two others. stories of his dissipated habits and reckless extravagance had been bruited about. graciella knew his family history, and had imbibed the old-fashioned notions of her grandmother's household, so that her acknowledgment of the introduction was somewhat cold, not to say distant. but as she felt the charm of his manner, and saw that the other girls were vieing with one another for his notice, she felt a certain triumph that he exhibited a marked preference for her conversation. her reserve gradually broke down, and she was talking with animation and listening with pleasure, when she suddenly recollected that colonel french would probably call, and that she ought to be there to entertain him, for which purpose she had dressed herself very carefully. he had not spoken yet, but might be expected to speak at any time; such marked attentions as his could have but one meaning; and for several days she had had a premonition that before the week was out he would seek to know his fate; and graciella meant to be kind. anticipating this event, she had politely but pointedly discouraged ben dudley's attentions, until ben's pride, of which he had plenty in reserve, had awaked to activity. at their last meeting he had demanded a definite answer to his oft-repeated question. "graciella," he had said, "are you going to marry me? yes or no. i'll not be played with any longer. you must marry me for myself, or not at all. yes or no." "then no, mr. dudley," she had replied with spirit, and without a moment's hesitation, "i will not marry you. i will never marry you, not if i should die an old maid." she was sorry they had not parted friends, but she was not to blame. after her marriage, she would avoid the embarrassment of meeting him, by making the colonel take her away. sometime she might, through her husband, be of service to ben, and thus make up, in part at least, for his disappointment. as she ran up through the garden and stepped upon the porch--her slippers were thin and made no sound--she heard colonel french's voice in the darkened parlour. some unusual intonation struck her, and she moved lightly and almost mechanically forward, in the shadow, toward a point where she could see through the window and remain screened from observation. so intense was her interest in what she heard, that she stood with her hand on her heart, not even conscious that she was doing a shameful thing. * * * * * her aunt was seated and colonel french was standing near her. an open bible lay upon the table. the colonel had taken it up and was reading: "'who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her. she will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. strength and honour are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come.' "laura," he said, "the proverb maker was a prophet as well. in these words, written four thousand years ago, he has described you, line for line." the glow which warmed her cheek, still smooth, the light which came into her clear eyes, the joy that filled her heart at these kind words, put the years to flight, and for the moment laura was young again. "you have been good to phil," the colonel went on, "and i should like him to be always near you and have your care. and you have been kind to me, and made me welcome and at home in what might otherwise have seemed, after so long an absence, a strange land. you bring back to me the best of my youth, and in you i find the inspiration for good deeds. be my wife, dear laura, and a mother to my boy, and we will try to make you happy." "oh, henry," she cried with fluttering heart, "i am not worthy to be your wife. i know nothing of the world where you have lived, nor whether i would fit into it." "you are worthy of any place," he declared, "and if one please you more than another, i shall make your wishes mine." "but, henry, how could i leave my mother? and graciella needs my care." "you need not leave your mother--she shall be mine as well as yours. graciella is a dear, bright child; she has in her the making of a noble woman; she should be sent away to a good school, and i will see to it. no, dear laura, there are no difficulties, no giants in the pathway that will not fly or fall when we confront them." he had put his arm around her and lifted her face to his. he read his answer in her swimming eyes, and when he had reached down and kissed her cheek, she buried her head on his shoulder and shed some tears of happiness. for this was her secret: she was sweet and good; she would have made any man happy, who had been worthy of her, but no man had ever before asked her to be his wife. she had lived upon a plane so simple, yet so high, that men not equally high-minded had never ventured to address her, and there were few such men, and chance had not led them her way. as to the others--perhaps there were women more beautiful, and certainly more enterprising. she had not repined; she had been busy and contented. now this great happiness was vouchsafed her, to find in the love of the man whom she admired above all others a woman's true career. "henry," she said, when they had sat down on the old hair-cloth sofa, side by side, "you have made me very happy; so happy that i wish to keep my happiness all to myself--for a little while. will you let me keep our engagement secret until i--am accustomed to it? it may be silly or childish, but it seems like a happy dream, and i wish to assure myself of its reality before i tell it to anyone else." "to me," said the colonel, smiling tenderly into her eyes, "it is the realisation of an ideal. since we met that day in the cemetery you have seemed to me the embodiment of all that is best of my memories of the old south; and your gentleness, your kindness, your tender grace, your self-sacrifice and devotion to duty, mark you a queen among women, and my heart shall be your throne. as to the announcement, have it as you will--it is the lady's privilege." "you are very good," she said tremulously. "this hour repays me for all i have ever tried to do for others." * * * * * graciella felt very young indeed--somewhere in the neighbourhood of ten, she put it afterward, when she reviewed the situation in a calmer frame of mind--as she crept softly away from the window and around the house to the back door, and up the stairs and into her own chamber, where, all oblivious of danger to her clothes or her complexion, she threw herself down upon her own bed and burst into a passion of tears. she had been cruelly humiliated. colonel french, whom she had imagined in love with her, had regarded her merely as a child, who ought to be sent to school--to acquire what, she asked herself, good sense or deportment? perhaps she might acquire more good sense--she had certainly made a fool of herself in this case--but she had prided herself upon her manners. colonel french had been merely playing with her, like one would with a pet monkey; and he had been in love, all the time, with her aunt laura, whom the girls had referred to compassionately, only that same evening, as a hopeless old maid. it is fortunate that youth and hope go generally hand in hand. graciella possessed a buoyant spirit to breast the waves of disappointment. she had her cry out, a good, long cry; and when much weeping had dulled the edge of her discomfiture she began to reflect that all was not yet lost. the colonel would not marry her, but he would still marry in the family. when her aunt laura became mrs. french, she would doubtless go often to new york, if she would not live there always. she would invite graciella to go with her, perhaps to live with her there. as for going to school, that was a matter which her own views should control; at present she had no wish to return to school. she might take lessons in music, or art; her aunt would hardly care for her to learn stenography now, or go into magazine work. her aunt would surely not go to europe without inviting her, and colonel french was very liberal with his money, and would deny his wife nothing, though graciella could hardly imagine that any man would be infatuated with her aunt laura. but this was not the end of graciella's troubles. graciella had a heart, although she had suppressed its promptings, under the influence of a selfish ambition. she had thrown ben dudley over for the colonel; the colonel did not want her, and now she would have neither. ben had been very angry, unreasonably angry, she had thought at the time, and objectionably rude in his manner. he had sworn never to speak to her again. if he should keep his word, she might be very unhappy. these reflections brought on another rush of tears, and a very penitent, contrite, humble-minded young woman cried herself to sleep before miss laura, with a heart bursting with happiness, bade the colonel good-night at the gate, and went upstairs to lie awake in her bed in a turmoil of pleasant emotions. miss laura's happiness lay not alone in the prospect that colonel french would marry her, nor in any sordid thought of what she would gain by becoming the wife of a rich man. it rested in the fact that this man, whom she admired, and who had come back from the outer world to bring fresh ideas, new and larger ideals to lift and broaden and revivify the town, had passed by youth and beauty and vivacity, and had chosen her to share this task, to form the heart and mind and manners of his child, and to be the tie which would bind him most strongly to her dear south. for she was a true child of the soil; the people about her, white and black, were her people, and this marriage, with its larger opportunities for usefulness, would help her to do that for which hitherto she had only been able to pray and to hope. to the boy she would be a mother indeed; to lead him in the paths of truth and loyalty and manliness and the fear of god--it was a priceless privilege, and already her mother-heart yearned to begin the task. and then after the flow came the ebb. why had he chosen her? was it _merely_ as an abstraction--the embodiment of an ideal, a survival from a host of pleasant memories, and as a mother for his child, who needed care which no one else could give, and as a helpmate in carrying out his schemes of benevolence? were these his only motives; and, if so, were they sufficient to ensure her happiness? was he marrying her through a mere sentimental impulse, or for calculated convenience, or from both? she must be certain; for his views might change. he was yet in the full flow of philanthropic enthusiasm. she shared his faith in human nature and the triumph of right ideas; but once or twice she had feared he was underrating the power of conservative forces; that he had been away from clarendon so long as to lose the perspective of actual conditions, and that he was cherishing expectations which might be disappointed. should this ever prove true, his disillusion might be as far-reaching and as sudden as his enthusiasm. then, if he had not loved her for herself, she might be very unhappy. she would have rejoiced to bring him youth and beauty, and the things for which other women were preferred; she would have loved to be the perfect mate, one in heart, mind, soul and body, with the man with whom she was to share the journey of life. but this was a passing thought, born of weakness and self-distrust, and she brushed it away with the tear that had come with it, and smiled at its absurdity. her youth was past; with nothing to expect but an old age filled with the small expedients of genteel poverty, there had opened up to her, suddenly and unexpectedly, a great avenue for happiness and usefulness. it was foolish, with so much to be grateful for, to sigh for the unattainable. his love must be all the stronger since it took no thought of things which others would have found of controlling importance. in choosing her to share his intellectual life he had paid her a higher compliment than had he praised the glow of her cheek or the contour of her throat. in confiding phil to her care he had given her a sacred trust and confidence, for she knew how much he loved the child. _twenty-one_ the colonel's schemes for the improvement of clarendon went forward, with occasional setbacks. several kilns of brick turned out badly, so that the brickyard fell behind with its orders, thus delaying the work a few weeks. the foundations of the old cotton mill had been substantially laid, and could be used, so far as their position permitted for the new walls. when the bricks were ready, a gang of masons was put to work. white men and coloured were employed, under a white foreman. so great was the demand for labour and so stimulating the colonel's liberal wage, that even the drowsy negroes around the market house were all at work, and the pigs who had slept near them were obliged to bestir themselves to keep from being run over by the wagons that were hauling brick and lime and lumber through the streets. even the cows in the vacant lot between the post-office and the bank occasionally lifted up their gentle eyes as though wondering what strange fever possessed the two-legged creatures around them, urging them to such unnatural activity. the work went on smoothly for a week or two, when the colonel had some words with jim green, the white foreman of the masons. the cause of the dispute was not important, but the colonel, as the master, insisted that certain work should be done in a certain way. green wished to argue the point. the colonel brought the discussion to a close with a peremptory command. the foreman took offense, declared that he was no nigger to be ordered around, and quit. the colonel promoted to the vacancy george brown, a coloured man, who was the next best workman in the gang. on the day when brown took charge of the job the white bricklayers, of whom there were two at work, laid down their tools. "what's the matter?" asked the colonel, when they reported for their pay. "aren't you satisfied with the wages?" "yes, we've got no fault to find with the wages." "well?" "we won't work under george brown. we don't mind working _with_ niggers, but we won't work _under_ a nigger." "i'm sorry, gentlemen, but i must hire my own men. here is your money." they would have preferred to argue their grievance, and since the colonel had shut off discussion they went down to clay jackson's saloon and argued the case with all comers, with the usual distortion attending one-sided argument. jim green had been superseded by a nigger--this was the burden of their grievance. thus came the thin entering wedge that was to separate the colonel from a measure of his popularity. there had been no objection to the colonel's employing negroes, no objection to his helping their school--if he chose to waste his money that way; but there were many who took offense when a negro was preferred to a white man. through caxton the colonel learned of this criticism. the colonel showed no surprise, and no annoyance, but in his usual good-humoured way replied: "we'll go right along and pay no attention to him. there were only two white men in the gang, and they have never worked under the negro; they quit as soon as i promoted him. i have hired many men in my time and have made it an unvarying rule to manage my own business in my own way. if anybody says anything to you about it, you tell them just that. these people have got to learn that we live in an industrial age, and success demands of an employer that he utilise the most available labour. after green was discharged, george brown was the best mason left. he gets more work out of the men than green did--even in the old slave times negroes made the best of overseers; they knew their own people better than white men could and got more out of them. when the mill is completed it will give employment to five hundred white women and fifty white men. but every dog must have his day, so give the negro his." the colonel attached no great importance to the incident; the places of the workmen were filled, and the work went forward. he knew the southern sensitiveness, and viewed it with a good-natured tolerance, which, however, stopped at injustice to himself or others. the very root of his reform was involved in the proposition to discharge a competent foreman because of an unreasonable prejudice. matters of feeling were all well enough in some respects--no one valued more highly than the colonel the right to choose his own associates--but the right to work and to do one's best work, was fundamental, as was the right to have one's work done by those who could do it best. even a healthy social instinct might be perverted into an unhealthy and unjust prejudice; most things evil were the perversion of good. the feeling with which the colonel thus came for the first time directly in contact, a smouldering fire capable always of being fanned into flame, had been greatly excited by the political campaign which began about the third month after his arrival in clarendon. an ambitious politician in a neighbouring state had led a successful campaign on the issue of negro disfranchisement. plainly unconstitutional, it was declared to be as plainly necessary for the preservation of the white race and white civilisation. the example had proved contagious, and fetters and his crowd, who dominated their state, had raised the issue there. at first the pronouncement met with slight response. the sister state had possessed a negro majority, which, in view of reconstruction history was theoretically capable of injuring the state. such was not the case here. the state had survived reconstruction with small injury. white supremacy existed, in the main, by virtue of white efficiency as compared with efficiency of a lower grade; there had been places, and instances, where other methods had been occasionally employed to suppress the negro vote, but, taken as a whole, the supremacy of the white man was secure. no negro had held a state office for twenty years. in clarendon they had even ceased to be summoned as jurors, and when a negro met a white man, he gave him the wall, even if it were necessary to take the gutter to do so. but this was not enough; this supremacy must be made permanent. negroes must be taught that they need never look for any different state of things. new definitions were given to old words, new pictures set in old frames, new wine poured into old bottles. "so long," said the candidate for governor, when he spoke at clarendon during the canvas, at a meeting presided over by the editor of the _anglo-saxon_, "so long as one negro votes in the state, so long are we face to face with the nightmare of negro domination. for example, suppose a difference of opinion among white men so radical as to divide their vote equally, the ballot of one negro would determine the issue. can such a possibility be contemplated without a shudder? our duty to ourselves, to our children, and their unborn descendants, and to our great and favoured race, impels us to protest, by word, by vote, by arms if need be, against the enforced equality of an inferior race. equality anywhere, means ultimately, equality everywhere. equality at the polls means social equality; social equality means intermarriage and corruption of blood, and degeneration and decay. what gentleman here would want his daughter to marry a blubber-lipped, cocoanut-headed, kidney-footed, etc., etc., nigger?" there could be but one answer to the question, and it came in thunders of applause. colonel french heard the speech, smiled at the old arguments, but felt a sudden gravity at the deep-seated feeling which they evoked. he remembered hearing, when a boy, the same arguments. they had served their purpose once before, with other issues, to plunge the south into war and consequent disaster. had the lesson been in vain? he did not see the justice nor the expediency of the proposed anti-negro agitation. but he was not in politics, and confined his protests to argument with his friends, who listened but were not convinced. behind closed doors, more than one of the prominent citizens admitted that the campaign was all wrong; that the issues were unjust and reactionary, and that the best interests of the state lay in uplifting every element of the people rather than selecting some one class for discouragement and degradation, and that the white race could hold its own, with the negroes or against them, in any conceivable state of political equality. they listened to the colonel's quiet argument that no state could be freer or greater or more enlightened than the average of its citizenship, and that any restriction of rights that rested upon anything but impartial justice, was bound to re-act, as slavery had done, upon the prosperity and progress of the state. they listened, which the colonel regarded as a great point gained, and they agreed in part, and he could almost understand why they let their feelings govern their reason and their judgment, and said no word to prevent an unfair and unconstitutional scheme from going forward to a successful issue. he knew that for a white man to declare, in such a community, for equal rights or equal justice for the negro, or to take the negro's side in any case where the race issue was raised, was to court social ostracism and political death, or, if the feeling provoked were strong enough, an even more complete form of extinction. so the colonel was patient, and meant to be prudent. his own arguments avoided the stirring up of prejudice, and were directed to the higher motives and deeper principles which underlie society, in the light of which humanity is more than race, and the welfare of the state above that of any man or set of men within it; it being an axiom as true in statesmanship as in mathematics, that the whole is greater than any one of its parts. content to await the uplifting power of industry and enlightenment, and supremely confident of the result, the colonel went serenely forward in his work of sowing that others might reap. _twenty-two_ the atmosphere of the treadwell home was charged, for the next few days, with electric currents. graciella knew that her aunt was engaged to colonel french. but she had not waited, the night before, to hear her aunt express the wish that the engagement should be kept secret. she was therefore bursting with information of which she could manifest no consciousness without confessing that she had been eavesdropping--a thing which she knew miss laura regarded as detestably immoral. she wondered at her aunt's silence. except a certain subdued air of happiness there was nothing to distinguish miss laura's calm demeanor from that of any other day. graciella had determined upon her own attitude toward her aunt. she would kiss her, and wish her happiness, and give no sign that any thought of colonel french had ever entered her own mind. but this little drama, rehearsed in the privacy of her own room, went unacted, since the curtain did not rise upon the stage. the colonel came and went as usual. some dissimulation was required on graciella's part to preserve her usual light-hearted manner toward him. she may have been to blame in taking the colonel's attentions as intended for herself; she would not soon forgive his slighting reference to her. in his eyes she had been only a child, who ought to go to school. he had been good enough to say that she had the making of a fine woman. thanks! she had had a lover for at least two years, and a proposal of marriage before colonel french's shadow had fallen athwart her life. she wished her aunt laura happiness; no one could deserve it more, but was it possible to be happy with a man so lacking in taste and judgment? her aunt's secret began to weigh upon her mind, and she effaced herself as much as possible when the colonel came. her grandmother had begun to notice this and comment upon it, when the happening of a certain social event created a diversion. this was the annual entertainment known as the assembly ball. it was usually held later in the year, but owing to the presence of several young lady visitors in the town, it had been decided to give it early in the fall. the affair was in the hands of a committee, by whom invitations were sent to most people in the county who had any claims to gentility. the gentlemen accepting were expected to subscribe to the funds for hall rent, music and refreshments. these were always the best the town afforded. the ball was held in the opera house, a rather euphemistic title for the large hall above barstow's cotton warehouse, where third-class theatrical companies played one-night stands several times during the winter, and where an occasional lecturer or conjurer held forth. an amateur performance of "pinafore" had once been given there. henry w. grady had lectured there upon white supremacy; the reverend sam small had preached there on hell. it was also distinguished as having been refused, even at the request of the state commissioner of education, as a place for booker t. washington to deliver an address, which had been given at the town hall instead. the assembly balls had always been held in the opera house. in former years the music had been furnished by local negro musicians, but there were no longer any of these, and a band of string music was brought in from another town. so far as mere wealth was concerned, the subscribers touched such extremes as ben dudley on the one hand and colonel french on the other, and included barclay fetters, whom graciella had met on the evening before her disappointment. the treadwell ladies were of course invited, and the question of ways and means became paramount. new gowns and other accessories were imperative. miss laura's one party dress had done service until it was past redemption, and this was graciella's first assembly ball. miss laura took stock of the family's resources, and found that she could afford only one gown. this, of course, must be graciella's. her own marriage would entail certain expenses which demanded some present self-denial. she had played wall-flower for several years, but now that she was sure of a partner, it was a real sacrifice not to attend the ball. but graciella was young, and in such matters youth has a prior right; for she had yet to find her mate. graciella magnanimously offered to remain at home, but was easily prevailed upon to go. she was not entirely happy, for the humiliating failure of her hopes had left her for the moment without a recognised admirer, and the fear of old maidenhood had again laid hold of her heart. her aunt laura's case was no consoling example. not one man in a hundred would choose a wife for colonel french's reasons. most men married for beauty, and graciella had been told that beauty that matured early, like her own, was likely to fade early. one humiliation she was spared. she had been as silent about her hopes as miss laura was about her engagement. whether this was due to mere prudence or to vanity--the hope of astonishing her little world by the unexpected announcement--did not change the comforting fact that she had nothing to explain and nothing for which to be pitied. if her friends, after the manner of young ladies, had hinted at the subject and sought to find a meaning in colonel french's friendship, she had smiled enigmatically. for this self-restraint, whatever had been its motive, she now reaped her reward. the announcement of her aunt's engagement would account for the colonel's attentions to graciella as a mere courtesy to a young relative of his affianced. with regard to ben, graciella was quite uneasy. she had met him only once since their quarrel, and had meant to bow to him politely, but with dignity, to show that she bore no malice; but he had ostentatiously avoided her glance. if he chose to be ill-natured, she had thought, and preferred her enmity to her friendship, her conscience was at least clear. she had been willing to forget his rudeness and be a friend to him. she could have been his true friend, if nothing more; and he would need friends, unless he changed a great deal. when her mental atmosphere was cleared by the fading of her dream, ben assumed larger proportions. perhaps he had had cause for complaint; at least it was only just to admit that he thought so. nor had he suffered in her estimation by his display of spirit in not waiting to be jilted but in forcing her hand before she was quite ready to play it. she could scarcely expect him to attend her to the ball; but he was among the subscribers, and could hardly avoid meeting her, or dancing with her, without pointed rudeness. if he did not ask her to dance, then either the virginia reel, or the lancers, or quadrilles, would surely bring them together; and though graciella sighed, she did not despair. she could, of course, allay his jealousy at once by telling him of her aunt laura's engagement, but this was not yet practicable. she must find some other way of placating him. ben dudley also had a problem to face in reference to the ball--a problem which has troubled impecunious youth since balls were invented--the problem of clothes. he was not obliged to go to the ball. graciella's outrageous conduct relieved him of any obligation to invite her, and there was no other woman with whom he would have cared to go, or who would have cared, so far as he knew, to go with him. for he was not a lady's man, and but for his distant relationship would probably never have gone to the treadwells'. he was looked upon by young women as slow, and he knew that graciella had often been impatient at his lack of sprightliness. he could pay his subscription, which was really a sort of gentility tax, the failure to meet which would merely forfeit future invitations, and remain at home. he did not own a dress suit, nor had he the money to spare for one. he, or they, for he and his uncle were one in such matters, were in debt already, up to the limit of their credit, and he had sold the last bale of old cotton to pay the last month's expenses, while the new crop, already partly mortgaged, was not yet picked. he knew that some young fellows in town rented dress suits from solomon cohen, who, though he kept only four suits in stock at a time, would send to new york for others to rent out on this occasion, and return them afterwards. but ben would not wear another man's clothes. he had borne insults from graciella that he never would have borne from any one else, and that he would never bear again; but there were things at which his soul protested. nor would cohen's suits have fitted him. he was so much taller than the average man for whom store clothes were made. he remained in a state of indecision until the day of the ball. late in the evening he put on his black cutaway coat, which was getting a little small, trousers to match, and a white waistcoat, and started to town on horseback so as to arrive in time for the ball, in case he should decide, at the last moment, to take part. _twenty-three_ the opera house was brilliantly lighted on the night of the assembly ball. the dancers gathered at an earlier hour than is the rule in the large cities. many of the guests came in from the country, and returned home after the ball, since the hotel could accommodate only a part of them. when ben dudley, having left his horse at a livery stable, walked up main street toward the hall, carriages were arriving and discharging their freight. the ladies were prettily gowned, their faces were bright and animated, and ben observed that most of the gentlemen wore dress suits; but also, much to his relief, that a number, sufficient to make at least a respectable minority, did not. he was rapidly making up his mind to enter, when colonel french's carriage, drawn by a pair of dashing bays and driven by a negro in livery, dashed up to the door and discharged miss graciella treadwell, radiantly beautiful in a new low-cut pink gown, with pink flowers in her hair, a thin gold chain with a gold locket at the end around her slender throat, white slippers on her feet and long white gloves upon her shapely hands and wrists. ben shrank back into the shadow. he had never been of an envious disposition; he had always looked upon envy as a mean vice, unworthy of a gentleman; but for a moment something very like envy pulled at his heartstrings. graciella worshipped the golden calf. _he_ worshipped graciella. but he had no money; he could not have taken her to the ball in a closed carriage, drawn by blooded horses and driven by a darky in livery. graciella's cavalier wore, with the ease and grace of long habit, an evening suit of some fine black stuff that almost shone in the light from the open door. at the sight of him the waist of ben's own coat shrunk up to the arm-pits, and he felt a sinking of the heart as they passed out of his range of vision. he would not appear to advantage by the side of colonel french, and he would not care to appear otherwise than to advantage in graciella's eyes. he would not like to make more palpable, by contrast, the difference between colonel french and himself; nor could he be haughty, distant, reproachful, or anything but painfully self-conscious, in a coat that was not of the proper cut, too short in the sleeves, and too tight under the arms. while he stood thus communing with his own bitter thoughts, another carriage, drawn by a pair of beautiful black horses, drew up to the curb in front of him. the horses were restive, and not inclined to stand still. some one from the inside of the carriage called to the coachman through the open window. "ransom," said the voice, "stay on the box. here, you, open this carriage door!" ben looked around for the person addressed, but saw no one near but himself. "you boy there, by the curb, open this door, will you, or hold the horses, so my coachman can!" "are you speaking to me?" demanded ben angrily. just then one of the side-lights of the carriage flashed on ben's face. "oh, i beg pardon," said the man in the carriage, carelessly, "i took you for a nigger." there could be no more deadly insult, though the mistake was not unnatural. ben was dark, and the shadow made him darker. ben was furious. the stranger had uttered words of apology, but his tone had been insolent, and his apology was more offensive than his original blunder. had it not been for ben's reluctance to make a disturbance, he would have struck the offender in the mouth. if he had had a pistol, he could have shot him; his great uncle ralph, for instance, would not have let him live an hour. while these thoughts were surging through his heated brain, the young man, as immaculately clad as colonel french had been, left the carriage, from which he helped a lady, and with her upon his arm, entered the hall. in the light that streamed from the doorway, ben recognised him as barclay fetters, who, having finished a checkered scholastic career, had been at home at sycamore for several months. much of this time he had spent in clarendon, where his father's wealth and influence gave him entrance to good society, in spite of an ancestry which mere character would not have offset. he knew young fetters very well by sight, since the latter had to pass mink run whenever he came to town from sycamore. fetters may not have known him, since he had been away for much of the time in recent years, but he ought to have been able to distinguish between a white man--a gentleman--and a negro. it was the insolence of an upstart. old josh fetters had been, in his younger days, his uncle's overseer. an overseer's grandson treated him, ben dudley, like dirt under his feet! perhaps he had judged him by his clothes. he would like to show barclay fetters, if they ever stood face to face, that clothes did not make the man, nor the gentleman. ben decided after this encounter that he would not go on the floor of the ballroom; but unable to tear himself away, he waited until everybody seemed to have gone in; then went up the stairs and gained access, by a back way, to a dark gallery in the rear of the hall, which the ushers had deserted for the ballroom, from which he could, without discovery, look down upon the scene below. his eyes flew to graciella as the needle to the pole. she was dancing with colonel french. the music stopped, and a crowd of young fellows surrounded her. when the next dance, which was a waltz, began, she moved out upon the floor in the arms of barclay fetters. ben swore beneath his breath. he had heard tales of barclay fetters which, if true, made him unfit to touch a decent woman. he left the hall, walked a short distance down a street and around the corner to the bar in the rear of the hotel, where he ordered a glass of whiskey. he had never been drunk in his life, and detested the taste of liquor; but he was desperate and had to do something; he would drink till he was drunk, and forget his troubles. having never been intoxicated, he had no idea whatever of the effect liquor would have upon him. with each succeeding drink, the sense of his wrongs broadened and deepened. at one stage his intoxication took the form of an intense self-pity. there was something rotten in the whole scheme of things. why should he be poor, while others were rich, and while fifty thousand dollars in gold were hidden in or around the house where he lived? why should colonel french, an old man, who was of no better blood than himself, be rich enough to rob him of the woman whom he loved? and why, above all, should barclay fetters have education and money and every kind of opportunity, which he did not appreciate, while he, who would have made good use of them, had nothing? with this sense of wrong, which grew as his brain clouded more and more, there came, side by side, a vague zeal to right these wrongs. as he grew drunker still, his thoughts grew less coherent; he lost sight of his special grievance, and merely retained the combative instinct. he had reached this dangerous stage, and had, fortunately, passed it one step farther along the road to unconsciousness--fortunately, because had he been sober, the result of that which was to follow might have been more serious--when two young men, who had come down from the ballroom for some refreshment, entered the barroom and asked for cocktails. while the barkeeper was compounding the liquor, the young men spoke of the ball. "that little treadwell girl is a peach," said one. "i could tote a bunch of beauty like that around the ballroom all night." the remark was not exactly respectful, nor yet exactly disrespectful. ben looked up from his seat. the speaker was barclay fetters, and his companion one tom mcrae, another dissolute young man of the town. ben got up unsteadily and walked over to where they stood. "i want you to un'erstan'," he said thickly, "that no gen'l'man would mensh'n a lady's name in a place like this, or shpeak dissuspeckerly 'bout a lady 'n any place; an' i want you to unerstan' fu'thermo' that you're no gen'l'man, an' that i'm goin' t' lick you, by g--d!" "the hell you are!" returned fetters. a scowl of surprise rose on his handsome face, and he sprang to an attitude of defence. ben suited the action to the word, and struck at fetters. but ben was drunk and the other two were sober, and in three minutes ben lay on the floor with a sore head and a black eye. his nose was bleeding copiously, and the crimson stream had run down upon his white shirt and vest. taken all in all, his appearance was most disreputable. by this time the liquor he had drunk had its full effect, and complete unconsciousness supervened to save him, for a little while, from the realisation of his disgrace. "who is the mucker, anyway?" asked barclay fetters, readjusting his cuffs, which had slipped down in the melee. "he's a chap by the name of dudley," answered mcrae; "lives at mink run, between here and sycamore, you know." "oh, yes, i've seen him--the 'po' white' chap that lives with the old lunatic that's always digging for buried treasure---- _'for my name was captain kidd, as i sailed, as i sailed.'_ but let's hurry back, tom, or we'll lose the next dance." fetters and his companion returned to the ball. the barkeeper called a servant of the hotel, with whose aid, ben was carried upstairs and put to bed, bruised in body and damaged in reputation. _twenty-four_ ben's fight with young fetters became a matter of public comment the next day after the ball. his conduct was cited as sad proof of the degeneracy of a once fine old family. he had been considered shiftless and not well educated, but no one had suspected that he was a drunkard and a rowdy. other young men in the town, high-spirited young fellows with plenty of money, sometimes drank a little too much, and occasionally, for a point of honour, gentlemen were obliged to attack or defend themselves, but when they did, they used pistols, a gentleman's weapon. here, however, was an unprovoked and brutal attack with fists, upon two gentlemen in evening dress and without weapons to defend themselves, "one of them," said the _anglo-saxon_, "the son of our distinguished fellow citizen and colleague in the legislature, the honourable william fetters." when colonel french called to see miss laura, the afternoon of next day after the ball, the ladies were much concerned about the affair. "oh, henry," exclaimed miss laura, "what is this dreadful story about ben dudley? they say he was drinking at the hotel, and became intoxicated, and that when barclay fetters and tom mcrae went into the hotel, he said something insulting about graciella, and when they rebuked him for his freedom he attacked them violently, and that when finally subdued he was put to bed unconscious and disgracefully intoxicated. graciella is very angry, and we all feel ashamed enough to sink into the ground. what can be the matter with ben? he hasn't been around lately, and he has quarrelled with graciella. i never would have expected anything like this from ben." "it came from his great-uncle ralph," said mrs. treadwell. "ralph was very wild when he was young, but settled down into a very polished gentleman. i danced with him once when he was drunk, and i never knew it--it was my first ball, and i was intoxicated myself, with excitement. mother was scandalised, but father laughed and said boys would be boys. but poor ben hasn't had his uncle's chances, and while he has always behaved well here, he could hardly be expected to carry his liquor like a gentleman of the old school." "my dear ladies," said the colonel, "we have heard only one side of the story. i guess there's no doubt ben was intoxicated, but we know he isn't a drinking man, and one drink--or even one drunk--doesn't make a drunkard, nor one fight a rowdy. barclay fetters and tom mcrae are not immaculate, and perhaps ben can exonerate himself." "i certainly hope so," said miss laura earnestly. "i am sorry for ben, but i could not permit a drunken rowdy to come to the house, or let my niece be seen upon the street with him." "it would only be fair," said the colonel, "to give him a chance to explain, when he comes in again. i rather like ben. he has some fine mechanical ideas, and the making of a man in him, unless i am mistaken. i have been hoping to find a place for him in the new cotton mill, when it is ready to run." they were still speaking of ben, when there was an irresolute knock at the rear door of the parlour, in which they were seated. "miss laura, o miss laura," came a muffled voice. "kin i speak to you a minute. it's mighty pertickler, miss laura, fo' god it is!" "laura," said the colonel, "bring catharine in. i saw that you were troubled once before when you were compelled to refuse her something. henceforth your burdens shall be mine. come in, catharine," he called, "and tell us what's the matter. what's your trouble? what's it all about?" the woman, red-eyed from weeping, came in, wringing her apron. "miss laura," she sobbed, "an' colonel french, my husban' bud is done gone and got inter mo' trouble. he's run away f'm mistah fettuhs, w'at he wuz sol' back to in de spring, an' he's done be'n fine' fifty dollahs mo', an' he's gwine ter be sol' back ter mistah fettuhs in de mawnin', fer ter finish out de ole fine and wo'k out de new one. i's be'n ter see 'im in de gyard house, an' he say mistah haines, w'at use' ter be de constable and is a gyard fer mistah fettuhs now, beat an' 'bused him so he couldn' stan' it; an' 'ceptin' i could pay all dem fines, he'll be tuck back dere; an'he say ef dey evah beats him ag'in, dey'll eithuh haf ter kill him, er he'll kill some er dem. an' bud is a rash man, miss laura, an' i'm feared dat he'll do w'at he say, an' ef dey kills him er he kills any er dem, it'll be all de same ter me--i'll never see 'm no mo' in dis worl'. ef i could borry de money, miss laura--mars' colonel--i'd wuk my fingers ter de bone 'tel i paid back de las' cent. er ef you'd buy bud, suh, lack you did unc' peter, he would n' mind wukkin' fer you, suh, fer bud is a good wukker we'n folks treats him right; an' he had n' never had no trouble nowhar befo' he come hyuh, suh." "how did he come to be arrested the first time?" asked the colonel. "he didn't live hyuh, suh; i used ter live hyuh, an' i ma'ied him down ter madison, where i wuz wukkin'. we fell out one day, an' i got mad and lef' 'im--it wuz all my fault an' i be'n payin' fer it evuh since--an' i come back home an' went ter wuk hyuh, an' he come aftuh me, an de fus' day he come, befo' i knowed he wuz hyuh, dis yer mistah haines tuck 'im up, an' lock 'im up in de gyard house, like a hog in de poun', an' he didn' know nobody, an' dey didn' give 'im no chanst ter see nobody, an' dey tuck 'im roun' ter squi' reddick nex' mawnin', an' fined 'im an' sol' 'im ter dis yer mistuh fettuhs fer ter wo'k out de fine; an' i be'n wantin' all dis time ter hyuh fum 'im, an' i'd done be'n an' gone back ter madison to look fer 'im, an' foun' he wuz gone. an' god knows i didn' know what had become er 'im, 'tel he run away de yuther time an' dey tuck 'im an' sent 'im back again. an' he hadn' done nothin' de fus' time, suh, but de lawd know w'at he won' do ef dey sen's 'im back any mo'." catharine had put her apron to her eyes and was sobbing bitterly. the story was probably true. the colonel had heard underground rumours about the fetters plantation and the manner in which it was supplied with labourers, and his own experience in old peter's case had made them seem not unlikely. he had seen catharine's husband, in the justice's court, and the next day, in the convict gang behind turner's buggy. the man had not looked like a criminal; that he was surly and desperate may as well have been due to a sense of rank injustice as to an evil nature. that a wrong had been done, under cover of law, was at least more than likely; but a deed of mercy could be made to right it. the love of money might be the root of all evil, but its control was certainly a means of great good. the colonel glowed with the consciousness of this beneficent power to scatter happiness. "laura," he said, "i will attend to this; it is a matter about which you should not be troubled. don't be alarmed, catharine. just be a good girl and help miss laura all you can, and i'll look after your husband, and pay his fine and let him work it out as a free man." "thank'y, suh, thank'y, mars' colonel, an' miss laura! an' de lawd is gwine bless you, suh, you an' my sweet young lady, fuh bein' good to po' folks w'at can't do nuthin' to he'p deyse'ves out er trouble," said catharine backing out with her apron to her eyes. * * * * * on leaving miss laura, the colonel went round to the office of squire reddick, the justice of the peace, to inquire into the matter of bud johnson. the justice was out of town, his clerk said, but would be in his office at nine in the morning, at which time the colonel could speak to him about johnson's fine. the next morning was bright and clear, and cool enough to be bracing. the colonel, alive with pleasant thoughts, rose early and after a cold bath, and a leisurely breakfast, walked over to the mill site, where the men were already at work. having looked the work over and given certain directions, he glanced at his watch, and finding it near nine, set out for the justice's office in time to reach it by the appointed hour. squire reddick was at his desk, upon which his feet rested, while he read a newspaper. he looked up with an air of surprise as the colonel entered. "why, good mornin', colonel french," he said genially. "i kind of expected you a while ago; the clerk said you might be around. but you didn' come, so i supposed you'd changed yo' mind." "the clerk said that you would be here at nine," replied the colonel; "it is only just nine." "did he? well, now, that's too bad! i do generally git around about nine, but i was earlier this mornin' and as everybody was here, we started in a little sooner than usual. you wanted to see me about bud johnson?" "yes, i wish to pay his fine and give him work." "well, that's too bad; but you weren't here, and mr. turner was, and he bought his time again for mr. fetters. i'm sorry, you know, but first come, first served." the colonel was seriously annoyed. he did not like to believe there was a conspiracy to frustrate his good intention; but that result had been accomplished, whether by accident or design. he had failed in the first thing he had undertaken for the woman he loved and was to marry. he would see fetters's man, however, and come to some arrangement with him. with fetters the hiring of the negro was purely a commercial transaction, conditioned upon a probable profit, for the immediate payment of which, and a liberal bonus, he would doubtless relinquish his claim upon johnson's services. learning that turner, who had acted as fetters's agent in the matter, had gone over to clay johnson's saloon, he went to seek him there. he found him, and asked for a proposition. turner heard him out. "well, colonel french," he replied with slightly veiled insolence, "i bought this nigger's time for mr. fetters, an' unless i'm might'ly mistaken in mr. fetters, no amount of money can get the nigger until he's served his time out. he's defied our rules and defied the law, and defied me, and assaulted one of the guards; and he ought to be made an example of. we want to keep 'im; he's a bad nigger, an' we've got to handle a lot of 'em, an' we need 'im for an example--he keeps us in trainin'." "have you any power in the matter?" demanded the colonel, restraining his contempt. "me? no, not _me_! i couldn't let the nigger go for his weight in gol'--an' wouldn' if i could. i bought 'im in for mr. fetters, an' he's the only man that's got any say about 'im." "very well," said the colonel as he turned away, "i'll see fetters." "i don't know whether you will or not," said turner to himself, as he shot a vindictive glance at the colonel's retreating figure. "fetters has got this county where he wants it, an' i'll bet dollars to bird shot he ain't goin' to let no coon-flavoured no'the'n interloper come down here an' mix up with his arrangements, even if he did hail from this town way back yonder. this here nigger problem is a south'en problem, and outsiders might's well keep their han's off. me and haines an' fetters is the kind o' men to settle it." the colonel was obliged to confess to miss laura his temporary setback, which he went around to the house and did immediately. "it's the first thing i've undertaken yet for your sake, laura, and i've got to report failure, so far." "it's only the first step," she said, consolingly. "that's all. i'll drive out to fetters's place to-morrow, and arrange the matter. by starting before day, i can make it and transact my business, and get back by night, without hurting the horses." catharine was called in and the situation explained to her. though clearly disappointed at the delay, and not yet free of apprehension that bud might do something rash, she seemed serenely confident of the colonel's ultimate success. in her simple creed, god might sometimes seem to neglect his black children, but no harm could come to a negro who had a rich white gentleman for friend and protector. _twenty-five_ it was not yet sunrise when the colonel set out next day, after an early breakfast, upon his visit to fetters. there was a crisp freshness in the air, the dew was thick upon the grass, the clear blue sky gave promise of a bright day and a pleasant journey. the plantation conducted by fetters lay about twenty miles to the south of clarendon, and remote from any railroad, a convenient location for such an establishment, for railroads, while they bring in supplies and take out produce, also bring in light and take out information, both of which are fatal to certain fungus growths, social as well as vegetable, which flourish best in the dark. the road led by mink run, and the colonel looked over toward the house as they passed it. old and weather-beaten it seemed, even in the distance, which lent it no enchantment in the bright morning light. when the colonel had travelled that road in his boyhood, great forests of primeval pine had stretched for miles on either hand, broken at intervals by thriving plantations. now all was changed. the tall and stately growth of the long-leaf pine had well nigh disappeared; fifteen years before, the turpentine industry, moving southward from virginia, along the upland counties of the appalachian slope, had swept through clarendon county, leaving behind it a trail of blasted trunks and abandoned stills. ere these had yielded to decay, the sawmill had followed, and after the sawmill the tar kiln, so that the dark green forest was now only a waste of blackened stumps and undergrowth, topped by the vulgar short-leaved pine and an occasional oak or juniper. here and there they passed an expanse of cultivated land, and there were many smaller clearings in which could be seen, plowing with gaunt mules or stunted steers, some heavy-footed negro or listless "po' white man;" or women and children, black or white. in reply to a question, the coachman said that mr. fetters had worked all that country for turpentine years before, and had only taken up cotton raising after the turpentine had been exhausted from the sand hills. he had left his mark, thought the colonel. like the plague of locusts, he had settled and devoured and then moved on, leaving a barren waste behind him. as the morning advanced, the settlements grew thinner, until suddenly, upon reaching the crest of a hill, a great stretch of cultivated lowland lay spread before them. in the centre of the plantation, near the road which ran through it, stood a square, new, freshly painted frame house, which would not have seemed out of place in some ohio or michigan city, but here struck a note alien to its surroundings. off to one side, like the negro quarters of another generation, were several rows of low, unpainted cabins, built of sawed lumber, the boards running up and down, and battened with strips where the edges met. the fields were green with cotton and with corn, and there were numerous gangs of men at work, with an apparent zeal quite in contrast with the leisurely movement of those they had passed on the way. it was a very pleasing scene. "dis yer, suh," said the coachman in an awed tone, "is mistah fetters's plantation. you ain' gwine off nowhere, and leave me alone whils' you are hyuh, is you, suh?" "no," said the colonel, "i'll keep my eye on you. nobody'll trouble you while you're with me." passing a clump of low trees, the colonel came upon a group at sight of which he paused involuntarily. a gang of negroes were at work. upon the ankles of some was riveted an iron band to which was soldered a chain, at the end of which in turn an iron ball was fastened. accompanying them was a white man, in whose belt was stuck a revolver, and who carried in one hand a stout leather strap, about two inches in width with a handle by which to grasp it. the gang paused momentarily to look at the traveller, but at a meaning glance from the overseer fell again to their work of hoeing cotton. the white man stepped to the fence, and colonel french addressed him. "good morning." "mornin', suh." "will you tell me where i can find mr. fetters?" inquired the colonel. "no, suh, unless he's at the house. he may have went away this mornin', but i haven't heard of it. but you drive along the road to the house, an' somebody'll tell you." the colonel seemed to have seen the overseer before, but could not remember where. "sam," he asked the coachman, "who is that white man?" "dat's mistah haines, suh--use' ter be de constable at cla'endon, suh. i wouldn' lak to be in no gang under him, suh, sho' i wouldn', no, suh!" after this ejaculation, which seemed sincere as well as fervent, sam whipped up the horses and soon reached the house. a negro boy came out to meet them. "is mr. fetters at home," inquired the colonel? "i--_i_ don' know, suh--i--i'll ax mars' turner. _he's_ hyuh." he disappeared round the house and in a few minutes returned with turner, with whom the colonel exchanged curt nods. "i wish to see mr. fetters," said the colonel. "well, you can't see him." "why not?" "because he ain't here. he left for the capital this mornin', to be gone a week. you'll be havin' a fine drive, down here and back." the colonel ignored the taunt. "when will mr. fetters return?" he inquired. "i'm shore i don't know. he don't tell me his secrets. but i'll tell _you_, colonel french, that if you're after that nigger, you're wastin' your time. he's in haines's gang, and haines loves him so well that mr. fetters has to keep bud in order to keep haines. there's no accountin' for these vi'lent affections, but they're human natur', and they have to be 'umoured." "i'll talk to your _master_," rejoined the colonel, restraining his indignation and turning away. turner looked after him vindictively. "he'll talk to my _master_, like as if i was a nigger! it'll be a long time before he talks to fetters, if that's who he means--if i can prevent it. not that it would make any difference, but i'll just keep him on the anxious seat." it was nearing noon, but the colonel had received no invitation to stop, or eat, or feed his horses. he ordered sam to turn and drive back the way they had come. as they neared the group of labourers they had passed before, the colonel saw four negroes, in response to an imperative gesture from the overseer, seize one of their number, a short, thickset fellow, overpower some small resistance which he seemed to make, throw him down with his face to the ground, and sit upon his extremities while the overseer applied the broad leathern thong vigorously to his bare back. the colonel reached over and pulled the reins mechanically. his instinct was to interfere; had he been near enough to recognise in the negro the object of his visit, bud johnson, and in the overseer the ex-constable, haines, he might have yielded to the impulse. but on second thought he realised that he had neither authority nor strength to make good his interference. for aught he knew, the performance might be strictly according to law. so, fighting a feeling of nausea which he could hardly conquer, he ordered sam to drive on. the coachman complied with alacrity, as though glad to escape from a mighty dangerous place. he had known friendless coloured folks, who had strayed down in that neighbourhood to be lost for a long time; and he had heard of a spot, far back from the road, in a secluded part of the plantation, where the graves of convicts who had died while in fetters's service were very numerous. _twenty-six_ during the next month the colonel made several attempts to see fetters, but some fatality seemed always to prevent their meeting. he finally left the matter of finding fetters to caxton, who ascertained that fetters would be in attendance at court during a certain week, at carthage, the county seat of the adjoining county, where the colonel had been once before to inspect a cotton mill. thither the colonel went on the day of the opening of court. his train reached town toward noon and he went over to the hotel. he wondered if he would find the proprietor sitting where he had found him some weeks before. but the buggy was gone from before the piazza, and there was a new face behind the desk. the colonel registered, left word that he would be in to dinner, and then went over to the court house, which lay behind the trees across the square. the court house was an old, square, hip-roofed brick structure, whose walls, whitewashed the year before, had been splotched and discoloured by the weather. from one side, under the eaves, projected a beam, which supported a bell rung by a rope from the window below. a hall ran through the centre, on either side of which were the county offices, while the court room with a judge's room and jury room, occupied the upper floor. the colonel made his way across the square, which showed the usual signs of court being in session. there were buggies hitched to trees and posts here and there, a few negroes sleeping in the sun, and several old coloured women with little stands for the sale of cakes, and fried fish, and cider. the colonel went upstairs to the court room. it was fairly well filled, and he remained standing for a few minutes near the entrance. the civil docket was evidently on trial, for there was a jury in the box, and a witness was being examined with some prolixity with reference to the use of a few inches of land which lay on one side or on the other of a disputed boundary. from what the colonel could gather, that particular line fence dispute had been in litigation for twenty years, had cost several lives, and had resulted in a feud that involved a whole township. the testimony was about concluded when the colonel entered, and the lawyers began their arguments. the feeling between the litigants seemed to have affected their attorneys, and the court more than once found it necessary to call counsel to order. the trial was finished, however, without bloodshed; the case went to the jury, and court was adjourned until two o'clock. the colonel had never met fetters, nor had he seen anyone in the court room who seemed likely to be the man. but he had seen his name freshly written on the hotel register, and he would doubtless go there for dinner. there would be ample time to get acquainted and transact his business before court reassembled for the afternoon. dinner seemed to be a rather solemn function, and except at a table occupied by the judge and the lawyers, in the corner of the room farthest from the colonel, little was said. a glance about the room showed no one whom the colonel could imagine to be fetters, and he was about to ask the waiter if that gentleman had yet entered the dining room, when a man came in and sat down on the opposite side of the table. the colonel looked up, and met the cheerful countenance of the liveryman from whom he had hired a horse and buggy some weeks before. "howdy do?" said the newcomer amiably. "hope you've been well." "quite well," returned the colonel, "how are you?" "oh, just tol'able. tendin' co't?" "no, i came down here to see a man that's attending court--your friend fetters. i suppose he'll be in to dinner." "oh, yes, but he ain't come in yet. i reckon you find the ho-tel a little different from the time you were here befo'." "this is a better dinner than i got," replied the colonel, "and i haven't seen the landlord anywhere, nor his buggy." "no, he ain't here no more. sad loss to carthage! you see bark fetters--that's bill's boy that's come home from the no'th from college--bark fetters come down here one day, an' went in the ho-tel, an' when lee dickson commenced to put on his big airs, bark cussed 'im out, and lee, who didn't know bark from adam, cussed 'im back, an' then bark hauled off an' hit 'im. they had it hot an' heavy for a while. lee had more strength, but bark had more science, an' laid lee out col'. then bark went home an' tol' the ole man, who had a mortgage on the ho-tel, an' he sol' lee up. i hear he's barberin' or somethin' er that sort up to atlanta, an' the hotel's run by another man. there's fetters comin' in now." the colonel glanced in the direction indicated, and was surprised at the appearance of the redoubtable fetters, who walked over and took his seat at the table with the judge and the lawyers. he had expected to meet a tall, long-haired, red-faced, truculent individual, in a slouch hat and a frock coat, with a loud voice and a dictatorial manner, the typical southerner of melodrama. he saw a keen-eyed, hard-faced small man, slightly gray, clean-shaven, wearing a well-fitting city-made business suit of light tweed. except for a few little indications, such as the lack of a crease in his trousers, fetters looked like any one of a hundred business men whom the colonel might have met on broadway in any given fifteen minutes during business hours. the colonel timed his meal so as to leave the dining-room at the same moment with fetters. he went up to fetters, who was chewing a toothpick in the office, and made himself known. "i am mr. french," he said--he never referred to himself by his military title--"and you, i believe, are mr. fetters?" "yes, sir, that's my name," replied fetters without enthusiasm, but eyeing the colonel keenly between narrowed lashes. "i've been trying to see you for some time, about a matter," continued the colonel, "but never seemed able to catch up with you before." "yes, i heard you were at my house, but i was asleep upstairs, and didn't know you'd be'n there till you'd gone." "your man told me you had gone to the capital for two weeks." "my man? oh, you mean turner! well, i reckon you must have riled turner somehow, and he thought he'd have a joke on you." "i don't quite see the joke," said the colonel, restraining his displeasure. "but that's ancient history. can we sit down over here in the shade and talk by ourselves for a moment?" fetters followed the colonel out of doors, where they drew a couple of chairs to one side, and the colonel stated the nature of his business. he wished to bargain for the release of a negro, bud johnson by name, held to service by fetters under a contract with clarendon county. he was willing to pay whatever expense fetters had been to on account of johnson, and an amount sufficient to cover any estimated profits from his services. meanwhile fetters picked his teeth nonchalantly, so nonchalantly as to irritate the colonel. the colonel's impatience was not lessened by the fact that fetters waited several seconds before replying. "well, mr. fetters, what say you?" "colonel french," said fetters, "i reckon you can't have the nigger." "is it a matter of money?" asked the colonel. "name your figure. i don't care about the money. i want the man for a personal reason." "so do i," returned fetters, coolly, "and money's no object to me. i've more now than i know what to do with." the colonel mastered his impatience. he had one appeal which no southerner could resist. "mr. fetters," he said, "i wish to get this man released to please a lady." "sorry to disoblige a lady," returned fetters, "but i'll have to keep the nigger. i run a big place, and i'm obliged to maintain discipline. this nigger has been fractious and contrary, and i've sworn that he shall work out his time. i have never let any nigger get the best of me--or white man either," he added significantly. the colonel was angry, but controlled himself long enough to make one more effort. "i'll give you five hundred dollars for your contract," he said rising from his chair. "you couldn't get him for five thousand." "very well, sir," returned the colonel, "this is not the end of this. i will see, sir, if a man can be held in slavery in this state, for a debt he is willing and ready to pay. you'll hear more of this before i'm through with it." "another thing, colonel french," said fetters, his quiet eyes glittering as he spoke, "i wonder if you recollect an incident that occurred years ago, when we went to the academy in clarendon?" "if you refer," returned the colonel promptly, "to the time i chased you down main street, yes--i recalled it the first time i heard of you when i came back to clarendon--and i remember why i did it. it is a good omen." "that's as it may be," returned fetters quietly. "i didn't have to recall it; i've never forgotten it. now you want something from me, and you can't have it." "we shall see," replied the colonel. "i bested you then, and i'll best you now." "we shall see," said fetters. fetters was not at all alarmed, indeed he smiled rather pityingly. there had been a time when these old aristocrats could speak, and the earth trembled, but that day was over. in this age money talked, and he had known how to get money, and how to use it to get more. there were a dozen civil suits pending against him in the court house there, and he knew in advance that he should win them every one, without directly paying any juryman a dollar. that any nigger should get away while he wished to hold him, was--well, inconceivable. colonel french might have money, but he, fetters, had men as well; and if colonel french became too troublesome about this nigger, this friendship for niggers could be used in such a way as to make clarendon too hot for colonel french. he really bore no great malice against colonel french for the little incident of their school days, but he had not forgotten it, and colonel french might as well learn a lesson. he, fetters, had not worked half a lifetime for a commanding position, to yield it to colonel french or any other man. so fetters smoked his cigar tranquilly, and waited at the hotel for his anticipated verdicts. for there could not be a jury impanelled in the county which did not have on it a majority of men who were mortgaged to fetters. he even held the judge's note for several hundred dollars. the colonel waited at the station for the train back to clarendon. when it came, it brought a gang of convicts, consigned to fetters. they had been brought down in the regular "jim crow" car, for the colonel saw coloured women and children come out ahead of them. the colonel watched the wretches, in coarse striped garments, with chains on their legs and shackles on their hands, unloaded from the train and into the waiting wagons. there were burly negroes and flat-shanked, scrawny negroes. some wore the ashen hue of long confinement. some were shamefaced, some reckless, some sullen. a few white convicts among them seemed doubly ashamed--both of their condition and of their company; they kept together as much as they were permitted, and looked with contempt at their black companions in misfortune. fetters's man and haines, armed with whips, and with pistols in their belts, were present to oversee the unloading, and the colonel could see them point him out to the state officers who had come in charge of the convicts, and see them look at him with curious looks. the scene was not edifying. there were criminals in new york, he knew very well, but he had never seen one. they were not marched down broadway in stripes and chains. there were certain functions of society, as of the body, which were more decently performed in retirement. there was work in the state for the social reformer, and the colonel, undismayed by his temporary defeat, metaphorically girded up his loins, went home, and, still metaphorically, set out to put a spoke in fetters's wheel. _twenty-seven_ his first step was to have caxton look up and abstract for him the criminal laws of the state. they were bad enough, in all conscience. men could be tried without jury and condemned to infamous punishments, involving stripes and chains, for misdemeanours which in more enlightened states were punished with a small fine or brief detention. there were, for instance, no degrees of larceny, and the heaviest punishment might be inflicted, at the discretion of the judge, for the least offense. the vagrancy law, of which the colonel had had some experience, was an open bid for injustice and "graft" and clearly designed to profit the strong at the expense of the weak. the crop-lien laws were little more than the instruments of organised robbery. to these laws the colonel called the attention of some of his neighbours with whom he was on terms of intimacy. the enlightened few had scarcely known of their existence, and quite agreed that the laws were harsh and ought to be changed. but when the colonel, pursuing his inquiry, undertook to investigate the operation of these laws, he found an appalling condition. the statutes were mild and beneficent compared with the results obtained under cover of them. caxton spent several weeks about the state looking up the criminal records, and following up the sentences inflicted, working not merely for his fee, but sharing the colonel's indignation at the state of things unearthed. convict labour was contracted out to private parties, with little or no effective state supervision, on terms which, though exceedingly profitable to the state, were disastrous to free competitive labour. more than one lawmaker besides fetters was numbered among these contractors. leaving the realm of crime, they found that on hundreds of farms, ignorant negroes, and sometimes poor whites, were held in bondage under claims of debt, or under contracts of exclusive employment for long terms of years--contracts extorted from ignorance by craft, aided by state laws which made it a misdemeanour to employ such persons elsewhere. free men were worked side by side with convicts from the penitentiary, and women and children herded with the most depraved criminals, thus breeding a criminal class to prey upon the state. in the case of fetters alone the colonel found a dozen instances where the law, bad as it was, had not been sufficient for fetters's purpose, but had been plainly violated. caxton discovered a discharged guard of fetters, who told him of many things that had taken place at sycamore; and brought another guard one evening, at that time employed there, who told him, among other things, that bud johnson's life, owing to his surliness and rebellious conduct, and some spite which haines seemed to bear against him, was simply a hell on earth--that even a strong negro could not stand it indefinitely. a case was made up and submitted to the grand jury. witnesses were summoned at the colonel's instance. at the last moment they all weakened, even the discharged guard, and their testimony was not sufficient to justify an indictment. the colonel then sued out a writ of habeas corpus for the body of bud johnson, and it was heard before the common pleas court at clarendon, with public opinion divided between the colonel and fetters. the court held that under his contract, for which he had paid the consideration, fetters was entitled to johnson's services. the colonel, defeated but still undismayed, ordered caxton to prepare a memorial for presentation to the federal authorities, calling their attention to the fact that peonage, a crime under the federal statutes, was being flagrantly practised in the state. this allegation was supported by a voluminous brief, giving names and dates and particular instances of barbarity. the colonel was not without some quiet support in this movement; there were several public-spirited men in the county, including his able lieutenant caxton, dr. price and old general thornton, none of whom were under any obligation to fetters, and who all acknowledged that something ought to be done to purge the state of a great disgrace. there was another party, of course, which deprecated any scandal which would involve the good name of the state or reflect upon the south, and who insisted that in time these things would pass away and there would be no trace of them in future generations. but the colonel insisted that so also would the victims of the system pass away, who, being already in existence, were certainly entitled to as much consideration as generations yet unborn; it was hardly fair to sacrifice them to a mere punctilio. the colonel had reached the conviction that the regenerative forces of education and enlightenment, in order to have any effect in his generation, must be reinforced by some positive legislative or executive action, or else the untrammelled forces of graft and greed would override them; and he was human enough, at this stage of his career to wish to see the result of his labours, or at least a promise of result. the colonel's papers were forwarded to the proper place, whence they were referred from official to official, and from department to department. that it might take some time to set in motion the machinery necessary to reach the evil, the colonel knew very well, and hence was not impatient at any reasonable delay. had he known that his presentation had created a sensation in the highest quarter, but that owing to the exigencies of national politics it was not deemed wise, at that time, to do anything which seemed like an invasion of state rights or savoured of sectionalism, he might not have been so serenely confident of the outcome. nor had fetters known as much, would he have done the one thing which encouraged the colonel more than anything else. caxton received a message one day from judge bullard, representing fetters, in which fetters made the offer that if colonel french would stop his agitation on the labour laws, and withdraw any papers he had filed, and promise to drop the whole matter, he would release bud johnson. the colonel did not hesitate a moment. he had gone into this fight for johnson--or rather to please miss laura. he had risen now to higher game; nothing less than the system would satisfy him. "but, colonel," said caxton, "it's pretty hard on the nigger. they'll kill him before his time's up. if you'll give me a free hand, i'll get him anyway." "how?" "perhaps it's just as well you shouldn't know. but i have friends at sycamore." "you wouldn't break the law?" asked the colonel. "fetters is breaking the law," replied caxton. "he's holding johnson for debt--and whether that is lawful or not, he certainly has no right to kill him." "you're right," replied the colonel. "get johnson away, i don't care how. the end justifies the means--that's an argument that goes down here. get him away, and send him a long way off, and he can write for his wife to join him. his escape need not interfere with our other plans. we have plenty of other cases against fetters." within a week, johnson, with the connivance of a bribed guard, a poor-white man from clarendon, had escaped from fetters and seemingly vanished from beaver county. fetters's lieutenants were active in their search for him, but sought in vain. _twenty-eight_ ben dudley awoke the morning after the assembly ball, with a violent headache and a sense of extreme depression, which was not relieved by the sight of his reflection in the looking-glass of the bureau in the hotel bedroom where he found himself. one of his eyes was bloodshot, and surrounded by a wide area of discolouration, and he was conscious of several painful contusions on other portions of his body. his clothing was badly disordered and stained with blood; and, all in all, he was scarcely in a condition to appear in public. he made such a toilet as he could, and, anxious to avoid observation, had his horse brought from the livery around to the rear door of the hotel, and left for mink run by the back streets. he did not return to town for a week, and when he made his next appearance there, upon strictly a business visit, did not go near the treadwells', and wore such a repellent look that no one ventured to speak to him about his encounter with fetters and mcrae. he was humiliated and ashamed, and angry with himself and all the world. he had lost graciella already; any possibility that might have remained of regaining her affection, was destroyed by his having made her name the excuse for a barroom broil. his uncle was not well, and with the decline of his health, his monomania grew more acute and more absorbing, and he spent most of his time in the search for the treasure and in expostulations with viney to reveal its whereabouts. the supervision of the plantation work occupied ben most of the time, and during his intervals of leisure he sought to escape unpleasant thoughts by busying himself with the model of his cotton gin. his life had run along in this way for about two weeks after the ball, when one night barclay fetters, while coming to town from his father's plantation at sycamore, in company with turner, his father's foreman, was fired upon from ambush, in the neighbourhood of mink run, and seriously wounded. groaning heavily and in a state of semi-unconsciousness he was driven by turner, in the same buggy in which he had been shot, to doctor price's house, which lay between mink run and the town. the doctor examined the wound, which was serious. a charge of buckshot had been fired at close range, from a clump of bushes by the wayside, and the charge had taken effect in the side of the face. the sight of one eye was destroyed beyond a peradventure, and that of the other endangered by a possible injury to the optic nerve. a sedative was administered, as many as possible of the shot extracted, and the wounds dressed. meantime a messenger was despatched to sycamore for fetters, senior, who came before morning post-haste. to his anxious inquiries the doctor could give no very hopeful answer. "he's not out of danger," said doctor price, "and won't be for several days. i haven't found several of those shot, and until they're located i can't tell what will happen. your son has a good constitution, but it has been abused somewhat and is not in the best condition to throw off an injury." "do the best you can for him, doc," said fetters, "and i'll make it worth your while. and as for the double-damned scoundrel that shot him in the dark, i'll rake this county with a fine-toothed comb till he's found. if bark dies, the murderer shall hang as high as haman, if it costs me a million dollars, or, if bark gets well, he shall have the limit of the law. no man in this state shall injure me or mine and go unpunished." the next day ben dudley was arrested at mink run, on a warrant sworn out by fetters, senior, charging dudley with attempted murder. the accused was brought to clarendon, and lodged in beaver county jail. ben sent for caxton, from whom he learned that his offense was not subject to bail until it became certain that barclay fetters would recover. for in the event of his death, the charge would be murder; in case of recovery, the offense would be merely attempted murder, or shooting with intent to kill, for which bail was allowable. meantime he would have to remain in jail. in a day or two young fetters was pronounced out of danger, so far as his life was concerned, and colonel french, through caxton, offered to sign ben's bail bond. to caxton's surprise dudley refused to accept bail at the colonel's hands. "i don't want any favours from colonel french," he said decidedly. "i prefer to stay in jail rather than to be released on his bond." so he remained in jail. graciella was not so much surprised at ben's refusal to accept bail. she had reasoned out, with a fine instinct, the train of emotions which had brought her lover to grief, and her own share in stirring them up. she could not believe that ben was capable of shooting a man from ambush; but even if he had, it would have been for love of her; and if he had not, she had nevertheless been the moving cause of the disaster. she would not willingly have done young mr. fetters an injury. he had favoured her by his attentions, and, if all stories were true, he had behaved better than ben, in the difficulty between them, and had suffered more. but she loved ben, as she grew to realise, more and more. she wanted to go and see ben in jail but her aunt did not think it proper. appearances were all against ben, and he had not purged himself by any explanation. so graciella sat down and wrote him a long letter. she knew very well that the one thing that would do him most good would be the announcement of her aunt laura's engagement to colonel french. there was no way to bring this about, except by first securing her aunt's permission. this would make necessary a frank confession, to which, after an effort, she nerved herself. "aunt laura," she said, at a moment when they were alone together, "i know why ben will not accept bail from colonel french, and why he will not tell his side of the quarrel between himself and mr. fetters. he was foolish enough to imagine that colonel french was coming to the house to see me, and that i preferred the colonel to him. and, aunt laura, i have a confession to make; i have done something for which i want to beg your pardon. i listened that night, and overheard the colonel ask you to be his wife. please, dear aunt laura, forgive me, and let me write and tell ben--just ben, in confidence. no one else need know it." miss laura was shocked and pained, and frankly said so, but could not refuse the permission, on condition that ben should be pledged to keep her secret, which, for reasons of her own, she was not yet ready to make public. she, too, was fond of ben, and hoped that he might clear himself of the accusation. so graciella wrote the letter. she was no more frank in it, however, on one point, than she had been with her aunt, for she carefully avoided saying that she _had_ taken colonel french's attentions seriously, or built any hopes upon them, but chided ben for putting such a construction upon her innocent actions, and informed him, as proof of his folly, and in the strictest confidence, that colonel french was engaged to her aunt laura. she expressed her sorrow for his predicament, her profound belief in his innocence, and her unhesitating conviction that he would be acquitted of the pending charge. to this she expected by way of answer a long letter of apology, explanation, and protestations of undying love. she received, instead, a brief note containing a cold acknowledgment of her letter, thanking her for her interest in his welfare, and assuring her that he would respect miss laura's confidence. there was no note of love or reproachfulness--mere cold courtesy. graciella was cut to the quick, so much so that she did not even notice ben's mistakes in spelling. it would have been better had he overwhelmed her with reproaches--it would have shown at least that he still loved her. she cried bitterly, and lay awake very late that night, wondering what else she could do for ben that a self-respecting young lady might. for the first time, she was more concerned about ben than about herself. if by marrying him immediately she could have saved him from danger and disgrace she would have done so without one selfish thought--unless it were selfish to save one whom she loved. * * * * * the preliminary hearing in the case of the state _vs._ benjamin dudley was held as soon as doctor price pronounced barclay fetters out of danger. the proceedings took place before squire reddick, the same justice from whom the colonel had bought peter's services, and from whom he had vainly sought to secure bud johnson's release. in spite of dudley's curt refusal of his assistance, the colonel, to whom miss laura had conveyed a hint of the young man's frame of mind, had instructed caxton to spare no trouble or expense in the prisoner's interest. there was little doubt, considering fetters's influence and vindictiveness, that dudley would be remanded, though the evidence against him was purely circumstantial; but it was important that the evidence should be carefully scrutinised, and every legal safeguard put to use. the case looked bad for the prisoner. barclay fetters was not present, nor did the prosecution need him; his testimony could only have been cumulative. turner described the circumstances of the shooting from the trees by the roadside near mink run, and the driving of the wounded man to doctor price's. doctor price swore to the nature of the wound, its present and probable consequences, which involved the loss of one eye and perhaps the other, and produced the shot he had extracted. mcrae testified that he and barclay fetters had gone down between dances, from the opera ball, to the hotel bar, to get a glass of seltzer. they had no sooner entered the bar than the prisoner, who had evidently been drinking heavily and showed all the signs of intoxication, had picked a quarrel with them and assaulted mr. fetters. fetters, with the aid of the witness, had defended himself. in the course of the altercation, the prisoner had used violent and profane language, threatening, among other things, to kill fetters. all this testimony was objected to, but was admitted as tending to show a motive for the crime. this closed the state's case. caxton held a hurried consultation with his client. should they put in any evidence, which would be merely to show their hand, since the prisoner would in any event undoubtedly be bound over? ben was unable to deny what had taken place at the hotel, for he had no distinct recollection of it--merely a blurred impression, like the memory of a bad dream. he could not swear that he had not threatened fetters. the state's witnesses had refrained from mentioning the lady's name; he could do no less. so far as the shooting was concerned, he had had no weapon with which to shoot. his gun had been stolen that very day, and had not been recovered. "the defense will offer no testimony," declared caxton, at the result of the conference. the justice held the prisoner to the grand jury, and fixed the bond at ten thousand dollars. graciella's information had not been without its effect, and when caxton suggested that he could still secure bail, he had little difficulty in inducing ben to accept colonel french's friendly offices. the bail bond was made out and signed, and the prisoner released. caxton took ben to his office after the hearing. there ben met the colonel, thanked him for his aid and friendship, and apologised for his former rudeness. "i was in a bad way, sir," he said, "and hardly knew what i was doing. but i know i didn't shoot bark fetters, and never thought of such a thing." "i'm sure you didn't, my boy," said the colonel, laying his hand, in familiar fashion, upon the young fellow's shoulder, "and we'll prove it before we quit. there are some ladies who believe the same thing, and would like to hear you say it." "thank you, sir," said ben. "i should like to tell them, but i shouldn't want to enter their house until i am cleared of this charge. i think too much of them to expose them to any remarks about harbouring a man out on bail for a penitentiary offense. i'll write to them, sir, and thank them for their trust and friendship, and you can tell them for me, if you will, that i'll come to see them when not only i, but everybody else, can say that i am fit to go." "your feelings do you credit," returned the colonel warmly, "and however much they would like to see you, i'm sure the ladies will appreciate your delicacy. as your friend and theirs, you must permit me to serve you further, whenever the opportunity offers, until this affair is finished." ben thanked the colonel from a full heart, and went back to mink run, where, in the effort to catch up the plantation work, which had fallen behind in his absence, he sought to forget the prison atmosphere and lose the prison pallor. the disgrace of having been in jail was indelible, and the danger was by no means over. the sympathy of his friends would have been priceless to him, but to remain away from them would be not only the honourable course to pursue, but a just punishment for his own folly. for graciella, after all, was only a girl--a young girl, and scarcely yet to be judged harshly for her actions; while he was a man grown, who knew better, and had not acted according to his lights. three days after ben dudley's release on bail, clarendon was treated to another sensation. former constable haines, now employed as an overseer at fetters's convict farm, while driving in a buggy to clarendon, where he spent his off-duty spells, was shot from ambush near mink run, and his right arm shattered in such a manner as to require amputation. _twenty-nine_ colonel french's interest in ben dudley's affairs had not been permitted to interfere with his various enterprises. work on the chief of these, the cotton mill, had gone steadily forward, with only occasional delays, incident to the delivery of material, the weather, and the health of the workmen, which was often uncertain for a day or two after pay day. the coloured foreman of the brick-layers had been seriously ill; his place had been filled by a white man, under whom the walls were rising rapidly. jim green, the foreman whom the colonel had formerly discharged, and the two white brick-layers who had quit at the same time, applied for reinstatement. the colonel took the two men on again, but declined to restore green, who had been discharged for insubordination. green went away swearing vengeance. at clay johnson's saloon he hurled invectives at the colonel, to all who would listen, and with anger and bad whiskey, soon worked himself into a frame of mind that was ripe for any mischief. some of his utterances were reported to the colonel, who was not without friends--the wealthy seldom are; but he paid no particular attention to them, except to keep a watchman at the mill at night, lest this hostility should seek an outlet in some attempt to injure the property. the precaution was not amiss, for once the watchman shot at a figure prowling about the mill. the lesson was sufficient, apparently, for there was no immediate necessity to repeat it. the shooting of haines, while not so sensational as that of barclay fetters, had given rise to considerable feeling against ben dudley. that two young men should quarrel, and exchange shots, would not ordinarily have been a subject of extended remark. but two attempts at assassination constituted a much graver affair. that dudley was responsible for this second assault was the generally accepted opinion. fetters's friends and hirelings were openly hostile to young dudley, and haines had been heard to say, in his cups, at clay jackson's saloon, that when young dudley was tried and convicted and sent to the penitentiary, he would be hired out to fetters, who had the country contract, and that he, haines, would be delighted to have dudley in his gang. the feeling against dudley grew from day to day, and threats and bets were openly made that he would not live to be tried. there was no direct proof against him, but the moral and circumstantial evidence was quite sufficient to convict him in the eyes of fetter's friends and supporters. the colonel was sometimes mentioned, in connection with the affair as a friend of ben's, for whom he had given bail, and as an enemy of fetters, to whom his antagonism in various ways had become a matter of public knowledge and interest. one day, while the excitement attending the second shooting was thus growing, colonel french received through the mail a mysteriously worded note, vaguely hinting at some matter of public importance which the writer wished to communicate to him, and requesting a private interview for the purpose, that evening, at the colonel's house. the note, which had every internal evidence of sincerity, was signed by henry taylor, the principal of the coloured school, whom the colonel had met several times in reference to the proposed industrial school. from the tenor of the communication, and what he knew about taylor, the colonel had no doubt that the matter was one of importance, at least not one to be dismissed without examination. he thereupon stepped into caxton's office and wrote an answer to the letter, fixing eight o'clock that evening as the time, and his own library as the place, of a meeting with the teacher. this letter he deposited in the post-office personally--it was only a step from caxton's office. upon coming out of the post-office he saw the teacher standing on an opposite corner. when the colonel had passed out of sight, taylor crossed the street, entered the post-office, and soon emerged with the letter. he had given no sign that he saw the colonel, but had looked rather ostentatiously the other way when that gentleman had glanced in his direction. at the appointed hour there was a light step on the colonel's piazza. the colonel was on watch, and opened the door himself, ushering taylor into his library, a very handsome and comfortable room, the door of which he carefully closed behind them. the teacher looked around cautiously. "are we alone, sir?" "yes, entirely so." "and can any one hear us?" "no. what have you got to tell me?" "colonel french," replied the other, "i'm in a hard situation, and i want you to promise that you'll never let on to any body that i told you what i'm going to say." "all right, mr. taylor, if it is a proper promise to make. you can trust my discretion." "yes, sir, i'm sure i can. we coloured folks, sir, are often accused of trying to shield criminals of our own race, or of not helping the officers of the law to catch them. maybe we does, suh," he said, lapsing in his earnestness, into bad grammar, "maybe we does sometimes, but not without reason." "what reason?" asked the colonel. "well, sir, fer the reason that we ain't always shore that a coloured man will get a fair trial, or any trial at all, or that he'll get a just sentence after he's been tried. we have no hand in makin' the laws, or in enforcin' 'em; we are not summoned on jury; and yet we're asked to do the work of constables and sheriffs who are paid for arrestin' criminals, an' for protectin' 'em from mobs, which they don't do." "i have no doubt every word you say is true, mr. taylor, and such a state of things is unjust, and will some day be different, if i can help to make it so. but, nevertheless, all good citizens, whatever their colour, ought to help to preserve peace and good order." "yes, sir, so they ought; and i want to do just that; i want to co-operate, and a whole heap of us want to co-operate with the good white people to keep down crime and lawlessness. i know there's good white people who want to see justice done--but they ain't always strong enough to run things; an' if any one of us coloured folks tells on another one, he's liable to lose all his frien's. but i believe, sir, that i can trust you to save me harmless, and to see that nothin' mo' than justice is done to the coloured man." "yes, taylor, you can trust me to do all that i can, and i think i have considerable influence. now, what's on your mind? do you know who shot haines and mr. fetters?" "well, sir, you're a mighty good guesser. it ain't so much mr. fetters an' mr. haines i'm thinkin' about, for that place down the country is a hell on earth, an' they're the devils that runs it. but there's a friend of yo'rs in trouble, for something he didn' do, an' i wouldn' stan' for an innocent man bein' sent to the penitentiary--though many a po' negro has been. yes, sir, i know that mr. ben dudley didn' shoot them two white men." "so do i," rejoined the colonel. "who did?" "it was bud johnson, the man you tried to get away from mr. fetters--yo'r coachman tol' us about it, sir, an' we know how good a friend of ours you are, from what you've promised us about the school. an' i wanted you to know, sir. you are our friend, and have showed confidence in us, and i wanted to prove to you that we are not ungrateful, an' that we want to be good citizens." "i had heard," said the colonel, "that johnson had escaped and left the county." "so he had, sir, but he came back. they had 'bused him down at that place till he swore he'd kill every one that had anything to do with him. it was mr. turner he shot at the first time and he hit young mr. fetters by accident. he stole a gun from ole mr. dudley's place at mink run, shot mr. fetters with it, and has kept it ever since, and shot mr. haines with it. i suppose they'd 'a' ketched him before, if it hadn't be'n for suspectin' young mr. dudley." "where is johnson now," asked the colonel. "he's hidin' in an old log cabin down by the swamp back of mink run. he sleeps in the daytime, and goes out at night to get food and watch for white men from mr. fetters's place." "does his wife know where he is?" "no, sir; he ain't never let her know." "by the way, taylor," asked the colonel, "how do _you_ know all this?" "well, sir," replied the teacher, with something which, in an uneducated negro would have been a very pronounced chuckle, "there's mighty little goin' on roun' here that i _don't_ find out, sooner or later." "taylor," said the colonel, rising to terminate the interview, "you have rendered a public service, have proved yourself a good citizen, and have relieved mr. dudley of serious embarrassment. i will see that steps are taken to apprehend johnson, and will keep your participation in the matter secret, since you think it would hurt your influence with your people. and i promise you faithfully that every effort shall be made to see that johnson has a fair trial and no more than a just punishment." he gave the negro his hand. "thank you, sir, thank you, sir," replied the teacher, returning the colonel's clasp. "if there were more white men like you, the coloured folks would have no more trouble." the colonel let taylor out, and watched him as he looked cautiously up and down the street to see that he was not observed. that coloured folks, or any other kind, should ever cease to have trouble, was a vain imagining. but the teacher had made a well-founded complaint of injustice which ought to be capable of correction; and he had performed a public-spirited action, even though he had felt constrained to do it in a clandestine manner. about his own part in the affair the colonel was troubled. it was becoming clear to him that the task he had undertaken was no light one--not the task of apprehending johnson and clearing dudley, but that of leavening the inert mass of clarendon with the leaven of enlightenment. with the best of intentions, and hoping to save a life, he had connived at turning a murderer loose upon the community. it was true that the community, through unjust laws, had made him a murderer, but it was no part of the colonel's plan to foster or promote evil passions, or to help the victims of the law to make reprisals. his aim was to bring about, by better laws and more liberal ideas, peace, harmony, and universal good will. there was a colossal work for him to do, and for all whom he could enlist with him in this cause. the very standards of right and wrong had been confused by the race issue, and must be set right by the patient appeal to reason and humanity. primitive passions and private vengeance must be subordinated to law and order and the higher good. a new body of thought must be built up, in which stress must be laid upon the eternal verities, in the light of which difficulties which now seemed unsurmountable would be gradually overcome. but this halcyon period was yet afar off, and the colonel roused himself to the duty of the hour. with the best intentions he had let loose upon the community, in a questionable way, a desperate character. it was no less than his plain duty to put the man under restraint. to rescue from fetters a man whose life was threatened, was one thing. to leave a murderer at large now would be to endanger innocent lives, and imperil ben dudley's future. the arrest of bud johnson brought an end to the case against ben dudley. the prosecuting attorney, who was under political obligations to fetters, seemed reluctant to dismiss the case, until johnson's guilt should have been legally proved; but the result of the negro's preliminary hearing rendered this position no longer tenable; the case against ben was nolled, and he could now hold up his head as a free man, with no stain upon his character. indeed, the reaction in his favour as one unjustly indicted, went far to wipe out from the public mind the impression that he was a drunkard and a rowdy. it was recalled that he was of good family and that his forebears had rendered valuable service to the state, and that he had never been seen to drink before, or known to be in a fight, but that on the contrary he was quiet and harmless to a fault. indeed, the clarendon public would have admired a little more spirit in a young man, even to the extent of condoning an occasional lapse into license. there was sincere rejoicing at the treadwell house when ben, now free in mind, went around to see the ladies. miss laura was warmly sympathetic and congratulatory; and graciella, tearfully happy, tried to make up by a sweet humility, through which shone the true womanliness of a hitherto undeveloped character, for the past stings and humiliations to which her selfish caprice had subjected her lover. ben resumed his visits, if not with quite their former frequency, and it was only a day or two later that the colonel found him and graciella, with his own boy phil, grouped in familiar fashion on the steps, where ben was demonstrating with some pride of success, the operation of his model, into which he was feeding cotton when the colonel came up. the colonel stood a moment and looked at the machine. "it's quite ingenious," he said. "explain the principle." ben described the mechanism, in brief, well-chosen words which conveyed the thought clearly and concisely, and revealed a fine mind for mechanics and at the same time an absolute lack of technical knowledge. "it would never be of any use, sir," he said, at the end, "for everybody has the other kind. but it's another way, and i think a better." "it is clever," said the colonel thoughtfully, as he went into the house. the colonel had not changed his mind at all since asking miss laura to be his wife. the glow of happiness still warmed her cheek, the spirit of youth still lingered in her eyes and in her smile. he might go a thousand miles before meeting a woman who would please him more, take better care of phil, or preside with more dignity over his household. her simple grace would adapt itself to wealth as easily as it had accommodated itself to poverty. it would be a pleasure to travel with her to new scenes and new places, to introduce her into a wider world, to see her expand in the generous sunlight of ease and freedom from responsibility. true to his promise, the colonel made every effort to see that bud johnson should be protected against mob violence and given a fair trial. there was some intemperate talk among the partisans of fetters, and an ominous gathering upon the streets the day after the arrest, but judge miller, of the beaver county circuit, who was in clarendon that day, used his influence to discountenance any disorder, and promised a speedy trial of the prisoner. the crime was not the worst of crimes, and there was no excuse for riot or lynch law. the accused could not escape his just punishment. as a result of the judge's efforts, supplemented by the colonel's and those of doctor price and several ministers, any serious fear of disorder was removed, and a handful of fetters's guards who had come up from his convict farm and foregathered with some choice spirits of the town at clay jackson's saloon, went back without attempting to do what they had avowedly come to town to accomplish. _thirty_ one morning the colonel, while overseeing the work at the new mill building, stepped on the rounded handle of a chisel, which had been left lying carelessly on the floor, and slipped and fell, spraining his ankle severely. he went home in his buggy, which was at the mill, and sent for doctor price, who put his foot in a plaster bandage and ordered him to keep quiet for a week. peter and phil went around to the treadwells' to inform the ladies of the accident. on reaching the house after the accident, the colonel had taken off his coat, and sent peter to bring him one from the closet off his bedroom. when the colonel put on the coat, he felt some papers in the inside pocket, and taking them out, recognised the two old letters he had taken from the lining of his desk several months before. the housekeeper, in a moment of unusual zeal, had discovered and mended the tear in the sleeve, and peter had by chance selected this particular coat to bring to his master. when peter started, with phil, to go to the treadwells', the colonel gave him the two letters. "give these," he said, "to miss laura, and tell her i found them in the old desk." it was not long before miss laura came, with graciella, to call on the colonel. when they had expressed the proper sympathy, and had been assured that the hurt was not dangerous, miss laura spoke of another matter. "henry," she said, with an air of suppressed excitement, "i have made a discovery. i don't quite know what it means, or whether it amounts to anything, but in one of the envelopes you sent me just now there was a paper signed by mr. fetters. i do not know how it could have been left in the desk; we had searched it, years ago, in every nook and cranny, and found nothing." the colonel explained the circumstances of his discovery of the papers, but prudently refrained from mentioning how long ago they had taken place. miss laura handed him a thin, oblong, yellowish slip of paper, which had been folded in the middle; it was a printed form, upon which several words had been filled in with a pen. "it was enclosed in this," she said, handing him another paper. the colonel took the papers and glanced over them. "mother thinks," said miss laura anxiously, "that they are the papers we were looking for, that prove that fetters was in father's debt." the colonel had been thinking rapidly. the papers were, indeed, a promissory note from fetters to mr. treadwell, and a contract and memorandum of certain joint transactions in turpentine and cotton futures. the note was dated twenty years back. had it been produced at the time of mr. treadwell's death, it would not have been difficult to collect, and would have meant to his survivors the difference between poverty and financial independence. now it was barred by the lapse of time. miss laura was waiting in eager expectation. outwardly calm, her eyes were bright, her cheeks were glowing, her bosom rose and fell excitedly. could he tell her that this seemingly fortunate accident was merely the irony of fate--a mere cruel reminder of a former misfortune? no, she could not believe it! "it has made me happy, henry," she said, while he still kept his eyes bent on the papers to conceal his perplexity, "it has made me very happy to think that i may not come to you empty-handed." "dear woman," he thought, "you shall not. if the note is not good, it shall be made good." "laura," he said aloud, "i am no lawyer, but caxton shall look at these to-day, and i shall be very much mistaken if they do not bring you a considerable sum of money. say nothing about them, however, until caxton reports. he will be here to see me to-day and by to-morrow you shall have his opinion." miss laura went away with a radiantly hopeful face, and as she and graciella went down the street, the colonel noted that her step was scarcely less springy than her niece's. it was worth the amount of fetters's old note to make her happy; and since he meant to give her all that she might want, what better way than to do it by means of this bit of worthless paper? it would be a harmless deception, and it would save the pride of three gentlewomen, with whom pride was not a disease, to poison and scorch and blister, but an inspiration to courtesy, and kindness, and right living. such a pride was worth cherishing even at a sacrifice, which was, after all, no sacrifice. he had already sent word to caxton of his accident, requesting him to call at the house on other business. caxton came in the afternoon, and when the matter concerning which he had come had been disposed of, colonel french produced fetters's note. "caxton," he said, "i wish to pay this note and let it seem to have come from fetters." caxton looked at the note. "why should you pay it?" he asked. "i mean," he added, noting a change in the colonel's expression, "why shouldn't fetters pay it?" "because it is outlawed," he replied, "and we could hardly expect him to pay for anything he didn't have to pay. the statute of limitations runs against it after fifteen years--and it's older than that, much older than that." caxton made a rapid mental calculation. "that is the law in new york," he said, "but here the statute doesn't begin to run for twenty years. the twenty years for which this note was given expires to-day." "then it is good?" demanded the colonel, looking at his watch. "it is good," said caxton, "provided there is no defence to it except the statute, and provided i can file a petition on it in the county clerk's office by four o'clock, the time at which the office closes. it is now twenty minutes of four." "can you make it?" "i'll try." caxton, since his acquaintance with colonel french, had learned something more about the value of half an hour than he had ever before appreciated, and here was an opportunity to test his knowledge. he literally ran the quarter of a mile that lay between the colonel's residence and the court house, to the open-eyed astonishment of those whom he passed, some of whom wondered whether he were crazy, and others whether he had committed a crime. he dashed into the clerk's office, seized a pen, and the first piece of paper handy, and began to write a petition. the clerk had stepped into the hall, and when he came leisurely in at three minutes to four, caxton discovered that he had written his petition on the back of a blank marriage license. he folded it, ran his pen through the printed matter, endorsed it, "estate of treadwell _vs._ fetters," signed it with the name of ellen treadwell, as executrix, by himself as her attorney, swore to it before the clerk, and handed it to that official, who raised his eyebrows as soon as he saw the endorsement. "now, mr. munroe," said caxton, "if you'll enter that on the docket, now, as of to-day, i'll be obliged to you. i'd rather have the transaction all finished up while i wait. your fee needn't wait the termination of the suit. i'll pay it now and take a receipt for it." the clerk whistled to himself as he read the petition in order to make the entry. "that's an old-timer," he said. "it'll make the old man cuss." "yes," said caxton. "do me a favour, and don't say anything about it for a day or two. i don't think the suit will ever come to trial." _thirty-one_ on the day following these events, the colonel, on the arm of old peter, hobbled out upon his front porch, and seating himself in a big rocking chair, in front of which a cushion had been adjusted for his injured ankle, composed himself to read some arrears of mail which had come in the day before, and over which he had only glanced casually. when he was comfortably settled, peter and phil walked down the steps, upon the lowest of which they seated themselves. the colonel had scarcely begun to read before he called to the old man. "peter," he said, "i wish you'd go upstairs, and look in my room, and bring me a couple of light-coloured cigars from the box on my bureau--the mild ones, you know, peter." "yas, suh, i knows, suh, de mil' ones, dem wid de gol' ban's 'roun' 'em. now you stay right hyuh, chile, till peter come back." peter came up the steps and disappeared in the doorway. the colonel opened a letter from kirby, in which that energetic and versatile gentleman assured the colonel that he had evolved a great scheme, in which there were millions for those who would go into it. he had already interested mrs. jerviss, who had stated she would be governed by what the colonel did in the matter. the letter went into some detail upon this subject, and then drifted off into club and social gossip. several of the colonel's friends had inquired particularly about him. one had regretted the loss to their whist table. another wanted the refusal of his box at the opera, if he were not coming back for the winter. "i think you're missed in a certain quarter, old fellow. i know a lady who would be more than delighted to see you. i am invited to her house to dinner, ostensibly to talk about our scheme, in reality to talk about you. "but this is all by the way. the business is the thing. take my proposition under advisement. we all made money together before; we can make it again. my option has ten days to run. wire me before it is up what reply to make. i know what you'll say, but i want your 'ipse dixit.'" the colonel knew too what his reply would be, and that it would be very different from kirby's anticipation. he would write it, he thought, next day, so that kirby should not be kept in suspense, or so that he might have time to enlist other capital in the enterprise. the colonel felt really sorry to disappoint his good friends. he would write and inform kirby of his plans, including that of his approaching marriage. he had folded the letter and laid it down, and had picked up a newspaper, when peter returned with the cigars and a box of matches. "mars henry?" he asked, "w'at's gone wid de chile?" "phil?" replied the colonel, looking toward the step, from which the boy had disappeared. "i suppose he went round the house." "mars phil! o mars phil!" called the old man. there was no reply. peter looked round the corner of the house, but phil was nowhere visible. the old man went round to the back yard, and called again, but did not find the child. "i hyuhs de train comin'; i 'spec's he's gone up ter de railroad track," he said, when he had returned to the front of the house. "i'll run up dere an' fetch 'im back." "yes, do, peter," returned the colonel. "he's probably all right, but you'd better see about him." little phil, seeing his father absorbed in the newspaper, and not wishing to disturb him, had amused himself by going to the gate and looking down the street toward the railroad track. he had been doing this scarcely a moment, when he saw a black cat come out of a neighbour's gate and go down the street. phil instantly recalled uncle peter's story of the black cat. perhaps this was the same one! phil had often been warned about the railroad. "keep 'way f'm dat railroad track, honey," the old man had repeated more than once. "it's as dange'ous as a gun, and a gun is dange'ous widout lock, stock, er bairl: i knowed a man oncet w'at beat 'is wife ter def wid a ramrod, an' wuz hung fer it in a' ole fiel' down by de ha'nted house. dat gun couldn't hol' powder ner shot, but was dange'ous 'nuff ter kill two folks. so you jes' better keep 'way f'm dat railroad track, chile." but phil was a child, with the making of a man, and the wisest of men sometimes forget. for the moment phil saw nothing but the cat, and wished for nothing more than to talk to it. so phil, unperceived by the colonel, set out to overtake the black cat. the cat seemed in no hurry, and phil had very nearly caught up with him--or her, as the case might be--when the black cat, having reached the railroad siding, walked under a flat car which stood there, and leaping to one of the truck bars, composed itself, presumably for a nap. in order to get close enough to the cat for conversational purposes, phil stooped under the overhanging end of the car, and kneeled down beside the truck. "kitty, kitty!" he called, invitingly. the black cat opened her big yellow eyes with every evidence of lazy amiability. peter shuffled toward the corner as fast as his rickety old limbs would carry him. when he reached the corner he saw a car standing on the track. there was a brakeman at one end, holding a coupling link in one hand, and a coupling pin in the other, his eye on an engine and train of cars only a rod or two away, advancing to pick up the single car. at the same moment peter caught sight of little phil, kneeling under the car at the other end. peter shouted, but the brakeman was absorbed in his own task, which required close attention in order to assure his own safety. the engineer on the cab, at the other end of the train, saw an old negro excitedly gesticulating, and pulled a lever mechanically, but too late to stop the momentum of the train, which was not equipped with air brakes, even if these would have proved effective to stop it in so short a distance. just before the two cars came together, peter threw himself forward to seize the child. as he did so, the cat sprang from the truck bar; the old man stumbled over the cat, and fell across the rail. the car moved only a few feet, but quite far enough to work injury. a dozen people, including the train crew, quickly gathered. willing hands drew them out and laid them upon the grass under the spreading elm at the corner of the street. a judge, a merchant and a negro labourer lifted old peter's body as tenderly as though it had been that of a beautiful woman. the colonel, somewhat uneasy, he scarcely knew why, had started to limp painfully toward the corner, when he was met by a messenger who informed him of the accident. forgetting his pain, he hurried to the scene, only to find his heart's delight lying pale, bleeding and unconscious, beside the old negro who had sacrificed his life to save him. a doctor, who had been hastily summoned, pronounced peter dead. phil showed no superficial injury, save a cut upon the head, from which the bleeding was soon stanched. a negro's strong arms bore the child to the house, while the bystanders remained about peter's body until the arrival of major mclean, recently elected coroner, who had been promptly notified of the accident. within a few minutes after the officer's appearance, a jury was summoned from among the bystanders, the evidence of the trainmen and several other witnesses was taken, and a verdict of accidental death rendered. there was no suggestion of blame attaching to any one; it had been an accident, pure and simple, which ordinary and reasonable prudence could not have foreseen. by the colonel's command, the body of his old servant was then conveyed to the house and laid out in the front parlour. every honour, every token of respect, should be paid to his remains. _thirty-two_ meanwhile the colonel, forgetting his own hurt, hovered, with several physicians, among them doctor price, around the bedside of his child. the slight cut upon the head, the physicians declared, was not, of itself, sufficient to account for the rapid sinking which set in shortly after the boy's removal to the house. there had evidently been some internal injury, the nature of which could not be ascertained. phil remained unconscious for several hours, but toward the end of the day opened his blue eyes and fixed them upon his father, who was sitting by the bedside. "papa," he said, "am i going to die?" "no, no, phil," said his father hopefully. "you are going to get well in a few days, i hope." phil was silent for a moment, and looked around him curiously. he gave no sign of being in pain. "is miss laura here?" "yes, phil, she's in the next room, and will be here in a moment." at that instant miss laura came in and kissed him. the caress gave him pleasure, and he smiled sweetly in return. "papa, was uncle peter hurt?" "yes, phil." "where is he, papa? was he hurt badly?" "he is lying in another room, phil, but he is not in any pain." "papa," said phil, after a pause, "if i should die, and if uncle peter should die, you'll remember your promise and bury him near me, won't you, dear?" "yes, phil," he said, "but you are not going to die!" but phil died, dozing off into a peaceful sleep in which he passed quietly away with a smile upon his face. it required all the father's fortitude to sustain the blow, with the added agony of self-reproach that he himself had been unwittingly the cause of it. had he not sent old peter into the house, the child would not have been left alone. had he kept his eye upon phil until peter's return the child would not have strayed away. he had neglected his child, while the bruised and broken old black man in the room below had given his life to save him. he could do nothing now to show the child his love or peter his gratitude, and the old man had neither wife nor child in whom the colonel's bounty might find an object. but he would do what he could. he would lay his child's body in the old family lot in the cemetery, among the bones of his ancestors, and there too, close at hand, old peter should have honourable sepulture. it was his due, and would be the fulfilment of little phil's last request. the child was laid out in the parlour, amid a mass of flowers. miss laura, for love of him and of the colonel, with her own hands prepared his little body for the last sleep. the undertaker, who hovered around, wished, with a conventional sense of fitness, to remove old peter's body to a back room. but the colonel said no. "they died together; together they shall lie here, and they shall be buried together." he gave instructions as to the location of the graves in the cemetery lot. the undertaker looked thoughtful. "i hope, sir," said the undertaker, "there will be no objection. it's not customary--there's a coloured graveyard--you might put up a nice tombstone there--and you've been away from here a long time, sir." "if any one objects," said the colonel, "send him to me. the lot is mine, and i shall do with it as i like. my great-great-grandfather gave the cemetery to the town. old peter's skin was black, but his heart was white as any man's! and when a man reaches the grave, he is not far from god, who is no respecter of persons, and in whose presence, on the judgment day, many a white man shall be black, and many a black man white." the funeral was set for the following afternoon. the graves were to be dug in the morning. the undertaker, whose business was dependent upon public favour, and who therefore shrank from any step which might affect his own popularity, let it be quietly known that colonel french had given directions to bury peter in oak cemetery. it was inevitable that there should be some question raised about so novel a proceeding. the colour line in clarendon, as in all southern towns, was, on the surface at least, rigidly drawn, and extended from the cradle to the grave. no negro's body had ever profaned the sacred soil of oak cemetery. the protestants laid the matter before the cemetery trustees, and a private meeting was called in the evening to consider the proposed interment. white and black worshipped the same god, in different churches. there had been a time when coloured people filled the galleries of the white churches, and white ladies had instilled into black children the principles of religion and good morals. but as white and black had grown nearer to each other in condition, they had grown farther apart in feeling. it was difficult for the poor lady, for instance, to patronise the children of the well-to-do negro or mulatto; nor was the latter inclined to look up to white people who had started, in his memory, from a position but little higher than his own. in an era of change, the benefits gained thereby seemed scarcely to offset the difficulties of readjustment. the situation was complicated by a sense of injury on both sides. cherishing their theoretical equality of citizenship, which they could neither enforce nor forget, the negroes resented, noisly or silently, as prudence dictated, its contemptuous denial by the whites; and these, viewing this shadowy equality as an insult to themselves, had sought by all the machinery of local law to emphasise and perpetuate their own superiority. the very word "equality" was an offence. society went back to egypt and india for its models; to break caste was a greater sin than to break any or all of the ten commandments. white and coloured children studied the same books in different schools. white and black people rode on the same trains in separate cars. living side by side, and meeting day by day, the law, made and administered by white men, had built a wall between them. and white and black buried their dead in separate graveyards. not until they reached god's presence could they stand side by side in any relation of equality. there was a negro graveyard in clarendon, where, as a matter of course the coloured dead were buried. it was not an ideal locality. the land was low and swampy, and graves must be used quickly, ere the water collected in them. the graveyard was unfenced, and vagrant cattle browsed upon its rank herbage. the embankment of the railroad encroached upon one side of it, and the passing engines sifted cinders and ashes over the graves. but no negro had ever thought of burying his dead elsewhere, and if their cemetery was not well kept up, whose fault was it but their own? the proposition, therefore, of a white man, even of colonel french's standing, to bury a negro in oak cemetery, was bound to occasion comment, if nothing more. there was indeed more. several citizens objected to the profanation, and laid their protest before the mayor, who quietly called a meeting of the board of cemetery trustees, of which he was the chairman. the trustees were five in number. the board, with the single exception of the mayor, was self-perpetuating, and the members had been chosen, as vacancies occurred by death, at long intervals, from among the aristocracy, who had always controlled it. the mayor, a member and chairman of the board by virtue of his office, had sprung from the same class as fetters, that of the aspiring poor whites, who, freed from the moral incubus of slavery, had by force of numbers and ambition secured political control of the state and relegated not only the negroes, but the old master class, to political obscurity. a shrewd, capable man was the mayor, who despised negroes and distrusted aristocrats, and had the courage of his convictions. he represented in the meeting the protesting element of the community. "gentlemen," he said, "colonel french has ordered this negro to be buried in oak cemetery. we all appreciate the colonel's worth, and what he is doing for the town. but he has lived at the north for many years, and has got somewhat out of our way of thinking. we do not want to buy the prosperity of this town at the price of our principles. the attitude of the white people on the negro question is fixed and determined for all time, and nothing can ever alter it. to bury this negro in oak cemetery is against our principles." "the mayor's statement of the rule is quite correct," replied old general thornton, a member of the board, "and not open to question. but all rules have their exceptions. it was against the law, for some years before the war, to manumit a slave; but an exception to that salutary rule was made in case a negro should render some great service to the state or the community. you will recall that when, in a sister state, a negro climbed the steep roof of st. michael's church and at the risk of his own life saved that historic structure, the pride of charleston, from destruction by fire, the muncipality granted him his freedom." "and we all remember," said mr. darden, another of the trustees, "we all remember, at least i'm sure general thornton does, old sally, who used to belong to the mcrae family, and was a member of the presbyterian church, and who, because of her age and infirmities--she was hard of hearing and too old to climb the stairs to the gallery--was given a seat in front of the pulpit, on the main floor." "that was all very well," replied the mayor, stoutly, "when the negroes belonged to you, and never questioned your authority. but times are different now. they think themselves as good as we are. we had them pretty well in hand until colonel french came around, with his schools, and his high wages, and now they are getting so fat and sassy that there'll soon be no living with them. the last election did something, but we'll have to do something more, and that soon, to keep them in their places. there's one in jail now, alive, who has shot and disfigured and nearly killed two good white men, and such an example of social equality as burying one in a white graveyard will demoralise them still further. we must preserve the purity and prestige of our race, and we can only do it by keeping the negroes down." "after all," said another member, "the purity of our race is not apt to suffer very seriously from the social equality of a graveyard." "and old peter will be pretty effectually kept down, wherever he is buried," added another. these sallies provoked a smile which lightened the tension. a member suggested that colonel french be sent for. "it seems a pity to disturb him in his grief," said another. "it's only a couple of squares," suggested another. "let's call in a body and pay our respects. we can bring up the matter incidentally, while there." the muscles of the mayor's chin hardened. "colonel french has never been at my house," he said, "and i shouldn't care to seem to intrude." "come on, mayor," said mr. darden, taking the official by the arm, "these fine distinctions are not becoming in the presence of death. the colonel will be glad to see you." the mayor could not resist this mark of intimacy on the part of one of the old aristocracy, and walked somewhat proudly through the street arm in arm with mr. darden. they paid their respects to the colonel, who was bearing up, with the composure to be expected of a man of strong will and forceful character, under a grief of which he was exquisitely sensible. touched by a strong man's emotion, which nothing could conceal, no one had the heart to mention, in the presence of the dead, the object of their visit, and they went away without giving the colonel any inkling that his course had been seriously criticised. nor was the meeting resumed after they left the house, even the mayor seeming content to let the matter go by default. _thirty-three_ fortune favoured caxton in the matter of the note. fetters was in clarendon the following morning. caxton saw him passing, called him into his office, and produced the note. "that's no good," said fetters contemptuously. "it was outlawed yesterday. i suppose you allowed i'd forgotten it. on the contrary, i've a memorandum of it in my pocketbook, and i struck it off the list last night. i always pay my lawful debts, when they're properly demanded. if this note had been presented yesterday, i'd have paid it. to-day it's too late. it ain't a lawful debt." "do you really mean to say, mr. fetters, that you have deliberately robbed those poor women of this money all these years, and are not ashamed of it, not even when you're found out, and that you are going to take refuge behind the statute?" "now, see here, mr. caxton," returned fetters, without apparent emotion, "you want to be careful about the language you use. i might sue you for slander. you're a young man, that hopes to have a future and live in this county, where i expect to live and have law business done long after some of your present clients have moved away. i didn't owe the estate of john treadwell one cent--you ought to be lawyer enough to know that. he owed me money, and paid me with a note. i collected the note. i owed him money and paid it with a note. whoever heard of anybody's paying a note that wasn't presented?" "it's a poor argument, mr. fetters. you would have let those ladies starve to death before you would have come forward and paid that debt." "they've never asked me for charity, so i wasn't called on to offer it. and you know now, don't you, that if i'd paid the amount of that note, and then it had turned up afterward in somebody else's hands, i'd have had to pay it over again; now wouldn't i?" caxton could not deny it. fetters had robbed the treadwell estate, but his argument was unanswerable. "yes," said caxton, "i suppose you would." "i'm sorry for the women," said fetters, "and i've stood ready to pay that note all these years, and it ain't my fault that it hasn't been presented. now it's outlawed, and you couldn't expect a man to just give away that much money. it ain't a lawful debt, and the law's good enough for me." "you're awfully sorry for the ladies, aren't you?" said caxton, with thinly veiled sarcasm. "i surely am; i'm honestly sorry for them." "and you'd pay the note if you had to, wouldn't you?" asked caxton. "i surely would. as i say, i always pay my legal debts." "all right," said caxton triumphantly, "then you'll pay this. i filed suit against you yesterday, which takes the case out of the statute." fetters concealed his discomfiture. "well," he said, with quiet malignity, "i've nothing more to say till i consult my lawyer. but i want to tell you one thing. you are ruining a fine career by standing in with this colonel french. i hear his son was killed to-day. you can tell him i say it's a judgment on him; for i hold him responsible for my son's condition. he came down here and tried to demoralise the labour market. he put false notions in the niggers' heads. then he got to meddling with my business, trying to get away a nigger whose time i had bought. he insulted my agent turner, and came all the way down to sycamore and tried to bully me into letting the nigger loose, and of course i wouldn't be bullied. afterwards, when i offered to let the nigger go, the colonel wouldn't have it so. i shall always believe he bribed one of my men to get the nigger off, and then turned him loose to run amuck among the white people and shoot my boy and my overseer. it was a low-down performance, and unworthy of a gentleman. no really white man would treat another white man so. you can tell him i say it's a judgment that's fallen on him to-day, and that it's not the last one, and that he'll be sorrier yet that he didn't stay where he was, with his nigger-lovin' notions, instead of comin' back down here to make trouble for people that have grown up with the state and made it what it is." caxton, of course, did not deliver the message. to do so would have been worse taste than fetters had displayed in sending it. having got the best of the encounter, caxton had no objection to letting his defeated antagonist discharge his venom against the absent colonel, who would never know of it, and who was already breasting the waves of a sorrow so deep and so strong as almost to overwhelm him. for he had loved the boy; all his hopes had centred around this beautiful man child, who had promised so much that was good. his own future had been planned with reference to him. now he was dead, and the bereaved father gave way to his grief. _thirty-four_ the funeral took place next day, from the episcopal church, in which communion the little boy had been baptised, and of which old peter had always been an humble member, faithfully appearing every sunday morning in his seat in the gallery, long after the rest of his people had deserted it for churches of their own. on this occasion peter had, for the first time, a place on the main floor, a little to one side of the altar, in front of which, banked with flowers, stood the white velvet casket which contained all that was mortal of little phil. the same beautiful sermon answered for both. in touching words, the rector, a man of culture, taste and feeling, and a faithful servant of his master, spoke of the sweet young life brought to so untimely an end, and pointed the bereaved father to the best source of consolation. he paid a brief tribute to the faithful servant and humble friend, to whom, though black and lowly, the white people of the town were glad to pay this signal tribute of respect and appreciation for his heroic deed. the attendance at the funeral, while it might have been larger, was composed of the more refined and cultured of the townspeople, from whom, indeed, the church derived most of its membership and support; and the gallery overflowed with coloured people, whose hearts had warmed to the great honour thus paid to one of their race. four young white men bore phil's body and the six pallbearers of old peter were from among the best white people of the town. the double interment was made in oak cemetery. simultaneously both bodies were lowered to their last resting-place. simultaneously ashes were consigned to ashes and dust to dust. the earth was heaped above the graves. the mound above little phil's was buried with flowers, and old peter's was not neglected. beyond the cemetery wall, a few white men of the commoner sort watched the proceedings from a distance, and eyed with grim hostility the negroes who had followed the procession. they had no part nor parcel in this sentimental folly, nor did they approve of it--in fact they disapproved of it very decidedly. among them was the colonel's discharged foreman, jim green, who was pronounced in his denunciation. "colonel french is an enemy of his race," he declared to his sympathetic following. "he hires niggers when white men are idle; and pays them more than white men who work are earning. and now he is burying them with white people." when the group around the grave began to disperse, the little knot of disgruntled spectators moved sullenly away. in the evening they might have been seen, most of them, around clay jackson's barroom. turner, the foreman at fetters's convict farm, was in town that evening, and jackson's was his favourite haunt. for some reason turner was more sociable than usual, and liquor flowed freely, at his expense. there was a great deal of intemperate talk, concerning the negro in jail for shooting haines and young fetters, and concerning colonel french as the protector of negroes and the enemy of white men. _thirty-five_ at the same time that the colonel, dry-eyed and heavy-hearted, had returned to his empty house to nurse his grief, another series of events was drawing to a climax in the dilapidated house on mink run. even while the preacher was saying the last words over little phil's remains, old malcolm dudley's illness had taken a sudden and violent turn. he had been sinking for several days, but the decline had been gradual, and there had seemed no particular reason for alarm. but during the funeral exercises ben had begun to feel uneasy--some obscure premonition warned him to hurry homeward. as soon as the funeral was over he spoke to dr. price, who had been one of the pallbearers, and the doctor had promised to be at mink run in a little while. ben rode home as rapidly as he could; as he went up the lane toward the house a negro lad came forward to take charge of the tired horse, and ben could see from the boy's expression that he had important information to communicate. "yo' uncle is monst'ous low, sir," said the boy. "you bettah go in an' see 'im quick, er you'll be too late. dey ain' nobody wid 'im but ole aun' viney." ben hurried into the house and to his uncle's room, where malcolm dudley lay dying. outside, the sun was setting, and his red rays, shining through the trees into the open window, lit the stage for the last scene of this belated drama. when ben entered the room, the sweat of death had gathered on the old man's brow, but his eyes, clear with the light of reason, were fixed upon old viney, who stood by the bedside. the two were evidently so absorbed in their own thoughts as to be oblivious to anything else, and neither of them paid the slightest attention to ben, or to the scared negro lad, who had followed him and stood outside the door. but marvellous to hear, viney was talking, strangely, slowly, thickly, but passionately and distinctly. "you had me whipped," she said. "do you remember that? you had me whipped--whipped--whipped--by a poor white dog i had despised and spurned! you had said that you loved me, and you had promised to free me--and you had me whipped! but i have had my revenge!" her voice shook with passion, a passion at which ben wondered. that his uncle and she had once been young he knew, and that their relations had once been closer than those of master and servant; but this outbreak of feeling from the wrinkled old mulattress seemed as strange and weird to ben as though a stone image had waked to speech. spellbound, he stood in the doorway, and listened to this ghost of a voice long dead. "your uncle came with the money and left it, and went away. only he and i knew where it was. but i never told you! i could have spoken at any time for twenty-five years, but i never told you! i have waited--i have waited for this moment! i have gone into the woods and fields and talked to myself by the hour, that i might not forget how to talk--and i have waited my turn, and it is here and now!" ben hung breathlessly upon her words. he drew back beyond her range of vision, lest she might see him, and the spell be broken. now, he thought, she would tell where the gold was hidden! "he came," she said, "and left the gold--two heavy bags of it, and a letter for you. an hour later _he came back and took it all away_, except the letter! the money was here one hour, but in that hour you had me whipped, and for that you have spent twenty-five years in looking for nothing--something that was not here! i have had my revenge! for twenty-five years i have watched you look for--nothing; have seen you waste your time, your property, your life, your mind--for nothing! for ah, mars' ma'colm, you had me whipped--_by another man_!" a shadow of reproach crept into the old man's eyes, over which the mists of death were already gathering. "yes, viney," he whispered, "you have had your revenge! but i was sorry, viney, for what i did, and you were not. and i forgive you, viney; but you are unforgiving--even in the presence of death." his voice failed, and his eyes closed for the last time. when she saw that he was dead, by a strange revulsion of feeling the wall of outraged pride and hatred and revenge, built upon one brutal and bitterly repented mistake, and labouriously maintained for half a lifetime in her woman's heart that even slavery could not crush, crumbled and fell and let pass over it in one great and final flood the pent-up passions of the past. bursting into tears--strange tears from eyes that had long forgot to weep--old viney threw herself down upon her knees by the bedside, and seizing old malcolm's emaciated hand in both her own, covered it with kisses, fervent kisses, the ghosts of the passionate kisses of their distant youth. with a feeling that his presence was something like sacrilege, ben stole away and left her with her dead--the dead master and the dead past--and thanked god that he lived in another age, and had escaped this sin. as he wandered through the old house, a veil seemed to fall from his eyes. how old everything was, how shrunken and decayed! the sheen of the hidden gold had gilded the dilapidated old house, the neglected plantation, his own barren life. now that it was gone, things appeared in their true light. fortunately he was young enough to retrieve much of what had been lost. when the old man was buried, he would settle the estate, sell the land, make some provision for aunt viney, and then, with what was left, go out into the world and try to make a place for himself and graciella. for life intrudes its claims even into the presence of death. when the doctor came, a little later, ben went with him into the death chamber. viney was still kneeling by her master's bedside, but strangely still and silent. the doctor laid his hand on hers and old malcolm's, which had remained clasped together. "they are both dead," he declared. "i knew their story; my father told it to me many years ago." ben related what he had overheard. "i'm not surprised," said the doctor. "my father attended her when she had the stroke, and after. he always maintained that viney could speak--if she had wished to speak." _thirty-six_ the colonel's eyes were heavy with grief that night, and yet he lay awake late, and with his sorrow were mingled many consoling thoughts. the people, his people, had been kind, aye, more than kind. their warm hearts had sympathised with his grief. he had sometimes been impatient of their conservatism, their narrowness, their unreasoning pride of opinion; but in his bereavement they had manifested a feeling that it would be beautiful to remember all the days of his life. all the people, white and black, had united to honour his dead. he had wished to help them--had tried already. he had loved the town as the home of his ancestors, which enshrined their ashes. he would make of it a monument to mark his son's resting place. his fight against fetters and what he represented should take on a new character; henceforward it should be a crusade to rescue from threatened barbarism the land which contained the tombs of his loved ones. nor would he be alone in the struggle, which he now clearly foresaw would be a long one. the dear, good woman he had asked to be his wife could help him. he needed her clear, spiritual vision; and in his lifelong sorrow he would need her sympathy and companionship; for she had loved the child and would share his grief. she knew the people better than he, and was in closer touch with them; she could help him in his schemes of benevolence, and suggest new ways to benefit the people. phil's mother was buried far away, among her own people; could he consult her, he felt sure she would prefer to remain there. here she would be an alien note; and when laura died she could lie with them and still be in her own place. "have you heard the news, sir," asked the housekeeper, when he came down to breakfast the next morning. "no, mrs. hughes, what is it?" "they lynched the negro who was in jail for shooting young mr. fetters and the other man." the colonel hastily swallowed a cup of coffee and went down town. it was only a short walk. already there were excited crowds upon the street, discussing the events of the night. the colonel sought caxton, who was just entering his office. "they've done it," said the lawyer. "so i understand. when did it happen?" "about one o'clock last night. a crowd came in from sycamore--not all at once, but by twos and threes, and got together in clay johnson's saloon, with ben green, your discharged foreman, and a lot of other riffraff, and went to the sheriff, and took the keys, and took johnson and carried him out to where the shooting was, and----" "spare me the details. he is dead?" "yes." a rope, a tree--a puff of smoke, a flash of flame--or a barbaric orgy of fire and blood--what matter which? at the end there was a lump of clay, and a hundred murderers where there had been one before. "can we do anything to punish _this_ crime?" "we can try." and they tried. the colonel went to the sheriff. the sheriff said he had yielded to force, but he never would have dreamed of shooting to defend a worthless negro who had maimed a good white man, had nearly killed another, and had declared a vendetta against the white race. by noon the colonel had interviewed as many prominent men as he could find, and they became increasingly difficult to find as it became known that he was seeking them. the town, he said, had been disgraced, and should redeem itself by prosecuting the lynchers. he may as well have talked to the empty air. the trail of fetters was all over the town. some of the officials owed fetters money; others were under political obligations to him. others were plainly of the opinion that the negro got no more than he deserved; such a wretch was not fit to live. the coroner's jury returned a verdict of suicide, a grim joke which evoked some laughter. doctor mckenzie, to whom the colonel expressed his feelings, and whom he asked to throw the influence of his church upon the side of law and order, said: "it is too bad. i am sorry, but it is done. let it rest. no good can ever come of stirring it up further." later in the day there came news that the lynchers, after completing their task, had proceeded to the dudley plantation and whipped all the negroes who did not learn of their coming in time to escape, the claim being that johnson could not have maintained himself in hiding without their connivance, and that they were therefore parties to his crimes. the colonel felt very much depressed when he went to bed that night, and lay for a long time turning over in his mind the problem that confronted him. so far he had been beaten, except in the matter of the cotton mill, which was yet unfinished. his efforts in bud johnson's behalf--the only thing he had undertaken to please the woman he loved, had proved abortive. his promise to the teacher--well, he had done his part, but to no avail. he would be ashamed to meet taylor face to face. with what conscience could a white man in clarendon ever again ask a negro to disclose the name or hiding place of a coloured criminal? in the effort to punish the lynchers he stood, to all intents and purposes, single-handed and alone; and without the support of public opinion he could do nothing. the colonel was beaten, but not dismayed. perhaps god in his wisdom had taken phil away, that his father might give himself more completely and single-mindedly to the battle before him. had phil lived, a father might have hesitated to expose a child's young and impressionable mind to the things which these volcanic outbursts of passion between mismated races might cause at any unforeseen moment. now that the way was clear, he could go forward, hand in hand with the good woman who had promised to wed him, in the work he had laid out. he would enlist good people to demand better laws, under which fetters and his kind would find it harder to prey upon the weak. diligently he would work to lay wide and deep the foundations of prosperity, education and enlightenment, upon which should rest justice, humanity and civic righteousness. in this he would find a worthy career. patiently would he await the results of his labours, and if they came not in great measure in his own lifetime, he would be content to know that after years would see their full fruition. so that night he sat down and wrote a long answer to kirby's letter, in which he told him of phil's death and burial, and his own grief. something there was, too, of his plans for the future, including his marriage to a good woman who would help him in them. kirby, he said, had offered him a golden opportunity for which he thanked him heartily. the scheme was good enough for any one to venture upon. but to carry out his own plans, would require that he invest his money in the state of his residence, where there were many openings for capital that could afford to wait upon development for large returns. he sent his best regards to mrs. jerviss, and his assurance that kirby's plan was a good one. perhaps kirby and she alone could handle it; if not, there must be plenty of money elsewhere for so good a thing. he sealed the letter, and laid it aside to be mailed in the morning. to his mind it had all the force of a final renunciation, a severance of the last link that bound him to his old life. long the colonel lay thinking, after he retired to rest, and the muffled striking of the clock downstairs had marked the hour of midnight ere he fell asleep. and he had scarcely dozed away, when he was awakened by a scraping noise, as though somewhere in the house a heavy object was being drawn across the floor. the sound was not repeated, however, and thinking it some trick of the imagination, he soon slept again. as the colonel slept this second time, he dreamed of a regenerated south, filled with thriving industries, and thronged with a prosperous and happy people, where every man, having enough for his needs, was willing that every other man should have the same; where law and order should prevail unquestioned, and where every man could enter, through the golden gate of hope, the field of opportunity, where lay the prizes of life, which all might have an equal chance to win or lose. for even in his dreams the colonel's sober mind did not stray beyond the bounds of reason and experience. that all men would ever be equal he did not even dream; there would always be the strong and the weak, the wise and the foolish. but that each man, in his little life in this our little world might be able to make the most of himself, was an ideal which even the colonel's waking hours would not have repudiated. following this pleasing thread with the unconscious rapidity of dreams, the colonel passed, in a few brief minutes, through a long and useful life to a happy end, when he too rested with his fathers, by the side of his son, and on his tomb was graven what was said of ben adhem: "here lies one who loved his fellow men," and the further words, "and tried to make them happy." * * * * * shortly after dawn there was a loud rapping at the colonel's door: "come downstairs and look on de piazza, colonel," said the agitated voice of the servant who had knocked. "come quick, suh." there was a vague terror in the man's voice that stirred the colonel strangely. he threw on a dressing gown and hastened downstairs, and to the front door of the hall, which stood open. a handsome mahogany burial casket, stained with earth and disfigured by rough handling, rested upon the floor of the piazza, where it had been deposited during the night. conspicuously nailed to the coffin lid was a sheet of white paper, upon which were some lines rudely scrawled in a handwriting that matched the spelling: _kurnell french_: _take notis. berry yore ole nigger somewhar else. he can't stay in oak semitury. the majority of the white people of this town, who dident tend yore nigger funarl, woant have him there. niggers by there selves, white peepul by there selves, and them that lives in our town must bide by our rules._ _by order of_ cumitty. the colonel left the coffin standing on the porch, where it remained all day, an object of curious interest to the scores and hundreds who walked by to look at it, for the news spread quickly through the town. no one, however, came in. if there were those who reprobated the action they were silent. the mob spirit, which had broken out in the lynching of johnson, still dominated the town, and no one dared to speak against it. as soon as colonel french had dressed and breakfasted, he drove over to the cemetery. those who had exhumed old peter's remains had not been unduly careful. the carelessly excavated earth had been scattered here and there over the lot. the flowers on old peter's grave and that of little phil had been trampled under foot--whether wantonly or not, inevitably, in the execution of the ghoulish task. the colonel's heart hardened as he stood by his son's grave. then he took a long lingering look at the tombs of his ancestors and turned away with an air of finality. from the cemetery he went to the undertaker's, and left an order; thence to the telegraph office, from which he sent a message to his former partner in new york; and thence to the treadwells'. _thirty-seven_ miss laura came forward with outstretched hands and tear-stained eyes to greet him. "henry," she exclaimed, "i am shocked and sorry, i cannot tell you how much! nor do i know what else to say, except that the best people do not--cannot--could not--approve of it!" "the best people, laura," he said with a weary smile, "are an abstraction. when any deviltry is on foot they are never there to prevent it--they vanish into thin air at its approach. when it is done, they excuse it; and they make no effort to punish it. so it is not too much to say that what they permit they justify, and they cannot shirk the responsibility. to mar the living--it is the history of life--but to make war upon the dead!--i am going away, laura, never to return. my dream of usefulness is over. to-night i take away my dead and shake the dust of clarendon from my feet forever. will you come with me?" "henry," she said, and each word tore her heart, "i have been expecting this--since i heard. but i cannot go; my duty calls me here. my mother could not be happy anywhere else, nor would i fit into any other life. and here, too, i am useful--and may still be useful--and should be missed. i know your feelings, and would not try to keep you. but, oh, henry, if all of those who love justice and practise humanity should go away, what would become of us?" "i leave to-night," he returned, "and it is your right to go with me, or to come to me." "no, henry, nor am i sure that you would wish me to. it was for the old town's sake that you loved me. i was a part of your dream--a part of the old and happy past, upon which you hoped to build, as upon the foundations of the old mill, a broader and a fairer structure. do you remember what you told me, that night--that happy night--that you loved me because in me you found the embodiment of an ideal? well, henry, that is why i did not wish to make our engagement known, for i knew, i felt, the difficulty of your task, and i foresaw that you might be disappointed, and i feared that if your ideal should be wrecked, you might find me a burden. i loved you, henry--i seem to have always loved you, but i would not burden you." "no, no, laura--not so! not so!" "and you wanted me for phil's sake, whom we both loved; and now that your dream is over, and phil is gone, i should only remind you of where you lost him, and of your disappointment, and of--this other thing, and i could not be sure that you loved me or wanted me." "surely you cannot doubt it, laura?" his voice was firm, but to her sensitive spirit it did not carry conviction. "you remembered me from my youth," she continued tremulously but bravely, "and it was the image in your memory that you loved. and now, when you go away, the old town will shrink and fade from your memory and your heart and you will have none but harsh thoughts of it; nor can i blame you greatly, for you have grown far away from us, and we shall need many years to overtake you. nor do you need me, henry--i am too old to learn new ways, and elsewhere than here i should be a hindrance to you rather than a help. but in the larger life to which you go, think of me now and then as one who loves you still, and who will try, in her poor way, with such patience as she has, to carry on the work which you have begun, and which you--oh, henry!" he divined her thought, though her tear-filled eyes spoke sorrow rather than reproach. "yes," he said sadly, "which i have abandoned. yes, laura, abandoned, fully and forever." the colonel was greatly moved, but his resolution remained unshaken. "laura," he said, taking both her hands in his, "i swear that i should be glad to have you with me. come away! the place is not fit for you to live in!" "no, henry! it cannot be! i could not go! my duty holds me here! god would not forgive me if i abandoned it. go your way; live your life. marry some other woman, if you must, who will make you happy. but i shall keep, henry--nothing can ever take away from me--the memory of one happy summer." "no, no, laura, it need not be so! i shall write you. you'll think better of it. but i go to-night--not one hour longer than i must, will i remain in this town. i must bid your mother and graciella good-bye." he went into the house. mrs. treadwell was excited and sorry, and would have spoken at length, but the colonel's farewells were brief. "i cannot stop to say more than good-bye, dear mrs. treadwell. i have spent a few happy months in my old home, and now i am going away. laura will tell you the rest." graciella was tearfully indignant. "it was a shame!" she declared. "peter was a good old nigger, and it wouldn't have done anybody any harm to leave him there. i'd rather be buried beside old peter than near any of the poor white trash that dug him up--so there! i'm so sorry you're going away; but i hope, sometime," she added stoutly, "to see you in new york! don't forget!" "i'll send you my address," said the colonel. _thirty-eight_ it was a few weeks later. old ralph dudley and viney had been buried. ben dudley had ridden in from mink run, had hitched his horse in the back yard as usual, and was seated on the top step of the piazza beside graciella. his elbows rested on his knees, and his chin upon his hand. graciella had unconsciously imitated his drooping attitude. both were enshrouded in the deepest gloom, and had been sunk, for several minutes, in a silence equally profound. graciella was the first to speak. "well, then," she said with a deep sigh, "there is absolutely nothing left?" "not a thing," he groaned hopelessly, "except my horse and my clothes, and a few odds and ends which belong to me. fetters will have the land--there's not enough to pay the mortgages against it, and i'm in debt for the funeral expenses." "and what are you going to do?" "gracious knows--i wish i did! i came over to consult the family. i have no trade, no profession, no land and no money. i can get a job at braking on the railroad--or may be at clerking in a store. i'd have asked the colonel for something in the mill--but that chance is gone." "gone," echoed graciella, gloomily. "i see my fate! i shall marry you, because i can't help loving you, and couldn't live without you; and i shall never get to new york, but be, all my life, a poor man's wife--a poor white man's wife." "no, graciella, we might be poor, but not poor-white! our blood will still be of the best." "it will be all the same. blood without money may count for one generation, but it won't hold out for two." they relapsed into a gloom so profound, so rayless, that they might almost be said to have reveled in it. it was lightened, or at least a diversion was created by miss laura's opening the garden gate and coming up the walk. ben rose as she approached, and graciella looked up. "i have been to the post-office," said miss laura. "here is a letter for you, ben, addressed in my care. it has the new york postmark." "thank you, miss laura." eagerly ben's hand tore the envelope and drew out the enclosure. swiftly his eyes devoured the lines; they were typewritten and easy to follow. "glory!" he shouted, "glory hallelujah! listen!" he read the letter aloud, while graciella leaned against his shoulder and feasted her eyes upon the words. the letter was from colonel french: _"my dear ben_: _i was very much impressed with the model of a cotton gin and press which i saw you exhibit one day at mrs. treadwells'. you have a fine genius for mechanics, and the model embodies, i think, a clever idea, which is worth working up. if your uncle's death has left you free to dispose of your time, i should like to have you come on to new york with the model, and we will take steps to have the invention patented at once, and form a company for its manufacture. as an evidence of good faith, i enclose my draft for five hundred dollars, which can be properly accounted for in our future arrangements._" "o ben!" gasped graciella, in one long drawn out, ecstatic sigh. "o graciella!" exclaimed ben, as he threw his arms around her and kissed her rapturously, regardless of miss laura's presence. "now you can go to new york as soon as you like!" _thirty-nine_ colonel french took his dead to the north, and buried both the little boy and the old servant in the same lot with his young wife, and in the shadow of the stately mausoleum which marked her resting-place. there, surrounded by the monuments of the rich and the great, in a beautiful cemetery, which overlooks a noble harbour where the ships of all nations move in endless procession, the body of the faithful servant rests beside that of the dear little child whom he unwittingly lured to his death and then died in the effort to save. and in all the great company of those who have laid their dead there in love or in honour, there is none to question old peter's presence or the colonel's right to lay him there. sometimes, at night, a ray of light from the uplifted torch of the statue of liberty, the gift of a free people to a free people, falls athwart the white stone which marks his resting place--fit prophecy and omen of the day when the sun of liberty shall shine alike upon all men. when the colonel went away from clarendon, he left his affairs in caxton's hands, with instructions to settle them up as expeditiously as possible. the cotton mill project was dropped, and existing contracts closed on the best terms available. fetters paid the old note--even he would not have escaped odium for so bare-faced a robbery--and mrs. treadwell's last days could be spent in comfort and miss laura saved from any fear for her future, and enabled to give more freely to the poor and needy. barclay fetters recovered the use of one eye, and embittered against the whole negro race by his disfigurement, went into public life and devoted his talents and his education to their debasement. the colonel had relented sufficiently to contemplate making over to miss laura the old family residence in trust for use as a hospital, with a suitable fund for its maintenance, but it unfortunately caught fire and burned down--and he was hardly sorry. he sent catherine, bud johnson's wife, a considerable sum of money, and she bought a gorgeous suit of mourning, and after a decent interval consoled herself with a new husband. and he sent word to the committee of coloured men to whom he had made a definite promise, that he would be ready to fulfil his obligation in regard to their school whenever they should have met the conditions. * * * * * one day, a year or two after leaving clarendon, as the colonel, in company with mrs. french, formerly a member of his firm, now his partner in a double sense--was riding upon a fast train between new york and chicago, upon a trip to visit a western mine in which the reorganised french and company, limited, were interested, he noticed that the pullman car porter, a tall and stalwart negro, was watching him furtively from time to time. upon one occasion, when the colonel was alone in the smoking-room, the porter addressed him. "excuse me, suh," he said, "i've been wondering ever since we left new york, if you wa'n't colonel french?" "yes, i'm mr. french--colonel french, if you want it so." "i 'lowed it must be you, suh, though you've changed the cut of your beard, and are looking a little older, suh. i don't suppose you remember me?" "i've seen you somewhere," said the colonel--no longer the colonel, but like the porter, let us have it so. "where was it?" "i'm henry taylor, suh, that used to teach school at clarendon. i reckon you remember me now." "yes," said the colonel sadly, "i remember you now, taylor, to my sorrow. i didn't keep my word about johnson, did i?" "oh, yes, suh," replied the porter, "i never doubted but what you'd keep your word. but you see, suh, they were too many for you. there ain't no one man can stop them folks down there when they once get started." "and what are you doing here, taylor?" "well, suh, the fact is that after you went away, it got out somehow that i had told on bud johnson. i don't know how they learned it, and of course i knew you didn't tell it; but somebody must have seen me going to your house, or else some of my enemies guessed it--and happened to guess right--and after that the coloured folks wouldn't send their children to me, and i lost my job, and wasn't able to get another anywhere in the state. the folks said i was an enemy of my race, and, what was more important to me, i found that my race was an enemy to me. so i got out, suh, and i came no'th, hoping to find somethin' better. this is the best job i've struck yet, but i'm hoping that sometime or other i'll find something worth while." "and what became of the industrial school project?" asked the colonel. "i've stood ready to keep my promise, and more, but i never heard from you." "well, suh, after you went away the enthusiasm kind of died out, and some of the white folks throwed cold water on it, and it fell through, suh." when the porter came along, before the train reached chicago, the colonel offered taylor a handsome tip. "thank you, suh," said the porter, "but i'd rather not take it. i'm a porter now, but i wa'n't always one, and hope i won't always be one. and during all the time i taught school in clarendon, you was the only white man that ever treated me quite like a man--and our folks just like people--and if you won't think i'm presuming, i'd rather not take the money." the colonel shook hands with him, and took his address. shortly afterward he was able to find him something better than menial employment, where his education would give him an opportunity for advancement. taylor is fully convinced that his people will never get very far along in the world without the good will of the white people, but he is still wondering how they will secure it. for he regards colonel french as an extremely fortunate accident. * * * * * and so the colonel faltered, and, having put his hand to the plow, turned back. but was not his, after all, the only way? for no more now than when the man of sorrows looked out over the mount of olives, can men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. the seed which the colonel sowed seemed to fall by the wayside, it is true; but other eyes have seen with the same light, and while fetters and his kind still dominate their section, other hands have taken up the fight which the colonel dropped. in manufactures the south has gone forward by leaps and bounds. the strong arm of the government, guided by a wise and just executive, has been reached out to crush the poisonous growth of peonage, and men hitherto silent have raised their voices to commend. here and there a brave judge has condemned the infamy of the chain-gang and convict lease systems. good men, north and south, have banded themselves together to promote the cause of popular education. slowly, like all great social changes, but visibly, to the eye of faith, is growing up a new body of thought, favourable to just laws and their orderly administration. in this changed attitude of mind lies the hope of the future, the hope of the republic. but clarendon has had its chance, nor seems yet to have had another. other towns, some not far from it, lying nearer the main lines of travel, have been swept into the current of modern life, but not yet clarendon. there the grass grows thicker in the streets. the meditative cows still graze in the vacant lot between the post-office and the bank, where the public library was to stand. the old academy has grown more dilapidated than ever, and a large section of plaster has fallen from the wall, carrying with it the pencil drawing made in the colonel's schooldays; and if miss laura treadwell sees that the graves of the old frenches are not allowed to grow up in weeds and grass, the colonel knows nothing of it. the pigs and the loafers--leaner pigs and lazier loafers--still sleep in the shade, when the pound keeper and the constable are not active. the limpid water of the creek still murmurs down the slope and ripples over the stone foundation of what was to have been the new dam, while the birds have nested for some years in the vines that soon overgrew the unfinished walls of the colonel's cotton mill. white men go their way, and black men theirs, and these ways grow wider apart, and no one knows the outcome. but there are those who hope, and those who pray, that this condition will pass, that some day our whole land will be truly free, and the strong will cheerfully help to bear the burdens of the weak, and justice, the seed, and peace, the flower, of liberty, will prevail throughout all our borders. * * * * * +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | page : resposeful replaced with reposeful | | page : retrogade replaced with retrograde | | page : h'anted replaced with ha'nted | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ [transcriber's note: obvious printer's errors have been corrected, author's spelling has been retained. --missing page numbers correspond to illustration or blank pages.] integration of the armed forces - _defense studies series_ integration of the armed forces - _by_ _morris j. macgregor, jr._ _defense historical studies committee_ (as of april ) alfred goldberg office of the secretary of defense robert j. watson historical division, joint chiefs of staff brig. gen. james l. collins, jr. chief of military history maj. gen. john w. huston chief of air force history maurice matloff center of military history stanley l. falk office of air force history rear adm. john d. h. kane, jr. director of naval history brig. gen. (ret.) edwin h. simmons director of marine corps history and museums dean c. allard naval historical center henry j. shaw, jr. marine corps historical center library of congress cataloging in publication data macgregor, morris j integration of the armed forces, - (defense studies series) includes bibliographical references and index. supt. of docs. no.: d . :in / - . afro-american soldiers. . united states--race relations. i. title. ii. series. ub .a m . ' - _department of the army_ _historical advisory committee_ (as of april ) otis a. singletary university of kentucky maj. gen. robert c. hixon u.s. army training and doctrine command brig. gen. robert arter u.s. army command and general staff college sara d. jackson national historical publications and records commission harry l. coles ohio state university maj. gen. enrique mendez, jr. deputy surgeon general, usa robert h. ferrell indiana university james o'neill deputy archivist of the united states cyrus h. fraker the adjutant general center benjamin quarles morgan state college william h. goetzmann university of texas brig. gen. alfred l. sanderson army war college col. thomas e. griess u.s. military academy russell f. weigley temple university foreword the integration of the armed forces was a momentous event in our military and national history; it represented a milestone in the development of the armed forces and the fulfillment of the democratic ideal. the existence of integrated rather than segregated armed forces is an important factor in our military establishment today. the experiences in world war ii and the postwar pressures generated by the civil rights movement compelled all the services--army, navy, air force, and marine corps--to reexamine their traditional practices of segregation. while there were differences in the ways that the services moved toward integration, all were subject to the same demands, fears, and prejudices and had the same need to use their resources in a more rational and economical way. all of them reached the same conclusion: traditional attitudes toward minorities must give way to democratic concepts of civil rights. if the integration of the armed services now seems to have been inevitable in a democratic society, it nevertheless faced opposition that had to be overcome and problems that had to be solved through the combined efforts of political and civil rights leaders and civil and military officials. in many ways the military services were at the cutting edge in the struggle for racial equality. this volume sets forth the successive measures they and the office of the secretary of defense took to meet the challenges of a new era in a critically important area of human relationships, during a period of transition that saw the advance of blacks in the social and economic order as well as in the military. it is fitting that this story should be told in the first volume of a new defense studies series. the defense historical studies program was authorized by the then deputy secretary of defense, cyrus vance, in april . it is conducted under the auspices of the defense historical studies group, an _ad hoc_ body chaired by the historian of the office of the secretary of defense and consisting of the senior officials in the historical offices of the services and of the joint chiefs of staff. volumes produced under its sponsorship will be interservice histories, covering matters of mutual interest to the army, navy, air force, marine corps, and the joint chiefs of staff. the preparation of each volume is entrusted to one of the service historical sections, in this case the army's center of military history. although the book was written by an army historian, he was generously given access to the pertinent records of the other services and the office of the secretary of defense, and this initial volume in the defense studies series covers the experiences of all components of the department of defense in achieving integration. washington, d.c. james l. collins, jr. march brigadier general, usa chief of military history the author morris j. macgregor, jr., received the a.b. and m.a. degrees in history from the catholic university of america. he continued his graduate studies at the johns hopkins university and the university of paris on a fulbright grant. before joining the staff of the u.s. army center of military history in he served for ten years in the historical division of the joint chiefs of staff. he has written several studies for military publications including "armed forces integration--forced or free?" in _the military and society: proceedings of the fifth military symposium of the u.s. air force academy_. he is the coeditor with bernard c. nalty of the thirteen-volume _blacks in the united states armed forces: basic documents_ and with ronald spector of _voices of history: interpretations in american military history_. he is currently working on a sequel to _integration of the armed forces_ which will also appear in the defense studies series. preface (p. ix) this book describes the fall of the legal, administrative, and social barriers to the black american's full participation in the military service of his country. it follows the changing status of the black serviceman from the eve of world war ii, when he was excluded from many military activities and rigidly segregated in the rest, to that period a quarter of a century later when the department of defense extended its protection of his rights and privileges even to the civilian community. to round out the story of open housing for members of the military, i briefly overstep the closing date given in the title. the work is essentially an administrative history that attempts to measure the influence of several forces, most notably the civil rights movement, the tradition of segregated service, and the changing concept of military efficiency, on the development of racial policies in the armed forces. it is not a history of all minorities in the services. nor is it an account of how the black american responded to discrimination. a study of racial attitudes, both black and white, in the military services would be a valuable addition to human knowledge, but practically impossible of accomplishment in the absence of sufficient autobiographical accounts, oral history interviews, and detailed sociological measurements. how did the serviceman view his condition, how did he convey his desire for redress, and what was his reaction to social change? even now the answers to these questions are blurred by time and distorted by emotions engendered by the civil rights revolution. few citizens, black or white, who witnessed it can claim immunity to the influence of that paramount social phenomenon of our times. at times i do generalize on the attitudes of both black and white servicemen and the black and white communities at large as well. but i have permitted myself to do so only when these attitudes were clearly pertinent to changes in the services' racial policies and only when the written record supported, or at least did not contradict, the memory of those participants who had been interviewed. in any case this study is largely history written from the top down and is based primarily on the written records left by the administrations of five presidents and by civil rights leaders, service officials, and the press. many of the attitudes and expressions voiced by the participants in the story are now out of fashion. the reader must be constantly on guard against viewing the beliefs and statements of many civilian and military officials out of context of the times in which they were expressed. neither bigotry nor stupidity was the monopoly of some of the people quoted; their statements are important for what they tell us about certain attitudes of our society rather than for what they reveal about any individual. if the methods or attitudes of some (p. x) of the black spokesmen appear excessively tame to those who have lived through the 's, they too should be gauged in the context of the times. if their statements and actions shunned what now seems the more desirable, albeit radical, course, it should be given them that the style they adopted appeared in those days to be the most promising for racial progress. the words _black_ and _negro_ have been used interchangeably in the book, with negro generally as a noun and black as an adjective. aware of differing preferences in the black community for usage of these words, the author was interested in comments from early readers of the manuscript. some of the participants in the story strongly objected to one word or the other. "do me one favor in return for my help," lt. comdr. dennis d. nelson said, "never call me a black." rear adm. gerald e. thomas, on the other hand, suggested that the use of the term negro might repel readers with much to learn about their recent past. still others thought that the historian should respect the usage of the various periods covered in the story, a solution that would have left the volume with the term _colored_ for most of the earlier chapters and negro for much of the rest. with rare exception, the term black does not appear in twentieth century military records before the late 's. fashions in words change, and it is only for the time being perhaps that black and negro symbolize different attitudes. the author has used the words as synonyms and trusts that the reader will accept them as such. professor john hope franklin, mrs. sara jackson of the national archives, and the historians and officials that constituted the review panel went along with this approach. the second question of usage concerns the words _integration_ and _desegregation_. in recent years many historians have come to distinguish between these like-sounding words. desegregation they see as a direct action against segregation; that is, it signifies the act of removing legal barriers to the equal treatment of black citizens as guaranteed by the constitution. the movement toward desegregation, breaking down the nation's jim crow system, became increasingly popular in the decade after world war ii. integration, on the other hand, professor oscar handlin maintains, implies several things not yet necessarily accepted in all areas of american society. in one sense it refers to the "leveling of all barriers to association other than those based on ability, taste, and personal preference";[ ] in other words, providing equal opportunity. but in another sense integration calls for the random distribution of a minority throughout society. here, according to handlin, the emphasis is on racial balance in areas of occupation, education, residency, and the like. [footnote : oscar handlin, "the goals of integration," _daedalus _ (winter ): .] from the beginning the military establishment rightly understood that the breakup of the all-black unit would in a closed society necessarily mean more than mere desegregation. it constantly used the terms integration and equal treatment and opportunity to describe its racial goals. rarely, if ever, does one find the word desegregation in military files that include much correspondence from the various (p. xi) civil rights organizations. that the military made the right choice, this study seems to demonstrate, for the racial goals of the defense department, as they slowly took form over a quarter of a century, fulfilled both of professor handlin's definitions of integration. the mid- 's saw the end of a long and important era in the racial history of the armed forces. although the services continued to encounter racial problems, these problems differed radically in several essentials from those of the integration period considered in this volume. yet there is a continuity to the story of race relations, and one can hope that the story of how an earlier generation struggled so that black men and women might serve their country in freedom inspires those in the services who continue to fight discrimination. this study benefited greatly from the assistance of a large number of persons during its long years of preparation. stetson conn, chief historian of the army, proposed the book as an interservice project. his successor, maurice matloff, forced to deal with the complexities of an interservice project, successfully guided the manuscript through to publication. the work was carried out under the general supervision of robert r. smith, chief of the general history branch. he and robert w. coakley, deputy chief historian of the army, were the primary reviewers of the manuscript, and its final form owes much to their advice and attention. the author also profited greatly from the advice of the official review panel, which, under the chairmanship of alfred goldberg, historian, office of the secretary of defense, included martin blumenson; general j. lawton collins (usa ret.); lt. gen. benjamin o. davis, jr. (usaf ret.); roy k. davenport, former deputy assistant secretary of the army; stanley l. falk, chief historian of the air force; vice adm. e. b. hooper, chief of naval history; professor benjamin quarles; paul j. scheips, historian, center of military history; henry i. shaw, chief historian of the u.s. marine corps; loretto c. stevens, senior editor of the center of military history; robert j. watson, chief historian of the joint chiefs of staff; and adam yarmolinsky, former assistant to the secretary of defense. many of the participants in this story generously shared their knowledge with me and kindly reviewed my efforts. my footnotes acknowledge my debt to them. nevertheless, two are singled out here for special mention. james c. evans, former counselor to the secretary of defense for racial affairs, has been an endless source of information on race relations in the military. if i sometimes disagreed with his interpretations and assessments, i never doubted his total dedication to the cause of the black serviceman. i owe a similar debt to lt. comdr. dennis d. nelson (usn ret.) for sharing his intimate understanding of race relations in the navy. a resourceful man with a sure social touch, he must have been one hell of a sailor. i want to note the special contribution of several historians. martin blumenson was first assigned to this project, and before leaving the center of military history he assembled research material that proved most helpful. my former colleague john bernard corr prepared a study on the national guard upon which my account of the guard is based. in addition, he patiently reviewed many pages of the draft (p. xii) manuscript. his keen insights and sensitive understanding were invaluable to me. professors jack d. foner and marie carolyn klinkhammer provided particularly helpful suggestions in conjunction with their reviews of the manuscript. samuel b. warner, who before his untimely death was a historian in the joint chiefs of staff as well as a colleague of lee nichols on some of that reporter's civil rights investigations, also contributed generously of his talents and lent his support in the early days of my work. finally, i am grateful for the advice of my colleague ronald h. spector at several key points in the preparation of this history. i have received much help from archivists and librarians, especially the resourceful william h. cunliffe and lois aldridge (now retired) of the national archives and dean c. allard of the naval historical center. although the fruits of their scholarship appear often in my footnotes, three fellow researchers in the field deserve special mention: maj. alan m. osur and lt. col. alan l. gropman of the u.s. air force and ralph w. donnelly, former member of the u.s. marine corps historical center. i have benefited from our exchange of ideas and have had the advantage of their reviews of the manuscript. i am especially grateful for the generous assistance of my editors, loretto c. stevens and barbara h. gilbert. they have been both friends and teachers. in the same vein, i wish to thank john elsberg for his editorial counsel. i also appreciate the help given by william g. bell in the selection of the illustrations, including the loan of two rare items from his personal collection, and arthur s. hardyman for preparing the pictures for publication. i would like to thank mary lee treadway and wyvetra b. yeldell for preparing the manuscript for panel review and terrence j. gough for his helpful pre-publication review. finally, while no friend or relative was spared in the long years i worked on this book, three colleagues especially bore with me through days of doubts and frustrations and shared my small triumphs: alfred m. beck, ernest f. fisher, jr., and paul j. scheips. i also want particularly to thank col. james w. dunn. i only hope that some of their good sense and sunny optimism show through these pages. washington, d.c. morris j. macgregor, jr. march contents (p. xiii) _chapter_ _page_ . introduction............................................. _the armed forces before _............................ _civil rights and the law in _........................ _to segregate is to discriminate_........................ . world war ii: the army.................................. _a war policy: reaffirming segregation_.................. _segregation and efficiency_............................. _the need for change_.................................... _internal reform: amending racial practices_............. _two exceptions_......................................... . world war ii: the navy.................................. _development of a wartime policy_........................ _a segregated navy_...................................... _progressive experiments_................................ _forrestal takes the helm_............................... . world war ii: the marine corps and the coast guard...... _the first black marines_............................... _new roles for black coast guardsmen_................... . a postwar search....................................... _black demands_......................................... _the army's grand review_............................... _the navy's informal inspection_........................ . new directions......................................... _the gillem board report_............................... _integration of the general service_.................... _the marine corps_...................................... . a problem of quotas.................................... _the quota in practice_................................. _broader opportunities_................................. _assignments_........................................... _a new approach_........................................ _the quota system: an assessment_....................... . segregation's consequences............................. _discipline and morale among black troops_.............. _improving the status of the segregated soldier_........ _discrimination and the postwar army_................... (p. xiv) _segregation in theory and practice_.................... _segregation: an assessment_............................ . the postwar navy....................................... _the steward's branch_.................................. _black officers_........................................ _public image and the problem of numbers_............... . the postwar marine corps.............................. _racial quotas and assignments_......................... _recruitment_........................................... _segregation and efficiency_............................ _toward integration_.................................... . the postwar air force................................. _segregation and efficiency_............................ _impulse for change_.................................... . the president intervenes.............................. _the truman administration and civil rights_............ _civil rights and the department of defense_............ _executive order _.................................. . service interests versus presidential intent.......... _public reaction to executive order _............... _the army: segregation on the defensive_................ _a different approach_.................................. _the navy: business as usual_........................... _adjustments in the marine corps_....................... _the air force plans for limited integration_........... . the fahy committee versus the department of defense... _the committee's recommendations_....................... _a summer of discontent_................................ _assignments_........................................... _quotas_................................................ _an assessment_......................................... . the role of the secretary of defense, - ....... _overseas restrictions_................................. _congressional concerns_................................ . integration in the air force and the navy............. _the air force, - _.............................. _the navy and executive order _..................... . the army integrates................................... _race and efficiency: _............................. _training_.............................................. _performance of segregated units_....................... _final arguments_....................................... _integration of the eighth army_........................ _integration of the european and continental commands_.. (p. xv) . integration of the marine corps....................... _impetus for change_.................................... _assignments_........................................... . a new era begins...................................... _the civil rights revolution_........................... _limitations on executive order _................... _integration of navy shipyards_......................... _dependent children and integrated schools_............. . limited response to discrimination.................... _the kennedy administration and civil rights_........... _the department of defense, - _.................. _discrimination off the military reservation_........... _reserves and regulars: a comparison_................... . equal treatment and opportunity redefined............. _the secretary makes a decision_........................ _the gesell committee_.................................. _reaction to a new commitment_.......................... _the gesell committee: final report_.................... . equal opportunity in the military community........... _creating a civil rights apparatus_..................... _fighting discrimination within the services_........... . from voluntary compliance to sanctions................ _development of voluntary action programs_.............. _civil rights, - _............................... _the civil rights act and voluntary compliance_......... _the limits of voluntary compliance_.................... . conclusion............................................ _why the services integrated_........................... _how the services integrated, - _................ _equal treatment and opportunity_....................... note on sources........................................... index..................................................... illustrations crewmen of the uss _miami_ during the civil war............. buffalo soldiers............................................ integration in the army of ............................. gunner's gang on the uss _maine_........................... (p. xvi) general john j. (black jack) pershing inspects troops...... heroes of the th infantry, february ................ judge william h. hastie.................................... general george c. marshall and secretary of war henry l. stimson............................................... engineer construction troops in liberia, july ......... labor battalion troops in the aleutian islands, may ... sergeant addressing the line............................... pilots of the d fighter group........................... service club, fort huachuca................................ d division troops in bougainville, april ............ gun crew of battery b, th field artillery, september ........................................... tankers of the st medium tank battalion prepare for action................................................... waac replacements.......................................... volunteers for combat in training.......................... road repairmen............................................. mess attendant, first class, dorie miller addressing recruits at camp smalls.................................. admiral ernest j. king and secretary of the navy frank knox..................................................... crew members of uss _argonaut_, pearl harbor, ......... messmen volunteer as gunners, july .................... electrician mates string power lines....................... laborers at naval ammunition depot......................... seabees in the south pacific............................... lt. comdr. christopher s. sargent.......................... uss _mason_................................................ first black officers in the navy........................... lt. (jg.) harriet ida pickens and ens. frances wills....... sailors in the general service............................. security watch in the marianas............................. specialists repair aircraft................................ the d special construction battalion celebrates v-j day.. marines of the st defense battalion, montford point, ............................................. shore party in training, camp lejeune, ............... d-day on peleliu.......................................... medical attendants at rest, peleliu, october ......... gun crew of the d defense battalion..................... crewmen of uscg lifeboat station, pea island, north carolina................................................ coast guard recruits at manhattan beach training station, new york....................................... stewards at battle station on the cutter _campbell_....... shore leave in scotland................................... lt. comdr. carlton skinner and crew of the uss _sea cloud_............................................. ens. joseph j. jenkins and lt. (jg.) clarence samuels..... president harry s. truman addressing the naacp convention.............................................. assistant secretary of war john j. mccloy................. civilian aide to the secretary of war truman k. gibson.... (p. xvii) company i, th infantry, d division, advances through cascina, italy.................................. d division engineers prepare a ford for arno river traffic................................................. lester granger interviewing sailors....................... granger with crewmen of a naval yard craft................ lt. gen. alvan c. gillem, u.s. army....................... secretary of war robert p. patterson...................... admiral louis e. denfeld, u.s. navy....................... general gerald c. thomas, u.s. marine corps............... lt. gen. willard s. paul.................................. adviser to the secretary of war marcus ray................ lt. gen. robert l. eichelberger inspects th infantry troops.................................................. army specialists report for airborne training............. bridge players, seaview service club, tokyo, japan, ............................................. th infantry band, gifu, japan, ..................... lt. gen. clarence r. huebner inspects the th military police company................................. reporting to kitzingen.................................... inspection by the chief of staff.......................... brig. gen. benjamin o. davis, sr.......................... shore leave in korea...................................... mess attendants, uss _bushnell_, ..................... mess attendants, uss _wisconsin_, .................... lt. comdr. dennis d. nelson ii............................ naval unit passes in review, naval advanced base, bremerhaven, germany.................................... submariner................................................ marine artillery team..................................... d lt. and mrs. frederick c. branch....................... training exercises........................................ damage inspection......................................... col. noel f. parrish...................................... officers' softball team................................... checking ammunition....................................... squadron f, th aaf battalion, in review................ col. benjamin o. davis, jr., commander, th composite group, ............................................. lt. gen. idwal h. edwards................................. col. jack f. marr......................................... walter f. white........................................... truman's civil rights campaign............................ a. philip randolph........................................ national defense conference on negro affairs, april .................................................... mp's hitch a ride......................................... secretary of the army kenneth c. royall reviews military police battalion............................... spring formal dance, fort george g. meade, maryland, .......................................... secretary of defense james v. forrestal................... general clifton b. cates.................................. (p. xviii) st marine division drill team on exhibition.............. secretary of the air force w. stuart symington............ secretary of defense louis c. johnson..................... fahy committee with president truman and armed services secretaries............................................. e. w. kenworthy........................................... charles fahy.............................................. roy k. davenport.......................................... press notice.............................................. secretary of the army gordon gray......................... chief of staff of the army j. lawton collins.............. "no longer a dream"....................................... navy corpsman in korea.................................... th division troops in japan............................. assistant secretary of defense anna m. rosenberg.......... assistant secretary of the air force eugene m. zuckert.... music makers.............................................. maintenance crew, d strategic fighter squadron......... jet mechanics............................................. christmas in korea, .................................. rearming at sea........................................... broadening skills......................................... integrated stewards class graduates, great lakes, .... wave recruits, naval training center, bainbridge, maryland, .......................................... rear adm. samuel l. gravely, jr........................... moving up................................................. men of battery a, th field artillery battalion......... survivors of an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon, th infantry.................................. general matthew b. ridgway, far east commander............ machine gunners of company l, th infantry, hill , korea................................................... color guard, th infantry, korea, .................. visit with the commander.................................. brothers under the skin................................... marines on the kansas line, korea......................... marine reinforcements..................................... training exercises on iwo jima, march ................ marines from camp lejeune................................. lt. col. frank e. petersen, jr............................ sergeant major edgar r. huff.............................. clarence mitchell......................................... congressman adam clayton powell........................... secretary of the navy robert b. anderson.................. reading class in the military dependents school, yokohama. civil rights leaders at the white house................... president john f. kennedy and president jorge allessandri. (p. xix) secretary of defense robert s. mcnamara................... adam yarmolinsky.......................................... james c. evans............................................ the gesell committee meets with the president............. alfred b. fitt............................................ arriving in vietnam....................................... digging in................................................ listening to the squad leader............................. supplying the seventh fleet............................... usaf ground crew, tan son nhut air base, vietnam.......... fighter pilots on the line................................ medical examination....................................... auto pilot shop........................................... submarine tender duty..................................... first aid................................................. vietnam patrol............................................ marine engineers in vietnam............................... loading a rocket launcher................................. american sailors help evacuate a vietnamese child......... booby trap victim from company b, th infantry........... camaraderie............................................... all illustrations are from the files of the department of defense and the national archives and records service with the exception of the pictures on pages and , courtesy of william g. bell; on page , by fabian bachrach, courtesy of judge william h. hastie; on page , courtesy of carlton skinner; on page , courtesy of the washington _star_, on page , courtesy of the _afro-american_ newspapers; on page , courtesy of the sengstacke newspapers; and on page , courtesy of the washington bureau of the national association for the advancement of colored people. tables _no._ . classification of all men tested from march through december ........................................... . agct percentages in selected world war ii divisions.... . percentage of black enlisted men and women............. . disposition of black personnel at eight air force bases, ............................................ . racial composition of air force units.................. . black strength in the air force........................ . racial composition of the training command, december .......................................... . black manpower, u.s. navy.............................. (p. xx) . worldwide distribution of enlisted personnel by race, october ........................................... . distribution of black enlisted personnel by branch and rank, october ............................. . black marines, - .............................. . defense installations with segregated public schools.. . black strength in the armed forces for selected years. . estimated percentage distribution of draft-age males in u.s. population by afqt groups............... . rate of men disqualified for service in .......... . rejection rates for failure to pass armed forces mental test, ..................................... . nonwhite inductions and first enlistments, fiscal years - ....................................... . distribution of enlisted personnel in each major occupation, ...................................... . occupational group distribution by race, all dod, .................................................. . occupational group distribution of enlisted personnel by length of service, and race.............. . percentage distribution of navy enlisted personnel by race, afqt groups and occupational areas, and length of service, ............................... . percentage distribution of blacks and whites by pay grade, all dod, .................................. . percentage distribution of navy enlisted personnel by race, afqt groups, pay grade, and length of service, ......................................... . black percentages, - .......................... . rates for first reenlistments, - .............. . black attendance at the military academies, july . . army and air force commissions granted at predominately black schools........................... . percentage of negroes in certain military ranks, - ............................................. . distribution of servicemen in occupational groups by race, ......................................... integration of the armed forces (p.  ) - chapter (p.  ) introduction in the quarter century that followed american entry into world war ii, the nation's armed forces moved from the reluctant inclusion of a few segregated negroes to their routine acceptance in a racially integrated military establishment. nor was this change confined to military installations. by the time it was over, the armed forces had redefined their traditional obligation for the welfare of their members to include a promise of equal treatment for black servicemen wherever they might be. in the name of equality of treatment and opportunity, the department of defense began to challenge racial injustices deeply rooted in american society. for all its sweeping implications, equality in the armed forces obviously had its pragmatic aspects. in one sense it was a practical answer to pressing political problems that had plagued several national administrations. in another, it was the services' expression of those liberalizing tendencies that were permeating american society during the era of civil rights activism. but to a considerable extent the policy of racial equality that evolved in this quarter century was also a response to the need for military efficiency. so easy did it become to demonstrate the connection between inefficiency and discrimination that, even when other reasons existed, military efficiency was the one most often evoked by defense officials to justify a change in racial policy. _the armed forces before _ progress toward equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces was an uneven process, the result of sporadic and sometimes conflicting pressures derived from such constants in american society as prejudice and idealism and spurred by a chronic shortage of military manpower. in his pioneering study of race relations, gunnar myrdal observes that ideals have always played a dominant role in the social dynamics of america.[ - ] by extension, the ideals that helped involve the nation in many of its wars also helped produce important changes in the treatment of negroes by the armed forces. the democratic spirit embodied in the declaration of independence, for example, opened the continental army to many negroes, holding out to them the promise of eventual freedom.[ - ] [footnote - : gunnar myrdal, _the american dilemma: the negro problem and modern democracy_, rev. ed. (new york: harper row, ), p. lxi.] [footnote - : benjamin quarles, _the negro in the american revolution_ (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, ), pp. - . the following brief summary of the negro in the pre-world war ii army is based in part on the quarles book and roland c. mcconnell, _negro troops of antebellum louisiana: a history of the battalion of free men of color_ (baton rouge: louisiana state university press, ); dudley t. cornish, _sable arm: negro troops in the union army, - _ (new york: norton, ); william h. leckie, _the buffalo soldiers: a narrative of the negro cavalry in the west_ (norman: university of oklahoma press, ); william bruce white, "the military and the melting pot: the american army and minority groups, - " (ph.d. dissertation, university of wisconsin, ); marvin e. fletcher, _the black soldier and officer in the united states army, - _ (columbia: university of missouri press, ); arthur e. barbeau and florette henri, _unknown soldiers: black american troops in world war i_ (philadelphia: temple university press, ). for a general survey of black soldiers in america's wars, see jack foner, _blacks and the military in american history: a new perspective_ (new york: praeger, ).] yet the fact that the british themselves were taking large numbers (p.  ) of negroes into their ranks proved more important than revolutionary idealism in creating a place for negroes in the american forces. above all, the participation of both slaves and freedmen in the continental army and the navy was a pragmatic response to a pressing need for fighting men and laborers. despite the fear of slave insurrection shared by many colonists, some , negroes, the majority from new england, served with the american forces in the revolution, often in integrated units, some as artillerymen and musicians, the majority as infantrymen or as unarmed pioneers detailed to repair roads and bridges. again, general jackson's need for manpower at new orleans explains the presence of the louisiana free men of color in the last great battle of the war of . in the civil war the practical needs of the union army overcame the lincoln administration's fear of alienating the border states. when the call for volunteers failed to produce the necessary men, negroes were recruited, generally as laborers at first but later for combat. in all, , negroes served in the union army. in addition to those in the sixteen segregated combat regiments and the labor units, thousands also served unofficially as laborers, teamsters, and cooks. some , negroes served in the navy, about percent of its total civil war strength. the influence of the idealism fostered by the abolitionist crusade should not be overlooked. it made itself felt during the early months of the war in the demands of radical republicans and some union generals for black enrollment, and it brought about the postwar establishment of black units in the regular army. in congress authorized the creation of permanent, all-black units, which in were designated the th and th cavalry and the th and th infantry. [illustration: crewmen of the uss miami during the civil war] military needs and idealistic impulses were not enough to guarantee uninterrupted racial progress; in fact, the status of black servicemen tended to reflect the changing patterns in american race relations. during most of the nineteenth century, for example, negroes served in an integrated u.s. navy, in the latter half of the century averaging between and percent of the enlisted strength.[ - ] but the employment of negroes in the navy was abruptly curtailed after . paralleling the rise of jim crow and legalized segregation (p.  ) in much of america was the cutback in the number of black sailors, who by were mostly in the galley and the engine room. in contrast to their high percentage of the ranks in the civil war and spanish-american war, only , black sailors, including twenty-four women reservists (yeomanettes), served in world war i; they constituted . percent of the navy's total enlistment.[ - ] their service was limited chiefly to mess duty and coal passing, the latter becoming increasingly rare as the fleet changed from coal to oil. [footnote - : estimates vary; exact racial statistics concerning the nineteenth century navy are difficult to locate. see enlistment of men of colored race, jan , a note appended to hearings before the general board of the navy, , operational archives, department of the navy (hereafter opnavarchives). the following brief summary of the negro in the pre-world war ii navy is based in part on foner's _blacks and the military in american history_ as well as harold d. langley, "the negro in the navy and merchant service, - ," _journal of negro history_ (october ): - ; langley's _social reform in the united states navy - _, (urbana: university of illinois press, ) peter karsten, _the naval aristocracy: the golden age of annapolis and the emergence of modern american navalism_ (new york: the free press, ); frederick s. harrod, _manning the new navy: the development of a modern naval enlisted force, - _ (westport: greenwood press, ).] [footnote - : ltr, rear adm c. w. nimitz, actg chief, bureau of navigation, to rep. hamilton fish, jun , a - , general records of the department of the navy (hereafter genrecsnav).] [illustration: buffalo soldiers. (_frederick remington's sketch._)] when postwar enlistment was resumed in , the navy recruited filipino stewards instead of negroes, although a decade later it reopened the branch to black enlistment. negroes quickly took advantage of this limited opportunity, their numbers rising from in to , in june , when they constituted . percent of the navy's , total.[ - ] curiously enough, because black (p.  ) reenlistment in combat or technical specialties had never been barred, a few black gunner's mates, torpedomen, machinist mates, and the like continued to serve in the 's. [footnote - : memo, h. a. badt, bureau of navigation, for officer in charge, public relations, jul , sub: negroes in u.s. navy, nav- , records of the bureau of naval personnel (hereafter bupersrecs).] although the army's racial policy differed from the navy's, the resulting limited, separate service for negroes proved similar. the laws of and that guaranteed the existence of four black regular army regiments also institutionalized segregation, granting federal recognition to a system racially separate and theoretically equal in treatment and opportunity a generation before the supreme court sanctioned such a distinction in _plessy_ v. _ferguson_.[ - ] so important to many in the black community was this guaranteed existence of the four regiments that had served with distinction against the frontier indians that few complained about segregation. in fact, as historian jack foner has pointed out, black leaders sometimes interpreted demands for integration as attempts to eliminate black soldiers altogether.[ - ] [footnote - : u.s. ( ). in this case concerning segregated seating on a louisiana railroad, the supreme court ruled that so long as equality of accommodation existed, segregation could not in itself be considered discriminatory and therefore did not violate the equal rights provision of the fourteenth amendment. this "separate but equal" doctrine would prevail in american law for more than half a century.] [footnote - : foner, _blacks and the military in american history_, p. .] the spanish-american war marked a break with the post-civil war tradition of limited recruitment. besides the , black regulars, approximately , black volunteers served in the army during (p.  ) the conflict. world war i was another exception, for negroes made up nearly percent of the army's total strength, some , officers and men.[ - ] the acceptance of negroes during wartime stemmed from the army's pressing need for additional manpower. yet it was no means certain in the early months of world war i that this need for men would prevail over the reluctance of many leaders to arm large groups of negroes. still remembered were the brownsville affair, in which men of the th infantry had fired on texan civilians, and the august riot involving members of the th infantry at houston, texas.[ - ] ironically, those idealistic impulses that had operated in earlier wars were operating again in this most jim crow of administrations.[ - ] woodrow wilson's promise to make the world safe for democracy was forcing his administration to admit negroes to the army. although it carefully maintained racially separate draft calls, the national army conscripted some , negroes, . percent of all those drafted in world war i.[ - ] [footnote - : ulysses lee, _the employment of negro troops_, united states army in world war ii (washington: government printing office, ), p. . see also army war college historical section, "the colored soldier in the u.s. army," may , p. , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : for a modern analysis of the two incidents and the effect of jim crow on black units before world war i, see john d. weaver, _the brownsville raid_ (new york: w. w. norton co., ); robert v. haynes, _a night of violence: the houston riot of _ (baton rouge: louisiana state university press, ).] [footnote - : on the racial attitudes of the wilson administration, see nancy j. weiss, "the negro and the new freedom: fighting wilsonian segregation," _political science quarterly_ (march ): - .] [footnote - : _special report of the provost marshal general on operations of the selective service system to december _ (washington: government printing office, ), p. .] black assignments reflected the opinion, expressed repeatedly in army staff studies throughout the war, that when properly led by whites, blacks could perform reasonably well in segregated units. once again negroes were called on to perform a number of vital though unskilled jobs, such as construction work, most notably in sixteen specially formed pioneer infantry regiments. but they also served as frontline combat troops in the all-black d and d infantry divisions, the latter serving with distinction among the french forces. established by law and tradition and reinforced by the army staff's conviction that black troops had not performed well in combat, segregation survived to flourish in the postwar era.[ - ] the familiar practice of maintaining a few black units was resumed in the regular army, with the added restriction that negroes were totally excluded from the air corps. the postwar manpower retrenchments common to all regular army units further reduced the size of the remaining black units. by june the number of negroes on active duty stood at approximately , men, . percent of the army's total, about the same proportion as negroes in the navy.[ - ] [footnote - : the development of post-world war i policy is discussed in considerable detail in lee, _employment of negro troops_, chapters i and ii. see also u.s. army war college miscellaneous file - through - and - , u.s. army military history research collection, carlisle barracks (hereafter amhrc).] [footnote - : the strength figure is extrapolated from misc div, ago, returns sec, oct - nov . the figures do not include some , negroes in national guard units under state control.] _civil rights and the law in _ (p.  ) the same constants in american society that helped decide the status of black servicemen in the nineteenth century remained influential between the world wars, but with a significant change.[ - ] where once the advancing fortunes of negroes in the services depended almost exclusively on the good will of white progressives, their welfare now became the concern of a new generation of black leaders and emerging civil rights organizations. skilled journalists in the black press and counselors and lobbyists presenting such groups as the national association for the advancement of colored people (naacp), the national urban league, and the national negro congress took the lead in the fight for racial justice in the united states. they represented a black community that for the most part lacked the cohesion, political awareness, and economic strength which would characterize it in the decades to come. nevertheless, negroes had already become a recognizable political force in some parts of the country. both the new deal politicians and their opponents openly courted the black vote in the presidential election. [footnote - : this discussion of civil rights in the pre-world war ii period draws not only on lee's _employment of negro troops_, but also on lee finkle, _forum for protest: the black press during world war ii_ (cranbury: fairleigh dickinson university press, ); harvard sitkoff, "racial militancy and interracial violence in the second world war," _journal of american history_ (december ): - ; reinhold schumann, "the role of the national association for the advancement of colored people in the integration of the armed forces according to the naacp collection in the library of congress" ( ), in cmh; richard m. dalfiume, _desegregation of the united states armed forces: fighting on two fronts, - _ (columbia: university of missouri press, ).] these politicians realized that the united states was beginning to outgrow its old racial relationships over which jim crow had reigned, either by law or custom, for more than fifty years. in large areas of the country where lynchings and beatings were commonplace, white supremacy had existed as a literal fact of life and death.[ - ] more insidious than the jim crow laws were the economic deprivation and dearth of educational opportunity associated with racial discrimination. traditionally the last hired, first fired, negroes suffered all the handicaps that came from unemployment and poor jobs, a condition further aggravated by the great depression. the "separate but equal" educational system dictated by law and the realities of black life in both urban and rural areas, north and south, had proved anything but equal and thus closed to negroes a traditional avenue to advancement in american society. [footnote - : the jim crow era is especially well described in rayford w. logan's _the negro in american life and thought: the nadir, - _ (new york: dial, ) and c. vann woodward's _the strange career of jim crow_, d ed. rev. (new york: oxford university press, )] in these circumstances, the economic and humanitarian programs of the new deal had a special appeal for black america. encouraged by these programs and heartened by eleanor roosevelt's public support of civil rights, black voters defected from their traditional allegiance to the republican party in overwhelming numbers. but the civil rights leaders were already aware, if the average black citizen was not, that despite having made some considerable improvements franklin roosevelt never, in one biographer's words, "sufficiently challenged southern (p.  ) traditions of white supremacy to create problems for himself."[ - ] negroes, in short, might benefit materially from the new deal, but they would have to look elsewhere for advancement of their civil rights. [footnote - : frank freidel, _f.d.r. and the south_ (baton rouge: louisiana state university press, ), pp. - . see also bayard rustin, _strategies for freedom: the changing patterns of black protest_ (new york: columbia university press, ), p. .] men like walter f. white of the naacp and the national urban league's t. arnold hill sought to use world war ii to expand opportunities for the black american. from the start they tried to translate the idealistic sentiment for democracy stimulated by the war and expressed in the atlantic charter into widespread support for civil rights in the united states. at the same time, in sharp contrast to many of their world war i predecessors, they placed a price on black support for the war effort: no longer could the white house expect this sizable minority to submit to injustice and yet close ranks with other americans to defeat a common enemy. it was readily apparent to the negro, if not to his white supporter or his enemy, that winning equality at home was just as important as advancing the cause of freedom abroad. as george s. schuyler, a widely quoted black columnist, put it: "if nothing more comes out of this emergency than the widespread understanding among white leaders that the negro's loyalty is conditional, we shall not have suffered in vain."[ - ] the naacp spelled out the challenge even more clearly in its monthly publication, _the crisis_, which declared itself "sorry for brutality, blood, and death among the peoples of europe, just as we were sorry for china and ethiopia. but the hysterical cries of the preachers of democracy for europe leave us cold. we want democracy in alabama, arkansas, in mississippi and michigan, in the district of columbia--in the _senate of the united states_."[ - ] [footnote - : pittsburgh _courier_, december , .] [footnote - : _the crisis_ (july ): .] this sentiment crystallized in the black press's double v campaign, a call for simultaneous victories over jim crow at home and fascism abroad. nor was the double v campaign limited to a small group of civil rights spokesmen; rather, it reflected a new mood that, as myrdal pointed out, was permeating all classes of black society.[ - ] the quickening of the black masses in the cause of equal treatment and opportunity in the pre-world war ii period and the willingness of negroes to adopt a more militant course to achieve this end might well mark the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. [footnote - : myrdal, _american dilemma_, p. .] [illustration: integration in the army of . _the army band at fort duchesne, utah, composed of soldiers from the black th cavalry and the white st infantry._] historian lee finkle has suggested that the militancy advocated by most of the civil rights leaders in the world war ii era was merely a rhetorical device; that for the most part they sought to avoid violence over segregation, concentrating as before on traditional methods of protest.[ - ] this reliance on traditional methods was apparent when the leaders tried to focus the new sentiment among negroes on two war-related goals: equality of treatment in the armed forces and equality of job opportunity in the expanding defense industries. in the pittsburgh _courier_, the largest and one (p.  ) of the most influential of the nation's black papers, called upon the president to open the services to negroes and organized the committee for negro participation in the national defense program. these moves led to an extensive lobbying effort that in time spread to many other newspapers and local civil rights groups. the black press and its satellites also attracted the support of several national organizations that were promoting preparedness for war, and these groups, in turn, began to demand equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces.[ - ] [footnote - : lee finkle, "the conservative aims of militant rhetoric: black protest during world war ii," _journal of american history_ (december ): .] [footnote - : some impression of the extent of this campaign and its effect on the war department can be gained from the volume of correspondence produced by the pittsburgh _courier_ campaign and filed in ag . ( - - )( ).] the government began to respond to these pressures before the united states entered world war ii. at the urging of the white house the army announced plans for the mobilization of negroes, and congress amended several mobilization measures to define and increase the military training opportunities for negroes.[ - ] the most important of these legislative amendments in terms of influence on future race relations in the united states were made to the selective service act of . the matter of race played only a small part in the debate on this highly controversial legislation, but during congressional hearings on the bill black spokesmen testified on discrimination against negroes in the services.[ - ] these witnesses concluded that if the draft law did not provide specific guarantees against it, discrimination would prevail. [footnote - : the army's plans and amendments are treated in great detail in lee, _employment of negro troops_.] [footnote - : hearings before the committee on military affairs. house of representatives, th cong., d sess., on h.r. , _selective compulsory military training and service_, pp. - .] [illustration: gunner's gang on the uss maine.] a majority in both houses of congress seemed to agree. during (p.  ) floor debate on the selective service act, senator robert f. wagner of new york proposed an amendment to guarantee to negroes and other racial minorities the privilege of voluntary enlistment in the armed forces. he sought in this fashion to correct evils described some ten days earlier by rayford w. logan, chairman of the committee for negro participation in the national defense, in testimony before the house committee on military affairs. the wagner proposal triggered critical comments and questions. senators john h. overton and allen j. ellender of louisiana viewed the wagner amendment as a step toward "mixed" units. overton, ellender, and senator lister hill of alabama proposed that the matter should be "left to the army." hill also attacked the amendment because it would allow the enlistment of japanese-americans, some of whom he claimed were not loyal to the united states.[ - ] [footnote - : _congressional record_, th cong., d sess., vol. , p. .] [illustration: general pershing, aef commander, inspects troops _of the d (colored) pioneer regiment in france, _.] no filibuster was attempted, and the wagner amendment passed the senate easily, to . it provided that any person between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five regardless of race or color shall be afforded an opportunity voluntarily to enlist and be inducted into the land and naval forces (including aviation units) of the united states for the training and service prescribed in subsection (b), if he is acceptable to the land or naval forces for such training and service.[ - ] [footnote - : _u.s. stat._ ( ).] the wagner amendment was aimed at _volunteers_ for military service. congressman hamilton fish, also of new york, later introduced a similar measure in the house aimed at _draftees_. the fish (p.  ) amendment passed the house by a margin of to and emerged intact from the house-senate conference. the law finally read that in the selection and training of men and execution of the law "there shall be no discrimination against any person on account of race or color."[ - ] [footnote - : ibid. fish commanded black troops in world war i. captain of company k, fifteenth new york national guard (colored), which subsequently became the th infantry, fish served in the much decorated d division in the french sector of the western front.] [illustration: heroes of the th infantry. _winners of the croix de guerre arrive in new york harbor, february ._] the fish amendment had little immediate impact upon the services' racial patterns. as long as official policy permitted separate draft calls for blacks and whites and the officially held definition of discrimination neatly excluded segregation--and both went unchallenged in the courts--segregation would remain entrenched in the armed forces. indeed, the rigidly segregated services, their ranks swollen by the draft, were a particular frustration to the civil rights forces because they were introducing some black citizens to racial discrimination more pervasive than any they had ever endured in civilian life. moreover, as the services continued to open bases throughout the country, they actually spread federally sponsored segregation into areas where it had never before existed with the force of law. in the long run, however, the draft law and subsequent draft legislation had a strong influence on the armed forces' racial policies. they created a climate in which progress could be made toward integration within the services. although not apparent in , the pressure of a draft-induced flood of black (p.  ) conscripts was to be a principal factor in the separate decisions of the army, navy, and marine corps to integrate their units. _to segregate is to discriminate_ as with all the administration's prewar efforts to increase opportunities for negroes in the armed forces, the selective service act failed to excite black enthusiasm because it missed the point of black demands. guarantees of black participation were no longer enough. by most responsible black leaders shared the goal of an integrated armed forces as a step toward full participation in the benefits and responsibilities of american citizenship. the white house may well have thought that walter white of the naacp singlehandedly organized the demand for integration in , but he was merely applying a concept of race relations that had been evolving since world war i. in the face of ever-worsening discrimination, white's generation of civil rights advocates had rejected the idea of the preeminent black leader booker t. washington that hope for the future lay in the development of a separate and strong black (p.  ) community. instead, they gradually came to accept the argument of one of the founders of the national association for the advancement of colored people, william e. b. dubois, that progress was possible only when negroes abandoned their segregated community to work toward a society open to both black and white. by the end of the 's this concept had produced a fundamental change in civil rights tactics and created the new mood of assertiveness that myrdal found in the black community. the work of white and others marked the beginning of a systematic attack against jim crow. as the most obvious practitioner of jim crow in the federal government, the services were the logical target for the first battle in a conflict that would last some thirty years. this evolution in black attitudes was clearly demonstrated in correspondence in the 's between officials of the naacp and the roosevelt administration over equal treatment in the armed forces. the discussion began in with a series of exchanges between chief of staff douglas macarthur and naacp counsel charles h. houston and continued through the correspondence between white and the administration in . the naacp representatives rejected macarthur's defense of army policy and held out for a quota guaranteeing that negroes would form at least percent of the nation's military strength. their emphasis throughout was on numbers; during these first exchanges, at least, they fought against disbandment of the existing black regiments and argued for similar units throughout the service.[ - ] [footnote - : see especially ltr, houston to cofs, aug and aug ; ltr, cofs to houston, aug ; ltr, maj gen edgar t. conley, actg ag, usa, to walter white, nov ; ltr, houston to roosevelt, oct ; ltr, houston to sw, oct . see also elijah reynolds, _colored soldiers and the regular army_ (naacp pamphlet, december , ). all in c- , naacp collection, library of congress.] yet the idea of integration was already strongly implied in houston's call for "a more united nation of free citizens,"[ - ] and in february the organization emphasized the idea in an editorial in _the crisis_, asking why black and white men could not fight side by side as they had in the continental army.[ - ] and when the army informed the naacp in september that more black units were projected for mobilization, white found this solution unsatisfactory because the proposed units would be segregated.[ - ] if democracy was to be defended, he told the president, discrimination must be eliminated from the armed forces. to this end, the naacp urged roosevelt to appoint a commission of black and white citizens to investigate discrimination in the army and navy and to recommend the removal of racial barriers.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid. ltr, houston to cofs, aug .] [footnote - : _the crisis_ ( ): , , .] [footnote - : ltr, presley holliday to white, sep ; ltr, white to holliday, sep . both in c- , naacp collection, lc.] [footnote - : ltr, white to roosevelt, sep , in c- , naacp collection, lc. this letter was later released to the press.] the white house ignored these demands, and on october the secretary to the president, col. edwin m. watson, referred white to a war department report outlining the new black units being created under presidential authorization. but the naacp leaders were not to be diverted from the main chance. thurgood marshall, then the head of (p.  ) the organization's legal department, recommended that white tell the president "that the naacp is opposed to the separate units existing in the armed forces at the present time."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, marshall for white, oct ; ltr, secy to the president to white, oct . both in c- , naacp collection, lc.] when his associates failed to agree on a reply to the administration, white decided on a face-to-face meeting with the president.[ - ] roosevelt agreed to confer with white, hill of the urban league, and a. philip randolph, head of the brotherhood of sleeping car porters, the session finally taking place on september . at that time the civil rights officials outlined for the president and his defense assistants what they called the "important phases of the integration of the negro into military aspects of the national defense program." central to their argument was the view that the army and navy should accept men without regard to race. according to white, the president had apparently never considered the use of integrated units, but after some discussion he seemed to accept the suggestion that the army could assign black regiments or batteries alongside white units and from there "the army could 'back into' the formation of units without segregation."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, white for roy wilkins et al., oct ; ltr, houston to white, oct ; memo, wilkins to white, oct . all in c- , naacp collection, lc.] [footnote - : walter white, "conference at white house, friday, september , : a.m.," arthur b. spingarn papers, library of congress. see also white's _a man called white_ (new york: viking press, ), pp. - .] nothing came of these suggestions. although the policy announced by the white house subsequent to the meeting contained concessions regarding the employment and distribution of negroes in the services, it did not provide for integrated units. the wording of the press release on the conference implied, moreover, that the administration's entire program had been approved by white and the others. to have their names associated with any endorsement of segregation was particularly infuriating to these civil rights leaders, who immediately protested to the president.[ - ] the white house later publicly absolved the leaders of any such endorsement, and press secretary early was forced to retract the "damaging impression" that the leaders had in any way endorsed segregation. the president later assured white, randolph, and hill that further policy changes would be made to insure fair treatment for negroes.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, white to stephen early, oct . see also memo, white for r. s. w. [roy wilkins], oct . both in c- , naacp collection, lc. see also ltr, s. early to white, oct , incl to ltr, white to spingarn, oct , spingarn papers, lc.] [footnote - : white, _a man called white_, pp. - .] presidential promises notwithstanding, the naacp set out to make integration of the services a matter of overriding interest to the black community during the war. the organization encountered opposition at first when some black leaders were willing to accept segregated units as the price for obtaining the formation of more all-black divisions. the naacp stood firm, however, and demanded at its annual convention in an immediate end to segregation. in a related move symbolizing the growing unity behind the campaign to integrate the military, the leaders of the march on washington movement, a group of black activists under a. philip randolph, (p.  ) specifically demanded the end of segregation in the army and navy. the movement was the first since the days of marcus garvey to involve the black masses; in fact negroes from every social and economic class rallied behind randolph, ready to demonstrate for equal treatment and opportunity. although some black papers objected to the movement's militancy, the major civil rights organization showed no such hesitancy. roy wilkins, a leader of the naacp, later claimed that randolph could supply only about , potential demonstrators and that the naacp had provided the bulk of the movement's participants.[ - ] [footnote - : roy wilkins oral history interview, columbia university oral history collection. see also a. philip randolph, "why should we march," _survey graphic_ (november ), as reprinted in john h. franklin and isidore starr, eds., _the negro in twentieth century america_ (new york: random house, ).] although randolph was primarily interested in fair employment practices, the naacp had been concerned with the status of black servicemen since world war i. reflecting the degree of naacp support, march organizers included a discussion of segregation in the services when they talked with president roosevelt in june . randolph and the others proposed ways to abolish the separate racial units in each service, charging that integration was being frustrated by prejudiced senior military officials.[ - ] [footnote - : white, _a man called white_, pp. - .] the president's meeting with the march leaders won the administration a reprieve from the threat of a mass civil rights demonstration in the nation's capital, but at the price of promising substantial reform in minority hiring for defense industries and the creation of a federal body, the fair employment practices committee, to coordinate the reform. while it prompted no similar reform in the racial policies of the armed forces, the march on washington movement was nevertheless a significant milestone in the services' racial history.[ - ] it signaled the beginning of a popularly based campaign against segregation in the armed forces in which all the major civil rights organizations, their allies in congress and the press, and many in the black community would hammer away on a single theme: segregation is unacceptable in a democratic society and hypocritical during a war fought in defense of the four freedoms. [footnote - : herbert garfinkle, _when negroes march: the march on washington movement in the organizational politics of fepc_ (glencoe: the free press, ), provides a comprehensive account of the aims and achievements of the movement.] chapter (p.  ) world war ii: the army civil rights leaders adopted the "double v" slogan as their rallying cry during world war ii. demanding victory against fascism abroad and discrimination at home, they exhorted black citizens to support the war effort and to fight for equal treatment and opportunity for negroes everywhere. although segregation was their main target, their campaign was directed against all forms of discrimination, especially in the armed forces. they flooded the services with appeals for a redress of black grievances and levied similar demands on the white house, congress, and the courts. black leaders concentrated on the services because they were public institutions, their officials sworn to uphold the constitution. the leaders understood, too, that disciplinary powers peculiar to the services enabled them to make changes that might not be possible for other organizations; the armed forces could command where others could only persuade. the army bore the brunt of this attention, but not because its policies were so benighted. in the army was a fairly progressive organization, and few institutions in america could match its record. rather, the civil rights leaders concentrated on the army because the draft law had made it the nation's largest employer of minority groups. for its part, the army resisted the demands, its spokesmen contending that the service's enormous size and power should not be used for social experiment, especially during a war. further justifying their position, army officials pointed out that their service had to avoid conflict with prevailing social attitudes, particularly when such attitudes were jealously guarded by congress. in this period of continuous demand and response, the army developed a racial policy that remained in effect throughout the war with only superficial modifications sporadically adopted to meet changing conditions. _a war policy: reaffirming segregation_ the experience of world war i cast a shadow over the formation of the army's racial policy in world war ii.[ - ] the chief architects of the new policy, and many of its opponents, were veterans of the first war and reflected in their judgments the passions and prejudices of that era.[ - ] civil rights activists were determined to eliminate the (p.  ) segregationist practices of the mobilization and to win a fair representation for negroes in the army. the traditionalists of the army staff, on the other hand, were determined to resist any radical change in policy. basing their arguments on their evaluation of the performance of the d division and some other black units in world war i, they had made, but not publicized, mobilization plans that recognized the army's obligation to employ black soldiers yet rigidly maintained the segregationist policy of world war i.[ - ] these plans increased the number of types of black units to be formed and even provided for a wide distribution of the units among all the arms and services except the army air forces and signal corps, but they did not explain how the skilled negro, whose numbers had greatly increased since world war i, could be efficiently used within the limitations of black units. in the name of military efficiency the army staff had, in effect, devised a social rather than a military policy for the employment of black troops. [footnote - : this survey of the army and the negro in world war ii is based principally on lee's _employment of negro troops_. a comprehensive account of the development of policy, the mobilization of black soldiers, and their use in the various theaters and units of world war ii, this book is an indispensable source for any serious student of the subject.] [footnote - : for examples of how world war i military experiences affected the thinking of the civil rights advocates and military traditionalists of world war ii, see lester b. granger oral history interview, , columbia university oral history collection; interview, lee nichols with lt. gen. john c. h. lee (c. ). for the influence of world war ii on a major contributor to postwar racial policy, see interview, lee nichols with harry s. truman, jun . last two in nichols collection, cmh. these interviews are among many compiled by nichols as part of his program associated with the production of _breakthrough on the color front_ (new york: random house, ). nichols, a journalist, presented this collection of interviews, along with other documents and materials, to the center of military history in . the interviews have proved to be a valuable supplement to the official record. they capture the thoughts of a number of important participants, some no longer alive, at a time relatively close to the events under consideration. they have been checked against the sources whenever possible and found accurate.] [footnote - : memo, acofs, g- , for cofs, jun , sub: employment of negro manpower, g- / - .] the white house tried to adjust the conflicting demands of the civil rights leaders and the army traditionalists. eager to placate and willing to compromise, president franklin d. roosevelt sought an accommodation by directing the war department to provide jobs for negroes in all parts of the army. the controversy over integration soon became more public, the opponents less reconcilable; in the weeks following the president's meeting with black representatives on september the army countered black demands for integration with a statement released by the white house on october. to provide "a fair and equitable basis" for the use of negroes in its expansion program, the army planned to accept negroes in numbers approximate to their proportion in the national population, about percent. black officers and enlisted men were to serve, as was then customary, only in black units that were to be formed in each major branch, both combatant and noncombatant, including air units to be created as soon as pilots, mechanics, and technical specialists were trained. there would be no racial intermingling in regimental organizations because the practice of separating white and black troops had, the army staff said, proved satisfactory over a long period of time. to change would destroy morale and impair preparations for national defense. since black units in the army were already "going concerns, accustomed through many years to the present system" of segregation, "no experiments should be tried ... at this critical time."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, tag for cg's et al., oct , sub: war department policy in regard to negroes, ag . ( - - ) m-a-m.] the president's "ok, f.d.r." on the war department statement (p.  ) transformed what had been a routine prewar mobilization plan into a racial policy that would remain in effect throughout the war. in fact, quickly elevated in importance by war department spokesmen who made constant reference to the "presidential directive," the statement would be used by some army officials as a presidential sanction for introducing segregation in new situations, as, for example, in the pilot training of black officers in the army air corps. just as quickly, the civil rights leaders, who had expected more from the tone of the president's own comments and more also from the egalitarian implications of the new draft law, bitterly attacked the army's policy. black criticism came at an awkward moment for president roosevelt, who was entering a heated campaign for an unprecedented third term and whose new deal coalition included the urban black vote. his opponent, the articulate wendell l. willkie, was an unabashed champion of civil rights and was reportedly attracting a wide following among black voters. in the weeks preceding the election the president tried to soften the effect of the army's announcement. he promoted col. benjamin o. davis, sr., to brigadier general, thereby making davis the first negro to hold this rank in the regular army. he appointed the commander of reserve officers' training at howard university, col. campbell c. johnson, special aide to the director of selective service. and, finally, he named judge william h. hastie, dean of the howard university law school, civilian aide to the secretary of war. a successful lawyer, judge hastie entered upon his new assignment with several handicaps. because of his long association with black causes, some civil rights organizations assumed that hastie would be their man in washington and regarded his duties as an extension of their crusade against discrimination. hastie's war department superiors, on the other hand, assumed that his was a public relations job and expected him to handle all complaints and mobilization problems as had his world war i predecessor, emmett j. scott. both assumptions proved false. hastie was evidently determined to break the racial logjam in the war department, yet unlike many civil rights advocates he seemed willing to pay the price of slow progress to obtain lasting improvement. according to those who knew him, hastie was confident that he could demonstrate to war department officials that the army's racial policies were both inefficient and unpatriotic.[ - ] [footnote - : the foregoing impressions are derived largely from interviews, lee nichols with james c. evans, who worked for judge hastie during world war ii, and ulysses g. lee (c. ). both in nichols collection, cmh.] judge hastie spent his first ten months in office observing what was happening to the negro in the army. he did not like what he saw. to him, separating black soldiers from white soldiers was a fundamental error. first, the effect on black morale was devastating. "beneath the surface," he wrote, "is widespread discontent. most white persons are unable to appreciate the rancor and bitterness which the negro, as a matter of self-preservation, has learned to hide beneath a smile, a joke, or merely an impassive face." the inherent paradox of trying to inculcate pride, dignity, and aggressiveness in a black soldier while inflicting on him the segregationist's concept of the negro's (p.  ) place in society created in him an insupportable tension. second, segregation wasted black manpower, a valuable military asset. it was impossible, hastie charged, to employ skilled negroes at maximum efficiency within the traditionally narrow limitations of black units. third, to insist on an inflexible separation of white and black soldiers was "the most dramatic evidence of hypocrisy" in america's professed concern for preserving democracy. although he appreciated the impossibility of making drastic changes overnight, judge hastie was disturbed because he found "no apparent disposition to make a beginning or a trial of any different plan." he looked for some form of progressive integration by which qualified negroes could be classified and assigned, not by race, but as individuals, according to their capacities and abilities.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, william h. hastie for sw, with attachment, sep , sub: survey and recommendations concerning the integration of the negro soldiers into the army, g- / - . see also intervs, nichols with evans and lee.] [illustration: judge hastie.] judge hastie gained little support from the secretary of war, henry l. stimson, or the chief of staff, general george c. marshall, when he called for progressive integration. both considered the army's segregated units to be in accord with prevailing public sentiment against mixing the races in the intimate association of military life. more to the point, both stimson and marshall were sensitive to military tradition, and segregated units had been a part of the army since . stimson embraced segregation readily. while conveying to the president that he was "sensitive to the individual tragedy which went with it to the colored man himself," he nevertheless urged roosevelt not to place "too much responsibility on a race which was not showing initiative in battle."[ - ] stimson's attitude was not unusual for the times. he professed to believe in civil rights for every citizen, but he opposed social integration. he never tried to reconcile these seemingly inconsistent views; in fact, he probably did not consider them inconsistent. stimson blamed what he termed eleanor roosevelt's "intrusive and impulsive folly" for some of the criticism visited upon the army's racial policy, just as he inveighed against the "foolish leaders of the colored race" who were seeking "at (p.  ) bottom social equality," which, he concluded, was out of the question "because of the impossibility of race mixture by marriage."[ - ] influenced by under secretary robert p. patterson, assistant secretary john j. mccloy, and truman k. gibson, jr., who was judge hastie's successor, but most of all impressed by the performance of black soldiers themselves, stimson belatedly modified his defense of segregation. but throughout the war he adhered to the traditional arguments of the army's professional staff. [footnote - : stimson, a republican, had been appointed by roosevelt in , along with secretary of the navy frank knox, in an effort to enlist bipartisan support for the administration's foreign policy in an election year. stimson brought a wealth of experience with him to the office, having served as secretary of war under william howard taft and secretary of state under herbert hoover. the quotations are from stimson diary, october , henry l. stimson papers, yale university library.] [footnote - : henry l. stimson and mcgeorge bundy, _on active service in peace and war_ (new york: harper and brothers, ), pp. - . the quotations are from stimson diary, jan .] [illustration: general marshall and secretary stimson.] general marshall was a powerful advocate of the views of the army staff. he lived up to the letter of the army's regulations, consistently supporting measures to eliminate overt discrimination in the wartime army. at the same time, he rejected the idea that the army should take the lead in altering the racial mores of the nation. asked for his views on hastie's "carefully prepared memo,"[ - ] general marshall admitted that many of the recommendations were sound but said that judge hastie's proposals would be tantamount to solving a social problem which has perplexed the american people throughout the history of this nation. the army cannot accomplish such a solution and (p.  ) should not be charged with the undertaking. the settlement of vexing racial problems cannot be permitted to complicate the tremendous task of the war department and thereby jeopardize discipline and morale.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, usw for cofs, oct , g- / - .] [footnote - : memo, cofs for sw, dec , sub: report of judge william h. hastie, civilian aide to the secretary of war, dated sep , ocs - .] as chief of staff, marshall faced the tremendous task of creating in haste a large army to deal with the axis menace. since for several practical reasons the bulk of that army would be trained in the south where its conscripts would be subject to southern laws, marshall saw no alternative but to postpone reform. the war department, he said, could not ignore the social relationship between blacks and whites, established by custom and habit. nor could it ignore the fact that the "level of intelligence and occupational skill" of the black population was considerably below that of whites. though he agreed that the army would reach maximum strength only if individuals were placed according to their abilities, he concluded that experiments to solve social problems would be "fraught with danger to efficiency, discipline, and morale." in sum, marshall saw no reason to change the policy approved by the president less than a year before.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid. see also forrest c. pogue, _george c. marshall: organizer of victory_ (new york: the viking press, ), pp. - .] the army's leaders and the secretary's civilian aide had reached an impasse on the question of policy even before the country entered the war. and though the use of black troops in world war i was not entirely satisfactory even to its defenders,[ - ] there appeared to be no time now, in view of the larger urgency of winning the war, to plan other approaches, try other solutions, or tamper with an institution that had won victory in the past. further ordering the thoughts of some senior army officials was their conviction that wide-scale mixing of the races in the services might, as under secretary patterson phrased it, foment social revolution.[ - ] [footnote - : the army staff's mobilization planning for black units in the 's generally relied upon the detailed testimony of the commanders of black units in world war i. this testimony, contained in documents submitted to the war department and the army war college, was often critical of the army's employment of black troops, although rarely critical of segregation. the material is now located in the u.s. army's military history research collection, carlisle barracks, pennsylvania. for discussion of the post-world war i review of the employment of black troops, see lee's _employment of negro troops_, chapter i, and alan m. osur's _blacks in the army air forces during world war ii: the problem of race relations_ (washington: government printing office, ), chapter i.] [footnote - : memo, usw for maj gen william bryden (principal deputy chief of staff), jan , ocs - .] these opinions were clearly evident on december , the day the united states entered world war ii, when the army's leaders met with a group of black publishers and editors. although general marshall admitted that he was not satisfied with the department's progress in racial matters and promised further changes, the conference concluded with a speech by a representative of the adjutant general who delivered what many considered the final word on integration during the war. the army is made up of individual citizens of the united states who have pronounced views with respect to the negro just as they have individual ideas with respect to other matters in their daily walk of life. military orders, fiat, or dicta, will not change their viewpoints. the army then cannot be made the (p.  ) means of engendering conflict among the mass of people because of a stand with respect to negroes which is not compatible with the position attained by the negro in civil life.... the army is not a sociological laboratory; to be effective it must be organized and trained according to the principles which will insure success. experiments to meet the wishes and demands of the champions of every race and creed for the solution of their problems are a danger to efficiency, discipline and morale and would result in ultimate defeat.[ - ] [footnote - : col eugene r. householder, tago, speech before conference of negro editors and publishers, dec , ag . ( - - ) ( ).] the civil rights advocates refused to concede that the discussion was over. judge hastie, along with a sizable segment of the black press, believed that the beginning of a world war was the time to improve military effectiveness by increasing black participation in that war.[ - ] they argued that eliminating segregation was part of the struggle to preserve democracy, the transcendent issue of the war, and they viewed the unvarying pattern of separate black units as consonant with the racial theories of nazi germany.[ - ] their continuing efforts to eliminate segregation and discrimination eventually brought hastie a sharp reminder from john j. mccloy. "frankly, i do not think that the basic issues of this war are involved in the question of whether colored troops serve in segregated units or in mixed units and i doubt whether you can convince people of the united states that the basic issues of freedom are involved in such a question." for negroes, he warned sternly, the basic issue was that if the united states lost the war, the lot of the black community would be far worse off, and some negroes "do not seem to be vitally concerned about winning the war." what all negroes ought to do, he counseled, was to give unstinting support to the war effort in anticipation of benefits certain to come after victory.[ - ] [footnote - : lee, _employment of negro troops_, ch. vi.] [footnote - : noteworthy is the fact that for several reasons not related to race (for instance, language and nationality) the german army also organized separate units. its d infantry division was composed of troops from turkestan and the caucasus, and its th ss panzer division had segregated scandinavian, dutch, and flemish regiments. unlike the racially segregated u.s. army, germany's so-called ost units were only administratively organized into separate divisions, and an ost infantry battalion was often integrated into a "regular" german infantry regiment as its fourth infantry battalion. several allied armies also had segregated units, composed, for example, of senegalese, gurkhas, maoris, and algerians.] [footnote - : memo, asw for judge hastie, jul , asw . , nt .] thus very early in world war ii, even before the united states was actively engaged, the issues surrounding the use of negroes in the army were well defined and the lines sharply drawn. was segregation, a practice in conflict with the democratic aims of the country, also a wasteful use of manpower? how would modifications of policy come--through external pressure or internal reform? could traditional organizational and social patterns in the military services be changed during a war without disrupting combat readiness? _segregation and efficiency_ in the years before world war ii, army planners never had to consider segregation in terms of manpower efficiency. conditioned by the experiences of world war i, when the nation had enjoyed a surplus of untapped manpower even at the height of the war, and aware of the overwhelming manpower surplus of the depression years, the staff (p.  ) formulated its mobilization plans with little regard for the economical use of the nation's black manpower. its decision to use negroes in proportion to their percentage of the population was the result of political pressures rather than military necessity. black combat units were considered a luxury that existed to indulge black demands. when the army began to mobilize in it proceeded to honor its pledge, and one year after pearl harbor there were , negroes in the army, . percent of the total and . percent of all enlisted troops.[ - ] [footnote - : strength of the army, jan , stm- , p. .] the effect of segregation on manpower efficiency became apparent only as the army tried to translate policy into practice. in the face of rising black protest and with direct orders from the white house, the army had announced that negroes would be assigned to all arms and branches in the same ratio as whites. several forces, however, worked against this equitable distribution. during the early months of mobilization the chiefs of those arms and services that had traditionally been all white accepted less than their share of black recruits and thus obliged some organizations, the quartermaster corps and the engineer corps in particular, to absorb a large percentage of black inductees. the imbalance worsened in . in december of that year negroes accounted for percent of the infantry and less than percent each of the air corps, medical corps, and signal corps. the quartermaster corps was percent black, the engineer corps percent, and unassigned and miscellaneous detachments were percent black. the rejection of black units could not always be ascribed to racism alone. with some justification the arms and services tried to restrict the number and distribution of negroes because black units measured far below their white counterparts in educational achievement and ability to absorb training, according to the army general classification test (agct). the army had introduced this test system in march as its principal instrument for the measurement of a soldier's learning ability. five categories, with the most gifted in category i, were used in classifying the scores made by the soldiers taking the test (_table _). the army planned to take officers and enlisted specialists from the top three categories and the semiskilled soldiers and laborers from the two lowest. table --classification of all men tested from march through december white black agct category number percentage number percentage i , . , . ii , , . , . iii , , . , . iv , , . , . v , . , . total , , . , . _source_: tab a, memo, g- for cofs, apr , ag . ( mar )( ). although there was considerable confusion on the subject, basically the army's mental tests measured educational achievement rather than native intelligence, and in educational achievement in the united states hinged more on geography and economics than color. though black and white recruits of comparable educations made comparable scores, the majority of negroes came from areas of the country where inferior schools combined with economic and cultural poverty to put them at a significant disadvantage.[ - ] many whites suffered similar (p.  ) disadvantages, and in absolute numbers more whites than blacks appeared in the lower categories. but whereas the army could distribute the low-scoring white soldiers throughout the service so that an individual unit could easily absorb its few illiterate and semiliterate white men, the army was obliged to assign an almost equal number of low-scoring negroes to the relatively few black units where they could neither be absorbed nor easily trained. by the same token, segregation penalized the educated negro whose talents were likely to be wasted when he was assigned to service units along with the unskilled. [footnote - : lee, _employment of negro troops_, pp. - . for an extended discussion of army test scores and their relation to education, see department of the army, _marginal man and military service: a review_ (washington: government printing office, ). this report was prepared for the deputy under secretary of the army for personnel management by a working group under the leadership of dr. samuel king, office of the chief of research and development.] segregation further hindered the efficient use of black manpower by complicating the training of black soldiers. although training facilities were at a premium, the army was forced to provide its training and replacement centers with separate housing and other facilities. with an extremely limited number of regular army negroes to draw from, the service had to create cadres for the new units and find officers to lead them. black recruits destined for most arms and services were assured neither units, billets, nor training cadres. the army's solution to the problem: lower the quotas for black inductees. the use of quotas to regulate inductees by race was itself a source of tension between the army and the bureau of selective service.[ - ] selective service questioned the legality of the whole procedure whereby white and black selectees were delivered on the basis of separate calls; in many areas of the country draft boards were under attack for passing over large numbers of negroes in order to fill these racial quotas. with the navy depending exclusively on volunteers, selective service had by early a backlog of , black registrants who, according to their order numbers, should have been called to service but had been passed over. selective service wanted to eliminate the quota system altogether. at the very least it demanded that the army accept more negroes to adjust the racial imbalance of the draft rolls. the army, determined to preserve the quota system, tried to satisfy the selective service's minimum demands, making room for more black inductees by forcing its arms (p.  ) and services to create more black units. again the cost to efficiency was high. [footnote - : for discussion of how selective service channeled manpower into the armed forces, see selective service system, special monograph number , _special groups_ (washington: government printing office, ), ch. viii, and special monograph number , _quotas, calls, and inductions_ (washington: government printing office, ), chs. iv-vi.] under the pressure of providing sufficient units for negroes, the organization of units for the sake of guaranteeing vacancies became a major goal. in some cases, careful examination of the usefulness of the types of units provided was subordinated to the need to create units which could receive negroes. as a result, several types of units with limited military value were formed in some branches for the specific purpose of absorbing otherwise unwanted negroes. conversely, certain types of units with legitimate and important military functions were filled with negroes who could not function efficiently in the tasks to which they were assigned.[ - ] [footnote - : lee, _employment of negro troops_, p. .] [illustration: engineer construction troops in liberia, july .] the practice of creating units for the specific purpose of absorbing negroes was particularly evident in the army air forces.[ - ] long considered the most recalcitrant of branches in accepting negroes, (p.  ) the air corps had successfully exempted itself from the allotment of black troops in the mobilization plans. black pilots could not be used, maj. gen. henry h. arnold, chief of the air corps, explained, "since this would result in having negro officers serving over white enlisted men. this would create an impossible social problem."[ - ] and this situation could not be avoided, since it would take several years to train black mechanics; meanwhile black pilots would have to work with white ground crews, often at distant bases outside their regular chain of command. the air corps faced strong opposition (p.  ) when both the civil rights advocates and the rest of the army attacked this exclusion. the civil rights organizations wanted a place for negroes in the glamorous air corps, but even more to the point the other arms and services wanted this large branch of the army to absorb its fair share of black recruits, thus relieving the rest of a disproportionate burden. [footnote - : the army's air arm was reorganized several times. designated as the army air corps in (the successor to the historic army air service), it became the army air forces in the summer of . this designation lasted until a separate u.s. air force was created in . organizationally, the army was divided in march into three equal parts: the army ground forces, the army service forces (originally services of supply), and the army air forces. this division was administrative. each soldier continued to be assigned to a branch of the army, for example, infantry, artillery, or air corps, a title retained as the name of an army branch.] [footnote - : memo, cofac for g- , may , sub: employment of negro personnel in air corps units, g- / -gen- .] [illustration: labor battalion troops in the aleutian islands, may . _stevedores pause for a hot meal at massacre bay._] [illustration: sergeant addressing the line. _aviation squadron standing inspection, ._] when the war department supported these demands the army air forces capitulated. its mobilization plans provided for the formation of nine separate black aviation squadrons which would perform the miscellaneous tasks associated with the upkeep of airfields. during the next year the chief of staff set the allotment of black recruits for the air arm at a rate that brought over , negroes into the air corps by . on january under secretary patterson announced the formation of a black pursuit squadron, but the army air forces, bowing to the opposition typified by general arnold's comments of the previous year, trained the black pilots in separate facilities at tuskegee, alabama, where the army tried to duplicate the expensive training center established for white officers at maxwell field, just forty miles away.[ - ] black pilots were at first trained exclusively for pursuit flying, a very difficult kind of combat for which a negro had to qualify both physically and technically or else, in judge (p.  ) hastie's words, "not fly at all."[ - ] the th fighter squadron was organized at tuskegee in and sent to the mediterranean theater in april . by then the all-black d fighter group with three additional fighter squadrons had been organized, and in it too was deployed to the mediterranean. [footnote - : usaf oral history program, interv with maj gen noel f parrish (usaf, ret.), mar .] [footnote - : william h. hastie, _on clipped wings: the story of jim crow in the army air corps_ (new york: naacp, ). based on war department documents and statistics, this famous pamphlet was essentially an attack on the army air corps. for a more comprehensive account of the negro and the army air forces, see osur, _blacks in the army air forces during world war ii_.] [illustration: pilots of the d fighter group being briefed _for combat mission in italy_.] these squadrons could use only a limited number of pilots, far fewer than those black cadets qualified for such training. all applicants in excess of requirements were placed on an indefinite waiting list where many became overage or were requisitioned for other military and civilian duties. yet when the army air forces finally decided to organize a black bomber unit, the th bombardment group, in late , it encountered a scarcity of black pilots and crewmen. because of the lack of technical and educational opportunities for negroes in america, fewer blacks than whites were included in the manpower pool, and tuskegee, already overburdened with its manifold training functions and lacking the means to train bomber crews, was unable to fill the training gap. sending black cadets to white training schools was one obvious solution; the army air forces chose instead to postpone the operational date of the th until its pilots could be trained at tuskegee. in the end, the th was not declared (p.  ) operational until after the war. even then some compromise with the army air forces' segregation principles was necessary, since tuskegee could not accommodate b- pilot transition and navigator-bombardier training. in black officers were therefore temporarily assigned to formerly all-white schools for such training. tuskegee's position as the sole and separate training center for black pilots remained inviolate until its closing in , however, and its graduates, the "tuskegee airmen," continued to serve as a powerful symbol of armed forces segregation.[ - ] [footnote - : for a detailed discussion of the black training program, see osur, _blacks in the army air forces during world war ii_, ch. iii; lee, _employment of negro troops_, pp. - ; charles e. francis, _the tuskegee airmen: the story of the negro in the u.s. air force_ (boston bruce humphries, ).] training for black officer candidates other than flyers, like that of most officer candidates throughout the army, was integrated. at first the possibility of integrated training seemed unlikely, for even though assistant secretary of war for air robert a. lovett had assured hastie that officer candidate training would be integrated, the technical training command announced plans in for a segregated facility. although the plans were quickly canceled the command's announcement was the immediate cause for hastie's resignation from the war department. the air staff assured the assistant secretary of war in january of that qualified negroes were being sent to officer candidate schools and to training courses "throughout the school system of the technical training command."[ - ] in fact, negroes did attend the air forces' officer candidate school at miami beach, although not in great numbers. in spite of their integrated training, however, most of these black officers were assigned to the predominantly black units at tuskegee and godman fields. [footnote - : memo, cofas for asw, jan , asw . .] the army air forces found it easier to absorb the thousands of black enlisted men than to handle the black flying squadrons. for the enlisted men it created a series of units with vaguely defined duties, usually common labor jobs operating for the most part under a bulk allotment system that allowed the air forces to absorb great numbers of new men. through hundreds of these aviation training squadrons, quartermaster truck companies, and engineer aviation and air base security battalions were added to the air forces' organization tables. practically every american air base in the world had its contingent of black troops performing the service duties connected with air operations. the air corps, like the armor and the artillery branches, was able to form separate squadrons or battalions for black troops, but the infantry and cavalry found it difficult to organize the growing number of separate black battalions and regiments. the creation of black divisions was the obvious solution, although this arrangement would run counter to current practice, which was based in part on the army's experience with the d division in world war i. convinced of the poor performance of that unit in , the war department had decided in the 's not to form any more black divisions. the regiment would serve as the basic black unit, and from time to time these regiments would be employed as organic elements of divisions whose other regiments and units would be white. in keeping with this decision, the black th and th cavalry regiments were combined in october (p.  ) with white regiments to form the d cavalry division. before world war ii most black leaders had agreed with the army's opposition to all-black divisions, but for different reasons. they considered that such divisions only served to strengthen the segregation pattern they so opposed. in the early weeks of the war a conference of black editors, including walter white, pressed for the creation of an experimental integrated division of volunteers. white argued that such a unit would lift black morale, "have a tremendous psychological effect upon white america," and refute the enemy's charge that "the united states talks about democracy but practices racial discrimination and segregation."[ - ] the naacp organized a popular movement in support of the idea, which was endorsed by many important individuals and organizations.[ - ] yet this experiment was unacceptable to the army. ignoring its experience with all-volunteer paratroopers and other special units, the war department declared that the volunteer system was "an ineffective and dangerous" method of raising combat units. admitting that the integrated division might be an encouraging gesture toward certain minorities, general marshall added that "the urgency of the present military situation necessitates our using tested and proved methods of procedure, and using them with all haste."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, walter white to gen marshall, dec , ag . ( - - ).] [footnote - : see c- , , volunteer division folder, naacp collection, manuscripts division, lc.] [footnote - : ltr, cofs to dorothy canfield fisher, feb , ocs - .] even though it rejected the idea of a volunteer, integrated division, the army staff reviewed in the fall of a proposal for the assignment of some black recruits to white units. the organization-mobilization group of g- , headed by col. edwin w. chamberlain, argued that the army general classification test scores proved that black soldiers in groups were less useful to the army than white soldiers in groups. it was a waste of manpower, funds, and equipment, therefore, to organize the increasingly large numbers of black recruits into segregated units. not only was such organization wasteful, but segregation "aggravated if not caused in its entirety" the racial friction that was already plaguing the army. to avoid both the waste and the strife, chamberlain recommended that the army halt the activation of additional black units and integrate black recruits in the low-score categories, iv and v, into white units in the ratio of one black to nine whites. the black recruits would be used as cooks, orderlies, and drivers, and in other jobs which required only the minimum basic training and which made up to percent of those in the average unit. negroes in the higher categories, i through iii, would be assigned to existing black units where they could be expected to improve the performance of those units. chamberlain defended his plan against possible charges of discrimination by pointing out that the negroes would be assigned wholly on the basis of native capacity, not race, and that this plan would increase the opportunities for negroes to participate in the war effort. to those who objected on the grounds that the proposal meant racial integration, chamberlain replied that there was no more integration involved than in "the (p.  ) employment of negroes as servants in a white household."[ - ] [footnote - : draft memo (initialed e.w.c.) for gen edwards, g- negro file, - . see also lee, _employment of negro troops_, pp. - .] the chamberlain plan and a variant proposed the following spring prompted discussion in the army staff that clearly revealed general dissatisfaction with the current policy. nonetheless, in the face of opposition from the service and ground forces, the plan was abandoned. yet because something had to be done with the mounting numbers of black draftees, the army staff reversed the decision made in its prewar mobilization plans and turned once more to the concept of the all-black division. the d infantry division was reactivated in the spring of and the d the following fall. the d cavalry division was reconstituted as an all-black unit and reactivated in february . these units were capable of absorbing , or more men each and could use men trained in the skills of practically every arm and service. this absorbency potential became increasingly important in when the chairman of the war manpower commission, paul v. mcnutt, began to attack the use of racial quotas in selecting inductees. he considered the practice of questionable legality, and the commission faced mounting public criticism as white husbands and fathers were drafted while single healthy negroes were not called.[ - ] secretary stimson defended the legality of the quota system. he did not consider the current practice "discriminatory in any way" so long as the army accepted its fair percentage of negroes. he pointed out that the selective service act provided that no man would be inducted "_unless and until_" he was acceptable to the services, and negroes were acceptable "only at a rate at which they can be properly assimilated."[ - ] stimson later elaborated on this theme, arguing that the quota system would be necessary even after the army reached full strength because inductions would be limited to replacement of losses. since there were few negroes in combat, their losses would be considerably less than those of whites. mcnutt disagreed with stimson's interpretation of the law and announced plans to abandon it as soon as the current backlog of uninducted negroes was absorbed, a date later set for january .[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, paul v. mcnutt to sw, feb , ag . ( - - ) ( ) sec. .] [footnote - : ltr, sw to mcnutt, feb , ag . ( - - ) ( ) sec. .] [footnote - : ltr, mcnutt to sw, mar , ag . ( - - ) ( ) sec. .] a crisis over the quota system was averted when, beginning in the spring of , the army's monthly manpower demands outran the ability of the bureau of selective service to provide black inductees. so long as the army requested more negroes than the bureau could supply, little danger existed that mcnutt would carry out his threat.[ - ] but it was no victory for the army. the question of the quota's legality remained unanswered, and it appeared that the army might be forced to abandon the system at some future time when there was a black surplus. [footnote - : the danger was further reduced when, as part of a national manpower allocation reform, president roosevelt removed the bureau of selective service from the war manpower commission's control and restored it to its independent status as the selective service system on december . see stimson and bundy, _on active service_, pp. - ; theodore wyckoff, "the office of the secretary of war under henry l. stimson," in cmh.] there were many reasons for the sudden shortage of black inductees (p.  ) in the spring of . since more negroes were leaving the service for health or other reasons, the number of calls for black draftees had increased. in addition, local draft boards were rejecting more negroes. but the basic reason for the shortage was that the magnitude of the war had finally turned the manpower surpluses of the 's into manpower shortages, and the shortages were appearing in black as well as white levies for the armed forces. the negro was no longer a manpower luxury. the quota calls for negroes rose in , and black strength stood at , men in september, approximately . percent of the whole army. [ - ] the percentage of black women in the army stayed at less than percent of the women's army auxiliary corps--after july the women's army corps--throughout the war. training and serving under the same racial policy that governed the employment of men, the women's corps also had a black recruitment goal of percent, but despite the active efforts of recruiters and generally favorable publicity from civil rights groups, the volunteer organization was unable to overcome the attitude among young black women that they would not be well received at army posts.[ - ] [footnote - : strength of the army, jan , stm- , p. .] [footnote - : memo, dir of mil pers, sos, for g- , sep , spgam/ . (waac) ( - - ). see also edwin r. embree, "report of informal visit to training camp for waac's des moines, iowa" (c. ), spwa . . for a general description of negroes in the women's army auxiliary corps, see mattie e. treadwell, _the women's army corps_, united states army in world war ii (washington: government printing office, ), especially chapter iii. see also lee, _employment of negro troops_, pp. - .] faced with manpower shortages, the army began to reassess its plan to distribute negroes proportionately throughout the arms and services. the demand for new service units had soared as the size of the overseas armies grew, while black combat units, unwanted by overseas commanders, had remained stationed in the united states. the war department hoped to ease the strain on manpower resources by converting black combat troops into service troops. a notable example of the wholesale conversion of such combat troops and one that received considerable notice in the press was the inactivation of the d cavalry division upon its arrival in north africa in march . victims of the change included the th and th cavalry regiments, historic combat units that had fought with distinction in the indian wars, with teddy roosevelt in cuba, and in the philippine insurrection.[ - ] [footnote - : inactivation of the d cavalry division began in february , and its headquarters completed the process on may. the th cavalry was inactivated on march, the th cavalry on march .] by trying to justify the conversion, secretary stimson only aggravated the controversy. in the face of congressional questions and criticism in the black press, stimson declared that the decision stemmed from a study of the relative abilities and status of training of the troops in the units available for conversion. if black units were particularly affected, it was because "many of the negro units have been unable to master efficiently the techniques of modern weapons."[ - ] thus, by the end of , the army had abandoned its attempt to maintain a balance between black combat and service units, and during the rest of the war most negroes were assigned to service units. [footnote - : ltr, sw to rep. hamilton fish, feb , reprinted in u.s. congress, house, _congressional record_, th cong., d sess., pp. - .] according to the war department, the relationship between negroes (p.  ) and the army was a mutual obligation. negroes had the right and duty to serve their country to the best of their abilities; the army had the right and the duty to see that they did so. true, the use of black troops was made difficult because their schooling had been largely inferior and their work therefore chiefly unskilled. nevertheless, the army staff concluded, all races were equally endowed for war and most of the less mentally alert could fight if properly led.[ - ] a manual on leadership observed: war department concern with the negro is focused directly and solely on the problem of the most effective use of colored troops ... the army has no authority or intention to participate in social reform as such but does view the problem as a matter of efficient troop utilization. with an imposed ceiling on the maximum strength of the army it is the responsibility of all officers to assure the most efficient use of the manpower assigned.[ - ] [footnote - : war department pamphlet - , _command of negro troops_, february .] [footnote - : army service forces manual m- , _leadership and the negro soldier_, october , p. iv.] but the best efforts of good officers could not avail against poor policy. although the army maintained that negroes had to bear a proportionate share of the casualties, by policy it assigned the majority to noncombat units and thus withheld the chance for them to assume an equal risk. subscribing to the advantage of making full use of individual abilities, the army nevertheless continued to consider negroes as a group and to insist that military efficiency required racially segregated units. segregation in turn burdened the service with the costly provision of separate facilities for the races. although a large number of negroes served in world war ii, their employment was limited in opportunity and expensive for the service. _the need for change_ if segregation weakened the army's organization for global war, it had even more serious effects on every tenth soldier, for as it deepened the negro's sense of inferiority it devastated his morale. it was a major cause of the poor performance and the disciplinary problems that plagued so many black units. and it made black soldiers blame their personal difficulties and misfortunes, many the common lot of any soldier, on racial discrimination.[ - ] [footnote - : lee, _employment of negro troops_, p. ; for a full discussion of morale, see ch. xi. see also david g. mandelbaum, _soldier groups and negro soldiers_ (berkeley: university of california press, ); charles dollard and donald young, "in the armed forces," _survey graphic_ (january ): ff.] deteriorating morale in black units and pressure from a critical audience of articulate negroes and their sympathizers led the war department to focus special attention on its race problem. early in the war secretary stimson had agreed with a general staff recommendation that a permanent committee be formed to evaluate racial incidents, propose special reforms, and answer questions involving the training and assignment of negroes.[ - ] on august he established the advisory committee on negro troop policies, with assistant secretary mccloy as chairman.[ - ] caught in the cross (p.  ) fire of black demands and army traditions, the committee contented itself at first with collecting information on the racial situation and acting as a clearinghouse for recommendations on the employment of black troops.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, g- for cofs, jul ; df, g- to tag, aug . both in ag (advisory cmte on negro trp policies, jul ) ( ).] [footnote - : the committee included the assistant chiefs of staff, g- , of the war department general staff, the air staff, and the army ground forces; the director of personnel, army service forces; general davis, representing the inspector general, and an acting secretary. the civilian aide to the secretary of war was not a member, although judge hastie's successor was made an _ex officio_ member in march . see min of mtg of advisory cmte, col j. s. leonard, mar , asw . ntc.] [footnote - : see, for example, memo, recorder, cmte on negro troop policies (col john h. mccormick), for cofs, sub: negro troops, wdcsa . ( - - ).] [illustration: service club, fort huachuca.] serious racial trouble was developing by the end of the first year of the war. the trouble was a product of many factors, including the psychological effects of segregation which may not have been so obvious to the committee or even to the black soldier. other factors, however, were visible to all and begged for remedial action. for example, the practice of using racially separated facilities on military posts, which was not sanctioned in the army's basic plan for black troops, took hold early in the war. many black units were located at camps in the south, where commanders insisted on applying local laws and customs inside the military reservations. this (p.  ) practice spread rapidly, and soon in widely separated sections of the country commanders were separating the races in theaters, post exchanges, service clubs, and buses operating on posts. the accommodations provided negroes were separate but rarely equal, and substandard recreational and housing facilities assigned to black troops were a constant source of irritation. in fact the army, through the actions of local commanders, actually introduced jim crow in some places at home and abroad. negroes considered such practices in violation of military regulations and inconsistent with the announced principles for which the united states was fighting. many believed themselves the victims of the personal prejudices of the local commander. judge hastie reported their feelings: "the traditional mores of the south have been widely accepted and adopted by the army as the basis of policy and practice affecting the negro soldier.... in tactical organization, in physical location, in human contacts, the negro soldier is separated from the white soldier as completely as possible."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, hastie for sw, sep , sub: survey and recommendations concerning the integration of the negro soldier into the army, g- / - .] in november another controversy erupted over the discovery that the red cross had established racially segregated blood banks. the red cross readily admitted that it had no scientific justification for the racial separation of blood and blamed the armed services for the decision. despite the evidence of science and at risk of demoralizing the black community, the army's surgeon general defended the controversial practice as necessary to insure the acceptance of a potentially unpopular program. ignoring constant criticism from the naacp and elements of the black press, the armed forces continued to demand segregated blood banks throughout the war. negroes appreciated the irony of the situation, for they were well aware that a black doctor, charles r. drew, had been a pioneer researcher in the plasma extraction process and had directed the first red cross blood bank.[ - ] [footnote - : on january the navy announced that "in deference to the wishes of those for whom the plasma is being provided, the blood will be processed separately so that those receiving transfusions may be given blood of their own race." three days later the chief of the bureau of medicine, who was also the president's personal physician, told the secretary of the navy, "it is my opinion that at this time we cannot afford to open up a subject such as mixing blood or plasma regardless of the theoretical fact that there is no chemical difference in human blood." see memo, rear adm ross t. mcintire for secnav, jan , genrecsnav. see also florence murray, ed., _negro handbook, - _ (new york: a. a. wyn, ), pp. - . for effect of segregated blood banks on black morale, see mary a. morton, "the federal government and negro morale," _journal of negro education_ (summer ): , - .] black morale suffered further in the leadership crisis that developed in black units early in the war. the logic of segregated units demanded a black officer corps, but there were never enough black officers to command all the black units. in only . percent of the negroes in the army were officers, a shortcoming that could not be explained by poor education alone.[ - ] but when the number of black officers did begin to increase, obstacles to their employment appeared: some white commanders, assuming that negroes did not possess leadership ability and that black troops preferred white (p.  ) officers, demanded white officers for their units. limited segregated recreational and living facilities for black officers prevented their assignment to some bases, while the active opposition of civilian communities forced the army to exclude them from others. the army staff practice of forbidding negroes to outrank or command white officers serving in the same unit not only limited the employment and restricted the rank of black officers but also created invidious distinctions between white and black officers in the same unit. it tended to convince enlisted men that their black leaders were not full-fledged officers. thus restricted in assignment and segregated socially and professionally, his ability and status in question, the black officer was often an object of scorn to himself and to his men. [footnote - : eli ginzberg, _the negro potential_ (new york: columbia university press, ), p. . ginzberg points out that only about one out of ten black soldiers in the upper two mental categories became an officer, compared to one out of four white soldiers.] the attitude and caliber of white officers assigned to black units hardly compensated for the lack of black officers. in general, white officers resented their assignment to black units and were quick to seek transfer. worse still, black units, where sensitive and patient leaders were needed to create an effective military force, often became, as they had in earlier wars, dumping grounds for officers unwanted in white units.[ - ] the army staff further aggravated black sensibilities by showing a preference for officers of southern birth and training, believing them to be generally more competent to exercise command over negroes. in reality many negroes, especially those from the urban centers, particularly resented southern officers. at best these officers appeared paternalistic, and negroes disliked being treated as a separate and distinct group that needed special handling and protection. as general davis later circumspectly reported, "many colored people of today expect only a certain line of treatment from white officers born and reared in the south, namely, that which follows the southern pattern, which is most distasteful to them."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dcofs to cg, aaf, aug , sub: professional qualities of officers assigned to negro units, wdgap . ; memo, cg, vii corps, to cg, agf, aug , same sub, gnags . .] [footnote - : brig gen b. o. davis, "history of a special section office of the inspector general ( june to november )," p. , in cmh.] some of these humiliations might have been less demeaning had the black soldier been convinced that he was a full partner in the crusade against fascism. as news of the conversion of black units from combat to service duties and the word that no new black combat units were being organized became a matter of public knowledge, the black press asked: will any black combat units be left? will any of those left be allowed to fight? in fact, would black units ever get overseas? actually, the army had a clear-cut plan for the overseas employment of both black service and combat units. in may the war department directed the army air forces, ground forces, and service forces to make sure that black troops were ordered overseas in numbers not less than their percentage in each of these commands. theater commanders would be informed of orders moving black troops to their commands, but they would not be asked to agree to their shipment beforehand. since troop shipments to the british isles were the chief concern at (p.  ) that time, the order added that "there will be no positive restrictions on the use of colored troops in the british isles, but shipment of colored units to the british isles will be limited, initially, to those in the service categories."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, tag to cg, aaf, et al., may , ag . ( - - ).] the problem here was not the army's policy but the fact that certain foreign governments and even some commanders in american territories wanted to exclude negroes. some countries objected to black soldiers because they feared race riots and miscegenation. others with large black populations of their own felt that black soldiers with their higher rates of pay might create unrest. still other countries had national exclusion laws. in the case of alaska and trinidad, secretary stimson ordered, "don't yield." speaking of iceland, greenland, and labrador, he commented, "pretty cold for blacks." to the request of panamanian officials that a black signal construction unit be withdrawn from their country he replied, "tell them [the black unit] they must complete their work--it is ridiculous to raise such objections when the panama canal itself was built with black labor." as for chile and venezuela's exclusion of negroes he ruled that "as we are the petitioners here we probably must comply."[ - ] stimson's rulings led to a new war department policy: henceforth black soldiers would be assigned without regard to color except that they would not be sent to extreme northern areas or to any country against its will when the united states had requested the right to station troops in that country.[ - ] [footnote - : stimson's comments were not limited to overseas areas. to a request by the second army commander that negroes be excluded from maneuvers in certain areas of the american south he replied: "no, get the southerners used to them!" memo, acofs, wpd, for cofs, mar , sub: the colored troop problem, opd . . stimson's comments are written marginally in ink and initialed "h.l.s."] [footnote - : memo, g- for tag, apr , and revised proposals, apr and apr . all in g- / - .] ultimately, theater commanders decided which troops would be committed to action and which units would be needed overseas; their decisions were usually respected by the war department where few believed that washington should dictate such matters. unwilling to add racial problems to their administrative burdens, some commanders had been known to cancel their request for troops rather than accept black units. consequently, very few negroes were sent overseas in the early years of the war. black soldiers were often the victims of gross discrimination that transcended their difficulties with the army's administration. for instance, black soldiers, particularly those from more integrated regions of the country, resented local ordinances governing transportation and recreation facilities that put them at a great disadvantage in the important matters of leave and amusement. infractions of local rules were inevitable and led to heightened racial tension and recurring violence.[ - ] at times black soldiers themselves, reflecting the low morale and lack of discipline in their units, instigated the violence. whoever the culprits, the army's files are replete with cases of discrimination charged, investigations launched, and exonerations issued or reforms ordered.[ - ] an incredible amount of time and effort went into handling these cases during the darkest days of the war--cases growing out of a policy (p.  ) created in the name of military efficiency. [footnote - : memo, civilian aide to sw, nov , asw . nt.] [footnote - : see, for example, aaf central decimal files for october -may (rg ). for an extended discussion of this subject, see lee, _employment of negro troops_, ch xi-xiii.] nor was the violence limited to the united states. racial friction also developed in great britain where some american troops, resenting their black countrymen's social acceptance by the british, tried to export jim crow by forcing the segregation of recreational facilities. appreciating the treatment they were receiving from the british, the black soldiers fought back, and the clashes grew at times to riot proportions. general davis considered discrimination and prejudice the cause of trouble, but he placed the immediate blame on local commanders. many commanders, convinced that they had little jurisdiction over racial disputes in the civilian community or simply refusing to accept responsibility, delegated the task of keeping order to their noncommissioned officers and military police.[ - ] these men, rarely experienced in handling racial disturbances and often prejudiced against black soldiers, usually managed to exacerbate the situation. [footnote - : memo, brig gen b. o. davis for the ig, dec , ig . -great britain.] in an atmosphere charged with rumors and counterrumors, personal incidents involving two men might quickly blow up into riots involving hundreds. in the summer of the army began to reap what ulysses lee called the "harvest of disorder." race riots occurred at military reservations in mississippi, georgia, california, texas, and kentucky. at other stations, the advisory committee on negro troop policies somberly warned, there were indications of unrest ready to erupt into violence.[ - ] by the middle of the war, violence over racial issues at home and abroad had become a source of constant concern for the war department. [footnote - : memo, asw for cofs, jul , sub: negro troops, asw . nt. the judge advocate general described disturbances of this type as military "mutiny." see the judge advocate general, _military justice, july to december _, p. , in cmh.] _internal reform: amending racial practices_ concern over troop morale and discipline and the attendant problem of racial violence did not lead to a substantial revision of the army's racial policy. on the contrary, the army staff continued to insist that segregation was a national issue and that the army's task was to defend the country, not alter its social customs. until the nation changed its racial practices or until congress ordered such changes for the armed forces, racially separated units would remain.[ - ] in the army had insisted that debate on the subject was closed,[ - ] and, in fact, except for discussion of the chamberlain plan there was no serious thought of revising racial policy in the army staff until after the war. [footnote - : lee, _employment of negro troops_, p. .] [footnote - : ltr, tag to dr. amanda v. g. hillyer, chmn program cmte, d.c. branch, naacp, apr , ag . ( - - ) ( ).] had the debate been reopened in , the traditionalists on the army staff would have found new support for their views in a series of surveys made of white and black soldiers in and . these surveys supported the theory that the army, a national institution (p.  ) composed of individual citizens with pronounced views on race, would meet massive disobedience and internal disorder as well as national resistance to any substantial change in policy. one extensive survey, covering , soldiers in ninety-two units, revealed that percent of the whites and percent of the negroes preferred segregated units. among the whites, percent preferred separate service clubs and percent preferred separate post exchanges. almost half of the negroes thought separate service clubs and post exchanges were a good idea.[ - ] these attitudes merely reflected widely held national views as suggested in a survey of five key cities by the office of war information.[ - ] the survey showed that percent of the whites and percent of the blacks questioned supported segregation. [footnote - : research branch, special service division, "what the soldier thinks," december , and "attitudes of the negro soldier," july . both cited in lee, _employment of negro troops_, pp. - . for detailed analysis, see samuel a. stouffer et al., _studies in social psychology in world war ii_, vol. i, _the american soldier: adjustment during army life_ (princeton: princeton university press, ), pp. - . for a more personal view of black experiences in world war ii service clubs, see margaret halsey's _color blind: a white woman looks at the negro_ (new york: simon and schuster, ). for a comprehensive expression of the attitudes of black soldiers, see mary p. motley, ed., _the invisible soldier: the experience of the black soldier, world war ii_ (detroit: wayne state university press, ), a compilation of oral histories by world war ii veterans. although these interviews were conducted a quarter of a century after the event and in the wake of the modern civil rights movement, they provide useful insight to the attitude of black soldiers toward discrimination in the services.] [footnote - : office of war information, the negroes' role in the war: a study of white and colored opinions (memorandum , surveys division, bureau of special services), jul , in cmh.] some army officials considered justification by statistics alone a risky business. reviewing the support for segregation revealed in the surveys, for example, the special services division commented: "many of the negroes and some of the whites who favor separation in the army indicate by their comments that they are opposed to segregation in principle. they favor separation in the army to avoid trouble or unpleasantness." its report added that the longer a negro remained in the army, the less likely he was to support segregation.[ - ] nor did it follow from the overwhelming support for segregation that a policy of integration would result in massive resistance. as critics later pointed out, the same surveys revealed that almost half the respondents expressed a strong preference for civilian life, but the army did not infer that serious disorders would result if these men were forced to remain in uniform.[ - ] [footnote - : special services division, "what the soldier thinks," number , august , pp. - , ssd . .] [footnote - : dollard and young, "in the armed forces," p. .] by negroes within and without the war department had just about exhausted arguments for a policy change. after two years of trying, judge hastie came to believe that change was possible only in response to "strong and manifest public opinion." he concluded that he would be far more useful as a private citizen who could express his views freely and publicly than he was as a war department employee, bound to conform to official policy. quitting the department, hastie joined the increasingly vocal black organizations in a sustained attack on the army's segregation policy, an attack that was also being translated into political action by the major civil rights organizations. in , a full year before the national elections, representatives of twenty-five civil rights groups met and formulated the demands (p.  ) they would make of the presidential candidates: full integration (some groups tempered this demand by calling for integrated units of volunteers); abolition of racial quotas; abolition of segregation in recreational and other army facilities; abolition of blood plasma segregation; development of an educational program in race relations in the army; greater black participation in combat forces; and the progressive removal of black troops from areas where they were subject to disrespect, abuse, and even violence.[ - ] [footnote - : new york _times_, december , .] the army could not afford to ignore these demands completely, as truman k. gibson, jr., judge hastie's successor, pointed out.[ - ] the political situation indicated that the racial policy of the armed forces would be an issue in the next national election. recalling the changes forced on the army as a result of political pressures applied before the election, gibson predicted that actions that might now seem impolitic to the army and the white house might not seem so during the next campaign when the black vote could influence the outcome in several important states, including new york, pennsylvania, illinois, and michigan. already the chicago _tribune_ and other anti-administration groups were trying to encourage black protest in terms not always accurate but nonetheless believable to the black voter. gibson suggested that the army act before the political pressure became even more intense.[ - ] [footnote - : gibson, a lawyer and a graduate of the university of chicago, became judge hastie's assistant in . after hastie's resignation on january , gibson served as acting civilian aide and assumed the position permanently on september . see memo, asw for admin asst (john w. martyn), sep , asw . nt-civ aide.] [footnote - : memo, gibson to asw, nov , asw . nt. see also new york _times_, december , .] caught between the black demands and war department traditions, the advisory committee on negro troop policies launched an attack--much too late and too weak, its critics agreed--on what it perceived as the causes of the army's racial disorders. some of the credit for this attack must go to truman gibson. no less dedicated to abolition of racial segregation than hastie, gibson eschewed the grand gesture and emphasized those practical changes that could be effected one step at a time. for all his zeal, gibson was admirably detached.[ - ] he knew that his willingness to recognize that years of oppression and injustice had marred the black soldier's performance would earn for him the scorn of many civil rights activists, but he also knew that his fairness made him an effective advocate in the war department. he worked closely with mccloy's committee, always describing with his alternatives for action their probable effect upon the army, the public, and the developing military situation. as a result of the close cooperation between the advisory committee and gibson, the army for the first time began to agree on practical if not policy changes. [footnote - : for discussion of gibson's attitude and judgments, see interv, author with evans, jun .] the advisory committee's first campaign was directed at local commanders. after a long review of the evidence, the committee was convinced that the major cause of racial disorder was the failure of commanders in some echelons to appreciate the seriousness of racial unrest and their own responsibility for dealing with the discipline, morale, and (p.  ) welfare of their men. since it found that most disturbances began with real or fancied incidents of discrimination, the committee concluded that there should be no discrimination against negroes in the matter of privileges and accommodations and none in favor of negroes that compromised disciplinary standards. the committee wanted local commanders to be reminded that maintaining proper discipline and good order among soldiers, and between soldiers and civilians, was a definite command responsibility.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, chmn, advisory cmte, for cofs, jul , sub: negro troops, asw . nt. this was not sent until july.] general marshall incorporated the committee's recommendations in a letter to the field. he concluded by saying that "failure on the part of any commander to concern himself personally and vigorously with this problem will be considered as evidence of lack of capacity and cause for reclassification and removal from assignment."[ - ] at the same time, the chief of staff did not adopt several of the committee's specific recommendations. he did not require local commanders to recommend changes in war department policy on the treatment of negroes and the organization and employment of black units. nor did he require them to report on steps taken by them to follow the committee's recommendations. moreover, he did not order the dispatch of black combat units to active theaters although the committee had pointed to this course as "the most effective means of reducing tension among negro troops." [footnote - : memo, cofs for cg, aaf, et al., jul , sub: negro troops, wdcsa . .] next, the advisory committee turned its attention to the black press. judge hastie and the representatives of the senior civil rights organizations were judicious in their criticism and accurate in their charges, but this statement could not be made for much of the black press. along with deserving credit for spotlighting racial injustices and giving a very real impetus to racial progress, a segment of the black press had to share the blame for fomenting racial disorder by the frequent publication of inaccurate and inflammatory war stories. some field commanders charged that the constant criticism was detrimental to troop morale and demanded that the war department investigate and even censor particular black newspapers. in july the army service forces recommended that general marshall officially warn the editors against printing inciting and untrue stories and suggested that if this caution failed sedition proceedings be instituted against the culprits.[ - ] general marshall followed a more moderate course suggested by assistant secretary mccloy.[ - ] the army staff amplified and improved the services of the bureau of public relations by appointing negroes to the bureau and by releasing more news items of special interest to black journalists. the result was a considerable increase in constructive and accurate stories on (p.  ) black participation in the war, although articles and editorials continued to be severely critical of the army's segregation policy. [footnote - : memo, advisory cmte for cofs, mar , sub: inflammatory publications, asw . nt cmte; memo, cg, th service cmd, asf, to cg, asf, jul , sub: disturbances among negro troops, with attached note initialed by gen marshall, wdcsa . ( jul ).] [footnote - : memo, j. j. mcc (john j. mccloy) for gen marshall, jul , with attached note signed "gcm," asw . nt.] the proposal to send black units into combat, rejected by marshall when raised by the advisory committee in , became the preeminent racial issue in the army during the next year.[ - ] it was vitally necessary, the advisory committee reasoned, that black troops not be wasted by leaving them to train endlessly in camps around the country, and that the war department begin making them a "military asset." in march it recommended to secretary stimson that black units be introduced into combat and that units and training schedules be reorganized if necessary to insure that this deployment be carried out as promptly as possible. elaborating on the committee's recommendation, chairman mccloy added: there has been a tendency to allow the situation to develop where selections are made on the basis of efficiency with the result that the colored units are discarded for combat service, but little is done by way of studying new means to put them in shape for combat service. with so large a portion of our population colored, with the example of the effective use of colored troops (of a much lower order of intelligence) by other nations, and with the many imponderables that are connected with the situation, we must, i think, be more affirmative about the use of our negro troops. if present methods do not bring them to combat efficiency, we should change those methods. that is what this resolution purports to recommend.[ - ] [footnote - : min of mtg of advisory cmte on negro troop policies, feb , asw . negro troops cmte; lee, _employment of negro troops_, pp. - .] [footnote - : memo, asw for sw, mar , inclosing formal recommendations, wdcsa . / negroes ( ).] stimson agreed, and on march the advisory committee met with members of the army staff to decide on combat assignments for regimental combat teams from the d and d divisions. in order that both handpicked soldiers and normal units might be tested, the team from the d would come from existing units of that division, and the one from the d would be a specially selected group of volunteers. general marshall and his associates continued to view the commitment of black combat troops as an experiment that might provide documentation for the future employment of negroes in combat.[ - ] in keeping with this experiment, the army staff suggested to field commanders how negroes might be employed and requested continuing reports on the units' progress. [footnote - : pogue, _organizer of victory_, p. .] the belated introduction of major black units into combat helped alleviate the army's racial problems. after elements of the d division were committed on bougainville in march and an advanced group of the d landed in italy in july, the army staff found it easier to ship smaller supporting units to combat theaters, either as separate units or as support for larger units, a course that reduced the glut of black soldiers stationed in the united states. recognizing that many of these units had poor leaders, lt. gen. lesley j. mcnair, head of the army ground forces, ordered that, "if practicable," all leaders of black units who had not received "excellent" or higher (p.  ) in their efficiency ratings would be replaced before the units were scheduled for overseas deployment.[ - ] given the "if practicable" loophole, there was little chance that all the units would go overseas with "excellent" commanders. [footnote - : memo, cg, agf, for cg's, second army, et al., n.d., sub: efficiency ratings of commanders of negro units scheduled for overseas shipment, gngap-l . / .] [illustration: d division troops in bougainville, april . _men, packing mortar shells, cross the west branch texas river._] a source of pride to the black community, the troop commitments also helped to reduce national racial tensions, but they did little for the average black soldier who remained stationed in the united states. he continued to suffer discrimination within and without the gates of the camp. the committee attributed that discrimination to the fact that war department policy was not being carried out in all commands. in some instances local commanders were unaware of the policy; in others they refused to pay sufficient attention to the seriousness of what was, after all, but one of many problems facing them. for some time committee members had been urging the war department to write special instructions, and finally in february the department issued a pamphlet designed to acquaint local commanders with an official definition of army racial policy and to improve methods of developing leaders in black units. _command of negro troops_ was a landmark (p.  ) publication.[ - ] its frank statement of the army's racial problems, its scholarly and objective discussion of the disadvantages that burdened the black soldier, and its outline of black rights and responsibilities clearly revealed the committee's intention to foster racial harmony by promoting greater command responsibility. the pamphlet represented a major departure from previous practice and served as a model for later army and navy statements on race.[ - ] [footnote - : wd pam - , _command of negro troops_, feb .] [footnote - : the army service forces published a major supplement to war department pamphlet - in october , see army service forces manual m- , _leadership and the negro soldier_.] but pamphlets alone would not put an end to racial discrimination; the committee had to go beyond its role of instructor. although the war department had issued a directive on march forbidding the assignment of any recreational facility, "including theaters and post exchanges," by race and requiring the removal of signs labeling facilities for "white" and "colored" soldiers, there had been little alteration in the recreational situation. the directive had allowed the separate use of existing facilities by designated units and camp areas, so that in many places segregation by unit had replaced separation by race, and inspectors and commanders reported that considerable confusion existed over the war department's intentions. on other posts the order to remove the racial labels from facilities was simply disregarded. on july the committee persuaded the war department to issue another directive clearly informing commanders that facilities could be allocated to specific areas or units, but that all post exchanges and theaters must be opened to all soldiers regardless of race. all government transportation, moreover, was to be available to all troops regardless of race. nor could soldiers be restricted to certain sections of government vehicles on or off base, regardless of local customs.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, tag to cg, aaf, et al., jul , sub: recreational facilities, ag . ( jul ) ob-s-a-m.] little dramatic change ensued in day-to-day life on base. some commanders, emphasizing that part of the directive which allowed the designation of facilities for units and areas, limited the degree of the directive's application to post exchanges and theaters and ignored those provisions concerned with individual rights. this interpretation only added to the racial unrest that culminated in several incidents, of which the one at the officers' club at freeman field, indiana, was the most widely publicized.[ - ] after this incident the committee promptly asked for a revision of wd pamphlet - on the command of black troops that would clearly spell out the intention of the authors of the directive to apply its integration provisions explicitly to "officers' clubs, messes, or similar social organizations."[ - ] in effect the war department was declaring that racial separation applied to units only. for the first time it made a clear distinction (p.  ) between army race policy to be applied on federal military reservations and local civilian laws and customs to be observed by members of the armed forces when off post. in acting secretary patterson's words: the war department has maintained throughout the emergency and present war that it is not an appropriate medium for effecting social readjustments but has insisted that all soldiers, regardless of race, be afforded equal opportunity to enjoy the recreational facilities which are provided at posts, camps and stations. the thought has been that men who are fulfilling the same obligation, suffering the same dislocation of their private lives, and wearing the identical uniform should, within the confines of the military establishment, have the same privileges for rest and relaxation.[ - ] [footnote - : actually, the use of officers' clubs by black troops was clearly implied if not ordained in paragraph of army regulation - , december , which stated that any club operating on federal property must be open to all officers assigned to the post, camp, or station. for more on the freeman field incident, see chapter , below.] [footnote - : memo, secy, advisory cmte, for advisory cmte on special troop policies, jun , sub: minutes of meeting, asw . nt.] [footnote - : ltr, actg sw to gov. chauncey sparks of alabama, sep , wdcsa . ( aug ).] widely disseminated by the black press as the "anti-jim crow law," the directive and its interpretation by senior officials produced the desired result. although soldiers most often continued to frequent the facilities in their own base areas, in effect maintaining racial separation, they were free to use any facilities, and this knowledge gradually dispelled some of the tensions on posts where restrictions of movement had been a constant threat to good order. with some pride, assistant secretary mccloy claimed on his advisory committee's first birthday that the army had "largely eliminated discrimination against the negroes within its ranks, going further in this direction than the country itself."[ - ] he was a little premature. not until the end of did the advisory committee succeed in eliminating the most glaring examples of discrimination within the army. even then race remained an issue, and isolated racial incidents continued to occur. [footnote - : ltr, asw to herbert b. elliston, editor, washington _post_, aug , asw . nt (gen).] _two exceptions_ departmental policy notwithstanding, a certain amount of racial integration was inevitable during a war that mobilized a biracial army of eight million men. through administrative error or necessity, segregation was ignored on many occasions, and black and white soldiers often worked and lived together in hospitals,[ - ] rest camps, schools, and, more rarely, units. but these were isolated cases, touching relatively few men, and they had no discernible effect on racial policy. of much more importance was the deliberate integration in officer training schools and in the divisions fighting in the european theater in . mccloy referred to these deviations from policy as experiments "too limited to afford general conclusions."[ - ] but if they set no precedents, they at least challenged the army's cherished assumptions on segregation and strengthened the postwar demands for change. [footnote - : ltr, usw to roane waring, national cmdr, american legion, may , sw . nt. integrated hospitals did not appear until . see robert j. parks, "the development of segregation in u.s. army hospitals, - ," _military affairs_ (december ): - .] [footnote - : ltr, asw to secnav, aug , asw . nt (gen).] the army integrated its officer candidate training in an effort to avoid the mistakes of the world war i program. in secretary of war newton d. baker had established a separate training school for (p.  ) black officer candidates at fort des moines, iowa, with disappointing results. to fill its quotas the school had been forced to lower its entrance standards, and each month an arbitrary number of black officer candidates were selected and graduated with little regard for their qualifications. many world war i commanders agreed that the black officers produced by the school proved inadequate as troop commanders, and postwar staff studies generally opposed the future use of black officers. should the army be forced to accept black officers in the future, these commanders generally agreed, they should be trained along with whites.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, william hastie to lee nichols, jul , in nichols collection, cmh; see also lee, _employment of negro troops_ pp. - ; army war college misc file - through - , amhrc.] [illustration: gun crew of battery b, th field artillery, _moving into position near the arno river, italy, september _.] despite these criticisms, mobilization plans between the wars all assumed that black officers would be trained and commissioned, although, as the mobilization plan put it, their numbers would be limited to those required to provide officers for organizations authorized to have black officers.[ - ] no detailed plans were drawn up on the nature of this training, but by the eve of world war ii a policy had become fixed: negroes were to be chosen and trained according to the same standards as white officers, preferably in the same schools.[ - ] the war department ignored the subject of race (p.  ) when it established the officer candidate schools in . "the basic and predominating consideration governing selections to ocs," the adjutant general announced, would be "outstanding qualities of leadership as demonstrated by actual services in the army."[ - ] general davis, who participated in the planning conferences, reasoned that integrated training would be vital for the cooperation that would be necessary in battle. he agreed with the war department's silence on race, adding, "you can't have negro, white, or jewish officers, you've got to have american officers."[ - ] [footnote - : as published in mobilization regulation - ( and may versions), par. d, and jul version, par. b.] [footnote - : lee, _employment of negro troops_, p. .] [footnote - : tag ltr, apr , ag ( - - ) m-m-c.] [footnote - : davis, "history of a special section office of the inspector general."] [illustration: tankers of the st medium tank battalion _prepare for action in the european theater, august _.] the army's policy failed to consider one practical problem: if race was ignored in war department directives, would black candidates ever be nominated and selected for officer training? early enrollment figures suggested they would not. between july , when the schools opened, and october , only seventeen out of the , students enrolled in candidate schools were negroes. only six more negroes entered during the next two months.[ - ] [footnote - : eleven of these were candidates at the infantry school, at the field artillery school, at the quartermaster school, and each at the cavalry, ordnance, and finance schools. memo, tag for admin asst, osw, sep , sub: request of the civ aide to the sw for data relative to negro soldiers, ag . ( - - ) m; memo, tag for civ aide to sw, nov , sub: request for data relative to negro soldiers admitted to ocs, ag . ( - - ) rb.] some civil rights spokesmen argued for the establishment of a (p.  ) quota system, and a few negroes even asked for a return to segregated schools to insure a more plentiful supply of black officers. even before the schools opened, judge hastie warned secretary stimson that any effective integration plan "required a directive to corps area commanders indicating that negroes are to be selected in numbers exactly or approximately indicated for particular schools."[ - ] but the planners had recommended the integrated schools precisely to avoid a quota system. they were haunted by the army's experience, although the chief of the army staff's organizations division did not allude to these misgivings when he answered judge hastie. he argued that a quota could not be defended on any grounds "except those of a political nature" and would be "race discrimination against the whites."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, hastie to sw, may , asw . nt.] [footnote - : memo, acofs, g- , for cofs, may , sub: negro officers; memo, acofs, g- , for acofs, g- (attn: col wharton), jun , same sub. both in wdgot . .] general marshall agreed that racial parity could not be achieved at the expense of commissioning unqualified men, but he was equally adamant about providing equal opportunity for all qualified candidates, black and white. he won support for his position from some of the civil rights advocates.[ - ] these arguments may not have swayed hastie, but in the end he dropped the idea of a regular quota system, judging it unworkable in the case of the officer candidate schools. he concluded that many commanders approached the selection of officer candidates with a bias against the negro, and he recommended that a directive or confidential memorandum be sent to commanders charged with the selection of officer candidates informing them that a certain minimum percentage of black candidates was to be chosen. hastie's recommendation was ignored, but the widespread refusal of local commanders to approve or transmit applications of negroes, or even to give them access to appropriate forms, halted when secretary stimson and the army staff made it plain that they expected substantial numbers of negroes to be sent to the schools.[ - ] [footnote - : pogue, _organizer of victory_, p. .] [footnote - : memo, hastie for asw, sep , g- / - ; ltr, hastie to nichols, jul ; tab c to ag . ( - - ).] the national association for the advancement of colored people meanwhile moved quickly to prove that the demand for a return to segregated schools, made by edgar g. brown, president of the united states government employees, and broadcaster fulton lewis, jr., enjoyed little backing in the black community. "we respectfully submit," walter white informed stimson and roosevelt, "that no leader considered responsible by intelligent negro or white americans would make such a request."[ - ] in support of its stand the naacp issued a statement signed by many influential black leaders. [footnote - : telg, walter white, naacp, to sw and president roosevelt, oct , ag . ( - - ) ( ); ltr, edgar w. brown to president roosevelt and sw, oct , ag . ( - - ) ( ). see also memo, acofs, g- , for cofs, oct , sub: negro officer candidate schools, g- / .] [illustration: waac replacements _training at fort huachuca, december _.] the segregationists attacked integration of the officer candidate (p.  ) schools for the obvious reasons. a group of florida congressmen, for example, protested to the army against the establishment of an integrated air corps school at miami beach. the war department received numerous complaints when living quarters at the schools were integrated. the president of the white supremacy league complained that young white candidates at fort benning "have to eat and sleep with negro candidates," calling it "the most damnable outrage that was ever perpetrated on the youth of the south." to all such complaints the war department answered that separation was not always possible because of the small number of negroes involved.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, horace wilkinson to rep. john j. sparkman (alabama), aug ; ltr, tag to rep. john starnes (alabama), sep . both in ag (wilkinson) ( aug ). see also interv, nichols with ulysses lee, .] in answering these complaints the army developed its ultimate justification for integrated officer schools: integration was necessary on the grounds of efficiency and economy. as one army spokesman put it, "our objection to separate schools is based (p.  ) primarily on the fact that black officer candidates are eligible from every branch of the army, including the armored force and tank destroyer battalions, and it would be decidedly uneconomical to attempt to gather in one school the materiel and instructor personnel necessary to give training in all these branches."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, sgs to sen. carl hayden (arizona), dec , ag ( - - ). see also memo, acofs, g- , for cofs, oct , sub: negro officer candidate schools, g- / .] officer candidate training was the army's first formal experiment with integration. many blacks and whites lived together with a minimum of friction, and, except in flight school, all candidates trained together.[ - ] yet in some schools the number of black officer candidates made racially separate rooms feasible, and negroes were usually billeted and messed together. in other instances army organizations were slow to integrate their officer training. the women's army auxiliary corps, for example, segregated black candidates until late when judge hastie brought the matter to mccloy's attention.[ - ] nevertheless, the army's experiment was far more important than its immediate results indicated. it proved that even in the face of considerable opposition the army was willing to abandon its segregation policy when the issues of economy and efficiency were made sufficiently clear and compelling. [footnote - : dollard and young, "in the armed forces."] [footnote - : memos, hastie for asw, nov and dec ; ltr, maj gen a. d. bruce, cmdr, tank destroyer center, to asw, dec . all in asw . nt ( - - ).] the army's second experiment with integration came in part from the need for infantry replacements during the allied advance across western europe in the summer and fall of .[ - ] the ground force replacement command had been for some time converting soldiers from service units to infantry, and even as the germans launched their counterattack in the ardennes the command was drawing up plans to release thousands of soldiers in lt. gen. john c. h. lee's communications zone and train them as infantrymen. these plans left the large reservoir of black manpower in the theater untapped until general lee suggested that general dwight d. eisenhower permit black service troops to volunteer for infantry training and eventual employment as individual replacements. general eisenhower agreed, and on december lee issued a call to the black troops for volunteers to share "the privilege of joining our veteran units at the front to deliver the knockout blow." the call was limited to privates in the upper four categories of the army general classification test who had had some infantry training. if noncommissioned officers wanted to apply, they had to accept a reduction in grade. although patronizing in tone, the plan was a bold departure from war department policy: "it is planned to assign you without regard to color or race to the units where assistance is most needed, and give you the opportunity of fighting shoulder to shoulder to bring about victory.... your relatives and friends everywhere have been urging that you be granted this privilege."[ - ] [footnote - : for a detailed discussion, see lee, _employment of negro troops_, chapter xxii.] [footnote - : ltr, lt gen john c. h. lee to commanders of colored troops, comz, dec , sub: volunteers for training and assignment as reinforcements, ag x xsgs.] the revolutionary nature of general lee's plan was not lost on (p.  ) supreme headquarters, allied expeditionary force. arguing that the circular promising integrated service would embarrass the army, lt. gen. walter bedell smith, the chief of staff, recommended that general eisenhower warn the war department that civil rights spokesmen might seize on this example to demand wider integration. to avoid future moves that might compromise army policy, smith wanted permission to review any communications zone statements on negroes before they were released. general eisenhower compromised. washington was not consulted, and eisenhower himself revised the circular, eliminating the special call for black volunteers and the promise of integration on an individual basis. he substituted instead a general appeal for volunteers, adding the further qualification that "in the event that the number of suitable negro volunteers exceeds the replacement needs of negro combat units, these men will be suitably incorporated in other organizations so that their service and their fighting spirit may be efficiently utilized."[ - ] this statement was disseminated throughout the european theater. [footnote - : revised version of above, same date. copies of both versions in cmh. later general eisenhower stated that he had decided to employ the men "as individuals," but the evidence is clear that he meant platoons in , see ltr, d.d.e. to gen bruce c. clarke, may , in cmh.] the eisenhower revision needed considerable clarification. it mentioned the replacement needs of black combat units, but there were no black infantry units in the theater;[ - ] and the replacement command was not equipped to retrain men for artillery, tank, and tank destroyer units, the types of combat units that did employ negroes in europe. the revision also called for volunteers in excess of these needs to be "suitably incorporated in other organizations," but it did not indicate how they would be organized. eisenhower later made it clear that he preferred to organize the volunteers in groups that could replace white units in the line, but again the replacement command was geared to train individual, not unit, replacements. after considerable discussion and compromise, eisenhower agreed to have negroes trained "as members of infantry rifle platoons familiar with the infantry rifle platoon weapons." the platoons would be sent for assignment to army commanders who would provide them with platoon leaders, platoon sergeants, and, if needed, squad leaders. [footnote - : the d division was assigned to the mediterranean theater.] unaware of how close they had come to being integrated as individuals, so many negroes volunteered for combat training and duty that the operations of some service units were threatened. to prevent disrupting these vital operations, the theater limited the number to , , turning down about , men. early in january the volunteers assembled for six weeks of standard infantry conversion training. after training, the new black infantrymen were organized into fifty-three platoons, each under a white platoon leader and sergeant, and were dispatched to the field, two to work with armored divisions and the rest with infantry divisions. sixteen were shipped to the th army group, the rest to the th army group, and all (p.  ) saw action with a total of eleven divisions in the first and seventh armies. [illustration: volunteers for combat in training, _ th reinforcement depot, february _.] in the first army the black platoons were usually assigned on the basis of three to a division, and the division receiving them normally placed one platoon in each regiment. at the company level, the black platoon generally served to augment the standard organization of three rifle platoons and one heavy weapons platoon. in the seventh army, the platoons were organized into provisional companies and attached to infantry battalions in armored divisions. general davis warned the seventh army commander, lt. gen. alexander m. patch, that the men had not been trained for employment as company units and were not being properly used. the performance of the provisional companies failed to match the performance of the platoons integrated into white companies and their morale was lower.[ - ] at the end of the war the theater made clear to the black volunteers that integration was over. although a large group was sent to the th infantry division to be returned home, most were reassigned to black combat or service units in the occupation army. [footnote - : davis, "history of a special section office of the inspector general," p. .] the experiment with integration of platoons was carefully scrutinized. in may and june , the research branch of the information and education division of eisenhower's theater headquarters made a (p.  ) survey solely to discover what white company-grade officers and platoon sergeants thought of the combat performance of the black rifle platoons. trained interviewers visited seven infantry divisions and asked the same question of men--all the available company officers and a representative sample of platoon sergeants in twenty-four companies that had had black platoons. in addition, a questionnaire, not to be signed, was submitted to approximately , white enlisted men in other field forces for the purpose of discovering what their attitudes were toward the use of black riflemen. no negro was asked his opinion. more than percent of the white officers and noncommissioned officers who were interviewed reported that the negroes had performed "very well" in combat; percent of the officers and percent of the noncommissioned officers saw no reason why black infantrymen should not perform as well as white infantrymen if both had the same training and experience. most reported getting along "very well" with the black volunteers; the heavier the combat shared, the closer and better the relationships. nearly all the officers questioned admitted that the camaraderie between white and black troops was far better than they had expected. most enlisted men reported that they had at first disliked and even been apprehensive at the prospect of having black troops in their companies, but three-quarters of them had changed their minds after serving with negroes in combat, their distrust turning into respect and friendliness. of the officers and noncommissioned officers, percent had more favorable feelings toward negroes after serving in close proximity to them, the others reported no change in attitude; not a single individual stated that he had developed a less favorable attitude. a majority of officers approved the idea of organizing negroes in platoons to serve in white companies; the practice, they said, would stimulate the spirit of competition between races, avoid friction with prejudiced whites, eliminate discrimination, and promote interracial understanding. familiarity with negroes dispersed fear of the unknown and bred respect for them among white troops; only those lacking experience with black soldiers were inclined to be suspicious and hostile.[ - ] [footnote - : eto i&e div rpt e- research br, the utilization of negro infantry platoons in white companies, jun ; asf i&e div rpt b- , opinions about negro infantry platoons in white companies of seven divisions, jul . for a general critique of black performance in world war ii, see chapter below.] general brehon b. somervell, commanding general of the army service forces, questioned the advisability of releasing the report. an experiment involving , volunteers--his figure was inaccurate, actually , were involved--was hardly, he believed, a conclusive test. furthermore, organizations such as the naacp might be encouraged to exert pressure for similar experiments among troops in training in the united states and even in the midst of active operations in the pacific theater--pressure, he believed, that might hamper training and operations. what mainly concerned somervell were the political implications. many members of congress, newspaper editors, and others who had given strong support to the war department were, he contended, "vigorously opposed" to integration under any conditions. a strong adverse reaction from this influential segment of the nation's (p.  ) opinion-makers might alienate public support for a postwar program of universal military training.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cg, asf, to asw, jul , asw . nt.] general omar n. bradley, the senior american field commander in europe, took a different tack. writing for the theater headquarters and drawing upon such sources of information as the personal observations of some officers, general bradley disparaged the significance of the experiment. most of the black platoons, he observed, had participated mainly in mopping-up operations or combat against a disorganized enemy. nor could the soldiers involved in the experiment be considered typical, in bradley's opinion. they were volunteers of above average intelligence according to their commanders.[ - ] finally, bradley contended that, while no racial trouble emerged during combat, the mutual friendship fostered by fighting a common enemy was threatened when the two races were closely associated in rest and recreational areas. nevertheless, he agreed that the performance of the platoons was satisfactory enough to warrant continuing the experiment but recommended the use of draftees with average qualifications. at the same time, he drew away from further integration by suggesting that the experiment be expanded to include employment of entire black rifle companies in white regiments to avoid some of the social difficulties encountered in rest areas.[ - ] [footnote - : the percentage of high school graduates and men scoring in agct categories i, ii, and iii among the black infantry volunteers was somewhat higher than that of all negroes in the european theater. as against percent high school graduates and percent in the first three test score categories for the volunteers, the percentages for all negroes in the theater were and percent. at the same time the averages for black volunteers were considerably below those for white riflemen, of whom percent were high school graduates and percent in the higher test categories--figures that tend to refute the general's argument. see asf i&e div rpt b- , jul .] [footnote - : msg, hq comz, eto, paris, france (signed bradley), to wd jul . for similar reports from the field see, for example, ltr, brig gen r. b. lovett, eto ag, to tag, sep , sub: the utilization of negro platoons in white companies; ltr, hq usfet to tag, oct , same sub. both in ag . ( ).] general marshall, the chief of staff, agreed with both somervell and bradley. although he thought that the possibility of integrating black units into white units should be "followed up," he believed that the survey should not be made public because "the conditions under which the [black] platoons were organized and employed were most unusual."[ - ] too many of the circumstances of the experiment were special--the voluntary recruitment of men for frontline duty, the relatively high number of noncommissioned officers among the volunteers, and the fact that the volunteers were slightly older and scored higher in achievement tests than the average black soldier. moreover, throughout the experiment some degree of segregation, with all its attendant psychological and morale problems, had been maintained. [footnote - : memo, cofs for asw, aug , wdcsa . negroes ( aug ).] the platoon experiment was illuminating in several respects. the fact that so late in the war thousands of negroes volunteered to trade the safety of the rear for duty at the front said something about black patriotism and perhaps something about the negro's passion for equality. it also demonstrated that, when properly trained and motivated and (p.  ) treated with fairness, blacks, like whites, performed with bravery and distinction in combat. finally, the experiment successfully attacked one of the traditionalists' shibboleths, that close association of the races in army units would cause social dissension. [illustration: road repairmen, _company a, th engineer battalion, near rimberg, germany, december _.] it is now apparent that world war ii had little immediate effect on the quest for racial equality in the army. the double v campaign against fascism abroad and racism at home achieved considerably less than the activists had hoped. although negroes shared in the prosperity brought by war industries and some , of them served in uniform, segregation remained the policy of the army throughout the war, just as jim crow still ruled in large areas of the country. probably the campaign's most important achievement was that during the war the civil rights groups, in organizing for the fight against discrimination, began to gather strength and develop techniques that would be useful in the decades to come. the army's experience with black units also convinced many that segregation was a questionable policy when the country needed to mobilize fully. for its part the army defended the separation of the races in the name of military efficiency and claimed that it had achieved a victory over racial discrimination by providing equal treatment and job opportunity for black soldiers. but the army's campaign had also been less than completely successful. true, the army had provided specialist training and opened job opportunities heretofore denied to thousands of negroes, and it had a cadre of potential leaders in the hundreds of experienced black officers. for the times, the army was a progressive minority employer. even so, as an institution it had defended the separate but equal doctrine and had failed to come to grips with segregation. under segregation the army was compelled to combine large numbers of undereducated and undertrained black soldiers in units that were often inefficient and sometimes surplus to its needs. this system in turn robbed the army of the full services of the educated and able black soldier, who had every reason to feel restless and rebellious. the army received no end of advice on its manpower policy during the war. civil rights spokesmen continually pointed out that segregation itself was discriminatory, and judge hastie in particular hammered on this proposition before the highest officials of the war (p.  ) department. in fact hastie's recommendations, criticisms, and arguments crystallized the demands of civil rights leaders. the army successfully resisted the proposition when its advisory committee on negro troop policies under john mccloy modified but did not appreciably alter the segregation policy. it was a predictable course. the army's racial policy was more than a century old, and leaders considered it dangerous if not impossible to revise traditional ways during a global war involving so many citizens with pronounced and different views on race. what both the civil rights activists and the army's leaders tended to ignore during the war was that segregation was inefficient. the myriad problems associated with segregated units, in contrast to the efficient operation of the integrated officer candidate schools and the integrated infantry platoons in europe, were overlooked in the atmosphere of charges and denials concerning segregation and discrimination. john mccloy was an exception. he had clearly become dissatisfied with the inefficiency of the army's policy, and in the week following the japanese surrender he questioned navy secretary james v. forrestal on the navy's experiments with integration. "it has always seemed to me," he concluded, "that we never put enough thought into the matter of making a real military asset out of the very large cadre of negro personnel we received from the country."[ - ] although segregation persisted, the fact that it hampered military efficiency was the hope of those who looked for a change in the army's policy. [footnote - : ltr, asw to secnav, aug , asw . nt (gen).] chapter (p.  ) world war ii: the navy the period between the world wars marked the nadir of the navy's relations with black america. although the exclusion of negroes that began with a clause introduced in enlistment regulations in lasted but a decade, black participation in the navy remained severely restricted during the rest of the inter-war period. in june the navy had , black personnel, . percent of its nearly , -man total.[ - ] all were enlisted men, and with the exception of six regular rated seamen, lone survivors of the exclusion clause, all were steward's mates, labeled by the black press "seagoing bellhops." [footnote - : all statistics in this chapter are taken from the files of the u.s. navy, bureau of naval personnel (hereafter cited as bupers).] the steward's branch, composed entirely of enlisted negroes and oriental aliens, mostly filipinos, was organized outside the navy's general service. its members carried ratings up to chief petty officer, but wore distinctive uniforms and insignia, and even chief stewards never exercised authority over men rated in the general naval service. stewards manned the officers' mess and maintained the officers' billets on board ship, and, in some instances, took care of the quarters of high officials in the shore establishment. some were also engaged in mess management, menu planning, and the purchase of supplies. despite the fact that their enlistment contracts restricted their training and duties, stewards, like everyone else aboard ship, were assigned battle stations, including positions at the guns and on the bridge. one of these stewards, dorie (doris) miller, became a hero on the first day of the war when he manned a machine gun on the burning deck of the uss _arizona_ and destroyed two enemy planes.[ - ] [footnote - : after some delay and considerable pressure from civil rights sources, the navy identified miller, awarded him the navy cross, and promoted him to mess attendant, first class. miller was later lost at sea. see dennis d. nelson, _the integration of the negro into the u.s. navy_ (new york: farrar, straus and young, ), pp. - . the navy further honored miller in by naming a destroyer escort (de ) after him.] by the end of december the number of negroes in the navy had increased by slightly more than a thousand men to , , or . percent of the whole, but they continued to be excluded from all positions except that of steward.[ - ] it was not surprising that civil rights organizations and their supporters in congress demanded a change in policy. [footnote - : there were exceptions to this generalization. the navy had black men with ratings in the general service in december : the regulars from the 's, others returned from retirement, and members of the fleet reserve. see u.s. navy, bureau of naval personnel, "the negro in the navy in world war ii" ( ) (hereafter "bupers hist"), p. . this study is part of the bureau's unpublished multivolume administrative history of world war ii. a copy is on file in the bureau's technical library. the work is particularly valuable for its references to documents that no longer exist.] _development of a wartime policy_ (p.  ) at first the new secretary, frank knox, and the navy's professional leaders resisted demands for a change. together with secretary of war stimson, knox had joined the cabinet in july when roosevelt was attempting to defuse a foreign policy debate that threatened to explode during the presidential campaign.[ - ] for a major cabinet officer, knox's powers were severely circumscribed. he had little knowledge of naval affairs, and the president, himself once an assistant secretary of the navy, often went over his head to deal directly with the naval bureaus on shipbuilding programs and manpower problems as well as the disposition of the fleet. but knox was a personable man and a forceful speaker, and he was particularly useful to the president in congressional liaison and public relations. roosevelt preferred to work through the secretary in dealing with the delicate question of black participation in the navy. knox himself was fortunate in his immediate official family. james v. forrestal became under secretary in august ; during the next year ralph a. bard, a chicago investment banker, joined the department as assistant secretary, and adlai e. stevenson became special assistant. [footnote - : one of theodore roosevelt's rough riders, a world war i field artillery officer, and later publisher of the chicago _daily news_, knox was an implacable foe of the new deal but an ardent internationalist, strongly sympathetic to president roosevelt's foreign policy.] able as these men were, frank knox, like most new secretaries unfamiliar with the operations and traditions of the vast department, was from the beginning heavily dependent on his naval advisers. these were the chiefs of the powerful bureaus and the prominent senior admirals of the general board, the navy's highest advisory body.[ - ] generally these men were ardent military traditionalists, and, despite the progressive attitude of the secretary's highest civilian advisers, changes in the racial policy of the navy were to be glacially slow. [footnote - : in the bureaus were answerable only to the secretary of the navy and the president, but after a reorganization of they began to lose some of their independence. in march president roosevelt merged the offices of the chief of naval operations and commander in chief, u.s. fleet, giving admiral ernest j. king, who held both titles, at least some direction over most of the bureaus. eventually the chief of naval operations would become a figure with powers comparable to those exercised by the army's chief of staff. see julius a. furer, _administration of the navy department in world war ii_ (washington: government printing office, ), pp. - . this shift in power was readily apparent in the case of the administration of the navy's racial policy.] the bureau of navigation, which was charged with primary responsibility for all personnel matters, was opposed to change in the racial composition of the navy. less than two weeks after knox's appointment, it prepared for his signature a letter to lieutenant governor charles poletti of new york defending the navy's policy. the bureau reasoned that since segregation was impractical, exclusion was necessary. experience had proved, the bureau claimed, that when given supervisory responsibility the negro was unable to maintain discipline among white subordinates with the result that teamwork, harmony, and ship's efficiency suffered. the negro, therefore, had to be segregated from the white sailor. all-black units were impossible, the bureau argued, because the service's training and distribution system (p.  ) demanded that a man in any particular rating be available for any duty required of that rating in any ship or activity in the navy. the navy had experimented with segregated crews after world war i, manning one ship with an all-filipino crew and another with an all-samoan crew, but the bureau was not satisfied with the result and reasoned that ships with black crews would be no more satisfactory.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, secnav to lt. gov. charles poletti (new york), jul , nav- -at, genrecsnav.] [illustration: dorie miller.] during the next weeks secretary knox warmed to the subject, speaking of the difficulty faced by the navy when men had to live aboard ship together. he was convinced that "it is no kindness to negroes to thrust them upon men of the white race," and he suggested that the negro might make his major contribution to the armed forces in the army's black regimental organizations.[ - ] confronted with widespread criticism of this policy, however, knox asked the navy's general board in september to give him "some reasons why colored persons should not be enlisted for general service."[ - ] he accepted the board's reasons for continued exclusion of negroes--generally an extension of the ones advanced in the poletti letter--and during the next eighteen months these reasons, endorsed by the chief of naval operations and the bureau of navigation, were used as the department's standard answer to questions on race.[ - ] they were used at the white house conference on june when, in the presence of black leaders, knox told president roosevelt that the navy could do nothing about taking negroes into the general service "because men live in such intimacy aboard ship that we simply can't enlist negroes above the rank of messman."[ - ] [footnote - : idem to sen. arthur capper (kansas), aug , qn/p - , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, rear adm w. r. sexton, chmn of gen bd, for capt morton l. deyo, sep , recs of gen bd, opnavarchives.] [footnote - : idem for secnav, sep , sub: enlistment of colored persons in the u.s. navy, recs of gen bd, opnavarchives. st ind to ltr, natl public relations comm of the universal negro improvement assn to secnav, oct ; memo, chief, bunav, for cno, oct , and d ind to same, cno to secnav (public relations). both in bupers qn/p - ( ), genrecsnav. for examples of the navy's response on race, see ltr, ens ross r. hirshfield, off of pub relations, to roberson county training school, oct ; ltr, ens william stucky to w. henry white, feb . both in qn/p - . bupersrecs.] [footnote - : quoted in white, _a man called white_, p. .] the white house conference revealed an interesting contrast between roosevelt and knox. whatever his personal feelings, roosevelt agreed with knox that integration of the navy was an impractical step in (p.  ) wartime, but where knox saw exclusion from general service as the alternative to integration roosevelt sought a compromise. he suggested that the navy "make a beginning" by putting some "good negro bands" aboard battleships. under such intimate living conditions white and black would learn to know and respect each other, and "then we can move on from there."[ - ] in effect the president was trying to lead the navy toward a policy similar to that announced by the army in . while his suggestion about musicians was ignored by secretary knox, the search for a middle way between exclusion and integration had begun. [footnote - : ibid.] [illustration: admiral king and secretary knox _on the uss augusta_.] the general public knew nothing of this search, and in the heightened atmosphere of early war days, charged with unending propaganda about the four freedoms and the forces of democracy against fascism, the administration's racial attitudes were being questioned daily by civil rights spokesmen and by some democratic politicians.[ - ] as protest against the navy's racial policy mounted, secretary knox turned once again to his staff for reassurance. in july he appointed a committee consisting of navy and marine corps personnel officers and including addison walker, a special assistant to assistant secretary bard, to conduct a general investigation of that policy. the committee took six months to complete its study and submitted both a majority and minority report. [footnote - : memo, w. a. allen, office of public relations, for lt cmdr smith, bupers, jan , bupers qn/p- , bupersrecs.] the majority report marshaled a long list of arguments to prove that exclusion of the negro was not discriminatory, but "a means of promoting efficiency, dependability, and flexibility of the navy as a whole." it concluded that no change in policy was necessary since "within the limitations of the characteristics of members of certain races, the enlisted personnel of the naval establishment is representative of all the citizens of the united states."[ - ] the majority invoked past experience, efficiency, and patriotism to support the _status quo_, but its chorus of reasons for excluding negroes sounded incongruous amid the patriotic din and call to colors that followed pearl harbor. [footnote - : ltr, chief, bunav, to chmn, gen bd, jan , sub: enlistment of men of colored race in other than messman branch, recs of gen bd, opnavarchives.] [illustration: crew members of uss argonaut _relax and read mail, pearl harbor, _.] demonstrating changing social attitudes and also reflecting the (p.  ) compromise solution suggested by the president in june, addison walker's minority report recommended that a limited number of negroes be enlisted for general duty "on some type of patrol or other small vessel assigned to a particular yard or station." while the enlistments could frankly be labeled experiments, walker argued that such a step would mute black criticism by promoting negroes out of the servant class. the program would also provide valuable data in case the navy was later directed to accept negroes through selective service. reasoning that a man's right to fight for his country was probably more fundamental than his right to vote, walker insisted that the drive for the rights and privileges of black citizens was a social force that could not be ignored by the navy. indeed, he added, "the reconciliation of social friction within our own country" should be a special concern of the armed forces in wartime.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid.] although the committee's majority won the day, its arguments were overtaken by events that followed pearl harbor. the naacp, viewing the navy's rejection of black volunteers in the midst of the intensive recruiting campaign, again took the issue to the white house. the president, in turn, asked the fair employment practices committee to consider the case.[ - ] committee chairman mark ethridge conferred with assistant secretary bard, pointing out that since negroes had been eligible for general duty in world war i, the navy had actually taken a step backward when it restricted them to the messman's branch. the committee was even willing to pay the price of segregation to insure the negro's return to general duty. ethridge recommended that the navy amend its policy and accept negroes for use at caribbean stations or on harbor craft.[ - ] criticism of navy policy, hitherto emanating almost exclusively from the civil rights organizations and a few (p.  ) congressmen, now broadened to include another government agency. as president roosevelt no doubt expected, the fair employment practices committee had come out in support of his compromise solution for the navy. [footnote - : the fepc was established june to carry out roosevelt's executive order against discrimination in employment in defense industries and in the federal government.] [footnote - : "bupers hist," pp. - ; ltr, mark ethridge to lee nichols. jul , in nichols collection, cmh.] but the committee had no jurisdiction over the armed services, and secretary knox continued to assert that with a war to win he could not risk "crews that are impaired in efficiency because of racial prejudice." he admitted to his friend, conservationist gifford pinchot, that the problem would have to be faced someday, but not during a war. seemingly in response to walker and ethridge, he declared that segregated general service was impossible since enough men with the skills necessary to operate a war vessel were unavailable even "if you had the entire negro population of the united states to choose from." as for limiting negroes to steward duties, he explained that this policy avoided the chance that negroes might rise to command whites, "a thing which instantly provokes serious trouble."[ - ] faced in wartime with these arguments for efficiency, assistant secretary bard could only promise ethridge that black enlistment would be taken under consideration. [footnote - : ltr, secnav to gifford pinchot, jan , - - , genrecsnav.] at this point the president again stepped in. on january he asked his beleaguered secretary to consider the whole problem once more and suggested a course of action: "i think that with all the navy activities, bunav might invent something that colored enlistees could do in addition to the rating of messman."[ - ] the secretary passed the task on to the general board, asking that it develop a plan for recruiting , negroes in the general service.[ - ] [footnote - : quoted in "bupers hist," p. .] [footnote - : memo, secnav for chmn, gen bd, jan , sub: enlistment of men of colored race in other than messman branch, recs of gen bd, opnavarchives.] when the general board met on january to consider the secretary's request, it became apparent that the minority report on the role of negroes in the navy had gained at least one convert among the senior officers. one board member, the inspector general of the navy, rear adm. charles p. snyder, repeated the arguments lately advanced by addison walker. he suggested that the board consider employing negroes in some areas outside the servant class: in the musician's branch, for example, because "the colored race is very musical and they are versed in all forms of rhythm," in the aviation branch where the army had reported some success in employing negroes, and on auxiliaries and minor vessels, especially transports. snyder noted that these schemes would involve the creation of training schools, rigidly segregated at first, and that the whole program would be "troublesome and require tact, patience, and tolerance" on the part of those in charge. but, he added, "we have so many difficulties to surmount anyhow that one more possibly wouldn't swell the total very much." foreseeing that segregation would become the focal point of black protest, he argued that the navy had to begin accepting negroes somewhere, and it might as well begin with a segregated general service. adamant in its opposition to any change in the navy's policy, the (p.  ) bureau of navigation ignored admiral snyder's suggestions. the spokesman for the bureau warned that the , negroes under consideration were just an opening wedge. "the sponsors of the program," capt. kenneth whiting contended, "desire full equality on the part of the negro and will not rest content until they obtain it." in the end, he predicted, negroes would be on every man-of-war in direct proportion to their percentage of the population. the commandant of the marine corps, maj. gen. thomas holcomb, echoed the bureau's sentiments. he viewed the issue of black enlistments as crucial. if we are defeated we must not close our eyes to the fact that once in they [negroes] will be strengthened in their effort to force themselves into every activity we have. if they are not satisfied to be messmen, they will not be satisfied to go into the construction or labor battalions. don't forget the colleges are turning out a large number of well-educated negroes. i don't know how long we will be able to keep them out of the v- class. i think not very long. the commandant called the enlistment of negroes "absolutely tragic"; negroes had every opportunity, he added, "to satisfy their aspiration to serve in the army," and their desire to enter the naval service was largely an effort "to break into a club that doesn't want them." the board heard similar sentiments from representatives of the bureau of aeronautics, the bureau of yards and docks, and, with reservations, from the coast guard. confronted with such united opposition from the powerful bureaus, the general board capitulated. on february it reported to the secretary that it was unable to submit a plan and strongly recommended that the current policy be allowed to stand. the board stated that "if, in the opinion of higher authority, political pressure is such as to require the enlistment of these people for general service, let it be for that." if restriction of negroes to the messman's branch was discrimination, the board added, "it was but part and parcel of a similar discrimination throughout the united states."[ - ] [footnote - : enlistment of men of colored race ( ), jan , hearings before the general board of the navy, ; memo, chmn, gen bd, for secnav, feb , sub: enlistment of men of colored race in other than messman branch. both in recs of gen bd, opnavarchives.] secretary knox was certainly not one to dispute the board's findings, but it was a different story in the white house. president roosevelt refused to accept the argument that the only choice lay between exclusion in the messman's branch and total integration in the general service. his desire to avoid the race issue was understandable; the war was in its darkest days, and whatever his aspirations for american society, the president was convinced that, while some change was necessary, "to go the whole way at one fell swoop would seriously impair the general average efficiency of the navy."[ - ] he wanted the board to study the question further, noting that there were some additional tasks and some special assignments that could be worked (p.  ) out for the negro that "would not inject into the whole personnel of the navy the race question."[ - ] [footnote - : quoted in "bupers hist," p. .] [footnote - : memo, secnav for chmn, gen bd, feb , recs of gen bd, opnavarchives. the quotation is from the knox memo and is not necessarily in the exact words of the president.] [illustration: messmen volunteer as gunners, _pacific task force, july _.] the navy got the message. armed with these instructions from the white house, the general board called on the bureaus and other agencies to furnish lists of stations or assignments where negroes could be used in other than the messman's branch, adding that it was "unnecessary and inadvisable" to emphasize further the undesirability of recruiting negroes. freely interpreting the president's directive, the board decided that its proposals had to provide for segregation in order to prevent the injection of the race issue into the navy. it rejected the idea of enlisting negroes in such selected ratings as musician and carpenter's mate or designating a branch for negroes (the possibility of an all-black aviation department for a carrier was discussed). basing its decision on the plans quickly submitted by the bureaus, the general board recommended a course that it felt offered "least disadvantages and the least difficulty of accomplishment as a war measure": the formation of black units in the shore establishment, black crews for naval district local defense craft and selected coast (p.  ) guard cutters, black regiments in the seabees, and composite battalions in the marine corps. the board asked that the navy department be granted wide latitude in deciding the number of negroes to be accepted as well as their rate of enlistment and the method of recruiting, training, and assignment.[ - ] the president agreed to the plan, but balked at the board's last request. "i think this is a matter," he told secretary knox, "to be determined by you and me."[ - ] [footnote - : memos, chmn, gen bd, for chief, bunav, cmdt, cg, and cmdt, mc, feb , sub: enlistment of men of colored race in other than messman branch. for examples of responses, see ltr, cmdt, to chmn, gen bd, feb , same sub; memo, chief, bunav, for chmn, gen bd, mar , same sub; memo, cno for chief, bunav, feb , same sub, with st ind by cincusflt, feb , same sub. the final enlistment plan is found in memo, chmn, gen bd, for secnav, mar , same sub (g. b. no ). all in recs of gen bd, opnavarchives. it was transmitted to the president in ltr, secnav to president, mar , p - /mm, genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, president for secy of navy, mar , franklin d. roosevelt library, hyde park, new york.] the two-year debate over the admission of negroes ended just in time, for the opposition to the navy's policy was enlisting new allies daily. the national press made the expected invidious comparisons when joe louis turned over his share of the purse from the louis-baer fight to navy relief, and wendell willkie in a well-publicized speech at new york's freedom house excoriated the navy's racial practices as a "mockery" of democracy.[ - ] but these were the last shots fired. on april secretary knox announced the navy's capitulation. the navy would accept black volunteers per week--it was not yet drafting anyone--for enlistment in all ratings of the general service of the reserve components of the navy, marine corps, and coast guard. their actual entry would have to await the construction of suitable, meaning segregated, facilities, but the navy's goal for the first year was , negroes in the general service.[ - ] [footnote - : new york _times_, january and march , .] [footnote - : office of secnav, press release, apr .] members of the black community received the news with mixed emotions. some reluctantly accepted the plan as a first step; the naacp's _crisis_ called it "progress toward a more enlightened point of view." others, like the national negro congress, complimented knox for his "bold, patriotic action."[ - ] but almost all were quick to point out that the black sailor would be segregated, limited to the rank of petty officer, and, except as a steward, barred from sea duty.[ - ] the navy's plan offered all the disadvantages of the army's system with none of the corresponding advantages for participation and advancement. the naacp hammered away at the segregation angle, informing its public that the old system, which had fathered inequalities and humiliations in the army and in civilian life, was now being followed by the navy. a. philip randolph complained that the change in navy policy merely "accepts and extends and consolidates the policy of jim-crowism in the navy as well as proclaims it as an accepted, recognized government (p.  ) ideology that the negro is inferior to the white man."[ - ] the editors of the national urban league's _opportunity_ concluded that, "faced with the great opportunity to strengthen the forces of democracy, the navy department chose to affirm the charge that japan is making against america to the brown people ... that the so-called four freedoms enunciated in the great 'atlantic charter' were for white men only."[ - ] [footnote - : "the navy makes a gesture," _crisis_ (may ): . the national negro congress quotation reprinted in dennis d. nelson's summary of reactions to the secretary of the navy's announcement. see nelson, "the integration of the negro in the united states navy, - " (navexos-p- ), p. . (this earlier and different version of nelson's published work, derived from his master's thesis, was sponsored by the u.s. navy.)] [footnote - : although essentially correct, the critics were technically inaccurate since some negroes would be assigned to coast guard cutters which qualified as sea duty.] [footnote - : quoted in nelson, "the integration of the negro," p. .] [footnote - : _opportunity_ (may ), p. .] _a segregated navy_ with considerable alacrity the navy set a practical course for the employment of its black volunteers. on april secretary knox approved a plan for training negroes at camp barry, an isolated section of the great lakes training center. later renamed camp robert smalls after a black naval hero of the civil war, the camp not only offered the possibility of practically unlimited expansion but, as the bureau of navigation put it, made segregation "less obvious" to recruits. the secretary also approved the use of facilities at hampton institute, the well-known black school in virginia, as an advanced training school for black recruits.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, chief, bunav, for secnav, apr , sub: training facilities for negro recruits, nav- ; memo, secnav for rear adm randall jacobs, apr , - - . both in genrecsnav.] black enlistments began on june , and black volunteers started entering great lakes later that month in classes of men. at the same time the navy opened enlistments for an unlimited number of black seabees and messmen. lt. comdr. daniel armstrong commanded the recruit program at camp smalls. an annapolis graduate, son of the founder of hampton institute, armstrong first came to the attention of knox in march when he submitted a plan for the employment of black sailors that the secretary considered practical.[ - ] under armstrong's energetic leadership, black recruits received training that was in some respects superior to that afforded whites. for all his success, however, armstrong was strongly criticized, especially by educated negroes who resented his theories of education. imbued with the paternalistic attitude of tuskegee and hampton, armstrong saw the negro as possessing a separate culture more attuned to vocational training. he believed that negroes needed special treatment and discipline in a totally segregated environment free from white competition. educated negroes, on the other hand, saw in this special treatment another form of discrimination.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secnav for chmn, gen bd, mar , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : for a discussion of armstrong's philosophy from the viewpoint of an educated black recruit, see nelson, "integration of the negro," pp. - . sec also ltr, nelson to author, feb , cmh files.] during the first six months of the new segregated training program, before the great influx of negroes from the draft, the navy set the training period at twelve weeks. later, when it had reluctantly abandoned the longer period, the navy discovered that the regular eight-week course was sufficient. approximately percent of those graduating from the recruit course were qualified for class a (p.  ) schools and entered advanced classes to receive training that would normally lead to petty officer rating for the top graduates and prepare men for assignment to naval stations and local defense and district craft. there they would serve in such class "a" specialties as radioman, signalman, and yeoman and the other occupational specialties such as machinist, mechanic, carpenter, electrician, cook, and baker.[ - ] some of these classes were held at hampton, but, as the number of black recruits increased, the majority remained at camp smalls for advanced training. [footnote - : with the exception of machinist school, where blacks were in training twice as long as whites, specialist training for negroes and whites was similar in length. see "bupers hist," pp. - , - .] [illustration: electrician mates _string power lines in the central pacific_.] the rest of the recruit graduates, those unqualified for advanced schooling, were divided. some went directly to naval stations and local defense and district craft where they relieved whites as seaman, second class, and fireman, third class, and as trainees in specialties that required no advanced schooling; the rest, approximately eighty men per week, went to naval ammunition depots as unskilled laborers.[ - ] [footnote - : bupers, "reports, schedules, and charts relating to enlistment, training, and assignment of negro personnel," jun , pers- , bupersrecs.] the navy proceeded to assimilate the black volunteers along these lines, suffering few of the personnel problems that plagued the army in the first months of the war. in contrast to the army's chaotic situation, caused by the thousands of black recruits streaming in from selective service, the navy's plans for its volunteers were disrupted only because qualified negroes showed little inclination to flock to the navy standard, and more than half of those who did were rejected. the bureau of naval personnel[ - ] reported that during the first three weeks of recruitment only , negroes volunteered for general service, and percent of these had to be rejected for physical and other reasons. the chief of naval personnel, rear adm. randall jacobs, was surprised at the small number of volunteers, a figure far below the planners' expectations, and his surprise turned to concern in the next months as the seventeen-year-old volunteer inductees, the primary target of the armed forces recruiters, continued to choose the army over the navy at a ratio of to .[ - ] the navy's personnel officials agreed that they had to attract their proper share of intelligent and able negroes but seemed unable to isolate the (p.  ) cause of the disinterest. admiral jacobs blamed it on a lack of publicity; the bureau's historians, perhaps unaware of the navy's nineteenth century experience with black seamen, later attributed it to negroes' "relative unfamiliarity with the sea or the large inland waters and their consequent fear of the water."[ - ] [footnote - : in may the name of the bureau of navigation was changed to the bureau of naval personnel to reflect more accurately the duties of the organization.] [footnote - : memo, chief, navpers, for co, great lakes ntc, apr . p - , bupersrecs.] [footnote - : "bupers hist," p. .] the fact was, of course, that negroes shunned the navy because of its recent reputation as the exclusive preserve of white america. only when the navy began assigning black recruiting specialists to the numerous naval districts and using black chief petty officers, reservists from world war i general service, at recruiting centers to explain the new opportunities for negroes in the navy was the bureau able to overcome some of the young men's natural reluctance to volunteer. by february the navy had , negroes (still percent of the total enlisted): , in the general service; , in the seabees; and , , over two-thirds of the total, in the steward's branch.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., p. .] the smooth and efficient distribution of black recruits was short-lived. under pressure from the army, the war manpower commission, and in particular the white house, the navy was forced into a sudden and significant expansion of its black recruit program. the army had long objected to the navy's recruitment method, and as early as february secretary stimson was calling the volunteer recruitment system a waste of manpower.[ - ] he was even more direct when he complained to president roosevelt that through voluntary recruiting the navy had avoided acceptance of any considerable number of negroes. consequently, the army was now faced with the possibility of having to accept an even greater proportion of negroes "with adverse effect on its combat efficiency." the solution to this problem, as stimson saw it, was for the navy to take its recruits from selective service.[ - ] stimson failed to win his point. the president accepted the navy's argument that segregation would be difficult to maintain on board ship. "if the navy living conditions on board ship were similar to the army living conditions on land," he wrote stimson, "the problem would be easier but the circumstances ... being such as they are, i feel that it is best to continue the present system at this time."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, sw for secnav, feb , sub: continuing of voluntary recruiting by the navy, qn/p - , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : idem for president, mar , copy in qn/p - , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, president for sw, mar , copy in qn/p - , genrecsnav.] but the battle over racial quotas was only beginning. the question of the number of negroes in the navy was only part of the much broader considerations and conflicts over manpower policy that finally led the president, on december , to direct the discontinuance in all services of volunteer enlistment of men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-eight.[ - ] beginning in february all men in this age group would be obtained through selective service. the order also placed selective service under the war manpower commission. [footnote - : executive order , dec .] the navy issued its first call for inductees from selective (p.  ) service in february , adopting the army's policy of placing its requisition on a racial basis and specifying the number of whites and blacks needed for the navy, marine corps, and coast guard. the bureau of naval personnel planned to continue its old monthly quota of about , negroes for general service and , for the messman's branch. secretary knox explained to the president that it would be impossible for the navy to take more negroes without resorting to mixed crews in the fleet, which, knox reminded roosevelt, was a policy "contrary to the president's program." the president agreed with knox and told him so to advise maj. gen. lewis b. hershey, director of selective service.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secnav for rear adm randall jacobs, feb , - - , genrecsnav.] the problem of drafting men by race was a major concern of the bureau of selective service and its parent organization, the war manpower commission. at a time when a general shortage of manpower was developing and industry was beginning to feel the effects of the draft, negroes still made up only percent of the armed forces, a little over half their percentage of the population, and almost all of these were in the army. the chairman of the war manpower commission, paul v. mcnutt, explained to secretary knox as he had to secretary stimson that the practice of placing separate calls for white and black registrants could not be justified. not only were there serious social and legal implications in the existing draft practices, he pointed out, but the selective service act itself prohibited racial discrimination. it was necessary, therefore, to draft men by order number and not by color.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, paul mcnutt to secnav, feb , wmc gen files, nars.] on top of this blow, the navy came under fire from another quarter. the president was evidently still thinking about negroes in the navy. he wrote to the secretary on february: i guess you were dreaming or maybe i was dreaming if randall jacobs is right in regard to what i am supposed to have said about employment of negroes in the navy. if i did say that such employment should be stopped, i must have been talking in my sleep. most decidedly we must continue the employment of negroes in the navy, and i do not think it the least bit necessary to put mixed crews on the ships. i can find a thousand ways of employing them without doing so. the point or the thing is this. there is going to be a great deal of feeling if the government in winning this war does not employ approximately % of negroes--their actual percentage to the total population. the army is nearly up to this percentage but the navy is so far below it that it will be deeply criticized by anybody who wants to check into the details. perhaps a check by you showing exactly where all white enlisted men are serving and where all colored enlisted men are serving will show you the great number of places where colored men could serve, where they are not serving now--shore duty of all kinds, together with the handling of many kinds of yard craft. you know the headache we have had about this and the reluctance of the navy to have any negroes. you and i have had to veto that navy reluctance and i think we have to do it again.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, president for secnav, feb , fdr library.] in an effort to save the quota concept, the bureau of naval (p.  ) personnel ground out new figures that would raise the current call of , negroes per month to , in april and , for each of the remaining months of . armed with these figures, secretary knox was able to promise commissioner mcnutt that percent of the men inducted for the rest of would be negroes, although separate calls had to be continued for the time being to permit adjusting the flow of negroes to the expansion of facilities.[ - ] in other words, the secretary promised to accept , black draftees in ; he did not promise to increase the black strength of the navy to percent of the total. [footnote - : ltr, knox to mcnutt, feb , wmc gen files.] commissioner mcnutt understood the distinction and found the navy's offer wanting for two reasons. the proposed schedule was inadequate to absorb the backlog of black registrants who should have been inducted into the armed services, and it did not raise the percentage of negroes in the navy to a figure comparable to their strength in the national population. mcnutt wanted the navy to draft at least , negroes before january , and he insisted that the practice of placing separate calls be terminated "as soon as feasible."[ - ] the navy finally struck a compromise with the commission, agreeing that up to , negroes a month would be inducted for the rest of to reach the , figure by january .[ - ] the issue of separate draft calls for negroes and whites remained in abeyance while the services made common cause against the commission by insisting that the orderly absorption of negroes demanded a regular program that could only be met by maintaining the quota system. [footnote - : ltr, mcnutt to knox, mar , wmc gen files.] [footnote - : ltr, secnav to paul mcnutt, apr ; ltr, mcnutt to knox, apr ; both in wmc gen files.] total black enlistments never reached percent of the navy's wartime enlisted strength but remained nearer the percent mark. but this figure masks the navy's racial picture in the later years of the war after it became dependent on selective service. the navy drafted , negroes during the war, . percent of all the men it drafted. in alone the navy placed calls with selective service for , black draftees. although selective service was unable to fill the monthly request completely, the navy received , black draftees (versus , whites) that year, a percent rise over the black enlistment rate.[ - ] [footnote - : selective service system, _special groups_, vol. ii, pp. - . see also memos, director of planning and control, bupers, for chief, bupers, feb , sub: increase in colored personnel for the navy; and apr , sub; increase in negro personnel in navy. both in p- , bupersrecs.] although it wrestled for several months with the problem of distributing the increased number of black draftees, the bureau of naval personnel could invent nothing new. the navy, knox told president roosevelt, would continue to segregate negroes and restrict their service to certain occupations. its increased black strength would be absorbed in twenty-seven new black seabee battalions, in which negroes would serve overseas as stevedores; in black crews for harbor craft and local defense forces; and in billets for cooks and port hands. the rest would be sent to shore stations for guard (p.  ) and miscellaneous duties in concentrations up to about percent of the total station strength. the president approved the navy's proposals, and the distribution of negroes followed these lines.[ - ] [footnote - : memos, secnav for president, feb and apr , quoted in "bupers hist," pp. - ; memo, actg chief, navpers, for secnav, feb , sub: employment of colored personnel in the navy, pers , genrecsnav. for roosevelt's approval see "bupers hist," p. .] to smooth the racial adjustments implicit in these plans, the bureau of naval personnel developed two operating rules: negroes would be assigned only where need existed, and, whenever possible, those from northern communities would not be used in the south. these rules caused some peculiar adjustments in administration. negroes were not assigned to naval districts for distribution according to the discretion of the commander, as were white recruits. rather, after conferring with local commanders, the bureau decided on the number of negroes to be included in station complements and the types of jobs they would fill. it then assigned the men to duty accordingly, and the districts were instructed not to change the orders without consulting the bureau. subsequently the bureau reinforced this rule by enjoining the commanders to use negroes in the ratings for which they had been trained and by sending bureau representatives to the various commands to check on compliance. some planners feared that the concentration of negroes at shore stations might prove detrimental to efficiency and morale. proposals were circulated in the bureau of naval personnel for the inclusion of negroes in small numbers in the crews of large combat ships--for example, they might be used as firemen and ordinary seamen on the new aircraft carriers--but admiral jacobs rejected the recommendations.[ - ] the navy was not yet ready to try integration, it seemed, even though racial disturbances were becoming a distinct possibility in . for as negroes became a larger part of the navy, they also became a greater source of tension. the reasons for the tension were readily apparent. negroes were restricted for the most part to shore duty, concentrated in large groups and assigned to jobs with little prestige and few chances of promotion. they were excluded from the waves (women accepted for volunteer emergency service), the nurse corps, and the commissioned ranks. and they were rigidly segregated. [footnote - : "bupershist," p. .] although the navy boasted that negroes served in every rating and at every task, in fact almost all were used in a limited range of occupations. denied general service assignments on warships, trained negroes were restricted to the relatively few billets open in the harbor defense, district, and small craft service. although assigning negroes to these duties met the president's request for variety of opportunity, the small craft could employ only , men at most, a minuscule part of the navy's black strength. most negroes performed humbler duties. by mid- over , black sailors were serving as mess stewards, cooks, and bakers. these jobs remained in the negro's eyes a symbol of his second-class citizenship in the naval establishment. under pressure to provide more (p.  ) stewards to serve the officers whose number multiplied in the early months of the war, recruiters had netted all the men they could for that separate duty. often recruiters took in many as stewards who were equipped by education and training for better jobs, and when these men were immediately put into uniforms and trained on the job at local naval stations the result was often dismaying. the navy thus received poor service as well as unwelcome publicity for maintaining a segregated servants' branch. in an effort to standardize the training of messmen, the bureau of naval personnel established a stewards school in the spring of at norfolk and later one at bainbridge, maryland. the change in training did little to improve the standards of the service and much to intensify the feeling of isolation among many stewards. [illustration: laborers at naval ammunition depot. _sailors passing -inch canisters, st. julien's creek, virginia._] another , negroes served as artisans and laborers at overseas bases. over , of these were seabees, who, with the exception of two regular construction battalions that served with distinction in the pacific, were relegated to "special" battalions stevedoring cargo and supplies. the rest were laborers in base companies assigned to the south pacific area. these units were commanded by white officers, and almost all the petty officers were white. approximately half the negroes in the navy were detailed to shore billets within the continental united states. most worked as laborers at ammunition or supply depots, at air stations, and at section (p.  ) bases,[ - ] concentrated in large all-black groups and sometimes commanded by incompetent white officers.[ - ] [footnote - : naval districts organized section bases during the war with responsibility, among other things, for guarding beaches, harbors, and installations and maintaining equipment.] [footnote - : see cno alnav, aug , quoted in nelson, "integration of the negro," p. .] [illustration: seabees in the south pacific _righting an undermined water tank_.] while some billets existed in practically every important rating for graduates of the segregated specialty schools, these jobs were so few that black specialists were often assigned instead to unskilled laboring jobs.[ - ] some of these men were among the best educated negroes in the navy, natural leaders capable of articulating their dissatisfaction. they resented being barred from the fighting, and their resentment, spreading through the thousands of negroes in the shore establishment, was a prime cause of racial tension. [footnote - : memo, actg chief, navpers, for cmdts, alnav districts et al., sep , sub: enlisted personnel--utilization of in field for which specifically trained, pers - /mm, bupersrecs.] no black women had been admitted to the navy. race was not mentioned in the legislation establishing the waves in , but neither was exclusion on account of color expressly forbidden. the waves and the women's reserve of both the coast guard (spars) and the marine corps therefore celebrated their second birthday exclusively white. the navy nurse corps was also totally white. in answer to protests passed to the service through eleanor roosevelt, the navy admitted in november that it had a shortage of nurses, but since another (p.  ) white nurses were under indoctrination and training, the bureau of medicine and surgery explained, "the question relative to the necessity for accepting colored personnel in this category is not apparent."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, eleanor roosevelt to secnav, nov ; ltr, secnav to mrs. roosevelt, nov ; both in bumed-s-ec, genrecsnav. well known for her interest in the cause of racial justice, the president's wife received many complaints during the war concerning discrimination in the armed forces. mrs. roosevelt often passed such protests along to the service secretaries for action. although there is no doubt where mrs. roosevelt's sympathies lay in these matters, her influence was slight on the policies and practices of the army or navy. her influence on the president's thinking is, of course, another matter. see white, _a man called white_, pp. - , .] another major cause of unrest among black seamen was the matter of rank and promotion. with the exception of the coast guard, the naval establishment had no black officers in , and none were contemplated. nor was there much opportunity for advancement in the ranks. barred from service in the fleet, the nonrated seamen faced strong competition for the limited number of petty officer positions in the shore establishment. in consequence, morale throughout the ranks deteriorated. the constant black complaint, and the root of the navy's racial problem, was segregation. it was especially hard on young black recruits who had never experienced legal segregation in civilian life and on the "talented tenth," the educated negroes, who were quickly frustrated by a policy that decided opportunity and assignment on the basis of color. they particularly resented segregation in housing, messing, and recreation. here segregation off the job, officially sanctioned, made manifest by signs distinguishing facilities for white and black, and enforced by military as well as civilian police, was a daily reminder for the negro of the navy's discrimination. such discrimination created tension in the ranks that periodically released itself in racial disorder. the first sign of serious unrest occurred in june when over half the negroes of the naval ammunition depot at st. julien's creek, virginia, rioted against alleged discrimination in segregated seating for a radio show. in july, negroes of the th construction battalion staged a protest over segregation on a transport in the caribbean. yet, naval investigators cited leadership problems as a major factor in these and subsequent incidents, and at least one commanding officer was relieved as a consequence.[ - ] [footnote - : for a discussion of these racial disturbances, see "bupers hist," pp. - .] _progressive experiments_ since the inception of black enlistment there had been those in the bureau of naval personnel who argued for the establishment of a group to coordinate plans and policies on the training and use of black sailors. various proposals were considered, but only in the wake of the racial disturbances of did the bureau set up a special programs unit in its planning and control activity to oversee the whole black enlistment program. in the end the size of the unit governed the scope of its program. originally the unit was to monitor all transactions involving negroes in the bureau's operating divisions, thus relieving the enlisted division of the critical task of (p.  ) distributing billets for negroes. it was also supposed to advise local commanders on race problems and interpret departmental policies for them. when finally established in august , the unit consisted of only three officers, a size which considerably limited its activities. still, the unit worked diligently to improve the lot of the black sailor, and eventually from this office would emerge the plans that brought about the integration of the navy. [illustration: commander sargent.] the special programs unit's patron saint and the guiding spirit of the navy's liberalizing race program was lt. comdr. christopher s. sargent. he never served in the unit himself, but helped find the two lieutenant commanders, donald o. vanness and charles e. dillon, who worked under capt. thomas f. darden in the plans and operations section of the bureau of naval personnel and acted as liaison between the special programs unit and its civilian superiors. a legendary figure in the bureau, the -year-old sargent arrived as a lieutenant, junior grade, from dean acheson's law firm, but his rank and official position were no measure of his influence in the navy department. by birth and training he was used to moving in the highest circles of american society and government, and he had wide-ranging interests and duties in the navy. described by a superior as "a philosopher who could not tolerate segregation,"[ - ] sargent waged something of a moral crusade to integrate the navy. he was convinced that a social change impossible in peacetime was practical in war. not only would integration build a more efficient navy, it might also lead the way to changes in american society that would bridge the gap between the races.[ - ] in effect, sargent sought to force the generally conservative bureau of naval personnel into making rapid and sweeping changes in the navy's racial policy. [footnote - : interv, lee nichols with rear adm. r. h. hillenkoetter, , in nichols collection, cmh.] [footnote - : nichols, _breakthrough on the color front_, pp. - . nichols supports his affectionate portrait of sargent, who died shortly after the war, with interviews of many wartime officials who worked in the bureau of naval personnel with sargent. see nichols collection, cmh. see also _christopher smith sargent, - _, a privately printed memorial prepared by the sargent family in , copy in cmh.] during its first months of existence the special programs unit tried to quiet racial unrest by a rigorous application of the separate but equal principle. it began attacking the concentration of negroes in large segregated groups in the naval districts by creating more overseas billets. toward the end of , negroes were being assigned in (p.  ) greater numbers to duty in the pacific at shore establishments and aboard small defense, district, and yard craft. the bureau of naval personnel also created new specialties for negroes in the general service. one important addition was the creation of black shore patrol units for which a school was started at great lakes. the special programs unit established a remedial training center for illiterate draftees at camp robert smalls, drawing the faculty from black servicemen who had been educators in civilian life. the twelve-week course gave the students the equivalent of a fifth grade education in addition to regular recruit training. approximately , negroes took this training before the school was consolidated with a similar organization for whites at bainbridge, maryland, in the last months of the war.[ - ] [footnote - : for further discussion, see nelson, "integration of the negro," pp. - .] at the other end of the spectrum, the special programs unit worked for the efficient use of black class a school graduates by renewing the attack on improper assignments. the bureau had long held that the proper assignment of black specialists was of fundamental importance to morale and efficiency, and in july it had ordered that all men must be used in the ratings and for the types of work for which they had been trained.[ - ] but the unit discovered considerable deviation from this policy in some districts, especially in the south, where there was a tendency to regard negroes as an extra labor source above the regular military complement. in december the special programs unit got the bureau to rule in the name of manpower efficiency that, with the exception of special units in the supply departments at south boston and norfolk, no black sailor could be assigned to such civilian jobs as maintenance work and stevedoring in the continental united states.[ - ] [footnote - : bupers ltr, pers -mbr, jul .] [footnote - : "bupers hist," p. .] these reforms were welcome, but they ignored the basic dilemma: the only way to abolish concentrations of shore-based negroes was to open up positions for them in the fleet. though many black sailors were best suited for unskilled or semiskilled billets, a significant number had technical skills that could be properly used only if these men were assigned to the fleet. to relieve the racial tension and to end the waste of skilled manpower engendered by the misuse of these men, the special programs unit pressed for a chance to test black seamanship. admiral king agreed, and in early the bureau of naval personnel assigned black enlisted men and white officers and petty officers to the uss _mason_, a newly commissioned destroyer escort, with the understanding that all enlisted billets would be filled by negroes as soon as those qualified to fill them had been trained. it also assigned black rated seamen and white officers and noncommissioned officers to a patrol craft, the pc .[ - ] both ships eventually replaced their white petty officers and some of their officers with negroes. among the latter was ens. samuel gravely, who was to become the navy's first black admiral. [footnote - : memo, chief, bupers, for cincusfleet, dec , sub: negro personnel, p /mm, bupersrecs. the latter experiment has been chronicled by its commanding officer, eric purdon, in _black company: the story of subchaser _ (washington: luce, ).] [illustration: uss mason. _sailors look over their new ship._] although both ships continued to operate with black crews well (p.  ) into , the _mason_ on escort duty in the atlantic, only four other segregated patrol craft were added to the fleet during the war.[ - ] the _mason_ passed its shakedown cruise test, but the bureau of naval personnel was not satisfied with the crew. the black petty officers had proved competent in their ratings and interested in their work, but bureau observers agreed that the rated men in general were unable to maintain discipline. the nonrated men tended to lack respect for the petty officers, who showed some disinclination to put their men on report. the special programs unit admitted the truth of these charges but argued that the experiment only proved what the navy already knew: black sailors did not respond well when assigned to all-black organizations under white officers.[ - ] on the other hand, the experiment demonstrated that the navy possessed a reservoir of able seamen who were not being efficiently employed, and--an unexpected dividend from the presence of white noncommissioned officers--that integration worked on board ship. the white petty officers messed, worked, and slept with their men in the close contact inevitable aboard small ships, with no sign of racial friction. [footnote - : memo, cno for cmdt, first and fifth naval districts, may , sub: assignment of negro personnel, p- - /mm, bupersrecs.] [footnote - : for an assessment of the performance of the _mason's_ crew. see "bupers hist," pp. - and .] opportunity for advancement was as important to morale as (p.  ) assignment according to training and skill, and the special programs unit encouraged the promotion of negroes according to their ability and in proportion to their number. although in july the bureau of naval personnel had warned commanders that it would continue to order white enlisted men to sea with the expectation that they would be replaced in shore jobs by negroes,[ - ] the special programs unit discovered that rating and promotion of negroes was still slow. at the unit's urging, the bureau advised all naval districts that it expected negroes to be rated upward "as rapidly as practicable" and asked them to report on their rating of negroes.[ - ] it also authorized stations to retain white petty officers for up to two weeks to break in their black replacements, but warned that this privilege must not be abused. the bureau further directed that all qualified general service candidates be advanced to ratings for which they were eligible regardless of whether their units were authorized enough spaces to take care of them. this last directive did little for black promotions at first because many local commanders ruled that no negroes could be "qualified" since none were allowed to perform sea duties. in january the bureau had to clarify the order to make sure that negroes were given the opportunity to advance.[ - ] [footnote - : bupers ltr, p - , jul , sub: the expanded use of negroes, bupersrecs.] [footnote - : ltr, chief, navpers, to cmdts, all naval districts, aug , sub: advancement in rating re: negro personnel, p - /mm, bupersrecs.] [footnote - : bupers cir ltr - , jan .] despite these evidences of command concern, black promotions continued to lag in the navy. again at the special programs unit's urging, the bureau of naval personnel began to limit the number of rated men turned out by the black training schools so that more nonrated men already on the job might have a better chance to win ratings. the bureau instituted a specialist leadership course for rated negroes at great lakes and recommended in january that two negroes so trained be included in each base company sent out of the country. it also selected twelve negroes with backgrounds in education and public relations and assigned them to recruiting duty around the country. the bureau expanded the black petty officer program because it was convinced by the end of that the presence of more black leaders, particularly in the large base companies, would improve discipline and raise morale. it was but a short step from this conviction to a realization that black commissioned officers were needed. despite its , enlisted negroes, the absence of black commissioned officers in the fall of forced the navy to answer an increasing number of queries from civil rights organizations and congress.[ - ] several times during suggestions were made within the bureau of naval personnel that the instructors at the hampton specialist school and seventy-five other negroes be commissioned (p.  ) for service with the large black units, but nothing happened. secretary knox himself thought that the navy would have to develop a considerable body of black sailors before it could even think about commissioning black officers.[ - ] but the secretary failed to appreciate the effect of the sheer number of black draftees that overwhelmed the service in the spring of , and he reckoned without the persuasive arguments of his special assistant, adlai stevenson.[ - ] [footnote - : news that the navy had inadvertently commissioned a black student at harvard university in the spring of produced the following reaction in one personnel office: "ltcmdr b ... [special activities branch, bupers] says this is true due to a slip by the officer who signed up medical students at harvard. cmdr. b. says this boy has a year to go in medical school and hopes they can get rid of him some how by then. he earnestly asks us to be judicious in handling this matter and prefers that nothing be said about it." quoted in a note, h. m. harvey to m mc (ca. jun ), copy on file in the dennis d. nelson collection, san diego, california.] [footnote - : ltr, secnav to sen. david i. walsh (massachusetts), may , - - ; see also idem to sen. william h. smathers (florida), feb , nav- -c. both in genrecsnav.] [footnote - : interv, lee nichols with lester granger, , in nichols collection, cmh.] secretary knox often referred to adlai stevenson as "my new dealer," and, as the expression suggested, the illinois lawyer was in an excellent position to influence the secretary's thinking.[ - ] although not so forceful an advocate as christopher sargent, stevenson lent his considerable intelligence and charm to the support of those in the department who sought equal opportunity for the negro. he was an invaluable and influential ally for the special programs unit. stevenson knew knox well and understood how to approach him. he was particularly effective in getting negroes commissioned. in september he pointed out that, with the induction of , negroes a month, the demand for black officers would be mounting in the black community and in the government as well. the navy could not and should not, he warned, postpone much longer the creation of some black officers. suspicion of discrimination was one reason the navy was failing to get the best qualified negroes, and stevenson believed it wise to act quickly. he recommended that the navy commission ten or twelve negroes from among "top notch civilians just as we procure white officers" and a few from the ranks. the commissioning should be treated as a matter of course without any special publicity. the news, he added wryly, would get out soon enough.[ - ] [footnote - : kenneth s. davis, _the politics of honor: a biography of adlai e. stevenson_ (new york: putnam, ), p. ; ltr, a. e. stevenson to dennis d. nelson, feb , nelson collection, san diego, california.] [footnote - : memo, stevenson for the secretary [knox], sep , - - , genrecsnav.] there were in fact three avenues to a navy commission: the naval academy, the v- program, and direct commission from civilian life or the enlisted ranks. but annapolis had no negroes enrolled at the time stevenson spoke, and only a dozen negroes were enrolled in v- programs at integrated civilian colleges throughout the country.[ - ] the lack of black students in the v- program could be attributed in part to the belief of many black trainees that the program barred negroes. actually, it never had, and in december the bureau publicized this fact. it issued a circular letter emphasizing to all commanders that enlisted men were entitled to consideration for transfer to the v- program regardless of race.[ - ] despite this effort (p.  ) it was soon apparent that the program would produce only a few black officers, and the bureau of naval personnel, at the urging of its special programs unit, agreed to follow stevenson's suggestion and concentrate on the direct commissioning of negroes. unlike stevenson the bureau preferred to obtain most of the men from the enlisted ranks, and only in the case of certain specially trained men did the navy commission civilians. [footnote - : the v- program was designed to prepare large numbers of educated men for the navy's reserve midshipmen schools and to increase the war-depleted student bodies of many colleges. the navy signed on eligible students as apprentice seamen and paid their academic expenses. eventually the v- program produced some , officers for the wartime navy. for an account of the experiences of a black recruit in the v- program, see carl t. rowan, "those navy boys changed my life," _reader's digest_ (january ): - . rowan, the celebrated columnist and onetime deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs, was one of the first negroes to complete the v- program. another was samuel gravely.] [footnote - : bupers cir ltr - , dec .] [illustration: first black officers in the navy. _from left to right_: (_top row_) _john w. reagan_, _jesse w. arbor_, _dalton l. baugh_; (_second row_) _graham e. martin_, _w. o. charles b. lear_, _frank c. sublett_; (_third row_) _phillip s. barnes_, _george cooper_, _reginald goodwin_; (_bottom row_) _james e. hare_, _samuel e. barnes_, _w. sylvester white_, _dennis d. nelson ii_.] the bureau of naval personnel concluded that, since many units were substantially or wholly manned by negroes, black officers could be used without undue difficulty, and when secretary knox, prodded by stevenson, turned to the bureau, it recommended that the navy (p.  ) commission twelve line and ten staff officers from a selected list of enlisted men.[ - ] admiral king endorsed the bureau's recommendation and on december knox approved it, although he conditioned his approval by saying: "after you have commissioned the twenty-two officers you suggest, i think this matter should again be reviewed before any additional colored officers are commissioned."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secnav for chief, navpers, nov , - - ; memo, chief, navpers, for secnav, dec , sub: negro officers. both in genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, secnav for rear adm jacobs, dec , quoted in "bupers hist," p. .] on january the first sixteen black officer candidates, selected from among qualified enlisted applicants, entered great lakes for segregated training. all sixteen survived the course, but only twelve were commissioned. in the last week of the course, three candidates were returned to the ranks, not because they had failed but because the bureau of naval personnel had suddenly decided to limit the number of black officers in this first group to twelve. the twelve entered the u.s. naval reserve as line officers on march. a thirteenth man, the only candidate who lacked a college degree, was made a warrant officer because of his outstanding work in the course. two of the twelve new ensigns were assigned to the faculty at hampton training school, four others to yard and harbor craft duty, and the rest to training duty at great lakes. all carried the label "deck officers limited--only," a designation usually reserved for officers whose physical or educational deficiencies kept them from performing all the duties of a line officer. the bureau of naval personnel never explained why the men were placed in this category, but it was clear that none of them lacked the physical requirements of a line officer and all had had business or professional careers in civil life. operating duplicate training facilities for officer candidates was costly, and the bureau decided shortly after the first group of black candidates was trained that future candidates of both races would be trained together. by early summer ten more negroes, this time civilians with special professional qualifications, had been trained with whites and were commissioned as staff officers in the medical, dental, chaplain, civil engineer, and supply corps. these twenty-two men were the first of some sixty negroes to be commissioned during the war. since only a handful of the negroes in the navy were officers, the preponderance of the race problems concerned relations between black enlisted men and their white officers. the problem of selecting the proper officers to command black sailors was a formidable one never satisfactorily solved during the war. as in the army, most of the white officers routinely selected for such assignments were southerners, chosen by the bureau of naval personnel for their assumed "understanding" of negroes rather than for their general competency. the special programs unit tried to work with these officers, assembling them for conferences to discuss the best techniques and procedures for dealing with groups of black subordinates. members of the unit sought to disabuse the officers of preconceived biases, constantly reminding them that "our prejudices must be subordinated to our traditional (p.  ) unfailing obedience to orders."[ - ] although there was ample proof that many negroes actively resented the paternalism exhibited by many of even the best of these officers, this fact was slow to filter through the naval establishment. it was not until january that an officer who had compiled an enviable record in training seabee units described how his organization had come to see the light: we in the seabees no longer follow the precept that southern officers exclusively should be selected for colored battalions. a man may be from the north, south, east or west. if his attitude is to do the best possible job he knows how, regardless of what the color of his personnel is, that is the man we want as an officer for our colored seabees. we have learned to steer clear of the "i'm from the south--i know how to handle 'em variety." it follows with reference to white personnel, that deeply accented southern whites are not generally suited for negro battalions.[ - ] [footnote - : quoted in record of "conference with regard to negro personnel," held at hq, fifth naval district, oct , incl to ltr, chief, navpers, to all sea frontier cmds et al., jan , sub: negro personnel--confidential report of conference with regard to the handling of, pers , bupers recs. the grotesque racial attitudes of some commanders, as well as the thoughtful questions and difficult experiences of others, were fully aired at this conference.] [footnote - : ibid.] further complicating the task of selecting suitable officers for black units was the fact that when the bureau of naval personnel asked unit commanders to recommend men for such duty many commanders used the occasion to rid themselves of their least desirable officers. the special programs unit then tried to develop its own source of officers for black units. it discovered a fine reservoir of talent among the white noncommissioned officers who ran the physical training and drill courses at great lakes. these were excellent instructors, mature and experienced in dealing with people. in january arrangements were made to commission them and to assign them to black units. improvement in the quality of officers in black units was especially important because the attitude of local commanders was directly related to the degree of segregation in living quarters and recreational facilities, and such segregation was the most common source of racial tension. although the navy's practice of segregating units clearly invited separate living and recreational facilities, the rules were unwritten, and local commanders had been left to decide the extent to which segregation was necessary. thus practices varied greatly and policy depended ultimately on the local commanders. rather than attack racial practices at particular bases, the unit decided to concentrate on the officers. it explained to these leaders the navy's policy of equal treatment and opportunity, a concept basically incompatible with many of their practices. this conclusion was embodied in a pamphlet entitled _guide to the command of negro naval personnel_ and published by the bureau of naval personnel in february .[ - ] the special programs unit had to overcome much opposition within the bureau to get the pamphlet published. some thought the subject of racial tension was best ignored; others objected to the "sociological" content of the work, considering this approach outside the navy's province. the unit (p.  ) argued that racial tension in the navy was a serious problem that could not be ignored, and since human relations affected the navy's mission the navy should deal with social matters objectively and frankly.[ - ] [footnote - : navpers , feb .] [footnote - : "bupers hist," pt. ii, pp. - .] scholarly and objective, the pamphlet was an important document in the history of race relations in the navy. in language similar to that used in the war department's pamphlet on race, the bureau of naval personnel stated officially for the first time that discrimination flowed of necessity out of the doctrine of segregation: the idea of compulsory racial segregation is disliked by almost all negroes, and literally hated by many. this antagonism is in part a result of the fact that as a principle it embodies a doctrine of racial inferiority. it is also a result of the lesson taught the negro by experience that in spite of the legal formula of "separate but equal" facilities, the facilities open to him under segregation are in fact usually inferior as to location or quality to those available to others.[ - ] [footnote - : navpers , feb , p. .] the guide also foreshadowed the end of the old order of things: "the navy accepts no theories of racial differences in inborn ability, but expects that every man wearing its uniform be trained and used in accordance with his maximum individual capacity determined on the basis of individual performance."[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., p. .] _forrestal takes the helm_ the navy got a leader sympathetic to the proposition of equal treatment and opportunity for negroes, and possessed of the bureaucratic skills to achieve reforms, when president roosevelt appointed under secretary james forrestal to replace frank knox, who died suddenly on april . during the next five years forrestal, a brilliant, complex product of wall street, would assume more and more responsibility for directing the integration effort in the defense establishment. although no racial crusader, forrestal had been for many years a member of the national urban league, itself a pillar of the civil rights establishment. he saw the problem of employing negroes as one of efficiency and simple fair play, and as the months went by he assumed an active role in experimenting with changes in the navy's policy.[ - ] [footnote - : see columbia university oral hist interv with granger; usaf oral history program, interview with james c. evans, apr .] his first experiment was with sea duty for negroes. after the experience of the _mason_ and the other segregated ships which actually proved very little, sentiment for a partial integration of the fleet continued to grow in the bureau of naval personnel. as early as april , officers in the planning and control activity recommended that negroes be included in small numbers in the crews of the larger combat ships. admiral jacobs, however, was convinced that "you couldn't dump colored boys on a crew in battle,"[ - ] so this and similar proposals later in the year never survived passage through the bureau. [footnote - : interv, lee nichols with vice adm randall jacobs, mar , in nichols collection, cmh.] forrestal accepted jacob's argument that as long as the war (p.  ) continued any move toward integrating the fighting ships was impractical. at the same time, he agreed with the special programs unit that large concentrations of negroes in shore duties lowered efficiency and morale. forrestal compromised by ordering the bureau to prepare as an experiment a plan for the integration of some fleet auxiliary ships. on may he outlined the problem for the president: "from a morale standpoint, the negroes resent the fact that they are not assigned to general service billets at sea, and white personnel resent the fact that negroes have been given less hazardous assignments." he explained that at first negroes would be used only on the large auxiliaries, and their number would be limited to not more than percent of the ship's complement. if this step proved workable, he planned to use negroes in small numbers on other types of ships "as necessity indicates." the white house answered: "ok, fdr."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secnav for president, may , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] secretary forrestal also won the support of the chief of naval operations for the move, but admiral king still considered integration in the fleet experimental and was determined to keep strict control until the results were known. on august king informed the commanding officers of twenty-five large fleet auxiliaries that negroes would be assigned to them in the near future. as forrestal had suggested, king set the maximum number of negroes at percent of the ship's general service. of this number, percent would be third-class petty officers from shore activities, selected as far as possible from volunteers and, in any case, from those who had served the longest periods of shore duty. of the remainder, percent would be from class a schools and percent from recruit training. the basic percent figure proved to be a theoretical maximum; no ship received that many negroes. admiral king insisted that equal treatment in matters of training, promotion, and duty assignments must be accorded all hands, but he left the matter of berthing to the commanding officers, noting that experience had proved that in the shore establishment, when the percentage of blacks to whites was small, the two groups could be successfully mingled in the same compartments. he also pointed out that a thorough indoctrination of white sailors before the arrival of the negroes had been useful in preventing racial friction ashore.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, cno to co, uss _antaeus_ et al., aug , sub: negro enlisted personnel--assignment of to ships of the fleet, p - /mm, opnavarchives.] king asked all commanders concerned in the experiment to report their experiences.[ - ] their judgment: integration in the auxiliary fleet worked. as one typical report related after several months of integrated duty: the crew was carefully indoctrinated in the fact that negro personnel should not be subjected to discrimination of any sort and should be treated in the same manner as other members of the crew. the negro personnel when they came aboard were berthed indiscriminately throughout the crew's compartments in the same manner as if they had been white. it is felt that the assimilation of the general service negro personnel aboard this ship has been remarkably successful. to the present date (p.  ) there has been no report of any difficulty which could be laid to their color. it is felt that this is due in part, at least, to the high calibre of negroes assigned to this ship.[ - ] [footnote - : idem to cmdr, _antaeus_ et al., jan , p - , opnavarchives.] [footnote - : ltr, co, uss _antaeus_, to chief, navpers, jan , sub: negro enlisted personnel--assignment of to ships of the fleet, ag /p - /mm; see also memo, cmdr d. armstrong for comserforpac, dec , sub: negro enlisted personnel (general service ratings) assignment of to ships of the fleet; ltr, comserforpac to chief, navpers, jan , with cincpac&poa end thereto, same sub; ltrs to chief, navpers, from co, uss _laramie_, jan , uss _mattole_, jan , with comserforlant end, and uss _ariel_, feb . all incl to memo, chief, navpers, for cincusfleet, mar , sub: negro personnel--expanded use of, pers fb. all in opnavarchives.] the comments of his commanders convinced king that the auxiliary vessels in the fleet could be integrated without incident. he approved a plan submitted by the chief of naval personnel on march for the gradual assignment of negroes to all auxiliary vessels, again in numbers not to exceed percent of the general service billets in any ship's complement.[ - ] a month later negroes were being so assigned in an administratively routine manner.[ - ] the bureau of naval personnel then began assigning black officers to sea duty on the integrated vessels. the first one went to the _mason_ in march, and in succeeding months others were sent in a routine manner to auxiliary vessels throughout the fleet.[ - ] these assignments were not always carried out according to the bureau's formula. the commander of the uss _chemung_, for example, told a young black ensign: i'm a navy man, and we're in a war. to me, it's that stripe that counts--and the training and leadership that it is supposed to symbolize. that's why i never called a meeting of the crew to prepare them, to explain their obligation to respect you, or anything like that. i didn't want anyone to think you were different from any other officer coming aboard.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, chief, navpers, for cincusfleet, mar , sub: negro personnel--expanded use of, with st ind, from fleet adm, usn, for vice cno, mar , same sub, ffi/p - /mm, opnavarchives.] [footnote - : bupers cir ltr - , apr , sub: negro general-service personnel, assignment of to auxiliary vessels of the fleet.] [footnote - : ltr, chief, navpers, to co, uss _mason_, mar , sub: negro officer--assignment of, pers -fb; see also idem to co, uss _kaweah_, jul , sub: negro officer--assignment of to auxiliary vessel of the fleet, ao /p - ; idem to co, uss _laramie_, aug , same sub, ao /p - . all in opnavarchives.] [footnote - : quoted in rowan, "those navy boys changed my life." pp - .] admitting negroes to the waves was another matter considered by the new secretary in his first days in office. in fact, the subject had been under discussion in the navy department for some two years. soon after the organization of the women's auxiliary, its director, capt. mildred h. mcafee, had recommended that negroes be accepted, arguing that their recruitment would help to temper the widespread criticism of the navy's restrictive racial policy. but the traditionalists in the bureau of naval personnel had opposed the move on the grounds that waves were organized to replace men, and since there were more than enough black sailors to fill all billets open to negroes there was no need to recruit black women. actually, both arguments served to mask other motives, as did knox's rejection of recruitment on the grounds that integrating women into the navy was difficult enough without taking on the race (p.  ) problem.[ - ] in april knox "tentatively" approved the "tentative" outline of a bureau plan for the induction of up to , black waves, but nothing came of it.[ - ] given the secretary's frequent protestation that the subject was under constant review,[ - ] and his statement to captain mcafee that black waves would be enlisted "over his dead body,"[ - ] the tentative outline and approval seems to have been an attempt to defer the decision indefinitely. [footnote - : ltr, mildred m. horton to author, mar , cmh files.] [footnote - : memo, chief, navpers, for secnav, apr , pers md, bupersrecs, memo, secnav for adm jacobs, apr , - - , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : see, for example, ltr, secnav to algernon d. black, city-wide citizen's cmte on harlem, apr , - - , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : quoted in ltr, horton to author, mar .] secretary knox's delay merely attracted more attention to the problem and enabled the protestors to enlist powerful allies. at the time of his death, knox was under siege by a delegation from the congress of industrial organizations (cio) demanding a reassessment of the navy's policy on the women's reserve.[ - ] his successor turned for advice to captain mcafee and to the bureau of naval personnel where, despite knox's "positive and direct orders" against recruiting black waves, the special programs unit had continued to study the problem.[ - ] convinced that the step was just and inevitable, the unit also agreed that the waves should be integrated. forrestal approved, and on july he recommended to the president that negroes be trained in the waves on an integrated basis and assigned "wherever needed within the continental limits of the united states, preferably to stations where there are already negro men." he concluded by reiterating a special programs unit warning: "i consider it advisable to start obtaining negro waves before we are forced to take them."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, ralph bard for forrestal, may , sub: navy policy on recruitment of negro females as waves; ltr, nathan cowan, cio, to forrestal, may , - - . both in genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, j. v. f. (forrestal) for adm denfeld (ca. jun ); memo, capt mildred mcafee for adm denfeld, jun ; both in - - , genrecsnav. see also memo, chief, navpers, for secnav, may , sub: navy policy on recruitment of negro females as waves, pers , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, forrestal for president, jul , - - , genrecsnav.] to avoid the shoals of racial controversy in the midst of an election year, secretary forrestal did trim his recommendations to the extent that he retained the doctrine of separate but equal living quarters and mess facilities for the black waves. despite this offer of compromise, president roosevelt directed forrestal to withhold action on the proposal.[ - ] here the matter would probably have stood until after the election but for thomas e. dewey's charge in a chicago speech during the presidential campaign that the white house was discriminating against black women. the president quickly instructed the navy to admit negroes into the waves.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, lt cmdr john tyree (white house aide) for forrestal, aug , - - , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : navy dept press release, oct .] the first two black wave officers graduated from training at smith college on december, and the enlistment of black women began a week later. the program turned out to be more racially progressive than initially outlined by forrestal. he had explained to the president that the women would be quartered separately, a provision (p.  ) interpreted in the bureau of naval personnel to mean that black recruits would be organized into separate companies. since a recruit company numbered women, and since it quickly became apparent that such a large group of black volunteers would not soon be forthcoming, some of the bureau staff decided that the navy would continue to bar black women. in this they reckoned without captain mcafee who insisted on a personal ruling by forrestal. she warned the secretary that his order was necessary because the concept "was so strange to navy practice."[ - ] he agreed with her that the negroes would be integrated along with the rest of the incoming recruits, and the bureau of naval personnel subsequently ordered that the waves be assimilated without making either special or separate arrangements.[ - ] [footnote - : oral history interview, mildred mcafee horton, aug , center of naval history.] [footnote - : ltr, asst chief, navpers, to co, navtrascol (wr), bronx, n.y., dec , sub: colored wave recruits, pers- , bupersrecs.] [illustration: lieutenant pickens and ensign wills. _first black wave officers, members of the final graduating class at naval reserve midshipmen's school (wr), northhampton, massachusetts._] by july the navy had trained seventy-two black waves at hunter college naval training school in a fully integrated and routine manner. although black waves were restricted somewhat in specialty assignments and a certain amount of separate quartering within integrated barracks prevailed at some duty stations, the special programs unit came to consider the wave program, which established a forceful precedent for the integration of male recruit training, its most important wartime breakthrough, crediting captain mcafee and her unbending insistence on equal treatment for the achievement. forrestal won the day in these early experiments, but he was a skillful administrator and knew that there was little hope for any fundamental social change in the naval service without the active cooperation of the navy's high-ranking officers. his meeting with admiral king on the subject of integration in the summer of has been reported by several people. lester granger, who later became forrestal's special representative on racial matters, recalled: he [forrestal] said he spoke to admiral king, who was then chief of staff, and said, "admiral king, i'm not satisfied with the situation here--i don't think that our navy negro personnel are getting a square break. i want to do something about it, but i can't do anything about it unless the officers are behind me. i want your help. what do you say?" he said that admiral king sat for a moment, and looked out (p.  ) the window and then said reflectively, "you know, we say that we are a democracy and a democracy ought to have a democratic navy. i don't think you can do it, but if you want to try, i'm behind you all the way." and he told me, "and admiral king was behind me, all the way, not only he but all of the bureau of personnel, bupers. they've been bricks."[ - ] [footnote - : quoted in the columbia university oral history interview with granger. granger's incorrect reference to admiral king as "chief of staff" is interesting because it illustrates the continuing evolution of that office during world war ii.] [illustration: sailors in the general service move ammunition.] admiral jacobs, the chief of naval personnel, also pledged his support.[ - ] [footnote - : james v. forrestal, "remarks for dinner meeting at national urban league," feb , box , misc file, forrestal papers, princeton library. forrestal's truncated version of the king meeting agreed substantially with granger's lengthier remembrance.] as news of the king-forrestal conversation filtered through the department, many of the programs long suggested by the special programs unit and heretofore treated with indifference or disapproval suddenly received respectful attention.[ - ] with the high-ranking officers cooperating, the navy under forrestal began to attack some of the more obvious forms of discrimination and causes of racial tension. admiral king led the attack, personally directing in august that all elements give close attention to the proper selection of officers to command black sailors. as he put it: "certain officers will be temperamentally better suited for such commands than others."[ - ] the qualifications of these officers were to be kept under constant (p.  ) review. in december he singled out the commands in the pacific area, which had a heavy concentration of all-black base companies, calling for a reform in their employment and advancement of negroes.[ - ] [footnote - : intervs, lee nichols with adm louis e. denfeld (deputy chief of naval personnel, later cno) and with cmdr charles dillon (formerly of bupers special unit), ; both in nichols collection, cmh.] [footnote - : alnav, aug , quoted in nelson, "integration of the negro," p. .] [footnote - : dir, cno, to forward areas, dec , quoted in nelson's "integration of the negro," p. .] [illustration: security watch in the marianas. _ratings of these men guarding an ammunition depot include boatswain, second class, seaman, first class, and fireman, first class._] the bureau of naval personnel also stepped up the tempo of its reforms. in march it had already made black cooks and bakers eligible for duty in all commissary branches of the navy.[ - ] in june it got forrestal's approval for putting all rated cooks and stewards in chief petty officer uniforms.[ - ] (while providing finally for the proper uniforming of the chief cooks and stewards, this reform set their subordinates, the rated cooks and stewards, even further apart from their counterparts in the general service who of course continued to wear the familiar bell bottoms.) the bureau also began to attack the concentration of negroes in ammunition depots and base companies. on february it ordered that all naval magazines and ammunition depots in the united states and, wherever practical, overseas limit their black seamen to percent of the total employed.[ - ] it (p.  ) also organized twenty logistic support companies to replace the formless base companies sent to the pacific in the early months of the recruitment program. organized to perform supply functions, each company consisted of enlisted men and five officers, with a flexible range of petty officer billets. [footnote - : bupers cir ltr - , mar , sub: negro personnel of the commissary branch, assignment to duty of.] [footnote - : idem, - , jun , "uniform for chief cooks and chief stewards and cooks and stewards."] [footnote - : idem, - , feb , and - , may , sub: negro enlisted personnel--limitation on assignment of to naval ammunition depots and naval magazines.] in the reform atmosphere slowly permeating the bureau of naval personnel, the special programs unit found it relatively easy to end segregation in the specialist training program.[ - ] from the first, the number of negroes eligible for specialist training had been too small to make costly duplication of equipment and services practical. in , for example, the black aviation metalsmith school at great lakes had an average enrollment of eight students. the school was quietly closed and its students integrated with white students. thus, when the _mason's_ complement was assembled in early , negroes were put into the destroyer school at norfolk side by side with whites, and the black and white petty officers were quartered together. as a natural consequence of the decision to place negroes in the auxiliary fleet, the bureau of naval personnel opened training in seagoing rates to negroes on an integrated basis. citing the practicality of the move, the bureau closed the last of the black schools in june .[ - ] [footnote - : there is some indication that integration was already going on unofficially in some specialist schools; see ltr, dr. m. a. f. ritchie to james c. evans, aug , cmh files.] [footnote - : bupers cir ltr - , sub: advanced schools, nondiscrimination in selection of personnel for training in; ltr, chief, navpers, to co, adcomd, navtracen, jun , sub: selection of negro personnel for instruction in class "a" schools, - - , genrecsnav.] despite these reforms, the months following forrestal's talk with king saw many important recommendations of the special programs unit wandering uncertainly through the bureaucratic desert. for example, a proposal to make the logistic support companies interracial, or at least to create comparable white companies to remove the stigma of segregated manual labor, failed to survive the objections of the enlisted personnel section. the bureau of naval personnel rejected a suggestion that negroes be assigned to repair units on board ships and to lst's, lci's, and lct's during the expansion of the amphibious program. on august admiral king rejected a bureau recommendation that the crews of net tenders and mine ships be integrated. he reasoned that these vessels were being kept in readiness for overseas assignment and required "the highest degree of experienced seamanship and precision work" by the crews. he also cited the crowded living quarters and less experienced officers as further reasons for banning negroes.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cno for chief, navpers, aug , sub: negro personnel--assignment to ans and yms, p -/mm, bupersrecs.] there were other examples of backsliding in the navy's racial practices. use of negroes in general service had created a shortage of messmen, and in august the bureau of naval personnel authorized commanders to recruit among black seamen for men to transfer to the steward's branch. the bureau suggested as a talking point the fact (p.  ) that stewards enjoyed more rapid advancement, shorter hours, and easier work than men in the general service.[ - ] and, illustrating that a move toward integration was sometimes followed by a step backward, a bureau representative reported in july that whereas a few black trainees at the bainbridge naval training center had been integrated in the past, many now arriving were segregated in all-black companies.[ - ] [footnote - : bupers cir ltr - , aug , sub: steward's branch, procurement of from general-service negroes.] [footnote - : memo, lt william h. robertson, jr., for rear adm william m. fechteler, asst chief, navpers, jul , sub: conditions existing at ntc, bainbridge, md., regarding negro personnel, reported on by lt wm. h. robertson, jr., pers- -fb, bupersrecs.] there were reasons for the inconsistent stance in washington. the special programs unit had for some time been convinced that only full integration would eliminate discrimination and dissolve racial tensions in the navy, and it had understood forrestal's desire "to do something" for the negro to mean just that. some senior commanders and their colleagues in the bureau of naval personnel, on the other hand, while accepting the need for reform and willing to accept some racial mixing, nevertheless rejected any substantial change in the policy of restricted employment of negroes on the grounds that it might disrupt the wartime fleet. both sides could argue with assurance since forrestal and king had not made their positions completely clear. whatever the secretary's ultimate intention, the reforms carried out in were too little and too late. perhaps nothing would have been sufficient, for the racial incidents visited upon the navy during the last year of the war were symptomatic of the overwhelming dissatisfaction negroes felt with their lot in the armed forces. there had been incidents during the knox period, but investigation had failed to isolate any "single, simple cause," and troubles continued to occur during .[ - ] [footnote - : "bupers hist," p. .] three of these incidents gained national prominence.[ - ] the first was a mutiny at mare island, california, after an explosion destroyed two ammunition ships loading at nearby port chicago on july . the explosion killed over persons, including black seamen who had toiled in large, segregated labor battalions. the survivors refused to return to work, and fifty of them were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to prison. the incident became a _cause celebre_. finally, through the intervention of the black press and black organizations and the efforts of thurgood marshall and lester granger, the convictions were set aside and the men restored to active duty. [footnote - : nelson, "integration of the negro," ch. viii.] a riot on guam in december was the climax of months of friction between black seamen and white marines. a series of shootings in and around the town of agana on christmas eve left a black and a white marine dead. believing one of the killed a member of their group, black sailors from the naval supply depot drove into town to confront the outnumbered military police. no violence ensued, but the next day two truckloads of armed negroes went to the white marine camp. a riot followed and forty-three negroes were arrested, charged with rioting and theft of the trucks, and sentenced to up to four years in prison. the authorities also recommended that several of the white marines (p.  ) involved be court-martialed. these men too were convicted of various offenses and sentenced.[ - ] walter white went to guam to investigate the matter and appeared as a principal witness before the marine court of inquiry. there he pieced together for officials the long history of discrimination suffered by men of the base company. this situation, combined with poor leadership in the unit, he believed, caused the trouble. his efforts and those of other civil rights advocates led to the release of the black sailors in early .[ - ] [footnote - : henry i. shaw, jr., and ralph w. donnelly, _blacks in the marine corps_ (washington: government printing office, ), pp. - .] [footnote - : white's testimony before the court of inquiry was attached to a report by maj gen henry l. larsen to cmc (ca. jan ), ser. no. , copy in cmh.] [illustration: specialists repair aircraft, _naval air station, seattle, washington, _.] a hunger strike developed as a protest against discrimination in a seabee battalion at port hueneme, california, in march . there was no violence. the thousand strikers continued to work but refused to eat for two days. the resulting publicity forced the navy to investigate the charges; as a result, the commanding officer, the focus of the grievance, was replaced and the outfit sent overseas. the riots, mutinies, and other incidents increased the pressure for further modifications of policy. some senior officers became convinced that the only way to avoid mass rebellion was to avert the (p.  ) possibility of collective action, and collective action was less likely if negroes were dispersed among whites. as admiral chester w. nimitz, commander of the pacific fleet and an eloquent proponent of the theory that integration was a practical means of avoiding trouble, explained to the captain of an attack cargo ship who had just received a group of black crewmen and was segregating their sleeping quarters: "if you put all the negroes together they'll have a chance to share grievances and to plot among themselves, and this will damage discipline and morale. if they are distributed among other members of the crew, there will be less chance of trouble. and when we say we want integration, we mean _integration_."[ - ] thus integration grew out of both idealism and realism. [footnote - : as quoted in white, _a man called white_, p. . for a variation on this theme, see interv, nichols with hillenkoetter.] if racial incidents convinced the admirals that further reforms were necessary, they also seem to have strengthened forrestal's resolve to introduce a still greater change in his department's policy. for months he had listened to the arguments of senior officials and naval experts that integration of the fleet, though desirable, was impossible during the war. yet forrestal had seen integration work on the small patrol craft, on fleet auxiliaries, and in the waves. in fact, integration was working smoothly wherever it had been tried. although hard to substantiate, the evidence suggests that it was in the weeks after the guam incident that the secretary and admiral king agreed on a policy of total integration in the general service. the change would be gradual, but the progress would be evident and the end assured--negroes were going to be assigned as individuals to all branches and billets in the general service.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, rear adm hillenkoetter to nichols, may ; see also intervs, nichols with granger, hillenkoetter, jacobs, thomas darden, dillon, and other bupers officials. in contrast to the knox period, where the files are replete with secretary of the navy memos, bupers letters, and general board reports on the development of the navy's racial policy, there is scant documentation on the same subject during the early months of the forrestal administration. this is understandable because the subject of integration was extremely delicate and not readily susceptible to the usual staffing needed for most policy decisions. furthermore, forrestal's laconic manner of expressing himself, famous in bureaucratic washington, inhibited the usual flow of letters and memos.] forrestal and king received no end of advice. in december a group of black publicists called upon the secretary to appoint a civilian aide to consider the problems of the negro in the navy. the group also added its voice to those within the navy who were suggesting the appointment of a black public relations officer to disseminate news of particular interest to the black press and to improve the navy's relations with the black community.[ - ] one of forrestal's assistants proposed that an intradepartmental committee be organized to standardize the disparate approaches to racial problems throughout the naval establishment; another recommended the appointment of a black civilian to advise the bureau of naval personnel; and still another recommended a white assistant on racial affairs in the office of the under secretary.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, john h. sengstacke to forrestal, dec , - - , genrecsnav; interv, nichols with granger.] [footnote - : memo, under sec bard for secnav, jan ; memo, h struve hensel (off of gen counsel) for forrestal, jan ; both in - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] these ideas had merit. the special programs unit had for some time been urging a public relations effort, pointing to the existence of an influential black press as well as to the desirability of (p.  ) fostering among whites a greater knowledge of the role of negroes in the war. forrestal brought two black officers to washington for possible assignment to public relations work, and he asked the director of public relations to arrange for black newsmen to visit vessels manned by black crewmen. finally, in june , a black officer was added to the staff of the navy's office of public relations.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secnav for eugene duffield (asst to under sec), jan , - - ; idem for rear adm a. stanton merrill (dir of pub relations), mar and may , - - . all in forrestal file, genrecsnav.] appointment of a civilian aide on racial affairs was under consideration for some time, but when no agreement could be reached on where best to assign the official, forrestal, who wanted someone he could "casually talk to about race relations,"[ - ] invited the executive secretary of the national urban league to "give us some of your time for a period."[ - ] thus in march lester b. granger began his long association with the department of defense, an association that would span the military's integration effort.[ - ] granger's assignment was straightforward. from time to time he would make extensive trips representing the secretary and his special interest in racial problems at various naval stations. [footnote - : quoted in forrestal, "remarks for dinner of urban league."] [footnote - : ltr, secnav to lester granger, feb , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] [footnote - : ltrs, granger to forrestal, mar and apr , - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav. granger and forrestal had attended dartmouth college, but not together as forrestal thought. for a detailed and affectionate account of their relationship, see columbia university oral history interview with granger.] forrestal was sympathetic to the urban league's approach to racial justice, and in granger he had a man who had developed this approach into a social philosophy. granger believed in relating the navy's racial problems not to questions of fairness but to questions of survival, comfort, and security for all concerned. he assumed that if leadership in any field came to understand that its privilege or its security were threatened by denial of fairness to the less privileged, then a meeting of minds was possible between the two groups. they would begin to seek a way to eliminate insecurity, and from the process of eliminating insecurity would come fairness. as granger explained it, talk to the commander about his loss of efficient production, not the shame of denying a negro a man's right to a job. talk about the social costs that come from denial of opportunity and talk about the penalty that the privileged pay almost in equal measure to what the negro pays, but in different coin. only then would one begin to get a hearing. on the other hand, talk to negroes not about achieving their rights but about making good on an opportunity. this would lead to a discussion of training, of ways to override barriers "by maintaining themselves whole."[ - ] the navy was going to get a lesson in race relations, urban league style. [footnote - : columbia university oral hist interv with granger.] at forrestal's request, granger explained how he viewed the special adviser's role. he thought he could help the secretary by smoothing the integration process in the general service through consultations with local commanders and their men in a series of field visits. he could also act as an intermediary between the department and the civil rights organizations and black press. granger urged the formation (p.  ) of an advisory council, which would consist of ranking representatives from the various branches, to interpret and administer the navy's racial policy. the need for such intradepartmental coordination seemed fairly obvious. although in the bureau of naval personnel had increased the resources of its special programs unit, still the only specialized organization dealing with race problems, that group was always too swamped with administrative detail to police race problems outside washington. furthermore, the seabees and the medical and surgery department were in some ways independent of the bureau, and their employment of black sailors was different from that of other branches--a situation that created further confusion and conflict in the application of race policy.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, chief, navpers, for cmdr richard m. paget (exec office of the secnav), apr , sub: organization of advisory cmte, pers , genrecsnav. see also "bupers hist," pt. ii, p. .] assuming that the advisory council would require an executive agent, granger suggested that the secretary have a full-time assistant for race relations in addition to his own part-time services. he wanted the man to be black and he wanted him in the secretary's office, which would give him prestige in the black community and increase his power to deal with the bureaus. forrestal rejected the idea of a council and a full-time assistant, pleading that he must avoid creating another formal organization. instead he decided to assemble an informal committee, which he invited granger to join, to standardize the navy's handling of negroes.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, granger to secnav, mar ; ltrs, secnav to granger, mar and apr . all in - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav. the activities of the intradepartmental committee will be discussed in chapter .] it was obvious that forrestal, convinced that the navy's senior officials had made a fundamental shift in their thinking on equal treatment and opportunity for negroes in the navy, was content to let specific reforms percolate slowly throughout the department. he would later call the navy's wartime reforms "a start down a long road."[ - ] in these last months of the war, however, more barriers to equal treatment of negroes were quietly falling. in march , after months of prodding by forrestal, the surgeon general announced that the navy would accept a "reasonable" number of qualified black nurses and was now recruiting for them.[ - ] in june the bureau of naval personnel ordered the integration of recruit training, assigning black general service recruits to the nearest recruit training command "to obtain the maximum utilization of naval training and housing facilities."[ - ] noting that this integration was at variance with some individual attitudes, the bureau justified the change on the grounds of administrative efficiency. again at the secretary's urging, plans were set in motion in july for the assignment of negroes to submarine and aviation pilot training.[ - ] at the same time lester granger, acting as the secretary's personal representative, was visiting the (p.  ) navy's continental installations, prodding commanders and converting them to the new policy.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, forrestal to marshall field iii (publisher of _pm_), jul , - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, secnav for rear adm w. j. c. agnew, asst surg gen, jan ; memo, surg gen for eugene duffield, mar ; both in - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav. by v-j day the navy had four black nurses on active duty.] [footnote - : ltr, chief, navpers, to cmdts, all naval districts, jun , sub: negro recruit training--discontinuance of special program and camps for, p - /mm, bupersrecs.] [footnote - : memo, secnav for artemus l. gates, asst sec for air, et al. jul ; ltr, secnav to granger, jul ; both in - - , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : ltr, granger to forrestal, aug , - - , genrecsnav.] [illustration: the d special construction battalion celebrates v-j day.] the navy's wartime progress in race relations was the product of several forces. at first negroes were restricted to service as messmen, but political pressure forced the navy to open general service billets to them. in this the influence of the civil rights spokesmen was paramount. they and their allies in congress and the national political parties led president roosevelt to demand an end to exclusion and the navy to accept negroes for segregated general service. the presence of large numbers of black inductees and the limited number of assignments for them in segregated units prevented the bureau of naval personnel from providing even a semblance of separate but equal conditions. deteriorating black morale and the specter of racial disturbance drove the bureau to experiment with all-black crews, but the experiment led nowhere. the navy could never operate a separate but equal fleet. finally in forrestal began to experiment with integration in seagoing assignments. the influence of the civil rights forces can be overstated. their attention tended to focus on the army, especially in the later years of the war; their attacks on the navy were mostly sporadic and uncoordinated and easily deflected by naval spokesmen. equally important to race reform was the fact that the navy was developing its own group of civil rights advocates during the war, influential men in key positions who had been dissatisfied with the prewar status of the negro and who pressed for racial change in the name of military efficiency. under the leadership of a sympathetic secretary, (p.  ) himself aided and abetted by stevenson and other advisers in his office and in the bureau of naval personnel, the navy was laying plans for a racially integrated general service when japan capitulated. to achieve equality of treatment and opportunity, however, takes more than the development of an integration policy. for one thing, the liberalization of policy and practices affected only a relatively small percentage of the negroes in the navy. on v-j day the navy could count , enlisted negroes, . percent of its total enlisted strength.[ - ] more than double the prewar percentage, this figure was still less than half the national ratio of blacks to whites. in august the navy had black officers, of whom were women ( nurses and waves), and enlisted waves who were not segregated. the integration of the navy officer corps, the waves, and the nurses had an immediate effect on only people. figures for black enlisted men show that they were employed in some sixty-seven ratings by the end of the war, but steward and steward's mate ratings accounted for some , men, about percent of the total black enlistment. approximately , others were ordinary seamen, some were recruits in training or specialists striking for ratings, but most were assigned to the large segregated labor units and base companies.[ - ] here again integrated service affected only a small portion of the navy's black recruits during world war ii. [footnote - : pers -bl, "enlisted strength--u.s. navy," jul , bupersrecs.] [footnote - : pers - -el, "number of negro enlisted personnel on active duty," nov (statistics as of oct ), bupersrecs.] furthermore, a real chance existed that even this limited progress might prove to be temporary. on v-j day the regular navy had , negroes, just . percent of its total.[ - ] many of these men could be expected to stay in the postwar navy, but the overwhelming majority of them were in the separate steward's branch and would remain there after the war. black reservists in the wartime general service would have to compete with white regulars and reservists for the severely reduced number of postwar billets and commissions in a navy in which almost all members would have to be regulars. although lester granger had stressed this point in conversations with james forrestal, neither the secretary nor the bureau of naval personnel took the matter up before the end of the war. in short, after setting in motion a number of far-reaching reforms during the war, the navy seemed in some danger of settling back into its old prewar pattern. [footnote - : pers- -bl, "enlisted strength--u.s. navy," jul .] still, the fact that reforms had been attempted in a service that had so recently excluded negroes was evidence of progress. secretary forrestal was convinced that the navy's hierarchy had swung behind the principle of equal treatment and opportunity, but the real test was yet to come. hope for a permanent change in the navy's racial practices lay in convincing its tradition-minded officers that an integrated general service with a representative share of black officers and men was a matter of military efficiency. chapter (p.  ) world war ii: the marine corps and the coast guard the racial policies of both the marine corps and the coast guard were substantially the same as the navy policy from which they were derived, but all three differed markedly from each other in their practical application. the differences arose partly from the particular mission and size of these components of the wartime navy, but they were also governed by the peculiar legal relationship that existed in time of war between the navy and the other two services. by law the marine corps was a component of the department of the navy, its commandant subordinate to the secretary of the navy in such matters as manpower and budget and to the chief of naval operations in specified areas of military operations. in the conduct of ordinary business, however, the commandant was independent of the navy's bureaus, including the bureau of naval personnel. the marine corps had its own staff personnel officer, similar to the army's g- , and, more important for the development of racial policy, it had a division of plans and policies that was immediately responsible to the commandant for manpower planning. in practical terms, the marine corps of world war ii was subject to the dictates of the secretary of the navy for general policy, and the secretary's order to enlist negroes applied equally to the marine corps, which had no negroes in its ranks, and to the navy, which did. at the same time, the letters and directives of the chief of naval operations and the chief of naval personnel implementing the secretary's order did not apply to the corps. in effect, the navy department imposed a racial policy on the corps, but left it to the commandant to carry out that policy as he saw fit. these legal distinctions would become more important as the navy's racial policy evolved in the postwar period. the coast guard's administrative position had early in the war become roughly analogous to that of the marine corps. at all times a branch of the armed forces, the coast guard was normally a part of the treasury department. a statute of , however, provided that during wartime or "whenever the president may so direct" the coast guard would operate as part of the navy, subject to the orders of the secretary of the navy.[ - ] at the direction of the president, the coast guard passed to the control of the secretary of the navy on november and so remained until january .[ - ] [footnote - : _u.s. stat. at l_ ( ), - . since the coast guard has been a part of the department of transportation.] [footnote - : executive order , nov . a similar transfer under provisions of the law was effected during world war i. the service's predecessor organizations, the revenue marine, revenue service, revenue-marine service, and the revenue cutter service, had also provided the navy with certain specified ships and men during all wars since the revolution.] at first a division under the chief of naval operations, the (p.  ) headquarters of the coast guard was later granted considerably more administrative autonomy. in march secretary knox carefully delineated the navy's control over the coast guard, making the chief of naval operations responsible for the operation of those coast guard ships, planes, and stations assigned to the naval commands for the "proper conduct of the war," but specifying that assignments be made with "due regard for the needs of the coast guard," which must continue to carry out its regular functions. such duties as providing port security, icebreaking services, and navigational aid remained under the direct control and supervision of the commandant, the local naval district commander exercising only "general military control" of these activities in his area.[ - ] important to the development of racial policy was the fact that the coast guard also retained administrative control of the recruitment, training, and assignment of personnel. like the marine corps, it also had a staff agency for manpower planning, the commandant's advisory board, and one for administration, the personnel division, independent of the navy's bureaus.[ - ] in theory, the coast guard's manpower policy, at least in regard to those segments of the service that operated directly under navy control, had to be compatible with the racial directives of the navy's bureau of naval personnel. in practice, the commandant of the coast guard, like his colleague in the marine corps, was left free to develop his own racial policy in accordance with the general directives of the secretary of the navy and the chief of naval operations. [footnote - : ltr, secnav to cominch-cno, mar , sub: administration of coast guard when operating under navy department, quoted in furer, _administration of the navy department in world war ii_, pp. - .] [footnote - : for a survey of the organization and functions of the u.s. coast guard personnel division, see uscg historical section, _personnel_, the coast guard at war, : - .] _the first black marines_ these legal distinctions had no bearing on the marine corps' prewar racial policy, which was designed to continue its tradition of excluding negroes. the views of the commandant, maj. gen. thomas holcomb, on the subject of race were well known in the navy. negroes did not have the "right" to demand a place in the corps, general holcomb told the navy's general board when that body was considering the expansion of the corps in april . "if it were a question of having a marine corps of , whites or , negroes, i would rather have the whites."[ - ] he was more circumspect but no more reasonable when he explained the racial exclusion publicly. black enlistment was impractical, he told one civil rights group, because the marine corps was too small to form racially separate units.[ - ] and, if some negroes persisted in trying to volunteer after pearl harbor, there was another deterrent, described by at least one senior recruiter: the medical examiner was cautioned to disqualify the black applicant during the enlistment physical.[ - ] [footnote - : quoted in navy general board, "plan for the expansion of the usmc," apr (no. ), recs of gen bd, opnavarchives.] [footnote - : ltr, cmc to harold e. thompson, northern phila. voters league, aug , aq- , central files, headquarters, usmc (hereafter mc files).] [footnote - : memo, off in charge, eastern recruiting div, for cmc, jan , sub: colored applicants for enlistment in the marine corps, wp , mc files.] such evasions could no longer be practiced after president (p.  ) roosevelt decided to admit negroes to the general service of the naval establishment. according to secretary knox the president wanted the navy to handle the matter "in a way that would not inject into the whole personnel of the navy the race question."[ - ] under pressure to make some move, general holcomb proposed the enlistment of , negroes in the volunteer marine corps reserve for duty in the general service in a segregated composite defense battalion. the battalion would consist primarily of seacoast and antiaircraft artillery, a rifle company with a light tank platoon, and other weapons units and components necessary to make it a self-sustaining unit.[ - ] to inject the subject of race "to a less degree than any other known scheme," the commandant planned to train the unit in an isolated camp and assign it to a remote station.[ - ] the general board accepted this proposal, explaining to secretary knox that negroes could not be used in the marine corps' amphibious units because the inevitable replacement and redistribution of men in combat would "prevent the maintenance of necessary segregation." the board also mentioned that experienced noncommissioned officers were at a premium and that diverting them to train a black unit would be militarily inefficient.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secnav for adm w. r. sexton, feb , p - , recs of gen bd, opnavarchives. the quotation is from the knox memo and is not necessarily in the president's exact words.] [footnote - : in devising plans for the composite battalion the director of plans and policies rejected a proposal to organize a black raider battalion. the author of the proposal had explained that negroes would make ideal night raiders "as no camouflage of faces and hands would be necessary." memo, col thomas gale for exec off, div of plans and policies, feb , ao- , mc files.] [footnote - : memo, cmc for chmn of gen bd, feb , sub: enlistment of men of the colored race in other than messman branch, ao- , mc files.] [footnote - : memo, chmn of gen bd for secnav, mar , sub: enlistment of men of the colored race in other than messman branch (g.b. no. ), recs of gen bd, opnavarchives.] although the enlistment of black marines began on june , the corps placed the reservists on inactive status until a training-size unit could be enlisted and segregated facilities built at montford point on the vast training reservation at marine barracks, new river (later renamed camp lejeune), north carolina.[ - ] on august the first contingent of negroes began recruit training as the st composite defense battalion at montford point under the command of col. samuel a. woods, jr. the corps had wanted to avoid having to train men as typists, truck drivers, and the like--specialist skills needed in the black composite unit. instead, the commandant established black quotas for three of the four recruiting divisions, specifying that more than half the recruits qualify in the needed skills.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cmc for district cmdrs, all reserve districts except th, th, th, and th, may , sub: enlistment of colored personnel in the marine corps, historical and museum division, headquarters, u.s. marine corps (hereafter hist div, hqmc). for further discussion of the training of black marines and other matters pertaining to negroes in the marine corps, see shaw and donnelly, _blacks in the marine corps_. this volume by the corps' chief historian and the former chief of its history division's reference branch is the official account.] [footnote - : memo, cmc for off in charge, eastern, central, and southern recruiting divs, may , sub: enlistment of colored personnel in the marine corps, ap- ( ), mc files. the country was divided into four recruiting divisions, but black enlistment was not opened in the west coast division on the theory that there would be few volunteers and sending them to north carolina would be unjustifiably expensive. only white marines were trained in california. this circumstance brought complaints from civil rights groups. see, for example, telg, walter white to secnav, jul , ap- , mc files.] [illustration: marines of the st defense battalion _await turn on rifle range, montford point, _.] the enlistment process proved difficult. the commandant reported (p.  ) that despite predictions of black educators to the contrary the corps had netted only sixty-three black recruits capable of passing the entrance examinations during the first three weeks of recruitment.[ - ] as late as october the director of plans and policies was reporting that only of the scheduled , men (the final strength figure decided upon for the all-black unit) had been enlisted. he blamed the occupational qualifications for the delay, adding that it was doubtful "if even white recruits" could be procured under such strictures. the commandant approved his plan for enlisting negroes without specific qualifications and instituting a modified form of specialist training. black marines would not be sent to specialist schools "unless there is a colored school available," but instead marine instructors would be sent to teach in the black camp.[ - ] in the end many of these first black specialists received their training in nearby army installations. [footnote - : memo, cmc for secnav, jun , ap- ( - ), mc files.] [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, oct , sub: enlistment of colored personnel in the marine corps reserve, ao- , mc files.] segregation was the common practice in all the services in , (p.  ) as indeed it was throughout much of american society. if this practice appeared somehow more restrictive in the marine corps than it did in the other services, it was because of the corps' size and traditions. the illusion of equal treatment and opportunity could be kept alive in the massive army and navy with their myriad units and military occupations; it was much more difficult to preserve in the small and specialized marine corps. given segregation, the marine corps was obliged to put its few black marines in its few black units, whose small size limited the variety of occupations and training opportunities. yet the size of the corps would undergo considerable change, and on balance it was the marine corps' tradition of an all-white service, not its restrictive size, that proved to be the most significant factor influencing racial policy. again unlike the army and navy, the marine corps lacked the practical experience with black recruits that might have countered many of the alarums and prejudices concerning negroes that circulated within the corps during the war. the importance of this experience factor comes out in the reminiscences of a senior official in the division of plans and policies who looked back on his experiences: it just scared us to death when the colored were put on it. i went over to selective service and saw gen. hershey, and he turned me over to a lieutenant colonel [campbell c. johnson]--that was in april--and he was one grand person. i told him, "eleanor [mrs. roosevelt] says we gotta take in negroes, and we are just scared to death, we've never had any in, we don't know how to handle them, we are afraid of them." he said, "i'll do my best to help you get good ones. i'll get the word around that if you want to die young, join the marines. so anybody that joins is got to be pretty good!" and it was the truth. we got some awfully good negroes.[ - ] [footnote - : usmc oral history interview, general ray a. robinson (usmc ret.), - mar , p. , hist div, hqmc.] unfortunately for the peace of mind of the marine corps' personnel planner, the conception of a carefully limited and isolated black contingent was quickly overtaken by events. the president's decision to abolish volunteer enlistments for the armed forces in december and the subsequent establishment of a black quota for each component of the naval establishment meant that in the next year some , more negroes, percent of all marine corps inductees, would be added to the corps.[ - ] as it turned out the monthly draft calls were never completely filled, and by december only , of the scheduled black inductions had been completed, but by the time the corps stopped drafting men in it had received over , negroes through the selective service. including the , black volunteers, the number of negroes in the marine corps during world war ii totaled , , approximately percent of the corps' enlisted men. [footnote - : memo, cmc for chief, navpers, apr , sub: negro registrants to be inducted into the marine corps, ao- - - , mc files.] the immediate problem of what to do with this sudden influx of negroes was complicated by the fact that many of the draftees, the product of vastly inferior schooling, were incompetent. where black volunteers had to pass the corps' rigid entrance requirements, draftees had (p.  ) only to meet the lowest selective service standards. an exact breakdown of black marine corps draftees by general classification test category is unavailable for the war period. a breakdown of some , black enlisted men, however, was compiled ten weeks after v-j day and included many of those drafted during the war. category i represents the most gifted men:[ - ] category: i ii iii iv v percentage: . . . . . [footnote - : memo, dir, pers, for dir, div of plans and policies, jul , sub: gct percentile equivalents for colored enlisted marines in november and in march , sub file: negro marines--test and testing, ref br, hist div, hqmc.] if these figures are used as a base, slightly more than percent of all black enlisted men, more than , , scored in the two lowest categories, a meaningless racial statistic in terms of actual numbers because the smaller percentage of the much larger group of white draftees in these categories gave the corps more whites than blacks in groups iv and v. yet the statistic was important because low-scoring negroes, unlike the low-scoring whites who could be scattered throughout the corps' units, had to be concentrated in a small number of segregated units to the detriment of those units. conversely, the corps had thousands of negroes with the mental aptitude to serve in regular combat units and a small but significant number capable of becoming officers. yet these men were denied the opportunity to serve in combat or as officers because the segregation policy dictated that negroes could not be assigned to a regular combat unit unless all the billets in that unit as well as all replacements were black--a practical impossibility during world war ii. segregation, not the draft, forced the marine corps to devise new jobs and units to absorb the black inductees. a plan circulated in the division of plans and policies called for more defense battalions, a branch for messmen, and the assignment of large black units to local bases to serve as chauffeurs, messengers, clerks, and janitors. referring to the janitor assignment, one division official admitted that "i don't think we can get away with this type duty."[ - ] in the end the negroes were not used as chauffeurs, messengers, clerks, and janitors. instead the corps placed a "maximum practical number" in defense battalions. the number of these units, however, was limited, as maj. gen. harry schmidt, the acting commandant, explained in march , by the number of black noncommissioned officers available. black noncommissioned officers were necessary, he continued, because in the army's experience "in nearly all cases to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same organization" led to "trouble and disorder."[ - ] demonstrating his own and the marine corps' lack of experience with black troops, the acting commandant went on to provide his commanders with some rather dubious advice based on what he perceived as the army's experience: black units should be commanded by men "who thoroughly knew their [negroes'] individual and racial (p.  ) characteristics and temperaments," and negroes should be assigned to work they preferred. [footnote - : unsigned memo for dir, plans and policies div, dec , sub: colored personnel, with attached handwritten note, ao- , mc files.] [footnote - : ltr, actg cmc to major cmdrs, mar , sub: colored personnel, ap- , mc files.] [illustration: shore party in training, camp lejeune, .] the points emphasized in general schmidt's letter to marine commanders--a rigid insistence on racial separation and a willingness to work for equal treatment of black troops--along with an acknowledgement of the marine corps' lack of experience with racial problems were reflected in commandant holcomb's basic instruction on the subject of negroes two months later: "all marines are entitled to the same rights and privileges under navy regulations," and black marines could be expected "to conduct themselves with propriety and become a credit to the marine corps." general holcomb was aware of the adverse effect of white noncommissioned officers on black morale, and he wanted them removed from black units as soon as possible. since the employment of black marines was in itself a "new departure," he wanted to be informed periodically on how negroes adapted to marine corps life, what their off-duty experience was with recreational facilities, and what their attitude was toward other marines.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr of instruction no. , cmc to all co's, may , sub: colored personnel, mc files.] [illustration: d-day on peleliu. _support troops participate in the landing of st marine division._] these were generally progressive sentiments, evidence of the commandant's desire to provide for the peaceful assimilation and advancement of negroes in the corps. unfortunately for his reputation among the civil rights advocates, general holcomb seemed overly concerned with certain social implications of rank and color. (p.  ) undeterred by a lack of personal experience with interracial command, he was led in the name of racial harmony to an unpopular conclusion. "it is essential," he told his commanders, "that in no case shall there be colored noncommissioned officers senior to white men in the same unit, and desirable that few, if any be of the same rank."[ - ] he was particularly concerned with the period when white instructors and noncommissioned officers were being phased out of black units. he wanted negroes up for promotion to corporal transferred, before promotion, out of any unit that contained white corporals. [footnote - : ibid. the subject of widespread public complaint when its existence became known after the war, the instruction was rescinded. see memo, j. a. stuart, div of plans and policies, for cmc, feb , sub: ltr of inst # revocation of, ao- , copy in ref br, hist div, hqmc.] [illustration: medical attendants at rest, peleliu, october, .] the division of plans and policies tried to follow these strictures as it set about organizing the new black units. job preference had already figured in the organization of the new messman's branch established in january . at that time secretary knox had approved the reconstitution of the corps' all-white mess branch as the commissary branch and the organization of an all-black messman's branch along the lines of the navy's steward's branch.[ - ] in (p.  ) authorizing the new branch, which was quickly redesignated the steward's branch to conform to the navy model, secretary knox specified that the members must volunteer for such duty. yet the corps, under pressure to produce large numbers of stewards in the early months of the war, showed so little faith in the volunteer system that marine recruiters were urged to induce half of all black recruits to sign on as stewards.[ - ] original plans called for the assignment of one steward for every six officers, but the lack of volunteers and the needs of the corps quickly caused this estimate to be scaled down.[ - ] by july the steward's branch numbered (p.  ) , men, roughly percent of the total black strength of the marine corps.[ - ] it remained approximately this size for the rest of the war. [footnote - : memo, cmc for secnav, dec , sub: change of present mess branch in the marine corps to commissary branch and establishment of a messman's branch and ranks therein, with secnav approval indicated, ao- - . see also memo, cmc for chief, navpers, dec , sub: request for allotment to mc..., a- ; memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, nov , sub: organization of mess branch (colored), ao- . all in mc files.] [footnote - : memo, dir of recruiting for off in charge, eastern recruiting div et al., feb , sub: messman branch, ap- - ; memo, cmc for secnav, apr , sub: change in designation..., ao- - . both in mc files.] [footnote - : memo, dir, plans and policies, for cmc, may , sub: assignment of steward's branch personnel, ao- , mc files.] [footnote - : memo, h. e. dunkelberger, m- sec, div of plans and policies, for asst cmc, jul , sub: steward's branch personnel, ao- , mc files.] the admonition to employ black marines to the maximum extent practical in defense battalions was based on the mobilization planners' belief that each of these battalions, with its varied artillery, infantry, and armor units, would provide close to a thousand black marines with varied assignments in a self-contained, segregated unit. but the realities of the pacific war and the draft quickly rendered these plans obsolete. as the united states gained the ascendancy, the need for defense battalions rapidly declined, just as the need for special logistical units to move supplies in the forward areas increased. the corps had originally depended on its replacement battalions to move the mountains of supply involved in amphibious assaults, but the constant flow of replacements to battlefield units and the need for men with special logistical skill had led in the middle of the war to the organization of pioneer battalions. to supplement the work of these shore party units and to absorb the rapidly growing number of black draftees, the division of plans and policies eventually created fifty-one separate depot companies and twelve separate ammunition companies manned by negroes. the majority of these new units served in base and service depots, handling ammunition and hauling supplies, but a significant number of them also served as part of the shore parties attached to the divisional assault units. these units often worked under enemy fire and on occasion joined in the battle as they moved supplies, evacuated the wounded, and secured the operation's supply dumps.[ - ] nearly , men, about percent of the corps' black enlistment, served in this sometimes hazardous combat support duty. the experience of these depot and ammunition companies provided the marine corps with an interesting irony. in contrast to negroes in the other services, black marines trained for combat were never so used. those trained for the humdrum labor tasks, however, found themselves in the thick of the fighting on saipan, peleliu, iwo jima, and elsewhere, suffering combat casualties and winning combat citations for their units. [footnote - : shaw and donnelly, _blacks in the marine corps_, pp. - . see also, hqmc div of public information, "the negro marine, - ," ref br, hist div, hqmc.] the increased allotment of black troops entering the corps and the commandant's call for replacing all white noncommissioned officers with blacks as quickly as they could be sufficiently trained caused problems for the black combat units. the st defense battalion in particular suffered many vicissitudes in its training and deployment. the st was the first black unit in the marine corps, a doubtful advantage considering the frequent reorganization and rapid troop turnover that proved its lot. at first the reception and training of all black inductees fell to the battalion, but in march a separate headquarters company, recruit depot battalion, was organized at montford point.[ - ] its cadre was drawn from the st, as (p.  ) were the noncommissioned officers and key personnel of the newly organized ammunition and depot companies and the black security detachments organized at montford point and assigned to the naval ammunition depot, mcalester, oklahoma, and the philadelphia depot of supplies. [footnote - : memo, co, st def bn, for dir, plans and policies, jan , sub: colored personnel, ref br, hist div, hqmc.] in effect, the st served as a specialist training school for the black combat units. when the second black defense battalion, the d, was organized in december its cadre, too, was drawn from the st. by the time the st was actually deployed, it had been reorganized several times and many of its best men had been siphoned off as leaders for new units. to compound these losses of experienced men, the battalion was constantly receiving large influxes of inexperienced and educationally deficient draftees and sometimes there was infighting among its officers.[ - ] [footnote - : for charges and countercharges on the part of the st's commanders, see hq, st defense bn, "record of proceedings of an investigation," jun ; memo, lt col floyd a. stephenson for cmc, may , sub: fifty-first defense battalion, fleet marine force, with indorsements and attachments; memo, co, st def bn, for cmc, jul , sub: combat efficiency, fifty-first defense battalion. all in ref br, hist div, hqmc.] training for black units only emphasized the rigid segregation enforced in the marine corps. after their segregated eight-week recruit training, the men were formed into companies at montford point; those assigned to the defense battalions were sent for specialist training in the weapons and equipment employed in such units, including radar, motor transport, communications, and artillery fire direction. each of the ammunition companies sent sixty of its men to special ammunition and camouflage schools where they would be promoted to corporal when they completed the course. in contrast to the depot companies and elements of the defense battalions, the ammunition units would have white staff sergeants as ordnance specialists throughout the war. this exception to the rule of black noncommissioned officers for black units was later justified on the grounds that such units required experienced supervisors to emphasize and enforce safety regulations.[ - ] on the whole specialist training was segregated; whenever possible even the white instructors were rapidly replaced by blacks. [footnote - : shaw and donnelly, _blacks in the marine corps_, p. .] before being sent overseas, black units underwent segregated field training, although the length of this training varied considerably according to the type of unit. depot companies, for example, were labor units pure and simple, organized to perform simple tasks, and many of them were sent to the pacific less than two weeks after activation. in contrast, the st defense battalion spent two months in hard field training, scarcely enough considering the number of raw recruits, totally unfamiliar with gunnery, that were being fed regularly into what was essentially an artillery battalion. [illustration: gun crew of the d defense battalion _on duty, central pacific, _.] the experience of the two defense battalions demonstrates that racial consideration governed their eventual deployment just as it had decided their organization. with no further strategic need for defense battalions, the marine corps began to dismantle them in , just as the two black units became operational and were about to be sent to the central and south pacific. the eighteen white defense (p.  ) battalions were subsequently reorganized as antiaircraft artillery battalions for use with amphibious groups in the forward areas. while the two black units were similarly reorganized, only they and one of the white units retained the title of defense battalion. their deployment was also different. the policy of self-contained, segregated service was, in the case of a large combat unit, best followed in the rear areas, and the two black battalions were assigned to routine garrison duties in the backwaters of the theater, the st at eniwetok in the marshalls, the d at guam. the latter unit saw nearly half its combat-trained men detailed to work as stevedores. it was not surprising that the morale in both units suffered.[ - ] [footnote - : for a discussion of black morale in the combat-trained units, see usmc oral history interview, obie hall, aug , ref br, and john h. griffin, "my life in the marine corps," personal papers collection, museums br. both in hist div, hqmc.] even more explicitly racial was the warning of a senior combat commander to the effect that the deployment of black depot units to the polynesian areas of the pacific should be avoided. the polynesians, he explained, were delightful people, and their "primitively romantic" women shared their intimate favors with one and all. mixture with the white race had produced "a very high-class half-caste," mixture with the chinese a "very desirable type," but the union of black and "melanesian types ... produces a very undesirable citizen." the (p.  ) marine corps, maj. gen. charles f. b. price continued, had a special moral obligation and a selfish interest in protecting the population of american samoa, especially, from intimacy with negroes; he strongly urged therefore that any black units deployed to the pacific should be sent to micronesia where they "can do no racial harm."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, maj gen charles f. b. price to brig gen keller e. rockey, apr ; , ref br, hist div, hqmc.] general price must have been entertaining second thoughts, since two depot companies were already en route to samoa at his request. nevertheless, because of the "importance" of his reservations the matter was brought to the attention of the director of plans and policies.[ - ] as a result, the assignment of the th and th depot companies to samoa proved short-lived. arriving on october , they were redeployed to the ellice islands in the micronesia group the next day. [footnote - : brig gen rockey for s-c files, jun , memo, g. f. good, div of plans and policies, to dir, div of plans and policies, sep . both attached to price ltr, see n. above.] thanks to the operations of the ammunition and depot companies, a large number of black marines, serving in small, efficient labor units, often exposed to enemy fire, made a valuable contribution. that so many black marines participated, at least from time to time, in the fighting may explain in part the fact that relatively few racial incidents took place in the corps during the war. but if many negroes served in forward areas, they were all nevertheless severely restricted in opportunity. black marines were excluded from the corps' celebrated combat divisions and its air arm. they were also excluded from the women's reserve, and not until the last months of the war did the corps accept its first black officer candidates. marine spokesmen justified the latter exclusion on the grounds that the corps lacked facilities--that is, segregated facilities--for training black officers.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, phillips d. carleton, asst to dir, mc reserve, to welford wilson, u.s. employment service, mar , af- , mc files. for more on black officers in the marine corps, see chapter .] these exclusions did not escape the attention of the civil rights spokesmen who took their demands to secretary knox and the white house.[ - ] it was to little avail. with the exception of the officer candidates in , the separation of the races remained absolute, and negroes continued to be excluded from the main combat units of the marine corps. [footnote - : see, for example, ltr, mary findley allen, interracial cmte of federation of churches, to mrs. roosevelt (ca. mar ); memo, secnav for rear adm jacobs, mar , p- ; memo, r. c. kilmartin, jr., div of plans and policies, for dir, div of plans and policies, sep , ao- . all in hist div, hqmc.] personal prejudices aside, the desire for social harmony and the fear of the unknown go far toward explaining the marine corps' wartime racial policy. a small, specialized, and racially exclusive organization, the marine corps reacted to the directives of the secretary of the navy and the necessities of wartime operation with a rigid segregation policy, its black troops restricted to about percent of its enlisted strength. a large part of this black strength was assigned to labor units where negroes performed valuable and sometimes dangerous service in the pacific war. complaints from civil rights advocates abounded, but neither protests nor the cost to military efficiency of duplicating training facilities were of (p.  ) sufficient moment to overcome the sentiment against significant racial change, which was kept to a minimum. judged strictly in terms of keeping racial harmony, the corps policy must be considered a success. ironically this very success prevented any modification of that policy during the war. [illustration: crewmen of uscg lifeboat station, pea island, north carolina, _ready surf boat for launching_.] _new roles for black coast guardsmen_ the coast guard's pre-world war ii experience with negroes differed from that of the other branches of the naval establishment. unlike the marine corps, the coast guard could boast a tradition of black enlistment stretching far back into the previous century. although it shared this tradition with the navy, the coast guard, unlike the navy, had always severely restricted negroes both in terms of numbers enlisted and jobs assigned. a small group of negroes manned a lifesaving station at pea island on north carolina's outer banks. negroes also served as crewmen at several lighthouses and on tenders in the mississippi river basin; all were survivors of the transfer of the lighthouse service to the coast guard in . these guardsmen were almost always segregated, although a few served in integrated crews or even commanded large coast guard vessels and small harbor (p.  ) craft.[ - ] they also served in the separate steward's branch, although it might be argued that the small size of most coast guard vessels integrated in fact men who were segregated in theory. [footnote - : capt. michael healy, who was of irish and afro-american heritage, served as commanding officer of the _bear_ and other major coast guard vessels. at his retirement in healy was the third ranking officer in the u.s. revenue cutter service. see robert e. greene, _black defenders of america, - _ (chicago: johnson publishing company, ), p. . for pre-world war ii service of negroes in the coast guard, see truman r. strobridge, _blacks and lights: a brief historical survey of blacks and the old u.s. lighthouse service_ (office of the uscg historian, ); h. kaplan and j. hunt, _this is the united states coast guard_ (cambridge, md.: cornell maritime press, ); rodney h. benson, "romance and story of pea island station," _u.s. coast guard magazine_ (november ): ; george reasons and sam patrick, "richard etheridge--saved sailors," washington _star_, november , . for the position of negroes on the eve of world war ii induction, see enlistment of men of colored race ( ), jan , hearings before the general board of the navy, .] [illustration: coast guard recruits _at manhattan beach training station, new york_.] the lot of the black coast guardsman on a small cutter was not necessarily a happy one. to a surprising extent the enlisted men of the prewar coast guard were drawn from the eastern shore and outer banks region of the atlantic coast where service in the coast guard had become a strong family tradition among a people whose attitude toward race was rarely progressive. although these men tolerated an occasional small black coast guard crew or station, they might well resist close service with individual negroes. one commander reported that racial harassment drove the solitary black in the prewar (p.  ) crew of the cutter _calypso_ out of the service.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with capt w. c. capron, uscgr, feb , cmh files.] coast guard officials were obviously mindful of such potential troubles when, at secretary knox's bidding, they joined in the general board's discussion of the expanded use of negroes in the general service in january . in the name of the coast guard, commander lyndon spencer agreed with the objections voiced by the navy and the marine corps, adding that the coast guard problem was "enhanced somewhat by the fact that our units are small and contacts between the men are bound to be closer." he added that while the coast guard was not "anxious to take on any additional problems at this time, if we have to we will take some of them [negroes]."[ - ] [footnote - : enlistment of men of colored race ( ), jan , hearings before the general board of the navy, .] when president roosevelt made it clear that negroes were to be enlisted, coast guard commandant rear adm. russell r. waesche had a plan ready. the coast guard would enlist approximately five hundred negroes in the general service, he explained to the chairman of the general board, vice adm. walton r. sexton. some three hundred of these men would be trained for duty on small vessels, the rest for shore duty under the captain of the port of six cities throughout the united states. although his plan made no provision for the training of black petty officers, the commandant warned admiral sexton that to percent of the crew in these small cutters and miscellaneous craft held such ratings, and it followed that negroes would eventually be allowed to try for such ratings.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cmdt, cg, for adm sexton, chmn of gen bd, feb , sub: enlistment of men of the colored race in other than messman branch, attached to enlistment of men of colored race ( ), jan , hearings before the general board of the navy, .] further refining the plan for the general board on february, admiral waesche listed eighteen vessels, mostly buoy tenders and patrol boats, that would be assigned black crews. all black enlistees would be sent to the manhattan beach training station, new york, for a basic training "longer and more extensive" than the usual recruit training. after recruit training the men would be divided into groups according to aptitude and experience and would undergo advanced instruction before assignment. those trained for ship duty would be grouped into units of a size to enable them to go aboard and assume all but the petty officer ratings of the designated ships. the commandant wanted to initiate this program with a group of men. no other negroes would be enlisted until the first group had been trained and assigned to duty for a period long enough to permit a survey of its performance. admiral waesche warned that the whole program was frankly new and untried and was therefore subject to modification as it evolved.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cmdt, cg, for chmn of gen bd, feb . sub: enlistment of men of the colored race in other than messman branch, p- , attached to recs of gen bd, no (serial -x), opnavarchives.] the plan was a major innovation in the coast guard's manpower policy. for the first time a number of negroes, approximately . percent of the guard's total enlisted complement, would undergo regular (p.  ) recruit and specialized training.[ - ] more than half would serve aboard ship at close quarters with their white petty officers. the rest would be assigned to port duty with no special provision for segregated service. if the provision for segregating nonrated coast guardsmen when they were at sea was intended to prevent the development of racial antagonism, the lack of a similar provision for negroes ashore was puzzling; but whatever the coast guard's reasoning in the matter, the general board was obviously concerned with the provisions for segregation in the plan. its chairman told secretary knox that the assignment of negroes to the captains of the ports was a practical use of negroes in wartime, since these men could be segregated in service units. but their assignment to small vessels, admiral sexton added, meant that "the necessary segregation and limitation of authority would be increasingly difficult to maintain" and "opportunities for advancement would be few." for that reason, he concluded, the employment of such black crews was practical but not desirable.[ - ] [footnote - : unless otherwise noted, all statistics on coast guard personnel are derived from memo, chief, statistical services div, for chief, pub information div, mar , sub: negro personnel, officers and enlisted; number of, office of the uscg historian; and "coast guard personnel growth chart," _report of the secretary of the navy-fiscal _, p. a- .] [footnote - : memo, chmn of gen bd for secnav, mar , sub: enlistment of men of the colored race in other than messman branch, g.b. no. (serial ), opnavarchives.] the general board was overruled, and the coast guard proceeded to recruit its first group of black volunteers, sending them to manhattan beach for basic training in the spring of . the small size of the black general service program precluded the establishment of a separate training station, but the negroes were formed into a separate training company at manhattan beach. while training classes and other duty activities were integrated, sleeping and messing facilities were segregated. although not geographically separated as were the black sailors at camp smalls or the marines at montford point, the black recruits of the separate training company at manhattan beach were effectively impressed with the reality of segregation in the armed forces.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with ira h. coakley, feb , cmh files. coakley was a recruit in one of the first black training companies at manhattan beach.] after taking a four-week basic course, those who qualified were trained as radiomen, pharmacists, yeomen, coxswains, fire controlmen, or in other skills in the seaman branch.[ - ] those who did not so qualify were transferred for further training in preparation for their assignment to the captains of the ports. groups of black coast guardsmen, for example, were sent to the pea island station after their recruit training for several weeks' training in beach duties. similar groups of white recruits were also sent to the pea island station for training under the black chief boatswain's mate in charge.[ - ] by august some three hundred negroes had been recruited, trained, and assigned to general service duties under the new program. at the same time the coast guard continued to recruit hundreds of negroes for its separate steward's branch. [footnote - : for a brief account of the coast guard recruit training program, see nelson, "integration of the negro," pp. - , and "a black history in world war ii," _octagon_ (february ): - .] [footnote - : log of pea island station, , berry collection, uscg headquarters.] the commandant's program for the orderly induction and assignment (p.  ) of a limited number of black volunteers was, as in the case of the navy and marine corps, abruptly terminated in december when the president ended volunteer enlistment for most military personnel. for the rest of the war the coast guard, along with the navy and marine corps, came under the strictures of the selective service act, including its racial quota system. the coast guard, however, drafted relatively few men, issuing calls for a mere , and eventually inducting only , . but more than percent of its calls ( , men between february and november ) and percent of all those drafted ( , ) were negro. on the average, negroes and , whites were inducted each month during .[ - ] just over , negroes served as coast guardsmen in world war ii.[ - ] [footnote - : selective service system, _special groups_, : - .] [footnote - : testimony of coast guard representatives before the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, mar , p. .] as it did for the navy and marine corps, the sudden influx of negroes from selective service necessitated a revision of the coast guard's personnel planning. many of the new men could be assigned to steward duties, but by january the coast guard already had some , stewards and the branch could absorb only half of the expected black draftees. the rest would have to be assigned to the general service.[ - ] and here the organization and mission of the coast guard, far more so than those of the navy and marine corps, militated against the formation of large segregated units. the coast guard had no use for the amorphous ammunition and depot companies and the large seabee battalions of the rest of the naval establishment. for that reason the large percentage of its black seamen in the general service (approximately percent of all black coast guardsmen) made a considerable amount of integration inevitable; the small number of negroes in the general service ( , men, less than percent of the total enlisted strength of the coast guard) made integration socially acceptable. [footnote - : uscg public relations div, negroes in the u.s. coast guard, july , office of the uscg historian.] the majority of black coast guardsmen were only peripherally concerned with this wartime evolution of racial policy. some , negroes served in the racially separate steward's branch, performing the same duties in officer messes and quarters as stewards in the navy and marine corps. but not quite, for the size of coast guard vessels and their crews necessitated the use of stewards at more important battle stations. for example, a group of stewards under the leadership of a black gun captain manned the three-inch gun on the afterdeck of the cutter _campbell_ and won a citation for helping to destroy an enemy submarine in february .[ - ] the personnel division worked to make the separate steward's branch equal to the rest of the service in terms of promotion and emoluments, and there were instances when individual stewards successfully applied for ratings in general service.[ - ] again, the close quarters aboard coast guard (p.  ) vessels made the talents of stewards for general service duties more noticeable to officers.[ - ] the evidence suggests, however, that the majority of the black stewards, about percent of all the negroes in the coast guard, continued to function as servants throughout the war. as in the rest of the naval establishment, the stewards in the coast guard were set apart not only by their limited service but also by different uniforms and the fact that chief stewards were not regarded as chief petty officers. in fact, the rank of chief steward was not introduced until the war led to an enlargement of the coast guard.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, cmdt, uscg, to cmdr, third cg district, jan , sub: etheridge, louis c; ... award of the bronze star medal, p , bupersrecs; uscg pub rel div, negroes in the u.s. coast guard, jul .] [footnote - : uscg pers bull - , mar , sub: apprentice seamen and mess attendants, third class, advancement of, uscg cen files a .] [footnote - : intervs, author with cmdt carlton skinner, uscgr, feb , and with capron, cmh files.] [footnote - : for discussion of limited service of coast guard stewards, see testimony of coast guard representatives before the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, mar , pp. - .] [illustration: stewards at battle station _on the afterdeck of the cutter campbell_.] the majority of black guardsmen in general service served ashore under the captains of the ports, local district commanders, or at headquarters establishments. men in these assignments included hundreds in security and labor details, but more and more served as yeomen, radio operators, storekeepers, and the like. other negroes were assigned to local coast guard stations, and a second all-black station was organized during the war at tiana beach, new york. still others participated in the coast guard's widespread beach patrol (p.  ) operations. organized in as outposts and lookouts against possible enemy infiltration of the nation's extensive coastlines, the patrols employed more than percent of all the coast guard's enlisted men. this large group included a number of horse and dog patrols employing only black guardsmen.[ - ] in all, some , black coast guardsmen served in the shore establishment. [footnote - : uscg historical section, the coast guard at war, : - , .] [illustration: shore leave in scotland. (_the distinctive uniform of the coast guard steward is shown_.)] the assignment of so many negroes to shore duties created potential problems for the manpower planners, who were under orders to rotate sea and shore assignments periodically.[ - ] given the many black general duty seamen denied sea duty because of the coast guard's segregation policy but promoted into the more desirable shore-based jobs to the detriment of whites waiting for rotation to such assignments, the possibility of serious racial trouble was obvious. [footnote - : uscg pers bull - , jun , sub: relief of personnel assigned to seagoing units, uscg cen files a .] at least one officer in coast guard headquarters was concerned enough to recommend that the policy be revised. with two years' service in greenland waters, the last year as executive officer of the uscgc _northland_, lt. carlton skinner had firsthand experience with the limitations of the coast guard's racial policy. while on the _northland_ skinner had recommended that a skilled black mechanic, (p.  ) then serving as a steward's mate, be awarded a motor mechanic petty officer rating only to find his recommendation rejected on racial grounds. the rating was later awarded after an appeal by skinner, but the incident set the stage for the young officer's later involvement with the coast guard's racial traditions. on shore duty at coast guard headquarters in june , skinner recommended to the commandant that a group of black seamen be provided with some practical seagoing experience under a sympathetic commander in a completely integrated operation. he emphasized practical experience in an integrated setting, he later revealed, because he was convinced that men with high test scores and specialized training did not necessarily make the best sailors, especially when their training was segregated. skinner envisioned a widespread distribution of negroes throughout the coast guard's seagoing vessels. his recommendation was no "experiment in social democracy," he later stressed, but was a design for "an efficient use of manpower to help win a war."[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with skinner; ltr, skinner to author, jun , in cmh files. the skinner memorandum to admiral waesche, like so many of the personnel policy papers of the u.s. coast guard from the world war ii period, cannot be located. for a detailed discussion of skinner's motives and experiences, see his testimony before the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, apr , pp. - .] although skinner's immediate superior forwarded the recommendation as "disapproved," admiral waesche accepted the idea. in november skinner found himself transferred to the uss _sea cloud_ (ix ), a patrol ship operating in the north atlantic as part of task force reporting on weather conditions from four remote locations in northern waters.[ - ] the commandant also arranged for the transfer of black apprentice seamen, mostly from manhattan beach, to the _sea cloud_ in groups of about twenty men, gradually increasing the number of black seamen in the ship's complement every time it returned to home station. skinner, promoted to lieutenant commander and made captain of the _sea cloud_ on his second patrol, later decided that the commandant had "figured he could take a chance on me and the _sea cloud_."[ - ] [footnote - : a unique vessel, the _sea cloud_ was on loan to the government for the duration of the war by its owner, the former ambassador to russia, joseph davies. davies charged a nominal sum and extracted the promise that the vessel would be restored to its prewar condition as one of the world's most famous private yachts.] [footnote - : interv, author with skinner.] it was a chance well taken. before decommissioning in november , the _sea cloud_ served on ocean weather stations off the coasts of greenland, newfoundland, and france. it received no special treatment and was subject to the same tactical, operating, and engineering requirements as any other unit in the navy's atlantic fleet. it passed two atlantic fleet inspections with no deficiencies and was officially credited with helping to sink a german submarine in june . the _sea cloud_ boasted a completely integrated operation, its black officers and some black petty officers and seamen serving throughout the ship's -man complement.[ - ] no problems of a racial nature arose on the ship, although its captain reported that his crew experienced some hostility in the various departments of the boston navy yard from time to time. skinner was determined to provide truly integrated conditions. he personally introduced his black officers (p.  ) into the local white officers' club, and he saw to it that when his men were temporarily detached for shore patrol duty they would go in integrated teams. again, all these arrangements were without sign of racial incident.[ - ] [footnote - : log of the _sea cloud_ (ix ), aug-nov , nars, suitland.] [footnote - : interv, author with skinner.] [illustration: commander skinner and crew of the uss sea cloud. _skinner officiates at awards ceremony._] it is difficult to assess the reasons for the commandant's decision to organize an integrated crew. one senior personnel officer later suggested that the _sea cloud_ was merely a public relations device designed to still the mounting criticism by civil rights spokesmen of the lack of sea duty for black coast guardsmen.[ - ] the public relations advantage of an integrated ship operating in the war zone must have been obvious to admiral waesche, although the coast guard made no effort to publicize the _sea cloud_. in fact, this absence of special attention had been recommended by skinner in his original proposal to the commandant. such publicity, he felt, would disrupt the military experiment and make it more difficult to apply generally the experience gained. [footnote - : interv, author with rear adm r. t. mcelligott, feb , cmh files. for an example of the coast guard reaction to civil rights criticism, see ltr, uscg public relations officer to douglas hall, washington _afro-american_, july , , cg , office of the uscg historian.] the success of the _sea cloud_ experiment did not lead to the widespread integration implied in commander skinner's recommendation. the only other extensively integrated coast guard vessel assigned to a war zone was the destroyer escort _hoquim_, operating in out (p.  ) of adak in the aleutian islands, convoying shipping along the aleutian chain. again, the commander of the ship was skinner. nevertheless the practical reasons for skinner's first recommendation must also have been obvious to the commandant, and the evidence suggests that the _sea cloud_ project was but one of a series of liberalizing moves the coast guard made during the war, not only to still the criticism in the black community but also to solve the problems created by the presence of a growing number of black seamen in the general service. there is also reason to believe that the coast guard's limited use of racially mixed crews influenced the navy's decision to integrate the auxiliary fleet in . senior naval officials studied a report on the _sea cloud_, and one of secretary forrestal's assistants consulted skinner on his experiences and their relation to greater manpower efficiency.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, skinner to author, jun .] [illustration: ensign jenkins and lieutenant samuels, _first black coast guard officers, on board the sea cloud_.] throughout the war the coast guard never exhibited the concern shown by the other services for the possible disruptive effects if blacks outranked whites. as the war progressed, more and more blacks advanced into petty officer ranks; by august some negroes, almost a third of their total number, were petty or warrant officers, many of them in the general service. places for these trained specialists in any kind of segregated general service were extremely limited, and by the last year of the war many black petty officers could be found serving in mostly white crews and station complements. for example, a black pharmacist, second class, and a signalman, third class, served on the cutter _spencer_, a black coxswain served on a cutter in the greenland patrol, and other black petty officers were assigned to recruiting stations, to the loran program, and as instructors at the manhattan beach training station.[ - ] [footnote - : uscg historical section, the coast guard at war, : ; intervs, author with lt harvey c. russell, uscgr, feb , and with capron, cmh files.] the position of instructor at manhattan beach became the usual avenue to a commission for a negro. joseph c. jenkins went from manhattan beach to the officer candidate school at the coast guard academy, graduating as an ensign in the coast guard reserve in april , almost a full year before negroes were commissioned in the navy. clarence samuels, a warrant officer and instructor at manhattan (p.  ) beach, was commissioned as a lieutenant (junior grade) and assigned to the _sea cloud_ in . harvey c. russell was a signal instructor at manhattan beach in when all instructors were declared eligible to apply for commissions. at first rejected by the officer training school, russell was finally admitted at the insistence of his commanding officer, graduated as an ensign, and was assigned to the _sea cloud_.[ - ] [footnote - : "a black history in wwii," pp. - . for an account of samuels' long career in the coast guard, see joseph greco and truman r. strobridge, "black trailblazer has colorful past," _fifth dimension_ ( d quarter, ); see also interv, author with russell.] these men commanded integrated enlisted seamen throughout the rest of the war. samuels became the first negro in this century to command a coast guard vessel in wartime, first as captain of lightship no. and later of the uscgc _sweetgum_ in the panama sea frontier. russell was transferred from the integrated _hoquim_ to serve as executive officer on a cutter operating out of the philippines in the western pacific, assuming command of the racially mixed crew shortly after the war. at the behest of the white house, the coast guard also joined with the navy in integrating its women's reserve. in the fall of it recruited five black women for the spars. only token representation, but understandable since the spars ceased all recruitment except for replacements on november , just weeks after the decision to recruit negroes was announced. nevertheless the five women trained at manhattan beach and were assigned to various coast guard district offices without regard to race.[ - ] [footnote - : uscg historical section, the coast guard at war, : . see also oral history interview, dorothy c. stratton, sep , center of naval history.] this very real progress toward equal treatment and opportunity for negroes in the coast guard must be assessed with the knowledge that the progress was experienced by only a minuscule group. negroes never rose above . percent of the coast guard's wartime population, well below the figures for the other services. this was because the other services were forced to obtain draft-age men, including a significant number of black inductees from selective service, whereas the coast guard ceased all inductions in early . despite their small numbers, however, the black coast guardsmen enjoyed a variety of assignments. the different reception accorded this small group of negroes might, at least to some extent, be explained by the coast guard's tradition of some black participation for well over a century. to a certain extent this progress could also be attributed to the ease with which the directors of a small organization can reorder its policies.[ - ] but above all, the different reception accorded negroes in the coast guard was a small organization's practical reaction to a pressing assimilation problem dictated by the manpower policies common throughout the naval establishment. [footnote - : for discussion of this point, see testimony of coast guard representatives before the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, mar , pp. - .] chapter (p.  ) a postwar search the nation's military leaders and the leaders of the civil rights movement were in rare accord at the end of world war ii. they agreed that despite considerable wartime improvement the racial policies of the services had proved inadequate for the development of the full military potential of the country's largest minority as well as the efficient operation and management of the nation's armed forces. dissatisfaction with the current policy of the armed forces was a spearpoint of the increasingly militant and powerful civil rights movement, and this dissatisfaction was echoed to a great extent by the services themselves. intimate association with minority problems had convinced the army's advisory committee on negro troop policies and the navy's special programs unit that new policies had to be devised and new directions sought. confronted with the incessant demands of the civil rights advocates and presented by their own staffs with evidence of trouble, civilian leaders of the services agreed to review the status of the negro. as the postwar era opened, both the army and the navy were beginning the interminable investigations that augured a change in policy. unfortunately, the services and the civil rights leaders had somewhat different ends in mind. concerned chiefly with military efficiency but also accustomed to racial segregation or exclusion, most military leaders insisted on a rigid appraisal of the performance of segregated units in the war and ignored the effects of segregation on that performance. civil rights advocates, on the other hand, seeing an opportunity to use the military as a vehicle for the extension of social justice, stressed the baneful effects of segregation on the black serviceman's morale. they were inclined to ignore the performance of the large segregated units and took issue with the premise that desegregation of the armed forces in advance of the rest of american society would threaten the efficient execution of the services' military mission. neither group seemed able to appreciate the other's real concerns, and their contradictory conclusions promised a renewal of the discord in their wartime relationship. _black demands_ world war ii marked the beginning of an important step in the evolution of the civil rights movement. until then the struggle for racial equality had been sustained chiefly by the "talented tenth," the educated, middle-class black citizens who formed an economic and political alliance with white supporters. together they fought to (p.  ) improve the racial situation with some success in the courts, but with little progress in the executive branch and still less in the legislative. the efforts of men like w. e. b. dubois, walter white, and thurgood marshall of the naacp and lester granger of the national urban league were in the mainstream of the american reform movement, which stressed an orderly petitioning of government for a redress of grievances. but there was another facet to the american reform tradition, one that stressed mass action and civil disobedience, and the period between the march on washington movement in and the threat of a black boycott of the draft in witnessed the beginnings of a shift in the civil rights movement to this kind of reform tactic. the articulate leaders of the prewar struggle were still active, and in fact would make their greatest contribution in the fight that led to the supreme court's pronouncement on school segregation in . but their quiet methods were already being challenged by a. philip randolph and others who launched a sustained demand for equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces during the early postwar period. randolph and leaders of his persuasion relied not so much on legal eloquence in their representations to the federal government as on an understanding of bloc voting in key districts and the implicit threat of civil disobedience. the civil rights campaign, at least in the effort to end segregation in the armed forces, had the appearance of a mass movement a full decade before a weary rosa parks boarded a montgomery bus and set off the all-embracing crusade of martin luther king, jr. the growing political power of the negro and the threat of mass action in the 's were important reasons for the breakthrough on the color front that began in the armed forces in the postwar period. for despite the measure of good will and political acumen that characterized his social programs, harry s. truman might never have made the effort to achieve racial equality in the services without the constant pressure of civil rights activists. the reasons for the transformation that was beginning in the civil rights struggle were varied and complex.[ - ] fundamental was the growing urbanization of the negro. by almost half the black population lived in cities. as the labor shortage became more acute during the next five years, movement toward the cities continued, not only in the south but in the north and west. attracted by economic opportunities in los angeles war industries, for example, over , negroes moved to that city each month during the war. detroit, seattle, and san francisco, among others, reported similar migrations. the balance finally shifted during the war, and the census showed that percent of the black population resided in metropolitan (p.  ) areas, percent in cities of the north and west.[ - ] [footnote - : this discussion is based in great part on arnold m. rose, "the american negro problem in the context of social change," _annals of the academy of political science_ (january ): - ; rustin, _strategies for freedom_, pp. - ; leonard broom and norval glenn, _transformation of the negro american_ (new york: harper and row, ); st. clair drake and horace cayton, _black metropolis: a study of negro life in a northern city_ (new york: harcourt brace, ); john hope franklin, _from slavery to freedom: a history of negro america_, d ed. (new york: knopf, ); woodward's _the strange career of jim crow_; seymour wolfbein, "postwar trends in negro employment," a report by the occupational outlook division, bureau of labor statistics, in cmh; oscar handlin, "the goals of integration," and kenneth b. clark, "the civil rights movement: momentum and organization," both in _daedalus_ (winter ).] [footnote - : for a discussion of this trend, see bureau of labor statistics, "social and economic conditions of negroes in the united states" (current population reports p , october ); see also charles s. johnson, "the negro minority," _annals of the academy of political science_ (september ): - .] this mass migration, especially to cities outside the south, was of profound importance to the future of american race relations. it meant first that the black masses were separating themselves from the archaic social patterns that had ruled their lives for generations. despite virulent discrimination and prejudice in northern and western cities, negroes could vote freely and enjoy some protection of the law and law-enforcement machinery. they were free of the burden of jim crow. along with white citizens they were given better schooling, a major factor in improving status. the mass migration also meant that this part of america's peasantry was rapidly joining america's proletariat. the wartime shortage of workers, coupled with the efforts of the fair employment practices committee and other government agencies, opened up thousands of jobs previously denied black americans. the number of skilled craftsmen, foremen, and semiskilled workers among black americans rose from , to over , , during the war, while the number of negroes working for the federal government increased from , to , .[ - ] [footnote - : selective service system, _special groups_, vol. i, pp. - ; see also robert c. weaver, "negro labor since ," _the journal of negro history_ (january ): - .] though much of the increase in black employment was the result of temporarily expanded wartime industries, black workers gained valuable training and experience that enabled them to compete more effectively for postwar jobs. employment in unionized industries strengthened their position in the postwar labor movement. the severity of inevitable postwar cuts in black employment was mitigated by continued prosperity and the sustained growth of american industry. postwar industrial development created thousands of new upper-level jobs, allowing many black workers to continue their economic advance without replacing white workers and without the attendant development of racial tensions. the armed forces played their part in this change. along with better food, pay, and living conditions provided by the services, many negroes were given new work experiences. along with many of their white fellows, they acquired new skills and a new sophistication that prepared them for the different life of the postwar industrial world. most important, military service in world war ii divorced many negroes from a society whose traditions had carefully defined their place, and exposed them for the first time to a community where racial equality, although imperfectly realized, was an ideal. out of this experience many negroes came to understand that their economic and political position could be changed. ironically, the services themselves became an early target of this rising self-awareness. the integration of the armed forces, immediate and total, was a popular goal of the newly franchised voting group, which was turning away from leaders of both races who preached a philosophy of gradual change. the black press was spokesman for the widespread demand for (p.  ) equality in the armed forces; just as the growth of the black press was dramatically stimulated by urbanization of the negro, so was the civil rights movement stimulated by the press. the pittsburgh _courier_ was but one of many black papers and journals that developed a national circulation and featured countless articles on the subject of discrimination in the services. one black sociologist observed that it was "no exaggeration to say that the negro press was the major influence in mobilizing negroes in the struggle for their rights during world war ii."[ - ] sometimes inaccurate, often inflammatory, and always to the consternation of the military, the black press rallied the opposition to segregation during and after the war. [footnote - : e. franklin frazier, _the negro in the united states_ (new york: macmillan, ), p. .] much of the black unrest and dissatisfaction dramatized by the press continued to be mobilized through the efforts of such organizations as the national association for the advancement of colored people, the national urban league, and the congress of racial equality. the naacp, for example, revitalized by a new and broadened appeal to the black masses, had some , branches in forty-three states by and boasted a membership of more than half a million. while the association continued to fight for minority rights in the courts, to stimulate black political participation, and to improve the conditions of negroes generally, its most popular activity during the 's was its effort to eliminate discrimination in the armed forces. the files of the services and the white house are replete with naacp complaints, requests, demands, and charges that involved the military departments in innumerable investigations and justifications. if the complaints effected little immediate change in policy, they at least dramatized the plight of black servicemen and mobilized demands for reform.[ - ] [footnote - : clark, "the civil rights movement," pp. - .] not all racial unrest was so constructively channeled during the war. riots and mutinies in the armed services were echoed around the country. in detroit competition between blacks and whites, many recently arrived from the south seeking jobs, culminated in june in the most serious riot of the decade. the president was forced to declare a state of emergency and dispatch , troops to patrol the city. the detroit riot was only the most noticeable of a number of racial incidents that inevitably provoked an ugly reaction, and the postwar period witnessed an increase in antiblack sentiment and violence in the united states.[ - ] testifying to the black community's economic and political progress during the war as well as a corresponding increase in white awareness of and protest against the mistreatment of black citizens, this antiblack sentiment was only the pale ghost of a similar phenomenon after world war i. [footnote - : _report of the national advisory commission on civil disorders, march _, kerner report (washington: government printing office, ), pp. - ; see also dalfiume, _desegregation of the u.s. armed forces_, pp. - . for a detailed account of the major riot, see r. shogan and t. craig, _the detroit race riot: a study in violence_ (new york: chilton books, ).] [illustration: president truman addressing the naacp convention, _lincoln memorial, washington, d.c., june . seated at the president's left are walter white, eleanor roosevelt, and senator wayne morse; visible in the rear row are admiral of the fleet chester w. nimitz, attorney general tom c. clark, and chief justice fred m. vinson_.] nevertheless, the sentiment was widespread. traveling cross-country in a train during christmastime, , the celebrated american essayist bernard de voto was astonished to hear expressions of antiblack (p.  ) sentiment. in wisconsin, "a state where i think i had never before heard the word 'nigger,' that [dining] car was full of talk about niggers and what had to be done about them."[ - ] a white veteran bore out the observation. "anti-negro talk ... is cropping up in many places ... the assumption [being] that there is more prejudice, never less.... throughout the war the whites were segregated from the negroes (why not say it this way for a change?) so that there were almost no occasions for white soldiers to get any kind of an impression of negroes, favorable or otherwise." there had been some race prejudice among servicemen, but, the veteran asked, "what has caused this anti-negro talk among those who stayed at home?"[ - ] about the same time, a u.s. senator was complaining to the secretary of war that white and black civilians at kelly field, texas, (p.  ) shared the same cafeterias and other facilities. he hoped the secretary would look into the matter to prevent disturbances that might grow out of a policy of this sort.[ - ] [footnote - : bernard de voto, "the easy chair" _harper's_ (january ): - .] [footnote - : ltr, john h. caldwell (hartsdale, new york) to the editor, _harper's_ (march ): unnumbered front pages.] [footnote - : ltr, sen. w. lee o'daniel of texas to sw, feb , asw . ( ).] nor did the armed forces escape the rise in racial tension. for example, the war department received many letters from the public and members of congress when black officers, nearly the base's entire contingent of four hundred, demonstrated against the segregation of the officers' club at freeman field, indiana, in april . the question at issue was whether a post commander had the authority to exclude individuals on grounds of race from recreational facilities on an army post. the army air forces supported the post commander and suggested a return to a policy of separate and equal facilities for whites and blacks, primarily because a club for officers was a social center for the entire family. since it was hardly an accepted custom in the country for the races to intermingle, officials argued, the army had to follow rather than depart from custom, and, further, the wishes of white officers as well as those of negroes deserved consideration.[ - ] [footnote - : this important incident in the air force's racial history has been well documented. see aaf summary sheet, may , sub: racial incidents at freeman field and ft. huachuca, arizona, and memo, maj gen h. r. harmon, acofs, aaf, for dcofs, may , both in wdgap . . see also memo, the inspector general for dcofs, may , sub: investigation at freeman field, wdsig . freeman field, and memo, truman gibson for asw, may , asw . nt. for a critical contemporary analysis, see hq air defense command, "the training of negro combat units by the first air force" (monograph iii, may ), vol. ; ch. iii, afshrc. the incident is also discussed in osur, _blacks in the army air forces during world war ii_, ch. vi, and in alan l. gropman's _the air force integrates, - _ (washington: government printing office, ). gropman's work is the major source for the history of negroes in the postwar air force.] the controversy reached the desk of john mccloy, the assistant secretary of war, who considered the position taken by the army air forces a backward step, a reversal of the war department position in an earlier and similar case at selfridge field, michigan. mccloy's contention prevailed--that the commander's administrative discretion in these matters fell short of authority to exclude individuals from the right to enjoy recreational facilities provided by the federal government or maintained with its funds. secretary of war stimson agreed to amend the basic policy to reflect this clarification.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asw for sw, jun ; memo, sgs for dcofs, jun , sub: report of advisory committee on special troop policies, both in asw . (nt).] in december the press reported and the war and navy departments investigated an incident at le havre, france, where soldiers were embarking for the united states for demobilization. officers of a navy escort carrier objected to the inclusion of black enlisted men on the grounds that the ship was unable to provide separate accommodations for negroes. army port authorities then substituted another group that included only one black officer and five black enlisted men who were placed aboard over the protests of the ship's officers.[ - ] the secretary of the navy had already declared that the navy did not differentiate between men on account of race, and on (p.  ) december he reiterated his statement, adding that it applied to members of all the armed forces.[ - ] demonstrating the frequent gap between policy and practice, forrestal's order was ignored six months later by port officials when a group of black officers and men was withdrawn from a shipping list at bremerhaven, germany, on the grounds that "segregation is a war department policy."[ - ] [footnote - : opd summary sheet to cofs, apr , cs . negroes; memo, wd bureau of public relations for press, jan ; ltr, exec to actg asw to p. bernard young, jr., norfolk _journal and guide_, dec , asw . .] [footnote - : alnav - , dec .] [footnote - : memo, marcus h. ray, civ aide to sw, for asw, jun , asw . (nt).] overt antiblack behavior and social turbulence in the civilian community also reached into the services. in february issac woodard, jr., who had served in the army for fifteen months in the pacific, was ejected from a commercial bus and beaten by civilian police. sergeant woodard had recently been discharged from the army at camp gordon, georgia, and was still in uniform at the time of the brutal attack that blinded him. his case was quickly taken up by the naacp and became the centerpiece of a national protest.[ - ] not only did the civil rights spokesmen protest the sadistic blinding, they also charged that the army was incapable of protecting its own members in the community. [footnote - : see ltr, walter white, secy, naacp, to sw, may , and a host of letters in sw . file. see also copies of naacp press releases on the subject in cmh files.] while service responsibility for countering off-base discrimination against servicemen was still highly debatable in , the right of men on a military base to protection was uncontestable. yet even service practices on military bases were under attack as racial conflicts and threats of violence multiplied. "dear mother," one soldier stationed at sheppard field, texas, felt compelled to write in early , "i don't know how long i'll stay whole because when those whites come over to start [trouble] again i'll be right with the rest of the fellows. nothing to worry about. love,..."[ - ] if the soldier's letter revealed continuing racial conflict in the service, it also testified to a growing racial unity among black servicemen that paralleled the trend in the black community. when negroes could resolve with a new self-consciousness to "be right with the rest of the fellows," their cause was immeasurably strengthened and their goals brought appreciably nearer. [footnote - : ltr, feb , copy in sw . .] civil rights spokesmen had several points to make regarding the use of negroes in the postwar armed forces. referring to the fact that world war ii began with negroes fighting for the right to fight, they demanded that the services guarantee a fair representation of negroes in the postwar forces. furthermore, to avoid the frustration suffered by negroes trained for combat and then converted into service troops, they demanded that negroes be trained and employed in all military specialties. they particularly stressed the correlation between poor leaders and poor units. the services' command practices, they charged, had frequently led to the appointment of the wrong men, either black or white, to command black units. their principal solution was to provide for the promotion and proper employment of a proportionate share of competent black officers and noncommissioned officers. above all, they pointed to the humiliations black soldiers suffered in (p.  ) the community outside the limits of the base.[ - ] one particularly telling example of such discrimination that circulated in the black press in described german prisoners of war being fed in a railroad restaurant while their black army guards were forced to eat outside. but such discrimination toward black servicemen was hardly unique, and the civil rights advocates were quick to point to the connection between such practices and low morale and performance. for them there was but one answer to such discrimination: all men must be treated as individuals and guaranteed equal treatment and opportunity in the services. in a word, the armed forces must integrate. they pointed with pride to the success of those black soldiers who served in integrated units in the last months of the european war, and they repeatedly urged the complete abolition of segregation in the peacetime army and navy.[ - ] [footnote - : for a summary of these views, see warman welliver, "report on the negro soldier," _harper's_ (april ): - and back pages.] [footnote - : murray, _negro handbook, - _, pp. - .] [illustration: assistant secretary mccloy.] when an executive of the national urban league summed up these demands for president truman at the end of the war, he clearly indicated that the changes in military policy that had brought about the gradual improvement in the lot of black servicemen during the war were now beside the point.[ - ] the military might try to ignore this fact for a little while longer; a politically sensitive president was not about to make such an error. [footnote - : ltr, exec secy, national urban league, to president truman, aug , copy in forrestal file, genrecsnav.] _the army's grand review_ in the midst of this intensifying sentiment for integration, in fact a full year before the war ended, the army began to search for a new racial policy. the invasion of normandy and the extraordinary advance to paris during the summer of had led many to believe that the war in europe would soon be over, perhaps by fall. as the allied leaders at the quebec conference in september discussed arrangements to be imposed on a defeated germany, american officials in washington began to consider plans for the postwar period. among them was assistant secretary of war mccloy. dissatisfied with the manner in which the army was using black troops, mccloy believed it was time to start planning how best to employ them in the postwar army, which (p.  ) according to current assumptions, would be small and professional and would depend upon a citizen reserve to augment it in an emergency. [illustration: truman gibson.] mccloy concluded that despite a host of prewar studies by the general staff, the army war college, and other military agencies, the army was unprepared during world war ii to deal with and make the most efficient use of the large numbers of negroes furnished by selective service. policies for training and employing black troops had developed in response to specific problems rather than in accordance with a well thought out and comprehensive plan. because of "inadequate preparation prior to the period of sudden expansion," mccloy believed a great many sources of racial irritation persisted. to develop a "definite, workable policy, for the inclusion and utilization in the army of minority racial groups" before postwar planning crystallized and solidified, mccloy suggested to his assistants that the war department general staff review existing practices and experiences at home and abroad and recommend changes.[ - ] [footnote - : memos, mccloy for advisory committee on special troop policies, jul and sep , sub: participation of negro troops in the post-war military establishment; memo, asw for sw, jan , same sub, all in asw . (nt).] the chief of staff, general marshall, continued to insist that the army's racial problem was but part of a larger national problem and, as mccloy later recalled, had no strong views on a solution.[ - ] whatever his personal feelings, marshall, like most army staff officers, always emphasized efficiency and performance to the exclusion of social concerns. while he believed that the limited scope of the experiment with integrated platoons toward the end of the war in europe made the results inconclusive, marshall still wanted the platoons' performance considered in the general staff study.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, john j. mccloy to author, sep , cmh files.] [footnote - : memo, cofs for mccloy, aug , wdcsa . negroes ( aug ).] the idea of a staff study on the postwar use of black troops also found favor with secretary stimson, and a series of conferences and informal discussions on the best way to go about it took place in the highest echelons of the army during the early months of . the upshot was a decision to ask the senior commanders at home and overseas for their comments. how did they train and use their black troops? what irritations, frictions, and disorders arising from racial conflicts had hampered their operations? what were their (p.  ) recommendations on how best to use black troops after the war? two weeks after the war ended in europe, a letter with an attached questionnaire was sent to senior commanders.[ - ] the questionnaire asked for such information as: "to what extent have you maintained segregation beyond the actual unit level, and what is your recommendation on this subject? if you have employed negro platoons in the same company with white platoons, what is your opinion of the practicability of this arrangement?" [footnote - : ltr, tag to cinc, southwest pacific area, et al., may , sub: participation of negro troops in post-war military establishment, ag . ( may ). on the high-level discussions, see memo, maj gen w. f. tompkins, dir, special planning div, for acofs, g- , and personnel officers of the air, ground, and service forces, feb , same sub; df, g- , wdgs (col o. g. haywood, exec), mar , same sub; memo, col g. e. textor, dep dir, wdssp, for acofs, g- , mar , same sub; memo for the file (col lawrence westbrook), mar ; memo, maj bell i. wiley for col mathews, apr , all in ag . .] not everyone agreed that the questionnaire was the best way to review the performance of negroes in world war ii. truman gibson, for one, doubted the value of soliciting information from senior commanders, feeling that these officers would offer much subjective material of little real assistance. referring to the letter to the major senior commanders, he said: mere injunctions of objectivity do not work in the racial field where more often than not decisions are made on a basis of emotion, prejudice or pre-existing opinion.... much of the difficulty in the army has arisen from improper racial attitudes on both sides. indeed, the army's basic policy of segregation is said to be based principally on the individual attitudes and desires of the soldiers. but who knew what soldiers' attitudes were? why not, he suggested, make some scientific inquiries? why not try to determine, for example, how far public opinion and pressure would permit the army to go in developing policies for black troops?[ - ] [footnote - : memo, gibson for asw, may , asw . (nt).] gibson had become, perforce, an expert on public opinion. during the last several months he had suffered the slings and arrows of an outraged black press for his widely publicized analysis of the performance of black troops. visiting black units and commanders in the mediterranean and european theaters to observe, in mccloy's words, "the performance of negro troops, their attitudes, and the attitudes of their officers toward them,"[ - ] gibson had arrived in italy at the end of february to find theater officials concerned over the poor combat record of the d infantry division, the only black division in the theater and one of three activated by the war department. after a series of discussions with senior commanders and a visit to the division, gibson participated in a press conference in rome during which he spoke candidly of the problems of the division's infantry units.[ - ] subsequent news reports of the conference stressed gibson's confirmation of the division's disappointing performance, but neglected the reasons he advanced to explain its failure. the reports earned a swift and angry retort from the black community. many (p.  ) organizations and journals condemned gibson's evaluation of the d outright. some seemed less concerned with the possible accuracy of his statement than with the effects it might have on the development of future military policy. the naacp's _crisis_, for example, charged that gibson had "carried the ball for the war department," and that "probably no more unfortunate words, affecting the representatives of the entire race, were ever spoken by a negro in a key position in such a critical hour. we seem destined to bear the burden of mr. gibson's rome adventure for many years to come."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, gibson to gen john c. h. lee, cg, comz, etousa, mar , asw . (nt).] [footnote - : memo, truman gibson for maj gen o. l. nelson, mar , sub: report on visit to d division (negro troops), asw . .] [footnote - : "negro soldier betrayed," _crisis_ (april ): ; "gibson echo," ibid. (july ): .] other black journals took a more detached view of the situation, asserting that gibson's remarks revealed nothing new and that the problem was segregation, of which the d was a notable victim. gibson took this tack in his own defense, pointing to the irony of a situation in which "some people can, on the one hand, argue that segregation is wrong, and on the other ... blindly defend the product of that segregation."[ - ] [footnote - : washington _afro-american_, april , , quoted in lee, _employment of negro troops_, p. . for details of the gibson controversy, see lee, pp. - .] gibson had defenders in the army whose comments might well apply to all the large black units in the war. at one extreme stood the allied commander in italy, general mark w. clark, who attributed the d's shortcomings to "our handling of minority problems at home." most of all, general clark thought, black soldiers needed the incentive of feeling that they were fighting for home and country as equals. but his conclusion--"only the proper environment in his own country can provide such an incentive"--neatly played down army responsibility for the division's problems.[ - ] [footnote - : mark w. clark, _a calculated risk_ (new york: harper & brothers, ), pp. - .] another officer, who as commander of a divisional artillery unit was intimately acquainted with the division's shortcomings, delineated an entirely different set of causes. the division was doomed to mediocrity and worse, lt. col. marcus h. ray concluded, from the moment of its activation. undercurrents of racial antipathy as well as distrust and prejudice, he believed, infected the organization from the outset and created an unhealthy beginning. the practice of withholding promotion from deserving black officers along with preferential assignments for white officers prolonged the malady. the basic misconception was that southern white officers understood negroes; under such officers negroes who conformed with the southern stereotype were promoted regardless of their abilities, while those who exhibited self-reliance and self-respect--necessary attributes of leadership--were humiliated and discouraged for their uppityness. "i was astounded," he said, "by the willingness of the white officers who preceded us to place their own lives in a hazardous position in order to have tractable negroes around them."[ - ] in short, the men of the d who fought and died bravely should be honored, but their unit, which on balance did not perform well, should be considered a (p.  ) failure of white leadership. [footnote - : ltr, ray to gibson, may , wdgap . . ray later succeeded gibson as civilian aide to the secretary of war.] [illustration: company i, th infantry, d division, _advances through cascina, italy_.] lt. gen. lucian k. truscott, jr., then fifth army commander in italy, disagreed. submitting the proceedings of a board of review that had investigated the effectiveness of black officers and enlisted men in the d division, he was sympathetic to the frustrations encountered by the division commander, maj. gen. edward m. almond. "in justice to those splendid officers"--a reference to the white senior commanders and staff members of the division--"who have devoted themselves without stint in an endeavor to produce a combat division with negro personnel and who have approached this problem without prejudice," truscott endorsed the board's hard view that many infantrymen in the division "would not fight."[ - ] this conclusion was in direct conflict with the widely held and respected truism that competent leadership solved all problems, from which it followed that the answer to the problem of negroes in combat was command. good commanders prevented friction, performed their mission effectively, and achieved success no matter what the obstacles--a view put forth in a typical report from world war ii that "the efficiency of negro units depends entirely on the leadership of officers and nco's."[ - ] [footnote - : st ind, hq fifth army (signed l. k. truscott, jr.), jul , to proceedings and board of review, d inf div, fifth army files.] [footnote - : wd file . (negro troop policy), - , is full of statements to this effect. the quote is from d ind, hq usastaf, jul , attached to aaf summary sheets to cofs, sep , sub: participation of negro troops in the post-war military establishment, ag . ( may ).] in fact, general truscott's analysis of the d division's problems seemed at variance with his analysis of command problems in other units, as illustrated by his later attention to problems in the all-white th infantry division.[ - ] the habit of viewing unit problems as command problems was also demonstrated by general jacob l. devers, who was deputy allied commander in the mediterranean when the d arrived in italy. reflecting later upon the d division, general devers agreed that its engineer and armor unit performed well, but the infantry did not "because their commanders weren't good enough."[ - ] [footnote - : l. k. truscott, jr., _command missions: a personal story_ (new york: dutton, ), see pages - and - for comparison of truscott's critical analysis of problems of the th and d infantry divisions.] [footnote - : interv, author with general jacob devers, mar , cmh files.] years later general almond, the division's commander, was to claim (p.  ) that the d division had done "many things well and some things poorly." it fought in extremely rugged terrain against a determined enemy over an exceptionally broad front. the division's artillery as well as its technical and administrative units performed well. negroes also excelled in intelligence work and in dealing with the italian partisans. on the other hand, general almond reported, infantry elements were unable to close with the enemy and destroy him. rifle squads, platoons, and companies tended "to melt away" when confronted by determined opposition. almond blamed this on "a lack of dedication to purpose, pride of accomplishment and devotion to duty and teammates by the majority of black riflemen assigned to infantry units."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, lt gen edward m. almond to brig gen james l. collins, jr., apr , cmh files. general almond's views are thoroughly explored in paul goodman, _a fragment of victory_ (army war college, ). for an objective and detailed treatment of the d division, see lee, _employment of negro troops_, chapter xix, and ernest f. fisher, jr., _cassino to the alps_, united states army in world war ii (washington: government printing office, ), chapter xxiii.] similar judgments were expressed concerning the combat capability of the other major black unit, the d infantry division.[ - ] when elements of the d, the th regimental combat team in particular, participated in the bougainville campaign in the solomon islands, their performance was the subject of constant scrutiny by order of the chief of staff.[ - ] the combat record of the th included enough examples of command and individual failure to reinforce the war department's decision in mid- to use the individual units of the division in security, laboring, and training duties in quiet areas of the theater, leaving combat to more seasoned units.[ - ] during the last year of the war the d performed missions that were essential but not typical for combat divisions. [footnote - : a third black division, the d cavalry, never saw combat because it was disbanded upon arrival in the mediterranean theater.] [footnote - : rad, marshall to lt gen millard harmon, cg, usafispa, mar , cm-out ( mar ).] [footnote - : lee, _employment of negro troops_, pp. - . lee discusses here the record of the d infantry division and war department decisions concerning its use.] analyses of the division's performance ran along familiar lines. the xiv corps commander, under whom the division served, rated the performance of the th regimental combat team infantry as fair and artillery as good, but found the unit, at least those parts commanded by black officers, lacking in initiative, inadequately trained, and poorly disciplined. other reports tended to agree. all of them, along with reports on the th infantry, another black unit serving in the area, were assembled in washington for assistant secretary mccloy. while he admitted important limitations in the performance of the units, mccloy nevertheless remained encouraged. not so the secretary of war. "i do not believe," he told mccloy, "they can be turned into really effective combat troops without all officers being white."[ - ] [footnote - : the above digested reports and quotations are from lee, _employment of negro troops_, pp. - .] black officers of the d, however, entertained a different view. they generally cited command and staff inefficiencies as the major cause of the division's discipline and morale problems. one respondent, a company commander in the th infantry, singled out the "continuous (p.  ) dissension and suspicion characterizing the relations between white and colored officers of the division." all tended to stress what they considered inadequate jungle training, and, like many white observers, they all agreed the combat period was too brief to demonstrate the division's developing ability.[ - ] [footnote - : usaffe board reports no. , jan , and , feb , sub: information on colored troops. these reports were prepared at the behest of the commanding general of the army ground forces during the preparation of bell i. wiley's _the training of negro troops_ (agf study no. , ). the quotation is from exhibit k of usaffe board report no. .] [illustration: d division engineers prepare a ford for arno river traffic.] despite the performance of some individuals and units praised by all, the combat performance of the d and d infantry divisions was generally considered less than satisfactory by most observers. a much smaller group of commentators, mostly black journalists, never accepted the prevailing view. pointing to the decorations and honors received by individuals in the two divisions, they charged that the adverse reports were untrue, reflections of the prejudices of white officers. such an assertion presupposed that hundreds of officers and war department officials were so consumed with prejudice that they falsified the record. and the argument from decorations, as one expert later pointed out, faltered once it was understood that the d (p.  ) and d infantry divisions combined a relatively high number of decorations with relatively few casualties.[ - ] [footnote - : e. w. kenworthy, "the case against army segregation," _annals of the american academy of political science_ (may ): - . a low decoration to casualty ratio is traditionally used as one measure of good unit performance. however, so many different unit attitudes and standards for decorations existed during world war ii that any argument over ratios can only be self-defeating no matter what the approach.] actually, there was little doubt that the performance of the black divisions in world war ii was generally unacceptable. beyond that common conclusion, opinions diverged widely. commanders tended to blame undisciplined troops and lack of initiative and control by black officers and noncommissioned officers as the primary cause of the difficulty. others, particularly black observers, cited the white officers and their lack of racial sensitivity. in fact, as ulysses lee points out with careful documentation, all these factors were involved, but the underlying problem usually overlooked by observers was segregation. large, all-black combat units submerged able soldiers in a sea of men with low aptitude and inadequate training. segregation also created special psychological problems for junior black officers. carefully assigned so that they never commanded white officers or men, they were often derided by white officers whose attitudes were quickly sensed by the men to the detriment of good discipline. segregation was also a factor in the rapid transfer of men in and out of the divisions, thus negating the possible benefits of lengthy training. furthermore, the divisions were natural repositories for many dissatisfied or inadequate white officers, who introduced a host of other problems. truman gibson was quick to point out how segregation had intensified the problem of turning civilians into soldiers and groups into units. the "dissimilarity in the learning profiles" between black and white soldiers as reflected in their agct scores was, he explained to mccloy, primarily a result of inferior black schooling, yet its practical effect on the army was to burden it with several large units of inferior combat ability (_table _). in addition to the fact that large black units had a preponderance of slow learners, gibson emphasized that nearly all black soldiers were trained near "exceedingly hostile" communities. this hostile atmosphere, he believed, had played a decisive role in their adjustment to army life and adversely affected individual motivation. gibson also charged the army with promoting some black officers who lacked leadership qualifications and whose performance, consequently, was under par. he recommended a single measure of performance for officers and a single system for promotion, even if this system reduced promotions for black officers. promotions on any basis other than merit, he concluded, deprived the army of the best leadership and inflicted weak commanders on black units. table --agct percentages in selected world war ii divisions unit i ii iii iv v total ( +) ( - ) ( - ) ( - ) ( - ) th armored division....... . . . . . th infantry division....... . . . . . d infantry division (negro) . . . . . d infantry division (negro) . . . . . th infantry division........ . . . . . _source_: tables submitted by the adjutant general to the gillem board, . gibson was not trying to magnify the efficiency of segregated (p.  ) units. he made a special effort to compare the performance of the d division with that of the integrated black platoons in germany because such a comparison would demonstrate, he believed, that the army's segregation policy was in need of critical reexamination. he cited "many officers" who believed that the problems connected with large segregated combat units justified their abolition in favor of the integration of black platoons into larger white units. although such unit integration would not abolish segregation completely, gibson concluded, it would permit the army to use men and small units on the basis of ability alone.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, gibson for asw, apr , sub: report of visit to mto and eto, asw . (nt); see also interv, bell i. wiley with truman k. gibson, civilian aide to secretary of war, may , cmh files.] the flexibility gibson detected among many army officers was not apparent in the answers to the mccloy questionnaire that flowed into the war department during the summer and fall of . with few exceptions, the senior officers queried expressed uniform reactions. they reiterated a story of frustration and difficulty in training and employing black units, characterized black soldiers as unreliable and inefficient, and criticized the performance of black officers and noncommissioned officers. they were particularly concerned with racial disturbances, which, they believed, were not only the work of racial agitators but also the result of poor morale and a sense of discrimination among black troops. yet they wanted to retain segregation, albeit in units of smaller size, and they wanted to depend, for the most part, on white officers to command these black units. concerned with performance, pragmatic rather than reflective in their habits, the commanders showed little interest in or understanding of the factors responsible for the conditions of which they complained. many believed that segregation actually enhanced black pride.[ - ] [footnote - : eventually over thirty-five commands responded to the mccloy questionnaire. for examples of the attitudes mentioned above, see ltr, hq, u.s. forces, european theater (main) to tag, oct , sub: study of participation of negro troops in the postwar establishment; ltr, hq, u.s. forces, india, burma theater, to tag, aug , same sub; ltr, ghq usarpac to tag, sep , same sub. all in ag . ( may ). some of these and many others are also located in wdssp . ( ).] these responses were summarized by the commanding generals of the major force commands at the request of the war department's special planning division.[ - ] for example, the study prepared by the army service forces, which had employed a high proportion of black troops in its technical services during the war, passed on the recommendations made by these far-flung commands and touched incidentally on several of the points raised by gibson.[ - ] like gibson, the army service forces recommended that negroes of little (p.  ) or no education be denied induction or enlistment and that no deviation from normal standards for the sake of maintaining racial quotas in the officer corps be tolerated. the army service forces also wanted negroes employed in all major forces, participating proportionately in all phases of the army's mission, including overseas and combat assignments, but not in every occupation. for the army service forces had decided that negroes performed best as truck drivers, ammunition handlers, stevedores, cooks, bakers, and the like and should be trained in these specialties rather than more highly skilled jobs such as armorer or machinist. even in the occupations they were best suited to, negroes should be given from a third more to twice as much training as whites, and black units should have to percent more officers than white units. at the same time, the army service forces wanted to retain segregated units, although it recommended limiting black service units to company size. stating in conclusion that it sought only "to insure the most efficient training and utilization of negro manpower" and would ignore the question of racial equality or the "wisdom of segregation in the social sense," the army service forces overlooked the possibility that the former could not be attained without consideration of the latter. [footnote - : memo, dir, wdssp, for cg's, asf et al., may , sub: participation of negro troops in the postwar military establishment, ag . ( may ).] [footnote - : memo, cofs, asf, for dir, special planning division, wdss, oct , sub: participation of negro troops in the postwar military establishment, wdssp . ( oct ). on the use of negroes in the signal corps, see the following volumes in the united states army in world war ii series: dulany terrett, _the signal corps: the emergency_ (washington: government printing office, ); george raynor thompson et al., _the signal corps: the test_ (washington: government printing office, ); george raynor thompson and dixie r. harris, _the signal corps: the outcome_ (washington: government printing office, ).] the army ground forces, which trained black units for all major branches of the field forces, also wanted to retain black units, but its report concluded that these units could be of battalion size. the organization of black soldiers in division-size units, it claimed, only complicated the problem of training because of the difficulty in developing the qualified black technicians, noncommissioned officers, and field grade officers necessary for such large units and finding training locations as well as assignment areas with sufficient off-base recreational facilities for large groups of black soldiers. the army ground forces considered the problem of finding and training field grade officers particularly acute since black units employing black officers, at least in the case of infantry, had proved ineffective. yet white officers put in command of black troops felt they were being punished, and their presence added to the frustration of the blacks. the army ground forces was also particularly concerned with racial disturbances, which, it believed, stemmed from conflicting white and black concepts of the negro's place in the social pattern. the army ground forces saw no military solution for a problem that transcended the contemporary national emergency, and its conclusion--that the solution lay in society at large and not primarily in the armed forces--had the effect, whether or not so intended, of neatly exonerating the army. in fact, the detailed conclusions and recommendations of the army ground forces were remarkably similar to those of the army service forces, but the ground forces study, more than any other, was shot full with blatant racism. the study quoted a war college study to the effect that the black officer was (p.  ) "still a negro with all the faults and weaknesses of character inherent in the negro race." it also discussed the "average negro" and his "inherent characteristics" at great length, dwelling on his supposed inferior mentality and weakness of character, and raising other racial shibboleths. burdened with these prejudices, the army ground forces study concluded that the conception that negroes should serve in the military forces, or in particular parts of the military forces, or sustain battle losses in proportion to their population in the united states, may be desirable but is impracticable and should be abandoned in the interest of a logical solution to the problem of the utilization of negroes in the armed forces.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, ground ag, agf, for cofsa, nov , sub: participation of negro troops in the postwar military establishment, with incl, wdssp . ( dec ).] the army air forces, another large employer of black servicemen, reported a slightly different world war ii experience. conforming with departmental policies on utilizing black soldiers, it had selected negroes for special training on the same basis as whites with the exception of aviation cadets. negroes with a lower stanine (aptitude) had been accepted in order to secure enough candidates to meet the quota for pilots, navigators, and bombardiers in the black units. in its preliminary report to the war department on the employment of negroes, the army air forces admitted that individuals of both races with similar aptitudes and test scores had the same success in technical schools, could be trained as pilots and technicians in the same period of time, and showed the same degree of mechanical proficiency. black units, on the other hand, required considerably more time in training than white units, sometimes simply because they were understrength and their performance was less effective. at the same time the air forces admitted that even after discounting the usual factors, such as time in service and job assignment, whites advanced further than blacks. no explanation was offered. nevertheless, the commanding general of the air forces reported very little racial disorder or conflict overseas. there had been a considerable amount in the united states, however; many air forces commanders ascribed this to the unwillingness of northern negroes to accept southern laws or social customs, the insistence of black officers on integrated officers' clubs, and the feeling among black fliers that command had been made an exclusive prerogative of white officers rather than a matter depending on demonstrated qualification. in contrast to the others, the army air forces revealed a marked change in sentiment over the post-world war i studies of black troops. no more were there references to congenital inferiority or inherent weaknesses, but everywhere a willingness to admit that negroes had been held back by the white majority. the commanding general of the army air forces recommended negroes be apportioned among the three major forces--the army ground forces, the army service forces, and the army air forces--but that their numbers in no case exceed percent of any command; that black servicemen be trained exactly as whites; and that negroes be segregated in units (p.  ) not to exceed air group size. unlike the others, the army air forces wanted black units to have black commanders as far as possible and recommended that the degree of segregation in messing, recreation, and social activities conform to the custom of the surrounding community. it wanted negroes assigned overseas in the same proportion as whites, and in the united states, to the extent practicable, only to those areas considered favorable to their welfare. finally, the air forces wanted negroes to be neither favored nor discriminated against in disciplinary matters.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cg, aaf, for cofsa, sep , sub: participation of negro troops in the postwar military establishment, wdssp . ( ). for the final report of oct , which summed up the previous recommendations, see summary sheet, ac/as- for maj gen c. c. chauncey, dcofas, oct , same sub and file.] among the responses of the subordinate commands were some exceptions to the generalizations found in those of the major forces. one commander, for example, while concluding that segregation was desirable, admitted that it was one of the basic causes of the army's racial troubles and would have to be dealt with "one way or the other."[ - ] another recommended dispersing black troops, one or two in a squad, throughout all-white combat units.[ - ] still another pointed out that the performance of black officers and noncommissioned officers in terms of resourcefulness, aggressiveness, sense of responsibility, and ability to make decisions was comparable to the performance of white soldiers when conditions of service were nearly equal. but the army failed to understand this truth, the commander of the st service command charged, and its separate and unequal treatment discriminated in a way that would affect the efficiency of any man. the performance of black troops, he concluded, depended on how severely the community near a post differentiated between the black and white soldier and how well the negro's commander demonstrated the fairness essential to authority. the army admitted that black units needed superior leadership, but, he added, it misunderstood what this leadership entailed. all too often commanders of black units acted under the belief that their men were different and needed special treatment, thus clearly suggesting racial inferiority. the army, he concluded, should learn from its wartime experience the deleterious effect of segregation on motivation and ultimately on performance.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, ocsigo (col david e. washburn, exec off) to wdssp, jul , sub: participation of negro troops in the postwar military establishment, wdssp . ( ).] [footnote - : ltr, maj gen james l. collins, cg, fifth service cmd, to cg, asf, jul , sub: participation of negro troops in the postwar military establishment, wdssp . .] [footnote - : memo, cg, first service cmd, for cg, asf, jul , sub: participation of negro troops in the postwar military establishment, wdssp . ( ).] truman gibson took much the same approach when he summed up for mccloy his estimate of the situation facing the army. after rehearsing the recent history of segregation in the armed forces, he suggested that it was not enough to compare the performance of black and white troops; the reports of black performance should be examined to determine whether the performance would be improved or impaired by changing the policy of segregation. any major army review, he urged, should avoid the failure of the old studies on race that based (p.  ) differences in performance on racial characteristics and should question instead the efficiency of segregation. for him, segregation was the heart of the matter, and he counseled that "future policy should be predicated on an assumption that civilian attitudes will not remain static. the basic policy of the army should, therefore, not itself be static and restrictive, but should be so framed as to make further progress possible on a flexible basis."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, truman gibson for asw, aug , asw . .] before passing gibson's suggestions to the assistant secretary of war, mccloy's executive assistant, lt. col. davidson sommers, added some ideas of his own. since it was "pretty well recognized," he wrote, that the army had not found the answer to the efficient use of black manpower, a first-class officer or group of officers of high rank, supplemented perhaps with a racially mixed group of civilians, should be designated to prepare a new racial policy. but, he warned, their work would be ineffectual without specific directions from army leaders. he wanted the army to make "eventual nonsegregation" its goal. complete integration, sommers felt, was impossible to achieve at once. classification test scores alone refuted the claim that "negroes in general make as good soldiers as whites." but he thought there was no need "to resort to racial theories to explain the difference," for the lack of educational, occupational, and social opportunities was sufficient.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, exec off, asw, for mccloy, aug , asw . (nt).] sommers had, in effect, adopted gibson's gradualist approach to the problem, suggesting an inquiry to determine "the areas in which nonsegregation can be attempted first and the methods by which it can be introduced ... instead of merely generalizing, as in the past, on the disappointing and not very relevant experiences with large segregated units." he foresaw difficulties: a certain amount of social friction and perhaps a considerable amount of what he called "professional negro agitation" because negroes competing with whites would probably not achieve comparable ranks or positions immediately. but sommers saw no cause for alarm. "we shall be on firm ground," he concluded, "and will be able to defend our actions by relying on the unassailable position that we are using men in accordance with their ability." competing with these calls for gradual desegregation was the army's growing concern with securing some form of universal military training. congress would discuss the issue during the summer and fall of , and one of the questions almost certain to arise in the congressional hearings was the place contemplated for negroes. would the army use negroes in combat units? would the army train and use negroes in units together with whites? upon the answers to these questions hinged the votes of most, if not all, southern congressmen. prudence dictated that the army avoid any innovations that might jeopardize the chance for universal military training. in other words, went the prevalent view, what was good for the army--and universal military training was in that category--had to come before all else.[ - ] [footnote - : memos, col frederick s. skinner for dir, special planning div, wdss, may and jun , sub: participation of negro troops in the postwar military establishment, wdssp . ( ).] even among officers troubled by the contradictory aspects of an (p.  ) issue clouded by morality, many felt impelled to give their prime allegiance to the army as it was then constituted. the army's impressive achievement during the war, they reasoned, argued for its continuation in conformance with current precepts, particularly in a world still full of hostilities. the stability of the army came first; changes would have to be made slowly, without risking the menace of disruption. an attempt to mix the races in the army seemed to most officers a dangerous move bordering on irresponsibility. furthermore, the majority of army officers, dedicated to the traditions of the service, saw the army as a social as well as a military institution. it was a way of life that embraced families, wives and children. the old manners and practices were comfortable because they were well known and understood, had produced victory, and had represented a life that was somewhat isolated and insulated--particularly in the field--from the currents and pressures of national life. why then should the old patterns be modified; why exchange comfort for possible chaos? why should the army admit large numbers of negroes; what had negroes contributed to winning world war ii; what could they possibly contribute to the postwar army? although opinion among army officials on the future role of negroes in the army was diverse and frankly questioning in tone, opinion on the past performance of black units was not. commanders tended to agree that with certain exceptions, particularly small service and combat support units, black units performed below the army average during the war and considerably below the best white units. the commanders also generally agreed that black units should be made more efficient and usually recommended they be reduced in size and filled with better qualified men. most civil rights spokesmen and their allies in the army, on the other hand, viewed segregation as the underlying cause of poor performance. how, then, could the conflicting advice be channeled into construction of an acceptable postwar racial policy? the task was clearly beyond the powers of the war department's special planning division, and in september mccloy adopted the recommendation of sommers and gibson and urged the secretary of war to turn over this crucial matter to a board of general officers. out of this board's deliberations, influenced in great measure by opinions previously expressed, would emerge the long-awaited revision of the army's policy for its black minority. _the navy's informal inspection_ in contrast to the elaborate investigation conducted by the army, the navy's search for a policy consisted mainly of an informal intradepartmental review and an inspection of its black units by a civilian representative of the secretary of the navy. in general this contrast may be explained by the difference in the services' postwar problems. the army was planning for the enlistment of a large cross section of the population through some form of universal military training; the navy was planning for a much smaller peacetime organization of technically trained volunteers. moreover, the army wanted to review the performance of its many black combat units, (p.  ) whereas the naval establishment, which had excluded most of its negroes from combat, had little to gain from measuring their wartime performance. the character and methods of the secretary of the navy had an important bearing on policy. forrestal believed he had won the senior officers to his view of equal treatment and opportunity, and to be assured of success he wanted to convince lower commanders and the ranks as well. he wrote in july : "we are making every effort to give more than lip service to the principles of democracy in the treatment of the negro and we are trying to do it with the minimum of commotion.... we would rather await the practical demonstration of the success of our efforts.... there is still a long road to travel but i am confident we have made a start."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, forrestal to field, jul , - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] forrestal's wish for a racially democratic navy did not noticeably conflict with the traditionalists' plan for a small, technically elite force, so while the army launched a worldwide quest in anticipation of an orthodox policy review, the navy started an informal investigation designed primarily to win support for the racial program conceived by the secretary of the navy. the navy's search began in the last months of the war when secretary forrestal approved the formation of an informal committee on negro personnel. although lester granger, the secretary's adviser on racial matters, had originally proposed the establishment of such a committee to "help frame sound and effective racial policies,"[ - ] the chief of naval personnel, a preeminent representative of the navy's professionals, saw an altogether different reason for the group. he endorsed the idea of a committee, he told a member of the secretary's staff, "not because there is anything wrong or backward about our policies," but because "we need greater cooperation from the technical bureaus in order that those policies may succeed."[ - ] forrestal did little to define the group's purpose when on april he ordered under secretary bard to organize a committee "to assure uniform policies" and see that all subdivisions of the navy were familiar with each other's successful and unsuccessful racial practices.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, lester granger to secnav, mar , - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, chief, navpers, for cmdr richard m. paget (exec off, secnav), apr , sub: formation of informal cmte to assure uniform policies on the handling of negro personnel, p- , bupersrecs.] [footnote - : memo, secnav for cmdr richard m. paget, apr , - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] by pressing for the uniform treatment of negroes, forrestal doubtless hoped to pull backward branches into line with more liberal ones so that the progressive reforms of the past year would be accepted throughout the navy. but if forrestal's ultimate goal was plain, his failure to give clear-cut directions to his informal committee was characteristic of his handling of racial policy. he carefully followed the recommendations of the chief of naval personnel, who wanted the committee to be a military group, despite having earlier expressed his intention of inviting granger to chair the committee. as announced on april, the committee was headed by a senior official of the bureau of naval personnel, capt. roscoe h. hillenkoetter, with another (p.  ) of the bureau's officers serving as committee recorder.[ - ] restricting the scope of the inquiry, forrestal ordered that "whenever practical" the committee should assign each of its members to investigate the racial practices in his own organization. [footnote - : other members of the committee included four senior navy captains and representatives of the marine corps and coast guard. memo, secnav for under secnav, apr , qb /a - , genrecsnav.] nevertheless when the committee got down to work it quickly went beyond the limited concept of its mission as advanced by the chief of naval personnel. not only did it study statistics gathered from all sections of the department and review the experiences of various commanders of black units, it also studied granger's immediate and long-range recommendations for the department, an extension of his earlier wartime work for forrestal. specifically, granger had called for the formulation of a definite integration policy and for a strenuous public relations campaign directed toward the black community. he had also called for the enlistment and commissioning of a significant number of negroes in the regular navy, and he wanted commanders indoctrinated in their racial responsibilities. casting further afield, granger had warned that discriminatory policies and practices in shipyards and other establishments must be eliminated, and employment opportunities for black civilians in the department broadened.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, granger to secnav, mar , - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] the committee deliberated on all these points, and, after meeting several times, announced in may its findings and recommendations. it found that the navy's current policies were sound and when properly executed produced good results. at the same time it saw a need for periodic reviews to insure uniform application of policy and better public relations. such findings could be expected from a body headed by a senior official of the personnel bureau, but the committee then came up with the unexpected--a series of recommendations for sweeping change. revealing the influence of the special programs unit, the committee asked that negroes be declared available for assignment to all types of ships and shore stations in all classifications, with selections made solely on merit. since wholesale reassignments were impractical, the committee recommended well-planned, gradual assimilation--it avoided the word integration--as the best policy for ending the concentration of negroes at shore activities. it also attacked the steward's branch as the conspicuous symbol of the negroes' second-class status and called for the assignment of white stewards and allowing qualified stewards to transfer to general service. the committee wanted the judge advocate general to assign legal advisers to all major trials, especially those involving minorities, to prevent errors in courts-martial that might be construed as discrimination. it further recommended that negroes be represented in the secretary's public relations office; that news items concerning negroes be more widely disseminated through bureau bulletins; and, finally, that all bureaus as well as the coast guard and marine corps be encouraged to enroll commanders in special indoctrination programs before they were assigned to units with substantial numbers of (p.  ) negroes.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cmte on personnel for under secnav, may , sub: report and recommendations of committee on negro personnel, p. - , genrecsnav.] [illustration: granger interviewing sailors _on inspection tour in the pacific_.] the committee's recommendations, submitted to under secretary bard on may , were far more than an attempt to unify the racial practices of the various subdivisions of the navy department. for the first time, senior representatives of the department's often independent branches accepted the contention of the special programs unit that segregation was militarily inefficient and a gradual but complete integration of the navy's general service was the solution to racial problems. yet as a formula for equal treatment and opportunity in the navy, the committee's recommendations had serious omissions. besides overlooking the dearth of black officers and the marine corps' continued strict segregation, the committee had ignored granger's key proposal that negroes be guaranteed a place in the regular navy. almost without exception, negroes in the navy's general service were reservists, products of wartime volunteer enlistment or the draft. all but a few of the black regulars were stewards. without assurance that many of these general service reservists would be converted to regulars or that provision would be made for enlistment of black regulars, (p.  ) the committee's integration recommendations lacked substance. secretary forrestal must have been aware of these omissions, but he ignored them. perhaps the problem of the negro in the postwar navy seemed remote during this last, climactic summer of the war. [illustration: granger with crewmen of a naval yard craft.] to document the status of the negro in the navy, forrestal turned again to lester granger. granger had acted more than once as the secretary's eyes and ears on racial matters, and the association between the two men had ripened from mutual respect to close rapport.[ - ] during august granger visited some twenty continental installations for forrestal, including large depots and naval stations on the west coast, the great lakes training center, and bases and air stations in the south. shortly after v-j day granger launched a more ambitious tour of inspection that found him traveling among the , negroes assigned to the pacific area. [footnote - : columbia university oral hist interv with granger.] unlike the army staff, whose worldwide quest for information stressed black performance in the familiar lessons-learned formula and only incidentally treated those factors that affected performance, granger, a civilian, never really tried to assess performance. he was, (p.  ) however, a race relations expert, and he tried constantly to discover how the treatment accorded negroes in the navy affected their performance and to pass on his findings to local commanders. he later explained his technique. first, he called on the commanding officer for facts and opinions on the performance and morale of the black servicemen. then he proceeded through the command, unaccompanied, interviewing negroes individually as well as in small and large groups. finally, he returned to the commanding officer to pass along grievances reported by the men and his own observations on the conditions under which they served.[ - ] [footnote - : granger's findings and an account of his inspection technique are located in ltrs, granger to secnav, aug, aug, aug, and oct ; and in "minutes of press conference held by mr. lester b. granger," nov . all in - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav. see also columbia university oral hist interv with granger.] granger always related the performance of enlisted men to their morale. he pointed out to the commanders that poor morale was at the bottom of the port chicago mass mutiny and the guam riot, and his report to the secretary confirmed the experiences of the special programs unit: black performance was deeply affected by the extent to which negroes felt victimized by racial discrimination or handicapped by segregation, especially in housing, messing, and military and civilian recreational facilities. although no official policy on segregated living quarters existed, granger found such segregation widely practiced at naval bases in the united states. separate housing meant in most cases separate work crews, thereby encouraging voluntary segregation in mess halls. in some cases the navy's separate housing was carried over into nearby civilian communities where no segregation existed before. in others shore patrols forced segregation on civilian places of entertainment, even when state laws forbade it. on southern bases, especially, many commanders willingly abandoned the navy's ban against discrimination in favor of the racial practices of local communities. there enforced segregation was widespread, often made explicit with "colored" and "white" signs. yet granger found encouraging exceptions which he passed along to local commanders elsewhere. at camp perry, virginia, for example, there was a minimum of segregation, and the commanding officer had intervened to see that virginia's segregated bus laws did not apply to navy buses operating between the camp and norfolk. this situation was unusual for the navy although integrated busing had been standard practice in the army since mid- . he found camp perry "a pleasant contrast" to other southern installations, and from his experiences there he concluded that the attitude of the commanding officer set the pace. "there is practically no limit," granger said, "to the progressive changes in racial attitudes and relationships which can be made when sufficiently enlightened and intelligent officer leadership is in command." the development of hard and fast rules, he concluded, was unnecessary, but the bureau of naval personnel must constantly see to it that commanders resisted the "influence of local conventions." at pearl harbor granger visited three of the more than two hundred auxiliary ships manned by mixed crews. on two the conditions were excellent. the commanding officer in each case had taken special (p.  ) pains to avoid racial differentiation in ratings, assignments, quarters, and messes; efficiency was superior, morale was high, and racial conflict was absent. on the third ship negroes were separated; they were specifically assigned to a special bunk section in the general crew compartment and to one end of the chow table. here there was dissatisfaction among negroes and friction with whites. at the naval air bases in hawaii performance and morale were good because negroes served in a variety of ratings that corresponded to their training and ability. the air station in oahu, for example, had black radar operators, signalmen, yeomen, machinist mates, and others working amiably with whites; the only sign of racial separation visible was the existence of certain barracks, no different from the others, set aside for negroes. morale was lowest in black base companies and construction battalions. in several instances able commanding officers had availed themselves of competent black leaders to improve race relations, but in most units the racial situation was generally poor. granger regarded the organization of the units as "badly conceived from the racial standpoint." since base companies were composed almost entirely of nonrated men, spaces for black petty officers were lacking. in such units the scaffold of subordinate leadership necessary to support and uphold the authority of the officers was absent, as were opportunities for individual advancement. some units had been provisionally re-formed into logistic support companies, and newly authorized ratings were quickly filled. this partial remedy had corrected some deficiencies, but left unchanged a number of the black base companies in the pacific area. although construction battalions had workers of both races, granger reported them to be essentially segregated because whites were assigned to headquarters or to supervisory posts. some officers had carried this arbitrary segregation into off-duty areas, one commander contending that strict segregation was the civilian pattern and that everyone was accustomed to it. the marine corps lagged far behind the rest of the naval establishment, and there was little pretense of conforming with the navy's racial policy. black marines remained rigidly segregated and none of the few black officer candidates, all apparently well qualified, had been commissioned. furthermore, some black marines who wanted to enlist as regulars were waiting word whether they could be included in the postwar marine corps. approximately percent of the black marines in the pacific area were in depot and ammunition companies and steward groups. in many cases their assignments failed to match their qualifications and previous training. quite a few specialists complained of having been denied privileges ordinarily accorded white men of similar status--for example, opportunities to attend schools for first sergeants, musicians, and radar operators. black technicians were frequently sent to segregated and hastily constructed schools or detached to army installations for schooling rather than sent to marine corps schools. conversely, some white enlisted men, assigned to black units for protracted periods as instructors, were often accorded the unusual privilege of living in officers' quarters and eating in the officers' mess in order to preserve racial segregation. most black servicemen, granger found, resented the white fleet (p.  ) shore patrols in the pacific area which they considered biased in handling disciplinary cases and reporting offenders. the commanding officer of the shore patrol in honolulu defended the practice because he believed the use of negroes in this duty would be highly dangerous. granger disagreed, pointing to the successful employment of black shore patrols in such fleet liberty cities as san diego and miami. he singled out the situation in guam, which was patrolled by an all-white marine corps guard regarded by black servicemen as racist in attitude. frequently, racial clashes occurred, principally over the attentions of native women, but it was the concentration of negroes in the naval barracks at guam, granger concluded, along with the lack of black shore patrols, that intensified racial isolation, induced a suspicion of racial policies, and aggravated resentment. at every naval installation granger heard vigorous complaints over the contrast between black and white ratings and promotions. discrepancies could be explained partly by the fact that, since the general service had been opened to negroes fairly late in the war, many white men had more than two years seniority over any black. but granger found evidence that whites were transferred into units to receive promotions and ratings due eligible black members. in many cases, he found "indisputable racial discrimination" by commanding officers, with the result that training was wasted, trained men were prevented from acquiring essential experience and its rewards, and resentment smoldered. evidence of overt prejudice aside, granger stressed again and again that the primary cause of the navy's racial problems was segregation. segregation was "impractical and inefficient," he pointed out, because racial isolation bred suspicion, which in turn inflamed resentment, and finally provoked insubordination. the best way to integrate negroes, granger felt, was to take the most natural course, that is, eliminate all special provisions, conditions, or cautions regarding their employment. "there should be no exceptional approach to problems involving negroes," he counseled, "for the racial factor in naval service will disappear only when problems involving negroes are accepted as part of the navy's general program for insuring efficient performance and first-class discipline." despite his earlier insistence on a fair percentage of negroes in the postwar regular navy, granger conceded that the number and proportion would probably decrease during peacetime. it was hardly likely, he added, that black enlistment would exceed percent of the total strength, a manageable proportion. he even saw some advantages in smaller numbers, since, as the educational standards for all enlistees rose, the integration of relatively few but better qualified negroes would "undoubtedly make for greater racial harmony and improved naval performance." despite the breadth and acuity of his observations, granger suggested remarkedly few changes. impressed by the progress made in the treatment of negroes during the war, he apparently expected it to continue uninterrupted. although his investigations uncovered basic problems that would continue to trouble the navy, he did not (p.  ) recognize them as such. for his part, forrestal sent granger's voluminous reports with their few recommendations to his military staff and thanked the urban league official for his contribution.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, j.f. [james forrestal] for vice adm jacobs (chief of naval personnel), aug ; ltr, secnav to granger, dec , both in - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] although different in approach and point of view, granger's observations neatly complemented the findings and recommendations of the committee on negro personnel. both reinforced the secretary's postwar policy aims and both supported his gradualist approach to racial reform. granger cited segregation, in particular the concentration of masses of black sailors, as the principal cause of racial unrest and poor morale among negroes. the committee urged the gradual integration of the general service in the name of military efficiency. granger and the committee also shared certain blind spots. both were encouraged by the progress toward full-scale integration that occurred during the war, but this improvement was nominal at best, a token bow to changing conditions. their assumption that integration would spread to all branches of the navy neglected the widespread and deeply entrenched opposition to integration that would yield only to a strategy imposed by the navy's civilian and military leaders. finally, the hope that integration would spread ignored the fact that after the war few negroes except stewards would be able to meet the enlistment requirements for the regular navy. in short, the postwar navy, so far as negroes were concerned, was likely to resemble the prewar navy. the search for a postwar racial policy led the army and navy down some of the same paths. the army manpower planners decided that the best way to avoid the inefficient black divisions was to organize negroes into smaller, and therefore, in their view, more efficient segregated units in all the arms and services. at the same time secretary forrestal's advisers decided that the best way to avoid the concentration of negroes who could not be readily assimilated in the general service was to integrate the small remnant of black specialists and leave the majority of black sailors in the separate steward's branch. in both instances the experiences of world war ii had successfully demonstrated to the traditionalists that large-scale segregated units were unacceptable, but neither service was yet ready to accept large-scale integration as an alternative. chapter (p.  ) new directions all the services developed new racial policies in the immediate postwar period. because these policies were responses to racial stresses peculiar to each service and were influenced by the varied experiences of each, they were, predictably, disparate in both substance and approach; because they were also reactions to a common set of pressures on the services they proved to be, perhaps not so predictably, quite similar in practical consequences. one pressure felt by all the services was the recently acquired knowledge that the nation's military manpower was not only variable but also limited in quantity. military efficiency demanded, therefore, that the services not only make the most effective use of available manpower, but also improve its quality. since negroes, who made up approximately percent of the population, formed a substantial part of the nation's manpower, they could no longer be considered primarily a source of unskilled labor. they too must be employed appropriately, and to this end a higher proportion of negroes in the services must be qualified for specialized jobs. continuing demands by civil rights groups added to the pressure on the services to employ negroes according to their abilities. arguing that negroes had the right to enjoy the privileges and share the responsibilities of citizenship, civil rights spokesmen appeared determined to test the constitutionality of the services' wartime policies in the courts. their demands placed the truman administration on the defensive and served warning on the armed forces that never again could they look to the exclusion of black americans as a long-term solution to their racial problems. in addition to such pressures, the services had to reckon with a more immediate problem. postwar black reenlistment, particularly among service men stationed overseas, was climbing far beyond expectation. as the armed forces demobilized in late and early , the percentage of negroes in the army rose above its wartime high of . percent of the enlisted strength and was expected to reach percent and more by . aside from the marine corps, which experienced a rapid drop in black enlistment, the navy also expected a rise in the percentage of negroes, at least in the near future. the increase occurred in part because negroes, who had less combat time than whites and therefore fewer eligibility points for discharge, were being separated from service later and more slowly. the rise reflected as well the negro's expectation that the national labor market would deteriorate in the wake of the war. although greater opportunities for employment had developed for black americans, civilians already filled the posts and many young negroes preferred the job security of a military career. but there was another, more poignant reason why many negroes elected to remain in uniform: they were afraid to reenter (p.  ) what seemed a hostile society and preferred life in the armed forces, imperfect as that might be. the effect of this increase on the services, particularly the largest service, the army, was sharp and direct. since many negroes were poorly educated, they were slow to learn the use of sophisticated military equipment, and since the best educated and qualified men, black and white, tended to leave, the services faced the prospect of having a large proportion of their enlisted strength black and unskilled. _the gillem board report_ clearly, a new policy was necessary, and soon after the japanese surrender assistant secretary mccloy sent to the recently appointed secretary of war the accumulated pile of papers on the subject of how best to employ negroes in the postwar army. along with the answers to the questionnaires sent to major commanders and a collection of interoffice memos went mccloy's reminder that the matter ought to be dealt with soon. mccloy wanted to form a committee of senior officers to secure "an objective professional view" to be used as a base for attacking the whole race problem. but while he considered it important to put this professional view on record, he still expected it to be subject to civilian review.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, mccloy for sw, sep , sw . ; ltr, mccloy to author, sep , cmh files.] robert p. patterson became secretary of war on september , after serving with henry stimson for five years, first as assistant and later as under secretary. intimately concerned with racial matters in the early years of the war, patterson later became involved in war procurement, a specialty far removed from the complex and controversial racial situation that faced the army. now as secretary he once again assumed an active role in the army's black manpower problems and quickly responded to mccloy's request for a policy review.[ - ] in accordance with patterson's oral instructions, general marshall appointed a board, under the chairmanship of lt. gen. alvan c. gillem, jr., which met on october . three days later a formal directive signed by the deputy chief of staff and approved by the secretary of war ordered the board to "prepare a policy for the use of the authorized negro manpower potential during the postwar period including the complete development of the means required to derive the maximum efficiency from the full authorized manpower of the nation in the event of a national emergency."[ - ] on this group, to be known as the gillem board, would fall the responsibility for formulating a policy, preparing a directive, and planning the use of negroes in the postwar army. [footnote - : see, for example, memo, sw for cofs, nov , sw . ; see also ltr, mccloy to author, sep .] [footnote - : quoted in memo, gen gillem for cofs, nov , sub: report of board of general officers on utilization of negro manpower in the post-war army, copy in csgot . ( ) bp.] none of the board members was particularly prepared for the new assignment. general gillem, a tennessean, had come up through the ranks to command the xiii corps in europe during world war ii. although he had written one of the war college studies on the (p.  ) use of black troops and had many black units in his corps, gillem probably owed his appointment to the fact that he was a three-star general, available at the moment, and had recently been selected by the chief of staff to direct a special planning division study on the use of black troops that had been superseded by the new board.[ - ] burdened with the voluminous papers collected by mccloy, gillem headed a board composed of maj. gen. lewis a. pick, a virginian who had built the ledo road in the china-burma-india theater; brig. gen. winslow c. morse of michigan, who had served in a variety of assignments in the army air forces culminating in wartime duties in china; and brig. gen. aln d. warnock, the recorder without vote, a texan who began his career in the arizona national guard and had served in iceland during world war ii.[ - ] these men had broad and diverse experience and gave the board a certain geographical balance. curiously enough, none was a graduate of west point.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, capt alan osur, usaf, with lt gen alvan c. gillem (usa ret.), feb , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, maj gen ray porter, dir, spec planning div, for gillem, sep , sub: war department special board on negro manpower, wdcsa . .] [footnote - : in a later comment on the selections, mccloy said that the geographical spread and lack of west point representation was accidental and that the use of general officers reflected the importance of the subject to him and to patterson. see ltr, mccloy to author, sep , and ltr, gen morse to author, sep , cmh files.] [illustration: general gillem.] although new to the subject, the board members worked quickly. less than a month after their first session, gillem informed the chief of staff that they had already reached certain conclusions. they recognized the need to build on the close relationships developed between the races during the war by introducing progressive measures that could be put into operation promptly and would provide for the assignment of black troops on the basis of individual merit and ability alone. after studying and comparing the racial practices of the other services, the board decided that the navy's partial integration had stimulated competition which improved black performance without causing racial friction. by contrast, strict segregation in the marine corps required longer training periods and closer supervision for black marines. in his memorandum gillem refrained from drawing the logical conclusion and simply went on to note that the army had, for example, integrated its black and white patients in hospitals because of the greater expense, inefficiency, and general impracticality of duplicating complex medical (p.  ) equipment and installations.[ - ] by inference the same disadvantages applied to maintaining separate training facilities, operational units, and the rest of the apparatus of the shrinking army establishment. at one point in his progress report, gillem seemed close to recommending integration, at least to the extent already achieved in the navy. but stated explicitly such a recommendation would have been a radical step, out of keeping with the climate of opinion in the country and in the army itself. [footnote - : memo, gen gillem for cofs, oct , sub: progress rpt on board study of utilization of negro manpower in the post-war army, wdcsa . ; see also interv, osur with gillem.] on november the gillem board finished the study and sent its report to the chief of staff.[ - ] in six weeks the board had questioned more than sixty witnesses, consulted a mass of documentary material, and drawn up conclusions and recommendations on the use of black troops. the board declared that its recommendations were based on two complementary principles: black americans had a constitutional right to fight, and the army had an obligation to make the most effective use of every soldier. but the board also took into account reports of the army's wartime experience with black units. it referred constantly to this experience, citing the satisfactory performance of the black service units and some of the smaller black combat units, in particular the artillery and tank battalions. it also described the black infantry platoons integrated into white companies in europe as "eminently successful." at the same time large black combat units had not been satisfactory, most often because their junior officers and noncommissioned officers lacked the ability to lead. the difficulties the army encountered in properly placing its black troops during the war, the board decided, stemmed to some extent from inadequate staff work and improper planning. poor staff work allowed a disproportionate number of negroes with low test scores to be allocated to combat elements. lack of early planning, constant reorganization and regrouping of black units, and continuous shifting of individuals from one type of training to another had confused and bewildered black troops, who sometimes doubted that the army intended to commit them to combat at all. [footnote - : memo, gillem for cofs, nov , sub: report of board of general officers on the utilization of negro manpower in the post-war army. unless otherwise noted this section is based on the report.] it was necessary, the board declared, to avoid repetition of this experience. advance planning was needed to develop a broader base of trained men among black troops to provide cadres and leaders to meet national emergencies more efficiently. the army had to realize and take advantage of the advances made by negroes in education, industry, and government service. the wide range of skills attained by negroes had enhanced their military value and made possible a broader selectivity with consequent benefit to military efficiency. thus, the army had to adopt a racial policy that provided for the progressive and flexible use of black manpower "within proportions corresponding to those in the civilian population." this policy, it added, must "be implemented _promptly ... must_ be objective by nature ... must (p.  ) eliminate, at the earliest practicable moment, any special consideration based on race ... and should point towards the immediate objective of an evaluation of the negro on the basis of individual merit and ability." the board made eighteen specific recommendations, of which the following were the most important. "that combat and service units be organized and activated from the negro manpower available in the postwar army to meet the requirements of training and expansion and in addition qualified individuals be utilized in appropriate special and overhead units." the use of qualified negroes in overhead units was the first break with the traditional policy of segregation, for though black enlisted men would continue to eat and sleep in segregated messes and barracks, they would work alongside white soldiers and perform the same kind of duty in the same unit. "the proportion of negro to white manpower as exists in the civil population be the accepted ratio for creating a troop basis in the postwar army."[ - ] [footnote - : the percent quota that eventually emerged from the gillem board was an approximation; gillem later recalled that the world war ii enlisted ratio was nearer . percent, but that general eisenhower, the chief of staff, saying he could not remember that, suggested making it "an even percent." see interv, osur with gillem.] "that negro units organized or activated for the postwar army conform in general to other units of the postwar army but the maximum strength of type [sic] units should not exceed that of an infantry regiment or comparable organization." here the board wanted the army to avoid the division-size units of world war ii but retain separate black units which would be diversified enough to broaden the professional base of negroes in the regular army by offering them a larger selection of military occupations. "that in the event of universal training in peacetime additional officer supervision is supplied to units which have a greater than normal percentage of personnel falling into a.g.c.t. classifications iv and v." such a policy had existed in world war ii, but was never carried out. "that a staff group of selected officers whose background has included commanding troops be formed within the g- division of the staffs of the war department and each major command of the army to assist in the planning, promulgation, implementation and revision of policies affecting all racial minorities." this was the administrative machinery the board wanted to facilitate the prompt and efficient execution of the army's postwar racial policies. "that reenlistment be denied to regular army soldiers who meet only the minimum standards." this provision was in line with the concept that the peacetime army was a cadre to be expanded in time of emergency. as long as the army accepted all reenlistments regardless of aptitude and halted black enlistments when black strength exceeded percent, it would deny enlistment to many qualified negroes. it would also burden the army with low-scoring men who would never rise above the rank of private and whose usefulness in a peacetime (p.  ) cadre, which had the function of training for wartime expansion, would be extremely limited. "that surveys of manpower requirements conducted by the war department include recommendations covering the positions in each installation of the army which could be filled by negro military personnel." this suggestion complemented the proposal to use negroes in overhead positions on an individual basis. by opening more positions to negroes, the army would foster leadership, maintain morale, and encourage a competitive spirit among the better qualified. by forcing competition with whites "on an individual basis of merit," the army would become more attractive as a career to superior negroes, who would provide many needed specialists as a "nucleus for rapid expansion of army units in time of emergency." "that groupings of negro units with white units in composite organizations be continued in the postwar army as a policy." since world war ii demonstrated that black units performed satisfactorily when grouped or operated with white combat units, the inclusion of a black service company in a white regiment or a heavy weapons company in an infantry battalion could perhaps be accomplished "without encountering insurmountable difficulties." such groupings would build up a professional relationship between blacks and whites, but, the board warned, experimentation must not risk "the disruption of civilian racial relationships." "that there be accepted into the regular army an unspecified number of qualified negro officers ... that all officers, regardless of race, be required to meet the same standard for appointment ... be accorded equal rights and opportunities for advancement and professional improvement; and be required to meet the same standard for appointment, promotion and retention in all components of the army." the board set no limit on the number of black officers in the army, nor did it suggest that black officers be restricted to service in black units. its report rendered, the board remained in existence ready to make revisions "as may be warranted" by the comments of the many individuals and agencies that were to review the policy in conformance with a directive of the secretary of war.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, brig gen h. i. hodes, adcofs, for gillem, nov , sub: war department special board on negro management, wdcsa . ( nov ).] no two individuals were more intimately concerned with the course of events that led to the gillem board report than john j. mccloy and truman gibson, and although both were about to leave government service, each gave the new secretary of war his opinion of the report.[ - ] mccloy called the report a "fine achievement" and a "great advance over previous studies." it was most important, he said, that the board had stated the problem in terms of manpower efficiency. at the same time both men recognized ambiguities in the board's (p.  ) recommendations, and their criticisms were strong, precise, and, considering the conflicts that developed in the army over these issues, remarkedly acute. both agreed the report needed a clear statement on the basic issue of segregation, and they wanted the board to eliminate the quota. gibson pointed out that the board proposed as a long-range objective the utilization of all persons on the basis of individual ability alone. "this means, of course," he announced with more confidence than was warranted, "a completely integrated army." in the interest of eventually achieving an integrated army he was willing to settle for less than immediate and total integration, but nevertheless he attacked the board for what he called the vagueness of its recommendations. progressive and planned integration, he told secretary patterson, demanded a clear and explicit policy stating that segregation was outmoded and integration inevitable, and the army should move firmly and steadily from one to the other. [footnote - : memo, civilian aide for asw, nov , asw . negro troops (post war); ltr, idem to sw, nov ; memo, mccloy for patterson, nov ; memo, gibson for sw, nov . last three in sw . . the gibson quote is from the november memo.] on some fundamental issues mccloy thought the board did "not speak with the complete clarity necessary," but he considered the ambiguity unintentional. experience showed, he reminded the secretary, "that we cannot get enforcement of policies that permit of any possibility of misconstruction." directness, he said, was required in place of equivocation based on delicacy. if the gillem board intended black officers to command white officers and men, it should have said so flatly. if it meant the army should try unsegregated and mixed units, it should have said so. its report, mccloy concluded, should have put these matters beyond doubt. he was equally forthright in his rejection of the quota, which he found impractical because it deprived the army of many qualified negroes who would be unable to enlist when the quota was full. even if the quota was meant as a floor rather than a ceiling, mccloy thought it objectionable. "i do not see any place," he wrote, "for a quota in a policy that looks to utilize negroes on the basis of ability." if the gillem board revealed the army's willingness to compromise in treating a pressing efficiency problem, detailed comments by interested staff agencies revealed how military traditionalists hoped to avoid a pressing social problem. for just as mccloy and gibson criticized the board for failing to spell out concrete procedures toward integration, other staff experts generally approved the board's report precisely because its ambiguities committed them to very little. their specific criticisms, some betraying the biases of the times, formed the basis of the standard traditionalist defense of the racial _status quo_ for the next five years. comments from the staff's personnel organization set the tone of this criticism.[ - ] the assistant chief of staff for personnel, g- , maj. gen. willard s. paul, approved the board's recommendations, calling them a "logical solution to the problem of effective utilization of negro manpower." although he thought the report "sufficiently (p.  ) detailed to permit intelligent, effective planning," he passed along without comment the criticisms of his subordinates. he was opposed to the formation of a special staff group. "we must soon reach the point," he wrote, "where our general staff must be able to cope with such problems without the formation of ad hoc committees or groups."[ - ] [footnote - : for examples of this extensive review of the gillem board report in g- , see the following memos: col j. f. cassidy (exec office, g- ) for col parks, dec ; chief, officer branch, g- , for exec off, g- policy group, dec ; actg chief, req and res br, for chief, policy control group, dec ; lt col e. b. jones, special projects br, for g- , and dec , sub: policy for utilization of negro manpower in post-war army. all in wdgap . .] [footnote - : memo, gen paul, g- , for cofs, dec , sub: policy for utilization of negro manpower in post-war army, wdgap . ( nov ).] the assistant chief of staff for organization and training, g- , maj. gen. idwal h. edwards, was chiefly concerned with the timing of the new policy. in trying to employ black manpower on a broader professional scale, he warned, the army must recognize the "ineptitude and limited capacity of the negro soldier." he wanted various phases of the new policy timed "with due consideration for all factors such as public opinion, military requirements and the military situation." if the priority given public opinion in the sequence of these factors reflected edwards's view of their importance, the list is somewhat curious. edwards concurred in the recommendations, although he wanted the special staff group established in the personnel office rather than in his organization, and he rejected any arbitrary percentage of black officers. more black officers could be obtained through expansion of the reserve officers' training corps, he suggested, but he rejected the board's call for special classification of all enlistees in reception and training centers, on grounds that the centers were not adequate for the task.[ - ] [footnote - : g- summary sheet to adcofs, jan , sub: war department special board on negro manpower, wdgct . ( nov ).] the chief of the general staff's operations division, lt. gen. john e. hull, dismissed the gillem report with several blunt statements: black enlisted men should be assigned to black units capable of operational use within white units at the rate of one black battalion per division; a single standard of professional proficiency should be followed for white and black officers; and "no negro officer be given command of white troops."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, lt gen john e. hull, acofs, opd (signed brig gen e. d. post, dep chief, theater gp, opd), for acofs, g- , jan , sub: war department special board on negro manpower, wdgct . .] the deputy commander of the army air forces, lt. gen. ira c. eaker, agreed with the board that the army should not be "a testing ground for problems in race relationships." neither did he think the air forces should organize units for the sole purpose of "advancing the prestige of one race, especially when it is necessary to utilize personnel that do not have the proper qualifications in order to keep these units up to strength." black combat units should be limited by the percent quota and by the small number of negroes qualified for tactical training. most negroes should be placed in air forces service units, where "their wartime record was the best," even though such placement would leave the air forces open to charges of discrimination. the idea of experimental groupings of black and white units in composite organizations might prove "impractical," eaker wrote to the chief of staff, because an air forces group operated as an integral unit rather than as three or four separate squadrons; units often exchanged men and equipment, and common messes were used. composite organizations were practical "only when it is not (p.  ) necessary for the units to intermingle continually in order to carry on efficiently." why intermingling could not be synonymous with efficiency, he failed to explain. the inference was clear that segregation was not only normal but best. yet he advocated continuing integrated flying schools and agreed that negroes should be stationed where community attitudes were favorable. he cited the difficulties involved in stationing. for more than two years the army air forces had tried to find a suitable base for its only black tactical group. even in northern cities with large black communities--syracuse, new york, columbus, ohio, and windsor locks, connecticut, among others--officials had vehemently protested against having the black group. the war department, eaker concluded, "should never be ahead of popular opinion on this subject; otherwise it will put itself in a position of stimulating racial disorders rather than overcoming them." along these lines, and harking back to the freeman field incident, he protested against regulations reaffirmed by the gillem board for the joint use of clubs, theaters, post exchanges, and the like at stations in localities where such use was contrary to civilian practices.[ - ] [footnote - : st ind, lt gen ira c. eaker, deputy cmdr, aaf, to cofs, dec , sub: war department special board on negro manpower, copy at tab h, supplemental report of board of officers on utilization of negro manpower in the post-war army, jan , copy in cmh.] the army ground forces headquarters concurred generally with the gillem board's conclusions and recommendations but suggested the army not act alone. the headquarters recommended a policy be formulated for the entire military establishment; only then should individual elements of the armed forces come forward with their own policies. the idea that negroes should serve in numbers proportionate to their percentage of the population and bear their share of battle losses "may be desirable but is impracticable and should be abandoned in the interest of a logical solution."[ - ] since the abilities of negroes were limited, the report concluded, their duties should be restricted. [footnote - : memo, lt col s. r. knight (for cg, agf) for cofs, dec , sub: army ground forces comments and recommendations on report of the war department special board (gillem) on negro manpower, dated nov , gngps . ( dec ); agf study, "participation of negro troops in the postwar military establishment," nov , forwarded to cofs, attn: dir, wd special planning div, gndcg . ( nov ).] the commanding general of the army service forces claimed the gillem board report was advocating substantially the same policy his organization had followed during the war. the army service forces had successfully used an even larger percentage of negroes than the gillem board contemplated. concurring generally with the board's recommendations, he cautioned that the war department should not dictate the use of negroes in the field; to do so would be a serious infringement of command prerogatives that left each commander free to select and assign his men. as for the experimental groupings of black and white units, the general believed that such mixtures were appropriate for combat units but not for the separate small units common to the army service forces. separate, homogeneous companies or battalions formed during the war worked well, and experience proved mixed units impractical below group and regimental echelons. the service forces commander called integration infeasible "for (p.  ) the present and foreseeable future." it was unlawful in many areas, he pointed out, and not common practice elsewhere, and requiring soldiers to follow a different social pattern would damage morale and defeat the army's effort to increase the opportunities and effectiveness of black soldiers. he did not try to justify his contention, but his meaning was clear. it would be a mistake for the army to attempt to lead the nation in such reforms, especially while reorganization, unification, and universal military training were being considered.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, maj gen daniel noce, actg cofs, asf, for cofs, dec , sub: war department special board on negro manpower, copy at tab j, supplemental report of war department special board on negro manpower, jan , cmh files.] reconvened in january to consider the comments on its original report, the gillem board deliberated for two more weeks, heard additional witnesses, and stood firm in its conclusions and recommendations.[ - ] the policy it proposed, the board emphasized, had one purpose, the attainment of maximum manpower efficiency in time of national emergency. to achieve this end the armed forces must make full use of negroes now in service, but future use of black manpower had to be based on the experience gained in two major wars. the board considered the policy it was proposing flexible, offering opportunity for advancement to qualified individuals and at the same time making possible for the army an economic use of national manpower as a whole. [footnote - : supplemental report of war department special board on negro manpower, "policy for utilization of negro manpower in the post-war army," jan . the following quotations are taken from this amended version of the gillem board report, a copy of which, with all tabs and annexes, is in cmh.] to its original report the board added a statement at once the hope and despair of its critics and supporters. _the initial objectives_: the utilization of the proportionate ratio of the manpower made available to the military establishment during the postwar period. the manpower potential to be organized and trained as indicated by pertinent recommendations. _the ultimate objective_: the effective use of _all_ manpower made available to the military establishment in the event of a major mobilization at some unknown date against an undetermined aggressor. the manpower to be utilized, in the event of another major war, in the army without regard to antecedents or race. when, and if such a contingency arises, the manpower of the nation should be utilized in the best interests of the national security. the board cannot, and does not, attempt to visualize at this time, intermediate objectives. between the first and ultimate objective, timely phasing may be interjected and adjustments made in accordance with conditions which may obtain at this undetermined date. the board based its ultimate objective on the fact that the black community had made important advances in education and job skills in the past generation, and it expected economic and educational conditions for negroes to continue to improve. since such improvement would make it possible to employ black manpower in a variety of ways, the board's recommendations could be only a guide for the future, a policy that must remain flexible. to the specific objections raised by the reviewing agencies, the board replied that although black units eventually should be commanded by black officers "no need exists for the assignment of negro commanders to units composed of white troops." it also agreed with those who (p.  ) felt it would be beneficial to correlate army racial policies with those of the navy. on other issues the board stood firm. it rejected the proposal that individual commanders be permitted to choose positions where negroes could be employed in overhead installations on the grounds that this delegation of responsibility "hazards lack of uniformity and makes results doubtful." it refused to drop the quota, arguing it was needed for planning purposes. at the same time the board did admit that the percent ratio, suitable for the moment, might be changed in the future in the interest of efficiency--though changed in which way it did not say. [illustration: secretary patterson.] the board rejected the proposition that the army service forces and the army air forces were unable to use small black units in white organizations and took a strong stand for elimination of the professional private, the career enlistee lacking the background or ability to advance beyond the lowest rank. finally, the board rejected demands that the color line be reestablished in officers' messes and enlisted recreational facilities. "this large segment of the population contributed materially to the success attained by our military forces.... the negro enjoyed the privileges of citizenship and, in turn, willingly paid the premium by accepting service. in many instances, this payment was settled through the medium of the supreme sacrifice." the board's recommendations were well received, at least in the highest echelons of the war department. general dwight d. eisenhower, now chief of staff,[ - ] quickly sent the proposed policy to the secretary of war with a recommendation for approval "subject to such adjustment as experience shows is necessary."[ - ] on february secretary patterson approved the new policy in a succinct restatement of the board's recommendations. the policy and the full gillem board report were published as war department circular on april . at the secretary's direction the circular was dispatched to the field "without delay."[ - ] on march the report was released to the press.[ - ] the most exhaustive and intensive inquiry ever made (p.  ) by the army into the employment of black manpower had survived the review and analysis process with its conclusions and recommendations intact. [footnote - : eisenhower succeeded marshall as chief of staff on november .] [footnote - : memo, cofs for sw, feb , sub: supplemental report of board of officers on utilization of negro manpower in the post-war army, wdcsa . ( feb ).] [footnote - : ltr, tag for cg's, agf et al., may , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the post-war army, wdgap . .] [footnote - : wd press release, mar , "report of board of officers on utilization of negro manpower in the post-war army."] attitudes toward the new policy varied with interpretations of the board's statement of objectives. secretary patterson saw in the report "a significant development in the status of the negro soldiers in the army." the immediate effect of using negroes in composite units and overhead assignments, he predicted, would be to change war department policy on segregation.[ - ] but the success of the policy could not be guaranteed by a secretary of war, and some of his advisers were more guarded in their estimates. to truman gibson, once again in government service, but briefly this time, the report seemed a good beginning because it offered a new approach, one that had originated within the army itself. yet gibson was wary of its chances for success: the board's recommendations, he told the assistant secretary of war, would make for a better army "only if they are effectively carried out."[ - ] the newly appointed assistant secretary, howard c. petersen, was equally cautious. explaining the meaning of the report to the negro newspaper publishers association, he warned that "a strong policy weakly enforced will be of little value to the army."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, sw for cofs, feb , wdcsa . ( feb ).] [footnote - : memo, truman gibson, expert consultant to the sw, for howard c. petersen, feb , asw . negro troops (post-war).] [footnote - : remarks of the assistant secretary of war at luncheon for negro newspaper publishers association, mar , asw . .] marcus h. ray, gibson's successor as the secretary's adviser on racial affairs,[ - ] stressed the board's ultimate objective to employ manpower without regard to race and called its recommendations "a step in the direction of efficient manpower utilization." it was a necessary step, he added, because "any racial group which lives under the stigma of implied inferiority inherent in a system of enforced separation cannot give over-all top performance in peace or in war."[ - ] [footnote - : ray, a former commander of an artillery battalion in the d infantry division, was appointed civilian aide on january ; see wd press release, jan .] [footnote - : ltr, marcus ray to capt warman k. welliver, apr , copy in cmh. welliver, the commander of a black unit during the war, was a student of the subject of negroes in the army; see his "report on the negro soldier."] on the whole, the black community was considerably less sanguine about the new policy. the _norfolk journal and guide_ called the report a step in the right direction, but reserved judgment until the army carried out the recommendations.[ - ] to a distinguished black historian who was writing an account of the negro in world war ii, the gillem board report reflected the army's ambiguity on racial matters. "it is possible," l. d. reddick of the new york public library wrote, "to interpret the published recommendations as pointing in opposite directions."[ - ] one naacp official charged that it "tries to dilute jim-crow by presenting it on a smaller scale." after citing the tremendous advances made by negroes and all the reasons for ending segregation, he accused the gillem board of refusing to take the (p.  ) last step.[ - ] most black papers adopted the same attitude, characterizing the new policy as "the same old army." the pittsburgh _courier_, for one, observed that the new policy meant that the army command had undergone no real change of heart.[ - ] other segments of the public were more forebearing. one veterans' organization commended the war department for the work of the gillem board but called its analysis and recommendations incomplete. citing evidence that jim crow, not the enemy, "defeated" black combat units, the chairman of the american veterans committee called for an immediate end to segregation.[ - ] [footnote - : norfolk _journal and guide_, march , .] [footnote - : ltr, l. d. reddick, n.y. pub. lib., to sw, mar , sw .] [footnote - : ltr, bernard jackson, youth council, naacp boston br, to asw, apr , asw . (nt).] [footnote - : pittsburgh _courier_, may , .] [footnote - : ltr, charles g. bolte, chmn, amer vets cmte, to sw, mar ; see also ltr, ralph denat, corr secy, amer vets cmte, to sw, may , both in sw . (cmte) ( aug ).] clearly, opposition to segregation was not going to be overcome with palliatives and promises, yet petersen could only affirm that the gillem board report would mean significant change. he admitted segregation's tenacious hold on army thinking and that black units would continue to exist for some time, but he promised movement toward desegregation. he also made the army's usual distinction between segregation and discrimination. though there were many instances of unfair treatment during the war, he noted, these were individual matters, inconsistent with army policy, which "has consistently condemned discrimination." discrimination, he concluded, must be blamed on "defects" of enforcement, which would always exist to some degree in any organization as large as the army.[ - ] [footnote - : ltrs, asw to bernard h. solomon and to bernard jackson, apr , both in asw . .] actually, petersen's promised "movement" toward integration was likely to be a very slow process. so substantive a change in social practice, the army had always argued, required the sustained support of the american public, and judging from war department correspondence and press notices large segments of the public remained unaware of what the army was trying to do about its "negro problem." most military journalists continued to ignore the issue; perhaps they considered the subject of the employment of black troops unimportant compared with the problems of demobilization, atomic weaponry, and service unification. for example, in listing the principal military issues before the united states in the postwar period, military analyst hanson baldwin did not mention the employment of negroes in the service.[ - ] [footnote - : hanson baldwin, "wanted: an american military policy," _harper's_ (may ): - .] given the composition of the gillem board and the climate of opinion in the nation, the report was exemplary and fair, its conclusions progressive. if in the light of later developments the recommendations seem timid, even superficial, it should be remembered to its credit that the board at least made integration a long-range goal of the army and made permanent the wartime guarantee of a substantial black representation. nevertheless the ambiguities in the gillem board's recommendations would be useful to those commanders at all levels of the army who were devoted to the racial _status quo_. gillem and his colleagues (p.  ) discussed black soldiers in terms of social problems rather than military efficiency. as a result, their recommendations treated the problem from the standpoint of how best negroes could be employed within the traditional segregated framework even while they spoke of integration as an ultimate goal. they gave their blessing to the continued existence of segregated units and failed to inquire whether segregation might not be a factor in the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of black units and black soldiers. true, they sought to use qualified negroes in specialist jobs as a solution to better employment of black manpower, but this effort could have little practical effect. few were qualified--and determination of qualifications was often done by those with little sympathy for the negro and even less for the educated negro. black serviceman holding critical specialties and those assigned to overhead installations would never amount to more than a handful of men whose integration during duty hours only would fall far short even of tokenism. to point out as the board did that the policy it was recommending no longer required segregation was meaningless. until the army ordered integration, segregation, simply by virtue of inertia, would remain. as mccloy, along with gibson and others, warned, without a strong, explicit statement of intent by the army the changes in army practice suggested by the gillem board would be insignificant. the very acceptance of the board's report by officials traditionally opposed to integration should have been fair warning that the report would be difficult to use as a base for a progressive racial policy; in fact it could be used to justify almost any course of action. from the start, the war department encountered overwhelming difficulties in carrying out the board's recommendations, and five years later the ultimate objective was still out of reach. clearly, the majority of army officers viewed segregated service as the acceptable norm. general jacob l. devers, then commanding general of army ground forces, gave a clue to their view when he told his fellow officers in that "we are going to put colored battalions in white divisions. this is purely business--the social side will not be brought into it."[ - ] here then was the dilemma: was not the army a social institution as well as a fighting organization? the solution to the army's racial problems could not be achieved by ignoring the social implications. on both counts there was a reluctance among many professional soldiers to take in negroes. they registered acute social discomfort at the large influx of black soldiers, and many who had devoted their lives to military service had very real misgivings over using negroes in white combat units or forming new black combat units because they felt that black fighters in the air and on the ground had performed badly in the past. to entrust the fighting to negroes who had failed to prove their competence in this highest mission of the army seemed to them to threaten the institution itself. [footnote - : remarks by gen j. l. devers, armored conference report, may .] despite these shortcomings, the work of the gillem board was a progressive step in the history of army race relations. it broke with the assumption implicit in earlier army policy that the black soldier was inherently inferior by recommending that negroes be assigned (p.  ) tasks as varied and skilled as those handled by white soldiers. it also made integration the army's goal by declaring as official policy the ultimate employment of all manpower without regard to race. even the board's insistence on a racial quota, it could be argued, had its positive aspects, for in the end it was the presence of so many black soldiers in the korean war that finally ended segregation. in the meantime, controversy over the quota, whether it represented a floor supporting minimum black participation or a ceiling limiting black enlistment, continued unabated, providing the civil rights groups with a focal point for their complaints. no matter how hard the army tried to justify the quota, the quota increased the army's vulnerability to charges of discrimination. _integration of the general service_ the navy's postwar revision of racial policy, like the army's, was the inevitable result of its world war ii experience. inundated with unskilled and undereducated negroes in the middle of the war, the navy had assigned most of these men to segregated labor battalions and was surprised by the racial clashes that followed. as it began to understand the connection between large segregated units and racial tensions, the navy also came to question the waste of the talented negro in a system that denied him the job for which he was qualified. perhaps more to the point, the navy's size and mission made immediately necessary what the army could postpone indefinitely. unlike the army, the navy seriously modified its racial policy in the last year of the war, breaking up some of the large segregated units and integrating negroes in the specialist and officer training schools, in the waves, and finally in the auxiliary fleet and the recruit training centers. yet partial integration was not enough. lester granger's surveys and the studies of the secretary's special committee had demonstrated that the navy could resolve its racial problems only by providing equal treatment and opportunity. but the absurdity of trying to operate two equal navies, one black and one white, had been obvious during the war. only total integration of the general service could serve justice and efficiency, a conclusion the civil rights advocates had long since reached. after years of leaving the navy comparatively at peace, they now began to demand total integration. there was no assurance, however, that a move to integration was imminent when granger returned from his final inspection trip for secretary forrestal in october . both granger and the secretary's committee on negro personnel had endorsed the department's current practices, and granger had been generally optimistic over the reforms instituted toward the end of the war. admirals nimitz and king both endorsed granger's recommendations, although neither saw the need for further change.[ - ] for his part secretary forrestal seemed determined to maintain the momentum of reform. "what steps do we take," he (p.  ) asked the chief of naval personnel, "to correct the various practices ... which are not in accordance with navy standards?"[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, cincpac&poa to secnav via ch, navpers, oct , sub: negro naval personnel--pacific ocean areas, and d ind, cno, dec , same sub, both in p - /mm, opnavarchives.] [footnote - : memo, j. f. for adm jacobs, aug , - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] [illustration: admiral denfeld.] in response the bureau of naval personnel circulated the granger reports throughout the navy and ordered steps to correct practices identified by granger as "not in accordance with navy standards."[ - ] but it was soon apparent that the bureau would be selective in adopting granger's suggestions. in november, for example, the chief of naval personnel, admiral louis e. denfeld, arguing that officers "could handle black personnel without any special indoctrination," urged the secretary to reject granger's recommendation that an office be established in headquarters to deal exclusively with racial problems. at the same time some of the bureau's recruiting officials were informing negroes that their reenlistment in the regular navy was to be limited to the steward's branch.[ - ] with the help of admiral nimitz, chief of naval operations, forrestal quickly put an end to this recruiting practice, but he paid no further attention to racial matters except to demand in mid-december a progress report on racial reforms in the pacific area.[ - ] nor did he seem disturbed when the pacific commander reported a large number of all-black units, some with segregated recreational facilities, operating in the pacific area as part of the permanent postwar naval organization.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asst ch, navpers, for secnav, sep , sub: ur memo of august , , relative to lester b. granger ... - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] [footnote - : st ind, chief, navpers, to ltr, cincpac&poa to secnav, oct , sub: negro personnel--pacific ocean areas (ca. nov ), p - mm, opnavarchives; memo, m. f. correa (admin asst to secnav) for capt robert n. mcfarlane, nov , - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] [footnote - : forrestal's request for a progress report was circulated in cno dispatch z dec to cincpac&poa, quoted in nelson, "integration of the negro," p. .] [footnote - : memo, cincpac&poa for cno, jan , sub: negro naval personnel--pacific ocean areas, p /p , opnavarchives.] in the end the decision to integrate the general service came not from the secretary but from that bastion of military tradition, the bureau of naval personnel. despite the general reluctance of the bureau to liberalize the navy's racial policy, there had been all along some manpower experts who wanted to increase the number of specialties open to black sailors. capt. hunter wood, jr., for example, suggested in january that the bureau make plans for an expansion in assignments for negroes. wood's proposal fell on the sympathetic ears of admiral denfeld, who considered the granger recommendations (p.  ) practical for the postwar navy. denfeld, of course, was well aware that these recommendations had been endorsed by admirals king and nimitz as well as forrestal, and he himself had gone on record as believing that negroes in the peacetime navy should lose none of the opportunities opened to them during the war.[ - ] [footnote - : admiral denfeld's statement to the black press representatives in this regard is referred to in memo, capt h. wood, jr., for chief, navpers, jan , p - /mm, bupersrecs.] denfeld had had considerable experience with the navy's evolving racial policy in his wartime assignment as assistant chief of personnel where his principal concern had been the efficient distribution and assignment of men. he particularly objected to the fact that current regulations complicated what should have been the routine transfer of sailors. simple control procedures for the segregation of negroes in general service had been effective when negroes were restricted to particular shore stations and duties, he told admiral nimitz on january , but now that negroes were frequently being transferred from shore to sea and from ship to ship the restriction of negroes to auxiliary ships was becoming extremely difficult to manage and was also "noticeably contrary to the non-differentiation policy enunciated by the secretary of the navy." the only way to execute that policy effectively and maintain efficiency, he concluded, was to integrate the general service completely. denfeld pointed out that the admission of negroes to the auxiliary fleet had caused little friction in the navy and passed almost unnoticed by the press. secretary forrestal had promised to extend the use of negroes throughout the entire fleet if the preliminary program proved practical, and the time had come to fulfill that promise. he would start with "the removal of restrictions governing the type of duty to which general service negroes can be assigned," but would limit the number of negroes on any ship or at any shore station to a percentage no greater than that of general service negroes throughout the navy.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, chief, navpers, to cno, jan , sub: assignment of negro personnel, p - mm, bupersrecs.] with the enlistment of the chief of naval personnel in the cause, the move to an integrated general service was assured. on february the navy published circular letter - : "effective immediately all restrictions governing types of assignments for which negro naval personnel are eligible are hereby lifted. henceforth, they shall be eligible for all types of assignments in all ratings in all activities and all ships of naval service." the letter went on to specify that "in housing, messing, and other facilities, there would be no special accommodations for negroes." it also directed a redistribution of personnel by administrative commands so that by october no ship or naval activity would be more than percent negro. the single exception would be the naval academy, where a large contingent of black stewards would be left intact to serve the midshipmen's meals. the publication of circular letter - was an important step in the navy's racial history. in less than one generation, in fewer years actually than the average sailor's service life, the navy had made a complete about-face. in a sense the new policy was a service (p.  ) reform rather than a social revolution; after a -year hiatus integration had once again become the navy's standard racial policy. since headlines are more often reserved for revolutions than reformations, the new policy attracted little attention. the metropolitan press gave minimum coverage to the event and never bothered to follow later developments. for the most part the black press treated the navy's announcement with skepticism. on behalf of secretary forrestal, lester granger invited twenty-three leading black editors and publishers to inspect ships in the fleet as well as shore activities to see for themselves the changes being made. not one accepted. as one veteran put it, the editors shrank from praising the navy's policy change for fear of being proved hasty. they preferred to remain on safe ground, "givin' 'em hell."[ - ] [footnote - : as reported in ltr, granger to author, jun , cmh files.] the editors had every reason to be wary: integration was seriously circumscribed in the new directive, which actually offered few guarantees of immediate change. applying only to enlisted men in the shore establishment and on ships, the directive ignored the navy's all-white officer corps and its nonwhite servants branch of stewards. aimed at abolishing discrimination in the service, it failed to guarantee either through enlistment, assignment guidelines, or specific racial quotas a fair proportion of black sailors in the postwar navy. finally, the order failed to create administrative machinery to carry out the new policy. in a very real sense the new policy mirrored tradition. it was naval tradition to have black sailors in the integrated ranks and a separate messman's branch. the return to this tradition embodied in the order complemented forrestal's philosophy of change as an outgrowth of self-realized reform. at the same time naval tradition did not include the concept of high-ranking black officers, white servants, and negroes in specialized assignments. here forrestal's hope of self-reform did not materialize, and equal treatment and opportunity for negroes in the navy remained an elusive goal. but forrestal and his military subordinates made enough of a start to draw the fire of white segregationists. the secretary answered charges and demands in a straightforward manner. when, for example, a congressman complained that "white boys are being forced to sleep with these negroes," forrestal explained that men were quartered and messed aboard ship according to their place in the ship's organization without regard to race. the navy made no attempt to prescribe the nature or extent of their social relationships, which were beyond the scope of its authority. although forrestal expressed himself as understanding the strong feelings of some americans on this matter, he made it clear that the navy had finally decided segregation was the surest way to emphasize and perpetuate the gap between the races and had therefore adopted a policy of integration.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, congressman stephen pace of georgia to forrestal, jun ; ltr, forrestal to pace, aug , both in - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav.] what forrestal said was true, but the translation of the navy's postwar racial policy into the widespread practice of equal treatment and opportunity for negroes was still before him and his officers. (p.  ) to achieve it they would have to fight the racism common in many segments of american society as well as bureaucratic inertia. if put into practice the new policy might promote the efficient use of naval manpower and give the navy at least a brief respite from the criticism of civil rights advocates, but because of forrestal's failure to give clear-cut direction--a characteristic of his approach to racial reform--the navy might well find itself proudly trumpeting a new policy while continuing its old racial practices. _the marine corps_ as part of the naval establishment, the marine corps fell under the strictures of secretary forrestal's announced policy of racial nondiscrimination.[ - ] at the same time the marine corps was administratively independent of the chief of naval operations and the chief of naval personnel, and circular letter - , which desegregated the navy's general service, did not apply to the corps. in the development of manpower policy the corps was responsible to the navy, in organization it closely resembled the army, but in size and tradition it was unique. each of these factors contributed to the development of the corps' racial policy and helped explain its postwar racial practices. [footnote - : the latest pronouncement of that policy was alnav - .] because of the similarities in organization and mission between the army and the marine corps, the commandant leaned toward the army's solution for racial problems. the army staff had contended that racially separate service was not discriminatory so long as it was equal, and through its gillem board policy it accepted the responsibility of guaranteeing that negroes would be represented in equitable numbers and their treatment and opportunity would be similar to that given whites. since the majority of marines served in the ground units of the fleet marine force, organized like the army in regiments, battalions, and squadrons with tables of organization and equipment, the formation of racially separate units presented no great problem. although the marine corps was similar to the army in organization, it was very different in size and tradition. with a postwar force of little more than , men, the corps was hardly able to guarantee its segregated negroes equal treatment and opportunity in terms of specialized training and variety of assignment. again in contrast to the army and navy with their long tradition of negroes in service, the marine corps, with a few unauthorized exceptions, had been an exclusively white organization since . this habit of racial exclusion was strengthened by those feelings of intimacy and fraternity natural to any small bureaucracy. in effect the marines formed a small club in which practically everybody knew everybody else and was reluctant to admit strangers.[ - ] racial exclusion often warred with the corps' clear duty to provide the fair and equal service for all americans authorized by the secretary of the navy. at one point the commandant, general alexander vandegrift, even had (p.  ) to remind his local commanders that black marines would in fact be included in the postwar corps.[ - ] [footnote - : see usmc oral history interviews, lt gen james l. underhill, mar , and lt gen ray a. robinson, mar , both in hist div, hqmc.] [footnote - : memo, co, th marine depot co., fifth service depot, second fmf, pacific, for cmc, nov , with inds, sub: information concerning peacetime colored marine corps, request for; memos, cmc for cg, fmf (pacific), et al., dec , sub: voluntary enlistments, negro marines, in regular marine corps, assignment of quotas; idem for cmdr, mcab, cherry point, n.c., et al., dec . unless otherwise noted, all documents cited in this section are located in hist div, hqmc.] one other factor influenced the policy deliberations of the marine corps: its experiences with black marines during world war ii. overshadowing the praise commanders gave the black depot companies were reports of the trials and frustrations suffered by those who trained the large black combat units. many negroes trained long and hard for antiaircraft duty, yet a senior group commander found them ill-suited to the work because of "emotional instability and lack of appreciation of materiel." one battery commander cited the "mechanical ineptitude" of his men; another fell back on "racial characteristics of the negro as a whole" to explain his unit's difficulty.[ - ] embodying rash generalization and outright prejudice, the reports of these commanders circulated in marine corps headquarters, also revealed that a large group of black marines experienced enough problems in combat training to cast serious doubt on the reliability of the defense battalions. this doubt alone could explain the corps' decision to relegate the units to the backwaters of the war zone. seeing only the immediate shortcomings of the large black combat units, most commanders ignored the underlying reasons for the failure. the controversial commander of the st defense battalion, col. curtis w. legette,[ - ] however, gave his explanation to the commandant in some detail. he reported that more than half the men in the st as it prepared for overseas deployment--most of them recent draftees--were in the two lowest categories, iv and v, for either general classification or mechanical aptitude. that some of the noncommissioned officers of the units were also in categories iv and v was the result of the unit's effort to carry out the commandant's order to replace white noncommissioned officers as quickly as possible. the need to develop black noncommissioned officers was underscored by legette, who testified to a growing resentment among his black personnel at the assignment of new white noncoms. symptomatic of the unit's basic problems in was what legette called an evolving "occupational neurosis" among white officers forced to serve for lengthy periods with black marines.[ - ] [footnote - : aaa gp, st defense bn, fmf, montford pt., gp cmdr's endorsement on annual record practice, year , dec ; aaa gp, st defense bn, fmf, montford pt., battery cmdr's narrative report of record practice, , dec ; idem, battery cmdr's narrative rpt (signed r. h. twisdale) (ca. dec ).] [footnote - : for the extensive charges and countercharges concerning the controversy between colonel legette and his predecessor in the st, see files of hist div, hqmc.] [footnote - : memo, co, st defense bn, fmf, for cmc, jul , sub: combat efficiency, fifty-first defense battalion, serial .] the marines experienced far fewer racial problems than either the army or navy during the war, but the difficulties that occurred were nonetheless important in the development of postwar racial policy. the basic cause of race problems was the rigid concentration of (p.  ) often undertrained and undereducated men, who were subjected to racial slurs and insensitive treatment by some white officials and given little chance to serve in preferred military specialties or to advance in the labor or defense units or steward details to which they were invariably consigned. but this basic cause was ignored by marine corps planners when they discussed the postwar use of negroes. they preferred to draw other lessons from the corps' wartime experience. the employment of black marines in small, self-contained units performing traditional laboring tasks was justified precisely because the average black draftee was less well-educated and experienced in the use of the modern equipment. furthermore, the correctness of this procedure seemed to be demonstrated by the fact that the corps had been relatively free of the flare-ups that plagued the other services. many officials would no doubt have preferred to eliminate race problems by eliminating negroes from the corps altogether. failing this, they were determined that regular black marines continue to serve in those assignments performed by black marines during the war: in service units, stewards billets, and a few antiaircraft artillery units, the postwar successors to defense battalions.[ - ] [footnote - : shaw and donnelly, _blacks in the marine corps_, pp - ; interv, james westfall with col curtis w. legette (usmc, ret.), feb , copy in cmh.] [illustration: general thomas.] the development of a postwar racial policy to carry out the navy department's nondiscrimination order in the marine corps fell to the division of plans and policies and its director, brig. gen. gerald c. thomas. it was a complicated task, and general thomas and his staff after some delay established a series of guidelines intended to steer a middle path between exclusion and integration that would be nondiscriminatory. in addition to serving in the steward's branch, which contained percent of all blacks in the corps, negroes would serve in segregated units in every branch of the corps, and their strength would total some , men. this quota would not be like that established in the army, which was pegged to the number of black soldiers during the war and which ultimately was based on national population ratios. the marine corps ratio of blacks to whites would be closer to in and would merely represent the estimated number of billets that might be filled by negroes in self-sustaining segregated units. the directorate also established a table of distribution plan that for the first time provided for black regular marines in aviation units and several other marine corps activities. aviation units alone (p.  ) accounted for percent of the marines in the postwar corps, general thomas contended, and must absorb their proportionate share of black strength. further, the navy's policy of nondiscrimination demanded that all types of assignments be opened to black marines. segregation "best suits the needs of the marine corps," general thomas concluded. ignoring the possibility of black officers and women marines, he thought that the opening of all specialties and types of duty to the enlisted ranks would find the marine corps "paralleling navy policy."[ - ] clearly, the division of plans and policies wanted the corps to adopt a formula roughly analogous to the gillem board's separate but equal system without that body's provisions for a fixed quota, black officers, or some integrated service. [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, apr , sub: negro personnel in the post-war marine corps. this memo was not submitted for signature and was superseded by a memo of may .] but even this concession to nondiscrimination was never approved, for the plans and policies division ran afoul of a basic fact of segregation: the postwar strength of many elements of the marine corps was too small to support separate racial units. the director of aviation, for example, argued that because of the size and nature of his operation, segregated service was impossible. a substantial number of his enlisted men also did double duty by serving in air stations where negroes could not be segregated, he explained. only completely separate aviation units, police and maintenance, and construction units would be available for negroes, a state of affairs "which would be open to adverse criticism." he recommended instead that negroes in aviation be used only as stewards.[ - ] he failed to explain how this solution would escape adverse criticism. [footnote - : memos, dir, aviation, for cmc, apr , sub: negro personnel in the post-war marine corps, and may , sub: enlistment of negroes "for duty in aviation units only."] general thomas rejected these proposals, repeating that secretary forrestal's nondiscrimination policy demanded that a separate but equal system be extended throughout the marine corps. he also borrowed one of the gillem board's arguments: negroes must be trained in the postwar military establishment in every occupation to serve as a cadre for future general mobilizations.[ - ] thomas did not mention the fact that although large branches such as fleet marine force aviation could maintain separate but equal living facilities for its black marines, even they would have to provide partially integrated training and working conditions. and the smaller organizations in the corps would be forced to integrate fully if forced to accept black marines. in short, if the corps wanted segregation it must pay the price of continued discrimination against black marines in terms of numbers enlisted and occupations assigned. [footnote - : div of plans and policies (signed g. c. thomas), consideration of non-concurrence, may , attached to memo, dir, aviation, for cmc, apr .] the choice was left to commandant vandegrift. one solution to the "negro question," general thomas told him, was complete integration and the abolition of racial quotas, but thomas did not press this solution. instead, he reviewed for vandegrift the racial policies of the other services, pointing out that these policies had more often been devised to "appease the negro press and other 'interested' (p.  ) agencies than to satisfy their own needs." until the matter was settled on a "higher level," thomas concluded, the services were not required to go further than had been their custom, and until vandegrift decided on segregation or integration, setting quotas for the different branches in the corps was inappropriate. thomas himself recommended that segregated units be adopted and that a quota be devised only after each branch of the corps reported how many negroes it could use in segregated units.[ - ] vandegrift approved thomas's recommendation for segregated black units, and the marine corps lost the chance, temporarily, to adopt a policy in line with either the navy's limited and integrated system or the army's separate but equal system. [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, may , sub: negro personnel in the post-war marine corps.] general thomas spent the summer collecting and reviewing the proposals of the corps' various components for the employment of black marines. on the basis of this review general vandegrift approved a postwar policy for the employment of negroes in the marine corps on september . the policy called for the enlistment of , negroes, as stewards, the rest to serve in separate units, chiefly in ground security forces of the fleet marine force in guam and saipan and in marine corps activities of the naval shore establishment. no negroes except stewards would serve in marine aviation, marine forces afloat, or, with the exception of service depots, in the marine logistic establishment.[ - ] [footnote - : idem for cmc, sep , sub: post-war negro personnel requirements. for examples of the proposals submitted by the various components, see memo, f. d. beans, g- , for g- , aug , sub: employment of colored personnel in the fleet marine force (ground) (less service ground) and in training activities; memo, lt col schmuck, g- , for col stiles, jun , sub: utilization of negro personnel in post-war infantry units of the fleet marine force; memo, qmc for cmc, sep , sub: negro personnel in the post-war marine corps.] the policy was in effect by january . in the end the marine corps' white-only tradition had proved strong enough to resist the progressive impulses that were pushing the other services toward some relaxation of their segregation policies. committed to limiting negroes to a token representation and employing black marines in rigidly self-contained units, the marine corps could not establish a quota for negroes based on national racial proportions and could offer no promise of equal treatment and opportunity in work assignments and promotions. thus all the services emerged from their deliberations with postwar policies that were markedly different in several respects but had in common a degree of segregation. the army, declaring that military efficiency demanded ultimate integration, temporized, guaranteeing as a first step an intricate system of separate but equal treatment and opportunity for negroes. the marine corps began with the idea that separate but equal service was not discriminatory, but when equal service proved unattainable, black marines were left with separatism alone. the navy announced the most progressive policy of all, providing for integration of its general service. yet it failed to break the heavy concentration of negroes in the steward's branch, (p.  ) where no whites served. and unlike the segregated army, the integrated navy, its admission standards too high to encourage black enlistments, did not guarantee to take any black officers or specialists. none of these policies provided for the equal treatment and opportunity guaranteed to every black serviceman under the constitution, although the racial practices of all the services stood far in advance of those of most institutions in the society from which they were derived. the very weaknesses and inadequacies inherent in these policies would in themselves become a major cause of the reforms that were less than a decade away. chapter (p.  ) a problem of quotas the war department encountered overwhelming problems when it tried to put the gillem board's recommendations into practice, and in the end only parts of the new policy for the use of black manpower were ever carried out. the policy foundered for a variety of reasons: some implicit in the nature of the policy itself, others the result of manpower exigencies, and still others because of prejudices lingering in the staff, the army, and the nation at large. even before the army postwar racial policy was published in war department circular on april it met formidable opposition in the staff. although secretary patterson had approved the new course of action, the assistant chief of staff for personnel, general paul, sent a copy of what he called the "proposed" policy to the army air forces for further comment.[ - ] the response of the air commander, general carl spaatz, revealed that he too considered the policy still open for discussion. he suggested that the army abandon the quota in favor of admitting men on the basis of intelligence and professional ability and forbid enlistment to anyone scoring below eighty in the entry tests. he wanted the composite organizations of black and white units recommended by the board held to a minimum, and none smaller than an air group--a regimental-size unit. black combat units should have only black service units in support. in fact, spaatz believed that most black units should be service units, and he wanted to see negroes employed in overhead assignments only where and when their specialties were needed. he did not want jobs created especially for them.[ - ] [footnote - : df, acofs, g- , to cg, aaf, mar , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the postwar army, wdgap . .] [footnote - : memo, cg, aaf, for acofs, g- , apr , sub: utilization of manpower in the postwar army, wdgap . .] these were not the only portents of difficulty for the new policy. before its publication general paul had announced that he would not establish a staff group on racial affairs as called for by the gillem board. citing manpower shortages and the small volume of work he envisaged, paul planned instead to divide such duties between his welfare branch and military personnel services group.[ - ] the concept of a central authority for the direction of racial policy was further weakened in april when paul invited the assistant chief of staff for organization and training, general edwards, one of whose primary tasks was to decide the size and number of military units, to share responsibility for carrying out the recommendations of the gillem board.[ - ] [footnote - : df, acofs, g- , to asw, mar , sub: implementation of wd cir , wdgap . .] [footnote - : idem to acofs, g- , apr , sub: implementation of wd cir , wdgap . .] assistant secretary petersen was perturbed at the mounting (p.  ) evidence of opposition. specifically, he believed spaatz's comments indicated a lack of accord with army policy, and he wanted the army air forces told that "these basic matters are no longer open for discussion." he also wanted to establish a troop basis that would lead, without the imposition of arbitrary percentages, to the assignment of a "fair proportion" of black troops to all major commands and their use in all kinds of duties in all the arms and services. petersen considered the composite unit one of the most important features of the new policy, and he wanted "at least a few" such units organized soon. he mentioned the assignment of a black parachute battalion to the d airborne division as a good place to begin. petersen had other concerns. he was distressed at the dearth of black specialists in overhead detachments, and he wondered why war department circular , which provided for the assignment of men to critically needed specialties, explicitly excluded negroes.[ - ] he wanted the circular revised. above all, petersen feared the new policy might falter from a lack of aggressive leadership. he estimated that at first it would require at least the full attention of several officers under the leadership of an "aggressive officer who knows the army and has its confidence and will take an active interest in vigorous enforcement of the program."[ - ] by implication petersen was asking general paul to take the lead. [footnote - : wd cir , apr .] [footnote - : memo, asw for acofs, g- , apr , asw . .] within a week of petersen's comments on leadership, paul had revised circular , making its provisions applicable to all enlisted men, regardless of race or physical profile.[ - ] a few days later, he was assuring petersen that general spaatz's comments were "inconsistent with the approved recommendations" and were being disregarded.[ - ] paul also repeated the principal points of the new policy for the major commanders, especially those dealing with composite units and overhead assignments for black specialists. he stressed that, whenever possible, negroes should be assigned to places where local community attitudes were most favorable and no undue burden would be imposed on local civilian facilities.[ - ] [footnote - : g- summary sheet for cofs, may , sub: changes to wd cir , , wdgap . . revision appeared as wd circular , may .] [footnote - : df, acofs, g- , to asw, may , sub: utilization of negro manpower in postwar army, wdgap . .] [footnote - : ltr, tag to cg's, agf, aaf, and asf, may , sub: utilization of negro manpower in postwar army, agam-pm . ( apr ); idem to cg's, jun , same sub, same file ( jun ).] general paul believed the principal impediment to practical application of the new policy was not so much the opposition of field commanders as the fact that many black units continued to perform poorly. he agreed with marcus ray, civilian aide to the secretary of war, who had predicted as early as january that the success of the gillem board's recommendations would depend on how many negroes of higher than average ability the armed forces could attract and retain. ray reasoned that among the negroes enlisting in the regular army-- percent of the total--were large numbers of noncommissioned (p.  ) officers in the three highest grades whose abilities were limited. they were able to maintain their ratings, usually in service units, because their duties required knowledge of neither administration nor weapons. truckmasters, foremen, riggers, and the like, they rushed to reenlist in order to freeze themselves in grade. since many of these men were in the two lowest test categories, they could not supply the leaders needed for black units. ray wanted to replace these men with better educated enlistees who could be used on the broadened professional base recommended by the gillem board. to that end he wanted the army to test all enlisted men, discharge those below minimum standards, and launch a recruiting campaign to attract better qualified men, both black and white.[ - ] for his part, paul also deplored the enlistment of men who were, in his words, "mentally incapable of development into the specialists, technicians, and instructors that we must have in the post-war regular army."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, marcus h. ray for asw, jan , asw . .] [footnote - : memo, acofs, g- , for cofs, jan , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the postwar army, wdgap . .] [illustration: general paul.] here, even before the new racial policy was published, the army staff ran head on into the realities of postwar manpower needs. in a rapid demobilization, the army was critically short of troops, particularly for overseas replacements, and it could maintain troop strength only by accepting all the men it could get. until paul had more definite information on the future operations of selective service and the rate of voluntary regular army enlistments, he would have to postpone action to curtail the admission of low-scoring men. so pressing were the army's needs that paul could do nothing to guarantee that black strength would not greatly exceed the percent figure suggested by the gillem board. he anticipated that by july the regular and active reserve components of the army would together be approximately percent black, a percentage impossible to avoid if the army was to retain . million men. since all planning had been based on a percent black strength, plans would have to be revised to make use of the excess. in february the chief of staff approved general paul's program: negroes would continue to be drafted at the percent ratio; at the same time their enlistment in the regular army would continue without restriction on numbers. negroes would be limited to percent of the overseas commands, and the continental commands (p.  ) would absorb all the rest.[ - ] [footnote - : df, acofs, g- , jan , sub: utilization of negro personnel, wdgap . ( jan ); ltr, tag to cg's, major forces, and overseas cmdrs, feb , same sub, ag . ( jan ) ob-s-a-m.] paul's program for absorbing negroes faced rough going, for the already complex manpower situation was further complicated by limitations on the use of negroes in certain overseas theaters and the demands of the war department's major commands. the army was prohibited by an agreement with the state department from sending negroes to the panama canal zone; it also respected an unwritten agreement that barred black servicemen from iceland, the azores, and china.[ - ] since the war department was unable to use negroes everywhere, the areas where they could be used had to take more. the increase in black troops provoked considerable discussion in the large pacific and european commands because it entailed separate housing, transportation, and care for dependents--all the usual expensive trappings of segregation. theater commanders also faced additional problems in public relations and management. as one war department staff officer claimed, black units required more than normal administration, stricter policing, and closer supervision. this in turn demanded additional noncommissioned officers, and "more negro bodies must be maintained to produce equivalent results."[ - ] [footnote - : g- memo for rcd, col coyne, operations gp, feb , wdgap . ; prohibitions for certain areas are discussed in detail in chapter .] [footnote - : memo, actg chief, pac theater sec, opd, for maj gen h. a. craig, dep acofs, opd, feb , sub: utilization of negro manpower, wdgot . .] both commands protested the war department decision. representatives from the european theater arrived in washington in mid-february to propose a black strength of . rather than the prescribed percent. seeking to determine where black soldiers could be used "with the least harmful effect on theater operations," they discovered in conferences with representatives of the war department staff only the places negroes were not to be used: in infantry units, in the constabulary, which acted as a border patrol and occupation police, in highly technical services, or as supervisors of white civilian laborers.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, chief, eur sec, opd, for maj gen howard a. craig, dep acofs, opd, feb , sub: utilization of negro personnel, wdgot . .] the commander of army forces, pacific, was even more insistent on a revision, asking how he could absorb so many negroes when his command was already scheduled to receive , philippine scouts and , negroes in the second half of . these two groups, which the command considered far less adaptable than white troops to occupational duties, would together make up about percent of the command's total strength. although philippine scouts in the theater never exceeded , , the command's protest achieved some success. the war department agreed to reduce black troops in the pacific to percent by january and percent by july .[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, lt col french, theater group, opd, may , sub: negro enlisted strength, pacific theater, , wdgot . . for a discussion of the philippine scouts in the pacific theater, see robert ross smith, "the status of philippine military forces during world war ii," cmh files.] no sooner had the demands of the overseas theaters been dealt with (p.  ) than the enlarged black quotas came under attack from the commanders of major forces. instead of planning to absorb more negroes, the army air forces wanted to divest itself of some black units on the premise that unskilled troops were a liability in a highly technical service. general spaatz reported that some percent of all his black troops stationed in the united states in january were performing the duties of unskilled laborers and that very few could be trained for skilled tasks. he predicted that the army air forces would soon have an even higher percentage of low-scoring negroes because percent of all men enlisting in his regular army units--expected to reach a total of , men by july --were black. to forestall this increase in "undesirable and uneconomical" troops, he wanted to stop inducting negroes into the army air forces and suspend all black enlistments in the regular army.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cg, aaf, for acofs, g- , jan , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the postwar army, wdgap . .] the army air forces elaborated on these arguments in the following months, refining both its estimates and demands. specifically, its manpower officials estimated that to reach the percent black strength ordered by july the air forces would have to take , negroes into units that could efficiently use only , men. this embarrassment of more than , unusable men, the army air forces claimed, would require eliminating tactical units and creating additional quartermaster car companies, mess platoons, and other service organizations.[ - ] the air staff wanted to eliminate the unwanted , black airmen by raising to eighty the minimum classification test score for regular army enlistment in the army air forces. in the end it retreated from this proposal, and on february requested permission to use the , negroes in service units, but over and above its , -man troop basis. it promised to absorb all these men into the troop basis by june .[ - ] [footnote - : memo, brig gen william metheny, off, commitments div, acofs air staff- , for acofs air staff- , feb , wdgot . .] [footnote - : df, dcofas (maj gen c. c. chauncey) to g- feb , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the postwar army, wdgot . .] the army staff rejected this plan on the grounds that any excess allowed above the current air forces troop basis would have to be balanced by a corresponding and unacceptable deficit in the army ground forces and army service forces.[ - ] the army air forces countered with a proposal to discharge all black enlistees in excess of air forces requirements in the european theater who would accept discharge. it had in mind a group of , negroes recently enlisted for a three-year period, who, in accordance with a lure designed to stimulate such enlistments, had chosen assignment in the air forces and a station in europe. with a surplus of black troops, the air forces found itself increasingly unable to fulfill the "overseas theater of choice" enlistment contract. since some men would undoubtedly refuse to serve anywhere but europe, the air staff (p.  ) reasoned, why not offer a discharge to all men who preferred separation over service elsewhere? [footnote - : memo, actg acofs, g- , for cg, aaf, mar , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the postwar army, wdgot . .] again the army staff turned down a request for a reduction in black troops. this time the air forces bowed to the inevitable-- percent of its enlisted strength black--but grudgingly, for a quota of , negroes, general spaatz charged, "seriously jeopardizes the ability of the aaf to perform its assigned mission."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, acofs, g- , for cg, aaf, mar , sub: authorized military personnel as of december and june , wdgot . ( mar ); df, cg, aaf, to acofs, g- , mar , same sub, wdgot . ( feb ).] the army service forces also objected. when queried,[ - ] the chiefs of its technical and administrative services all agreed they could use only small percentages of black troops, and only those men in the higher categories of the classification test. from the replies of the chiefs it was plain that none of the technical services planned to use negroes in as much as percent of spaces, and several wanted to exclude black units altogether. furthermore, the test qualifications they wanted set for many jobs were consistently higher than those achieved by the men then performing the tasks. the staff of the army service forces went so far as to advocate that no more than . percent of the overhead and miscellaneous positions in the army service forces be entrusted to black troops.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, actg dir, plans and policy, asf, for pmg et al., may , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the postwar army, ag . ( may ).] [footnote - : the replies of the individual technical and administrative service chiefs, along with the response of the asf personnel director, are inclosed in memo, chief, plans and policy off, dir of ss&p, for dir, o&t, jun , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the postwar army, wdgsp . (negro).] these answers failed to impress the war department's director of personnel and administration and the director of organization and training.[ - ] both agreed that the technical and administrative services had failed to appreciate the problems and responsibilities outlined in war department circular ; the assumption that black troops would not be used in certain types of duty in the future because they had not been so used in the past was unwarranted, general paul added. limited or token employment of negroes, he declared, was no longer acceptable.[ - ] [footnote - : under wd circular , may , the war department general staff was reorganized, and many of its offices, including g- and g- , were redesignated as of june . for an extended discussion of these changes, see james e. hewes, jr., _from root to mcnamara: army organization and administration, - _ (washington: government printing office, ), chapter iv.] [footnote - : df, d/ot to d/pa, jul , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the postwar army, wdgot . ( jun ); df, d/pa to d/ot, jul , same sub, wdgap . ( jul ).] yet somehow the reality of black enlistments and inductions in never quite matched the army's dire predictions. according to plans for april , negroes in the continental united states would comprise . percent of the army service forces, . percent of the army ground forces, and percent of the army air forces. actually, negroes in continental commands on april made up . percent of the army service forces, . percent of the army ground forces, and . percent of the army air forces. the , black soldiers amounted to . percent of all troops based in the united states; overseas, the , negroes constituted . percent of american (p.  ) force. altogether, the , negroes in the army amounted to . percent of the whole.[ - ] [footnote - : strength of the army (stm- ), may ; see also memo, acofs, g- , for chief, mpd, asf, jun , sub: utilization of negro personnel, wdgpa . . ( jul ).] _the quota in practice_ while the solution to the problem of too many black enlistees and too many low-scoring men was obvious, it was also replete with difficulty. the difficulty came from the complex way the army obtained its manpower. it accepted volunteers for enlistment in the regular army and qualified veterans for the organized reserves; until november it also drafted men through the selective service and accepted volunteers for the draft.[ - ] at the same time, under certain conditions it accepted enlistment in the regular army of drafted men who had completed their tours. to curtail enlistment of negroes and discharge low-scoring professionals, the army would be obliged to manipulate the complex regulations governing the various forms of enlistment and sidestep the egalitarian provisions of the selective service system at a time when the service was trying to attract recruits and avoid charges of racial discrimination. altogether it was quite a large order, and during the next two years the army fought the battle of numbers on many fronts. [footnote - : volunteers for the draft were men classified -a by selective service who were allowed to sign up for immediate duty often in the service of their choice. the volunteer for the draft was only obliged to serve for the shorter period imposed on the draftee rather than the -month enlistment for the regular army.] it first took on the draft. although to stop inducting negroes when the administration was trying to persuade congress to extend the draft act was politically unwise, the army saw no way to restrict the number of negroes or eliminate substandard men so long as selective service insisted on percent black calls and a minimum classification test score of seventy. in april the army issued a call for , men, boldly specifying that no negroes would be accepted. out of the battle of memos with selective service that followed, a compromise emerged: a black call of percent of the total in april, a return to the usual percent call for negroes in may, and another percent call in june.[ - ] no draft calls were issued in july and august, but in september the army staff tried again, canceling the call for negroes and rejecting black volunteers for induction.[ - ] again it encountered resistance from the selective service and the black community, and when the secretary of war was sued for violation of the selective service act the army issued a percent call for negroes in october, the last call made under the draft law. in all, , negroes were drafted into the army in , some . percent of the total.[ - ] [footnote - : report of the director, office of selective service review, march , table , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, chief, manpower control gp, d/pa, for tag, sep , utilization of negro manpower in postwar army, wdgpa . ; d/pa memo for rcd, sep . wdgpa . ( sep - dec ).] [footnote - : figures vary for the number actually drafted; those given above are from selective service monograph no. , _special groups_, appendix, p. . see also "review of the month," _a monthly summary of events and trends in race relations_ (october ): .] the army had more success restricting black enlistments. in april (p.  ) , at the same time it adopted the gillem board recommendations, the army began to deny enlistment or reenlistment in the regular army to anyone scoring below seventy on the army general classification test. the only exceptions were men who had been decorated for valor and men with previous service who had scored sixty-five and were recommended for reenlistment by their commanders.[ - ] the army also stopped enlisting men with active venereal disease, not because the medical department was unable to cure them but because by and large their educational levels were low and, according to the classification tests, they had little aptitude for learning. the army stopped recruiting men for special stations, hoping a denial of the european theater and other attractive assignments would lower the number of unwanted recruits. [footnote - : wd cir , apr .] using the new enlistment standards as a base, the army quickly revised its estimated black strength downward. on april the secretary of war rescinded the order requiring major commands to retain a black strength of percent.[ - ] the acting g- had already informed the commanding general of the army air forces of the predicted drop in the number of black troops--from . percent in june to percent a year later--and agreed the army air forces could reduce its planned intake accordingly.[ - ] estimating the european theater's capacity to absorb black troops at , men, approximately percent of the command total, the army staff agreed to readjust its planned allotment of negroes to that command downward by some , spaces.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, tag to cg, aaf, et al., apr , sub: utilization of negro personnel, agao-s-a-m . ( apr ).] [footnote - : memo, actg acofs, g- , for cg, aaf, apr , sub: utilization of negro personnel, wdgot . ( feb ).] [footnote - : memo, acofs, opd, for cofs, may , sub: augmentation of the eto ceiling strengths as of jul (less aaf), wdcsa . ( ).] these changes proved ill-advised, for the effort to curb the number of negroes in the regular army was largely unsuccessful. the staff had overlooked the ineffectiveness of the army's testing measures and the zeal of its recruiters who, pressed to fill their quotas, accepted enlistees without concern for the new standards. by mid-june the effect was readily apparent. the european theater, for example, reported some , negroes in excess of billets in black units and some , men above the theater's current allotment of black troops. assignment of negroes to europe had been stopped, but the number of black regulars waiting for overseas assignment stood at , , a figure expected to double by the end of the summer. some of this excess could be absorbed in eight newly created black units, but that still left black units worldwide to percent overstrength.[ - ] [footnote - : g- memo for rcd (signed col e. l. heyduck, enl div), jun , wdgap . ; see also eucom hist div (prepared by margaret l. geis), "negro personnel in the european command, january - june ," occupation forces in europe series (historical division, european command, ) (hereafter geis monograph), pp. - , copy in cmh.] notice that negroes totaled percent of the regular army on july with the personnel staff's projections running to a percent level for the next year precipitated action in the war department. (p.  ) on july marcus ray and dean rusk, special assistant to the assistant secretary of war, met with representatives of the army staff to discuss black strength. basing his decision on the consensus of that meeting, the secretary of war on july suspended enlistment of negroes in the regular army. he excepted two categories of men from this ruling. men who qualified and had actually served for six months in any of forty-eight unusual military occupational specialties in which there were chronic manpower shortages would be enlisted without promise of specific assignment to branch or station. at the same time, because of manpower shortages, the army would continue to accept negroes, already regulars, who wanted to reenlist.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, tag to cg, each army, et al., jul , sub: enlistment of negroes, agse-p . ( jul ); d/pa summary sheet to cofs, jul , sub: enlistment of negroes in regular army, wdgpa . .] [illustration: marcus ray.] while the new enlistment policy would help restore the gillem board's quantitative equilibrium to the army, the secretary's exception allowing reenlistment of regulars would only intensify the qualitative imbalance between black and white soldiers. the nation's biracial educational system had produced an average black soldier who scored well below the average white soldier on all the army's educational and training tests. the segregation policy had only complicated the problem by denying the talented negro the full range of army occupations and hence an equal chance for advancement. with the suspension of first-time enlistments, the qualitative imbalance was sure to grow, for now the highly qualified civilian would be passed over while the less qualified soldier was permitted to reenlist. this imbalance was of particular concern to marcus ray who was present when the suspension of black enlistments had been decided upon. ray had suggested that instead of barring all new enlistees the army should discharge all class v soldiers, whites and blacks alike, for the convenience of the government and recruit in their place an equal number of class i and ii candidates. manpower officials had objected, arguing there was no point in enlisting more negroes in class i and ii until the percent ratio was again reached. such a reduction, with current attrition, would take two years. at the same time, the army manpower shortages made it impractical to discharge , soldiers, half of whom were white, in class v. the organization and training representatives, on the other hand, agreed with ray that it was (p.  ) in the best interest of the army to discharge these men, pointing out that a recent increase in pay for enlisted men together with the continuing need for recruits with greater aptitude for learning would make the policy palatable to the congress and the public.[ - ] [footnote - : d/ot memo for red, jul ; df, d/ot to d/pa, jul , sub: basic training of negro personnel; both in wdgot . .] the conferees deferred decision on the matter, but during the following months the war department set out to achieve a qualitative balance between its black and white recruits. on august the chief of staff directed commanders, under the authority of army regulation - which defined ineptness for military service, to eliminate after six months men "incapable of serving in the army in a desirable manner after reasonable attempts have been made to utilize their capabilities." he went on to explain that this category included those not mentally qualified, generally defined as men scoring below seventy, and those repeatedly guilty of minor offenses.[ - ] the army reissued the order in , further defining the criteria for discharge to include those who needed continued and special instruction or supervision or who exhibited habitual drunkenness, ineptness, or inability to conform to group living. a further modification in would deny reenlistment to married men who had failed during their first enlistment to make corporal or single men who did not make private first class.[ - ] [footnote - : wd cir , aug .] [footnote - : wd cir , apr ; d/pa summary sheet, sep , sub: method of reducing negro reenlistment rate, wdgpa . ( apr ).] the measures were aimed at eliminating the least qualified men of both races, and in october general paul decided the army could now begin taking black recruits with the qualifications and background that allowed them "to become useful members of the army."[ - ] to that end the adjutant general announced on october that as a further exception to the prohibition against black enlistments in the regular army all former officers and noncommissioned officers who volunteered would be accepted without limitation.[ - ] on october he announced the establishment of a selective procurement program. with the exception of men who had been in certain specialized occupations for six months, all negroes enlisting in the regular army had to score one hundred on the army general classification test; the minimum score for white enlistees remained seventy.[ - ] at the same time, the adjutant general rescinded for negroes the choice-of-assignment provision of regular army enlistment contracts. [footnote - : p&a memo for red, sep , attached to copy of ltr, tag to cg, each army, et al., oct , sub: enlistment of negroes, agse-p . , wdgap . .] [footnote - : ltr, tag to cg, each army, et al., oct , sub: enlistment of negroes, agse-p . ( sep ).] [footnote - : ibid., oct , sub: enlistment of negroes, agse-p . ( oct ); see also wd cir , . an exception to the agct minimum for whites was made in the case of enlistment into the aaf which remained at for both races.] these measures helped lower the percentage of negroes in the army and reduced to some extent the differential in test scores between white and black soldiers. the percentage of negroes dropped by june to . percent of the army, . percent of its enlisted strength (p.  ) and . percent of its regular army strength. black enlisted strength of all the overseas commands stood at . percent, down from the . percent of the previous december. percentages in the individual theaters reflected this trend; the european theater, for example, dropped from . percent black to . , the mediterranean theater from . to . , and alaska from . to . .[ - ] [footnote - : all figures are from stm- , strength of the army. figures for the pacific theater were omitted because of the complex reorganization of army troops in that area in early . on june the army element in the far east command, the major army organization in the pacific, had , black enlisted troops, . percent of the command's total.] precise figures on the number of poorly qualified troops eliminated are unknown, but the european command expected to discharge some , low-scoring and unsuitable men, many of them black, in .[ - ] several commands reported that the new regulations materially improved the quality of black units by opening vacancies to better qualified men. general paul could argue with considerable justification that in regulating the quality of its recruits the army was following the spirit if not the letter of the gillem board report. if the army could set high enough standards it would get good men, and to this end the general staff's personnel and administration division asked for the support of commanders.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, brig gen j. j. o'hare, dep dir, p&a, for sa, mar , sub: implementation of wd cir , csgpa . .] [footnote - : g- memo for rcd, sep , attached to ltr, tag to cg, each army, et al., oct , sub: enlistment of negroes, agse-p . ( sep ).] although these measures were helpful to the army, they were frankly discriminatory, and they immediately raised a storm of protest. during the summer of , for example, many black soldiers and airmen complained about the army's rejection of black enlistments for the european theater. the naacp, which received some of the soldiers' complaints, suggested that the war department honor its pledges or immediately release all negroes who were refused their choice of location.[ - ] the army did just that, offering to discharge honorably those soldiers who, denied their theater of choice, rejected any substitute offered.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, walter white to sw, jun ; telg, white to sw, jun ; both in sw . (negro troops).] [footnote - : df, otig to d/pa, jul , sub: assignment of negro enlistees who have selected eto as choice of initial assignment, wdsig . --negro enlistees.] later in a young negro sued the secretary of war and a pittsburgh recruiting officer for refusing to enlist him. to make standards for black applicants substantially higher than those for whites, he alleged, violated the preamble and fifth amendment of the constitution, while the inducements offered for enlistment, for example the gi bill of rights, constituted a valuable property right denied him because of race. the suit asked that all further enlistments in the army be stopped until negroes were accepted on equal terms with whites and all special enlistment requirements for negroes were abolished.[ - ] commenting on the case, the chief of the war department's public relations division, maj. gen. floyd l. parks, defended the gillem board's percent quota, but agreed that (p.  ) "we are on weak ground [in] having a different standard for admission between white and colored.... i think the thing to do is to put a ceiling over the number you take in, and then take the best ones."[ - ] [footnote - : pittsburgh _post gazette_, december , .] [footnote - : memo, d/prd for sw, asw, and d/p&a, dec , asw . .] the suit brought to a climax the feeling of indignation against army policy that had been growing among some civil rights activists. one organization called on the secretary of war to abandon the gillem board policy "and unequivocably and equitably integrate negroes ... without any discrimination, segregation or quotas in any form, concept or manner."[ - ] senator robert m. lafollette, jr., of wisconsin called the decision to suspend black enlistments race discrimination.[ - ] walter p. reuther, president of the united automobile workers and the codirector of his union's fair practices department, branded the establishment of a quota "undemocratic and in violation of principles for which they [negroes] fought in the war" and demanded that black enlistment be reinstated and the quota abolished.[ - ] invoking american tradition and the united nations charter, john haynes holmes, chairman of the board of directors of the american civil liberties union, called for the abolition of enlistment quotas. the national commander of the united negro and allied veterans of america announced that his organization unreservedly condemned the quota because it deliberately deprived citizens of their constitutional right to serve their country.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, american veterans committee, manhattan chapter, to sw, jul , sw . (nt).] [footnote - : ltr, lafollette to sw, jul , sw . .] [footnote - : ltr, reuther and william oliver to sw, jul , sw . .] [footnote - : ltr, j. h. holmes to sw, jul ; ltr, arthur d. gatz, nat'l cmdr, united negro and allied veterans of america, to sw, jul ; both in sw . .] the replies of the secretary of war to all these protests were very much alike. the army's enlistment practices, he wrote, were based on a belief that black strength in the army ought to bear a direct relationship to the percentage of negroes in the population. as for the basic premise of what seemed to him a perfectly logical course of action, patterson concluded that "acceptance of the negro-white ratio existing in the civilian population as a basis for the army's distribution of units and personnel is not considered discriminatory."[ - ] the secretary's responses were interesting, for they demonstrated a significant change in the army's attitude toward the quota. there is evidence that the quota was devised by the gillem board as a temporary expedient to guarantee the substantial participation of negroes. it was certainly so viewed by civil rights advocates. as late as december assistant secretary petersen was still echoing this view when he explained that the quota was a temporary ceiling and the army had no right to use it as a permanent bar to black enlistment.[ - ] [footnote - : see ltrs, sw to wesley p. brown, adjutant, jesse clipper american legion post no. , buffalo, n.y., aug , and to jesse o. dedmon, jr., secy, veterans affairs bureau, naacp, nov ; both in sw . . the quote is from the latter document.] [footnote - : memo, maj gen parks for sw, et al., dec (with attached note signed "hp"), sw . .] nevertheless it is also clear that the traditionalists considered the quota a means of permanently limiting black soldiers to a percentage equivalent to negroes in the population. assistant secretary (p.  ) mccloy belonged to neither group. more than a year before in reviewing the gillem board's work he had declared: "i do not see any place for a quota in a policy that looks to utilization of negroes on the basis of ability." after a year of dealing with black overstrengths and juggling enlistment standards, general paul and his staff thought otherwise. they believed that a ceiling must be imposed on the army's black strength if a rapid and uncontrolled increase in the number of black troops was to be avoided. and it had to be avoided, they believed, lest it create a disproportionately large pool of black career soldiers with low aptitudes that would weaken the army. using the quota to limit the number of black troops, they maintained, was not necessarily discriminatory. it could be defended as a logical reading of the gillem board's declaration that "the proportion of negro to white manpower as exists in the civil population" should be accepted in the peacetime army to insure an orderly and uniform mobilization in a national emergency. with the gillem policy to support it, the army staff could impose a strict quota on the number of black soldiers and justify different enlistment standards for blacks and whites, a course that was in fact the only alternative to the curtailment of white enlistment under the manpower restrictions being imposed upon the postwar army.[ - ] [footnote - : df, d/p&a to d/o&t, apr , sub: negro enlisted strength, wdgpa . ( jul ); idem for sa, aug , sub: removing restrictions on negro enlistments, csgpa . .] paul's reasoning was eventually endorsed by the new chief of staff, general omar n. bradley, secretary patterson, and his successor, secretary of the army kenneth c. royall.[ - ] beginning in mid- the enlistment of negroes was carefully geared to their percentage of the total strength of the army, not to a fixed quota or percentage of those enlisting. this limitation on black enlistment was made more permanent in when it was included in the army's mobilization plan, the basic manpower planning document.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, onb (gen bradley) for gen paul, aug , csusa . negroes ( aug ). bradley succeeded eisenhower as chief of staff on february , and royall succeeded patterson on july . royall assumed the title secretary of the army on september under the terms of the national security act of .] [footnote - : amp- personnel annex, jun , p&d . ( apr ); see also memo, chief, planning office, p&a, for brig gen john e. dahlquist (dep p&a), feb , sub: utilization of negroes in mobilization, d/pa . ( feb ).] the adjustment of enlistment quotas to increase or curtail black strength quickly became routine in the army. when the number of negroes dropped below percent of the army's total strength in june , the adjutant general set a quota for the enlistment of black soldiers.[ - ] when this quota was met in late august, the enlistment of negroes with no special training was reduced to men per month.[ - ] as part of a personnel and administration division program to increase the number and kinds of black units, the quota was temporarily increased to , men per month for four months beginning in december .[ - ] finding itself once again exceeding the (p.  ) percent black strength figure, the army suspended the enlistment of all negroes for nine months beginning in april .[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, tag to cg, each army, et al., jul , sub: enlistment of negroes agse-p . . ( jun ).] [footnote - : t- , tag to co, gen ground, ft. monroe (agf), aug , . negroes; ltr, tag to cg, each army, et al., sep , sub: enlistment of negroes, agse-p . .] [footnote - : msg, tag to cg's, all zi armies, dec , agse-p . .] [footnote - : msg, tag to cg, all armies (zi), et al., mar , wcl ; d/pa summary sheet for vcofs, sep , sub: method of reducing the negro reenlistment rate, csgpa . ( apr ).] in effect, the gillem board's critics who predicted that the quota would become permanent were correct, but the quota was only the most publicized manifestation of the general scheme of apportioning manpower by race throughout the army. general paul had offered one solution to the problem in july . he recommended that each major command and service be allocated its proportionate share of black troops; that such troops "have the over-all average frequency of agct grades occurring among negro military personnel"; and that major commands and services submit plans for establishing enough units and overhead positions to accommodate their total allocations.[ - ] but paul did not anticipate the low-scoring soldier's penchant for reenlistment or the ability of some commanders, often on the basis of this fact, to justify the rejection of further black allotments. thus, in pursuit of a racial policy designed to promote the efficient use of manpower, the g- and g- sections of the general staff wrestled for almost five years with the problem of racial balances in the various commands, continental armies, and training programs. [footnote - : df, d/pa to d/ot, jul , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the postwar army, wdgpa . ( jul ).] _broader opportunities_ the equitable distribution of negroes throughout each major command and service was complicated by certain provisions of circular . along with the quota, the policy prescribed grouping black units, not to exceed regimental size, with white units in composite organizations and integrating black specialists in overhead organizations. the composite organizations were primarily the concern of the g- (later the organization and training division) section of the general staff, and in june its director, lt. gen. charles p. hall, brought the matter to the attention of major commanders. although the war department did not want to establish an arbitrary number of black combat units, hall explained, the new policy stressed the development of such units to provide a broader base for future expansion, and he wanted more black combat units organized as rapidly as trained troops became available. to that end he called for a survey of all black units to find out their current organization and assignment.[ - ] [footnote - : cir as memo, tag for cg, aaf et al., jun , sub: organization of negro manpower in postwar army, ag . ( jun ).] army ground forces reported that it had formed some composite units, but its largest black unit, the th regimental combat team, had been attached to the v corps at fort jackson, south carolina, instead of being made an organic element in a division. practically all service group headquarters reported separate black and white battalions (p.  ) under their control, but many of the organizations in the army service forces--those under the provost marshal general and the surgeon general, for example--still had no black units, let alone composite organizations. the caribbean defense command, the trinidad base command, and the headquarters base command of the antilles department reported similar situations. the mediterranean theater was using some negroes with special skills in appropriate overhead organizations, but in the vast european command negroes were assigned to separate regiments and smaller units. there were two exceptions: one provisional black regiment was attached to the st infantry division, and a black field artillery battalion was attached to each of the three occupation divisions. the alaskan department and the okinawa base command had black units, both separate and grouped with white units, but the yokohama base command continued to use specially skilled negroes in black units because of the great demand for qualified persons in those units.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, d/o&t for asw, jul , sub: organization of negro manpower in postwar army, wdgot . .] to claim, as hall did to assistant secretary petersen, that black units were being used like white units was misleading. despite the examples cited in the survey, many black units still remained independent organizations, and with one major exception black combat units grouped with white units were attached rather than assigned as organizational elements of a parent unit. this was an important distinction.[ - ] the constant imposition of attached status on a unit that under normal circumstances would be assigned as an organic element of a division introduced a sense of impermanence and alienation just as it relieved the division commander of considerable administrative control and hence proprietary interest in the unit. [footnote - : an attached unit, such as a tank destroyer battalion, is one temporarily included in a larger organization; an assigned unit is one permanently given to a larger organization as part of its organic establishment. on the distinction between attached and assigned status, see ltr, csa to cg, conarc, jul , csusa . (div), and cmh, "lineages and honors: history, principles, and preparation," june , in cmh.] attached status, so common for black units, thus weakened morale and hampered training as petersen well understood. noting the favorable attitude of the division commander, he had asked in april if it was possible to assign the black th parachute battalion to the celebrated d airborne division.[ - ] the answer was no. the commanding general of the army ground forces, general devers, justified attachment rather than assignment of the black battalion to the d on the grounds that the army's race policy called for the progressive adoption of the composite unit and attachment was a part of this process. assignment of such units was, on the other hand, part of a long-range plan to put the new policy into effect and should still be subject to considerable study. further justifying the _status quo_, he pointed to the division's low strength, which he said resulted from a lack of volunteers. offering his own variation (p.  ) of the "catch- " theme, he suggested that before any black battalion was assigned to a large combat unit, the effect of such an assignment on the larger unit's combat efficiency would first have to be studied. finally, he questioned the desirability of having a black unit assume the history of a white unit; evidently he did not realize that the intention was to assign a black unit with its black history to the division.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, actg, acofs, g- , for cg, agf, jun , sub: formation of composite white-negro units, with attachment, wdgot . ( apr ).] [footnote - : memo, cg, afg, for cofs, june , sub: formation of composite white-negro units, gngct- . (negro) ( jun ).] [illustration: general eichelberger, eighth army commander, _inspects th infantry troops, camp majestic, japan, june _.] in the face of such arguments hall accepted what he called the "nonfeasibility" of replacing one of the d's organic battalions with the th, but he asked whether an additional parachute battalion could be authorized for the division so that the th could be assigned without eliminating a white battalion. he reiterated the arguments for such an assignment, adding that it would invigorate the th's training, attract more and better black recruits, and better implement the provisions of circular .[ - ] general devers remained unconvinced. he doubted that assigning the black battalion to the (p.  ) division would improve the battalion's training, and he was "unalterably opposed" to adding an extra battalion. he found the idea unsound from both a tactical and organizational point of view. it was, he said, undesirable to reorganize a division solely to assign a black unit.[ - ] [footnote - : df, d/o&t to cg, agf, jul , sub: formation of composite white-negro units, wdgot . ( apr ).] [footnote - : memo, cg, agf, for d/o&t, aug , sub: formation of composite white-negro units, cmt to df, d/o&t to cg, agf, jul , same sub, wdgot . ( apr ).] general hall gave up the argument, and the th remained attached to the d. attached status would remain the general pattern for black combat units for several years.[ - ] the assignment of the th infantry to the th infantry division in japan was the major exception to this rule, but the th was the only black regiment left intact, and it was administratively difficult to leave such a large organization in attached status for long. the other black regiment on active duty, the th infantry, was split; its battalions, still carrying their unit designations, were attached to various divisions to replace inactive or unfilled organic elements. the th and th cavalry, the other major black units, were inactivated along with the d cavalry division in , but reactivated in as separate tank battalions. [footnote - : memo, d/o&t for sw, sep , sub: request for memorandum, wdgot . ( sep ).] that this distinction between attached and assigned status was considered important became clear in the fall of . at that time the personnel organization suggested that the word "separate" be deleted from a sentence of circular : "employment will be in negro regiments or groups, separate battalions or squadrons, and separate companies, troops, or batteries." general paul reasoned that the word was redundant since a black unit was by definition a separate unit. general devers was strongly opposed to deletion on grounds that it would lead to the indiscriminate organization of small black units within larger units. he argued that the gillem board had provided for black units as part of larger units, but not as organic parts. he believed that a separate black unit should continue to be attached when it replaced a white unit; otherwise it would lose its identity by becoming an organic part of a mixed unit. larger considerations seem also to have influenced his conclusion: "our implementation of the negro problem has not progressed to the degree where we can accept this step. we have already progressed beyond that which is acceptable in many states and we still have a considerable latitude in the present policy without further liberalizing it from the negro viewpoint."[ - ] the chief of staff supported paul's view, however, and the word "separate" was excised.[ - ] [footnote - : df, cg, agf, to d/p&a, sep , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the postwar army. policy; agf df, aug , same sub; both in gngap-m . ( aug ). the quote is from the former document.] [footnote - : da cir -iii, oct . the life of circular was extended indefinitely by da circular -ii, oct , and da ltr agao . ( mar ).] but the practice of attaching rather than assigning black units continued until the end of . only then, and increasingly during , did the army begin to assign a number of black units as organic parts of combat divisions. more noteworthy, negroes began to be assigned to fill the spaces in parts of white units. thus the d (p.  ) battalion of the th infantry and the d battalion of the th became black units in . despite the emergence of racially composite units, the army's execution of the gillem board recommendation on the integration of black and white units was criticized by black leaders. the board had placed no limitation on the size of the units to be integrated, and its call for progressive steps to utilize black manpower implied to many that the process of forming composite black and white units would continue till it included the smaller service units, which still contained the majority of black troops. it was one thing, the army staff concluded, to assign a self-sustaining black battalion to a division, but quite another to assign a small black service unit in a similar fashion. as a spokesman for the personnel and administration division put it in a address, the army was "not now ready to mix negro and white personnel in the same company or battery, for messing and housing." ignoring the navy's experience to the contrary, he concluded that to do so might provoke serious opposition from the men in the ranks and from the american public.[ - ] [footnote - : col. h. e. kessinger, exec off, acofs, g- , "utilization of negro manpower, ," copy in wdgpa . ( ).] accordingly, g- and g- agreed to reject the mediterranean theater's plan to organize composite service units in the th infantry division because such organization "involves the integration of negro platoons or negro sections into white companies, a combination which is not in accordance with the policy as expressed in circular ."[ - ] in the separate case of black service companies--for example, the many transportation truck companies and ordnance evacuation companies--theater commanders tended to combine them first into quartermaster trains and then attach them to their combat divisions.[ - ] [footnote - : df, acofs, g- , to cofs, jun , sub: implementation of the gillem board, wdgap . ( nov ); see also routing form, acofs, g- , same date, subject, and file.] [footnote - : for the formation of quartermaster trains in europe, see geis monograph, pp. - .] despite the relaxation in the distinction between attached and assigned status in the case of large black units, the army staff remained adamantly opposed to the combination of small black with small white units. the personnel and administration division jealously guarded the orthodoxy of this interpretation. commenting on one proposal to combine small units in april , general paul noted that while grouping units of company size or greater was permissible, the army had not yet reached the stage where two white companies and two black companies could be organized into a single battalion. until the process of forming racially composite units developed to this extent, he told the under secretary of the army, william h. draper, jr., the experimental mixing of small black and white units had no place in the program to expand the use of negroes in the army.[ - ] he did not say when such a process would become appropriate or possible. several months later paul flatly told the chief of staff that integration of black and white platoons in a company was precluded by stated army policy.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, d/p&a for under sa, apr , sub: negro utilization in the postwar army, csgpa . .] [footnote - : idem for cofs, jun , csgpa . .] _assignments_ (p.  ) the organization of black units was primarily the concern of the organization and training division; the personnel and administration division's major emphasis was on finding more jobs for black soldiers in keeping with the gillem board's call for the use of negroes on a broader professional scale. this could best be done, paul decided, by creating new black units in a variety of specialties and by using more negroes in overhead spaces in unit headquarters where black specialists would be completely interspersed with white. to that end his office prepared plans in november listing numerous occupational specialties that might be offered black recruits. it also outlined in considerable detail a proposal for converting several organizations to black units, including a field artillery ( -mm. howitzer) battalion, a tank company, a chemical mortar company, and an ordnance heavy automotive maintenance company. these units would be considered experimental in the sense that the men would be specially selected and distributed in terms of ability. the officers, negroes insofar as practical, and cadre noncommissioned officers would be specially assigned. morale and learning ability would be carefully monitored, and special training would be given men with below average agct scores. at the end of six months, these organizations would be measured against comparable white units. mindful of the controversial aspects of his plan, paul had a draft circulated among the major commands and services.[ - ] [footnote - : df, d/p&a to cg, agf, et al., nov , sub: proposed directive, utilization of negro military personnel; see also p&a memo for rcd, nov ; both in wdgpa . ( jul ).] the army ground forces, first to answer, concentrated on paul's proposal for experimental black units. maj. gen. charles l. bolte, speaking for the commanding general, reported that in july the command had begun a training experiment to determine the most effective assignments for black enlisted men in the combat arms. because of troop reductions and the policy of discharging individuals with low test scores, he said, the experiment had lasted only five weeks. five weeks was apparently long enough, however, for brig. gen. benjamin f. caffey, commander of the th regimental combat team (provisional), to reach some rather startling conclusions. he discovered that the black soldier possessed an untrained and undisciplined mind and lacked confidence and pride in himself. in the past the negro had been unable to summon the physical courage and stamina needed to withstand the shocks of modern battle. integrating individual negroes or small black units into white organizations would therefore only lower the standard of efficiency of the entire command. he discounted the integration after the battle of the bulge, saying that it succeeded only because it came at the end of the war and during pursuit action. "it still remains a moot question," caffey concluded, "as to whether the negroes in integrated units would have fought in a tough attack or defensive battle." curiously enough he went on to say that until negroes reached the educational level of whites, they should be organized into small combat units--battalions and smaller--and attached to white organizations in order to learn the proper standards of military discipline, conduct, administration, (p.  ) and training. despite its unfavorable opinion of experimental black units, the army ground forces did not reject the whole proposal outright but asked for a postponement of six months until its own reorganization, required by the war department, was completed.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, brig gen b. f. caffey, cg, th rct (prov), ft. benning ga., to cg, agf, dec , agf . ; df, cg, agf, to d/p&a, nov , sub: utilization of negro military personnel, wdgpa . (negro) ( nov ).] the other forces also rejected the idea of experimental black units. general spaatz once again declared that the mission of the army air forces was already seriously hampered by budgetary and manpower limitations and experimentation would only sacrifice time, money, manpower, and training urgently needed by the army air forces to fulfill its primary mission. he believed, moreover, that such an experiment would be weighted in favor of negroes since comparisons would be drawn between specially selected and trained black units and average white units.[ - ] in a similar vein the director of organization and training, general hall, found the conversion "undesirable at this time." he also concluded that the problem was not limited to training difficulties but involved a "combination of factors" and could be solved through the application of common sense by the local commander.[ - ] the chiefs of ordnance and the chemical corps, the technical services involved in the proposed experiment, concurred in the plan but added that they had no negroes available for the designated units.[ - ] [footnote - : df, cg, aaf, to d/p&a, nov , sub: utilization of negro military personnel, wdgpa . ( nov ).] [footnote - : memo, d/o&t for d/p&a, dec , sub: utilization of negro military personnel, wdgot . ( nov ).] [footnote - : tabs e and f to df, d/p&a to dcofs, jan , sub: utilization of negro military personnel in overhead installations, wdgpa . ( jul ).] in the face of this strong opposition, paul set aside his plan to establish experimental black units and concentrated instead on the use of negroes in overhead positions. on january he drew up for the chief of staff's office a list of military occupational specialties most commonly needed in overhead installations, including skilled jobs in the signal, ordnance, transportation, medical, and finance corps from which negroes had been excluded. he called for an immediate survey of the army commands to determine specialties to which negroes might be assigned, the number of negroes that could be used in each, and the number of negroes already qualified and available for immediate assignment. depending on the answers to this survey, he proposed that commanders assign immediately to overhead jobs those negroes qualified by school training, and open the pertinent specialist courses to negroes. black quotas for the courses would be increased, not only for recruits completing basic training, who would be earmarked for assignment to overhead spaces, but also for men already assigned to units, who would be returned to their units for such assignments upon completion of their courses. negroes thus assigned would perform the same duties as whites alongside them, but they would be billeted and messed in separate detachments or (p.  ) attached to existing black units for quarters and food.[ - ] [footnote - : df, d/p&a to dcofs, jan , sub: utilization of negro military personnel in overhead installations, wdgpa . ( jul ).] this proposal also met with some opposition. general spaatz, for example, objected on the same grounds he had used against experimental black units. forcing the military development of persons on the basis of color, general ira c. eaker, the deputy commander of army air forces, argued, was detrimental to the organization as a whole. spaatz added that it was desirable and necessary to select individual men on the basis of their potential contribution to the service rather than in response to such criteria as race.[ - ] [footnote - : df, cg, aaf (signed by dep cg, lt gen ira c. eaker), to d/p&a, jan , sub: utilization of negro military personnel in overhead installations, wdgpa . ( jul ).] the acting deputy chief of staff, maj. gen. henry i. hodes, objected to the timing of the paul proposal since it would require action by field commanders during a period when continuing mass demobilization and severe budget limitations were already causing rapid and frequent adjustments, especially in overhead installations. he also felt that sending men to school would disrupt unit activities; altogether too many men would be assigned to overhead jobs, particularly during the period when negroes were receiving training. finally, he believed that paul's directive was too detailed. he doubted that it was workable because it centralized power in washington.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, adcofs for d/p&a, jan , sub: utilization of negro military personnel in overhead installations, wdcsa . ( jan ).] general paul disagreed. the major flow of manpower, he maintained, was going to domestic rather than overseas installations. a relatively small shift of manpower was contemplated in his plan and would therefore cause little dislocation. the plan would provide commanders with the trained men they had been asking for. school training inevitably required men to be temporarily absent from their units, but, since commanders always complained about the scarcity of trained negroes, paul predicted that they would accept a temporary inconvenience in order to have their men school trained. the gillem board policy had been in effect for nine months, and "no material implementation by field commanders has as yet come to the attention of the division." if any changes were to be accomplished, paul declared, "a specific directive must be issued." since the chief of staff had charged the personnel and administration division with implementing gillem board policy and since that policy expressly directed the use of negroes in overhead positions, it seemed to paul "inconceivable that any proposition ... designed to improve the caliber of any of their negro personnel would be unworkable in the sense of creating a personnel shortage." he again recommended that the directive be approved and released to the public to "further the spirit and recommendations of the gillem board report."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, d/p&a for general hodes, jan , sub: utilization of negro personnel in overhead installations, wdgpa . ( jul ).] his superiors did not agree. instead of a directive, general hodes ordered yet another survey to determine whether commanders were actually complying with circular . he wanted all commands (p.  ) to itemize all the occupation specialties of major importance that contained black troops in overhead spaces.[ - ] needless to say, the survey added little to the army's knowledge of its racial problems. most commanders reported full compliance with the circular and had no further recommendations. [footnote - : memo, adcofs for d/p&a, feb , sub: utilization of negro military personnel in overhead installations, wdcsa . ( jan ); ltr, tag to cg, aaf, et al., mar , same sub, agam-pm . ( feb ).] with rare exceptions their statistics proved their claims specious. the far east command, for example, reported no negroes in overhead spaces, although general macarthur planned to incorporate about negroes into the bulk overhead units in japan in july . he reported that he would assign negroes to overhead positions when qualified men could be spared. for the present they were needed in black units.[ - ] other commands produced similar statistics. the mediterranean theater, percent black, had only four negroes in , overhead spaces, a decrease over the previous year, because, as its commander explained, a shortage of skilled technicians and noncommissioned officers in black units meant that none could be spared. more than percent black, the alaskan department had no negroes in overhead spaces. in europe, on the other hand, some , overhead spaces, . percent of the total, were filled by negroes.[ - ] [footnote - : msg, cincfe to wd for agpp-p, may , c- . although cincfe was a joint commander, his report concerned army personnel only.] [footnote - : ltr, cg, mto, to tag, apr , sub: utilization of negro military personnel in overhead installations; ltr, cg, alaskan dept, to tag, apr , same sub; ltr, cg, eucom, to tag, apr , same sub. all in agpp-p . ( feb ).] although negroes held some percent of all overhead positions in the field services, the picture was far from clear. more than percent of the army air forces' , overhead spaces, for example, were filled by negroes, but the army ground forces used only negroes, who occupied percent of its overhead spaces. in the continental armies almost , negroes were assigned to overhead, . percent of the total of such spaces--a more than equitable figure. yet most were cooks, bakers, truck drivers, and the like; all finance clerks, motion picture projectionists, and personnel assistants were white. in the field commands the use of negroes in signal, ordnance, transportation, medical, and finance overhead spaces was at a minimum, although figures varied from one command to the other. the transportation corps, more than percent black, used almost percent of its negroes in overhead; the chemical corps, percent black, used more than percent of its negroes in overhead. at the same time virtually all skilled military occupational specialties were closed to negroes in the signal corps, and the chief of finance stated flatly: "it is considered impractical to have negro overhead assigned to these [field] activities and none are utilized."[ - ] [footnote - : the reports of all these services are inclosures to df, tag to d/p&a, apr , sub: utilization of negro military personnel in overhead installations, agpp-p . ( feb ). the quote is from ltr, chief of finance corps to tag, mar , same sub.] the survey attested to a dismal lack of progress in the (p.  ) development of specialist training for negroes. although all the commanders of the zone of interior armies reported that negroes had equal opportunity with whites to attend army schools, in fact more than half of all the army's courses were not open to black soldiers regardless of their qualifications. the ordnance department, for example, declared that all its technical courses were open to qualified negroes, but as late as november the ordnance school in atlanta, georgia, had openings for whites but none for blacks. ironically, the results of the hodes survey were announced just four days short of circular 's first birthday. along with the other surveys and directives of the past year, it demonstrated that in several important particulars the gillem board's recommendations were being only partially and indifferently followed. obviously, some way must be found to dispel the atmosphere of indifference, and in some quarters hostility, that now enveloped circular . _a new approach_ a new approach was possible mainly because general paul and his staff had amassed considerable experience during the past year in how to use black troops. they had come to understand that the problems inherent in broadening the employment of black soldiers--the procurement of desirable black recruits, their training, especially school training for military occupational specialties, and their eventual placement in spaces that used that training--were interrelated and that progress in one of these areas was impossible without advances in the other two. in november the personnel and administration division decided to push for a modest step-by-step increase in the number of jobs open to negroes, using this increase to justify an expansion of school quotas for negroes and a special recruitment program. it was a good time for such an initiative, for the army was in the midst of an important reorganization of its program for specialist training. on may the war department had introduced a career guidance program for managing the careers of enlisted men. to help each soldier develop his maximum potential and provide the most equitable system for promotions, it divided all army jobs into several career fields--two, for example, were infantry and food service--and established certain job progressions, or ladders, within each field. an enlisted man could move up the ladder in his career field to increased responsibility and higher rank as he completed school courses, gained experience, and passed examinations.[ - ] [footnote - : wd cir , may .] general paul wanted to take advantage of this unusually fluid situation. he could point out that black soldiers must be included in the new program, but how was he to fit them in? black units lacked the diverse jobs open to whites, and as a result negroes were clustered in a relatively small number of military specialties with few career fields open to them. moreover, some of the army's listed school courses required an army general classification test score (p.  ) of ninety for admission, and the personnel and administration division discovered that percent of negroes enlisted between april and march as compared to percent of whites scored below that minimum. excluded from schools, these men would find it difficult to move up the career ladders.[ - ] [footnote - : p&a memo for rcd, attached to df, d/p&a to tag, jun , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the postwar army in connection with enlisted career guidance program, wdgpa . ( jun ).] concerned that the new career program would discriminate against black soldiers, paul could not, however, agree with the solution suggested by roy k. davenport, an army manpower expert. on the basis of a detailed study that he and a representative of the personnel and administration division conducted on negroes in the career program, davenport concluded that despite significant improvement in the quality of black recruits in recent months more than half the black enlisted men would still fail to qualify for the schooling demanded in the new program. he wanted the army to consider dropping the test score requirement for school admission and substituting a "composite of variables," including length of service in a military occupation and special performance ratings. such a system, he pointed out, would insure the most capable in terms of performance would be given opportunities for schooling and would eliminate the racial differential in career opportunity. it was equally important, davenport thought, to broaden arbitrarily the list of occupational specialties, open all school courses to negroes, and increase the black quotas for courses already open to them.[ - ] [footnote - : davenport, "matters relating to the participation of negro personnel in the career program," attached to df, d/p&a to brig gen j. j. o'hare, chief, mil pers mgt gp, p&a div, nov , wdgpa . ( jul ).] mindful of the strong opposition to his recent attempts to train negroes for new overhead assignments, general paul did not see how occupational specialties could be increased until new units or converted white ones were formed, or, for that matter, how school quotas could be increased unless positions for negroes existed to justify the training. he believed that the army should first widen the employment of black units and individuals in overhead spaces, and then follow up with increased school quotas and special recruitment. paul had already learned from recent surveys that the number of available overhead positions would allow only a modest increase in the number of specialized jobs available to negroes; any significant increase would require the creation of new black units. given the limitations on organized units, any increase would be at the expense of white units. the organization and training division had the right to decide which units would be white and which black, and considering the strong opposition in that division to the creation of more black units, an opposition that enjoyed support from the chief of staff's office, paul's efforts seemed in vain. but again an unusual opportunity presented itself when the chief of staff approved a reorganization of the general reserve in late . it established a continentally based, mobile striking force of four divisions with supporting units. each unit would have a well-trained core of regular army or other troops who might be expected to remain in the service for a (p.  ) considerable period of time. manpower and budget limitations precluded a fully manned and trained general reserve, but new units for the four continental divisions, which were in varying stages of readiness, were authorized.[ - ] [footnote - : for a discussion of the reorganization of the general reserve, see the introduction to john b. wilson's "u.s. army lineage and honors: the division," in cmh.] [illustration: army specialists report for airborne training, _fort bragg, north carolina, _.] here was a chance to create some black units, and paul jumped at it. during the activation and reorganization of the units for the general reserve he persuaded the organization and training division to convert nineteen white units to black: seven combat (including infantry and field artillery battalions), five combat support, and seven service units for a total of , spaces. nine of the units were attached to general reserve divisions, including the d armored, d infantry, and d airborne division. the rest, nondivisional elements, were assigned to the various continental armies.[ - ] [footnote - : ltrs, tag to cg, each army, et al., dec and mar . sub: activation and reorganization of certain units of the general reserve, agao- ( nov and jan ).] with the spaces in hand, the personnel and administration division launched a special drive in late december to secure , negroes, men per week, above the normal recruiting quotas. it called on the commanding generals of the continental armies to enlist men for three years' service in the regular army from among those (p.  ) who had previous military service, had completed high school, or had won the bronze star, commendation ribbon, or a decoration for valor, and who could make a "reasonable" score on the classification test. after basic training at fort dix and fort knox, the men would be eligible for specialized schooling and direct assignment to the newly converted units.[ - ] [footnote - : army memo - - , dec , sub: enlistment of negroes for special units; df, d/p&a to tag, jan , sub: training div assignment procedures for negro pers enlisting under provisions of da memo - - , dec , csgpa . ( jan ).] the conversion of units did not expand to any great extent the range of military specialties open to negroes because they were already serving in similarly organized units. but it did increase the number of skilled occupation slots available to them. to force a further increase in the number of school-trained negroes, paul asked the adjutant general to determine how many spaces for school-trained specialists existed in the units converted from white to black and how many spaces for school-trained specialists were unfilled in black units worldwide. he wanted to increase the quotas for each school-trained specialty to insure filling all these positions.[ - ] he also arranged to increase black quotas in certain military police, signal, and medical corps courses, and he insisted that a directive be sent to all major continental commands making mandatory the use of negroes trained under the increased school quotas.[ - ] moving further along these lines, paul suggested the adjutant general assign a black officer to study measures that might broaden the use of negroes in the army, increase school quotas for them, select black students properly, and assign trained black soldiers to suitable specialties.[ - ] [footnote - : df, d/p&a to tag, jan , sub: training div assignment procedures for negro personnel enlisting under provisions of da memo - - , dec ; ibid., jan , sub: notification to z armies of certain negro school training; both in csgpa . ( jan ).] [footnote - : ibid., mar , sub: utilization of negro school trained personnel, csgpa . ( jan ).] [footnote - : df d/p&a for brig gen joseph j. o'hare, chief mil pers mgt gp, nov , csgpa . ( nov ).] the adjutant general assigned maj. james d. fowler, a black graduate of west point, class of , to perform all these tasks. fowler surveyed the nineteen newly converted units and recommended that , men, approximately percent of those enlisted for the special expansion of the general reserve, be trained in thirty-seven courses of instruction--an increase of black spaces in these courses. examining worldwide army strength to determine deficiencies in school-trained specialties in black units, he recommended a total increase of spaces in another thirty-seven courses. studying the organizational tables of more than two hundred military bases, fowler recommended that black school quotas for another eleven military occupational specialties, for which there were currently no black quotas, be set at thirty-nine spaces. on the basis of these recommendations, the army increased the number of courses with quotas for negroes from to ; black quotas were increased in courses; others remained unchanged or their black quotas were slightly decreased. new courses were opened to negroes in the adjutant general's school, the airborne section of the (p.  ) infantry school, and the artillery, armored, engineer, medical, military police, ordnance, quartermaster, signal, and transportation schools. courses with increased quotas were in transportation, quartermaster, ordnance, and engineer schools.[ - ] the number of black soldiers in courses open to recruits quickly grew from to . percent of total enrollment, and the number of courses open to negroes rose from to percent of all the entry courses in the army school system. [footnote - : memo, chief, morale, and welfare br, p&a, for chief, mil pers mgt gp, p&a, feb , sub: school input quotas for enlisted personnel from the replacement stream (other than air), csgpa . .] _the quota system: an assessment_ the conversion of nineteen units from white to black in december , the procurement of , negroes to man these units, and the increases in black quotas for the army schools to train specialists for these and other black units worldwide marked the high point of the army's attempt to broaden the employment of negroes under the terms of the gillem board policy. as paul well knew, the training of black troops was linked to their placement and until the great expansion of the army in for the korean war no other units were converted from white to black. the increase in black combat units and the spread in the range of military occupations for black troops, therefore, were never achieved as planned. the interval between wars ended just as it began with the majority of white soldiers serving in combat or administrative units and the majority of black soldiers continuing to work in service or combat support units.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, brig gen j. j. o'hare, dep dir, p&a, for sa, mar , sub: implementation of wd circular , csgpa . .] the personnel and organization division made no further requests for increased school quotas for negroes, and even those increases already approved were short-lived. as soon as the needs of the converted units were met, the school quotas for negroes were reduced to a level sufficient to fill the replacement needs of the black units. by march , spaces for black students in the replacement stream courses had declined from the recommended by major fowler to eighty-two; the number of replacement stream courses open to negroes fell from percent of all courses offered to . percent. fowler had expected to follow up his study of school quotas in the military police, signal corps, and medical corps with surveys of other schools figuring in the career guidance program, but since no additional overhead positions were ever converted from white to black, no further need existed for school quota studies. the three-point study suggested by paul to find ways to increase school quotas for negroes was never made. the war department's problems with its segregation policy were only intensified by its insistence on maintaining a racial quota. whatever the authors' intention, the quota was publicized as a guarantee of black participation. in practice it not only restricted the number of negroes in the army but also limited the number and variety of (p.  ) black units that could be formed and consequently the number and variety of jobs available to negroes. further, it restricted the openings for negroes in the army's training schools. [illustration: bridge players, seaview service club, tokyo, japan, .] at the same time, enlistment policies combined with selective service regulations to make it difficult for the army to produce from its black quota enough men with the potential to be trained in those skills required by a variety of units. attracted by the superior economic status promised by the army, the average black soldier continued to reenlist, thus blocking the enlistment of potential military leaders from the increasing number of educated black youths. this left the army with a mass of black soldiers long in service but too old to fight, learn new techniques, or provide leadership for the future. subject to charges of discrimination, the army only fitfully and for limited periods tried to eliminate low scorers to make room for more qualified men. yet to the extent to which it failed to attract educated negroes and provide them with modern military skills, it failed to perform a principal function of the peacetime army, that of preparing a cadre of leaders for future wars. in discussing the problem of low-scoring negroes it should be remembered that the army general classification test, universally accepted in the armed services as an objective device to measure ability, has been seriously questioned by some manpower experts. (p.  ) since world war ii, for example, educational psychologists have learned that ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds have an important influence on performance in general testing. davenport, who eventually became a senior manpower official in the department of defense has, for one, concluded that the test scores created a distorted picture of the mental ability of the black soldier. he has also questioned the fairness of the army testing system, charging that uniform time periods were not always provided for black and white recruits taking the tests and that this injustice was only one of several inequalities of test administration that might have contributed to the substantial differences in the scores of applicants.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, roy k. davenport to author, dec , cmh files. davenport became deputy under secretary of the army and later deputy assistant secretary of defense (manpower planning and research) in the johnson administration.] the accuracy of test scores can be ignored when the subject is viewed from the perspective of manpower utilization. in the five years after world war ii, the actual number of white soldiers who scored in the lowest test categories equaled or exceeded the number of black soldiers. the army had no particular difficulty using these white soldiers to advantage, and in fact refused to discharge all class v men in . segregation was the heart of the matter; the less gifted whites could be scattered throughout the army but the less gifted blacks were concentrated in the segregated black units. reversing the coin, what could the army do with the highly qualified black soldier? his technical skills were unneeded in the limited number and variety of black units; he was barred from white units. in an attempt to deal with this problem, the gillem policy directed that negroes with special skills or qualifications be employed in overhead detachments. such employment, however, depended in great part on the willingness of commanders to use school-trained negroes. many of these officers complained that taking the best qualified negroes out of black units for assignment to overhead detachments deprived black units of their leaders. furthermore, overhead units represented so small a part of the whole that they had little effect on the army's problem. the racial quota also complicated the postwar reduction in army strength. since the strength and composition of the army was fixed by the defense budget and military planning, the majority of new black soldiers produced by the quota could be organized into units only at the expense of white units already in existence. in light of past performance of black units and in the interests of efficiency and economy, particularly at a time of reduced operating funds and a growing cold war, how could the army justify converting efficient white units into less capable black units? the same question applied to the formation of composite units. grouping lower scoring black units with white units, many of the army staff believed, would lower the efficiency of the whole and complicate the army's relations with the civilian community. as a result, the black units remained largely separate, limited in number, and tremendously overstrength throughout the postwar period. some of these problems, at least, might have been solved had the (p.  ) army created a special staff group to oversee the new policy, a key proposal of the gillem board. the personnel and administration division was primarily interested in individuals, in trying to place qualified negroes on an individual basis; the organization and training division was primarily concerned with units, in trying to expand the black units to approximate the combat to service ratio of white units. these interests conflicted at times, and with no single agency possessing overriding authority, matters came to an impasse, blocking reform of army practices. instead, the staff played a sterile numbers game, seeking to impose a strict ratio everywhere. but it was impossible to have a percent proportion of negroes in every post, in every area, in every overseas theater; it was equally impossible to have percent in every activity, in every arm and service, in every type of task. yet wherever the army failed to organize its black strength by quota, it was open to charges of racial discrimination. it would be a mistake to overlook the signs of racial progress achieved under the gillem board policy. because of its provisions thousands of negroes came to serve in the postwar regular army, many of them in a host of new assignments and occupations. but if the policy proved a qualified success in terms of numbers, it still failed to gain equal treatment and opportunity for black soldiers, and in the end the racial quotas and diverse racial units better served those who wanted to keep a segregated army. chapter (p.  ) segregation's consequences the army staff had to overcome tremendous obstacles in order to carry out even a modest number of the gillem board's recommendations. in addition to prejudices the army shared with much of american society and the institutional inertia that often frustrates change in so large an organization, the staff faced the problem of making efficient soldiers out of a large group of men who were for the most part seriously deficient in education, training, and motivation. to the extent that it overcame these difficulties, the army's postwar racial policy must be judged successful and, considered in the context of the times, progressive. nevertheless, the gillem board policy was doomed from the start. segregation was at the heart of the race problem. justified as a means of preventing racial trouble, segregation only intensified it by concentrating the less able and poorly motivated. segregation increased the problems of all commanders concerned and undermined the prestige of black officers. it exacerbated the feelings of the nation's largest minority toward the army and multiplied demands for change. in the end circular was abandoned because the army found it impossible to fight another war under a policy of racial quotas and units. but if the quota had not defeated the policy, other problems attendant on segregation would probably have been sufficient to the task. _discipline and morale among black troops_ by any measure of discipline and morale, black soldiers as a group posed a serious problem to the army in the postwar period. the standard military indexes--serious incidents statistics, venereal disease rates, and number of courts-martial--revealed black soldiers in trouble out of all proportion to their percentage of the army's population. when these personal infractions and crimes were added to the riots and serious racial incidents that continued to occur in the army all over the world after the war, the dimensions of the problem became clear. in , when negroes accounted for . percent of the army's average strength, black prisoners entering rehabilitation centers, disciplinary barracks, and federal institutions were . percent of the army total. in , when the average black strength had risen (p.  ) to . percent of the army's total, . percent of the soldiers sent to the stockade were negroes. the following tabulation gives their percentage of all military prisoners by offense: negro military offenses percentage absent without leave . desertion . misbehavior before the enemy . violation of arrest or confinement . discreditable conduct toward superior . civil offenses murder . rape . robbery . manslaughter . burglary and housebreaking . larceny . forgery . assault . _source_: correction branch, tago, copy in cmh. the most common explanation offered for such statistics is that fundamental injustices drove these black servicemen to crime. probably more to the point, most black soldiers, especially during the early postwar period, served in units burdened with many disadvantaged individuals, soldiers more likely to get into trouble given the characteristically weak leadership in these units. but another explanation for at least some of these crime statistics hinged on commanders' power to define serious offenses. in general, unit commanders had a great deal of discretion in framing the charges brought against an alleged offender; indeed, where some minor offenses were concerned officers could even conclude that a given infraction was not a serious matter at all and simply dismiss the soldier with a verbal reprimand and a warning not to repeat his offense. whereas one commander might decide that a case called for a charge of aggravated assault, another, faced with the same set of facts, might settle for a charge of simple assault. if it is reasonable to assume that, as a part of the pattern of discrimination, negroes accused of offenses like misconduct toward superiors, awol, and assault often received less generous treatment from their officers than white servicemen, then it is reasonable to suspect that statistics on negroes involved in crime may reflect such discriminatory treatment. the crime figures were particularly distressing to the individual black soldier, as indeed they were to his civilian counterpart, because as a member of a highly visible minority he became identified with the wrongdoing of some of his fellows, spectacularly reported in the press, while his own more typical attendance to orders and competent performance of duty were more often buried in the army's administrative reports. in particular, negroes among the large overseas commands suffered embarrassment. the gillem board policy (p.  ) was announced just as the army began the occupation of germany and japan. as millions of veterans returned home, to be replaced in lesser numbers by volunteers, black troops began to figure prominently in the occupation forces. on january the army had , negroes stationed overseas, . percent of the total number of overseas troops, divided principally between the two major overseas commands. by march , in keeping with the general reduction of forces, black strength overseas was reduced to , men, but black percentages in europe and the far east remained practically unchanged.[ - ] it was among these negroes, scattered throughout germany and japan, that most of the disciplinary problems occurred. [footnote - : stm- , strength of the army, jan and mar .] during the first two years of peace, black soldiers consistently dominated the army's serious-incident rate, a measure of indictments and accusations involving troops in crimes against persons and property. in june , for example, black soldiers in the european theater were involved in serious incidents (actual and alleged) at the rate of . cases per , men. the rate among white soldiers for the same period was . cases per , . the rate for both groups rose considerably in . the figure for negroes climbed to a yearly average of . incidents per , ; the figure for whites, reflecting an even greater gain, reached . . these crime rates were not out of line with america's national crime rate statistics, which, based on a sample of cities, averaged about . during the same period.[ - ] nevertheless, the rate was of particular concern to the government because the majority of the civil offenses were perpetuated against german and japanese nationals and therefore lowered the prestige and effectiveness of the occupation forces. [footnote - : geis monograph, pp. - and chart .] less important but still a serious internal problem for the army was a parallel rise in the incidence of venereal disease. various reasons have been advanced for the great postwar rise in the army's venereal disease rate. it is obvious, for example, that the rapid conversion from war to peacetime duties gave many american soldiers new leisure and freedom to engage in widespread fraternization with the civilian population. serious economic dislocation in the conquered countries drove many citizens into a life of prostitution and crime. by the same token, the breakdown of public health services had removed a major obstacle to the spread of social disease. but whatever the reasons, a high rate of venereal disease--the overseas rate was three times greater than the rate reported for soldiers in the united states--reflected a serious breakdown in military discipline, posed a threat to the combat effectiveness of the commands, and produced lurid rumors and reports on army morality. as in the case of crime statistics, the rate of venereal disease for black soldiers in the overseas commands far exceeded the figure for whites. the eighth army, the major unit in the far east, reported for the month of june , cases of venereal disease for whites, or cases per , men per year; cases were reported for negroes, or , cases per , men per year. the rates for the european (p.  ) command for july stood at cases per , negroes per year as compared with for white soldiers. the disease rate improved considerably during in both commands, but still the rates for black troops averaged per , men per year in eighth army compared to for whites. in europe the rate was per , men per year for negroes compared to for whites. at the same time the rate for all soldiers in the united states was per , per year.[ - ] some critics question the accuracy of these statistics, charging that more white soldiers, with informal access to medical treatment, were able to escape detection by the medical department's statisticians, at least in cases of more easily treated strains of venereal disease. [footnote - : ibid., pp. - ; eighth army (afpac) hist div, _occupational monograph of the eighth army in japan_ (hereafter afpac monograph), : .] the court-martial rate for black soldiers serving overseas was also higher than for white soldiers. black soldiers in europe, for example, were court-martialed at the rate of . men per , during the third quarter of compared with a . rate for whites. a similar situation existed in the far east where the black service units had a monthly court-martial rate nearly double the average rate of the eighth army as a whole.[ - ] [footnote - : geis monograph; afpac monograph, : - and charts, : - and jag illus. no. . it should be noted that on occasion individual white units registered disciplinary rates spectacularly higher than these averages. in a nine-month period in - , for example, a -man white unit stationed in vienna, austria, had general courts-martial, between and special and summary courts-martial, and of its members separated under the provisions of ar - .] the disproportionate black crime and disease rates were symptomatic of a condition that also revealed itself in the racially oriented riots and disturbances that continued to plague the postwar army. sometimes black soldiers were merely reacting to blatant discrimination countenanced by their officers, to racial insults, and at times even to physical assaults, but nevertheless they reacted violently and in numbers. the resulting incidents prompted investigations, recriminations, and publicity. two such disturbances, more spectacular than the typical flare-up, and important because they influenced army attitudes toward blacks, occurred at army bases in the united states. the first was a mutiny at macdill airfield, florida, which began on october at a dance for black noncommissioned officers to which privates were denied admittance. military police were called when a fight broke out among the black enlisted men and rapidly developed into a belligerent demonstration by a crowd that soon reached mob proportions. police fire was answered by members of the mob and one policeman and one rioter were wounded. urged on by its ringleaders, the mob then overwhelmed the main gate area and disarmed the sentries. the rioters retained control of the area until early the next day, when the commanding general persuaded them to disband. eleven negroes were charged with mutiny.[ - ] a second incident, a riot with strong racial overtones, occurred at fort leavenworth in may following an altercation between white and black prisoners in the army disciplinary barracks. the rioting, caused by allegations of favoritism (p.  ) accorded to prisoners, lasted for two days; one man was killed and six were injured.[ - ] [footnote - : "history of macdill army airfield, th aab unit, october ," pp. - , afcho files.] [footnote - : florence murray, ed., _the negro handbook, _ (new york: macmillan, ), pp. - .] disturbances in overseas commands, although less serious, were of deep concern to the army because of the international complications. in april , for example, soldiers of the th signal construction detachment threw stones at two french officers who were driving through the village of weyersbusch in the rhine palatinate. the officers, one of them injured, returned to the village with french mp's and requested an explanation of the incident. they were quickly surrounded by about thirty armed negroes of the detachment who, according to the french, acted in an aggressive and menacing manner. as a result, the supreme french commander in germany requested his american counterpart to remove all black troops from the french zone. the u.s. commander in europe, general joseph t. mcnarney, investigated the incident, court-martialed its instigators, and transferred the entire detachment out of the french zone. at the same time his staff explained to the french that to prohibit the stationing of negroes in the area would be discriminatory and contrary to army policy. black specialists continued to operate in the french zone, although none were subsequently stationed there permanently.[ - ] [footnote - : geis monograph, pp. - .] the far east command also suffered racial incidents. the eighth army reported in that "racial agitation" was one of the primary causes of assault, the most frequent violent crime among american troops in japan. this racial agitation was usually limited to the american community, however, and seldom involved the civilian population.[ - ] [footnote - : afpac monograph, : .] the task of maintaining a biracial army overseas in peacetime was marked with embarrassing incidents and time-consuming investigations. the army was constantly hearing about its racial problems overseas and getting no end of advice. for example, in may louis lautier, chief of the negro newspaper publishers association news service, informed the assistant secretary of war that fifty-five of the seventy american soldiers executed for crimes in the european theater were black. most were category iv and v men. "in light of this fact," lautier charged, "the blame for the comparatively high rate of crime among black soldiers belongs to the american educational system."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, louis r. lautier to howard c. petersen, may . asw . (nt).] but when a delegation of publishers from lautier's organization toured european installations during the same period, the members took a more comprehensive look at the seventh army's race problems. they told secretary patterson that they found all american soldiers reacting similarly to poor leadership, substandard living conditions, and menial occupations whenever such conditions existed. although they professed to see no difference in the conduct of white and black troops, they went on to list factors that contributed to the bad conduct of some of the black troops including the dearth of black officers, hostility of military police, inadequate recreation, and poor camp location. they also pointed out that many soldiers in the occupation had been shipped overseas without basic training, (p.  ) scored low in the classification tests, and served under young and inexperienced noncoms. many black regulars, on the other hand, once proud members of combat units, now found themselves performing menial tasks in the backwaters of the occupation. above all, the publishers witnessed widespread racial discrimination, a condition that followed inevitably, they believed, from the army's segregation policy. conditions in the army appeared to them to facilitate an immediate shift to integration; conditions in europe and elsewhere made such a shift imperative. yet they found most commanders in europe still unaware of the gillem board report and its liberalizing provisions, and little being done to encourage within the army the sensitivity to racial matters that makes life in a biracial society bearable. until the recommendations of the board were carried out and discrimination stopped, they warned the secretary, the army must expect racial flare-ups to continue.[ - ] [footnote - : frank l. stanley, report of the negro newspaper publishers association to the honorable secretary of war on troops and conditions in europe, jul , copy in cmh.] characteristically, the secretary of war's civilian aide, marcus ray, never denied evidence of misconduct among black troops, but concentrated instead on finding the cause. returning from a month's tour of pacific installations in september , he bluntly pointed out to secretary patterson that high venereal disease and court-martial rates among black troops were "in direct proportion to the high percentage of class iv and vs among the negro personnel." given ray's conclusion, the solution was relatively simple: the army should "vigorously implement" its recently promulgated policy, long supported by ray, and discharge persons with test scores of less than seventy.[ - ] [footnote - : ray, rpt of tour of pacific installations to sw patterson, aug- sep , asw . .] the civilian aide was not insensitive to the effects of segregation on black soldiers, but he stressed the practical results of the army's policy instead of making a sweeping indictment of segregation. for example, he criticized the report of the noted criminologist, leonard keeler, who had recently studied the criminal activities of american troops in europe for the army's criminal investigation division. ray was critical, not because keeler had been particularly concerned with the relatively high black crime rate and its effect on europeans, but because the report overlooked the concentration of segregated black units which had increased the density of negroes in some areas of europe to a point where records and reports of misconduct presented a false picture. in effect, black crime statistics were meaningless, ray believed, as long as the army's segregation policy remained intact. where keeler implied that the solution was to exclude negroes from europe, ray believed that the answer lay in desegregating and spreading them out.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, ray for asw petersen, nov , asw . .] it was probably inevitable that all the publicity given racial troubles would attract attention on capitol hill. when the senate's special investigations committee took up the question of military government in occupied europe in the fall of , it decided to look into the conduct of black soldiers also. witnesses asserted that black troops in europe were ill-behaved and poorly disciplined and their (p.  ) officers were afraid to punish them properly for fear of displeasing higher authorities. the committee received a report on the occupation prepared by its chief counsel, george meader. a curious amalgam of sensational hearsay, obvious racism, and unimpeachable fact, the document was leaked to the press and subsequently denounced publicly by the committee's chairman, senator harley m. kilgore of west virginia. kilgore charged that parts of the report dealing with negroes were obviously based on hearsay. "neither prejudice nor malice," the senator concluded, "has any place in factual reports."[ - ] [footnote - : u.s. congress, senate special committee investigating national defense programs, part , "military government in germany," th cong., november , pp. - ; see also new york _times_, november and december , . the quotation is from the _times_ of november th.] although the committee's staff certainly had displayed remarkable insensitivity, meader's recommendations appeared temperate enough. he wanted the committee to explore with the war department possible solutions to the problem of black troops overseas, and he called on the war department to give careful consideration to the recommendations of its field commanders. the european commander was already on record with a recommendation to recall all black troops from europe, citing the absence of negroes from the u.s. occupation army in the rhineland after world war i. lt. gen. lucius d. clay, then u.s. commander, berlin, who later succeeded general mcnarney as theater commander and military governor, wanted negroes in the occupation army used primarily as parade troops. meader contended that the war department was reluctant to act on these theater recommendations because it feared political repercussions from the black community. he had no such fear: "certainly, the conduct of the negro troops, as provable from war department records, is no credit to the negro race and proper action to solve the problem should not result in any unfavorable reaction from any intelligent negro leaders."[ - ] [footnote - : senate special committee, "military government in germany," th cong., nov , pp. - ; see also geis monograph, pp. - .] the war department was not insensitive to the opinions being aired on capitol hill. the under secretary, kenneth c. royall, had already dispatched a group from the inspector general's office under brig. gen. elliot d. cooke to find out among other things if black troops were being properly disciplined and to investigate other charges lt. col. francis p. miller had made before the special investigations committee. examining in detail the records of one subordinate european command, which had , negroes in its force of , , the cooke group decided that commanders were not afraid to punish black soldiers. although negroes were responsible for vehicle accidents and disciplinary infractions in numbers disproportionate to their strength, they also had a proportionately higher court-martial rate.[ - ] [footnote - : geis monograph, pp. - ; eucom hist div, _morale and discipline in the european command, - _, occupation forces in europe series, pp. - , in cmh.] while the cooke group was still studying the specific charges of the senate's investigations committee, secretary patterson decided on a general review of the situation. he ordered ray to tour european installations and report on how the gillem board policy was being (p.  ) put into effect overseas. ray visited numerous bases and housing and recreation areas in germany, italy, france, switzerland, and austria. he examined duties, living conditions, morale, and discipline. he also looked into race relations and community attitudes. his month's tour, ending on december , reinforced his conviction that substandard troops--black and white--were at the heart of the army's crime and venereal disease problem. ray supported the efforts of local commanders to discharge these men, although he wanted the secretary to reform and standardize the method of discharge. in his analysis of the overseas situation, the civilian aide avoided any specific allusion to the nexus between segregation and racial unrest. in a rare burst of idealism, however, he did condemn those who would exclude negroes from combat units and certain occupations because of presumed prejudices on the part of the german population. to bow to such prejudices, he insisted, was to negate america's aspirations for the postwar world. in essence, ray's formula for good race relations was quite simple: institute immediately the reforms outlined in the gillem board report. in addition to broader use of black troops, ray was concerned with basic racial attitudes. the army, he charged, generally failed to see the connection between prejudice and national security; many of its leaders even denied that prejudice existed in the army. yet to ignore the problem of racial prejudice, he claimed, condemned the army to perpetual racial upsets. he wanted the secretary to restate the army's racial objectives and launch an information and education program to inform commanders and troops on racial matters.[ - ] [footnote - : ray, "rpt to secwar, mr. robert p. patterson, of tour of european installations," dec , incl to memo, sw for dcofs, jan , sw . .] in all other respects a lucid progress report on the gillem board policy, ray's analysis was weakened by his failure to point out the effect of segregation on the performance and attitude of black soldiers. ray believed that the gillem board policy, with its quota system and its provisions for the integration of black specialists, would eventually lead to an integrated army. preoccupied with practical and imminently possible racial reforms, ray, along with secretary patterson and other reformers within the army establishment, tended to overlook the tenacious hold that racial segregation had on army thought. this hold was clearly illustrated by the reaction of the army staff to ray's recommendations. speaking with the concurrence of the other staff elements and the approval of the deputy chief of staff, general paul warned that very little could be accomplished toward the long-range objective of the gillem board--integration--until the army completed the long and complex task of raising the quality and lowering the quantity of black soldiers. he also considered it impractical to use negroes in overhead positions, combat units, and highly technical and professional positions in exact proportion to their percentage of the population. such use, paul claimed, would expend travel funds already drastically curtailed and further complicate a serious housing situation. he admitted that the deep-seated prejudice of some army members in all grades would (p.  ) have a direct bearing on the progress of the army's new racial policy. [illustration: th infantry band, gifu, japan, .] the staff generally agreed with ray's other recommendations with one exception: it opposed his suggestion that black units be used in the european theater's constabulary, the specially organized and trained force that patrolled the east-west border and helped police the german occupation. the theater commander had so few capable negroes, paul reasoned, that to siphon off enough to form a constabulary unit would threaten the efficiency of other black units. besides, even if enough qualified negroes were available, he believed their use in supervisory positions over german nationals would be unacceptable to many germans.[ - ] the staff offered no evidence for this latter argument, and indeed there was none available. in marked contrast to their reaction to the french government's quartering of senegalese soldiers in the rhineland after world war i, the german attitude toward american negroes immediately after world war ii was notably tolerant, a factor in the popularity among negroes of assignments to europe. it was only later that the germans, especially tavern owners and the (p.  ) like, began to adopt the discriminatory practices of their conquerors.[ - ] [footnote - : wdgpa summary sheet, jan , sub: utilization of negroes in the european theater, with incls, wdgpa . ( jan ).] [footnote - : interv, author with lt gen clarence r. huebner (former cg, u.s. army, europe), mar , cmh files.] ray's proposals and the reaction to them formed a kind of watershed in the war department's postwar racial policy. just ten months after the gillem board report was published, the army staff made a judgment on the policy's effectiveness: the presence of negroes in numbers approximating percent of the army's strength and at the current qualitative level made it necessary to retain segregation indefinitely. segregation kept possible troublemakers out of important combat divisions, promoted efficiency, and placated regional prejudices both in the army and congress. integration must be postponed until the number of negroes in the army was carefully regulated and the quality of black troops improved. both, the staff thought, were goals of a future so distant that segregated units were not threatened. but the staff's views ran contrary to the gillem board policy and the public utterances of the secretary of war. robert patterson had consistently supported the policy in public and before his advisers. besides, it was unthinkable that he would so quickly abandon a policy developed at the cost of so much effort and negotiation and announced with such fanfare. he had insisted that the quota be maintained, most recently in the case of the european command.[ - ] in sum, he believed that the policy provided guidelines, practical and expedient, albeit temporary, that would lead to the integration of the army. [footnote - : geis monograph, pp. - .] in face of this impasse between the secretary and the army staff there slowly evolved what proved to be a new racial policy. never clearly formulated--circular continued in effect with only minor changes until --the new policy was based on the substantially different proposition that segregation would continue indefinitely while the staff concentrated on weeding out poorly qualified negroes, upgrading the rest, and removing vestiges of discrimination, which it saw as quite distinct from segregation. at the same time the army would continue to operate under a strict percent quota of negroes, though not necessarily within every occupation or specialty. the staff overlooked the increasingly evident connection between segregation and racial unrest, thereby assuring the continuation of both. from on, integration, the stated goal of the gillem board policy, was ignored, while segregation, which the board saw as an expedient to be tolerated, became for the army staff a way of life to be treasured. it was from this period in that circular and the gillem board report began to gain their reputations as regressive documents. _improving the status of the segregated soldier_ in the army accelerated its long-range program to discharge soldiers who scored less than seventy on the army general classification test. often a subject of public controversy, the program formed a major part of the army's effort to close the (p.  ) educational and training gap between black and white troops.[ - ] of course, there were other ways to close the gap, and on occasion the army had taken the more positive and difficult approach of upgrading its substandard black troops by giving them extra training. although rarely so recognized, the army's long record of providing remedial academic and technical training easily qualified it as one of the nation's major social engineers. [footnote - : for the use of ar - to discharge low-scoring soldiers, see chapter .] [illustration: general huebner _inspects the th military police company, giessen, germany, _.] in world war ii thousands of draftees were taught to read and write in the army's literacy program. in at fort benning an on-duty educational program was organized in the th regimental combat team for soldiers, in this case all negroes, with less than an eighth grade education. although the project had to be curtailed because of a lack of specialized instructors, an even more ambitious program was launched the next year throughout the army after a survey revealed an alarming illiteracy rate in replacement troops. in a move of primary importance to black recruits, the far east command, for example, ordered all soldiers lacking the equivalent of a fifth grade education to attend courses. the order was later changed to include all soldiers who failed to achieve army test scores of seventy.[ - ] [footnote - : afpac monograph, : .] in the european theater launched the most ambitious project by far for improving the status of black troops, and before it was over thousands of black soldiers had been examined, counseled, and trained. the project was conceived and executed by the deputy and later theater commander, lt. gen. clarence r. huebner, and his adviser on negro affairs, marcus ray, now a lieutenant colonel.[ - ] these men were convinced that a program could be devised to raise the status of the black soldier. huebner wanted to lay the foundation for a command-wide educational program for all black units. "if you're going to make soldiers out of people," he later explained, "they have the right to be trained." huebner had specialized in training in his army career, had written several of the army's training manuals, and possessed an abiding faith in the ability of the army to change men. "if your (p.  ) soldiers don't know how, teach them."[ - ] [footnote - : at the suggestion of secretary patterson, general huebner established the position of negro adviser. after several candidates were considered, the post went to marcus ray, who left the secretary's office and went on active duty.] [footnote - : interv, author with huebner.] general huebner got his chance in march when the command decided to use some , unassigned black troops in guard duties formerly performed by the st infantry division. the men were organized into two infantry battalions,[ - ] but because of their low test scores huebner decided to establish a twelve-to thirteen-week training program at the grafenwohr training center and directed the commanding general of the st division to train black soldiers in both basic military and academic subjects. huebner concluded his directive by saying: this is our first opportunity to put into effect in a large way the war department policy on negro soldiers as announced in war department circular no. , . owing to the necessity for rapid training, and to the press of occupational duties, little time has been available in the past for developing the leadership of the negro soldier. we can now do that.... i wish you to study the program, its progress, its deficiencies and its advantages, in order that a full report may be compiled and lessons in operation and training drawn.[ - ] [footnote - : the th and st infantry battalions (separate) were organized on june . the men came from eucom's inactivated engineer service battalions and construction companies, ambulance companies, and ordnance ammunition, quartermaster railhead, signal heavy construction, and transportation corps car companies; see geis monograph, p. .] [footnote - : ltr, cg, ground and service forces, europe, to cg, st inf div, may , sub: training of negro infantry battalions, quoted in geis monograph, pp. - .] as the improved military bearing and efficiency of black trainees and the subsequent impressive performance of the two new infantry battalions would suggest, the reports on the grafenwohr training were optimistic and the lessons drawn ambitious. they prompted huebner on december to establish a permanent training center at kitzingen air base.[ - ] essentially, he was trying to combine both drill and constant supervision with a broad-based educational program. trainees received basic military training for six hours daily and academic instruction up to the twelfth grade level for two hours more. the command ordered all black replacements and casuals arriving from the united states to the training center for classifying and training as required. eventually all black units in europe were to be rotated through kitzingen for unit refresher and individual instruction. as each company completed the course at kitzingen, the command assigned academic instructors to continue an on-duty educational program in the field. a soldier was required to participate in the educational program until he passed the general education development test for high school level or until he clearly demonstrated that he could not profit from further instruction. [footnote - : the training center had already moved from grafenwohr to larger quarters at mannheim koafestal, germany.] washington was quick to perceive the merit of the european program, and paul reported widespread approval "from all concerned."[ - ] the program quickly produced some impressive statistics. thousands of (p.  ) soldiers--at the peak in more than percent of all negroes in the command--were enrolled in the military training course at kitzingen or in on-duty educational programs organized in over two-thirds of the black companies throughout the command. by june the program had over , students and instructors. a year later, the european commander estimated that since the program began some , negroes had completed fifth grade in his schools, , had finished grade school, and had passed the high school equivalency test.[ - ] the experiment had a practical and long-lasting effect on the army. for example, in a sampling of three black units showed that after undergoing training at kitzingen and in their own units the men scored an average of twenty points higher in army classification tests. according to a european command estimate, the command's education program was producing some of the finest trained black troops in the army. [footnote - : ltr, d/p&a to huebner, oct , csgpa . . this approval did not extend to all civil rights advocates, some of whom objected to the segregated training. walter white, however, supported the program. see interv, author with huebner.] [footnote - : eucom hist div, _eucom command report, _, pp. , , copy in cmh.] [illustration: reporting to kitzingen. _men of company b, st infantry battalion, arrive for refresher course in basic military training._] the training program even provoked jealous reaction among some white troops who claimed that the educational opportunities offered negroes discriminated against them. they were right, for in comparison to the on-duty high school courses offered negroes, the command restricted courses for white soldiers to so-called literacy training or completion of the fifth grade. command spokesmen quite openly justified the disparity on the grounds that negroes on the whole (p.  ) had received fewer educational opportunities in the united states and that the program would promote efficiency in the command.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, chief, eucom ti&e div, to eucom dcsops, jun , cited in geis monograph, p. .] whether a connection can be made between the kitzingen training program and improvement in the morale and discipline of black troops, the fact was that by january a dramatic change had occurred in the conduct of black soldiers in the european command. the rate of venereal disease among black soldiers had dropped to an average approximating the rate for white troops (and not much greater than the always lower average for troops in the united states). this phenomenon was repeated in the serious incident rate. in the first half of courts-martial that resulted in bad conduct discharges totaled fifty-nine for negroes, a figure that compared well with the similar verdicts for the larger contingent of white soldiers.[ - ] for once the army could document what it had always preached, that education and training were the keys to the better performance of black troops. the tragedy was that the education program was never applied throughout the army, not even in the far east and in the united states, where far more black soldiers were stationed than in europe.[ - ] the army lost yet another chance to fulfill the promise of its postwar policy. [footnote - : geis monograph, charts and and p. .] [footnote - : not comparable was the brief literacy program reinstituted in the th regimental combat team at fort benning, georgia, in .] in later years kitzingen assumed the task of training black officers, a natural progression considering the attitude of general huebner and marcus ray. the general and the command adviser were convinced that the status of black soldiers depended at least in part on the caliber of black officers commanding them. huebner deftly made this point in october soon after kitzingen opened when he explained to general paul that he wanted more "stable, efficient, and interested negro officers and senior non-commissioned officers" who, he believed, would set an example for the trainees.[ - ] others shared huebner's views. the black publishers touring europe some months later observed that wherever black officers were assigned there was "a noticeable improvement in the morale, discipline and general efficiency of the units involved."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, huebner to d/p&a, oct , csgpa . .] [footnote - : memo, dcofs for d/p&a, may , sub: report of visit by negro publishers and editors to the european theater, csusa . negroes ( may ).] the european command had requisitioned only five black officers during the last eight months, general paul noted; this might have caused its shortage of black officers. still, paul knew the problem went deeper, and he admitted that many black officers now on duty were relatively undesirable and many desirable ones were being declared surplus. he was searching for a solution.[ - ] the personnel and administration division could do very little about the major cause of the shortage, for the lack of black officers was fundamentally connected with the postwar demobilization affecting all the services. most black officers were unable to compete in terms of length of service, combat experience, and other factors that counted heavily toward retention. (p.  ) consequently their numbers dropped sharply from an august high of , to a december low of , . the drop more than offset the slight rise in the black percentage of the whole officer corps, . percent in to . percent in . [footnote - : ltr, d/p&a to huebner, oct , csgpa . .] at first general paul was rather passive in his attitude toward the shortage of black officers. commenting on assistant secretary of war petersen's suggestion in may that the army institute a special recruitment program to supplement the small number of black officers who survived the competition for regular army appointments, paul noted that all appointments were based on merit and competition and that special consideration for negroes was itself a form of discrimination.[ - ] whether through fear of being accused of discrimination against whites or because of the general curtailment of officer billets, it was not until april that the personnel and administration division launched a major effort to get more black officers. [footnote - : memo, asw for d/p&a, may , sub: negro officers in the regular establishment; memo, d/p&a for asw, may , same sub; memo, "d. r." (exec asst to asw, lt col d. j. rogers) for petersen, jun . copies of all in asw . ( may ).] in april general paul had his manpower control group review the officer strength of seventy-eight black units stationed in the united states. the group uncovered a shortage of seventy-two officers in the seventy-eight units, but it went considerably beyond identifying simple shortages. in estimating the number of black officers needed, the group demonstrated not only how far the gillem board policy had committed the army, but in view of contemporary manpower shortages just how impossible this commitment was of being fulfilled. the manpower group discovered that according to circular , which prescribed more officers for units containing a preponderance of men with low test scores, the seventy-eight units should have additional officers beyond their regular allotment. also taking into account circular 's provision that black officers should command black troops, the group discovered that these units would need another black officer replacements. the group temporized. it recommended that the additional officers be assigned to units in which percent or more of the men were in grades iv and v and without mentioning specific numbers noted that high priority be given to the replacement of white officers with negroes. assuming the shortages discovered in the seventy-eight units would be mirrored in the black units overseas as well as other temporary units at home, the group also wanted general paul to order a comprehensive survey of all black units.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, chief, manpower survey gp, for paul, apr , sub: assignment of officers of negro t/o&e units in compliance with wd cir , , csgpa . ( apr ); "report on negro officer strength in army," incl w/memo, d/p&a for dcofs, jun , sub: report of negro publishers and editors on tour of european installations, csusa . negroes ( may ).] paul complied with the group's request by ordering the major commanders in may to list the number of officers by branch, grade, and specialty needed to fill the vacant spaces in their black units.[ - ] but there was really little need for further surveys because the (p.  ) key to all the group's recommendations--the availability of suitable black officers--was beyond the immediate reach of the army. general paul was able to fill the existing vacancies in the seventy-eight continental units by recalling black officers from inactive duty, but the number eligible for recall or available from other sources was limited. as of may , personnel officials could count on only , black reserve and national guard officers who could be assigned to extended active duty. this number was far short of current needs; negroes would have to approximate . percent ( , officers) of the army's officer corps if all the whites in black units were replaced. as for the other provisions of the gillem board, the organization and training division urged restraint, arguing that circular was not an authorization for officers in excess of organization table ceilings, but rather that the presence of many low-scoring men constituted a basis for requesting more officers.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, d/p&a for tag, may , sub: negro officers in to&e units, csgpa . ( may ).] [footnote - : ibid.; "report on negro officer strength in army," incl w/memo, d/p&a for dcofs, jun , sub: report of negro publishers and editors..., csusa . negroes ( may ).] general paul did not argue the point. admitting that the . percent figure was "an objective to be achieved over a period of time," he could do little but instruct the commanders concerned to indicate in future requisitions that they wanted black officers as fillers or replacements in black units. clearly, as long as the number of black officers remained so low, the provisions of circular calling for black officers to replace whites or supplement the officer strength of units containing men with low test scores would have to be ignored. there were other long-range possibilities for procuring more black officers, the most obvious the expansion of the reserve officers' training corps. as of january the army had rotc units at nine predominantly black colleges and universities with a total enrollment of , cadets. the organization and training division contemplated adding one more unit during , but after negotiations with officials from secretary royall's office, themselves under considerable congressional and public pressure, the division added three more advanced rotc units, one service and two combat, at predominantly black institutions.[ - ] at the same time some hope existed for increasing the number of black cadets at west point. the academy had nine black cadets in , including five plebes. general paul hoped that the graduation of these cadets would stimulate further interest and a corresponding increase in applications from negroes.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asst secy, gs, for dcofs, jun , sub: negro rotc units, csusa . negroes ( jun ); see also department of national defense, "national defense conference on negro affairs," apr , morning session, pp. - , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : "report on negro officer strength in army," incl w/memo, d/p&a for dcofs, jun , sub: report of negro publishers and editors..., csusa . negroes ( may ).] it was probably naive to assume that an increase of black cadets from four to nine would stir much interest when other statistics suggested that black officers had a limited future in the service. as secretary royall pointed out, even if the total number of black officers could not be quickly increased, the percentage of black officers in the (p.  ) regular army could.[ - ] yet by april the army had almost completed the conversion of reservists into regulars, and few black officers had been selected. in june , for example, there were black officers in the regular army; by april they numbered only , including west point graduates and converted reservists.[ - ] the army had also recently nominated young negroes, designated distinguished military graduates of the advanced rotc program, for regular army commissions. [footnote - : department of national defense, "national defense conference on negro affairs," apr , morning session, pp. - . prior to world war ii, an officer held a commission in the regular army, in the army reserve, or in the national guard. another type of commission, one in the army of the united states (aus), was added during world war ii, and all temporary promotions granted during the war were to aus rank. for example, a regular army captain could become an aus major but would retain his regular army captaincy. many reservists and some national guard officers remaining on active duty sought conversion to, or "integration" into, the regular army for career security.] [footnote - : these black officers were converted to regular army officers in the following arms and services: infantry, ; chaplain corps, ; medical service corps, ; army nurse corps, ; field artillery, ; quartermaster, ( of whom were transferred later to the transportation corps). these figures include the first black doctor and nurse converted to regular army officers.] during the regular army integration program, negroes and , whites applied for the regular army; the army and the air force awarded commissions to , white officers ( . percent of those applying) and black officers ( . percent of the applicants). preliminary rejections based on efficiency and education ran close to percent of the applicants of both races. the disparity in rejections by race appeared when applicants went before the selection board itself; only . percent of the remaining black applicants were accepted while . percent of the white applicants were selected for regular army commissions.[ - ] [footnote - : "analysis of negro officers in the army," incl w/memo, d/p&a for dcas, jun , sub: report of negro publishers and editors..., csusa . negroes ( may ).] given statistics like these, it was difficult to stimulate black interest in a career as an army officer, as general paul was well aware. he had the distribution of black officers appointed to the regular army studied in to see if it was in consonance with the new racial policy. while most of the arms and services passed muster with the personnel and administration division, paul felt compelled to remind the chief of engineers, whose corps had so far awarded no regular army commission to the admittedly limited number of black applicants, that officers were to be accepted in the regular army without regard to race. he repeated this warning to the quartermaster general and the chief of transportation; both had accepted black officers for the regular army but had selected only the smallest fraction of those applying. although the black applicants did score slightly below the whites, paul doubted that integration would lower the standards of quality in these branches, and he wanted every effort made to increase the number of black officers.[ - ] [footnote - : df, d/p&a to chief of engrs, jul , sub: appointment of negro officers to the regular army, w/attached memo for rcd, wdgpa . ( jul ).] the chief of engineers, quick to defend his record, explained that the race of candidates was difficult to ascertain and had not been considered in the selection process. nevertheless, he had reexamined all rejected applications and found two from negroes whose (p.  ) composite scores were acceptable. both men, however, fell so short of meeting the minimum professional requirements that to appoint either would be to accord preferential treatment denied to hundreds of other underqualified applicants.[ - ] it would appear that bias and prejudice were not the only governing factors in the shortage of black officers, but rather that in some ways at least circular was making impossible demands on the army's personnel system. [footnote - : df, chief of engrs to d/p&a, aug , sub: appointment of negro officers to the regular army, copy in wpgpa . ( jul ).] _discrimination and the postwar army_ training black soldiers and trying to provide them with black officers was a practical move demanded by the army's new race policy. at the same time, often with reluctance and only after considerable pressure had been brought to bear, the army also began to attack certain practices that discriminated against the black soldier. one was the arbitrary location of training camps after the war. in november , for example, the army ground forces reorganized its training centers for the army, placing them at six installations: fort dix, new jersey; fort bragg, north carolina; fort knox, kentucky; fort jackson, south carolina; fort lewis, washington, and fort ord, california. white enlisted and reenlisted men were sent to the training centers within the geographical limits of the army area of their enlistment. because it was impossible for the army ground forces to maintain separate black training cadres of battalion size at each of the six centers, all negroes, except those slated for service in the army air forces, were sent to fort jackson.[ - ] [footnote - : wd memo - - , nov , sub: flow of enlisted personnel from induction centers and central examining stations.] the gillem board had called for the assignment of negroes to localities where community attitudes were favorable, and marcus ray protested the ground forces action. "it is in effect a restatement of policy and ... has implications which will affect adversely the relationship of the army and our negro manpower potential.... i am certain that this ruling will have the immediate effect of crystallizing negro objections to the enlistment of qualified men and also universal military training."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, marcus ray for asw, jan , asw . .] ray reminded assistant secretary of war petersen that the fort jackson area had been the scene of many racial disturbances since and that an increase in the black troop population would only intensify the hostile community attitude. he wanted to substitute fort dix and fort ord for fort jackson. he also had another suggestion: why not assign black training companies to white battalions, especially in those training centers that drew their populations from northern, eastern, and western communities? petersen ignored for the time being ray's suggestion for composite training groups, but he readily agreed on training black soldiers at more congenial posts, particularly after ray's views were aired in the black press. petersen also urged the deputy chief of staff to (p.  ) coordinate staff actions with ray whenever instructions dealing with race relations in the army were being prepared.[ - ] at the same time, secretary of war patterson assured walter white of the naacp, who had also protested sending negroes to fort jackson, that the matter was under study.[ - ] within a matter of months negroes entering the army from civilian life were receiving their training at fort dix and fort ord. [footnote - : memo, asw for dcofs, feb , asw . .] [footnote - : ltr, sw robert p. patterson to walter white, feb , sw . .] turning its back on the overt racism of some southern communities, the army unwittingly exposed an example of racism in the west. the plan to train negroes at fort ord aroused the combined opposition of the citizens around monterey bay, who complained to senator william f. knowland that theirs was a tourist area unable to absorb thousands of black trainees "without serious threat of racial conflict." the army reacted with forthright resistance. negroes would be trained at fort ord, and the secretary of the army would be glad to explain the situation and cooperate with the local citizenry.[ - ] [footnote - : telg, hugh f. dormody, mayor of monterey, calif., et al., to sen. william f. knowland, jul ; ltr, sa to sen. knowland, may ; both in csusa . negroes ( aug ).] on the recommendation of the civilian aide, the assistant secretary of war introduced another racial reform in january that removed racial designations from overseas travel orders and authorizations issued to dependents and war department civilian employees.[ - ] the order was strongly opposed by some members of the army staff and had to be repeated by the secretary of the army in .[ - ] branding racial designations on travel orders a "continuous source of embarrassment" to the army, secretary frank pace, jr., sought to include all travel orders in the prohibition, but the army staff persuaded him it was unwise. while the staff agreed that orders involving travel between reception centers and training organizations need not designate race, it convinced the secretary that to abolish such designations on other orders, including overseas assignment documents, would adversely affect strength and accounting procedures as well as overseas replacement systems.[ - ] the modest reform continued in effect until the question of racial designation became a major issue in the 's. [footnote - : ag memo for office of sw et al., jan , sub: designation of race on overseas travel orders, agao-c . ( jan ), wdgsp; memo for rcd attached to memo, d/ssp for tag, jan , same sub, ag . ( jan ).] [footnote - : memo, sa for cofsa, apr , sub: racial designations on travel orders, cs . ( apr ).] [footnote - : g- summary sheet, apr , sub: racial designations on travel orders; memo, cofs for sa, may , same sub; both in cs . ( apr ).] not all the reforms that followed the gillem board's deliberations were so quickly adopted. for in truth the army was not the monolithic institution so often depicted by its critics, and its racial directives usually came out of compromises between the progressive and traditional factions of the staff. the integration of the national cemeteries, an emotion-laden issue in , amply demonstrated that sharp differences of opinion existed within the department. although long-standing regulations provided for segregation by rank only, local custom, and in one case--the long island national cemetery--a order by secretary of war george h. dern, dictated racial (p.  ) segregation in most of the cemeteries. the quartermaster general reviewed the practice in and recommended a new policy specifically opening new sections of all national cemeteries to eligible citizens of all races. he would leave undisturbed segregated grave sites in the older sections of the cemeteries because integration would "constitute a breach of faith with the next of kin of those now interred."[ - ] as might be expected, general paul supported the quartermaster suggestion, as did the commander of the army ground forces. the army air forces commander, on the other hand, opposed integrating the cemeteries, as did the chief of staff, who on february rejected the proposal. the existing policy was reconfirmed by the under secretary of war three days later, and there the matter rested.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, qmg for dcofs, apr , csusa, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : wdsp summary sheet, jan , sub: staff study--segregation of grave sites, wdgsp/c .] not for long, for civil rights spokesmen and the black press soon protested. the naacp confessed itself "astonished" at the army's decision and demanded that secretary patterson change a practice that was both "un-american and un-democratic."[ - ] marcus ray predicted that continuing agitation would require further army action, and he reminded under secretary royall that cemeteries under the jurisdiction of the navy, veterans administration, and department of the interior had been integrated with considerable publicity. he urged adoption of the quartermaster general's recommendation.[ - ] that was enough for secretary patterson. on april he directed that the new sections of national cemeteries be integrated.[ - ] [footnote - : telg, secy veterans affairs, naacp, to sw, attached to memo, sw for dcofs, apr , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, civilian aide for usw, mar , sub: segregation in grave site assignment, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, sw for dcofs, apr , copy in cmh. the secretary's directive was incorporated in the _national cemetery regulations_, august , and army regulation - , october .] it was a hollow victory for the reformers because the traditionalists were able to cling to the secretary's proviso that old sections of the cemeteries be left alone, and the army continued to gather its dead in segregation and in bitter criticism. five months after the secretary's directive, the american legion protested to the secretary of war over segregation at the fort snelling national cemetery, minnesota, and in august the governor's interracial commission of the state of minnesota carried the matter to the president, calling the policy "a flagrant disregard of human dignity."[ - ] the army continued to justify segregation as a temporary and limited measure involving the old sections, but a decade after the directive the commander of the atlanta depot was still referring to segregation in some cemeteries.[ - ] the controversial practice would drag on into the next decade before the department of defense finally ruled that there would be no lines drawn by rank or race in national cemeteries. [footnote - : ltr, royall to rep. edward j. devitt of minnesota, sep ; ltr, clifford rucker to the president, aug ; both in sw . .] [footnote - : ltr, cg, atlanta depot, to dqmg, mar , mgme-p. see also memo, asa (m&rf) for cofs, sep , sub: segregation of national cemeteries; df, qmf to g- , oct , same sub; both in cs ( sep ).] an attempt to educate the rank and file in the army's racial (p.  ) policy met some opposition in the army staff. at general paul's request, the information and education division prepared a pamphlet intended to improve race relations through troop indoctrination.[ - ] _army talk _, published on april , was, like its world war ii predecessors, _command of negro troops_ and _the negro soldier_, progressive for the times. while it stressed the reforms projected in the army's policy, including eventual integration, it also clearly defended the army's continued insistence on segregation on the grounds that segregation promoted interracial harmony. the official position of the service was baldly stated. "the army is not an instrument of social reform. its interest in matters of race is confined to considerations of its own effectiveness." [footnote - : memo, d/p&a for cofs, feb , sub: army talks on "utilization of negro manpower," wdgpa . ( jan ).] even before publication the pamphlet provoked considerable discussion and soul-searching in the army staff. the deputy chief of staff, lt. gen. thomas t. handy, questioned some of the information and education division's claims for black combatants. in the end the matter had to be taken to general eisenhower for resolution. he ordered publication, reminding local commanders that if necessary they should add further instructions of their own, "in keeping with the local situation" to insure acceptance of the army's policy. the pamphlet was not to be considered an end in itself, he added, but only one element in a "progressive process toward maximum utilization of manpower in the army."[ - ] [footnote - : wd cir , mar ; see also ltrs, col david lane (author of _army talk _) to martin blumenson, dec , and to author, mar , cmh files.] _segregation in theory and practice_ efforts to carry out the policy set forth in circular reached a high-water mark in mid- . by then black troops, for so long limited to a few job categories, could be found in a majority of military occupational fields. the officer corps was open to all without the restrictions of a racial quota, and while a quota for enlisted men still existed all racial distinctions in standards of enlistment were gone. the army was replacing white officers in black units with negroes as fast as qualified black replacements became available. and more were qualifying every day. by june the army had almost , black commissioned officers, warrant officers, and nurses serving with over , enlisted men and women.[ - ] [footnote - : stm- , strength of the army, jul . for an optimistic report on the execution of circular , see _annual report of the secretary of the army, _ (washington: government printing office, ), pp. - , , .] but here, in the eyes of the army's critics, was the rub: after three years of racial reform segregation not only remained but had been perfected. no longer would the army be plagued with the vast all-black divisions that had segregated thousands of negroes in an admittedly inefficient and often embarrassing manner. instead, negroes would be segregated in more easily managed hundreds. by limiting (p.  ) integration to the battalion level (the lowest self-sustaining unit in the army system), the army could guarantee the separation of the races in eating, sleeping, and general social matters and still hope to escape some of the obvious discrimination of separate units by making the black battalions organic elements of larger white units. the army's scheme did not work. schooling and specialty occupations aside, segregation quite obviously remained the essential fact of military life and social intercourse for the majority of black soldiers, and all the evidence of reasonable and genuine reform that came about under the gillem board policy went aglimmering. the army was in for some rough years with its critics. but why were the army's senior officers, experienced leaders at the pinnacle of their careers and dedicated to the well-being of the institution they served, so reluctant to part with segregation? why did they cling to an institution abandoned by the navy and the air force,[ - ] the target of the civil rights movement and its allies in congress, and by any reasonable judgment so costly in terms of efficient organization? the answers lie in the reasoned defense of their position developed by these men during the long controversy over the use of black troops and so often presented in public statements and documents.[ - ] arguments for continued segregation fell into four general categories. [footnote - : the air force became a separate service on september .] [footnote - : unless otherwise noted, the following paragraphs are based on nichols' interviews in with generals eisenhower, bradley, and lee and with lt. col. steve davis (a black officer assigned to the p&a division during the gillem board period); author's interview with general wade h. haislip, mar , and with general j. lawton collins, apr ; all in cmh files; and u.s. congress, senate, hearings before the u.s. senate committee on _armed services, universal military training_, th cong., d sess., , pp. - . see also morris janowitz, _the professional soldier: a social and political portrait_ (new york: free press, ), pp. ff.] first, segregation was necessary to preserve the internal stability of the army. prejudice was a condition of american society, general of the army dwight d. eisenhower told a senate committee in , and the army "is merely one of the mirrors that holds up to our faces the united states of america." since society separated the races, it followed that if the army allowed black and white soldiers to live and socialize together it ran the very real risk of riots and racial disturbances which could disrupt its vital functions. remembering the contribution of black platoons to the war in europe, general eisenhower, for his part, was willing to accept the risk and integrate the races by platoons, believing that the social problems "can be handled," particularly on the large posts. nevertheless he made no move toward integrating by platoons while he was chief of staff. later he explained that the possibility of applying this lesson [world war ii integration of negro platoons] to the peacetime army came up again and again. objection involved primarily the social side of the soldier's life. it was argued that through integration we would get into all kinds of difficulty in staging soldiers' dances and other social events. at that time we were primarily occupied in responding to america's determination "to get the soldiers home"--so, as i recall, little progress toward integration was made during that period.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, dde to gen bruce clarke (commander of the d constabulary brigade when it was integrated in ), may , copy in cmh.] [illustration: inspection by the chief of staff. _general dwight d. eisenhower talks with a soldier of the th combat team motor pool during a tour of fort benning, georgia, ._] "liquor and women," lt. gen. john c. h. lee pronounced, were the (p.  ) major ingredients of racial turmoil in the army. although general lee had been a prime mover in the wartime integration of combat platoons, he wanted the army to avoid social integration because of the disturbances he believed would attend it. as general omar n. bradley saw it, the army could integrate its training programs but not the soldier's social life. hope of progress would be destroyed if integration was pushed too fast. bradley summed up his postwar attitude very simply: "i said let's go easy--as fast as we can." second, segregation was an efficient way to isolate the poorly educated and undertrained black soldier, especially one with a combat occupational specialty. to integrate negroes into white combat units, already dangerously understrength, would threaten the army's fighting ability. when he was chief of staff, eisenhower thought many of the problems associated with black soldiers, problems of morale, health, and discipline, were problems of education, and that the negro was capable of change. "i believe," he said, "that a negro can improve his standing and his social standing and his respect for certain of the standards that we observe, just as well as we can." lt. gen. wade h. haislip, the deputy chief of staff for administration, concluded that the army's racial mission was education. all that circular meant, he explained, "was that we had to begin educating the negro soldiers so they could be mixed sometime in the future." bradley observed in agreement that "as you begin to get better educated negroes in the service," there is "more reason to integrate." the army was pledged to accept negroes and to give them a wide choice of assignment, but until their education and training improved they had to be isolated. third, segregation was the only way to provide equal treatment and opportunity for black troops. defending this paternalistic argument, eisenhower told the senate: in general, the negro is less well educated ... and if you make a complete amalgamation, what you are going to have is in every company the negro is going to be relegated to the minor jobs, and he is never going to get his promotion to such grades as technical sergeant, master sergeant, and so on, because the competition is too tough. if, on the other hand, he is in (p.  ) smaller units of his own, he can go up to that rate, and i believe he is entitled to the chance to show his own wares. fourth, segregation was necessary because segments of american society with powerful representatives in congress were violently opposed to mixing the races. bradley explained that integration was part of social evolution, and he was afraid that the army might move too fast for certain sections of the country. "i thought in that they were ready in the north," he added, "but not in the south." the south "learned over the years that mixing the races was a vast problem." bradley continued, "so any change in the army would be a big step in the south." general haislip reasoned, you "just can't do it all of a sudden." as for the influence of those opposed to maintaining the army's social _status quo_, haislip, who was the vice chief of staff during part of the gillem board period, recalled that "everybody was floundering around, trying to find the right thing to do. i didn't lose any sleep over it [charges of discrimination]." general eisenhower, as he did so often during his career, accurately distilled the thinking of his associates: i believe that the human race may finally grow up to the point where it [race relations] will not be a problem. it [the race problem] will disappear through education, through mutual respect, and so on. but i do believe that if we attempt merely by passing a lot of laws to force someone to like someone else, we are just going to get into trouble. on the other hand, i do not by any means hold out for this extreme segregation as i said when i first joined the army years ago. these arguments might be specious, as a white house committee would later demonstrate, but they were not necessarily guileful, for they were the heartfelt opinions of many of the army's leaders, opinions shared by officials of the other services. these men were probably blind to the racism implicit in their policies, a racism nurtured by military tradition. education and environment had fostered in these career officers a reverence for tradition. why should the army, these traditionalists might ask, abandon its black units, some with histories stretching back almost a century? why should the ordered social life of the army post, for so long a mirror of the segregated society of most civilian communities, be so uncomfortably changed? the fact that integration had never really been tried before made it fraught with peril, and all the forces of military tradition conspired to support the old ways. what had gone unnoticed by army planners was the subtle change in the attitude of the white enlisted man toward integration. opinion surveys were rare in an institution dedicated to the concept of military discipline, but nevertheless in the five years following the war several surveys were made of the racial views of white troops (the views of black soldiers were ignored, probably on the assumption that all negroes favored integration). in , just as the gillem board policy was being enunciated, the army staff found enlisted men in substantial agreement on segregation. although most of those surveyed supported the expanded use of negroes in the army, an overwhelming majority voted for the principle of having racially separate working and living arrangements. yet the pollsters found much less opposition to integration when they put their questions on a personal basis--"how do _you_ feel about...?" only southerners as a group registered a clear majority for segregated working conditions. the survey also (p.  ) revealed another encouraging portent: most of the opposition to integration existed among older and less educated men.[ - ] [footnote - : the survey is contained in cinfo, "supplementary rpt on attitudes of whites toward serving with negro em," incl to memo, col charles s. johnson, exec off, cofs, for dcofs, may , sub: segregation in the army, csusa . negroes ( may ).] [illustration: general davis.] three years later the secretary of defense sponsored another survey of enlisted opinion on segregation. this time less than a third of those questioned were opposed to integrated working conditions and some percent were not "definitely opposed" to complete integration of both working and living arrangements. again men from all areas tended to endorse integration as their educational level rose; opposition, on the other hand, centered in among the chronic complainers and those who had never worked with negroes.[ - ] [footnote - : armed forces i&e div, osd, rpt no. , "morale attitudes of enlisted men, may-june ," pt. ii, attitude toward integration of negro soldiers in the army, copy in cmh.] in discussing prejudice and discrimination it is necessary to compare the army with the rest of american society. examining the question of race relations in the army runs the risk of distorting the importance given the subject by the nation as a whole in the postwar period. while resistance to segregation was undoubtedly growing in the black community and among an increasing number of progressives in the white community, there was as yet no widespread awareness of the problem and certainly no concerted public effort to end it. this lack of perception might be particularly justified in the case of army officers, for few of them had any experience with black soldiers and most undoubtedly were not given to wide reading and reflecting on the subject of race relations. moreover, the realities of military life tended to insulate army officers from the main currents of american society. frequently transferred and therefore without roots in the civilian community, isolated for years at a time in overseas assignments, their social life often centered in the military garrison, officers might well have been less aware of racial discrimination. perhaps because of the insulation imposed on officers by their duties, the army's leaders were achieving reforms far beyond those accepted elsewhere in american society. few national organizations and industries could match the army in for the number of negroes employed, the breadth of responsibility given them, and the variety of their training and occupations. looked at in this light, the (p.  ) army of and the men who led it could with considerable justification be classed as a progressive force in the fight for racial justice. _segregation: an assessment_ the gap between the army's stated goal of integration and its continuing practices had grown so noticeable in , a presidential election year, that most civil rights spokesmen and their allies in the press had become disillusioned with army reforms. benjamin o. davis, still the army's senior black officer and still after eight years a brigadier general, called the army staff's attention to the shift in attitude. most had greeted publication of circular as "the dawn of a new day for the colored soldier"--general davis's words--and looked forward to the gradual eradication of segregation. but army practices in subsequent months had brought disappointment, he warned the under secretary, and the black press had become "restless and impatient." he wanted the army staff to give "definite expression of the desire of the department of national defense for the elimination of all forms of discrimination-segregation from the armed services."[ - ] the suggestion was disapproved. general paul explained that the army could not make such a policy statement since circular permitted segregated units and a quota that by its nature discriminated at least in terms of numbers of negroes assigned.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, brig gen b. o. davis, sp asst to sa, for under sa, jan , sub: negro utilization in the postwar army, wdgpa - ; ibid., nov ; both in sa files. the quotations are from the latter document.] [footnote - : memo, d/p&a for under sa, apr , sub: negro utilization in the postwar army, wdgpa . .] in february the chief of information tried to counter criticism by asking personnel and administrative officials to collect favorable opinions from prominent civilians, "particularly negroes and sociologists." but this antidote to public criticism failed because, as the deputy personnel director had to admit, "the division does not have knowledge of any expressed favorable opinion either of individuals or organizations, reference our negro policy."[ - ] [footnote - : df's, cinfo to d/p&a, feb , and dep d/p&a to cinfo, feb ; both in wdgpa . ( feb ).] a constant concern because it marred the army's public image, segregation also had a profound effect on the performance and well-being of the black soldier. this effect was difficult to measure but nevertheless real and has been the subject of considerable study by social scientists.[ - ] their opinions are obviously open to debate, and in fact most of them were not fully formulated during the period under discussion. yet their conclusions, based on modern sociological techniques, clearly reveal the pain and turmoil suffered by black soldiers because of racial separation. rarely did the army staff bother to delve into these matters in the years before korea, (p.  ) although the facts on which the scientists based their conclusions were collected by the war department itself. this indifference is the more curious because the army had always been aware of what the war department policies and programs review board called in "that intangible aspect of military life called prestige and spirit."[ - ] [footnote - : for a detailed discussion of this point, see mandelbaum, _soldier groups and negro soldiers_; stouffer et al., _the american soldier: adjustment during army life_, ch. xii; eli ginzberg, _the negro potential_ (new york: columbia university press, ); ginzberg et al., _the ineffective soldier_, vol. iii, _patterns of performance_ (new york: columbia university press, ); _to secure these rights: the report of the president's committee on civil rights_ (washington: government printing office, ); dollard and young, "in the armed forces."] [footnote - : final rpt, wd policies and programs review board, aug , csusa files.] burdened with the task of shoring up its racial policy, the army staff failed to concern itself with the effect of segregation. yet by ignoring segregation the staff overlooked the primary cause of its racial problems and condemned the army to their continuation. it need not have been, because as originally conceived, the gillem board policy provided, in the words of the assistant secretary of war, for "progressive experimentation" leading to "effective manpower utilization without regard to race or color."[ - ] this reasonable approach to a complex social issue was recognized as such by the war department and by many black spokesmen. but the gillem board's original goal was soon abandoned, and in the "interest of national defense," according to secretary royall, integration was postponed for the indefinite future.[ - ] extension of individual integration below the company level was forbidden, and the lessons learned at the kitzingen training center were never applied elsewhere; in short, progressive experimentation was abandoned. [footnote - : ltr, howard c. petersen, asw, to william m. taylor, may , asw . .] [footnote - : department of national defense, "national defense conference on negro affairs," apr , morning session, p. .] the gillem board era began with secretary patterson accepting the theory of racially separate but equal service as an anodyne for temporary segregation; it ended with secretary royall embracing a permanent separate but equal system as a shield to protect the racial _status quo_. while patterson and his assistants accepted restriction on the number of negroes and their assignment to segregated jobs and facilities as a temporary expedient, military subordinates used the gillem board's reforms as a way to make more efficient a segregation policy that neither they nor, they believed, society in general was willing to change. thus, despite some real progress on the periphery of its racial problem, the army would have to face the enemy in korea with an inefficient organization of its men. the army's postwar policy was based on a false premise. the gillem board decided that since negroes had fought poorly in segregated divisions in two world wars, they might fight better in smaller segregated organizations within larger white units. few officers really believed this, for it was commonly accepted throughout the army that negroes generally made poor combat soldiers. it followed then that the size of a unit was immaterial, and indeed, given the manpower that the army received from reenlistments and selective service, any black unit, no matter its size, would almost assuredly be an inefficient, spiritless group of predominately class iv and v men. for in addition to its educational limitations, the typical black unit suffered a further handicap in the vital matter of motivation. the gillem board disregarded this fact, but it was rarely overlooked by the black soldier: he was called upon to serve as a second-class (p.  ) soldier to defend what he often regarded as his second-class citizenship. in place of unsatisfactory black divisions, circular made the army substitute three unsatisfactorily mixed divisions whose black elements were of questionable efficiency and a focus of complaint among civil rights advocates. commanders at all levels faced a dilemma implicit in the existence of white and black armies side by side. overwhelmed by regulations and policies that tried to preserve the fiction of separate but equal opportunity, these officers wasted their time and energy and, most often in the case of black officers, lost their self-confidence. in calling for the integration of small black units rather than individuals, the gillem board obviously had in mind the remarkably effective black platoons in europe in the last months of world war ii. but even this type of organization was impossible in the postwar army because it demanded a degree of integration that key commanders, especially the major army component commanders, were unwilling to accept. these real problems were intensified by the normal human failings of prejudice, vested interest, well-meaning ignorance, conditioned upbringing, shortsightedness, preoccupation with other matters, and simple reluctance to change. the old ways were comfortable, and the new untried, frightening in their implications and demanding special effort. nowhere was there enthusiasm for the positive measures needed to implement the gillem board's recommendations leading to integration. this unwillingness to act positively was particularly noticeable in the organization and training division, in the army ground forces, and even to some extent in the personnel and administration division itself. the situation might have improved had the gillem board been able or willing to spell out intermediate goals. for the ultimate objective of using black soldiers like white soldiers as individuals was inconceivable and meaningless or radical and frightening to many in the army. interim goals might have provided impetus for gradual change and precluded the virtual inertia that gripped the army staff. but at best circular served as a stopgap measure, allowing the army to postpone for a few more years any substantial change in race policy. this postponement cost the service untold time and effort devising and defending a system increasingly under attack from the black community and, significantly, from that community's growing allies in the administration. chapter (p.  ) the postwar navy that army concerns and problems dominated the discussions of race relations in the armed forces in the postwar years is understandable since the army had the largest number of negroes and the most widely publicized segregation policy of all the services. at the same time the army bore, unfairly, the brunt of public criticism for all the services' race problems. the navy, committed to a policy of integration, but with relatively few negroes in its integrated general service or in the ranks of the segregated marine corps and the new air force, its racial policy still fluid, merely attracted less attention and so escaped many of the charges hurled at the army by civil rights advocates both in and out of the federal government. but however different or unformed their racial policies, all the services for the most part segregated negroes in practice and all were open to charges of discrimination. although the services developed different racial policies out of their separate circumstances, all three were reacting to the same set of social forces and all three suffered from race prejudice. they also faced in common a growing indifference to military careers on the part of talented young negroes who in any case would have to compete with an aging but persistent group of less talented black professionals for a limited number of jobs. of great importance was the fact that the racial practices of the armed forces were a product of the individual service's military traditions. countless incidents support the contention that service traditions were a transcendent factor in military decisions. marx leva, forrestal's assistant, told the story of a forrestal subordinate who complained that some admirals were still opposed to naval aviation, to which forrestal replied that he knew some admirals who still opposed steam engines.[ - ] forrestal's humorous exaggeration underscored the tenacity of traditional attitudes in the navy. although self-interest could never be discounted as a motive, tradition also figured prominently, for example, in the controversy between proponents of the battleship and proponents of the aircraft carrier. certainly the influence of tradition could be discerned in the antipathy of navy officials toward racial change.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, lee nichols with marx leva, , in nichols collection, cmh.] [footnote - : on the survival of traditional attitudes in the navy, see karsten, _naval aristocracy_, ch. v; waldo h. heinricks, jr., "the role of the u.s. navy," in dorothy borg and shumpei okamoto, eds., _pearl harbor as history_ (new york: columbia university press, ); david rosenberg, "arleigh burke and officer development in the inter-war navy," _pacific historical review_ (november ).] the army also had its problems with tradition. it endured tremendous inner conflict before it decided to drop the cavalry in favor of mechanized and armored units. nor did the resistance to armor die quickly. former chief of staff peyton c. march reported that a (p.  ) previous chief of cavalry told him in that the army had betrayed the horse.[ - ] president roosevelt was also a witness to how military tradition frustrated attempts to change policy. he picked his beloved navy to make the point: "to change anything in the na-a-vy is like punching a feather bed. you punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted, and then you find the damn bed just as it was before you started punching."[ - ] many senior officers resisted equal treatment and opportunity simply because of their traditional belief that negroes needed special treatment and any basic change in their status was fraught with danger.[ - ] [footnote - : edward m. coffman, _the hilt of the sword_ (madison: university of wisconsin press, ), p. .] [footnote - : quoted in marriner s. eccles, _beckoning frontiers: public and personal recollections_, ed. sidney hyman (new york: knopf, ), p. .] [footnote - : the influence of tradition on naval racial practices was raised during the hearings of the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, january , pages - , - .] still, tradition could work two ways, and in the case of the navy, at least, the postwar decision to liberalize racial practices can be traced in part to its sense of tradition. when james forrestal started to integrate the general service in , his appeals to his senior military colleagues, the president, and the public were always couched in terms of military efficiency. but if military efficiency made the new policy announced in february inevitable, military tradition made partial integration acceptable. black sailors had served in significant numbers in an integrated general service during the nation's first century and a half, and those in the world war ii period who spoke of a traditional navy ban against negroes were just as wrong as those who spoke of a traditional ban on liquor. the same abstemious secretary who completely outlawed alcohol on warships in initiated the short-lived restrictions on the service of negroes in the navy.[ - ] both limited integration and liquor were old traditions in the american navy, and the influence of military tradition made integration of the general service relatively simple. [footnote - : secnav (josephus daniels) general order , jul . alcohol had been outlawed for enlisted men at sea by secretary john d. long more than a decade earlier. the prohibition rule infuriated the officers. one predicted that the ruling would push officers into "the use of cocaine and other dangerous drugs." quoted in ronald spector, _admiral of the new empire_ (baton rouge: university of louisiana press, ), pp. - .] forrestal was convinced that in order to succeed racial reform must first be accepted by the men already in uniform; integration, if quietly and gradually put into effect, would soon demonstrate its efficiency and make the change acceptable to all members of the service. quiet gradualism became the hallmark of his effort. in august the navy had some , negroes, almost . percent of its total strength. sixty-four of them, including six women, were commissioned officers.[ - ] presumably, these men and women would be the first to enjoy the fruits of the new integration order. their number could also be expected to increase because, as secretary forrestal reported in august , the only quotas on enlistment were those determined by the needs of the navy and the limitation of (p.  ) funds.[ - ] even as he spoke, at least some black sailors were being trained in almost all naval ratings and were serving throughout the fleet, on planes and in submarines, working and living with whites. the signs pointed to a new day for negroes in the navy. [footnote - : unless otherwise noted the statistical information used in this section was supplied by the office, assistant chief for management information, bupers. see also bupers, "enlisted strength--u.s. navy," jul , pers -bl, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : ltr, secnav to harvard chapter, avc, aug , p - mm genrecsnav.] [illustration: shore leave in korea. _men of the uss topeka land in inch'on, ._] but during the chaotic months of demobilization a different picture began to emerge. although negroes continued to number about percent of the navy's enlisted strength, their position altered radically. the average strength figures for showed , negroes, percent of the total black strength, serving in the integrated general service while , , or percent, were classified as stewards. by mid- the outlook was somewhat brighter, but still on the average only percent of the negroes in the navy held jobs in the general service while percent remained in the nonwhite steward's branch. at this time only three black officers remained on active duty. again, what navy officials saw as military efficiency helps explain this postwar retreat. because of its rapidly sinking manpower needs, the navy could afford to set higher enlistment standards than the army, and the fewer available spaces in the general service went overwhelmingly to the many more eligible whites who applied. only in the steward's branch, with its separate quotas and lower enlistment standards, did the (p.  ) navy find a place for the many black enlistees as well as the thousands of stewards ready and willing to reenlist for peacetime service. if efficiency explains why the navy's general service remained disproportionately white, tradition explains how segregation and racial exclusion could coexist with integration in an organization that had so recently announced a progressive racial policy. along with its tradition of an integrated general service, the navy had a tradition of a white officer corps. it was natural for the navy to exclude black officers from the regular navy, secretary john l. sullivan said later, just as it was common to place negroes in mess jobs.[ - ] a _modus vivendi_ could be seen emerging from the twin dictates of efficiency and tradition: integrate a few thousand black sailors throughout the general service in fulfillment of the letter of the bureau of naval personnel circular; as for the nonwhite steward's branch and the lack of black officers, these conditions were ordinary and socially comfortable. since most navy leaders agreed that the new policy was fair and practical, no further changes seemed necessary in the absence of a pressing military need or a demand from the white house or congress. [footnote - : interv, nichols with secretary john l. sullivan, dec , in nichols collection, cmh. sullivan succeeded james forrestal as secretary on september .] to black publicists and other advocates of civil rights, the navy's postwar manpower statistics were self-explanatory: the navy was discriminating against the negro. time and again the navy responded to this charge, echoing secretary forrestal's contention that the navy had no racial quotas and that all restrictions on the employment of black sailors had been lifted. as if suggesting that all racial distinctions had been abandoned, personnel officials discontinued publishing racial statistics and abolished the special programs unit.[ - ] cynics might have ascribed other motives for these decisions, but the civil rights forces apparently never bothered. for the most part they left the navy's apologists to struggle with the increasingly difficult task of explaining why the placement of negroes deviated so markedly from assignment for whites. [footnote - : the bupers progress report (pers ), the major statistical publication of the department, terminated its statistical breakdown by race in march . the navy's racial affairs office was closed in june . see bupers, "narrative of bureau of naval personnel, september to october " (hereafter "bupers narrative"), : .] the navy's difficulty in this regard stemmed from the fact that the demobilization program under which it geared down from a . million-man service to a peacetime force of less than half a million was quite straightforward and simple. consequently, the latest state of the negro in the navy was readily apparent to the black serviceman and to the public. the key to service in the postwar navy was acceptance into the regular navy. the wartime navy had been composed overwhelmingly of reservists and inductees, and shortly after v-j day the navy announced plans for the orderly separation of all reservists by september . in april it discontinued volunteer enlistment in the naval reserve for immediate active duty, and in may it (p.  ) issued its last call for draftees through selective service.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., p. ; selective service system, _special groups_ (monograph ), : . between september and may the navy drafted , men, including , negroes.] at the same time the bureau of naval personnel launched a vigorous program to induce reservists to switch to the regular navy. in october it opened all petty officer ratings in the regular navy to such transfers and offered reservists special inducements for changeover in the form of ratings, allowance extras, and, temporarily, short-term enlistments. so successful was the program that by july the strength of the regular navy had climbed to , , only a few thousand short of the postwar authorization. the navy ended its changeover program in early .[ - ] while it lasted, black reservists and inductees shared in the program, although the chief of the personnel recruiting division found it necessary to amplify the recruiting instructions to make this point clear.[ - ] the regular navy included , enlisted negroes on v-j day, . percent of the total enlisted strength. this figure nearly tripled in the next year to , , although the percentage of negroes only doubled.[ - ] [footnote - : "bupers narrative," : , ; see also bupers cir ltr - , feb .] [footnote - : see ltr, chief, navpers, to co, naval barracks, nad, seal beach, calif., oct , sub: eligibility of negroes for enlistment in usn, p mm, bupersrecs; recruiting dir, bupers, directive to recruiting officers, jan , quoted in nelson, "integration of the negro," p. .] [footnote - : bupers, "enlisted strength--u.s. navy," jul , pers -bl.] _the steward's branch_ the major concern of the civil rights groups was not so much the number of negroes in the regular navy, although this remained far below the proportion of negroes in the civilian population, but that the majority of negroes were being accepted for duty in the nonwhite steward's branch. more than percent of all black sailors in the regular navy in december were in this branch. the ratio improved somewhat in the next six months when , black general service personnel (out of a wartime high of , ) transferred into the regular navy while more than , black reservists and draftees joined the , regulars already in the steward's branch.[ - ] the statistical low point in terms of the ratio of negroes in the postwar regular general service and the steward's branch occurred in fiscal year when only . percent of the navy's regular black personnel were assigned outside the steward's branch.[ - ] in short, more than eight out of every ten negroes in the navy trained and worked separately from white sailors, performing menial tasks and led by noncommissioned officers denied the perquisites of rank. [footnote - : memo, dir of planning and control, bupers, for chief, navpers (ca. jan ), sub: negro personnel, pers b, bupersrecs.] [footnote - : bupers, memo on discrimination of the negro, jan . filed in bupers technical library.] the navy itself had reason to be concerned. the steward's branch created efficiency problems and was a constant source of embarrassment to the service's public image. because of its low standards, the branch attracted thousands of poorly educated and underprivileged individuals who had a high rate of venereal disease but were (p.  ) engaged in preparing and serving food. leaders within the branch itself, although selected on the basis of recommendations from superiors, examinations, and seniority, were often poor performers. relations between the individual steward and the outfit to which he was assigned were often marked by personal conflicts and other difficulties. consequently, while stewards eagerly joined the branch in the regular navy, the incidence of disciplinary problems among them was high. the branch naturally earned the opprobrium of civil rights groups, who were sensitive not only to the discrimination of a separate branch for minorities but also to the unfavorable image these men created of negroes in the service.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, lt dennis d. nelson for dep dir. pub relations. mar , sub: problems of the stewards' branch, pr - , genrecsnav. on mental standards for stewards, sec bupers cir ltr - , feb .] [illustration: mess attendants, uss bushnell, .] [illustration: mess attendants, uss wisconsin, .] the navy had a ready defense for its management of the branch. its spokesmen frequently explained that it performed an essential function, especially at sea. since this function was limited in scope, they added, the navy was able to reduce the standards for the branch, thus opening opportunities for many men otherwise ineligible to join the service. in order to offer a chance for advancement the navy had to create a separate recruiting and training system for (p.  ) stewards. this separation in turn explained the steward's usual failure to transfer to branches in the regular command channels. since there were no minimum standards for the branch, it followed that most of its noncommissioned officers remained unqualified to exercise military command over personnel other than their branch subordinates. lack of command responsibility was also present in a number of other branches not directly concerned with the operation of ships. it was not the result of race prejudice, therefore, but of standards for enlistment and types of duties performed. nor was the steward's frequent physical separation based on race; berthing was arranged by department and function aboard large vessels. separation did not exist on smaller ships. messmen were usually berthed with other men of the supply department, including bakers and storekeepers. chief stewards, however, as under secretary kimball later explained, had not been required to meet the military qualifications for chief petty officer, and therefore it was "considered improper that they should be accorded the same messing, berthing, club facilities, and other privileges reserved for the highest enlisted grade of the navy."[ - ] stewards of the lower ranks received the same chance for advancement as members of other enlisted branches, but to grant them command responsibility would necessitate raising qualifications for the whole branch, (p.  ) thus eliminating many career stewards and extending steward training to include purely military subjects.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, under secnav for congressman clyde doyle of california. aug , mm( ), genrecsnav.] [footnote - : for examples of the navy's official explanation of steward duties, see ltr, actg secnav to lester granger, apr , qn/mm( ), and ltr, under secnav to congressman clyde doyle of california, aug ; both in genrecsnav. see also ltr, chief, navpers, to dr. carl yaeger, oct , p - , bupersrecs, and testimony of capt fred r. stickney, bupers, and vice adm william m. fechteler, chief of naval personnel, before the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services (fahy cmte), jan and mar .] there was truth in these assertions. stewards had taken advantage of relaxed regulations, flocking into the regular navy during the first months of the changeover program. many did so because they had many years invested in a naval career. some may have wanted the training and experience to be gained from messman's service. in fact, some stewards enjoyed rewarding careers in restaurant, club, and hotel work after retirement. more surprising, considering the numerous complaints about the branch from civil rights groups, the steward's branch consistently reported the highest reenlistment rate in the navy. understandably, the navy constantly reiterated these statistics. actually, the stewards themselves were a major stumbling block to reform of the branch. few of the senior men aspired to other ratings; many were reluctant to relinquish what they saw as the advantages of the messman's life. whatever its drawbacks, messman's duty proved to be a popular assignment.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, nelson to author, feb .] the navy's defense was logical, but not too convincing. technically the steward's branch was open to all, but in practice it remained strictly nonwhite. civil rights activists could point to the fact that there were six times as many illiterate whites as negroes in the wartime navy, yet none of these whites were ever assigned to the steward's branch and none transferred to that branch of the regular navy after the war.[ - ] moreover, shortly after the war the bureau of naval personnel predicted a , -man shortage in the steward's branch, but the navy made no attempt to fill the places with white sailors. instead, it opened the branch to filipinos and guamanians, recruiting , of the islanders before the program was stopped on july , the date of philippine independence. some navy recruiters found other ways to fill steward quotas. the urban league and others reported cases in which black volunteers were rejected by recruiters for any assignment but steward duty.[ - ] nor did civil rights spokesmen appreciate the distinction in petty officer rank the navy made between the steward and other sailors; they continued to interpret it as part and parcel of the "injustices, lack of respect and the disregard for the privileges accorded rated men in other branches of the service."[ - ] they also resented the paternalism implicit in the secretary's assurances that messman's duty was a haven for men unable to compete. [footnote - : ltr, dir, plans and oper div, bupers, to richard lueking, berea college, dec , p . , bupersrecs.] [footnote - : department of national defense, "national defense conference on racial affairs," apr , morning session, pp. - .] [footnote - : memo, lt d. d. nelson, office of public relations, for capt e. b. dexter, office of public relations, aug , sub: negro stewards, petty officer ratings, status of, pr - , genrecsnav.] some individuals in the department were aware of this resentment in the black community and pushed for reform in the steward's branch. the assistant secretary of the navy for air, john nicholas brown, (p.  ) wanted more publicity given both in and outside the service to the fact that the branch was not restricted to any one race and, conversely, that negroes were welcome in the general service.[ - ] in view of the strong tradition of racial separateness in the stewards rating, such publicity might be considered sheer sophistry, but no more so than the suggestion made by a senior personnel official that the commissary branch and steward's branch be combined to achieve a racially balanced specialty.[ - ] lester granger, now outside the official navy family but still intimately concerned with the department's racial affairs, also pleaded for a merger of the commissary and steward functions. he reasoned that, since members of the commissary branch could advance to true petty officer rating, such a merger would provide a new avenue of advancement for stewards. [footnote - : ltr, asst secnav to lester granger, apr , qn-mm ( ), genrecsnav.] [footnote - : interv, nichols with capt george a. holderness, jr., usn, in nichols collection, cmh.] but more to the point granger also pushed for reform in the standards of the steward's branch. he recognized that educational and other requirements had been lowered for stewards, but, he told forrestal's successor, secretary john l. sullivan, there was little wisdom in "compounding past error." he also pointed out that not all messmen were in the lower intelligence classifications and recommended that the higher scoring men be replaced with low-scoring whites.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, granger to secnav, mar , so- - - , secnav files, genrecsnav.] from within the navy itself lt. dennis d. nelson, one of the first twelve negroes commissioned and still on active duty, added his voice to the demand for reform of the steward's branch. an analogy may be drawn between the navy career of nelson and that of the legendary christopher sargent. lacking sargent's advantages of wealth and family connection, nelson nevertheless became a familiar of secretary sullivan's and, though not primarily assigned to the task, made equal opportunity his preeminent concern. a highly visible member of the navy's racial minority in washington, he made himself its spokesman, pressing senior officials to bring the department's manpower practices closer to its stated policy. once again the navy experienced the curious phenomenon of a lieutenant firing off memos and letters to senior admirals and buttonholing the secretary of the navy.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, nichols with sullivan; intervs, author with lt cmdr d. d. nelson, sep , and with james c. evans, counselor to the secdef, jan ; ltr, nelson to author, feb . all in cmh files.] nelson had a host of suggestions for the steward's branch: eliminate the branch as a racially separate division of labor in the navy, provide permanent officer supervision for all steward units, develop capable noncommissioned officers in the branch with privileges and responsibilities similar to those of other petty officers, indoctrinate all personnel in the ramifications of the navy's stated integration policy, and create a committee to work out the details of these changes. on several occasions nelson tried to show his superiors how nuances in their own behavior toward the stewards reinforced, perhaps as much as separate service itself, the image of discrimination. he recommended that the steward's uniform be changed, eliminating the white jacket and giving the steward a regular (p.  ) seaman's look. he also suggested that petty officer uniforms for stewards be regularized. at one poignant moment this lonely officer took on the whole service, trying to change singlehandedly a thoughtless habit that demeaned both blacks and whites. he admonished the service: "refrain from the use of 'boy' in addressing stewards. this has been a constant practice in the service and is most objectionable, is in bad taste, shows undue familiarity and pins a badge of inferiority, adding little to the dignity and pride of adults."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, lt nelson for capt dexter, pub rels office, aug , sub: negro stewards, petty officer ratings, status of, pr - ; idem for dep dir, off of pub relations, mar , sub: problems of the stewards' branch, pr - ; both in genrecsnav. the quotation is from the latter document.] in summing up these recommendations for the secretary of the navy in january , nelson reminded sullivan that only percent of the navy's negroes were in the general service, in contrast to percent of the negroes in the marine corps. he warned that this imbalance perturbed the members of the recently convened national defense conference on negro affairs and predicted it would interest those involved in the forthcoming presidential inquiry on equality in the armed forces.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, nelson to secnav, jan , secnav files, genrecsnav. for discussion of the presidential inquiry, see chapter .] despite its continued defense of the _status quo_ in the steward's branch, the bureau of naval personnel was not insensitive to criticism. to protect negroes from overzealous recruiters for the branch, the bureau had announced in october that any negro in the general service desiring transfer to the steward's branch had to make his request in writing.[ - ] in mid- it closed the branch to first enlistment, thereby abolishing possible abuses in the recruiting system.[ - ] later in the year the bureau tried to upgrade the quality of the branch by instituting a new and more rigorous training course for second-and third-class stewards and cooks at bainbridge, maryland. finally, in june it removed from its personnel manual all remaining mention of restrictions on the transfer of messmen to the general service.[ - ] these changes were important, but they failed to attack racial separation, the major problem of the branch. thus the controversy over messmen, in which tradition, prejudice, and necessity contended, went on, and the steward's branch, a symbol of discrimination in the navy, remained to trouble both the service and the civil rights groups for some time. [footnote - : bupers cir ltr, oct .] [footnote - : testimony of capt fred stickney at national defense conference on negro affairs, apr , morning session, p. .] [footnote - : change to ankle d- , bupers manual, .] _black officers_ the navy had a racial problem of more immediate concern to men like lieutenant nelson, one of three black officers remaining on active duty. these were the survivers of a most exclusive group that had begun its existence with much hope. in the months following graduation of the first twelve black officers and one warrant officer in march , scores of negroes had passed through the navy's training school. by the end of the war the v- program had thirty-six black candidates, with three others attending the supply corps school at harvard. (p.  ) the number of black officers had grown at an agonizingly slow rate, although in june the secretary of the navy approved a personnel bureau request that in effect removed any numerical quotas for black officers. unfortunately, black officers were still limited to filling "needs as they appeared," and the need for black officers was curtailed by the restricted range of activities open to them in the segregated wartime service. further, most nominees for commissions were selected from the ranks and depended on the sponsorship of their commanding officer who might not be able to spare a competent enlisted man who deserved promotion. putting the matter in the best possible light, one navy historian blamed the dearth of black officers on bureaucratic inertia.[ - ] [footnote - : "bupers hist," pp. - , and supplement (ln), pp. - , copy in cmh. unless otherwise noted the data for this section on black officers in world war ii are from this source.] [illustration: commander nelson.] despite procurement failures and within the limitations of general segregation policy, the navy treated black officers with scrupulous fairness during the war. the bureau of naval personnel insisted they be given the privileges of rank in wardroom and ashore, thus crushing an attempt by authorities at great lakes to underwrite a tacit ban on the use of the officers' club by negroes. in fact, integration proved to be more the rule than the exception in training black officers. the small number of black candidates made segregated classes impractical, and after graduation of the first group of black officers at great lakes, negroes were accepted in all officer candidate classes. as part of this change, the special programs unit successfully integrated the navy's officer candidate school in the posh hotels of still-segregated miami beach. the officers graduated into a number of assignments. some saw duty aboard district and yard craft, others at departmental headquarters in washington. a few served in recruit training assignments at great lakes and hampton institute, but the majority went overseas to work in logistical and advanced base companies, the stevedore-type outfits composed exclusively of negroes. nelson, for example, was sent to the marshall islands where he was assigned to a logistic support company composed of some three hundred black sailors and noncommissioned officers with a racially mixed group of officers. black staff officers, engineers, doctors, dentists, and chaplains were also attached to these units, where they had limited responsibilities and little chance for advancement.[ - ] [footnote - : nelson, "integration of the negro," pp. - .] exceptions to the assignment rule increased during the last months (p.  ) of the war. the special programs unit had concluded that restricting black officers to district craft and shore billets might further encourage the tendency to build an inshore black navy, and the bureau of naval personnel began assigning black officers to seagoing vessels when they completed their sea duty training. by july several were serving in the fleet. to avoid embarrassment, the chief of naval personnel made it a practice to alert the commanding officers of a ship about to receive a black officer so that he might indoctrinate his officers. as his assistant, rear adm. william m. fechteler, explained to one such commander, "if such officers are accorded the proper respect and are required to discharge the duties commensurate with their rank they should be equally competent to white officers of similar experience."[ - ] [footnote - : "bupers hist," p. . the quotation is from ltr, chief, navpers, to co, uss _laramie_, jul , bupersrecs.] fechteler's prediction proved accurate. by v-j day, the navy's black officers, both line and staff, were serving competently in many occupations. the bureau reported that the "personnel relationship aspect" of their introduction into the service had worked well. black officers with white petty officers and enlisted men under them handled their command responsibilities without difficulty, and in general bureau reports and field inspections noted considerable satisfaction with their performance.[ - ] but despite this satisfactory record, only three black officers remained on active duty in . the promise engendered by the navy's treatment of its black officers in the closing months of the war had not been fulfilled during the demobilization period that followed, and what had been to the civil rights movement a brightening situation rapidly became an intolerable one. [footnote - : "bupers hist," p. .] there were several reasons for the rapid demobilization of black officers. some shared the popular desire of reserve officers to return to civilian life. among them were mature men with substantial academic achievements and valuable technical experience. many resented in particular their assignment to all-black labor units, and wanted to resume their civilian careers.[ - ] but a number of black officers, along with over , white reservists, did seek commissions in the regular navy.[ - ] yet not one negro was granted a regular commission in the first eighteen months after the war. lester granger was especially upset by these statistics, and in july he personally took up the case of two black candidates with secretary forrestal.[ - ] [footnote - : nelson "integration of the negro," p. .] [footnote - : alnav - , may , sub: transfer to regular navy.] [footnote - : ltr, granger to secnav, jul , - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav. one of these applicants was nelson, then a lieutenant, who received a promotion upon assignment as commanding officer of a logistic support company in the marshall islands. the grade became permanent upon nelson's assignment to the public relations bureau in washington in .] the bureau of naval personnel offered what it considered a reasonable explanation. as a group, black reserve officers were considerably overage for their rank and were thus at a severe disadvantage in the fierce competition for regular commissions. the average age of the first class of black officers was over thirty-one years. all had been commissioned ensigns on march , and all had received one (p.  ) promotion to lieutenant, junior grade, by the end of the war. when age and rank did coincide, black reservists were considered for transfer. for example, on march ens. john lee, a former v- graduate assigned as gunnery officer aboard a fleet auxiliary craft, received a regular commission, and on january lt. (jg.) edith devoe, one of the four black nurses commissioned in march , was transferred into the regular navy. the following october ens. jessie brown was commissioned and assigned to duty as the first black navy pilot. in a sense, the black officers had the cards stacked against them. as nelson later explained, the bureau did not extend to its black line officers the same consideration given other reservists. while the first twelve black officers were given unrestricted line officer training, the bureau assigned them to restricted line positions, an added handicap when it came to promotions and retention in the postwar navy. all were commissioned ensigns, although the bureau usually granted rank according to the candidate's age, a practice followed when it commissioned its first black staff officers, one of whom became a full lieutenant and the rest lieutenants, junior grade. as an overage reservist himself, nelson remained on active duty after the war through the personal intervention of secretary forrestal. his tour in the navy's public relations office was repeatedly extended until finally on january , thanks to secretary sullivan, he received a regular commission.[ - ] [footnote - : nelson, "integration of the negro," pp. - ; ltr, nelson to author, feb ; interv, nichols with sullivan.] prospects for an increase in black officers were dim. with rare exception the navy's officers came from the academy at annapolis, the officer candidate program, or the naval reserve officers' training corps (nrotc) program. ens. wesley a. brown would graduate in the academy's class of , the sixth negro to attend and the first to graduate in the academy's -year history. only five other negroes were enrolled in the academy's student body in , and there was little indication that this number would rapidly increase. for the most part the situation was beyond the control of the bureau of naval personnel. competition was keen for acceptance at annapolis. the american civil liberties union later asserted that the exclusion of negroes from many of the private prep schools, which so often produced successful academy applicants, helped explain why there were so few negroes at the academy.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr. exec dir. aclu, to secnav, nov , genrecsnav.] nor were many black officers forthcoming from the navy's two other sources. officer candidate schools, severely reduced in size after the war and a negligible source of career officers, had no negroes in attendance from through . perhaps most disturbing was the fact that in just fourteen negroes were enrolled among more than , students in the nrotc program, the usual avenue to a regular navy commission.[ - ] the holloway program, the basis for the navy's reserve officer training system, offered scholarships at fifty-two colleges across the nation, but the number of these scholarships was small, the competition intense, and black applicants, often burdened by inferior schooling, did not fare well. [footnote - : "bupers narrative," : .] statistics pointed at least to the possibility that racial (p.  ) discrimination existed in the nrotc system. unlike the army and air force programs, reserve officer training in the navy depended to a great extent on state selection committees dominated by civilians. these committees exercised considerable leeway in selecting candidates to fill their state's annual nrotc quota, and their decisions were final. not one negro served on any of the state committees. in fact, fourteen of the fifty-two colleges selected for reserve officer training barred negroes from admission by law and others--the exact number is difficult to ascertain--by policy. one black newspaper charged that only thirteen of the participating institutions admitted negroes.[ - ] in all, only six black candidates survived this process to win commissions in . [footnote - : norfolk _journal and guide_, august , .] lester granger blamed the lack of black candidates on the fact that so few negroes attended the schools; undoubtedly, more negroes would have been enrolled in reserve officer training had the program been established at one of the predominantly black colleges. but black institutions were excluded from the wartime v- program, and when the program was extended to include fifty-two colleges in november the navy again rejected the applications of black schools, justifying the exclusion, as it did for many white schools, on grounds of inadequacies in enrollment, academic credentials, and physical facilities.[ - ] some black spokesmen called the decision discriminatory. president mordecai johnson of howard university ruefully wondered how the navy's unprejudiced and nondiscriminatory selection of fifty-two colleges managed to exclude so neatly all black institutions.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, secnav to william t. farley, chmn, civilian components policy bd, dod, mar , q , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : statement of dr. mordecai johnson at national defense conference on negro affairs, apr , morning session, p. .] others disagreed. from the first the special programs unit had rejected the clamor for forming v- units in predominantly black colleges, arguing that in the long run this could be considered enforced segregation and hardly contribute to racial harmony. although candidates were supposed to attend the nrotc school of their choice, black candidates were restricted to institutions that would accept them. if a black school was added to the program, all black candidates would very likely gravitate toward it. several black spokesmen, including nelson, took this attitude and urged instead a campaign to increase the number of negroes at the various integrated schools in the nrotc system.[ - ] whatever the best solution, a significant and speedy increase in the number of black officers was unlikely. [footnote - : ltr, nelson to author, feb ; see also "bupershist," p. .] of lesser moment because of the small size of the waves and the nurse corps, the role of black women in the postwar navy nevertheless concerned several civil rights leaders. roy wilkins, for one, concluded that the navy's new policy which "hasn't worked out on the officer level ... hadn't worked on the women's level" either.[ - ] the navy's statistics seemed to proved his contention. the service had (p.  ) black enlisted women and officers (including nurses) on v-j day; a year later the number had been reduced to black waves and nurse. the navy sought to defend these statistics against charges of discrimination. a spokesman explained that the paucity of black waves resulted from the fact that negroes were barred from the waves until december , just months before the navy stopped recruiting all waves. black waves who had remained in the postwar navy had been integrated and were being employed without discrimination.[ - ] [footnote - : statement of roy wilkins at national defense conference on negro affairs, apr , morning session p. .] [footnote - : testimony of stickney at national defense conference on negro affairs, apr , morning session, p. .] but criticism persisted. in february the navy could count six black waves out of a total enlisted force of , , and during hearings on a bill to regularize the women's services several congressmen joined with a representative of the naacp to press for a specific anti-discrimination amendment. the amendment was defeated, but not before congressman adam clayton powell charged that the status of black women in the navy proved discrimination and demonstrated that the administration was practicing "not merely discrimination, segregation, and jim crowism, but total exclusion."[ - ] the same critics also demanded a similar amendment to the companion legislation on the wac's, but it, too, was defeated. [footnote - : u.s. congress, house, committee on armed services, subcommittee no. , organization and mobilization, _hearings on s. , to establish the women's army corps in the regular army, to authorize the enlistment and appointment of women in the regular navy and marine corps and the naval and marine corps reserve and for other purposes_, th cong., d sess., feb , pp. - , , , - . the powell quotation is on page .] black nurses presented a different problem. two of the wartime nurses had resigned to marry and the third was on inactive status attending college. the navy, secretary forrestal claimed in july , was finding it difficult to replace them or add to their number. observing that black leaders had shown considerable interest in the navy's nursing program, forrestal noted that a similar interest had not been forthcoming from black women themselves. during the navy's recruitment drive to attract , new nurses, only one negro applied, and she was disqualified on physical grounds.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, secnav to congresswoman margaret chase smith (maine), jul , og/p - , genrecsnav.] _public image and the problem of numbers_ individual black nurses no doubt had cogent reasons for failing to apply for navy commissions, but the fact that only one applied called attention to a phenomenon that first appeared about . black americans were beginning to ignore the navy. attempts by black reserve officers to procure nrotc applicants in black high schools and colleges proved largely unproductive. nelson spoke before , potential candidates in , and a special recruiting team reached an equal number the following year, but the combined effort brought fewer than ninety black applicants to take the competitive examination.[ - ] recruiters had similar problems in the enlistment of negroes (p.  ) for general service. viewed from a different perspective, even the complaints and demands of black citizens, at flood tide during the war, now merely trickled into the secretary's office, reflecting, it could be argued, a growing indifference. that such unwillingness to enlist, as lester granger put it, should occur on the heels of a widely publicized promise of racial equality in the service was ironic. the navy was beginning to welcome the negro, but the negro no longer seemed interested in joining.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir, pol div, bupers, for capt william c. chapman, office of information, navy dept, sep ; memo, chief, navpers, for chief, bur of public relations, dec . qr ; both in bupersrecs.] [footnote - : see testimony of lester granger and assistant secretary brown at national defense conference on negro affairs, apr , morning session, pp. - ; and memo, nelson for marx leva, may , copy in nelson archives.] [illustration: naval unit passes in review, _naval advanced base, bremerhaven, germany, _.] several reasons were suggested for this attitude. assistant secretary brown placed the blame, at least in part, on the gap between policy and practice. because of delay in abolishing old discriminatory practices, he pointed out to the deputy chief of naval operations, "the navy's good public relations are endangered."[ - ] the personnel bureau promptly investigated, found justification for complaints (p.  ) of discrimination, and took corrective action.[ - ] yet, as nelson pointed out, such corrections, often in the form of "clarifying directives," were usually directed to specific commanders and tied to specific incidents and were ignored by other commanders as inapplicable to their own racial experiences.[ - ] despite the existence of the racially separate steward's branch, the navy's policy seemed so unassailable to the chief of naval personnel that when his views on a congressional measure to abolish segregation in the services were solicited he reported without reservation that his bureau interposed no objection.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asst secnav for air for dep cno, feb , sub: racial discrimination, p - ( ), genrecsnav.] [footnote - : see memo, chief, navpers, for co, uss _grand canyon_ (ad ), dec , sub: navy department's non discrimination policy--alleged violation of, p ; ltr, chief, navpers, to cmdt, twelfth nav dist, feb , sub: officer screening procedure and indoctrination course in the supervision of negro personnel--establishment of, pers ; both in bupersrecs.] [footnote - : memo, nelson for chief, navpers, nov , sub: complaint of navy enlisted man made to pittsburgh courier..., pr , bupersrecs.] [footnote - : memo, chief, navpers, for jag, feb , sub: hr : to prohibit race segregation in the armed forces of the united states, genrecsnav.] the navy's major racial problem by was the shockingly small number of negroes in the service. in november , a presidential election month, negroes accounted for . percent of the navy's strength. not only were there few negroes in the navy, but there were especially too few in the general service and practically no black officers, a series of statistics that made the predominately black and separate stewards more conspicuous. the navy rejected an obvious solution, lowering recruitment standards, contending that it could not run its ships and aircraft with men who scored below ninety in the general classification test.[ - ] the alternative was to recruit among the increasing numbers of educated negroes, as the personnel bureau had been trying to do. but here, as nelson and others could report, the navy faced severe competition from other employers, and here the navy's public image had its strongest effect. [footnote - : for discussion of the problem of comparative enlistment standards, see chapter .] lt. comdr. edward hope, a black reserve officer assigned to officer procurement, concluded that the black community, especially veterans, distrusted all the services. consequently, negroes tended to disregard announced plans and policies applicable to all citizens unless they were specially labeled "for colored." negroes tried to avoid the humiliation of applying for certain rights or benefits only to be arbitrarily rejected.[ - ] compounding the suspicion and fear of humiliation, hope reported, was a genuine lack of information on navy policy that seriously limited the number of black applicants. [footnote - : ltr, lt cmdr, e. s. hope to secdef, may , with attached rpt, d - - , genrecsnav.] the cause of confusion among black students over navy policy was easy to pinpoint, for memories of the frustrations and insults suffered by black seamen during the war were still fresh. negroes remembered the labor battalions bossed by whites--much like the old plantation system, lester granger observed. unlike the army, the navy had offered few black enlisted men the chance of serving in vital jobs under black commanders. this slight, according to granger, robbed the black sailor of pride in service, a pride that could hardly be restored by the postwar image of the black sailor not as a fighting man but as a servant or laborer. always a loyal member of the navy team, (p.  ) granger was anxious to improve the navy's public image in the black community, and he and others often advanced plans for doing so.[ - ] but any discussion of image quickly foundered on one point: the navy would remain suspect in the eyes of black youth and be condemned by civil rights leaders as long as it retained that symbol of racism, the racially separate steward's branch. [footnote - : see, for example, ltr, granger to secnav, jun , - - , forrestal file, genrecsnav, and granger's extensive comments and questions at the national defense conference on negro affairs, apr .] [illustration: submariner.] here the practical need for change ran headlong into strong military tradition. an integrated general service was traditional and therefore acceptable; an integrated servants' branch was not. faced with the choice of a small number of negroes in the navy and the attendant charges of racism or a change in its traditions, the navy accepted the former. lack of interest on the part of the black community was not a particularly pressing problem for the navy in the immediate postwar years. indeed, it might well have been a source of comfort for the military traditionalists who, armed with an unassailable integration policy, could still enjoy a navy little changed from its prewar condition. nevertheless, the lack of black volunteers for general service was soon to be discussed by a presidential commission, and in the next fifteen years would become a pressing problem when the navy, the first service with a policy of integration, would find itself running behind in the race to attract minority members. chapter (p.  ) the postwar marine corps unlike the army and navy, the all-white marine corps seemed to consider the wartime enlistment of over , negroes a temporary aberration. forced by the navy's nondiscrimination policy to retain negroes after the war, marine corps officials at first decided on a black representation of some , men, roughly the same proportion as during the war. but the old tradition of racial exclusion remained strong, and this figure was soon reduced. the corps also ignored the navy's integration measures, adopting instead a pattern of segregation that marine officials claimed was a variation on the army's historic "separate but equal" black units. in fact, separation was real enough in the postwar corps; equality remained elusive. _racial quotas and assignments_ the problem was that any "separate but equal" race policy, no matter how loosely enforced, was incompatible with the corps' postwar manpower resources and mission and would conflict with its determination to restrict black units to a token number. the dramatic manpower reductions of were felt immediately in the two major elements of the marine corps. the fleet marine force, the main operating unit of the corps and usually under control of the chief of naval operations, retained three divisions, but lost a number of its combat battalions. the divisions kept a few organic and attached service and miscellaneous units. under such severe manpower restrictions, planners could not reserve one of the large organic elements of these divisions for black marines, thus leaving the smaller attached and miscellaneous units as the only place to accommodate self-contained black organizations. at first the plans and policies division decided to assign roughly half the black marines to the fleet marine force. of these some were slated for an antiaircraft artillery battalion at montford point which would provide training as well as an opportunity for negroes' overseas to be rotated home. others were placed in three combat service groups and one service depot where they would act as divisional service troops, and the rest went into slots, later increased to , for stewards, the majority in aviation units. the other half of the black marines was to be absorbed by the so called non-fleet marine force, a term used to cover training, security, and miscellaneous marine units, all noncombat, which normally remained under the control of the commandant. this part of the corps was composed of many small and usually self-contained units, but in a number of activities, particularly in the logistical establishment and the units afloat, reductions in manpower would (p.  ) necessitate considerable sharing of living and working facilities, thus making racial separation impossible. the planners decided, therefore, to limit black assignments outside the fleet marine force to naval ammunition depots at mcalester, oklahoma, and earle, new jersey, where negroes would occupy separate barracks; to guam and saipan, principally as antiaircraft artillery; and to a small training cadre at montford point. eighty stewards would also serve with units outside the fleet marine force. with the exception of the depot at earle, all these installations had been assigned negroes during the war. speaking in particular about the assignment of negroes to mcalester, the director of the plans and policies division, brig. gen. gerald c. thomas, commented that "this has proven to be a satisfactory location and type of duty for these personnel."[ - ] thomas's conception of "satisfactory" duty for negroes became the corps' rationale for its postwar assignment policy. [footnote - : memos, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, sep and oct , sub: post war personnel requirements, a - , mc files. unless otherwise noted, all the documents cited in this chapter are located in hist div, hqmc. the quotation is from the september memo.] [illustration: marine artillery team. _men of the st defense battalion in training at montford point with -mm. antiaircraft gun._] to assign negroes to unskilled jobs because they were accustomed to such duties and because the jobs were located in communities that would accept black marines might be satisfactory to marine officials, but it was considered racist by many civil rights spokesmen and left the marine corps open to charges of discrimination. the policy of tying the number of negroes to the number of available, appropriate slots also meant that the number of black marines, and consequently the acceptability of black volunteers, was subject to chronic fluctuation. more important, it permitted if not encouraged further restrictions on the use of the remaining black marines who had combat training, thereby allowing the traditionalists to press for a segregated service in which the few black marines would be mostly servants and laborers. the process of reordering the assignment of black marines began just eleven weeks after the commandant approved the staff's postwar policy recommendations. informing the commandant on january that "several changes have been made in concepts upon which such (p.  ) planning was based," general thomas explained that the requirement for antiaircraft artillery units at guam and saipan had been canceled, along with the plan for maintaining an artillery unit at montford point. because of the cancellation his division wanted to reduce the number of black marines to , . these men could be assigned to depot companies, service units, and marine barracks--all outside the fleet marine force--or they could serve as stewards. the commandant's approval of this plan reduced the number of negroes in the corps by percent, or men. coincidental with this reduction was a percent rise in spaces for black stewards to .[ - ] [footnote - : memo, g. c. thomas, div of plans and policies, for cmc, jan , sub: negro requirements, a - .] approval of this plan eliminated the last negroes from combat assignments, a fact that general thomas suggested could be justified as "consistent with similar reductions being effected elsewhere in the corps." but the facts did not support such a palliative. in june the corps had some , men serving in three antiaircraft artillery battalions and an antiaircraft artillery group headquarters. in june the corps still had white antiaircraft artillery units on guam and at camp lejeune totaling , men. the drop in numbers was explained almost entirely by the elimination of the black units.[ - ] [footnote - : usmc muster rolls of officers and enlisted men, and .] a further realignment of black assignments occurred in june when general vandegrift approved a plans and policies division decision to remove more black units from security forces at naval shore establishments. the men were reassigned to montford point with the result that the number of black training and overhead billets at that post jumped percent--a dubious decision at best considering that black specialist and recruit training was virtually at a standstill. general thomas took the occasion to advise the commandant that maintaining an arbitrary quota of black marines was no longer a consideration since a reduction in their strength could be "adequately justified" by the general manpower reductions throughout the corps.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, g. c. thomas for cmc, jun , sub: negro requirements and assignments, a - .] actually the marine corps was not as free to reduce the quota of , negroes as general thomas suggested. to make further cuts in what was at most a token representation, approximately percent of the corps in august , would further inflame civil rights critics and might well provoke a reaction from secretary forrestal. even thomas's accompanying recommendation carefully retained the black strength figure previously agreed upon and actually raised the number of negroes in the ground forces by seventy-six men. the , -man minimum quota for black enlistment survived the reorganization of the fleet marine force later in , and the plans and policies division even found it necessary to locate some more billets for negroes to maintain the figure. in august the commandant approved plans to add slots for stewards and general duty billets overseas, the latter to facilitate rotation and provide a broader range of assignments for negroes.[ - ] only once before the korean war, (p.  ) and then only briefly, did the authorized strength of negroes drop below the , mark, although because of recruitment lags actual numbers never equaled authorized strength.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, aug , sub: requirements for general duty negro marines, a - .] [footnote - : idem for div, pub info, nov , sub: information relating to negro marines, a - .] by mid- , therefore, the marine corps had abandoned its complex system of gearing the number of black marines to available assignments and, like the army and the air force, had adopted a racial quota--but with an important distinction. although they rarely achieved it, the army and the air force were committed to accepting a fixed percentage of negroes; in an effort to avoid the problems with manpower efficiency plaguing the other services, the marine corps established a straight _numerical_ quota. authorized black strength would remain at about , men until the korean war. during that same period the actual percentage of negroes in the marine corps almost doubled, rising from . percent of the , -man corps in june to slightly more than percent of the , -man total in june .[ - ] [footnote - : unless otherwise noted, statistics in this section are from na pers, (a), _report, navy and marine corps military statistics_, jun , bupers. official figures on black marines are from reports of the usmc personnel accounting section.] yet neither the relatively small size of the marine corps nor the fact that few black marines were enrolled could conceal the inefficiency of segregation. over the next three years the personnel planning staff tried to find a solution to the problem of what it considered to be too many negroes in the general service. first it began to reduce gradually the number of black units accommodated in the operating force plan, absorbing the excess black marines by increasing the number of stewards. this course was not without obvious public relations disadvantages, but they were offset somewhat by the fact that the marine corps, unlike the navy, never employed a majority of its black recruits as stewards. in may the commandant approved new plans for a percent decrease in the number of general duty assignments and a corresponding increase in spaces for stewards.[ - ] the trend away from assigning negroes to general service duty continued until the korean war, and in october a statistical high point was reached when some percent of all black marines were serving as stewards. the doctrine that all marines were potential infantrymen stood, but it was small comfort to civil rights activists who feared that what at best was a nominal black representation in the corps was being pushed into the kitchen. [footnote - : memo, dir, plans and policies div, for cmc, may , sub: procurement and assignment of negro enlisted personnel, a - .] but they had little to fear since the number of negroes that could be absorbed in the steward's branch was limited. in the end the marine corps still had to accommodate two-thirds of its black strength in general duty billets, a course with several unpalatable consequences. for one, negroes would be assigned to new bases reluctant to accept them and near some communities where they would be unwelcome. for another, given the limitations in self-contained units, there was the possibility of introducing some integration in the men's living or working arrangements. certainly black billets would have to be created at the expense of white billets. the director of plans and policies warned in august that the reorganization of the fleet marine (p.  ) force, then under way, failed to allocate spaces for some negroes with general duty contracts. while he anticipated some reduction in this number as a result of the campaign to attract volunteers for the steward's branch, he admitted that many would remain unassigned and beyond anticipating a reduction in the black "overage" through attrition, his office had no long-range plans for creating the needed spaces.[ - ] when the attrition failed to materialize, the commandant was forced in december to redesignate white billets for black marines with general duty contracts.[ - ] the problem of finding restricted assignments for black marines in the general service lasted until it was overtaken by the manpower demands of the korean war. meanwhile to the consternation of the civil rights advocates, as the corps' definition of "suitable" assignment became more exact, the variety of duties to which negroes could be assigned seemed to decrease.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., aug , sub: requirements for general duty negro marines, a - .] [footnote - : ibid., nov , sub: designation of units for assignment of negro marines, a - .] [footnote - : for criticism of assignment restrictions, see comments and questions at the national defense conference on negro affairs, apr (afternoon session), pp. - , copy in cmh.] _recruitment_ postwar quotas and assignments for negroes did nothing to curb the black community's growing impatience with separate and limited opportunities, a fact brought home to marine corps recruiters when they tried to enlist the negroes needed to fill their quota. at first it seemed the traditionalists would regain their all-white corps by default. the marine corps had ceased drafting men in november and launched instead an intensive recruiting campaign for regular marines from among the thousands of reservists about to be discharged and regulars whose enlistments would soon expire. included in this group were some , negroes from among whom the corps planned to recruit its black contingent. to charges that it was discriminating in the enlistment of black civilians, the corps readily admitted that no new recruits were being accepted because preference was being given to men already in the corps.[ - ] in truth, the black reservists were rejecting the blandishments of recruiters in overwhelming numbers. by may only negroes, less than a quarter of the small postwar black complement, had enlisted in the regular service. [footnote - : g- , div of plans and policies, operational diary, sep -oct , apr ; memo, dir of personnel (div of recruiting) for off in charge, northeastern recruiting div, jan , sub: enlistment of negro ex-marines, mc . see also _afro-american_, february , .] the failure to attract recruits was particularly noticeable in the antiaircraft battalions. to obtain black replacements for these critically depleted units, the commandant authorized the recruitment of reservists who had served less than six months, but the measure failed to produce the necessary manpower. on february the commanding general of camp lejeune reported that all but seven negroes on his antiaircraft artillery roster were being processed for discharge.[ - ] since this list included the black noncommissioned instructors, the commander warned that future training of black (p.  ) marines would entail the use of officers as instructors. the precipitous loss of black artillerymen forced marine headquarters to assign white specialists as temporary replacements in the heavy antiaircraft artillery groups at guam and saipan, both designated as black units in the postwar organization.[ - ] [footnote - : msg, cmc to cg, cp lejeune, feb , mc ; memo, cg, cp lejeune, for cmc, feb , sub: personnel and equipment for antiaircraft artillery training battalion (colored), availability of, rps- , mc files.] [footnote - : memo, g. c. thomas for dir of personnel, mar , sub: replacements for enlisted personnel (colored) assignment of, request for, a - ; msg, cincpac/poa pearl to cno, z apr , mc , mc files.] it was not the fault of the black press if this expression of black indifference went unnoticed. the failure of black marines to reenlist was the subject of many newspaper and journal articles. the reason for the phenomenon advanced by the norfolk _journal and guide_ would be repeated by civil rights spokesmen on numerous occasions in the era before integration. the paper declared that veterans remembered their wartime experiences and were convinced that the same distasteful practices would be continued after the war.[ - ] marine corps officials advanced different reasons. the montford point commander attributed slow enlistment rates to a general postwar letdown and lack of publicity, explaining that montford point "had an excellent athletic program, good chow and comfortable barracks." a staff member of the division of plans and policies later prepared a lengthy analysis of the treatment the marine corps had received in the black press. he charged that the press had presented a distorted picture of conditions faced by blacks that had "agitated" the men and turned them against reenlistment. he recommended a public relations campaign at montford point to improve the corps' image.[ - ] but this analysis missed the point, for while the black press might influence civilians, it could hardly instruct marine veterans. probably more than any other factor, the wartime treatment of black marines explained the failure of the corps to attract qualified, let alone gifted, negroes to its postwar junior enlisted ranks. [footnote - : norfolk _journal and guide_, may , . see also murray, _negro yearbook_, pp. - . on the general accuracy of the press charges, see shaw and donnelly, _blacks in the marine corps_, pp. - .] [footnote - : co, montford point, press conference (ca. may ), quoted in div of plans and policies staff report, "rescinding ltr of instruction # ," mc files; unsigned, untitled memo written in the division of plans and policies on black marines and the black press (ca. aug ).] considering the critical shortages, temporarily and "undesirably" made up for by white marines, and the "leisurely" rate at which black reservists were reenlisting, general thomas recommended in may that the corps recruit some , negroes from civilian sources. this, he explained to the commandant, would accelerate black enlistment but still save some spaces for black reservists.[ - ] the commandant agreed,[ - ] and contrary to the staff's expectations, most negroes in the postwar service were new recruits. the mass departure of world (p.  ) war ii veterans eloquently expressed the attitude of experienced black servicemen toward the marines' racial policy. [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, may , sub: enlisting of negroes in the marine corps from civilian sources, a - .] [footnote - : ibid., oct , sub: enlistment of negroes, - ; memo, cmc to off in charge, northeastern recruiting div, et al., oct , sub: negro first enlistments, quota for month of november, , ap- . there was an attempt to stall first enlistment, see memo, dir of personnel, for dir, div of plans and policies, may , sub: enlisting of negroes in the marine corps from civilian sources; but it was overruled, memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for dir of personnel. may , same sub, a - .] the word spread quickly among the new black marines. when in mid- the division of plans and policies was looking for ways to reduce the number of black marines in keeping with the modified manpower ceiling, it discovered that if offered the opportunity about one-third of all negroes would apply for discharge. an even higher percentage of discharge requests was expected from among black marines overseas. the commandant agreed to make the offer, except to the stewards, and in the next six months black strength dropped by men.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, may , sub: program for accelerated attrition of negro marines, a - ; maj s. m. adams, "additional directives from plans and policies-- june ," jun ; speed ltr, cmc to cg, marine corps air station, cherry point, n.c., et al., may , a - ; memo, cmc to depot quartermaster, depot of supplies, jun , sub: discharge for the convenience of the government certain enlisted negro members of the marine corps, - - .] even the recruitment of stewards did not go according to predictions. thomas had assured the commandant in the spring of that a concrete offer of steward duty to black reservists would produce the -man quota for the regular corps. he wanted the offer published at all separation centers and a training program for stewards instituted at camp lejeune.[ - ] general vandegrift approved the proposal, but a month later the commander of camp lejeune reported that only three reservists and one regular had volunteered.[ - ] he advised the commandant to authorize recruitment among qualified civilians. faced with wholesale rejection of such duty by black marines, general thomas in march opened the steward's branch to negroes with previous military service in any of the armed forces and qualifications for such work.[ - ] this ploy also proved a failure. looking for stewards, the recruiters could find but one acceptable applicant in the first weeks of the program. retreating still further, the commandant canceled the requirement for previous military service in april, and in october dropped the requirement for "clearly established qualifications."[ - ] apparently the staff would take a chance on any warm body. [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, mar , sub: steward's branch personnel, information concerning, a - , mc files.] [footnote - : ltr, cg, cp lejeune, to cmc, apr , sub: steward's branch personnel, .] [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, mar , sub: enlistment of negro personnel, a .] [footnote - : ibid., apr , sub: first enlistment of negro personnel, a - , and oct , sub: procurement and assignment of stewards personnel, box - ; ltr, cmc (div of recruiting) to off in charge, northeastern recruiting div, apr , sub: negro first enlistments, a .] in dropping the requirement for prior military service, the corps introduced a complication. recruits for steward duty would be obliged to undergo basic training and their enlistment contracts would read "general duty"; navy regulations required that subsequent reclassification to "stewards duty only" status had to be made at the request of the recruit. in august three men enlisted under the first enlistment program for stewards refused to execute a change of enlistment contract after basic training.[ - ] although these men could have been discharged "for the good of the service," the commandant (p.  ) decided not to contest their right to remain in the general service. this action did not go unnoticed, and in subsequent months a number of men who signed up with the intention of becoming stewards refused to modify their enlistment contract while others, who already had changed their contract, suddenly began to fail the qualifying tests for stewards school. [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, sep , sub: disposition of negro personnel who enlisted with a view toward qualifying for stewards duties..., a .] the possibility of filling the quota became even more distant when in september the number of steward billets was increased to . since only stewards had signed up in the past twelve months, recruiters now had to find some men, at least per month for the immediate future. the commandant, furthermore, approved plans to increase the number of stewards to . in december the plans and policies division, conceding defeat, recommended that the commandant arrange for the transfer of men from the navy's oversubscribed steward's branch. at the same time, to overcome what the division's new director, brig. gen. ray a. robinson, called "the onus attached to servant type duties," the commandant was induced to approve a plan making the rank and pay of stewards comparable to those of general duty personnel.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., dec , sub: procurement of steward personnel, a - ; see also ltr, cmc to chief of naval personnel, jan , sub: discharge of steward personnel from navy to enlist in the marine corps, mc ; memo, chief of naval personnel for cmc, jan , sub: discharge of certain steward branch personnel for purpose of enlistment in the marine corps.] these measures seemed to work. the success of the transfer program and the fact that first enlistments had finally begun to balance discharges led the recruiters to predict in march that their steward quota would soon be filled. unfortunately, success tempted the planners to overreach themselves. assured of a full steward quota, general robinson recommended that approval be sought from the secretary of the navy to establish closed messes, along with the requisite steward billets, at the shore quarters for bachelor officers overseas.[ - ] approval brought another rise in the number of steward billets, this time to , and required a first-enlistment goal of twenty men per month.[ - ] the new stewards, however, were not forthcoming. after three months of recruiting the corps had netted ten men, more than offset by trainees who failed to qualify for steward school. concluding that the failures represented to a great extent a scheme to remain in general service and evade the ceiling on general enlistment, the planners wanted the men failing to qualify discharged "for the good of the service."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, mar , sub: procurement and distribution of steward personnel, a - .] [footnote - : ibid., aug , sub: steward personnel, allowances and procurement, a - ; ltr, cmc to cg, marine barracks, cp lejeune, aug , sub: negro recruits, a .] [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, oct , sub: disposition of negro personnel who enlist "for steward duty only" and subsequently fail to qualify for such duty, study # - ; ltr, qmg of mc to cmc, sep , same sub, ca .] the lack of recruits for steward duty and constant pressure by stewards for transfer to general duty troubled the marine corps throughout the postwar period. reviewing the problem in december , the commanding general of camp lejeune saw three causes: (p.  ) "agitation from civilian sources," which labeled steward duty degrading servant's work; lack of rapid promotion; and badgering from black marines on regular duty.[ - ] but the commander's solution--a public relations campaign using black recruits to promote the attractions of steward duty along with a belated promise of more rapid promotion--failed. it ignored the central issue, the existence of a segregated branch in which black marines performed menial, nonmilitary duties. [footnote - : msg, cg, cp lejeune, n.c., to cmc, dec .] headquarters later resorted to other expedients. it obtained seventy-five more men from the navy and lowered the qualification test standards for steward duty. but like earlier efforts, these steps also failed to produce enough men.[ - ] ironically, while the corps aroused the ire of the civil rights groups by maintaining a segregated servants' branch, it was never able to attract a sufficient number of stewards to fill its needs in the postwar period. [footnote - : memo, chief of naval personnel and cmc for all ships and stations, feb , sub: discharge of stewards, usn, for the purpose of immediate enlistment in marine corps, pers- , genrecsnav; memo, cmc for dir of recruiting, feb , sub: mental requirements for enlistment for "steward duty only," a - ; ltr, cmc (div of recruiting) to off in charge, northeastern recruiting div, mar , sub: mental standards for enlistment for steward duty only, mc ; msg, cmc to div of recruiting, apr .] many of the corps' critics saw in the buildup of the steward's branch the first step in an attempt to eliminate negroes from the general service. if such a scheme had ever been contemplated, it was remarkably unsuccessful, for the corps would enter the korean war with most of its negroes still in the general service. nevertheless, the apprehension of the civil rights advocates was understandable because during most of the postwar period enlistment in the general service was barred to negroes or limited to a very small number of men. closed to negroes in early , enlistment was briefly reopened at the rate of forty men per month later that year to provide the few hundred extra men called for in the reorganization of the operating force plan.[ - ] enlistment was again opened in may when the recruiting office established a monthly quota for black recruits at ten men for general duty and eight for the steward's branch. the figure for stewards quickly rose to thirty per month, but effective may the recruitment of negroes for general service was closed.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cmc for cg, marine barracks, cp lejeune, n.c., dec , sub: negro recruits, a .] [footnote - : ltr, cmc to cg, cp lejeune, may , a - ; memo, cmc for off in charge of recruiting div, jan , sub: enlistment of negroes, d ; msg, cmc to offs in charge of recruiting divs, apr .] these rapid changes, indeed the whole pattern of black enlistment in the postwar marine corps, demonstrated that the staff's manpower practices were out of joint with the times. not only did they invite attack from the increasingly vocal civil rights forces, but they also fostered a general distrust among black marines themselves and among those young negroes the corps hoped to attract. _segregation and efficiency_ the assignment policies and recruitment practices of the corps were the inevitable result of its segregation policy. prejudice and discrimination no doubt aggravated the situation, but the policy of separation limited the ways negroes could be employed and places (p.  ) to which they might be assigned. segregation explained, for example, why negroes were traditionally employed in certain types of combat units, and why, when changing missions and manpower restrictions caused a reduction in the number of such units, negroes were not given other combat assignments. most negroes with combat military occupational specialties served in defense battalions during world war ii. these units, chiefly antiaircraft artillery, were self-contained and could therefore be segregated; at the same time they cloaked a large group of men with the dignity of a combat assignment. but what was possible during the war was no longer practical and efficient in the postwar period. some antiaircraft artillery units survived the war, but they no longer operated as battalions and were divided instead into battery-size organizations that simply could not be segregated in terms of support and recreational facilities. in fact, the corps found it impossible after the war to maintain segregation in any kind of combat unit. even if segregated service had been possible, the formation of all-black antiaircraft artillery battalions would have been precluded by the need of this highly technical branch for so many kinds of trained specialists. not only would separate training facilities for the few negroes in the peacetime corps be impossibly expensive and inefficient, but not enough black recruits were eligible for such training. a wartime comparison of the general classification test and mechanical aptitude test scores of the men in the d defense battalion with those of men in two comparable white units showed the negroes averaging considerably lower than the whites.[ - ] it was reasonable to expect this difference to continue since, on the whole, black recruits were scoring lower than their world war ii counterparts.[ - ] under current policies, therefore, the marine corps saw little choice but to exclude negroes from antiaircraft artillery and other combat units. [footnote - : ltr, co, d defense battalion, to cmc, jan , sub: employment of colored personnel as antiaircraft artillery troops, recommendations on, - , mc files.] [footnote - : memo, dir of personnel for dir, div of plans and policies, jul , sub: general classification test scores of colored enlisted marines, dz . the gct distribution of black marines as of march was as follows: group i ( - ), %; group ii ( - ), . %; group iii ( - ), . %; group iv ( - ), . %; and group v ( - ), . %. memo, dir of personnel to dir, div of plans and policies, may , sub: marines--tests and testing.] obviously the corps had in its ranks some negroes capable of performing any task required in an artillery battalion. yet because the segregation policy demanded that there be enough qualified men to form and sustain a whole black battalion, the abilities of these high-scoring individuals were wasted. on the other hand, many billets in antiaircraft artillery or other types of combat battalions could be filled by men with low test scores, but less gifted black marines were excluded because they had to be assigned to one of the few black units. segregation, in short, was doubly inefficient, it kept both able and inferior negroes out of combat units that were perpetually short of men. segregation also promoted inefficiency in the placement of black marine units. while the assignment of an integrated unit with a few black marines would probably go unnoticed in most naval districts--witness the experience of the navy itself--the task of (p.  ) finding a naval district and an american community where a large segregated group of black marines could be peacefully assimilated was infinitely more difficult. the original postwar racial program called for the assignment of black security units to the marine barracks at mcalester, oklahoma, and earle, new jersey. noting that the station was in a strict jim crow area where recreational facilities for negroes were limited and distant, the commanding officer of the marine barracks at mcalester recommended that no negroes be assigned. he reminded the commandant that guard duty required marines to question and apprehend white civilian employees, a fact that would add to the racial tension in the area. his conclusions, no doubt shared by commanders in many parts of the country, summed up the problem of finding assignments for black marines: any racial incident which might arise out of disregard for local racial custom, he wrote, would cause the marine corps to become involved by protecting such personnel as required by federal law and navy regulations. it is believed that if one such potential incident occurred, it would seriously jeopardize the standing of the marine corps throughout the southwest. to my way of thinking, the marine corps is not now maintaining the high esteem of public opinion, or gaining in prestige, by the manner in which its uniform and insignia are subjected to such laws. the uniform does not count, it is relegated to the background and made to participate in and suffer the restrictions and limitations placed upon it by virtue of the wearer being subject to the jim crow laws.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, co, mb, nad, mcalester, okla., to cmc, nov , sub: assignment of colored marines, .] the commander of the mcalester ammunition depot endorsed this recommendation, adding that oklahoma was a "border" state where the negro was not accepted as in the north nor understood and tolerated as in the south. this argument moved the director of plans and policies to recommend that mcalester be dropped and the black unit sent instead to port chicago, california.[ - ] with the approval of the commandant and the chief of naval operations, plans for the assignment were well under way in june when the commandant of the twelfth naval district intervened.[ - ] the presence of a black unit, he declared, was undesirable in a predominantly white area that was experiencing almost constant labor turmoil. the possibility of clashes between white pickets and black guards would invite racial conflict. his warnings carried the day, and port chicago was dropped in favor of the marine barracks, naval shipyard, brooklyn, new york, with station at bayonne, new jersey. at the same time, because of opposition from naval officials, the plan for assigning negroes to earle, new jersey, was also dropped, and the commandant launched inquiries about the (p.  ) depots at hingham, massachusetts, and fort mifflin, pennsylvania.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, co, nad, mcalester, okla., to cmc, nov , st ind to ltr, co, mb, mcalester, ; memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, dec , sub: assignment of negro marines to mb, naval magazine, port chicago, calif., in lieu of mb, nad, mcalester, okla., a - .] [footnote - : memo, cmc for cno, dec , sub: assignment of negro marines to mb, naval magazine, port chicago, calif., and mb, nad, earle, n.j., a - ; idem for co, mb, nad, earle, n.j., jan , sub: assignment of colored marines to marine barracks, naval ammunition depot, earle, n.j.; idem for co, department of the pacific, and co, mb, nad, mcalester, okla., a - ; memo, cno for cmc, jan , same sub, op m.] [footnote - : speed ltr, cmc to cmdt, twelfth naval district, jun ; memo, cmc for co, mb, naval shipyard, brooklyn, n.y., jun , sub: assignment of negro marines to second guard company, marine barracks naval shipyard, brooklyn, n.y., a - ; idem for co, mb, usnad, hingham, mass., jun , sub: assignment of negro marines, a - ; speed ltr, cmc to cmdt, twelfth naval district, jun , a ; memo, cmc for co, mb, nad, ft. mifflin, pa., jun , sub: assignment of negro marines, a - ; memo, cmdt, fourth naval district for co, mb, nad, ft. mifflin, pa., jun , same sub.] fort mifflin agreed to take fifty black marines, but several officials objected to the proposed assignment to hingham. the marine commander, offering what he called his unbiased opinion in the best interests of the service, explained in considerable detail why he thought the assignment of negroes would jeopardize the fire-fighting ability of the ammunition depot. the commanding officer of the naval depot endorsed these reasons and added that assigning black marines to guard duty that included vehicle search would create a problem in industrial relations.[ - ] the commandant of the first naval district apparently discounted these arguments, but he too voted against the assignment of negroes on the grounds that the hingham area lacked a substantial black population, was largely composed of restricted residential neighborhoods, and was a major summer resort on which the presence of black units would have an adverse effect.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, co, mb, nad, hingham, mass., for cmc, jun , sub: comments on assignment of negro marines, ab- ; memo, co, nad, hingham, mass., for cmc, jun , st ind to ab- , jun .] [footnote - : ltr, cmdt, first naval district, to cmc, jun , sub: assignment of negro marines, d ind to ab- , jun .] the commander of the naval base, new york, meanwhile had refused to approve a plan to assign a black unit to bayonne, new jersey, and suggested that it be sent to earle, new jersey, instead because there the unit "presented fewer problems and difficulties than at any other naval activity." the commander noted that stationing negroes at bayonne would necessitate a certain amount of integration in mess and ship service facilities. bayonne was also reputed to have the toughest gate duty in the new york area, and noncommissioned officers had to supervise a white civilian police force. at earle, on the other hand, the facilities were completely separate, and although some complaints from well-to-do summer colonists in the vicinity could be expected, men could be bused to newark or jersey city for recreation. moreover, earle could absorb a -man unit.[ - ] but chief of the navy's bureau of ordnance wanted to retain white marines at earle because a recent decision to handle ammonium nitrate fertilizer there made it unwise to relieve the existing trained detachment. earle was also using contract stevedores and expected to be using army troops whose use of local facilities would preclude plans for a segregated barracks and mess.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, co, naval base, new york, to cmc, july , sub: assignment of negro marines to second guard company, marine barracks, new york naval shipyard, brooklyn, n.y., nb- .] [footnote - : ltr, chief, bur of ord, to cno, aug , sub: naval ammunition depot, earle, n.j.--assignment of negro marine complement, nti- .] the commandant accepted these arguments and on august revoked the assignment of a black unit to earle. still, with its ability to absorb men and its relative suitability in terms of separate (p.  ) living facilities, the depot remained a prime candidate for black units, and in november general vandegrift reversed himself. the chief of naval operations supported the commandant's decision over the renewed objections of the chief of the bureau of ordnance.[ - ] with hingham, massachusetts, ruled out, the commandant now considered the substitution of marine barracks at trinidad, british west indies; scotia, new york; and oahu, hawaii. he rejected trinidad in favor of oahu, and officials in hawaii proved amenable.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, nov , sub: first enlistments of negro personnel, a - ; memo, chief, bur of ord, for cno, dec , sub: assignment of negro marines at naval ammunition depot, earle, red bank, n.j.; memo, cno for chief, bur of ord, jan , same sub.] [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, jul , sub: negro requirements and assignments, a - , mc files.] the chief of the navy's bureau of supplies and accounts objected to the use of black marines at the supply depot in scotia, claiming that such an assignment to the navy's sole installation in upper new york state would bring about a "weakening of the local public relations advantage now held by the navy" and would be contrary to the navy's best interests. he pointed out that the assignment would necessitate billeting white marine graves registration escorts and black marines in the same squad rooms. the use of black marines for firing squads at funerals, he thought, would be "undesirable." he also pointed out that the local black population was small, making for extremely limited recreational and social opportunities.[ - ] the idea of using scotia with all these attendant inconveniences was quietly dropped, and the black marines were finally assigned to earle, new jersey; fort mifflin, pennsylvania; and oahu, hawaii. [footnote - : memo, chief, bur of supplies and accounts, for cno, oct , sub: assignment of negro marines, p- - ; memo, cno to cmc, nov , same sub, op d.] approved on november , the postwar plan to assign black units to security guard assignments in the united states was not fully put into practice until august , almost two years later. this episode in the history of discrimination against americans in uniform brought little glory to anyone involved and revealed much about the extent of race prejudice in american society. it was an indictment of people in areas as geographically diverse as oklahoma, new york, massachusetts, and new jersey who objected to the assignment of black servicemen to their communities. it was also an indictment of a great many individual commanders, both in the navy and marine corps, some perhaps for personal prejudices, others for so readily bowing to community prejudices. but most of all the blame must fall on the marine corps' policy of segregation. segregation made it necessary to find assignments for a whole enlisted complement and placed an intolerable administrative burden on the corps. the dictum that black marines could not deal with white civilians, especially in situations in which they would give orders, further limited assignments since such duties were routine in any security unit. thus, bound to a policy that was neither just nor practical, the commandant spent almost two years trying to place four hundred men. despite the obvious inefficiency and discrimination involved, the (p.  ) commandant, general vandegrift, adamantly defended the marine segregation policy before secretary of the navy forrestal. wartime experience showed, he maintained, oblivious to overwhelming evidence to the contrary since , "that the assignment of negro marines to separate units promotes harmony and morale and fosters the competitive spirit essential to the development of a high esprit."[ - ] his stand was bound to antagonize the civil rights camp; the black press in particular trumpeted the theme that the corps was as full of race discrimination as it had been during the war.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, gen vandegrift to secnav, aug , sub: assignment of negro marines, - - , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : see, for example, the analysis that appeared in the chicago _defender_, august , .] _toward integration_ but even as the commandant defended the segregation policy, the corps was beginning to yield to pressure from outside forces and the demands of military efficiency. the first policy breach concerned black officers. although a proposal for commissions had been rejected when the subject was first raised in , three black candidates were accepted by the officer training school at quantico in april . one failed to qualify on physical and two on scholastic grounds, but they were followed by five other negroes who were still in training on v-j day. one of this group, frederick branch of charlotte, north carolina, elected to stay in training through the demobilization period. he was commissioned with his classmates on november and placed in the inactive reserves. meanwhile, three negroes in the v- program graduated and received commissions as second lieutenants in the inactive marine corps reserve. officer training for all these men was integrated.[ - ] [footnote - : shaw and donnelly, _blacks and the marine corps_, pp. - ; see also selective service system, _special groups_ (monograph ), i: .] the first negro to obtain a regular commission in the marine corps was john e. rudder of paducah, kentucky, a marine veteran and graduate of the naval reserve officers' training corps. analyzing the case for the commandant in may , the director of plans and policies noted that the law did not require the marine corps to commission rudder, but that he was only the first of several negroes who would be applying for commissions in the next few years through the naval reserve officers' training corps. since the reserve corps program was a vital part of the plan to expand marine corps officer strength, rejecting a graduate on account of race, general robinson warned, might jeopardize the entire plan. he thought that rudder should be accepted for duty. rudder was appointed a second lieutenant in the regular marine corps on may and ordered to quantico for basic schooling.[ - ] in lieutenant rudder resigned. indicative of the changing civil rights scene was the apprehension shown by some marine corps officials about public reaction to the resignation. but although rudder reported instances of discrimination at quantico--stemming for the most (p.  ) part from a lack of military courtesy that amounted to outright ostracism--he insisted his decision to resign was based on personal reasons and was irreversible. the director of public information was anxious to release an official version of the resignation,[ - ] but other voices prevailed, and rudder's exit from the corps was handled quietly both at headquarters and in the press.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, may , sub: appointment to commissioned rank in the regular marine corps, case of midshipman john earl rudder, a - ; see also dept of navy press release, aug .] [footnote - : memo, dir of public information for cmc, feb , sub: publicity on second lieutenant john rudder, usmc, ag ; see also ltr, lt cmdr dennis nelson to james c. evans, feb , cmh files.] [footnote - : memo, oliver smith for cmc, feb , with attached cmc note.] [illustration: lieutenant and mrs. branch.] the brief active career of one black officer was hardly evidence of a great racial reform, but it represented a significant breakthrough because it affirmed the practice of integrated officer training and established the right of negroes to command. and rudder was quickly followed by other black officer candidates, some of whom made careers in the corps. rudder's appointment marked a permanent change in marine corps policy. enlistment of black women marked another change. negroes had been excluded from the women's reserve during world war ii, but in march a. philip randolph asked the commandant, in the name of the committee against jim crow in military service and training, if black women could join the corps. the commandant's reply was short and direct: "if qualified for enlistment, negro women will be accepted on the same basis as other applicants."[ - ] in september annie n. graham and ann e. lamb reported to parris island for integrated training and subsequent assignment. [footnote - : ltr, a. philip randolph to gen c. b. cates, mar ; ltr, cmc to randolph, mar , aw .] yet another racial change, in the active marine corps reserve, could be traced to outside pressure. until all black reservists were assigned to inactive and unpaid volunteer reserve status, and applications for transfer to active units were usually disapproved by commanding officers on grounds that such transfers would cost the unit a loss in whites. rejections did not halt applications, however, and in may the director of marine corps reserve decided to seek a policy decision. while he wanted each commander of an active unit left free to decide whether he would take negroes, the director also wanted units with black enlisted men formed in the organized reserve, all-black voluntary training units recognized, and integrated active duty training provided for reservists.[ - ] a group of negroes (p.  ) in chicago had already applied for the formation of a black voluntary training unit. [footnote - : memo, dir, div of reserve, for cmc, may , sub: general policy governing negro reservists, af ; ltr, william griffin to cmc, mar ; ltr, col r. mcpate to william griffin, mar .] general thomas, director of plans and policies, was not prepared to go the whole way. he agreed that within certain limitations the local commander should decide on the integration of black reservists into an active unit, and he accepted integrated active duty training. but he rejected the formation of black units in the organized reserve and the voluntary training program; the latter because it would "inevitably lead to the necessity for negro officers and for authorizing drill pay" in order to avoid charges of discrimination. although thomas failed to explain why black officers and drill pay were unacceptable or how rejecting the program would save the corps from charges of discrimination, his recommendations were approved by the commandant over the objection of the reserve division.[ - ] but the director of reserves rejoined that volunteer training units were organized under corps regulations, the chicago group had met all the specifications, and the corps would be subject to just criticism if it refused to form the unit. on the other hand, by permitting the formation of some all-black volunteer units, the corps might satisfy the wish of negroes to be a part of the reserve and thus avoid any concerted attempt to get the corps to form all-black units in the organized reserve.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, may , sub: general policy governing negro reservists, a - .] [footnote - : memo, dir of reserve for cmc, may , sub: general policy concerning negro reservists, af .] at this point the division of plans and policies offered to compromise. general robinson recommended that when the number of volunteers so warranted, the corps should form black units of company size or greater, either separate or organic to larger reserve units around the country. he remained opposed to integrated units, explaining that experience proved--he neglected to mention what experience, certainly none in the marine corps--that integrated units served neither the best interests of the individual nor the corps.[ - ] while the commandant's subsequent approval set the stage for the formation of racially composite units in the reserve, the stipulation that the black element be of company size or larger effectively limited the degree of reform. [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, mar , sub: enlistment of negro ex-marines in organized reserve, a - .] the development of composite units in the reserve paralleled a far more significant development in the active forces. in the marine corps began organizing such units along the lines established in the postwar army. like the army, the corps discovered that maintaining a quota--even when the quota for the corps meant maintaining a minimum number of negroes in the service--in a period of shrinking manpower resources necessitated the creation of new billets for negroes. at the same time it was obviously inefficient to assign combat-trained negroes, now surplus with the inactivation of the black defense battalions, to black service and supply units when the fleet marine force battalions were so seriously understrength. thus the strictures against integration notwithstanding, the corps was forced to begin (p.  ) attaching black units to the depleted fleet marine force units. in january , for example, members of headquarters unit, montford point camp, and men of the inactivated d antiaircraft artillery battalion were transferred to camp geiger, north carolina, and assigned to the all-black d medium depot company, which, along with eight white units, was organized into the racially composite d combat service group in the d marine division.[ - ] although the units of the group ate in separate mess halls and slept in separate barracks, inevitably the men of all units used some facilities in common. after negroes were assigned to camp geiger, for instance, recreational facilities were open to all. in some isolated cases, black noncommissioned officers were assigned to lead racially mixed details in the composite group.[ - ] [footnote - : usmc muster rolls, .] [footnote - : interv, martin blumenson with st sgt jerome pressley, feb , cmh files.] [illustration: training exercises. _black marine unit boards ship at morehead city, north carolina, ._] but these reforms, which did very little for a very few men, scarcely dented the marine corps' racial policy. corps officials were still firmly committed to strict segregation in , and change seemed very distant. any substantial modification in racial policy would require a revolution against marine tradition, a movement dictated by higher civilian authority or touched off by an overwhelming military need. chapter (p.  ) the postwar air force the air force was a new service in , but it was also heir to a long tradition of segregation. most of its senior officers, trained in the army, firmly supported the army's policy of racially separate units and racial quotas. and despite continuing objections to what many saw as the gillem board's far too progressive proposals, the air force adopted the army's postwar racial policy as its own. yet after less than two years as an independent service the air force in late stood on the threshold of integration. this sudden change in attitude was not so much the result of humanitarian promptings by service officials, although some of them forcibly demanded equal treatment and opportunity. nor was it a response to civil rights activists, although negroes in and outside the air force continued to exert pressure for change. rather, integration was forced upon the service when the inefficiency of its racial practices could no longer be ignored. the inefficiency of segregated troops was less noticeable in the army, where a vast number of negroes could serve in a variety of expandable black units, and in the smaller navy, where only a few negroes had specialist ratings and most black sailors were in the separate steward's branch. but the inefficiency of separatism was plainly evident in the air force. like the army, the air force had its share of service units to absorb the marginal black airman, but postwar budget restrictions had made the enlargement of service units difficult to justify. at the same time, the gillem board policy as well as outside pressures had made it necessary to include a black air unit in the service's limited number of postwar air wings. however socially desirable two air forces might seem to most officials, and however easy it had been to defend them as a wartime necessity, it quickly became apparent that segregation was, organizationally at least, a waste of the air force's few black pilots and specialists and its relatively large supply of unskilled black recruits. thus, the inclination to integrate was mostly pragmatic; notably absent were the idealistic overtones sounded by the navy's special programs unit during the war. considering the magnitude of the air force problem, it was probably just as well that efficiency rather than idealism became the keynote of change. on a percentage basis the air force had almost as many negroes as the army and, no doubt, a comparable level of prejudice among its commanders and men. at the same time, the air force was a new service, its organization still fluid and its policies subject to rapid modification. in such circumstances a straightforward appeal to efficiency had a chance to succeed where an idealistic call for justice and fair play might well have floundered. _segregation and efficiency_ (p.  ) many officials in the army air forces had defended segregated units during the war as an efficient method of avoiding dangerous social conflicts and utilizing low-scoring recruits.[ - ] general arnold himself repeatedly warned against bringing black officers and white enlisted men together. unless strict unit segregation was imposed, such contacts would be inevitable, given the air forces' highly mobile training and operations structure.[ - ] but if segregation restricted contacts between the races it also imposed a severe administrative burden on the wartime air forces. it especially affected the black flying units because it ordained that not only pilots but the ground support specialists--mechanics, supply clerks, armorers--had to be black. throughout most of the war the air forces, competing with the rest of the army for skilled and high-scoring negroes, was unable to fill the needs of its black air units. at a time when the air forces enjoyed a surplus of white air and ground crews, the black fighter units suffered from a shortage of replacements for their combat veterans, a situation as inefficient as it was damaging to morale.[ - ] [footnote - : for a comprehensive and authoritative account of the negro in the army air forces during world war ii, sec osur's _blacks in the army air forces during world war ii_.] [footnote - : see memo, cs/ac for g- , may , sub: employment of negro personnel in the air corps units, g- / -gen .] [footnote - : for the effect on unit morale, see charles e. francis, _the tuskegee airmen: the story of the negro in the u.s. air force_ (boston: bruce humphries, ), p. ; see also usaf oral history program, interview with lt gen b. o. davis, jr., jan .] the shortage was compounded in the penultimate year of the war when the all-black th bombardment group was organized. (black airmen and civil rights spokesmen complained that restricting negroes to fighter units excluded them from many important and prestigious types of air service.) in the end the new bombardment group only served to limit black participation in the air war. already short of black pilots, the army air forces now had to find black navigators and bombardiers as well, thereby intensifying the competition for qualified black cadets. the stipulation that pilots and bombardiers for the new unit be trained at segregated tuskegee was another obvious cause for the repeated delays in the operational date of the th, and its crews were finally assembled only weeks before the end of the war. competition for black bomber crews also led to a ludicrous situation in which men highly qualified for pilot training according to their stanine scores (achievements on the battery of qualifying tests taken by all applicants for flight service) were sent instead to navigator-bomber training, for which they were only barely qualified.[ - ] [footnote - : lee, _employment of negro troops_, pp. - ; see also interv, author with lt gen benjamin o. davis, jr., jun , cmh files.] unable to obtain enough negroes qualified for flight training, the army air forces asked the ground and service forces to screen their personnel for suitable candidates, but a screening early in produced only about one-sixth of the men needed. finally, the air forces recommended that the army staff lower the general classification test score for pilot training from to , a recommendation the service and ground forces opposed because such a move would eventually mean the mass transfer of high-scoring negroes to the air forces, (p.  ) thus depriving the service and ground forces of their proportionate share. although the secretary of war approved the air forces proposal, the change came too late to affect the shortage of black pilots and specialists before the end of the war. [illustration: damage inspection. _a squadron operations officer of the d fighter group points out a cannon hole to ground crew, italy, ._] while short of skilled negroes, the army air forces was being inundated with thousands of undereducated and unskilled negroes from selective service. it tried to absorb these recruits, as it absorbed some of its white draftees, by creating a great number of service and base security battalions. a handy solution to the wartime quota problem, the large segregated units eventually caused considerable racial tension. some of the tension might have been avoided had black officers commanded black squadrons, a logical course since the air force had a large surplus of nonrated black officers stationed at tuskegee.[ - ] most were without permanent assignment or were assigned such duties as custodial responsibility for bachelor officer quarters, occupations unrelated to their specialties.[ - ] [footnote - : a nonrated officer is one not having or requiring a currently effective aeronautical rating; that is, an officer who is not a pilot, navigator, or bombardier.] [footnote - : interv, author with davis; see also osur's _blacks in the army air forces during world war ii_, ch. v.] few of these idle black officers commanded black service units because the units were scattered worldwide while the nonrated officers were almost always assigned to the airfield at tuskegee. approximately one-third of the air forces' , black officers were stationed at tuskegee in june . most others were assigned to the fighter group in the mediterranean theater or the new bombardment group in flight training at godman field, kentucky. only twenty-five black (p.  ) officers were serving at other stations in the united states. the second, third, and fourth air forces and i troop carrier command, for example, had a combined total of seventeen black officers as against , black enlisted men.[ - ] col. noel f. parrish, the wartime commander at tuskegee, explained that the principal reason for this restriction was the prevailing fear of social conflict. if assigned to other bases, black officers might try to use the officers' clubs and other base facilities. thus, despite the surplus of black officers only too evident at tuskegee, their requests for transfer to other bases for assignment in their rating were usually denied on the grounds that the overall shortage of black officers made their replacement impossible.[ - ] [footnote - : "summary of aaf post-war surveys," prepared by noel parrish, copy in naacp collection, library of congress.] [footnote - : noel f. parrish, "the segregation of the negro in the army air forces," thesis submitted to the usaf air command and staff school, maxwell afb, ala., , pp. - .] fearing trouble between black and white officers and assuming that black airmen preferred white officers, the air forces assigned white officers to command black squadrons. actually, such assignments courted morale problems and worse because they were extremely unpopular with both officers and men. moreover, the air forces eventually had to admit that there was a tendency to assign white officers "of mediocre caliber" to black squadrons.[ - ] yet few assignments demanded greater leadership ability, for these officers were burdened not only with the usual problems of a unit commander but also with the complexities of race relations. if they disparaged their troops, they failed as commanders; if they fought for their men, they were dismissed by their superiors as "pro-negro." consequently, they were generally a harassed and bewildered lot, bitter over their assignments and bad for troop morale.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, hq aaf, to cg, tactical training cmd, aug , sub: professional qualities of officers assigned to negro units, . - , afshrc.] [footnote - : parrish, "segregation of the negro in the army air forces," pp. - . the many difficulties involved in the assignment of white officers to black units are discussed in osur's _blacks in the army air forces during world war ii_, ch v.] the social problems predicted for integration proved inevitable under segregation. commanders found it prohibitively expensive to provide separate but equal facilities, and without them discrimination became more obvious. the walk-in protest at the freeman field officers club was but one of the natural consequences of segregation rules. and such demonstrations were only the more spectacular problems. just as time-consuming and perhaps more of a burden were the many administrative difficulties. the air transport command admitted in that it was too expensive to maintain, as the command was obligated to do, separate and equal housing and messing, including separate orderly and day rooms for black airmen. at the same time it complained of the disproportionately high percentage of black troops violating military and civil law. although negroes accounted for percent of the command's troops, they committed more than percent of its law infractions. the only connection the command was able to make between the separate, unequal facilities and the high misconduct rate was to point out that, while it had done its best to provide for negroes, they "had not earned a very enviable record by themselves."[ - ] [footnote - : aaf transport cmd, "history of the command, july - december " pp. - .] in one crucial five-month period of the war, army air forces (p.  ) headquarters processed twenty-two separate staff actions involving black troops.[ - ] to avoid the supposed danger of large-scale social integration, the air forces, like the rest of the army during world war ii, had been profligate in its use of material resources, inefficient in its use of men, and destructive of the morale of black troops. [footnote - : parrish, "segregation of the negro in the army air forces."] [illustration: colonel parrish. (_ photograph_).] the air staff was not oblivious to these facts and made some adjustments in policy as the war progressed. notably, it rejected separate training of nonrated black officers and provided for integrated training of black navigators and bombardiers. in the last days of the war general arnold ordered his commanders to "take affirmative action to insure that equity in training and assignment opportunity is provided all personnel."[ - ] and when it came to postwar planning, the air staff demonstrated it had learned much from wartime experience: the degree to which negroes can be successfully employed in the post-war military establishment largely depends on the success of the army in maintaining at a minimum the feeling of discrimination and unfair treatment which basically are the causes for irritation and disorders ... in the event of a future emergency the arms will employ a large number of negroes and their contribution in such an emergency will largely depend on the training, treatment and intelligent use of negroes during the intervening years.[ - ] [footnote - : aaf ltr - , aug .] [footnote - : rpt, acs/as- to wdss, sep , sub: participation of negro troops in the post-war military establishment, wdss . .] but while admitting that discrimination was at the heart of its racial problem, the air staff failed to see the connection between discrimination and segregation. instead it adopted the recommendations of its senior commanders. the consensus was that black combat (flying) units had performed "more or less creditably," but required more training than white units, and that the ground echelon and combat support units had performed below average. rather than abolish these below average units, however, commanders wanted them preserved and wanted postwar policy to strengthen segregation. the final recommendation of the army air forces to the gillem board was that blacks be trained according to the same standards as whites but that they be employed in separate units and segregated for recreation, messing, and social activities "on the post as well as off," in (p.  ) keeping with prevailing customs in the surrounding civilian community.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid. for an analysis of these recommendations, see gropman's _the air force integrates_, ch. ii.] the army air forces' postwar use of black troops was fairly consonant with the major provisions of the gillem board report. to reduce black combat units in proportion to the reduction of its white units, it converted the th bombardment group (m) into the th composite group. this group, under the command of the army's senior black pilot, col. benjamin o. davis, jr., included a fighter, a bombardment, and a service squadron. to provide segregated duty for its black specialists, the army air forces organized regular black squadrons, mostly ammunition, motor transport, and engineer throughout its commands. to absorb the large number of unskilled negroes, it organized one black squadron (squadron f) in each of the ninety-seven base units in its worldwide base system to perform laboring and housekeeping chores. finally, it promised "to the fullest possible extent" to assign negroes with specialized skills and qualifications to overhead and special units.[ - ] [footnote - : wd bureau of public relations, memo for the press, sep ; office of public relations, godman field, ky., "col. davis issues report on godman field," oct ; memo, chief, programs and manpower section, troop basis branch, organization division, d/t&r, for dir of military personnel, apr , no sub; all in negro affairs, secaf files. see also "history of godman field, ky., mar-- oct ," afshrc.] in the summer of , the army air forces integrated aviation training at randolph field, texas, and quietly closed tuskegee airfield, thus ending the last segregated officer training in the armed forces. the move was unrelated to the gillem board report or to the demands of civil rights advocates. the tuskegee operation had simply become impractical. in the severe postwar retrenchment of the armed forces, tuskegee's cadet enrollment had dropped sharply, only nine men graduated in the october class.[ - ] to the general satisfaction of the black community, the few black cadets shared both quarters and classes with white students.[ - ] nine black cadets were in training at the end of .[ - ] [footnote - : "history of the d aaf base unit, pilot school, basic, advanced, and tuskegee army air field, sep - oct ," afshrc.] [footnote - : for an example of black reaction see _ebony_ magazine v (september ).] [footnote - : memo, james c. evans, adviser to the secdef, for capt robert w. berry, feb , secdef . files.] another postwar reduction was not so advantageous for negroes. by february the th composite group had been reduced to sixteen b- bombers, twelve p- fighter-bombers, and only men--a percent drop in four months.[ - ] although the tactical air command rated the unit's postwar training and performance satisfactory, and its transfer to the more hospitable surroundings and finer facilities of lockbourne field, ohio, raised morale, the th, like other understaffed and underequipped organizations, faced inevitable conversion to specialized service. in july the th was inactivated and replaced by the d fighter group composed of the th, th, and st fighter squadrons. black bomber pilots were converted to fighter pilots, and the bomber crews were removed from flying status. [footnote - : "history of the th composite group," sep - feb , feb-mar , and mar- jul , afshrc.] [illustration: officers' softball team _representing the th composite group, godwin field, kentucky_.] these changes flew in the face of the gillem board report, for (p.  ) however slightly that document may have changed the army's segregation policy, it did demand at least a modest response to the call for equal opportunity in training, assignment, and advancement. the board clearly looked to the command of black units by qualified black officers and the training of black airmen to serve as a cadre for any necessary expansion of black units in wartime. certainly the conversion of black bomber pilots to fighters did not meet these modest demands. in its defense the army air forces in effect pleaded that there were too many negroes for its present force, now severely reduced in size and lacking planes and other equipment, and too many of the black troops lacked education for the variety of assignments recommended by the board. the army air forces seemed to have a point, for in the immediate postwar period its percentage of black airmen had risen dramatically. it was drafting men to replace departing veterans, and in it was taking anyone who qualified, including many negroes. in seven months the air arm lost over half its black strength, going from a wartime high of , on august to , on march , but in the same period the black percentage almost doubled, climbing from . to . .[ - ] the war department predicted that all combat arms would have a black strength of percent by july .[ - ] [footnote - : all figures from stm- , sep and apr .] [footnote - : memo, tag for cg's et al., feb , sub: utilization of negro personnel, ag . ( jan ).] this prophecy never materialized in the air forces. changes in enlistment standards, curtailment of overseas assignments for negroes, and, finally, suspension of all black enlistments in the regular army except in certain military specialist occupations turned the percentage of negroes downward. by the fall of , when the air (p.  ) force became a separate service,[ - ] the proportion of black airmen had leveled off at nearly percent. nor did the proportion of negroes ever exceed the gillem board's percent quota during the next decade. [footnote - : under the terms of the national security act of the u.s. air force was created as a separate service in a department of the air force on september . the new service included the old army air forces; the air corps, u.s. army; and general headquarters air force. the strictures of wd circular , like those of many other departmental circulars, were adopted by the new service. for convenience' sake the terms _air force_ and _service_ will be employed in the remaining sections of this chapter even where the terms _army air forces_ and _component_ would be more appropriate.] the air force seemed on safer ground when it pleaded that it lacked the black airmen with skills to carry out the variety of assignments called for by the gillem board. the air force was finding it impossible to organize effective black units in appreciable numbers; even some units already in existence were as much as two-thirds below authorized strength in certain ground specialist slots.[ - ] yet here too the statistics do not reveal the whole truth. despite a general shortage of negroes in the high test score categories, the air force did have black enlisted men qualified for general assignment as specialists or at least eligible for specialist training, who were instead assigned to labor squadrons.[ - ] in its effort to reduce the number of negroes, the service had also relieved from active duty other black specialists trained in much needed skills. finally, the air force still had a surplus of black specialists in some categories at lockbourne field who were not assigned to the below-strength units. [footnote - : "tactical air command (tac) history, jan- dec ," pp. - , afshrc; see also lawrence j. paszek, "negroes and the air force, - ," _military affairs_ (spring ), p. .] [footnote - : memo, dcofs/personnel, tac, for cg, tac, mar , afshrc.] again it was not too many black enlisted men or too few black officers or specialists but the policy of strict segregation that kept the air force from using black troops efficiently. insistence on segregation, not the number of negroes, caused maldistribution among the commands. in , for example, the tactical air command contained some , black airmen, close to percent of the command's strength. this situation came about because the command counted among its units the one black air group and many of the black service units whose members in an integrated service would have been distributed throughout all the commands according to needs and abilities. the air force segregation policy restricted all but forty-five of the black officers in the continental united states to one base,[ - ] just as it was the air force's attempt to avoid integration that kept black officers from command. in november , , black enlisted men and only two black officers were stationed at macdill field; at san antonio there were , black airmen and again two black officers. these figures provide some clue to the cause of the riot involving black airmen at macdill field on october .[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dcofs/p&a, usaf, for asst secaf, dec , sub: air force negro troops in the zone of interior, negro affairs, secaf files.] [footnote - : "history of macdill army airfield, oct ," pp. - , afshrc. for a detailed analysis of the macdill riot and its aftermath, see gropman, _the air force integrates_, ch. i; see also ch. , above.] segregation also prevented the use of negroes on a broader professional scale. in april , . percent of negroes in the air force were working in an occupational specialty as against . (p.  ) percent of whites, but the number of negroes in radar, aviation specialist, wire communications, and other highly specialized skills required to support a tactical air unit was small and far below the percentage of whites. the air force argued that since negroes were assigned to black units and since there was only one black tactical unit, there was little need for negroes with these special skills. [illustration: checking ammunition. _an armorer in the d fighter group inspects the p- mustang, italy, ._] the fact that rated black officers and specialists were restricted to one black fighter group particularly concerned civil rights advocates. without bomber, transport, ferrying, or weather observation assignments, black officers qualified for larger aircraft had no chance to diversify their careers. it was essentially the same story for black airmen. without more varied and large black combat units the air force had no need to assign many black airmen to specialist training. in december , for example, only of approximately , black airmen were attending specialist schools.[ - ] when asked about the absence of negroes in large aircraft, especially bombers, air force spokesmen cited the conversion of the th composite group, which contained the only black bomber unit, to a specialized fighter group as merely part of a general reorganization to meet the needs (p.  ) of a -wing organization.[ - ] that the one black bomber unit happened to be organized out of existence was pure accident. [footnote - : memo, unsigned (probably dcofs/p&a), for asst secaf zuckert, apr , secaf files.] [footnote - : see air force testimony before the national defense conference on negro affairs (afternoon session), pp. - , cmh files.] the gillem board had sought to expand the training and placement of skilled negroes by going outside the regular black units and giving them overhead assignments. after the war some base commanders made such assignments unofficially, taking advantage of the abilities of airmen in the overmanned, all-black squadron f's and assigning them to skilled duties. in one instance the base commander's secretary was a member of his black unit; in another, black mechanics from squadron f worked on the flight line with white mechanics. but whatever their work, these men remained members of squadron f, and often the whole black squadron, rather than individual airmen, found itself functioning as an overhead unit, contrary to the intent of the gillem board. even the few negroes formally trained in a specialty and placed in an integrated overhead unit did not approximate the gillem board's intention of training a cadre that would be readily expandable in an emergency. the alternative to expanded overhead assignments was continuation of segregated service units and squadron f's, but, as some manpower experts pointed out, many special purpose units suitable for unskilled airmen were disappearing from the postwar air force. experience gained through the assignment of large numbers of marginal men to such units in peacetime would be of questionable value during large-scale mobilization.[ - ] as colonel parrish, the wartime commander of training at tuskegee, warned, a peacetime policy incapable of wartime application was not only unrealistic, but dangerous.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dcofs/p&a, tac, for cg, tac, mar , sub: utilization of negro manpower, afshrc.] [footnote - : parrish, "segregation of the negro in the army air forces," pp. - .] the air staff tried to carry out the gillem board's suggestion that negroes be stationed "where attitudes are most favorable for them insofar as military factors permit," but even here the service lagged behind civilian practice. when marcus h. ray arrived at wright field, ohio, for a two-day inspection tour in july , he found almost , black civilians working peacefully and effectively alongside , white civilians, all assigned to their jobs without regard to race. "i would rate this installation," ray reported, "as the best example of efficient utilization of manpower i have seen." he went on to explain: "the integration has been accomplished without publicity and simply by assigning workers according to their capabilities and without regard to race, creed, or color." but ray also noted that there were no black military men on the base.[ - ] assistant secretary of war petersen was impressed. "in view of the fact that the racial climate seems exceptionally favorable at wright field," he wrote general carl spaatz, "consideration should be given to the employment of carefully selected negro military personnel with specialist ratings for work in that installation."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, ray for asw, jul , asw . .] [footnote - : memo, petersen for cg, aaf, jul , asw . .] the air force complied. in the fall of it was forming black (p.  ) units for assignment to air materiel command stations, and it planned to move a black unit to wright field in the near future.[ - ] in assigning an all-black unit to wright, however, the air force was introducing segregation where none had existed before, and here as in other areas its actions belied the expressed intent of the gillem board policy. [footnote - : memo, brig gen reuben c. hood, jr., office of cg, aaf, for asw, sep , asw . .] _impulse for change_ the problems associated with efficient use of black airmen intensified when the air force became an independent service in . the number of negroes fluctuated during the transition from army air forces to air force, and as late as april the army still retained a number of specialized black units whose members had the right to transfer to the air force. estimates were that some , black airmen would eventually enter the air force from this source. air force officials believed that when these men were added to the , negroes already in the new service, including rated and nonrated male officers and female officers, the total would exceed the percent quota suggested by the gillem board. accordingly, soon after it became an independent service, the air force set the number of black enlistments at per month until the necessary adjustments to the transfer program could be made.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, unsigned, for asst secaf zuckert, apr , secaf files. the figures cited in this memorandum were slightly at variance with the official strength figures as compiled later in the _unites states air force statistical digest i_ ( ). the _digest_ put the air force's strength (excluding army personnel still under air force control) on march at , , including , negroes ( . percent of the total). the percent plus estimate mentioned in the memorandum, however, was right on the mark when statistics for enlisted strength alone are considered.] in addition to the chronic problems associated with black enlistments and quotas, four very specific problems demonstrated clearly to air force officials the urgent need for a change in race policy. the first of these was the distribution of black airmen which threatened the operational efficiency of the tactical air command. a second, related to the first, revolved around the personnel shortages in black tactical units that necessitated an immediate reorganization of those units, a reorganization both controversial and managerially inefficient. the third and fourth problems were related; the demands of black leaders for a broader use of black servicemen suddenly intensified, dovetailing with the personal inclinations of the secretary of the air force, who was making the strict segregation of black officers and specialists increasingly untenable. these four factors coalesced during and led to a reassessment of policy and, finally, to a _volte-face_. limiting black enlistment to per month did little to ease the situation in the tactical air command. there, the percentage of black personnel, although down from its postwar high of percent to . percent by the end of , remained several points above the gillem board's percent quota throughout . in march the command's deputy chief of staff for personnel, col. john e. barr, found that the large number of negroes gave the command a surplus of "marginal (p.  ) individuals," men who could not be trained economically for the various skills needed. he argued that this theoretical surplus of negroes was "potentially parasitic" and threatened the command's mission.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dcofs/p&a, tac, for cg, tac, mar , sub: utilization of negro manpower, afshrc.] [illustration: squadron f, th aaf battalion, _in review, lockbourne air force base, ohio, _.] at the same time, the command's personnel director found that negroes were being inefficiently used. with one squadron designated for their black airmen, most commanders deemed surplus any negroes in excess of the needs of that squadron and made little attempt to use them effectively. even when some of these men were given a chance at skilled jobs in the tactical air command their assignments proved short-lived. because of a shortage of white airmen at shaw air force base, south carolina, in early , for example, negroes from the base's squadron f were assigned to fill all the slots in squadron c, the base fire department. the negroes performed so creditably that when enough white airmen to man squadron c became available the commander suggested that the black fire fighters be transferred to lockbourne rather than returned to their menial assignments.[ - ] the advantage of leaving the all-black squadron c at shaw was apparently overlooked by everyone. [footnote - : memo, adj, th fighter wing, for cg, ninth af, undated, sub: transfer of structural firefighters; d ind, hq d fighter wing, lockbourne, to cg, ninth af, apr , hist of ninth af, afshrc.] even this limited chance at occupational preferment was exceptional for black airmen in the tactical air command. the command's personnel staff admitted that many highly skilled black technicians were performing menial tasks and that measures taken to raise the performance levels of other black airmen through training were inadequate. the staff also concluded that actions designed by the command to raise morale among black airmen left much to be desired. it mentioned specifically the excessively high turnover of officers assigned to black units, officers who for the most part proved mediocre as leaders. most devastating of all, the study admitted that promotions and other rewards for duties performed by black airmen were not commensurate with those received by whites.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dcofs/p&a, tac, for cg, tac, mar , sub: utilization of negro manpower, afshrc.] colonel barr offered a solution that echoed the plea of air force (p.  ) commanders everywhere: revise circular to allow his organization to reduce the percentage of negroes. among a number of "compromise solutions" he recommended raising enlistment standards to reduce the number of submarginal airmen; designating squadron e, the transportation squadron of the combat wings, a black unit; assigning all skilled black technicians to lockbourne or declaring them surplus to the command; and selecting only outstanding officers to command black units. one of these recommendations was under fire in colonel barr's own command. all-black transportation squadrons had already been discussed in the ninth air force and had brought an immediate objection from maj. gen. william d. old, its commander. old explained that few black airmen in his command were qualified for "higher echelon maintenance activities," that is, major motor and transmission overhaul, and he had no black officers qualified to command such troops. on-the-job training would be impossible during total conversion of the squadrons from white to black; formal schooling for whole squadrons would have to be organized. besides, old continued, making transportation squadrons all black would only aggravate the command's race problems, for it would result in a further deviation from the "desired ratio of one to ten." old wanted to reduce the number of black airmen in the ninth air force by , men. the loss would not materially affect the efficiency of his command, he concluded. it would leave the ninth air force with a ratio of one black officer to ten white and one black airman to eight white, and still permit the manning of black tactical units at full strength.[ - ] in the end none of these recommendations was followed. they needed the approval of air force headquarters, and as lt. gen. elwood r. quesada, commander of the tactical air command, explained to general old, the headquarters was in the midst of a lengthy review of circular . in the meantime the command would have to carry on without guidance from higher headquarters.[ - ] carry on it did, but the problems associated with the distribution of black airmen, problems the command constantly shared with air force headquarters, lingered throughout .[ - ] [footnote - : memo, maj gen old for cg, tac, jan , sub: utilization of negro manpower, af . , hist of ninth af, afshrc.] [footnote - : ltr, lt gen quesada to maj gen old, ninth af, apr , hist of ninth af, afshrc.] [footnote - : ltrs, cg, tac, to cs/usaf, sep , sub: reception of submarginal enlisted personnel; vcs/usaf to cg, tac, sep , sub: elimination of undesirable or substandard airmen; cg, tac, to cs/usaf, sep , same sub. all in afshrc.] the air force's segregation policy had meanwhile created a critical situation in the black tactical units. the old d, now the d fighter wing, shared with the rest of the command the burden of too many low-scoring men-- percent of lockbourne's airmen were in the two lowest groups, iv and v--but here the problem was acute since the presence of so many persons with little ability limited the number of skilled black airmen that the tactical air command could transfer to the wing from other parts of the command. under direction of the command, the ninth air force was taking advantage of a regulation that restricted the reenlistment of low-scoring airmen, but the high percentage of unskilled negroes persisted at lockbourne. negroes (p.  ) in the upper test brackets were not reenlisting while the low scorers unquestionably were.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, dcofs/p&a, tac, to cg, ninth af, may , sub: submarginal enlisted personnel; record of dir of per staff, tac, mtg, oct ; both in afshrc.] at the same time there was a shortage of rated black officers. the d fighter wing was authorized officers, but only were assigned in february . there was no easy solution to the shortage, a product of many years of neglect. segregation imposed the necessity of devising a broad and long-range recruitment and training program for black officers, but not until april did the tactical air command call for a steady flow of negroes through officer candidate and flight training schools.[ - ] it hoped to have another thirty-one black pilot graduates by march and planned to recall thirty-two others from inactive status.[ - ] even these steps could not possibly alleviate the serious shortage caused by the perennial failure to replace the wing's annual pilot attrition. [footnote - : ltr, cg, tac, to cg, ninth af, apr , tac ( apr ), afshrc.] [footnote - : hq tac, record and routing sheet, apr , sub: supervisory visit d ftr gp, lockbourne afb, afshrc.] the chronic shortage of black field grade officers in the d was the immediate cause of the change in air force policy. by february the d had only thirteen of its forty-eight authorized field grade officers on duty. the three tactical units of the wing were commanded by captains instead of the authorized lieutenant colonels. if colonel davis were reassigned, and his attendance at the air war college was expected momentarily, his successor as wing commander would be a major with five years' service.[ - ] the tactical air commander was trying to have all field grade negroes assigned to the d, but even that expedient would not provide enough officers.[ - ] finally, general quesada decided to recommend that "practically all" the key field grade positions in the d wing be filled by whites.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, cg, ninth af, to cg, tac, feb , sub: assignment of negro personnel, hist of ninth af, afshrc.] [footnote - : hq tac, record and routing sheet, apr , sub: supervisory visit d ftr gp, lockbourne afb, afshrc.] [footnote - : ltrs, cg, tac, to cg, ninth af, apr , and dcg, tac, to cg, ninth af, may , tac . ; both in hist of ninth af, afshrc.] subsequent discussions at air force headquarters gave the air force chief of staff, general hoyt s. vandenberg, three choices: leave lockbourne manned exclusively by black officers; assign a white wing commander with a racially mixed staff; or permit colonel davis to remain in command with a racially mixed staff. believing that general vandenberg would approve the last course, the tactical air command proceeded to search for appropriate white officers to fill the key positions under davis.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, a- , ninth af, for c/s, ninth af, may , sub: manning of d fighter wing, hist of ninth af; record of the tac staff conf, may ; both in afshrc.] the deputy commander of the ninth air force, brig. gen. jarred v. crabb, predicted that placing whites in key positions in the d would cause trouble, but leaving davis in command of a mixed staff "would be loaded with dynamite."[ - ] the commander of the ninth (p.  ) air force called the proposal to integrate the d's staff contrary to air force policy, which prescribed segregated units of not less than company strength. general old was forthright: [integration] would be playing in the direction in which the negro press would like to force us. they are definitely attempting to force the army and air force to solve the racial problem. as you know, they have been strongly advocating mixed companies of white and colored. for obvious reasons this is most undesirable and to do so would definitely limit the geographical locations in which such units could be employed. if the air forces go ahead and set a precedent, most undesirable repercussions may occur. regardless of how the problem is solved, we would certainly come under strong criticism of the negro press. that must be expected. in view of the combat efficiency demonstrated by colored organizations during the last war, my first recommendation in the interest of national defense and saving the taxpayer's money is to let the organization die on the vine. we make a big subject of giving the taxpayers the maximum amount of protection for each dollar spent, then turn around and support an organization that would contribute little or nothing in an emergency. it is my own opinion that it is an unnecessary drain on our national resources, but for political reasons i presume the organization must be retained. therefore, my next recommended solution is to transfer all of the colored personnel from the wing headquarters staff to the tactical and service organizations within the wing structure and replace it with a completely white staff.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, brig gen j. v. crabb to maj gen robert m. lee, hq tac, may , hist of ninth af, afshrc.] [footnote - : ltr, cg, ninth af, to maj gen r. m. lee, tac, may , hist of ninth af, afshrc.] it is difficult to estimate the extent to which these views were shared by other senior commanders, but they were widespread and revealed the tenacious hold of segregation.[ - ] [footnote - : for discussion of these views and their influence on officers, see usaf oral history program, interviews with brig gen noel parrish, mar , col jack marr, oct , and eugene zuckert, apr .] the ninth air force's deputy commander offered another solution: use "whatever colored officers we have" to run lockbourne. he urged that colonel davis's absence at the air war college be considered a temporary arrangement. meanwhile, the general added, "we can carry lockbourne along for that period of time by close supervision from this headquarters."[ - ] as davis later put it, cost effectiveness, not prejudice, was the key factor in the air force's wish to get rid of the d. the air force, he concluded, "wasn't getting its money's worth from negro pilots in a black air force."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, brig gen j. v. crabb to maj gen robert m. lee, hq tac, may , hist of ninth af, afshrc.] [footnote - : interv, author with davis.] the tactical air command's use of black troops is always singled out because of the numbers involved, but the problem was common to nearly all commands. most negroes in the strategic air command, for example, were assigned to aviation engineer units where, as construction workers, they built roads, runways, and housing for the command's far-flung bases. these duties were transient, however, and like migrant workers at home, black construction crews were shifted from base to base as the need arose; they had little chance for promotion, let alone the opportunity to develop other skills.[ - ] [footnote - : see history of various aviation air units in "history of the strategic air command, ," vols vi and viii, afshrc.] the distribution of negroes in all commands, and particularly the shortage of black specialists and officers in the d fighter wing, strongly influenced the air force to reexamine its racial policy, (p.  ) but pressures came from outside the department as well as from the black community which began to press its demands on the new service.[ - ] the prestigious pittsburgh _courier_ opened the campaign in march by directing a series of questions on air force policy to the chief of staff. general carl spaatz responded with a smooth summary of the gillem board report, leaning heavily on that document's progressive aims. "it is the feeling of this headquarters," the chief of staff wrote, "that the ultimate air force objective must be to eliminate segregation among its personnel by the unrestricted use of negro personnel in free competition for any duty within the air force for which they may qualify."[ - ] unimpressed with this familiar rhetoric, the _courier_ headlined its account of the exchange, "air force to keep segregated policy." [footnote - : for discussion of the strength of this outside pressure, see usaf oral history program. interviews with davis and brig gen lucius theus, jan .] [footnote - : ltr, lemuel graves to gen carl spaatz, mar ; ltr, spaatz to graves, apr . a copy of the correspondence was also sent to the secaf. see col jack f. marr, "a report on the first year of implementation of current policies regarding negro personnel," n.d., ppb . .] [illustration: colonel davis.] assistant secretary eugene m. zuckert followed general spaatz's line when he met with black leaders at the national defense conference on negro affairs in april , but his audience also showed little interest in future intentions. putting it bluntly, they wanted to know why segregation was necessary in the air force. zuckert could only assure them that segregation was a "practical military expediency," not an "endorsement of belief in racial distribution."[ - ] but the black leaders pressed the matter further. why was it expedient in a system dedicated to consideration of the individual, asked the president of howard university, to segregate a negro of superior mentality? at yale or harvard, dr. mordecai johnson continued, he would be kept on the team, but if he entered the air force he would be "brigaded with all the people from mississippi and alabama who had had education that costs $ a year."[ - ] [footnote - : department of national defense, "national defense conference on negro affairs," apr (morning session) p. . the conference, convened by secretary of defense forrestal, provided an opportunity for a group of black leaders to question major defense officials on the department's racial policies. see ch. .] [footnote - : department of national defense, "national defense conference on negro affairs," apr , (morning session), p. .] answering for the air force, lt. gen. idwal h. edwards, the deputy chief of staff for personnel, admitted segregation was unnecessary, promised eventual integration, but stated firmly that for the present segregation remained air force policy. as evidence of progress, (p.  ) edwards pointed to the peaceful integration of black officers in training at randolph field. for one conferee this "progress" led to another conclusion: resistance to integration had to emanate from the policymakers, not from the fighting men. all edwards could manage in the way of a reply was that air force policy was considered "the best way to make this thing work under present conditions."[ - ] later edwards, who was not insensitive to the arguments of the black leaders, told secretary of the air force w. stuart symington that perhaps some recommendation "looking toward the integration of whites and negroes in the same units may be forthcoming" from the air board's study of racial policy which was to commence the first week in may.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., p. .] [footnote - : memo, edwards for secaf, apr , sub: conference with group of prominent negroes, negro affairs , secaf files.] if the logic of the black leaders impressed general edwards, the demands themselves had little effect on policy. it remained for james c. evans, now the adviser to secretary of defense forrestal, to translate these questions and demands into recommendations for specific action. taking advantage of a long acquaintance with the secretary of the air force, evans discussed the department's race problem with him in may . symington was sympathetic. "put it on paper," he told evans.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with evans, apr ; note, evans to col marr, jun , sd . .] couching his recommendations in terms of the gillem board policy, evans faithfully summarized for the secretary the demands of black leaders. specifically, he asked that colonel davis, the commander of lockbourne air force base, be sent for advanced military schooling without delay. diversification of career was long overdue for davis, the ranking black officer in the air force, as it was for others who were considered indispensable because of the small number of qualified black leaders. for davis, most of all, the situation was unfair since he had always been in command of practically all rated black officers. nor was it good for his subordinates. the air force should not hesitate to assign a white replacement for davis. in effect, evans was telling symington that the black community would understand the necessity for such a move. besides, under the program evans was recommending, the all-black wing would soon cease to exist. he wanted the air force to "deemphasize" lockbourne as the black air base and scatter the black units concentrated there. he wanted to see negroes dispersed throughout the air force, either individually or in small units contemplated by the gillem board, but he wanted men assigned on the basis of technical specialty and proficiency rather than race. it was unrealistic, he declared, to assume all black officers could be most effectively utilized as pilots and all enlisted men as squadron f laborers. limiting training and job opportunity because of race reduced fighting potential in a way that never could be justified. the air force should open to its negroes a wide variety of training, experience, and opportunity to acquire versatility and proficiency.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, evans for secaf, jun , sub: negro air units, d - - . secdef files.] if followed, this program would fundamentally alter air force (p.  ) racial practices. general edwards recommended that the reply to evans should state that certain policy changes would be forthcoming, although they would have to await the outcome of a departmental reevaluation currently under way. the suggestions had been solicited by symington, and edwards was anxious for evans to understand the delay was not a device to defer action.[ - ] [footnote - : dcofs/p summary sheet for cofs, jul , sub: negro air units, negro affairs , secaf files.] [illustration: general edwards.] edwards was in a position to make such assurances. he was an influential member of the air staff with considerable experience in the field of race relations. as a member of the army staff during world war ii he had worked closely with the old mccloy committee on black troops and had strongly advocated wartime experiments with the integration of small-scale units.[ - ] his background, along with his observations as chief personnel officer in the new air force, had taught him to avoid abstract appeals to justice and to make suggestions in terms of military efficiency. concern with efficiency led him, soon after the air force became a separate service, to order lt. col. jack f. marr, a member of his staff, to study the air force's racial policy and practices. testifying to edwards's pragmatic approach, marr later said of his own introduction to the subject: "there was no sociology involved. it was merely a routine staff action along with a bunch of other staff actions that were taking place."[ - ] [footnote - : during world war ii, edwards served as the army's assistant chief of staff, g- . for a discussion of his opposition at that time to the concentration of large groups of men in categories iv and v, see edwin w. kenworthy, "the case against army segregation," _the annals of the american academy of political and social science_ (may ): . see also lee's _employment of negro troops_, p. . edward's part in the integration program is based on usaf oral history program, interviews with zuckert, general william f. mckee, davis, senator stuart symington, and marr. see also interv, author with lt gen idwal h. edwards, nov , cmh files.] [footnote - : ltr, marr to author, jun , cmh files.] a similar concern for efficiency, this time triggered by criticism at the national defense conference on negro affairs in april and evans's discussions with secretary symington the following month, led edwards, after talking it over with assistant secretary zuckert, to raise the subject of the employment of negroes in the air board in may.[ - ] in the wake of the air board discussion the chief of staff appointed a group under maj. gen. richard e. nugent, then director (p.  ) of civilian personnel, to reexamine the service's race policy.[ - ] nugent was another air force official who viewed the employment of negroes as a problem in military efficiency.[ - ] these three, edwards, nugent, and marr, were the chief figures in the development of the air force integration plan, which grew out of the nugent group's study. edwards and nugent supervised its many refinements in the staff while marr, whom zuckert later described as the indispensable man, wrote the plan and remained intimately connected with it until the air force carried it out.[ - ] antedating the truman order to integrate the services, the provisions of this plan eventually became the program under which the air force was integrated.[ - ] [footnote - : a group created to review policy and make recommendations to the chief of staff when called upon, the air board consisted at this time of the assistant chiefs of the air staff, the air inspector, the air comptroller, the director of information, the deputy assistant chief of staff for research and development, and other officials when appropriate.] [footnote - : memo, maj leon bell for zuckert, oct , secaf files. nugent later succeeded edwards as the chief air force personnel officer.] [footnote - : this attitude is strongly displayed in the usaf oral history program, interviews with lt gen richard e. nugent, jun , and marr, oct .] [footnote - : usaf oral hist interv with zuckert.] [footnote - : colonel marr recalled a different chronology for the air force integration plan. according to marr, his proposals were forwarded by edwards to symington who in turn discussed them at a meeting of the secretary of defense's personnel policy board sometime before june . the board rejected the plan at the behest of secretary of the army royall, but later in the year outside pressure caused it to be reconsidered. nothing is available in the files to corroborate marr's recollections, nor do the other participants remember that royall was ever involved in the air force's internal affairs. the records do not show when the air force study of race policy, which originated in the air board in may , evolved into the plan for integration that marr wrote and the chief of staff signed in december , but it seems unlikely that the plan would have been ready before june. see ltrs, marr to author, jun , and jul , cmh files; see also usaf oral hist interv with marr.] [illustration: colonel marr.] as it evolved during the months of deliberation,[ - ] the air force study of black manpower weighed air force practices against the gillem board report and found them "considerably divergent" from the policy as outlined. it isolated several reasons for this divergence. black airmen on the whole, as measured by classification tests, were unsuitable and inadequate for operating all-black air units organized and trained for modern combat. to achieve a balance of skills and training in black units was a "never ending problem for which there appears to be no solution under either the current air force policies or the policies recommended by the gillem board." in short, practices with respect to negroes were "wasteful, deleterious to military effectiveness and lacking in wartime application." [footnote - : the air force integration plan underwent considerable revision and modification before its submission to the secretary of defense in january . the quotations in the next paragraphs are taken from the version approved by the chief of staff on december .] edwards and his staff saw several advantages in complete (p.  ) integration. wherever qualified black airmen had been permitted to compete with whites on their individual qualifications and abilities, the negroes "achieved a certain amount of acceptance and recognition." students in some schools lived and learned side by side as a matter of practical necessity. "this degree of integration and acceptance on a competitive basis has been eminently successful and has to a remarkable degree solved the 'negro problem' for the training schools involved." at some bases qualified black airmen were administratively assigned to black units but actually performed duties in white units. some commanders had requested that these men be permanently transferred and assigned to the white units because the men deserved higher grades but could not receive them in black units and because it was poor management to have individuals performing duties for one military organization and living under the administrative jurisdiction of another. in the end consideration of full integration was dropped in favor of a program based on the navy's postwar integration of its general service. edwards and his personnel staff dismissed the navy's problems with stewards and its difficulty in enlisting skilled negroes as temporary embarrassments with little practical consequence. this problem apparently allowed an economic and efficient use of negroes and also "relieved the navy of the necessity for repeated efforts to justify an untenable position." they saw several practical advantages in a similar policy for the air force. it would allow the elimination of the percent quota. the inactivation of some black units--"and the pronounced relief of the problems involved in maintaining those units under present conditions"--could be accomplished without injustice to negroes and with benefit to the air force. nor would the integration of qualified negroes in technical and combat units appreciably alter current practices; according to contemporary estimates such skilled men would never total more that percent of the service's manpower. the logic of social justice might have led to total integration, but it would not have solved the air force's pressing problem of too many unskilled blacks. it was consideration of military efficiency, therefore, that led these personnel experts to propose a system of limited integration along the lines of the navy's postwar policy. such a system, they concluded, would release the air force from its quota obligation--and hence its continuing surplus of unskilled men--and free it to assign its relatively small group of skilled black recruits where they were needed and might advance. although limited, the proposed reform was substantial enough to arouse opposition. general edwards reported overwhelming opposition to any form of integration among air force officers, and never during the spring of did the chief of staff seriously consider even partial integration.[ - ] but if integration, even in a small dose, was unpalatable, widespread inefficiency was intolerable. and a new (p.  ) service, still in the process of developing policy, might embrace the new and the practical, especially if pressure were exerted from above. assistant secretary zuckert intimated as much when he finally replied to james evans, "you have my personal assurance that our present position is not in the interest of maintaining the status quo, but it is in anticipation of a more progressive and more satisfactory action in the relatively near future."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, edwards for secaf, apr , sub: conference with group of prominent negroes, negro affairs , secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, zuckert to evans, jul , sub: negro air units, secaf files.] chapter (p.  ) the president intervenes on july president harry s. truman signed executive order , calling on the armed forces to provide equal treatment and opportunity for black servicemen. this act has variously been described as an example of presidential initiative, the capstone of the truman civil rights program, and the climax of the struggle for racial equality in the armed forces. but in some ways the order was simply a practical response to a presidential dilemma. the president's order was related to the advent of the cold war. developments in the middle east and europe testified to the ambitions of the soviet union, and many americans feared the spread of communism throughout the world, a threat more ominous with the erosion of american military strength since world war ii. in march truman enunciated a new foreign policy calling for the containment of soviet expansion and pledging economic and military aid to greece and turkey. a year later he asked congress to adopt the marshall plan for economic aid to europe, authorize military training, and enact a new selective service law to maintain the armed forces at expanded levels. that same month his principal military advisers met at key west, florida, to discuss new military roles and missions for the armed forces, grapple with paralyzing divisions among the services, and re-form the military establishment into a genuinely unified whole.[ - ] as if to underscore the urgency of these measures, the soviet union began in april to harass allied troops in berlin, an action that would develop into a full-scale blockade by june. [footnote - : on the development of cold war roles and missions for the services, see timothy w. stanley, _american defense and national security_ (washington: public affairs press, ), chapter viii.] integration of the armed forces hardly loomed large on the international scene, but if the problem of race appeared insignificant to military planners, the sheer number of negroes in the armed forces gave them new prominence in national defense. because of postwar racial quotas, particularly in the army and air force, black servicemen now constituted a significant segment of the service population, and consequently their abilities and well-being had a direct bearing on the nation's cold war defenses. the black community represented percent of the country's manpower, and this also influenced defense planning. black threats to boycott the segregated armed forces could not be ignored, and civil rights demands had to be considered in developing laws relating to selective service and universal training. nor could the administration overlook the fact that the united states had become a leading protagonist in a cold war in which the sympathies of the undeveloped and mostly colored world would soon assume a special importance. inasmuch as integration of the services had become an almost universal demand of the black (p.  ) community, integration became, willy-nilly, an important defense issue. a second stimulus to improvement of the black serviceman's position was the truman administration's strong civil rights program, which gave executive sanction to a national movement started some years before. the civil rights movement was the product of many factors, including the federal government's increased sense of responsibility for the welfare of all its citizens, a sense that had grown out of the new deal and a world war which expanded horizons and increased economic power for much of the black population. the supreme court had recently accelerated this movement by broadening its interpretation of the fourteenth amendment. in the black community itself greater participation in elections and new techniques in community action were eroding discriminatory traditions and practices in many communities. the civil rights movement had in fact progressed by to a stage at which it was politically attractive for a democratic president to assume a vigorous civil rights stance. the urban black vote had become a major goal of truman's election campaign, and he was being pressed repeatedly by his advisers to demonstrate his support for black interests. a presidential order on armed forces integration logically followed because the services, conspicuous practitioners of segregation and patently susceptible to unilateral action on the part of the chief executive, were obvious and necessary targets in the black voters' campaign for civil rights. finally, the integration order resulted in part from the move toward service unification and the emergence of james v. forrestal as secretary of defense. despite misgivings over centralized control of the nation's defense establishment and overconcentration of power in the hands of a secretary of defense, forrestal soon discovered that certain problems rising out of common service experiences naturally converged on the office of the secretary. both by philosophy and temperament he was disposed to avoid a clash with the services over integration. he remained sensitive to their interests and rights, and he frankly doubted the efficacy of social change through executive fiat. yet forrestal was not impervious to the aspirations of the civil rights activists; guided by a humane interest in racial equality, he made integration a departmental goal. his technique for achieving integration, however, proved inadequate in the face of strong service opposition, and finally the president, acting on the basis of these seemingly unrelated motives, had to issue the executive order to strengthen the defense secretary's hand. _the truman administration and civil rights_ executive and legislative interest in the civil rights of black americans reached a level in unmatched since reconstruction. the president himself was the catalyst. by creating a presidential committee on civil rights and developing a legislative program based on its findings, truman brought the black minority into the political arena and committed the federal government to a program of social legislation that it has continued to support ever since. little in (p.  ) the president's background suggested he would sponsor basic social changes. he was a son of the middle border, from a family firmly dedicated to the confederate cause. his appreciation of black aspirations was hardly sophisticated, as he revealed to a black audience in : "i wish to make it clear that i am not appealing for social equality of the negro. the negro himself knows better than that, and the highest types of negro leaders say quite frankly they prefer the society of their own people. negroes want justice, not social relations."[ - ] [footnote - : jonathan daniels, _the man of independence_ (philadelphia: lippincott, ), p. . the quotation is from a speech before the national colored democratic convention, chicago, reprinted in the _congressional record_, th cong., d sess., vol. , aug , appendix, pp. - .] nor did his attitude change drastically in later years. in , seven years after the supreme court's vital school integration decision, truman was calling the freedom riders "meddlesome intruders who should stay at home and attend to their own business." his suggestion to proprietors of lunch counters undergoing sit-ins was to kick out unwelcome customers.[ - ] but if he failed to appreciate the scope of black demands, truman nevertheless demonstrated as early as an acute awareness of the connection between civil rights for blacks and civil liberties for all americans: in giving negroes the rights which are theirs we are only acting in accord with our own ideals of a true democracy. if any class or race can be permanently set apart from, or pushed down below the rest in political and civil rights, so may any other class or race when it shall incur the displeasure of its more powerful associates, and we may say farewell to the principles on which we count our safety.[ - ] [footnote - : quoted in james peck, _freedom ride_ (new york: simon and schuster, ), pp. - .] [footnote - : quoted in daniels, _man of independence_, pp. - .] he would repeat these sentiments to other gatherings, including the assembled delegates of the naacp's convention.[ - ] the president's civil rights program would be based, then, on a practical concern for the rights of the majority. neither his social philosophy nor his political use of black demands should detract from his achievements in the field of civil rights. [footnote - : msg, hst to naacp convention, jun , _public papers of the president, _ (washington: government printing office, ), pp. - .] it was probably just as well that truman adopted a pragmatic approach to civil rights, for there was little social legislation a reform president could hope to get through the postwar congresses. dominated by a conservative coalition that included the dixiecrats, a group of sometimes racially reactionary southerners, congress showed little interest in civil rights. the creation of a permanent fair employment practices commission, the one piece of legislation directly affecting negroes and the only current test of congressional intent in civil rights, was floundering on capitol hill. truman conspicuously supported the fair employment measure, but did little else specifically in the first year after the war to advance civil rights. instead he seemed content to carry on with the new deal approach to the problem: improve the social condition of all americans and the condition of the minorities will also improve. in this vein his first domestic program concentrated on national projects for housing, health, and veterans' benefits. the conversion of harry truman into a forceful civil rights (p.  ) advocate seems to have come about, at least partially, from his exposure to what he later called the "anti-minority" incidents visited on black servicemen and civilians in .[ - ] although the lynchings, property destruction, and assaults never matched the racial violence that followed world war i, they were enough to convince many civil rights leaders that the pattern of racial strife was being repeated. some of these men, along with a group of labor executives and clergymen, formed a national emergency committee against mob violence to warn the american public against the dangers of racial intolerance. a delegation from this committee, with walter white as spokesman, met with the president on september to demand government action. white described the scene: the president sat quietly, elbows resting on the arms of his chair and his fingers interlocked against his stomach as he listened with a grim face to the story of the lynchings.... when i finished, the president exclaimed in his flat, midwestern accent, "my god! i had no idea it was as terrible as that! we've got to do something!"[ - ] [footnote - : harry s. truman, _memoirs_ (new york: doubleday, ), ii: - ; white, _a man called white_, pp. - . truman's concept of civil rights is analyzed in considerable detail in donald r. mccoy and richard t. ruetten, _quest and response: minority rights and the truman administration_ (lawrence, kansas: university of kansas press, ), chapter iii.] [footnote - : white, _a man called white_, pp. - .] but the truman administration had nearly exhausted the usual remedies open to it. the attorney general had investigated the lynchings and klan activities and the president had spoken out strongly and repeatedly against mob violence but without clear and pertinent civil rights legislation presidential exhortations and investigations counted for very little. civil rights leaders like white understood this, and, given the mood of congress, they were resigned to the lack of legislative support. nevertheless, it was in this context that the president decided to create a committee to investigate and report on the status of civil rights in america. the concept of a federal civil rights group had been circulating in the executive branch for some time. after the detroit race riot in , presidential assistant jonathan daniels had organized a committee to deal with racial troubles. proposals to create a national organization to reduce racial tensions were advanced later in the war, principally by saul k. padover, a minority specialist in the interior department, and david k. niles of the white house staff. little came of the committee idea, however, because roosevelt was convinced that any steps associated with integration would prove divisive and were unwise during wartime.[ - ] with the war over and a different political climate prevailing, niles, now senior white house adviser on minority affairs, proposed the formation of a committee not only to investigate racial violence but also to explore the entire subject of civil rights. [footnote - : intervs, nichols with oscar ewing, former federal security administrator and senior presidential adviser, and jonathan daniels, , in nichols collection, cmh; see also mccoy and ruetten, _quest and response_, p. .] walter white and his friends greeted the idea with some skepticism. they had come demanding action, but were met instead with another promise of a committee and the probability of interminable (p.  ) congressional debate and unproductive hearings.[ - ] but this time, for several reasons, it would be different. in the first place the civil rights leaders underestimated the sincerity of truman's reaction to the racial violence. he had quickly agreed to create niles's committee by executive order to save it from possible pigeonholing at the hands of a hostile congress. he had also given the group, called the president's committee on civil rights, a broad directive "to determine whether and in what respect current law enforcement measures and the authority and means possessed by federal, state, and local governments may be strengthened and improved to safeguard the civil rights of the people."[ - ] the civil rights leaders also failed to gauge the effect republican victories in the congressional elections would have on the administration. finding it necessary to court the negro and other minorities and hoping to confound congressional opposition, the administration sought a strong civil rights program to put before the eightieth congress. thus, the committee's recommendations would get respectful attention in the white house. finally, neither the civil rights leaders nor the president could have foreseen the effectiveness of the committee members. serving under charles e. wilson, president of the general electric company, the group included among its fifteen members distinguished church leaders, public service lawyers, the presidents of dartmouth college and the university of north carolina, and prominent labor executives. the committee had two black members, sadie t. m. alexander, a lawyer from philadelphia, and channing h. tobias, director of the phelps-stokes fund. its members not only prepared a comprehensive survey of the condition of civil rights in america but also presented to the president on october a far-reaching series of recommendations, in effect a program for corrective action that would serve as a bench mark for civil rights progress for many years.[ - ] [footnote - : white, _a man called white_, pp. - .] [footnote - : executive order , dec .] [footnote - : in addition to chairman wilson, the following people served on the committee: sadie t. m. alexander, james b. carey, john s. dickey, morris l. ernst, roland b. gittelsohn, frank p. graham, francis j. haas, charles luckman, francis p. matthews, franklin d. roosevelt, jr., henry knox sherrill, boris shishkin, dorothy tilly, and channing tobias.] [illustration: walter white.] the group recommended the concentration of civil rights work in the department of justice, the establishment of a permanent civil rights commission, a federal antilynching act, a permanent fair employment practices commission, and legislation to correct discrimination in voting and naturalization laws. it also examined the state of (p.  ) civil rights in the armed forces and incidentally publicized the long-ignored survey of black infantry platoons that had fought in europe in .[ - ] it concluded: the injustice of calling men to fight for freedom while subjecting them to humiliating discrimination within the fighting forces is at once apparent. furthermore, by preventing entire groups from making their maximum contribution to the national defense, we weaken our defense to that extent and impose heavier burdens on the remainder of the population.[ - ] [footnote - : parts of the survey of attitudes of participants in the world war ii integration of platoons were included in remarks by congresswoman helen g. douglas, published in the _congressional record_, th cong., d sess., feb , appendix, pp. - .] [footnote - : _to secure these rights_, p. .] the committee called for sweeping change in the armed forces, recommending that congress enact legislation, followed by appropriate administrative action, to end all discrimination and segregation in the services. concluding that the recent service unification provided a timely opportunity for revision of existing policies and practices, the committee proposed a specific ban on discrimination and segregation in all phases of recruitment, assignment, and training, including selection for service schools and academies, as well as in mess halls, quarters, recreational facilities, and post exchanges. it also wanted commissions and promotions awarded on merit alone and asked for new laws to protect servicemen from discrimination in communities adjacent to military bases.[ - ] the committee wanted the president to look beyond the integration of people working and living on military bases, and it introduced a concept that would gain considerable support in a future administration. the armed forces, it declared, _should_ be used as an instrument of social change. world war ii had demonstrated that the services were a laboratory in which citizens could be educated on a broad range of social and political issues, and the administration was neglecting an effective technique for teaching the public the advantages of providing equal treatment and opportunity for all citizens.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., pp. - .] [footnote - : ibid., p. .] president truman deleted the recommendations on civil rights in the services when he transmitted the committee's recommendations to congress in the form of a special message on february . arguing that the services' race practices were matters of executive interest and pointing to recent progress toward better race relations in the armed forces, the president told congress that he had already instructed the secretary of defense to take steps to eliminate remaining instances of discrimination in the services as rapidly as possible. he also promised that the personnel policies and practices of all the services would be made uniform.[ - ] [footnote - : truman, special message to the congress on civil rights, feb , _public papers of the president, _, pp. - .] to press for civil rights legislation for the armed forces or even to mention segregation was politically imprudent. truman had two pieces of military legislation to get through congress: a new draft law and a provision for universal military training. these he considered (p.  ) too vital to the nation's defense to risk grounding on the shoals of racial controversy. for the time being at least, integration of the armed forces would have to be played down, and any civil rights progress in the department of defense would have to depend on the persuasiveness of james forrestal. [illustration: truman's civil rights campaign _as seen by washington star cartoonist clifford k. berryman, march , _.] _civil rights and the department of defense_ the basic postwar reorganization of the national military establishment, the national security act of , created the office of the secretary of defense, a separate department of the air force, the central intelligence agency, and the national security council. it also reconstituted the war department as the department of the army and gave legal recognition as a permanent agency to the joint chiefs of staff. the principle of military unification that underlay the reorganization plan was muted in the legislation that finally emerged from congress. although the secretary of defense was given authority to establish general policies and to exercise general direction (p.  ) and control of the services, the services themselves retained a large measure of autonomy in their internal administration and individual service secretaries retained cabinet rank. in effect, the act created a secretary without a department, a reorganization that largely reflected the viewpoint of the navy. the army had fought for a much greater degree of unification, which would not be achieved until the passage of the national security act amendments of . this legislation redesignated the unified department the department of defense, strengthened the powers of the secretary of defense, and provided for uniform budgetary procedures. although the services were to be "separately administered," their respective secretaries henceforward headed "military departments" without cabinet status. the first secretary of defense, james forrestal, was a man of exceptional administrative talents, yet even before taking office he expressed strong reservations on the wisdom of a unified military department. as early as july , at breakfast with president truman during the potsdam conference, forrestal questioned whether any one man "was good enough to run the combined army, navy, and air departments." what kind of men could the president get in peacetime, he asked, to be under secretaries of war, navy, and air if they were subordinate to a single defense secretary?[ - ] speaking to lester granger that same year on the power of the secretary of the navy to order the marine corps to accept negroes, forrestal expressed uncertainty about a cabinet officer's place in the scheme of things. "some people think the secretary is god-almighty, but he's just a god-damn civilian."[ - ] even after his appointment as defense secretary doubts lingered: "my chief misgivings about unification derived from my fear that there would be a tendency toward overconcentration and reliance on one man or one-group direction. in other words, too much central control."[ - ] [footnote - : quoted in walter millis, ed., _the forrestal diaries_ (new york: viking press, ), p. .] [footnote - : quoted by granger in the interview he gave nichols in .] [footnote - : quoted in millis, _forrestal diaries_, p. .] forrestal's philosophy of management reinforced the limitations placed on the secretary of defense by the national security act. he sought a middle way in which the efficiency of a unified system could be obtained without sacrificing what he considered to be the real advantages of service autonomy. thus, he supported a report of the defense study group under ferdinand eberstadt that argued for a "coordinated" rather than a "unitary" defense establishment.[ - ] practical experience modified his fears somewhat, and by october , convinced he needed greater power to control the defense establishment, forrestal urged that the language of the national security act, which limited the secretary of defense to "general" authority only over the military departments, be amended to eliminate the word _general_. yet he always retained his basic distrust of (p.  ) dictation, preferring to understand and adjust rather than to conclude and order.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., pp. , . timothy stanley describes the eberstadt report as the navy's "constructive alternative" to unification. see stanley's _american defense and national security_, p. ; see also hewes, _from root to mcnamara_, pp. - . for a detailed analysis of defense unification, see lawrence legere, jr., "unification of the armed forces," chapter vi, in cmh.] [footnote - : millis, _forrestal diaries_, pp. , .] nowhere was forrestal's philosophy of government more evident than in his approach to the problem of integration. his office would be concerned with equal opportunity, he promised walter white soon after his elevation to the new post, but "the job of secretary of defense," he warned, "is one which will have to develop in an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary manner." further dashing hopes of sudden reform, forrestal added that specific racial problems, as distinct from general policy matters, would remain the province of the individual services.[ - ] he retained this attitude throughout his tenure. he considered the president's instructions to end remaining instances of discrimination in the services "in accord with my own conception of my responsibilities under unification," and he was in wholehearted agreement with a presidential wish that the national military establishment work out the answer to its racial problems through administrative action. he wanted to see a "more nearly uniform approach to interracial problems by the three services," but experience had demonstrated, he believed, that racial problems could not be solved simply by publishing an executive order or passing a law. racial progress would come from education. such had been his observation in the wartime navy, and he was ready to promise that "even greater progress will be made in the future." but, he added, "progress must be made administratively and should not be put into effect by fiat."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, forrestal to white, oct , day file, forrestal papers, princeton university library.] [footnote - : remarks by james forrestal at dinner meeting of the national urban league, feb , copy in misc file, forrestal papers; see also ltr, forrestal to john n. brown, oct , day file, ibid.] executive fiat was just what some of forrestal's advisers wanted. for example, his executive assistant, john h. ohly, his civilian aide, james c. evans,[ - ] and truman gibson urged the secretary to consider establishing an interservice committee along the lines of the old mccloy committee to prepare a uniform racial policy that he could apply to all the services. they wanted the committee to examine past and current practices as well as the recent reports of the president's advisory commission on universal training and the committee on civil rights and to make specific recommendations for carrying out and policing department policy. truman gibson went to the heart of the matter: the formulation of such an interservice committee would signal to the black community better than anything else the defense establishment's determination to change the racial situation. more and more, he warned, the discrepancies among the services' racial practices were attracting public attention. most important to the administration was the fact that these discrepancies were strengthening opposition to universal military training and the draft.[ - ] [footnote - : in addition to his duties as civilian aide to the secretary of the army, evans was made aide to the secretary of defense on october . (see memo, secdef for sa et al., oct , d - - , files of historian, osd.) evans was subsequently appointed "civilian assistant" to the secretary of defense by secretary louis johnson on apr . (see nme press release, - -a.)] [footnote - : ltr, gibson to ohly, nov , d - - , sec def files.] [illustration: a. philip randolph. (_detail from painting by betsy g. reyneau._)] gibson was no doubt referring to a. philip randolph, president (p.  ) of the brotherhood of sleeping car porters and organizer of the march on washington movement, who had spoken out against the pending legislation. randolph was particularly concerned that the bill did not prohibit segregation, and he quoted a member of the advisory commission on universal training who admitted that the bill ignored the racial issue because "the south might oppose umt if negroes were included." drafting eighteen-year olds into a segregated army was a threat to black progress, randolph charged, because enforced segregation made it difficult to break down other forms of discrimination. convinced that the pentagon was trying to bypass the segregation issue, randolph and grant reynolds, a black clergyman and new york politician, formed a committee against jim crow in military service and training. they planned to submit a proposal to the president and congress for drafting a nondiscrimination measure for the armed forces, and they were prepared to back up this demand with a march on washington--no empty gesture in an election year. randolph had impressive backing from black leaders, among them dr. channing h. tobias of the civil rights committee, george s. schuyler, columnist of the pittsburgh _courier_, l. d. reddick, curator of the schomburg collection of the new york public library, and joe louis.[ - ] [footnote - : new york times, november , ; _herald tribune_, november , . see also l. d. reddick, "the negro policy of the american army since world war ii," _journal of negro history_ (april ): - .] black spokesmen were particularly incensed by the attitude of the secretary of the army and his staff. walter white pointed out that these officials continued to justify segregated units on the grounds that segregation was--he quoted them--"in the interest of national defense." white went to special pains to refute the army's contention that segregation was necessary because the army had to conform to local laws and customs. "how," he asked secretary forrestal, can the imposition of segregation upon northern states having clear-cut laws and policies in opposition to such practices be justified by the army?... in view of president truman's recent report to the congress and in view of the report of his committee on civil rights condemning segregation in the armed forces, i am at a loss to understand the reluctance on the part of the department of defense to immediately eliminate all vestiges of discrimination and (p.  ) segregation in the armed forces of this country. as the foremost defender of democratic principles in international councils, the united states can ill afford to any longer discriminate against its negro citizens in its armed forces solely because they were fortunate or unfortunate enough to be born negroes.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, white to forrestal, feb , d - - , secdef files.] forrestal stubbornly resisted the pleas of his advisers and black leaders that he assume a more active role. in the first place he had real doubts concerning his authority to do so. forrestal was also aware of the consequences an integration campaign would have on capitol hill, where he was in the midst of delicate negotiations on defense measures. but most of all the role of crusader did not fit him. "i have gone somewhat slowly," forrestal had written in late october , "because i believe in the theory of having things to talk about as having been done rather than having to predict them, and ... morale and confidence are easy to destroy but not easy to rebuild. in other words, i want to be sure that any changes we make are changes that accomplish something and not merely for the sake of change."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, forrestal to rear adm w. b. young, oct , quoted in millis, _forrestal diaries_, p. .] to forrestal equal opportunity was not a pious platitude, but a practical means of solving the military's racial problems. equal opportunity was the tactic he had used in the navy where he had encouraged specialized training for all qualified negroes. he understood that on shipboard machinists ate and bunked with machinists, firemen with firemen. inaugurated in the fleet, the practice naturally spread to the shore establishment, and equal opportunity led inevitably to the integration of the general service. given the opportunity to qualify for all specialties, negroes--albeit their number was limited to the small group in the general service--quickly gained equal treatment in off-the-job activities. forrestal intended to apply the same tactic to achieve the same results in the other services.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, blumenson with marx leva, special assistant to the secretary of defense ( - ) and later assistant secretary of defense (legal and legislative affairs), may , cmh files.] as in the past, he turned first to lester granger, his old friend from the national urban league. acting on the recommendation of his special assistant, marx leva, forrestal invited granger to the pentagon to discuss the department's racial problems with a view to holding a general conference and symposium on the subject. as usual, granger was full of ideas, and he and the secretary agreed that forrestal should create a "critics group," which would discuss "army and general defense policies in the use of negro personnel."[ - ] granger suggested a roster of black and white experts, influential in the black community and representing most shades of opinion, but he would exclude those apt to make political capital out of the issues. [footnote - : handwritten memo, leva for forrestal, attached to ltr, white to forrestal, feb ; ltr, leva to granger, feb ; ltr, granger to forrestal, mar . all in d - - , secdef files. the quotation is from the march letter.] the leva-granger conference idea fitted neatly into forrestal's thinking. it offered the possibility of introducing to the services in a systematic and documented way the complaints of responsible black leaders while instructing those leaders in the manpower problems confronting the postwar armed forces. he hoped the conference (p.  ) would modify traditionalist attitudes toward integration while curbing mounting unrest in the black community. granger and forrestal agreed that the conference should be held soon. although granger wanted some "good solid white representation" in the group, forrestal decided instead to invite fifteen black leaders to meet on april in the pentagon; he alerted the service secretaries, asking them to attend or to designate an assistant to represent them in each case.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, marx leva for sa et al., apr ; idem for forrestal, apr ; ltr, secdef to all invited, apr . all in d - - , secdef files. those invited were truman gibson; dr. channing tobias; dr. sadie t. m. alexander; mary mcleod bethune; dr. john w. davis of west virginia state college; dr. benjamin e. mays of morehouse college; dr. mordecai johnson of howard university; p. b. young, jr., of the norfolk _journal and guide_; willard townsend of the united transport service employees; rev. john h. johnson of new york; walter white; hobson e. reynolds of the international order of elks; bishop j. w. gregg of kansas city; loren miller of los angeles; and charles houston of washington, d.c. unable to attend, white sent his assistant roy wilkins, townsend sent george l. p. weaver, and mrs. bethune was replaced by ira f. lewis of the pittsburgh _courier_.] announcement of the conference was upstaged in the press by the activities of some civil rights militants, including those whom granger sought to exclude from the forrestal conference because he thought they would make a political issue of the war against segregation. forrestal first learned of the militants' plans from members of the national negro publishers association, a group of publishers and editors of important black journals who were about to tour european installations as guests of the army.[ - ] at granger's suggestion forrestal had met with the publishers and editors to explain the causes for the delay in desegregating the services. instead, he found himself listening to an impassioned demand for immediate change. ira f. lewis, president of the pittsburgh _courier_ and spokesman for the group, told the secretary that the black community did not expect the services to be a laboratory or clearinghouse for processing the social ills of the nation, but it wanted to warn the man responsible for military preparedness that the united states could not afford another war with one-tenth of its population lacking the spirit to fight. the problem of segregation could best be solved by the policymakers. "the colored people of the country have a high regard for you, mr. secretary, as a square shooter," lewis concluded. and from forrestal they expected action.[ - ] [footnote - : representing eight papers, a cross section of the influential black press, the journalists included ira f. lewis and william g. nunn, pittsburgh _courier_; cliff w. mackay, _afro-american_; louis martin and charles browning, chicago _defender_; thomas w. young and louis r. lautier, norfolk _journal and guide_; carter wesley, houston _defender_; frank l. stanley, louisville _defender_; dowdal h. davis, kansas city _call_; dan burley, _amsterdam news_. see evans, list of publishers and editors of negro newspapers, pentagon, mar , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : sentiments of the meeting were summarized in ltr, ira f. lewis to forrestal, mar ; see also ltr, granger to forrestal, mar ; both in d - - , secdef files.] while black newspapermen were pressing the executive branch, randolph and his committee against jim crow were demanding congressional action. randolph concentrated on one explosive issue, the army's procurement of troops. the first war department plans for postwar manpower procurement were predicated on some form of universal military training, a new concept for the united states. the plans immediately came under fire from negroes because the army, citing the gillem board report as its authority, had specified that black recruits be trained in segregated units. the army had also specified that the black units form parts of larger, racially mixed units and would be trained in racially mixed camps.[ - ] the president's (p.  ) advisory commission on universal training (the compton commission), appointed to study the army's program, strongly objected to the segregation provisions, but to no avail.[ - ] as if to signal its intentions the army trained an experimental universal military training unit in at fort knox that carefully excluded black volunteers. [footnote - : wd ltr, agao-s ( may ), wdgot-m, jun .] [footnote - : _a program for national security: report of the president's advisory commission on universal training, may _ (washington: government printing office, ), p. .] the showdown between civil rights organizations and the administration over universal military training never materialized. faced with chronic opposition to the program and the exigencies of the cold war, the administration quietly shelved universal training and concentrated instead on the reestablishment of the selective service system. when black attention naturally shifted to the new draft legislation, randolph was able to capitalize on the determination of many leaders in the civil rights movement to defeat any draft law that countenanced the army's racial policy. appearing at the senate armed services committee hearings on the draft bill, randolph raised the specter of civil disobedience, pledging to openly counsel, aid, and abet youth, both white and negro, to quarantine any jim crow conscription system, whether it bear the label of universal military training or selective service.... from coast to coast in my travels i shall call upon all negro veterans to join this civil disobedience movement and to recruit their younger brothers in an organized refusal to register and be drafted.... i shall appeal to the thousands of white youths ... to demonstrate their solidarity with negro youth by ignoring the entire registration and induction machinery.... i shall appeal to the negro parents to lend their moral support to their sons, to stand behind them as they march with heads held high to federal prisons as a telling demonstration to the world that negroes have reached the limit of human endurance, that, in the words of the spiritual, we will be buried in our graves before we will be slaves.[ - ] [footnote - : senate, hearings before the committee on armed services, _universal military training_, th cong., d sess., , p. .] randolph argued that hard-won gains in education, job opportunity, and housing would be nullified by federal legislation supporting segregation. how could a fair employment practices commission, he asked, dare criticize discrimination in industry if the government itself was discriminating against negroes in the services? "negroes are just sick and tired of being pushed around," he concluded, "and we just do not propose to take it, and we do not care what happens."[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., p. .] when senator wayne morse warned randolph that such statements in times of national emergency would leave him open to charges of treason, randolph replied that by fighting for their rights negroes were serving the cause of american democracy. borrowing from the rhetoric of the cold war, he predicted that such was the effect of segregation on the international fight for men's minds that america could never stop communism as long as it was burdened with jim crowism. randolph threw down the gauntlet. "we have to face this thing sooner or (p.  ) later, and we might just as well face it now."[ - ] it was up to the administration and congress to decide whether his challenge was the beginning of a mass movement or a weightless threat by an extremist group. [footnote - : ibid., pp. - . the quotation is from page .] the immediate reaction of various spokesmen for the black community supported both possibilities. also testifying before the senate armed services committee, truman gibson, who was a member of the compton commission that had objected to segregation, expressed "shock and dismay" at randolph's pledge and predicted that negroes would continue to participate in the country's defense effort.[ - ] for his pains gibson was branded a "rubber stamp uncle tom" by congressman adam clayton powell. the black press, for the most part, applauded randolph's analysis of the mood of negroes, but shied away from the threat of civil disobedience. the naacp and most other civil rights organizations took the same stand, condemning segregation but disavowing civil disobedience.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., p. .] [footnote - : the philadelphia _inquirer_, april , ; pm, april , . see also mccloy and ruetten, _quest and response_, pp. - ; "crisis in the making: u.s. negroes tussle with the issue," _newsweek_, june , , pp. - ; l. bennett, jr., _confrontation black and white_ (chicago: johnson press, ), pp. - ; grant reynolds, "a triumph for civil disturbance," _nation_ (august , ): - .] although the administration could take comfort in the relatively mild reaction from conservative blacks, an important element of the black community supported randolph's stand. a poll of young educated negroes conducted by the naacp revealed that percent of those of draft age would support the civil disobedience campaign. so impressive was randolph's support--the new york _times_ called it a blunt warning from the black public--that one news journal saw in the campaign the specter of a major national crisis.[ - ] on the other hand, the washington _post_ cautioned its readers not to exaggerate the significance of the protest. randolph's words, the _post_ declared, were intended "more as moral pressure" for nondiscrimination clauses in pending draft and universal military training legislation than as a serious threat.[ - ] [footnote - : new york _times_, april , .] [footnote - : washington _post_, april , .] whatever its ultimate influence on national policy, the randolph civil disobedience pledge had no visible effect on the position of the president or congress. with a draft bill and a national political convention pending, the president was not about to change his hands-off policy toward the segregation issue in the services. in fact he showed some heat at what he saw as a threat by extremists to exploit an issue he claimed he was doing his best to resolve.[ - ] as for members of congress, most of those who joined in the debate on the draft bill simply ignored the threatened boycott. [footnote - : mccoy and ruetten, _quest and response_, p. .] in contrast to the militant randolph, the negroes who gathered at secretary forrestal's invitation for the national defense conference on april appeared to be a rather sedate group. but academic honors, business success, and gray hairs were misleading. these eminent educators, clergymen, and civil rights leaders proved just as (p.  ) determined as randolph and his associates to be rid of segregation and, considering their position in the community, were more likely to influence the administration. that they were their own men quickly became apparent in the stormy course of the pentagon meeting. they subjected a score of defense officials[ - ] to searching questions, submitted themselves to cross-examination by the press, and agreed to prepare a report for the secretary of defense. [footnote - : department of national defense, "national defense conference on negro affairs," apr . this document includes the testimony and transcript of the news conference that followed. officials appearing before the committee included james forrestal, secretary of defense; robert p. patterson, former secretary of war; marx leva, special assistant to the secretary of defense; james evans, adviser to the secretary of defense; kenneth c. royall, secretary of the army; john n. brown, assistant secretary of the navy; w. stuart symington, secretary of the air force; and personnel officials and consultants from each service.] while the group refrained from endorsing randolph's position, it also refrained from criticizing him and strongly supported his thesis that segregation in itself was discrimination. nor were its views soft-pedaled in the press release issued after the conference. the secretary of defense was forced to announce that the black leaders declined to serve as advisers to the national military establishment as long as the services continued to practice segregation. the group unanimously recommended that the armed services eliminate segregation and challenged the army's interpretation of its own policy, insisting that the army could abolish segregation even within the framework of the gillem board recommendations. the members planned no future meetings but adjourned to prepare their report.[ - ] [footnote - : nme press releases, apr and sep .] this adamant stand should not have surprised the secretary of defense. forrestal could appreciate more than most the pressures operating on the group. in the aftermath of the report of the president's committee on civil rights and in the heightened atmosphere caused by the rhetoric of the randolph campaign, these men were also caught up in the militants' cause. if they were reluctant to attack the services too severely lest they lose their chance to influence the course of racial events in the department, they were equally reluctant to accept the pace of reform dictated by the traditionalists. in the end they chose to side with their more radical colleagues. thus despite lester granger's attempt to soften the blow, the conference designed to bring the opponents together ended with yet another condemnation of forrestal's gradualism. forrestal himself agreed with the goals of the conferees, he told granger, but at the same time he refused to abandon his approach, insisting that he could not force people into cooperation and mutual respect by issuing a directive. instead he arranged for granger to meet with army leaders to spread the gospel of equal opportunity and ordered a report prepared showing precisely what the navy did during the late months of the war and "how much of it has stuck--on the question of non-segregation both in messing and barracks." the report, written by lt. dennis d. nelson, was sent to secretary of the army royall along with sixteen photographs picturing blacks and whites (p.  ) being trained together and working side by side.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, forrestal for marx leva, apr ; ltr, nelson to leva, may ; memo, leva for sa, may . all in d - - , secdef files.] [illustration: national defense conference on negro affairs. _conferees prepare to meet with the press, april ._] given the vast size of the army, it was perfectly feasible to open all training to qualified negroes and yet continue for years racial practices that had so quickly proved impossible in the navy's smaller general service. of course, even in the army the number of segregated jobs that could be created was limited, and in time forrestal's tactics might, it could be argued, have succeeded despite the army's size and the intractability of its leaders. time, however, was precisely what forrestal lacked, given the increasing political strength of the civil rights movement. sparked by randolph's stand before the congressional committee, some members of the black community geared up for greater protests. worse still for an administration facing a critical election, the protest was finding some support in the camps of the president's rivals. early in may, for example, a group of prominent civil rights activists formed the commission of inquiry with the expressed purpose of examining the treatment of black servicemen during world war ii. organized by randolph and reynolds, the commission boasted arthur garfield hayes, noted civil libertarian and lawyer, as its counsel. the commission planned to interrogate witnesses and, on the basis of the testimony gathered, issue a report to congress and the public that would include recommendations on conscription legislation. various defense department officials were invited to testify but only james c. evans, who acted as department spokesman, accepted. during the (p.  ) inquiry, which evans estimated was attended by persons, little attention was given to randolph's civil disobedience pledge, but evans himself came in for considerable ridicule, and there were headlines aplenty in the black press.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, grant reynolds and randolph to evans, may ; memo, evans for secdef, may , sub: commission of inquiry; both in secdef files. see also a. philip randolph, statement before commission of inquiry, may , copy in usaf special files , , secaf files.] these attacks were being carried out in an atmosphere of heightened political interest in the civil rights of black servicemen. henry a. wallace, the progressive party's presidential candidate, had for some time been telling his black audiences that the administration was insincere because if it wanted to end segregation it could simply force the resignation of the secretary of the army.[ - ] henry cabot lodge, the republican senator from massachusetts, called on forrestal to make "a real attempt, well thought out and well organized," to integrate a sizable part of the armed forces with soldiers volunteering for such arrangements. quoting from general eisenhower's testimony before the armed services committee, he reminded forrestal that segregation was not only an undeserved and unjustified humiliation to the negro, but a potential danger to the national defense effort. in the face of a manpower shortage, it was inexcusable to view segregation simply as a political question, "of concern to a few individuals and to a few men in public life and to be dealt with as adroitly as possible, always with an eye to the largest number of votes."[ - ] [footnote - : new york _times_, february , .] [footnote - : ltr, sen. henry c. lodge, jr. (mass.), to secdef, apr , d - - , secdef files.] yet as the timing of senator lodge's letter suggests, the political implications of the segregation fight were a prime concern of every politician involved, and forrestal had to act with this fact in mind. the administration considered the wallace campaign a real but minor threat because of his appeal to black voters in the early months of the campaign.[ - ] the republican incursion into the civil rights field was more ominous, and forrestal, having acknowledged lodge's letter, turned to lester granger for help in drafting a detailed reply. it took granger some time to suggest an approach because he agreed with lodge on many points but found some of his inferences as unsound as the army's policy. for instance lodge approved eisenhower's comments on segregation, and the only real difference between eisenhower and the army staff was that eisenhower wanted segregation made more efficient by putting smaller all-black units into racially composite organizations. negroes opposed segregation as an insult to their race and to their manhood. granger wanted forrestal to tell lodge that no group of negroes mindful of its public standing could take a position other than total opposition to segregation. having to choose between randolph's stand and eisenhower's, negroes could not endorse eisenhower. granger also thought forrestal would do well to explain to lodge that he himself favored for the other services the policy followed by the navy in the name of improving efficiency and morale.[ - ] [footnote - : mccoy and ruetten, _quest and response_, pp. - .] [footnote - : ltr, granger to leva, may , d - - , secdef files.] a reply along these line was prepared, but marx leva persuaded (p.  ) forrestal not to send it until the selective service bill had safely passed congress.[ - ] forrestal was "seriously concerned," he wrote the president on may , about the fate of that legislation. he wanted to express his opposition to an amendment proposed by senator richard b. russell of georgia that would guarantee segregated units for those draftees who wished to serve only with members of their own race. he also wanted to announce his intention of making "further progress" in interracial relations. to that end he had discussed with special counsel to the president clark m. clifford the creation of an advisory board to recommend specific steps his department could take in the race relations field. reiterating a long-cherished belief, forrestal declared that this "difficult problem" could not be solved by issuing an executive order or passing a law, "for progress in this field must be achieved by education, and not by mandate."[ - ] the president agreed to these maneuvers,[ - ] but just three days later forrestal returned to the subject, passing along to truman a warning from senator robert a. taft of ohio that both the russell amendment and one proposed by senator william langer of north dakota to prohibit all segregation were potential roadblocks to passage of the bill.[ - ] in the end congress rejected both amendments, passing a draft bill without any special racial provisions on june . [footnote - : memo, leva to forrestal, may , d - - , secdef files. forrestal's response, suggesting that lodge meet with lester granger to discuss the matter, was finally sent on jun . see also memo, leva for forrestal, jun , and ltr, secdef to sen. lodge, jun , both in d - - , secdef files.] [footnote - : memo, james forrestal for president, may , secretary's file (psf), harry s. truman library.] [footnote - : memo, president for secdef, jun , secretary's file (psf), truman library.] [footnote - : note, secdef for president, may , sub: conversation with senator taft, secretary's file (psf), truman library.] the proposal for an advisory board proved to be forrestal's last attempt to change the racial practices of the armed forces through gradualism. in the next few weeks the whole problem would be taken out of his hands by a white house grown impatient with his methods. there, in contrast to the comparatively weak position of the secretary of defense, who had not yet consolidated his authority, the full force and power of the commander in chief would be used to give a dramatic new meaning to equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces. given the temper of the times, forrestal's surrender was inevitable, for a successful reform program had to show measurable improvements, and despite his maneuvers with the civil rights activists, the congress, and the services, forrestal had no success worth proclaiming in his first eight months of office. this lack of progress disappointed civil rights leaders, who had perhaps overestimated the racial reforms made when forrestal was secretary of the navy. it can be argued that as secretary of defense forrestal himself was inclined to overestimate them. nevertheless, he could demonstrate some systematic improvement in the lot of the black sailor, enough improvement, according to his gradualist philosophy, to assure continued progress. ironically, considering forrestal's faith in the efficacy of education and persuasion, whatever can be counted as his success in the navy was accomplished by the firm authority he and his immediate subordinates exercised during the last months of (p.  ) the war. yet this authority was precisely what he lacked in his new office, where his power was limited to only a general control over intransigent services that still insisted on their traditional autonomy. in any case, by there was no hope for widespread reform through a step-by-step demonstration of the practicality and reasonableness of integration. too much of the remaining opposition was emotional, rooted in prejudice and tradition, to yield to any but forceful methods. if the services were to be integrated in the short run, integration would have to be forced upon them. _executive order _ although politics was only one of several factors that led to executive order , the order was born during a presidential election campaign, and its content and timing reflect that fact. having made what could be justified as a military decision in the interest of a more effective use of manpower in the armed forces, the president and his advisers sought to capitalize on the political benefits that might accrue from it.[ - ] the work of the president's committee on civil rights and truman's subsequent message to congress had already elevated civil rights to the level of a major campaign issue. as early as november clark clifford, predicting the nomination of thomas dewey and henry wallace, had advised the president to concentrate on winning the allegiance of the nation's minority voters, especially the black, labor, and jewish blocs.[ - ] clifford had discounted the threat of a southern defection, but in the spring of southern democrats began to turn from the party, and the black vote, an important element in the big city democratic vote since the formation of the roosevelt coalition, now became in the minds of the campaign planners an essential ingredient in a truman victory. through the efforts of oscar ewing, head of the federal security administration and white house adviser on civil rights matters, and several other politicians, harry truman was cast in the role of minority rights champion.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, nichols with ewing; interv, blumenson with leva.] [footnote - : memo, clark clifford for president, nov ; ibid., aug , sub: the campaign; both in truman library. see also cabell b. phillips, _the truman presidency_ (new york: macmillan, ), pp. - , and mccoy and ruetten, _quest and response_, ch. vi.] [footnote - : interv, nichols with ewing.] theirs was not a difficult task, for the president's identification with the civil rights movement had become part of the cause of his unpopularity in some democratic circles and a threat to his renomination. he overcame the attempt to deny him the presidential nomination in june, and he accepted the strong civil rights platform that emerged from the convention. the resolution committee of that convention had proposed a mild civil rights plank in the hope of preventing the defection of southern delegates, but in a dramatic floor fight hubert h. humphrey, the mayor of minneapolis and a candidate for the u.s. senate, forced through one of the strongest civil rights statements in the history of the party. this plank endorsed truman's congressional message on civil rights and called (p.  ) for "congress to support our president in guaranteeing these basic and fundamental rights ... the right of equal treatment in the service and defense of our nation."[ - ] [footnote - : quoted in memo, leva for secdef, jul , d - - , secdef files.] truman admitted to forrestal that "he had not himself wanted to go as far as the democratic platform went on the civil rights issue." the president had no animus toward those who voted against the platform; he would have done the same if he had come from their states. but he was determined to run on the platform, and for him, he later said, a platform was not a window dressing. his southern colleagues understood him. when a reporter pointed out to governor strom thurmond of south carolina that the president had only accepted a platform similar to those supported by roosevelt, the governor answered, "i agree, but truman really means it."[ - ] after the platform fight the alabama and mississippi delegates walked out of the convention. the dixiecrat revolt was on in earnest. [footnote - : quoted in truman, _memoirs_, ii: ; see also interv, nichols with truman, and millis, _forrestal diaries_, p. .] both the democratic platform and the report of the president's civil rights committee referred to discrimination in the federal government, a matter obviously susceptible to presidential action. for once the "do-nothing" congress could not be blamed, and if truman failed to act promptly he would only invite the wrath of the civil rights forces he was trying to court. aware of this political necessity, the president's advisers had been studying the areas in which the president alone might act in forbidding discrimination as well as the mechanics by which he might make his actions effective. according to oscar ewing, the advisers had decided as early as october that the best way to handle discrimination in the federal government was to issue a presidential order securing the civil rights of both civilian government employees and members of the armed forces. in the end the president decided to issue two executive orders.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, nichols with ewing.] clifford, ewing, and philleo nash, who was a presidential specialist on minority matters, worked on drafting both orders. after consulting with truman gibson, nash proposed that the order directed to the services should create a committee within the military establishment to push for integration, one similar to the mccloy committee in world war ii. like gibson, nash was convinced that change in the armed forces racial policy would come only through a series of steps initiated in each service. by such steps progress had been made in the navy through its special programs unit and in the army through the efforts of the mccloy committee. nash argued against the publication of an executive order that spelled out integration or condemned segregation. rather, let the order to the services call for equal treatment and opportunity--the language of the democratic platform. tie it to military efficiency, letting the services discover, under guidance from a white house committee, the inefficiency of segregation. the services would quickly conclude, the advisers assumed, that equal treatment and opportunity were impossible in a segregated (p.  ) system.[ - ] after a series of discussions with the president, nash, clifford, and ewing drew up a version of the order to the services along the lines suggested by nash.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, niles for clifford, may ; memo, clifford for secdef, may , nash collection, truman library.] [footnote - : interv, nichols with ewing.] the draft underwent one significant revision at the request of the secretary of defense. in keeping with his theory that the services should be given the chance to work out their own methods of compliance with the order to integrate, forrestal wanted no deadlines set. to keep antagonisms to a minimum he wanted the order to call simply for progress "as rapidly as feasible." the president agreed.[ - ] [footnote - : nichols, _breakthrough on the color front_, p. .] the timing of the order was politically important to truman, and by late july the white house was extremely anxious to publish the document. the president now had his all-important selective service legislation; he was beginning to campaign on a platform calling for a special session of congress--a congress dominated by republicans, who had also just approved a party platform calling for an end to segregation in the armed forces. haste was evident in the fact that the order, along with copies for the service secretaries, was sent to the secretary of defense on the morning of july--the day it was issued--for comment and review by that afternoon.[ - ] the order was also submitted to walter white and a. philip randolph before it was issued.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, donald s. dawson, admin asst to the president, to secdef, jul . the executive order on equal opportunity for federal employees was also issued on july.] [footnote - : columbia university oral hist interv with wilkins.] actually, the order had been read to forrestal on the evening of the previous day, and his office had suggested one more change. marx leva believed that the order would be improved if it mentioned the fact that substantial progress in civil rights had been made during the war and in the years thereafter. since a sentence to this effect had been included in truman's civil rights message of february, leva thought it would be well to include it in the executive order. believing also that policy changes ought to be the work of the government or of the executive branch of the government rather than of the president alone, he offered a sentence for inclusion: "to the extent that this policy has not yet been completely implemented, such alterations or improvements in existing rules, procedures and practices as may be necessary shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible." although forrestal approved the sentence, it was not accepted by the president.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, leva for forrestal, jul , secdef files.] approvals were quickly gathered from interested cabinet officials. the attorney general passed on the form and legality of the order. forrestal was certain that stuart symington of the air force and john l. sullivan, secretary of the navy, would approve the order, but he suggested that oscar ewing discuss the draft with kenneth royall. according to ewing, the secretary of the army read the order twice (p.  ) and said, "tell the president that i not only have no objections but wholeheartedly approve, and we'll go along with it."[ - ] [footnote - : interv, nichols with ewing: ltr, atty gen to president, jul , - , copy in eisenhower library.] the historic document, signed by truman on july , read as follows: executive order whereas it is essential that there be maintained in the armed services of the united states the highest standards of democracy, with equality of treatment and opportunity for all those who serve in our country's defense: now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as president of the united states, and as commander in chief of the armed services, it is hereby ordered as follows: . it is hereby declared to be the policy of the president that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. this policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale. . there shall be created in the national military establishment an advisory committee to be known as the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, which shall be composed of seven members to be designated by the president. . the committee is authorized on behalf of the president to examine into the rules, procedures and practices of the armed services in order to determine in what respect such rules, procedures and practices may be altered or improved with a view to carrying out the policy of this order. the committee shall confer and advise with the secretary of defense, the secretary of the army, the secretary of the navy, and the secretary of the air force, and shall make such recommendations to the president and to said secretaries as in the judgment of the committee will effectuate the policy hereof. . all executive departments and agencies of the federal government are authorized and directed to cooperate with the committee in its work, and to furnish the committee such information or the services of such persons as the committee may require in the performance of its duties. . when requested by the committee to do so, persons in the armed services or in any of the executive departments and agencies of the federal government shall testify before the committee and shall make available for the use of the committee such documents and other information as the committee may require. . the committee shall continue to exist until such time as the president shall terminate its existence by executive order. the white house harry s. truman july , as indicated by the endorsement of such diverse protagonists as royall and randolph, the wording of the executive order was in part both vague and misleading. the vagueness was there by design. the failure to mention either segregation or integration puzzled many people and angered others, but it was certainly to the advantage of a president who wanted to give the least offense possible to voters who supported segregation. in fact integration was not the precise word to describe the complex social change in the armed forces demanded by civil rights leaders, and the emphasis on equality of treatment and opportunity with its portent for the next generation was particularly appropriate. truman, however, was not allowed to remain vague for long. (p.  ) questioned at his first press conference after the order was issued, the president refused to set a time limit, but he admitted that he expected the order to abolish racial segregation in the armed forces.[ - ] the order was also misleading when it created the advisory committee "in" the national military establishment. truman apparently intended to create a presidential committee to oversee the manpower policies of all the services, and despite the wording of the order the committee would operate as a creature of the white house, reporting to the president rather than to the secretary of defense. [footnote - : presidential news conference, jul , _public papers of the president_, , p. .] the success of the new policy would depend to a great extent, as friends and foes of integration alike recognized, on the ability and inclination of this committee. the final choice of members was the president's, but he conspicuously involved the democratic national committee, the secretary of defense, and the secretary of the army. he repeatedly solicited forrestal's suggestions, and it was apparent that the views of the pentagon would carry much weight in the final selection. just four days after the publication of executive order , the president's administrative assistant, donald s. dawson, wrote forrestal that he would be glad to talk to him about the seven members.[ - ] before forrestal replied he had leva discuss possible nominees with the three military departments and obtain their recommendations. the pentagon's list went to the white house on august. a list compiled subsequently by truman's advisers, chiefly philleo nash and oscar ewing, and approved by the democratic national committee, duplicated a number of forrestal's suggestions; its additions and deletions revealed the practical political considerations under which the white house had to operate.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, dawson to forrestal, jul , secdef files.] [footnote - : memos, leva for forrestal, and aug ; ltr, forrestal to president, aug , d - - , secdef files.] by mid-september the committee was still unformed. the white house had been unable to get either frank graham, president of the university of north carolina, a member of the president's committee on civil rights, and the first choice of both the white house and the pentagon for chairman, or charles e. wilson, second choice, to accept the chairmanship. secretary of the army royall was particularly incensed that some of the men being considered for the committee "have publicly expressed their opinion in favor of abolishing segregation in the armed services. at least one of them, lester grainger [_sic_], has been critical both of the army and of me personally on this particular matter."[ - ] royall wanted no one asked to serve on the president's committee who had fixed opinions on segregation, and certainly no one who had made a public pronouncement on the subject. he wanted the nominees questioned to make sure they could give "fair consideration" to the subject.[ - ] royall favored jonathan daniels, ralph mcgill of the atlanta _constitution_, colgate darden, president of the university of virginia, and douglas southall freeman, distinguished richmond historian.[ - ] names continued to be bruited about. (p.  ) dawson asked forrestal if he had any preferences for reginald e. gillmor, president of sperry gyroscope, or julius ochs adler, noted publisher and former military aide to secretary stimson, as possibilities for chairman. forrestal inclined toward adler; "i believe he would be excellent although as a southerner he might have limiting views."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, royall to president, sep , osa . ( sep ).] [footnote - : ibid.] [footnote - : memo, royall for forrestal, sep , osa . ( sep ).] [footnote - : memo, leva for forrestal, sep , and handwritten note by forrestal, d - - , secdef files.] with the election imminent, the need for an announcement on the membership of the committee became pressing. on september dawson told leva that a chairman and five of the six members had been selected and had agreed to serve: charles fahy, chairman, charles luckman, lester granger, john h. sengstacke, jacob billikopf, and alphonsus j. donahue. the sixth member, still uninvited, was to be dwight palmer. dawson said he would wait on this appointment until forrestal had time to consider it, but two days later he was back, telling the secretary that the president had instructed him to release the names. there was final change: william e. stevenson's name was substituted for billikopf's.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, leva for forrestal, sep , d - - , secdef files.] although only two of forrestal's nominees, lester granger and john sengstacke, survived the selection process, the final membership was certainly acceptable to the secretary of defense. charles fahy was suggested by presidential assistant david k. niles, who described the soft-voiced georgian as a "reconstructed southerner liberal on race." a lawyer and former solicitor general, fahy had a reputation for sensitive handling of delicate problems, "with quiet authority and the punch of a mule." granger's appointment was a white house bow to forrestal and a disregard for royall's objections. sengstacke, a noted black publisher suggested by forrestal and ewing and supported by william l. dawson, the black congressman from chicago, was appointed in deference to the black press. moreover, he had supported truman's reelection "in unqualified terms." william stevenson was the president of oberlin college and was strongly recommended by lloyd k. garrison, president of the national urban league. finally, there was a trio of businessmen on the committee: donahue was a connecticut industrialist, highly recommended by senator howard j. mcgrath of rhode island and brian mcmahon of connecticut; luckman was president of lever brothers and a native of kansas city, missouri; and dwight palmer was president of the general cable corporation.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, nichols with ewing; interv, blumenson with leva. donahue resigned for health reasons shortly after the committee began its work; see ltr, donahue to truman, may , truman library. luckman did not participate at all in the committee's work or sign its report. the committee's active members, in addition to its chairman, were granger, sengstacke, palmer, and stevenson.] these were the men with whom, for a time at least, the secretary of defense would share his direction over the racial policies of the armed forces. chapter (p.  ) service interests versus presidential intent several months elapsed between the appointment of the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services and its first meeting, a formal session with the president at the white house on january . actually, certain advantages accrued from the delay, for postponing the meetings until after the president's reelection enabled the committee to face the services with assurance of continued support from the administration. renewed presidential backing was probably necessary, considering the services' deliberations on race policy during this half-year hiatus. their reactions to the order, logical outgrowths of postwar policies and practices, demonstrated how their perceived self-interests might subvert the president's intentions. the events of this six-month period also began to show the relative importance of the order and the parochial interests of the services as factors in the integration of the armed forces. _public reaction to executive order _ considering the substantial changes it promised, the president's order provoked surprisingly little public opposition. its publication coincided with the convening of the special session of a congress smarting under truman's "do-nothing" label. in this charged political atmosphere, the anti-administration majority in congress quietly sidestepped the president's july call for civil rights legislation. to do otherwise would only have added to the political profits already garnered by truman in some important voting areas. for the same reason congressional opponents avoided all mention of executive order , although the widely expected defeat of truman and the consequent end to this executive sally into civil rights might have contributed to the silence. besides, segregationists could do little in an immediate legislative way to counteract the presidential command. congress had already passed the selective service act and defense appropriations act, the most suitable vehicles for amendments aimed at modifying the impact of the integration order. national elections and the advent of a new congress precluded any other significant moves in this direction until later in the next year. yet if it was ignored in congress, the order was nevertheless a clear signal to the friends of integration and brought with it a tremendous surge of hope to the black community. publishing the order made harry truman the "darling of the negroes," roy wilkins said later. nor did the coincidence of its publication to the election, he added, bother a group that was becoming increasingly pragmatic about the reasons (p.  ) for social reform.[ - ] both the declaredly democratic chicago _defender_ and republican-oriented pittsburgh _courier_ were aware of the implications of the order. the _defender_ ran an editorial on august under the heading "mr. truman makes history." the "national grapevine" column of charlie cherokee in the same issue promised its readers a blow-by-blow description of the events surrounding the president's action. an interview in the same issue with col. richard l. jones, black commander of the th regimental combat team (illinois), emphasized the beneficial effects of the proposed integration, and in the next issue, august, the editor broadened the discussion with an editorial entitled "what about prejudice?"[ - ] the _courier_, for its part, questioned the president's sincerity because he had not explicitly called for an end to segregation. at the same time it contrasted the futility of civil disobedience with the efficiency of such an order on the services, and while maintaining its support for the candidacy of governor dewey the paper revealed a strong enthusiasm for president truman's civil rights program.[ - ] [footnote - : columbia university oral hist interv with wilkins.] [footnote - : chicago _defender_, august and august , .] [footnote - : pittsburgh _courier_, august , august , and september , .] these affirmations of support for executive order in the major black newspapers fitted in neatly with the administration's political strategy. nor was the democratic national committee averse to using the order to win black votes. for example it ran a half-page advertisement in the _defender_ under the heading "by his deeds shall ye know him."[ - ] at the same time, not wishing to antagonize the opponents of integration further, the administration made no special effort to publicize the order in the metropolitan press. consequently, when the order was mentioned at all, it was usually carried without comment, and the few columnists who treated the subject did so with some caution. arthur krock's "reform attempts aid southern extremists" in the new york _times_, for example, lauded the president's civil rights initiatives but warned that any attempt to force social integration would only strengthen demagogues at the expense of moderate politicians.[ - ] [footnote - : chicago _defender_, august , .] [footnote - : new york _times_, september , .] if the president's wooing of the black voter was good election politics, his executive order was also a successful practical response to the threat of civil disobedience and the failure of the secretary of defense to strive actively for racial equality throughout the services. declaring the president's action a substantial gain, a. philip randolph canceled the call for a boycott of the draft, leaving only a small number of diehards to continue the now insignificant effort. the black leaders who had participated in secretary forrestal's national defense conference gave the president their full support, and donald s. dawson, administrative assistant to the president, was able to assure truman that the black press, now completely behind the committee on equal treatment and opportunity, had abandoned its vigorous campaign against the army's racial policy.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, donald dawson for president, sep , nash collection, truman library; memo, secdef for [clark] clifford, aug , and ltr, bayard rustin of the campaign to resist military segregation to james v. forrestal, aug ; both in d - - , secdef files. it should be noted that dawson's claim that the black press universally supported the executive order has not been accepted by all commentators; see mccoy and ruetten, _quest and response_, p. .] ironically, the most celebrated pronouncement on segregation at (p.  ) the moment of the truman order came not from publicists or politicians but from the army's new chief of staff, general omar n. bradley.[ - ] speaking to a group of instructors at fort knox, kentucky, and unaware of the president's order and the presence of the press, bradley declared that the army would have to retain segregation as long as it was the national pattern.[ - ] this statement prompted questions at the president's next news conference, letters to the editor, and debate in the press.[ - ] bradley later explained that he had supported the army's segregation policy because he was against making the army an instrument of social change in areas of the country which still rejected integration.[ - ] his comment, as amplified and broadcast by military analyst hanson w. baldwin, summarized the army's position at the time of the truman order. "it is extremely dangerous nonsense," baldwin declared, "to try to make the army other than one thing--a fighting machine." by emphasizing that the army could not afford to differ greatly in customs, traditions, and prejudices from the general population, baldwin explained, bradley was only underscoring a major characteristic of any large organization of conscripts. most import, baldwin pointed out, the chief of staff considered an inflexible order for the immediate integration of all troops one of the surest ways to break down the morale of the army and destroy its efficiency.[ - ] [footnote - : bradley succeeded eisenhower as chief of staff on february .] [footnote - : washington _post_, july , ; atlanta _constitution_, july , .] [footnote - : news conference, jul , _public papers of the presidents: harry s. truman, _, p. ; new york _times_, july , ; chicago _defender_, august , ; pittsburgh _courier_, august , ; washington _post_, august , .] [footnote - : interv, nichols with bradley.] [footnote - : hanson baldwin, "segregation in the army," new york _times_, august , .] but such arguments were under attack by the very civil rights groups the president was trying to court. "are we to understand that the president's promise to end discrimination," one critic asked, was made for some other purpose than to end discrimination in its worst form--segregation? general bradley's statement, subsequent to the president's orders, would seem to indicate that the president either did not mean what he said or his orders were not being obeyed. we should like to point out that general bradley's reported observation ... was decidedly wide of the mark. segregation is the legal pattern of only a few of our most backward states.... in view of the trends in law and social practice, it is high time that the defense forces were not used as brakes on progress toward genuine democracy.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, a. a. heist, dir, american civil liberties union, south california branch, to forrestal, sep , d - - , secdef files.] general bradley apologized to the president for any confusion caused by his statement, and truman publicly sloughed off the affair, but not before he stated to the press that his order specifically directed the integration of the armed forces.[ - ] it was obvious that the situation had developed into a standoff. some of the president's most (p.  ) outspoken supporters would not let him forget his integration order, and the army, as represented by its chief of staff, failed to realize that events were rapidly moving beyond the point where segregation could be considered a workable policy for an agency of the united states government. [footnote - : ltrs, bradley to president truman, jul , and truman to bradley, aug , csusa . ( aug ). see also ltr, sa to president, jul , osa . (negroes) ( - - ).] _the army: segregation on the defensive_ the president's order heralded a series of attacks on the army's race policy. as further evidence of the powerful pressures for change, several state governors now challenged segregation in the national guard. generally the race policy of the reserve components echoed that of the regular army, in part because it seemed logical that state units, subject to federal service, conform to federal standards of performance and organization. accordingly, in the wake of the publication of the gillem board report, the army's director of personnel and administration recommended to the committee on national guard policy[ - ] that it amend its regulation on the employment of black troops to conform more closely with the new policy. specifically, general paul asked the committee to spell out the prohibition against integration of white and black troops below battalion level, warning that federal recognition would be denied any state unit organized in violation of this order.[ - ] [footnote - : as provided in various laws since , most notably in section v of the amendments to the national defense act, members of the general staff's committee on national guard policy and committee on reserve policy were the principal advisers to the secretary of war on reserve component matters. all questions regarding these organizations were referred to the committees, which usually met in combined session as the committee on national guard and reserve policy. the combined committee was composed of twenty-one officers, seven each from the regular army, the guard, and the reserves. when the business under consideration was restricted exclusively to one of the reserve components, the representatives of the other would absent themselves, the remaining members, along with the regular army members, reconstituting themselves as the committee on national guard policy or the committee on reserve policy. these groups, familiarly known as the "section v committees," wielded considerable power in the development of the postwar program for the reserves.] [footnote - : memo, chief, classification and personnel actions br, p&a, for brig gen ira swift, chief, liaison, planning and policy coordination gp, p&a, apr , sub: resolution regarding employment of negro troops in the national guard; memo, dir, p&a, for dir, intel, apr , same sub; both in wdgpa . ( apr ).] agreeing to comply with general paul's request, the national guard committee went a step further and recommended that individual states be permitted to make their own decisions on the wisdom and utility of organizing separate black units.[ - ] the army staff rejected this proposal, however, on the grounds that it gave too much discretionary power to the state guard authorities.[ - ] interestingly enough in view of later developments, neither the committee nor the staff disputed the war department's right to withhold federal recognition in racial matters, and both displayed little concern for the principle of (p.  ) states' rights. their attitude was important, for while the prohibition against integration sat well in some circles, it drew severe criticism in others. unlike the regular army, the national guard and the army reserve were composed of units deeply rooted in the local community, each reflecting the parochial attitudes of its members and its section. this truth was forcefully pointed out to the army staff in when it tried to reactivate the th infantry and designate it as a black unit in the th division (pennsylvania). former members of the old white th, now prominent citizens, expressed their "very strong sentiments" on the matter, and the army had to beat a hasty retreat. in the future, the staff decided, either black reserve units would be given the name and history of inactive black units or new units would be constituted.[ - ] [footnote - : df, wdgs cmte on national guard policy, to chief, ngb, may , sub: integration of negro troops; idem to dir, p&a, and dir, o&t, same date and sub. see also ltr, maj gen kenneth f. cramer, cg, d inf div (conn. ng) to col russell y. moore, ocofs, mar . all in office file, army reserve forces policy cmte.] [footnote - : memo, dir, o&t, for wdgs cmte on national guard policy, jun , sub: integration of negro troops, wdgot . .] [footnote - : memo, exec for reserve and rotc affairs, o&t, for dir, o&t, jul ; o&t memo for rcd, aug ; both in wdgot . .] on the other hand, in citizen groups sprang up in connecticut, new york, new jersey, ohio, and california to agitate among their state adjutants general for liberalization of the national guard's racial policy. as early as february governor james l. mcconnaughy had publicly deplored segregation of negroes in his own connecticut national guard. adopting the states' rights stance more commonly associated with defenders of racial discrimination, governor mcconnaughy argued that by requiring segregation the war department ran contrary to the wishes of individual states. marcus ray, the secretary's adviser on race, predicted that integration in the reserve components would continue to be a "point of increasing pressure." as he pointed out to assistant secretary petersen, the army had always supported segregation in its southern installations on the grounds that it had to conform with local mores. how then could it refuse to conform with the local statutes and customs of some northern states without appearing inconsistent? he recommended the army amend its race policy to permit reserve components in states which wished it to integrate at a level consistent with "local community attitudes."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, ray for petersen, apr , sub: integration of negro personnel in the reserve components, asw . .] the army staff would have nothing to do with ray's suggestion. instead, both the director of personnel and administration and the director of organization and training supported a new resolution by the national guard policy committee that left the number of black units and the question of their integration with white units above the company level up to the states involved. integration at the company level was prohibited, and such integrated companies would be denied federal recognition. the committee's resolution was adopted by the secretary of war in may .[ - ] [footnote - : memo, d/o&t for asw, apr , sub: integration of negro personnel in the reserve components, wdgot . ; memo, d/p&a thru d/o&t for asw, apr , same sub, wdgpa . ; df, d/p&a to cofs, may , sub: integration of negro troops, csusa . negroes.] but the fight was not over yet. in new jersey adopted a new constitution that specifically prohibited segregation in the state militia. by extension no new jersey national guard unit could receive federal recognition. in february governor mcconnaughy brought (p.  ) connecticut back into the fray, this time taking the matter up with the white house. a month later governor luther w. youngdahl appealed to the secretary of defense on behalf of negroes in the minnesota national guard. secretary of the army royall quickly reappraised the situation and excepted new jersey from the army's segregation rule. secretary symington followed suit by excepting the new jersey air national guard.[ - ] royall also let the governors of connecticut and minnesota know that he would be inclined to make similar concessions to any state which, by legislative action, prohibited its governor from conforming to the federal requirements. at that time connecticut and minnesota had no such legislation, but royall nevertheless agreed to refer their requests to his committee on national guard policy.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, kenneth royall to alfred driscoll, feb ; ltr, w. stuart symington to driscoll, mar ; copies of both in cmh.] [footnote - : ltrs, sa to luther youngdahl and james c. shannon, may , both in osa . negroes ( - - ); memos, cofsa for dir, o&t, jan and mar , sub: utilization of negroes in the national guard, csusa . . shannon succeeded mcconnaughy as governor of connecticut in march .] [illustration: mp's hitch a ride on army tanks, augsburg, germany, .] here the secretary did no more than comply with the national defense act, which required that all national guard policy matters be formulated in the committee. privately, royall admitted that he did not feel bound to accept a committee recommendation and would be inclined to recognize any state prohibition against segregation. but he made a careful distinction between constitutional or legislative action and executive action in the states. a governor's decision to integrate, he pointed out, would not be recognized by the army because such an action was subject to speedy reversal by the governor's successor and could cause serious confusion in the guard.[ - ] (p.  ) the majority of the national guard committee, supported by the director of organization and training, recommended that the secretary make no exceptions to the segregation policy. the director of personnel and administration, on the other hand, joined with the committee's minority in recommending that royall's action in the new jersey case be used as a precedent.[ - ] commenting independently, general bradley warned royall that integrating individual negroes in the national guard would, from a military point of view, "create problems which may have serious consequences in case of national mobilization of those units."[ - ] [footnote - : remarks by kenneth royall in the committee of four, mar , osd historical office files.] [footnote - : p&a summary sheet, jul , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the national guard, wdgpa . ; o&t summary sheet, apr , same sub. see also memo, col william abendroth, exec, cmte on ng and reserve policy, for cofsa, jun , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the national guard of the united states, office file, army reserve forces policy cmte. thirteen of the seventeen committee members concurred with the staff study without reservation; the remaining four concurred with the proviso that states prohibiting segregation be granted the right to integrate.] [footnote - : memo, cofsa for sa, jul , csusa . negroes ( jul ).] here the matter would stand for some time, the army's segregation policy intact, but an informal allowance made for excepting individual states from prohibitions against integration below the company level. yet the publicity and criticism attendant upon these decisions might well have given the traditionalists pause. while secretary royall, and on occasion his superior, secretary of defense forrestal, reiterated the army's willingness to accommodate certain states,[ - ] civil rights groups were gaining allies for another proposition. the american veterans committee had advanced the idea that to forbid integration at the platoon level was a retreat from world war ii practice, and to accept the excuse that segregation was in the interest of national defense was to tolerate a "travesty on words."[ - ] hearings were conducted in congress in and on bills h.r. and h.r. to prohibit segregation in the national guard. royall's interpretation of the national defense act did not satisfy advocates of a thoroughly integrated guard, for it was clear that not many states were likely to petition for permission to integrate. at the same time the exceptions to the segregation rule promised an incompatible situation between the segregated active forces and the incompletely integrated reserve organization. [footnote - : see ltrs, james forrestal to a. a. heist, dir, american civil liberties union, sep , and augustus f. hawkins, sep ; both in d - - , secdef files; df, dir, p&a, to cofsa, nov , sub: executive order to permit integration of negroes into minnesota national guard, csusa . negroes ( nov ).] [footnote - : ltr, j. steward mcclendon, secy, minneapolis chapter, am vets cmte, to secdef [_sic_] royall, may , csusa . negroes ( may ).] royall's ruling, while perhaps a short-term gain for traditionalists, was significant because it established a precedent that would be used by integrationists in later years. the price for defending the army's segregation policy, guard officials discovered, was the surrender of their long-cherished claim of state autonomy. the committee's recommendation on the matter of applying the gillem board policy to the guard was inflexible, leaving no room for separate decisions by officials of the several states. maj. gen. jim dan hill of the wisconsin national guard recognized this danger. along with a minority of his colleagues he maintained that the decision on segregation "will have to be solved at the state level."[ - ] the committee (p.  ) majority argued the contrary, agreeing with brig. gen. alexander g. paxton of mississippi that the national defense act of prohibited the sort of exception made in the new jersey case. general paxton called for a uniform policy for all guard units: national security is an obligation of all the states, and its necessity in time of emergency transcends all local issues. federal recognition of the national guard units of the several states is extended for the purpose of affording these units a federal status under the national defense act. the issue in question is purely one of compliance with federal law.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, maj gen jim dan hill, wisconsin national guard, to secy, wd advisory cmte, jun ; see also ltr, brig gen harry evans, maryland national guard, to col william abendroth, exec, cmte on ng and reserve policy, jun , office file, army reserve forces policy cmte.] [footnote - : ltr, brig gen a. g. paxton, mississippi national guard, to col william abendroth, may , office file, army reserve forces policy cmte.] here was tacit recognition of federal supremacy over the national guard. in supporting the right of the secretary of the army to dictate racial policy to state guards in , the national guard committee adopted a position that would haunt it when the question of integrating the guard came up again in the early 's. despite the publicity given to general bradley's comments at fort knox, it was the secretary of the army, not the chief of staff, who led the fight against change in the army's racial practices. as the debate over these practices warmed in the administration and the national press, kenneth c. royall emerged as the principal spokesman against further integration and the principal target of the civil rights forces. royall's sincere interest in the welfare of black soldiers, albeit highly paternalistic, was not in question. his trouble with civil rights officials stemmed from the fact that he alone in the truman administration still clung publicly to the belief that segregation was not in itself discrimination, a belief shared by many of his fellow citizens. royall was convinced that the separate but equal provisions of the army's gillem board policy were right in as much as they did provide equal treatment and opportunity for the black minority. his opinion was reinforced by the continual assurances of his military subordinates that in open competition with white soldiers few negroes would ever achieve a proportionate share of promotions and better occupations. and when his subordinates added to this sentiment the notion that integration would disrupt the army and endanger its efficiency, they quickly persuaded the already sympathetic royall that segregation was not only correct but imperative.[ - ] the secretary might easily have agreed with general paul, who told an assembly of army commanders that aside from some needed improvement in the employment of black specialists "there isn't a single complaint anyone can make in our use of the negro."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, marx leva to author, may , cmh files; see also testimony of royall at national defense conference on negro affairs, apr , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : general paul's remarks at army commanders conference, mar- apr , p. , csusa .] secure in his belief that segregation was right and necessary, royall confidently awaited the judgment of the recently appointed president's committee. he was convinced that any fair judge could draw but one conclusion: under the provisions of circular , negroes had (p.  ) already achieved equal treatment and opportunity in the army. his job, therefore, was relatively simple. he had to defend army policy against outside attack and make sure it was applied uniformly throughout the service. his stand marked one of the last attempts by a major federal official to support a racially separate but equal system before the principle was finally struck down by the supreme court in _brown_ v. _board of education_. [illustration: secretary royall reviews military police, _yokohama, japan, _.] royall readily conceded that it was proper and necessary for negroes to insist on integration, but, echoing a long-cherished army belief, he adamantly opposed using the army to support or oppose any social cause. the army, he contended, must follow the nation, not lead it, in social matters. the army must not experiment. when, "without prejudice to the national defense," the army could reduce segregation to the platoon level it would do so, but all such steps should be taken one at a time. and , he told the conference of black leaders in april of that year, was not the time.[ - ] [footnote - : see testimony of royall at national defense conference on negro affairs, apr , pp. - .] convinced of the rightness of the army's policy, secretary royall was understandably agitated by the unfavorable publicity directed at him and his department. the publicity, he was convinced, resulted from discrimination on the part of "the negro and liberal press" (p.  ) against the army's policy in favor of the navy and air force. he was particularly incensed at the way the junior services had escaped the "rap"--his word--on racial matters. he ascribed it in large part, he told the secretary of defense in september , to the "unfortunate" national defense conference, the gathering of black spokesmen held under forrestal's auspices the previous spring.[ - ] the specific object of royall's indignation was lester granger's final report on the work of the national defense conference. that report emphasized the conferees' rebuttal to royall's defense of segregation on the grounds of military expediency and past experience with black soldiers. the army has assumed a position, granger claimed, that was unjustified by its own experience. overlooking evidence to the contrary, granger added that the army position was at variance with the experience of the other services. his parting shot was aimed at the heart of the army's argument: "it is as unwise as it is unsound to cite the resistance of military leadership against basic changes in policy as sufficient cause for delaying immediate and effective action."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, sa for secdef, sep , copy in cd - - , secdef files.] [footnote - : ltr, granger and conferees to forrestal, aug , d - - , secdef files.] adding to royall's discomfort, forrestal released the report on september, and his letter of appreciation to granger and the conferees assured them he would send their report to the president's committee. the new york _times_ promptly picked up granger's reference to opposition among military leaders.[ - ] royall tried to counter this attack. since neither the president nor the secretary of defense had disapproved the army's racial policy nor suggested any modifications, royall told forrestal he wanted him to go on record as approving the army position. this course would doubtless be more palatable to forrestal, royall suggested, than having royall announce that forrestal had given tacit approval to the army's policy.[ - ] [footnote - : nme press release, sep ; new york _times_, september , ; memo, leva for forrestal, aug ; ltr, forrestal to granger, aug . last two in d - - , secdef files.] [footnote - : memo, sa for secdef, sep , copy in cd - - , secdef files.] forrestal quickly scotched this maneuver. it was true, he told royall, that the army's policy had not been disapproved. but neither had the army's policy or that of the navy or air force yet been reviewed by the secretary of defense. the president's committee would probably make such a review an early order of business. meanwhile, the army's race policy would continue in effect until it was altered either by forrestal's office or by action from some other source.[ - ] [footnote - : memo (unsigned), forrestal for royall, sep . the answer was prepared by leva and used by forrestal as the basis for his conversation with royall. see memos, leva for forrestal, undated, and sep , both in cd - - , secdef files.] even as secretary royall tried to defend the army from the attacks of the press, the service's policy was challenged from another quarter. the blunt fact was that with the reinstitution of selective service in the army was receiving more black recruits--especially those in the lower mental categories--than a segregated system could easily absorb. the high percentage of black soldiers so proudly publicized by royall at the national defense conference was in fact a source of anxiety for army planners. the staff particularly resented the different standards adopted by the other services to determine (p.  ) the acceptability of selectees. the navy and air force, pleading their need for skilled workers and dependence on volunteer enlistments, imposed a higher minimum achievement score for admission than the army, which, largely dependent upon the draft for its manpower, was required to accept men with lower scores. thousands of negroes, less skilled and with little education, were therefore eligible for service in the army although they were excluded from the navy and air force. given such circumstances, it was probably inevitable that differences in racial policies would precipitate an interservice conflict. the army claimed the difference in enlistment standards was discriminatory and contrary to the provisions of the draft law which required the secretary of defense to set enlistment standards. in april secretary royall demanded that forrestal impose the same mental standards on all the services. he wanted inductees allocated to the services according to their physical and mental abilities and negroes apportioned among them. the other services countered that there were not enough well-educated people of draft age to justify raising the army's mental standards to the navy and air force levels, but neither service wanted to lower its own entrance standards to match the level necessity had imposed on the army. the air force eventually agreed to enlist negroes at a percent ratio to whites, but the navy held out for higher standards and no allocation by race. it contended that setting the same standards for all services would improve the quality of the army's black enlistees only imperceptibly while it would do great damage to the navy. the navy admitted that the other services should help the army, but not "up to the point of _unnecessarily_ reducing their own effectiveness.... the modern navy cannot operate its ships and aircraft with personnel of g.c.t. ."[ - ] general bradley cut to the point: if the navy carried the day it would receive substantially fewer negroes than the other two services and a larger portion of the best qualified.[ - ] secretary forrestal first referred the interservice controversy to the munitions board in may and later that summer to a special interservice committee. after both groups failed to reach an agreement,[ - ] forrestal decided not to force a parity in mental standards upon the services. on october he explained to the secretaries that parity could be imposed only during time of full mobilization, and since conditions in the period between october and june could not be considered comparable to those of full mobilization, parity was impossible. he promised, however, to study the qualitative needs of each service. meanwhile, he had found no evidence that any service was discriminating in the selection of enlistees and settled for a warning that any serious (p.  ) discrimination by any two of the services would place "an intolerable burden" on the third.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secnav for secdef, may , sub: liaison with the selective service system and determination of parity standards, p - ; memo, actg secnav for secdef, aug ; sub: items in disagreement between the services as listed in secdef's memo of jul , p - ; both in genrecsnav. the quotation is from an inclosure to the latter memo.] [footnote - : cofsa, rpt of war council min, aug , copy in osd historical office files.] [footnote - : for a detailed analysis of the various service arguments and positions, see office of the secretary of defense, "proposed findings and decisions on questions of parity of mental standards, allocation of inductees according to physical and mental capabilities and allocation of negroes" (noble report), oct , copy in secdef files.] [footnote - : memo, secdef for sa et al., oct , with attached summary of supplement, copy in cmh.] convinced that forrestal had made the wrong decision, the army staff was nevertheless obliged to concern itself with the percentage of negroes it would have to accept under the new selective service law. although by november the army's black strength had dropped to . percent of the total, its proportion of negroes was still large when compared with the navy's . percent, the marine corps' . percent, and the air force's percent. projecting these figures against the possible mobilization of five million men (assuming each service increased in proportion to its current strength and absorbed the same percentage of a black population remaining at percent of the whole), the army calculated that its low entrance requirements would give it a black strength of percent. in the event of a mobilization equaling or surpassing that of world war ii, the minimum test score of seventy would probably be lowered, and thus the army would shoulder an even greater burden of poorly educated men, a burden that in the army's view should be shared by all the services.[ - ] [footnote - : df, dir, p&a, to cofs, jan , sub: experimental unit, gspga . ( jan ).] _a different approach_ no matter how the army tried to justify segregation or argue against the position of the navy and air force, the integrationists continued to gain ground. royall, in opposition, adopted a new tactic in the wake of the truman order. he would have the army experiment with integration, perhaps proving that it would not work on a large scale, certainly buying time for circular and frustrating the rising demand for change. he had expressed willingness to experiment with an integrated army unit when lester granger made the suggestion through forrestal in february , but nothing came of it.[ - ] in september he returned to the idea, asking the army staff to plan for the formation of an integrated unit about the size of a regimental combat team, along with an engineer battalion and the station complement of a post large enough to accommodate these troops. black enlisted men were to form percent of the troop basis and be used in all types of positions. black officers, used in the same ratio as black officers in the whole army, were to command mixed troops. general bradley reported the staff had studied the idea and concluded that such units "did not prove anything on the subject." royall, however, dismissed the staff's objection and reiterated his order to plan an experiment at a large installation and in a permanent unit.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secdef for president, feb , secretary's file (psf), truman library.] [footnote - : memo, cofs for dir, o&t, oct , csusa . negroes ( oct ).] despite the staff's obvious reluctance, maj. gen. harold r. bull, the new director of organization and training, made an intensive study of the alternatives. he produced a plan that was in turn further refined by a group of senior officers including the deputy chief of staff for administration and the chief of information.[ - ] these officers (p.  ) decided that "if the secretary of the army so orders," the army could activate an experimental unit in the d infantry division at camp campbell, kentucky. the troops, percent of them black, would be drawn from all parts of the country and include ten black officers, none above the rank of major. the unit would be carefully monitored by the army staff, and its commander would report on problems encountered after a year's trial. [footnote - : lt col d. m. oden, asst secy, cs, memo for rcd, nov , sub: organization of an experimental unit, csusa . (negroes) ( oct ).] [illustration: spring formal dance, fort george g. meade, maryland, .] it was obvious that forrestal wanted to avoid publicizing the project. he had his assistants, marx leva and john ohly, discuss the proposal with the secretary of the array to impress on him the need for secrecy until all arrangements were completed. more important, he hoped to turn royall's experiment back on the army itself, using it to gain a foothold for integration in the largest service. leva and ohly suggested to royall that instead of activating a special unit he select a regular army regiment--leva recommended one from the d airborne division to which a number of black combat units were already attached--as the nucleus of the experiment. with an eye to the forthcoming white house investigation, leva added that, while the details would be left to the army, integration of the unit, to be put into effect "as soon as possible," should be total.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, marx leva for sa, nov ; see also idem for ohly, nov ; both in cd - - , secdef files.] the plan for a large-scale integrated unit progressed little (p.  ) beyond this point, but it was significant if only because it marked the first time since the revolution that the army had seriously considered using a large number of black soldiers in a totally integrated unit. the situation was not without its note of irony, for the purpose of the plan was not to abolish the racial discrimination that critics were constantly laying at the army's doorstep. in fact, army leaders, seriously dedicated to the separate but equal principle, were convinced the gillem board policy had already eliminated discrimination. nor was the plan designed to carry out the president's order or prompted by the secretary of defense. rather, it was pushed by secretary royall as a means of defending the army against the anticipated demands of the president's committee. the plan died because, while the army staff studied organizations and counted bodies, royall expanded his proposal for an integrated unit to include elements of the whole national defense establishment. several motives have been suggested for his move. by ensnaring the navy and air force in the experiment, he might impress on all concerned the problems he considered certain to arise if any service attempted the integration of a large number of negroes. an experiment involving the whole department might also divert the white house from trying to integrate the army immediately. besides, the scheme had an escape clause. if the navy and air force refused to cooperate, and royall thought it likely they would, given the shortage of skilled black recruits, the army could then legitimately cancel its offer to experiment with integration and let the whole problem dissipate in a lengthy interservice argument.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with james c. evans, jul ; ltr, e. w. kenworthy, exec secy, presidential committee, to lee nichols, jul ; both in cmh files.] royall formally proposed a defense-wide experiment in integration to forrestal on december. he was not oblivious to the impression his vacillation on the subject had produced and went to some lengths to explain why he had opposed such experiments in the past. although he had been thinking about such an experiment for some time, he told forrestal, he had publicly rejected the idea at the national defense conference and during the senate hearings on the draft law because of the tense international situation and the small size of the army at that time. his interest in the experiment revived as the size of the army increased and similar suggestions were made by both black leaders and southern politicians, but again he had hesitated, this time because of the national elections. he was now prepared to go ahead, but only if similar action were taken by the other services. the experimental units, he advised forrestal, should contain both combat and service elements of considerable size, and he went on to specify their composition in some detail. the navy and marine corps should include at least one shore station "where the social problems for individuals and their families will approximate those confronting the army." to insure the experiment's usefulness, he wanted negroes employed in all positions, including supervisory ones, for which they qualified, and he urged that attention be paid to "the problem of social relations in off-duty hours." he was candid about the plan's weaknesses. the right to transfer out of the experimental unit might confine the experiment to white and black troops who wanted it to (p.  ) succeed; hence any conclusions drawn might be challenged as invalid since men could not be given the right to exercise similar options in time of war. therefore, if the experiment succeeded, it would have to be followed by another in which no voluntary options were granted. the experiment might also bring pressure from groups outside the army, and if it failed "for any reason" the armed services would be accused of sabotage, no matter how sincere their effort. curiously, he admitted that the plan was not favored by his military advisers. the army staff, he noted in what must have surprised anyone familiar with the staff's consistent defense of segregation, thought the best way to eliminate segregation was to reduce gradually the size of segregated units and extend integration in schools, hospitals, and special units. nevertheless, royall recommended that the national military establishment as a whole, not the army separately, go forward with the experiment and that it start early in .[ - ] [footnote - : memo, sa for secdef, dec , cd - - , secdef files.] the other services had no intention of going forward with such an experiment. the air force objected, as secretary symington explained, because the experiment would be inconclusive; too many artificial features were involved, especially having units composed of volunteers. arbitrary quotas violated the principle of equal opportunity, he charged, and the experiment would be unfair to negroes because the proportion of negroes able to compete with whites was less than to . symington also warned against the public relations aspect of the scheme, which was of "minimal military significance but of major significance in the current public controversy on purely racial issues." the air force could conduct the experiment without difficulty, he conceded, for there were enough trained black technicians to man percent of the positions and give a creditable performance, but these men were representative neither of the general black population of the air force nor of negroes coming into the service during wartime. symington predicted that negroes would suffer no matter how the experiment came out--success would be attributed to the special conditions involved; failure would reflect unjustly on the negro's capabilities. the air force, therefore, preferred to refrain from participation in the experiment. symington added that he was considering a study prepared by the air staff over the past six months that would insure equality of treatment and increased opportunities for negroes in the air force, and he expected to offer proposals to forrestal in the immediate future.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secaf for secdef, dec , cd - - , secdef files.] the navy also wanted no part of the royall experiment. its acting secretary, john nicholas brown, believed that the gradual indoctrination of the naval establishment was producing the desired nondiscriminatory practices "on a sound and permanent basis without concomitant problems of morale and discipline." to adopt royall's proposal, on the other hand, would "unnecessarily risk losing all that has been accomplished in the solution of the efficient utilization of negro personnel to the limit of their ability."[ - ] brown did not spell out the risk, but a navy spokesman on forrestal's staff was (p.  ) not so reticent. "mutiny cannot be dismissed from consideration," capt. herbert d. riley warned, if the navy were forced to integrate its officers' wardrooms, staterooms, and clubs. such integration ran considerably in advance of the navy's current and carefully controlled integration of the enlisted general service and would, like the proposal to place negroes in command of white officers and men, captain riley predicted, have such dire results as wholesale resignations and retirements.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, actg secnav for secdef, dec , cd - - , secdef files.] [footnote - : memo, capt h. d. riley, usn, osd, for secdef, dec , sub: comment on the secretary of the army's proposal concerning experimental non-segregated units in the armed forces, cd - - , secdef files.] [illustration: secretary forrestal, _accompanied by general huebner, inspects the th army band and the th eucom honor guard, heidelberg, germany, november _.] the decisive opposition of the navy and air force convinced forrestal that interservice integration was unworkable. in short, the navy and air force had progressed in their own estimation to the point where, despite shortcomings in their racial policies rivaling the army's, they had little to fear from the coming white house investigation. the army could show no similar forward motion. despite royall's claim that he and the army staff favored eventual integration of black soldiers through progressive reduction in the size of the army's segregated black units, the facts indicated otherwise. for example, while secretary of defense forrestal was touring germany in late he noted in his diary of lt. gen. clarence r. huebner, now the commander of europe: "huebner's experience with colored troops is excellent.... he is ready to proceed with the implementation of the president's directive about nonsegregation down to the platoon level, and proposes to initiate this in the three cavalry regiments and the aa battalion up north, but does not want to do it if it is premature."[ - ] [footnote - : millis, _forrestal diaries_, p. .] huebner's concern with prematurity was understandable, for the possibility of using black soldiers in the constabulary had been a lively topic in the army for some time. marcus ray had proposed it in his december report to the secretary of war, but it was quickly rejected by the army staff. the staff had approved huebner's decision in july to attach a black engineer construction battalion and a transportation truck company, a total of men, to the constabulary. the director of organization and training, however, continued to make a careful distinction between attached units and "organic (p.  ) assignment," adding that "the department of the army does not favor the organic assignment of negro units to the constabulary at this time."[ - ] [footnote - : df, dir, o&t, to dcofs, jul , sub: report of visit by negro publishers and editors to the european theater, csgot . ( may ); memo for rcd, attached to memo, dir, p&a, for dcofs, jul , same sub, csgpa . ( may ). see also geis monograph, pp. - .] but by november huebner wished to go considerably further. as he later put it, he had no need for a black infantry regiment, but since the constabulary, composed for the most part of cavalry units, lacked foot soldiers, he wanted to integrate a black infantry battalion, in platoon-size units, in each cavalry regiment.[ - ] the staff turned down his request. arguing that the inclusion of organic black units in the constabulary "might be detrimental to the proper execution of its mission," and quoting the provision of circular limiting integration to the company level, the staff's organization experts concluded that the use of black units in the european theater below company size "would undoubtedly prove embarrassing to the department of the army ... in the zone of the interior in view of the announced department of the army policy." general bull, director of organization and training, informed huebner he might use black units in composite groupings only at the company level, including his constabulary forces, "if such is desired by you," but it was "not presently contemplated that integration of negro units on the platoon level will be approved as department of the army policy."[ - ] huebner later recalled that the constabulary was his outfit, to be run his way, and "bradley and collins always let me do what i had to."[ - ] still, when black infantrymen joined the constabulary in late , they came in three battalion-size units "attached" for training and tactical control.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with huebner.] [footnote - : ltr, dir, o&t, to cg, eucom, dec , sub: integration of negro units on the platoon level within the constabulary eucom, csgot . ( nov ); df, dir, o&t, to cofs, dec , same sub, csusa . ( nov ).] [footnote - : interv, author with huebner.] [footnote - : geis monograph, p. . for the reaction of a constabulary brigade commander to the attachment of black infantrymen, see bruce c. clarke, "early integration," _armor_ (nov-dec ): .] the truman order had no immediate effect on the army's racial policy. the concession to state governors regarding integration of their national guard units was beside the point, and royall's limited offer to set up an experimental integrated unit in the regular army was more image than substance. accurately summarizing the situation in march , the adjutant general informed army commanders that although it was "strategically unwise" to republish war department circular while the president's committee was meeting, the policies contained in that document, which was about to expire, would continue in effect until further notice.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, tag to distribution, mar , sub: utilization of negro manpower, agao . .] _the navy: business as usual_ the navy department also saw no reason to alter its postwar racial policy because of the truman order. as acting secretary of navy brown explained to the secretary of defense in december , whites in (p.  ) his service had come to accept the fact that blacks must take their rightful place in the navy and marine corps. this acceptance, in turn, had led to "very satisfactory progress" in the integration of the department's black personnel without producing problems of morale and discipline or a lowering of _esprit de corps_.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, actg secnav for secdef et al., dec , sub: the secretary of the army's confidential memorandum of december..., copy in secaf files.] brown had ample statistics at hand to demonstrate that at least in the navy this nondiscrimination policy was progressive. whereas at the end of the world war ii demobilization only percent of the navy's negroes served in the general service, some two years later percent were so assigned. these men and women generally worked and lived under total integration, and the men served on many of the navy's combat ships. the bureau of naval personnel predicted in early that before the end of the year at least half of all black sailors would be assigned to the general service.[ - ] in contrast to the army's policy of separate but equal service for its black troops, the navy's postwar racial policy was technically correct and essentially in compliance with the president's order. yet progress was very limited and in fact in the two years under its postwar nondiscrimination policy, the navy's performance was only marginally different from that of the other services. the number of negroes in the navy in december , the same month brown was extolling its nondiscrimination policy, totaled some , men, . percent of its strength and about half the army's proportion. this percentage had remained fairly constant since world war ii and masked a dramatic drop in the number of black men in uniform as the navy demobilized. thus while the _percentage_ of the navy's black sailors assigned to the integrated general service rose from to , the _number_ of negroes in the general service dropped from , in to some , in . looked at another way, the percent figure of blacks in the general service meant that percent of all negroes in the navy, , men in december , still served in the separate steward's branch.[ - ] in contrast to the army and air force, the navy's negroes were, with only the rarest exception, enlisted men. the number of black officers in december was four; the waves could count only six black women in its , (p.  ) total. clearly, the oft repeated rationale for these statistics--negroes favored the army because they were not a seafaring people--could not explain them away.[ - ] [footnote - : testimony of stickney before the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, apr , pp. - . see also, memo, actg secnav for secdef et al., dec , sub: the secretary of the army's confidential memorandum of december....] [footnote - : lt cmdr g. e. minor, bupers, memo for file, mar , sub: information for lt. nelson-press section, pers , bupersrecs. _separate_ is probably a better term for describing the steward's branch, since the branch was never completely segregated. on march , for example, the racial and ethnic breakdown of the branch was as follows: negro , hawaiian filipino , puerto rican chamorro japanese chinese american indian samoan caucasian korean total , _source_: figures taken from bupers, "steward group personnel by race," may , pers , bupersrecs.] [footnote - : this dubious assertion on the seagoing interests of races had been most recently expressed by the chief of naval personnel before a meeting of the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services; see testimony of fechteler, jan , pp. - .] a substantial increase in the number of negroes would have absolved the navy from some of the stigma of racial discrimination it endured in the late 's. since the size of the steward's branch was limited by regulation and budget, any increase in black enlistment would immediately raise the number of negroes serving in the integrated general service. increased enlistments would also widen the choice of assignments, creating new opportunities for promotion to higher grades. but even this obvious and basic response to the truman order was not forthcoming. the navy continued to exclude many potential black volunteers on the grounds that it needed to maintain stricter mental and physical standards to secure men capable of running a modern, technically complex navy. true, regular and reserve officers were periodically sent to black colleges to discuss naval careers with the students, but as one official, speaking of the reserves, confessed to the fahy committee in april , "we aren't doing anything special to procure negro officers or negro enlisted men."[ - ] [footnote - : testimony of capt j. h. schultz, asst chief of naval personnel for naval reserve, before president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, apr , afternoon session, p. .] at best, recruiting more negroes for the general service would only partly fulfill the navy's obligation to conform to the truman order. it would still leave untouched the steward's branch, which for years had kept alive the impression that the navy valued minority groups only as servants. the bureau of naval personnel had closed the branch to first enlistments and provided for the transfer of eligible stewards to the general service, but black stewards were only transferring at the rate of seven men per month, hardly enough to alter the racial composition of the branch. in the six months following september the branch's black strength dropped by men, but because the total strength of the branch also dropped, the percentage of black stewards remained constant.[ - ] what was needed was an infusion of whites, but this remedy, like an increase of black officers, would require a fundamental change in the racial attitudes of navy leaders. no such change was evident in the navy's postwar racial policy. while solemnly proclaiming its belief in the principle of nondiscrimination, the service had continued to sanction practices that limited integration and equal opportunity to a degree consistent with its racial tradition and manpower needs. curiously, the navy managed to avoid strong criticism from the civil rights groups throughout the postwar period, and the truman order notwithstanding, it was therefore in a strong position to resist precipitous change (p.  ) in its racial practices. [footnote - : memo, head, pers accounting and statistical control sec, bupers, for dir, fiscal div (pers ), dec , sub: statistics on steward group personnel in navy; memo, w. c. kincaid, bupers fiscal div, for cmdr smith, bupers, may , sub: negroes, usn--transferring from commissary or steward branch to general service; bupers, "steward group personnel by race," may . all in pers , bupersrecs.] _adjustments in the marine corps_ unlike the navy, the marine corps did not enjoy so secure a position. its policy of keeping black marines strictly segregated was becoming untenable in the face of its shrinking size, and by the time president truman issued his order the corps was finding it necessary to make some adjustments. basic training, for example, was integrated in the cause of military efficiency. with fewer than twenty new black recruits a month, the corps was finding it too expensive and inefficient to maintain a separate recruit training program, and on july the commandant, general clifton b. cates, ordered that negroes be trained with the rest of the recruits at parris island, but in separate platoons.[ - ] even this system proved too costly, however, because black recruits were forced to wait for training until their numbers built up to platoon size. given the length of the training cycle, the camp commander had to reserve three training platoons for the few black recruits. maj. gen. alfred h. noble, the commander, repeatedly complained of the waste of instructors, time, and facilities and the "otherwise generally undesirable" features of separate black training platoons. he pointed out to the commandant that black students had been successfully assimilated into personnel administration and drill instructor schools without friction or incident, and reservist training and local intramural sports had already peacefully introduced integration to the base. noble wanted to integrate black recruits as they arrived, absorbing them in the white training platoons then being processed. he also wanted to use selected black noncommissioned officers as instructors.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cmc for cg, mb, cp lejeune, n.c., aug , sub: recruit training load at montford point camp, mc ; idem for cg, mcrd, may , mc ; memo, dir of recruiting for off in charge, recruit divs, jun , sub: enlistment of negro personnel. all in hist div, hqmc. unless otherwise noted all documents cited in this section are located in this office.] [footnote - : memo, cg, mcrd, parris island, for cmc, sep , sub: negro recruits, ser. .] the commandant approved the integration of recruit training on september, and noble quietly began assigning recruits without regard to color.[ - ] integration of black noncommissioned officer platoon leaders followed, along with integration of the noncommissioned officers' club and other facilities. noble later recalled the circumstance of the first significant instance of integration in the history of the marine corps: this innovation not only produced no unfavorable reaction among the marines, but also it had no unfavorable reaction among the civilian citizens of south carolina in the vicinity. of course i consulted the civilian leaders first and told them what i was going to do and got their advice and promises of help to try to stop any adverse criticisms of it. it seemed like integration was due to take place sooner or later anyway in this country, certainly in the armed forces, and i thought that it should take place in the armed forces first.[ - ] [footnote - : this limited integration program was announced by the secretary of the navy on december ; see memo, under secnav for chmn, ppb, dec , ppb files.] [footnote - : usmc oral history interview with noble, - may .] since manpower restrictions also made the organization of (p.  ) administratively separate black units hard to justify, the postwar reduction in the number of black marines eventually led to the formation of a number of racially composite units. where once separate black companies were the norm, by the corps had organized most of its black marines into separate platoons and assigned them as parts of larger white units. in march secretary of the navy sullivan reported that with the minor exception of several black depot companies, the largest black units in the marine corps were platoons of forty-three men, "and they are integrated with other platoons of whites."[ - ] [footnote - : testimony of the secretary of the navy before president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, mar , afternoon session, p. .] [illustration: general cates.] the cutback in the size and kinds of black units and the integration of recruit training removed the need for the separate camp at montford point, home base for black marines since the beginning of world war ii. the camp's last two organizations, a provisional company and a headquarters company, were inactivated on july and september, respectively, thus ending an era in the history of negroes in the marine corps.[ - ] [footnote - : on the closing of montford point, see interv, blumenson with sgt max rousseau, admin chief, g- div, usmc (former member of the montford point camp headquarters), feb , cmh files.] composite grouping of small black units usually provided for separate assignment and segregated facilities. as late as february , the commandant made clear he had no intention of allowing the corps to drift into a _de facto_ integration policy. when, for example, it came to his attention that some commanders were restricting appointment of qualified black marines to specialist schools on the grounds that their commands lacked billets for black specialists, the commandant reiterated the principle that assignment to specialty training was to be made without regard to race. at the same time he emphasized that this policy was not to be construed as an endorsement of the use of black specialists in white units. general cates specifically stipulated that where no billets in their specialty or a related one were available for black specialists in black units, his headquarters was to be informed. the implication of this order was obvious to the division of plans and policies. "this is an important one," a division official commented, "it involves finding billets for negro specialists even if we have to create a unit to do it."[ - ] it was also obvious that when the under secretary of the navy, dan a. kimball, (p.  ) reported to the personnel policy board in may that "negro marines, including stewards, are assigned to other [white] marine corps units in accord with their specialty," he was speaking of rare exceptions to the general rule.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cmc for cg, fmf, pacific, feb , with attached handwritten note, div of plans and policies to asst cmc, feb .] [footnote - : memo, under secnav for chmn, ppb, may , ppb . .] cates seemed determined to ignore the military inefficiency attendant on such elaborate attempts to insure the continued isolation of black marines. the defense establishment, he was convinced, "could not be an agency for experimentation in civil liberty without detriment to its ability to maintain the efficiency and the high state of readiness so essential to national defense." having thus tied military efficiency to segregation, cates explained to the assistant secretary of the navy for air that the efficiency of a unit was a command responsibility, and so long as that responsibility rested with the commander, he must be authorized to make such assignments as he deemed necessary. it followed, then, that segregation was a national, not a military, problem, and any attempt to change national policy through the armed forces was, in the commandant's words, "a dangerous path to pursue inasmuch as it affects the ability of the national military establishment to fulfill its mission." integration must first be accepted as a national custom, he concluded, "before it could be adopted in the armed forces."[ - ] nor was general cates ambiguous on marine corps policy when it was questioned by civil rights leaders. individual marines, he told the commander of a black depot company in a case involving opportunities available to reenlisting black marines, would be employed in the future as in the past "to serve the best interests of the corps under existing circumstances."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cmc for asst secnav for air, mar , sub: proposed directive for the armed forces for the period july to july , ao- , mc files.] [footnote - : idem for co, second depot co, service cmd, fmf, may , sub: employment of negroes in the marine corps, mc , mc files.] actually, cates was only forcibly expressing a cardinal tenet common to all the military services: the civil rights of the individual must be subordinated to the mission of the service. what might appear to a civil rights activist to be a callous and prejudiced response to a legitimate social complaint was more likely an expression of the commandant's overriding concern for his military mission. still it was difficult to explain such elaborate precautions in a corps where negroes numbered less than percent of the total strength.[ - ] how could the integration of , men throughout the worldwide units of the corps disrupt its mission, civil rights spokesmen might well (p.  ) ask, especially given the evidence to the contrary in the navy? in view of the president's order, how could the corps justify the proliferation of very small black units that severely restricted the spread of occupational opportunities for negroes? [footnote - : on june the marine corps had , negroes on active duty, . percent of the total if the one-year enlistees were included or . percent if the one-year enlistees were excluded. see office of the civilian aide, osd, _negro strength summary_, jul , copy in cmh. for purposes of comparison, the following gives the percentage of negroes in the navy and the marine corps for earlier years. _date_ _navy_ _marine corps_ dec . . dec . . dec . . dec . . dec . . feb . . _source_: officer in charge, pers acctg & stat control, memo for file, apr , pers bupersrecs.] [illustration: st marine division drill team on exhibition _at san diego's balboa stadium, _.] the corps ignored these questions during the summer of , concentrating instead on the problem of finding racially separate assignments for its , negroes in the general service. as the number of marines continued to drop, the division of plans and policies was forced to justify the existence of black units by a series of reorganizations and redistributions. when, for example, the reorganization of the fleet marine force caused the inactivation of two black depot units, the division designated a -man truck company as a black unit to take up the slack. at the same time the division found yet another "suitable" occupation for black marines by laying down a policy that all security detachments at inactive naval facilities were to be manned by negroes. it also decided to assign small black units to the service battalions of the marine divisions, maintaining that such assignments would not run counter to the commandant's policy of restricting negroes to noncombat organizations.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir, div of plans and policies, for cmc, jul , sub: re-assignment of negro marines to existing units (dp&p study - ), mc files.] the marine corps, in short, had no intention of relaxing its policy of separating the races. the timing of the integration of recruit training and the breakup of some large black units perhaps suggested a general concession to the truman order, but these administrative changes were actually made in response to the manpower restrictions of the truman defense budget. in fact, the position of black marines in small black units became even more isolated in the months (p.  ) following the truman order as the division of plans and policies began devising racially separate assignments. like the stewards before them, the security guards at closed naval installations and ammunition depots found themselves in assignments increasingly viewed as "colored" jobs. that the number of negroes in the marine corps was so small aided and abetted these arrangements, which promised to continue despite the presidential order until some dramatic need for change arose. _the air force plans for limited integration_ of all the services, the air force was in the best position to respond promptly to president truman's call for equal treatment and opportunity. for some time a group of air staff officers had been engaged in devising a new approach to the use of black manpower. indeed their study, much of which antedated the truman order, represented the solution of the air force's manpower experts to a pressing problem in military efficiency. more important than the executive order or demands of civil rights advocates, the criticism of segregation by these experts in uniform led the air force to accept the need for limited integration. but there was to be no easy road to integration for the service. considerable resistance was yet to be overcome, both in the air staff and among senior commanders. as secretary zuckert later put it, while there was sentiment for integration among a few of the highest officers, "you didn't have to scratch far to run into opposition."[ - ] the deputy chief of staff for personnel, general edwards, reported to secretary symington that he had found solid opposition to any proposed policy of integration in the service.[ - ] normally such resistance would have killed the study group's proposals. in the army, for example, opposition supported by secretary royall had blocked change. in the air force, the opposition received no such support. indeed, secretary symington proved to be the catalyst that the army had lacked. he was the air force's margin of difference, transforming the study group's proposal from a staffing paper into a program for substantial change in racial policy. [footnote - : notes on telecon, author with zuckert, apr , cmh files.] [footnote - : memo, dcofs/p&a, usaf, for secaf, apr , sub: conference with group of prominent negroes, negro affairs, , secaf files.] in symington the air force had a secretary who was not only a tough-minded businessman demanding efficiency but a progressive politician with a humanitarian interest in providing equal opportunity for negroes. "with symington," eugene zuckert has pointed out, "it was principle first, efficiency second."[ - ] symington himself later explained the source of his humanitarian interest. "what determined me many years ago was a quotation from bernard shaw in myrdal's book, _american dilemma_, which went something like this--'first the american white man makes the negro clean his shoes, then criticizes him for being a bootblack.' all americans should have their chance. and both my grandfathers were in the confederate army."[ - ] symington had successfully combined efficiency and humanitarianism before. (p.  ) as president of the emerson electric manufacturing company of st. louis, he had racially integrated a major industry carrying out vital war work in a border state, thereby increasing productivity. when he became secretary, symington was immediately involved in the air force's race problems; he wanted to know, for instance, why only nine black applicants had passed the qualifying examination for the current cadet program.[ - ] when president truman issued his executive order, symington was ready to move. in his own words, "when mr. truman as commander-in-chief issued an order to integrate the air force, i asked him if he was serious. he said he was. accordingly we did just that. i turned the actual operations of the job over to my assistant secretary eugene zuckert.... it all worked out routinely."[ - ] [footnote - : telecon, author with zuckert.] [footnote - : ltr, symington to david k. niles, jan , secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, secaf for zuckert, jan ; penciled note, signed "stu," attached to memo, asecaf for symington, jan . all in secaf files.] [footnote - : ltr, w. stuart symington to author, may , cmh files.] to call "routine" the fundamental change that took place in air force manpower practices stretches the definition of the word. the integration program required many months of intensive study and planning, and many more months to carry out. yet if integration under symington was slow, it was also inevitable. zuckert reported that symington gave him about eight reasons for integration, the last "because i said do it."[ - ] symington's tough attitude, along with the presidential order, considerably eased the burden of those in the air force who were expected to abandon a tradition inherited from their army days. the secretary's diplomatic skill also softened opposition in other quarters. symington, a master at congressional relations, smoothed the way on capitol hill by successfully reassuring some southern leaders, in particular congressman carl vinson of georgia, that integration had to come, but that it would come quietly and in a way least calculated to provoke its congressional opponents.[ - ] [footnote - : telecon, author with zuckert.] [footnote - : ibid.; see also usaf oral hist interv with zuckert.] symington assigned general responsibility for equal opportunity matters to his assistant secretary for management, eugene zuckert, but the task of formulating the specific plan fell to general edwards. to avoid conflict with some of his colleagues, edwards resorted to the unorthodox means of ignoring the usual staff coordination. he sent his proposals directly to the chief of staff and then on to the secretary for approval without reference to other staff agencies, one of which, the office of the vice chief of staff, general muir s. fairchild, was the focal point of staff opposition.[ - ] [footnote - : for discussion of the close-held nature of the usaf integration plan, see usaf oral hist intervs with davis and marr; see also ltrs, marr to author, jun and jul .] on the basis of evidence submitted by his long-standing study group, general edwards concluded that current air force policy for the use of black manpower was "wasteful, deleterious to military effectiveness and lacking in wartime application." the policy of the navy was superior, he told the chief of staff and the secretary, with respect to military effectiveness, economy, and morale, especially when the needs of full mobilization were considered. the air force would (p.  ) profit by adopting a policy similar to that of the navy, and he proposed a program, to be "vigorously implemented and monitored," that would inactivate the all-black fighter wing and transfer qualified black servicemen from that wing as well as from all the major commands to white units. one exception would be that those black specialists, whose work was essential to the continued operation of their units, would stay in their black units. some black units would be retained to provide for individuals ineligible for transfer to white units or for discharge. [illustration: secretary symington.] the new program would abolish the percent quota and develop recruiting methods to enable the air force to secure only the "best qualified" enlistees of both races. men chronically ineligible for advancement, both black and white, would be eliminated. if too many negroes enlisted despite these measures, edwards explained that an "administratively determined ceiling of negro intake" could be established, but the air force had no intention of establishing a minimum for black enlistees. as the director of personnel planning put it, a racial floor was just as much a quota as a racial ceiling and had the same effect of denying opportunity to some while providing special consideration for others.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir, personnel planning usaf, for the fahy cmte, jan , sub: air force policies regarding negro personnel, secaf files.] the manpower experts had decided that the social complications of such a policy would be negligible--"more imaginary than real." edwards referred to the navy's experience with limited integration, which, he judged, had relieved rather than multiplied social tensions between the races. nevertheless he and his staff proposed "as a conservative but progressive step" toward the integration of living quarters that the air force arrange for separate sleeping quarters for blacks and whites. the so-called "barracks problem" was the principal point of discussion within the air staff, edwards admitted, and "perhaps the most critical point of the entire policy." he predicted that the trend toward more privacy in barracks, especially the separate cubicles provided in construction plans for new barracks, would help solve whatever problems might arise.[ - ] [footnote - : summary sheet dcs/p, usaf, for cs, usaf, and secaf, dec , sub: air force policies on negro personnel, secaf files.] while the chief of staff, general vandenberg, initialed the program without comment, assistant secretary zuckert was enthusiastic. as zuckert explained to symington, the program was predicated on free competition for all air force jobs, and he believed that it would also eliminate social discrimination by giving black officers and men (p.  ) all the privileges of air force social facilities. although he admitted that in the matter of living arrangements the plan "only goes part way," he too was confident that time and changes in barracks construction would eliminate any problems.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asecaf for symington, jan , secaf files.] symington was already familiar with most of edwards's conclusions, for a summary had been sent him by the assistant vice chief of staff on december "for background."[ - ] when he received zuckert's comments he acted quickly. the next day he let the secretary of defense know what the air force was doing. "we propose," he told forrestal, "to adopt a policy of integration." but he qualified that statement along the lines suggested by the air staff: "although there will still be units manned entirely by negroes, all negroes will not necessarily be assigned to these units. qualified negro personnel will be assigned to any duties in any air force activity strictly on the basis of the qualifications of the individual and the needs of the air force."[ - ] symington tied the new program to military efficiency, explaining to forrestal that efficient use of black servicemen was one of the essentials of economic and effective air power. in this vein he summarized the program and listed what he considered its advantages for the air force. [footnote - : memo, maj gen william f. mckee for symington, dec , sub: mr. royall's negro experiment, secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, secaf for forrestal, jan , negro affairs, , secaf files.] the proposal forwarded to the secretary of defense in january committed the air force to a limited integration policy frankly imitative of the navy's. a major improvement over the air force's current practices, the plan still fell considerably short of the long-range goals enunciated in the gillem board report, to say nothing of the implications of the president's equal opportunity order. although it is impossible to say exactly why symington decided to settle for less than full integration, there are several explanations worth considering. in the first place the program sent to forrestal may well not have reflected the exact views of the air force secretary, nor conveyed all that his principal manpower assistant intended. actually, the concern expressed by air force officials for military efficiency and by civil rights leaders for equal opportunity always centered specifically on the problems of the black tactical air unit and related specialist billets at lockbourne air force base. in fact, the need to solve the pressing administrative problems of colonel davis's command provoked the air staff study that eventually evolved into the integration program. the program itself focused on this command and provided for the integrated assignment of its members throughout the air force. other black enlisted men, certainly those serving as laborers in the f squadrons, scattered worldwide, did not pose a comparable manpower problem. they were ignored on the theory that abolition of the quota, along with the application of more stringent recruitment procedures, would in time rid the services of its unskilled and unneeded men. it can be argued that the purpose of the limited integration proposal was not so much to devise a new policy as to minimize the impact of change on congressional opponents. edwards certainly hoped that his plan would placate senior commanders and staff officers who (p.  ) opposed integration or feared the social upheaval they assumed would follow the abolition of all black units. this explanation would account for the cautious approach to racial mixing in the proposal, the elaborate administrative safeguards against social confrontation, and the promised reduction in the number of black airmen. some of those pressing for the new program certainly considered the retention of segregated units a stopgap measure designed to prevent a too precipitous reorganization of the service. as lt. col. jack marr, a member of edwards's staff and author of the staff's integration study, explained to the fahy committee, "we are trying to do our best not to tear the air force all apart and try to reorganize it overnight."[ - ] marr predicted that as those eligible for reassignment were transferred out of black units, the units themselves, bereft of essential personnel, would become inoperative and disappear one by one. [footnote - : testimony of lt col jack f. marr before president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, jan , afternoon session, p .] in the end it must be admitted that race relations possess an inner dynamic, and it is impossible to relate the integration of the air force to any isolated decision by a secretary or proposal by a group from his military staff. the decision to integrate was the result of several disparate forces--the political interests of the administration, the manpower needs of the air force, the aspirations of its black minority, and perhaps more than all the rest, the acceptance by its airmen of a different social system. together, these factors would make successive steps to full integration impossible to resist. integration, then, was an evolutionary process, and symington's acceptance of a limited integration plan was only one step in a continuing process that stretched from the air staff's study of black manpower in to the disappearance of the last black unit two years later. chapter (p.  ) the fahy committee versus the department of defense given james forrestal's sympathy for integration, considerable cooperation could be expected between members of his department and the committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, better known as the fahy committee. in the wake of the committee's establishment, forrestal proposed that the service secretaries assign an assistant secretary to coordinate his department's dealings with the group and a ranking black officer from each service be assigned to advise the assistant secretaries.[ - ] his own office promised to supply the committee with vital documentation, and his manpower experts offered to testify. the service secretaries agreed to follow suit. [footnote - : memo, secdef for sa et al., oct , copy in fahy committee file, cmh [hereafter cited as fc file]. the center of military history has retained an extensive collection of significant primary materials pertaining to the fahy committee and its dealings with the department of defense. while most of the original documents are in the charles fahy papers and the papers of the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services at the harry s. truman library or in the national archives, this study will cite the cmh collection when possible.] willing to cooperate, forrestal still wanted to chart his own course. both he and his successor, louis a. johnson, made it quite clear that as a senior cabinet officer the secretary of defense was accountable in all matters to the president alone. the fahy committee might report on the department's racial practices and suggest changes, but the development of policy was his prerogative. both men dealt directly with the committee from time to time, but their directives to the services on the formulation of race policy were developed independently of the white house group.[ - ] underscoring this independent attitude, marx leva reminded the service secretaries that the members of the personnel policy board were to work with the representatives of their respective staffs on racial matters. they were not expected "to assist fahy."[ - ] [footnote - : ltrs, james forrestal to fahy, mar , and louis johnson to fahy, apr ; both in fc file. see also ltr, thomas r. reid to r. m. dalfiume, feb , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : min, cmte of four secretaries mtg, oct , office of osd historian. the committee of the four secretaries was an informal body composed of the secretary of defense or his representative and the secretaries of the three armed services.] at the same time secretary of defense forrestal was aware that the interests of a committee enjoying white house support could not be ignored. his attempt to develop a new racial policy was probably in part an effort to forestall committee criticism and in part a wish to draw up a policy that would satisfy the committee without really doing much to change things. after all, such a departmental attitude toward committees, both congressional and presidential, was fairly normal. faced with the conflicting racial policies of the air force and army, forrestal agreed to let the services present their separate (p.  ) programs to the fahy committee, but he wanted to develop a race policy applicable to all the services.[ - ] some of his subordinates debated the wisdom of this decision, arguing that the president had assigned that task to the fahy committee, but they were overruled. forrestal ordered the newly created personnel policy board to undertake, simultaneously with the committee, a study of the department's racial policy. the board was to concentrate on "breaking down the problem," as forrestal put it, into its component parts and trying to arrive quietly at areas of agreement on a uniform policy that could be held in readiness until the fahy committee made its report.[ - ] [footnote - : min, war council mtg, jan , office of osd historian; memo, secy of war council for sa et al., jan , sub: significant action of the special meeting of the war council on january , osd . . the war council, established by section of the national security act of , consisted of the secretary of defense as chairman with power of decision, the service secretaries, and the military chiefs of the army, navy, air force, and marine corps.] [footnote - : memo, thomas r. reid, chmn, ppb, for worthington thompson, osd, feb , sub: meeting of committee of four, a.m. tuesday-- february, fc file.] the personnel policy board, established by forrestal to help regulate the military and civilian policies of his large department, was the logical place to prepare a departmental racial policy.[ - ] but could a group basically interservice in nature be expected to develop a forceful, independent racial policy for all the services along the lines forrestal appeared to be following? it seemed unlikely, for at their first meeting the board members agreed that any policy developed must be "satisfactory to the three services."[ - ] [footnote - : forrestal signed an interim directive appointing members of the board on february . composed of a civilian chairman and an under secretary or assistant secretary from each service, the board was to have a staff of personnel experts under a director, an officer of flag rank, appointed by the chairman; see nme press releases, dec , and apr .] [footnote - : min ppb mtg, feb , fc file.] undeterred by members' calling for more investigation and debate before the board prepared a common policy, chairman thomas r. reid and his chief of staff, army brig. gen. charles t. lanham, acted.[ - ] on february they drafted a directive for the secretary of defense that would abolish all racial quotas and establish uniform standards of induction for service which in times of emergency would include provisions for the apportionment of enlistees both qualitatively and quantitatively. moreover, all black enlistees would be given the opportunity to serve as individuals in integrated units. the services would be completely integrated by july . to ease the change, reid and lanham would in the interim regulate the number of negroes in integrated units, allowing not less than four men and not more than percent in a company-size unit. enlisted men could choose to serve under officers of their own race.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, col j. f. cassidy, ppb, for dir, ppb staff, feb , sub: policies of the three departments with reference to negro personnel, fc file.] [footnote - : ppb, draft (reid and lanham), proposed directive for the armed forces for the period july to july , feb , fc file.] favorably received in the secretary's office, the proposed directive came too late for speedy enactment. on march forrestal resigned, and although leva hoped the directive could be issued before forrestal's actual departure, "in view of his long-standing interest in this field," forrestal was obviously reluctant to commit his successor (p.  ) to so drastic a course.[ - ] with a final bow to his belief in service autonomy, forrestal asked reid and lanham to submit their proposal to the service secretaries for review.[ - ] the secretaries approved the idea of a unified policy in principle, but each had very definite and individual views on what that policy should contain and how it should be carried out. denied firm direction from the ailing forrestal, reid and lanham could do little against service opposition. their proposal was quietly tabled while the board continued its search for an acceptable unified policy. [footnote - : note, leva thru ohly to buck lanham, attached to draft of proposed directive cited in n. .] [footnote - : memo, chmn, ppb, for john ohly, assistant to secdef, mar ; revised min, ppb mtg, mar ; both in fc file.] perhaps it was just as well, for the reid-lanham draft had serious defects. it failed to address the problems of qualitative imbalance in the peacetime services, probably in deference to forrestal's recent rejection of the army's call for a fair distribution of high-scoring enlistees. while the proposal encouraged special training for negroes, it also limited their assignment to a strict percent quota in any unit. the result would have been an administrative nightmare, with trained men in excess of the percent quota assigned to other, nonspecialty duties. as one manpower expert later admitted, "you ran the real chance of haying black engineers and the like pushing wheelbarrows."[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with roy k. davenport, oct , cmh.] the service objections to a carefully spelled out policy were in themselves quite convincing to lanham and reid. reid agreed with eugene zuckert, assistant secretary of the air force, that "probably the most logical and soundest approach" was for each service to prepare a policy statement and explain how it was being carried out. the board could then prepare a general policy based on these statements, and, with the approval of the secretary of defense, send it to the fahy committee in time for its report to the president.[ - ] but if zuckert's scheme was logical and sound, it also managed to reduce the secretary's status to final endorsement officer. such a role never appealed to james forrestal, and would be even less acceptable to the politically energetic louis johnson, who succeeded forrestal as secretary of defense on march . [footnote - : memo for files, clarence h. osthagen, assistant to secaf, mar , sub: conference with thomas reid, fc file.] reid appreciated this distinction, and while he was willing to abandon the idea of a policy directive spelling out matters of personnel administration, he was determined that there be a general policy statement on the subject and that it originate not with the services but with the secretary of defense, who would then review individual service plans for implementing his directive.[ - ] reid set the board's staff to this task, but it took several draftings, each stronger and more specific than the last, before a directive acceptable to reid and lanham was devised.[ - ] approved by the full board on april and signed by secretary johnson the next day, the directive reiterated the president's executive order, adding that all persons would be considered on the basis of individual merit and ability and must qualify (p.  ) according to the prescribed standards for enlistment, promotion, assignment, and school attendance. all persons would be accorded equal opportunity for appointment, advancement, professional improvement, and retention, and although some segregated units would be retained, "qualified" negroes would be assigned without regard to race. the secretary ordered the services to reexamine their policies and submit detailed plans for carrying out this directive.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, thomas reid for asst secnav, apr , sub: statement on equality of treatment and opportunity, fc file.] [footnote - : ppb, draft memo, secdef for svc secys (prepared by col j. f. cassidy for reid), mar ; ppb, proposed policy for the national military establishment, apr ; both in fc file.] [footnote - : memo, secdef for sa et al., apr , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services; min, ppb mtg, apr ; both in fc file.] although responsible for preparing the secretary's directive, reid and lanham had second thoughts about it. they were concerned lest the services treat it as an endorsement of their current policies. reid pointedly explained to their representatives on the personnel policy board that the service statements due by may should not merely reiterate present practices, but should represent a "sincere effort" by the departments to move toward greater racial equality.[ - ] service responses, he warned, would be scrutinized to determine "their adequacy in the light of the intent of the secretary's policy." reid later admitted to secretary johnson that the directive was so broadly formed that it "permits almost any practice under it."[ - ] he, lanham, and others agreed that since its contents were bound to reach the press anyway, the policy should be publicized in a way that played down generalizations and emphasized the responsibilities it imposed for new directions. johnson agreed, and the announcement of his directive, emphasizing the importance of new service programs and setting a deadline for their submission, was widely circulated.[ - ] [footnote - : min, ppb mtg, apr , fc file.] [footnote - : memo, reid for secdef, apr , sub: the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, fc file.] [footnote - : min, ppb mtg, may ; nme press release - a, apr ; both in fc file.] the directive reflected louis johnson's personality, ambition, and administrative strategy. if many of his associates questioned his personal commitment to the principle of integration, or indeed even his private feeling about president truman's order, all recognized his political ambition and penchant for vigorous and direct action.[ - ] the secretary would recognize the political implications of the executive order just as he would want to exercise personal control over integration, an issue fraught with political uncertainties that an independent presidential committee would only multiply. a dramatic public statement might well serve johnson's needs. by creating at least the illusion of forward motion in the field of race relations, a directive issued by the secretary of defense might neutralize the fahy committee as an independent force, protecting the services from outside interference while enhancing johnson's position in the white house and with the press. a "blustering bully," one of fahy's assistants later called johnson, whose directive was designed, he charged, to put the fahy committee out of business.[ - ] [footnote - : this conclusion is based on interviews, author with charles fahy, feb , james c. evans, apr , and brig gen charles t. lanham, jan . it is also based on letters to author from john ohly, jan , and thomas reid, jan . all in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, kenworthy for chief of military history, oct . cmh.] if such was his motive, the secretary was taking a chance. (p.  ) announcing his directive to the press transformed what could have been an innocuous, private reaffirmation of the department's pledge of equal treatment and opportunity into a public exercise in military policymaking. the secretary of defense in effect committed himself to a public review of the services' racial practices. in this sense the responses he elicited from the army and navy were a disappointment. both services contented themselves with an outline of their current policies and ignored the secretary's request for future plans. the army offered statistics to prove that its present program guaranteed equal opportunity, while the navy concluded that its practices and procedures revealed "no inconsistencies" with the policy prescribed by the secretary of defense.[ - ] summing up his reaction to these responses for the personnel policy board, reid said that the army had a poor policy satisfactorily administered, while the navy had an acceptable policy poorly administered. neither service complied "with the spirit or letter of the request."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, actg secnav for chmn, ppb, may , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the navy and marine corps; memo, sa for secdef, apr , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services; both in fc file.] [footnote - : min, ppb mtg, may , fc file.] [illustration: secretary of defense johnson.] not all the board members agreed. in the wake of the army and navy replies, some saw the possible need for separate service policies rather than a common policy; considering the many advances enumerated in the replies, one member even suggested that johnson might achieve more by getting the services to prosecute their current policies vigorously. although chairman reid promised that these suggestions would all be taken into consideration, he still hoped to use the air force response to pry further concessions out of the army and navy.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid.; see also ltr, thomas reid to richard dalfiume, apr , incl to ltr, reid to author, jan . all in cmh.] the air force plan had been in existence for some time, its implementation delayed because symington had agreed with royall in january that a joint army-air force plan might be developed and because he and zuckert needed the time to sell the new plan to some of their senior military assistants.[ - ] but greater familiarity with the plan quickly convinced royall that the army and air force (p.  ) positions could never be reconciled, and the air force plan was independently presented to the fahy committee and later, with some revision that further liberalized its provisions, to johnson as the air force reply to his directive.[ - ] the personnel policy board approved the air force's proposal for the integration of a large group of its black personnel, and after discussing it with fahy and the other services, reid recommended to the secretary of defense that he approve it also.[ - ] [footnote - : min, war council mtg, jan , fc file; see also interv, author with w. stuart symington, , cmh.] [footnote - : memo, secaf for chmn, ppb, osd, apr ; memo, asst secaf for secaf, apr , sub: department of air force implementation of department of defense policy on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services; both in secaf files.] [footnote - : min, ppb mtg, may ; memo, reid for secdef, may , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces, fc file.] to achieve maximum benefit from the air force plan, reid and his associates had to link it publicly with the inadequate replies from the other services. disregarding the views of some board members, he suggested that johnson reject the army and navy answers and, without indicating the form he thought their answers should take, order them to prepare new proposals.[ - ] johnson would also have to ignore a warning from secretary of the army royall, who had recently reminded him that forrestal had assured congress during the selective service hearings that the administration would not issue a preemptory order completely abolishing segregation. "i have no reason to believe that the president had changed his mind," royall continued, "but i think you should be advised of these circumstances because if any action were later taken by you or other authority to abolish segregation in the army i am confident that these southern senators would remember this incident."[ - ] [footnote - : ibid.] [footnote - : memo, sa for secdef, apr , osa . .] despite royall's not so subtle warning, reid's scheme worked. the secretary of defense explicitly and publicly approved the air force program and rejected those of the army and navy. johnson told the army, for example, that he was pleased with the progress made in the past few years, but he saw "that much remains to be done and that the rate of progress toward the objectives of the executive order must be accelerated."[ - ] he gave the recalcitrants until may to submit "specific additional actions which you propose to take." [footnote - : memo, secdef for sa, may , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces; idem for secaf and secnav, may , same sub; dod press release - a, may . all in fc file.] _the committee's recommendations_ if there was ever any question of what their programs should contain, the services had only to turn to the fahy committee for plenty of advice. the considerable attention paid by senior officials of the department of defense to racial matters in the spring of could be attributed in part to the commonly held belief that the fahy committee planned an integration crusade, using the power of the white house to transform the services' racial policies in a profound and dramatic way. indeed, some members of the committee itself demanded that the chairman "lay down the law to the services."[ - ] but this approach, charles fahy decided, ignored both the personalities of the (p.  ) participants and the realities of the situation. [footnote - : interv, author with fahy.] [illustration: fahy committee with president truman and armed services secretaries. _seated with the president are secretary forrestal and committeeman a. j. donahue. standing from the left: chairman of the personnel policy board thomas r. reid; chief of staff of the personnel policy board brig. gen. charles t. lanham; committeemen john h. sengstacke and william m. stevenson; secretary royall; secretary symington; committeemen lester granger and dwight r. palmer; secretary sullivan; and charles fahy._] the armed forces had just won a great world war, and the opinions of the military commanders, fahy reasoned, would carry much weight with the american public. in any conflict between the committee and the services, fahy believed that public opinion would be likely to side with the military. he wanted the committee to issue no directive. instead, as he reported to the president, the committee would seek the confidence and help of the armed services in working out changes in manpower practices to achieve truman's objectives.[ - ] it was important to fahy that the committee not make the mistake of telling the services what should be done and then have to drop the matter with no assurances that anything would be done. he was determined, rather, to obtain not only a change in policy, but also a "program in being" during the life of the committee. to achieve this change the group would have to convince the army and the other services of the need for and justice of integration. to do less, to settle for the issuance of an integration directive alone, would leave the services the (p.  ) option of later disregarding the reforms on the grounds of national security or for other reasons. fahy explained to the president that all this would take time.[ - ] "take all the time you need," truman told his committee.[ - ] this the committee proceeded to do, gathering thousands of pages of testimony, while its staff under the direction of executive secretary edwin w. kenworthy toured military installations, analyzed the existing programs and operations of the three services, and perused the reams of pertinent historical documents. [footnote - : ibid.; see also fahy cmte, "a progress report for the president," jun , fc file.] [footnote - : memo, fahy for brig gen james l. collins, jr. aug , cmh.] [footnote - : interv, author with fahy.] that the committee expected the secretary of defense to take the lead in racial affairs, refraining from dictating policy itself, did not mean that fahy and his associates lacked a definite point of view. from the first, fahy understood truman's executive order to mean unequivocally that the services would have to abandon segregation, an interpretation reinforced in a later discussion he had with the president.[ - ] the purpose of the committee, in fahy's view, was not to impose integration on the services, but to convince them of the merits of the president's order and to agree with them on a plan to make it effective. [footnote - : interv, blumenson with fahy, apr ; interv, author with davenport, oct ; both in cmh.] the trouble, the committee quickly learned, lay in trying to convince the army of the practical necessity for integration. on one hand the army readily admitted that there were some advantages in spreading black soldiers through the white ranks. "it might remove any false charges that equal opportunities are not provided," general bradley testified. "it would simplify administration and the use of manpower, and it would distribute our losses in battle more nearly in proportion to the percentage of the two races."[ - ] but then the army had so carefully and often repeated the disadvantages of integration that bradley and others could very easily offer a logical and well-rehearsed apology for continuing the army's current policy. army officials repeatedly testified, for example, that their situation fundamentally differed from those of the other two services. the army had a much higher proportion of negroes in its ranks, to percent during the period of the committee's life, and in addition was required by law to accept by the thousands recruits, many of them black, whose aptitude or education would automatically disqualify them for the air force or navy. armed with these inequities, the army remained impervious to the claims of the navy and air force, defending its time-honored charge that segregation was necessary to preserve the efficiency of its combat forces. in zuckert's opinion, the army was trying to maintain the _status quo_ at any cost.[ - ] [footnote - : testimony of general omar n. bradley, fahy cmte hearings, mar , afternoon session, p. .] [footnote - : memo, asst secaf for symington, apr , sub: statement of the secretary of the army before the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services--march , , secaf files.] the army offered other reasons. its leaders testified that the unlimited induction of negroes into an integrated army would seriously affect enlistments and the morale of troops. morale in particular affected battle efficiency. again general bradley testified. i consider that a unit has high morale when the men have (p.  ) confidence in themselves, confidence in their fellow members of their unit, and confidence in their leaders. if we try to force integration on the army before the country is ready to accept these customs, we may have difficulty attaining high morale along the lines i have mentioned.[ - ] [footnote - : testimony of bradley, fahy cmte hearings, mar , afternoon session, pp. - .] underlying all these discussions of morale and efficiency lurked a deep-seated suspicion of the combat reliability and effectiveness of black troops and the fear that many white soldiers would refuse to serve with blacks. many army leaders were convinced that the performance of black troops in the past two wars did not qualify negroes for a role in the army's current mission, the execution of field operations in relatively small groups. these reservations were expressed frequently in army testimony. bradley, in defense of segregation, for example, cited the performance of the d division. when asked whether a percent black army would reduce efficiency, he said, "from our experience in the past i think the time might come when it wouldn't, but the average educational standards of these men would not be up to the average of the white soldier. in modern combat a man is thrown very much on his own initiative."[ - ] this attitude was closely related to the army's estimates of white morale: white soldiers, the argument ran, especially many among those southerners who comprised an unusually high proportion of the army's strength, would not accept integration. many white men would refuse to take orders from black superiors, and the mutual dependence of individual soldiers and small units in combat would break down when the races were mingled. [footnote - : ibid., p. .] although these beliefs were highly debatable, they were tenaciously held by many senior officials and were often couched in terms that were extremely difficult to refute. for instance, royall summed up the argument on morale: "i am reluctant--and i am sure all sincere citizens will be reluctant--to force a pace faster than is consistent with the efficiency and morale of the army--or to follow a course inconsistent with the ability of the army, in the event of war, to take the battlefield with reasonable assurance of success."[ - ] [footnote - : testimony of the secretary of the army, fahy cmte hearings, mar , morning session, p. .] but in time the fahy committee found a way, first suggested by its executive secretary, to turn the efficiency argument around. certainly a most resourceful and imaginative man, kenworthy had no doubt about the immorality of segregation, but he also understood, as he later told the secretary of the army, that whatever might be morally undeniable in the abstract, military efficiency had to govern in matters of military policy. his study of the record and his investigation of existing service conditions convinced him that segregation actually impeded military efficiency. convinced from the start that appeals to morality would be a waste of time, kenworthy pressed the committee members to tackle the services on their own ground--efficiency.[ - ] after seeing the army so effectively dismiss in the name of military efficiency and national security the moral arguments against segregation as being valid but irrelevant, kenworthy asked chairman fahy: i wonder if the one chance of getting something done isn't (p.  ) to meet the military on their own ground--the question of military efficiency. they have defended their negro manpower policies on the grounds of efficiency. have they used negro manpower efficiently?... can it be that the whole policy of segregation, especially in large units like the nd and rd division, adversely affects morale and efficiency?[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, kenworthy to sa, jul , fc file; see also memo, kenworthy for chief of military history, oct , cmh.] [footnote - : ltr, kenworthy to fahy, mar , fc file.] the committee did not have to convince the navy or the air force of the practical necessity for integration. with four years of experience in integrating its ships and stations, the navy did not bother arguing the merits of integration with the committee, but instead focused its attention on black percentages and the perennial problem of the largely black steward's branch. specifically, naval officials testified that integration increased the navy's combat efficiency. speaking for the air force, symington told the committee that "in our position we believe that non-segregation will improve our efficiency in at least some instances" and consequently "it's simply been a case [of] how we are going to do it, not whether we are going to do it." convinced of the simple justice of integration, symington also told the committee: "you've got to clear up that basic problem in your heart before you can really get to this subject. both zuckert and edwards feel right on the basic problem."[ - ] [footnote - : testimony of the secretary of the air force, fahy cmte hearings, mar , afternoon session, p. .] even while the air force and the navy were assuring fahy of their belief in the efficiency of integration, they hastened to protect themselves against a change of heart. general edwards gave the committee a caveat on integration: "if it comes to a matter of lessening the efficiency of the air force so it can't go to war and do a good job, there isn't any question that the policy of non-segregation will have to go by the boards. in a case like that, i'd be one of the first to recommend it."[ - ] secretary of the navy sullivan also supported this view and cautioned the committee against making too much of the differences in the services' approach to racial reforms. each service, he suggested, should be allowed to work out a program that would stand the test of war. "if war comes and we go back [to segregation], then we have taken a very long step in the wrong direction." he wanted the committee to look to the "substance of the advance rather than to the apparent progress."[ - ] [footnote - : fahy cmte hearings, mar , afternoon session, pp. - .] [footnote - : ibid., p. .] kenworthy predicted that attacking the army's theory of military efficiency would require considerable research by the committee into army policy as well as the past performance of black units. ironically enough, he got the necessary evidence from the army itself, in the person of roy k. davenport.[ - ] davenport's education at fisk and columbia universities had prepared him for the scholar's life, but pearl harbor changed all that, and davenport eventually landed behind a desk in the office that managed the army's manpower affairs. one of the first black professionals to break through the armed forces racial barrier, davenport was not a "negro specialist" and did not wish to be one. nor could he, an experienced government bureaucrat, be blamed if he saw in the fahy committee yet one more well-meaning attempt by (p.  ) an outside group to reform the army. only when kenworthy convinced him that this committee was serious about achieving change did davenport proceed to explain in great detail how segregation limited the availability of military occupational specialties, schooling, and assignments for negroes. [footnote - : intervs, blumenson with fahy, and author with fahy.] [illustration: e. w. kenworthy.] kenworthy decided that the time had come for fahy to meet davenport, particularly since the chairman was inclined to be impressed with, and optimistic over, the army's response to johnson's directive of april . fahy, kenworthy knew, was unfamiliar with military language and the fine art practiced by military staffs of stating a purpose in technical jargon that would permit various interpretations. there was no fanfare, no dramatic scene. kenworthy simply invited fahy and davenport, along with the black officers assigned by the services to assist the committee, to meet informally at his home one evening in april.[ - ] [footnote - : this incident is described in detail in interviews, author with fahy; davenport, oct ; and e. w. kenworthy (by telephone), dec . see also interv, nichols with davenport, in nichols collection. all in cmh.] never one to waste time, fahy summarized the committee's activities thus far, outlined its dealings with army witnesses, and then handed out copies of the army's response to secretary johnson's directive. fahy was inclined to recommend approval, a course agreed to by the black officers present, but he nevertheless turned courteously to the personnel expert from the department of the army and asked him for his opinion of the official army position. davenport did not hesitate. "the directive [the army's response to secretary johnson's april directive] isn't worth the paper it's written on," he answered. it called for sweeping changes in the administration of the army's training programs, he explained, but would produce no change because personnel specialists at the training centers would quickly discover that their existing procedures, which excluded so many qualified black soldiers, would fit quite comfortably under the document's idealistic but vague language. the army's response, davenport declared, had been very carefully drawn up to retain segregation rather than to end it. chairman fahy seemed annoyed by this declaration. after all, he had listened intently to the army's claims and promises and was inclined to accept the army's proposal as a slow, perhaps, but certain way to bring about racial integration. he was, however, a tough-minded man and was greatly impressed by the analysis of the situation (p.  ) presented by the army employee. when davenport asked him to reexamine the directive with eyes open to the possibility of deceit, fahy walked to a corner of the room and reread the army's statement in the light of davenport's charges. witnesses would later remember the flush of anger that came to his face as he read. his committee was going to have to hear more from davenport. [illustration: charles fahy _(a later portrait)_.] if efficiency was to be the keynote of the committee's investigation, davenport explained, it would be a simple thing to prove that the army was acting inefficiently. in a morning of complex testimony replete with statistical analysis of the army's manpower management, he and maj. james d. fowler, a black west point graduate and personnel officer, provided the committee with the needed breakthrough. step by step they led fahy and his associates through the complex workings of the army's career guidance program, showing them how segregation caused the inefficient use of manpower on several counts.[ - ] the army, for example, as part of a continuing effort to find men who _could_ be trained for specialties in which it had a shortage of men, published a monthly list, the so-called " report," of its authorized and actual strength in each of its military occupational specialties. each of these specialties was further broken down by race. the committee learned that no authorization existed at all for negroes in of these specialties, despite the fact that in many of them the army was under its authorized strength. furthermore, for many of the specialties in which there were no authorizations for negroes no great skill was needed. in short, it was the policy of segregated service that allowed the army, which had thousands of jobs unfilled for lack of trained specialists, to continue to deny training and assignment to thousands of negroes whose aptitude test scores showed them at least minimally suited for those jobs. how could the army claim that it was operating efficiently when a shortage existed and potentially capable persons were being ignored? [footnote - : fahy cmte hearings, apr , morning session.] one question led to another. if there were no authorizations for black soldiers in specialties, what were the chances for qualified negroes to attend schools that trained men for these specialties? it turned out that of the school courses available after a man finished basic training, only twenty-one were open to negroes. that is, percent of the courses offered by the army were closed to negroes. the army denied that discrimination was involved. since (p.  ) existing black units could not use the full range of the army's military occupational specialties, went the official line of reasoning, it would be wasteful and inefficient to train men for nonexistent jobs in those units. it followed that the organization and training division must exclude many negroes from being classified in specialties for which they were qualified and from army schools that would train others for such unneeded specialties. [illustration: roy davenport.] this reasoning was in the interest of segregation, not efficiency, and davenport and others were able to prove to the committee's satisfaction that the army's segregation policy could be defended neither in terms of manpower efficiency nor common fairness. with davenport and fowler's testimony, charles fahy later explained, he began to "see light for a solution."[ - ] he began to see how he would probably be able to gain the committee's double objective: the announcement of an integration policy for the army and the establishment of a practical program that would immediately begin moving the army from segregation to integration. [footnote - : interv, nichols with fahy, in nichols collection, cmh.] in fact, military efficiency was a potent weapon which, if skillfully handled, might well force the army into important concessions leading to integration. taking its cue from davenport and fowler, the committee would contend that, as the increasing complexity of war had created a demand for skilled manpower, the country could ill-afford to use any of its soldiers below their full capacity or fail to train them adequately. with a logic understandable to president and public alike, the committee could later state that since maximum military efficiency demanded that all servicemen be given an equal opportunity to discover and exploit their talents, an indivisible link existed between military efficiency and equal opportunity.[ - ] thus equal opportunity in the name of military efficiency became one of the committee's basic premises; until the end of its existence the committee hammered away at this premise. [footnote - : fahy cmte, "second interim report to the president," jul , fc file.] while the committee's logic was unassailable when applied to the plight of a relatively small number of talented and qualified black soldiers, a different solution would have to prevail when the far larger number of negroes ineligible for army schooling either by talent, inclination, or previous education was considered. here the army's plea for continued segregation in the name of military efficiency carried some weight. how could it, the army asked, endanger the morale and efficiency of its fighting forces by integrating these (p.  ) men? how could it, with its low enlistment standards, abandon its racial quota and risk enlarging the already burdensome concentration of "professional black privates?" the committee admitted the justice of the army's claim that the higher enlistment score required by the navy and air force resulted in the army's getting more than its share of men in the low-test categories iv and v. and while kenworthy believed that immediate integration was less likely to cause serious trouble than the army's announced plan of mixing the races in progressively smaller units, he too accepted the argument that it would be dangerous to reassign the army's group of professional black privates to white units. fahy saw the virtue of the army's position here; his committee never demanded the immediate, total integration of the army. one solution to the problem, reducing the number of soldiers with low aptitude by forcing the other services to share equally in the burden of training and assimilating the less gifted and often black enlistee and draftee, had recently been rejected by the navy and air force, a rejection endorsed by secretary of defense forrestal. even in the event that the army could raise its enlistment standards and the other services be induced to lower theirs, much time would elapse before the concentration of undereducated negroes could be broken up. davenport was aware of all this when he limited his own recommendations to the committee to matters concerning the integration of black specialists, the opening of all army schools to negroes, and the establishment of some system to monitor the army's implementation of these reforms.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with davenport, oct .] having gained some experience, the committee was now able to turn the army's efficiency argument against the racial quota. it decided that the quota had helped defeat the gillem board's aim of using negroes on a broad professional scale. it pointed out that, when forced by manpower needs and the selective service law to set a lower enlistment standard, the army had allowed its black quota to be filled to a great extent by professional privates and denied to qualified black men, who could be used on a broad professional scale, the chance to enlist.[ - ] it was in the name of military efficiency, therefore, that the committee adopted a corollary to its demand for equal opportunity in specialist training and assignment: the racial quota must be abandoned in favor of a quota based on aptitude. [footnote - : fahy cmte, "initial recommendations by the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services," attached to fahy cmte, "a progress report for the president", jun , fc file.] fahy was not sure, he later admitted, how best to proceed at this point with the efficiency issue, but his committee obviously had to come up with some kind of program if only to preserve its administrative independence in the wake of secretary johnson's directive. as kenworthy pointed out, short of demanding the elimination of all segregated units, there was little the committee could do that went beyond johnson's statement.[ - ] fahy, at least, was not prepared to settle for that. his solution, harmonizing with his belief in the efficacy of long-range practical change and his estimate of the committee's strength vis-à-vis the services' strength, was (p.  ) to prepare a "list of suggestions to guide the army and navy in its [_sic_] determinations."[ - ] the suggestions, often referred to by the committee as its "initial recommendations," would in the fullness of time, fahy thought, effect substantial reforms in the way the negro was employed by the services. [footnote - : ltr, kenworthy to fahy, may , fahy papers, truman library.] [footnote - : fahy cmte, "a progress report for the president," jun , fc file.] the committee's recommendations, sent to the personnel policy board in late may , are easily summarized.[ - ] questioning why the navy's policy, "so progressive on its face," had attracted so few negroes into the general service, the committee suggested that negroes remembered the navy's old habit of restricting them to servant duties. it wanted the navy to aim a vigorous recruitment program at the black community in order to counteract this lingering suspicion. at the same time the committee wanted the navy to make a greater effort among black high school students to attract qualified negroes into the naval reserve officers' training corps program. to reinforce these campaigns and to remove one more vestige of racial inequality in naval service, the committee also suggested that the navy give to chief stewards all the perquisites of chief petty officers. the lack of this rating, in particular, had continued to cast doubt on the navy's professed policy, the committee charged. "there is no reason, except custom, why the chief steward should not be a chief petty officer, and that custom seems hardly worth the suspicion it evokes." finally, the committee wanted the navy to adopt the same entry standards as the army. it rejected the navy's claim that men who scored below ninety were unusable in the general service and called for an analysis by outside experts to determine what jobs in the navy could be performed by men who scored between seventy and ninety. at the same time the committee reiterated that it did not intend the navy or any of the services to lower the qualifications for their highly skilled positions. [footnote - : min, war council mtg, may ; fahy cmte, "initial recommendations by the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services," attached to fahy cmte, "a progress report for the president", jun , fc file. excerpts from the "initial recommendations" were sent to the services via the personnel policy board, which explains the document in the secnav's files with the penciled notation "excerpt from fahy recommendation / ." see also ltr, kenworthy to fahy, may , fahy papers, truman library.] the committee also suggested to the air force that it establish a common enlistment standard along with the other services. commenting that the air force had apparently been able to use efficiently thousands of men with test scores below ninety in the past, the committee doubted that the contemporary differential in air force and army standards was justified. with a bow to secretary symington's new and limited integration policy, the committee deferred further recommendations. it showed no such reluctance when it came to the army. it wanted the army to abolish racial considerations in the designation of military occupational specialties, attendance at its schools, and use of its school graduates in their military specialties. in line with the establishment of a parity of enlistment standards among the services, the committee wanted the army to abandon its racial quotas. the committee did not insist on an immediate end to segregation in the army, believing that no matter how desirable, such a drastic change could not be accomplished, as davenport had warned, without very (p.  ) serious administrative confusion. besides, there were other pragmatic reasons for adopting the gradualist approach. for the committee to demand immediate and complete integration would risk an outcry from capitol hill that might endanger the whole reform program. gradual change, on the other hand, would allow time for qualified negroes to attend school courses, and the concept that negroes had a right to equal educational opportunities was one that was very hard for the segregationists to attack, given the american belief in education and the right of every child to its benefits.[ - ] if the army could be persuaded to adopt these recommendations, the committee reasoned, the army itself would gradually abolish segregation. the committee's formula for equality of treatment and opportunity in the army, therefore, was simple and straightforward, but each of its parts had to be accepted to achieve the whole. [footnote - : memo, kenworthy for chief of military history, oct , cmh.] as it was, the committee's program for gradual change proved to be a rather large dose for senior service officials. an army representative on the personnel policy board staff characterized the committee's work as "presumptuous," "subjective," and "argumentative." he also charged the committee with failing to interpret the executive order and thus leaving unclear whether the president wanted across-the-board integration, and if so how soon.[ - ] the personnel policy board ignored these larger questions when it considered the subject on may, focusing its opposition instead on two of the committee's recommendations. it wanted secretary johnson to make "a strong representation" to fahy against the suggestion that there be a parity of scores for enlistment in the services. the board also unanimously opposed the committee's suggestion that the army send all qualified negroes to specialty schools within eighteen months of enlistment, arguing that such a policy would be administratively impossible to enforce and would discriminate against white servicemen.[ - ] [footnote - : col j. f. cassidy, comments on initial recommendations of fahy committee (ca. may ) fc file.] [footnote - : min, ppb mtg, may , fc file.] chairman reid temporized somewhat in his recommendations to secretary johnson. he admitted that the whole question of parity of entrance standards was highly controversial. he recognized the justice in establishing universal standards for enlistment through selective service, but at the same time he believed it unfair to ask any service to accept volunteers of lesser quality than it could obtain through good enlistment and recruitment methods. he wanted johnson to concentrate his attack on the parity question.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, reid for under secdef, may , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services; idem for secdef, jun , sub: fahy committee initial recommendations--discussion with members of the fahy committee; both in ppb files. see also memo, ohly for reid, may , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, fc file.] before johnson could act on his personnel group's recommendations, the army and navy formally submitted their second replies to his directive on the executive order. surprisingly, the services provided a measure of support for the fahy committee. for its part, the navy was under particular pressure to develop an acceptable program. it, after all, had been the first to announce a general integration policy for which it had, over the years, garnered considerable praise. but now it (p.  ) was losing this psychological advantage under steady and persistent criticism from civil rights leaders, the president's committee, and, finally, the secretary of defense himself. proud of its racial policy and accustomed to the rapport it had always enjoyed with forrestal, the navy was suddenly confronted with a new secretary of defense who bluntly noted its "lack of any response" to his april directive, thus putting the navy in the same league as the army. secretary johnson's rejection of the navy's response made a reexamination of its race program imperative, but it was still reluctant to follow the fahy committee's proposals completely. although the personnel bureau had already planned special recruitment programs, as well as a survey of all jobs in the navy and the mental requirements for each, the idea of making chief petty officers out of chief stewards caused "great anger and resentment in the upper reaches of bupers," capt. fred stickney of the bureau admitted to a representative of the committee. stickney was confident that the bureau's opposition to this change could be surmounted, but he was not so sure that the navy would surrender on the issue of equality of enlistment standards. the committee's arguments to the contrary, the navy remained convinced that standardizing entrance requirements for all the services would mean "lowering the calibre of men taken into the navy."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, kenworthy to fahy, may , fc file.] but even here the navy proved unexpectedly conciliatory. replying to the secretary of defense a second time on may, acting secretary dan kimball committed the navy to a program that incorporated to a great extent the recommendations of the fahy committee, including raising the status of chief stewards and integrating recruit training in the marine corps. while he did not agree with the committee's proposal for equality of enlistment standards, kimball broke the solid opposition to the committee's recommendation on this subject by promising to study the issue to determine where men who scored less than forty-five (the equivalent of general classification test score ninety) could be used without detriment to the navy.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, actg secnav for secdef, may , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces, fc file.] the question of parity of enlistment standards aside, the navy's program generally followed the suggestions of the fahy committee, and chairman reid urged johnson to accept it.[ - ] the secretary's acceptance was announced on june and was widely reported in the press.[ - ] [footnote - : draft memo, reid for secnav, jun , and memo, reid for secdef, jun , both in ppb files; memo, kenworthy for fahy, may , sub: replies of army and navy to mr. johnson's may memo, fc file.] [footnote - : nme, off of pub info, release - a, jun . see washington _post_, june , , and new york _times_, june , .] to some extent the army had an advantage over the navy in its dealings with johnson and fahy. it never had an integration policy to defend, had in fact consistently opposed the imposition of one, and was not, therefore, under the same psychological pressures to react positively to the secretary's latest rebuff. determined to defend its current interpretation of the gillem board policy, the army resisted the personnel policy board's use of the air force plan, secretary johnson's directive, and the initial recommendations of the fahy committee (p.  ) to pry out of it a new commitment to integrate. in lieu of such a commitment, acting secretary of the army gordon gray[ - ] offered secretary johnson another spirited defense of circular on may, promising that the army's next step would be to integrate black companies in the white battalions of the combat arms. this step could not be taken, he added, until the reactions to placing black battalions in white regiments and black companies in composite battalions had been observed in detail over a period of time. gray remained unmoved by the committee's appeal for the wider use and broader training of the talented black soldiers in the name of combat efficiency and continued to defend the _status quo_. he cited with feeling the case of the average black soldier who because of his "social environment" had most often missed the opportunity to develop leadership abilities and who against the direct competition with the better educated white soldier would find it difficult to "rise above the level of service tasks." segregation, gray claimed, was giving black soldiers the chance to develop leadership "unhindered and unfettered by overshadowing competition they are not yet equipped to meet." he would be remiss in his duties, he warned johnson, if he failed to report the concern of many senior officers who believed that the army had already gone too far in inserting black units into white units and that "we are weakening to a dangerous degree the combat efficiency of our army."[ - ] [footnote - : following the resignation of secretary royall, president truman nominated gordon gray as secretary of the army. his appointment was confirmed by the senate on june . a lawyer, gray had been a newspaper publisher in north carolina before his appointment as assistant secretary in .] [footnote - : memo, actg sa for secdef, may , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services; see also p&a summary sheet, may , same sub, fc file.] the army's response found the fahy committee and the office of the secretary of defense once again in agreement. the committee rejected gray's statement, and kenworthy drew up a point-by-point rebuttal. he contended that unless the army took intermediate steps, its first objective, a specific quota of black units segregated at the battalion level, would always block the realization of integration, its ultimate objective.[ - ] the secretary's personnel policy board struck an even harder blow. chairman reid called gray's statement a rehash of army accomplishments "with no indication of significant change or step forward." it ignored the committee's recommendations. in particular, and in contrast to the navy, which had agreed to restudy the enlistment parity question, the army had rejected the committee's request that it reconsider its quota system. reid's blunt advice to johnson: reject the army's reply and demand a new one by a definite and early date.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, kenworthy for fahy, may , sub: replies of army and navy to mr. johnson's may memo, fc file.] [footnote - : memo, reid for secdef, jun , sub: army and navy replies to your memorandum of april on equality of treatment and opportunity in the army services; min, ppb mtg, jun ; both in fc file.] members of the fahy committee met with johnson and reid on june. despite the antagonism that was growing between the secretary of defense and the white house group, the meeting produced several notable agreements. for his part, johnson, accepting the recommendations of fahy and reid, agreed to reject the army's latest response and (p.  ) order the secretary of the army and the chief of staff to confer informally with the committee in an attempt to produce an acceptable program. at the same time, johnson made no move to order a common enlistment standard; he told fahy that the matter was extremely controversial and setting such standards would involve rescinding previous interdepartmental agreements. on the committee's behalf, fahy agreed to reword the recommendation on schooling for all qualified negroes within eighteen months of enlistment and to discuss further the parity issue.[ - ] [footnote - : min, ppb mtg, jun ; ltr, fahy to johnson, jul , fc file.] [illustration: press notice. _rejection of the army's second proposal as seen by the afro-american, june , ._] general lanham endorsed the committee's belief that there was a need for practical, intermediate steps when he drafted a response to the army for secretary johnson to sign. "it is my conviction," he wanted johnson to say, "that the department of the army must meet this issue [the equal opportunity imposed by executive order ] squarely and that its action, no matter how modest or small at its inception, must be progressive in spirit and carry with it the unmistakable promise of an ultimate solution in consonance with the chief executive's position and our national policy."[ - ] [footnote - : draft memo, lanham for secdef, jun , fc file.] but the army received no such specific instruction. although johnson rejected the army's second reply and demanded another based on a careful consideration of the fahy committee's recommendations,[ - ] he deleted lanham's demand for immediate steps toward providing equal opportunity. johnson's rejection of lanham's proposal--a tacit rejection of the committee's basic premise as well--did not necessarily indicate a shift in johnson's position, but it did establish a basis for future rivalry between the secretary and the committee. until now johnson and the committee, through the medium of the personnel policy board, had worked in an informal partnership whose fruitfulness was readily apparent in the development of acceptable navy and air force programs and in johnson's rejection of the army's inadequate responses. but this cooperation was to be (p.  ) short-lived; it would disappear altogether as the fahy committee began to press the army, while the secretary of defense, in reaction, began to draw closer to the army's position.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secdef for sa, jun , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services; nme, off of pub info, press release - a, jun . the secretary gave the army a new deadline of june, but by mutual agreement of all concerned this date was postponed several times and finally left to the secretary of the army to submit his program "at his discretion," although at the earliest possible date. see memo, t. reid for maj gen levin allen, jul , sub: army reply to the secretary of defense on equality of treatment; min, ppb mtg, aug . all in fc file.] [footnote - : interv, author with kenworthy.] _a summer of discontent_ the committee approached its negotiations with the army with considerable optimism. kenworthy was convinced that the committee's moderate and concrete recommendations had reassured reid and the personnel policy board and would strengthen its hand in dealing with the recalcitrant army,[ - ] and fahy, outlining for the president the progress the committee had made with the services, said that he looked forward to his coming meetings with gray and bradley.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, kenworthy to fahy, may , fahy papers, truman library.] [footnote - : fahy cmte, "a progress report for the president," jun , fc file.] to remove any unnecessary obstacle to what fahy hoped would be fruitful sessions, the committee revised its initial recommendations to the army. first, as fahy had promised johnson, it modified its position on guaranteeing qualified black soldiers already assigned to units the opportunity to attend army schools within eighteen months. calling the imbroglio over this issue a mere misunderstanding--the committee did not intend that preferential treatment be given negroes nor that the army train more people than it needed--fahy explained to johnson that the committee only wanted to make sure that qualified negroes would have the same chance as qualified white men. it would be happy, fahy said, to work with the army on rewording the recommendation.[ - ] the committee also added the suggestion that so long as racial units existed, the army might permit enlisted men in the four lowest grades, at their request, to remain in a unit predominantly composed of men of their own race. this provision, however, was not to extend to officers and noncommissioned officers in the top three grades, who received their promotions on a worldwide competitive basis. finally, the committee offered a substitute for the numerical quota it wanted abolished. so that the army would not get too many low-scoring recruits, either black or white, the committee proposed a separate quota for each category in the classification test scores. only so many voluntary enlistments would be accepted in categories i through iii, their numbers based on the normal spread of scores that existed in both the wartime and peacetime army. if the army netted more high scorers than average in any period, it would induct fewer men from the next category. it would also deny reenlistment to any man scoring less than eighty (category iv).[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, fahy to johnson, jun , fc file.] [footnote - : idem to sa, jul , fc file.] after meeting first with gray and then the chief of staff, fahy called the sessions "frank and cordial" and saw some prospect of accord, although their positions were still far apart.[ - ] just how far apart had already become apparent on july when gray presented (p.  ) fahy with an outline for yet another program for using black soldiers. this new program was based in part on the comments of the field commanders, and the director of personnel and administration warned that "beyond the steps listed in this plan, there is very little major compromise area left short of complete integration."[ - ] while the army plan differed from the committee's recommendations in many ways, in essence the disagreement was limited to two fundamental points. determined to retain segregated units, the army opposed the reassignment of school-trained negroes to vacancies in white units; and in order to prevent an influx of negroes in the low achievement categories, the army was determined to retain the numerical quota.[ - ] [footnote - : idem to secdef, jul , fc file.] [footnote - : p&a summary sheet to dc/s (adm), jun , sub: utilization of negro manpower, csusa . negroes. for comments of army commanders, see the following memos: wade h. haislip (dc/s adm) for army cmdrs, jun , sub: draft recommendations of committee on equality of treatment and opportunity; lt gen m. s. eddy for cofs, jun , same sub; lt gen w. b. smith for cofs, jun , same sub; lt gen s. j. chamberlain, th army cmdr, for cofs, jun , same sub; lt gen john r. hodge for cofs, jun , same sub; gen jacob devers, jun , same sub; gen thomas t. handy, th army cmdr, for cofs, jun , sub: comments on fahy committee draft recommendations. all in csusa . negroes.] [footnote - : an outline plan for utilization of negro manpower submitted by the army to the president's committee, jul , incl to ltr, fahy to secdef, jul , fc file. see also ltr, kenworthy to fahy, jun , fahy papers, truman library; fahy cmte, "meeting to discuss the proposals made by the army as preliminary to the third response," jul , fc file.] the committee argued that if the army was to train men according to their ability, hence efficiently, and in accord with the principle of equality, it must consider assigning them without regard to race. it could not see how removal of the numerical quota would result in a flood of negroes joining the army, but it could see how retaining the quota would prevent the enlistment of blacks for long periods of time. these two provisions--that school-trained negroes be freely assigned and that the quota be abolished--were really the heart of the committee's plan and hope for the gradual integration of the army. the provisions would not require the abolition of racial units "at this time," fahy explained to president truman, but they would gradually extend the integration already practiced in overhead installations and army schools. the committee could not demand any less, he confessed, in light of the president's order.[ - ] [footnote - : ltrs, fahy to secdef and sa, jul ; idem to president, jul . all in fc file.] the committee and the army had reached a stalemate. as a staff member of the personnel policy board put it, their latest proposal and counterproposals were simply extensions of what had long been put forth by both parties. he advised chairman reid to remain neutral until both sides presented their "total proposal."[ - ] but the press was not remaining neutral. the new york _times_, for example, accused the army of stalling and equivocating, engaging in a "private insurrection," and trying "to preserve a pattern of bigotry which caricatures the democratic cause in every corner of the world." there was no room for compromise, the _times_ added, and president truman could not retreat without abdicating as commander in chief.[ - ] secretary gray countered with a statement that the army was still (p.  ) under injunction from the secretary of defense to submit a new race program, and he was contemplating certain new proposals on the military occupational specialty issue.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, col j. f. cassidy for reid, aug , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the department of the army, fc file.] [footnote - : new york _times_, july and , .] [footnote - : interv, nbc's "meet the press" with gordon gray, jul ; ltr, secdef to charles fahy, aug , fc file.] the army staff did prepare another reply for the secretary of defense, and on september gray met with fahy and others to discuss it. general wade h. haislip, the vice chief of staff, claimed privately to gray that the new reply was almost identical with the plan presented to the committee on july and that the new concessions on occupational specialties would only require the conversion of some units from white to black.[ - ] haislip, however, had not reckoned with the concession that gray was prepared to make to fahy. gray accepted in principle the committee's argument that the assignment of black graduates of specialist schools should not be limited to black units or overhead positions but could be used to fill vacancies in any unit. at the same time, he remained adamant on the quota. when the committee spoke hopefully of the advantages of an army open to all, the army contemplated fearfully the racial imbalance that might result. the future was to prove the committee right about the advantages, but as of september gray and his subordinates had no intention of giving up the quota.[ - ] gray did agree, however, to continue studying the quota issue with the committee, and fahy optimistically reported to president truman: "it is the committee's expectation that it will be able within a few weeks to make a formal report to you on a complete list of changes in army policy and practices."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, vcofs for gray, aug , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, csusa . negroes.] [footnote - : interv, nichols with gordon gray, , in nichols collection, cmh; memo, kenworthy for cmte, sep , sub: meeting with gray, sep , fahy papers, truman library.] [footnote - : ltrs, fahy to president, sep and sep , both in fc file.] fahy made his prediction before secretary of defense johnson took a course of action that, in effect, rendered the committee's position untenable. on september johnson received from gray a new program for the employment of black troops. without reference to the fahy committee, johnson approved the proposal and announced it to the press. gray's program opened all military occupational specialties to all qualified men, abolished racial quotas for the army's schools, and abolished racially separate promotion systems and standards. but it also specifically called for retention of the racial quota on enlistments and conspicuously failed to provide for the assignment of black specialists beyond those jobs already provided by the old gillem board policy.[ - ] secretary gray had asked for fahy's personal approval before forwarding the plan discussed by the two men at such length, but fahy refused; he wanted the plan submitted to his full committee. when johnson received the plan he did not consult the committee at all, although he briefly referred it to the acting chairman of the personnel policy board, who interposed no objection.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, sa for secdef, sep , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, csgpa . ; dod, off of pub info, press release - , sep , fc file.] [footnote - : memo, kenworthy for cmte, sep , sub: army's reply to secretary johnson, fahy papers, truman library; note, handwritten and signed mccrea, attached to memo, sa for secdef, sep ; memo, thompson for leva, oct , sub: army policy of equality of treatment and opportunity, cd - - ; both in secdef files.] it is not difficult to understand johnson's reasons for ignoring (p.  ) the president's committee. he had been forced to endure public criticism over the protracted negotiations between the army and the committee. among liberal elements on capitol hill, his position--that his directive and the service replies made legislation to prohibit segregation in the services unnecessary--was obviously being compromised by the lack of an acceptable army response.[ - ] in a word, the argument over civil rights in the armed forces had become a political liability for louis johnson, and he wanted it out of the way. glossing over the army's truculence, johnson blamed the committee and its recommendations for his problem, and when his frontal assault on the committee failed--kenworthy reported that the secretary tried to have the committee disbanded--he had to devise another approach.[ - ] the army's new proposal, a more reasonable-sounding document than its predecessor, provided him with a convenient opportunity. why not quickly approve the program, thereby presenting the committee with a _fait accompli_ and leaving the president with little excuse for prolonging the civil rights negotiations? [footnote - : ltr, secdef to congressman vinson, jul ; memo, lanham for reid, mar ; both in ppb files.] [footnote - : ltr, kenworthy to nichols, jul , in nichols collection, cmh.] unfortunately for johnson the gambit failed. while fahy admitted that the army's newest proposal was an improvement, for several reasons he could not accept it. the assignment of black specialists to white units was a key part of the committee's program, and despite gray's private assurances that specialists would be integrated, fahy was not prepared to accept the army's "equivocal" language on this subject. there was also the issue of the quota, still very much alive between the committee and the army. the committee was bound, furthermore, to resent being ignored in the approval process. fahy and his associates had been charged by the president with advising the services on equality of treatment and opportunity, and they were determined to be heard.[ - ] fahy informed the white house that the committee would review the army's proposal in an extraordinary meeting. he asked that the president meanwhile refrain from comment.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, kenworthy to cmte, sep , sub: army's reply to secretary johnson, and ltr, kenworthy to joseph evans, sep , both in fahy papers, truman library; memo, worthington thompson for leva, oct , sub: army policy of equality of treatment and opportunity, secdef files; ltr, kenworthy to nichols, jul , in nichols collection, cmh.] [footnote - : memo for rcd, probably written by philleo nash, oct , nash collection, truman library.] the committee's stand received support from the black press and numerous national civil rights organizations, all of which excoriated the army's position.[ - ] david k. niles, the white house adviser on racial matters, warned president truman about the rising controversy and predicted that the committee would again reject the army's proposal. he advised the president to tell the press that johnson's news release was merely a "progress report," that it was not final, and that the committee was continuing its investigation.[ - ] the president did just that, adding: "eventually we will reach, i (p.  ) hope, what we contemplated in the beginning. you can't do it all at once. the progress report was a good report, and it isn't finished yet."[ - ] and lest his purpose remain unclear, the president declared that his aim was the racial integration of the army. [footnote - : see los angeles _star review_, october , ; _afro-american_, october , ; washington _post_, october , ; pittsburgh _courier_, octobers, ; norfolk _journal and guide_, october , ; new york _amsterdam news_, october , .] [footnote - : ltr, niles to president, oct , nash collection, truman library.] [footnote - : news conference, oct , as quoted in _public papers of the president: harry s. truman, _, p. .] the president's statement signaled a victory for the committee; its extent became apparent only when the army tried to issue a new circular, revising its gillem board policy along the lines of the outline plan approved by johnson on september. during the weeks of protracted negotiations that followed, the committee clearly remained in control, its power derived basically from its willingness to have the differences between the committee and the army publicized and the reluctance of the white house to have it so. the attitudes toward publicity were already noticeable when, on october, fahy suggested to truman some possible solutions to the impasse between the committee and the army. the secretary of defense could issue a supplementary statement on the army's assignment policy, the committee could release its recommendations to the press, or the army and the committee could resume discussions.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, fahy for president, oct , fc file.] president truman ordered his military aide to read the committee's october suggestion and "then take [it] up with johnson."[ - ] as a result the secretary of defense retired from the controversy. reminding gray through intermediaries that he had approved the army's plan in outline form, johnson declared that it was "inappropriate" for him to approve the plan's publication as an army circular as the army had requested.[ - ] about the same time, niles informed the army that any revision of circular would have to be submitted to the white house before publication, and he candidly admitted that presidential approval would depend on the views of the fahy committee.[ - ] meanwhile, his assistant, philleo nash, predicting that the committee would win both the assignment and quota arguments, persuaded fahy to postpone any public statement until after the army's revised circular had been reviewed by the committee.[ - ] [footnote - : penciled note, signed hst, on memo, niles for president, secretary's file (psf), truman library.] [footnote - : memo, maj gen levin c. allen, exec secy, secdef, for sa, oct ; memo, vice adm john mccrea, dir of staff, ppb, for allen, oct ; both in cd - - , secdef files.] [footnote - : memo for rcd, karl bendetsen, spec consultant to sa, nov , sa files; ltr, kenworthy to fahy, nov , and memo, kenworthy for fahy cmte, oct , sub: background to proposed letter to gray; both in fahy papers, truman library.] [footnote - : ltr, fahy to cmte, nov , fahy papers, truman library.] chairman fahy was fully aware of the leverage these actions gave his committee, although he and his associates now had few illusions about the speedy end to the contest. "i know from the best authority within p&a," kenworthy warned the committee, that the obstructionists in army personnel hoped to see the committee submit final recommendations--"what its recommendations are they don't much care"--and then disband. until the committee disbanded, its opponents would try to block any real change in army policy.[ - ] kenworthy offered in evidence the current controversy over the army's instructions to its field commanders. these instructions, a copy of the outline plan (p.  ) approved by secretary johnson, had been sent to the commanders by the adjutant general on october as "additional policies" pending a revision of circular .[ - ] included in the message, of course, was gray's order to open all military occupational specialties to negroes; but when some commanders, on the basis of their interpretation of the message, began integrating black specialists in white units, officials in the personnel and administration and the organization and training divisions dispatched a second message on october specifically forbidding such action "except on department of army orders."[ - ] negroes would continue to be authorized for assignment to black units, the message explained, and to "negro spaces in t/d [overhead] units." in effect, the army staff was ordering commanders to interpret the secretary's plan in its narrowest sense, blocking any possibility of broadening the range of black assignments. [footnote - : memo, kenworthy for cmte, oct , sub: background to proposed letter to gray, fahy papers, truman library.] [footnote - : msg, tag to chief, aff, et al., wcl , z oct , copy in ag . .] [footnote - : memo, d/pa for tag, oct , sub: assignment of negro enlisted personnel, with attached memo for rcd, col john h. riepe, chief, manpower control gp, d/pa; memo, deputy dir, pa, for gen brooks (dir of pa), nov , same sub; msg, tag to chief, aff, et al., wcl , oct . all in csgpa . ( oct ).] kenworthy was able to turn this incident to the committee's advantage. he made a practice of never locking his pentagon office door nor his desk drawer. he knew that negroes, both civilian and military, worked in the message centers, and he suspected that if any hanky-panky was afoot they would discover it and he would be anonymously apprised of it. a few days after the dispatch of the second message, kenworthy opened his desk drawer to find a copy. for the first and only time, he later explained, he broke his self-imposed rule of relying on negotiations between the military and the committee and its staff _in camera_. he laid both messages before a long-time friend of his, the editor of the washington _post_'s editorial page.[ - ] thus delivered to the press, the second message brought on another round of accusations, corrections, and headlines to the effect that "the brass gives gray the run-around." kenworthy was able to denounce the incident as a "step backward" that even violated the gillem board policy by allocating "negro spaces" in overhead units. the army staff's second message nullified the committee's recommendations since they depended ultimately on the unlimited assignment of black specialists. the message demonstrated very well, kenworthy told the committee, that careful supervision of the army's racial policy would be necessary.[ - ] some newspapers were less charitable. the pittsburgh _courier_ charged that the colonel blamed for the release of the second message had been made the "goat" in a case that involved far more senior officials, and the washington _post_ claimed that the message "vitiates" even the limited improvements outlined in the army's plan as approved by secretary johnson. the paper called on secretary gray to assert himself in the case.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, kenworthy for chief of military history, oct , cmh.] [footnote - : idem for cmte, oct , sub: instructions to commanding generals on new army policy, fahy papers, truman library.] [footnote - : lem graves, jr. (washington correspondent of the pittsburgh _courier_), "a colonel takes the rap," pittsburgh _courier_, october , ; washington _post_, november , .] a furious secretary, learning of the second message from the press (p.  ) stories, did enter the case. branding the document a violation of his announced policy, he had it rescinded and, publicizing a promise made earlier to the committee, announced that qualified black specialists would be assigned to some white units.[ - ] at the same time gray was not prepared to admit that the incident demonstrated how open his plan was to evasion, just as he refused to admit that his rescinding of the errant message represented a change in policy. he would continue, in effect, the plan approved by the secretary of defense on september, he told fahy.[ - ] [footnote - : dod, off of pub info, release - , nov , fc file.] [footnote - : ltr, sa to fahy, nov , fc file.] the army staff's draft revision of the gillem board circular, sent to the committee on november, reflected gray's september plan.[ - ] in short, when it emerged from its journey through the various army staff agencies, the proposed revision still contained none of the committee's key recommendations. it continued the severe restrictions on the assignment of negroes who had specialty training; it specifically retained the numerical quota; and, with several specific exceptions, it carefully preserved the segregation of army life.[ - ] actually, the proposed revision amounted to little more than a repetition of the gillem board policy with minor modifications designed to make it easier to carry out. fahy quickly warned the deputy director of personnel and administration that there was no chance of its winning the committee's approval.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, bendetsen to fahy, nov ; memo for rcd, kenworthy, nov ; both in fahy papers, truman library.] [footnote - : army draft no. of revised circular , nov , fc file.] [footnote - : ltr, fahy to maj gen c. e. byers, nov , fc file.] _assignments_ the quota and assignments issues remained the center of controversy between the army and the committee. although fahy was prepared to postpone a decision on the quota while negotiations continued, he was unwilling to budge on the assignments issue. as the committee had repeatedly emphasized, the question of open, integrated assignment of trained negroes was at the heart of its program. without it the opening of army schools and military occupational specialties would be meaningless and the intent of executive order frustrated. at first glance it would seem that the revision of circular supported the assignment of negroes to white units, as indeed secretary gray had recently promised. but this was not really the case, as kenworthy explained to the committee. the army had always made a distinction between _specialists_, men especially recruited for critically needed jobs, and _specialties_, those military occupations for which soldiers were routinely trained in army schools. the draft revision did not refer to this second and far larger category and was intended to provide only for the placement of the rare black specialist in white units. the document as worded even limited (p.  ) the use of negroes in overhead units. only those with skills considered appropriate by the personnel office--that is, those who possessed a specialty either inappropriate in a black unit or in excess of its needs--would be considered for racially mixed overhead units.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, kenworthy for president's cmte, nov , sub: successor policy to wd cir ; idem for fahy, nov , sub: revised wd cir ; both in fahy papers, truman library.] fahy was determined to have the army's plan modified, and furthermore he had learned during the past few weeks how to get it done. on december kenworthy telephoned philleo nash at the white house to inform him of the considerable sentiment in the committee for publicizing the whole affair and read to him the draft of a press statement prepared by fahy. as fahy expected, the white house wanted to avoid publicity; the president, through nash, assured the committee that the issues of assignment and quota were still under discussion. nash suggested that instead of a public statement the committee prepare a document for the army and the white house explaining what principles and procedures were demanded by the presidential order. in his opinion, nash assured kenworthy, the white house would order the army to meet the committee's recommendations.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, kenworthy, dec , sub: telephone conversation with nash, fahy papers, truman library.] white house pressure undoubtedly played a major role in the resolution of the assignment issue. when on december the committee presented the army and the president with its comments on the army's proposed revision of circular , it took the first step toward what was to be a rapid agreement on black assignments. at the same time it would be a mistake to discount the effectiveness of reasonable men of good will discussing their very real differences in an effort to reach a consensus. there is considerable evidence that when fahy met on december with secretary gray and general j. lawton collins, the chief of staff, he was able to convince them that the committee's position on the assignment of black graduates of specialist schools was right and inevitable.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, nichols with fahy. j. lawton collins became chief of staff of the army on august , succeeding omar bradley who stepped up to the chairmanship of the joint chiefs of staff.] while neither gray nor collins could even remotely be described as social reformers, both were pragmatic leaders, prepared to accept changes in army tradition.[ - ] collins, unlike his immediate predecessors, was not so much concerned with finding the army in the vanguard of american social practices as he was in determining that its racial practices guaranteed a more efficient organization. while he wanted to retain the numerical quota, lest the advantages of an army career attract so large a number of negroes that a serious racial imbalance would result, he was willing to accept a substantive revision of the gillem board policy. [footnote - : intervs, nichols with gray and fahy, and author with collins.] gray was perhaps more cautious than collins. confessing later that he had never considered the question of equal opportunity until fahy brought it to his attention, gray began with a limited view of the executive order--the army must eliminate racial discrimination, (p.  ) not promote racial integration. in their meeting on december fahy was able to convince gray that the former was impossible without the latter. according to kenworthy, gray demonstrated an "open and unbiased" view of the problem throughout all discussions.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, kenworthy to gray, jul , fc file; intervs, nichols with gray, davenport, and fahy.] [illustration: secretary of the army gray.] the trouble was, as roy davenport later noted, gordon gray was a lawyer, not a personnel expert, and he failed to grasp the full implications of the army staff's recommendations.[ - ] davenport was speaking from firsthand knowledge because gray, after belatedly learning of his experience and influence with the committee, sent for him. politely but explicitly davenport told gray that the staff officers who were advising him and writing the memos and directives to which he was signing his name had deceived him. gray was at first annoyed and incredulous; after davenport finally convinced him, he was angry. kenworthy, years later, wrote that the gray-davenport discussion was decisive in changing gray's mind on the assignment issue and was of great help to the fahy committee.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with davenport, oct .] [footnote - : memo, kenworthy for chief of military history, oct , cmh.] fahy reduced the whole problem to the case of one qualified black soldier denied a job because of color and pictured the loss to the army and the country, eloquently pleading with gray and collins at the december meeting to try the committee's way. "i can't say you won't have problems," fahy concluded, "but try it." gray resisted at first because "this would mean the complete end of segregation," but unable to deny the logic of fahy's arguments he agreed to try.[ - ] there were compromises on both sides. when collins pointed out some of the administrative difficulties that could come from the "mandatory" language recommended by the committee, fahy said that the policy should be administered "with latitude." to that end he promised to suggest some changes in wording that would produce "a policy with some play in the joints." the conferees also agreed that the quota issue should be downplayed while the parties continued their discussions on that subject.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, karl r. bendetsen, spec asst to sa, dec , sub: conference with judge charles fahy, sa files. intervs, nichols with gray and fahy, author with fahy, and blumenson with fahy.] [footnote - : memo for rcd, bendetsen, dec , sa files; ltr, fahy to cmte, dec , fahy papers, truman library.] agreement followed rapidly on the heels of the meeting of the principals. roy davenport presented the committee members with the final draft of the army proposal and urged that it be accepted as (p.  ) "the furthest and most hopeful they could get."[ - ] lester granger, davenport later reported, was the first to say he would accept, with fahy and the rest following suit,[ - ] and on january the army issued special regulation - - , _utilization of negro manpower in the army_, with the committee's blessing. [footnote - : interv, nichols with davenport.] [footnote - : ltr, kenworthy to nichols, jul , in nichols collection, cmh; interv, nichols with davenport.] [illustration: general collins.] fahy reported to truman that the new army policy was consistent with the executive order. its paragraphs on assignments spelled out the principle long advocated by the committee: "negro manpower possessing appropriate skills and qualifications will be utilized in accordance with such skills and qualifications, and will be assigned to any ... unit without regard to race or color." adding substance to this declaration, the army also announced that a list of critical specialties in which vacancies existed would be published periodically and ordered major commanders to assign negroes who possessed those specialties to fill the vacancies without regard to race. the first such list was published at the same time as the new regulation. the army had taken a significant step, fahy told the president, toward the realization of equal treatment and opportunity for all soldiers.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, fahy for president, jan , fc file; sr - - , jan ; dod, off of pub info, release - , jan . the special regulation was circulated worldwide on the day of the issue; see memo, d/p&a to tag, jan , wdgpa . .] secretary of defense johnson was also optimistic, but he warned gordon gray that many complex problems remained and asked the army for periodic reports. his request only emphasized the fact that the army's new regulation lacked the machinery for monitoring compliance with its provisions for integration. as the history of the gillem board era demonstrated, any attempt to change the army's traditions demanded not only exact definition of the intermediate steps but also establishment of a responsible authority to enforce compliance. _quotas_ in the wake of the army's new assignment regulation, the committee turned its full attention to the last of its major recommendations, the abolition of the numerical quota. despite months of discussion, the disagreement between the army and the committee over the quota (p.  ) showed no signs of resolution. simply put, the fahy committee wanted the army to abolish the gillem board's racial quota and to substitute a quota based on general classification test scores of enlistees. the committee found the racial quota unacceptable in terms of the executive order and wasteful of manpower since it tended to encourage the reenlistment of low-scoring negroes and thereby prevented the enlistment of superior men. none of the negroes graduating from high school in june , for example, no matter how high their academic rating, could enlist because the black quota had been filled for months. quotas based on test scores, on the other hand, would limit enlistment to only the higher scoring blacks and whites. specifically, the committee wanted no enlistment to be decided by race. the army would open all enlistments to anyone who scored ninety or above, limiting the number of blacks and whites scoring between eighty and eighty-nine to . percent of the total army strength, a percentage based on world war ii strengths. with rare exception it would close enlistment to anyone who scored less than eighty. applying this formula to the current army, , men on march , and assessing the number of men from seventeen to thirty-four years old in the national population, the committee projected a total of , negroes in the army, almost exactly percent of the army's strength. in a related statistical report prepared by davenport, the committee offered figures demonstrating that the higher black reenlistment rates would not increase the number of black soldiers.[ - ] [footnote - : d/pa summary sheet for sa, feb , sub: fahy committee proposal re: numerical enlistment quota, csgpa . ( nov ); roy davenport, "figures on reenlistment rate and explanation," document fc xl, fc file; memo, fahy for sa, feb , sub: recapitulation of the proposal of the president's committee for the abolition of the racial quota, fc file; memo, kenworthy for dwight palmer (cmte member), feb , fahy papers, truman library.] the army's reply was based on the premise that "the negro strength of the army must be restricted and that the population ratio is the most equitable method [of] limitation." in fact, the _only_ method of controlling black strength was a numerical quota of original enlistments. the personnel staff argued that enlistment specifically unrestricted by race, as the high rate of unrestricted black reenlistment had demonstrated, would inevitably produce a "very high percentage of negroes in the army." a quota based on the classification test scores could not limit sufficiently the number of black enlistments if, as the committee insisted, it required that identical enlistment standards be maintained for both blacks and whites. looking at the census figure another way, the army had its own statistics to prove its point. basing its figures on the number of negroes who became eighteen each month ( , ), the personnel staff estimated that black enlistments would total from to percent of the army's monthly strength if an entrance quota was imposed with the cut-off score set at ninety or from to percent if the enlistment standards were lowered to eighty. it also pointed to the experience of the air force where with no quotas in the third quarter of black enlistments accounted for . percent of the total; even when a (p.  ) gct quota of was imposed in october and november, percent of all air force enlistees were black.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, actg d/pa for karl r. bendetsen, spec asst to sa, dec , sub: ten percent racial quota; d/pa summary sheet, with incl, for sa, feb , sub: fahy committee proposals re: numerical enlistment quota; both in csgpa . ( nov ). the quotations are from the former document.] the committee quickly pointed out that the army had neglected to subtract from the monthly figure of , blacks those physically and mentally disqualified (those who scored below eighty) and those in school. using the army's own figures and taking into account these deductions, the committee predicted that negroes would account for . percent of the men accepted in the , monthly intake, probably at the gct eighty level, or percent of the , men estimated acceptable at the gct ninety level.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, kenworthy for karl bendetsen, oct , sub: manpower policy, fahy papers, truman library.] on december the army, offering to compromise on the quota, retired from its statistical battle with the committee. it would accept the unlimited enlistment of negroes scoring or better, limiting the number of those accepted below so that the total black strength would remain at percent of the army's population.[ - ] attractive to the committee because it would provide for the enlistment of qualified men at the expense of the less able, the proposal was nevertheless rejected because it still insisted upon a racial quota. again there was a difference between the committee and the army, but again the advantage lay with the committee, for the white house was anxious for the quota problem to be solved.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, kenworthy, dec , sub: conference with maj lieblich and col smith, dec , fc file.] [footnote - : memo, fahy for president's cmte, feb , fahy papers, truman library.] niles warned the president that the racial imbalance which had for so long frustrated equal treatment and opportunity for negroes in the army would continue despite the army's new assignment policy unless the army was able to raise the quality of its black enlistees. niles considered the committee's proposal doubly attractive because, while it abolished the quota, it would also raise the level of black recruits. the proposal was sensible and fair, niles added, and he believed it would reduce the number of black soldiers as it raised their quality. it had been used successfully by the navy and air force, and, as it had in those services, would provide for the gradual dissolution of the all-black units rather than a precipitous change.[ - ] the army staff did not agree, and as late as february the director of personnel and administration was recommending that the army retain the racial quota at least for all negroes scoring below on the classification test.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, niles to president, feb , secretary's file (psf), truman library.] [footnote - : d/pa summary sheet for sa, feb , sub: fahy committee proposal re: numerical enlistment quota, csgpa . ( nov ).] secretary gray, aware that the army's arguments would not move the committee, was sure that the president did not want to see a spectacular and precipitous rise in the army's black strength. he decided on a personal appeal to the commander in chief.[ - ] the army would drop the racial quota, he told truman on march, with (p.  ) one proviso: "if, as a result of a fair trial of this new system, there ensues a disproportionate balance of racial strengths in the army, it is my understanding that i have your authority to return to a system which will, in effect, control enlistments by race."[ - ] the president agreed. [footnote - : interv, nichols with gray.] [footnote - : ltr, sa to president, mar , fahy papers, truman library.] at the president's request, gray outlined a program for open recruitment, fixing april as the date when all vacancies would be open to all qualified individuals. gray wanted to handle the changes in routine fashion. with the committee's concurrence, he planned no public announcement. from his vacation quarters in key west, truman added a final encouraging word: "i am sure that everything will work out as it should."[ - ] the order opening recruiting to all races went out on march .[ - ] [footnote - : memo, president for sa, mar , fc file; memo, sa for president, mar , sub: discontinuance of racial enlistment quotas, copy in csgpa . .] [footnote - : msg, tag to chief, aff, et al., fort monroe, va., wcl , mar , copy in fc file.] despite the president's optimism, the fahy committee was beginning to have doubts about just how everything would work out. specifically, some members were wondering how they could be sure the army would comply with the newly approved policies. such concern was reasonable, despite the army's solemn commitments, when one considers the committee's lengthening experience with the defense department's bureaucracy and its familiarity with the liabilities of the gillem board policy. the committee decided, therefore, to include in its final report to the president a request for the retention of a watchdog group to review service practices. in this its views clashed directly with those of secretary johnson, who wanted the president to abolish the committee and make him solely responsible for the equal treatment and opportunity program.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, clark clifford for president (ca. mar ), nash collection, truman library.] niles, anxious to settle the issue, tried to reconcile the differences[ - ] and successfully persuaded the committee to omit a reference in its final report to a successor group to review the services' progress. such a move, he told kenworthy, would imply that, unless policed, the services would not carry out their programs. public discussion about how long the committee was to remain in effect would also tend to tie the president's hands. niles suggested instead that the committee members discuss the matter with the president when they met with him to submit their final report and perhaps suggest that a watchdog group be appointed or their committee be retained on a standby basis for a later review of service actions.[ - ] before the committee met with the president on may, niles recommended to truman that he make no commitment on a watchdog group.[ - ] privately, niles agreed with clark clifford that the committee should be retained for an indefinite period, but on an advisory rather than an operating basis so that, in clifford's words, "it will be in a position to see that there is not a gap between policy and an (p.  ) administration of policy in the defense establishment."[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with kenworthy.] [footnote - : memo, kenworthy for fahy, apr , fahy papers, truman library.] [footnote - : ltr, niles to president, may , nash collection, truman library.] [footnote - : memo, clifford for president, nash collection, truman library.] the president proceeded along these lines. several months after the committee presented its final report, _freedom to serve_,[ - ] in a public ceremony, truman relieved the group of its assignment. commenting that the services should have the opportunity to work out in detail the new policies and procedures initiated by the committee, he told fahy on july that he would leave his order in effect, noting that "at some later date, it may prove desirable to examine the effectuation of your committee's recommendations, which can be done under executive order ."[ - ] [footnote - : _freedom to serve: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services; a report by the president's committee_ (washington: government printing office, ).] [footnote - : ltr, president to fahy, jul , fahy papers, truman library.] _an assessment_ thus ended a most active period in the history of armed forces integration, a period of executive orders, presidential conferences, and national hearings, of administrative infighting broadcast to the public in national headlines. the fahy committee was the focus of this bureaucratic and journalistic excitement. charged with examining the policies of the services in light of the president's order, the committee could have glanced briefly at current racial practices and automatically ratified secretary johnson's general policy statement. indeed, this was precisely what walter white and other civil rights leaders expected. but the committee was made of sterner stuff. with dedication and with considerable political acumen, it correctly assessed the position of black servicemen and subjected the racial policies of the services to a rigorous and detailed examination, the first to be made by an agency outside the department of defense. as a result of this scrutiny, the committee clearly and finally demonstrated that segregation was an inefficient way to use military manpower; once and for all it demolished the arguments that the services habitually used against any demand for serious change. most important is the fact that the committee kept alive the spirit of reform the truman order had created. the committee's definition of equal treatment and opportunity became the standard by which future action on racial issues in the armed forces would be measured. throughout its long existence, the fahy committee was chiefly concerned with the position of the negro in the army. after protracted argument it won from the army an agreement to abolish the racial quota and to open all specialties in all army units and all army schools and courses to qualified negroes. finally, it won the army's promise to cease restricting black servicemen to black units and overhead installations alone and to assign them instead on the basis of individual ability and the army's need. as for the other services, the committee secured from the navy a pledge to give petty officer status to chief stewards and stewards of the first, second, and third class, and its influence was discernible in the navy's decision to allow stewards to transfer to the general service. the committee also made, and the navy accepted, several practical suggestions that might lead to an increase in the number (p.  ) of black officers and enlisted men. the committee approved the air force integration program and publicized the success of this major reform as it was carried out during ; for the benefit of the reluctant army, the committee could point to the demonstrated ability of black servicemen and the widespread acceptance of integration among the rank and file of the air force. in regard to the marine corps, however, the committee was forced to acknowledge that the corps had not yet "fully carried out navy policy."[ - ] [footnote - : _freedom to serve_, p. .] the fahy committee won from the services a commitment to equal treatment and opportunity and a practical program to achieve that end. yet even with this victory and the strong support of many senior military officials, the possibility that determined foes of integration might erect roadblocks or that simple bureaucratic inertia would delay progress could not be discounted. there was, for example, nothing in the postwar practices of the marine corps, even the temporary integration of its few black recruits during basic training, that hinted at any long-range intention of adopting the navy's integration program. and the fate of one of the committee's major recommendations, that all the services adopt equal enlistment standards, had yet to be decided. the acceptance of this recommendation hinged on the results of a defense department study to determine the jobs in each service that could be filled by men in the lowest mental classification category acceptable to all three services. although the navy and the air force had agreed to reexamine the matter, they had consistently opposed the application of enlistment parity in the past, and the secretary of defense's personnel policy board had indorsed their position. secretary forrestal, himself, had rejected the concept, and there was nothing in the record to suggest that his successor would do otherwise. yet the parity of enlistment standards was a vital part of the committee's argument for the abolition of the army's racial quota. if enlistment standards were not equalized, especially in a period when the army was turning to selective service for much of its manpower, the number of men in the army's categories iv and v was bound to increase, and that increase would provide strong justification for reviving the racial quota. the army staff was aware, if the public was not, that a resurrected quota was possible, for the president had given the secretary of the army authority to take such action if there was "a disproportionate balance of racial strengths."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, sa to president, mar , fahy papers, truman library.] the army's concern with disproportionate balance was always linked to a concern with the influx of men, mostly black, who scored poorly on the classification tests. the problem, the army repeatedly claimed, was not the quantity of black troops but their quality. yet at the time the army agreed to the committee's demand to drop the quota, some percent of all black soldiers scored below eighty. these men could rarely profit from the army's agreement to integrate all specialist training and assignments. the committee, aware of the problem, had strongly urged the army to refuse reenlistment, with few exceptions, to anyone scoring below eighty. on may fahy reminded secretary of the army frank pace, jr., that despite the army's promise to eliminate its low scorers it continued to reenlist men scoring (p.  ) less than seventy.[ - ] but by july even the test score for first-time enlistment into the army had declined to seventy because men were needed for the korean war. the law required that whenever selective service began drafting men the army would automatically lower its enlistment standards to seventy. thus, despite the committee's recommendations, the concentration of low-scoring negroes in the lower grades continued to increase, creating an even greater pool of men incapable of assignment to the schools and specialties open without regard to race. [footnote - : memo, fahy for sa, may , fahy papers, truman library. frank pace, an arkansas lawyer and former assistant director of the bureau of the budget, succeeded gordon gray as secretary of the army on april .] [illustration: "no longer a dream." _the pittsburgh courier's reaction to the services' agreements with the fahy committee, may , ._] even the army's promise to enlarge gradually the number of specialties open to negroes was not carried out expeditiously. by july , the last month of the fahy committee's life, the army had added only seven more specialties with openings for negroes to the list of forty published seven months before at the time of its agreement with the committee. in a pessimistic mood, kenworthy confessed to judge (p.  ) fahy[ - ] that "so long as additions are not progressively made to the critical list of mos in which negroes can serve, and so long as segregated units continue to be the rule, all mos and schools can not be said to be open to negroes because negro units do not have calls for many of the advanced mos." kenworthy was also disturbed because the army had disbanded the staff agency created to monitor the new policies and make future recommendations and had transferred both its two members to other duties. in the light of progress registered in the half year since the army had adopted the committee's proposal, kenworthy concluded that "the army intends to do as little as possible towards implementing the policy which it adopted and published."[ - ] [footnote - : president truman appointed charles fahy to the u.s. circuit court of appeals for the district of columbia on october . fahy did not assume his judicial duties, however, until december after concluding his responsibilities as a member of the american delegation to the united nations general assembly.] [footnote - : memo, kenworthy for fahy, jul , fahy papers, truman library. in the memorandum the number of additional specialties is erroneously given as six; see dcsper summary sheet, apr , sub: list of critical specialties referred to in sr - - , g- . ( oct ).] roy davenport later suggested that such pessimism was ill-founded. other factors were at work within the army in , particularly after the outbreak of war in korea.[ - ] davenport alluded principally to the integration of basic training centers and the assignment of greater numbers of black inductees to combat specialties--developments that were pushing the army ahead of the integration timetable envisioned by committee members and making concern over black eligibility for an increased number of occupation categories less important. [footnote - : ltr, davenport to osd historian, aug , copy in cmh. for a discussion of these war-related factors, see chapters and .] the fahy committee has been given full credit for proving that segregation could not be defended on grounds of military efficiency, thereby laying the foundation for the integration of the army. but perhaps in the long run the group's idealism proved to be equally important. the committee never lost sight of the moral implications of the services' racial policies. concern for the rightness and wrongness of things is readily apparent in all its deliberations, and in the end the committee would invoke the words of saint paul to the philippians to remind men who perhaps should have needed no such reminder that they should heed "whatsoever things are true ... whatsoever things are just." what was right and just, the committee concluded, would "strengthen the nation."[ - ] [footnote - : _freedom to serve_, pp. - .] the same ethics stood forth in the conclusion of the committee's final report, raising that practical summary of events to the status of an eloquent state paper. the committee reminded the president and its fellow citizens that the status of the individual, "his equal worth in the sight of god, his equal protection under the law, his equal rights and obligations of citizenship and his equal opportunity to make just and constructive use of his endowment--these are the very foundation of the american system of values."[ - ] [footnote - : _ibid._, p. .] to its lasting honor the fahy committee succeeded in spelling out for the nation's military leaders how these principles, these "high standards of democracy" as president truman called them in his order, must be applied in the services. chapter (p.  ) the role of the secretary of defense - having ordered the integration of the services and supported the fahy committee in the development of acceptable racial programs, president truman quickly turned the matter over to his subordinates in the department of defense, severing white house ties with the problem. against the recommendations of some of his white house advisers, truman adjourned the committee, leaving his executive order in effect. "the necessary programs having been adopted," he told fahy, it was time for the services "to work out in detail the procedures which will complete the steps so carefully initiated by the committee."[ - ] in effect, the president was guaranteeing the services the freedom to put their own houses in order. [footnote - : ltr, truman to fahy, jul , fc file.] the issue of civil rights, however, was still of vital interest to one of the president's major constituencies. black voters, recognized as a decisive factor in the november election, pressed their demands on the victorious president; in particular some of their spokesmen called on the administration to implement fully the program put forth by the fahy committee. these demands were being echoed in congress by a civil rights bloc--for bloc it had now become in the wake of the election that sent harry truman back to the white house. no longer the concern of a congressman or two, the cause of the black serviceman was now supported by a group of politicians who, joining with civil rights leaders, pressed the department of defense for rapid changes in its racial practices. the traditionalists in the armed forces also had congressional allies. in all probability these legislators would accept an integrated navy because it involved relatively few negroes; they might even tolerate an integrated air force because they lacked a proprietary attitude toward this new service; but they would fight to keep the army segregated because they considered the army their own.[ - ] congressional segregationists openly opposed changes in the army's racial policy only when they thought the time was right. they carefully avoided the subject in the months following publication of the (p.  ) executive order, waiting to bargain until their support became crucial to the success of such vital military legislation as the renewal of the selective service act and the establishment of universal military training. [footnote - : interv, nichols with gen wade h. haislip, , in nichols collection; telephone interv, author with haislip, mar ; interv, author with martin blumenson, jan . all in cmh files.] at most, congress played only a minor role in the dramatic changes beginning in the armed forces. champions of civil rights had little effect on service practices, although these congressmen channeled the complaints of black voters and kept the military traditionalists on the defensive. as for the congressional traditionalists, their support may have helped sustain those on the staff who resisted racial change within the army, thus slowing down that service's integration. but the demands of congressional progressives and obstructionists tended to cancel each other out, and in the wake of the fahy committee's disbandment the services themselves reemerged as the preeminent factor in the armed forces racial program. the services regained control by default. logically, direction of racial reforms in the services should have fallen to the secretary of defense. in the first place, the secretary, other administration officials, and the public alike had begun to use the secretary's office as a clearinghouse for reconciling conflicting demands of the services, as an appellate court reviewing decisions of the service secretaries, and as the natural channel of communication between the services and the white house, congress, and the public. many racial problems had become interservice in nature, and only the office of the secretary of defense possessed the administrative machinery to deal with such matters. the personnel policy board or, later, the new office of the assistant secretary of defense for manpower and personnel might well have become the watchdog recommended by the fahy committee to oversee the services' progress toward integration, but neither did. certainly the secretary of defense had other matters pressing for his attention. secretary johnson had become the central character in the budgetary conflicts of truman's second term, and both he and general george c. marshall, who succeeded him as secretary on september , were suddenly thrust into leadership of the korean war. in administrative matters, at least, marshall had to concentrate on boosting the morale of a department torn by internecine budgetary arguments. integration did not appear to have the same importance to national security as these weighty matters. more to the point, johnson and marshall were not social reformers. whatever their personal attitudes, they were content to let the services set the pace of racial reform. with one notable exception neither man initiated any of the historic racial changes that took place in the armed forces during the early 's. for the most part those racial issues that did involve the secretary of defense centered on the status of the negro in the armed forces in general and were extraneous to the issue of integration. one of the most persistent status problems was classification by race. first posed during the great world war ii draft calls, the question of how to determine a serviceman's race, and indeed the related one of who had the right to make such a determination, remained unanswered five years later. in august the selective service system decided (p.  ) that the definition of a man's race should be left to the man himself. while this solution no doubt pleased racial progressives and certainly simplified the induction process, not to speak of protecting the war department from a ticklish court review, it still left the services the difficult and important task of designating racial categories into which men could be assigned. as late as april the army and the air force listed a number of specific racial categories, one of which had to be chosen by the applicant or recruiter--the regulation left the point unclear--to identify the applicant's race. the regulation listed "white, negro, indian (referring to american indian only), puerto rican, cuban, mexican, hawaiian, filipino, chinese, east indian, etc.," and specifically included mulattoes and "others of negroid race or extraction" in the negro category, leaving other men of mixed race to be entered under their predominant race.[ - ] [footnote - : sr - - (afr - ), apr .] the regulation was obviously subject to controversy, and in the wake of the president's equality order it is not surprising that some group--a group of spanish-speaking americans from southern california, as it turned out--would raise the issue. specifically, they objected to a practice of army and air force recruiters, who often scratched out "white" and inserted "mexican" in the applications of spanish-speaking volunteers. these young men wanted to be integrated into every phase of community life, congressman chet holifield told the secretary of defense, and he passed on a warning from his california constituents that "any attempt to forestall this ambition by treating them as a group apart is extremely repellent to them and gives rise to demoralization and hostility."[ - ] if the department of defense considered racial information essential, holifield continued, why not make the determination in a less objectionable manner? he suggested a series of questions concerning the birthplace of the applicant's parents and the language spoken in his home as innocuous possibilities. [footnote - : ltr, holifield to secdef, aug , sd . negroes.] secretary johnson sent the congressman's complaint to the personnel policy board, which, ignoring the larger considerations posed by holifield, concentrated on simplifying the department's racial categories to five--caucasian, negroid, mongolian, indian (american), and malayan--and making their use uniform throughout the services. the board also adopted the use of inoffensive questions to help determine the applicant's proper race category. obviously, the board could not abandon racial designations because the army's quota system, still in effect, depended on this information. less clear, however, was why the board failed to consider the problem of who should make the racial determination. at any rate, its new list of racial categories, approved by the secretary and published on october, immediately drew complaints from members of the department.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dep dir, personnel policy bd staff, for chmn, ppb, sep , sub: project summary--change of nomenclature on enlistment forms as pertains to "race" entries (m- ); memo, chmn, ppb, for sa et al., oct , sub: policy regarding race entries on enlistment contracts and shipping articles; both in ppb . .] [illustration: navy corpsman in korea _attends wounded from the st marine division, _.] the secretary's racial adviser, james c. evans, saw no need for (p.  ) racial designations on departmental forms, but knowing their removal was unlikely in the near future, he concentrated on trying to change the newly revised categories. he explained to the board, obviously unschooled in the nuance of racial slurs, that the word "negroid" was offensive to many negroes. besides, the board's categories made no sense since indian (american) and malayan were not comparable to the other three entries listed. why not, he suggested, settle for the old black, white, yellow, red, and brown designations?[ - ] [footnote - : memo, evans for chmn, ppb, nov , sub: racial designation and terminology, sd . ; interv, author with evans, jul , cmh files.] the navy, too, objected to the board's categories. after consulting a smithsonian ethnologist, the under secretary of the navy suggested that the board create a sixth category, polynesian, for use in shipping articles and in forms for reporting casualties. the army, also troubled by the categories, requested they be defined. the categories were meant to provide a uniform basis for classifying military personnel, the adjutant general pointed out, but given the variety and complexity of army forms--he had discovered that the army was using seven separate forms with racial entries, each with a different procedure for deciding race--uniformity was practically (p.  ) impossible without a careful delineation of each category.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, head, strength and statistics br, bupers, for head, policy control br, bupers, oct , sub: policy regarding race entries, pers -el, bupersrecs; memo, under secnav for chmn, ppb, nov , sub: policy regarding "race" entries on enlistment contracts and shipping articles, genrecsnav; df, d/p&a to tag, oct , same sub, with cmt , tag to d/p&a, nov , copy in ag . ( oct ).] its ruling under attack from the services, the board made a hasty appeal to authority. its chief of staff, vice adm. john l. mccrea,[ - ] recommended that the army and navy consult funk and wagnalls _standard dictionary_ for specific definitions of the five racial categories. that source, the admiral explained to the under secretary of the navy, listed polynesian in the malayan category, and if the navy decided to add race to its shipping articles, the five categories should be sufficient. the board, he added, had not meant to encourage additional use of racial information. the navy had always used the old color categories on its shipping articles forms, the ones, incidentally, favored by evans, and mccrea thought they generally corresponded to the categories developed by the board.[ - ] the admiral also suggested that the army use the color system to help clarify the board's categories. he offered some generalizations on specific army questions: "a) puerto ricans are officially caucasian, unless of indian or negro birth; b) filipinos are malayan; c) hawaiians are malayan; d) latin americans are caucasian or indian; and e) indian-negro and white-negro mixtures should be classified in accordance with the laws of the states of their birth."[ - ] the lessons on definition of race so painfully learned during world war ii were ignored. henceforth race was to be determined by a dictionary, a color scheme, and the legal vagaries found in the race laws of the several states. [footnote - : admiral mccrea succeeded general lanham as director of the board's staff in .] [footnote - : memo, dir, ppb staff, for under secnav, dec , sub: policy regarding "race" entries on enlistment contracts and shipping articles, ppb . .] [footnote - : idem for administrative asst to sa, dec , sub: policy regarding "race" entries on enlistment contracts and shipping articles, osa . .] the board's rulings, unscientific and open to all sorts of legal complications, could only be stopgap measures, and when on january the army again requested clarification of the racial categories, the board quickly responded. although it continued to defend the use of racial categories, it tried to soften the ruling by stating that an applicant's declaration of race should be accepted, subject to "sufficient justification" from the applicant when his declaration created "reason to doubt." it was april before the board's new chairman, j. thomas schneider,[ - ] issued a revised directive to this effect.[ - ] [footnote - : schneider succeeded thomas reid as chairman on february .] [footnote - : memo, chmn, ppb, for sa et al., apr , sub: policy regarding "race" on enlistment contracts and shipping articles, ppb . .] the board's decision to accept an applicant's declaration was simply a return to the reasonable and practical method the selective service had been using for some time. but adopting the vague qualification "sufficient justification" invited further complaints. when the services finally translated the board's directive into a new regulation, the role of the applicant in deciding his racial identity was practically abolished. in the army and the air force, for (p.  ) example, recruiters had to submit all unresolved identity cases to the highest local commander, whose decision, supposedly based on available documentary evidence and answers to the questions first suggested by congressman holifield, was final. further, the army and the air force decided that "no enlistment would be accomplished" until racial identity was decided to the satisfaction of both the applicant and the service.[ - ] the navy adopted a similar procedure when it placed the board's directive in effect.[ - ] the new regulation promised little comfort for young americans of racially mixed parentage and even less for the services. contrary to the intent of the personnel policy board, its directive once again placed the burden of deciding an applicant's race, with the concomitant complaints and potential civil suits, back on the services. [footnote - : sr - - (afr - ), sep .] [footnote - : bupers cir ltr - , jun .] at the time the army did not see this responsibility as a burden and in its quest for uniformity was willing to assume an even greater share of the decision-making in a potentially explosive issue. on august the deputy assistant chief of staff, g- , asked the personnel policy board to include army induction centers in the directive meant originally for recruiting centers only.[ - ] in effect the army was offering to assume from selective service the task of deciding the race of all draftees. the board obtained the necessary agreement from maj. gen. lewis b. hershey, and selective service was thus relieved of an onerous task reluctantly acquired in . on august the adjutant general ordered induction stations to begin entering the draftee's race in the records.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dep asst cs/g- for dep dir of staff, mil pers, ppb, aug , sub: "race" entries on induction records, ppb . . the director, personnel and administration, was redesignated the assistant chief of staff, g- , in the reorganization of the army staff; see hewes, _from root to mcnamara_.] [footnote - : memo, dir, ppb staff, for dep acs, g- , aug , sub: "race" entries on induction records, ppb . ( aug ); memo, chief, class and standards br, g- , for tag, sep , same sub, g- . ( oct ); ltr, dir, selective service, to actg dir of production management, munitions bd, nov , copy in g- . ; g- memo for rcd, attached to g- df to tag, dec , same sub, g- . ( oct ).] the considerable staff activity devoted to definitions of race between and added very little to racial harmony or the cause of integration. the simplified racial categories and the regulations determining their application continued to irritate members of america's several minority groups. the ink was hardly dry on the new regulation, for example, before the director of the naacp's washington bureau was complaining to secretary of the air force thomas k. finletter that the department's five categories were comparatively meaningless and caused unnecessary humiliation for inductees. he wanted racial entries eliminated.[ - ] finletter explained that racial designations were not used for assignment or administrative purposes but solely for evaluating the integration program and answering questions from the public. his explanation prompted much discussion within the services and correspondence between them and clarence mitchell and walter white of the naacp. it culminated in a meeting of the service secretaries with the secretary of defense (p.  ) on january at which finletter reaffirmed his position.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, clarence mitchell to secaf thomas k. finletter, dec , secaf files. finletter had become secretary on april .] [footnote - : ltr, secaf to mitchell, dir, washington bureau, naacp, jan , and ltr, mitchell to asst secaf, jan , both in secaf files; memo, edward t. dickinson, asst to joint secys, osd, for sa et al., jan , osd files.] there was some justification for the defense department's position. many of those who found racial designations distasteful also demanded hard statistical proof that members of minority groups were given equal treatment and opportunity,[ - ] and such assurances, of course, demanded racial determinations on the records. still, not all the reasons for retaining the racial identification entry were so defensible. the army, for example, had to maintain accurate statistics on the number of negroes inducted because of its concern with a possible unacceptable rise in their number and the president's promise to reimpose the quota to prevent such an increase. whatever the reasons, it was obvious that racial statistics had to be kept. it was also obvious that as long as they were kept and continued to matter, the secretary of defense would be saddled with the task of deciding in the end which racial tag to attach to each man in the armed forces. it was an unenviable duty, and it could be performed with neither precision nor justice. [footnote - : memo, dep asst secaf (program management) for secaf, jan , secaf files; memo, col robin b. pape, asst to dir, ppb staff, for chmn, ppb, may , sub: racial entries on enlistment records, ppb . .] _overseas restrictions_ another problem involving the secretary of defense concerned restrictions placed on the use of black servicemen in certain foreign areas. the problem was not new. making a distinction in cases where american troops were stationed in a country at the request of the united states government, the services excluded black troops from assignment in some allied countries during and immediately after world war ii.[ - ] the army, for example, barred the assignment of black units to china (the chinese government did not object to assignment of individual black soldiers up to percent of any unit's strength), and the navy removed black messmen from stations in iceland.[ - ] although these restrictions did not improve the racial image of the services, they were only a minor inconvenience to military officials since negroes were for the most part segregated and their placement could be controlled easily. the armed forces continued to exclude black servicemen from certain countries into under what the personnel policy board called "operating agreements (probably not in writing)" with the state department.[ - ] but the situation changed radically when some of the services started to integrate. efficient administration then demanded that black servicemen be interchanged (p.  ) freely among the various duty stations. even in the case of the still segregated army the exclusion of negroes from certain commands further complicated the chronic maldistribution of black soldiers throughout the service. [footnote - : memo, secy, cmte on negro policies, for asw, sep , sub: digest of war department policy pertaining to negro military personnel, asw . negro troops.] [footnote - : msg, cg, china theater, to war department, mar , g- . ( jan- mar ); memo vice cno for chief of navpers, jul , sub: colored personnel on duty in iceland--replacement of, p- , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, thomas r. reid for najeeb halaby, dir, office of foreign military affairs, osd, jul , sub: foreign assignments of negro personnel, ppb . ( jul ).] the interservice and departmental aspects of the problem involved secretary of defense johnson. following promulgation of his directive on racial equality and at the instigation of his personnel policy board and his assistant, najeeb halaby, johnson asked the secretary of state for a formal expression of views on the use of black troops in a lengthy list of countries.[ - ] such an expression was clearly necessary, as air force spokesmen pointed out. informed of the consultations, assistant secretary zuckert asked that an interim policy be formulated, so urgent had the problem become in the air force where new racial policies and assignments were under way.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, secdef to secy of state, sep , cd - - , secdef files.] [footnote - : memo, asst secaf for chmn, ppb, sep , sub: assignment of negroes to overseas areas; memo, dir of staff, ppb, for asst secaf, sep , same sub; memo, asst secaf for chmn, ppb, oct , same sub. all in secaf files.] for his part the secretary of state had no objection to stationing negroes in any of the listed countries. in fact, under secretary james e. webb assured johnson, the state department welcomed the new defense department policy of equal treatment and opportunity as a step toward the achievement of the nation's foreign policy objectives. at the same time webb admitted that there were certain countries--he listed specifically iceland, greenland, canada, newfoundland, bermuda, and british possessions in the caribbean--where local attitudes might affect the morale of black troops and their relations with the inhabitants. the state department, therefore, preferred advance warning when the services planned to assign negroes to these countries so that it might consult the host governments and reduce "possible complications" to a minimum.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, james e. webb to louis johnson, oct ; memo, secdef for sa et al., oct ; both in cd - - , secdef files.] this policy definition did not end the matter. in the first place the state department decided not to restrict its list of excepted areas to the six mentioned. while it had no objection to the assignment of individual negroes or nonsegregated units to panama, the department informally advised the army in december , it did interpose grave objections to the assignment of black units.[ - ] accordingly, only individual negroes were assigned to temporary units in the panama command.[ - ] [footnote - : df, d/pa to d/ot, mar , sub: utilization of negro manpower; ltr, d/pa for maj gen ray e. porter, cg, usacarib, feb ; both in csgpa . .] [footnote - : g- summary sheet, apr , sub: utilization of negro manpower, csgpa . .] yet for several reasons, the services were uneasy about the situation. the director of marine corps personnel, for example, feared that since in the bulk reassignment of marines enlisted men were transferred by rank and military occupational specialties only, a black marine might be assigned to an excepted area by oversight. yet the corps was reluctant to change the system.[ - ] an air force objection was (p.  ) more pointed. general edwards worried that the restrictions were becoming public knowledge and would probably cause adverse criticism of the air force. he wanted the state department to negotiate with the countries concerned to lift the restrictions or at least to establish a clear-cut, defensible policy. secretary symington discussed the matter with secretary of defense johnson, and halaby, knowing deputy under secretary of state dean rusk's particular interest in having men assigned without regard to race, agreed to take the matter up with rusk.[ - ] secretary of the navy francis p. matthews reminded johnson that black servicemen already numbered among the thousands of navy men assigned to four of the six areas mentioned, and if the system continued these men would periodically and routinely be replaced with other black sailors. should the navy, he wanted to know, withdraw these negroes? given the "possible unfavorable reaction" to their withdrawal, the navy wanted to keep negroes in these areas in approximately their present numbers.[ - ] both the fahy committee and the personnel policy board made it clear that they too wanted black servicemen retained wherever they were currently assigned.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir of personnel, usmc, for dir, div of plans and policies, dec , hist div, hqmc.] [footnote - : memo, dep cs/pers for secaf, dec ; memo, clarence h. osthagen, asst to secaf, for asst secaf, jan ; rcd of telecon, halaby with zuckert, jan . all in secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, secnav for secdef, jan , sub: foreign assignment of negro personnel, cd - - , secdef files.] [footnote - : memo, neh (halaby) for maj gen j. h. burns, feb , attached to ltr, burns to rusk, feb , cd - - , secdef files.] maj. gen. james h. burns, secretary johnson's assistant for foreign military affairs, put the matter to the state department, and james evans followed up by discussing it with rusk. reassured by these consultations, secretary johnson issued a more definitive policy statement for the services on april explaining that "the department of state endorses the policy of freely assigning negro personnel or negro or non-segregated units to any part of the world to which us forces are sent; it is prepared to support the desires of the department of defense in this respect."[ - ] nevertheless, since certain governments had from time to time indicated an unwillingness to accept black servicemen, johnson directed the services to inform him in advance when black troops were to be dispatched to countries where no blacks were then stationed so that host countries might be consulted. this new statement produced immediate reaction in the services. citing a change in policy, the air force issued directives opening all overseas assignments except iceland to negroes. after an extended discussion on the assignment of black troops to the trieste (trust) area, the army followed suit.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secdef for sa et al., apr , sub: foreign assignment of negro personnel; ltr, dean rusk to maj gen burns, mar ; memo, burns for secdef, apr . all in cd - - , secdef files.] [footnote - : df, acs, g- , for csa, dec , sub: restricted distribution of negro personnel; ibid., mar , sub: assignment of negro personnel to trust; both in cs . negroes. see also memo, acs, g- , for tag, apr , sub: assignment of negro personnel, ag . ( apr ); memo, asecaf for secdef, apr , sub: foreign assignment of negro personnel, cd - - , secdef files.] yet the problem refused to go away, largely because the services continued to limit foreign assignment of black personnel, particularly in attache offices, military assistance advisory groups, and military missions. the army's g- , for example, concluded in that, (p.  ) while the race of an individual was not a factor in determining eligibility for a mission assignment, the attitude of certain countries (he was referring to certain latin american countries) made it advisable to inform the host country of the race of the prospective applicant. for a host country to reject a negro was undesirable, he concluded, but for a negro to be assigned to a country that did not welcome him would be embarrassing to both countries.[ - ] when the chief of the military mission in turkey asked the army staff in to reconsider assigning black soldiers to turkey because of the attitude of the turks, the army canceled the assignment.[ - ] [footnote - : g- summary sheet, nov , sub: assignment of negro personnel, g- . .] [footnote - : msg, chief, jammat, ankara, turkey, to da, personal for the g- , apr ; ltr, brig gen w. e. dunkelberg to maj gen william h. arnold, chief, jammat, apr ; idem to brig gen john b. murphy, g- sec, eucom, april . all in g- . .] [illustration: th division troops unload trucks and equipment _at sasebo railway station, japan, for transport to korea, _.] undoubtedly certain countries objected to the assignment of american servicemen on grounds of race or religion, but there were also indications that racial restrictions were not always made at the behest of the host country.[ - ] in congressman adam clayton powell protested that negroes were not being assigned to the (p.  ) offices of attaches, military assistance advisory groups, and military missions.[ - ] in particular he was concerned with ethiopia, whose emperor had personally assured him that his government had no race restrictions. the deputy assistant secretary of the army admitted that negroes were barred from ethiopia, and although documentary evidence could not be produced, the ban was thought to have been imposed at the request of the united nations. the state department claimed it was unaware of any such ban, nor could it find documentation to support the army's contention. it objected neither to the assignment of individual negroes to attache and advisory offices in ethiopia nor to "most" other countries.[ - ] having received these assurances, the department of defense informed the services that "it was considered appropriate" to assign black servicemen to the posts discussed by congressman powell.[ - ] for some time, however, the notion persisted in the department of defense that black troops should not be assigned to ethiopia.[ - ] in fact, restrictions and reports of restrictions against the assignment of americans to a number of overseas posts on grounds of race or religion persisted into the 's.[ - ] [footnote - : jack greenberg, _race relations and american law_ (new york: columbia university press, ), pp. - .] [footnote - : memo, dep asa for asd/isa, feb , sub: racial assignment restrictions, osa . ethiopia.] [footnote - : ltr, dep asst secy of state for personnel to dep asd (mp&r), may , oasd (mp&r) . .] [footnote - : memo, dep asd for asa (mp&r) et al., jun , asd (mp&r) . .] [footnote - : memo, james c. evans for paul hopper, isa, oct ; memo for rcd, exec to civilian asst, osd, jan , sub: maag's and missions, copies of both in cmh.] [footnote - : see afm - l, appendix m, dec , sub: assignment restrictions; memo, usmc ig for dir of pers, mc, aug , sub: problem area at marine barracks, argentia, hist div, hqmc. see also new york _times_, december , and november , , and , .] _congressional concerns_ congress was slow to see that changes were gradually transforming the armed services. in its special preelection session, the eightieth congress ignored the recently issued truman order on racial equality just as it ignored the president's admonition to enact a general civil rights program. but when the new eighty-first congress met in january the subjects of armed forces integration, the truman order, and the fahy committee all began to receive attention. debate on race in the services occurred frequently in both houses. each side appealed to constitutional and legal principles to support its case, but the discussions might well have remained a philosophical debate if the draft law had not come up for renewal in . the debate focused mostly on an amendment proposed by senator richard b. russell of georgia that would allow inductees and enlistees, upon their written declaration of intent, to serve in a unit manned exclusively by members of their own race. russell had made this proposal once before, but because it seemed of little consequence to the still largely segregated services of it was ignored. now in the wake of the executive order and the fahy committee report, the amendment came to sudden prominence. and when russell succeeded in discharging the draft bill with his amendment from the senate armed forces committee with the members' unanimous approval, civil rights supporters quickly (p.  ) jumped to the attack. even before the bill was formally introduced on the floor, senator wayne morse of oregon told his colleagues that the russell amendment conflicted with the stated policy of the administration as well as with sound republican principles. he cited the waste of manpower the amendment would bring about and reminded his colleagues of the international criticism the armed forces had endured in the past because of undemocratic social practices.[ - ] [footnote - : _congressional record_, st cong., d sess., vol. , p. .] when debate began on the amendment, senator leverett saltonstall of massachusetts was one of the first to rise in opposition. while confessing sympathy for the states' rights philosophy that recognized the different customs of various sections of the nation, he branded the russell amendment unnecessary, provocative, and unworkable, and suggested congress leave the services alone in this matter. to support his views he read into the record portions of the fahy committee report, which represented, he emphasized, the judgment of impartial civilians appointed by the president, another civilian.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., pp. , .] discussion of the russell amendment continued with opponents and defenders raising the issues of military efficiency, legality, and principles of equality and states' rights. in the end the amendment was defeated to with not voting, a close vote if one considers that the abstentions could have changed the outcome.[ - ] a similar amendment, this time introduced by congressman arthur winstead of mississippi, was also defeated in . [footnote - : ibid., p. ; see also memo, rear adm h. a. houser, osd legis liaison, for asd rosenberg, mar , sub: winstead anti-nonsegregation amendment, sd . .] the russell amendment was the high point of the congressional fight against armed forces integration. during the next year the integrationists took their turn, their barrage of questions and demands aimed at obtaining from the secretary of defense additional reforms in the services. on balance, these congressmen were no more effective than the segregationists. secretary johnson had obviously adopted a hands-off policy on integration.[ - ] certainly he openly discouraged further public and congressional investigations of the department's racial practices. when the committee against jim crow sought to investigate racial conditions in the seventh army in december , johnson told a. philip randolph and grant reynolds that he could not provide them with military transport, and he closed the discussion by referring the civil rights leaders to the army's new special regulation on equal opportunity published in january .[ - ] [footnote - : see ltrs, rep. kenneth b. keating to johnson, dec ; secdef to keating, jan ; idem to hubert h. humphrey, mar ; humphrey to secdef, feb ; rep. jacob javits to johnson, dec ; draft ltr, secdef to javits, jan (not sent); memos, leva for johnson, and jan . all in sd . negroes.] [footnote - : ltrs, johnson to reynolds, dec ; reynolds to johnson, jan ; reynolds and randolph to johnson, jan ; johnson to reynolds and randolph, feb . the committee against jim crow was particularly upset with johnson's assistants, leva and evans; see ltrs, reynolds to johnson, dec ; leva to niles, feb ; reynolds to evans, jan . all in sd . .] [illustration: assistant secretary rosenberg _talks with men of the th medium tank battalion during a far east tour_.] johnson employed much the same technique when congressman jacob (p.  ) k. javits of new york, who with several other legislators had become interested in the joint congressional-citizen commission proposed by the committee against jim crow, introduced a resolution in the house calling for a complete investigation into the racial practices and policies of the services by a select house committee.[ - ] johnson tried to convince chairman adolph j. sabath of the house committee on rules that the new service policies promised equal treatment and opportunity, again using the new army regulation to demonstrate how these policies were being implemented.[ - ] once more he succeeded in diverting the integrationists. the javits resolution came to naught, and although that congressman still harbored some reservations on racial progress in the army, he nevertheless reprinted an article from _our world_ magazine in the _congressional record_ in april that outlined "the very good progress" being made by the secretary (p.  ) of defense in the racial field.[ - ] javits would have no reason to suspect, but the "very good progress" he spoke of had not issued from the secretary's office. for all practical purposes, johnson's involvement in civil rights in the armed forces ended with his battle with the fahy committee. certainly in the months after the committee was disbanded he did nothing to push for integration and allowed the subject of civil rights to languish. [footnote - : ltr, javits to johnson, dec ; press release, jacob k. javits, jan ; ltr, javits to johnson, jan . other legislators expressed interest in the joint commission idea; see ltrs, saltonstall to johnson, jan ; sen. william langer to johnson, oct ; henry c. lodge to johnson, nov . all in sd . . see also ltr, javits to author, with attachments, oct , cmh files.] [footnote - : ltr, secdef to chmn, cmte on rules, mar , sd . ( mar ).] [footnote - : _congressional record_, st cong., d sess., pp. a - ; memo, leva for johnson, may ; ltr, johnson to javits, may ; both in secdef files. see also ltr, javits to author, oct .] departmental interest in racial affairs quickened noticeably when general marshall, johnson's successor, appointed the brilliant labor relations and manpower expert anna m. rosenberg as the first assistant secretary of defense for manpower and personnel.[ - ] rosenberg had served on both the manpower consulting committee of the army and navy munitions board and the war manpower commission and toward the end of the war in the european theater as a consultant to general eisenhower, who recommended her to marshall for the new position.[ - ] she was encouraged by the secretary to take independent control of the department's manpower affairs, including racial matters.[ - ] that she was well acquainted with integration leaders and sympathetic to their objectives is attested by her correspondence with them. "dear anna," senator hubert h. humphrey wrote in march , voicing confidence in her attitude toward segregation, "i know i speak for many in the senate when i say that your presence with the department of defense is most reassuring."[ - ] [footnote - : carl w. borklund, _men of the pentagon_ (new york: praeger, ), pp. - ; ltr, anna rosenberg hoffman to author, sep ; interv, author with james c. evans, sep ; both in cmh files.] [footnote - : immediately before her appointment as the manpower assistant, rosenberg was a public member of the committee on mobilization policy of the national security resources board and a special consultant on manpower problems to the chairman of the board, stuart symington.] [footnote - : interv, author with davenport, oct .] [footnote - : ltr, humphrey to rosenberg, mar , sd . .] still, to bring about effective integration of the services would take more than a positive attitude, and rosenberg faced a delicate situation. she had to reassure integrationists that the new racial policy would be enforced by urging the sometimes reluctant services to take further steps toward eliminating discrimination. at the same time she had to promote integration and avoid provoking the segregationists in congress to retaliate by blocking other defense legislation. the bill for universal military training was especially important to the department and to push for its passage was her primary assignment. it is not surprising, therefore, that she accomplished little in the way of specific racial reform during the first year of the korean war. secretary rosenberg took it upon herself to meet with legislators interested in civil rights to outline the department's current progress and future plans for guaranteeing equal treatment for black servicemen. she also arranged for her assistants and brig. gen. b. m. mcfayden, the army's deputy g- , to brief officials of the various civil rights organizations on the same subject.[ - ] she had congressional complaints and proposals speedily investigated, and (p.  ) demanded from the services periodic progress reports which she issued to legislators who backed civil rights.[ - ] [footnote - : see memo for rcd, maj m. o. becker, g- , mar , g- . ; ltrs, granger to leva, jan , leva to granger, feb , clarence mitchell, naacp, to rosenberg, mar , last three in sd . . legislators attending these briefings included senators lehman, william benton of connecticut, humphrey, john pastore of rhode island, and kilgore.] [footnote - : see ltrs, humphrey to rosenberg, mar ; rosenberg to humphrey, mar ; javits to secdef, mar ; marshall to javits, mar ; memo, leva for rosenberg, mar ; ltrs, rosenberg to douglas, humphrey, benton, kilgore, lehman, and javits, jun ; memo, rosenberg for sa, may , sub: private lionel e. bolin. all in sd . . see also df, acs, g- , to csa, apr , sub: summary of advances in utilization of negro manpower, cs . negroes.] rosenberg and her departmental colleagues were less forthcoming in some other areas of civil rights. reflecting a desire to placate segregationist forces in congress, they did little, for example, to promote federal protection of servicemen in cases of racial violence outside the military reservation. the naacp had been urging the passage of such legislation for many years, and in march clarence mitchell called rosenberg's attention to the mistreatment of black servicemen and their families suffered at the hands of policemen and civilians in communities surrounding some military bases.[ - ] at times, walter white charged, these humiliations and abuses by civilians were condoned by military police. he warned that such treatment "can only succeed in adversely affecting the morale of negro troops ... and hamper efforts to secure fullhearted support of the american negro for the government's military and foreign policy program."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, mitchell to rosenberg, mar , sd . .] [footnote - : telgs, white to marshall and sa, jan , copy in sd . .] the civil rights leaders had at least some congressional support for their demand. congressman abraham j. multer of new york called on the armed services committee to include in the extension of the selective service act an amendment making attacks on uniformed men and women and discrimination against them by public officials and in public places of recreation and interstate travel federal offenses.[ - ] focusing on a different aspect of the problem, senator humphrey introduced an amendment to the senate version of the bill to protect servicemen detained by public authority against civil violence or punishment by extra legal forces. both amendments were tabled before final vote on the bill.[ - ] [footnote - : _congressional record_, st cong., d sess., vol. , p. a .] [footnote - : ibid., p. . for the army's opposition to these proposals, see memo acofs, g- , for cofs, apr , sub: department of the army policies re segregation and utilization of negro manpower, g- . ( apr ).] the matter came up again in the next congress when senator herbert h. lehman of new york offered a similar amendment to the universal military training bill.[ - ] commenting for his department, secretary marshall admitted that defense officials had been supporting such legislation since when stimson asked for help in protecting servicemen in the civilian community. but marshall was against linking the measure to the training bill, which, he explained to congressman franck r. havenner of california, was of such fundamental importance that its passage should not be endangered by consideration of extraneous issues. he wanted the problem of federal protection considered as a separate piece of legislation.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, maj m. o. becker, g- , mar , g- . .] [footnote - : ltr, secdef to havenner, mar , secdef files.] but evidently not just yet, for when the naacp's mitchell, (p.  ) referring to marshall's letter to congressman havenner, asked rosenberg to press for separate legislation, he was told that since final congressional action was still pending on the universal military training and reserve programs it was not an auspicious moment for action on a federal protection bill.[ - ] the department's reluctance to act in the matter obviously involved more than concern with the fate of universal military training. summing up department policy on june, the day after the training bill passed the house, rosenberg explained that the department of defense would not itself propose any legislation to extend to servicemen the protection afforded "civilian employees" of the federal government but would support such a proposal if it came from "any other source."[ - ] this limitation was further defined by rosenberg's colleagues in the defense department. on june the assistant secretary of defense for legal and legislative affairs, daniel k. edwards, rejected mitchell's request for help in preparing the language of a bill to protect black servicemen. mitchell had explained that discussions with congressional leaders convinced the naacp that chances for such legislation were favorable, but the defense department's assistant general counsel declared the department did not ordinarily act "as a drafting service for outside agencies."[ - ] in fact, effective legislation to protect servicemen off military bases was more than a decade away. [footnote - : ltr, mitchell to rosenberg, apr ; ltr, rosenberg to mitchell, may ; both in sd . .] [footnote - : memo, asd (mp&r) for asd (legal and legis affairs), jun , sd . ; pl , d congress.] [footnote - : ltr, mitchell, dir, washington br, naacp, to dir of industrial relations, dod, may ; ltr, asd (legal and legis affairs) to mitchell, jun ; memo, asst gen counsel, osd, for asd (legal and legis affairs), jun . all in sd . .] despite her concern over possible congressional opposition, rosenberg achieved one important reform during her first year in office. for years the army's demand for a parity of enlistment standards had been opposed by the navy and the air force and had once been rejected by secretary forrestal. now rosenberg was able to convince marshall and the armed services committees that in times of manpower shortages the services suffered a serious imbalance when each failed to get its fair share of recruits from the various so-called mental categories.[ - ] her assistant, ralph p. sollat, prepared a program for her incorporating roy k. davenport's specific suggestions. the program would allow volunteer enlistments to continue but would require all the services to give a uniform entrance test to both volunteers and draftees. (actually, rather than develop a completely new entrance test, the other services eventually adopted the army's, which was renamed the armed forces qualification test.) sollat also devised an arrangement whereby each service had to recruit men in each of the four mental categories in accordance with an established quota. manpower experts agreed that this program offered the best chance to distribute manpower equally among the services. approved by secretary marshall on april under the title qualitative distribution of military manpower program, it quickly changed the intellectual composition of the services by obliging the navy and air force to share responsibility with the army for the training and employment (p.  ) of less gifted inductees. for the remainder of the korean war, for example, each of the services, not just the army, had to take percent of its new recruits from category iv, the low-scoring group. this figure was later reduced to percent and finally in to percent.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, anna rosenberg hoffman to author, sep .] [footnote - : bupers study, pers a (probably jan ), genrecsnav.] the navy and the air force had always insisted their high minimum entrance requirements were designed to maintain the good quality of their recruits and had nothing to do with race. roy davenport believed otherwise and read into their standards an intent to exclude all but a few negroes. rosenberg saw in the new qualitative distribution program not only the chance to upgrade the army but also a way of "making sure that the other services had their proper share of negroes."[ - ] because so many negroes scored below average in achievement tests and therefore made up a large percentage of the men in category iv, the new program served rosenberg's double purpose. even after discounting the influence of other factors, statistics suggest that the imposition of the qualitative distribution program operated just as rosenberg and the fahy committee before her had predicted. (_table _) [footnote - : interv, author with davenport, oct ; and ltr, anna rosenberg hoffman to author, sep .] table --percentage of black enlisted men and women service july july july army . . . navy . . . air force . . . marine corps . . . _source_: memo for rcd, asd/m, sep , sub: integration percentages, asd(m) . . the program had yet another consequence: it destroyed the army's best argument for the reimposition of the racial quota. upset over the steadily rising number of black enlistments in the early months of the korean war, the army's g- had pressed secretary pace in october , and again five months later with g- concurrence, to reinstate a ceiling on black enlistments. assistant secretary earl d. johnson returned the request "without action," noting that the new qualitative distribution program would produce a "more equitable" solution.[ - ] the president's agreement with secretary gray about reimposing a quota notwithstanding, it was highly unlikely that the army could have done so without returning to the white house for permission, and when in may the army staff renewed its demand, pace considered asking the white house for a quota on negroes in category iv. after consulting with rosenberg on the long-term effects of qualitative distribution of manpower, however, pace agreed to drop the matter.[ - ] [footnote - : g- summary sheet with incl, mar , sub: negro strength in the army; memo, asa for cofs, apr , same sub; both in cs . negroes ( mar ).] [footnote - : memo, actg cofs for sa, may , sub: present overstrength in segregated units; g- summary sheet for cofs, may , same sub; draft memo, frank pace, jr., for president; memo, asa for sa, jul . all in g- . ( may ).] executive order passed its third anniversary in july (p.  ) with little having happened in the office of the secretary of defense to lift the hearts of the champions of integration. the race issues with which the secretary of defense concerned himself in these years--the definition of race, the status of black servicemen overseas, even the parity of enlistment standards--while no doubt important in the long run to the status of the negro in the armed forces, had little to do with the immediate problem of segregation. secretary johnson had done nothing to enforce the executive order in the army and his successor achieved little more. willing to let the services set the pace of reform, neither secretary substantially changed the armed forces' racial practices. the integration process that began in those years was initiated, appropriately enough perhaps, by the services themselves. chapter (p.  ) integration in the air force and the navy the racial reforms instituted by the four services between and demonstrated that integration was to a great extent concerned with effective utilization of military manpower. in the case of the army and the marine corps the reforms would be delayed and would occur, finally, on the field of battle. the navy and the air force, however, accepted the connection between military efficiency and integration even before the fahy committee began to preach the point. despite their very dissimilar postwar racial practices, the air force and the navy were facing the same problem. in a period of reduced manpower allocations and increased demand for technically trained men, these services came to realize that racial distinctions were imposing unacceptable administrative burdens and reducing fighting efficiency. their response to the fahy committee was merely to expedite or revise integration policies already decided upon. _the air force, - _ the air force's integration plan had gone to the secretary of defense on january , committing that service to a major reorganization of its manpower. in a period of severe budget and manpower retrenchment, the air force was proposing to open all jobs in all fields to negroes, subject only to the individual qualifications of the men and the needs of the service.[ - ] to ascertain these needs and qualifications the director of personnel planning was prepared to screen the service's , negroes ( officers and , airmen), approximately percent of its strength, for the purpose of reassigning those eligible to former all-white units and training schools and dropping the unfit from the service.[ - ] as secretary of the air force symington made clear, his integration plan would be limited in scope. some black service units would be retained; the rest would be eliminated, "thereby relieving the air force of the critical problems involved in manning these units with qualified personnel."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asecaf for symington, mar , sub: salient factors of air force policy regarding negro personnel, secaf files.] [footnote - : negro strength figures as of april . ltr, asecaf to robert harper, chief clerk, house armed services cmte, apr , secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, symington for forrestal, jan , secaf files.] in the end the integration process was not a drawn-out one; much of symington's effort in was devoted instead to winning approval for the plan. submitted to forrestal on january , it was (p.  ) slightly revised after lengthy discussions in both the fahy committee and the personnel policy board and in keeping with the defense secretary's equal treatment and opportunity directive of april . some further delay resulted from the personnel policy board's abortive attempt to achieve an equal opportunity program common to all the services. the air force plan was not finally approved by the secretary of defense until may. some in the air force were worried about the long delay in approval. as early as january the chief of staff warned symington that budget programming for the new -wing force required an early decision on the plan, especially in regard to the inactivation of the all-black wing at lockbourne. further delay, he predicted, would cause confusion in reassignment of some , troops.[ - ] in conversation with the secretary of defense, symington mentioned a deadline of march, but assistant secretary zuckert was later able to assure symington that the planners could tolerate a delay in the decision over integration until may.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, hoyt s. vandenberg, cofs, usaf, for secaf, jan , secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, secaf for forrestal, feb ; memo, asecaf for symington, mar , sub: lockbourne afb; both in secaf files.] by then the long official silence had produced serious consequences, for despite the lack of any public announcement, parts of the plan had leaked to the press and caused some debate in congress and considerable dissatisfaction among black servicemen. congressional interest in the internal affairs of the armed forces was always of more than passing concern to the services. when a discussion of the new integration plan appearing in the washington _post_ on march caused a flurry of comment on capitol hill, zuckert's assistant, clarence h. osthagen, met with the clerk of the house armed services committee to "explain and clarify" for the air force. the clerk, robert harper, warned osthagen that the impression in the house was that a "complete intermingling of negro and white personnel was to take place" and that congressman winstead of mississippi had been tempted to make a speech on the subject. still, harper predicted that there would be no adverse criticism of the plan in the house "at this time," adding that since that body had already passed the air force appropriation chairman carl vinson was generally unconcerned about the air force racial program. reporting on senate reaction, harper noted that while many members of the upper house would have liked to see the plan deferred, they recognized that the president's order made change mandatory. at any rate, harper reassured osthagen, the announcement of an integration plan would not jeopardize pending air force legislation.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for files, osthagen, asst to asecaf, apr , secaf files.] unfortunately, the air force's black personnel were not so easily reassured, and the service had a morale problem on its hands during the spring of . as later reported by the fahy committee staff, black troops generally supported the inactivation of the all-black d fighter wing at lockbourne as a necessary step toward integration, but news reports frequently linked the disbandment of that unit to the belt tightening imposed on the air force by the budget. some negroes in the d concluded that the move was not (p.  ) directed at integration but at saving money for the air force.[ - ] they were concerned lest they find themselves relegated to unskilled labor units despite their training and experience. this fear was not so farfetched, considering zuckert's private prediction that the redistribution of lockbourne men had to be executed exactly according to the proposed program or "we would find experienced air force negro technical specialists pushing wheelbarrows or driving trucks in negro service units."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, joseph h. evans, assoc exec secy, fahy cmte, to fahy cmte, jun , fc file. see also "u.s. armed forces: ," _our world _ (june ): - .] [footnote - : draft memo, zuckert for symington, feb , sub: air force policies on negro personnel (not sent), secaf files.] the truth was that, while most negroes in the air force favored integration, some were disturbed by the prospect of competition with whites of equivalent rank that would naturally follow. many of the black officers were overage in grade, their proficiency geared to the f- , a wartime piston plane, and they were the logical victims of any reduction in force that might occur in this period of reduced military budgets.[ - ] some men doubted that the new program, as they imperfectly understood it, would truly integrate the service. they could, for example, see no way for the air force to break through what the press called the "community patterns" around southern bases, and they were generally suspicious of the motives of senior department officials. the pittsburgh _courier_ summarized this attitude by quoting one black officer who expressed doubt "that a fair program will be enforced from the top echelon."[ - ] [footnote - : washington _post_, april , ; usaf oral history program, interview with lt col spann watson (usaf, ret.), apr .] [footnote - : pittsburgh _courier_, january , .] but such suspicions were unfounded, for the air force's senior officials were determined to enforce the new program both fairly and expeditiously. general vandenberg, the chief of staff, reported to the war council on january that the air force would "effect full and complete implementation" of its integration plan not only by issuing the required directives and orders, but also by assigning responsibility for monitoring the worldwide implementation of the program to his deputy for personnel. the chief of staff also planned to call a meeting of his senior commanders to discuss and solve problems rising from the plan and impress on them the personal attention they must give to carrying it out in the field.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, vandenberg, cofs, usaf, for secaf, jan , secaf files.] the air force commanders' conference, assembled on april , heard lt. gen. idwal edwards, the deputy chief of staff for personnel, explain the genesis of the integration plan and outline its major provisions. he mentioned two major steps to be taken in the first phase of the program. first, the d fighter wing would be inactivated on or before june, and all blacks would be removed from lockbourne. the commander of the continental air command would create a board of lockbourne officers to screen those assigned to the all-black base, dividing them into three groups. the skilled and qualified officers and airmen would be reassigned worldwide to white units "just like any other officers or airmen of similar skills (p.  ) and qualifications." general edwards assumed that the number of men in this category would not be large. some officers and , airmen, he estimated, would be found sufficiently qualified and proficient for such reassignment. he added parenthetically that colonel davis understood the "implications" of the new policy and intended to recommend only an individual "of such temperament, judgment, and common sense that he can get along smoothly as an individual in a white unit, and second, that his ability is such as to warrant respect of the personnel of the unit to which he is transferred." the technically unqualified but still "usable" men would be reassigned to black service units. the staff recognized, general edwards added, that some negroes were unsuited for assignment to white units for "various reasons" and had specifically authorized the retention of "this type of negro" in black units. finally, those who were found neither qualified nor useful would be discharged under current regulations. the second major action would be taken at the same time as the first. all commands would similarly screen their black troops with the object of reassigning the skilled and qualified to white units and eliminating the chronically unqualified. at the same time racial quotas for recruitment and school attendance would be abolished. henceforth, blacks would enter the air force under the same standards as whites and would be classified, assigned, promoted, or eliminated in accordance with rules that would apply equally to all. "in other words," edwards commented, "no one is either helped or hindered because of the color of his skin; how far or how fast each one goes depends upon his own ability." to assure equal treatment and opportunity, he would closely monitor the problem. edwards admitted that the subject of integrated living quarters had caused discussion in the staff, but based on the navy's years of good experience with integrated quarters and bolstered by the probability that the number of negroes in any white unit would rarely exceed percent, the staff saw no need for separate sleeping accommodations. general edwards reminded the assembled commanders that, while integration was new to the air force, the navy had been following a similar policy for years, encountering no trouble, even in the deep south where black troops as well as the nearby civilian communities understood that when men left the base they must conform to the laws and customs of the community. and as a parting shot he made the commanders aware of where the command responsibility lay: there will be frictions and incidents. however, they will be minimized if commanders give the implementation of this policy their personal attention and exercise positive command control. unless our young commanders are guided and counselled by the senior commanders in unbiased implementation, we may encounter serious troubles which the navy has very ably avoided. it must have your _personal attention and personal control_.[ - ] [footnote - : lt gen i. h. edwards, "remarks on major personnel problems presented to usaf commanders' conference headquarters, usaf," apr , secaf files. italics in the original.] compelling reasons for reform notwithstanding, the effectiveness of an integration program would in the end depend on the attitude and initiative of the local commander. in the air force's case the (p.  ) ultimate effectiveness owed much to the fact that the determination of its senior officials was fully explained and widely circulated throughout the service. as lt. gen. daniel (chappie) james, jr., later recalled, those who thought to frustrate the process were well aware that they risked serious trouble if their opposition was discovered by the senior commanders. none of the obvious excuses for preserving the racial _status quo_ remained acceptable after vandenberg and edwards made their positions clear.[ - ] [footnote - : usaf oral history program, interview with lt gen daniel james, jr., oct . james was to become the first four-star black officer in the armed forces.] the fact that the control of the new plan was specifically made a personal responsibility of the senior commanders spoke well for its speedy and efficient execution. this was the kind of talk commanders understood, and as the order filtered down to the lower echelons its terms became even more explicit.[ - ] "direct attention to this changed condition is required throughout the command," maj. gen. laurence s. kuter notified his subordinate commanders at the military air transport service. "judgment, leadership, and ingenuity are demanded. commanders who cannot cope with the integration of negroes into formerly white units or activities will have no place in the air force structure."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, marr to author, jun .] [footnote - : mats hq ltr no. , may , secaf files.] the order itself, as approved by the secretary of defense on may and published on the same day as air force letter - , was unmistakable in intent and clearly spelled out a new bill of rights for negroes in the air force.[ - ] the published directive differed in some respects from the version drafted by the chief of staff in january. despite general edwards's comments at the commanders' conference in april, the provision for allowing commanders to segregate barracks "if considered necessary" was removed even before the plan was first forwarded to the secretary of defense. this deletion was made in the office of the secretary of the air force, probably by zuckert.[ - ] later zuckert commented, "i wouldn't want to give the commanders that kind of sweeping power. i would be afraid of how it might be exercised."[ - ] from the beginning, black airmen were billeted routinely in the living quarters of the units to which they were assigned. [footnote - : af ltr - , may . effective until may , the order was superseded by a new but similar letter, af ltr - , on september .] [footnote - : memo, asecaf for symington, jan , af negro affairs , secaf files.] [footnote - : usaf oral hist interv with zuckert.] the final version of the directive also deleted reference to a percent limitation on black strength in formerly white units. zuckert had assured the fahy committee this limitation was designed to facilitate, not frustrate, the absorption of negroes into white units, and edwards even agreed that given the determination of air force officials to make a success of their program, the measure was probably unnecessary.[ - ] in the end zuckert decided to drop any reference to such limitations "because of the confusion that seemed to arise from this statement."[ - ] [footnote - : testimony of zuckert and edwards, usaf, before the fahy committee, mar , afternoon session, pp. - .] [footnote - : memo, asecaf for symington, apr , sub: department of the air force implementation of the department of defense policy on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, secaf files.] [illustration: assistant secretary zuckert.] zuckert also deleted several clauses in the supplementary letter (p.  ) to air force commanders that was to accompany and explain the order. these clauses had listed possible exemptions from the new order: one made it possible to retain a man in a black unit if he was one of the "key personnel" considered necessary for the successful functioning of a black unit, and the other allowed the local commander to keep those negroes he deemed "best suited" for continued assignment to black units. the free reassignment of all eligible negroes, particularly the well-qualified, was essential to the eventual dissolution of the all-black units. the fahy committee had objected to these provisions and considered it important for the air force to delete them,[ - ] but the matter was not raised during the committee hearings. there is evidence that the deletions were actually requested by the secretary of defense's personnel policy board, whose influence in the integration of the air force is often overlooked.[ - ] [footnote - : _freedom to serve_, pp. - .] [footnote - : memo, secaf for chmn, ppb, apr , copy in fc file. mccoy and ruetten, _quest and response_, p. , call the deletion a victory for the committee.] the screening of officers and men at lockbourne got under way on may. a board of officers under the presidency of col. davis, the commander of lockbourne, and composed of representatives of air force headquarters, the continental air command, and the air training command, and important officers of lockbourne, interviewed every officer in the wing. after considering each man's technical training, his performance, and his career field preference, the board recommended him for reassignment in a specific duty field. although edwards had promised that the screening boards would also judge each man's "adaptability" to integrated service, this requirement was quickly dropped by davis and his fellow board members.[ - ] in fact, the whole idea of having screening boards was resented by some black officers. zuckert later admitted that the screening may have been a mistake, but at the time it had been considered the best mechanism for ascertaining the proper assignment for the men.[ - ] [footnote - : usaf oral hist interv with davis.] [footnote - : usaf oral hist interv with zuckert.] at the same time, a screening team in the air training command gave a written examination to lockbourne's more than , airmen and waf's to determine if they were in appropriate military occupational specialties. a team of personnel counselors interviewed all (p.  ) airmen, weighed test scores, past performances, qualifications outside of assigned specialty, and choices of a career field, and then placed them in one of three categories. first, they could be earmarked for general reassignment in a specific military occupational specialty different from the one they were now in; second, they could be scheduled for additional or more advanced technical training; or third, they could be trained in their current specialties. the screeners referred marginal or extraordinary cases to colonel davis's board for decision.[ - ] [footnote - : nme fact sheet no. - , jul .] concurrently with the lockbourne processing, individual commanders established similar screening procedures wherever black airmen were then assigned. all these teams uncovered a substantial number of men and women considered eligible for further training or reassignment. (_table _) table --disposition of black personnel at eight air force bases, percentages total asgmt to asgmt to asgmt to recom for base tested instr tech present board duty school mos action lockbourne male . . . . female . . . . lackland . . . . barksdale . . . . randolph . . . . waco . . . . mather . . . . williams . . . . goodfellow . . . . total , . . . . _source_: president's cmte on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces, "a first report on the racial integration program of the air force," feb , fc file. the process of screening lockbourne's troops was quickly completed, but the process of reassigning them was considerably more drawn-out. the reassignments were somewhat delayed in the first place by indecision, caused by budgetary uncertainties, on the future of lockbourne itself. by july, a full two months after the screening began, the lockbourne board had recommended only officers and airmen to air force headquarters for new assignment. a short time later, however, lockbourne was placed on inactive status and its remaining men and women, with the exception of a small caretaker detachment, were quickly reassigned throughout the air force. the staff had predicted that the speed with which the integration order was carried out would follow a geographical pattern, with southern bases the last to integrate, but in fact no special pattern prevailed. for the many negroes assigned to all-black base squadrons for administrative purposes but serving on a day-to-day basis in integrated units, the change was relatively simple. these men had already demonstrated their ability to perform their duties competently under integration, and in conformity with the new order most (p.  ) commanders immediately assigned them to the units in which they were already working. except for their own squadron overhead, some base service squadrons literally disappeared when these reassignments were effected. after the screening process, most commanders also quickly reassigned troops serving in the other all-black units, such as squadron f's, air ammunition, motor transport, vehicle repair, signal heavy construction, and aviation engineer squadrons.[ - ] [footnote - : "report on the first year of implementation of current policies regarding negro personnel," incl to memo, maj gen richard e. nugent for asecaf, jul , sub: distribution of negro personnel, ppb . ( jul ) (hereafter referred to as marr report). see also usaf oral hist interv with marr.] there were of course a few exceptions. some commanders, noticeably more cautious than the majority, began the integration process with considerably less ease and speed.[ - ] as late as january , for example, the fahy committee's executive secretary found that, with the exception of a small number of negroes assigned to white units, the black airmen at maxwell air force base were still assigned to the all-black th base service squadron, the only such unit he found, incidentally, in a tour of seven installations.[ - ] but as the months went by even the most cautious commander, learning of the success of the new policy in other commands, began to reassign his black airmen according to the recommendations of the screening board. despite the announcement that some black units would be retained, practically all units were integrated by the end of the first year of the new program. even using the air staff's very restricted definition of a "negro unit," that is, one whose strength was over percent black, statistics show how radical was the change in just one year. (_table _) [footnote - : usaf oral hist interv with davis.] [footnote - : president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces, "a first report on the racial integration program of the air force," feb , fc file (hereafter cited as kenworthy report).] table --racial composition of air force units negroes assigned negroes assigned month black integrated to black to integrated units units units units[ ] june not available not available july , , august , , september , , october , , , november , , , december , , , january , , , february , , , march , , , april , , , may , , , [tablenote : figures extracted from the marr report; see also monthly reports on af integration, for example memo, dir, pers plng, for osthagen (secaf office), mar , sub: distribution of negro personnel, secaf files.] despite the predictions of some analysts, the effect of (p.  ) integration on black recruitment proved to be negligible. in a service whose total strength remained about , men during the first year of integration, negroes numbered as follows (_table _): table --black strength in the air force percentage officer enlisted of air force date strength[ ] strength[ ] strength december not available not available . june ( ) , ( , ) . august ( ) , ( , ) . december ( ) , ( , ) . may ( ) , ( , ) . [tablenote : includes in parentheses the special category army personnel with air force (scarwaf), those soldiers assigned for duty in the air force but still administratively under the segregated army, leftovers from the department of defense reorganization of . figures extracted from marr report.] the air staff explained that the slight surge in black recruits in the early months of integration was related less to the new policy than to the abnormal recruiting conditions of the period. in addition to the backlog of negroes who for some time had been trying to enlist only to find the air force quota filled, there were many black volunteers who had turned to the quota-free air force when the army, its quota of negroes filled for some time, stopped recruiting negroes. with negroes serving in over , separate units there was no need to invoke the percent racial quota in individual units as vandenberg had ordered. one notable exception during the first months of the program was the air training command, where the rapid and unexpected reassignment of many black airmen caused some bases, james connally in texas, for example, to acquire a great many negroes while others received few or none. to prevent a recurrence of the connally experience and "to effect a smooth operation and proper adjustment of social importance," the commander of the air training command imposed an to percent black quota on his units and established a procedure for staggering the assignment of black airmen in small groups over a period of thirty to sixty days instead of assigning them to any particular base in one large increment. these quotas were not applied to the basic training flights, which were completely integrated. it was not uncommon to find black enlistees in charge of racially mixed training flights.[ - ] of all air force organizations, the training command received the greatest number of black airmen as a result of the screening and reassignment. (_table _) [footnote - : atc, "history of atc, july-december ," i: - ; new york _times_, september , .] table --racial composition of the training command, december (p.  ) a. flight training _percent_ _white_ _black_ _black_ officers , . enlisted , . total , . b. technical training officers , . enlisted , , . total , , . c. indoctrination (basic) training white , black , total , percent black . [a] d. officers candidate training (candidates graduating from november through december ) white black total percent black . e. course representation _base_ _no. of courses_[b] _no. of courses with blacks_ chanute warren keesler lowry scott sheppard [tablenote a: in january , probably as a result of a decline in backlog and the raising of enlistment standard to gct , this percentage dropped to . .] [tablenote b: negroes in percent of the courses offered as of dec .] _source_: kenworthy report. at the end of the first year under the new program, the acting deputy chief of staff for personnel, general nugent, informed zuckert that integration had progressed "rapidly, smoothly and virtually without incident."[ - ] in view of this fact and at nugent's recommendation, the air force canceled the monthly headquarters check on the program. [footnote - : memo, actg dcsper for zuckert, jul , usaf file no. , secaf files.] to some extent the air force's integration program ran away with itself. whatever their personal convictions regarding discrimination, senior air force officials had agreed that integration would be limited. they were most concerned with managerial problems associated with continued segregation of the black flying unit and the black specialists scattered worldwide. other black units were not considered an immediate problem. assistant secretary zuckert admitted as much in march when he reported that black service units would be retained since they performed a "necessary air force function."[ - ] as originally conceived, the air force plan was frankly imitative of the navy's postwar program, stressing merit and ability as the limiting factors of change. the air force promised to discharge all its substandard men, but those black airmen either ineligible for discharge or for reassignment to specialist duty would remain in segregated units. [footnote - : memo, asecaf for symington, mar , sub: salient factors of air force policy regarding negro personnel, secaf files.] yet once begun, the integration process quickly became universal. by the end of , for example, the air force had reduced the number of black units to nine with percent of its black airmen serving in integrated units. the number of black officers rose to , an (p.  ) increase of percent over the previous year, and black airmen to , , an increase of percent, although the proportion of blacks to whites continued to remain between and percent.[ - ] some eighteen months later only one segregated unit was left, a -man outfit, itself more than percent white. negroes were then serving in , integrated units.[ - ] [footnote - : _air force times_, february . these figures do not take into account the scarwaf (army personnel) who continued to serve in segregated units within the air force.] [footnote - : memo, depsecaf for manpower and organizations for asd/m, sep , secaf files.] there were several reasons for the universal application of what was conceived as a limited program. first, the air force was in a sense the captive of its own publicity. while secretary symington had carefully delineated the limits of his departmental plan for the personnel policy board in january , he was carried considerably beyond these limits when he addressed president truman in the open forum of the fahy committee's first formal meeting: as long as you mentioned the air force, sir, i just want to report to you that our plan is to completely eliminate segregation in the air force. for example, we have a fine group of colored boys. our plan is to take those boys, break up that fine group, and put them with the other units themselves and go right down the line all through these subdivisions one hundred percent.[ - ] [footnote - : transcript of the meeting of the president and the four service secretaries with the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, jan , fc file, which reports the president's response as being "that's all right."] later, symington told the fahy committee that while the new program would probably temporarily reduce air force efficiency "we are ready, willing, and anxious to embark on this idea. we want to eliminate the fundamental aspect of class in this picture."[ - ] clearly, the retention of large black units was incompatible with the elimination of class distinctions. [footnote - : testimony of the secretary of the air force before the fahy committee, mar , afternoon session, p. .] the more favorable the publicity garnered by the plan in succeeding months, the weaker the distinction became between the limited integration of black specialists and total integration. reinforcing the favorable publicity were the monthly field reports that registered a steady drop in the number of black units and a corresponding rise in the number of integrated black airmen. this well-publicized progress provided another, almost irresistible reason for completing the task. more to the point, the success of the program provided its own impetus to total integration. the prediction that a significant number of black officers and men would be ineligible for reassignment or further training proved ill-founded. the air force, it turned out, had few untrainable men, and after the screening process and transfer of those eligible was completed, many black units were so severely reduced in strength that their inactivation became inevitable. the fear of white opposition that had inhibited the staff planners and local commanders also proved groundless. according to a fahy committee staff report in march , integration had been readily accepted at all levels and the process had been devoid of friction. "the men," e. w. (p.  ) kenworthy reported, "apparently were more ready for equality of treatment and opportunity than the officer corps had realized."[ - ] at the same time, kenworthy noted the effect of successful integration on the local commanders. freed from the charges of discrimination that had plagued them at every turn, most of the commanders he interviewed remarked on the increased military efficiency of their units and the improved utilization of their manpower that had come with integration. they liked the idea of a strictly competitive climate of equal standards rigidly applied, and some expected that the air force example would have an effect, eventually, on civilian attitudes.[ - ] [footnote - : kenworthy report, as quoted and commented on in memo, worthington thompson (personnel policy board staff) for leva, mar , sub: some highlights of fahy committee report on air force racial integration program, sd . .] [footnote - : ltr, kenworthy to zuckert, jan , secaf files.] [illustration: music makers _of the u.s. far east air force prepare to celebrate christmas, korea, _.] for the air force, it seemed, the problem of segregation was all over but for the celebrating. and there was plenty of that, thanks to the fahy committee and the press. in a well-publicized tour of a cross section of air force installations in early , kenworthy surveyed the integration program for the committee. his favorable report won the air force laudatory headlines in the national press and formed the core of the air force section of the fahy committee's final report, _freedom to serve_.[ - ] for its part, the black press covered the program in great detail and gave its almost unanimous approval. as early as july , for example, dowdal h. davis, president of the negro newspaper publishers association, reported on the highly encouraging reaction to the breakup of the d, and the headlines reflected this attitude: "the air force leads the way," the chicago _defender_ headlined; "salute to the air force," the minneapolis _spokesman_ editorialized; and "the swiftest and most amazing upset of racial policy in the history of the u.s. military," _ebony_ concluded. pointing to the air force program as the best, the pittsburgh _courier_ called the progress toward total integration "better than most dared hope."[ - ] [footnote - : see, for example, the washington _post_, march , .] [footnote - : press reaction summarized in memo, james c. evans for ppb, jan , ppb . . see also, ltr, dowdal davis, gen manager of the kansas city _call_, to evans, jul , sd . ; memo, evans for secaf, jul ; and memo, zuckert for secaf, aug , both in secaf files; chicago _defender_, june , ; minneapolis _spokesman_, january , ; _ebony_ magazine, (september ): ; pittsburgh _courier_, july , ; detroit _free press_, may , .] general vandenberg and his staff were well aware of the rapid and (p.  ) profound change in the air force wrought by the integration order. from the start his personnel chief carefully monitored the program and reviewed the reports from the commands, ready to investigate any racial incidents or differences attributable to the new policy. the staff had expected a certain amount of testing of the new policy by both white and black troops, and with few exceptions the incidents reported turned out to be little more than that. some arose from attempts by negroes to win social acceptance at certain air force installations, but the majority of cases involved attempts by white airmen to introduce their black comrades into segregated off-base restaurants and theaters. two examples might stand for all. the first involved a transient black corporal who stopped off at the bolling air force base, washington, d.c., to get a haircut in a post exchange barbershop. he was refused service and in the absence of the post exchange officer he returned to the shop to trade words and eventually blows with the barber. the corporal was subsequently court-martialed, but the sentence was set aside by a superior court.[ - ] another case involved a small group of white airmen who ordered refreshments at a segregated lunch counter in san antonio, texas, for themselves "and a friend who would join them later." the friend, of course, was a black airman. the inspector general reported this incident to be just one of a number of attempts by groups of white and black airmen to integrate lunch counters and restaurants. in each case the commanders concerned cautioned their men against such action, and there were few reoccurrences.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, ig, usaf, for asecaf, jul , secaf files.] [footnote - : idem for dcsper, sep , copy in secaf files; see also acofs, g- , fourth army, ft. sam houston, summary of information, sep , copy in sa . .] the commanders' warnings were understandable because, as any official from secretary symington on down would quickly explain, the air force did not regard itself as being in the business of forcing changes in american society; it was simply trying to make the best use of its manpower to build military efficiency in keeping with its national defense mission.[ - ] but in the end the integration order proved effective on both counts. racial feelings, racial incidents, charges of discrimination, and the problems of procurement, training, and assignment always associated with racially designated units had been reduced by an appreciable degree or eliminated entirely. the problems anticipated from the mingling of blacks and whites in social situations had proved to be largely imaginary. the air force adopted a standard formula for dealing with these problems during the next decade. incidents involving black airmen were treated as individual incidents and dealt with on a personal basis like any ordinary disciplinary case. only when there was no alternative was an incident labeled "racial" and then the commander was expected to deal speedily and firmly with the troublemakers.[ - ] this sensible procedure freed the air force for a decade from the charges of on-base discrimination that had plagued it in the past. [footnote - : see, for example, memo, secaf for secdef, feb ; ltr, secaf to sen. burnet r. maybank, jul ; both in secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, evans, osd, for worthington thompson, may , sub: summary of topics reviewed in thompson's office may , sd . .] [illustration: maintenance crew, _ d strategic fighter squadron, disassembles aft section of an f- thunderstreak_.] without a doubt the new policy improved the air force's manpower (p.  ) efficiency, as the experience of the d installation group illustrates. a segregated unit serving at eglin air force base, florida, the d was composed of an all-black heavy maintenance and construction squadron, a black maintenance repair and utilities squadron, and an all-white headquarters and headquarters squadron. this rigid segregation had caused considerable trouble for the unit's personnel section, which was forced to assign men on the basis of color rather than military occupational specialty. for example, a white airman with mos , a truck driver, although assigned to the unit, could not be assigned to the heavy maintenance and construction squadron where his specialty was authorized but had to be assigned to the white headquarters squadron where his specialty was not authorized. clearly operating in an inefficient manner, the unit was charged with misassignment of personnel by the air inspector; in july it was swiftly and peaceably, if somewhat belatedly, integrated, and its three squadrons were converted to racially mixed units, allowing an airman to be assigned according to his training and not his color.[ - ] [footnote - : history officer, d installations groups, "history of the d installations group, july- october ," eglin afb, fla., pp. - .] the preoccupation of high officials with the effects of integration on a soldier's social life seemed at times out of keeping with the issues of national defense and military efficiency. at one of the fahy committee hearings, for instance, an exasperated charles fahy asked omar bradley, "general, are you running an army or a dance?"[ - ] yet social life on military bases at swimming pools, dances, bridge parties, and service clubs formed so great a part of the fabric of military life that the air force staff could hardly ignore the possibility of racial troubles in the countless social exchanges that characterized the day-to-day life in any large american institution. the social situation had been seriously considered before the new racial policy was approved. at that time the staff had predicted that problems developing out of integration would not prove insurmountable, and indeed on the basis of a year's experience a member of the air staff declared that (p.  ) at the point where the negro and the white person are actually in contact the problem has virtually disappeared. since all races of air force personnel work together under identical environmental conditions on the base, it is not unnatural that they participate together, to the extent that they desire, in certain social activities which are considered a normal part of service life. this type of integration has been entirely voluntary, without incident, and considerably more complete and more rapid than was anticipated.[ - ] [footnote - : this off-the-record comment occurred during the committee hearings in the pentagon and was related to the author by e. w. kenworthy in interview on october . see also memo, kenworthy to brig gen james l. collins, jr., oct , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : marr report.] [illustration: jet mechanics _work on an f- supersabre, foster air force base, texas_.] the air staff had imposed only two rules on interracial social activities: with due regard for sex and rank all air force facilities were available for the unrestricted use of all its members; troublemakers would get into trouble. under these inflexible rules, the fahy committee later reported, there was a steady movement in the direction of shared facilities. "here again, mutual respect engendered on the job or in the school seemed to translate itself into friendly association."[ - ] whether it liked it or not, the air force was in the business of social change. [footnote - : _freedom to serve_, p. .] typical of most unit reports was one from the commander of the st air transport wing, great falls air force base, montana, who wrote secretary symington that the unit's eighty-three negroes, serving in ten different organizations, lived and worked with white airmen "on an apparently equal and friendly basis."[ - ] the commander had been unable to persuade local community leaders, however, to promote equality of treatment outside the base, and beyond its movie theaters great falls had very few places that allowed black airmen. the commander was touching upon a problem that would eventually trouble all the services: airmen, he reported to secretary symington, although they have good food and entertainment on the base, sooner or later want to go to town, sit at a table, and order what they want. the air force was now coming into conflict with local custom which it could see no way to control. as the _air force times_ put it, "the air force, like the other services, feels circumspect policy in this regard is the only advisable one on the grounds that off-base segregation is a matter for civilian rather than military decision."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, col paul h. prentiss, cmdr, st at wing, to secaf, dec , secaf files.] [footnote - : _air force times_, february .] but this problem could not detract from what had been accomplished on the bases. judged by the standards it set for itself before the fahy committee, the air force had achieved its goals. further, they (p.  ) were achieved in the period between and when the percentage of blacks in the service doubled, an increase resulting from the defense department's qualitative distribution of manpower rather than the removal of the racial quota.[ - ] during these years the number of black airmen rose from . to . percent of the enlisted strength and the black officers from . to . percent. reviewing the situation in , _ebony_ noted that the program begun in was working well and that white men were accepting without question progressive racial practices forbidden in their home communities. minor racial flare-ups still occurred, but integration was no longer a major problem in the air force; it was a fact of life.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, ads(m), sep , sub: integration percentages, ads(m) . . for further discussion of the qualitative distribution program, see navy section, below.] [footnote - : "integration in the air force abroad," _ebony_ (march ): .] _the navy and executive order _ the changing government attitude toward integration in the late 's had less dramatic effect on the navy than upon the other services because the navy was already the conspicuous possessor of a racial policy guaranteeing equal treatment and opportunity for all its members. but as the fahy committee and many other critics insisted, the navy's equality guarantee was largely theoretical; its major racial problem was not one of policy but of practice as statistics demonstrated. it was true, for example, that the navy had abolished racial quotas in recruitment, yet the small number of black sailors-- , during , averaging . percent of the total strength--made the absence of a quota academic.[ - ] it was true that negroes served side by side with white sailors in almost every occupation and training program in the navy, but it was also a fact that percent of all negroes in the navy in were still assigned to the nonwhite steward's branch. this figure shows that as late as december fewer than , black sailors were serving in racially integrated assignments.[ - ] again, with only black officers, including nurses, in a average officer strength of , , it meant little to say that the navy had an integrated officer corps. a shadow had fallen, then, between the promise of the navy's policy and its fulfillment, partly because of indifferent execution. [footnote - : unless otherwise noted all statistics are from information supplied by the bureau of naval personnel. the exact percentage on july was . ; see memo for rcd, asd(m), sep , sub: integration percentages, asd(m) . .] [footnote - : memo, chief, navpers, for under secnav, dec , sub: proposed report to chairman personnel policy board regarding the implementation of executive order , pers , genrecsnav.] submitted to and approved by the secretary of defense, the new navy plan announced on june called for a specific series of measures to bring departmental practices into line with policy.[ - ] once he had gained johnson's approval, secretary of the navy matthews did not tarry. on june he issued an explicit statement to all ships and stations, abjuring racial distinctions in the navy and marine (p.  ) corps and ordering that all personnel be enlisted or appointed, trained, advanced or promoted, assigned and administered without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.[ - ] admirable and comprehensive, matthew's statement scarcely differed in intent from his predecessor's general declaration of equal treatment and opportunity of december and the more explicit directive of the chief of naval operations on the same subject on february . yet despite the close similarity, a reiteration was clearly necessary. as even the most ardent apologist for the navy's postwar racial policy would admit, these groundbreaking statements had not done the job, and, to satisfy the demands of the fahy committee and the secretary of defense, secretary matthews had to convince his subordinates that the demand for equal treatment and opportunity was serious and had to be dealt with immediately. his specific mention of the marine corps and the problems of enlistment, assignment, and promotion, subjects ignored in the earlier directives, represented a start toward the reform of his department's racial practices currently out of step with its expressed policy. [footnote - : memo, secnav for secdef, may , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces, copy in fc file.] [footnote - : alnav - , which remained in force until march when secnav instruction . superseded it without substantial change.] yet a restatement of policy, no matter how specific, was not enough. as under secretary dan a. kimball admitted, the navy had the formidable task of convincing its own people of the sincerity of its policy and of erasing the distrust that had developed in the black community "resulting from past discriminating practices."[ - ] those who were well aware of the navy's earlier failure to achieve integration by fiat were bound to greet secretary matthews's directive with skepticism unless it was accompanied by specific reforms. matthews, aware of the necessity, immediately inaugurated a campaign to recruit more black sailors, commission more black officers, and remove the stigma attached to service in the steward's branch. [footnote - : memo, under secnav for chmn, ppb, dec , sub: implementation of executive order , ppb . .] it was logical enough to start a reform of the navy's integration program by attacking the perennial problem of too few negroes in the general service. in his annual report to the secretary of defense, matthews outlined some of the practical steps the navy was taking to attract more qualified young blacks. the bureau of naval personnel, he explained, planned to assign black sailors and officers to its recruiting service. as a first step it assigned eight negroes to recruitment procurement school and subsequently to recruit duty in eight major cities with further such assignments planned when current manpower ceilings were lifted.[ - ] [footnote - : secnav, annual report to secdef, fy , p. ; memo, under secnav chmn, ppb, dec , sub: implementation of executive order , ppb . .] the bureau of naval personnel had also polled black reservists on the possibility of returning to active duty on recruiting assignments, and from this group had chosen five officers for active duty in the new york, philadelphia, washington, detroit, and chicago recruiting offices. at the same time black officers and petty officers were sent to extol the advantages of a naval career before black student (p.  ) bodies and citizen groups.[ - ] their performances were exceedingly well received. the executive secretary of the dayton, ohio, urban league, for example, thanked secretary matthews for the appearances of lieutenant nelson before groups of students, reporters, and community leaders in the city. the lieutenant, he added, not only "clearly and effectively interpreted the opportunities open to negro youth in the united states navy" but also "greatly accelerated" the community's understanding of the navy's integration program.[ - ] nelson, himself, had been a leading advocate of an accelerated public relations program to advertise the opportunities for negroes in the navy.[ - ] the personnel bureau had adopted his suggestion that all recruitment literature, including photographs testifying to the fact that negroes were serving in the general service, be widely distributed in predominantly black institutions. manpower ceilings, however, had forced the bureau to postpone action on nelson's suggestion that posters, films, pamphlets, and the like be used.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir, recruiting div, bupers, for admin aide to secnav, dec , sub: negro officer in recruiting on the west coast; ltr, secnav to actg exec dir, urban league, los angeles, dec ; both in pers b , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : ltr, charles w. washington, exec secy, dayton, ohio, urban league, to secnav, oct , copy in pers , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, nelson for charles durham, fahy committee, sub: implementation of proposed navy racial policy, jun , fc file.] [footnote - : memo, under secnav for chmn, ppb, dec , sub: implementation of executive order , ppb . .] an obvious concomitant to the increase in the number of black sailors was an increase in the number of black officers. the personnel bureau was well aware of this connection; comdr. luther c. heinz, officer in charge of naval reserve officer training, called the shortage of negroes in his program a particularly important problem. he promised, "in accord with the desires of the president," as he put it, to increase black participation in the naval reserve officers' training corps, and his superior, the chief of naval personnel, started a program in the bureau for that purpose.[ - ] with the help of the national urban league, heinz arranged a series of lectures by black officers at forty-nine black schools and other institutions to interest negroes in the navy's reserve officers program. in august , for example, ens. wesley brown, the first negro to be graduated from annapolis, addressed gatherings in chicago on the opportunities for negroes as naval officers.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, off in charge, nrotc tng, for chief, plans & policy div, bupers, jul , sub: nrotc personnel problems, pers , bupersrecs.] [footnote - : ltr, granger to chief, navpers, aug , pers , bupersrecs.] at the same time the bureau of naval personnel wrote special press releases, arranged interviews for naval officials with members of the black press, and distributed publicity materials in predominantly black schools to attract candidates and to assure interested young men that race was no bar to their selection. in this connection commander heinz bid for and received an invitation to address the urban league's annual conference in august to outline the navy's program. the chief of naval personnel, rear adm. thomas l. sprague, also (p.  ) arranged for the training of all those engaged in promoting the program--professors of naval science, naval procurement officers, and the like. in states where such assignments were considered acceptable, sprague planned to appoint negroes to selection committees.[ - ] in a related move he also ordered that when local law or custom required the segregation of facilities used for the administration of qualifying tests for reserve officer training, the navy would use its own facilities for testing. this ruling was used when the examinations were given in atlanta and new orleans; to the delight of the black press the navy transferred the test site to its nearby facilities.[ - ] these efforts had some positive effect. in alone some , black youths indicated an interest in the naval reserve officers' training corps by submitting applications.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir of tng, bupers, for chief, navpers, jul ; ltr, granger to cmdr luther heinz, aug ; ltr, heinz to granger, aug . all in pers , bupersrecs. see also interv, author with nelson, may , and ltr, nelson to author, feb , both in cmh files.] [footnote - : ltr, chief, navpers, to cmdt, all continental naval dists, mar , pers , bupersrecs; memo, under secnav for chmn, ppb, dec , ppb . .] [footnote - : memo, under secnav for chmn, ppb, dec , ppb . .] despite these well-intentioned efforts, the navy failed to increase significantly the number of black officers or sailors in the next decade (_table _). the percentage of negroes in the navy increased so slowly that not until , in the wake of the great manpower buildup during the korean war, did it exceed the figure. although the percentage of black enlistments increased significantly at times--approximately percent of all enlistments in were black, for example--the proportion of negroes in the navy's enlisted ranks was only . percent higher in than in . while the number of black officers increased more than sevenfold in the same decade, it was still considerably less than percent of the total officer strength, well below army and air force percentages. table --black manpower, u.s. navy a. enlisted strength _percent _year_ _total strength_ _black strength_ black_ , , . , , . , , . , , . , , . , , . , , . , , . , , . , , . , , . , , . b. percentage of blacks enlisted in steward's and other branches _year_ _steward's branch_ _other branches_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . c. officer strength (selected years) _year_ _black officers on active duty_ _total officers_ , , , , _source_: bupers, personnel statistics branch. see especially bupers, "memo on discrimination of the negro," jan , baf - . bupers technical library. all figures represent yearly averages. the navy had an explanation for the small number of negroes. the reduced manpower ceilings imposed on the navy, even during the korean war, had caused a drastic curtailment in recruiting. at the same time, with the brief exception of the korean war, the navy had depended on volunteers for enlistment and had required volunteers to score ninety or higher on the general classification test. the percentage of those who scored above ninety was lower for blacks than for whites-- percent against percent, a ratio, naval spokesmen suggested, that explained the enlistment figures. furthermore, the low enlistment quotas produced a long waiting list of those desiring to volunteer. all applicants for the relatively few openings were thoroughly screened, and competition was so keen that any negroes accepted for the monthly quota had to be extraordinarily well qualified.[ - ] [footnote - : for a public expression of these sentiments see, for example, ltr, capt r. b. ellis, policy control br, bupers, to president of birmingham, ala., branch, naacp, mar , pers mm, genrecsnav.] what the navy's explanation failed to mention was that the rise and decline in the navy's black strength during the 's was intimately related to the number of group iv enlistees being forced on the services under the provisions of the defense department's program (p.  ) for the qualitative distribution of manpower. each service was required to accept percent of all recruits in group iv from fiscal year to , percent in fiscal year , and percent thereafter. between and the navy accepted well above the required percent of group iv men, but in fiscal year took only . percent, and in only . percent. in , with the knowledge of the secretary of defense, all the services took in fewer of the group iv's than the distribution program required, but justified the reduction on the grounds that declining strength made it necessary to emphasize high quality in recruits. in a move endorsed by the navy, the air force finally requested in that the qualitative distribution program be held in abeyance. on the basis of this request the navy temporarily ceased to accept all group iv and some group iii men, but resumed recruiting them when it seemed likely that the (p.  ) secretary of defense would refuse the request.[ - ] [footnote - : bupers, "memo on discrimination of the negro," january , pers a , bupers tech library.] [illustration: christmas in korea, .] the correlation between the rise and fall of the group iv enlistments and the percentage of negroes in the navy shows that all the increases in black strength between and came not through the navy's publicized and organized effort to attract the qualified black volunteers it had promised the fahy committee, but from the men forced upon it by the defense department's distribution program. the correlation also lends credence to the charges of some of the civil rights critics who saw another reason for the shortage of negroes. they claimed that there had been no drop in the number of applicants but that fewer negroes were being accepted by navy recruiters. one naacp official claimed that negroes were "getting the run around." those who had fulfilled all enlistment requirements were not being informed, and others were being given false information by recruiters. he concluded that the navy was operating under an unwritten policy of filling recruit quotas with whites, accepting negroes only when whites were unavailable.[ - ] if these accusations were true, the navy was denying itself the services of highly qualified black applicants at a time when the defense department's qualitative distribution program was forcing it to take large numbers of the less gifted. certainly the number of negroes capable of moving up the career and promotion ladder was reduced and the navy left vulnerable to further charges of discrimination. [footnote - : ltr, exec secy, birmingham, ala., branch, naacp, to chief, navpers, mar , pers a, genrecsnav.] as for the shortage of officers, nelson cited the awareness among candidates that promotions were slower for blacks in the navy than in the other services where there was "less caste and class to buck."[ - ] nelson was aware that out of the , blacks who had indicated an interest in the reserve officer training program in only actually took the aptitude tests. of these, only two passed the tests and one of these was later rejected for poor eyesight. an urban league spokesman believed that some failed to take the tests out of fear of failure but that many harbored a suspicion that the program was not entirely open to all regardless of race.[ - ] reinforcing this suspicion was the fact that, despite the intentions of the (p.  ) bureau of naval personnel and the navy's increasing control over the appointment process, as of not a single negro had been appointed to any of the -man state selection committees on reserve officer training.[ - ] also to be considered, as the american civil liberties union later pointed out, was the promotion record of black officers. as late as no black officer had ever commanded a ship, and while both black and white officers started up the same promotion ladder, the blacks were usually transferred out of the line into staff billets.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, nichols with nelson, , in nichols collection; ltr, nelson to author, feb ; both in cmh files.] [footnote - : quoted in memo, dir of tng, bupers, for chief, navpers, jul , pers , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo for rcd, evans, jun , sub: nrotc boards, asd/m . .] [footnote - : ltr, exec dir, aclu, to secnav, nov , genrecsnav.] [illustration: rearming at sea. _ordnancemen at work on the deck of the uss philippine sea, off korea, october ._] given the pressure on the personnel bureau to develop some respectable black manpower statistics, it is unlikely that the lack of educated, black recruits can be blamed on widespread subterfuge at the recruiting level. far more likely is the explanation offered by under secretary kimball, that the black community distrusted the navy.[ - ] first apparent in the 's, this distrust lasted throughout the next decade as young negroes continued to show a general apathy toward the navy, which at times turned into open hostility. in september the chief of naval personnel reported that recruiters were not infrequently being treated to "booing, hissing and other disorderly conduct" when they tried to discuss the opportunities for naval careers before black audiences.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, under secnav for chmn, ppb, dec , sub: implementation of executive order , ppb . .] [footnote - : memo, chief, navpers, for pers b, sep , copy in harris wofford collection, j. f. kennedy library.] the navy's poor reputation in the black community centered on the continued existence of the racially separate servants' branch, in the eyes of many the symbol of the service's racial exclusiveness. the steward's branch remained predominantly black. in it had , negroes, , filipinos, other nonwhites, and white man. chief stewards continued to be denied the grade of chief petty officer, on the grounds that since stewards were not authorized to exercise military command over others than stewards because of their lack of military training, chief stewards were not chiefs in the military sense of the word. this difference in authority also explained, as the chief of naval personnel put it, why as a general rule chief stewards were not quartered with other petty officers.[ - ] these (p.  ) distinctions were true also for stewards in the first, second, and third classes, a fact in their case symbolized by differences in uniform. most of the thousands of black stewards continued to be recruited, trained, and employed exclusively in that branch, and thus for over half the negroes-- percent--in the navy the chance for advancement was severely limited and the chance to qualify for a different job almost nonexistent. [footnote - : testimony of vice adm william m. fechteler before the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services (the fahy cmte), mar , p. .] [illustration: broadening skills. _stewards on the uss valley forge volunteer for classes leading to advancement in other fields, korea, ._] the navy instituted several changes in the branch in the wake of the fahy committee's recommendations. on july the chief of naval personnel ordered all chief stewards designated chief petty officers with all the prerogatives of that status; in precedence they came immediately after chief dental technicians,[ - ] who were at the bottom of the list. that the change was limited to chief stewards did not go unnoticed. joseph evans of the fahy committee staff charged that the bureau "seemed to have ordered this to accede to the committee's recommendations never intending to go beyond chief stewards."[ - ] nelson, by now a sort of unofficial ombudsman and gadfly for black sailors, urged his superiors to broaden the reform, and kimball warned admiral sprague that limiting the change to chief stewards might be "justified on the literal statement of (p.  ) intention, but is vulnerable to criticism of continued discrimination." without compelling reasons to the contrary, he added, "i do not feel that we can afford to risk any possible impression of reluctant implementation of the spirit of the directive."[ - ] [footnote - : bupers cir ltr - , jul .] [footnote - : memo, evans for fahy cmte, aug , sub: progress in navy, fahy papers, truman library.] [footnote - : memo, under secnav for chief, navpers, aug , mm ( ) genrecsnav.] admiral sprague got the point, and on august he announced that effective with the new year, stewards--first, second, and third class--would be designated petty officers with appropriate pay, prerogatives, and precedence, and that their uniforms would be changed to conform to those of other petty officers. he also amended the bureau's manual to allow commanding officers to change the ratings of stewards without headquarters approval, thus enlarging the opportunity for stewards, in all other respects qualified, to transfer into other ratings.[ - ] these reforms brought about a slow but steady change in the assignment of black sailors. between january and august , the percentage of negroes in the general service rose from to percent of the navy's , man black strength, with a corresponding drop in the percentage of those assigned to the steward's branch.[ - ] [footnote - : bupers cir ltr - , aug . see also memo, under secnav for chmn, ppb, dec , sub: implementation of executive order , ppb . ; memo, chief, navpers, for secnav, may , sub: equality of treatment and opportunity, pers , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, dir, plans and policy, bupers, for capt brooke schumm, usn, ppb, jul , sub: secretary of defense semi-annual report, negro enlisted personnel data for, pers b; memo, head, strength and statistics br, bupers, for head, technical info br, bupers, aug , sub: information requested by lcdr d. d. nelson concerning negro strength, pers a ; both in bupersrecs.] yet these reforms were modest in terms of the pressing need for a substantive change in the racial composition of the steward's branch. despite the changes in assignment policy, the steward's branch was still nearly percent black in , and the rest were mostly filipino citizens under contract. secretary of the navy kimball's observation that stewards had transferred out of the branch in a recent four-month period hardly promised any speedy change in the current percentages.[ - ] in fact there was evidence even at that late date that some staff members in the personnel bureau were working at cross-purposes to the navy's expressed policy. worried about the shortages of volunteers for the steward's branch, a group of officials had met in august to discuss ways of improving branch morale. some suggested publicizing the branch to the black press and schools, showing that negroes were in all branches of the navy including the steward's. they also studied a pamphlet called "the advantages of stewards duty in the navy" that gave nine reasons why a man should become a steward.[ - ] [footnote - : kimball was sworn in as secretary of the navy on july . ltr, secnav to granger, nov , secnav files, genrecsnav.] [footnote - : bupers, plans and policy div, "review of suggestions and recommendations to improve standards, morale, and attitudes toward stewards branch of u.s. navy" (ca. aug ), bupersrecs.] obviously the navy had to set a steady course if it intended any lasting racial reform of the steward's branch, but its leaders seemed ambivalent toward the problem. despite his earlier efforts to raise the status of stewards, kimball, in a variation on an old postwar argument, tried to show that the exclusiveness of the steward's (p.  ) branch actually worked to the negro's advantage. as he explained to lester granger in november , any action to effect radical or wholesale changes in ratings "would not only tend to reduce the efficiency of the navy, but also in many instances be to the disadvantage or detriment of the individuals concerned, particularly those in the senior steward ratings."[ - ] supporting this line of argument, the chief of naval personnel announced the reenlistment figures for the steward's branch--over percent during the korean war period. these figures, vice admiral james l. holloway, jr., added, proved the branch to be the most popular in the navy and offered "a rational measure of the state of the morale and job satisfaction."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, secnav for granger, nov , secnav files, genrecsnav.] [footnote - : ltrs, chief, navpers, to james c. evans, osd, jun , and granger, jul , both in p ( ), bupersrecs.] these explanations still figured prominently in the navy's defense of its racial statistics. discussing the matter at a white house meeting of civil rights leaders, the chief of naval personnel pointed out that all the black stewards could be replaced with filipinos, but the navy had refrained from such a course for several reasons. the branch still had the highest reenlistment rate. it provided jobs for those group iv men the navy was obliged to accept but could never use in technical billets. without the opportunity provided by the branch, moreover, "many of the rated black stewards would probably not achieve a petty officer rating at all."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, chief, navpers, for pers b, sep , harris wofford collection, j. f. kennedy library. see also memo, chief, navpers, for asd/m, mar , sub: stewards in u.s. navy, pers ( ), bupersrecs; memo, special asst to secdef, adam yarmolinsky, for frederic dutton, special asst to president, oct , sub: yarmolinsky memo of october , harris wofford collection, j. f. kennedy library.] however well founded these arguments were, they did not satisfy the navy's critics, who continued to press for the establishment of one recruitment standard and the assignment of men on the basis of interest and training rather than race. lester granger, for example, warned secretary kimball of the skepticism that persisted among sections of the black community: "as long as that branch [the steward's branch] is composed entirely of nonwhite personnel, the navy is apt to be held by some to be violating its own stated policy."[ - ] to kimball's successor, robert b. anderson,[ - ] granger was even more blunt. the steward's branch, he declared, was "a constant irritant to the negro public." he saw some logical reason for the continued concentration of negroes in the branch but added "logic does not necessarily imply wisdom and i sincerely believe that it is unwise from the standpoint of efficiency and public relations to continue the stewards branch on its present basis."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, granger to secnav, oct , secnav files, genrecsnav.] [footnote - : secretary anderson, appointed by president eisenhower, became secretary of the navy on february .] [footnote - : ltr, granger to secnav, apr , secnav files, genrecsnav.] granger's suggestion for change was straightforward. he wanted the bureau of naval personnel to find a way to introduce a sufficiently large number of whites into the branch to transform its racial composition. the task promised to be difficult if the charges leveled in the detroit _free press_ were accurate. in may the paper (p.  ) reported incidents of naval recruiting officers who, "by one ruse or another," were shunting young volunteers, sometimes without their knowledge, into the steward's branch.[ - ] [footnote - : detroit _free press_, may , .] granger's suggestions were taken up by secretary anderson, who announced his intention of integrating the steward's branch and ordered the chief of naval personnel to draw up plans to that end.[ - ] to devise some practical measures for handling the problem, the personnel bureau brought back to active duty three officers who had been important to the development of the navy's integration policy. their study produced three recommendations: abolish the segregation of the steward's branch from the general service and separate recruitment for its members; consider consolidating the branch with the predominantly white commissary branch; and change the steward's insignia.[ - ] [footnote - : up news release, september , , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : ltr, cmdr durwood w. gilmore, usnr et al., to chief, navpers, vice adm j. l. holloway, jr., aug , p ( ), bupersrecs.] the group acknowledged that the steward's branch was a "sore spot with the negroes, and is our weakest position from the standpoint of public relations," and two of their recommendations were obviously aimed at immediate improvement of public relations. combining the messmen and commissary specialists would of course create an integrated branch, which granger estimated would be only percent black, and would probably provide additional opportunities for promotions, but in the end it could not mask the fact that a high proportion of black sailors were employed in food service and valet positions. nor was it clear how changing the familiar crescent insignia, symbolic of the steward's duties, would change the image of a separate group that still performed the most menial duties. long-term reform, everyone agreed, demanded the presence of a significant number of whites in the branch, and there was strong evidence that the general service contained more than a few group iv white sailors. the group's proposal to abolish separate recruiting would probably increase the number of blacks in the general service and eliminate the possibility that unsuspecting black recruits would be dragooned into a messman's career; both were substantial reforms but did not guarantee that whites would be attracted or assigned to the branch. admiral holloway was concerned about this latter point, which dominated his discussions with the secretary of the navy on september . he had, he told anderson, discussed with his recruiting specialists the possibility of recruiting white sailors for the branch, and while they all agreed that whites must not be induced to join by "improper procedures," such as preferential recruitment to escape the draft, they felt that whites could be attracted to steward duty by skillful recruiters, especially in areas of the country where industrial integration had already been accomplished. his bureau was considering the abolition of separate recruiting, but to make specific recommendations on matters involving the stewards he had created an ad hoc committee, under the deputy chief of naval personnel and composed of (p.  ) representatives of the other bureaus. when he received this committee's views, holloway promised to take "definite administrative action."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, chief, navpers, for secnav, sep , sub: mr. granger's visit and related matters, pers, genrecsnav.] [illustration: integrated stewards class graduates, great lakes, .] the three recommendations of the reservist experts did not survive intact the ad hoc committee's scrutiny. at the committee's suggestion, holloway rejected the proposed merger of the commissary and steward functions on the grounds that such a move was unnecessary in an era of high reenlistment. he also decided that stewards would retain their branch insignia. he did approve, however, in a decision announced on february , putting an end to the separate recruitment of stewards with the exception of the contract enlistment of filipino citizens. as anderson assured congressman adam clayton powell of new york, only after recruit training and "with full knowledge of the opportunities in various categories of administrative specialties" would an enlistee be allowed to volunteer for messman's duty.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, secnav to congressman adam c. powell, mar , secnav files, genrecsnav.] admiral holloway promised a further search for ways to eliminate "points of friction" regarding the stewards, and naval officials discussed the problem with civil rights leaders and defense department officials on several occasions in the next years.[ - ] the (p.  ) special assistant to the secretary of defense, adam yarmolinsky, reported in that the bureau of naval personnel "was not sanguine" about recruiting substantial numbers of white seamen for the steward's branch.[ - ] in answer, the chief of naval personnel could only point out that no matter what their qualifications or ambitions all men assigned to the steward's branch were volunteers. as one commentator observed, white sailors were very rarely attracted to the messmen's field because of its reputation as a black specialty.[ - ] [footnote - : see, for example, asd/m, thursday reports, jan and apr , copies in dep asd (civil rights) files; see also memo, chief, navpers, for special asst to secdef, mar , sub: stewards in u.s. navy, bupersrecs.] [footnote - : memo, adam yarmolinsky for fred dutton, oct , sub: yarmolinsky memo of october , harris wofford collection, j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : greenberg, _race relations and american law_, p. .] nevertheless, by a definite pattern of change had emerged in the steward's branch. the end of separate recruitment drastically cut the number of negroes entering the rating, while the renewed emphasis on transferring eligible chief stewards to other specialties somewhat reduced the number of negroes already in the branch. between and , some men out of the , tested transferred to other rating groups or fields. the substantial drop in black strength resulting from these changes combined with a corresponding rise in the number of contract messmen from the western pacific region reduced for the first time in some thirty years negroes in the steward's branch to a minority. even for those remaining in the branch, life changed considerably. separate berthing for stewards, always justified on the grounds of different duties and hours, was discontinued, and the amount of time spent by stewards at sea, with the varied military work that sea duty involved, was increased.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, chief, navpers, for special asst to secdef, mar , sub: stewards in u.s. navy, pers ( ), genrecsnav.] if these changes caused by the increased enlistment of stewards from the western pacific relieved the steward's branch of its reputation as the black man's navy, they also perpetuated the notion that servants' duties were for persons of dark complexion. the debate over a segregated branch that had engaged the civil rights leaders and the navy since was over, but it had left a residue of ill will; some were bitter at what they considered the listless pace of reform, a pace which left the impression that the service had been forced to change against its will. to some extent the navy in the 's failed to capitalize on its early achievements because it had for so long missed the point of the integrationists' arguments about the stewards. in the fifties the navy expended considerable time and energy advertising for black officer candidates and recruits whom they guaranteed a genuinely equal chance to participate in all specialties, but these efforts were to some extent dismissed by critics as not germane. in , for example, only negroes served in the glamorous submarine assignments and even fewer in the naval air service.[ - ] yet this obvious underrepresentation caused no great outcry from the black community. what did cause bitterness and (p.  ) protest in an era of aroused racial pride was the fact that servants' duties fell almost exclusively on nonwhite americans. that these duties were popular--the percent reenlistment rate in the steward's branch continued throughout the decade and the transfer rate into the branch almost equaled the transfer out--was disregarded by many of the more articulate spokesmen, who considered the branch an insult to the black public. as congressman powell informed the navy in , "no one is interested in today's world in fighting communism with a frying pan or shoe polish."[ - ] although statistics showed nearly half the black sailors employed in other than menial tasks, powell voiced the mood of a large segment of the black community. [footnote - : the navy commissioned its first black pilot, ens. jesse l. brown, in . he was killed in action in korea.] [footnote - : ltr, powell to john floberg, asst secnav for air, jun , secnav files, genrecsnav.] [illustration: wave recruits, _naval training center, bainbridge, maryland, _.] the fahy committee had acknowledged that manpower statistics alone were not a reliable index of equal opportunity. convinced that negroes were getting a full and equal chance to enlist in the general service and compete for officer commissions, the committee had approved the navy's policy, trusting to time and equal opportunity to produce the desired result. unfortunately for the navy, there would be many critics both in and out of government in the 's who disagreed with the committee's trust in time and good intentions, for equal opportunity would remain very much a matter of numbers and percentages. in an (p.  ) era when a premium would be placed on the size of minority membership, the palm would go to the other services. "the blunt fact is," granger reminded the secretary of the navy in , "that as a general rule the most aspiring negro youth are apt to have the least interest in a navy career, chiefly because the army and air force have up to now captured the spotlight."[ - ] a decade later the statement still held. [footnote - : ltr, granger to secnav, jan , secnav files, genrecsnav.] [illustration: admiral gravely (_ portrait_).] it was ironic that black youth remained aloof from the navy in the 's when the way of life for negroes on shipboard and at naval bases had definitely taken a turn for the better. the general service was completely integrated, although the black proportion, . percent in , was still far less than might reasonably be expected, considering the black population.[ - ] negroes were being trained in every job classification and attended all the navy's technical schools. although not yet represented in proportionate numbers in the top grades within every rating, negroes served in all ratings in every branch, a fact favorably noticed in the metropolitan press.[ - ] black officers, still shockingly out of proportion to black strength, were not much more so than in the other services and were serving more often with regular commissions in the line as well as on the staff. their lack of representation in the upper ranks demonstrated that the climb to command was slow and arduous even when the discriminatory tactics of earlier times had been removed. in the navy could finally announce that a black officer, lt. comdr. samuel l. gravely, jr., had been ordered to command a destroyer escort, the uss _falgout_.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asd/m for sa et al., nov , sub: manuscript on the negro in the armed forces, secdef . .] [footnote - : see new york _herald tribune_, december , , and new york post, march , .] [footnote - : gravely would eventually become the first black admiral in the u.s. navy.] but how were these changes being accepted among the rank and file? comments from official sources and civil rights groups alike showed the leaven of racial tolerance at work throughout the service.[ - ] reporter lee nichols, interviewing members of all the services in (p.  ) ,[ - ] found that whites expected blacks to prove themselves in their assignments while blacks were skeptical that equal opportunities for assignment were really open to them. yet the nichols interviews reveal a strain of pride and wonderment in the servicemen at the profound changes they had witnessed. [footnote - : see, for example, ltr, exec secy, president's cmte on equal treatment and opportunity in the armed services, to cno, jun , fc file; memo, chief, navpers, for secnav, bupersrecs; memo, asd/m for sa et al., nov , sub: manuscript on the negro in the armed forces, secdef . ; ltr, exec secy, aclu, to secnav, nov , secnav files, genrecsnav.] [footnote - : nichols's sampling, presented in the form of approximately a hundred interviews with men and women from all the services, was completely unscientific and informal and was undertaken for the preparation of his book, _breakthrough on the color front_. considering their timing, the interviews supply an interesting sidelight to the integration period. they are included in the nichols collection, cmh.] in time integrated service became routine throughout the navy, and instances of negroes in command of integrated units increased. bigots of both races inevitably remained, and the black community continued to resent the separate steward's branch, but the sincerity of the navy's promise to integrate the service seemed no longer in doubt. chapter (p.  ) the army integrates the integration of the united states army was not accomplished by executive fiat or at the demand of the electorate. nor was it the result of any particular victory of the civil rights advocates over the racists. it came about primarily because the definition of military efficiency spelled out by the fahy committee and demonstrated by troops in the heat of battle was finally accepted by army leaders. the army justified its policy changes in the name of efficiency, as indeed it had always, but this time efficiency led the service unmistakably toward integration. _race and efficiency: _ the army's postwar planners based their low estimate of the black soldier's ability on the collective performance of the segregated black units in world war ii and assumed that social unrest would result from mixing the races. the army thus accepted an economically and administratively inefficient segregated force in peacetime to preserve what it considered to be a more dependable fighting machine for war. insistence on the need for segregation in the name of military efficiency was also useful in rationalizing the prejudice and thoughtless adherence to traditional practice which obviously played a part in the army's tenacious defense of its policy. an entirely different conclusion, however, could be drawn from the same set of propositions. the fahy committee, for example, had clearly demonstrated the inefficiency of segregation, and more to the point, some senior army officials, in particular secretary gray and chief of staff collins, had come to question the conventional pattern. explaining later why he favored integration ahead of many of his contemporaries, collins drew on his world war ii experience. the major black ground units in world war ii, and to a lesser degree the th pursuit squadron, he declared, "did not work out." nor, he concluded, did the smaller independent black units, even those commanded by black officers, who were burdened with problems of discipline and inefficiency. on the other hand, the integrated infantry platoons in europe, with which collins had personal experience, worked well. his observations had convinced him that it was "pointless" to support segregated black units, and while the matter had "nothing to do with sociology itself," he reasoned that if integration worked at the platoon level "why not on down the line?" the best plan, he believed, was to assign two negroes to each squad in the army, always assuming that the quota limiting the total number of black soldiers would be preserved.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with collins.] but the army had promised the fahy committee in april it (p.  ) would abolish the quota. if carried out, such an agreement would complicate an orderly and controlled integration, and collins's desire for change was clearly tempered by his concern for order and control. so long as peacetime manpower levels remained low and inductions through the draft limited, a program such as the one contemplated by the chief of staff was feasible, but any sudden wartime expansion would change all that. fear of such a sudden change combined with the strong opposition to integration still shared by most army officials to keep the staff from any initiative toward integration in the period immediately after the fahy committee adjourned. even before gray and collins completed their negotiations with the fahy committee, they were treated by the chamberlin board to yet another indication of the scope of army staff opposition to integration. gray had appointed a panel of senior officers under lt. gen. stephen j. chamberlin on september in fulfillment of his promise to review the army's racial policy periodically "in the light of changing conditions and experiences of this day and time."[ - ] after sitting four months and consulting more than sixty major army officials and some officers and men, the board produced a comprehensive summary of the army's racial status based on test scores, enlistment rates, school figures, venereal disease rates, opinion surveys, and the like. [footnote - : memo, sa for lt gen stephen j. chamberlin, nov , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the army, csgpa . . see also dir, p&a, summary sheet to cofs, nov , sub: board to study the utilization of negro manpower in peacetime army, csgpa . , and tag to chamberlin, nov , same sub, ag ( nov ). in addition to chamberlin, the board included maj. gen. withers a. buress, commanding general of the infantry center; maj. gen. john m. divine, commanding general of th infantry division, fort dix; and col. m. vanvoorst, personnel and administration division, as recorder without vote.] the conclusions and recommendations of the chamberlin board represent perhaps the most careful and certainly the last apologia for a segregated army.[ - ] the army's postwar racial policy and related directives, the board assured secretary gray, were sound, were proving effective, and should be continued in force. it saw only one objection to segregated units: black units had an unduly high proportion of men with low classification test scores, a situation, it believed, that could be altered by raising the entrance level and improving training and leadership. at any rate, the board declared, this disadvantage was a minor one compared to the advantages of an organization that did not force negroes into competition they were unprepared to face, did not provoke the resentment of white soldiers with the consequent risk of lowered combat effectiveness, and avoided placing black officers and noncommissioned officers in command of white troops, "a position which only the exceptional negro could successfully fill." [footnote - : memo, gen chamberlin et al. for sa, feb , sub: report of board of officers on utilization of negro manpower in the army, ag . ( dec ). a copy of the report and many of the related and supporting documents are in cmh.] a decision on these matters, the board stated, had to be based on combat effectiveness, not the use of black manpower, and what constituted maximum effectiveness was best left to the judgment of war-tested combat leaders. these men, "almost without exception," vigorously opposed integration. ignoring the army's continuing (p.  ) negotiations with the fahy committee on the matter, the board called for retaining the percent quota. to remove the quota without imposing a higher entrance standard, it argued, would result in an influx of negroes "with a corresponding deterioration of combat efficiency." in short, ignoring the political and budgetary realities of the day, the board called on secretary gray to repudiate the findings of the fahy committee and the stipulations of executive order and to maintain a rigidly segregated service with a carefully regulated percentage of black members. while gray and collins let the recommendations of the chamberlin board go unanswered, they did very little to change the army's racial practices in the year following their agreements with the fahy committee. the periodic increase in the number of critical specialties for which negroes were to be trained and freely assigned did not materialize. the number of trained black specialists increased, and some were assigned to white units, but this practice, while substantially different from the gillem board's idea of limiting such integration to overhead spaces, nevertheless produced similar results. black specialists continued to be assigned to segregated units in the majority of cases, and in the minds of most commanders such assignment automatically limited black soldiers to certain jobs and schools no matter what their qualifications. kenworthy's blunt conclusion in may was that the army had not carried out the policy it had agreed to.[ - ] certainly the army staff had failed to develop a successful mechanism for gauging its commanders' compliance with its new policy. despite the generally progressive sentiments of general collins and secretary gray's agreement with the fahy committee, much of the army clung to old sentiments and practices for the same old reasons. [footnote - : kenworthy, "the case against army segregation," p. .] the catalyst for the sudden shift away from these sentiments and practices was the korean war. ranking among the nation's major conflicts, the war caused the army to double in size in five months. by june it numbered . million, with , men serving in korea in the eighth army. this vast expansion of manpower and combat commitment severely tested the army's racial policy and immediately affected the racial balance of the quota-free army. when the quota was lifted in april , negroes accounted for . percent of the total enlisted strength; by august this figure reached . percent. on january , negroes comprised . percent of the army, and in december the ratio was . percent. the cause of this striking rise in black strength was the large number of negroes among wartime enlistments. the percentage of negroes among those enlisting in the army for the first time jumped from . in march to . in august, averaging percent of all first-term enlistments during the first nine months of the war. black reenlistment increased from . to . percent of the total reenlistment during the same period, and the percentage of black draftees in the total number of draftees supplied by selective service averaged percent.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, g- for vcofs, sub: negro statistics, jun - oct , cs . negro; idem for g- , apr , sub: training spaces for negro personnel, ops . ; memo, chief, mil opers management branch, g- , for g- , feb , sub: distribution of negro manpower in the army, g- . , and memo, chief, procurement and distribution div, g- , for g- , oct , same sub and file.] [illustration: moving up. _ th division infantrymen head for the front, korea, july ._] the effect of these increases on a segregated army was tremendous. (p.  ) by april , black units throughout the army were reporting large overstrengths, some as much as percent over their authorized organization tables. overstrength was particularly evident in the combat arms because of the steady increase in the number of black soldiers with combat occupational specialties. largely assigned to service units during world war ii--only percent, about half the white percentage, were in combat units--negroes after the war were assigned in ever-increasing numbers to combat occupational specialties in keeping with the gillem board recommendation that they be trained in all branches of the service. by some percent of all black soldiers were in combat units, and by june they were being assigned to the combat branches in approximately the same percentage as white soldiers, percent.[ - ] [footnote - : stm- , strength of the army, sep , mar , and jul .] the chief of staff's concern with the army's segregation policy went beyond immediate problems connected with the sudden manpower increases. speaking to maj. gen. lewis a. craig, the inspector general, in august , collins declared that the army's social policy was unrealistic and did not represent the views of younger americans whose attitudes were much more relaxed than those of the senior officers who (p.  ) established policy. reporting collins's comment to the staff, craig went on to say the situation in korea confirmed his own observations that mixing whites and blacks "in reasonable proportions" did not cause friction. continued segregation, on the other hand, would force the army to reinstate the old division-size black unit, with its ineffectiveness and frustrations, to answer the negro's demand for equitable promotions and job opportunities. in short, both collins and craig agreed that the army must eventually integrate, and they wanted the use of black servicemen restudied.[ - ] [footnote - : ig summary sheet for cofs, dec , sub: policy regarding negro segregation, cs . ( dec ).] their view was at considerable variance with the attitude displayed by most officers on the army staff and in the major commands in december . his rank notwithstanding, collins still had to persuade these men of the validity of his views before they would accept the necessity for integration. moreover, with his concept of orderly and controlled social change threatened by the rapid rise in the number of black soldiers, collins himself would need to assess the effects of racial mixing in a fluid manpower situation. these necessities explain the plethora of staff papers, special boards, and field investigations pertaining to the employment of black troops that characterized the next six months, a period during which every effort was made to convince senior officers of the practical necessity for integration. the chief of staff's exchange of views with the inspector general was not circulated within the staff until december . at that time the personnel chief, lt. gen. edward h. brooks, recommended reconvening the chamberlin board to reexamine the army's racial policy in light of the korean experience. brooks wanted to hold off the review until february by which time he thought adequate data would be available from the far east command. his recommendation was approved, and the matter was returned to the same group which had so firmly rejected integration less than a year before.[ - ] [footnote - : g- summary sheet for cofs, dec , sub: policy regarding negro segregation, g- . .] even as the chamberlin board was reconvening, another voice was added to those calling for integration. viewing the critical overstrength in black units, assistant secretary earl d. johnson recommended distributing excess black soldiers among other units of the army.[ - ] the response to his proposal was yet another attempt to avoid the dictates of the draft law and black enlistments. maj. gen. anthony c. mcauliffe, the g- , advised against integrating the organized white units on the grounds that experience gained thus far on the social impact of integration was inadequate to predict its effect on "overall army efficiency." since the army could not continue assigning more men to the overstrength black units, mcauliffe wanted to organize additional black units to accommodate the excess, and he asked maj. gen. maxwell d. taylor, the g- , to activate the necessary units.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asa for sa, apr , sub: present overstrength in segregated units, g- . .] [footnote - : memo, g- for cofs, may , sub: present overstrength in segregated units; df, g- for g- , apr , sub: training spaces for negro personnel; both in g- . .] the chief of the army field forces was even more direct. integration was untimely, general mark w. clark advised, and the army should instead reimpose the quota and push for speedy implementation of the secretary of defense's directive on the qualitative distribution (p.  ) of manpower.[ - ] clark's plea for a new quota was one of many circulating in the staff since black enlistment percentages started to rise. but time had run out on the quota as a solution to overstrength black units. although the army staff continued to discuss the need for the quota, and senior officials considered asking the president for permission to reinstitute it, the secretary of defense's acceptance of parity of enlistment standards had robbed the army of any excuse for special treatment on manpower allotments.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cg, aff, for g- , may , sub: negro strength in the army, g- . .] [footnote - : memo, asa for sa, jul , and draft memo, sa for president (not sent), both in sa . .] [illustration: men of battery a, _ th field artillery battalion, fire -mm. howitzer, korea, august _.] mcauliffe's recommendation for additional black units ran into serious opposition and was not approved. taylor's staff, concerned with the practical problems of army organization, objected to the proposal, citing budget limitations that precluded the creation of additional units and policy restrictions that forbade the creation of new units merely to accommodate black recruits. the operations staff recommended instead that black soldiers in excess of unit strength be shipped directly from training centers to overseas commands as replacements without regard for specific assignment. mcauliffe's personnel staff, in turn, warned that on the basis of a monthly average dispatch of , replacements to the far east command, the portion of negroes in those shipments would be percent for may , percent for june, percent for july, and percent for august. mcauliffe listed the familiar problems that would accrue to the far east commanders from this decision, but he was unable to break the impasse in washington. thus the problem of excess black manpower was passed on to the overseas commanders for resolution.[ - ] [footnote - : cmt (brig gen d. a. ogden, chief, orgn & tng div, g- ), may , cmt (brig gen w. e. dunkelberg, chief, manpower control div, g- ), may , and cmt (ogden), may , to g- summary sheet for cofs, apr , sub: negro overstrengths, g- . .] commanders in korea had already begun to apply the only practical remedy. confronted with battle losses in white units and a growing surplus of black replacements arriving in japan, the eighth army began assigning individual black soldiers just as it had been assigning individual korean soldiers to understrength units.[ - ] in august , for example, initial replacements for battle casualties in (p.  ) the th infantry of the u.s. d infantry division included two black officers and eighty-nine black enlisted men. the commander assigned them to units in his severely undermanned all-white st and d battalions. in september sixty more soldiers from the regiment's all-black d battalion returned to the regiment for duty. they were first attached but later, with the agreement of the officers and men involved, assigned to units of the st and d battalions. subsequently, black replacements were routinely assigned wherever needed throughout the regiment.[ - ] by december the th infantry had absorbed negroes to about their proportion of the national population, percent. of six black officers among them, one commanded company c and another was temporarily in command of company b when that unit fought in november on the ch'ongch'on river line. s. l. a. marshall later described company b as "possibly the bravest" unit in that action.[ - ] [footnote - : the korean augmentation to the united states army, known as katusa, a program for integrating korean soldiers in american units, was substantially different from the integration of black americans in terms of official authorization and management; see cmh study by david c. skaggs, "the katusa program," in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, co, th inf, for tig, oct , attached to ig summary sheet for cofs, dec , sub: policy regarding negro segregation, cs . ( dec ); fec, "g- command report, january- october ."] [footnote - : s. l. a. marshall, "integration," detroit _news_, may , .] the practice of assigning individual blacks throughout white units in korea accelerated during early and figured in the manpower rotation program which began in korea during may. by this time the practice had so spread that . percent of all negroes in the theater were serving in some forty-one newly and unofficially integrated units.[ - ] another . percent were in integrated but predominantly black units. the other percent continued to serve in segregated units: in march these numbered black regiment, battalions, separate companies, and separate detachments. looked at another way, by may some percent of the eighth army's infantry companies were at least partially integrated. [footnote - : oro technical memorandum t- , a preliminary report on the utilization of negro manpower, jun , p. , copy in cmh.] though still limited, the conversion to integrated units was permanent. the korean expedient, adopted out of battlefield necessity, carried out haphazardly, and based on such imponderables as casualties and the draft, passed the ultimate test of traditional american pragmatism: it worked. and according to reports from korea, it worked well. the performance of integrated troops was praiseworthy with no report of racial friction.[ - ] it was a test that could not fail to impress field commanders desperate for manpower. [footnote - : ibid., p. . for a popular report on the success of this partial integration, see harold h. martin, "how do our negro troops measure up?," _saturday evening post_ (june , ): - .] _training_ training units in the united states were subject to many of the stresses suffered by the eighth army, and without fanfare they too began to integrate. there was little precedent for the change. true, the army had integrated officer training in world war ii and basic training at the women's army corps training center at fort lee, virginia, in april . but beyond that only the rare black trainee designated for specialist service was assigned to a white training unit. until there was no effort to mix black and white trainees because the army's manpower experts always predicted a "social (p.  ) problem," a euphemism for the racial conflict they feared would follow integration at large bases in the united states. not that demands for integration ever really ceased. civil rights organizations and progressive lawmakers continued to press the army, and the selective service system itself complained that black draftees were being discriminated against even before induction.[ - ] because so many protests had focused on the induction process, james evans, the civilian aide to the secretary of defense, recommended that the traditional segregation be abandoned, at least during the period between induction and first assignment.[ - ] congressman jacob javits, always a critic of the army's segregation policy, was particularly disturbed by the segregation of black trainees at fort dix, new jersey. his request that training units be integrated was politely rejected in the fall of by general marshall, who implied that the subject was an unnecessary intrusion, an attitude characteristic of the defense department's war-distracted feelings toward integration.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, lewis b. hershey to sa, sep , sa . ; memo, col w. preston corderman, exec, office of asa, for cofs, sep , sub: racial complaints, cs . . for an example of complaints by a civil rights organization, see telg, j. l. lefore, mobile, ala., naacp, to president, sep , and ltr, a. philip randolph to secdef, oct , both in sd . neg.] [footnote - : memo, evans for leva, asd, oct , sub: racial complaint from the mobile area, sd . neg ( sep ).] [footnote - : ltrs, javits to secdef, sep and oct ; ltrs, secdef to javits, sep and oct . all in sd . neg.] again, the change in army policy came not because the staff ordered it, but because local commanders found it necessary. the commanders of the nine training divisions in the continental united states were hard pressed because the number of black and white inductees in any monthly draft call, as well as their designated training centers, depended on selective service and was therefore unpredictable. it was impossible for commanders to arrange for the proper number of separate white and black training units and instructors to receive the inductees when no one knew whether a large contingent of black soldiers or a large group of whites would get off the train. a white unit could be undermanned and its instructors idle while a black unit was overcrowded and its instructors overworked. this inefficient use of their valuable training instructors led commanders, first at fort ord and then at the other training divisions and replacement centers throughout the united states, to adopt the expedient of mixing black and white inductees in the same units for messing, housing, and training. as the commander of fort jackson, south carolina, put it, sorting out the rapidly arriving inductees was "ridiculous," and he proceeded to assign new men to units without regard to color. he did, however, divert black inductees from time to time "to hold the negro population down to a workable basis."[ - ] [footnote - : g- summary sheet for vcofs, apr , sub: information for the g- information book, g- . ; memo, asa (m&pr) for asd (m&pr), aug , sub: progress report on elimination of segregation in the army, sd . ; memo, vcofs for sa, jun , sub: assimilation of negroes at ft. jackson, s.c., sa . . see also lt col william m. nichols, "the dod program to ensure civil rights within the services and between the services and the community," rpt , , industrial college of the armed forces, p. .] the commanding general of the th infantry division at fort dix raised another question about integrating trainees. he had integrated all white units other than reserve units at his station, he explained (p.  ) to the first army commander in january , but since he was receiving many more white trainees than black he would soon be forced to integrate his two black training regiments as well by the unprecedented assignment of white soldiers to black units with black officers and noncommissioned officers.[ - ] actually, such reverse integration was becoming commonplace in korea, and in the case of fort dix the army g- solved the commander's dilemma by simply removing the asterisk, which meant black, from the names of the th and th infantry regiments.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, maj gen w. k. harrison, cg, th inf div, ft. dix, n.j., to cg, first army, jan , sub: request for an additional training regiment, g- . .] [footnote - : memo, da, g- for cgia, for th inf div, feb , g- . ; agao-i, mar , ag .] the nine training divisions were integrated by march , with fort dix, new jersey, and fort knox, kentucky, the last to complete the process. conversion proved trouble-free and permanent; no racial incidents were reported. in june assistant secretary of the army johnson assured the assistant secretary of defense for manpower and personnel, anna rosenberg, that current expansion of training divisions would allow the army to avoid in the future even the occasional funneling of some inductees into temporarily segregated units in times of troop overstrengths.[ - ] logic dictated that those who trained together would serve together, but despite integrated training, the plethora of negroes in overseas replacement pipelines, and the increasing amount of integrated fighting in korea, percent of the army's black soldiers still served in segregated units in april , almost three years after president truman issued his order. [footnote - : memo, asa for asd (m&p), jun ; memo, sa for asd (m&p), sep ; both in sd . .] _performance of segregated units_ another factor leading to a change in racial policy was the performance of segregated units in korea. despite "acts of heroism and capable performance of duty" by some individuals, the famous old th infantry regiment as a whole performed poorly. its instability was especially evident during the fighting on battle mountain in august , and by september the regiment had clearly become a "weak link in the th division line," and in the eighth army as well.[ - ] on september the division commander recommended that the regiment be removed from combat. "it is my considered opinion," maj. gen. william b. kean told the eighth army commander, that the th infantry has demonstrated in combat that it is untrustworthy and incapable of carrying out missions expected of an infantry regiment. in making this statement, i am fully cognizant of the seriousness of the charges that i am making, and the implications involved.... the continued use of this regiment in combat will jeopardize the united nations war effort in korea.[ - ] [footnote - : roy e. appleman, _south to the naktong, north to the yalu_ (washington: government printing office, ), pp. - . for a detailed account of the battlefield performance of the th and other segregated units, see ibid., passim.] [footnote - : ltr, maj gen w. b. kean to cg, eighth army, sep , sub: combat effectiveness of the th infantry regiment, ag . (a).] kean went on to spell out his charges. the regiment was unreliable (p.  ) in combat, particularly on the defensive and at night; it abandoned positions without warning to troops on its flanks; it wasted equipment; it was prone to panic and hysteria; and some of its members were guilty of malingering. the general made clear that his charges were directed at the unit as an organization and not at individual soldiers, but he wanted the unit removed and its men reassigned as replacements on a percentage basis in the other units of the eighth army. general kean also claimed to have assigned unusually able officers to the regiment, but to no avail. in attempting to lead their men in battle, all the unit's commanders had become casualties. concluding that segregated units would not work in a combat situation, the general believed that the combat value of black soldiers would never be realized unless they were integrated into white units at a rate of not more than percent.[ - ] [footnote - : observer report, lt col j. d. stevens, plans div, g- , oct , g- pac (sec i-d), case , tab g.] the th division commander's charges were supported by the eighth army inspector general, who investigated the th infantry at length but concluded that the inactivation of the th was unfeasible. instead he suggested integrating negroes in all eighth army units up to percent of their strength by means of the replacement process. the far east command's inspector general, brig. gen. edwin a. zundel, concurred, stating that the rotation process would provide a good opportunity to accomplish integration and expressing hope that the theater would observe the "spirit" of the army's latest racial regulations.[ - ] [footnote - : fecom check sheet, ig to g- , fec, may , sub: report of investigation; memo, fec g- for cofs, fec, apr , sub: g- topics which cinc may discuss with gen taylor; both are quoted in fecom mil hist section, "history of the korean war," iii (pt. ): - , in cmh.] lt. gen. walton h. walker, the eighth army commander, accepted the inspector general's report, and the th infantry remained on duty in korea through the winter. zundel meanwhile continued the investigation and in march offered a more comprehensive assessment of the th. it was a fact, for example, that percent of the unit's troops were in categories iv and v as against percent of the troops in the th infantry and percent in the th, the th division's white regiments. the gillem board had recommended supplying all such units with percent more officers in the company grades, something not done for the th infantry. some observers also reported evidence in the regiment of the lack of leadership and lack of close relationships between officers and men; absence of unit _esprit de corps_; discrimination against black officers; and poor quality of replacements. whatever the cause of the unit's poor performance, the unanimous recommendation in the eighth army, its inspector general reported, was integration. yet he perceived serious difficulty in integration. to mix the troops of the eighty-four major segregated units in the eighth army under wartime conditions would create an intolerable administrative burden and would be difficult for the individuals involved. if integration was limited to the th infantry alone, on the other hand, its members, indeed even its former members, would share the onus of its failure. the inspector general therefore (p.  ) again recommended retaining the th, assigning additional officers and noncommissioned officers to black units with low test averages, and continuing the integration of the eighth army.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, eusak ig to cg, eusak, mar , sub: report of investigation concerning th infantry regiment and negro soldiers in combat, eusak ig report.] [illustration: survivors of an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon, _ th infantry, korea, may _.] the eighth army was not alone in investigating the th infantry. the naacp was also concerned with reports of the regiment's performance, in particular with figures on the large number of courts-martial. thirty-six of the men convicted, many for violation of article of the articles of war (misbehavior before the enemy), had appealed to the association for assistance, and thurgood marshall, then one of its celebrated attorneys, went to the far east to investigate. granted _carte blanche_ by the far east commander, general douglas macarthur, marshall traveled extensively in korea and japan reviewing the record and interviewing the men. his conclusions: "the men were tried in an atmosphere making justice impossible," and the naacp had the evidence to clear most of them.[ - ] contrasting the army's experiences with those of the navy and the air force, marshall attributed (p.  ) discrimination in the military justice system to the army's segregation policy. he blamed macarthur for failing to carry out truman's order in the far east and pointed out that no negroes served in the command's headquarters. as long as racial segregation continued, the civil rights veteran concluded, the army would dispense the kind of injustice typical of the courts-martial he reviewed. [footnote - : thurgood marshall, _report on korea: the shameful story of the courts martial of negro gis_ (new york: naacp, ).] it would be hard to refute marshall's contention that discrimination was a handmaiden of segregation. not so walter white's contention that the reports of the th infantry's poor performance constituted an attempt to discredit the combat ability of black soldiers and return them to labor duties. the association's executive secretary had fought racial injustice for many decades, and, considering his world war ii experiences with the breakup of the d cavalry division into labor units, his acceptance of a conspiracy theory in korea was understandable. but it was inaccurate. the army operated under a different social order in , and many combat leaders in the eighth army were advocating integration. the number of black service units in the eighth army, some ninety in march , was comparable to the number in other similar army commands. nor, for that matter, was the number of black combat units in the eighth army unusual. in march the eighth army had eighty-four such units ranging in size from regiment to detachment. far from planning the conversion of black combat troops to service troops, most commanders were recommending their assignment to integrated combat units throughout korea. apprised of these various conclusions, macarthur ordered his staff to investigate the problem of segregation in the command.[ - ] the far east command g- staff incorporated the inspector general's report in its study of the problem, adding that "negro soldiers can and do fight well when integrated." the staff went on to dismiss the importance of leadership as a particular factor in the case of black troops by observing that "no race has a monopoly on stupidity."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, lt gen edward almond, cofs, fecom, to tig, mar , ig . .] [footnote - : fecom check sheet, ig to g- , fec, may , sub: report of investigation; memo, fec g- for cofs fec, apr , sub: g- topics which cinc may discuss with gen taylor.] before the staff could finish its investigation, general matthew b. ridgway replaced macarthur as far east commander. fresh from duty as eighth army commander, ridgway had had close-hand experience with the th infantry's problems; from both a military and a human viewpoint he had concluded that segregation was "wholly inefficient, not to say improper." he considered integration the only way to assure _esprit de corps_ in any large segment of the army. as for segregation, ridgway concluded, "it has always seemed to me both un-american and un-christian for free citizens to be taught to downgrade themselves this way as if they were unfit to associate with their fellows or to accept leadership themselves."[ - ] he had planned to seek authorization to integrate the major black units of the eighth army in mid-march, but battlefield preoccupations and his sudden elevation to theater command interfered. once he became commander in chief, however, he quickly concurred in his inspector general's recommendation, adding that "integration in white combat units in korea is a practical (p.  ) solution to the optimum utilization of negro manpower provided the overall theater level of negroes does not exceed percent of troop level and does not exceed over percent in any combat unit."[ - ] [footnote - : matthew b. ridgway, _the korean war_ (new york: doubleday, ), pp. - .] [footnote - : memorandum for file, fecom ig, may , copy in ag . .] the th infantry's experiences struck yet another blow at the army's race policy. reduce the size of black units, the gillem board had reasoned, and you will reduce inefficiency and discrimination. such a course had not worked. the same troubles that befell the d division in italy were now being visited in korea on the th infantry, a unit rich with honors extending back to the indian fighting after the civil war, the war with spain, and the philippine insurrection. the unit could also boast among its medal of honor winners the first man to receive the award in korea, pfc. william thompson of company m. before its inactivation in the th had yet another member so honored, sgt. cornelius h. carlton of company h. _final arguments_ to concentrate on the widespread sentiment for integration in the far east would misrepresent the general attitude that still prevailed in the army in the spring of . this attitude was clearly reflected again by the chamberlin board, which completed its reexamination of the army's racial policy in light of the korean experience in april. the board recognized the success of integrated units and even cited evidence indicating that racial friction had decreased in those units since the men generally accepted any replacement willing to fight. but in the end the board retreated into the army's conventional wisdom: separate units must be retained, and the number of negroes in the army must be regulated.[ - ] [footnote - : report of board of officers on utilization of negro manpower ( d chamberlin report), apr , g- ( nov ).] the board's recommendations were not approved. budgetary limitations precluded the creation of more segregated units and the evidence of korea could not be denied. yet the board still enjoyed considerable support in some quarters. the vice chief of staff, general haislip, who made no secret of his opposition to integration, considered it "premature" to rely and act solely on the experience with integration in korea and the training divisions, and he told secretary pace in may that "no action should be taken which would lead to the immediate elimination of segregated units."[ - ] and then there was the assessment of lt. gen. edward m. almond, world war ii commander of the d division and later x corps commander in korea and macarthur's chief of staff. twenty years after the korean war almond's attitude toward integration had not changed. i do not agree that integration improves military efficiency; i believe that it weakens it. i believe that integration was and is a political solution for the composition of our military forces because those responsible for the procedures either do not understand the characteristics of the two human elements (p.  ) concerned, the white man and the negro as individuals. the basic characteristics of negro and white are fundamentally different and these basic differences must be recognized by those responsible for integration. by trial and error we must test the integration in its application. these persons who promulgate and enforce such policies either have not the understanding of the problem or they do not have the intestinal fortitude to do what they think if they do understand it. there is no question in my mind of the inherent difference in races. this is not racism--it is common sense and understanding. those who ignore these differences merely interfere with the combat effectiveness of battle units.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, actg cofs for sa, may , sub: negro strength in the army, cs . negroes ( apr ); see also interv, author with haislip, feb , cmh files.] [footnote - : incl to ltr, almond to cmh, apr , cmh files.] the opinions of senior commanders long identified with segregated units in combat carried weight with the middle-ranking staff officers who, lacking such experience, were charged with devising policy. behind the opinions expressed by many staff members there seemed to be a nebulous, often unspoken, conviction that negroes did not perform well in combat. the staff officers who saw proof for their convictions in the troubles of the th infantry ignored the possibility that segregated units, not individual soldiers, was the problem. their attitude explains why the army continued to delay changes made imperative by its experience in korea. it also explains why at this late date the army turned to the scientific community for still another review of its racial policy. the move originated with the army's g- , maj. gen. maxwell d. taylor, who in february called for the collection of all information on the army's experiences with black troops in korea. if the g- , general mcauliffe, did not consider the available data sufficient, general taylor added, he would join in sponsoring further investigation in the far east.[ - ] the result was two studies. the g- sent an army personnel research team, which left for korea in april , to study the army's regulations for assigning men under combat conditions and to consider the performance of integrated units.[ - ] on march, maj. gen. ward s. maris, the g- , requested the operations research office, a contract agency for the army, to make a study of how best to use black manpower in the army.[ - ] the g- investigation, undertaken by manpower experts drawn from several army offices, concentrated on the views of combat commanders; the contract agency reviewed all available data, including a detailed battlefield survey by social scientists. both groups submitted preliminary reports in july . [footnote - : memo, acofs, g- , for acofs, g- , feb , wdgpa . .] [footnote - : memo, chief, pers mgmt div, g- , for cofs, g- , mar , wdgpa . .] [footnote - : ltr, maj gen ward maris, g- , for dir, oro, mar , g- . . the operations research office, a subsidiary of the johns hopkins university, performed qualitative and quantitative analyses of strategy, tactics, and materiel. some of its assignments were subcontracted to other research institutions; all were assigned by the g- 's research and development division and coordinated with the department of defense.] their findings complemented each other. the g- team reported that integration of black soldiers into white combat units in korea had been accomplished generally "without undue friction and with better utilization of manpower." combat commanders, the team added, "almost unanimously favor integration."[ - ] the individual soldier's own motivation determined his competence, the team concluded. the (p.  ) contract agency, whose report was identified by the code name project clear,[ - ] observed that large black units were, on average, less reliable than large white units, but the effectiveness of small black units varied widely. the performance of individual black soldiers in integrated units, on the other hand, approximated that of whites. it found that white officers commanding black units tended to attribute their problems to race; those commanding integrated units saw their problems as military ones. the contract team also confirmed previous army findings that efficient officers and noncommissioned officers, regardless of race, were accepted by soldiers of both races. integration, it decided, had not lowered white morale, but it had raised black morale. virtually all black soldiers supported integration, while white soldiers, whatever their private sentiments, were not overtly hostile. in most situations, white attitudes toward integration became more favorable with firsthand experience. although opinions varied, most combat commanders with integration experience believed that a squad should contain not more than two negroes. in sum, the project clear group concluded that segregation hampered the army's effectiveness while integration increased it. ironically, this conclusion practically duplicated the verdict of the army's surveys of the integration of black and white units in europe at the end of world war ii. [footnote - : da personnel research team, "a preliminary report on personnel research data" (ca. jul ), ag . .] [footnote - : oro-t- , "a preliminary report on the utilization of negro manpower," jun , s -s , copy in cmh. a draft version of a more comprehensive study on the same subject was prepared in seven volumes (oro-r- ) in november . these several documents are usually referred to as project clear, the code name for the complete version. the declassification and eventual publication of this very important social document had a long and interesting history; see, for example, memo, howard sacks, office of the general counsel, sa, for james c. evans, nov , in cmh. for over a decade a "sanitized" version of project clear remained for official use only. the study was finally cleared and published under the title _social research and the desegregation of the u.s. army_, ed. leo bogart (chicago: markham, ).] general collins immediately accepted the project clear conclusions when presented to him verbally on july .[ - ] his endorsement and the subsequent announcement that the army would integrate its forces in the far east implied a connection which did not exist. actually, the decision to integrate in korea was made before project clear or the g- study appeared. this is not to denigrate the importance of these documents. their justification of integration in objective, scientific terms later helped convince army traditionalists of the need for worldwide change and absolved the secretary of the army, his chief of staff, and his theater commander of the charge of having made a political and social rather than a military decision.[ - ] [footnote - : oro, "utilization of negro manpower in the army: a study" (advance draft), pp. viii-ix, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : ltr, dir, oro, to g- , nov , g- . ; see also interv, nichols with davis.] _integration of the eighth army_ on may general ridgway forced the issue of integration by formally requesting authority to abolish segregation in his command. he would begin with the th infantry, which he wanted to replace after reassigning its men to white units in korea. he would then integrate the other combat units and, finally, the service units. (p.  ) where special skills were not a factor ridgway wanted to assign his black troops throughout the theater to a maximum of percent of any unit. to do this he needed permission to integrate the th and th divisions, the federalized national guard units then stationed in japan. he based his proposals on the need to maintain the combat effectiveness of his command where segregated units had proved ineffective and integrated units acceptable.[ - ] [footnote - : msg, cincfe to da, da in , may , sub: utilization of negro manpower in the fec; ibid., da in , may , same sub. see also ltrs, cg, eighth army, to cincfe, may , sub: redesignation of negro combat units, and ridgway to author, dec , both in cmh.] when it finally arrived, the proposal for wide-scale integration of combat units encountered no real opposition from the army staff. general ridgway had rehearsed his proposal with the g- when the latter visited the far east in april. taylor "heartily approved," calling the times auspicious for such a move.[ - ] of course his office quickly approved the plan, and mcauliffe in g- and the rest of the staff followed suit. there was some sentiment on the staff, eventually suppressed, for retaining the th infantry as an integrated unit since the statutory requirement for the four black regiments had been repealed in .[ - ] the staff did insist, over the g- 's objections, on postponing the integration of the two national guard divisions until their arrival in korea, where the change could be accomplished through normal replacement-rotation procedures.[ - ] there were other minor complications and misunderstandings between the far east command and the army staff over the timing of the order, but they were easily ironed out.[ - ] collins discussed the plan with the appropriate congressional chairmen, ridgway further briefed the secretary of defense during general marshall's visit to japan, and secretary of the army pace kept the president informed.[ - ] [footnote - : ridgway, _the korean war_, p. .] [footnote - : section , army organization act of (pl , st cong.), published in da bull , jul . see also msg, da to cincfe, da , may ; g- summary sheet for cofs and sa, may , sub: utilization of negro manpower; memo for rcd, g- (ca. may ). all in g- . .] [footnote - : g- summary sheets for cofs, and may , sub: utilization of negro troops in fecom, g- . . see also elva stillwaugh's study, "personnel problems in the korean conflict," pp. - , in cmh.] [footnote - : see, for example, msg, da to cincfe, da , may ; msg, cincfe to da, c , jun .] [footnote - : memo, actg cofs for sa, may , sub: utilization of negro manpower, cs . .] pace had succeeded gordon gray as secretary in april and participated in the decisions leading to integration. a harvard-trained lawyer with impressive managerial skills, pace did not originate any of the army's racial programs, but he fully supported the views of his chief of staff, general collins.[ - ] meeting with his senior civilian assistants, the g- and g- of the army, and assistant secretary of defense rosenberg on june, pace admitted that their discussions were being conducted "probably with a view to achieving complete integration in the army." nevertheless, he stressed a cautionary approach because "once a step was taken it was very much harder to retract." he was particularly worried about the high percentage of black soldiers, . percent of the army's total, compared with the percentage of negroes in the other services. he summarized the three options still under discussion in the department of the army: ridgway's call for complete integration in korea, followed by integration of army elements in japan, with a percent limit (p.  ) on black replacements; mark clark's proposal to ship black combat battalions to korea to be used at the division commanders' discretion, with integration limited to combat-tested individuals and then only in support units; and, finally, the army staff's decision to continue sending replacements for use as the far east command saw fit. [footnote - : interv, author with collins.] [illustration: general ridgway.] commenting on the ridgway proposal, one participant pointed out that a percent limit on black replacements, even if integration spread to the european command, would mean that the majority of the army's negroes would remain in the united states. rosenberg, however, preferred the ridgway plan. stressing that it was an army decision and that she was "no crusader," she nevertheless reminded secretary pace that the army needed to show some progress. rosenberg mentioned the threat of a congress which might force more drastic measures upon the army and pointedly offered to defer answering her many congressional inquisitors until the army reached a decision.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, col james f. collins, asst to asd (m&p), jun , sd . .] the decision was finally announced on july . a message went out to general ridgway approving "deactivation of the th infantry and your general plan for integration of negroes into all units (with the temporary exception of the th and th divisions)."[ - ] the staff wanted the move to be gradual, progressive, and secret to avoid any possible friction in the eighth army and to win general acceptance for integration. but it did not remain secret for long. in the face of renewed public criticism for its segregated units and after lengthy staff discussion, the army announced the integration of the far east command on july, the third anniversary of the truman order.[ - ] prominent among the critics of the army's delay was general macarthur, who publicly blamed president truman for the continued segregation of his former command. the charge, following as it did the general's dismissal, was much discussed in the press and the department of defense. easily disputed, it was eventually overtaken by the fact of integration. [footnote - : msg, da to cincfe, da , jul .] [footnote - : memo, chief, public info div, cinfo, for dir, office of public info, dod, jul ; dod press release, jul . for last-minute criticism of the continued segregation see, for example, ltr, sens. herbert lehman and hubert humphrey to secdef, jul ; memo, asa for asd (m&p), jul , sub: racial segregation in fecom; telg, elmer w. henderson, dir, american council on human rights, to george c. marshall, secdef, may . all in secdef . .] three problems had to be solved in carrying out the integration (p.  ) order. the first, inactivation of the th infantry and the choice of a replacement, was quickly overcome. from the replacements suggested, ridgway decided on the th infantry, which had been recently assigned, minus men and equipment, to the far east command. it was filled with troops and equipment from the th infantry, then training replacements in japan. on october it was assigned to the th's zone of responsibility in the th division's line. the th infantry, its men and equipment transferred to other infantry units in korea, was inactivated on october and "transferred to the control of the department of the army."[ - ] [footnote - : per ltr, tag to cincfe, aug , agao-i ( jul ), implemented by eighth army go , sep .] the second problem, integration of units throughout the command, proved more difficult and time-consuming. ridgway considered the need most urgent in the infantry units and wanted their integration to take precedence. the d battalion of the th infantry was reorganized first, many of its black members scattered throughout other infantry units in the d division. but then things got out of phase. to speed the process the army staff dropped its plan for inactivating all segregated units and decided simply to remove the designation "segregated" and assign white soldiers to formerly all-black units. before this form of integration could take place in the d battalion, th infantry, the last major black infantry unit, the th tank battalion and the th armored field artillery battalion began the process of shifting their black troops to nearby white units. the th engineer combat company was the last combat unit to lose the asterisk, the army's way of designating a unit black.[ - ] the command was originally committed to an army contingency plan that would transfer black combat troops found superfluous to the newly integrated units to service units, but this proved unnecessary. all segregated combat troops were eventually assigned to integrated combat units.[ - ] [footnote - : msg, da , sep ; eighth army go , oct .] [footnote - : fecom mil hist section, "history of the korean war," iii (pt. ): - .] to soften the emotional aspects of the change, troop transfers were scheduled as part of the individual soldier's normal rotation. by the end of october the eighth army had integrated some percent of its infantry units. the process was scheduled for completion by december, but integration of the rest of its combat units and the great number of service units dragged on for another half year. it was not until may that the last divisional and nondivisional organizations were integrated.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asa (m&rf) for asd (m&p), aug , sub: integration of negro manpower, sd . .] the third and greatest problem in the integration of the far east command was how to achieve a proportionate distribution of black troops throughout the command. ridgway was under orders to maintain black strength at a maximum percent except in combat infantry units, where the maximum was percent. the temporary restriction on integrating the th and th divisions and the lack of specially trained negroes eligible for assignment to the japan logistical command added to the difficulty of achieving this goal, but the basic cause of delay was the continued shipment of black troops to the (p.  ) far east in excess of the prescribed percentage. during the integration period the percentage of black replacements averaged between . and percent and occasionally rose above percent.[ - ] ridgway finally got permission from washington to raise the ratio of black soldiers in his combat infantry units to percent, and further relief could be expected in the coming months when the two national guard divisions began integrating.[ - ] still, in october the proportion of negroes in the eighth army had risen to . percent, and the flow of black troops to the far east continued unabated, threatening the success of the integration program. ridgway repeatedly appealed for relief, having been warned by his g- that future black replacements must not exceed percent if the integration program was to continue successfully.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid.; stillwaugh, "personnel problems in the korean conflict," pp. - .] [footnote - : msg, csa to cincfe, da , jul .] [footnote - : journal files, g- , fec, oct , annex .] [illustration: machine gunners of company l, th infantry, _hill , korea, september _.] ridgway was particularly concerned with the strain on his program caused by the excessive number of black combat replacements swelling the percentage of negroes in his combat units. by september black combat strength reached . percent, far above the limits set by the army staff. ridgway wanted combat replacements limited to (p.  ) percent. he also proposed that his command be allowed to request replacements by race and occupational specialty in order to provide army headquarters with a sound basis for allotting black enlisted men to the far east. while the army staff promised to try to limit the number of black combat troops, it rejected the requisition scheme. selection for occupational specialist training was not made by race, the g- explained, and the army could not control the racial proportions of any particular specialty. since the army staff had no control over the number of negroes in the army, their specialties or the replacement needs of the command, no purpose would be served by granting such a request.[ - ] [footnote - : rad, cincfe for da, da in , sep , sub: negro personnel; msg, da to cincfe, sep , g- . .] yet ridgway's advice could not be ignored, because by year's end the whole army had developed a vested interest in the success of integration in the far east. the service was enjoying the praise of civil rights congressmen, much of the metropolitan press, and even some veterans' groups, such as the amvets.[ - ] secretary pace was moved to call the integration of the eighth army a notable advance in the field of human relations.[ - ] but most of all, the army began to experience the fruits of racial harmony. much of the conflict and confusion among troops that characterized the first year of the war disappeared as integration spread, and senior officials commented publicly on the superior military efficiency of an integrated army in korea.[ - ] as for the men themselves, their attitudes were in sharp contrast to those predicted by the army traditionalists. the conclusion of some white enlisted men, wounded and returned from korea, were typical: far as i'm concerned it [integration] worked pretty good.... when it comes to life or death, race does not mean any difference.... it's like one big family.... got a colored guy on our machine gun crew--after a while i wouldn't do without him.... concerning combat, what i've seen, an american is an american. when we have to do something we're all the same.... each guy is like your own brother--we treated all the same.... had a colored platoon leader. they are as good as any people.... we [an integrated squad] had something great in common, sleeping, guarding each other--sometimes body against body as we slept in bunkers.... takes all kinds to fight a war.[ - ] [footnote - : see, for example, press release by senator herbert h. lehman, july , which expressed the praise of nine u.s. senators; editorial in the baltimore sun, december , ; ltr, national cmdr, amvets, to cincfe, dec , copies in cmh.] [footnote - : _semiannual report of the secretary of defense, july -december , _ (washington: government printing office, ), p. .] [footnote - : see, for example, interv, nichols with bradley; ltr, ridgway to author, dec ; mark s. watson, "most combat gi's are unsegregated," datelined dec (probably prepared for the baltimore _sun_). all in cmh files. see also james c. evans and david lane, "integration in the armed services," _annals of the american academy of political and social sciences_ (march ): .] [footnote - : extracted from a series of interviews conducted by lee nichols with a group of wounded soldiers at walter reed army medical center, november , in nichols collection, cmh.] integration was an established fact in korea, but the question remained: could an attitude forged in the heat of battle be sustained on the more tranquil maneuver grounds of central europe and the american south? [illustration: color guard, th infantry, korea, .] _integration of the european and continental commands_ (p.  ) since the army was just percent negro in september , it should have been possible to solve ridgway's problem of black overstrength simply by distributing black soldiers evenly throughout the army. but this solution was frustrated by the segregation still in force in other commands. organized black units in the united states were small and few in number, and black recruits who could not be used in them were shipped as replacements to the overseas commands, principally in the far east and europe.[ - ] consequently, ridgway's problem was not an isolated one; his european counterpart was operating a largely segregated command almost percent black. the army could not prevent black overstrengths so long as negroes were ordered into the quota-free service by color-blind draft boards, but it could equalize the overstrength by integrating its forces all over the world. [footnote - : in the european command was the major army headquarters in the european theater. it was, at the same time, a combined command with some , members of the air force and navy serving along with , army troops. in august a separate army command (u.s. army, europe) was created within the european command. discussion of the european command and its commander in the following paragraphs applies only to army troops.] this course, along with the knowledge that integration was working in the far east and the training camps, was leading senior army officials toward full integration. but they wanted certain reassurances. believing that integration of the continental commands would create, in the words of the g- , "obstacles and difficulties vastly greater than those in fecom," the army staff wanted these problems (p.  ) thoroughly analyzed before taking additional moves, "experimental or otherwise," to broaden integration.[ - ] general collins, although personally committed to integration, voiced another widespread concern over extending integration beyond the far east units. unlike the navy and the air force, which were able to secure more highly qualified men on a volunteer basis, the army had long been forced to accept anyone meeting the draft's minimum standards. this circumstance was very likely to result, he feared, in an army composed to an unprecedented degree of poorly educated black soldiers, possibly as much as percent in the near future.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, g- for dcofs, admin, jul , g- . .] [footnote - : ltr, eli ginzberg to lt col edward j. barta, hist div, usareur, attached to ltr, ginzberg to carter burgess, asd (m&p), nov , sd . ( nov ).] the army's leaders received the necessary reassurances in the coming months. the secretary of defense laid to rest their fear that the draft-dependent army would become a dumping ground for the ignorant and untrainable when, in april , he directed that troops must be distributed among the services on a qualitative basis. assistant secretary of the army johnson asked professor eli ginzberg, a social scientist and consultant to the army, to explain to the army policy council the need for aggressive action to end segregation.[ - ] and once again, but this time with considerable scientific detail to support its recommendations, the project clear final report told army leaders that the service should be integrated worldwide. again the researchers found that the army's problem was not primarily racial, but a question of how best to use underqualified men. refining their earlier figures, they decided that black soldiers were best used in integrated units at a ratio of to . integration on the job was conducive to social integration, they discovered, and social integration, dependent on several variables, was particularly amenable to firm policy guidance and local control. finally, the report found that integration on military posts was accepted by local civilians as a military policy unlikely to affect their community.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, ginzberg to burgess, nov .] [footnote - : oro-r- , rpt, utilization of negro manpower in the army, project clear, vol. ; g- summary sheet for cofsa, jan , sub: evaluation of oro-r- on utilization of negro manpower in the army, cs . negroes ( jan ).] the chief of staff approved the project clear final report, although his staff had tried to distinguish between the report's view of on-the-job integration and social integration, accepting the former with little reservation, but considering the latter to be "weak in supporting evidence." the personnel staff continued to stress the need to reimpose a racial quota quickly without waiting for black enrollment to reach percent as the project clear report suggested. it also believed that integration should be limited to the active federal service, exempting national guard units under state control. general mcauliffe agreed to drop racial statistics but warned that investigation of discrimination charges depended on such statistics. he also agreed that blacks could be mixed with whites at to percent of the strength of any white unit, but to assign whites in similar percentages to black units "would undoubtedly present difficulties and place undue burdens on the assigned white personnel." finally, mcauliffe stressed that commanders would have flexibility (p.  ) in working out the nonoperational aspects of integration so long as their methods and procedures were consistent with army policy.[ - ] [footnote - : g- summary sheet for cofsa, jan .] these reservations aside, mcauliffe concluded that integration was working in enough varied circumstances to justify its extension to the entire army. general collins agreed, and on december he ordered all major commanders to prepare integration programs for their commands. integration was the army's immediate goal, and, he added, it was to be progressive, in orderly stages, and without publicity.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., dec , sub: integration of negro enlisted personnel, g- . negroes.] the chief of staff's decision was especially timely for the european command where general thomas t. handy faced manpower problems similar to if not so critical as those in the far east. during army strength in europe had also risen sharply--from , to , men. black strength had increased even more dramatically, from , (or percent) to , (or percent). the majority of black soldiers in europe served in segregated units, the number of which more than doubled because of the korean war. from sixty-six units in june , the figure rose to in march . most of these units were not in divisions but in service organizations; were service units, of which fifty-three were transportation units. again as in the far east, some integration in europe occurred in response to the influx of new soldiers as well as to army directives. handy integrated his noncommissioned officers' academy in in an operation involving thousands of enlisted men. after he closed the segregated kitzingen training center in february , black troops were absorbed into other training and replacement centers on an integrated basis. for some time army commanders in europe had also been assigning certain black soldiers with specialist training to white units, a practice dramatically accelerated in when the command began receiving many negroes with occupation specialties unneeded in black units. in march handy directed that, while the assignment of negroes to black units remained the first priority, negroes possessing qualifications unusable or in excess of the needs of black units would be assigned where they could be used most effectively.[ - ] consequently, by the end of some percent of all black enlisted men, percent of the black officers, and all black soldiers of the women's army corps in the command were serving in integrated units. [footnote - : ltr, eucom to sub cmds, mar , sub: utilization of negro personnel, usareur sgs . . see also eucom hist div, "integration of negro and white troops in the u.s. army, europe, - ," p. , in cmh. this monograph, prepared by ronald sher, will be cited hereafter as sher monograph.] in sharp contrast to the far east command, there was little support among senior army officials in europe for full integration. sent by assistant secretary johnson to brief european commanders on the army's decision, eli ginzberg met with almost universal skepticism. most commanders were unaware of the army's success with integration in the far east and in the training divisions at home; when so informed they were quick to declare such a move impractical for europe. they warned of the social problems that would arise with the all-white civilian population and predicted that the army would be forced to abandon (p.  ) the program in midstream.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, ginzberg to burgess, nov , cmh files.] there were exceptions. lt. gen. manton s. eddy, the commander of the seventh army, described the serious operational problems caused by segregation in his command. most of his black units were unsatisfactory, and without minimizing the difficulties he concluded in that integration was desirable not only for the sake of his own mission but for the army's efficiency and the nation's world leadership. officers at headquarters, supreme allied powers, europe, also recited personnel and training problems caused in their command by segregation, but here, ginzberg noted, the attitude was one of cautious silence, an attitude that made little difference because general eisenhower's command was an international organization having nothing to do with the army's race policies. it would, however, be of some interest during the political campaign when some commentators made the false claim that eisenhower had integrated american units in europe.[ - ] [footnote - : see, for example, _pathfinder_ magazine (may , ): . see also ltr, philleo nash to donald dawson, may , nash collection, truman library; ltr, brig gen charles t. lanham to evans, aug , cmh files; cinfo summary sheet, jun , sub: query washington bureau, naacp, csa . .] obviously it was going to take more than a visit from ginzberg to move the european command's staff, and later in the year collins took the matter up personally with handy. this consultation, and a series of exchanges between mcauliffe and command officials, led collins to ask handy to submit an integration plan as quickly as possible.[ - ] handy complied with a proposal that failed on the whole to conform to the army's current plans for worldwide integration and was quickly amended in washington. the european command would not, collins decreed, conduct a special screening of its black officers and noncoms for fitness for combat duty. the command would not retain segregated service units, although the army would allow an extension of the program's timetable to accomplish the integration of these units. finally, the command would stage no publicity campaign but would instead proceed quietly and routinely. the program was to begin in april .[ - ] [footnote - : msg, cofsa to cinceur, dec , da .] [footnote - : ltr, ag, eucom, to cofsa, dec , sub: racial integration in combat units; g- summary sheet, jan , same sub; ltr, cofsa to handy, feb ; msg, cinceur to cofsa, mar , da in ; msg, cofsa to cinceur, da , mar . all in cs . .] integration of the european command proceeded without incident, but the administrative task was complicated and frequently delayed by the problem of black overstrength. handy directed that negroes be assigned as individuals in a to ratio in all units although he would tolerate a higher ratio in service and temporary duty units during the early stages of the program.[ - ] this figure was adjusted upward the following year to a maximum of percent black for armor and infantry units, percent for combat engineers and artillery, and . percent for all other units. during the process of integrating the units, a percent black strength was authorized.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cinceucom for commanding generals et al., apr , sub: racial integration of eucom army units, copy in cs . .] [footnote - : sher monograph, p. .] the ratios were raised because the percentage of negroes in the (p.  ) command continued to exceed the to ratio and was still increasing. in september the new commander, general alfred m. gruenther, tried to slow the rate of increase.[ - ] he got washington to halt the shipment of black units, and he himself instituted stricter reenlistment standards in europe. finally, he warned that with fewer segregated units to which black troops might be assigned, the racial imbalance was becoming more critical, and he asked for a deferment of the program's completion.[ - ] the army staff promised to try to alleviate the racial disproportions in the replacement stream, but asked gruenther to proceed as quickly as possible with integration.[ - ] [footnote - : as of august the major joint american command in europe was designated u.s. european command (useucom). the u.s. army element in this command was designated u.s. army, europe (usareur). gruenther was the commander in chief of the european command from july to november . at the same time he occupied the senior position in the nato command under the title supreme allied commander, europe (saceur).] [footnote - : memo, uscinceur for tag, sep , sub: racial integration of usareur units, ag . ( sep ); see also sher monograph, pp. - .] [footnote - : memos, g- for tag, oct , sub: negro overstrength in usareur, and tag for uscinceur, nov , same sub; both in ag . ( oct ).] there was little the army staff could do. the continental commands had the same overstrength problem, and the staff considered the european command an inappropriate place to raise black percentages. by mid- negroes accounted for some percent of army personnel in europe and, more important to the command, the number of negroes with combat occupation specialties continued to increase at the same rate. as an alternative to the untenable practice of reclassifying combat-trained men for noncombat assignments purely on account of race, gruenther again raised the acceptable ratio of blacks in combat units. at the same time he directed the seventh army commander to treat ratios in the future merely as guidelines, to be adhered to as circumstances permitted.[ - ] the percentage of negroes in the command leveled off at this time, but not before the black proportion of the command's transportation units reached . percent. summing up his command's policy on integration, gruenther concluded: "i cannot permit the assignment of large numbers of unqualified personnel, regardless of race, to prejudice the operation readiness of our units in an effort to attain percent racial integration, however desirable that goal may be."[ - ] a heavy influx of white replacements with transportation specialties allowed the european command to finish integrating the elements of the seventh army in july .[ - ] the last black unit in the command, the th engineer battalion, was inactivated in november. [footnote - : ltr, uscinceur to cg, seventh army, jul , sub: racial integration of usareur units, usareur ag . ( ).] [footnote - : ltr, cincusareur to saceur, apr , usareur sgs . ( ), quoted in sher monograph, p. .] [footnote - : hq usareur, "annual historical report, january - june ," p. , in cmh.] integration of black troops in europe proved successful on several counts, with the army, in assistant secretary fred korth's words, "achieving benefits therefrom substantially greater than we had anticipated at its inception."[ - ] the command's combat (p.  ) readiness increased, he claimed, while its racial incidents and disciplinary problems declined. the reaction of the soldiers was, again in korth's words, "generally good" with incidents stemming from integration "fewer and much farther between." moreover, the program had been a definite advantage in counteracting communist propaganda, with no evidence of problems with civilians arising from social integration. more eloquent testimony to the program's success appeared in the enthusiasm of the european command's senior officials.[ - ] their fears and uncertainties eased, they abruptly reversed their attitudes and some even moved from outright opposition to praise for the program as one of their principal achievements. [footnote - : memo, asa (m&rf) for j. c. evans, oasd (m), nov , sub: negro integration in europe, sd . .] [footnote - : ltr, ginzberg to burgess, nov , cmh files; ernest leiser, "for negroes, it's a new army now," _saturday evening post_ (december , ): - , - .] the smaller overseas commands also submitted plans to army headquarters for the breakup of their segregated units in , and integration of the alaskan command and the rest proceeded during without incident.[ - ] at the same time the continental army commands, faced with similar manpower problems, began making exceptions, albeit considerably more timidly than the great overseas commands, to the assignment of negroes to black units. as early as september the army g- discovered instances of unauthorized integration in every army area,[ - ] the result of either unrectified administrative errors or the need to find suitable assignments for black replacements. "the concern shown by you over the press reaction to integrating these men into white units," the sixth army commander, lt. gen. joseph m. swing, reported to the army staff, "causes me to guess that your people may not realize the extent to which integration has already progressed--at least in the sixth army."[ - ] swing concluded that gradual integration had to be the solution to the army's race problems everywhere. mcauliffe agreed with swing that the continental commands should be gradually integrated, but, as he put it, "the difficulty is that my superiors are not prepared to admit that we are already launched on a progressive integration program" in the united states. the whole problem was a very touchy one, mcauliffe added.[ - ] [footnote - : on the integration of these commands, see, for example, g- summary sheet, sep , sub: utilization of negro personnel; ltr, cg, usaral, to da, sep ; ltr, g- to maj gen julian cunningham, oct . all in g- . .] [footnote - : memo, chief, manpower control div, g- , for gen taylor, sep , sub: negro integration, g- . .] [footnote - : ltr, cg, sixth army, to acofs, g- , sep , g- . negroes.] [footnote - : ltr, g- to cg, sixth army, sep , g- . .] the army staff had agreed to halt the further integration of units in the united states until the results of the overseas changes had been carefully analyzed. nevertheless, even while the integration of the far east forces was proceeding, general mcauliffe's office prepared a comprehensive two-phase plan for the integration of the continental armies. it would consolidate all temporary units then separated into racial elements, redistributing all negroes among the organized white units; then, negroes assigned to black components of larger white units would be absorbed into similar white units through normal attrition or by concentrated levies on the black units. mcauliffe (p.  ) estimated that the whole process would take two years.[ - ] [footnote - : g- summary sheet for cofs, sep , sub: g- attitude toward integration of negroes into conus units, cs . negroes ( sep ). the staff's decision to halt further integration was announced in memo, acofs, g- , for acofs, g- , jul , g- . .] [illustration: visit with the commander. _soldiers of the ordnance branch, berlin command, meet with brig. gen. charles f. craig._] mcauliffe's plan was put into effect when general collins ordered worldwide integration in december . the breakdown of the " percent army" proceeded uneventfully, and the old black units disappeared. the th and th cavalry regiments, now converted into the th and th tank battalions (negro), received white replacements and dropped the racial designation. the th infantry, now broken down into smaller units, was integrated in september . on october assistant secretary of defense john hannah announced that percent of the army's negroes were serving in integrated units with the rest to be so assigned not later than june .[ - ] his estimate was off by several months. the european (p.  ) command's th engineer battalion, the last major all-black unit, was inactivated in november , several weeks after the secretary of defense had announced the end of all segregated units.[ - ] [footnote - : _u.s. news and world report_ (october , ): - .] [footnote - : hq usareur, "annual historical report, july - june ," p. .] [illustration: brothers under the skin, _inductees at fort sam houston, texas, _.] like a man who discovers that his profitable deeds are also virtuous, the army discussed its new racial policy with considerable pride. from company commander to general officer the report was that the army worked better; integration was desirable, and despite all predictions to the contrary, it was a success. military commentators in and out of uniform stoutly defended the new system against its few critics.[ - ] most pointed to korea as the proving ground for the new policy. assistant secretary of defense hannah generalized about the change to integration: "official analyses and reports indicate a definite increase in combat effectiveness in the overseas areas.... from experience in korea and elsewhere, army commanders have (p.  ) determined, also, that more economical and effective results accrue from the policies which remove duplicate facilities and operations based upon race."[ - ] the army, it would seem, had made a complete about-face in its argument from efficiency. [footnote - : see, for example, _semiannual report of the secretary of defense, january -june , _, p. ; ibid., january -june , , pp. - ; and annual reports of the secretary of the army for same period, as well as cincusareur's response to criticisms by general mark clark, _army times_, may , , and s. l. a. marshall's devastating rejoinder to general almond in the detroit _news_, may , . clark's views are reported in _u.s. news and world report_ (may , ). see also ltr, lt col gordon hill, cinfo, to joan rosen, wcbs, apr , cmh files; new york _herald tribune_, may , ; new york _times_ may , .] [footnote - : ltr, hannah, asd (m), to sen. lyndon b. johnson, feb , asd (m) . .] but integration did more than demonstrate a new form of military efficiency. it also stilled several genuine fears long entertained by military leaders. many thoughtful officials had feared that the social mingling that would inevitably accompany integration in the continental united states might lead to racial incidents and a breakdown in discipline. the new policy seemed to prove this fear groundless.[ - ] a army-sponsored survey reported that, with the single major exception of racially separate dances for enlisted men at post-operated service clubs on southern bases, segregation involving uniformed men and women now stopped at the gates of the military reservation.[ - ] army headquarters, carefully monitoring the progress of social integration, found it without incident.[ - ] at the same time the survey revealed that some noncommissioned officers' clubs and enlisted men's clubs tended to segregate themselves, but no official notice was taken of this tendency, and not one such instance was a source of racial complaint in . the survey also discovered that racial attitudes in adjacent communities had surprisingly little influence on the relations between white and black soldiers on post. nor was there evidence of any appreciable resentment toward integration on the part of white civilian employees, even when they worked with or under black officers and enlisted men. [footnote - : one exception was the strong objection in some states to racially mixed marriages contracted by soldiers. twenty-seven states had some form of miscegenation law. the army therefore did not assign to stations in those states soldiers who by reason of their mixed marriages might be subject to criminal penalties. see memo, chief, classification and standards branch, dcsper, for planning office, feb , sub: assignment of personnel; df, dcsper to tag, jun ; both in dcsper . . for further discussion of the matter, see tago, policy paper, july ; new york _post_, november , .] [footnote - : humrro, integration of social activities on nine army posts, aug . see also interv, nichols with davis. a dcsper action officer, davis was intimately involved with the army's integration program during this period.] [footnote - : interv, author with evans, dec , cmh files.] the on-post dance, a valuable morale builder, was usually restricted to one race because commanders were afraid of arousing antagonism in nearby communities. but even here restrictions were not uniform. mutual use of dance floors by white and black couples was frequent though not commonplace and was accepted in officers' clubs, many noncommissioned officers' clubs, and at special unit affairs. the rules for social integration were flexible, and many adjustments could be made to the sentiments of the community if the commander had the will and the tact. some commanders, unaware of what was being accomplished by progressive colleagues, were afraid to establish a precedent, and often avoided practices that were common elsewhere. social scientists reviewing the situation suggested that the army should acquaint the commanders with the existing wide range of social possibilities. fear of congressional disapproval, another reason often given for deferring integration, was exaggerated, as a meeting between senator richard b. russell and james evans in early demonstrated. (p.  ) at the request of the manpower secretary, evans went to capitol hill to inform the chairman of the armed services committee that for reasons of military efficiency the army was going to integrate. senator russell observed that he had been unable to do some things he wanted to do "because your people [black voters] weren't strong enough politically to support me." tell the secretary, russell added, "that i won't help him integrate, but i won't hinder him either--and neither will anyone else."[ - ] the senator was true to his word. news of the army's integration program passed quietly through the halls of congress without public or private protest. [footnote - : ibid.] much opposition to integration was based on the fear that low-scoring black soldiers, handicapped by deficiencies in schooling and training, would weaken integrated units as they had the all-black units. but integration proved to be the best solution. as one combat commander put it, "mix 'um up and you get a strong line all the way; segregate 'um and you have a point of weakness in your line. the enemy hits you there, and it's bug out."[ - ] korea taught the army that an integrated unit was not as weak as its weakest men, but as strong as its leadership and training. integration not only diluted the impact of the less qualified by distributing them more widely, but also brought about measurable improvement in the performance and standards of a large number of black soldiers. [footnote - : quoted in john b. spore and robert f. cocklin, "our negro soldiers," _reporter_ (january , ): - .] closely related to the concern over the large number of ill-qualified soldiers was the fear of the impact of integration on a quota-free army. the project clear team concluded that a maximum of to percent black strength "seems to be an effective interim working level."[ - ] general mcauliffe pointed out in november that he was trying to maintain a balanced distribution of black troops, not only geographically but also according to combat and service specialties (_see tables and _). collins decided to retain the ceiling on black combat troops--no more than percent in any combat unit--but he agreed that a substantially higher percentage was acceptable in all other units.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, dir, oro, to acofs, g- , nov , g- . .] [footnote - : memo for rcd, g- , nov , ref: acofs, g- , memo for cofs, sub: distribution of negro personnel, oct , g- . .] table --worldwide distribution of enlisted personnel by race, october (in thousands) european far east other overseas continental category command command commands united total states white . . . . , . black . . . [a] . . total . . . . , . percent black . . . . . [tablenote a: restrictions remained in effect on the assignment of negroes to certain stations in usarpac, trust, and usarcarib.] _source_: memo, chief, per and dist br, g- , for acofs, g- , oct , sub: distribution of negro enlisted personnel, g- , . . table --distribution of black enlisted personnel by branch and rank, october aus regular branch total percent[b] total percent[b] armor , . , . artillery , . , . infantry , . , . adjutant general's corps , . . chemical corps , . . corps of engineers , . , . military police corps , . , . finance corps . . army medical service , . , . ordnance corps , . , . quartermaster corps , . , . signal corps , . , . transportation corps , . , . women's army corps , . , . no branch assignment[a] , . , . total , [c] , [tablenote a: in training.] [tablenote b: figures show black percentage of total army enlistments.] [tablenote c: discrepancy with table , which is based on september figures.] _source_: stm- , oct . these percentages were part of a larger concern over the number of negroes in the army as a whole. based on the evidence of draft-swollen enlistment statistics, it seemed likely that the to percent figure would be reached or surpassed in or , and there was some discussion in the staff about restoring the quota. but such talk quickly faded as the korean war wound down and the percentage declined. negroes constituted . percent of enlisted strength in december and leveled off by the summer of at . percent. statistics for the european command illustrated the trend. in june , negroes accounted for . percent of the command's officer strength and . percent of its enlisted strength. the enlisted figure represents a drop from a high of . percent in june . the percentage of black troops was down to . percent of the (p.  ) command's total strength--officers, warrant officers, and enlisted men--by june . the reduction is explained in part by a policy adopted by all commands in february of refusing, with certain exceptions, to reenlist three-year veterans who scored less than ninety in the classification tests. in europe alone some , enlisted men were not permitted to reenlist in . slightly more than percent were black.[ - ] [footnote - : hq usareur, "annual historical report, july - june ," pp. - , ; ibid., july - june , pp. - .] the racial quota, in the guise of an "acceptable" percentage of negroes in individual units, continued to operate long after the army agreed to abandon it. no one, black or white, appears to have voiced in the early 's the logical observation that the establishment of a racial quota in individual army units--whatever the percentage and the grounds for that percentage--was in itself a residual form of discrimination. nor did anyone ask how establishing a race quota, clearly distinct from restricting men according to mental, moral, or professional standards, could achieve the "effective working (p.  ) level" posited by the army's scientific advisers. these questions would still be pertinent years later because the alternative to the racial quota--the enlistment and assignment of men without regard for color--would continue to be unacceptable to many. they would argue that to abandon the quota, as the services did in the 's, was to violate the concept of racial balance, which is yet another hallmark of an egalitarian society. for example, during the vietnam war some black americans complained that too many negroes were serving in the more dangerous combat arms. since men were assigned without regard to race, these critics were in effect asking for the quota again, reminding the service that the population of the united states was only some percent black. and during discussions of the all-volunteer army a decade later, critics would be asking how the white majority would react to an army or even percent black. these considerations were clearly beyond the ken of the men who integrated the army in the early 's. they concentrated instead on the perplexities of enlisting and assigning vast numbers of segregated black soldiers during wartime and closely watched the combat performance of black units in korea. integration provided the army with a way to fill its depleted combat units quickly. the shortage of white troops forced local commanders to turn to the growing surplus of black soldiers awaiting assignment to a limited number of black units. manpower restrictions did not permit the formation of new black units merely to accommodate the excess, and in any case experience with the th infantry had strengthened the army staff's conviction that black combat units did not perform well. however commanders may have felt about the social implications of integration, and whatever they thought of the fighting ability of black units, the only choice left to them was integration. when the chief of staff ordered the integration of the far east command in , what had begun as a battlefield expedient became official policy. segregation became unworkable when the army lost its power to limit the number of black soldiers. abandonment of the quota on enlistments, pressed on the army by the fahy committee, proved compatible with segregated units only so long as the need for fighting men was not acute. in korea the need became acute. ironically, the gillem board, whose work became anathema to the integrationists, accurately predicted the demise of segregation in its final report, which declared that in the event of another major war the army would use its manpower "without regard to antecedents or race." chapter (p.  ) integration of the marine corps even more so than in the army, the history of racial equality in the marine corps demonstrates the effect of the exigencies of war on the integration of the armed forces. the truman order, the fahy committee, even the demands of civil rights leaders and the mandates of the draft law, all exerted pressure for reform and assured the presence of some black marines. but the marine corps was for years able to stave off the logical outcome of such pressures, and in the end it was the manpower demands of the korean war that finally brought integration. in the first place the korean war caused a sudden and dramatic rise in the number of black marines: from , men, almost half of them stewards, in may , to some , men, only of them serving in separate stewards duty, in october .[ - ] whereas the careful designation of a few segregated service units sufficed to handle the token black representation in , no such organization was possible in , when thousands of black marines on active duty constituted more than percent of the total enlistment. the decision to integrate the new black marines throughout the corps was the natural outcome of the service's early experiences in korea. ordered to field a full division, the corps out of necessity turned to the existing black service units, among others, for men to augment the peacetime strength of its combat units. these men were assigned to any unit in the far east that needed them. as the need for more units and replacements grew during the war, newly enlisted black marines were more and more often pressed into integrated service both in the far east and at home. [footnote - : all statistics from official marine corps sources, hist div, hqmc.] most significantly, the war provided a rising generation of marine corps officers with a first combat experience with black marines. the competence of these negroes and the general absence of racial tension during their integration destroyed long accepted beliefs to the contrary and opened the way for general integration. although the corps continued to place special restrictions on the employment of negroes and was still wrestling with the problem of black stewards well into the next decade, its basic policy of segregating marines by race ended with the cancellation of the last all-black unit designation in . hastily embraced by the corps as a solution to a pressing manpower problem, integration was finally accepted as a permanent manpower policy. _impetus for change_ (p.  ) this transformation seemed remote in in view of commandant clifton b. cates's strong defense of segregation. at that time cates made a careful distinction between allocating men to the services without regard to race, which he supported, and ordering integration of the services themselves. "changing national policy in this respect through the armed forces," he declared, "is a dangerous path to pursue inasmuch as it effects [_sic_] the ability of the national military establishment to fulfill its mission."[ - ] integration of the services had to follow, not precede, integration of american society. [footnote - : memo, cmc for asst secnav for air, mar , mc files.] the commandant's views were spelled out in a series of decisions announced by the corps in the wake of the secretary of the navy's call for integration of all elements of the navy department in . on november the corps' acting chief of staff announced a new racial policy: individual black marines would be assigned in accordance with their specialties to vacancies "in any unit where their services can be effectively utilized," but segregated black units would be retained and new ones created when appropriate in the regular and reserve components of the corps. in the case of the reserve component, the decision on the acceptance of an applicant was vested in the unit commander.[ - ] on the same day the commandant made it clear that the policy was not to be interpreted too broadly. priority for the assignment of individual black marines, cates informed the commander of the pacific department, would be given to the support establishment and black officers would be assigned to black units only.[ - ] [footnote - : mc memo - , nov , sub: policy regarding negro marines, hist div, hqmc, files. unless otherwise noted, all documents in this section are located in these files.] [footnote - : msg, cmc (signed c. b. cates) to cg, dept of pacific, nov . aware of the delicate public relations aspects of this subject, the director of plans and policies recommended that this message be classified; see memo, e. a. pollock for asst cmc, nov .] further limiting the chances that black marines would be integrated, cates approved the creation of four new black units. the director of personnel and the marine quartermaster had opposed this move on the grounds that the new units would require technical billets, particularly in the supply specialties, which would be nearly impossible to fill with available enlisted black marines. either school standards would have to be lowered or white marines would have to be assigned to the units. cates met this objection by agreeing with the director of plans and policies that no prohibition existed against racial mixing in a unit during a period of on-the-job training. the director of personnel would decide when a unit was sufficiently trained and properly manned to be officially designated a black organization.[ - ] in keeping with this arrangement, for example, the commanding general of the d marine division reported in february that his black marines were sufficiently trained to assume complete operation of the depot platoon within the division's service command. cates then designated the platoon as a unit suitable for general (p.  ) duty black marines, which prompted the coordinator of enlisted personnel to point out that current regulations stipulated "after a unit has been so designated, all white enlisted personnel will be withdrawn and reassigned."[ - ] [footnote - : dp&p study - , nov , sub: designation of units for assignment of negro marines, approved by cmc, dec .] [footnote - : memo, cg, d marine div, for cmc, feb , sub: assignment of negro enlisted personnel; memo, cmc to cg, d marine div, mar , sub: designation of the depot platoon, support company, second combat service group, service command, for assignment of negro enlisted marines; mc routing sheet, enlisted coordinator, personnel department, mar , same sub.] nor were there any plans for the general integration of black reservists, although some negroes were serving in formerly all-white units. the th infantry battalion, for instance, had a black lieutenant. as the assistant commandant, maj. gen. oliver p. smith, put it on january , black units would be formed "in any area where there is an expressed interest" provided that the black population was large enough to support it.[ - ] when the naacp objected to the creation of another all-black reserve unit in new york city as being contrary to defense department policy, the marine corps justified it on the grounds that the choice of integrated or segregated units must be made by the local community "in accord with its cultural values."[ - ] notwithstanding the secretary of the navy's integration order and assignment policies directed toward effective utilization, it appeared that the marine corps in early was determined to retain its system of racially segregated units indefinitely. [footnote - : ltr, smith to franklin s. williams, asst special counsel, naacp, jan , ao- , mc files.] [footnote - : ltr, roy wilkins to secdef, feb ; memo, secnav for secdef, apr , sub: activation of negro reserve units in the u.s. marine corps; both in secdef . . see also ltr, asst cmc to franklin williams, feb .] but the corps failed to reckon with the consequences of the war that broke out suddenly in korea in june. two factors connected with that conflict caused an abrupt change in marine race policy. the first was the great influx of negroes into the corps. although the commandant insisted that race was not considered in recruitment, and in fact recruitment instructions since contained no reference to the race of applicants, few negroes had joined the marine corps in the two years preceding the war.[ - ] in its defense the corps pointed to its exceedingly small enlistment quotas during those years and its high enlistment standards, which together allowed recruiters to accept only a few men. the classification test average for all recruits enlisted in was , while the average for black enlistees during the same period was . . new black recruits were almost exclusively enlisted for stewards duty.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, cmc to walter white, jul .] [footnote - : memo, div of plans and policies for asst dir of public info, jun , sub: article in pittsburgh _courier_ of may .] a revision of defense department manpower policy combined with the demands of the war to change all that. the imposition of a qualitative distribution of manpower by the secretary of defense in april meant that among the thousands of recruits enlisted during the korean war the marine corps would have to accept its share of the large percentage of men in lower classification test categories. among these men were a significant number of black enlistees who had failed to qualify under previous standards. they were joined by thousands (p.  ) more who were supplied through the nondiscriminatory process of the selective service system when, during the war, the corps began using the draft. the result was a percent jump in the number of black marines in the first year of war, a figure that would be multiplied almost six times before war inductions ran down in . (_table _) table --black marines, - percent date officers enlisted men of corps july , . july , . january , . july , . january , . july na , . january , . july , . november , . june , . january , . a second factor forcing a change in racial policy was the manpower demands imposed upon the corps by the war itself. when general macarthur called for the deployment of a marine regimental combat team and supporting air group on july , the secretary of the navy responded by sending the st provisional marine brigade, which included the th marine regiment, the st battalion of the th marines (artillery), and marine air group . by september the st marine division and the st marine air wing at wartime strength had been added. fielding these forces placed an enormous strain on the corps' manpower, and one result was the assignment of a number of black service units, often combined with white units in composite organizations, to the combat units. the pressures of battle quickly altered this neat arrangement. theoretically, every marine was trained as an infantryman, and when shortages occurred in combat units commanders began assigning black replacements where needed. for example, as the demand for more marines for the battlefield grew, the marine staff began to pull black marines from routine duties at the marine barracks in new jersey, pennsylvania, and hawaii and send them to korea to bring the fighting units up to full strength. the first time black servicemen were integrated as individuals in significant numbers under combat conditions was in the st provisional marine brigade during the fighting in the pusan perimeter in august . the assignment of large numbers of black marines throughout the combat units of the st marine division, beginning in september, provided the clearest instance of a service abandoning a social policy in response to the demands of the battlefield. the th marines, for example, an organic element of the st marine division since august , received into its rapidly expanding ranks, along with many recalled white reservists and men from small, miscellaneous marine units, a -man black (p.  ) service unit. the regimental commander immediately broke up the black unit, assigning the men individually throughout his combat battalions. that the emergency continued to influence the placement of negroes is apparent from the distribution of black marines in march , when almost half were assigned to combat duty in integrated units.[ - ] before the war was over, the st marine division had several thousand black marines, serving in its ranks in korea, where they were assigned to infantry and signal units as well as to transportation and food supply organizations. one of the few black reserve officers on active duty found himself serving as an infantry platoon commander in company b of the division's th marines. [footnote - : _location of black marines, march _ posts and stations inside the united states posts and stations outside the united states troop training units aviation fleet marine force (ground) , ships en route missing in action total , _source_: tab to memo, acofs, g- , to asst dir of public info, jun , sub: queries concerning negro marines.] the shift to integration in korea proved uneventful. in the words of the th marines commander: "never once did any color problem bother us.... it just wasn't any problem. we had one negro sergeant in command of an all-white squad and there was another--with a graves registration unit--who was one of the finest marines i've ever seen."[ - ] serving for the first time in integrated units, negroes proceeded to perform in a way that not only won many individuals decorations for valor but also won the respect of commanders for negroes as fighting men. reminiscing about the performance of black marines in his division, lt. gen. oliver p. smith remembered "they did everything, and they did a good job because they were integrated, and they were with good people."[ - ] in making his point the division commander contrasted the performance of his integrated men with the army's segregated th infantry. the observations of field commanders, particularly the growing opinion that a connection existed between good performance and integration, were bound to affect the deliberations of the division of plans and policies when it began to restudy the question of black assignments in the fall of . [footnote - : washington _post_, february , .] [footnote - : usmc oral history interview, lt gen oliver p. smith, jun .] as a result of the division's study, the commandant of the marine corps announced a general policy of racial integration on december , thus abolishing the system first introduced in of designating certain units in the regular forces and organized reserves as black units.[ - ] he spelled out the new order in some detail (p.  ) on december, and although his comments were addressed to the commanders in the fleet marine force, they were also forwarded to various commands in the support establishment that still retained all-black units. the order indicated that the practices now so commonplace in korea were about to become the rule in the united states.[ - ] some six months later the commandant informed the chief of naval personnel that the marine corps had no segregated units and while integration had been gradual "it was believed to be an accomplished fact at this time."[ - ] [footnote - : mc policy memo - , dec , sub: policy regarding negro marines.] [footnote - : memo, cmc for cg, fmf, pacific, et al., dec , sub: assignment of negro enlisted personnel.] [footnote - : idem for chief, navpers (ca. jun ), mc files.] [illustration: marines on the kansas line, korea. _men of the st marines await word to move out._] the change was almost immediately apparent in other parts of the corps, for black marines were also integrated in units serving with the fleet. reporting on a mediterranean tour of the d battalion, th marines (reinforced), from april to october , capt. thomas l. faix, a member of the unit, noted: "we have about fifteen negro marines in our unit now, out of fifty men. we have but very little trouble and they sleep, eat and go on liberty together. it would be hard for many to believe but the thought is that here in the service all are facing a common call or summons to service regardless of color."[ - ] finally, in august , lt. gen. gerald c. thomas, (p.  ) who framed the postwar segregation policy, announced that "integration of negroes in the corps is here to stay. colored boys are in almost every military occupation specialty and certainly in every enlisted rank. i believe integration is satisfactory to them, and it is satisfactory to us."[ - ] [footnote - : extract from thomas l. faix, "marines on tour (an account of mediterranean goodwill cruise and naval occupation duty), third battalion, sixth marines (reinforced), april -october , ," in essays and topics of interest: # , race relations, p. .] [footnote - : the chief of staff was quoted in "integration of the armed forces," _ebony_ (july ): .] [illustration: marine reinforcements. _a light machine gun squad of d battalion, st marines, arrives during the battle for "boulder city."_] _assignments_ the integration order ushered in a new era in the long history of the marine corps, but despite the abolition of segregated units, the new policy did not bring about completely unrestricted employment of negroes throughout the corps. the commandant had retained the option to employ black marines "where their services can be effectively utilized," and in the years after the korean war it became apparent that the corps recognized definite limits to the kinds of duty to which black marines could be assigned. following standard assignment procedures, the department of personnel's detail branch selected individual staff noncommissioned officers for specific duty billets. after screening the records of a marine and considering his race, the branch could reject the assignment of a negro to a billet for any (p.  ) reason "of overriding interest to the marine corps."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, head of detail br, pers dept, for dir of pers, jun , sub: policy regarding negro marines, mc files. this method of assigning staff noncommissioned officers still prevailed in .] by the same token, the assignment of marines in the lower ranks was left to the individual commands, which filled quotas established by headquarters. commanders usually filled the quotas from among eligible men longest on station, but whether or not negroes were included in a transfer quota was left entirely to the discretion of the local commander. the department of personnel reserved the right, however, to make one racial distinction in regard to bulk quotas: it regulated the number of black marines it took from recruit depots as replacements, as insurance against a "disproportionate" number of negroes in combat units. under the screening procedures of marine headquarters and unit commanders, black enlisted men were excluded from assignment to reserve officer training units, recruiting stations, the state department for duty at embassies and legations, and certain special duties of the department of defense and the navy department.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., aug .] for the service to reserve the right to restrict the assignment of negroes when it was of "overriding interest to the marine corps" was perhaps understandable, but it was also susceptible to considerable misinterpretation if not outright abuse. the personnel department was "constantly" receiving requests from commanders that no black noncoms be assigned to their units. while some of these requests seemed reasonable, the chief of the division's detail branch noted, others were not. commanders of naval prison retraining centers did not want black noncommissioned officers assigned because, they claimed, negroes caused unrest among the prisoners. the marine barracks in washington, d.c., where the commandant lived, did not want black marines because of the ceremonial nature of its mission. the marine barracks at dahlgren, virginia, did not want negroes because conflicts might arise with civilian employees in cafeterias and movies. other commanders questioned the desirability of assigning black marines to the naval academy, to inspector-instructor billets in the clerical and supply fields, and to billets for staff chauffeurs. the detail branch wanted a specific directive that listed commands to which black marines should not be assigned.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., jun .] restrictions on the assignment of black marines were never codified, but the justification for them changed. in place of the "overriding interest to the marine corps" clause, the corps began to speak of restrictions "solely for the welfare of the individual marine." in the director of personnel, maj. gen. robert o. bare, pointed to the unusually severe hardships imposed on negroes in some communities where the attitude toward black marines sometimes interfered with their performance of duty. since civilian pressures could not be recognized officially, bare reasoned, they had to be dealt with informally on a person-to-person basis.[ - ] by this statement (p.  ) he meant the marine corps would informally exclude negroes from certain assignments. of course no one explained how barring negroes from assignment to recruitment, inspector-instructor, embassy, or even chauffeur duty worked for "the welfare of the individual marine." such an explanation was just what congressman powell was demanding in january when he asked why black marines were excluded from assignments to the american embassy in paris.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, maj gen r. o. bare to co, st mar div, jul ; ltr, dir of pers to cg, st mar div (ca. dec ). the quotation is from ltr, co, marine barracks, nad, hawthorne, nev., to dir of pers, dec .] [footnote - : ltr, powell to secdef, jan . see also unsigned draft ltr for the commandant's signature to powell, feb .] community attitudes toward negroes in uniform had become a serious matter in all the services by the late 's, and concern for the welfare of black marines was repeatedly voiced by marine commanders in areas as far-flung as nevada, florida, and southern california.[ - ] but even here there was reason to question the motives of some local commanders, for during a lengthy discussion in the personnel department some officials asserted that the available evidence indicated no justification for restricting assignments. anxiety over assignments anywhere in the united states was unfounded, they claimed, and offered in support statistics demonstrating the existence of a substantial black community in all the duty areas from which negroes were unofficially excluded. the assignment and classification branch also pointed out that the corps had experienced no problems in the case of the thirteen black marines then assigned to inspector-instructor duty, including one in mobile, alabama. the branch went on to discuss the possibility of assigning black marines to recruiting duty. since recruiters were assigned to areas where they understood local attitudes and customs, some officials reasoned, negroes should be used to promote the corps among potential black enlistees whose feelings and attitudes were not likely to be understood by white recruiters. [footnote - : see ltrs, a. w. gentleman, hq mc cold weather tng cen, bridgeport, calif., to col hartley, nov ; co, mb, nas, jacksonville, fla., to personnel dept, dec ; co, mb, nad, hawthorne, nev., to same, dec .] these matters were never considered officially by the marine corps staff, and as of the inspector general was still keeping a list of stations to which negroes would not be assigned. but the picture quickly changed in the next year, and by june all restrictions on the assignment of black marines had been dropped with the exception of several installations in the united states where off-base housing was unavailable and some posts overseas where the use of black marines was limited because of the attitudes of foreign governments.[ - ] [footnote - : draft memo, head of assignment and classification br for dir, pers (ca. ), sub: restricted assignments; memo, ig for dir, pers, aug ; ltr, lt col a. w. snell to col r. s. johnson, co, mb, port lyautey, jun . see also memo, maj e. w. snelling, mb, nad, charleston, s.c., for maj duncan, nov ; and the following ltrs: col s. l. stephan, co, mb, norfolk nav shipyard, to dir, pers, dec ; k. a. jorgensen, co, mb, nav base, charleston, s.c., to duncan, dec ; col r. j. picardi, co, mb, lake mead base, to duncan, nov .] the perennial problem of an all-black steward's branch persisted into the 's. stewards served a necessary though unglamorous function in the marine corps, and education standards for such duty were (p.  ) considerably lower than those for the rest of the service. everyone understood this, and beyond the stigma many young people felt was attached to such duties, many negroes particularly resented the fact that while the branch was officially open to all, somehow none of the less gifted whites ever joined. stewards were acquired either by recruiting new marines with stewards-duty-only contracts or by accepting volunteers from the general service. the evidence suggests that there was truth in the commonly held assumption among stewards that when a need for more stewards arose, "volunteers" were secured by tampering with the classification test scores of men in the general service.[ - ] [footnote - : shaw and donnelly, _blacks in the marine corps_, pp. - .] [illustration: training exercises _on iwo jima, march _.] the commandant seemed less concerned with methods than results when stewards were needed. in june he had reaffirmed the policy of allowing stewards to reenlist for general duty, but when he learned that some stewards had made the jump to general duty without being qualified, he announced that men who had signed contracts for stewards duty only were not acceptable for general duty unless they scored at least in the st percentile of the qualifying tests. to make the change to general duty even less attractive, he ruled that if a steward reenlisted for general duty he would have to revert to the rank of private, first class.[ - ] such measures did nothing to improve the morale of black stewards, many of whom, according to civil rights critics, felt confined forever to performing menial tasks, nor did it prevent constant shortages in the steward's branch and problems arising from the lack of men with training in modern mess management. [footnote - : speed ltr, cmc to distribution list, jun ; routing sheet, pers dept, jun , sub: enlistment of stewards.] the corps tried to attack these problems in the mid- 's. at the behest of the secretary of the navy it eliminated the stewards-duty-only contract in ; henceforth all marines were enlisted for general duty, and only after recruit training could volunteers sign up for stewards duty. acceptance of men scoring below ninety in the classification tests would be limited to percent of those volunteering each month for stewards duty.[ - ] the corps also instituted special training in modern mess management for stewards. in the quartermaster general had created an inspection and demonstration team composed of senior stewards to instruct members (p.  ) of the branch in the latest techniques of cooking and baking, supervision, and management.[ - ] in august the commandant established an advanced twelve-week course for stewards based on the navy's successful system. [footnote - : ltrs, cmc to distribution list, apr and nov .] [footnote - : memo, head, enlisted monitoring unit, detail br, for lt col gordon t. west, oct , pers a. see also shaw and donnelly, _blacks in the marine corps_, pp. - .] [illustration: marines from camp lejeune on the uss valley forge _for training exercises, _.] these measures, however, did nothing to cure the chronic shortage of men and the attendant problems of increased work load and low morale that continued to plague the steward's branch throughout the 's. consequently, the corps still found it difficult to attract enough black volunteers to the branch. in , for example, the branch was still percent short of its -man goal.[ - ] the obvious solution, to use white volunteers for messman duty, would be a radical departure from tradition. true, before world war ii white marines had been used in the marine corps for duties now performed by black stewards, but they had never been members of a branch organized exclusively for that purpose. in tradition was broken when white volunteers were quietly signed up for the branch. by march the branch had eighty white men, percent of its total. reviewing the situation later that year, the commandant decided to increase the number of white stewards by setting a racial quota on steward assignment. henceforth, he ordered, half the volunteers accepted (p.  ) for stewards duty would be white.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, j. j. holicky, detail br, for dir of pers, usmc, aug , sub: inspection of occupational field (stewards), pers , mc files.] [footnote - : memo, asst chief for plans, bupers (rear adm b. j. semmes, jr.), for chief of navpers, jun .] [illustration: colonel petersen (_ photograph_).] the new policy made an immediate difference. in less than two months the steward's branch was percent white. in marked contrast to the claims of navy recruiters, the marines reported no difficulty in attracting white volunteers for messman duties. curiously, the volunteers came mostly from the southeastern states. as the racial composition of the steward's branch changed, the morale of its black members seemed to improve. as one senior black warrant officer later explained, simply opening stewards duty to whites made such duty acceptable to many negroes who had been prone to ask "if it [stewards duty] was so good, why don't you have some of the whites in it."[ - ] when transfer to general service assignments became easy to obtain in the 's, the marine corps found that only a small percentage of the black stewards now wished to make the change. [footnote - : usmc oral history interview, cwo james e. johnson, mar .] there were still inequities in the status of black marines, especially the near absence of black officers (two on active duty in , nineteen in january ) and the relatively slow rate of promotion among black marines in general. the corps had always justified its figures on the grounds that competition in so small a service was extremely fierce, and, as the commandant explained to walter white in , a man had to be good to compete and outstanding to be promoted. he cited the selection figures for officer training: out of , highly qualified men applying, only half were selected and only half of those were commissioned.[ - ] promotion to senior billets for noncommissioned officers was also highly competitive, with time in service an important factor. it was unlikely in such circumstances that many black marines would be commissioned from the ranks or a higher percentage of black noncommissioned officers would be promoted to the most senior positions during the 's.[ - ] the marine corps had begun commissioning negroes so recently that the development of a representative group of black officers in a system of open competition was of necessity a slow and arduous task. the task was further complicated because most of the nineteen black officers on (p.  ) active duty in were reservists serving out tours begun in the korean war. only a few of them had made the successful switch from reserve to regular service. the first two were d lt. frank e. petersen, jr., the first black marine pilot, and d lt. kenneth h. berthoud, jr., who first served as a tank officer in the d marine division. both men would advance to high rank in the corps, petersen becoming the first black marine general. [footnote - : ltr, cmc to walter white, jul , ao- , mc files. see also memo, div of plans and policies (t. j. colley) for asst dir of public info, jun , sub: article in pittsburgh _courier_ of may .] [footnote - : memo, exec off, acofs, g- , for william l. taylor, asst staff dir, u.s. commission on civil rights, feb , sub: personnel information requested, ao- c, mc files.] [illustration: sergeant major huff.] as for the noncommissioned officers, there were a number of senior enlisted black marines in the 's, many of them holdovers from the world war ii era, and negroes were being promoted to the ranks of corporal and sergeant in appreciable numbers. but the tenfold increase in the number of black marines during the korean war caused the ratio of senior black noncommissioned officers to black marines to drop. here again promotion to higher rank was slow. the first black marine to make the climb to the top in the integrated corps was edgar r. huff. a gunnery sergeant in an integrated infantry battalion in korea, huff later became battalion sergeant major in the th marines and eventually senior sergeant major of the marine corps.[ - ] [footnote - : shaw and donnelly, _blacks in the marine corps_, pp. - . .] by there were , black enlisted men, . percent of the corps' strength, and black officers ( captains, lieutenants, and warrant officers) serving in integrated units in all military occupations. these statistics illustrate the racial progress that occurred in the marine corps during the 's, a change that was both orderly and permanent, and, despite the complicated forces at work, in essence a gift to the naval establishment from the korean battlefield. chapter (p.  ) a new era begins on october the secretary of defense announced that the last racially segregated unit in the armed forces of the united states had been abolished.[ - ] considering the department's very conservative definition of a segregated unit--one at least percent black--the announcement celebrated a momentous change in policy. in the little more than six years since president truman's order, all black servicemen, some quarter of a million in , had been intermingled with whites in the nation's military units throughout the world. for the services the turbulent era of integration had begun. [footnote - : new york _times_, october , ; ibid., editorial, november , .] the new era's turbulence was caused in part by the decade-long debate that immediately ensued over the scope of president truman's guarantee of equal treatment and opportunity for servicemen. on one side were ranged most service officials, who argued that integration, now a source of pride to the services and satisfaction to the civil rights movement, had ceased to be a public issue. abolishing segregated units, they claimed, fulfilled the essential elements of the executive order, leaving the armed forces only rare vestiges of discrimination to correct. others, at first principally the civil rights bloc in congress and civil rights organizations, but later black servicemen themselves, contended that the truman order committed the department of defense to far more than integration of military units. they believed that off-base discrimination, so much more apparent with the improvement of on-base conditions, seriously affected morale and efficiency. they wanted the department to challenge local laws and customs when they discriminated against black servicemen. this interpretation made little headway in the department of defense during the first decade of integration. both the eisenhower and kennedy administrations made commitments to the principle of equal treatment within the services, and both admitted the connection between military efficiency and discrimination, but both presumed, at least until , severe limitations on their power to change local laws and customs. for their part, the services constantly referred to the same limitations, arguing that their writ in regard to racial reform ran only to the gates of the military reservation. yet while there was no substantive change in the services' view of their racial responsibilities, the department of defense was able to make significant racial reforms between and . more than expressing the will of the chief executive, these changes reflected the fact that military society was influenced by some of the same forces that were operating on the larger american society. possessed of a discipline that enabled it to reform rapidly, military society still shared the prejudices as well as the reform impulses of the (p.  ) body politic. racial changes in the services during the first decade of integration were primarily parochial responses to special internal needs; nevertheless, they took place at a time when civil rights demands were stirring the whole country. their effectiveness must be measured against the expectations such demands were kindling in the black community. _the civil rights revolution_ the post-world war ii civil rights movement was unique in the nation's history. contrasting this era of black awakening with the post-civil war campaign for black civil rights, historian c. vann woodward found the twentieth century phenomenon "more profound and impressive ... deeper, surer, less contrived, more spontaneous."[ - ] again in contrast to the original, the so-called second reconstruction period found black americans uniting in a demand for social justice so long withheld. in , the year before the supreme court decision to desegregate the schools, clarence mitchell of the naacp gave voice to the revolutionary rise in black expectations: twenty years ago the negro was satisfied if he could have even a half-decent school to go to (and took it for granted that it would be a segregated school) or if he could go to the hotel in town or the restaurant maybe once a year for some special interracial dinner and meeting. twenty years ago much of the segregation pattern was taken for granted by the negro. now it is different.[ - ] [footnote - : c. vann woodward, _strange career of jim crow_, p. . this account of the civil rights movement largely follows woodward's famous study, but the following works have also been consulted: benjamin muse, _ten years of prelude: the story of integration since the supreme court's decision_ (new york: viking press, ); constance m. green, _the secret city: a history of race relations in the nation's capital_ (princeton: princeton university press, ); anthony lewis and the new york _times_, _portrait of a decade_ (new york: new york _times_, ); franklin, _from slavery to freedom; freedom to the free: a report to the president by the u.s. commission on civil rights_ (washington: government printing office, ); _report of the national advisory commission on civil disorders_; interv, nichols with clarence mitchell, , in nichols collection, cmh.] [footnote - : interv, nichols with mitchell.] the difference was understandable. the rapid urbanization of many black americans, coupled with their experience in world war ii, especially in the armed forces and in defense industries, had enhanced their economic and political power and raised their educational opportunities. and what was true for the war generation was even truer for its children. possessed of a new self-respect, young negroes began to demonstrate confidence in the future and a determination to reject the humiliation of second-class citizenship. out of this attitude grew a widespread demand among the young for full equality, and when this demand met with opposition, massive participation in civil rights demonstrations became both practical and inevitable. again historian woodward's observations are pertinent: more than a black revolt against whites, it was in part a generational rebellion, an uprising of youth against the older generation, against the parental "uncle toms" and their inhibitions. it even took the n.a.a.c.p. and core (congress of racial equality) by surprise. negroes were in charge of their (p.  ) own movement, and youth was in the vanguard.[ - ] [footnote - : woodward, _strange career of jim crow_, p. .] [illustration: clarence mitchell.] to a remarkable extent, this youthful vanguard was strongly religious and nonviolent. the influence of the church on the militant phase of the civil rights movement is one of the movement's salient characteristics. this black awakening paralleled a growing realization among an increasing number of white americans that the demands of the civil rights leaders were just and that the government should act. world war ii had made many thoughtful americans aware of the contradiction inherent in fighting fascism with segregated troops. in the postwar years, the cold war rivalry for the friendship and allegiance of the world's colored peoples, who were creating a multitude of new states, added a pragmatic reason for ensuring equal treatment and opportunity for black americans. a further inducement, and a particularly forceful one, was the size of the northern black vote, which had become the key to victory in several electorally important states and had made the civil rights cause a practical political necessity for both major parties. the u.s. supreme court was the real pacesetter. significantly broadening its interpretation of the fourteenth amendment, the court reversed a century-old trend and called for federal intervention to protect the civil rights of the black minority in transportation, housing, voting, and the administration of justice. in the _morgan_ v. _virginia_ decision of ,[ - ] for example, the court launched an attack on segregation in interstate travel. in another series of cases it proclaimed the right of negroes to be tried only in those courts where negroes could serve on juries and outlawed the all-white primary system, which in some one-party states had effectively barred negroes from the elective process. the latter decision partly explains the rise in the number of qualified black voters in twelve southern states from , in to some . million by . however, many difficulties remained in the way of full enfranchisement. the poll tax, literacy tests, and outright intimidation frustrated the registration of negroes in many areas, and in some rural counties black voter registration actually declined in the early 's. but the court's intervention was crucial because its decisions established the precedent for federal action that would culminate in the voting rights act of . [footnote - : u.s. ( ).] these judicial initiatives whittled away at segregation's hold on (p.  ) the constitution, but it was the supreme court's rulings in the field of public education that dealt segregation a mortal blow. its unanimous decision in the case of _oliver brown et al._ v. _board of education of topeka, kansas_, on may [ - ] not only undermined segregation in the nation's schools, but by an irresistible extension of the logic employed in the case also committed the nation at its highest levels to the principle of racial equality. the court's conclusion that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" exposed segregation in all public areas to renewed judicial scrutiny. it was, as professor woodward described it, the most far-reaching court decision in a century, and it marked the beginning of the end of jim crow's reign in america.[ - ] [footnote - : u.s. ( ); see also u.s. ( ).] [footnote - : woodward, _strange career of jim crow_, p. .] but it was only the beginning, for the court's order that the transition to racially nondiscriminatory school systems be accomplished "with all deliberate speed"[ - ] encountered massive resistance in many places. despite ceaseless litigation and further affirmations by the court, and despite enforcement by federal troops in the celebrated cases of little rock, arkansas, and oxford, mississippi, and by federal marshals in new orleans, louisiana,[ - ] elimination of segregated public schools was painfully slow. as late as , for example, only . percent of the more than three million negroes of school age in the southern and border states attended integrated schools. [footnote - : u.s. ( ).] [footnote - : for an outline of the federal and national guard intervention in these areas, see robert w. coakley, paul j. scheips, vincent h. demma, and m. warner stark, "use of troops in civil disturbances since world war ii" ( to with two supplements through ), center of military history study .] the executive branch also took up the cause of civil rights, albeit in a more limited way than the courts. the eisenhower administration, for instance, continued president truman's efforts to achieve equal treatment and opportunity for black servicemen. just before the _brown_ decision the administration quickly desegregated most dependent schools on military bases. it also desegregated the school system of washington, d.c., and, with a powerful push from the supreme court in the case of the _district of columbia_ v. _john r. thompson co._ in ,[ - ] abolished segregation in places of public accommodation in the nation's capital. eisenhower also continued truman's fight against discrimination in federal employment, including jobs covered by government contracts, by establishing watchdog committees on government employment policy and government contracts. [footnote - : u.s. ( ).] independent federal agencies also began to attack racial discrimination. the interstate commerce commission, with strong assistance from the courts, made a series of rulings that by had outlawed segregation in much interstate travel. the federal housing authority, following the supreme court's abrogation of the state's power to enforce restrictive covenants in the sale of housing, began in the early 's to push toward a federal open-occupancy policy in public housing and all housing with federally guaranteed loans. (p.  ) the u.s. commission on civil rights, an investigatory agency appointed by the president under the civil rights act of , examined complaints of voting discrimination and denials of equal protection under the law. both eisenhower and kennedy dispatched federal officials to investigate and prosecute violations of voting rights in several states. but civil rights progress was still painfully slow in the 's. the fight for civil rights in that decade graphically demonstrated a political fact of life: any profound change in the nation's social system requires the concerted efforts of all three branches of the national government. in this case the supreme court had done its part, repeatedly attacking segregation in many spheres of national life. the executive branch, on the other hand, did not press the court's decisions as thoroughly as some had hoped, although eisenhower certainly did so forcibly and spectacularly with federal troops at little rock in . the dispatch of paratroopers to little rock,[ - ] a memorable example of federal intervention and one popularly associated with civil rights, had, in fact, little to do with civil rights, but was rather a vivid example of the exercise of executive powers in the face of a threat to federal judicial authority. where the _brown_ decision was concerned, eisenhower's view of judicial powers was narrow and his leadership antithetical to the court's call for "all deliberate speed." he even withheld his support in school desegregation cases. eisenhower was quite frank about the limitations he perceived in his power and, by inference, his duty to effect civil rights reforms. such reforms, he believed, were a matter of the heart and, as he explained to congressman powell in , could not be achieved by means of laws or directives or the action of any one person, "no matter with how much authority and forthrightness he acts."[ - ] [footnote - : for an authoritative account of little rock, see robert w. coakley's "operation arkansas," center of military history study m, . see also paul j. scheips, "enforcement of the federal judicial process by federal marshals," in _bayonets in the streets; the use of troops in civil disturbances_, ed. robin higham (lawrence: university press of kansas, ), pp. - .] [footnote - : ltr, eisenhower to powell, jun , g -a- , eisenhower library. for a later and more comprehensive expression of these sentiments, see "extemporaneous remarks by the president at the national conference on civil rights, june ," _public papers of the presidents: dwight d. eisenhower, _, pp. - .] despite the president's reluctance to lead in civil rights matters, major blame for the lack of substantial progress must be assigned to the third branch of government. the and civil rights laws, pallid harbingers of later powerful legislation in this field, demonstrated congress's lukewarm commitment to civil rights reform that severely limited federal action. the reluctance of congress to enact the reforms augured in the _brown_ decision convinced many negroes that they would have to take further measures to gain their full constitutional rights. they had seen presidents and federal judges embrace principles long argued by civil rights organizations, but to little avail. seven years after the _brown_ decision, negroes were still disfranchised in large areas of the south, still (p.  ) endured segregated public transportation and places of public accommodation, and still encountered discrimination in employment and housing throughout the nation. nor had favorable court decisions and federal attempts at enforcement reversed the ominous trend in black unemployment rates, which had been rising for a decade. above all, court decisions could not spare negroes the sense of humiliation that segregation produced. segregation implied racial inferiority, a "constant corroding experience," as clarence mitchell once called it. it was segregation's seeming imperviousness to governmental action in the 's that caused the new generation of civil rights leaders to develop new civil rights techniques. their new methods forced the older leaders, temporarily at least, into eclipse. no longer could they convince their juniors of the efficacy of legal action, and the 's ended with the younger generation taking to the streets in the first spontaneous battles of their civil rights revolution. under the direction of the southern christian leadership council and its charismatic founder, martin luther king, jr., the strategy of massive civil disobedience, broached in by a. philip randolph, became a reality. other organizations quickly joined the battle, including the student nonviolent coordinating committee (sncc), also organized by dr. king but soon destined to break away into more radical paths, and the congress of racial equality (core), an older organization, now expanded and under its new director, james farmer, rededicated to activism. rosa parks's refusal to move to the rear of the montgomery bus in and the ensuing successful black boycott that ended the city's segregated transportation pointed the way to a wave of nonviolent direct action that swept the country in the 's. thousands of young americans, most notably in the student-led sit-ins enveloping the south in [ - ] and the scores of freedom riders bringing chaos to the transportation system in , carried the civil rights struggle into all corners of the south. "we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer," dr. king warned the nation's majority, and suffer negroes did in the brutal resistance that met their demands. but it was not in vain, for police brutality, mob violence, and assassinations set off hundreds of demonstrations throughout the country and made civil rights a national political issue. [footnote - : for an account of the first major sit-in demonstrations, which occurred at greensboro, north carolina, and their influence on civil rights organizations, including the student nonviolent coordinating committee, see miles wolff, _lunch at the five and ten; the greensboro sit-in_ (new york: stein and day, ). see also clark, "the civil rights movement," pp. - .] the stage was set for a climatic scene, and onto that stage walked the familiar figure of a. philip randolph, calling for a massive march on washington to demand a redress of black grievances. this time, unlike the response to his appeal, the answer was a promise of support from both races. the churches joined in, many labor leaders, including walter reuther, enlisted in the demonstration, and even the president, at first opposed, gave his blessing to the national event. a quarter of a million people, about percent of them white, marched to lincoln memorial on august to hear king appeal to the (p.  ) the nation's conscience by reciting his dream of a just society. in the words of the kerner commission: it [the march] was more than a summation of the past years of struggle and aspiration. it symbolized certain new directions: a deeper concern for the economic problems of the masses, more involvement of white moderates and new demands from the most militant, who implied that only a revolutionary change in american institutions would permit negroes to achieve the dignity of citizens.[ - ] [footnote - : _report of the national advisory commission on civil disorders_, p. .] _limitations on executive order _ the decade of national civil rights activity that culminated symbolically at the lincoln memorial in was closely mirrored in the department of defense, where the services' definition of equal treatment and opportunity underwent a marked evolution. here, a decade that had begun with the department's placing severe limitations on its defense of black servicemen's civil rights ended with the department's joining the vanguard of the civil rights movement. in the early 's the services were constantly referring to the limitations of executive order . the air force could not intervene in local custom, assistant secretary zuckert told clarence mitchell in . social change in local communities must be evolutionary, he continued, either ignoring or contrasting the air force's own social experience.[ - ] defending the practice of maintaining large training camps in localities discriminating against black soldiers, the army chief of staff explained to senator homer ferguson of michigan that while its facilities were open to all soldiers regardless of race, the army had no control over nearby civilian communities. there was little its commanders could do beyond urging local civic organizations to cooperate.[ - ] the deputy chief of naval personnel was even more blunt. "the housing situation at key west is not within the control of the navy," he told the assistant secretary of defense in . housing was segregated, he admitted, but it was the federal housing authority, not the navy, that controlled the location of off-base housing for black sailors.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, lt col leon bell, asst exec, off, asst secaf, for col barnes, office, secaf, jan , secaf files.] [footnote - : ltr, cofsa to ferguson, may ; see also ltr, under sa earl d. johnson to sen. robert taft, jul ; both in cs . ( apr ).] [footnote - : memo, dep chief, navpers for asd (m&p), feb , sub: alleged race segregation at u.s. naval base, key west, florida, p ( )/nb key west, genrecs nav.] these excuses for not dealing with off-base discrimination continued throughout the decade. as late as , discussing a case of racial discrimination near an army base in germany, a defense department spokesman explained to congressman james roosevelt that "since the incident did not take place on one of our military bases, we are not in a position to offer direct relief in the situation...."[ - ] even james evans, the racial counselor, came to use this explanation. "community mores with respect to race vary," evans wrote in , and "such matters are largely beyond direct purview of the department (p.  ) of defense."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, asd (mp&r) charles c. finucane to james roosevelt, jun , asd (mp&r) files.] [footnote - : evans and lane, "integration in the armed services," p. .] understandably, in view of the difficulties they perceived, the services tried to avoid the whole problem. in , for example, a group of forty-eight black soldiers traveling on a bus in columbia, south carolina, were arrested and fined when they protested the attempted arrest of one of them for failing to comply with the state's segregated seating law. in the ensuing furor, secretary of defense charles e. wilson explained to president eisenhower that soldiers were subject to community law and his department contemplated no investigation or disciplinary action in the case. in view of the civil rights issues involved, wilson continued,[ - ] the judge advocate general of the army discussed the matter with the justice department and referred related correspondence to that department "for whatever disposition it considered appropriate." "this reply," an assistant noted on wilson's file copy of the memo for the president, "gets them off our neck, but i don't know about brownell's [the attorney general]."[ - ] [footnote - : wilson, former president of general motors corporation, became president eisenhower's first secretary of defense on january .] [footnote - : memo, cofs, g- , for asa, jan , sub: mass jailing and fining of negro soldiers in columbia, s.c.; memo, asa for asd (m&p), same date and sub; memo, secdef for president, jan . all in g- . ( dec ).] but the services never did get "them" off their neck, and to a large extent defense officials could only blame themselves for their troubles. their attitude toward extending their standards of equal treatment and opportunity to local communities implied a benign neutrality on their part in racial disputes involving servicemen. this attitude was belied by the fact that on numerous and sometimes celebrated occasions the services helped reinforce local segregation laws. in , for example, secretary of the air force harold e. talbott explained that military commanders were expected to foster good relations with local authorities and in many areas were obliged to "require" servicemen to conform to the dictates of local law "regardless of their own convictions or personal beliefs."[ - ] [footnote - : secaf statement, may , quoted in address by james p. goode, employment policy officer for the air force, at a meeting called by the president's committee on government employment policy, may , af file - , fair employment program.] this requirement could be rather brutal in practice and placed the services, the nation's leading equal opportunity employer, in questionable company. in a black pilot stationed at craig air force base, alabama, refused to move to the rear of a public bus until the military police ordered him to comply with the state law. the air force officially reprimanded and eventually discharged the pilot. the position of the air force was made clear in the reprimand: your actions in this instance are prejudicial to good order and military discipline and do not conform to the standards of conduct expected of a commissioned officer of the united states air force. as a member of the armed forces, you are obliged to abide by all municipal and state laws, regardless of your personal feelings or armed forces policy relative to the issue at hand. your open violation of the segregation policy established by this railroad company and the state of alabama is (p.  ) indicative of extremely poor judgment on your part and reflects unfavorably on your qualifications as a commissioned officer.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cg, th tactical training wing, keesler afb, miss., for (name withheld), jul , sub: administrative reprimand; naacp news release, nov ; copies of both in secaf files.] as the young pilot's commanding officer put it, the lieutenant had refused to accept the fact that military personnel must use tact and diplomacy to avoid discrediting the united states air force.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, cmdr, th pilot tng wing, craig afb, ala., for cmdr, flying dir, air tng cmd, waco, tex., aug , sub: disciplinary punishment, copy in secaf files.] tact and diplomacy were also the keynote when the services helped enforce the local segregation practices of the nation's allies. this became increasingly true even in europe in the 's, although never with as much publicity as the events connected with the carrier _midway's_ visit to capetown, south africa, in . its captain, on the advice of the u.s. consul, agreed to conform with a local law that segregated sailors when they were ashore. this agreement became public knowledge while the ship was en route, but despite a rash of protests and congressional demands that the visit be canceled, the _midway_ arrived at capetown. later a white house spokesman tried to put a good face on the incident: we believe that a far greater blow was struck for the cause of equal justice when , south africans came aboard the midway on a non-segregated basis--when the whole community saw american democracy in action--than could have been made if we had decided to by-pass capetown. certainly no friends for our cause would have been gained in that way![ - ] [footnote - : ltr, maxwell m. rabb, president's assistant for minority affairs, to dr. w. montague cobb, as reproduced in cobb, "the strait gate," _journal of the national medical association_ (september ): .] the black serviceman lacked the civilian's option to escape community discrimination. for example, one black soldier requested transfer because of discrimination he was forced to endure in the vicinity of camp hanford, washington. his request was denied, and in commenting on the case the army's g- gave a typical service excuse when he said that the army could not practically arrange for the mass reassignment of black soldiers or the restriction of their assignments to certain geographical areas to avoid discrimination.[ - ] the air force added a further twist. replying to a similar request, a spokesman wrote that limiting the number of bases to which black airmen could be assigned would be "contrary to the policy of equality of treatment."[ - ] there was, however, one exception to the refusal to alter assignments for racial reasons. both the air force and the army had an established and frequently reiterated policy of not assigning troops involved (p.  ) in interracial marriages to states where such unions were illegal.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, acofs, g- , for tig, nov , sub: complaint of cpl israel joshua, g- . ( nov ). for an earlier expression of the same sentiments, see acofs, g- , summary sheet for cofs, nov , sub: request for policy determination, g- . ( nov ). camp hanford was originally the hanford engineer works, which played a part in the manhattan project that produced the atom bomb.] [footnote - : memo, maj gen joe kelly, dir, legis liaison, usaf, for lt col william g. draper, af aide to president, sep , with attachments, sub: segregation in gulfport, mississippi; memo, col draper for maxwell rabb, oct ; both in gf -a- , eisenhower library.] [footnote - : career management div, tago, "policy paper," jul , agam . for other pronouncements of this policy, see ibid.; df, acs/g- to tag, jan , sub: assignment of personnel; and in g- . the following: memo, chief, classification and standards br, g- , for planning office, g- , feb , sub: assignment of personnel; df, g- to tag, mar , same sub.] at times the services' respect for local laws and ordinances forced them to retain some aspects of the segregation policies so recently abolished. answering a complaint made by congressman powell in , for example, the adjutant general of the army explained that off-duty entertainment did not fall within the scope of the truman order. since most dances were sponsored by outside groups, they had to take place "under conditions cited by them." to insist on integration in this instance, the adjutant general argued, would mean cancellation of these dances to the detriment of the soldiers' morale. for that reason, segregated dances would continue on post.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, tag to powell, aug , gf -a- , eisenhower library.] this response illustrates the services' approach to equal opportunity and treatment during the eisenhower administration. the president showed a strong reluctance to interfere with local laws and customs, a reluctance that seemed to flow out of a pronounced constitutional scruple against federal intervention in defiance of local racial laws. the practical consequence of this scruple was readily apparent in the armed forces throughout his administration. in , for example, a black veteran called the president's attention to the plight of black soldiers, part of an integrated group, who were denied service in an alabama airport and left unfed throughout their long journey. answering for the president, maxwell m. rabb, secretary to the cabinet, reaffirmed eisenhower's dedication to equal opportunity but added that it was not in the scope of the president's authority "to intervene in matters which are of local or state-wide concern and within the jurisdiction of local legislation and determination."[ - ] again to a black soldier complaining of being denied service near fort bragg, north carolina, a white house assistant, himself a negro, replied that "outside of an army post, there is little that the federal government can do, except to appeal to the decency of the citizens to treat men in uniform with courtesy and respect." he then suggested a course of action for black soldiers: the president's heart bleeds when any americans are victims of injustice, and he is doing everything he possibly can to rectify this situation in our country. you can hold up his hand by carrying on, despite the unpleasant things that are happening to you at this moment, realizing that, on this end, we will work all the harder to make your sacrifices worthwhile.[ - ] [footnote - : ltrs, c. b. nichols to president, mar , and rabb to nichols, apr ; both in g- - , eisenhower library.] [footnote - : ltr, e. frederic morrow to pfc john washington, apr , in reply to ltr, washington to president, mar ; both in g- -a- , eisenhower library.] but as the record suggests, this promise to rectify the situation was never meant to extend beyond the gates of the military reservation. thus, the countless incidents of blatant discrimination encountered by black gi's would continue largely unchallenged into the 's, masking the progress made by the eisenhower administration in ordering the sometimes reluctant services to adopt reforms. this presidential (p.  ) resolution was particularly obvious in the integration of civilian facilities at navy shipyards and installations and in schools for dependent children on military posts. _integration of navy shipyards_ the navy employed many thousands of civilians, including a large number of negroes, at some forty-three installations from virginia to texas. at the norfolk shipyard, for example, approximately percent of the , employees were black. to the extent dictated by local laws and customs, black employees were segregated and otherwise discriminated against. the degree of segregation depended upon location, and, according to a newspaper survey, ranged "from minor in most instances to substantial in a few cases."[ - ] [footnote - : upi news release, aug , copy in cmh files.] in january the chief of the office of industrial relations, rear adm. w. mcl. hague, all but absolved navy installations from the provisions of executive order .[ - ] he announced that segregation would continue if "the station is subject to local laws of the community in which located, and the laws of the community require segregated facilities," or if segregation were "the norm of the community and conversion to common facilities would, in the judgment of the commanding officer, result in definite impediment to productive effort." known officially as "oir notice cp ," hague's statement left little doubt that segregation would remain the norm in most instances. it specified that a change to integrated facilities would be allowed only after the commander had decided that it could be accomplished without "inordinate interference with the station's ability to carry out its mission." if other facilities stood nearby, the change would be allowed only after he had coordinated with the naval district commander.[ - ] shortly thereafter the acting secretary of the navy expressed his agreement with hague's statement,[ - ] thus elevating it to an official expression of navy policy. [footnote - : executive order , announcing regulations governing fair employment practices within the federal government, was signed by president truman on july , the same day and as a companion to his order on equal treatment and opportunity in the services.] [footnote - : oir notice cp , chief, office of industrial relations, to chiefs, bureaus, et al., jan , sub: segregation of facilities for civil service employees; navy department policy.] [footnote - : ltr, actg secnav francis whitehair to jerry o. gilliam, norfolk branch, naacp, mar , p ( ), secnav files, genrecsnav.] official protestations to the contrary, the navy was again segregating people by race. evans, in the department of defense, charged that this was in fact the "insidious intent" of hague's notice. he pointed out to assistant secretary of defense rosenberg that signs and notices of segregation were reappearing over drinking fountains and toilets at naval installations which had abandoned such practices, that men in uniform were now subjected to segregation at such facilities, and that the local press was making the unrefuted claim that local law was (p.  ) being reestablished on federal properties.[ - ] somewhat late to the battle, dennis d. nelson seemingly a permanent fixture in the pentagon, spoke out against his department's policy, but from a different angle. he warned the secretary of the navy through his aide that notice was embarrassing not only for the navy but for the white house as well.[ - ] [footnote - : draft memo, evans for rosenberg, secdef . . evans delivered the draft memo to mrs. rosenberg and discussed the situation with her at length "in the spring of ." see interv, author with evans, mar , cmh files. on mrs rosenberg's request for a survey of the situation, see memo, asd (m&p) for under secnav, dec . see also memo, co, norfolk naval shipyard, for chief, navpers, apr , p ( ), bupersrecs.] [footnote - : memo, nelson for aide to asst secnav, may , p ( ), genrecsnav.] [illustration: congressman powell.] nelson was right of course. the notice quickly won the attention of civil rights leaders. walter white condemned the policy, but his protest, along with the sharp complaints of the naacp's clarence mitchell and jerry gilliam and the arguments of the urban league's lester granger, failed to move secretary of the navy dan a. kimball.[ - ] the secretary insisted that integrating these installations might jeopardize the fulfillment of the navy's mission, dependent as it was on the "efficiency and whole-hearted cooperation" of the employees. "in a very realistic way," he told walter white, the navy must recognize and conform to local labor customs and usages.[ - ] answering rosenberg's inquiry on the subject, the navy gave its formula for change: this department cannot take the initiative in correcting this social ill but must content itself with being alert to take advantage of the gradual dissolution of these racial prejudices which can be effectively brought about only by a process of social education and understanding. this department is ever ready to dissolve segregation practices of long standing as soon as that can be done without decreasing the effectiveness of our activities.[ - ] [footnote - : kimball succeeded sullivan as secretary of the navy on july .] [footnote - : ltrs, white to secnav, may ; mitchell to same, feb ; jerry gilliam to same, feb ; granger to same, may and jun ; secnav to granger, jun ; same to white, jun ; chief, oir, to mitchell, feb ; under secnav to mitchell, mar . all in p ( ), genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, actg secnav for asd (m&p), jan ; memo, asd (m&p) for under secnav, dec ; both in p ( ), genrecsnav.] president eisenhower's newly appointed secretary of the navy, robert b. anderson, endorsed notice along the same lines, informing mitchell that the navy would "measure the pace of non-segregation by the limits of what is practical and reasonable in each area."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, secnav to mitchell (ca., apr ), oir , genrecsnav.] but what seemed practical and reasonable in the navy was not (p.  ) necessarily so in the white house, where the president had publicly pledged his administration to the abolition of segregation in the federal government. should eisenhower falter, there was always his campaign ally, congressman powell, to remind him of his "forthright stand on segregation when federal funds are expended."[ - ] in colorful prose that pulled no punches, powell reminded the president of his many black supporters and pressed him on the navy's continuing segregation. although he denied powell's charge of obstructionist tactics in the executive branch, the president had in fact been told by maxwell rabb, now serving as his minority affairs assistant, that "some government agencies were neglecting their duty."[ - ] the president responded to this news promptly enough by ordering rabb to supervise the executive agencies in their application of the presidential racial policy. rabb thereafter discussed the navy's policy with secretary anderson and his assistants on june . [footnote - : ltr, powell to eisenhower, apr , copy in secnav files, genrecsnav.] [footnote - : dwight d. eisenhower, _mandate for change - _ (new york: new american library, ), p. .] with his policy openly contradicting the president's, anderson was in an awkward position. he had been unaware of the implications of the problem, he later explained, and had accepted his predecessor's judgment. his mistake, he pled, was one of timing not intent.[ - ] yet anderson had conducted a wide correspondence on the subject, discussed the matter with lester granger, and as late as may was still defending notice , telling special white house assistant wilton b. persons that it represented a practical answer to a problem that could not be corrected by edict. nor could he introduce any changes, he maintained, adopting his predecessor's argument that the navy should "be alert to take advantage of its [segregation's] gradual dissolution through the process of social education and understanding."[ - ] [footnote - : interv, nichols with anderson, sep , and nichols upi release, sep ; both in nichols collection, cmh.] [footnote - : ltrs, secnav to w. persons, may ; secnav to granger, may and jul ; granger to anderson, apr and jul . see also memo, chief, navpers for secnav, may . all in secnav files, genrecsnav.] but neither the civil rights leaders nor the white house could be put off with gradualism. anderson's stand was roundly criticized. in an address to the naacp annual convention, walter white plainly referred to the secretary's position as a "defiance of president eisenhower's order."[ - ] if such barbed criticism left the secretary unmoved, rabb carried a stronger weapon, and in their june meeting the two men discussed the president's order to integrate federally owned or controlled properties, the possibility of a supreme court decision on the same subject, and, more to the point, powell's public statements concerning segregation at the norfolk and charleston naval shipyards.[ - ] [footnote - : white, address delivered at th naacp annual convention, jun , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, under secnav for president, jun , sub: segregation in naval activities, attached to ltr, under secnav to sherman adams, jun , p ( ), genrecsnav.] [illustration: secretary anderson _talks to a member of the fleet_.] anderson then proceeded to reverse his position. he began by (p.  ) ordering a survey of a group of southern installations to estimate the effect of integration on their civilian programs. he learned segregation could be virtually eliminated at these shipyards and stations within six months, although under secretary charles s. thomas, who prepared the report, agreed with the local commanders that an integration directive would be certain to cause trouble. but the formula chosen by the commanders for eliminating segregation, in which thomas concurred, might well have given anderson pause. they wanted to remove racial signs from drinking fountains and toilets, certain that the races would continue using separate facilities, and leave the problem of segregated cafeterias till later. it was the unanimous opinion of those involved, thomas reported, that the situation should not be forced by "agitators," a category in which they all placed powell. on august anderson directed commanders of segregated facilities to proceed steadily toward complete elimination of racial barriers. furthermore, each commander was to submit a progress report on november and at sixty-day intervals thereafter.[ - ] although the secretary was concerned with the possible reaction of the civil rights groups were integration not achieved in the first sixty days, he was determined to give local commanders some leeway in carrying out his order.[ - ] but he made it clear to the press that he did not intend "to put up with inaction." [footnote - : all nav, aug ; ltr, chief, industrial relations, to commandant, th naval district, aug , oir , genrecsnav. for an example of how the new policy was transmitted to the field, see comfive instruction , sep , a. ( ), genrecsnav.] [footnote - : interv, nichols with anderson; nichols news release, sep , in nichols collection, cmh.] he need not have worried. evans reported on october that integration of the charleston shipyard was almost complete and had occurred so far without incident. in fact, he told assistant secretary of defense john a. hannah, the reaction of the local press and community had been "surprisingly tolerant and occasionally favorable."[ - ] evans, however, apparently overlooked an attempt by some white employees to discourage the use of integrated facilities. although there was no disorder, the agitators were partly successful; the chief of industrial relations reported that white usage had (p.  ) dropped severely.[ - ] nevertheless by january this same officer could tell secretary anderson that all racial barriers for civilian employees had been eliminated without incident.[ - ] [footnote - : evans, weekly thursday report to asd (m&p), oct , sd . . begun by evans as a means of informing rosenberg of activities in his office, the weekly thursday report was adopted by the assistant secretary for use in all parts of the manpower office.] [footnote - : memo, chief, industrial relations, for secnav, nov , sub: segregation of facilities for civil service employees; see also ltr, secnav to president, nov ; both in p ( ), genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, chief, industrial relations, for secnav, nov , sub: segregation of facilities for civil service employees, p ( ), genrecsnav.] _dependent children and integrated schools_ the department of defense's effort to integrate schools attended by servicemen's children proved infinitely more complex than integrating naval shipyards. in a period when national attention was focused on the constitutional implications of segregated education, the eisenhower administration was thrust into a dispute over the intent of federal aid to education and eventually into a reappraisal of the federal role in public education. confusing to the department of defense, the president's personal attitude remained somewhat ambiguous throughout the controversy. he had publicly committed himself to ending segregation in federally financed institutions, yet he had declared scruples against federal interference with state laws and customs that would prevent him from acting to keep such a pledge when all its ramifications were revealed. in fact not one but four separate categories of educational institutions came under scrutiny. only the first category, schools run by the u.s. office of education for the department of defense overseas and on military reservations in the united states, operated exclusively with federal funds. the next two categories, schools operated by local school districts on military reservations and schools on federal land usually adjacent to a military reservation, were supported by local and state funds with federal subsidies. the fourth and by far the largest group contained the many community schools attended by significant numbers of military dependents. these schools received considerable federal support through the impact aid program. the federal support program for schools in "federally impacted" areas added yet another dimension to the administration's reappraisal. the impact aid legislation (public laws and ),[ - ] like similar programs during world war ii, was based on the premise that a school district derived no tax from land occupied by a federal installation but usually incurred an increase in school enrollment. in many cases the enrollment of military dependents was far greater than that of the communities in the school district. actually, these programs were not limited to the incursion of military families; the most extreme federal impact in terms of enrollment percentages was found in remote mountain districts where in some cases almost all students were children of u.s. forest service or national park service employees. [footnote - : pl , sep , u.s. ; pl , sep , u.s. .] in recognition of these inequities in the tax system, congress gave such school systems special "in-lieu of tax" support. public law provided for capital projects, land, buildings, and major equipment; public law gave operating support in the form of salaries, (p.  ) supplies, and the like. if, for example, a school district could prove at least percent of its enrollment federally connected, it was eligible to receive from the u.s. office of education a grant equal to the district's cost of instruction for federally connected students. if it could show federally connected enrollment necessitated additional classrooms, the school district was eligible for federally financed buildings. such schools were usually concentrated in military housing areas, but examples existed of federally financed schools, like federal dependents, scattered throughout the school district. students from the community at large attended the federally constructed schools and the school district continued to receive state support for all students. although public law was far more important in terms of general application and fiscal impact, its companion piece, public law , was more important to integration because it involved the construction of schools. from the beginning congress sought to prevent these laws from becoming a means by which federal authorities exercised control over the operation of school districts. it stipulated that "no department, officer or employee of the united states shall exercise any direction, supervision or control over the personnel, curriculum or program of instruction" of any local school or school system.[ - ] the firmness of this admonition, an indication of congressional opinion on this important issue, later played a decisive part in the integration story. [footnote - : sec. a, pl , u.s. .] attacks on segregation in schools attended by military dependents did not begin until the early fifties when the army, in answer to complaints concerning segregated schools in texas, oklahoma, and virginia, began using a stock answer to the effect that the schools were operated by state agencies as part of the state school system subject to state law.[ - ] trying to justify the situation to clarence mitchell, assistant secretary of the army fred korth cited public law , whose intent, he claimed, was that educating children residing on federal property was the responsibility of "the local educational agency."[ - ] [footnote - : da office of legislative liaison summary sheet for asa, sep , sub: alleged segregation practiced at fort bliss, texas, cs . negroes ( sep ); ltr, cg, the artillery school, to parents of school age children, sep , sub: school information, ag . akpsigp. for examples of complaints on segregated schools, see ltrs, sen. hubert h. humphrey to asd (m&p), jun , and dir, washington bureau, naacp, to secdef, oct ; both in oasd (m&p) . .] [footnote - : draft ltr, asa (m&p) to mitchell. although he never dispatched it, korth used this letter as a basis for a discussion of the matter with mitchell in an october meeting.] senator humphrey, for one, was not to be put off by such an interpretation. he reminded assistant secretary rosenberg that president truman had vetoed an education bill in because of provisions requiring segregation in schools on federal property. as a member of the subcommittee that guided public law through congress, humphrey could assure rosenberg that at no time did congress include language requiring segregation in post schools. thanks to the army's interpretation, he observed, local community segregation practices were being extended for the first time to federal property under the guise of compliance with federal law. he predicted further incursions by the segregationists if this move was left unchallenged.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, humphrey to asd (m&p), oct , oasd (m&p) . .] after conferring with both humphrey and mitchell, rosenberg took (p.  ) the matter of segregated schools on military posts to the u.s. commissioner of education, earl j. mcgrath. with secretary of defense lovett's approval she put the department on record as opposed to segregated schools on posts because they were "violative not only of the policy of the department" but also of "the policy set forth by the president."[ - ] evidently mcgrath saw public law in the same light, for on january he informed rosenberg that if the department of defense outlawed segregated dependent schooling and local educational agencies were unable to comply, his office would have to make "other arrangements" for the children.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, asd (m&p) to u.s. commissioner of educ, jan , secdef . .] [footnote - : ltr, u.s. commissioner of educ to asd (m&p), jan ; ltr, asd (m&p) to humphrey, jan ; both in oasd . .] commissioner mcgrath proposed that his office discuss the integration question further with defense department representatives but the change in administrations interrupted these negotiations and rosenberg's successor, john a. hannah, made it clear that there would be no speedy change in the racial composition of post schools. commenting at hannah's request on the points raised by mcgrath, the army's principal personnel officer concluded that integration should be considered a departmental goal, but one that should be approached by steps "consistent with favorable local conditions as determined by the installation commander concerned." in his opinion, committing the department to integration of all on-post schools, as the assistant secretary of defense had proposed earlier, would create teacher procurement problems and additional financial burdens.[ - ] this cautious endorsement of integrated schools was further qualified by the secretary of the army. it was a "desirable goal," he told hannah, but "positive steps to eliminate segregation ... should be preceded by a careful analysis of the impact on each installation concerned."[ - ] hannah then broke off negotiations with the office of education. [footnote - : g- summary sheet for cofs, feb , sub: segregation of school children on military installations, g- . ( jan ).] [footnote - : memo, exec off, sa, for asd (m&p), feb , sub: proposed reply to u.s. commissioner of education regarding segregation in dependent schools, copy in g- . ( jan ).] the matter was rescued from bureaucratic limbo when in answer to a question during his march press conference president eisenhower promised to investigate the school situation, adding: i will say this--i repeat it, i have said it again and again: whenever federal funds are expended for anything, i do not see how any american can justify--legally, or logically, or morally--a discrimination in the expenditure of those funds as among our citizens. all are taxed to provide these funds. if there is any benefit to be derived from them, i think they must all share, regardless of such inconsequential factors as race and religion.[ - ] [footnote - : president's news conference, mar , _public papers of the presidents: dwight d. eisenhower, _, p. .] the sweeping changes implied in this declaration soon became apparent. statistics compiled as a result of the white house investigation revealed that federal dependents attended thousands of schools, a complex mix of educational institutions having little more in common than their mutual dependence in whole or part on federal funds.[ - ] (p.  ) most were under local government control and the great majority, including the community public schools, were situated a long distance from any military base. the president was no doubt unaware of the ramifications of federal enrollment and impacted aid on the nation's schools when he made his declaration, and, given his philosophy of government and the status of civil rights at the time, it is not surprising that his promise to look into the subject came to nothing. from the beginning secretary of defense wilson limited the department's campaign against segregated schools to those on federal _property_ rather than those using federal _funds_. and even this limited effort to integrate schools on federal property encountered determined opposition from many local officials and only the halfhearted support of some of the federal officials involved. [footnote - : memo for rcd, human relations and research br, g- (ca. mar ), copy in cmh. see also memo, under secnav for asd (m&p), mar , sub: schools operated by the department of the navy pursuant to section and of public law , st congress, a , genrecsnav; "list of states and whether or not segregation is practiced in schools for dependents, as given by colonel brody, opns secn, ago, in charge of dependents schools, oct ," osa . negroes.] the department of defense experienced few problems at first as it integrated its own schools. its overseas schools, especially in germany and japan, had always been integrated, and its schools in the united states now quickly followed suit. eleven in number, they were paid for and operated by the u.s. commissioner of education because the states in which they were located prohibited the use of state funds for schools on federal property. with only minimal public attention, all but one of these schools was operating on an integrated basis by . the exception was the elementary school at fort benning, georgia, which at the request of the local school board remained a white-only school. on march the new secretary of the army, robert t. stevens, informed the white house that this school had been ordered to commence integrated operations in the fall.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, sa for james hagerty, white house press secretary, mar , sub: segregation in army schools, copy in cmh.] the integration of schools operated by local school authorities on military posts was not so simple, and before the controversy died down the department of defense found itself assuming responsibility for a number of formerly state-operated institutions. as of april , twenty-one of these sixty-three schools in the united states were operating on a segregated basis. (_table _) table --defense installations with segregated public schools state installation alabama (c)[ ] maxwell air force base craig air force base arkansas (s)[ ] pine bluff arsenal (army) florida (c) macdill air force base eglin air force base tyndall air force base naval air station, pensacola patrick air force base maryland (s) andrews air force base naval air station, patuxent naval powder factory, indianhead oklahoma (c) fort sill (army) texas (c) fort bliss (army) fort hood (army) fort sam houston (army) randolph air force base reese air force base shepherd air force base lackland air force base virginia (c) fort belvoir (army) langley air force base [tablenote : (c) indicates segregation required by state constitution.] [tablenote : (s) indicates segregation required by state statute.] the secretary of the army promised to investigate the possibility of integrating schools on army bases and to consider further action with the commissioner of education "as the situation is clarified." he warned the president that to "prod the commissioner" into setting up integrated federal schools when segregated state schools were available would invite charges in the press and congress of squandering money. moreover, newly assembled faculties would have state accreditation problems.[ - ] admitting that there were complicating factors, the president ignored the secretary's warnings and noted that if integrated schools could not be provided by (p.  ) state authorities "other arrangements will be considered."[ - ] [footnote - : ibid.] [footnote - : memo, eisenhower for secdef, mar , sub: segregation in schools on army posts; memo, bernard shanley (special counsel to president) for sa, mar ; both in a- eisenhower library.] others in the administration took these complications more seriously. oveta culp hobby, secretary of health, education, and welfare, was concerned with the attitude of congress and the press. she pleaded for more time to see what the supreme court would rule on the subject and to study the effect of the conversion to federally operated schools "so that we can feel confident of our ground in the event further action should be called for." going a step further than the secretary of the army, hobby suggested delaying action on the twenty-one segregated schools on posts "for the immediate present."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, secy of hew, to secdef, apr , copy in cmh.] in marked contrast to hobby's recommendation, and incidentally buttressing popular belief in the existence of an interdepartmental dispute on the subject, secretary of defense wilson told the president that he wanted to end segregation in all schools on military installations "as swiftly as practicable." he admitted it would be difficult, as a comprehensive and partially covert survey of the school districts by the local commanders had made clear. the commanders found, for example, that the twenty-one school districts involved would not operate the schools as integrated institutions. (p.  ) wilson also stressed that operating the schools under federal authority would be very expensive, but his recommendation was explicit. there should be no exact timetable, but the schools should be integrated before the fall term.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, secdef to president, may , copy in cmh. on the army's investigation of the schools, see also g- summary sheet for cofs, apr , sub: segregation in schools on army posts, cs . negroes ( mar ), and the following: ltrs, tag to cg's, continental armies et al., mar , and to cg, fourth army, apr , sub: segregation in schools on army posts, agao-r . ( apr ); memo, dir of pers policy, osd, for acs/g- and chief of navpers, may ; statement for sherman adams in reply to telg, powell to president, as attachment to memo, asd (m&p) for secnav, jun ; last two in oasd (m&p) . .] although both wilson and hobby later denied that the department of health, education, and welfare was opposed to integrating the schools, rumors and complaints persisted throughout the summer of that hobby opposed swift action and had carried her opposition "to the cabinet level."[ - ] lending credence to these rumors, president eisenhower later admitted that there was some foot-dragging in his official family. he had therefore ordered minority affairs assistant rabb, already overseeing the administration's fight against segregated shipyards, to "track down any inconsistencies of this sort in the rest of the departments and agencies of the government."[ - ] [footnote - : dod opi release, feb ; upi news release, jan ; telg, powell to president, ca. jun ; ltr, president to powell, jun ; press release, congressman powell, jun ; naacp press release, nov ; white, address delivered at th naacp annual convention, jun . copies of all in nichols collection, cmh. see also new york _times_, february , .] [footnote - : eisenhower, _mandate for change_, p. .] the interdepartmental dispute was quickly buried by wilson's dramatic order of january . effective as of that date, the secretary announced, "no new school shall be opened for operation on a segregated basis, and schools presently so conducted shall cease operating on a segregated basis, as soon as practicable, and under no circumstances later than september , ."[ - ] wilson promised to negotiate with local authorities, but if they were unable to comply the commissioner of education would be requested to provide integrated facilities through the provisions of public law . interestingly, the secretary's order predated the supreme court decision on segregated education by some four months. [footnote - : memo, secdef for sa et al., jan , sub: schools on military installations for dependents of military and civilian personnel, secdef . .] the order prompted considerable public response. the anti-defamation league of b'nai b'rith telegraphed "hearty approval of your directive ... action is consonant with democratic ideals and in particular with the military establishment's successful program of integration in the armed forces."[ - ] walter white added the naacp's approval in a similar vein, and many individual citizens offered congratulations.[ - ] but not all the response was favorable. congressman arthur a. winstead of mississippi asked the secretary to outline for him "wherein you believe that procedure will add anything whatsoever to the defense of this country. certainly it appears to me that you have every reason anyone could desire to refuse to take action which is in total (p.  ) violation of certain state laws."[ - ] [footnote - : telg, anti-defamation league of b'nai b'rith to wilson, feb , secdef . .] [footnote - : telg, walter white to secdef, feb ; and as an example of a letter from an individual citizen, see ltr, mrs. louis shearer to secdef, feb ; both in secdef . .] [footnote - : ltr, winstead to secdef, feb , secdef . .] the three services quickly responded to the order. by february all had issued specific directives for enforcing it. the secretary of the navy, for example, declared that the "policy of non-segregation" would apply to the operation of existing schools and school facilities hereafter constructed on navy and marine corps installations within the united states, alaska, hawaii, puerto rico and the virgin islands, the area in which public law and ... ... are operative.... in the case of pl this area will be extended, effective july , to include wake island ... the same policy of non-segregation will apply in all navy-operated schools for dependent children of military and civilian personnel of the department of defense.[ - ] [footnote - : secnav instruction . , feb , which was renewed by secnav instruction . a, jul . for other services, see memo, chief, pers ser div, usaf, for all major zi commands and alaskan air command, feb , sub: elimination of segregation in on-base schools, afpmp- , af files; ltr, tag to cg's, continental armies, mdw, feb , sub: elimination of segregation in on-post public schools, agcp . ( feb ).] any local school official hoping for a reprieve from the deadlines expressed in these orders was likely to be disappointed. in response to queries on the subject, the services quoted their instructions, and if they excused continued segregation during the school year they were adamant about the september integration date.[ - ] the response of secretary of the air force talbott to one request for an extension revealed the services' determination to stick to the letter of the wilson order. talbott agreed with the superintendent of the montgomery county, alabama, school board that local school boards were best qualified to run the schools for dependent children of the military, but he refused to extend the deadline. "unilateral action in the case of individual air force base schools would be in violation of the directive," he explained, adding: "at such time as the alabama legislature acts to permit your local board of education to operate the school at maxwell afb on an integrated basis, the air force will return operational responsibility for the school to the local board at the earliest practicable date."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, secnav to clarence mitchell, apr ; ltr, jack cochrane, bupers realty legal section, to b. alden lillywhite, dept of hew, apr ; both in p - , genrecsnav. see also ltr, asd (m&p) to commissioner of educ, may ; ltr, asd (m&p) to dr. j. w. edgar, texas education agency, may ; both in oasd (m&p) . ( may ).] [footnote - : ltr, secaf to superintendent of montgomery public schools, jan , secaf files.] as a result of this unified determination on the part of departmental officials, the office of the assistant secretary of defense could announce in december that two of the schools, the one at craig air force base, alabama, and fort belvoir, virginia, were integrated; two others, the naval air station school at pensacola, florida, and reese air force base, texas, had been closed; the remaining seventeen would be fully integrated by the september deadline.[ - ] lee nichols, a prolific writer on integration, reported in november that schools segregated for generations suddenly had black and white children sitting side by side. this move by the armed forces, he (p.  ) pointed out, could have far-reaching effects. educators from segregated community schools would be watching the military experiment closely for lessons in how to comply with the supreme court's desegregation order.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, chief, morale and welfare br, asd (m&p), dec , sub: integration of certain schools located on military installations, oasd (m&p) . .] [footnote - : upi news release, incl to memo, dir, dod office of public information, for asd (m&p), nov , oasd (m&p) . .] strictly speaking there were more than twenty-one segregated schools operating on federal installations. a small group of institutions built and operated by local authorities stood on land leased from the services. at the time of secretary wilson's order this category of schools included three with -year leases, those at fort meade, maryland, and fort bliss and biggs air force base, texas, and one with a -year lease at pine bluff arsenal, arkansas.[ - ] the air force's general counsel believed the lease could be broken in light of the wilson order, but the possibility developed that some extensions might be granted to these schools because of the lease complication.[ - ] the secretary of the army went right to the point, asking the assistant secretary of defense, carter l. burgess, for an extension in the case of fort meade pending maryland's integration of its schools under the supreme court's decision.[ - ] in response burgess ordered, as of june , the exemption of four schools. "no attempt shall be made," he informed the services, "to break the lease or take over operation of the schools pending further instruction from the secretary of defense."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, col staunton brown, usa, district engineer, little rock district, to division engineer, southwestern div, jun , sub: meeting with representatives of white hall school district, pine bluff arsenal; memo, asst adjutant, second army, for cg, second army, jun , sub: lease for meade heights elementary school; copies of both in oasd (m&p) . .] [footnote - : memo, af general counsel for dir of mil pers, mar , sub: lease on property occupied by briggs air force base dependent's school; memo, asst secaf for asd (m&p), may , sub: biggs air force base dependent school; both in secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, asa for asd (m&p), may , sub: elimination of segregation in on-post public schools, oasd (m&p) . .] [footnote - : memo, asd (m&p) for sa et al., jun , sub: operation of dependent schools on military installations on an integrated basis; idem for secdef et al., aug , sub: status of racial integration in schools on military installations for dependents of military and civilian personnel; both in oasd (m&p) . ( aug ).] it was some time before the question of temporary extensions was resolved. two of the leased property schools, biggs and fort bliss, were integrated before the september deadline as a result of a change in state law in the wake of the supreme court's decision. then, on july , the assistant secretary of the army reported that the phased integration of fort meade's elementary school had started.[ - ] the pine bluff arsenal case was still unresolved in , but since at that time there were no black dependents at the installation it was not considered so pressing by burgess, who allowed the extension to continue beyond . besides, it turned out there were still other schools in this category that the navy had temporarily exempted from the september deadline. the school at the patuxent river naval air station, for example, which had no black dependents eligible for attendance, was allowed to continue to operate as usual while negotiations were under way for the transfer of the school and property to the st. mary's county, maryland, school (p.  ) board.[ - ] a lease for the temporary use of buildings by local authorities for segregated schools on the grounds of the new orleans naval air station was allowed to run on until because of technicalities in the lease, but not, however, without considerable public comment.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asa for asd (m&p), jul , sub: status of racial integration in schools at fort george g. meade, maryland, and pine bluff arsenal, arkansas, oasd (m&p) . .] [footnote - : memo, cmdr charles b. reinhardt, oasd (m&p), for brig gen john h. ives, mil policy div, oasd (m&p), oct , sub: school at patuxent river naval air stations, oasd (m&p) . .] [footnote - : see the following memos: asd (m&p) for secnav, nov , sub: integration in schools on military installations for department of military and civilian personnel; idem for asst secnav (p&rf), jan , sub: segregation in schools at the new orleans naval base, algiers, louisiana; asst secnav (p&rf) for asd (m&p), apr , same sub; asd (m&p) for asst secnav (fm), aug , sub: u.s. naval station, new orleans, louisiana: one year extension of outlease with orleans parish school board, new orleans, louisiana; ltrs, co, new orleans naval station, to rev. edward schlick, feb , and rear adm john m. will, oasd (m&p), to clarence mitchell, naacp, dec and apr . all in oasd (m&p) . . for public interest in the case, see the files of the chief of naval personnel (p - ) for the years - .] [illustration: reading class in the military dependents school, _yokohama, japan, _.] the department of defense could look with pride at its progress. in less than three years after president eisenhower had promised to look into segregated schools for military dependents, the department had integrated hundreds of classrooms, inducing local authorities to integrate a series of schools in areas that had never before seen blacks and whites educated together. it had even ordered the integration of classes conducted on post by local universities and (p.  ) voluntarily attended by servicemen in off-duty hours.[ - ] yet many dependent schools were untouched because wilson's order applied only to schools on federal property. it ignored the largest category of dependent schools, those in the local community that because of heavy enrollment of federal dependents were supported in whole or part by federal funds. in these institutions some , federal dependents were being educated in segregated classes. integration for them would have to await the long court battles that followed _brown_ v. _board of education_. [footnote - : ltr, sen. herbert lehman to secdef, oct ; ltr, secdef to lehman, oct , both in sd . .] this dreary prospect had not always seemed so inevitable. although wilson's order ignored local public schools, civil rights advocates did not, and the problem of off-base segregation, typified by the highly publicized school at the little rock air force base in , became an issue involving not only the department of defense but the whole administration. the decision to withhold federal aid to school districts that remained segregated in defiance of court orders was clearly beyond the power of the department of defense. in a memorandum circulated among pentagon officials in october , assistant secretary of health, education, and welfare elliot c. richardson discussed the legal background of federal aid to schools attended by military dependents, especially congressional intent and the definition of "suitable" facilities as expressed in public laws and . he also took up the question of whether to provide off-base integrated schooling, balancing the difficult problem of protecting the civil rights of federal employees against the educational advantages of a state-sponsored education system. richardson mentioned the great variation in school population--some bases having seven high school aged children one year, none the next--and the fact that the cost of educating the , dependents attending segregated schools in would amount to more than $ million for facilities and $ . million annually for operations. he was left with one possible conclusion, that "irrespective of our feelings about the unsuitability of segregated education as a matter of principle, we are constrained by the legislative history, the settled administrative construction, and the other circumstances surrounding the statutes in question to adhere to the existing interpretation of them."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asst secy of hew for secy of hew, oct , sub: payments of segregated schools under p.l. and p.l. , incl to ltr, asst secy of hew to asd (m&p), oct , oasd (m&p) . ( oct ).] richardson might be "constrained" to accept the _status quo_, but some black parents were not. in the fall of matters came to a head at the school near the little rock air base. here was a new facility, built by the local school board exclusively with federal funds, on state land, and intended primarily for the education of dependents living at a newly constructed military base. on the eve of the school's opening, the pulaski county school board informed the air force that the school would be for white students only. the decision was brought to the president's attention by a telegram from a black sergeant's wife whose child was denied admission.[ - ] the telegram was only the first in a series of protests from congressmen, civil (p.  ) rights organizations, and interested citizens. for all the defense department had a stock answer: there was nothing the air force could do. the service neither owned nor operated the school, and the impact aid laws forbade construction of federal school facilities if the local school districts could provide public school education for federal dependents.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dir of pers policy, osd, for stephen jackson, aug , sub: air force segregated school situation in pulaski county, arkansas (san francisco _chronicle_ article of aug , ); memo for rec, stephen jackson, oasd (m&p), oct , sub: integration of little rock air force base school, jacksonville, ark., attached to memo, asd (m&p) for sa et al., oct . all in oasd (m&p) . .] [footnote - : see, for example, ltrs, dir of pers policy, osd, to sen. richard l. neuberger, sep , and asd/m to congressman charles c. diggs, jr., oct . see also memo, dep dir of mil pers, usaf, for asst secaf (manpower, pers, and res forces), oct , sub: dependent schools. all in oasd (m&p) . .] the department would not get off the hook so easily; the president wanted something done about the little rock school, although he wanted his interest kept quiet.[ - ] yet any action would have unpleasant consequences. if the department transferred the father, it was open to a court suit on his behalf; if it tried to force integration on the local authorities, they would close the school. since neither course was acceptable, assistant secretary of defense charles c. finucane ordered his troubleshooter, stephen jackson, to little rock to investigate.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, lt col winston p. anderson, exec off, asst secaf (m&p), for asst secaf (m&p), nov , secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, asd (mp&r) for sa et al., oct , oasd (mp&r) . ; memo for rcd, spec asst to asst secaf, oct , sub: meeting with mr. finucane and mr. jackson re little rock air force base, secaf files.] before he went to little rock, jackson met with officials from the department of health, education, and welfare and decided, with the concurrence of the department of justice, that the solution lay in government purchase of the land. the school would then be on a military base and subject to integration. should local authorities refuse to operate the integrated on-base school, the air force would do so. in that event, jackson warned local officials on his arrival in arkansas, the school district would lose much of its federal enrollment and hence its very important federal subsidy. nor could the board be assured that the federal acquisition would be limited to one school. jackson later admitted the local black school had also been constructed with federal funds, and he could not guarantee that it would escape federal acquisition. board members queried jackson on this point, introducing the possibility that the federal government might try to acquire local high schools, also attended in large numbers by military dependents and also segregated. jackson assured the school board that the department "had no desire to change the community patterns where schools were already in existence merely because they received federal aid,"[ - ] a statement that amounted to a new federal policy. [footnote - : memo for rcd, dep asd (mr&p), oct , sub: integration of little rock air force base school, jacksonville, ark.; attached to memo, asd (mp&r) for sa et al., oct , oasd (mp&r) . .] jackson failed to convince the board, and in late october it rejected the government's offer to run an integrated school on land purchased from them.[ - ] jackson thereupon met with justice officials and together they decided that sometime before january the justice department would acquire title to the school land for one year by taking a leasehold through the right of eminent domain. they did not at that time, however, formulate any definite plan of (p.  ) action to accomplish the school take-over.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, dep asst secaf, nov , secaf files.] [footnote - : ibid.; memo, lt col winston p. anderson, exec off, asst secaf (m&p) for asst secaf (m&p), nov , secaf files.] it was just as well, for soon after this decision was reached the naacp brought up the subject of dependent schools near the air force bases at blytheville, arkansas, and stewart, tennessee.[ - ] air force deputy assistant secretary james p. goode was quick to point out that there were at least five other segregated schools constructed with federal funds, situated near air force bases, and attended almost exclusively by federal dependents. he also predicted that a careful survey would reveal perhaps another fifteen schools in segregated districts serving only air force dependents. in light of these facts, and with a frankly confessed aversion to the administration's acquisition of the properties by right of eminent domain, goode preferred to have the schools integrated in an orderly manner through the supervision of the federal courts.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asst secaf (m&p) for under secaf, nov , secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, dep asst secaf (mp&r) for asst secaf (mp&r), nov , sub: little rock air force base elementary school, secaf files.] this attitude was to prevail for some time in the department of defense. in april , for example, the assistant secretary for manpower informed a senate subcommittee that, while schools under departmental jurisdiction were integrated "without reservation and with successful results," many children of black servicemen stationed in georgia, alabama, mississippi, and elsewhere still attended segregated off-post schools. adjacent to military posts and attended "in whole or in part by federal dependents," these schools "conformed to state rather than federal laws."[ - ] and as late as may , a naval official admitted there was no way for the navy to require school officials in key west, florida, to conform to the department of defense's policy of equal opportunity.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for chmn, subcommittee on education, cmte on labor and pub welfare, of the u.s. senate, apr , oasd (m) . .] [footnote - : ltr, rear adm c. k. duncan, asst chief for plans, bupers, to mrs. rosetta mccullough, may , p , genrecsnav.] yet even as the principle of noninterference with racial patterns of the local community emerged intact from the lengthy controversy, exceptions to its practical application continued to multiply. in the fall of , less than a year after the administration suspended its campaign to integrate off-base schools in arkansas, black air force dependents quietly entered the little rock school. at the same time, schools catering predominantly to military dependents near bases in florida and tennessee integrated with little public attention.[ - ] under pressure from the courts, and after president eisenhower had discussed the case in a national press conference in terms of the proper use of impact aid in segregated districts, the city of norfolk, virginia, agreed to integrate its , students, roughly one-third of whom were military dependents.[ - ] [footnote - : morton puner, "what the armed forces taught us about integration," _coronet_ (june ), reprinted in the _congressional record_, vol. , pp. - .] [footnote - : press conference, jan , _public papers of the presidents: dwight d. eisenhower, _, p. ; see also washington _post_ january , .] the controversy over schools for dependents demonstrated the (p.  ) limits of federal intervention in the local community on behalf of the civil rights of servicemen. before these limits could be breached a new administration would have to redefine the scope of the defense department's power. nevertheless, the armed forces had scored some dramatic successes in the field of race relations by . some five million servicemen, civilians, and their dependents were proving the practicality of integration on the job, in schools, and in everyday living. several writers even suggested that the services' experience had itself become a dynamic force for social change in the united states.[ - ] the new york _times's_ anthony lewis went so far as to say that the successful integration of military society led to the black crusade against discrimination in civilian society.[ - ] others took the services' influence for granted, as morton puner did when he observed in that "the armed services are more advanced in their race relations than the rest of the united states. perhaps it is uniquely fitting that this should be so, that in one of the greatest peacetime battles of our history, the armed forces should be leading the way to victory."[ - ] [footnote - : see fred richard bahr, "the expanding role of the department of defense as an instrument of social change" (ph.d. dissertation, george washington university, february ), ch. iii.] [footnote - : as quoted, ibid., p. .] [footnote - : morton puner, "integration in the army," _the new leader_ (january , ).] as such encomiums became more frequent, successful integration became a source of pride to the services. military commanders with experience in korea had, according to assistant secretary of defense hannah, universally accepted the new order as desirable, conceding that integration worked "very well" despite predictions to the contrary.[ - ] nor was this attitude limited to military commanders, for there had been considerable change in sentiment among senior defense officials. citing the major economies realized in the use of manpower and facilities, secretary wilson reported to president eisenhower in march that the results of integration were encouraging: combat effectiveness is increased as individual capabilities rather than racial designations determine assignments and promotions. economics in manpower and funds are achieved by the elimination of racially duplicated facilities and operations. above all, our national security is improved by the more effective utilization of military personnel, regardless of race.[ - ] [footnote - : extracted from an interview given by hannah and published in _u.s. news and world report_ (october , ): . see also ltr, lt col l. hill, chief, public info div, cinfo, to joan rosen, wcbs eye on new york, apr , cmh misc . negroes.] [footnote - : _semiannual report of the secretary of defense, january -june , _ (washington: government printing office, ), pp. - .] in other reports he expatiated on this theme, explaining how integration cut down racial incidents in the services and improved "national solidarity and strength."[ - ] after years of claiming the contrary, defense officials were justifying integration in the name of military efficiency. [footnote - : office of the assistant secretary of defense, manpower, "advances in the utilization of negro manpower: extracts from official reports of the secretary of defense, - ." the quotation is from secretary wilson's report, dec .] certainly racial incidents in the armed forces practically (p.  ) disappeared in the immediate post-integration period, and the number of complaints about on-base discrimination that reached the pentagon from individual black servicemen dropped dramatically. moreover, supporting secretary wilson's claim of national solidarity, major civil rights organizations began to cite the racial experiences of the armed forces to strengthen their case against segregated american society. civil rights leaders continued to press for action against discrimination outside the military reservation, but in the years after korea their sense of satisfaction with the department's progress was quite obvious. at its national conventions in and , for example, the naacp officially praised the services for their race policy. as one writer observed, integration not only increased black support for the armed forces and black commitment to national defense during the cold war, but it also boosted the department's prestige in the black and white community alike, creating indirect political support for those politicians who sponsored the racial reforms.[ - ] [footnote - : bahr, "the expanding role of the department of defense," pp. - .] but what about the black serviceman himself? a negro enlisting in the armed forces in , unlike his counterpart in , entered an integrated military community. he would quickly discover traces of discrimination, especially in the form of unequal treatment in assignments, promotions, and the application of military justice, but for a while at least these would seem minor irritants to a man who was more often than not for the first time close to being judged by ability rather than race.[ - ] it was a different story in the civilian community, where the black serviceman's uniform commanded little more respect than it did in . eventually this contrast would become so intolerable that he and his sympathizers would beleaguer the department of defense with demands for action against discrimination in off-base housing, schools, and places of public accommodation. [footnote - : ginzberg, _the negro potential_, p. .] chapter (p.  ) limited response to discrimination the good feelings brought on by the integration of the armed forces lasted less than a decade. by the early 's the department of defense and the civil rights advocates had begun once more to draw apart, the source of contention centering on their differing interpretations of the scope of the truman order. the defense department professed itself unable to interfere with community laws and customs even when those laws and customs discriminated against men in uniform. the civil rights leaders, however, rejected the federal government's acceptance of the _status quo_. reacting especially to the widespread and blatant discrimination encountered by servicemen both in communities adjacent to bases at home and abroad and in the reserve components of the services in many parts of the country, they stepped up demands for remedial action against a situation that they believed continued at the sufferance of the armed forces. nor were their demands limited to the problem of discrimination in the local community. civil rights spokesmen backed the complaints of those black servicemen who had begun to question their treatment in the military community itself. lacking what many of them considered an effective procedure for dealing with racial complaints, black servicemen usually passed on their grievances to congressmen and various civil rights organizations, and these, in turn, took the problems to the defense department. the number of complaints over inequalities in promotion, assignment, and racial representation never matched the volume of those on discrimination in the community, nor did their appearance attest to a new set of problems or any particular increase in discrimination. it seemed rather that the black serviceman, after the first flush of victory over segregation, was beginning to perceive from the vantage of his improved position that other and perhaps more subtle barriers stood in his way. whatever the reason, complaints of discrimination within the services themselves, rarely heard in the pentagon in the late 's, suddenly reappeared.[ - ] actually, the complaints about discrimination both in the local civilian community and on the military reservation called for a basic alteration in the way the services interpreted their policies of equal treatment and opportunity. in the end it would prove easier for the services to attack the gaudier but ultimately less complicated problems outside their gates. [footnote - : for discussion of charges of discrimination within the services, see ltrs, asd (m) to congressman charles c. diggs, jr., mar and sep ; and the following memos: under secnav for asd (m), mar , sub: discrimination in u.s. military services; dep secaf for manpower, personnel, and organization for asd (m), mar , sub: alleged racial discrimination with the air force; dep under sa (m) for asd (m), mar , sub: servicemen's complaints of discrimination in the u.s. military. all in asd (m) . .] it would be a mistake to equate the notice given the persistent (p.  ) but subtle problem of on-base discrimination with the sometimes brutal injustice visited on black servicemen off-base in the early 's. black servicemen often found the short bus ride from post to town a trip into the past, where once again they were forced to endure the old patterns of segregation. defense department officials were aware, for example, that decent housing open to black servicemen was scarce. with limited income, under military orders, and often forced by circumstances to reside in the civilian community, black servicemen were, in the words of robert s. mcnamara, president kennedy's secretary of defense, "singularly defenseless against this bigotry."[ - ] while the services had always denied responsibility for combating this particular form of discrimination, many in the black community were anxious to remind them of john f. kennedy's claim in the presidential campaign of that discrimination in housing could be alleviated with a stroke of the chief executive's pen. [footnote - : robert s. mcnamara, _the essence of security_ (new york: harper & row, ), p. .] but housing was only part of a larger pattern of segregation that included restrictions on black servicemen's use of many places of public accommodation such as restaurants, theaters, and saloons, some literally on the doorstep of military reservations. james evans listed some twenty-seven military installations in the united states where in segregation in transportation and places of public accommodation was established in adjacent communities by law or custom.[ - ] moreover, instances of blatant jim crow tactics were rapidly multiplying near bases in japan, germany, the philippines, and elsewhere as host communities began to adopt the prejudices of their visitors.[ - ] the united states commission on civil rights charged that black servicemen were often reluctant to complain to their superiors or the inspector general because of the repeated failure of local commands to show concern for the problem and suspicion that complainers would be subjected to reprisals.[ - ] [footnote - : james c. evans, oasd (m), "suggested list of military installations," jun , copy in cmh. evans's list was based on incomplete data. a great number of military installations were located in jim crow areas in . see also memo, dep asd (military personnel policy) for asd (m), oct , sub: forthcoming conference with representatives from core, asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, lee nichols (upi reporter) for secdef, attn: adam yarmolinsky, may , sub: racial integration in the u.s. armed forces, copy in cmh. nichols had recently toured military bases under defense department sponsorship. see also puner, "integration in the army"; news articles in _overseas weekly_ (frankfurt), november and , , and _stars and stripes_, november , .] [footnote - : u.s. commission on civil rights, _civil rights_ ' (washington: government printing office, ), p. .] civil rights leaders were particularly distressed by this form of discrimination, which, considering the armed forces' persistent declaration of impotence in the matter, seemed destined to remain a permanent condition of service life. "these problems involve factors which are not directly under the control of the department of defense," assistant secretary for manpower carlisle p. runge noted in a typical response.[ - ] similar sentiments were often expressed by local commanders, although some tried to soften their refusal to act with the hope that the military example might change local community attitudes in the long run.[ - ] congressman charles c. diggs, (p.  ) jr., did not share this hope. citing numerous examples for the president of discrimination against black servicemen, he charged that, far from influencing local communities to change, commanders actually cooperated in discrimination by punishing or otherwise identifying protesting servicemen as troublemakers.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for asst legal counsel to president, nov , sub: racial discrimination in the armed services, asd (m) . .] [footnote - : see transcribed taped interviews conducted by nichols of the upi with military and civilian personnel in the charleston, s.c., area in march , copies in the james c. evans collection, amhrc.] [footnote - : ltr, diggs to president, jun , copy in gesell collection, john f. kennedy library.] [illustration: civil rights leaders at the white house. _attorney general robert f. kennedy poses with (from left) martin luther king, jr., roy wilkins, whitney m. young, jr., and a. philip randolph._] especially galling to civil rights leaders was the conviction that the armed forces had set up artificial and self-imposed barriers to a needed social reform. in the end this conviction seemed to spur them on. the american veterans committee, for example, demanded that when a community "mistreats american troops, such as in montgomery, alabama, or flaunts its ku klux klan membership, as does selma, alabama, the entire area should be placed 'off limits' to purchases by defense installations and by servicemen."[ - ] others were convinced that the federal government was in effect supporting segregation through its widespread economic assistance programs to state and local governments and to private institutions in the fields of employment, housing, education, health service, military affairs, and agriculture. in august a group of fifty civil rights leaders petitioned the (p.  ) president to end such federal support.[ - ] on a more modest scale, the congress of racial equality asked the army in august to declare segregated restaurants in aberdeen, maryland, off limits to all military personnel. the activist group justified its demand by stating that "the army declares dangerous or immoral establishments off limits to soldiers and what is more dangerous or immoral in a democracy than racial intolerance?"[ - ] in this they failed to distinguish between the commander's proper response to what was illegal, for example prostitution, and what was still legal, for example, segregated housing. [footnote - : american veterans committee, "audit of negro veterans and servicemen," , p. , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : leadership conference on civil rights, "proposals for executive action to end federally supported segregation and other forms of racial discrimination," august , copy in sd . . see also u.s. commission on civil rights, _freedom to the free: a century of emancipation_ (washington: government printing office, ), pp. ff.] [footnote - : baltimore _sun_, august , . on the particular problem in the aberdeen area see telg, president kennedy to john field, president's cmte on equal employment opportunity, sep , copy in cmh.] _the kennedy administration and civil rights_ the strong connection between black morale and military efficiency made it likely that the new secretary of defense would be intimately concerned with problems of discrimination. highly trained in modern managerial techniques, robert s. mcnamara came to the pentagon with the idea of instituting a series of fundamental changes in the management of the armed forces through manpower reorganization and what was becoming known as systems analysis. whatever his attitude toward racial justice, his initial interest in the defense department's black employees, military and civilian, was closely linked to his concern for military efficiency. less than a week on the job, he called for information on the status of negroes in the department. he had heard that some services were better integrated than others, and he wanted his assistant secretary for manpower to investigate. he wanted to know if there was a "fair" proportion of negroes in the higher civilian grades. if not, he asked, "what do you recommend be done about it?"[ - ] these questions, and indeed all action on civil rights matters originating in his office in the months to come, indicated that mcnamara, like his predecessors, would limit his reforms to discrimination within the services themselves. but as time passed, mcnamara, like president kennedy, would warm to the civil rights cause and eventually both would become firmly committed. [footnote - : memo, secdef for asd (mp&r) designate, jan , asd (m) . .] the kennedy administration has been closely identified with civil rights, yet the president's major biographers and several of his assistants agree that his commitment to civil rights reform did not emerge full-blown on inauguration day. it was only in the last months of his administration that kennedy, subjected to civil rights demands and sharing the interests and experiences of his brother robert, the attorney general, threw himself wholeheartedly into the civil (p.  ) rights fray.[ - ] as senator and later as president, kennedy was sympathetic to the aspirations of the black minority, appreciated its support in his campaign, but regarded civil rights as one, and not the most pressing, problem facing the chief executive. even his administrations's use of federal marshals during the freedom rides in and its use of both marshals and troops at oxford, mississippi, in and troops again in alabama in were justified in the name of enforcement of federal judicial processes. well into he studiously downplayed the civil rights issues involved. [footnote - : this discussion of kennedy's civil rights position is based on arthur m. schlesinger, _a thousand days_ (boston: houghton mifflin, ); theodore c. sorensen, _kennedy_ (new york: harper and row, ); and the following oral history interviews in the j. f. kennedy library: berl bernhard with harris wofford, nov , roy wilkins, aug , and thurgood marshall, apr ; joseph o'connor with theodore hesburgh, mar . also consulted were sorensen's _the kennedy legacy_ (new york: new american library, ); victor s. navasky, _kennedy justice_ (new york: atheneum, ); william g. carlton, "kennedy in history," in _perspectives on th century america: readings and commentary_, ed. otis l. graham, jr. (new york: dodd, mead, ); edwin guthman, _we band of brothers: a memoir of robert f. kennedy_ (new york: harper and row, ); burke marshall, _federation and civil rights_ (new york: columbia university press, ).] kennedy was convinced that the only answer to the injustices suffered by negroes was a series of strong laws, but he was also certain that such legislation was impossible to achieve in . to urge it on an unwilling congress would only jeopardize his legislative program, increase the black minority's feeling of frustration, and divide the nation in a period of national crisis. discussing the civil rights commission's "non-negotiable" demands concerning the organized reserves, for example, commission member father theodore hesburgh remembered the president saying: look, i have a serious problem in west berlin, and i do not think this is the proper time to start monkeying around with the army.... i have no problem with the principle of this, and we'll certainly be doing it, but at this precise moment i have to keep uppermost in mind that i may need these units ... and i can't have them in the midst of a social revolution while i'm trying to do this.[ - ] [footnote - : quoted from o'connor's oral history interview with hesburgh, mar .] kennedy temporized. he would promptly and positively endorse the principle of equal rights and enforce the civil rights decisions of the supreme court through negotiation, moral suasion, executive order, and, when necessary, through the use of federal marshals.[ - ] the justice department meanwhile would pursue a vigorous course of litigation to insure the franchise for negroes from which, he believed, all civil blessings flowed. [footnote - : for a critical interpretation of the kennedy approach to enforcing the court's decisions, see navasky's _kennedy justice_, pp. - , and howard zinn, _postwar america_, - (indianapolis: bobbs-merrill, ), ch. iv.] civil rights was not mentioned in kennedy's first state of the union message. with the exception of a measure to outlaw literacy and poll tax requirements for voting, no civil rights bills were sent to the eighty-seventh congress. yet at one of his first press conferences, the president told newsmen that a plan to withhold federal funds in certain segregation cases would be included in a general study "of where the federal government might usefully place its power and influence to expand civil rights."[ - ] on march he signed executive order , which combined the committees on government (p.  ) contracts and employment policy into a single committee on equal employment opportunity chaired by the vice president.[ - ] his order, he believed, specified sanctions "sweeping enough to ensure compliance."[ - ] finally, in november , after numerous and increasingly pointed reminders from civil rights advocates, the president issued executive order , directing executive agencies to take action against discrimination in the sale or lease of federal housing or any housing bought with loans from or insured by the federal government.[ - ] [footnote - : press conference, mar , _public papers of the presidents: john f. kennedy, _, p. .] [footnote - : _federal register_ .] [footnote - : presidential statement, mar , _public papers of the presidents: kennedy, _, p. . see also "president's remarks on meeting of committee on equal employment opportunity," new york _times_, april , ; memo, president for heads of all executive departments and agencies, apr , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : executive order , nov , _federal register_ .] besides executive orders, the white house had other ways, less formal but perhaps more efficient, of getting the federal bureaucracy to move on civil rights. upon the recommendation of special assistant frederick g. dutton, the president created the civil rights subcabinet group in march to coordinate the administration's civil rights actions. under dutton's chairmanship, this group included the assistant secretaries responsible for racial matters in their respective agencies, with white house special civil rights assistant harris wofford serving as executive secretary.[ - ] the group regularly scrutinized the racial programs of the various departments, demanding reports and investigations of racial matters and insuring that the interests and criticisms of the administration were quickly disseminated at the operations level of the federal agencies affected.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, frederick g. dutton, spec asst to president, for secy of state et al., mar , and memo, asd (m) for dutton (ca. apr ), both in asd (m) . ; memo, nicholas d. katzenbach for vice president elect, nov , burke marshall papers, and interv, bernhard with wofford, both in j. f. kennedy library. according to wofford there was some discussion over just who would represent the department of defense in the group. the department's initial choice seems to have been evans, but wofford rejected this selection on the grounds that evans's position did not place him in the department's power structure. he preferred to have yarmolinsky or assistant secretary carlisle p. runge. yarmolinsky insisted that runge be included so that it would not appear that racial reform in the department of defense was a duty only for the administration's men.] [footnote - : see memo, asd (m) for under sa et al., nov , sub: minority representation in officer procurement and training, asd (m) . . see also memos, wofford for civil rights subcabinet group, sep, oct, and nov , copies in cmh.] there is evidence that the subcabinet group was responsible for considerable cross-fertilization of civil rights programs among the departments. for example, it appears to have used the experience of black servicemen in interstate travel to move the department of justice and, with the assistance of attorney general kennedy, the interstate commerce commission toward eliminating such discrimination.[ - ] and it was through the subcabinet group that the attorney general's interest in minority voting rights was translated into a voting registration campaign among servicemen.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, james c. evans, jul , sub: meeting, subcabinet group on civil rights, friday, july , (judge jackson represented mr. runge); ltr, secdef to atty gen, jun ; both in asd (m) . .] [footnote - : civil rights subcabinet group, notes on meeting of jun ; ltr, spec asst to postmaster gen to james c. evans, jan ; memo, evans for spec asst to asd (m), james w. platt, mar ; memo, harris wofford for subcabinet group, jan . copies of all in cmh.] the existence of this group, with its surveys, questions, and (p.  ) investigations, put constant pressure on the armed services. they were not singled out for special treatment, but they obviously attracted the attention of both the white house and the civil rights organizations because their commitment to equal treatment and opportunity affected so many people and their past successes and remaining problems were having a decided impact on american society. in the words of presidential assistant wofford, the defense department was "a world within itself," a world which by its magnitude could make a "significant contribution by its example" to the solution of the nation's racial problems.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, james c. evans, jul , sub: meeting, subcabinet group on civil rights, friday, july , (judge jackson represented mr. runge), asd (m&p) . .] the size of the department's racial program alluded to by wofford also invited the attention of a federal agency outside white house control. the united states commission on civil rights was continually investigating the services, probing allegations of discrimination against black servicemen and evaluating the role of the department in community race relations.[ - ] of particular interest to an understanding of racial policy in the 's is the commission's comprehensive survey, titled "the services and their relations with the community," which concluded that the continued existence of community discrimination against servicemen and their dependents had a detrimental effect on the morale and efficiency of significant numbers of them. the commission cataloged the traditional alibis of military commanders: "it is not the mission of the services to concern themselves with the practices of the local community"; the commander's responsibility "stops at the gate"; harmonious relations with the community must be maintained; and, finally, in order to achieve harmony, servicemen must comply with local laws and customs. yet when it came to other areas of community relations, particularly where the general health, welfare, and morale of the servicemen were involved, the commission found that commanders did not hesitate to ally themselves with servicemen, local community controversy and opposition notwithstanding. the commission wanted the services to take a similar stand against racial discrimination in the community. although its specific recommendations differed little from those of civil rights leaders, its position as an independent federal agency and its access to the news media added a constant and special pressure on the services.[ - ] [footnote - : see, for example, ltr, chmn, commission on civil rights, to secdef, mar ; memo, asd (m) for under sa et al., may , sub: survey, united states commission on civil rights; memo, under secnav for asd (m), may , sub: united states commission on civil rights survey of the department of defense; ltr, yarmolinsky to berl i. bernhard, staff dir, u.s. comm on civil rights, nov ; memo, asd (m) for under sa et al., may ; ltr, bernhard to runge, jul ; ltr runge to bernhard, jul . copies of all in cmh.] [footnote - : u.s. commission on civil rights, "the services and their relations with the community," jun .] another pressure on the armed forces in the early sixties was exerted by the civil rights bureaucracy in the white house itself. various presidential assistants subjected the services' reports on progress in the equal opportunity field to unprecedented scrutiny, asking questions that forced the defense department to explain or justify its racial policies and practices.[ - ] in march , civil rights assistants on the president's staff inquired about the number of (p.  ) negroes on the defense department's military and civilian screening boards.[ - ] later, special assistant frank d. reeves inquired about the employees working in the executive area of the department and suggested that the front offices do something about hiring more black office workers.[ - ] and again as a result of a number of questions raised about the navy's race policy, presidential assistant wofford sponsored a white house meeting on september for several civil rights representatives and adam yarmolinsky, special assistant to the secretary of defense, with the chief of naval personnel, vice adm. william r. smedberg. beginning with yarmolinsky's probing questions concerning the perennial problem of racial composition of the steward's branch, the meeting evolved into a general review of the navy's recent problems and achievements in race relations.[ - ] [footnote - : for examples of dod reports submitted to the white house on this subject, see memo, asd (m) for harris wofford, nov , and idem for frank d. reeves, spec asst to president, jun . for examples of white house interest in these reports, see james c. evans, oasd (m), notes on civil rights subcabinet group meeting, feb and mar . all in asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, yarmolinsky for runge, may ; memo, asd (m) for sa et al., mar , sub: personnel screening boards; both in asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, frank d. reeves, spec asst to president, for secdef, attn: adam yarmolinsky, apr , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : ltr, harris wofford to asd (m), sep ; memo for rcd, james c. evans, sep , sub: negro naval personnel; informal memo, evans for runge, sep , same sub. all in asd (m) . .] at times this white house scrutiny could be aggressively critical. there was, for example, small comfort for defense department officials in dutton's review of department comments on the recommendations of the civil rights leadership conference submitted to the white house in august .[ - ] dutton wanted to know more about the department's inquiry into possible racial discrimination in the sentences meted out by military courts. he was concerned with the allegation, categorically denied by the defense department, that black servicemen with school-aged dependents were being moved off bases to avoid integrating base schools. he wanted a prompt investigation. dutton was impatient with the navy's explanation for the continuing predominance of negroes in the steward's branch, and he was especially critical of the racial situation in the national guard. he wanted a progress report on these points. finally, he was unhappy with the lack of negroes in officer training, an executive area, he claimed, in which civilian agencies were forging ahead. he wanted something done about that also.[ - ] [footnote - : composed of representatives of some fifty civil rights groups under the chairmanship of roy wilkins of the naacp, the leadership conference on civil rights presented to president kennedy a list of proposals for executive action to end federally supported segregation. see u.s. commission on civil rights, _freedom to the free_, p. .] [footnote - : memo, dutton for yarmolinsky, oct , copy in asd (m) . ( may ).] the disquietude white house staff members produced among defense department officials was nothing compared to the trauma induced by the president's personal attention. john kennedy rarely intervened but he did so on occasion quickly and decisively and in a way illustrative of his administration's civil rights style. he acted promptly, for example, when he noticed an all-white unit from the coast guard academy marching in his inaugural parade. his call to the secretary of the treasury douglas dillon on inauguration night led to the admission of the first black students to the coast guard academy. he elaborated on the incident during his first cabinet meeting, asking each (p.  ) department head to analyze the minority employment situation in his own department. he was also upset to see "few, if any" black honor guardsmen in the units that greeted visiting ghanian president kwame nkrumah on march, an observation not lost on secretary mcnamara. "would it be possible," the new defense chief asked his manpower assistant, "to introduce into these units a reasonable number of negro personnel?"[ - ] an immediate survey revealed that negroes accounted for percent of the air force honor unit, percent of the army's, and . percent of the marines corps'. the -man naval unit had no black members.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secdef for asd (m), mar , asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for secdef, mac , sub: ceremonial units and honor guard details, asd (m) . .] [illustration: president kennedy and president allessandri of chile _review an all-white honor guard unit, white house, _.] these were minor incidents, yet kennedy's interest was bound to make a difference. as evans wryly put it in regard to the survey of blacks in the honor guard: "pending any further instructions it is submitted that the alert which has been given in person and by telephone in connection with the securing of the above data may be adequate for accomplishing the objectives contemplated in the [mcnamara] (p.  ) memorandum."[ - ] if not conducive to substantive change in the lot of the black serviceman, the president's intervention signaled in a way clearly understood by washington bureaucrats that a new style in executive politics was at hand and a new awareness of the racial implications of their actions was expected of them.[ - ] [footnote - : informal memo, evans for judge jackson, mar , sub: ceremonial units and honor guard details. remark repeated by asd (m) in his memo for secdef, mar , same sub. both in asd (m) files.] [footnote - : the coast guard incident in particular seems to have impressed washington. it was cited by mitchell, wilkins, and hesburgh during their oral history interviews at the j. f. kennedy library, and it continued to be discussed for some time after the inauguration in official channels. see, for example, memos, frederick dutton for secy of treas, mar , sub: coast guard academy, and theodore eliot (spec asst to secy of treas) for richard n. goodwin (asst spec counsel to president), jun , sub: negro in the coast guard, with attached note, dick [goodwin] to president; ltr, asst secy of treas to tim reardon, jan . all in white house gen files, j. f. kennedy library. the coast guard, it should be recalled, was not part of the department of defense in .] _the department of defense, - _ the white house approach to civil rights matters was faithfully adopted in mcnamara's department. despite a reputation for foot-dragging in some quarters--deputy secretary roswell l. gilpatric admitted that neither he nor mcnamara was especially interested in personnel matters and that some of their early appointments in the personnel field were inappropriate--[ - ]the secretary and his assistants issued a spate of directives and policy memorandums and inaugurated a whole series of surveys and investigations. yarmolinsky was later able to recall eleven major papers produced by the secretary's office during the first thirty months of mcnamara's incumbency. evans's more comprehensive list of actions taken by the office of the secretary's manpower assistant with regard to equal opportunity contained some forty items.[ - ] these totals did not include , racial complaints the defense department investigated and adjudicated before september nor the scores of contract compliance reviews conducted under the equal opportunity clauses in defense contracts.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, dennis o'brien with roswell l. gilpatric, may , in j. f. kennedy library; see also interv, bernhard with wofford.] [footnote - : memo, spec asst to secdef for paul southwick, white house, oct ; james c. evans, "equality of opportunity in the armed forces, a summary report on actions and contributions of the asd (m), january -july "; copies of both in cmh.] [footnote - : although it did not directly affect black servicemen, the contract compliance program deserves mention as a field in which the department of defense pioneered for the federal government. during the kennedy administration the department hired hundreds of contract compliance officers to scrutinize its vast purchasing program, insuring compliance with executive order . see ltr, adam yarmolinsky to author, nov , cmh files.] the number of department of defense rulings that pertained directly to black servicemen was matched by the comprehensiveness of their subject matter. many concerned the recruitment of negroes and the increase in their proportion of the military establishment. others pertained to off-base matters, ranging from prohibitions against the use of segregated facilities during field exercises to the use of military units in ceremonies and shows involving segregated audiences. continued segregation in the reserves, the racial policies of the united services organization, and even the racial rule of (p.  ) morticians who dealt with the services came in for attention. yet if these investigations and directives bespoke a quickened tempo in the fight for equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces, they did not herald a substantive reinterpretation of policy. the defense department continued to limit its actions to matters obviously and directly within its purview. the same self-imposed restriction that kept mcnamara's immediate predecessors from dealing with the most pressing demands for reforms by black servicemen and the civil rights leaders continued to be observed. this fact was especially clear in the case of the defense department's four major policy pronouncements involving the complex problem of discrimination visited upon servicemen and their dependents outside the gates of the military reservation. _discrimination off the military reservation_ in the first of these directives, which was derived from president kennedy's executive order on equal employment opportunity,[ - ] secretary mcnamara laid down that no departmental facility could be used by employee recreational organizations that practiced racial or religious discrimination. included were facilities financed from nonappropriated funds as well as all organizations to which civilian as well as military personnel belonged.[ - ] a straightforward enough commitment to a necessary racial reform, the secretary's order could by logical extension also be viewed as carrying the department's fight against racial discrimination into the civilian community. yet precisely because of these implications, the directive was subjected to later clarification. official interpretation revealed that secretarial rhetoric aside, the department of defense was not yet ready to involve civilians in its equality crusade. [footnote - : the office of the secretary of defense also issued several other statements implementing sections of executive order ; see dod dir . , jan , and osd admin instr no. , july , both in sd files.] [footnote - : memo, secdef for secys of military departments et al., apr , sub: military and civilian employee recreational organizations, copy in asd (m) . .] the problem emerged when the commander of maxwell air force base, in keeping with his reading of the mcnamara order, prohibited the use of maxwell's dining halls for a segregated luncheon of the american legion's boys' state and its playing fields for the segregated maxwell little league teams. assistant secretary runge quickly reassured senator lister hill of alabama that the april order was limited to employee organizations and so informed the under secretary of the air force.[ - ] but a further clarification and, in effect, a further restriction of the department's policy in discrimination cases was issued when the civil rights commission became interested in the case. "if these activities are not covered by the april directive," the commission's staff director-designate wanted to know, "what is the position of the department of defense on them?"[ - ] runge's (p.  ) response, cleared through special assistant yarmolinsky, was hardly reassuring to the commission. the department did not inquire into the racial rules of private organizations that used departmental facilities, runge explained, nor did it object when its departmentally sponsored teams and groups played or performed with segregated private recreational groups.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, runge to hill, jun ; memo, runge for under secaf, jan , sub: military and civilian employee recreational organizations both in asd (m) . .] [footnote - : ltr, bernhard to runge, jul , asd (m) . .] [footnote - : ltr, runge to bernhard, jul , with attached handwritten note, signed ssj [stephen jackson], jul , asd (m) . .] with the effect of a stone dropped into water, the implications of the anti-discrimination memorandum continued to ripple outward. the commander of brookley air force base, alabama, canceled the sale of subsidized tickets to the mobile bears baseball games by the base's civilian welfare council on the grounds that the ball park's segregated seating of air force personnel violated the secretary's order. inquiries from capitol hill set off another round of clarifications.[ - ] while the secretary's manpower advisers were inclined to support the base commander's action, some of the department's legal advisers had reservations. canceling the sale of tickets, a lawyer in the general counsel's office noted, was consistent with one construction of the secretary's memorandum but was not the "inevitable interpretation" since it was the ball club and not the air force recreational organization that discriminated.[ - ] another departmental lawyer warned that if the commander's interpretation was sustained the department would next have to prohibit welfare groups from selling unsubsidized tickets to events where the seating or even perhaps the performers themselves were segregated.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, hill to runge, jul ; memo, asd (m) for secaf, sep , sub: purchase and sale of baseball tickets at brookley afb; both in asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, r.c. gilliat for bartimo, jul , attached to draft ltr, runge to hill, asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, rta [robert t. andrews] for fab [frank a. bartimo], aug , asd (m) . .] yarmolinsky ignored such speculations, and on august informed special presidential assistant dutton that the secretary's office approved the base commander's action. although the sale of tickets did not technically violate executive order , the department's sponsorship and subsidy of segregated events, he said, "is, in our opinion, not consonant with the clear intent of the president's memorandum."[ - ] yarmolinsky suggested the white house might want to consider proposing to the ball club that the air base would resume the sale of tickets if it could sell a block of unsegregated seats. the white house reply was postponed until after the passage of the foreign aid bill, but the air force eventually received notice to proceed along these lines.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, yarmolinsky for dutton, aug , sub: president's memorandum of april , asd (m) . ( may ).] [footnote - : note, signed, "mb," aug , sub: call from virginia mcguire, attached to draft ltr, asd (m) to sen. hill; memo, asd (m) for secaf, sep , sub: purchase and sale of baseball tickets at brookley afb; both in asd (m) . ( may ).] on june deputy secretary gilpatric issued a second major policy statement. this one ostensibly dealt with the availability of integrated community facilities for servicemen, but was in fact far wider in scope, and brought the department nearer the uncharted (p.  ) shoals of community race relations. a testament to the extraordinary political sensitivity of the subject was the long time the document spent in the drafting stage. its wording incorporated the suggestions of representatives of the three service secretaries and was carefully reviewed by the president's civil rights advisers, who wanted the draft shown to the president "because of his particular interest in civil rights matters."[ - ] with their request in mind, and because of what he considered "the tense situation now existent in the south," runge urged the secretary to send the president the memorandum. before doing so mcnamara asked his general counsel, cyrus r. vance, to discuss the draft with the under secretaries of the services and assistant attorney general nicholas b. katzenbach and burke marshall. at the suggestion of the justice officials, the draft was slightly revised; then it was sent once again to the services for review. finally on june , and only after yarmolinsky had rejected certain minor alterations suggested by the services, was the memorandum issued under gilpatric's signature and its provisions passed down to the local commanders by the service secretaries.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for secdef, may , sub: availability of facilities to military personnel, asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, dep secdef for service secys, jun , sub: availability of facilities to military personnel, sd . . for various comments on the draft memo, see the following memos: vance and runge for secdef, jun ; asd (m) for dep secdef, jun , sub: availability of facilities to military personnel; dep secdef for service secys, jun , same sub; secaf for dep secdef, jun , same sub. all in asd (m) . ( may ).] the policy that emerged from all this careful labor committed the services to very little change. in the first place the title, the availability of facilities to military personnel, was vague, a legacy of the department's fear of congressional retaliation for any substantive move in the politically sensitive area of race relations. actually the secretary's office was primarily concerned with discrimination in places of public accommodation such as swimming pools, recreational facilities, meeting halls, and the like while the explosive subject of off-base housing was ignored. although the order's ambiguity did not preclude initiatives in the housing field by some zealous commanders, neither did it oblige any commander to take any specific action, thus providing a convenient excuse for no action at all.[ - ] commanders, for example, were ordered to provide integrated facilities off post for servicemen "to the extent possible," a significant qualification in areas where such facilities were not available in the community. commanders were also "expected to make every effort" to obtain integrated facilities off base through the good offices of their command-community relations committees. in effect the department was asking its commanders to achieve through tact what the courts and the justice department were failing to achieve through legal process. [footnote - : interv, author with james c. evans, nov , cmh files.] where the order was specific, it carefully limited the extent of reforms. it barred the use of military police in the enforcement of local segregation laws, a positive step but a limited reform since only in very rare instances had military police ever been so employed. the order also provided "as circumstances warranted" for legal assistance to servicemen to insure that they were afforded due process of law in cases growing out of the enforcement of local (p.  ) segregation ordinances. again what seemed a broad commitment and extensive interference with local matters was in practice very carefully circumscribed, as demonstrated by the air force policy statement issued in the wake of the secretary's order. the air force announced that in the case of discrimination in the community, the local air force commander and his staff judge advocate would interview the aggrieved serviceman to ascertain the facts and advise him of his legal recourses, "but will neither encourage nor discourage the filing of a criminal complaint." the purpose of the policy, the air force chief of staff explained, was to assist servicemen and at the same time avoid disrupting good community relations. the commander should remain interested, but he should leave the work to his judge advocate so that the commander would not personally be "caught in the middle" to the detriment of his community relations program. if local authorities refused to cooperate, the matter should be referred to higher authority who might pursue it with local government officials. such procedures might keep the commander from becoming embroiled in locally sensitive issues.[ - ] in short, discrimination was to be fought through voluntary action at the local command level, but nothing was to be done that might compromise the commander's standing with the local authorities. [footnote - : memo, maj gen albert m. kuhfeld, usafjag (for cofsaf), for almajcom (sja), feb , sub: air force policy statement concerning violations of anti-discrimination law, and attached memo, dep cofs, pers, for almajcom, jan , same sub, secaf files.] mcnamara's office displayed the same good intentions and crippling inhibitions when it considered policy on the participation of servicemen in civil rights demonstrations. the secretary had inherited a policy from his predecessor who, in the wake of a series of sit-in demonstrations involving black airmen in the spring of , had approved a plan devised by the judge advocate generals of the services and other defense department officials. declaring such activity "inappropriate" in light of the services' mission, these officials banned the participation of servicemen in civil rights demonstrations and gave local commanders broad discretionary powers to prevent such participation, including the right to declare the place of demonstration off limits or to restrict servicemen to the base. although all the services adopted the new policy, only the air force published detailed instructions.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, asd (p), mar ; memo, dep chief, navpers, for asst secnav (pers and reserve forces), mar , sub: considerations relative to department of defense policy concerning disputes over local laws or customs; copies of both in asd (m) . . for the air force instructions, see memo, af dep cofs (p) for all major cmdrs, mar , sub: air force policy statement concerning involvement of air force personnel in local civil disturbances, secaf files.] this prohibition did not deter all black servicemen, and some commanders, in their zeal to enforce departmental policy, went beyond the methods mcnamara's predecessor had recommended. such was the case during a series of sit-ins at killeen, texas, near the army's fort hood, where, as reported in the national press and subsequently investigated by the united states commission on civil rights, the commander used military police to break up two demonstrations.[ - ] the secretary's office reacted quickly to the incidents. a (p.  ) prohibition against the use of military police to quell civil rights demonstrations was quickly included in the secretary's policy statement, the availability of facilities to military personnel, then being formulated. "this memorandum," assistant secretary runge assured mcnamara, "should preclude any further such incidents."[ - ] in specific reference to the situation in the fort hood area, the deputy under secretary of the army reported that as a result of a new policy and the emphasis placed on personal contact by commanders with local community representatives, "a cordial relationship now exists between fort hood and the surrounding communities."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for secdef, jul , sub: use of military police to halt sit-ins as reported by drew pearson's column of july in the washington post; ltr, u.s. commission on civil rights staff dir designate to asd (m), jul ; both in asd (m) . . the president's office received considerable mail on the subject; see white house cen files, j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for secdef, jul , sub: use of military police..., asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, dep under sa for counselor, oasd (m), jan , sub: off-base racial discrimination in the fort hood area, asd (m) . .] but to ban the use of military police and to urge commanders to deal with local business leaders to end segregation actually begged the question. significantly, the much-heralded memorandum on the availability of integrated facilities failed to review the rules governing participation in demonstrations, a subject of pressing interest to an increasing number of negroes as the civil rights struggle moved into a more active phase. bothered by this failure, air force representatives on the policy drafting team had wanted to provide local commanders with guidance before civil rights incidents occurred. the justice officials who reviewed the memorandum at mcnamara's invitation, however, were reluctant to see specific reference to such incidents incorporated, and the matter was ignored.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, vance and runge for secdef, jun , asd (m) . .] in fact, justice officials were not the only ones reluctant to see the issue raised. it was a common belief in the defense department that military service placed some limitations on a man's basic liberties. because servicemen were assigned to their duty station, subject to immediate transfers and on duty twenty-four hours a day, they were allowed no opportunity for participating in demonstrations.[ - ] the department's general counsel was even more specific, saying that a prohibition against picketing would not conflict with the department's anti-discrimination policies and could be lawfully imposed by the services. "indeed," he believed, "the role of the military establishment in our society required the imposition of such a limitation on the off-duty activities of service personnel."[ - ] blessed by such authority, the prohibition against participation in civil rights demonstrations remained in effect for more than three years.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, asd (m) to john de j. pemberton, jr., exec dir, american civil liberties union, jul ; memos for rcd, osd counselor, apr and jul . all in asd (m) . ( jul ).] [footnote - : memo, general counsel for asd (m), jun , sub: picketing by members of the armed forces, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : see memo, james p. goode, office of secaf, for stephen jackson and carlisle runge, attached to memo, af dep cofs (p) for all major cmdrs, mar , sub: air force policy statement concerning involvement of air force personnel in local civil disturbances, secaf files; ltr, under secnav to jesse h. turner, oct , copy in cmh. see also ltr, adam yarmolinsky to adam c. powell, oct , sd . ( jul ).] such restrictions could not last much longer. given the civil (p.  ) rights temper of the times-- witnessed the mammoth march on washington, the introduction of president kennedy's civil rights bill, and the landmark directive of the secretary of defense on equal opportunity in the armed forces--a total prohibition on servicemen's participation in demonstrations appeared more and more incongruous. finally, on july , mcnamara relaxed the department's policy. still declaring such participation inappropriate and unnecessary for servicemen in view of their "special obligations of citizenship," he nevertheless lifted the ban on military participation in demonstrations, provided that the uniform was not worn; such activity took place during off-duty hours, off the military reservation, and did not constitute a breach of law and order; and no violence was reasonably likely to result.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, secdef for secys of mil depts et al., jul , sd files; see also new york _times_, july , , , , , and , .] [illustration: secretary of defense mcnamara.] again an apparent liberalization of departmental racial policy actually promised very little change. first, the continuing prohibitions on participation in demonstrations were so broad and so vague that they could be interpreted to cover almost any civil rights activity. then, too, the secretary left the interpretation of his order to the judgment of local commanders, a dubious blessing in the eyes of the civil libertarians and concerned servicemen in light of the narrow constructions commanders had given recent defense department memorandums. finally, the relaxation of the ban was applicable only to the continental united states. in response to a request for guidance from the european commander, the joint chiefs of staff informed all overseas commanders that as guests of allied nations, u.s. servicemen had no right to picket, demonstrate, or otherwise participate in any act designed to "alter the policies, practices, or activities of the local inhabitants who are operating within the framework of their own laws."[ - ] [footnote - : msg, uscinceur to jcs, z aug ; msg, jcs to cinsco et al. (info copies to service chiefs of staff, cincal, asd [m], and asd [pa]), z aug .] the fourth major memorandum on racial matters outlined the department's application of executive order on housing. racial discrimination in off-base housing had become perhaps the chief complaint of black servicemen who were further incensed by many (p.  ) local commanders who maintained lists of segregated houses in their base housing offices. in some cases commanders referred their black servicemen to the urban league or similar organizations for help in finding suitable housing.[ - ] demands that the services do something about the situation were rebuffed. as the assistant secretary of defense explained to a white house official, the department of defense had "virtually no direct involvement" in off-base housing, the segregation of which was "not readily susceptible to change by actions that are within the control of the military departments."[ - ] [footnote - : omaha _world herald_, august , ; see also memo, adam [yarmolinsky] for l. white, sep , lee white collection, j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for asst legal counsel to president, nov , sub: racial discrimination in the armed services, asd (m) . .] several of mcnamara's assistants disagreed. they drafted a housing order for the secretary but not without opposition at first from some of their colleagues. an army representative, for example, suggested a counterproposal that commanders be ordered to work through the federal agencies established in various geographical areas of the country by executive order . an air force spokesman recommended the creation of special regional and local community committees, chaired by representatives of the housing and home finance agency and including members from all major federal agencies. for his part, stephen s. jackson, a special assistant in the manpower office, thought these service proposals had merit, and he wanted to postpone action until they had been discussed with other interested federal agencies.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, jackson for dep asd, family housing-oasd (i&l), feb , sub: implementation of ex , equal opportunity in housing, copy in cmh.] mcnamara, however, "readily agreed" with his housing experts that a letter on nondiscrimination in family housing was necessary. on march he informed the service secretaries that effective immediately all military leases for family housing, that is, contracts for private housing rented by the services for servicemen, would contain a nondiscrimination clause in accordance with the president's executive order. he also ordered military bases to maintain listings only on nonsegregated private housing.[ - ] again an attempt to bring about a needed change was severely limited in effectiveness by the department's concern for the scope of the commander's authority in the local community. the application of the president's order would end segregation in leased housing, but only a small percentage of black servicemen lived in such housing. the majority of service families lived off base in private housing, which the new order, except for banning the listing of segregated properties by base housing offices, ignored. barring the use of segregated private housing to all servicemen, a more direct method of changing the racial pattern surrounding military installations, would have to wait for a substantive change in departmental thinking. [footnote - : memo, secdef for sa et al., mar , sub: non-discrimination in family housing; memo, asd (i&l) for dep asd (family housing), mar ; copies of both in asd (m) . . the quote is from the latter document.] _reserves and regulars: a comparison_ while the interest of both civil rights advocates and defense officials was focused on off-base concerns during the early 's, discrimination continued to linger in the armed forces. a (p.  ) particularly sensitive issue to the services, which in the public mind had complete jurisdiction over all men in uniform, was the position of the negro in the reserve components. to generalize on the racial policies of the fifty-four national guard organizations is difficult, but whereas some state guards had been a progressive force in the integration of the services in the early postwar period, others had become symbols of racism by . some fourteen years after the truman order, ten states with large black populations and understaffed guard units still had no negroes in the guard. the kennedy administration was not the first to wrestle with the problem of applying a single racial policy to both the regulars and the guard. it was aware that too much tampering with the politically influential and volatile guard could produce an explosion. at the same time any appearance of timidity courted antagonism from another quarter. from the beginning the new administration found itself criticized by civil rights organizations, including the u.s. commission on civil rights, for not moving quickly against segregated national guard units.[ - ] a delegation from the naacp's convention visited assistant secretary runge in july and criticized--to the exclusion of all other subjects--discrimination in the national guard. this group wanted the federal government to withhold funds from states that continued to bar black participation. repeating the old claim that special federal-state relationships precluded direct action by the secretary of defense, runge nevertheless promised the delegates a renewed effort to provide equal opportunity. he also made a somewhat irrelevant reference to the recent experience of a black citizen in oklahoma who had secured admission to the state guard by a direct appeal to the governor.[ - ] how futile such appeals would be in some states was demonstrated a week later when the adjutant general of florida declared that since the guard was a volunteer organization and his state had always drawn its members from among white citizens, florida was under no obligation to enlist black men.[ - ] [footnote - : see petitions signed by thousands of negroes to the president demanding redress of grievances against the discriminatory practices of the national guard, in white house cen files, , j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : memo for rcd, james c. evans, oasd (m), jul , sub: mr. runge receives naacp delegation, asd (m) . .] [footnote - : washington _post_, july , .] that the new administration had quietly adopted different policies toward the guard and the regular forces was confirmed when runge responded to a report prepared by the american veterans committee on the lack of racial progress in the guard. the veterans group called on the administration to use the threat of withdrawal of federal recognition to alter guard practices.[ - ] the administration refused. a policy of force might be acceptable for the active armed forces, but voluntary persuasion seemed more appropriate for the national guard. enunciating what would become the defense department's position on the national guard through , runge declared that the federal government had no legal authority to force integration on the guard when it was not serving in a federal status. furthermore, (p.  ) withdrawal of federal recognition or withholding federal funds as a means of bringing about integration, though legally sound, would cause some states to reject federal support and inactivate their units, thereby stripping the country of a portion of its military reserve and damaging national security. citing the progress being made by persuasion, runge predicted that some recalcitrant states might in time voluntarily move toward integration.[ - ] noting instances of recent progress and citing legal restrictions against forcing state compliance, mcnamara endorsed the policy of encouraging voluntary compliance.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, murray gross, chmn of the avc, to secdef, jun , sd . . the report on the integration of the national guard was inclosed.] [footnote - : ltrs, runge to murray gross, jul and nov , asd (m) . , and n.d. (ca. nov ), copy in wofford collection, j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : ltr, secdef to rep. carl vinson of georgia, chmn, house armed services cmte, aug , reprinted in appendix to _congressional record_, th cong., st sess., vol. , p. a .] although unauthorized, similar patterns of discrimination persisted in parts of the organized reserves. reserve units had links with both the regular forces and the guard. like the regulars, the reserve was legally a creature of the federal government and subject to policies established by the secretary of defense. moreover, the reserve drew much of its manpower from the pool of soldiers separating from active duty with a reserve obligation still to fulfill, and within some limits the defense department could assign such men to units in a manner that could influence the reserve's racial composition. but like the guard, the reserve also had a distinct local flavor, serving almost as a social club in some parts of the country. this characteristic was often an important factor in maintaining a unit at satisfactory strength. since segregation sometimes went hand in hand with the clublike atmosphere, the services feared that a strong stand on integration might cause a severe decline in the strength of some units.[ - ] when the army staff reviewed the situation in , therefore, it had not pressed for integration of all units, settling instead for merely "encouraging" commanders to open their units to negroes.[ - ] [footnote - : acofs (reserve components) summary sheet, feb , sub: race issue in armory debate, copy in dcsper . .] [footnote - : dcsper summary sheet, apr , sub: policy for reserve training assignments of obligated non-caucasian personnel of the ready reserve who reside in segregated areas, dcsper . .] the move toward complete integration of the reserves was slow. in , for example, more than percent of the army's reserve units in southern states were still segregated. the other services followed a similar pattern; in more than percent of all reserve units in the country were white; the army retained six all-black reserve units as well. racial exclusion persisted in the reserve officers' training corps also, although here the fault was probably not so much a matter of reserve policy as the lingering segregation pattern in some state school systems. at the same time, the reserves had more blacks in nondrill status than in drill status. in other words, more blacks were in reserve pools where, unassigned to specific units, they did not participate in active duty training. in , some percent of the black reservists in the army and air force, percent in the navy, and percent in the marine corps were assigned to such pools. for many reservists, paid drill status was desirable; apart from the money received for such active duty, they had the opportunity to gain (p.  ) credit toward retirement and pensions. deputy secretary of defense gilpatric reminded the services in april that the truman order applied to the reserves and called on the under secretaries to integrate the all-black and all-white units "as rapidly as is consistent with military effectiveness."[ - ] he also wanted a review of black assignments for the purpose of removing the disproportionate number of negroes in pools "consistent with the military requirements and the skills of the personnel involved." [footnote - : memo, dep secdef for under secys, apr , sub: compliance with e.o. in the army, navy, air force, and marine corps reserves, in sd files. the secretary's memo was distributed to the commands; see, for example, memo, tag for cincarpac et al., may (tag . / may ).] a defense manpower team surveyed the reserves in november . it tried to soften the obvious implication of its racial statistics by pointing out that the all-black units were limited to two army areas, and action had already been taken by the third army and fourth army commanders to integrate the six units as soon as possible. the team also announced initiation of a series of administrative safeguards against discrimination in the enlistment and assignment of men to drilling units. as for the all-white units, the reviewers cautioned that discrimination was not necessarily involved since negroes constituted a relatively small proportion of the strength of the reserves-- . percent of the army, . percent of the air force, and an estimated . percent of the navy. furthermore, the data neither proved nor disproved allegations of discrimination since the degree to which individuals volunteered, the skills and aptitudes they possessed, and the needs of the services were all factors in the assignment and use of the men involved.[ - ] [footnote - : office of the asd (m), review of compliance with e.o. in the army, navy, air force, and marine corps reserves, nov , copy in cmh.] pleas of an absence of legal authority in regard to the national guard and generalized promises of racial reform in the reserves were not going to still the complaints of the civil rights organizations nor discourage the interest of their allies in the administration. clearly, the department of defense would be hearing more about race in the reserve components in the months to come. the sudden reemergence in the early 's of complaints of discrimination in the regular forces centered around a familiar litany: the number of negroes in some of the services still fell significantly short of the black percentage of the national population; and separate standards, favorable to whites, prevailed in the promotion and assignment systems of all the services. there had to be some discrimination involved, congressman diggs pointed out to the secretary of the air force in july . with extensive help from the services, diggs had been investigating servicemen's complaints for some time. while his major concern remained the discrimination suffered by black servicemen off base, he nevertheless concluded that the service regulations developed in consultation with the fahy committee more than a decade earlier had not been fully implemented and discriminatory practices existed "in varying degrees" at (p.  ) military installations around the world. diggs admitted that a black serviceman might well charge discrimination to mask his failure to compete successfully for a job or grade, but to accept such failures as a universal explanation for the disproportionate number of negroes in the lower ranks and undesirable occupations was to accept as true the canard that negroes as a group were deficient. diggs's conclusion, which he pressed upon the department with some notice in the press, was that some black servicemen were being subtly but deliberately and arbitrarily restricted to inferior positions because their military superiors exercised judgments based on racial considerations. these judgments, he charged, were inconsistent with the spirit of the truman order.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, diggs to secaf, jul ; see also memo, dir, af legis liaison, for spec asst for manpower, personnel, and reserve forces, usaf, jul , with attached summary of findings and highlights of the diggs report concerning alleged discriminatory practices in the armed forces; both in secaf files.] at first glance the study of racial discrimination by the u.s. commission on civil rights seemed to contradict diggs's charges. the commission concluded that taken as a whole the status of black servicemen had improved considerably since the truman order. it noted that black representation had remained relatively constant since the early days of integration, . percent of the total, . percent of the enlisted strength, and approached national population averages. the percentage of black officers, . percent of all officers, while admittedly low, had been rising steadily and compared favorably with the number of black executives in the civilian economy. the occupational status of the black enlisted man had also undergone steady improvement since the early days of integration, especially when one compared the number and variety of military occupation specialties held by black servicemen with opportunities in the rest of the civil service and the business community. finally, and perhaps most important, the commission found that in their daily operations, military installations were "generally free from the taint of racial discrimination."[ - ] it confirmed the general assessments of the anti-defamation league of b'nai b'rith and the american veterans committee among others, pointing out that black and white servicemen not only worked side by side, but also mingled in off-duty hours.[ - ] in sum, the study demonstrated general satisfaction with the racial situation on military bases. its major concern, and indeed the major concern of diggs and most black servicemen, remained the widespread discrimination prevailing against black servicemen in the local community. [footnote - : u.s. commission on _civil rights_, civil rights ' , pp. - . the quotation is from page .] [footnote - : see, for example, morton puner, "the armed forces: an integration success story," _anti-defamation league bulletin_, nov , pp. , ; and american veterans committee, "audit of negro veterans and servicemen," .] these important generalizations aside, the commission nevertheless offered impressive statistical support for some of diggs's charges when it investigated the diverse and conflicting enlistment and assignment patterns of the different services. the navy and marine corps came in for special criticism. even when the complexities of mental aptitude requirements and use of draftees versus enlistees (p.  ) were discounted, the commission found that these two services consistently employed a significantly smaller percentage of negroes than the army and air force. a similar disparity existed in assignment procedures. the commission found that both services failed to match the record of the civilian economy in the use of negroes in technical, mechanical, administrative, clerical, and craft fields. it suspected that the services' recruiting and testing methods intensified these differences and wondered whether they might not operate to exclude negroes in some instances. despite general approval of conditions on the bases, the commission found what it called "vestiges of discrimination on some bases." it reported some segregated noncommissioned officer clubs, some segregated transportation of servicemen to the local community, and some discriminatory employment patterns in the hiring of civilians for post jobs. partly the legacy of the old segregated services, this discrimination, the commission concluded, was to a greater extent the result of the intrusion of local civilian attitudes. the commission's attention to outside influences on attitudes at the base suggested that it found the villain of the diggs investigation, the prejudiced military official, far too simplistic an explanation for what was in reality institutional racism, a complex mixture of sociological forces and military traditions acting on the services. the department of defense's manpower experts dwelt on these forces and traditions when they analyzed recruitment, promotion, and assignment trends for mcnamara in .[ - ] [footnote - : memo, depasd (special studies and requirements) for asd (m), jul , with attachment, utilization of negroes in the armed forces, july , copy in cmh. all the tables accompanying this discussion are from the preceding source, with the exception of table , which is from the u.s. department of labor, office of policy planning and research, _the negro family: the case for national action_, mar , p. , where it is reproduced from dod sources.] they found a general increase in black strength ratios between and (_table _). they blamed the "selective" recruiting practices in vogue before the truman order for the low enlistment ratios in , just as they attributed the modest increases since that time to the effects of the services' equal treatment and opportunity programs. in the judgment of these analysts, racial differences in representation since the truman order, and indeed most of the other discrepancies between black and white servicemen, could usually be explained by the sometimes sharp difference in aptitude test results (_table _). a heritage of the negro's limited, often segregated and inferior education and his economic and related (p.  ) environmental handicaps, low aptitude scores certainly explained the contrast in disqualification rates (_tables and _). by fully half of all negroes--as compared to percent of all whites--failed to qualify for service under minimum mental test standards. in some southern states, the draftee rejection rate for negroes exceeded percent. table --black strength in the armed forces for selected years (in percentage) army navy marine corps air force enlisted enlisted enlisted enlisted year men officers men officers men officers men officers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . table --estimated percentage distribution of draft-age males in u.s. population by afqt groups (based on preinduction examination, - ) group white nonwhite i . . ii . . iii . . iv . . v . . table --rate of men disqualified for service in (in percentage) cause white nonwhite medical and other . . mental test failure . . total . . table --rejection rates for failure to pass armed forces mental test, failed mental test number area examined number percent grand total, continental united states , , . total, white , , . total, black , , . first army: connecticut, maine, massachusetts, new hampshire, new jersey, new york, rhode island, vermont white , , . black , , . second army: delaware, washington, d.c., kentucky, maryland, ohio, pennsylvania, virginia, west virginia white , , . black , , . third army: alabama, florida, georgia, mississippi, north carolina, south carolina, tennessee white , , . black , , . fourth army: arkansas, louisiana, new mexico, oklahoma, texas white , , . black , , . fifth army: colorado, illinois, iowa, michigan, minnesota, missouri, nebraska, north dakota, south dakota, wisconsin, wyoming white , , . black , , . sixth army: arizona, california, idaho, montana, nevada, oregon, utah, washington white , , . black , . this problem became critical for black enlistments in the mid- 's when the services, with less need for new servicemen, raised the mental standards for enlistees, denying group iv men the right to enlist. (an exception to this pattern was the navy's decision to accept group iv enlistments in and to replace post-korean enlistment losses.) in terms of total black representation, however, the new mental standards made a lesser difference (_table _). denying group iv men enlistment during the 's only increased their number in the draft pool, and when the army stepped up draft inductions in the early 's the number of group iv men in uniform, including negroes, rapidly increased. table --nonwhite inductions and first enlistments, fiscal years - [ ] fiscal | total | percent nonwhite year |accessions| dod| army |navy|marine| air | ( )[ ] | |inductees[ ]|enlistees| |corps |force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . total , . . . . . . . [tablenote : includes inductions and male "non-prior service" enlistments into the regular components.] [tablenote : the army was the only service drafting men during this decade.] while the army's dependence on the draft, and thus group iv men, explained part of the continuing high percentage of negroes in that service, the defense department manpower group was at a loss to explain the notable variation in black enlistments among the services. all employed similar enlistment standards, yet during the period -- , for example, black enlistment in the army and air force averaged percent, the marine corps percent, and the navy . percent. nor could the analysts isolate the factors contributing to the low officer ratios in all four services. almost all military officers during the period under analysis were college graduates, negroes comprised about percent of all male college graduates, yet only the army maintained a black officer ratio approaching that figure. (_see table ._) the inability of many black servicemen to score highly in the tests might also explain why training in some technical occupations continued more restricted for them (_tables and _). in (p.  ) contrast to ground combat and service occupations, which required little formal school training, some occupation groups--electronics, for example--had high selection standards. the defense department group admitted that occupations for blacks in the armed forces had also been influenced by historical patterns of segregated assignments to food service and other support occupations. among men with twenty or more years in uniform, percent of the blacks and percent (p.  ) of the whites were assigned to service occupations. but this pattern was changing, the analysts pointed out. the reduction in the differential between whites and blacks in service occupations among more recent recruits clearly reflected the impact of policies designed to equalize opportunities (_table _). these policies had brought (p.  ) about an increasing proportion of negroes in white collar skills as well as in ground combat skills. table --distribution of enlisted personnel in each major occupation, percentage distribution by afqt groups occupation i&ii iii iv electronics . . . other technical . . . admin. & clerical . . . mechanics & repairmen . . . crafts . . . services . . . ground combat . . . table --occupational group distribution by race. all dod, total percent occupational group percentage distribution of negroes in negroes white each group ground combat . . . electronics . . . other technical . . . admin. & clerical . . . mechanics & repairmen . . . crafts . . . services . . . total . . . table --occupational group distribution of enlisted personnel by length of service and race - over occupational - years - years - years years years group white black white black white black white black white black ground combat . . . . . . . . . . electronics . . . . . . . . . . other technical . . . . . . . . . . admin. & clerical . . . . . . . . . . mechanics . . . . . . . . . . crafts . . . . . . . . . . services . . . . . . . . . . this change was dramatically highlighted by the occupational distribution of naval personnel in (_table _). among general qualification test groups i and ii, the percentage of negroes assigned to service occupations, mainly stewards, commissarymen, and the (p.  ) like, declined from percent of those with more than twelve years' service to percent of those with less than twelve years' service, with sharp increases in the "other technical" group, mainly medical and dental specialists, and smaller increases in other technical skills. a similar trend also appeared in the lower mental categories. one persisting occupational difference was the tendency to assign a relatively large percentage of negroes with high aptitudes to "other technical" skills and those of low aptitude to service occupations. the group admitted that these differences required further analysis. table --percentage distribution of navy enlisted personnel by race, afqt groups and occupational areas, and length of service, afqt group and - years years & over occupational area[ ] white negro white negro groups i and ii electronics . . . . other technical . . . . admin. & clerical . . . . mechanics & repairmen . . . . crafts . . . . services . . . . total . . . . group iii electronics . . . . other technical . . . . admin. & clerical . . . . mechanics & repairmen . . . . crafts . . . . services . . . . total . . . . group iv electronics . . . . other technical . . . . admin. & clerical . . . . mechanics & repairmen . . . . crafts . . . . services . . . . total . . . . [tablenote : excludes personnel not classified by occupation, such as recruits and general duty seamen.] reporting on promotions, the defense department group found that the relatively limited advancement of black officers was caused chiefly by their disadvantage in point of time in service and grade, branch of service, and educational background (_table _). although the difference in grade distribution among black and white enlisted men was much smaller, it too seemed related to disadvantages in education and service occupation. again, for negroes entering the services since , the grade distribution had become similar to that of whites. the navy's experience illustrated this point. in the case of those entering the navy since the korean war, the grade distribution of whites and nonwhites within the first three mental categories was nearly identical (_table _). the divergences were much wider among the more senior men in the service groups, but this was probably due at least in part to the concentration of senior black servicemen in relatively overmanned specialties, such as food service, where promotional opportunities were limited. with this exception little evidence exists that whites enjoyed an advantage over blacks in the matter of promotions in the enlisted ranks. table --percentage distribution of blacks and whites by pay grade, all dod, grade black white officers o- to o- . . o- . . o- . . o- . . o- to o- . . total . . enlisted men e- to e- . . e- . . e- . . e- . . e- to e- . . total . . table --percentage distribution of navy enlisted personnel by race, afqt groups, pay grade, and length of service, - years over years pay grade white negro white negro afqt groups i & ii e- to e- . . . . e- . . . . e- . . . . e- . . . . e- to e- . . . . total . . . . afqt group iii e- to e- . . . . e- . . . . e- . . . . e- . . . . e- to e- . . . . total . . . . afqt group iv e- to e- . . . . e- . . . . e- . . . . e- . . . . e- to e- . [a] . . total . . . . [tablenote a: less than . percent.] all these figures could be conjured up when the services had to answer complaints of discrimination, but more often than not the services contented themselves with a vague defense of the _status quo_[ - ] such answers were clearly unacceptable to civil rights leaders (p.  ) and their allies in the administration, and it is not surprising that the complaints persisted. to the argument that higher enlistment standards were a matter of military economy during a period of partial mobilizations, those concerned about civil rights responded that, since marginal manpower was a necessary ingredient of full mobilization, the services should learn to deal in peacetime with what would be a wartime problem.[ - ] to pleas of helplessness against off-base discrimination, the activists argued that these practices had demonstrably adverse effects on the morale of more than percent of the armed forces and were, therefore, a clear threat to the accomplishment of the services' military mission.[ - ] [footnote - : see, for example, the following memos: dep under sa (manpower) for asd (m), mar , sub: servicemen's complaints of discrimination in the u.s. military; af dep for manpower, pers, and organization for asd (m), mar , sub: alleged racial discrimination within the air force; under secnav for asd (m), mar , sub: discrimination in the u.s. military services. all in asd (m) . ( feb ).] [footnote - : ginzberg, _the negro potential_, p. .] [footnote - : u.s. commission on civil rights, _civil rights ' _, pp. - .] integration of black servicemen and general political and economic gains of the black population had combined in the last decade to create a ground swell for reform that resulted in ever more frequent and pressing attacks on the community policies of the department (p.  ) of defense. some members of the administration rode with the reform movement. although he was speaking particularly of increased black enrollment at the military academies, special white house assistant wofford betrayed the reformer's attitude toward the whole problem of equal opportunity when he told james evans "i am sure that much work has been done, but there is, of course, still a long way to go."[ - ] but by the services had just about exhausted the traditional reform methods available to them. to go further, as wofford and the civil rights advocates demanded, meant a fundamental change in the department's commitment to equal treatment and opportunity. the decision to make such a change was clearly up to secretary mcnamara and the kennedy administration. [footnote - : memo, wofford for evans, feb , wofford collection, j. f. kennedy library.] chapter (p.  ) equal treatment and opportunity redefined by the civil rights leaders and their allies in the kennedy administration were pressing the secretary of defense to end segregation in the reserve components and in housing, schools, and public accommodations in communities adjacent to military installations. such an extension of policy, certainly the most important to be contemplated since president truman's executive order in , would involve the department of defense in the fight for servicemen's civil rights, thrusting it into the forefront of the civil rights movement. given the forces at work in the department, it was by no means certain in that the fight against discrimination would be extended beyond those vestiges that continued to exist in the military community itself. in robert mcnamara the department had an energetic secretary, committed to the principle of equal treatment and opportunity, and, since his days with the ford motor company in michigan, a member of the naacp. but, as his directives indicated, mcnamara had much to learn in the field of race relations. as he later recalled: "adam [yarmolinsky] was more sensitive to the subject [race relations] in those days than i was. i was concerned. i recognized what harry truman had done, his leadership in the field, and i wanted to continue his work. but i didn't know enough."[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with mcnamara, telecon of may , cmh files.] _the secretary makes a decision_ some of mcnamara's closest advisers and some civil rights advocates in the kennedy administration, increasingly critical of current practices, were anxious to instruct the secretary in the need for a new racial outlook. but their efforts were counterbalanced by the influence of defenders of the _status quo_, primarily the manpower bureaucrats in the secretary's office and their colleagues in the services. these men opposed substantive change not because they objected to the reformers' goals but because they doubted the wisdom and propriety of interfering in what they regarded as essentially a domestic political issue. superficially, the department's racial policy appears to have been shaped by a conflict between traditionalists and progressives, but it would be a mistake to apply these labels mechanically to the men involved. there were among them several shades of opinion, and (p.  ) they were affected as well by complex political and social pressures. many of those involved in the debate shared a similar goal. a continuum existed, one defense official later suggested, that ranged from a few people who wanted for a number of reasons to do nothing--who even wanted to tolerate the continued segregation of national guard units called to active duty in --to men of considerable impatience who thought the off-limits sanction was a neglected and obvious weapon which ought to be invoked at once.[ - ] nevertheless, these various views tended to coalesce into a series of mutually exclusive arguments that can be analyzed.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, alfred b. fitt to author, may , cmh files.] [footnote - : the following summary of opinions is based upon ( ) intervs: author with mcnamara, may , gerhard a. gesell, may , robert e. jordan iii, jun , james c. evans, and mar ; o'brien with gilpatric, may ; usaf with zuckert, apr ; ( ) ltrs: fitt and yarmolinsky to author, may and may , respectively; rudolph winnacker, osd historian, to james c. evans, jul ; evans to dasd (cr), jul ; asd (m) to congressman charles c. diggs, jr., mar ; idem to john roemer, vice chmn, baltimore core, aug ; ( ) memos: usaf dep for manpower, pers, and organization for secaf, nov , sub: meeting of president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces; asd (m) for asst legal counsel to president, nov , sub: racial discrimination in the armed services; evans to yarmolinsky, mar . copies of all in cmh. see also adam yarmolinsky, _the military establishment: its impacts in american society_ (new york: harper & row, ), p. .] one group, from whom adam yarmolinsky, mcnamara's special assistant, might be singled out as the most prominent member, developed arguments for a new racial policy that would encourage the services to modify local laws and customs in ways more favorable to black servicemen. unlike earlier reformers in the department who acted primarily out of an interest in military efficiency, these men were basically civil libertarians, or "social movers," as secretary of the air force zuckert called them. they were allied with like-minded new frontiersmen, including the president's special counsel on minority affairs and attorney general kennedy, who were convinced that congress would enact no new civil rights legislation in . the services, this group argued, had through their recent integration found themselves in the vanguard of the national campaign for equal treatment and opportunity for negroes, and to some it seemed only logical that they be used to retain that lead for the administration. these men had ample proof, they believed, for the proposition that the services' policies had already influenced reforms elsewhere. they saw a strong connection, for example, between the new interstate commerce commission's order outlawing segregation in interstate travel and the services' efforts to secure equal treatment for troops in transit. in effect, in the name of an administration handicapped by an unwilling legislature, they were asking the services to fly the flag of civil rights. if their motives differed from those of their predecessors, their rhetoric did not. yarmolinsky and his colleagues argued that racial discrimination, particularly discrimination in housing and public accommodations, created a serious morale problem among black gis, a contention strongly supported by the recent civil rights commission findings. while the services had always denied responsibility for combating discrimination outside the military reservation, these (p.  ) officials were confident that the connection between this discrimination and military efficiency could be demonstrated. they were also convinced that segregated housing and the related segregation of places of public accommodation were particularly susceptible to economic pressure from military authorities. [illustration: adam yarmolinsky.] this last argument was certainly not new. for some time civil rights spokesmen had been urging the services to use economic pressure to ease discrimination. specifically, congressman powell, and later a number of civil rights groups, had called on the armed forces to impose off-limits sanctions for all servicemen against businesses that discriminated against black servicemen. clear historical precedent seemed to exist for the action demanded by the controversial harlem legislator because from earliest time the services had been declaring establishments and whole geographical areas off limits to their officers and men in order to protect their health and welfare. in view of the services' contention that equal treatment and opportunity were important to the welfare of servicemen, was it not reasonable, the spokesmen could ask, for the armed forces to use this powerful economic weapon against those who discriminated? those defense officials calling for further changes also argued that even the limited reforms already introduced by the administration faced slow going in the department of defense. this point was of particular concern to robert kennedy and his assistants in the justice department who agreed that senior defense officials lacked neither the zeal nor the determination to advance the civil rights of black servicemen but that the uniformed services were not, as deputy secretary gilpatric expressed it, "putting their hearts and souls into really carrying out all of these directives and policies." reflecting on it later, gilpatric decided that the problem in the armed forces was one of pace. the services, he believed, were willing enough to carry out the policies, but in their own way and at their own speed, to avoid the appearance of acting as the agent of another federal department. all these arguments failed to convince assistant secretary for manpower runge, some officials in the general counsel's office, and principal black adviser on racial affairs james evans, among others. this group and their allies in the services could point to a political fact of life: to interfere with local segregation laws and customs, specifically to impose off-limits sanctions against southern businessmen, would pit the administration against powerful congressmen, calling (p.  ) down on it the wrath of the armed services and appropriation committees. to the charge that this threat of congressional retaliation was simply an excuse for inaction, the services could explain that unlike the recent integration of military units, which was largely an executive function with which congress, or at least some individual congressmen, reluctantly went along, sanctions against local communities would be considered a direct threat by scores of legislators. "even one obscure congressman thus threatened could light a fire over military sanctions," evans later remarked, "and there were plenty of folks around who were eager to fan the flames." [illustration: james evans.] even more important, the department's equal opportunity bureaucracy argued, was the need to protect the physical well-being of the individual black soldier. in a decade when civil rights beatings and murders were a common occurrence, these men knew that evans was right when he said "by the time washington could enter the case the young man could be injured or dead." operating under the principle that the safety and welfare of the individual transcended the civil rights of the group, these officials wanted to forbid the men, both the black and the increasing number of white activists, to disobey local segregation laws and customs. the opponents of intervention pointed out that the services would be ill-advised to push for changes outside the military reservation until the reforms begun under truman were completely realized inside the reservation. ignoring the argument that discrimination in the local community had a profound effect on morale, they wanted the services to concentrate instead on the necessary but minor reforms within their jurisdiction. to give the local commander the added responsibility for correcting discrimination in the community, they contended, might very well dilute his efforts to correct conditions within the services. and to use servicemen to spearhead civil rights reform was a misuse of executive power. with support from the department's lawyers, they questioned the legality of using off-limits sanctions in civil rights cases. they constantly repeated the same refrain: social reform was not a military function. as one manpower spokesman put it to the renowned black civil rights lawyer, thurgood marshall, "let the army tend its own backyard, and let other government agencies work on civil rights."[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with evans, mar .] runge and the rest were professional manpower managers who had a (p.  ) healthy respect for the chance of command error and its effect on race relations nationally. in this they found an ally in secretary of the air force eugene m. zuckert, one of the architects of air force integration in . american commanders lacked training in the delicate art of community relations, zuckert later explained, and should even a few of them blunder they could bring on a race crisis of major proportions. he sympathized with the activists' goals and was convinced that the president as commander in chief could and should use the armed forces for social ends; but these social objectives had to be balanced against the need to preserve the military forces for their primary mission. again on the practical level, deputy secretary of defense gilpatric was concerned with the problems of devising general instructions that could be applied in all the diverse situations that might arise at the hundreds of bases and local communities involved.[ - ] [footnote - : usaf oral hist interv with zuckert, apr ; interv, o'brien with gilpatric, may .] many of the manpower officials carefully differentiated between equal treatment, which had always been at the heart of the defense department's reforms, and civil rights, which they were convinced were a constitutional matter and belonged in the hands of the courts and the justice department. the principle of equal treatment and opportunity was beyond criticism. its application, a lengthy and arduous task that had occupied and still concerned the services' racial advisers, had brought the department of defense to unparalleled heights of racial harmony. convinced that the current civil rights campaign was not the business of the defense department, they questioned the motives of those who were willing to make black gi's the stalking horse for their latest and perhaps transient enthusiasm, in the process inviting congressional criticism of the department's vital racial programs. in short, assistant secretary runge and his colleagues argued that the administration's civil rights campaign should be led by the justice department and by the department of health, education, and welfare, not the defense department, which had other missions to perform. such were the rationalizations that had kept the department of defense out of the field of community race relations for over a decade, and the opponents of change in a strong position. their opposition was reasonable, their allies in the services were legion, they were backed by years of tradition, and, most important, they held the jobs where the day-to-day decisions on racial matters were made. to change the _status quo_, to move the department beyond the notion that the guarantee of equal rights stopped at the boundaries of military installations, might seem "desirable and indeed necessary" to yarmolinsky and his confreres,[ - ] but it would take something more than their eloquent words to bring about change. [footnote - : ltr, yarmolinsky to author, may , cmh files.] yarmolinsky was convinced that the initiative for such a change had to come from outside the department. certain that any outside investigation would quickly reveal the connection between racial discrimination in the community and military efficiency, he wanted the secretary of defense to appoint a committee of independent (p.  ) citizens to investigate and report on the situation.[ - ] the idea of a citizens' committee was not new. the fahy committee provided a recent precedent, and in august congressman diggs had asked the secretary of defense to consider the appointment of such a group, a suggestion rejected at the time by assistant secretary runge.[ - ] but yarmolinsky enjoyed opportunities unavailable to the michigan congressman; he had the attention and the support of robert mcnamara. in the latter's words: "adam suggested another broad review of the place of the negro in the department. the committee was necessary because the other sources--the dod manpower reports and so forth--were inadequate. they didn't provide the exact information i needed. this is what adam and i decided."[ - ] this decision launched the department of defense into one of the most important civil rights battles of the 's. [footnote - : not everyone supporting the idea of an investigatory committee was necessarily an advocate of yarmolinsky's theories. roy k. davenport, soon to be appointed a deputy under secretary of the army for personnel management, decided that an assessment of the status of black servicemen was timely after a decade of integration. his professional curiosity, like that of some of the other manpower experts in the services, was piqued more by a concern for the fate of current regulations than an interest in the development of new ones. see interv, author with davenport, oct .] [footnote - : ltr, diggs to mcnamara, aug ; ltr, asd (m) to diggs, sep ; memo, asd (m) for asst legal counsel to president, nov , sub: racial discrimination in the armed services. all in asd (m) . .] [footnote - : interv, author with mcnamara, may .] _the gesell committee_ on june john f. kennedy announced the formation of the president's committee on equality of opportunity in the armed forces, popularly designated the gesell committee after its chairman, gerhard a. gesell.[ - ] it was inevitable that the gesell committee should be compared to the fahy committee, given the similarity of interests, but in fact the two groups had little in common and served different purposes. the fahy committee had been created to carry out president truman's equal treatment and opportunity policy. the gesell committee, on the other hand, was less concerned with carrying out existing policy than with developing a new policy for the department of defense. the fahy committee operated under an executive order and sought an acceptable integration program from each service. the gesell committee enjoyed no such advantage, although the truman order was technically still in effect and could have been used to support it. (the kennedy administration ignored this possibility, and yarmolinsky warned one presidential aide that the truman order should be quietly revoked lest someone question why the gesell committee had not been afforded similar stature.)[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, kennedy to gesell, jun , as reproduced in white house press release, jun , copy in cmh. for an example of the attention the new committee received in the press, see washington _post_, june , .] [footnote - : memo, yarmolinsky for lee c. white, jul , sub: revocation of executive order , sd . .] again unlike the fahy committee, which forced its attention upon a generally reluctant defense department at the behest of the president, the gesell committee was created by the secretary of defense; the presidential appointment of its members bestowed an aura of special authority on a group that lacked the power of its predecessor to (p.  ) make and review policy. mcnamara later put it quite bluntly: "the committee was the creature of the secretary of defense. calling it a president's committee was just windowdressing. the civil rights people didn't have a damn thing to do with it. we wanted information, and that's just what the gesell people gave us."[ - ] in fact, yarmolinsky conceived the project, named it, nominated its members, and drew up its directives. only when it was well along was the project passed to the white house for review of the committee's makeup and guidelines.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with mcnamara, may ; see also ltr, yarmolinsky to author, may . yarmolinsky called the presidential appointment an example of the defense department's borrowing the prestige of the white house.] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for asst legal counsel to president, nov , sub: racial discrimination in the armed services, asd (m) . .] this special connection between the department of defense and the gesell committee influenced the course of the investigation. true to his concept of the committee as a fact-finding team, mcnamara personally remained aloof from its proceedings, never trying to influence its investigation or findings. ironically, gesell would later complain about this remoteness, regretting the secretary's failure to intervene in the case of the recalcitrant national guard.[ - ] he could harbor no complaint, however, against the secretary's special assistant, yarmolinsky, who carefully guided the committee's investigation to the explosive subject of off-base discrimination. even while expressing the committee's independence, gesell recognized yarmolinsky's influence. "it was perfectly clear," gesell later noted, "that yarmolinsky was interested in the off-base housing and discrimination situation, but he had no solution to suggest. he wanted the committee to come up with one."[ - ] yarmolinsky formally spelled out this interest when he devised the group's presidential directive. the committee, he informed vice president lyndon b. johnson during march , would devote itself to those measures that should be taken to improve the effectiveness of current policies and procedures in the services and to the methods whereby the department of defense could improve equality of opportunity for members of the armed forces and their dependents in the civilian community.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, nov , cmh files. the secretary of defense met with the committee but once for an informal chat.] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, may .] [footnote - : memo, yarmolinsky for vice president, mar , sd . .] the citizens chosen for this delicate task, "integrationists all,"[ - ] were men with backgrounds in the law and the civil rights movement, their nearest common denominators being yale university and acquaintance with yarmolinsky, a graduate of yale law school.[ - ] chairman gesell was a washington lawyer, educated at yale, an acquaintance of yarmolinsky's with whom he shared a close mutual (p.  ) friend, burke marshall, also from yale and the head of the department of justice's civil rights division. gesell always assumed that this friendship with marshall explained his selection by the kennedy administration for such a sensitive task.[ - ] black committeemen were nathaniel s. colley, a california lawyer, civil rights advocate associated with the naacp, and former law school classmate of yarmolinsky's; john h. sengstacke, publisher of the chicago _defender_ and a member of the fahy committee; and whitney m. young, jr., of the national urban league. the other members were abe fortas, a prominent washington attorney and former yale professor; benjamin muse, a leader of the southern regional council and a noted student of the civil rights movement; and louis hector, also a yale-educated lawyer, who was called in to replace ailing dean joseph o'meara of the notre dame law school. gesell arranged for the appointment of laurence i. hewes iii, of yale college and law school, as the committee's counsel. [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for lee c. white, asst spec counsel to president, jun , sub: establishment of committee on equality of opportunity in the armed forces, asd (m) . .] [footnote - : in discussing the yale connection in the gesell committee, it is interesting to note that at least three other officials intimately connected with the question of equal treatment and opportunity, alfred b. fitt, the first deputy assistant secretary of defense (civil rights), cyrus r. vance, secretary of the army, and deputy secretary of defense gilpatric, were yale men. of course, secretary mcnamara was not a yale graduate; his undergraduate degree is from the university of california at berkeley, his graduate degree from harvard.] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, may .] some of the members had definite ideas on how the committee should operate. warning of a new mood in the black community where "impatience and expectations" were far different from what they were at the time of the fahy committee, whitney young wanted the committee to prepare a frank and honest report free of the "taint of whitewash." to that end he wanted the group's directive interpreted in its broadest sense as leading to a wide-ranging examination of off-base housing, recreation, and educational opportunity, among other subjects. he wanted an investigation at the grass roots level, and he offered specific suggestions about the size and duties of the staff to achieve this. young also recommended commissioning "additional citizen teams" to assist in some of the numerous and necessary field trips and wanted the committee to use congressman diggs and his files.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, young to gesell, aug , gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] benjamin muse, on the other hand, considered direct, personal investigation of specific grievances too time-consuming. he wanted the group to concentrate instead on the command level, holding formal conferences with key staff officials. the best way to impress upon the services that the white house was serious, he told gesell, was to learn the opinions of these officials and to elicit, "subject to our private analysis and discount," a great deal of helpful information.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, muse to gesell, jan , gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] chairman gesell compromised. he wanted the group to develop some broad recommendations on the basis of a limited examination of specific complaints. president kennedy agreed. he told gesell: "don't go overboard and try to visit every base, but unless you see at least some bases you will never understand the situation."[ - ] white house assistant lee c. white suggested that while the committee had no deadline it should be advised that a report would be needed in june if any legislative proposals were to be submitted to congress. at the (p.  ) same time he wanted the white house to make clear that the members, "and particularly the negro members," would be left free to act as they chose.[ - ] [footnote - : quoted by gesell during interview with author, may .] [footnote - : memo, white for dep atty gen, jan , copy in lee c. white collection, j. f. kennedy library. (deputy attorney general katzenbach was a member of the white house's civil rights subcabinet.) according to yarmolinsky, the white suggestion might have originated with secretary mcnamara.] in the end the committee's operations owed something to all these suggestions. the group worked out of a small office near the white house and pointedly distant from the pentagon. its formal meetings were rare--only seven in all--and were used primarily to hear the presentations of service officials and consider the committee's findings. at a meeting in november , for instance, gesell arranged for five air force base commanders to discuss the application of the equal opportunity policy in their commands and in neighboring communities and describe their own duties as they saw them.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, gesell to secaf, oct , secaf files.] the chairman explained that the infrequent meetings were used mostly for "needling people and asking for statistics." some black members at first opposed asking the services for statistical data on the grounds that such requests would reinforce the tendency to identify servicemen by race, thus encouraging racial assignments and, ultimately, racial quotas. the majority, however, was convinced of the need for statistical material, and in the end the requests for such information enjoyed the committee's unanimous support.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, nov .] most of the committee's work was done in a "shirt sleeve" atmosphere, as its chairman described it, with a staff of four people.[ - ] members, alone and in groups, studied the mountains of racial statistics, some prepared by the staff of the civil rights commission, and the lengthy answers to committee questionnaires prepared by the services. the services also arranged for on-site inspections by committee members.[ - ] the field trips proved to be of paramount importance, not only in ascertaining the conditions of black servicemen and their dependents but also in fixing the extent of the local commander's responsibility for race relations. operating usually in two-man biracial teams, the committee members would separate to interview the commander, local businessmen, and the men themselves. the firsthand information thus gathered had a profound influence on the committee's thinking, an influence readily discernible in its recommendations to the president. [footnote - : memo, gesell for cmte members, nov , gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : the committee's considerable probings were reflected in the defense department's files. see for example, memo, secdef for secys of mil depts et al., sep , sub: president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, sd . ( feb ); memo, asd (m) for sa et al., dec , same sub, asd (m) . ; ltr, secnav to gesell, apr ; memo, under secnav for secnav, apr , sub: meeting with the president's cmte on equal opportunity in the armed forces; ltrs, under secnav to chmn gesell, apr and may ; last four in secnav file , genrecsnav, also marine corps bulletin , jan , hist div. hqmc. see also ltrs, chmn, president's cmte, to secaf, oct , usaf, report for president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, dec , and james p. goode, af dep for manpower, personnel, & organization, to chmn gesell, apr , both in - , secaf files; "visit of mr. nathaniel colley and mr. john sengstacke to d marine division," copy in cmh. additionally, see also ltr, berl i. bernhard, u.s. commission on civil rights, to gesell, jun , gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] the committee concluded from its investigations that serious discrimination against black servicemen and their families existed at home and abroad within the services and in the civilian community, (p.  ) and that this discrimination affected black morale and military efficiency. regarding evidence of discrimination within the services, the committee isolated a series of problems existing "both service-wide and at particular bases."[ - ] specifically, the group was not convinced by official reasons for the disproportionately small number of negroes in some services, especially among the noncommissioned officers and in the officer corps. chairman gesell called the dearth of black officers a "shocking condition."[ - ] his group was particularly concerned with the absence of black officers on promotion boards and the possibility of unfairness in the promotion process where photos and racial and religious information were included in the selection files made available to these boards. it also noted the failure of the services to increase the number of black rotc graduates. the committee considered and rejected the idea of providing preferential treatment for negroes to achieve better representation in the services and in the higher grades.[ - ] [footnote - : the president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, "initial report: equality of treatment and opportunity for negro military personnel stationed within the united states, june , " (hereafter cited as "initial rpt"), p. . the following discussion of the committee cannot carry the eloquence or force of the group's report, which was reproduced in the _congressional record_, th cong., st sess., vol. , pp. - .] [footnote - : ltr, gesell to under secnav, feb , secnav file ( ), genrecsnav.] [footnote - : intervs, author with gesell, may and nov .] overrepresentation of black enlisted men in certain supply and food services was obvious.[ - ] here the committee was particularly critical of the navy and the marine corps. on another score, the chief of naval personnel noted that the committee "considers the navy and marines far behind the army and air force, particularly in the area of community relations," a criticism, he admitted, "to some extent" justified.[ - ] so apparent was the justification that, at the suggestion of the secretary of the navy, gesell discussed with under secretary paul b. fay, jr., ways to better the navy's record in its "areas of least progress."[ - ] gesell later concluded that the close social contact necessary aboard ship had been a factor in the navy's slower progress.[ - ] whatever the reason, the navy and marine corps fell statistically short of the other services in every category measured by the gesell group. [footnote - : memo, dep for manpower, personnel, & organization, usaf, for secaf, jan , sub: meeting with president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, secaf files.] [footnote - : ltr, chief of navpers to conus district cmdrs et al., apr , attached to memo, chief of navpers for distribution list, apr , sub: president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, genrecsnav .] [footnote - : ltr, under secnav to gesell, feb , secnav file ( ), genrecsnav. for examples of this exchange between the committee and the navy, see ltrs, gesell to fay, feb , and fay to gesell, may and jun , all in secnav file , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, nov .] the "sex thing," as gesell referred to the interracial problems arising from off-duty social activities, also proved to be important, especially for noncommissioned officer and service clubs and base-sponsored activities in the community. the committee itself had persuaded the national united services organization to integrate its facilities, and it wanted local commanders to follow up by inviting black civilians to participate in uso dances and entertainments.[ - ] (p.  ) the committee also discussed discrimination in military police assignments, segregation in local transport and on school buses, and the commander's attitude toward interracial associations both on and off the military reservation. [footnote - : for an example of how an individual service was handling the uso and other on-base social problems, see memo, maj gen john k. hester, asst vcofs, usaf, for secaf, feb , sub: antidiscrimination policies, secaf files. see also "initial rpt," pp. - .] despite its criticism of the imperfect application of service race policies--some service-wide, others confined to certain bases--the committee reported to the president that the services had made "an intelligent and far-reaching advance toward complete integration, and, with some variations from service to service, substantial progress toward equality of treatment and opportunity."[ - ] gesell called the services the nation's "pace setter," and he was convinced that they had not received sufficient credit for their racial achievements, which were "way ahead of general motors and the other great corporations."[ - ] that the services were more advanced than other segments of american society in terms of equal treatment and opportunity was beyond dispute; nevertheless, serious problems connected with racial prejudice and the armed forces' failure to understand the fundamental needs of black servicemen remained. the committee's investigation, with its emphasis on off-base realities and its dependence on statistics and other empirical data, did not lend itself to more than a superficial treatment of these subtle and stubborn, if unmeasurable, on-base problems. [footnote - : "initial rpt," p. .] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, nov .] the committee believed that some of what appeared discriminatory was in reality the working of such factors as the black serviceman's lack of seniority, deficiencies in education, and lack of interest in specific fields and assignments. looking beyond these, the fruits of institutional racism, the committee concluded that much of the substantiated discrimination disclosed in its investigations had proved to be limited in scope. but whether limited or widespread, discrimination had to be eliminated. prompt attention to even minor incidents of discrimination would contribute substantially to morale and serve to keep before all servicemen the standard of conduct decreed by executive policy.[ - ] [footnote - : "initial rpt," pp. - , , .] the committee was considerably less sanguine over conditions encountered by black servicemen off military bases. in eloquent paragraphs it outlined for the president the injustices suffered by these men and their families in some american communities, the effect of these practices on morale, and the consequent danger to the mission of the armed forces. it reviewed the services' efforts to eliminate segregated housing, schooling, and public accommodations around the military reservations and found them wanting. local commanders, the committee charged, were often naive about the existence of social problems and generally did not keep abreast of departmental policy specifying their obligations; they were especially ill-informed on the mcnamara-gilpatric directives and memorandums on equal treatment. often quizzed on the subject, the commanders told the committee that they enjoyed very fine community relationships. to this whitney (p.  ) young would answer that fine community relationships and racial injustice were not necessarily exclusive.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, usaf dep for manpower, personnel, & organization, nov , sub: meeting of the president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, secaf file - .] [illustration: the gesell committee meets with the president. _left to right_: _laurence i. hewes iii_, _executive secretary_; _nathaniel s. colley_; _benjamin muse_; _gerhard a. gesell_; _president kennedy_; _whitney m. young, jr._; _john h. sengstacke_; and _abe fortas_.] this community-based discrimination, the committee found, had become a greater trial for black servicemen and their families because of its often startling contrast to their life in the services. there was even evidence that some of the off-base segregation, especially overseas, had been introduced through the efforts of white servicemen. particularly irritating to the committee were restrictions placed on black participation in civil rights demonstrations protesting such off-base conditions. the committee wanted the restrictions removed.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dep for manpower, personnel, & organization, usaf, for secaf, jan , sub: meeting with president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, secaf files. see also memo for rcd, marine corps aide to secnav, jan , sub: meeting with navy-marine corps representatives on equal opportunity, secnav file ( ), genrecsnav.] in the end the committee's reputation would rest not so much on its carefully developed catalog of racial discrimination. after all, others, most notably the civil rights commission, had recently documented the problems encountered by black servicemen, although not in the detail offered by the gesell group, and had convincingly tied this discrimination to black morale and military efficiency. the (p.  ) committee's major contribution lay rather in its establishment of a new concept in command responsibility that directly attacked the traditional parochialism of the services' social concerns: it should be the policy of the department of defense and part of the mission of the chain of command from the secretaries of the services to the local base commander not only to remove discrimination within the armed forces, but also to make every effort to eliminate discriminatory practices as they affect members of the armed forces and their dependents within the neighboring civilian communities.[ - ] [footnote - : "initial rpt," p. .] in effect the committee proposed a new racial policy for the department of defense, one that would translate the services' promise of equality of treatment and opportunity into a declaration of civil liberties. to that end it recommended the adoption of a set of techniques radically new to the thinking of the military commanders, one that grew out of the committee's own experiences in the field. chairman gesell later recollected how this recommendation developed: i remember in particular our experiences at the bases at augusta and pensacola. this made a strong impression on me. i saw discrimination on bases right under the noses of the commanders who were often not even aware of it. and i saw much discrimination in communities around the bases. sometimes unbelievable. at pensacola, for example, i found that the station had never used negroes for guard duty at the main gate where they would be seen by the public, black and white. we told this to the commander and reminded him of the effect that it had on black morale. he changed it immediately. on base the housing for blacks was segregated off to one side in poor run-down shacks below the railroad tracks. we told the commander who admitted that he had some substandard housing units but was unaware of any segregation in housing. the commander promised to report to us about this in two weeks. he did later report: "the whole housing area has been bulldozed and all housing on base integrated." it was examples like this that convinced me that there was much the commanders could do.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, may .] this sense of racial progress made a vivid impression on committee member muse who later recalled that "it was amazing how much activity our presence stirred up. it showed that a lot could be done by commanders."[ - ] gesell and muse were particularly impressed by how local commanders, acting firmly but informally, could achieve swift breakthroughs. but actually, as the gesell-young trip to pensacola demonstrated, often more than the base commander was involved in these dramatic reforms. a week after their trip to florida, gesell and young had a casual chat with under secretary fay about conditions at pensacola, particularly housing conditions, that, they claimed, had contributed to a "literally disgraceful" state of black morale, leading black sailors "almost to the point of rebellion." although the base commander seemed concerned, he had deferred to his military superior who lacked the "philosophical outlook oriented toward the successful implementation of equal opportunity policies." fay was quick to see the point. he pledged the navy to a "constructive effort" to eliminate the problem at pensacola "prior to the committee's reporting date [to the president] of june."[ - ] in a matter (p.  ) of hours fay was arranging to send the inspector general to pensacola, but the matter did not end there. in late may committee counsel hewes asked the assistant secretary of defense concerned with military installations about housing at pensacola, thus setting off yet another investigation of the base.[ - ] [footnote - : idem with benjamin muse, mar , cmh files.] [footnote - : memo, under secnav for secnav, apr , sub: meeting with the president's cmte on equal opportunity in the armed forces, secnav file , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : ltr, dasd (family housing) to chmn gesell, jun , gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] gesell saw the reforms at pensacola as a direct result of his own suggestion to a commander. he seemed unaware that his remarks to fay had set in motion a chain of action behind the scenes. in the weeks following, black servicemen were moved from the substandard segregated housing to integrated navy-controlled housing both on and off base. the local commander also arranged for the desegregation of some off-base social facilities in a effort to improve black morale.[ - ] if the changes at pensacola appear more closely related to the committee's political clout in washington than to the commander's interest in reform, they also demonstrate the power for reform that the commander could exercise. this was the committee's main point, that equal opportunity was a command responsibility.[ - ] but it would be hard to sell in the department of defense where, as gesell himself later admitted, resistance to what was perceived as a political matter was common to most american military officers.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, under secnav to chmn gesell, jun , copy in gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library; see also memo, under secnav for secnav, sep , sub: nas pensacola, secnav file ( ), genrecsnav.] [footnote - : "initial rpt," p. .] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, nov .] the most controversial recommendation, however, was that the armed forces should, when necessary, exercise economic sanctions against recalcitrant businesses. in the name of troop morale and military efficiency, the committee wanted commanders to put public accommodations off limits for all servicemen, and it wanted the secretary of defense, as a last resort, to close the military installations in communities that persisted in denying black servicemen their civil rights.[ - ] again, gesell elaborated on the power of base commanders and recommended tactics. there was also much that they could do in the community to improve the lot of their blacks. if only they were sensitive to the situation.... for example, we visited the local community leaders. i would put it to the local banker who held the mortgage on the local bowling alley: "what would you do if you were a commander and some of your men were barred from the local bowling alley?" he got the point and the alley outside the base was desegregated overnight. to another i said, "you know, i'm just a lawyer down here on a temporary job, and i can only talk with you about these things. but you can't tell about those guys in washington. they will have to be closing some bases soon. now put yourself in their shoes. which would you shut, those bases that don't have race problems or those that do?" again, they got the point. in other words, an implied economic threat by the commander would work well. hell, the commanders were always getting good citizenship awards and ignoring the major citizenship problem of the era. commanders were local heroes, and they had plenty of influence. they use it. the trouble was most commanders were ignorant of the ferment among their own men on this subject. in all my trips i hinted at sanctions and base (p.  ) closings. the dutch uncle approach. i wanted the commanders to do the same. i talked economics to the community leaders. it opened their eyes. the commanders could do the same.[ - ] [footnote - : "initial rpt," pp. - .] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, may .] the committee further refined its concepts of economic sanctions during the course of its hearings. commanders were frequently quizzed on the probable effects of the imposition of off-limits sanctions or base closings.[ - ] despite the reluctance of most commanders to invoke sanctions, committee members, assuming that no community would long persist in a social order detrimental to its economic welfare, came to the belief that ultimately only a firm and uncompromising policy of economic sanctions would eliminate off-base discrimination. the committee was obviously aware of the controversial aspects of its recommendation, and it stressed that the department's objective should always be "the preservation of morale, not the punishment of local communities which have a tradition of segregation."[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, dep for manpower, personnel, & organization, usaf, nov , sub: meeting of president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, secaf files. deputy goode's assumptions about the committee's thinking were later confirmed in its "initial rpt," pages - , and in author's interview with gesell on may .] [footnote - : "initial rpt," p. .] mindful of the wish expressed by the white house staff that a report be submitted by mid- , the committee, acting unanimously, completed on june an initial report on discrimination in the services and the local community, postponing the results of its time-consuming and less-pressing investigation of the national guard and overseas posts until a later date.[ - ] complete accord among the members had not been automatic. the chairman later recalled that the group's black members had remained somewhat aloof during the months of investigation, perhaps because at first they felt the report might be a whitewash of executive policy, but that they became "enthusiastic" when they read his draft and quickly joined in the preparation of the final version.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, gesell to president kennedy, jun , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, may .] the reason for this enthusiasm was a report that faithfully reflected the realities of discrimination suffered by black servicemen and proposed solutions based on conclusions drawn by the members from their months of discussion and investigation. the committee's conclusions and recommendations were the natural reaction of a group of humane and sensible men to the overwhelming evidence of continued discrimination against black servicemen. national policy, the committee told the president, required that this discrimination be eliminated, for equal opportunity for the negro will exist only when it is possible for him to enter upon a career of military service with assurance that his acceptance and his progress will be in no way impeded by reason of his color. clearly, distinctions based on race prevent full utilization of negro military personnel and are inconsistent with the objectives of our democratic society.[ - ] [footnote - : "initial rpt," p. .] the committee wanted responsibility for eliminating these color (p.  ) distinctions in the services shifted to the local commander. commanders, it believed, needed to improve their communication with black servicemen and should be "held accountable to discover and remedy discrimination" in their commands. the committee, in short, wanted racial sensitivity made a function of command. command responsibility for equal opportunity, the committee emphasized, was particularly important "in the area of most pressing concern, off-base discrimination." it wanted local commanders to attack discrimination in the community by seeking the voluntary compliance of local businessmen and by establishing biracial community committees. the committee asserted that despite the services' claims to the contrary the department of defense had made no serious effort to achieve off-base compliance with its anti-discrimination measures through voluntary action. commanders had been given little guidance thus far, and a carefully planned program of voluntary action should be given a chance. if it failed, commanders should be able to employ sanctions against the offending businesses; if sanctions failed, the services should consider closing installations in offending areas. the committee again stressed the need to fix responsibility for the program on local commanders. a commander's performance should be monitored and rated, and offices should be established in the department of defense and in the individual services to devise programs, monitor their progress, and bring base commanders into close working relationship with other interested and responsible federal agencies. although their recommendations were later excoriated by critics as a radical usurpation of state sovereignty and a threat to civil liberties, the committee had meant only to provide a graduated solution to a national defense problem. let reform begin with the local commander's improving conditions on his base and pressing for voluntary changes in the local community. only when this tactic failed--and the committee predicted that failure would be a rare occurrence--should the services employ economic sanctions. a firm philosophical assumption underlay all these recommendations. the committee believed that the armed forces, a worldwide symbol of american society, had to be the leader in the quest for racial justice. social reform, therefore, both within the services and where it affected servicemen in the community beyond, was a legitimate military function. to the extent that these reforms were successful, the armed forces would not only be protecting the civil rights of black servicemen but also providing a standard against which civilian society could measure its conduct and other nations could judge the country's adherence to its basic principles.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., pp. - .] _reaction to a new commitment_ the gesell committee's conclusion that discrimination in the community was tied to military efficiency meshed well with the civil rights philosophy of the new frontier. responding to the committee's (p.  ) report, president kennedy cited "the interests of national defense, national policy and basic considerations of human decency" to justify his administration's interest in opening public accommodations and housing to black servicemen. he considered it proper to ask the "military community to take a leadership role" in the matter and asked secretary mcnamara to review the committee's recommendations.[ - ] the secretary, in turn, personally asked the service secretaries to comment on the recommendations and assigned the deputy under secretary of the army (manpower), alfred b. fitt, to act as coordinator and draw up the defense department's reply.[ - ] the comments thus solicited revealed that some of mcnamara's senior subordinates had not been won over by the committee's arguments that the services should take an active role in community race relations.[ - ] the sticking point at all levels involved two important recommendations: the rating of commanders on their handling of racial matters and the use of economic sanctions. in regard to the proposal to close bases in communities that persisted in racial discrimination, the secretary of the navy said bluntly: "do not concur. base siting is based upon military requirements."[ - ] these officials promised that commanders would press for voluntary compliance, but for more aggressive measures they preferred to wait for the passage of federal legislation--they had in mind the administration's civil rights bill then being considered by congress--which would place the primary responsibility for the protection of a serviceman's civil rights in another federal department. the secretary of the air force suggested that the services continue to plan, but defer action on the committee's recommendations until congress acted on the civil rights bill.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, president to secdef, jun , copy in cmh. the president also sent the committee's report to the vice president for comment. indicative of the pentagon's continuing influence in the committee's work, the kennedy letter had been drafted by gesell and yarmolinsky; see memo, yarmolinsky for white, jun , white collection, j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : memo, secdef for sa et al., jun , sub: report of the president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces; see also memo, asd (m) for secdef, jun ; both in asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, dep under sa (m) for secdef (ca. jul ), with service comments attached, copy in asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, secnav for asd (m), jul , sub; report of the president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, secnav file , genrecsnav.] [footnote - : memo, secaf for asd (m), jul , sub: air force response to the gesell committee report, secaf files.] despite the opposition to these recommendations, fitt saw room for compromise between the committee and the services. noting, for example, that the services wanted to do their own monitoring of their commander's performance, fitt agreed this would be acceptable so long as the secretary of defense could monitor the monitors. adding that officers, like other human beings, tended to concentrate on the tasks that would be reviewed by superiors, he wanted to see a judgment of a commander's ability to handle discrimination matters included in (p.  ) the narrative portion of his efficiency report. on the question of sanctions, fitt pointed out to mcnamara that the services now understood that their equal opportunity responsibilities extended beyond the limits of the military reservation but that several of their objections to the use of sanctions were sound. he suggested the secretary approve the use of sanctions in discrimination cases but place severe restraints on their imposition, restricting the decision to the secretary's office. [illustration: alfred fitt.] this suggestion no doubt pleased mcnamara. although the committee's recommendations might be the logical outcome of its investigations, in the absence of a strong federal civil rights law even a sympathetic secretary of defense could not accept such radical changes in the services' community relations programs without reservations. nor, as gesell later admitted, could a secretary of defense chance the serious compromise to the administration's effort to win passage of such a law that could be caused by some "too gung-ho" commander left to impose sanctions on his own.[ - ] the secretary agreed with the committee that much could be done by individual commanders in a voluntary way to change the customs of the local community, and he wanted the emphasis to be kept there. [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, may .] unlike gesell, who doubted the effectiveness of directives and executive edicts ("trouble-making" he called them), mcnamara considered equal opportunity matters "an executive job that should be handled by the departments, using directives."[ - ] armed with the committee's call for action and the services' agreement in principle, mcnamara turned to the preparation of a directive, the main outline of which he transmitted to the president on july after review by burke marshall in the department of justice. as mcnamara explained to marshall, "i would like to be able to tell him [the president] that you have read same and offer no objection."[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., and with mcnamara, may .] [footnote - : memo, mcnamara for burke marshall (ca. jul ), marshall papers, j. f. kennedy library.] the secretary of defense promised the president to "eliminate the exceptions and guard the continuing reality" of racial equality in the services. in the light of the committee's conclusion that off-base discrimination reduced military effectiveness, he pledged that "the military departments will take a leadership role in combating discrimination wherever it affects the military effectiveness" of servicemen. mcnamara admitted having reservations about some of (p.  ) the committee's recommendations, especially the closing of bases near communities that constantly practiced discrimination; such closings, he declared, were not feasible "at this time." nevertheless he agreed with the committee that off-limits sanctions should be available to the services, for "certainly the damage to military effectiveness from off-base discrimination is not less than that caused by off-base vice, as to which the off-limits sanction is quite customary."[ - ] he failed to add that even though sanctions against vice were regularly applied by the local commander, sanctions against discrimination would be reserved to higher authority. [footnote - : idem for president, jul , copy in cmh.] the directive, in reality an outline of the department of defense's civil rights responsibilities and the prototype of subsequent secretarial orders dealing with race, was published on july , the fifteenth anniversary of harry truman's executive order. it read in part: _ii. responsibilities._ a. office of the secretary of defense: . pursuant to the authority vested in the secretary of defense and the provisions of the national security act of , as amended, the assistant secretary of defense (manpower) is hereby assigned responsibility and authority for promoting equal opportunity for members of the armed forces. in the performance of this function he shall (a) be the representative of the secretary of defense in civil rights matters, (b) give direction to programs that promote equal opportunity for military personnel, (c) provide policy guidance and review policies, regulations and manuals of the military departments, and (d) monitor their performance through periodic reports and visits to field installations. . in carrying out the functions enumerated above, the assistant secretary of defense (manpower) is authorized to establish the office of deputy assistant secretary of defense (civil rights). b. the military departments: . the military departments shall, with the approval of the assistant secretary of defense (manpower), issue appropriate instructions, manuals and regulations in connection with the leadership responsibility for equal opportunity, on and off base, and containing guidance for its discharge. . the military departments shall institute in each service a system for regularly reporting, monitoring and measuring progress in achieving equal opportunity on and off base. c. military commanders: every military commander has the responsibility to oppose discriminatory practices affecting his men and their dependents and to foster equal opportunity for them, not only in areas under his immediate control, but also in nearby communities where they may live or gather in off-duty hours. in discharging that responsibility a commander shall not, except with the prior approval of the secretary of his military department, use the off-limits sanction in discrimination cases arising within the united states.[ - ] [footnote - : dod dir . , jul .] after some thirty months in office, robert mcnamara had made a (p.  ) most decisive move in race relations. in the name of fulfilling harry truman's pledge of equal treatment and opportunity he announced an aggressive new policy. not only would the department work to eliminate discrimination in the armed forces, but when servicemen were affected it would work in the community as well. even more ominous to the secretary's critics was the fact that the new policy revealed mcnamara's willingness, under certain circumstances, to use the department's economic powers to force these changes. this directive marked the beginning of mcnamara's most active period of participation in the civil rights revolution of the 's. but the secretary's move did not escape strong criticism. the directive was denounced as infamous and shocking, as biased, impractical, undemocratic, brutally authoritarian, and un-american. if followed, critics warned, it would set the military establishment at war with society, inject the military into civilian political controversies in defiance of all traditions to the contrary, and burden military commanders with sociological tasks beyond their powers and to the detriment of their military mission.[ - ] [footnote - : alfred b. fitt thus characterized the opposition in his remarks before civilian aides conference of the secretary of army, mar , dasd (cr) files.] "it is hard to realize that your office would become so rotten and degraded," one critic wrote mcnamara. "in my opinion you are using the tactics of a dictator.... it is a tragic event when the federal government is again trying to bring reconstruction days into the south. again the military is being used to bring this about." did businesses not have the right to choose their customers? did local authorities not have the right to enforce the law in their communities? and surely the white soldier deserved the freedom to choose his associates.[ - ] another correspondent reproached mcnamara: "you have, without conscience and with total disregard for the honorable history of the military of our great nation, signed our freedom away." and still another saw her white supremacy menaced: "we have a bunch of mad dogs in washington and if you and others like you are not stopped, our children will curse us. we don't want black grandchildren and we won't have them. if you want to dance with them--you have two legs, start dancing." [footnote - : ltr to secdef, jul . this letter and the two following are typical of hundreds received by the secretary and filed in the records of asd (m).] not all the correspondents were racist or hysterical. some thoughtful citizens were concerned with what they considered extramilitary and illegal activities on the part of the services and took little comfort from the often repeated official statement that the secretary of defense had no present plans for the use of sanctions and hoped that they would never have to be used.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, dasd (cr) to james wilson, director, national security commission, american legion, sep , written when the legion had the adoption of a resolution against the directive under consideration. see also ltrs, dasd (cr) to sen. frank moss, aug , and asd (m) to congressman george huddleston, aug ; asd (m), "straightening out the record," aug ; memo, dasd (cr) for general counsel, sep , sub: use of the off-limits power. all in dasd (cr) files.] some defenders of the directive saw the whole controversy over (p.  ) sanctions as a red herring dragged across the path of a genuine equal treatment and opportunity program.[ - ] during congressional debate on the directive, the use of off-limits sanctions quickly became the respectable issue behind which those opposed to any reform could rally. the senate debated the subject on july; the house on august. during lengthy sessions on those days, opponents cast the controversy in the familiar context of states' rights, arguing that constitutional and legal points were involved. as congressman durward g. hall of missouri put it: "the recommendations made in the report and in the directive indicate a narrowness of vision which, in seeing only the civil rights issue, has blinded itself to the question of whether it is proper to use the armed forces to enforce a moral or social, rather than a legal, issue in the civilian sector."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, fitt to author, may .] [footnote - : _congressional record_, th cong., st sess., vol. , p. .] opponents argued generally that the directive represented government by fiat, an unprecedented extension of executive power that imposed the armed forces on civilian society in a new and illegal way. if the administration was already empowered to protect the civil rights of some citizens, why, they asked, was it pushing so hard for a civil rights bill? the fact was, several legislators argued, the department of defense was interfering with the civil rights of businessmen and practicing a crude form of economic blackmail.[ - ] [footnote - : ibid., pp. - , - .] critics also discussed the directive in terms of military efficiency. the secretary had given the commanders a new mission, senator john stennis of mississippi noted, that "can only be detrimental to military tradition, discipline, and morale." elaborating on this idea, congressman l. mendel rivers of south carolina predicted that the new policy would destroy the merit promotion system. henceforth, rivers forecast, advancement would depend on acceptance of integration; henceforth, racial quotas would "take the place of competence for purposes of promotion." others were alarmed at the prospect of civil rights advisers on duty at each base and outside the regular chain of command. this outrage, congressman h. r. gross of iowa charged, "would create the biggest army of snoopers and informers that the military has ever heard of." some legislators saw sinister things afoot in the pentagon. senator herman e. talmadge of georgia thought he recognized a return to the military districting of reconstruction days, and congressman f. edward hebert of louisiana warned that "everybody should be prepared for the midnight knock on the door." congressman otto e. passman of louisiana thought it most likely that attorney general kennedy was behind the whole thing; "a tragic state of affairs," he said, if the justice department was directing "the missions of the military establishment." congressman hebert found yet another villain in the piece. adam yarmolinsky, whom he incorrectly identified as the author of the mcnamara directive, had, hebert accused, "one objective in mind--with an almost sataniclike zeal--the forced integration of every facet of the american way of life, using the full power of the department of defense to bring about this change."[ - ] in line with these (p.  ) suspicions, some legislators reported that the secretary's new civil rights deputy, alfred b. fitt, was circulating among southern segregationist businessmen with, in senator barry m. goldwater's words, "a dossier gleaned from internal revenue reports." senator stennis suspected that the secretary of defense had come under the influence of "obscure men," and he warned against their revolutionary strategy: "it had been apparent for some time that the more extreme exponents of revolutionary civil rights action have wanted to use the military in a posture of leadership to bring about desegregation outside the boundaries of military bases."[ - ] [footnote - : quotes are from ibid., pp. , , - , , , .] [footnote - : ibid., senate, jul , pp. , .] the congressional critics had a strategy of their own. they would try to persuade mcnamara to rescind or modify his directive, and, failing that, they would try to change the new defense policy by law. senators goldwater, j. william fulbright of arkansas, and robert c. byrd of west virginia, along with some of their constituents, debated with mcnamara while no less than the chairman of the house armed services committee, carl vinson of georgia, introduced a bill aimed at outlawing all integration activity by military officers.[ - ] their campaign came to naught because the new policy had its own supporters in congress,[ - ] and the great public outcry against the directive, so ardently courted by its congressional opponents, failed to materialize. judging by the press, the public showed little interest in the gesell committee's report and comment on the secretary's directive was regional, with much of it coming from the southern press. certainly the effect of the directive could not compare with the furor set off by the truman order in . [footnote - : congressional letters critical of the directive can be found in dasd (cr) and sd files, . see, for example, ltrs, fulbright to secdef, aug , r. c. byrd to secdef, aug , goldwater to secnav, jul , rivers to asd (m), oct , gillis long to secdef, aug , bob sikes to secdef, jul . intense discussion of the constitutionality of the directive and of vinson's bill took place among department officials during september and october . see the following memos: dasd (cr) for asd (m), oct , sub: vinson bill comment with inclosures; asd (m) for under sa et al., sep , sub: h.r. ; asst gen counsel (manpower) for asd (m), sep . all in asd (m) . .] [footnote - : letters in support of the dod directive can be found in asd (cr) ( a ) files, .] the attitude of the press merely underscored a fact already obvious to many politicians on capitol hill in --equal opportunity in the armed forces had dwindled to the status of a minor issue in the greater civil rights struggle engulfing the nation. the media reaction also suggested that prolonged attacks against the committee and the directive were for hometown consumption and not a serious effort to reverse policy. in effect a last hurrah for the congressional opponents of integration in the armed forces, the attacks failed to budge the secretary of defense and marked the end of serious congressional attempts to influence armed forces racial policy.[ - ] the threat of congressional opposition, at times real and sometimes imagined, had discouraged progressive racial policies in the department of defense for over a quarter of a century. its abrupt and public demise robbed the traditionalists in the department of (p.  ) defense of a cherished excuse for inaction. [footnote - : a late victim of the anticivil rights forces in congress was adam yarmolinsky. his appointment as deputy director of the office of economic opportunity was withdrawn as a result of criticism in the house. one cause of this criticism was his connection with the gesell committee. see mary mcgrory, "a southern hatchet fell," washington _star_, august , .] _the gesell committee: final report_ while the argument over the mcnamara directive raged, the gesell committee worked quietly if intermittently on the final segment of its investigation, the status of blacks stationed overseas and in the national guard. president kennedy's death in november introduced an element of uncertainty in a group serving at the pleasure of the chief executive. special presidential counsel lee c. white arranged for gesell to meet with president lyndon b. johnson, and gesell offered to disband the committee if johnson wished. the president left it in being. as gesell later observed: "the committee felt that johnson understood us and our work in a way better than kennedy who had no clear idea on how to go with the race issue. we had no trouble with johnson who could have stopped us if he wanted."[ - ] [footnote - : the quote is from author's interview with gesell on may . see also ltr, white to gesell, jan , and memo, gesell for members of the committee, feb , both in gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] the committee's operations became even more informal in this final stage. its investigations completed, its staff dissolved, and its members (now one man short with the resignation of nathaniel colley) scattered, the committee operated out of gesell's law office. he was almost exclusively responsible for its final report.[ - ] this informality masked the protracted negotiations that the committee conducted with the national guard bureau over the persistent exclusion of negroes. it also masked the solid investigation by individual committee members and the voluminous evidence gathered by the staff in support of the group's final report. [footnote - : memo, gesell for members of the committee, feb .] these investigations and the documentary evidence again confirmed the findings of the civil rights commission, although the gesell committee's emphasis was different. it dismissed the problem of assignment of negroes to overseas stations. the percentage of negroes, both officers and men, sent overseas approximated their percentage in the continental united states, and with rare and "understandable" exceptions--it cited south africa--overseas assignments in the armed forces were made routinely without regard for race.[ - ] the committee also quickly dismissed the problem of discrimination on overseas bases, which it considered "minimal," and as in the united states chiefly the result of poor communication between commanders and men. the group concentrated instead on discrimination off base, especially in germany. back from a firsthand look in april , benjamin muse reported that local american commanders seemed unwilling to take the matter seriously, but he considered it delicate and complex, principally because prejudice had been most often introduced by american servicemen. he suggested that off-limits sanctions should also be imposed in germany but "only after consultation and on a (p.  ) basis of mutual understanding with german municipal authorities."[ - ] [footnote - : the president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, "final report: military personnel stationed overseas and membership and participation in the national guard, november " (hereafter cited as "final report"), copy in cmh.] [footnote - : ltr, muse to gesell, apr , gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] the committee wanted the recommendations on off-base discrimination contained in its initial report also applied overseas. ignoring the oft made distinction about the guest status of overseas service, it wanted the department of state enlisted in a campaign against discrimination in public accommodations, including the use of off-limits sanctions when necessary. the committee also called for a continuing review to insure equal opportunity in assignments to attache and mission positions. the committee devoted the largest portion of its final report to the national guard, "the only branch of the armed forces," it told president johnson, "which has not been fully integrated."[ - ] chairman gesell later reported that when the segregated state guards were pressured they "resisted like hell."[ - ] this resistance had a political dimension, but when attorney general kennedy chided that "you are killing us with the guard," gesell replied that the committee took orders from the president and would ignore the political problems involved. nevertheless, before the committee issued its report gesell sent the portions on the national guard to the justice department for comment, as one justice official noted, "apparently ... in the hope that its recommendation will not prove embarrassing to the administration."[ - ] [footnote - : "final report," p. .] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, nov .] [footnote - : the kennedy quote is from the author's interview with gesell on may . the justice department quote is from memo, gordon a. martin (dept of justice) for burke marshall, jul , sub: proposed gesell cmte rpt on the national guard, marshall papers, j. f. kennedy library.] the committee admitted that its investigation of the national guard was incomplete because of the variation in state systems and the absence of statistical data on recruitment, assignment, and promotion in some state guards. it had no doubt, however, of the central premise that discrimination existed. for example, until ten states with large black populations had no black guardsmen at all. membership in the guard, the committee concluded, was a distinct advantage for some individuals, providing the chance to perform their military obligation without a lengthy time away from home or work. because of the peculiar relationship between the reserve and regular systems, national guard service had important advantages in retirement benefits for others. these advantages and benefits should, in simple fairness, be open to all, but beyond the basic constitutional rights involved there were practical reasons for federal insistence on integration. the committee accepted the national guard bureau's conclusion that, since guard units were subject to integration when federalized, their morale and combat efficiency would be improved if their members were accustomed to service with negroes in all ranks during training.[ - ] [footnote - : "final report," pp. - .] the committee stressed executive initiatives. it wanted the president to declare the integration of the national guard in the national interest. it wanted the department of defense to demand pertinent (p.  ) racial statistics from the states. for psychological advantages, it wanted the recent liberalization of guard policies toward negroes widely publicized. again suggesting voluntary methods as a first step, the committee called for the use of economic sanctions if voluntary methods failed. the president should lose no time in applying the provisions of the new civil rights act of , which forbade the use of federal funds in discriminatory activities, to offending states. as it had been in the case of discrimination in local communities, the committee was optimistic about the success of voluntary compliance. citing its own efforts and those of the national guard bureau,[ - ] the committee reported that the last ten states to hold out had now begun to integrate their guard units at least on a token basis. in fact, the committee's report had to be revised at the last minute because alabama and mississippi enrolled negroes in their enlisted ranks. [footnote - : the national guard bureau is a joint agency of the departments of the army and air force which acts as adviser to the service staffs on national guard matters and as the channel of communication between the two departments and the state guards. the chief of the bureau is always a national guard officer.] chairman gesell circulated a draft report containing these findings and recommendations among committee members in september .[ - ] his colleagues suggested only minor revisions, although whitney young thought that some of the space spent on complimenting the services could be better used to emphasize the committee's recommendations for further reform. he did not press the point but noted wryly: "if we were as sensitive about the feelings of the victims of discrimination as we are of the perpetuators, we wouldn't have most of these problems to begin with."[ - ] maj. gen. winston p. wilson, the chief of the national guard bureau, also reviewed the draft and found it "entirely fair, temperate and well-founded."[ - ] the committee's final report was sent to the president on november . a month later johnson sent it along to mcnamara with the request that he be kept informed on progress of the negotiations between the secretary and the governors on integration of the national guard.[ - ] [footnote - : the draft was also sent for comment to the national guard bureau; see ltr, chief, ngb, to gesell, nov , gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : memo, gesell for members of the president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, nov . the quotation is from ltr, young to gesell, sep . for the reaction of other members see, for example, ltrs, sengstacke to gesell, oct , muse to gesell, sep , fortas to gesell, sep . all in gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : ltr, gen wilson, ngb, to gesell, nov , gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : ltr, president to secdef, dec , copy in cmh.] the radical change in the civil rights orientation of the department of defense demanded by the administration's civil rights supporters was obviously a task too controversial for the department to assume in on its own initiative. it was, as a member of the gesell committee later remarked, a task that only a group of independent citizens reporting to the president could effectively suggest.[ - ] in the end the committee did all that its sponsors could have wanted. it confirmed the persistence of discrimination against black servicemen both on and off the military base and effectively tied that discrimination to troop morale and military efficiency. the (p.  ) committee's conclusions, logically derived from the connection between morale and efficiency, introduced a radically expanded concept of racial responsibility for the armed forces. [footnote - : interv, author with muse, mar .] although many people strongly associate the gesell committee with the use of economic coercion against race discrimination in the community, the committee's emphasis was always on the local commander's role in achieving voluntary compliance with the department's equal opportunity policies. economic sanction was conceived of as a last resort. the directive of the secretary of defense that endorsed these recommendations was also denounced for embracing sanctions, although here the charges were even less appropriate because the use of sanctions was severely circumscribed. it remained to be seen how far command initiative and voluntary compliance could be translated by the services into concrete gains. chapter (p.  ) equal opportunity in the military community when secretary mcnamara issued his equal opportunity directive in , all segregated public accommodations, schools, and even housing near military reservations became potential targets of the department of defense's integration drive. this change in policy was substantive, but the traditionalists who feared the sudden intrusion of the services into local community affairs and the reformers who later charged mcnamara with procrastination missed the point. more than a declaration of racial principles, the directive was a guideline for the progressive application of a series of administrative pressures. endorsing the gesell committee's concept of command responsibility, mcnamara enjoined the local commander to oppose discrimination and foster equal opportunity both on and off the military base. he also endorsed the committee's recommendation for the use of economic sanctions in cases where voluntary compliance could not be obtained. by demanding the approval of the service secretaries for the use of sanctions, mcnamara served notice that this serious application of the commander's authority would be limited and infrequent. he avoided altogether the committee's call for closing military bases. the secretary's critics overlooked the fact that no exact timetable was set for the reforms outlined in the directive, and actually several factors were operating against precipitate action on discrimination outside the military reservation. strong sentiment existed among service officials for leaving off-base discrimination problems to the department of justice, and, as early reactions to the committee report revealed, the committee's findings did little to alter these feelings. more important, the inclination to postpone the more controversial aspects of the equal opportunity directive received support from the white house itself. political wisdom dictated that the department of defense refrain from any dramatic move in the civil rights field while congress debated the civil rights bill, a primary legislative goal of both the kennedy and johnson administrations. "avoid civil rights spectaculars" was the white house's word to the executive departments while the civil rights act hung fire.[ - ] [footnote - : quoted in ltr, fitt to author, may ; see also interv, author with jordan, jun .] the lack of pressure by black servicemen and civil rights advocates lent itself to official procrastination. civil rights organizations, preoccupied with racial unrest throughout the nation and anxious for the passage of new civil rights legislation, seemed to lose some (p.  ) of their intense interest in service problems. they paid scant attention to the directive beyond probing for the outer limits of the new policy. in the months following the directive, officials of the naacp and other organizations shot off a spate of requests for the imposition of off-limits sanctions against certain businesses and schools and in some cases even whole towns and cities.[ - ] when defense department officials made clear that sanctions were to be a last, not first, resort and offered the cooperation of local commanders for a joint effort against local discrimination through voluntary compliance, the demands of the civil rights organizations petered out.[ - ] [footnote - : see ltr, j. francis pohlhous, counsel, washington bureau, naacp, to secdef, aug , asd (m) . ; telg, naacp commanders to secdef, da in , asd (m) equal opportunity in armed forces ( jul ); ltr, juanita mitchell, president, baltimore branch, naacp, to secdef, may , copy in cmh. sec also new york _times_, july , .] [footnote - : see ltrs, dasd (cr) to j. francis pohlhous, aug and sep ; albert fritz, utah branch, naacp, aug ; and juanita mitchell, mar . see also ltr, dasd (civ pers, industrial relations, and civil rights) to moses newsom, _afro-american newspapers_, feb . copies of all in cmh.] according to a survey of black servicemen and veterans, this group enjoyed military life more than whites and were more favorably disposed toward the equal opportunity efforts of the department of defense.[ - ] they continued to complain, but the volume of their complaints was considerably reduced. one unsettling note: although fewer in number, the complaints were often addressed to the white house, the justice department, the civil rights organizations, or the secretary of defense, thus confirming the gesell committee's finding that black servicemen continued to distrust the services' interest in or ability to administer justice.[ - ] [footnote - : charles moskos, "findings on american military establishment" (northeastern university, ), quoted in yarmolinsky, _the military establishment_, p. .] [footnote - : for many examples of these racial complaints and their disposition, see dasd (cr) files, - , especially access nos. -a- and -a- .] the secretary of defense's manpower staff processed all these complaints. it dismissed those considered unrelated to race but forwarded many to the individual services with requests for immediate remedial action. significantly, those involving the violation of a serviceman's civil rights off base continued to be sent to the justice department for disposition. defense department officials themselves adjudicated the hundreds of discrimination cases involving civilian employees.[ - ] [footnote - : the assistant secretary of defense (manpower) prepared a monthly compilation of all discrimination cases in the department of defense involving civilian employees. originally requested by then vice president lyndon johnson in his capacity as chairman of the president's committee on equal opportunity in employment in june , the reports were continued after the gesell committee disbanded. the report for november , for example, listed cases of "contractor complaints" investigated and adjudicated and cases of "in-house complaints" being processed in the department of defense. see memo, asd (m) for sa et al., dec , asd (m) . .] in the weeks and months following publication of the equal opportunity directive, official replies to the demands and complaints of black servicemen and their allies in the civil rights organizations continued to be carefully circumscribed. whatever skepticism such restricted application of the gesell recommendations may have produced among the civil rights leaders, the department found itself surprisingly free from outside pressure. it was able to set the pace of its own reform and to avoid meanwhile a clash with either (p.  ) reformers or segregationists over major civil rights issues of the day. _creating a civil rights apparatus_ the defense department could do little about discrimination either on or off the military reservation until it was better organized for the task. the secretary needed new bureaucratic tools with which to develop new civil rights procedures, unite the disparate service programs, and document whatever failures might occur. he created a civil rights secretariat, assigning to his manpower assistant, norman s. paul,[ - ] the responsibility for promoting equal opportunity in the armed forces. although racial affairs had always been considered among the manpower secretary's general duties, with precedents reaching back through the personnel policy board to world war ii when assistant secretary of war john j. mccloy supervised the employment of black troops, mcnamara now significantly increased these responsibilities. the assistant secretary would represent him "in civil rights matters," would direct the department's equal opportunity programs, and would provide policy guidance for the military departments, reviewing their policies, regulations, instructions, and manuals and monitoring their performance.[ - ] to carry out these functions, the secretary of defense authorized his assistant to create a deputy assistant secretary for civil rights.[ - ] again a precedent existed for the secretary's move. in january paul had assigned an assistant to coordinate the department's racial activities.[ - ] the reorganization transferred the person and duties of the secretary's civilian aide, james c. evans, to the office of the deputy assistant secretary for civil rights. the new organization was thus provided with a pedigree traceable to world war i and the work of emmett j. scott,[ - ] although evans' move to the deputy's staff was the only connection between scott and that office. the civilian aides, limited by the traditionally indifferent attitudes of the services toward equal opportunity programs, had been used to advise civilian officials on complaints from the black community, especially black servicemen, and to rationalize service policies for civil rights organizations. the new civil rights office, reflecting mcnamara's positive intentions, was organized to monitor and instruct military departments. [footnote - : norman s. paul succeeded carlisle runge as assistant secretary of defense (manpower) on august .] [footnote - : dod dir . , jul . for an extended discussion of the functions of the assistant secretary of defense (manpower) and his civil rights deputy, see memo, dasd (cr) for mr. paul, sep , sub: policy formulation, planning and action in the office of the deputy assistant secretary of defense (civil rights), july - september , asd (m) . . this significant document, a progress report on civil rights in the first two years of mcnamara's new program, is an important source for much of the following discussion and will be referred to hereafter as paul memo.] [footnote - : dod news release - , jul .] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for dasd (education) et al., jan , sub: coordination of all matters related to racial problems, asd (m) . .] [footnote - : evans' predecessors included emmett j. scott, special assistant to the secretary of war, - ; william h. hastie, civilian aide to the secretary of war, - ; truman k. gibson, - ; and marcus h. ray, - . evans left army employ to join the staff of the secretary of defense in . see memo for rcd, counselor to asd (m), mar , asd (m) . .] the civil rights deputy was a relatively powerless bureaucrat. (p.  ) he might investigate discrimination and isolate its causes, but he enjoyed no independent power to reform service practices. his substantive dealings with the services had to be staffed through his superior, the assistant secretary for manpower, a man to whom equal opportunity was but one of many problems and who might well question new or aggressive civil rights tactics. such an attitude was understandable in an official with little or no experience in civil rights matters and no day-to-day contact with civil rights operations. norman paul, whose experience was in legislative liaison, might also be especially sensitive to the possibility of congressional or public criticism.[ - ] indicative of the assistant secretary's attitude toward his civil rights deputy was the fact that the position was reorganized and retitled, with some significant corresponding changes in function each time, a bewildering five times in ten years.[ - ] to add to the problems of the civil rights office, nine different men were to occupy the deputy's position, three of them in the capacity of acting deputy, in that same decade.[ - ] [footnote - : before assuming the manpower position, norman paul was the chief of legislative liaison for the department of defense. for a critique of the work of the asd (m) incumbents in the racial field, see o'brien's interview with gilpatric, may , j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : for a discussion of the effect of the proliferation of assistants in the manpower office, see usaf oral history interview with evans, apr .] [footnote - : the incumbents were alfred b. fitt, stephen n. shulman, jack moskowitz, l. howard bennett (acting), frank w. render ii, donald l. miller, curtis r. smothers (acting), stuart broad (acting), and h. minton francis.] the organization of the equal opportunity program of the secretary of defense was not without its critics. some wanted to enhance the prestige of the equal opportunity program by creating a separate assistant secretary for civil rights.[ - ] such an official, accountable to the secretary of defense alone, would be free to direct the services' racial activities and, they agreed, would also serve as a highly visible symbol to servicemen and civil rights advocates alike of the department's determination to execute its new policy. others, however, defended the existing organization, arguing that racial discrimination was a manpower problem, and the number of assistant secretaries was fixed by law and the chance of congressional approval for yet another manpower position was remote.[ - ] [footnote - : this solution was still being recommended a decade later; see department of defense, "report of the task force on the administration of military justice in the armed forces," nov , vol. i, pp. , . see also interv, author with l. howard bennett (former dasd [cr]), dec , cmh files.] [footnote - : interv, author with col george r. h. johnson, deputy, plans and policy, dasd (equal opportunity), aug , cmh files.] these organizational problems had yet to appear in july when at yarmolinsky's suggestion secretary mcnamara appointed alfred b. fitt the first civil rights deputy. since the army's deputy under secretary for manpower, fitt had recently been on loan to the office of the secretary of defense to coordinate the department's responses to the gesell committee. he was the author of the equal opportunity directive signed by mcnamara, and his personal views on the subject, while consistent with those of yarmolinsky and mcnamara, were often expressed in more advanced terms. going beyond the usual arguments for equal treatment based on morale and military efficiency, fitt (p.  ) referred to the black servicemen's struggle as a moral issue. he was glad, he later confessed, to be on the right side of such an issue, and he felt indebted to the positive racial policies of kennedy and johnson and their secretary of defense.[ - ] he quickly gathered around him a staff of like-minded experts who proceeded to their first task, a review of the services' outline plans called for in the secretary's directive.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, dasd (cr) to gesell, jul , gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : interv, author with jordan, jun .] [illustration: arriving in vietnam. _ st airborne division troops aboard the usns general le roy eltinge._] although merely outlines of proposed service programs, the three plans submitted in july and august nevertheless reflected the emphasis on off-base discrimination preached by the gesell committee and endorsed by the secretary of defense.[ - ] the plans also revealed the services' essential satisfaction with their current on-base programs, although each outlined further reforms within the military community. the navy, for example, announced reforms in recruitment methods, and the army planned the development of more racially equitable training programs and job assignments. all three services discussed new (p.  ) provisions for monitoring their equal opportunity programs, with the army including explicit provisions for the processing of servicemen's racial complaints. and to insure the coordination of equal opportunity matters in future staff decisions, each service also announced (the navy in a separate staff action) the formation of an equal opportunity organization in its military staff: an equal rights branch in the office of the army's deputy chief of staff for personnel, an equal opportunity group in the air force's directorate of personnel planning to work in conjunction with its secretary's committee on equal opportunity, and an ad hoc committee in the navy's bureau of personnel. [footnote - : memos: dep to secaf for manpower, personnel, and organization for asd (m), aug , sub: implementation of dod directive . ; sa for asd (m), aug , sub: equal opportunity in the armed forces; under secnav for asd (m), aug , sub: outline plan for implementing department of defense directive . , "equal opportunity in the armed forces," dated jul . all in asd (m) . .] the outline plans revealed that the services entertained differing interpretations of the mcnamara call for command responsibility in equal opportunity matters. the gesell committee had considered this responsibility of fundamental importance and wanted the local commander held accountable and his activities in this area made part of his performance rating. there was some disagreement among manpower experts on this point. how, one critic asked, could the services set up standards against which a commander's performance might be fairly judged? how could they insure that an overzealous commander might not, in the interest of a higher efficiency report, upset anti-discrimination programs that called for subtle negotiation?[ - ] but to chairman gesell the equal opportunity situation demanded action, and how could this demand be better impressed on the commander than by the knowledge that his performance was being measured?[ - ] the point of this argument, which the committee accepted, was that unless personal responsibility was fixed, policies and directives on equal opportunity were just so much rhetoric. [footnote - : interv, author with davenport, aug , cmh files.] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, may .] only the army's outline plan explicitly adopted the committee's controversial recommendation that "the effective performance of commanders in this area will be considered along with other responsibilities in determining his overall manner of duty performance." the navy equivocated. commanders would "monitor continually racial matters with a goal toward improvement." the inspectors general of the navy and marine corps were "instructed to appraise" all command procedures. the air force expected base base commanders to concern themselves with the welfare nondiscriminatory treatment of its servicemen when they were away from the base, but it left them considerable freedom in the matter. "the military mission is predominant," the air force announced, and the local commander must be given wide latitude in dealing with discrimination cases since "each community presented a different situation for which local solutions must be developed." the decision by the navy and air force to exempt commanders from explicit responsibility in equal opportunity matters came after some six months of soul-searching. under secretary of the navy fay agreed with his superior that the navy's equal opportunity "image" suffered in comparison to the other services and the percentage of negroes in the navy and marine corps left much to be desired. but when (p.  ) ordered by secretary fred korth to develop a realistic approach to equal opportunity in consultation with the gesell committee, fay's response tended to ignore service shortcomings and, most significantly, failed to fix responsibility for equal opportunity matters. he proposed to revise navy instructions to provide for increased liaison between local commanders and community leaders and monitor civil rights cases involving naval personnel, but his response neither discussed new ways to increase job opportunities for negroes nor mentioned making equal opportunity performance a part of the military efficiency rating system.[ - ] his elaborate provisions for monitoring and reporting notwithstanding, his efforts appeared primarily cosmetic. [footnote - : memo, under secnav for secnav, feb , sub: equal opportunity in the navy and marine corps, secnav file , genrecsnav.] [illustration: digging in. _men of m company, th marines, construct a defense bunker during "operation desoto," vietnam._] undoubtedly, the navy's image in the black community needed some refurbishing. despite substantial changes in the racial composition of the steward's branch in recent years, negroes continued to avoid naval service, as a special navy investigation later found, because "they have little desire to become stewards or cooks."[ - ] fay believed that the shortage of negroes was part of a general problem shared by all the services. his public relations proposals were designed (p.  ) to overcome the difficulty of attracting volunteers. his recommendations were approved by secretary korth in february and disseminated throughout the navy and marine corps for execution.[ - ] with only minor modification they were also later submitted to the secretary of defense as the navy's outline plan. [footnote - : memo, david m. clinard, spec asst, for secnav, oct , sub: interviews with negro personnel at andrews air force base, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : secnav instruction . a, mar ; personal ltr, secnav to all flag and general officers et al., mar , copy in cmh; secnav notice , apr ; alnav , sep . see also cmdt, usmc, report of progress--equal opportunity in the united states marine corps (ca. jun ), hist div hqmc; memo, chief, navpers, for under secnav, may , sub: interim progress report on navy measures..., secnav file , genrecsnav.] even as fay settled on these modest changes, signs pointed to the possibility that the department's military leaders would be amenable to more substantial reform. the chief of naval personnel admitted that the gesell committee's charges against the service were "to some extent" justified and warned naval commanders that if they failed to take a more positive approach to equal opportunity they would be ordered to take actions difficult for both the navy and the community. better "palatable evolutionary progress," he counseled, than "bitter revolutionary change."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, chief, navpers, to conus district cmdrs et al., apr , attached to memo, chief, navpers, for distribution list, apr , sub: president's committee on equal opportunity in the armed forces, secnav file , genrecsnav.] air force officials had also considered the problem of command responsibility in the months before submitting their outline plan. as early as december , under secretary joseph v. charyk admitted the possibility of confusion over what the policy of base commanders should be concerning off-base segregation. he proposed that the staff consider certain "minimum" actions, including "mandatory evaluation of all officers concerning their knowledge of this program and the extent to which they have complied with the policy of anti-discrimination."[ - ] secretary zuckert discussed charyk's proposal with his assistants on january . it was also considered by mcnamara, who then passed it to the other services, calling on them to develop similar programs.[ - ] finally, air force officials discussed command responsibility in preparing their critique of gesell committee recommendations, and secretary zuckert informed assistant secretary of defense paul that "the responsibility for this [the air force's anti-discrimination] program will be clearly designated down to base level."[ - ] despite this attention, the subject of specific command responsibility was not clearly delineated in the air force's outline plan. [footnote - : memo, actg secaf cofsaf, dec , sub: anti-discrimination policy in the military service, secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, secdef for sa and navy, mar , sub: anti-discrimination policy in the military service, copy in cmh. mcnamara received the air force document from charyk through yarmolinsky. see memo, benjamin fridge, spec asst for manpower and reserve forces, for secaf, mar , sub: anti-discrimination policies; see also memo, asst vice cofs, usaf, for secaf, feb , same sub, - ; both in secaf files.] [footnote - : memo, secaf for asd (m), jul , sub: air force response to the gesell committee report, asd (m) . .] paul ignored the critical differences in the services' outline plans when he approved all three without distinction on september.[ ] alfred fitt later explained why the department had not insisted (p.  ) the services adopt the committee's specific recommendations on command responsibility. commenting on the committee's call for the appointment of a special officer at each base to transmit black servicemen's grievances to base commanders, fitt acknowledged that most negroes were reluctant to complain, but said the services were aware of this reluctance and had already devised means to overcome it. problems in communication, he pointed out, were leadership problems, and commanders must be left free to find their own method of learning about conditions in their commands. as for the committee's suggestion that equal opportunity initiatives in the local community be made a consideration in the promotion of the commander, the defense department had temporized. such initiatives, fitt explained, might be considered part of the commander's total performance, but it should never be the governing factor in determining advancement.[ ] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for under sa et al., sep , sub: dod directive . , jul , equal opportunity, asd (m) . .] [footnote - : alfred b. fitt, deputy assistant secretary of defense (civil rights), "remarks before civilian aides conference of the secretary of the army," mar , copy in cmh.] yet the principle of command responsibility was not completely ignored, for paul made his approval of the plans contingent on several additional service actions. each service had to prepare for commanders an instruction manual dealing with the discharge of their equal opportunity responsibilities, develop an equal opportunity information program for the periodic orientation of all personnel, and institute some method of insuring that all new commanders promptly reviewed equal opportunity programs applicable to their commands. the secretary also set deadlines for putting the plans into effect. the preparation of these comprehensive regulations and manuals, however, took much longer than expected, a delay, fitt admitted, that slowed equal opportunity progress to some extent.[ - ] in fact, it was not until january that the last of the basic service regulations on equal opportunity was published.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, dasd (civil rights) to gesell, apr , asd (m) . .] [footnote - : ar - , jul (superseded by ar - , mar ); afr - , aug (superseded in may ); secnav instructions . , jan , . a, dec , and . , mar . see also navso p , may , "a commanding officer's guide for establishing minority community relations."] there were several reasons for the delay. the first was the protracted congressional debate over the civil rights bill. some service officials strongly supported the stand that off-base complaints of black servicemen were chiefly the concern of the justice department. on a more practical level, however, the department of defense was reluctant to issue new directives while legislation bearing directly on discrimination affecting servicemen was being formulated. accepting these arguments, paul postponed the services' submission of new regulations and manuals until the act assumed final form. the delayed publication of the service regulations could also be blamed in part on the confusion that surrounded the announcement of a new defense policy on attendance at segregated meetings. the issue arose in early when fitt discovered some defense employees accepting invitations to participate in segregated affairs while others refused on the basis of the secretary's equal opportunity directives. inconsistency on such a delicate subject disturbed the civil rights deputy. the services had fortuitously avoided several (p.  ) potentially embarrassing incidents when officials were invited to attend segregated functions, and fitt warned paul that "if we don't erect a better safeguard than sheer chance, we're bound somewhere, sometime soon to look foolish and insensitive."[ - ] he wanted mcnamara to issue a policy statement on the subject, admittedly a difficult task because it would be hard to write and would require white house clearance that might not be forthcoming. for the short run fitt wanted to deal with the problem at a regular staff meeting where he could discuss the matter and coordinate his strategy without the delay of publishing new regulations. [footnote - : memo, dasd (cr) for paul, feb , sub: official attendance at segregated meetings, asd (m) . .] as it turned out, anxiety over white house approval proved groundless. "the president has on numerous occasions made clear his view that federal officials should not participate in segregated meetings," white house counsel lee c. white informed all department and agency heads, and he suggested that steps be taken in each department to inform all employees.[ - ] the deputy secretary of defense, cyrus r. vance, complied on july by issuing a memorandum to the services prohibiting participation in segregated meetings. adding to the text prepared in the white house, he ordered that this prohibition be incorporated in regulations then being prepared, a move that necessitated additional staffing of the developing equal opportunity regulations.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, assoc spec counsel to president for heads of departments and agencies, jun , sub: further participation at segregated meetings, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, dep secdef for secys of military departments et al., jul , sub: federal participation at segregated meetings, sd . . the army's regulation, published on july, five days before secretary vance's memorandum, was republished on may to include the prohibition against segregated meetings and other new policies. the navy prepared a special secretary of navy instruction ( . , jul ) on the subject.] objections to the prohibition were forthcoming. continuing on a tack he had pursued for several years, the air force deputy special assistant for manpower, personnel, and organization, james p. goode, objected to the application of the vance memorandum to base commanders. these men had to maintain good relations with community leaders, he argued, and good relations were best fostered by the commander's joining local community organizations such as the rotary club and the chamber of commerce, which were often segregated. these civic and social organizations offered an effective forum for publicizing the objectives of the department of defense, and to forbid the commander's participation because of segregation would seriously reduce his local influence. goode wanted the order "clarified" to exclude local community organizations from its coverage on the grounds that including them would be "detrimental to the best interests of all military personnel and their dependents and would result in a corresponding reduction in military effectiveness."[ - ] the defense department would have nothing to do with the idea. such an exception to the rule, the civil rights deputy declared, would not constitute a (p.  ) clarification, but rather a nullification of the order. the air force request was rejected.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, james p. goode for dep secdef, sep , sub: federal participation at segregated meetings, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : draft memo, dasd (civ pers, indus rels, and cr) for dep for manpower, personnel, and organization, usaf, oct , sub: federal participation at segregated meetings. the memorandum was not actually dispatched, and a note on the original draft discloses that after discussion between the deputy assistant secretary of defense and the assistant secretary of defense (manpower) the rejection of the air force request was "handled verbally." copy of the memo in cmh.] the confusion surrounding the publication of service regulations suggested that without firm and comprehensive direction from the office of the secretary of defense the services would never develop effective or uniform programs. service officials argued that commanders had always been allowed to execute racial policy without specific instructions. they feared popular reaction to forceful regulations, and, in truth, they were already being subjected to congressional criticism over minor provisions of the gesell committee's report. even the innocuous suggestion that officers be appointed to channel black servicemen's complaints was met with charges of "snooping" and "gestapo" tactics.[ - ] [footnote - : fitt, "remarks before civilian aides conference of the secretary of the army," mar .] although both the gesell committee and secretary mcnamara had made clear that careful direction was necessary, the manpower office of the department of defense temporized. instead of issuing detailed guidelines to the services that outlined their responsibilities for enforcing the provision of the secretary's equal opportunity directive, instead of demanding a strict accounting from commanders of their execution of these responsibilities, paul asked the services for outline plans and then indiscriminately approved these plans even when they passed over real accountability in favor of vaguely stated principles. the result was a lengthy period of bureaucratic confusion. protected by the lack of specific instructions the services went through an alfonse-gaston routine, each politely refraining from commitment to substantial measures while waiting to see how far the others would go.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with evans, jul , cmh files.] _fighting discrimination within the services_ the immediate test for the services' belatedly organized civil rights apparatus was the racial discrimination lingering within the armed forces themselves. the civil rights commission and the gesell committee had been concerned with the exceptions to the services' generally satisfactory equal opportunity record. it was these exceptions, such chronic problems as underrepresentation of negroes in some services, in the higher military grades, and in skilled military occupations, that continued to concern the defense department civil rights organization and the services as they tried to carry out mcnamara's directive. seemingly minor compared to the discrimination faced by black servicemen outside the military reservation, racial problems within the military family and how the services dealt with them would have direct bearing on the tranquility of the armed forces in the 's. [illustration: listening to the squad leader. _men of company d, st infantry, prepare to move out, quang tin province, vietnam._] two pressing needs, and obviously interrelated ones, were to (p.  ) attract a greater number of young blacks to a military career and improve the status of negroes already in uniform. these were not easy, short-term tasks. in the first place the negro, ironically in view of the services' now genuine desire to have him, was no longer so interested in joining. as explained by defense department civil rights officials, the past attitudes and practices of the services, especially the treatment of negroes during world war ii, had created among black opinion-makers an indifference toward the services as a vocation.[ - ] lacking encouragement from parents, teachers, and peers, black youths were increasingly reluctant to consider a military career. for their part the services tried to counter this attitude with an energetic public relations program.[ - ] encouraged by the department's civil rights experts they tried to establish closer (p.  ) relations with black students. they even reorganized their recruitment programs, and the secretary of defense himself initiated a program to attract more black rotc cadets.[ - ] service representatives also worked with teachers and school officials to inform students on military career opportunities. [footnote - : paul memo.] [footnote - : for accounts of navy and marine corps attempts to attract more negroes, see memos: smedberg for under secnav, may , sub: interim progress report on navy measures in the area of equality of opportunity in the armed forces; under secnav for secnav, jul , sub: first report of progress in the area of equal opportunity in the navy department; e. hidalgo, spec asst to secnav, for l. howard bennett, principal asst for civil rights, oasd (cr), oct , sub: summary of steps deemed necessary to increase number of qualified negro officers and enlisted personnel on the navy/marine corps team, secnav file ( ). all in genrecsnav. see also memos, marine aide to secnav for cofs, usmc, aug , sub: equal opportunity in the armed services, and acofs, g- , usmc, for cofs, usmc, aug , same sub, both in mc files. for osd awareness of the problem, see stephen n. shulman, "the civil rights policies of the department of defense," may , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, secdef for educators, oct , sub: equal opportunity at the service academies of the united states army, navy, and air force, sd . .] enlistment depended not only on a man's desire to join but also on his ability to qualify. following the publication of a presidential task force report on the chronic problem of high draft rejection rates, the army inaugurated in august a special training and enlistment program (step), an experiment in the "military training, education, and physical rehabilitation of men who cannot meet current mental or medical standards for regular enlistment in the army."[ - ] aimed at increasing enlistments by providing special training after induction for those previously rejected as unqualified, the program provided for the enlistment of , substandard men, which included many negroes. before the men could be enlisted, however, congress killed the program, citing its cost and duplication of the efforts of the job corps. it was not until that the idea of accepting many young men ineligible for the draft because of mental or educational deficiencies was revived when mcnamara launched his project , .[ - ] [footnote - : dod news release, aug . see the president's task force on manpower conservation, _one-third of a nation: a report on young men found unqualified for military service_ (washington: government printing office, ). kennedy established the task force in september . its members included the secretaries of labor, defense, and health, education and welfare and the director of selective service.] [footnote - : mcnamara, _the essence of security_, pp. - . see also bahr, "the expanding role of the department of defense," ch. v.] the services were unable to bring off a dramatic change in black enlistment patterns in the 's. with the exception of the marine corps, in which the proportion of black enlisted men increased percent, the percentage of negroes in the services remained relatively stationary between and (_table _). in , when negroes accounted for percent of the american population, their share of the enlisted service population remained at . , with significant differences among the services. nor did there seem much chance of increasing the number of black servicemen since the percentage of negroes among draftees and first-time enlistees was rising very (p.  ) slowly while black reenlistment rates, for some twenty years a major factor in holding black strength steady, began to decline (_table _). actually, enlistment figures for both whites and blacks declined, a circumstance usually attributed to the unpopularity of the vietnam war, although in the midst of the war, in , black first-term reenlistment rates continued to exceed white rates to . table --black percentages, - | army | navy | marine corps | air force year| enlisted| enlisted| enlisted| enlisted |officers| men |officers| men |officers| men |officers| men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _source_: records of asd (m) . . table --rates for reenlistments, - army navy marine corps air force year | white | black | white | black | white | black | white | black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _source_: records of asd (m) . ; see especially paul memo. the low percentage of black officers, a matter of special concern to the civil rights commission and the gesell committee as well as the civil rights organizations, remained relatively unchanged in the 's (_see table _). nor could any dramatic rise in the number of black officers be expected. between and the three service academies graduated just fifty-one black officers, an impressive statistic only in the light of the record of a total of sixty black graduates in the preceding eighty-six years. furthermore, there were only black cadets in , a vast proportional increase over former years but also an indication of the small number of black officers that could be expected from that source during the next four years (_table _). since cadets were primarily chosen by congressional nomination and from other special categories, little could be done, many officials assumed, to increase substantially the number of black cadets and midshipmen. an imaginative effort by fitt in early , however, proved this assumption false. fitt got the academies to agree to take all the qualified negroes he could find and some senators and congressmen to relinquish some of their appointments to the cause. he then wrote every major school district in the country, seeking black applicants and assuring them that the academies were truly open to all those qualified. even though halfway through the academic year, fitt's "micro-personnel operation," as he later called it, yielded appointments for ten negroes. unfortunately, (p.  ) his successor did not continue the effort.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, fitt to author, oct , cmh files.] table --black attendance at the military academies, july class class class class total total academy | of | of | of | of | negro | attendance army , navy , air force , totals _source_: office, deputy assistant secretary of defense (civil rights). the rotc program at predominantly black colleges had always been the chief source of black officers, but here, again, there was little hope for immediate improvement. with the exception of a large increase in the number of black air force officers graduating from five black colleges, the percentage of officers entering the service from these institutions remained essentially unchanged throughout the 's despite the services' new equal opportunity programs (_table _). some civil rights leaders had been arguing for years that the establishment of rotc units at predominantly black schools merely helped perpetuate the nation's segregated college system. fitt agreed that as integrated education became more commonplace the number of black rotc graduates would increase in predominantly white colleges, but meanwhile he considered units at black schools essential. among the approximately black colleges without rotc affiliation, some could possibly qualify for units, and in february fitt's successor, stephen n. shulman, called for the formation of more (p.  ) rotc units as an equal opportunity measure.[ - ] the army responded by creating a unit at arkansas a&m normal college, and the navy opened a unit at prairie view a&m in the president's home state of texas. balancing the expectations implied by the formation of these new units were the growing antiwar sentiment among college students and the special competition for black college graduates in the private business community, both of which made rotc commissions less attractive to many black students. [footnote - : fitt left the civil rights office in august to become the general counsel of the army. at his departure the position of deputy assistant secretary of defense for civil rights was consolidated with that of the deputy for civilian personnel and industrial relations. the incumbent of the latter position, stephen shulman, became deputy assistant secretary of defense for civilian personnel, industrial relations, and civil rights. shulman, a graduate of yale law school and former executive assistant to the secretary of labor, had been closely involved in the defense department's equal opportunity program in industrial contracts.] table --army and air force commissions granted at predominantly black schools army commissions class of|class of|class of|class of school | | | a&t college, n.c. central state college, ohio florida a&m college hampton university, va. lincoln university, pa. morgan state college, md. prairie view a&m college, tex. south carolina state college southern university, la. tuskegee institute, ala. virginia state college west virginia state college howard university, washington, d.c. total percentage of total such commissions granted . . . . air force commissions class of class of class of school | | a&t college, n.c. howard university, washington, d.c. maryland state college tennessee a&i university tuskegee institute, ala. total _source_: office, deputy assistant secretary of defense (civil rights). chance of promotion for officers and men was one factor in judging equal treatment and opportunity in the services. a statistical comparison of the ranks of enlisted black servicemen between and reveals a steady advance (_table _). with the exception of the air force, the percentage of negroes in the higher enlisted ranks compared favorably with the total black percentage in each service. the advance was less marked for officers, but here too the black share of the o- grade (major or lieutenant commander) was comparable with the black percentage of the service's total strength. the services could declare with considerable justification that reform in this area was necessarily a drawn-out affair; promotion to the senior ranks must be won against strong competition. table --percentage of negroes in certain military ranks, - e- (staff sergeant or petty officer, first class) _ _ _ _ _ _ army . . . navy . . . marine corps . . . air force . . . o- (major or lieutenant commander) army . . . navy . . . marine corps . . . air force . . . _source_: office, deputy assistant secretary of defense (civil rights). the department's civil rights office forwarded to the services complaints from black servicemen who, despite the highest efficiency ratings and special commendations from commanders, failed to win promotions. "almost uniformly," the office reported in , "the reply comes back from the service that there had been no bias, no partiality, no prejudice operating in detriment on the complainant's consideration for promotion. they reply the best qualified was promoted, but this was not to say that the complainant did not have a very good record."[ - ] while black officers might well have (p.  ) been subtly discriminated against in matters of promotion, they also, it should be pointed out, shared in the general inflation in efficiency ratings, common in all the services, that resulted in average officers being given "highest efficiency ratings." [footnote - : paul memo.] in addition to complaining of direct denial of promotion opportunity, so-called "vertical mobility," some black officers alleged that their chances of promotion had been systematically reduced by the services when they failed to provide negroes with "horizontal mobility," that is, with a wide variety of assignments and all-important command experience which would justify their future advancement. supporting these claims, the civil rights office reported that only negroes were enrolled at the senior service schools in , black naval officers with command experience were on active duty, and black air force officers had been given tactical command experience since . the severely limited assignment of black army officers at the major command headquarters, moreover, illustrated the "narrow gauge" assignment of negroes.[ - ] this picture seemed somewhat at variance with deputy assistant secretary shulman's assurances to the kansas conference on civil rights in may that "we have paid particular attention to the assignment of negro officers to the senior service schools, and to those positions of command that are so vital to officer advancement to the highest rank."[ - ] [footnote - : ibid.] [footnote - : shulman, "the civil rights policies of the department of defense," may .] since promotion in the military ranks depended to a great extent on a man's skills, training in and assignment to vital job categories were important to enlisted men. here, too, the statistics revealed that the percentage of negroes in the technical occupations, which had begun to rise in the years after korea, had continued to increase but that a large proportion still held unskilled or semiskilled military occupational specialties (_table _). eligibility for the various military occupations depended to a great extent on the servicemen's mental aptitude, with men scoring in the higher categories usually winning assignment to technical occupations. when the army began drafting large numbers of men in the mid- 's, the number of men in category iv, which included many negroes, began to go up. given the fact that many negroes with the qualifications for technical training were ignoring the services for other vocations while the less qualified were once again swelling the ranks, the department of defense could do little to insure a fair representation of negroes in technical occupations or increase the number of black soldiers in higher grades. the problem tended to feed upon itself. not only were the statistics the bane of civil rights organizations, but they also influenced talented young blacks to decide against a service career, in effect creating a variation of gresham's law in the army wherein men of low mentality were keeping out men of high intelligence. there seemed little to be done, although the department's civil rights office pressed the services to establish remedial training for category iv men so that they might become eligible for more technical assignments. table --distribution of servicemen in occupational groups by race, | white | black |unknown|total | | | | | percent| | | | | | |of total| | | |percent| |percent| in each| | group/activity | number| dist. | number| dist. | group/ | number|number | | | | |activity| | combat troops , . , . . , , electronics repairmen , . , . . , communications specialists , . , . . , medical personnel , . , . . , other technicians , . , . . , administrative personnel , . , . . , mechanical repairmen , . , . . , draftsmen , . , . . , service & supply personnel , . , . . , miscellaneous/ unknown , . , . . , , trainees[a] , . , . . , , total , , . , . . , , , [tablenote a: represents an army category only.] _source_: bahr, "the expanding role of the department of defense as an instrument of social change." bahr's table is based on unpublished data from the dasd (cr). if a man's assignment and promotion depended ultimately on his (p.  ) aptitude category, that category depended upon his performance in the armed forces qualifying test and other screening tests usually administered at induction. these tests have since been widely criticized as being culturally biased, more a test of an individual's understanding of the majority race's cultural norms than his mental aptitude. even the fact that the tests were written also left them open to charges of bias. some educational psychologists have claimed that an individual's performance in written tests measured his cultural and educational background, not his mental aptitude. it is true that the accuracy of test measurements was never reassessed in light of the subsequent performance of those tested. the services paid little attention to these serious questions in the 's, yet as a defense department task force studying the administration of military justice was to observe later: the most important determination about a serviceman's future career (both in and out of the service) is made almost solely on the basis of the results of these tests: where he will be placed, how and whether he will be promoted during his hitch, and whether what he will learn in the service will be saleable for his post-service career.[ - ] [footnote - : department of defense, "report of the task force on the administration of military justice in the armed forces," nov , vol. i, p. .] the department of defense depended on the "limited predictive capability of these tests," the task force charged, in deciding whether a serviceman was assigned to a "soft core" field, that is, given a job in such categories as transportation or supply, or whether he could enter one of the more profitable and prestigious "hard core" fields that would bring more rapid advancement. accurate and comprehensive testing and the measurement of acquired (p.  ) skills was obviously an important and complex matter, but in it was ignored by both the civil rights commission and the gesell committee. president kennedy, however, seemed aware of the problem. before leaving for europe in the summer of he called on the secretary of defense to consider establishing training programs keyed primarily to the special problems of black servicemen found ineligible for technical training. according to lee white, the president wanted to use new training techniques "and other methods of stimulating interest and industry" that might help thousands of men bridge "the gap that presently exists between their own educational and cultural backgrounds and those of the average white serviceman."[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asst spec counsel to president for secdef, jun , copy in cmh.] because of the complexity of the problem, white agreed with fitt that the program should be postponed pending further study, but the president's request happened to coincide with a special survey of the deficiencies and changes in recruit training then being made by under secretary of the army stephen ailes.[ - ] ailes offered to develop a special off-duty training program in line with the president's request. the program, to begin on a trial basis in october , would also include evaluation counseling to determine if and when trainees should be assigned to technical schools.[ - ] such a program represented a departure for the services, which since world war ii had consistently rejected the idea frequently advanced by sociologists that the culturally, environmentally, and educationally deprived were denied equal opportunity when they were required to compete with the middle-class average.[ - ] although no specific, measurable results were recorded from this educational experiment, the project was eventually blended into the army's special training and enlistment program and finally into mcnamara's project , .[ - ] [footnote - : acsfor, "annual historical summary, fiscal years - ," copy in cmh; memo, dasd (cr) for paul, sep , sub: training program keyed primarily to the special problems of negro servicemen, asd (m) files.] [footnote - : memo, under sa for asd (m), sep , sub: training program keyed primarily to the special problems of negro servicemen; memo, asd (m) for asst spec counsel to president, sep ; both in asd (m) files.] [footnote - : for a discussion of this argument, see [bupers] memo for rcd, capt k. j. b. sanger, usn, oct , pers , bupersrecs.] [footnote - : interv, author with davenport, asa, manpower (ret.), aug , cmh files.] beyond considering the competence of black servicemen, the department of defense had to face the possibility that discrimination was operating at least in some cases of assignment and promotion. abolishing the use of racial designations on personnel records was one obvious way of limiting such discrimination, and throughout the mid- 's the department sought to balance the conflicting demands for and against race labeling. along with the integration of military units in the 's, the services had narrowed their multiple and cumbersome definition of races to a list of five groups. even this list, a compromise drawn up by the defense department's personnel policy board, was criticized. reflecting the opinion of the civil rights forces, evans declared that the definition of five races and twelve subcategories was scientifically inaccurate, statistically (p.  ) complicated, and racially offensive. he wanted a simple "white, nonwhite" listing of servicemen.[ - ] the subject continued to be discussed throughout the 's, the case finally going to the director of the bureau of the budget, the ultimate authority on government forms. in august the director announced a uniform method for defining the races in federal statistics. the collectives "negro and other races," "all other rates," or "all other" would be acceptable to designate minorities; the terms "white," "negro," and "other races" would be acceptable in distinguishing between the majority, principal minority, and other races.[ - ] [footnote - : see, for example, the following memos: evans for judge jackson, apr , and mr. jordan, sep , sub: racial designations; douglas dahlin for e. e. moyers, sep , sub: case history of an osd action; james evans for philip m. timpane, aug , sub: race and color-coding. see also memo for rcd, evans, aug , sub: racial designations. all in dasd (cr) files.] [footnote - : bureau of the budget, circular no. a- , transmittal memorandum no. , aug .] it was the use to which these definitions were put more than their number that had concerned civil rights leaders since the 's. under pressure from civil rights organizations, some congressmen, and the office of the secretary of defense, the services began to abandon some of the least justifiable uses of racial designations, principally those used on certain inductees' travel orders, reassignment orders, and reserve rosters.[ - ] but change was not widespread, and as late as the services still distinguished by race in their basic personnel records, casualty reports, statistical and command strength reports, personnel control files, and over twenty-five other departmental forms.[ - ] they continued to defend the use of racial designations on the grounds that measurement of equal opportunity programs and detection of discrimination patterns depended on accurate racial data.[ - ] few could argue with these motives, although critics continued to question the need for race designations on records that were used in assignment and promotion processes. when public opposition developed to the use of racial entries on federal forms in general, the president's committee on equal opportunity appointed a subcommittee in under civil service chairman john w. macy, jr., to investigate. after much deliberation this group conducted a statistical experiment within the department of agriculture to discover whether employees could be identified by racial groups in a confidential manner separate from other personnel data.[ - ] [footnote - : see ltr, clarence mitchell, naacp, to asd (m), jul ; ltr, congressman henry s. reuss of wisconsin to secdef, sep ; memo, yarmolinsky for fitt, nov ; memo, dep under sa for asd (m), dec , sub: racial designation in special orders; ltr, chmn, cmte on gov operations, house of representatives, to sa, jul ; memo, asd (m) for sa, mar , sub: racial designations on travel orders; memo, chief, mil personnel management div, g- , for dir, personnel policies, aug , sub: racial designations, g- . ; memo, secnav for asd (m), may , sub: deletion of question regarding "race" ... copies of all in cmh.] [footnote - : see memo, tag for distribution, sep , sub: racial identification in army documents, agam (m) . ; memo for rcd, evans, dec , sub: racial designations--navy, asd (m) . ; memo, dasd (cr) for dasd (h&m) et al., feb , sub: racial designations on department of defense forms, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : see, for example, ltr, dir of personnel policy (osd) to j. francis pohlhous, counsel, naacp, jul , asd (m) . .] [footnote - : ltr, director, civil service commission, to rear adm robert l. moore, chief of industrial relations, usn, jul , copy in cmh.] [illustration: supplying the seventh fleet. _uss procyon crewmen rig netload of supplies for a warship._] the civil rights staff of the defense department was also (p.  ) interested in further limiting the use of race in departmental forms. in april assistant secretary paul ordered a review of military personnel records and reporting forms to determine where racial entries were included unnecessarily.[ - ] his review uncovered twenty-five forms used in common by the services and the office of the secretary of defense that contained racial designations. on march paul discreetly ordered the removal of race designations on all but nine of these forms, those concerning biostatistical, criminal, and casualty figures.[ - ] his order did not, however, extend to another group of forms used by individual services for their own purposes, and later in the year fitt drafted an order that would have eliminated all racial designations in the services except an entry for data processing systems and one for biostatistical information. the directive also would have allowed racial designations on forms that did not identify individuals, arranged for the disposition of remains and casualty reporting, described fugitives and other "wanted" types, and permitted other exceptions granted at the level of the assistant secretary of defense or that of the service secretary. finally it would have set up a system for purging existing records and removing photographs from promotion board selection folders.[ - ] the services strongly objected to a purge of existing records on the grounds of costliness, and they were particularly opposed to the removal of photographs. photographs were traditional and remained desirable, deputy under secretary of the army roy k. davenport explained, because they were useful in portraying individual physical characteristics unrelated to race.[ - ] davenport added, however, that photographs could be eliminated from promotion board materials. [footnote - : memo, spec asst to asd (m) for under sa, apr , sub: racial identification on military records (similar memorandums were sent to the secretaries of navy and air force on the same day); memo, asd (m) for oasd (comptroller) (ca. jun ); both in asd (m) . . for service reviews, answers, and exchanges on the subject, see asd (m) a- . see also memo, ssj [stephen s. jackson, spec asst to asd (m)] for valdes, oasd (m), and james c. evans, jun , asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, dasd (cr) for dasd (management), mar , sub: elimination of racial designations on dd forms (the army adopted this dod policy in the form of change to ar - in october ). see also memo, dasd (cr) for dasd (h&m) et al., feb , sub: racial designations on department of defense forms; idem for lee c. white, jul . all in asd (m) files. see also washington _evening star_, june , , p. a .] [footnote - : memo, philip m. timpane for dasd (cr), aug , sub: race on records, asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, dep under sa for dasd (cr), jun , sub: proposed dod instruction re: use of racial designations in forms and records and annual racial distribution report, copy in cmh.] these proposals marked a high point in the effort to simplify and (p.  ) reduce the use of racial designations by the department of defense. although several versions of fitt's draft order were discussed in later years, none was ever published.[ - ] nor did the bureau of the budget, to which the matter was referred for the development of a government-wide policy, publish any instructions. in fact, by the mid- 's an obvious trend had begun in the department of defense toward broader use of racial indicators but narrower definition of race. [footnote - : l. howard bennett, untitled minutes of equal opportunity council meetings on the subject of racial indicators, sep ; memo, bennett for thomas morris and jack moskowitz, dec , sub: actions to aid in assuring equality of opportunity during ratings, assignment, selection, and promotion processes, copies of both in cmh. judge bennett was the executive secretary of the equal opportunity council within the office of the secretary of defense, an interdepartmental working group dealing with racial indicators in september and consisting of two members from each manpower office of the services and p. m. timpane of the dasd (equal opportunity) office.] several changes in american society were responsible for the changes. the need for more exact racial documentation overcame the argument for removing racial designations, for the civil rights experts both within and outside the department demanded more detailed racial statistics to protect and enlarge the equal opportunity gains of the sixties. the demand was also supported by representatives of the smaller racial minorities who, joining in the civil rights revolution, developed a self-awareness that made detailed racial and ethnic statistics mandatory. the shift was made possible to a great extent by the change in public opinion toward racial minorities. as one civil rights official later noted, the change in attitude had caused black servicemen to reconsider their belief that detrimental treatment necessarily followed racial identification.[ - ] ironically, just a decade after the mcnamara directive on equal opportunity, a departmental civil rights official, himself a negro, was defending the use of photographs in the selection process on the grounds that such procedures were necessary in any large organization where individuals were relatively unknown to their superiors.[ - ] so strong had the services' need for black officers become, it could be argued, that a promotion board's knowledge of a candidate's race redounded to the advantage of the black applicants. for whatever reason, the pressure to eliminate racial indicators from personnel forms had largely disappeared at the end of the 's. [footnote - : memo, bennett for asd (m) and dasd (civ pers, indus rels, and cr), dec , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : interv, author with johnson, aug .] the gesell committee's investigations also forced the department of defense to consider the possibility of discrimination in the rarefied area of embassy and special mission assignments and the certainty of discrimination against black servicemen in local communities near some overseas bases. concerning the former, the staff of the civil rights deputy concluded that such assignments were voluntary and based on special selection procedures. race was not a factor except for three countries where assignments were "based on politically ethnic considerations."[ - ] nevertheless, fitt began to discuss with the services ways to attract more qualified black volunteers for (p.  ) assignments to attaché, mission, and military assistance groups. [footnote - : memo, exec to dasd (cr) for dasd (cr), mar ; see also oasd (cr), summary of military personnel assignments in overseas areas; both in odasd (cr) files. negroes were not the only americans excluded from certain countries for "politically ethnic considerations." jewish servicemen were barred from certain middle east countries.] the department was less responsive to the gesell committee's recommendations on racial restrictions encountered off base overseas. the services, traditionally, had shunned consideration of this matter, citing their role as guests. when the department of defense outlined the commander's responsibility regarding off-base discrimination overseas, it expressly authorized commanders to impose sanctions in foreign communities, yet just five weeks later the services clarified the order for the press, explaining that sanctions would be limited to the united states.[ - ] a spokesman for the u.s. army in germany admitted that discrimination continued in restaurants and bars, adding that such discrimination was illegal in germany and was limited to the lowest class establishments.[ - ] supporting these conclusions was a spate of newspaper reports of segregated establishments in certain areas of okinawa and the neighborhood around an army barracks near frankfurt, germany.[ - ] [footnote - : dod directive cited in gesell committee's "final report," p. ; see also new york _times_, september , .] [footnote - : new york _times_ and washington _post_, december , .] [footnote - : see, for example, new york _herald tribune_, january , ; new york _times_, march , .] despite these continuing press reports, the services declared in mid- that the "overwhelming majority" of overseas installations were free of segregation problems in housing or public accommodations. one important exception to this overwhelming majority was reported by general paul freeman, the commander of u.s. army forces in europe. he not only admitted that the problem existed in his command but also concluded that it had been imported from the united states. the general had met with gerhard gesell and subsequently launched a special troop indoctrination program in europe on discrimination in public accommodations. he also introduced a voluntary compliance program to procure open housing.[ - ] [footnote - : memo for rcd, timpane, nov , odasd (cr) files.] the gesell committee had repeatedly asserted that discrimination existed only in areas near american bases, and its most serious manifestations were "largely inspired by the attitude of a minority of white servicemen" who exerted social pressure on local businessmen. it was, therefore, a problem for american forces, and not primarily one for its allies. the civil rights office, however, preferred to consider the continuing discrimination as an anti-american phenomenon rather than a racial problem.[ - ] fitt and his successor seemed convinced that such discrimination was isolated and its solution complex because of the difficulty in drawing a line between the attitudes of host nations and american gi's. consequently, the problem continued throughout the next decade, always low key, never widespread, a problem of black morale inadequately treated by the department. [footnote - : paul memo.] the failure to solve the problem of racial discrimination overseas and, indeed, the inability to liquidate all remaining vestiges of discrimination within the military establishment, constituted the major shortfall of mcnamara's equal opportunity policy. with no (p.  ) attempt to shift responsibility to his subordinates,[ - ] mcnamara later reflected with some heat on the failure of his directive to improve treatment and opportunities for black servicemen substantially and expeditiously: "i was naive enough in those days to think that all i had to do was show my people that a problem existed, tell them to work on it, and that they would then attack the problem. it turned out of course that not a goddamn thing happened."[ - ] [footnote - : for an example of mcnamara's extremely self-critical judgments on the subject of equal opportunity, see brock brower, "mcnamara seen now, full length," _life_ (may , ): .] [footnote - : interv, author with mcnamara, may .] although critical of his department's performance, mcnamara would probably admit that more than simple recalcitrance was involved. for example, the services' traditional opposition to outside interference with the development of their personnel policies led naturally to their opposition to any defense programs setting exact command responsibilities or dictating strict monitoring of their racial progress. defense officials, respecting service attitudes, failed to demand an exact accounting. again, the services' natural reluctance to court congressional criticism, a reluctance shared by mcnamara and his defense colleagues, led them all to avoid unpopular programs such as creating ombudsmen at bases to channel black servicemen's complaints. as one manpower official pointed out, all commanders professed their intolerance of discrimination in their commands, yet the prospect of any effective communication between these commanders and their subordinates suffering such discrimination remained unlikely.[ - ] again defense officials, restrained by the white house from antagonizing congress, failed to insist upon change. [footnote - : memo, william c. baldes, odasd (cr), for dasd (cr), jul , asd (m) . .] finally, while it was true that the services had not responded any better to mcnamara's directive than to any of several earlier and less noteworthy calls for racial equality within the military community, it was not true that the reason for the lack of progress lay exclusively with the service. against the background of the integration achievements of the previous decade, a feeling existed among defense officials that such on-base discrimination as remained was largely a matter of detail. even fitt shared the prevailing view. "in three years of close attention to such matters, i have observed [no] ... great gains in on-base equality," because, he explained to his superior, "_the basic gains were made in the - period_."[ - ] it must be remembered that discrimination operating within the armed forces was less tractable and more difficult to solve than the patterns of segregation that had confronted the services of old or the off-base problems confronting them in the early 's. the services had reached what must have seemed to many a point of diminishing returns in the battle against on-base discrimination, a point at which each successive increment of effort yielded a smaller result than its predecessor. [footnote - : memo, dasd (cr) for asd (m), jul , copy in cmh. emphasis not in original.] no one--not the civil rights commission, the gesell committee, the civil rights organizations, and, judging from the volume of complaints, not even black servicemen themselves--seriously tried to disabuse these officials of their satisfaction with the pace of reform. (p.  ) certainly no one equated the importance of on-base discrimination with the blatant off-base discrimination that had captured everyone's attention. in fact, problems as potentially explosive as the discrimination in the administration of military justice were all but ignored during the 's.[ - ] [footnote - : the administration of military justice was not considered by the civil rights commission nor by the gesell committee, although it was mentioned once by the naacp as a cause of numerous complaints and once by the deputy assistant secretary for civil rights in regard to black representation on courts-martial. see naacp, "proposals for executive action to end federal supported segregation and other forms of racial discrimination," submitted to the white house on aug , white house central files, j. f. kennedy library; memo, philip m. timpane, odasd (civ pers, indus rels, and cr) for dasd (civ pers, indus rels and cr), feb , sub: representation by race on courts-martial. odasd (civ pers, indus rels, and cr) files.] [illustration: usaf ground crew, tan son nhut air base, vietnam, _relaxes over cards in the alert tent_.] the sense of satisfaction that pervaded fitt's comment, however understandable, was lamentable because it helped insure that certain inequities in the military community would linger. the failure of negroes to win skilled job assignments and promotions, for example, would remain to fester and contribute significantly to the bitterness visited upon a surprised department of defense in later years. in brief, because the services had become a model of racial equality when judged by contemporary standards, the impulse of almost all concerned was to play down the reforms still needed on base and turn instead to the pressing and spectacular challenges that lay in wait outside the gates. chapter (p.  ) from voluntary compliance to sanctions the defense department's attitude toward off-base discrimination against servicemen underwent a significant change in the mid- 's. at first secretary mcnamara relied on his commanders to win from the local communities a voluntary accommodation to his equal opportunity policy. only after a lengthy interval, during which the accumulated evidence demonstrated that voluntary compliance would, in some cases, not be forthcoming, did he take up the cudgel of sanctions. his use of this powerful economic weapon proved to be circumscribed and of brief duration, but its application against a few carefully selected targets had a salubrious and widespread effect. at the same time developments in the civil rights movement, especially the passage of strong new legislation in , permitted servicemen to depend with considerable assurance upon judicial processes for the redress of their grievances. sanctions were distasteful, and almost everyone concerned was anxious to avoid their use. the gesell committee wanted them reserved for those recalcitrants who had withstood the informal but determined efforts of local commanders to obtain voluntary compliance. mcnamara agreed. "there were plenty of things that the commanders could do in a voluntary way," he said later, and he wanted to give them time "to get to work on this problem."[ - ] his principal civil rights assistants considered it inappropriate to declare businesses or local communities off limits while the services were still in the process of developing voluntary action programs and before the full impact of new federal civil rights legislation on those programs could be tested. as for the services themselves, each was on record as being opposed to any use of sanctions in equal opportunity cases. the equal opportunity directive of the secretary of defense reflected this general reluctance. it authorized the use of sanctions, but in such a carefully restricted manner that for three years agencies of the department of defense never seriously contemplated using them. [footnote - : interv, author with mcnamara, may .] _development of voluntary action programs_ despite this obvious aversion to the use of sanctions in equal opportunity cases, the public impression persisted that secretary mcnamara was trying to use military commanders as instruments for forcing the desegregation of civilian communities. actually, the (p.  ) gesell committee and the mcnamara directive had demanded no such thing, as the secretary's civil rights deputy was repeatedly forced to point out. military commanders, fitt explained, were obligated to protect their men from harm and to secure their just treatment. therefore, when "harmful civilian discrimination" was directed against men in uniform, "the wise commander seeks to do something about it." commanders, he observed, did not issue threats or demand social reforms; they merely sought better conditions for servicemen and their families through cooperation and understanding. as for the general problem of racial discrimination in the united states, that was a responsibility of the civilian community, not the services.[ - ] [footnote - : see memo, dasd (cr) for asd (m), jul ; fitt, "remarks before the civilian aides conference of the secretary of the army," mar ; copies of both in cmh. the quoted passage is from the latter document.] exhibiting a similar concern for the sensibilities of congressional critics, secretary mcnamara assured the senate armed services committee that he had no plans "to utilize military personnel as a method of social reform." at the same time he reiterated his belief that troop efficiency was affected by segregation, and added that when such a connection was found to exist "we should work with the community involved." he would base such involvement, he emphasized, on the commander's responsibility to maintain combat readiness and effectiveness.[ - ] similar reassurances had to be given the military commanders, some of whom saw in the gesell recommendations a demand for preferential treatment for negroes and a level of involvement in community affairs that would interfere with their basic military mission.[ - ] to counter this belief, fitt and his successor hammered away at the gesell committee's basic theme: discrimination affects morale; morale affects military efficiency. the commander's activities in behalf of equal opportunity for his men in the community is at least as important as his interest in problems of gambling, vice, and public health, and is in furtherance of his military mission.[ - ] [footnote - : robert s. mcnamara, testimony before senate armed services committee, oct , quoted in new york _times_, october , .] [footnote - : memo, william c. valdes, oasd (m), for alfred b. fitt, jul , sub: case studies of minority group problems at keesler afb, brookley afb, greenville afb, and columbus afb, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : see shulman, "the civil rights policies of the department of defense," may .] mcnamara's civil rights assistants tried to provide explicit guidance on the extent to which it was proper for base commanders to become involved in the community. fitt organized conferences with base commanders to develop techniques for dealing with off-base discrimination, and his office provided commanders with legal advice to counter the arguments of authorities in segregated communities. fitt also encouraged commanders to establish liaison with local civil rights groups whose objectives and activities coincided with departmental policy. at his request, assistant secretary of defense for manpower paul devised numerous special instructions and asked the services to issue regulations supporting commanders in their attempts to change community attitudes toward black servicemen. these regulations, in turn, called on commanders to enlist community support for equal treatment and opportunity measures, utilizing in the (p.  ) cause their command-community relations committees. consisting of base officials and local business and community leaders, these committees had originally been organized by the services to improve relations between the base and town. henceforth, they would become the means by which the local commanders might introduce measures to secure equal treatment for servicemen.[ - ] [footnote - : memos: dasd (cr) for white, assoc spec council to president, jul ; philip m. timpane. staff asst, odasd (cp, ir, & cr), for dasd (cp, ir, & cr), feb , sub: service reports on equal rights activities; dasd (cp, ir, & cr) for john g. stewart, dec , sub: civil rights responsibilities of the department of defense. copies of all in cmh. for a discussion of the composition and activities of these command-community relations committees and a critical analysis of the command initiatives in the local community in general, see david sutton, "the military mission against off-base discrimination," _public opinion and the military establishment_, ed. charles c. moskos, jr. (beverly hills, california: sage publications, ), pp. - .] [illustration: fighter pilots on the line. _col. daniel (chappie) james, jr., commander of an f- jet, and his pilot readying for takeoff from a field in thailand._] perhaps the most important, certainly most controversial, of fitt's moves[ - ] was the establishment of a system to measure the local commanders' progress against off-base discrimination. his vehicle was a series of off-base equal opportunity inventories, the first comprehensive, statistical record of discrimination affecting servicemen in the united states. based on detailed reports from every military installation to which or more servicemen were (p.  ) assigned, the first inventory covered some bases in forty-eight states and the district of columbia and nearly percent of the total military population stationed in the united states. along with detailed surveys of public transportation, education, public accommodations, and housing, the inventory reported on local racial laws and customs, police treatment of black servicemen, the existence of state and local agencies concerned with equal opportunity enforcement, and the base commander's use of command-community relations committees.[ - ] [footnote - : see especially upi press release, october , ; new york _times_, october , ; memo, robert e. jordan iii, staff asst, odasd (cr), for asd (m), oct , sub: status of defense department implementation of dod directive . ("equal opportunity in the armed forces," july , ), asd (m) . ( jul ).] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for under sa et al., sep , sub: off-base equal opportunity inventory, asd (m) . ( jul ); dasd (cr) "summary of off-base equal opportunity inventory responses" (ca. jan ), copy inclosed with ltr, dasd (cr) to gesell, apr , gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library. for examples of service responses, see bupers instruction . , oct , and marine corps order . , oct . for details of a service's experiences with conducting an off-base inventory, see the many documents in cs . ( aug ).] the first inventory confirmed the widespread complaints of special discrimination encountered by black servicemen. it also uncovered interesting patterns in that discrimination. in matters of commercial transportation, local schools, and publicly owned facilities such as libraries and stadiums, the problem of discrimination against black servicemen was confined almost exclusively to areas around installations in the south. but segregated public accommodations such as motels, restaurants, and amusements, a particularly virulent form of discrimination for servicemen, who as transients had to rely on such businesses, existed in all parts of the country including areas as diverse as iowa, alaska, arizona, and illinois. discrimination in these states was especially flagrant since all except arizona had legislation prohibiting enforced segregation of public accommodations. discrimination in the sale and rental of houses showed a similar pattern. only thirty installations out of the reporting were located in states with equal housing opportunity statutes. these were in northern states, stretching from maine to california. at the same time, some of these installations reported discrimination in housing despite existing state legislation forbidding such practices. no differences were reported in the treatment of black and white servicemen with respect to civilian law enforcement except that in some communities black servicemen were segregated when taken into custody for criminal violations. generally, the practice of most forms of discrimination was more intense in the south, but the record of other sections of the country was no better than mixed, even where legislation forbade such separate and unequal treatment. obviously there was much room for progress, and as indicated in the inventory much still could be done within the armed forces themselves. the reports revealed that almost one-third of the commands inventoried failed to form the command-community relations committees recommended by the gesell committee and ordered in the services' equal opportunity directives. of the rest, only sixty-one commands had invited local black leaders to participate in what were supposed to be biracial groups. the purpose of the follow-up inventories--three were due from each service at six-month intervals--was to determine the progress of local commanders in achieving equal opportunity for their men. the (p.  ) defense department showed considerable energy in extracting from commanders comprehensive information on the state of equal opportunity in their communities.[ - ] in fact, this rather public exposition proved to be the major reporting system on equal opportunity progress, the strongest inducement for service action, and the closest endorsement by the department of the gesell committee's call for an accountability system. [footnote - : see, for example, the following memos: usaf dep for manpower, personnel, and organization for asd (m), feb , sub: off-base equal opportunity inventory report, secaf files; dasd (cr) for fridge, usaf manpower office, may ; idem for davenport et al., aug , sub: off-base equal opportunity inventory follow-up reports. all in asd (m) . .] the first follow-up inventory revealed some progress in overcoming discrimination near military installations, but progress was slight everywhere and in some areas of concern nonexistent. discrimination in schooling for dependents off base, closely bound to the national problem of school desegregation, remained a major difficulty. commanders reported that discrimination in public accommodations was more susceptible to command efforts, but here, too, in some parts of the country, communities were resisting change. a marine corps commander, for example, reported the successful formation of a command-community relations committee at his installation near albany, georgia, but to inquiries concerning the achievements of this committee the commander was forced to reply "absolutely none."[ - ] [footnote - : oasd (cr), summary of follow-up off-base equal opportunity inventory (ca. jun ), dasd (cr) files.] some forms of discrimination seemed impervious to change. open housing, for one, was the exception rather than the rule throughout the country. one survey noted the particular difficulty this created for servicemen, especially the many enlisted men who lived in trailers and could find no unsegregated place to park.[ - ] at times the commanders' efforts to improve the situation seemed to compound the problem. the stipulation that only open housing be listed with base housing officers served more to reduce the number of listings than to create opportunities for open housing. small wonder then that segregated housing, "the most pervasive and most intractable injustice of all," in alfred fitt's words, was generally ignored while the commanders and civil rights officials concentrated instead on the more easily surmountable forms of discrimination.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dasd (cp, ir, & cr) for stewart, dec , sub: civil rights responsibilities of the department of defense, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : ltr, fitt to author, may .] at least part of the reason for the continued existence of housing discrimination against servicemen lay in the fact that the department of defense continued to deny itself the use of its most potent equal opportunity weapon. well into , fitt could report that no service had contemplated the use of sanctions in an equal opportunity case.[ - ] nor had housing discrimination ever figured prominently in any decision to close a military base. at fitt's suggestion, assistant secretary paul proposed that community discrimination patterns be listed as one of the reasons for closing military (p.  ) bases.[ - ] although the assistant secretary for installations and logistics, thomas d. morris, agreed to consult such information during deliberations on closings, he pointed out that economics and operational suitability were the major factors in determining a base's value.[ - ] as late as december , an official of the office of the secretary of defense was publicly explaining that "discrimination in the community is certainly a consideration, but the military effectiveness and justification of an installation must be primary."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, dasd (cr) to congressman charles diggs, feb , copy in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, dasd (cr) for asd (m), apr , sub: base closings; memo, asd (m) for asd (i&l), apr , sub: base closing decisions; both in asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, asd (i&l) for asd (m), may , sub: base closing decisions, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : ltr, principal asst for cr, dasd (cp, ir, & cr) to stanley t. gutman, dec , asd (m) . .] clearly, voluntary compliance had its limits, and fitt said as much on the occasion of his departure after a year's assignment as the civil rights deputy. reviewing the year's activities for gesell, fitt concluded that "we have done everything we could think of" in formulating civil rights policy and in establishing a monitoring system for its enforcement. he was confident that the department's campaign against discrimination had gained enough momentum to insure continued progress. if, as he put it, the "off-base lot of the negro serviceman will not in my time be the same as that of his white comrade-in-arms" he was nevertheless satisfied that the department of defense was committed to equal opportunity and that commitment was "bound to be beneficial."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, dasd (cr) to gesell, jul , copy in cmh.] fitt's assessment was accurate, no doubt, but not exactly in keeping with the optimistic spirit of the gesell committee and secretary mcnamara's subsequent equal opportunity commitment to the president. obviously more could be achieved through voluntary compliance if the threat of legal sanctions were available. in the summer of , therefore, the defense department's manpower officials turned to new federal civil rights legislation for help. _civil rights, - _ the need for strong civil rights legislation had become increasingly apparent in the wake of _brown_ v. _board of education_.[ - ] with that decision, the judicial branch finally lined up definitively with the executive in opposition to segregation. but the effect of this united opposition was blunted by the lack of a strong civil rights law, something that president kennedy had not been able to wrestle from a reluctant legislative branch. the demands of the civil rights movement only underscored the inability of court judgments and (p.  ) executive orders alone to guarantee the civil rights of all americans. such a profound social change in american society required the concerted action of all three branches of government, and by the drive for strong civil rights legislation had made such legislation the paramount domestic political issue. lyndon johnson fully understood its importance. "we have talked long enough in this country about equal rights," he told his old colleagues in congress, "we have talked for one hundred years or more. it is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law."[ - ] [footnote - : _benjamin muse, the american negro revolution: from nonviolence to black power, - _ (bloomington: university of indiana press, ). the following survey is based on muse and on robert d. marcus and david burner, eds., _america since _ (new york: st. martin's, ), especially the chapter by james sundquist, "building the great society: the case of equal rights, from politics and policy," and that by daniel walker, "violence in chicago, : the walker report"; _report of the national advisory commission on civil disorders_; otis l. graham, jr., ed., _perspectives on th century america, readings and commentary_ (new york: dodd, mead, ); zinn, _postwar america, - _; roger beaumont, "the embryonic revolution: perspectives on the riots," in robin higham, ed., _bayonets in the street: the use of troops in civil disturbances_ (lawrence: university press of kansas, ); woodward's _strange career of jim crow_.] [footnote - : lyndon b. johnson, "address before a joint session of the congress," nov , _public papers of the presidents: lyndon b. johnson, - _ (washington: government printing office, ), i: .] he was peculiarly fitted for the task. a southerner in quest of national support, johnson was determined for very practical reasons to carry out the civil rights program of his slain predecessor and to end the long rule of jim crow in many areas of the country. he let it be known that he would accept no watered-down law. i made my position [on the civil rights bill] unmistakably clear: we were not prepared to compromise in any way. "so far as this administration is concerned," i told a press conference, "its position is firm." i wanted absolutely no room for bargaining.... i knew that the slightest wavering on my part would give hope to the opposition's strategy of amending the bill to death.[ - ] [footnote - : lyndon b. johnson, _the vantage point_ (new york: holt, rinehart and winston, ), p. .] certainly this pronouncement was no empty rhetoric, coming as it did from a consummate master of the legislative process who enjoyed old and close ties with congressional leaders. johnson was also philosophically committed to change. "civil rights was really something that was, by this time, burning pretty strongly in johnson," harris l. wofford later noted.[ - ] the new president exhorted his countrymen: "to the extent that negroes were imprisoned, so was i ... to the extent that negroes were free, really free, so was i. and so was my country."[ - ] skillfully employing the wave of sympathy for equal rights that swept the country after john kennedy's death, president johnson procured a powerful civil rights act, which he signed on july .[ - ] [footnote - : interv, bernhard with wofford, nov . special assistant to presidents kennedy and johnson, wofford was later appointed to a senior position in the peace corps.] [footnote - : johnson, _vantage point_, p. .] [footnote - : pl - , _u.s. stat._ .] the object of the civil rights act of was no less than the overthrow of segregation in america. its major provisions outlawed discrimination in places of amusement and public accommodation, in public education, labor unions, employment, and housing. it called for federal intervention in voting rights cases and established a community relations service in the department of commerce to arbitrate racial disputes. the act also strengthened the civil rights commission and broadened its powers. it authorized the united states attorney general and private citizens to bring suit in discrimination cases, outlining the procedures for such cases. most significant were the sweeping provisions of the law's title vi that forbade (p.  ) discrimination in any activity or program that received federal financial assistance. this added the threat of economic sanctions against any of those thousands of institutions, whether public or private, which, while enjoying federal benefactions, discriminated against citizens because of race. accurately characterized as the "most effective instrument yet found for the elimination of racial discrimination,"[ - ] title vi gave the federal government leave to cut segregation and discrimination out of the body politic. in professor woodward's words, "a national consensus was in the making and a peaceful solution was in sight."[ - ] [footnote - : muse, _the american negro revolution_, p. . for a detailed discussion of the provisions of the civil rights act of , see muse's book, pp. - .] [footnote - : woodward, _strange career of jim crow_, p. .] the presidential election was at hand to test this consensus. given the republican candidate's vehement opposition to the civil rights act, lyndon johnson's overwhelming victory was among other things widely interpreted as a national plebiscite for the new law. the president, however, preferred a broader interpretation. believing that "great social change tends to come rapidly in periods of intense activity before the impulse slows,"[ - ] he considered his victory a mandate for further social reform. on the advice of the justice department and the civil rights commission, he called on congress to eliminate the "barriers to the right to vote."[ - ] [footnote - : johnson, "remarks at the national urban league's community action assembly," dec , as reproduced in _public papers of the presidents: johnson, - _, ii: .] [footnote - : lyndon b. johnson, "annual message to congress on the state of the union," jan , _public papers of the presidents: lyndon b. johnson, _ (washington: government printing office, ), i: .] in common with its predecessors, the civil rights act had only touched lightly on the serious obstacles in the way of black voters. although some , negroes were added to the voting rolls in the southern states in the year following passage of the law, the civil rights advocates were calling for stronger legislation. with bipartisan support, the president introduced a measure aimed directly at states that discriminated against black voters, providing for the abolition of literacy tests, appointment of federal examiners to register voters for all elections, and assignment of federal supervisors for those elections. the twenty-fourth amendment, adopted in february , had eliminated the poll tax in federal elections, and the president's new measure carried a strong condemnation of the use of the poll tax in state elections as well. in all of his efforts the president had the unwitting support of the segregationists, who treated the nation to another sordid racial spectacular. in february alabama police jailed martin luther king, jr., and some , members of his voting rights drive, and a generally outraged nation watched king's later clash with the police over a voting rights march. this time he and his followers were stopped at a bridge in selma, alabama, by state troopers using tear gas and clubs. the incident climaxed months of violence that saw the murder of three civil rights workers in philadelphia, mississippi; the harassment of the mississippi summer project, a voting registration campaign sponsored by several leading civil rights organizations; and ended in the assassination of a white unitarian minister, james (p.  ) reeb, of washington, d.c., one of the hundreds of clergymen, students, and other americans who had joined in the king demonstrations. addressing a joint session of congress on the voting rights bill, the president alluded to the selma incident, declaring: "their cause must be our cause too. because it is not just negroes, but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. and we shall overcome."[ - ] [footnote - : lyndon b. johnson, "speech before joint session of congress," mar , _public papers of the presidents: johnson, _, i: .] [illustration: medical examination. _navy doctor on duty, yokosuka, japan._] the president's bill passed easily with bipartisan support, and he signed it on august . two days later federal examiners were on the job in three states. the act promised a tremendous difference in the political complexion of significant portions of the country. in less than a year federal examiners certified , new voters in four states and almost half of all eligible negroes were registered to vote in the states and counties covered by the law. another result of the new legislation was that the attorney general played an active role in the defeat of the state poll tax laws in _harper_ v. _virginia board of elections_.[ - ] [footnote - : u.s. ( ).] useful against legalized discrimination, chiefly in the south, the civil rights laws of the mid- 's were conspicuously less successful in those areas where discrimination operated outside the law. in the great urban centers of the north and west, home of some percent of the black population, _de facto_ segregation in housing, employment, and education had excluded millions of negroes from the benefits of economic progress. this ghettoization, this failure to meet human needs, led to the alienation of many young americans and a bitter resentment against society that was dramatized just five days after the signing of the voting rights act when the watts section of los angeles exploded in flames and violence. there had been racial unrest before, especially during the two previous summers when flare-ups occurred in cambridge (maryland), philadelphia, jacksonville, brooklyn, cleveland, and elsewhere, but watts was a different matter. before the california national guard with some logistical help from the army quelled the riots, thirty-four people were killed, some , arrested, and $ million worth of property damaged or destroyed. the greatest civil disturbance since the detroit riot, watts was but the first in a series of urban (p.  ) disturbances which refuted the general belief that the race problem had been largely solved in cities of the north and the west.[ - ] [footnote - : for an account of the watts riot and its aftermath, see robert conot, _rivers of blood, years of darkness_ (new york: bantam books, ), and anthony platt, ed., _the politics of riot commissions_ (new york: collin books, ), ch. vi.] discrimination in housing was a major cause of black urban unrest, and housing was foremost among the areas of discrimination still untouched by federal legislation. the housing provision of the civil rights act was severely limited, and johnson rejected the idea of yet another executive order proposed by his committee on equal opportunity in housing. like the order signed by kennedy, it could cover only new housing and even that with dubious legality. johnson, relying on the civil rights momentum developed over the previous years, decided instead to press for a comprehensive civil rights bill that would outlaw discrimination in the sale of all housing. the new measure was also designed to attack several other residual areas of discrimination, including jury selection and the physical protection of negroes and civil rights workers. although he enjoyed a measure of bipartisan support for these latter sections of the bill, the president failed to overcome the widespread opposition to open housing, and the civil rights bill died in the senate, thereby postponing an effective law on open housing until after the assassination of dr. king in . the spectacle of demonstrators and riots in northern cities and the appearance in of the "black power" slogan considered ominous by many citizens were blamed for the bill's failure. another and more likely cause was that in violating the sanctity of the all-white neighborhood johnson had gone beyond any national consensus on civil rights. in august , for example, a survey by the louis harris organization revealed that some percent of white america would object to having a black family as next-door neighbors and percent believed that negroes "were trying to move too fast." of particular importance to the department of defense, which would be taking some equal opportunity steps in the housing field in the next months, was the fact that this opposition was not translated into a general rejection of the concept of equal opportunity. in fact, although the bill failed to win enough votes to apply the senate's cloture rule, the president could boast that he won a clear majority in both houses. his defeat slowed the pace of the civil rights movement and postponed a solution to a major domestic problem; postponed, because, as roy wilkins reminded his fellow citizens at the time, "the problem is not going away ... the negro is not going away."[ - ] [footnote - : both the harris and wilkins remarks are quoted in sundquist, "building the great society," pp. - .] _the civil rights act and voluntary compliance_ the enactment of new civil rights legislation in had thrust the armed forces into the heart of the civil rights movement in a special way. as secretary mcnamara himself reminded his subordinates, president johnson was determined to have each federal department develop programs and policies that would give meaning to the new (p.  ) legislation. that legislation, he added, created "new opportunities" to win full equality for all servicemen. the secretary made the usual connection between discrimination and military efficiency, adding that "this reason alone" compelled departmental action.[ - ] obviously other reasons existed, and when mcnamara called on all commanders to support their men in the "lawful assertion of the rights guaranteed" by the act he was making his more than local commanders agents of the new federal legislation. [footnote - : memo, secdef for sa et al., jul , copy in cmh; see also secdef news conference, jul , p. , oasd (pa).] defense officials quickly arranged for the publication of directives and regulations applying the provisions of the new law to the whole defense establishment. to insure, as mcnamara put it, that military commanders understood their responsibility for seeing that those in uniform were accorded fair treatment as prescribed by the new law, assistant secretary paul had already ordered the services to advise the rank and file of their rights and instruct commanders to seek civilian cooperation for the orderly application of the act to servicemen.[ - ] after considering the service comments solicited by his civil rights deputy,[ - ] paul issued a departmental instruction on july that prescribed specific policies and procedures for processing the requests of uniformed men and women for legal action under titles ii (public accommodations), iii (public facilities), and iv (public education) of the act. the instruction encouraged, but did not compel, the use of command assistance by servicemen who wished to request suit by the u.s. attorney general.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for under sa et al., jul , asd (m) . ; see also secdef news conference, jul , p. .] [footnote - : memo, dasd (cr) for roy davenport, et al., may , sub: requests for suit by military personnel under the civil rights bill; idem for asd (m), jul , sub: dod instruction on processing of requests by military personnel for the bringing of civil rights suits by the attorney general; both in asd (m) . . for an example of a service response, see memo, dep under sa (pers management) for dasd (cr), jul , same sub, asd (m) . .] [footnote - : dod instr . , jul , processing of requests by military personnel for action by the attorney general under the civil rights act; see also memo, asd (m) for under sa et al., jul , same sub, asd (m) . .] finally in december, mcnamara issued a directive spelling out his department's obligations under the act's controversial title vi, nondiscrimination in federally assisted programs.[ - ] this directive was one of a series requested by the white house from various governmental agencies and reviewed by the justice department and the bureau of the budget in an attempt to coordinate the federal government's activities under the far-reaching title vi provision.[ - ] after arranging for the circulation of the directive throughout the services, secretary mcnamara explained in considerable detail how grants and loans of federal funds, transfer, sale, or lease of military property, and in fact any federal assistance would be denied in cases where discrimination could be found. although this directive would affect the department of defense chiefly through the national guard and various civil defense programs, it was (p.  ) nevertheless a potential source of economic leverage for use by the armed forces in the fight against discrimination.[ - ] furthermore, this directive, unlike mcnamara's equal opportunity directive of the previous year, was supported by federal legislation and thus escaped the usual criticism suffered by his earlier directives on discrimination. [footnote - : dod directive . , dec .] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for dir, bob, jul , sub: defense department regulations to implement title vi of the civil rights act; see also ltr, spec asst to dasd (cr), to gesell, jul ; copies of both in gesell collection, j. f. kennedy library.] [footnote - : dasd (cp, ir, & cr), the civil rights policies of the department of defense, may , copy in cmh.] the department of defense's voluntary compliance program in off-base discrimination cases had its greatest success in the months following the passage of the civil rights act. given the passage of the act and other federal legislation, pronouncements of the federal courts, and the broad advance of racial tolerance throughout the nation, the defense department's civil rights officials came to expect that most discrimination could be dealt with in a routine manner. as robert e. jordan iii, a staff assistant to the department's civil rights deputy, put it, the use of sanctions would not "normally" be invoked when the civil rights act or other laws could provide a judicial remedy.[ - ] fitt predicted that only a "very tiny number" of requests by servicemen for suits under the act would ever be processed all the way through to the courts. he expected to see many voluntary settlements achieved by commanders spurred to action by the filing of requests for suit.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, jordan to william a. smith, aug , asd (m) . .] [footnote - : memo, dasd (cr) for asd (m), jul , sub: dod instruction on processing of requests by military personnel for the bringing of civil rights suits by the attorney general, asd (m) . .] by early local commanders had made "very good progress," according to one defense department survey, in securing voluntary compliance with title ii of the act for public accommodations frequented by servicemen. each service had reported "really surprising examples of progress" in obtaining integrated off-base housing in neighborhoods adjoining military installations and heavily populated by service families. the services also reported good progress in obtaining integrated off-duty education for servicemen, as distinct from their dependents in the public schools.[ - ] at the same time lesser but noticeable progress was reported in titles ii and iii cases. in the first off-base inventory some installations in twenty states had reported widespread discrimination in nearby restaurants, hotels, bars, bowling alleys, and other title ii businesses; forty installations in nine states reported similar discrimination in libraries, city parks, and stadiums (title iii categories). each succeeding inventory reported impressive reductions in these figures. [footnote - : memo, timpane (staff asst) for shulman, dasd (cp, ir, & cr), feb , sub: service reports on equal rights activities, asd (m) . .] defense department officials observed that the amount of progress depended considerably on the size of the base, its proximity to the local community, and the relationship between the commander and local leaders. progress was most notable at large bases near towns. the influence of the civil rights act on cases involving servicemen was also readily apparent. but above all, these officials pointed to the personal efforts of the local commander as the vital factor. many commanders were able to use the off-base inventory itself as a weapon to fight discrimination, especially when the philosophy of "if (p.  ) everybody else desegregates i will" was so prevalent. nor could the effect of commanders' achievements be measured merely in terms of hotels and restaurants open to black servicemen. the knowledge that his commander was fighting for his rights in the community gave a tremendous boost to the black serviceman's morale. it followed that when a commander successfully forced a change in the practices of a business establishment, even one only rarely frequented by servicemen, he stirred a new pride and self-respect in his men.[ - ] [footnote - : for discussion of command initiatives and black morale, see memo, dasd (cr) for under sa et al., may , sub: off-base equal opportunity inventories; fitt, "remarks before civilian aides conference of the secretary of the army," mar ; memo, dasd (cr) for burke marshall, dept of justice, mar , sub: the civil rights of negro servicemen. copies of all in cmh.] _the limits of voluntary compliance_ if the civil rights act strengthened the hands of the commander, it also quickly revealed the ultimate limits of voluntary compliance itself. the campaign against titles ii and iii discrimination was only one facet of the department of defense's battle against off-base discrimination, which also included major attacks against discrimination in the national guard, in the public schools, and, finally, in housing. it was in these areas that the limits of voluntary compliance were reached, and the technique was abandoned in favor of economic sanctions. because of its intimate connection with the department of defense, the national guard appeared to be an easy target in the attack against off-base discrimination. although secretary mcnamara had accepted his department's traditional voluntary approach toward ending discrimination in this major reserve component,[ - ] the possibility of using sanctions against the guard had been under discussion for some time. as early as the legal counsel of the national guard bureau had concluded that the federal government had the right to compel integration.[ - ] essentially the same stand was taken in by the defense department's assistant general counsel for manpower.[ - ] [footnote - : for the discussion of mcnamara's initial dealings with the national guard on the subject of race, see chapter .] [footnote - : "opinion of the legal adviser of the national guard bureau, april ," reproduced in special board to study negro participation in the army national guard (arng) and the united states army reserve (usar), "participation of negroes in the reserve components of the army," vols. ( ) (hereafter cited as williams board rpt), ii: - .] [footnote - : memo, asst gen counsel (manpower) for asd (m), jul , sub: integration of national guard, asd (m) . .] these opinions, along with the staff study on the guard and the new jersey case,[ - ] provided support extending over more than a decade for the argument that the federal government could establish racial policies for the national guard. indeed, there is no evidence of opposition to this position in the 's, and southern guard leaders openly accepted federal supremacy during the period when the army and air force were segregated. but in the 's, long after (p.  ) the services had integrated their active forces and seemed to be moving toward a similar policy for the guard, doubts about federal authority over a peacetime guard appeared. the national guard bureau disputed the opinion of its legal counsel and the more recent one from the defense department and stressed the political implications of forcing integration; a bureau spokesman asserted that "an ultimatum to a governor that he must commit political suicide in order to obtain federal support for his national guard will be rejected." moreover, if federal officials insisted on integration, the bureau foresaw a deterioration of guard units to the detriment of national security.[ - ] [footnote - : for a discussion of earlier efforts to integrate the new jersey national guard and the attitude of individual states toward defense department requests, see chapter .] [footnote - : memo, legal adviser, ngb, for bruce docherty, office of the general counsel, da, jul , sub: authority to require integration in the national guard, copy in cmh.] [illustration: auto pilot shop. _airmen check out equipment, biggs air force base, texas._] the national guard bureau supported voluntary integration, and its chiefs tried in and to prod state adjutants general into taking action on their own account. citing the success some states, notably texas, enjoyed in continuing the integration their units first experienced during federalized service in the berlin call-up, maj. gen. d. w. mcgowan warned other state organizations that outright defiance of federal authorities could not be maintained indefinitely and would eventually lead to integration enforced by washington.[ - ] replies from the state adjutants varied, but in some cases it (p.  ) became clear that the combination of persuasion and quiet pressure might bring change. the louisiana adjutant general, for example, reported that considering the feelings in his state's legislature any move toward integration would require "a selling job." at the same time, he carefully admitted, "some of these days, the thing [integration] is probably inevitable."[ - ] the administration, however, continued to take the view that integration of the national guard was a special problem because the leverage available to implement it was in no way comparable to the federal government's control over the active forces or the organized reserves. [footnote - : ltrs, chief, ngb, to ag's of alabama et al., mar , jul , and dec ; see also williams board rpt, ii: .] [footnote - : ltr, maj gen raymond h. fleming, adjutant general, louisiana national guard, to chief, ngb, jul , copy in cmh.] progress toward total integration continued through and , although slowly.[ - ] near the end of , the national guard bureau announced that every state national guard was integrated, though only in token numbers in some cases.[ - ] even this slight victory could not be claimed by the department of defense or its national guard bureau, but was the result of the pressure exerted on states by the gesell committee. [footnote - : see memos: chief, ngb, for gen counsel, da, oct , sub: current status of integration of national guard in ten southern states; idem for dasd (cr), dec , sub: year-end report on integration of negroes in the national guard; idem for dep under sa (manpower and res forces), jan , sub: meeting with national chairman of the american veterans committee. copies of all in cmh.] [footnote - : "statement by maj. gen. winston c. wilson, chief, national guard bureau concerning integration of the national guard," dec , copy in cmh; see also new york _times_, december , , and williams board rpt, ii: .] the civil rights act of altered the defense department's attitude toward the national guard. title vi of the act undercut all arguments against federal supremacy over the guard, for it no longer mattered who had technical responsibility for units in peacetime. in practical terms, the power to integrate clearly rested now with the federal government, which in a complete reversal of its earlier policy showed a disposition to use it. on february deputy secretary of defense vance ordered the army and air force to amend national guard regulations to eliminate any trace of racial discrimination and "to ensure that the policy of equal opportunity and treatment is clearly stated."[ - ] vance's order produced a speedy change in the states, so much so that later in the department of defense was finally able to oppose new york congressman abraham j. multer's biannual bill to withhold federal aid from segregated guard units on the grounds that there were no longer any such units.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dep secdef for sa and secaf, feb , sub: equality of opportunity in the national guard, sd . ; see also memo, chief, ngb, for chief, office of reserve components, jan . for examples of how vance's order was transmitted to the individual states, see texas air national guard regulation - , march , and state of michigan general order no. , july . in march the army and air force published a joint regulation outlining procedures to assure compliance with title vi in the army and air national guard and designating the chief of the national guard bureau as the responsible official to implement departmental directives regarding all federally assisted activities of the national guard. see national guard regulation , mar .] [footnote - : congressman multer first introduced such a bill on january and pressed, unsuccessfully, for similar measures in each succeeding congress; see williams board rpt, ii: - .] lack of equal opportunity in the national guard might have been resented by civil rights groups, but black servicemen themselves suffered more generally and more deeply from discrimination (p.  ) visited on their children. alfred fitt summarized these feelings in : the imposition of unconstitutionally segregated schooling on their children is particularly galling for the negro servicemen. as comparative transients--and as military men accustomed to avoiding controversy with civilian authorities--they cannot effectively sue for the constitutional rights of their sons and daughters. yet they see their children, fresh from the integrated environment which is the rule on military installations, condemned to schools which are frequently two, even three grades behind the integrated schools these same children had attended on-base or at their fathers' previous duty stations.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dasd (cr) for burke marshall, mar , sub: the civil rights of negro servicemen, copy in cmh.] there was much to be said for the defense department's theory that an appeal for voluntary compliance would produce much integration in off-base schools attended by military dependents. that these children were the offspring of men serving in defense of their country was likely to have considerable impact in the south, especially, with its strong military traditions. that the children had in most cases already attended integrated schools, competing and learning with children of another race, was likely to make their integration more acceptable to educators. beyond these special reasons, the services could expect help from new legislation and new administration rulings. the civil rights act of , for example, had authorized the department of health, education, and welfare to provide integrated education for military dependents in areas where public schools were discontinued. in march secretary of health, education, and welfare abraham ribicoff announced that racially segregated schools were no longer "suitable" institutions under the terms of public laws and and that beginning in september his department would "exercise sound discretion, take appropriate steps" to provide integrated education for military dependents. if the children were withdrawn from local school systems to achieve this, he warned, so too the federal aid.[ - ] lending credence to ribicoff's warning, his department undertook a survey in the fall of of selected military installations to determine the educational status of military dependents.[ - ] on september attorney general kennedy filed suit in richmond to bar the use of federal funds in the segregated schools of prince george county, virginia, the location of fort lee.[ - ] finally, in january , the department of health, education, and welfare announced that unless state officials relented it would start a crash program of construction and operation of integrated schools for military dependents in alabama, georgia, mississippi, and south carolina.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, actg u.s. comm of ed to superintendent of public instruction, fla., et al., nov , with incls; see also memo for rcd, evans, nov , sub: schools for dependents, copies of both in cmh.] [footnote - : afns, release no. , aug .] [footnote - : four similar suits were filed in january regarding segregation in huntsville and mobile, alabama; gulfport and biloxi, mississippi; and bossier parish, louisiana. ltr, atty gen to president, jan (released by white house on jan ), copy in cmh. see new york _times_, september , .] [footnote - : washington _post_, january , .] some local commanders took immediate advantage of these emotional (p.  ) appeals and administration pressures. the commandant of the marine corps schools, quantico, for example, won an agreement from stafford county, virginia, authorities that the county would open its high school and two elementary schools to marine corps dependents without regard to race. the commandant also announced that schools in albany, georgia, had agreed to take military dependents on an integrated basis.[ - ] the air force announced that schools near eglin, whiting, and macdill air force bases in florida as well as those near six bases in texas, including sheppard and connally, would integrate. the under secretary of the navy reported similar successes in school districts in florida, tennessee, and texas. and the commander of fort belvoir started discussions with the fairfax county, virginia, school board looking toward the speedy desegregation of schools near the fort. [footnote - : both the marine corps and the navy operated installations in the vicinity of albany, georgia.] lest any commander hesitate, the department of defense issued a new policy in regard to the education of military dependents. on july assistant secretary paul directed all local commanders in areas where public education was still segregated--large parts of some fifteen states--to counsel parents on the procedures available for the transfer of their children to integrated schools, on how to appeal assignment to segregated schools, and on legal action as an alternative to accepting local school board decisions to bar their children.[ - ] in december fitt drew up contingency plans for the education of dependent children in the event of local school closings.[ - ] in april of fitt reminded the services that defense department policy called for the placement of military dependents in integrated schools and that commanders were expected to make "appropriate efforts" on behalf of the children to eliminate any deviation from that policy.[ - ] in effect, base commanders were being given a specific role in the fight to secure for black and white dependents equal access to public schools. [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for sa et al., jul , sub: assignment of dependents of military personnel to public schools, asd(m) . .] [footnote - : memo, dasd (cr) for under secnav, dec , sub: dependent schooling in closed school districts; memo, asst secnav for dasd (cr), dec , same sub; both in secnav files, genrecsnav. see also memo, dasd (cr) for burke marshall et al., mar , sub: possible september school closings affecting military dependents, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, dasd (cr) for under sa et al., apr , sub: assignment of dependents of military personnel to public schools; see also idem for asd (m), apr , sub: segregated schools and military dependents. for an example of how this new responsibility was conveyed to local commanders, see bupers notice . , jul , "assignment of dependents of military personnel to public schools." copies of all in cmh.] the action taken by base commanders under this responsibility might alter patterns of segregated education in some areas, but in the long run any attempt to integrate schools through a program of voluntary compliance appeared futile. at the end of the school year more than , military dependents, including , black children, at forty-nine installations attended segregated schools. another , children on these same bases attended integrated schools, usually (p.  ) grade school, on the military base itself.[ - ] because of the restrictions against base closings and off-limits sanctions, there was little hope that base commanders could produce any substantial improvement in this record. fitt admitted that the department of defense could not compel the integration of a school district. he recognized that it was impossible to establish an accredited twelve-grade system at the forty-nine installations, yet at the same time he considered it "incompatible with military requirements" to assign black servicemen with children to areas where only integrated schools were available. even the threat to deny impacted-area aid was limited because in many communities the services' contracts with local school districts to educate dependent children was contingent on continuous federal aid. if the aid was stopped the schools would be closed, leaving service children with no schools to attend.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dasd (cr) for under sa et al., may , sub: off-base equal opportunity inventories, copy in cmh.] [footnote - : for an example of how these contracts for the education of dependents were tied to federal aid, see the case concerning columbus air force base, mississippi, as discussed in ltr, dasd (cr) to j. francis pohlhous, naacp, nov . for the views of the secretary's race counselor on the fitt assessment, see ltr, evans to mrs. frank c. eubanks, jun . copies of both in cmh.] the only practical recourse for parents of military dependents, fitt believed, was to follow the slow process of judicial redress under title iv of the civil rights bill then moving through congress. anticipating the new law, fitt asked the services to provide him with pertinent data on all school districts where military dependents attended segregated schools. he planned to use this information in cooperation with the departments of justice and health, education, and welfare for use in federal suits. he also requested reports on the efforts made by local commanders to integrate schools used by dependent children and the responses of local school officials to such efforts.[ - ] later, after the new law had been signed by the president, norman paul outlined for the services the procedures to be used for lodging complaints under titles iv and vi of the civil rights act and directed that local commanders inform all parents under their command of the remedies afforded them under the new legislation.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dasd (cr) for spec asst to secaf for manpower, personnel, and reserve forces, jun , secaf files. similar memos were sent to the army and navy the same day. for an example of how these reports were used, see memo, spec asst to dasd (cr) for st. john barrett, civil rights div, dept of justice, aug , sub: desegregation of schools serving children of shaw afb, south carolina, personnel. copies of all in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for under sa et al., aug , sub: assignment of dependents of military personnel to public schools, asd (m) . .] with no prospect in sight for speedy integration of schools attended by military dependents, the department of defense summarily ended the attendance of uniformed personnel at all segregated educational institutions. with the close of the spring semester, paul announced, no defense department funds would be spent to pay tuition for such schooling.[ - ] the economic pressure implicit in this ruling, which for some time had been applied to the education of (p.  ) civilian employees of the department, allowed many base commanders to negotiate an end to segregation in off-base schools.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for sa et al., mar , sub: non-discrimination in civil schooling of military personnel; ltr, dasd (cr) to congressman john bell williams of mississippi, mar ; ltr, dasd (m) to sen. richard russell of georgia, jul ; memo, dasd (cr) for roy davenport et al., apr . copies of all in cmh.] [footnote - : memo, timpane for dasd (cp, ir, & cr), feb , sub: service reports on equal rights activities. in a related action the department made military facilities available for the use of the college entrance examination board when that body was confronted with segregated facilities in which to administer its tests; see memos, dep chief, pers services div, usaf, for aflc et al., mar , sub: college entrance examinations, and evans for dasd (m), jan , sub: college entrance examination board communication. fitt opposed this policy on the grounds that it removed a wholesome pressure on the segregated private facilities; see memo, dasd (cr) for asd (m), mar , sub: college entrance examinations at military installations. fitt was overruled, and the military facilities were provided for the college entrance examinations; see ltr, regional dir, college entrance examination bd, to evans, apr . copies of all in cmh.] the effort of the department of defense to secure education for its military dependents in integrated schools was, on the whole, unsuccessful. integration, when it finally came to most of these institutions later in the 's, came principally through the efforts of the department of health, education, and welfare to enforce title vi of the civil rights act of . yet the role of local military commanders in the effort to secure integrated schools cannot be ignored, for with the development of a new policy toward off-base facilities in the commander became a permanent and significant partner in the administration's fight to desegregate the nation's schools. in contrast to earlier times when the department of defense depended on moral suasion to desegregate schools used by servicemen's children, its commanders now educated parents on their legal rights, collected data to support class action suits, and negotiated with school boards. if the primary impetus for this activity was the civil rights act of , the philosophy of the gesell committee and the secretary of defense's directive were also implicit. discrimination in the sale and lease of housing continued to be the most widespread and persistent form of racial injustice encountered by black servicemen, and a most difficult one to fight. the chronic shortage of on-base accommodations, the transient nature of a military assignment, and the general reluctance of men in uniform to protest publicly left the average serviceman at the mercy of local landlords and real estate interests. nor did he have recourse in law. no significant federal legislation on the subject existed before , and state laws (by over half the states had some form of prohibition against discrimination in public housing and twenty-one states had open housing laws) were rather limited, excluding owner-occupied dwellings, for example, from their provisions. even president kennedy's housing order was restricted to future building and to housing dependent on federal financing. both the civil rights commission and the gesell committee studied the problem in some detail and concluded that the president's directive to all federal agencies to use their "good offices" to push for open housing in federally supported housing had not been followed in the department of defense. the civil rights commission, in particular, painted a picture of a defense department alternating between naivete and indifference in connection with the special housing problems of black servicemen.[ - ] white house staffer wofford later decided (p.  ) that the secretary of defense was dragging his feet on the subject of off-base housing, although wofford admitted that each federal agency was a forceful advocate of action by other agencies.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asd (cr) for secdef, oct , sub: family housing and the negro serviceman, civil rights commission staff report; memo, asd (m) for secdef, nov , sub: family housing for negro servicemen; both in asd (m) . .] [footnote - : interv, bernhard with wofford, nov , p. .] [illustration: submarine tender duty. _a senior chief boatswain mate and master diver at his station on the uss hunley._] the assistant secretary for manpower conceded in november that little had been done, but, citing the widely misunderstood off-base inventory, he pleaded the need to avoid retaliation by segregationist forces in congress both on future authorizations for housing and on the current civil rights legislation. he recommended that the department of defense complete and disseminate to local commanders information packets containing relevant directives, statistics, and legal procedures available in the local housing field.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, asd (m) for secdef, nov , sub: family housing for negro servicemen, asd (m) - .] mcnamara approved this procedure, again investing local commanders with responsibility for combating a pervasive form of discrimination with a voluntary compliance program. specifically, local commanders were directed to promote open housing near their bases, expanding their open housing lists and pressing the problem of local housing (p.  ) discrimination on their biracial community committees for solution. they were helped by the secretary's assistants. his civil rights and housing deputies became active participants in the president's housing committee, transmitting to local military commanders the information and techniques developed in the executive body. mcnamara's civil rights staff inaugurated cooperative programs with state and municipal equal opportunity commissions and other local open housing bodies, making these community resources available to local commanders. finally, in february , the department of defense entered into a formal arrangement with the federal housing administration to provide commanders with lists of all housing in their area covered by the president's housing order and to arrange for the lease of foreclosed federal housing authority properties to military personnel.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, dasd (cr) to chmn, president's cmte on equal opportunity in housing, sep , copy in cmh; see also paul memo.] these activities had little effect on the military housing situation. an occasional apartment complex or trailer court got integrated, but no substantial progress could be reported in the four years following secretary mcnamara's equal opportunity directive. on the contrary, the record suggests that many commanders, discouraged perhaps by the overwhelming difficulties encountered in the fair housing field, might agree with fitt: "i have no doubt that i did nothing about it [housing discrimination] in - because i was working on forms of discrimination at once more blatant and easier to overcome. i did not fully understand the impact of housing discrimination, and i did not know what to do about it."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, fitt to author, may .] a special defense department housing survey of thirteen representative communities, including a study of service families in the washington, d.c., area, documented this failure. the survey described a housing situation as of early in which progress toward open off-base housing for servicemen was minimal. despite the active off-base programs sponsored by local commanders, discrimination in housing remained widespread,[ - ] and based on four years' experience the department of defense had to conclude that appeals to the community for voluntary compliance would not produce integrated housing for military families on a large scale. still, defense officials were reluctant to substitute more drastic measures. deputy secretary vance, for one, argued in early that nationwide application of off-limits sanctions would raise significant legal issues, create chaotic conditions in the residential status of all military personnel, downgrade rather than enhance the responsibility of local commanders to achieve their equal opportunity goals, and, above all, fail to produce more integrated housing. writing to the chairman of the action coordinating committee to end segregation in the suburbs (access),[ - ] he asserted that open housing for servicemen (p.  ) would be achieved only through the "full commitment at every level of command to the proposition of equal treatment."[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, dep secdef to j. charles jones, chairman, access, feb , copy in cmh; see also the detailed account of the department of defense's housing campaign in bahr, "the expanding role of the department of defense," p. .] [footnote - : access was one of the several local, biracial open-housing groups that sprang up to fight discrimination in housing during the mid- 's. the center of this particular group's concern was in the washington, d.c., suburbs.] [footnote - : ltr, dep secdef to jones, feb , copy in cmh.] but even as vance wrote, the department's housing policy was undergoing substantial revision. and, ironically, it was the very group to which vance was writing that precipitated the change. it was the members of access who climaxed their campaign against segregated apartment complexes in the washington suburbs with a sit-down demonstration in mcnamara's reception room in the pentagon on february, bringing the problem to the personal attention of a secretary of defense burdened with vietnam.[ - ] although strongly committed to the principle of equal opportunity and always ready to support the initiatives of his civil rights assistants,[ - ] mcnamara had largely ignored the housing problem. later he castigated himself for allowing the problem to drift for four years. i get charged with the tfx. it's nothing compared to the bay of pigs or my failure for four years to integrate off-base military housing. i don't want you to misunderstand me when i say this, but the tfx was only money. we're talking about blood, the moral foundation of our future, the life of the nation when we talk about these things.[ - ] [footnote - : ltr, fitt to author, may ; see also new york _times_ and washington _post_, february , .] [footnote - : robert e. jordan, former dasd (cr) assistant, described the secretary's eagerness to support civil rights initiatives: "he would hardly wait for an explanation, but start murmuring, 'where do i sign, where do i sign?'" interv, author with jordan, jun .] [footnote - : quoted by brower, "mcnamara seen now, full length," p. . the tfx mentioned by mcnamara was an allusion to the heated and lengthy controversy that arose during his administration over fighter aircraft for the navy and air force.] mcnamara was being unnecessarily harsh with himself. there were several reasons, quite unrelated to either the secretary of defense or his assistants, that explain the failure of voluntarism to integrate housing used by servicemen. a major cause--witness the failure of president johnson's proposed civil rights bill in --was that open housing lacked a national consensus or widespread public support. voluntary compliance was successful in other areas, such as public accommodation, transportation, and to some extent even in dependent schooling, precisely because the requests of local commanders were supported by a growing national consensus and the force of national legislation. in dealing with housing discrimination, however, these same commanders faced public indifference or open hostility without the comforting support of federal law. even with the commander's wholehearted commitment to open housing, a commitment that equal opportunity directives from the services could by no means insure, his effectiveness against such widespread discrimination was questionable. nothing in his training prepared him for the delicate negotiations involved in obtaining integrated housing. moreover, it was extremely difficult if not impossible to isolate the black serviceman's housing plight from that of other black citizens; thus, an open housing campaign really demanded comprehensive action by the whole federal government. the white house had never launched a national open housing campaign; it was not, indeed, until february that president johnson submitted a compulsory national open housing bill to congress.[ - ] [footnote - : a weakened version of this bill eventually emerged as the civil rights act of .] whatever the factors contributing to the lack of progress, (p.  ) mcnamara admitted that "the voluntary program had failed and failed miserably."[ - ] philosophically, robert mcnamara found this situation intolerable. he had become interested in the "unused potential" of his department to change american society as it affected the welfare of servicemen. as fitt explained, the secretary believed any department which administers % of the gross national product, with influence over the lives of million people, is bound to have an impact. the question is whether it's going to be a dumb, blind impact, or a marshaled and ordered impact. mcnamara wanted to marshal that impact by committing defense resources to social goals that were still compatible with the primary mission of security.[ - ] [footnote - : mcnamara, _the essence of security_, p. .] [footnote - : quoted by brower, "mcnamara seen now, full length," p. .] clearly, the secretary of defense considered open housing for service families one of these goals, and when his attention was drawn to the immediacy of the problem by the access demonstration he acted quickly. at his instigation vance ordered the local commanders of all services to conduct a nationwide census of all apartment houses, housing developments, and mobile home courts consisting of five or more rental units within normal commuting distance of all installations having at least servicemen. he also ordered the commanders to talk to the owners or operators of these properties personally and to urge them to open their properties to all servicemen. he organized an off-base equal opportunity board, consisting of the open housing coordinators of each service and his office to monitor the census. finally, he announced the establishment of a special action program under the direction of thomas d. morris, now the assistant secretary for manpower. aimed at the washington, d.c., area specifically, the program was designed to serve as a model for the rest of the country.[ - ] [footnote - : memo, dep secdef for secys of military departments, apr , sub: equal opportunity for military personnel in rental of off-base housing. vance's instructions were spelled out in great detail, replete with charts and forms, in memo, asd (m) for dep under secys of military departments (manpower), apr , same sub. copies of both in cmh.] vance also notified the service secretaries that subsequent to the census all local commanders would be asked to discuss the census findings with local community leaders in an effort to mobilize support for open housing. later assistant secretary morris, with the help of the acting civil rights deputy, l. howard bennett, spelled out a program for "aggressive" negotiation with community leaders and cooperation with other government agencies, in effect a last-ditch attempt to achieve open housing for servicemen through voluntary compliance. underscoring the urgency of the housing campaign, the department demanded a monthly report from all commanders on their open housing activities,[ - ] and morris promptly launched a proselytizing effort of his own in the metropolitan washington area. described simply by mcnamara as "a decent man," morris spoke indefatigably before civil leaders and realtors on behalf of open housing.[ - ] [footnote - : memos, asd (m) for dep under secys of military departments, apr and jul , sub: equal opportunity for military personnel in rental of off-base housing. for the effect of this order on an individual commander, see article by charles hunter in charleston, south carolina, _post_, august , . see also interv, author with bennett, dec .] [footnote - : intervs, author with mcnamara, may , and jordan, jan .] the department's national housing census confirmed the gloomy (p.  ) statistics projected from earlier studies indicating that housing discrimination was widespread and intractable and damaging to servicemen's morale.[ - ] mcnamara decided that local commanders "were not going to involve themselves," and for the first time since sanctions were mentioned in his equal opportunity directive some four years before, he decided to use them in a discrimination case. the secretary of defense himself, not the local commander nor the service secretaries, made the decision: housing not opened to _all_ servicemen would be closed to _all_ servicemen.[ - ] aware of the controversy accompanying such action, the secretary's legal counsel prepared a justification. predictably, the department's lawyer argued that sanctions against discrimination in off-base housing were an extension of the commander's traditional right to forbid commerce with establishments whose policies adversely affected the health or morals of his men. acutely conscious of the lack of federal legislation barring housing discrimination, vance and his legal associates were careful to distinguish between an owner's legal right to choose his tenants and the commander's power to impose a military order on his men. [footnote - : mcnamara, _the essence of security_, p. .] [footnote - : interv, author with mcnamara, may .] although committed to a nationwide imposition of sanctions on housing if necessary, the secretary of defense hoped that the example of a few cases would be sufficient to break the intransigence of offending landlords; certainly a successful test case would strengthen the hand of the commanders in their negotiations with community leaders. metropolitan washington was the obvious area for the first test case, and the maryland general assembly further focused attention on that region when on february it called on the secretary of defense to end housing discrimination for all military personnel in the state.[ - ] on the night of june, gerhard gesell received an unexpected phone call: there would be something in tomorrow's paper, robert mcnamara told him, that should be especially interesting to the judge.[ - ] and there was, indeed, on the front page. as of july, all military personnel would be forbidden to lease or rent housing in any segregated apartment building or trailer court within a three-and-a-half-mile radius of andrews air force base, maryland. citing the special housing problems of servicemen returning from vietnam, mcnamara pointed out that in the andrews area of maryland less than percent of some , local apartment units were open to black servicemen. the andrews situation, he declared, was causing problems "detrimental to the morale and welfare of the majority of our negro military families and thus to the operational effectiveness of the base."[ - ] [footnote - : joint resolution of the maryland general assembly as cited in memo, secdef for secretaries of military departments, jun , sub: unsatisfactory housing of negro military families living off-post in the andrews air force base area, copy in cmh. see also new york _times_, may , , and yarmolinsky, _the military establishment_, p. .] [footnote - : interv, author with gesell, nov .] [footnote - : memo, secdef for secretaries of military departments, jun , sub: unsatisfactory housing of negro military families living off-post in the andrews air force base area, sd files. the quotation is from mcnamara's news conference, june , as quoted in the new york _times_, june , .] the secretary's rhetoric, skillfully justifying sanctions in (p.  ) terms of military efficiency and elementary fairness for returning combat veterans, might have explained the singular lack of adverse congressional reaction to the order. no less a personage than chairman l. mendel rivers of the house armed services committee admitted that he had no objection to the sanctions near andrews. asked about possible sanctions elsewhere, rivers added that he would cross that bridge later.[ - ] [footnote - : new york _times_, june , . rivers did criticize later applications of the housing sanctions; see washington _post_, december , .] rivers and his congressional allies would have little time for reflection, because mcnamara quickly made it clear that the andrews action was only a first step. sanctions were imposed in rapid succession on areas surrounding four other military installations in maryland, fort george g. meade, aberdeen proving ground, edgewood arsenal, and fort holabird.[ - ] more pressure was placed on segregationists when mcnamara announced on september his intention to extend the sanctions nationwide. he singled out california, where the defense department census had shown black servicemen barred from a third of all rental units, for special attention. in fact, off-limits sanctions imposed on broad geographical areas were used only once more--in december against multiple rental properties in the northern virginia area.[ - ] in the meantime, the department of defense had developed a less dramatic but equally effective method of exerting economic pressure on landlords. on july mcnamara ordered the establishment of housing referral offices at all installations where more than men were assigned. all married servicemen seeking off-base housing were required to obtain prior clearance from these offices before entering into rental agreements with landlords.[ - ] [footnote - : actually, mcnamara imposed the sanctions in the first two instances, the secretary of the army in the other two.] [footnote - : dod news release no. - , dec .] [footnote - : memo, secdef for service secys et al., jul , sub: off-base housing referral services, sd files.] finally, in the wake of the passage of the civil rights act of and the supreme court's ruling against housing discrimination in _jones_ v. _mayer_, mcnamara's successor, clark m. clifford, was able to combine economic threats with new legal sanctions against landlords who continued to discriminate. on june clifford ordered the services to provide advice and legal assistance to servicemen who encountered discrimination in housing. the services were also to coordinate their housing programs with the departments of housing and urban development and justice, provide assistance in locating nondiscriminatory rental units, and withhold authorization for servicemen to sign leases where discriminatory practices were evident. in a separate action the manpower assistant secretary also ordered that housing referral offices be established on all bases to which --as opposed to the earlier --military personnel were assigned.[ - ] [footnote - : in _jones_ v. _mayer_ ( u.s. , [ ]) the supreme court held that the civil rights act of "bars all racial discrimination, private as well as public, in the sale or rental of property." for clifford's response, see memo, secdef for secys of military departments, et al., jun ; clark clifford, news conference, jun ; memo, asd (m&ra) for secys of military departments, et al., nov . for instructions concerning legal assistance to servicemen and civilian employees of the department of defense under the civil rights act, see dod instr . , aug . copy of all in cmh.] [illustration: first aid. _soldier of the d infantry gives water to heat stroke victim during "operation wahiawa," vietnam._] the result of these directives was spectacular. by june the (p.  ) ratio of off-base housing units carried on military referral listings--that is, apartment and trailer court units with open housing policies assured in writing by the owner or certified by the local commander--rose to some percent of all available off-base housing for a gain of , units over the inventory.[ - ] in the suburban washington area alone, the number of housing units opened to all servicemen rose more than percent in days--from , to more than , units.[ - ] by the end of some . million rental units, percent of all those identified in the survey, were open to all servicemen.[ - ] still, these impressive gains did not signal the end of housing discrimination for black servicemen. the various defense department sanctions excluded dwellings for four families or less, and the evidence suggests that the original and hastily compiled off-base census on which all the open housing gains were measured had ignored some particularly intransigent landlords in larger apartment houses and operators of trailer courts on the grounds that their continued refusal to negotiate with commanders had made (p.  ) the likelihood of integrating their properties extremely remote. [footnote - : secdef news conference, jun , transcript in cmh.] [footnote - : mcnamara, _the essence of security_, p. .] [footnote - : bahr, "_the expanding role of the department of defense_," p. .] the campaign for open housing is the most noteworthy chapter in the fight for equality of treatment and opportunity for servicemen. the efforts of the department of defense against other forms of off-base discrimination were to a great extent successful because they coincided with court rulings and powerful civil rights legislation. the campaign for open housing, on the other hand, was launched in advance of court and congressional action and in the face of much popular feeling against integrated housing. mcnamara's fight for open housing demonstrates, as nothing had before, his determination to use, if necessary, the department's economic powers in the civilian community to secure equal treatment and opportunity for servicemen. in the name of fair housing, mcnamara invested not only his own prestige but also the defense department's manpower and financial resources. in effect, this willingness to use the extreme weapon of off-limits sanctions revitalized the idea of using the department of defense as an instrument of social change in american society. mcnamara's willingness to push the department beyond the national consensus on civil rights (as represented by the contemporary civil rights laws) also signified a change in his attitude. unlike yarmolinsky and robert kennedy, mcnamara limited his attention to discrimination's effect on the individual serviceman and, ultimately, on the military efficiency of the armed forces. despite his interest in the cause of civil rights, he had, until the open housing campaign, always circumscribed the department's equal opportunity program to fit a more traditional definition of military mission. seen in this light, mcnamara's attack against segregated housing represented not only the substitution of a new and more powerful technique--sanctions--for one that had been found wanting--voluntary compliance, but also a substantial evolution in his own social philosophy. he later implied as much. we request cooperation and seek voluntary compliance [in obtaining open housing].... i am fully aware that the defense department is not a philanthropic foundation or a social-welfare institution. but the department does not intend to let our negro servicemen and their families continue to suffer the injustices and indignities they have in the past. i am certain my successors will pursue the same policy.[ - ] [footnote - : mcnamara, _the essence of security_, p. .] by the major programs derived from secretary mcnamara's equal opportunity policy had been defined, and the department of defense could look back with pride on the substantial and permanent changes it had achieved in the treatment of black servicemen in communities near military bases.[ - ] emphasizing voluntary compliance with its policy, the department had proved to be quite successful in its campaign against discrimination in off-base recreation, public transportation and accommodation, in the organized reserves, and even, to a limited extent, in off-base schools. it was logical that the services should seek voluntary compliance before resorting to more drastic methods. as the gesell committee had pointed out, base (p.  ) commanders had vast influence in their local communities, influence that might be used in countless ways to alter the patterns of off-base discrimination. for the first time the armed forces had fought discrimination by making the local commander responsible for a systematic program of negotiations in the community. [footnote - : this analysis owes much to the author's correspondence with alfred fitt and the interviews with mcnamara, gesell, and jordan. see also memo, timpane tor stephen schulman, feb , sub: service reports of equal rights activities, and paul memo. copies of all in cmh.] but voluntary compliance had its limits. its success depended in large measure on the ability and will of local commanders, who, for the most part, were unprepared by training or temperament to deal with the complex and explosive problems of off-base discrimination. even if the commander could qualify as a civil rights reformer, he had little time or incentive for a duty that would go unrecognized in terms of his efficiency rating yet must compete for his attention with other necessary duties that were so recognized. finally, the successful use of voluntary compliance techniques depended on the implied threat of legal or economic pressures, yet, for a considerable period following mcnamara's directive, no legal strictures against some forms of discrimination existed, and the use of economic sanctions had been so carefully circumscribed by defense officials as to render the possibility of their use extremely remote. the decision to circumscribe the use of economic sanctions against off-base discrimination made sense. closing a base because of discrimination in nearby communities was practically if not politically impossible and might conceivably become a threat to national security. as to sanctions aimed at specific businesses, the secretary's civil rights assistants feared the possibility that the abrupt or authoritarian imposition of sanctions by an insensitive or unsympathetic commander might sabotage the department's whole equal opportunity program in the community. they were determined to leave the responsibility for sanctions in the hands of senior civilian officials. in the end it was the most senior of these officials who acted. when his attention turned to the problem of discrimination in off-base housing for black servicemen in , secretary mcnamara quickly decided to use sanctions against a discriminatory practice widely accepted and still legal under federal law. the combination of voluntary compliance techniques and economic sanctions, in tandem with the historic civil rights legislation of the mid- 's, succeeded in eliminating most of the off-base discrimination faced by black servicemen. ironically, in view of its unquestioned control in the area, the department of defense failed to achieve an equal success against discrimination within the military establishment itself. complaints concerning the number, promotion, assignment, and punishment of black servicemen, a limited problem in the mid- 's, went mostly unrecognized. relatively speaking, they were ignored by the gesell committee and the civil rights organizations in the face of the more pressing off-base problems and only summarily treated by the services, which remained largely silent about on-base and in-house discrimination. long after off-base discrimination had disappeared as a specific military problem, this neglected on-base discrimination would rise up again to trouble the armed forces in more militant times.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with bennett, dec .] chapter (p.  ) conclusion the defense department's response to the recommendations of the gesell committee marked the close of a well-defined chapter in the racial history of the armed forces. within a single generation, the services had recognized the rights of black americans to serve freely in the defense of their country, to be racially integrated, and to have, with their dependents, equal treatment and opportunity not only on the military reservation but also in nearby communities. the gradual compliance with secretary mcnamara's directives in the mid- 's marked the crumbling of the last legal and administrative barriers to these goals. _why the services integrated_ in retrospect, several causes for the elimination of these barriers can be identified. first, if only for the constancy and fervor of its demands, was the civil rights movement. an obvious correlation exists between the development of this movement and the shift in the services' racial attitudes. the civil rights advocates--that is, those spokesmen of the rapidly proliferating civil rights organizations and their allies in congress, the white house, and the media--formed a pressure group that zealously enlisted political support for equal opportunity measures. their metier was presidential politics. in several elections they successfully traded their political assistance, an unknown quantity, for specific reform. their influence was crucial, for example, in roosevelt's decision to enlist negroes for general service in the world war ii navy and in all branches of the army and in truman's proclamation of equal treatment and opportunity; it was notable in the adjudication of countless discrimination cases involving individual black servicemen both on and off the military base. running through all their demands and expressed more and more clearly during this period was the conviction that segregation itself was discrimination. the success of their campaign against segregation in the armed forces can be measured by the extent to which this proposition came to be accepted in the counsels of the white house and the pentagon. because the demands of the civil rights advocates were extremely persistent and widely heard, their direct influence on the integration of the services has sometimes been overstressed. in fact, for much of the period their most important demands were neutralized by the logical-sounding arguments of those defending the racial _status quo_. more to the point, the civil rights revolution itself swept along some important defense officials. thus the reforms begun by james forrestal and robert mcnamara testified to the indirect but important influence of the civil rights movement. resisting the pressure for change was a solid bloc of officials (p.  ) in the services which held out for the retention of traditional policies of racial exclusion or segregation. professed loyalty to military tradition was all too often a cloak for prejudice, and prejudice, of course, was prevalent in all the services just as it was in american society. at the same time traditionalism simply reflected the natural inclination of any large, inbred bureaucracy to preserve the privileges and order of an earlier time. basically, the military traditionalists--that is, most senior officials and commanders of the armed forces and their allies in congress--took the position that black servicemen were difficult to train and undependable in battle. they cited the performance of large black combat units during the world wars as support for their argument. they also rationalized their opposition to integration by saying that the armed forces should not be an instrument of social change and that the services could only reflect the social mores of the society from which they sprang. thus, in their view, integration not only hindered the services' basic mission by burdening them with undependable units and marginally capable men, but also courted social upheaval in military units. eventually reconciled to the integration of military units, many military officials continued to resist the idea that responsibility for equal treatment and opportunity of black servicemen extended beyond the gates of the military reservation. deeply ingrained in the officer corps was the conviction that the role of the military was to serve, not to change, society. to effect social change, the traditionalist argued, would require an intrusion into politics that was by definition militarism. it was the duty of the department of justice and other civilian agencies, not the armed forces, to secure those social changes essential for the protection of the rights of servicemen in the civilian community.[ - ] if these arguments appear to have overlooked the real causes of the services' wartime racial problems and ignored some of the logical implications of truman's equal treatment and opportunity order, they were nevertheless in the mainstream of american military thought, ardently supported, and widely proclaimed. [footnote - : speaking at a later date on this subject, former army chief of staff j. lawton collins observed that "when we look about us and see the deleterious effects of military interference in civilian governments throughout ... many other areas of the world, we can be grateful that american military leaders have generally stuck to their proper sphere." see memo, collins for osd historian, aug , copy in cmh.] the story of integration in the armed forces has usually, and with some logic, been told in terms of the conflict between the "good" civil rights advocates and the "bad" traditionalists. in fact, the history of integration goes beyond the dimensions of a morality play and includes a number of other influences both institutional and individual. [illustration: vietnam patrol. _men of the th infantry advance during "operation baker."_] the most prominent of these institutional factors were federal legislation and executive orders. after world war ii most americans moved slowly toward acceptance of the proposition that equal treatment and opportunity for the nation's minorities was both just and prudent.[ - ] a drawn-out process, this acceptance was in reality a grudging concession to the promptings of the civil rights movement; translated into federal legislation, it exerted constant pressure (p.  ) on the racial policy of the armed forces. the selective service acts of and , for example, provided an important reason for integrating when, as interpreted by the executive branch, their racial provisions required each service to accept a quota of negroes among its draftees. the services could evade the provisions of the acts for only so long before the influx of black draftees in conjunction with other pressures led to alterations in the old racial policies. truman's order calling for equality of treatment and opportunity in the services was also a major factor in the racial changes that took place in the army in the early 's. to a great extent the dictates of the civil rights laws of and exerted similar pressure on the services and account for the success of the defense department's comprehensive response during the mid- 's to the discrimination faced by servicemen in the local community. [footnote - : for an extended discussion of the moral basis of racial reform, see o'connor's interview with hesburgh, mar .] questions concerning the effect of law on social custom, and particularly the issue of whether government should force social change or await the popular will, are of continuing interest to the sociologist and the political scientist. in the case of the armed forces, a sector of society that habitually recognizes the primacy of authority and law, the answer was clear. ordered to integrate, the members of both races adjusted, though sometimes reluctantly, to a new social relationship. the traditionalists' genuine fear that racial unrest would follow racial mixing proved unfounded. the performance of individual negroes in the integrated units demonstrated that changed social relationships could also produce rapid improvement in individual and group achievement and thus increase military efficiency. furthermore, the successful integration of military units in the 's so raised expectations in the black community that the civil rights leaders would use that success to support their successful campaign in the 's to convince the government that it must impose social change on the community at large.[ - ] [footnote - : for an extended discussion of the law and racial change, see greenberg, _race relations and american law_; charles c. moskos, jr., "racial integration in the armed forces," _american journal of sociology_ (september ): - ; ginzberg, _the negro potential_, pp. - .] paralleling the influence of the law, the quest for military efficiency was another institutional factor that affected the services' racial policies. the need for military efficiency had always been used by the services to rationalize racial exclusion and segregation; later it became the primary consideration in the decision of each service to integrate its units. reinforcing the efficiency argument was the realization by the military that manpower could no longer be considered an inexhaustible resource. world war ii had demonstrated that the federal government dare not ignore the military and industrial potential of any segment of its population. the reality of the limited national manpower pool explained the services' guarantee that negroes would be included in the postwar period as cadres for the full wartime mobilization of black manpower. timing was somewhat dependent on the size and mission of the individual service; integration came to each when it became obvious that black manpower could not be used efficiently in separate organizations. in the case of the largest service, the army, the fahy committee used the (p.  ) failure to train and use eligible negroes in unfilled jobs to convince senior officials that military efficiency demanded the progressive integration of its black soldiers, beginning with those men eligible for specialist duties. the final demonstration of the connection between efficiency and integration came from those harried commanders who, trying against overwhelming odds to fight a war in korea with segregated units, finally began integrating their forces. they found that their black soldiers fought better in integrated units. [illustration: marine engineers in vietnam. _men of the th engineer battalion move culverts into place in a mountain stream during "operation pegasus."_] later, military efficiency would be the rationale for the defense department's fight against discrimination in the local community. the gesell committee was used by adam yarmolinsky and others to demonstrate to secretary mcnamara if not to the satisfaction of skeptical military traditionalists and congressional critics that the need to solve a severe morale problem justified the department's intrusion. appeals to military efficiency, therefore, became the ultimate justification for integrating the units of the armed forces and providing for equal treatment of its members in the community. beyond the demands of the law and military efficiency, the integration of the armed forces was also influenced by certain individuals within the military establishment who personified america's awakening social conscience. they led the services along the road toward (p.  ) integration not because the law demanded it, nor because activists clamored for it, nor even because military efficiency required it, but because they believed it was right. complementing the work of these men and women was the opinion of the american serviceman himself. between and his attitude toward change was constantly discussed and predicted but only rarely solicited by senior officials. actually his opinion at that time is still largely unknown; documentary evidence is scarce, and his recollections, influenced as they are by the intervening years of the civil rights movement, are unreliable. yet it was clearly the serviceman's generally quiet acceptance of new social practices, particularly those of the early 's, that ratified the services' racial reforms. as a perceptive critic of the nation's racial history described conditions in the services in : there was a rising tide of tolerance around the nation at that time. i was thrilled to see it working in the services. whether officers were working for it or not it existed. from time to time you would find an officer imbued with the desire to improve race relations.... it was a marvel to me, in contrast to my recent investigations in the south, to see how well integration worked in the services.[ - ] [footnote - : interv, author with muse, mar .] indeed, it could be argued, american servicemen of the 's became a positive if indirect cause of racial change. by demonstrating that large numbers of blacks and whites could work and live together, they destroyed a fundamental argument of the opponents of integration and made further reforms possible if not imperative. _how the services integrated, - _ the interaction of all these factors can be seen when equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces is considered in two distinct phases, the first culminating in the integration of all active military units in , the second centering around the decision in to push for equal opportunity for black servicemen outside the gates of the military base.[ - ] [footnote - : portions of the following discussion have been published in somewhat different form under the title "armed forces integration--forced or free?" in _the military and society, proceedings of the fifth military symposium_ (u.s. air force academy, ).] the navy was the acknowledged pioneer in integration. its decision during world war ii to assign black and white sailors to certain ships was not entirely a response to pressures from civil rights advocates, although secretary james forrestal relied on his friends in the urban league, particularly lester granger, to teach him the techniques of integrating a large organization. nor was the decision solely the work of racial reformers in the bureau of naval personnel, although this small group was undoubtedly responsible for drafting the regulations that governed the changes in the wartime navy. rather, the navy began integrating its general service because segregation proved painfully inefficient. the decision was largely the result of the impersonal operation of the draft law. although imperfectly applied during the war, the anti-discrimination provision of that law produced a massive infusion of black inductees. the army, with its larger (p.  ) manpower base and expandable black units, could evade the implications of a nondiscrimination clause, but the sheer presence of large numbers of negroes in the service, more than any other force, breached the walls of segregation in the navy. [illustration: loading a rocket launcher. _crewmen of the uss carronade participating in a coordinated gunfire support action near chu lai, vietnam._] the navy experiment with an all-black crew had proved unsatisfactory, and only so many shore-based jobs were considered suitable for large segregated units. bowing to the argument that two navies--one black, one white--were both inefficient and expensive, secretary forrestal began to experiment with integration during the last months of the war and finally announced a policy of integration in february . the full application of this new policy would wait for some years while the navy's traditional racial attitudes warred with its practical desire for efficiency. the air force was the next to end segregation. again, immediate outside influences appeared to be slight. despite the timing of the air force integration directive in early and secretary stuart symington's discussions of the subject with truman and the fahy committee, plans to drop many racial barriers in the air force had already been formulated at the time of the president's equal opportunity order in . nor is there any evidence of special concern among air force officials about the growing criticism of their segregation policy. the record clearly reveals, however, that by late the air staff had become anxious over the manpower requirements of the gillem board report, which enunciated the postwar racial policy that the air force shared with the army. the gillem board report would hardly be classified as progressive by later standards; its provisions for reducing the size of black units and integrating a small number of black specialists were, in a way, an effort to make segregation less wasteful. nevertheless, with all its shortcomings, this postwar policy contained the germ of integration. it committed the army and air force to total integration as a long-range objective, and, more important, it made permanent the wartime policy of allotting percent of the army's strength to negroes. later branded by the civil rights spokesmen as an instrument for limiting black enlistment, the racial quota committed the army and its offspring, the air force, not only to maintaining at least percent black strength but also to assigning black servicemen to all branches and all job categories, thereby significantly weakening (p.  ) the segregated system. although never filled in either service, the quotas guaranteed that a large number of negroes would remain in uniform after the war and thus gave both services an incentive to desegregate. once again the army could postpone the logical consequences of its racial policy by the continued proliferation of its segregated combat and service units. but the new air force almost immediately felt the full force of the gillem board policy, quickly learning that it could not maintain percent black strength separate but equal. it too might have continued indefinitely enlarging the number of service units in order to absorb black airmen. like the army, it might even have ignored the injunction to assign a quota of blacks to every military occupation and to every school. but it was politically impossible for the air force to do away with its black flying units, and it became economically impossible in a time of shrinking budgets and manpower cuts to operate separate flying units for the small group of negroes involved. it was also unfeasible, considering the small number of black rated officers and men, to fill all the positions in the black air units and provide at the same time for the normal rotation and advanced training schedules. facing these difficulties and mindful of the navy's experience with integration, the air force began serious discussion of the integration of its black pilots and crews in , some months before truman issued his order. committed to integrating its air units and rated men in , the air staff quietly enlarged its objectives and broke up all its black units, thereby making the air force the first service to achieve total integration. there were several reasons for this rapid escalation in what was to have been a limited program. as devised by general edwards and colonel marr of the air staff the plan demanded that all black airmen in each command be conscientiously examined so that all might be properly reassigned, further trained, retained in segregated units, or dismissed. the removal of increasing numbers of eligible men from black units only hastened the end of those organizations, a tendency ratified by the trouble-free acceptance of the program by all involved. the integration of the army was more protracted. the truman order in and the fahy committee, the white house group appointed to oversee the execution of that order, focused primarily on the segregated army. there is little doubt that the president's action had a political dimension. given the fact that the army had become a major target of the president's own civil rights commission and that it was a highly visible practitioner of segregation, the equal opportunity order would almost have had to be part of the president's plan to unite the nation's minorities behind his candidacy. the order was also a logical response to the threat of civil disobedience issued by a. philip randolph and endorsed by other civil rights advocates. in a matter of weeks after truman issued his integration order, randolph dropped his opposition to the draft law and his call for a boycott of the draft by negroes. it remained for the fahy committee to translate the president's order into a working program leading toward integration of the army. like randolph and other activists, the committee quickly concluded that segregation was a denial of equal treatment and opportunity and that the executive order, therefore, was essentially a call for the (p.  ) services to integrate. after lengthy negotiations, the committee won from the army an agreement to move progressively toward full integration. gradual integration was disregarded, however, when the army, fighting in korea, was forced by a direct threat to the efficiency of its operations to begin wide-scale mixing of the races. specifically, the proximate reason for the army's integration in the far east was the fact that general ridgway faced a severe shortage of replacements for his depleted white units while accumulating a surplus of black replacements. so pressing was his need that even before permission was received from washington integration had already begun on the battlefield. the reason for the rapid integration of the rest of the army was more complicated. the example of korea was persuasive, as was the need for a uniform policy, but beyond that the rapid modernization of the army was making obsolete the large-scale labor units traditionally used by the army to absorb much of its black quota. with these units disappearing, the army had to find new jobs for the men, a task hopelessly complicated by segregation. the postwar racial policy of the marine corps struck a curious compromise between that of the army and of the navy. adopting the former's system of segregated units and the latter's rejection of the percent racial quota, the corps was able to assign its small contingent of black marines to a few segregated noncombatant duties. but the policy of the corps was only practicable for its peacetime size, as its mobilization for korea demonstrated. even before the army was forced to change, the marine corps, its manpower planners pressed to find trained men and units to fill its divisional commitment to korea, quietly abandoned the rules on segregated service. while progressives cited the military efficiency of integration, traditionalists used the efficiency argument to defend the racial _status quo_. in general, senior military officials had concluded on the basis of their world war ii experience that large black units were ineffective, undependable in close combat, and best suited for supply assignments. whatever their motives, the traditionalists had reached the wrong conclusion from their data. they were correct when they charged that, despite competent and even heroic performance on the part of some individuals and units, the large black combat units had, on average, performed poorly during the war. but the traditionalists failed, as they had failed after world war i, to see the reasons for this poor performance. not the least of these were the benumbing discrimination suffered by black servicemen during training, the humiliations involved in their assignments, and the ineptitude of many of their leaders, who were most often white. above all, the postwar manpower planners drew the wrong conclusion from the fact that the average general classification test scores of men in world war ii black units fell significantly below that of their white counterparts. the scores were directly related to the two groups' relative educational advantages which depended to a large extent on their economic status and the geographic region from which they came. this mental average of servicemen was a unit problem, for at all times the total number of white individuals who scored in low-aptitude categories iv and v greatly outnumbered black individuals in those categories. this greater number of less gifted white (p.  ) servicemen had been spread thinly throughout the services' thousands of white units where they caused no particular problem. the lesser number of negroes with low aptitude, however, were concentrated in the relatively few black units, creating a serious handicap to efficient performance. conversely, the contribution of talented black servicemen was largely negated by their frequent assignment to units with too many low-scoring men. small units composed in the main of black specialists, such as the black artillery and armor units that served in the european theater during world war ii, served with distinction, but these units were special cases where the effect of segregation was tempered by the special qualifications of the carefully chosen men. segregation and not mental aptitude was the key to the poor performance of the large black units in world war ii. [illustration: american sailors _help evacuate vietnamese child_.] postwar service policies ignored these facts and defended segregation in the name of military efficiency. in short, the armed forces had to make inefficiency seem efficient as they explained in paternalistic fashion that segregation was best for all concerned. "in general, the negro is less well educated than his brother citizen that is white," general eisenhower told the senate armed forces committee in , "and if you make a complete amalgamation, what you are going to have is in every company the negro is going to be relegated to the minor jobs ... because the competition is too rough."[ - ] [footnote - : quoted in senate, hearings before the u.s. senate committee on armed services, _universal military training_, th cong., d sess., , pp. - .] competence in a great many skills became increasingly important for servicemen in the postwar period as the trend toward technical complexity and specialization continued in all the services. differences in recruiting gave some services an advantage. the navy and air force, setting stricter standards of enlistment, could fill their ranks with high-scoring volunteers and avoid enlisting large groups of low-scoring men, often black, who were eventually drafted for the army. while this situation helped reduce the traditional opposition to integration in the navy and air force, it made the army more determined to retain separate black units to absorb the large number of low-scoring draftees it was obligated to take. a major factor in the eventual integration of the army--and the single most significant contribution of the secretary of defense to that (p.  ) end--was george marshall's decision to establish a parity of enlistment standards for the services. on the advice of his manpower assistant, anna rosenberg, marshall abolished the special advantage enjoyed by the navy and air force, making all the services share in the recruitment of low-scoring men. the common standard undercut the army's most persuasive argument for restoring a racial quota and maintaining segregated units. [illustration: booby trap victim _from company b, th infantry, resting on buddy's back, awaits evacuation_.] in the years from to , then, several forces converged to bring about integration of the regular armed forces. pressure from the civil rights advocates was one, idealistic leadership another. most important, however, was the services' realization that segregation was an inefficient way to use the manpower provided by a democratic draft law or a volunteer system made democratic by the secretary of defense. each service reached its conclusion separately, since each had a different problem in the efficient use of manpower and each had its own racial traditions. accordingly, the services saw little need to exchange views, develop rivalries, or imitate one another's racial policies. there were two exceptions to this situation: both the army and air force naturally considered the navy's integration experience when they were formulating postwar policies, and the navy and air force fought the army's proposals to experiment with integrated units and institute a parity of enlistment standards. _equal treatment and opportunity_ segregation officially ended in the active armed forces with the announcement of the secretary of defense in that the last all-black unit had been disbanded. in the little more than six years after president truman's order, some quarter of a million blacks had been intermingled with whites in the nation's military units worldwide. these changes ushered in a brief era of good feeling during which the services and the civil rights advocates tended to overlook some forms of discrimination that persisted within the services. this tendency became even stronger in the early 's when the discrimination suffered by black servicemen in local communities dramatized the relative effectiveness of the equal treatment and opportunity policies on military installations. in july , in the wake of another presidential investigation of racial equality (p.  ) in the armed forces, secretary of defense mcnamara outlined a new racial policy. an extension of the forces that had produced the abolition of segregated military units, the new policy also vowed to carry the crusade for equal treatment and opportunity for black servicemen outside the military compound into the civilian community beyond. mcnamara's directive became the model for subsequent racial orders in the defense department. this enlargement of the department's concept of equal treatment and opportunity paralleled the rise of the modern civil rights movement, which was reaching its apogee in the mid- 's. mcnamara later acknowledged the influence of the civil rights activists on his department during this period. but the department's racial progress cannot be explained solely as a reaction to the pressures exerted by the civil rights movement. several other factors lay behind the new and broader policy. the defense department was, for instance, under constant pressure from black officers and men who were not only reporting inequities in the newly integrated services and complaining of the remaining racial discrimination within the military community but were also demanding the department's assistance in securing their constitutional rights from the communities outside the military bases. this was particularly true in the fields of public education, housing, and places of entertainment. the services as well as the defense department's manpower officials resisted these demands and continued in the early 's to limit their racial reforms to those necessary but exclusively internal matters most obviously connected with the efficient operation of their units. reinforcing this resistance was the reluctance on the part of most commanders to break with tradition and interfere in what they considered community affairs. nor had mcnamara's early policy statements in response to servicemen's demands come to grips with the issue of discrimination in the civilian community. at the same time, some reformers in the defense department had allied themselves with like-minded progressives throughout the administration and were searching for a way to carry out president kennedy's commitment to civil rights. these individuals were determined to use the services' early integration successes as a stepping-stone to further civil rights reforms while the administration's civil rights program remained bogged down in congress. although these reformers believed that the armed forces could be an effective instrument of social change for society at large, they clothed their aims in the garb of military efficiency. in fact, military efficiency was certainly mcnamara's paramount concern when he supported the idea of enlarging the scope of his department's racial programs and when in he readily accepted the proposal to appoint the gesell committee to study the services' racial program. the gesell committee easily documented the connection, long suspected by the reformers, between discrimination in the community and poor morale among black servicemen and the link between morale and combat efficiency. more important, with its ability to publicize the extent of discrimination against black servicemen in local communities and to offer practical recommendations for reform, the committee was able (p.  ) to stimulate the secretary into action. yet not until his last years in office, beginning with his open housing campaign in , did mcnamara, who had always championed the stand of adam yarmolinsky and the rest, become a strong participant. mcnamara promptly endorsed the gesell committee's report, which called for a vigorous program to provide equal opportunity for black servicemen, ordering the services to launch such a program in communities near military bases and making the local commander primarily responsible for its success. he soft-pedaled the committee's controversial provision for the use of economic sanctions against recalcitrant businessmen, stressing instead the duty of commanders to press for changes through voluntary compliance. these efforts, according to defense department reports, achieved gratifying results in the next few years. in conjunction with other federal officials operating under provisions of the civil rights act, local commanders helped open thousands of theaters, bowling alleys, restaurants, and bathing beaches to black servicemen. only in the face of continued opposition to open housing by landlords who dealt with servicemen, and then not until , did mcnamara decide to use the powerful and controversial weapon of off-limits sanctions. in short order his programs helped destroy the patterns of segregation in multiple housing in areas surrounding most military bases. the federal government's commitment to civil rights, manifest in supreme court decisions, executive orders, and congressional actions, was an important support for the defense department's racial program during this second part of the integration era. it is doubtful whether many of the command initiatives recommended by the gesell committee would have succeeded or even been tried without the court's school ruling and the civil rights act of . yet in several important instances, such as the mcnamara equal opportunity directive and the open housing campaign in , the department's actions antedated federal action. originally a follower of civilian society in racial matters, the armed forces moved ahead in the 's and by the mid- 's had become a powerful stimulus for change in civilian practices in some areas of the country.[ - ] [footnote - : for a discussion of this point, see yarmolinsky's _the military establishment_, pp. - .] achievements of the services should not detract from the primacy of civil rights legislation in the reforms of the 's. the sudden fall of barriers to black americans was primarily the result of the civil rights acts. but the fact and example of integration in the armed forces was an important cause of change in the communities near military bases. defense officials, prodding in the matter of integrated schooling for dependent children, found the mere existence of successfully integrated on-base schooling a useful tool in achieving similar schooling off-base. the experience of having served in the integrated armed forces, shared by so many young americans, also exercised an immeasurable influence on the changes of the 's. gesell committee member benjamin muse recalled hearing a mississippi hitchhiker say in at the height of the anti-integration, anti-negro fever in that area: "i don't hold with this stuff about 'niggers'. (p.  ) i had a colored buddy in korea, and i want to tell you he was all right."[ - ] [footnote - : quoted in ltr, muse to chief of military history, aug , in cmh.] [illustration: camaraderie. _a soldier of company c, th infantry, lights a cigarette for a marine from d company, th marines, during "operation pegasus" near khe sanh._] in retrospect, the attention paid by defense officials and the services to off-base discrimination in the 's may have been misdirected; many of these injustices would eventually have succumbed to civil rights legislation. certainly more attention could have been paid to the unfinished business of providing equal treatment and opportunity for black servicemen within the military community. discrimination in matters of promotion, assignment, and military justice, overlooked by almost everyone in the early 's, was never treated with the urgency it deserved. to have done so might have averted at least some of the racial turmoil visited on the services in the vietnam era. but these shortcomings merely point to the fact that the services were the only segment of american society to have integrated, however imperfectly, the races on so large a scale. in doing so they demonstrated that a policy of equal treatment and opportunity is more than a legal concept; it also ordains a social condition. between (p.  ) the enunciation of such a policy and the achievement of its goals can fall the shadow of bigotry and the traditional way of doing things. the record indicates that the services surmounted bigotry and rejected the old ways to a gratifying degree. to the extent that they were successful in bringing the races together, their efficiency prospered and the nation's ideal of equal opportunity for all citizens was fortified. unfortunately, the collapse of the legal and administrative barriers to equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces did not lead immediately to the full realization of this ideal. equal treatment and opportunity would remain an elusive goal for the department of defense for years to come. the post- period comprises a new chapter in the racial history of the services. the agitation that followed the mcnamara era had different roots from the events of the previous decades. the key to this difference was suggested during the vietnam war by the kerner commission in its stark conclusion that "our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate but unequal."[ - ] in contrast to the mcnamara period of integration, when civil rights advocates and defense department officials worked toward a common goal, subsequent years would be marked by an often greater militancy on the part of black servicemen and a new kind of friction between a fragmented civil rights movement and the department of defense. clearly, in coping with these problems the services will have to move beyond the elimination of legal and administrative barriers that had ordered their racial concerns between and . [footnote - : _report of the national advisory commission on civil disorders_, p. .] note on sources (p.  ) the search for source materials used in this volume provided the writer with a special glimpse into the ways in which various government agencies have treated what was until recently considered a sensitive subject. most important documents and working papers concerning the employment of black servicemen were, well into the 's and in contrast to the great bulk of personnel policy papers, routinely given a security classification. in some agencies the "secret" or "confidential" stamp was considered sufficient to protect the materials, which were filed and retired in a routine manner and, therefore, have always been readily available to the persistent and qualified researcher. but, as any experienced staff officer could demonstrate, other methods beyond mere classification can be devised to prevent easy access to sensitive material. thus, subterfuges were employed from time to time by officials dealing with racial subjects. in some staff agencies, for example, documents were collected in special files, separated from the normal personnel or policy files. in other instances the materials were never retired in a routine matter, but instead remained for many years scattered in offices of origin or, less often, in some central file system. if some officials appear to have been overly anxious to shield their agency's record, they also, it should be added, possessed a sense of history and the historical import of their work. though the temptation may have been strong within some agencies to destroy papers connected with past controversies, most officials scrupulously preserved not only the basic policy documents concerning this specialized subject, but also much of the back-up material that the historian treasures. the problem for the modern researcher is that these special collections and reserved materials, no longer classified and no longer sensitive, have fallen, largely unnoted, into a sea of governmental paper beyond the reach of the archivist's finding aids. the frequently expressed comment of the researcher, "somebody is withholding something," should, for the sake of accuracy, be changed to "somebody has lost track of something." this material might never have been recovered without the skilled assistance of the historical offices of the various services and office of the secretary of defense. at times their search for lost documents assumed the dimensions of a detective story. in partnership with marine corps historian ralph donnelly, for example, the author finally traced the bulk of the world war ii racial records of the marine corps to an obscure and unmarked file in the classified records section of marine corps headquarters. a comprehensive collection of official documents on the employment of black personnel in the navy between and was unearthed, not in the official archives, but in a dusty file cabinet in the bureau of naval personnel's management information division. the search also had its frustrations, for some materials seem (p.  ) permanently lost. despite persistent and imaginative work by the coast guard's historian, truman strobridge, much of the documentary record of that service's world war ii racial history could not be located. the development of the coast guard's policy has had to be reconstructed, painstakingly and laboriously, from other sources. the records of many army staff agencies for the period - were destroyed on the assumption that their materials were duplicated in the adjutant general's files, an assumption that frequently proved to be incorrect. although generally intact, the navy's records of the immediate post-world war ii period also lack some of the background staff work on the employment of black manpower. fortunately for this writer, the recent, inadvertent destruction of the bulk of the bureau of naval personnel's classified wartime records occurred after the basic research for this volume had been completed, but this lamentable accident will no doubt cause problems for future researchers. thanks to the efforts of the services' historical offices and the wonder of photocopying, future historians may be spared some of the labor connected with the preparation of this volume. most of the records surviving outside regular archives have been identified and relocated for easy access. copies of approximately percent of all documents cited in this volume have been collected and are presently on file in the center of military history, from which they will be retired for permanent preservation. _official archival material_ the bulk of the official records used in the preparation of this volume is in the permanent custody of the national archives and records service, washington, d.c. the records of most military agencies for the period - are located in the modern military records branch or in the navy and old army branch of the national archives proper. most documents dated after , along with military unit records (including ships' logs), are located in the general archives division in the washington national records center, suitland, maryland. the suitland center also holds the other major group of official materials, that is, all those documents still administered by the individual agencies but stored in the center prior to their screening and acquisition by the national archives. these records are open to qualified researchers, but access to them is controlled by the records managers of the individual agencies, a not altogether felicitous arrangement for the researcher, considering the bulk of the material and its lack of organization. the largest single group of materials consulted were those of the various offices of the army staff. although these agencies have abandoned the system of classifying all documents by a decimal-subject system, the system persisted in many offices well into the 's, thereby enabling the researcher to accomplish a speedy, if unrefined, screening of pertinent materials. even with this crutch, the researcher must still comb through thousands of documents created by the secretary of war (later secretary of the army), his assistant secretary, the chief of staff, and the various staff divisions, (p.  ) especially the personnel (g- ), organization and training (g- ), and operations divisions, together with the offices of the adjutant general, the judge advocate general, and the inspector general. the war department special planning division's files are an extremely important source, especially for postwar racial planning, as are the records of the three world war ii major commands, the army ground, service, and air forces. although illuminating in regard to the problem of racial discrimination, the records of the office of the secretary's civilian aide are less important in terms of policy development. finally, the records of the black units, especially the important body of documents related to the tribulations of the d infantry division in world war ii and the th infantry regiment in korea, are also vital sources for this subject. the records managers in the office of the secretary of defense also used the familiar . classification to designate materials related to the subject of negroes. (an exception to this generalization were the official papers of the secretary's office during the forrestal period when a navy file system was generally employed.) the most important materials on the subject of the defense department's racial interests are found in the records of the office of the secretary of defense. the majority of these records, including the voluminous files of the assistant secretary (manpower) so helpful for the later sections of the study, have remained in the custody of the department and are administered by the office of the deputy assistant secretary of defense (administration). after the office of the deputy assistant secretary (civil rights) and its successor organizations loom as a major source. many of the official papers were eventually filed with those of the assistant secretary (manpower) or have been retained in the historical files of the equal opportunity office of the secretary of defense. the records of the personnel policy board and the office of the general counsel, both part of the files of the office of the secretary of defense, are two more important sources of materials on black manpower. a subject classification system was not universally applied in the navy department during the 's and even where used proved exceedingly complicated. the records of the office of the secretary of the navy are especially strong in the world war ii period, but they must be supplemented with the national archives' separate forrestal papers file. despite the recent loss of records, the files of the bureau of naval personnel remain the primary source for documents on the employment of black personnel in the navy. research in all these files, even for the world war ii period, is best begun in the records management offices of those two agencies. more readily accessible, the records of the chief of naval operations and the general board, both of considerable importance in understanding the navy's world war ii racial history, are located in the operational archives branch, naval historical division, washington navy yard. this office has recently created a special miscellaneous file containing important documents of interest to the researcher on racial matters that have been gleaned from various sources not easily available to the researcher. copies of all known staff papers concerning black marines and the (p.  ) development of the marine corps' equal opportunity program during the integration period have been collected and filed in the reference section of the director of marine corps history and museums, headquarters, u.s. marine corps. likewise, most of the very small selection of extant official coast guard records on the employment of negroes have been identified and collected by the coast guard historian. the log of the _sea cloud_, the first coast guard vessel in modern times to boast a racially mixed crew, is located in the archives branch at suitland. the air force has retained control of a significant portion of its postwar personnel records, and the researcher would best begin work in the office of the administrative assistant, secretary of the air force. this office has custody of the files of the secretary of the air force, his assistant secretaries, the office of the chief of staff, and the staff agencies pertinent to this story, especially the deputy chief of staff, personnel, and the director of military personnel. the records of black air units, as well as the extensive and well-indexed collection of official unit and base histories and studies and reports of the air staff that touch on the service's racial policies, are located in the albert f. simpson historical research center, maxwell afb, alabama. these records are supplemented, and sometimes duplicated, by the holdings of the suitland records center and the office of air force history, boiling air force base, washington, d.c. other air force files of interest, particularly in the area of policy planning, can be found in the holdings of the national archives' modern military branch. the records of the selective service system also provide some interesting material, but most of this has been published by the selective service in its _special groups_ (special monograph number , vols. [washington: government printing office, ]). far more important are the records of the war manpower commission, located in the national archives, which, when studied in conjunction with the papers of the secretaries of war and navy, reveal the influence of the draft law on the services' racial policies. _personal collections_ the official records of the integration of the armed forces are not limited to those documents retired by the governmental agencies. parts of the story must also be gleaned from documents that for various reasons have been included in the personal papers of individuals. documents created by government officials, as well as much unofficial material of special interest, are scattered in a number of institutional or private repositories. probably the most noteworthy of these collections is the papers of the president's committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces (the fahy committee) in the harry s. truman library. in addition to this central source, the truman library also contains materials contributed by philleo nash, oscar chapman, and clark clifford, whose work in the white house was intimately, if briefly, concerned with armed forces integration. the president's own papers, especially the recently opened white house secretary's file, contain a number of important (p.  ) documents. documents of special interest can also be found in the roosevelt papers at the franklin d. roosevelt library and among the various white house files preserved in the dwight d. eisenhower library. the central white house file in the john f. kennedy library, along with the papers of harris wofford and gerhard gesell, are essential to the history of equal opportunity in the early 's. most of these collections are well indexed. the james v. forrestal papers, princeton university library, while helpful in tracing the urban league's contribution to the navy's integration policy, lack the focus and comprehensiveness of the forrestal papers in the national archives' office of the secretary of the navy file. another collection of particular interest for the naval aspects of the story is the dennis d. nelson papers, in the custody of the nelson family in san diego, california, with a microfilm copy on file in the navy's operational archives branch in washington. the heart of this collection is the materials nelson gathered while writing "the integration of the negro in the united states navy, - ," a u.s. navy monograph prepared in . the nelson collection also contains a large group of newspaper clippings and other rare secondary materials of special interest. the maxie m. berry papers, in the custody of the equal opportunity officer of the u.s. coast guard headquarters, offer a rare glimpse into the life of black coast guardsmen during world war ii, especially those assigned to the all-black pea island station, north carolina. the u.s. army military history research collection at carlisle barracks, pennsylvania, has acquired the papers of james c. evans, the long-time civilian aide to the secretaries of war and defense, and those of lt. gen. alvan c. gillem, jr., the chairman of the army's special personnel board that bears his name. the evans materials contain a rare collection of clippings and memorandums on integration in the armed forces; the gillem papers are particularly interesting for the summaries of testimony before the gillem board. the papers of the national association for the advancement of colored people in the manuscript division, library of congress, are useful, especially if used in conjunction with that library's arthur b. spingarn papers, in assessing the role of the civil rights leaders in bringing about black participation in world war ii. the collection of secondary materials on negroes in the armed forces in the schomburg collection, new york public library, however, is disappointing, considering the prominence of that institution. finally, the u.s. army center of military history, washington, d.c., has on file those materials collected by the author in the preparation of this volume, including not only those items cited in the footnotes, but also copies of hundreds of official documents and correspondence with various participants, together with the unique body of documents and notes collected by lee nichols in his groundbreaking research on integration. of particular importance among the documents in the center of military history are copies of many bureau of naval personnel documents, the originals of which have since been destroyed, as well as copies of the bulk of the papers produced by the fahy committee. _interviews_ (p.  ) the status of black servicemen in the integration era has attracted considerable attention among oral history enthusiasts. the author has taken advantage of this special source, but oral testimony concerning integration must be treated cautiously. in addition to the usual dangers of fallible memory that haunt all oral history interviews, the subjects of some of these interviews, it should be emphasized, were separated from the events they were recalling by a civil rights revolution that has changed fundamentally the attitudes of many people, both black and white. in some instances it is readily apparent that the recollections of persons being interviewed have been colored by the changes of the 's and 's, and while their recitation of specific events can be checked against the records, their estimates of attitudes and influences, not so easily verified, should be used cautiously. much of this danger can be avoided by a skillful interviewer with special knowledge of integration. because of the care that went into the interviews conducted in the u.s. air force oral history program, which are on file at the albert f. simpson historical research center, they are particularly dependable. this is especially true of those used in this study, for they were conducted by lt. col. alan gropman and maj. alan osur, both serious students of the subject. particular note should be made of the especially valuable interviews with former secretary of the air force eugene m. zuckert and several of the more prominent black generals. the extensive columbia university oral history collection has several interviews of special interest, in particular the very revealing interview with the national urban league's lester granger. read in conjunction with the national archives' forrestal papers, this interview is a major source for the navy's immediate postwar policy changes. similarly, the kennedy library's oral history program contains several interviews that are helpful in assessing the role of the services in the kennedy administration's civil rights program. of particular interest are the interviews with harris wofford, roy wilkins, and theodore hesburgh. the u.s. marine corps oral history program, whose interviews are on file in marine corps headquarters, and the u.s. navy oral history collection, copies of which can be found in the navy's operational archives branch, contain several interviews of special interest to researchers in racial history. mention should be made of the marine corps interviews with generals ray a. robinson and alfred g. noble and the navy's interviews with captains mildred mcafee horton and dorothy stratton, leaders of the world war ii waves and spars. finally, included in the files of the center of military history is a collection of notes taken by lee nichols, martin blumenson, and the author during their interviews with leading figures in the integration story. the nichols notes, covering the series of interviews conducted by that veteran reporter in - , include such items as summaries of conversations with harry s. truman, truman k. gibson, jr., and emmett j. scott. _printed materials_ (p.  ) many of the secondary materials found particularly helpful by the author have been cited throughout the volume, but special attention should be drawn to certain key works in several categories. in the area of official works, ulysses lee's _the employment of negro troops_ in the united states army in world war ii series (washington: government printing office, ) remains the definitive account of the negro in the world war ii army. the bureau of naval personnel's "the negro in the navy," bureau of naval personnel history of world war ii (mimeographed, , of which there is a copy in the bureau's technical library in washington), is a rare item that has assumed even greater significance with the loss of so much of the bureau's records. presented without attribution, the text paraphrases many important documents accurately. margaret l. geis's "negro personnel in the european command, january - june ," part of the occupation forces in europe series (historical division, european command, ), ronald sher's "integration of negro and white troops in the u.s. army, europe, - " (historical division, headquarters, u.s. army, europe, ), and charles g. cleaver, "personnel problems," vol. iii, pt. , of the "history of the korean war" (military history section, headquarters, far east command, ), are important secondary sources for guiding the student through a bewildering mass of materials. alan m. osur's _blacks in the army air forces during world war ii: the problem of race relations_ (washington: government printing office, ) and alan gropman's _the air force integrates, - _ (washington: government printing office, ), both published by the office of air force history, and henry i. shaw, jr., and ralph w. donnelly's _blacks in the marine corps_ (washington: government printing office, ) provided official, comprehensive surveys of their subjects. finally, there is in the files of the center of military history a copy of the transcripts of the national defense conference on negro affairs ( april ). second only to the transcripts of the fahy committee hearings in comprehensiveness on the subject of postwar racial policies, this document also provides a rare look at the attitudes of the traditional black leadership at a crucial period. as the footnotes indicate, congressional documents and newspapers were also important resources mined in the preparation of this volume. of particular interest, the center of military history has on file a special guide to some of these sources prepared by lt. col. reinhold s. schumann (usar). this guide analyzes the congressional and press reaction to the and draft laws and to the fahy and gesell committee reports. in his _blacks and the military in american history: a new perspective_ (new york: praeger, ), jack d. foner provides a fine general survey of the negro in the armed forces, including an accurate summary of the integration period. among the many specialized studies on the integration period itself, cited throughout the text, several might provide a helpful entree to a complicated subject. the standard account is richard m. dalfiume's _desegregation of the_ _united (p.  ) states armed forces: fighting on two fronts, - _ (columbia, missouri: university of missouri press, ). carefully documented and containing a very helpful bibliography, this work tends to emphasize the influence of the civil rights advocates and harry truman on the integration process. the reader will also benefit from consulting lee nichols's pioneer work, _breakthrough on the color front_ (new york: random house, ). although lacking documentation, nichols's journalistic account was devised with the help of many of the participants and is still of considerable value to the student. the reader may also want to consult richard j. stillman ii's short survey, _integration of the negro in the u.s. armed forces_ (new york: praeger, ), principally for its statistical information on the post-korean period. the role of president truman and the fahy committee in the integration of the armed forces has been treated in detail by dalfiume and by donald r. mccoy and richard t. ruetten in _quest and response: minority rights and the truman administration_ (lawrence, kansas: the university of kansas press, ). a valuable critical appraisal of the short-range response of the army to the fahy committee's work appeared in edwin w. kenworthy's "the case against army segregation," _annals of the american academy of political and social science_ (may ): - . in addition, the reader may want to consult william c. berman's _the politics of civil rights in the truman administration_ (columbus: ohio state university press, ) for a general survey of civil rights in the truman years. the expansion of the defense department's equal treatment and opportunity policy in the 's is explained by adam yarmolinsky in _the military establishment: its impacts on american society_ (new york: harper & row, ). this book is the work of a number of informed specialists sponsored by the th century fund. a general survey of president kennedy's civil rights program is presented by carl m. brauer in his _john f. kennedy and the second reconstruction_ (new york: columbia university press, ). the mcnamara era is treated in fred richard bahr's "the expanding role of the department of defense as an instrument of social change" (ph.d. dissertation, george washington university, ). concerning the rise of the civil rights movement itself, the reader would be advised to consult c. vann woodward's masterful _the strange career of jim crow_, d ed. rev. (new york: oxford university press, ), and the two volumes composed by gesell committee member benjamin muse, _ten years of prelude: the story of integration since the supreme court's decision_ (new york: the viking press, ), and _the american negro revolution: from nonviolence to black power, - _ (bloomington: university of indiana press, ). important aspects of the civil rights movement and its influence on american servicemen are discussed by jack greenberg in _race relations and american law_ (new york: columbia university press, ) and eli ginzberg, _the negro potential_ (new york: columbia university press, ). finally, many of the documents supporting the history of the integration of the armed forces, including complete transcripts of the fahy committee hearings and the conference on negro affairs, have (p.  ) been compiled by the author and bernard c. nalty in the multivolumed _blacks in the united states armed forces: basic documents_ (wilmington: scholarly resources, ). index (p.  ) aberdeen proving ground, md., . action coordinating committee to end segregation in the suburbs (access), , _n_. adler, julius ochs, . advisory committee on negro troop policies (mccloy committee), - , , - , , , . advisory commission on universal training (compton commission), . ailes, stephen, . _air force times_, . air forces second, ; third, ; fourth, ; ninth, . air training command, , . air transport command, . air transport wing, st, . airborne division, d, - , . alaskan command, integration of, . alaskan department, , . alexander, sadie t. m., , _n_. almond, lt. gen. edward m., , , - . american civil liberties union, , . american legion, . american veterans committee, , , , . anderson, robert b., - , - . andrews air force base, md., - . anti-defamation league of b'nai b'rith, , . antiaircraft artillery battalion, d (usmc), . antilles department, . arkansas a&m normal college, . armed forces, negroes in before , - . armed forces qualification test, - , , , _see also_ intelligence levels and test scores. armies first, ; sixth, ; seventh, , - , , ; eighth, - , , - , - , - . armored division, d, . armored field artillery battalion, th, . armstrong, lt. comdr. daniel, . army air forces efficiency, military, and segregation in, - , - ; enlistment practices, ; manpower shortages, black, - ; morale in, - ; officer training schools, integration of, ; officers, black, - , - ; postwar assignments, - , - , , , ; quotas, - , ; racial policies, - , - , - ; training in, , - . army forces, pacific, . army general classification test (agct), - , , _n_, - , - , - , - ; _see also_ intelligence levels and test scores. army ground forces, , ; and assignments, - , ; and postwar location of training camps, - ; and postwar use of black troops, - , . army groups, th and th, - . army service forces, ; and postwar quotas, , ; and postwar use of black troops, - , - . _army talk_, , . arnold, maj. gen. henry h., , , . assignments, air force postwar, - ; and reassignments during integration, - , . assignments, armed forces and civilian community attitudes, , - , - , - ; and embassy and special mission, , - ; and occupational distribution, - , - ; and overseas restrictions, , , - . assignments, army and fahy committee, - ; and korean war, - ; postwar, - ; in world war ii, - , - , - , - . assignments, coast guard, - . assignments, marine corps and integration order, - ; postwar, , - , - , - ; in world war ii, , - . assignments, navy postwar, - ; in world war ii, - , - , - , . attitudes, change in toward negroes, - , , . attorney general, , . availability of facilities to military personnel, the, - . bainbridge naval training center, md., , , , . baker, newton d., - . baldwin, hanson w., , . bard, ralph a., , - , . bare, maj. gen. robert o., - . barr, col. john e., - . base service squadron, th, . battle mountain, korea, . bayonne, n.j. (naval shipyard), - . bennett, l. howard, _n_, . benton, william, _n_. berthoud, d lt. kenneth h., jr., . bethune, mary mcleod, _n_. biggs air force base, texas, . billikopf, jacob, . blood banks, segregated, . blytheville, ark., . bolte, maj. gen. charles l., . bombardment group, th, - , , . bradley, general omar n., , ; and fahy committee, - , ; and a segregated army, - , - , , . branch, d lt. frederick, . bremerhaven, germany, . broad, stuart, _n_. brookley air force base, ala., . brooks, lt. gen. edward h., . brown, edgar g., . brown, ens. jessie, . brown, john nicholas, , , - , . brown, ens. wesley a., , . _brown_ v. _board of education_, , , . brownell, herbert, jr., . browning, charles, _n_. bull, maj. gen. harold r., , . buress, maj. gen. withers a., _n_. burgess, carter l., . burley, dan, _n_. burns, maj. gen. james h., . byrd, robert c., . caffey, brig. gen. benjamin f., . _calypso_, . camp barry, ill., . camp campbell, ky., . camp geiger, n.c., . camp hanford, wash., . camp lejeune, n.c., , . camp perry, va., . camp robert smalls, ill., , , . _campbell_, . career guidance program (war department), - . carey, james b., _n_. caribbean defense command, . carlton, sgt. cornelius h., . cates, general clifton b., - , - . cavalry division, d, - , _n_, , . cavalry regiments, th and th, , - , , , . cemeteries, national, - . chamberlain, col. edwin w., - . chamberlin, lt. gen. stephen j., . chamberlin board, - , , . charleston, s.c. (shipyard), , . charyk, joseph v., . _chemung_, . cherokee, charlie, . chicago _defender_, , . chicago _tribune_, . chief of staff. _see_ eisenhower, general of the army dwight d. chile, . china, , . ch'ongch'on river line, . civil rights act of , , - , , . civil rights demonstrations, participation of servicemen in, - , . civil rights legislation ( - ), , , - , , - . civil rights movement, ; and armed forces before world war ii, - ; and armed forces during world war ii, - , , , - ; and department of defense, - , - ; and eisenhower, - , ; and johnson, - , ; and kennedy, , , - , - , , , , ; and off-base discrimination, , - , - ; post-world war ii, - ; and postwar use of negroes in armed forces, - , ; prior to world war ii, - ; and roosevelt, , - ; and truman, , , - , - , _n_, . civil rights subcabinet group ( ), - . civilian aide to secretary of war for negro affairs. _see_ gibson, truman k., jr., hastie, william h.; ray, marcus h.; scott, emmett j. civilian communities. _see also_ committee on equality of opportunity in the armed forces (gesell committee). and assignment of black personnel, , - , - , - ; and off-base discrimination, , , - , , - , - ; and off-base discrimination overseas, - , ; and racial incidents, , , - , . clark, general mark w., , - , . clay, lt. gen. lucius d., . clifford, clark m., - , , . colley, nathaniel s., , . collins, general j. lawton and the fahy committee, - ; and integration of the army, - , , , , - , , _n_. combat service group, d, . _command of negro troops_, - . commerce, department of, . commission of inquiry ( ), - . committee against jim crow in military service and training, , , . committee on civil rights ( ), - . committee on equal employment opportunity ( ), . committee on equality of opportunity in the armed forces (gesell committee), - ; conclusions of, - , , - ; congressional opposition to, - ; and dod directive . issued, ; and final report, - ; and local commanders' responsibilities, , - , , ; and off-limits sanctions, - , - , , ; operations of, - ; reactions to, - ; recommendations of, - , . committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces (fahy committee), - , , - ; and the air force, , - , , - , - ; and army assignments, - ; and army opposition to recommendations, - ; and army proposals and counterproposals, - ; and army quotas, , - , - ; assessment of, - ; and department of defense racial policy, - ; and enlistment standards, - ; and initial recommendations, - ; and military efficiency in the army, - , , ; and the navy, , - , , - ; purpose of, - . committee for negro participation in the national defense program ( ), . committee on negro personnel (navy), - , . community facilities, integrated, availability of for servicemen, - . composite group, th, , . composite units in the army, - ; in the marine corps, - , . congress of racial equality (core), , , . construction battalion, th, . contract compliance program, _n_. cooke, brig. gen. elliot d., . crabb, brig. gen. jarred v., . craig, maj. gen. lewis a., - . craig air force base, ala., , . crime and disease rates, - , , . _crisis, the_, , , , . daniels, jonathan, , . darden, colgate, . darden, capt. thomas f., . davenport, roy k., , , - , , - , , - , _n_, . davis, col. benjamin o., jr., , - , , , , . davis, brig. gen. benjamin o., sr., , , , , , . davis, dowdal h., _n_, . davis, john w., _n_. dawson, donald s., - , . dawson william l., . defense, department of, - ; and basic regulations on equal opportunity, , ; and civil rights, - , - ; and civilian communities, , - , , - , - ; and discrimination in the services, 's, - , - , ; and discrimination within the services, 's, - ; and equal opportunity directive, , - , - , , - ; and field of community race relations, - ; and integration of dependents' schools, - , - , ; and off-base discrimination, - , - , - ; and off-base housing, - , - , , - , ; and off-limits sanctions, - , - , - , - , , - , , ; and organization of a civil rights office, - ; and overseas assignments, - ; and racial designations, - , - ; and voluntary compliance programs, - , - , - , - , . _see also_ committee on equality of opportunity in the armed forces (gesell committee); committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces (fahy committee). defense appropriations act, . defense battalions st (composite), , - ; d, - , . denfeld, admiral louis e., - . depot companies d medium ; th and th, . dern, george h., . desegregation. _see_ integration _of the four services_. detroit _free press_, - . devers, general jacob l., , , - . devoe, lt. (jg.) edith, . devoto, bernard, - . dewey, thomas e., , . dickey, john s., _n_. diggs, charles c., jr., , - , , . dillon, lt. comdr. charles e., . dillon, douglas, . discipline. _see_ crime and disease rates. discrimination, racial. _see also_ civilian communities; committee on equality of opportunity in the armed forces (gesell committee); integration _of the four services_; racial policies _of the four services_. and complaints of in the 's, - , , - , , , - ; and u.s. commission on civil rights study of ( ), - . disease rates. _see_ crime and disease rates. _district of columbia_ v. _john r. thompson co._, . divine, maj. gen. john m., _n_. divisions. _see_ airborne division, d; armored division, d; cavalry division, d; infantry divisions; marine divisions; national guard divisions, th and th. dod directive . , - , - , , - . donahue, alphonsus j., . double v campaign, , , . draper, william h., jr., . drew, charles r., . dubois, william e. b., , . dutton, frederick g., , , . eaker, lt. gen. ira c., - , . earle naval ammunition depot, n.j., , - . early, stephen, . eberstadt, ferdinand, . _ebony_, , . eddy, lt. gen. manton s., . edgewood arsenal, md., . education program, eucom, - . educational backgrounds, - , , , , - , - . edwards, daniel k., . edwards, lt. gen. idwal h. and continued segregation in the air force, - ; and integration plan of , - , , - , ; and overseas restrictions, ; and army postwar racial policy, , . efficiency, military, and segregation, , , , - ; in the air force, , - , - ; in the army, , , - , - , , - , - , ; in the marine corps, , - , - ; in the navy, - , - , - . eisenhower, general of the army dwight d., , , ; and the army's racial policy, - , , ; and civil rights movement, - , ; and federal intervention, , , ; and gillem board report, ; and integration of dependents' schools, - , , - ; and negro infantry training, - . ellender, allen j., . engineer battalion, th, , . engineer combat company, th, . engineers, chief of, - . eniwetok, . enlistment in armed forces, 's, and black indifference, - . enlistment practices in the air force, , , - ; in the army, - , , , - , - , , , - ; in the coast guard, , - ; in the marine corps, - , , - ; in the navy, - , - , , , - , - , - . enlistment standards and the fahy committee, - ; and interservice controversy over in , - ; and qualitative distribution program, - , - . equal opportunity in the 's. _see also_ executive order . in the air force, , ; in the armed forces; assessments of, - , - ; and dod directive . , - , - , , - ; in the army, - ; and executive order , - , ; in the marine corps, ; in the navy, - . ernst, morris l., _n_. ethiopia and the assignment of american servicemen, - . ethridge, mark, - . european command, , , , _n_; and education program, - ; and integration of, - . evans, james c. and dod racial policies, , , - , , , _n_; and foreign assignment of negroes, ; and integration of naval shipyards, , ; and new civil rights office, ; and off-base discrimination, - , , - ; and racial designations, , - . evans, joseph, . ewing, oscar, - , . executive order , . executive order , , - , ; and immediate effect on the air force, - ; and immediate effect on the army, - ; and immediate effect on the marine corps, - ; and immediate effect on the navy, - ; limitations on, - ; public reactions to, - . executive order , - , . executive order , , . fahy, charles, , - , - , - , - , , _n_, . fahy committee. _see_ committee on equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces (fahy committee). fair employment practices commission, , - , . fairchild, general muir s., . faix, capt. thomas l., . falgout, . far east command, , , , , - . farmer, james, . fay, paul b., jr., , - , - . fechteler, rear adm. william m., . federal housing authority, - , , . ferguson, homer, . fighter group, d, , . fighter squadron, th, , . fighter wing, d, - , - , . finkle, lee, . finletter, thomas k., - . finucane, charles c., . fish, hamilton, - . fitt, alfred b. and assignments, - ; and dependents' schools, - ; and effort to attract black officer candidates, - ; as first civil rights deputy, _n_, , - , - , _n_, , ; and gesell committee, - ; and racial designations, - ; and voluntary action programs, - , - , . foner, jack, . forrestal, james v., , , , ; and changes in navy's policy, - , - , - , , - , , - , , - ; and executive order , , ; and fahy committee, - , , ; and integration approach as secretary of defense, , - , - , , - , - , , ; and postwar policy aims, - , , , - . fort belvoir, va., , . fort benning, ga., , , . fort bliss, tex., . fort bragg, n. c., . fort dix, n. j., , - , - . fort george g. meade, md., , . fort holabird, md., . fort hood, tex., - . fort jackson, s. c., - , . fort knox, ky., , , , . fort leavenworth, kans., - . fort lee, va., , . fort lewis, wash., . fort mifflin, pa., , . fort ord, calif., - , . fort snelling national cemetery, minn., . fortas, abe, . fowler, maj. james d., - , . francis, h. minton, _n_. _freedom to serve_, , . freeman, douglas southall, . freeman, general paul, . freeman field, ind., , , . fulbright, j. william, . garrison, lloyd k., . garvey, marcus, . german army and segregated units, _n_. gesell, gerhard a., - , - , , - , , . gesell committee. _see_ committee on equality of opportunity in the armed forces (gesell committee). gibson, truman k., jr., , , , - , - , - , , , - , _n_, , , _n_. gillem, lt. gen. alvan c., jr., - , . gillem board, - , - , - , , , ; and attitudes toward new policy, - ; conclusions and recommendations of, - , - , - , , ; and reactions to recommendations, - . gilliam, jerry, . gillmor, reginald e., . gilpatric, roswell l., , - , , , , _n_. ginzberg, eli, - . gittelsohn, roland b., _n_. godman field, ky., , . goldwater, barry m., . goode, james p., , . grafenwohr training center, germany, . graham, annie n., . graham, frank p., _n_, . granger, lester b., , , , , - , ; and fahy committee, - , ; and inspection of black units, - ; and racial problems of department of defense, - , , , , , - ; and recommendations to navy department, - , - , - , - , ; and reforms in steward's branch, , - , ; and shortage of black officers, , . gravely, lt. comdr. samuel l., jr., , _n_, . gray, gordon and fahy committee, , - , - , - ; and integration of the army, - . great britain, - . great falls air force base, mont., . great lakes training center, ill., , , , , . greenland, , . gregg, bishop j. w., _n_. gross, h. r., . gruenther, general alfred m., . guam and black marines at, , , - , ; and race riot at, - . _guide to the command of negro naval personnel_, - . haas, francis j., _n_. hague, rear adm. w. mcl., . haislip, general wade h., - , , . halaby, najeeb, - . hall, lt. gen. charles p., - , . hall, durward g., . hampton institute, va., - . handy, general thomas t., , - . hannah, john a., - , , , . harper, robert, . _harper_ v. _virginia board of elections_, . hastie, william h., - , , , , - , , , , _n_. havenner, franck r., . hawaii, , . hayes, arthur garfield, . healey, capt. michael, _n_. health, education, and welfare, department of, , , - . hebert, f. edward, . hector, louis, . heinz, comdr. luther c., . hershey, maj. gen. lewis b., , , . hesburgh, father theodore, . hewes, laurence i., iii, , . hill, maj. gen. jim dan, - . hill, lister, , . hill, t. arnold, , . hillenkoetter, capt. roscoe h., . hingham, mass., - . hobby, oveta culp, - . hodes, maj. gen. henry i., - . holcomb, maj. gen. thomas, , - , - . holifield, chet, . holloway, vice adm. james l., jr., - . holloway program, . holmes, john haynes, . hope, lt. comdr. edward, . _hoquim_, - . housing, off-base, - , , , , ; and department of defense, - , , - , , - , ; in washington, d.c. area, - . houston, charles h., , _n_. huebner, lt. gen. clarence r., - , , - . huff, sgt. maj. edgar r., . hull, lt. gen. john e., . humphrey, hubert h., , , . hunter college naval training school, n.y., . iceland, , , - . infantry battalions d of th infantry, ; d of th infantry, ; th, ; th and st (separate), _n_. infantry divisions st, , ; d, ; d, ; th, ; th, ; th, ; th, ; th, ; d, , , , , , , - , - , ; d, , , , - , . infantry regiments th, ; th, ; th, , , , , - , - , ; th, , , , ; th, ; th, ; th, ; th, ; th, ; th, . installation group, d, . integration of the air force directive for ( ), - ; and the fahy committee, , ; and local commanders' responsibilities, - ; plan for in , - , , - ; and reassignment of black airmen, - , ; and screening at lockbourne field, - ; and social situations, - ; success of, - , - . integration of the army and continental army commands, - ; in the eighth army, - ; and the european command, - ; and military efficiency, - ; in officer training schools, - , ; and performance of th infantry regiment, - ; in platoons, - ; and review of racial policy ( ), - ; and social situations, , , ; success of, - , - ; and training units, - . integration of the coast guard, - . integration of the marine corps and assignments of negroes, - ; and black reservists, - ; and the korean war, - , ; new racial policy for ( ), - ; and recruit training, - ; and the steward's branch, - . integration of the navy in the fleet, - , - , - , - ; new plan for in , - ; and recruitment of negroes, - ; and shipyards, - ; and the steward's branch, - . intelligence levels and test scores, , , - , , - , , , - , - , - , , - . interstate commerce commission, , , . investigations on conduct of black soldiers, - . jackson, stephen s., , . jacobs, rear adm. randall, - , , , . james, lt. gen. daniel (chappie), jr., . james connally air force base, tex., . javits, jacob k., - , . jenkins, ens. joseph c., . johnson, col. campbell c., , . johnson, earl d., , , , - . johnson, john h., _n_. johnson, louis a. and fahy committee, , - , - , - , , ; as secretary of defense, - , - , - , . johnson, lyndon b., and civil rights legislation, - , ; and gesell committee, , . johnson, mordecai, , , _n_. jones, col. richard l., . _jones_ v. _mayer_, . jordan, robert e., iii, . justice, department of, , , . katzenbach, nicholas b., . kean, maj. gen. william b., - . keeler, leonard, . kelly field, tex., . kennedy, john f. and civil rights, , , - , - , , ; and gesell committee, , , ; and training programs, . kennedy, robert f., , , - , , . kenworthy, edwin w., - , , , , - , - , , . kerner commission, . key west, fla., , , . kilgore, harley m., , _n_. kimball dan a., , , , , - , . king, admiral ernest j., _n_, , , - , - , , , . king, martin luther, jr., - , . kitzingen air base, germany, - , . knowland, william f., . knox, frank, _n_, ; and early views on integration, - , - , ; and induction of negroes into the navy, - , - , - , - ; and the marine corps, - . korean war, - , , - , , . korth, fred, - , , - . krock, arthur, . kuter, maj. gen. laurence s., . labrador, . lafollette, robert m., jr., . lamb, ann e., . langer, william, . lanham, brig. gen. charles t., - , . lautier, louis r., , _n_. lee, ens. john, . lee, lt. gen. john c. h., - , . lee, ulysses, , . legal assistance, , , , . legette, col. curtis w., . lehavre, france, . lehman, herbert h., _n_, . leva, marx, , , , , , , - . lewis, anthony, . lewis, fulton, jr., . lewis, ira f., . lightship no. , . little rock, ark., , . little rock, air force base, ark., - . local commanders, air force, - , . local commanders, armed forces and equal opportunity matters, , - , - , - , , ; and gesell committee's recommendations, - , , , ; and integration of off-base schools, - ; and local community attitudes, - ; and off-base housing, - . local commanders, army and discipline, ; and off-base discrimination, ; and on-base discrimination, , , - . local commanders, navy, . lockbourne field, ohio, , , - , , , - , - . lodge, henry cabot, . logan, rayford w., . long, john d., _n_. long island national cemetery, . louis, joe, , . lovett, robert a., , . luckman, charles, _n_, , _n_. mcafee, capt. mildred h., - . mcalester naval ammunition depot, okla., , , . macarthur, general douglas, , , , , . mcauliffe, maj. gen. anthony c., - , , , - , - , . mccloy, john j., , , , and advisory committee on negro troop policies, - , - , , - ; and postwar use of black troops, - , , , , _n_, - , , . mcconnaughy, james l., , . mccrea, vice adm. john l., . macdill airfield, fla., , . mcfayden, brig. gen. b. m., . mcgill, ralph, . mcgowan, maj. gen. d. w., . mcgrath, earl j., . mcgrath, howard j., . mackay, cliff w., _n_. mcmahon, brian, . mcnair, lt. gen. lesley j., . mcnamara, robert s., , , , ; and civil rights act of , - ; and equal opportunity directive ( ), - , , - ; and equal treatment and opportunity, , - ; and gesell committee, , - ; and the national guard, , ; and off-base housing, , , - ; and off-limits sanctions, - , , , - ; and organization of civil rights apparatus, - , , ; and racial reform directives, , , - ; and voluntary action programs, , . mcnarney, general joseph t., . mcnutt, paul v., , - . macy, john w., jr., . manhattan beach training station, n. y., - , - . manpower shortages, black in the air force, , - ; in the army, - , , - ; in the navy, , - , . march, general peyton c., . march on washington movement, . mare island, calif., . marine air group, , . marine air wing, st, . marine barracks, dahlgren, va., . marine barracks, washington, d.c., . marine divisions st, - ; d, . marine regiments th, ; th, - . maris, maj. gen. ward s., . marr, lt. col. jack f., - , _n_, , . marshall, burke, , , . marshall, general george c., , , ; and integration, - , , , , ; as secretary of defense, , - , , , , . marshall, s. l. a., . marshall, thurgood, , , , - , . martin, louis, _n_. _mason_, - , . matthews, francis p., _n_, , - . maxwell air force base, ala., , , . maxwell field, ala., . mays, benjamin e., _n_. meader, george, . medals of honor, . mediterranean theater, , . meetings, segregated, - . miami beach, fla., , , . _midway_, . miller, donald l., _n_. miller, dorie (doris), , _n_. miller, lt. col. francis p., . miller, loren, _n_. minneapolis _spokesman_, . mississippi summer project, - . mitchell, clarence, , - , , - , . mobilization plans, - , - , , . montford point, n. c., , - , - , , , . montgomery, ala., . morale in the air force, , - ; in the armed forces, , , ; in the army, , - , - , ; in the marine corps, , , - ; in the navy, , - . _morgan_ v. _virginia_, . morris, thomas d., , . morse, wayne, , . morse, brig. gen. winslow c., . moskowitz, jack, _n_. multer, abraham j., , . muse, benjamin, , , , . myrdal, gunnar, , , . nash, philleo, - , , , . national association for the advancement of colored people (naacp) and the army, , , , , ; and enlistment quotas, ; and integration in the armed forces, , - , , , ; and the marine corps, ; and the navy, , ; and off-limits sanctions, ; and racial violence, ; and segregated dependents' schools, ; and segregated national cemeteries, . national defense act of , , . national defense conference on negro affairs ( ), , , - , . national emergency committee against mob violence ( ), . national guard continued segregation in, - , - ; and executive order , - ; integration of, - . national guard divisions, th and th, , - . national negro congress, , . national negro publishers association, . national security act of , - . national urban league, , , , , , . naval reserve officers' training corps, - , - . navy circular letter - , - . nelson, lt. dennis d., , , , , ; and recruitment of officer candidates, , , ; and reform of steward's branch, - , . new orleans, la., . new orleans naval air station, la., . new york _times_, , , . newspapers. _see_ press, negro; _publications by name_. nichols, lee, - , - . niles, david k., - , , - , - . nimitz, admiral chester w., , - . nkrumah, kwame, . noble, maj. gen. alfred h., . norfolk, va., , , , , . norfolk _journal and guide_, , . _northland_, . nugent, maj. gen. richard e., - , . nunn, william g., _n_. nurse corps, u.s. navy, , - , , - . occupational distribution of assignments, - , - . occupational specialties, , - , , - , , - , - . off-base equal opportunity inventories, - , . off-limits sanctions by department of defense and housing, , - , , ; and question of using, - ; recommended by gesell committee, - , - , , ; and requested by naacp, . office of war information, . officer training schools, integration of in the air force, ; in the army, , - ; in the marine corps, ; in the navy, , . officers, black in the air force, , - , , ; in the armed forces, - ; in the army, , - , - , , - , ; in the coast guard, , - ; in the marine corps, , - , , - ; in the navy, - , - , - , , - , - , . officers, white, attitudes of in the army, , - ; in the navy, - , - . ohly, john h., , . oir notice cp ( ), - . okinawa base command, . old, maj. gen. william d., , . o'meara, joseph, . operations research office, - . _opportunity_, . osthagen, clarence h., . overhead spaces in the air force, ; in the army, , - . overseas employment of black servicemen by the army, - ; and the gesell committee, - ; by the marine corps, - ; restrictions on, , , - . overton, john h., . oxford, miss., , . pace, frank, jr., , , _n_, , - , . padover, saul k., . palmer, dwight, . panama canal zone, , , . parachute battalion, th, - . parks, maj. gen. floyd l., - . parks, rosa, , . parris island, s. c., . parrish, col. noel f., , . passman, otto e., . pastore, john, _n_. patch, lt. gen. alexander m., . patterson, robert p., - , , , ; and conduct of black troops in europe, - ; and gillem board, , - , , ; and quotas, , - , - ; sued for violation of selective service act, , . patuxent river naval air station, md., . paul, norman s. and civil rights legislation, , - ; and off-base discrimination, , - ; and organization of civil rights apparatus, - , , . paul, maj. gen. willard s., - , , ; and assignment of black personnel, - , , - ; and composite units, - ; and continued segregation, , ; and expansion of school quotas, - ; and national guard integration, ; and postwar quotas, - , , - , - ; and shortage of black officers, - . paxton, brig. gen. alexander g., . pc , . pea island station, n.c., , . pearl harbor, hawaii, . pensacola naval air station, fla., , - . personnel policy board, dod, , ; and fahy committee, - , , ; and facial designations, - , . petsons, wilton b., . petersen, d lt. frank e., jr., . petersen, howard c., - , ; and postwar quotas, , ; and postwar racial reforms, - , . philadelphia, miss., . philadelphia depot of supplies, pa., . pick, maj. gen. lewis a., . pinchot, gifford, . pine bluff arsenal, ark., . pittsburgh _courier_, , , , , , , , . platoons, integration of, - . _plessy_ v. _ferguson_, . poletti, charles, . port chicago, calif., . port hueneme, calif., . powell, adam clayton, and discrimination in the services, , , - , , , , , , . prairie view a&m, tex., . press, negro. _see also by name of publication._ and equal treatment in the armed forces, , - , , - , , , - , , ; and executive order , , , . price, maj. gen. charles f. b., - . project clear, , , . promotions in the air force, ; in the armed forces, - ; in the army, , ; in the coast guard, ; in the marine corps, , - ; in the navy, , , - . provisional marine brigade, st, . public laws and , - . puner, morton, . pursuit squadron, th. _see_ fighter squadron, th. qualitative distribution of military manpower program, - , - . quartermaster general, , . quesada, lt. gen. elwood r., . quotas, air force, - . quotas, army, - , , _n_, , , - ; assessments of, - , - ; and enlistment practices, - , - , ; and expansion of for schools, - ; and the fahy committee, , - , - ; and postwar opposition to, - , ; and qualitative balance, - . quotas, coast guard, . quotas, marine corps postwar, , , - ; and postwar recruitment efforts, - ; in world war ii, . quotas, navy, - . rabb, maxwell, m., , , . racial designations, , - , - . racial incidents, , ; in the air force, ; in the army, - , , , - ; in the marine corps, - , ; in the navy, , - , - . racial policies, air force - , - ; and immediate effect of executive order , - ; and military traditions, ; and need for change of, - . racial policies, army and arguments for continued segregation, - ; and an assessment of segregation in , - ; and enlisted opinions on integration, - ; and immediate effect of executive order , - ; and immediate postwar. _see_ gillem board; and military traditions, , - ; postwar, - ; and postwar opposition to quotas, - , ; and postwar performance evaluation of black troops, - ; and reforms in , - ; and search for a new postwar policy, - , - , ; in world war ii, - , , - . racial policies, coast guard and limited integration, - ; pre-world war ii experience, - ; in world war ii, - . racial policies, marine corps and immediate effect of executive order , - ; immediate postwar, - , - , - ; and military traditions, , , , , ; and search for a postwar policy, - ; and steps toward integration, - ; in world war ii, - . racial policies, navy between world wars, ; and blood processing, _n_; and commissioning of black officers, - ; and development of a wartime policy, - ; and employment of black recruits, - ; and failure to attract negroes, - , - , - , , - ; and immediate effect of executive order , - ; and immediate postwar, - ; and military traditions, - , , ; and reforms under forrestal, - , - ; and search for a postwar policy, - , - ; and special programs unit reforms, - , - , - . racial policies, and social change in the armed forces, - , , , , , , , ; and congress, - , - , - . randolph, a. philip and civil rights movement, ; and executive order , , ; and integration of the armed forces, - , - , , , ; and proposed draft bill, , - , . randolph field, tex., , . ray, (lt. col.) marcus h., , , , , _n_; and eucom education program, , ; and postwar manpower needs, - , ; and postwar racial reforms, - , , ; and survey of black soldiers in europe, - . recreational facilities, - , - , , - . recruitment. _see_ enlistment practices. red cross, . reddick, l. d., , . reeb, james, . reenlistment. _see_ enlistment practices. reese air force base, tex., . reeves, frank d., . regimental combat team, th, , , . reid, thomas r., - , - . render, frank w., ii, _n_. reserve officers' training corps, , - . reserves, army, integration of, - . reuther, walter p., , . reynolds, grant, , , . reynolds, hobson, e., _n_. ribicoff, abraham, . richardson, elliot, c., . ridgway, general matthew b., , - , . riley, capt. herbert d., . rivers, l. mendel, , . robinson, brig. gen. ray a., , , . roosevelt, eleanor, , , , _n_, . roosevelt, franklin d., , ; and civil rights, ; and integration in the army, - , - ; and integration in the navy, - , - , , , , . roosevelt, franklin d., jr., _n_. roosevelt, james, . rosenberg, anna m., - , , - , , - , . rowan, carl t., _n_. royall, kenneth c., , , ; and enlistment standards, ; and executive order , - ; and the fahy committee, - , ; and further integration in the army, - ; and integration experiments, - ; and integration of reserve components, - ; and shortage of black officers, - . rudder, d lt. john e., - . runge, carlisle p. and the national guard, - ; and off-base discrimination, , _n_, , - ; and racial reform directives, - , . rusk, dean, , . russell, ens. harvey c., . russell, richard b., , - , - . sabath, adolph j., . st. julien's creek, va., . saipan, - , . saltonstall, leverett, . samoa, . samuels, lt. (jg.) clarence, . san antonio, tex., . sargent, lt. comdr. christopher s., , . schmidt, maj. gen. harry, - . schneider, j. thomas, . schools, army, and quotas, - . schools, dependents' and impact aid legislation, - ; off-base, , - , - , ; on-post, . schuyler, george s., , . scotia, n. y., . scott, emmett, j., , . _sea cloud_, - . secretary of the air force. _see_ finletter, thomas k.; symington, w. stuart. secretary of the army. _see_ gray, gordon; pace, frank, jr.; royall, kenneth c.; stevens, robert t. secretary of defense. _see_ clifford, clark m.; forrestal, james v.; johnson, louis a.; lovett, robert a.; mcnamara, robert s.; marshall, general george c.; wilson, charles e. secretary of the navy. _see_ anderson, robert b.; forrestal, james v.; kimball dan a.; knox, frank; matthews, francis p.; sullivan, john l. secretary of war. _see_ patterson, robert p.; royall, kenneth c.; stimson, henry l. segregation. _see_ discrimination, racial. selective service act of , - , , , , . selective service act of , - , - , , , . selective service system, , ; and quotas, - , ; and racial designations, , - . selfridge field, mich., . selma, ala., , - . sengstacke, john h., , . "services and their relations with the community, the," . sexton, vice adm. walton r., - . shaw, bernard, . shaw air force base, s. c., . sherrill, henry knox, _n_. shipyards, naval, integration of, - . shishkin, boris, _n_. shulman, stephen n., _n_, - . signal construction detachment, th, . skinner, lt. comdr. carlton, - . smedberg, vice adm. william r., . smith, lt. gen. oliver p., , . smith, lt. gen. walter bedell, . smith college, mass., . smothers, curtis r., _n_. snyder, rear adm. charles p., - . sollat, ralph p., . somervell, general brehon b., - . sommers, lt. col. davidson, . south boston, mass., . southern christian leadership council, . spaatz, general carl and assignments, - , ; and postwar quotas, , - . spars, , . special training and enlistment program (step), . _spencer_, . spencer, comdr. lyndon, . sprague, rear adm. thomas l., - , - . stanley, frank l., _n_. state, department of, - , . stennis, john, - . stevens, robert t., . stevenson, adlai e., , - . stevenson, william e., . steward's branch coast guard, , - ; marine corps, - , - , - , , - ; navy, , , , , - , - , - . stewart, tenn., . stickney, capt. fred, . stimson, henry l., - , - , , , , , , , . strategic air command, . strength ratios, air force, , _n_, , . strength ratios, armed forces, - , . strength ratios, army, , ; - , - , - , ; in korean war, , , - ; postwar overseas, . strength ratios, coast guard, - , . strength ratios, marine corps postwar, , , , ; in world war ii, - , . strength ratios, navy in , ; - , , , , , , ; - , , - . student nonviolent coordinating committee (sncc), . sullivan, john l., , , , , . surveys on army segregation ( - ), ; and enlisted opinion on segregation, - ; and harris on open housing, ; and hodes on overhead spaces, - ; on integration of platoons, - ; by u.s. commission on civil rights, - ; of washington, d. c. housing, . _sweetgum_, . swing, lt. gen. joseph m., . symington, w. stuart, - , , , , ; and executive order , - , ; and the fahy committee, , ; and integration plan of , - , , , . tactical air command, , , - . taft, robert a., . talbott, harold e., , . "talented tenth," , . talmadge, herman e., . tank battalions th, ; th and th, . taylor, maj. gen. maxwell d., , , . thomas, charles s., . thomas, lt. gen. gerald c., - , - , - , , . thompson, pfc. william, . thurmond, strom, . tiana beach, n.y., . tilly, dorothy, _n_. tobias, channing h., , , _n_. townsend, willard, _n_. training in the air force, - , - , ; in the armed forces, - ; in the army, , - , - , - ; in the coast guard, - ; in the marine corps, , - ; in the navy, - , , , , - , , . training camps, postwar location of, - . transportation, chief of, . transportation facilities, , , . trieste, . trinidad base command, , . troop carrier command, i, . truman, harry s. and civil rights, , , - , - , _n_, ; and executive order , , - , , , , , ; and the fahy committee, - , , - , ; and segregation in the services, , . truscott, lt. gen. lucian k., jr., . turkey, . tuskegee, ala., - , - , . united services organization, - . units, attached v. assigned, - . universal military training, . u.s. coast guard academy, . u.s. commission on civil rights, , , , , , ; and civil rights act of , , ; and study of racial discrimination ( ), - , , , . u.s. commissioner of education, - , . u.s. congress and the armed forces, , - , - , , - , - , , , , ; and civil rights legislation, , , - , ; and senate special investigations committee, - . u.s. military academy, . u.s. office of education, - . u.s. supreme court, , , , - , , . _utilization of negro manpower in the army_, . v- program, - , , . vance, cyrus r., , _n_, , , - . vandegrift, general alexander, , - , , , - . vandenberg, general hoyt s., , , , , , . vanness, lt. comdr. donald o., . vanvoorst, col. m., _n_. venereal disease rates, - , . vinson, carl, , , . voluntary compliance programs, - , - , - , , . votes, black, , ; and election, , , , ; legislation for, , - . voting rights act of , . waac's, , , . waesche, rear adm. russell r., , . wagner, robert f., . walker, addison, - . walker, lt. gen. walton h., . wallace, henry a., , . war department circular no. , . war department circular no. ; and gillem board report, , , , , , ; and provisions of, , , - , . war department pamphlet no. - , . war manpower commission, . warnock, brig. gen. aln d., . washington, booker t., . washington, d. c., and off-base housing, - , . washington _post_, , . watson, col. edwin m., . watts, calif., . waves, , , - , - , . weaver, george l. p., _n_. webb, james e., . wesley, carter, _n_. white, lee c., - , , , . white, walter f., , , ; and civil rights movement, , _n_, , - , ; and eucom's training program, _n_; and integration of the armed forces, , - , , , , , , , , . whiting, capt. kenneth, . wilkins, roy, , , _n_, , . willkie, wendell l., , . wilson, charles e. (secretary of defense), , - , , - . wilson, charles e., , . wilson, maj. gen. winston p., . winstead, arthur a., , , . wofford, harris l., - , , , - . women, black in the marine corps women's reserve, , ; in the nurse corps, u.s. navy, , - , , - ; in the waac's, , , ; in the waves, , , - , - , - . women's army auxiliary corps (waac). _see_ waac's. women's army corps (wac). _see_ waac's. women's reserve, u.s. marine corps, , . wood, capt. hunter, jr., . woodard, sgt. issac, jr., . woods, col. samuel a., jr., . woodward, c. vann, - . wright field, ohio, . yarmolinsky, adam and civil rights, , _n_, , , ; and gesell committee, - , , - ; and need for a new dod racial policy, , - . yokohama base command, . young, p. b., jr., _n_. young, thomas w., _n_. young, whitney m., jr., , , . youngdahl, luther w., . zuckert, eugene m., , , ; and air force integration plans, - , , - , ; and civilian communities, , ; and the fahy committee, , , ; and local commanders, , . zundel, brig. gen. edwin a., . u.s. government printing office: - - black and white _land, labor, and politics in the south_ by timothy thomas fortune author's preface in discussing the political and industrial problems of the south, i base my conclusions upon a personal knowledge of the condition of classes in the south, as well as upon the ample data furnished by writers who have pursued, in their way, the question before me. that the colored people of the country will yet achieve an honorable status in the national industries of thought and activity, i believe, and try to make plain. in discussion of the land and labor problem i but pursue the theories advocated by more able and experienced men, in the attempt to show that the laboring classes of any country pay all the taxes, in the last analysis, and that they are systematically victimized by legislators, corporations and syndicates. wealth, unduly centralized, endangers the efficient workings of the machinery of government. land monopoly--in the hands of individuals, corporations or syndicates--is at bottom the prime cause of the inequalities which obtain; which desolate fertile acres turned over to vast ranches and into bonanza farms of a thousand acres, where not one family finds a habitation, where muscle and brain are supplanted by machinery, and the small farmer is swallowed up and turned into a tenant or slave. while in large cities thousands upon thousands of human beings are crowded into narrow quarters where vice festers, where crime flourishes undeterred, and where death is the most welcome of all visitors. the primal purpose in publishing this work is to show that the social problems in the south are, in the main, the same as those which afflict every civilized country on the globe; and that the future conflict in that section will not be racial or political in character, but between capital on the one hand and labor on the other, with the odds largely in favor of nonproductive wealth because of the undue advantage given the latter by the pernicious monopoly in land which limits production and forces population disastrously upon subsistence. my purpose is to show that poverty and misfortune make no invidious distinctions of "race, color, or previous condition," but that wealth unduly centralized oppresses all alike; therefore, that the labor elements of the whole united states should sympathize with the same elements in the south, and in some favorable contingency effect some unity of organization and action, which shall subserve the common interest of the common class. t. thomas fortune. new york city, july , . contents i--black ii--white iii--the negro and the nation iv--the triumph of the vanquished v--illiteracy--its causes vi--education--professional or industrial vii---how not to do it viii--the nation surrenders ix--political independence of the negro x--solution of the political problem xi--land and labor xii--civilization degrades the masses xiii--conditions of labor in the south xiv--classes in the south xv--the land problem xvi--conclusion appendix on a summer day, when the great heat induced a general thirst, a lion and a boar came at the same moment to a small well to drink. they fiercely disputed which of them should drink first, and were soon engaged in the agonies of a mortal combat. on their suddenly stopping to take breath for the fiercer renewal of the strife, they saw some vultures in the distance, waiting to feast on the one which should fall. they at once made up their quarrel, saying, "it is better for us to be friends, than to become the food of crows or vultures."--_Æsop's fables_. chapter i _black_ there is no question to-day in american politics more unsettled than the negro question; nor has there been a time since the adoption of the federal constitution when this question has not, in one shape or another, been a disturbing element, a deep-rooted cancer, upon the body of our society, frequently occupying public attention to the exclusion of all other questions. it appears to possess, as no other question, the elements of perennial vitality. the introduction of african slaves into the colony of virginia in august, , was the beginning of an agitation, a problem, the solution of which no man, even at this late date, can predict, although many wise men have prophesied. history--the record of human error, cruelty and misdirected zeal--furnishes no more striking anomaly than the british puritan fleeing from princely rule and tyranny and dragging at his heels the african savage, bound in servile chains; praying to a just god for freedom, and at the same time riveting upon his fellow-man the gyves of most unjust and cruel slavery. a parallel for such hypocrisy, such sacrilegious invocation, is not matched in the various history of peoples. it did not matter to the early settlers of the american colonies that, in the memorable struggle for the right to be represented if taxed, a black man--crispus attucks, a full-blooded negro--died upon the soil of massachusetts, in the boston massacre of , in common with other loyal, earnest men, as the first armed protest against an odious tyranny; it did not matter that in the armies of the colonies, in rebellion against great britain, there were (according to the report of adjutant general scammell), on the th day of august, , regularly enlisted negro troops; it did not matter that in the second war with great britain, general andrew jackson, on the st day of september, , appealed to the "free colored people of louisiana" as "sons of freedom," who were "called upon to defend _our_ most inestimable blessing," the right to be free and sovereign, and to "rally around the standard of the eagle, to defend all which is dear in existence;" it did not matter that in each of these memorable struggles the black man was called upon, and responded nobly, to the call for volunteers to drive out the minions of the british tyrant. when the smoke of battle had dissolved into thin air; when the precious right to be free and sovereign had been stubbornly fought for and reluctantly conceded; when the bloody memories of yorktown and new orleans had passed into glorious history, the black man, who had assisted by his courage to establish the free and independent states of america, was doomed to sweat and groan that others might revel in idleness and luxury. allured, in each instance, into the conflict for national independence by the hope held out of generous reward and an honest consideration of his manhood rights, he received as his portion chains and contempt. the spirit of injustice, inborn in the caucasian nature, asserted itself in each instance. selfishness and greed rode roughshod over the promptings of a generous, humane, christian nature, as they have always done in this country, not only in the case of the african but of the indian as well, each of whom has in turn felt the pernicious influence of that heartless greed which overleaps honesty and fair play, in the unmanly grasp after perishable gain. the books which have been written in this country--the books which have molded and controlled intelligent public opinion--during the past one hundred and fifty years have been written by white men, in justification of the white man's domineering selfishness, cruelty and tyranny. beginning with thomas jefferson's _notes on virginia_, down to the present time, the same key has been struck, the same song as been sung, with here and there a rare exception--as in the case of mrs. stowe's _uncle tom's cabin_, judge tourgée's _a fool's errand_, dr. haygood's _our brother in black_, and some others of less note. the white man's story has been told over and over again, until the reader actually tires of the monotonous repetition, so like the ten-cent novels in which the white hunter always triumphs over the red man. the honest reader has longed in vain for a glimpse at the other side of the picture so studiously turned to the wall. even in books written expressly to picture the black man's side of the story, the author has been compelled to palliate, by interjecting extenuating, often irrelevant circumstances, the ferocity and insatiate lust of greed of his race. he has been unable to tell the story as it was, because his nature, his love of race, his inborn, prejudices and narrowness made him a lurking coward. and so it has been with the newspapers, which have ever been the obsequious reflex of distempered public opinion, siding always with the strong and powerful; so that in , when the "liberator" (published in boston by the intrepid and patriotic garrison) made its appearance, it was a lone david among a swarm of goliaths, any one of which was willing and anxious to serve the cause of the devil by crushing the little angel in the service of the lord. so it is to-day. the great newspapers, which should plead the cause of the oppressed and the down-trodden, which should be the palladiums of the people's rights, are all on the side of the oppressor, or by silence preserve a dignified but ignominious neutrality. day after day they weave a false picture of facts--facts which must measurably influence the future historian of the times in the composition of impartial history. the wrongs of the masses are referred to sneeringly or apologetically. the vast army of laborers--men, women, and even tender children--find no favor in the eyes of these knights of the quill. the negro and the indian, the footballs of slippery politicians and the helpless victims of sharpers and thieves, are wantonly misrepresented--held up to the eyes of the world as beings incapable of imbibing the distorted civilization in the midst of which they live and have their being. they are placed in the attic, only to be aired when somebody wants an "issue" or an "appropriation." there are no "liberators" to-day, and the william lloyd garrisons have nearly all of them gone the way of all the world. the part played by the ministry of christ in the early conflict against human slavery in this country would be enigmatical in the extreme, utterly beyond apprehension, if it were not matter of history that the representatives of the christian church, in conflicts with every giant wrong, have always been the strongest supporters, the most obsequious tools of money power and the political sharpers who have imposed their vile tyrannies upon mankind. they have alternately supplicated and domineered, crawled in the dust or mounted the house-top, as occasion served, from gregory to the smiths and joneses of the present time. so that it has passed into a proverb, that the ministers of the gospel may be always counted upon to take sides with the strongest party--always seeking to conciliate "king cotton," "king corporation," "king monopoly," and all the other "kings" of modern growth--swaying, like the reed in the wind, to the powers that be, whether of tyranny reared upon a thousand years of usurpation, military despotism of a day's growth, or presumptuous wealth accumulated by robbery, hypocrisy and insidious assassination. instead of leading in the reformation of leviathan wrongs, the ministry waits for the rabble to applaud before it commends.[ ] it was not in this manner that the great christ set the world in motion, sowed broadcast the dynamite which uprooted long-established infamies, and prepared the way for the ultimate redemption of the world from sin and error. if the christian ministry of the united states did at last recognize the demoralization and iniquity of slavery, it was because the heroic band, headed by william lloyd garrison, first fired the heart of the people and forced the ministry to take sides with the righteous cause. i speak not of the few heroic exceptions, but of the mass of the american clergy. if in the evangelization of the black man since the rebellion, the ministry have largely furthered the work, they have done so because there were hundreds and thousands of brave men and women ready to give their time and money to the upbuilding of outraged humanity and the cause of christ. they have simply put in operation movements conceived and nurtured by the genius and philanthropy of others, and no one of them will claim that he has not reaped an abundant pecuniary harvest for his labors. yet, i would accord to the ministry of the united states full meed of praise for all that they have done as the agents of the humane, intelligent and philanthropic opinions of the times; and, too, there have been good men who fought the good fight simply because the cause was just. footnotes: [ ] _be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who waits till all commend._ _pope's_ essay on man. chapter ii _white_ it is my purpose in writing this work to show that the american government has always construed people of african parentage to be aliens, not only when the constitution was tortured by narrow-minded men to shield the cruel, murderous slave-holder in the possession of his human property, but even now, when the panoply of citizenship is, presumably, all-sufficient to insure to the late slave the enjoyment of full manhood rights as a sovereign citizen. the conflict of law and the moral sentiment of the country has been long and bloody, and the end is not yet. political parties in this country do not lead, but follow, public opinion. they hang upon the applause of the rabble, and succeed or fail in their efforts to administer the affairs of government in proportion as they interpret the wishes of the rabble. not alone do parties defer to the wishes of the illiterate, the "great unwashed" majority, but individuals as well, who prefer to ride upon the wave of success as the champions of great wrongs rather than to go into retirement as the champions of just principles. the voice of the charmer is all too powerful to be successfully resisted. republics have always been fruitful of demagogues. such vermin find the soil of democratic government the most fertile and congenial for their operations, because the audiences to which they speak, the passions to which they appeal, are not always of the most reflective, humane or enlightened. demagogues are the parasites of republics; and that our country is afflicted with an abnormal number of them is to be expected from the tentative nature of our institutions, the extent of our territory and the heterogeneity of our vast population. under our government all the peoples of the world find shelter and protection--save the african (who was formerly used as a beast of burden and now as a football, to be kicked by one faction and kicked back by the other) and the industrious chinaman, who was barred out by the over-obsequiousness of the congress of the nation, in deference to the sand-lot demagogues of the pacific coast, headed by denis kearney, because it was desirable to conciliate their votes, even at the expense of consistency and the unity of the constitution. that great document, while constantly affirmed to be the most broad and liberal compact ever devised for the governance of man, has always been found to be narrow enough to serve the purposes of the slave oligarch and the make-shifts of the party in power; and has always afforded ample shelter and protection to the lazzaroni of italy, the paupers of ireland, and the incendiary spirits of other countries, but yet cannot shield a black man, a citizen and to the manor born, in any common, civil or political right which usually attaches to citizenship. a putative citizen of the united states commits murder in the jurisdiction of a friendly power, and the chief executive of fifty millions of people deems it incumbent upon him as the head of the faction to which he belongs to "call the attention of congress" to the fact, ostensibly in the interest of justice and fair-play, but obviously to court the good will of the american sympathizers of the assassin. while on the contrary, within a few hundred miles of the national capital, an armed mob of citizens shoot down in cold blood a dozen of their fellow-citizens, but the chief of the nation did not deem it at all pertinent or necessary to "call the attention of congress" to the matter. and why? because, forsooth, the newspapers, voicing the wishes of the rabble and the cormorants of trade, cry down the "bloody shirt," proclaiming, with brazen effrontery, that each state is "_sovereign_," and that its citizens have a _perfect right_ to terrorize and murder one another, if they so desire. the bible declares that "righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people." god save the union! but such argument is indicative, not only of american politics but of caucasian human nature as well--that human nature which seldom rises above self-interest in business or politics. if you have abundance of money, the merchant is all accommodation, the lawyer all smiles; if you have votes that count, politicians cannot be too obsequious, too affable, too anxious to serve you. but if you simply have common humanity, clothed in the awful majesty of a just cause, you appeal in vain to the cormorants of trade, the harpies of law, or the demagogues of power. unless you are of the salt salty, unless you are clothed in broadcloth and fine linen, you cannot obtain even a respectful hearing. it took the abolitionists full thirty years to convince the american people, the ministry of christ included, that slavery was, pure and simple, a "covenant with death and an agreement with hell;" and then, sad to say, they were convinced against their wills. their sense of justice had become so obtuse as to wholly blunt the sense of reason, the brotherly sympathy of a common race-feeling, and the broad, liberal and just inculcations of jesus christ. the nation was sunk to the moral turpitude of constantinople; and not even a john crying in the wilderness could arouse it to a sense of the exceeding foulness in the midst of which it grovelled, or of the storm gathering on the distant horizon. although the abolition of slavery had been agitated for more than thirty years, the nation, which was ruled by politicians of the usual mental caliber, was startled at the defiant shot upon fort sumter--the shot that echoed the downfall of the foulest institution which has sapped the vitality of any modern government, and that aroused the people to a sorrowful realization that the power which defied them was strong enough and desperate enough to stop at nothing short of the disintegration of the american union. so the nation, still sympathizing with slavery, still playing with a coal of fire, grappled with the monster, feeling itself powerful to crush it in a few short months. it was not because the people of the nation hated slavery and oppression that they rushed upon the field of battle; no such righteousness moved them: it was because the slave-power, which had for so long dictated legislation and the interpretation of the laws, would tolerate no adverse criticism or legislation upon the foul institution it championed, and appealed from the forum of reason to the forum of treasonable rebellion to enforce the right so long and (i blush to say it!) _constitutionally_ conceded to it. i do not believe that, in , a majority (or even a respectable minority) of the american people desired the manumission of the slave; it is evident, from the temper of the political discussions of that time, that the combination of parties out of which, in , the republican party was formed, desired to do no more than to confine the institution of slavery within the territory then occupied. there was certainly very little comfort for the black man in this position of the "party of great moral ideas." the overtures[ ] made by president lincoln to the slave-power during the first year of the war were all made in the interest of the perpetuation of the union, and not in the interest of the slave. his reply to mr. horace greeley, who urged upon him the importance of issuing an emancipation proclamation is conclusive that he was more concerned about the union than about the slave: executive mansion, washington, _august , _ hon. horace greeley:--dear sir: i have just read yours of the th, addressed to myself through the _new york tribune_. if there be in it any statements or assumptions of facts which i may know to be erroneous, i do not, now and here, controvert them. if there be in it any inferences which i may believe to be falsely drawn, i do not, now and here, argue against them. if there be perceptible in it an imperious and dictatorial tone, i waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart i have always supposed to be right. as to the policy i seem to be pursuing, as you say, i have not meant to leave any one in doubt. i would save the union. i would save it the shortest way under the constitution. the sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the union will be the union it was. * * * if there be those who would not save the union, unless they could at the same time _destroy slavery, i do not agree with them_. my paramount object in this struggle _is to save the union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery_. if i could save the union _without_ freeing _any_ slave _i would do it_, and if i could save it by freeing _all_ the slaves i would do it; and if i could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone i would also do that. _what i do about slavery and the colored race, i do because i believe it helps to save the union_; and what i forbear i forbear because i do not believe it would help to save the union. i shall do _less_ whenever i shall believe what i am doing hurts the cause, and i shall do _more_ whenever i shall believe doing more will help the cause. i shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and i shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. i have here stated my purposes according to my view of _official_ duty; and i intend no modification of my oft-expressed _personal_ wish that all men, everywhere, should be free. yours, a. lincoln everything--humanity, justice, posterity--was placed upon the sacrificial altar of the union, and the slave-power was repeatedly and earnestly invited to lay down its traitorous arms, be forgiven, and keep its slaves. with mr. lincoln, as president, it was the union, first, last, and all the time. and he but echoed the prevailing opinions of his time. i do not question or criticise his _personal_ attitude; but what he himself called his "view of official duty" was to execute the will of the people, and that was _not_ to abolish slavery, at that time. as the politicians only took hold of the great question when they thought it would advance their selfish interests, they were prepared to abandon it or immolate it upon the altar of "expediency," when the great clouds of treason burst upon them in the form of gigantic rebellion. the politicians of that time, like the politicians of all times, were incapable of appreciating the magnitude of the questions involved in the conflict. but the slave-power had been aroused. it was not to be appeased by overtures; it wanted no compromise. it would brook no interference inimical to its "peculiar institution." in the congress of the nation, in the high places of power, it had so long been permitted to dictate the policy to be pursued towards slavery, it had so inoculated the institutions of the government with the virus of its vicious opinions, that, to be interfered with, to be dictated to, was out of the question. it was ephraim and his idol repeated. the south forced the issue upon the people of the country. the southerners marched off under the banner of "states rights"--a doctrine they have always championed. they cared nothing for the union _then_; they care less for the union _now_. the state to them is sovereign; the nation a magnificent combination of nothingness. the state has in its keeping all option over life, individual rights, and property. the spirit of hayne and calhoun is still the star that lights the pathway of the southern man in his duty to the government. he recognizes no sovereignty more potential than that of his state. long years of agitation and bloody war have failed to decide the rights of states, or the measure of protection which the national government owes to the individual members of states. we still grope in the sinuous by-ways of uncertainty. the state still defies the national authority; and the individual citizens of the nation still appeal in vain for protection from oppressive laws of states or the violent methods of their citizens. the question, "which is the greater, the state or the sisterhood of states?" is still undecided, and may have to be adjudicated in some future stage of our history by another appeal to arms. footnotes: [ ] i, abraham lincoln, president of the united states of america, and commander-in-chief of the army and navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare * * * that, on the first day of january, in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of the state, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the united states, shall be then, and thenceforward, and forever free; * * * that the executive will, on the first day of january aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the states and parts of states, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the united states.--" president lincoln's _"conditional" emancipation proclamation_. chapter iii _the negro and the nation_ the war of the rebellion settled only one question: it forever settled the question of chattel slavery[ ] in this country. it forever choked the life out of the infamy of the constitutional right of one man to rob another, by purchase of his person, or of his honest share of the produce of his own labor. but this was the only question permanently and irrevocably settled. nor was this _the_ all-absorbing question involved. the right of a state to secede from the so-called _union_ remains where it was when the treasonable shot upon fort sumter aroused the people to all the horrors of internecine war. and the measure of protection which the national government owes the individual members of states, a right imposed upon it by the adoption of the xivth amendment[ ] to the constitution, remains still to be affirmed. it was not sufficient that the federal government should expend its blood and treasure to unfetter the limbs of four millions of people. there can be a slavery more odious, more galling, than mere chattel slavery. it has been declared to be an act of charity to enforce ignorance upon the slave, since to inform his intelligence would simply be to make his unnatural lot all the more unbearable. instance the miserable existence of Æsop, the great black moralist. but this is just what the manumission of the black people of this country has accomplished. they are more absolutely under the control of the southern whites; they are more systematically robbed of their labor; they are more poorly housed, clothed and fed, than under the slave régime; and they enjoy, practically, less of the protection of the laws of the state or of the federal government. when they appeal to the federal government they are told by the supreme court to go to the state authorities--as if they would have appealed to the one had the other given them that protection to which their sovereign citizenship entitles them! practically, there is no law in the united states which extends its protecting arm over the black man and his rights. he is, like the irishman in ireland, an alien in his native land. there is no central or auxiliary authority to which he can appeal for protection. wherever he turns he finds the strong arm of constituted authority powerless to protect him. the farmer and the merchant rob him with absolute immunity, and irresponsible ruffians murder him without fear of punishment, undeterred by the law, or by public opinion--which connives at, if it does not inspire, the deeds of lawless violence. legislatures of states have framed a code of laws which is more cruel and unjust than any enforced by a former slave state. the right of franchise[ ] has been practically annulled in every one of the former slave states, in not one of which, to-day, can a man vote, think or act as he pleases. he must conform his views to the views of the men who have usurped every function of government--who, at the point of the dagger, and with shotgun, have made themselves masters in defiance of every law or precedent in our history as a government. they have usurped government with the weapons of the coward and assassin, and they maintain themselves in power by the most approved practices of the most odious of tyrants. these men have shed as much innocent blood as the bloody triumvirate of rome. to-day, red-handed murderers and assassins sit in the high places of power, and bask in the smiles of innocence and beauty. the newspapers of the country, voicing the sentiments of the people, literally hiss into silence any man who has the courage to protest against the prevailing tendency to lawlessness[ ] and bare-faced usurpation; while parties have ceased to deal with the question for other than purposes of political capital. even this fruitful mine is well-nigh exhausted. a few more years, and the usurper and the man of violence will be left in undisputed possession of his blood-stained inheritance. no man will attempt to deter him from sowing broadcast the seeds of revolution and death. brave men are powerless to combat this organized brigandage, complaint of which, in derision, has been termed "waving the bloody shirt." men organize themselves into society for mutual protection. government justly derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. but what shall we say of that society which is incapable of extending the protection which is inherent in it? what shall we say of that government which has not power or inclination to insure the exercise of those solemn rights and immunities which it guarantees? to declare a man to be free, and equal with his fellow, and then to refrain from enacting laws powerful to insure him in such freedom and equality, is to trifle with the most sacred of all the functions of sovereignty. have not the united states done this very thing? have they not conferred freedom and the ballot, which are necessary the one to the other? and have they not signally failed to make omnipotent the one and practicable the other? the questions hardly require an answer. the measure of freedom the black man enjoys can be gauged by the power he has to vote. he has, practically, no voice in the government under which he lives. his property is taxed and his life is jeopardized, by states on the one hand and inefficient police regulations on the other, and no question is asked or expected of him. when he protests, when he cries out against this flagrant nullification of the very first principles of a republican form of government, the insolent question is asked: "what are you going to do about it?" and here lies the danger. you may rob and maltreat a slave and ask him what he is going to do about it, and he can make no reply. he is bound hand and foot; he is effectually gagged. despair is his only refuge. he knows it is useless to appeal from tyranny unto the designers and apologists of tyranny. ignominious death alone can bring him relief. this was the case of thousands of men doomed by the institution of slavery. _but such is not the case with free men._ you cannot oppress and murder freemen as you would slaves: you cannot so insult them with the question, "what are you going to do about it?" when you ask free men that question you appeal to men who, though sunk to the verge of despair, yet are capable of uprising and ripping hip and thigh those who deemed them incapable of so rising above their condition. the history of mankind is fruitful of such uprisings of races and classes reduced to a condition of absolute despair. the american negro is no better and no worse than the haytian revolutionists headed by toussaint l'overture, christophe and the bloody dessalaines. i do not indulge in the luxury of prophecy when i declare that the american people are fostering in their bosoms a spirit of rebellion which will yet shake the pillars of popular government as they have never before been shaken, unless a wiser policy is inaugurated and honestly enforced. all the indications point to the fulfillment of such declaration. the czar of russia squirms upon his throne, not because he is necessarily a bad man, but because he is the head and center of a condition of things which squeezes the life out of the people. his subjects hurl infernal machines at the tyrant because he represents the system which oppresses them. but the evil is far deeper than the throne, and cannot be remedied by striking the occupant of it-_the throne itself must be rooted out and demolished_. so the irish question has a more powerful motive to foment agitation and murder than the landlord and landlordism. the landlord simply stands out as the representative of the real grievance. to remove _him_ would not remove the evil; agitation would not cease; murder would still stalk abroad at noonday. _the real grievance is the false system which makes the landlord possible._ the appropriation of the fertile acres of the soil of ireland, which created and maintains a privileged class, a class that while performing no labor, wrings from the toiler, in the shape of rents, so much of the produce of his labor that he cannot on the residue support himself and those dependent upon him aggravates the situation. it is this system which constitutes the real grievance and makes the landlord an odious loafer with abundant cash and the laborer a constant toiler always upon the verge of starvation. evidently, therefore, to remove the landlord and leave the system of land monopoly would not remove the evil. destroy the latter and the former would be compelled to go. herein lies the great social wrong which has turned the beautiful roses of freedom into thorns to prick the hands of the black men of the south; which made slavery a blessing, paradoxical as it may appear, and freedom a curse. it is this great wrong which has crowded the cities of the south with an ignorant pauper population, making desolate fields that once bloomed "as fair as a garden of the lord," where now the towering oak and pine-tree flourish, instead of the corn and cotton which gladdened the heart and filled the purse. it was this gigantic iniquity which created that arrogant class who have exhausted the catalogue of violence to obtain power and the lexicon of sophistry for arguments to extenuate the exceeding heinousness of crime. how could it be otherwise? to tell a man he is free when he has neither money nor the opportunity to make it, is simply to mock him. to tell him he has no master when he cannot live except by permission of the man who, under favorable conditions, monopolizes all the land, is to deal in the most tantalizing contradiction of terms. but this is just what the united states did for the black man. and yet because he has not grown learned and wealthy in twenty years, because he does not own broad acres and a large bank account, people are not wanting who declare he has no capacity, that he is improvident by nature and mendacious from inclination. footnotes: [ ] neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the united states, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.--art. xiii. sec. of the constitution. [ ] all persons born or naturalized in the united states, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the united states and of the state in which they reside. no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the united states; _nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws_--xivth amendment, section . [ ] the right of citizens of the united states to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the united states, or by any state, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.--xvth amendment, sec. . [ ] while i write these lines, the daily newspapers furnish the following paragraph. it is but one of the _waifs_ that are to be found in the newspapers day by day. there is always some _circumstance_ which justifies the murder and exculpates the murderer. the black always deserves his fate. i give the paragraph: "spear, mitchell co., n.c., march , .--col. j.m. english, a farmer and prominent citizen living at plumtree, mitchell county, n.c., shot and killed a mulatto named jack mathis at that place saturday, march . there had been difficulty between them for several months. "mathis last summer worked in one of col. english's mica mines. evidence pointed to him being implicated in the systematic stealing of mica from the mine. still it was not direct enough to convict him, but he was discharged by english. mathis was also a tenant of one of english's houses and lots. in resentment he damaged the property by destroying fences, tearing off weather boards from the house, and injuring the fruit trees. for this col. english prosecuted the negro, and on feb. , before a local justice, ex-sheriff wiseman, he got a judgment for $ . on the date stated, during a casual meeting, hot words grew into an altercation, and col. english shot the negro. mathis was a powerful man. english is a cripple, being lame in a leg from a wound received in the mexican war. "a trial was had before a preliminary court recently, col. s.c. vance appearing for col. english. after a hearing of all the testimony the court reached a decision of justifiable homicide and english was released. the locality of the shooting is in the mountains of western north carolina, and not far from the flat rock mica mine, the scene of the brutal midnight murder, feb. , of burleson, miller, and horton by rae and anderson, two revenue officers, who took this means to gain possession of the mica mine." my knowledge of such affairs in the south is, that the black and the white have an altercation over some trivial thing, and the white to end the argument shoots the black man down. the negro is always a "_powerful fellow_" and the white man a "weak sickly man." the law and public opinion always side with the white man. chapter iv _the triumph of the vanquished_ there are those throughout the length and breadth of our great country who make a fair living by traducing better men than themselves; by continually crying out that the black man is incapable of being civilized; that he is born with the elements of barbarity, improvidence and untruthfulness so woven into his very nature that no amount of opportunity, labor, love, or sacrifice can ever lift him out of the condition, the "sphere god designed him to occupy"--as if the great common parent took any more pains in the making of one man than another. but those who utter such blasphemy, who call in the assistance of the almighty to fight the battles of the devil, are the very persons who do most by precept and example to make possible the verification of their blasphemy. they carry their lamentations into the pulpit, grave convocations, newspapers, and even into halls of legislation, state and federal. they are the false prophets who blind the eye of reason and blunt the sympathies of honest, well-meaning men. they are the jonases on board the ship of progress. they belong to that class of men who would pick flaws in the finest work of art. they find fault with the great mass of ignorance around them, contending that the poor victims have only themselves to blame for their destitute and painful condition, and, therefore, are not entitled to the sympathy or charity of their more fortunate brethren--unmindful that the great master, judging by the false laws of men, declared that "the poor ye have always with you;" while the very rich are held up as monsters of selfishness, rapacity and the most loathsome of social vices. it is, therefore, hardly to be expected that this class of persons would find anything good in the nature of the lately enslaved black man, or any improvement in his condition since a generous government had made him an ignorant voter and a confirmed pauper--the victim of his former master, to be robbed outright by designing and unscrupulous harpies of trade, and to be defrauded of his franchise by blatant demagogues or by outlaws, to whom i will not apply the term "assassins" for fear of using bad english. when the american government conferred upon the black man the boon of freedom and the burden of the franchise, it added four million men to the already vast army of men who appear to be specially created to labor for the enrichment of vast corporations, which have no souls, and for individuals, whom our government have made a privileged class, by permitting them to usurp or monopolize, through the accepted channel of barter and trade, the soil, from which the masses, the laboring masses, must obtain a subsistence, and without the privilege of cultivating which they must faint and die.[ ] it also added four millions of souls to what have been termed, in the refinement of sarcasm, "the dangerous classes"[ ]--meaning by which the vast army of men and women who, while willing and anxious to make an honest living by the labor of their hands, and who--when speculators cry "over-production," "glutted market," and other clap-trap--threaten to take by force from society that which society prevents them from making honestly. when a society fosters as much crime and destitution as ours, with ample resources to meet the actual necessities of every one, there must be something radically wrong, not in the society but in the foundation upon which society is reared. where is this ulcer located? is it to be found in the dead-weight of illiteracy which we carry? the masses of few countries are more intelligent than ours. is it to be found in burdensome taxation or ill-adjusted tariff regulations? few countries are burdened with less debt, and many have far worse tariff laws than curse our country. is it to be found in an unjust pension list? we hardly miss the small compensation which we grant to the men (or their heirs) who, in the hour of national peril, gave their lives freely to perpetuate the union of our states. where, then, is secreted the parasite which is eating away the energies of the people, making paupers and criminals in the midst of plenty and the grandest of civilizations? is it not to be found in the powerful monopolies we have created? monopoly in land, in railroads, telegraphs, fostered manufactures, etc.,--the gigantic forces in our civilization which are, in their very nature, agents of public convenience, comfort and absolute necessity? society, in the modern sense, could not exist without these forces; they are part and parcel of our civilization. naturally, therefore, society should control them, or submit to the humiliation of being ruled by them. and this latter is largely the case at the present time. having evolved those forces out of its necessities, made them strong and permanent, society failed to impose such conditions as wise policy should have dictated, and now suffers the calamitous consequences. the tail wags the dog, instead of the dog wagging the tail. no government can afford, with any degree of safety, to make four million of citizens out of so many slaves. and when it is remembered that our slaves were turned loose upon their former masters--lifted by one stroke of the pen, as it were, from the most degraded condition to the very pinnacle of sovereign manhood--the equals in unrestricted manhood, with the privileges and immunities of citizens who had been born to rule, apparently, instead of being ruled--it will be seen readily how critical was the situation. but the condition having once been created by the strong arm of the federal government, based upon a bloody and costly war in open defiance of the constitution as designed by the compromising fathers of the republic; the slave once made a free man the same as his former master, and given the ballot, the highest privilege of government a man can exercise;--the government having once gone so far, there was absolutely nothing for it to do but to interpose its omnipotent authority between the haughty and arrogant free man on the one hand and the crouching and fearful freed man on the other--the lion and the lamb. to do less would be more than cruel, it would be murderous;--the agency which created the condition was bound by all law and precedent to see that those conditions were maintained in their entirety. it could not evade the issue except at the expense of dignity, consistency and humanity. there was but one honorable course to pursue. any other would be a horrible abandonment of principle. if it were powerful to create, to make free men and citizens, it must, manifestly, be powerful to insure the enjoyment of the freedom conferred, and protect the inviolability of the franchise granted. any other conclusion would make government a by-word and a scoffing to the nations; any other conclusion would make its conferring of freedom and citizenship absurd in the extreme, a mere trick of the demagogue to ease the popular conscience. to do such a thing would sink a decent government lower in the estimation of the world than the miserable apology of government represented by the khedive of egypt. no patriotic american would admit to himself, or to a foreigner, that the united states government, through its accredited representatives in congress, possessed constitutional power to confer a benefit and did not possess power to make that benefit available; to contract an obligation, pecuniary or other, which it had not inherent power to liquidate. the validity of a contract, as a matter of fact, depends upon the ability of the parties to enter into it, for no court can enforce a contract when it is shown that the principals to it had not legal right to make it or to fulfill the conditions of it. it is accepted as a surety of power to observe the conditions when a sovereign government makes itself a party to a contract. the people are bound by their agents, to whom they delegate authority. nothing is regarded in a more obnoxious light than the repudiation of their honest debts by sovereign states. it is regarded in financial circles as the crime of all crimes the blackest. the credit of the state is reduced to a song, and moneyed men shun it as they would a rattlesnake. the state and its people are held up as monsters of depravity. it matters not how unjust the debt, how poor the people; the mere fact that they repudiate an obligation which they entered into in good faith is sufficient to destroy their credit in new york or london and make them the target of every virtuous newspaper which voices the sentiment of the class that deals in "futures" and "corners." as an illustration, take the state of virginia. the people of that state contracted large debts to aid and abet the cause of the so-called confederate government, a thing which crystallized around the question: "have the sovereign states absolute, undivided authority to regulate their own internal concerns, slave and other, or is this authority vested in the federal or national government?" when the people of virginia contracted those large debts, drawing upon her future resources, and placing burdens upon men yet unborn, to propagate theories at variance with sound doctrines of government, and to perpetuate an institution too vile to be mentioned with respect, in , and immediately subsequent thereto, when the state of virginia contracted the debts in question for the perpetuation of slavery, she had a population of , , ; . per cent of which was white (free), and . per cent was colored (slave). virginia, therefore, in contracting debts in , did not calculate that twenty-two years thereafter the obligations would be repudiated, and the credit of the state depreciated, by the assistance of the very class of persons to bind whom to a cruel and barbarous servitude those debts were contracted. it is one of the most striking instances of retributive justice that i ever knew. nothing was more natural, when the question came up for final settlement a few years ago, than that the black voters of virginia should take sides with those who opposed the full settlement of the indebtedness. it is too much to expect of sensible men that they will assent, in a state of sovereign citizenship, to cancel debts contracted when they had no voice in the matter, and when, as a matter of fact, the debts were contracted to rivet upon them the chains of death. and yet for the part the black men of virginia took upon the settlement of her infamous debt, they have been abused and maligned from one end of the country to the other. because they refused to vote to tax themselves to pay money borrowed without their consent, and applied to purposes of death and slaughter, no man has been found to commend them or to accept as sufficiently extenuating, the peculiar circumstances surrounding the question. shylock must have his pound of flesh, though the unlucky victim bleed his life away. but there are laws "higher" than any framed in the interest of tyrannical capital. in my opinion, the man who deliberately invests his money to perpetuate so vile an institution as slavery deserves not only to lose the interest upon his investment but the principal as well. i therefore have not a grain of sympathy for the greedy cormorants who invested their money in the so-called confederate government. neither have i any sympathy for the people of the south who, having invested all their money in human flesh, found themselves at the close of the rebellion paupers in more senses than one--being bankrupt in purse and unused to make an honest living by honest labor--too proud to work and too poor to loaf. in a question of this kind, no one disputes the power of virginia to contract debts to propagate opinions, erroneous or other, but it is a question whether the people of one generation have the right to tax--that is, enslave--the people of generations yet unborn. the creation of public debts is pernicious in practice, productive of more harm than good. what right have i to create debts for my grandson or granddaughter? i have no right even to presume that i will have a grandson, certainly none that he will be able to meet his own debts in addition to those i entail upon him. the character of the people called upon to settle the debt of virginia, contracted in , before or immediately after, differed radically from the character of the people who were called upon to tax themselves to cancel that debt. not only had the character of the people undergone a radical change; the whole social and industrial mechanism of the state had undergone a wonderful, almost an unrecognizable, metamorphosis. the haughty aristocrat, with his magnificent plantation, his army of slaves, and his "cattle on a thousand hills," who eagerly contracted the debt, had been transformed into a sour pauper when called upon to honor his note; while the magnificent plantation had been in many instances cut into a thousand bits to make homes for the former slaves, now freemen and citizens, the equals of "my lord," while "his cattle on a thousand hills" had dwindled down to a stubborn jackass and a worn out milch cow. true, the white man possessed, largely, the soil; but he was, immediately after the war, utterly incapable of wringing from it the bounty of nature; he had first to be re-educated. but, when the bloody rebellion was over, the country, in its sovereign capacity, and by individual states, was called upon to deal with grave questions growing out of the conflict. mr. lincoln, by a stroke of the pen,[ ] transferred the battle from the field to the halls of legislation. in view of the "emancipation proclamation" as issued by mr. lincoln, and the invaluable service rendered by black troops[ ] in the rebellion, legislation upon the status of the former slave could not be avoided. the issue could not be evaded; like banquo's ghost, it would not down. there were not wanting men, even when the war had ended and the question of chattel slavery had been forever relegated to the limbo of "things that were," who were willing still to toy with half-way measures, to cater to the caprices of that treacherous yet brave power--the south. they had not yet learned that southern sentiment was fundamentally revolutionary, dynamic in the extreme, and could not be toyed with as with a doll-baby. so the statesmen proceeded to manufacture the "reconstruction policy"--a policy more fatuous, more replete with fatal concessions and far more fatal omissions than any ever before adopted for the acceptance and governance of a rebellious people on the one hand and a newly made, supremely helpless people on the other. it is not easy to regard with equanimity the blunders of the "reconstruction policy" and the manifold infamies which have followed fast upon its adoption. the south scornfully rejected and successfully nullified the legislative will of the victors. judge albion w. tourgee says of this policy in his book called _a fool's errand_: "it was a magnificent sentiment that underlay it all,--an unfaltering determination, an invincible defiance to all that had the seeming of compulsion or tyranny. one cannot but regard with pride and sympathy the indomitable men, who, being conquered in war, yet resisted every effort of the conqueror to change their laws, their customs, or even the _personnel_ of their ruling class; and this, too, not only with unyielding stubbornness, but with success. one cannot but admire the arrogant boldness with which they charged the nation which had overpowered them--even in the teeth of her legislators--with perfidy, malice, and a spirit of unworthy and contemptible revenge. how they laughed to scorn the reconstruction acts of which the wise men boasted! how boldly they declared the conflict to be irrepressible, and that white and black could not and should not live together as co-ordinate ruling elements! how lightly they told the tales of blood--of the masked night-riders, of the invisible empire of rifle clubs and saber clubs (all organized for peaceful purposes), of warnings and whippings and slaughter! ah, it is wonderful! * * * bloody as the reign of mary, barbarous as the chronicles of the comanche!" footnotes: [ ] we of the united states take credit for having abolished slavery. passing the question of how much credit the majority of us are entitled to for the abolition of negro slavery, it remains true that we have only abolished one form of slavery--and that a primitive form which had been abolished in the greater portion of the country by social development, and that, notwithstanding its race character gave it peculiar tenacity, would in time have been abolished in the same way in other parts of the country. we have not really abolished slavery; we have retained it in its most insidious and widespread form--in the form which applies to whites as to blacks. so far from having abolished slavery, it is extending and intensifying, and we made no scruple of setting into it our own children--the citizens of the republic yet to be. for what else are we doing in selling the land on which future citizens must live, if they are to live at all.--henry george, _social problems_, p. . [ ] although for the present there is a lull in the conflict of races at the south, it is a lull which comes only from the breathing-spells of a great secular contention, and not from any permanent pacification founded on a resolution of the race problem presented by the negro question in its present aspects. so long as the existing mass of our crude and unassimilated colored population holds its present place in the body politic, we must expect that civilization and political rights will oscillate between alternate perils--the peril that comes from the white man when he places civilization, or sometimes his travesty of it, higher than the negro's political rights, and the peril that comes from the black man when his political rights are placed by himself or others higher than civilization--president james c. willing, on "race education" in _the north american review_, april, . [ ] by virtue of the power and for the purposes aforesaid, i do ordain and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts of states, are and henceforth shall be free; and that the executive government of the united states, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.--abraham lincoln's _emancipation proclamation_. [ ] from williams's _history of the negro race in america_ i construct the following table showing the number of colored troops employed by the federal government during the war of the rebellion: colored troops furnished - total of new england states , total of middle states , total, western states and territories , total, border states , total, southern states , ------- grand total states , at large not accounted for , officers , ------- grand total , this gives colored troops enlisted in the states in rebellion; besides this, there were , colored troops (included with the white soldiers) in the quotas of the several states. chapter v _illiteracy--its causes_ at the close of the rebellion there were in the union (according to the census of ) , , people of african origin; in they had increased to , , . of this vast multitude in , it is safe to say, not so many as one in every ten thousand could read or write. they had been doomed by the most stringent laws to a long night of mental darkness. it was a crime to teach a black man how to read even the bible, the sacred repository of the laws that must light the pathway of man from death unto life eternal. for to teach a slave was to make a firebrand--to arouse that love of freedom which stops at nothing short of absolute freedom. it is not, therefore, surprising that every southern state should have passed the most odious inhibitary laws, with severe fines and penalties for their infraction, upon the question of informing the stunted intelligence of the slave population. the following table will show the condition of education in the south in : comparative statistics of education at the south ------------------------------------------------------------------------ white colored -------------------------- ------------------------- states school enroll- [a] school enroll- [a] [b] population ment population ment ------------------------------------------------------------------------ alabama , , , , $ , arkansas [b] , [c] , [b] , [c] , , delaware , , , , , florida [b] , [c] , [b] , [c] , , georgia [d] , , [d] , , , kentucky [e] , [c] , [e] , [c] , , louisiana [c] , [d] , [c] , [d] , , maryland [f] , , [f] , , , , mississippi , , , , , missouri , , , , , , n.carolina , , , , , s.carolina [g] , , [g] , , , tennessee , , , , , texas [h] , , [h] , , , virginia , , , , , w.virginia , , , , , district of columbia , , , , , ------------------------------------------------------------ total , , , , , , , , , ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [table header a: percentage of the school population enrolled] [table header b: total expenditure for both races[a]] [a] in delaware the colored public schools have been supported by the school tax collected from colored citizens only; recently, however, they have received an appropriation of $ , from the state; in kentucky the school-tax collected from colored citizens is the only state appropriation for the support of colored schools; in maryland there is a biennial appropriation by the legislature; in the district of columbia one-third of the school moneys is set apart for colored public schools, and in the other states mentioned above the school moneys are divided in proportion to the school population without regard to race. [b] several counties failed to make race distinctions. [c] estimated. [d] in . [e] for whites the school age is to , for colored to . [f] census of . [g] in . [h] these numbers include some duplicates; the actual school population is , . speaking in the senate of the united states june , , the bill for national "aid to common schools" being under consideration, senator henry w. blair, of new hampshire, said: excluding the states of maryland and missouri and the district of columbia, and the total yearly expenditure for both races is only $ , , , while in the whole country the annual expenditure is, from taxation, $ , , , and from school funds $ , , , or a total of $ , , , (see tables and ,) or one-tenth of the whole, while they contain one-fifth of the school-population. the causes which have produced this state of things in the southern states are far less important than the facts themselves as they now exist. to find a remedy and apply it is the only duty which devolves upon us. without universal education, not only will the late war prove to be a failure, but the abolition of slavery be proved to be a tremendous disaster, if not a crime. the country was held together by the strong and bloody embrace of war, but that which the nation might and did do to retain the integrity of its territory and of its laws by the expenditure of brute force will all be lost if, for the subjection of seven millions of men, by the statutes of the states is to be substituted the thraldom of ignorance and the tyranny of an irresponsible suffrage. secession, and a confederacy founded upon slavery as its chief cornerstone, would be better than the future of the southern states--better for both races, too--if the nation is to permit one-third, and that the fairest portion of its domain, to become the spawning ground of ignorance, vice, anarchy, and of every crime. the nation as such abolished slavery as a legal institution; but ignorance is slavery, and no matter what is written in your constitutions and your laws, slavery will continue until intelligence, handmaid of liberty, shall have illuminated the whole land with the light of her smile. before the war the southern states were aristocracies, highly educated, and disciplined in the science of polities. hence they preserved order and flourished at home, while they imposed their will upon the nation at large. now all is changed. the suffrage is universal, and that means universal ruin unless the capacity to use it intelligently is created by universal education. until the republican constitutions, framed in accordance with the congressional reconstruction which supplanted the governments initiated by president johnson, common-school systems, like universal suffrage, were unknown. hence in a special manner the nation is responsible for the existence and support of those systems as well as for the order of things which made them necessary. that remarkable progress has been made under their influence is true, and that the common school is fast becoming as dear to the masses of the people at the south as elsewhere is also evident. the nation, through the freedmen's bureau, and perhaps to a limited extent in other ways, has expended five millions of dollars for the education of negroes and refugees in the earlier days of reconstruction, while religious charities have founded many special schools which have thus far cost some ten millions more. the peabody fund has distilled the dews of heaven all over the south; but heavy rains are needed; without them every green thing must wither away. this work belongs to the nation. it is a part of the war. we have the southern people as patriotic allies now. we are one; so shall we be forever. but both north and south have a fiercer and more doubtful fight with the forces of ignorance than they waged with each other during the bloody years which chastened the opening life of this generation. the south lost in the destruction of property about two billion dollars and in prosecuting the war two billion more. no people can lose so much without seriously disarranging the entire mechanism of their government. it is for this reason, therefore, that the measure of "national aid to education" has so many and so persistent advocates. i wish to place myself among them. if the safety of republican government abides in the intelligence and virtue of the people, it can very readily be seen how much safety there is in the south at present. if it be true that an ulcer will vitiate the entire body, and endanger the life of the patient, we can see very plainly to what possible danger the spread of illiteracy may lead us. illiteracy in the south is one of the worst legacies which the rebellion bequeathed to the nation. it has been the prime cause of more misgovernment in the south than any other one cause, not even the insatiable rapacity of the carpet-bag adventurers taking precedence of it. it has not only served as a provocation to peculation and chicanery, but it has nerved the courage of the assassin and made merry the midnight ride of armed mobs bent upon righting wrongs by committing crimes before which the atrocities of savage warfare pale. wholesale murders have been committed and sovereign majorities awed into silence and inaction by reason of the widespread illiteracy of the masses. the very first principles of republican government have been ruthlessly trampled under foot because the people were ignorant of their sovereign rights, and had not, therefore, courage to maintain them. that there should be in sixteen states and the district of columbia a population of , , people to be educated out of $ , , is sufficient to arouse the apprehension of the most indifferent friend of good government. the state of new york alone, with a school population of only , , spent, in , $ , , . but i base my argument for the establishment and maintenance of a comprehensive system of national education upon other grounds than the "safety of the union," which is the same argument used by mr. lincoln when he emancipated the slaves. this argument is strong, and will always greatly influence a certain class of people. and, naturally, it should, for the perpetuation of the union is simply the perpetuation of a republican form of government. but there are stronger grounds to be considered. . the united states government is directly responsible for the illiteracy and the widespread poverty which obtain in the south. under its sanction and by its connivance the institution of slavery flourished and prospered, until it had taken such deep root as to be almost impossible of extirpation. it was the _union_, and not the _states_, severally, which made slavery part and parcel of the fundamental law of the land. if this be a correct statement of the case, and i assume that it is, the _union_ (and not the _states_, severally) is responsible for the ignorance of the black people of the south. slavery could not have existed and grown in the union save by permission of all the states of the union. it is therefore obvious that the agency which created and fostered a great crime is obligated, not only by the laws of god but of man as well, to assume the responsibility of its creation and to remedy, as far as possible, the evil results of that crime. the issue cannot be evaded. the obligation rests upon the union, not upon the several states, to assume the direction of methods by which the appalling illiteracy of the south is to be diminished. . there have not been wanting men and newspapers to urge that the united states should reimburse the slave-holders of the south for the wholesale confiscation, so to speak, of their property. true, these men and newspapers belong to that class of unrepentants who believed that slavery was a _divine institution_ and that the slave-holder was a sort of vicegerent of heaven, a holy moses, as it were. but when we leave the absurdity of this claim, which lies upon the surface, there is much apparent reason in their representations. it was the _union_ which legalized the sale and purchase of slave property, thereby inviting capitalists to invest in it; and it was the _union_ which declared such contracts null and void by the abolition of slavery, or confiscation of slave property. as i said before, i have no sympathy with those who invested their money in slave property. they not only received their just deserts in having their property confiscated, but they should have been compelled to make restitution to the last penny to the poor slaves whom they had systematically robbed. but perhaps this would have been carrying justice too near the ideal. for the great debt to the slave, who was robbed of his honest wage, we go behind the slave-holder, who had been invited by the government to invest his money in blood; we go to the head of the firm for the payment of debts contracted by the firm, for each member of the government is, measurably, an agent of the government, contracting and paying debts by its delegated authority. thus the law holds him guilty who willfully breaks a contract entered into in good faith by all the parties to it. instead of holding the slave-holder responsible for the robbery of the black man through a period of a hundred years, we hold the _government_ responsible. what man can compute the dollars stolen from the black slave in the shape of wages, for a period of a hundred years! what claim has the slave-holder against the government for confiscation of property by the side of the claim of the slaves for a hundred years of wages and enervated and dwarfed manhood! a billion dollars would have bought every slave in the south in , but fifty billions would not have adequately recompensed the slave for enforced labor and debased manhood. the debt grows in magnitude the closer it is inspected. and yet there are those who will laugh this claim to scorn; who will be unable to see any grounds upon which to base the justice of it; who will say that the black man was fully compensated for all the ills he had borne, the robbery to which he had been subjected, and the debasement--not to say enervation--of his manhood, by the great act by which he was made a free man and a citizen. but there is, or should be, such a claim; it rests upon the strongest possible grounds of equity; while the conference of freedom and citizenship was simply the rendering back in the first instance that which no man has any right to appropriate, law or no law; and, in the second, bestowing a boon which had been honestly earned in every conflict waged by the union from yorktown to appomatox court house--a boon, i am forced to exclaim, which has, in many respects, proved to be more of a curse than a blessing, more a dead weight to carry than a help to conserve his freedom; and to aid in the fixing of his proper status as a co-equal citizen. i deny the _right_ of any man to enslave his fellow; i deny the _right_ of any government, sovereign as the union or dependent as are the states in many respects, to pass any regulation which robs _one man or class_ to enrich _another_. individuals may invest their capital in human flesh, and governments may legalize the infamous compact; yet it carries upon its face the rankest injustice to the man and outrage upon the laws of god, the common parent of all mankind. there are those in this country--men too of large influence, however small their wit, who, aping miserably the masterly irony of _junius_, speak of the black man as the "ward of the nation"--a sort of pauper, dependent upon the charity of a generous and humane people for sustenance, and even tolerance to dwell among them, to enjoy the blessing of a civilization which i pronounce to be reared upon quicksand, a civilization more fruitful of poverty, misery and crime than of competence, happiness and virtue. those who regard the black man in the light of a "ward of the nation," are too narrow-minded, ignorant or ungenerous to deserve my contempt. the people of this country have been made fabulously affluent by legalized robbery of the black man; the coffers of the national government have overflowed into the channels of subsidy and peculation, enriching sharpers and thieves, with the earnings of slave labor; while nineteen out of every twenty landowners in the south obtained their unjust hold upon the soil by robbing the black man. when the rebellion at last closed, the white people of the south were poor in gold but rich indeed in lands, while the black man was poor in everything, even in manhood, not because of any neglect or improvidence on his part, but because, though he labored from the rising to the setting of the sun, he received absolutely nothing for his labor, often being denied adequate food to sustain his physical man and clothing to protect him from the rude inclemency of the weather. he was a bankrupt in purse because the _government_ had robbed him; he was a bankrupt in character, in all the elements of a successful manhood, because the _government_ had placed a premium upon illiteracy and immorality. it was not the individual slave-owner who held the black man in chains; it was the _government_; for, the government having permitted slavery to exist, the institution vanished the instant the government declared that it should no longer exist! i therefore maintain that the people of this nation who enslaved the black man, who robbed him of more than a hundred years of toil, who perverted his moral nature, and all but extinguished in him the divine spark of intelligence, are morally bound to do all that is in their power to build up his shattered manhood, to put him on his feet, as it were, to fit him to enjoy the freedom thrust upon him so unceremoniously, and to exercise with loyalty and patriotism the ballot placed in his hands--the ballot, in which is wrapped up the destiny of republican government, the perpetuity of democratic institutions. it is the proper function of government to see to it that its citizens are properly prepared to exercise wisely the liberties placed in their keeping. self-preservation would dictate as much; for, if it be considered the better part of valor to discretely build and maintain arsenals and forts to bar out the invader, to prepare against the assaults of the enemy from without, how much more imperative it is to take timely precautions to counteract the mischief of insidious foes from within? are our liberties placed more in jeopardy by the assaults of an enemy who plans our destruction three thousand miles away than of the enemy within our very bosoms? was it the puissance of the barbarian arms or the corruption and enervation of the character of her people which worked the downfall of rome? was it influences from _without_ or influences from _within_ which corrupted the integrity of the people of sparta and led to their subjugation by a more sturdy people? let us learn by the striking examples of history. a people's greatness should be measured, not by its magnificent palaces, decked out in all the gaudy splendors of art and needless luxuries, the price of piracy or direct thievery; not in the number of colossal fortunes accumulated out of the stipend of the orphan and widow and the son of toil; not in the extent and richness of its public buildings and palaces of idle amusement; not in vast aggregations of capital in the coffers of the common treasury--capital unnecessarily diverted from the channels of trade, extorted from the people by the ignorance of their "wise men," who seek in vain for a remedy for the evil, _because they do not want to find one_.[ ] a people's greatness should not be measured by these standards, for they are the parasites which eat away the foundations of greatness and stability. on the contrary, such greatness is to be found in the general diffusion of wealth, the comparative contentment and competency of the masses, and the general virtue and patriotism of the _whole_ people. it should, therefore, manifestly be the end and aim of legislators to so shape the machinery placed in their hands as to operate with the least possible restraint upon the energies of the people. it should not be the studied purpose to enrich the few at the expense of the many, to restrain this man and give that one the largest possible immunity. no law should be made or enforced which would abridge my right while enlarging the right of my neighbor. that such is the case at this time--that legislatures are manipulated in the interest of a few, and that the great mass of the people feel only the burdens placed upon them by their servants, who are more properly speaking become their masters--that to such perversion of popular sovereignty we have come, is admitted by candid men. therefore, that the people may more clearly know their rights and how best to preserve them and reap their fullest benefits, they should be instructed in the language which is the medium through which to interpret their grand _magna charta_. footnotes: [ ] since all sensible men know that the evil lies in a protective tariff and the bulky catalogue of monopoly. chapter vi _education--professional or industrial_ the "religious training of the freedmen" and the "education of the freedmen" have raised up an army of people more _peculiar_ in many respects than any other like class in all the history of mankind. they stand off by themselves; they are not to be approached by any counter method of "advocating a cause" or "building up the kingdom of christ" in _their_ field. millions of dollars have been "raised" to root out the illiteracy and immorality of the freedmen, and to build up their shattered manhood. indeed, there have been times when i have seriously debated the question, whether the black man had any manhood left, after the missionaries and religious enthusiasts had done picturing, or, rather, caricaturing his debased moral and mental condition. he has been made the victim of the most exalted panegyric by one set of fanatics, and of the most painful, malignant abuse and detraction by another set. the one has painted him as a sort of angel, and the other as a sort of devil; when, in fact, he is neither one nor the other; when, simply, he is a _man_, a member of the common family, possessing no more virtue nor vice than his brother, the brother who has managed to so impose upon himself that he is pretty thoroughly convinced that nature expended all its most choice materials in the construction of his class. but this is simply the work of the devil, who delights in throwing cayenne pepper into the eyes of good men. the aspects of the work which has been done in the south for the colored people by "missionaries," so to term them, by the assistance of large sums of money donated by philanthropic men and women, are very many-sided indeed. i would in no wise underrate the magnitude of the work performed, nor attribute to those who have been the agents in disbursing these unparalleled benefactions motives other than of the purest and loftiest, in a majority of cases; but i think the time has arrived when we may disrobe the matter of the romance which writers have industriously woven about it. in the early stages of the work a few men and women of large fortunes, who had been "born with a silver spoon in their mouths," may have gone south to labor for humanity and the master, may have left comfortable firesides and congenial companionships to make their homes among strangers who shut them out from their affections and sympathies because they had come to labor for the poor and the despised. examples of this lofty devotion to a good cause there undoubtedly were in the days long ago; but the bulk of the work was performed by persons, male and female, to whom employment, an opportunity to make an honest living in an honest way, was a godsend. that they possessed much bravery to undertake a work which shut them out from the sympathy and social recognition of those who may be called their equals, is not denied; but that they were the pampered children of fortune, laboring simply for god and humanity, which zealous persons have painted them to be in newspapers and magazines, religious and other, is simply making a mountain out of a mole-hill. they were neither millionaires nor paupers, but they were educated men and women, like thousands throughout the north and west, who went into the field to labor because it was rich unto the harvest and the laborers were few. to say that salaries offered were not accepted always with promptness would be to get on the wrong side of a correct statement of fact. there are hundreds and thousands of educated men and women in the north and west to-day "waiting for something to turn up," and who would not hesitate a moment to embrace an opportunity, honorable and lucrative, which should present itself. there was little romance in the undertaking; there was far less in the work to be performed. i simply desire to protest against the correctness of the distorted pictures drawn ostensibly to magnify the sacrifices, which were many, and to belittle the rewards, which were great, in the performance of an ordinary piece of work, by a class of persons now rapidly disappearing from the scenes that once knew them. their work is fast being transferred to the hands of colored men and women--the pupil is taking the place of the master; the demand drawing upon the colored--not the white--supply, because "birds of a feather flock together," more especially when one class is composed of chickens and the other of chicken-hawks. when lines are drawn, men unconsciously, as it were, keep on their own side. so, in colored churches and schools the whites are at a discount because it is easier and more congenial to employ colored help. colored people are like white people. when they see nothing but white ministers in the white churches they conclude that it is best to have nothing but colored ministers in their own pulpits, and they are perfectly consistent and logical in their conclusion; the rule which actuates mankind in such matters being, not the biblical one, which enjoins that we do unto others as we _would have them_ do unto us, but, rather, do unto others as _they do_ unto us; and this latter rule would seem to be better adapted for worldly success than the former, because it has more of the practical than the theoretical about it, and is more earthly than heavenly in its observance. the same is true of schools and school teachers. the colored people everywhere are constantly clamoring for colored teachers, since the rank injustice of _separate_ schools is forced upon them. i would interject just here a few words on the _separate-school system_. aside from the manifest injustice of setting up two schoolhouses in the same ward or district--injustice to the children in the spirit, false from every standpoint, that one child is better than another--the _double expense_ of maintaining two schools is obvious, and is sufficiently absurd to repel the sympathy or practical philanthropy of any man, christian or infidel. why should the people be called upon to support _two_ schools within speaking distance of each other to preserve an infamous distinction, a sneaking caste prejudice? why! because the people are wise in their own conceit--perfectly rational upon all other questions save the _color question_. the south is weighted down with debt, almost as poor as the proverbial "job's turkey," and yet she supports a dual school system simple to gratify a _prejudice_. i notice with surprise that among the bills pending before congress to give national aid to education it is not proposed to interfere with the irregular and ruinous dual caste schools; thereby, in effect, giving the national assent to a system repugnant to the genius of the constitution. but it is nothing new under the sun for the congress of the nation to aid and abet institutions and theories anti-republican and pernicious in all their ramifications. perhaps no people ever had more advantages to dedicate and prepare themselves for the ministry of christ than the colored people of the south. the religious "idea" has been so thoroughly worked that other branches of study, other callings than the ministry, have paled into insignificance. the cross of christ has been held up before the colored youth as if the whole end and aim of life was to preach the gospel, as if the philosophy of heaven superseded in practical importance the philosophy of life. the persistence with which this one "idea" has been forced upon colored students has produced the reverse of what was anticipated in a large number of cases, and very naturally. it is a false theory to suppose all the people of any one class to be specially fitted for only one branch of industry: for i maintain that preaching has largely become a trade or profession, in which the churches with large salaries have become prizes to be contended for with almost as much zeal and partisanship as the prizes in politics. this is true not only of colored ministers but white ones as well. it is no disparagement of colored ministers to say that day by day they grow more and more in favor of serving churches with fair salaries than in carrying around the cross as itinerants, without any special place to lay their heads when the storms blow and the rains descend. in this they do but pattern after white clergymen, who do not always set examples that angels would be justified in imitating. colored people are naturally sociable, and intensely religious in their disposition. their excellent social qualities make them the best of companions. they are musical, humorous and generous to a fault. coupled with their strong religious bias, these attractive qualities will in time lift them to the highest possible grade in our dwarfed civilization, where the fittest does not always survive; the drossiest, flimsiest, most selfish and superficial often occupying the high places, social and political. but i have still higher aspirations for my race. there is hope for any people who are social in disposition, for this supposes the largest capacity for mutual friendships, therefore of co-operation, out of which the highest civilization is possible to be evolved; while a love of music and the possession of musical and humorous talent is, undeniably, indicative of genius and prospective culture and refinement of the most approved standard. indeed, the constant evolution of negro character is one of the most marked and encouraging social phenomena of the times; it constantly tends upwards, in moral, mental development and material betterment. those who contend that the negro is standing still, or "_relapsing into barbarism_," are the falsest of false prophets. they resolutely shut their eyes to facts all around them, and devote columns upon columns of newspaper, magazine and book argument--imaginary pictures--to the immorality, mental sterility and innate improvidence of this people; and they do this for various reasons, none of them honorable, many of them really disreputable. in dealing with this negro problem they always start off upon a false premise; their conclusions must, necessarily, be false. in the first place, disregarding the fact that the negroes of the south are nothing more nor less than the laboring class of the people, the same in many particulars as the english and irish peasantry, they proceed to regard them as intruders in the community--as a people who continually take from but add nothing to the wealth of the community. it is nothing unusual to see newspaper articles stating in the most positive terms that the schools maintained by the state for the education of the blacks are supported out of the taxes paid by _white men_; and, very recently, it was spoken of as a most laudable act of justice and generosity that the state of georgia paid out annually for the maintenance of colored schools more money than _the aggregate taxes paid into the treasury_ of the state by the negro property owners of the state; while the grand commonwealth of kentucky only appropriates for the maintenance of colored schools such moneys as are paid into the state treasury by the colored people. can the philosophy of taxation be reduced to a more hurtful, a more demoralizing absurdity! suppose the same standard of distribution of school funds should be applied to the city or the state of new york; what would be the logical result? should we appropriate annually from nine to twelve millions of dollars to improve the morals of the people by informing their intelligence? would the state be able, after ten years of such an experiment, to pay the myriads of officials which would be required to preserve the public peace, to protect life and insure proper respect for the so-called rights of property? such an experiment would in time require the deportation to new york of the entire male adult population of ireland, to be turned into the "finest police in the world," to stem the tide of crime and immorality which such premium upon ignorance would entail. since even under the present munificent and well ordered school system, it is almost impossible to elect a board of aldermen from any other than the _slum_ elements of the population--the liquor dealers, the gamblers, and men of their kind, the president of the new york board of aldermen at this very writing being a liquor-dealer, who can estimate the calamity which the inauguration of the kentucky system would bring upon the people of new york--appropriating to the support of the public schools only such taxes as were paid by the parents of the children who attend them! and, yet, there is hardly an editor in the south who does not regard it as so much robbery of the tax-payers to support schools for the colored people--for the proletarian classes generally, white and colored. they stoutly maintain that these people really add nothing to the stock of wealth, really produce nothing, and that, therefore charity can become no more magnanimous than when it gives, places in reach of, the poor man the opportunity to educate his child, the embryo man, the future citizen. they think it a sounder principle of government to equip and maintain vast penal systems--with chain gangs, schools of crime, depravity and death, than to support schools and churches. millions of money are squandered annually to curb crime, when a few thousand dollars, properly applied, would prove to be a more humane, a more profitable preventive. the poor school teacher is paid _twenty-five dollars per month_ for three months in the year, while the prison guards is paid _fifty dollars per month_ for twelve months--ninety days being the average length given to teach the child in the school and three hundred and sixty-five being necessary to teach him in the prison, whence he is frequently graduated a far worse, more hopeless enemy of society than when he matriculated. and the brutality of the convict systems of southern states is equaled by no similar institutions in the world, if we except the penal system enforced by russia in siberia. the terms of imprisonment for minor offenses are cruelly excessive, while the food and shelter furnished and the punishments inflicted would bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of a savage. the convict systems of alabama, georgia, south carolina and arkansas are a burning disgrace to the christian civilization which we boast. nothing short of a semi-barbarous public opinion would permit them to exist. governors have "called attention" to them; legislatures have "investigated" and "resolved" that they should be purified, and a _few_ newspapers here and there have held them up to the scorn and contempt of the world; yet they not only grow worse year by year, but the number of them steadily multiplies. and so they will. how is it to be otherwise? to prevent such ulcerations upon the body you must purify the blood. you cannot root them out by probing; that simply aggravates them. a system of misrepresentation and vilification of the character and condition of the southern negro has grown up, for the avowed purpose of enlisting the sympathies of the charitable and philanthropic people of the country to supply funds for his regeneration and education, which the government, state and federal, studiously denies; so that it is almost impossible to form a correct opinion either of his moral, mental or material condition. societies have organized and maintain a work among that people which requires an annual outlay of millions of dollars and thousands of employees; and to maintain the work, to keep up the interest of the charitable, it is necessary to picture, as black as imagination can conceive it, the present and prospective condition of the people who are, primarily, the beneficiaries. the work and its maintenance has really become a heavy strain upon the patience and generosity of the liberal givers of the land--whose profuse behests have no parallel in the history of any people. they have kept it up wellnigh a quarter of a century; and it is no disparagement to their zeal to say the tax upon them is becoming more of a burden than a pleasure. they have done in the name of humanity and of god for the unfortunate needy what the government should have done for its own purification and perpetuity for the co-equal citizen. and it is high time that the government should relieve the individual from the unjust and onerous tax. i do not hesitate to affirm, that while the work done by the charitable for the black citizen of this republic has been of the most incalculable benefit to him, it has also done him injury which it will take years upon years to eradicate. the misrepresentations resorted to, to obtain money to "lift him up," have spread broadcast over the land a feeling of contempt for him as a man and pity for his lowly and unfortunate condition; so that throughout the north a business man would much rather _give a thousand dollars_ to aid in the education of the black heathen than to give a black scholar and gentleman an opportunity to honestly _earn a hundred dollars_. he has no confidence in the capacity of the black man. he has seen him pictured a savage, sunk in ignorance and vice--an object worthy to receive alms, but incapable of making an honest living. so that when a black man demonstrates any capacity, shows any signs of originality or genius, rises just a few inches above the common, he at once becomes an object rare and wonderful--a "moses," a "_leader_ of his people."--it is almost as hard for an educated black man to obtain a position of trust and profit as it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. the missionaries, the preachers, and the educators, assisted by the newspapers and the magazines, have educated the people into the false opinion that it is safer to "donate" a thousand dollars to a colored college than it is to give one black man a chance to make an honest living. let us now look at the system of education as it has been operated among the colored people of the south. it cannot be denied that much of the fabulous sums of money lavishly given for the education of the freedmen of the south, has been squandered upon experiments, which common sense should have dictated were altogether impracticable. perhaps this was sequential in the early stages of the work, when the instructor was ignorant of the topography of the country, the temper of the people among whom he was to labor, and, more important still, when he was totally ignorant of the particular class upon whom he was to operate--ignorant of their temperament, receptive capacity and peculiar, aye, unique, idiosyncrasies. thus thousands upon thousands of dollars were expended upon the erection and endowment of "colleges" in many localities where ordinary common schools were unknown. each college was, therefore, necessarily provided with a primary department, where the child of ten years and the adult of forty struggled in the same classes with the first elements of rudimentary education. the child and the adult each felt keenly his position in the college, and a course of cramming was pursued, injurious to all concerned, to lessen the number in the primary and to increase the number in the college departments. no man can estimate the injury thus inflicted upon not only the student but the cause of education. even unto to-day there are colleges in localities in the south which run all year while the common school only runs from three to eight months. indeed, the multiplication of colleges and academies for the "higher education of colored youth" is one of the most striking phenomena of the times: as if theology and the classics were the things best suited to and most urgently needed by a class of persons unprepared in rudimentary education, and whose immediate aim must be that of the mechanic and the farmer--to whom the classics, theology and the sciences, in their extremely impecunious state, are unequivocable abstractions. there will be those who will denounce me for taking this view of collegiate and professional preparation; but i maintain that any education is false which is unsuited to the condition and the prospects of the student. to educate him for a lawyer when there are no clients, for medicine when the patients, although numerous, are too poor to give him a living income, to fill his head with latin and greek as a teacher when the people he is to teach are to be instructed in the _a b c's_--such education is a waste of time and a senseless expenditure of money. i do not inveigh against higher education; i simply maintain that the sort of education the colored people of the south stand most in need of is _elementary and industrial_. they should be instructed for the work to be done. many a colored farmer boy or mechanic has been spoiled to make a foppish gambler or loafer, a swaggering pedagogue or a cranky homiletician. men may be spoiled by education, even as they are spoiled by illiteracy. education is the preparation for a future work; hence men should be educated with special reference to that work. if left to themselves men usually select intuitively the course of preparation best suited to their tastes and capacities. but the colored youth of the south have been allured and seduced from their natural inclination by the premiums placed upon theological, classical and professional training for the purpose of sustaining the reputation and continuance of "colleges" and their professorships. i do not hesitate to say that if the vast sums of money already expended and now being spent in the equipment and maintenance of colleges and universities for the so called "higher education" of colored youth had been expended in the establishment and maintenance of primary schools and schools of applied science, the race would have profited vastly more than it has, both mentally and materially, while the results would have operated far more advantageously to the state, and satisfactorily to the munificent benefactors. since writing the above, i find in a very recent number of judge tourgèe's magazine, _the continent_, the following reflections upon the subject, contributed to that excellent periodical by prof. george f. magoun of iowa college. mr. magoun says: may i offer one suggestion which observation a few years since among the freedmen and much reflection, with comparisons made in foreign countries, have impressed upon me? it is this, that the key of the future for the black men of the south is _industrial_ education. the laboring men of other lands cannot hold their own in skilled labor save as they receive such education, and this of a constantly advancing type. the english house of commons moved two years since for a royal commission to study the technical schools of the continent, and the report respecting france made by this commission has been republished at washington by the united states commissioner of education. in our two leading northwestern cities, st. louis and chicago, splendid manual training-schools have been formed, and east and west the question of elementary manual training in public schools is up for discussion and decision. all this for _white_ laboring men. as long ago as december, , the legislature of tennessee authorized a brief manual of the elementary principles of agriculture to be "taught in the public schools of the state," for the benefit of _white_ farmers again. the professor of chemistry in the vanderbilt university, nashville, prepared the book-- pages. where in all this is there anything for the educational improvement of the black laborer just where he needs education most? the labor of the south is subject in these years to a marvelous revolution. the only opportunity the freedman has to rise is by furnishing such skilled labor as the great changes going on in that splendid section of the land require. how can he furnish it, unless the education given him is chiefly industrial and technical? some very pertinent statements of the situation are made in the _princeton review_ for may. they confirm all that you have said.[ ] as to the various bills before congress, the writer says: "immediate assistance should be rendered to the ex-slave states in the development of an education suited to their political and _industrial_ needs." can this be an education in latin and greek?"(the writer contends earnestly for retaining these studies in classical college and academy courses for students of all colors.) can it be anything else than training in elementary industry, such as is now demanded for our northern common-schools? if the denominational freedmen's schools find this a necessity, is it anything less for the southern public schools act which is contemplated in the bills before congress? mr. magoun reasons wisely. if the colored men of the south are to continue their grip as the wage-workers and wealth-producers of that section they must bring to their employments common intelligence and skill; and these are to be obtained in the south as in the north, by apprenticeship and in schools specially provided for the purpose. instead of spending three to seven years in mastering higher education, which presupposes favorable conditions, colored youth should spend those years in acquiring a "common school education," and in mastering some trade by which to make an honest livelihood when they step forth into the world of fierce competition. some may ask: shall we, then, not have some scholars, men learned in all that higher education gives? of course; and we should have them. men fitted by nature for special pursuits in life will make preparation for that work. water will find its level. genius cannot be repressed. it will find an audience, even though the singer be robert burns at his plow in the remoteness of ayr, or the philosophic Æsop in the humble garb of a greek pedant's slave. genius will take care of itself; it is the mass of mankind that must be led by the hand as we lead a small boy. it is therefore that i plead, that the masses of the colored race should receive such preparation for the fierce competition of every day life that the odds shall not be against them. i do not plead for the few, who will take care of themselves, but for the many who must be guided and protected lest they fall a prey to the more hardy or unscrupulous. mr. magoun follows out his train of thought in the following logical deductions: plainly, if this opportunity for furnishing the skilled labor of the south hereafter (as he has furnished the unskilled heretofore) slips away from the black man, he can never rise. in the race for property, influence, and all success in life, the industrially educated white man--whatever may be said of southern white men "hating to work"--will outstrip him. before an ecclesiastical body of representative colored men at memphis, in the autumn of , i urged this consideration, when asked to advise them about education, as the one most germane to their interests; and preachers and laymen, and their white teachers, approved every word, and gave me most hearty thanks. i counseled aspiring young men to abstain from unsuitable attempts at merely literary training; from overlooking the intermediate links of culture in striving after something "beyond their measure;" from expecting any more to be shot up into the united states senatorships, etc., by a revolution which had already wellnigh spent its first exceptional force (as a few extraordinary persons are thrown up into extraordinary distinction in the beginning of revolutions); from ambitious rejection of the steady, thorough, toilsome methods of fitting themselves for immediate practical duties and nearer spheres, by which alone any class is really and healthfully elevated. to shirk elementary preparation and aspire after the results of scholarship without its painstaking processes is the _temptation of colored students_, as i know by having taught them daily in college classes. i rejoice in every such student who really climbs the heights of learning with exceeding joy. but a far greater proportion than has thus far submitted to thorough-going preparation for skilled labor must do so, or there is no great future for them in this land as a race. but already the absurdity of beginning at the apex of the educational fabric instead of at the base is being perceived by those who have in hand the education of colored youth. a large number of colleges are adding industrial to their other features, and with much success, and a larger number of educators are agitating the wisdom of such feature. perhaps no educational institution in the union has done more for the industrial education of the colored people of the south than the hampton (virginia) normal and agricultural institute under the management of general s.c. armstrong. the success of this one institution in industrial education, and the favor with which it is regarded by the public, augurs well for the future of such institutions. that they many multiply is the fervent wish of every man who apprehends the necessities of the colored people. in a recent issue of the _new york globe_, prof. t. mccants stewart of the liberia (west africa) college, who is studying the industrial features of the hampton normal and agricultural institute for use in his capacity as a professor among the people of the lone star republic, photographs in the following manner the great work being done at hampton. prof. stewart says: the day after my arrival, i was put into the hands of an excellent new england gentleman, who was to show me through the institute. he took me first to the barn, a large and substantial building in which are stored the products of the farm, and in which the stock have their shelter. we ascended a winding staircase, reached the top, and looked down upon the institute grounds with their wide shell-paved walls, grassplots, flower-beds, orchards, groves and many buildings--the whole full of life, and giving evidence of abundant prosperity, and surrounded by a beautiful and charming country. we came down and began our rounds through "the little world" in which almost every phase of human life has its existence. we went into the shoe-making department. it is in the upper part of a two-story brick building. on the first floor the harness-making department is located. we were told that frederick douglass has his harness made here. one certainly gets good material and honest work; and reasonable prices are charged. in the shoe department several indian boys and youths were at work. there were also three or four colored boys. they make annually for the united states government two thousand pairs of shoes for the indians. they also look after outside orders, and do all the repairing, etc., of boots and shoes for the faculty, officers, and students--making fully five thousand pairs of shoes a year, if we include the repairing in this estimate. at the head of this department is a practical shoemaker from boston. each department has a practical man at its head. we visited, not all the first day, the blacksmith, wheelwright and tin shops, and looked through the printing office, and the knitting-room, in which young men are engaged manufacturing thousands of mittens annually for a firm in boston. these two departments are in a commodious brick edifice, called the "stone building." it is the gift of mrs. valeria stone. one of the most interesting departments is located also in the "stone building"--the sewing-room. in it are nearly a score, perhaps more, of cheerful, busy girls. the rapid ticking of the machine is heard, and the merry laugh followed by gentle whispers gives life to the room. these young girls are the future wives and mothers; and the large majority of them will be married to poor men. in the kitchen, the laundry, and the sewing-room, they are acquiring a knowledge and habits of industry that will save their husbands' pennies, and thus keep them from living from hand to mouth, making an everlasting struggle to save their nose from the grindstone. in the schoolroom, they are gathering up those intellectual treasures, which will make them in a double sense helpmeets unto their husbands. standing in the carpenter and paint shops, and in the saw mill, and seeing negro youths engaged in the most delicate kind of work, learning valuable and useful trades, i could not help from feeling that this is an excellent institution, and that i would like to have my boys spend three years here, from fourteen to seventeen, grow strong in the love for work, and educated to feel the dignity of labor, and get a trade: then if they have the capacity and desire to qualify for a "top round in the ladder," for leadership in the "world's broad field of battle," it will be time enough to think of harvard and yale and edinburgh, or perhaps similar african institutions. mr. george h. corliss, of rhode island, presented to the school in a sixty-horse power corliss engine. soon after mr. c.p. huntington, of the missouri & pacific r.r., gave a saw mill, and as a result of these gifts large industrial operations were begun. the saw mill is certainly an extensive enterprise. logs are brought up from the carolinas, and boards are sawn out, and in the turning department fancy fixtures are made for houses, piazzas, etc. there are two farms. the normal school farm, and the hemenway farm, which is four miles from the institute. on the former seventy tons of hay and about one hundred and twenty tons of ensilaged fodder-corn were raised last year, besides potatoes, corn, rye, oats, asparagus, and early vegetables. five hundred thousand bricks were also made. the hemenway farm, of five hundred acres, is in charge of a graduate and his wife. its receipts reach nearly three thousand dollars a year, and the farm promises to do invaluable service in time towards sustaining this gigantic work. all of the industries do not pay. for example, the deficit in the printing office last year was about seven hundred dollars. this is due to the employment and training of student labor. the primary aim is not the making of money but the advancement of the student. after they learn, they are good, profitable workmen; but they then leave the institute to engage in the outside world in the battle of life. on the farm is a large number of stock, milch cows and calves, beef cattle, horses and colts, mules, oxen, sheep and hogs--in all nearly five hundred heads. in these various industries, the farm, saw mill, machine shop, knitting, carpentering, harness making, tinsmithing, blacksmithing, shoe-making, wheel-wrighting, tailoring, sewing, printing, etc., over five hundred students were engaged in . they earned over thirty thousand dollars--an average of seventy dollars each. there is no question about the fact that this is a "beehive" into which a bee can enter, if accepted, with nothing but his soul and his muscle, and get a good education! professor stewart's article carries upon its face the proper reply to mr. magoun's apprehensions and my own deductions, and is the very strongest argument for a complete and immediate recasting of the underlying principles upon which nearly all colored colleges are sustained and operated. money contributed for eleemosynary purposes is a sacred trust, and should so be applied as to net the greatest good not only to the beneficiary but the donor. the primary object of educational effort among the colored people thus far has been to purify their perverted moral nature and to indoctrinate in them correcter ideas of religion and its obligations; and the effort has not been in vain. yet i am constrained to say, the inculcation of these principals has been altogether a too predominant idea. material possibilities are rightly predicated upon correct moral and spiritual bases; but a morally and spiritually sound training must be sustained by such preparation for the actual work of life, as we find it in the machine shop, the grain field, and the commercial pursuits. the moralist and missionary are no equals for the man whose ideas of honest toil are supplemented by a common school training and an educated hand. this is exemplified every day in the ready demand for foreign-born skilled labor over our own people, usually educated as gentlemen without means, as if they were to be kid-gloved fellows, not men who must contend for subsistence with the horny-handed men who have graduated from the machine shops and factories and the schools of applied sciences of europe. indeed, the absence of the old-time apprentices among the white youth of the north, as a force in our industrial organization to draw upon, can be accounted for upon no other ground than that the supply of foreign-born skilled help so readily fills the demand that employers find it a useless expenditure of means to graduate the american boy. thus may we account for the "grand rush" young men make for the lighter employments and the professions, creating year after year an idle floating population of miseducated men, and reducing the compensation for clerical work below that received by hod-carriers. this is not a fancy picture; it is an arraignment of the american system of education, which proceeds upon the assumption that boys are all "born with a silver spoon in their mouths" and are destined to reach--not the poor-house, but the senate house or the white house. the american system of education proceeds upon a false and pernicious assumption; and, while i protest against its application generally, i protest, in this connection, against its application in the case of the colored youth in particular. what the colored boy, what all boys of the country need, is _industrial not ornamental_ education; shall they have it? let the state and the philanthropists answer. footnotes: [ ] judge tourgee has for years been urgently and admirably writing in advocacy of national aid in southern education. chapter vii _how not to do it_ revolutions are always the outgrowth of deepest wrongs, clearly defined by long and heated agitation, which inflame the mind of the people, and divide them into hostile factions. the field of battle is simply the theater upon which the hostile factions decide by superior prowess, or numbers, or sagacity, the questions at issue. in these conflicts, right usually, but not invariably, triumphs, as it should always do. revolutions quicken the conscience and intelligence of the people, and wars purify the morals of the people by weeding out the surplus and desperate members of the population; just as a thunderstorm clarifies the atmosphere. but the problems involved in the agitation which culminated in the war of the rebellion are to-day as far from solution as if no shot had been fired upon fort sumter or as if no lee had laid down traitorous arms four years thereafter. the giant form of the slave-master, the tyrant, still rises superior to law, to awe and oppress the unorganized proletariat--the common people, the laboring class. even when slavery was first introduced into this country, fate had written upon the walls of the nation that it "must go," and go it must, as the result of wise statesmanship or amid the smoke of battle and the awful "diapason of cannonade." no man can tell whether wisdom will dictate further argument of peaceful, or there must be found a violent, solution; but all men of passable intelligence know and feel that justice will prevail. progress goes forward ever, backward never. that human intelligence has reached higher ground within the present century than it ever before attained, goes without saying. that we have marvelously improved upon all the mechanism of government is equally true. but whether we have improved upon the time-honored rules of dealing with rebels by extending to them general amnesty for all their sins of commission is seriously to be debated. if we may judge of the proper treatment of treason by the example which, according to milton, high heaven made of lucifer, amnesty is a failure; if we may judge by the almost absolute failure of the results of the war of the rebellion, we may emphatically pronounce amnesty to be a noxious weed which should not be permitted to take too firm a rooting in our dealing with traitors. human, it may be, to err, and to forgive divine; but for man to extend forgiveness too far is positively fatal. examples are not wanting to show the truthfulness of the reasoning. there is no error which has been productive of more disaster and death than the stupid plan adopted by the federal government in what is known as the "reconstruction policy." this _policy_, born out of expediency and nurtured in selfishness, was, in its inception, instinct with the elements of failure and of death. perhaps no piece of legislation, no policy, was ever more fatuous in every detail. how could it be otherwise? how could the men who devised it expect for it anything more than a speedy, ignominous collapse? all the past history of the southern states unmistakably pointed to the utter failure of any policy in which the whites were not made the masters; unless, indeed, they were subjected to that severe governmental control which their treason merited, until such time as the people were prepared for self-government by education, the oblivion of issues out of which the war grew, the passing away by death of the old spirits, and the complete metamorphosis of the peculiar conditions predicated upon and fostered by the unnatural state of slavery. at the close of the rebellion, in , the united states government completely transformed the social fabric of the southern state governments; and, without resorting to the slow process of educating the people; without even preparing them by proper warnings; without taking into consideration the peculiar relations of the subject and dominant classes--the slave class and the master class--instantly, as it were, the lamb and the lion were commanded to lie down together. the master class, fresh from the fields of a bloody war, with his musket strapped to his shoulder and the sharp thorn of ignominious defeat penetrating his breast; the master class, educated for two hundred years to dominate in his home, in the councils of municipal, state and federal government; the master class, who had been taught that slavery was a divine institution and that the black man, the unfortunate progeny of ham, was his lawful slave and property; and the slave class, born to a state of slavery and obedience, educated in the school of improvidence, mendacity and the lowest vices--these two classes of people, born to such widely dissimilar stations in life and educated in the most extreme schools, were declared to be _free, and equal before the law_, with the right to vote; to testify in courts of law; to sit upon jury and in the halls of legislation, municipal and other; to sue and be sued; to buy and to sell; to marry and give in marriage. in short, these two classes of people were made co-equal citizens, entitled alike to the protection of the laws and the benefits of government. i know of no instance in the various history of mankind which equals in absurdity the presumption of the originators of our "reconstruction policy" that the master class would accept cordially the conditions forced upon them, or that the enfranchised class would prove equal to the burden so unceremoniously forced upon them. on the one hand, a proud and haughty people, who had stubbornly contested the right of the government to interfere with the extension of slavery, not to say confiscation of slave property--a people rich in lands, in mental resources, in courage; on the other, a poor, despised people, without lands, without money, without mental resources, without moral character--these peoples _equal_, indeed! these peoples go peaceably to the ballot-box together to decide upon the destiny of government! these peoples melt into an harmonious citizenry! these peoples have and exercise mutual confidence, esteem and appreciation of their common rights! these peoples _dissolve into one people!_ the bare statement of the case condemns it as impracticable, illusory, in the extreme. and, yet, these two peoples, so different in character, in education and material condition, were turned loose to enjoy the same benefits in common--to be one! and the _wise men_ of the nation--as, tourgee's _fool_ ironically names them--thought they were legislating for the best; thought they were doing their duty. and, so, having made the people free, and equal before the law, and given them the ballot with which to settle their disputes, the "_wise men_" left the people to live in peace if they could, and to cut each other's throats if they could not. that they should have proceeded to cut each other's throats was as natural as it is for day to follow night. i do not desire to be understood as inveighing against the manumission of the slave or the enfranchisement of the new-made free man. to do so, would be most paradoxical on my part, who was born a slave and spent the first nine years of my life in that most unnatural condition. what i do inveigh against, is the unequal manner in which the colored people were pitted against the white people; the placing of these helpless people absolutely in the power of this hereditary foeman--more absolutely in their power, at their mercy, than under the merciless system of slavery, when sordid interest dictated a modicum of humanity and care in treatment. and i arraign the "reconstruction policy" as one of the hollowest pieces of perfidy ever perpetrated upon an innocent, helpless people; and in the treatment of the issues growing out of that policy, i arraign the dominant party of the time for base ingratitude, subterfuge and hypocrisy to its black partisan allies. with the whole power of the government at its back, and with a constitution so amended as to extend the amplest protection to the new-made citizen, it left him to the inhuman mercy of men whose uncurbed passions, whose deeds of lawlessness and defiance, pale into virtues the ferocity of cossack warfare. and, for this treachery, for leaving this people alone and single-handed, to fight an enemy born in the lap of self-confidence, and rocked in the cradle of arrogance and cruelty, the "party of great moral ideas" must go down to history amid the hisses and the execrations of honest men in spite of its good deeds. there is not one extenuating circumstance to temper the indignation of him who believes in justice and humanity. as i stand before the thirteen bulky volumes, comprising the "ku klux conspiracy," being the report of the "joint select committee, to inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrectionary states," on the part of the senate and house of representatives of the united states, reported february , , my blood runs cold at the merciless chronicle of murder and outrage, of defiance, inhumanity and barbarity on the one hand, and usurpation and tyranny on the other. if the shot upon fort sumter was treason, what shall we call the bloody conflict which the white men of the south have waged against the constitutional amendments from to the murder of innocent citizens at danville, virginia, in --even unto the present time? if the shot upon fort sumter drew down upon the south the indignation and the vengeance of the federal government, putting father against son, and brother against brother, what shall we say the federal government should have done to put a period to the usurpation and the murders of these leagues of horror? the entire adult male population of the south, though no longer in armed "rebellion," appeared to be in league against the government of the united states. the arm of state authority was paralyzed, the operation of courts of justice was suspended, lawlessness and individual license walked abroad, and anarchy, pure and simple, prevailed. under the name of the "ku klux klan," the south was bound by the following oath, ironclad, paradoxical and enigmatical as it is: i, [name] before the great immaculate judge of heaven and earth, and upon the holy evangelists of almighty god, do, of my own free will and accord, subscribe to the following sacred, binding obligation: i. i am on the side of justice and humanity and constitutional liberty, as bequeathed to us by our forefathers in its original purity. ii. i reject and oppose the principles of the radical party. iii. i pledge aid to a brother of the ku-klux klan in sickness, distress, or pecuniary embarrassments. females, friends, widows, and their households shall be the special object of my care and protection. iv. should i ever divulge, or cause to be divulged, any of the secrets of this order, or any of the foregoing obligations, i must meet with the fearful punishment of death and traitor's doom, which is death, death, death, at the hands of the brethren. murderers, incendiaries, midnight raiders on the "side of justice, humanity and constitutional liberty"! let us see what kind of "justice, humanity and constitutional liberty" is meant. in volume i, page , i find the following: taking these statements from official sources, showing the prevalence of this organization in every one of the late insurrectionary states and in kentucky, it is difficult now, with the light that has recently been thrown upon its history, to realize that even its existence has been for so long a mooted question in the public mind. especially is this remarkable in view of the effects that are disclosed by some of this documentary evidence to have been produced by it. that it was used as a means of intimidating and murdering negro voters during the presidential election of , the testimony in the louisiana and other contested-election cases already referred to clearly establishes. taking the results in louisiana alone as an instance, the purpose of the organization at that time, whatever it may have been at its origin, could hardly be doubted. a member of the committee which took that testimony thus sums it up: the testimony shows that over , persons were killed, wounded, and otherwise injured in that state within a few weeks prior to the presidential election; that half the state was overrun by violence; midnight raids, secret murders, and open riot kept the people in constant terror until the republicans surrendered all claims, and then the election was carried by the democracy. the parish of orleans contained , voters, , black. in the spring of that parish gave , republican votes. in the fall of it gave grant , , a falling off of , votes. riots prevailed for weeks, sweeping the city of new orleans, and filling it with scenes of blood, and ku-klux notices were scattered through the city warning the colored men not to vote. in caddo there were , republicans. in the spring of they carried the parish. in the fall they gave grant one vote. here also there were bloody riots. but the most remarkable case is that of st. landry, a planting parish on the river teche. here the republicans had a registered majority of , votes. in the spring of they carried the parish by . in the fall they gave grant no vote, not one; while the democrats cast , , the full vote of the parish, for seymour and blair. here occurred one of the bloodiest riots on record, in which the ku-klux killed and wounded over two hundred republicans, hunting and chasing them for two days and nights through fields and swamps. thirteen captives were taken from the jail and shot. a pile of twenty-five dead bodies was found half buried in the woods. having conquered the republicans, killed and driven off the white leaders, the ku-klux captured the masses, marked them with badges of red flannel, enrolled them in clubs, led them to the polls, made them vote the democratic ticket, and then gave them certificates of the fact. it is not my purpose to weary the reader with tedious citations from the cumbersome reports of the "ku klux conspiracy." those reports are accessible to the reading public. they tell the bloody story of the terrible miscarriage of the "reconstruction policy;" they show how cruel men can be under conditions favorable to unbridled license, undeterred by the strong arm of constituted authority; they show how helpless the freed people were; how ignorant, how easily led by unscrupulous adventurers _pretending to be friends_ and how easily murdered and overawed by veterans inured to the dangers and the toils of war; and, lastly, they show how powerless was the national government to protect its citizens' rights, specifically defined by the federal constitution. _was_, do i say? it is as powerless to day! in this brief review, then, of the history and present political condition of the american negro i cannot omit, though i shall not detail, the horrors of the ku klux period. they are a link in the chain: and though today's links are different in form and guise, _the chain is the same_. let the reader, then, be a little patient at being reminded of things which he has perhaps forgotten. chapter viii _the nation surrenders_ the mind sickens in contemplating the mistakes of the "reconstruction policy;" and the revolting peculation and crime--which went hand in hand from - to , bankrupting and terrorizing those unfortunate states--plunging them into all but anarchy, pure and simple. a parallel to the terror which walked abroad in the south from , down to , and which is largely dominant in that section even unto the present hour, must be sought for in other lands than our own, where the iron hand of the tyrant, seated upon a throne, cemented with a thousand years of usurpation and the blood of millions of innocent victims, presses hard upon the necks of the high and the backs of the low; we must turn to the dynastic villanies of the house of orleans or of stuart, or that prototype of all that is tyrannical, sordid and inhuman, the czar of all the russias. the "invisible empire," with its "knights of the white camelia," was as terrible as the "empire" which marat, danton and robespierre made for themselves, with this difference: the "knights of the white camelia" were assassins and marauders who murdered and terrorized in defiance of all laws, human or divine, though claiming allegiance to both; while the frenchmen regarded themselves as the lawful authority of the land and rejected utterly the divine or "higher law." the one murdered men as highwaymen do, while the other murdered them under the cover of law and in the name of _liberty_, in whose name, as madame roland exclaimed on the scaffold of revolutionary vengeance, so many crimes are perpetrated! the one murdered kings and aristocrats to unshackle the limbs of the proletariat of france; the other murdered the proletariat of the south to re-rivet their chains upon the wretched survivors. and each class of murders proclaimed that it was actuated by the motive of _justice and humanity_. liberty was the grand inspiration that steeled the arm and hardened the heart of each of the avengers! and thus it has been in all the history of murder and plunder. liberty! the people! these are the sacred objects with which tyrants cloak their usurpations, and which assassins plead in extenuation of their brazen disregard of life, of virtue, of all that is dear and sacred to the race. the dagger of brutus and the sword of cromwell, were they not drawn in the name of liberty--the people? the guillotine of the french commune and the derringer of j. wilkes booth, were they not inspired by liberty--the people? the innocent blood which has been spilt in the name of liberty and the people, which has served the purposes of tyranny and riveted upon the people most galling chains, "would float a navy." by the side of the robbery, the embezzlement, the depletion of the treasury of south carolina, and the imposition of ruinous and unnecessary taxation upon the people of that state by the carpet-bag harpies, aided and abetted by the ignorant negroes whom our government had not given time to shake the dust of the cornfield from their feet before it invited them to seats in the chambers of legislature, we must place the heartless butcheries of hamburgh and ellenton. by the side of the misgovernment, the honeycomb of corruption in which the carpet-bag government of louisiana reveled, we must place the universal lawlessness which that state witnessed from to . the whole gamut of states could be run with the same deplorable, the same sickening conclusion. the federal authority had created the wildest confusion and retired to watch the fire-brand. the "wise men" of the nation had made possible a system of government in which robbery and murder were to contend for the mastery, in which organized ignorance and organized brigandage were to contend for the right to rule _and_ to ruin. it is not complimentary to the white men of the south that their organized brigandage proved to be more stubborn, more far-sighted than was unorganized ignorance. in a warfare of this disreputable nature very little honor can be accorded to the victorious party, be he brigand or ignoramus. the warfare is absolutely devoid of principle, and, therefore, victory, any way it is twisted, is supremely dishonorable. the south, therefore, although she rooted out the incubus of _carpet-baggism_ (one of the most noxious plants that ever blossomed in the garden of any nascent society), and stifled the liberties and immunities of a whole people, turning their new-found joy into sadness and mourning--although the south succeeded in accomplishing these results, she lies prostrate to-day, feared by her fellow-citizens, who will not trust her with power, and shunned by the industrious aliens who seek our shores, because they will not become members of a society in which individualism and absolutism are the supreme law--for was it not to escape these parasites that they expatriated themselves from the shores of the volga, the danube and the rhine? men will not make their homes among people who, spurning the accepted canons of justice and the courts of law, make themselves a community of _banditti_. thus, the south lies prostrate, staggering beneath a load of illiteracy sufficient to paralyze the energies of any people; dwelling in the midst of usurpation, where law is suspended and individual license is the standard authority; where criminals and suspected criminals are turned over to the rude mercy of mobs, masked and irresponsible; where caste corrupts every rivulet that issues from the fountain of aspiration or of chastity;[ ] where no man is allowed to think or act for himself who does not conform his thoughts and shape his actions to suit the censorious and haughty _dictum_ of the dominant class. "you must think as we think and act as we act, or you must go!" this is the law of the south. in each of the late rebellious states the ballotbox has been closed against the black man. to reach it he is compelled to brave the muzzles of a thousand rifles in the hands of silent sentinels who esteem a human life as no more sacred than the serpent that drags his tortuous length among the grasses of the field, and whose head mankind is enjoined to crush. the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the federal constitution which grew out of the public sentiment created by thirty long years of agitation of the abolitionists and of the "emancipation proclamation"--issued as a war measure by president lincoln--are no longer regarded as fundamental by the south. the beneficiaries of those amendments have failed in every instance to enjoy the benefits that were, presumably, intended to be conferred. these laws--having passed both branches of the federal legislature, having received the approval and signature of the chief executive of the nation, and having been ratified by a majority of the states composing the sisterhood of states--these laws are no longer binding upon the people of the south, who fought long and desperately to prevent the possibility of their enactment; and they no longer benefit, if they ever did, the people in whose interest they were incorporated in the _magna charta_ of american liberty; _while the central authority which originated them, has, through the supreme court, declared nugatory, null and void all supplementary legislation based upon those laws, as far as the government of the united states is concerned!_ the whole question has been remanded to the legislatures of the several states! the federal union has left to the usurped governments of the south the adjudication of rights which the south fought four years in honorable warfare to make impossible, and which it has since the war exhausted the catalogue of infamy and lawlessness to make of no force or effect. the fate of the lamb has been left to the mercy of the lion and the tiger. the "party of great moral ideas," having emancipated the slave, and enfranchised disorganized ignorance and poverty, finally finished its mission, relinquished its right to the respect and confidence of mankind when, in , it abandoned all effort to enforce the provisions of the war amendments. that party stands today for organized corruption, while its opponent stands for organized brigandage. the black man, who was betrayed by his party and murdered by the opponents of his party, is absolved from all allegiance which _gratitude_ may have dictated, and is to-day free to make conditions the best possible with any faction which will insure him in his right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." the black men of the united states are, today, free to form whatever alliances wisdom dictates, to make sure their position in the social and civil system of which, in the wise providence of a just god, they are a factor, for better or for worse. footnotes: [ ] "southerners fire up terribly, as has been noted in these columns again and again, when the subject of intermarriage between whites and negroes is discussed. but the terrible state of immorality which exists there, involving white men and colored women, is something upon which the papers of that region are silent as a rule. not so the grand jury that met recently at madison, ga., which thus spoke out in its presentment with all plainness of the old testament: "after several days of laborious investigation we have found the moral state of our country in a fair condition, and the freedom of our community from any great criminal offenses is a subject for congratulation to our people. but the open and shameless cohabitation of white men with negro women in our community cries to heaven for abatement. this crime in its nature has been such as to elude our grasp owing to the limited time of our session. it is poisoning the fountains of our social life; it is ruining and degrading our young men, men who would scorn to have imputation put on them of equalization with negroes, but who have, nevertheless, found the lowest depths of moral depravity in this unnatural shame of their lives." "the despatch chronicling the presentment adds: 'the reading of this presentment in court aroused a great feeling of indignation among men who declare that the private affairs of the people should not be intruded upon.' it strikes the northern mind that until these 'private affairs' do not need to be 'intruded upon,' southern newspapers and southern clergymen would with better grace bottle up their indignation upon the terrible evils likely to result from the legitimate intermarriage of the two races."--_newspaper waif._ chapter ix _political independence of the negro_ the following chapter is, in the main, a reproduction of an address delivered by me before the colored press association, in the city of washington, june , :-- * * * * * in addressing myself to a consideration of the subject: "the colored man as an independent force in our politics," i come at once to one of the vital principles underlying american citizenship of the colored man in a peculiar manner. upon this question hang all the conditions of man as a free moral agent, as an intelligent reasoning being; as a man thoughtful for the best interests of his country, of his individual interests, and of the interests of those who must take up the work of republican government when the present generation has passed away. when i say that this question is of a most complex and perplexing nature, i only assert what is known of all men. i would not forget that the arguments for and against independent action on our part are based upon two parties or sets of principles. principles are inherent in government by the people, and parties are engines created by the people through which to voice the principles they espouse. parties have divided on one line in this country from the beginning of our national existence to the present time. all other issues merge into two distinct ones--the question of a strong federal government, as enunciated by alexander hamilton, and maintained by the present republican party, and the question of the rights and powers of the states, as enunciated by thomas jefferson, and as maintained by the present democratic party,--called the "party of the people," but in fact the party of oligarchy, bloodshed, violence and oppression. the republican party won its first great victory on the inherent weakness of the democratic party on the question of human rights and the right of the federal government to protect itself from the assumption, the aggression, the attempted usurpation, of the states, and it has maintained its supremacy for so long a time as to lead to the supposition that it will rule until such time as it shall fall to pieces of itself because of internal decay and exterior cancers. there does not appear to exist sufficient vitality outside of the republican party to keep its members loyal to the people or honest to the government. the loyal legislation which would be occasioned by dread of loss of power, and the administration of the government in the most economical form, are wanting, because of the absence of an honest, healthy opposing party. but it is not my purpose to dwell upon the mechanism of parties, but rather to show why colored americans should be independent voters, independent citizens, independent men. to this end i am led to lay it down: ( .) that an independent voter must be intelligent, must comprehend the science of government, and be versed in the history of governments and of men; ( .) that an independent voter must be not only a citizen versed in government, but one loyal to his country, and generous and forbearing with his fellow-citizens, not looking always to the word and the act, but looking sometimes to the undercurrent which actuates these--to the presence of immediate interest, which is always strong in human nature, to the love of race, and to the love of section, which comes next to the love of country. our country is great not only in mineral and cereal resources, in numbers, and in accumulated wealth, but great in extent of territory, and in multiplicity of interests, out-growing from peculiarities of locality, race, and the education of the people. thus the people of the north and east and west are given to farming, manufacturing, and speculation, making politics a subordinate, not a leading interest; they are consequently wealthy, thrifty and contented: while the people of the south, still in the shadow of defeat in the bloodiest and most tremendous conflict since the napoleonic wars, are divided sharply into two classes, and given almost exclusively to the pursuits of agriculture and hatred of one another. the existence of this state of things is most disastrous in its nature, and deplorable in its results. it is a barrier against the progress of that section and alien to the spirit and subversive of the principles of our free institutions. it is in the south that the largest number of our people live; it is there that they encounter the greatest hardships; it is there the problem of their future usefulness as american citizens must have full and satisfactory, or disastrous and disheartening demonstration. consequently, the colored statesman and the colored editor must turn their attention to the south and make that field the center of speculation, deduction and practical application. we all understand the conditions of society in that section and the causes which have produced them, and, while not forgetting the causes, it is a common purpose to alter the existing conditions, so that they may conform to the logic of the great rebellion and the spirit and letter of the federal constitution. it is not surprising, therefore, that, as an humble worker in the interest of my race and the common good, i have decided views as to the course best to be pursued by our people in that section, and the fruits likely to spring from a consistent advocacy of such views. i may stand alone in the opinion that the best interests of the race and the best interests of the country will be conserved by building up a bond of union between the white people and the negroes of the south--advocating the doctrine that the interests of the white and the interests of the colored people are one and the same; that the legislation which affects the one will affect the other; that the good which comes to the one should come to the other, and that, as one people, the evils which blight the hopes of the one blight the hopes of the other; i say, i may stand alone among colored men in the belief that harmony of sentiment between the blacks and whites of the country, in so far forth as it tends to honest division and healthy opposition, is natural and necessary, but i speak that which is a conviction as strong as the stalwart idea of diversity between black and white, which has so crystallized the opinion of the race. it is not safe in a republican form of government that clannishness should exist, either by compulsory or voluntary reason; it is not good for the government, it is not good for the individual. a government like ours is like unto a household. difference of opinion on non-essentials is wholesome and natural, but upon the fundamental idea incorporated in the declaration of independence and re-affirmed in the federal constitution the utmost unanimity should prevail. that all men are born equal, so far as the benefits of government extend; that each and every man is justly entitled to the enjoyment of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, so long as these benign benefits be not forfeited by infraction upon the rights of others; that freedom of thought and unmolested expression of honest conviction and the right to make these effective through the sacred medium of a fair vote and an honest count, are god-given and not to be curtailed--these are the foundations of republican government; these are the foundations of our institutions; these are the birthright of every american citizen; these are the guarantees which make men free and independent and great. the colored man must rise to a full conception of his citizenship before he can make his citizenship effective. it is a fatality to create or foster clannishness in a government like ours. assimilation of sentiment must be the property of the german, the irish, the english, the anglo-african, and all other racial elements that contribute to the formation of the american type of citizen. the moment you create a caste standard, the moment you recognize the existence of such, that moment republican government stands beneath the sword of damocles, the vitality of its being becomes vitiated and endangered. if this be true, the american people have grave cause for apprehension. the anglo-african element of our population is classed off by popular sentiment, and kept so. it is for the thoughtful, the honest, the calm but resolute men of the race to mould the sentiment of the masses, lift them up into the broad sunlight of freedom. ignorance, superstition, prejudice, and intolerance are elements in our nature born of the malign institution of servitude. no fiat of government can eradicate these. as they were the slow growth, the gradual development of long years of inhuman conditions, so they must be eliminated by the slow growth of years of favorable conditions. let us recognize these facts as facts, and labor honestly to supplant them with more wholesome, more cheering realities. the independent colored man, like the independent white man, is an american citizen who does his own thinking. when some one else thinks for him he ceases to be an intelligent citizen and becomes a dangerous dupe--dangerous to himself, dangerous to the state. it is not to be expected now that the colored voters will continue to maintain that unanimity of idea and action characteristic of them when the legislative halls of states resounded with the clamor of law-makers of their creation, and when their breath flooded or depleted state treasuries. the conditions are different now. they find themselves citizens without a voice in the shapement of legislation; tax-payers without representation; men without leadership masterful enough to force respect from inferior numbers in some states, or to hold the balance of power in others. they find themselves at the mercy of a relentless public opinion which tolerates but does not respect their existence as a voting force; but which, on the contrary, while recognizing their right to the free exercise of the suffrage, forbids such exercise at the point of the shotgun of the assassin, whom it not only nerves but shields in the perpetration of his lawless and infamous crimes. and why is this? why is it that the one hundred and twenty thousand black voters of south carolina allow the eighty thousand white voters of that state to grind the life out of them by laws more odious, more infamous, more tyrannical and subversive of manhood than any which depopulate the governments of the old world? is it because the white man is the created viceregent of government? the scriptures affirm that all are sprung from one parental stem. is it because he is the constitutionally invested oligarch of government? the magna charta of our liberties affirms that "all men are created equal." is it because the law of the land reserves unto him the dominance of power? the preamble of the federal constitution declares that "we" and not "i," constitute "the people of the united states." if the law of god and the law of man agree in the equality of right of man, explain to me the cause which keeps a superior force in subjection to a minority. look to the misgovernment of the reconstruction period for the answer--misgovernment by white men and black men who were lifted into a "little brief authority" by a mighty but unwieldy voting force. that black man who connived at and shared in the corruption in the south which resulted in the subversion of the majority rule, is a traitor to his race and his country, wherever he may now be eking out a precarious and inglorious existence, and i have nothing to heap upon his head but the curses, the execrations of an injured people. like benedict arnold he should seek a garret in the desert of population, living unnoticed and without respect, where he might die without arousing the contempt of his people. the love of liberty carries with it the courage to preserve it from encroachments from without and from contempt from within. a people in whom the love of liberty is in-born cannot be enslaved, though they may be exterminated by superior force and intelligence, as in the case of the poor indian of our own land--a people who, two hundred years ago, spread their untamed hordes from the icebergs of maine to the balmy sunland of florida. but to-day where are they? their love of freedom and valorous defense of priority of ownership of our domain have caused them to be swept from the face of the earth. had they possessed intelligence with their more than spartan courage, the wave of extermination could never have rolled over them forever. as a man i admire the unconquerable heroism and fortitude of the indian. so brave a race of people were worthy a nobler and a happier destiny. as an american citizen, i feel it born in my nature to share in fullest measure all that is american. i sympathize in all the hopes, aspirations and fruitions of my country. there is no pulsation in the animated frame of my native land which does not thrill my nature. there is no height of glory we may reach as a government in which i should not feel myself individually lifted; and there is no depth of degradation to which we may fall to which i should not feel myself individually dragged. in a word, i am an american citizen. i have a heritage in each and every provision incorporated in the constitution of my country, and should this heritage be attempted to be filched from me by any man or body of men, i should deem the provocation sufficiently grievous to stake even life in defense of it. i would plant every colored man in this country on a platform of this nature--to think for himself, to speak for himself, to act for himself. this is the ideal citizen of an ideal government such as ours is modelled to become. this is my conception of the colored man as an independent force in our politics. to aid in lifting our people to this standard, is one of the missions which i have mapped out for my life-work. i may be sowing the seed that will ripen into disastrous results, but i don't think so. my conception of republican government does not lead me to a conclusion so inconsistent with my hopes, my love of my country and of my race. i look upon my race in the south and i see that they are helplessly at the mercy of a popular prejudice outgrowing from a previous condition of servitude; i find them clothed in the garments of citizenship by the federal government and opposed in the enjoyment of it by their equals, not their superiors, in the benefits of government; i find that the government which conferred the right of citizenship is powerless, or indisposed, to force respect for its own enactments; i find that these people, left to the mercy of their enemies, alone and defenseless, and without judicious leadership, are urged to preserve themselves loyal to the men and to the party which have shown themselves unable to extend to them substantial protection; i find that these people, alone in their struggles of doubt and of prejudice, are surrounded by a public opinion powerful to create and powerful to destroy; i find them poor in culture and poor in worldly substance, and dependent for the bread they eat upon those they antagonize politically. as a consequence, though having magnificent majorities, they have no voice in shaping the legislation which is too often made an engine to oppress them; though performing the greatest amount of labor, they suffer from overwork and insufficient remuneration; though having the greater number of children, the facilities of education are not as ample or as good as those provided for the whites out of the common fund, nor have they means to supply from private avenues the benefits of education denied them by the state. now, what is the solution of this manifold and grievous state of things? will it come by standing solidly opposed to the sentiment, the culture, the statesmanship, and the possession of the soil and wealth of the south? let the history of the past be spread before the eyes of a candid and thoughtful people; let the bulky roll of misgovernment, incompetence, and blind folly be enrolled on the one hand, and then turn to the terrors of the midnight assassin and the lawless deeds which desecrate the sunlight of noontide, walking abroad as a phantom armed with the desperation of the damned! i maintain the idea that the preservation of our liberties, the consummation of our citizenship, must be conserved and matured, not by standing alone and apart, sullen as the melancholy dane, but by imbibing all that is american, entering into the life and spirit of our institutions, spreading abroad in sentiment, feeling the full force of the fact that while we are classed as africans, just as the germans are classed as germans we are in all things american citizens, american freemen. since we have tried the idea of political unanimity let us now try other ideas, ideas more in consonance with the spirit of our institution. there is no strength in a union that enfeebles. assimilation, a melting into the corporate body, having no distinction from others, equally the recipients of government--this is to be the independent man, be his skin tanned by the torrid heat of africa, or bleached by the eternal snows of the caucasus. to preach the independence of the colored man is to preach his americanization. the shackles of slavery have been torn from his limbs by the stern arbitrament of arms; the shackles of political enslavement, of ignorance, and of popular prejudice must be broken on the wheels of ceaseless study and the facility with which he becomes absorbed into the body of the people. to aid himself is his first duty if he believes that he is here to stay, and not a probationer for the land of his forefathers--a land upon which he has no other claim than one of sentiment. what vital principle affecting our citizenship is championed by the national republican party of to-day? is it a fair vote and an honest count? measure our strength in the south and gaze upon the solitary expression of our citizenship in the halls of the national legislature. the fair vote which we cast for rutherford b. hayes seemed to have incurred the enmity of that chief executive, and he and his advisers turned the colored voters of the south over to the bloodthirsty minority of that section. the republican party has degenerated into an ignoble scramble for place and power. it has forgotten the principles for which sumner contended, and for which lincoln died. it betrayed the cause for which douglass, garrison and others labored, in the blind policy it pursued in reconstructing the rebellious states. it made slaves freemen and freemen slaves in the same breath by conferring the franchise and withholding the guarantees to insure its exercise; it betrayed its trust in permitting thousands of innocent men to be slaughtered without declaring the south in rebellion, and in pardoning murders, whom tardy justice had consigned to a felon's dungeon. it is even now powerless to insure an honest expression of the vote of the colored citizen. for these things, i do not deem it binding upon colored men further to support the republican party when other more advantageous affiliations can be formed. and what of the bourbon democratic party? there has not been, there is not now, nor will there ever be, any good thing in it for the colored man. bourbon democracy is a curse to our land. any party is a curse which arrays itself in opposition to human freedom, to the universal brotherhood of man. no colored man can ever claim truthfully to be a bourbon democrat. it is a fundamental impossibility. but he can be an independent, a progressive democrat. the hour has arrived when thoughtful colored men should cease to put their faith upon broken straws; when they should cease to be the willing tools of a treacherous and corrupt party; when they should cease to support men and measures which do not benefit them or the race; when they should cease to be duped by one faction and shot by the other. the time has fully arrived when they should have their position in parties more fully defined, and when, by the ballot which they hold, they should force more respect for the rights of life and property. to do this, they must adjust themselves to the altered condition which surrounds them. they must make for themselves a place to stand. in the politics of the country the colored vote must be made as uncertain a quantity as the german and irish vote. the color of their skin must cease to be an index to their political creed. they must think less of "the party" and more of themselves; give less heed to a name and more heed to principles. the black men and white men of the south have a common destiny. circumstances have brought them together and so interwoven their interests that nothing but a miracle can dissolve the link that binds them. it is, therefore, to their mutual disadvantage that anything but sympathy and good will should prevail. a reign of terror means a stagnation of all the energies of the people and a corruption of the fountains of law and justice. the colored men of the south must cultivate more cordial relations with the white men of the south. they must, by a wise policy, hasten the day when politics shall cease to be the shibboleth that creates perpetual warfare. the citizen of a state is far more sovereign than the citizen of the united states. the state is a real, tangible reality; a thing of life and power; while the united states is, purely, an abstraction--a thing that no man has successfully defined, although many, wise in their way and in their own conceit, have philosophized upon it to their own satisfaction. the metaphysical polemics of men learned in the science of republican government, covering volume upon volume of "debates," the legislation of ignoramuses, styled statesmen, and the "strict" and "liberal" construction placed upon their work by the judicial _magi_, together with a long and disastrous rebellion, to the cruel arbitrament of which the question had been, as was finally hoped, in the last resort, submitted, have failed, all and each, to define that visionary thing the so-called federal government, and its just rights and powers. as alexander hamilton and thomas jefferson left it, so it is to-day, a bone of contention, a red flag in the hands of the political matadors of one party to infuriate those of the other parties. no: it is time that the colored voter learned to leave his powerless "protectors" and take care of himself. let every one read, listen, think, reform his own ideas of affairs in his own locality; let him be less interested in the continual wars of national politics than in the interests of his own town and county and state; let him make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness of his own neighborhood, so far as to take an intelligent part among his neighbors, white and black, and vote for the men and for the party that will do the best for him and his race, and best conserve the interest of his vicinity. let there be no aim of _solidifying_ the colored vote; the massing of black means the massing of white by contrast. individual colored men--and many of them--have done wonders in self-elevation; but there can be no general elevation of the colored men of the south until they use their voting power in independent local affairs with some discrimination more reasonable than an obstinate clinging to a party name. when the colored voters differ among themselves and are to be found on _both sides_ of local political contests, they will begin to find themselves of some political importance; their votes will be sought, cast, _and counted_. and this is the key to the whole situation; let them make themselves a part of the people. it will take time, patience, intelligence, courage; but it can be done: and until it is done their path will lie in darkness and perhaps in blood. chapter x _solution of the political problem_ i have no faith in parties. in monarchical and imperial governments they are always manipulated by royal boobies, who are in turn manipulated by their empty-pated favorites and their women of soporific virtue; while in republics they are always manipulated by demagogues, tricksters, and corruptionists, who figure in the newspapers as "bosses," "heelers" and "sluggers," and in history as statesmen, senators and representatives. these gentlemen, who _rule_ our government and _ruin_ our people, comprise what mr. matthew arnold recently termed the "remnant" which should be permitted to run things to suit themselves, the people, the great mass, being incapable of taking care of themselves and the complex machinery of government. of course, mr. arnold, who is necessarily very british in his ideas of government, intended that the "remnant" he had in his "mind's eye," should comprise men of the most exalted character and intelligence, the very things which keep them out of the gutters of politics. men of exalted character are expected in our country to attend to their own concerns, not the concerns of the people, and to give the "boys" a chance; while the men of exalted intelligence are, by reason of the great industry and seclusiveness necessary to their work, too much wedded to their books and their quiet modes of life to rush into ward meetings and contend for political preferment with the "mikes" and "jakes" who make their bread and butter out of the spoils and peculations of office. a clay or webster, a seward or sumner, sometimes gets into politics, but it is by accident. there is not enough money in our politics to cause honest men to make it an object, while the corruption frequently necessary to maintain a political position, is so disgusting as to deter honest men from making it a business. a love of power easily degenerates from patriotism into treason or tyranny, or both. as it is easier to fall from virtue to vice than it is to rise from vice to virtue, so it is easier to fall from patriotism than to rise to it. before the war the men of the south engaged, at first, in politics as an elegant pastime. they had plenty of leisure and plenty of money. they did not take to literature and science, because these pursuits require severe work and more or less of a strong bias, for a thorough exposition of their profound penetralia. it may be, too, that their assumed patrician sensitiveness shrank from entering into competition with the plebeian fellows who had to study hard and write voluminously for a few pennies to keep soul and body together. and your southern grandees, before the war, were not compelled to drudge for a subsistence; they had to take little thought for the morrow. their vast landed estates and black slaves were things that did not fluctuate; under the effective supervision of the viperous slave-driver the black samson rose before the coming of the sun, and the land, nature's own flower garden and man's inalienable heritage, brought forth golden corn and snowy cotton in their season. southern intelligence expended its odors in the avenues where brilliance, not profundity, was the passport to popularity. hence, southern hospitality (giving to others that which had been deliberately stolen) became almost as proverbial in the _polite_ circles of america and europe as the long established suavity and condescension of the french. and even unto the present time the hospitality of the south, shorn of its profuseness and grandiloquence, is frequently the theme of newspaper hacks and magazine penny-a-liners. but the shadow alone remains; the substance has departed--"there are no birds in last year's nest." if the literary reputation of the united states had been rated, up to the close of the rebellion, on the contributions of southern men--fiction, prose and poetry, science, art, and invention--the polite nations of the world would have regarded us as a nation of semi-barbarians. but, happily, the rugged genius of new england made up then and makes up now for the poverty of literary effort on the part of the south. true, a few men since the war have placed the south in a better light; but even their work, as an index of southern genius, is regarded as highly precocious and tentative. the south has yet to demonstrate that she has capacity for high literary effort. in the process of that demonstration, i am fully persuaded that the anglo-african--with his brilliant wit and humor, his highly imaginative disposition and his innate fondness for literary pursuits--will contribute largely to give the south an enviable and honorable position. what the south lacked in literary effort before the war she made up in a magnificent galaxy of meteoric statesmen, who rushed into politics with the instinct of ducks taking to water, and who were forgotten, in the majority of cases, before they had run out their ephemeral career. a few names have survived the earthquake, and are remembered for their cleverness rather than their depth. a few more decades, and they will be remembered only by the curious student who plods his weary way through the labyrinth of congressional records and the musty archives of states, seeking for data of times which long ago passed into the hazy vista of history and romance. before the war the southern man of leisure took to politics more as a pastime than as a serious business. but as the pastime was agreeable, and as it gave additional weight and distinction, all those who could, strived to make it appear that they were men of importance in the nation. they were largely a nation of politicians, always brilliant, shallow, bellicose and dogmatic, as ready to decide an argument with the shotgun or saber as with reason and logic. this was the temper of the people who rushed into the war with the confidence of a schoolboy and who limped out like a man overtaken in his gymnastic exercise by a paralytic stroke. the war taught the south a very useful lesson, but did not sufficiently convince it that it was preëminently a supercilious, arrogant people, who did not and do not possess all the virtue, intelligence, and courage of the country; that its stock of these prime elements is woefully small considering the long years it had posed as america's own patrician class. but when the war was over, and the southern nobility turned its thoughts once more to social arrogance and political dominion, it found that othello's occupation was entirely gone. a revolution had swept over the country more iconoclastic and merciless than that which followed in the wake of the french revolution nearly a hundred years before. the bottom rail had been violently placed upon the top; industrial adjustments had been so completely metamorphosed as to defy detection; while the basis and the method of political representation and administration had been so altered as to confound both the old and the new forces. aside from the ignorance of the black citizens and the insatiate greed and unscrupulousness of their carpet-bag leaders--a band of vultures more voracious and depraved than any which ever before imposed upon and abused the confidence of a credulous people--the white men of the south had been educated to regard themselves as, naturally, the factors of power and the colored people as, naturally, the subject class, no factor at all. it was these two things which produced that exhibition of barbarity on the part of the south and impotence on the part of the government which make us go to roumania and the byzantine court for fit parallel. but, as i have said, a love of power easily degenerates into treason. if we may not call the violence, the assassinations, which have disgraced the south, _treason_ by what fitter name, pray, shall we call it? if the nullification of the letter and spirit of the amendments of the federal constitution by the conquered south was not renewed _treason_, what was it? what is it? the white men of the south, to the "manor born," having shown their superiority in the superlative excellencies of murder, usurpation and robbery (and i maintain they have gone further in the execution of these infamies than was true of the negro-carpet-bag _bacchanalia_); having made majorities dwindle into iotas and vaulted themselves into power at the point of the shot gun and dagger (regular bandit style); having made laws which discriminate odiously against one class while giving the utmost immunity to the other; having, after doing these things, modeled the government they rule upon the pro-slavery doctrine that it is a "white man's government"--having had time to become sobered, the white men of the south should be open to reason, if not to conviction. the black men of the south know full well that they were disfranchised by illegal and violent methods; they know that laws are purposely framed to defraud and to oppress them. this is dangerous knowledge, dangerous to the black and the white man. it will be decided by one of two courses--wise and judicious statesmanship or bloody and disastrous insurrection. when men are wronged they appeal either to the arbitrament of reason or of violence. no man who loves his country would sanction violence in the adjudication of rights save as a last resort. reason is the safest tribunal before which to arraign injustice and wrong; but it is not always possible to reach this tribunal. the black and white citizens of the south must alter the lines which have divided them since the close of the war. they are, essentially, one people, and should be mutual aids instead of mutual hindrances to each other. by "one people" i don't wish to be understood as implying that the white and black man are one in an ethnological, but a generic sense, having a common origin. living in the same communities, pursuing identical avocations, and subject to the same fundamental laws, however these may differ in construction and application in the several states, it is as much, if not even more, the interest of the white man that the black should be given every possible opportunity to better his mental, material and civil condition. society is not corrupted from the apex but from the base. it is not the pure rain that falls from the heavens, but the stagnant waters of the pool, that breed disease and death. the corruption of the ballot by white men of the south is more pernicious than the misuse of it by black men; the perversion of the law in the apprehension and punishment of criminals, by being wielded almost exclusively against colored men, not only brings law into contempt of colored men but encourages crime among white men. thus the entire society is corrupted. mob law is the most forcible expression of an abnormal public opinion; it shows that society is rotten to the core. when men find that laws are purposely framed to oppress and defraud them they become desperate and reckless; and mob law, by usurping the rightful functions of the judiciary, makes criminals of honest men. as alexander pope expressed it: _vice is a monster of such frightful mien, that to be hated needs but to be seen; yet, seen too oft, familiar with his face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace._ the south has nothing to gain and everything to lose in attempting to repress the energies and ambition of the colored man. it is to the safety as well as to the highest efficiency of society that all its members should be allowed the same opportunities for moral, intellectual and material development. "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." there is no escape from the law of god. you either deal justly or suffer the evil effects of wrong-doing. the disorders which have made the south a seething cauldron for fifteen years have produced the most widespread contempt of lawful authority not only on the part of the lawless whites but the law-abiding blacks, who have suffered patiently the infliction of all manner of wrong _because they were a generation of slaves, suddenly made freemen_. they permitted themselves to be shot because they had been educated to bare their backs at the command of the white oligarch. but that sort of pusillanimous cowardice cannot be expected to last always. men in a state of freedom instinctively question the right of others to impose unequal burdens upon them, or to deny to them equal and exact protection of the laws. when oppressed people begin to murmur, grow restless and discontented, the opposer had better change his tactics, or lock himself up, as does the cowardly tyrant of russia. a new generation of men has come upon the stage of action in the south. they know little or nothing of the regulations or the horrors of the slave régime. they know they are freemen; they know they are cruelly and unjustly defrauded; and they _question the right_ of their equals to oppose and defraud them. a large number of these people have enjoyed the advantage of common school education, and not a few of academic and collegiate education, and a large number have "put money in their purse." the entire race has so changed that they are almost a different people from what they were when the exigencies of war made their manumission imperative. yet there has been but little change in the attitude of the white men towards this people. they still strenuously deny their right to participate in the administration of justice or to share equally in the blessings of that justice. there must be a change of policy. the progress of the black man demands it; the interest of the white man compels it. the south cannot hope to share in the industrious emigration constantly flowing into our ports as long as it is scattered over the world that mob law and race distractions constantly interrupt the industry of the people, and put life and property in jeopardy of eminent disturbance; and she cannot hope to encourage the investment of large capital in the development of her industries or the extension of her national system. capital is timid. it will only seek investment where it is sure of being let alone. again, while the present state continues, no southern statesman, however capable he may be, can hope to enjoy the confidence of the country or attain to high official position. thoughtful, sober people will not entrust power to men who sanction mob law, and who rise to high honor by conniving at or participating in assassination and murder. they have too much self-respect to do it. only a few weeks since, a narrow-minded senator from the state of alabama, speaking upon the question of "national aid to education," said he would rather vote for an appropriation to place the southern states in direct communication with the congo than to vote money to educate the blacks. there is no ingrate more execrable than the one who lifts up his hand or his voice to wrong the man he has betrayed. this senator from alabama does not represent the majority of the people of his state. take away the shot gun and mob law and he would be compelled to crawl back into the obscurity out of which he was dragged by his accomplices in roguery. the colored man is in the south to stay there. he will not leave it voluntarily and he cannot be driven out. he had no voice in being carried into the south, but he will have a very loud voice in any attempt to put him out. the expatriation of , , to , , people to an alien country needs only to be suggested to create mirth and ridicule. the white men of the south had better make up their minds that the black men will remain in the south just as long as corn will tassel and cotton will bloom into whiteness. the talk about the black people being brought to this country to prepare themselves to evangelize africa is so much religious nonsense boiled down to a sycophantic platitude. the lord, who is eminently just, had no hand in their forcible coming here; it was preëminently the work of the devil. africa will have to be evangelized _from within_, not _from without_. the colonization society has spent mints of money and tons of human blood in the selfish attempt to plant an anglo-african colony on the west coast of africa. the money has been thrown away and the human lives have been sacrificed in vain. the black people of this country are americans, not africans; and any wholesale expatriation of them is altogether out of the question. the white men of the south should not deceive themselves: the blacks are with them to remain. whether they like it or not, it is a fact that will not be rubbed out. if this be true, what should be the policy of the whites towards the blacks? the question should need no answer at my hands. if it were not for the unexampled obtuseness of the editors, preachers and politicians of that section, i should close this chapter here. the white men and women of the south should get down from the delectable mountain of delusive superiority which they have climbed; and, recognizing that "of one blood god made all the children of men," take hold of the missionary work god has placed under their nose. instead of railing at the black man, let them take hold of him in a christian spirit and assist him in correcting those moral abscesses and that mental enervation which they did so awfully much to infuse into him; they should first take the elephant out of their own eyes before digging at the gnat in their neighbor's eyes. they should encourage him in his efforts at moral and religious improvement, not by standing off and clapping their hands, but by going into his churches and into his pulpits, showing him the "light and the way" not only by precept but example as well. can't do it, do you say? then take your religion and cast it to the dogs, for it is a living lie; it comes not from god but from beelzebub the prince of darkness. a religion that divides christians is unadulterated paganism; a minister that will not preach the gospel to sinners, be they black or white, is a hypocrite, who "steals the livery of heaven to serve the devil in." they should make liberal provision for the schools set apart for the colored people, and they should visit these schools, not only to mark the progress made, and to encourage teacher and pupil, but to show to the young minds blossoming into maturity and usefulness that they are friends and deeply interested in the progress made. in public, they should seek first to inspire the confidence of colored men by just laws and friendly overtures and by encouraging the capable, honest and ambitious few by placing them in position of honor and trust. they should show to colored men that they accept the constitution as amended, and are earnestly solicitous that they should prosper in the world, and become useful and respected citizens. you can't make a friend and partisan of a man by shooting him; you can't make a sober, industrious, honest man by robbing and outraging him. these tactics will not work to the uplifting of a people. "a soft answer turns away wrath." even a dog caresses the hand that pats him on the head. the south must spend less money on penitentiaries and more money on schools; she must use less powder and buckshot and more law and equity; she must pay less attention to politics and more attention to the development of her magnificent resources; she must get off the "race line" hobby and pay more attention to the common man; she must wake up to the fact that-- _worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow,_ and that it is to her best interest to place all men upon the same footing before the law; mete out the same punishment to the white scamp that is inexorably meted out to the black scamp, for a scamp is a scamp any way you twist it; a social pest that should be put where he will be unable to harm any one. in an honest acceptance of the new conditions and responsibilities god has placed upon them, and in mutual forebearance, toleration and assistance, the south will find that panacea for which she has sought in vain down to this time. chapter xi land and labor there is more prose than poetry in the desperate conflict now waging in every part of the civilized world between labor and capital,--between the dog and his tail, again, for, when the question is reduced to a comprehensive statement of fact, it will be readily seen that capital is the offspring of labor, not labor the offspring of capital. capital can produce nothing. left to itself, it is as valueless as the countless millions of gold, silver, copper, lead and iron that lie buried in the unexplored womb of nature. this storied wealth counts for nothing in its crude, undeveloped state. as it is to-day, so it was a thousand years ago. years may add to the bulk, and, therefore, the richness of its value; but until man, by his labor of muscle and brain, has brought it forth, it has no value whatever. to have value, it must become an object of barter, of circulation, in short, of exchange. as its value depends upon its utility, so when it can no longer be used it again becomes a useless mass of perishable wealth. it is the product of labor, pure and simple. speaking on "management of the banks" (footnote p. ), in his work on _labor and capital_, edward kellogg says:-- all who become rich by speculations in bank, state and other stocks, gain their wealth at the expense of the producing classes; for no increased production is made by the changing market value of these stocks. it is clear, that when the rate of interest is increased, the gains of money-lenders are augmented, and the money gained will buy a greater quantity of property and labor. the increased gains of the lender must be paid by the borrowers, by the productions of their own or of others' labor. so adam smith, speaking of "the origin and use of money" (_wealth of nations_, p. ), says: in order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the divisions of labor, must naturally have endeavored to manage his affairs in such a manner as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry. labor is the one paramount force which develops the resources of the world. it produces all the wealth; it pays, in the last analysis, all the taxes--national, state and municipal; it produces the wealth which sustains all the institutions of learning, as well as ministers to the profligate luxuries of the idlers and sharpers who add nothing to the wealth of society, but on the contrary constantly take from it, and who have not inaptly been termed by dr. howard crosby the "dangerous classes;" it makes the wealth which gives a few men millions of dollars as their share, either as rental or usurious interest upon capital invested in the production of wealth; and it creates the vast surplus which lies in the coffers of the federal and state treasuries of our land. the producing agency, without which there could be no wealth; without which the landlord could exact no rent and capital could draw no interest, the producing agency alone receives an inadequate proportion of the wealth it produces. the man who conducts any business requiring labor and capital not only exacts an unjust proportion of the laborer's hire, but takes more than he justly should as interest upon his capital and as reward for his own time and labor, often amounting to no trouble or labor, he delegating to other hands, such as foremen or overseers, the absolute control of his investment. yet, the man who invests capital not only derives, in a majority of cases, a sufficient income to enable him to live in more than comfort but to have a healthy bank account; while the laborer, who alone makes capital draw interest by giving it employment in developing the resources of nature, derives only a bare subsistence, frequently not sufficient to meet the absolute necessaries of his daily life. his wife and children must be content with life simply--bare, cold life--often without any of the conveniences or the commonest luxuries which make existence anything more than the curse it is to a large majority of humankind. this is peculiarly true of the condition of the masses of the old world, and is fast becoming true in our own young and vigorous country. in every quarter of the globe the cry of depressed and defrauded labor is heard. the enormous drain upon the producing agents necessary to maintain in idleness and luxury the great capitalists of the world who accumulated their ill-gotten wealth by fraud, perjury and "conquest," so called, grinds the producing agent down to the lowest possible point at which he can live and still produce. the millionaires of the world, so called "aristocracies," and the taxes imposed by sovereign states to liquidate obligations more frequently contracted to enslave than to ameliorate the conditions of mankind, are a constant drain which comes ultimately out of the laboring classes in every case. what are millionaires, any way, but the most dangerous enemies of society, always eating away its entrails, like the cultures that preyed upon the chained prometheus? take our own breed of these parasites; note how they grind down the stipend they are compelled to bestow upon the human tools they must use to still further swell their ungodly gains! note how they take advantage of the public; how they extort, with shylock avarice, every penny they possibly can from those who are compelled to use the appliances which wealth enables them to contrive for the public convenience and comfort; how they corrupt legislatures and dictate to the unscrupulous minions of the law. the athenians were wise who enacted into law the principle that when a citizen became too powerful or rich to be controlled within proper bounds, the safety of society demanded that he should be exiled--sent where his power or riches could not be used to the detriment of his fellow-citizens. should such a rule be applied to-day, society in every land could disgorge with much advantage the men who ride the people as the old man of the sea rode sindbad the luckless sailor. but our civilization is built upon a higher conception of individual right and immunity; there is now no limit to the right of one man to rob another of the produce of his labor or his natural and conferred rights. not only may individuals rob and plunder their fellows with absolute impunity, but our laws have put breath into that soulless thing which has become notoriously infamous as a "corporation." around this thing, this engine of extortion and oppression, our laws have placed bulwarks which the defrauded laborer, the widow and orphan, and even the sovereign public, cannot overleap. here is where monopoly first shows its cormorant head. if millionaires are enemies of society, and i assume that they are--not because they have property, but because, as a rule, they have acquired it by unjust processes and use it tyrannically--what excuse have we for aristocracies, an idle class, a privileged class, who toil not, nor spin? what is a recognized aristocracy, such as england maintains? from what perennial fountain did it draw its nobility and wealth? came they not through norman conquest and robbery? who pay the heavy taxes levied upon the people to support the privileged classes of england? the royal revenues and princely preserves, are they not supported out of the sweat of the poorer classes, upon whom all the burdens of society fall at last? and why should there be royal revenues and princely preserves? do they add anything to the wealth of a nation or the happiness of a people? let us see. brassey (sir thomas), in his book on _work and wages_, p. , says: the irish poor law commissioners stated that the average produce of the soil in ireland was not much above one half the average produce in england, whilst the number of laborers employed in agriculture was, in proportion to the quantity of land under cultivation more than double, viz.: as five to two. thus ten laborers in ireland raised only the same quantity of produce that four laborers raised in england, and this produce was generally of an inferior quality. why is it that ten men in ireland produce no more than four men produce in england? henry george says (_social problems_, p. ): a year ago i traveled through that part of ireland from which these government-aided emigrants come. what surprises an american at first, even in connaught, is the apparent sparseness of population, and he wonders if this can indeed be that over-populated ireland of which he has heard so much. _there is plenty of good land_, but on it are only fat beasts, and sheep so clean and white that you at first think that they must be washed and combed every morning. once, this soil was tilled and was populous, but now you will find only traces of ruined hamlets, and here and there the miserable hut of a herd, who lives in a way that no terra del fuegan could envy. for the 'owners' of this land, who live in london and paris, many of them having never seen their estates, find cattle more profitable than men, and so the men have been driven off. _it is only when you reach the bog and the rocks_ in the mountains and by the sea shore, that you find a dense population. here they are crowded together on land on which nature never intended men to live. it is too poor for grazing, so the people who have been driven from the better lands are allowed to live upon it--as long as they pay their rent. if it were not too pathetic, the patches they called fields would make you laugh. originally the surface of the ground must have been about as susceptible of cultivation as the surface of broadway. but at the cost of enormous labor the small stones have been picked off and piled up, though the great boulders remain, so that it is impossible to use a plow; and the surface of the bog has been cut away and manured by seaweed, brought in from the shore on the backs of men and women, till it can be made to grow something. sir thomas brassey writes from a capitalist's standpoint, while mr. george writes from the standpoint of a philosopher who not only sees gross social wrongs but boldly applies the remedy. but let us see if the same fester which irritates the body of irish society has not also a parasitical existence in our own land, where society is yet in its infancy, where the people are supposed to enjoy all the advantages of the competitive system, and where all are, measurably, free to take and to use the opportunities offered the pioneers, or him who gets first his grip upon the three natural elements absolutely essential to man's existence, viz.: air, water, and land. wm. goodwin moody says (_land and labor in the united states_, p. ): instead of being able to boast, as could our fathers, that every man who tilled the soil was lord of the manor he occupied, owning no master, the last census report made a return of , , tenant farms in our country in . a comparison of this showing with the land-holdings of great britain and ireland will help to a better understanding of what these things import. the very latest statistics give the total number of holdings in england and wales at , ; in ireland, at , ; in scotland, at , ; total, , , . showing that in the whole of great britain and ireland, counting all the holdings as tenant occupations, which they are not, there are , less tenant farms than in the united states. again: among the owners of the tenant farms in our country are english, french, and german capitalists, non-residents, who have bought immense tracts of the railroad lands, and seized upon the alternate government sections lying within their railroad purchases, and on those tracts have commenced their bonanza operations, or planted their tenants on the american system. when it is remembered that the entire network of railroads in the united states is practically under the absolute control of five or six men who, having derived their valuable franchises and more than princely land grants from the people, show the utmost disregard of the comfort, convenience or rights of the donors; when it is remembered that one family in the city of new york controls enough land with enough tenants to constitute an overgrown village; and that what they do not claim as their own is held by one-fourth of the rest of the population; when it is remembered that nearly every article which has become a household necessity has been seized upon and can be obtained only through some corporation, in the manufacture of which the government has virtually granted a monopoly, as charles granted to the duke of buckingham a monopoly in the sale of gold lace; when it is remembered that, even in this new country, three-fourths of the population rent their homes and cannot buy them[ ]; when these things are remembered, as they should be, it will be readily seen that the condition of our work-people is fast becoming no better than that of the people of europe, where a thousand years of false social adjustments, of usurpation and of tyranny, have reduced the proletariat class to the verge of starvation and desperation. true, the immigrant laborers from europe in the north, and the colored people at the south tend to crowd into the cities, where their labor is least needed and the conditions of life for them must be at the hardest; true, in america if a man _has it in him_ the way is open for him to mount to the topmost round of the social ladder; true, too, the operatives in manufactures and the agricultural laborers here live on a far higher plane than in europe; but the elements of degradation as well as of elevation are present in our land, and "easy in the descent" to the infernal regions. let us be warned in time. chapter xii _civilization degrades the masses_ there are men in all parts of the world, whose names have become synonyms of learning and genius, who proclaim it from the housetops that civilization is in a constant state of evolution to a higher, purer, nobler, happier condition of the people, the great mass of mankind, who properly make up society, and who have been styled, in derision, the "_mudsills_ of society." so they are, society rests upon them; society must build upon them; without them society cannot be, because they are, in the broadest sense, society itself,--not only the "mudsills" but the _superstructure_ as well. they not only constitute the great producing class but the great consuming class as well. they are the bone and sinew of society. it is therefore of the utmost importance to know the condition of the people; it is not only important to know exactly what that condition is, but it is of the very first importance to the well-being of society that there should be absolutely nothing in that condition to arouse the apprehension of the sharks who live upon the carcass of the people, or of the people who permit the sharks to so live. there is nothing more absolutely certain than that the people--who submit to be robbed through the intricate and multifarious processes devised by the cupidity of individuals and of governments--when aroused to a full sense of the wrongs inflicted upon them, will strike down their oppressors in a rage of desperation born of despair. modern tyrannies are far more insidious than the military despotisms of the past. these modern engines which crush society destroy the energy and vitality of the people by the slow process of starvation, sanctioned by the law, and in a majority of instances, are patiently borne by the victims. it is only when human nature can endure no more that protests are first heard; then armed resistance; then anarchy. thus it was with the french of the eighteenth century. thus it is with the russian, the german, the english, the irish peoples of to-day. the heel of the tyrant is studded with too many steel nails to be borne without excruciating pain and without earnest protest. if in their desperate conflict with the serpent that has coiled its slimy length about the body of the people the latter resort to dynamite, and seek by savage warfare to right their wrongs, they are to be condemned and controlled, for they confound the innocent with the guilty and work ruin rather than reform. yet there is another side to be considered, for when injustice wraps itself in the robes of virtue and of law, and calls in the assistance of armies and all the destructive machinery of modern warfare to enforce its right to enslave and starve mankind, what counter warfare can be too savage, too destructive in its operations, to compel attention to the wrong? the difficulty is that vengeance should discriminate, but that is a refinement which blind rage can hardly compass. i believe in law and order; but i believe, as a condition precedent, that law and order should be predicated upon right and justice, pure and simple. law is, intrinsically, a written expression of justice; if, on the contrary, it becomes instead written _injustice_, men are not, strictly speaking, bound to yield it obedience. there is no law, on the statute books of any nation of the world, which bears unjustly upon the people, which should be permitted to stand one hour. it is through the operations of law that mankind is ground to powder; it is by the prostitution of the rights of the masses, by men who pretend to be their representatives and are not, that misery, starvation and death fill the largest space in the news channels of every land. in new york city--where the intelligence, the enterprise, the wealth and the christianized humanity of the new world are supposed to have their highest exemplification--men, women and children die by the thousands, starved and frozen out of the world! thousands die yearly in the city of new york from the effects of exposure and insufficient nutriment. the world, into which they had come unbidden, and the fruits of which a just god had declared they should enjoy as reward of the sweat of their brows, had refused them even a bare subsistance; and, this, when millions of food rot in the storehouses without purchasers! the harpies of trade prefer that their substance should resolve itself into the dirt and weed from which it sprung, rather than the poor and needy should eat of it and live. i have walked through the tenement wards of new york, and i have seen enough want and crime and blasted virtue to condemn the civilization which produced them and which fosters them in its bosom. i have looked upon the vast army of police which new york city maintains to protect life and so-called "vested rights," and i have concluded that there is something wrong in the social system which can only be kept intact by the expenditure of so much productive force, for this vast army, which stands on the street corners and lurks in the alley ways, "spotting," suspicious persons, "keeping an eye" on strangers who look "smart," this vast army contributes nothing to the production of wealth. it is, essentially, a parasite. and yet, without this army of idlers, life would be in constant danger and property would fall prey not only to the vicious and the desperate, but to the hungry men and women who have neither a place to shelter them from the storms of heaven, nor food to sustain nature's cravings from finding an eternal resting place in the potter's field. and, even after every precaution which selfishness can devise, courts of law and police officers are powerless to stay the hand of the pariahs whom society has outlawed--the men and women who are doomed to starve to death and be buried at the expense of society. the streets of every city in the union are full of people who have been made desperate by social adjustments which prophets laud to the skies and which philosophers commend as "ideal," as far as they go. one-half the producing power of the united states is to-day absolutely dependent upon the cold charity of the world; one fourth does not make sufficient to live beyond the day, while the other one-fourth only manages to live comfortably at the expense of the most parsimonious economy. it is becoming a mooted question whether labor-saving machinery has not supplanted muscle-power in the production of every article to such a marvelous extent as to make thoughtful men tremble for the future of those who can only hope to live upon the produce of their labors. the machine has taken the place, largely, of man in the production of articles of consumption, of wear and of ornamentation; but no machine has, as yet, been invented to take the place of human wants. the markets of the world are actually glutted with articles produced by machine labor, but there are no purchasers with the means to buy, to consume the additional production caused by machinery and the consequent cheapening of processes of producing the articles of consumption, ornamentation, etc. when men have work they have money; and when men have money they spend it. hence, when the toilers of a land have steady employment trade is brisk; when business stagnation forces them into idleness vice and crime afflict the country. what avail the tireless labor of the machine and the mountains of material it places upon the market, if there are no purchasers? one man at a machine will do as much work in a factory to-day as required the work of fifty men fifty years ago; but the enhanced volume of production can have only one purchaser now where there was once fifty, hence the fitful existence of the one and the desperate struggle for existence of the forty-nine.[ ] as iron and steel cannot compete with muscle and brain in the volume of production, so iron and steel cannot compete with muscle and brain in consumption. and, without consumption, what does production amount to? what does it avail us that our stores and granaries are overstocked, if the people are unable to buy? the thing is reduced to a cruel mockery when stores and granaries are over-gorged, while people clamor in vain for clothing and food, and drop dead within reach of these prime elements of warmth and sustentation. what does it avail us if the balance of trade be in our favor by one, or two, or three hundred millions of dollars, if this result be obtained by the degradation and death of our own people? more; not only at the expense of the well being of our own people, but of the people of those countries in whose markets we are enabled to undersell them, by reason of the more systematic pauperization of our own producing classes. competition, it is declared, is the life of trade; if this be true, it is truer that it is the death of labor, of the poorer classes. for great britain has established herself in the markets of the world at the expense of her laboring classes. while the capitalists of that country hold up their heads among the proudest people of the world, her laboring classes are absolutely ground to powder. because of the inhuman competition which her manufacturers have been led to adopt, and the introduction of improved labor-saving machinery, her balance of trade runs far into the millions of pounds, and political economists place their hands upon their hearts and declare that great britain is the most happy and prosperous country on the face of the globe. but the declaration is illusory in the extreme. no country can be happy and prosperous whose "mudsills" live in squalor, want, misery, vice and death. if great britain is happy and prosperous, how shall we account for the constant strikes of labor organizations for higher pay or as a protest against further reduction of wages below which man cannot live and produce? the balance of trade desire is the curse of the people of the world. it can be obtained only by underbidding other people in their own markets; and this can be done only by the maximum of production at the minimum of cost--by forcing as much labor out of the man or the machine as possible at the least possible expense. there is death in the theory; death to our own people and death to the people with whom we compete. when a people no longer produce those articles which are absolutely necessary to sustain life the days of such people may be easily calculated. men talk daily of "over production," of "glutted markets," and the like; but such is not a true statement of the case. there can be no over production of anything as long as there are hungry mouths to be fed. it does not matter if the possessors of these hungry mouths are too poor to buy the bread; if they are hungry, there is no overproduction. with a balance of $ , , of trade; with plethoric granaries and elevators all over the land; with millions of swine, sheep and cattle on a thousand hills; with millions of surplus revenue in the vaults of the national treasury, diverted from the regular channels of trade by an ignorant set of legislators who have not gumption enough to reduce unnecessary and burdensome taxation without upsetting the industries of the country--with all its grandiloquent exhibition of happiness and prosperity, the laboring classes of the country starve to death, or eke out an existence still more horrible. the factories of the land run on half time, and the men, women and children who operate them grow pinch-faced, lean and haggard, from insufficient nutriment, and are old and decrepit while yet in the bud of youth; the tenements are crowded to suffocation, breeding pestilence and death; while the wages paid to labor hardly serve to satisfy the exactions of the landlord--a monstrosity in the midst of civilization, whose very existence is a crying protest against our pretensions to civilization. yet, "competition" is the cry of the hour. millionaires compete with each other in the management of vast railroads and water routes, reducing labor to the verge of subsistence while exacting mints of money as tolls for transportation from the toilers of the soil and the consumers who live by their labor in other industrial enterprises; the manufacturers join in the competition, selling goods at the least possible profit to themselves and the least possible profit to those who labor for them; and, when no market can be found at home, boldly enter foreign markets and successfully compete with manufacturers who employ what our writers are pleased to style "pauper" labor. every branch of industry is in the field _competing_, and the competition is ruining every branch of industry. the constant effort to obtain the maximum of production at the minimum of cost operates injuriously upon employer and employee alike; while the shrinkage in money circulation, caused by the competition, reduces, in every branch of industry, the wages of those who are the great consumers as well as producers; it produces those "hard times" which bear so hardly upon the poor in every walk of life. even the laboring man has entered the race, and now competes in the labor market with his fellow for an opportunity to make a crust of bread to feed his wife and child. when things reach this stage, when the man who is working for one dollar and a half per day is underbid by a man who will work for a dollar and a quarter, then the condition of the great wealth producing and consuming class is desperate indeed. and so it is. frederick douglass, the great negro commoner, speaking at washington, april , , on the "twenty-first anniversary of emancipation in the district of columbia," said: events are transpiring all around us that enforce respect of the oppressed classes. in one form or another, by one means or another, the ideas of a common humanity against privileged classes, of common rights against special privileges, are now rocking the world. explosives are heard that rival the earthquake. they are causing despots to tremble, class rule to quail, thrones to shake and oppressive associated wealth to turn pale. it is for america to be wise in time. and the black philosopher, who had by manly courage and matchless eloquence braved the mob law of the north and the organized brigandage and robbery of the south in the dark days of the past, days that tried men's souls, standing in the sunlight of rejuvenated manhood, still was the oracle of the oppressed in the sentiments above quoted. all over the land the voice of the masses is heard. organizations in their interests are multiplying like sands on the seashore. the fierce, hoarse mutter of the starved and starving gives unmistakable warning that america has entered upon that fierce conflict of money-power and muscle-power which now shake to their very centers the hoary-headed commonwealths of the old world. in _john swintons paper_ of a recent date i find the following editorial arraignment of the present state of "labor and capital:" the cries of the people against the oppressions of capital and monopoly are heard all over the land; but the capitalist and monopolist give them no heed, and go on their way more relentlessly than ever. congress is fully aware of the condition of things; but you cannot get any bill through there for the relief of the people. the coal lords of pennsylvania know how abject are the tens of thousands of blackamoors of their mines; but they grind them without mercy, and cut their days' wages again whenever they squeal. jay gould knows of the wide-spread ruin he has wrought in piling up his hundred millions; but he drives along faster than ever in his routine of plunder. the factory christians of fall river see their thousands of poor spinners struggling for the bread of life amid the whirl of machinery: but they order reduction after reduction in the rate of wages, though the veins of the corporations are swollen to congestion. the "big four" of chicago, who corner grain and provisions, and the capitalists here and elsewhere who do the same thing, know well how the farmers suffer and the tables of the poor are ravaged by their operations; but they prosecute their work more extensively and recklessly than ever. the railroad and telegraph corporations know that, in putting on "all that the traffic will bear," they are taking from this country more than the people can stand; yet their only answer is that of the horseleech.... our lawmakers know how the people are wronged through legislation in the interest of privilege and plunder; but they add statute to statute in that same interest. they know how advantageous to the producers would be the few measures asked in their name; yet they persistently refuse to adopt them. the great employers of labor, the cormorants of competition, know through what hideous injustice they enrich themselves; but speak to them of fair play, and they flout you from their presence. the wealthy corporations owning these street car lines in new york see that their drivers and conductors are kept on the rack from sixteen to eighteen hours every day of the week, including sundays; but when a bill is brought into the state legislature to limit the daily working hours to twelve, they order their hired agents of the lobby to defeat it. these gamblers of wall street know that their gains are mainly through fraud; yet forever, fast and furious, do they play with loaded dice. the landlords of these tenement quarters know by the mortality statistics how broad is the swathe that death cuts among their victims; but they add dollar to dollar as coffin after coffin is carried into the street. * * * these owners of the machinery of industry know how it bears upon the men who keep it flying; but they are regardless of all that, if only it fills their coffers. these owners of palaces look upon the men by whom they are built; but think all the time how to raise the rent of their hovels. these great money-lenders who hold the mortgages on countless farms know of the straits of the mortgage-bound farmers; yet they never cease to plot for higher interest and harder terms. the gilded priests of mammon and hypocrisy cannot get away from the cries of humankind; but when do you ever hear them denouncing the guilty and responsible criminals in their velvet-cushioned pews? harder and harder grow the exactions of capital. harder and harder grows the lot of the millions. louder and louder grow the cries of the sufferers. deafer and deafer grow the ears of the millionaires. _yet_, if those who cry would but use their power in action, peaceful action, they could right their wrongs, or at least the most grievous of them, before the world completes the solar circuit of this year. wm. goodwin moody (_land and labor in the united states_, p. ), reverting to the difficulties which beset the pathway of labor organizations, which have so far been productive of nothing but disaster to the laboring classes, says: is it not time that new weapons should be adopted, and new methods introduced? * * * will not the working men of the country learn anything from the bitter experiences they have passed through, and abandon methods that have been so uniformly followed by the ultimate failure of all their efforts. but the great evils by which we are surrounded, and that are destroying the foundations of society, can be removed by the working-men only. they form the large majority of its members, and in our country they are all-powerful. still it is only by absolutely united action that the working-men can accomplish any good. by disunion they may achieve any amount of evil. the enemy they have to contend against, though few in number, are strong in position and possession of great capital. nevertheless, before the united working-men of the country, seeking really national objects and noble ends, by methods that are just and in harmony with the institutions under which we live, the tyranny of capital will end. the working-men will also draw to their support a very large part of the best thought and intelligence of the country, that will be sure to keep even step with the labor of society in its attack upon the enemies of humanity and progress. there is no fact truer than this, that the accumulated wealth of the land, and the sources of power, are fast becoming concentrated in the hands of a few men, who use that wealth and power to the debasement and enthrallment of the wage workers. already it is almost impossible to obtain any legislation, in state or federal legislatures, to ameliorate the condition of the laboring classes. capital has placed its tyrant grip upon the throat of the goddess of liberty. the power of railroad and telegraph corporations, and associated capital invested in monopolies which oppress the many, while ministering to the wealth, the comfort and the luxury of the few, has become omnipotent in halls of legislation, courts of justice, and even in the executive chambers of great states, so that the poor, the oppressed and the defrauded appeal in vain for justice. such is the deplorable condition of the laboring classes in the west, the north and the east. they are bound to the car of capital, and are being ground to powder as fast as day follows day. they organize in vain; they protest in vain; they appeal in vain. civilization is doing its work. "to him that hath, more shall be given; to him that hath nothing, even that shall be taken from him." let us turn to the south and see if a black skin has anything to do with the tyranny of capital; let us see if the cause of the laboring man is not the same in all sections, in all states, in all governments, in the union, as it is in all the world. if this can be shown; if i can incontestably demonstrate that _the condition of the black and the white laborer is the same, and that consequently_ _their cause is common_; that they should unite under the one banner and work upon the same platform of principles for the uplifting of labor, the more equal distribution of the products of labor and capital, i shall not have written this book in vain, and the patient reader will not have read after me without profit to himself and the common cause of a common humanity. footnotes: [ ] w.g. moody: _land and labor in the united states._ [ ] wm. goodwin moody shows this conclusively in his work on _land and labor in the united states_. chapter xiii _conditions of labor in the south_ i am not seriously concerned about the frightful political disorders which have disgraced the southern states since the close of the war of the rebellion; nor am i seriously concerned about the race-wars in that section about which so much has been justly said, and about which so very little is really known, in spite of the vast mass of testimony that did not more than begin to tell the tale. i know that time and education will give proper adjustment to the politics of the south, and that the best men of all classes, the intelligent and the property-holders will eventually grasp the reins of political or civil power and give, as far as they can, equilibrium to the unbalanced conditions. the men of natural parts, of superior culture and ambitious spirit usually, in all societies, manage to rise to the top as the natural rulers of the people. you cannot keep them down; you cannot repress them. they rise to the top as naturally as sparks fly upward to the heavens. demagogues and quacks manage only to impose upon the ignorant and confiding, upon men, conscious of their own inability to rule, who gladly transfer the responsibility to the first loud-mouthed fellow who comes along claiming, as his own, superior capacity and virtue. intelligent men do not permit ignoramuses and adventurers to rule them; they prefer to rule themselves; and they submit to be ruled by such interlopers only so long as it takes them to thoroughly understand the condition of affairs. it is not, therefore, to be marvelled at that the white men of the south spread death and terror in their pathway to the throne of power in subverting the governments of the reconstruction policy, based as those governments were, upon _disorganized_ ignorance on the part of the blacks and organized robbery on the part of the white adventurers, who have become infamous under the expressive term "carpet-baggers;" although the genuine northern immigrants, the "fools" who came in good faith to cast in their lot with the southern people supposing themselves to be welcome, should not share in the obloquy of that epithet. but, should the white men of the south continue indefinitely as the rulers of the south, to the absolute exclusion of participation of the black citizens of those states, then would my surprise be turned into profound amazement and horror at what such tyranny would produce as a logical result. yet i know the temper of the people of the south too well to base any deduction upon a proposition so full of horror and despair. and, then, too, such a proposition would be at variance with all accepted precedents of two peoples living in the same community, governed by the same laws and subject to the same social and material conditions. i submit that i have no fears about the future political status of the whites and blacks of the south. the intelligent, the ambitious and the wealthy men of both races will eventually rule over their less fortunate fellow-citizens without invidious regard to race or previous condition. and the great-grandson of senator wade hampton may yet vote for the great-grandson of congressman robert smalls to be governor of the chivalric commonwealth of south carolina. senator wade hampton may grit his teeth at this aspect of the case; but it is strictly in the domain of probability. the grandson of john c. calhoun, the great orator and statesman of south carolina, has not as yet voted for a colored governor, but he has for a colored sheriff and probate judge, as the following testimony he gave before the blair committee on "education and labor," (vol ii, p. ), in the city of new york, september , , will show: "q. (the chairman) what do you think of his [the black man's] intellectual and moral qualities and his capacity for development? a. (mr. calhoun, john c.) ... the probate judge of my county is a negro and one of my tenants, and i am here now in new york attending to important business for my county as an appointee of that man. he has upon him the responsibilities of all estates in the county; he is probate judge. "q. is he a capable man? a. a very capable man, and an excellent, good man, and a very just one." again (_ibid_ p. ), mr. calhoun testified: the sheriff of my county is from ohio, _and a negro_, and he is a man whom _we all support in his office_, because he is capable of administering his office. when the grandson of john c. calhoun can make such admissions, creditable alike to his head and his heart, may not the great-grandson of wade hampton rise up to chase the bourbonism of his great-grandfather into the tomb of disgruntlement? i have not the least doubt of such probability. again, i say, i am not seriously concerned about the future political status of the black man of the south. he has talent; he has ambition; he possesses a rare fund of eloquence, of wit and of humor, and these will carry him into the executive chambers of states, the halls of legislation and on to the bench of the judiciary. you can't bar him out; you can't repress him: he will make his way. god has planted in his very nature those elements which constitute the stock-in-trade of the american politician--ready eloquence, rich humor, quick perception--and you may rest assured he will use all of them to the very best advantage. i know of municipalities in the south to-day, where capable colored men are regularly voted into responsible positions by the best white men of their cities. and why not? do not colored men vote white men into office? and, pray, is the white man less magnanimous than the black man? perish the thought! no; the politics of the south will readily adjust themselves to the best interest of the people; be very sure of this. and the future rulers of the south will not all be white, nor will they be all black: they will be a happy commingling of the two peoples. and thus with the so-called "war of races:" it will pass away and leave not a trace behind. it is based upon condition and color-prejudice--two things which cannot perpetuate themselves. when the lowly condition of the black man has passed away; when he becomes a capable president of banks, of railroads and of steamboats; when he becomes a large land-holder, operating bonanza farms which enrich him and pauperize black and white labor; when he is not only a prisoner at the bar but a judge on the bench; when he sits in the halls of legislation the advocate of the people, or (more profit if less honor) the advocate of vast corporations and monopolies; when he has successfully metamorphosed the condition which attaches to him as a badge of slavery and degradation, and made a reputation for himself as a financier, statesman, advocate, land-holder, and money-shark generally, his color will be swallowed up in his reputation, his bank-account and his important money interests. is this a fancy picture? is there no substantial truth seen in this picture of what will, must and shall be, as the logical outgrowth of the divine affirmation that of one blood he created all men to dwell upon the earth, and of the declaration of independence that "we hold these truths to be self-evident:--that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"? let us see. a few months ago i sat in the banking office of mr. william e. mathews and ex-congressman joseph h. rainey (of south carolina), in washington. as i sat there, a stream of patrons came and went. the whites were largely in the majority. they all wanted to negotiate a loan, or to meet a note just matured. among the men were contractors, merchants, department clerks, etc. they all spoke with the utmost deference to the colored gentleman who had money to loan upon good security and good interest. a few months ago i dined with ex-senator b.k. bruce (of mississippi), now register of the united states treasury. the ex-senator has a handsome house, and a delightful family. in running my eyes over his card tray, i saw the names of some of the foremost men and women of the nation who had called upon register and mrs. bruce. in passing through the register's department with the senator, sight-seeing, i was not surprised at the marks of respect shown to mr. bruce by the white ladies and gentlemen in his department. why? because mr. bruce is a gentleman by instinct, a diplomat by nature, and a scholar who has "burned the midnight oil." such a person does not have to ask men and women to respect him; they do so instinctively. i walked down f street and called at the office of prof. richard t. greener, a ripe scholar and a gentleman. the professor not only has a paying law practice, but is president of a new insurance company. he has all that he can do, and his patrons are both black and white. all this and more came under my observation in the course of an hour's leisure at the capital of the nation. and the black man has not yet aroused himself to a full sense of his responsibilities or of his opportunities. in baltimore, philadelphia, new york, and boston we have colored men of large wealth, who conduct extensive business operations and enjoy the confidence and esteem of their fellow citizens without regard to caste. speaking upon the progress of the colored race, in the course of an address on the "civil rights law," at washington, october , , the hon. john mercer langston, united states minister and consul general to hayti, and one of the most remarkable, scholarly, and diplomatic men the colored race in america has produced, drew the following pen-picture: do you desire to witness moral wonders? start at chicago; travel to st. louis; travel to louisville; travel to nashville; travel to chattanooga; travel on to new orleans, and in every state and city you will meet vast audiences, immense concourses of men and women with their children, boys and girls, who, degraded and in ignorance because of their slavery formerly, are to-day far advanced in general social improvement. it would be remarkable now for you to go into the home of one of our families, and find even our daughters incompetent to discourse with you upon any subject of general interest with perfect ease and understanding. excuse me, if i refer to the fact that some two weeks ago i visited st. louis for two reasons; first to see my son and daughter, and secondly and mainly to attend the seventy-second anniversary of the birth of perhaps the richest colored man in the state of missouri. i went to his house, and i was surprised as i entered his doors and looked about his sitting-room and parlors, furnished in the most approved modern style, in the richest manner; but i was more surprised when i saw one hundred guests come into the home of this venerable man, to celebrate the seventy-second anniversary of his birth, all beautifully attired; and when he told me, indirectly, how much money he had made, since the war, and what he was worth on the night of this celebration, i was more surprised than ever. i am surprised at the matchless progress the colored people of this country have made since their emancipation. i have traveled in the west indies; i have seen the emancipated english, spanish and french negro; but i have seen no emancipated negro anywhere who has made the progress at all comparable with the colored people of the united states of america. i desire it to be distinctly understood, that i am not at all anxious about the mental and material development of the colored people of the united states. they are naturally shrewd, calculating and agreeable, possessing in a peculiar degree the art of pleasing; and these qualities will give them creditable positions in the business interests of the country in a few years. but they must have time to collect their wits, to sharpen their intelligence, to train their moral sense and the feeling of social responsibility, to fully comprehend all that the change from chattel slavery to absolute freedom implies. men cannot awaken from a rip van winkle slumber of a hundred years and grasp at once the altered conditions which flash upon them. the awakening is terrific, appalling, staggering. when a man has been confined for long years in a dark dungeon he has not trouble in discerning objects about him which, when he first entered his dungeon, were indistinct or invisible to him. so when he is brought suddenly to the strong light of the sun the effulgence overmasters him, and he is blind as a bat. but slowly and painfully he becomes accustomed to the transition from absolute darkness to absolute light, and then nature wears to his vision her naturally gay and winsome appearance. so with the slave. his grasp of the conditions of freedom is slow and uncertain. but give him time, lend him a helping hand, and he will completely master the situation. in one of the most remarkable pamphlets of the time, written by c.k. marshall, d.d., of vicksburg, miss., entitled _the colored race weighed in the balance_, being a reply to a most malicious speech by j.l. tucker, d.d., of jackson, miss., i find many truths that the american people should know. both dr. marshall and dr. tucker are white ministers of the south, and both should be intimately acquainted with the characteristics, capacity and progress of the colored people. but dr. tucker appears to be as ignorant of the colored race as if he had spent his days in the sandwich islands instead of the sunny land of the south. dr. marshall says (p. ): i think i know nearly all that can be said against a negro. in one form or another, the complaints have been a thousand times reiterated; but has he not been, and is he not now what the white man and society have made him? he is naturally peace-loving, docile, and imitative. if kindly and justly treated, with due allowance for the _peculiar elements_ that make up his life, he will render back, in kind at least, equally with the brother in white in _like surroundings_. everybody knows some reliable, trustworthy negro man and woman; and john randolph said that of two of the politest men he ever saw one was a negro. _gentleness_ is a wonderful agency in managing a negro: i know it tells powerfully upon white folks. the psalmist, addressing his maker, says, "thy gentleness hath made me great." it is a mighty lever; it moves the world; it moved it before archimedes; it moves it still; but peevishness, fault-finding, scolding, cursing, premature censure, haughty and assuming ways, sullenness, ill-temper, whether in the field, the kitchen, the nursery, or parlor, will legitimately result in thriftlessness, revolt, departure, and contempt for white people! many of the young generation have not yet found their places in the new order of things; and their silly parents work themselves nearly to death to keep their sons from the plow and to make ladies of their daughters, just like white folks; but time, gentleness, bread, and neat homes will, with religion and culture, bring great changes. and i say it to the credit of their former owners, and their own instincts and capabilities, that _they constitute to-day the best peasantry, holding similar relations to the ruling classes on the face of the earth_. their vices are no greater; their respect for law about the same; and their care for their children little inferior. besides, they speak the language of their country better, are less cringing and craven, freer from begging; more manly, more polite, less priest-ridden, less obsequious; have a higher estimate of human rights and obligations; understand farming, cooking, house-work, and manual labor, in which they have been trained, better, i insist, than any similarly conditioned race or people. they are less profane--very much less--than white people; less bitter, vindictive, and bloodthirsty; less intemperate, and far, far less revengeful; and less selfish than what they contemptuously snub as "poor white trash." but he is a sinner! i believe the old stale rhyme tells some truth in a modified sense, "in adam's fall we sinned all;" but i do not believe the serpent's tooth struck a more deadly and depraving virus into the negro's share of the apple of eden, dooming him as a sinner to a lower plane of wickedness than others. he commits not all, but many, of the sins, crimes, and misdemeanors, and indulges many of the vices of polished humanity--cultured caucasian humanity. they have had but moderate experience in the sole management of their own affairs. again (p. ): the negro is neither a beggar, nor a pauper, nor a tramp; and if honestly dealt with, he can make his own way. where they are idle and profligate, execute the law vigorously against them, and they will approve and aid in the work. we can lift them up, or cast them down. for one, i think we owe them a debt of gratitude and impartial justice for their faithful conduct during the war; and when disposed to criticise and reproach them for not coming in all things up to your sentimental notions, just put yourself in their place. then you will, if your scales are true and your weights just, settle the question with little difficulty. i cannot serve my readers better, perhaps, than by quoting the words of the rev. dr. callaway, lately professor in emory college, oxford, ga., and new president of paine institute, augusta, ga., a native of that state, and to the manor born. in a late address, he says: "we have spoken of the negro as related to the conduct of the war, but it remains to be said that, in his relation to us as a friend during that period, and to our wives and children as guardian, the testimony of his fidelity is on the lips of every surviving soldier. it is easy to conjecture how, with a race less loyal to home and patron, the testimony in the case might have been a narrative of lawlessness and license. what he refrained from, therefore, is to his credit. but in the four years of darkness and demoralization, when, besides those of military age, every boy whose muscles were equal to the support of a musket, and every old man with vigor enough to mark time, was called to the front, the negro, commanding as a patriarch and reverent as a priest, kept sacred vigil at our homes. besides this, with a foresight not developed for himself or his family, but evoked by virtue of his office, and the piteous destitution of our loved ones, he provided for their wants. 'they were a-hungered, and he fed them.' what he did is to his honor. what we refrain from in our place of power as the superior race, shall be to our credit; what we do in return shall be in proof of our appreciation. the conduct of the negro during the war proves him kindly, temperate, trustworthy; his conduct since the war reveals in him considerateness, purpose, capacity, an order of growing good qualities. during the war his inferior courage, it may be assumed, inured to his superior serviceableness, his fears giving counsel to his courtesy and care. so set it down, if you will, though the logic is as lame as the charge is ungrateful." this testimony upon the character, temper and adaptability of colored people is all the more valuable because dr. marshall not only treats the question from a christian standpoint, but because his intimate acquaintance with the subject adds weight and authority to his opinion. in the same strain, dr. atticus g. haygood, president of emory college, in georgia, a man of the largest culture, christian intelligence and progressive ideas, says, in his masterful work, _our brother in black, his freedom and his future_ (p. ): if white people and black people wish to know how to treat each other in all the relations of life, let them study the bible. take for example the business relations of life, the old question of capital and labor, of service and wages. for the settlement of all questions that grow out of these relations the laws laid down and the principles taught in the bible, are worth all the "political economies" in the world. they apply to all races and conditions of men, in all countries and in all times. they are as needful and useful in new england factories as on southern plantations. free negroes are not the only underlings in the world, negro servants are not the only hirelings. there are thousands of factory operatives, day laborers, domestic servants, mechanics, sewing women, clerks, apprentices, and such like, whose cry for justice against oppression goes up to heaven by day and by night. "for which things' sake," in all lands, "the wrath of god is come upon the children of disobedience." let us here recall some of these half-forgotten laws; they must do us all good. i know they are needed in the south; i am persuaded that they are needed wherever there are masters and servants. having heard a great deal about the condition of the colored people in louisiana, i decided that it would not be uninteresting to have an authentic statement of that condition by some person fully capable of furnishing the desired information. i therefore addressed a letter to the hon. theophile t. allain, a colored member of the louisiana legislature for sweet iberville parish, and a large sugar planter. from mr. allain's letter i condense the following statement, which will be found to be interesting for many reasons: "first," says mr. allain, "i speak as a man of the south, who pays taxes on thirty-five thousand dollars worth of property, and without owing to any man one dollar. i claim to be well informed as to the condition of the colored people of the south, the people who bear the heat and burden of the day. "in the cotton section of the south the negroes are kept in subjugation, and are not permitted to exercise the right of suffrage guaranteed to them by the provisions of the federal constitution. in the sugar-growing districts of louisiana the colored and white people live upon terms of friendship and cordiality. in these districts there are thousands of colored men, who before the war were slaves, who now pay taxes upon property, assessed in their own names, ranging in value from five hundred to fifty thousand dollars. they produce principally rice and sugar. it is a self-evident fact that the labor of the colored men produces two-thirds of all the cotton raised in the south, four-fifths of the sugar, and nine-tenths of all the rice. "in the cotton sections of louisiana the colored men work mostly on shares, and here and there some of them have accumulated a little money; but, as a rule, they make fortunes for the landlords and die in poverty because of no fault of their own. rent here, as everywhere else, pulls the laborer down, and keeps him down. what remains to him after the landlord has taken his _share_, goes to the jew shopkeepers and other middle men at crossroads, who will not be satisfied with any profit less than one hundred to one hundred and fifty per cent. "but the sugar districts of louisiana are like oases in the desert. vacuum pans, steam cars, fine machinery and smiling faces are to be met on every hand. colored laborers find employment very readily in the sugar districts from october to february; and during cultivation-time, in many places, the colored laborers receive _as high as one dollar and twenty cents per day_, and during the grinding season, which is the harvest time, laborers receive from one dollar and twenty-five cents to one dollar and fifty cents per day in the field and seventy-five cents for one half of the night. at this season we run the sugar machinery night and day. i should not omit to state that colored men are, in the majority of cases, employed as engineers at our sugar mills, and receive from two to two and a half dollars per day: "you will be surprised when i tell you that the most of the bricklaying and plastering work, and the blacksmithing and carpentering work is done in the sugar districts by colored men, who average three dollars per day for their work. "there are fifty-eight parishes in louisiana, twenty-four of them being sugar districts. to illustrate the degree of toleration which obtains in the cotton and sugar growing districts, take the following statement: in the louisiana house of representatives there are thirteen colored members--all from the sugar districts; in the senate there are four colored members--all from the sugar districts. this condition of things is readily accounted for by the fact that the colored people in the sugar districts are more generally tax payers than they are in the cotton districts, and, having mutual interests, both white and black are more tolerant and better informed. the bulldozer and white liner can find but little room to ply their nefarious work where everybody finds plenty of work that pays well, and where material prosperity is the first and political bickering the secondary consideration. because of the mutual interests at stake, colored men in the sugar districts are often protected by their bitterest political opponents. "the state of louisiana is assessed at $ , , , of which her colored population pay taxes upon more than $ , , .--two thirds of this is owned by colored men in the sugar districts." i could multiply quotations, but they would serve only to confirm my view, that the colored man merely requires time to fully comprehend his freedom and his opportunities, to enjoy the ample immunities of the first and to improve to the utmost the advantages of the second. all over the country the colored man is coming to understand that if he is ever to have and enjoy a status in this country at all commensurate with that of his white fellow-citizens, he must get his grip upon the elements of success which they employ with such effect, and boldly enter the lists, a competitor who must make a way for himself. dr. marshall says truly: "the negro is neither a beggar, nor a pauper, nor a tramp." he is, essentially, a man of the largest wealth, god having given him, under tropical conditions, a powerful physique, with ample muscle and constitution to extract out of the repositories of nature her buried wealth. he only needs intelligence to use the wealth he creates. when he has intelligence, he will no longer labor to enrich men more designing and unscrupulous than he is; he will labor to enrich himself and his children. indeed, in his powerful muscle and enduring physical constitution, directed by intelligence, the black man of the south, who alone has demonstrated his capacity to labor with success in the rice swamps, the cotton, and the cornfields of the south, will ultimately turn the tables upon the unscrupulous harpies who have robbed him for more than two hundred years; and from having been the slave of these men, he, in turn, will enslave them. from having been the slave, he will become the master; from having labored to enrich others, he will force others to labor to enrich him. the laws of nature are inexorable, and this is one of them. the white men of the south may turn pale with rage at this aspect of the case, but it is written on the wall. already i have seen in the south the black and white farm laborer, working side by side for a black landlord; already i have seen in the south a black and a white brick-mason (and carpenters as well) working upon a building side by side, under a colored contractor. and we are not yet two decades from the surrender of robert e. lee and the manumission of the black slave. i have no disposition to infuriate any white man of the south, by placing a red flag before him; we simply desire to accustom him to look upon a picture which his grand-children will not, because of the frequency of the occurrence, regard with anything more heart-rending than complacent indifference. the world moves forward; and the white man of the south could not stand still, if he so desired. like the black man, he must work, or perish; like the black man, he must submit to the sharpest competition, and rise or fall, as the case may be. and so it should be. chapter xiv _classes in the south_ since the war the people of the south are, from a northern standpoint, very poor. there are very few millionaires among them. a man who has a bank account of fifty thousand dollars is regarded as very rich. i am reminded of an incident which shows that the southern people fall down and worship a golden calf the same as their deluded brothers of the north and west. a few years ago i was a resident of jacksonville, the metropolis of florida. florida is a great winter resort. the wealthy people of the country go there for a few months or weeks in the winter. it is fashionable to do so. a great many wealthy northern men have acquired valuable landed interests in jacksonville, among them the astors of new york, who have a knack for pinning their interests in the soil. the people of jacksonville were very proud to have as a resident and property holder, mr. wm. b. astor. and mr. astor appeared to enjoy immensely the worship bestowed upon his money. he built one or two very fine buildings there, which must net him a handsome return for his investment by this time. mr. astor had with him a very shrewd "man friday," and this man friday got it into his head that he would like to be mayor of jacksonville, and he sought and obtained the support of his very powerful patron. it leaked out that mr. astor favored his man friday for mayor. the "business interests" of the city took the matter "under advisement." after much "consultation" and preliminary skirmishing, it was decided that it would be unwise to antagonize mr. astor's man friday; and so he was placed in nomination as the "citizens' candidate." he was elected by a handsome majority. i believe it is a disputed question to-day, whether mr. astor's man friday was, or was not, a citizen of the place at the time he was elected mayor. be that as it may, it showed beyond question that the people knew how to go down upon their knees to the golden calf. a condition of slavery or of serfdom produces two grievous evils, around which cluster many others of less importance, viz: the creation of vast landed estates, and the pauperization and debasement of labor. pliny declared that to the creation of vast _latifundia_ (aggregated estates) italy owed its downfall. the same is true of the downfall of the south and its pet institution, since they produced a powerful and arrogant class which was not content to lord it on their vast demesnes and over their pauper labor, but must needs carry their high-flown notions into the councils of the nation, flaunting their gentle birth and undulating acres in the faces of horny-handed statesmen like abraham lincoln, henry wilson, and others. the operations of the vast landed estates of the south produced all the industrial disjointments which have afflicted the south since the war. the white man was taught to look upon labor as the natural portion of the black slave; and nothing could induce a white man to put his hand to the plow, but the gaunt visage of starvation at his door. he even preferred ignominious starvation to honest work; and, in his desperate struggle to avoid the horror of the one and the disgrace of the other, he would sink himself lower in the scale of moral infamy than the black slave he despised. he would make of himself a monster of cruelty or of abject servility to avoid starvation or honest work. it was from this class of vermin that the planters secured their "nigger drivers" or overseers, and a more pliable, servile, cruel, heartless set of men never existed. they were commonly known as "_poor white trash_," or "crackers." they were most heartily and righteously detested by the slave population. as the poor whites of the south were fifty years ago, so they are to-day--a careless, ignorant, lazy, but withal, arrogant set, who add nothing to the productive wealth of the community because they are too lazy to work, and who take nothing from that wealth because they are too poor to purchase. they have graded human wants to a point below which man could not go without starving. they live upon the poorest land in the south, the "piney woods," and raise a few potatoes and corn, and a few pigs, which never grow to be hogs, so sterile is the land upon which they are turned to "root, or die." these characteristic pigs are derisively called "shotes" by those who have seen their lean, lank and hungry development. they are awful counterparts of their pauper owners. it may be taken as an index of the quality of the soil and the condition of the people, to observe the condition of their live stock. strange as it may appear, the faithful dog is the only animal which appears to thrive on "piney woods" land. the "piney woods" gopher, which may be not inappropriately termed a "highland turtle," is a great desideratum in the food supply of the pauper denizens of these portions of the south. there is nothing enticing about the appearance of the gopher. but his flesh, properly cooked, is passably palatable. the poor white population of the south who live in the piney woods are sunk in the lowest ignorance, and practice vices too heinous to be breathed. they have no schools, and their mental condition hardly warrants the charitable inference that they would profit much if they were supplied with them. still, i would like to see the experiment tried. their horrible poverty, their appalling illiteracy, their deplorable moral enervation, deserve the pity of mankind and the assistance of philanthropic men and a thoughtful government. though sunk to the lowest moral scale, _they are men_, and nothing should be omitted to improve their condition and make them more useful members of the communities in which they are now more than an incubus. it may not be out of place here to state that the kuklux klan, the white liners league, the knights of the white camelia, and other lawless gangs which have in the past fifteen years made southern chivalry a by-word and reproach among the nations of the earth, were largely recruited from this idle, vicious, ignorant class of southerners. they needed no preparation for the bloody work perpetrated by those lawless organizations, those more cruel than italian brigands. they instinctively hate the black man; because the condition of the black, his superior capacity for labor and receptivity of useful knowledge, place him a few pegs higher than themselves in the social scale. so these degraded white men, the very substratum of southern population, were ready tools in the hands of the organized chivalrous brigands (as they had been of the slave oligarch), whose superior intelligence made them blush at the lawlessness they inspired, and who, therefore, gladly transferred to other hands the execution of those deeds of blood and death which make men shudder even now to think of them. it was long a common saying among the black population of the south that "i'd rudder be a niggah den a po' w'ite man!" and they were wise in their preference. it is safe to say, that the peasantry of no country claiming to be civilized stands more in need of the labors of the schoolmaster and the preacher, than do the so-called "poor white trash" of the south. on their account, if no other, i am an advocate of a compulsory system of education, a national board of education, and a very large national appropriation for common school and industrial education. i name this class first because it is the very lowest. next to this class is the great labor force of the south, the class upon whose ample shoulders have fallen the weight of southern labor and inhumanity for lo! two hundred years--_the black man_. time was, yesterday, it appears to me, when this great class were all of _one_ condition, driven from the rising to the setting of the sun to enrich men who were created out of the same sod, and in the construction of whose mysterious mechanism, mental and physical, the great god expended no more time or ingenuity. up to the close of the rebellion, of that gigantic conflict which shook the pillars of republican government to their center, the great black population were truly the "mudsills" of southern society, upon which rested all the industrial burdens of that section; truly, "the hewers of wood and the drawers of water;" a people who, in the mysterious providence of god, were torn root and branch from their savage homes in that land which has now become to them a dream "more insubstantial than a pageant faded," to "dwell in a strange land, among strangers," to endure, like the children of israel, a season of cruel probation, and then to begin life in earnest; to put their shoulders to the wheel and assist in making this vast continent, this asylum of the oppressed of the world, the grandest abode of mingled happiness and woe, and wealth and pauperization ever reared by the genius and governed by the selfishness and cupidity of man. and to-day, as in the dark days of the past, this people are the bone and sinew of the south, the great producers and partial consumers of her wealth; the despised, yet indispensable, "mudsills" of her industrial interests. a senator of the united states from the south, whose hands have been dyed in the blood of his fellow citizens, and who holds his high office by fraud and usurpation, not long since declared that his state could very well dispense with her black population. that population outnumbers the white three to one; and by the toil by which that state has been enriched, by the blood and the sweat of two hundred years which the soil of that state has absorbed, by the present production and consumption of wealth by that black population, we are amazed at the ignorance of the great man who has been placed in a "little brief authority." the black population cannot and will not be dispensed with; because it is so deeply rooted in the soil that it is a part of it--the most valuable part. and the time will come when it will hold its title to the land, by right of purchase, for a laborer is worthy of his hire, and is now free to invest that hire as it pleases him best. already some of the very best soil of that state is held by the people this great magnus in the nation's councils would supersede in their divine rights. when the war closed, as i said, the great black population of the south was distinctively a laboring class. it owned no lands, houses, banks, stores, or live stock, or other wealth. not only was it the distinctively laboring class but the distinctively pauper class. it had neither money, intelligence nor morals with which to begin the hard struggle of life. it was absolutely at the bottom of the social ladder. it possessed nothing but health and muscle. i have frequently contemplated with profound amazement the momentous mass of subjected human force, a force which had been educated by the lash and the bloodhound to despise labor, which was thrown upon itself by the wording of the emancipation proclamation and the surrender of robert e. lee. nothing in the history of mankind is at all comparable, an exact counterpart, in all particulars, to that great event. a slavery of two hundred years had dwarfed the intelligence and morality of this people, and made them to look upon labor as the most baneful of all the curses a just god can inflict upon humankind; and they were turned loose upon the land, without a dollar in their hands, and, like the great christ and the fowls of the air, without a place to lay their head. and yet to-day, this people, who, only a few years ago, were bankrupts in morality, in intelligence, and in wealth, have leaped forward in the battle of progress like _veterans_; have built magnificent churches, with a membership of over two million souls; have preachers, learned and eloquent; have professors in colleges by the hundreds and schoolmasters by the thousands; have accumulated large landed interests in country, town and city; have established banking houses and railroads; manage large coal, grocery and merchant tailoring businesses; conduct with ability and success large and influential newspaper enterprises; in short, have come, and that very rapidly, into sharp competition with white men (who have the prestige of a thousand years of civilization and opportunity) in all the industrial interests which make a people great, respected and feared. the metamorphosis has been rapid, marvelous, astounding. their home life has been largely transformed into the quality of purity and refinement which should characterize the home; they have now successful farmers, merchants, ministers, lawyers, editors, educators, physicians, legislators--in short, they have entered every avenue of industry and thought. their efforts yet crude and their grasp uncertain, but they are in the field of competition, and will remain there and acquit themselves manfully. of course i speak in general terms of the progress the colored people have made. individual effort and success are the indicators of the vitality and genius of a people. when individuals rise out of the indistinguishable mass and make their mark, we may rest assured that the mass is rich and capable of unlimited production. the great mass of every government, of every people, while adding to and creating greatness, go down in history unmentioned. but their glory, their genius, success and happiness, are expended and survive in the few great spirits their fortunate condition produced. the governments of antiquity were great and glorious, because their proletarians were intelligent, thrifty and brave, but the proletarians fade into vagueness, and are great only in the few great names which have been handed down to us. it has been said that a nation expends a hundred years of its vitality in the production of a great man of genius like socrates, or bacon, or toussaint l'overture, or fulton. and this may be true. there can now be no question that the african race in the united states possess every element of vitality and genius possessed by their fellow citizens of other races, and any calculation of race possibilities in this country which assumes that they will remain indefinitely the "mudsills" only of society will prove more brittle than ropes of sand. at this time the colored people of the south are largely the industrial class; that is, they are the producing class. they are principally the agriculturists of the south; consequently, being wedded to the soil by life-long association and interest, and being principally the laboring class, they will naturally invest their surplus earnings in the purchase of the soil. herein lies the great hope of the future. for the man who owns the soil largely owns and dictates to the men who are compelled to live upon it and derive their subsistence from it. the colored people of the south recognize this fact. and if there is any one idiosyncrasy more marked than another among them, it is their mania for buying land. they all live and labor in the cheerful anticipation of some day owning a home, a farm of their own. as the race grows in intelligence this mania for land owning becomes more and more pronounced. at first their impecuniosity will compel them to purchase poor hill-lands, but they will eventually get their grip upon the rich alluvial lands. the class next to the great black class is the _small white farmers_. this class is composed of some of the "best families" of the south who were thrown upon their resources of brain and muscle by the results of the war, and of some of the worst families drawn from the more thrifty poor white class. southern political economists labor hard to make it appear that the vastly increased production of wealth in the south since the war is to be traced largely to the phenomenally increased percentum of small white farmers, but the assumption is too transparent to impose upon any save those most ignorant of the industrial conditions of the south, and the marvelous adaptability to the new conditions shown by colored men. i grant that these small white farmers, who were almost too inconsiderable in numbers to be taken into account before the war, have added largely to the development of the country and the production of wealth; but that the tremendous gains of free labor as against slave labor are to be placed principally to their intelligence and industry is too absurd to be seriously debated. the charleston (s.c.) _news and courier_, a pronounced anti-negro newspaper, recently made such a charge in all seriousness. the struggle for supremacy will largely come between the small white and black farmer; because each recurring year will augment the number of each class of small holders. a condition of freedom and open competition makes the fight equal, in many respects. which will prove the more successful small holder, the black or the white? the fourth class is composed of the _hereditary land-lords_ of the south; the gentlemen with flowing locks, gentle blood and irascible tempers, who appeal to the code of honor (in times past) to settle small differences with their equals and shoot down their inferiors without premeditation or compunction, and who drown their sorrows, as well as their joviality in rye or bourbon whiskey; the gentlemen who claim consanguinity with europe's titled sharks, and vaunt their chivalry in contrast to the peasant or yeoman blood of all other americans; the gentlemen who got their broad acres (however they came by their peculiar blood) by robbing black men, women and children of the produce of their toil under the system of slavery, and who maintain themselves in their reduced condition by driving hard bargains with white and black labor either as planters or shop-keepers, often as both, the dual occupations more effectually enabling them to make unreasonable contracts and exactions of those they live to victimize. they are the gentlemen who constantly declare that "this is a white man's government," and that "the negro must be made to keep his place." they are the gentlemen who have their grip upon the throat of southern labor; who hold vast areas of land, the product of robbery, for a rise in values; who run the stores and torture the small farmer to death by usurious charges for necessaries; these are the gentlemen who are opposed to the new conditions resultant from the war which their hotspur impetuosity and shylock greed made possible. in short, these gentlemen comprise the moneyed class. they are the gentlemen who are hastening the conflict of labor and capital in the south. and, when the black laborer and the white laborer come to their senses, join issues with the common enemy and pitch the tent of battle, then will come the tug of war. but the large land-owners and tradesmen of the south will not in the future belong exclusively to the class of persons i have described. on the contrary this class of hereditary land-owners will be sensibly diminished and their places be taken by successful recruits from the ranks of small white and black farmers. indeed, i confess, i strongly incline to the belief that the black man of the south will eventually become the large land-holding class, and, therefore, the future tyrants of labor in that section. all the indications strongly point to such a possibility. it is estimated that, already, the colored people own, in the cotton growing states, , , acres, the result of seventeen years of thrift, economy, and judicious management; while in the state of georgia alone they own, it is reliably estimated, , acres of land, and pay taxes on $ , , worth of property. dr. alexander crummell, a most learned african, in a very interesting pamphlet drawn out by the malicious misstatements of dr. tucker, before referred to by me, makes the following deductions and statements, to wit: let me suggest here another estimate of this landed property of the negro, acquired _since_ emancipation. taking the old slave states in the general, there has been a large acquisition of land in each and all of them. in the state of georgia, as we have just seen, it was , acres. let us put the figure as low as , for each state--for the purchase of farm lands has been everywhere a passion with the freedman--this , acres multiplied into , _i.e._ the number of the chief southern states, shows an aggregate of , , acres of land, the acquisition of the black race in less than twenty years. but dr. tucker will observe a further fact of magnitude in this connection: it is the increased production which has been developed on the part of the freedman since emancipation. i present but _one_ staple, and for the reason that it is almost exclusively the result of $ . i will take the five years immediately preceding the late civil war and compare them with the five years preceeding the last year's census-taking; and the contrast in the number of cotton-bales produced will show the industry and thrift of the black race as a consequent on the gift of freedom: _years_ _bales_ , , , , , , , , , , ---------- total , , _years_ _bales_ , , , , , , , , , , ----------- the five years' work of _freedom_ , , the five years' work of _slavery_ , , ---------- balance in favor of freedom , , now this item of production is a positive disproof of dr. tucker's statement, "that the average level in material prosperity is but little higher than it was before the war." here is the fact that the freedman has produced one-third more in five years than he did in the same time when a slave! another view of this matter is still more striking. the excess of yield in cotton in seven years [_i.e._, from to ] over the seven years [_i.e._, from to ] is , , bales, being $ . if dr. tucker will glance at the great increase of the cotton, tobacco, and sugar crops south, as shown in agricultural reports from to , and reflect that negroes have been the producers of these crops, he will understand their indignation at his outrageous charges of "laziness and vagabondage:" and perhaps he will listen to their demand that he shall take back the unjust and injurious imputations which, without knowledge and discrimination, he makes against a whole race of people. this impulse to thrift on the part of the freedmen was no tardy and reluctant disposition. it was the _immediate_ offspring of freedom. it is not possible even to approximate the landed acquisitions of the colored people, but that they have been large purchasers of small holdings will readily be admitted by all candid persons who are acquainted with the intense pastoral nature of the people, their constant thrift, and their deepseated determination to own their own homes. if we assume, with dr. crummell, that in the past seventeen years, the hardest, most disadvantageous years they will ever again be compelled to go through, they have come into possession of , , acres, the gain in the next seventeen years must be vastly greater. at any rate, we are free to place the holdings in the next fifty years at not less than , , acres, and the probability is that it will be vastly more. in the _popular science monthly_ for october , mr. j. stahl patterson, in an article on the "movement of the colored population," says: "it would seem that in the industrial aspects of the case the white and colored men may be, under certain circumstances, the complement of each other." again: "there are two distinct classes of colored economists. one is satisfied with dependence on others for employment, the other affects independent homes, and struggles to secure them, however humble. some even acquire wealth." in the same monthly for february, , prof. e.w. gilliam has a long article on the "african in the united states," in which he does all he can to make wider the breach between the blacks and the whites. he has very little good to say of the black man. but he was forced to make the following admissions, viz: "the blacks are an improving race, and the throb of aspiration is quickening. * * * advancement in mental training and in economic science must needs be slow but there _is_ advancement." the learned professor makes the interesting calculation that the blacks in the southern states will increase from , , in , to , , , in ; while the whites in the south, in , , , , will number only , , , in . the learned professor infers that this vast army will be "doomed to remain where they have been, and be hewers of wood and drawers of water," because they form a "distinct alien race." i think, if the professor will wait until , he will find that this "alien race," which profligate white men have done and are doing so much to amalgamate with their own race, will not only increase approximately as he has figured it out, in numbers, but in wealth as well. the future landlord and capitalist of the south are no longer confined to the white race: the black man has become a factor, and he must be counted. chapter xv _the land problem_ the ownership of land in the south is the same pernicious thing it has come to be in every civilized country in the world. instead of being, as it was intended to be, a blessing to the people, it is the crying curse which takes precedence of all other evils that afflict mankind. and the cause is not far to seek. land is, in its very nature, the common property of the people. like air and water, it is one of the natural elements which inhere in man as a common right, and without which life could in no wise be sustained. a man must have air, or he will suffocate; he must have water, or he will perish of thirst; he must have access to the soil, for upon it grow those things which nature intended for the sustentation of the physical man, and without which he cannot live. deprive me of pure fresh air, and i die; deprive me of pure fresh water, and i die; deprive me of free opportunity to earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, by sowing in the sowing time and reaping in the reaping time, and i die. there is no escape from this aspect of the case: there is no logic that can reduce these truisms to sophistries. they are founded in the omnipotent laws of god, and are as universal as the earth. they apply with as much truth to life in the united states as in dahomey; they operate in like nature upon the savage as upon man in the civilized state. individual ownership in the land is a transgression of the common right of man, and a usurpation which produces nearly, if not all, the evils which result upon our civilization; the inequalities which produce pauperism, vice, crime, and wide-spread demoralization among all the so-called "lower classes;" which produce, side by side, the millionaire and the tramp, the brownstone front and the hut of the squatter, the wide extending acres of the bonanza farm and the small holding, the lord of the manor and the cringing serf, peasant and slave. i maintain, with other writers upon this land question, that land is common property, the property of the whole people, and that it cannot be alienated from the people without producing the most fearful consequences. no man is free who is debarred in his right, to so much of the soil of his country as is necessary to support him in his right to life, for without the inherent right to unrestrained access to the soil he cannot support life, except in primitive society where land is plentiful, population sparse, and industry undiversified. as population becomes denser and land becomes scarcer from having been monopolized by the more far seeing, or more fortunate, and industry becomes more diversified, mankind begins to feel the pressure of population described by malthus, and the scarcity of subsistence; caused, not by this pressure of population, as malthus maintains, but by the restricted production of subsistence caused by the monopoly and concentration of the soil, which inhibits the producing agency from the production of the increased subsistence necessary to the increased number of mouths to be fed. there can be no such thing as overproduction when there are hundreds and thousands who perish for food; there can be no pressure upon population when there are hundreds and thousands of acres of arable land locked up in a deed purchase, or entail, or primogeniture, upon which alone beasts are allowed to trespass. the idea is preposterous. and yet men who are regarded as standard authority upon economic questions impose this sophistry of overproduction and pressure of population upon mankind, and are applauded for their ignorance, or the cupidity which makes them to pervert the truth. monopoly of land is the curse of the race in every modern government. being the one great source from which all wealth must and does spring, its concentration in the hands of a few men not only impoverishes the people, but seriously cripples the operations of government (the one and the other being substantially identical) by curtailing the productive energies of the people and diverting into the coffers of individuals rental which should flow into the common treasury as taxes, thus lifting from the shoulders of the people the enormous burden of the maintenance of government which falls upon them. monopoly of land was the prime element which hastened the decay of roman greatness and strength, because when the people no longer had homes to fight for they ceased to be patriots, ceased to be virtuous, and became mercenaries, or slaves or tyrants; left to those who had monopolized the soil, the defense of their property: and these, being few in numbers, parsimonious after the nature of their class, and effeminate from luxurious living and habits of indolence, fell easy victims to the rapacity and iron nerve of goth and vandal. the great french revolution would have never occurred but for the monopoly of land, which, after long ages, became centered in a few hands, who by reason of this were a privileged class and in the refinement of language had been designated as the "nobility." the nobility, as was natural, having been created by the state, not only ground the proletariat to powder but dictated to the state. when it was no longer possible to purchase land, because those whose nobility rested upon it would not alienate it, and when the proletariat had been reduced to a state of vassalage, more vile and grinding than slavery itself, the proletariat rose up in its might and crushed at one tremendous blow the hydra-headed monstrosity. marat, danton and robespiere concentrated in their intense natures the venom, the hate, and the desperation of the people--a more terrible triumvirate than the celebrated one which colored the tiber with the patrician blood of rome. the nihilism of russia is the outgrowth of monopoly in land and the consequent enslavement of the people by the aristocracy, beginning with the autocrat upon his throne. england has reached a transition period. the pressure of her population has become so intense, that the great producing classes can no longer stand the tension and live. the land has been filched from the people to enrich the brainless favorites and the courtesans of kings, and entailed upon their progeny generation after generation. the land of great britain is held by the nobility and the princely cormorants of trade, who exact rental which cannot be paid from the produce of the soil, so usurious is it, or who turn the rich acres into pleasure grounds and pasturages. as nero fiddled while rome was one vast blaze of conflagration and horror, so the nobility of great britain dance and make merry while the people starve or seek in other lands that opportunity to live which their country denies to them. for the past five years the government of great britain has been engaged in a most desperate struggle with the people of one of her constituent islands, the agitation assuming, like the chameleon, different colors or names as the exigencies of the contending forces determined. but the one great question at the root of the agitation is the monopoly of the land by the "nobility" and the successful cormorants of trade, and the consequent pressure of population upon the enforced circumscription of production. the best lands have been alienated from the people, while the inferior lands upon which they are allowed to live will not yield the exorbitant rental demanded and the necessary subsistence for those who work them. hence, ireland is in a state so explosive that it can only be appropriately described by the term "dynamitic." in the interest of a few landlords the whole irish nation has been demoralized and impoverished, so that the government of great britain finds it necessary to "_assist_" able-bodied men to reach america, or any other portion of the world they desire to go to, in order to make a living. if monopoly in land produces such results as these is it not to be condemned as subversive of correct social adjustments and the perpetuity of government? the question admits of but one answer. if monopoly in land compels a government to "assist" its able-bodied men, its laborers, its producers of wealth, its soldiery, to go to other lands, is it not to be condemned as parasitical, destroying the very bone and sinew of government? the answer is self-evident. if monopoly in land produces such results as these, would it not be wise statesmanship and sound governmental policy to confiscate to the people the millions of acres which avarice, cunning, favoritism and robbery have turned into parks, pasturages and game preserves--making the few thousands who constitute the land monopolists, the idlers and the harpies, go honestly to work to make a living, and giving at the same time the same opportunity to the great laboring classes, who earnestly desire to make a living but to whom the opportunity is cruelly and maliciously denied? i am opposed to aristocracies and so-called privileged classes, because they are opposed to the masses. they make inequalities, out of which grow all the miseries of society, because there is no limit to their avarice, parsimony and cruelty. so _they_ thrive, _all the rest_ of humanity may go to the dogs; so they revel in luxury and debauchery, all the rest of humanity may revel in poverty, vice and crime; so they enjoy all the blessings of organized society, all the rest of humanity may bear its curses. man is essentially a selfish animal. self-preservation is the very first law which he learns to observe and to practice. that he may get on top of the social ladder and remain there, he will sacrifice family, common humanity and patriotism. naturally, moloch-self is the god he serves. to enjoy a little brief authority, he would enslave universal mankind, and declare, as solomon did, after exhausting the catalogue of tyranny and libertinism, "all is vanity"--emptiness! thus, it is dangerous to confide in the humanity of man. to place in his hands a weapon so all-powerful as land, is to place him upon a pinnacle from whose vast altitude he can, will, and does crush his unfortunate fellowman. like the small stream which gathers volume and momentum in its wanderings from the small lake to the gulf, into which it debouches as a mighty river like the "father of waters," so the first encroachments of the land shark are small, and hardly felt; but give him time, let him grow from the norman soldier of fortune into the english nobility of to-day, and you have a monster whose proportions and rapacity stagger the imagination to fully apprehend. what the common soldier of fortune received as reward for his valor eight hundred years ago, and which he held subject to confiscation to his prince if he failed to render him service in person and with retainers, has developed into a huge monopoly which appropriates in rental more than the tenant can pay, with the added necessary subsistence required to sustain him. there are also the imposition of direct taxes by the government and indirect taxes upon all implements and other articles of manufacture, occasioned by the division of labor, which he must use; all of which taxes the land monopolists have managed to shift upon the tenant and wage-laborer. time augments the evil. so that, to-day, in great britain, a man cannot purchase land, except in rare cases, and then the purchaser must pay a fortune for the privilege. the poor farmer, the wage-laborer, the common man, has not and cannot have any grip upon the soil, but must come into the world a slave, and go down to his grave after a life of toil and self-denial, a slave, with the tormenting consciousness that as he was, so must the unfortunate offspring of his loins be! if this be the tendency of organized society--if the tendency be to enslave mankind, place a premium upon human woe and crime--then organized society is organized robbery, and the savage state is preferable. there is no appeal from this deduction. what avail the triumphs of art, science and commerce, if the majority of mankind are ground to powder to make those triumphs possible! it is not the law of god, but the law of man, that produces these herculean evils which constantly threaten the peace and safety of society. but the british land-owner, having enslaved the people of his own island, has shackled the people of ireland, scotland and wales, doomed them and their posterity to be perpetual aliens in their native lands; he has, upon the plea of conquest, the argument of the base assassin and robber, reduced the people of india to a state worse than death; and his iron grip has been placed upon the uncounted millions of african soil; the islands of the sea squirm in his grasp; the west india islands are his prostrate prey; while a portion of the vast continent of america owns his sway and groans under his exactions. but this is not all. in our own country the british land shark has made his appearance. his vile clutch, which our forefathers unwrenched in the strength of their colonial greatness, has again been fastened upon our throat. the following table will show the extent to which the parasite has insinuated himself into our vital parts. let the good people of this country--who should know that monopoly in land is the death note of free institutions; that large estates are the parasites of republics and the death of small freeholders--let the people read the following table with the closeness which its gravity should inspire. the san francisco _daily examiner_, a leading paper on the pacific coast says: besides the millions of acres belonging to railroad and other corporations, the amount of land that is being acquired by foreign capitalists and landlords is fairly amazing. ireland is to-day groaning beneath the yoke of oppression, and not many years will roll around before the american tenant, upon his knees, will also look up into the scowling face of his master and acknowledge his obedience. following are a few of america's foreign landlords, and the amount of their holdings expressed in acres:-- an english syndicate, no. , in texas , , the holland land company, new mexico , , sir edward reid, and a syndicate in florida , , english syndicate, in mississippi , , marquis of tweedale , , philips, marshal & co., london , , german syndicate , , anglo-american syndicate, mr. rogers president, london , byron h. evans, of london, in mississippi , duke of sutherland , british land company, in kansas , william whallay, m.p., peterboro, england , missouri land company, edinburgh, scotland , robert tennant, of london , dundee land company, scotland , lord dunmore , benjamin newgas, liverpool , lord houghton, in florida , lord dunraven, in colorado , english land company, in florida , english land company, in arkansas , albert peel, m.p., leicestershire, england , sir j.l. kay, yorkshire, england , alexander grant, of london, in kansas , english syndicate (represented by closs bros.) wisconsin , m. ellerhauser, of halifax, nova scotia, in west virginia , a scotch syndicate, in florida , a. boysen, danish consul, in milwaukee , missouri land company, of edinburgh, scotland , total , , commenting upon these startling figures, the _new york (daily) world_, one of the best informed papers of the time says: the land grabber is not a fungus of nineteenth century growth. he first came among english-speaking peoples over eight centuries ago. wherever his foot has found a standing-place pauperism and its sequence, crime, have followed. in the british isles he is known as an acreocrat. since he has extended his operations from his native country to our own free soil the land-grabber should be examined under the microscope of history analytically, impartially, and truthfully. the unnaturalized foreigner threatens us with other dangers than those which would be created by our indigenous american land-grabber. the british acreocrat who owns real estate in this country believes in the cancer of english monarchy with its hideous annals of nearly a thousand years. he accepts the tradition of an hereditary house of lords, a body composed of the effete and played out descendants of the most tyrannical and profligate rascals which europe ever produced, and he will remain an english blueblood in every thought and action, which cannot fail to bring about in free america and on his own acres here the same poverty-stricken class of peasants as now curse great britain and ireland. english "upper-tendom" is represented in recent purchases of american soil by one duke, one marquis, two earls, a baron, two baronets and two members of parliament. the british duke owns , acres; the marquis, , , acres; the two earls, , acres; the baron, , acres; the brace of baronets, , , acres; and the pair of parliamentary politicians, , acres. in the rest of the land purchased by our brand-new imported lords of the soil, england's governing acreocrats, are largely represented in their , , acres. much ignorance is affected in american society respecting the manner in which the british landocrats came by their property. it is enough that "my lud" has a handle to his name, and murray hill shoddyocracy will wine and dine and toady him, and perhaps for his title marry him to some sweet, pure and good american girl, whose life hereafter will be a purgatory to herself and a mutual misery to both. but the land held by the foreigner in the united states is a mere bagatelle. he is odious not because he is a foreigner, but only because he is the representative, on the one hand, of the odious land system of the old world, and on the other of those monarchical ideas which have made the great body of the european people unwilling slaves, reducing them to the very verge of desperation and starvation. archimedes explained, as illustrating the vast power of the fulcrum, that if he had a place to stand he could move the world. the british land-shark, having got his hold upon the soil, possesses the place to stand for which the greek sighed in vain, and no man will say he does not move the world; and he will continue to move _it_ until such time as the world shall move _him._ the foreign land-shark is still in his infancy. we have an indigenous land-shark whose maw is so capacious that the rapacity of his appetite in no wise keeps pace with its lightning-like digestion. congressman william steel holman, of indiana, one of the purest statesmen of these corrupt times, and one of the most thoroughly informed men of the country upon the question of eminent domain, and the bestowal of that domain upon corporations and syndicates, recently said, on the floor of the house of representatives, in the course of a discussion on the post-office appropriation bill: is it just and proper to require the landgrant railroads to transport your mails at per cent of the rates you pay to corporations whose railroads were built by private capital? i think it is. i think it liberal and more than liberal when the cost in public wealth is considered in the building of these land-grant railroads. i submit tables of the railroads built under the land-grant system, compiled from official reports, and they show an aggregate of , , acres, , , acres of which were granted between june , , and march , , the aggregate length of railroads for which the grants were made being , miles, , miles independent of the , mileage of the pacific roads; and the reports of the post-office department show that last year the government paid, on , , miles of land-grant railroad, independent of the union pacific system and the great body of lapsed grants, $ , , . for postal service. the startling fact appears that in the gradual development of these grants, great as they are, they still swell in their proportions. i pointed out on a former occasion the startling discrepancies that appear in the official statements of these grants, and can only say now, as i did then, that in such enormous grants a few million acres either way is considered of no moment. again: there are other grants which i have not included in either of the foregoing tables where not a spadeful of earth has been dug in the construction of a railroad, yet the lands are withdrawn from settlement and claimed by the corporation, although the grants were long since forfeited. the forfeiture of these grants will, of course, be declared. of all of these grants over , , acres, including over , , this house has already declared forfeited, are beyond any reasonable question forfeited, and the declaration of that forfeiture by congress is demanded by the highest consideration of public policy, common honesty, and justice to the people. even to the extent these land-grant railroads enumerated in the first table were completed, you paid them, as i have shown, last year $ , , . for transporting your mails. this bill would, as to these roads, to the extent they are entitled to the lands granted and including the pacific systems, save to the treasury annually, i think, near a million dollars, perhaps more. deducing from the foregoing statement of land-grants to corporations, mr. holman draws the following picture of what the people may do when they are fully informed and aroused to the enormous extent to which they have been despoiled by their unfaithful servants in congress: the wealth that builds palaces, undermines the foundations of free government, and wrings from the heart of labor the cry of despair! with the public lands exhausted, with remnants of the indian-tribes despoiled of their reservations, and the lands seized upon by capitalists and merciless speculators (except so far as you have pledged them in advance to the railroad corporations), and lands everywhere advanced in price beyond the reach of laboring men, with the hope of better fortune and of independent homes dying out of the heart of labor, with men fully conscious of the wrong you have done them by your legislation, can the peaceful order of society be hoped for as of old? i am not astonished that gentlemen deem this early hour an opportune moment to urge the policy of a great navy; it will come, if it does come, in the natural order before a great army. capital is timid and full of suggestions; the navy is the most remote, but i am not surprised that here and there comes also the intimation that your army is too small. these, too, may be some of the bitter fruits of your imperial grants. i fear that it will be seen soon enough that when you have destroyed the very foundations of security and hope upon which labor has rested so long, the old-time repose and peaceful order will be no more. gentlemen should not forget that the wrong that has been done to laboring men and their children by giving over their natural inheritance to an accursed monopoly will in due time be considered by the most intelligent body of laboring men who ever debated a public wrong--men fully aware of their rights and capable of asserting them. but the foreign land-shark, and the corporate land-shark, dwindle into insignificance by the side of the individual land-shark. every hamlet, town, city, and state in the union is in the grasp of the individual land holder. starting with his fellows as a pioneer two hundred and fifty years ago, with his pickaxe on his shoulder, he has steadily grown in size and importance, so that today he holds in his hands the destinies of the republic and the life of his fellow citizens. his bulk has become mastodonian in proportions and his influence has shrivelled up the energies of the people. more absolute than the iron prince of germany, he pays no taxes; he limits production, not to the requirements of the population but to the demand of the market, at such figures as he can extort from the crying necessities of the people through the operations of "corners;" he regulates the wheels of government, state and federal, and dictates to the people by making them hungry and naked. we stand only upon the threshold of governmental existence; the nation, in comparison to the hoary-handed commonwealths of europe, was born but yesterday; but, having adopted at the beginning the system which hastened the downfall of rome after she had spread her authority over the known world, we are already weak and exhausted. monopoly has stunted the people, and they stagger to the grave, starved to death by a system of robbery almost too transparent to require minute elucidation at the hand of the conscientious writer upon economic questions. the suppressed groans of the toiling masses are echoed and reëchoed from every corner of the land, and burst forth in mobocratic fury that the entire police authority finds it almost impossible to stay. the newspapers are a daily chronicle of the desperate condition to which the country has been brought by the rapacity and ignorance of legislators and the parasitical manipulations of the gang which has rooted itself in the soil of the country. the fires of revolution are incorporated into the _magna charta_ of our liberties, and no human power can avert the awful eruption which will eventually burst upon us as mount vesuvius burst forth upon herculaneum and pompeii. it is too late for america to be wise in time. "_the die is cast._" chapter xvi _conclusion_ i know it is not fashionable for writers on economic questions to tell the truth, but the truth should be told, though it kill. when the wail of distress encircles the world, the man who is linked by "the touch of nature" which "makes the whole world kin" to the common destiny of the race universal; who hates injustice wherever it lifts up its head; who sympathizes with the distressed, the weak, and the friendless in every corner of the globe, such a man is morally bound to tell the truth as he conceives it to be the truth. in these times, when the law-making and enforcing authority is leagued against the people; when great periodicals--monthly, weekly and daily--echo the mandates or anticipate the wishes of the powerful men who produce our social demoralization, it becomes necessary for the few men who do not agree to the arguments advanced or the interests sought to be bolstered up, to "cry aloud and spare not." the man who with the truth in his possession flatters with lies, that "thrift may follow fawning" is too vile to merit the contempt of honest men. the government of the united states confiscated as "contraband of war" the slave population of the south, but it left to the portion of the unrepentant rebel a far more valuable species of property. the slave, the perishable wealth, was confiscated to the government and then manumitted; but property in land, the wealth which perishes not nor can fly away, and which had made the institution of slavery possible, was left as the heritage of the robber who had not hesitated to lift his iconoclastic hand against the liberties of his country. the baron of feudal europe would have been paralyzed with astonishment at the leniency of the conquering invader who should take from him his slave, subject to mutation, and leave him his landed possessions which are as fixed as the universe of nature. he would ask no more advantageous concession. but the united states took the slave and left the thing which gave birth to _chattel slavery_ and which is now fast giving birth to _industrial slavery_; a slavery more excruciating in its exactions, more irresponsible in its machinations than that other slavery, which i once endured. the chattel slave-holder must, to preserve the value of his property, feed, clothe and house his property, and give it proper medical attention when disease or accident threatened its life. but industrial slavery requires no such care. the new slave-holder is only solicitous of obtaining the maximum of labor for the minimum of cost. he does not regard the man as of any consequence when he can no longer produce. having worked him to death, or ruined his constitution and robbed him of his labor, he turns him out upon the world to live upon the charity of mankind or to die of inattention and starvation. he knows that it profits him nothing to waste time and money upon a disabled industrial slave. the multitude of laborers from which he can recruit his necessary laboring force is so enormous that solicitude on his part for one that falls by the wayside would be a gratuitous expenditure of humanity and charity which the world is too intensely selfish and materialistic to expect him. here he forges wealth and death at one and the same time. he could not do this if our social system did not confer upon him a monopoly of the soil from which subsistence must be derived, because the industrial slave, given an equal opportunity to produce for himself, would not produce for another. on the other hand the large industrial operations, with the multitude of laborers from which adam smith declares employers grow rich, as far as this applies to the soil, would not be possible, since the vast volume of increased production brought about by the industry of the multitude of co-equal small farmers would so reduce the cost price of food products as to destroy the incentive to speculation in them, and at the same time utterly destroy the necessity or the possibility of famines, such as those which have from time to time come upon the irish people. there could be no famine, in the natural course of things, where all had an opportunity to cultivate as much land as they could wherever they found any not already under cultivation by some one else. it needs no stretch of the imagination to see what a startling tendency the announcement that all vacant land was free to settlement upon condition of cultivation would have to the depopulation of over-crowded cities like new york, baltimore and savannah, where the so-called pressure of population upon subsistence has produced a hand-to-hand fight for existence by the wage-workers in every avenue of industry. this is no fancy picture. it is a plain, logical deduction of what would result from the restoration to the people of that equal chance in the race of life which every man has a right to expect, to demand, and to exact as a condition of his membership of organized society. the wag who started the "forty acres and a mule" idea among the black people of the south was a wise fool; wise in that he enunciated a principle which every argument of sound policy should have dictated, _upon the condition that the forty acres could in no wise be alienated_, and that it could be regarded _only_ as _property_ as _long as it was cultivated_; and a fool because he designed simply to impose upon the credulity and ignorance of his victims. but the justness of the "forty acre" donation cannot be controverted. in the first place, the slave had earned this miserable stipend from the government by two hundred years of unrequited toil; and, secondly, as a free man, he was inherently entitled to so much of the soil of his country as would suffice to maintain him in the freedom thrust upon him. to tell him he was a free man, and at the same time shut him off from free access to the soil upon which he had been reared, without a penny in his pocket, and with an army of children at his coat-tail--some of his reputed wife's children being the illegitimate offspring of a former inhuman master--was to add insult to injury, to mix syrup and hyssop, to aggravate into curses the pretended conferrence of blessings. when i think of the absolutely destitute condition of the colored people of the south at the close of the rebellion; when i remember the moral and intellectual enervation which slavery had produced in them; when i remember that not only were they thus bankrupt, but that they were absolutely and unconditionally cut off from the soil, with absolutely no right or title in it, i am surprised,--not that they have already got a respectable slice of landed interests; not that they have taken hold eagerly of the advantages of moral and intellectual opportunities of development placed in their reach by the charitable philanthropy of good men and women; not that they have bought homes and supplied them with articles of convenience and comfort, often of luxury--but i am surprised that the race did not turn robbers and highwaymen, and, in turn, terrorize and rob society as society had for so long terrorized and robbed them. the thing is strange, marvelous, phenomenal in the extreme. instead of becoming outlaws, as the critical condition would seem to have indicated, the black men of the south _went manfully to work_ to better their own condition and the crippled condition of the country which had been produced by the ravages of internecine rebellion; _while the white men of the south, the capitalists, the land-sharks, the poor white trash, and the nondescripts, with a thousand years of christian civilization and culture behind them, with "the boast of chivalry, the pomp of power," these white scamps, who had imposed upon the world the idea that they were paragons of virtue and the heaven-sent vicegerents of civil power, organized themselves into a band of outlaws, whose concatenative chain of auxiliaries ran through the entire south, and deliberately proceeded to murder innocent men and women for political reasons and to systematically rob them of their honest labor because they were too accursedly lazy to labor themselves._ but this highly abnormal, unnatural condition of things is fast passing away. the white man having asserted his superiority in the matters of assassination and robbery, has settled down upon a barrel of dynamite, as he did in the days of slavery, and will await the explosion with the same fatuity and self-satisfaction true of him in other days. but as convulsions from within are more violent and destructive than convulsions from without, being more deepseated and therefore more difficult to reach, the next explosion will be more disastrous, more far-reaching in its havoc than the one which metamorphosed social conditions in the south, and from the dreadful reactions of which we are just now recovering. as i have said elsewhere, the future struggle in the south will be, not between white men and black men, but between capital and labor, landlord and tenant. already the cohorts are marshalling to the fray; already the forces are mustering to the field at the sound of the slogan. the same battle will be fought upon southern soil that is in preparation in other states where the conditions are older in development but no more deep-seated, no more pernicious, no more blighting upon the industries of the country and the growth of the people. it is not my purpose here to enter into an extended analysis of the foundations upon which our land system rests, nor to give my views as to how matters might be remedied. i may take up the question at some future time. it is sufficient for my purpose to have indicated that the social problems in the south, as they exfoliate more and more as resultant upon the war, will be found to be the same as those found in every other section of our country; and to have pointed out that the questions of "race," "condition" "politics," etc., will all properly adjust themselves with the advancement of the people in wealth, education, and forgetfulness of the unhappy past. the hour is approaching when the laboring classes of our country, north, east, west and south, will recognize that they have a _common cause_, a _common humanity_ and a _common enemy_; and that, therefore, if they would triumph over wrong and place the laurel wreath upon triumphant justice, without distinction of race or of previous condition _they must unite_! and unite they will, for "a fellow feeling makes us wond'rous kind." when the issue is properly joined, the rich, be they black or be they white, will be found upon the same side; and the poor, be they black or be they white, will be found on the same side. _necessity knows no law and discriminates in favor of no man or race._ appendix i append to this volume a portion of the testimony of mr. john caldwell calhoun because of the uniform fairness with which he treated the race and labor problem in the section of country where he is an extensive landowner and employer of labor. mr. calhoun's testimony was given before the blair senate committee on education and labor and will be found in the committee's report as to _the relations between labor and capital_. (vol. ii, pp. ). new york, _thursday, september , _ labor in the southwest john caldwell calhoun sworn and examined by the chairman: question. where do you reside?--answer. in chicot county, arkansas. q. state to the committee, if you please, where you were born, of what family connection you are, and what have been your opportunities for becoming acquainted with the past and the present condition of agricultural labor in the southern states. --a. i was born in marengo county, alabama. my father was a planter there before the war. q. he was a son of john c. calhoun, the statesman?--a. he was a son of mr. john c. calhoun, of south carolina. q. you are his grandson, then? --a. yes, sir; i am his grandson. my father was col. andrew p. calhoun. i was reared in south carolina. in my father removed his residence from his plantations in alabama to fort hill, south carolina, near pendleton, where i was raised. i have been identified with the agricultural interest of the south from my earliest recollections, and have been a practical cotton planter myself since the war, giving my own personal attention to my interests since . q. when did you remove from south carolina? --a. i removed from south carolina to chicot county, arkansas, in . q. until you had been a resident of south carolina? --a. yes, sir. q. and of course very familiar with the condition of things on the atlantic coast. since that time you have been in the mississippi valley? --a. yes, sir; my experience as a cotton planter and with the laborers of the south is confirmed, i may say, almost entirely to the mississippi valley, for i left south carolina so soon after the war that things had hardly shaped themselves there so that i could form an accurate estimate of the labor or the condition of affairs in south carolina or on the atlantic coast. the chairman. not having had a personal acquaintance with mr. calhoun, and learning of his rare opportunities to give valuable information to the committee, and of his presence in the city, i addressed him a letter, calling attention to the subject-matter upon which we should like information, and which i had reason to think he could give us better than almost any one else, indicating certain questions which i would like to have him prepared to answer, and receiving a courteous reply, expressing a willingness to oblige the committee, i have called him before the committee, and will now read the questions:-- st. what is the condition of the laborers in your section? d. under what system are the laborers in your section employed? d. when hired for wages what is paid? th. what division is made between labor and capital of their joint production when you work on shares? th. when you rent what division is made? th. how many hours do the laborers work? th. under what system do you work? th. what is the relation existing between the planters and their employees? th. what danger is there of strikes? th. how can the interest of the laborers of your section be best subserved? if you have prepared answers to these questions, and can give your answers consecutively, i would like you to do so. the witness. i have prepared replies in order that i might save the committee time as well as condense my ideas. q. . what is the condition of the laborers in your section? --a. the laborers in the mississippi valley are agricultural. but few whites are employed; they soon become landowners or tenants. your question, therefore, reduces itself to, what is the condition of the negroes? i should say good, as compared with a few years ago, and improving. you must recollect that it has only been years since the negroes emerged from slavery without a dollar and with no education, and that for generations they had been taught to rely entirely upon others for guidance and support. they became, therefore, at once the easy prey of unscrupulous men, who used them for their personal aggrandizement, were subjected to every evil influence, and did not discover for years the impositions practiced upon them. they were indolent and extravagant, and eager to buy on a credit everything the planter or merchant would sell them. the planter had nothing except the land, which, with the crop to be grown, was mortgaged generally for advances. if he refused to indulge his laborers in extravagant habits during the year, by crediting them for articles not absolutely necessary, his action was regarded as good grounds for them to quit work, and there were those present who were always ready to use this as an argument to array the negroes against the proprietors. this, of course, demoralized the country to a very great extent, and it has only been in the past few years the negro laborers have realized their true condition and gone to work with a view of making a support for themselves and families. there is yet much room for improvement, but they will improve just as they gain experience and become self-reliant. considering their condition after emancipation and the evil influences to which they have been subjected, even the small advancement they have made seems surprising. q. . under what systems are the laborers in your section employed? --a. there are three methods: we hire for wages, for a part of the crop, or we rent. q. . when hired for wages what is paid? --a. when hired by the month we pay unskilled field hands from $ to $ per month and board. when hired by the day, for unskilled laborers, from cents to $ . teamsters, $ a day and board. artisans, from $ to $ . in addition to their wages and board, the laborers are furnished, free of cost, a house, fuel, and a garden spot varying from half to one acre; also the use of wagon and team with which to haul their fuel and supplies, and pasturage, where they have cattle and hogs, which they are encouraged to raise. q. . what division is made between labor and capital of their joint production when you work on shares? --a. i doubt if there is greater liberality shown to laborers in any portion of the world than is done under this system. the proprietor furnishes the land and houses, including dwelling, stables, and outhouses, pays the taxes, makes all necessary improvements, keeps up repairs and insurance, gives free of cost a garden spot, fuel, pasturage for the stock owned by the laborer, and allows the use of his teams for hauling fuel and family supplies, provides mules or horses, wagons, gears, implements, feed for teams, the necessary machinery for ginning, or, in short, every expense of making the crop and preparing it for market, and then divides equally the whole gross proceeds with the laborers. in addition to all this, the proprietor frequently mortgages his real estate to obtain means to advance to the laborers supplies on their portion of the crop yet to be grown, thus mortgaging what he actually possesses, and taking a security not yet in existence, and which depends not only upon the vicissitudes of the seasons, but the faithfulness of the laborers themselves. under this system thrifty, industrious laborers ought soon to become landowners. but, owing to indolence, the negroes, except where they are very judiciously managed and encouraged, fail to take advantage of the opportunities offered them to raise the necessaries of life. they idle away all the time not actually necessary to make and gather their corn and cotton, and improvidently spend what balance may remain after paying for the advances made to them. q. . when you rent, what division is made? --a. where the laborer owns his own teams, gears, and implements necessary for making a crop, he gets two-thirds or three-fourths of the crop, according to the quality and location of the land. under the rental system proper, where a laborer is responsible and owns his team, &c., first-class land is rented to him for $ or $ per acre. with the land go certain privileges, such as those heretofore enumerated. q. . how many hours do the laborers work? --a. this is an extremely difficult question to answer. under the wages system, from sunrise to sunset, with a rest for dinner of from one and one-half to three hours, according to the season of the year. under the share or rental system there is much time lost; for instance, they seldom work on saturday at all, and as the land is fertile, and a living can be made on a much smaller acreage than a hand can cultivate, they generally choose one-third less than they should, and it is safe to say that one third of the time which could and would be utilized by an industrious laborer is wasted in fishing, and hunting, and idleness. q. . under what system do you work? --a. we are forced to adopt all systems heretofore stated. we prefer, however, the tenant system. we wish to make small farmers our laborers, and bring them up as nearly as possible to the standard of the small white farmers. but this can only be done gradually, because the larger portion of the negroes are without any personal property. we could not afford to sell the mules, implements, &c., where a laborer has nothing. therefore the first year we contract to work with him on the half-share system, and require him to plant a portion of the land he cultivates in corn, hay, potatoes, &c. for this portion we charge him a reasonable rent, to be paid out of his part of the cotton raised on the remainder. in this way all of the supplies raised belong to him, and at the end of the first year he will, if industrious, find himself possessed of enough supplies to support and feed a mule. we then sell him a mule and implements, preserving, of course, liens until paid. at the end of the second year, if he should be unfortunate, and not quite pay out, we carry the balance over to the next year, and in this way we gradually make a tenant of him. we encourage him in every way in our power to be economical, industrious, and prudent, to surround his home with comforts, to plant an orchard and garden, and to raise his own meat, and to keep his own cows, for which he has free pasturage. our object is to attach him as much as possible to his home. under whatever system we work, we require the laborer to plant a part of his land in food crops and the balance in cotton with which to pay his rent and give him ready money. we consider this system as best calculated to advance him. recognizing him as a citizen, we think we should do all in our power to fit him for the duties of citizenship. we think there is no better method of doing this than by interesting him in the production of the soil, surrounding him with home comforts, and imposing upon him the responsibilities of his business. who will make the best citizen or laborer, he who goes to a home with a week's rations, wages spent, wife and children hired out, or he who returns to a home surrounded with the ordinary comforts, and wife and children helping him to enjoy the products of their joint labor? we recognize that no country can be prosperous unless the farmers are prosperous. under our system, we seek to have our property cultivated by a reliable set of tenants, who will be able to always pay their rent and have a surplus left. again, a large portion of the cotton crop of the country is made by small white farmers. these to a great extent are raising their own supplies, and making cotton a surplus crop. the number who do this will increase year by year. it must be apparent that the large planters cannot afford to hire labor and compete with those whose cotton costs nothing except the expenditure of their own muscle and energy. the natural consequence resulting from this condition of things is that the negro, if he is to prosper, must gradually become a small farmer, either as a tenant or the owner of the soil, and look himself upon cotton as a surplus crop. q. . what is the relation existing between the planters and their employers? --a. friendly and harmonious. the planter feel an interest in the welfare of his laborers, and the latter in turn look to him for advice and assistance. q. . what danger is there of strikes? --a. very little. as a rule the laborers are interested in the production of the soil, and a strike would be as disastrous to them as it would be to the proprietors. there is really very little conflict between labor and capital. the conflict in my section, if any should come in future, will not assume the form of labor against capital, but of race against race. q. . how can the interest of the laborers of your section be best subserved? --a. by the establishment by the states of industrial schools, by the total elimination from federal politics of the so-called negro question, and by leaving the solution to time, and a reduction of taxation, both indirect and incidental. it is a noteworthy fact that the improvement of my section has kept pace, _pari passu_, with the cessation of the agitation of race issues. the laborers share equally with the landowners the advantages of the improvement, and there is every reason to expect increasing and permanent prosperity if all questions between the landowners and their laborers in our section are left to the natural adjustment of the demand for labor. for many years the negroes regarded themselves as the wards of the federal government, and it were well for them to understand that they have nothing more to expect from the federal government, than the white man, and that, like him, their future depends upon their own energy, industry, and economy. this can work no hardship. the constant demand for labor affords them the amplest protection. nothing, probably, would contribute so immediately to their prosperity as the reduction of the tariff. they are the producers of no protected articles. the onerous burdens of the tariff naturally fall heaviest upon those who are large consumers of protected articles and produce only the great staples, grain and cotton, which form the basis of our export trade, and which can, from their very nature in this country, receive no protection from a tariff. q. in your own state, arkansas, what portion of the land cultivated and what proportion of the acreage of the land cultivated is in the form of large plantations? --a. that lying along the mississippi and arkansas rivers. it would be hard for me to estimate the proportions. i do not know that i have ever considered it, but the portions which are cultivated in large plantations lie directly on the mississippi river in front of the state of arkansas and on the arkansas river. the rest of the state is cultivated very much by small white farmers. q. and are the productions of the small holdings and large holdings similar; i inquire as to cotton particularly? --a. no, sir. in the interior of the state cotton is made a surplus crop entirely. q. what are the principal crops there? --a. our people are raising their own supplies, fruits and vegetables. for instance, it was stated by the land agent of the iron mountain railroad at a public meeting in little rock some weeks ago that that road had carried out from the state of arkansas in one week , pounds of green peas and strawberries. q. to what market? --a. to saint louis, going to different markets. the section of the state lying between little rock and fort smith is peculiarly adapted for growing fruit, and there is a very large fruit trade. q. what kinds of fruit? --a. i might say almost all kinds, but particularly apples; that section of country is noted for its apples. q. are peaches raised there also? --a. very fine, indeed. q. plums? --a. yes, sir. q. are oranges raised there? --a. no, sir; we do not raise any of the tropical fruits, such as oranges, bananas, and lemons. q. how in regard to oats, rye, corn, wheat, potatoes, and crops of that description? --a. if our exhibit, which is now being made at the louisville exposition, can be seen it will compare favorably with that of any other portion of the united states. q. even with the northwest? --a. even with the northwest. q. would you judge that one-half the cultivated surface of arkansas is made up of the larger plantations? --a. no, sir; i should not say more than a third, as a rough estimate. q. upon these plantations is there any crop raised for consumption anywhere but upon the plantations, save the cotton? --a. only in a very limited way. we raise irish potatoes for the northern markets, and it is an extremely profitable and productive crop with us. q. what is the home market price? --a. we do not sell these potatoes at home at all. we get them to saint louis, chicago, and cincinnati before the ground is really thawed out up there. we get from $ to $ a barrel for them. q. a barrel of about bushels? --a. a barrel of about bushels. that of course is a fancy price, and only lasts until the product comes in from other sources. q. that is an advantage no farmer has elsewhere in the united states than in arkansas? --a. in arkansas and louisiana, on the mississippi river. q. are potatoes raised largely in louisiana? --a. yes, sir; in parts. the cultivation of the alluvial lands in louisiana is very similar to what i am speaking of in arkansas. q. is the potato of good quality raised on those rich lands? --a. of very fine quality. q. can you give the average crop of potatoes per acre? --a. i cannot, as i have never raised any myself for market. we leave it almost entirely to our small farmers to do that sort of thing. q. about bushels per acre, senator pugh says. this is the irish potato you speak of, not the sweet? --a. the irish potato. we raise also the sweet potato there. i have raised sweet potatoes that weighed five pounds. q. and of good quality? --a. of fine quality. q. the size does not depreciate the quality, then? --a. not at all. q. they, i suppose are raised for exportation from the state? --a. no, sir; they are raised almost entirely for home consumption by our farmers. q. do your people at home prefer the sweet to the irish potato for their own use? --a. i cannot say they do. i think they raise both in equal proportions. q. which, on the whole, is the most profitable crop to raise of potatoes? --a. the irish potatoes because we export and sell them. the sweet potato does not mature until the fall of the year. q. upon your plantations you encourage the raising of the variety of crops you have spoken of for consumption, by the laborers, and for the use of the planter, i suppose, but not for exportation and sale? --a. not for sale. we merely raise them for home consumption in case of a disaster to our cotton crops. the cotton crop is subjected to very many vicissitudes, and we want to have all our supplies at home, so that in case of a failure of the cotton crop we have our living made at least. q. are the planters and those who labor upon the plantations substantially independent of the small farmers surrounding them, or do they constitute consumers for the smaller farmers in the interior? --a. we have our own gardens, and generally raise our own supplies, but every planter interests himself to find a market for all the products of his laborers. for instance, we encourage them to raise poultry to a great extent. if they have a surplus of potatoes, or eggs, or chickens, we will buy it and create a market for it, and ship the articles off in order that if they have any surplus they may realize on it. on the mississippi river we have nearly all the markets. boats are passing there every day going directly by the banks of the river. we have the markets of new orleans, vicksburg, memphis, saint louis, chicago, and we have, you may say, the whole country open before us where we can create a market. we make the best market we can for the products of our small farmers. q. do you know something of the prices in the north for the various crops you have mentioned, and if so, how do they compare with the price realized by your laborers at home? --a. our laborers realize the prices of the northwest. we ship the articles for them. for instance, a negro has several barrels of potatoes; i consign them to my merchants in saint louis, and have them sold for his account. q. there are no middlemen, really; you transact this business for them? --a. i transact this business for them direct. q. charging them simply the cost of transportation? --a. you are asking me the relationship between the proprietor and the negro. there are a great many stores on the mississippi river, and negroes sometimes go and trade directly. there are a great many properties in the mississippi valley owned by non-residents. there are some plantations rented out to negroes that there is not a white man on at all. the proprietor comes and collects his rent at the end of the year when the crop is made; or it may be his negro tenant consigns the cotton to a factor in new orleans. q. where is the proprietor himself usually resident? --a. in different states. we have people who are proprietors of real estate who live out in orange, new jersey; some live in south carolina; some live in georgia, in the various states, but they own property with us, and this property is rented directly to the negroes. generally, though, there is a responsible manager in charge of this property, but there are instances where there is not even a white man on the place at all. q. in those instances, how do matters work? do the negroes conduct affairs with reasonable prudence, and consult the interest of the owners? --a. no, sir; in these instances the property generally goes to decay gradually; the negro will not make an improvement on real estate at all. q. in these cases do the negroes work together and carry on the plantation as a whole, or is the plantation cut up into small holdings and rented out to negroes? --a. it is cut into small portions and rented according to the size of the family. some men work two mules; some four. it is regulated better by the number of animals he works. for instance, a mule can cultivate in that country with ease about fifteen acres. a man with two mules would work thirty acres; a man with four, sixty, and so on. i know some negroes who work eight and ten mules that they have paid for; but i will say this right here, and it shows the necessity of the education of the negro and of fitting him for the condition of being able to take care of himself and make his own contracts and sign his own name to a contract: i have known of numerous instances where negroes, working under the management of a proprietor of a plantation, have made enough money to buy a home; such a one will go back out in the hills, that section of country lying back of the alluvial lands, and buy a home. in three or four years he will move back to the river again, having lost all his property, mortgaged it to some storekeeper, become extravagant, and that storekeeper in a short time--three or four years probably--will have absorbed all he had earned under the management of a planter. q. about that store system; how extensive is it, and how great an evil does it constitute? --a. it constitutes a very considerable evil, but you cannot blame the storekeeper for it, for this reason, or he can only be blamed partially: capital in that country is very limited. when you consider the fact that new orleans, which handles the cotton crop of that country, has a smaller banking capital than any one of your little towns in massachusetts or new hampshire, it shows at once that there is not enough capital to be advanced to the country people at reasonable enough rates of interest for those people to conduct a strictly legitimate business. i have known capital to cost in new orleans, counting the commissions, or per cent, for money loaned. the storekeeper who borrows money to conduct his business with has to buy his goods from some merchant at some point who must make his profit. he cannot go directly to the producer, because he has got to have somebody to help him out if his capital falls short. therefore, before the goods get down to him, they cost him perhaps , , or percent more than the first price. therefore he has to tack on an enormous profit to bring himself out whole and pay his expenses in order to meet his obligations with the factor in new orleans. there is, however, among a certain class, as there would be in all sections of the country, as exists right here in new york, or anywhere else, a set of people who will always prey upon ignorance. the best protection that can be afforded to the laborer of that country is education; fit him for his condition of life, that he may protect himself. q. do you mean to be understood that these traders do business upon borrowed capital? --a. almost entirely. q. their capital is hired in new orleans? --a. or any points they may go for it; i merely mention new orleans as one point. a number of our people borrow money in memphis, and some borrow money in vicksburg. q. do you know whether those people to any extent borrow capital of northern capitalists in new york and other portions of the north --a. that class of people do not. in the last few years--i might say almost within the last two years--northern capital has begun to seek investment in our section of the country, but only upon mortgages on real estate. the class of storekeepers i allude to generally have no real estate at all; they only have their stores. q. your system by which the planter makes a market for the surplus productions of the laborers upon his plantation dispenses with a middleman, and enables the laborer to make a saving, whereas, if he goes to the hills he makes a loss? --a. yes, sir. i will put it more definitely: as long as he is under the guidance and care of the proprietor of the plantation he prospers, the planter, as we express it in that country, "loaning him our aid"; we make it very expressive to the negro, we loan him our aid, that is, he must follow our advice, and he has learned to do that, and by doing that he accumulates; but when thrown upon his own resources--there are individual exceptions, of course, where a good many negroes prosper themselves when thrown upon their own resources in arkansas--but as a general fact, where he leaves the guidance and care of the proprietor of a plantation and subjects himself just as any one else does to the common trading with storekeepers, in a very few years he loses what he has accumulated. q. under these favorable circumstances which surround the laborer on the plantation one would think he ought to accumulate; but i understand you that as a rule he is rather improvident and fails to accumulate. to what do you attribute that improvidence on the part of the negro laborer? --a. it is simply from the want of a proper appreciation of the opportunities of advancement from his condition. the negroes are just beginning, as i expressed it, to realize the responsibilities of life, and just as they begin to realize the responsibilities of life here, they begin to prosper. the prosperity of the south has only begun in the last few years, and it has begun to increase just as the race issue has ceased. i will demonstrate that to you by a little paragraph i cut out of the _new york herald_ last night, taken from the new orleans _times-democrat_. if you take the assessed valuation of real estate in alabama, in it was at $ , , ; in it is assessed at $ , , . there has been that increase in four years from $ , , to $ , , . now let us take the state of arkansas: in our real estate was valued at $ , , ; in it is valued at $ , , . it goes on just in that same proportion. for instance, this shows that in eight of the southern and southwestern states there has been an increase of nearly half a billion dollars--that is, $ , , --in value of taxable property during the short period of four years. i happened to pick up this book last night. if i had an opportunity i could have gotten some statistics to show you the increased production in these different states, and how completely it has taken place, as the laborer has begun to rely on himself and been thrown on his resources. q. have you observed the origin of these statistics? --a. they come from the new orleans _times-democrat_. i will read this in order that they may be known. this is from the _herald_ of yesterday: southern progress the new orleans times-democrat has gathered from trustworthy sources and given to the public valuable statistics showing the industrial progress made in the southern states during the past four years. this covers the period since , the year to which the figures of the latest national census apply. the census returns show a marvelous material growth in the south during the preceding ten years. but, according to the reports published by our new orleans contemporary, the progress of the past four years is greater and more wonderful than that achieved during the decade between the census years. taking the important item of assessed value of property, a comparison between the years and gives the following remarkable results: ----------------------------------------------------------------- assessment tax assessment tax states rate rate ----------------------------------------------------------------- alabama $ , , - / $ , , arkansas , , , , - / florida , , , , georgia , , - / , , louisiana , , , , mississippi , , - / , , - / tennessee , , , , texas , , , , ----------------------------------------------------------------- total , , , - / , , , ----------------------------------------------------------------- this shows that in eight southern and southwestern states there has been an increase of nearly half a billion dollars--$ , , --in the value of taxable property during the short period of four years, while the rate of taxation has been actually reduced. at the same time liberal appropriations have been made for schools, public improvements, and other useful purposes. "nor is this marvelous advance in valuation," says the _times-democrat_, "the result of any inflation in value, but the natural sequence of grand crops, new industries developed, new manufactories, mines, and lumber mills established." the extension of railroads has been hardly less astonishing. in the eight states above enumerated there were in , miles of railroad. there are now , miles, showing an increase in four years of , miles. the agricultural progress made is shown by the fact that the value of raw products raised in these states, including all crops, lumber, cattle, and wool, has advanced from $ , , in to $ , , in , or an increase of $ , , . during this period the mineral output of alabama alone has increased from $ , , to $ , , , and the lumber product of arkansas from $ , , to $ , , . the trade of new orleans is a barometer of southern industry and commerce. the value of domestic produce in that city in - was $ , , ; in - it was $ , , . the value of exports of domestic produce to foreign countries in the former year amounted to $ , , ; in the latter it reached $ , , . these figures tell a remarkable story of recent progress in the southern states. always rich in natural resources, the south has long been poor through lack of development. it has at last entered upon a new era of industrial activity, and is now making rapid strides toward a stage of material prosperity commensurate with its great natural wealth.--_new york herald_, september , . now, here is quite a remarkable fact to which i wish to call your attention, to show you the opportunities for labor existing in the south and what is the condition of certain counties in the south. i hold in my hand a book that is compiled for the benefit of the georgia pacific railroad, but i happened to find it in my room and thought these matters would be interesting. q. the data you consider reliable? --a. what i read i think comes from the census report; i think this is reliable: in this connection let us glance at montgomery county, alabama, which, although not in the belt we are studying, is on the same prairie formation crossed by the georgia pacific railway, on the edge of mississippi. compare it with butler county, ohio, which "shows the best record of any county in the west." in live stock montgomery has $ , , ; butler, $ , , . that is the largest producing county in ohio as compared with montgomery county, alabama, before the war. montgomery had , hogs; butler, , . animals slaughtered: montgomery, $ , ; butler, $ , . in grain butler was considerably ahead, but in roots montgomery led. montgomery doubled butler in the production of wool, and had its cotton crop to show besides. the total value of the crops of montgomery county was $ , , ; those of butler only $ , , . there is montgomery county, alabama, compared with the leading producing county in ohio. q. do you know as to the relative size of the two counties? --a. i think it was given here: a handsome triumph for the alabama county! and yet montgomery is not up to the average of the prairie counties of alabama. i do not know the relative size. here is a fact to which i wish to call particular attention: we have examined the mortality tables of the united states census for , and find that as regards health, georgia, alabama, and mississippi make a better showing than some of the oldest and most densely populated northern states. there is generally an idea prevailing that the southern states are very unhealthy. it is a point that bears directly on our labor question, and for that reason i wish to call special attention to this table, which is taken directly from the census: annual death rate for each thousand of population new york . pennsylvania . virginia . massachusetts . kentucky . georgia . alabama . mississippi . mississippi has the smallest average death rate of any of that number of states which i have enumerated. q. i suppose the circumstance that the average death rate is larger in cities ought to be taken into account, the southern population being mostly rural, is it not? --a. the southern population is to a very great extent rural--still there are cities in georgia which i suppose in proportion to our rural population would not make the latter in excess of what it is here. if you take your rural population here and in new jersey, where you are densely populated, we are no more densely populated in the proportion of our city population to the country than you are here, i think. q. of the population, which is, as a rule, the more healthy in the south, the colored or the white population? by mr. pugh: q. there must be some qualification of that difference between the death rate between such states as massachusetts, for instance, and georgia, on account of the fact--which i suppose must be conceded--that in these new states population is younger and more vigorous than in the older states. the emigration to these states has been of the younger and more vigorous population, not so liable to die as those who remain behind and are older? --a. there has been but very little emigration into these states up to this census. mr. pugh. that is the fact to some extent, i suppose, anyway. the chairman. in that same connection, i suppose, should be borne in mind the fact that the population of these eastern states is largely re-enforced by immigration from europe, and that is of the younger and more vigorous european population, and i do not know but what the people in massachusetts will insist upon it that they are as young and as vigorous as anybody. mr. pugh. i have no doubt. i saw a great many very old people there. the witness. i merely mentioned this because i wanted to do away with the impression which generally exists that the southern states are very unhealthy. mr. pugh. i have no doubt that what you state is true as a general fact. the witness. now, to bear out the assertion which i made that the prosperity of the negroes began to increase with the cessation of race issues in the south, which has been so apparent to me that i can almost mark the time that it began, look at the cotton crop that is being made to a great extent by small farmers; look at the increase of the cotton crop in the different states in the last few years. for instance, take georgia: in she made , bales of cotton; in she made , , an increase of per cent. alabama in produced , bales; and in , , an increase of per cent. mississippi in produced , bales; in she produced , bales, an increase of per cent. here is a very significant fact also with regard to the condition of our laborers in the south, and it shows one of the disadvantages we have had to labor under. during the war, and from the results of the war, nearly all of our live stock was destroyed, a great portion of it was destroyed, which left us after the war without the means of raising our own meat and such supplies at home, and took away from the south a great portion of our wealth, for we know that cattle, hogs &c., increase in arithmetical progress. if you have a hog, this year she bears so many pigs, and in a couple of years those pigs bear so many, and so on. but we were left without live stock. i have here a table which shows, even under those difficulties, the increase in that respect in the southern states of live stock. these are very significant figures. it is entirely an accident that i happened to get hold of them last night. the live stock of new york in was , , ; in , , , , an increase of per cent. in pennsylvania it was , , in ; in , , , , an increase of per cent. in georgia, in , it was , , ; in , , , , an increase of per cent. in alabama it was , , in , and in , , , , an increase of per cent, and in mississippi, in , it was , , , and in , , , , an increase of per cent. this shows that with all the disadvantages the south had to contend with of their stock cattle being destroyed, the natural advantages of climate and pasturage, to which i attribute it, existing in the south have enabled them to increase more rapidly their live stock than any other of the states of the union. that shows clearly the advantages which that country offers for immigration and labor. this is an advantage to labor. as i stated in my written reply to your submitted questions, we work but few white laborers in my section of the country. why? because they soon become land-owners with the opportunities which present themselves to them. the white men will not be there more than two or three years before he has bought and paid for his land in almost every instance. by the chairman: q. and he becomes an employer himself? --a. he becomes an employer himself. q. does he usually locate upon the plantation lands along the rivers? --a. no, sir; he cannot buy this land, because the planter would not divide a large plantation into tracts; he would not sell off a portion of his land without selling the whole. q. in how large tracts are the plantations held? just mention the acreage of some of them that you are acquainted with. --a. i would say variously from to , acres in cultivation. q. how valuable are these plantations per acre? --a. that is a question which cannot be answered definitely except in this way: where a planter owns the land, and he is out of debt, the land is not for sale, because he cannot invest his money in anything that is so profitable; but where a planter's property is mortgaged, and the mortgagee wants to foreclose and will foreclose, and there is not in that country the money which the planter can borrow to relieve himself of his indebtedness, he will probably sell his land at a small excess of his debt in order to save something. you see there is a want of capital in that country, and if a planter is involved, as many planters are and have been ever since the war, he must do the best he can. there are many planters in that country who are nothing but agents of the factors, from the fact that the interest and commissions they pay upon the debt amount to more than the rent for the property, and they hold on to it as a home. therefore, a planter in that condition will sell at a nominal price, whereas a plantation owned and paid for is not for sale. by mr. pugh: q. there is really no established market price? --a. none at all, owing to the necessity of the one to sell and the desire of another to buy. by the chairman: q. at what rates per acre have you known the title to change in some instances? --a. i have known lands to be bought there, including woodlands and cleared lands, at from $ to $ an acre, which would be, say, $ or $ an acre for the cleared land, and i have known other planters to refuse $ an acre, cash. q. do you think that $ or $ per acre would be a reasonable price for these plantation lands? --a. they sold before the war for $ an acre. by mr. call: q. you are speaking now of the alluvial lands? --a. i am speaking of the alluvial lands on the mississippi river, cleared, ready for cultivation, with the improvements existing upon them. by the chairman: q. improved plantations? --a. yes, sir. q. upon what price per acre do you think those lands would pay, one year with another, an interest of per cent? --a. i will best answer that question by the figures of rents which i have given. the rent, without any responsibility attached to the proprietor at all, is from $ to $ an acre. q. in money? --a. in money. i will say further that i have been living in that country since , and i have never yet known a year when there has not been a sufficient crop made to pay the rent, without a single exception. by mr. call: q. what is left to the tenant after he pays this $ an acre? --a. that land produces on an average pounds of lint cotton to the acre, which at cents a pound is $ . by the chairman: q. to what extent is northern capital availing itself of opportunity to invest in these plantations? --a. i might say it is limited. q. from what fact does that arise? --a. from the fact that the safety of investments there is just becoming apparent to capitalists. capitalists up to this time have been afraid to go to the south, owing to the disturbed condition of affairs politically and this very race-issue question. a man does not want to carry his money down there and put it into a country that might be involved in riots and disturbances. those questions are now just beginning to settle themselves, and capital is beginning to find its way. q. do you anticipate in the near or remote future any further difficulty from the race question? --a. not at all, and if we are left to ourselves things will very soon equalize themselves. q. you are left to yourselves now, are you not? --a. we are now. q. all you ask is to continue to be let alone? --a. just to be let alone. the south, with her natural resources and advantages of climate and soil, feels that she is perfectly able to take care of herself and her affairs, and all she wants is that the legislation of the country, both federal and state, should be that which will mete out justice to all her citizens, colored as well as white. q. does the south feel as though all she had got to do was to take care of herself, or does she feel a little responsibility for the other section of the country? --a. she feels, more immediately now, responsibility for that section, for this reason, that the negro population of the south, compared with the white population of the south, might be a dangerous element, but the negro population, compared with the whole white population of the united states as an integral body, sinks into insignificance. therefore, the forces which are at work in the south today make us strongly union. they are directly contrary to what were existing before the war, and there are no people in this government today who have the same interest in the federal union that the people of the southern states have, and they appreciate it. q. you feel that it is to your advantage that the negro population should be dealt with by the forty or fifty millions of whites, that the races should be balanced in that proportion rather than in the proportion that exists between them and the white population of the south alone? --a. yes, sir. q. the central idea of the south is a national idea, then? --a. the central idea of the south is more a national idea now than it has been in this respect. q. i would use the word "leading" rather than "central" there--the leading idea? --a. we, of course, claim that we want to manage the internal affairs of our states just as much as new york, or new hampshire, or massachusetts would want to manage theirs, but that it is necessary for us to have the guidance and protection of the government: we want it just as much as either of those states. q. have you traveled considerably through the north? --a. i have. q. what portions of the north have you visited within the last few years? --a. i have visited philadelphia, new york, boston, hartford, and i might say a number of other points in the states of which they are the chief cities. q. while we are speaking of this matter of reciprocal feeling between the sections of country, as you have mentioned the attitude of the south, i should like to know from you, from your personal observation and knowledge, what you find to be that of the north toward the south? --a. i think it is of the kindliest character. i have never in my life been treated with more consideration than i have been by gentlemen in the east who were most opposed to the south during the war. q. i do not refer simply to personal courtesy, but i mean the expression of feeling as between the sections, the general tendency and drift of northern feeling towards the southern portions of the country, to the people of the south? --a. i think, so far as i have been able to observe, that the feeling in the east towards the south is a general anxiety for her prosperity. i would go so far as to speak of it as anxiety for her prosperity. q. you think the war of sections is pretty much over? --a. i think it is obliterated, and for that reason i go back to this point, that our prosperity in the south has begun. q. you have described with some minuteness the condition of things among the planters and those who work upon the plantations. i should like to ask this question further, whether any of the negroes along the alluvial bottoms are obtaining ownership of lands in fee-simple? --a. in very few instances in the alluvial lands. when they make enough money to buy a home they generally go to the hill country, where land can be bought at a much more reasonable price. q. with what amount of accumulation will a negro get up and go to the hills? --a. there are negroes right in my section of the country who have an accumulation clear of all expenses of from a thousand to $ , a year. q. do they remain or do they go and buy homesteads for themselves? --a. they probably remain until they accumulate a few thousand dollars, and then go and buy a home. we encourage it, from the fact that we want the others behind to be stimulated to do the same thing. i will say in that connection that the future of the negro of the south is the alluvial lands. q. these plantations? --a. not only these plantations particularly. what i mean by alluvial lands are the alluvial lands on the coast and the alluvial lands of the mississippi valley, the rich lands where the negro relies on his own energy and exertion rather than on his brains. there is an immigration coming into the older states now. q. the older southern states? --a. the older southern states. as they come in the negroes gradually give way and go to the richer lands. for instance, one railroad last year brought into the mississippi valley over , negro immigrants. q. from what states? --a. from the atlantic and gulf states. q. what became of them? --a. they were scattered along the alluvial lands of the mississippi valley. as the negroes of the mississippi valley either immigrate from that valley and go in different directions and buy land, the planters of the mississippi valley send out to the older states and replace them with labor from those states. a negro in the older states, probably, to make his support would have to cultivate or acres of land, whereas a negro in the mississippi valley can make his support on or acres of land. q. will this result in the ownership of the alluvial lands being transferred to the negro? --a. no, sir; because as he makes money he goes off. q. he is a chinese immigrant?--a. i mean by "goes off" he does not go out of the state, but he goes to the hills. q. and to smaller ownerships?--a. to smaller ownerships. q. and the aim of the southern planter is to accommodate this tendency of things to smaller rentings? --a. yes, sir. q. do you think a plantation is more productive where, under a general supervision by the planter or the owner, it is let out in small sections to the negroes to cultivate, or is it better to cultivate the plantation as a whole? --a. it is better to let it out, as i stated in my written answers. the cotton crop of this country is being raised to such an extent by the small white farmers that the large planter can no longer afford to hire and compete with that class of labor who only expend their own energy; consequently the tendency is to make farmers of the negroes. q. what chance is there of the planter securing white labor to carry on these plantations? --a. there is such a small proportion of white labor in the south that it would be difficult for him to find them, and the tide of foreign immigration is just beginning to be turned in that direction. there has been a prejudice against white emigrants going to the south, on account of going among the negroes. q. do you think that is diminishing? --a. diminishing yearly. q. you mean that immigration from europe is being employed on the plantations? --a. not exactly upon the large cotton plantations, but the smaller plantations are now being converted into farms. for instance, there has been a large immigration of european emigrants into that section of the country between little rock and fort smith. q. do they, upon these farm or small plantations being converted into farms, work in companionship with the negro laborer? --a. no; they generally buy the land and work it themselves; they may hire a negro and work with him; they are laborers themselves. q. is there any tendency among the white and colored laborers of any class to work in companionship, or to fraternize at all in labor? --a. i cannot say that there is. a white man would not take a negro in as a partner to work with him in the field. q. and will a white man find any difficulty in hiring another white man and negro to work together side by side in the field? --a. no, sir; i have them myself working side by side. q. there is no prejudice of that kind? --a. none at all. q. no white man inquires whether he can work by himself or is to work in company with a negro? do they exhibit any reluctance to work in company with the negro? --a. the class of white people that work in our country for wages comes from ohio, and missouri, and indiana, and that section of country, and i find there is some prejudice among that class of people sometimes, but still there are instances--as i say, i have men from indiana now myself hired working right in a gang with negroes. q. there is no strong tendency in that way, i suppose? --a. no strong tendency in that way. there are no white laborers from the south proper; at least the number we can hire for wages is so small that it is not sufficient to call it a class. q. in the southern states proper about two thirds of the population is white, is it not? --a. i do not recollect. according to the census returns i think there are about seven millions of negroes. the census would give the exact statement. q. not far from two thirds of the population, i think, is white. in the gulf states proper at least one half the population must be white. in what way is the white laboring population of the south employed? --a. they are employed as small farmers nearly almost entirely. q. not to as great extent as mechanics and artisans? --a. i suppose there is a liberal proportion of them to the population; we have to have our artisans and mechanics; but as a rule the white population of the south are small farmers, either owners of the land themselves or tenants. q. how as to their material prosperity and thrift and saving? --a. it varies very much. for instance, take the state of georgia--and i believe it is admitted that georgia is one of the most thrifty and prosperous of all the southern states--i think the small farmers are generally self-sustaining; they raise their own supplies. q. do these small white farmers employ negro help to any extent? --a. to a certain extent. if a man has more land than his family can work he will hire a negro laborer. there is no prejudice against his doing so either on the part of the farmer hiring him or the negro hired. q. he may hire some white and other colored laborers, i suppose? --a. yes, sir. q. do they work together? --a. yes, sir. q. how in regard to the value of the hill lands you have spoken of in the state of arkansas; as compared with the alluvial, what is the difference in value? --a. it is very great. there are farms in arkansas that can be bought, partially cleared up, and with some improvements upon them, for from $ to $ an acre, less than the rent of fair lands on the river. there is no finer section of country in the world--i say that unhesitatingly--for a foreign immigrant, or the immigrant from the east, or from anywhere, than is afforded to-day in arkansas and texas. q. and political disturbances are at an end? --a. we apprehend nothing at all; there is no reason why we should. q. you were speaking of the necessity of the education of the laborer of the south, the negro especially. will you not describe to us the actual condition of the masses of the colored people in the matter of education, to what extent it has progressed, and what facilities and opportunities exist, and what additional are required? --a. it varies in different sections. for instance, georgia, and tennessee are probably ahead of any of the southern states in point of educating the colored people; they have more facilities; they have negro primary schools and colleges where a man is educated. the education that i was speaking of, more particularly for the negro, is a plain english education, sufficient to enable him to read and write. q. what we call up north a common school education? --a. a common school education. i will illustrate that. suppose a negro comes to me to make a contract that i have written for him, and he cannot read or write. i offer that contract to him, and i read it to him. he touches a pen and signs his mark to it; there is no obligation attached at all. he says at once, "that man is an educated man; he has the advantage of me; he shows me that contract; i do not know what is in it; i cannot even read it." therefore a contract made with a negro in that way is almost a nullity; but if he could read that contract himself and sign his own name to it, it would be a very different thing. i never allow a negro to sign a written contract with me before he has taken it home with him and had some friend to read it over and consult with him about it, because i want some obligation attached to my contracts. q. it is necessary for you as well as the negro? --a. necessary for my protection as well as his. q. how many of the negroes on the plantations can comprehend a written contract by reading it, because a man may be somewhat educated and not be able to decipher a contract? --a. i cannot give you an exact proportion, for it varies to a great extent. i can only say that that number is increasing rapidly. q. from what circumstances comes this increase? --a. from their desire to gain knowledge. q. do you find that desire strong among the colored people? --a. very strong indeed; and there are two ideas which a negro possesses that give me great hopes for his future. if i did not believe the negro was capable of sufficient development to make him a responsible small farmer, i should not want to remain in the business that i am any longer, because i believe that the development of my business is necessarily based upon the development of the negro and the cultivation of my lands. the negro possesses two remarkable qualifications: one is that he is imitative, and the other is that he has got pride; he wants to dress well; he wants to do as well as anybody else does when you get him aroused, and with these two qualifications i have very great hopes for him in the future. q. what do you think of his intellectual and moral qualities and his capacity for development? --a. there are individual instances i know of where negroes have received and taken a good education. as a class, it would probably be several generations, at any rate, before they would be able to compete with the caucasian. i believe that the negro is capable of receiving an ordinary english education, and there are instances where they enter professions and become good lawyers. for instance, i know in the town of greenville, miss., right across the river from me, a negro attorney, who is a very intelligent man, and i heard one of the leading attorneys in greenville say he would almost have anybody on the opposite side of a case rather than he would that negro. the sheriff of my county is from ohio, and a negro, he is a man whom we all support in his office. we are anxious that the negroes should have a fair representation. for instance, you ask for the feeling existing between the proprietor and the negroes. the probate judge of my county is a negro and one of my tenants, and i am here now in new york attending to important business for my county as an appointee of that man. he has upon him the responsibilities of all estates in the county; he is probate judge. q. is he a capable man? --a. a very capable man, and an excellent, good man, and a very just one. q. do you see any reason why, with fair opportunities assured to himself and to his children, he may not become a useful and competent, american citizen? --a. we already consider him so. q. the question is settled? --a. i thought you were speaking personally of the man i referred to. q. no; i was speaking of the negro generally--the negro race. --a. let me understand your question exactly. q. do you see any reason why the negroes, as a component part of the american population, may not, with a fair chance, come to be useful, industrious, and competent to the discharge of the duties of citizenship? --a. i think they may as a class, but it will take probably generations for them to arrive at that standard. q. it has taken us generations to arrive at the standard, has it not? --a. yes, sir. q. there is some talk about our ancestors having been pirates, i believe. now, will you state to us what the existing facilities for education are among the negroes? --a. i can only speak as regards arkansas. of course i do not know much of the other states. in arkansas we have in each county a school board. these boards examine and employ teachers. we are taxed for a school fund, from which these teachers are paid. q. what proportion of the colored children attend school, do you think? --a. on my own property there are five schools, and i think the larger portion, i might say nearly all that are capable of going to school, do go to school. q. how many children are there on your own property? --a. i could scarcely form an idea. q. there are five schools? --a. there are five schools, and i should suppose from to children. q. those are educated in public schools? --a. yes, sir. q. i understand you to say that nearly all of them attend? --a. yes, sir. q. for how long a time each year is school kept open? --a. the schools extend all the year except vacation, i think, which is about three months; but a number of the negroes will withdraw their children from school during cotton-picking season, to help them pick the crop. q. between what ages do they actually attend school? --a. from to . i know a great many of them who are going to school who are , , and , who can just begin to read and write a little. q. do you find any inclination among the older negroes who are past school age to endeavor to read and write? --a. not very much, but they are anxious their children should, and appeal to them. in almost every instance where a man has a child who can read and write, he will bring him along with him when he makes a contract. they are very proud of their children being able to read and write. q. are they satisfied, as a rule, with their simply becoming able to read and write, or do they like to have them make a little further progress in mathematics, geography, &c.? --a. as a class they look to them simply to read and write. they think when they have got that far they know everything; but then there are certain ones who have ambition, just as it is with our own race. there are some men who have tastes for literature, and receive a better education than others do, but it is not the same proportion of the negro race of course that it is with our own. there are instances where negroes are also anxious to obtain a collegiate education, and become school teachers. q. i do not know that you are able to state to what extent they actually attend school in the hill districts? --a. i am not. q. you speak both of your own plantation and of other plantations as well as your own in that regard? --a. i am speaking of the alluvial lands along the mississippi river. q. in arkansas? --a. not only in arkansas, but in louisiana and mississippi; i will say the alluvial lands on the mississippi river between memphis and vicksburg. q. are the negroes on those lands generally having the same opportunities for education that they do on your plantation? --a. oh, yes, sir; there is a common school system. q. and it is as prevalent in louisiana and mississippi as in arkansas? --a. i think it is. q. what is the nativity of those teachers, as a rule? --a. they are generally colored people from either the east or the northwest. there are some white teachers, but very few. q. are any of the white teachers southern in birth? --a. there is not a white teacher on my own property; they are all colored teachers on my own property. the proportion of white teachers is very small. q. how much do these colored teachers themselves know? --a. some of them are remarkably well educated. q. and generally earnestly devoted to their work? --a. perfectly so. q. or is it simply to get their money? --a. no; i think some of them really have a desire to see their scholars advance. q. some pride in their race, to have them get on, i suppose? --a. i think there is a certain pride in that respect; and, again, they want to gain a reputation as teachers. q. what compensation does a teacher get? --a. i think about from $ to $ a month. q. do they pay their own expenses, board and shelter? --a. yes, sir; but board is cheap, merely nominal. q. about what amount? --a. i should say these teachers can get board for $ a month. q. is the cost of clothing in your part of the country about the same as here? --a. this is our market. q. you buy the ready-made clothing largely for the population in general, i suppose? --a. we buy both ready-made clothing and cloth to make up. q. i suppose the colored population hardly buy custom goods? --a. a great many of them buy the cloth, and some of their women are as good tailoresses as you would find anywhere. they buy the cloth and make it up themselves. q. that must bring a suit of clothes pretty cheap in a colored family; they really expend nothing but buy the cloth themselves? --a. they sell very good jeans cloth there at or cents a yard; they generally wear jeans. q. all seasons of the year? --a. generally in all seasons of the year. in the summer time a laboring man hardly ever wears a coat at all. q. what do you think an average colored southern laborer expends per annum for his clothing, say the head of the family, the man--what does it cost him for clothing a year? --a. i cannot give you a definite answer. i will only say that we who are the producers of cotton are very glad to see them get in a prosperous condition in order that there may be more consumption, and when a man is prosperous he will buy two suits of clothes, where if he is not prosperous he will make one do. q. we have had a good deal of testimony as to what it actually costs a northern laborer a year for clothing. i have no desire to show that any laborers dress cheaply or poorly; i merely want to get an idea of the relative cost of the laboring man living north or south, in the item of clothing? --a. i can sell and do sell a man a pair of jeans pants and a coat from $ to $ per suit. q. how many suits will he want in a year? --a. that will depend on his condition and his ability to pay me. if he is a prosperous man and beginning to accumulate he will make one do. whenever a negro begins to accumulate he goes to extremes; he does not want to buy anything; he wants to accumulate rapidly. where a man is not doing so well, and there is little doubt of his ability to pay, he would probably want several suits; but i would confine him to one or two. q. the same is true, i suppose, of his wife and children? --a. yes, sir. q. but you look on the matter of clothing as a much less expensive item in the laborer's account in your country than here in the north where the climate is colder, i suppose? --a. yes, sir. what absorbs the profit of the laborers with us is their want of providence; that is, if they get surplus money they throw it away for useless articles. q. it has been suggested that a postal savings bank might be a good thing as a place of deposit of the savings of the colored population of the south; they might feel some confidence in an institution of that kind, and that it would be a beneficial thing to them. what is your own judgment? --a. i advocate it and approve it, and indeed propose to start a savings bank in our own neighborhood. in this connection i will mention another important feature. in the mississippi valley--and when i speak of the mississippi valley i mean both sides of the river, arkansas and louisiana on one side and mississippi on the other--there are numbers of negroes who have considerable accumulations and use their surplus to advance to other negroes. for instance, there are negroes right on our property who have accumulated enough to help out certain others, as they express it, and they use their money as an investment in that way. for instance one negro who has got something will advance it to another negro and take a mortgage on his crop. consequently there are numbers of them who are getting advances from their co-laborers, and i always give them that opportunity when they want it. my idea of the adjustment in the mississippi valley, seeing what i can make from the mercantile portion of my business, is that it is simply my revenue that i get from the rent of my land as an investment on my capital; and whenever a negro can get his own merchant in new orleans--a number of them have very good factors in new orleans and ship their cotton direct--i encourage it. when one negro wants to help out another, i give him the privilege of doing it and encourage it. there are several negroes, a great many, not a few in chicot county to-day who have their own factors in new orleans, ship their own goods, and receive their own accounts of sales. q. they are not owners of alluvial lands? --a. they are not owners at all; they are tenants. q. i suppose some time they will be liable to make some accumulations, and they will now and then own a plantation? --a. i do know of one instance on the river below vicksburg where the old property of mr. davis was bought by a former slave of his. q. is that the only instance? --a. the only instance i know of. q. one question we have been accustomed to put is as to the actual personal feeling that exists between the laborers and capitalists of different parts of the country. what is the feeling between the laborers, colored and white, and the owners of the land and of capital at the south? --a. i confine my replies to my own section, because i am not familiar with the others. i have answered that question in the written answers. the feeling is harmonious and good, as i have expressed it there. the negro naturally looks to the planter for advice and for assistance, and the planter looks to his laborers for the development of his property. consequently their interests are identical and their feelings good. q. you have alluded once or twice to the pressure of outside, and i suppose northern, opinion; i assume that you mean political opinion in the past and the desirability that it should cease. what is the fact as to a progressive disintegration of the solid republican or solid negro vote of the south? what are the chances of its dividing, and of the white vote dividing? we hear now of a "solid south," colored on the one side and white on the other. what prospect is there of a division in that regard; to what extent does it exist, or is it going on? --a. the negroes of the south are already divided in their votes. there are a great many who vote with the proprietors of the properties. there are instances where they vote with what they call their republican friends. a few years ago in the south any man who was an escaped convict from one of your penitentiaries here who would come down to that country and tell the negroes that he was one of general grant's soldiers, and fought to free him, would vote the last one out; but any of those negroes would come to me at that very time with his money and get me to save it for him, and take care of it for him. he would put all his confidence in me so far as his money was concerned, but when it would come to politics he would vote with this man, who probably did not own the coat he had on his back. those kind of inferences were what did do us in the south very material damage. let me illustrate that by a riot in my own county. in chicot county, in , there was a proposition to impose upon the county a railroad tax of $ , for the purpose of building a railroad. q. what proportion of the taxable property of the county would that have been? --a. our whole assessed valuation was about $ , , at that time. this was brought out by a promise that if the appropriation was made, the levees on our river should be built and this road would run on the levees. at that time the whole of the local government in chicot county was in the hands of men who did not own any property in the county, and had just come down there and been elected by the negroes, who have a very large majority in that county. this tax was a very great imposition upon us. at that time there was a negro attorney at lake village, who was one of the prime movers in this thing. the planters knew that this was only intended as a speculation upon the county, for the vote was afterwards taken, the appropriation was made, and not one foot of levee was put up, and not one foot of that railroad was built in chicot county. still we are mandamused now for the interest on that debt that was put on us by that kind of influence. one of our planters was remonstrating with this negro attorney about this debt and told him it was an imposition on the property owners, and that the thing ought not to be done, when the man became violent and insolent, and it resulted in a difficulty between this planter and the negro. the planter had a little pen-knife in his pocket, the blade not longer than my little finger; he struck the negro with it and it happened accidentally to hit him on a vital point and killed him. the sheriff of the county was a negro. the planter, with two innocent parties in whose house this occurrence took place at the county-seat, in lake village, was arrested and lodged in jail. a few days afterwards--probably not more than two or three--nearly every negro in the county was summoned to lake village, and they rose like so many locusts, coming in from every direction, took those three men out of jail shot them to pieces, murdered them. it was such an outrage that the people from memphis and vicksburg and from the hill countries, commenced to come in there with companies, started down with companies. on investigation we found out that the sheriff of the county had exercised his authority to send out to the ignorant negroes of the county and summon them to the village, and these fellows went because they were afraid not to obey the mandate of the sheriff. at that time feeling was running very high, and these people were anxious to come in and quell this riot, but a few of us who were more prudent, a few of the leading planters of the county, got together, sent these different companies word not to come there, that we did not want them in the county; some of the companies were already on their way to chicot county, thinking the people there were going to be massacred. a great many of our people had to run away from their homes for several days; but we took the ground that we would let the thing take its natural course. as soon as things quieted down, which they did so partially in three or four days, some of our gentlemen who had gone off with their families returned, and it resulted in our arresting a few of the ringleaders in the county. the courts and the administration were all at that time in the hands of persons not identified with the interests of the county, and it was impossible for us to get justice meted out. we saved a massacre of the negroes of the county, but we never could bring those men to any kind of punishment before the courts, and finally we came to a compromise with them, that if they would leave the county we would withdraw the suit against them, and that was the way the thing was ended. now, i do not believe you could get up a riot in chicot county because i think there are many intelligent negroes there who would not permit it. those are the kind of race issues that i referred to. relieve us of that sort of thing, and leave our government to ourselves and our people, and give to the negro the same protection the white man has, but do not give him any more. do not let him feel that he has the united states government standing behind him, and that he is the child of the united states government to be taken care of, but that he must rely on his own resources and energy for his living, and time will solve the question, and the demand for his labor will protect him. q. do you find that the feeling among the negroes which resulted in the exodus of a few years ago has been allayed and perhaps has disappeared? --a. i will tell you something that is rather amusing about that. the first that i heard of a negro exodus in my section of the country--it was to kansas--was my manager coming into my room one morning and saying that the negroes were going out to the river to go to kansas. i said, "it is several miles to the river; how are they going?" said he, "they are toting their things out on their heads." said i, "go right at once there and offer them the wagons on the plantation to haul the things. what is the matter?" said he, "i don't know; i went out this morning and summoned the hands to the field, but they say they are all going to kansas." i got on my horse and rode out and met a negro who had been my engineer. i said to him, "what is the matter, where are you all going?" he stopped right on the road and said, "mr. calhoun, you never have deceived me, and i am going to tell you what is the matter. there were two men came through here last week, one night, and said 'you see this picture?' there is a picture of a farm in kansas for me that general grant has bought out there for me. that is so because my name is on the back of it, and here is my ticket; that carries me to kansas." said i, "let me see it." he showed me a piece of pasteboard that had printed on it "good for one trip to kansas." said i, "what did you pay him for this?" he said, "we paid him $ a piece." "how many of you are in this thing?" "over eighty of us are in this thing." said i, "that man then swindled you out of $ ; he is an imposter; there is no farm bought for you in kansas." i saw that the time for me to remonstrate with them was not then; they were on their way to the mississippi river, and i let them all go. after they got out there i went and expostulated with them; told them of the difference in climate, soil, and everything else that they were accustomed to, and that if they went there many of them would lose their families and children. they would not listen to me. they went on to the river bank, and those negroes who went out there owed me over $ , . q. how many of them were there? eighty i think you said? --a. there were , i think. once, i suppose, there were negroes, perhaps more, on the bank of the river. they were not at a regular landing. they went out to the intermediate points where a boat would not be compelled to land. we notified all the boats coming up the river not to land at this point. i did not want these negroes to go off, being satisfied that they were going to their ruin if they did; that they were leaving comfortable homes; many of them had sold their mules or given them away at a mere sacrifice. one negro sold a mule worth $ for $ to get off. they opened their potato-houses, they opened their corn-cribs and scattered the corn, giving it away to everybody that would offer them five cents a bushel. i had given two of these people a piece of land, the productions of all of which they were to have for bringing it into cultivation and improving it. knowing the negro nature as i do, and knowing that he would not want anybody to derive the benefit of something that he thought he was entitled to, i got two white men in the county to come and offer me to take this piece of land and cultivate it on shares with me, giving me one half its product, whereas with them i was entitled to nothing. as soon as those two fellows found out that i had made a good bargain for their land they went back home from the river bank, and as soon as they went back all the rest followed. then i called the whole plantation up and told them to appoint two representatives and that i would send them to kansas at my own expense to examine into this matter and report to them. these two men went to kansas, came back, and reported the true condition of affairs; and now if what they call in that country "a poor white man"--the negro's expression--goes through the country and says "kansas," they almost want to mob him. that was the result of the kansas movement. q. what has become of those who went to kansas? --a. many of them have returned and many have died; numbers of them have died. quite a large number went to washington county mississippi, just opposite me. q. from time to time, at washington, efforts are being made to secure public lands in the territories, the indian territory and elsewhere, for the purpose of colonizing such tracts with negroes. do you think there is any sort of occasion for that? --a. none in the world. if the alluvial lands on the mississippi river were protected from overflow and brought into a condition where they could be cultivated they would afford all the homes, and of the best character, that the negroes could possibly want in the south, and the natural tendency is to come to just such lands. q. and the negroes prefer to be there to anywhere else? --a. those that come, i notice, never go back. q. you suggested the improvement of the levees. what is the necessity, and in what degree is it difficult for those residing along the river banks to protect themselves? --a. i am the president of the levee board of chicot county. the plan which has been suggested by the mississippi river commission and mr. eads, as their chief engineer, is unquestionably the correct one for the improvement of the mississippi river. we know this not only from theory, but from long experience with the river, those of us who have lived there. the mississippi river being, as it is generally termed, the "father of waters," and passing through several states, it is almost a national system, and it would be impossible for any system to be adopted by the states which would be local. consequently it is imperatively the duty of the government of the united states to take care of the improvement of the mississippi river. there are certain sections of the mississippi river that are naturally above overflow, made so by cut-offs. the fall of the mississippi river is about four inches to the mile. consequently, when there is one of those large bends, where the river runs around where the cut-off is, no increase of water is needed. the fall being four inches to the mile, the lands just above the cut-off are made higher and above overflow, whereas just below, the lands are overflowed or become liable to overflow. the improvement of the mississippi river itself for commercial purposes, as well as the protection of the lands, is dependent upon the building of the levees, for the levees of course confine the water within its banks, and give not only a greater volumn of water, but greater velocity for scouring purposes, which scours out the sand bars that are formed continually on the river. captain eads's plan of forming jetties where the banks cave, saves this deposit, as it were, in the water, which makes the sand bars. a mattress is put against the caving banks which prevents the alluvial land caving into the river which forms the sand bars below. then the increased volumn and increased velocity of the water wash out the channel, and improve it for commercial purposes, answering the object of protecting the land, and at the same time opening that immense channel for commerce. again, there are very important lines of railroad that are being built up and down either bank of the mississippi river, and it is necessary they should be protected for commercial purposes, as well as that the mississippi river should be improved for commercial purposes, and they can only be protected by the building of levees. we who have been on the river, and who feel that we are familiar with it, have closely watched the course of the commission, and i can only say, as an expression of the opinion of the people, that we indorse what the commission are doing. q. and desire still more of it? --a. yes, sir; it is absolutely necessary. what has already been expended by the government would be absolutely useless unless additional appropriations are made to complete the work. i would like to call your attention to this point. the atchafalaya, in louisiana, is a stream which runs from just about the mouth of red river into the gulf of mexico. the fall from the mouth of the atchafalaya and red river to the gulf of mexico is very much greater than the fall from the mouth of red river to the gulf by way of new orleans down the mississippi river. a few years ago the atchafalaya was a stream which could be waded across, but owing to the current gradually going through it, it commenced to wash out until now it has got to be a stream feet deep. q. is there or not any perceptible increase or diminution of the column of the mississippi itself as compared with , or , or years ago? --a. we think that our waters are higher now than they have ever been before. q. greater extremes, or is there a uniform flow? --a. a larger uniform flow, and it is attributed to the destruction of the forests, though that is mere theory. one of the arguments, at any rate, is that it is owing to the destruction of the forests in the northwest, which causes more rain storms and gives a larger rainfall. q. i have heard the idea advanced that the destruction of the woods and timber about the headwaters would, in case of rain, lead to a more rapid deposit in the stream, it would not be held back by the swampy nature of the soil, and so you might have more sudden rises and falls in the river than formerly without the volume of water or the uniform flow being increased or lessened? --a. i think--at least i have heard it so expressed by men experienced on the river--that the flow of the mississippi river is greater now than it was formerly. q. that one year with another, more water runs down the channel? --a. we can see a slight increase of the water of the mississippi river. i do not know how it may increase in the future, or if it will at all, but that is the opinion of people there now. the point i want to call your attention to specifically is the necessity for the prevention of the water of the red river going down through the atchafalaya, for if the atchafalaya washes out it leaves new orleans, a large commercial city, upon, as it were, an inland sea. the waters which overflow from the banks of the mississippi river on the front of arkansas go over into the red river and never come back into the mississippi river any more until they come out at the mouth of the red river. just at the mouth of red river, and before red river reaches the mississippi, is the atchafalaya. so that all of this overflow water that could be kept in the mississippi river by building the levees on the front of arkansas, now goes into red river and helps to wash out the atchafalaya, which will ruin the city of new orleans if that is not prevented. it is a very strong commercial point, for the commerce of new orleans is a matter to be considered in our affairs. q. i suppose there is no doubt that the atchafalaya furnishes an outlet, which relieves your plantations very much? --a. no, sir; it does not affect where i live at all. q. below the red river, in louisiana, is it not a relief in case of an overflow? --a. a partial relief; but in louisiana, when you get down that far, they pretty much have their system of levees built, which protect the sugar district; there are only probably a few gaps; and the mississippi river, when it gets that far down, does not rise in the same proportion that it does where i live, miles above. the mouth of the atchafalaya is miles below where i am. q. has this increased drainage from the atchafalaya resulted in any injury to the navigation of the river as far north? --a. not as yet; but if it is not stopped--the commission realize the fact i am now telling you--if it is not checked, the whole mississippi river will naturally turn through the atchafalaya, because the fall is so much greater. q. how do they propose to check it? --a. that is a matter the commission and scientific engineers would have to decide. q. can they block it at the outlet of the red river? --a. they propose to check it principally by stopping the water from the mississippi river that goes into the red river. there would in that way be an enormous quantity of water kept out of red river. that would be one method. what the engineers would consider sufficient or necessary to be done, of course i would not venture to express an opinion upon. q. what danger is there to the large mass of capital invested in these alluvial lands, unless something is done to prevent the overflows of which you speak? --a. the lands that are now liable to overflow are almost entirely abandoned. q. to how large an extent are they now abandoned? --a. taking in the whole of mississippi valley proper, from memphis down. q. has there been any computation or reasonable estimate that you know of the value of those lands affected by the overflow? --a. i have never heard of it; but i will say that those lands which are liable to overflow now, if brought into cultivation, are just as valuable as any we are cultivating; probably more so, because they have the alluvial deposits upon them. there is a deposit there from to inches. q. you have no idea of the extent of those lands? --a. i cannot give you the proportion. i will simply say it is a very large proportion. q. a third, or a half, or a quarter? --a. more than a half. i saw it estimated some time ago, at least i will give it as a statement published in the _planters' journal_, published in vicksburgh, that there are thirteen counties on the mississippi river which, if all cleared up and put into cultivation, are capable of producing the entire cotton crop of the united states, and i have heard the question discussed. q. what prevents their being cleared up and put into cultivation? --a. simply the overflow. q. have they ever been cleared as yet? --a. a great portion of them; and now destroyed because the levee system is not complete. on these lands all the negro labor which is not found profitable on the poorer lands in the older states, could be made extremely profitable, not only to the proprietors of the lands, but to the laborers themselves. q. do you think it would be within limit to say that one half of the alluvial plantation lands, such as you have described in arkansas, mississippi, and louisiana, is now practically destroyed by reason of this overflow occasioned by the destruction of the levee system? --a. yes, sir. q. at least one half? --a. at least one half of that which has been in cultivation, and which can be brought into cultivation. q. of that which is thus useless now, what portion has been formerly under cultivation? --a. it would be impossible for any one to form an estimate, because it is so varied. q. the amount of land that has been improved and which is now destroyed by reason of the overflow, you cannot state? --a. i cannot state it accurately; i will state it approximately; i should say at least one third. q. one third of the entire amount that has been improved is now destroyed by reason of the overflow, resulting from imperfections in the levee system? --a. yes, sir; that is what i mean to say. q. and of that which has not been improved but might be improved, how much? --a. at least half. * * * * * as i have devoted some space to the general condition of labor in the whole country, and as some of my statements and conclusions may be looked upon as extravagant, i deem it very pertinent to add to the appendix a portion of the testimony of dr. r. heber newton, given before senator blair's committee on the "_relations between capital and labor_," in new york city, september , (vol. ii., p. ). dr. newton is recognized as a clear thinker and a ready writer not only on theological but on economic questions as well. his testimony on the points to which i have asked attention was as follows: a labor question coming the broad fact that the united states census of estimated the average annual income of our wage-workers at a little over $ per capita, and that the census of estimates it at a little over $ per capita, is the quite sufficient evidence that there is a labor question coming upon us in this country. the average wages of indicated, after due allowance for the inclusion of women and children, a mass of miserably paid labor--that is, of impoverished and degraded labor. the average wages of indicated that this mass of semi-pauperized labor is rapidly increasing, and that its condition has become per cent worse in ten years. the shadow of the old-world _proletariat_ is thus seen to be stealing upon our shores. it is for specialists in political economy to study this problem in the light of the large social forces that are working such an alarming change in our american society. in the consensus of their ripened judgment we must look for the authoritative solution of this problem. i am not here to assume that role. i have no pet hobby to propose, warranted to solve the whole problem without failure. i do not believe there is any such specific yet out. * * * i the faults of labor plainly, labor's fault must be found with itself. . leaving upon one side the class of skilled labor, a large proportion of our wage-workers are notoriously inefficient. in the most common tasks one has to watch the average workingman in order to prevent his bungling a job. hands are worth little without some brains; as in the work done, so in the pay won. our labor is quite as largely uninterested--having no more heart than brains back of the hands. work is done mechanically by most workingmen, with little pride in doing it well, and little ambition to be continually doing it better. . there is too commonly as little sense of identity with the employer's interests, or of concern that any equivalent in work should be rendered for the pay received. in forms irritating beyond expression employers are made to feel that their employees do not in the least mind wasting their material, injuring their property, and blocking their business in the most critical moments. under what possible system, save in a grievous dearth of laborers, can such labor be well off, and incompetence and indifference draw high wages? . our labor is for the most part very thriftless. in the purchase and in the preparation of food--the chief item of expense in the workingman's family and that wherein economic habits count for most--men and women are alike improvident. the art of making money go the farthest in food is comparatively unknown. workingmen will turn up their noses at the fare on which a carlyle did some of the finest literary work of our century. i remember some time ago speaking to one of our butchers, who told me that workingmen largely ordered some of his best cuts. now an ample supply of nutritious food is certainly essential for good work, whether of the brain or of the brawn. the advance of labor is rightly gauged, among other ways, by its increasing consumption of wheat and meat, but the nutritiousness of meat is not necessarily dependent upon its being from the finest cut. i should like to see all men eating "french" chops and porter-house steaks if they could afford it; but when i know the average wages of our workingmen and the cost of living on the simplest possible scale, it is discouraging to learn such a fact as that which i have mentioned, since all the elements of necessary sustenance can be had in so much cheaper forms. * * * . labor must fault itself further, on the ground of its lack of power of combination and of its defective methods in combination. it has been by combination that the middle class has arisen, and by it that capital has so wonderfully increased. the story of the middle ages, familiar to us all, is the story of the rise of the industrial class by combination in guilds. labor's numbers, now a hindrance, might thus become a help. in a mob men trample upon each other; in an army they brace each other to the charge of victory. trades-unions represent the one effective form of combination won by american labor. trades-unions need no timid apologists. their vindication is in the historic tale of the successful advances which they have won for workingmen. called into being to defend labor against legislation in the interests of capital, in the days when to ask for an advance in wages led to workingmen's being thrown into prison, they have in england led on to the brilliant series of reforms which mark our century, as told so well in the articles by mr. howell (_the nineteenth century_ for october, ) and by mr. harrison (_the contemporary review_ for october, ). doubtless they have committed plenty of follies, and are still capable of stupid tyrannies that only succeed in handicapping labor, in alienating capital, and in checking productivity--that is, in lessening the sum total of divisible wealth. such actions are inevitable in the early stages of combination on the part of uneducated men, feeling a new sense of power, and striking blindly out in angry retaliation for real or fancied injuries. trades-unions are gradually, however, outgrowing their crude methods. the attempts, such as we have seen lately, of great corporations to break them up, is a piece of despotism which ought to receive an indignant rebuke from the people at large. labor must combine, just as capital has combined, in forming these very corporations. labor's only way of defending its interests as a class is through combination. it is the abuse and not the use of trades-unions against which resistance should be made. the chief abuse of our trades-unions has been their concentration of attention upon the organization of strikes. strikes seem to me in our present stage of the "free-contract" system entirely justifiable when they are really necessary. workingmen have the right to combine in affixing a price at which they wish to work. the supply of labor and the demand for goods, in the absence of higher considerations, will settle the question as to whether they can get the increase. the trying features of this method of reaching a result are incidental to our immature industrial system. strikes have had their part to play in the development of that system. we note their failures and forget their successes; but they have had their signal success, and have won substantial advantages for labor. their chief service, however, has been in teaching combination, and in showing labor the need of a better weapon by which to act than the strike itself. the strike requires long practice and great skill to wield it well. practice in it is more costly than the experiments at woolwich. mr. dolles, in his new work on political economy, gives some statistics which abundantly illustrate the folly of strikes, although he only gives one side of the case, namely, the losses which fall directly upon the laborers themselves. if to these were added the losses of capitalists, the aggregate would become colossal. in the manchester spinners struck, and lost $ , , in wages before the dispute was at an end. the next year their brethren at ashton and stayleybridge followed their example in striking and in losing $ , , . in the builders of manchester forfeited $ , by voluntary idleness. in the spinners of preston threw away $ , . eighteen years afterward their successor, seventeen thousand strong, slowly starved through thirty-six weeks and paid $ , , for the privilege. in the english iron-workers lost $ , by a strike. such losses marked, too, the strikes of the london builders in , and tailors in , and the northern iron-workers in . the strike of the belfast linen-weavers, which was ended a few weeks since by the mediation of the british association for the advancement of science, cost the operatives $ , , . the cost of strikes is expressible only in the aggregate of the savings of labor consumed in idleness, of the loss to the productivity of the country, of the disturbance of the whole mechanism of exchange, and of the injury wrought upon the delicate social organization by the strain thus placed upon it. the famous pittsburgh strike is estimated to have cost the country ten millions of dollars. when so costly a weapon is found to miss far more often than it hits, it is altogether too dear. * * * trades-unions in this country seem to me to be gravely at fault in clinging to such an obsolete weapon. they should have turned their attention to our modern improvement upon this bludgeon. arbitration is a far cheaper and more effective instrument of adjusting differences between capital and labor--a far more likely means of securing a fair increase of wages. it places both sides to the controversy in an amicable mood, and is an appeal to the reason and conscience--not wholly dead in the most soulless corporation. it costs next to nothing. it is already becoming a substitute for strikes in england, where the trades-unions are adopting this new weapon. * * * trades-unions ought, among us, to emulate the wisdom of european workingmen, and use their mechanism to organize forms of association which should look not alone to winning higher wages but to making the most of existing wages, and ultimately to leading the wage-system into a higher development. the provident features of the english trades-unions are commonly overlooked, and yet it is precisely in these provident features that their main development has been reached. mr. george howell shows that a number of societies, which he had specially studied, had spent in thirty years upward of $ , , through their various relief-funds, and $ , , only on strikes. mr. harrison speaks of seven societies spending in one year ( ) upward of $ , , upon their members out of work. he shows that seven of the great societies spent in less than per cent of their income on strikes; and states that per cent of union funds in england "have been expended in the beneficent work of supporting workmen in bad times, in laying by a store for bad times, and saving the country from a crisis of destitution and strife." trades-unions ought to be doing for our workingmen what trades-unions have already done in england. * * * it has been by the power of combination among the workingmen, developed through the trades-unions, that this long list of beneficent legislation--factory acts, mines-regulation acts, education acts, tenant-right acts, employers' liability acts, acts against "truck," acts against cruelty to animals, etc.--has been secured. it has been wrested from reluctant parliaments by the manifestations of strength on the part of the laboring classes. * * * our trades unions ought to be the means of securing one of the great necessities of labor in this country--accurate and generally diffused information concerning the state of the labor-market. were there any thorough combination in existence on the part of these unions in hard times, there could be diffused through the great centers of labor in the east regular reports of the labor-market in the different local centers of the country, such as would guide workingmen in their search for opportunities of work. * * * another action that our labor unions might take in the interest of the workingmen is in the development of co-operation. the story of european co-operation is one of the most encouraging tales of our modern industrial world. germany, for example, had in some , credit societies; of which reported , members; advances for the year, in loans to their members, $ , , , with a loss of one mark to every thalers, or - / cents on every $ --an indication of soundness in their financial operations that many capitalistic corporations might well envy. the rapid growth of these societies is bringing the omnipotence of credit to the aid of the workingmen in germany. we have within the past decade had a most encouraging growth of a somewhat similar form of co-operation in the building and loan associations, which are now estimated to number probably about , in the nation, with a membership of , , and an aggregated capital of $ , , . the co-operative stores have reached a wonderful development in england, with most beneficent results. there were stores reporting to the congress in , which showed aggregate sales of $ , , , with profits of $ , ; while scotland reported stores in the same year, representing sales of $ , , , and profits of $ , . against this showing our workingmen have comparatively little to offer. we have, it is true, had a great deal more of experimenting in co-operative distribution than is ordinarily supposed. co-operative stores began among us between and . the workingmen's protective union developed a great many stores at this time, which together did a business in their best days ranging from $ , , to $ , , per annum. in the decade - there was an extensive revival of co-operative stores; plans for wholesale agencies being even discussed. a few of these earlier stores still live. two great national orders have arisen, seeking to build up co-operative stores, among other aims. the grangers had in twenty state purchasing agencies, three of which did a business annually of $ , , and one of which did an annual business of $ , , . they claimed to have, about the same time, five steamboat or packet lines, fifty societies for shipping goods, thirty-two grain elevators, twenty-two warehouses for storing goods. in one hundred and sixty grange stores were recorded. in he same year it was officially stated that "local stores are in successful operation all over the country." the sovereigns of industry also developed co-operative distribution largely. in president earle reported that "ninety-four councils, selected from the whole, report a membership of , , and with an average capital of only $ did a business last year of $ , , . . it is safe to assume that the unreported sales will swell the amount to at least $ , , ." there have been numerous stores started apart from these orders. the finest success won is by the philadelphia industrial co-operative society. starting in with one store, it has now six stores. its sales for the quarter ending february , , were $ , . . a considerable increase of interest in such stores marks the opening of our decade. stores are starting up in various parts of the country. the grangers claim to have now hundreds of co-operative stores, upon the rochdale plan, in successful operation. texas reports officially ( ) seventy-five co-operative societies connected with this order. * * * we had an epoch of brilliant enthusiasm over co-operative agriculture in - , but little has been left from it. one form of agricultural co-operation, a lower form, has been astonishingly successful--the cheese-factories and creameries. it is estimated that there are now , of them in the country. in co-operative manufactures we have had many experiments, but few successes, from onward. massachusetts reported twenty-five co-operative manufactories in . all of them, however, were small societies. now, co-operation has its clearly marked limitations. it is of itself no panacea for all the ills that labor is heir to. but it can ameliorate some of the worst of those ills. it can effect great savings for our workingmen, and can secure them food and other necessaries of the best quality. if nothing further arises, the spread of co-operation may simply induce a new form of competition between these big societies; but no one can study the history of the movement without becoming persuaded that there is a moral development carried on which will, in some way as yet not seen to us, lead up the organization of those societies into some higher generalization, securing harmony. it is constantly and rightly said that business can never dispense with that which makes the secret of capital's success in large industry and trade, namely, generalship. co-operation can, it is admitted, capitalize labor for the small industries, in which it is capable of making workingmen their own employers, but it is said it can never, through committees of management, carry on large industries or trade. i can, however, see no reason why hereafter it may not enable large associations to hire superior directing ability at high salaries, just as paid generals give to republics the leadership which kings used to supply in monarchies. there are in the savings-banks of many manufacturing centers in our country amounts which if capitalized would place the workingmen of those towns in industrial independence; moneys which, in some instances, are actually furnishing the borrowed capital for their own employers. in such towns our workingmen have saved enough to capitalize their labor, but for lack of the power of combination, let the advantage of their own thrift inure to the benefit of men already rich. they save money and then loan it to rich men to use in hiring them to work on wages, while the profits go to the borrowers of labor's savings. but the chief value of co-operation, in my estimate, is its educating power. it opens a training school for labor in the science and art of association. labor once effectively united could win its dues, whatever they may be. the difficulties of such association have lain in the undeveloped mental and moral condition of the rank and file of the hosts of labor. * * * now, of this effort at co-operation i find scarcely any trace in the trade organizations of our workingmen. trades-unions have until very lately passed the whole subject by in utter silence. what has been done by workingmen in this country in the line of co-operation has been done outside of the great trade associations, which form the natural instrumentalities for organizing such combination. they offer the mechanism, the mutual knowledge, the preliminary training in habits of combination, which together should form the proper conditions for the development of co-operation. is it not a singular thing, considering the manifold benefits that would come to labor from such a development, that the attention of these great and powerful organizations has not heretofore been seriously called to this matter. * * * the story of such attempts as have already been made in this direction is one of a sad and discouraging nature to all who feel the gravity of this problem. again and again great organizations have risen on our soil, seeking to combine our trade associations and promising the millennium to labor, only to find within a few years suspicion, distrust, and jealousy eating the heart out of the order, and disintegration following rapidly as a natural consequence. the time must soon come let us hope, when the lesson of these experiences will have been learned. these are some of the salient faults of labor--faults which are patent to all dispassionate observers. the first step to a better state of things lies through the correction of these faults. whatever other factors enter into the problem, this is the factor which it concerns labor to look after if it would reach the equation of the good time coming. no reconstruction of society can avail for incompetent, indifferent, thriftless men who cannot work together. self-help must precede all other help. dreamers may picture utopias, where all our present laws are suspended, and demagogues may cover up the disagreeable facts of labor's own responsibility for its pitiful condition, but sensible workingmen will remember that, as renan told his countrymen after the franco-prussian war, "the first duty is to face the facts of the situation." there are no royal roads to an honest mastery of fortune, though there seem to be plenty of by-ways to dishonest success. nature is a hard school-mistress. she allows no makeshifts for the discipline of hard work and of self-denial, for the culture of all the strengthful qualities. her american school for workers is not as yet overcrowded. the rightful order of society is not as yet submerged on our shores. there are the rewards of merit for all who will work and wait. no man of average intelligence needs to suffer in our country if he has clear grit in him. "the stone that is fit for the wall," as the spanish proverb runs, "will not be left in the road." ii faults of capital but--for there is a very large "but" in the case--when all this is said, only the thorough going _doctrinaire_ will fail to see that merely half the case has been presented. there is a shallow optimism which, from the heights of prosperity, throws all the blame of labor's sufferings on labor's own broad shoulders; steels the heart of society against it because of these patent faults, and closes the hand against its help, while it sings the gospel of the gradgrinds--"as it was and ever shall be. amen." labor itself is not wholly responsible for its own faults. these faults spring largely out of the defective social conditions amid which the workingman finds himself placed. before we proceed to administer to him the whole measure of the "whopping" due for his low estate, we had better look back of him, to see why it is that he is as he is. the inefficiency of labor is by no means the fault of the individual laborer alone. heredity has bankrupted him before he started on his career. his parents were probably as inefficient as he is--and most likely _their_ parents also. one who sees much of the lower grades of labor ceases to wonder why children turn out worthless, knowing what the parents were. general francis a. walker, in opening the manufacturers' and mechanics' institute at boston lately, said: "there is great virtue in the inherited industrial aptitudes and instincts of the people. you can no more make a first-class dyer or a first-class machinist in one generation than you can in one generation make a cossack horseman or a tartar herdsman. artisans are born, not made." our incompetents may plead that they were not born competent. it does not readily appear what we are going to do about this working of heredity against labor, except as by the slow and gradual improvement of mankind these low strata of existences are lifted up to a higher plane. meanwhile we must blame less harshly and work a little more earnestly to better the human stock. the environment of labor handicaps still further this organic deficiency. in most of our great cities the homes of the workingmen are shockingly unwholesome; unsunned, badly drained, overcrowded. the tenements of new york are enough alone to take the life out of labor. city factories often are not much better. the quality of the food sold in the poorer sections of our cities--meat, bread, milk, etc.--is defectively nutritious, even where it is not positively harmful. the sanitary conditions are thus against labor. this could be largely reflected by the state and city authorities, and ought to be rectified in simple justice to society at large, which is now so heavily burdened by the manifold evils bred under such conditions. government guards carefully the rights both of land and capital by an immense amount of legislation and administration. has not labor a fair claim to an equal solicitude on the part of the state? health is the laborer's source of wealth, but it is by no means so farefully looked after as are the resources of the other two factors of production. it is only within the last three years that in new york we have had a satisfactory tenement-house law or a fair administration of any law bearing on this evil. there ought to be the exercise of some such large wisdom as led the city of glasgow to spend $ , , in reconstructing three thousand of the worst tenements of that city, with a consequent reduction of the death rate from per thousand to per thousand, and with a corresponding decrease in pauperism and crime. to this end our municipal governments should be taken out of party politics and made the corporation business that they are in german cities. we have in none of the states of our union any such legislation as that of the thorough system of factory laws in england, and we ought to supply the lack promptly. whatever may be said as to interference on the part of legislation with the rights of capital, the sufficient answer is that the whole advance of society has been a constant interference on the part of legislation with the merely natural action of the law of supply and demand; and that only thus has england, for example, secured the immense amelioration in the condition of the problem of labor and capital which marks her state to-day. it can be said also in this connection that if government has one business more peculiarly her own than another, it is to look after the class that most needs looking after; and that not simply from the interest of the class itself, which would rarely supply a basis for governmental interference, but in the interests of society at large--of the state itself. the state's first concern is to see her citizens healthful, vigorous, wealth-producing factors; and to this end bad sanitary conditions, which undermine the "health-capital" of labor, imperatively demand correction. the deeper seated the roots of labor's inefficiency in heredity and environment, the greater the need for an education that will develop whatever potencies may lie latent. inefficiency will rarely correct itself. superior ability must train it into better power. where is there any proper provision for such an education? state governments and our national government have for a number of years been fostering certain branches of industrial education, chiefly in the line of agriculture. the late report of the bureau of education upon industrial education presents a very encouraging summary of what is thus being done under the guidance of the state. it reports concerning forty-three colleges aided by state grants to give agricultural and mechanical training, besides a large number of technical departments in other colleges, industrial schools, evening classes for such instruction, etc. probably the finest example of industrial education that the country possesses is found in the hampton schools in virginia. of attempts, however, to combine general and intellectual education with practical training and handicrafts we have few examples. the hampton schools, already alluded to, present one of the best. professor adler's school in this city is very interesting in this respect. our common schools have until lately signally passed by the whole field of practical education. drawing is at last being generally introduced, and sewing is also being introduced to a small extent, i believe, especially in new england. but the schools which are supposed to be intended for the mass of the people, and which are supplied at the public cost, have made next to no provision for the practiced training of boys and girls to become self-supporting men and women--wealth-producing citizens; while the whole curriculum of the school-system tends to a disproportionate intellectuality, and to an alienation from all manual labor. * * * the necessity of the state's entering the educational field is disputed by no one; but if it is to educate children at the public cost it is bound, i think, to so educate its wards that they shall return to society the taxation imposed for their education. its justification in becoming school-master lies in the necessity of making out of the raw material of life citizens who shall be productive factors in the national wealth and conservators of its order. if, therefore, it is justified in teaching the elementary branches of education, if it is justified in adding to those elementary branches departments that may be considered in the nature of luxuries, how much more is it justified in training the powers by which self-support shall be won and wealth shall be added to society! * * * that such efforts to encourage industrial education would pay our government is best seen in the example of england. the international exhibition of revealed to england its complete inferiority to several continental countries in art-industries, and the cause of that inferiority in the absence of skilled workmen. the government at once began to study the problem, and out of this study arose the kensington museum, with its art-schools, and similar institutions throughout the country, which have already made quick and gratifying returns in the improvement of the national art-industries, and in the vast enrichment of the trade growing therefrom. concerning the uninterestedness of labor and its too common lack of any identification with capital, we must also look beyond labor itself to find the full responsibility of this evil. the whole condition of industrial labor has changed in our century. contrast the state of such labor a century ago with what it is now. then the handicraftsman worked in his own home, surrounded by his family, upon a task all the processes of which he had mastered, giving him thus a sense of interest and pride in the work being well and thoroughly done. now he leaves his home early and returns to it late, working during the day in a huge factory with several hundred other men. the subdivision of labor gives him now only a bit of the whole process to do, where the work is still done by hand, whether it be the making of a shoe or a piano. he cannot be master of a craft, but only master of a fragment of the craft. he cannot have the pleasure or pride of the old-time workman, for he _makes_ nothing. he sees no complete product of his skill growing into finished shape in his hands. what zest can there be in this bit of manhood? steam machinery is slowly taking out of his hands even this fragment of intelligent work, and he is set at feeding and watching the great machine which has been endowed with the brains that once were in the human toiler. man is reduced to being the tender upon a steel automaton which thinks and plans and combines with marvelous power, leaving him only the task of supplying it with the raw material, and of oiling and cleansing it. some few machines require a skill and judgment to guide them proportioned to their own astonishing capacities, and for the elect workmen who manage and guide them there is a new sense of the pleasure of power. but, for the most part, mechanism takes the life out of labor as the handicraft becomes the manufacture--or, more properly, the _machino_-facture; and the problem of to-day is, how to keep up the interest of labor in its daily task, from which the zest has been stolen. manufacturers ought to see this problem and hasten to solve it. those who profit most by the present factory system ought, in all justice, to be held responsible to those who suffer most from it. they ought to be held morally bound to make up to them in some way the interest in life that has gone out with the old handicrafts. they could interest their hands _out_ of the working hours, and in ways that would give them a new interest _in_ their working hours. * * * not a few of our manufacturers are already opening their eyes to the facts of the industrial problem, and, with far-seeing generosity and human brotherliness that will, according to the eternal laws, return even the good things of this world unto them, they are providing their workingmen with libraries, reading-rooms, and halls for lectures and entertainments. they are encouraging and stimulating the formation of literary and debating societies, bands, and clubs, and such other things as give social fellowship and mental interest. all this can be done at comparatively small cost. the men in the employ of a great establishment can be taught a new interest in their task as they learn to understand its processes and the relation of these processes to society at large, which can easily be done by lectures, etc. such work as this is a work that demands the leadership, the organizing power, which the employer can best furnish. at the last session of the social science association an interesting paper sketched some of these efforts. in what wiser way could our wealthy manufacturers use a portion of the money won for them by the labor which has exhausted its own interest in its task? such personal interest on the part of employers in their employees leads up to a clue to that other branch of the uninterestedness of labor--its lack of identification with the welfare of capital--its lack of any feeling of loyalty toward the capitalist. how can anything else be fairly expected in our present state of things from the _average_ workingman under the _average_ employer? i emphasize the "average" because there are employees of exceptional intelligence and honor, as there are employers of exceptional conscientiousness, anxious to do fairly by their men. the received political economy has taught the average workingman that the relations of capital and labor are those of hostile interests; that profits and wages are in an inverse ratio; that the symbol of the factory is a see-saw, on which capital goes up as labor goes down. as things are, there is unfortunately too much ground for this notion, as the workman sees. mr. carroll d. wright, in the fourteenth annual report of the massachusetts bureau of labor ( ), shows that in the percentage of wages paid to the value of production, in over , establishments, was . ; and that in it was . . this means that the workingmen's share of the returns of their own labor, so far from increasing, has decreased one sixth in five years. the workingman is disposed to believe in the light of such figures that the large wealth accumulated by his employer represents over and above a fair profit the increased wages out of which he naturally regards himself as being mulcted. he may be thick-headed, but he can see that in such a see-saw of profits _versus_ wages the superior power of capital has the odds all in its favor. he learns to regard the whole state of the industrial world as one in which _might_ makes _right_, and feebleness is the synonym of fault. how, in the name of all that is reasonable, can the average man take much interest in his employer or identity himself with that employer under such a state of things as the economy sanctioned by the employer has taught him? this is aggravated by the whole character of our modern industrial system. the factory system is a new feudalism, in which a master rarely deals directly with his hands. superintendents, managers, and "bosses" stand between him and them. he does not know them; they do not know him. the old common feeling is disappearing. and--this is a significant point that it behooves workingmen to notice--the intermediaries are generally workingmen who have risen out of the ranks of manual labor and have lost all fellow-feeling with their old comrades, without gaining the larger sympathy with humanity which often comes from better culture. the hardest men upon workingmen are ex-workingmen. it is stated, on what seems to be good authority, that the general superintendent of the great corporation which lately has shown so hard a feeling towards its operatives when on a strike was himself only ten years ago a telegraph-operator. a further aggravating feature of this problem is the increasing tendency of capital to associated action. what little knowledge of his employees or sympathy with them the individual manufacturer might have is wholly lost in the case of the corporation. to the stockholders of a great joint-stock company, many of whom are never on the spot, the hundreds of laborers employed by the company are simply "hands"--as to whose possession of hearts or minds or souls the by-laws rarely take cognizance. here there is plainly a case where capital--the party of brains and wealth--the head of the industrial association, should lead off in a systematic effort and renew, as far as may be, the old human tie, for which no substitute has ever been devised. to conciliate the interests of the classes, and identify labor with capital, individual employers must re-establish personal relationships between themselves and their men. what might be done in this way, and how, this being done, the present alienation of feeling on the part of our working-men would largely disappear, must be evident to any one who has watched some of the beautiful exemplifications of this relationship which have already grown into being on our shores. i know of one large manufacturer, in a city not a hundred miles from this, who started to enter the ministry as a young man, but found to his intense disappointment that he had no aptitude for the work of a preacher, and turned his attention, on the insistent advice of those nearest to him, to active business. he took up the business which his father had left him at his death and had left largely involved. his first task was to pay off, dollar for dollar, all the debts which his father had bequeathed him, although in most instances they had been compromised by his creditors. he then threw the energy of his being into development of the business, and, in the course of a few years, put it at the forefront of that line in his native city. into his business he breathed the spirit of love to god and man which had moved him originally to take up the work of the ministry. he felt himself ordained to be what carlyle would have called a "captain of industry." from the start he established personal, human, living relationships with his men. he taught them by deed rather than by word to consider him their friend. he was in the habit of calling in upon their families in a social and respecting way. in all their troubles and adversities he trained them to counsel with him, and gave them the advantage of his riper judgment and larger vision. in cases of exigency his means were at their service in the way of loans to tide them over the hard times. his friends have seen, more than once, coming from his private office some of the hard-fisted men of toil in his employ, with tears streaming down their faces. he had called them into the office on hearing of certain bad habits into which they had fallen, and so impressive had been his talk with them, that they left his presence with the most earnest resolves to do better in the future. the result of all this relationship has been that during some fifteen years of the management of this large business he has rarely changed his men, and while strikes have abounded around him he has never known a strike. i hold in my possession a letter from one of our leading iron-manufacturers in this country, who, in response to an appeal for participation in a charity of this city, gave answer that it had been a practice of the firm to invest a certain portion of their profits in developing the comforts of their workingmen, and that they were obliged to limit their desire to give in charity in order that they might be able to build homes, club-rooms, reading-rooms, and all the _et ceteras_ of a really civilized community in their work-village. these are examples, in our own country, of what might be done. one of the most beautiful models that i know of in modern history is furnished by the town to which reference has already been made--the town of mulhouse, where, after some thirty years, the spirit of brotherliness has so entered into the relationships of capital and labor that a firm would be disreputable which there attempted to carry on business as business is ordinarily done here. all the manufacturers plan out, organize, and carry on what to most of us would seem impossible schemes for the amelioration and uplifting of the condition of their working people. no one wonders that, as he walks through the town which his large hearted philanthropy imbued with this fine spirit, the workingmen salute the originator of these schemes as "father peter." in addition to this personal, human relationship, capital might and should, in all justice and humanity, identify the pecuniary interests of labor with its own interests. what is known as industrial partnership is simply a solution of this branch of the problem. the principle is simply that of giving labor a pecuniary interest in the profits of the establishment _pro rata_ with his own wages. a _bonus_ is set on frugality and industry and conscientiousness of work by making the hands small partners in the concern. * * * the american prejudice against color. * * * * * an authentic narrative, showing how easily the nation got into an uproar. * * * * * by william g. allen, a refugee from american despotism. * * * * * london: w. and f. g. cash, , bishopsgate-street-without. edinburgh: john menzies. dublin: james mc. glashan and j. b. gilpin * * * * * preface. extract of a letter from hon. gerrit smith, of new york, member of congress, to joseph sturge, esq., of birmingham, england. (by permission of mr. sturge.) _"peterboro', new york, march rd_, . "i take great pleasure in introducing to you my much esteemed friend, professor wm. g. allen. i know him well, and know him to be a man of great mental and moral worth. i trust, in his visit to england, he will be both useful and happy. "very truly, your friend and brother, "gerrit smith." * * * * * "commending professor allen to the friends of the colored american citizens who are denied their rights in their own country, and wishing him every success in the object before him, "i am, respectfully, "_birmingham, mo., d._, . "joseph sturge." * * * * * "_clapham, august th_, . "my dear sir:-- "your determination to spend some time in great britain, and to employ yourself, as opportunities occur, in giving lectures and delivering addresses upon american topics, including the social position of the free colored population--for which your education and personal experience eminently fit you--has given me sincere pleasure. i trust you will meet with ample encouragement from the friends of abolition throughout the united kingdom, to whose sympathy and kindness i would earnestly recommend you, and still more your heroic and most estimable lady. "believe me, most truly yours, "professor w. g. allen "george thompson." contents. chapter i.--introduction ii.--personalities iii.--nobility and servility iv.--the mob v.--dark days vi.--brightening up,--grand result vii.--conclusion a short personal narrative by william g allen chapter i. introduction many persons having suggested that it would greatly subserve the anti-slavery cause in this country, to present to the public a concise narrative of my recent narrow escape from death, at the hands of an armed mob in america, a mob armed with tar, feathers, poles, and an empty barrel spiked with shingle nails, together with the reasons which induced that mob, i propose to give it. i cannot promise however, to write such a book as ought to be written to illustrate fully the bitterness, malignity, and cruelty, of american prejudice against color, and to show its terrible power in grinding into the dust of social and political bondage, the hundreds of thousands of so-called free men and women of color of the north. this bondage is, in many of its aspects, far more dreadful than that of the _bona fide_ southern slavery, since its victims--many of them having emerged out of, and some of them never having been into, the darkness of personal slavery--have acquired a development of mind, heart, and character, not at all inferior to the foremost of their oppressors. the book that ought to be written, _i_ ought not to attempt; but if no one precedes me, i shall consider myself bound by necessity, and making the attempt, lay on, with all the strength i can possibly summon, to american caste and skin-deep democracy. the mob occurred on sabbath (!) evening, january the th, , in the village of phillipsville, near fulton, oswego county, new york. the cause,--the intention, on my part, of marrying a white young lady of fulton,--at least so the public surmised. chapter ii. personalities. i am a quadroon, that is, i am of one-fourth african blood, and three-fourths anglo-saxon. i graduated at oneida institute, in whitesboro', new york, in ; subsequently studied law with ellis gray loring, esq., of boston, massachusetts; and was thence called to the professorship of the greek and german languages, and of rhetoric and belles-lettres of new york central college, situated in mc. grawville, cortland county,--the only college in america that has ever called a colored man to a professorship, and one of the very few that receive colored and white students on terms of perfect equality, if, indeed, they receive colored students at all. in april, , i was invited to fulton, to deliver a course of lectures. i gladly accepted the invitation, and none the less that fulton had always maintained a high reputation for its love of impartial freedom, and that its citizens were highly respected for their professed devotion to the teachings of christianity. i am glad to say, that on this occasion i was well received, and at the close of my first lecture was invited to spend the evening at the house of the rev. lyndon king. this gentleman having long been known as a devoted abolitionist,--a fervid preacher of the doctrine, that character is above color,--and as one of the ablest advocates of the social, political, and religious rights of the colored man, i, of course, had a pleasant visit with the family; and, remaining with them several days, conceived a deep interest in one of the elder's daughters,--miss mary e. king, who was then preparing to enter the college in mc. grawville. i accompanied miss king to mc. grawville, where she remained in college, a year and a half. boarding in tenements quite opposite each other, we frequently met in other than college halls, and as freely conversed,--miss k. being of full age, and legally, as well as intellectually and morally, competent to discuss the subjects in which, it is generally supposed, young men and women feel an absorbing interest. it is of no consequence what we said; and if it were, the reader, judging in the light of the results, will perhaps as correctly imagine that, as i can possibly describe it. i pass on at once, therefore, simply stating that at the close of the year and a half, my interest in the young lady had become fully reciprocated, and we occupied a relation to each other much more significant than that of teacher and pupil. miss king returned to her father's house in october, . i visited the family in december following. then and there we discussed the subject of marriage more fully between ourselves; and deeming it a duty obligatory upon us, by an intelligent regard for our future happiness, to survey, before consummating an engagement even, the whole field of difficulties, embarrassments, trials, insults and persecutions, which we should have to enter on account of our diversity of complexion, and to satisfy ourselves fully as to our ability to endure what we might expect to encounter; we concluded to separate unengaged, and, in due season, each to write to the other what might be the results of more mature deliberation. this may seem unromantic to the reader; nevertheless, it was prudent on our part. after remaining in fulton a week, i left for boston. several letters then passed between us, and in january last, our engagement was fixed. i will not speak of myself, but on the part of miss king, this was certainly a bold step. it displayed a moral heroism which no one can comprehend who has not been in america, and who does not understand the diabolical workings of prejudice against color. whatever a man may be in his own person,--though he should have the eloquence, talents, and character of paul and apollos, and the angel gabriel combined,--though he should be as wealthy as croesus,--and though, in personal appearance, he should be as fair as the fairest anglo-saxon, yet, if he have but one drop of the blood of the african flowing in his veins, no white young lady can ally herself to him in matrimony, without bringing upon her the anathemas of the community, with scarcely an exception, and rendering herself an almost total outcast, not only from the society in which she formerly moved, but from society in general. such is american caste,--the most cruel under the sun. and such it is, notwithstanding the claims set up by the american people, that they are heaven's vicegerents, to teach to men, and to nations as well, the legitimate ideas of christian democracy. to digress a moment. this caste-spirit of america sometimes illustrates itself in rather ridiculous ways. a beautiful young lady--a friend of mine--attended, about two years since, one of the most aristocratic schools of one of the most aristocratic villages of new york. she was warmly welcomed in the highest circles, and so amiable in temper was she, as well as agreeable in mind and person, that she soon became not only a favorite, but _the_ favorite of the circle in which she moved. the _young gentlemen_ of the village were especially interested in her, and what matrimonial offer might eventually have been made her, it is not for me to say. at the close of the second term, however, she left the school and the village; and then, for the first time, the fact became known (previously known only to her own room-mate) that she was slightly of african blood. reader,--the consternation and horror which succeeded this "new development," are, without exaggeration, perfectly indescribable. the people drew long breaths, as though they had escaped from the fangs of a boa constrictor; the old ladies charged their daughters, that should miss ---- be seen in that village again, by no means to permit themselves to be seen in the street with her; and many other charges were delivered by said mothers, equally absurd, and equally foolish. and yet this same young lady, according to their own previous showing, was not only one of the most beautiful in person and manners who had ever graced their circle, but was also of fine education; and in complexion as white as the whitest in the village. truly, this, our human nature, is extremely strange and vastly inconsistent! confessedly, as a class, the quadroon women of new orleans are the most beautiful in america. their personal attractions are not only irresistible, but they have, in general, the best blood of america in their veins. they are mostly white in complexion, and are, many of them, highly educated and accomplished; and yet, by the law of louisiana, no man may marry a quadroon woman, unless he can prove that he, too, has african blood in his veins. a law involving a greater outrage on propriety, a more blasphemous trifling with the heart's affections, and evincing a more contemptible tyranny, those who will look at the matter from the beginning to the end, will agree with me, could not possibly have been enacted. colonel fuller, of the "_new york mirror_," writing from new orleans, gives some melancholy descriptions--and some amusing ones too--of the operations of this most barbarous law. one i especially remember. a planter, it seems, had fallen deeply in love with a charming quadroon girl. he desired to marry her; but the law forbade. what was he to do? to tarnish her honour was out of the question; he had too much himself to seek to tarnish hers. here was a dilemma. but he was not to be foiled. what true heart will be, if there be any virtue in expedients? "----in love, his thoughts came down like a rushing stream." at last he got it. a capital thought, which could have crept out of no one's brain, save that of a most desperate lover. he hit upon the expedient of extracting a little african blood from the veins of one of his slaves, and injecting it into his own. the deed done, the letter of the law was answered. he made proposals, was accepted, and they were married,--he being willing to risk his caste in obedience to a love higher and holier than any conventionalism which men have ever contrived to establish. o, cupid, thou art a singular god! and a most amazing philosopher! thou goest shooting about with thy electrically charged arrows, bringing to one common level human hearts, however diverse in clime, caste, or color. let not the reader suppose, however, that the white people of america are in the habit of exercising such honor towards the people of color, as is here ascribed to this planter. far from it. the laws of the southern states, on the one hand, (i allude not now to any particular law of louisiana, but to the laws of the slave states in general), have deliberately, and in cold blood, withheld their protection from every woman within their borders, in whose veins may flow but half a drop of african blood; while the prejudice against color of the northern states, on the other hand, is so cruel and contemptuous of the rights and feelings of colored people, that no white man would lose his caste in debauching the best educated, most accomplished, virtuous and wealthy colored woman in the community, but would be mobbed from maine to delaware, should he with that same woman attempt honorable marriage. henry ward beecher, (brother of mrs. stowe) in reference to prejudice against color, has truly said of the northern people--and the truth in this case in startling and melancholy--that, "with them it is less sinful to break the whole decalogue towards the colored people, than to keep a single commandment in their favour." but to return to the narrative. miss king, previously to the consummation of our engagement, consulted her father, who at once gave his consent. her sister not only consented, but, thanks to her kind heart, warmly approved the match. her brothers, of whom there were many, were bitterly opposed. mrs. king--a step-mother only--was not only also bitterly opposed, but inveterately so. bright fancies and love-bewildering conceptions were what, in her estimation, we ought not to be allowed to indulge. in passing, it is proper to say, that this lady, though not lacking a certain benevolence,--especially that sort which can pity the fugitive, give him food and raiment, or permit him at her table even,--is, nevertheless, extremely aristocratic of heart and patronizing of temper. this statement is made upon quite a familiar acquaintance with mrs. king, and out of no asperity of feeling. i cherish none, but only pity for those who nurture a prejudice, which, while it convicts them of the most ridiculous vanity, at the same time shrivels their own hearts and narrows their own souls. mrs. king was at first mild in her opposition, but finally resorted to such violence of speech and act, as to indicate a state of feeling really deplorable, and a spirit diametrically opposed to all the teachings of the christian religion--a religion which she loudly professed, and which assures us that "god is no respecter of persons." i judge not mortal man or woman, but leave mrs. king, and all those who thought it no harm because of my complexion, to abuse the most sacred feelings of my heart, to their conscience and their god. chapter iii. nobility and servility. the reader will doubtless and also correctly imagine that situated as miss king has now been shown to be, she could not have experienced many very pleasant hours either of night or day,--pleasant so far as the sympathy of her numerous relatives and friends could serve to make them such. fortunately, however she was not of that class whose happiness depends upon the smiles or the approbation of others earned at any cost--but upon a steady obedience to what in her inmost soul, she regarded as demanded by the laws of rectitude and justice. that a young lady could break away without a struggle from the counsellors, friends and companions of her youth, is not to be expected. miss king had her struggles; and the letter written to me by her on the consummation of our engagement evinced their character, and also her grandeur and nobility of soul:-- "i have endeavoured to solve, honorably, conscientiously and judiciously, the greatest problem of human life; and god and the holy angels have assisted me in thus solving. friends may forsake me, and the world prove false, but the sweet assurance that i have your most devoted love, and that that love will strengthen and increase in proportion as the regard of others may diminish, is the only return i ask." what vows i uttered in the secret chambers of my heart as i read the above and similar passages of that letter, let the reader imagine who may be disposed to credit me with the least aptitude of appreciating whatsoever in human nature is grand and noble, or in the human spirit, which is lovely, and true, and beautiful, and of good report. throughout the letter there was also a tone of gentle sadness--not that of regret for the course in contemplation,--but that which holily lingers around a loving heart, which, while it gives itself away, may not even lightly inflict the slightest pang upon other hearts to which it has long been bound by dearly-cherished ties. but family opposition was not the only opposition which miss king expected to, or did indeed encounter. whoever sought to marry yet, and did the deed unblessed or uncursed of public praise or wrath? and aside from extraordinary circumstances, it is so pleasant to dip one's finger into a pie matrimonial. the following paragraph of a letter written to me by miss king a few days after i left her in december, amused me much,--it may possibly amuse the reader:-- "professor,--you would smile if you only knew what an excitement your visit here caused among the good people of fulton. some would have it that we were married, and others said if we were not already married, they were sure that we would be; for they knew that you would not have spent a whole week with us if there had been no love existing between you and myself. some of the villagers came to see me the day after you left, and begged of me, if _i were determined to marry you, to do so at once, and not to keep the public in so much suspense_." friend, have you ever heard or read of anything which came nearer to clapping the climax of the ridiculous than this most singular appeal couched in the last clause of this quotation, to the benevolence of miss king? certainly, if anything could have come nearer, it would have been the act of a certain lady who, having heard during this selfsame visit that we were to be married on the morrow, actually had her sleigh drawn up to the door, and would have driven off to the elder's to "_stop the wedding_" had not her husband remonstrated. it is true, this lady opposed the marriage, not on the ground of an immorality, but of its inexpediency considering the existent state of american sentiment; but then it is curious to think of what amazing powers she must have imagined herself possessed. public opposition however, soon began to assume a more decided form. neighbours far and near, began to visit the house of elder king, and to adopt such remonstrance and expostulation as, in their view the state of the case demanded. some thought our marriage would be dreadful, a most inconceivably horrid outrage. some declared it would be vulgar, and had rather see every child of theirs dead and buried, than take the course which, they were shocked to find, miss king seemed bent to do. some sillier than all the rest, avowed that should the marriage be permitted to take place, it would be a sin against almighty god; and it may be, they thought it would call down thunder-bolts from the chamber of heaven's wrath, to smite us from the earth. "there is no peace," saith my god, "to the wicked."--and surely, clearer exemplifications of this saying of holy writ were never had, than in the brain-teasings, mind-torturings and heart-rackings of these precious people, out of deference to our welfare. may they be mercifully remembered and gloriously rewarded. it is proper to introduce to the reader at this point, our cherished friends,--mr. and mrs. porter,--and to say at once, that words are not expressive enough to describe the gratitude we owe them, nor in what remembrance we hold them in the deepest depths of our hearts. they stood by us throughout that season of intended bloody persecution, turning neither to the right nor the left, nor counting their own interests or lives as aught in comparison to the friendship they bore us, or to their love of the principles of truth, justice and humanity. amid the raging billows, they stood as a rock to which to cling. we had known these friends for months, nay, for years. they had also been students in mc. grawville, but had subsequently married, and at the time of my december visit to fulton were teachers of a school in phillipsville,--where, it may be proper here to say, was located the depôt of the fulton trains of cars. not only belonging to that class of persons, (rare in america, even among those who claim to be abolitionists and christians), persons who do not _profess_ to believe merely, but really _do_ believe in the doctrine of the "unity, equality, and brotherhood of the human race;" and who are willing to accord to others the exercise of rights which they claim for themselves; but, having also great purity of heart and purpose, mr. and mrs. porter did not, as they could not, sympathise with those whose ideas of marriage, as evinced in their conversation respecting miss king and myself, never ascended beyond the region of the material into that of the high, the holy and the spiritual. of all the families of fulton and phillipsville, this was the only one which _publicly_ spoke approval of our course. so that, therefore it will be expected, that while those true hearts were friendly to us, they were equally with ourselves targets at which our enemies might shoot. i have introduced mr. and mrs. porter at this point, because, at this point, their services to us commenced. but for these faithful friends, miss king would not have known whither to have fled when she found as she did, her own home becoming any other than a desirable habitation, owing to the growing opposition and bitter revilings of her step-mother, and the impertinent intermeddlings of others. thus far the opposition which miss king had experienced, though disagreeable, had not become too much for the "utmost limit of human patience." soon, however, a crisis occurred, in the arrival in fulton, of the rev. john b. king. this gentleman's visit was unexpected, and it is due to him to say, that he did not come on any errand connected with this subject; for until he arrived in fulton, he did not know of the correspondence which had existed between his sister and myself. though unexpected, his visit as already intimated, was fraught with results, which in their immediate influence, were extremely sad and woeful. mr. king was a reform preacher, and had even come from washington, district of columbia, where he had been residing for the last two years, to collect money to build a church which should exclude from membership those who held their fellow-men in bondage, and who would not admit the doctrines of the human brotherhood. just the man to assist us, one would have thought. but it is easy to preach and to talk. who cannot do that? it is easier still to _feel_--this is humanity's instinct--for the wrongs and outrages inflicted upon our kind. but to plant one's feet rough-shod upon the neck and heels of a corrupt and controlling public sentiment, to cherish living faith in god, and, above all to crush the demon in one's own soul,--ah! this it is which only the _great_ can do, who, only of men, can help the world onward up to heaven. mr. king had scarcely entered the house, and been told the story of our engagement, when he manifested the most unworthy and unchristian opposition. unworthy and unchristian, since he frankly averred, that had i the remaining fourth anglo-saxon blood, he would be proud of me as a brother. he was bitter, not as wormwood only, but as wormwood and gall combined. he would not tolerate me as a visitor at his house, in company with his sister, unless i came in the capacity of driver or servant. a precious brother this, and a most glorious christian teacher. i have said that the arrival of this gentleman marked a crisis in the history of our troubles; and it did so in the fact that by the powerful influence which he exerted over his father, adverse to our marriage, and by the aid, strength and comfort which he gave to his step-mother; the elder was at last brought to a reconsideration of his views, and to abandon the ground which he had hitherto maintained with so much heroism and valour. i shall say no hard things of elder king; now that the storm is over, i prefer to leave him to his own reflections, and especially to this one, which may be embodied in the following question,--_what is the true relation which a christian reformer sustains to public opinion?_ had the elder, supposing it to have been possible, assumed towards us a position more adverse than the one he did in this singular and unexpected change, the results could not, for the time being at least, have been sadder or more disastrous. how it affected the feelings of his daughter, the reader can well imagine, who will remember, that upon her father she had hitherto relied as upon a pillar of strength, and especially as her rock of refuge from the storms which beat upon her from without. stricken thus, a weak spirit would have given up in despair; but not so with this heroic and noble-minded lady, upon whom misfortune seemed to have no other effect than to increase her faith in god. elder king now, not as hitherto out of his deference to the feelings of his wife, but of his own accord, averred that i should on no consideration whatever, be permitted to enter his house, to hold a conference with his daughter, providing said conference was to be promotive of our marriage. miss king was compelled, therefore, to make an arrangement with mr. porter, by which our interviews should be held in his house when i should arrive, as i was expected to do so in a few days, from boston. strange to say, however, and paradoxical as it may seem, on the day on which i was expected to arrive in fulton, the elder himself took his daughter from fulton to phillipsville to meet me. i reached phillipsville, on saturday afternoon, january th, and, of course, was not advised of this altered state of things, until my arrival there--the elder's change having taken place within a very few days previous. the method which elder king took to evince his hostility--his exclusion of me from his house--was extremely injudicious; and i have no doubt that he, himself, now sincerely regrets it. it excited to action the mob spirit which had all along existed in the hearts of the people, and was only awaiting the pretext which the elder gave--the placing of me before the community, as a marauder upon the peace of his family. the mob, also, gave to the matter what the king family, evidently afterwards, greatly deplored--extraordinary notoriety. elder king would certainly have displayed more worldly sagacity, to say nothing of christian propriety, to have admitted me into his house as usual, where we could, all together, have reasoned the matter; and if prejudices could not have been conciliated, the elder, at all events, by his previous acquaintance with my character, had every reason to suppose that i should have conducted myself as became a gentleman and a christian. but so it is,--prejudice thus bewilders the faculties, and defeats the objects which it aims most to accomplish. chapter iv. the mob. hardly unlooked for by myself was this mob, especially after i had learned of the direction which "the subject" had taken in the family of mr. king. on sabbath afternoon, january th, while mr. and mrs. porter, mrs. porter's sister, miss king, and myself, were enjoying ourselves in social conversation, a gentleman from the village of fulton called at the residence of mr. porter, to give an account of events as they were transpiring in the village. this gentleman was decidedly opposed to "amalgamation," expressed the utmost surprise that mr. porter should for a moment suppose that god ever designed the inter-marriage of white and colored persons,--but he was, nevertheless, a man of friendly disposition,--and as a friend he came to mr. porter. _we were to be mobbed_,--so this gentleman informed us. he advised escape on the part of mr. porter and myself, otherwise the house would be demolished! all fulton, since saturday night, he informed us, had been in arms. crowds of men could be seen in the streets, at every point, discussing the subject of our marriage, and with feelings of the most extraordinary excitement; and similar discussions, he added, had been held during the live-long night preceding, in all the grog shops and taverns of the village. all sorts of oaths had been uttered, and execrations vented. tar, feathers, poles, and an empty barrel spiked with shingle nails had been prepared for my especial benefit; and, so far as i was concerned, it must be escape or death. mr. porter was to be mobbed, he said, for offering me entertainment, and for being supposed friendly to our union. this friend did not understand the whole plan of the onslaught, but he gave sufficient information to justify us in surmising that no harm was intended to be inflicted upon miss king, or any lady of the house. knowing the brutal character of prejudice against color, and knowing also that i was supposed to be about to commit the unpardonable sin, i confess, that though surprised to learn that the mob intended murder, yet i was not surprised to learn many of the details which this friend so kindly gave us. mr. porter suggested that after supper, he and i should retire to a neighbour's house, he supposing that if the mob should be foiled in their attempt to get us into their hands, they would, after all, pass away, and thus the matter blow quietly over. the suggestion, however, was not carried into effect; for we had scarcely finished tea ere they (the mob) were down upon us like wild beasts out of a den. we first observed some twenty men turning a corner in the direction of the house; then about thirty or forty more, and soon the streets were filled with men--some four or five hundred. in the rear of this multitude there was driven a sleigh in which, we rightly conjectured, miss king was to be taken home. from the statements of the leader of the mob--statements afterwards given to the public--it seems that a committee, composed of members of the mob, and constituted by the mob, suggested before reaching the house that if we were still unmarried there should be no violence done, as they intended to carry off the lady. a portion of this committee also made it their duty to gain access to the apartment where our company were sitting, and to inform us of the intentions of the assembled multitude below, while the remainder of the committee endeavoured by speeches and reasoning to quiet the mob spirit, which soon after the assembling, began to reach its climax. this committee was composed of some of the most "respectable" men of fulton--lawyers, merchants, and others of like position. the reader will doubtless think it strange that such men should be members of a mob; and so it would be, if prejudice against color were not the saddest of all comments upon the meanness of human depravity. in this, more than in anything else did the malignant character of this american feeling evince itself--that to drive me off or kill me, if need be, the "respectable" and the base were commingled, like-- "kindred elements into one." men who, under other circumstances, would have been regarded as beneath contempt, the vulgar minded and vulgar hearted--with these, even christians (so called) did not hesitate to affiliate themselves in order to crush a man who was guilty of no crime save that, having a colored skin, he was supposed to be about to marry a lady a few shades lighter than himself. o, the length and breadth, the height and depth, the cruelty and the irony of a prejudice which can so belittle human nature. but to the committee again. this committee declared themselves to us to be a self-constituted body. but whether self-constituted or otherwise, it matters not, since they were to all intents and purposes members of the mob--if not in _deed_, still in spirit and in heart. they meant no more than to save the honor of their village by preventing, if possible, bloodshed and death. they were not men of better principles than the rabble--they were only men of better breeding. i do them no injustice. the tenor of their discourse to us at the house of mr. porter, the spirit of an article published by one of their number a few days after in the "_oswego daily times_," and the statements of the mob-leader, clearly satisfy me that had we been married, they (the committee) deeming that our marriage would have been a greater disgrace to their village than even bloodshed or death, would have left us to our fate--miss king to be carried off, or perchance grossly insulted, and myself left, as the spiked barrel especially evinced, to torture and to death. that this committee saved my life, i have no doubt; and i have publicly thanked them for the act. so i would be grateful even to the man who took deadly aim at me with his revolver, and only missed his mark. previous to the death which i was to suffer in the spiked barrel, i was to undergo various torturings and mutilations of person, aside from the tarring and feathering--some of these mutilations too shocking to be named in the pages of this book. mr. porter, as i have already said, was also to be mobbed; but, as we afterwards ascertained, only to be coated with tar and feathers and ridden on a rail. the leader of the mob subsequently averred that so decided was the feeling in fulton, that in addition to the hundreds who, in person, made the onslaught, there were hundreds more in waiting in the village, who, it was understood between the two companies, were ready to join the onslaughting party at but a moment's warning. indeed, mrs. allen now assures me that on her way home that evening, conducted by a portion of the committee, she twice met crowds of men still coming on to join the multitudes already congregated at mr. porter's. one of the committee, fearing that if all fulton should get together, excited as the people were, there would be bloodshed in spite of all that could be said or done, entreated one of these crowds to go back. but, heeding him not; on the villains went, some of them uttering oaths and imprecations, some of them hurrahing, and many of them proceeding with great solemnity of step--these last doubtless being church-members; for the mob was not only on sabbath evening, but it is a notorious fact which came out early afterwards, that the churches on that evening were, every one of them, quite deserted. reader, the life of a colored man in america, save as a slave, is regarded as far less sacred than that of a dog. there is no exaggeration in this statement--i am not writing of exceptions. it is true there are white people in america who, while the colored man will keep in what they call "his place," will treat him with a show of respect even. but even this kind of people have their offset in the multitudes and majorities--the populace at large who would go out of their way to inflict the most demon-like outrages upon those whose skins are not colored like their own! i have before me at this moment recent american papers which contain accounts of the throttling of respectably-dressed colored men and women for venturing no further even than into the cabins of ferry boats plying between opposite cities; of colored ladies made to get out of the cars in which they had found seats--in cars in which the vilest loafer, provided his skin be white might sit unmolested; of respectable clergymen having their clothes torn from their backs, because they presumed to ask in a quiet manner that they might have berths in the cabins of steamers on which they were travelling, and not be compelled to lodge on deck; and lastly, of a colored man who was not long since picked up and thrown over-board from a steam boat, on one of the western rivers, because of some affray with a white man--while all the bye-standers stood looking on, regarding the drowning of the man with less consideration than they would have done the drowning of a brute. knowing all these things, and knowing also the peculiarity of the circumstances which surrounded me on that sabbath evening, the reader will not be surprised, that when i saw the dense multitude surrounding the house of mr. porter, i at once came to the conclusion that i should not be permitted to live an hour longer. i was not frightened--was never calmer--prepared for the worst, disposed of my watch and such other articles of value as i had about my person. mr. porter was below stairs at the time the mob approached. soon he came running up, introducing the committee to whom reference has already been made. they at once addressed us. i do not remember their words,--the purport of the whole, however, was that death was intended for me, provided we had been married; and as it was, i could only escape it, by miss king consenting to go with them, and by myself consenting to leave the village; and further, that there must be no delay by either party. one of the committee, in order to assure me of the terrible danger by which i was surrounded, drew back the window curtains and bade me look out. i did not do so, however, since it was not necessary that i should look out in order to feel fully convinced that there were men below, who had determined to degrade themselves below the level of the brutes that perish. such cursings, such imprecations, such cries of "nigger," "bring him out," "d----n him," "kill him," "down with the house," were never heard before, i hardly think, even in america. of course, to have attempted to resist this armed mob of hundreds of men would have been preposterous. it would have been, so far as i was concerned, at least, to have committed myself to instant death. compelled, therefore, to make the best of our unfortunate situation, miss king consented to go with the committee, and i to leave the village--she, however, taking care to assure me in a whisper, that she would meet me on the following day in syracuse. the lady was now conducted by the committee through the mob to the sleigh. not a word was spoken by a single ruffian in the crowd. all were silent until the driver put whip to his horse, when a general shout was sent up, as of complete and perfect triumph. "mistaken souls!" having reached her father's house, one of the committee addressed a speech to her, hoped that for the sake of her family, and the community, miss king would relinquish all partiality for professor allen, advised her also to go around among the ladies of the village, and consult with them, and assured her that he would be glad to see her at his house; and at any time when she felt disposed to come, he would send a sleigh to bring her. nothing remarkable about this speech. but the tone in which it was delivered!--that cannot be put upon paper. the speaker evidently thought the young lady would receive it all as a mark of gracious favor, and as assuring her that though she had been "hand and glove" with a coloured man, he would nevertheless condescend to overlook it. he was dealing with the wrong woman, however; and he received such a reply to his harangue as only a virtuous indignation could have prompted. the reader must also be informed that a double-sleigh load of able-bodied men followed close behind the one in which miss king was taken home. what this movement meant, i am not able very satisfactorily to conjecture. i venture the opinion, however, that the good folks supposed their victim would jump out of the sleigh in which she was riding, if a good opportunity should offer, and run back to the professor; and so this last load, no doubt, was put on as the rear-guard of the posse. now for myself. miss king having left, and the mob having been informed that i was about to leave, they were somewhat quieted, but were far from being appeased. that portion of the committee that remained with me, thought there was danger yet; and so, indeed, there was, judging hideous noises, bitter curses and ruffianly demonstrations, to be any proper criterion. they still cried, "bring him out" and "kill him." the committee thought the safety of the house required that i should be removed at once; so i having gotten together my hat, valise and other effects, they took me under their protection and conducted me to the village hotel. while i was being conducted out of the door, all manner of speech was hurled at me--a bountiful supply of that sort of dialectics which america can beat all the world at handling. however, the main desire of the mob at this point seemed to have been to get a sight of me; so they arraigned themselves in a double file, while i was conducted through the centre thereof, somewhat after the fashion of a military hero--a committee man at each side, one in front and another behind. having passed completely through the file, the scoundrels then closed in upon me; some of them kicking me, some striking me in the side, once on the head, some pulling at my clothes and bruising my hat, and all of them hooting and hallooing after a manner similar to that which they practised when they first surrounded the house of mr. porter. at length we reached the hotel--a quarter of a mile distant. the committee were about to conduct me into the front parlour, when one fellow patriotically cried out, "god d----n it, don't carry that nigger into the front door." a true yankee that! i have a penny laid up for that fellow, if i should ever chance to meet him. i was conducted into the back parlour of the hotel, as being the most secure. still the mob were not appeased, and besides, their numbers had increased. they hung around the house. some of them opened the windows half-way and tried to clamber through them into the parlour where i was; and at last they way-laid the outer doors. the sort of curses they indulged in meanwhile, i need not describe again. they were essentially the same as they had hitherto vented, save that one or two of them growing a little humorous, cried out occasionally "a speech from professor allen"--putting a peculiar emphasis on the professor. the committee busied themselves in furnishing two sleighs in which i was to be conveyed away, and also in appeasing the more ruffianly part of the multitude with cigars and such other articles as they choose to call for at the bar of the hotel. one of the sleighs was stationed at the back door of the hotel, and the other about two miles from fulton. the plan was that i should get into the former and be driven to the latter, in which i was to be taken post haste to syracuse--a distance of about twenty-five miles. the mob, however, suspected some of the details of the plan, and consequently every time i appeared at the back door, they made a rush at me seeking to wreak their vengeance. i escaped their violence, however, by stepping adroitly out of the way. and, as the tavern keeper had assured them that if they attempted violence upon me while i was under his roof, they would do it at their peril, many of them left, and i, at last, succeeded in reaching the sleigh at the back door and was driven off in safety. the mob unable to overtake me, still shouted a last imprecation. for this said sleigh ride, i paid six dollars, about £ . s.; so i was robbed, if not murdered. i will now describe the leader of the mob--henry c. hibbard. i will do it in short. this man is a clumsy-fisted, double jointed, burly-headed personage, about six feet in height, with a countenance commingling in expression the utmost ferocity and cunning. hibbard is not a fool--but a knave. he is essentially a low bred man, and vulgar to the heart's core. some idea of the calibre of the man may be had in the fact that in his published article in defense of the mob, he makes use of such expressions as "g'hals," "g'halhood" and the like. he has great perseverance of character as is evinced in the fact that though i was several days behind the time at which i was expected to arrive in fulton, he or his deputies never failed to be daily at the cars so as to watch my arrival, and thus be in season with the onslaught. this man set himself up, and was indeed so received by the elder and mrs. king as their friend, counsellor, and adviser. a confirmation this, of what i have already said about the commingling of the "respectable" and the base. his mobocratic movements, however, it is but just to say, were unknown to the elder and his wife until after the onslaught had been made. mrs. king however did not deprecate the mob until its history had become somewhat unpopular, by reason of many of the "respectable" men becoming ashamed at last that they had been found in such company as hibbard's. and even the elder himself, though he deprecated the mob, still characterized it as the "just indignation of the public." hibbard, i have already said, published a written defence of the mob. the article was headed "_the mary rescue._"--and a most remarkable document it was--remarkable, however, only for its intense vulgarity, its absurd contradictions, and its ridiculous attempts at piety and poetry. me, he describes as the "professor of charms" and "charming professor," once--the "tawney charmer." hibbard's article is not by me; and, if it were, its defilement is such that i could not be tempted to give it at length. laughable and lamentable as the article is in the main, i still thank hibbard for some portions of it, and especially for that one which substantiates the charge which i have brought against the "respectable men of fulton." thus ends the mob. chapter v. dark days. reader, i am now to describe the events of the two weeks which followed the fulton onslaught; and i can assure you that language has yet to be invented in which to write in its fullness what, when the children of certain parents shall look back fifty years hence, they will regard as the darkest deeds recorded in the history of their ancestors. diabolical as was the mob, yet the shameful and outrageous persecution to which miss king was subjected during those memorable weeks, at the hands of her relatives and the fulton community, sinks it (the mob) into utter significance. how the human beings who so outraged an inoffensive young lady can dare call themselves christians, is to me a mystery which i, at least, shall never be able wholly to explain. i have already said that miss king assured me on parting on sabbath evening that she would meet me in syracuse on the morrow. accordingly i awaited at the depôt, on monday afternoon, the arrival of the fulton train of cars. but she did not appear, and, for the first time, the thought occurred to me that the fulton people were determined to leave nothing undone by which to fill out their measure of meanness. on tuesday morning next, february st, the following article appeared in the "_syracuse star_"--one of the organs of the fillmore administration. it needs no comment of mine to instruct the reader as to the character of the paper which could publish such complete diabolism:-- "another rescue." "a gentleman from fulton informs us that that village was the theatre of quite an exciting time, to say the least, on sunday evening last. the story is as follows:--rev. mr. king, pastor of a regular wesleyan methodist, abolition, amalgamation church at fulton, has an interesting and quite pretty daughter, whom, for some three or four years past, he has kept at school at that pink of a 'nigger' institution, called the mc. grawville college, located south of us, in cortland county. while there, it seems that a certain genuine negro connected with the institution, called professor allen, (professor allen! bah!!) and herself became enamoured of each other, and thereupon entered into the requisite stipulation and agreements to constitute what is known to those interested in such matters, as an 'engagement' to be married. a little time since, the damsel went home to her amalgamation-preaching parents, and made known the arrangements whereby their lovely daughter expected soon to be folded in the hymenean arms of anti-alabaster sambo. the parents remonstrated and begged, and got the brothers and sisters to interpose, but all to no effect. the blooming damsel was determined to partake of the 'bed and board,' and inhale the rich odours, refreshing perfumes, and reviving fragrance which mc. grawville college teaching had pictured to her in life-like eloquence; and more than this, she would not remain in membership with the denomination that preaches but declines to practice, and sent in her resignation in due form of law. whereupon, down from mc. grawville comes the blushing allen, all decked in wedding garb, and on sunday morn he half woke from ponderous sleep, and thought he heard playing on the air such sweet music,-- '"as are those dulcet sounds in break of day, that creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear, and summons him to marriage!"' "but evening came, and as the anxious couple could not have the nuptial rites celebrated under the rev. father's roof, they withdrew to phillips' tavern, on the west side of the river, and made preparations for the ceremonies. in the meantime the affair got whispered about the town, and the incensed populace to some five hundred strong made ready to 'disturb the meeting.' several of the prominent citizens, fearing lest a serious row should follow, repaired to the marriage-home, and while some kept the riot down by speeches and persuasions, others gained admittance to the colors. allen, on being asked if he was married, replied 'no,' but that he would be in a few minutes. he was remonstrated with, and told the consequences that would ensue--that he would be mobbed, and must leave town immediately. he responded that he knew what he was about, was a free man, in a free country, and should do as he pleased. by this time the outsiders could be held still no longer, and the window curtains being drawn, our hero 'saw and trembled,' and cried for mercy. the damsel didn't faint, but at once consented to go home, and was hurried into a sleigh and driven off, while sambo under disguise and surrounded by abolitionists, was hustled out of the crowd over to the fulton house. the multitude soon followed, eager and raving to grab the 'nigger,' but after a little, he was got away from the house, by some sly comer, and hurried off to syracuse in a sleigh, at the top of two-horse speed. thus the black cloud avoided the whirlwind, and thus ended 'another rescue.'" this article, abominable as it is, was copied either in whole or in part by nearly every pro-slavery organ throughout america in a few days after the mob--with glorifications at what they supposed to be my defeat; and some of the papers copied the article with regrets that i had not been killed outright. and, indeed, this same "_syracuse star_" in a few days after the publication of the above article did what it could to inflame the populace of syracuse to inflict upon me violence and death. nor were the pro-slaveryites the only persons who gloated with delight over the article published by the "_star_." hundreds, and i think i am within the bounds of truth, when i say that thousands of men and women calling themselves abolitionists and christians, were especially rejoiced at my "defeat;" and expressed themselves to that effect, though using more guarded language than those who made no pretensions to a love of truth, justice, and humanity. the article abounds in falsehood, though to serve its purpose it is certainly adroitly written. we had not intended to be married on the evening of the mob, so that not only is the speech which the editor puts in my mouth false, but so also is his statement that we repaired to phillips' tavern to have the nuptial rites celebrated. the story of my seeing, and trembling and crying for mercy, is also equally false. it is also worthy of note that every paper which copied the article, varied the details, in order to suit its specific locality. some of the versions of the affair were extremely amusing. one of the papers described the mob as having taken place at syracuse, and the onslaught as having been made upon us while the ceremony was about being performed, whereat miss king fled in one direction, and i in another. one editor in furnishing his readers with the details thought it necessary to a completion of the picture to describe my personal appearance. he had never seen me--but no matter for that. he had seen the "_star's_" report, and what that did not give him, his imagination could supply. so he at it; and the next morning i appeared in print as "a stout, lusty, fellow, six feet and three inches tall, and as black as a pot of charcoal." reader, you would laugh to see me after such a description--of my height, at least. the telegraphic wires were also put in demand, and in less than forty-eight hours after the occurrence of the mob, the terrific news had spread throughout the country that a "colored man had attempted to marry a white woman!" and incredible as it may seem to britons, this "horrid marriage" was for weeks, not only discoursed of in the papers but was the staple of conversation and debate in the grog shops, in the parlors, at the corners of the streets, and wherever men and women are accustomed to assemble; and during this time also my life was in danger whenever i ventured in the streets. the reader will get some idea of the state of things when i assure him that about a week after the mob, i had occasion to call at the globe hotel, syracuse; and had not been in the house more than ten minutes before the landlord came to me and requested me to retire, as he feared the destruction of his house--the multitude having seen me enter, he said, and were now assembling about the building. i walked quietly out in company with a gentleman in a counter direction to the mob, and so escaped their wrath. but to return to the narrative. on tuesday afternoon (two days after the mob) i awaited again at the syracuse depôt, the arrival of the fulton train of cars; supposing it possible that i might meet miss king. she did not make her appearance, and there was now not a doubt left on my mind as to the character of what was going on in fulton. just as i was on the point of turning away from the depôt, a gentleman came up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and bade me get out of the way as quickly as possible; for the fulton mobocrats, he informed me, had sent up word by telegraph to certain persons in syracuse to mob me, if i should be seen about the car house. this gentleman also added that some of these persons were about the car house, wishing to have me pointed out. it seems, the committee that visited us on the evening of the mob, had overheard miss king assure me that she would meet me on the following day in syracuse; and they, or others of our keepers, had not only determined that no such meeting should be held, but that the mobbing should be repeated if i attempted again to see her. just as i was about to enter my lodging house on my return from the depôt, whom should i espy but my friend porter turning the corner and approaching me. of course i was glad to see him; and our conversation, at once, turned upon fulton and the events of the two preceeding days. he informed me, much to my surprise, for i had hardly supposed that tyranny would have gone so far, that on the night following the mob, the people of the village had risen up _en masse_, and in solemn meeting dismissed him from his school. glorious america! land of the free! mr. porter had committed no crime--nothing was charged against him, save that he had entertained us, and was known to be favorable to our union, or rather unfavorable to any interference in a matter which was of sacred right our own. mr. p. gave me no information with regard to miss king, except that she was at home, and that in consequence of the extraordinary excitement she would probably be unable to get out of fulton for several days to come. he returned to fulton the next morning, and three or four days after, i received from him the following letter. it is significant:-- "gilberts' mills, february th, . "professor allen,-- "dear friend:-- "i write you under very extraordinary circumstances. i have been obliged to leave the vicinity of fulton, for a while at least. i am now stopping at a. gilbert's. how long i shall stay here, i cannot tell. "mary (miss king) i have not seen or heard from, for two days. all communications between her and julia, (her sister--who was favorable to our union) and our family has been broken off--strictly prohibited; and hibbard's house, on the hill, is the watch tower to guard elder king's house against such dangerous invaders as ourselves. "when i came from syracuse that morning, hibbard was at the depôt on the watch. in the afternoon i went up to the elder's, and was met on the door-step and told not to deliver any messages or letters to mary. of course, i had none with me to deliver, and so i told elder king. but i saw mary in the presence of the family and hibbard, and mrs. case and mrs. sherman, and such like--for elder king's folks have a great many such sympathisers now. "i wanted to say some things to her not in the presence of these strangers--so to speak--in the family; _but she told me that she was permitted to say no word to any one but in the presence of such companions as were appointed for her. i went away sad, for mrs. king is trying to torment her soul out of her, by constant upbraidings and railings_. "yesterday morning sarah (mrs. porter) started to go up to see her, not having seen her since the affair of the mob; but a cutter from phillipsville whipped by her, and when she had got near the house, the cutter came back bringing elder king, who told her that they thought it advisable to request her not to go to his house--that, in a word, _they were determined to prevent all communication between our family and mary_. sarah came back. in the meantime, a man came to see me--mr. case--to tell me that i must not go to elder king's--_that i could not go there without getting hurt_. in fact, i had been that morning to fulton early, to see the editor of '_the patriot_;' while i was going through the street, a lot of rowdies gathered together and yelled after me. the explanation is easy. when i came from syracuse, the story went that i was plotting to get mary off. and i can hardly forgive elder king for putting the sanction upon this falsity, by excluding us from his house. that act of elder king gave the multitude full swing. they have now full liberty to mob me; _and last night i came very near getting into their hands. about sunset they came over headed by hibbard_, and while stopping at the tavern on the way--this side of the bridge--a man whipped up to watson's on horseback, and gave me the wink. george gilbert was at our room, (a lucky chance) and so i got under the buffalo, and sarah sat on the seat, and so we rode down straight by them, and thus foiled them again. to-day i went back--packed up, and put my trunks in a neighbor's house, and then came down here with sarah and libbie. thus it is. _mary--god help her--is in prison,--that is, she is guarded._ elder king has consented to just such arrangements as mrs. king and hibbard and some of the heartless, officious aristocrats of the village saw fit to propose. it cannot be helped. mary will doubtless be used well, corporally--but oh, the torment of being confined with such despicable companions. i trust she will be brave; though i did hear yesterday morning that she was somewhat indisposed and was abed. her eyes are inflamed. "i left the vicinity not altogether out of personal fear, but because i knew that my presence kept up the excitement. allen, _it is impossible for you to conceive what a convulsion this village of fulton has been thrown into_. a regular siege and cannonading could hardly have raised a greater muss. "write to me soon. enclose to g. gilbert on the _outside_ wrapper. i dared not send from phillipsville yesterday. "keep cool; and do not blame elder king more than you can help, for i expect he is forced into some things. how much he is to be forgiven on account of the dilemma into which he has got himself, let time decide. i do not wish to make his case worse. "yours in friendship, "john c. porter." [the italics and parentheses of the above letter are mine. i shall add no comment.] * * * * * on saturday afternoon, feb. th,--still in syracuse,--i received a visit from wm. s. king, esq. this gentleman is also a brother of miss king. his visit seemed to have about it at the outset somewhat of a stealthy character, and i confess i did not receive him with any great degree of cordiality. he came on an errand, he said. his sister desired to have an interview with me, and to that end she would meet me at the house of a friend about four miles from the village of fulton. the journey to this friend's--hers of four miles and mine of twenty or more--he assured me must be conducted with the greatest possible secrecy; for should the fulton people hear of it, the most disastrous results would follow. his sister was very ill, he said--was suffering intense anguish of mind--had been confined to her chamber with bodily ailings--had an eye also in a dreadful condition, the sight of which was in danger of being lost--still, her anxiety to see me was so great that she had entreated to be taken even in this condition to the place aforesaid mentioned. i understood this brother at once. i was not to be trapped. i had read human nature (so i think the result will justify me in saying) to a much better purpose than he. i declined holding the interview at the time, on account, as i urged, of his sister's feeble health and excited state of mind--but would have no objection, i added, to such an interview some two or three weeks to come. he then urged me to write, assuring me that he would take the letter willingly. this also, i refused to do. so at last he left me with the understanding that upon the recovery of his sister's health, we should have an "interview." mr. king returned immediately to fulton, and on the monday following, i received by post a letter from miss king. it was not in her own hand-writing--she was too ill to write, but it was dictated to her sister. just as i expected, miss king had found it necessary considering the influences against her, and that her relatives and the community would have left no means untried, however illegal or disgraceful to thwart her in her designs,--nay, would have sworn her into a lunatic asylum rather than to have permitted her to marry me--to consent that our engagement should be broken. this letter was to announce the fact, while at the same time, it gave as the reason--deference to the feelings of father and brothers. of course, i did not reply to the letter. as the "_star_" says--i knew what i was about. on tuesday morning, february th, i published in the "_syracuse standard_" the following card:-- "to the public.--from professor allen." "so much has been said and written on the subject of the late affair at fulton, that the public by this time must have had nearly _quantum sufficit_; yet i deem it not improper on my own behalf to add a remark or two. i shall not undertake to describe in detail, the murderous outrage intended to be inflicted on a quiet and unoffending man--that is not of much consequence now. "i wish now simply to show the public, that those who made the onslaught upon me on sabbath evening, a week ago, acted no less like a pack of fools than a pack of devils; and this can be shown almost in a single word, by stating that the whole story of my intention of being married on the evening in question, or that i went to fulton intending to consummate an affair of the kind at any period of my recent visit there, is a fabrication from the beginning to the end. the wretch who 'fixed up' just such a story as he thought would inflame the rabble to take my life, will yet, i trust, meet with deserved scorn and contempt from a community who, whatever may be their prejudice against my color, have, nevertheless, a high sense of what belongs to their own honor and dignity, and to the character and reputation of their village. "i make this statement with regard to this matter of marriage, not because i regard myself as amenable to the public to state to them _whom_ or _when_ i shall marry, but that since so much has been said upon the subject, i am quite willing they should know the truth as it is. they are tyrants, and very little-hearted, and exceedingly muddy-headed ones at that, who will presume to take a matter of this kind out of the hands of the parties to whom it specifically belongs, and who are acting law-abidingly and honorably in the premises. "here then is the story. read it. a band of several hundred armed men--armed, as i have been told, with an empty barrel spiked with shingle nails, tar, feathers and a pole, came down upon a certain house in phillipsville, opposite fulton, on sabbath evening, a week ago, to kill or drive out a single individual, conducting himself in a quiet, peaceable manner, and that individual, too, in physical stature, one of the smallest of men,--and in physical strength, proportionably inferior! if this is not cowardice as well as villainy--and both of them double-refined--then, i ask, what is cowardice, or what is villainy? the malignity of the whole matter also is set in a clearer light, when it is remembered that this same individual has never injured one of his assailants, nor has it been charged upon him that in his life-time he has ever inflicted the slightest wrong upon mortal man, but who has striven to maintain an upright character through life, and to fight his way for long years through scorn and contempt, to an honorable position among men. truly, this is a precious country! however, it is some consolation to know that 'god is just, and that his justice cannot sleep for ever.' "a gentleman of fulton writes an article on this subject, to the '_oswego daily times_,' of february the rd. the spirit of this gentleman's article dishonors his heart. so filled is he with a prejudice which an eminent christian of this country has rightly characterized, as a 'blasphemy against god,' and a 'quarrel with jehovah,' that he will not even deign to call me by name, to say nothing of the title which has been legitimately accorded me, but designates me as a 'colored man, &c.' the object of this writer in thus refusing to accord to me so cheap and common a courtesy is apparent, and as contemptible as apparent. let him have the glory of it,--i pity him. had i been a white man, he would not have so violated what he is such a stickler for--'the laws and usages of society.' "in another place in his article, he describes me as the 'negro.' this is preposterous and ridiculous. were i a negro, i should regard it as no dishonor, since men are not responsible for their physical peculiarities, and since they are neither better nor worse on account of them. it happens in this case, however, that so far from being a negro, three-fourths of the blood which flows in my veins is as good anglo-saxon as that which flows in the veins of this writer in the '_times_,'--better, i will not say, of course. "something also is said in this article from fulton about the 'course we' (the young lady and myself) 'were pursuing.' now, as the several hundred armed men strong who came down upon me on sunday night, and some newspaper editors, and this gentleman in particular, and the public very nearly in general, have taken the matter of judging what this 'course we were pursuing' was, out of our own hands, i propose to leave it still further with them. they can guess at it, and fight it out to their heart's content. "something also is said by this gentleman about 'wholesome advice being given me'--but i did not hear it, that's all. besides, i never take advice from those who can not tell the difference between a man and his skin. "one gentleman--a true man--came to me, and expressed his deep sympathy for me, and his sorrow that i had been so wrongfully treated and shamefully outraged, and entreated me to regard with pity, and not with anger, the murderous wretches outside. this is the speech that i remember, and remember it to thank the friend for his manifestation of kind and generous emotions. "this fulton 'committee man' also says that 'the colored man asked if he was to be left to be torn to pieces.' beyond a doubt, i asked that question. it was certainly, under the circumstances, the most natural question in the world; for i had really begun to think that the fellows outside had the genuine teeth and tail. "i close this article. to the committee who so kindly lent me their protection on that memorable night, i offer my thanks and lasting gratitude. "to the poor wretches who sought to take my life, i extend my pity and forgiveness. "as to myself--having in my veins, though but in a slight degree, the blood of a despised, crushed, and persecuted people, i ask no favors of the people of this country, and get none save from those whose christianity is not hypocrisy, and who are willing to 'do unto others as they would that others should do unto them'--and who regard _all_ human beings who are equal in character as equal to one another. "respectfully "william g. allen" simultaneously with the above card, there appeared in the "_syracuse journal_," the following article. it is from the pen of wm. s. king--the brother aforesaid mentioned. it is in spirit a most dastardly performance, more so, considering that the gentleman really _did_ know the circumstances, than anything which had hitherto been sent to the press. as a history of the "affair," it is almost a falsity throughout--and especially is it so in that part of it which describes miss king as repulsing me with her abhorrence of the idea of amalgamation. i do not propose, however, to be hard on mr. king. his untruthful and cowardly spirit has been sufficiently rebuked by the marriage which took place in less than two months after the publication of his article:-- "the fulton rescue case." "since the occurrence of the circumstances which induced the mob and consequent excitement at fulton, on the th of last month, we have made considerable effort to procure a full and precise statement of the facts in the case. this we have finally succeeded in doing from a gentleman of standing, who is well acquainted with all the circumstances. they are as follows:-- "for some years past, miss king has been attending the school at mc. grawville, known as the 'new york central college,' in which allen, the colored professor alluded to, is one of the teachers. "during that time, allen became deeply interested in the lady, and proposed marriage to her. this she at once rejected, declaring that the thought of such a connection was repulsive to her. "for some time after this, the professor said no more upon the subject; but in the course of a year or so, _again_ proposed marriage, and was _again_ rejected. "thus matters stood until some time since, when miss king left the school, and returned to her home in fulton. shortly after, allen went to that place and called on her, and, after a short interview, again, for the third time, proposed marriage. she _again rejected him_, and told him _that such was her firm and fixed decision_. her manner towards him, however, during all this period, had been kind and friendly, but she had always expressed her abhorrence of the idea of 'amalgamation.' "by this time madam gossip had set the rumor afloat, that allen and miss k. were engaged to be married. such a report was, of course calculated to produce a great excitement wherever it went. "allen, however, was not to be baffled by his former ill success, and was determined, if possible, to make the report good. he, therefore, a few days after his last rejection, wrote to a gentleman residing in phillipsville, opposite fulton--who had formerly been a student in mc. grawville--that he intended making him a visit. as all the parties had been friends and acquaintances at school, miss k. was invited to be present for the purpose of having a friendly visit. she accordingly called upon them on saturday afternoon, and at their earnest solicitations consented to spend the sabbath with them. "in the meantime, it was whispered about that the professor and miss k. were there for the purpose of being married. this, the people of fulton determined at once, should not be done in that town. they, therefore, assembled several hundred strong, and appointed a committee to wait upon the party, which they accordingly did, and informed the professor that he must leave town, and the young lady that she must go home, to which request they both acceded without hesitation. "the above is, as we have been informed, a full and true statement of the affair which has created such an excitement throughout the country." * * * * * the reader will see that the article appears as an editorial--another evidence that it is "conscience that doth make cowards of us all." should mr. king ever see this little book, and wonder how i found him out, i will simply inform him that i chanced to be in the neighborhood of the journal office, when he went in with his piece; and further, i have the guarantee of the editor. i now subjoin an extract of a note which i received from miss king, on the afternoon of february the th:-- "fulton, friday morning, feb. th. "professor allen,-- "dearest and best-loved friend:-- "i am much better this morning; and if i could only see you for a few hours, i am sure i should be quite well again. i have been trying to persuade father to let me go to syracuse this morning and see you, but he thinks my health is not in a state to admit of it now, but has promised me faithfully that i may meet you at loguens, on tuesday of next week. * * * * * "professor--when i saw that article in the '_syracuse journal_,' holding you up in such a ridiculous light, and laboring to make such false impressions upon the mind of the public, my soul was on fire with indignation. * * * * * "i need not tell you again that i love you, for you know that i do; yes, and i always shall until life's troubled waters cease their flow. "all communications that i receive from, or send to, you, _are read by father_; for i am a prisoner, yes, a prisoner; and when you write to me--if you should before i see you--_you must say nothing but what you are willing to have seen_. i shall manage to send this note without having it seen by any one. * * * * * "when i see you, i will tell you how much i have suffered since i saw you last, and how much i still suffer. * * * * * "ever yours, "mary." [the italicising of the above is my own.] * * * * * this little note was the only communication which i had received from fulton, containing any account of the doings of the king family, since the letter written to me by miss king, announcing that our engagement must be broken. though short, it was satisfactory. it assured me that miss king,--though she could be persecuted--could not be crushed. about the same time that i received the above note from miss king, i also received the following from rev. timothy stowe, of peterboro', new york. how much i valued this friendly epistle coming, as it did, from one of the most devoted christians in america, it is not possible for me to say:-- "peterboro', february th, . "dear brother allen:-- "i see by the papers, that you have been shamefully mobbed at fulton. i write to let you know that there are some in the world who will not join the multitude who are trying to overwhelm you with prejudice. * * * * * "now do not be cast down. you, i trust, are not the man to cower at such a moment. do not be afraid to stand up your whole length in defence of your own rights. "come and visit us without delay. consider my house your home while here. "brother smith sends you his love. brother remington wishes me to say that you have his confidence, and that he is your friend. "yours with kindest regards, "timothy stowe." chapter vi. brightening up.--grand result. according to the intimation in the note received from miss king dated feb. th, she met me--not however as she expected on tuesday--but, on wednesday of next week in syracuse: and at the house of a friend whose memory we hold in the highest reverence. the interview, as the parents and relatives of miss king understood it, was to be held to the intent that miss king might then and there in person, and by "word" more effectually than she could possibly do by writing, absolve herself from all engagement, obligation or intention whatsoever to marry me--now, hereafter, or evermore. this was their construction of the matter, and it was in the light of this construction that they essayed to grant the request--the granting of which miss king made the condition on which she proposed to yield up her sacred right. that the king family--determined as they were, law or no law, justice or no justice, christianity or no christianity; in short, at all events and all hazards, to prevent our union--should have granted this interview to miss king convicts them of as great imbecility and folly as was their persecution of their victim. but so it is, the innocent shall not only not be cut down, but they who practice unrighteousness shall themselves be overtaken. but to the interview. i should be glad to describe my feelings on first meeting miss king after she had passed through that fiery furnace of affliction. but i desist. the "engagement," i have already said, displayed a moral heroism which no one can comprehend who has not been in america, but the passage through was more than sublime. she related to me the events of the two preceding weeks as she had known them to transpire in her own family, and as she had heard of them as transpiring in the village. i cannot write the details. it chills my blood to think of them. the various letters published in this narrative will suffice to give the reader some idea of things as they were; while the hundreds of things which cannot be written and which, because of their littleness are the more faithful exponents of meanness, must be left to the reader to imagine as best he can. i say as best he can, since no englishman can imagine the thing precisely as it was. she was reviled, upbraided, ridiculed, tormented; and by some, efforts were made to bribe her into the selling of her conscience. what the vilest and most vulgar prejudices could suggest were hurled at both our devoted heads. letters were not permitted to be received or sent without their being first inspected by the parents. and finally she was imprisoned after the manner set forth in the letter of mr. porter. so rigid was the surveillance that her sister was also put under the same "regimen," because her sympathies were with the persecuted and not the persecutors. when we met, therefore, we were not long in determining what was our duty. and now, reader, what would you have done? just what we did--no doubt. made up your mind to have sacrificed nothing upon the altar of a vulgar prejudice. such was the nature of the demand--would it not have been base to have yielded? we concluded that now, more than ever, we would obey our heart's convictions, though all the world should oppose us; that, come what would, we would stand by each other, looking to heaven to bless us, and not to man, for either smiles or favor. we were resolved, but there was a difficulty yet. determined to exercise our god-given rights, we were still overpowered by the physical force of the whole community. an open declaration by either party of our resolve would have been not less than consummate madness. to exercise our rights, therefore, not as we _would_ but as we _could_, was the only hope left us. we resolved to marry and flee the country. miss king returned to fulton; after remaining there a week or ten days she went to pennsylvania _ostensibly_ to teach in a school. we corresponded by means of a third person; and my arrangements being made, we met in new york city, on march th, according to appointment; were married immediately and left for boston. in boston, we remained ten days, keeping as quiet as possible, in the family of a beloved friend, and on the th of april, took passage for liverpool. since our arrival in this country, we have received several american papers. the following article is from one of the western new york papers, which is but a specimen of the articles published by all the pro-slavery papers throughout the land on the announcement of the marriage, shows that the flight to england completed the victory. to have remained to be killed would have been fun to be relished. but public sentiment abroad--ah, that is another thing, and not so pleasant to be thought of:-- "prof. allen is married" "married.--in new york city, march th, by rev. thomas henson, professor william g. allen, of mc. grawville, n. y., and miss mary e. king, of fulton, n. y., daughter of rev. lyndon king, of fulton. "we expected as much. we were liberally abused for our discountenance of this marriage, and charged with wilfully falsifying facts, because we insisted that this affair was in contemplation, and would yet go off. _prof._ allen denied it, and others thought that they had the most positive assurance from his statements that the amalgamation wedding was a fiction. but now, after he and his white brethren have liberally impugned our motives, charged falsehood upon us, and made solemn asseverations designed to make the public believe that no such thing was in contemplation, in two brief months, the thing is consummated, with all the formality of a religious observance, and this unholy amalgamation is perpetrated before high heaven and asserted among men. "_prof._ allen and his fair bride are now in europe. it is well they should emigrate, to show admiring foreigners the beauties of american abolitionism. let them attend the receptions of the duchess of sutherland, the soirees of english agitators, and the orgies of exeter hall. let geo. thompson introduce them as the first fruits of his _philanthropic_ labors in america. let them travel among the starveling english operatives, who would gladly accept slavery if assured of a peck of corn each week; let them wander among european serfs, whose life, labor, and virtue are the sport of despots, compared to whom the crudest slave driver is an angel--and there proclaim their 'holy alliance.' if the victims of english and continental tyranny do not turn their backs, disgusted with the foul connection, their degradation must be infinitely greater than we had supposed." * * * * * but to return to the story: soon after the "interview" between miss king and myself, i received the following note from mrs. harriet beecher stowe--the renowned authoress of "uncle tom's cabin." a "divine-hearted woman," this, as horace mann hath rightly called her, and more precious than rubies to me is her kind and christian epistle:-- andover, massachusetts, february st, . "professor allen,-- "dear sir:-- "i have just read with indignation and sorrow your letter in the liberator (copied from the syracuse standard). i had hoped that the day for such outrages had gone by. i trust that you will be enabled to preserve a patient and forgiving spirit under this exhibition of vulgar and unchristian prejudice. _its day is short._ "please accept the accompanying volume as a mark of friendly remembrance from,-- "h. b. stowe." * * * * * just before miss k. left fulton for pennsylvania, she received the following letter from the rev. timothy stowe--the gentleman to whom reference has already been made. he is not related to mrs. harriet beecher stowe, but is nevertheless of royal race:-- "peterboro', new york, march st, . "miss mary e. king,-- "dear friend:-- "you will not be offended that i should address you by this title, though i never saw you, to my recollection, until last july at mc. grawville; i then felt an interest in your welfare--an interest which has been deepened by your recent insults and trials. i am not one of those who can censure you for your attachment and engagement to professor allen. he is a man--a noble man--a whole man; a man, in fine, of whom no woman need be ashamed. i am aware, you are aware, that the world will severely condemn you; so it did luther, when he married a nun; it was then thought to be as great an outrage on decency, for a minister to marry a nun, as it now is for a white young lady to marry a colored gentleman. you have this consolation, that god does not look upon the countenance--the color of men; that in his eye, black and white are the same; and consequently, to marry a colored person of intelligence and worth is no immorality, and in his eye, no impropriety. it is probably the design of providence in this case, to call the attention of the public to the fresh consideration of what is implied in the great doctrine of human brotherhood. is it true or not, that a colored man has all the rights of a white man? is this a question still mooted among abolitionists? if so, then we may as well settle it now as at any other time, and though the controversy may be, and must be a very painful one to your feelings, yet, the result will be a better understanding of the great principles of our common nature and brotherhood. professor allen is with me in my study, and has detailed to me the whole of this outrage against yourself and him, and has also made me acquainted with your relations to each other. i extend to you my sympathy, i proffer to you my friendship. you have not fallen in my estimation, nor in the estimation of mr. smith and others in this place. lay not this matter to heart, be not cast down; put your trust in god, and he will bring you out of this crucible seven times purified. he in mercy designs to promote your spiritual growth and consolation. keep the saviour in your heart. my good wife sympathises with you. we would be glad to see you at our humble home, either before or after your marriage. we would try to comfort you; we would bear your burdens, and so 'fulfil the law of christ.' "yours, with fraternal and christian affection, "timothy stowe." on the day after miss king left for pennsylvania, i received the following note from a friend in fulton. it is significant, and certainly corroborative of the opinion which i have expressed of the fulton people--that they had determined to leave nothing undone by which to make their tyranny complete:-- "fulton, march th, . "dear friend:-- "yesterday i heard from you by a friend * * * * * "mary has gone to pennsylvania. * * * * * "what we feared was, she would be again imprisoned, and hindered from going to pa. if her relatives and other friends knew of your intentions, she would have been put under lock and key as sure as there are _mean men_ in fulton. * * * * * "professor, they were as mad as wild asses here about that 'resolution of smith's,' especially king's folks. * * * * * i want your miniature--_must have it_. i want to show it to my friends that they may see this man whose idle moments in the bower of love sets half the world crazy. * * * * * "in friendship, yours, "* * *" the resolution to which reference has been made, is as follows. it was presented by the hon. gerrit smith, member of congress, from new york, at a convention of "liberty party men," held in syracuse, about four weeks after the mob:-- "resolved, that the recent outrage committed upon that accomplished and worthy man--professor william g. allen--and the general rejoicing throughout the country therein, evinces that the heart of the american people, on the subject of slavery is utterly corrupt, and almost past cure." now for something spicy. the following letter was written to elder king by a slaveholder of mississippi, about five weeks after the mob. the elder re-mailed it to his daughter while she was in pennsylvania. having become the property of the daughter, and the daughter and i now being one, i shall take the liberty of giving this specimen of southern chivalry to the public. the reader shall have it without alteration:-- "warrenton, mississippi, "march th, . "rev. sir:-- "you cannot judge of my surprise and indignation, on reading an editorial in one of my papers concerning an intending marriage of your lovely and accomplished daughter, with a negro man; which thanks to providence has been prevented by the excited and enraged populace of the enterprising citizens of the good town of fulton. "during my sojourn in the state of new york last year, i visited for mere curiosity the mc. grawville institute in cortland co., which gave me an opportunity of seeing your daughter, then a pupil of that equality and amalgamated institute; and i believe in all my travels north, i never saw one more interesting and polite to those of her acquaintances. "i have thought much about your daughter since my return home, and do yet, notwithstanding the ignominious connection she has lately escaped from. your daughter--innocent, as i must in charity presume--because deluded and deranged by the false teachings of the abolition institute at mc. grawville. "my object in writing to you this letter is to obtain your permission to correspond with your daughter if it should be agreeable with herself, for i do assure you that i have no other than an honorable intention in doing so. "i reside in warren county near warrenton--am the owner of nine young negroes in agriculture, who would not exchange their bondage for a free residence in the north. i am happy to inform you revd. sir that my character is such that will bear the strictest investigation, and my relations respectable. i am yet young having not yet obtained my th year. "well sir, i am a stranger to both yourself and interesting family, and as a matter of course you may desire to know something about the humble individual who has thought proper to address you on a subject which depends on the future happiness of your daughter. for your reverence's gratification you are at liberty to refer to either or all of the following gentlemen, by letter or in person,--viz., hon. j. e. sharkey, state senator, warren co., p. o., warrenton, miss.;--hon. a. g. brown, ex-gov., miss., now member of congress, p. o., gallatin, miss.;--samuel edwards, high sheriff, warren co., p. o., vicksburg, miss.;--e. b. scarbrough clerk, probate court, warren co., p. o., vicksburg, miss.;--m. shannon, editor, vicksburg, miss., whig;--geo. d. prentice, editor, louisville, ky., journal;--and reed, brothers, and co., , market street, philadelphia. "again rev. sir, i assure you that in writing you this letter, i only do that which is the result of mature deliberation. "i shall wait anxiously your reply, "thos. k. knowland." "p. s.--as messrs. reed, brothers, and co., are the nearest reference to whom i refer, i enclose you a letter from them." * * * * * the two letters immediately following were received by miss k. just before she left pennsylvania for new york. many other letters were also received by both of us, which are not given in this book, but we can assure the writers thereof that they have our hearts' gratitude:-- "fulton, march th, . "my dear and brave sister:-- "for two weeks past we have been stopping with mr. b. yesterday we received four letters--two from my good brother b., and two from pennsylvania, yours and jane's. right glad were we to receive those welcome favors--those little _epistolary_ angels, telling us of your safety, (for safety has of late become quite a consideration) of your affection, of your anxiety, and a hundred things more than what were written. "mary, i judge from your letters and notes--from the tone of them--that there are feelings and emotions in your heart utterly beyond the power of words to express. you are resolved, and you are happy in your resolve, and strong in the providential certainty of its success. yet you tremble for probabilities, or rather for _possibilities_. "what feelings, dear mary, you must have in the hour of your departure from this country. through the windows of imagination i can catch a glimpse of it all. your flight is a flight for freedom, and i can almost call you _eliza_. to you this land will become a land of memory. and, oh! what memories! but we will talk of this hereafter. "the remembrance of _friendship unbroken here_,--oh, mary, let it not vanish as the blue hills of your father-land will dim away in the distance, while you glide eastward upon the 'free waters.' but let that bright remembrance be embodied in _spirit_-form, for ever attending you, and pointing back to those still here who hold you high in affection and in honor. * * * * * "mary, i must close. be firm--strong--brave--unflinching--_just like_ mary king. "yours in the bonds of love, "john c. porter." "fulton, march th, . "my dear sister mary:-- "almost hourly since you left has your image been before me. and as i seat myself to write, thoughts and emotions innumerable come crowding for utterance. gladly would i express them to you, dear sister, but the pen is far too feeble an instrument. oh, that i could be with you in body as in spirit. you need encouragement and strength in this hour; and i know that you will receive them,--for you are surrounded by a few of the truest and dearest of friends. and you know and have felt, that a higher and stronger power than earth can uphold us in every endeavour for the right. * * * * * "mary, do you remember the time when you told me that i must love you better than i had ever done before; for friends would forsake you, and there would be none left to love you but p., and myself, and your father, and julia, and j. b., and d. s., and s. t.? our arms were twined around each other in close embrace. your heart was full to overflowing, and words gave place to tears. i shall not forget the intense anxiety i felt for you at that moment as i tried to penetrate the future, knowing, as i did, somewhat of the cruelty of prejudice. it seems we both had a foreboding of something that would follow. i do not know that i wept, but heaven witnessed and recorded the silent, sacred promise of my heart to draw nearer and cherish you with truer fidelity as others turned away. and so shall i always feel. * * * * * "oh, mary, how little can we imagine the sufferings of the oppressed, while we float along on the popular current. i thank god from the depths of my soul, that we have launched our barks upon the ocean. frail they are, yet, having right for our beacon, and humanity for our compass, i know we shall not be wrecked or go down among the raging elements. * * * * * "now, dear sister, farewell, and as you depart from this boasted 'land of liberty and equal rights,' and go among strangers, that you may, indeed, enjoy liberty, be not despondent, but cheerful, ever remembering the message of your angel mother. * * * * * again, dear sister, farewell,--you know how much we love you, and that our deepest sympathies are with you wherever you may be. "affectionately yours, "sarah d. porter." i subjoin an extract of a letter which i received from miss k. a few days before our marriage:-- "dolington, pennsylvania "march st, . "professor allen,-- "dearest and best-loved friend:-- "i have just received your letter of march th, and hasten to reply. "you ask me if i can go with you in four weeks or thereabouts. in reply, i say yes; gladly and joyfully will i hasten with you to a land where unmolested, we can be happy in the consciousness of the love which we cherish for each other. while so far from you, i am sad, lonely, and unhappy; for i feel that i have no home but in the heart of him whom i love, and no country until i reach one where the cruel and crushing hand of republican america can no longer tear me from you. * * * * * "professor,--i sometimes tremble when i think of the strong effort that would be put forth to keep me from you, should my brothers know our arrangements. but my determination is taken and my decision fixed; and should the public or my friends ever see fit to lay their commands upon me again, they will find that although they have but a weak, defenceless woman to contend with, still, that woman is one who will never passively yield her rights. _they may mob me; yea, they may kill me; but they shall never crush me._ "heaven's blessings upon all who sympathised with us. i am not discouraged. god will guide us and protect us. "ever yours, "mary." '"thou friend, whose presence on my wintry heart fell like bright spring upon some herbless plain; how beautiful and calm and free thou wert in thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain of custom thou did'st burst and rend in twain, and walked as free as night the clouds among."' some idea of the spirit of persecution by which we were pursued may be gathered from the fact, that when the mobocrats of fulton ascertained that miss king and myself were having an interview in syracuse, they threatened to come down and mob us, and were only deterred from so doing by the promise of elder king, that he would go after his daughter if she did not return in the next train. chapter vii. conclusion. reader,--i have but a word or two more to say. insignificant as this marriage may seem to you, i can assure you that nothing else has ever occurred in the history of american prejudice against color, which so startled the nation from north to south and east to west. on the announcement of the probability of the case merely, men and women were panic-stricken, deserted their principles and fled in every direction. indignation meetings were held in and about fulton immediately after the mob. the following resolution was passed unanimously in one of them:-- "resolved,--that amalgamation is no part of the free democracy of granby." (town near f.) the editor of the fulton newspaper, however, spoke of us with respect. let him be honored. he condemned the mob, opposed amalgamation, but described the parties thus,--"miss king, a young lady of talent, education, and unblemished character," and myself, "a gentleman, a scholar, and a christian, and a citizen against whose character nothing whatever had been urged." i have said that some of the papers regretted that i had not been killed outright. i give an extract from the "_phoenix democrat_," published in the state of new york:-- "this professor allen may get down on his marrow bones, and thank god that we are not related to mary king by the ties of consanguinity." to show that i have not exaggerated the spirit of persecution which beset us, i will state that in a few days after mr. porter was dismissed from his school, he called upon the pastor of the church of which he is a communicant; and though without means--the chivalrous people who turned him out of his school not having yet paid him up--and knowing not whither to go, the pastor assured him that he could not take him in, or render him any assistance, so severely did he feel that he would be censured by the public. that mr. porter is still pursued by this fiendish spirit, the reader will see by the following paragraph of a letter received from him a few days since:-- "i have advertised for a school in s----. they would not tolerate me in o----, after they found out that i was the phillipsville school-master. i was employed in o---- three months." such, reader, is the character of prejudice against color,--bitter, cruel, relentless. the end. * * * * * a short personal narrative, by william g. allen, (colored american,) formerly professor of the greek language and literature in new york central college resident for the last four years in dublin. * * * * * dublin: sold by the author, and by william curry & co., , upper sackville-street, and j. robertson, grafton-street. * * * * * price one shilling. dublin: printed by robert chapman, temple lane dame street. preface. in preparing this little narrative, i have not sought to make a book, but simply to tell my own experiences both in the slaveholding and non-slaveholding states of america, in as few words as possible. the facts here detailed throw light upon many phases of american life, and add one more to the tens of thousands of illustrations of the terrible power with which slavery has spread its influences into the northern states of the union--penetrating even the inmost recesses of social life. w. g. a. donnybrook, dublin, _january, ._ a short personal narrative. i was born in virginia, but not in slavery. the early years of my life were spent partly in the small village of urbanna, on the banks of the rappahannock, partly in the city of norfolk, near the mouth of the james' river, and partly in the fortress of monroe, on the shores of the chesapeake. i was eighteen years in virginia. my father was a white man, my mother a mulattress, so that i am what is generally termed a quadroon. both parents died when i was quite young, and i was then adopted by another family, whose name i bear. my parents by adoption were both coloured, and possessed a flourishing business in the fortress of monroe. i went to school a year and a half in norfolk. the school was composed entirely of coloured children, and was kept by a man of color, a baptist minister, who was highly esteemed, not only as a teacher, but as a preacher of rare eloquence and power. his color did not debar him from taking an equal part with his white brethren in matters pertaining to their church. but the school was destined to be of short duration. in , nathaniel turner, a slave, having incited a number of his brethren to avenge their wrongs in a summary manner, marched by night with his comrades upon the town of southampton, virginia, and in a few hours put to death about one hundred of the white inhabitants. this act of turner and his associates struck such terror into the hearts of the whites throughout the state, that they immediately, as an act of retaliation or vengeance, abolished every colored school within their borders; and having dispersed the pupils, ordered the teachers to leave the state forthwith, and never more to return. i now went to the fortress of monroe, but soon found that i could not get into any school there. for, though being a military station, and therefore under the sole control of the federal government, it did not seem that this place was free from the influence of slavery, in the form of prejudice against color. but my parents had money, which always and everywhere has a magic charm. i was also of a persevering habit; and what therefore i could not get in the schools i sought among the soldiers in the garrison, and succeeded in obtaining. many of the rank and file of the american army are highly educated foreigners; some of them political refugees, who have fled to america and become unfortunate, oftentimes from their own personal habits. i now learned something of several languages, and considerable music. my german teacher, a common soldier, was, by all who knew him, reputed to be both a splendid scholar and musician. i also now and then bought the services of other teachers, which greatly helped to advance me. many of the slaveholders aided my efforts. this seems like a paradox; but, to the credit of humanity, be it said, that the bad are not always bad. one kind-hearted slaveholder, an army officer, gave me free access to his valuable library; and another slaveholder, a naval officer, who frequented the garrison, presented me, as a gift, with a small but well selected library, which formerly belonged to a deceased son. my experience, therefore, in the state of virginia, is, in many respects, quite the opposite of that which others of my class have been called to undergo. could i forget how often i have stood at the foot of the market in the city of norfolk, and heard the cry of the auctioneer--"what will you give for this man?"--"what for this woman?"--"what for this child?" could i forget that i have again and again stood upon the shores of the chesapeake, and, while looking out upon that splendid bay, beheld ships and brigs carrying into unutterable misery and woe men, women and children, victims of the most cruel slavery that ever saw the sun; could i forget the innumerable scenes of cruelty i have witnessed, and blot out the remembrance of the degradation, intellectual, moral and spiritual, which everywhere surrounded me--making the country like unto a den of dragons and pool of waters--my reminiscence of virginia were indeed a joy and not a sorrow. some things i do think of with pleasure. a grand old state is virginia. no where else, in america at least, has nature revealed herself on a more munificent scale. lofty mountains, majestic hills, beautiful valleys, magnificent rivers cover her bosom. a genial clime warms her heart. her resources are exhaustless. why should she not move on? execrated for ever be this wretched slavery--this disturbing force. it kills the white man--kills the black man--kills the master--kills the slave--kills everybody and everything. liberty is, indeed, the first condition of human progress, and the especial hand-maiden of all that in human life is beautiful and true. i attained my eighteenth year. about this time the rev. w. h---- of new york city visited the fortress of monroe, and opened a select school. he was a white man, and of a kind and benevolent nature. he could not admit me into his school, nevertheless he took a deep interest in my welfare. he aided my studies in such ways as he could, and, on his return to the state of new york (he remained but a short time in virginia), acquainted the honorable gerrit smith, of peterboro, with my desires. mr. smith's sympathies were immediately touched on my behalf. he requested the rev. w. h---- to write to me at once, and extend to me an invitation to visit the state of new york, enter college, and graduate at his expense--if need be. i have to remark just here that at the time of the visit of the rev. w. h---- to the fortress of monroe, my parents were in greatly reduced circumstances, owing to a destructive fire which had recently taken place, and burned to the ground a most valuable property. the fire was supposed to be the work of incendiaries--low whites of the neighbourhood, who had become envious of my parents' success. there was no insurance on the property. under these circumstances i gladly accepted the kind offer of mr. smith. his generous nature then and there turned towards me in friendship; and, i am happy to be able to add, he has ever continued my friend from that day to this. mr. smith is one of the noblest men that america has ever produced; and is especially remarkable for his profound appreciation of that sublime command of our saviour, "all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." where he treads no angel of sorrow follows. he is a man of vast estates--a millionaire. he is also what in america is termed a land reformer. he believes that every man should possess an inviolable homestead. he himself possesses by inheritance millions of acres in the northern and eastern states of america; and shows his sincerity and consistency by parcelling off from time to time such portions of these lands as are available, in lots of forty or fifty acres each, and presenting the deeds thereof, free of charge, to the deserving landless men, white or black, in the region where the lands in question are located. he also long since vacated the splendid peterboro' mansion, into possession of which he came on the death of his father; and now resides, himself and family, in a simple cottage near peterboro', with only forty acres attached. his sympathies are not bounded by country or clime. he sent into ireland, during the famine of , the largest single donation that reached the country from abroad. he was elected to the united states congress a few years ago, as one of the members for new york, but resigned his seat after holding it only a year--probably feeling outraged by the manners and morals, not to say superlative wickedness, of so many of his associates. whatever may have been the cause which induced him to resign, he did well to give up his post. nature had evidently not set him to the work. of great ability, winning eloquence, and undoubted moral courage, his heart and temper were too soft and apologetic to deal with the blustering tyrants who fill too many of the seats of both houses of congress. mr. smith is truly a great orator. he has in an eminent degree the first qualification thereof--a great heart. his voice is a magnificent bass, deep, full, sonorous; and, being as melodious as deep, it gives him enviable power over the hearts and sympathies of men. in personal appearance he is extremely handsome. large and noble in stature, with a face not only beautiful, but luminous with the reflection of every christian grace. he is now engaged in the care of his vast estates, and in his private enterprises, scarcely private, since they are all for the public good. he is sixty-two years of age. a true christian in every exalted sense of the term, long may he live an honor and a blessing to his race. having accepted the invitation of this gentleman, i prepared to leave the south. on making arrangements for a passage from norfolk to baltimore, i found that the "free papers" which every man of color in a slave state must possess, in order to be able to prove, in case of his being apprehended at any time, that he is not an absconding slave, were of very little avail. i must needs have a "pass" as well, or i could not leave. however i obtained this document without much trouble, and as it is a curious specimen of american literature, i will give it. it does not equal, to be sure, the "charming pages" of washington irving, but it is certainly quite as illustrative in its way:-- "norfolk, oct. . "the bearer of this, william g. allen, is permitted to leave norfolk by the steam boat jewess, capt. sutton, for baltimore. "signed, j. f. hunter "agent, baltimore steam packet company." this document was also countersigned by one of the justices of the peace. really, there is something preposterous about these slaveholders. they make all sorts of attempts to drive the free colored people out of their borders; but when a man of this class wishes to go of his own accord, he must that be _permitted_! i reached baltimore in safety, but now found that neither "free papers" nor "pass" were of any further use. i desired to take the train to philadelphia _en route_ to new york. i must this time get a white man to testify to my freedom, or further i could not go. or, worse still, if no such man could be found, i must be detained in baltimore and lodged in jail! by no means a pleasant prospect. there was no time to be lost. my previous experience had taught me this truth--the more we trust, the more we are likely to find to trust. acting upon this principle, and putting in practice my studies in physiognomy, i presently found a friend among the crowd; who, being satisfied with my statements and the documents i presented, kindly gave the desired testimony. the ticket seller then recorded my name, age, and personal appearance in his book, and delivered me my ticket. i now had no further trouble, and reached the college (in the state of new york) in safety. remaining at this college (oneida institute, whitesboro') five years, i graduated with some honor and little cost to my patron, mr. smith. i quite paid my way by private tuitions: during one vacation i taught a school in canada. i cannot leave oneida institute without paying the tribute of my heart's warmest admiration and love to the president thereof--reverend beriah green. america has few such men--men of that true greatness which comes from a combination of wisdom and virtue. wherever found in that country, they are the "chosen few," consecrating their energies to the cause of humanity and religion--nobly and earnestly seeking to rid their country of its dire disgrace and shame. president green still lives. he is a profound scholar, an original thinker, and, better and greater than all these, a sincere and devoted christian. to the strength and vigor of a man, he adds the gentleness and tenderness of a woman. he has never taken an active part in the world of stir and politics; but in the line of his proper profession has immeasurably advanced the cause of human progress. may such men be multiplied in america, and elsewhere, for surely there is need. out now in the great world of america, my ambition was to secure a professorial chair. that any man having the slightest tinge of color, nay, without tinge of color, with only a drop of african blood in his veins, let his accomplishments be what they may, should aspire to such a position, i soon found was the very madness of madness. but something must be done. i repaired at once to the city of boston, and entered the law office of e. g. l----, esq. a distinguished barrister, who had already shown his regard for the colored race by having brought to the bar a colored young man--now practising with much success in boston. black men may practice law--at least in massachusetts. i remained in the office of this gentleman two years, and was just entering my third and last year, when, unsolicited on my part and to my great surprise, i received the appointment of professor of the greek language and literature in new york central college--a college of recent date, and situated in the town of m'grawville, near the centre of the state of new york. this was the first college in america that ever had the moral courage to invite a man of color to occupy a professor's chair; and, so far as i know, it is also the only one. the college was founded by a few noble-minded men, whose object was to combat the vulgar american prejudice, which can see no difference between a man and his skin. they sought to illustrate the doctrine of human equality, or brotherhood of the races; to elevate the nation's morals, and give it more exalted views of the aims and objects of christianity. such a college, in the midst of corrupt public sentiment, could not fail to meet with the greatest opposition. it was persecuted on all sides, and by all parties, showing how deep-seated and virulent is prejudice against color. the legislature countenanced the college so far as to grant it a charter, and empowered it to confer degrees, but would not, seemingly on no earthly consideration, give it the slightest pecuniary patronage. the debates which took place in the state house at albany when the bill relating to the college came up for consideration, would, in vulgar flings at "negroes," cries of "amalgamation," and such like, have disgraced a very assemblage of pagans. however the college held on its way, and is still doing its work, though its efficiency is of course greatly marred. all the other professors were white; so also were the majority of the students. * * * * * i was four years in connexion with this college as professor, and in all probability would have been in m'grawville still, but for the following circumstances. i bethought me now of marriage, having what might be termed good prospects in the world. visiting the town of fulton, county of oswego, state of new york, about forty miles from new york central college, on an occasion of public interest, i was made the guest of the rev. l. k----, a highly esteemed minister of the gospel, and greatly distinguished for his earnest and zealous advocacy of the principles of abolition. he was a white man. this gentleman had a large family of sons and daughters. a feeling of friendship sprung up between one of his daughters and myself on the occasion of this visit, which feeling eventually ripened into emotions of a higher and more interesting character. the father welcomed me: the mother was long since deceased. the parties immediately concerned were satisfied--why should others demur? i knew something of prejudice against color, but i supposed that a sense of dignity, not to say decency, would deter the most bitterly opposed from interference with a matter wholly domestic and private, and which, in its relation to the public, was also wholly insignificant. i reckoned without my host however. the inhabitants of fulton had received the impression that there was an union in contemplation between the lady and myself; and they determined that it should not take place, certainly not in their town, nor elsewhere if they could prevent it. they stirred the town in every direction, evoking all the elements of hostility, and organizing the same into a deadly mob, to act at convenient opportunity. i was ignorant of the great length to which this feeling had attained; so also were the parties immediately interested in my personal safety. i was therefore greatly surprised when, on the occasion of my last visit to fulton, and while in company with the lady, both of us visiting at the house of a mutual friend, residing about two miles out of town, a party rushed into our presence in hot haste, bidding me, if i wished to escape with my life, to "fly with all possible speed!" the party who performed this kindly office had scarcely gone, when, on looking out of the window, i beheld a maddened multitude approaching--about six hundred white men, armed with tar, feathers, poles and an empty barrel spiked with shingle nails! in this barrel i was to be put, and rolled from the top to the bottom of a hill near by. they also brought a sleigh, in which the lady was to be taken back to her father's house. they intended no harm to her. knowing the character of an american mob, and also knowing how little they value the life of a man of color, i expected, as i saw the multitude surrounding the house, to die--in fact, prepared for death. having assembled about the premises, they began to cry out in the most uproarious manner, "bring him out!" "kill the nigger!" "hang him!" "tear down the house!" shouts, groans, maledictions of all sorts and degrees followed. no one who has not witnessed an american mob can have the slightest idea of the scene which presented itself at this point. had six hundred beasts of the forest been loosed together, in one promiscuous assemblage, they could scarcely have sent up howls and yells and mad noises equal to those made by these infuriated men. there is no exaggeration in this statement. for the sake of humanity, i only wish there was. nor were the members of the mob confined entirely to the rabble; far from it. many of its members were also members of a christian church. the mob occurred on a sabbath evening, about six o'clock, so that these men absolutely deserted their pews on purpose to enjoy the fun of "hunting the nigger." there came with this mob a self-constituted committee of gentlemen, lawyers, merchants, and leading men of the town, who, although partaking of the general feeling of prejudice against color, did not wish, for the sake of the reputation of their town, to see bloodshed; besides also many of them, i doubt not, entertained feelings of personal friendship for myself. this committee divided itself. one half came up to the drawing-room, and advised that the young lady should consent to go home in the sleigh provided, and that i should consent to leave the town. conceding so much to the mob, they thought my life might be spared. the other half of the committee remained below, to appease the maddened multitude, and deter them from carrying their threats into execution. we agreed to the propositions of the committee. the young lady was taken home in the sleigh aforesaid, about one third of the mob following on foot, for what purpose i know not. i was then conducted by the committee through the mob, many members of which giving me, as i passed, sundry kicks and cuffs, but doing me no serious bodily harm. i was next taken by the committee to an hotel, where arrangements had been made for my reception. the mob followed, hooting and hallooing, the sight of their victim seeming to revive their hostile feelings. they would have broken into the hotel, had not the proprietor held them back by his threats. he was not a friend of mine, but he had agreed to shelter me, and he was, of course, determined to protect his property. the committee then secured the use of two sleighs, one of which they placed at the back entrance of the hotel, and the other they caused to be driven about four miles out of the town. into the first sleigh i was to get when i could find my opportunity, and be driven to the other sleigh, in which i was to be finally conveyed to the town of syracuse, about twenty-five miles distant. i made several attempts to get into the sleigh at the back entrance of the hotel, but was driven back by the mob every time i made my appearance at the door. meanwhile the committee furnished the mobocrats with spirits to drink, and cigars to smoke, for all of which i had to pay. comment upon this extraordinary act of meanness would be entirely out of place. one would have thought that these mobocrats would have been content to have mobbed me free of expense, at least. not so it seemed however. but midnight drew on, and of course the multitude grew weary. presently, seeing my opportunity, i jumped into the sleigh at the back entrance of the hotel, drove rapidly off to the second sleigh, and reached the town of syracuse early next morning. some of the mobocrats attempted chase, but soon gave it up. had this tumult ended here, i should probably have been in my chair at the college today; and the whole affair, so far as it related only to myself, would have been regarded by me as merely a bit of an episode in my life--of course a most exciting one. but the worst was to come, at least so far as it concerned the lady personally; and the very worst it would be better to say nothing about. after we had been disposed of in the manner already described, the next step taken by the inhabitants of the town of fulton was to place the lady under a most degraded surveillance. true, she was to continue in her father's house, but so overpowering had the mob-spirit become, that the mobocrats commanded (and were obeyed!) that no communications should be sent to her or from her, unless they had been previously perused and sanctioned by duly deputed parties. nor would they permit any persons to call upon her, unless they too had been previously approved. there was a line of railway between the towns of fulton and syracuse. guards were placed by certain individuals at the various stations on the line, in order to prevent the possible escape of either party, or rather to prevent the possible meeting of the parties, _i.e._, of the lady and myself. meanwhile the telegraphic wires and newspapers spread the news throughout the length and breadth of the land; the consequence of all which was, i became so notorious that my life was placed in jeopardy wherever i went. on one occasion particularly i barely escaped with it. on the day after the occurrence of the mob, and for several days after, the town of fulton presented a scene of unparallelled excitement. had the good people witnessed the approach of an invading army, but, by some lucky chance, succeeded in driving it back, they could not have been more extravagant in their demonstrations. their countenances indicated the oddest possible mixture of consternation and joy. seriously, if one can be serious over such details, never before did the contemplated marriage of two mortals create such a hubbub. the inhabitants of fulton immediately assembled _en masse_, and voted unanimously, in congress especially convened for the purpose, that mr. and mrs. p----, school teachers, our friends, at whose house we were being entertained at the time of the mob, "do give up their school, and leave the town forthwith." for what crime? none, save that of showing us hospitality. our friends had therefore not only to give up their business at an immense pecuniary sacrifice, but had absolutely to make off with their lives as best they could. during all this time the lady who had been thus rudely treated was true to her noble and heroic nature; but so much outward pressure, and of such an extraordinary character, produced its consequences upon her health. it failed, and it became necessary that she should be released from her thraldom. once more at liberty she visited, incognito, the town of syracuse, where i was still tarrying. the mobocrats would not have permitted her to have left fulton in peace, if they had known whither she was going. we met again: reviewed the past and discussed the future. as i am not detailing sentiment, but merely stating facts, suffice it to say, that we made up our minds that we would not be defeated by a mob. but to the future. what was to be done? we came to the conclusion that i could no longer expect to hold my position in m'grawville. the college had already received a terrible shock by reason of the cry of "amalgamation" which had been raised by the mob. and though the trustees were willing, at heart, to face the storm of prejudice, worldly wisdom, they considered, dictated that they should not incur the odium which they could not avoid bringing upon the college, if they persisted in retaining me longer as one of their professors. the trustees thought it would be better to be cautious, and save the college for the good it might do in the future. such a union as ours was, in fact, but one of the logical results of the very principles on which the college was founded. i do not profess to sit in judgment, and therefore attempt no comment. they were now evidently anxious that i should resign, though, of course, they did not express so much to me in words. i also came to the further conclusion that i could no longer, under the circumstances, whatever i might be able to do in future, hold my position in the country. for, however willing i might be to endure all things in my own person, i felt that i ought not to expose to any further danger one who already suffered so much and so heroically for my sake. i knew several of the lady's friends who were bitterly opposed to our union, solely on account of my color, and who were prepared, if the occasion should require it, to go to desperate lengths. they would not have hesitated to have sworn her into the lunatic asylum. i therefore decided not only to resign my professorship in the college, but also to leave the country. our plans being now quietly arranged, the lady returned to fulton, and it was then supposed that all communication between us was for ever broken off. the mob had ordered that it should be so, and doubtless thought it was so. the most mistaken idea they ever entertained. the lady remained for a short time in fulton, and then retired into the interior of the state of pennsylvania. i continued to remain in the town of syracuse. soon a favorable opportunity presented itself, and we met in the city of new york, on the th march, , and then and there asserted our rights in due and legal form: after which we immediately took the train for boston. owing to the great publicity which the newspapers had given to our affairs and the consequent excitement thereon, we found it necessary to use the utmost caution, such as walking apart in the streets, and travelling in the trains as strangers to each other. it would have been fool-hardy to have provoked another mob. we remained in boston ten days, quietly visiting among our friends, and then set sail for england. wishing to get out of the country without farther ado, we were compelled to submit to many sacrifices, pecuniary and otherwise, of which it is not necessary to speak. in england and ireland, including a short trip to scotland, we have been ever since, and have constantly received that generous and friendly consideration which, from the reputation of great britain and ireland, we had been led to expect; and for which we are grateful. to go back for a single moment to new york central college. on receiving the appointment to the professorial chair, the pro-slavery newspaper press of the country opened a regular assault. the "_washington union_" thus wrote: "what a pity that college could not have found white men in all america to fill its professors' chairs. what a burning shame that the trustees should have been mean enough to rob mr. l---- of his law student, and the boston bar of its ebony ornament." i was never at the boston bar, and therefore could not have been its ebony ornament. the imagination of the editors supplied them with the fact, and that answered their purpose as well. a reverend doctor of divinity writing in a cincinnati newspaper, wondered "how a man of sense could enter that amalgamation college. if this professor would go to liberia and display his eloquence at the bar there; or, if he has any of the grace of god in his heart, enter the pulpit, he would then be doing a becoming work." from augusta, georgia (slave state), i received the following document, signed by several parties, and containing the picture of a man hanging by the neck, under which was written, "here hangs the professor of greek!" "augusta, geo. nov. . "sir,--we perceive you have been appointed professor of greek in new york central college. very well. we also perceive that you have occasionally lectured in the north on the 'probable destiny of the african race.' now, sir, if you will only have the kindness to come to augusta, and visit our hemp yard, you may be sure that your destiny will not be _probable_, but certain. "signed, ------ ------ ------" of course i did not go to augusta, georgia. these assaults and attempts at ridicule served to bring me into general notice. i soon found that, by reason of them, and without merit or effort of my own, i had become known throughout the whole country as "the colored professor." i had a status. the lady being the daughter of a highly respectable minister, she also had a status. to permit therefore the union of these parties would be to bring the principle of amalgamation into respectability. so reasoned those who attempted to reason on behalf, or rather in excuse, of the mob. "we are sorry," they went on condescendingly to say, "for professor allen, for though a man of color, he is nevertheless a gentleman, a christian and a scholar. but this union must not be; the 'proprieties of society,' must not be violated!" here then was the secret of this extraordinary outbreak. had we moved in what these good people would have been pleased to term a lower strata of society, they would have let us alone with infinite contempt. the most lamentable feature of this fulton mob was the fact, that we could not, if we had sought it, have secured any redress. no court of law in the state would have undertaken to bring to justice the perpetrators of this outrage. but on the contrary, such court would have been inclined to take sides with the mobocrats, and to justify them in the means which they employed wherewith to chastise a colored man who had presumed so grossly to violate the "proprieties of society." before closing i cannot forebear a further word with regard to new york central college. during the four years i was in connexion with that college as professor, i never experienced the slightest disrespect from trustees, professors or students. all treated me kindly, so kindly indeed that i can truly say that the period of my professorship forms one of the pleasantest remembrances of my life. terrible as prejudice against color is, my experience has taught me that it is not invincible; though, as it is the offspring of slavery, it will never be fully vanquished until slavery has been abolished. in illustration of the direct influences of slavery as they affect the free man of color, i again go back for a single moment. having spent three years at oneida institute, i proposed to myself a visit to virginia, to look once more into the faces of beloved parents, relatives and friends, to walk again upon the strand at fortress monroe, where i had so often in childhood beheld the sunbeams play upon the coves and inlets, and seen the surf beat upon the rocks. i, at first, had some difficulty in getting a passage to virginia, most of the masters of the new york vessels to whom i applied seeming to be of a friendly nature, and not willing to expose me to the slave laws of virginia. i, however, succeeded at last--the captain of a philadelphia vessel consenting to land me at the fortress of monroe. i remained in the home of my childhood and youth seven days in peace; but on the morning of the eighth day, while walking on the strand, i was rudely assaulted by a person who had known me from my infancy. i had always supposed him to be a gentleman, and was therefore greatly surprised and shocked. but slavery is relentless; it ruins both the morals and the manners. this individual, after belaboring me in a savage manner, gave me distinctly to understand that unless i left virginia speedily, i might find myself in trouble. he afterwards remarked, as i understood, to his friends that "this allen has been off to an abolition college and returned among us. let us look out for him." i took the hint; and on the next morning secured the services of a party who rowed me off in a small canoe to a vessel lying in the harbor, where i bargained with the captain, who, for a handsome sum, consented to take me quietly out of the state. i left virginia at once, and have never returned to it since, though i would gladly have done so, as relatives and friends near and dear to me have since died, by the side of whose death beds i desired to stand. in conclusion i have only to say that were i in the united states of america to-morrow, it would be more than my life or liberty would be worth to put foot upon the soil of my native state. is this freedom? if it be, then give me slavery indeed. a word or two with regard to my course in this country. hitherto my income has been derived solely from lectures, tuitions, and such other odds and ends of work in my line as my hands could find to do. i desire a more permanent settlement for myself and family, and hope that the sale of this little narrative may help to create means to that end. i send it forth therefore, desiring that it may stand upon its own merits, at the same time earnestly hoping that it may interest all into whose hands it may fall. from lord shaftesbury. "lord shaftesbury sympathizes most heartily with professor allen and sincerely wishes him success in his undertaking. it will give lord shaftesbury great pleasure to assist, in any way that he can, a gentleman of the colored race, who is a hundred times wiser and better than his white oppressors. "london, _july, ._" from rev. i. g. abeltshauser, ll.d. trinity college, dublin, and others;-- "dublin, th april, . "the undersigned having made due enquiry from the most trustworthy sources relative to the character and attainments of professor william g. allen, have much pleasure in recommending him as a gentleman of high attainments and honorable character. i. g. abeltshauser, clk. ll.d. trin. col. dub. wm. urwick, d. d. , rathmines road, dublin. james haughton, eccles-street, dublin. richard allen, sackville-street, dublin. jonathan pim, , william-street, dublin. john evans, m. d. , richmond-street, dublin. r. d. webb, , great brunswick-street, dublin. john r. wigham, , capel-street, dublin." from richard d. webb, esq. of dublin. "dublin, rd november, . "dear mr. allen, "your name was familiar to me long before i knew you personally. i had often heard of 'professor w. g. allen,' who, while connected with the central college, in the state of new york, and respected there as a man and a teacher, was obliged to leave his native country for the offence of marrying a white lady of respectable family and great excellence of character, who is now much liked and esteemed by her numerous friends in this city. i became acquainted with you soon after your arrival in london; and particularly during your residence in ireland i have had nearly as much opportunity of knowing you as any of your acquaintances here. i can truly say, that you have earned the hearty respect of all who know you (of whom i have any knowledge), by the industry, energy, and self-respect you have evinced in the course of a long and difficult battle with those adverse circumstances, with which a comparatively unknown and friendless stranger has to contend, in his efforts to effect a settlement in a strange country. your conduct has been industrious, honorable and in every way deserving of esteem and sympathy. some time since, in the columns of the 'anti-slavery advocate,' without hint or solicitation on your part, i took the liberty to speak of your course as i do now; for amongst all the colored americans with whom my interest in the anti-slavery cause has made me acquainted--and many of whom are my own personal friends--i have known none more deserving of respect and confidence than yourself. "yours truly, "richard d. webb." * * * * * having, in my avocation as lecturer on "the african race" and "america and the americans," visited nearly the whole of ireland, i respectfully submit the following letters and notices, the letters being from gentlemen who kindly presided at the meetings:-- from the rev. doctor fitzgerald, archdeacon of kildare, (now lord bishop of cork). "professor allen delivered some lectures on the african race, in kingstown, which seemed to have given general satisfaction. i regret that i was unable to attend more than one, but i can truly say that it bore evidence of a highly cultivated mind, and imparted valuable information in a pleasing form. from what i have seen and heard of professor allen, i should be glad to think that any testimony of mine could be of service to him. "w. fitzgerald, archdeacon of kildare, (now lord bishop of cork.) "dublin, nov. " from rev. doctor urwick, dublin. "i have known professor allen since his first coming to ireland, and believe him to be a gentleman of high character and attainments. his lecturings, more than one of which i have heard, display much power, and by the amount of information they contain, united with a clear and often eloquent style, and earnest manner, cannot fail, at once, to interest and instruct the audience. i cordially commend him to the confidence and kind attention of my friends. "w. urwick. "dublin, nov. , ." from cork--see "constitution," "examiner" and "reporter," march . "cork, feb. , . "to william g. allen, esq. late professor of greek in new york central college. "dear sir--we, the undersigned, having heard your lectures on 'america' and 'africa,' and derived therefrom much instruction as well as gratification, do, on our own part and that of many of our fellow citizens who are anxious to hear you, respectfully request that you will give, at least, two lectures more upon these interesting subjects. "(signed) henry martin, congregational minister. r. w. forrest (free church). richd. corbett, m. d. j. d. carnegie. henry unkles. george baker. richard dowden, (rd.) william magill, (scots' church). joseph r. greene, professor, queen's coll. thomas jennings. n. jackson, c. e. joseph colbeck." from "belfast news-letter," dec. , . "rev. doctor cooke occupied the chair. professor allen then delivered a lecture of great ability and interest. dr. cooke said he had listened to a remarkable oration. he was glad he had heard it. he thanked professor allen, in the name of the meeting, for his truly valuable and instructive lecture." from the dean of waterford. "professor w. g. allen, an american gentleman of color, having visited waterford, delivered two lectures here, one on 'america,' and the other on 'africa and the african races.' on each occasion i had the pleasure to occupy the chair at the meetings held to hear mr. allen's lectures, which proved most interesting and instructive. the professor is himself a witness that there is nothing in color or race to hinder a man from being distinguished for eloquence, good taste, and religious feeling. "i have seldom heard public addresses which have interested me more, and i have no doubt that mr. allen's lectures will prove useful, wherever they are delivered, in creating an interest on behalf of our fellow men, who have suffered so great wrongs from professing christians, though happily no longer at the hands of british subjects. "edw. n. hoare, dean of waterford. "deanery, waterford, jan. , ." from rev. doctor browne, principal of kilkenny college. "kilkenny college, feb. , . "i have attended professor allen's lectures on 'america and the americans,' and on the 'african races,' and have received much pleasure as well as information from the talent and power with which he has handled the subjects of which he treated. "his knowledge, his ardent and impressive manner, and clear melodious voice, render him a most pleasing as well as instructive lecturer. "john browne, clk. ll.d." twenty-five years in the black belt [illustration: william j. edwards] twenty-five years in the black belt by william j. edwards illustrated the cornhill company boston copyright, by the cornhill company to my loving wife who encouraged me in all my early struggles and aided me in all my achievements contents chapter page . childhood days . shadows . a ray of light . life at tuskegee . reconnoitering . founding the snow hill school . small beginnings . campaigning for funds in the north . results . origin of the jeanes fund . appreciation . graduates and ex-students . the solution of the negro problem . the greatest menace of the south . the negro exodus . the negro and the public schools of the south . where lies the negro's opportunity? . school problems of a tuskegee graduate . benefits wrought by hardships . the negro and the world war appendix list of illustrations william j. edwards _frontispiece_ uncle charles lee and his home in the black belt _facing page_ first trustees of snow hill and two of their wives " " partial view of snow hill institute " " a new type of home in the black belt " " typical log cabin in the black belt " " home of a snow hill graduate " " graduates of snow hill institute " " teachers of snow hill institute " " preface in bringing this book before the public, it is my hope that the friends of the snow hill school and all who are interested in negro education may become more familiar with the problems and difficulties that confront those who labor for the future of a race. i have had to endure endless hardships during these twenty-five years, in order that thousands of poor negro youths might receive an industrial education,--boys and girls who might have gone into that demoralized class that is a disgrace to any people and that these friends may continue their interest in not only snow hill but all the schools of the south that are seeking to make better citizens of our people. i also hope that the interest may be sustained until the state and nation realize that it is profitable to educate the black child as well as the white. to me, these have been twenty-five years of self denial, of self sacrifice, of deprivation, even of suffering, but when i think of the results, i am still encouraged to go on; when i think of the work that mr. mcduffie is doing at laurinburg, n. c., brown at richmond, ala., knight at evergreen, ala., mitchell at w. butler, ala., carmichael at perdue hill, ala., brister at selma, ala., and hundreds of others, i feel that the sacrifice has not been in vain, so i continue believing that after all the great heart of the american people is on the right side. i think that to-day, the negro faces the dawn,--not the twilight,--the morning,--not the evening. in my passionate desire to hasten that time and with the crying needs of my race at heart, i choose this opportunity for making an appeal in their behalf. "lord, and what shall this man do?" (john .) man is a relative being and should be thus considered. the status of my brother then will always serve as a standard of value by which my own conduct can be measured; by his standard mine may become either high or low, broad or narrow, deep or shallow. this is the theory that underlies all humanitarian work. this is the great dynamic force of the christian life. no question is being asked by the american people more earnestly today than this one: "lord, what shall this man, the negro, do,--this black man upon whom centuries of ignorance have left their marks?" he has made a faithful slave, a courageous soldier, and when trained and educated, an industrious and law-abiding citizen, yet he is troubled on every side. what shall he do? uneducated, undisciplined, untrained, he is often ferocious or dangerous; he makes a criminal of the lowest type for he is the product of ignorance. crime has increased in proportion as educational privileges have been withdrawn. this brings the negro face to face with a most dangerous criminal force. what shall this man do? it is true that the white man is further up on the ladder of civilization than the negro, but the negro desires to climb and has made rapid strides, according to his chances. christ's answer to peter was, "what is that to thee, follow thou me." john's future welfare evidently depended upon peter's ability to follow christ. so the future work and welfare of the negro in the black-belt of the south depend largely upon the christian work of the southern white man. the negro needs justice and mercy from the courts of the land and asks for equal rights in educational opportunities. we admit that there is a difference between the white man and the negro, but the difference is not as great as was the difference between christ and his disciples. we admit that the white man is above the negro, but not so high as was christ above his disciples. the very fact that christ was superior to his disciples served to him as a reason why he should minister unto them. the superiority of the white man to his black brother can only be shown by the white man's willingness to minister unto him. lord, what shall this black man do? many great problems confront the people of the rural south, namely, this negro problem and the problem of sufficient labor supply. in a practical way i wish to consider the relation of the negro to the labor problem of the rural south. it is a fact that today many of the best farms of the south have been turned into pastures because of the lack of labor; other farms have been sold, and still others are growing up in weeds because there is no one to till them. this condition obtains in a very marked degree in almost every southern state. certainly in most of the agricultural sections. before investigating the cause of this condition, men of influence and power have hastened to proclaim through the press and otherwise, that the responsibility rests upon the negro. they say that the negro is lazy, worthless, criminal and will not work and therefore they are compelled to have immigrants to work these fields. that there are lazy, worthless and criminal negroes, we do not deny, but we do deny that as a race they are such. the facts are these: first, the south, unlike other sections of the country, has not had thousands of immigrants to come into her borders year after year to do her work, but has depended solely upon the increase in her native population for this purpose. this increase has not kept pace with the marvellous growth and development of that section, hence, the cry for labor. second, scarcity of labor in that section is due in part, to ignorance and a false idea of real freedom. men with such ideas do not work long in any one place, but rove from section to section and work enough to keep themselves living. this labor is not only unprofitable to the individual, but is not satisfactory to the employers. third, the labor trouble in the rural south is due mostly to the way in which the landlords and merchants treat their tenants and customers. the great mass of negroes in the south either rent the lands or work them on shares. this rent varies according to the kind of crops that are made. if the tenant makes a good crop this year, he must expect to pay more rent the next year, or his farm will be rented to another at higher figures. of course, the negroes are ignorant and are unable to keep their own accounts. sometimes these negro farmers pay as much as %, % and % on the goods and provisions which they consume during the year. this method of renting lands and selling goods according to the condition of the crops, is repeated year after year. i know ignorant farmers who have been working under these conditions for twenty-five and thirty years, who have never been able to get more than $ or $ in any one year during this period. these are not worthless and shiftless negroes, but persons who work hard from monday morning until saturday night. as a rule, they are on their farms at sunrise, and remain there until sunset. they have their dinners brought to them in the fields. i have seen small families grow into large ones under these conditions. i have also seen infants grow to manhood under same. now, these people who have been working in this way for twenty-five and thirty years are becoming discouraged. when you ask them why they do not ditch, fertilize, and improve their farms, their answer is, that if they do this, the next year they will either have to pay more rent or hunt another home for themselves. it seems to be the policy of the landlords and the merchants of the rural south to keep their tenants and customers in debt. it is this abominable method of the landlords and tenants of the rural south more than anything else, that has caused many of the best farming lands there to be turned into pastures, others to be sold at sheriff sale, and still others to be growing up in weeds. another menace is loss of fertility of the soil. the problem is, how can we stop these people from leaving the country for the cities and other places of public works and again reclaim these waste fields? it was once thought that the places of these negroes could be supplied by immigrants from foreign countries, but this hope is now almost abandoned. in fact, the few immigrants who have gone into that section have, in many instances, been oppressed almost as much as the negroes, many have gone to other parts of the country or have returned to their homes. so we find ourselves face to face with large and fertile agricultural areas in the south with no labor to till them. the remedy of these evils lies in the negro himself. he is best suited to the work, best adapted to the climate, and understands the southern white man better than anyone else. furthermore, he knows the white man; knows his disposition and inclinations, and therefore, knows what is so called his place. he feels that justice is wanting in the courts of the south and he therefore tries to avoid all troubles. most of all, he prays for a chance to work and educate his children. he labors and waits thus patiently because he has faith in the american people. he believes that ere long the righteous indignation of this people will be aroused and like the great wave of prohibition, will sweep this country from center to circumference, and then every man will be awarded according to his several abilities. these waste places can be reclaimed and the guttered hills made to blossom, only by giving the negro a common education combined with religious, moral and industrial training and the opportunity to at least own his home, if not the land he cultivates. the negro must be taught to believe that the farmer can become prosperous and independent; that he can own his home and educate his children in the country. if he can, and he can be taught these things, in less than ten years, every available farm in the rural south will be occupied. william j. edwards. twenty-five years in the black belt chapter . childhood days. all that i know of my ancestors was told to me by my people. i learned from my grandfather on my mother's side that the family came to alabama from south carolina. he told me that his mother was owned by the wrumphs who lived in south carolina, but his father belonged to another family. for some cause, the wrumphs decided to move from south carolina to alabama; this caused his mother and father to be separated, as his father remained in south carolina. the new home was near the village of snow hill. this must have been in the thirties when my grandfather was quite a little child. he had no hope of ever seeing his father again, but his father worked at nights and in that way earned enough money to purchase his freedom from his master. so after four or five years he succeeded in buying his own freedom from his master and started out for alabama. when he arrived at snow hill, he found his family, and mr. wrumphs at once hired him as a driver. he remained with his family until his death, which occurred during the war. at his death one of his sons, george, was appointed to take his place as driver. as i now remember, my grandfather told me that his mother's name was phoebe and that she lived until the close of the war. my grandfather married a woman by the name of rachael and she belonged to a family by the name of sigh. his wife's mother came directly from africa and spoke the african language. it is said that when she became angry no one could understand what she said. her owner allowed her to do much as she pleased. my grandfather had ten children, my mother being the oldest girl. she married my father during the war and, as nearly as i can remember, he told me that it was in . three children were born to them and i was the youngest; there was a girl and another boy. i know little of my father's people, excepting that he repeatedly told me that they came from south carolina. so it is, that while i can trace my ancestry back to my great-grandparents on my mother's side, i can learn nothing beyond my grandparents on my father's side. my grandfather was a local preacher and could read quite well. just how he obtained this knowledge, i have never been able to learn. he had the confidence and respect of the best white and colored people in the community and sometimes he would journey eight or ten miles to preach. many times at these meetings there were nearly as many whites as colored people in the audience. he was indeed a grand old man. his name was james and his father's name was michael. so after freedom he took the name of james carmichael. one of the saddest things about slavery was the separation of families. very often i come across men who tell me that they were sold from virginia, south carolina or north carolina, and that they had large families in those states. since their emancipation, many of these have returned to their former states in search of their families, and while some have succeeded in finding them, there are those who have not been able to find any trace of their families and have come back again to die. sometimes we hear people attempt to apologize for slavery, but slavery at its best was hard and cruel. often the old slaves tell me of their bitter experience. even today, there are everywhere in the south many ex-slaves who lived their best days before and during the civil war. many of these men and women found themselves alone at the close of the war, having been sold away from their families while they were slaves. i was born at snow hill, wilcox county, alabama, september th, , three-quarters of a mile east of where snow hill institute now stands. my mother died september th, , at which time i lacked three days of being one year old. from all i can learn my mother was very religious. she was a great praying woman and almost at every meeting held in the neighborhood she would be called upon to pray. in fact, she was sent for miles around to pray at these meetings. my mother's death left my father with three children, i being the youngest. he succeeded in getting his mother, who was cooking for her white people in selma, alabama, to come and take us in charge. my name was ulyses grant edwards, but my grandmother, who had been with white people since emancipation, changed my name to william. i afterward added to this my grandfather's name of james. my father went away to work and i remained with my grandmother. we lived about one mile from the "quarter,"--that is, the collection of slaves' cabins. we had about three acres of ground cleared around our cabin and my grandmother and i farmed. i do not know how old i was when i began working, for i have been a farm hand ever since i could remember anything. we usually made one bale of cotton each year and about twenty-five or thirty bushels of corn. sometimes my grandfather would do our plowing and at other times,--as we had no stock,--my grandmother and i worked out for others to get our plowing done. in the summer time it was the custom for little negro boys to wear only one garment, a shirt. sometimes, however, my grandmother would be unable to get one for me and in that case she would take a crocus sack or corn sack and put two holes in it for my arms and one for my head. in putting on a sack shirt for the first time the sensation was extremely irritating. it seemed as if a thousand pins were sticking me all at once, but after a few days it would become all right and i could wear it comfortably. for several summers this was my only garment. sometimes we would raise a pig during the summer to kill in the winter and sometimes we had a cow to milk. at such times we had plenty to eat, but at other times we had neither a pig nor a cow and then we had hard times in the way of getting something to eat. some days our only diet was corn-bread and corn coffee. when i was old enough, i was sent to school for two or three months each winter. here again i had a hard time, as we usually carried our dinner in a little tin bucket. sometimes i had nothing but bread and when recess came for dinner, i went away by myself and ate my bread and drank water. as long as i could keep out of the way of the other children, no one was the wiser and i did not mind it, but some of the children began to watch me and in that way found that i had nothing but bread, and when they told the others, they would laugh and make fun of me. this would make me feel badly and sometimes i cried, but i did not stop school for this. my one desire was to learn to read the bible for my old grandmother, who like my mother, was very religious. at last i was able to read the bible for her. she would listen for hours and too, she would sing such songs as, "roll, jordan roll." saturdays were mill days and i had to take the corn on my shoulder and go to the mill, which was four or five miles away. it always took me from four to five hours to make this trip, as i had to stop by the way several times to rest. by this time my brother and sister were large enough to do good work on the farm. my grandfather and grandmother for whom they were working, now desired to take them wholly from my old grandmother. the justice of the peace said that the children might decide the matter. my brother chose to go to my grandfather's but my sister came back home with the grandmother who had reared us from infants. of course, i did not go to court, because they all knew that there was no chance of my leaving my grandmother. in the early spring of while on one of my trips to the mill the thought dawned upon me that my grandmother was very old and must soon die. i cried all the way to the mill and back. i could not see how i would live after she was gone. i did not tell anybody why i was crying. on a june night, she became severely ill and died. all she said to us during her illness was: "children, i have been waiting for this hour a long time." after the death of my grandmother, her daughter marina rivers, who was herself a widow and well on in years, came to live with us that year. i soon learned to love her as i had my grandmother and never once thought of leaving her for my mother's people. we gathered the crop that fall and when all was over, my father, whom i had not seen for five or six years, came to carry my sister and myself to selma, where he was staying. the thought of going to the city filled me with joy and the time to go could not come too soon for me. chapter . shadows. we arrived in selma several days before christmas. here everything was strange to me, as i had never been in a city before. i did not know any one and it was not long before i was crying to return to snow hill. my father gave me to understand then, that selma was my home now and that i should not be permitted to return to snow hill. he said that he was going to put me in school when the new year came, but when the time came nothing was said about school. he gave us little care and often we were in need of food and clothes. after spending a few weeks doing nothing, i went out one day to hunt for work and succeeded in getting a job at the compress, where they reduced the size of a bale of cotton by one-half and clipped the tires. my job was to straighten out the bent tires. i got twenty-five cents a day for this. that week i made one dollar and fifty cents. this was the most money i had ever had. i spent almost all of it for provisions and that night my sister cooked a great supper. finally, my father said that he would save my wages for me, but if he did he has it still, as i never have seen any that he collected. i had not been in selma long before i was taken ill. that misfortune changed my whole life. i had no medical attendance and suffered greatly. sometimes i prayed and sometimes i cried. the news reached snow hill that i was sick and not being cared for. as soon as she could, my aunt rina came to selma for me and carried me home. on my return to snow hill i was sick and emaciated, but few people welcomed me. many tried to discourage my aunt for bringing me back. they gave me about three months to live. i was glad to be at home again and had the consolation of knowing that should i die i would be buried in the old burying ground. i was unable at the time to do any work on the farm, so i was put to the task of raising chickens. i took personal interest in the little chicks. i had a name for each one of them. i would follow them around the yard and see them work for their food. when i was weary of this i would go to an old deserted cabin nearby, taking a few old books and the bible; there unmolested i would spend hours at a time reading the bible and pondering over the books. one of the books was an old davies' practical arithmetic. nothing gave me more pleasure than working out new sums for the first time. i kept up this practice until i had read the new testament through several times and had worked every problem in the arithmetic. in addition to this i would gather up wood and carry it home for the people to cook with. my aunt and her daughter were very poor and had to work each day for what they could get to eat. it pained me because i could not go out and work for something to eat as i had done in selma. i never ate a full meal although my aunt and her daughter insisted upon my doing so; i felt that i had no right to eat up what they had worked so hard to get, while i was doing nothing that was worth while. my aunt's daughter had a son who was one month older than i; he was well grown for his age and always was the picture of health. we all lived in a one-room cabin and there were three beds in it, besides it was the kitchen and dining-room as well. my aunt and her daughter wanted me to sleep at nights with their boy, but he objected, so i would not force myself upon him. i asked them to give me one or two old quilts and i would spread these upon the floor of the cabin at night for my bed. i would get up early and roll them up and store them away in some dark corner of the cabin until the next night. i slept in this manner for several years. after i had been at home for several months and my condition did not improve, my aunt went about begging people for nickels and dimes to take me to the local physician. i think she raised about three dollars in this way and succeeded in getting a doctor to treat me, but he gave my aunt to understand that she had to pay cash for each treatment. i shall never forget one sunday when a great many of the neighbors came to our home, they began telling my aunt what they would do with me if they were in her place. at the time i was in the back-yard watching the chicks. some one said that she should send me to the poorhouse, others said that she had done so much for me, it was time that some of my other people should take me and share in the burden, while others said that i should be driven away and go wherever i could find shelter. i was so offended at hearing this that i hobbled down the hill and there under a pine tree, which now stands, i prayed for an hour or more for god to let me die. after this prayer i lay down, folded my arms and closed my eyes, to see if my prayer would be answered. after waiting for awhile i finally decided to get up and i felt better then than i had felt for several months. i have made many prayers since then, but never since have i prayed to die. none of the solicitations and advices from our good friends could change my aunt's attitude towards me. in fact, she was more determined now than ever to care for me. the next year she rented a little patch and worked it as best she could and that fall she cleared a little money. as the local physician had done me no good, she took me to dr. george keyser who lived in the town of richmond, eight or ten miles away. dr. keyser had the reputation of being the best physician in that section of the state and people would come for twenty-five and thirty miles around to be treated by him. but we had also heard that he was a man who would not treat any one without having his money down. as i remember, my aunt paid him five dollars on the first visit and each time after that she would send whatever she could get. i used to borrow a mule from one of the neighbors to ride to see him. sometimes when my medicine gave out and i had to go without any money, i would pray to god the whole distance that he might soften the doctor's heart so that he would let me have my medicine. i don't know whether my prayers were needed or not, but i do know that the doctor always treated me kindly and finally he told me that i could be treated whenever my medicine gave out, money or no money. he treated me in this way until the early fall of ' when he told my aunt that i needed an operation and she must try and get me a place to stay nearby so that he could see me daily. after looking around she found on the doctor's place an old fellow-servant, that is, an old lady who belonged to the same man my aunt did in slavery time. her name was lucy george; she was near the age of my aunt, and had never been married. they were indeed glad to meet and she readily consented to take me to her little cabin where she lived alone. the doctor visited his plantation two or three times a week and usually came to see me. he operated on me twice during my stay there. "in the subject of this sketch, w. j. edwards, was sent to me by his aunt, rina rivers, for medical treatment. he had been sick for several months from scrofula and it had affected the bone of his left arm (hinneras) near the elbow joint, and the heel bone (os calcis) of his left foot. it was with much difficulty and pain that he walked at all. the boy was kind, courteous and polite to every one, white and colored, and all sympathized with him in his great affliction, and manifested their sympathy in a very substantial way, by sending him many good things to eat. this enabled me to build up his general health. i had to remove the dead bone (necrosed bone) from his arm and heel many times. he always stood the operation patiently and manifested so great a desire to get well, i kept him near me a long time and patiently watched his case. after four years' treatment his heel cured up nicely, and he was enabled to walk very well, and the following fall he picked cotton. with prudence, care and close application to cotton picking, he saved money enough to very nearly pay his medical account, and his fare to booker washington's school at tuskegee, alabama. the work of this pupil of booker washington,--carried on under adverse circumstances,--is worthy of emulation. he has, and is now, doing much good work for his race. he has won the confidence and esteem of all the white and colored citizens of this section of the country. he is a remarkable man, a great benefactor to his race, and it affords me great pleasure to testify as to his history and character. mr. r. o. simpson, on whose plantation he lived and who aided him materially,--is one of the trustees of his institute." george w. keyser, m. d. richmond, dallas county, alabama. chapter . a ray of light. for three months after my first operation i could not walk. my aunt would come from snow hill once a week to bring my rations and to see how i was getting along. i always cried when she went home. during my first month's stay on the doctor's place, "aunt lucy" george with whom i lived, was at home most of the time, but when the cotton season came on, she had to go to the doctor's field, which was a mile away, to pick cotton. this left me alone for five days in the week. "aunt lucy" would get up early and prepare her breakfast, take her lunch to the field with her, and would not return until night. she would also leave me something to eat, and i could crawl about the house and get such other things as i needed. the first few days that i was alone were the most miserable days of my life. i tried to walk, but fainted once or twice at these attempts, so i had to be contented with crawling. soon, however, i began crawling about the yard. i found several red ants' nests within about twenty or twenty-five yards of the house, and soon made friends of the ants. i would crawl from nest to nest and watch them do their work. i became so interested in them that i would spend the whole day watching and following them about the yard. i would be anxious for the nights to pass that i might return to them the next day. i found that the ants worked by classes. one class would bring out the dirt, another would go out in search of food, another would take away the dead, another would over look those that worked, and still another class, though few in numbers, would come out and look around and then return. these had much larger heads than the average. some few, however, with great heads, would come out once or twice a day. i never learned what their business was, as they did not seem to do much of anything. they very seldom went more than a few inches from the nests. i noticed, too, that those that went in search of food and failed to get it, would come back to the nests and stand around and consult with the guards and then would return. they did this several times. sometimes they would go away and get into the weeds and rest awhile. however, when they saw others coming, they would start out again. sometimes, after making several trips without success, i would give them crumbs of bread, and they would hasten away to their nests. they never hesitated when they had food, but would run right in. this was great fun for me, and i spent most of the remainder of my time in this manner. this was during the fall of ' . by the first week in december i had recovered sufficiently to be able to walk very well with a stick and could do a little work. i then returned to snow hill with my aunt, and, though i was anxious to return home, i hated very much to leave my little friends. i got home in time to make toy wagons for my christmas money. the following year, although far from being well, i could do a little work on my aunt's farm. i ought not to call it a farm, because it was only a few acres which she rented from one of the tenants on mr. simpson's plantation. the habit of sub-renting was very prevalent on this plantation. a tenant with one mule would rent twenty-five acres, if he had two mules he would rent fifty acres. now in order to get work done on his farm, he would sub-rent four or five acres, to some one who would do this work for him. it was in this way that my aunt could get land to work. we usually made on these few acres about twenty bushels of corn and sometimes a half a bale or a whole bale of cotton. having to work for our plowing and to pay the rent of the land, we had but little chance to do much work for ourselves. we very seldom had enough to eat. some days we would work from the rising of the sun until dark without anything but water. then my aunt would go out among the neighbors in the evening and borrow a little corn meal or get a little on condition that she would work to pay for it the next day. while my aunt would go to hunt for the bread i would go out and beg for some milk from some of our friends. i would always add water to my milk to make it go a long way. this bread and half-water-and-milk constituted our supper for many nights. in spite of these hard times i always found time to study my books. sometimes i borrowed books from the boys and girls who had them. we were too poor to buy oil so i would go to the woods and get a kind of pine that we called light-wood. this would make an excellent light and i could study some nights until twelve o'clock. when the blackberries, peaches, apples and plums were ripe, we fared better, as these grew wild and we could have a plenty of them to eat. as the season came for the corn to mature, we would sometimes make a meal of green corn. when the corn became too hard for us to use in this way, we used to make a grater out of an old piece of tin and would grate the corn and make meal of it in this way until it was hard enough to go to the mill. when the cotton picking season came on we could pick cotton for the neighbors and in that way could have a plenty to eat. they paid fifty cents a hundred pounds for picking cotton. i sometimes picked two hundred pounds a day, but by picking at night, i occasionally got almost three hundred. we children thought it great fun to go into the swamps at night to pick cotton. we would go at seven o'clock in the evening and spend the whole night in the cotton fields. when we got sleepy we would lie down in the cotton row with our cotton sacks under our heads. we would sleep a few hours and get up and begin picking again. in the swamps at night the owls and frogs made plenty of music for us. such was my life for several years. during all these years the one thing uppermost in my mind was the desire to attend some school, but i could not see how i would ever be able to do so. i had heard much of talladega college, the school at normal and the state school at montgomery, but board at these schools was from seven to eight dollars per month and this had to be paid in cash. this, of course, would keep me out, as i could never see how i could get so much money. it was during the month of august ' that i first heard of tuskegee. there was a revival meeting going on at one of the churches at snow hill. i was determined to visit this meeting. i did not have suitable clothes, neither did i have any shoes, so my people told me that i would not be able to attend church. i had not been to church in seven years, and i was very anxious to hear some preaching. notices were sent out that on a wednesday night a presiding elder would speak. this man had the reputation of being a great preacher. all of our people prepared early, and went to church. when i thought the services had begun, i too went. though i was far from being well, i did not have much trouble in reaching there. i did not go in, however, but went around to the rear of the church. the building was a large, box-like cottage, and contained many cracks. one could hear as well on the outside as on the inside. i stood directly behind the pulpit and heard all that the preacher said. at the close of his sermon he spoke of the school at tuskegee, where, he said, poor boys and girls could go without money and without price, and work for an education. from that night i decided to go to tuskegee. before the meeting closed, i returned home, and when the others got there, i was in my place fast asleep. i wrote mr. washington the next day, and he sent me a catalogue immediately. chapter . life at tuskegee. in the fall of ' i told my aunt that i wanted to go to tuskegee the next year, and that in addition to her little farm, i wanted to rent an acre of land and work it for that purpose. she encouraged me in this idea and said that she wished so much that she could do something for me that was worth while, but she was poor and could do but little, as she was now well advanced in years. she said, however, that she would help me to work my patch. about this time i learned that my brother washington, who had been away for a number of years, was living at hazen, alabama, about fifty miles northeast of snow hill. he was working in the bridge-gang on a railroad and was making good money. i learned also that my father and sister had died several years before. now as there were but two of us, and i was cripple, i thought that i would write my brother and get him to help me go to tuskegee. so i started out for hazen and reached there after two days' journey on foot. my brother did not seem to care for me and gave me no encouragement whatever. this was a sore disappointment to me and i did not remain there more than a few days. i returned to snow hill very much discouraged, but the warmth with which my old aunt greeted and welcomed me back home, helped me much. soon we were all busy getting ready to plant our little farms. that year there were four of us still living in the one room log cabin, my aunt, her daughter, her grandson and myself. each of us had a little farm. about mid-summer when our provisions had given out, my aunt's daughter and her son mortgaged their crops for something to eat, and wanted that we should do the same, but i would not agree to do so. this, of course, made it hard for me to get anything to eat. my cousin and her son were perfectly willing that their mother and grandmother should share in their provisions, but would see to it that i got none. i did not think hard of them for this, because i felt that i had no right to what they had. i continued to live on water and bread, and sometimes i would get a little milk from the neighbors as i had formerly done. i asked them, however, if i might have the water in which they boiled their vegetables whenever they had a boiled dinner. we called this water "pot liquor." of course, they readily consented to this and sometimes i would get enough of this liquor to last me two or three days. in fact, i was poorly nourished all the time. about this time someone came through the county selling clocks, on condition that we pay for them later in the fall. i objected to this but the other members of the family over-ruled my objections and the clock was bought on the condition stated above. the clock cost $ and each of us agreed to pay $ . each. when the time came to pay for this clock no one had any money, and so i paid what i had saved to prepare myself for tuskegee. i thought now that i would never get to that school as i had spent most of my money in paying for a worthless clock. however, i picked cotton day and night for almost two weeks, and succeeded in making all the money back which i had spent for the clock. i was now able to finish paying dr. keyser and get a few clothes and start for tuskegee. for a long time the people in the quarter did not believe that i was going, and many tried to discourage me. had it not been for my aunt's encouraging words and sincere efforts, i believe that i could not have overcome the efforts of others to keep me from going. when, however, they all found that i was determined to go, they all became my friends and each would give me a nickel or a dime to help me off. the night before i left for tuskegee, one of the neighbors told me that while he did not have anything to give me, he had a contract to get a cord of wood to the woodyard for the train by six o'clock the next morning and if i would take his team and haul it, he would give me one dollar for my services. i agreed to do it and at two o'clock the next morning i was at his home hitching up the team to haul the wood. i had to go about two miles for the wood and there was a very heavy frost that morning. by five o'clock i had hauled the wood and had the team back to my neighbor's home waiting for my dollar. i thought this to be the coldest morning that i had ever experienced up to that time. i then got my few things together and was off for school. i reached tuskegee the first day of ' . i found things there very strange indeed. hundreds of students were going to and fro. some were playing football, others were having band practice, and still others were going around doing nothing, as the first day of the new year was a holiday. i was placed with a crowd of boys from pensacola, fla. i learned afterwards that they were the roughest boys in school. they made it very unpleasant for me, so much so that i decided to return home. in going back to the office i met mr. washington for the first time. he wanted to know why i was not satisfied, and after i told him my troubles, he said that he would remedy them. i was deeply impressed with him and from that day to this, i loved him as a father. he changed my room and i found a crowd of very congenial boys. the next ordeal through which i was to pass, was going into the dining-room and using knives and forks, but i avoided all humiliation by simply watching. i have made it a rule of my life to never be the first to try new things, nor the last to lay old ones aside. after supper, i was worried about sleeping. i had heard the boys talking about night shirts and i knew i had none; in fact, i did not know their purpose. so when time came to retire, one of the boys in my room who had several, gave me one, then i was undecided just whether it was to go over my day shirt or over my undershirt, but i did not want to ask how it should be worn, so i decided to sit up until some one had gone to bed and by watching him i knew i would learn just how to use mine. in this way i came through all right. the habit of using the tooth-brush was not so hard. the next day the regular routine work of the school began and i was given my examination. i took examination for the b-middle class. this is the second year normal. miss annie c. hawley of portland, maine, who was then a teacher there, gave me the examination. i made the class in all of the subjects except grammar. of this subject i knew absolutely nothing. i did not know what a sentence was. i could not tell the subject from the predicate, so i was put back two years into what is called the a-prep. class. after my examination i was assigned to my work. i was placed in the tin shop, which was then being placed as one of the industries, under mr. lewis adams. i was the first student to work in this shop, but it did not take two days to learn that i could never be a tinsmith. next i was assigned to the printing office, but here too i found that i could never become a printer; so finally, i was put on the farm and there i remained during my whole stay at tuskegee. the farm manager at that time, mr. c. w. green, had charge of the brick-yard, poultry, dairy, landscape gardening, horticulture, as well as the general farm and truck-farm. i worked some in all of these departments and enjoyed my work immensely. i considered the work in the brick-yard as being the hardest of all and that was the only work which i could not do without suffering great pain because of my physical condition. still i was willing to endure suffering if by so doing i could obtain an education. i did not go to night school because i was given extra work, such as keeping the clocks on the campus regulated and making fires in the girls' buildings, and too, they had a system of electric bells which were used for the passing of classes, and i kept these in order. in this way i worked enough each month to pay my board and stay in day school. of course, i did not have, or get any money for my work, but i did not worry about that. miss maggie murray (afterwards mrs. washington) kept me well supplied with clothes from the supply of second hand garments which came to the school from northern friends. the remainder of the time that i was at tuskegee was spent in practically the same way that i have already described. many of the students would complain about the food, but the fact that i was getting three regular meals a day was enough for me. and too, i was now sleeping in a bed, something that i seldom had done. when burning bricks they would pay students cash for working at night, and it was by this work that i got a little money now and then. it usually takes from seven to eight days to burn a kiln of brick and sometimes i would work every night until the kiln had been burned. the one thing that made the deepest impression on me while at tuskegee was mr. washington's sunday evening talks to the students. he used to tell us that after getting our education we should return to our homes and there help the people. he said that the people were supporting tuskegee in order that we might be able to help the masses of our people. i could understand every word he said, and too, i felt always that he was talking directly to me. these talks of dr. washington's changed the course of my whole life and they are responsible for my being at the snow hill school today. it was when i reached the senior class that i came in personal touch with dr. washington, as he taught that class in two or three subjects. here i could study him as i was never able to do before. he had a thorough grasp upon all subjects he taught and would accept nothing but the same from his students. as the time was nearing for my graduation, i was deeply worried about my commencement suit. all of the other members of the class were sending home for their suits or for the money with which to get them, but i knew that my aunt was not able to help me, so i was at a loss to know where i should get mine. finally, i decided to write to mr. r. o. simpson of furman, alabama, the man on whose plantation i was reared, and ask him to loan me fifteen dollars. i prayed during the entire time it took me to write the letter and when i had sealed it i prayed over it again. in two days' time i had an answer with the fifteen dollars. so all of my troubles and worries were banished and i proceeded to get ready for commencement. i graduated second, with a class of twenty, on may , . our class motto was "deeds not words." the morning of may th found me packing my few clothes in an old trunk which one of the young men had given me, and getting ready to return to snow hill. all the while i was thinking of what i could do to live up to this new training which i had received at tuskegee, and above all, how could i make good our class motto: "deeds not words." although it has been now well nigh years since my graduation, those words still ring in my ears: "deeds not words." i should like so to live that when the summons come for me to join dr. washington in the great beyond, these words might be written as an epitaph on my tomb: "deeds not words." chapter . reconnoitering. when i returned from tuskegee on the th of may, , i found my old aunt, her daughter and her grandson still living in the one-room log cabin in which i had left them four and a half years before. their condition was much the same as when i left them. my first work was to build another end, a log pen, to the one room cabin; this gave us two rooms, something we never had before. as it was too late for me to pitch a crop, i worked with them until their crop was clean of weeds and then i went from farm to farm in the neighborhood, helping all the farmers that i could. the only pay i received was three meals a day wherever i worked. i usually worked from one to three days on each farm. all the while i was making a close study of the people's condition. i continued working in this way until i was convinced that i had a thorough knowledge of their condition. i then ventured to carry the investigation into other sections of wilcox county and the adjoining counties. i visited most of the places in the counties of monroe, butler, dallas and lowndes. these constitute most of the black belt counties of the state. i made the entire journey on foot. it was a bright beautiful morning in july when i started from my home, a log cabin. more than two hundred negroes were in the nearby fields plowing corn, hoeing cotton and singing those beautiful songs often referred to as plantation melodies: "i am going to roll in my jesus' arms," "o, freedom," and "before i'd be a slave, i'd be carried to my grave." with the beautiful fields of corn and cotton outstretched before me, and the shimmering brook like a silver thread twining its way through the golden meadows, and then through verdant fields, giving water to thousands of creatures as it passed, i felt that the earth was truly clothed in his beauty and the fulness of his glory. but i had scarcely gone beyond the limits of the field when i came to a thick undergrowth of pines. here we saw old pieces of timber and two posts. "this marks the old cotton-gin house," said uncle jim, my companion, and then his countenance grew sad; after a sigh, he said: "i have seen many a negro whipped within an inch of his life at these posts. i have seen them whipped so badly that they had to be carried away in wagons. many never did recover." from this our road led first up-hill, then down, and finally through a stretch of woods until we reached carlowville. this was once the most aristocratic village of the southern part of dallas county. perhaps no one who owned less than a hundred slaves was able to secure a home within its borders. here still are to be seen stately mansions and among the names of the owners are those of lyde, lee, wrumph, bibb, youngblood and reynolds. many of these mansions have been partly rebuilt and remodeled to conform to modern styles of architecture, while others have been deserted and are now fast decaying. usually the original families have sold out or many have died out. in carlowville stands the largest white church in dallas or wilcox counties. it has a seating capacity of , , excluding the balcony, which during slavery was used exclusively for the negroes of the families attending. our stay in carlowville was necessarily short, as the evening sun was low and the nearest place for lodging was two miles ahead. before reaching this place we came to a large one-room log cabin, by feet on the road-side, with a double door and three holes for windows cut in the sides. there was no chimney nor anything to show that the room could be heated in cold weather. this was the hopewell baptist church. here five hundred members congregated one sunday in each month and spent the entire day in eating, shouting, and praising god for his goodness toward the children of men. here also the three months' school was taught during the winter. a few hundred yards beyond this church brought us to the home of a deacon jones. he was living in the house occupied by the overseer of the plantation during slavery. it was customary for deacon jones to care for strangers who chanced to come into the community, especially for the preachers and teachers. so here we found rest. at supper deacon jones told of the many preachers he had entertained and their fondness for chicken. after supper i spent some time in trying to find out the real condition of the people in this section. mr. jones told me how for ten years he had been trying to buy some land, and had been kept from it more than once, but that he was still hopeful of getting the right deeds for the land for which he had paid. he also told of many families who had recently moved into this community. these newcomers had made a good start for the year and had promising crops, but they were compelled to mortgage their growing crops in order to get "advances" for the year. when asked of the schools, he said that there were more than five hundred children of school age in his township, but not more than two hundred of these had attended school the previous winter, and most of these for a period not longer than six weeks. he also said that the people were very indifferent as to the necessity of schoolhouses and churches. quite a few who cleared a little money the previous year had spent it all in buying whiskey, in gambling, in buying cheap jewelry, and for other useless articles. after spending two hours in such talk, i retired for the evening. thus ended the first day of my search for first-hand information. instead of going farther northward, we turned our course westward for the town of tilden, which is only eight miles west of snow hill. the road from carlowville to tilden is somewhat hilly, but a very pleasant one, and for miles the large oak trees formed an almost perfect arch. on reaching tilden we learned that there would be a union meeting of two churches that night. i decided that this would give me an opportunity to study the religious life of these people for myself. the members of churches number one and number two assembled at their respective places at eight o'clock. the members of church number two had a short praise service and formed a line of procession to march to church number one. all the women of the congregation had their heads bound in pieces of white cloth, and they sang peculiar songs as they marched. when the members of church number two were within a few hundred yards of the church number one, the singing then alternated, and finally, when the members of church number two came to church number one, they marched around this church three times before entering it. after entering the church, six sermons were preached to the two congregations by six different ministers, and at least three of these could not read a word in the bible. each minister occupied at least one hour. their texts were as often taken from webster's blue-back speller as from the bible, and sometimes this would be held upside down. it was about two o'clock in the morning when the services were concluded. here, again, we found no school-houses, and the three months' school had been taught in one of the little churches. the next day we started for camden, a distance of sixteen miles. this section between tilden and camden is perhaps the most fertile section of land in the state of alabama. taking a southwest course from tilden, i crossed into wilcox county again, where i saw acres of corn and miles of cotton, all being cultivated by negroes. the evening was far advanced when we reached camden, but having been there before, we had no difficulty in securing lodging. camden is the seat of wilcox county, and has a population of about three thousand. the most costly buildings of the town were the courthouse and jail, and these occupied the most conspicuous places. here great crowds of negroes would gather on saturdays to spend their earnings of the week for a fine breakfast or dinner on the following sunday, or for useless trivialities. on saturday evenings, on the roads leading to and from camden, as from other towns, could be seen groups of negroes gambling here and there, and buying and selling whiskey. as the county had voted against licensing whiskey-selling, this was a violation of the law, and often the commission merchant, a negro, was imprisoned for the offense, while those who supplied him went free. in camden i found one negro school-house; this was a box-like cottage, by feet, and was supposed to seat more than one hundred students. this school, like those taught in the churches, was opened only three months in the year. after a two days' stay in camden, i next visited miller's ferry on the alabama river, twelve miles west of camden. the road from camden is one of the best roads in the state, and for miles and miles one could see nothing but cotton and corn. at miller's ferry a negro school-house of ample proportions had been built on judge henderson's plantation. here the school ran several months in the year, and the colored people in the community were prosperous and showed a remarkable degree of intelligence. their church was as attractive as their school-house. judge henderson was for twelve years probate judge of wilcox county. he proved to be one of the best judges this county has ever had, and even unto this day he is admired by all, both white and black, rich and poor, for his honesty, integrity, and high sense of justice. from judge henderson's place we traveled southward to rockwest, a distance of more than fifteen miles. during this journey hundreds of negroes were seen at work in the corn and cotton fields. these people were almost wholly ignorant, as they had neither schools nor teachers, and their ministers were almost wholly illiterate. at rockwest i found a very intelligent colored man, mr. darrington, who had attended school at selma for a few years. he owned his home and ran a small grocery. he told of the hardships with which he had to contend in building up his business, and of the almost hopeless condition of the negroes about there. he said that they usually made money each year, but that they did not know how to keep it. the merchants would induce them to buy buggies, machines, clocks, etc., but would never encourage them to buy homes. we were very much pleased with the reception which mr. darrington gave us, and felt very much like putting into practice our state motto, "here we rest," at his home, but our objective point for the day was fatama, sixteen miles away. [illustration: uncle charles lee and his home in the black belt] on our journey that afternoon we saw hundreds of negro one-room log cabins. some of these were located in the dense swamps and some on the hills, while others were miles away from the public road. most of these people had never seen a locomotive. we reached fatama about seven o'clock that night, and here for the first time we were compelled to divide our crowd in order to get a night's lodging. each of us had to spend the night in a one-room cabin. it was my privilege to spend the night with uncle jake, a jovial old man, a local celebrity. after telling him of our weary journey, he immediately made preparation for me to retire. this was done by cutting off my bed from the remainder of the cabin by hanging up a sheet on a screen. while somewhat inconvenient, my rest that night was pleasant, and the next morning found me very much refreshed and ready for another day's journey. our company assembled at uncle jake's for breakfast, after which we started for pineapple. we found the condition of the negroes between fatama and pineapple much the same as that of those we had seen the previous day. no school-house was to be seen, but occasionally we would see a church at the cross-roads. we reached pineapple late in the afternoon. from pineapple we went to greenville, and from greenville to fort deposit, and from fort deposit we returned to snow hill, after having traveled a distance of miles and visiting four counties. in three of these counties there was a colored population of , between the ages of five and twenty years, and a white population of , of the same ages. the negro school population of wilcox and the seven adjoining counties was , . speaking of public schools in the sense that educators use the term, the colored people in this section had none. of course, there were so-called public schools here and there, running from three to five months in the year and paying the teachers from $ . to $ per month. our trip through this section revealed the following facts: ( ) that while many opportunities were denied our people, they abused many privileges; ( ) that there was a colored population, in this section visited, of more than , and a school population of , ; ( ) that the people were ignorant and superstitious; ( ) that the teachers and preachers for the most part, were of the same condition; ( ) that there were no public or private libraries and reading-rooms to which they had access; ( ) that, strictly speaking, there were no public schools and only one private one. now, what can be expected of any people in such a condition? can the blind lead the blind? they could not in the days of old, and it is not likely that they can now. chapter . founding the snow hill school. after this trip through the "black belt" i was more convinced than ever before of the great need of an industrial school in the very midst of these people; a school that would correct the erroneous ideas the people held of education; a school that would put most stress upon the things which the people were most likely to have to do with through life; a school that would endeavor to make education practical rather than theoretical; a school that would train men and women to be good workers, good leaders, good husbands, good wives, and finally train them to be fit citizens of the state and proper subjects for the kingdom of god. with this idea the snow hill normal and industrial institute was started twenty-five years ago in an old dilapidated one-room log cabin with one teacher and three students, with no state appropriation, and without any church or society responsible for one dollar of its expenses. aside from this unfortunate state of affairs, the condition of the people was miserable. this was due partly to poor crops and partly to bad management on their part. in many instances the tenants were not only unable to pay their debts, but were also unable to pay their rents. in a few cases the landlords had to provide at their own expense provisions for their tenants. this was simply another way of establishing soup-houses on the plantations. the idea of buying land was foreign to all of them, and there were not more than twenty acres of land owned by the colored people in this whole neighborhood. the churches and schools were practically closed, while crime and immorality were rampant. the carrying of men and women to the chain-gang was a frequent occurrence. these people believed that the end of education was to free their children from manual labor. they were much opposed to industrial education. when the school was started, many of the parents came to school and forbade our "working" their children, stating as their objection that their children had been working all their lives and that they did not mean to send them to school to learn to work. not only did they forbid our having their children work, but many took their children out of school rather than allow them to do so. a good deal of this opposition was kept up by illiterate preachers and incompetent teachers, who had not had any particular training for their profession. in fact, ninety-eight per cent of them had attended no school. we continued, however, to keep the "industrial plank" in our platform, and year after year some industry was added until we now have fourteen industries in constant operation. agriculture is the foremost and basic industry of the institution. we do this because we are in a farming section and ninety-five per cent of the people depend upon agriculture for a livelihood. [illustration: first trustees of snow hill and two of their wives] chapter . small beginnings. the early years of the school were indeed trying ones. there are however in all communities persons whose hearts are in the right place. i found it so in this case, for while there were many who opposed the industrial idea, there were those who stood for it and held up our arms. i refer to that noble class of old colored men who always seek for truth. the men who stood so loyally by me in the founding of the school were messrs. frank warren, willis mccants, ellis johnson, john thomas, isaac johnson, tom johnson and p. j. gaines. these men and their wives were ready at every call. they gave suppers, fairs and picnics as well as other entertainments to raise money for the school. not only would they help in the raising of money, but they would come to the school and work for days without thinking of any pay for their work. when we got ready to put up a new building, we would have what we called a house-raising and would invite all the men in the neighborhood to come out and help us. on these days the wives of these men would compete with each other to see who could bring out the best basket. at the end of the first school year it was clearly seen that we needed two assistant teachers; but the question that puzzled us was, where could they work. we had only one room and none of us had the money to buy the lumber needed. but there was a saw-mill near by and finally i sought work at this mill with the understanding that i would take my pay in lumber if the people would agree to feed me. this they readily consented to do. so i worked during may, june, july and august at the saw-mill and took my wages in lumber. this enabled us to get sufficient material to erect two of the rooms of our present training building. the following october we opened school with three teachers and students. these two teachers had graduated at tuskegee with me in ' . they were misses ophelia clopton and rosa bradford. they spent four years in the work here and we never had two teachers who did more for the old people in the community and who were loved more by them. in the fall of ' mr. barnes, who was also a member of the class of ' , joined us, and has been connected with the school since then except for two years which he spent in boston. in the fall of ' another one of our class-mates, julius webster, a carpenter, joined in our work here. we now had five teachers, all of tuskegee and all class-mates. i can never forget these old people and these early teachers, for we all shared our many sorrows and our few joys. no work was too hard for us and no sacrifice was too great. another tuskegee student was with us almost from the beginning. while mr. rivers did not graduate from the academic department at tuskegee, he finished his trade, agriculture, there. mr. rivers has had charge of our farm off and on since ' . i should say to his credit that he is in charge today and last year he made the best crop the school has ever made. thus far, i have spoken of the assistance given me by the colored people and teachers, but no chapter about the founding of snow hill institute would be complete without a mention of mr. r. o. simpson, the white man on whose plantation i was reared. mr. simpson must have known me from my birth. i well remember that in ' and ' he used to stop by to see my old grandmother when riding over his plantation. i think that my grandmother prepared meals for him on some of these visits to the plantation. i also remember that after the death of grandmother, when i was sick and living with my aunt rina, some days he would see me lying on the roadside and would toss me a coin. on my return from tuskegee i found mr. simpson deeply interested in the welfare of my people; in fact, it seemed as if he was looking for some one to start an industrial school upon his place. we had many talks together. when he found out that i had returned to cast my lot with my people, he seemed highly pleased and said that he would give a few acres for the school if i thought i could use it to advantage. i decided that this was my opportunity and told him that i could. he first gave seven acres, and then thirty-three, and finally sixty more, making in all one hundred acres that he gave the school. in later years we bought one-half of his plantation, making in all nearly two thousand acres. while all of the white people in snow hill have been friendly towards the work, i have found mr. simpson and his entire family to be our particular friends and i have yet to go to them for a favor and be refused. one of the cardinal points in dr. washington's sunday evening talks to the students and teachers at tuskegee was that they should buy homes of their own. i felt that the best way to teach the people to get a home was for me to own one myself. i thought that it would be useless for me to talk to them about buying homes as long as i did not have one for myself, so i secured a home. after the school was thoroughly planted and i had bought and paid for my home, we began to encourage the people to buy homes. this was done through several agencies, the negro farmers conference, the workers conference and the black-belt improvement society. the aim of this society is clearly set forth in its constitution, a part of which is as follows: ( ) this society shall be known as the black belt improvement society. its object shall be the general uplift of the people of the black belt of alabama; to make them better morally, mentally, spiritually, and financially. ( ) it shall further be the object of the black belt improvement society as far as possible, to eliminate the credit system from our social fabric; to stimulate in all members the desire to raise, as far as possible, all their food supplies at home, and pay cash for whatever may be purchased at the stores. ( ) to bring about a system of co-operation in the purchase of what supplies cannot be raised at home wherever it can be done to advantage. ( ) to discuss topics of interest to the communities in which the various societies may be organized, and topics relating to the general welfare of the race, and especially to farmers. ( ) to teach the people to practice the strictest economy, and especially to obtain and diffuse such information among farmers as shall lead to the improvement and diversification of crops, in order to create in farmers a desire for homes and better home conditions, and to stimulate a love for labor in both old and young. each local organization may offer small prizes for the cleanest and best-kept house, the best pea-patch, and the best ear of corn, etc. ( ) to aid each other in sickness and in death; for this purpose a fee of ten cents will be collected from each member every month and held sacred to be used for no other purpose whatever. ( ) it shall be one of the great objects of this society to stimulate its members to acquire homes, and urge those who already possess homes to improve and beautify them. ( ) to urge our members to purchase only the things that are absolutely necessary. ( ) to exert our every effort to obliterate those evils which tend to destroy our character and our homes, such as intemperance, gambling, and social impurity. ( ) to refrain from spending money and time foolishly or in unprofitable ways; to take an interest in the care of our highways, in the paying of our taxes and the education of our children; to plant shade trees, repair our yard fences, and in general, as far as possible, bring our home life up to the highest standard of civilization. this society has standing committees on government, on education, on business, on housekeeping, on labor, and on farming. the chairman of each of these committees holds monthly meetings in the various communities, at which time various topics pertaining to the welfare and uplift of the people are discussed. as a result of these meetings the people return to their homes with new inspiration. the meetings are doing good in the communities where they are being held, and our sincere hope is that such meetings may be extended. it is the aim of the school and of its several organizations, to reach the ills that most retard the negroes of the rural south. the articles of our simple constitution go to the very bottom of the conditions. thus it will be seen that the work of the class-room is only a small part of what we are trying to do for the uplift of the negro people in the black belt. chapter . campaigning for funds in the north. the matter of raising money for undenominational schools in the south is no easy task, and right here i ought to state just why i preferred to have such a school. our people in the rural south are mostly baptists and methodists, and of course the denominations have their schools, located in certain cities. while no one is barred from these schools, it is a fact that undue influence is exerted upon the pupils to make them become members of the church that supports the school. this is not only true of the methodist and baptist schools, but is also true of all denominational schools in the south. i did not like that and our people do not like to have any one influence their children to join churches other than the one of their choice. we may shut our eyes to this truth, but the fact remains that methodists do not want their children to be persuaded to join some other church, neither do the baptists want theirs taken away from them. now, i wanted that my school should be free from such "isms." i wanted a school for all the negroes, thoroughly religious in its spirit, but entirely undenominational. for twenty-five years now we have adhered strictly to this policy. many times when all was dark and there seemed to be no way, some of these denominations would come and offer me the money to run the work, provided i would accept their faith. but this i have never done, i had rather that the work should die than to sell my principle for money. i repeat that raising money for such a school is a hard task. i have never been particularly interested as to the choice of the church that my students make, but i have been profoundly interested in their finding salvation. a great many people to whom i appeal for aid from time to time, tell me that they give all their alms through their church. but in spite of all this, i feel that the kind of schools most needed for our people, should be broad and not narrow, deep and not shallow. after winning the approval of the people in the community, both black and white, and getting whatever help i could from them, my thoughts turned towards the north for means to run the work. my first attempt was in march, ' . i got as far as washington, d. c., and saw the inauguration of president mckinley, and then i returned home. the following june dr. washington wrote me to come to tuskegee so as to accompany the tuskegee quartet north that summer. it must not be understood that i was one of the singers; that was not my good fortune. i was to tell what tuskegee had done for me and was to show in turn what i was trying to do for my people. dr. washington reasoned in this way i would have a chance to meet some of the best people of the country and thereby gain support for my work. there was to be no collection taken for snow hill, but those who became interested would often come up after the meetings and give me something for my work. we left tuskegee about the first of july. we spent most of the month of july in the southeastern part of massachusetts, known as the cape and south shore. we had meetings at most of the churches and resorts in that section. dr. washington himself met us at the most prominent places. in august we came to boston and from there went up the north shore. this was my first visit to boston and it was here that i met miss susan d. messinger and her brother william s. messinger. their home was at walnut avenue, roxbury, mass. miss messinger had been an abolitionist. both she and her brother were deeply interested in the welfare of my people. they listened attentively to my story and from that day became my best friends. although i have been going north now for twenty years, i have never met such welcome as was shown me at their home. i think i have never met such christ-like people anywhere. it was largely through miss messinger's appeals in the "transcript" that the people of boston and new england learned of our work at the snow hill institute. through her appeals from time to time, we raised much money for our school. i cannot, in words, express the valuable aid these people gave us in our work. sometimes when i had worked hard all day with poor results, i would go to their home in the evening discouraged and low-spirited, but would always find there a hearty welcome and a word of cheer. i would always leave with new zeal and fresh courage. their home has been to me a home now for twenty years and although they are now dead, i never go to boston but that i find time to go out to mt. auburn and put a fresh flower on their graves. the old home is lonely now, but the messinger spirit still abides there in the person of mr. reed, their nephew. i still receive from him the hearty welcome and support that they used to give in days of old. another friend whom i met that summer was mrs. j. s. howe of brookline (now mrs. herman f. vickery). she became interested in our work through miss messinger and from that time to this her interest has steadily grown. had it not been for the encouragement and aid received from the messingers and mrs. howe on this trip, i am sure that i should have given up the struggle. after leaving boston, the tuskegee singers went up the north shore and on to the isles of shoals. there we had a very good meeting, and as mr. washington could not be present, i was the principal speaker. the people were greatly interested in what i said and although we took up a good collection for tuskegee, my private collection was equally large. this the leader of the quartet did not like. it was the duty of this man who was a teacher at tuskegee, to speak as well as myself, but for some reason he did not like to do it and would always shirk it when he could. but after this meeting he cut off my support and when we reached portsmouth, he told me that i was dividing the interest and that he could not use me further on that trip. of course, what little money i had been getting i had sent to the school, so i was almost penniless when he turned me off. i ought to say, however, that he gave me my fare back to boston. i reached boston that night about eight o'clock with no money and nowhere to go, but finally, i went to the place where we had stopped when the quartet was in boston and i found r. w. taylor, who at the time was financial agent in the north for tuskegee. he saw that i was discouraged and insisted that i tell him why i had come back to boston. when he had learned the facts he told his landlady to provide lodging and board for me at his expense until i could do better. it was some time before dr. washington found out that i was not with the quartet, and as soon as he knew it, he wrote me to meet him at lake mohonk, n. y. when the leader of the quartet found out that i was to be at lake mohonk, he tried to interfere so as to prohibit my going there, but when dr. washington said a thing, it had to be done, and i went to lake mohonk and i met the quartet again; also dr. washington. we had a great meeting at lake mohonk and after the meeting mr. and mrs. s. p. avery, who were guests there, gave me $ . from here we returned south and reached tuskegee about the first of september. from there i returned to snow hill. my trip north during the summer of ' was very much saddened by the illness and death of my aunt rina rivers, whom i had learned to love as a mother, and to whom i always feel that i owe my life, for had it not been for the care she gave me during my sickness, i could not have stood the ordeal. her death came while i was in boston and without sufficient funds to take me either to her bed-side or to her funeral. this incident in my life has always been a cause for deep sorrow and as the years go by i feel it more keenly. i had always hoped that she could have lived until i could make her life happy, but this pleasure has been forever denied me. however she left behind four daughters and many grandchildren and i have tried to be unusually kind to them because of my great love for their mother and grandmother. again this was a hard year because of the spanish war and the consequent excitement. i returned to snow hill early in the fall, cast down, but not destroyed. i had to adjust myself to the loss of my best earthly friend. in the meantime, our enrollment was constantly increasing and new teachers and industries were being added from year to year. my campaign in the north during the summer of was made alone, just as the previous one had been. i got much needed experience during this summer. in this house-to-house campaign for money, one must expect many rebuffs, but on the other hand one meets some of the finest people that have ever lived. i find, however, that as i grow older the strain is harder. i don't think that i am a very successful money raiser. however, on april th, , at the th anniversary of tuskegee, i delivered an address that interested mr. andrew carnegie and he gave the snow hill institute ten thousand dollars. (see appendix.) [illustration: partial view of snow hill institute] chapter . results. in the preceding chapters i have tried in a plain and practical way to tell the story of my life and struggle for twenty-five years. i now purpose to tell some results of this effort. we started our work with no land, no building, and no assurance of any support from any source. in fact, we rented an old log cabin in which to begin our work. on the first day of opening, we had one teacher, three pupils and fifty cents in money, a pretty small capital with which to build a normal and industrial institute. as i now look back on this early adventure of mine, i am amazed at the undertaking. although penniless and almost without a place to rest my head, i had an abundance of hope and great faith in god. these have always been my greatest assets in this work. the people in the community were equally poor; not more than ten acres of land were owned by the colored people within a radius of ten miles, and there was even a mortgage on these ten acres. the homes of the people consisted chiefly of one-room and two-room log cabins. there was not a single glass window to be found. i remember that shortly after the founding of the school a negro built a house and fitted it up with glass windows and people would go ten miles to see it. the economic condition of the people was deplorable. they all carried heavy mortgages from year to year. these mortgages ranged all the way from $ to $ . the people were thoroughly discouraged, and seemingly had lost all hopes. everywhere in their religious services, they sang this song: "you may have all the world, but give me jesus." the white man was taking them at their word and giving them all of jesus, but none of the world. so disheartened were the people that when mr. simpson offered to give us the first seven acres of land for the school, many tried to prevail with him not to do so, saying that they did not want any land. but as i have said, you can always find in any place a few of our people whose hearts are in the right place; it was so in this instance; a few of the old men were very stanch friends,--they stood by me in this fight and we won. such was the condition of the people here twenty-five years ago. now how changed are these conditions? from the rented log cabin the school has grown until we have at present, to be exact, acres of land and twenty-four buildings, counting large and small. it enrolls each year between three and four hundred students, teaches fourteen trades, putting most stress on agriculture. the entire property is valued upwards of $ , and is deeded to a board of trustees. but the worth of an institution is not judged by houses and land, but by its ability to serve the people among whom it is located. it has never been our end to acquire houses, land and industries, these we have used as means of enabling us to accomplish our end, which was and still is to seek and to save that which was lost. for twenty-five years then we have been here, seeking lost boys, lost girls, lost men and lost women. we have tolled our bells that they might hear, and preached the gospel of work in order that they might understand; we have used the church, the sunday-school, bible classes and other religious societies that they might feel; the class-rooms that they might know; the shops and farms that they might handle and do. and so all of our material acquisitions have been used to drive home one great end; social service, better men and better women. now how well we have accomplished this end may be seen from the following: counting those who have finished the course of study and others who have remained at the school long enough to catch its spirit and be influenced by its teaching, we have sent out into various parts of the south more than a thousand young men and women who are today leading useful and helpful lives. they are farmers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, housekeepers, dressmakers, printers, railway postal clerks, letter carriers, teachers, preachers, domestic servants, insurance agents, doctors, expressmen, contractors, timber-inspectors, college students. in fact, they are to be found in every vocation known to the south. many of these young people have bought farms and homes of their own, have erected neat and comfortable cottages; have influenced their neighbors to buy land, to build better homes, better churches and better school-houses. they have also been instrumental in securing a higher type of teachers and preachers. they make a special effort always to cultivate a friendly relation between the two races. in this particular they have been remarkably successful. i shall speak more directly about their work under the chapter on graduates. perhaps i can in no way better show the effects of the school upon the immediate community than by referring to an address given by me and quoted in the appendix of this book. it is the custom at tuskegee to have each class reassemble at the school twenty years after graduation. some one of the class is chosen by the school, to represent the class and is placed on the commencement program. it fell my lot to represent my class on this occasion. of course at the anniversary of each class, that class is expected to make a donation to the school. although this had been the custom for several years, the class donations very seldom amounted to more than $ . sometimes they were as small as $ . or less. somehow i have always felt that the graduates of tuskegee owed that institution a debt of gratitude which they can never pay, and thought that they should make the class anniversaries mean something more substantial to the school than they had meant. so long before our time came, i wrote the members of my class telling them that it should be our aim to give tuskegee $ at our anniversary. they readily agreed with me and the class set itself to the task of raising the $ . this was done because we felt that the time had come for the graduates to give more substantial aid to their alma-mater, and as a stimulus to those who are to follow. i think in a small way it has served that purpose, because these class anniversary donations have never been less than $ since that date. [illustration: a newer type of home in the black belt] i think of all the talks i have ever made, none have given me the real joy that this one gave. i feel that this was true for the reason that this was a giving talk rather than a receiving one. the address is also given in the appendix. chapter . origin of the jeanes fund. in the fall of i received a letter from dr. washington requesting me to speak at a meeting in philadelphia in the interest of tuskegee. miss cornelia bowen, also a graduate of tuskegee, was asked to speak at the same meeting. we both accepted. during my stay in the city mr. henry c. davis, a trustee of tuskegee at the time, gave me a letter of introduction to miss anna t. jeanes, a wealthy woman who seldom gave to schools as large as tuskegee and hampton, but who would, in all probability, be interested in my school. in going to miss jeanes's home on arch street i had many apprehensions but i found her very cordial and deeply interested in the welfare of my people. i told her of my struggle to get an education and how, after finishing at tuskegee i had returned to my home in alabama. i described the condition of the public schools in the rural districts. she gave keen interest to this part of my story. finally, she asked me if i was aiming to build a large school such as tuskegee or hampton. i told her that i had no such idea; that i only wanted to build a school that could properly care for three or four hundred students, and try as best i could to help the little schools throughout that section. when i returned to snow hill i found a check from her for five thousand dollars for the work at snow hill. each year after this miss jeanes gave me from $ to $ for the work at snow hill. finally, in the fall of when she had moved to the home in germantown which she had established for the aged, i called to see her. she was then ill and although the nurse said that i could not see her, after my card had been taken to her, she sent for me. she was quite feeble, but said to me: "i have been deeply interested in what thee has been telling me all these years about the little schools. i would give largely to them if thee thinks that thee could get dr. washington or dr. frissell to come to see me." i am sure she was thinking of the large experience of those men. she said also that she thought if she would make such a gift as she contemplated, it might induce other great philanthropists to do as much. at my suggestion dr. washington visited miss jeanes who gave $ , each to dr. washington and dr. frissell to be used as they thought best for the small schools. i am positive that the jeanes fund originated in this way, and i am proud of the part that i had in this affair and that so many negro children can be helped by the fund that is destined to do so much for the elevation of our people in this country. chapter . appreciation. in building up an institution such as we have done at snow hill, no one man is entitled to all the credit. on the contrary, it is impossible to name all to whom credit is due. we can only speak of those who have been closely allied with us and whose work has been prominent in the building of the institution. perhaps of these, the trustees come first. we could never have gone on with the work from year to year without their aid and assistance. without mr. r. o. simpson there could not have been any snow hill institute. we might have built a similar school elsewhere, but we could not have built it at snow hill. mr. simpson gave the first site for the school and from the start has been one of our best friends. he stood for negro education when it was unpopular for him to do so. he allied himself with this cause, at the risk of being ostracised by other white people. because of his firm stand, most of the white people in this section have been won over to his way of thinking, and now there is scarcely if any opposition hereabouts to the snow hill institute. mr. r. o. simpson is one of the noblest men that i have ever met, north or south. he is absolutely free from all racial and petty prejudice that we so often find in the average man of today. i feel safe in saying that he is living at least fifty years ahead of his time. the things that he stands for and have been fighting for, for thirty years, are coming more and more to pass, and although it seems hard for the present generation to accept them, they must be accepted if we would make the world safe for democracy. he is a true patriot, a true democrat, and a zealous christian gentleman. mr. simpson has a family of five children, three sons and two daughters, all of whom possess his spirit to a large degree. i first met rev. r. c. bedford at tuskegee while i was there in school. i loved him from the first time i saw him and i feel that this was because of his deep and sincere interest in our people. until i met mr. bedford, i had always distrusted the white man and thought it was impossible for any white man to be free from race prejudice. after my graduation at tuskegee, as i said before, i returned to snow hill and seeing that mr. bedford and mr. simpson had something in common, arranged to have mr. bedford come to snow hill and meet mr. simpson. their meeting resembled that of jonathan and david, and i believe their friendship was equally great. it continued until mr. bedford's death. mr. bedford was one man who understood what it was to build up an institution from nothing. he knew the hardships one had to undergo to meet bills when there was no money appropriated for these bills. he knew what it was to make brick without straw. ofttimes when the burden was heavy and the yoke rough, it was the encouraging words from mr. bedford that gave me strength and courage to continue. while his particular mission was to look after the tuskegee schools, he loved every good work and would always lend a hand to a good cause. he was thoroughly imbued with the christ-spirit. i cannot express in words the great debt of gratitude that i owe the immortal booker t. washington, for i owe all to him. it was he who changed my view of life. he changed me from the visionary to the substantial, from the shadow to the substance, from the artificial to the real, and from words to deeds. dr. washington became a trustee of snow hill institute from its beginning and remained as such until his death. he made three visits to snow hill, the last being november th, . dr. washington always did what he could to help us in our work. he seemed to appreciate the efforts that we were putting forth to uplift our people. he could sympathize with us; he could understand that an institution that had no permanent support, but had to depend upon the efforts of one man to raise money, could not be perfect, and many things were not as well as they should be. dr. washington could sympathize with us because he knew what it was. he had borne the burden in the heat of the day. but i find that persons who have done nothing themselves, but have lived as parasites most of their days, are much more critical than dr. washington ever could be. sometimes i am asked to what i attribute dr. washington's success in life. my answer to this question has always been the same: to his spirit and simplicity. he possessed in a very large degree, the spirit and simplicity of the master. he never struck back. he always sought to do good to those who would do evil to him. he was meek and lowly of heart, and i know that he has found rest for his soul. there are other trustees who have played a prominent part in the development of the work here, among whom may be mentioned mr. james h. post, rev. henry wilder foote, prof. william howell reed and mr. william h. baldwin, rd. the trustees are now taking a more active part in the work than ever before. this is their bounden duty, because the school is theirs, not mine. next to the trustees, the officers and teachers have played a prominent part in the work here. my classmate, henry a. barnes, has been treasurer of the school for twenty-three years, which period of service is, in itself, a tribute to his faithfulness. mr. barnes not only does the work of treasurer, but is also acting principal during my absence from the school, and under him the work of the school continues with little or no interruption while i am away. what mr. barnes has been to the financial department, mr. r. a. daly has been to our industries. i consider mr. daly the best industrial man that we can have. the academic department has been developed under the management of messrs. whitehead and handy, and it stands well in comparison with that of other similar schools in the state. i cannot overestimate the value of the conscientious work done by my secretaries during all these years. miss rebecca savage (now mrs. r. v. cooke) served in this capacity for fourteen years and miss o. h. williamson has served one way or another for five years. much of the office work and responsibility fall upon the secretaries and this responsibility they have borne without complaint. sometimes we have been compelled to work night and day, but they have always been willing to serve. not only have the officers been willing to serve, but the rank and file of our teachers have shown the same spirit of willingness from year to year. sometimes they would get their pay promptly and at other times they would have to wait for months, but always they have been willing to do what they could to cheer and help me in the darkest hour of the struggle. i believe that the spirit of the officers and teachers of snow hill institute is: "not to be ministered unto, but to minister." aside from trustees, officers and teachers, there is that great cloud of witnesses which no man can number, who have helped by their aid, their words of cheer and their presence from time to time. these are in all parts of the country, but principally in the north and east. how shall we thank them for what they have been to us? we cannot do it by words, because there are no words that could adequately express our deep sense of gratitude to this host of friends. we must, therefore, be contented to show them by our acts and deeds that we are ever mindful of their help and that each day we are striving more and more to make ourselves and our work worthy of their aid and encouragement. among this cloud of witnesses are some of the best people that god has ever made. they deem it a privilege to give and to help the lowly. [illustration: typical log cabin in the black belt] [illustration: home of a snow hill graduate] in speaking of our debt of gratitude to the forces that have helped in building up our work here, we must not overlook the press. there are certain great papers in this country that have been fearless in their advocacy of right and justice to the negro, and have always opened their columns to any cause that has for its end the uplift of the lowly. among these may be mentioned especially _the new york evening post_, _the boston transcript_, _the springfield republican_, _the hartford courant_, and in the south _the montgomery advertiser_. one also receives much aid and encouragement from those who are in similar work. it has been my good fortune to meet in the north from time to time with those who have similar work as mine. in this way i have met most of the principals of southern schools. perhaps mr. w. h. holtzclaw of utica, mississippi, comes first in this class. this is true, because i have known him the longest. i first met him in tuskegee in the early nineties, when we both were in school there. his life was similar to mine, as we both had a very hard time in trying to get an education. i became interested in him there and when he finished i took him to work with me at snow hill. it was at snow hill that he met and married miss mary ella patterson, one of our teachers. they remained with us at snow hill four years. both mr. and mrs. holtzclaw have always seemed more like my relatives than like friends. some of mr. holtzclaw's best teachers today are graduates of snow hill institute. i have always been deeply interested in the welfare of utica for it is in reality an outgrowth of snow hill. other principals whom i meet occasionally, are president battle of okolona, mississippi, where a number of our graduates have worked. i have found mr. battle interested in the general cause of negro education, and too, we found in our case that the cause is the same. i have had occasion to ask mr. battle just how our graduates measure up with his other teachers, and he tells me that snow hill graduates are among his best helpers. by this i know that in deeds, not words, we are making good. another most interesting character whom i always meet on my tours north is mr. frank p. chisholm, financial secretary of tuskegee institute. i have been knowing mr. chisholm for a great many years. we have attended the summer school at harvard several summers together and it has been both a pleasure and benefit to me to be associated with him in this way. although working directly for tuskegee, he has always been willing to speak a word for snow hill wherever the opportunity presented itself. i have obtained many suggestions from mr. chisholm which have been very beneficial to me in my work here. i consider mr. chisholm a representative type of the new negro of to-day. he is a brilliant scholar, a clear thinker, and is doing a very effective work for tuskegee. others with whom i come in contact on such trips are principal hunt of fort valley, ga.; principal minafee of denmark, s. c.; principal long of christianburg, va. these young men and many others are doing a greater work than they know, and all possess in a smaller or larger degree the spirit of dear old tuskegee. they are all preaching the gospel of service. chapter . graduates and ex-students. prof. bagley in his "classroom management," page , has the following to say in "testing results": "the ultimate test of efficiency of efforts is the result of effort. unhappily this test is seldom applied to the work of teaching. we judge the teacher by the process rather than by the product, and we introduce a number of extraneous criteria to hide the absence of a real criterion. we watch the way in which he conducts a recitation, how many slips he makes in his diction and syntax, inspect his personal appearance, ask of what school he is a graduate and how many degrees he possesses, inquire into his moral character, determine his church membership, and judge him to be a good or a poor teacher according to our findings. all of these queries may have their place in the estimation of any teacher's worth, but they do not strike the most salient, the most vital, point at issue. that point is simply this: does he 'make good' in results? does he do the thing that he sets out to do, and does he do it well?" i agree wholly with prof. bagley in this particular and on these grounds we are willing to stand or fall by the results of our graduates. speaking of our graduates and ex-students, i wish to point to the life and work of a few written by their own hands because in these particular cases i can testify to the truth of every word they say, having known them from early childhood. their record follows and they speak for themselves: "i was born in snow hill, wilcox county, alabama, about years ago. i was the th child of a family of . my father was a very prosperous farmer and believed in educating his children. each year he would send them by twos off to schools, such as talladega, tuskegee and normal, alabama. some of the older children, however, did not take advantage of the great opportunity they had. he spent his money lavishly on them and about the time i was large enough to go off to school, he was not as prosperous. as soon as i was old enough he kept me in the public and sometimes private schools, both summer and winter. yet, he had promised to send the remainder of us off to school. fortunately for us, however, snow hill institute had been established by mr. w. j. edwards, and my father being very much impressed with mr. edwards and his teachers, consulted him about entering three children, i being the youngest. mr. edwards kindly consented and we were at once put in school there. i was also fond of music and after learning that snow hill institute had such an efficient music teacher, i was very much pleased to attend school there. so in the year of i entered. i was enabled to develop my musical talent to the extent that i was selected to play for my home church, and that inspired other students to attend snow hill institute. "during my first year in school there i was undecided as to just what i was going to follow as a trade. i worked awhile in the sewing room then in the laundry--was also interested in cooking and took special lessons in cooking under miss mabry. in fact, i studied cooking the first two years. finally, in my senior year, miss c. v. johnson, then secretary to mr. edwards, asked me to clean the offices of mornings for her and work with her on my work days. i began this work and would watch her using the typewriter so much until i fully decided that i wanted to make an efficient secretary for someone, and began working to that end. on my work days she would have me copying letters with ink. i would be careful not to make a mistake. during the time i was working in the office, mr. edwards would often send me on errands and tell me to see how quickly i could go and come. he seemed to have been very much impressed with my work as a student in both the academic and industrial departments. there were several prize contests given my class by different teachers, and i won each prize. this was in the academic department. there were twelve members in the class. mr. edwards had the members of my class to write some friends of the school for scholarships (this being the request of the friends) and of the two persons that received favorable answers, i was one. during the whole time i was in school i did not receive one demerit, or a black mark. our teachers seemed perfect, and it was a pleasure for me to try to please them. "in the year i graduated from the institution with a splendid grasp of all that the school stood for and in favor with all of my teachers and friends. mr. edwards, knowing my ability to do things as i was instructed, employed me to work in his office as clerk. i then put forth more strenuous efforts to do efficient work and would try to improve myself along that particular line of work. so in the summer of i attended school at cheyney, pa., taking a special course in english, typewriting and shorthand. i did my best to give satisfaction in my work. "in the year i was made private secretary to mr. edwards and a member of the executive council. i still had a desire to make further improvement, and in the summer of , i attended comer's commercial college in boston, mass., trying to become more efficient in the work that was assigned to my hands. principal edwards would have to be away from the school most of the time soliciting means to carry on the work, but i tried to not leave a stone unturned in accomplishing the work he left behind. snow hill institute succeeded in inculcating into my life a love for work, and i am not satisfied unless i have some work to do. "i worked for mr. edwards untiringly until october, . i was married, however, in july, . i have often wondered where my lot would have been cast had there been no snow hill institute." "i was born of ex-slave parents on the calhoun plantation in dallas county, alabama. i am not quite sure of the exact date of my birth, but at any rate, as nearly as i have been able to learn, i was born near the village called richmond, in the month of may, . my life had its beginning under the most difficult circumstances. this was so, however, not because of any wilful neglect on the part of my parents, but as ex-slaves they naturally knew but little as to the providing for the maintenance of their family and home. i was born in a one-room log cabin about x feet square. in this cabin i lived with my mother, father and the other eight sisters and brothers until providentially i found an opportunity to enter school at snow hill institute, snow hill, alabama. "i went to snow hill in the year of , and there remained for eight years receiving instruction at the hand of a loyal band of self-sacrificing teachers, who not only taught me how to read, write and to cipher, but in addition they taught me lessons of thrift and industry which have proven to be the main saving point in my life. "i completed the prescribed course of study at the snow hill institute in and returned home as i had resolved to do, before entering school there, for the purpose of helping the people of my home community. "the street manual training school (incorporated) at richmond, dallas county, alabama, was started in with one teacher, fifteen pupils and no money. since that time it has grown to the point where it now has thirty acres of land, four buildings, and an enrollment of three hundred pupils. the entire property is valued at fifteen thousand dollars ($ , ) and deeded to a board of trustees. among the members of this board are: mr. j. d. alison, president, mrs. edwin d. mead, the rev. mr. emmanuel m. brown, mr. wm. d. brigham, mr. walter powers, mr. edwin w. lambert, mr. w. j. edwards, mrs. francis carr and mr. henry a. barnes. "this school is training some three hundred negro children between the ages of six and eighteen years in the practical arts necessary to enable them to make an earnest, comfortable living. there is no attempt made to teach them foreign languages, either dead or living; but they are well grounded in the english language. they do not study higher mathematics, but they learn simple arithmetic. they spend no time on psychology, economics, sociology, or logic; their time is taken up trying to raise crops, to manage a small farm, to cook and to sew." sketch of my life. "i was born in snow hill, wilcox county, alabama, december th, . my parents were emanuel and emma mcduffie. i was brought up under the most adverse conditions. my father died about six months before my birth, thus leaving my mother with the care of seven children. as i had never seen my father, i was often referred to by the other children of the community, as the son of "none." in july, , my mother died and the burden of caring for the children then fell upon my old grandmother, who was known throughout the community as "aunt" polly. in order to help secure food and clothing for myself and the rest of the family, i was compelled to plow an ox on a farm and as we usually made from four to five bales of cotton and and bushels of corn each year, she was looked upon as a great farmer. when i was fifteen years of age, my grandmother was called to her heavenly rest, thus leaving a house full of children to shift for themselves. after her death i became interested in education and immediately applied for admittance to snow hill normal and industrial institute, which had recently been established. i was admitted as a work student, working all day and attending school about two hours and a half at night. until i entered snow hill institute, i had a very vague idea about life as it pertained to the negro. in fact, up until that time, i was of the opinion that the negro had no business being anything; but after entering the school and being surrounded by a different atmosphere and seeing what had already been accomplished by mr. edwards, i soon realized that the negro had as much right to life and liberty as any other man. "while it was great joy for me to be in school, i was woefully unprepared to remain there. really, i am unable to tell the many obstacles that confronted me while in school. but one of my many difficulties was to get sufficient clothing, for when i entered, i had on all that i possessed and day after day i wore what i had until finally they got beyond mending. the teachers at snow hill were just as they are now, extremely hard against dirt and filth. as i only had one suit of underwear and as we were compelled to change at least once a week, i could plainly see that my condition was becoming more alarming each day. so i would go down to the spring at night, wash that suit and dry it the best i could by the heater that was in my room. quite often i would go for days wearing damp or wet underwear, which has caused both pain and doctor bills in after years. finally, mr. edwards relieved me of this situation when he sent me to the sales-room to get a pair of second-hand trousers and another suit of underwear. my trousers didn't begin to fit, for they were both too large and too long, but i wore them with pleasure because i went to snow hill in search of an education and i was willing to make any sacrifice to obtain my desire. through all of my troubles i never became discouraged, because i felt that some day i would be prepared to be of service to my people. "of all things that gave me inspiration while in school, mr. edwards's own christian life which he lived before us day after day had more to do with keeping me there than anything else. his courage and perseverance under difficulties, which we all could see, were noble lessons to me. in his sunday evening talks in the chapel, he would plead with us to shape our lives for work among those who were less fortunate than we. one sunday evening, he made a powerful and vivid appeal, admonishing the students to go out, when they had finished their education, and start their life's work among the lowly in the rural districts. he spoke these words many times during the term. in fact, so often did he repeat them that the very thoughts of them inspired me and i soon learned to love the cause of humanity as well and as dearly as did mr. edwards himself. soon after completing my course in may, , a call came from the black belt of north carolina for a man to go to laurinburg and build up an industrial school there. after talking the matter over with mr. edwards, i decided to go. "i reached the town of laurinburg september , . when i got there i found that the people had been so often deceived and hoodwinked by political demagogues and supposed race leaders, that they had no confidence in any one. but i made a start and opened school in an old public school building with seven students and fifteen cents in cash. as the people had no confidence in me, it was hard for me to increase my enrollment, but i continued to labor with them on the streets and in the churches until i gradually won their respect. then we started the erection of a new school building and from that day until now, both white and black have taken the deepest interest in the work and we now have the absolute confidence of all the people. "the work has constantly grown from year to year and results have been obtained. from one teacher, seven students and fifteen cents in cash, thirteen years ago, the institution now has fourteen teachers, upwards of four hundred students from all over north carolina, virginia, south carolina and georgia, and counting land, livestock, five large and three small buildings, it has a property valuation of $ , all free of debt. each year our teachers are selected from some of the best schools of the south; such as tuskegee institute, shaw university, snow hill institute, claflin university, benedict college, etc. eight industries are taught, consisting of farming, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, sewing, laundering, printing, domestic science and home nursing. "we are kept in immediate need of money for current and building expenses, but we are going on accomplishing results with what we have at hand. boys and girls are being sent out each year to work among their fellows. these young men and women are reaching the masses and as a result, the moral tone of the people is being aroused to the contemplation of higher ideals and they are at last becoming serious as to the sober side of life. excursions, parties and a good time generally are slowly but surely being relegated to the rear. our farmers are studying how to become better farmers and in all walks of life, we are improving in workshop and the various industries. "verily, the school room is doing much in awakening the dormant energies of the negro for good. in fact, the school's influence is helping the people generally. where there were ignorance and indifference, now we have a fair measure of intelligence and thrift. the people are buying homes and property, and in many ways showing signs of aspiration. "we have also organized a farmers' conference and it is gratifying indeed to see how hundreds of farmers, with their wives and children, turn out seeking information, demonstration and co-operation. i have been thus enabled to help my people here in north carolina by giving them the new truth and the new light and pointing them on to a better way." waverley turner carmichael was born at snow hill, ala., in , and was reared on the farm as all country negro boys are. all of his education was obtained at the snow hill institute except for six weeks he spent in the harvard summer school last year. [illustration: graduates of snow hill institute emmanuel mcduffie. principal laurinburg normal and industrial institute, laurinburg, n. c. john w. brister, who established a prize at snow hill institute. rev. emmanuel m. brown of street manual training school, richmond, alabama. waverley turner carmichael, poet of snow hill.] i had been deeply impressed with the poems which he had been writing for several years, but as i was no judge of poems, i thought i would give him a chance to bring his poems before those who could judge, so i received for him a free scholarship at the summer school at harvard. he read his poems to the class on several occasions and i had the opportunity of hearing him several times. they had a deep impression upon the class, so much so that his professor wrote the introduction to his book in the following words:-- "when waverley carmichael, as a student in my summer class at harvard, brought me one day a modest sheaf of his poems, i felt that in him a race had become or at least was becoming articulate. we have had, it is true, sympathetic portrayals of negro life and feeling from without; we have had also the poems of dunbar, significant of the high capabilities of the negro as he advances far along the way of civilization and culture. the note which is sounded in this little volume is of another sort. these humble and often imperfect utterances have sprung up spontaneously from the soul of a primitive and untutored folk. the rich emotion, the individual humor, the simple wisdom, the naive faith which are its birthright, have here for the first time found voice. it is sufficient to say of waverley carmichael that he is a full blooded southern negro, that until last summer he has never been away from his native alabama, that he has had but the most limited advantages of education, and that he has shared the portion of his race in hardship, poverty and toil. he does not know why he wrote these poems. it is an amazing thing that he should have done so--a freak, we may call it, of the wind of genius, which bloweth where it listeth and singles out one in ten thousand to find a fitting speech for the dumb thought and feeling of the rest. but we need not base the claim of carmichael to the attention of the public merely on considerations of this sort. his work speaks for itself. it is original and sincere. it follows no traditions and suffers no affectation. it is artless, yet it reaches the goal of art. the rhythms, especially of some of the religious pieces, are of a kind which is beyond the reach of effort. he has rightly called them melodies. occasionally there is, it seems to me, a touch of something higher, as in the haunting refrain of the lyric "winter is coming." de yaller leafs are falling fas' fur summer days is been and pas' the air is blowin' mighty cold, like it done in days of old. but this is rare. oftenest the characteristic note is humor, or tender melancholy relieved by a philosophy of cheer and courage, and the poetic virtue is that of simple truth. we are reminded of no poet so strongly as of burns. what waverley carmichael may accomplish in the future i do not know. but certainly in this volume he has entitled himself to the gratitude of his own race and to the sympathetic appreciation of all who have its interests and those of true poetry at heart." james holly hanford. mr. william stanley braithwaite speaking of his poems had the following to say: "many have claimed the mantle of paul laurence dunbar, but only upon the shoulders of waverley turner carmichael has it fallen, and he wears it with becoming grace and fitness. for this poet, a veritable child of negro folk, gives expression to its spirit in need and language more akin to the ante-bellum 'spirituel' than any writer i know. like those 'black and unknown bards' he sings because he must, with all their fervid imaginativeness, symbolizations, poignant strains of pathos and philosophic humor." mr. braithwaite is the best known negro critic of poetry in the world today. as for me who has always lived in the south and know the southern negro through and through, i feel and believe that carmichael has interpreted negro life as never before. we hope and pray that carmichael will live through this great ordeal and come back to us and continue his work of interpreting negro life. there are hundreds of other graduates and ex-students who have won distinction in other fields and are doing equally as well as those who have been mentioned here. we have their record at the school, and any one can have them for the asking. i only wish to mention in a brief way two other graduates because they have established a first and second prize at snow hill. they are john w. brister and edmond j. o'neal. several years ago the late misses collins (ellen and marguerite) of new york, two of the most sainted women whom i ever met, established an annual prize at the school known as the sumner peace prize, of $ . . but at their death this prize would have stopped unless some one had taken it up. both mr. brister and mr. o'neal had won these prizes several times while they were in school. so at the death of the misses collins they came forward and said that they would be responsible for the prize each year on condition that the school make a first and second prize instead of one, mr. brister giving $ . in gold for the first prize and mr. o'neal giving $ . in gold for the second. this they have done for several years, and they constantly assure me that it will be kept up during their lifetime. this shows that our graduates are carrying with them the spirit of christ, "freely receive, freely give." chapter . the solution of the negro problem. all prophecies pertaining thus far to the solution of the negro problem have failed. men in all parts of the country are becoming alarmed over the situation and are asking, "whither are we drifting?" and yet although everyone admits that there is a negro problem, few are agreed as to the exact nature of the problem, and still fewer are agreed as to what the final answer should be. generally speaking, the negro problem consists of twelve millions of people of african descent living in this country, mostly in the southern states, and forming one-third of the population of this section and one-eighth of the entire population of the united states. notwithstanding the fact that we are far from an agreement as to the answer to this problem, we are all agreed that the solution must be sought in the answers to the following questions: what is to be the economic, the political, the civil, and the social status of the negro in this country? it is true that there are criminals in the negro race for whom no legal form of punishment is too severe. it is also true that the better and best classes of negroes are daily being insulted in the streets, on the street-cars, on the railroads, at the ticket offices, at the baggage rooms, the express offices, and in fact, in all places pertaining to public travel. they are persecuted, despised, rejected, and discriminated against before every court in the south. since the negro is now being lynched as readily for his sins of omission as he is for his sins of commission, it is quite necessary for him when traveling in the south, to keep constantly in telegraphic communication with the agent at the station ahead as to the movement of the mob. in addition to this, the negro is subjected to many other forms of persecution and discrimination in almost every walk of life. these things go to make up what we call the negro problem. _the white man's solution._ a large majority of the white men in the south believe that this problem is to be solved by the negro "learning his place" and keeping in it. though they do not say just what this place is, they purpose to teach it to the negro by disfranchisement, by limiting his education, by discrimination on the streets and on the railroads, by barring him from public parks, public libraries, and public amusements of any kind, by insulting replies to courteous questions, by conviction for trivial offences, and, finally, by judge lynch and the shot gun. this class is called the rabble. there is another class of white men in the south, though fewer in number, who deprecate all such views and actions (as advanced by this first class). they believe that the negro should have equal legal rights, but that he should be denied equal political and educational rights. they believe the bible to be the panacea for all the ills of the negro. to bear out their contention, they often revert to the time when, they say, there was no race problem. this, they say, was during slavery, when the master taught his slaves the beneficent influence of the holy bible. they are now appealing to the white men of the south to return to this practice. in this class would fall a large number of politicians, statesmen, educators, and ministers. this is called the conservative class. there is still a third class of white men in the south, who believe that the negro is a man, nothing more and nothing less. they believe that under similar circumstances the negro will act as other races do. they contend that the negro should have equal rights in every respect; they believe that worthy negroes like worthy white men, should vote, and that ignorant and vicious negroes like ignorant and vicious white men, should not; that the school money should be divided equally among the children of the state regardless of race, color or previous conditions; that the negro should be given justice in all of the courts; that the criminal and lawless negro, like the criminal and lawless white man, should be punished to the full extent of the law. they believe that a strict adherence to this view will result in the final solution of the problem. there are, however, so few who feel in this way, and they are so widely scattered, that they can hardly be called a class. the other classes of white people consider them insane and accuse them of advocating social equality. they are given no voice in the government and their wishes are disregarded as readily as those of the negro. they are sometimes persecuted, ostracised, and harmed in every conceivable way. this class is increasing and the two other classes decreasing. _the negro's method of solution._ there are three classes of negroes in the south, but only one desires a solution of the problem and that is class number two, of those i shall mention. class number one is composed chiefly of the illiterate and superstitious negroes. they usually work on the railroads, on the steamboats, in the large saw-mills, and on the farms for wages. they have no homes and do not want any; but float from place to place. this class is contented to be let alone, but is quick to resent an insult, and will shoot almost as readily as the white man, and make no attempt to choose their victims. among this class are to be found the whiskey seller, the drunkard, the gambler, and the criminal of the lowest type. it is the low, degraded and depraved criminals of this class who stir up and incite race hatred, which always results in race riots. they do not attend church or any other religious meeting. the better class of negroes are as anxious to get rid of these as the white man. the second class is composed of the renters of farms, the owners of farms, of homes, of preachers, teachers, students, professional and business men. they believe that the negro should be educated in the trades as well as in the professions; that they should own homes, pay their taxes and perform their civic duties like all other citizens and that they should possess all of the rights and privileges that are delegated to them by the constitution of the united states. they believe in the purity of the state and in the sanctity of the home. they are enduring, self-sacrificing, patient, and long suffering, and desire the good of all. it is this class that always assists in quelling race riots and is constantly seeking the co-operation of the best class of white people in order that the relation between the races may be of the most cordial nature. it is this class also who do not lose their heads though innocent members of the race be murdered by the mob. though this class is rapidly increasing, it is still far inferior in number to the first class. the third class is composed chiefly of the ante-bellum negroes. they are well advanced in age and are contented with their present lot. many of them have waited for years for the forty acres and mule and having been disappointed in their expectation, they have lost all hopes. they are fast losing sight on the things of this world and gaining sight on the things of the world to come. ofttimes, they sing, "you may have all this world, but give me jesus." they are perfectly harmless and have no earthly ambition. this is what the white man here calls a good negro; for him they act as pall-bearers when he dies and for him they weep when he is gone. in many instances they erect monuments to his memory. _fallacy of the master and the bible remedy._ since the recent riots that have occurred in georgia, north carolina, tennessee, arkansas and other southern states, many white ministers and other prominent citizens of the south have been advocating a return to the master and bible theory of slavery days, when, they say, there was no race problem. but every student of history knows that at the same time the master was carrying the bible to his slaves this country was struggling with one of the greatest race problems that the world has ever witnessed and the slavery phase of this problem was settled by one of the bloodiest wars in the annals of history. furthermore, the student of history knows that the master carried the lash more often to the slave's back than the bible to the slave's heart; that the lash kept the slave in subjection. if the relation between the races now seems most strained and the solution of the problem seems farther away than ever, we must be candid and seek the cause of failure in the methods that we have been using. in the past, the white man's idea of the solution has been contrary to the negro's idea. the white man has been trying to circumscribe the negro's sphere, at the same time, the negro has been trying to know the truth which would make him free; yet, both claim to be trying to solve the same problem. before a satisfactory solution of the problem can be had, it will be necessary for the best white people and the best class of negroes to get together and agree as to what the solution must be. is it to consist of the negro knowing his place and staying in it, or is it to consist of the negro knowing the truth and being free? which shall it be? unless they can agree as to the answer there can be no satisfactory solution. in a democratic form of government having one language, one history, one literature, one religion, one bible, and one god, there can be only one man who is the sum total of these, only one man who is the typically good democratic citizen, and this man will be known by his accomplishments and not by the color of his skin. if we should have two types, two men, then we must have two governments, two languages, two histories, two literatures, two religions, two bibles, and two gods. if the shiftless, ignorant, superstitious, and criminal class of negroes is increasing, it is because the ruling class of white men have been limiting his education, disfranchising him, and in other ways trying to doom him to serfdom. the great race riot in atlanta was simply the culmination of the ten months' campaigning of race hatred. men who are now writing resolutions and sound and sane editorials, were then rivaling each other in their abuse of the negro. the nominee for governor seemingly, was to be given to the one who could prove himself the greatest enemy of the negro. it is a divine and immutable law that if we sow the wind we will reap the whirlwind. _only one road to the solution._ lynchings and mobs will not solve the problem, for it has been proven that such actions beget crimes. depriving him of educational advantages and disfranchising him, will not suffice, for on the one hand this method produces ignorant negroes, and on the other hand it increases in the white man the belief that the negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect. these two states of mind in the last analysis will always produce crime. the master and bible theory will not solve it, because the criminal and lawless negro does not attend church. there is but one true solution and that lies in compulsory education for all the children of the state with religious, moral and industrial training. if the south is sincere in its efforts to help the negro, or even if the ministers and other citizens who are now filling the daily press with suggestions as to the practical solution of this problem are sincere, they will advocate the enacting of compulsory educational laws and see to it that all children between the ages of six and fourteen are kept in school. they will also advocate a more equitable division of the school fund between the races. the great factor in the solution of this problem is education and the negro schools are the hope of the race. _the attitude of the north towards this problem._ just now, the attitude of the north towards this problem is that of an onlooker and well wisher. for a number of years the south has been saying to the north, "hands off, we understand the negro and we can solve our own problem." the north, seemingly, has heeded this injunction and the press and politicians of the north, barring a few, have been inclined to take sides with the so-called conservative class of white men of the south. the philanthropist of the north, however, while being a friend to the white south has been none the less a friend to the black south, and has kept constantly aiding negro education and it is the schools thus supported that are doing the most effective work in the uplifting of the race. it was the wise guidance, judicious and calm leadership of the men in these schools that saved the day at atlanta. all of these schools have the record of their graduates and ex-students opened to the public for inspection. and an impartial inspection of these records will show that these students and graduates have made since leaving school, according to their circumstances, as creditable a mark as the graduates and ex-students from any of our northern schools. these schools do not give college training. in these perilous times when the race is passing through such trying ordeals, and when the souls of men are being tried, i trust that our friends will not forsake us. our industrial schools and colleges and the better element of the race, need their sympathy, encouragement, and assistance now as never before. my prayer is for a double portion of their spirit and an increased amount of their assistance. the recent race troubles should not discourage us or our friends. in fact, we should be encouraged, for during these troubles the better element of the race has been severely tried and they have stood the test. everywhere their advice has been for moderation, patience, and forbearance. it is true, we are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. our records will show that we have been faithful over a few things, may we not retain the faith and trust of friends? chapter . the greatest menace of the south. in every age there are great and pressing problems to be solved,--problems whose solution will have seemingly, a far reaching and lasting effect upon the economic life of the country concerned. it was the case in this country from its very beginning and the same condition obtains today, although each section of the country has its own peculiar problems the true american citizen recognizes the fact that the success of one section in solving its problems will be beneficial to the entire nation. perhaps, no section of this country has been confronted with more difficult problems than the south. i therefore, wish to present what i consider to be the greatest menace of this section, not as a prophet foretelling future events, but humbly expressing my views of the situation after careful study. if you were to ask the average white man of the south today what is the greatest menace to this section, his answer, undoubtedly, would be, the negro and negro domination. at least this would be the answer of the politician. that he would take this view, is shown by the great amount of legislation that has been enacted, aiming either directly or indirectly to retard the negro's progress. i do not believe that there has been one piece of legislation enacted in the south within the last thirty years for the express purpose of promoting the negro's welfare. this does not mean, however, that the entire white south is against the negro or that it means to oppose his advancement. there are thousands of white men and women throughout the length and breadth of the south, who are today, laboring almost incessantly for the advancement of the negro. to these, we owe a great debt of gratitude, and to these should be given much credit for what has been accomplished. this class of white southerns are not, as a rule, politicians and it is seldom, if ever, they are elected to office. when we speak of the average southern white man then, we have particular reference to the great horde of office seekers and politicians that infest the entire south-land. it is this class that will tell you that negro domination is the greatest menace to the south. now, negro domination may be a menace to the south, but it is certainly not the greatest. neither is the extermination of our forests to be greatly feared. there are organizations and societies on foot in all parts of the south for the conservation of our forests. southern citizenship is suffering much from child labor, but even this, although being a great danger to our future development and prosperity, cannot rightly be classed as our greatest menace. the one thing today, in which we stand in greatest danger, is the loss of the fertility of the soil. if we should lose this, as we are gradually doing, then all is lost. if we should save it, then all other things will be added. our great need is the conservation and preservation of the soil. the increased crops which we have in the south occasionally, are not due to improved methods of farming, but to increased acreage. thousands of acres of new land are added each year and our increase in farm production is due to the strength of these fresh lands. there is not much more woodland to be taken in as new farm lands, for this source has been well nigh exhausted. we must then, within a few years, expect a gradual reduction in the farm production of the south. already the old farm lands that have been in cultivation for the past fifty or fifty-five years are practically worn out. i have seen in my day where forty acres of land twenty or twenty-five years ago would produce from twenty to twenty-five bales of cotton each year, and from to bushels of corn. now, these forty acres will not produce more than eight or nine bales of cotton and hardly enough corn to feed two horses. in fact, one small family cannot obtain a decent support from the land which twenty years ago supported three families in abundance. this farm is not on the hill-side, neither has it been worn away by erosion. it is situated in the lowlands, in the black prairie, and is considered the best farm on a large plantation. this condition obtains in all parts of the south today. this constant deterioration of land, this gradual reduction of crops year after year, if kept up for the next fifty years, will surely prove disastrous to the south. practically, all the land in the black belt of the south is cultivated by negroes and the farm production has decreased so rapidly during the last ten or fifteen years that the average negro farmer hardly makes sufficient to pay his rent and buy the few necessaries of life. of course, here and there where a tenant has been lucky enough to get hold of some new land, he makes a good crop, but after three or four years of cultivation, his crop begins to decrease and this decrease is kept up at a certain ratio as long as he keeps the land. instead of improving, the tenant's condition becomes worse each year until he finds it impossible to support his family on the farm. farm after farm is being abandoned or given up to the care of the old men and women. already, most of these are too old and feeble to do effective work. now, the chief cause of these farms becoming less productive, is the failure on the part of the farmers to add something to the land after they have gathered their crops. they seem to think that the land contains an inexhaustible supply of plant food. another cause of this deficiency of the soil is the failure of the farmer to rotate his crop. there are farms being cultivated in the south today where the same piece of land has been planted in cotton every year for forty or fifty years. forty years ago, i am told by reliable authority, that this same land would yield from one bale to one and a half per acre. and today it will take from four to six acres to produce one bale. still another cause for the deterioration of the soil is erosion. there is practically no effort put forth on the tenant's part to prevent his farm from washing away. the hill-side and other rolling lands are not terraced and after being in use four or five years, practically all of these lands are washed away and as farm lands they are entirely abandoned. not only are the hillside lands unprotected from the beating rains and flowing streams, but the bottom or lowlands are not properly drained, and the sand washed down from the hill, the chaff and raft from previous rains soon fill the ditches and creeks and almost any ordinary rain will cause an overflow of these streams. under these conditions an average crop is impossible even in the best of years. at present, the south does not produce one-half of the foodstuff that it consumes and if the present condition of things continue for the next fifty years, this section of the country will be on the verge of starvation and famines will be a frequent occurrence. of course, negro starvation will come first, but white man starvation will surely follow. i believe, therefore, that i am justified in saying that there is even more danger in negro starvation than there is in negro domination. i have noticed in this country that the sins of the races are contagious. if the negro in a community be lazy, indifferent, and careless about his farm, the white man in the community will soon fall into the same habit. on the other hand, if the white man is smart, industrious, energetic and persevering in his general makeup, the negro will soon fall into line; so after all, whatever helps one race in the south will help the other and whatever degrades one race in the south, sooner or later will degrade the other. but you may reply to this assertion by saying that the negro can go to the city and make an independent living for himself and family, but you forget that all real wealth must come from the soil and that the city cannot prosper unless the country is prosperous. when the country fails, the city feels the effect; when the country weeps, the city moans; when agriculture dies, all die. such are the conditions which face us today. now for the remedy. it is worth while to remember that there are ten essential elements of plant food. if the supply of any one of the elements fails, the crop will fail. these ten elements are carbon and oxygen taken into the leaves of the plant from the air as carbon dioxide, hydrogen, a constituent of water absorbed through the plant roots; nitrogen, taken from the soil by all plants also secured from the air by legumes. the other elements are phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and sulphur, all of which are secured from the soil. the soil nitrogen is contained in the organic matter or humus, and to maintain the supply of nitrogen, we should keep the soil well stored with organic matter, making liberal use of clover or other legumes which have power to secure nitrogen from the inexhaustible supply in the air. it is interesting to note that one of the ablest chemists in this country, prof. e. w. clark of the u. s. geological survey, has said that an acre of ground seven inches deep contains sufficient iron to produce one hundred bushels of corn every year for , years, sufficient calcium to produce one hundred bushels of corn or one bale of cotton each year for , years, enough magnesium to produce such a crop , years, enough sulphur for , years and potassium for , years, but only enough phosphorus for years. the nitrogen resting upon the surface of an acre of ground is sufficient to produce one hundred bushels of corn or a bale of cotton for , years; but only enough in the plowed soil to produce fifty such crops. in other words, there are enough of eight of the elements of plant food in the ordinary soil to produce bushels of corn per acre or a bale of cotton per acre for each year for , years; but only enough of the other two, phosphorus and nitrogen, to produce such crops for forty or fifty years. let us grant that most of our farm lands in the south have been in cultivation for fifty or seventy-five years, and in many instances for one hundred years, it is readily seen that practically all of the phosphorus and nitrogen in the plowed soil have been exhausted. is it any wonder then that we are having such poor crops? the wonder is that our crops have kept up so well. unless a radical change is made in our mode of farming, we must expect less and less crops each year until we have no crops, or such little that we can hardly pay the rent. to improve and again make fertile our soils, we must restore to them the phosphorus and nitrogen which have been used up in the seventy-five or more crops that we have gathered from them. this is a herculean task but this is what confronts us and i for one, believe we can accomplish it. by the proper rotation of crops, including oats, clover, cowpeas, as well as cotton and corn, and a liberal use of barn-yard manure and cotton seed fertilizer, all of the necessary elements of plant food can be restored to our worn out soil. but the proper use of these require much painstaken study. the black as well as the white should give this matter serious consideration. the landlords and the tenants should co-operate in this great work. the merchants and bankers must lend their aid and influence, preachers and teachers should be pioneers in this movement to save our common country. our agricultural colleges should imprint their courses of study in something more than their annual catalogues. they should be imprinted in the minds and hearts of their students, and especially those who are to do farm work. thus far, but very little general good has been accomplished by these schools. the reason is that the farmers, those who till the soil, have not had access to these schools and those who attend are not the farming class, and do not take to farming as their life's work. the man who works the soil must be taught how to farm. we have in this state nine purely agricultural schools, each of which is a white institution. it is true that some agricultural training is given for negroes at normal, montgomery and tuskegee, but these are not purely agricultural schools and the great mass of negro farmers cannot hope to attend them. if the negro is to remain the farming class in the black belt of the south, then he must be taught at least the rudiments of the modern methods of improved farming. he must have agricultural schools and must be encouraged to attend them. the loss of the fertility of the soil is the greatest menace of the south. how can we regain this lost fertility, is the greatest question of the hour. chapter . the negro exodus. the negro has remained in the south almost as a solid mass since his emancipation. this, in itself shows that he loves the south, and if he is now migrating to the east, north and west by the hundreds and thousands, there must be a cause for it. we should do our best to find out these causes and at least suggest the remedy, if we cannot accomplish it. the time has come for plain speaking on the part of us all. it will do us no good to try to hide the facts, because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." in the first place, the negro in this country is oppressed. this oppression is greatest where the negro population is greatest. the negro population happens to be greater in the south than in the north, therefore, he is more oppressed in the south than in the north. take the counties in our own state. some are known as white counties and others as black counties. in the white counties the negro is given better educational opportunities than in the black counties. i have in mind one black belt county where the white child is given fifteen dollars a year for his education and the negro child thirty cents a year. see the late dr. booker t. washington's article, "is the negro having a fair chance?" now these facts are generally known throughout this state by both white and black. and we all know that this is unjust. it is oppression. this oppression shows itself in many other ways. take for example the railroads running through the rural sections of the south. there are many flag stations where hundreds of our people get off and on train. the railroads have at these little stops a platform about six feet square, only one coach stops at this point; the negro women, girls and boys are compelled to get off and on the train sometimes in water and in the ditches because there are no provisions made for them otherwise. again, take the matter of the franchise. we all agree that ignorant negroes should not be entrusted with this power, but we all feel that where a negro has been smart and industrious in getting an education and property and pays his taxes, he should be represented. taxation without representation is just as unjust today as it was in . it is just as unfair for the negro as it is to the white man, and we all, both white and black, know this. we may shut our eyes to this great truth, as sometimes we do, but it is unjust just the same. take the matter of the courts. there is no justice unless the negro has a case against another negro. when he has a case against a white man you can tell what the decision will be just as soon as you know the nature of the case, unless some strong white man will come to the negro's rescue. this, too, is generally known, and the negro does not expect justice. none of us have forgotten the recent campaign of mr. underwood and mr. hobson for united states senator from this state. mr. underwood's supporters attacked mr. hobson because he defended the negro soldiers when he was representative, and mr. hobson's supporters attacked mr. underwood because they said that he had a negro secretary in washington. any politician who dares defend a negro, however just the cause may be, is doomed to political death. this is another fact which we all know. as yet, there has been no concerted actions on the part of the white people to stop mob violence. i know a few plantations, however, where the owners will not allow their negroes to be arrested unless the officer first consults them, and these negroes idolize these white men as gods, and so far not one of these negroes has gone north. i repeat that there are out-croppings of these oppressions everywhere in this country, but they show themselves most where the negroes are in largest numbers. all of these sorrows the negro has endured with patience and long suffering, and they may be all classed as the secondary cause of this great exodus. the primary cause is economics. the storms and floods destroy crops in the black belt section. these people are hungry, they are naked, they have no corn and had no cotton; so they are without food and clothes. what else can they do but go away in search of work? there are a great many wealthy white men here and there throughout the black belt section. they have large plantations which need the ditches cleared and new ones made to properly drain their farms. they could have given much work to these destitute people; but what have they done? nothing. they say that it is a pity for the negro to go away in such large numbers, and so it is, but that will not stop them. they have it in their power to stop them by making the negro's economic condition better here. the south must do more than make cotton and corn; it must begin to manufacture some of the things that it uses. why should we send our raw material to the north to be manufactured? practically all the furniture we use comes from the north and they get the timber from us. the south must be both a manufacturing as well as a farming section, if it would hold its own with the other sections of this great country. the capitalists of the south must turn loose their money if this section would come into its own. thus far, the average white man of the south has been interested in the negro from a selfish point of view. he must now become interested in him from a humanitarian point of view. he must be interested in his educational, moral and religious welfare. we know that we have many ignorant, vicious, and criminal negroes, which are a disgrace to any people, but they are ignorant because they have not had a chance. why i know one county in this state today with , negro children of school age and only , of these are in school, according to the report of the superintendent of education. we cannot expect ignorant people to act like intelligent ones, and no amount of abuse will make them better. we know that our race is weak and that the white race is strong. we know also that our race is sick and that the white race is well or whole. now, how should the strong treat the weak? how should the whole treat the sick? would a strong man say, here is a weak man with a heavy burden, therefore, i will put more upon him? would a well man say, here is a sick man, therefore, i shall give him less medical treatment? then why do you say, here is the ignorant negro, therefore let us give him less educational opportunities than we give the white man? if the white man would be logical in this particular, he would say in the courts, because he is ignorant let us make his punishment less severe; because he is weak, let us protect him, because he is ignorant, let us give him greater educational opportunities. but this has not been done. there has not been one dollar increase in the negro public school fund in the rural districts in twenty years; if anything, it is less today than it was twenty years ago. sometimes we hear it said that the white man of the south knows the negro better than anybody else, but the average white man of the south only knows the ignorant, vicious and criminal class of negroes better than anybody else. he knows little of the best class of negroes. i am glad to say, however, that there are a few southern white men who know the better class and know them intimately and are doing what they can to better the negro's condition. i would to god that the number of these few could be increased a hundred fold. we used to deride the north for giving the negro a chance to spend a dollar while withholding from him the opportunity to make one. but in the providence of god all this has been changed by the great war in europe, which has created a labor scarcity in the north, east and west, and the negro is now being given a chance to make a dollar there as well as spend one. the white man of the north is due no special credit for this, the credit belongs to god. he is the righteous judge of all the earth and in the end he will do right. we will hear many tales of the sufferings of these people who go from this section. many will die and some will come back, but still some will never return. you remember the fate of the pilgrims, and the early colonists who first came to this country. you also know the fate of the men in the world war; many must die that some be saved. it behooves us of the south who remain here, both white and black, to re-dedicate ourselves to unselfish service and try more and more each day of our lives to live up to the great principle laid down in the memorable atlanta speech by the immortal booker t. washington when he said: "in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." chapter . the negro and the public schools of the south. too much praise cannot be given to the general education board, dr. dillard and mr. rosenwald, and others for what they have done and are doing to improve negro public schools of the south, for in the last analysis it is there where the great masses of negro children must be educated. we have in the south, as every one knows, a dual system of public schools, one for the whites and one for the negroes. this accounts in part for our poor schools for both white and colored. such a system is expensive and, of course, the negro gets the worst of the bargain. this is not surprising to him; he expects it in all such cases. he has been taught to expect only a half loaf where others get a whole one, but in some cases he gets practically nothing from the state for education. for an instance, i know four or five negro public schools in the black belt that get $ . for the school term of four months. it would be hard to figure out how a teacher can live in these days on $ . per month. but, as i have said, the agencies that i have mentioned above have done much and are doing more to improve these conditions. [illustration: teachers of snow hill institute] they endeavor to work with or through the state and county officials wherever it can be done. this i think is perfectly right and proper because the state must in the end direct the education of its subjects. but where this cannot be done, i think provision should be made for the thousands who are now being neglected. ever since i succeeded in getting the late miss anna t. jeanes of philadelphia to give so largely towards the negro public schools of the south, i have been thinking how this work could be carried on in harmony with the state and county officials. the general education board, dr. dillard and mr. rosenwald have gone a long way towards solving this problem. at the present time every southern state has a superintendent of education and a county superintendent. these officers are elected by the people (white people, of course). recently, however, there have been two other offices created, state supervisor of education for the negro and county supervisor. these officers are selected and not elected. i think the offices came about as a result of the efforts of the general education board and dr. dillard, and i think that the state supervisors of education are selected largely through them. thus far all of the state supervisors for negro schools have been white men, and they in turn have been given the power to select the county supervisor for the negro schools, all of which are colored. these white men are not always able to get the most efficient persons for such work because i know of a few county supervisors here and there who are not competent to do the work that has been intrusted to them. now as the negro has nothing to say as to who should be his state or county superintendent of education, it seems that in the matter of his state and county supervisors he should have a word. (i think it is right and proper that the great funds for negro education should be spent through the state and county officials wherever it can be done.) the state superintendent ought to be given the power to select the most competent negro educator to be state supervisor of negro schools, and the county superintendent ought to be given the same. furthermore, as each state has a negro education association which meets once a year, i think this association should recommend to the state superintendent of education a number of persons from whom he may select the state supervisor. in each county we have an organization, which is known as the county teacher institute. this organization could recommend two or more persons to the county superintendent from whom he might select the county supervisor. i feel and think in this way because in order to really help the people one must go amongst them and know of their hardships, struggles, desires, sorrows, and their joys, must talk with them, eat and sleep with them and know their hearts. it would be asking too much of the southern white man to do this. we know that in order to save the world god gave his only begotten son, jesus christ, who came to earth in the likeness of man, to save man. perhaps he might have sent an archangel or an angel, but this work of redemption could only be done by his sending a person who was a man, just like the men he was to save, and so it is with all great work of reformation and evolution. in order to help the people we must become like them. in christ becoming like man is what we call the humiliation of the incarnation, and in that lies the great secret of redemption and reformation. again, i feel that this is a day of democracy, and that the negro should be given a voice in the government of his schools. if this democracy, of which we are hearing so much, is for the white man alone, then i think that the negro should know it, and if it is for all people he should know that. the white man owes it to the negro to make this matter plain. chapter . where lies the negro's opportunity? the liberation and enfranchisement of four million of slaves in this country fifty years ago brought into the body politic a situation that has ever since been a bone of contention. because of their ignorance, most of these people were without the slightest idea of the proper use, or the power, of the ballot, and but few could properly exercise this new and high prerogative. as long as the federal troops remained in the south and supervised and controlled the elections, these newly-made citizens retained their rights, but when, during president hayes' administration, the troops were withdrawn, the south immediately set to work to remedy this condition. starting with mississippi in , state after state disfranchised the negro. other discriminating laws have been enacted setting apart "jim crow" apartments for the negro on all public carriers, establishing "jim crow" schools, and, in fact, segregating the two races in all public places wherever it is possible. this action on the part of the south brought forth a storm of criticism from the north. the north accused the south of treating the negro unjustly and taking from him his constitutional rights. the south answered the north, not by claiming its policy towards the negro to be right, but by accusing the north of hypocrisy; but both sections agree that the negro should be made as useful as his capacities will permit, and that he should seek the place where this usefulness can be best secured. this long and constant agitation has led thoughtful students of the race problem to ask the question: are the conditions in the south more conducive to the social efficiency of the negro than those offered to him in the north? this is a vital question and a just answer to it will have a far-reaching and lasting effect upon the future welfare of the negro race in this country. by social efficiency we mean that degree of development of the individual that will enable him to render the most effective service to himself, his family and to society. as has been defined, all will agree that social efficiency is the chief end of life. in the north the negro lives mostly in the large cities, while in the south he lives mostly in the rural or country districts. both the north and the south will admit this fact; the opportunities offered in the north then must be largely the opportunities such as large cities can offer, those in the south must be largely such as country districts can offer. but before further considering this question let us note for a moment the opportunities offered in the south and those offered in the north. it is true that, in the south, the negro is disfranchised. it is also true that he suffers many other injustices in that section, but on the other hand he has a wide field of labor. first of all he has almost an unlimited opportunity to farm. he is better adapted to farm work in that section than either the native white man or the foreigner. he stands the heat better and can do more work under a burning southern sun. in railroad construction the negro is preferred. the coal of the south is dug by negro labor, the iron ore is picked from the bowels of the earth by his brawny muscles. the negro finds work at the foundries, the great pipe furnaces, the rolling mills, car factories and other industries in the mineral districts. he is eagerly sought for the sawmills, the turpentine orchard, and in fact for almost every industry of the south. though the white man in the south is beginning to enter the field of industry, he has not entered to the extent that the negro's place is, in the least, in jeopardy. such are the opportunities offered the negro in the south, though he is largely deprived of political and social rights. these facts are admitted by both the north and the south. now what are the opportunities offered him in the north? first of all, the negro is a free man in a political sense. he has the same right to vote that other citizens have and, too, he can vote according to the dictates of his own conscience. president roosevelt in his speech at tuskegee in , said that the colored people had opportunities for economic development in the south that are not offered to them elsewhere. in the large cities of the north, where the negro mostly lives, the chances for good health and the purchase of a home are not so good. the man with little means, such as the negro usually is, must live in either filthy streets or back alleys, where the air is foul and the environments are permeated with disease germs. for the lack of fresh air, pure food and proper exercise, his children are mere weaklings instead of strong and robust boys and girls. dr. robert b. bean of ann arbor, in his essay on "the training of the negro" in _century magazine_ of october, , said that in the large cities the negro is being forced by competition into the most degraded and least remunerative occupations; that such occupations make them helpless to combat the blight of squalor and disease which are inevitable in these cities, and therefore many of them are being destroyed by them. mr. baker says: "one of the questions i asked of negroes whom i met both north and south was this: "'what is your chief cause of complaint?' "in the south the first answer nearly always referred to the jim crow cars or the jim crow railroad stations; after that, the complaint was of political disfranchisement, the difficulty of getting justice in the courts, the lack of good school facilities, and in some localities, of the danger of actual physical violence. "but in the north the first answer invariably referred to working conditions. "'the negro isn't given a fair opportunity to get employment. he is discriminated against because he is colored.'" these conditions instead of promoting the social efficiency of the negro, tend to degrade and demoralize him. the argument that the deprivation of the negro's political and social rights in the south tends to crush his ambition, warp his aspirations and distort his judgment, is unsound, because his self-reliance, ambition and independence in the south can be traced partly to this very deprivation. by it he has been forced to establish his own schools, his own churches, educate his own children and train his own ministers. all of these make for self-reliance and independence and are therefore conducive to his social efficiency. chapter . school problems of a tuskegee graduate. "two distinct problems face the tuskegee graduate who goes forth as a leader of his people: the problem of extending education to the masses of our people and the problem of so adjusting the people to their actual conditions that the two races will be able to live and work together in harmony and helpfulness. it may as well be admitted at the outset that the public schools in the rural districts of the lower south are not working toward this end. the condition of the public schools for our people in the black belt section of this state is disheartening. as unreasonable as it may seem, it is a fact that as the negro population increases, in this section, the appropriation for negro schools decreases. in many places the schools have been abolished altogether. from almost every nook and corner of the south there comes a cry that the negro as a laborer is unsatisfactory. it is said that he is inefficient, unreliable, indolent, lazy, in short, that he is unfit to do the work the south wants done. less than two decades ago it was just the opposite. then, it was said that the negro was unfit for everything else except work. how inconsistent! we admit that there is a labor problem in the south, but we deny that it is due wholly to the inefficiency of the negro as a laborer. in the first place, the natural increase of the population of the south has not kept pace with the marvelous growth and development of her industries. this in itself would explain a scarcity of labor. furthermore, it should be remembered that the most industrious, the most frugal, and the most thrifty negroes of the south are rapidly changing from the wage hands, to contract hands, and the day laborers, to the renters of their own farms, while thousands of negroes in different parts of the south are establishing independent business enterprises for themselves. the south cannot hire that class of negroes from their work. this, again has a tendency to make labor scarce. added to this is the fact that thousands of negroes are moving into the cities. some are going into other states seeking on the one hand better educational opportunities for their children, and on the other hand, protection from mobs and lynchers. this again has a depressing effect upon labor. while these underlying causes seem sufficient to account for the present labor troubles of the south, we must admit that there are entirely too many negroes, particularly among those who work as wage-hands, contract-hands, and day laborers, who are ignorant and superstitious, too many who are gamblers and drunkards. naturally, their work is not satisfactory. but they are not wholly to blame since they have had neither adequate educational opportunities, nor the proper home training. if they lack character, it is largely because they lack training. this is, as i understand it, what the president means when he says that "ignorance is the most costly crop that any community can produce." graduates from tuskegee, a few years ago, received from our illustrious principal the injunction, "go ye into all parts of the south and change these conditions." i will now try to give an account of my stewardship. i hail from snow hill, which is located in the heart of the black belt of this state, in a section where the colored people outnumber the white seven to one, and in the center of a colored population of more than , . when we started work there twenty-five years ago the people as a whole were poor, ignorant, superstitious and greatly in debt. they had no special love for industrial training and not much general love for any kind of education. the so-called public schools were then running three months in the year and paying the teachers nine and ten dollars per month. we started work in a dilapidated one-room log cabin with three students and fifty cents in money. there was no state appropriation, neither was any church or society responsible for one dollar of its expenses. today we have an institution of more than four hundred students and twenty-two teachers and officers. we have acres of land, twenty-four buildings, counting large and small, and fourteen industries in constant operation. being in a farming section, however, we are putting more stress upon agriculture. it is the aim of our institution to teach the beauty and dignity of all labor and inculcate a love for the soil and for agricultural life. in spite of the denial of political rights and of the poor educational opportunities, and many other unjust discriminations, the south, just now, is the best place in this country for the negro, and especially the agricultural section. we might as well recognize this fact and teach our people to act accordingly. again, we aim to train leaders for the masses of our people; for this purpose we need young men and young women imbued with the spirit of sacrifice and service who will go into these rural sections and teach our people how to live, how not to die; teach them how to live economically, to pay their debts, to buy land, to build better homes, better schools, better churches, and above all, how to lead pure and upright lives and become useful and helpful citizens in the community in which they live. finally, we aim to train a high class of domestic servants. there need be no fear or uneasiness for we have an abundance of material for each class. but the worth of an institution is not determined by the acquisition of houses and land, neither by the bare statement of its aims, but by its actual power to serve the practical, daily needs of the community in which it exists. as a result of our twenty-five years' work at snow hill, we have about one thousand graduates and ex-students who have either finished the full or partial course at the institution and are now out in the world doing creditable work as teachers, farmers, mechanics, and domestic workers. over fifty per cent of our students have bought homes since leaving school. many have houses with five and six rooms. wherever a snow hill student teaches the school term is lengthened and the people are encouraged to buy land, build better homes, better school-houses and better churches. the people have not only been helped by our students and graduates, but they have been helped directly through our negro conference and black belt improvement society. twenty-five years ago the people in the neighborhood of the school did not own more than ten acres of land, while today they own more than twenty thousand acres. twenty-five years ago the one-room log cabin was the rule, today it is the exception. twenty-five years ago the majority of the farmers were in heavy debt and mortgaged their crops, today many of the farmers now have bank accounts, while a few years ago they did not know what a bank account was. throughout the community they are building better homes, better churches, better school-houses, and the relation between the races is cordial. just a word about our black belt improvement society. this organization has ten degrees of membership and any one of good moral standing desiring to better his condition, can become a member of the first degree. a member of the second degree, however, must own a little property, at least three chickens, and a pig. a member of the third degree must own a cow, of the fourth degree he must own an acre of land, a member of the fifth degree must have erected on that acre a house having at least three rooms, a member of the sixth degree must own twenty acres of land, of the seventh degree must own forty acres of land, and of the eighth degree must own sixty acres, etc., until they reach the tenth degree. then we have an annual fair at which prizes are given to those who have excelled in any of the agricultural products, or those who have had the best gardens, or who have kept the best house during the year. a special prize is given to the party who has bought the most land during the year. this society has several committees. it has a committee on education. this committee holds meetings in the various communities to arouse in the people an interest in education. it encourages them to build better school-houses, to extend the school term and it keeps their children in school. it is the duty of the committee on labor to gather together those of our race who still work as contract-hands, wage-hands, day-laborers, and domestic servants, and impress upon them the necessity of rendering the best service, tell them that the race is judged more by what they do than what we do, and how great their responsibility is. the farming committee is always active, trying to create in the people a real love for agricultural life, trying to show them that the opportunities which the country offers us are superior to those offered in the cities. other committees are the committee on good government, committee on business, and committee on good roads. the influence for good this society is exerting throughout the section can hardly be estimated. such is the nature of the work we are doing at snow hill. chapter . benefits wrought by hardships. the word "offence" is a general and somewhat indefinite term. as defined by the various dictionaries, it means an attack, an assault, aggression, injustice, oppression, transgression of a law, misdemeanor, trespass, crime and persecution. in all of these definitions there is implied an act considered as disagreeable if not harmful to the recipient. of the various nations of the earth, those that are most powerful and that have accomplished most good are those which have endured and have survived the most offences. they have grown by reason of the obstacles which they have overcome. it is singular, yet it is true, that offences have never destroyed a nation. those nations which have been destroyed have been destroyed not by attack from without, but by their own internal weakness. societies that are accomplishing the most good for the uplift of humanity today are those against whom the most offences have been committed. take the christian church, the greatest of all societies. who can enumerate the offences which have been committed against the church? herod tried to behead it, but could not; pilate tried to crucify it, but instead sanctified it; paul persecuted it and it redeemed him; poor drunken and debauched nero poured forth the fury of his wrath against it in every conceivable, wicked way. he deliberately set fire to the city of rome and accused the christians of the deed. he gave feasts in his garden and the bodies of the christians were burned as torches in the evenings. their groans and agonies constituted the music for their dance and carousal. other christians were fed to half-starved lions. but through it all the church has become more powerful and more glorious than before; while nero's name will forever be a stench to the nations of the earth. in this particular case the prophecy of christ "that offences must need be but woe unto the man by whom the offence cometh" is fulfilled. as with the church, so with all other societies and institutions that are doing good in the community, they endure their offences. the history of the growth and rise of the various races will show that they, too, have had their bitter as well as their sweet. in fact, they have fought for every inch of territory which they now possess. let us consider some of the benefits which have been derived from our hardships. that the enslavement of my people was a serious offence there is no doubt. i should be the last one to apologize for slavery; but, after all, we brought more out of slavery than we carried into it. we went into it heathens, with no language, and no god; we came out american citizens, speaking the proud anglo-saxon tongue, and serving the god of all the earth. under the leadership of old richard allen and other noted colored divines, the negro church was set up under a bush harbor, but today they own church property in this country valued at more than $ , , . as a result of the educational offences committed against the negro, today he has , negro teachers and more than seventeen million dollars' worth of school property in this country. the negro has been disfranchised, but he is more capable of the ballot today than ever before. though the disfranchisement of the negro has wrought great harm to our democratic form of government, it has increased in the negro the spirit of patience, self-reliance, self-sacrifice, and, in fact, it has enhanced in him all of those virtues which make for true manhood and womanhood. in the business world there has been less offence committed against the negro than in any other way. what little there has been was rather slight and it has been only in recent years that the negro has began to detect it, and establish business of his own. he has not so many stores as he has schools, nor so many shops as he has churches, yet the reports of the negro national business league, which recently met in atlanta, will show that he is making rapid progress in the business world. all great men as well as races and nations suffered their offences. washington, lincoln and grant were great because they had to endure hardships. robert small, frederick douglas and booker washington are great because they were slaves. the negro of the south was emancipated years ago without education, without money, without clothes, without food, without even a place to rest his head, and, in many instances, without a name. his greatest possession was ignorance. if, during slavery, he was taught many useful and helpful lessons, during slavery, also, he was denied the opportunity of exercising and developing the greatest requisite of independence, self-reliance. he was a new-born babe, as a ship in mid-ocean without a rudder. it was nothing more than natural for him at times to drift, at times to wander, and still at other times to steer in the wrong direction. consequently, he made many mistakes, some of them serious. he made mistakes in religion, mistakes in economics, and mistakes in politics, but to my mind his greatest mistake was made in the matter of education. until the year ' the masses of our people in the black-belt section of the south believed that the end of education was to free one from manual labor, especially from the labor of the farm. they furthermore believed that it was the end of education to take the people from the country to the cities and otherwise fit them for only three callings, namely, of teacher, of preacher, and of politician. this conception of education was entertained not only by the masses, but many of our schools and colleges encouraged the same view. just at this period, when the relation between the races seemed most strained, there loomed on the horizon the booker washington idea, "that the kind of education most needed by our people was that which would dignify, beautify, and make attractive and desirable country life and at the same time fit our people for high and useful citizenship." mr. washington further contended that any education which did not manifest itself in the practical daily life of the people was not worthy of the name. this idea of mr. washington was indeed timely, but, like all other great movements for reform, it was not accomplished without obstacles, but in the face of many dangers and difficulties. but the dawn of a new day is breaking and industrialism seems to be the spirit of the age. the very fact that the negro was not allowed to attend the white man's school in the south gave the negro a tuskegee. the fact that no white educator was willing to bear the black man's burden gave him a booker washington. for similar reasons the negro has been forced to build his own libraries, his own theatres, his own hotels, and to establish many other business enterprises. hardships, trials, persecution, and offences are a primary necessity in life. we ought not, therefore, complain of them; our trials have made us what we are. this is pre-eminently a progressive age. the world no longer stands still. we are either going forward or backward, rising or falling; there is no such thing as standing still. those phases of our human activities that are standing still are dying. this forward movement is not accomplished without obstacles, and what is true of politics and business is equally true of individuals. the greatest strength comes from overcoming--from resistance and struggle. chapter . the negro and the world war. no book written in the year would be complete without a word about this awful conflagration which is now sweeping over the earth. one sometimes thinks that the end is near and that the world is being destroyed. we know that everything that has been invented to advance civilization is now being used to destroy it. our one consolation is that however imperfect we may have been as a nation, we know that our cause is just and because of this we believe that in the end we will and must win. the right has always been more powerful than the wrong, even more powerful than might and it will prove true in this case. i am being constantly asked by white men in both the north and south, "how does the negro regard this war and what about his willingness to share in its responsibilities." i have only one answer for such questions: "the negro now knows but one word 'loyalty.' he is no alien, he owes no allegiance to any other country, there is no hyphen to his name, he is all american, he is willing to fight and die, that the world might be made safe for democracy." he only asks that he may share in this democracy. already there are practically , negroes who have been called to the colors and thousands of others are expected to be called. i hear of but few if any slackers among them, while thousands of slackers of other races are being rounded up by the police in various cities throughout the country. the , negro soldiers who are now at the front and in the camps have gone with as brave hearts as any american citizen. they say, "silver and gold, have i but little, but i give my life to uncle sam, it is all that i can do." the negro is not only furnishing men to the national army, but he is doing his part to support the boys at the front. he has bought liberty bonds to the fullest extent. many of his business organizations, societies and lodges have bought large blocks of these bonds. on sunday morning, june th, dr. cortland l. myers of tremont temple, boston, in his sermon told of an incident of an old colored woman who had worked hard and saved up three hundred dollars in order that she might not at the end be buried in the paupers' field, but when she read that the united states wanted money, took all she had and carried it to the bank to the agent. when the agent gave her the liberty bond and told her that she would get four per cent on her money, she was utterly surprised and said, "lord, boss, i thought i was giving this money to uncle sam." this woman had only three hundred dollars, but she gave all. you remember what christ said about those who were contributing to a great cause on one occasion. many made large gifts, but one poor woman came up and gave a penny which was all she had. christ on commenting on this to his disciples said that she had given more than all, because she had given all she had. many incidents of this kind may be cited as proof of the negroes' loyalty in this struggle. not only in the liberty loan drive, but in the red cross and war savings stamp drives, the negro is doing his part. there are negro agents all over the south who are educating our people up to what the government at washington wants. such schools as snow hill, laurinburg, denmark, utica, okalona and calhoun and many others are serving as bureaus of information for this war work among the negroes. nor is this all. the negro is doing his part in the various industries of the country. i have heard of many strikes and walk-outs since we entered the war, but not once have a group of negroes struck. in some places where a few are working with the unions, the unions have forced them out at the risk of their lives, but where he is free, nowhere in this country has the negro struck during the war. he is doing his bit on the farm. everywhere the negro farmers, man, woman and child, believe that they can help win the war by making a good crop and they are at work on the farm trying to do this, so you see that the negro in every way is in the war to a finish. these are answers to questions asked me by the white man both north and south as to the attitude of the negro toward this world's war. but on the other hand the negro soldiers and civilians are not asleep and they too are asking such questions as these:-- "are we to share in the democracy for which we are giving our lives? when the world is made safe for democracy, will the entire country be made safe for it? will my father, mother, sister and brother be allowed to share in this democracy? will lynchings and burnings at the stake cease? will the white man who makes the laws allow these laws to take their course? will they allow us or give us a fair trial before their courts, which have only white men as jurors? will they cease taxing us without representation? will they give us an equal part of the money spent for education? (in many places in the black belt the negro child receives thirty cents a year for education, while the white child receives fifteen dollars.) will the negro be given any work that he is capable of doing and not be denied it on account of his color? will it be possible for a negro travelling from alabama to california or massachusetts, to find a place to sleep at night? will the baggage masters and the conductors of the south ever treat the negro passengers with courtesy and respect and finally will the white man in the south after making the laws for the qualifications of voters, allow a negro to vote if he measures up to these qualifications?" the negro does not care what these qualifications may be. he only wants a fair chance in case he measures up to them. the negro only seeks equal rights and justice before all the courts of the land. he expects this because of his teachings. he was brought to this country against his will, even against his protest. he has been given the white man's language, his history, his literature, his bible and even his god. his aspirations, inspirations and desires have been brought about as a result of these and if they are wrong, the white man is to blame. the negro has been taught to believe that god is no respecter of persons and therefore his subjects should not be. he thought that if he did what other men did he would obtain the same results. now evidently the negro is a man. he loves as other men do, he lives as others do, he dies as others die, he has joy and sorrow as others do, even hates as others do, laughs and cries as others. he must therefore, be a man as man is the only being which possesses these faculties. then he asks for a man's chance and the world will never be right until this is given him. the world will never be safe for democracy until all the races of the earth are allowed to share in it. in answer to all of the foregoing questions asked me by both the white and black, i have said that things will be better for the negro after the war. i have said that it was impossible for the world to be made safe for democracy unless every county in the south is made safe for it. i have gone as far as to cite a recent occurrence in camden, wilcox county, alabama, where more than one hundred and forty negroes were sent to the cantonments and i was asked to be one of the speakers on the occasion. the white people there gave the negroes a great banquet and in my remarks after thanking them for their hospitality, i said "that it would be foolish and cowardly on my part to stand here in your presence and say that as a race we have no grievances, for we have them, but this is no time to air them. when the house is on fire it is no time for family quarrels, but the thing to do is to put the fire out and then we can adjust the quarrels after. "today our national house is on fire and it is the duty of every man, both white and black, rich and poor, great and small, to rise in his might and put the fire out and when the fire is out, we will see you about these grievances." i went a step further and told that "already the war had brought some good results as this was the most democratic day that this little city had ever seen." before the war, two expressions were commonly used by the white man and the negro. the negro's expression was this:--"i haven't any country," and the white man's expression was:--"this is a white man's country." now both of these classes are saying, "this is our country." i further said that "we should win this war, because democracy was right and autocracy is wrong, and if we lose, and god forbid that we should, the fault will not be in democracy, but it will be due to the fact that we are not practicing what we preach." at the close of my remarks many of the white citizens, including the judge, the sheriff, lawyers and other prominent men came forward and congratulated me on what i had said and some said that the white people of camden needed more of such plain talk. i took these signs to mean that better things were coming for the negro of the south after the war, but i must admit that when i read in the evening papers of june th that senator john sharp williams of mississippi had practically defeated the bill for women suffrage, because he said that he favored the vote for white women only and that the bill in its present form would not be allowed in his state--i must confess that this action almost took away all of my hopes especially after there was no one to rise and rebut his argument. there was no one in the united states senate to speak for democracy for all the people. now i think that just such spirit as this exhibited by that great senator from mississippi is at the foundation of this world's war and until that spirit is crushed, i fear that this war will continue. for of a truth, "god is no respecter of persons." now i have given my answers to both the negro and the white man. what is the answer of the white man? are we fighting for democracy for all the people, or are we fighting for democracy for the white man only? this question has never been answered by the white man, but it must be answered after this great war. appendix _address delivered by mr. edwards on the twentieth anniversary of his graduation from tuskegee._ "two decades ago, twenty members constituting the class of ' , received their commission from the illustrious principal of this great institution on yonder hill, to go ye into all parts of the south and teach and preach tuskegee's gospel. this gospel was then as it is now, a gospel of service. now after the lapse of twenty years we have assembled here to review the efforts of past years. although twenty years are not long enough in which to record the life's work of a class, it is sufficiently long to indicate the direction in which this work is tending. "so we come today, not so much to tell what we have accomplished as to tell what we are doing to renew our allegiance to our alma mater, and to assure its principal and members of the faculty that our motto, "deeds not words," is still our guiding star. four of our number have passed to the great beyond. we must therefore wait a later and greater day to hear their record read or told. of the remaining sixteen, we have lost all communication with two, and it would be mere speculation for us to say what these two are doing. we can only hope, and do most fervently pray, that wherever they are they have with them the deep and abiding spirit of tuskegee, and this we believe they have. this leaves then only fourteen live, vigorous and active members with which we are concerned. all of these, except one, have been engaged more or less in teaching. they are located as follows: "two in normal school at snow hill, alabama; one at the head of a large industrial school at topeka, kansas; three in birmingham, alabama; one teaching in miles memorial college; one in government service; one doing settlement work; two are in asheville, n. c., where they are engaged in teaching and doing settlement work respectively; another teaching in dothan, alabama; two in montgomery, one of these teaching and the other doing settlement work; one in selma, alabama, farming and doing extension work; one at the head of a prosperous industrial school at china, alabama, and one teaching in georgia. all have been remarkably successful and they have touched and made better the lives of more than five thousand souls. while losing their lives for others, they have saved their own somewhat, materially. "having been out on the tempestuous sea of life for twenty years amidst both storms and calms, it may not be out of place for us to speak a word of warning or make a few suggestions to those who are to set sail today, and to those who hope to go to sea at a later date. this, then, is our message. first of all, it is necessary for you to know where the work of the world is to be done. "on one occasion during christ's sojourn on earth, he took a few of his disciples with him upon the mountain and there transfigured himself. he clothed himself in heavenly beauty and splendor; he arrayed himself in his godlike power. these men were so overjoyed at this manifestation of his glory and power, that old peter, impulsive as he was, spoke out and said: 'lord, it is good for us to be here, if it be thy will, let us build here three tabernacles, one for thee, one for moses, and one for elias.' the place was so glorious that they wanted to abide there. but at the same time the multitude was waiting at the foot of the mountain, hungering and desiring to be fed; naked and desiring to be clothed; sick, and desiring to be healed. the work of jesus christ and his disciples was not on the transfigured mountain, but at the foot among the masses. so as they came down from the mountain, there met him a man whose son was a lunatic, desiring that the master might heal him. "so on occasions like this when dr. washington takes us upon the mountain and reveals to us tuskegee in all of her beauty and splendor, we are likely, in such a state of ecstasy, to cry out saying, principal washington, it is good for us to be here, and let us build three tabernacles; one for thee, one for armstrong, and one for douglas. but my friends, we cannot abide here. we must go down to the foot of the mountain among the masses. we must go out into the rural districts for there it is that the people are a hungry and thirsty crowd, and there it is that the harvest is great, but the laborers are few, and there it is the work of the world must be done. "another suggestion is, that as you go out to work, you will find that for the most part negro society is built upon a false basis. instead of being built upon the sound basis of merit and character, it is built upon display; instead of being built upon substance, it is built upon shadow. "we need young men and women who have confidence in themselves; confidence in the race, and abiding faith in god. we need young men and women who are more interested in the opportunity to make a dollar than in the privilege to spend one. we need young men and women who are imbued with the spirit of sacrifice and service, whose mission is, 'not to be ministered unto, but to minister.' we need young men and women with a purpose. "to illustrate what we mean by a purpose, we take the action of grant during the late civil war. when winfield scott and mcclellan had practically failed with the army of the potomac and things were looking very dark for the union forces, lieutenant u. s. grant was placed in command of all the union forces. from the date of his command, his purpose was: 'on to richmond.' day after day his command was: 'on to richmond.' when they had rivers to ford and mountains to climb, his command was: 'on to richmond.' at times thousands were laid low by the ravage of disease, but his command was: 'on to richmond.' when the cannon of his enemy roared like thunder and bullets like lightning struck his men down by the tens of thousands, his command was: 'on to richmond.' he received letters and telegrams by the thousands saying: 'my god, general, are you going to kill all of our husbands, all of our sons, our brothers? are you going to make all of the north a land of widows and orphans?' his reply was: 'on to richmond.' when rivers of blood were before him, flames of fire swept over his forces, his command was: 'on to richmond.' and the command never ceased until lee surrendered his sword to grant at appomattox court house. we repeat, that for the work that lies before us, we need young men and women with a purpose. "a third warning is, that we must not mistake the aim and end of education. you will find somewhere in the bible a sentence like this: 'and the word was made flesh and it dwelled among us.' the word had been spoken by abraham; moses thundered it from mt. sinai's ragged brow; ezekiel preached it; david sang it; solomon proclaimed it; jeremiah prophesied it; elijah saw it in the whirlwind; moses saw it in the burning bush, and isaiah saw it and in amazement cried: 'who is this that cometh from edom with dyed garments from bazroh? this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength?' but my friends, none of this would do. speaking the word would not atone; hearing it would not redeem; and seeing it would not save. the word had to be made flesh and blood in the person of jesus christ, the son of god, and then come down on earth and live, move, and dwell among us. "as with the word, so with education. you have been here a number of years trying to obtain it. you have heard education from your teachers; you have heard it in the class-rooms; you have heard it from the platform; you have heard it in the sunday-school; you have gleaned it from your text-books; you have sung it; you have prayed it; you have spoken it; you have walked it; you have assumed it. but none of these will suffice. education, in order to be real, must be applied; in order to be effective, it must be digested and assimilated. it must become a part of your flesh and blood; it must transform you into a new creature and then go out and move, live and dwell among us. "and now a final word for the class of ' . what of its loyalty to tuskegee, our alma mater? it is true that at times our purposes and aims have been misunderstood and misconstructed; at times your attitude towards us has been misinterpreted, but not once have we doubted your love. we hope that you have never mistrusted ours. "it is true that at times we are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in dispair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. through all of this, our love and loyalty to dear old tuskegee has never wavered, and now as a token of this love and loyalty, i hand to dr. washington as a memorial scholarship for the class of ' , a check for one thousand dollars." i think that this act pleased dr. washington more than anything that had ever been done by the class of ' . we all were proud of this because we wanted dr. washington to see that we had not forgotten what he had done for us. we wanted to do this during his lifetime, and this we succeeded in doing. an address before the alabama state teachers' association, held in montgomery, ala., the subject being: _"school building under difficulties."_ "there is no work pertaining to the welfare of our race that is of more importance than that of the teacher, and no class of people has a harder task to perform than the earnest and conscientious negro teacher of today. "the problems that come before the large educational associations of this and other countries, are problems dealing largely with the child, such as the treatment of backward children, treating of abnormal children, care of the blind, of the deaf, special treatment for incorrigibles, the feeble minded, and many other kinds of mental and physical defectives. "other problems that demand the attention of such meetings, are problems dealing with the teacher, his preparation and qualification for the various grades of our schools, for instance, preparation of the teacher for the elementary school, for the secondary school, and for colleges and universities. these associations also give much time to such subjects as the relation of education to real life; the defects of our present school system; and how these defects may be remedied. in other words, how can the school better fit the student to take his place in the social and economic life of today? i repeat, these are the problems which largely consume the time of these educational meetings. they are vital and far-reaching, and demand the closest attention of our wisest and best educators. they are not racial; not sectional; not even national, but are universal in their scope and teachers in all parts of the world must contend with them. "the average negro teacher of the south today must assume his share of the burden of these problems along with other teachers, whether he wills it or not. in addition to this he has to deal with the serious problem of his bread and butter. this makes the burden of the negro teacher of a two-fold nature, and in this respect he is at a disadvantage of the average american teacher. he has not as yet been able to live up to the biblical injunction, 'take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.' no teacher can do his best so long as there is doubt and uncertainty about his daily bread. "the negro student who finishes at one of our higher institutions of learning today, and goes forth to teach, does not find everything to his liking. he soon learns that there has been no voice before him crying in the wilderness saying: 'prepare ye the way of the teacher, make straight in the desert a highway for our educator.' he learns here for the first time that in addition to the ordinary educational problems, it is for him to exalt every valley, make low every hill and mountain, make the crooked straight, and the rough places plain. he finds no way prepared, he must make one; he finds no school-house ready, he must build one; he finds no people anxiously awaiting him, he must persuade them. in many cases the negro teacher who is imbued with the spirit of sacrifice and service can truly say as did the master, 'the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the teacher who would redeem a poverty stricken and ignorant people, has not where to lay his head.' "the purpose of the snow hill institute is to prepare young men and young women to go into communities where they propose to work and influence the people to stop living in rented one-room log cabins, buy land, and build dwelling houses having at least four rooms, and thus improve the home life of the people. second, to influence the people to build better school-houses and lengthen the school terms and thus by arousing educational interest, assist in bringing about the needed reform that is so essential to economic and upright living; and finally to promote good character building. to some extent the purpose is being realized, for more than one thousand different students who have been more or less benefited by having spent a year or more under its guidance, are leading sober and useful lives. two hundred fifteen have either been granted certificates or diplomas, and are engaged as follows: fifty are teachers, twenty-five are housekeepers, three of the teachers have founded schools of their own, one at laurinburg, n. c., one at west butler, alabama, and one at richmond, alabama. "though the majority of the ex-students are located in the black belt of alabama and are engaged principally in farming, a large number of them are found in the following states: mississippi, louisiana, georgia, florida, and the carolinas." appendix address delivered by mr. edwards in bessemer, alabama "the signs of times" it was customary in ancient times for nations to build walls around their cities to protect them from the enemy. war was the rule, and peace the exception. nations therefore spent most of their time in preparing for war, as they believed that their advancement depended largely upon their conquest. watchmen would be placed here and there on the walls to keep a sharp look-out for the enemy and when detected, would warn the inhabitants of his approach. as a result of these warlike times and military activities, some of the world's greatest generals were produced during that period. undoubtedly, conditions here mentioned, existed because of the poor methods of transportation and communication that were uncertain during that day, for since the advent of the steam-engine, telegraph, telephone, the automobile, and other means of rapid transit, national lines of demarcation have been becoming less distinct. as nations communed with nations and understood each other better, they found less causes for differences and less need of watchmen on the walls. we cannot help but believe that with a better knowledge of each race by the other and on the part of each a better understanding of the great and common end of life, which is to serve and uplift, that racial strife and conflict will cease and ere long this old world will become the kingdom of our god. but these are not ancient times and things that were are not now. the cities of the plain are no longer separated, for the walls have been demolished and instead of the watchmen we have the teacher, the preacher and the politician to tell us the signs of the times. this is, pre-eminently, a progressive age; an age of going forth; an age in which things move. with the new and varied inventions of the th and th centuries, old customs and conditions are rapidly passing away and those nations, races, and individuals who cannot adjust themselves to these new conditions must be left behind. just now grave and serious problems confront the american people and this, in itself, is a proof of our going forth. we must not deprecate them, we must not shirk them, they are ours, we must face them manfully, must shoulder them and stand up and walk. these problems are the mothers of progress and instead of trying to turn from them or to dodge them, we should rejoice because we live at a time when we can help in the solution of such complex problems, whose results will have such far reaching and lasting effect upon the social and economic life of the american people. this country is one and inseparable and whatever is beneficial to the white man is beneficial to the black man also. the negro cannot hope at the present to play a very important part in the solution of great questions. at our best the part we must play can only be secondary. first, because our business operations have not brought us into intimate relation to these questions and we do not fully comprehend their meaning. second, we can do but little because these questions are political in their nature and must be settled by the ballot. the negro in this section has been disfranchised and therefore he cannot play at that game. our being thus handicapped and prohibited from assisting in the solution of these great problems, is no reason why we should say there is nothing we can do. "if you cannot cross the ocean and the heathen lands explore you can find the heathen nearer; you can help them at your door." there are some problems, however, that are within our reach, upon the solution of which depends our future welfare in this country. they are, inefficiency, vagrancy, and crime. for a long time we have been hearing of the inefficiency of the negro teacher, the inefficiency of the negro preacher, but all the while it was said that he was a good worker; that he was only fitted to do manual labor. the cry has gone out and is rapidly spreading to the effect that the negro is worthless; that there is inefficiency in the pulpit, inefficiency in the school-room, and now inefficiency on the farm. inefficiency everywhere. our race has lost many places of trust and honor because of this cry. i know personal cases where negro men have been replaced by white men because, they say, the black men were inefficient. this is as much true in new york as it is in alabama. as the supply of efficient men increases, the demand for inefficient men will decrease and sooner or later there will be no room for the inefficient man. he will be idle, cannot get any work to do. he will be added to the vagrant class. already this class is too large among us; strong able-bodied men walking about with no home and nothing to do. this is a dangerous class. of course, unless the vagrant gets some work to do he will starve or have to leave the country; but this man does not do either. he becomes a parasite and lives of the honest toil of others. sometimes he lives out of the white man's kitchen, because his sweetheart is the cook; sometimes because his old mother is a wash woman, and sometimes because his sister is a nurse. this is the class, my white friends, that gives you trouble, this is the class that gives us trouble, this is the class that will give trouble to any community and we are as anxious as you are to rid ourselves of this body of death. now the best class of negroes and the best class of white people are agreed as to the fact that this dangerous class must be gotten rid of, but they differ as to methods. the negro believes mostly in the preventive method, the white man mostly in the cure method. the negro says a good school in every community will prevent, the white man says a good jail in every county will cure. the negro says teach the law, the white man says enforce the law. the negro cries for a state reformatory for the boys and girls of his race, the white man cries for the penitentiary for them. now, this is not a very great difference after all and we should get together by each asking for the best schools to prevent these evils and then when the evils are committed, asking for the strictest law for their punishment. as for my part, it is not a question in my mind as to the cause of this increasing class among my people. it is plain to me that ignorance is the cause of inefficiency, inefficiency the cause of vagrancy, and vagrancy the cause of crime. we must, therefore, seek the remedy in the removal of the cause. if ignorance be the mother of inefficiency, inefficiency the mother of vagrancy, and vagrancy the mother of crime, it is plain that the removal of ignorance will stop the others. this can only be done by education and civic righteousness. i wish here to emphasize the fact that education is the source of all we have and the spring of all our future joys. our religion, our morality, and that which is highest and best in our social and civic life, all come from education. therefore, it is the primary factor in the elevation of all races. our education should be of a threefold nature, viz.: literary, industrial and religious. no limit should be placed upon the negro's literary qualification. a race so largely segregated as ours, needs its own teachers, preachers, lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, and other professional and business men, and therefore they should be given the highest and best education that is obtainable. if our preachers and teachers are inefficient, it is because they are improperly educated. if the churches are growing cold and dying and the schools accomplishing but very little good, it is because religion is not being made practical and education not being made to apply to our every day life. such an end can only be accomplished through well and systematically trained teachers and preachers. better teachers and better preachers will go a long way towards the alleviation of our ills. if we would secure the kind of education here referred to, we must be willing to pay for it; we must make a sacrifice, we must care less about forms and fashions and more about the higher things of life. we must see less evils in the dollar and more good. we must not only have a good education, but we must have good industrial training. this is a scientific as well as a literary age. a scientific age is always an age of inventions and with new inventions comes the demand for men qualified to manage large interests and complicated machinery. this demand can only be supplied by industrially trained men and women. this must be done in our industrial schools. our hands should be as truly trained to work as our minds to think, and any education that teaches otherwise, is not worthy of the name. i know that in some sections my people are prejudiced towards industrial schools, but this is foolish in the extreme. if we are to hold our own in this country, it must be by our ability to do work and to do it in the most acceptable manner. we are in a farming section and i believe that we should therefore strive to be the best farmers in the world. let us make a specialty of all the trades that are related in anyway to agriculture; endeavor to become the best stock raisers, the best truck gardeners, the best cooks, the best wash women, the best housekeepers, the best dress makers, the best blacksmiths, and in fact, the best in all that pertains to country life. let us get hold of the lands we cultivate as far as possible and build better homes and keep our homes clean. but you say that we do not need industrial training. let us see. many years ago henry clay, in order to encourage home industry, introduced a bill in the kentucky legislature to the effect that the people of that state should use nothing save what could be produced in the state. suppose today the white man of this country should say that the negro must use only the things which he could make, what would be his condition? could we cook with proper utensils? could we eat with knives and forks? could we dress as we do now? practically everything we wear or use was made by the white man and were he to institute such actions we would be helpless to provide for ourselves. in our quest for knowledge, we must not overlook the education of the heart. our religion should be made practical. it must be real and not visionary. no other will suffice. our religion must consist more in deeds and less in words. transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. the following misprints have been corrected: " " corrected to " " (table of contents) "tuskeegee" corrected to "tuskegee" (page ) "phosporus" corrected to "phosphorus"(page ) some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. obvious errors have been silently closed, while those requiring interpretation have been left open. other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation usage have been retained. the american negro academy. occasional papers no. . a comparative study --of the-- negro problem --by-- mr. charles c. cook. price fifteen cents. washington, d. c. published by the academy a comparative study of the negro problem[ ] living as we do in the midst of a people, which, if not of unmixed english blood, is at least english in institutions, language and laws, where can we better read our destiny than in the pages of english history? "in our own hearts," some will at once answer. but no, the thread of our fate is, to-day, more in the hands of the american people than in our own. the three nations, which have in modern times, most startled the world by their progress, are england, the united states, and japan. in the early years of the seventeenth century, a part of the english people, impatient of the restrictions of their time, founded upon this continent a new and more rapidly progressive civilization than that which they left behind them in their old homes. but this was no beginning, only an acceleration of the movement, which had already placed england among the foremost powers of the earth. to study the conditions attending upon the entrance of the american people upon their path of progress, we must follow the pilgrims back to and into their english homes. what, then, does the history of the american people teach us? a simple lesson, still more impressively told by the history of japan: that time may become an insignificant element in the making of a powerful nation. what it took england ten centuries to accomplish, the united states has done in two hundred, and japan in thirty years. what mighty leavening agency has been employed, what secret learned from nature's workshop, that these almost incredible results, should have been so quickly, yet beyond question so well, won? the answer may be given in two words: england was chiefly hand-made, the united states, and above all japan, have been made by machinery. richly endowed with human genius, as with natural resources, only time enough was needed to transplant modern political institutions, and economic and industrial machinery, and to train natives in their use, to enable japan to raise herself, in one generation, high in the scale of progressive nations. thirty years ago, japan stood hesitatingly upon the threshold of her hermit's cell, and considered whether she should go out and join the throng of bustling europeans. america, england and holland had beaten furiously at her doors, demanding her answer. at this fateful moment, the daimio okubu thus addressed the mikado--"since the middle ages our emperor has lived behind a screen and has never trodden the earth. nothing of what went on outside his screen ever penetrated his sacred ear; the imperial residence was profoundly secluded, and, naturally, unlike the outer world. not more than a few court nobles were allowed to approach the throne, a practice most opposed to the principles of heaven. this vicious practice has been common in all ages. but now, let pompous etiquette be done away with, and simplicity become our first object. kioto is in an-out-of-the way position, and is unfit to be the seat of government! let his majesty take up his abode temporarily at ozaka, removing his capital hither, and thus cure one of the hundred abuses which we inherit from past ages." "the young mikado, mutsuhito, came in person to the meetings of the council of state, and before the daimios and court nobles, promised on oath that a deliberative assembly should be formed; all measures be decided by public opinion; the uncivilized customs of former times should be broken through; and the impartiality and justice displayed in the workings of nature, be adopted as a basis of action; and that intellect and learning should be sought for throughout the world, in order to establish the foundations of empire." "these words," says the translator, "seem an echo of the prophetic question of the hebrew seer: can a nation be born at once." in the quickly accomplished revolution occurred, which overthrew a feudal aristocracy which had endured for nearly seven hundred years. at its close, the mikado emerged from the sacred seclusion, in which he had been purposely kept, to take the reins of government and lead the half unwilling nation into the ways of the western world. in a few years, japan had fitted herself out with a constitution, a bureau staff, an army and navy, post office, railroad and telegraph facilities, customs houses, a mint, docks, lighthouses, mills and factories, public schools, colleges and schools of special instruction, newspapers, publishing houses and a new literature written by japanese students of european life and history; ambassadors and consuls were admitted to japan and sent to the other nations; scholars sought the western schools and returned to put into practice western ideas; european ships established commercial relations with the islands; and christian missionaries hurried into this promising new field. japan, in thirty years had passed from obscurity to fame, and no longer doomed to be the prey of other nations, she had a voice in that great council, which decides the destinies of mankind. by a not unnatural coincidence, she has been attracted to that other island power, great britain, and it is to england that her debt is greatest; for in political and economic progress, england is the model of the world. about the middle of the fifth century, the roman armies, after a military occupation of britain which lasted for four hundred years, were recalled to rome. that imperial city, fattened upon oriental plunder, and intoxicated by hundreds of military triumphs, was now falling amidst the ruins of her temples and theatres, before the onslaughts of barbarian hordes. meanwhile the same drama, though upon a smaller scale, was being enacted in the deserted province. the romanized britons, their vitals eaten out by the corrosive civilization which they had adopted, were slaughtered like sheep on their borders, by the uncivilized tribes, until in desperation, they invited north german pirate chiefs to britain to protect them. to protect them! what bitter irony! by the end of the next century, bones and ashes were about all there was left to protect, and england was peopled afresh by the devastating hosts of her protectors. while in their native forests four centuries earlier, these germans had won the admiration of tacitus by the simplicity of their manners and the integrity of their lives. lovers of freedom, they were loyal followers of their leaders in battle: accustomed by the severity of their winters to the greatest hardships, and hardened by lives of war into cruelty, they were tender, almost reverential in their attitude toward women. "they had no use for laws," said tacitus "their good customs sufficed." during the century following their arrival in england, they glutted the savage in them, with the sight of bleeding corpses and burning homes; nor did they escape demoralization; for they turned their arms against each other and fought for three hundred years for tribal supremacy, only to fall before a danish, and later, a norman conqueror. in , years after the landing of hengest, and years after the coming of augustine the missionary, alfred, the greatest of the saxon kings, ascended the throne. the intellectual condition of england at that time, may be described in his own words, "when i began to reign i cannot remember one south of thames who could explain the service-book in english,"--which is as much as to say that there was not one fairly educated man in the richest and most progressive part of the island. for more than three hundred years, the history of england is an almost continuous record of anarchy and rapine. such conditions favor the strong, and, like the body of soldiers which, while advancing over the smooth road, keeps its line unbroken, but when obliged to cross a muddy, ploughed field, breaks up into a straggling file, the commonwealth of ancient germany, with its wonderful equality and community, had so changed its form under pressure of the conditions attending the conquest of the britons, that monarchy and slavery, and the accumulation by individuals of wealth and power, had, even before the norman invasion, become permanent features of the society. all had possessed some share of power and wealth in the early time, and it followed that the acquisition of them was little esteemed; but now these gifts, when the normans usurped them, grew to splendor in the eyes of those from whose presence they were being ever farther and farther withdrawn. the race for money and power had begun, and though the gaps between the contestants widened, all pressed onwards: england had entered upon her progressive stage. now, after eight hundred years, while the rich harvest is being reaped, let us look back at the sowers, in the time of its sowing. england was, before the rise of japan, the only island power, and to her consequent isolation may be traced many important differences between her development and that of the continental powers. prominent among these was an early consciousness of national existence, which gave some purpose to three centuries of otherwise meaningless bloodshed. as the insulation of england was the most striking among the favorable circumstances, so love of independence became the distinguishing feature of the english character, belonging alike to the saxon of the time of tacitus and the englishman of to-day. the effect of this instinct has been to invigorate all of the members of the society; and to it is due the succession of glorious victories won by the english yeomanry over the french army at crecy, poitiers and agincourt; the ranks of the english army being so far superior, individually, to the ranks of the french, that superiority in the numbers of the french was unavailing. but, on the other hand, it was the same spirit which caused the saxon freeman to stay away from the tribal assembly for several days, in order to show that he acknowledged no duty to obey: and this spirit, again which spent the english by more than three hundred years of domestic wars and left them helpless before sixty thousand norman and french invaders. the very different period of peace and prosperity, which followed upon norman tyranny, taught the english to distinguish between a just and an exaggerated sense of the freedom to which each individual was entitled, and in burke's attitude towards the french revolution, we have the residuum of the struggle between saxon independence and norman discipline. the church of england also expresses the english spirit of liberty. it stands not for dissent, but for national self-control; it is an independent, not a protestant church. to realize this, we must remember, that the desire for separation from the church of rome showed itself in the eleventh century; and from then on continuously, until henry viii slit the thin thread which bound england to rome, the cause of ecclesiastical and of civil liberty advanced side by side. it is a noteworthy characteristic of the saxon, as described by implication in the germania of tacitus, that, while he barely tolerated a king, he cheerfully obeyed a captain, or war leader. when, therefore, angles and saxons entered upon a period of conquest in england, which lasted a hundred and fifty years, it became quite easy for the captain, imperceptibly, and, to a certain extent involuntarily, to add to his proper office that of law giver and administrator. in this way, especially after the exchange of saxon for norman administrators, the still rebellious saxon freeman became hopelessly entangled in a network of machinery, local and national, which kept him for many years an obedient, unresisting subject. so, being deprived for centuries of any considerable weight in the english counsels, the commoner turned his attention to the increasing of his material well-being. in this he was favored by the stern enforcement, by the norman kings, of law and order, and an enduring peace; for, though english soldiers have often fought on the continent, it may be said with almost literal truth that not since the norman conquest has english soil felt the footsteps of a foreign foe. for this blessing, england is indebted to her insular position, which has also pointed so unmistakably to her destiny as a sea-faring power, carrying the world's trade in her merchant ships and scattering colonies over every continent. summing up then, the conditions favoring english progress at its beginning: we have a people, instinct with the love of freedom and power, subjected to law by desire for victory in war, and kept obedient by bewilderment of machinery. forced to reconcile themselves to norman usurpation of all power in church and state, they devote themselves to the acquisition of wealth, and, because of their insular position and small territory, end in commercial supremacy and colonial expansion. the english people are, through their american descendants, our teachers in everything, and their lessons we eagerly and unquestioningly learn and practice. but we ought now, fairly and candidly to consider how far we may realize with our dispositions and our circumstances, the greatness which england has achieved. could we colonize cuba, our environing conditions would be favorable to political and economic development. cuba is an island, fertile and, for commerce, almost ideal in its situation. or, can we not, remaining here, share in the management of this splendid country, exercising the powers and fulfilling the duties of government in those states where we are in the majority, and influencing the government of other states where our numbers are not so great? if either career is open to us, the study and imitation of the english model will abundantly repay us. but do we believe that it is so? no, we cannot hope that either path will be ours. the white races have to-day the power and the determination to rule the world. but, as if the first obstacle was not great enough, i must add another which is even greater: we have not the disposition to follow england had we the opportunity to do so. the modern state is the product of centuries of war. its architectural model is the mediaeval castle. from that school of discipline we have been excluded for more than two hundred years. that we have not quite forgotten our early lessons, our fidelity to our leaders in battle and devotion to our cause, have put beyond question. it has been more than once shown that there are men among us who can charge up a hill in the face of a withering fire; but who among us is capable of jumping into the air, and falling with both knees upon a fellow-student in a college foot-ball game; or of using against a savage tribe, as england proposed to do, the mutilating dum dum bullet, forbidden by the rules of civilized warfare, but too expensive to throw away? yet this is the spirit of the conqueror, careful, patient, exact, merciless, cool. one-third of a victory to-day belongs, it is said, to the treasury office, one-third to the war office, and only the remaining third, to the general and soldiers in the field. since both opportunity and disposition, therefore, are wanting, which would enable us to enter upon a political career, we must be content to live here, a voiceless figure at the council-board of the american nation. and yet, a mere element in the population ("negroes and indians untaxed") we will never consent to be. when de toqueville wrote upon democracy in america, he made the negro problem a part of the history of civilization, and it has continued to increase in importance, as in difficulty, down to the present day. but that it should be other than a problem for the whites had not been thought of. how strange this seems to us, whose whole attention is concentrated upon it from morning till night, from childhood to the grave! we stand before it like sisyphus before the great rock which he rolled so laboriously and so vainly up that tartarean hill. a few years ago, i had occasion to seek the advice of a distinguished member of the board of trustees of howard university upon a school matter. after hearing a part of the tale of trouble, he said solemnly, "it is very unfortunate, but still true that your people are not united, you don't act together." now, as it happened, it was otherwise in this instance, and i hastened to say that all of the colored teachers were on one side and the white teachers on the other. "now that will never do," he replied quickly. "you must never allow a color line to be drawn." he spoke with such evident feeling that i realized that his last word was said. we cannot exaggerate the importance of this fundamental dilemma. if we hope to win in any contest, we must unite, but the unwisest thing we can do, is to unite and win. during the past forty years a great many people in western countries have been deeply impressed by darwin's view of the animal and vegetable worlds as the theatre of a struggle for existence in which the fittest have survived; and have applied this doctrine unrestrictedly to the life of man. a deep tinge of darwinism seems to have spread itself over our own discussions, and two schools are rising in our midst, one advocating an active, the other a passive part in the struggle. in pursuance of the former policy, we are told to organize, and if need be, to arm, in defense of our political and social rights; in the pulpit, in the press and before the courts of law to defend ourselves; and above all, to get money, for this is the key to the whole situation. but nothing could be more unwise than willingly to match our strength with that of the american people. it is vain to hope for a fair fight, man against man. the whites will not fail to make use of every advantage which they possess. the struggle will always be one between an armed white man and an unarmed negro; between a man on one hand, and a man and a giant on the other, a giant made of store-houses, arsenals and navies, railroads, organization, science and confidence. it is equally idle to _demand_ an impartial administration of the law. the english common law is but a stepmother of justice; her own child is prosperity. the saxon came to england a pirate. he grew to be a merchant, often returning, however, to his old trade. after turning merchant, he turned lawyer, and the law administered in our courts of justice is but his replication in his own case. but it is vainest of all to suppose that we can _buy_ our way into the respect and liking of the american people. somebody has been saying to us; just let us own blocks of southern railroad stock and who will bid us ride on a jim crow car? who could it have been, who offered us this advice? we should at least crown him king of jesters and prince of wits. is there anything in the english or american past, to justify us in believing that they will part more willingly with wealth than with power? are we not shortsightedly preparing for calamities far more destructive, and more enduring than the political murders of the last thirty years? the black miners at virden could tell us something about the pursuit of wealth; and the jews about its social and political value after it has been acquired. but the worst result _to-day_ of this kind of advice is that it is so quickly taken up by rash and evil-minded men, who shout it from the platform in its coarsest and most misleading form. after them follows the newspaper vulture seizing upon what is worst in the speaker's address to scatter it in large headlines through thousands of homes. more numerous than these who bid us strike for our rights are the counsellors of a pacific policy. their aim is the same, survival, but our part in the struggle must be, they say, a humble, or at least, an inconspicuous one. we should stoop to conquer, one tells us; while another, phrasing technically the same thought, says, we must march along the path of least resistance. that the second thought is only the first in another dress scarcely needs the proof which a few words will give. in order to determine in advance, which of many paths will offer the least resistance, we must know the nature of the body moving, and of the field through which the body moves; and also the changes which both the body and the field undergo during the passage; the problem being a somewhat different one at any moment from what it was at the preceding moment. still, the variations would be comparatively few were not the body, our own chaotic mass, and the field, which is, in this case, the american people, such changeable factors. as it is, the determination of the path of least resistance for our eight millions is a task which a college of scientists could not hope to accomplish. the problem becomes very easy however, if we make two assumptions: the first, that the colored people of this country are immeasurably meek, patient and long-suffering; and the second, that the white people are determined, right or wrong, to rule and have. these premises being granted, it _seems_ at least to follow, that the path of least resistance for the colored people is one of submission. but there is a difficulty, which at once confronts us: the unvarying meekness of the negro is denied by the very circumstance which brought out this solution,--the race conflicts. this unquestionable fact, that "race riots" do crop out in all parts of the south; and the equally incontrovertible fact that men of character and influence encourage a spirit of stubborn clinging to rights deemed inalienable, must be held to justify us in raising the question: which path _is_ the negro pursuing, that of submission, or that of resistance. it avails us nothing to insist that the former is the way of life, the latter, of extinction; the way of least resistance is, by no means, always, the way of life. the drunkard follows the path of least resistance, when he lifts the cup for the twelfth time to his lips; the moth follows the path of least resistance when it flies into the candle flame. the path of least resistance is the path, which, whether chosen by ourselves or forced upon us; whether it lead to life, or to death; we have followed and are about to follow. we come back then to the real thought, which is so clouded by that technical expression. the cry goes up: a black man cannot stand up in the south! let him kneel down then, is the answer. it is our duty to deal with this thought in its nakedness, and each of us answer for himself, this question: shall i kneel down? the issue brings our moral courage to the supreme test. the moral coward is he who sacrifices what he believes to be the higher from fear, who sacrifices his inner self to save his skin. if we hold our political rights dear above all else, if we think our manhood involved, let us be ready to give up wealth, comfort, and even life itself in their defense; let us, if attacked at this last point defend our privileges, and, if defeated turn our faces to the wall and die. but at such a crisis in our lives let us make no avoidable mistake; let us not say that our self-respect is in peril, when we mean our pride. to strike back, even in self-defence, is to turn our backs to the path which christ pointed out to us. to fight against almost insuperable odds, as we must, can be justified only by a cause which we cannot without degradation surrender, and can in no other way maintain. if we give up our political rights for love of peace, and because our gentler nature does not goad us on to return blow for blow, we forfeit none of our self-respect; but if we give up this privilege for love of christ, that his law of love may become the law of the nations of the earth, we have his promise of a glorious reward. but, after all, why should we consider which path we should follow, that of resistance, or that of submission, before we know where we are going? what is that survival, which we must fight for; what is this conquest, which gilds ignoble stooping? in north germany, where the climate is too severe for grain or grass to flourish, there was nursed a race, which hunted in the forests, and fished along the rocky coasts. in the fifth century, these men learned that there were more beautiful parts of the earth. in less than fifteen hundred years they have swept the celts from england, the indians from north america, the maoris from australia. will they continue their devastating progress over the earth, never resting until they have extinguished every other race? it may be so, but long before they have dispersed the other inhabitants of the globe, they must themselves have become scattered, divided, opposed. already, the english language is unintelligible in germany, though englishman and german are offshoots from the same stock, the german of the north can hardly understand the german of the south; dutch and english vessels have fought desperately at sea, in the past, and to-day, dutch and english are face to face in south africa; england and america have fought two wars; the northern and southern states of this country have fought one. as far back as we can go the same condition reveals itself; greece humiliates her sister persia, and falls before her more powerful sister, rome: the barbarians who sack rome in the fifth century and the romans themselves are of the same aryan stock: so are the english and russians, who seem about to grapple in a deadly struggle to-day. to assign a limit to this process of selection seems as impossible in the future, as in the past. yet it may well be doubted whether, amidst the host of the fallen, there were not many who were worthier than those who have survived. forty years ago, hallam, after reviewing the middle ages, was forced to say: "we cannot from any past experience, indulge the pleasing vision of a constant and parallel relation between the moral and intellectual energies, the virtues and civilization of mankind." and to-day, it is an almost accepted view, that the least difference between the savage and the civilized man is the difference in morality. it follows that morality has played no conspicuous part in the process of selection; that the extermination of others does little or nothing to improve the character of those who survived; and finally, since japan has put on european civilization as easily as a japanese can put on a suit of english clothes, that civilization is a varnish, spread over the material beneath. that this is the real belief of nearly every one of us, and has always been so, our judgment of the conduct of individuals proves. do we go about the streets giving prizes to octogenarians, or put down to wickedness the early death of a child? why then, should we otherwise regard long life in a whole people? do we applaud the superior strength or cunning of cain, or pretend that the discovery of gun-powder strengthened the arm of the _good_? no, neither loyalty, nor victory is the true test;--it is by their fruits that god will know them. let us, then, throw away this narrow, self-justifying doctrine of the survival of the fittest, and follow instead the noble counsel of milton:-- nor love thy life, nor hate, but what thou liv'st, live well. how long or short permit to heaven. let us find our model less in the conquering saxon and more in the dying saviour. christ died that we may live; and for the same purpose all created life has passed away. let us so live that when the last man goes from the earth, he will, no matter what his race or color, owe a part of the good there is in him, of the hope there is for him, to our influence. our life cannot be too brief for this influence to be exerted; and when god shall look over his flocks to praise the worthy, it is the witness of his son that his first loving welcome will be for the least and lowliest. but we have so little faith to-day, that i hardly doubt that there is chiming in the ears of many in this audience the refrain:--"this is all sentiment and doesn't help us to deal with hard facts." we ought, however, to hesitate, i think, before consigning this view to the babies' limbs. it may be after all that the sermon on the mount was not pure eccentricity, nor christ a don quixote. of the two counsels, 'get religion,' and 'get money,' there is yet something to be said in support of the former. carlyle fairly exculpates the nobility of scotland for their cold treatment of the poet, burns. "had they not," he asks, "their game to preserve; their borough interests to strengthen, dinners to eat and give?... let us pity and forgive them. the game they preserved and shot, the dinners they ate and gave, the borough interests they strengthened, the little babylons they severally builded by the glory of their might are all melted, or melting back into the primeval chaos, as man's merely selfish endeavors are bound to do." and after all, who are the poor? let history answer! is thrift taxed, which seems able to bear, or prodigality, which spares nothing? do we tax clear-headed temperance, or the wretched drunkard, whose starving wife and babes, by reason of the penny of internal revenue, lose one more crust of bread? upon whose shoulders falls the lash of scorn and punishment? upon those of the able man, who never tries to do his best, or upon the ill-born, ill-bred creature's only, whose best is so little above society's arbitrary passing mark, that to slip at all is to fall below it? i have often thought that in the words, "the poor always ye have with you," is contained, far from a curse, the greatest pledge of the world's salvation; for except that hunger, cold, sorrow and disease walk among us, the bond of sympathy which binds us to our fellow-man slackens, and the heart grows dead and cold. one night during the long period of hardship which the missionaries experienced in the conversion of england, a snow-storm drove cuthbert's boat on the coast of fife. "the snow closes the road along the shore, mourned his comrades, the storm bars our way over sea." "there is still the pathway of heaven that lies open," said cuthbert. it is even so with us. can we regret it? surely the problem is greatly simplified. while our minds are fixed upon survival, no path is clear, and we weary ourselves walking along roads which either lead nowhere at all, or bring us back to our starting point. but, with only right living in view, there is no mistaking the way; for there has always been a straight road ahead of us, which we could follow if we would. it is hard to keep plodding along the narrow path, when fields of wealth and power stretch away on either side, but, happily for us, these are about all fenced in, even the great sahara desert is fenced in. we cannot be tyrants if we would, nor can we despoil our fellows for they are as poor as we. our road is made smooth before us. god has not led us into temptation. we ought then to come nearer than other peoples to a christian life, to that better community, where one half of the world is not happy while the other half is miserable. of the little guidance which is needed, a part we may get from others, a part from ourselves. from the english, _before_ their entrance upon their progressive stage, we may learn the importance of two bonds, that of the family, and that of the neighborhood. national, state, even municipal organization is denied us. the village is the highest unit of population in which we may hope to develop our political instincts. the village gave birth to literature, manners and customs; as indeed it did to all institutions, political and social; for, let us not forget, that for centuries, the western european peoples, so powerful to-day, had, except in time of war, no other life than that of villagers. deeper yet in our nature the family has its source. to it we owe our earliest expressions of chivalry, care and protection; of obedience, loyalty, devotion, faith. the basis upon which the historic monogamous family rests is reverence for parents and respect for women: the basis upon which the village community rests is the common ownership of land;--and it is in just those great countries of europe, where common ownership of land longest prevailed, namely, in russia and germany, that great cities are fewest and the inequality of wealth, least. in such village communities we would be strong enough to resist single handed aggression, yet too weak to warrant persecution; rich enough to escape the degradation of unending toil, though not rich enough to arouse in our oppressors the spirit of avarice. he who seeks to maintain himself in his social privileges and political rights must have in reserve abundant means of subsistence, and beyond this, rugged manhood. if he is going to defend himself in the possession of anything which another covets, he must be prepared to fight down the whole decline from civilization to savagery. not only would the village community furnish us with centres of resistance to oppression, but what is of greater importance, with custom, and tradition, that understanding among men and between generations which is stronger than law. it is the peculiar weakness of our efforts at organization, that they proceed from the minds and wills of a few individuals, and not from any popular demand, and until our many society constitutions, in part at least, codify existing customs, it is like making ropes of sands to expect our organizations to endure, or our articles to bind. in the cities, where so many of us now live, the village community is no longer available, and the replacing of it is one of the serious tasks before us. men who will help to solve this and other like problems are desperately needed. without armies and without government as we are, leaders, whether statesmen diplomats, politicians or orators, we can well depense with; without national life of any sort, national organizations to control our political, social, religious, literary or scientific affairs may easily be spared. but quiet, earnest, trained workers, who will help to improve our family life, and bring into communion even small groups of families, are destined to be the pioneers of our civilization. to confer any lasting benefit upon our people, however, patient deliberation and foresight are needed. i appeal to our unselfish men and women no longer to limit their discussions to the events which this month or year brings forth. the present is always a bad time for consideration. what hunter can _aim_ his gun at a bird which rises from beneath his feet? will he not rather fire at a bird which is coming or going? we are gathered here tonight as amateur historians and prophets, to review the past and lay plans for the future. but let me quickly relieve myself of the charge of encouraging rash projects or empty theories. i am proposing no vast schemes; i believe it useless to do so. we move through life, with our backs toward, to the engine, and see all that we see after it has passed. the reason, the imagination, with their creative powers, picture for themselves the world that lies before, but so swift and so unremitting is our progress, that the new revelations constantly pouring in alter the premises before a conclusion can be reached. only the most gifted geniuses can draw in the vaguest outline a picture of the future which the flight of time will prove to be true. for the most part, our spiders' webs of theory are remorselessly cut down by the scythe of time. it is good to investigate sociological problems, and devise means for guiding our course safely through perils, but in our moments of pride, we would do wisely to reflect, that it is as though we were playing at chess with god as our adversary. all efforts to improve our state are bountiful, which are made after prayer, but other plans than those conceived in a spirit of humility and obedience to god's law are, when we are mindful of his jealousy, at once foolish and terrible. charles c. cook. footnote: [ ] a study of the conditions attending upon the entrance of england and of japan upon their progressive stage, as a part of the problem of determining the point of equilibrium between the white and colored people of america. transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. the following misprints have been corrected: "hollaud" corrected to "holland" (page ) "unforlunate" corrected to "unfortunate" (page ) the american negro academy occasional papers, no. . the conservation of races. by w. e. burghardt du bois. washington, d. c. published by the academy. . baptist magazine print, washington, d. c. orders may be sent to john h. wills. the boston cheap book store, washington, d. c. announcement the american negro academy believes that upon those of the race who have had the advantages of higher education and culture, rests the responsibility of taking concerted steps for the employment of these agencies to uplift the race to higher planes of thought and action. two great obstacles to this consummation are apparent: (_a_) the lack of unity, want of harmony, absence of a self-sacrificing spirit, and no well-defined line of policy seeking definite aims; and (_b_) the persistent, relentless, at times covert opposition employed to thwart the negro at every step of his upward struggles to establish the justness of his claim to the highest physical, intellectual and moral possibilities. the academy will, therefore, from time to time, publish such papers as in their judgment aid, by their broad and scholarly treatment of the topics discussed the dissemination of principles tending to the growth and development of the negro along right lines, and the vindication of that race against vicious assaults. the conservation of races. the american negro has always felt an intense personal interest in discussions as to the origins and destinies of races: primarily because back of most discussions of race with which he is familiar, have lurked certain assumptions as to his natural abilities, as to his political, intellectual and moral status, which he felt were wrong. he has, consequently, been led to deprecate and minimize race distinctions, to believe intensely that out of one blood god created all nations, and to speak of human brotherhood as though it were the possibility of an already dawning to-morrow. nevertheless, in our calmer moments we must acknowledge that human beings are divided into races; that in this country the two most extreme types of the world's races have met, and the resulting problem as to the future relations of these types is not only of intense and living interest to us, but forms an epoch in the history of mankind. it is necessary, therefore, in planning our movements, in guiding our future development, that at times we rise above the pressing, but smaller questions of separate schools and cars, wage-discrimination and lynch law, to survey the whole question of race in human philosophy and to lay, on a basis of broad knowledge and careful insight, those large lines of policy and higher ideals which may form our guiding lines and boundaries in the practical difficulties of every day. for it is certain that all human striving must recognize the hard limits of natural law, and that any striving, no matter how intense and earnest, which is against the constitution of the world, is vain. the question, then, which we must seriously consider is this: what is the real meaning of race; what has, in the past, been the law of race development, and what lessons has the past history of race development to teach the rising negro people? when we thus come to inquire into the essential difference of races we find it hard to come at once to any definite conclusion. many criteria of race differences have in the past been proposed, as color, hair, cranial measurements and language. and manifestly, in each of these respects, human beings differ widely. they vary in color, for instance, from the marble-like pallor of the scandinavian to the rich, dark brown of the zulu, passing by the creamy slav, the yellow chinese, the light brown sicilian and the brown egyptian. men vary, too, in the texture of hair from the obstinately straight hair of the chinese to the obstinately tufted and frizzled hair of the bushman. in measurement of heads, again, men vary; from the broad-headed tartar to the medium-headed european and the narrow-headed hottentot; or, again in language, from the highly-inflected roman tongue to the monosyllabic chinese. all these physical characteristics are patent enough, and if they agreed with each other it would be very easy to classify mankind. unfortunately for scientists, however, these criteria of race are most exasperatingly intermingled. color does not agree with texture of hair, for many of the dark races have straight hair; nor does color agree with the breadth of the head, for the yellow tartar has a broader head than the german; nor, again, has the science of language as yet succeeded in clearing up the relative authority of these various and contradictory criteria. the final word of science, so far, is that we have at least two, perhaps three, great families of human beings--the whites and negroes, possibly the yellow race. that other races have arisen from the intermingling of the blood of these two. this broad division of the world's races which men like huxley and raetzel have introduced as more nearly true than the old five-race scheme of blumenbach, is nothing more than an acknowledgment that, so far as purely physical characteristics are concerned, the differences between men do not explain all the differences of their history. it declares, as darwin himself said, that great as is the physical unlikeness of the various races of men their likenesses are greater, and upon this rests the whole scientific doctrine of human brotherhood. although the wonderful developments of human history teach that the grosser physical differences of color, hair and bone go but a short way toward explaining the different roles which groups of men have played in human progress, yet there are differences--subtle, delicate and elusive, though they may be--which have silently but definitely separated men into groups. while these subtle forces have generally followed the natural cleavage of common blood, descent and physical peculiarities, they have at other times swept across and ignored these. at all times, however, they have divided human beings into races, which, while they perhaps transcend scientific definition, nevertheless, are clearly defined to the eye of the historian and sociologist. if this be true, then the history of the world is the history, not of individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he who ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores and overrides the central thought of all history. what, then, is a race? it is a vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life. turning to real history, there can be no doubt, first, as to the widespread, nay, universal, prevalence of the race idea, the race spirit, the race ideal, and as to its efficiency as the vastest and most ingenious invention for human progress. we, who have been reared and trained under the individualistic philosophy of the declaration of independence and the laisser-faire philosophy of adam smith, are loath to see and loath to acknowledge this patent fact of human history. we see the pharaohs, caesars, toussaints and napoleons of history and forget the vast races of which they were but epitomized expressions. we are apt to think in our american impatience, that while it may have been true in the past that closed race groups made history, that here in conglomerate america _nous avons changer tout cela_--we have changed all that, and have no need of this ancient instrument of progress. this assumption of which the negro people are especially fond, can not be established by a careful consideration of history. we find upon the world's stage today eight distinctly differentiated races, in the sense in which history tells us the word must be used. they are, the slavs of eastern europe, the teutons of middle europe, the english of great britain and america, the romance nations of southern and western europe, the negroes of africa and america, the semitic people of western asia and northern africa, the hindoos of central asia and the mongolians of eastern asia. there are, of course, other minor race groups, as the american indians, the esquimaux and the south sea islanders; these larger races, too, are far from homogeneous; the slav includes the czech, the magyar, the pole and the russian; the teuton includes the german, the scandinavian and the dutch; the english include the scotch, the irish and the conglomerate american. under romance nations the widely-differing frenchman, italian, sicilian and spaniard are comprehended. the term negro is, perhaps, the most indefinite of all, combining the mulattoes and zamboes of america and the egyptians, bantus and bushmen of africa. among the hindoos are traces of widely differing nations, while the great chinese, tartar, corean and japanese families fall under the one designation--mongolian. the question now is: what is the real distinction between these nations? is it the physical differences of blood, color and cranial measurements? certainly we must all acknowledge that physical differences play a great part, and that, with wide exceptions and qualifications, these eight great races of to-day follow the cleavage of physical race distinctions; the english and teuton represent the white variety of mankind; the mongolian, the yellow; the negroes, the black. between these are many crosses and mixtures, where mongolian and teuton have blended into the slav, and other mixtures have produced the romance nations and the semites. but while race differences have followed mainly physical race lines, yet no mere physical distinctions would really define or explain the deeper differences--the cohesiveness and continuity of these groups. the deeper differences are spiritual, psychical, differences--undoubtedly based on the physical, but infinitely transcending them. the forces that bind together the teuton nations are, then, first, their race identity and common blood; secondly, and more important, a common history, common laws and religion, similar habits of thought and a conscious striving together for certain ideals of life. the whole process which has brought about these race differentiations has been a growth, and the great characteristic of this growth has been the differentiation of spiritual and mental differences between great races of mankind and the integration of physical differences. the age of nomadic tribes of closely related individuals represents the maximum of physical differences. they were practically vast families, and there were as many groups as families. as the families came together to form cities the physical differences lessened, purity of blood was replaced by the requirement of domicile, and all who lived within the city bounds became gradually to be regarded as members of the group; _i. e._, there was a slight and slow breaking down of physical barriers. this, however, was accompanied by an increase of the spiritual and social differences between cities. this city became husbandmen, this, merchants, another warriors, and so on. the _ideals of life_ for which the different cities struggled were different. when at last cities began to coalesce into nations there was another breaking down of barriers which separated groups of men. the larger and broader differences of color, hair and physical proportions were not by any means ignored, but myriads of minor differences disappeared, and the sociological and historical races of men began to approximate the present division of races as indicated by physical researches. at the same time the spiritual and physical differences of race groups which constituted the nations became deep and decisive. the english nation stood for constitutional liberty and commercial freedom; the german nation for science and philosophy; the romance nations stood for literature and art, and the other race groups are striving, each in its own way, to develope for civilization its particular message, its particular ideal, which shall help to guide the world nearer and nearer that perfection of human life for which we all long, that "one far off divine event." this has been the function of race differences up to the present time. what shall be its function in the future? manifestly some of the great races of today--particularly the negro race--have not as yet given to civilization the full spiritual message which they are capable of giving. i will not say that the negro race has as yet given no message to the world, for it is still a mooted question among scientists as to just how far egyptian civilization was negro in its origin; if it was not wholly negro, it was certainly very closely allied. be that as it may, however the fact still remains that the full, complete negro message of the whole negro race has not as yet been given to the world: that the messages and ideal of the yellow race have not been completed, and that the striving of the mighty slavs has but begun. the question is, then: how shall this message be delivered; how shall these various ideals be realized? the answer is plain: by the development of these race groups, not as individuals, but as races. for the development of japanese genius, japanese literature and art, japanese spirit, only japanese, bound and welded together, japanese inspired by one vast ideal, can work out in its fullness the wonderful message which japan has for the nations of the earth. for the development of negro genius, of negro literature and art, of negro spirit, only negroes bound and welded together, negroes inspired by one vast ideal, can work out in its fullness the great message we have for humanity. we cannot reverse history; we are subject to the same natural laws as other races, and if the negro is ever to be a factor in the world's history--if among the gaily-colored banners that deck the broad ramparts of civilization is to hang one uncompromising black, then it must be placed there by black hands, fashioned by black heads and hallowed by the travail of , , black hearts beating in one glad song of jubilee. for this reason, the advance guard of the negro people--the , , people of negro blood in the united states of america--must soon come to realize that if they are to take their just place in the van of pan-negroism, then their destiny is _not_ absorption by the white americans. that if in america it is to be proven for the first time in the modern world that not only negroes are capable of evolving individual men like toussaint, the saviour, but are a nation stored with wonderful possibilities of culture, then their destiny is not a servile imitation of anglo-saxon culture, but a stalwart originality which shall unswervingly follow negro ideals. it may, however, be objected here that the situation of our race in america renders this attitude impossible; that our sole hope of salvation lies in our being able to lose our race identity in the commingled blood of the nation; and that any other course would merely increase the friction of races which we call race prejudice, and against which we have so long and so earnestly fought. here, then, is the dilemma, and it is a puzzling one, i admit. no negro who has given earnest thought to the situation of his people in america has failed, at some time in life, to find himself at these cross-roads; has failed to ask himself at some time: what, after all, am i? am i an american or am i a negro? can i be both? or is it my duty to cease to be a negro as soon as possible and be an american? if i strive as a negro, am i not perpetuating the very cleft that threatens and separates black and white america? is not my only possible practical aim the subduction of all that is negro in me to the american? does my black blood place upon me any more obligation to assert my nationality than german, or irish or italian blood would? it is such incessant self-questioning and the hesitation that arises from it, that is making the present period a time of vacillation and contradiction for the american negro; combined race action is stifled, race responsibility is shirked, race enterprises languish, and the best blood, the best talent, the best energy of the negro people cannot be marshalled to do the bidding of the race. they stand back to make room for every rascal and demagogue who chooses to cloak his selfish deviltry under the veil of race pride. is this right? is it rational? is it good policy? have we in america a distinct mission as a race--a distinct sphere of action and an opportunity for race development, or is self-obliteration the highest end to which negro blood dare aspire? if we carefully consider what race prejudice really is, we find it, historically, to be nothing but the friction between different groups of people; it is the difference in aim, in feeling, in ideals of two different races; if, now, this difference exists touching territory, laws, language, or even religion, it is manifest that these people cannot live in the same territory without fatal collision; but if, on the other hand, there is substantial agreement in laws, language and religion; if there is a satisfactory adjustment of economic life, then there is no reason why, in the same country and on the same street, two or three great national ideals might not thrive and develop, that men of different races might not strive together for their race ideals as well, perhaps even better, than in isolation. here, it seems to me, is the reading of the riddle that puzzles so many of us. we are americans, not only by birth and by citizenship, but by our political ideals, our language, our religion. farther than that, our americanism does not go. at that point, we are negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its african fatherland. we are the first fruits of this new nation, the harbinger of that black to-morrow which is yet destined to soften the whiteness of the teutonic to-day. we are that people whose subtle sense of song has given america its only american music, its only american fairy tales, its only touch of pathos and humor amid its mad money-getting plutocracy. as such, it is our duty to conserve our physical powers, our intellectual endowments, our spiritual ideals; as a race we must strive by race organization, by race solidarity, by race unity to the realization of that broader humanity which freely recognizes differences in men, but sternly deprecates inequality in their opportunities of development. for the accomplishment of these ends we need race organizations: negro colleges, negro newspapers, negro business organizations, a negro school of literature and art, and an intellectual clearing house, for all these products of the negro mind, which we may call a negro academy. not only is all this necessary for positive advance, it is absolutely imperative for negative defense. let us not deceive ourselves at our situation in this country. weighted with a heritage of moral iniquity from our past history, hard pressed in the economic world by foreign immigrants and native prejudice, hated here, despised there and pitied everywhere; our one haven of refuge is ourselves, and but one means of advance, our own belief in our great destiny, our own implicit trust in our ability and worth. there is no power under god's high heaven that can stop the advance of eight thousand thousand honest, earnest, inspired and united people. but--and here is the rub--they _must_ be honest, fearlessly criticising their own faults, zealously correcting them; they must be _earnest_. no people that laughs at itself, and ridicules itself, and wishes to god it was anything but itself ever wrote its name in history; it _must_ be inspired with the divine faith of our black mothers, that out of the blood and dust of battle will march a victorious host, a mighty nation, a peculiar people, to speak to the nations of earth a divine truth that shall make them free. and such a people must be united; not merely united for the organized theft of political spoils, not united to disgrace religion with whoremongers and ward-heelers; not united merely to protest and pass resolutions, but united to stop the ravages of consumption among the negro people, united to keep black boys from loafing, gambling and crime; united to guard the purity of black women and to reduce that vast army of black prostitutes that is today marching to hell; and united in serious organizations, to determine by careful conference and thoughtful interchange of opinion the broad lines of policy and action for the american negro. this is the reason for being which the american negro academy has. it aims at once to be the epitome and expression of the intellect of the black-blooded people of america, the exponent of the race ideals of one of the world's great races. as such, the academy must, if successful, be (_a_). representative in character. (_b_). impartial in conduct. (_c_). firm in leadership. it must be representative in character; not in that it represents all interests or all factions, but in that it seeks to comprise something of the _best_ thought, the most unselfish striving and the highest ideals. there are scattered in forgotten nooks and corners throughout the land, negroes of some considerable training, of high minds, and high motives, who are unknown to their fellows, who exert far too little influence. these the negro academy should strive to bring into touch with each other and to give them a common mouthpiece. the academy should be impartial in conduct; while it aims to exalt the people it should aim to do so by truth--not by lies, by honesty--not by flattery. it should continually impress the fact upon the negro people that they must not expect to have things done for them--they must do for themselves; that they have on their hands a vast work of self-reformation to do, and that a little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving would do us more credit and benefit than a thousand force or civil rights bills. finally, the american negro academy must point out a practical path of advance to the negro people; there lie before every negro today hundreds of questions of policy and right which must be settled and which each one settles now, not in accordance with any rule, but by impulse or individual preference; for instance: what should be the attitude of negroes toward the educational qualification for voters? what should be our attitude toward separate schools? how should we meet discriminations on railways and in hotels? such questions need not so much specific answers for each part as a general expression of policy, and nobody should be better fitted to announce such a policy than a representative honest negro academy. all this, however, must come in time after careful organization and long conference. the immediate work before us should be practical and have direct bearing upon the situation of the negro. the historical work of collecting the laws of the united states and of the various states of the union with regard to the negro is a work of such magnitude and importance that no body but one like this could think of undertaking it. if we could accomplish that one task we would justify our existence. in the field of sociology an appalling work lies before us. first, we must unflinchingly and bravely face the truth, not with apologies, but with solemn earnestness. the negro academy ought to sound a note of warning that would echo in every black cabin in the land: _unless we conquer our present vices they will conquer us_; we are diseased, we are developing criminal tendencies, and an alarmingly large percentage of our men and women are sexually impure. the negro academy should stand and proclaim this over the housetops, crying with garrison: _i will not equivocate, i will not retreat a single inch, and i will be heard_. the academy should seek to gather about it the talented, unselfish men, the pure and noble-minded women, to fight an army of devils that disgraces our manhood and our womanhood. there does not stand today upon god's earth a race more capable in muscle, in intellect, in morals, than the american negro, if he will bend his energies in the right direction; if he will burst his birth's invidious bar and grasp the skirts of happy chance, and breast the blows of circumstance, and grapple with his evil star. in science and morals, i have indicated two fields of work for the academy. finally, in practical policy, i wish to suggest the following _academy creed_: . we believe that the negro people, as a race, have a contribution to make to civilization and humanity, which no other race can make. . we believe it the duty of the americans of negro descent, as a body, to maintain their race identity until this mission of the negro people is accomplished, and the ideal of human brotherhood has become a practical possibility. . we believe that, unless modern civilization is a failure, it is entirely feasible and practicable for two races in such essential political, economic and religious harmony as the white and colored people of america, to develop side by side in peace and mutual happiness, the peculiar contribution which each has to make to the culture of their common country. . as a means to this end we advocate, not such social equality between these races as would disregard human likes and dislikes, but such a social equilibrium as would, throughout all the complicated relations of life, give due and just consideration to culture, ability, and moral worth, whether they be found under white or black skins. . we believe that the first and greatest step toward the settlement of the present friction between the races--commonly called the negro problem--lies in the correction of the immorality, crime and laziness among the negroes themselves, which still remains as a heritage from slavery. we believe that only earnest and long continued efforts on our own part can cure these social ills. . we believe that the second great step toward a better adjustment of the relations between the races, should be a more impartial selection of ability in the economic and intellectual world, and a greater respect for personal liberty and worth, regardless of race. we believe that only earnest efforts on the part of the white people of this country will bring much needed reform in these matters. . on the basis of the foregoing declaration, and firmly believing in our high destiny, we, as american negroes, are resolved to strive in every honorable way for the realization of the best and highest aims, for the development of strong manhood and pure womanhood, and for the rearing of a race ideal in america and africa, to the glory of god and the uplifting of the negro people. w. e. burghardt du bois. transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. the following misprints have been corrected: "menta" corrected to "mental" (page ) "o;ganization" corrected to "organization" (page ) other than the corrections listed above, printer's spelling and hyphenation usage have been retained. huckleberry finn by mark twain part . chapter xxxvi. as soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile of fox-fire, and went to work. we cleared everything out of the way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. tom said we was right behind jim's bed now, and we'd dig in under it, and when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there, because jim's counter-pin hung down most to the ground, and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole. so we dug and dug with the case-knives till most midnight; and then we was dog-tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything hardly. at last i says: "this ain't no thirty-seven year job; this is a thirty-eight year job, tom sawyer." he never said nothing. but he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped digging, and then for a good little while i knowed that he was thinking. then he says: "it ain't no use, huck, it ain't a-going to work. if we was prisoners it would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no hurry; and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered, and we could keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right, and the way it ought to be done. but we can't fool along; we got to rush; we ain't got no time to spare. if we was to put in another night this way we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well--couldn't touch a case-knife with them sooner." "well, then, what we going to do, tom?" "i'll tell you. it ain't right, and it ain't moral, and i wouldn't like it to get out; but there ain't only just the one way: we got to dig him out with the picks, and let on it's case-knives." "now you're talking!" i says; "your head gets leveler and leveler all the time, tom sawyer," i says. "picks is the thing, moral or no moral; and as for me, i don't care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. when i start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a sunday-school book, i ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done. what i want is my nigger; or what i want is my watermelon; or what i want is my sunday-school book; and if a pick's the handiest thing, that's the thing i'm a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that sunday-school book out with; and i don't give a dead rat what the authorities thinks about it nuther." "well," he says, "there's excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like this; if it warn't so, i wouldn't approve of it, nor i wouldn't stand by and see the rules broke--because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better. it might answer for you to dig jim out with a pick, without any letting on, because you don't know no better; but it wouldn't for me, because i do know better. gimme a case-knife." he had his own by him, but i handed him mine. he flung it down, and says: "gimme a case-knife." i didn't know just what to do--but then i thought. i scratched around amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took it and went to work, and never said a word. he was always just that particular. full of principle. so then i got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and made the fur fly. we stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it. when i got up stairs i looked out at the window and see tom doing his level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn't come it, his hands was so sore. at last he says: "it ain't no use, it can't be done. what you reckon i better do? can't you think of no way?" "yes," i says, "but i reckon it ain't regular. come up the stairs, and let on it's a lightning-rod." so he done it. next day tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house, for to make some pens for jim out of, and six tallow candles; and i hung around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin plates. tom says it wasn't enough; but i said nobody wouldn't ever see the plates that jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dog-fennel and jimpson weeds under the window-hole--then we could tote them back and he could use them over again. so tom was satisfied. then he says: "now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to jim." "take them in through the hole," i says, "when we get it done." he only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. by and by he said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to decide on any of them yet. said we'd got to post jim first. that night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him. then we whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half the job was done. we crept in under jim's bed and into the cabin, and pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over jim awhile, and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle and gradual. he was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for having us hunt up a cold-chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away, and clearing out without losing any time. but tom he showed him how unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans, and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm; and not to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, sure. so jim he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old times awhile, and then tom asked a lot of questions, and when jim told him uncle silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and aunt sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of them was kind as they could be, tom says: "now i know how to fix it. we'll send you some things by them." i said, "don't do nothing of the kind; it's one of the most jackass ideas i ever struck;" but he never paid no attention to me; went right on. it was his way when he'd got his plans set. so he told jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and other large things by nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the lookout, and not be surprised, and not let nat see him open them; and we would put small things in uncle's coat-pockets and he must steal them out; and we would tie things to aunt's apron-strings or put them in her apron-pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and what they was for. and told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood, and all that. he told him everything. jim he couldn't see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just as tom said. jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed, with hands that looked like they'd been chawed. tom was in high spirits. he said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave jim to our children to get out; for he believed jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it. he said that in that way it could be strung out to as much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record. and he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it. in the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes, and tom put them and the pewter spoon in his pocket. then we went to the nigger cabins, and while i got nat's notice off, tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a corn-pone that was in jim's pan, and we went along with nat to see how it would work, and it just worked noble; when jim bit into it it most mashed all his teeth out; and there warn't ever anything could a worked better. tom said so himself. jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first. and whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in from under jim's bed; and they kept on piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn't hardly room in there to get your breath. by jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to door! the nigger nat he only just hollered "witches" once, and keeled over on to the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was dying. tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of jim's meat, and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door, and i knowed he'd fixed the other door too. then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again. he raised up, and blinked his eyes around, and says: "mars sid, you'll say i's a fool, but if i didn't b'lieve i see most a million dogs, er devils, er some'n, i wisht i may die right heah in dese tracks. i did, mos' sholy. mars sid, i felt um--i felt um, sah; dey was all over me. dad fetch it, i jis' wisht i could git my han's on one er dem witches jis' wunst--on'y jis' wunst--it's all i'd ast. but mos'ly i wisht dey'd lemme 'lone, i does." tom says: "well, i tell you what i think. what makes them come here just at this runaway nigger's breakfast-time? it's because they're hungry; that's the reason. you make them a witch pie; that's the thing for you to do." "but my lan', mars sid, how's i gwyne to make 'm a witch pie? i doan' know how to make it. i hain't ever hearn er sich a thing b'fo'." "well, then, i'll have to make it myself." "will you do it, honey?--will you? i'll wusshup de groun' und' yo' foot, i will!" "all right, i'll do it, seeing it's you, and you've been good to us and showed us the runaway nigger. but you got to be mighty careful. when we come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we've put in the pan, don't you let on you see it at all. and don't you look when jim unloads the pan--something might happen, i don't know what. and above all, don't you handle the witch-things." "hannel 'm, mars sid? what is you a-talkin' 'bout? i wouldn' lay de weight er my finger on um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n billion dollars, i wouldn't." chapter xxxvii. that was all fixed. so then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shingle-nails that tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in aunt sally's apron-pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t'other we stuck in the band of uncle silas's hat, which was on the bureau, because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and tom dropped the pewter spoon in uncle silas's coat-pocket, and aunt sally wasn't come yet, so we had to wait a little while. and when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn't hardly wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other, and says: "i've hunted high and i've hunted low, and it does beat all what has become of your other shirt." my heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a warwhoop, and tom he turned kinder blue around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and i would a sold out for half price if there was a bidder. but after that we was all right again--it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold. uncle silas he says: "it's most uncommon curious, i can't understand it. i know perfectly well i took it off, because--" "because you hain't got but one on. just listen at the man! i know you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory, too, because it was on the clo's-line yesterday--i see it there myself. but it's gone, that's the long and the short of it, and you'll just have to change to a red flann'l one till i can get time to make a new one. and it 'll be the third i've made in two years. it just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to do with 'm all is more'n i can make out. a body 'd think you would learn to take some sort of care of 'em at your time of life." "i know it, sally, and i do try all i can. but it oughtn't to be altogether my fault, because, you know, i don't see them nor have nothing to do with them except when they're on me; and i don't believe i've ever lost one of them off of me." "well, it ain't your fault if you haven't, silas; you'd a done it if you could, i reckon. and the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther. ther's a spoon gone; and that ain't all. there was ten, and now ther's only nine. the calf got the shirt, i reckon, but the calf never took the spoon, that's certain." "why, what else is gone, sally?" "ther's six candles gone--that's what. the rats could a got the candles, and i reckon they did; i wonder they don't walk off with the whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, silas--you'd never find it out; but you can't lay the spoon on the rats, and that i know." "well, sally, i'm in fault, and i acknowledge it; i've been remiss; but i won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes." "oh, i wouldn't hurry; next year 'll do. matilda angelina araminta phelps!" whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around any. just then the nigger woman steps on to the passage, and says: "missus, dey's a sheet gone." "a sheet gone! well, for the land's sake!" "i'll stop up them holes to-day," says uncle silas, looking sorrowful. "oh, do shet up!--s'pose the rats took the sheet? where's it gone, lize?" "clah to goodness i hain't no notion, miss' sally. she wuz on de clo'sline yistiddy, but she done gone: she ain' dah no mo' now." "i reckon the world is coming to an end. i never see the beat of it in all my born days. a shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can--" "missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a brass cannelstick miss'n." "cler out from here, you hussy, er i'll take a skillet to ye!" well, she was just a-biling. i begun to lay for a chance; i reckoned i would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. she kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last uncle silas, looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. she stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, i wished i was in jeruslem or somewheres. but not long, because she says: "it's just as i expected. so you had it in your pocket all the time; and like as not you've got the other things there, too. how'd it get there?" "i reely don't know, sally," he says, kind of apologizing, "or you know i would tell. i was a-studying over my text in acts seventeen before breakfast, and i reckon i put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put my testament in, and it must be so, because my testament ain't in; but i'll go and see; and if the testament is where i had it, i'll know i didn't put it in, and that will show that i laid the testament down and took up the spoon, and--" "oh, for the land's sake! give a body a rest! go 'long now, the whole kit and biling of ye; and don't come nigh me again till i've got back my peace of mind." i'd a heard her if she'd a said it to herself, let alone speaking it out; and i'd a got up and obeyed her if i'd a been dead. as we was passing through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out. tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says: "well, it ain't no use to send things by him no more, he ain't reliable." then he says: "but he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without him knowing it--stop up his rat-holes." there was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape. then we heard steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t'other, looking as absent-minded as year before last. he went a mooning around, first to one rat-hole and then another, till he'd been to them all. then he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle and thinking. then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying: "well, for the life of me i can't remember when i done it. i could show her now that i warn't to blame on account of the rats. but never mind --let it go. i reckon it wouldn't do no good." and so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left. he was a mighty nice old man. and always is. tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said we'd got to have it; so he took a think. when he had ciphered it out he told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the spoon-basket till we see aunt sally coming, and then tom went to counting the spoons and laying them out to one side, and i slid one of them up my sleeve, and tom says: "why, aunt sally, there ain't but nine spoons yet." she says: "go 'long to your play, and don't bother me. i know better, i counted 'm myself." "well, i've counted them twice, aunty, and i can't make but nine." she looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count--anybody would. "i declare to gracious ther' ain't but nine!" she says. "why, what in the world--plague take the things, i'll count 'm again." so i slipped back the one i had, and when she got done counting, she says: "hang the troublesome rubbage, ther's ten now!" and she looked huffy and bothered both. but tom says: "why, aunty, i don't think there's ten." "you numskull, didn't you see me count 'm?" "i know, but--" "well, i'll count 'm again." so i smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time. well, she was in a tearing way--just a-trembling all over, she was so mad. but she counted and counted till she got that addled she'd start to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes; and so, three times they come out right, and three times they come out wrong. then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley-west; and she said cle'r out and let her have some peace, and if we come bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she'd skin us. so we had the odd spoon, and dropped it in her apron-pocket whilst she was a-giving us our sailing orders, and jim got it all right, along with her shingle nail, before noon. we was very well satisfied with this business, and tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took, because he said now she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life; and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if she did; and said that after she'd about counted her head off for the next three days he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them any more. so we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of her closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets she had any more, and she didn't care, and warn't a-going to bullyrag the rest of her soul out about it, and wouldn't count them again not to save her life; she druther die first. so we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn't no consequence, it would blow over by and by. but that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie. we fixed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it done at last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we had to use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through, and we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke; because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we couldn't prop it up right, and she would always cave in. but of course we thought of the right way at last--which was to cook the ladder, too, in the pie. so then we laid in with jim the second night, and tore up the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together, and long before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could a hung a person with. we let on it took nine months to make it. and in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go into the pie. being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough for forty pies if we'd a wanted them, and plenty left over for soup, or sausage, or anything you choose. we could a had a whole dinner. but we didn't need it. all we needed was just enough for the pie, and so we throwed the rest away. we didn't cook none of the pies in the wash-pan--afraid the solder would melt; but uncle silas he had a noble brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from england with william the conqueror in the mayflower or one of them early ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first pies, because we didn't know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. we took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and loaded her up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a satisfaction to look at. but the person that et it would want to fetch a couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope ladder wouldn't cramp him down to business i don't know nothing what i'm talking about, and lay him in enough stomach-ache to last him till next time, too. nat didn't look when we put the witch pie in jim's pan; and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so jim got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted into the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick, and scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the window-hole. chapter xxxviii. making them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. that's the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. but he had to have it; tom said he'd got to; there warn't no case of a state prisoner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms. "look at lady jane grey," he says; "look at gilford dudley; look at old northumberland! why, huck, s'pose it is considerble trouble?--what you going to do?--how you going to get around it? jim's got to do his inscription and coat of arms. they all do." jim says: "why, mars tom, i hain't got no coat o' arm; i hain't got nuffn but dish yer ole shirt, en you knows i got to keep de journal on dat." "oh, you don't understand, jim; a coat of arms is very different." "well," i says, "jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat of arms, because he hain't." "i reckon i knowed that," tom says, "but you bet he'll have one before he goes out of this--because he's going out right, and there ain't going to be no flaws in his record." so whilst me and jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, jim a-making his'n out of the brass and i making mine out of the spoon, tom set to work to think out the coat of arms. by and by he said he'd struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there was one which he reckoned he'd decide on. he says: "on the scutcheon we'll have a bend or in the dexter base, a saltire murrey in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron vert in a chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field azure, with the nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger, sable, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, maggiore fretta, minore otto. got it out of a book--means the more haste the less speed." "geewhillikins," i says, "but what does the rest of it mean?" "we ain't got no time to bother over that," he says; "we got to dig in like all git-out." "well, anyway," i says, "what's some of it? what's a fess?" "a fess--a fess is--you don't need to know what a fess is. i'll show him how to make it when he gets to it." "shucks, tom," i says, "i think you might tell a person. what's a bar sinister?" "oh, i don't know. but he's got to have it. all the nobility does." that was just his way. if it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you, he wouldn't do it. you might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make no difference. he'd got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a mournful inscription--said jim got to have one, like they all done. he made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so: . here a captive heart busted. . here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world and friends, fretted his sorrowful life. . here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven years of solitary captivity. . here, homeless and friendless, after thirty-seven years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of louis xiv. tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down. when he got done he couldn't no way make up his mind which one for jim to scrabble on to the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed he would let him scrabble them all on. jim said it would take him a year to scrabble such a lot of truck on to the logs with a nail, and he didn't know how to make letters, besides; but tom said he would block them out for him, and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the lines. then pretty soon he says: "come to think, the logs ain't a-going to do; they don't have log walls in a dungeon: we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock. we'll fetch a rock." jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him such a pison long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn't ever get out. but tom said he would let me help him do it. then he took a look to see how me and jim was getting along with the pens. it was most pesky tedious hard work and slow, and didn't give my hands no show to get well of the sores, and we didn't seem to make no headway, hardly; so tom says: "i know how to fix it. we got to have a rock for the coat of arms and mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock. there's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it, and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it, too." it warn't no slouch of an idea; and it warn't no slouch of a grindstone nuther; but we allowed we'd tackle it. it warn't quite midnight yet, so we cleared out for the mill, leaving jim at work. we smouched the grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most nation tough job. sometimes, do what we could, we couldn't keep her from falling over, and she come mighty near mashing us every time. tom said she was going to get one of us, sure, before we got through. we got her half way; and then we was plumb played out, and most drownded with sweat. we see it warn't no use; we got to go and fetch jim so he raised up his bed and slid the chain off of the bed-leg, and wrapt it round and round his neck, and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and jim and me laid into that grindstone and walked her along like nothing; and tom superintended. he could out-superintend any boy i ever see. he knowed how to do everything. our hole was pretty big, but it warn't big enough to get the grindstone through; but jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough. then tom marked out them things on it with the nail, and set jim to work on them, with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under his straw tick and sleep on it. then we helped him fix his chain back on the bed-leg, and was ready for bed ourselves. but tom thought of something, and says: "you got any spiders in here, jim?" "no, sah, thanks to goodness i hain't, mars tom." "all right, we'll get you some." "but bless you, honey, i doan' want none. i's afeard un um. i jis' 's soon have rattlesnakes aroun'." tom thought a minute or two, and says: "it's a good idea. and i reckon it's been done. it must a been done; it stands to reason. yes, it's a prime good idea. where could you keep it?" "keep what, mars tom?" "why, a rattlesnake." "de goodness gracious alive, mars tom! why, if dey was a rattlesnake to come in heah i'd take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, i would, wid my head." why, jim, you wouldn't be afraid of it after a little. you could tame it." "tame it!" "yes--easy enough. every animal is grateful for kindness and petting, and they wouldn't think of hurting a person that pets them. any book will tell you that. you try--that's all i ask; just try for two or three days. why, you can get him so in a little while that he'll love you; and sleep with you; and won't stay away from you a minute; and will let you wrap him round your neck and put his head in your mouth." "please, mars tom--doan' talk so! i can't stan' it! he'd let me shove his head in my mouf--fer a favor, hain't it? i lay he'd wait a pow'ful long time 'fo' i ast him. en mo' en dat, i doan' want him to sleep wid me." "jim, don't act so foolish. a prisoner's got to have some kind of a dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain't ever been tried, why, there's more glory to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other way you could ever think of to save your life." "why, mars tom, i doan' want no sich glory. snake take 'n bite jim's chin off, den whah is de glory? no, sah, i doan' want no sich doin's." "blame it, can't you try? i only want you to try--you needn't keep it up if it don't work." "but de trouble all done ef de snake bite me while i's a tryin' him. mars tom, i's willin' to tackle mos' anything 'at ain't onreasonable, but ef you en huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, i's gwyne to leave, dat's shore." "well, then, let it go, let it go, if you're so bull-headed about it. we can get you some garter-snakes, and you can tie some buttons on their tails, and let on they're rattlesnakes, and i reckon that 'll have to do." "i k'n stan' dem, mars tom, but blame' 'f i couldn' get along widout um, i tell you dat. i never knowed b'fo' 't was so much bother and trouble to be a prisoner." "well, it always is when it's done right. you got any rats around here?" "no, sah, i hain't seed none." "well, we'll get you some rats." "why, mars tom, i doan' want no rats. dey's de dadblamedest creturs to 'sturb a body, en rustle roun' over 'im, en bite his feet, when he's tryin' to sleep, i ever see. no, sah, gimme g'yarter-snakes, 'f i's got to have 'm, but doan' gimme no rats; i hain' got no use f'r um, skasely." "but, jim, you got to have 'em--they all do. so don't make no more fuss about it. prisoners ain't ever without rats. there ain't no instance of it. and they train them, and pet them, and learn them tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies. but you got to play music to them. you got anything to play music on?" "i ain' got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o' paper, en a juice-harp; but i reck'n dey wouldn' take no stock in a juice-harp." "yes they would. they don't care what kind of music 'tis. a jews-harp's plenty good enough for a rat. all animals like music--in a prison they dote on it. specially, painful music; and you can't get no other kind out of a jews-harp. it always interests them; they come out to see what's the matter with you. yes, you're all right; you're fixed very well. you want to set on your bed nights before you go to sleep, and early in the mornings, and play your jews-harp; play 'the last link is broken'--that's the thing that 'll scoop a rat quicker 'n anything else; and when you've played about two minutes you'll see all the rats, and the snakes, and spiders, and things begin to feel worried about you, and come. and they'll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good time." "yes, dey will, i reck'n, mars tom, but what kine er time is jim havin'? blest if i kin see de pint. but i'll do it ef i got to. i reck'n i better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de house." tom waited to think it over, and see if there wasn't nothing else; and pretty soon he says: "oh, there's one thing i forgot. could you raise a flower here, do you reckon?" "i doan know but maybe i could, mars tom; but it's tolable dark in heah, en i ain' got no use f'r no flower, nohow, en she'd be a pow'ful sight o' trouble." "well, you try it, anyway. some other prisoners has done it." "one er dem big cat-tail-lookin' mullen-stalks would grow in heah, mars tom, i reck'n, but she wouldn't be wuth half de trouble she'd coss." "don't you believe it. we'll fetch you a little one and you plant it in the corner over there, and raise it. and don't call it mullen, call it pitchiola--that's its right name when it's in a prison. and you want to water it with your tears." "why, i got plenty spring water, mars tom." "you don't want spring water; you want to water it with your tears. it's the way they always do." "why, mars tom, i lay i kin raise one er dem mullen-stalks twyste wid spring water whiles another man's a start'n one wid tears." "that ain't the idea. you got to do it with tears." "she'll die on my han's, mars tom, she sholy will; kase i doan' skasely ever cry." so tom was stumped. but he studied it over, and then said jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion. he promised he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in jim's coffee-pot, in the morning. jim said he would "jis' 's soon have tobacker in his coffee;" and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising the mullen, and jews-harping the rats, and petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do on pens, and inscriptions, and journals, and things, which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook, that tom most lost all patience with him; and said he was just loadened down with more gaudier chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn't know enough to appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. so jim he was sorry, and said he wouldn't behave so no more, and then me and tom shoved for bed. chapter xxxix. in the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under aunt sally's bed. but while we was gone for spiders little thomas franklin benjamin jefferson elexander phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and aunt sally she come in, and when we got back she was a-standing on top of the bed raising cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. so she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. i never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was. we got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we like to got a hornet's nest, but we didn't. the family was at home. we didn't give it right up, but stayed with them as long as we could; because we allowed we'd tire them out or they'd got to tire us out, and they done it. then we got allycumpain and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right again, but couldn't set down convenient. and so we went for the snakes, and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house-snakes, and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper-time, and a rattling good honest day's work: and hungry?--oh, no, i reckon not! and there warn't a blessed snake up there when we went back--we didn't half tie the sack, and they worked out somehow, and left. but it didn't matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres. so we judged we could get some of them again. no, there warn't no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. you'd see them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then; and they generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn't want them. well, they was handsome and striped, and there warn't no harm in a million of them; but that never made no difference to aunt sally; she despised snakes, be the breed what they might, and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it; and every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn't make no difference what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. i never see such a woman. and you could hear her whoop to jericho. you couldn't get her to take a-holt of one of them with the tongs. and if she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a howl that you would think the house was afire. she disturbed the old man so that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes created. why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week aunt sally warn't over it yet; she warn't near over it; when she was setting thinking about something you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her stockings. it was very curious. but tom said all women was just so. he said they was made that way for some reason or other. we got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she allowed these lickings warn't nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them. i didn't mind the lickings, because they didn't amount to nothing; but i minded the trouble we had to lay in another lot. but we got them laid in, and all the other things; and you never see a cabin as blithesome as jim's was when they'd all swarm out for music and go for him. jim didn't like the spiders, and the spiders didn't like jim; and so they'd lay for him, and make it mighty warm for him. and he said that between the rats and the snakes and the grindstone there warn't no room in bed for him, skasely; and when there was, a body couldn't sleep, it was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, because they never all slept at one time, but took turn about, so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his way, and t'other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over. he said if he ever got out this time he wouldn't ever be a prisoner again, not for a salary. well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. the shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit jim he would get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh; the pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the grindstone; the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had et up the sawdust, and it give us a most amazing stomach-ache. we reckoned we was all going to die, but didn't. it was the most undigestible sawdust i ever see; and tom said the same. but as i was saying, we'd got all the work done now, at last; and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly jim. the old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below orleans to come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because there warn't no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise jim in the st. louis and new orleans papers; and when he mentioned the st. louis ones it give me the cold shivers, and i see we hadn't no time to lose. so tom said, now for the nonnamous letters. "what's them?" i says. "warnings to the people that something is up. sometimes it's done one way, sometimes another. but there's always somebody spying around that gives notice to the governor of the castle. when louis xvi. was going to light out of the tooleries a servant-girl done it. it's a very good way, and so is the nonnamous letters. we'll use them both. and it's usual for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in, and he slides out in her clothes. we'll do that, too." "but looky here, tom, what do we want to warn anybody for that something's up? let them find it out for themselves--it's their lookout." "yes, i know; but you can't depend on them. it's the way they've acted from the very start--left us to do everything. they're so confiding and mullet-headed they don't take notice of nothing at all. so if we don't give them notice there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us, and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape 'll go off perfectly flat; won't amount to nothing--won't be nothing to it." "well, as for me, tom, that's the way i'd like." "shucks!" he says, and looked disgusted. so i says: "but i ain't going to make no complaint. any way that suits you suits me. what you going to do about the servant-girl?" "you'll be her. you slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that yaller girl's frock." "why, tom, that 'll make trouble next morning; because, of course, she prob'bly hain't got any but that one." "i know; but you don't want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door." "all right, then, i'll do it; but i could carry it just as handy in my own togs." "you wouldn't look like a servant-girl then, would you?" "no, but there won't be nobody to see what i look like, anyway." "that ain't got nothing to do with it. the thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not. hain't you got no principle at all?" "all right, i ain't saying nothing; i'm the servant-girl. who's jim's mother?" "i'm his mother. i'll hook a gown from aunt sally." "well, then, you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and jim leaves." "not much. i'll stuff jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed to represent his mother in disguise, and jim 'll take the nigger woman's gown off of me and wear it, and we'll all evade together. when a prisoner of style escapes it's called an evasion. it's always called so when a king escapes, f'rinstance. and the same with a king's son; it don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one." so tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and i smouched the yaller wench's frock that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door, the way tom told me to. it said: beware. trouble is brewing. keep a sharp lookout. unknown friend. next night we stuck a picture, which tom drawed in blood, of a skull and crossbones on the front door; and next night another one of a coffin on the back door. i never see a family in such a sweat. they couldn't a been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts laying for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air. if a door banged, aunt sally she jumped and said "ouch!" if anything fell, she jumped and said "ouch!" if you happened to touch her, when she warn't noticing, she done the same; she couldn't face noway and be satisfied, because she allowed there was something behind her every time--so she was always a-whirling around sudden, and saying "ouch," and before she'd got two-thirds around she'd whirl back again, and say it again; and she was afraid to go to bed, but she dasn't set up. so the thing was working very well, tom said; he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory. he said it showed it was done right. so he said, now for the grand bulge! so the very next morning at the streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what we better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going to have a nigger on watch at both doors all night. tom he went down the lightning-rod to spy around; and the nigger at the back door was asleep, and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back. this letter said: don't betray me, i wish to be your friend. there is a desprate gang of cut-throats from over in the indian territory going to steal your runaway nigger to-night, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not bother them. i am one of the gang, but have got religgion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again, and will betray the helish design. they will sneak down from northards, along the fence, at midnight exact, with a false key, and go in the nigger's cabin to get him. i am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if i see any danger; but stead of that i will ba like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow at all; then whilst they are getting his chains loose, you slip there and lock them in, and can kill them at your leasure. don't do anything but just the way i am telling you; if you do they will suspicion something and raise whoop-jamboreehoo. i do not wish any reward but to know i have done the right thing. unknown friend. chapter xl. we was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went over the river a-fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and her back was turned we slid for the cellar cupboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about half-past eleven, and tom put on aunt sally's dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but says: "where's the butter?" "i laid out a hunk of it," i says, "on a piece of a corn-pone." "well, you left it laid out, then--it ain't here." "we can get along without it," i says. "we can get along with it, too," he says; "just you slide down cellar and fetch it. and then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come along. i'll go and stuff the straw into jim's clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to ba like a sheep and shove soon as you get there." so out he went, and down cellar went i. the hunk of butter, big as a person's fist, was where i had left it, so i took up the slab of corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up stairs very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes aunt sally with a candle, and i clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says: "you been down cellar?" "yes'm." "what you been doing down there?" "noth'n." "noth'n!" "no'm." "well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?" "i don't know 'm." "you don't know? don't answer me that way. tom, i want to know what you been doing down there." "i hain't been doing a single thing, aunt sally, i hope to gracious if i have." i reckoned she'd let me go now, and as a generl thing she would; but i s'pose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat about every little thing that warn't yard-stick straight; so she says, very decided: "you just march into that setting-room and stay there till i come. you been up to something you no business to, and i lay i'll find out what it is before i'm done with you." so she went away as i opened the door and walked into the setting-room. my, but there was a crowd there! fifteen farmers, and every one of them had a gun. i was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair and set down. they was setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice, and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn't; but i knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats, and putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their seats, and fumbling with their buttons. i warn't easy myself, but i didn't take my hat off, all the same. i did wish aunt sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell tom how we'd overdone this thing, and what a thundering hornet's-nest we'd got ourselves into, so we could stop fooling around straight off, and clear out with jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us. at last she come and begun to ask me questions, but i couldn't answer them straight, i didn't know which end of me was up; because these men was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right now and lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn't but a few minutes to midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep-signal; and here was aunty pegging away at the questions, and me a-shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks i was that scared; and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty soon, when one of them says, "i'm for going and getting in the cabin first and right now, and catching them when they come," i most dropped; and a streak of butter come a-trickling down my forehead, and aunt sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and says: "for the land's sake, what is the matter with the child? he's got the brain-fever as shore as you're born, and they're oozing out!" and everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the bread and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, and says: "oh, what a turn you did give me! and how glad and grateful i am it ain't no worse; for luck's against us, and it never rains but it pours, and when i see that truck i thought we'd lost you, for i knowed by the color and all it was just like your brains would be if--dear, dear, whyd'nt you tell me that was what you'd been down there for, i wouldn't a cared. now cler out to bed, and don't lemme see no more of you till morning!" i was up stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another one, and shinning through the dark for the lean-to. i couldn't hardly get my words out, i was so anxious; but i told tom as quick as i could we must jump for it now, and not a minute to lose--the house full of men, yonder, with guns! his eyes just blazed; and he says: "no!--is that so? ain't it bully! why, huck, if it was to do over again, i bet i could fetch two hundred! if we could put it off till--" "hurry! hurry!" i says. "where's jim?" "right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him. he's dressed, and everything's ready. now we'll slide out and give the sheep-signal." but then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them begin to fumble with the pad-lock, and heard a man say: "i told you we'd be too soon; they haven't come--the door is locked. here, i'll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lay for 'em in the dark and kill 'em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece, and listen if you can hear 'em coming." so in they come, but couldn't see us in the dark, and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. but we got under all right, and out through the hole, swift but soft--jim first, me next, and tom last, which was according to tom's orders. now we was in the lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. so we crept to the door, and tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn't make out nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us jim must glide out first, and him last. so he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a-scraping around out there all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence in injun file, and got to it all right, and me and jim over it; but tom's britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started somebody sings out: "who's that? answer, or i'll shoot!" but we didn't answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. then there was a rush, and a bang, bang, bang! and the bullets fairly whizzed around us! we heard them sing out: "here they are! they've broke for the river! after 'em, boys, and turn loose the dogs!" so here they come, full tilt. we could hear them because they wore boots and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots and didn't yell. we was in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close on to us we dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. they'd had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn't scare off the robbers; but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making powwow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when they see it warn't nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering; and then we up-steam again, and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn't make no more noise than we was obleeged to. then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out. and when we stepped on to the raft i says: "now, old jim, you're a free man again, and i bet you won't ever be a slave no more." "en a mighty good job it wuz, too, huck. it 'uz planned beautiful, en it 'uz done beautiful; en dey ain't nobody kin git up a plan dat's mo' mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz." we was all glad as we could be, but tom was the gladdest of all because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg. when me and jim heard that we didn't feel so brash as what we did before. it was hurting him considerable, and bleeding; so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to bandage him, but he says: "gimme the rags; i can do it myself. don't stop now; don't fool around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set her loose! boys, we done it elegant!--'deed we did. i wish we'd a had the handling of louis xvi., there wouldn't a been no 'son of saint louis, ascend to heaven!' wrote down in his biography; no, sir, we'd a whooped him over the border--that's what we'd a done with him--and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. man the sweeps--man the sweeps!" but me and jim was consulting--and thinking. and after we'd thought a minute, i says: "say it, jim." so he says: "well, den, dis is de way it look to me, huck. ef it wuz him dat 'uz bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'go on en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one?' is dat like mars tom sawyer? would he say dat? you bet he wouldn't! well, den, is jim gywne to say it? no, sah--i doan' budge a step out'n dis place 'dout a doctor, not if it's forty year!" i knowed he was white inside, and i reckoned he'd say what he did say--so it was all right now, and i told tom i was a-going for a doctor. he raised considerable row about it, but me and jim stuck to it and wouldn't budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but we wouldn't let him. then he give us a piece of his mind, but it didn't do no good. so when he sees me getting the canoe ready, he says: "well, then, if you re bound to go, i'll tell you the way to do when you get to the village. shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywheres in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don't give it back to him till you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. it's the way they all do." so i said i would, and left, and jim was to hide in the woods when he see the doctor coming till he was gone again. chapter xli. the doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man when i got him up. i told him me and my brother was over on spanish island hunting yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about midnight he must a kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home this evening and surprise the folks. "who is your folks?" he says. "the phelpses, down yonder." "oh," he says. and after a minute, he says: "how'd you say he got shot?" "he had a dream," i says, "and it shot him." "singular dream," he says. so he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started. but when he sees the canoe he didn't like the look of her--said she was big enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two. i says: "oh, you needn't be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us easy enough." "what three?" "why, me and sid, and--and--and the guns; that's what i mean." "oh," he says. but he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her, and shook his head, and said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one. but they was all locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for me to wait till he come back, or i could hunt around further, or maybe i better go down home and get them ready for the surprise if i wanted to. but i said i didn't; so i told him just how to find the raft, and then he started. i struck an idea pretty soon. i says to myself, spos'n he can't fix that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is? spos'n it takes him three or four days? what are we going to do?--lay around there till he lets the cat out of the bag? no, sir; i know what i'll do. i'll wait, and when he comes back if he says he's got to go any more i'll get down there, too, if i swim; and we'll take and tie him, and keep him, and shove out down the river; and when tom's done with him we'll give him what it's worth, or all we got, and then let him get ashore. so then i crept into a lumber-pile to get some sleep; and next time i waked up the sun was away up over my head! i shot out and went for the doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the night some time or other, and warn't back yet. well, thinks i, that looks powerful bad for tom, and i'll dig out for the island right off. so away i shoved, and turned the corner, and nearly rammed my head into uncle silas's stomach! he says: "why, tom! where you been all this time, you rascal?" "i hain't been nowheres," i says, "only just hunting for the runaway nigger--me and sid." "why, where ever did you go?" he says. "your aunt's been mighty uneasy." "she needn't," i says, "because we was all right. we followed the men and the dogs, but they outrun us, and we lost them; but we thought we heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them and crossed over, but couldn't find nothing of them; so we cruised along up-shore till we got kind of tired and beat out; and tied up the canoe and went to sleep, and never waked up till about an hour ago; then we paddled over here to hear the news, and sid's at the post-office to see what he can hear, and i'm a-branching out to get something to eat for us, and then we're going home." so then we went to the post-office to get "sid"; but just as i suspicioned, he warn't there; so the old man he got a letter out of the office, and we waited awhile longer, but sid didn't come; so the old man said, come along, let sid foot it home, or canoe it, when he got done fooling around--but we would ride. i couldn't get him to let me stay and wait for sid; and he said there warn't no use in it, and i must come along, and let aunt sally see we was all right. when we got home aunt sally was that glad to see me she laughed and cried both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of hern that don't amount to shucks, and said she'd serve sid the same when he come. and the place was plum full of farmers and farmers' wives, to dinner; and such another clack a body never heard. old mrs. hotchkiss was the worst; her tongue was a-going all the time. she says: "well, sister phelps, i've ransacked that-air cabin over, an' i b'lieve the nigger was crazy. i says to sister damrell--didn't i, sister damrell?--s'i, he's crazy, s'i--them's the very words i said. you all hearn me: he's crazy, s'i; everything shows it, s'i. look at that-air grindstone, s'i; want to tell me't any cretur 't's in his right mind 's a goin' to scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone, s'i? here sich 'n' sich a person busted his heart; 'n' here so 'n' so pegged along for thirty-seven year, 'n' all that--natcherl son o' louis somebody, 'n' sich everlast'n rubbage. he's plumb crazy, s'i; it's what i says in the fust place, it's what i says in the middle, 'n' it's what i says last 'n' all the time--the nigger's crazy--crazy 's nebokoodneezer, s'i." "an' look at that-air ladder made out'n rags, sister hotchkiss," says old mrs. damrell; "what in the name o' goodness could he ever want of--" "the very words i was a-sayin' no longer ago th'n this minute to sister utterback, 'n' she'll tell you so herself. sh-she, look at that-air rag ladder, sh-she; 'n' s'i, yes, look at it, s'i--what could he a-wanted of it, s'i. sh-she, sister hotchkiss, sh-she--" "but how in the nation'd they ever git that grindstone in there, anyway? 'n' who dug that-air hole? 'n' who--" "my very words, brer penrod! i was a-sayin'--pass that-air sasser o' m'lasses, won't ye?--i was a-sayin' to sister dunlap, jist this minute, how did they git that grindstone in there, s'i. without help, mind you --'thout help! that's wher 'tis. don't tell me, s'i; there wuz help, s'i; 'n' ther' wuz a plenty help, too, s'i; ther's ben a dozen a-helpin' that nigger, 'n' i lay i'd skin every last nigger on this place but i'd find out who done it, s'i; 'n' moreover, s'i--" "a dozen says you!--forty couldn't a done every thing that's been done. look at them case-knife saws and things, how tedious they've been made; look at that bed-leg sawed off with 'm, a week's work for six men; look at that nigger made out'n straw on the bed; and look at--" "you may well say it, brer hightower! it's jist as i was a-sayin' to brer phelps, his own self. s'e, what do you think of it, sister hotchkiss, s'e? think o' what, brer phelps, s'i? think o' that bed-leg sawed off that a way, s'e? think of it, s'i? i lay it never sawed itself off, s'i--somebody sawed it, s'i; that's my opinion, take it or leave it, it mayn't be no 'count, s'i, but sich as 't is, it's my opinion, s'i, 'n' if any body k'n start a better one, s'i, let him do it, s'i, that's all. i says to sister dunlap, s'i--" "why, dog my cats, they must a ben a house-full o' niggers in there every night for four weeks to a done all that work, sister phelps. look at that shirt--every last inch of it kivered over with secret african writ'n done with blood! must a ben a raft uv 'm at it right along, all the time, amost. why, i'd give two dollars to have it read to me; 'n' as for the niggers that wrote it, i 'low i'd take 'n' lash 'm t'll--" "people to help him, brother marples! well, i reckon you'd think so if you'd a been in this house for a while back. why, they've stole everything they could lay their hands on--and we a-watching all the time, mind you. they stole that shirt right off o' the line! and as for that sheet they made the rag ladder out of, ther' ain't no telling how many times they didn't steal that; and flour, and candles, and candlesticks, and spoons, and the old warming-pan, and most a thousand things that i disremember now, and my new calico dress; and me and silas and my sid and tom on the constant watch day and night, as i was a-telling you, and not a one of us could catch hide nor hair nor sight nor sound of them; and here at the last minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under our noses and fools us, and not only fools us but the injun territory robbers too, and actuly gets away with that nigger safe and sound, and that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at that very time! i tell you, it just bangs anything i ever heard of. why, sperits couldn't a done better and been no smarter. and i reckon they must a been sperits--because, you know our dogs, and ther' ain't no better; well, them dogs never even got on the track of 'm once! you explain that to me if you can!--any of you!" "well, it does beat--" "laws alive, i never--" "so help me, i wouldn't a be--" "house-thieves as well as--" "goodnessgracioussakes, i'd a ben afeard to live in sich a--" "'fraid to live!--why, i was that scared i dasn't hardly go to bed, or get up, or lay down, or set down, sister ridgeway. why, they'd steal the very--why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster i was in by the time midnight come last night. i hope to gracious if i warn't afraid they'd steal some o' the family! i was just to that pass i didn't have no reasoning faculties no more. it looks foolish enough now, in the daytime; but i says to myself, there's my two poor boys asleep, 'way up stairs in that lonesome room, and i declare to goodness i was that uneasy 't i crep' up there and locked 'em in! i did. and anybody would. because, you know, when you get scared that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits gets to addling, and you get to doing all sorts o' wild things, and by and by you think to yourself, spos'n i was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't locked, and you--" she stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on me--i got up and took a walk. says i to myself, i can explain better how we come to not be in that room this morning if i go out to one side and study over it a little. so i done it. but i dasn't go fur, or she'd a sent for me. and when it was late in the day the people all went, and then i come in and told her the noise and shooting waked up me and "sid," and the door was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning-rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't never want to try that no more. and then i went on and told her all what i told uncle silas before; and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty harum-scarum lot as fur as she could see; and so, as long as no harm hadn't come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well and she had us still, stead of fretting over what was past and done. so then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of a brown study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says: "why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and sid not come yet! what has become of that boy?" i see my chance; so i skips up and says: "i'll run right up to town and get him," i says. "no you won't," she says. "you'll stay right wher' you are; one's enough to be lost at a time. if he ain't here to supper, your uncle 'll go." well, he warn't there to supper; so right after supper uncle went. he come back about ten a little bit uneasy; hadn't run across tom's track. aunt sally was a good deal uneasy; but uncle silas he said there warn't no occasion to be--boys will be boys, he said, and you'll see this one turn up in the morning all sound and right. so she had to be satisfied. but she said she'd set up for him a while anyway, and keep a light burning so he could see it. and then when i went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good i felt mean, and like i couldn't look her in the face; and she set down on the bed and talked with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy sid was, and didn't seem to want to ever stop talking about him; and kept asking me every now and then if i reckoned he could a got lost, or hurt, or maybe drownded, and might be laying at this minute somewheres suffering or dead, and she not by him to help him, and so the tears would drip down silent, and i would tell her that sid was all right, and would be home in the morning, sure; and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say it again, and keep on saying it, because it done her good, and she was in so much trouble. and when she was going away she looked down in my eyes so steady and gentle, and says: "the door ain't going to be locked, tom, and there's the window and the rod; but you'll be good, won't you? and you won't go? for my sake." laws knows i wanted to go bad enough to see about tom, and was all intending to go; but after that i wouldn't a went, not for kingdoms. but she was on my mind and tom was on my mind, so i slept very restless. and twice i went down the rod away in the night, and slipped around front, and see her setting there by her candle in the window with her eyes towards the road and the tears in them; and i wished i could do something for her, but i couldn't, only to swear that i wouldn't never do nothing to grieve her any more. and the third time i waked up at dawn, and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle was most out, and her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep. chapter xlii. the old man was uptown again before breakfast, but couldn't get no track of tom; and both of them set at the table thinking, and not saying nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not eating anything. and by and by the old man says: "did i give you the letter?" "what letter?" "the one i got yesterday out of the post-office." "no, you didn't give me no letter." "well, i must a forgot it." so he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he had laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her. she says: "why, it's from st. petersburg--it's from sis." i allowed another walk would do me good; but i couldn't stir. but before she could break it open she dropped it and run--for she see something. and so did i. it was tom sawyer on a mattress; and that old doctor; and jim, in her calico dress, with his hands tied behind him; and a lot of people. i hid the letter behind the first thing that come handy, and rushed. she flung herself at tom, crying, and says: "oh, he's dead, he's dead, i know he's dead!" and tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other, which showed he warn't in his right mind; then she flung up her hands, and says: "he's alive, thank god! and that's enough!" and she snatched a kiss of him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as fast as her tongue could go, every jump of the way. i followed the men to see what they was going to do with jim; and the old doctor and uncle silas followed after tom into the house. the men was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang jim for an example to all the other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away like jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family scared most to death for days and nights. but the others said, don't do it, it wouldn't answer at all; he ain't our nigger, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure. so that cooled them down a little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that hain't done just right is always the very ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of him. they cussed jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two side the head once in a while, but jim never said nothing, and he never let on to know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on him, and chained him again, and not to no bed-leg this time, but to a big staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and both legs, and said he warn't to have nothing but bread and water to eat after this till his owner come, or he was sold at auction because he didn't come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and said a couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every night, and a bulldog tied to the door in the daytime; and about this time they was through with the job and was tapering off with a kind of generl good-bye cussing, and then the old doctor comes and takes a look, and says: "don't be no rougher on him than you're obleeged to, because he ain't a bad nigger. when i got to where i found the boy i see i couldn't cut the bullet out without some help, and he warn't in no condition for me to leave to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little worse, and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn't let me come a-nigh him any more, and said if i chalked his raft he'd kill me, and no end of wild foolishness like that, and i see i couldn't do anything at all with him; so i says, i got to have help somehow; and the minute i says it out crawls this nigger from somewheres and says he'll help, and he done it, too, and done it very well. of course i judged he must be a runaway nigger, and there i was! and there i had to stick right straight along all the rest of the day and all night. it was a fix, i tell you! i had a couple of patients with the chills, and of course i'd of liked to run up to town and see them, but i dasn't, because the nigger might get away, and then i'd be to blame; and yet never a skiff come close enough for me to hail. so there i had to stick plumb until daylight this morning; and i never see a nigger that was a better nuss or faithfuller, and yet he was risking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too, and i see plain enough he'd been worked main hard lately. i liked the nigger for that; i tell you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a thousand dollars--and kind treatment, too. i had everything i needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he would a done at home--better, maybe, because it was so quiet; but there i was, with both of 'm on my hands, and there i had to stick till about dawn this morning; then some men in a skiff come by, and as good luck would have it the nigger was setting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees sound asleep; so i motioned them in quiet, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble. and the boy being in a kind of a flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice and quiet, and the nigger never made the least row nor said a word from the start. he ain't no bad nigger, gentlemen; that's what i think about him." somebody says: "well, it sounds very good, doctor, i'm obleeged to say." then the others softened up a little, too, and i was mighty thankful to that old doctor for doing jim that good turn; and i was glad it was according to my judgment of him, too; because i thought he had a good heart in him and was a good man the first time i see him. then they all agreed that jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some notice took of it, and reward. so every one of them promised, right out and hearty, that they wouldn't cuss him no more. then they come out and locked him up. i hoped they was going to say he could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water; but they didn't think of it, and i reckoned it warn't best for me to mix in, but i judged i'd get the doctor's yarn to aunt sally somehow or other as soon as i'd got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of me --explanations, i mean, of how i forgot to mention about sid being shot when i was telling how him and me put in that dratted night paddling around hunting the runaway nigger. but i had plenty time. aunt sally she stuck to the sick-room all day and all night, and every time i see uncle silas mooning around i dodged him. next morning i heard tom was a good deal better, and they said aunt sally was gone to get a nap. so i slips to the sick-room, and if i found him awake i reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash. but he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too; and pale, not fire-faced the way he was when he come. so i set down and laid for him to wake. in about half an hour aunt sally comes gliding in, and there i was, up a stump again! she motioned me to be still, and set down by me, and begun to whisper, and said we could all be joyful now, because all the symptoms was first-rate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so long, and looking better and peacefuller all the time, and ten to one he'd wake up in his right mind. so we set there watching, and by and by he stirs a bit, and opened his eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says: "hello!--why, i'm at home! how's that? where's the raft?" "it's all right," i says. "and jim?" "the same," i says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. but he never noticed, but says: "good! splendid! now we're all right and safe! did you tell aunty?" i was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says: "about what, sid?" "why, about the way the whole thing was done." "what whole thing?" "why, the whole thing. there ain't but one; how we set the runaway nigger free--me and tom." "good land! set the run--what is the child talking about! dear, dear, out of his head again!" "no, i ain't out of my head; i know all what i'm talking about. we did set him free--me and tom. we laid out to do it, and we done it. and we done it elegant, too." he'd got a start, and she never checked him up, just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and i see it warn't no use for me to put in. "why, aunty, it cost us a power of work --weeks of it--hours and hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep. and we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case-knives, and the warming-pan, and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can't think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and one thing or another, and you can't think half the fun it was. and we had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning-rod, and dig the hole into the cabin, and made the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie, and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket--" "mercy sakes!" "--and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for jim; and then you kept tom here so long with the butter in his hat that you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive at us, and i got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and was all safe, and jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and wasn't it bully, aunty!" "well, i never heard the likes of it in all my born days! so it was you, you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. i've as good a notion as ever i had in my life to take it out o' you this very minute. to think, here i've been, night after night, a--you just get well once, you young scamp, and i lay i'll tan the old harry out o' both o' ye!" but tom, he was so proud and joyful, he just couldn't hold in, and his tongue just went it--she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she says: "well, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it now, for mind i tell you if i catch you meddling with him again--" "meddling with who?" tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised. "with who? why, the runaway nigger, of course. who'd you reckon?" tom looks at me very grave, and says: "tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? hasn't he got away?" "him?" says aunt sally; "the runaway nigger? 'deed he hasn't. they've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!" tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills, and sings out to me: "they hain't no right to shut him up! shove!--and don't you lose a minute. turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur that walks this earth!" "what does the child mean?" "i mean every word i say, aunt sally, and if somebody don't go, i'll go. i've knowed him all his life, and so has tom, there. old miss watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her will." "then what on earth did you want to set him free for, seeing he was already free?" "well, that is a question, i must say; and just like women! why, i wanted the adventure of it; and i'd a waded neck-deep in blood to --goodness alive, aunt polly!" if she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, i wish i may never! aunt sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried over her, and i found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. and i peeped out, and in a little while tom's aunt polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at tom over her spectacles--kind of grinding him into the earth, you know. and then she says: "yes, you better turn y'r head away--i would if i was you, tom." "oh, deary me!" says aunt sally; "is he changed so? why, that ain't tom, it's sid; tom's--tom's--why, where is tom? he was here a minute ago." "you mean where's huck finn--that's what you mean! i reckon i hain't raised such a scamp as my tom all these years not to know him when i see him. that would be a pretty howdy-do. come out from under that bed, huck finn." so i done it. but not feeling brash. aunt sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons i ever see --except one, and that was uncle silas, when he come in and they told it all to him. it kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting sermon that night that gave him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn't a understood it. so tom's aunt polly, she told all about who i was, and what; and i had to up and tell how i was in such a tight place that when mrs. phelps took me for tom sawyer--she chipped in and says, "oh, go on and call me aunt sally, i'm used to it now, and 'tain't no need to change"--that when aunt sally took me for tom sawyer i had to stand it--there warn't no other way, and i knowed he wouldn't mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. and so it turned out, and he let on to be sid, and made things as soft as he could for me. and his aunt polly she said tom was right about old miss watson setting jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, tom sawyer had gone and took all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and i couldn't ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he could help a body set a nigger free with his bringing-up. well, aunt polly she said that when aunt sally wrote to her that tom and sid had come all right and safe, she says to herself: "look at that, now! i might have expected it, letting him go off that way without anybody to watch him. so now i got to go and trapse all the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creetur's up to this time, as long as i couldn't seem to get any answer out of you about it." "why, i never heard nothing from you," says aunt sally. "well, i wonder! why, i wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean by sid being here." "well, i never got 'em, sis." aunt polly she turns around slow and severe, and says: "you, tom!" "well--what?" he says, kind of pettish. "don t you what me, you impudent thing--hand out them letters." "what letters?" "them letters. i be bound, if i have to take a-holt of you i'll--" "they're in the trunk. there, now. and they're just the same as they was when i got them out of the office. i hain't looked into them, i hain't touched them. but i knowed they'd make trouble, and i thought if you warn't in no hurry, i'd--" "well, you do need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. and i wrote another one to tell you i was coming; and i s'pose he--" "no, it come yesterday; i hain't read it yet, but it's all right, i've got that one." i wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but i reckoned maybe it was just as safe to not to. so i never said nothing. chapter the last the first time i catched tom private i asked him what was his idea, time of the evasion?--what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before? and he said, what he had planned in his head from the start, if we got jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft, and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight procession and a brass-band, and then he would be a hero, and so would we. but i reckoned it was about as well the way it was. we had jim out of the chains in no time, and when aunt polly and uncle silas and aunt sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse tom, they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. and we had him up to the sick-room, and had a high talk; and tom give jim forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and jim was pleased most to death, and busted out, and says: "dah, now, huck, what i tell you?--what i tell you up dah on jackson islan'? i tole you i got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en i tole you i ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich agin; en it's come true; en heah she is! dah, now! doan' talk to me--signs is signs, mine i tell you; en i knowed jis' 's well 'at i 'uz gwineter be rich agin as i's a-stannin' heah dis minute!" and then tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all three slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for howling adventures amongst the injuns, over in the territory, for a couple of weeks or two; and i says, all right, that suits me, but i ain't got no money for to buy the outfit, and i reckon i couldn't get none from home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and got it all away from judge thatcher and drunk it up. "no, he hain't," tom says; "it's all there yet--six thousand dollars and more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. hadn't when i come away, anyhow." jim says, kind of solemn: "he ain't a-comin' back no mo', huck." i says: "why, jim?" "nemmine why, huck--but he ain't comin' back no mo." but i kept at him; so at last he says: "doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz a man in dah, kivered up, en i went in en unkivered him and didn' let you come in? well, den, you kin git yo' money when you wants it, kase dat wuz him." tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and i am rotten glad of it, because if i'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book i wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more. but i reckon i got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because aunt sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and i can't stand it. i been there before. the education of the negro by charles dudley warner at the close of the war for the union about five millions of negroes were added to the citizenship of the united states. by the census of this number had become over seven and a half millions. i use the word negro because the descriptive term black or colored is not determinative. there are many varieties of negroes among the african tribes, but all of them agree in certain physiological if not psychological characteristics, which separate them from all other races of mankind; whereas there are many races, black or colored, like the abyssinian, which have no other negro traits. it is also a matter of observation that the negro traits persist in recognizable manifestations, to the extent of occasional reversions, whatever may be the mixture of a white race. in a certain degree this persistence is true of all races not come from an historic common stock. in the political reconstruction the negro was given the ballot without any requirements of education or property. this was partly a measure of party balance of power; and partly from a concern that the negro would not be secure in his rights as a citizen without it, and also upon the theory that the ballot is an educating influence. this sudden transition and shifting of power was resented at the south, resisted at first, and finally it has generally been evaded. this was due to a variety of reasons or prejudices, not all of them creditable to a generous desire for the universal elevation of mankind, but one of them the historian will judge adequate to produce the result. indeed, it might have been foreseen from the beginning. this reconstruction measure was an attempt to put the superior part of the community under the control of the inferior, these parts separated by all the prejudices of race, and by traditions of mastership on the one side and of servitude on the other. i venture to say that it was an experiment that would have failed in any community in the united states, whether it was presented as a piece of philanthropy or of punishment. a necessary sequence to the enfranchisement of the negro was his education. however limited our idea of a proper common education may be, it is a fundamental requisite in our form of government that every voter should be able to read and write. a recognition of this truth led to the establishment in the south of public schools for the whites and blacks, in short, of a public school system. we are not to question the sincerity and generousness of this movement, however it may have halted and lost enthusiasm in many localities. this opportunity of education (found also in private schools) was hailed by the negroes, certainly, with enthusiasm. it cannot be doubted that at the close of the war there was a general desire among the freedmen to be instructed in the rudiments of knowledge at least. many parents, especially women, made great sacrifices to obtain for their children this advantage which had been denied to themselves. many youths, both boys and girls, entered into it with a genuine thirst for knowledge which it was pathetic to see. but it may be questioned, from developments that speedily followed, whether the mass of negroes did not really desire this advantage as a sign of freedom, rather than from a wish for knowledge, and covet it because it had formerly been the privilege of their masters, and marked a broad distinction between the races. it was natural that this should be so, when they had been excluded from this privilege by pains and penalties, when in some states it was one of the gravest offenses to teach a negro to read and write. this prohibition was accounted for by the peculiar sort of property that slavery created, which would become insecure if intelligent, for the alphabet is a terrible disturber of all false relations in society. but the effort at education went further than the common school and the primary essential instruction. it introduced the higher education. colleges usually called universities--for negroes were established in many southern states, created and stimulated by the generosity of northern men and societies, and often aided by the liberality of the states where they existed. the curriculum in these was that in colleges generally,--the classics, the higher mathematics, science, philosophy, the modern languages, and in some instances a certain technical instruction, which was being tried in some northern colleges. the emphasis, however, was laid on liberal culture. this higher education was offered to the mass that still lacked the rudiments of intellectual training, in the belief that education--the education of the moment, the education of superimposed information, can realize the theory of universal equality. this experiment has now been in operation long enough to enable us to judge something of its results and its promises for the future. these results are of a nature to lead us seriously to inquire whether our effort was founded upon an adequate knowledge of the negro, of his present development, of the requirements for his personal welfare and evolution in the scale of civilization, and for his training in useful and honorable citizenship. i am speaking of the majority, the mass to be considered in any general scheme, and not of the exceptional individuals --exceptions that will rapidly increase as the mass is lifted--who are capable of taking advantage to the utmost of all means of cultivation, and who must always be provided with all the opportunities needed. millions of dollars have been invested in the higher education of the negro, while this primary education has been, taking the whole mass, wholly inadequate to his needs. this has been upon the supposition that the higher would compel the rise of the lower with the undeveloped negro race as it does with the more highly developed white race. an examination of the soundness of this expectation will not lead us far astray from our subject. the evolution of a race, distinguishing it from the formation of a nation, is a slow process. we recognize a race by certain peculiar traits, and by characteristics which slowly change. they are acquired little by little in an evolution which, historically, it is often difficult to trace. they are due to the environment, to the discipline of life, and to what is technically called education. these work together to make what is called character, race character, and it is this which is transmitted from generation to generation. acquirements are not hereditary, like habits and peculiarities, physical or mental. a man does not transmit to his descendants his learning, though he may transmit the aptitude for it. this is illustrated in factories where skilled labor is handed down and fixed in the same families, that is, where the same kind of labor is continued from one generation to another. the child, put to work, has not the knowledge of the parent, but a special aptitude in his skill and dexterity. both body and mind have acquired certain transmissible traits. the same thing is seen on a larger scale in a whole nation, like the japanese, who have been trained into what seems an art instinct. it is this character, quality, habit, the result of a slow educational process, which distinguishes one race from another. it is this that the race transmits, and not the more or less accidental education of a decade or an era. the brahmins carry this idea into the next life, and say that the departing spirit carries with him nothing except this individual character, no acquirements or information or extraneous culture. it was perhaps in the same spirit that the sad preacher in ecclesiastes said there is no "knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest." it is by this character that we classify civilized and even semi-civilized races; by this slowly developed fibre, this slow accumulation of inherent quality in the evolution of the human being from lower to higher, that continues to exist notwithstanding the powerful influence of governments and religions. we are understood when we speak of the french, the italian, the pole, the spanish, the english, the german, the arab race, the japanese, and so on. it is what a foreign writer calls, not inaptly, a collective race soul. as it is slow in evolution, it is persistent in enduring. further, we recognize it as a stage of progress, historically necessary in the development of man into a civilized adaptation to his situation in this world. it is a process that cannot be much hurried, and a result that cannot be leaped to out of barbarism by any superimposition of knowledge or even quickly by any change of environment. we may be right in our modern notion that education has a magical virtue that can work any kind of transformation; but we are certainly not right in supposing that it can do this instantly, or that it can work this effect upon a barbarous race in the same period of time that it can upon one more developed, one that has acquired at least a race consciousness. before going further, and in order to avoid misunderstanding, it is proper to say that i have the firmest belief in the ultimate development of all mankind into a higher plane than it occupies now. i should otherwise be in despair. this faith will never desist in the effort to bring about the end desired. but, if we work with providence, we must work in the reasonable ways of providence, and add to our faith patience. it seems to be the rule in all history that the elevation of a lower race is effected only by contact with one higher in civilization. both reform and progress come from exterior influences. this is axiomatic, and applies to the fields of government, religion, ethics, art, and letters. we have been taught to regard africa as a dark, stolid continent, unawakened, unvisited by the agencies and influences that have transformed the world from age to age. yet it was in northern and northeastern africa that within historic periods three of the most powerful and brilliant civilizations were developed,--the egyptian, the carthaginian, the saracenic. that these civilizations had more than a surface contact with the interior, we know. to take the most ancient of them, and that which longest endured, the egyptian, the pharaohs carried their conquests and their power deep into africa. in the story of their invasions and occupancy of the interior, told in pictures on temple walls, we find the negro figuring as captive and slave. this contact may not have been a fruitful one for the elevation of the negro, but it proves that for ages he was in one way or another in contact with a superior civilization. in later days we find little trace of it in the home of the negro, but in egypt the negro has left his impress in the mixed blood of the nile valley. the most striking example of the contact of the negro with a higher civilization is in the powerful medieval empire of songhay, established in the heart of the negro country. the vast strip of africa lying north of the equator and south of the twentieth parallel and west of the upper nile was then, as it is now, the territory of tribes distinctly described as negro. the river niger, running northward from below jenne to near timbuctoo, and then turning west and south to the gulf of guinea, flows through one of the richest valleys in the world. in richness it is comparable to that of the nile and, like that of the nile, its fertility depends upon the water of the central stream. here arose in early times the powerful empire of songhay, which disintegrated and fell into tribal confusion about the middle of the seventeenth century. for a long time the seat of its power was the city of jenne; in later days it was timbuctoo. this is not the place to enlarge upon this extraordinary piece of history. the best account of the empire of songhay is to be found in the pages of barth, the german traveler, who had access to what seemed to him a credible arab history. considerable light is thrown upon it by a recent volume on timbuctoo by m. dubois, a french traveler. m. dubois finds reason to believe that the founders of the songhese empire came from yemen, and sought refuge from moslem fanaticism in central africa some hundred and fifty years after the hejira. the origin of the empire is obscure, but the development was not indigenous. it seems probable that the settlers, following traders, penetrated to the niger valley from the valley of the nile as early as the third or fourth century of our era. an evidence of this early influence, which strengthened from century to century, dubois finds in the architecture of jenne and timbuctoo. it is not roman or saracenic or gothic, it is distinctly pharaonic. but whatever the origin of the songhay empire, it became in time mohammedan, and so continued to the end. mohammedanism seems, however, to have been imposed. powerful as the empire was, it was never free from tribal insurrection and internal troubles. the highest mark of negro capacity developed in this history is, according to the record examined by barth, that one of the emperors was a negro. from all that can be gathered in the records, the mass of the negroes, which constituted the body of this empire, remained pagan, did not become, except in outward conformity, mohammedan and did not take the moslem civilization as it was developed elsewhere, and that the disintegration of the empire left the negro races practically where they were before in point of development. this fact, if it is not overturned by further search, is open to the explanation that the moslem civilization is not fitted to the development of the african negro. contact, such as it has been, with higher civilizations, has not in all these ages which have witnessed the wonderful rise and development of other races, much affected or changed the negro. he is much as he would be if he had been left to himself. and left to himself, even in such a favorable environment as america, he is slow to change. in africa there has been no progress in organization, government, art. no negro tribe has ever invented a written language. in his exhaustive work on the history of mankind, professor frederick ratzel, having studied thoroughly the negro belt of africa, says "of writing properly so called, neither do the modern negroes show any trace, nor have traces of older writing been found in negro countries." from this outline review we come back to the situation in the united states, where a great mass of negroes--possibly over nine millions of many shades of colors--is for the first time brought into contact with christian civilization. this mass is here to make or mar our national life, and the problem of its destiny has to be met with our own. what can we do, what ought we to do, for his own good and for our peace and national welfare? in the first place, it is impossible to escape the profound impression that we have made a mistake in our estimate of his evolution as a race, in attempting to apply to him the same treatment for the development of character that we would apply to a race more highly organized. has he developed the race consciousness, the race soul, as i said before, a collective soul, which so strongly marks other races more or less civilized according to our standards? do we find in him, as a mass (individuals always excepted), that slow deposit of training and education called "character," any firm basis of order, initiative of action, the capacity of going alone, any sure foundation of morality? it has been said that a race may attain a good degree of standing in the world without the refinement of culture, but never without virtue, either in the roman or the modern meaning of that word. the african, now the american negro, has come in the united states into a more favorable position for development than he has ever before had offered. he has come to it through hardship, and his severe apprenticeship is not ended. it is possible that the historians centuries hence, looking back over the rough road that all races have traveled in their evolution, may reckon slavery and the forced transportation to the new world a necessary step in the training of the negro. we do not know. the ways of providence are not measurable by our foot rules. we see that slavery was unjust, uneconomic, and the worst training for citizenship in such a government as ours. it stifled a number of germs that might have produced a better development, such as individuality, responsibility, and thrift,--germs absolutely necessary to the well-being of a race. it laid no foundation of morality, but in place of morality saw cultivated a superstitious, emotional, hysterical religion. it is true that it taught a savage race subordination and obedience. nor did it stifle certain inherent temperamental virtues, faithfulness, often highly developed, and frequently cheerfulness and philosophic contentment in a situation that would have broken the spirit of a more sensitive race. in short, under all the disadvantages of slavery the race showed certain fine traits, qualities of humor and good humor, and capacity for devotion, which were abundantly testified to by southerners during the progress of the civil war. it has, as a race, traits wholly distinct from those of the whites, which are not only interesting, but might be a valuable contribution to a cosmopolitan civilization; gifts also, such as the love of music, and temperamental gayety, mixed with a note of sadness, as in the hungarians. but slavery brought about one result, and that the most difficult in the development of a race from savagery, and especially a tropical race, a race that has always been idle in the luxuriance of a nature that supplied its physical needs with little labor. it taught the negro to work, it transformed him, by compulsion it is true, into an industrial being, and held him in the habit of industry for several generations. perhaps only force could do this, for it was a radical transformation. i am glad to see that this result of slavery is recognized by mr. booker washington, the ablest and most clear-sighted leader the negro race has ever had. but something more was done under this pressure, something more than creation of a habit of physical exertion to productive ends. skill was developed. skilled labor, which needs brains, was carried to a high degree of performance. on almost all the southern plantations, and in the cities also, negro mechanics were bred, excellent blacksmiths, good carpenters, and house-builders capable of executing plans of high architectural merit. everywhere were negroes skilled in trades, and competent in various mechanical industries. the opportunity and the disposition to labor make the basis of all our civilization. the negro was taught to work, to be an agriculturist, a mechanic, a material producer of something useful. he was taught this fundamental thing. our higher education, applied to him in his present development, operates in exactly the opposite direction. this is a serious assertion. its truth or falsehood cannot be established by statistics, but it is an opinion gradually formed by experience, and the observation of men competent to judge, who have studied the problem close at hand. among the witnesses to the failure of the result expected from the establishment of colleges and universities for the negro are heard, from time to time, and more frequently as time goes on, practical men from the north, railway men, manufacturers, who have initiated business enterprises at the south. their testimony coincides with that of careful students of the economic and social conditions. there was reason to assume, from our theory and experience of the higher education in its effect upon white races, that the result would be different from what it is. when the negro colleges first opened, there was a glow of enthusiasm, an eagerness of study, a facility of acquirement, and a good order that promised everything for the future. it seemed as if the light then kindled would not only continue to burn, but would penetrate all the dark and stolid communities. it was my fortune to see many of these institutions in their early days, and to believe that they were full of the greatest promise for the race. i have no intention of criticising the generosity and the noble self-sacrifice that produced them, nor the aspirations of their inmates. there is no doubt that they furnish shining examples of emancipation from ignorance, and of useful lives. but a few years have thrown much light upon the careers and characters of a great proportion of the graduates, and their effect upon the communities of which they form a part, i mean, of course, with regard to the industrial and moral condition of those communities. have these colleges, as a whole,--[this sentence should have been further qualified by acknowledging the excellent work done by the colleges at atlanta and nashville, which, under exceptionally good management, have sent out much-needed teachers. i believe that their success, however, is largely owing to their practical features.--c.d.w.]--stimulated industry, thrift, the inclination to settle down to the necessary hard work of the world, or have they bred idleness, indisposition to work, a vaporous ambition in politics, and that sort of conceit of gentility of which the world has already enough? if any one is in doubt about this he can satisfy himself by a sojourn in different localities in the south. the condition of new orleans and its negro universities is often cited. it is a favorable example, because the ambition of the negro has been aided there by influence outside of the schools. the federal government has imposed upon the intelligent and sensitive population negro officials in high positions, because they were negroes and not because they were specially fitted for those positions by character or ability. it is my belief that the condition of the race in new orleans is lower than it was several years ago, and that the influence of the higher education has been in the wrong direction. this is not saying that the higher education is responsible for the present condition of the negro. other influences have retarded his elevation and the development of proper character, and most important means have been neglected. i only say that we have been disappointed in our extravagant expectations of what this education could do for a race undeveloped, and so wanting in certain elements of character, and that the millions of money devoted to it might have been much better applied. we face a grave national situation. it cannot be successfully dealt with sentimentally. it should be faced with knowledge and candor. we must admit our mistakes, both social and political, and set about the solution of our problem with intelligent resolution and a large charity. it is not simply a southern question. it is a northern question as well. for the truth of this i have only to appeal to the consciousness of all northern communities in which there are negroes in any considerable numbers. have the negroes improved, as a rule (always remembering the exceptions), in thrift, truthfulness, morality, in the elements of industrious citizenship, even in states and towns where there has been the least prejudice against their education? in a paper read at the last session of this association, professor w. f. willcox of cornell university showed by statistics that in proportion to population there were more negro criminals in the north than in the south. "the negro prisoners in the southern states to ten thousand negroes increased between and twenty-nine per cent., while the white prisoners to ten thousand whites increased only eight per cent." "in the states where slavery was never established, the white prisoners increased seven per cent. faster than the white population, while the negro prisoners no less than thirty-nine per cent. faster than the negro population. thus the increase of negro criminality, so far as it is reflected in the number of prisoners, exceeded the increase of white criminality more in the north than it did in the south." this statement was surprising. it cannot be accounted for by color prejudice at the north; it is related to the known shiftlessness and irresponsibility of a great portion of the negro population. if it could be believed that this shiftlessness is due to the late state of slavery, the explanation would not do away with the existing conditions. schools at the north have for a long time been open to the negro; though color prejudice exists, he has not been on the whole in an unfriendly atmosphere, and willing hands have been stretched out to help him in his ambition to rise. it is no doubt true, as has been often said lately, that the negro at the north has been crowded out of many occupations by more vigorous races, newly come to this country, crowded out not only of factory industries and agricultural, but of the positions of servants, waiters, barbers, and other minor ways of earning a living. the general verdict is that this loss of position is due to lack of stamina and trustworthiness. wherever a negro has shown himself able, honest, attentive to the moral and economic duties of a citizen, either successful in accumulating property or filling honorably his station in life, he has gained respect and consideration in the community in which he is known; and this is as true at the south as at the north, notwithstanding the race antagonism is more accentuated by reason of the preponderance of negro population there and the more recent presence of slavery. upon this ugly race antagonism it is not necessary to enlarge here in discussing the problem of education, and i will leave it with the single observation that i have heard intelligent negroes, who were honestly at work, accumulating property and disposed to postpone active politics to a more convenient season, say that they had nothing to fear from the intelligent white population, but only from the envy of the ignorant. the whole situation is much aggravated by the fact that there is a considerable infusion of white blood in the negro race in the united states, leading to complications and social aspirations that are infinitely pathetic. time only and no present contrivance of ours can ameliorate this condition. i have made this outline of our negro problem in no spirit of pessimism or of prejudice, but in the belief that the only way to remedy an evil or a difficulty is candidly and fundamentally to understand it. two things are evident: first, the negro population is certain to increase in the united states, in a ratio at least equal to that of the whites. second, the south needs its labor. its deportation is an idle dream. the only visible solution is for the negro to become an integral and an intelligent part of the industrial community. the way may be long, but he must work his way up. sympathetic aid may do much, but the salvation of the negro is in his own hands, in the development of individual character and a race soul. this is fully understood by his wisest leaders. his worst enemy is the demagogue who flatters him with the delusion that all he needs for his elevation is freedom and certain privileges that were denied him in slavery. in all the northern cities heroic efforts are made to assimilate the foreign population by education and instruction in americanism. in the south, in the city and on plantation, the same effort is necessary for the negro, but it must be more radical and fundamental. the common school must be as fully sustained and as far reaching as it is in the north, reaching the lowest in the city slums and the most ignorant in the agricultural districts, but to its strictly elemental teaching must be added moral instructions, and training in industries and in habits of industry. only by such rudimentary and industrial training can the mass of the negro race in the united states be expected to improve in character and position. a top-dressing of culture on a field with no depth of soil may for a moment stimulate the promise of vegetation, but no fruit will be produced. it is a gigantic task, and generations may elapse before it can in any degree be relaxed. why attempt it? why not let things drift as they are? why attempt to civilize the race within our doors, while there are so many distant and alien races to whom we ought to turn our civilizing attention? the answer is simple and does not need elaboration. a growing ignorant mass in our body politic, inevitably cherishing bitterness of feeling, is an increasing peril to the public. in order to remove this peril, by transforming the negro into an industrial, law-abiding citizen, identified with the prosperity of his country, the cordial assistance of the southern white population is absolutely essential. it can only be accomplished by regarding him as a man, with the natural right to the development of his capacity and to contentment in a secure social state. the effort for his elevation must be fundamental. the opportunity of the common school must be universal, and attendance in it compulsory. beyond this, training in the decencies of life, in conduct, and in all the industries, must be offered in such industrial institutions as that of tuskegee. for the exceptional cases a higher education can be easily provided for those who show themselves worthy of it, but not offered as an indiscriminate panacea. the question at once arises as to the kind of teachers for these schools of various grades. it is one of the most difficult in the whole problem. as a rule, there is little gain, either in instruction or in elevation of character, if the teacher is not the superior of the taught. the learners must respect the attainments and the authority of the teacher. it is a too frequent fault of our common-school system that, owing to inadequate pay and ignorant selections, the teachers are not competent to their responsible task. the highest skill and attainment are needed to evoke the powers of the common mind, even in a community called enlightened. much more are they needed when the community is only slightly developed mentally and morally. the process of educating teachers of this race, fit to promote its elevation, must be a slow one. teachers of various industries, such as agriculture and the mechanic arts, will be more readily trained than teachers of the rudiments of learning in the common schools. it is a very grave question whether, with some exceptions, the school and moral training of the race should not be for a considerable time to come in the control of the white race. but it must be kept in mind that instructors cheap in character, attainments, and breeding will do more harm than good. if we give ourselves to this work, we must give of our best. without the cordial concurrence in this effort of all parties, black and white, local and national, it will not be fruitful in fundamental and permanent good. each race must accept the present situation and build on it. to this end it is indispensable that one great evil, which was inherent in the reconstruction measures and is still persisted in, shall be eliminated. the party allegiance of the negro was bid for by the temptation of office and position for which he was in no sense fit. no permanent, righteous adjustment of relations can come till this policy is wholly abandoned. politicians must cease to make the negro a pawn in the game of politics. let us admit that we have made a mistake. we seem to have expected that we could accomplish suddenly and by artificial contrivances a development which historically has always taken a long time. without abatement of effort or loss of patience, let us put ourselves in the common-sense, the scientific, the historic line. it is a gigantic task, only to be accomplished by long labor in accord with the divine purpose. "thou wilt not leave us in the dust; thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die; and thou hast made him; thou art just. "oh, yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill, to pangs of nature, sins of will, defects of doubt, and taints of blood. "that nothing walks with aimless feet, that not one life shall be destroyed, or cast as rubbish to the void, when god hath made the pile complete." this ebook was produced by stephanie mcnees. the american negro academy occasional papers, no. the conservation of races w.e. burghardt du bois announcement the american negro academy believes that upon those of the race who have had the advantage of higher education and culture, rests the responsibility of taking concerted steps for the employment of these agencies to uplift the race to higher planes of thought and action. two great obstacles to this consummation are apparent: (a) the lack of unity, want of harmony, absence of a self- sacrificing spirit, and no well-defined line of policy seeking definite aims; and (b) the persistent, relentless, at times covert opposition employed to thwart the negro at every step of his upward struggles to establish the justness of his claim to the highest physical, intellectual and moral possibilities. the academy will, therefore, from time to time, publish such papers as in their judgment aid, by their broad and scholarly treatment of the topics discussed the dissemination of principles tending to the growth and development of the negro along right lines, and the vindication of that race against vicious assaults. the conservation of races 	the american negro has always felt an intense personal interest in discussions as to the origins and destinies of races: primarily because back of most discussions of race with which he is familiar, have lurked certain assumptions as to his natural abilities, as to his political , intellectual and moral status, which he felt were wrong. he has, consequently, been led to deprecate and minimize race distinctions, to believe intensely that out of one blood god created all nations, and to speak of human brotherhood as though it were the possibility of an already dawning to-morrow. 	nevertheless, in our calmer moments we must acknowledge that human beings are divided into races; that in this country the two most extreme types of the world's races have met, and the resulting problem as to the future relations of these types is not only of intense and living interest to us, but forms an epoch in the history of mankind. 	it is necessary, therefore, in planning our movements, in guiding our future development, that at times we rise above the pressing, but smaller questions of separate schools and cars, wage-discrimination and lynch law, to survey the whole questions of race in human philosophy and to lay, on a basis of broad knowledge and careful insight, those large lines of policy and higher ideals which may form our guiding lines and boundaries in the practical difficulties of every day. for it is certain that all human striving must recognize the hard limits of natural law, and that any striving, no matter how intense and earnest, which is against the constitution of the world, is vain. the question, then, which we must seriously consider is this: what is the real meaning of race; what has, in the past, been the law of race development, and what lessons has the past history of race development to teach the rising negro people? 	when we thus come to inquire into the essential difference of races we find it hard to come at once to any definite conclusion. many criteria of race differences have in the past been proposed, as color, hair, cranial measurements and language. and manifestly, in each of these respects, human beings differ widely. they vary in color, for instance, from the marble-like pallor of the scandinavian to the rich, dark brown of the zulu, passing by the creamy slav, the yellow chinese, the light brown sicilian and the brown egyptian. men vary, too, in the texture of hair from the obstinately straight hair of the chinese to the obstinately tufted and frizzled hair of the bushman. in measurement of heads, again, men vary; from the broad-headed tartar to the medium-headed european and the narrow-headed hottentot; or, again in language, from the highly- inflected roman tongue to the monosyllabic chinese. all these physical characteristics are patent enough, and if they agreed with each other it would be very easy to classify mankind. unfortunately for scientists, however, these criteria of race are most exasperatingly intermingled. color does not agree with texture of hair, for many of the dark races have straight hair; nor does color agree with the breadth of the head, for the yellow tartar has a broader head than the german; nor, again, has the science of language as yet succeeded in clearing up the relative authority of these various and contradictory criteria. the final word of science, so far, is that we have at least two, perhaps three, great families of human beings–the whites and negroes, possibly the yellow race. that other races have arisen from the intermingling of the blood of these two. this broad division of the world's races which men like huxley and raetzel have introduced as more nearly true than the old five-race scheme of blumenbach, is nothing more than an acknowledgment that, so far as purely physical characteristics are concerned, the differences between men do not explain all the differences of their history. it declares, as darwin himself said, that great as is the physical unlikeness of the various races of men their likenesses are greater, and upon this rests the whole scientific doctrine of human brotherhood. 	although the wonderful developments of human history teach that the grosser physical differences of color, hair and bone go but a short way toward explaining the different roles which groups of men have played in human progress, yet there are differences–subtle, delicate and elusive, though they may be– which have silently but definitely separated men into groups. while these subtle forces have generally followed the natural cleavage of common blood, descent and physical peculiarities, they have at other times swept across and ignored these. at all times, however, they have divided human beings into races, which, while they perhaps transcend scientific definition, nevertheless, are clearly defined to the eye of the historian and sociologist. 	if this be true, then the history of the world is the history, not of individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he who ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores and overrides the central thought of all history. what, then, is a race? it is a vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life. 	turning to real history, there can be no doubt, first, as to the widespread, nay, universal, prevalence of the race idea, the race spirit, the race ideal, and as to its efficiency as the vastest and most ingenious invention of human progress. we, who have been reared and trained under the individualistic philosophy of the declaration of independence and the laisser- faire philosophy of adam smith, are loath to see and loath to acknowledge this patent fact of human history. we see the pharaohs, caesars, toussaints and napoleons of history and forget the vast races of which they were but epitomized expressions. we are apt to think in our american impatience, that while it may have been true in the past that closed race groups made history, that here in conglomerate america nous avons changer tout cela–we have changed all that, and have no need of this ancient instrument of progress. this assumption of which the negro people are especially fond, can not be established by a careful consideration of history. 	we find upon the world's stage today eight distinctly differentiated races, in the sense in which history tells us the word must be used. they are, the slavs of eastern europe, the teutons of middle europe, the english of great britain and america, the romance nations of southern and western europe, the negroes of africa and america, the semitic people of western asia and northern africa, the hindoos of central asia and the mongolians of eastern asia. there are, of course, other minor race groups, as the american indians, the esquimaux and the south sea islanders; these larger races, too, are far from homogeneous; the slav includes the czech, the magyar, the pole and the russian; the teuton includes the german, the scandinavian and the dutch; the english include the scotch, the irish and the conglomerate american. under romance nations the widely-differing frenchman, italian, sicilian and spaniard are comprehended. the term negro is, perhaps, the most indefinite of all, combining the mulattoes and zamboes of america and the egyptians, bantus and bushmen of africa. among the hindoos are traces of widely differing nations, while the great chinese, tartar, corean and japanese families fall under the one designation–mongolian. 	the question now is: what is the real distinction between these nations? is it the physical differences of blood, color and cranial measurements? certainly we must all acknowledge that physical differences play a great part, and that, with wide exceptions and qualifications, these eight great races of to-day follow the cleavage of physical race distinctions; the english and teuton represent the white variety of mankind; the mongolian, the yellow; the negroes, the black. between these are many crosses and mixtures, where mongolian and teuton have blended into the slav, and other mixtures have produced the romance nations and the semites. but while race differences have followed mainly physical race lines, yet no mere physical distinctions would really define or explain the deeper differences–the cohesiveness and continuity of these groups. the deeper differences are spiritual, psychical, differences– undoubtedly based on the physical, but infinitely transcending them. the forces that bind together the teuton nations are, then, first, their race identity and common blood; secondly, and more important, a common history, common laws and religion, similar habits of thought and a conscious striving together for certain ideals of life. the whole process which has brought about these race differentiations has been a growth, and the great characteristic of this growth has been the differentiation of spiritual and mental differences between great races of mankind and the integration of physical differences. 	the age of nomadic tribes of closely related individuals represents the maximum of physical differences. they were practically vast families, and there were as many groups as families. as the families came together to form cities the physical differences lessened, purity of blood was replaced by the requirement of domicile, and all who lived within the city bounds became gradually to be regarded as members of the group; i.e., there was a slight and slow breaking down of physical barriers. this, however, was accompanied by an increase of the spiritual and social differences between cities. this city became husbandmen, this, merchants, another warriors, and so on. the ideals of life for which the different cities struggled were different. when at last cities began to coalesce into nations there was another breaking down of barriers which separated groups of men. the larger and broader differences of color, hair and physical proportions were not by any means ignored, but myriads of minor differences disappeared, and the sociological and historical races of men began to approximate the present division of races as indicated by physical researches. at the same time the spiritual and physical differences of race groups which constituted the nations became deep and decisive. the english nation stood for constitutional liberty and commercial freedom; the german nation for science and philosophy; the romance nations stood for literature and art, and the other race groups are striving, each in its own way, to develop for civilization its particular message, it particular ideal, which shall help to guide the world nearer and nearer that perfection of human life for which we all long, that "one far off divine event." 	this has been the function of race differences up to the present time. what shall be its function in the future? manifestly some of the great races of today–particularly the negro race–have not as yet given to civilization the full spiritual message which they are capable of giving. i will not say that the negro-race has yet given no message to the world, for it is still a mooted question among scientists as to just how far egyptian civilization was negro in its origin; if it was not wholly negro, it was certainly very closely allied. be that as it may, however, the fact still remains that the full, complete negro message of the whole negro race has not as yet been given to the world: that the messages and ideal of the yellow race have not been completed, and that the striving of the mighty slavs has but begun. the question is, then: how shall this message be delivered; how shall these various ideals be realized? the answer is plain: by the development of these race groups, not as individuals, but as races. for the development of japanese genius, japanese literature and art, japanese spirit, only japanese, bound and welded together, japanese inspired by one vast ideal, can work out in its fullness the wonderful message which japan has for the nations of the earth. for the development of negro genius, of negro literature and art, of negro spirit, only negroes bound and welded together, negroes inspired by one vast ideal, can work out in its fullness that great message we have for humanity. we cannot reverse history; we are subject to the same natural laws as other races, and if the negro is ever to be a factor in the world's history–if among the gaily-colored banners that deck the broad ramparts of civilizations is to hang one uncompromising black, then it must be placed there by black hands, fashioned by black heads and hallowed by the travail of , , black hearts beating in one glad song of jubilee. 	for this reason, the advance guard of the negro people–the , , people of negro blood in the united states of america– must soon come to realize that if they are to take their just place in the van of pan-negroism, then their destiny is not absorption by the white americans. that if in america it is to be proven for the first time in the modern world that not only negroes are capable of evolving individual men like toussaint, the saviour, but are a nation stored with wonderful possibilities of culture, then their destiny is not a servile imitation of anglo-saxon culture, but a stalwart originality which shall unswervingly follow negro ideals. 	it may, however, be objected here that the situation of our race in america renders this attitude impossible; that our sole hope of salvation lies in our being able to lose our race identity in the commingled blood of the nation; and that any other course would merely increase the friction of races which we call race prejudice, and against which we have so long and so earnestly fought. 	here, then, is the dilemma, and it is a puzzling one, i admit. no negro who has given earnest thought to the situation of his people in america has failed, at some time in life, to find himself at these cross-roads; has failed to ask himself at some time: what, after all, am i? am i an american or am i a negro? can i be both? or is it my duty to cease to be a negro as soon as possible and be an american? if i strive as a negro, am i not perpetuating the very cleft that threatens and separates black and white america? is not my only possible practical aim the subduction of all that is negro in me to the american? does my black blood place upon me any more obligation to assert my nationality than german, or irish or italian blood would? 	it is such incessant self-questioning and the hesitation that arises from it, that is making the present period a time of vacillation and contradiction for the american negro; combined race action is stifled, race responsibility is shirked, race enterprises languish, and the best blood, the best talent, the best energy of the negro people cannot be marshalled to do the bidding of the race. they stand back to make room for every rascal and demagogue who chooses to cloak his selfish deviltry under the veil of race pride. 	is this right? is it rational? is it good policy? have we in america a distinct mission as a race–a distinct sphere of action and an opportunity for race development, or is self- obliteration the highest end to which negro blood dare aspire? 	if we carefully consider what race prejudice really is, we find it, historically, to be nothing but the friction between different groups of people; it is the difference in aim, in feeling, in ideals of two different races; if, now, this difference exists touching territory, laws, language, or even religion, it is manifest that these people cannot live in the same territory without fatal collision; but if, on the other hand, there is substantial agreement in laws, language and religion; if there is a satisfactory adjustment of economic life, then there is no reason why, in the same country and on the same street, two or three great national ideals might not thrive and develop, that men of different races might not strive together for their race ideals as well, perhaps even better, than in isolation. here, it seems to me, is the reading of the riddle that puzzles so many of us. we are americans, not only by birth and by citizenship, but by our political ideals, our language, our religion. farther than that, our americanism does not go. at that point, we are negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its african fatherland. we are the first fruits of this new nation, the harbinger of that black to-morrow which is yet destined to soften the whiteness of the teutonic to-day. we are that people whose subtle sense of song has given america its only american music, its only american fairy tales, its only touch of pathos and humor amid its mad money-getting plutocracy. as such, it is our duty to conserve our physical powers, our intellectual endowments, our spiritual ideals; as a race we must strive by race organization, by race solidarity, by race unity to the realization of that broader humanity which freely recognizes differences in men, but sternly deprecates inequality in their opportunities of development. 	for the accomplishment of these ends we need race organizations: negro colleges, negro newspapers, negro business organizations, a negro school of literature and art, and an intellectual clearing house, for all these products of the negro mind, which we may call a negro academy. not only is all this necessary for positive advance, it is absolutely imperative for negative defense. let us not deceive ourselves at our situation in this country. weighted with a heritage of moral iniquity from our past history, hard pressed in the economic world by foreign immigrants and native prejudice, hated here, despised there and pitied everywhere; our one haven of refuge is ourselves, and but one means of advance, our own belief in our great destiny, our own implicit trust in our ability and worth. there is no power under god's high heaven that can stop the advance of eight thousand thousand honest, earnest, inspired and united people. but–and here is the rub–they must be honest, fearlessly criticising their own faults, zealously correcting them; they must be earnest. no people that laughs at itself, and ridicules itself, and wishes to god it was anything but itself ever wrote its name in history; it must be inspired with the divine faith of our black mothers, that out of the blood and dust of battle will march a victorious host, a mighty nation, a peculiar people, to speak to the nations of earth a divine truth that shall make them free. and such a people must be united; not merely united for the organized theft of political spoils, not united to disgrace religion with whoremongers and ward-heelers; not united merely to protest and pass resolutions, but united to stop the ravages of consumption among the negro people, united to keep black boys from loafing, gambling and crime; united to guard the purity of black women and to reduce the vast army of black prostitutes that is today marching to hell; and united in serious organizations, to determine by careful conference and thoughtful interchange of opinion the broad lines of policy and action for the american negro. 	this, is the reason for being which the american negro academy has. it aims at once to be the epitome and expression of the intellect of the black-blooded people of america, the exponent of the race ideals of one of the world's great races. as such, the academy must, if successful, be 	(a). representative in character. 	(b). impartial in conduct. 	(c). firm in leadership. 	it must be representative in character; not in that it represents all interests or all factions, but in that it seeks to comprise something of the best thought, the most unselfish striving and the highest ideals. there are scattered in forgotten nooks and corners throughout the land, negroes of some considerable training, of high minds, and high motives, who are unknown to their fellows, who exert far too little influence. these the negro academy should strive to bring into touch with each other and to give them a common mouthpiece. 	the academy should be impartial in conduct; while it aims to exalt the people it should aim to do so by truth–not by lies, by honesty–not by flattery. it should continually impress the fact upon the negro people that they must not expect to have things done for them–they must do for themselves; that they have on their hands a vast work of self-reformation to do, and that a little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving would do us more credit and benefit than a thousand force or civil rights bills. 	finally, the american negro academy must point out a practical path of advance to the negro people; there lie before every negro today hundreds of questions of policy and right which must be settled and which each one settles now, not in accordance with any rule, but by impulse or individual preference; for instance: what should be the attitude of negroes toward the educational qualification for voters? what should be our attitude toward separate schools? how should we meet discriminations on railways and in hotels? such questions need not so much specific answers for each part as a general expression of policy, and nobody should be better fitted to announce such a policy than a representative honest negro academy. 	all this, however, must come in time after careful organization and long conference. the immediate work before us should be practical and have direct bearing upon the situation of the negro. the historical work of collecting the laws of the united states and of the various states of the union with regard to the negro is a work of such magnitude and importance that no body but one like this could think of undertaking it. if we could accomplish that one task we would justify our existence. 	in the field of sociology an appalling work lies before us. first, we must unflinchingly and bravely face the truth, not with apologies, but with solemn earnestness. the negro academy ought to sound a note of warning that would echo in every black cabin in the land: unless we conquer our present vices they will conquer us; we are diseased, we are developing criminal tendencies, and an alarmingly large percentage of our men and women are sexually impure. the negro academy should stand and proclaim this over the housetops, crying with garrison: i will not equivocate, i will not retreat a single inch, and i will be heard. the academy should seek to gather about it the talented, unselfish men, the pure and noble-minded women, to fight an army of devils that disgraces our manhood and our womanhood. there does not stand today upon god's earth a race more capable in muscle, in intellect, in morals, than the american negro, if he will bend his energies in the right direction; if he will burst his birth's invidious bar and grasp the skirts of happy chance, and breast the blow of circumstance, and grapple with his evil star. 	in science and morals, i have indicated two fields of work for the academy. finally, in practical policy, i wish to suggest the following academy creed: .	we believe that the negro people, as a race, have a contribution to make to civilization and humanity, which no other race can make. .	we believe it the duty of the americans of negro descent, as a body, to maintain their race identity until this mission of the negro people is accomplished, and the ideal of human brotherhood has become a practical possibility. .	we believe that, unless modern civilization is a failure, it is entirely feasible and practicable for two races in such essential political, economic and religious harmony as the white and colored people in america, to develop side by side in peace and mutual happiness, the peculiar contribution which each has to make to the culture of their common country. .	as a means to this end we advocate, not such social equality between these races as would disregard human likes and dislikes, but such a social equilibrium as would, throughout all the complicated relations of life, give due and just consideration to culture, ability, and moral worth, whether they be found under white or black skins. .	we believe that the first and greatest step toward the settlement of the present friction between the races–commonly called the negro problem-lies in the correction of the immorality, crime and laziness among the negroes themselves, which still remains as a heritage from slavery. we believe that only earnest and long continued efforts on our own part can cure these social ills. .	we believe that the second great step toward a better adjustment of the relations between races, should be a more impartial selection of ability in the economic and intellectual world, and a greater respect for personal liberty and worth, regardless of race. we believe that only earnest efforts on the part of the white people of this country will bring much needed reform in these matters. .	on the basis of the foregoing declaration, and firmly believing in our high destiny, we, as american negroes, are resolved to strive in every honorable way for the realization of the best and highest aims, for the development of strong manhood and pure womanhood, and for the rearing of a race ideal in america and africa, to the glory of god and the uplifting of the negro people. w.e. burghardt du bois the wife of his youth and other stories of the color line, and selected essays charles w. chesnutt introduction charles waddell chesnutt ( - )--african-american educator, lawyer, and activist--was the most prominent black prose author of his day. in both his fiction and his essays, he addressed the thorny issues of the "color line" and racism in an outspoken way. despite the critical acclaim resulting from several works of fiction and non-fiction published between and , he was unable to make a living as an author. he kept writing, however, and several works which were not published during his lifetime have been rediscovered (and published) in recent years. he was awarded the springarn medal for distinguished literary achievement by the naacp in . the library at fayetteville state university, in north carolina, is named after him. the wife of his youth ( ) was chesnutt's second collection of short stories, drawing upon his mixed race heritage. these deal largely with race relations, the far-reaching effects of jim crow laws, and color prejudice among african americans toward darker-skinned blacks. eric j. sundquist wrote: "chesnutt's color-line stories, like his conjure tales, are at their best haunting, psychologically and philosophically astute studies of the nation's betrayal of the promise of racial equality and its descent into a brutal world of segregation. [he] made the family a means of delineating america's racial crisis, during slavery and afterward." for our pg edition, i have added three of chesnutt's essays on the "color line" in an appendix to this collection. suzanne shell, project gutenberg project manager contents the wife of his youth her virginia mammy the sheriff's children a matter of principle cicely's dream the passing of grandison uncle wellington's wives the bouquet the web of circumstance appendix three essays on the color line: what is a white man? ( ) the future american ( ) the disfranchisement of the negro ( ) the wife of his youth i mr. ryder was going to give a ball. there were several reasons why this was an opportune time for such an event. mr. ryder might aptly be called the dean of the blue veins. the original blue veins were a little society of colored persons organized in a certain northern city shortly after the war. its purpose was to establish and maintain correct social standards among a people whose social condition presented almost unlimited room for improvement. by accident, combined perhaps with some natural affinity, the society consisted of individuals who were, generally speaking, more white than black. some envious outsider made the suggestion that no one was eligible for membership who was not white enough to show blue veins. the suggestion was readily adopted by those who were not of the favored few, and since that time the society, though possessing a longer and more pretentious name, had been known far and wide as the "blue vein society," and its members as the "blue veins." the blue veins did not allow that any such requirement existed for admission to their circle, but, on the contrary, declared that character and culture were the only things considered; and that if most of their members were light-colored, it was because such persons, as a rule, had had better opportunities to qualify themselves for membership. opinions differed, too, as to the usefulness of the society. there were those who had been known to assail it violently as a glaring example of the very prejudice from which the colored race had suffered most; and later, when such critics had succeeded in getting on the inside, they had been heard to maintain with zeal and earnestness that the society was a lifeboat, an anchor, a bulwark and a shield,--a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, to guide their people through the social wilderness. another alleged prerequisite for blue vein membership was that of free birth; and while there was really no such requirement, it is doubtless true that very few of the members would have been unable to meet it if there had been. if there were one or two of the older members who had come up from the south and from slavery, their history presented enough romantic circumstances to rob their servile origin of its grosser aspects. while there were no such tests of eligibility, it is true that the blue veins had their notions on these subjects, and that not all of them were equally liberal in regard to the things they collectively disclaimed. mr. ryder was one of the most conservative. though he had not been among the founders of the society, but had come in some years later, his genius for social leadership was such that he had speedily become its recognized adviser and head, the custodian of its standards, and the preserver of its traditions. he shaped its social policy, was active in providing for its entertainment, and when the interest fell off, as it sometimes did, he fanned the embers until they burst again into a cheerful flame. there were still other reasons for his popularity. while he was not as white as some of the blue veins, his appearance was such as to confer distinction upon them. his features were of a refined type, his hair was almost straight; he was always neatly dressed; his manners were irreproachable, and his morals above suspicion. he had come to groveland a young man, and obtaining employment in the office of a railroad company as messenger had in time worked himself up to the position of stationery clerk, having charge of the distribution of the office supplies for the whole company. although the lack of early training had hindered the orderly development of a naturally fine mind, it had not prevented him from doing a great deal of reading or from forming decidedly literary tastes. poetry was his passion. he could repeat whole pages of the great english poets; and if his pronunciation was sometimes faulty, his eye, his voice, his gestures, would respond to the changing sentiment with a precision that revealed a poetic soul and disarmed criticism. he was economical, and had saved money; he owned and occupied a very comfortable house on a respectable street. his residence was handsomely furnished, containing among other things a good library, especially rich in poetry, a piano, and some choice engravings. he generally shared his house with some young couple, who looked after his wants and were company for him; for mr. ryder was a single man. in the early days of his connection with the blue veins he had been regarded as quite a catch, and young ladies and their mothers had manoeuvred with much ingenuity to capture him. not, however, until mrs. molly dixon visited groveland had any woman ever made him wish to change his condition to that of a married man. mrs. dixon had come to groveland from washington in the spring, and before the summer was over she had won mr. ryder's heart. she possessed many attractive qualities. she was much younger than he; in fact, he was old enough to have been her father, though no one knew exactly how old he was. she was whiter than he, and better educated. she had moved in the best colored society of the country, at washington, and had taught in the schools of that city. such a superior person had been eagerly welcomed to the blue vein society, and had taken a leading part in its activities. mr. ryder had at first been attracted by her charms of person, for she was very good looking and not over twenty-five; then by her refined manners and the vivacity of her wit. her husband had been a government clerk, and at his death had left a considerable life insurance. she was visiting friends in groveland, and, finding the town and the people to her liking, had prolonged her stay indefinitely. she had not seemed displeased at mr. ryder's attentions, but on the contrary had given him every proper encouragement; indeed, a younger and less cautious man would long since have spoken. but he had made up his mind, and had only to determine the time when he would ask her to be his wife. he decided to give a ball in her honor, and at some time during the evening of the ball to offer her his heart and hand. he had no special fears about the outcome, but, with a little touch of romance, he wanted the surroundings to be in harmony with his own feelings when he should have received the answer he expected. mr. ryder resolved that this ball should mark an epoch in the social history of groveland. he knew, of course,--no one could know better,--the entertainments that had taken place in past years, and what must be done to surpass them. his ball must be worthy of the lady in whose honor it was to be given, and must, by the quality of its guests, set an example for the future. he had observed of late a growing liberality, almost a laxity, in social matters, even among members of his own set, and had several times been forced to meet in a social way persons whose complexions and callings in life were hardly up to the standard which he considered proper for the society to maintain. he had a theory of his own. "i have no race prejudice," he would say, "but we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the nether millstone. our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black. the one does n't want us yet, but may take us in time. the other would welcome us, but it would be for us a backward step. 'with malice towards none, with charity for all,' we must do the best we can for ourselves and those who are to follow us. self-preservation is the first law of nature." his ball would serve by its exclusiveness to counteract leveling tendencies, and his marriage with mrs. dixon would help to further the upward process of absorption he had been wishing and waiting for. ii the ball was to take place on friday night. the house had been put in order, the carpets covered with canvas, the halls and stairs decorated with palms and potted plants; and in the afternoon mr. ryder sat on his front porch, which the shade of a vine running up over a wire netting made a cool and pleasant lounging place. he expected to respond to the toast "the ladies" at the supper, and from a volume of tennyson--his favorite poet--was fortifying himself with apt quotations. the volume was open at "a dream of fair women." his eyes fell on these lines, and he read them aloud to judge better of their effect:---- "at length i saw a lady within call, stiller than chisell'd marble, standing there; a daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely fair." he marked the verse, and turning the page read the stanza beginning,---- "o sweet pale margaret, o rare pale margaret." he weighed the passage a moment, and decided that it would not do. mrs. dixon was the palest lady he expected at the ball, and she was of a rather ruddy complexion, and of lively disposition and buxom build. so he ran over the leaves until his eye rested on the description of queen guinevere:---- "she seem'd a part of joyous spring; a gown of grass-green silk she wore, buckled with golden clasps before; a light-green tuft of plumes she bore closed in a golden ring. * * * * * "she look'd so lovely, as she sway'd the rein with dainty finger-tips, a man had given all other bliss, and all his worldly worth for this, to waste his whole heart in one kiss upon her perfect lips." as mr. ryder murmured these words audibly, with an appreciative thrill, he heard the latch of his gate click, and a light footfall sounding on the steps. he turned his head, and saw a woman standing before his door. she was a little woman, not five feet tall, and proportioned to her height. although she stood erect, and looked around her with very bright and restless eyes, she seemed quite old; for her face was crossed and recrossed with a hundred wrinkles, and around the edges of her bonnet could be seen protruding here and there a tuft of short gray wool. she wore a blue calico gown of ancient cut, a little red shawl fastened around her shoulders with an old-fashioned brass brooch, and a large bonnet profusely ornamented with faded red and yellow artificial flowers. and she was very black,--so black that her toothless gums, revealed when she opened her mouth to speak, were not red, but blue. she looked like a bit of the old plantation life, summoned up from the past by the wave of a magician's wand, as the poet's fancy had called into being the gracious shapes of which mr. ryder had just been reading. he rose from his chair and came over to where she stood. "good-afternoon, madam," he said. "good-evenin', suh," she answered, ducking suddenly with a quaint curtsy. her voice was shrill and piping, but softened somewhat by age. "is dis yere whar mistuh ryduh lib, suh?" she asked, looking around her doubtfully, and glancing into the open windows, through which some of the preparations for the evening were visible. "yes," he replied, with an air of kindly patronage, unconsciously flattered by her manner, "i am mr. ryder. did you want to see me?" "yas, suh, ef i ain't 'sturbin' of you too much." "not at all. have a seat over here behind the vine, where it is cool. what can i do for you?" "'scuse me, suh," she continued, when she had sat down on the edge of a chair, "'scuse me, suh, i 's lookin' for my husban'. i heerd you wuz a big man an' had libbed heah a long time, an' i 'lowed you would n't min' ef i 'd come roun' an' ax you ef you 'd ever heerd of a merlatter man by de name er sam taylor 'quirin' roun' in de chu'ches ermongs' de people fer his wife 'liza jane?" mr. ryder seemed to think for a moment. "there used to be many such cases right after the war," he said, "but it has been so long that i have forgotten them. there are very few now. but tell me your story, and it may refresh my memory." she sat back farther in her chair so as to be more comfortable, and folded her withered hands in her lap. "my name 's 'liza," she began, "'liza jane. w'en i wuz young i us'ter b'long ter marse bob smif, down in ole missoura. i wuz bawn down dere. wen i wuz a gal i wuz married ter a man named jim. but jim died, an' after dat i married a merlatter man named sam taylor. sam wuz free-bawn, but his mammy and daddy died, an' de w'ite folks 'prenticed him ter my marster fer ter work fer 'im 'tel he wuz growed up. sam worked in de fiel', an' i wuz de cook. one day ma'y ann, ole miss's maid, came rushin' out ter de kitchen, an' says she, ''liza jane, ole marse gwine sell yo' sam down de ribber.' "'go way f'm yere,' says i; 'my husban' 's free!' "'don' make no diff'ence. i heerd ole marse tell ole miss he wuz gwine take yo' sam 'way wid 'im ter-morrow, fer he needed money, an' he knowed whar he could git a t'ousan' dollars fer sam an' no questions axed.' "w'en sam come home f'm de fiel' dat night, i tole him 'bout ole marse gwine steal 'im, an' sam run erway. his time wuz mos' up, an' he swo' dat w'en he wuz twenty-one he would come back an' he'p me run erway, er else save up de money ter buy my freedom. an' i know he 'd 'a' done it, fer he thought a heap er me, sam did. but w'en he come back he didn' fin' me, fer i wuzn' dere. ole marse had heerd dat i warned sam, so he had me whip' an' sol' down de ribber. "den de wah broke out, an' w'en it wuz ober de cullud folks wuz scattered. i went back ter de ole home; but sam wuzn' dere, an' i could n' l'arn nuffin' 'bout 'im. but i knowed he 'd be'n dere to look fer me an' had n' foun' me, an' had gone erway ter hunt fer me. "i 's be'n lookin' fer 'im eber sence," she added simply, as though twenty-five years were but a couple of weeks, "an' i knows he 's be'n lookin' fer me. fer he sot a heap er sto' by me, sam did, an' i know he 's be'n huntin' fer me all dese years,--'less'n he 's be'n sick er sump'n, so he could n' work, er out'n his head, so he could n' 'member his promise. i went back down de ribber, fer i 'lowed he 'd gone down dere lookin' fer me. i 's be'n ter noo orleens, an' atlanty, an' charleston, an' richmon'; an' w'en i 'd be'n all ober de souf i come ter de norf. fer i knows i 'll fin' 'im some er dese days," she added softly, "er he 'll fin' me, an' den we 'll bofe be as happy in freedom as we wuz in de ole days befo' de wah." a smile stole over her withered countenance as she paused a moment, and her bright eyes softened into a far-away look. this was the substance of the old woman's story. she had wandered a little here and there. mr. ryder was looking at her curiously when she finished. "how have you lived all these years?" he asked. "cookin', suh. i 's a good cook. does you know anybody w'at needs a good cook, suh? i 's stoppin' wid a cullud fam'ly roun' de corner yonder 'tel i kin git a place." "do you really expect to find your husband? he may be dead long ago." she shook her head emphatically. "oh no, he ain' dead. de signs an' de tokens tells me. i dremp three nights runnin' on'y dis las' week dat i foun' him." "he may have married another woman. your slave marriage would not have prevented him, for you never lived with him after the war, and without that your marriage does n't count." "would n' make no diff'ence wid sam. he would n' marry no yuther 'ooman 'tel he foun' out 'bout me. i knows it," she added. "sump'n 's be'n tellin' me all dese years dat i 's gwine fin' sam 'fo' i dies." "perhaps he 's outgrown you, and climbed up in the world where he would n't care to have you find him." "no, indeed, suh," she replied, "sam ain' dat kin' er man. he wuz good ter me, sam wuz, but he wuz n' much good ter nobody e'se, fer he wuz one er de triflin'es' han's on de plantation. i 'spec's ter haf ter suppo't 'im w'en i fin' 'im, fer he nebber would work 'less'n he had ter. but den he wuz free, an' he did n' git no pay fer his work, an' i don' blame 'im much. mebbe he 's done better sence he run erway, but i ain' 'spectin' much." "you may have passed him on the street a hundred times during the twenty-five years, and not have known him; time works great changes." she smiled incredulously. "i 'd know 'im 'mongs' a hund'ed men. fer dey wuz n' no yuther merlatter man like my man sam, an' i could n' be mistook. i 's toted his picture roun' wid me twenty-five years." "may i see it?" asked mr. ryder. "it might help me to remember whether i have seen the original." as she drew a small parcel from her bosom he saw that it was fastened to a string that went around her neck. removing several wrappers, she brought to light an old-fashioned daguerreotype in a black case. he looked long and intently at the portrait. it was faded with time, but the features were still distinct, and it was easy to see what manner of man it had represented. he closed the case, and with a slow movement handed it back to her. "i don't know of any man in town who goes by that name," he said, "nor have i heard of any one making such inquiries. but if you will leave me your address, i will give the matter some attention, and if i find out anything i will let you know." she gave him the number of a house in the neighborhood, and went away, after thanking him warmly. he wrote the address on the fly-leaf of the volume of tennyson, and, when she had gone, rose to his feet and stood looking after her curiously. as she walked down the street with mincing step, he saw several persons whom she passed turn and look back at her with a smile of kindly amusement. when she had turned the corner, he went upstairs to his bedroom, and stood for a long time before the mirror of his dressing-case, gazing thoughtfully at the reflection of his own face. iii at eight o'clock the ballroom was a blaze of light and the guests had begun to assemble; for there was a literary programme and some routine business of the society to be gone through with before the dancing. a black servant in evening dress waited at the door and directed the guests to the dressing-rooms. the occasion was long memorable among the colored people of the city; not alone for the dress and display, but for the high average of intelligence and culture that distinguished the gathering as a whole. there were a number of school-teachers, several young doctors, three or four lawyers, some professional singers, an editor, a lieutenant in the united states army spending his furlough in the city, and others in various polite callings; these were colored, though most of them would not have attracted even a casual glance because of any marked difference from white people. most of the ladies were in evening costume, and dress coats and dancing pumps were the rule among the men. a band of string music, stationed in an alcove behind a row of palms, played popular airs while the guests were gathering. the dancing began at half past nine. at eleven o'clock supper was served. mr. ryder had left the ballroom some little time before the intermission, but reappeared at the supper-table. the spread was worthy of the occasion, and the guests did full justice to it. when the coffee had been served, the toast-master, mr. solomon sadler, rapped for order. he made a brief introductory speech, complimenting host and guests, and then presented in their order the toasts of the evening. they were responded to with a very fair display of after-dinner wit. "the last toast," said the toast-master, when he reached the end of the list, "is one which must appeal to us all. there is no one of us of the sterner sex who is not at some time dependent upon woman,--in infancy for protection, in manhood for companionship, in old age for care and comforting. our good host has been trying to live alone, but the fair faces i see around me to-night prove that he too is largely dependent upon the gentler sex for most that makes life worth living,--the society and love of friends,--and rumor is at fault if he does not soon yield entire subjection to one of them. mr. ryder will now respond to the toast,--the ladies." there was a pensive look in mr. ryder's eyes as he took the floor and adjusted his eyeglasses. he began by speaking of woman as the gift of heaven to man, and after some general observations on the relations of the sexes he said: "but perhaps the quality which most distinguishes woman is her fidelity and devotion to those she loves. history is full of examples, but has recorded none more striking than one which only to-day came under my notice." he then related, simply but effectively, the story told by his visitor of the afternoon. he gave it in the same soft dialect, which came readily to his lips, while the company listened attentively and sympathetically. for the story had awakened a responsive thrill in many hearts. there were some present who had seen, and others who had heard their fathers and grandfathers tell, the wrongs and sufferings of this past generation, and all of them still felt, in their darker moments, the shadow hanging over them. mr. ryder went on:---- "such devotion and confidence are rare even among women. there are many who would have searched a year, some who would have waited five years, a few who might have hoped ten years; but for twenty-five years this woman has retained her affection for and her faith in a man she has not seen or heard of in all that time. "she came to me to-day in the hope that i might be able to help her find this long-lost husband. and when she was gone i gave my fancy rein, and imagined a case i will put to you. "suppose that this husband, soon after his escape, had learned that his wife had been sold away, and that such inquiries as he could make brought no information of her whereabouts. suppose that he was young, and she much older than he; that he was light, and she was black; that their marriage was a slave marriage, and legally binding only if they chose to make it so after the war. suppose, too, that he made his way to the north, as some of us have done, and there, where he had larger opportunities, had improved them, and had in the course of all these years grown to be as different from the ignorant boy who ran away from fear of slavery as the day is from the night. suppose, even, that he had qualified himself, by industry, by thrift, and by study, to win the friendship and be considered worthy the society of such people as these i see around me to-night, gracing my board and filling my heart with gladness; for i am old enough to remember the day when such a gathering would not have been possible in this land. suppose, too, that, as the years went by, this man's memory of the past grew more and more indistinct, until at last it was rarely, except in his dreams, that any image of this bygone period rose before his mind. and then suppose that accident should bring to his knowledge the fact that the wife of his youth, the wife he had left behind him,--not one who had walked by his side and kept pace with him in his upward struggle, but one upon whom advancing years and a laborious life had set their mark,--was alive and seeking him, but that he was absolutely safe from recognition or discovery, unless he chose to reveal himself. my friends, what would the man do? i will presume that he was one who loved honor, and tried to deal justly with all men. i will even carry the case further, and suppose that perhaps he had set his heart upon another, whom he had hoped to call his own. what would he do, or rather what ought he to do, in such a crisis of a lifetime? "it seemed to me that he might hesitate, and i imagined that i was an old friend, a near friend, and that he had come to me for advice; and i argued the case with him. i tried to discuss it impartially. after we had looked upon the matter from every point of view, i said to him, in words that we all know:---- "'this above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.' "then, finally, i put the question to him, 'shall you acknowledge her?' "and now, ladies and gentlemen, friends and companions, i ask you, what should he have done?" there was something in mr. ryder's voice that stirred the hearts of those who sat around him. it suggested more than mere sympathy with an imaginary situation; it seemed rather in the nature of a personal appeal. it was observed, too, that his look rested more especially upon mrs. dixon, with a mingled expression of renunciation and inquiry. she had listened, with parted lips and streaming eyes. she was the first to speak: "he should have acknowledged her." "yes," they all echoed, "he should have acknowledged her." "my friends and companions," responded mr. ryder, "i thank you, one and all. it is the answer i expected, for i knew your hearts." he turned and walked toward the closed door of an adjoining room, while every eye followed him in wondering curiosity. he came back in a moment, leading by the hand his visitor of the afternoon, who stood startled and trembling at the sudden plunge into this scene of brilliant gayety. she was neatly dressed in gray, and wore the white cap of an elderly woman. "ladies and gentlemen," he said, "this is the woman, and i am the man, whose story i have told you. permit me to introduce to you the wife of my youth." her virginia mammy i the pianist had struck up a lively two-step, and soon the floor was covered with couples, each turning on its own axis, and all revolving around a common centre, in obedience perhaps to the same law of motion that governs the planetary systems. the dancing-hall was a long room, with a waxed floor that glistened with the reflection of the lights from the chandeliers. the walls were hung in paper of blue and white, above a varnished hard wood wainscoting; the monotony of surface being broken by numerous windows draped with curtains of dotted muslin, and by occasional engravings and colored pictures representing the dances of various nations, judiciously selected. the rows of chairs along the two sides of the room were left unoccupied by the time the music was well under way, for the pianist, a tall colored woman with long fingers and a muscular wrist, played with a verve and a swing that set the feet of the listeners involuntarily in motion. the dance was sure to occupy the class for a quarter of an hour at least, and the little dancing-mistress took the opportunity to slip away to her own sitting-room, which was on the same floor of the block, for a few minutes of rest. her day had been a hard one. there had been a matinee at two o'clock, a children's class at four, and at eight o'clock the class now on the floor had assembled. when she reached the sitting-room she gave a start of pleasure. a young man rose at her entrance, and advanced with both hands extended--a tall, broad-shouldered, fair-haired young man, with a frank and kindly countenance, now lit up with the animation of pleasure. he seemed about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. his face was of the type one instinctively associates with intellect and character, and it gave the impression, besides, of that intangible something which we call race. he was neatly and carefully dressed, though his clothing was not without indications that he found it necessary or expedient to practice economy. "good-evening, clara," he said, taking her hands in his; "i 've been waiting for you five minutes. i supposed you would be in, but if you had been a moment later i was going to the hall to look you up. you seem tired to-night," he added, drawing her nearer to him and scanning her features at short range. "this work is too hard; you are not fitted for it. when are you going to give it up?" "the season is almost over," she answered, "and then i shall stop for the summer." he drew her closer still and kissed her lovingly. "tell me, clara," he said, looking down into her face,--he was at least a foot taller than she,--"when i am to have my answer." "will you take the answer you can get to-night?" she asked with a wan smile. "i will take but one answer, clara. but do not make me wait too long for that. why, just think of it! i have known you for six months." "that is an extremely long time," said clara, as they sat down side by side. "it has been an age," he rejoined. "for a fortnight of it, too, which seems longer than all the rest, i have been waiting for my answer. i am turning gray under the suspense. seriously, clara dear, what shall it be? or rather, when shall it be? for to the other question there is but one answer possible." he looked into her eyes, which slowly filled with tears. she repulsed him gently as he bent over to kiss them away. "you know i love you, john, and why i do not say what you wish. you must give me a little more time to make up my mind before i can consent to burden you with a nameless wife, one who does not know who her mother was"---- "she was a good woman, and beautiful, if you are at all like her." "or her father"---- "he was a gentleman and a scholar, if you inherited from him your mind or your manners." "it is good of you to say that, and i try to believe it. but it is a serious matter; it is a dreadful thing to have no name." "you are known by a worthy one, which was freely given you, and is legally yours." "i know--and i am grateful for it. after all, though, it is not my real name; and since i have learned that it was not, it seems like a garment--something external, accessory, and not a part of myself. it does not mean what one's own name would signify." "take mine, clara, and make it yours; i lay it at your feet. some honored men have borne it." "ah yes, and that is what makes my position the harder. your great-grandfather was governor of connecticut." "i have heard my mother say so." "and one of your ancestors came over in the mayflower." "in some capacity--i have never been quite clear whether as ship's cook or before the mast." "now you are insincere, john; but you cannot deceive me. you never spoke in that way about your ancestors until you learned that i had none. i know you are proud of them, and that the memory of the governor and the judge and the harvard professor and the mayflower pilgrim makes you strive to excel, in order to prove yourself worthy of them." "it did until i met you, clara. now the one inspiration of my life is the hope to make you mine." "and your profession?" "it will furnish me the means to take you out of this; you are not fit for toil." "and your book--your treatise that is to make you famous?" "i have worked twice as hard on it and accomplished twice as much since i have hoped that you might share my success." "oh! if i but knew the truth!" she sighed, "or could find it out! i realize that i am absurd, that i ought to be happy. i love my parents--my foster-parents--dearly. i owe them everything. mother--poor, dear mother!--could not have loved me better or cared for me more faithfully had i been her own child. yet--i am ashamed to say it--i always felt that i was not like them, that there was a subtle difference between us. they were contented in prosperity, resigned in misfortune; i was ever restless, and filled with vague ambitions. they were good, but dull. they loved me, but they never said so. i feel that there is warmer, richer blood coursing in my veins than the placid stream that crept through theirs." "there will never be any such people to me as they were," said her lover, "for they took you and brought you up for me." "sometimes," she went on dreamily, "i feel sure that i am of good family, and the blood of my ancestors seems to call to me in clear and certain tones. then again when my mood changes, i am all at sea--i feel that even if i had but simply to turn my hand to learn who i am and whence i came, i should shrink from taking the step, for fear that what i might learn would leave me forever unhappy." "dearest," he said, taking her in his arms, while from the hall and down the corridor came the softened strains of music, "put aside these unwholesome fancies. your past is shrouded in mystery. take my name, as you have taken my love, and i 'll make your future so happy that you won't have time to think of the past. what are a lot of musty, mouldy old grandfathers, compared with life and love and happiness? it 's hardly good form to mention one's ancestors nowadays, and what 's the use of them at all if one can't boast of them?" "it 's all very well of you to talk that way," she rejoined. "but suppose you should marry me, and when you become famous and rich, and patients flock to your office, and fashionable people to your home, and every one wants to know who you are and whence you came, you 'll be obliged to bring out the governor, and the judge, and the rest of them. if you should refrain, in order to forestall embarrassing inquiries about _my_ ancestry, i should have deprived you of something you are entitled to, something which has a real social value. and when people found out all about you, as they eventually would from some source, they would want to know--we americans are a curious people--who your wife was, and you could only say"---- "the best and sweetest woman on earth, whom i love unspeakably." "you know that is not what i mean. you could only say--a miss nobody, from nowhere." "a miss hohlfelder, from cincinnati, the only child of worthy german parents, who fled from their own country in ' to escape political persecution--an ancestry that one surely need not be ashamed of." "no; but the consciousness that it was not true would be always with me, poisoning my mind, and darkening my life and yours." "your views of life are entirely too tragic, clara," the young man argued soothingly. "we are all worms of the dust, and if we go back far enough, each of us has had millions of ancestors; peasants and serfs, most of them; thieves, murderers, and vagabonds, many of them, no doubt; and therefore the best of us have but little to boast of. yet we are all made after god's own image, and formed by his hand, for his ends; and therefore not to be lightly despised, even the humblest of us, least of all by ourselves. for the past we can claim no credit, for those who made it died with it. our destiny lies in the future." "yes," she sighed, "i know all that. but i am not like you. a woman is not like a man; she cannot lose herself in theories and generalizations. and there are tests that even all your philosophy could not endure. suppose you should marry me, and then some time, by the merest accident, you should learn that my origin was the worst it could be--that i not only had no name, but was not entitled to one." "i cannot believe it," he said, "and from what we do know of your history it is hardly possible. if i learned it, i should forget it, unless, perchance, it should enhance your value in my eyes, by stamping you as a rare work of nature, an exception to the law of heredity, a triumph of pure beauty and goodness over the grosser limitations of matter. i cannot imagine, now that i know you, anything that could make me love you less. i would marry you just the same--even if you were one of your dancing-class to-night." "i must go back to them," said clara, as the music ceased. "my answer," he urged, "give me my answer!" "not to-night, john," she pleaded. "grant me a little longer time to make up my mind--for your sake." "not for my sake, clara, no." "well--for mine." she let him take her in his arms and kiss her again. "i have a patient yet to see to-night," he said as he went out. "if i am not detained too long, i may come back this way--if i see the lights in the hall still burning. do not wonder if i ask you again for my answer, for i shall be unhappy until i get it." ii a stranger entering the hall with miss hohlfelder would have seen, at first glance, only a company of well-dressed people, with nothing to specially distinguish them from ordinary humanity in temperate climates. after the eye had rested for a moment and begun to separate the mass into its component parts, one or two dark faces would have arrested its attention; and with the suggestion thus offered, a closer inspection would have revealed that they were nearly all a little less than white. with most of them this fact would not have been noticed, while they were alone or in company with one another, though if a fair white person had gone among them it would perhaps have been more apparent. from the few who were undistinguishable from pure white, the colors ran down the scale by minute gradations to the two or three brown faces at the other extremity. it was miss hohlfelder's first colored class. she had been somewhat startled when first asked to take it. no person of color had ever applied to her for lessons; and while a woman of that race had played the piano for her for several months, she had never thought of colored people as possible pupils. so when she was asked if she would take a class of twenty or thirty, she had hesitated, and begged for time to consider the application. she knew that several of the more fashionable dancing-schools tabooed all pupils, singly or in classes, who labored under social disabilities--and this included the people of at least one other race who were vastly farther along in the world than the colored people of the community where miss hohlfelder lived. personally she had no such prejudice, except perhaps a little shrinking at the thought of personal contact with the dark faces of whom americans always think when "colored people" are spoken of. again, a class of forty pupils was not to be despised, for she taught for money, which was equally current and desirable, regardless of its color. she had consulted her foster-parents, and after them her lover. her foster-parents, who were german-born, and had never become thoroughly americanized, saw no objection. as for her lover, he was indifferent. "do as you please," he said. "it may drive away some other pupils. if it should break up the business entirely, perhaps you might be willing to give me a chance so much the sooner." she mentioned the matter to one or two other friends, who expressed conflicting opinions. she decided at length to take the class, and take the consequences. "i don't think it would be either right or kind to refuse them for any such reason, and i don't believe i shall lose anything by it." she was somewhat surprised, and pleasantly so, when her class came together for their first lesson, at not finding them darker and more uncouth. her pupils were mostly people whom she would have passed on the street without a second glance, and among them were several whom she had known by sight for years, but had never dreamed of as being colored people. their manners were good, they dressed quietly and as a rule with good taste, avoiding rather than choosing bright colors and striking combinations--whether from natural preference, or because of a slightly morbid shrinking from criticism, of course she could not say. among them, the dancing-mistress soon learned, there were lawyers and doctors, teachers, telegraph operators, clerks, milliners and dressmakers, students of the local college and scientific school, and, somewhat to her awe at the first meeting, even a member of the legislature. they were mostly young, although a few light-hearted older people joined the class, as much for company as for the dancing. "of course, miss hohlfelder," explained mr. solomon sadler, to whom the teacher had paid a compliment on the quality of the class, "the more advanced of us are not numerous enough to make the fine distinctions that are possible among white people; and of course as we rise in life we can't get entirely away from our brothers and our sisters and our cousins, who don't always keep abreast of us. we do, however, draw certain lines of character and manners and occupation. you see the sort of people we are. of course we have no prejudice against color, and we regard all labor as honorable, provided a man does the best he can. but we must have standards that will give our people something to aspire to." the class was not a difficult one, as many of the members were already fairly good dancers. indeed the class had been formed as much for pleasure as for instruction. music and hall rent and a knowledge of the latest dances could be obtained cheaper in this way than in any other. the pupils had made rapid progress, displaying in fact a natural aptitude for rhythmic motion, and a keen susceptibility to musical sounds. as their race had never been criticised for these characteristics, they gave them full play, and soon developed, most of them, into graceful and indefatigable dancers. they were now almost at the end of their course, and this was the evening of the last lesson but one. miss hohlfelder had remarked to her lover more than once that it was a pleasure to teach them. "they enter into the spirit of it so thoroughly, and they seem to enjoy themselves so much." "one would think," he suggested, "that the whitest of them would find their position painful and more or less pathetic; to be so white and yet to be classed as black--so near and yet so far." "they don't accept our classification blindly. they do not acknowledge any inferiority; they think they are a great deal better than any but the best white people," replied miss hohlfelder. "and since they have been coming here, do you know," she went on, "i hardly think of them as any different from other people. i feel perfectly at home among them." "it is a great thing to have faith in one's self," he replied. "it is a fine thing, too, to be able to enjoy the passing moment. one of your greatest charms in my eyes, clara, is that in your lighter moods you have this faculty. you sing because you love to sing. you find pleasure in dancing, even by way of work. you feel the _joie de vivre_--the joy of living. you are not always so, but when you are so i think you most delightful." miss hohlfelder, upon entering the hall, spoke to the pianist and then exchanged a few words with various members of the class. the pianist began to play a dreamy strauss waltz. when the dance was well under way miss hohlfelder left the hall again and stepped into the ladies' dressing-room. there was a woman seated quietly on a couch in a corner, her hands folded on her lap. "good-evening, miss hohlfelder. you do not seem as bright as usual to-night." miss hohlfelder felt a sudden yearning for sympathy. perhaps it was the gentle tones of the greeting; perhaps the kindly expression of the soft though faded eyes that were scanning miss hohlfelder's features. the woman was of the indefinite age between forty and fifty. there were lines on her face which, if due to years, might have carried her even past the half-century mark, but if caused by trouble or ill health might leave her somewhat below it. she was quietly dressed in black, and wore her slightly wavy hair low over her ears, where it lay naturally in the ripples which some others of her sex so sedulously seek by art. a little woman, of clear olive complexion and regular features, her face was almost a perfect oval, except as time had marred its outline. she had been in the habit of coming to the class with some young women of the family she lived with, part boarder, part seamstress and friend of the family. sometimes, while waiting for her young charges, the music would jar her nerves, and she would seek the comparative quiet of the dressing-room. "oh, i 'm all right, mrs. harper," replied the dancing-mistress, with a brave attempt at cheerfulness,--"just a little tired, after a hard day's work." she sat down on the couch by the elder woman's side. mrs. harper took her hand and stroked it gently, and clara felt soothed and quieted by her touch. "there are tears in your eyes and trouble in your face. i know it, for i have shed the one and known the other. tell me, child, what ails you? i am older than you, and perhaps i have learned some things in the hard school of life that may be of comfort or service to you." such a request, coming from a comparative stranger, might very properly have been resented or lightly parried. but clara was not what would be called self-contained. her griefs seemed lighter when they were shared with others, even in spirit. there was in her nature a childish strain that craved sympathy and comforting. she had never known--or if so it was only in a dim and dreamlike past--the tender, brooding care that was her conception of a mother's love. mrs. hohlfelder had been fond of her in a placid way, and had given her every comfort and luxury her means permitted. clara's ideal of maternal love had been of another and more romantic type; she had thought of a fond, impulsive mother, to whose bosom she could fly when in trouble or distress, and to whom she could communicate her sorrows and trials; who would dry her tears and soothe her with caresses. now, when even her kind foster-mother was gone, she felt still more the need of sympathy and companionship with her own sex; and when this little mrs. harper spoke to her so gently, she felt her heart respond instinctively. "yes, mrs. harper," replied clara with a sigh, "i am in trouble, but it is trouble that you nor any one else can heal." "you do not know, child. a simple remedy can sometimes cure a very grave complaint. tell me your trouble, if it is something you are at liberty to tell." "i have a story," said clara, "and it is a strange one,--a story i have told to but one other person, one very dear to me." "he must be dear to you indeed, from the tone in which you speak of him. your very accents breathe love." "yes, i love him, and if you saw him--perhaps you have seen him, for he has looked in here once or twice during the dancing-lessons--you would know why i love him. he is handsome, he is learned, he is ambitious, he is brave, he is good; he is poor, but he will not always be so; and he loves me, oh, so much!" the other woman smiled. "it is not so strange to love, nor yet to be loved. and all lovers are handsome and brave and fond." "that is not all of my story. he wants to marry me." clara paused, as if to let this statement impress itself upon the other. "true lovers always do," said the elder woman. "but sometimes, you know, there are circumstances which prevent them." "ah yes," murmured the other reflectively, and looking at the girl with deeper interest, "circumstances which prevent them. i have known of such a case." "the circumstance which prevents us from marrying is my story." "tell me your story, child, and perhaps, if i cannot help you otherwise, i can tell you one that will make yours seem less sad." "you know me," said the young woman, "as miss hohlfelder; but that is not actually my name. in fact i do not know my real name, for i am not the daughter of mr. and mrs. hohlfelder, but only an adopted child. while mrs. hohlfelder lived, i never knew that i was not her child. i knew i was very different from her and father,--i mean mr. hohlfelder. i knew they were fair and i was dark; they were stout and i was slender; they were slow and i was quick. but of course i never dreamed of the true reason of this difference. when mother--mrs. hohlfelder--died, i found among her things one day a little packet, carefully wrapped up, containing a child's slip and some trinkets. the paper wrapper of the packet bore an inscription that awakened my curiosity. i asked father hohlfelder whose the things had been, and then for the first time i learned my real story. "i was not their own daughter, he stated, but an adopted child. twenty-three years ago, when he had lived in st. louis, a steamboat explosion had occurred up the river, and on a piece of wreckage floating down stream, a girl baby had been found. there was nothing on the child to give a hint of its home or parentage; and no one came to claim it, though the fact that a child had been found was advertised all along the river. it was believed that the infant's parents must have perished in the wreck, and certainly no one of those who were saved could identify the child. there had been a passenger list on board the steamer, but the list, with the officer who kept it, had been lost in the accident. the child was turned over to an orphan asylum, from which within a year it was adopted by the two kind-hearted and childless german people who brought it up as their own. i was that child." the woman seated by clara's side had listened with strained attention. "did you learn the name of the steamboat?" she asked quietly, but quickly, when clara paused. "the pride of st. louis," answered clara. she did not look at mrs. harper, but was gazing dreamily toward the front, and therefore did not see the expression that sprang into the other's face,--a look in which hope struggled with fear, and yearning love with both,--nor the strong effort with which mrs. harper controlled herself and moved not one muscle while the other went on. "i was never sought," clara continued, "and the good people who brought me up gave me every care. father and mother--i can never train my tongue to call them anything else--were very good to me. when they adopted me they were poor; he was a pharmacist with a small shop. later on he moved to cincinnati, where he made and sold a popular 'patent' medicine and amassed a fortune. then i went to a fashionable school, was taught french, and deportment, and dancing. father hohlfelder made some bad investments, and lost most of his money. the patent medicine fell off in popularity. a year or two ago we came to this city to live. father bought this block and opened the little drug store below. we moved into the rooms upstairs. the business was poor, and i felt that i ought to do something to earn money and help support the family. i could dance; we had this hall, and it was not rented all the time, so i opened a dancing-school." "tell me, child," said the other woman, with restrained eagerness, "what were the things found upon you when you were taken from the river?" "yes," answered the girl, "i will. but i have not told you all my story, for this is but the prelude. about a year ago a young doctor rented an office in our block. we met each other, at first only now and then, and afterwards oftener; and six months ago he told me that he loved me." she paused, and sat with half opened lips and dreamy eyes, looking back into the past six months. "and the things found upon you"---- "yes, i will show them to you when you have heard all my story. he wanted to marry me, and has asked me every week since. i have told him that i love him, but i have not said i would marry him. i don't think it would be right for me to do so, unless i could clear up this mystery. i believe he is going to be great and rich and famous, and there might come a time when he would be ashamed of me. i don't say that i shall never marry him; for i have hoped--i have a presentiment that in some strange way i shall find out who i am, and who my parents were. it may be mere imagination on my part, but somehow i believe it is more than that." "are you sure there was no mark on the things that were found upon you?" said the elder woman. "ah yes," sighed clara, "i am sure, for i have looked at them a hundred times. they tell me nothing, and yet they suggest to me many things. come," she said, taking the other by the hand, "and i will show them to you." she led the way along the hall to her sitting-room, and to her bedchamber beyond. it was a small room hung with paper showing a pattern of morning-glories on a light ground, with dotted muslin curtains, a white iron bedstead, a few prints on the wall, a rocking-chair--a very dainty room. she went to the maple dressing-case, and opened one of the drawers. as they stood for a moment, the mirror reflecting and framing their image, more than one point of resemblance between them was emphasized. there was something of the same oval face, and in clara's hair a faint suggestion of the wave in the older woman's; and though clara was fairer of complexion, and her eyes were gray and the other's black, there was visible, under the influence of the momentary excitement, one of those indefinable likenesses which are at times encountered,--sometimes marking blood relationship, sometimes the impress of a common training; in one case perhaps a mere earmark of temperament, and in another the index of a type. except for the difference in color, one might imagine that if the younger woman were twenty years older the resemblance would be still more apparent. clara reached her hand into the drawer and drew out a folded packet, which she unwrapped, mrs. harper following her movements meanwhile with a suppressed intensity of interest which clara, had she not been absorbed in her own thoughts, could not have failed to observe. when the last fold of paper was removed there lay revealed a child's muslin slip. clara lifted it and shook it gently until it was unfolded before their eyes. the lower half was delicately worked in a lacelike pattern, revealing an immense amount of patient labor. the elder woman seized the slip with hands which could not disguise their trembling. scanning the garment carefully, she seemed to be noting the pattern of the needlework, and then, pointing to a certain spot, exclaimed:---- "i thought so! i was sure of it! do you not see the letters--m.s.?" "oh, how wonderful!" clara seized the slip in turn and scanned the monogram. "how strange that you should see that at once and that i should not have discovered it, who have looked at it a hundred times! and here," she added, opening a small package which had been inclosed in the other, "is my coral necklace. perhaps your keen eyes can find something in that." it was a simple trinket, at which the older woman gave but a glance--a glance that added to her emotion. "listen, child," she said, laying her trembling hand on the other's arm. "it is all very strange and wonderful, for that slip and necklace, and, now that i have seen them, your face and your voice and your ways, all tell me who you are. your eyes are your father's eyes, your voice is your father's voice. the slip was worked by your mother's hand." "oh!" cried clara, and for a moment the whole world swam before her eyes. "i was on the pride of st. louis, and i knew your father--and your mother." clara, pale with excitement, burst into tears, and would have fallen had not the other woman caught her in her arms. mrs. harper placed her on the couch, and, seated by her side, supported her head on her shoulder. her hands seemed to caress the young woman with every touch. "tell me, oh, tell me all!" clara demanded, when the first wave of emotion had subsided. "who were my father and my mother, and who am i?" the elder woman restrained her emotion with an effort, and answered as composedly as she could,---- "there were several hundred passengers on the pride of st. louis when she left cincinnati on that fateful day, on her regular trip to new orleans. your father and mother were on the boat--and i was on the boat. we were going down the river, to take ship at new orleans for france, a country which your father loved." "who was my father?" asked clara. the woman's words fell upon her ear like water on a thirsty soil. "your father was a virginia gentleman, and belonged to one of the first families, the staffords, of melton county." clara drew herself up unconsciously, and into her face there came a frank expression of pride which became it wonderfully, setting off a beauty that needed only this to make it all but perfect of its type. "i knew it must be so," she murmured. "i have often felt it. blood will always tell. and my mother?" "your mother--also belonged to one of the first families of virginia, and in her veins flowed some of the best blood of the old dominion." "what was her maiden name?" "mary fairfax. as i was saying, your father was a virginia gentleman. he was as handsome a man as ever lived, and proud, oh, so proud!--and good, and kind. he was a graduate of the university and had studied abroad." "my mother--was she beautiful?" "she was much admired, and your father loved her from the moment he first saw her. your father came back from europe, upon his father's sudden death, and entered upon his inheritance. but he had been away from virginia so long, and had read so many books, that he had outgrown his home. he did not believe that slavery was right, and one of the first things he did was to free his slaves. his views were not popular, and he sold out his lands a year before the war, with the intention of moving to europe." "in the mean time he had met and loved and married my mother?" "in the mean time he had met and loved your mother." "my mother was a virginia belle, was she not?" "the fairfaxes," answered mrs. harper, "were the first of the first families, the bluest of the blue-bloods. the miss fairfaxes were all beautiful and all social favorites." "what did my father do then, when he had sold out in virginia?" "he went with your mother and you--you were then just a year old--to cincinnati, to settle up some business connected with his estate. when he had completed his business, he embarked on the pride of st. louis with you and your mother and a colored nurse." "and how did you know about them?" asked clara. "i was one of the party. i was"---- "you were the colored nurse?--my 'mammy,' they would have called you in my old virginia home?" "yes, child, i was--your mammy. upon my bosom you have rested; my breasts once gave you nourishment; my hands once ministered to you; my arms sheltered you, and my heart loved you and mourned you like a mother loves and mourns her firstborn." "oh, how strange, how delightful!" exclaimed clara. "now i understand why you clasped me so tightly, and were so agitated when i told you my story. it is too good for me to believe. i am of good blood, of an old and aristocratic family. my presentiment has come true. i can marry my lover, and i shall owe all my happiness to you. how can i ever repay you?" "you can kiss me, child, kiss your mammy." their lips met, and they were clasped in each other's arms. one put into the embrace all of her new-found joy, the other all the suppressed feeling of the last half hour, which in turn embodied the unsatisfied yearning of many years. the music had ceased and the pupils had left the hall. mrs. harper's charges had supposed her gone, and had left for home without her. but the two women, sitting in clara's chamber, hand in hand, were oblivious to external things and noticed neither the hour nor the cessation of the music. "why, dear mammy," said the young woman musingly, "did you not find me, and restore me to my people?" "alas, child! i was not white, and when i was picked up from the water, after floating miles down the river, the man who found me kept me prisoner for a time, and, there being no inquiry for me, pretended not to believe that i was free, and took me down to new orleans and sold me as a slave. a few years later the war set me free. i went to st. louis but could find no trace of you. i had hardly dared to hope that a child had been saved, when so many grown men and women had lost their lives. i made such inquiries as i could, but all in vain." "did you go to the orphan asylum?" "the orphan asylum had been burned and with it all the records. the war had scattered the people so that i could find no one who knew about a lost child saved from a river wreck. there were many orphans in those days, and one more or less was not likely to dwell in the public mind." "did you tell my people in virginia?" "they, too, were scattered by the war. your uncles lost their lives on the battlefield. the family mansion was burned to the ground. your father's remaining relatives were reduced to poverty, and moved away from virginia." "what of my mother's people?" "they are all dead. god punished them. they did not love your father, and did not wish him to marry your mother. they helped to drive him to his death." "i am alone in the world, then, without kith or kin," murmured clara, "and yet, strange to say, i am happy. if i had known my people and lost them, i should be sad. they are gone, but they have left me their name and their blood. i would weep for my poor father and mother if i were not so glad." just then some one struck a chord upon the piano in the hall, and the sudden breaking of the stillness recalled clara's attention to the lateness of the hour. "i had forgotten about the class," she exclaimed. "i must go and attend to them." they walked along the corridor and entered the hall. dr. winthrop was seated at the piano, drumming idly on the keys. "i did not know where you had gone," he said. "i knew you would be around, of course, since the lights were not out, and so i came in here to wait for you." "listen, john, i have a wonderful story to tell you." then she told him mrs. harper's story. he listened attentively and sympathetically, at certain points taking his eyes from clara's face and glancing keenly at mrs. harper, who was listening intently. as he looked from one to the other he noticed the resemblance between them, and something in his expression caused mrs. harper's eyes to fall, and then glance up appealingly. "and now," said clara, "i am happy. i know my name. i am a virginia stafford. i belong to one, yes, to two of what were the first families of virginia. john, my family is as good as yours. if i remember my history correctly, the cavaliers looked down upon the roundheads." "i admit my inferiority," he replied. "if you are happy i am glad." "clara stafford," mused the girl. "it is a pretty name." "you will never have to use it," her lover declared, "for now you will take mine." "then i shall have nothing left of all that i have found"---- "except your husband," asserted dr. winthrop, putting his arm around her, with an air of assured possession. mrs. harper was looking at them with moistened eyes in which joy and sorrow, love and gratitude, were strangely blended. clara put out her hand to her impulsively. "and my mammy," she cried, "my dear virginia mammy." the sheriffs children branson county, north carolina, is in a sequestered district of one of the staidest and most conservative states of the union. society in branson county is almost primitive in its simplicity. most of the white people own the farms they till, and even before the war there were no very wealthy families to force their neighbors, by comparison, into the category of "poor whites." to branson county, as to most rural communities in the south, the war is the one historical event that overshadows all others. it is the era from which all local chronicles are dated,--births, deaths, marriages, storms, freshets. no description of the life of any southern community would be perfect that failed to emphasize the all pervading influence of the great conflict. yet the fierce tide of war that had rushed through the cities and along the great highways of the country had comparatively speaking but slightly disturbed the sluggish current of life in this region, remote from railroads and navigable streams. to the north in virginia, to the west in tennessee, and all along the seaboard the war had raged; but the thunder of its cannon had not disturbed the echoes of branson county, where the loudest sounds heard were the crack of some hunter's rifle, the baying of some deep-mouthed hound, or the yodel of some tuneful negro on his way through the pine forest. to the east, sherman's army had passed on its march to the sea; but no straggling band of "bummers" had penetrated the confines of branson county. the war, it is true, had robbed the county of the flower of its young manhood; but the burden of taxation, the doubt and uncertainty of the conflict, and the sting of ultimate defeat, had been borne by the people with an apathy that robbed misfortune of half its sharpness. the nearest approach to town life afforded by branson county is found in the little village of troy, the county seat, a hamlet with a population of four or five hundred. ten years make little difference in the appearance of these remote southern towns. if a railroad is built through one of them, it infuses some enterprise; the social corpse is galvanized by the fresh blood of civilization that pulses along the farthest ramifications of our great system of commercial highways. at the period of which i write, no railroad had come to troy. if a traveler, accustomed to the bustling life of cities, could have ridden through troy on a summer day, he might easily have fancied himself in a deserted village. around him he would have seen weather-beaten houses, innocent of paint, the shingled roofs in many instances covered with a rich growth of moss. here and there he would have met a razor-backed hog lazily rooting his way along the principal thoroughfare; and more than once he would probably have had to disturb the slumbers of some yellow dog, dozing away the hours in the ardent sunshine, and reluctantly yielding up his place in the middle of the dusty road. on saturdays the village presented a somewhat livelier appearance, and the shade trees around the court house square and along front street served as hitching-posts for a goodly number of horses and mules and stunted oxen, belonging to the farmer-folk who had come in to trade at the two or three local stores. a murder was a rare event in branson county. every well-informed citizen could tell the number of homicides committed in the county for fifty years back, and whether the slayer, in any given instance, had escaped, either by flight or acquittal, or had suffered the penalty of the law. so, when it became known in troy early one friday morning in summer, about ten years after the war, that old captain walker, who had served in mexico under scott, and had left an arm on the field of gettysburg, had been foully murdered during the night, there was intense excitement in the village. business was practically suspended, and the citizens gathered in little groups to discuss the murder, and speculate upon the identity of the murderer. it transpired from testimony at the coroner's inquest, held during the morning, that a strange mulatto had been seen going in the direction of captain walker's house the night before, and had been met going away from troy early friday morning, by a farmer on his way to town. other circumstances seemed to connect the stranger with the crime. the sheriff organized a posse to search for him, and early in the evening, when most of the citizens of troy were at supper, the suspected man was brought in and lodged in the county jail. by the following morning the news of the capture had spread to the farthest limits of the county. a much larger number of people than usual came to town that saturday,--bearded men in straw hats and blue homespun shirts, and butternut trousers of great amplitude of material and vagueness of outline; women in homespun frocks and slat-bonnets, with faces as expressionless as the dreary sandhills which gave them a meagre sustenance. the murder was almost the sole topic of conversation. a steady stream of curious observers visited the house of mourning, and gazed upon the rugged face of the old veteran, now stiff and cold in death; and more than one eye dropped a tear at the remembrance of the cheery smile, and the joke--sometimes superannuated, generally feeble, but always good-natured--with which the captain had been wont to greet his acquaintances. there was a growing sentiment of anger among these stern men, toward the murderer who had thus cut down their friend, and a strong feeling that ordinary justice was too slight a punishment for such a crime. toward noon there was an informal gathering of citizens in dan tyson's store. "i hear it 'lowed that square kyahtah's too sick ter hol' co'te this evenin'," said one, "an' that the purlim'nary hearin' 'll haf ter go over 'tel nex' week." a look of disappointment went round the crowd. "hit 's the durndes', meanes' murder ever committed in this caounty," said another, with moody emphasis. "i s'pose the nigger 'lowed the cap'n had some green-backs," observed a third speaker. "the cap'n," said another, with an air of superior information, "has left two bairls of confedrit money, which he 'spected 'ud be good some day er nuther." this statement gave rise to a discussion of the speculative value of confederate money; but in a little while the conversation returned to the murder. "hangin' air too good fer the murderer," said one; "he oughter be burnt, stidier bein' hung." there was an impressive pause at this point, during which a jug of moonlight whiskey went the round of the crowd. "well," said a round-shouldered farmer, who, in spite of his peaceable expression and faded gray eye, was known to have been one of the most daring followers of a rebel guerrilla chieftain, "what air yer gwine ter do about it? ef you fellers air gwine ter set down an' let a wuthless nigger kill the bes' white man in branson, an' not say nuthin' ner do nuthin', _i 'll_ move outen the caounty." this speech gave tone and direction to the rest of the conversation. whether the fear of losing the round-shouldered farmer operated to bring about the result or not is immaterial to this narrative; but, at all events, the crowd decided to lynch the negro. they agreed that this was the least that could be done to avenge the death of their murdered friend, and that it was a becoming way in which to honor his memory. they had some vague notions of the majesty of the law and the rights of the citizen, but in the passion of the moment these sunk into oblivion; a white man had been killed by a negro. "the cap'n was an ole sodger," said one of his friends solemnly. "he 'll sleep better when he knows that a co'te-martial has be'n hilt an' jestice done." by agreement the lynchers were to meet at tyson's store at five o'clock in the afternoon, and proceed thence to the jail, which was situated down the lumberton dirt road (as the old turnpike antedating the plank-road was called), about half a mile south of the court-house. when the preliminaries of the lynching had been arranged, and a committee appointed to manage the affair, the crowd dispersed, some to go to their dinners, and some to secure recruits for the lynching party. it was twenty minutes to five o'clock, when an excited negro, panting and perspiring, rushed up to the back door of sheriff campbell's dwelling, which stood at a little distance from the jail and somewhat farther than the latter building from the court-house. a turbaned colored woman came to the door in response to the negro's knock. "hoddy, sis' nance." "hoddy, brer sam." "is de shurff in," inquired the negro. "yas, brer sam, he 's eatin' his dinner," was the answer. "will yer ax 'im ter step ter de do' a minute, sis' nance?" the woman went into the dining-room, and a moment later the sheriff came to the door. he was a tall, muscular man, of a ruddier complexion than is usual among southerners. a pair of keen, deep-set gray eyes looked out from under bushy eyebrows, and about his mouth was a masterful expression, which a full beard, once sandy in color, but now profusely sprinkled with gray, could not entirely conceal. the day was hot; the sheriff had discarded his coat and vest, and had his white shirt open at the throat. "what do you want, sam?" he inquired of the negro, who stood hat in hand, wiping the moisture from his face with a ragged shirt-sleeve. "shurff, dey gwine ter hang de pris'ner w'at 's lock' up in de jail. dey 're comin' dis a-way now. i wuz layin' down on a sack er corn down at de sto', behine a pile er flour-bairls, w'en i hearn doc' cain en kunnel wright talkin' erbout it. i slip' outen de back do', en run here as fas' as i could. i hearn you say down ter de sto' once't dat you would n't let nobody take a pris'ner 'way fum you widout walkin' over yo' dead body, en i thought i 'd let you know 'fo' dey come, so yer could pertec' de pris'ner." the sheriff listened calmly, but his face grew firmer, and a determined gleam lit up his gray eyes. his frame grew more erect, and he unconsciously assumed the attitude of a soldier who momentarily expects to meet the enemy face to face. "much obliged, sam," he answered. "i 'll protect the prisoner. who 's coming?" "i dunno who-all _is_ comin'," replied the negro. "dere 's mistah mcswayne, en doc' cain, en maje' mcdonal', en kunnel wright, en a heap er yuthers. i wuz so skeered i done furgot mo' d'n half un em. i spec' dey mus' be mos' here by dis time, so i 'll git outen de way, fer i don' want nobody fer ter think i wuz mix' up in dis business." the negro glanced nervously down the road toward the town, and made a movement as if to go away. "won't you have some dinner first?" asked the sheriff. the negro looked longingly in at the open door, and sniffed the appetizing odor of boiled pork and collards. "i ain't got no time fer ter tarry, shurff," he said, "but sis' nance mought gin me sump'n i could kyar in my han' en eat on de way." a moment later nancy brought him a huge sandwich of split corn-pone, with a thick slice of fat bacon inserted between the halves, and a couple of baked yams. the negro hastily replaced his ragged hat on his head, dropped the yams in the pocket of his capacious trousers, and, taking the sandwich in his hand, hurried across the road and disappeared in the woods beyond. the sheriff reëntered the house, and put on his coat and hat. he then took down a double-barreled shotgun and loaded it with buckshot. filling the chambers of a revolver with fresh cartridges, he slipped it into the pocket of the sack-coat which he wore. a comely young woman in a calico dress watched these proceedings with anxious surprise. "where are you going, father?" she asked. she had not heard the conversation with the negro. "i am goin' over to the jail," responded the sheriff. "there 's a mob comin' this way to lynch the nigger we 've got locked up. but they won't do it," he added, with emphasis. "oh, father! don't go!" pleaded the girl, clinging to his arm; "they 'll shoot you if you don't give him up." "you never mind me, polly," said her father reassuringly, as he gently unclasped her hands from his arm. "i 'll take care of myself and the prisoner, too. there ain't a man in branson county that would shoot me. besides, i have faced fire too often to be scared away from my duty. you keep close in the house," he continued, "and if any one disturbs you just use the old horse-pistol in the top bureau drawer. it 's a little old-fashioned, but it did good work a few years ago." the young girl shuddered at this sanguinary allusion, but made no further objection to her father's departure. the sheriff of branson was a man far above the average of the community in wealth, education, and social position. his had been one of the few families in the county that before the war had owned large estates and numerous slaves. he had graduated at the state university at chapel hill, and had kept up some acquaintance with current literature and advanced thought. he had traveled some in his youth, and was looked up to in the county as an authority on all subjects connected with the outer world. at first an ardent supporter of the union, he had opposed the secession movement in his native state as long as opposition availed to stem the tide of public opinion. yielding at last to the force of circumstances, he had entered the confederate service rather late in the war, and served with distinction through several campaigns, rising in time to the rank of colonel. after the war he had taken the oath of allegiance, and had been chosen by the people as the most available candidate for the office of sheriff, to which he had been elected without opposition. he had filled the office for several terms, and was universally popular with his constituents. colonel or sheriff campbell, as he was indifferently called, as the military or civil title happened to be most important in the opinion of the person addressing him, had a high sense of the responsibility attaching to his office. he had sworn to do his duty faithfully, and he knew what his duty was, as sheriff, perhaps more clearly than he had apprehended it in other passages of his life. it was, therefore, with no uncertainty in regard to his course that he prepared his weapons and went over to the jail. he had no fears for polly's safety. the sheriff had just locked the heavy front door of the jail behind him when a half dozen horsemen, followed by a crowd of men on foot, came round a bend in the road and drew near the jail. they halted in front of the picket fence that surrounded the building, while several of the committee of arrangements rode on a few rods farther to the sheriff's house. one of them dismounted and rapped on the door with his riding-whip. "is the sheriff at home?" he inquired. "no, he has just gone out," replied polly, who had come to the door. "we want the jail keys," he continued. "they are not here," said polly. "the sheriff has them himself." then she added, with assumed indifference, "he is at the jail now." the man turned away, and polly went into the front room, from which she peered anxiously between the slats of the green blinds of a window that looked toward the jail. meanwhile the messenger returned to his companions and announced his discovery. it looked as though the sheriff had learned of their design and was preparing to resist it. one of them stepped forward and rapped on the jail door. "well, what is it?" said the sheriff, from within. "we want to talk to you, sheriff," replied the spokesman. there was a little wicket in the door; this the sheriff opened, and answered through it. "all right, boys, talk away. you are all strangers to me, and i don't know what business you can have." the sheriff did not think it necessary to recognize anybody in particular on such an occasion; the question of identity sometimes comes up in the investigation of these extra-judicial executions. "we 're a committee of citizens and we want to get into the jail." "what for? it ain't much trouble to get into jail. most people want to keep out." the mob was in no humor to appreciate a joke, and the sheriff's witticism fell dead upon an unresponsive audience. "we want to have a talk with the nigger that killed cap'n walker." "you can talk to that nigger in the court-house, when he 's brought out for trial. court will be in session here next week. i know what you fellows want, but you can't get my prisoner to-day. do you want to take the bread out of a poor man's mouth? i get seventy-five cents a day for keeping this prisoner, and he 's the only one in jail. i can't have my family suffer just to please you fellows." one or two young men in the crowd laughed at the idea of sheriff campbell's suffering for want of seventy-five cents a day; but they were frowned into silence by those who stood near them. "ef yer don't let us in," cried a voice, "we 'll bu's' the do' open." "bust away," answered the sheriff, raising his voice so that all could hear. "but i give you fair warning. the first man that tries it will be filled with buckshot. i 'm sheriff of this county; i know my duty, and i mean to do it." "what 's the use of kicking, sheriff," argued one of the leaders of the mob. "the nigger is sure to hang anyhow; he richly deserves it; and we 've got to do something to teach the niggers their places, or white people won't be able to live in the county." "there 's no use talking, boys," responded the sheriff. "i 'm a white man outside, but in this jail i 'm sheriff; and if this nigger 's to be hung in this county, i propose to do the hanging. so you fellows might as well right-about-face, and march back to troy. you 've had a pleasant trip, and the exercise will be good for you. you know _me_. i 've got powder and ball, and i 've faced fire before now, with nothing between me and the enemy, and i don't mean to surrender this jail while i 'm able to shoot." having thus announced his determination, the sheriff closed and fastened the wicket, and looked around for the best position from which to defend the building. the crowd drew off a little, and the leaders conversed together in low tones. the branson county jail was a small, two-story brick building, strongly constructed, with no attempt at architectural ornamentation. each story was divided into two large cells by a passage running from front to rear. a grated iron door gave entrance from the passage to each of the four cells. the jail seldom had many prisoners in it, and the lower windows had been boarded up. when the sheriff had closed the wicket, he ascended the steep wooden stairs to the upper floor. there was no window at the front of the upper passage, and the most available position from which to watch the movements of the crowd below was the front window of the cell occupied by the solitary prisoner. the sheriff unlocked the door and entered the cell. the prisoner was crouched in a corner, his yellow face, blanched with terror, looking ghastly in the semi-darkness of the room. a cold perspiration had gathered on his forehead, and his teeth were chattering with affright. "for god's sake, sheriff," he murmured hoarsely, "don't let 'em lynch me; i did n't kill the old man." the sheriff glanced at the cowering wretch with a look of mingled contempt and loathing. "get up," he said sharply. "you will probably be hung sooner or later, but it shall not be to-day, if i can help it. i 'll unlock your fetters, and if i can't hold the jail, you 'll have to make the best fight you can. if i 'm shot, i 'll consider my responsibility at an end." there were iron fetters on the prisoner's ankles, and handcuffs on his wrists. these the sheriff unlocked, and they fell clanking to the floor. "keep back from the window," said the sheriff. "they might shoot if they saw you." the sheriff drew toward the window a pine bench which formed a part of the scanty furniture of the cell, and laid his revolver upon it. then he took his gun in hand, and took his stand at the side of the window where he could with least exposure of himself watch the movements of the crowd below. the lynchers had not anticipated any determined resistance. of course they had looked for a formal protest, and perhaps a sufficient show of opposition to excuse the sheriff in the eye of any stickler for legal formalities. they had not however come prepared to fight a battle, and no one of them seemed willing to lead an attack upon the jail. the leaders of the party conferred together with a good deal of animated gesticulation, which was visible to the sheriff from his outlook, though the distance was too great for him to hear what was said. at length one of them broke away from the group, and rode back to the main body of the lynchers, who were restlessly awaiting orders. "well, boys," said the messenger, "we 'll have to let it go for the present. the sheriff says he 'll shoot, and he 's got the drop on us this time. there ain't any of us that want to follow cap'n walker jest yet. besides, the sheriff is a good fellow, and we don't want to hurt 'im. but," he added, as if to reassure the crowd, which began to show signs of disappointment, "the nigger might as well say his prayers, for he ain't got long to live." there was a murmur of dissent from the mob, and several voices insisted that an attack be made on the jail. but pacific counsels finally prevailed, and the mob sullenly withdrew. the sheriff stood at the window until they had disappeared around the bend in the road. he did not relax his watchfulness when the last one was out of sight. their withdrawal might be a mere feint, to be followed by a further attempt. so closely, indeed, was his attention drawn to the outside, that he neither saw nor heard the prisoner creep stealthily across the floor, reach out his hand and secure the revolver which lay on the bench behind the sheriff, and creep as noiselessly back to his place in the corner of the room. a moment after the last of the lynching party had disappeared there was a shot fired from the woods across the road; a bullet whistled by the window and buried itself in the wooden casing a few inches from where the sheriff was standing. quick as thought, with the instinct born of a semi-guerrilla army experience, he raised his gun and fired twice at the point from which a faint puff of smoke showed the hostile bullet to have been sent. he stood a moment watching, and then rested his gun against the window, and reached behind him mechanically for the other weapon. it was not on the bench. as the sheriff realized this fact, he turned his head and looked into the muzzle of the revolver. "stay where you are, sheriff," said the prisoner, his eyes glistening, his face almost ruddy with excitement. the sheriff mentally cursed his own carelessness for allowing him to be caught in such a predicament. he had not expected anything of the kind. he had relied on the negro's cowardice and subordination in the presence of an armed white man as a matter of course. the sheriff was a brave man, but realized that the prisoner had him at an immense disadvantage. the two men stood thus for a moment, fighting a harmless duel with their eyes. "well, what do you mean to do?" asked the sheriff with apparent calmness. "to get away, of course," said the prisoner, in a tone which caused the sheriff to look at him more closely, and with an involuntary feeling of apprehension; if the man was not mad, he was in a state of mind akin to madness, and quite as dangerous. the sheriff felt that he must speak the prisoner fair, and watch for a chance to turn the tables on him. the keen-eyed, desperate man before him was a different being altogether from the groveling wretch who had begged so piteously for life a few minutes before. at length the sheriff spoke:---- "is this your gratitude to me for saving your life at the risk of my own? if i had not done so, you would now be swinging from the limb of some neighboring tree." "true," said the prisoner, "you saved my life, but for how long? when you came in, you said court would sit next week. when the crowd went away they said i had not long to live. it is merely a choice of two ropes." "while there 's life there 's hope," replied the sheriff. he uttered this commonplace mechanically, while his brain was busy in trying to think out some way of escape. "if you are innocent you can prove it." the mulatto kept his eye upon the sheriff. "i did n't kill the old man," he replied; "but i shall never be able to clear myself. i was at his house at nine o'clock. i stole from it the coat that was on my back when i was taken. i would be convicted, even with a fair trial, unless the real murderer were discovered beforehand." the sheriff knew this only too well. while he was thinking what argument next to use, the prisoner continued:---- "throw me the keys--no, unlock the door." the sheriff stood a moment irresolute. the mulatto's eye glittered ominously. the sheriff crossed the room and unlocked the door leading into the passage. "now go down and unlock the outside door." the heart of the sheriff leaped within him. perhaps he might make a dash for liberty, and gain the outside. he descended the narrow stairs, the prisoner keeping close behind him. the sheriff inserted the huge iron key into the lock. the rusty bolt yielded slowly. it still remained for him to pull the door open. "stop!" thundered the mulatto, who seemed to divine the sheriff's purpose. "move a muscle, and i 'll blow your brains out." the sheriff obeyed; he realized that his chance had not yet come. "now keep on that side of the passage, and go back upstairs." keeping the sheriff under cover of the revolver, the mulatto followed him up the stairs. the sheriff expected the prisoner to lock him into the cell and make his own escape. he had about come to the conclusion that the best thing he could do under the circumstances was to submit quietly, and take his chances of recapturing the prisoner after the alarm had been given. the sheriff had faced death more than once upon the battlefield. a few minutes before, well armed, and with a brick wall between him and them he had dared a hundred men to fight; but he felt instinctively that the desperate man confronting him was not to be trifled with, and he was too prudent a man to risk his life against such heavy odds. he had polly to look after, and there was a limit beyond which devotion to duty would be quixotic and even foolish. "i want to get away," said the prisoner, "and i don't want to be captured; for if i am i know i will be hung on the spot. i am afraid," he added somewhat reflectively, "that in order to save myself i shall have to kill you." "good god!" exclaimed the sheriff in involuntary terror; "you would not kill the man to whom you owe your own life." "you speak more truly than you know," replied the mulatto. "i indeed owe my life to you." the sheriff started, he was capable of surprise, even in that moment of extreme peril. "who are you?" he asked in amazement. "tom, cicely's son," returned the other. he had closed the door and stood talking to the sheriff through the grated opening. "don't you remember cicely--cicely whom you sold, with her child, to the speculator on his way to alabama?" the sheriff did remember. he had been sorry for it many a time since. it had been the old story of debts, mortgages, and bad crops. he had quarreled with the mother. the price offered for her and her child had been unusually large, and he had yielded to the combination of anger and pecuniary stress. "good god!" he gasped, "you would not murder your own father?" "my father?" replied the mulatto. "it were well enough for me to claim the relationship, but it comes with poor grace from you to ask anything by reason of it. what father's duty have you ever performed for me? did you give me your name, or even your protection? other white men gave their colored sons freedom and money, and sent them to the free states. _you_ sold _me_ to the rice swamps." "i at least gave you the life you cling to," murmured the sheriff. "life?" said the prisoner, with a sarcastic laugh. "what kind of a life? you gave me your own blood, your own features,--no man need look at us together twice to see that,--and you gave me a black mother. poor wretch! she died under the lash, because she had enough womanhood to call her soul her own. you gave me a white man's spirit, and you made me a slave, and crushed it out." "but you are free now," said the sheriff. he had not doubted, could not doubt, the mulatto's word. he knew whose passions coursed beneath that swarthy skin and burned in the black eyes opposite his own. he saw in this mulatto what he himself might have become had not the safeguards of parental restraint and public opinion been thrown around him. "free to do what?" replied the mulatto. "free in name, but despised and scorned and set aside by the people to whose race i belong far more than to my mother's." "there are schools," said the sheriff. "you have been to school." he had noticed that the mulatto spoke more eloquently and used better language than most branson county people. "i have been to school, and dreamed when i went that it would work some marvelous change in my condition. but what did i learn? i learned to feel that no degree of learning or wisdom will change the color of my skin and that i shall always wear what in my own country is a badge of degradation. when i think about it seriously i do not care particularly for such a life. it is the animal in me, not the man, that flees the gallows. i owe you nothing," he went on, "and expect nothing of you; and it would be no more than justice if i should avenge upon you my mother's wrongs and my own. but still i hate to shoot you; i have never yet taken human life--for i did _not_ kill the old captain. will you promise to give no alarm and make no attempt to capture me until morning, if i do not shoot?" so absorbed were the two men in their colloquy and their own tumultuous thoughts that neither of them had heard the door below move upon its hinges. neither of them had heard a light step come stealthily up the stairs, nor seen a slender form creep along the darkening passage toward the mulatto. the sheriff hesitated. the struggle between his love of life and his sense of duty was a terrific one. it may seem strange that a man who could sell his own child into slavery should hesitate at such a moment, when his life was trembling in the balance. but the baleful influence of human slavery poisoned the very fountains of life, and created new standards of right. the sheriff was conscientious; his conscience had merely been warped by his environment. let no one ask what his answer would have been; he was spared the necessity of a decision. "stop," said the mulatto, "you need not promise. i could not trust you if you did. it is your life for mine; there is but one safe way for me; you must die." he raised his arm to fire, when there was a flash--a report from the passage behind him. his arm fell heavily at his side, and the pistol dropped at his feet. the sheriff recovered first from his surprise, and throwing open the door secured the fallen weapon. then seizing the prisoner he thrust him into the cell and locked the door upon him; after which he turned to polly, who leaned half-fainting against the wall, her hands clasped over her heart. "oh, father, i was just in time!" she cried hysterically, and, wildly sobbing, threw herself into her father's arms. "i watched until they all went away," she said. "i heard the shot from the woods and i saw you shoot. then when you did not come out i feared something had happened, that perhaps you had been wounded. i got out the other pistol and ran over here. when i found the door open, i knew something was wrong, and when i heard voices i crept upstairs, and reached the top just in time to hear him say he would kill you. oh, it was a narrow escape!" when she had grown somewhat calmer, the sheriff left her standing there and went back into the cell. the prisoner's arm was bleeding from a flesh wound. his bravado had given place to a stony apathy. there was no sign in his face of fear or disappointment or feeling of any kind. the sheriff sent polly to the house for cloth, and bound up the prisoner's wound with a rude skill acquired during his army life. "i 'll have a doctor come and dress the wound in the morning," he said to the prisoner. "it will do very well until then, if you will keep quiet. if the doctor asks you how the wound was caused, you can say that you were struck by the bullet fired from the woods. it would do you no good to have it known that you were shot while attempting to escape." the prisoner uttered no word of thanks or apology, but sat in sullen silence. when the wounded arm had been bandaged, polly and her father returned to the house. the sheriff was in an unusually thoughtful mood that evening. he put salt in his coffee at supper, and poured vinegar over his pancakes. to many of polly's questions he returned random answers. when he had gone to bed he lay awake for several hours. in the silent watches of the night, when he was alone with god, there came into his mind a flood of unaccustomed thoughts. an hour or two before, standing face to face with death, he had experienced a sensation similar to that which drowning men are said to feel--a kind of clarifying of the moral faculty, in which the veil of the flesh, with its obscuring passions and prejudices, is pushed aside for a moment, and all the acts of one's life stand out, in the clear light of truth, in their correct proportions and relations,--a state of mind in which one sees himself as god may be supposed to see him. in the reaction following his rescue, this feeling had given place for a time to far different emotions. but now, in the silence of midnight, something of this clearness of spirit returned to the sheriff. he saw that he had owed some duty to this son of his,--that neither law nor custom could destroy a responsibility inherent in the nature of mankind. he could not thus, in the eyes of god at least, shake off the consequences of his sin. had he never sinned, this wayward spirit would never have come back from the vanished past to haunt him. as these thoughts came, his anger against the mulatto died away, and in its place there sprang up a great pity. the hand of parental authority might have restrained the passions he had seen burning in the prisoner's eyes when the desperate man spoke the words which had seemed to doom his father to death. the sheriff felt that he might have saved this fiery spirit from the slough of slavery; that he might have sent him to the free north, and given him there, or in some other land, an opportunity to turn to usefulness and honorable pursuits the talents that had run to crime, perhaps to madness; he might, still less, have given this son of his the poor simulacrum of liberty which men of his caste could possess in a slave-holding community; or least of all, but still something, he might have kept the boy on the plantation, where the burdens of slavery would have fallen lightly upon him. the sheriff recalled his own youth. he had inherited an honored name to keep untarnished; he had had a future to make; the picture of a fair young bride had beckoned him on to happiness. the poor wretch now stretched upon a pallet of straw between the brick walls of the jail had had none of these things,--no name, no father, no mother--in the true meaning of motherhood,--and until the past few years no possible future, and then one vague and shadowy in its outline, and dependent for form and substance upon the slow solution of a problem in which there were many unknown quantities. from what he might have done to what he might yet do was an easy transition for the awakened conscience of the sheriff. it occurred to him, purely as a hypothesis, that he might permit his prisoner to escape; but his oath of office, his duty as sheriff, stood in the way of such a course, and the sheriff dismissed the idea from his mind. he could, however, investigate the circumstances of the murder, and move heaven and earth to discover the real criminal, for he no longer doubted the prisoner's innocence; he could employ counsel for the accused, and perhaps influence public opinion in his favor. an acquittal once secured, some plan could be devised by which the sheriff might in some degree atone for his crime against this son of his--against society--against god. when the sheriff had reached this conclusion he fell into an unquiet slumber, from which he awoke late the next morning. he went over to the jail before breakfast and found the prisoner lying on his pallet, his face turned to the wall; he did not move when the sheriff rattled the door. "good-morning," said the latter, in a tone intended to waken the prisoner. there was no response. the sheriff looked more keenly at the recumbent figure; there was an unnatural rigidity about its attitude. he hastily unlocked the door and, entering the cell, bent over the prostrate form. there was no sound of breathing; he turned the body over--it was cold and stiff. the prisoner had torn the bandage from his wound and bled to death during the night. he had evidently been dead several hours. a matter of principle i "what our country needs most in its treatment of the race problem," observed mr. cicero clayton at one of the monthly meetings of the blue vein society, of which he was a prominent member, "is a clearer conception of the brotherhood of man." the same sentiment in much the same words had often fallen from mr. clayton's lips,--so often, in fact, that the younger members of the society sometimes spoke of him--among themselves of course--as "brotherhood clayton." the sobriquet derived its point from the application he made of the principle involved in this oft-repeated proposition. the fundamental article of mr. clayton's social creed was that he himself was not a negro. "i know," he would say, "that the white people lump us all together as negroes, and condemn us all to the same social ostracism. but i don't accept this classification, for my part, and i imagine that, as the chief party in interest, i have a right to my opinion. people who belong by half or more of their blood to the most virile and progressive race of modern times have as much right to call themselves white as others have to call them negroes." mr. clayton spoke warmly, for he was well informed, and had thought much upon the subject; too much, indeed, for he had not been able to escape entirely the tendency of too much concentration upon one subject to make even the clearest minds morbid. "of course we can't enforce our claims, or protect ourselves from being robbed of our birthright; but we can at least have principles, and try to live up to them the best we can. if we are not accepted as white, we can at any rate make it clear that we object to being called black. our protest cannot fail in time to impress itself upon the better class of white people; for the anglo-saxon race loves justice, and will eventually do it, where it does not conflict with their own interests." whether or not the fact that mr. clayton meant no sarcasm, and was conscious of no inconsistency in this eulogy, tended to establish the racial identity he claimed may safely be left to the discerning reader. in living up to his creed mr. clayton declined to associate to any considerable extent with black people. this was sometimes a little inconvenient, and occasionally involved a sacrifice of some pleasure for himself and his family, because they would not attend entertainments where many black people were likely to be present. but they had a social refuge in a little society of people like themselves; they attended, too, a church, of which nearly all the members were white, and they were connected with a number of the religious and benevolent associations open to all good citizens, where they came into contact with the better class of white people, and were treated, in their capacity of members, with a courtesy and consideration scarcely different from that accorded to other citizens. mr. clayton's racial theory was not only logical enough, but was in his own case backed up by substantial arguments. he had begun life with a small patrimony, and had invested his money in a restaurant, which by careful and judicious attention had grown from a cheap eating-house into the most popular and successful confectionery and catering establishment in groveland. his business occupied a double store on oakwood avenue. he owned houses and lots, and stocks and bonds, had good credit at the banks, and lived in a style befitting his income and business standing. in person he was of olive complexion, with slightly curly hair. his features approached the cuban or latin-american type rather than the familiar broad characteristics of the mulatto, this suggestion of something foreign being heightened by a vandyke beard and a carefully waxed and pointed mustache. when he walked to church on sunday mornings with his daughter alice, they were a couple of such striking appearance as surely to attract attention. miss alice clayton was queen of her social set. she was young, she was handsome. she was nearly white; she frankly confessed her sorrow that she was not entirely so. she was accomplished and amiable, dressed in good taste, and had for her father by all odds the richest colored man--the term is used with apologies to mr. clayton, explaining that it does not necessarily mean a negro--in groveland. so pronounced was her superiority that really she had but one social rival worthy of the name,--miss lura watkins, whose father kept a prosperous livery stable and lived in almost as good style as the claytons. miss watkins, while good-looking enough, was not so young nor quite so white as miss clayton. she was popular, however, among their mutual acquaintances, and there was a good-natured race between the two as to which should make the first and best marriage. marriages among miss clayton's set were serious affairs. of course marriage is always a serious matter, whether it be a success or a failure, and there are those who believe that any marriage is better than no marriage. but among miss clayton's friends and associates matrimony took on an added seriousness because of the very narrow limits within which it could take place. miss clayton and her friends, by reason of their assumed superiority to black people, or perhaps as much by reason of a somewhat morbid shrinking from the curiosity manifested toward married people of strongly contrasting colors, would not marry black men, and except in rare instances white men would not marry them. they were therefore restricted for a choice to the young men of their own complexion. but these, unfortunately for the girls, had a wider choice. in any state where the laws permit freedom of the marriage contract, a man, by virtue of his sex, can find a wife of whatever complexion he prefers; of course he must not always ask too much in other respects, for most women like to better their social position when they marry. to the number thus lost by "going on the other side," as the phrase went, add the worthless contingent whom no self-respecting woman would marry, and the choice was still further restricted; so that it had become fashionable, when the supply of eligible men ran short, for those of miss clayton's set who could afford it to go traveling, ostensibly for pleasure, but with the serious hope that they might meet their fate away from home. miss clayton had perhaps a larger option than any of her associates. among such men as there were she could have taken her choice. her beauty, her position, her accomplishments, her father's wealth, all made her eminently desirable. but, on the other hand, the same things rendered her more difficult to reach, and harder to please. to get access to her heart, too, it was necessary to run the gauntlet of her parents, which, until she had reached the age of twenty-three, no one had succeeded in doing safely. many had called, but none had been chosen. there was, however, one spot left unguarded, and through it cupid, a veteran sharpshooter, sent a dart. mr. clayton had taken into his service and into his household a poor relation, a sort of cousin several times removed. this boy--his name was jack--had gone into mr. clayton's service at a very youthful age,--twelve or thirteen. he had helped about the housework, washed the dishes, swept the floors, taken care of the lawn and the stable for three or four years, while he attended school. his cousin had then taken him into the store, where he had swept the floor, washed the windows, and done a class of work that kept fully impressed upon him the fact that he was a poor dependent. nevertheless he was a cheerful lad, who took what he could get and was properly grateful, but always meant to get more. by sheer force of industry and affability and shrewdness, he forced his employer to promote him in time to a position of recognized authority in the establishment. any one outside of the family would have perceived in him a very suitable husband for miss clayton; he was of about the same age, or a year or two older, was as fair of complexion as she, when she was not powdered, and was passably good-looking, with a bearing of which the natural manliness had been no more warped than his training and racial status had rendered inevitable; for he had early learned the law of growth, that to bend is better than to break. he was sometimes sent to accompany miss clayton to places in the evening, when she had no other escort, and it is quite likely that she discovered his good points before her parents did. that they should in time perceive them was inevitable. but even then, so accustomed were they to looking down upon the object of their former bounty, that they only spoke of the matter jocularly. "well, alice," her father would say in his bluff way, "you 'll not be absolutely obliged to die an old maid. if we can't find anything better for you, there 's always jack. as long as he does n't take to some other girl, you can fall back on him as a last chance. he 'd be glad to take you to get into the business." miss alice had considered the joke a very poor one when first made, but by occasional repetition she became somewhat familiar with it. in time it got around to jack himself, to whom it seemed no joke at all. he had long considered it a consummation devoutly to be wished, and when he became aware that the possibility of such a match had occurred to the other parties in interest, he made up his mind that the idea should in due course of time become an accomplished fact. he had even suggested as much to alice, in a casual way, to feel his ground; and while she had treated the matter lightly, he was not without hope that she had been impressed by the suggestion. before he had had time, however, to follow up this lead, miss clayton, in the spring of -, went away on a visit to washington. the occasion of her visit was a presidential inauguration. the new president owed his nomination mainly to the votes of the southern delegates in the convention, and was believed to be correspondingly well disposed to the race from which the southern delegates were for the most part recruited. friends of rival and unsuccessful candidates for the nomination had more than hinted that the southern delegates were very substantially rewarded for their support at the time when it was given; whether this was true or not the parties concerned know best. at any rate the colored politicians did not see it in that light, for they were gathered from near and far to press their claims for recognition and patronage. on the evening following the white house inaugural ball, the colored people of washington gave an "inaugural" ball at a large public hall. it was under the management of their leading citizens, among them several high officials holding over from the last administration, and a number of professional and business men. this ball was the most noteworthy social event that colored circles up to that time had ever known. there were many visitors from various parts of the country. miss clayton attended the ball, the honors of which she carried away easily. she danced with several partners, and was introduced to innumerable people whom she had never seen before, and whom she hardly expected ever to meet again. she went away from the ball, at four o'clock in the morning, in a glow of triumph, and with a confused impression of senators and representatives and lawyers and doctors of all shades, who had sought an introduction, led her through the dance, and overwhelmed her with compliments. she returned home the next day but one, after the most delightful week of her life. ii one afternoon, about three weeks after her return from washington, alice received a letter through the mail. the envelope bore the words "house of representatives" printed in one corner, and in the opposite corner, in a bold running hand, a congressman's frank, "hamilton m. brown, m.c." the letter read as follows:---- house of representatives, washington, d.c., march , -. miss alice clayton, groveland. dear friend (if i may be permitted to call you so after so brief an acquaintance),--i remember with sincerest pleasure our recent meeting at the inaugural ball, and the sensation created by your beauty, your amiable manners, and your graceful dancing. time has so strengthened the impression i then received, that i should have felt inconsolable had i thought it impossible ever to again behold the charms which had brightened the occasion of our meeting and eclipsed by their brilliancy the leading belles of the capital. i had hoped, however, to have the pleasure of meeting you again, and circumstances have fortunately placed it in my power to do so at an early date. you have doubtless learned that the contest over the election in the sixth congressional district of south carolina has been decided in my favor, and that i now have the honor of representing my native state at the national capital. i have just been appointed a member of a special committee to visit and inspect the sault river and the straits of mackinac, with reference to the needs of lake navigation. i have made arrangements to start a week ahead of the other members of the committee, whom i am to meet in detroit on the th. i shall leave here on the d, and will arrive in groveland on the d, by the . evening express. i shall remain in groveland several days, in the course of which i shall be pleased to call, and renew the acquaintance so auspiciously begun in washington, which it is my fondest hope may ripen into a warmer friendship. if you do not regard my visit as presumptuous, and do not write me in the mean while forbidding it, i shall do myself the pleasure of waiting on you the morning after my arrival in groveland. with renewed expressions of my sincere admiration and profound esteem, i remain, sincerely yours, hamilton m. brown, m.c. to alice, and especially to her mother, this bold and flowery letter had very nearly the force of a formal declaration. they read it over again and again, and spent most of the afternoon discussing it. there were few young men in groveland eligible as husbands for so superior a person as alice clayton, and an addition to the number would be very acceptable. but the mere fact of his being a congressman was not sufficient to qualify him; there were other considerations. "i 've never heard of this honorable hamilton m. brown," said mr. clayton. the letter had been laid before him at the supper-table. "it 's strange, alice, that you have n't said anything about him before. you must have met lots of swell folks not to recollect a congressman." "but he was n't a congressman then," answered alice; "he was only a claimant. i remember senator bruce, and mr. douglass; but there were so many doctors and lawyers and politicians that i could n't keep track of them all. still i have a faint impression of a mr. brown who danced with me." she went into the parlor and brought out the dancing programme she had used at the washington ball. she had decorated it with a bow of blue ribbon and preserved it as a souvenir of her visit. "yes," she said, after examining it, "i must have danced with him. here are the initials--'h.m.b.'" "what color is he?" asked mr. clayton, as he plied his knife and fork. "i have a notion that he was rather dark--darker than any one i had ever danced with before." "why did you dance with him?" asked her father. "you were n't obliged to go back on your principles because you were away from home." "well, father, 'when you 're in rome'--you know the rest. mrs. clearweather introduced me to several dark men, to him among others. they were her friends, and common decency required me to be courteous." "if this man is black, we don't want to encourage him. if he 's the right sort, we 'll invite him to the house." "and make him feel at home," added mrs. clayton, on hospitable thoughts intent. "we must ask sadler about him to-morrow," said mr. clayton, when he had drunk his coffee and lighted his cigar. "if he 's the right man he shall have cause to remember his visit to groveland. we 'll show him that washington is not the only town on earth." the uncertainty of the family with regard to mr. brown was soon removed. mr. solomon sadler, who was supposed to know everything worth knowing concerning the colored race, and everybody of importance connected with it, dropped in after supper to make an evening call. sadler was familiar with the history of every man of negro ancestry who had distinguished himself in any walk of life. he could give the pedigree of alexander pushkin, the titles of scores of dumas's novels (even sadler had not time to learn them all), and could recite the whole of wendell phillips's lecture on toussaint l'ouverture. he claimed a personal acquaintance with mr. frederick douglass, and had been often in washington, where he was well known and well received in good colored society. "let me see," he said reflectively, when asked for information about the honorable hamilton m. brown. "yes, i think i know him. he studied at oberlin just after the war. he was about leaving there when i entered. there were two h.m. browns there--a hamilton m. brown and a henry m. brown. one was stout and dark and the other was slim and quite light; you could scarcely tell him from a dark white man. they used to call them 'light brown' and 'dark brown.' i did n't know either of them except by sight, for they were there only a few weeks after i went in. as i remember them, hamilton was the fair one--a very good-looking, gentlemanly fellow, and, as i heard, a good student and a fine speaker." "do you remember what kind of hair he had?" asked mr. clayton. "very good indeed; straight, as i remember it. he looked something like a spaniard or a portuguese." "now that you describe him," said alice, "i remember quite well dancing with such a gentleman; and i 'm wrong about my 'h.m.b.' the dark man must have been some one else; there are two others on my card that i can't remember distinctly, and he was probably one of those." "i guess he 's all right, alice," said her father when sadler had gone away. "he evidently means business, and we must treat him white. of course he must stay with us; there are no hotels in groveland while he is here. let 's see--he 'll be here in three days. that is n't very long, but i guess we can get ready. i 'll write a letter this afternoon--or you write it, and invite him to the house, and say i 'll meet him at the depot. and you may have _carte blanche_ for making the preparations." "we must have some people to meet him." "certainly; a reception is the proper thing. sit down immediately and write the letter and i 'll mail it first thing in the morning, so he 'll get it before he has time to make other arrangements. and you and your mother put your heads together and make out a list of guests, and i 'll have the invitations printed to-morrow. we will show the darkeys of groveland how to entertain a congressman." it will be noted that in moments of abstraction or excitement mr. clayton sometimes relapsed into forms of speech not entirely consistent with his principles. but some allowance must be made for his atmosphere; he could no more escape from it than the leopard can change his spots, or the--in deference to mr. clayton's feelings the quotation will be left incomplete. alice wrote the letter on the spot and it was duly mailed, and sped on its winged way to washington. the preparations for the reception were made as thoroughly and elaborately as possible on so short a notice. the invitations were issued; the house was cleaned from attic to cellar; an orchestra was engaged for the evening; elaborate floral decorations were planned and the flowers ordered. even the refreshments, which ordinarily, in the household of a caterer, would be mere matter of familiar detail, became a subject of serious consultation and study. the approaching event was a matter of very much interest to the fortunate ones who were honored with invitations, and this for several reasons. they were anxious to meet this sole representative of their race in the --th congress, and as he was not one of the old-line colored leaders, but a new star risen on the political horizon, there was a special curiosity to see who he was and what he looked like. moreover, the claytons did not often entertain a large company, but when they did, it was on a scale commensurate with their means and position, and to be present on such an occasion was a thing to remember and to talk about. and, most important consideration of all, some remarks dropped by members of the clayton family had given rise to the rumor that the congressman was seeking a wife. this invested his visit with a romantic interest, and gave the reception a practical value; for there were other marriageable girls besides miss clayton, and if one was left another might be taken. iii on the evening of april d, at fifteen minutes of six o'clock, mr. clayton, accompanied by jack, entered the livery carriage waiting at his gate and ordered the coachman to drive to the union depot. he had taken jack along, partly for company, and partly that jack might relieve the congressman of any trouble about his baggage, and make himself useful in case of emergency. jack was willing enough to go, for he had foreseen in the visitor a rival for alice's hand,--indeed he had heard more or less of the subject for several days,--and was glad to make a reconnaissance before the enemy arrived upon the field of battle. he had made--at least he had thought so--considerable progress with alice during the three weeks since her return from washington, and once or twice alice had been perilously near the tender stage. this visit had disturbed the situation and threatened to ruin his chances; but he did not mean to give up without a struggle. arrived at the main entrance, mr. clayton directed the carriage to wait, and entered the station with jack. the union depot at groveland was an immense oblong structure, covering a dozen parallel tracks and furnishing terminal passenger facilities for half a dozen railroads. the tracks ran east and west, and the depot was entered from the south, at about the middle of the building. on either side of the entrance, the waiting-rooms, refreshment rooms, baggage and express departments, and other administrative offices, extended in a row for the entire length of the building; and beyond them and parallel with them stretched a long open space, separated from the tracks by an iron fence or _grille_. there were two entrance gates in the fence, at which tickets must be shown before access could be had to trains, and two other gates, by which arriving passengers came out. mr. clayton looked at the blackboard on the wall underneath the station clock, and observed that the . train from washington was five minutes late. accompanied by jack he walked up and down the platform until the train, with the usual accompaniment of panting steam and clanging bell and rumbling trucks, pulled into the station, and drew up on the third or fourth track from the iron railing. mr. clayton stationed himself at the gate nearest the rear end of the train, reasoning that the congressman would ride in a parlor car, and would naturally come out by the gate nearest the point at which he left the train. "you 'd better go and stand by the other gate, jack," he said to his companion, "and stop him if he goes out that way." the train was well filled and a stream of passengers poured through. mr. clayton scanned the crowd carefully as they approached the gate, and scrutinized each passenger as he came through, without seeing any one that met the description of congressman brown, as given by sadler, or any one that could in his opinion be the gentleman for whom he was looking. when the last one had passed through he was left to the conclusion that his expected guest had gone out by the other gate. mr. clayton hastened thither. "did n't he come out this way, jack?" he asked. "no, sir," replied the young man, "i have n't seen him." "that 's strange," mused mr. clayton, somewhat anxiously. "he would hardly fail to come without giving us notice. surely we must have missed him. we 'd better look around a little. you go that way and i 'll go this." mr. clayton turned and walked several rods along the platform to the men's waiting-room, and standing near the door glanced around to see if he could find the object of his search. the only colored person in the room was a stout and very black man, wearing a broadcloth suit and a silk hat, and seated a short distance from the door. on the seat by his side stood a couple of valises. on one of them, the one nearest him, on which his arm rested, was written, in white letters, plainly legible,---- "h.m. brown, m.c. washington, d.c." mr. clayton's feelings at this discovery can better be imagined than described. he hastily left the waiting-room, before the black gentleman, who was looking the other way, was even aware of his presence, and, walking rapidly up and down the platform, communed with himself upon what course of action the situation demanded. he had invited to his house, had come down to meet, had made elaborate preparations to entertain on the following evening, a light-colored man,--a white man by his theory, an acceptable guest, a possible husband for his daughter, an avowed suitor for her hand. if the congressman had turned out to be brown, even dark brown, with fairly good hair, though he might not have desired him as a son-in-law, yet he could have welcomed him as a guest. but even this softening of the blow was denied him, for the man in the waiting-room was palpably, aggressively black, with pronounced african features and woolly hair, without apparently a single drop of redeeming white blood. could he, in the face of his well-known principles, his lifelong rule of conduct, take this negro into his home and introduce him to his friends? could he subject his wife and daughter to the rude shock of such a disappointment? it would be bad enough for them to learn of the ghastly mistake, but to have him in the house would be twisting the arrow in the wound. mr. clayton had the instincts of a gentleman, and realized the delicacy of the situation. but to get out of his difficulty without wounding the feelings of the congressman required not only diplomacy but dispatch. whatever he did must be done promptly; for if he waited many minutes the congressman would probably take a carriage and be driven to mr. clayton's residence. a ray of hope came for a moment to illumine the gloom of the situation. perhaps the black man was merely sitting there, and not the owner of the valise! for there were two valises, one on each side of the supposed congressman. for obvious reasons he did not care to make the inquiry himself, so he looked around for his companion, who came up a moment later. "jack," he exclaimed excitedly, "i 'm afraid we 're in the worst kind of a hole, unless there 's some mistake! run down to the men's waiting-room and you 'll see a man and a valise, and you 'll understand what i mean. ask that darkey if he is the honorable mr. brown, congressman from south carolina. if he says yes, come back right away and let me know, without giving him time to ask any questions, and put your wits to work to help me out of the scrape." "i wonder what 's the matter?" said jack to himself, but did as he was told. in a moment he came running back. "yes, sir," he announced; "he says he 's the man." "jack," said mr. clayton desperately, "if you want to show your appreciation of what i 've done for you, you must suggest some way out of this. i 'd never dare to take that negro to my house, and yet i 'm obliged to treat him like a gentleman." jack's eyes had worn a somewhat reflective look since he had gone to make the inquiry. suddenly his face brightened with intelligence, and then, as a newsboy ran into the station calling his wares, hardened into determination. "clarion, special extry 'dition! all about de epidemic er dipt'eria!" clamored the newsboy with shrill childish treble, as he made his way toward the waiting-room. jack darted after him, and saw the man to whom he had spoken buy a paper. he ran back to his employer, and dragged him over toward the ticket-seller's window. "i have it, sir!" he exclaimed, seizing a telegraph blank and writing rapidly, and reading aloud as he wrote. "how's this for a way out?"---- "dear sir,--i write you this note here in the depot to inform you of an unfortunate event which has interfered with my plans and those of my family for your entertainment while in groveland. yesterday my daughter alice complained of a sore throat, which by this afternoon had developed into a case of malignant diphtheria. in consequence our house has been quarantined; and while i have felt myself obliged to come down to the depot, i do not feel that i ought to expose you to the possibility of infection, and i therefore send you this by another hand. the bearer will conduct you to a carriage which i have ordered placed at your service, and unless you should prefer some other hotel, you will be driven to the forest hill house, where i beg you will consider yourself my guest during your stay in the city, and make the fullest use of every convenience it may offer. from present indications i fear no one of our family will be able to see you, which we shall regret beyond expression, as we have made elaborate arrangements for your entertainment. i still hope, however, that you may enjoy your visit, as there are many places of interest in the city, and many friends will doubtless be glad to make your acquaintance. "with assurances of my profound regret, i am sincerely yours, cicero clayton." "splendid!" cried mr. clayton. "you 've helped me out of a horrible scrape. now, go and take him to the hotel and see him comfortably located, and tell them to charge the bill to me." "i suspect, sir," suggested jack, "that i 'd better not go up to the house, and you 'll have to stay in yourself for a day or two, to keep up appearances. i 'll sleep on the lounge at the store, and we can talk business over the telephone." "all right, jack, we 'll arrange the details later. but for heaven's sake get him started, or he 'll be calling a hack to drive up to the house. i 'll go home on a street car." "so far so good," sighed mr. clayton to himself as he escaped from the station. "jack is a deuced clever fellow, and i 'll have to do something more for him. but the tug-of-war is yet to come. i 've got to bribe a doctor, shut up the house for a day or two, and have all the ill-humor of two disappointed women to endure until this negro leaves town. well, i 'm sure my wife and alice will back me up at any cost. no sacrifice is too great to escape having to entertain him; of course i have no prejudice against his color,--he can't help that,--but it is the _principle_ of the thing. if we received him it would be a concession fatal to all my views and theories. and i am really doing him a kindness, for i 'm sure that all the world could not make alice and her mother treat him with anything but cold politeness. it 'll be a great mortification to alice, but i don't see how else i could have got out of it." he boarded the first car that left the depot, and soon reached home. the house was lighted up, and through the lace curtains of the parlor windows he could see his wife and daughter, elegantly dressed, waiting to receive their distinguished visitor. he rang the bell impatiently, and a servant opened the door. "the gentleman did n't come?" asked the maid. "no," he said as he hung up his hat. this brought the ladies to the door. "he did n't come?" they exclaimed. "what 's the matter?" "i 'll tell you," he said. "mary," this to the servant, a white girl, who stood in open-eyed curiosity, "we shan't need you any more to-night." then he went into the parlor, and, closing the door, told his story. when he reached the point where he had discovered the color of the honorable mr. brown, miss clayton caught her breath, and was on the verge of collapse. "that nigger," said mrs. clayton indignantly, "can never set foot in this house. but what did you do with him?" mr. clayton quickly unfolded his plan, and described the disposition he had made of the congressman. "it 's an awful shame," said mrs. clayton. "just think of the trouble and expense we have gone to! and poor alice 'll never get over it, for everybody knows he came to see her and that he 's smitten with her. but you 've done just right; we never would have been able to hold up our heads again if we had introduced a black man, even a congressman, to the people that are invited here to-morrow night, as a sweetheart of alice. why, she would n't marry him if he was president of the united states and plated with gold an inch thick. the very idea!" "well," said mr. clayton, "then we 'we got to act quick. alice must wrap up her throat--by the way, alice, how _is_ your throat?" "it 's sore," sobbed alice, who had been in tears almost from her father's return, "and i don't care if i do have diphtheria and die, no, i don't!" and she wept on. "wrap up your throat and go to bed, and i 'll go over to doctor pillsbury's and get a diphtheria card to nail up on the house. in the morning, first thing, we 'll have to write notes recalling the invitations for to-morrow evening, and have them delivered by messenger boys. we were fools for not finding out all about this man from some one who knew, before we invited him here. sadler don't know more than half he thinks he does, anyway. and we 'll have to do this thing thoroughly, or our motives will be misconstrued, and people will say we are prejudiced and all that, when it is only a matter of principle with us." the programme outlined above was carried out to the letter. the invitations were recalled, to the great disappointment of the invited guests. the family physician called several times during the day. alice remained in bed, and the maid left without notice, in such a hurry that she forgot to take her best clothes. mr. clayton himself remained at home. he had a telephone in the house, and was therefore in easy communication with his office, so that the business did not suffer materially by reason of his absence from the store. about ten o'clock in the morning a note came up from the hotel, expressing mr. brown's regrets and sympathy. toward noon mr. clayton picked up the morning paper, which he had not theretofore had time to read, and was glancing over it casually, when his eye fell upon a column headed "a colored congressman." he read the article with astonishment that rapidly turned to chagrin and dismay. it was an interview describing the congressman as a tall and shapely man, about thirty-five years old, with an olive complexion not noticeably darker than many a white man's, straight hair, and eyes as black as sloes. "the bearing of this son of south carolina reveals the polished manners of the southern gentleman, and neither from his appearance nor his conversation would one suspect that the white blood which flows in his veins in such preponderating measure had ever been crossed by that of a darker race," wrote the reporter, who had received instructions at the office that for urgent business considerations the lake shipping interest wanted representative brown treated with marked consideration. there was more of the article, but the introductory portion left mr. clayton in such a state of bewilderment that the paper fell from his hand. what was the meaning of it? had he been mistaken? obviously so, or else the reporter was wrong, which was manifestly improbable. when he had recovered himself somewhat, he picked up the newspaper and began reading where he had left off. "representative brown traveled to groveland in company with bishop jones of the african methodist jerusalem church, who is _en route_ to attend the general conference of his denomination at detroit next week. the bishop, who came in while the writer was interviewing mr. brown, is a splendid type of the pure negro. he is said to be a man of great power among his people, which may easily be believed after one has looked upon his expressive countenance and heard him discuss the questions which affect the welfare of his church and his race." mr. clayton stared at the paper. "'the bishop,'" he repeated, "'is a splendid type of the pure negro.' i must have mistaken the bishop for the congressman! but how in the world did jack get the thing balled up? i 'll call up the store and demand an explanation of him. "jack," he asked, "what kind of a looking man was the fellow you gave the note to at the depot?" "he was a very wicked-looking fellow, sir," came back the answer. "he had a bad eye, looked like a gambler, sir. i am not surprised that you did n't want to entertain him, even if he was a congressman." "what color was he--that 's what i want to know--and what kind of hair did he have?" "why, he was about my complexion, sir, and had straight black hair." the rules of the telephone company did not permit swearing over the line. mr. clayton broke the rules. "was there any one else with him?" he asked when he had relieved his mind. "yes, sir, bishop jones of the african methodist jerusalem church was sitting there with him; they had traveled from washington together. i drove the bishop to his stopping-place after i had left mr. brown at the hotel. i did n't suppose you 'd mind." mr. clayton fell into a chair, and indulged in thoughts unutterable. he folded up the paper and slipped it under the family bible, where it was least likely to be soon discovered. "i 'll hide the paper, anyway," he groaned. "i 'll never hear the last of this till my dying day, so i may as well have a few hours' respite. it 's too late to go back, and we 've got to play the farce out. alice is really sick with disappointment, and to let her know this now would only make her worse. maybe he 'll leave town in a day or two, and then she 'll be in condition to stand it. such luck is enough to disgust a man with trying to do right and live up to his principles." time hung a little heavy on mr. clayton's hands during the day. his wife was busy with the housework. he answered several telephone calls about alice's health, and called up the store occasionally to ask how the business was getting on. after lunch he lay down on a sofa and took a nap, from which he was aroused by the sound of the door-bell. he went to the door. the evening paper was lying on the porch, and the newsboy, who had not observed the diphtheria sign until after he had rung, was hurrying away as fast as his legs would carry him. mr. clayton opened the paper and looked it through to see if there was any reference to the visiting congressman. he found what he sought and more. an article on the local page contained a resume of the information given in the morning paper, with the following additional paragraph:---- "a reporter, who called at the forest hill this morning to interview representative brown, was informed that the congressman had been invited to spend the remainder of his time in groveland as the guest of mr. william watkins, the proprietor of the popular livery establishment on main street. mr. brown will remain in the city several days, and a reception will be tendered him at mr. watkins's on wednesday evening." "that ends it," sighed mr. clayton. "the dove of peace will never again rest on my roof-tree." but why dwell longer on the sufferings of mr. clayton, or attempt to describe the feelings or chronicle the remarks of his wife and daughter when they learned the facts in the case? as to representative brown, he was made welcome in the hospitable home of mr. william watkins. there was a large and brilliant assemblage at the party on wednesday evening, at which were displayed the costumes prepared for the clayton reception. mr. brown took a fancy to miss lura watkins, to whom, before the week was over, he became engaged to be married. meantime poor alice, the innocent victim of circumstances and principles, lay sick abed with a supposititious case of malignant diphtheria, and a real case of acute disappointment and chagrin. "oh, jack!" exclaimed alice, a few weeks later, on the way home from evening church in company with the young man, "what a dreadful thing it all was! and to think of that hateful lura watkins marrying the congressman!" the street was shaded by trees at the point where they were passing, and there was no one in sight. jack put his arm around her waist, and, leaning over, kissed her. "never mind, dear," he said soothingly, "you still have your 'last chance' left, and i 'll prove myself a better man than the congressman." * * * * * occasionally, at social meetings, when the vexed question of the future of the colored race comes up, as it often does, for discussion, mr. clayton may still be heard to remark sententiously:---- "what the white people of the united states need most, in dealing with this problem, is a higher conception of the brotherhood of man. for of one blood god made all the nations of the earth." cicely's dream i the old woman stood at the back door of the cabin, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking across the vegetable garden that ran up to the very door. beyond the garden she saw, bathed in the sunlight, a field of corn, just in the ear, stretching for half a mile, its yellow, pollen-laden tassels overtopping the dark green mass of broad glistening blades; and in the distance, through the faint morning haze of evaporating dew, the line of the woods, of a still darker green, meeting the clear blue of the summer sky. old dinah saw, going down the path, a tall, brown girl, in a homespun frock, swinging a slat-bonnet in one hand and a splint basket in the other. "oh, cicely!" she called. the girl turned and answered in a resonant voice, vibrating with youth and life,---- "yes, granny!" "be sho' and pick a good mess er peas, chile, fer yo' gran'daddy's gwine ter be home ter dinner ter-day." the old woman stood a moment longer and then turned to go into the house. what she had not seen was that the girl was not only young, but lithe and shapely as a sculptor's model; that her bare feet seemed to spurn the earth as they struck it; that though brown, she was not so brown but that her cheek was darkly red with the blood of another race than that which gave her her name and station in life; and the old woman did not see that cicely's face was as comely as her figure was superb, and that her eyes were dreamy with vague yearnings. cicely climbed the low fence between the garden and the cornfield, and started down one of the long rows leading directly away from the house. old needham was a good ploughman, and straight as an arrow ran the furrow between the rows of corn, until it vanished in the distant perspective. the peas were planted beside alternate hills of corn, the cornstalks serving as supports for the climbing pea-vines. the vines nearest the house had been picked more or less clear of the long green pods, and cicely walked down the row for a quarter of a mile, to where the peas were more plentiful. and as she walked she thought of her dream of the night before. she had dreamed a beautiful dream. the fact that it was a beautiful dream, a delightful dream, her memory retained very vividly. she was troubled because she could not remember just what her dream had been about. of one other fact she was certain, that in her dream she had found something, and that her happiness had been bound up with the thing she had found. as she walked down the corn-row she ran over in her mind the various things with which she had always associated happiness. had she found a gold ring? no, it was not a gold ring--of that she felt sure. was it a soft, curly plume for her hat? she had seen town people with them, and had indulged in day-dreams on the subject; but it was not a feather. was it a bright-colored silk dress? no; as much as she had always wanted one, it was not a silk dress. for an instant, in a dream, she had tasted some great and novel happiness, and when she awoke it was dashed from her lips, and she could not even enjoy the memory of it, except in a vague, indefinite, and tantalizing way. cicely was troubled, too, because dreams were serious things. dreams had certain meanings, most of them, and some dreams went by contraries. if her dream had been a prophecy of some good thing, she had by forgetting it lost the pleasure of anticipation. if her dream had been one of those that go by contraries, the warning would be in vain, because she would not know against what evil to provide. so, with a sigh, cicely said to herself that it was a troubled world, more or less; and having come to a promising point, began to pick the tenderest pea-pods and throw them into her basket. by the time she had reached the end of the line the basket was nearly full. glancing toward the pine woods beyond the rail fence, she saw a brier bush loaded with large, luscious blackberries. cicely was fond of blackberries, so she set her basket down, climbed the fence, and was soon busily engaged in gathering the fruit, delicious even in its wild state. she had soon eaten all she cared for. but the berries were still numerous, and it occurred to her that her granddaddy would like a blackberry pudding for dinner. catching up her apron, and using it as a receptacle for the berries, she had gathered scarcely more than a handful when she heard a groan. cicely was not timid, and her curiosity being aroused by the sound, she stood erect, and remained in a listening attitude. in a moment the sound was repeated, and, gauging the point from which it came, she plunged resolutely into the thick underbrush of the forest. she had gone but a few yards when she stopped short with an exclamation of surprise and concern. upon the ground, under the shadow of the towering pines, a man lay at full length,--a young man, several years under thirty, apparently, so far as his age could be guessed from a face that wore a short soft beard, and was so begrimed with dust and incrusted with blood that little could be seen of the underlying integument. what was visible showed a skin browned by nature or by exposure. his hands were of even a darker brown, almost as dark as cicely's own. a tangled mass of very curly black hair, matted with burs, dank with dew, and clotted with blood, fell partly over his forehead, on the edge of which, extending back into the hair, an ugly scalp wound was gaping, and, though apparently not just inflicted, was still bleeding slowly, as though reluctant to stop, in spite of the coagulation that had almost closed it. cicely with a glance took in all this and more. but, first of all, she saw the man was wounded and bleeding, and the nurse latent in all womankind awoke in her to the requirements of the situation. she knew there was a spring a few rods away, and ran swiftly to it. there was usually a gourd at the spring, but now it was gone. pouring out the blackberries in a little heap where they could be found again, she took off her apron, dipped one end of it into the spring, and ran back to the wounded man. the apron was clean, and she squeezed a little stream of water from it into the man's mouth. he swallowed it with avidity. cicely then knelt by his side, and with the wet end of her apron washed the blood from the wound lightly, and the dust from the man's face. then she looked at her apron a moment, debating whether she should tear it or not. "i 'm feared granny 'll be mad," she said to herself. "i reckon i 'll jes' use de whole apron." so she bound the apron around his head as well as she could, and then sat down a moment on a fallen tree trunk, to think what she should do next. the man already seemed more comfortable; he had ceased moaning, and lay quiet, though breathing heavily. "what shall i do with that man?" she reflected. "i don' know whether he 's a w'ite man or a black man. ef he 's a w'ite man, i oughter go an' tell de w'ite folks up at de big house, an' dey 'd take keer of 'im. if he 's a black man, i oughter go tell granny. he don' look lack a black man somehow er nuther, an' yet he don' look lack a w'ite man; he 's too dahk, an' his hair's too curly. but i mus' do somethin' wid 'im. he can't be lef' here ter die in de woods all by hisse'f. reckon i 'll go an' tell granny." she scaled the fence, caught up the basket of peas from where she had left it, and ran, lightly and swiftly as a deer, toward the house. her short skirt did not impede her progress, and in a few minutes she had covered the half mile and was at the cabin door, a slight heaving of her full and yet youthful breast being the only sign of any unusual exertion. her story was told in a moment. the old woman took down a black bottle from a high shelf, and set out with cicely across the cornfield, toward the wounded man. as they went through the corn cicely recalled part of her dream. she had dreamed that under some strange circumstances--what they had been was still obscure--she had met a young man--a young man whiter than she and yet not all white--and that he had loved her and courted her and married her. her dream had been all the sweeter because in it she had first tasted the sweetness of love, and she had not recalled it before because only in her dream had she known or thought of love as something supremely desirable. with the memory of her dream, however, her fears revived. dreams were solemn things. to cicely the fabric of a vision was by no means baseless. her trouble arose from her not being able to recall, though she was well versed in dream-lore, just what event was foreshadowed by a dream of finding a wounded man. if the wounded man were of her own race, her dream would thus far have been realized, and having met the young man, the other joys might be expected to follow. if he should turn out to be a white man, then her dream was clearly one of the kind that go by contraries, and she could expect only sorrow and trouble and pain as the proper sequences of this fateful discovery. ii the two women reached the fence that separated the cornfield from the pine woods. "how is i gwine ter git ovuh dat fence, chile?" asked the old woman. "wait a minute, granny," said cicely; "i 'll take it down." it was only an eight-rail fence, and it was a matter of but a few minutes for the girl to lift down and lay to either side the ends of the rails that formed one of the angles. this done, the old woman easily stepped across the remaining two or three rails. it was only a moment before they stood by the wounded man. he was lying still, breathing regularly, and seemingly asleep. "what is he, granny," asked the girl anxiously, "a w'ite man, or not?" old dinah pushed back the matted hair from the wounded man's brow, and looked at the skin beneath. it was fairer there, but yet of a decided brown. she raised his hand, pushed back the tattered sleeve from his wrist, and then she laid his hand down gently. "mos' lackly he 's a mulatter man f'om up de country somewhar. he don' look lack dese yer niggers roun' yere, ner yet lack a w'ite man. but de po' boy's in a bad fix, w'ateber he is, an' i 'spec's we bettah do w'at we kin fer 'im, an' w'en he comes to he 'll tell us w'at he is--er w'at he calls hisse'f. hol' 'is head up, chile, an' i 'll po' a drop er dis yer liquor down his th'oat; dat 'll bring 'im to quicker 'n anything e'se i knows." cicely lifted the sick man's head, and dinah poured a few drops of the whiskey between his teeth. he swallowed it readily enough. in a few minutes he opened his eyes and stared blankly at the two women. cicely saw that his eyes were large and black, and glistening with fever. "how you feelin', suh?" asked the old woman. there was no answer. "is you feelin' bettah now?" the wounded man kept on staring blankly. suddenly he essayed to put his hand to his head, gave a deep groan, and fell back again unconscious. "he 's gone ag'in," said dinah. "i reckon we 'll hafter tote 'im up ter de house and take keer er 'im dere. w'ite folks would n't want ter fool wid a nigger man, an' we doan know who his folks is. he 's outer his head an' will be fer some time yet, an' we can't tell nuthin' 'bout 'im tel he comes ter his senses." cicely lifted the wounded man by the arms and shoulders. she was strong, with the strength of youth and a sturdy race. the man was pitifully emaciated; how much, the two women had not suspected until they raised him. they had no difficulty whatever, except for the awkwardness of such a burden, in lifting him over the fence and carrying him through the cornfield to the cabin. they laid him on cicely's bed in the little lean-to shed that formed a room separate from the main apartment of the cabin. the old woman sent cicely to cook the dinner, while she gave her own attention exclusively to the still unconscious man. she brought water and washed him as though he were a child. "po' boy," she said, "he doan feel lack he 's be'n eatin' nuff to feed a sparrer. he 'pears ter be mos' starved ter def." she washed his wound more carefully, made some lint,--the art was well known in the sixties,--and dressed his wound with a fair degree of skill. "somebody must 'a' be'n tryin' ter put yo' light out, chile," she muttered to herself as she adjusted the bandage around his head. "a little higher er a little lower, an' you would n' 'a' be'n yere ter tell de tale. dem clo's," she argued, lifting the tattered garments she had removed from her patient, "don' b'long 'roun' yere. dat kinder weavin' come f'om down to'ds souf ca'lina. i wish needham 'u'd come erlong. he kin tell who dis man is, an' all erbout 'im." she made a bowl of gruel, and fed it, drop by drop, to the sick man. this roused him somewhat from his stupor, but when dinah thought he had enough of the gruel, and stopped feeding him, he closed his eyes again and relapsed into a heavy sleep that was so closely akin to unconsciousness as to be scarcely distinguishable from it. when old needham came home at noon, his wife, who had been anxiously awaiting his return, told him in a few words the story of cicely's discovery and of the subsequent events. needham inspected the stranger with a professional eye. he had been something of a plantation doctor in his day, and was known far and wide for his knowledge of simple remedies. the negroes all around, as well as many of the poorer white people, came to him for the treatment of common ailments. "he 's got a fevuh," he said, after feeling the patient's pulse and laying his hand on his brow, "an' we 'll hafter gib 'im some yarb tea an' nuss 'im tel de fevuh w'ars off. i 'spec'," he added, "dat i knows whar dis boy come f'om. he 's mos' lackly one er dem bright mulatters, f'om robeson county--some of 'em call deyse'ves croatan injins--w'at's been conscripted an' sent ter wu'k on de fo'tifications down at wimbleton er some'er's er nuther, an' done 'scaped, and got mos' killed gittin' erway, an' wuz n' none too well fed befo', an' nigh 'bout starved ter def sence. we 'll hafter hide dis man, er e'se we is lackly ter git inter trouble ou'se'ves by harb'rin' 'im. ef dey ketch 'im yere, dey 's liable ter take 'im out an' shoot 'im--an' des ez lackly us too." cicely was listening with bated breath. "oh, gran'daddy," she cried with trembling voice, "don' let 'em ketch 'im! hide 'im somewhar." "i reckon we 'll leave 'im yere fer a day er so. ef he had come f'om roun' yere i 'd be skeered ter keep 'im, fer de w'ite folks 'u'd prob'ly be lookin' fer 'im. but i knows ev'ybody w'at's be'n conscripted fer ten miles 'roun', an' dis yere boy don' b'long in dis neighborhood. w'en 'e gits so 'e kin he'p 'isse'f we 'll put 'im up in de lof an' hide 'im till de yankees come. fer dey 're comin', sho'. i dremp' las' night dey wuz close ter han', and i hears de w'ite folks talkin' ter deyse'ves 'bout it. an' de time is comin' w'en de good lawd gwine ter set his people free, an' it ain' gwine ter be long, nuther." needham's prophecy proved true. in less than a week the confederate garrison evacuated the arsenal in the neighboring town of patesville, blew up the buildings, destroyed the ordnance and stores, and retreated across the cape fear river, burning the river bridge behind them,--two acts of war afterwards unjustly attributed to general sherman's army, which followed close upon the heels of the retreating confederates. when there was no longer any fear for the stranger's safety, no more pains were taken to conceal him. his wound had healed rapidly, and in a week he had been able with some help to climb up the ladder into the loft. in all this time, however, though apparently conscious, he had said no word to any one, nor had he seemed to comprehend a word that was spoken to him. cicely had been his constant attendant. after the first day, during which her granny had nursed him, she had sat by his bedside, had fanned his fevered brow, had held food and water and medicine to his lips. when it was safe for him to come down from the loft and sit in a chair under a spreading oak, cicely supported him until he was strong enough to walk about the yard. when his strength had increased sufficiently to permit of greater exertion, she accompanied him on long rambles in the fields and woods. in spite of his gain in physical strength, the newcomer changed very little in other respects. for a long time he neither spoke nor smiled. to questions put to him he simply gave no reply, but looked at his questioner with the blank unconsciousness of an infant. by and by he began to recognize cicely, and to smile at her approach. the next step in returning consciousness was but another manifestation of the same sentiment. when cicely would leave him he would look his regret, and be restless and uneasy until she returned. the family were at a loss what to call him. to any inquiry as to his name he answered no more than to other questions. "he come jes' befo' sherman," said needham, after a few weeks, "lack john de baptis' befo' de lawd. i reckon we bettah call 'im john." so they called him john. he soon learned the name. as time went on cicely found that he was quick at learning things. she taught him to speak her own negro english, which he pronounced with absolute fidelity to her intonations; so that barring the quality of his voice, his speech was an echo of cicely's own. the summer wore away and the autumn came. john and cicely wandered in the woods together and gathered walnuts, and chinquapins and wild grapes. when harvest time came, they worked in the fields side by side,--plucked the corn, pulled the fodder, and gathered the dried peas from the yellow pea-vines. cicely was a phenomenal cotton-picker, and john accompanied her to the fields and stayed by her hours at a time, though occasionally he would complain of his head, and sit under a tree and rest part of the day while cicely worked, the two keeping one another always in sight. they did not have a great deal of intercourse with other people. young men came to the cabin sometimes to see cicely, but when they found her entirely absorbed in the stranger they ceased their visits. for a time cicely kept him away, as much as possible, from others, because she did not wish them to see that there was anything wrong about him. this was her motive at first, but after a while she kept him to herself simply because she was happier so. he was hers--hers alone. she had found him, as pharaoh's daughter had found moses in the bulrushes; she had taught him to speak, to think, to love. she had not taught him to remember; she would not have wished him to; she would have been jealous of any past to which he might have proved bound by other ties. her dream so far had come true. she had found him; he loved her. the rest of it would as surely follow, and that before long. for dreams were serious things, and time had proved hers to have been not a presage of misfortune, but one of the beneficent visions that are sent, that we may enjoy by anticipation the good things that are in store for us. iii but a short interval of time elapsed after the passage of the warlike host that swept through north carolina, until there appeared upon the scene the vanguard of a second army, which came to bring light and the fruits of liberty to a land which slavery and the havoc of war had brought to ruin. it is fashionable to assume that those who undertook the political rehabilitation of the southern states merely rounded out the ruin that the war had wrought--merely ploughed up the desolate land and sowed it with salt. perhaps the gentler judgments of the future may recognize that their task was a difficult one, and that wiser and honester men might have failed as egregiously. it may even, in time, be conceded that some good came out of the carpet-bag governments, as, for instance, the establishment of a system of popular education in the former slave states. where it had been a crime to teach people to read or write, a schoolhouse dotted every hillside, and the state provided education for rich and poor, for white and black alike. let us lay at least this token upon the grave of the carpet-baggers. the evil they did lives after them, and the statute of limitations does not seem to run against it. it is but just that we should not forget the good. long, however, before the work of political reconstruction had begun, a brigade of yankee schoolmasters and schoolma'ams had invaded dixie, and one of the latter had opened a freedman's bureau school in the town of patesville, about four miles from needham green's cabin on the neighboring sandhills. it had been quite a surprise to miss chandler's boston friends when she had announced her intention of going south to teach the freedmen. rich, accomplished, beautiful, and a social favorite, she was giving up the comforts and luxuries of northern life to go among hostile strangers, where her associates would be mostly ignorant negroes. perhaps she might meet occasionally an officer of some federal garrison, or a traveler from the north; but to all intents and purposes her friends considered her as going into voluntary exile. but heroism was not rare in those days, and martha chandler was only one of the great multitude whose hearts went out toward an oppressed race, and who freely poured out their talents, their money, their lives,--whatever god had given them,--in the sublime and not unfruitful effort to transform three millions of slaves into intelligent freemen. miss chandler's friends knew, too, that she had met a great sorrow, and more than suspected that out of it had grown her determination to go south. when cicely green heard that a school for colored people had been opened at patesville she combed her hair, put on her sunday frock and such bits of finery as she possessed, and set out for town early the next monday morning. there were many who came to learn the new gospel of education, which was to be the cure for all the freedmen's ills. the old and gray-haired, the full-grown man and woman, the toddling infant,--they came to acquire the new and wonderful learning that was to make them the equals of the white people. it was the teacher's task, by no means an easy one, to select from this incongruous mass the most promising material, and to distribute among them the second-hand books and clothing that were sent, largely by her boston friends, to aid her in her work; to find out what they knew, to classify them by their intelligence rather than by their knowledge, for they were all lamentably ignorant. some among them were the children of parents who had been free before the war, and of these some few could read and one or two could write. one paragon, who could repeat the multiplication table, was immediately promoted to the position of pupil teacher. miss chandler took a liking to the tall girl who had come so far to sit under her instruction. there was a fine, free air in her bearing, a lightness in her step, a sparkle in her eye, that spoke of good blood,--whether fused by nature in its own alembic, out of material despised and spurned of men, or whether some obscure ancestral strain, the teacher could not tell. the girl proved intelligent and learned rapidly, indeed seemed almost feverishly anxious to learn. she was quiet, and was, though utterly untrained, instinctively polite, and profited from the first day by the example of her teacher's quiet elegance. the teacher dressed in simple black. when cicely came back to school the second day, she had left off her glass beads and her red ribbon, and had arranged her hair as nearly like the teacher's as her skill and its quality would permit. the teacher was touched by these efforts at imitation, and by the intense devotion cicely soon manifested toward her. it was not a sycophantic, troublesome devotion, that made itself a burden to its object. it found expression in little things done rather than in any words the girl said. to the degree that the attraction was mutual, martha recognized in it a sort of freemasonry of temperament that drew them together in spite of the differences between them. martha felt sometimes, in the vague way that one speculates about the impossible, that if she were brown, and had been brought up in north carolina, she would be like cicely; and that if cicely's ancestors had come over in the mayflower, and cicely had been reared on beacon street, in the shadow of the state house dome, cicely would have been very much like herself. miss chandler was lonely sometimes. her duties kept her occupied all day. on sundays she taught a bible class in the schoolroom. correspondence with bureau officials and friends at home furnished her with additional occupation. at times, nevertheless, she felt a longing for the company of women of her own race; but the white ladies of the town did not call, even in the most formal way, upon the yankee school-teacher. miss chandler was therefore fain to do the best she could with such companionship as was available. she took cicely to her home occasionally, and asked her once to stay all night. thinking, however, that she detected a reluctance on the girl's part to remain away from home, she did not repeat her invitation. cicely, indeed, was filling a double rôle. the learning acquired from miss chandler she imparted to john at home. every evening, by the light of the pine-knots blazing on needham's ample hearth, she taught john to read the simple words she had learned during the day. why she did not take him to school she had never asked herself; there were several other pupils as old as he seemed to be. perhaps she still thought it necessary to protect him from curious remark. he worked with needham by day, and she could see him at night, and all of saturdays and sundays. perhaps it was the jealous selfishness of love. she had found him; he was hers. in the spring, when school was over, her granny had said that she might marry him. till then her dream would not yet have come true, and she must keep him to herself. and yet she did not wish him to lose this golden key to the avenues of opportunity. she would not take him to school, but she would teach him each day all that she herself had learned. he was not difficult to teach, but learned, indeed, with what seemed to cicely marvelous ease,--always, however, by her lead, and never of his own initiative. for while he could do a man's work, he was in most things but a child, without a child's curiosity. his love for cicely appeared the only thing for which he needed no suggestion; and even that possessed an element of childish dependence that would have seemed, to minds trained to thoughtful observation, infinitely pathetic. the spring came and cotton-planting time. the children began to drop out of miss chandler's school one by one, as their services were required at home. cicely was among those who intended to remain in school until the term closed with the "exhibition," in which she was assigned a leading part. she had selected her recitation, or "speech," from among half a dozen poems that her teacher had suggested, and to memorizing it she devoted considerable time and study. the exhibition, as the first of its kind, was sure to be a notable event. the parents and friends of the children were invited to attend, and a colored church, recently erected,--the largest available building,--was secured as the place where the exercises should take place. on the morning of the eventful day, uncle needham, assisted by john, harnessed the mule to the two-wheeled cart, on which a couple of splint-bottomed chairs were fastened to accommodate dinah and cicely. john put on his best clothes,--an ill-fitting suit of blue jeans,--a round wool hat, a pair of coarse brogans, a homespun shirt, and a bright blue necktie. cicely wore her best frock, a red ribbon at her throat, another in her hair, and carried a bunch of flowers in her hand. uncle needham and aunt dinah were also in holiday array. needham and john took their seats on opposite sides of the cart-frame, with their feet dangling down, and thus the equipage set out leisurely for the town. cicely had long looked forward impatiently to this day. she was going to marry john the next week, and then her dream would have come entirely true. but even this anticipated happiness did not overshadow the importance of the present occasion, which would be an epoch in her life, a day of joy and triumph. she knew her speech perfectly, and timidity was not one of her weaknesses. she knew that the red ribbons set off her dark beauty effectively, and that her dress fitted neatly the curves of her shapely figure. she confidently expected to win the first prize, a large morocco-covered bible, offered by miss chandler for the best exercise. cicely and her companions soon arrived at patesville. their entrance into the church made quite a sensation, for cicely was not only an acknowledged belle, but a general favorite, and to john there attached a tinge of mystery which inspired a respect not bestowed upon those who had grown up in the neighborhood. cicely secured a seat in the front part of the church, next to the aisle, in the place reserved for the pupils. as the house was already partly filled by townspeople when the party from the country arrived, needham and his wife and john were forced to content themselves with places somewhat in the rear of the room, from which they could see and hear what took place on the platform, but where they were not at all conspicuously visible to those at the front of the church. the schoolmistress had not yet arrived, and order was preserved in the audience by two of the elder pupils, adorned with large rosettes of red, white, and blue, who ushered the most important visitors to the seats reserved for them. a national flag was gracefully draped over the platform, and under it hung a lithograph of the great emancipator, for it was thus these people thought of him. he had saved the union, but the union had never meant anything good to them. he had proclaimed liberty to the captive, which meant all to them; and to them he was and would ever be the great emancipator. the schoolmistress came in at a rear door and took her seat upon the platform. martha was dressed in white; for once she had laid aside the sombre garb in which alone she had been seen since her arrival at patesville. she wore a yellow rose at her throat, a bunch of jasmine in her belt. a sense of responsibility for the success of the exhibition had deepened the habitual seriousness of her face, yet she greeted the audience with a smile. "don' miss chan'ler look sweet," whispered the little girls to one another, devouring her beauty with sparkling eyes, their lips parted over a wealth of ivory. "de lawd will bress dat chile," said one old woman, in soliloquy. "i t'ank de good marster i 's libbed ter see dis day." even envy could not hide its noisome head: a pretty quadroon whispered to her neighbor:---- "i don't b'liebe she 's natch'ly ez white ez dat. i 'spec' she 's be'n powd'rin'! an' i know all dat hair can't be her'n; she 's got on a switch, sho 's you bawn." "you knows dat ain' so, ma'y 'liza smif," rejoined the other, with a look of stern disapproval; "you _knows_ dat ain' so. you 'd gib yo' everlastin' soul 'f you wuz ez white ez miss chan'ler, en yo' ha'r wuz ez long ez her'n." "by jove, maxwell!" exclaimed a young officer, who belonged to the federal garrison stationed in the town, "but that girl is a beauty." the speaker and a companion were in fatigue uniform, and had merely dropped in for an hour between garrison duty. the ushers had wished to give them seats on the platform, but they had declined, thinking that perhaps their presence there might embarrass the teacher. they sought rather to avoid observation by sitting behind a pillar in the rear of the room, around which they could see without attracting undue attention. "to think," the lieutenant went on, "of that junonian figure, those lustrous orbs, that golden coronal, that flower of northern civilization, being wasted on these barbarians!" the speaker uttered an exaggerated but suppressed groan. his companion, a young man of clean-shaven face and serious aspect, nodded assent, but whispered reprovingly,---- "'sh! some one will hear you. the exercises are going to begin." when miss chandler stepped forward to announce the hymn to be sung by the school as the first exercise, every eye in the room was fixed upon her, except john's, which saw only cicely. when the teacher had uttered a few words, he looked up to her, and from that moment did not take his eyes off martha's face. after the singing, a little girl, dressed in white, crossed by ribbons of red and blue, recited with much spirit a patriotic poem. when martha announced the third exercise, john's face took on a more than usually animated expression, and there was a perceptible deepening of the troubled look in his eyes, never entirely absent since cicely had found him in the woods. a little yellow boy, with long curls, and a frightened air, next ascended the platform. "now, jimmie, be a man, and speak right out," whispered his teacher, tapping his arm reassuringly with her fan as he passed her. jimmie essayed to recite the lines so familiar to a past generation of schoolchildren:---- "i knew a widow very poor, who four small children had; the eldest was but six years old, a gentle, modest lad." he ducked his head hurriedly in a futile attempt at a bow; then, following instructions previously given him, fixed his eyes upon a large cardboard motto hanging on the rear wall of the room, which admonished him in bright red letters to "always speak the truth," and started off with assumed confidence "i knew a widow very poor, who"---- at this point, drawn by an irresistible impulse, his eyes sought the level of the audience. ah, fatal blunder! he stammered, but with an effort raised his eyes and began again: "i knew a widow very poor, who four"---- again his treacherous eyes fell, and his little remaining self-possession utterly forsook him. he made one more despairing effort:---- "i knew a widow very poor, who four small"---- and then, bursting into tears, turned and fled amid a murmur of sympathy. jimmie's inglorious retreat was covered by the singing in chorus of "the star-spangled banner," after which cicely green came forward to recite her poem. "by jove, maxwell!" whispered the young officer, who was evidently a connoisseur of female beauty, "that is n't bad for a bronze venus. i 'll tell you"---- "'sh!" said the other. "keep still." when cicely finished her recitation, the young officers began to applaud, but stopped suddenly in some confusion as they realized that they were the only ones in the audience so engaged. the colored people had either not learned how to express their approval in orthodox fashion, or else their respect for the sacred character of the edifice forbade any such demonstration. their enthusiasm found vent, however, in a subdued murmur, emphasized by numerous nods and winks and suppressed exclamations. during the singing that followed cicely's recitation the two officers quietly withdrew, their duties calling them away at this hour. at the close of the exercises, a committee on prizes met in the vestibule, and unanimously decided that cicely green was entitled to the first prize. proudly erect, with sparkling eyes and cheeks flushed with victory, cicely advanced to the platform to receive the coveted reward. as she turned away, her eyes, shining with gratified vanity, sought those of her lover. john sat bent slightly forward in an attitude of strained attention; and cicely's triumph lost half its value when she saw that it was not at her, but at miss chandler, that his look was directed. though she watched him thenceforward, not one glance did he vouchsafe to his jealous sweetheart, and never for an instant withdrew his eyes from martha, or relaxed the unnatural intentness of his gaze. the imprisoned mind, stirred to unwonted effort, was struggling for liberty; and from martha had come the first ray of outer light that had penetrated its dungeon. before the audience was dismissed, the teacher rose to bid her school farewell. her intention was to take a vacation of three months; but what might happen in that time she did not know, and there were duties at home of such apparent urgency as to render her return to north carolina at least doubtful; so that in her own heart her _au revoir_ sounded very much like a farewell. she spoke to them of the hopeful progress they had made, and praised them for their eager desire to learn. she told them of the serious duties of life, and of the use they should make of their acquirements. with prophetic finger she pointed them to the upward way which they must climb with patient feet to raise themselves out of the depths. then, an unusual thing with her, she spoke of herself. her heart was full; it was with difficulty that she maintained her composure; for the faces that confronted her were kindly faces, and not critical, and some of them she had learned to love right well. "i am going away from you, my children," she said; "but before i go i want to tell you how i came to be in north carolina; so that if i have been able to do anything here among you for which you might feel inclined, in your good nature, to thank me, you may thank not me alone, but another who came before me, and whose work i have but taken up where _he_ laid it down. i had a friend,--a dear friend,--why should i be ashamed to say it?--a lover, to whom i was to be married,--as i hope all you girls may some day be happily married. his country needed him, and i gave him up. he came to fight for the union and for freedom, for he believed that all men are brothers. he did not come back again--he gave up his life for you. could i do less than he? i came to the land that he sanctified by his death, and i have tried in my weak way to tend the plant he watered with his blood, and which, in the fullness of time, will blossom forth into the perfect flower of liberty." she could say no more, and as the whole audience thrilled in sympathy with her emotion, there was a hoarse cry from the men's side of the room, and john forced his way to the aisle and rushed forward to the platform. "martha! martha!" "arthur! o arthur!" pent-up love burst the flood-gates of despair and oblivion, and caught these two young hearts in its torrent. captain arthur carey, of the st massachusetts, long since reported missing, and mourned as dead, was restored to reason and to his world. it seemed to him but yesterday that he had escaped from the confederate prison at salisbury; that in an encounter with a guard he had received a wound in the head; that he had wandered on in the woods, keeping himself alive by means of wild berries, with now and then a piece of bread or a potato from a friendly negro. it seemed but the night before that he had laid himself down, tortured with fever, weak from loss of blood, and with no hope that he would ever rise again. from that moment his memory of the past was a blank until he recognized martha on the platform and took up again the thread of his former existence where it had been broken off. * * * * * and cicely? well, there is often another woman, and cicely, all unwittingly to carey or to martha, had been the other woman. for, after all, her beautiful dream had been one of the kind that go by contraries. the passing of grandison i when it is said that it was done to please a woman, there ought perhaps to be enough said to explain anything; for what a man will not do to please a woman is yet to be discovered. nevertheless, it might be well to state a few preliminary facts to make it clear why young dick owens tried to run one of his father's negro men off to canada. in the early fifties, when the growth of anti-slavery sentiment and the constant drain of fugitive slaves into the north had so alarmed the slaveholders of the border states as to lead to the passage of the fugitive slave law, a young white man from ohio, moved by compassion for the sufferings of a certain bondman who happened to have a "hard master," essayed to help the slave to freedom. the attempt was discovered and frustrated; the abductor was tried and convicted for slave-stealing, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment in the penitentiary. his death, after the expiration of only a small part of the sentence, from cholera contracted while nursing stricken fellow prisoners, lent to the case a melancholy interest that made it famous in anti-slavery annals. dick owens had attended the trial. he was a youth of about twenty-two, intelligent, handsome, and amiable, but extremely indolent, in a graceful and gentlemanly way; or, as old judge fenderson put it more than once, he was lazy as the devil,--a mere figure of speech, of course, and not one that did justice to the enemy of mankind. when asked why he never did anything serious, dick would good-naturedly reply, with a well-modulated drawl, that he did n't have to. his father was rich; there was but one other child, an unmarried daughter, who because of poor health would probably never marry, and dick was therefore heir presumptive to a large estate. wealth or social position he did not need to seek, for he was born to both. charity lomax had shamed him into studying law, but notwithstanding an hour or so a day spent at old judge fenderson's office, he did not make remarkable headway in his legal studies. "what dick needs," said the judge, who was fond of tropes, as became a scholar, and of horses, as was befitting a kentuckian, "is the whip of necessity, or the spur of ambition. if he had either, he would soon need the snaffle to hold him back." but all dick required, in fact, to prompt him to the most remarkable thing he accomplished before he was twenty-five, was a mere suggestion from charity lomax. the story was never really known to but two persons until after the war, when it came out because it was a good story and there was no particular reason for its concealment. young owens had attended the trial of this slave-stealer, or martyr,--either or both,--and, when it was over, had gone to call on charity lomax, and, while they sat on the veranda after sundown, had told her all about the trial. he was a good talker, as his career in later years disclosed, and described the proceedings very graphically. "i confess," he admitted, "that while my principles were against the prisoner, my sympathies were on his side. it appeared that he was of good family, and that he had an old father and mother, respectable people, dependent upon him for support and comfort in their declining years. he had been led into the matter by pity for a negro whose master ought to have been run out of the county long ago for abusing his slaves. if it had been merely a question of old sam briggs's negro, nobody would have cared anything about it. but father and the rest of them stood on the principle of the thing, and told the judge so, and the fellow was sentenced to three years in the penitentiary." miss lomax had listened with lively interest. "i 've always hated old sam briggs," she said emphatically, "ever since the time he broke a negro's leg with a piece of cordwood. when i hear of a cruel deed it makes the quaker blood that came from my grandmother assert itself. personally i wish that all sam briggs's negroes would run away. as for the young man, i regard him as a hero. he dared something for humanity. i could love a man who would take such chances for the sake of others." "could you love me, charity, if i did something heroic?" "you never will, dick. you 're too lazy for any use. you 'll never do anything harder than playing cards or fox-hunting." "oh, come now, sweetheart! i 've been courting you for a year, and it 's the hardest work imaginable. are you never going to love me?" he pleaded. his hand sought hers, but she drew it back beyond his reach. "i 'll never love you, dick owens, until you have done something. when that time comes, i 'll think about it." "but it takes so long to do anything worth mentioning, and i don't want to wait. one must read two years to become a lawyer, and work five more to make a reputation. we shall both be gray by then." "oh, i don't know," she rejoined. "it does n't require a lifetime for a man to prove that he is a man. this one did something, or at least tried to." "well, i 'm willing to attempt as much as any other man. what do you want me to do, sweetheart? give me a test." "oh, dear me!" said charity, "i don't care what you _do_, so you do _something_. really, come to think of it, why should i care whether you do anything or not?" "i 'm sure i don't know why you should, charity," rejoined dick humbly, "for i 'm aware that i 'm not worthy of it." "except that i do hate," she added, relenting slightly, "to see a really clever man so utterly lazy and good for nothing." "thank you, my dear; a word of praise from you has sharpened my wits already. i have an idea! will you love me if i run a negro off to canada?" "what nonsense!" said charity scornfully. "you must be losing your wits. steal another man's slave, indeed, while your father owns a hundred!" "oh, there 'll be no trouble about that," responded dick lightly; "i 'll run off one of the old man's; we 've got too many anyway. it may not be quite as difficult as the other man found it, but it will be just as unlawful, and will demonstrate what i am capable of." "seeing 's believing," replied charity. "of course, what you are talking about now is merely absurd. i 'm going away for three weeks, to visit my aunt in tennessee. if you 're able to tell me, when i return, that you 've done something to prove your quality, i 'll--well, you may come and tell me about it." ii young owens got up about nine o'clock next morning, and while making his toilet put some questions to his personal attendant, a rather bright looking young mulatto of about his own age. "tom," said dick. "yas, mars dick," responded the servant. "i 'm going on a trip north. would you like to go with me?" now, if there was anything that tom would have liked to make, it was a trip north. it was something he had long contemplated in the abstract, but had never been able to muster up sufficient courage to attempt in the concrete. he was prudent enough, however, to dissemble his feelings. "i would n't min' it, mars dick, ez long ez you 'd take keer er me an' fetch me home all right." tom's eyes belied his words, however, and his young master felt well assured that tom needed only a good opportunity to make him run away. having a comfortable home, and a dismal prospect in case of failure, tom was not likely to take any desperate chances; but young owens was satisfied that in a free state but little persuasion would be required to lead tom astray. with a very logical and characteristic desire to gain his end with the least necessary expenditure of effort, he decided to take tom with him, if his father did not object. colonel owens had left the house when dick went to breakfast, so dick did not see his father till luncheon. "father," he remarked casually to the colonel, over the fried chicken, "i 'm feeling a trifle run down. i imagine my health would be improved somewhat by a little travel and change of scene." "why don't you take a trip north?" suggested his father. the colonel added to paternal affection a considerable respect for his son as the heir of a large estate. he himself had been "raised" in comparative poverty, and had laid the foundations of his fortune by hard work; and while he despised the ladder by which he had climbed, he could not entirely forget it, and unconsciously manifested, in his intercourse with his son, some of the poor man's deference toward the wealthy and well-born. "i think i 'll adopt your suggestion, sir," replied the son, "and run up to new york; and after i 've been there awhile i may go on to boston for a week or so. i 've never been there, you know." "there are some matters you can talk over with my factor in new york," rejoined the colonel, "and while you are up there among the yankees, i hope you 'll keep your eyes and ears open to find out what the rascally abolitionists are saying and doing. they 're becoming altogether too active for our comfort, and entirely too many ungrateful niggers are running away. i hope the conviction of that fellow yesterday may discourage the rest of the breed. i 'd just like to catch any one trying to run off one of my darkeys. he 'd get short shrift; i don't think any court would have a chance to try him." "they are a pestiferous lot," assented dick, "and dangerous to our institutions. but say, father, if i go north i shall want to take tom with me." now, the colonel, while a very indulgent father, had pronounced views on the subject of negroes, having studied them, as he often said, for a great many years, and, as he asserted oftener still, understanding them perfectly. it is scarcely worth while to say, either, that he valued more highly than if he had inherited them the slaves he had toiled and schemed for. "i don't think it safe to take tom up north," he declared, with promptness and decision. "he 's a good enough boy, but too smart to trust among those low-down abolitionists. i strongly suspect him of having learned to read, though i can't imagine how. i saw him with a newspaper the other day, and while he pretended to be looking at a woodcut, i 'm almost sure he was reading the paper. i think it by no means safe to take him." dick did not insist, because he knew it was useless. the colonel would have obliged his son in any other matter, but his negroes were the outward and visible sign of his wealth and station, and therefore sacred to him. "whom do you think it safe to take?" asked dick. "i suppose i 'll have to have a body-servant." "what 's the matter with grandison?" suggested the colonel. "he 's handy enough, and i reckon we can trust him. he 's too fond of good eating, to risk losing his regular meals; besides, he 's sweet on your mother's maid, betty, and i 've promised to let 'em get married before long. i 'll have grandison up, and we 'll talk to him. here, you boy jack," called the colonel to a yellow youth in the next room who was catching flies and pulling their wings off to pass the time, "go down to the barn and tell grandison to come here." "grandison," said the colonel, when the negro stood before him, hat in hand. "yas, marster." "have n't i always treated you right?" "yas, marster." "have n't you always got all you wanted to eat?" "yas, marster." "and as much whiskey and tobacco as was good for you, grandison?" "y-a-s, marster." "i should just like to know, grandison, whether you don't think yourself a great deal better off than those poor free negroes down by the plank road, with no kind master to look after them and no mistress to give them medicine when they 're sick and--and"---- "well, i sh'd jes' reckon i is better off, suh, dan dem low-down free niggers, suh! ef anybody ax 'em who dey b'long ter, dey has ter say nobody, er e'se lie erbout it. anybody ax me who i b'longs ter, i ain' got no 'casion ter be shame' ter tell 'em, no, suh, 'deed i ain', suh!" the colonel was beaming. this was true gratitude, and his feudal heart thrilled at such appreciative homage. what cold-blooded, heartless monsters they were who would break up this blissful relationship of kindly protection on the one hand, of wise subordination and loyal dependence on the other! the colonel always became indignant at the mere thought of such wickedness. "grandison," the colonel continued, "your young master dick is going north for a few weeks, and i am thinking of letting him take you along. i shall send you on this trip, grandison, in order that you may take care of your young master. he will need some one to wait on him, and no one can ever do it so well as one of the boys brought up with him on the old plantation. i am going to trust him in your hands, and i 'm sure you 'll do your duty faithfully, and bring him back home safe and sound--to old kentucky." grandison grinned. "oh yas, marster, i 'll take keer er young mars dick." "i want to warn you, though, grandison," continued the colonel impressively, "against these cussed abolitionists, who try to entice servants from their comfortable homes and their indulgent masters, from the blue skies, the green fields, and the warm sunlight of their southern home, and send them away off yonder to canada, a dreary country, where the woods are full of wildcats and wolves and bears, where the snow lies up to the eaves of the houses for six months of the year, and the cold is so severe that it freezes your breath and curdles your blood; and where, when runaway niggers get sick and can't work, they are turned out to starve and die, unloved and uncared for. i reckon, grandison, that you have too much sense to permit yourself to be led astray by any such foolish and wicked people." "'deed, suh, i would n' low none er dem cussed, low-down abolitioners ter come nigh me, suh. i 'd--i 'd--would i be 'lowed ter hit 'em, suh?" "certainly, grandison," replied the colonel, chuckling, "hit 'em as hard as you can. i reckon they 'd rather like it. begad, i believe they would! it would serve 'em right to be hit by a nigger!" "er ef i did n't hit 'em, suh," continued grandison reflectively, "i 'd tell mars dick, en _he 'd_ fix 'em. he 'd smash de face off'n 'em, suh, i jes' knows he would." "oh yes, grandison, your young master will protect you. you need fear no harm while he is near." "dey won't try ter steal me, will dey, marster?" asked the negro, with sudden alarm. "i don't know, grandison," replied the colonel, lighting a fresh cigar. "they 're a desperate set of lunatics, and there 's no telling what they may resort to. but if you stick close to your young master, and remember always that he is your best friend, and understands your real needs, and has your true interests at heart, and if you will be careful to avoid strangers who try to talk to you, you 'll stand a fair chance of getting back to your home and your friends. and if you please your master dick, he 'll buy you a present, and a string of beads for betty to wear when you and she get married in the fall." "thanky, marster, thanky, suh," replied grandison, oozing gratitude at every pore; "you is a good marster, to be sho', suh; yas, 'deed you is. you kin jes' bet me and mars dick gwine git 'long jes' lack i wuz own boy ter mars dick. en it won't be my fault ef he don' want me fer his boy all de time, w'en we come back home ag'in." "all right, grandison, you may go now. you need n't work any more to-day, and here 's a piece of tobacco for you off my own plug." "thanky, marster, thanky, marster! you is de bes' marster any nigger ever had in dis worl'." and grandison bowed and scraped and disappeared round the corner, his jaws closing around a large section of the colonel's best tobacco. "you may take grandison," said the colonel to his son. "i allow he 's abolitionist-proof." iii richard owens, esq., and servant, from kentucky, registered at the fashionable new york hostelry for southerners in those days, a hotel where an atmosphere congenial to southern institutions was sedulously maintained. but there were negro waiters in the dining-room, and mulatto bell-boys, and dick had no doubt that grandison, with the native gregariousness and garrulousness of his race, would foregather and palaver with them sooner or later, and dick hoped that they would speedily inoculate him with the virus of freedom. for it was not dick's intention to say anything to his servant about his plan to free him, for obvious reasons. to mention one of them, if grandison should go away, and by legal process be recaptured, his young master's part in the matter would doubtless become known, which would be embarrassing to dick, to say the least. if, on the other hand, he should merely give grandison sufficient latitude, he had no doubt he would eventually lose him. for while not exactly skeptical about grandison's perfervid loyalty, dick had been a somewhat keen observer of human nature, in his own indolent way, and based his expectations upon the force of the example and argument that his servant could scarcely fail to encounter. grandison should have a fair chance to become free by his own initiative; if it should become necessary to adopt other measures to get rid of him, it would be time enough to act when the necessity arose; and dick owens was not the youth to take needless trouble. the young master renewed some acquaintances and made others, and spent a week or two very pleasantly in the best society of the metropolis, easily accessible to a wealthy, well-bred young southerner, with proper introductions. young women smiled on him, and young men of convivial habits pressed their hospitalities; but the memory of charity's sweet, strong face and clear blue eyes made him proof against the blandishments of the one sex and the persuasions of the other. meanwhile he kept grandison supplied with pocket-money, and left him mainly to his own devices. every night when dick came in he hoped he might have to wait upon himself, and every morning he looked forward with pleasure to the prospect of making his toilet unaided. his hopes, however, were doomed to disappointment, for every night when he came in grandison was on hand with a bootjack, and a nightcap mixed for his young master as the colonel had taught him to mix it, and every morning grandison appeared with his master's boots blacked and his clothes brushed, and laid his linen out for the day. "grandison," said dick one morning, after finishing his toilet, "this is the chance of your life to go around among your own people and see how they live. have you met any of them?" "yas, suh, i 's seen some of 'em. but i don' keer nuffin fer 'em, suh. dey 're diffe'nt f'm de niggers down ou' way. dey 'lows dey 're free, but dey ain' got sense 'nuff ter know dey ain' half as well off as dey would be down souf, whar dey 'd be 'predated." when two weeks had passed without any apparent effect of evil example upon grandison, dick resolved to go on to boston, where he thought the atmosphere might prove more favorable to his ends. after he had been at the revere house for a day or two without losing grandison, he decided upon slightly different tactics. having ascertained from a city directory the addresses of several well-known abolitionists, he wrote them each a letter something like this:---- dear friend and brother:---- a wicked slaveholder from kentucky, stopping at the revere house, has dared to insult the liberty-loving people of boston by bringing his slave into their midst. shall this be tolerated? or shall steps be taken in the name of liberty to rescue a fellow-man from bondage? for obvious reasons i can only sign myself, a friend of humanity. that his letter might have an opportunity to prove effective, dick made it a point to send grandison away from the hotel on various errands. on one of these occasions dick watched him for quite a distance down the street. grandison had scarcely left the hotel when a long-haired, sharp-featured man came out behind him, followed him, soon overtook him, and kept along beside him until they turned the next corner. dick's hopes were roused by this spectacle, but sank correspondingly when grandison returned to the hotel. as grandison said nothing about the encounter, dick hoped there might be some self-consciousness behind this unexpected reticence, the results of which might develop later on. but grandison was on hand again when his master came back to the hotel at night, and was in attendance again in the morning, with hot water, to assist at his master's toilet. dick sent him on further errands from day to day, and upon one occasion came squarely up to him--inadvertently of course--while grandison was engaged in conversation with a young white man in clerical garb. when grandison saw dick approaching, he edged away from the preacher and hastened toward his master, with a very evident expression of relief upon his countenance. "mars dick," he said, "dese yer abolitioners is jes' pesterin' de life out er me tryin' ter git me ter run away. i don' pay no 'tention ter 'em, but dey riles me so sometimes dat i 'm feared i 'll hit some of 'em some er dese days, an' dat mought git me inter trouble. i ain' said nuffin' ter you 'bout it, mars dick, fer i did n' wanter 'sturb yo' min'; but i don' like it, suh; no, suh, i don'! is we gwine back home 'fo' long, mars dick?" "we 'll be going back soon enough," replied dick somewhat shortly, while he inwardly cursed the stupidity of a slave who could be free and would not, and registered a secret vow that if he were unable to get rid of grandison without assassinating him, and were therefore compelled to take him back to kentucky, he would see that grandison got a taste of an article of slavery that would make him regret his wasted opportunities. meanwhile he determined to tempt his servant yet more strongly. "grandison," he said next morning, "i 'm going away for a day or two, but i shall leave you here. i shall lock up a hundred dollars in this drawer and give you the key. if you need any of it, use it and enjoy yourself,--spend it all if you like,--for this is probably the last chance you 'll have for some time to be in a free state, and you 'd better enjoy your liberty while you may." when he came back a couple of days later and found the faithful grandison at his post, and the hundred dollars intact, dick felt seriously annoyed. his vexation was increased by the fact that he could not express his feelings adequately. he did not even scold grandison; how could he, indeed, find fault with one who so sensibly recognized his true place in the economy of civilization, and kept it with such touching fidelity? "i can't say a thing to him," groaned dick. "he deserves a leather medal, made out of his own hide tanned. i reckon i 'll write to father and let him know what a model servant he has given me." he wrote his father a letter which made the colonel swell with pride and pleasure. "i really think," the colonel observed to one of his friends, "that dick ought to have the nigger interviewed by the boston papers, so that they may see how contented and happy our darkeys really are." dick also wrote a long letter to charity lomax, in which he said, among many other things, that if she knew how hard he was working, and under what difficulties, to accomplish something serious for her sake, she would no longer keep him in suspense, but overwhelm him with love and admiration. having thus exhausted without result the more obvious methods of getting rid of grandison, and diplomacy having also proved a failure, dick was forced to consider more radical measures. of course he might run away himself, and abandon grandison, but this would be merely to leave him in the united states, where he was still a slave, and where, with his notions of loyalty, he would speedily be reclaimed. it was necessary, in order to accomplish the purpose of his trip to the north, to leave grandison permanently in canada, where he would be legally free. "i might extend my trip to canada," he reflected, "but that would be too palpable. i have it! i 'll visit niagara falls on the way home, and lose him on the canada side. when he once realizes that he is actually free, i 'll warrant that he 'll stay." so the next day saw them westward bound, and in due course of time, by the somewhat slow conveyances of the period, they found themselves at niagara. dick walked and drove about the falls for several days, taking grandison along with him on most occasions. one morning they stood on the canadian side, watching the wild whirl of the waters below them. "grandison," said dick, raising his voice above the roar of the cataract, "do you know where you are now?" "i 's wid you, mars dick; dat 's all i keers." "you are now in canada, grandison, where your people go when they run away from their masters. if you wished, grandison, you might walk away from me this very minute, and i could not lay my hand upon you to take you back." grandison looked around uneasily. "let 's go back ober de ribber, mars dick. i 's feared i 'll lose you ovuh heah, an' den i won' hab no marster, an' won't nebber be able to git back home no mo'." discouraged, but not yet hopeless, dick said, a few minutes later,---- "grandison, i 'm going up the road a bit, to the inn over yonder. you stay here until i return. i 'll not be gone a great while." grandison's eyes opened wide and he looked somewhat fearful. "is dey any er dem dadblasted abolitioners roun' heah, mars dick?" "i don't imagine that there are," replied his master, hoping there might be. "but i 'm not afraid of _your_ running away, grandison. i only wish i were," he added to himself. dick walked leisurely down the road to where the whitewashed inn, built of stone, with true british solidity, loomed up through the trees by the roadside. arrived there he ordered a glass of ale and a sandwich, and took a seat at a table by a window, from which he could see grandison in the distance. for a while he hoped that the seed he had sown might have fallen on fertile ground, and that grandison, relieved from the restraining power of a master's eye, and finding himself in a free country, might get up and walk away; but the hope was vain, for grandison remained faithfully at his post, awaiting his master's return. he had seated himself on a broad flat stone, and, turning his eyes away from the grand and awe-inspiring spectacle that lay close at hand, was looking anxiously toward the inn where his master sat cursing his ill-timed fidelity. by and by a girl came into the room to serve his order, and dick very naturally glanced at her; and as she was young and pretty and remained in attendance, it was some minutes before he looked for grandison. when he did so his faithful servant had disappeared. to pay his reckoning and go away without the change was a matter quickly accomplished. retracing his footsteps toward the falls, he saw, to his great disgust, as he approached the spot where he had left grandison, the familiar form of his servant stretched out on the ground, his face to the sun, his mouth open, sleeping the time away, oblivious alike to the grandeur of the scenery, the thunderous roar of the cataract, or the insidious voice of sentiment. "grandison," soliloquized his master, as he stood gazing down at his ebony encumbrance, "i do not deserve to be an american citizen; i ought not to have the advantages i possess over you; and i certainly am not worthy of charity lomax, if i am not smart enough to get rid of you. i have an idea! you shall yet be free, and i will be the instrument of your deliverance. sleep on, faithful and affectionate servitor, and dream of the blue grass and the bright skies of old kentucky, for it is only in your dreams that you will ever see them again!" dick retraced his footsteps towards the inn. the young woman chanced to look out of the window and saw the handsome young gentleman she had waited on a few minutes before, standing in the road a short distance away, apparently engaged in earnest conversation with a colored man employed as hostler for the inn. she thought she saw something pass from the white man to the other, but at that moment her duties called her away from the window, and when she looked out again the young gentleman had disappeared, and the hostler, with two other young men of the neighborhood, one white and one colored, were walking rapidly towards the falls. iv dick made the journey homeward alone, and as rapidly as the conveyances of the day would permit. as he drew near home his conduct in going back without grandison took on a more serious aspect than it had borne at any previous time, and although he had prepared the colonel by a letter sent several days ahead, there was still the prospect of a bad quarter of an hour with him; not, indeed, that his father would upbraid him, but he was likely to make searching inquiries. and notwithstanding the vein of quiet recklessness that had carried dick through his preposterous scheme, he was a very poor liar, having rarely had occasion or inclination to tell anything but the truth. any reluctance to meet his father was more than offset, however, by a stronger force drawing him homeward, for charity lomax must long since have returned from her visit to her aunt in tennessee. dick got off easier than he had expected. he told a straight story, and a truthful one, so far as it went. the colonel raged at first, but rage soon subsided into anger, and anger moderated into annoyance, and annoyance into a sort of garrulous sense of injury. the colonel thought he had been hardly used; he had trusted this negro, and he had broken faith. yet, after all, he did not blame grandison so much as he did the abolitionists, who were undoubtedly at the bottom of it. as for charity lomax, dick told her, privately of course, that he had run his father's man, grandison, off to canada, and left him there. "oh, dick," she had said with shuddering alarm, "what have you done? if they knew it they 'd send you to the penitentiary, like they did that yankee." "but they don't know it," he had replied seriously; adding, with an injured tone, "you don't seem to appreciate my heroism like you did that of the yankee; perhaps it 's because i was n't caught and sent to the penitentiary. i thought you wanted me to do it." "why, dick owens!" she exclaimed. "you know i never dreamed of any such outrageous proceeding. "but i presume i 'll have to marry you," she concluded, after some insistence on dick's part, "if only to take care of you. you are too reckless for anything; and a man who goes chasing all over the north, being entertained by new york and boston society and having negroes to throw away, needs some one to look after him." "it 's a most remarkable thing," replied dick fervently, "that your views correspond exactly with my profoundest convictions. it proves beyond question that we were made for one another." * * * * * they were married three weeks later. as each of them had just returned from a journey, they spent their honeymoon at home. a week after the wedding they were seated, one afternoon, on the piazza of the colonel's house, where dick had taken his bride, when a negro from the yard ran down the lane and threw open the big gate for the colonel's buggy to enter. the colonel was not alone. beside him, ragged and travel-stained, bowed with weariness, and upon his face a haggard look that told of hardship and privation, sat the lost grandison. the colonel alighted at the steps. "take the lines, tom," he said to the man who had opened the gate, "and drive round to the barn. help grandison down,--poor devil, he 's so stiff he can hardly move!--and get a tub of water and wash him and rub him down, and feed him, and give him a big drink of whiskey, and then let him come round and see his young master and his new mistress." the colonel's face wore an expression compounded of joy and indignation,--joy at the restoration of a valuable piece of property; indignation for reasons he proceeded to state. "it 's astounding, the depths of depravity the human heart is capable of! i was coming along the road three miles away, when i heard some one call me from the roadside. i pulled up the mare, and who should come out of the woods but grandison. the poor nigger could hardly crawl along, with the help of a broken limb. i was never more astonished in my life. you could have knocked me down with a feather. he seemed pretty far gone,--he could hardly talk above a whisper,--and i had to give him a mouthful of whiskey to brace him up so he could tell his story. it 's just as i thought from the beginning, dick; grandison had no notion of running away; he knew when he was well off, and where his friends were. all the persuasions of abolition liars and runaway niggers did not move him. but the desperation of those fanatics knew no bounds; their guilty consciences gave them no rest. they got the notion somehow that grandison belonged to a nigger-catcher, and had been brought north as a spy to help capture ungrateful runaway servants. they actually kidnaped him--just think of it!--and gagged him and bound him and threw him rudely into a wagon, and carried him into the gloomy depths of a canadian forest, and locked him in a lonely hut, and fed him on bread and water for three weeks. one of the scoundrels wanted to kill him, and persuaded the others that it ought to be done; but they got to quarreling about how they should do it, and before they had their minds made up grandison escaped, and, keeping his back steadily to the north star, made his way, after suffering incredible hardships, back to the old plantation, back to his master, his friends, and his home. why, it 's as good as one of scott's novels! mr. simms or some other one of our southern authors ought to write it up." "don't you think, sir," suggested dick, who had calmly smoked his cigar throughout the colonel's animated recital, "that that kidnaping yarn sounds a little improbable? is n't there some more likely explanation?" "nonsense, dick; it 's the gospel truth! those infernal abolitionists are capable of anything--everything! just think of their locking the poor, faithful nigger up, beating him, kicking him, depriving him of his liberty, keeping him on bread and water for three long, lonesome weeks, and he all the time pining for the old plantation!" there were almost tears in the colonel's eyes at the picture of grandison's sufferings that he conjured up. dick still professed to be slightly skeptical, and met charity's severely questioning eye with bland unconsciousness. the colonel killed the fatted calf for grandison, and for two or three weeks the returned wanderer's life was a slave's dream of pleasure. his fame spread throughout the county, and the colonel gave him a permanent place among the house servants, where he could always have him conveniently at hand to relate his adventures to admiring visitors. * * * * * about three weeks after grandison's return the colonel's faith in sable humanity was rudely shaken, and its foundations almost broken up. he came near losing his belief in the fidelity of the negro to his master,--the servile virtue most highly prized and most sedulously cultivated by the colonel and his kind. one monday morning grandison was missing. and not only grandison, but his wife, betty the maid; his mother, aunt eunice; his father, uncle ike; his brothers, tom and john, and his little sister elsie, were likewise absent from the plantation; and a hurried search and inquiry in the neighborhood resulted in no information as to their whereabouts. so much valuable property could not be lost without an effort to recover it, and the wholesale nature of the transaction carried consternation to the hearts of those whose ledgers were chiefly bound in black. extremely energetic measures were taken by the colonel and his friends. the fugitives were traced, and followed from point to point, on their northward run through ohio. several times the hunters were close upon their heels, but the magnitude of the escaping party begot unusual vigilance on the part of those who sympathized with the fugitives, and strangely enough, the underground railroad seemed to have had its tracks cleared and signals set for this particular train. once, twice, the colonel thought he had them, but they slipped through his fingers. one last glimpse he caught of his vanishing property, as he stood, accompanied by a united states marshal, on a wharf at a port on the south shore of lake erie. on the stern of a small steamboat which was receding rapidly from the wharf, with her nose pointing toward canada, there stood a group of familiar dark faces, and the look they cast backward was not one of longing for the fleshpots of egypt. the colonel saw grandison point him out to one of the crew of the vessel, who waved his hand derisively toward the colonel. the latter shook his fist impotently--and the incident was closed. uncle wellington's wives i uncle wellington braboy was so deeply absorbed in thought as he walked slowly homeward from the weekly meeting of the union league, that he let his pipe go out, a fact of which he remained oblivious until he had reached the little frame house in the suburbs of patesville, where he lived with aunt milly, his wife. on this particular occasion the club had been addressed by a visiting brother from the north, professor patterson, a tall, well-formed mulatto, who wore a perfectly fitting suit of broadcloth, a shiny silk hat, and linen of dazzling whiteness,--in short, a gentleman of such distinguished appearance that the doors and windows of the offices and stores on front street were filled with curious observers as he passed through that thoroughfare in the early part of the day. this polished stranger was a traveling organizer of masonic lodges, but he also claimed to be a high officer in the union league, and had been invited to lecture before the local chapter of that organization at patesville. the lecture had been largely attended, and uncle* wellington braboy had occupied a seat just in front of the platform. the subject of the lecture was "the mental, moral, physical, political, social, and financial improvement of the negro race in america," a theme much dwelt upon, with slight variations, by colored orators. for to this struggling people, then as now, the problem of their uncertain present and their doubtful future was the chief concern of life. the period was the hopeful one. the federal government retained some vestige of authority in the south, and the newly emancipated race cherished the delusion that under the constitution, that enduring rock on which our liberties are founded, and under the equal laws it purported to guarantee, they would enter upon the era of freedom and opportunity which their northern friends had inaugurated with such solemn sanctions. the speaker pictured in eloquent language the state of ideal equality and happiness enjoyed by colored people at the north: how they sent their children to school with the white children; how they sat by white people in the churches and theatres, ate with them in the public restaurants, and buried their dead in the same cemeteries. the professor waxed eloquent with the development of his theme, and, as a finishing touch to an alluring picture, assured the excited audience that the intermarriage of the races was common, and that he himself had espoused a white woman. uncle wellington braboy was a deeply interested listener. he had heard something of these facts before, but his information had always come in such vague and questionable shape that he had paid little attention to it. he knew that the yankees had freed the slaves, and that runaway negroes had always gone to the north to seek liberty; any such equality, however, as the visiting brother had depicted, was more than uncle wellington had ever conceived as actually existing anywhere in the world. at first he felt inclined to doubt the truth of the speaker's statements; but the cut of his clothes, the eloquence of his language, and the flowing length of his whiskers, were so far superior to anything uncle wellington had ever met among the colored people of his native state, that he felt irresistibly impelled to the conviction that nothing less than the advantages claimed for the north by the visiting brother could have produced such an exquisite flower of civilization. any lingering doubts uncle wellington may have felt were entirely dispelled by the courtly bow and cordial grasp of the hand with which the visiting brother acknowledged the congratulations showered upon him by the audience at the close of his address. the more uncle wellington's mind dwelt upon the professor's speech, the more attractive seemed the picture of northern life presented. uncle wellington possessed in large measure the imaginative faculty so freely bestowed by nature upon the race from which the darker half of his blood was drawn. he had indulged in occasional day-dreams of an ideal state of social equality, but his wildest flights of fancy had never located it nearer than heaven, and he had felt some misgivings about its practical working even there. its desirability he had never doubted, and the speech of the evening before had given a local habitation and a name to the forms his imagination had bodied forth. giving full rein to his fancy, he saw in the north a land flowing with milk and honey,--a land peopled by noble men and beautiful women, among whom colored men and women moved with the ease and grace of acknowledged right. then he placed himself in the foreground of the picture. what a fine figure he would have made in the world if he had been born at the free north! he imagined himself dressed like the professor, and passing the contribution-box in a white church; and most pleasant of his dreams, and the hardest to realize as possible, was that of the gracious white lady he might have called wife. uncle wellington was a mulatto, and his features were those of his white father, though tinged with the hue of his mother's race; and as he lifted the kerosene lamp at evening, and took a long look at his image in the little mirror over the mantelpiece, he said to himself that he was a very good-looking man, and could have adorned a much higher sphere in life than that in which the accident of birth had placed him. he fell asleep and dreamed that he lived in a two-story brick house, with a spacious flower garden in front, the whole inclosed by a high iron fence; that he kept a carriage and servants, and never did a stroke of work. this was the highest style of living in patesville, and he could conceive of nothing finer. uncle wellington slept later than usual the next morning, and the sunlight was pouring in at the open window of the bedroom, when his dreams were interrupted by the voice of his wife, in tones meant to be harsh, but which no ordinary degree of passion could rob of their native unctuousness. "git up f'm dere, you lazy, good-fuh-nuffin' nigger! is you gwine ter sleep all de mawnin'? i 's ti'ed er dis yer runnin' 'roun' all night an' den sleepin' all day. you won't git dat tater patch hoed ovuh ter-day 'less'n you git up f'm dere an' git at it." uncle wellington rolled over, yawned cavernously, stretched himself, and with a muttered protest got out of bed and put on his clothes. aunt milly had prepared a smoking breakfast of hominy and fried bacon, the odor of which was very grateful to his nostrils. "is breakfus' done ready?" he inquired, tentatively, as he came into the kitchen and glanced at the table. "no, it ain't ready, an' 't ain't gwine ter be ready 'tel you tote dat wood an' water in," replied aunt milly severely, as she poured two teacups of boiling water on two tablespoonfuls of ground coffee. uncle wellington went down to the spring and got a pail of water, after which he brought in some oak logs for the fire place and some lightwood for kindling. then he drew a chair towards the table and started to sit down. "wonduh what 's de matter wid you dis mawnin' anyhow," remarked aunt milly. "you must 'a' be'n up ter some devilment las' night, fer yo' recommemb'ance is so po' dat you fus' fergit ter git up, an' den fergit ter wash yo' face an' hands fo' you set down ter de table. i don' 'low nobody ter eat at my table dat a-way." "i don' see no use 'n washin' 'em so much," replied wellington wearily. "dey gits dirty ag'in right off, an' den you got ter wash 'em ovuh ag'in; it 's jes' pilin' up wuk what don' fetch in nuffin'. de dirt don' show nohow, 'n' i don' see no advantage in bein' black, ef you got to keep on washin' yo' face 'n' han's jes' lack w'ite folks." he nevertheless performed his ablutions in a perfunctory way, and resumed his seat at the breakfast-table. "ole 'oman," he asked, after the edge of his appetite had been taken off, "how would you lack ter live at de norf?" "i dunno nuffin' 'bout de norf," replied aunt milly. "it 's hard 'nuff ter git erlong heah, whar we knows all erbout it." "de brother what 'dressed de meetin' las' night say dat de wages at de norf is twicet ez big ez dey is heah." "you could make a sight mo' wages heah ef you 'd 'ten' ter yo' wuk better," replied aunt milly. uncle wellington ignored this personality, and continued, "an' he say de cullud folks got all de privileges er de w'ite folks,--dat dey chillen goes ter school tergedder, dat dey sets on same seats in chu'ch, an' sarves on jury, 'n' rides on de kyars an' steamboats wid de w'ite folks, an' eats at de fus' table." "dat 'u'd suit you," chuckled aunt milly, "an' you 'd stay dere fer de secon' table, too. how dis man know 'bout all dis yer foolis'ness?" she asked incredulously. "he come f'm de norf," said uncle wellington, "an' he 'speunced it all hisse'f." "well, he can't make me b'lieve it," she rejoined, with a shake of her head. "an' you would n' lack ter go up dere an' 'joy all dese privileges?" asked uncle wellington, with some degree of earnestness. the old woman laughed until her sides shook. "who gwine ter take me up dere?" she inquired. "you got de money yo'se'f." "i ain' got no money fer ter was'e," she replied shortly, becoming serious at once; and with that the subject was dropped. uncle wellington pulled a hoe from under the house, and took his way wearily to the potato patch. he did not feel like working, but aunt milly was the undisputed head of the establishment, and he did not dare to openly neglect his work. in fact, he regarded work at any time as a disagreeable necessity to be avoided as much as possible. his wife was cast in a different mould. externally she would have impressed the casual observer as a neat, well-preserved, and good-looking black woman, of middle age, every curve of whose ample figure--and her figure was all curves--was suggestive of repose. so far from being indolent, or even deliberate in her movements, she was the most active and energetic woman in the town. she went through the physical exercises of a prayer-meeting with astonishing vigor. it was exhilarating to see her wash a shirt, and a study to watch her do it up. a quick jerk shook out the dampened garment; one pass of her ample palm spread it over the ironing-board, and a few well-directed strokes with the iron accomplished what would have occupied the ordinary laundress for half an hour. to this uncommon, and in uncle wellington's opinion unnecessary and unnatural activity, his own habits were a steady protest. if aunt milly had been willing to support him in idleness, he would have acquiesced without a murmur in her habits of industry. this she would not do, and, moreover, insisted on his working at least half the time. if she had invested the proceeds of her labor in rich food and fine clothing, he might have endured it better; but to her passion for work was added a most detestable thrift. she absolutely refused to pay for wellington's clothes, and required him to furnish a certain proportion of the family supplies. her savings were carefully put by, and with them she had bought and paid for the modest cottage which she and her husband occupied. under her careful hand it was always neat and clean; in summer the little yard was gay with bright-colored flowers, and woe to the heedless pickaninny who should stray into her yard and pluck a rose or a verbena! in a stout oaken chest under her bed she kept a capacious stocking, into which flowed a steady stream of fractional currency. she carried the key to this chest in her pocket, a proceeding regarded by uncle wellington with no little disfavor. he was of the opinion--an opinion he would not have dared to assert in her presence--that his wife's earnings were his own property; and he looked upon this stocking as a drunkard's wife might regard the saloon which absorbed her husband's wages. uncle wellington hurried over the potato patch on the morning of the conversation above recorded, and as soon as he saw aunt milly go away with a basket of clothes on her head, returned to the house, put on his coat, and went uptown. he directed his steps to a small frame building fronting on the main street of the village, at a point where the street was intersected by one of the several creeks meandering through the town, cooling the air, providing numerous swimming-holes for the amphibious small boy, and furnishing water-power for grist-mills and saw-mills. the rear of the building rested on long brick pillars, built up from the bottom of the steep bank of the creek, while the front was level with the street. this was the office of mr. matthew wright, the sole representative of the colored race at the bar of chinquapin county. mr. wright came of an "old issue" free colored family, in which, though the negro blood was present in an attenuated strain, a line of free ancestry could be traced beyond the revolutionary war. he had enjoyed exceptional opportunities, and enjoyed the distinction of being the first, and for a long time the only colored lawyer in north carolina. his services were frequently called into requisition by impecunious people of his own race; when they had money they went to white lawyers, who, they shrewdly conjectured, would have more influence with judge or jury than a colored lawyer, however able. uncle wellington found mr. wright in his office. having inquired after the health of the lawyer's family and all his relations in detail, uncle wellington asked for a professional opinion. "mistah wright, ef a man's wife got money, whose money is dat befo' de law--his'n er her'n?" the lawyer put on his professional air, and replied:---- "under the common law, which in default of special legislative enactment is the law of north carolina, the personal property of the wife belongs to her husband." "but dat don' jes' tech de p'int, suh. i wuz axin' 'bout money." "you see, uncle wellington, your education has not rendered you familiar with legal phraseology. the term 'personal property' or 'estate' embraces, according to blackstone, all property other than land, and therefore includes money. any money a man's wife has is his, constructively, and will be recognized as his actually, as soon as he can secure possession of it." "dat is ter say, suh--my eddication don' quite 'low me ter understan' dat--dat is ter say"---- "that is to say, it 's yours when you get it. it is n't yours so that the law will help you get it; but on the other hand, when you once lay your hands on it, it is yours so that the law won't take it away from you." uncle wellington nodded to express his full comprehension of the law as expounded by mr. wright, but scratched his head in a way that expressed some disappointment. the law seemed to wobble. instead of enabling him to stand up fearlessly and demand his own, it threw him back upon his own efforts; and the prospect of his being able to overpower or outwit aunt milly by any ordinary means was very poor. he did not leave the office, but hung around awhile as though there were something further he wished to speak about. finally, after some discursive remarks about the crops and politics, he asked, in an offhand, disinterested manner, as though the thought had just occurred to him:---- "mistah wright, w'ile's we 're talkin' 'bout law matters, what do it cos' ter git a defoce?" "that depends upon circumstances. it is n't altogether a matter of expense. have you and aunt milly been having trouble?" "oh no, suh; i was jes' a-wond'rin'." "you see," continued the lawyer, who was fond of talking, and had nothing else to do for the moment, "a divorce is not an easy thing to get in this state under any circumstances. it used to be the law that divorce could be granted only by special act of the legislature; and it is but recently that the subject has been relegated to the jurisdiction of the courts." uncle wellington understood a part of this, but the answer had not been exactly to the point in his mind. "s'pos'n', den, jes' fer de argyment, me an' my ole 'oman sh'd fall out en wanter separate, how could i git a defoce?" "that would depend on what you quarreled about. it 's pretty hard work to answer general questions in a particular way. if you merely wished to separate, it would n't be necessary to get a divorce; but if you should want to marry again, you would have to be divorced, or else you would be guilty of bigamy, and could be sent to the penitentiary. but, by the way, uncle wellington, when were you married?" "i got married 'fo' de wah, when i was livin' down on rockfish creek." "when you were in slavery?" "yas, suh." "did you have your marriage registered after the surrender?" "no, suh; never knowed nuffin' 'bout dat." after the war, in north carolina and other states, the freed people who had sustained to each other the relation of husband and wife as it existed among slaves, were required by law to register their consent to continue in the marriage relation. by this simple expedient their former marriages of convenience received the sanction of law, and their children the seal of legitimacy. in many cases, however, where the parties lived in districts remote from the larger towns, the ceremony was neglected, or never heard of by the freedmen. "well," said the lawyer, "if that is the case, and you and aunt milly should disagree, it would n't be necessary for you to get a divorce, even if you should want to marry again. you were never legally married." "so milly ain't my lawful wife, den?" "she may be your wife in one sense of the word, but not in such a sense as to render you liable to punishment for bigamy if you should marry another woman. but i hope you will never want to do anything of the kind, for you have a very good wife now." uncle wellington went away thoughtfully, but with a feeling of unaccustomed lightness and freedom. he had not felt so free since the memorable day when he had first heard of the emancipation proclamation. on leaving the lawyer's office, he called at the workshop of one of his friends, peter williams, a shoemaker by trade, who had a brother living in ohio. "is you hearn f'm sam lately?" uncle wellington inquired, after the conversation had drifted through the usual generalities. "his mammy got er letter f'm 'im las' week; he 's livin' in de town er groveland now." "how 's he gittin' on?" "he says he gittin' on monst'us well. he 'low ez how he make five dollars a day w'ite-washin', an' have all he kin do." the shoemaker related various details of his brother's prosperity, and uncle wellington returned home in a very thoughtful mood, revolving in his mind a plan of future action. this plan had been vaguely assuming form ever since the professor's lecture, and the events of the morning had brought out the detail in bold relief. two days after the conversation with the shoemaker, aunt milly went, in the afternoon, to visit a sister of hers who lived several miles out in the country. during her absence, which lasted until nightfall, uncle wellington went uptown and purchased a cheap oilcloth valise from a shrewd son of israel, who had penetrated to this locality with a stock of notions and cheap clothing. uncle wellington had his purchase done up in brown paper, and took the parcel under his arm. arrived at home he unwrapped the valise, and thrust into its capacious jaws his best suit of clothes, some underwear, and a few other small articles for personal use and adornment. then he carried the valise out into the yard, and, first looking cautiously around to see if there was any one in sight, concealed it in a clump of bushes in a corner of the yard. it may be inferred from this proceeding that uncle wellington was preparing for a step of some consequence. in fact, he had fully made up his mind to go to the north; but he still lacked the most important requisite for traveling with comfort, namely, the money to pay his expenses. the idea of tramping the distance which separated him from the promised land of liberty and equality had never occurred to him. when a slave, he had several times been importuned by fellow servants to join them in the attempt to escape from bondage, but he had never wanted his freedom badly enough to walk a thousand miles for it; if he could have gone to canada by stage-coach, or by rail, or on horseback, with stops for regular meals, he would probably have undertaken the trip. the funds he now needed for his journey were in aunt milly's chest. he had thought a great deal about his right to this money. it was his wife's savings, and he had never dared to dispute, openly, her right to exercise exclusive control over what she earned; but the lawyer had assured him of his right to the money, of which he was already constructively in possession, and he had therefore determined to possess himself actually of the coveted stocking. it was impracticable for him to get the key of the chest. aunt milly kept it in her pocket by day and under her pillow at night. she was a light sleeper, and, if not awakened by the abstraction of the key, would certainly have been disturbed by the unlocking of the chest. but one alternative remained, and that was to break open the chest in her absence. there was a revival in progress at the colored methodist church. aunt milly was as energetic in her religion as in other respects, and had not missed a single one of the meetings. she returned at nightfall from her visit to the country and prepared a frugal supper. uncle wellington did not eat as heartily as usual. aunt milly perceived his want of appetite, and spoke of it. he explained it by saying that he did not feel very well. "is you gwine ter chu'ch ter-night?" inquired his wife. "i reckon i 'll stay home an' go ter bed," he replied. "i ain't be'n feelin' well dis evenin', an' i 'spec' i better git a good night's res'." "well, you kin stay ef you mineter. good preachin' 'u'd make you feel better, but ef you ain't gwine, don' fergit ter tote in some wood an' lighterd 'fo' you go ter bed. de moon is shinin' bright, an' you can't have no 'scuse 'bout not bein' able ter see." uncle wellington followed her out to the gate, and watched her receding form until it disappeared in the distance. then he re-entered the house with a quick step, and taking a hatchet from a corner of the room, drew the chest from under the bed. as he applied the hatchet to the fastenings, a thought struck him, and by the flickering light of the pine-knot blazing on the hearth, a look of hesitation might have been seen to take the place of the determined expression his face had worn up to that time. he had argued himself into the belief that his present action was lawful and justifiable. though this conviction had not prevented him from trembling in every limb, as though he were committing a mere vulgar theft, it had still nerved him to the deed. now even his moral courage began to weaken. the lawyer had told him that his wife's property was his own; in taking it he was therefore only exercising his lawful right. but at the point of breaking open the chest, it occurred to him that he was taking this money in order to get away from aunt milly, and that he justified his desertion of her by the lawyer's opinion that she was not his lawful wife. if she was not his wife, then he had no right to take the money; if she was his wife, he had no right to desert her, and would certainly have no right to marry another woman. his scheme was about to go to shipwreck on this rock, when another idea occurred to him. "de lawyer say dat in one sense er de word de ole 'oman is my wife, an' in anudder sense er de word she ain't my wife. ef i goes ter de norf an' marry a w'ite 'oman, i ain't commit no brigamy, 'caze in dat sense er de word she ain't my wife; but ef i takes dis money, i ain't stealin' it, 'caze in dat sense er de word she is my wife. dat 'splains all de trouble away." having reached this ingenious conclusion, uncle wellington applied the hatchet vigorously, soon loosened the fastenings of the chest, and with trembling hands extracted from its depths a capacious blue cotton stocking. he emptied the stocking on the table. his first impulse was to take the whole, but again there arose in his mind a doubt--a very obtrusive, unreasonable doubt, but a doubt, nevertheless--of the absolute rectitude of his conduct; and after a moment's hesitation he hurriedly counted the money--it was in bills of small denominations--and found it to be about two hundred and fifty dollars. he then divided it into two piles of one hundred and twenty-five dollars each. he put one pile into his pocket, returned the remainder to the stocking, and replaced it where he had found it. he then closed the chest and shoved it under the bed. after having arranged the fire so that it could safely be left burning, he took a last look around the room, and went out into the moonlight, locking the door behind him, and hanging the key on a nail in the wall, where his wife would be likely to look for it. he then secured his valise from behind the bushes, and left the yard. as he passed by the wood-pile, he said to himself:---- "well, i declar' ef i ain't done fergot ter tote in dat lighterd; i reckon de ole 'oman 'll ha' ter fetch it in herse'f dis time." he hastened through the quiet streets, avoiding the few people who were abroad at that hour, and soon reached the railroad station, from which a north-bound train left at nine o'clock. he went around to the dark side of the train, and climbed into a second-class car, where he shrank into the darkest corner and turned his face away from the dim light of the single dirty lamp. there were no passengers in the car except one or two sleepy negroes, who had got on at some other station, and a white man who had gone into the car to smoke, accompanied by a gigantic bloodhound. finally the train crept out of the station. from the window uncle wellington looked out upon the familiar cabins and turpentine stills, the new barrel factory, the brickyard where he had once worked for some time; and as the train rattled through the outskirts of the town, he saw gleaming in the moonlight the white headstones of the colored cemetery where his only daughter had been buried several years before. presently the conductor came around. uncle wellington had not bought a ticket, and the conductor collected a cash fare. he was not acquainted with uncle wellington, but had just had a drink at the saloon near the depot, and felt at peace with all mankind. "where are you going, uncle?" he inquired carelessly. uncle wellington's face assumed the ashen hue which does duty for pallor in dusky countenances, and his knees began to tremble. controlling his voice as well as he could, he replied that he was going up to jonesboro, the terminus of the railroad, to work for a gentleman at that place. he felt immensely relieved when the conductor pocketed the fare, picked up his lantern, and moved away. it was very unphilosophical and very absurd that a man who was only doing right should feel like a thief, shrink from the sight of other people, and lie instinctively. fine distinctions were not in uncle wellington's line, but he was struck by the unreasonableness of his feelings, and still more by the discomfort they caused him. by and by, however, the motion of the train made him drowsy; his thoughts all ran together in confusion; and he fell asleep with his head on his valise, and one hand in his pocket, clasped tightly around the roll of money. ii the train from pittsburg drew into the union depot at groveland, ohio, one morning in the spring of -, with bell ringing and engine puffing; and from a smoking-car emerged the form of uncle wellington braboy, a little dusty and travel-stained, and with a sleepy look about his eyes. he mingled in the crowd, and, valise in hand, moved toward the main exit from the depot. there were several tracks to be crossed, and more than once a watchman snatched him out of the way of a baggage-truck, or a train backing into the depot. he at length reached the door, beyond which, and as near as the regulations would permit, stood a number of hackmen, vociferously soliciting patronage. one of them, a colored man, soon secured several passengers. as he closed the door after the last one he turned to uncle wellington, who stood near him on the sidewalk, looking about irresolutely. "is you goin' uptown?" asked the hackman, as he prepared to mount the box. "yas, suh." "i 'll take you up fo' a quahtah, ef you want ter git up here an' ride on de box wid me." uncle wellington accepted the offer and mounted the box. the hackman whipped up his horses, the carriage climbed the steep hill leading up to the town, and the passengers inside were soon deposited at their hotels. "whereabouts do you want to go?" asked the hackman of uncle wellington, when the carriage was emptied of its last passengers. "i want ter go ter brer sam williams's," said wellington. "what 's his street an' number?" uncle wellington did not know the street and number, and the hackman had to explain to him the mystery of numbered houses, to which he was a total stranger. "where is he from?" asked the hackman, "and what is his business?" "he is f'm norf ca'lina," replied uncle wellington, "an' makes his livin' w'itewashin'." "i reckon i knows de man," said the hackman. "i 'spec' he 's changed his name. de man i knows is name' johnson. he b'longs ter my chu'ch. i 'm gwine out dat way ter git a passenger fer de ten o'clock train, an i 'll take you by dere." they followed one of the least handsome streets of the city for more than a mile, turned into a cross street, and drew up before a small frame house, from the front of which a sign, painted in white upon a black background, announced to the reading public, in letters inclined to each other at various angles, that whitewashing and kalsomining were "dun" there. a knock at the door brought out a slatternly looking colored woman. she had evidently been disturbed at her toilet, for she held a comb in one hand, and the hair on one side of her head stood out loosely, while on the other side it was braided close to her head. she called her husband, who proved to be the patesville shoemaker's brother. the hackman introduced the traveler, whose name he had learned on the way out, collected his quarter, and drove away. mr. johnson, the shoemaker's brother, welcomed uncle wellington to groveland, and listened with eager delight to the news of the old town, from which he himself had run away many years before, and followed the north star to groveland. he had changed his name from "williams" to "johnson," on account of the fugitive slave law, which, at the time of his escape from bondage, had rendered it advisable for runaway slaves to court obscurity. after the war he had retained the adopted name. mrs. johnson prepared breakfast for her guest, who ate it with an appetite sharpened by his journey. after breakfast he went to bed, and slept until late in the afternoon. after supper mr. johnson took uncle wellington to visit some of the neighbors who had come from north carolina before the war. they all expressed much pleasure at meeting "mr. braboy," a title which at first sounded a little odd to uncle wellington. at home he had been "wellin'ton," "brer wellin'ton," or "uncle wellin'ton;" it was a novel experience to be called "mister," and he set it down, with secret satisfaction, as one of the first fruits of northern liberty. "would you lack ter look 'roun' de town a little?" asked mr. johnson at breakfast next morning. "i ain' got no job dis mawnin', an' i kin show you some er de sights." uncle wellington acquiesced in this arrangement, and they walked up to the corner to the street-car line. in a few moments a car passed. mr. johnson jumped on the moving car, and uncle wellington followed his example, at the risk of life or limb, as it was his first experience of street cars. there was only one vacant seat in the car and that was between two white women in the forward end. mr. johnson motioned to the seat, but wellington shrank from walking between those two rows of white people, to say nothing of sitting between the two women, so he remained standing in the rear part of the car. a moment later, as the car rounded a short curve, he was pitched sidewise into the lap of a stout woman magnificently attired in a ruffled blue calico gown. the lady colored up, and uncle wellington, as he struggled to his feet amid the laughter of the passengers, was absolutely helpless with embarrassment, until the conductor came up behind him and pushed him toward the vacant place. "sit down, will you," he said; and before uncle wellington could collect himself, he was seated between the two white women. everybody in the car seemed to be looking at him. but he came to the conclusion, after he had pulled himself together and reflected a few moments, that he would find this method of locomotion pleasanter when he got used to it, and then he could score one more glorious privilege gained by his change of residence. they got off at the public square, in the heart of the city, where there were flowers and statues, and fountains playing. mr. johnson pointed out the court-house, the post-office, the jail, and other public buildings fronting on the square. they visited the market near by, and from an elevated point, looked down upon the extensive lumber yards and factories that were the chief sources of the city's prosperity. beyond these they could see the fleet of ships that lined the coal and iron ore docks of the harbor. mr. johnson, who was quite a fluent talker, enlarged upon the wealth and prosperity of the city; and wellington, who had never before been in a town of more than three thousand inhabitants, manifested sufficient interest and wonder to satisfy the most exacting _cicerone_. they called at the office of a colored lawyer and member of the legislature, formerly from north carolina, who, scenting a new constituent and a possible client, greeted the stranger warmly, and in flowing speech pointed out the superior advantages of life at the north, citing himself as an illustration of the possibilities of life in a country really free. as they wended their way homeward to dinner uncle wellington, with quickened pulse and rising hopes, felt that this was indeed the promised land, and that it must be flowing with milk and honey. uncle wellington remained at the residence of mr. johnson for several weeks before making any effort to find employment. he spent this period in looking about the city. the most commonplace things possessed for him the charm of novelty, and he had come prepared to admire. shortly after his arrival, he had offered to pay for his board, intimating at the same time that he had plenty of money. mr. johnson declined to accept anything from him for board, and expressed himself as being only too proud to have mr. braboy remain in the house on the footing of an honored guest, until he had settled himself. he lightened in some degree, however, the burden of obligation under which a prolonged stay on these terms would have placed his guest, by soliciting from the latter occasional small loans, until uncle wellington's roll of money began to lose its plumpness, and with an empty pocket staring him in the face, he felt the necessity of finding something to do. during his residence in the city he had met several times his first acquaintance, mr. peterson, the hackman, who from time to time inquired how he was getting along. on one of these occasions wellington mentioned his willingness to accept employment. as good luck would have it, mr. peterson knew of a vacant situation. he had formerly been coachman for a wealthy gentleman residing on oakwood avenue, but had resigned the situation to go into business for himself. his place had been filled by an irishman, who had just been discharged for drunkenness, and the gentleman that very day had sent word to mr. peterson, asking him if he could recommend a competent and trustworthy coachman. "does you know anything erbout hosses?" asked mr. peterson. "yas, indeed, i does," said wellington. "i wuz raise' 'mongs' hosses." "i tol' my ole boss i 'd look out fer a man, an' ef you reckon you kin fill de 'quirements er de situation, i 'll take yo' roun' dere ter-morrer mornin'. you wants ter put on yo' bes' clothes an' slick up, fer dey 're partic'lar people. ef you git de place i 'll expec' you ter pay me fer de time i lose in 'tendin' ter yo' business, fer time is money in dis country, an' folks don't do much fer nuthin'." next morning wellington blacked his shoes carefully, put on a clean collar, and with the aid of mrs. johnson tied his cravat in a jaunty bow which gave him quite a sprightly air and a much younger look than his years warranted. mr. peterson called for him at eight o'clock. after traversing several cross streets they turned into oakwood avenue and walked along the finest part of it for about half a mile. the handsome houses of this famous avenue, the stately trees, the wide-spreading lawns, dotted with flower beds, fountains and statuary, made up a picture so far surpassing anything in wellington's experience as to fill him with an almost oppressive sense of its beauty. "hit looks lack hebben," he said softly. "it 's a pootty fine street," rejoined his companion, with a judicial air, "but i don't like dem big lawns. it 's too much trouble ter keep de grass down. one er dem lawns is big enough to pasture a couple er cows." they went down a street running at right angles to the avenue, and turned into the rear of the corner lot. a large building of pressed brick, trimmed with stone, loomed up before them. "do de gemman lib in dis house?" asked wellington, gazing with awe at the front of the building. "no, dat 's de barn," said mr. peterson with good-natured contempt; and leading the way past a clump of shrubbery to the dwelling-house, he went up the back steps and rang the door-bell. the ring was answered by a buxom irishwoman, of a natural freshness of complexion deepened to a fiery red by the heat of a kitchen range. wellington thought he had seen her before, but his mind had received so many new impressions lately that it was a minute or two before he recognized in her the lady whose lap he had involuntarily occupied for a moment on his first day in groveland. "faith," she exclaimed as she admitted them, "an' it 's mighty glad i am to see ye ag'in, misther payterson! an' how hev ye be'n, misther payterson, sence i see ye lahst?" "middlin' well, mis' flannigan, middlin' well, 'ceptin' a tech er de rheumatiz. s'pose you be'n doin' well as usual?" "oh yis, as well as a dacent woman could do wid a drunken baste about the place like the lahst coachman. o misther payterson, it would make yer heart bleed to see the way the spalpeen cut up a-saturday! but misther todd discharged 'im the same avenin', widout a characther, bad 'cess to 'im, an' we 've had no coachman sence at all, at all. an' it 's sorry i am"---- the lady's flow of eloquence was interrupted at this point by the appearance of mr. todd himself, who had been informed of the men's arrival. he asked some questions in regard to wellington's qualifications and former experience, and in view of his recent arrival in the city was willing to accept mr. peterson's recommendation instead of a reference. he said a few words about the nature of the work, and stated his willingness to pay wellington the wages formerly allowed mr. peterson, thirty dollars a month and board and lodging. this handsome offer was eagerly accepted, and it was agreed that wellington's term of service should begin immediately. mr. peterson, being familiar with the work, and financially interested, conducted the new coachman through the stables and showed him what he would have to do. the silver-mounted harness, the variety of carriages, the names of which he learned for the first time, the arrangements for feeding and watering the horses,--these appointments of a rich man's stable impressed wellington very much, and he wondered that so much luxury should be wasted on mere horses. the room assigned to him, in the second story of the barn, was a finer apartment than he had ever slept in; and the salary attached to the situation was greater than the combined monthly earnings of himself and aunt milly in their southern home. surely, he thought, his lines had fallen in pleasant places. under the stimulus of new surroundings wellington applied himself diligently to work, and, with the occasional advice of mr. peterson, soon mastered the details of his employment. he found the female servants, with whom he took his meals, very amiable ladies. the cook, mrs. katie flannigan, was a widow. her husband, a sailor, had been lost at sea. she was a woman of many words, and when she was not lamenting the late flannigan's loss,--according to her story he had been a model of all the virtues,--she would turn the batteries of her tongue against the former coachman. this gentleman, as wellington gathered from frequent remarks dropped by mrs. flannigan, had paid her attentions clearly susceptible of a serious construction. these attentions had not borne their legitimate fruit, and she was still a widow unconsoled,--hence mrs. flannigan's tears. the housemaid was a plump, good-natured german girl, with a pronounced german accent. the presence on washdays of a bohemian laundress, of recent importation, added another to the variety of ways in which the english tongue was mutilated in mr. todd's kitchen. association with the white women drew out all the native gallantry of the mulatto, and wellington developed quite a helpful turn. his politeness, his willingness to lend a hand in kitchen or laundry, and the fact that he was the only male servant on the place, combined to make him a prime favorite in the servants' quarters. it was the general opinion among wellington's acquaintances that he was a single man. he had come to the city alone, had never been heard to speak of a wife, and to personal questions bearing upon the subject of matrimony had always returned evasive answers. though he had never questioned the correctness of the lawyer's opinion in regard to his slave marriage, his conscience had never been entirely at ease since his departure from the south, and any positive denial of his married condition would have stuck in his throat. the inference naturally drawn from his reticence in regard to the past, coupled with his expressed intention of settling permanently in groveland, was that he belonged in the ranks of the unmarried, and was therefore legitimate game for any widow or old maid who could bring him down. as such game is bagged easiest at short range, he received numerous invitations to tea-parties, where he feasted on unlimited chicken and pound cake. he used to compare these viands with the plain fare often served by aunt milly, and the result of the comparison was another item to the credit of the north upon his mental ledger. several of the colored ladies who smiled upon him were blessed with good looks, and uncle wellington, naturally of a susceptible temperament, as people of lively imagination are apt to be, would probably have fallen a victim to the charms of some woman of his own race, had it not been for a strong counter-attraction in the person of mrs. flannigan. the attentions of the lately discharged coachman had lighted anew the smouldering fires of her widowed heart, and awakened longings which still remained unsatisfied. she was thirty-five years old, and felt the need of some one else to love. she was not a woman of lofty ideals; with her a man was a man---- "for a' that an' a' that;" and, aside from the accident of color, uncle wellington was as personable a man as any of her acquaintance. some people might have objected to his complexion; but then, mrs. flannigan argued, he was at least half white; and, this being the case, there was no good reason why he should be regarded as black. uncle wellington was not slow to perceive mrs. flannigan's charms of person, and appreciated to the full the skill that prepared the choice tidbits reserved for his plate at dinner. the prospect of securing a white wife had been one of the principal inducements offered by a life at the north; but the awe of white people in which he had been reared was still too strong to permit his taking any active steps toward the object of his secret desire, had not the lady herself come to his assistance with a little of the native coquetry of her race. "ah, misther braboy," she said one evening when they sat at the supper table alone,--it was the second girl's afternoon off, and she had not come home to supper,--"it must be an awful lonesome life ye 've been afther l'adin', as a single man, wid no one to cook fer ye, or look afther ye." "it are a kind er lonesome life, mis' flannigan, an' dat 's a fac'. but sence i had de privilege er eatin' yo' cookin' an' 'joyin' yo' society, i ain' felt a bit lonesome." "yer flatthrin' me, misther braboy. an' even if ye mane it"---- "i means eve'y word of it, mis' flannigan." "an' even if ye mane it, misther braboy, the time is liable to come when things 'll be different; for service is uncertain, misther braboy. an' then you 'll wish you had some nice, clean woman, 'at knowed how to cook an' wash an' iron, ter look afther ye, an' make yer life comfortable." uncle wellington sighed, and looked at her languishingly. "it 'u'd all be well ernuff, mis' flannigan, ef i had n' met you; but i don' know whar i 's ter fin' a colored lady w'at 'll begin ter suit me after habbin' libbed in de same house wid you." "colored lady, indade! why, misther braboy, ye don't nade ter demane yerself by marryin' a colored lady--not but they 're as good as anybody else, so long as they behave themselves. there 's many a white woman 'u'd be glad ter git as fine a lookin' man as ye are." "now _you 're_ flattrin' _me_, mis' flannigan," said wellington. but he felt a sudden and substantial increase in courage when she had spoken, and it was with astonishing ease that he found himself saying:---- "dey ain' but one lady, mis' flannigan, dat could injuce me ter want ter change de lonesomeness er my singleness fer de 'sponsibilities er matermony, an' i 'm feared she 'd say no ef i 'd ax her." "ye 'd better ax her, misther braboy, an' not be wastin' time a-wond'rin'. do i know the lady?" "you knows 'er better 'n anybody else, mis' flannigan. _you_ is de only lady i 'd be satisfied ter marry after knowin' you. ef you casts me off i 'll spen' de rest er my days in lonesomeness an' mis'ry." mrs. flannigan affected much surprise and embarrassment at this bold declaration. "oh, misther braboy," she said, covering him with a coy glance, "an' it 's rale 'shamed i am to hev b'en talkin' ter ye ez i hev. it looks as though i 'd b'en doin' the coortin'. i did n't drame that i 'd b'en able ter draw yer affections to mesilf." "i 's loved you ever sence i fell in yo' lap on de street car de fus' day i wuz in groveland," he said, as he moved his chair up closer to hers. one evening in the following week they went out after supper to the residence of rev. cæsar williams, pastor of the colored baptist church, and, after the usual preliminaries, were pronounced man and wife. iii according to all his preconceived notions, this marriage ought to have been the acme of uncle wellington's felicity. but he soon found that it was not without its drawbacks. on the following morning mr. todd was informed of the marriage. he had no special objection to it, or interest in it, except that he was opposed on principle to having husband and wife in his employment at the same time. as a consequence, mrs. braboy, whose place could be more easily filled than that of her husband, received notice that her services would not be required after the end of the month. her husband was retained in his place as coachman. upon the loss of her situation mrs. braboy decided to exercise the married woman's prerogative of letting her husband support her. she rented the upper floor of a small house in an irish neighborhood. the newly wedded pair furnished their rooms on the installment plan and began housekeeping. there was one little circumstance, however, that interfered slightly with their enjoyment of that perfect freedom from care which ought to characterize a honeymoon. the people who owned the house and occupied the lower floor had rented the upper part to mrs. braboy in person, it never occurring to them that her husband could be other than a white man. when it became known that he was colored, the landlord, mr. dennis o'flaherty, felt that he had been imposed upon, and, at the end of the first month, served notice upon his tenants to leave the premises. when mrs. braboy, with characteristic impetuosity, inquired the meaning of this proceeding, she was informed by mr. o'flaherty that he did not care to live in the same house "wid naygurs." mrs. braboy resented the epithet with more warmth than dignity, and for a brief space of time the air was green with choice specimens of brogue, the altercation barely ceasing before it had reached the point of blows. it was quite clear that the braboys could not longer live comfortably in mr. o'flaherty's house, and they soon vacated the premises, first letting the rent get a couple of weeks in arrears as a punishment to the too fastidious landlord. they moved to a small house on hackman street, a favorite locality with colored people. for a while, affairs ran smoothly in the new home. the colored people seemed, at first, well enough disposed toward mrs. braboy, and she made quite a large acquaintance among them. it was difficult, however, for mrs. braboy to divest herself of the consciousness that she was white, and therefore superior to her neighbors. occasional words and acts by which she manifested this feeling were noticed and resented by her keen-eyed and sensitive colored neighbors. the result was a slight coolness between them. that her few white neighbors did not visit her, she naturally and no doubt correctly imputed to disapproval of her matrimonial relations. under these circumstances, mrs. braboy was left a good deal to her own company. owing to lack of opportunity in early life, she was not a woman of many resources, either mental or moral. it is therefore not strange that, in order to relieve her loneliness, she should occasionally have recourse to a glass of beer, and, as the habit grew upon her, to still stronger stimulants. uncle wellington himself was no tee-totaler, and did not interpose any objection so long as she kept her potations within reasonable limits, and was apparently none the worse for them; indeed, he sometimes joined her in a glass. on one of these occasions he drank a little too much, and, while driving the ladies of mr. todd's family to the opera, ran against a lamp-post and overturned the carriage, to the serious discomposure of the ladies' nerves, and at the cost of his situation. a coachman discharged under such circumstances is not in the best position for procuring employment at his calling, and uncle wellington, under the pressure of need, was obliged to seek some other means of livelihood. at the suggestion of his friend mr. johnson, he bought a whitewash brush, a peck of lime, a couple of pails, and a hand-cart, and began work as a whitewasher. his first efforts were very crude, and for a while he lost a customer in every person he worked for. he nevertheless managed to pick up a living during the spring and summer months, and to support his wife and himself in comparative comfort. the approach of winter put an end to the whitewashing season, and left uncle wellington dependent for support upon occasional jobs of unskilled labor. the income derived from these was very uncertain, and mrs. braboy was at length driven, by stress of circumstances, to the washtub, that last refuge of honest, able-bodied poverty, in all countries where the use of clothing is conventional. the last state of uncle wellington was now worse than the first. under the soft firmness of aunt milly's rule, he had not been required to do a great deal of work, prompt and cheerful obedience being chiefly what was expected of him. but matters were very different here. he had not only to bring in the coal and water, but to rub the clothes and turn the wringer, and to humiliate himself before the public by emptying the tubs and hanging out the wash in full view of the neighbors; and he had to deliver the clothes when laundered. at times wellington found himself wondering if his second marriage had been a wise one. other circumstances combined to change in some degree his once rose-colored conception of life at the north. he had believed that all men were equal in this favored locality, but he discovered more degrees of inequality than he had ever perceived at the south. a colored man might be as good as a white man in theory, but neither of them was of any special consequence without money, or talent, or position. uncle wellington found a great many privileges open to him at the north, but he had not been educated to the point where he could appreciate them or take advantage of them; and the enjoyment of many of them was expensive, and, for that reason alone, as far beyond his reach as they had ever been. when he once began to admit even the possibility of a mistake on his part, these considerations presented themselves to his mind with increasing force. on occasions when mrs. braboy would require of him some unusual physical exertion, or when too frequent applications to the bottle had loosened her tongue, uncle wellington's mind would revert, with a remorseful twinge of conscience, to the _dolce far niente_ of his southern home; a film would come over his eyes and brain, and, instead of the red-faced irishwoman opposite him, he could see the black but comely disk of aunt milly's countenance bending over the washtub; the elegant brogue of mrs. braboy would deliquesce into the soft dialect of north carolina; and he would only be aroused from this blissful reverie by a wet shirt or a handful of suds thrown into his face, with which gentle reminder his wife would recall his attention to the duties of the moment. there came a time, one day in spring, when there was no longer any question about it: uncle wellington was desperately homesick. liberty, equality, privileges,--all were but as dust in the balance when weighed against his longing for old scenes and faces. it was the natural reaction in the mind of a middle-aged man who had tried to force the current of a sluggish existence into a new and radically different channel. an active, industrious man, making the change in early life, while there was time to spare for the waste of adaptation, might have found in the new place more favorable conditions than in the old. in wellington age and temperament combined to prevent the success of the experiment; the spirit of enterprise and ambition into which he had been temporarily galvanized could no longer prevail against the inertia of old habits of life and thought. one day when he had been sent to deliver clothes he performed his errand quickly, and boarding a passing street car, paid one of his very few five-cent pieces to ride down to the office of the hon. mr. brown, the colored lawyer whom he had visited when he first came to the city, and who was well known to him by sight and reputation. "mr. brown," he said, "i ain' gitt'n' 'long very well wid my ole 'oman." "what 's the trouble?" asked the lawyer, with business-like curtness, for he did not scent much of a fee. "well, de main trouble is she doan treat me right. an' den she gits drunk, an' wuss'n dat, she lays vi'lent han's on me. i kyars de marks er dat 'oman on my face now." he showed the lawyer a long scratch on the neck. "why don't you defend yourself?" "you don' know mis' braboy, suh; you don' know dat 'oman," he replied, with a shake of the head. "some er dese yer w'ite women is monst'us strong in de wris'." "well, mr. braboy, it 's what you might have expected when you turned your back on your own people and married a white woman. you were n't content with being a slave to the white folks once, but you must try it again. some people never know when they 've got enough. i don't see that there 's any help for you; unless," he added suggestively, "you had a good deal of money." '"pears ter me i heared somebody say sence i be'n up heah, dat it wuz 'gin de law fer w'ite folks an' colored folks ter marry." "that was once the law, though it has always been a dead letter in groveland. in fact, it was the law when you got married, and until i introduced a bill in the legislature last fall to repeal it. but even that law did n't hit cases like yours. it was unlawful to make such a marriage, but it was a good marriage when once made." "i don' jes' git dat th'oo my head," said wellington, scratching that member as though to make a hole for the idea to enter. "it 's quite plain, mr. braboy. it 's unlawful to kill a man, but when he 's killed he 's just as dead as though the law permitted it. i 'm afraid you have n't much of a case, but if you 'll go to work and get twenty-five dollars together, i 'll see what i can do for you. we may be able to pull a case through on the ground of extreme cruelty. i might even start the case if you brought in ten dollars." wellington went away sorrowfully. the laws of ohio were very little more satisfactory than those of north carolina. and as for the ten dollars,--the lawyer might as well have told him to bring in the moon, or a deed for the public square. he felt very, very low as he hurried back home to supper, which he would have to go without if he were not on hand at the usual supper-time. but just when his spirits were lowest, and his outlook for the future most hopeless, a measure of relief was at hand. he noticed, when he reached home, that mrs. braboy was a little preoccupied, and did not abuse him as vigorously as he expected after so long an absence. he also perceived the smell of strange tobacco in the house, of a better grade than he could afford to use. he thought perhaps some one had come in to see about the washing; but he was too glad of a respite from mrs. braboy's rhetoric to imperil it by indiscreet questions. next morning she gave him fifty cents. "braboy," she said, "ye 've be'n helpin' me nicely wid the washin', an' i 'm going ter give ye a holiday. ye can take yer hook an' line an' go fishin' on the breakwater. i 'll fix ye a lunch, an' ye need n't come back till night. an' there 's half a dollar; ye can buy yerself a pipe er terbacky. but be careful an' don't waste it," she added, for fear she was overdoing the thing. uncle wellington was overjoyed at this change of front on the part of mrs. braboy; if she would make it permanent he did not see why they might not live together very comfortably. the day passed pleasantly down on the breakwater. the weather was agreeable, and the fish bit freely. towards evening wellington started home with a bunch of fish that no angler need have been ashamed of. he looked forward to a good warm supper; for even if something should have happened during the day to alter his wife's mood for the worse, any ordinary variation would be more than balanced by the substantial addition of food to their larder. his mouth watered at the thought of the finny beauties sputtering in the frying-pan. he noted, as he approached the house, that there was no smoke coming from the chimney. this only disturbed him in connection with the matter of supper. when he entered the gate he observed further that the window-shades had been taken down. "'spec' de ole 'oman's been house-cleanin'," he said to himself. "i wonder she did n' make me stay an' he'p 'er." he went round to the rear of the house and tried the kitchen door. it was locked. this was somewhat of a surprise, and disturbed still further his expectations in regard to supper. when he had found the key and opened the door, the gravity of his next discovery drove away for the time being all thoughts of eating. the kitchen was empty. stove, table, chairs, wash-tubs, pots and pans, had vanished as if into thin air. "fo' de lawd's sake!" he murmured in open-mouthed astonishment. he passed into the other room,--they had only two,--which had served as bedroom and sitting-room. it was as bare as the first, except that in the middle of the floor were piled uncle wellington's clothes. it was not a large pile, and on the top of it lay a folded piece of yellow wrapping-paper. wellington stood for a moment as if petrified. then he rubbed his eyes and looked around him. "w'at do dis mean?" he said. "is i er-dreamin', er does i see w'at i 'pears ter see?" he glanced down at the bunch of fish which he still held. "heah 's de fish; heah 's de house; heah i is; but whar 's de ole 'oman, an' whar 's de fu'niture? _i_ can't figure out w'at dis yer all means." he picked up the piece of paper and unfolded it. it was written on one side. here was the obvious solution of the mystery,--that is, it would have been obvious if he could have read it; but he could not, and so his fancy continued to play upon the subject. perhaps the house had been robbed, or the furniture taken back by the seller, for it had not been entirely paid for. finally he went across the street and called to a boy in a neighbor's yard. "does you read writin', johnnie?" "yes, sir, i 'm in the seventh grade." "read dis yer paper fuh me." the youngster took the note, and with much labor read the following:---- "mr. braboy: "in lavin' ye so suddint i have ter say that my first husban' has turned up unixpected, having been saved onbeknownst ter me from a wathry grave an' all the money wasted i spint fer masses fer ter rist his sole an' i wish i had it back i feel it my dooty ter go an' live wid 'im again. i take the furnacher because i bought it yer close is yors i leave them and wishin' yer the best of luck i remane oncet yer wife but now agin "mrs. katie flannigan. "n.b. i 'm lavin town terday so it won't be no use lookin' fer me." on inquiry uncle wellington learned from the boy that shortly after his departure in the morning a white man had appeared on the scene, followed a little later by a moving-van, into which the furniture had been loaded and carried away. mrs. braboy, clad in her best clothes, had locked the door, and gone away with the strange white man. the news was soon noised about the street. wellington swapped his fish for supper and a bed at a neighbor's, and during the evening learned from several sources that the strange white man had been at his house the afternoon of the day before. his neighbors intimated that they thought mrs. braboy's departure a good riddance of bad rubbish, and wellington did not dispute the proposition. thus ended the second chapter of wellington's matrimonial experiences. his wife's departure had been the one thing needful to convince him, beyond a doubt, that he had been a great fool. remorse and homesickness forced him to the further conclusion that he had been knave as well as fool, and had treated aunt milly shamefully. he was not altogether a bad old man, though very weak and erring, and his better nature now gained the ascendency. of course his disappointment had a great deal to do with his remorse; most people do not perceive the hideousness of sin until they begin to reap its consequences. instead of the beautiful northern life he had dreamed of, he found himself stranded, penniless, in a strange land, among people whose sympathy he had forfeited, with no one to lean upon, and no refuge from the storms of life. his outlook was very dark, and there sprang up within him a wild longing to get back to north carolina,--back to the little whitewashed cabin, shaded with china and mulberry trees; back to the wood-pile and the garden; back to the old cronies with whom he had swapped lies and tobacco for so many years. he longed to kiss the rod of aunt milly's domination. he had purchased his liberty at too great a price. the next day he disappeared from groveland. he had announced his departure only to mr. johnson, who sent his love to his relations in patesville. it would be painful to record in detail the return journey of uncle wellington--mr. braboy no longer--to his native town; how many weary miles he walked; how many times he risked his life on railroad tracks and between freight cars; how he depended for sustenance on the grudging hand of back-door charity. nor would it be profitable or delicate to mention any slight deviations from the path of rectitude, as judged by conventional standards, to which he may occasionally have been driven by a too insistent hunger; or to refer in the remotest degree to a compulsory sojourn of thirty days in a city where he had no references, and could show no visible means of support. true charity will let these purely personal matters remain locked in the bosom of him who suffered them. iv just fifteen months after the date when uncle wellington had left north carolina, a weather-beaten figure entered the town of patesville after nightfall, following the railroad track from the north. few would have recognized in the hungry-looking old brown tramp, clad in dusty rags and limping along with bare feet, the trim-looking middle-aged mulatto who so few months before had taken the train from patesville for the distant north; so, if he had but known it, there was no necessity for him to avoid the main streets and sneak around by unfrequented paths to reach the old place on the other side of the town. he encountered nobody that he knew, and soon the familiar shape of the little cabin rose before him. it stood distinctly outlined against the sky, and the light streaming from the half-opened shutters showed it to be occupied. as he drew nearer, every familiar detail of the place appealed to his memory and to his affections, and his heart went out to the old home and the old wife. as he came nearer still, the odor of fried chicken floated out upon the air and set his mouth to watering, and awakened unspeakable longings in his half-starved stomach. at this moment, however, a fearful thought struck him; suppose the old woman had taken legal advice and married again during his absence? turn about would have been only fair play. he opened the gate softly, and with his heart in his mouth approached the window on tiptoe and looked in. a cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, in front of which sat the familiar form of aunt milly--and another, at the sight of whom uncle wellington's heart sank within him. he knew the other person very well; he had sat there more than once before uncle wellington went away. it was the minister of the church to which his wife belonged. the preacher's former visits, however, had signified nothing more than pastoral courtesy, or appreciation of good eating. his presence now was of serious portent; for wellington recalled, with acute alarm, that the elder's wife had died only a few weeks before his own departure for the north. what was the occasion of his presence this evening? was it merely a pastoral call? or was he courting? or had aunt milly taken legal advice and married the elder? wellington remembered a crack in the wall, at the back of the house, through which he could see and hear, and quietly stationed himself there. "dat chicken smells mighty good, sis' milly," the elder was saying; "i can't fer de life er me see why dat low-down husban' er yo'n could ever run away f'm a cook like you. it 's one er de beatenis' things i ever heared. how he could lib wid you an' not 'preciate you _i_ can't understan', no indeed i can't." aunt milly sighed. "de trouble wid wellin'ton wuz," she replied, "dat he did n' know when he wuz well off. he wuz alluz wishin' fer change, er studyin' 'bout somethin' new." "ez fer me," responded the elder earnestly, "i likes things what has be'n prove' an' tried an' has stood de tes', an' i can't 'magine how anybody could spec' ter fin' a better housekeeper er cook dan you is, sis' milly. i 'm a gittin' mighty lonesome sence my wife died. de good book say it is not good fer man ter lib alone, en it 'pears ter me dat you an' me mought git erlong tergether monst'us well." wellington's heart stood still, while he listened with strained attention. aunt milly sighed. "i ain't denyin', elder, but what i 've be'n kinder lonesome myse'f fer quite a w'ile, an' i doan doubt dat w'at de good book say 'plies ter women as well as ter men." "you kin be sho' it do," averred the elder, with professional authoritativeness; "yas 'm, you kin be cert'n sho'." "but, of co'se," aunt milly went on, "havin' los' my ole man de way i did, it has tuk me some time fer ter git my feelin's straighten' out like dey oughter be." "i kin 'magine yo' feelin's, sis' milly," chimed in the elder sympathetically, "w'en you come home dat night an' foun' yo' chist broke open, an' yo' money gone dat you had wukked an' slaved full f'm mawnin' 'tel night, year in an' year out, an' w'en you foun' dat no-'count nigger gone wid his clo's an' you lef' all alone in de worl' ter scuffle 'long by yo'self." "yas, elder," responded aunt milly, "i wa'n't used right. an' den w'en i heared 'bout his goin' ter de lawyer ter fin' out 'bout a defoce, an' w'en i heared w'at de lawyer said 'bout my not bein' his wife 'less he wanted me, it made me so mad, i made up my min' dat ef he ever put his foot on my do'sill ag'in, i 'd shet de do' in his face an' tell 'im ter go back whar he come f'm." to wellington, on the outside, the cabin had never seemed so comfortable, aunt milly never so desirable, chicken never so appetizing, as at this moment when they seemed slipping away from his grasp forever. "yo' feelin's does you credit, sis' milly," said the elder, taking her hand, which for a moment she did not withdraw. "an' de way fer you ter close yo' do' tightes' ag'inst 'im is ter take me in his place. he ain' got no claim on you no mo'. he tuk his ch'ice 'cordin' ter w'at de lawyer tol' 'im, an' 'termine' dat he wa'n't yo' husban'. ef he wa'n't yo' husban', he had no right ter take yo' money, an' ef he comes back here ag'in you kin hab 'im tuck up an' sent ter de penitenchy fer stealin' it." uncle wellington's knees, already weak from fasting, trembled violently beneath him. the worst that he had feared was now likely to happen. his only hope of safety lay in flight, and yet the scene within so fascinated him that he could not move a step. "it 'u'd serve him right," exclaimed aunt milly indignantly, "ef he wuz sent ter de penitenchy fer life! dey ain't nuthin' too mean ter be done ter 'im. what did i ever do dat he should use me like he did?" the recital of her wrongs had wrought upon aunt milly's feelings so that her voice broke, and she wiped her eyes with her apron. the elder looked serenely confident, and moved his chair nearer hers in order the better to play the role of comforter. wellington, on the outside, felt so mean that the darkness of the night was scarcely sufficient to hide him; it would be no more than right if the earth were to open and swallow him up. "an' yet aftuh all, elder," said milly with a sob, "though i knows you is a better man, an' would treat me right, i wuz so use' ter dat ole nigger, an' libbed wid 'im so long, dat ef he 'd open dat do' dis minute an' walk in, i 'm feared i 'd be foolish ernuff an' weak ernuff to forgive 'im an' take 'im back ag'in." with a bound, uncle wellington was away from the crack in the wall. as he ran round the house he passed the wood-pile and snatched up an armful of pieces. a moment later he threw open the door. "ole 'oman," he exclaimed, "here 's dat wood you tol' me ter fetch in! why, elder," he said to the preacher, who had started from his seat with surprise, "w'at's yo' hurry? won't you stay an' hab some supper wid us?" the bouquet mary myrover's friends were somewhat surprised when she began to teach a colored school. miss myrover's friends are mentioned here, because nowhere more than in a southern town is public opinion a force which cannot be lightly contravened. public opinion, however, did not oppose miss myrover's teaching colored children; in fact, all the colored public schools in town--and there were several--were taught by white teachers, and had been so taught since the state had undertaken to provide free public instruction for all children within its boundaries. previous to that time, there had been a freedman's bureau school and a presbyterian missionary school, but these had been withdrawn when the need for them became less pressing. the colored people of the town had been for some time agitating their right to teach their own schools, but as yet the claim had not been conceded. the reason miss myrover's course created some surprise was not, therefore, the fact that a southern white woman should teach a colored school; it lay in the fact that up to this time no woman of just her quality had taken up such work. most of the teachers of colored schools were not of those who had constituted the aristocracy of the old régime; they might be said rather to represent the new order of things, in which labor was in time to become honorable, and men were, after a somewhat longer time, to depend, for their place in society, upon themselves rather than upon their ancestors. mary myrover belonged to one of the proudest of the old families. her ancestors had been people of distinction in virginia before a collateral branch of the main stock had settled in north carolina. before the war, they had been able to live up to their pedigree; but the war brought sad changes. miss myrover's father--the colonel myrover who led a gallant but desperate charge at vicksburg--had fallen on the battlefield, and his tomb in the white cemetery was a shrine for the family. on the confederate memorial day, no other grave was so profusely decorated with flowers, and, in the oration pronounced, the name of colonel myrover was always used to illustrate the highest type of patriotic devotion and self-sacrifice. miss myrover's brother, too, had fallen in the conflict; but his bones lay in some unknown trench, with those of a thousand others who had fallen on the same field. ay, more, her lover, who had hoped to come home in the full tide of victory and claim his bride as a reward for gallantry, had shared the fate of her father and brother. when the war was over, the remnant of the family found itself involved in the common ruin,--more deeply involved, indeed, than some others; for colonel myrover had believed in the ultimate triumph of his cause, and had invested most of his wealth in confederate bonds, which were now only so much waste paper. there had been a little left. mrs. myrover was thrifty, and had laid by a few hundred dollars, which she kept in the house to meet unforeseen contingencies. there remained, too, their home, with an ample garden and a well-stocked orchard, besides a considerable tract of country land, partly cleared, but productive of very little revenue. with their shrunken resources, miss myrover and her mother were able to hold up their heads without embarrassment for some years after the close of the war. but when things were adjusted to the changed conditions, and the stream of life began to flow more vigorously in the new channels, they saw themselves in danger of dropping behind, unless in some way they could add to their meagre income. miss myrover looked over the field of employment, never very wide for women in the south, and found it occupied. the only available position she could be supposed prepared to fill, and which she could take without distinct loss of caste, was that of a teacher, and there was no vacancy except in one of the colored schools. even teaching was a doubtful experiment; it was not what she would have preferred, but it was the best that could be done. "i don't like it, mary," said her mother. "it 's a long step from owning such people to teaching them. what do they need with education? it will only make them unfit for work." "they 're free now, mother, and perhaps they 'll work better if they 're taught something. besides, it 's only a business arrangement, and does n't involve any closer contact than we have with our servants." "well, i should say not!" sniffed the old lady. "not one of them will ever dare to presume on your position to take any liberties with us. _i_ 'll see to that." miss myrover began her work as a teacher in the autumn, at the opening of the school year. it was a novel experience at first. though there had always been negro servants in the house, and though on the streets colored people were more numerous than those of her own race, and though she was so familiar with their dialect that she might almost be said to speak it, barring certain characteristic grammatical inaccuracies, she had never been brought in personal contact with so many of them at once as when she confronted the fifty or sixty faces--of colors ranging from a white almost as clear as her own to the darkest livery of the sun--which were gathered in the schoolroom on the morning when she began her duties. some of the inherited prejudice of her caste, too, made itself felt, though she tried to repress any outward sign of it; and she could perceive that the children were not altogether responsive; they, likewise, were not entirely free from antagonism. the work was unfamiliar to her. she was not physically very strong, and at the close of the first day went home with a splitting headache. if she could have resigned then and there without causing comment or annoyance to others, she would have felt it a privilege to do so. but a night's rest banished her headache and improved her spirits, and the next morning she went to her work with renewed vigor, fortified by the experience of the first day. miss myrover's second day was more satisfactory. she had some natural talent for organization, though hitherto unaware of it, and in the course of the day she got her classes formed and lessons under way. in a week or two she began to classify her pupils in her own mind, as bright or stupid, mischievous or well behaved, lazy or industrious, as the case might be, and to regulate her discipline accordingly. that she had come of a long line of ancestors who had exercised authority and mastership was perhaps not without its effect upon her character, and enabled her more readily to maintain good order in the school. when she was fairly broken in, she found the work rather to her liking, and derived much pleasure from such success as she achieved as a teacher. it was natural that she should be more attracted to some of her pupils than to others. perhaps her favorite--or, rather, the one she liked best, for she was too fair and just for conscious favoritism--was sophy tucker. just the ground for the teacher's liking for sophy might not at first be apparent. the girl was far from the whitest of miss myrover's pupils; in fact, she was one of the darker ones. she was not the brightest in intellect, though she always tried to learn her lessons. she was not the best dressed, for her mother was a poor widow, who went out washing and scrubbing for a living. perhaps the real tie between them was sophy's intense devotion to the teacher. it had manifested itself almost from the first day of the school, in the rapt look of admiration miss myrover always saw on the little black face turned toward her. in it there was nothing of envy, nothing of regret; nothing but worship for the beautiful white lady--she was not especially handsome, but to sophy her beauty was almost divine--who had come to teach her. if miss myrover dropped a book, sophy was the first to spring and pick it up; if she wished a chair moved, sophy seemed to anticipate her wish; and so of all the numberless little services that can be rendered in a schoolroom. miss myrover was fond of flowers, and liked to have them about her. the children soon learned of this taste of hers, and kept the vases on her desk filled with blossoms during their season. sophy was perhaps the most active in providing them. if she could not get garden flowers, she would make excursions to the woods in the early morning, and bring in great dew-laden bunches of bay, or jasmine, or some other fragrant forest flower which she knew the teacher loved. "when i die, sophy," miss myrover said to the child one day, "i want to be covered with roses. and when they bury me, i 'm sure i shall rest better if my grave is banked with flowers, and roses are planted at my head and at my feet." miss myrover was at first amused at sophy's devotion; but when she grew more accustomed to it, she found it rather to her liking. it had a sort of flavor of the old régime, and she felt, when she bestowed her kindly notice upon her little black attendant, some of the feudal condescension of the mistress toward the slave. she was kind to sophy, and permitted her to play the rôle she had assumed, which caused sometimes a little jealousy among the other girls. once she gave sophy a yellow ribbon which she took from her own hair. the child carried it home, and cherished it as a priceless treasure, to be worn only on the greatest occasions. sophy had a rival in her attachment to the teacher, but the rivalry was altogether friendly. miss myrover had a little dog, a white spaniel, answering to the name of prince. prince was a dog of high degree, and would have very little to do with the children of the school; he made an exception, however, in the case of sophy, whose devotion for his mistress he seemed to comprehend. he was a clever dog, and could fetch and carry, sit up on his haunches, extend his paw to shake hands, and possessed several other canine accomplishments. he was very fond of his mistress, and always, unless shut up at home, accompanied her to school, where he spent most of his time lying under the teacher's desk, or, in cold weather, by the stove, except when he would go out now and then and chase an imaginary rabbit round the yard, presumably for exercise. at school sophy and prince vied with each other in their attentions to miss myrover. but when school was over, prince went away with her, and sophy stayed behind; for miss myrover was white and sophy was black, which they both understood perfectly well. miss myrover taught the colored children, but she could not be seen with them in public. if they occasionally met her on the street, they did not expect her to speak to them, unless she happened to be alone and no other white person was in sight. if any of the children felt slighted, she was not aware of it, for she intended no slight; she had not been brought up to speak to negroes on the street, and she could not act differently from other people. and though she was a woman of sentiment and capable of deep feeling, her training had been such that she hardly expected to find in those of darker hue than herself the same susceptibility--varying in degree, perhaps, but yet the same in kind--that gave to her own life the alternations of feeling that made it most worth living. once miss myrover wished to carry home a parcel of books. she had the bundle in her hand when sophy came up. "lemme tote yo' bundle fer yer, miss ma'y?" she asked eagerly. "i 'm gwine yo' way." "thank you, sophy," was the reply. "i 'll be glad if you will." sophy followed the teacher at a respectful distance. when they reached miss myrover's home, sophy carried the bundle to the doorstep, where miss myrover took it and thanked her. mrs. myrover came out on the piazza as sophy was moving away. she said, in the child's hearing, and perhaps with the intention that she should hear: "mary, i wish you would n't let those little darkeys follow you to the house. i don't want them in the yard. i should think you 'd have enough of them all day." "very well, mother," replied her daughter. "i won't bring any more of them. the child was only doing me a favor." mrs. myrover was an invalid, and opposition or irritation of any kind brought on nervous paroxysms that made her miserable, and made life a burden to the rest of the household, so that mary seldom crossed her whims. she did not bring sophy to the house again, nor did sophy again offer her services as porter. one day in spring sophy brought her teacher a bouquet of yellow roses. "dey come off'n my own bush, miss ma'y," she said proudly, "an' i didn' let nobody e'se pull 'em, but saved 'em all fer you, 'cause i know you likes roses so much. i 'm gwine bring 'em all ter you as long as dey las'." "thank you, sophy," said the teacher; "you are a very good girl." for another year mary myrover taught the colored school, and did excellent service. the children made rapid progress under her tuition, and learned to love her well; for they saw and appreciated, as well as children could, her fidelity to a trust that she might have slighted, as some others did, without much fear of criticism. toward the end of her second year she sickened, and after a brief illness died. old mrs. myrover was inconsolable. she ascribed her daughter's death to her labors as teacher of negro children. just how the color of the pupils had produced the fatal effects she did not stop to explain. but she was too old, and had suffered too deeply from the war, in body and mind and estate, ever to reconcile herself to the changed order of things following the return of peace; and, with an unsound yet perfectly explainable logic, she visited some of her displeasure upon those who had profited most, though passively, by her losses. "i always feared something would happen to mary," she said. "it seemed unnatural for her to be wearing herself out teaching little negroes who ought to have been working for her. but the world has hardly been a fit place to live in since the war, and when i follow her, as i must before long, i shall not be sorry to go." she gave strict orders that no colored people should be admitted to the house. some of her friends heard of this, and remonstrated. they knew the teacher was loved by the pupils, and felt that sincere respect from the humble would be a worthy tribute to the proudest. but mrs. myrover was obdurate. "they had my daughter when she was alive," she said, "and they 've killed her. but she 's mine now, and i won't have them come near her. i don't want one of them at the funeral or anywhere around." for a month before miss myrover's death sophy had been watching her rosebush--the one that bore the yellow roses--for the first buds of spring, and, when these appeared, had awaited impatiently their gradual unfolding. but not until her teacher's death had they become full-blown roses. when miss myrover died, sophy determined to pluck the roses and lay them on her coffin. perhaps, she thought, they might even put them in her hand or on her breast. for sophy remembered miss myrover's thanks and praise when she had brought her the yellow roses the spring before. on the morning of the day set for the funeral, sophy washed her face until it shone, combed and brushed her hair with painful conscientiousness, put on her best frock, plucked her yellow roses, and, tying them with the treasured ribbon her teacher had given her, set out for miss myrover's home. she went round to the side gate--the house stood on a corner--and stole up the path to the kitchen. a colored woman, whom she did not know, came to the door. "wat yer want, chile?" she inquired. "kin i see miss ma'y?" asked sophy timidly. "i don't know, honey. ole miss myrover say she don't want no cullud folks roun' de house endyoin' dis fun'al. i 'll look an' see if she 's roun' de front room, whar de co'pse is. you sed down heah an' keep still, an' ef she 's upstairs maybe i kin git yer in dere a minute. ef i can't, i kin put yo' bokay 'mongs' de res', whar she won't know nuthin' erbout it." a moment after she had gone, there was a step in the hall, and old mrs. myrover came into the kitchen. "dinah!" she said in a peevish tone; "dinah!" receiving no answer, mrs. myrover peered around the kitchen, and caught sight of sophy. "what are you doing here?" she demanded. "i-i 'm-m waitin' ter see de cook, ma'am," stammered sophy. "the cook is n't here now. i don't know where she is. besides, my daughter is to be buried to-day, and i won't have any one visiting the servants until the funeral is over. come back some other day, or see the cook at her own home in the evening." she stood waiting for the child to go, and under the keen glance of her eyes sophy, feeling as though she had been caught in some disgraceful act, hurried down the walk and out of the gate, with her bouquet in her hand. "dinah," said mrs. myrover, when the cook came back, "i don't want any strange people admitted here to-day. the house will be full of our friends, and we have no room for others." "yas 'm," said the cook. she understood perfectly what her mistress meant; and what the cook thought about her mistress was a matter of no consequence. the funeral services were held at st. paul's episcopal church, where the myrovers had always worshiped. quite a number of miss myrover's pupils went to the church to attend the services. the building was not a large one. there was a small gallery at the rear, to which colored people were admitted, if they chose to come, at ordinary services; and those who wished to be present at the funeral supposed that the usual custom would prevail. they were therefore surprised, when they went to the side entrance, by which colored people gained access to the gallery stairs, to be met by an usher who barred their passage. "i 'm sorry," he said, "but i have had orders to admit no one until the friends of the family have all been seated. if you wish to wait until the white people have all gone in, and there 's any room left, you may be able to get into the back part of the gallery. of course i can't tell yet whether there 'll be any room or not." now the statement of the usher was a very reasonable one; but, strange to say, none of the colored people chose to remain except sophy. she still hoped to use her floral offering for its destined end, in some way, though she did not know just how. she waited in the yard until the church was filled with white people, and a number who could not gain admittance were standing about the doors. then she went round to the side of the church, and, depositing her bouquet carefully on an old mossy gravestone, climbed up on the projecting sill of a window near the chancel. the window was of stained glass, of somewhat ancient make. the church was old, had indeed been built in colonial times, and the stained glass had been brought from england. the design of the window showed jesus blessing little children. time had dealt gently with the window, but just at the feet of the figure of jesus a small triangular piece of glass had been broken out. to this aperture sophy applied her eyes, and through it saw and heard what she could of the services within. before the chancel, on trestles draped in black, stood the sombre casket in which lay all that was mortal of her dear teacher. the top of the casket was covered with flowers; and lying stretched out underneath it she saw miss myrover's little white dog, prince. he had followed the body to the church, and, slipping in unnoticed among the mourners, had taken his place, from which no one had the heart to remove him. the white-robed rector read the solemn service for the dead, and then delivered a brief address, in which he dwelt upon the uncertainty of life, and, to the believer, the certain blessedness of eternity. he spoke of miss myrover's kindly spirit, and, as an illustration of her love and self-sacrifice for others, referred to her labors as a teacher of the poor ignorant negroes who had been placed in their midst by an all-wise providence, and whom it was their duty to guide and direct in the station in which god had put them. then the organ pealed, a prayer was said, and the long cortege moved from the church to the cemetery, about half a mile away, where the body was to be interred. when the services were over, sophy sprang down from her perch, and, taking her flowers, followed the procession. she did not walk with the rest, but at a proper and respectful distance from the last mourner. no one noticed the little black girl with the bunch of yellow flowers, or thought of her as interested in the funeral. the cortege reached the cemetery and filed slowly through the gate; but sophy stood outside, looking at a small sign in white letters on a black background:---- "_notice_. this cemetery is for white people only. others please keep out." sophy, thanks to miss myrover's painstaking instruction, could read this sign very distinctly. in fact, she had often read it before. for sophy was a child who loved beauty, in a blind, groping sort of way, and had sometimes stood by the fence of the cemetery and looked through at the green mounds and shaded walks and blooming flowers within, and wished that she might walk among them. she knew, too, that the little sign on the gate, though so courteously worded, was no mere formality; for she had heard how a colored man, who had wandered into the cemetery on a hot night and fallen asleep on the flat top of a tomb, had been arrested as a vagrant and fined five dollars, which he had worked out on the streets, with a ball-and-chain attachment, at twenty-five cents a day. since that time the cemetery gate had been locked at night. so sophy stayed outside, and looked through the fence. her poor bouquet had begun to droop by this time, and the yellow ribbon had lost some of its freshness. sophy could see the rector standing by the grave, the mourners gathered round; she could faintly distinguish the solemn words with which ashes were committed to ashes, and dust to dust. she heard the hollow thud of the earth falling on the coffin; and she leaned against the iron fence, sobbing softly, until the grave was filled and rounded off, and the wreaths and other floral pieces were disposed upon it. when the mourners began to move toward the gate, sophy walked slowly down the street, in a direction opposite to that taken by most of the people who came out. when they had all gone away, and the sexton had come out and locked the gate behind him, sophy crept back. her roses were faded now, and from some of them the petals had fallen. she stood there irresolute, loath to leave with her heart's desire unsatisfied, when, as her eyes sought again the teacher's last resting-place, she saw lying beside the new-made grave what looked like a small bundle of white wool. sophy's eyes lighted up with a sudden glow. "prince! here, prince!" she called. the little dog rose, and trotted down to the gate. sophy pushed the poor bouquet between the iron bars. "take that ter miss ma'y, prince," she said, "that 's a good doggie." the dog wagged his tail intelligently, took the bouquet carefully in his mouth, carried it to his mistress's grave, and laid it among the other flowers. the bunch of roses was so small that from where she stood sophy could see only a dash of yellow against the white background of the mass of flowers. when prince had performed his mission he turned his eyes toward sophy inquiringly, and when she gave him a nod of approval lay down and resumed his watch by the graveside. sophy looked at him a moment with a feeling very much like envy, and then turned and moved slowly away. the web of circumstance i within a low clapboarded hut, with an open front, a forge was glowing. in front a blacksmith was shoeing a horse, a sleek, well-kept animal with the signs of good blood and breeding. a young mulatto stood by and handed the blacksmith such tools as he needed from time to time. a group of negroes were sitting around, some in the shadow of the shop, one in the full glare of the sunlight. a gentleman was seated in a buggy a few yards away, in the shade of a spreading elm. the horse had loosened a shoe, and colonel thornton, who was a lover of fine horseflesh, and careful of it, had stopped at ben davis's blacksmith shop, as soon as he discovered the loose shoe, to have it fastened on. "all right, kunnel," the blacksmith called out. "tom," he said, addressing the young man, "he'p me hitch up." colonel thornton alighted from the buggy, looked at the shoe, signified his approval of the job, and stood looking on while the blacksmith and his assistant harnessed the horse to the buggy. "dat 's a mighty fine whip yer got dere, kunnel," said ben, while the young man was tightening the straps of the harness on the opposite side of the horse. "i wush i had one like it. where kin yer git dem whips?" "my brother brought me this from new york," said the colonel. "you can't buy them down here." the whip in question was a handsome one. the handle was wrapped with interlacing threads of variegated colors, forming an elaborate pattern, the lash being dark green. an octagonal ornament of glass was set in the end of the handle. "it cert'n'y is fine," said ben; "i wish i had one like it." he looked at the whip longingly as colonel thornton drove away. "'pears ter me ben gittin' mighty blooded," said one of the bystanders, "drivin' a hoss an' buggy, an' wantin' a whip like colonel thornton's." "what 's de reason i can't hab a hoss an' buggy an' a whip like kunnel tho'nton's, ef i pay fer 'em?" asked ben. "we colored folks never had no chance ter git nothin' befo' de wah, but ef eve'y nigger in dis town had a tuck keer er his money sence de wah, like i has, an' bought as much lan' as i has, de niggers might 'a' got half de lan' by dis time," he went on, giving a finishing blow to a horseshoe, and throwing it on the ground to cool. carried away by his own eloquence, he did not notice the approach of two white men who came up the street from behind him. "an' ef you niggers," he continued, raking the coals together over a fresh bar of iron, "would stop wastin' yo' money on 'scursions to put money in w'ite folks' pockets, an' stop buildin' fine chu'ches, an' buil' houses fer yo'se'ves, you 'd git along much faster." "you 're talkin' sense, ben," said one of the white men. "yo'r people will never be respected till they 've got property." the conversation took another turn. the white men transacted their business and went away. the whistle of a neighboring steam sawmill blew a raucous blast for the hour of noon, and the loafers shuffled away in different directions. "you kin go ter dinner, tom," said the blacksmith. "an' stop at de gate w'en yer go by my house, and tell nancy i 'll be dere in 'bout twenty minutes. i got ter finish dis yer plough p'int fus'." the young man walked away. one would have supposed, from the rapidity with which he walked, that he was very hungry. a quarter of an hour later the blacksmith dropped his hammer, pulled off his leather apron, shut the front door of the shop, and went home to dinner. he came into the house out of the fervent heat, and, throwing off his straw hat, wiped his brow vigorously with a red cotton handkerchief. "dem collards smells good," he said, sniffing the odor that came in through the kitchen door, as his good-looking yellow wife opened it to enter the room where he was. "i 've got a monst'us good appetite ter-day. i feels good, too. i paid majah ransom de intrus' on de mortgage dis mawnin' an' a hund'ed dollahs besides, an' i spec's ter hab de balance ready by de fust of nex' jiniwary; an' den we won't owe nobody a cent. i tell yer dere ain' nothin' like propputy ter make a pusson feel like a man. but w'at 's de matter wid yer, nancy? is sump'n' skeered yer?" the woman did seem excited and ill at ease. there was a heaving of the full bust, a quickened breathing, that betokened suppressed excitement. "i-i-jes' seen a rattlesnake out in de gyahden," she stammered. the blacksmith ran to the door. "which way? whar wuz he?" he cried. he heard a rustling in the bushes at one side of the garden, and the sound of a breaking twig, and, seizing a hoe which stood by the door, he sprang toward the point from which the sound came. "no, no," said the woman hurriedly, "it wuz over here," and she directed her husband's attention to the other side of the garden. the blacksmith, with the uplifted hoe, its sharp blade gleaming in the sunlight, peered cautiously among the collards and tomato plants, listening all the while for the ominous rattle, but found nothing. "i reckon he 's got away," he said, as he set the hoe up again by the door. "whar 's de chillen?" he asked with some anxiety. "is dey playin' in de woods?" "no," answered his wife, "dey 've gone ter de spring." the spring was on the opposite side of the garden from that on which the snake was said to have been seen, so the blacksmith sat down and fanned himself with a palm-leaf fan until the dinner was served. "yer ain't quite on time ter-day, nancy," he said, glancing up at the clock on the mantel, after the edge of his appetite had been taken off. "got ter make time ef yer wanter make money. did n't tom tell yer i 'd be heah in twenty minutes?" "no," she said; "i seen him goin' pas'; he did n' say nothin'." "i dunno w'at 's de matter wid dat boy," mused the blacksmith over his apple dumpling. "he 's gittin' mighty keerless heah lately; mus' hab sump'n' on 'is min',--some gal, i reckon." the children had come in while he was speaking,--a slender, shapely boy, yellow like his mother, a girl several years younger, dark like her father: both bright-looking children and neatly dressed. "i seen cousin tom down by de spring," said the little girl, as she lifted off the pail of water that had been balanced on her head. "he come out er de woods jest ez we wuz fillin' our buckets." "yas," insisted the blacksmith, "he 's got some gal on his min'." ii the case of the state of north carolina _vs_. ben davis was called. the accused was led into court, and took his seat in the prisoner's dock. "prisoner at the bar, stand up." the prisoner, pale and anxious, stood up. the clerk read the indictment, in which it was charged that the defendant by force and arms had entered the barn of one g.w. thornton, and feloniously taken therefrom one whip, of the value of fifteen dollars. "are you guilty or not guilty?" asked the judge. "not guilty, yo' honah; not guilty, jedge. i never tuck de whip." the state's attorney opened the case. he was young and zealous. recently elected to the office, this was his first batch of cases, and he was anxious to make as good a record as possible. he had no doubt of the prisoner's guilt. there had been a great deal of petty thieving in the county, and several gentlemen had suggested to him the necessity for greater severity in punishing it. the jury were all white men. the prosecuting attorney stated the case. "we expect to show, gentlemen of the jury, the facts set out in the indictment,--not altogether by direct proof, but by a chain of circumstantial evidence which is stronger even than the testimony of eyewitnesses. men might lie, but circumstances cannot. we expect to show that the defendant is a man of dangerous character, a surly, impudent fellow; a man whose views of property are prejudicial to the welfare of society, and who has been heard to assert that half the property which is owned in this county has been stolen, and that, if justice were done, the white people ought to divide up the land with the negroes; in other words, a negro nihilist, a communist, a secret devotee of tom paine and voltaire, a pupil of the anarchist propaganda, which, if not checked by the stern hand of the law, will fasten its insidious fangs on our social system, and drag it down to ruin." "we object, may it please your honor," said the defendant's attorney. "the prosecutor should defer his argument until the testimony is in." "confine yourself to the facts, major," said the court mildly. the prisoner sat with half-open mouth, overwhelmed by this flood of eloquence. he had never heard of tom paine or voltaire. he had no conception of what a nihilist or an anarchist might be, and could not have told the difference between a propaganda and a potato. "we expect to show, may it please the court, that the prisoner had been employed by colonel thornton to shoe a horse; that the horse was taken to the prisoner's blacksmith shop by a servant of colonel thornton's; that, this servant expressing a desire to go somewhere on an errand before the horse had been shod, the prisoner volunteered to return the horse to colonel thornton's stable; that he did so, and the following morning the whip in question was missing; that, from circumstances, suspicion naturally fell upon the prisoner, and a search was made of his shop, where the whip was found secreted; that the prisoner denied that the whip was there, but when confronted with the evidence of his crime, showed by his confusion that he was guilty beyond a peradventure." the prisoner looked more anxious; so much eloquence could not but be effective with the jury. the attorney for the defendant answered briefly, denying the defendant's guilt, dwelling upon his previous good character for honesty, and begging the jury not to pre-judge the case, but to remember that the law is merciful, and that the benefit of the doubt should be given to the prisoner. the prisoner glanced nervously at the jury. there was nothing in their faces to indicate the effect upon them of the opening statements. it seemed to the disinterested listeners as if the defendant's attorney had little confidence in his client's cause. colonel thornton took the stand and testified to his ownership of the whip, the place where it was kept, its value, and the fact that it had disappeared. the whip was produced in court and identified by the witness. he also testified to the conversation at the blacksmith shop in the course of which the prisoner had expressed a desire to possess a similar whip. the cross-examination was brief, and no attempt was made to shake the colonel's testimony. the next witness was the constable who had gone with a warrant to search ben's shop. he testified to the circumstances under which the whip was found. "he wuz brazen as a mule at fust, an' wanted ter git mad about it. but when we begun ter turn over that pile er truck in the cawner, he kinder begun ter trimble; when the whip-handle stuck out, his eyes commenced ter grow big, an' when we hauled the whip out he turned pale ez ashes, an' begun to swear he did n' take the whip an' did n' know how it got thar." "you may cross-examine," said the prosecuting attorney triumphantly. the prisoner felt the weight of the testimony, and glanced furtively at the jury, and then appealingly at his lawyer. "you say that ben denied that he had stolen the whip," said the prisoner's attorney, on cross-examination. "did it not occur to you that what you took for brazen impudence might have been but the evidence of conscious innocence?" the witness grinned incredulously, revealing thereby a few blackened fragments of teeth. "i 've tuck up more 'n a hundred niggers fer stealin', kurnel, an' i never seed one yit that did n' 'ny it ter the las'." "answer my question. might not the witness's indignation have been a manifestation of conscious innocence? yes or no?" "yes, it mought, an' the moon mought fall--but it don't." further cross-examination did not weaken the witness's testimony, which was very damaging, and every one in the court room felt instinctively that a strong defense would be required to break down the state's case. "the state rests," said the prosecuting attorney, with a ring in his voice which spoke of certain victory. there was a temporary lull in the proceedings, during which a bailiff passed a pitcher of water and a glass along the line of jury-men. the defense was then begun. the law in its wisdom did not permit the defendant to testify in his own behalf. there were no witnesses to the facts, but several were called to testify to ben's good character. the colored witnesses made him out possessed of all the virtues. one or two white men testified that they had never known anything against his reputation for honesty. the defendant rested his case, and the state called its witnesses in rebuttal. they were entirely on the point of character. one testified that he had heard the prisoner say that, if the negroes had their rights, they would own at least half the property. another testified that he had heard the defendant say that the negroes spent too much money on churches, and that they cared a good deal more for god than god had ever seemed to care for them. ben davis listened to this testimony with half-open mouth and staring eyes. now and then he would lean forward and speak perhaps a word, when his attorney would shake a warning finger at him, and he would fall back helplessly, as if abandoning himself to fate; but for a moment only, when he would resume his puzzled look. the arguments followed. the prosecuting attorney briefly summed up the evidence, and characterized it as almost a mathematical proof of the prisoner's guilt. he reserved his eloquence for the closing argument. the defendant's attorney had a headache, and secretly believed his client guilty. his address sounded more like an appeal for mercy than a demand for justice. then the state's attorney delivered the maiden argument of his office, the speech that made his reputation as an orator, and opened up to him a successful political career. the judge's charge to the jury was a plain, simple statement of the law as applied to circumstantial evidence, and the mere statement of the law foreshadowed the verdict. the eyes of the prisoner were glued to the jury-box, and he looked more and more like a hunted animal. in the rear of the crowd of blacks who filled the back part of the room, partly concealed by the projecting angle of the fireplace, stood tom, the blacksmith's assistant. if the face is the mirror of the soul, then this man's soul, taken off its guard in this moment of excitement, was full of lust and envy and all evil passions. the jury filed out of their box, and into the jury room behind the judge's stand. there was a moment of relaxation in the court room. the lawyers fell into conversation across the table. the judge beckoned to colonel thornton, who stepped forward, and they conversed together a few moments. the prisoner was all eyes and ears in this moment of waiting, and from an involuntary gesture on the part of the judge he divined that they were speaking of him. it is a pity he could not hear what was said. "how do you feel about the case, colonel?" asked the judge. "let him off easy," replied colonel thornton. "he 's the best blacksmith in the county." the business of the court seemed to have halted by tacit consent, in anticipation of a quick verdict. the suspense did not last long. scarcely ten minutes had elapsed when there was a rap on the door, the officer opened it, and the jury came out. the prisoner, his soul in his eyes, sought their faces, but met no reassuring glance; they were all looking away from him. "gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?" "we have," responded the foreman. the clerk of the court stepped forward and took the fateful slip from the foreman's hand. the clerk read the verdict: "we, the jury impaneled and sworn to try the issues in this cause, do find the prisoner guilty as charged in the indictment." there was a moment of breathless silence. then a wild burst of grief from the prisoner's wife, to which his two children, not understanding it all, but vaguely conscious of some calamity, added their voices in two long, discordant wails, which would have been ludicrous had they not been heartrending. the face of the young man in the back of the room expressed relief and badly concealed satisfaction. the prisoner fell back upon the seat from which he had half risen in his anxiety, and his dark face assumed an ashen hue. what he thought could only be surmised. perhaps, knowing his innocence, he had not believed conviction possible; perhaps, conscious of guilt, he dreaded the punishment, the extent of which was optional with the judge, within very wide limits. only one other person present knew whether or not he was guilty, and that other had slunk furtively from the court room. some of the spectators wondered why there should be so much ado about convicting a negro of stealing a buggy-whip. they had forgotten their own interest of the moment before. they did not realize out of what trifles grow the tragedies of life. it was four o'clock in the afternoon, the hour for adjournment, when the verdict was returned. the judge nodded to the bailiff. "oyez, oyez! this court is now adjourned until ten o'clock to-morrow morning," cried the bailiff in a singsong voice. the judge left the bench, the jury filed out of the box, and a buzz of conversation filled the court room. "brace up, ben, brace up, my boy," said the defendant's lawyer, half apologetically. "i did what i could for you, but you can never tell what a jury will do. you won't be sentenced till to-morrow morning. in the meantime i 'll speak to the judge and try to get him to be easy with you. he may let you off with a light fine." the negro pulled himself together, and by an effort listened. "thanky, majah," was all he said. he seemed to be thinking of something far away. he barely spoke to his wife when she frantically threw herself on him, and clung to his neck, as he passed through the side room on his way to jail. he kissed his children mechanically, and did not reply to the soothing remarks made by the jailer. iii there was a good deal of excitement in town the next morning. two white men stood by the post office talking. "did yer hear the news?" "no, what wuz it?" "ben davis tried ter break jail las' night." "you don't say so! what a fool! he ain't be'n sentenced yit." "well, now," said the other, "i 've knowed ben a long time, an' he wuz a right good nigger. i kinder found it hard ter b'lieve he did steal that whip. but what 's a man's feelin's ag'in' the proof?" they spoke on awhile, using the past tense as if they were speaking of a dead man. "ef i know jedge hart, ben 'll wish he had slep' las' night, 'stidder tryin' ter break out'n jail." at ten o'clock the prisoner was brought into court. he walked with shambling gait, bent at the shoulders, hopelessly, with downcast eyes, and took his seat with several other prisoners who had been brought in for sentence. his wife, accompanied by the children, waited behind him, and a number of his friends were gathered in the court room. the first prisoner sentenced was a young white man, convicted several days before of manslaughter. the deed was done in the heat of passion, under circumstances of great provocation, during a quarrel about a woman. the prisoner was admonished of the sanctity of human life, and sentenced to one year in the penitentiary. the next case was that of a young clerk, eighteen or nineteen years of age, who had committed a forgery in order to procure the means to buy lottery tickets. he was well connected, and the case would not have been prosecuted if the judge had not refused to allow it to be nolled, and, once brought to trial, a conviction could not have been avoided. "you are a young man," said the judge gravely, yet not unkindly, "and your life is yet before you. i regret that you should have been led into evil courses by the lust for speculation, so dangerous in its tendencies, so fruitful of crime and misery. i am led to believe that you are sincerely penitent, and that, after such punishment as the law cannot remit without bringing itself into contempt, you will see the error of your ways and follow the strict path of rectitude. your fault has entailed distress not only upon yourself, but upon your relatives, people of good name and good family, who suffer as keenly from your disgrace as you yourself. partly out of consideration for their feelings, and partly because i feel that, under the circumstances, the law will be satisfied by the penalty i shall inflict, i sentence you to imprisonment in the county jail for six months, and a fine of one hundred dollars and the costs of this action." "the jedge talks well, don't he?" whispered one spectator to another. "yes, and kinder likes ter hear hisse'f talk," answered the other. "ben davis, stand up," ordered the judge. he might have said "ben davis, wake up," for the jailer had to touch the prisoner on the shoulder to rouse him from his stupor. he stood up, and something of the hunted look came again into his eyes, which shifted under the stern glance of the judge. "ben davis, you have been convicted of larceny, after a fair trial before twelve good men of this county. under the testimony, there can be no doubt of your guilt. the case is an aggravated one. you are not an ignorant, shiftless fellow, but a man of more than ordinary intelligence among your people, and one who ought to know better. you have not even the poor excuse of having stolen to satisfy hunger or a physical appetite. your conduct is wholly without excuse, and i can only regard your crime as the result of a tendency to offenses of this nature, a tendency which is only too common among your people; a tendency which is a menace to civilization, a menace to society itself, for society rests upon the sacred right of property. your opinions, too, have been given a wrong turn; you have been heard to utter sentiments which, if disseminated among an ignorant people, would breed discontent, and give rise to strained relations between them and their best friends, their old masters, who understand their real nature and their real needs, and to whose justice and enlightened guidance they can safely trust. have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon you?" "nothin', suh, cep'n dat i did n' take de whip." "the law, largely, i think, in view of the peculiar circumstances of your unfortunate race, has vested a large discretion in courts as to the extent of the punishment for offenses of this kind. taking your case as a whole, i am convinced that it is one which, for the sake of the example, deserves a severe punishment. nevertheless, i do not feel disposed to give you the full extent of the law, which would be twenty years in the penitentiary,[ ] but, considering the fact that you have a family, and have heretofore borne a good reputation in the community, i will impose upon you the light sentence of imprisonment for five years in the penitentiary at hard labor. and i hope that this will be a warning to you and others who may be similarly disposed, and that after your sentence has expired you may lead the life of a law-abiding citizen." [footnote : there are no degrees of larceny in north carolina, and the penalty for any offense lies in the discretion of the judge, to the limit of twenty years.] "o ben! o my husband! o god!" moaned the poor wife, and tried to press forward to her husband's side. "keep back, nancy, keep back," said the jailer. "you can see him in jail." several people were looking at ben's face. there was one flash of despair, and then nothing but a stony blank, behind which he masked his real feelings, whatever they were. human character is a compound of tendencies inherited and habits acquired. in the anxiety, the fear of disgrace, spoke the nineteenth century civilization with which ben davis had been more or less closely in touch during twenty years of slavery and fifteen years of freedom. in the stolidity with which he received this sentence for a crime which he had not committed, spoke who knows what trait of inherited savagery? for stoicism is a savage virtue. iv one morning in june, five years later, a black man limped slowly along the old lumberton plank road; a tall man, whose bowed shoulders made him seem shorter than he was, and a face from which it was difficult to guess his years, for in it the wrinkles and flabbiness of age were found side by side with firm white teeth, and eyes not sunken,--eyes bloodshot, and burning with something, either fever or passion. though he limped painfully with one foot, the other hit the ground impatiently, like the good horse in a poorly matched team. as he walked along, he was talking to himself:---- "i wonder what dey 'll do w'en i git back? i wonder how nancy 's s'ported the fambly all dese years? tuck in washin', i s'ppose,--she was a monst'us good washer an' ironer. i wonder ef de chillun 'll be too proud ter reco'nize deir daddy come back f'um de penetenchy? i 'spec' billy must be a big boy by dis time. he won' b'lieve his daddy ever stole anything. i 'm gwine ter slip roun' an' s'prise 'em." five minutes later a face peered cautiously into the window of what had once been ben davis's cabin,--at first an eager face, its coarseness lit up with the fire of hope; a moment later a puzzled face; then an anxious, fearful face as the man stepped away from the window and rapped at the door. "is mis' davis home?" he asked of the woman who opened the door. "mis' davis don' live here. you er mistook in de house." "whose house is dis?" "it b'longs ter my husban', mr. smith,--primus smith." "'scuse me, but i knowed de house some years ago w'en i wuz here oncet on a visit, an' it b'longed ter a man name' ben davis." "ben davis--ben davis?--oh yes, i 'member now. dat wuz de gen'man w'at wuz sent ter de penitenchy fer sump'n er nuther,--sheep-stealin', i b'lieve. primus," she called, "w'at wuz ben davis, w'at useter own dis yer house, sent ter de penitenchy fer?" "hoss-stealin'," came back the reply in sleepy accents, from the man seated by the fireplace. the traveler went on to the next house. a neat-looking yellow woman came to the door when he rattled the gate, and stood looking suspiciously at him. "w'at you want?" she asked. "please, ma'am, will you tell me whether a man name' ben davis useter live in dis neighborhood?" "useter live in de nex' house; wuz sent ter de penitenchy fer killin' a man." "kin yer tell me w'at went wid mis' davis?" "umph! i 's a 'spectable 'oman, i is, en don' mix wid dem kind er people. she wuz 'n' no better 'n her husban'. she tuk up wid a man dat useter wuk fer ben, an' dey 're livin' down by de ole wagon-ya'd, where no 'spectable 'oman ever puts her foot." "an' de chillen?" "de gal 's dead. wuz 'n' no better 'n she oughter be'n. she fell in de crick an' got drown'; some folks say she wuz 'n' sober w'en it happen'. de boy tuck atter his pappy. he wuz 'rested las' week fer shootin' a w'ite man, an' wuz lynch' de same night. dey wa'n't none of 'em no 'count after deir pappy went ter de penitenchy." "what went wid de proputty?" "hit wuz sol' fer de mortgage, er de taxes, er de lawyer, er sump'n,--i don' know w'at. a w'ite man got it." the man with the bundle went on until he came to a creek that crossed the road. he descended the sloping bank, and, sitting on a stone in the shade of a water-oak, took off his coarse brogans, unwound the rags that served him in lieu of stockings, and laved in the cool water the feet that were chafed with many a weary mile of travel. after five years of unrequited toil, and unspeakable hardship in convict camps,--five years of slaving by the side of human brutes, and of nightly herding with them in vermin-haunted huts,--ben davis had become like them. for a while he had received occasional letters from home, but in the shifting life of the convict camp they had long since ceased to reach him, if indeed they had been written. for a year or two, the consciousness of his innocence had helped to make him resist the debasing influences that surrounded him. the hope of shortening his sentence by good behavior, too, had worked a similar end. but the transfer from one contractor to another, each interested in keeping as long as possible a good worker, had speedily dissipated any such hope. when hope took flight, its place was not long vacant. despair followed, and black hatred of all mankind, hatred especially of the man to whom he attributed all his misfortunes. one who is suffering unjustly is not apt to indulge in fine abstractions, nor to balance probabilities. by long brooding over his wrongs, his mind became, if not unsettled, at least warped, and he imagined that colonel thornton had deliberately set a trap into which he had fallen. the colonel, he convinced himself, had disapproved of his prosperity, and had schemed to destroy it. he reasoned himself into the belief that he represented in his person the accumulated wrongs of a whole race, and colonel thornton the race who had oppressed them. a burning desire for revenge sprang up in him, and he nursed it until his sentence expired and he was set at liberty. what he had learned since reaching home had changed his desire into a deadly purpose. when he had again bandaged his feet and slipped them into his shoes, he looked around him, and selected a stout sapling from among the undergrowth that covered the bank of the stream. taking from his pocket a huge clasp-knife, he cut off the length of an ordinary walking stick and trimmed it. the result was an ugly-looking bludgeon, a dangerous weapon when in the grasp of a strong man. with the stick in his hand, he went on down the road until he approached a large white house standing some distance back from the street. the grounds were filled with a profusion of shrubbery. the negro entered the gate and secreted himself in the bushes, at a point where he could hear any one that might approach. it was near midday, and he had not eaten. he had walked all night, and had not slept. the hope of meeting his loved ones had been meat and drink and rest for him. but as he sat waiting, outraged nature asserted itself, and he fell asleep, with his head on the rising root of a tree, and his face upturned. and as he slept, he dreamed of his childhood; of an old black mammy taking care of him in the daytime, and of a younger face, with soft eyes, which bent over him sometimes at night, and a pair of arms which clasped him closely. he dreamed of his past,--of his young wife, of his bright children. somehow his dreams all ran to pleasant themes for a while. then they changed again. he dreamed that he was in the convict camp, and, by an easy transition, that he was in hell, consumed with hunger, burning with thirst. suddenly the grinning devil who stood over him with a barbed whip faded away, and a little white angel came and handed him a drink of water. as he raised it to his lips the glass slipped, and he struggled back to consciousness. "poo' man! poo' man sick, an' sleepy. dolly b'ing powers to cover poo' man up. poo' man mus' be hungry. wen dolly get him covered up, she go b'ing poo' man some cake." a sweet little child, as beautiful as a cherub escaped from paradise, was standing over him. at first he scarcely comprehended the words the baby babbled out. but as they became clear to him, a novel feeling crept slowly over his heart. it had been so long since he had heard anything but curses and stern words of command, or the ribald songs of obscene merriment, that the clear tones of this voice from heaven cooled his calloused heart as the water of the brook had soothed his blistered feet. it was so strange, so unwonted a thing, that he lay there with half-closed eyes while the child brought leaves and flowers and laid them on his face and on his breast, and arranged them with little caressing taps. she moved away, and plucked a flower. and then she spied another farther on, and then another, and, as she gathered them, kept increasing the distance between herself and the man lying there, until she was several rods away. ben davis watched her through eyes over which had come an unfamiliar softness. under the lingering spell of his dream, her golden hair, which fell in rippling curls, seemed like a halo of purity and innocence and peace, irradiating the atmosphere around her. it is true the thought occurred to ben, vaguely, that through harm to her he might inflict the greatest punishment upon her father; but the idea came like a dark shape that faded away and vanished into nothingness as soon as it came within the nimbus that surrounded the child's person. the child was moving on to pluck still another flower, when there came a sound of hoof-beats, and ben was aware that a horseman, visible through the shrubbery, was coming along the curved path that led from the gate to the house. it must be the man he was waiting for, and now was the time to wreak his vengeance. he sprang to his feet, grasped his club, and stood for a moment irresolute. but either the instinct of the convict, beaten, driven, and debased, or the influence of the child, which was still strong upon him, impelled him, after the first momentary pause, to flee as though seeking safety. his flight led him toward the little girl, whom he must pass in order to make his escape, and as colonel thornton turned the corner of the path he saw a desperate-looking negro, clad in filthy rags, and carrying in his hand a murderous bludgeon, running toward the child, who, startled by the sound of footsteps, had turned and was looking toward the approaching man with wondering eyes. a sickening fear came over the father's heart, and drawing the ever-ready revolver, which according to the southern custom he carried always upon his person, he fired with unerring aim. ben davis ran a few yards farther, faltered, threw out his hands, and fell dead at the child's feet. * * * * * some time, we are told, when the cycle of years has rolled around, there is to be another golden age, when all men will dwell together in love and harmony, and when peace and righteousness shall prevail for a thousand years. god speed the day, and let not the shining thread of hope become so enmeshed in the web of circumstance that we lose sight of it; but give us here and there, and now and then, some little foretaste of this golden age, that we may the more patiently and hopefully await its coming! appendix three essays on the color line: what is a white man? ( ) the future american ( ) the disfranchisement of the negro ( ) what is a white man? the fiat having gone forth from the wise men of the south that the "all-pervading, all-conquering anglo-saxon race" must continue forever to exercise exclusive control and direction of the government of this so-called republic, it becomes important to every citizen who values his birthright to know who are included in this grandiloquent term. it is of course perfectly obvious that the writer or speaker who used this expression--perhaps mr. grady of georgia--did not say what he meant. it is not probable that he meant to exclude from full citizenship the celts and teutons and gauls and slavs who make up so large a proportion of our population; he hardly meant to exclude the jews, for even the most ardent fire-eater would hardly venture to advocate the disfranchisement of the thrifty race whose mortgages cover so large a portion of southern soil. what the eloquent gentleman really meant by this high-sounding phrase was simply the white race; and the substance of the argument of that school of southern writers to which he belongs, is simply that for the good of the country the negro should have no voice in directing the government or public policy of the southern states or of the nation. but it is evident that where the intermingling of the races has made such progress as it has in this country, the line which separates the races must in many instances have been practically obliterated. and there has arisen in the united states a very large class of the population who are certainly not negroes in an ethnological sense, and whose children will be no nearer negroes than themselves. in view, therefore, of the very positive ground taken by the white leaders of the south, where most of these people reside, it becomes in the highest degree important to them to know what race they belong to. it ought to be also a matter of serious concern to the southern white people; for if their zeal for good government is so great that they contemplate the practical overthrow of the constitution and laws of the united states to secure it, they ought at least to be sure that no man entitled to it by their own argument, is robbed of a right so precious as that of free citizenship; the "all-pervading, all conquering anglo-saxon" ought to set as high a value on american citizenship as the all-conquering roman placed upon the franchise of his state two thousand years ago. this discussion would of course be of little interest to the genuine negro, who is entirely outside of the charmed circle, and must content himself with the acquisition of wealth, the pursuit of learning and such other privileges as his "best friends" may find it consistent with the welfare of the nation to allow him; but to every other good citizen the inquiry ought to be a momentous one. what is a white man? in spite of the virulence and universality of race prejudice in the united states, the human intellect long ago revolted at the manifest absurdity of classifying men fifteen-sixteenths white as black men; and hence there grew up a number of laws in different states of the union defining the limit which separated the white and colored races, which was, when these laws took their rise and is now to a large extent, the line which separated freedom and opportunity from slavery or hopeless degradation. some of these laws are of legislative origin; others are judge-made laws, brought out by the exigencies of special cases which came before the courts for determination. some day they will, perhaps, become mere curiosities of jurisprudence; the "black laws" will be bracketed with the "blue laws," and will be at best but landmarks by which to measure the progress of the nation. but to-day these laws are in active operation, and they are, therefore, worthy of attention; for every good citizen ought to know the law, and, if possible, to respect it; and if not worthy of respect, it should be changed by the authority which enacted it. whether any of the laws referred to here have been in any manner changed by very recent legislation the writer cannot say, but they are certainly embodied in the latest editions of the revised statutes of the states referred to. the colored people were divided, in most of the southern states, into two classes, designated by law as negroes and mulattoes respectively. the term negro was used in its ethnological sense, and needed no definition; but the term "mulatto" was held by legislative enactment to embrace all persons of color not negroes. the words "quadroon" and "mestizo" are employed in some of the law books, tho not defined; but the term "octoroon," as indicating a person having one-eighth of negro blood, is not used at all, so far as the writer has been able to observe. the states vary slightly in regard to what constitutes a mulatto or person of color, and as to what proportion of white blood should be sufficient to remove the disability of color. as a general rule, less than one-fourth of negro blood left the individual white--in theory; race questions being, however, regulated very differently in practice. in missouri, by the code of , still in operation, so far as not inconsistent with the federal constitution and laws, "any person other than a negro, any one of whose grandmothers or grandfathers is or shall have been a negro, tho all of his or her progenitors except those descended from the negro may have been white persons, shall be deemed a mulatto." thus the color-line is drawn at one-fourth of negro blood, and persons with only one-eighth are white. by the mississippi code of , the color-line is drawn at one-fourth of negro blood, all persons having less being theoretically white. under the _code noir_ of louisiana, the descendant of a white and a quadroon is white, thus drawing the line at one-eighth of negro blood. the code of abolished all distinctions of color; as to whether they have been re-enacted since the republican party went out of power in that state the writer is not informed. jumping to the extreme north, persons are white within the meaning of the constitution of michigan who have less than one-fourth of negro blood. in ohio the rule, as established by numerous decisions of the supreme court, was that a preponderance of white blood constituted a person a white man in the eye of the law, and entitled him to the exercise of all the civil rights of a white man. by a retrogressive step the color-line was extended in in the case of marriage, which by statute was forbidden between a person of pure white blood and one having a visible admixture of african blood. but by act of legislature, passed in the spring of , all laws establishing or permitting distinctions of color were repealed. in many parts of the state these laws were always ignored, and they would doubtless have been repealed long ago but for the sentiment of the southern counties, separated only by the width of the ohio river from a former slave-holding state. there was a bill introduced in the legislature during the last session to re-enact the "black laws," but it was hopelessly defeated; the member who introduced it evidently mistook his latitude; he ought to be a member of the georgia legislature. but the state which, for several reasons, one might expect to have the strictest laws in regard to the relations of the races, has really the loosest. two extracts from decisions of the supreme court of south carolina will make clear the law of that state in regard to the color line. the definition of the term mulatto, as understood in this state, seems to be vague, signifying generally a person of mixed white or european and negro parentage, in whatever proportions the blood of the two races may be mingled in the individual. but it is not invariably applicable to every admixture of african blood with the european, nor is one having all the features of a white to be ranked with the degraded class designated by the laws of this state as persons of color, because of some remote taint of the negro race. the line of distinction, however, is not ascertained by any rule of law.... juries would probably be justified in holding a person to be white in whom the admixture of african blood did not exceed the proportion of one-eighth. but it is in all cases a question for the jury, to be determined by them upon the evidence of features and complexion afforded by inspection, the evidence of reputation as to parentage, and the evidence of the rank and station in society occupied by the party. the only rule which can be laid down by the courts is that where there is a distinct and visible admixture of negro blood, the individual is to be denominated a mulatto or person of color. in a later case the court held: "the question whether persons are colored or white, where color or feature are doubtful, is for the jury to decide by reputation, by reception into society, and by their exercise of the privileges of the white man, as well as by admixture of blood." it is an interesting question why such should have been, and should still be, for that matter, the law of south carolina, and why there should exist in that state a condition of public opinion which would accept such a law. perhaps it may be attributed to the fact that the colored population of south carolina always outnumbered the white population, and the eagerness of the latter to recruit their ranks was sufficient to overcome in some measure their prejudice against the negro blood. it is certainly true that the color-line is, in practice as in law, more loosely drawn in south carolina than in any other southern state, and that no inconsiderable element of the population of that state consists of these legal white persons, who were either born in the state, or, attracted thither by this feature of the laws, have come in from surrounding states, and, forsaking home and kindred, have taken their social position as white people. a reasonable degree of reticence in regard to one's antecedents is, however, usual in such cases. before the war the color-line, as fixed by law, regulated in theory the civil and political status of persons of color. what that status was, was expressed in the dred scott decision. but since the war, or rather since the enfranchisement of the colored people, these laws have been mainly confined--in theory, be it always remembered--to the regulation of the intercourse of the races in schools and in the marriage relation. the extension of the color-line to places of public entertainment and resort, to inns and public highways, is in most states entirely a matter of custom. a colored man can sue in the courts of any southern state for the violation of his common-law rights, and recover damages of say fifty cents without costs. a colored minister who sued a baltimore steamboat company a few weeks ago for refusing him first-class accommodation, he having paid first-class fare, did not even meet with that measure of success; the learned judge, a federal judge by the way, held that the plaintiff's rights had been invaded, and that he had suffered humiliation at the hands of the defendant company, but that "the humiliation was not sufficient to entitle him to damages." and the learned judge dismissed the action without costs to either party. having thus ascertained what constitutes a white man, the good citizen may be curious to know what steps have been taken to preserve the purity of the white race. nature, by some unaccountable oversight having to some extent neglected a matter so important to the future prosperity and progress of mankind. the marriage laws referred to here are in active operation, and cases under them are by no means infrequent. indeed, instead of being behind the age, the marriage laws in the southern states are in advance of public opinion; for very rarely will a southern community stop to figure on the pedigree of the contracting parties to a marriage where one is white and the other is known to have any strain of negro blood. in virginia, under the title "offenses against morality," the law provides that "any white person who shall intermarry with a negro shall be confined in jail not more than one year and fined not exceeding one hundred dollars." in a marginal note on the statute-book, attention is called to the fact that "a similar penalty is not imposed on the negro"--a stretch of magnanimity to which the laws of other states are strangers. a person who performs the ceremony of marriage in such a case is fined two hundred dollars, one-half of which goes to the informer. in maryland, a minister who performs the ceremony of marriage between a negro and a white person is liable to a fine of one hundred dollars. in mississippi, code of , it is provided that "the marriage of a white person to a negro or mulatto or person who shall have one-fourth or more of negro blood, shall be unlawful"; and as this prohibition does not seem sufficiently emphatic, it is further declared to be "incestuous and void," and is punished by the same penalty prescribed for marriage within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity. but it is georgia, the _alma genetrix_ of the chain-gang, which merits the questionable distinction of having the harshest set of color laws. by the law of georgia the term "person of color" is defined to mean "all such as have an admixture of negro blood, and the term 'negro,' includes mulattoes." this definition is perhaps restricted somewhat by another provision, by which "all negroes, mestizoes, and their descendants, having one-eighth of negro or mulatto blood in their veins, shall be known in this state as persons of color." a colored minister is permitted to perform the ceremony of marriage between colored persons only, tho white ministers are not forbidden to join persons of color in wedlock. it is further provided that "the marriage relation between white persons and persons of african descent is forever prohibited, and such marriages shall be null and void." this is a very sweeping provision; it will be noticed that the term "persons of color," previously defined, is not employed, the expression "persons of african descent" being used instead. a court which was so inclined would find no difficulty in extending this provision of the law to the remotest strain of african blood. the marriage relation is forever prohibited. forever is a long time. there is a colored woman in georgia said to be worth $ , --an immense fortune in the poverty stricken south. with a few hundred such women in that state, possessing a fair degree of good looks, the color-line would shrivel up like a scroll in the heat of competition for their hands in marriage. the penalty for the violation of the law against intermarriage is the same sought to be imposed by the defunct glenn bill for violation of its provisions; i.e., a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not to exceed six months, or twelve months in the chain-gang. whatever the wisdom or justice of these laws, there is one objection to them which is not given sufficient prominence in the consideration of the subject, even where it is discussed at all; they make mixed blood a _prima-facie_ proof of illegitimacy. it is a fact that at present, in the united states, a colored man or woman whose complexion is white or nearly white is presumed, in the absence of any knowledge of his or her antecedents, to be the offspring of a union not sanctified by law. and by a curious but not uncommon process, such persons are not held in the same low estimation as white people in the same position. the sins of their fathers are not visited upon the children, in that regard at least; and their mothers' lapses from virtue are regarded either as misfortunes or as faults excusable under the circumstances. but in spite of all this, illegitimacy is not a desirable distinction, and is likely to become less so as these people of mixed blood advance in wealth and social standing. this presumption of illegitimacy was once, perhaps, true of the majority of such persons; but the times have changed. more than half of the colored people of the united states are of mixed blood; they marry and are given in marriage, and they beget children of complexions similar to their own. whether or not, therefore, laws which stamp these children as illegitimate, and which by indirection establish a lower standard of morality for a large part of the population than the remaining part is judged by, are wise laws; and whether or not the purity of the white race could not be as well preserved by the exercise of virtue, and the operation of those natural laws which are so often quoted by southern writers as the justification of all sorts of southern "policies"--are questions which the good citizen may at least turn over in his mind occasionally, pending the settlement of other complications which have grown out of the presence of the negro on this continent. _independent_, may , the future american what the race is likely to become in the process of time the future american race is a popular theme for essayists, and has been much discussed. most expressions upon the subject, however, have been characterized by a conscious or unconscious evasion of some of the main elements of the problem involved in the formation of a future american race, or, to put it perhaps more correctly, a future ethnic type that shall inhabit the northern part of the western continent. some of these obvious omissions will be touched upon in these articles; and if the writer has any preconceived opinions that would affect his judgment, they are at least not the hackneyed prejudices of the past--if they lead to false conclusions, they at least furnish a new point of view, from which, taken with other widely differing views, the judicious reader may establish a parallax that will enable him to approximate the truth. the popular theory is that the future american race will consist of a harmonious fusion of the various european elements which now make up our heterogeneous population. the result is to be something infinitely superior to the best of the component elements. this perfection of type--no good american could for a moment doubt that it will be as perfect as everything else american--is to be brought about by a combination of all the best characteristics of the different european races, and the elimination, by some strange alchemy, of all their undesirable traits--for even a good american will admit that european races, now and then, have some undesirable traits when they first come over. it is a beautiful, a hopeful, and to the eye of faith, a thrilling prospect. the defect of the argument, however, lies in the incompleteness of the premises, and its obliviousness of certain facts of human nature and human history. before putting forward any theory upon the subject, it may be well enough to remark that recent scientific research has swept away many hoary anthropological fallacies. it has been demonstrated that the shape or size of the head has little or nothing to do with the civilization or average intelligence of a race; that language, so recently lauded as an infallible test of racial origin is of absolutely no value in this connection, its distribution being dependent upon other conditions than race. even color, upon which the social structure of the united states is so largely based, has been proved no test of race. the conception of a pure aryan, indo-european race has been abandoned in scientific circles, and the secret of the progress of europe has been found in racial heterogeneity, rather than in racial purity. the theory that the jews are a pure race has been exploded, and their peculiar type explained upon a different and much more satisfactory hypothesis. to illustrate the change of opinion and the growth of liberality in scientific circles, imagine the reception which would have been accorded to this proposition, if laid down by an american writer fifty or sixty years ago: "the european races, as a whole, show signs of a secondary or derived origin; certain characteristics, especially the texture of the hair, lead us to class them as intermediate between the extreme primary types of the asiatic and negro races respectively." this is put forward by the author, not as a mere hypothesis, but as a proposition fairly susceptible of proof, and is supported by an elaborate argument based upon microscopical comparisons, to which numerous authorities are cited. if this fact be borne in mind it will simplify in some degree our conception of a future american ethnic type. by modern research the unity of the human race has been proved (if it needed any proof to the careful or fair-minded observer), and the differentiation of races by selection and environment has been so stated as to prove itself. greater emphasis has been placed upon environment as a factor in ethnic development, and what has been called "the vulgar theory of race," as accounting for progress and culture, has been relegated to the limbo of exploded dogmas. one of the most perspicuous and forceful presentations of these modern conclusions of anthropology is found in the volume above quoted, a book which owes its origin to a boston scholar. proceeding then upon the firm basis laid down by science and the historic parallel, it ought to be quite clear that the future american race--the future american ethnic type--will be formed of a mingling, in a yet to be ascertained proportion, of the various racial varieties which make up the present population of the united states; or, to extend the area a little farther, of the various peoples of the northern hemisphere of the western continent; for, if certain recent tendencies are an index of the future it is not safe to fix the boundaries of the future united states anywhere short of the arctic ocean on the north and the isthmus of panama on the south. but, even with the continuance of the present political divisions, conditions of trade and ease of travel are likely to gradually assimilate to one type all the countries of the hemisphere. assuming that the country is so well settled that no great disturbance of ratios is likely to result from immigration, or any serious conflict of races, we may safely build our theory of a future american race upon the present population of the country. i use the word "race" here in its popular sense--that of a people who look substantially alike, and are moulded by the same culture and dominated by the same ideals. by the eleventh census, the ratios of which will probably not be changed materially by the census now under way, the total population of the united states was about , , , of which about seven million were black and colored, and something over , were of indian blood. it is then in the three broad types--white, black and indian--that the future american race will find the material for its formation. any dream of a pure white race, of the anglo-saxon type, for the united states, may as well be abandoned as impossible, even if desirable. that such future race will be predominantly white may well be granted--unless climate in the course of time should modify existing types; that it will call itself white is reasonably sure; that it will conform closely to the white type is likely; but that it will have absorbed and assimilated the blood of the other two races mentioned is as certain as the operation of any law well can be that deals with so uncertain a quantity as the human race. there are no natural obstacles to such an amalgamation. the unity of the race is not only conceded but demonstrated by actual crossing. any theory of sterility due to race crossing may as well be abandoned; it is founded mainly on prejudice and cannot be proved by the facts. if it come from northern or european sources, it is likely to be weakened by lack of knowledge; if from southern sources, it is sure to be colored by prejudices. my own observation is that in a majority of cases people of mixed blood are very prolific and very long-lived. the admixture of races in the united states has never taken place under conditions likely to produce the best results but there have nevertheless been enough conspicuous instances to the contrary in this country, to say nothing of a long and honorable list in other lands, to disprove the theory that people of mixed blood, other things being equal, are less virile, prolific or able than those of purer strains. but whether this be true or not is apart from this argument. admitting that races may mix, and that they are thrown together under conditions which permit their admixture, the controlling motive will be not abstract considerations with regard to a remote posterity, but present interest and inclination. the indian element in the united states proper is so small proportionally--about one in three hundred--and the conditions for its amalgamation so favorable, that it would of itself require scarcely any consideration in this argument. there is no prejudice against the indian blood, in solution. a half or quarter-breed, removed from the tribal environment, is freely received among white people. after the second or third remove he may even boast of his indian descent; it gives him a sort of distinction, and involves no social disability. the distribution of the indian race, however, tends to make the question largely a local one, and the survival of tribal relation may postpone the results for some little time. it will be, however, the fault of the united states indian himself if he be not speedily amalgamated with the white population. the indian element, however, looms up larger when we include mexico and central america in our fields of discussion. by the census of mexico just completed, over eighty per cent of the population is composed of mixed and indian races. the remainder is presumably of pure spanish, or european blood, with a dash of negro along the coast. the population is something over twelve millions, thus adding nine millions of indians and mestizos to be taken into account. add several millions of similar descent in central america, a million in porto rico, who are said to have an aboriginal strain, and it may safely be figured that the indian element will be quite considerable in the future american race. its amalgamation will involve no great difficulty, however; it has been going on peacefully in the countries south of us for several centuries, and is likely to continue along similar lines. the peculiar disposition of the american to overlook mixed blood in a foreigner will simplify the gradual absorption of these southern races. the real problem, then, the only hard problem in connection with the future american race, lies in the negro element of our population. as i have said before, i believe it is destined to play its part in the formation of this new type. the process by which this will take place will be no sudden and wholesale amalgamation--a thing certainly not to be expected, and hardly to be desired. if it were held desirable, and one could imagine a government sufficiently autocratic to enforce its behests, it would be no great task to mix the races mechanically, leaving to time merely the fixing of the resultant type. let us for curiosity outline the process. to start with, the negroes are already considerably mixed--many of them in large proportion, and most of them in some degree--and the white people, as i shall endeavor to show later on, are many of them slightly mixed with the negro. but we will assume, for the sake of the argument, that the two races are absolutely pure. we will assume, too, that the laws of the whole country were as favorable to this amalgamation as the laws of most southern states are at present against it; i.e., that it were made a misdemeanor for two white or two colored persons to marry, so long as it was possible to obtain a mate of the other race--this would be even more favorable than the southern rule, which makes no such exception. taking the population as one-eighth negro, this eighth, married to an equal number of whites, would give in the next generation a population of which one-fourth would be mulattoes. mating these in turn with white persons, the next generation would be composed one-half of quadroons, or persons one-fourth negro. in the third generation, applying the same rule, the entire population would be composed of octoroons, or persons only one-eighth negro, who would probably call themselves white, if by this time there remained any particular advantage in being so considered. thus in three generations the pure whites would be entirely eliminated, and there would be no perceptible trace of the blacks left. the mechanical mixture would be complete; as it would probably be put, the white race would have absorbed the black. there would be no inferior race to domineer over; there would be no superior race to oppress those who differed from them in racial externals. the inevitable social struggle, which in one form or another, seems to be one of the conditions of progress, would proceed along other lines than those of race. if now and then, for a few generations, an occasional trace of the black ancestor should crop out, no one would care, for all would be tarred with the same stick. this is already the case in south america, parts of mexico and to a large extent in the west indies. from a negroid nation, which ours is already, we would have become a composite and homogeneous people, and the elements of racial discord which have troubled our civil life so gravely and still threaten our free institutions, would have been entirely eliminated. but this will never happen. the same result will be brought about slowly and obscurely, and, if the processes of nature are not too violently interrupted by the hand of man, in such a manner as to produce the best results with the least disturbance of natural laws. in another article i shall endeavor to show that this process has been taking place with greater rapidity than is generally supposed, and that the results have been such as to encourage the belief that the formation of a uniform type out of our present racial elements will take place within a measurably near period. _boston evening transcript_, august , a stream of dark blood in the veins of the southern whites i have said that the formation of the new american race type will take place slowly and obscurely for some time to come, after the manner of all healthy changes in nature. i may go further and say that this process has already been going on ever since the various races in the western world have been brought into juxtaposition. slavery was a rich soil for the production of a mixed race, and one need only read the literature and laws of the past two generations to see how steadily, albeit slowly and insidiously, the stream of dark blood has insinuated itself into the veins of the dominant, or, as a southern critic recently described it in a paragraph that came under my eye, the "domineering" race. the creole stories of mr. cable and other writers were not mere figments of the imagination; the beautiful octoroon was a corporeal fact; it is more than likely that she had brothers of the same complexion, though curiously enough the male octoroon has cut no figure in fiction, except in the case of the melancholy honoré grandissime, f.m.c; and that she and her brothers often crossed the invisible but rigid color line was an historical fact that only an ostrich-like prejudice could deny. grace king's "story of new orleans" makes the significant statement that the quadroon women of that city preferred white fathers for their children, in order that these latter might become white and thereby be qualified to enter the world of opportunity. more than one of the best families of louisiana has a dark ancestral strain. a conspicuous american family of southwestern extraction, which recently contributed a party to a brilliant international marriage, is known, by the well-informed, to be just exactly five generations removed from a negro ancestor. one member of this family, a distinguished society leader, has been known, upon occasion, when some question of the rights or privileges of the colored race came up, to show a very noble sympathy for her distant kinsmen. if american prejudice permitted her and others to speak freely of her pedigree, what a tower of strength her name and influence would be to a despised and struggling race! a distinguished american man of letters, now resident in europe, who spent many years in north carolina, has said to the writer that he had noted, in the course of a long life, at least a thousand instances of white persons known or suspected to possess a strain of negro blood. an amusing instance of this sort occurred a year or two ago. it was announced through the newspapers, whose omniscience of course no one would question, that a certain great merchant of chicago was a mulatto. this gentleman had a large dry goods trade in the south, notably in texas. shortly after the publication of the item reflecting on the immaculateness of the merchant's descent, there appeared in the texas newspapers, among the advertising matter, a statement from the chicago merchant characterizing the rumor as a malicious falsehood, concocted by his rivals in business, and incidentally calling attention to the excellent bargains offered to retailers and jobbers at his great emporium. a counter-illustration is found in the case of a certain bishop, recently elected, of the african methodist episcopal church, who is accused of being a white man. a colored editor who possesses the saving grace of humor, along with other talents of a high order, gravely observed, in discussing this rumor, that "the poor man could not help it, even if he were white, and that a fact for which he was in no wise responsible should not be allowed to stand in the way of his advancement." during a residence in north carolina in my youth and early manhood i noted many curious phases of the race problem. i have in mind a family of three sisters so aggressively white that the old popular southern legend that they were the unacknowledged children of white parents was current concerning them. there was absolutely not the slightest earmark of the negro about them. it may be stated here, as another race fallacy, that the "telltale dark mark at the root of the nails," supposed to be an infallible test of negro blood, is a delusion and a snare, and of no value whatever as a test of race. it belongs with the grewsome superstition that a woman apparently white may give birth to a coal-black child by a white father. another instance that came under my eye was that of a very beautiful girl with soft, wavy brown hair, who is now living in a far western state as the wife of a white husband. a typical case was that of a family in which the tradition of negro origin had persisted long after all trace of it had disappeared. the family took its origin from a white ancestress, and had consequently been free for several generations. the father of the first colored child, counting the family in the female line--the only way it could be counted--was a mulatto. a second infusion of white blood, this time on the paternal side, resulted in offspring not distinguishable from pure white. one child of this generation emigrated to what was then the far west, married a white woman and reared a large family, whose descendants, now in the fourth or fifth remove from the negro, are in all probability wholly unaware of their origin. a sister of this pioneer emigrant remained in the place of her birth and formed an irregular union with a white man of means, with whom she lived for many years and for whom she bore a large number of children, who became about evenly divided between white and colored, fixing their status by the marriages they made. one of the daughters, for instance, married a white man and reared in a neighboring county a family of white children, who, in all probability, were as active as any one else in the recent ferocious red-shirt campaign to disfranchise the negroes. in this same town there was stationed once, before the war, at the federal arsenal there located, an officer who fell in love with a "white negro" girl, as our southern friends impartially dub them. this officer subsequently left the army, and carried away with him to the north the whole family of his inamorata. he married the woman, and their descendants, who live in a large western city, are not known at all as persons of color, and show no trace of their dark origin. two notable bishops of the roman catholic communion in the united states are known to be the sons of a slave mother and a white father, who, departing from the usual american rule, gave his sons freedom, education and a chance in life, instead of sending them to the auction block. colonel t.w. higginson, in his _cheerful yesterdays_, relates the story of a white colored woman whom he assisted in her escape from slavery or its consequences, who married a white man in the vicinity of boston and lost her identity with the colored race. how many others there must be who know of similar instances! grace king, in her "story of new orleans," to which i have referred, in speaking of a louisiana law which required the public records, when dealing with persons of color, always to specify the fact of color, in order, so far had the admixture of races gone, to distinguish them from whites, says: "but the officers of the law could be bribed, and the qualification once dropped acted, inversely, as a patent of pure blood." a certain well-known shakspearean actress has a strain of negro blood, and a popular leading man under a well-known manager is similarly gifted. it would be interesting to give their names, but would probably only injure them. if they could themselves speak of their origin, without any unpleasant consequences, it would be a handsome thing for the colored race. that they do not is no reproach to them; they are white to all intents and purposes, even by the curious laws of the curious states from which they derived their origin, and are in all conscience entitled to any advantage accompanying this status. anyone at all familiar with the hopes and aspirations of the colored race, as expressed, for instance, in their prolific newspaper literature, must have perceived the wonderful inspiration which they have drawn from the career of a few distinguished europeans of partial negro ancestry, who have felt no call, by way of social prejudice, to deny or conceal their origin, or to refuse their sympathy to those who need it so much. pushkin, the russian shakspeare, had a black ancestor. one of the chief editors of the london _times_, who died a few years ago, was a west indian colored man, who had no interest in concealing the fact. one of the generals of the british army is similarly favored, although the fact is not often referred to. general alfred dodds, the ranking general of the french army, now in command in china, is a quadroon. the poet, robert browning, was of west indian origin, and some of his intimate personal friends maintained and proved to their own satisfaction that he was partly of negro descent. mr. browning always said that he did not know; that there was no family tradition to that effect; but if it could be demonstrated he would admit it freely enough, if it would reflect any credit upon a race who needed it so badly. the most conspicuous of the eurafricans (to coin a word) were the dumas family, who were distinguished for three generations. the mulatto, general dumas, won distinction in the wars under the revolution. his son, the famous alexandre dumas _père_, has delighted several generations with his novels, and founded a school of fiction. his son, alexandre _fils_, novelist and dramatist, was as supreme in his own line as his father had been in his. old alexandre gives his pedigree in detail in his memoirs; and the negro origin of the family is set out in every encyclopaedia. nevertheless, in a literary magazine of recent date, published in new york, it was gravely stated by a writer that "there was a rumor, probably not well founded, that the author of monte-cristo had a very distant strain of negro blood." if this had been written with reference to some living american of obscure origin, its point might be appreciated; but such extreme delicacy in stating so widely known a fact appeals to one's sense of humor. these european gentlemen could be outspoken about their origin, because it carried with it no social stigma or disability whatever. when such a state of public opinion exists in the united states, there may be a surprising revision of pedigrees! a little incident that occurred not long ago near boston will illustrate the complexity of these race relations. three light-colored men, brothers, by the name, we will say, of green, living in a boston suburb, married respectively a white, a brown and a black woman. the children with the white mother became known as white, and associated with white people. the others were frankly colored. by a not unlikely coincidence, in the course of time the children of the three families found themselves in the same public school. curiously enough, one afternoon the three sets of green children--the white greens, the brown greens and the black greens--were detained after school, and were all directed to report to a certain schoolroom, where they were assigned certain tasks at the blackboards about the large room. still more curiously, most of the teachers of the school happened to have business in this particular room on that particular afternoon, and all of them seemed greatly interested in the green children. "well, well, did you ever! just think of it! and they are all first cousins!" was remarked audibly. the children were small, but they lived in boston, and were, of course, as became boston children, preternaturally intelligent for their years. they reported to their parents the incident and a number of remarks of a similar tenor to the one above quoted. the result was a complaint to the school authorities, and a reprimand to several teachers. a curious feature of the affair lay in the source from which the complaint emanated. one might suppose it to have come from the white greens; but no, they were willing that the incident should pass unnoticed and be promptly forgotten; publicity would only advertise a fact which would work to their social injury. the dark greens rather enjoyed the affair; they had nothing to lose; they had no objections to being known as the cousins of the others, and experienced a certain not unnatural pleasure in their discomfiture. the complaint came from the brown greens. the reader can figure out the psychology of it for himself. a more certain proof of the fact that negro blood is widely distributed among the white people may be found in the laws and judicial decisions of the various states. laws, as a rule, are not made until demanded by a sufficient number of specific cases to call for a general rule; and judicial decisions of course are never announced except as the result of litigation over contested facts. there is no better index of the character and genius of a people than their laws. in north carolina, marriage between white persons and free persons of color was lawful until . by the missouri code of , the color line was drawn at one-fourth of negro blood, and persons of only one-eighth were legally white. the same rule was laid down by the mississippi code of . under the old code noir of louisiana, the descendant of a white and a quadroon was white. under these laws many persons currently known as "colored," or, more recently as "negro," would be legally white if they chose to claim and exercise the privilege. in ohio, before the civil war, a person more than half-white was legally entitled to all the rights of a white man. in south carolina, the line of cleavage was left somewhat indefinite; the color line was drawn tentatively at one-fourth of negro blood, but this was not held conclusive. "the term 'mulatto'," said the supreme court of that state in a reported case, "is not invariably applicable to every admixture of african blood with the european, nor is one having all the features of a white to be ranked with the degraded class designated by the laws of the state as persons of color, because of some remote taint of the negro race.... the question whether persons are colored or white, where color or feature is doubtful, is for the jury to determine by reputation, by reception into society, and by their exercises of the privileges of a white man, as well as by admixture of blood." it is well known that this liberality of view grew out of widespread conditions in the state, which these decisions in their turn tended to emphasize. they were probably due to the large preponderance of colored people in the state, which rendered the whites the more willing to augment their own number. there are many interesting color-line decisions in the reports of the southern courts, which space will not permit the mention of. in another article i shall consider certain conditions which retard the development of the future american race type which i have suggested, as well as certain other tendencies which are likely to promote it. _boston evening transcript_, august , a complete race-amalgamation likely to occur i have endeavored in two former letters to set out the reasons why it seems likely that the future american ethnic type will be formed by a fusion of all the various races now peopling this continent, and to show that this process has been under way, slowly but surely, like all evolutionary movements, for several hundred years. i wish now to consider some of the conditions which will retard this fusion, as well as certain other facts which tend to promote it. the indian phase of the problem, so far at least as the united states is concerned, has been practically disposed of in what has already been said. the absorption of the indians will be delayed so long as the tribal relations continue, and so long as the indians are treated as wards of the government, instead of being given their rights once for all, and placed upon the footing of other citizens. it is presumed that this will come about as the wilder indians are educated and by the development of the country brought into closer contact with civilization, which must happen before a very great while. as has been stated, there is no very strong prejudice against the indian blood; a well-stocked farm or a comfortable fortune will secure a white husband for a comely indian girl any day, with some latitude, and there is no evidence of any such strong race instinct or organization as will make the indians of the future wish to perpetuate themselves as a small and insignificant class in a great population, thus emphasizing distinctions which would be overlooked in the case of the individual. the indian will fade into the white population as soon as he chooses, and in the united states proper the slender indian strain will ere long leave no trace discoverable by anyone but the anthropological expert. in new mexico and central america, on the contrary, the chances seem to be that the indian will first absorb the non-indigenous elements, unless, which is not unlikely, european immigration shall increase the white contingent. the negro element remains, then, the only one which seems likely to present any difficulty of assimilation. the main obstacle that retards the absorption of the negro into the general population is the apparently intense prejudice against color which prevails in the united states. this prejudice loses much of its importance, however, when it is borne in mind that it is almost purely local and does not exist in quite the same form anywhere else in the world, except among the boers of south africa, where it prevails in an even more aggravated form; and, as i shall endeavor to show, this prejudice in the united states is more apparent than real, and is a caste prejudice which is merely accentuated by differences of race. at present, however, i wish to consider it merely as a deterrent to amalgamation. this prejudice finds forcible expression in the laws which prevail in all the southern states, without exception, forbidding the intermarriage of white persons and persons of color--these last being generally defined within certain degrees. while it is evident that such laws alone will not prevent the intermingling of races, which goes merrily on in spite of them, it is equally apparent that this placing of mixed marriages beyond the pale of the law is a powerful deterrent to any honest or dignified amalgamation. add to this legal restriction, which is enforced by severe penalties, the social odium accruing to the white party to such a union, and it may safely be predicted that so long as present conditions prevail in the south, there will be little marrying or giving in marriage between persons of different race. so ferocious is this sentiment against intermarriage, that in a recent missouri case, where a colored man ran away with and married a young white woman, the man was pursued by a "posse"--a word which is rapidly being debased from its proper meaning by its use in the attempt to dignify the character of lawless southern mobs--and shot to death; the woman was tried and convicted of the "crime" of "miscegenation"--another honest word which the south degrades along with the negro. another obstacle to race fusion lies in the drastic and increasing proscriptive legislation by which the south attempts to keep the white and colored races apart in every place where their joint presence might be taken to imply equality; or, to put it more directly, the persistent effort to degrade the negro to a distinctly and permanently inferior caste. this is undertaken by means of separate schools, separate railroad and street cars, political disfranchisement, debasing and abhorrent prison systems, and an unflagging campaign of calumny, by which the vices and shortcomings of the negroes are grossly magnified and their virtues practically lost sight of. the popular argument that the negro ought to develop his own civilization, and has no right to share in that of the white race, unless by favor, comes with poor grace from those who are forcing their civilization upon others at the cannon's mouth; it is, moreover, uncandid and unfair. the white people of the present generation did not make their civilization; they inherited it ready-made, and much of the wealth which is so strong a factor in their power was created by the unpaid labor of the colored people. the present generation has, however, brought to a high state of development one distinctively american institution, for which it is entitled to such credit as it may wish to claim; i refer to the custom of lynching, with its attendant horrors. the principal deterrent to race admixture, however, is the low industrial and social efficiency of the colored race. if it be conceded that these are the result of environment, then their cause is not far to seek, and the cure is also in sight. their poverty, their ignorance and their servile estate render them as yet largely ineligible for social fusion with a race whose pride is fed not only by the record of its achievements but by a constant comparison with a less developed and less fortunate race, which it has held so long in subjection. the forces that tend to the future absorption of the black race are, however, vastly stronger than those arrayed against it. as experience has demonstrated, slavery was favorable to the mixing of races. the growth, under healthy civil conditions, of a large and self-respecting colored citizenship would doubtless tend to lessen the clandestine association of the two races; but the effort to degrade the negro may result, if successful, in a partial restoration of the old status. but, assuming that the present anti-negro legislation is but a temporary reaction, then the steady progress of the colored race in wealth and culture and social efficiency will, in the course of time, materially soften the asperities of racial prejudice and permit them to approach the whites more closely, until, in time, the prejudice against intermarriage shall have been overcome by other considerations. it is safe to say that the possession of a million dollars, with the ability to use it to the best advantage, would throw such a golden glow over a dark complexion as to override anything but a very obdurate prejudice. mr. spahr, in his well-studied and impartial book on _america's working people_, states as his conclusion, after a careful study of conditions in the south, that the most advanced third of the negroes of that section has already, in one generation of limited opportunity, passed in the race of life the least advanced third of the whites. to pass the next third will prove a more difficult task, no doubt, but the negroes will have the impetus of their forward movement to push them ahead. the outbreaks of race prejudice in recent years are the surest evidence of the negro's progress. no effort is required to keep down a race which manifests no desire nor ability to rise; but with each new forward movement of the colored race it is brought into contact with the whites at some fresh point, which evokes a new manifestation of prejudice until custom has adjusted things to the new condition. when all negroes were poor and ignorant they could be denied their rights with impunity. as they grow in knowledge and in wealth they become more self-assertive, and make it correspondingly troublesome for those who would ignore their claims. it is much easier, by a supreme effort, as recently attempted with temporary success in north carolina, to knock the race down and rob it of its rights once for all, than to repeat the process from day to day and with each individual; it saves wear and tear on the conscience, and makes it easy to maintain a superiority which it might in the course of a short time require some little effort to keep up. this very proscription, however, political and civil at the south, social all over the country, varying somewhat in degree, will, unless very soon relaxed, prove a powerful factor in the mixture of the races. if it is only by becoming white that colored people and their children are to enjoy the rights and dignities of citizenship, they will have every incentive to "lighten the breed," to use a current phrase, that they may claim the white man's privileges as soon as possible. that this motive is already at work may be seen in the enormous extent to which certain "face bleachers" and "hair straighteners" are advertised in the newspapers printed for circulation among the colored people. the most powerful factor in achieving any result is the wish to bring it about. the only thing that ever succeeded in keeping two races separated when living on the same soil--the only true ground of caste--is religion, and as has been alluded to in the case of the jews, this is only superficially successful. the colored people are the same as the whites in religion; they have the same standards and mediums of culture, the same ideals, and the presence of the successful white race as a constant incentive to their ambition. the ultimate result is not difficult to foresee. the races will be quite as effectively amalgamated by lightening the negroes as they would be by darkening the whites. it is only a social fiction, indeed, which makes of a person seven-eighths white a negro; he is really much more a white man. the hope of the negro, so far as the field of moral sympathy and support in his aspirations is concerned, lies, as always, chiefly in the north. there the forces which tend to his elevation are, in the main, allowed their natural operation. the exaggerated zeal with which the south is rushing to degrade the negro is likely to result, as in the case of slavery, in making more friends for him at the north; and if the north shall not see fit to interfere forcibly with southern legislation, it may at least feel disposed to emphasize, by its own liberality, its disapproval of southern injustice and barbarity. an interesting instance of the difference between the north and the south in regard to colored people, may be found in two cases which only last year came up for trial in two adjoining border states. a colored man living in maryland went over to washington and married a white woman. the marriage was legal in washington. when they returned to their maryland home they were arrested for the crime of "miscegenation"--perhaps it is only a misdemeanor in maryland--and sentenced to fine and imprisonment, the penalty of extra-judicial death not extending so far north. the same month a couple, one white and one colored, were arrested in new jersey for living in adultery. they were found guilty by the court, but punishment was withheld upon a promise that they would marry immediately; or, as some cynic would undoubtedly say, the punishment was commuted from imprisonment to matrimony. the adding to our territories of large areas populated by dark races, some of them already liberally dowered with negro blood, will enhance the relative importance of the non-caucasian elements of the population, and largely increase the flow of dark blood toward the white race, until the time shall come when distinctions of color shall lose their importance, which will be but the prelude to a complete racial fusion. the formation of this future american race is not a pressing problem. because of the conditions under which it must take place, it is likely to be extremely slow--much slower, indeed, in our temperate climate and highly organized society, than in the american tropics and sub-tropics, where it is already well under way, if not a _fait accompli_. that it must come in the united states, sooner or later, seems to be a foregone conclusion, as the result of natural law--_lex dura, sed tamen lex_--a hard pill, but one which must be swallowed. there can manifestly be no such thing as a peaceful and progressive civilization in a nation divided by two warring races, and homogeneity of type, at least in externals, is a necessary condition of harmonious social progress. if this, then, must come, the development and progress of all the constituent elements of the future american race is of the utmost importance as bearing upon the quality of the resultant type. the white race is still susceptible of some improvement; and if, in time, the more objectionable negro traits are eliminated, and his better qualities correspondingly developed, his part in the future american race may well be an important and valuable one. _boston evening transcript_, september , the disfranchisement of the negro the right of american citizens of african descent, commonly called negroes, to vote upon the same terms as other citizens of the united states, is plainly declared and firmly fixed by the constitution. no such person is called upon to present reasons why he should possess this right: that question is foreclosed by the constitution. the object of the elective franchise is to give representation. so long as the constitution retains its present form, any state constitution, or statute, which seeks, by juggling the ballot, to deny the colored race fair representation, is a clear violation of the fundamental law of the land, and a corresponding injustice to those thus deprived of this right. for thirty-five years this has been the law. as long as it was measurably respected, the colored people made rapid strides in education, wealth, character and self-respect. this the census proves, all statements to the contrary notwithstanding. a generation has grown to manhood and womanhood under the great, inspiring freedom conferred by the constitution and protected by the right of suffrage--protected in large degree by the mere naked right, even when its exercise was hindered or denied by unlawful means. they have developed, in every southern community, good citizens, who, if sustained and encouraged by just laws and liberal institutions, would greatly augment their number with the passing years, and soon wipe out the reproach of ignorance, unthrift, low morals and social inefficiency, thrown at them indiscriminately and therefore unjustly, and made the excuse for the equally undiscriminating contempt of their persons and their rights. they have reduced their illiteracy nearly per cent. excluded from the institutions of higher learning in their own states, their young men hold their own, and occasionally carry away honors, in the universities of the north. they have accumulated three hundred million dollars worth of real and personal property. individuals among them have acquired substantial wealth, and several have attained to something like national distinction in art, letters and educational leadership. they are numerously represented in the learned professions. heavily handicapped, they have made such rapid progress that the suspicion is justified that their advancement, rather than any stagnation or retrogression, is the true secret of the virulent southern hostility to their rights, which has so influenced northern opinion that it stands mute, and leaves the colored people, upon whom the north conferred liberty, to the tender mercies of those who have always denied their fitness for it. it may be said, in passing, that the word "negro," where used in this paper, is used solely for convenience. by the census of there were , , colored people in the country who were half, or more than half, white, and logically there must be, as in fact there are, so many who share the white blood in some degree, as to justify the assertion that the race problem in the united states concerns the welfare and the status of a mixed race. their rights are not one whit the more sacred because of this fact; but in an argument where injustice is sought to be excused because of fundamental differences of race, it is well enough to bear in mind that the race whose rights and liberties are endangered all over this country by disfranchisement at the south, are the colored people who live in the united states to-day, and not the lowbrowed, man-eating savage whom the southern white likes to set upon a block and contrast with shakespeare and newton and washington and lincoln. despite and in defiance of the federal constitution, to-day in the six southern states of mississippi, louisiana, alabama, north carolina, south carolina and virginia, containing an aggregate colored population of about , , , these have been, to all intents and purposes, denied, so far as the states can effect it, the right to vote. this disfranchisement is accomplished by various methods, devised with much transparent ingenuity, the effort being in each instance to violate the spirit of the federal constitution by disfranchising the negro, while seeming to respect its letter by avoiding the mention of race or color. these restrictions fall into three groups. the first comprises a property qualification--the ownership of $ worth or more of real or personal property (alabama, louisiana, virginia and south carolina); the payment of a poll tax (mississippi, north carolina, virginia); an educational qualification--the ability to read and write (alabama, louisiana, north carolina). thus far, those who believe in a restricted suffrage everywhere, could perhaps find no reasonable fault with any one of these qualifications, applied either separately or together. but the negro has made such progress that these restrictions alone would perhaps not deprive him of effective representation. hence the second group. this comprises an "understanding" clause--the applicant must be able "to read, or understand when read to him, any clause in the constitution" (mississippi), or to read and explain, or to understand and explain when read to him, any section of the constitution (virginia); an employment qualification--the voter must be regularly employed in some lawful occupation (alabama); a character qualification--the voter must be a person of good character and who "understands the duties and obligations of citizens under a republican [!] form of government" (alabama). the qualifications under the first group it will be seen, are capable of exact demonstration; those under the second group are left to the discretion and judgment of the registering officer--for in most instances these are all requirements for registration, which must precede voting. but the first group, by its own force, and the second group, under imaginable conditions, might exclude not only the negro vote, but a large part of the white vote. hence, the third group, which comprises: a military service qualification--any man who went to war, willingly or unwillingly, in a good cause or a bad, is entitled to register (ala., va.); a prescriptive qualification, under which are included all male persons who were entitled to vote on january , , at which date the negro had not yet been given the right to vote; a hereditary qualification (the so-called "grandfather" clause), whereby any son (va.), or descendant (ala.), of a soldier, and (n.c.) the descendant of any person who had the right to vote on january , , inherits that right. if the voter wish to take advantage of these last provisions, which are in the nature of exceptions to a general rule, he must register within a stated time, whereupon he becomes a member of a privileged class of permanently enrolled voters not subject to any of the other restrictions. it will be seen that these restrictions are variously combined in the different states, and it is apparent that if combined to their declared end, practically every negro may, under color of law, be denied the right to vote, and practically every white man accorded that right. the effectiveness of these provisions to exclude the negro vote is proved by the alabama registration under the new state constitution. out of a total, by the census of , of , negro "males of voting age," less than , are registered; in montgomery county alone, the seat of the state capital, where there are , negro males of voting age, only have been allowed to register, while in several counties not one single negro is permitted to exercise the franchise. these methods of disfranchisement have stood such tests as the united states courts, including the supreme court, have thus far seen fit to apply, in such cases as have been before them for adjudication. these include a case based upon the "understanding" clause of the mississippi constitution, in which the supreme court held, in effect, that since there was no ambiguity in the language employed and the negro was not directly named, the court would not go behind the wording of the constitution to find a meaning which discriminated against the colored voter; and the recent case of jackson vs. giles, brought by a colored citizen of montgomery, alabama, in which the supreme court confesses itself impotent to provide a remedy for what, by inference, it acknowledges may be a "great political wrong," carefully avoiding, however, to state that it is a wrong, although the vital prayer of the petition was for a decision upon this very point. now, what is the effect of this wholesale disfranchisement of colored men, upon their citizenship? the value of food to the human organism is not measured by the pains of an occasional surfeit, but by the effect of its entire deprivation. whether a class of citizens should vote, even if not always wisely--what class does?--may best be determined by considering their condition when they are without the right to vote. the colored people are left, in the states where they have been disfranchised, absolutely without representation, direct or indirect, in any law-making body, in any court of justice, in any branch of government--for the feeble remnant of voters left by law is so inconsiderable as to be without a shadow of power. constituting one-eighth of the population of the whole country, two-fifths of the whole southern people, and a majority in several states, they are not able, because disfranchised where most numerous, to send one representative to the congress, which, by the decision in the alabama case, is held by the supreme court to be the only body, outside of the state itself, competent to give relief from a great political wrong. by former decisions of the same tribunal, even congress is impotent to protect their civil rights, the fourteenth amendment having long since, by the consent of the same court, been in many respects as completely nullified as the fifteenth amendment is now sought to be. they have no direct representation in any southern legislature, and no voice in determining the choice of white men who might be friendly to their rights. nor are they able to influence the election of judges or other public officials, to whom are entrusted the protection of their lives, their liberties and their property. no judge is rendered careful, no sheriff diligent, for fear that he may offend a black constituency; the contrary is most lamentably true; day after day the catalogue of lynchings and anti-negro riots upon every imaginable pretext, grows longer and more appalling. the country stands face to face with the revival of slavery; at the moment of this writing a federal grand jury in alabama is uncovering a system of peonage established under cover of law. under the southern program it is sought to exclude colored men from every grade of the public service; not only from the higher administrative functions, to which few of them would in any event, for a long time aspire, but from the lowest as well. a negro may not be a constable or a policeman. he is subjected by law to many degrading discriminations. he is required to be separated from white people on railroads and street cars, and, by custom, debarred from inns and places of public entertainment. his equal right to a free public education is constantly threatened and is nowhere equitably recognized. in georgia, as has been shown by dr. du bois, where the law provides for a pro rata distribution of the public school fund between the races, and where the colored school population is per cent, of the total, the amount of the fund devoted to their schools is only per cent. in new orleans, with an immense colored population, many of whom are persons of means and culture, all colored public schools above the fifth grade have been abolished. the negro is subjected to taxation without representation, which the forefathers of this republic made the basis of a bloody revolution. flushed with their local success, and encouraged by the timidity of the courts and the indifference of public opinion, the southern whites have carried their campaign into the national government, with an ominous degree of success. if they shall have their way, no negro can fill any federal office, or occupy, in the public service, any position that is not menial. this is not an inference, but the openly, passionately avowed sentiment of the white south. the right to employment in the public service is an exceedingly valuable one, for which white men have struggled and fought. a vast army of men are employed in the administration of public affairs. many avenues of employment are closed to colored men by popular prejudice. if their right to public employment is recognized, and the way to it open through the civil service, or the appointing power, or the suffrages of the people, it will prove, as it has already, a strong incentive to effort and a powerful lever for advancement. its value to the negro, like that of the right to vote, may be judged by the eagerness of the whites to deprive him of it. not only is the negro taxed without representation in the states referred to, but he pays, through the tariff and internal revenue, a tax to a national government whose supreme judicial tribunal declares that it cannot, through the executive arm, enforce its own decrees, and, therefore, refuses to pass upon a question, squarely before it, involving a basic right of citizenship. for the decision of the supreme court in the giles case, if it foreshadows the attitude which the court will take upon other cases to the same general end which will soon come before it, is scarcely less than a reaffirmation of the dred scott decision; it certainly amounts to this--that in spite of the fifteenth amendment, colored men in the united states have no political rights which the states are bound to respect. to say this much is to say that all privileges and immunities which negroes henceforth enjoy, must be by favor of the whites; they are not _rights_. the whites have so declared; they proclaim that the country is theirs, that the negro should be thankful that he has so much, when so much more might be withheld from him. he stands upon a lower footing than any alien; he has no government to which he may look for protection. moreover, the white south sends to congress, on a basis including the negro population, a delegation nearly twice as large as it is justly entitled to, and one which may always safely be relied upon to oppose in congress every measure which seeks to protect the equality, or to enlarge the rights of colored citizens. the grossness of this injustice is all the more apparent since the supreme court, in the alabama case referred to, has declared the legislative and political department of the government to be the only power which can right a political wrong. under this decision still further attacks upon the liberties of the citizen may be confidently expected. armed with the negro's sole weapon of defense, the white south stands ready to smite down his rights. the ballot was first given to the negro to defend him against this very thing. he needs it now far more than then, and for even stronger reasons. the , , free colored people of to day have vastly more to defend than the , , hapless blacks who had just emerged from slavery. if there be those who maintain that it was a mistake to give the negro the ballot at the time and in the manner in which it was given, let them take to heart this reflection: that to deprive him of it to-day, or to so restrict it as to leave him utterly defenseless against the present relentless attitude of the south toward his rights, will prove to be a mistake so much greater than the first, as to be no less than a crime, from which not alone the southern negro must suffer, but for which the nation will as surely pay the penalty as it paid for the crime of slavery. contempt for law is death to a republic, and this one has developed alarming symptoms of the disease. and now, having thus robbed the negro of every political and civil _right_, the white south, in palliation of its course, makes a great show of magnanimity in leaving him, as the sole remnant of what he acquired through the civil war, a very inadequate public school education, which, by the present program, is to be directed mainly towards making him a better agricultural laborer. even this is put forward as a favor, although the negro's property is taxed to pay for it, and his labor as well. for it is a well settled principle of political economy, that land and machinery of themselves produce nothing, and that labor indirectly pays its fair proportion of the tax upon the public's wealth. the white south seems to stand to the negro at present as one, who, having been reluctantly compelled to release another from bondage, sees him stumbling forward and upward, neglected by his friends and scarcely yet conscious of his own strength; seizes him, binds him, and having bereft him of speech, of sight and of manhood, "yokes him with the mule" and exclaims, with a show of virtue which ought to deceive no one: "behold how good a friend i am of yours! have i not left you a stomach and a pair of arms, and will i not generously permit you to work for me with the one, that you may thereby gain enough to fill the other? a brain you do not need. we will relieve you of any responsibility that might seem to demand such an organ." the argument of peace-loving northern white men and negro opportunists that the political power of the negro having long ago been suppressed by unlawful means, his right to vote is a mere paper right, of no real value, and therefore to be lightly yielded for the sake of a hypothetical harmony, is fatally short-sighted. it is precisely the attitude and essentially the argument which would have surrendered to the south in the sixties, and would have left this country to rot in slavery for another generation. white men do not thus argue concerning their own rights. they know too well the value of ideals. southern white men see too clearly the latent power of these unexercised rights. if the political power of the negro was a nullity because of his ignorance and lack of leadership, why were they not content to leave it so, with the pleasing assurance that if it ever became effective, it would be because the negroes had grown fit for its exercise? on the contrary, they have not rested until the possibility of its revival was apparently headed off by new state constitutions. nor are they satisfied with this. there is no doubt that an effort will be made to secure the repeal of the fifteenth amendment, and thus forestall the development of the wealthy and educated negro, whom the south seems to anticipate as a greater menace than the ignorant ex-slave. however improbable this repeal may seem, it is not a subject to be lightly dismissed; for it is within the power of the white people of the nation to do whatever they wish in the premises--they did it once; they can do it again. the negro and his friends should see to it that the white majority shall never wish to do anything to his hurt. there still stands, before the negro-hating whites of the south, the specter of a supreme court which will interpret the constitution to mean what it says, and what those who enacted it meant, and what the nation, which ratified it, understood, and which will find power, in a nation which goes beyond seas to administer the affairs of distant peoples, to enforce its own fundamental laws; the specter, too, of an aroused public opinion which will compel congress and the courts to preserve the liberties of the republic, which are the liberties of the people. to wilfully neglect the suffrage, to hold it lightly, is to tamper with a sacred right; to yield it for anything else whatever is simply suicidal. dropping the element of race, disfranchisement is no more than to say to the poor and poorly taught, that they must relinquish the right to defend themselves against oppression until they shall have become rich and learned, in competition with those already thus favored and possessing the ballot in addition. this is not the philosophy of history. the growth of liberty has been the constant struggle of the poor against the privileged classes; and the goal of that struggle has ever been the equality of all men before the law. the negro who would yield this right, deserves to be a slave; he has the servile spirit. the rich and the educated can, by virtue of their influence, command many votes; can find other means of protection; the poor man has but one, he should guard it as a sacred treasure. long ago, by fair treatment, the white leaders of the south might have bound the negro to themselves with hoops of steel. they have not chosen to take this course, but by assuming from the beginning an attitude hostile to his rights, have never gained his confidence, and now seek by foul means to destroy where they have never sought by fair means to control. i have spoken of the effect of disfranchisement upon the colored race; it is to the race as a whole, that the argument of the problem is generally directed. but the unit of society in a republic is the individual, and not the race, the failure to recognize this fact being the fundamental error which has beclouded the whole discussion. the effect of disfranchisement upon the individual is scarcely less disastrous. i do not speak of the moral effect of injustice upon those who suffer from it; i refer rather to the practical consequences which may be appreciated by any mind. no country is free in which the way upward is not open for every man to try, and for every properly qualified man to attain whatever of good the community life may offer. such a condition does not exist, at the south, even in theory, for any man of color. in no career can such a man compete with white men upon equal terms. he must not only meet the prejudice of the individual, not only the united prejudice of the white community; but lest some one should wish to treat him fairly, he is met at every turn with some legal prohibition which says, "thou shalt not," or "thus far shalt thou go and no farther." but the negro race is viable; it adapts itself readily to circumstances; and being thus adaptable, there is always the temptation to "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, where thrift may follow fawning." he who can most skillfully balance himself upon the advancing or receding wave of white opinion concerning his race, is surest of such measure of prosperity as is permitted to men of dark skins. there are negro teachers in the south--the privilege of teaching in their own schools is the one respectable branch of the public service still left open to them--who, for a grudging appropriation from a southern legislature, will decry their own race, approve their own degradation, and laud their oppressors. deprived of the right to vote, and, therefore, of any power to demand what is their due, they feel impelled to buy the tolerance of the whites at any sacrifice. if to live is the first duty of man, as perhaps it is the first instinct, then those who thus stoop to conquer may be right. but is it needful to stoop so low, and if so, where lies the ultimate responsibility for this abasement? i shall say nothing about the moral effect of disfranchisement upon the white people, or upon the state itself. what slavery made of the southern whites is a matter of history. the abolition of slavery gave the south an opportunity to emerge from barbarism. present conditions indicate that the spirit which dominated slavery still curses the fair section over which that institution spread its blight. and now, is the situation remediless? if not so, where lies the remedy? first let us take up those remedies suggested by the men who approve of disfranchisement, though they may sometimes deplore the method, or regret the necessity. time, we are told, heals all diseases, rights all wrongs, and is the only cure for this one. it is a cowardly argument. these people are entitled to their rights to-day, while they are yet alive to enjoy them; and it is poor statesmanship and worse morals to nurse a present evil and thrust it forward upon a future generation for correction. the nation can no more honestly do this than it could thrust back upon a past generation the responsibility for slavery. it had to meet that responsibility; it ought to meet this one. education has been put forward as the great corrective--preferably industrial education. the intellect of the whites is to be educated to the point where they will so appreciate the blessings of liberty and equality, as of their own motion to enlarge and defend the negro's rights. the negroes, on the other hand, are to be so trained as to make them, not equal with the whites in any way--god save the mark!--this would be unthinkable!--but so useful to the community that the whites will protect them rather than lose their valuable services. some few enthusiasts go so far as to maintain that by virtue of education the negro will, in time, become strong enough to protect himself against any aggression of the whites; this, it may be said, is a strictly northern view. it is not quite clearly apparent how education alone, in the ordinary meaning of the word, is to solve, in any appreciable time, the problem of the relations of southern white and black people. the need of education of all kinds for both races is wofully apparent. but men and nations have been free without being learned, and there have been educated slaves. liberty has been known to languish where culture had reached a very high development. nations do not first become rich and learned and then free, but the lesson of history has been that they first become free and then rich and learned, and oftentimes fall back into slavery again because of too great wealth, and the resulting luxury and carelessness of civic virtues. the process of education has been going on rapidly in the southern states since the civil war, and yet, if we take superficial indications, the rights of the negroes are at a lower ebb than at any time during the thirty-five years of their freedom, and the race prejudice more intense and uncompromising. it is not apparent that educated southerners are less rancorous than others in their speech concerning the negro, or less hostile in their attitude toward his rights. it is their voice alone that we have heard in this discussion; and if, as they state, they are liberal in their views as compared with the more ignorant whites, then god save the negro! i was told, in so many words, two years ago, by the superintendent of public schools of a southern city that "there was no place in the modern world for the negro, except under the ground." if gentlemen holding such opinions are to instruct the white youth of the south, would it be at all surprising if these, later on, should devote a portion of their leisure to the improvement of civilization by putting under the ground as many of this superfluous race as possible? the sole excuse made in the south for the prevalent injustice to the negro is the difference in race, and the inequalities and antipathies resulting therefrom. it has nowhere been declared as a part of the southern program that the negro, when educated, is to be given a fair representation in government or an equal opportunity in life; the contrary has been strenuously asserted; education can never make of him anything but a negro, and, therefore, essentially inferior, and not to be safely trusted with any degree of power. a system of education which would tend to soften the asperities and lessen the inequalities between the races would be of inestimable value. an education which by a rigid separation of the races from the kindergarten to the university, fosters this racial antipathy, and is directed toward emphasizing the superiority of one class and the inferiority of another, might easily have disastrous, rather than beneficial results. it would render the oppressing class more powerful to injure, the oppressed quicker to perceive and keener to resent the injury, without proportionate power of defense. the same assimilative education which is given at the north to all children alike, whereby native and foreign, black and white, are taught side by side in every grade of instruction, and are compelled by the exigencies of discipline to keep their prejudices in abeyance, and are given the opportunity to learn and appreciate one another's good qualities, and to establish friendly relations which may exist throughout life, is absent from the southern system of education, both of the past and as proposed for the future. education is in a broad sense a remedy for all social ills; but the disease we have to deal with now is not only constitutional but acute. a wise physician does not simply give a tonic for a diseased limb, or a high fever; the patient might be dead before the constitutional remedy could become effective. the evils of slavery, its injury to whites and blacks, and to the body politic, were clearly perceived and acknowledged by the educated leaders of the south as far back as the revolutionary war and the constitutional convention, and yet they made no effort to abolish it. their remedy was the same--time, education, social and economic development;--and yet a bloody war was necessary to destroy slavery and put its spirit temporarily to sleep. when the south and its friends are ready to propose a system of education which will recognize and teach the equality of all men before the law, the potency of education alone to settle the race problem will be more clearly apparent. at present even good northern men, who wish to educate the negroes, feel impelled to buy this privilege from the none too eager white south, by conceding away the civil and political rights of those whom they would benefit. they have, indeed, gone farther than the southerners themselves in approving the disfranchisement of the colored race. most southern men, now that they have carried their point and disfranchised the negro, are willing to admit, in the language of a recent number of the charleston _evening post_, that "the attitude of the southern white man toward the negro is incompatible with the fundamental ideas of the republic." it remained for our clevelands and abbotts and parkhursts to assure them that their unlawful course was right and justifiable, and for the most distinguished negro leader to declare that "every revised constitution throughout the southern states has put a premium upon intelligence, ownership of property, thrift and character." so does every penitentiary sentence put a premium upon good conduct; but it is poor consolation to the one unjustly condemned, to be told that he may shorten his sentence somewhat by good behavior. dr. booker t. washington, whose language is quoted above, has, by his eminent services in the cause of education, won deserved renown. if he has seemed, at times, to those jealous of the best things for their race, to decry the higher education, it can easily be borne in mind that his career is bound up in the success of an industrial school; hence any undue stress which he may put upon that branch of education may safely be ascribed to the natural zeal of the promoter, without detracting in any degree from the essential value of his teachings in favor of manual training, thrift and character-building. but mr. washington's prominence as an educational leader, among a race whose prominent leaders are so few, has at times forced him, perhaps reluctantly, to express himself in regard to the political condition of his people, and here his utterances have not always been so wise nor so happy. he has declared himself in favor of a restricted suffrage, which at present means, for his own people, nothing less than complete loss of representation--indeed it is only in that connection that the question has been seriously mooted; and he has advised them to go slow in seeking to enforce their civil and political rights, which, in effect, means silent submission to injustice. southern white men may applaud this advice as wise, because it fits in with their purposes; but senator mcenery of louisiana, in a recent article in the _independent_, voices the southern white opinion of such acquiescence when he says: "what other race would have submitted so many years to slavery without complaint? _what other race would have submitted so quietly to disfranchisement?_ these facts stamp his [the negro's] inferiority to the white race." the time to philosophize about the good there is in evil, is not while its correction is still possible, but, if at all, after all hope of correction is past. until then it calls for nothing but rigorous condemnation. to try to read any good thing into these fraudulent southern constitutions, or to accept them as an accomplished fact, is to condone a crime against one's race. those who commit crime should bear the odium. it is not a pleasing spectacle to see the robbed applaud the robber. silence were better. it has become fashionable to question the wisdom of the fifteenth amendment. i believe it to have been an act of the highest statesmanship, based upon the fundamental idea of this republic, entirely justified by conditions; experimental in its nature, perhaps, as every new thing must be, but just in principle; a choice between methods, of which it seemed to the great statesmen of that epoch the wisest and the best, and essentially the most just, bearing in mind the interests of the freedmen and the nation, as well as the feelings of the southern whites; never fairly tried, and therefore, not yet to be justly condemned. not one of those who condemn it, has been able, even in the light of subsequent events, to suggest a better method by which the liberty and civil rights of the freedmen and their descendants could have been protected. its abandonment, as i have shown, leaves this liberty and these rights frankly without any guaranteed protection. all the education which philanthropy or the state could offer as a _substitute_ for equality of rights, would be a poor exchange; there is no defensible reason why they should not go hand in hand, each encouraging and strengthening the other. the education which one can demand as a right is likely to do more good than the education for which one must sue as a favor. the chief argument against negro suffrage, the insistently proclaimed argument, worn threadbare in congress, on the platform, in the pulpit, in the press, in poetry, in fiction, in impassioned rhetoric, is the reconstruction period. and yet the evils of that period were due far more to the venality and indifference of white men than to the incapacity of black voters. the revised southern constitutions adopted under reconstruction reveal a higher statesmanship than any which preceded or have followed them, and prove that the freed voters could as easily have been led into the paths of civic righteousness as into those of misgovernment. certain it is that under reconstruction the civil and political rights of all men were more secure in those states than they have ever been since. we will hear less of the evils of reconstruction, now that the bugaboo has served its purpose by disfranchising the negro. it will be laid aside for a time while the nation discusses the political corruption of great cities; the scandalous conditions in rhode island; the evils attending reconstruction in the philippines, and the scandals in the postoffice department--for none of which, by the way, is the negro charged with any responsibility, and for none of which is the restriction of the suffrage a remedy seriously proposed. rhode island is indeed the only northern state which has a property qualification for the franchise! there are three tribunals to which the colored people may justly appeal for the protection of their rights: the united states courts, congress and public opinion. at present all three seem mainly indifferent to any question of human rights under the constitution. indeed, congress and the courts merely follow public opinion, seldom lead it. congress never enacts a measure which is believed to oppose public opinion;--your congressman keeps his ear to the ground. the high, serene atmosphere of the courts is not impervious to its voice; they rarely enforce a law contrary to public opinion, even the supreme court being able, as charles sumner once put it, to find a reason for every decision it may wish to render; or, as experience has shown, a method to evade any question which it cannot decently decide in accordance with public opinion. the art of straddling is not confined to the political arena. the southern situation has been well described by a colored editor in richmond: "when we seek relief at the hands of congress, we are informed that our plea involves a legal question, and we are referred to the courts. when we appeal to the courts, we are gravely told that the question is a political one, and that we must go to congress. when congress enacts remedial legislation, our enemies take it to the supreme court, which promptly declares it unconstitutional." the negro might chase his rights round and round this circle until the end of time, without finding any relief. yet the constitution is clear and unequivocal in its terms, and no supreme court can indefinitely continue to construe it as meaning anything but what it says. this court should be bombarded with suits until it makes some definite pronouncement, one way or the other, on the broad question of the constitutionality of the disfranchising constitutions of the southern states. the negro and his friends will then have a clean-cut issue to take to the forum of public opinion, and a distinct ground upon which to demand legislation for the enforcement of the federal constitution. the case from alabama was carried to the supreme court expressly to determine the constitutionality of the alabama constitution. the court declared itself without jurisdiction, and in the same breath went into the merits of the case far enough to deny relief, without passing upon the real issue. had it said, as it might with absolute justice and perfect propriety, that the alabama constitution is a bold and impudent violation of the fifteenth amendment, the purpose of the lawsuit would have been accomplished and a righteous cause vastly strengthened. but public opinion cannot remain permanently indifferent to so vital a question. the agitation is already on. it is at present largely academic, but is slowly and resistlessly, forcing itself into politics, which is the medium through which republics settle such questions. it cannot much longer be contemptuously or indifferently elbowed aside. the south itself seems bent upon forcing the question to an issue, as, by its arrogant assumptions, it brought on the civil war. from that section, too, there come now and then, side by side with tales of southern outrage, excusing voices, which at the same time are accusing voices; which admit that the white south is dealing with the negro unjustly and unwisely; that the golden rule has been forgotten; that the interests of white men alone have been taken into account, and that their true interests as well are being sacrificed. there is a silent white south, uneasy in conscience, darkened in counsel, groping for the light, and willing to do the right. they are as yet a feeble folk, their voices scarcely audible above the clamor of the mob. may their convictions ripen into wisdom, and may their numbers and their courage increase! if the class of southern white men of whom judge jones of alabama, is so noble a representative, are supported and encouraged by a righteous public opinion at the north, they may, in time, become the dominant white south, and we may then look for wisdom and justice in the place where, so far as the negro is concerned, they now seem well-nigh strangers. but even these gentlemen will do well to bear in mind that so long as they discriminate in any way against the negro's equality of right, so long do they set class against class and open the door to every sort of discrimination, there can be no middle ground between justice and injustice, between the citizen and the serf. it is not likely that the north, upon the sober second thought, will permit the dearly-bought results of the civil war to be nullified by any change in the constitution. so long as the fifteenth amendment stands, the _rights_ of colored citizens are ultimately secure. there were would-be despots in england after the granting of magna charta; but it outlived them all, and the liberties of the english people are secure. there was slavery in this land after the declaration of independence, yet the faces of those who love liberty have ever turned to that immortal document. so will the constitution and its principles outlive the prejudices which would seek to overthrow it. what colored men of the south can do to secure their citizenship to-day, or in the immediate future, is not very clear. their utterances on political questions, unless they be to concede away the political rights of their race, or to soothe the consciences of white men by suggesting that the problem is insoluble except by some slow remedial process which will become effectual only in the distant future, are received with scant respect--could scarcely, indeed, be otherwise received, without a voting constituency to back them up,--and must be cautiously made, lest they meet an actively hostile reception. but there are many colored men at the north, where their civil and political rights in the main are respected. there every honest man has a vote, which he may freely cast, and which is reasonably sure to be fairly counted. when this race develops a sufficient power of combination, under adequate leadership,--and there are signs already that this time is near at hand,--the northern vote can be wielded irresistibly for the defense of the rights of their southern brethren. in the meantime the northern colored men have the right of free speech, and they should never cease to demand their rights, to clamor for them, to guard them jealously, and insistently to invoke law and public sentiment to maintain them. he who would be free must learn to protect his freedom. eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. he who would be respected must respect himself. the best friend of the negro is he who would rather see, within the borders of this republic one million free citizens of that race, equal before the law, than ten million cringing serfs existing by a contemptuous sufferance. a race that is willing to survive upon any other terms is scarcely worthy of consideration. the direct remedy for the disfranchisement of the negro lies through political action. one scarcely sees the philosophy of distinguishing between a civil and a political right. but the supreme court has recognized this distinction and has designated congress as the power to right a political wrong. the fifteenth amendment gives congress power to enforce its provisions. the power would seem to be inherent in government itself; but anticipating that the enforcement of the amendment might involve difficulty, they made the supererogatory declaration. moreover, they went further, and passed laws by which they provided for such enforcement. these the supreme court has so far declared insufficient. it is for congress to make more laws. it is for colored men and for white men who are not content to see the blood-bought results of the civil war nullified, to urge and direct public opinion to the point where it will demand stringent legislation to enforce the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. this demand will rest in law, in morals and in true statesmanship; no difficulties attending it could be worse than the present ignoble attitude of the nation toward its own laws and its own ideals--without courage to enforce them, without conscience to change them, the united states presents the spectacle of a nation drifting aimlessly, so far as this vital, national problem is concerned, upon the sea of irresolution, toward the maelstrom of anarchy. the right of congress, under the fourteenth amendment, to reduce southern representation can hardly be disputed. but congress has a simpler and more direct method to accomplish the same end. it is the sole judge of the qualifications of its own members, and the sole judge of whether any member presenting his credentials has met those qualifications. it can refuse to seat any member who comes from a district where voters have been disfranchised; it can judge for itself whether this has been done, and there is no appeal from its decision. if, when it has passed a law, any court shall refuse to obey its behests, it can impeach the judges. if any president refuse to lend the executive arm of the government to the enforcement of the law, it can impeach the president. no such extreme measures are likely to be necessary for the enforcement of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments--and the thirteenth, which is also threatened--but they are mentioned as showing that congress is supreme; and congress proceeds, the house directly, the senate indirectly, from the people and is governed by public opinion. if the reduction of southern representation were to be regarded in the light of a bargain by which the fifteenth amendment was surrendered, then it might prove fatal to liberty. if it be inflicted as a punishment and a warning, to be followed by more drastic measures if not sufficient, it would serve a useful purpose. the fifteenth amendment declares that the right to vote _shall not_ be denied or abridged on account of color; and any measure adopted by congress should look to that end. only as the power to injure the negro in congress is reduced thereby, would a reduction of representation protect the negro; without other measures it would still leave him in the hands of the southern whites, who could safely be trusted to make him pay for their humiliation. finally, there is, somewhere in the universe a "power that works for righteousness," and that leads men to do justice to one another. to this power, working upon the hearts and consciences of men, the negro can always appeal. he has the right upon his side, and in the end the right will prevail. the negro will, in time, attain to full manhood and citizenship throughout the united states. no better guaranty of this is needed than a comparison of his present with his past. toward this he must do his part, as lies within his power and his opportunity. but it will be, after all, largely a white man's conflict, fought out in the forum of the public conscience. the negro, though eager enough when opportunity offered, had comparatively little to do with the abolition of slavery, which was a vastly more formidable task than will be the enforcement of the fifteenth amendment. _the negro problem_, the broken road by a.e.w. mason author of "four feathers," "the truants," "running water," etc. contents chapter i. the breaking of the road ii. inside the fort iii. linforth's death iv. luffe looks forward v. a magazine article vi. a long walk vii. in the dauphinÉ viii. a string of pearls ix. luffe is remembered x. an unanswered question xi. at the gate of lahore xii. on the polo-ground xiii. the invidious bar xiv. in the courtyard xv. a question answered xvi. shere ali meets an old friend xvii. news from mecca xviii. sybil linforth's loyalty xix. a gift misunderstood xx. the soldier and the jew xxi. shere ali is claimed by chiltistan xxii. the casting of the die xxiii. shere ali's pilgrimage xxiv. news from ajmere xxv. in the rose garden xxvi. the breaking of the pitcher xxvii. an arrested confession xxviii. the thief xxix. mrs. oliver rides through peshawur xxx. the needed implement xxxi. an old tomb and a new shrine xxxii. surprises for captain phillips xxxiii. in the residency xxxiv. one of the little wars xxxv. a letter from violet xxxvi. "the little less--" chapter i the breaking of the road it was the road which caused the trouble. it usually is the road. that and a reigning prince who was declared by his uncle secretly to have sold his country to the british, and a half-crazed priest from out beyond the borders of afghanistan, who sat on a slab of stone by the river-bank and preached a _djehad_. but above all it was the road--linforth's road. it came winding down from the passes, over slopes of shale; it was built with wooden galleries along the precipitous sides of cliffs; it snaked treacherously further and further across the rich valley of chiltistan towards the hindu kush, until the people of that valley could endure it no longer. then suddenly from peshawur the wires began to flash their quiet and ominous messages. the road had been cut behind linforth and his coolies. no news had come from him. no supplies could reach him. luffe, who was in the country to the east of chiltistan, had been informed. he had gathered together what troops he could lay his hands on and had already started over the eastern passes to linforth's relief. but it was believed that the whole province of chiltistan had risen. moreover it was winter-time and the passes were deep in snow. the news was telegraphed to england. comfortable gentlemen read it in their first-class carriages as they travelled to the city and murmured to each other commonplaces about the price of empire. and in a house at the foot of the sussex downs linforth's young wife leaned over the cot of her child with the tears streaming from her eyes, and thought of the road with no less horror than the people of chiltistan. meanwhile the great men in calcutta began to mobilise a field force at nowshera, and all official india said uneasily, "thank heaven, luffe's on the spot." charles luffe had long since abandoned the army for the political service, and, indeed, he was fast approaching the time-limit of his career. he was a man of breadth and height, but rather heavy and dull of feature, with a worn face and a bald forehead. he had made enemies, and still made them, for he had not the art of suffering fools gladly; and, on the other hand, he made no friends. he had no sense of humour and no general information. he was, therefore, of no assistance at a dinner-party, but when there was trouble upon the frontier, or beyond it, he was usually found to be the chief agent in the settlement. luffe alone had foreseen and given warning of the danger. even linforth, who was actually superintending the making of the road, had been kept in ignorance. at times, indeed, some spokesman from among the merchants of kohara, the city of chiltistan where year by year the caravans from central asia met the caravans from central india, would come to his tent and expostulate. "we are better without the road, your excellency. will you kindly stop it!" the merchant would say; and linforth would then proceed to demonstrate how extremely valuable to the people of chiltistan a better road would be: "kohara is already a great mart. in your bazaars at summer-time you see traders from turkestan and tibet and siberia, mingling with the hindoo merchants from delhi and lahore. the road will bring you still more trade." the spokesman went back to the broad street of kohara seemingly well content, and inch by inch the road crept nearer to the capital. but luffe was better acquainted with the chiltis, a soft-spoken race of men, with musical, smooth voices and polite and pretty ways. but treachery was a point of honour with them and cold-blooded cruelty a habit. there was one particular story which luffe was accustomed to tell as illustrative of the chilti character. "there was a young man who lived with his mother in a little hamlet close to kohara. his mother continually urged him to marry, but for a long while he would not. he did not wish to marry. finally, however, he fell in love with a pretty girl, made her his wife, and brought her home, to his mother's delight. but the mother's delight lasted for just five days. she began to complain, she began to quarrel; the young wife replied, and the din of their voices greatly distressed the young man, besides making him an object of ridicule to his neighbours. one evening, in a fit of passion, both women said they would stand it no longer. they ran out of the house and up the hillside, but as there was only one path they ran away together, quarrelling as they went. then the young chilti rose, followed them, caught them up, tied them in turn hand and foot, laid them side by side on a slab of stone, and quietly cut their throats. "'women talk too much,' he said, as he came back to a house unfamiliarly quiet. 'one had really to put a stop to it.'" knowing this and many similar stories, luffe had been for some while on the alert. whispers reached him of dangerous talk in the bazaars of kohara, peshawur, and even of benares in india proper. he heard of the growing power of the old mullah by the river-bank. he was aware of the accusations against the ruling khan. he knew that after night had fallen wafadar nazim, the khan's uncle, a restless, ambitious, disloyal man, crept down to the river-bank and held converse with the priest. thus he was ready so far as he could be ready. the news that the road was broken was flashed to him from the nearest telegraph station, and within twenty-four hours he led out a small force from his agency--a battalion of sikhs, a couple of companies of gurkhas, two guns of a mountain battery, and a troop of irregular levies--and disappeared over the pass, now deep in snow. "would he be in time?" not only in india was the question asked. it was asked in england, too, in the clubs of pall mall, but nowhere with so passionate an outcry as in the house at the foot of the sussex downs. to sybil linforth these days were a time of intolerable suspense. the horror of the road was upon her. she dreamed of it when she slept, so that she came to dread sleep, and tried, as long as she might, to keep her heavy eyelids from closing over her eyes. the nights to her were terrible. now it was she, with her child in her arms, who walked for ever and ever along that road, toiling through snow or over shale and finding no rest anywhere. now it was her boy alone, who wandered along one of the wooden galleries high up above the river torrent, until a plank broke and he fell through with a piteous scream. now it was her husband, who could go neither forward nor backward, since in front and behind a chasm gaped. but most often it was a man--a young englishman, who pursued a young indian along that road into the mists. somehow, perhaps because it was inexplicable, perhaps because its details were so clear, this dream terrified her more than all the rest. she could tell the very dress of the indian who fled--a young man--young as his pursuer. a thick sheepskin coat swung aside as he ran and gave her a glimpse of gay silk; soft leather boots protected his feet; and upon his face there was a look of fury and wild fear. she never woke from this dream but her heart was beating wildly. for a few moments after waking peace would descend upon her. "it is a dream--all a dream," she would whisper to herself with contentment, and then the truth would break upon her dissociated from the dream. often she rose from her bed and, kneeling beside the boy's cot, prayed with a passionate heart that the curse of the road--that road predicted by a linforth years ago--might overpass this generation. meanwhile rumours came--rumours of disaster. finally a messenger broke through and brought sure tidings. luffe had marched quickly, had come within thirty miles of kohara before he was stopped. in a strong fort at a bend of the river the young khan with his wife and a few adherents had taken refuge. luffe joined the khan, sought to push through to kohara and rescue linforth, but was driven back. he and his troops and the khan were now closely besieged by wafadar nazim. the work of mobilisation was pressed on; a great force was gathered at nowshera; brigadier appleton was appointed to command it. "luffe will hold out," said official india, trying to be cheerful. perhaps the only man who distrusted luffe's ability to hold out was brigadier appleton, who had personal reasons for his views. brigadier appleton was no fool, and yet luffe had not suffered him gladly. all the more, therefore, did he hurry on the preparations. the force marched out on the new road to chiltistan. but meanwhile the weeks were passing, and up beyond the snow-encumbered hills the beleaguered troops stood cheerfully at bay behind the thick fort-walls. chapter ii inside the fort the six english officers made it a practice, so far as they could, to dine together; and during the third week of the siege the conversation happened one evening to take a particular turn. ever afterwards, during this one hour of the twenty-four, it swerved regularly into the same channel. the restaurants of london were energetically discussed, and their merits urged by each particular partisan with an enthusiasm which would have delighted a shareholder. where you got the best dinner, where the prettiest women were to be seen, whether a band was a drawback or an advantage--not a point was omitted, although every point had been debated yesterday or the day before. to-night the grave question of the proper number for a supper party was opened by major dewes of the th gurkha regiment. "two," said the political officer promptly, and he chuckled under his grey moustache. "i remember the last time i was in london i took out to supper--none of the coryphées you boys are so proud of being seen about with, but"--and, pausing impressively, he named a reigning lady of the light-opera stage. "you did!" exclaimed a subaltern. "i did," he replied complacently. "what did you talk about?" asked major dewes, and the political officer suddenly grew serious. "i was very interested," he said quietly. "i got knowledge which it was good for me to have. i saw something which it was well for me to see. i wished--i wish now--that some of the rulers and the politicians could have seen what i saw that night." a brief silence followed upon his words, and during that silence certain sounds became audible--the beating of tom-toms and the cries of men. the dinner-table was set in the verandah of an inner courtyard open to the sky, and the sounds descended into that well quite distinctly, but faintly, as if they were made at a distance in the dark, open country. the six men seated about the table paid no heed to those sounds; they had had them in their ears too long. and five of the six were occupied in wondering what in the world sir charles luffe, k.c.s.i., could have learnt of value to him at a solitary supper party with a lady of comic opera. for it was evident that he had spoken in deadly earnest. captain lynes of the sikhs broke the silence: "what's this?" he asked, as an orderly offered to him a dish. "let us not inquire too closely," said the political officer. "this is the fourth week of the siege." the rice-fields of the broad and fertile valley were trampled down and built upon with sangars. the siege had cut its scars upon the fort's rough walls of mud and projecting beams. but nowhere were its marks more visible than upon the faces of the englishmen in the verandah of that courtyard. dissimilar as they were in age and feature, sleepless nights and the unrelieved tension had given to their drawn faces almost a family likeness. they were men tired out, but as yet unaware of their exhaustion, so bright a flame burnt within each one of them. somewhere amongst the snow-passes on the north-east a relieving force would surely be encamped that night, a day's march nearer than it was yesterday. somewhere amongst the snow-passes in the south a second force would be surely advancing from nowshera, probably short of rations, certainly short of baggage, that it might march the lighter. when one of those two forces deployed across the valley and the gates of the fort were again thrown open to the air the weeks of endurance would exact their toll. but that time was not yet come. meanwhile the six men held on cheerily, inspiring the garrison with their own confidence, while day after day a province in arms flung itself in vain against their blood-stained walls. luffe, indeed, the political officer, fought with disease as well as with the insurgents of chiltistan; and though he remained the master-mind of the defence, the doctor never passed him without an anxious glance. for there were the signs of death upon his face. "the fourth week!" said lynes. "is it, by george? well, the siege won't last much longer now. the sirkar don't leave its servants in the lurch. that's what these hill-tribes never seem to understand. how is travers?" he asked of the doctor. travers, a subaltern of the north surrey light infantry, had been shot through the thigh in the covered waterway to the river that morning. "he's going on all right," replied the doctor. "travers had bad luck. it must have been a stray bullet which slipped through that chink in the stones. for he could not have been seen--" as he spoke a cry rang clearly out. all six men looked upwards through the open roof to the clear dark sky, where the stars shone frostily bright. "what was that?" asked one of the six. "hush," said luffe, and for a moment they all listened in silence, with expectant faces and their bodies alert to spring from their chairs. then the cry was heard again. it was a wail more than a cry, and it sounded strangely solitary, strangely sad, as it floated through the still air. there was the east in that cry trembling out of the infinite darkness above their heads. but the six men relaxed their limbs. they had expected the loud note of the pathan war-cry to swell sonorously, and with intervals shorter and shorter until it became one menacing and continuous roar. "it is someone close under the walls," said luffe, and as he ended a sikh orderly appeared at the entrance of a passage into the courtyard, and, advancing to the table, saluted. "sahib, there is a man who claims that he comes with a message from wafadar nazim." "tell him that we receive no messages at night, as wafadar nazim knows well. let him come in the morning and he shall be admitted. tell him that if he does not go back at once the sentinels will fire." and luffe nodded to one of the younger officers. "do you see to it, haslewood." haslewood rose and went out from the courtyard with the orderly. he returned in a few minutes, saying that the man had returned to wafadar nazim's camp. the six men resumed their meal, and just as they ended it a pathan glided in white flowing garments into the courtyard and bowed low. "huzoor," he said, "his highness the khan sends you greeting. god has been very good to him. a son has been born to him this day, and he sends you this present, knowing that you will value it more than all that he has"; and carefully unfolding a napkin, he laid with reverence upon the table a little red cardboard box. the mere look of the box told the six men what the present was even before luffe lifted the lid. it was a box of fifty gold-tipped cigarettes, and applause greeted their appearance. "if he could only have a son every day," said lynes, and in the laugh which followed upon the words luffe alone did not join. he leaned his forehead upon his hand and sat in a moody silence. then he turned towards the servant and bade him thank his master. "i will come myself to offer our congratulations after dinner if his highness will receive me," said luffe. the box of cigarettes went round the table. each man took one, lighted it, and inhaled the smoke silently and very slowly. the garrison had run out of tobacco a week before. now it had come to them welcome as a gift from heaven. the moment was one of which the perfect enjoyment was not to be marred by any speech. only a grunt of satisfaction or a deep sigh of pleasure was now and then to be heard, as the smoke curled upwards from the little paper sticks. each man competed with his neighbour in the slowness of his respiration, each man wanted to be the last to lay down his cigarette and go about his work. and then the doctor said in a whisper to major dewes: "that's bad. look!" luffe, a mighty smoker in his days of health, had let his cigarette go out, had laid it half-consumed upon the edge of his plate. but it seemed that ill-health was not all to blame. he had the look of one who had forgotten his company. he was withdrawn amongst his own speculations, and his eyes looked out beyond that smoke-laden room in a fort amongst the himalaya mountains into future years dim with peril and trouble. "there is no moon," he said at length. "we can get some exercise to-night"; and he rose from the table and ascended a little staircase on to the flat roof of the fort. major dewes and the three other officers got up and went about their business. dr. bodley, the surgeon, alone remained seated. he waited until the tramp of his companions' feet had died away, and then he drew from his pocket a briarwood pipe, which he polished lovingly. he walked round the table and, collecting the ends of the cigarettes, pressed them into the bowl of the pipe. "thank heavens i am not an executive officer," he said, as he lighted his pipe and settled himself again comfortably in his chair. it should be mentioned, perhaps, that he not only doctored and operated on the sick and wounded, but he kept the stores, and when any fighting was to be done, took a rifle and filled any place which might be vacant in the firing-line. "there are now forty-four cigarettes," he reflected. "at six a day they will last a week. in a week something will have happened. either the relieving force will be here, or--yes, decidedly something will have happened." and as he blew the smoke out from between his lips he added solemnly: "if not to us, to the political officer." meanwhile luffe paced the roof of the fort in the darkness. the fort was built in the bend of a swift, wide river, and so far as three sides were concerned was securely placed. for on three the low precipitous cliffs overhung the tumbling water. on the fourth, however, the fertile plain of the valley stretched open and flat up to the very gates. in front of the forts a line of sangars extended, the position of each being marked even now by a glare of light above it, which struck up from the fire which the insurgents had lit behind the walls of stone. and from one and another of the sangars the monotonous beat of a tom-tom came to luffe's ears. luffe walked up and down for a time upon the roof. there was a new sangar to-night, close to the north tower, which had not existed yesterday. moreover, the almond trees in the garden just outside the western wall were in blossom, and the leaves upon the branches were as a screen, where only the bare trunks showed a fortnight ago. but with these matters luffe was not at this moment concerned. they helped the enemy, they made the defence more arduous, but they were trivial in his thoughts. indeed, the siege itself was to him an unimportant thing. even if the fortress fell, even if every man within perished by the sword--why, as lynes had said, the sirkar does not forget its servants. the relieving force might march in too late, but it would march in. men would die, a few families in england would wear mourning, the government would lose a handful of faithful servants. england would thrill with pride and anger, and the rebellion would end as rebellions always ended. luffe was troubled for quite another cause. he went down from the roof, walked by courtyard and winding passage to the quarters of the khan. a white-robed servant waited for him at the bottom of a broad staircase in a room given up to lumber. a broken bicycle caught luffe's eye. on the ledge of a window stood a photographic camera. luffe mounted the stairs and was ushered into the khan's presence. he bowed with deference and congratulated the khan upon the birth of his heir. "i have been thinking," said the khan--"ever since my son was born i have been thinking. i have been a good friend to the english. i am their friend and servant. news has come to me of their cities and colleges. i will send my son to england, that he may learn your wisdom, and so return to rule over his kingdom. much good will come of it." luffe had expected the words. the young khan had a passion for things english. the bicycle and the camera were signs of it. unwise men had applauded his enlightenment. unwise at all events in luffe's opinion. it was, indeed, greatly because of his enlightenment that he and a handful of english officers and troops were beleaguered in the fortress. "he shall go to eton and to oxford, and much good for my people will come of it," said the khan. luffe listened gravely and politely; but he was thinking of an evening when he had taken out to supper a reigning queen of comic opera. the recollection of that evening remained with him when he ascended once more to the roof of the fort and saw the light of the fires above the sangars. a voice spoke at his elbow. "there is a new sangar being built in the garden. we can hear them at work," said dewes. luffe walked cautiously along the roof to the western end. quite clearly they could hear the spades at work, very near to the wall, amongst the almond and the mulberry trees. "get a fireball," said luffe in a whisper, "and send up a dozen sikhs." on the parapet of the roof a rough palisade of planks had been erected to protect the defenders from the riflemen in the valley and across the river. behind this palisade the sikhs crept silently to their positions. a ball made of pinewood chips and straw, packed into a covering of canvas, was brought on to the roof and saturated with kerosene oil. "are you ready?" said luffe; "then now!" upon the word the fireball was lit and thrown far out. it circled through the air, dropped, and lay blazing upon the ground. by its light under the branches of the garden trees could be seen the pathans building a stone sangar, within thirty yards of the fort's walls. "fire!" cried luffe. "choose your men and fire." all at once the silence of the night was torn by the rattle of musketry, and afar off the tom-toms beat yet more loudly. luffe looked on with every faculty alert. he saw with a smile that the doctor had joined them and lay behind a plank, firing rapidly and with a most accurate aim. but at the back of his mind all the while that he gave his orders was still the thought, "all this is nothing. the one fateful thing is the birth of a son to the khan of chiltistan." the little engagement lasted for about half an hour. the insurgents then drew back from the garden, leaving their dead upon the field. the rattle of the musketry ceased altogether. behind the parapet one sikh had been badly wounded by a bullet in the thigh. already the doctor was attending to his hurts. "it is a small thing, huzoor," said the wounded soldier, looking upwards to luffe, who stood above him; "a very small thing," but even as he spoke pain cut the words short. "yes, a small thing"; luffe did not speak the words, but he thought them. he turned away and walked back again across the roof. the new sangar would not be built that night. but it was a small thing compared with all that lay hidden in the future. as he paced that side of the fort which faced the plain there rose through the darkness, almost beneath his feet, once more the cry which had reached his ears while he sat at dinner in the courtyard. he heard a few paces from him the sharp order to retire given by a sentinel. but the voice rose again, claiming admission to the fort, and this time a name was uttered urgently, an english name. "don't fire," cried luffe to the sentinel, and he leaned over the wall. "you come from wafadar nazim, and alone?" "huzoor, my life be on it." "with news of sahib linforth?" "yes, news which his highness wafadar nazim thinks it good for you to know"; and the voice in the darkness rose to insolence. luffe strained his eyes downwards. he could see nothing. he listened, but he could hear no whispering voices. he hesitated. he was very anxious to hear news of linforth. "i will let you in," he cried; "but if there be more than one the lives of all shall be the price." he went down into the fort. under his orders captain lynes drew up inside the gate a strong guard of sikhs with their rifles loaded and bayonets fixed. a few lanterns threw a dim light upon the scene, glistening here and there upon the polish of an accoutrement or a rifle-barrel. "present," whispered lynes, and the rifles were raised to the shoulder, with every muzzle pointing towards the gate. then lynes himself went forward, removed the bars, and turned the key in the lock. the gate swung open noiselessly a little way, and a tall man, clad in white flowing robes, with a deeply pock-marked face and a hooked nose, walked majestically in. he stood quite still while the gate was barred again behind him, and looked calmly about him with inquisitive bright eyes. "will you follow me?" said luffe, and he led the way through the rabbit-warren of narrow alleys into the centre of the fort. chapter iii linforth's death luffe had taken a large bare low-roofed room supported upon pillars for his council-chamber. thither he conducted his visitor. camp chairs were placed for himself and major dewes and captain lynes. cushions were placed upon the ground for his visitor. luffe took his seat in the middle, with dewes upon his right and lynes upon his left. dewes expected him at once to press for information as to linforth. but luffe knew very well that certain time must first be wasted in ceremonious preliminaries. the news would only be spoken after a time and in a roundabout fashion. "if we receive you without the distinction which is no doubt your due," said luffe politely, "you must remember that i make it a rule not to welcome visitors at night." the visitor smiled and bowed. "it is a great grief to his highness wafadar nazim that you put so little faith in him," replied the chilti. "see how he trusts you! he sends me, his diwan, his minister of finance, in the night time to come up to your walls and into your fort, so great is his desire to learn that the colonel sahib is well." luffe in his turn bowed with a smile of gratitude. it was not the time to point out that his highness wafadar nazim was hardly taking the course which a genuine solicitude for the colonel sahib's health would recommend. "his highness has but one desire in his heart. he desires peace--peace so that this country may prosper, and peace because of his great love for the colonel sahib." again luffe bowed. "but to all his letters the colonel sahib returns the same answer, and truly his highness is at a loss what to do in order that he may ensure the safety of the colonel sahib and his followers," the diwan continued pensively. "i will not repeat what has been already said," and at once he began at interminable length to contradict his words. he repeated the proposals of surrender made by wafadar nazim from beginning to end. the colonel sahib was to march out of the fort with his troops, and his highness would himself conduct him into british territory. "if the colonel sahib dreads the censure of his own government, his highness will take all the responsibility for the colonel sahib's departure. but no blame will fall upon the colonel sahib. for the british government, with whom wafadar nazim has always desired to live in amity, desires peace too, as it has always said. it is the british government which has broken its treaties." "not so," replied luffe. "the road was undertaken with the consent of the khan of chiltistan, who is the ruler of this country, and wafadar, his uncle, merely the rebel. therefore take back my last word to wafadar nazim. let him make submission to me as representative of the sirkar, and lay down his arms. then i will intercede for him with the government, so that his punishment be light." the diwan smiled and his voice changed once more to a note of insolence. "his highness wafadar nazim is now the khan of chiltistan. the other, the deposed, lies cooped up in this fort, a prisoner of the british, whose willing slave he has always been. the british must retire from our country. his highness wafadar nazim desires them no harm. but they must go now!" luffe looked sternly at the diwan. "tell wafadar nazim to have a care lest they go never, but set their foot firmly upon the neck of this rebellious people." he rose to signify that the conference was at an end. but the diwan did not stir. he smiled pensively and played with the tassels of his cushion. "and yet," he said, "how true it is that his highness thinks only of the colonel sahib's safety." some note of satisfaction, not quite perfectly concealed, some sly accent of triumph sounding through the gently modulated words, smote upon luffe's ears, and warned him that the true meaning of the diwan's visit was only now to be revealed. all that had gone before was nothing. the polite accusations, the wordy repetitions, the expressions of good will--these were the mere preliminaries, the long salute before the combat. luffe steeled himself against a blow, controlling his face and his limbs lest a look or a gesture should betray the hurt. and it was well that he did, for the next moment the blow fell. "for bad news has come to us. sahib linforth met his death two days ago, fifty miles from here, in the camp of his excellency abdulla mahommed, the commander-in-chief to his highness. abdulla mahommed is greatly grieved, knowing well that this violent act will raise up a prejudice against him and his highness. moreover, he too would live in friendship with the british. but his soldiers are justly provoked by the violation of treaties by the british, and it is impossible to stay their hands. therefore, before abdulla mahommed joins hands with my master, wafadar nazim, before this fort, it will be well for the colonel sahib and his troops to be safely out of reach." luffe was doubtful whether to believe the words or no. the story might be a lie to frighten him and to discourage the garrison. on the other hand, it was likely enough to be true. and if true, it was the worst news which luffe had heard for many a long day. "let me hear how the accident--occurred," he said, smiling grimly at the euphemism he used. "sahib linforth was in the tent set apart for him by abdulla mahommed. there were guards to protect him, but it seems they did not watch well. huzoor, all have been punished, but punishment will not bring sahib linforth to life again. therefore hear the words of wafadar nazim, spoken now for the last time. he himself will escort you and your soldiers and officers to the borders of british territory, so that he may rejoice to know that you are safe. you will leave his highness mir ali behind, who will resign his throne in favour of his uncle wafadar, and so there will be peace." "and what will happen to mir ali, whom we have promised to protect?" the diwan shrugged his shoulders in a gentle, deprecatory fashion and smiled his melancholy smile. his gesture and his attitude suggested that it was not in the best of taste to raise so unpleasant a question. but he did not reply in words. "you will tell wafadar nazim that we will know how to protect his highness the khan, and that we will teach abdulla mahommed a lesson in that respect before many moons have passed," luffe said sternly. "as for this story of sahib linforth, i do not believe a word of it." the diwan nodded his head. "it was believed that you would reply in this way. "therefore here are proofs." he drew from his dress a silver watch upon a leather watch-guard, a letter-case, and to these he added a letter in linforth's own hand. he handed them to luffe. luffe handed the watch and chain to dewes, and opened the letter-case. there was a letter in it, written in a woman's handwriting, and besides the letter the portrait of a girl. he glanced at the letter and glanced at the portrait. then he passed them on to dewes. dewes looked at the portrait with a greater care. the face was winning rather than pretty. it seemed to him that it was one of those faces which might become beautiful at many moments through the spirit of the woman, rather than from any grace of feature. if she loved, for instance, she would be really beautiful for the man she loved. "i wonder who she is," he said thoughtfully. "i know," replied luffe, almost carelessly. he was immersed in the second letter which the diwan had handed to him. "who is it?" asked dewes. "linforth's wife." "his wife!" exclaimed dewes, and, looking at the photograph again, he said in a low voice which was gentle with compassion, "poor woman!" "yes, yes. poor woman!" said luffe, and he went on reading his letter. it was characteristic of luffe that he should feel so little concern in the domestic side of linforth's life. he was not very human in his outlook on the world. questions of high policy interested and engrossed his mind; he lived for the frontier, not so much subduing a man's natural emotions as unaware of them. men figured in his thoughts as the instruments of policy; their womenfolk as so many hindrances or aids to the fulfilment of their allotted tasks. thus linforth's death troubled him greatly, since linforth was greatly concerned in one great undertaking. moreover, the scheme had been very close to linforth's heart, even as it was to luffe's. but linforth's wife was in england, and thus, as it seemed to him, neither aid nor impediment. but in that he was wrong. she had been the mainspring of linforth's energy, and so much was evident in the letter which luffe read slowly to the end. "yes, linforth's dead," said he, with a momentary discouragement. "there are many whom we could more easily have spared. of course the thing will go on. that's certain," he said, nodding his head. a cold satisfaction shone in his eyes. "but linforth was part of the thing." he passed the second letter to dewes, who read it; and for a while both men remained thoughtful and, as it seemed, unaware for the moment of the diwan's presence. there was this difference, however. luffe was thinking of "the thing"; dewes was pondering on the grim little tragedy which these letters revealed, and thanking heaven in all simplicity of heart that there was no woman waiting in fear because of him and trembling at sight of each telegraph boy she met upon the road. the grim little tragedy was not altogether uncommon upon the indian frontier, but it gained vividness from the brevity of the letters which related it. the first one, that in the woman's hand, written from a house under the downs of sussex, told of the birth of a boy in words at once sacred and simple. they were written for the eyes of one man, and major dewes had a feeling that his own, however respectfully, violated their sanctity. the second letter was an unfinished one written by the husband to the wife from his tent amongst the rabble of abdulla mahommed. linforth clearly understood that this was the last letter he would write. "i am sitting writing this by the light of a candle. the tent door is open. in front of me i can see the great snow-mountains. all the ugliness of the lower shale slopes is hidden. by such a moonlight, my dear, may you always look back upon my memory. for it is over, sybil. they are waiting until i fall asleep. i have been warned of it. but i shall fall asleep to-night. i have kept awake for two nights. i am very tired." he had fallen asleep even before the letter was completed. there was a message for the boy and a wish: "may he meet a woman like you, my dear, when his time comes, and love her as i love you," and again came the phrase, "i am very tired." it spoke of the boy's school, and continued: "whether he will come out here it is too early to think about. but the road will not be finished--and i wonder. if he wants to, let him! we linforths belong to the road," and for the third time the phrase recurred, "i am very tired," and upon the phrase the letter broke off. dewes could imagine linforth falling forward with his head upon his hands, his eyes heavy with sleep, while from without the tent the patient chiltis watched until he slept. "how did it happen?" he asked. "they cast a noose over his head," replied the diwan, "dragged him from the tent and stabbed him." dewes nodded and turned to luffe. "these letters and things must go home to his wife. it's hard on her, with a boy only a few months old." "a boy?" said luffe, rousing himself from his thoughts. "oh! there's a boy? i had not noticed that. i wonder how far the road will have gone when he comes out." there was no doubt in luffe's mind, at all events, as to the boy's destiny. he turned to the diwan. "tell wafadar nazim that i will open the gates of this fort and march down to british territory after he has made submission," he said. the diwan smiled in a melancholy way. he had done his best, but the british were, of course, all mad. he bowed himself out of the room and stalked through the alleys to the gates. "wafadar nazim must be very sure of victory," said luffe. "he would hardly have given us that unfinished letter had he a fear we should escape him in the end." "he could not read what was written," said dewes. "but he could fear what was written," replied luffe. as he walked across the courtyard he heard the crack of a rifle. the sound came from across the river. the truce was over, the siege was already renewed. chapter iv luffe looks forward it was the mine underneath the north tower which brought the career of luffe to an end. the garrison, indeed, had lived in fear of this peril ever since the siege began. but inasmuch as no attempt to mine had been made during the first month, the fear had grown dim. it was revived during the fifth week. the officers were at mess at nine o'clock in the evening, when a havildar of sikhs burst into the courtyard with the news that the sound of a pick could be heard from the chamber of the tower. "at last!" cried dewes, springing to his feet. the six men hurried to the tower. a long loophole had been fashioned in the thick wall on a downward slant, so that a marksman might command anyone who crept forward to fire the fort. against this loophole luffe leaned his ear. "do you hear anything, sir?" asked a subaltern of the sappers who was attached to the force. "hush!" said luffe. he listened, and he heard quite clearly underneath the ground below him the dull shock of a pickaxe. the noise came almost from beneath his feet; so near the mine had been already driven to the walls. the strokes fell with the regularity of the ticking of a clock. but at times the sound changed in character. the muffled thud of the pick upon earth became a clang as it struck upon stone. "do you listen!" said luffe, giving way to dewes, and dewes in his turn leaned his ear against the loophole. "what do you think?" asked luffe. dewes stood up straight again. "i'll tell you what i am thinking. i am thinking it sounds like the beating of a clock in a room where a man lies dying," he said. luffe nodded his head. but images and romantic sayings struck no response from him. he turned to the young sapper. "can we countermine?" the young engineer took the place of major dewes. "we can try, but we are late," said he. "it must be a sortie then," said luffe. "yes," exclaimed lynes eagerly. "let me go, sir charles!" luffe smiled at his enthusiasm. "how many men will you require?" he asked. "sixty?" "a hundred," replied dewes promptly. all that night luffe superintended the digging of the countermine, while dewes made ready for the sortie. by daybreak the arrangements were completed. the gunpowder bags, with their fuses attached, were distributed, the gates were suddenly flung open, and lynes raced out with a hundred ghurkhas and sikhs across the fifty yards of open ground to the sangar behind which the mine shaft had been opened. the work of the hundred men was quick and complete. within half an hour, lynes, himself wounded, had brought back his force, and left the mine destroyed. but during that half-hour disaster had fallen upon the garrison. luffe had dropped as he was walking back across the courtyard to his office. for a few minutes he lay unnoticed in the empty square, his face upturned to the sky, and then a clamorous sound of lamentation was heard and an orderly came running through the alleys of the fort, crying out that the colonel sahib was dead. he was not dead, however. he recovered conciousness that night, and early in the morning dewes was roused from his sleep. he woke to find the doctor shaking him by the shoulder. "luffe wants you. he has not got very long now. he has something to say." dewes slipped on his clothes, and hurried down the stairs. he followed the doctor through the little winding alleys which gave to the fort the appearance of a tiny village. it was broad daylight, but the fortress was strangely silent. the people whom he passed either spoke not at all or spoke only in low tones. they sat huddled in groups, waiting. fear was abroad that morning. it was known that the brain of the defence was dying. it was known, too, what cruel fate awaited those within the fort, if those without ever forced the gates and burst in upon their victims. dewes found the political officer propped up on pillows on his camp-bed. the door from the courtyard was open, and the morning light poured brightly into the room. "sit here, close to me, dewes," said luffe in a whisper, "and listen, for i am very tired." a smile came upon his face. "do you remember linforth's letters? how that phrase came again and again: 'i am very tired.'" the doctor arranged the pillows underneath his shoulders, and then luffe said: "all right. i shall do now." he waited until the doctor had gone from the room and continued: "i am not going to talk to you about the fort. the defence is safe in your hands, so long as defence is possible. besides, if it falls it's not a great thing. the troops will come up and trample down wafadar nazim and abdulla mahommed. they are not the danger. the road will go on again, even though linforth's dead. no, the man whom i am afraid of is--the son of the khan." dewes stared, and then said in a soothing voice: "he will be looked after." "you think my mind's wandering," continued luffe. "it never was clearer in my life. the khan's son is a boy a week old. nevertheless i tell you that boy is the danger in chiltistan. the father--we know him. a good fellow who has lost all the confidence of his people. there is hardly an adherent of his who genuinely likes him; there's hardly a man in this fort who doesn't believe that he wished to sell his country to the british. i should think he is impossible here in the future. and everyone in government house knows it. we shall do the usual thing, i have no doubt--pension him off, settle him down comfortably outside the borders of chiltistan, and rule the country as trustee for his son--until the son comes of age." dewes realised surely enough that luffe was in possession of his faculties, but he thought his anxiety exaggerated. "you are looking rather far ahead, aren't you, sir?" he asked. luffe smiled. "twenty-one years. what are twenty-one years to india? my dear dewes!" he was silent. it seemed as though he were hesitating whether he would say a word more to this major who in india talked of twenty-one years as a long span of time. but there was no one else to whom he could confide his fears. if dewes was not brilliant, he was at all events all that there was. "i wish i was going to live," he cried in a low voice of exasperation. "i wish i could last just long enough to travel down to calcutta and _make_ them listen to me. but there's no hope of it. you must do what you can, dewes, but very likely they won't pay any attention to you. very likely you'll believe me wrong yourself, eh? poor old luffe, a man with a bee in his bonnet, eh?" he whispered savagely. "no, sir," replied dewes. "you know the frontier. i know that." "and even there you are wrong. no man knows the frontier. we are all stumbling in the dark among these peoples, with their gentle voices and their cut-throat ways. the most that you can know is that you are stumbling in the dark. well, let's get back to the boy here. this country will be kept for him, for twenty-one years. where is he going to be during those twenty-one years?" dewes caught at the question as an opportunity for reassuring the political officer. "why, sir, the khan told us. have you forgotten? he is to go to eton and oxford. he'll see something of england. he will learn--" and major dewes stopped short, baffled by the look of hopelessness upon the political officer's face. "i think you are all mad," said luffe, and he suddenly started up in his bed and cried with vehemence, "you take these boys to england. you train them in the ways of the west, the ideas of the west, and then you send them back again to the east, to rule over eastern people, according to eastern ideas, and you think all is well. i tell you, dewes, it's sheer lunacy. of course it's true--this boy won't perhaps suffer in esteem among his people quite as much as others have done. he belongs and his people belong to the maulai sect. the laws of religion are not strict among them. they drink wine, they eat what they will, they do not lose caste so easily. but you have to look at the man as he will be, the hybrid mixture of east and west." he sank back among his pillows, exhausted by the violence of his outcry, and for a little while he was silent. then he began again, but this time in a low, pleading voice, which was very unusual in him, and which kept the words he spoke vivid and fresh in dewes' memory for many years to come. indeed, dewes would not have believed that luffe could have spoken on any subject with so much wistfulness. "listen to me, dewes. i have lived for the frontier. i have had no other interest, almost no other ties. i am not a man of friends. i believed at one time linforth was my friend. i believed i liked him very much. but i think now that it was only because he was bound up with the frontier. the frontier has been my wife, my children, my home, my one long and lasting passion. and i am very well content that it has been so. i don't regret missed opportunities of happiness. what i regret is that i shall not be alive in twenty-one years to avert the danger i foresee, or to laugh at my fears if i am wrong. they can do what they like in rajputana and bengal and bombay. but on the frontier i want things to go well. oh, how i want them to go well!" luffe had grown very pale, and the sweat glistened upon his forehead. dewes held to his lips a glass of brandy which stood upon a table beside the bed. "what danger do you foresee?" asked dewes. "i will remember what you say." "yes, remember it; write it out, so that you may remember it, and din it into their ears at government house," said luffe. "you take these boys, you give them oxford, a season in london--did you ever have a season in london when you were twenty-one, dewes? you show them paris. you give them opportunities of enjoyment, such as no other age, no other place affords--has ever afforded. you give them, for a short while, a life of colour, of swift crowding hours of pleasure, and then you send them back--to settle down in their native states, and obey the orders of the resident. do you think they will be content? do you think they will have their heart in their work, in their humdrum life, in their elaborate ceremonies? oh, there are instances enough to convince if only people would listen. there's a youth now in the south, the heir of an indian throne--he has six weeks' holiday. how does he use it, do you think? he travels hard to england, spends a week there, and travels back again. in england he is treated as an _equal_; here, in spite of his ceremonies, he is an _inferior_, and will and must be so. the best you can hope is that he will be merely unhappy. you pray that he won't take to drink and make his friends among the jockeys and the trainers. he has lost the taste for the native life, and nevertheless he has got to live it. besides--besides--i haven't told you the worst of it." dewes leaned forward. the sincerity of luffe had gained upon him. "let me hear all," he said. "there is the white woman," continued luffe. "the english woman, the english girl, with her daintiness, her pretty frocks, her good looks, her delicate charm. very likely she only thinks of him as a picturesque figure; she dances with him, but she does not take him seriously. yes, but he may take her seriously, and often does. what then? when he is told to go back to his state and settle down, what then? will he be content with a wife of his own people? he is already a stranger among his own folk. he will eat out his heart with bitterness and jealousy. and, mind you, i am speaking of the best--the best of the princes and the best of the english women. what of the others? the english women who take his pearls, and the princes who come back and boast of their success. do you think that is good for british rule in india? give me something to drink!" luffe poured out his vehement convictions to his companion, wishing with all his heart that he had one of the great ones of the viceroy's council at his side, instead of this zealous but somewhat commonplace major of a sikh regiment. all the more, therefore, must he husband his strength, so that all that he had in mind might be remembered. there would be little chance, perhaps, of it bearing fruit. still, even that little chance must be grasped. and so in that high castle beneath the himalayas, besieged by insurgent tribes, a dying political officer discoursed upon this question of high policy. "i told you of a supper i had one night at the savoy--do you remember? you all looked sufficiently astonished when i told you to bear it in mind." "yes, i remember," said dewes. "very well. i told you i learned something from the lady who was with me which it was good for me to know. i saw something which it was good for me to see. good--yes, but not pleasant either to know or see. there was a young prince in england then. he dined in high places and afterwards supped at the savoy with the _coryphées;_ and both in the high places and among the _coryphées_ his jewels had made him welcome. this is truth i am telling you. he was a boaster. well, after supper that night he threw a girl down the stairs. never mind what she was--she was of the white ruling race, she was of the race that rules in india, he comes back to india and insolently boasts. do you approve? do you think that good?" "i think it's horrible," exclaimed dewes. "well, i have done," said luffe. "this youngster is to go to oxford. unhappiness and the distrust of his own people will be the best that can come of it, while ruin and disasters very well may. there are many ways of disaster. suppose, for instance, this boy were to turn out a strong man. do you see?" dewes nodded his head. "yes, i see," he answered, and he answered so because he saw that luffe had come to the end of his strength. his voice had weakened, he lay with his eyes sunk deep in his head and a leaden pallor upon his face, and his breath laboured as he spoke. "i am glad," replied luffe, "that you understand." but it was not until many years had passed that dewes saw and understood the trouble which was then stirring in luffe's mind. and even then, when he did see and understand, he wondered how much luffe really had foreseen. enough, at all events, to justify his reputation for sagacity. dewes went out from the bedroom and climbed up on to the roof of the fort. the sun was up, the day already hot, and would have been hotter, but that a light wind stirred among the almond trees in the garden. the leaves of those trees now actually brushed against the fort walls. five weeks ago there had been bare stems and branches. suddenly a rifle cracked, a little puff of smoke rose close to a boulder on the far side of the river, a bullet sang in the air past dewes' head. he ducked behind the palisade of boards. another day had come. for another day the flag, manufactured out of some red cloth, a blue turban and some white cotton, floated overhead. meanwhile, somewhere among the passes, the relieving force was already on the march. late that afternoon luffe died, and his body was buried in the fort. he had done his work. for two days afterwards the sound of a battle was heard to the south, the siege was raised, and in the evening the brigadier-general in command rode up to the gates and found a tired and haggard group of officers awaiting him. they received him without cheers or indeed any outward sign of rejoicing. they waited in a dead silence, like beaten and dispirited men. they were beginning to pay the price of their five weeks' siege. the brigadier looked at the group. "what of luffe?" he asked. "dead, sir," replied dewes. "a great loss," said brigadier appleton solemnly. but he was paying his tribute rather to the class to which luffe belonged than to the man himself. luffe was a man of independent views, brigadier appleton a soldier clinging to tradition. moreover, there had been an encounter between the two in which luffe had prevailed. the brigadier paid a ceremonious visit to the khan on the following morning, and once more the khan expounded his views as to the education of his son. but he expounded them now to sympathetic ears. "i think that his excellency disapproved of my plan," said the khan. "did he?" cried brigadier appleton. "on some points i am inclined to think that luffe's views were not always sound. certainly let the boy go to eton and oxford. a fine idea, your highness. the training will widen his mind, enlarge his ideas, and all that sort of thing. i will myself urge upon the government's advisers the wisdom of your highness' proposal." moreover dewes failed to carry luffe's dying message to calcutta. for on one point--a point of fact--luffe was immediately proved wrong. mir ali, the khan of chiltistan, was retained upon his throne. dewes turned the matter over in his slow mind. wrong definitely, undeniably wrong on the point of fact, was it not likely that luffe was wrong too on the point of theory? dewes had six months furlong too, besides, and was anxious to go home. it would be a bore to travel to bombay by way of calcutta. "let the boy go to eton and oxford!" he said. "why not?" and the years answered him. chapter v a magazine article the little war of chiltistan was soon forgotten by the world. but it lived vividly enough in the memories of a few people to whom it had brought either suffering or fresh honours. but most of all it was remembered by sybil linforth, so that even after fourteen years a chance word, or a trivial coincidence, would bring back to her the horror and the misery of that time as freshly as if only a single day had intervened. such a coincidence happened on this morning of august. she was in the garden with her back to the downs which rose high from close behind the house, and she was looking across the fields rich with orchards and yellow crops. she saw a small figure climb a stile and come towards the house along a footpath, increasing in stature as it approached. it was colonel dewes, and her thoughts went back to the day when first, with reluctant steps, he had walked along that path, carrying with him a battered silver watch and chain and a little black leather letter-case. because of that memory she advanced slowly towards him now. "i did not know that you were home," she said, as they shook hands. "when did you land?" "yesterday. i am home for good now. my time is up." sybil linforth looked quickly at his face and turned away. "you are sorry?" she said gently. "yes. i don't feel old, you see. i feel as if i had many years' good work in me yet. but there! that's the trouble with the mediocre men. they are shelved before they are old. i am one of them." he laughed as he spoke, and looked at his companion. sybil linforth was now thirty-eight years old, but the fourteen years had not set upon her the marks of their passage as they had upon dewes. indeed, she still retained a look of youth, and all the slenderness of her figure. dewes grumbled to her with a smile upon his face. "i wonder how in the world you do it. here am i white-haired and creased like a dry pippin. there are you--" and he broke off. "i suppose it's the boy who keeps you young. how is he?" a look of anxiety troubled mrs. linforth's face; into her eyes there came a glint of fear. colonel dewes' voice became gentle with concern. "what's the matter, sybil?" he said. "is he ill?" "no, he is quite well." "then what is it?" sybil linforth looked down for a moment at the gravel of the garden-path. then, without raising her eyes, she said in a low voice: "i am afraid." "ah," said dewes, as he rubbed his chin, "i see." it was his usual remark when he came against anything which he did not understand. "you must let me have him for a week or two sometimes, sybil. boys will get into trouble, you know. it is their nature to. and sometimes a man may be of use in putting things straight." the hint of a smile glimmered about sybil linforth's mouth, but she repressed it. she would not for worlds have let her friend see it, lest he might be hurt. "no," she replied, "dick is not in any trouble. but--" and she struggled for a moment with a feeling that she ought not to say what she greatly desired to say; that speech would be disloyal. but the need to speak was too strong within her, her heart too heavily charged with fear. "i will tell you," she said, and, with a glance towards the open windows of the house, she led colonel dewes to a corner of the garden where, upon a grass mound, there was a garden seat. from this seat one overlooked the garden hedge. to the left, the little village of poynings with its grey church and tall tapering spire, lay at the foot of the gap in the downs where runs the brighton road. behind them the downs ran like a rampart to right and left, their steep green sides scarred here and there by landslips and showing the white chalk. far away the high trees of chanctonbury ring stood out against the sky. "dick has secrets," sybil said, "secrets from me. it used not to be so. i have always known how a want of sympathy makes a child hide what he feels and thinks, and drives him in upon himself, to feed his thoughts with imaginings and dreams. i have seen it. i don't believe that anything but harm ever comes of it. it builds up a barrier which will last for life. i did not want that barrier to rise between dick and me--i--" and her voice shook a little--"i should be very unhappy if it were to rise. so i have always tried to be his friend and comrade, rather than his mother." "yes," said colonel dewes, wisely nodding his head. "i have seen you playing cricket with him." colonel dewes had frequently been puzzled by a peculiar change of manner in his friends. when he made a remark which showed how clearly he understood their point of view and how closely he was in agreement with it, they had a way of becoming reticent in the very moment of expansion. the current of sympathy was broken, and as often as not they turned the conversation altogether into a conventional and less interesting channel. that change of manner became apparent now. sybil linforth leaned back and abruptly ceased to speak. "please go on," said dewes, turning towards her. she hesitated, and then with a touch of reluctance continued: "i succeeded until a month or so ago. but a month or so ago the secrets came. oh, i know him so well. he is trying to hide that there are any secrets lest his reticence should hurt me. but we have been so much together, so much to each other--how should i not know?" and again she leaned forward with her hands clasped tightly together upon her knees and a look of great distress lying like a shadow upon her face. "the first secrets," she continued, and her voice trembled, "i suppose they are always bitter to a mother. but since i have nothing but dick they hurt me more deeply than is perhaps reasonable"; and she turned towards her companion with a poor attempt at a smile. "what sort of secrets?" asked dewes. "what is he hiding?" "i don't know," she replied, and she repeated the words, adding to them slowly others. "i don't know--and i am a little afraid to guess. but i know that something is stirring in his mind, something is--" and she paused, and into her eyes there came a look of actual terror--"something is calling him. he goes alone up on to the top of the downs, and stays there alone for hours. i have seen him. i have come upon him unawares lying on the grass with his face towards the sea, his lips parted, and his eyes strained, his face absorbed. he has been so lost in dreams that i have come close to him through the grass and stood beside him and spoken to him before he grew aware that anyone was near." "perhaps he wants to be a sailor," suggested dewes. "no, i do not think it is that," sybil answered quietly. "if it were so, he would have told me." "yes," dewes admitted. "yes, he would have told you. i was wrong." "you see," mrs. linforth continued, as though dewes had not interrupted, "it is not natural for a boy at his age to want to be alone, is it? i don't think it is good either. it is not natural for a boy of his age to be thoughtful. i am not sure that that is good. i am, to tell you the truth, very troubled." dewes looked at her sharply. something, not so much in her words as in the careful, slow manner of her speech, warned him that she was not telling him all of the trouble which oppressed her. her fears were more definite than she had given him as yet reason to understand. there was not enough in what she had said to account for the tense clasp of her hands, and the glint of terror in her eyes. "anyhow, he's going to the big school next term," he said; "that is, if you haven't changed your mind since you last wrote to me, and i hope you haven't changed your mind. all that he wants really," the colonel added with unconscious cruelty, "is companions of his own age. he passed in well, didn't he?" sybil linforth's face lost for the moment all its apprehension. a smile of pride made her face very tender, and as she turned to dewes he thought to himself that really her eyes were beautiful. "yes, he passed in very high," she said. "eton, isn't it?" said dewes. "whose house?" she mentioned the name and added: "his father was there before him." then she rose from her seat. "would you like to see dick? i will show you him. come quietly." she led the way across the lawn towards an open window. it was a day of sunshine; the garden was bright with flowers, and about the windows rose-trees climbed the house-walls. it was a house of red brick, darkened by age, and with a roof of tiles. to dewes' eyes, nestling as it did beneath the great grass downs, it had a most homelike look of comfort. sybil turned with a finger on her lips. "keep this side of the window," she whispered, "or your shadow will fall across the floor." standing aside as she bade him, he looked into the room. he saw a boy seated at a table with his head between his hands, immersed in a book which lay before him. he was seated with his side towards the window and his hands concealed his face. but in a moment he removed one hand and turned the page. colonel dewes could now see the profile of his face. a firm chin, a beauty of outline not very common, a certain delicacy of feature and colour gave to him a distinction of which sybil linforth might well be proud. "he'll be a dangerous fellow among the girls in a few years' time," said dewes, turning to the mother. but sybil did not hear the words. she was standing with her head thrust forward. her face was white, her whole aspect one of dismay. dewes could not understand the change in her. a moment ago she had been laughing playfully as she led him towards the window. now it seemed as though a sudden disaster had turned her to stone. yet there was nothing visible to suggest disaster. dewes looked from sybil to the boy and back again. then he noticed that her eyes were riveted, not on dick's face, but on the book which he was reading. "what is the matter?" he asked. "hush!" said sybil, but at that moment dick lifted his head, recognised the visitor, and came forward to the window with a smile of welcome. there was no embarrassment in his manner, no air of being surprised. he had not the look of one who nurses secrets. a broad open forehead surmounted a pair of steady clear grey eyes. "well, dick, i hear you have done well in your examination," said the colonel, as he shook hands. "if you keep it up i will leave you all i save out of my pension." "thank you, sir," said dick with a laugh. "how long have you been back, colonel dewes?" "i left india a fortnight ago." "a fortnight ago." dick leaned his arms upon the sill and with his eyes on the colonel's face asked quietly: "how far does the road reach now?" at the side of colonel dewes sybil linforth flinched as though she had been struck. but it did not need that movement to explain to the colonel the perplexing problem of her fears. he understood now. the linforths belonged to the road. the road had slain her husband. no wonder she lived in terror lest it should claim her son. and apparently it did claim him. "the road through chiltistan?" he said slowly. "of course," answered dick. "of what other could i be thinking?" "they have stopped it," said the colonel, and at his side he was aware that sybil linforth drew a deep breath. "the road reaches kohara. it does not go beyond. it will not go beyond." dick's eyes steadily looked into the colonel's face; and the colonel had some trouble to meet their look with the same frankness. he turned aside and mrs. linforth said, "come and see my roses." dick went back to his book. the man and woman passed on round the corner of the house to a little rose-garden with a stone sun-dial in the middle, surrounded by low red brick walls. here it was very quiet. only the bees among the flowers filled the air with a pleasant murmur. "they are doing well--your roses," said dewes. "yes. these queen mabs are good. don't you think so? i am rather proud of them," said sybil; and then she broke off suddenly and faced him. "is it true?" she whispered in a low passionate voice. "is the road stopped? will it not go beyond kohara?" colonel dewes attempted no evasion with mrs. linforth. "it is true that it is stopped. it is also true that for the moment there is no intention to carry it further. but--but--" and as he paused sybil took up the sentence. "but it will go on, i know. sooner or later." and there was almost a note of hopelessness in her voice. "the power of the road is beyond the power of governments," she added with the air of one quoting a sentence. they walked on between the alleys of rose-trees and she asked: "did you notice the book which dick was reading?" "it looked like a bound volume of magazines." sybil nodded her head. "it was a volume of the 'fortnightly.' he was reading an article written forty years ago by andrew linforth--" and she suddenly cried out, "oh, how i wish he had never lived. he was an uncle of harry's--my husband. he predicted it. he was in the old company, then he became a servant of the government, and he was the first to begin the road. you know his history?" "no." "it is a curious one. when it was his time to retire, he sent his money to england, he made all his arrangements to come home, and then one night he walked out of the hotel in bombay, a couple of days before the ship sailed, and disappeared. he has never been heard of since." "had he no wife?" asked dewes. "no," replied sybil. "do you know what i think? i think he went back to the north, back to his road. i think it called him. i think he could not keep away." "but we should have come across him," cried dewes, "or across news of him. surely we should!" sybil shrugged her shoulders. "in that article which dick was reading, the road was first proposed. listen to this," and she began to recite: "the road will reach northwards, through chiltistan, to the foot of the baroghil pass, in the mountains of the hindu kush. not yet, but it will. many men will die in the building of it from cold and dysentery, and even hunger--englishmen and coolies from baltistan. many men will die fighting over it, englishmen and chiltis, and gurkhas and sikhs. it will cost millions of money, and from policy or economy successive governments will try to stop it; but the power of the road will be greater than the power of any government. it will wind through valleys so deep that the day's sunshine is gone within the hour. it will be carried in galleries along the faces of mountains, and for eight months of the year sections of it will be buried deep in snow. yet it will be finished. it will go on to the foot of the hindu kush, and then only the british rule in india will be safe." she finished the quotation. "that is what andrew linforth prophesied. much of it has already been justified. i have no doubt the rest will be in time. i think he went north when he disappeared. i think the road called him, as it is now calling dick." she made the admission at last quite simply and quietly. yet it was evident to dewes that it cost her much to make it. "yes," he said. "that is what you fear." she nodded her head and let him understand something of the terror with which the road inspired her. "when the trouble began fourteen years ago, when the road was cut and day after day no news came of whether harry lived or, if he died, how he died--i dreamed of it--i used to see horrible things happening on that road--night after night i saw them. dreadful things happening to dick and his father while i stood by and could do nothing. oh, it seems to me a living thing greedy for blood--our blood." she turned to him a haggard face. dewes sought to reassure her. "but there is peace now in chiltistan. we keep a close watch on that country, i can tell you. i don't think we shall be caught napping there again." but these arguments had little weight with sybil linforth. the tragedy of fourteen years ago had beaten her down with too strong a hand. she could not reason about the road. she only felt, and she felt with all the passion of her nature. "what will you do, then?" asked dewes. she walked a little further on before she answered. "i shall do nothing. if, when the time comes, dick feels that work upon that road is his heritage, if he wants to follow in his father's steps, i shall say not a single word to dissuade him." dewes stared at her. this half-hour of conversation had made real to him at all events the great strength of her hostility. yet she would put the hostility aside and say not a word. "that's more than i could do," he said, "if i felt as you do. by george it is!" sybil smiled at him with friendliness. "it's not bravery. do you remember the unfinished letter which you brought home to me from harry? there were three sentences in that which i cannot pretend to have forgotten," and she repeated the sentences: "'whether he will come out here, it is too early to think about. but the road will not be finished--and i wonder. if he wants to, let him.' it is quite clear--isn't it?--that harry wanted him to take up the work. you can read that in the words. i can imagine him speaking them and hear the tone he would use. besides--i have still a greater fear than the one of which you know. i don't want dick, when he grows up, ever to think that i have been cowardly, and, because i was cowardly, disloyal to his father." "yes, i see," said colonel dewes. and this time he really did understand. "we will go in and lunch," said sybil, and they walked back to the house. chapter vi a long walk the footsteps sounded overhead with a singular regularity. from the fireplace to the door, and back again from the door to the fireplace. at each turn there was a short pause, and each pause was of the same duration. the footsteps were very light; it was almost as though an animal, a caged animal, padded from the bars at one end to the bars at the other. there was something stealthy in the footsteps too. in the room below a man of forty-five sat writing at a desk--a very tall, broad-shouldered man, in clerical dress. twenty-five years before he had rowed as number seven in the oxford eight, with an eye all the while upon a mastership at his old school. he had taken a first in greats; he had obtained his mastership; for the last two years he had had a house. as he had been at the beginning, so he was now, a man without theories but with an instinctive comprehension of boys. in consequence there were no vacancies in his house, and the headmaster had grown accustomed to recommend the rev. mr. arthur pollard when boys who needed any special care came to the school. he was now so engrossed with the preparations for the term which was to begin to-morrow that for some while the footsteps overhead did not attract his attention. when he did hear them he just lifted his head, listened for a moment or two, lit his pipe and went on with his work. but the sounds continued. backwards and forwards from the fireplace to the door, the footsteps came and went--without haste and without cessation; stealthily regular; inhumanly light. their very monotony helped them to pass as unnoticed as the ticking of a clock. mr. pollard continued the preparation of his class-work for a full hour, and only when the dusk was falling, and it was becoming difficult for him to see what he was writing, did he lean back in his chair and stretch his arms above his head with a sigh of relief. then once more he became aware of the footsteps overhead. he rose and rang the bell. "who is that walking up and down the drawingroom, evans?" he asked of the butler. the butler threw back his head and listened. "i don't know, sir," he replied. "those footsteps have been sounding like that for more than an hour." "for more than an hour?" evans repeated. "then i am afraid, sir, it's the new young gentleman from india." arthur pollard started. "has he been waiting up there alone all this time?" he exclaimed. "why in the world wasn't i told?" "you were told, sir," said evans firmly but respectfully. "i came into the study here and told you, and you answered 'all right, evans.' but i had my doubts, sir, whether you really heard or not." mr. pollard hardly waited for the end of the explanation. he hurried out of the room and sprang up the stairs. he had arranged purposely for the young prince to come to the house a day before term began. he was likely to be shy, ill-at-ease and homesick, among so many strange faces and unfamiliar ways. moreover, mr. pollard wished to become better acquainted with the boy than would be easily possible once the term was in full swing. for he was something more of an experiment than the ordinary indian princeling from a state well under the thumb of the viceroy and the indian council. this boy came of the fighting stock in the north. to leave him tramping about a strange drawing-room alone for over an hour was not the best possible introduction to english ways and english life. mr. pollard opened the door and saw a slim, tall boy, with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the floor, walking up and down in the gloom. "shere ali," he said, and he held out his hand. the boy took it shyly. "you have been waiting here for some time," mr. pollard continued, "i am sorry. i did not know that you had come. you should have rung the bell." "i was not lonely," shere ali replied. "i was taking a walk." "yes, so i gathered," said the master with a smile. "rather a long walk." "yes, sir," the boy answered seriously. "i was walking from kohara up the valley, and remembering the landmarks as i went. i had walked a long way. i had come to the fort where my father was besieged." "yes, that reminds me," said pollard, "you won't feel so lonely to-morrow as you do to-day. there is a new boy joining whose father was a great friend of your father's. richard linforth is his name. very likely your father has mentioned that name to you." mr. pollard switched on the light as he spoke and saw shere all's face flash with eagerness. "oh yes!" he answered, "i know. he was killed upon the road by my uncle's people." "i have put you into the next room to his. if you will come with me i will show you." mr. pollard led the way along a passage into the boys' quarters. "this is your room. there's your bed. here's your 'burry,'" pointing to a bureau with a bookcase on the top. he threw open the next door. "this is linforth's room. by the way, you speak english very well." "yes," said shere ali. "i was taught it in lahore first of all. my father is very fond of the english." "well, come along," said mr. pollard. "i expect my wife has come back and she shall give us some tea. you will dine with us to-night, and we will try to make you as fond of the english as your father is." the next day the rest of the boys arrived, and mr. pollard took the occasion to speak a word or two to young linforth. "you are both new boys," he said, "but you will fit into the scheme of things quickly enough. he won't. he's in a strange land, among strange people. so just do what you can to help him." dick linforth was curious enough to see the son of the khan of chiltistan. but not for anything would he have talked to him of his father who had died upon the road, or of the road itself. these things were sacred. he greeted his companion in quite another way. "what's your name?" he asked. "shere ali," replied the young prince. "that won't do," said linforth, and he contemplated the boy solemnly. "i shall call you sherry-face," he said. and "sherry-face" the heir to chiltistan remained; and in due time the name followed him to college. chapter vii in the dauphinÉ the day broke tardily among the mountains of dauphiné. at half-past three on a morning of early august light should be already stealing through the little window and the chinks into the hut upon the meije. but the four men who lay wrapped in blankets on the long broad shelf still slept in darkness. and when the darkness was broken it was by the sudden spit of a match. the tiny blue flame spluttered for a few seconds and then burned bright and yellow. it lit up the face of a man bending over the dial of a watch and above him and about him the wooden rafters and walls came dimly into view. the face was stout and burned by the sun to the colour of a ripe apple, and in spite of a black heavy moustache had a merry and good-humoured look. little gold earrings twinkled in his ears by the light of the match. annoyance clouded his face as he remarked the time. "verdammt! verdammt!" he muttered. the match burned out, and for a while he listened to the wind wailing about the hut, plucking at the door and the shutters of the window. he climbed down from the shelf with a rustle of straw, walked lightly for a moment or two about the hut, and then pulled open the door quickly. as quickly he shut it again. from the shelf linforth spoke: "it is bad, peter?" "it is impossible," replied peter in english with a strong german accent. for the last three years he and his brother had acted as guides to the same two men who were now in the meije hut. "we are a strong party, but it is impossible. before i could walk a yard from the door, i would have to lend a lantern. and it is after four o'clock! the water is frozen in the pail, and i have never known that before in august." "very well," said linforth, turning over in his blankets. it was warm among the blankets and the straw, and he spoke with contentment. later in the day he might rail against the weather. but for the moment he was very clear that there were worse things in the world than to lie snug and hear the wind tearing about the cliffs and know that there was no chance of facing it. "we will not go back to la bérarde," he said. "the storm may clear. we will wait in the hut until tomorrow." and from a third figure on the shelf there came in guttural english: "yes, yes. of course." the fourth man had not wakened from his sleep, and it was not until he was shaken by the shoulder at ten o'clock in the morning that he sat up and rubbed his eyes. the fourth man was shere ali. "get up and come outside," said linforth. ten years had passed since shere ali had taken his long walk from kohara up the valley in the drawing-room of his house-master at eton. and those ten years had had their due effect. he betrayed his race nowadays by little more than his colour, a certain high-pitched intonation of his voice and an extraordinary skill in the game of polo. there had been a time of revolt against discipline, of inability to understand the points of view of his masters and their companions, and of difficulty to discover much sense in their institutions. it is to be remembered that he came from the hill-country, not from the plains of india. that honour was a principle, not a matter of circumstance, and that treachery was in itself disgraceful, whether it was profitable or not--here were hard sayings for a native of chiltistan. he could look back upon the day when he had thought a public-house with a great gilt sign or the picture of an animal over the door a temple for some particular sect of worshippers. "and, indeed, you are far from wrong," his tutor had replied to him. "but since we do not worship at that fiery shrine such holy places are forbidden us." gradually, however, his own character was overlaid; he was quick to learn, and in games quick to excel. he made friends amongst his schoolmates, he carried with him to oxford the charm of manner which is eton's particular gift, and from oxford he passed to london. he was rich, he was liked, and he found a ready welcome, which did not spoil him. luffe would undoubtedly have classed him amongst the best of the native princes who go to england for their training, and on that very account, would have feared the more for his future. shere ali was now just twenty-four, he was tall, spare of body and wonderfully supple of limbs, and but for a fulness of the lower lip, which was characteristic of his family, would have been reckoned more than usually handsome. he came out of the door of the hut and stood by the side of linforth. they looked up towards the meije, but little of that majestic mass of rock was visible. the clouds hung low; the glacier below them upon their left had a dull and unillumined look, and over the top of the breche de la meije, the pass to the left of their mountain, the snow whirled up from the further side like smoke. the hut is built upon a great spur of the mountain which runs down into the desolate valley des Étançons, and at its upper end melts into the great precipitous rock-wall which forms one of the main difficulties of the ascent. against this wall the clouds were massed. snow lay where yesterday the rocks had shone grey and ruddy brown in the sunlight, and against the great wall here and there icicles were hung. "it looks unpromising," said linforth. "but peter says that the mountain is in good condition. to-morrow it may be possible. it is worth while waiting. we shall get down to la grave to-morrow instead of to-day. that is all." "yes. it will make no difference to our plans," said shere ali; and so far as their immediate plans were concerned shere ali was right. but these two men had other and wider plans which embraced not a summer's holiday but a lifetime, plans which they jealously kept secret; and these plans, as it happened, the delay of a day in the hut upon the meije was deeply to affect. they turned back into the room and breakfasted. then linforth lit his pipe and once more curled himself up in his rug upon the straw. shere ali followed his example. and it was of the wider plans that they at once began to talk. "but heaven only knows when i shall get out to india," cried linforth after a while. "there am i at chatham and not a chance, so far as i can see, of getting away. you will go back first." it was significant that linforth, who had never been in india, none the less spoke habitually of going back to it, as though that country in truth was his native soil. shere ali shook his head. "i shall wait for you," he said. "you will come out there." he raised himself upon his elbow and glanced at his friend's face. linforth had retained the delicacy of feature, the fineness of outline which ten years before had called forth the admiration of colonel dewes. but the ten years had also added a look of quiet strength. a man can hardly live with a definite purpose very near to his heart without gaining some reward from the labour of his thoughts. though he speak never so little, people will be aware of him as they are not aware of the loudest chatterer in the room. thus it was with linforth. he talked with no greater wit than his companions, he made no greater display of ability, he never outshone, and yet not a few men were conscious of a force underlying his quietude of manner. those men were the old and the experienced; the unobservant overlooked him altogether. "yes," said shere ali, "since you want to come you will come." "i shall try to come," said linforth, simply. "we belong to the road," and for a little while he lay silent. then in a low voice he spoke, quoting from that page which was as a picture in his thoughts. "over the passes! over the snow passes to the foot of the hindu kush!" "then and then only india will be safe," the young prince of chiltistan added, speaking solemnly, so that the words seemed a kind of ritual. and to both they were no less. long before, when shere ali was first brought into his room, on his first day at eton, linforth had seen his opportunity, and seized it. shere ali's father retained his kingdom with an english resident at his elbow. shere ali would in due time succeed. linforth had quietly put forth his powers to make shere ali his friend, to force him to see with his eyes, and to believe what he believed. and shere ali had been easily persuaded. he had become one of the white men, he proudly told himself. here was a proof, the surest of proofs. the belief in the road--that was one of the beliefs of the white men, one of the beliefs which marked him off from the native, not merely in chiltistan, but throughout the east. to the white man, the road was the beginning of things, to the oriental the shadow of the end. shere ali sided with the white men. he too had faith in the road and he was proud of his faith because he shared it with the white men. "we shall be very glad of these expeditions, some day, in chiltistan," said linforth. shere ali stared. "it was for that reason--?" he asked. "yes." shere ali was silent for a while. then he said, and with some regret: "there is a great difference between us. you can wait and wait. i want everything done within the year." linforth laughed. he knew very well the impulsiveness of his friend. "if a few miles, or even a few furlongs, stand to my credit at the end, i shall not think that i have failed." they were both young, and they talked with the bright and simple faith in their ideals which is the great gift of youth. an older man might have laughed if he had heard, but had there been an older man in the hut to overhear them, he would have heard nothing. they were alone, save for their guides, and the single purpose for which--as they then thought--their lives were to be lived out made that long day short as a summer's night. "the government will thank us when the work is done," said shere ali enthusiastically. "the government will be in no hurry to let us begin," replied linforth drily. "there is a resident at your father's court. your father is willing, and yet there's not a coolie on the road." "yes, but you will get your way," and again confidence rang in the voice of the chilti prince. "it will not be i," answered linforth. "it will be the road. the power of the road is beyond the power of any government." "yes, i remember and i understand." shere ali lit his pipe and lay back among the straw. "at first i did not understand what the words meant. now i know. the power of the road is great, because it inspires men to strive for its completion." "or its mastery," said linforth slowly. "perhaps one day on the other side of the hindu kush, the russians may covet it--and then the road will go on to meet them." "something will happen," said shere ali. "at all events something will happen." the shadows of the evening found them still debating what complication might force the hand of those in authority. but always they came back to the russians and a movement of troops in the pamirs. yet unknown to both of them the something else had already happened, though its consequences were not yet to be foreseen. a storm had delayed them for a day in a hut upon the meije. they went out of the hut. the sky had cleared; and in the sunset the steep buttress of the promontoire ran sharply up to the great wall; above the wall the small square patch of ice sloped to the base of the grand pic and beyond the deep gap behind that pinnacle the long serrated ridge ran out to the right, rising and falling, to the doight de dieu. there were some heavy icicles overhanging the great wall, and linforth looked at them anxiously. there was also still a little snow upon the rocks. "it will be possible," said peter, cheerily. "tomorrow night we shall sleep in la grave." "yes, yes, of course," said his brother. they walked round the hut, looked for a little while down the stony valley des Étançons, with its one green patch up which they had toiled from la bérarde the day before, and returned to watch the purple flush of the sunset die off the crags of the meije. but the future they had planned was as a vision before their eyes, and even along the high cliffs of the dauphiné the road they were to make seemed to wind and climb. "it would be strange," said linforth, "if old andrew linforth were still alive. somewhere in your country, perhaps in kohara, waiting for the thing he dreamed to come to pass. he would be an old man now, but he might still be alive." "i wonder," said shere ali absently, and he suddenly turned to linforth. "nothing must come between us," he cried almost fiercely. "nothing to hinder what we shall do together." he was the more emotional of the two. the dreams to which they had given utterance had uplifted him. "that's all right," said linforth, and he turned back into the hut. but he remembered afterwards that it was shere ali who had protested against the possibility of their association being broken. they came out from the hut again at half-past three in the morning and looked up to a cloudless starlit sky which faded in the east to the colour of pearl. above their heads some knobs of rock stood out upon the thin crest of the buttress against the sky. in the darkness of a small couloir underneath the knobs peter was already ascending. the traverse of the meije even for an experienced mountaineer is a long day's climb. they reached the summit of the grand pic in seven hours, descended into the brèche zsigmondy, climbed up the precipice on the further side of that gap, and reached the pic central by two o'clock in the afternoon. there they rested for an hour, and looked far down to the village of la grave among the cornfields of the valley. there was no reason for any hurry. "we shall reach la grave by eight," said peter, but he was wrong, as they soon discovered. a slope which should have been soft snow down which they could plunge was hard ice, in which a ladder of steps must be cut before the glacier could be reached. the glacier itself was crevassed so that many a devour was necessary, and occasionally a jump; and evening came upon them while they were on the rocher de l'aigle. it was quite dark when at last they reached the grass slopes, and still far below them the lights were gleaming in la grave. to both men those grass slopes seemed interminable. the lights of la grave seemed never to come nearer, never to grow larger. little points of fire very far away--as they had been at first, so they remained. but for the slope of ground beneath his feet and the aching of his knees, linforth could almost have believed that they were not descending at all. he struck a match and looked at his watch and saw that it was after nine; and a little while after they had come to water and taken their fill of it, that it was nearly ten, but now the low thunder of the river in the valley was louder in his ears, and then suddenly he saw that the lights of la grave were bright and near at hand. linforth flung himself down upon the grass, and clasping his hands behind his head, gave himself up to the cool of the night and the stars overhead. "i could sleep here," he said. "why should we go down to la grave to-night?" "there is a dew falling. it will be cold when the morning breaks. and la grave is very near. it is better to go," said peter. the question was still in debate when above the roar of the river there came to their ears a faint throbbing sound from across the valley. it grew louder and suddenly two blinding lights flashed along the hill-side opposite. "a motor-car," said shere ali, and as he spoke the lights ceased to travel. "it's stopping at the hotel," said linforth carelessly. "no," said peter. "it has not reached the hotel. look, not by a hundred yards. it has broken down." linforth discussed the point at length, not because he was at all interested at the moment in the movements of that or of any other motor-car, but because he wished to stay where he was. peter, however, was obdurate. it was his pride to get his patron indoors each night. "let us go on," he said, and linforth wearily rose to his feet. "we are making a big mistake," he grumbled, and he spoke with more truth than he was aware. they reached the hotel at eleven, ordered their supper and bathed. it was half-past eleven before linforth and shere ali entered the long dining-room, and they found another party already supping there. linforth heard himself greeted by name, and turned in surprise. it was a party of four--two ladies and two men. one of the men had called to him, an elderly man with a bald forehead, a grizzled moustache, and a shrewd kindly face. "i remember you, though you can't say as much of me," he said. "i came down to chatham a year ago and dined at your mess as the guest of your colonel." linforth came forward with a smile of recognition. "i beg your pardon for not recognising you at once. i remember you, of course, quite well," he said. "who am i, then?" "sir john casson, late lieutenant-governor of the united provinces," said linforth promptly. "and now nothing but a bore at my club," replied sir john cheerfully. "we were motoring through to grenoble, but the car has broken down. you are mountain-climbing, i suppose. phyllis," and he turned to the younger of the two ladies, "this is mr. linforth of the royal engineers. my daughter, linforth!" he introduced the second lady. "mrs. oliver," he said, and linforth turning, saw that the eyes of mrs. oliver were already fixed upon him. he returned the look, and his eyes frankly showed her that he thought her beautiful. "and what are you going to do with yourself?" said sir john. "go to the country from which you have just come, as soon as i can," said linforth with a smile. at this moment the fourth of the party, a stout, red-faced, plethoric gentleman, broke in. "india!" he exclaimed indignantly. "bless my soul, what on earth sends all you young fellows racing out to india? a great mistake! i once went to india myself--to shoot a tiger. i stayed there for months and never saw one. not a tiger, sir!" but linforth was paying very little attention to the plethoric gentleman. sir john introduced him as colonel fitzwarren, and linforth bowed politely. then he asked of sir john: "your car was not seriously damaged, i suppose?" "keep us here two days," said sir john. "the chauffeur will have to go on by diligence to-morrow to get a new sparking plug. perhaps we shall see more of you in consequence." linforth's eyes travelled back to mrs. oliver. "we are in no hurry," he said slowly. "we shall rest here probably for a day or so. may i introduce my friend?" he introduced him as the son of the khan of chiltistan, and mrs. oliver's eyes, which had been quietly resting upon linforth's face, turned towards shere ali, and as quietly rested upon his. "then, perhaps, you can tell me," said colonel fitzwarren, "how it was i never saw a tiger in india, though i stayed there four months. a most disappointing country, i call it. i looked for a tiger everywhere and i never saw one--no, not one." the colonel's one idea of the indian peninsula was a huge tiger waiting somewhere in a jungle to be shot. but shere ali was paying no more attention to the colonel's disparagements than linforth had done. "will you join us at supper?" said sir john, and both young men replied simultaneously, "we shall be very pleased." sir john casson smiled. he could never quite be sure whether it was or was not to mrs. oliver's credit that her looks made so powerful an appeal to the chivalry of young men. "all young men immediately want to protect her," he was wont to say, "and their trouble is that they can't find anyone to protect her from." he watched shere ali and dick linforth with a sly amusement, and as a result of his watching promised himself yet more amusement during the next two days. he was roused from this pleasing anticipation by his irascible friend, colonel fitzwarren, who, without the slightest warning, flung a loud and defiant challenge across the table to shere all. "i don't believe there is one," he cried, and breathed heavily. shere ali interrupted his conversation with mrs. oliver. "one what?" he asked with a smile. "tiger, sir, tiger," said the colonel, rapping with his knuckles upon the table. "of what else should i be speaking? i don't believe there's a tiger in india outside the zoo. otherwise, why didn't i see one?" colonel fitzwarren glared at shere ali as though he held him personally responsible for that unhappy omission. sir john, however, intervened with smooth speeches and for the rest of supper the conversation was kept to less painful topics. but the colonel had not said his last word. as they went upstairs to their rooms he turned to shere ali, who was just behind him, and sighed heavily. "if i had shot a tiger in india," he said, with an indescribable look of pathos upon his big red face, "it would have made a great difference to my life." chapter viii a string of pearls "so you go to parties nowadays," said mrs. linforth, and sir john casson, leaning his back against the wall of the ball-room, puzzled his brains for the name of the lady with the pleasant winning face to whom he had just been introduced. at first it had seemed to him merely that her hearing was better than his. the "nowadays," however, showed that it was her memory which had the advantage. they were apparently old acquaintances; and sir john belonged to an old-fashioned school which thought it discourtesy to forget even the least memorable of his acquaintances. "you were not so easily persuaded to decorate a ball-room at mussoorie," mrs. linforth continued. sir john smiled, and there was a little bitterness in the smile. "ah!" he said, and there was a hint, too, of bitterness in his voice, "i was wanted to decorate ball-rooms then. so i didn't go. now i am not wanted. so i do." "that's not the true explanation," mrs. linforth said gently, and she shook her head. she spoke so gently and with so clear a note of sympathy and comprehension that sir john was at more pains than ever to discover who she was. to hardly anyone would it naturally have occurred that sir john casson, with a tail of letters to his name, and a handsome pension, enjoyed at an age when his faculties were alert and his bodily strength not yet diminished, could stand in need of sympathy. but that precisely was the fact, as the woman at his side understood. a great ruler yesterday, with a council and an organized government, subordinated to his leadership, he now merely lived at camberley, and as he had confessed, was a bore at his club. and life at camberley was dull. he looked closely at mrs. linforth. she was a woman of forty, or perhaps a year or two more. on the other hand, she might be a year or two less. she had the figure of a young woman, and though her dark hair was flecked with grey, he knew that was not to be accounted as a sign of either age or trouble. yet she looked as if trouble had been no stranger to her. there were little lines about the eyes which told their tale to a shrewd observer, though the face smiled never so pleasantly. in what summer, he wondered, had she come up to the hill station of mussoorie. "no," he said. "i did not give you the real explanation. now i will." he nodded towards a girl who was at that moment crossing the ball-room towards the door, upon the arm of a young man. "that's the explanation." mrs. linforth looked at the girl and smiled. "the explanation seems to be enjoying itself," she said. "yours?" "mine," replied sir john with evident pride. "she is very pretty," said mrs. linforth, and the sincerity of her admiration made the father glow with satisfaction. phyllis casson was a girl of eighteen, with the fresh looks and the clear eyes of her years. a bright colour graced her cheeks, where, when she laughed, the dimples played, and the white dress she wore was matched by the whiteness of her throat. she was talking gaily with the youth on whose arm her hand lightly rested. "who is he?" asked mrs. linforth. sir john raised his shoulders. "i am not concerned," he replied. "the explanation is amusing itself, as it ought to do, being only eighteen. the explanation wants everyone to love her at the present moment. when she wants only one, then it will be time for me to begin to get flurried." he turned abruptly to his companion. "i would like you to know her." "thank you," said mrs. linforth, as she bowed to an acquaintance. "would you like to dance?" asked sir john. "if so, i'll stand aside." "no. i came here to look on," she explained. "lady marfield," and she nodded towards their hostess, "is my cousin, and--well, i don't want to grow rusty. you see i have an explanation too--oh, not here! he's at chatham, and it's as well to keep up with the world--" she broke off abruptly, and with a perceptible start of surprise. she was looking towards the door. casson followed the direction of her eyes, and saw young linforth in the doorway. at last he remembered. there had been one hot weather, years ago, when this boy's father and his newly-married wife had come up to the hill-station of mussoorie. he remembered that linforth had sent his wife back to england, when he went north into chiltistan on that work from which he was never to return. it was the wife who was now at his side. "i thought you said he was at chatham," said sir john, as dick linforth advanced into the room. "so i believed he was. he must have changed his mind at the last moment." then she looked with a little surprise at her companion. "you know him?" "yes," said sir john, "i will tell you how it happened. i was dining eighteen months ago at the sappers' mess at chatham. and that boy's face came out of the crowd and took my eyes and my imagination too. you know, perhaps, how that happens at times. there seems to be no particular reason why it should happen at the moment. afterwards you realise that there was very good reason. a great career, perhaps, perhaps only some one signal act, an act typical of a whole unknown life, leaps to light and justifies the claim the young face made upon your sympathy. anyhow, i noticed young linforth. it was not his good looks which attracted me. there was something else. i made inquiries. the colonel was not a very observant man. linforth was one of the subalterns--a good bat and a good change bowler. that was all. only i happened to look round the walls of the sappers' mess. there are portraits hung there of famous members of that mess who were thought of no particular account when they were subalterns at chatham. there's one alive to-day. another died at khartoum." "yes," said mrs. linforth. "well, i made the acquaintance of your son that night," said sir john. mrs. linforth stood for a moment silent, her face for the moment quite beautiful. then she broke into a laugh. "i am glad i scratched your back first," she said. "and as for the cricket, it's quite true. i taught him to keep a straight bat myself." meanwhile, dick linforth was walking across the floor of the ball-room, quite unconscious of the two who talked of him. he was not, indeed, looking about him at all. it seemed to both his mother and sir john, as they watched him steadily moving in and out amongst the throng--for it was the height of the season, and lady marfield's big drawing-room in chesterfield gardens was crowded--that he was making his way to a definite spot, as though just at this moment he had a definite appointment. "he changed his mind at the last moment," said sir john with a laugh, which gave to him the look of a boy. "let us see who it is that has brought him up from chatham to london at the last moment!" "would it be fair?" asked mrs. linforth reluctantly. she was, indeed, no less curious upon the point than her companion, and while she asked the question, her eyes followed her son's movements. he was tall, and though he moved quickly and easily, it was possible to keep him in view. a gap in the crowd opened before them, making a lane--and at the end of the lane they saw linforth approach a lady and receive the welcome of her smile. for a moment the gap remained open, and then the bright frocks and black coats swept across the space. but both had seen, and mrs. linforth, in addition, was aware of a barely perceptible start made by sir john at her side. she looked at him sharply. his face had grown grave. "you know her?" asked mrs. linforth. there was anxiety in her voice. there was also a note of jealousy. "yes." "who is she?" "mrs. oliver. violet oliver." "married!" "a widow. i introduced her to your son at la grave in the dauphiné country last summer. our motor-car had broken down. we all stayed for a couple of days together in the same hotel. mrs. oliver is a friend of my daughter's. phyllis admires her very much, and in most instances i am prepared to trust phyllis' instincts." "but not in this instance," said mrs. linforth quietly. she had been quick to note a very slight embarrassment in sir john casson's manner. "i don't say that," he replied quickly--a little too quickly. "will you find me a chair?" said mrs. linforth, looking about her. "there are two over here." she led the way to the chairs which were placed in a nook of the room not very far from the door by which linforth had entered. she took her seat, and when sir john had seated himself beside her, she said: "please tell me what you know of her." sir john spread out his hands in protest. "certainly, i will. but there is nothing to her discredit, so far as i know, mrs. linforth--nothing at all. beyond that she is beautiful--really beautiful, as few women are. that, no doubt, will be looked upon as a crime by many, though you and i will not be of that number." sybil linforth maintained a determined silence--not for anything would she admit, even to herself, that violet oliver was beautiful. "you are telling me nothing," she said. "there is so little to tell," replied sir john. "violet oliver comes of a family which is known, though it is not rich. she studied music with a view to making her living as a singer. for she has a very sweet voice, though its want of power forbade grand opera. her studies were interrupted by the appearance of a cavalry captain, who made love to her. she liked it, whereas she did not like studying music. very naturally she married the cavalry officer. captain oliver took her with him abroad, and, i believe, brought her to india. at all events she knows something of india, and has friends there. she is going back there this winter. captain oliver was killed in a hill campaign two years ago. mrs. oliver is now twenty-three years old. that is all." mrs. linforth, however, was not satisfied. "was captain oliver rich?" she asked. "not that i know of," said sir john. "his widow lives in a little house at the wrong end of curzon street." "but she is wearing to-night very beautiful pearls," said sybil linforth quietly. sir john casson moved suddenly in his chair. moreover, sybil linforth's eyes were at that moment resting with a quiet scrutiny upon his face. "it was difficult to see exactly what she was wearing," he said. "the gap in the crowd filled up so quickly." "there was time enough for any woman," said mrs. linforth with a smile. "and more than time enough for any mother." "mrs. oliver is always, i believe, exquisitely dressed," said sir john with an assumption of carelessness. "i am not much of a judge myself." but his carelessness did not deceive his companion. sybil linforth was certain, absolutely certain, that the cause of the constraint and embarrassment which had been audible in sir john's voice, and noticeable in his very manner, was that double string of big pearls of perfect colour which adorned violet oliver's white throat. she looked sir john straight in the face. "would you introduce dick to mrs. oliver now, if you had not done it before?" she asked. "my dear lady," protested sir john, "if i met dick at a little hotel in the dauphiné, and did not introduce him to the ladies who were travelling with me, it would surely reflect upon dick, not upon the ladies"; and with that subtle evasion sir john escaped from the fire of questions. he turned the conversation into another channel, pluming himself upon his cleverness. but he forgot that the subtlest evasions of the male mind are clumsy and obvious to a woman, especially if the woman be on the alert. sybil linforth did not think sir john had showed any cleverness whatever. she let him turn the conversation, because she knew what she had set out to know. that string of pearls had made the difference between sir john's estimate of violet oliver last year and his estimate of her this season. chapter ix luffe is remembered violet oliver took a quick step forward when she caught sight of linforth's tall and well-knit figure coming towards her; and the smile with which she welcomed him was a warm smile of genuine pleasure. there were people who called violet oliver affected--chiefly ladies. but phyllis casson was not one of them. "there is no one more natural in the room," she was in the habit of stoutly declaring when she heard the gossips at work, and we know, on her father's authority, that phyllis casson's judgments were in most instances to be respected. certainly it was not violet oliver's fault that her face in repose took on a wistful and pathetic look, and that her dark quiet eyes, even when her thoughts were absent--and her thoughts were often absent--rested pensively upon you with an unconscious flattery. it appeared that she was pondering deeply who and what you were; whereas she was probably debating whether she should or should not powder her nose before she went in to supper. nor was she to blame because at the approach of a friend that sweet and thoughtful face would twinkle suddenly into mischief and amusement. "she is as god made her," phyllis casson protested, "and he made her beautiful." it will be recognised, therefore, that there was truth in sir john's observation that young men wanted to protect her. but the bald statement is not sufficient. whether that quick transition from pensiveness to a dancing gaiety was the cause, or whether it only helped her beauty, this is certain. young men went down before her like ninepins in a bowling alley. there was something singularly virginal about her. she had, too, quite naturally, an affectionate manner which it was difficult to resist; and above all she made no effort ever. what she said and what she did seemed always purely spontaneous. for the rest, she was a little over the general height of women, and even looked a little taller. for she was very fragile, and dainty, like an exquisite piece of china. her head was small, and, poised as it was upon a slender throat, looked almost overweighted by the wealth of her dark hair. her features were finely chiselled from the nose to the oval of her chin, and the red bow of her lips; and, with all her fragility, a delicate colour in her cheeks spoke of health. "you have come!" she said. linforth took her little white-gloved hand in his. "you knew i should," he answered. "yes, i knew that. but i didn't know that i should have to wait," she replied reproachfully. "i was here, in this corner, at the moment." "i couldn't catch an earlier train. i only got your telegram saying you would be at the dance late in the afternoon." "i did not know that i should be coming until this morning," she said. "then it was very kind of you to send the telegram at all." "yes, it was," said violet oliver simply, and linforth laughed. "shall we dance?" he asked. mrs. oliver nodded. "round the room as far as the door. i am hungry. we will go downstairs and have supper." linforth could have wished for nothing better. but the moment that his arm was about her waist and they had started for the door, violet oliver realised that her partner was the lightest dancer in the room. she herself loved dancing, and for once in a way to be steered in and out amongst the couples without a bump or even a single entanglement of her satin train was a pleasure not to be foregone. she gave herself up to it. "let us go on," she said. "i did not know. you see, we have never danced together before. i had not thought of you in that way." she ceased to speak, being content to dance. linforth for his part was content to watch her, to hold her as something very precious, and to evoke a smile upon her lips when her eyes met his. "i had not thought of you in that way!" she had said. did not that mean that she had at all events been thinking of him in some way? and with that flattery still sweet in his thoughts, he was aware that her feet suddenly faltered. he looked at her face. it had changed. yet so swiftly did it recover its composure that linforth had not even the time to understand what the change implied. annoyance, surprise, fear! one of these feelings, certainly, or perhaps a trifle of each. linforth could not make sure. there had been a flash of some sudden emotion. that at all events was certain. but in guessing fear, he argued, his wits must surely have gone far astray; though fear was the first guess which he had made. "what was the matter?" violet oliver answered readily. "a big man was jigging down upon us. i saw him over your shoulder. i dislike being bumped by big men," she said, with a little easy laugh. "and still more i hate having a new frock torn." dick linforth was content with the answer. but it happened that sybil linforth was looking on from her chair in the corner, and the corner was very close to the spot where for a moment violet oliver had lost countenance. she looked sharply at sir john casson, who might have noticed or might not. his face betrayed nothing whatever. he went on talking placidly, but mrs. linforth ceased to listen to him. violet oliver waltzed with her partner once more round the room. then she said: "let us stop!" and in almost the same breath she added, "oh, there's your friend." linforth turned and saw standing just within the doorway his friend shere ali. "you could hardly tell that he was not english," she went on; and indeed, with his straight features, his supple figure, and a colour no darker than many a sunburnt englishman wears every august, shere ali might have passed unnoticed by a stranger. it seemed that he had been watching for the couple to stop dancing. for no sooner had they stopped than he advanced quickly towards them. linforth, however, had not as yet noticed him. "it can't be shere ali," he said. "he is in the country. i heard from him only to-day." "yet it is he," said mrs. oliver, and then linforth saw him. "hallo!" he said softly to himself, and as shere ali joined them he added aloud, "something has happened." "yes, i have news," said shere ali. but he was looking at mrs. oliver, and spoke as though the news had been pushed for a moment into the back of his mind. "what is it?" asked linforth. shere ali turned to linforth. "i go back to chiltistan." "when?" asked linforth, and a note of envy was audible in his voice. mrs. oliver heard it and understood it. she shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "by the first boat to bombay." "in a week's time, then?" said mrs. oliver, quickly. shere ali glanced swiftly at her, seeking the meaning of that question. did regret prompt it? or, on the other hand, was she glad? "yes, in a week's time," he replied slowly. "why?" asked linforth. "is there trouble in chiltistan?" he spoke regretfully. it would be hard luck if that uneasy state were to wake again into turmoil while he was kept kicking his heels at chatham. "yes, there is trouble," shere ali replied. "but it is not the kind of trouble which will help you forward with the road." the trouble, indeed, was of quite another kind. the russians were not stirring behind the hindu kush or on the pamirs. the turbulent people of chiltistan were making trouble, and profit out of the trouble, it is true. that they would be sure to do somewhere, and, moreover, they would do it with a sense of humour more common upon the frontier than in the provinces of india. but they were not at the moment making trouble in their own country. they were heard of in masulipatam and other cities of madras, where they were badly wanted by the police and not often caught. the quarrel in chiltistan lay between the british raj, as represented by the resident, and the khan, who was spending the revenue of his state chiefly upon his own amusements. it was claimed that the resident should henceforth supervise the disposition of the revenue, and it had been suggested to the khan that unless he consented to the proposal he would have to retire into private life in some other quarter of the indian peninsula. to give to the suggestion the necessary persuasive power, the young prince was to be brought back at once, so that he might be ready at a moment's notice to succeed. this reason, however, was not given to shere ali. he was merely informed by the indian government that he must return to his country at once. shere ali stood before mrs. oliver. "you will give me a dance?" he said. "after supper," she replied, and she laid her hand within linforth's arm. but shere ali did not give way. "where shall i find you?" he asked. "by the door, here." and upon that shere ali's voice changed to one of appeal. there came a note of longing into his voice. he looked at violet oliver with burning eyes. he seemed unaware linforth was standing by. "you will not fail me?" he said; and linforth moved impatiently. "no. i shall be there," said violet oliver, and she spoke hurriedly and moved by through the doorway. beneath her eyelids she stole a glance at her companion. his face was clouded. the scene which he had witnessed had jarred upon him, and still jarred. when he spoke to her his voice had a sternness which violet oliver had not heard before. but she had always been aware that it might be heard, if at any time he disapproved. "'your friend,' you called him, speaking to me," he said. "it seems that he is your friend too." "he was with you at la grave. i met him there." "he comes to your house?" "he has called once or twice," said mrs. oliver submissively. it was by no wish of hers that shere ali had appeared at this dance. she had, on the contrary, been at some pains to assure herself that he would not be there. and while she answered linforth she was turning over in her mind a difficulty which had freshly arisen. shere ali was returning to india. in some respects that was awkward. but linforth's ill-humour promised her a way of escape. he was rather silent during the earlier part of their supper. they had a little table to themselves, and while she talked, and talked with now and then an anxious glance at linforth, he was content to listen or to answer shortly. finally she said: "i suppose you will not see your friend again before he starts?" "yes, i shall," replied linforth, and the frown gathered afresh upon his forehead. "he dines to-morrow night with me at chatham." "then i want to ask you something," she continued. "i want you not to mention to him that i am paying a visit to india in the cold weather." linforth's face cleared in an instant. "i am glad that you have made that request," he said frankly. "i have no right to say it, perhaps. but i think you are wise." "things are possible here," she agreed, "which are impossible there." "friendship, for instance." "some friendships," said mrs. oliver; and the rest of their supper they ate cheerily enough. violet oliver was genuinely interested in her partner. she was not very familiar with the large view and the definite purpose. those who gathered within her tiny drawing-room, who sought her out at balls and parties, were, as a rule, the younger men of the day, and linforth, though like them in age and like them, too, in his capacity for enjoyment, was different in most other ways. for the large view and the definite purpose coloured all his life, and, though he spoke little of either, set him apart. mrs. oliver did not cultivate many illusions about herself. she saw very clearly what manner of men they were to whom her beauty made its chief appeal--lean-minded youths for the most part not remarkable for brains--and she was sincerely proud that linforth sought her out no less than they did. she could imagine herself afraid of linforth, and that fancy gave her a little thrill of pleasure. she understood that he could easily be lost altogether, that if once he went away he would not return; and that knowledge made her careful not to lose him. moreover, she had brains herself. she led him on that evening, and he spoke with greater freedom than he had used with her before--greater freedom, she hoped, than he had used with anyone. the lighted supper-room grew dim before his eyes, the noise and the laughter and the passing figures of the other guests ceased to be noticed. he talked in a low voice, and with his keen face pushed a trifle forward as though, while he spoke, he listened. he was listening to the call of the road. he stopped abruptly and looked anxiously at violet. "have i bored you?" he asked. "generally i watch you," he added with a smile, "lest i should bore you. to-night i haven't watched." "for that reason i have been interested to-night more than i have been before." she gathered up her fan with a little sigh. "i must go upstairs again," she said, and she rose from her chair. "i am sorry. but i have promised dances." "i will take you up. then i shall go." "you will dance no more?" "no," he said with a smile. "i'll not spoil a perfect evening." violet oliver was not given to tricks or any play of the eyelids. she looked at him directly, and she said simply "thank you." he took her up to the landing, and came down stairs again for his hat and coat. but, as he passed with them along the passage door he turned, and looking up the stairs, saw violet oliver watching him. she waved her hand lightly and smiled. as the door closed behind him she returned to the ball-room. linforth went away with no suspicion in his mind that she had stayed her feet upon the landing merely to make very sure that he went. he had left his mother behind, however, and she was all suspicion. she had remarked the little scene when shere ali had unexpectedly appeared. she had noticed the embarrassment of violet oliver and the anger of shere ali. it was possible that sir john casson had also not been blind to it. for, a little time afterwards, he nodded towards shere ali. "do you know that boy?" he asked. "yes. he is dick's great friend. they have much in common. his father was my husband's friend." "and both believed in the new road, i know," said sir john. he pulled at his grey moustache thoughtfully, and asked: "have the sons the road in common, too?" a shadow darkened sybil linforth's face. she sat silent for some seconds, and when she answered, it was with a great reluctance. "i believe so," she said in a low voice, and she shivered. she turned her face towards casson. it was troubled, fear-stricken, and in that assembly of laughing and light-hearted people it roused him with a shock. "i wish, with all my heart, that they had not," she added, and her voice shook and trembled as she spoke. the terrible story of linforth's end, long since dim in sir john casson's recollections, came back in vivid detail. he said no more upon that point. he took mrs. linforth down to supper, and bringing her back again, led her round the ball-room. an open archway upon one side led into a conservatory, where only fairy lights glowed amongst the plants and flowers. as the couple passed this archway, sir john looked in. he did not stop, but, after they had walked a few yards further, he said: "was it pale blue that violet oliver was wearing? i am not clever at noticing these things." "yes, pale blue and--pearls," said sybil linforth. "there is no need that we should walk any further. here are two chairs," said sir john. there was in truth no need. he had ascertained something about which, in spite of his outward placidity, he had been very curious. "did you ever hear of a man named luffe?" he asked. sybil linforth started. it had been luffe whose continual arguments, entreaties, threats, and persuasions had caused the road long ago to be carried forward. but she answered quietly, "yes." "of course you and i remember him," said sir john. "but how many others? that's the penalty of indian service. you are soon forgotten, in india as quickly as here. in most cases, no doubt, it doesn't matter. men just as good and younger stand waiting at the milestones to carry on the torch. but in some cases i think it's a pity." "in mr. luffe's case?" asked sybil linforth. "particularly in luffe's case," said sir john. chapter x an unanswered question sir john had guessed aright. shere ali was in the conservatory, and violet oliver sat by his side. "i did not expect you to-night," she said lightly, as she opened and shut her fan. "nor did i mean to come," he answered. "i had arranged to stay in the country until to-morrow. but i got my letter from the india office this morning. it left me--restless." he uttered the word with reluctance, and almost with an air of shame. then he clasped his hands together, and blurted out violently: "it left me miserable. i could not stay away," and he turned to his companion. "i wanted to see you, if only for five minutes." it was violet oliver's instinct to be kind. she fitted herself naturally to the words of her companions, sympathised with them in their troubles, laughed with them when they were at the top of their spirits. so now her natural kindness made her eyes gentle. she leaned forward. "did you?" she asked softly. "and yet you are going home!" "i am going back to chiltistan," said shere ali. "home!" violet oliver repeated, dwelling upon the word with a friendly insistence. but the young prince did not assent; he remained silent--so long silent that violet oliver moved uneasily. she was conscious of suspense; she began to dread his answer. he turned to her quickly as she moved. "you say that i am going home. that's the whole question," he said. "i am trying to answer it--and i can't. listen!" into the quiet and dimly lit place of flowers the music of the violins floated with a note of wistfulness in the melody they played--a suggestion of regret. through a doorway at the end of the conservatory shere ali could see the dancers swing by in the lighted ball-room, the women in their bright frocks and glancing jewels, some of whom had flattered him, a few of whom had been his friends, and all of whom had treated him as one of their own folk and their equal. "i have heard the tune, which they are playing, before," he said slowly. "i heard it one summer night in geneva. linforth and i had come down from the mountains. we were dining with a party on the balcony of a restaurant over the lake. a boat passed hidden by the darkness. we could hear the splash of the oars. there were musicians in the boat playing this melody. we were all very happy that night. and i hear it again now--when i am with you. i think that i shall remember it very often in chiltistan." there was so unmistakable a misery in his manner, in his voice, in his dejected looks, that violet was moved to a deep sympathy. he was only a boy, of course, but he was a boy sunk in distress. "but there are your plans," she urged. "have you forgotten them? you were going to do so much. there was so much to do. so many changes, so many reforms which must be made. you used to talk to me so eagerly. no more of your people were to be sold into slavery. you were going to stop all that. you were going to silence the mullahs when they preached sedition and to free chiltistan from their tyranny." violet remembered with a whimsical little smile how shere all's enthusiasm had wearied her, but she checked the smile and continued: "are all those plans mere dreams and fancies?" "no," replied shere ali, lifting his head. "no," he said again with something of violence in the emphasis; and for a moment he sat erect, with his shoulders squared, fronting his destiny. almost for a moment he recaptured that for which he had been seeking--his identity with his own race. but the moment passed. his attitude relaxed. he turned to violet with troubled eyes. "no, they are not dreams; they are things which need to be done. but i can't realise them now, with you sitting here, any more than i can realise, with this music in my ears, that it is my home to which i am going back." "oh, but you will!" cried violet. "when you are out there you will. there's the road, too, the road which you and mr. linforth--" she did not complete the sentence. with a low cry shere all broke in upon her words. he leaned forward, with his hands covering his face. "yes," he whispered, "there's the road--there's the road." a passion of self-reproach shook him. not for nothing had linforth been his friend. "i feel a traitor," he cried. "for ten years we have talked of that road, planned it, and made it in thought, poring over the maps. yes, for even at the beginning, in our first term at eton, we began. over the passes to the foot of the hindu kush! only a year ago i was eager, really, honestly eager," and he paused for a moment, wondering at that picture of himself which his words evoked, wondering whether it was indeed he--he who sat in the conservatory--who had cherished those bright dreams of a great life in chiltistan. "yes, it is true. i was honestly eager to go back." "less than a year ago," said violet oliver quickly. "less than a week ago. when did i see you last? on sunday, wasn't it?" "but was i honest then?" exclaimed shere ali. "i don't know. i thought i was--right up to to-day, right up to this morning when the letter came. and then--" he made a despairing gesture, as of a man crumbling dust between his fingers. "i will tell you," he said, turning towards her. "i believe that the last time i was really honest was in august of last year. linforth and i talked of the road through a long day in the hut upon the meije. i was keen then--honestly keen. but the next evening we came down to la grave, and--i met you." "no," violet oliver protested. "that's not the reason." "i think it is," said shere ali quietly; and violet was silent. in spite of her pity, which was genuine enough, her thoughts went out towards shere ali's friend. with what words and in what spirit would he have received shere ali's summons to chiltistan? she asked herself the question, knowing well the answer. there would have been no lamentations--a little regret, perhaps, perhaps indeed a longing to take her with him. but there would have been not a thought of abandoning the work. she recognised that truth with a sudden spasm of anger, but yet admiration strove with the anger and mastered it. "if what you say is true," she said to shere ali gently, "i am very sorry. but i hope it is not true. you have been ten years here; you have made many friends. just for the moment the thought of leaving them behind troubles you. but that will pass." "will it?" he asked quietly. then a smile came upon his face. "there's one thing of which i am glad," he whispered. "yes." "you are wearing my pearls to-night." violet oliver smiled, and with a tender caressing movement her fingers touched and felt the rope of pearls about her neck. both the smile and the movement revealed violet oliver. she had a love of beautiful things, but, above all, of jewels. it was a passion with her deeper than any she had ever known. beautiful stones, and pearls more than any other stones, made an appeal to her which she could not resist. "they are very lovely," she said softly. "i shall be glad to remember that you wore them to-night," said shere ali; "for, as you know, i love you." "hush!" said mrs. oliver; and she rose with a start from her chair. shere ali did the same. "it's true," he said sullenly; and then, with a swift step, he placed himself in her way. violet oliver drew back quietly. her heart beat quickly. she looked into shere ali's face and was afraid. he was quite still; even the expression of his face was set, but his eyes burned upon her. there was a fierceness in his manner which was new to her. his hand darted out quickly towards her. but violet oliver was no less quick. she drew back yet another step. "i didn't understand," she said, and her lips shook, so that the words were blurred. she raised her hands to her neck and loosened the coils of pearls about it as though she meant to lift them off and return them to the giver. "oh, don't do that, please," said shere ali; and already his voice and his manner had changed. the sullenness had gone. now he besought. his english training came to his aid. he had learned reverence for women, acquiring it gradually and almost unconsciously rather than from any direct teaching. he had spent one summer's holidays with mrs. linforth for his hostess in the house under the sussex downs, and from her and from dick's manner towards her he had begun to acquire it. he had become conscious of that reverence, and proudly conscious. he had fostered it. it was one of the qualities, one of the essential qualities, of the white people. it marked the sahibs off from the eastern races. to possess that reverence, to be influenced and moved and guided by it--that made him one with them. he called upon it to help him now. almost he had forgotten it. "please don't take them off," he implored. "there was nothing to understand." and perhaps there was not, except this--that violet oliver was of those who take but do not give. she removed her hands from her throat. the moment of danger had passed, as she very well knew. "there is one thing i should be very grateful for," he said humbly. "it would not cause you very much trouble, and it would mean a great deal to me. i would like you to write to me now and then." "why, of course i will," said mrs. oliver, with a smile. "you promise?" "yes. but you will come back to england." "i shall try to come next summer, if it's only for a week," said shere ali; and he made way for violet. she moved a few yards across the conservatory, and then stopped for shere ali to come level with her. "i shall write, of course, to chiltistan," she said carelessly. "yes," he replied, "i go northwards from bombay. i travel straight to kohara." "very well. i will write to you there," said violet oliver; but it seemed that she was not satisfied. she walked slowly towards the door, with shere ali at her side. "and you will stay in chiltistan until you come back to us?" she asked. "you won't go down to calcutta at christmas, for instance? calcutta is the place to which people go at christmas, isn't it? i think you are right. you have a career in your own country, amongst your own people." she spoke urgently. and shere ali, thinking that thus she spoke in concern for his future, drew some pride from her encouragement. he also drew some shame; for she might have been speaking, too, in pity for his distress. "mrs. oliver," he said, with hesitation; and she stopped and turned to him. "perhaps i said more than i meant to say a few minutes ago. i have not forgotten really that there is much for me to do in my own country; i have not forgotten that i can thank all of you here who have shown me so much kindness by more than mere words. for i can help in chiltistan--i can really help." then came a smile upon violet oliver's face, and her eyes shone. "that is how i would have you speak," she cried. "i am glad. oh, i am glad!" and her voice rang with the fulness of her pleasure. she had been greatly distressed by the unhappiness of her friend, and in that distress compunction had played its part. there was no hardness in violet oliver's character. to give pain flattered no vanity in her. she understood that shere ali would suffer because of her, and she longed that he should find his compensation in the opportunities of rulership. "let us say good-bye here," he said. "we may not be alone again before i go." she gave him her hand, and he held it for a little while, and then reluctantly let it go. "that must last me until the summer of next year," he said with a smile. "until the summer," said violet oliver; and she passed out from the doorway into the ball-room. but as she entered the room and came once more amongst the lights and the noise, and the familiar groups of her friends, she uttered a little sigh of relief. the summer of next year was a long way off; and meanwhile here was an episode in her life ended as she wished it to end; for in these last minutes it had begun to disquiet her. shere ali remained behind in the conservatory. his eyes wandered about it. he was impressing upon his memory every detail of the place, the colours of the flowers and their very perfumes. he looked through the doorway into the ball-room whence the music swelled. the note of regret was louder than ever in his ears, and dominated the melody. to-morrow the lights, the delicate frocks, the laughing voices and bright eyes would be gone. the violins spoke to him of that morrow of blank emptiness softly and languorously like one making a luxury of grief. in a week's time he would be setting his face towards chiltistan; and, in spite of the brave words he had used to violet oliver, once more the question forced itself into his mind. "do i belong here?" he asked. "or do i belong to chiltistan?" on the one side was all that during ten years he had gradually learned to love and enjoy; on the other side was his race and the land of his birth. he could not answer the question; for there was a third possibility which had not yet entered into his speculations, and in that third possibility alone was the answer to be found. chapter xi at the gate of lahore shere ali, accordingly, travelled with reluctance to bombay, and at that port an anonymous letter with the postmark of calcutta was brought to him on board the steamer. shere ali glanced through it, and laughed, knowing well his countrymen's passion for mysteries and intrigues. he put the letter in his pocket and took the northward mail. these were the days before the north-west province had been severed from the punjab, and instructions had been given to shere ali to break his journey at lahore. he left the train, therefore, at that station, on a morning when the thermometer stood at over a hundred in the shade, and was carried in a barouche drawn by camels to government house. there a haggard and heat-worn commissioner received him, and in the cool of the evening took him for a ride, giving him sage advice with the accent of authority. "his excellency would have liked to have seen you himself," said the commissioner. "but he is in the hills and he did not think it necessary to take you so far out of your way. it is as well that you should get to kohara as soon as possible, and on particular subjects the resident, captain phillips, will be able and glad to advise you." the commissioner spoke politely enough, but the accent of authority was there. shere ali's ears were quick to notice and resent it. some years had passed since commands had been laid upon him. "i shall always be glad to hear what captain phillips has to say," he replied stiffly. "yes, yes, of course," said the commissioner, taking that for granted. "captain phillips has our views." he did not seem to notice the stiffness of shere ali's tone. he was tired with the strain of the hot weather, as his drawn face and hollow eyes showed clearly. "on general lines," he continued, "his excellency would like you to understand that the government has no intention and no wish to interfere with the customs and laws of chiltistan. in fact it is at this moment particularly desirable that you should throw your influence on the side of the native observances." "indeed," said shere ali, as he rode along the mall by the commissioner's side. "then why was i sent to oxford?" the commissioner was not surprised by the question, though it was abruptly put. "surely that is a question to ask of his highness, your father," he replied. "no doubt all you learnt and saw there will be extremely valuable. what i am saying now is that the government wishes to give no pretext whatever to those who would disturb chiltistan, and it looks to you with every confidence for help and support." "and the road?" asked shere ali. "it is not proposed to carry on the road. the merchants in kohara think that by bringing more trade, their profits would become less, while the country people look upon it as a deliberate attack upon their independence. the government has no desire to force it upon the people against their wish." shere ali made no reply, but his heart grew bitter within him. he had come out to india sore and distressed at parting from his friends, from the life he had grown to love. all the way down the red sea and across the indian ocean, the pangs of regret had been growing keener with each new mile which was gathered in behind the screw. he had lain awake listening to the throb of the engine with an aching heart, and with every longing for the country he had left behind growing stronger, every recollection growing more vivid and intense. there was just one consolation which he had. violet oliver had enheartened him to make the most of it, and calling up the image of her face before him, he had striven so to do. there were his plans for the regeneration of his country. and lo! here at lahore, three days after he had set foot on land, they were shattered--before they were begun. he had been trained and educated in the west according to western notions and he was now bidden to go and rule in the east according to the ideals of the east. bidden! for the quiet accent of authority in the words of the unobservant man who rode beside him rankled deeply. he had it in his thoughts to cry out: "then what place have i in chiltistan?" but though he never uttered the question, it was none the less answered. "economy and quiet are the two things which chiltistan needs," said the commissioner. then he looked carelessly at shere ali. "it is hoped that you will marry and settle down as soon as possible," he said. shere ali reined in his horse, stared for a moment at his companion and then began quietly to laugh. the laughter was not pleasant to listen to, and it grew harsher and louder. but it brought no change to the tired face of the commissioner, who had stopped his horse beside shere ali's and was busy with the buckle of his stirrup leather. he raised his head when the laughter stopped. and it stopped as abruptly as it had begun. "you were saying--" he remarked politely. "that i would like, if there is time, to ride through the bazaar." "certainly," said the commissioner. "this way," and he turned at right angles out of the mall and its avenue of great trees and led the way towards the native city. short of it, however, he stopped. "you won't mind if i leave you here," he said. "there is some work to be done. you can make no mistake. you can see the gate from here." "is that the delhi gate?" asked shere ali. "yes. you can find your own way back, no doubt"; and the unobservant commissioner rode away at a trot. shere ali went forward alone down the narrowing street towards the gate. he was aflame with indignation. so he was to be nothing, he was to do nothing, except to practice economy and marry--a _nigger_. the contemptuous word rose to his mind. long ago it had been applied to him more than once during his early school-days, until desperate battles and black eyes had won him immunity. now he used it savagely himself to stigmatise his own people. he was of the white people, he declared. he felt it, he looked it. even at that moment a portly gentleman of lahore in a coloured turban and patent-leather shoes salaamed to him as he passed upon his horse. "surely," he thought, "i am one of the sahibs. this fool of a commissioner does not understand." a woman passed him carrying a babe poised upon her head, with silver anklets upon her bare ankles and heavy silver rings upon her toes. she turned her face, which was overshadowed by a hood, to look at shere ali as he rode by. he saw the heavy stud of silver and enamel in her nostril, the withered brown face. he turned and looked at her, as she walked flat-footed and ungainly, her pyjamas of pink cotton showing beneath her cloak. he had no part or lot with any of these people of the east. the face of violet oliver shone before his eyes. there was his mate. he recalled the exquisite daintiness of her appearance, her ruffles of lace, the winning sweetness of her eyes. not in chiltistan would he find a woman to drive that image from his thoughts. meanwhile he drew nearer to the delhi gate. a stream of people flowed out from it towards him. over their heads he looked through the archway down the narrow street, where between the booths and under the carved overhanging balconies the brown people robed and turbaned, in saffron and blue, pink and white, thronged and chattered and jostled, a kaleidoscope of colour. shere ali turned his eyes to the right and the left as he went. it was not merely to rid himself of the commissioner that he had proposed to ride on to the bazaars by way of the delhi gate. the anonymous letter bearing the postmark of calcutta, which had been placed in his hand when the steamer reached bombay, besought him to pass by the delhi gate at lahore and do certain things by which means he would hear much to his advantage. he had no thought at the moment to do the particular things, but he was sufficiently curious to pass by the delhi gate. some intrigue was on hand into which it was sought to lure him. he had not forgotten that his countrymen were born intriguers. slowly he rode along. here and there a group of people were squatting on the ground, talking noisily. here and there a beggar stretched out a maimed limb and sought for alms. then close to the gate he saw that for which he searched: a man sitting apart with a blanket over his head. no one spoke to the man, and for his part he never moved. he sat erect with his legs crossed in front of him and his hands resting idly on his knees, a strange and rather grim figure; so motionless, so utterly lifeless he seemed. the blanket reached almost to the ground behind and hung down to his lap in front, and shere ali noticed that a leathern begging-bowl at his side was well filled with coins. so he must have sat just in that attitude, with that thick covering stifling him, all through the fiery heat of that long day. as shere ali looked, he saw a poor bent man in rags, with yellow caste marks on his forehead, add a copper pi to the collection in the bowl. shere ali stopped the giver. "who is he?" he asked, pointing to the draped figure. the old hindu raised his hand and bowed his forehead into the palm. "huzoor, he is a holy man, a stranger who has lately come to lahore, but the holiest of all the holy men who have ever sat by the delhi gate. his fame is already great." "but why does he sit covered with the blanket?" asked shere ali. "huzoor, because of his holiness. he is so holy that his face must not be seen." shere ali laughed. "he told you that himself, i suppose," he said. "huzoor, it is well known," said the old man. "he sits by the road all day until the darkness comes--" "yes," said shere ali, bethinking him of the recommendations in his letter, "until the darkness comes--and then?" "then he goes away into the city and no one sees him until the morning"; and the old man passed on. shere ali chuckled and rode by the hooded man. his curiosity increased. it was quite likely that the blanket hid a mohammedan pathan from beyond the hills. to come down into the plains and mulct the pious hindu by some such ingenious practice would appeal to the pathan's sense of humour almost as much as to his pocket. shere ali drew the letter from his pocket, and in the waning light read it through again. true, the postmark showed that the letter had been posted in calcutta, but more than one native of chiltistan had come south and set up as a money-lender in that city on the proceeds of a successful burglary. he replaced the letter in his pocket, and rode on at a walk through the throng. the darkness came quickly; oil lamps were lighted in the booths and shone though the unglazed window-spaces overhead. a refreshing coolness fell upon the town, the short, welcome interval between the heat of the day and the suffocating heat of the night. shere ali turned his horse and rode back again to the gate. the hooded beggar still sat upon the ground, but he was alone. the others, the blind and the maimed, had crawled away to their dens. except this grim motionless man, there was no one squatting upon the ground. shere ali reined in beside him, and bending forward in his saddle spoke in a low voice a few words of pushtu. the hooded figure did not move, but from behind the blanket there issued a muffled voice. "if your highness will ride slowly on, your servant will follow and come to his side." shere ali went on, and in a few moments he heard the soft patter of a man running barefoot along the dusty road. he stopped his horse and the patter of feet ceased, but a moment after, silent as a shadow, the man was at his side. "you are of my country?" said shere ali. "i am of kohara," returned the man. "safdar khan of kohara. may god keep your highness in health. we have waited long for your presence." "what are you doing in lahore?" asked shere ali. in the darkness he saw a flash of white as safdar khan smiled. "there was a little trouble, your highness, with one ishak mohammed and--ishak mohammed's son is still alive. he is a boy of eight, it is true, and could not hold a rifle to his shoulder. but the trouble took place near the road." shere ali nodded his head in comprehension. safdar khan had shot his enemy on the road, which is a holy place, and therefore he came within the law. "blood-money was offered," continued safdar khan, "but the boy would not consent, and claims my life. his mother would hold the rifle for him while he pulled the trigger. so i am better in lahore. moreover, your highness, for a poor man life is difficult in kohara. taxes are high. so i came down to this gate and sat with a cloak over my head." "and you have found it profitable," said shere ali. again the teeth flashed in the darkness and safdar khan laughed. "for two days i sat by the delhi gate and no one spoke to me or dropped a single coin in my bowl. but on the third day a good man, may god preserve him, passed by when i was nearly stifled and asked me why i sat in the heat of the sun under a blanket. thereupon i told him, what doubtless your highness knows, that my face is much too holy to be looked upon, and since then your highness' servant has prospered exceedingly. the device is a good one." suddenly safdar khan stumbled as he walked and lurched against the horse and its rider. he recovered himself in a moment, with prayers for forgiveness and curses upon his stupidity for setting his foot upon a sharp stone. but he had put out his hand as he stumbled and that hand had run lightly down shere ali's coat and had felt the texture of his clothes. "i had a letter from calcutta," said the prince, "which besought me to speak to you, for you had something for my ear. therefore speak, and speak quickly." but a change had come over safdar khan. certainly shere ali was wearing the dress of one of the sahibs. a man passed carrying a lantern, and the light, feeble though it was, threw into outline against the darkness a pith helmet and a very english figure. certainly, too, shere ali spoke the pushtu tongue with a slight hesitation, and an unfamiliar accent. he seemed to grope for words. "a letter?" he cried. "from calcutta? nay, how can that be? some foolish fellow has dared to play a trick," and in a few short, effective sentences safdar khan expressed his opinion of the foolish fellow and of his ancestry distant and immediate. "yet the letter bade me seek you by the delhi gate of lahore," continued shere ali calmly, "and by the delhi gate of lahore i found you." "my fame is great," replied safdar khan bombastically. "far and wide it has spread like the boughs of a gigantic tree." "rubbish," said shere ali curtly, breaking in upon safdar's vehemence. "i am not one of the hindu fools who fill your begging-bowl," and he laughed. in the darkness he heard safdar khan laugh too. "you expected me," continued shere ali. "you looked for my coming. your ears were listening for the few words of pushtu. why else should you say, 'ride forward and i will follow'?" safdar khan walked for a little while in silence. then in a voice of humility, he said: "i will tell my lord the truth. yes, some foolish talk has passed from one man to another, and has been thrown back again like a ball. i too," he admitted, "have been without wisdom. but i have seen how vain such talk is. the mullahs in the hills speak only ignorance and folly." "ah!" said shere ali. he took the letter from his pocket and tore it into fragments and scattered the fragments upon the road. "so i thought. the letter is of their prompting." "my lord, it may be so," replied safdar khan. "for my part i have no lot or share in any of these things. for i am now of lahore." "aye," said shere ali. "the begging-bowl is filled to overflowing at the delhi gate. so you are of lahore, though your name is safdar khan and you were born at kohara," and suddenly he leaned down and asked in a wistful voice with a great curiosity, "are you content? have you forgotten the hills and valleys? is lahore more to you than chiltistan?" so perpetually had shere all's mind run of late upon his isolation that it crept into all his thoughts. so now it seemed to him that there was some vague parallel between his mental state and that of safdar khan. but safdar khan's next words disabused him: "nay, nay," he said. "but the widow of a rich merchant in the city here, a devout and holy woman, has been greatly moved by my piety. she seeks my hand in marriage and--" here safdar khan laughed pleasantly--"i shall marry her. already she has given me a necklace of price which i have had weighed and tested to prove that she does not play me false. she is very rich, and it is too hot to sit in the sun under a blanket. so i will be a merchant of lahore instead, and live at my ease on the upper balcony of my house." shere ali laughed and answered, "it is well." then he added shrewdly: "but it is possible that you may yet at some time meet the man in calcutta who wrote the letter to me. if so, tell him what i did with it," and shere ali's voice became hard and stern. "tell him that i tore it up and scattered it in the dust. and let him send the news to the mullahs in the hills. i know that soft-handed brood with their well-fed bodies and their treacherous mouths. if only they would let me carry on the road!" he cried passionately, "i would drag them out of the houses where they batten on poor men's families and set them to work till the palms of their hands were honestly blistered. let the mullahs have a care, safdar khan. i go north to-morrow to kohara." he spoke with a greater vehemence than perhaps he had meant to show. but he was carried along by his own words, and sought always a stronger epithet than that which he had used. he was sore and indignant, and he vented his anger on the first object which served him as an opportunity. safdar khan bowed his head in the darkness. safe though he might be in lahore, he was still afraid of the mullahs, afraid of their curses, and mindful of their power to ruin the venturesome man who dared to stand against them. "it shall be as your highness wishes," he said in a low voice, and he hurried away from shere ali's side. abuse of the mullahs was dangerous--as dangerous to listen to as to speak. who knew but what the very leaves of the neem trees might whisper the words and bear witness against him? moreover, it was clear that the prince of chiltistan was a sahib. shere ali rode back to government house. he understood clearly why safdar khan had so unceremoniously fled; and he was glad. if the fool of a commissioner did not know him for what he was, at all events safdar khan did. he was one of the white people. for who else would dare to speak as he had spoken of the mullahs? the mullahs would hear what he had said. that was certain. they would hear it with additions. they would try to make things unpleasant for him in chiltistan in consequence. but shere ali was glad. for their very opposition--in so loverlike a way did every thought somehow reach out to violet oliver--brought him a little nearer to the lady who held his heart. he found the commissioner sealing up his letters in his office. that unobservant man had just written at length, privately and confidentially, both to the lieutenant-governor of the punjab at the hill-station and to the resident at kohara. and to both he had written to the one effect: "we must expect trouble in chiltistan." he based his conclusions upon the glimpse which he had obtained into the troubled feelings of shere ali. the next morning shere ali travelled northwards and forty-eight hours later from the top of the malakand pass he saw winding across the swat valley past chakdara the road which reached to kohara and there stopped. chapter xii on the polo-ground violet oliver travelled to india in the late autumn of that year, free from apprehension. somewhere beyond the high snow-passes shere ali would be working out his destiny among his own people. she was not of those who seek publicity either for themselves or for their gowns in the daily papers. shere ali would never hear of her visit; she was safe. she spent her christmas in calcutta, saw the race for the viceroy's cup run without a fear that on that crowded racecourse the importunate figure of the young prince of chiltistan might emerge to reproach her, and a week later went northwards into the united provinces. it was a year, now some while past, when a royal visitor came from a neighbouring country into india. and in his honour at one great city in those provinces the troops gathered and the tents went up. little towns of canvas, gay with bordered walks and flowers, were dotted on the dusty plains about and within the city. great ministers and functionaries came with their retinues and their guests. native princes from rajputana brought their elephants and their escorts. thither also came violet oliver. it was, indeed, to attend this durbar that she had been invited out from england. she stayed in a small camp on the great parade ground where the tents faced one another in a single street, each with its little garden of grass and flowers before the door. the ends of the street were closed in by posts, and outside the posts sentries were placed. it was a week of bright, sunlit, rainless days, and of starry nights. it was a week of reviews and state functions. but it was also a week during which the best polo to be seen in india drew the visitors each afternoon to the club-ground. there was no more constant attendant than violet oliver. she understood the game and followed it with a nice appreciation of the player's skill. the first round of the competition had been played off on the third day, but a native team organised by the ruler of a mohammedan state in central india had drawn a by and did not appear in the contest until the fourth day. mrs. oliver took her seat in the front row of the stand, as the opposing teams cantered into the field upon their ponies. a programme was handed to her, but she did not open it. for already one of the umpires had tossed the ball into the middle of the ground. the game had begun. the native team was matched against a regiment of dragoons, and from the beginning it was plain that the four english players were the stronger team. but on the other side there was one who in point of skill outstripped them all. he was stationed on the outside of the field farthest away from violet oliver. he was a young man, almost a boy, she judged; he was beautifully mounted, and he sat his pony as though he and it were one. he was quick to turn, quick to pass the ball; and he never played a dangerous game. a desire that the native team should win woke in her and grew strong just because of that slim youth's extraordinary skill. time after time he relieved his side, and once, as it seemed to her, he picked the ball out of the very goalposts. the bugle, she remembered afterwards, had just sounded. he drove the ball out from the press, leaned over until it seemed he must fall to resist an opponent who tried to ride him off, and then somehow he shook himself free from the tangle of polo-sticks and ponies. "oh, well done! well done!" cried violet oliver, clenching her hands in her enthusiasm. a roar of applause went up. he came racing down the very centre of the ground, the long ends of his white turban streaming out behind him like a pennant. the seven other players followed upon his heels outpaced and outplayed. he rode swinging his polo-stick for the stroke, and then with clean hard blows sent the ball skimming through the air like a bird. violet oliver watched him in suspense, dreading lest he should override the ball, or that his stroke should glance. but he made no mistake. the sound of the strokes rose clear and sharp; the ball flew straight. he drove it between the posts, and the players streamed in behind as though through the gateway of a beleaguered town. he had scored the first goal of the game at the end of the first chukkur. he cantered back to change his pony. but this time he rode along the edge of the stand, since on this side the ponies waited with their blankets thrown over their saddles and the syces at their heads. he ran his eyes along the row of onlookers as he cantered by, and suddenly violet oliver leaned forward. she had been interested merely in the player. now she was interested in the man who played. she was more than interested. for she felt a tightening of the heart and she caught her breath. "it could not be," she said to herself. she could see his face clearly, however, now; and as suddenly as she had leaned forward she drew back. she lowered her head, until her broad hat-brim hid her face. she opened her programme, looked for and found the names of the players. shere ali's stared her in the face. "he has broken his word," she said angrily to herself, quite forgetting that he had given no word, and that she had asked for none. then she fell to wondering whether or no he had recognised her as he rode past the stand. she stole a glance as he cantered back, but shere ali was not looking towards her. she debated whether she should make an excuse and go back to her camp. but if he had thought he had seen her, he would look again, and her empty place would be convincing evidence. moreover, the teams had changed goals. shere ali would be playing on this side of the ground during the next chukkur unless the dragoons scored quickly. violet oliver kept her place, but she saw little of the game. she watched shere ali's play furtively, however, hoping thereby to learn whether he had noticed her. and in a little while she knew. he played wildly, his strokes had lost their precision, he was less quick to follow the twists of the ball. shere ali had seen her. at the end of the game he galloped quickly to the corner, and when violet oliver came out of the enclosure she saw him standing, with his long overcoat already on his shoulders, waiting for her. violet oliver separated herself from her friends and went forward towards him. she held out her hand. shere ali hesitated and then took it. all through the game, pride had been urging him to hold his head high and seek not so much as a single word with her. but he had been alone for six months in chiltistan and he was young. "you might have let me know," he said, in a troubled voice. violet oliver faltered out some beginnings of an excuse. she did not want to bring him away from his work in chiltistan. but shere ali was not listening to the excuses. "i must see you again," he said. "i must." "no doubt we shall meet," replied violet oliver. "to-morrow," continued shere ali. "to-morrow evening. you will be going to the fort." there was to be an investiture, and after the investiture a great reception in the fort on the evening of the next day. it would be as good a place as any, thought violet oliver--nay, a better place. there would be crowds of people wandering about the fort. since they must meet, let it be there and soon. "very well," she said. "to-morrow evening," and she passed on and rejoined her friends. chapter xiii the invidious bar violet oliver drove back to her camp in the company of her friends and they remarked upon her silence. "you are tired, violet?" her hostess asked of her. "a little, perhaps," violet admitted, and, urging fatigue as her excuse, she escaped to her tent. there she took counsel of her looking-glass. "i couldn't possibly have foreseen that he would be here," she pleaded to her reflection. "he was to have stayed in chiltistan. i asked him and he told me that he meant to stay. if he had stayed there, he would never have known that i was in india," and she added and repeated, "it's really not my fault." in a word she was distressed and sincerely distressed. but it was not upon her own account. she was not thinking of the awkwardness to her of this unexpected encounter. but she realised that she had given pain where she had meant not to give pain. shere ali had seen her. he had been assured that she sought to avoid him. and this was not the end. she must go on and give more pain. violet oliver had hoped and believed that her friendship with the young prince was something which had gone quite out of her life. she had closed it and put it away, as you put away upon an upper shelf a book which you do not mean to read again. the last word had been spoken eight months ago in the conservatory of lady marfield's house. and behold they had met again. there must be yet another meeting, yet another last interview. and from that last interview nothing but pain could come to shere ali. therefore she anticipated it with a great reluctance. violet oliver did not live among illusions. she was no sentimentalist. she never made up and rehearsed in imagination little scenes of a melting pathos where eternal adieux were spoken amid tears. she had no appreciation of the woeful luxury of last interviews. on the contrary, she hated to confront distress or pain. it was in her character always to take the easier way when trouble threatened. she would have avoided altogether this meeting with shere ali, had it been possible. "it's a pity," she said, and that was all. she was reluctant, but she had no misgiving. shere ali was to her still the youth to whom she had said good-bye in lady marfield's conservatory. she had seen him in the flush of victory after a close-fought game, and thus she had seen him often enough before. it was not to be wondered at that she noted no difference at that moment. but the difference was there for the few who had eyes to see. he had journeyed up the broken road into chiltistan. at the fort of chakdara, in the rice fields on the banks of the swat river, he had taken his luncheon one day with the english commandant and the english doctor, and there he had parted with the ways of life which had become to him the only ways. he had travelled thence for a few hundred yards along a straight strip of road running over level ground, and so with the levies of dir to escort him he swung round to the left. a screen of hillside and grey rock moved across the face of the country behind him. the last outpost was left behind. the fort and the signal tower on the pinnacle opposite and the english flag flying over all were hidden from his sight. wretched as any exile from his native land, shere all went up into the lower passes of the himalayas. days were to pass and still the high snow-peaks which glittered in the sky, gold in the noonday, silver in the night time, above the valleys of chiltistan were to be hidden in the far north. but already the words began to be spoken and the little incidents to occur which were to ripen him for his destiny. they were garnered into his memories as separate and unrelated events. it was not until afterwards that he came to know how deeply they had left their marks, or that he set them in an ordered sequence and gave to them a particular significance. even at the fort of chakdara a beginning had been made. shere ali was standing in the little battery on the very summit of the fort. below him was the oblong enclosure of the men's barracks, the stone landings and steps, the iron railings, the numbered doors. he looked down into the enclosure as into a well. it might almost have been a section of the barracks at chatham. but shere ali raised his head, and, over against him, on the opposite side of a natural gateway in the hills, rose the steep slope and the signal tower. "i was here," said the doctor, who stood behind him, "during the malakand campaign. you remember it, no doubt?" "i was at oxford. i remember it well," said shere ali. "we were hard pressed here, but the handful of men in the signal tower had the worst of it," continued the doctor in a matter-of-fact voice. "it was reckoned that there were fourteen thousand men from the swat valley besieging us, and as they did not mind how many they lost, even with the maxims and our wire defences it was difficult to keep them off. we had to hold on to the signal tower because we could communicate with the people on the malakand from there, while we couldn't from the fort itself. the amandara ridge, on the other side of the valley, as you can see, just hides the pass from us. well, the handful of men in the tower managed to keep in communication with the main force, and this is how it was done. a sepoy called prem singh used to come out into full view of the enemy through a porthole of the tower, deliberately set up his apparatus, and heliograph away to the main force in the malakand camp, with the swatis firing at him from short range. how it was he was not hit, i could never understand. he did it day after day. it was the bravest and coolest thing i ever saw done or ever heard of, with one exception, perhaps. prem singh would have got the victoria cross--" and the doctor stopped suddenly and his face flushed. shere ali, however, was too keenly interested in the incident itself to take any note of the narrator's confusion. baldly though it was told, there was the square, strong tower with its door six feet from the ground, its machicoulis, its narrow portholes over against him, to give life and vividness to the story. here that brave deed had been done and daily repeated. shere ali peopled the empty slopes which ran down from the tower to the river and the high crags beyond the tower with the hordes of white-clad swatis, all in their finest robes, like men who have just reached the goal of a holy pilgrimage, as indeed they had. he saw their standards, he heard the din of their firearms, and high above them on the wall of the tower he saw the khaki-clad figure of a single sepoy calmly flashing across the valley news of the defenders' plight. "didn't he get the victoria cross?" he asked. "no," returned the doctor with a certain awkwardness. but still shere ali did not notice. "and what was the exception?" he asked eagerly. "what was the other brave deed you have seen fit to rank with this?" "that, too, happened over there," said the doctor, seizing upon the question with relief. "during the early days of the siege we were able to send in to the tower water and food. but when the first of august came we could help them no more. the enemy thronged too closely round us, we were attacked by night and by day, and stone sangars, in which the swatis lay after dark, were built between us and the tower. we sent up water to the tower for the last time at half-past nine on a saturday morning, and it was not until half-past four on the monday afternoon that the relieving force marched across the bridge down there and set us free." "they were without water for all that time--and in august?" cried shere ali. "no," the doctor answered. "but they would have been had the sepoy not found his equal. a bheestie"--and he nodded his head to emphasise the word--"not a soldier at all, but a mere water-carrier, a mere camp-follower, volunteered to go down to the river. he crept out of the tower after nightfall with his water-skins, crawled down between the sangars--and i can tell you the hill-side was thick with them--to the brink of the swat river below there, filled his skins, and returned with them." "that man, too, earned the victoria cross," said shere ali. "yes," said the doctor, "no doubt, no doubt." something of flurry was again audible in his voice, and this time shere ali noticed it. "earned--but did not get it?" he went on slowly; and turning to the doctor he waited quietly for an answer. the answer was given reluctantly, after a pause. "well! that is so." "why?" the question was uttered sharply, close upon the words which had preceded it. the doctor looked upon the ground, shifted his feet, and looked up again. he was a young man, and inexperienced. the question was repeated. "why?" the doctor's confusion increased. he recognised that his delay in answering only made the answer more difficult to give. it could not be evaded. he blurted out the truth apologetically. "well, you see, we don't give the victoria cross to natives." shere ali was silent for a while. he stood with his eyes fixed upon the tower, his face quite inscrutable. "yes, i guessed that would be the reason," he said quietly. "well," said his companion uncomfortably, "i expect some day that will be altered." shere ali shrugged his shoulders, and turned to go down. at the gateway of the fort, by the wire bridge, his escort, mounted upon their horses, waited for him. he climbed into the saddle without a word. he had been labouring for these last days under a sense of injury, and his thoughts had narrowed in upon himself. he was thinking. "i, too, then, could never win that prize." his conviction that he was really one of the white people, bolstered up as it had been by so many vain arguments, was put to the test of fact. the truth shone in upon his mind. for here was a coveted privilege of the white people from which he was debarred, he and the bheestie and the sepoy. they were all one, he thought bitterly, to the white people. the invidious bar of his colour was not to be broken. "good-bye," he said, leaning down from his saddle and holding out his hand. "thank you very much." he shook hands with the doctor and cantered down the road, with a smile upon his face. but the consciousness of the invidious bar was rankling cruelly at his heart, and it continued to rankle long after he had swung round the bend of the road and had lost sight of chakdara and the english flag. he passed through jandol and climbed the lowari pass among the fir trees and the pines, and on the very summit he met three men clothed in brown homespun with their hair clubbed at the sides of their heads. each man carried a rifle on his back and two of them carried swords besides, and they wore sandals of grass upon their feet. they were talking as they went, and they were talking in the chilti tongue. shere ali hailed them and bade them stop. "on what journey are you going?" he asked, and one of the three bowed low and answered him. "sir, we are going to mecca." "to mecca!" exclaimed shere ali. "how will you ever get to mecca? have you money?" "sir, we have each six rupees, and with six rupees a man may reach mecca from kurrachee. till we reach kurrachee, there is no fear that we shall starve. dwellers in the villages will befriend us." "why, that is true," said shere ali, "but since you are countrymen of my own and my father's subjects, you shall not tax too heavily your friends upon the road." he added to their scanty store of rupees, and one after another they thanked him and so went cheerily down the pass. shere ali watched them as they went, wondering that men should take such a journey and endure so much discomfort for their faith. he watched their dwindling figures and understood how far he was set apart from them. he was of their faith himself, nominally at all events, but mecca--? he shrugged his shoulders at the name. it meant no more to him than it did to the white people who had cast him out. but that chance meeting lingered in his memory, and as he travelled northwards, he would wonder at times by night at what village his three countrymen slept and by day whether their faith still cheered them on their road. he came at last to the borders of chiltistan, and travelled thenceforward through a country rich with orchards and green rice and golden amaranth. the terraced slopes of the mountains, ablaze with wild indigo, closed in upon him and widened out. above the terraces great dark forests of pines and deodars, maples and horse chestnuts clung to the hill sides; and above the forests grass slopes stretched up to bare rock and the snowfields. from the villages the people came out to meet him, and here and there from some castle of a greater importance a chieftain would ride out with his bodyguard, gay in velvets, and silks from bokhara and chogas of gold kinkob, and offer to him gold dust twisted up in the petal of a flower, which he touched and remitted. he was escorted to polo-grounds and sat for hours witnessing sports and trials of skill, and at night to the music of kettledrums and pipes men and boys danced interminably before him. there was one evening which he particularly remembered. he had set up his camp outside a large village and was sitting alone by his fire in the open air. the night was very still, the sky dark but studded with stars extraordinarily bright--so bright, indeed, that shere ali could see upon the water of the river below the low cliff on which his camp fire was lit a trembling golden path made by the rays of a planet. and as he sat, unexpectedly in the hush a boy with a clear, sweet voice began to sing from the darkness behind him. the melody was plaintive and sweet; a few notes of a pipe accompanied him; and as shere ali listened in this high valley of the himalayas on a summer's night, the music took hold upon him and wrung his heart. the yearning for all that he had left behind became a pain almost beyond endurance. the days of his boyhood and his youth went by before his eyes in a glittering procession. his school life, his first summer term at oxford, the cherwell with the shadows of the branches overhead dappling the water, the strenuous week of the eights, his climbs with linforth, and, above all, london in june, a london bright with lilac and sunshine and the fair faces of women, crowded in upon his memory. he had been steadily of late refusing to remember, but the sweet voice and the plaintive melody had caught him unawares. the ghosts of his dead pleasures trooped out and took life and substance. particular hours were lived through again--a motor ride alone with violet oliver to pangbourne, a dinner on the lawn outside the inn, the drive back to london in the cool of the evening. it all seemed very far away to-night. shere ali sat late beside his fire, nor when he went into his tent did he close his eyes. the next morning he rode among orchards bright with apricots and mulberries, peaches and white grapes, and in another day he looked down from a high cliff, across which the road was carried on a scaffolding, upon the town of kohara and the castle of his father rising in terraces upon a hill behind. the nobles and their followers came out to meet him with courteous words and protestations of good will. but they looked him over with curious and not too friendly eyes. news had gone before shere ali that the young prince of chiltistan was coming to kohara wearing the dress of the white people. they saw that the news was true, but no word or comment was uttered in his hearing. joking and laughing they escorted him to the gates of his father's palace. thus shere ali at the last had come home to kohara. of the life which he lived there he was to tell something to violet oliver. chapter xiv in the courtyard the investiture was over, and the guests, thronging from the hall of audience, came out beneath arches and saw the whole length of the great marble court spread before them. a vast canopy roofed it in, and a soft dim light pervaded it. to those who came from the glitter of the ceremonies it brought a sense of coolness and of peace. from the arches a broad flight of steps led downwards to the floor, where water gleamed darkly in a marble basin. lilies floated upon its surface, and marble paths crossed it to the steps at the far end; and here and there, in its depth, the reflection of a lamp burned steadily. at the far end steps rose again to a great platform and to gilded arches through which lights poured in a blaze, and gave to that end almost the appearance of a lighted stage, and made of the courtyard a darkened auditorium. from one flight of steps to the other, in the dim cool light, the guests passed across the floor of the court, soldiers in uniforms, civilians in their dress of state, jewelled princes of the native kingdoms, ladies in their bravest array. but now and again one or two would slip from the throng, and, leaving the procession, take their own way about the fort. among those who slipped away was violet oliver. she went to the side of the courtyard where a couch stood empty. there she seated herself and waited. in front of her the stream of people passed by talking and laughing, within view, within earshot if only one raised one's voice a trifle above the ordinary note. yet there was no other couch near. one might talk at will and not be overheard. it was, to violet oliver's thinking, a good strategic position, and there she proposed to remain till shere ali found her, and after he had found her, until he went away. she wondered in what guise he would come to her: a picturesque figure with a turban of some delicate shade upon his head and pearls about his throat, or--as she wondered, a young man in the evening dress of an englishman stepped aside from the press of visitors and came towards her. before she could, in that dim light, distinguish his face, she recognised him by the lightness of his step and the suppleness of his figure. she raised herself into a position a little more upright, and held out her hand. she made room for him on the couch beside her, and when he had taken his seat, she turned at once to speak. but shere ali raised his hand in a gesture of entreaty. "hush!" he said with a smile; and the smile pleaded with her as much as did his words. "just for a moment! we can argue afterwards. just for a moment, let us pretend." violet oliver had expected anger, accusations, prayers. even for some threat, some act of violence, she had come prepared. but the quiet wistfulness of his manner, as of a man too tired greatly to long for anything, took her at a disadvantage. but the one thing which she surely understood was the danger of pretence. there had been too much of pretence already. "no," she said. "just for a moment," he insisted. he sat beside her, watching the clear profile of her face, the slender throat, the heavy masses of hair so daintily coiled upon her head. "the last eight months have not been--could not be. yesterday we were at richmond, just you and i. it was sunday--you remember. i called on you in the afternoon, and for a wonder you were alone. we drove down together to richmond, and dined together in the little room at the end of the passage--the room with the big windows, and the name of the woman who was murdered in france scratched upon the glass. that was yesterday." "it was last year," said violet. "yesterday," shere ali persisted. "i dreamt last night that i had gone back to chiltistan; but it was only a dream." "it was the truth," and the quiet assurance of her voice dispelled shere ali's own effort at pretence. he leaned forward suddenly, clasping his hands upon his knees in an attitude familiar to her as characteristic of the man. there was a tenseness which gave to him even in repose a look of activity. "well, it's the truth, then," he said, and his voice took on an accent of bitterness. "and here's more truth. i never thought to see you here to-night." "did you think that i should be afraid?" asked violet oliver in a low, steady voice. "afraid!" shere ali turned towards her in surprise and met her gaze. "no." "why, then, should i break my word? have i done it so often?" shere ali did not answer her directly. "you promised to write to me," he said, and violet oliver replied at once: "yes. and i did write." "you wrote twice," he cried bitterly. "oh, yes, you kept your word. there's a post every day, winter and summer, into chiltistan. sometimes an avalanche or a snowstorm delays it; but on most days it comes. if you could only have guessed how eagerly i looked forward to your letters, you would have written, i think, more often. there's a path over a high ridge by which the courier must come. i could see it from the casement of the tower. i used to watch it through a pair of field-glasses, that i might catch the first glimpse of the man as he rose against the sky. each day i thought 'perhaps there's a letter in your handwriting.' and you wrote twice, and in neither letter was there a hint that you were coming out to india." he was speaking in a low, passionate voice. in spite of herself, violet oliver was moved. the picture of him watching from his window in the tower for the black speck against the skyline was clear before her mind, and troubled her. her voice grew gentle. "i did not write more often on purpose," she said. "it was on purpose, too, that you left out all mention of your visit to india?" violet nodded her head. "yes," she said. "you did not want to see me again." violet turned her face towards him, and leaned forward a little. "i don't say that," she said softly. "but i thought it would be better that we two should not meet again, if meeting could be avoided. i saw that you cared--i may say that, mayn't i?" and for a second she laid her hand gently upon his sleeve. "i saw that you cared too much. it seemed to me best that it should end altogether." shere ali lifted his head, and turned quickly towards her. "why should it end at all?" he cried. his eyes kindled and sought hers. "violet, why should it end at all?" violet oliver drew back. she cast a glance to the courtyard. only a few paces away the stream of people passed up and down. "it must end," she answered. "you know that as well as i." "i don't know it. i won't know it," he replied. he reached out his hand towards hers, but she was too quick for him. he bent nearer to her. "violet," he whispered, "marry me!" violet oliver glanced again to the courtyard. but it was no longer to assure herself that friends of her own race were comfortably near at hand. now she was anxious that they should not be near enough to listen and overhear. "that's impossible!" she answered in a startled voice. "it's not impossible! it's not!" and the desperation in his voice betrayed him. in the depths of his heart he knew that, for this woman, at all events, it was impossible. but he would not listen to that knowledge. "other women, here in india, have had the courage." "and what have their lives been afterwards?" she asked. she had not herself any very strong feeling on the subject of colour. she was not repelled, as men are repelled. but she was aware, nevertheless, how strong the feeling was in others. she had not lived in india for nothing. marriage with shere ali was impossible, even had she wished for it. it meant ostracism and social suicide. "where should i live?" she went on. "in chiltistan? what life would there be there for me?" "no," he replied. "i would not ask it. i never thought of it. in england. we could live there!" and, ceasing to insist, he began wistfully to plead. "oh, if you knew how i have hated these past months. i used to sit at night, alone, alone, alone, eating my heart for want of you; for want of everything i care for. i could not sleep. i used to see the morning break. perhaps here and there a drum would begin to beat, the cries of children would rise up from the streets, and i would lie in my bed with my hands clenched, thinking of the jingle of a hansom cab along the streets of london, and the gas lamps paling as the grey light spread. violet!" violet twisted her hands one within the other. this was just what she had thought to avoid, to shut out from her mind--the knowledge that he had suffered. but the evidence of his pain was too indisputable. there was no shutting it out. it sounded loud in his voice, it showed in his looks. his face had grown white and haggard, the face of a tortured man; his hands trembled, his eyes were fierce with longing. "oh, don't," she cried, and so great was her trouble that for once she did not choose her words. "you know that it's impossible. we can't alter these things." she meant by "these things" the natural law that white shall mate with white, and brown with brown; and so shere ali understood her. he ceased to plead. there came a dreadful look upon his face. "oh, i know," he exclaimed brutally. "you would be marrying a nigger." "i never said that," violet interrupted hastily. "but you meant it," and he began to laugh bitterly and very quietly. to violet that laughter was horrible. it frightened her. "oh, yes, yes," he said. "when we come over to england we are very fine people. women welcome us and are kind, men make us their friends. but out here! we quickly learn out here that we are the inferior people. suppose that i wanted to be a soldier, not an officer of my levies, but a soldier in your army with a soldier's chances of promotion and high rank! do you know what would happen? i might serve for twenty years, and at the end of it the youngest subaltern out of sandhurst, with a moustache he can't feel upon his lip, would in case of war step over my head and command me. why, i couldn't win the victoria cross, even though i had earned it ten times over. we are the subject races," and he turned to her abruptly. "i am in disfavour to-night. do you know why? because i am not dressed in a silk jacket; because i am not wearing jewels like a woman, as those princes are," and he waved his hand contemptuously towards a group of them. "they are content," he cried. "but i was brought up in england, and i am not." he buried his face in his hands and was silent; and as he sat thus, violet oliver said to him with a gentle reproach: "when we parted in london last year you spoke in a different way--a better way. i remember very well what you said. for i was glad to hear it. you said: 'i have not forgotten really that there is much to do in my own country. i have not forgotten that i can thank all of you here who have shown me so much kindness by more than mere words. for i can help in chiltistan--i can really help.'" shere all raised his face from his hands with the air of a man listening to strange and curious words. "i said that?" "yes," and in her turn violet oliver began to plead. "i wish that to-night you could recapture that fine spirit. i should be very glad of it. for i am troubled by your unhappiness." but shere ali shook his head. "i have been in chiltistan since i spoke those words. and they will not let me help." "there's the road." "it must not be continued." "there is, at all events, your father," violet suggested. "you can help him." and again shere ali laughed. but this time the bitterness had gone from his voice. he laughed with a sense of humour, almost, it seemed to violet, with enjoyment. "my father!" he said. "i'll tell you about my father," and his face cleared for a moment of its distress as he turned towards her. "he received me in the audience chamber of his palace at kohara. i had not seen him for ten years. how do you think he received me? he was sitting on a chair of brocade with silver legs in great magnificence, and across his knees he held a loaded rifle at full cock. it was a snider, so that i could be quite sure it was cocked." violet stared at him, not understanding. "but why?" she asked. "well, he knew quite well that i was brought back to kohara in order to replace him, if he didn't mend his ways and spend less money. and he didn't mean to be replaced." the smile broke out again on shere ali's face as he remembered the scene. "he sat there with his great beard, dyed red, spreading across his chest, a long velvet coat covering his knees, and the loaded rifle laid over the coat. his eyes watched me, while his fingers played about the trigger." violet oliver was horrified. "you mean--that he meant to kill you!" she cried incredulously. "yes," said shere ali calmly. "i think he meant to do that. it's not so very unusual in our family. he probably thought that i might try to kill him. however, he didn't do it. you see, my father's very fond of the english, so i at once began to talk to him about england. it was evening when i went into the reception chamber; but it was broad daylight when i came out. i talked for my life that night--and won. he became so interested that he forgot to shoot me; and at the end i was wise enough to assure him that there was a great deal more to tell." the ways of the princes in the states beyond the frontier were unknown to violet oliver. the ruling family of chiltistan was no exception to the general rule. in its annals there was hardly a page which was not stained with blood. when the son succeeded to the throne, it was, as often as not, after murdering his brothers, and if he omitted that precaution, as often as not he paid the penalty. shere ali was fortunate in that he had no brothers. but, on the other hand, he had a father, and there was no great security. violet was startled, and almost as much bewildered as she was startled. she could not understand shere ali's composure. he spoke in so matter-of-fact a tone. "however," she said, grasping at the fact, "he has not killed you. he has not since tried to kill you." "no. i don't think he has," said shere ali slowly. but he spoke like one in doubt. "you see he realised very soon that i was not after all acceptable to the english. i wouldn't quite do what they wanted," and the humour died out of his face. "what did they want?" shere ali looked at her in hesitation. "shall i tell you? i will. they wanted me to marry--one of my own people. they wanted me to forget," and he broke out in a passionate scorn. "as if i could do either--after i had known you." "hush!" said she. but he was not to be checked. "you said it was impossible that you should marry me. it's no less impossible that i should marry now one of my own race. you know that. you can't deny it." violet did not try to. he was speaking truth then, she was well aware. a great pity swelled up in her heart for him. she turned to him with a smile, in which there was much tenderness. his life was all awry; and both were quite helpless to set it right. "i am very sorry," she said in a whisper of remorse. "i did not think. i have done you grave harm." "not you," he said quietly. "you may be quite sure of that. those who have done me harm are those who sent me, ten years ago, to england." chapter xv a question answered thereafter both sat silent for a little while. the stream of people across the courtyard had diminished. high up on the great platform by the lighted arches the throng still pressed and shifted. but here there was quietude. the clatter of voices had died down. a band playing somewhere near at hand could be heard. violet oliver for the first time in her life had been brought face to face with a real tragedy. she was conscious of it as something irremediable and terribly sad. and for her own share in bringing it about she was full of remorse. she looked at shere ali as he sat beside her, his eyes gazing into the courtyard, his face tired and hopeless. there was nothing to be done. her thoughts told her so no less clearly than his face. here was a life spoilt at the beginning. but that was all that she saw. that the spoilt life might become an instrument of evil--she was blind to that possibility: she thought merely of the youth who suffered and still must suffer; who was crippled by the very means which were meant to strengthen him: and pity inclined her towards him with an ever-increasing strength. "i couldn't do it," she repeated silently to herself. "i couldn't do it. it would be madness." shere ali raised his head and said with a smile, "i am glad they are not playing the tune which i once heard on the lake of geneva, and again in london when i said good-bye to you." and then violet sought to comfort him, her mind still working on what he had told her of his life in chiltistan. "but it will become easier," she said, beginning in that general way. "in time you will rule in chiltistan. that is certain." but he checked her with a shake of the head. "certain? there is the son of abdulla mohammed, who fought against my father when linforth's father was killed. it is likely enough that those old days will be revived. and i should have the priests against me." "the mullahs!" she exclaimed, remembering in what terms he was wont to speak of them to her. "yes," he answered, "i have set them against me already. they laid their traps for me while i was on the sea, and i would not fall into them. they would have liked to raise the country against my father and the english, just as they raised it twenty-five years ago. and they would have liked me to join in with them." he related to violet the story of his meeting with safdar khan at the gate of lahore, and he repeated the words which he had used in safdar khan's hearing. "it did not take long for my threats to be repeated in the bazaar of kohara, and from the bazaar they were quickly carried to the ears of the mullahs. i had proof of it," he said with a laugh. violet asked him anxiously for the proof. "i can tell to a day when the words were repeated in kohara. for a fortnight after my coming the mullahs still had hopes. they had heard nothing, and they met me always with salutations and greetings. then came the day when i rode up the valley and a mullah who had smiled the day before passed me as though he had not noticed me at all. the news had come. i was sure of it at the time. i reined in my horse and called sharply to one of the servants riding behind me, 'who is that?' the mullah heard the question, and he turned and up went the palm of his hand to his forehead in a flash. but i was not inclined to let him off so easily." "what did you do?" violet asked uneasily. "i said to him, 'my friend, i will take care that you know me the next time we meet upon the road. show me your hands!' he held them out, and they were soft as a woman's. i was close to a bridge which some workmen were repairing. so i had my friend brought along to the bridge. then i said to one of the workmen, 'would you like to earn your day's wage and yet do no work?' he laughed, thinking that i was joking. but i was not. i said to him, 'very well, then, see that this soft-handed creature does your day's work. you will bring him to me at the palace this evening, and if i find that he has not done the work, or that you have helped him, you will forfeit your wages and i will whip you both into the bargain.' the mullah was brought to me in the evening," said shere ali, smiling grimly. "he was so stiff he could hardly walk. i made him show me his hands again, and this time they were blistered. so i told him to remember his manners in the future, and i let him go. but he was a man of prominence in the country, and when the story got known he became rather ridiculous." he turned with a smile to violet oliver. "my people don't like being made ridiculous--least of all mullahs." but there was no answering smile on violet's face. rather she was troubled and alarmed. "but surely that was unwise?" shere ali shrugged his shoulders. "what does it matter?" he said. he did not tell her all of that story. there was an episode which had occurred two days later when shere ali was stalking an ibex on the hillside. a bullet had whistled close by his ear, and it had been fired from behind him. he was never quite sure whether his father or the mullah was responsible for that bullet, but he inclined to attribute it to the mullah. "yes, i have the priests against me," he said. "they call me the englishman." then he laughed. "a curious piece of irony, isn't it?" he stood up suddenly and said: "when i left england i was in doubt. i could not be sure whether my home, my true home, was there or in chiltistan." "yes, i remember," said violet. "i am no longer in doubt. it is neither in england nor in chiltistan. i am a citizen of no country. i have no place anywhere at all." violet oliver stood up and faced him. "i must be going. i must find my friends," she said, and as he took her hand, she added, "i am so very sorry." the words, she felt, were utterly inadequate, but no others would come to her lips, and so with a trembling smile she repeated them. she drew her hand from his clasp and moved a step or two away. but he followed her, and she stopped and shook her head. "this is really good-bye," she said simply and very gravely. "i want to ask you a question," he explained. "will you answer it?" "how can i tell you until you ask it?" he looked at her for a moment as though in doubt whether he should speak or not. then he said, "are you going to marry--linforth?" the blood slowly mounted into her face and flushed her forehead and cheeks. "he has not even asked me to marry him," she said, and moved down into the courtyard. shere ali watched her as she went. that was the last time he should see her, he told himself. the last time in all his life. his eyes followed her, noting the grace of her movements, the whiteness of her skin, all her daintiness of dress and person. a madness kindled in his blood. he had a wild thought of springing down, of capturing her. she mounted the steps and disappeared among the throng. and they wanted him to marry--to marry one of his own people. shere ali suddenly saw the face of the deputy commissioner at lahore calmly suggesting the arrangement, almost ordering it. he sat down again upon the couch and once more began to laugh. but the laughter ceased very quickly, and folding his arms upon the high end of the couch, he bowed his head upon them and was still. chapter xvi shere ali meets an old friend the carriage which was to take violet oliver and her friends back to their camp had been parked amongst those farthest from the door. violet stood for a long while under the awning, waiting while the interminable procession went by. the generals in their scarlet coats, the ladies in their satin gowns, the great officers of state attended by their escorts, the native princes, mounted into their carriages and were driven away. the ceremony and the reception which followed it had been markedly successful even in that land of ceremonies and magnificence. the voices about her told her so as they spoke of this or that splendour and recalled the picturesque figures which had given colour to the scene. but the laughter, the praise, the very tones of enjoyment had to her a heartless ring. she watched the pageantry of the great indian administration dissolve, and was blind to its glitter and conscious only of its ruthlessness. for ruthless she found it to-night. she had been face to face with a victim of the system--a youth broken by it, needlessly broken, and as helpless to recover from his hurt as a wounded animal. the harm had been done no doubt with the very best intention, but the harm had been done. she was conscious of her own share in the blame and she drove miserably home, with the picture of shere ali's face as she had last seen it to bear her company, and with his cry, that he had no place anywhere at all, sounding in her ears. when she reached the privacy of her own tent, and had dismissed her maid, she unlocked one of her trunks and took out from it her jewel case. she had been careful not to wear her necklace of pearls that night, and she took it out of the case now and laid it upon her knees. she was very sorry to part with it. she touched and caressed the pearls with loving fingers, and once she lifted it as though she would place it about her neck. but she checked her hands, fearing that if she put it on she would never bring herself to let it go. already as she watched and fingered it and bent her head now and again to scrutinise a stone, small insidious voices began to whisper at her heart. "he asked for nothing when he gave it you." "you made no promise when you took it." "it was a gift without conditions hinted or implied." violet oliver took the world lightly on the whole. only this one passion for jewels and precious stones had touched her deeply as yet. of love she knew little beyond the name and its aspect in others. she was familiar enough with that, so familiar that she gave little heed to what lay behind the aspect--or had given little heed until to-night. her husband she had accepted rather than actively welcomed. she had lived with him in a mood of placid and unquestioning good-humour, and she had greatly missed him when he died. but it was the presence in the house that she missed, rather than the lover. to-night, almost for the first time, she had really looked under the surface. insight had been vouchsafed to her; and in remorse she was minded to put the thing she greatly valued away from her. she rose suddenly, and, lest the temptation to keep the necklace should prove too strong, laid it away in its case. a post went every day over the passes into chiltistan. she wrapped up the case in brown paper, tied it, sealed it, and addressed it. there was need to send it off, she well knew, before the picture of shere ali, now so vivid in her mind, lost its aspect of poignant suffering and faded out of her thoughts. but she slept ill and in the middle of the night she rose from her bed. the tent was pitch dark. she lit her candle; and it was the light of the candle which awoke her maid. the tent was a double one; the maid slept in the smaller portion of it and a canvas doorway gave entrance into her mistress' room. over this doorway hung the usual screen of green matting. now these screens act as screens, are as impenetrable to the eye as a door--so long as there is no light behind them. but place a light behind them and they become transparent. this was what violet oliver had done. she had lit her candle and at once a part of the interior of her tent was visible to her maid as she lay in bed. the maid saw the table and the sealed parcel upon it. then she saw mrs. oliver come to the table, break the seals, open the parcel, take out a jewel case--a jewel case which the maid knew well--and carry it and the parcel out of sight. mrs. oliver crossed to a corner of the room where her trunks lay; and the next moment the maid heard a key grate in a lock. for a little while the candle still burned, and every now and then a distorted shadow was flung upon the wall of the tent within the maid's vision. it seemed to her that mrs. oliver was sitting at a little writing table which stood close by the trunk. then the light went out again. the maid would have thought no more of this incident, but on entering the room next morning with a cup of tea, she was surprised to see the packet once more sealed and fastened on the centre table. "adela," said mrs. oliver, "i want you to take that parcel to the post office yourself and send it off." the maid took the parcel away. violet oliver, with a sigh of relief, drank her tea. at last, she thought, the end was reached. now, indeed, her life and shere ali's life would touch no more. but she was to see him again. for two days later, as the train which was carrying her northwards to lahore moved out of the station, she saw from the window of her carriage the young prince of chiltistan standing upon the platform. she drew back quickly, fearing that he would see her. but he was watching the train with indifferent eyes; and the spectacle of his indifference struck her as something incongruous and strange. she had been thinking of him with remorse as a man twisting like hamlet in the coils of tragedy, and wearing like hamlet the tragic mien. yet here he was on the platform of a railway station, waiting, like any commonplace traveller, with an uninterested patience for his train. the aspect of shere ali diminished violet oliver's remorse. she wondered for a moment why he was not travelling upon the same train as herself, for his destination must be northwards too. and then she lost sight of him. she was glad that after all the last vision of him which she was to carry away was not the vision of a youth helpless and despairing with a trouble-tortured face. shere ali was following out the destiny to which his character bound him. he had been made and moulded and fashioned, and though he knew he had been fashioned awry, he could no more change and rebuild himself than the hunchback can will away his hump. he was driven down the ways of circumstance. at present he saw and knew that he was so driven. he knew, too, that he could not resist. this half-year in chiltistan had taught him that. so he went southwards to calcutta. the mere thought of chiltistan was unendurable. he had to forget. there was no possibility of forgetfulness amongst his own hills and the foreign race that once had been his own people. southwards he went to calcutta, and in that city for a time was lost to sight. he emerged one afternoon upon the racecourse, and while standing on the grass in front of the club stand, before the horses cantered down to the starting post, he saw an elderly man, heavy of build but still erect, approach him with a smile. shere ali would have avoided that man if he could. he hesitated, unwilling to recognise and unable quite to ignore. and while he hesitated, the elderly man held out his hand. "we know each other, surely. i used to see you at eton, didn't i? i used to run down to see a young friend of mine and a friend of yours, dick linforth. i am colonel dewes." "yes, i remember," said shere ali with some embarrassment; and he took the colonel's outstretched hand. "i thought that you had left india for good." "so did i," said dewes. "but i was wrong." he turned and walked along by the side of shere ali. "i don't know why exactly, but i did not find life in london so very interesting." shere ali looked quickly at the colonel. "yet you had looked forward to retiring and going home?" he asked with a keen interest. colonel dewes gave himself up to reflection. he sounded the obscurities of his mind. it was a practice to which he was not accustomed. he drew himself erect, his eyes became fixed, and with a puckered forehead he thought. "i suppose so," he said. "yes, certainly. i remember. one used to buck at mess of the good time one would have, the comfort of one's club and one's rooms, and the rest of it. it isn't comfortable in india, is it? not compared with england. your furniture, your house, and all that sort of thing. you live as if you were a lodger, don't you know, and it didn't matter for a little while whether you were comfortable or not. the little while slips on and on, and suddenly you find you have been in the country twenty or thirty years, and you have never taken the trouble to be comfortable. it's like living in a dak-bungalow." the colonel halted and pulled at his moustache. he had made a discovery. he had reflected not without result. "by george!" he said, "that's right. let me put it properly now, as a fellow would put it in a book, if he hit upon anything as good." he framed his aphorism in different phrases before he was satisfied with it. then he delivered himself of it with pride. "at the bottom of the englishman's conception of life in india, there is always the idea of a dak-bungalow," and he repeated the sentence to commit it surely to memory. "but don't you use it," he said, turning to shere ali suddenly. "i thought of that--not you. it's mine." "i won't use it," said shere ali. "life in india is based upon the dak-bungalow," said dewes. "yes, yes"; and so great was his pride that he relented towards shere ali. "you may use it if you like," he conceded. "only you would naturally add that it was i who thought of it." shere ali smiled and replied: "i won't fail to do that, colonel dewes." "no? then use it as much as you like, for it's true. out here one remembers the comfort of england and looks forward to it. but back there, one forgets the discomfort of india. by george! that's pretty good, too. shall we look at the horses?" shere ali did not answer that question. with a quiet persistence he kept colonel dewes to the conversation. colonel dewes for his part was not reluctant to continue it, in spite of the mental wear and tear which it involved. he felt that he was clearly in the vein. there was no knowing what brilliant thing he might not say next. he wished that some of those clever fellows on the india council were listening to him. "why?" asked shere ali. "why back there does one forget the discomfort of india?" he asked the question less in search of information than to discover whether the feelings of which he was conscious were shared too by his companion. "why?" answered dewes wrinkling his forehead again. "because one misses more than one thought to miss and one doesn't find half what one thought to find. come along here!" he led shere ali up to the top of the stand. "we can see the race quite well from here," he said, "although that is not the reason why i brought you up. this is what i wanted to show you." he waved his hand over towards the great space which the racecourse enclosed. it was thronged with natives robed in saffron and pink, in blue and white, in scarlet and delicate shades of mauve and violet. the whole enclosure was ablaze with colour, and the colours perpetually moved and grouped themselves afresh as the throng shifted. a great noise of cries rose up into the clear air. "i suppose that is what i missed," said dewes, "not the noise, not the mere crowd--you can get both on an english racecourse--but the colour." and suddenly before shere ali's eyes there rose a vision of the paddock at newmarket during a july meeting. the sleek horses paced within the cool grove of trees; the bright sunlight, piercing the screen of leaves overhead, dappled their backs with flecks of gold. nothing of the sunburnt grass before his eyes was visible to him. he saw the green turf of the jockey club enclosure, the seats, the luncheon room behind with its open doors and windows. "yes, i understand," he said. "but you have come back," and a note of envy sounded in his voice. here was one point in which the parallel between his case and that of colonel dewes was not complete. dewes had missed india as he had missed england. but dewes was a free man. he could go whither he would. "yes, you were able to come back. how long do you stay?" and the answer to that question startled shere ali. "i have come back for good." "you are going to live here?" cried shere ali. "not here, exactly. in cashmere. i go up to cashmere in a week's time. i shall live there and die there." colonel dewes spoke without any note of anticipation, and without any regret. it was difficult for shere ali to understand how deeply he felt. yet the feeling must be deep. he had cut himself off from his own people, from his own country. shere ali was stirred to yet more questions. he was anxious to understand thoroughly all that had moved this commonplace matter-of-fact man at his side. "you found life in england so dull?" he asked. "well, one felt a stranger," said dewes. "one had lost one's associations. i know there are men who throw themselves into public life and the rest of it. but i couldn't. i hadn't the heart for it even if i had the ability. there was lawrence, of course. he governed india and then he went on the school board," and dewes thumped his fist upon the rail in front of him. "how he was able to do it beats me altogether. i read his life with amazement. he was just as keen about the school board as he had been about india when he was viceroy here. he threw himself into it with just as much vigour. that beats me. he was a big man, of course, and i am not. i suppose that's the explanation. anyway, the school board was not for me. i put in my winters for some years at corfu shooting woodcock. and in the summer i met a man or two back on leave at my club. but on the whole it was pretty dull. yes," and he nodded his head, and for the first time a note of despondency sounded in his voice. "yes, on the whole it was pretty dull. it will be better in cashmere." "it would have been still better if you had never seen india at all," said shere ali. "no; i don't say that. i had my good time in india--twenty-five years of it, the prime of my life. no; i have nothing to complain of," said dewes. here was another difference brought to shere ali's eyes. he himself was still young; the prime years were before him, not behind. he looked down, even as dewes had done, over that wide space gay with colours as a garden of flowers; but in the one man's eyes there was a light of satisfaction, in the other's a gleam almost of hatred. "you are not sorry you came out to india," he said. "well, for my part," and his voice suddenly shook with passion, "i wish to heaven i had never seen england." dewes turned about, a vacant stare of perplexity upon his face. "oh, come, i say!" he protested. "i mean it!" cried shere ali. "it was the worst thing that could have happened. i shall know no peace of mind again, no contentment, no happiness, not until i am dead. i wish i were dead!" and though he spoke in a low voice, he spoke with so much violence that colonel dewes was quite astounded. he was aware of no similiarity between his own case and that of shere ali. he had long since forgotten the exhortations of luffe. "oh, come now," he repeated. "isn't that a little ungrateful--what?" he could hardly have chosen a word less likely to soothe the exasperated nerves of his companion. shere ali laughed harshly. "i ought to be grateful?" said he. "well," said dewes, "you have been to eton and oxford, you have seen london. all that is bound to have broadened your mind. don't you feel that your mind has broadened?" "tell me the use of a broad mind in chiltistan," said shere ali. and colonel dewes, who had last seen the valleys of that remote country more than twenty years before, was baffled by the challenge. "to tell the truth, i am a little out of touch with indian problems," he said. "but it's surely good in every way that there should be a man up there who knows we have something in the way of an army. when i was there, there was trouble which would have been quite prevented by knowledge of that kind." "are you sure?" said shere ali quietly; and the two men turned and went down from the roof of the stand. the words which dewes had just used rankled in shere ali's mind, quietly though he had received them. here was the one definite advantage of his education in england on which dewes could lay his finger. he knew enough of the strength of the british army to know also the wisdom of keeping his people quiet. for that he had been sacrificed. it was an advantage--yes. but an advantage to whom? he asked. why, to those governing people here who had to find the money and the troops to suppress a rising, and to confront at the same time an outcry at home from the opponents of the forward movement. it was to their advantage certainly that he should have been sent to england. and then he was told to be grateful! as they came out again from the winding staircase and turned towards the paddock colonel dewes took shere ali by the arm, and said in a voice of kindliness: "and what has become of all the fine ambitions you and dick linforth used to have in common?" "linforth's still at chatham," replied shere ali shortly. "yes, but you are here. you might make a beginning by yourself." "they won't let me." "there's the road," suggested dewes. "they won't let me add an inch to it. they will let me do nothing, and they won't let linforth come out. i wish they would," he added in a softer voice. "if linforth were to come out to chiltistan it might make a difference." they had walked round to the rails in front of the stand, and shere ali looked up the steps to the viceroy's box. the viceroy was present that afternoon. shere ali saw his tall figure, with the stoop of the shoulders characteristic of him, as he stood dressed in a grey frock-coat, with the ladies of his family and one or two of his _aides-de-camp_ about him. shere ali suddenly stopped and nodded towards the box. "have you any influence there?" he asked of colonel dewes; and he spoke with a great longing, a great eagerness, and he waited for the answer in a great suspense. dewes shook his head. "none," he replied; "i am nobody at all." the hope died out of shere ali's face. "i am sorry," he said; and the eagerness had changed into despair. there was just a chance, he thought, of salvation for himself if only linforth could be fetched out to india. he might resume with linforth his old companionship, and so recapture something of his old faith and of his bright ideals. there was sore need that he should recapture them. shere ali was well aware of it. more and more frequently sure warnings came to him. now it was some dim recollection of beliefs once strongly clung to, which came back to him with a shock. he would awaken through some chance word to the glory of the english rule in india, the lessening poverty of the indian nations, the incorruptibility of the english officials and their justice. "yes, yes," he would say with astonishment, "i was sure of these things; i knew them as familiar truths," even as a man gradually going blind might one day see clearly and become aware of his narrowing vision. or perhaps it would be some sudden unsuspected revulsion of feeling in his heart. such a revulsion had come to him this afternoon as he had gazed up to the viceroy's box. a wild and unreasoning wrath had flashed up within him, not against the system, but against that tall stooping man, worn with work, who was at once its representative and its flower. up there the great man stood--so his thoughts ran--complacent, self-satisfied, careless of the harm which his system wrought. down here upon the grass walked a man warped and perverted out of his natural course. he had been sent to eton and to oxford, and had been filled with longings and desires which could have no fruition; he had been trained to delicate thoughts and habits which must daily be offended and daily be a cause of offence to his countrymen. but what did the tall stooping man care? shere ali now knew that the english had something in the way of an army. what did it matter whether he lived in unhappiness so long as that knowledge was the price of his unhappiness? a cruel, careless, warping business, this english rule. thus shere ali felt rather than thought, and realised the while the danger of his bitter heart. once more he appealed to colonel dewes, standing before him with burning eyes. "bring linforth out to india! if you have any influence, use it; if you have none, obtain it. only bring linforth out to india, and bring him very quickly!" once before a passionate appeal had been made to colonel dewes by a man in straits, and colonel dewes had not understood and had not obeyed. now, a quarter of a century later another appeal was made by a man sinking, as surely as luffe had been sinking before, and once again dewes did not understand. he took shere ali by the arm, and said in a kindly voice: "i tell you what it is, my lad. you have been going the pace a bit, eh? calcutta's no good. you'll only collect debts and a lot of things you are better without. better get out of it." shere ali's face closed as his lips had done. all expression died from it in a moment. there was no help for him in colonel dewes. he said good-bye with a smile, and walked out past the stand. his syce was waiting for him outside the railings. shere ali had come to the races wearing a sun-helmet, and, as the fashion is amongst the europeans in calcutta, his syce carried a silk hat for shere ali to take in exchange for his helmet when the sun went down. shere ali, like most of the europeanised indians, was more scrupulous than any englishman in adhering to the european custom. but to-day, with an angry gesture, he repelled his syce. "i am going," he said. "you can take that thing away." his sense of humour failed him altogether. he would have liked furiously to kick and trample upon that glossy emblem of the civilised world; he had much ado to refrain. the syce carried back the silk hat to shere ali's smart trap, and shere ali drove home in his helmet. thus he began publicly to renounce the cherished illusion that he was of the white people, and must do as the white people did. but colonel dewes pointed unwittingly the significance of that trivial matter on the same night. he dined at the house of an old friend, and after the ladies had gone he moved up into the next chair, and so sat beside a weary-looking official from the punjab named ralston, who had come down to calcutta on leave. colonel dewes began to talk of his meeting with shere ali that afternoon. at the mention of shere ali's name the official sat up and asked for more. "he looked pretty bad," said colonel dewes. "jumpy and feverish, and with the air of a man who has been sitting up all night for a week or two. but this is what interested me most," and dewes told how the lad had implored him to bring linforth out to india. "who's linforth?" asked the official quickly. "not the son of that linforth who--" "yes, that's the man," said the colonel testily. "but you interrupt me. what interested me was this--when i refused to help, shere ali's face changed in a most extraordinary way. all the fire went from his eyes, all the agitation from his face. it was like looking at an open box full of interesting things, and then--bang! someone slaps down the lid, and you are staring at a flat piece of wood. it was as if--as if--well, i can't find a better comparison." "it was as if a european suddenly changed before your eyes into an oriental." dewes was not pleased with ralston's success in supplying the simile he could not hit upon himself. "that's a little fanciful," he said grudgingly; and then recognised frankly the justness of its application. "yet it's true--a european changing into an oriental! yes, it just looked like that." "it may actually have been that," said the official quietly. and he added: "i met shere ali last year at lahore on his way north to chiltistan. i was interested then; i am all the more interested now, for i have just been appointed to peshawur." he spoke in a voice which was grave--so grave that colonel dewes looked quickly towards him. "do you think there will be trouble up there in chiltistan?" he asked. the deputy-commissioner, who was now chief commissioner, smiled wearily. "there is always trouble up there in chiltistan," he said. "that i know. what i think is this--shere ali should have gone to the mayo college at ajmere. that would have been a compromise which would have satisfied his father and done him no harm. but since he didn't--since he went to eton, and to oxford, and ran loose in london for a year or two--why, i think he is right." "how do you mean--right?" asked the colonel. "i mean that the sooner linforth is fetched out to india and sent up to chiltistan, the better it will be," said the commissioner. chapter xvii news from mecca mr. charles ralston, being a bachelor and of an economical mind even when on leave in calcutta, had taken up his quarters in a grass hut in the garden of his club. he awoke the next morning with an uncomfortable feeling that there was work to be done. the feeling changed into sure knowledge as he reflected upon the conversation which he had had with colonel dewes, and he accordingly arose and went about it. for ten days he went to and fro between the club and government house, where he held long and vigorous interviews with officials who did not wish to see him. moreover, other people came to see him privately--people of no social importance for the most part, although there were one or two officers of the police service amongst them. with these he again held long interviews, asking many inquisitive questions. then he would go out by himself into those parts of the city where the men of broken fortunes, the jockeys run to seed, and the prize-fighters chiefly preferred to congregate. in the low quarters he sought his information of the waifs and strays who are cast up into the drinking-bars of any oriental port, and he did not come back empty-handed. for ten days he thus toiled for the good of the indian government, and, above all, of that part of it which had its headquarters at lahore. and on the morning of the eleventh day, as he was just preparing to leave for government house, where his persistence had prevailed, a tall, black-bearded and very sunburnt man noiselessly opened the door of the hut and as noiselessly stepped inside. ralston, indeed, did not at once notice him, nor did the stranger call attention to his presence. he waited, motionless and patient, until ralston happened to turn and see him. "hatch!" cried ralston with a smile of welcome stealing over his startled face, and making it very pleasant to look upon. "you?" "yes," answered the tall man; "i reached calcutta last night. i went into the club for breakfast. they told me you were here." robert hatch was of the same age as ralston. but there was little else which they had in common. the two men had met some fifteen years ago for the first time, in peshawur, and on that first meeting some subtle chord of sympathy had drawn them together; and so securely that even though they met but seldom nowadays, their friendship had easily survived the long intervals. the story of hatch's life was a simple one. he had married in his twenty-second year a wife a year younger than himself, and together the couple had settled down upon an estate which hatch owned in devonshire. only a year after the marriage, however, hatch's wife died, and he, disliking his home, had gone restlessly abroad. the restlessness had grown, a certain taste for oriental literature and thought had been fostered by his travels. he had become a wanderer upon the face of the earth--a man of many clubs in different quarters of the world, and of many friends, who had come to look upon his unexpected appearance and no less sudden departure as part of the ordinary tenour of their lives. thus it was not the appearance of hatch which had startled ralston, but rather the silence of it. "why didn't you speak?" he asked. "why did you stand waiting there for me to look your way?" hatch laughed as he sat down in a chair. "i have got into the habit of waiting, i suppose," he said. "for the last five months i have been a servant in the train of the sultan of the maldive islands." ralston was not as a rule to be surprised by any strange thing which hatch might have chosen to do. he merely glanced at his companion and asked: "what in the world were you doing in the maldive islands?" "nothing at all," replied hatch. "i did not go to them. i joined the sultan at suez." this time ralston, who had been moving about the room in search of some papers which he had mislaid, came to a stop. his attention was arrested. he sat down in a chair and prepared to listen. "go on," he said. "i wanted to go to mecca," said hatch, and ralston nodded his head as though he had expected just those words. "i did not see how i was going to get there by myself," hatch continued, "however carefully i managed my disguise." "yet you speak arabic," said ralston. "yes, the language wasn't the difficulty. indeed, a great many of the pilgrims--the people from central asia, for instance--don't speak arabic at all. but i felt sure that if i went down the red sea alone on a pilgrim steamer, landed alone at jeddah, and went up with a crowd of others to mecca, living with them, sleeping with them, day after day, sooner or later i should make some fatal slip and never reach mecca at all. if burton made one mistake, how many should i? so i put the journey off year after year. but this autumn i heard that the sultan of the maldive islands intended to make the pilgrimage. he was a friend of mine. i waited for him at suez, and he reluctantly consented to take me." "so you went to mecca," exclaimed ralston. "yes; i have just come from mecca. as i told you, i only landed at calcutta last night." ralston was silent for a few moments. "i think you may be able to help me," he said at length. "there's a man here in calcutta," and ralston related what he knew of the history of shere ali, dwelling less upon the unhappiness and isolation of the prince than upon the political consequences of his isolation. "he has come to grief in chiltistan," he continued. "he won't marry--there may be a reason for that. i don't know. english women are not always wise in their attitude towards these boys. but it seems to me quite a natural result of his education and his life. he is suspected by his people. when he goes back, he will probably be murdered. at present he is consorting with the lowest europeans here, drinking with them, playing cards with them, and going to ruin as fast as he can. i am not sure that there's a chance for him at all. a few minutes ago i would certainly have said that there was none. now, however, i am wondering. you see, i don't know the lad well enough. i don't know how many of the old instincts and traditions of his race and his faith are still alive in him, underneath all the western ideas and the western feelings to which he has been trained. but if they are dead, there is no chance for him. if they are alive--well, couldn't they be evoked? that's the problem." hatch nodded his head. "he might be turned again into a genuine mohammedan," he said. "i wonder too." "at all events, it's worth trying," said ralston. "for it's the only chance left to try. if we could sweep away the effects of the last few years, if we could obliterate his years in england--oh, i know it's improbable. but help me and let us see." "how?" asked hatch. "come and dine with me to-morrow night. i'll make shere ali come. i _can_ make him. for i can threaten to send him back to chiltistan. then talk to him of mecca, talk to him of the city, and the shrine, and the pilgrims. perhaps something of their devotion may strike a spark in him, perhaps he may have some remnant of faith still dormant in him. make mecca a symbol to him, make it live for him as a place of pilgrimage. you could, perhaps, because you have seen with your own eyes, and you know." "i can try, of course," said hatch with a shrug of his shoulders. "but isn't there a danger--if i succeed? i might try to kindle faith, i might only succeed in kindling fanaticism. are the mohammedans beyond the frontier such a very quiet people that you are anxious to add another to their number?" ralston was prepared for the objection. already, indeed, shere ali might be seething with hatred against the english rule. it would be no more than natural if he were. ralston had pondered the question with an uncomfortable vision before his eyes, evoked by certain words of colonel dewes--a youth appealing for help, for the only help which could be of service to him, and then, as the appeal was rejected, composing his face to a complete and stolid inexpressiveness, no longer showing either his pain or his desire--reverting, as it were, from the european to the oriental. "yes, there is that danger," he admitted. "seeking to restore a friend, we might kindle an enemy." and then he rose up and suddenly burst out: "but upon my word, were that to come to pass, we should deserve it. for we are to blame--we who took him from chiltistan and sent him to be petted by the fine people in england." and once more it was evident from his words that he was thinking not of shere ali--not of the human being who had just his one life to live, just his few years with their opportunities of happiness, and their certain irrevocable periods of distress--but of the prince of chiltistan who might or might not be a cause of great trouble to the government of the punjab. "we must take the risk," he cried as one arguing almost against himself. "it's the only chance. so we must take the risk. besides, i have been at some pains already to minimise it. shere ali has a friend in england. we are asking for that friend. a telegram goes to-day. so come to-morrow night and do your best." "very well, i will," said hatch, and, taking up his hat, he went away. he had no great hopes that any good would come of the dinner. but at the worst, he thought, it would leave matters where they were. in that, however, he was wrong. for there were important moments in the history of the young prince of chiltistan of which both hatch and ralston were quite unaware. and because they were unaware the dinner which was to help in straightening out the tangle of shere ali's life became a veritable catastrophe. shere ali was brought reluctantly to the table in the corner of the great balcony upon the first floor. he had little to say, and it was as evident to the two men who entertained him as it had been to colonel dewes that the last few weeks had taken their toll of him. there were dark, heavy pouches beneath his eyes, his manner was feverish, and when he talked at all it was with a boisterous and a somewhat braggart voice. ralston turned the conversation on to the journey which hatch had taken, and for a little while the dinner promised well. at the mere mention of mecca, shere ali looked up with a swift interest. "mecca!" he cried, "you have been there! tell me of mecca. on my way up to chiltistan i met three of my own countrymen on the summit of the lowari pass. they had a few rupees apiece--just enough, they told me, to carry them to mecca. i remember watching them as they went laughing and talking down the snow on their long journey. and i wondered--" he broke off abruptly and sat looking out from the balcony. the night was coming on. in front stretched the great grass plain of the maidan with its big trees and the wide carriage-road bisecting it. the carriages had driven home; the road and the plain were empty. beyond them the high chimney-stacks of the steamers on the river could still be seen, some with a wisp of smoke curling upwards into the still air; and at times the long, melancholy hoot of a steam-syren broke the stillness of the evening. shere ali turned to hatch again and said in a quiet voice which had some note of rather pathetic appeal: "will you tell me what you thought of mecca? i should like to know." the vision of the three men descending the lowari pass was present to him as he listened. and he listened, wondering what strange, real power that sacred place possessed to draw men cheerfully on so long and hazardous a pilgrimage. but the secret was not yet to be revealed to him. hatch talked well. he told shere ali of the journey down the red sea, and the crowded deck at the last sunset before jeddah was reached, when every one of the pilgrims robed himself in spotless white and stood facing the east and uttering his prayers in his own tongue. he described the journey across the desert, the great shrine of the prophet in mecca, the great gathering for prayer upon the plain two miles away. something of the fervour of the pilgrims he managed to make real by his words, but shere ali listened with the picture of the three men in his thoughts, and with a deep envy of their contentment. then hatch made his mistake. he turned suddenly towards ralston and said: "but something curious happened--something very strange and curious--which i think you ought to know, for the matter can hardly be left where it is." ralston leaned forward. "wait a moment," he said, and he called to the waiter. "light a cigar before you begin, hatch," he continued. the cigars were brought, and hatch lighted one. "in what way am i concerned?" asked ralston. "my story has to do with india," hatch replied, and in his turn he looked out across the maidan. darkness had come and lights gleamed upon the carriage-way; the funnels of the ships had disappeared, and above, in a clear, dark sky, glittered a great host of stars. "with india, but not with the india of to-day," hatch continued. "listen"; and over his coffee he told his story. "i was walking down a narrow street of mecca towards the big tank, when to my amazement i saw written up on a signboard above a door the single word 'lodgings.' it was the english word, written, too, in the english character. i could hardly believe my eyes when i saw it. i stood amazed. what was an english announcement, that lodgings were to be had within, doing in a town where no englishman, were he known to be such, would live for a single hour? i had half a mind to knock at the door and ask. but i noticed opposite to the door a little shop in which a man sat with an array of heavy country-made bolts and locks hung upon the walls and spread about him as he squatted on the floor. i crossed over to the booth, and sitting down upon the edge of the floor, which was raised a couple of feet or so from the ground, i made some small purchase. then, looking across to the sign, i asked him what the writing on it meant. i suppose that i did not put my question carelessly enough, for the shopkeeper leaned forward and peered closely into my face. "'why do you ask?' he said, sharply. "'because i do not understand,' i replied. "the man looked me over again. there was no mistake in my dress, and with my black beard and eyes i could well pass for an arab. it seemed that he was content, for he continued: 'how should i know what the word means? i have heard a story, but whether it is true or not, who shall say?'" hatch paused for a moment and lighted his cigar again. "well, the account which he gave me was this. among the pilgrims who come up to mecca, there are at times hottentots from south africa who speak no language intelligible to anyone in mecca; but they speak english, and it is for their benefit that the sign was hung up." "what a strange thing!" said shere ali. "the explanation," continued hatch, "is not very important to my story, but what followed upon it is; for the very next day, as i was walking alone, i heard a voice in my ear, whispering: 'the englishwoman would like to see you this evening at five.' i turned round in amazement, and there stood the shopkeeper of whom i had made the inquiries. i thought, of course, that he was laying a trap for me. but he repeated his statement, and, telling me that he would wait for me on this spot at ten minutes to five, he walked away. "i did not know what to do. one moment i feared treachery and proposed to stay away, the next i was curious and proposed to go. how in the world could there be an englishwoman in mecca--above all, an englishwoman who was in a position to ask me to tea? curiosity conquered in the end. i tucked a loaded revolver into my waist underneath my jellaba and kept the appointment." "go on," said shere ali, who was leaning forward with a great perplexity upon his face. "the shopkeeper was already there. 'follow me,' he said, 'but not too closely.' we passed in that way through two or three streets, and then my guide turned into a dead alley closed in at the end by a house. in the wall of the house there was a door. my guide looked cautiously round, but there was no one to oversee us. he rapped gently with his knuckles on the door, and immediately the door was opened. he beckoned to me, and went quickly in. i followed him no less quickly. at once the door was shut behind me, and i found myself in darkness. for a moment i was sure that i had fallen into a trap, but my guide laid a hand upon my arm and led me forward. i was brought into a small, bare room, where a woman sat upon cushions. she was dressed in white like a mohammedan woman of the east, and over her face she wore a veil. but a sort of shrivelled aspect which she had told me that she was very old. she dismissed the guide who had brought me to her, and as soon as we were alone she said: "'you are english.' "and she spoke in english, though with a certain rustiness of speech, as though that language had been long unfamiliar to her tongue. "'no,' i replied, and i expressed my contempt of that infidel race in suitable words. "the old woman only laughed and removed her veil. she showed me an old wizened face in which there was not a remnant of good looks--a face worn and wrinkled with hard living and great sorrows. "'you are english,' she said, 'and since i am english too, i thought that i would like to speak once more with one of my own countrymen.' "i no longer doubted. i took the hand she held out to me and-- "'but what are you doing here in mecca?' i asked. "'i live in mecca,' she replied quietly. 'i have lived here for twenty years.' "i looked round that bare and sordid little room with horror. what strange fate had cast her up there? i asked her, and she told me her story. guess what it was!" ralston shook his head. "i can't imagine." hatch turned to shere ali. "can you?" he asked, and even as he asked he saw that a change had come over the young prince's mood. he was no longer oppressed with envy and discontent. he was leaning forward with parted lips and a look in his eyes which hatch had not seen that evening--a look as if hope had somehow dared to lift its head within him. and there was more than a look of hope; there was savagery too. "no. i want to hear," replied shere ali. "go on, please! how did the englishwoman come to mecca?" "she was a governess in the family of an officer at cawnpore when the mutiny broke out, more than forty years ago," said hatch. ralston leaned back in his chair with an exclamation of horror. shere ali said nothing. his eyes rested intently and brightly upon hatch's face. under the table, and out of sight, his fingers worked convulsively. "she was in that room," continued hatch, "in that dark room with the other englishwomen and children who were murdered. but she was spared. she was very pretty, she told me, in her youth, and she was only eighteen when the massacre took place. she was carried up to the hills and forced to become a mohammedan. the man who had spared her married her. he died, and a small chieftain in the hills took her and married her, and finally brought her out with him when he made the pilgrimage to mecca. while he was at mecca, however, he fell ill, and in his turn he died. she was left alone. she had a little money, and she stayed. indeed, she could not get away. a strange story, eh?" and hatch leaned back in his chair, and once more lighted his cigar which for a second time had gone out. "you didn't bring her back?" exclaimed ralston. "she wouldn't come," replied hatch. "i offered to smuggle her out of mecca, but she refused. she felt that she wouldn't and couldn't face her own people again. she should have died at cawnpore, and she did not die. besides, she was old; she had long since grown accustomed to her life, and in england she had long since been given up for dead. she would not even tell me her real name. perhaps she ought to be fetched away. i don't know." ralston and hatch fell to debating that point with great earnestness. neither of them paid heed to shere ali, and when he rose they easily let him go. nor did their thoughts follow him upon his way. but he was thinking deeply as he went, and a queer and not very pleasant smile played about his lips. chapter xviii sybil linforth's loyalty a fortnight after shere ali had dined with ralston in calcutta, a telegram was handed to linforth at chatham. it was friday, and a guest-night. the mess-room was full, and here and there amongst the scarlet and gold lace the sombre black of a civilian caught the eye. dinner was just over, and at the ends of the long tables the mess-waiters stood ready to draw, with a single jerk, the strips of white tablecloth from the shining mahogany. the silver and the glasses had been removed, the word was given, and the strips of tablecloth vanished as though by some swift legerdemain. the port was passed round, and while the glasses were being filled the telegram was handed to linforth by his servant. he opened it carelessly, but as he read the words his heart jumped within him. his importunities had succeeded, he thought. at all events, his opportunity had come; for the telegram informed him of his appointment to the punjab commission. he sat for a moment with his thoughts in a whirl. he could hardly believe the good news. he had longed so desperately for this one chance that it had seemed to him of late impossible that he should ever obtain it. yet here it had come to him, and upon that his neighbour jogged him in the ribs and said: "wake up!" he waked to see the colonel at the centre of the top table standing on his feet with his glass in his hand. "gentlemen, the queen. god bless her!" and all that company arose and drank to the toast. the prayer, thus simply pronounced amongst the men who had pledged their lives in service to the queen, had always been to linforth a very moving thing. some of those who drank to it had already run their risks and borne their sufferings in proof of their sincerity; the others all burned to do the like. it had always seemed to him, too, to link him up closely and inseparably with the soldiers of the regiment who had fallen years ago or had died quietly in their beds, their service ended. it gave continuity to the regiment of sappers, so that what each man did increased or tarnished its fair fame. for years back that toast had been drunk, that prayer uttered in just those simple words, and linforth was wont to gaze round the walls on the portraits of the famous generals who had looked to these barracks and to this mess-room as their home. they, too, had heard that prayer, and, carrying it in their hearts, without parade or needless speech had gone forth, each in his turn, and laboured unsparingly. but never had linforth been so moved as he was tonight. he choked in his throat as he drank. for his turn to go forth had at the last come to him. and in all humility of spirit he sent up a prayer on his own account, that he might not fail--and again that he might not fail. he sat down and told his companions the good news, and rejoiced at their congratulations. but he slipped away to his own quarters very quietly as soon as the colonel rose, and sat late by himself. there was one, he knew very well, to whom the glad tidings would be a heavy blow--but he could not--no, not even for her sake--stand aside. for this opportunity he had lived, training alike his body and mind against its coming. he could not relinquish it. there was too strong a constraint upon him. "over the passes to the foot of the hindu kush," he murmured; and in his mind's eye he saw the road--a broad, white, graded road--snake across the valleys and climb the cliffs. was russia at work? he wondered. was he to be sent to chiltistan? what was shere ali doing? he turned the questions over in his mind without being at much pains to answer them. in such a very short time now he would know. he was to embark before a month had passed. he travelled down the very next day into sussex, and came to the house under the downs at twelve o'clock. it was early spring, and as yet there were no buds upon the trees, no daffodils upon the lawns. the house, standing apart in its bare garden of brown earth, black trees, and dull green turf, had a desolate aspect which somehow filled him with remorse. he might have done more, perhaps, to fill this house with happiness. he feared that, now that it was too late to do the things left undone. he had been so absorbed in his great plans, which for a moment lost in his eyes their magnitude. dick linforth found his mother in the study, through the window of which she had once looked from the garden in the company of colonel dewes. she was writing her letters, and when she saw him enter, she sprang up with a cry of joy. "dick!" she cried, coming towards him with outstretched hands. but she stopped half-way. the happiness died out of her. she raised a hand to her heart, and her voice once more repeated his name; but her voice faltered as she spoke, and the hand was clasped tight upon her breast. "dick," she said, and in his face she read the tidings he had brought. the blow so long dreaded had at last fallen. "yes, mother, it's true," he said very gently; and leading her to a chair, he sat beside her, stroking her hand, almost as a lover might do. "it's true. the telegram came last night. i start within the month." "for chiltistan?" dick looked at her for a moment. "for the punjab," he said, and added: "but it will mean chiltistan. else why should i be sent for? it has been always for chiltistan that i have importuned them." sybil linforth bowed her head. the horror which had been present with her night and day for so long a while twenty-five years ago rushed upon her afresh, so that she could not speak. she sat living over again the bitter days when luffe was shut up with his handful of men in the fort by kohara. she remembered the morning when the postman came up the garden path with the official letter that her husband had been slain. and at last in a whisper she said: "the road?" dick, even in the presence of her pain, could not deny the implication of her words. "we linforths belong to the road," he answered gravely. the words struck upon a chord of memory. sybil linforth sat upright, turned to her sort and greatly surprised him. he had expected an appeal, a prayer. what he heard was something which raised her higher in his thoughts than ever she had been, high though he had always placed her. "dick," she said, "i have never said a word to dissuade you, have i? never a word? never a single word?" and her tone besought him to assure her. "never a word, mother," he replied. but still she was not content. "when you were a boy, when the road began to take hold on you--when we were much together, playing cricket out there in the garden," and her voice broke upon the memory of those golden days, "when i might have been able, perhaps, to turn you to other thoughts, i never tried to, dick? own to that! i never tried to. when i came upon you up on the top of the down behind the house, lying on the grass, looking out--always--always towards the sea--oh, i knew very well what it was that was drawing you; but i said nothing, dick. not a word--not a word!" dick nodded his head. "that's true, mother. you never questioned me. you never tried to dissuade me." sybil's face shone with a wan smile. she unlocked a drawer in her writing-table, and took out an envelope. from the envelope she drew a sheet of paper covered with a faded and yellow handwriting. "this is the last letter your father ever wrote to me," she said. "harry wrote on the night that he--that he died. oh, dick, my boy, i have known for a long time that i would have one day to show it to you, and i wanted you to feel when that time came that i had not been disloyal." she had kept her face steady, even her voice calm, by a great effort. but now the tears filled her eyes and brimmed over, and her voice suddenly shook between a laugh and a sob. "but oh, dick," she cried, "i have so often wanted to be disloyal. i was so often near to it--oh, very, very near." she handed him the faded letter, and, turning towards the window, stood with her back to him while he read. it was that letter, with its constant refrain of "i am very tired," which linforth had written in his tent whilst his murderers crouched outside waiting for sleep to overcome him. "i am sitting writing this by the light of a candle," dick read. "the tent door is open. in front of me i can see the great snow-mountains. all the ugliness of the shale-slopes is hidden. by such a moonlight, my dear, may you always look back upon my memory. for it is all over, sybil." then followed the advice about himself and his school; and after that advice the message which was now for the first time delivered: "whether he will come out here, it is too early to think about. but the road will not be finished--and i wonder. if he wants to, let him! we linforths belong to the road." dick folded the letter reverently, and crossing to his mother's side, put his arm about her waist. "yes," he said. "my father knew it as i know it. he used the words which i in my turn have used. we linforths belong to the road." his mother took the letter from his hand and locked it away. "yes," she said bravely, and called a smile to her face. "so you must go." dick nodded his head. "yes. you see, the road has not advanced since my father died. it almost seems, mother, that it waits for me." he stayed that day and that night with sybil, and in the morning both brought haggard faces to the breakfast table. sybil, indeed, had slept, but, with her memories crowding hard upon her, she had dreamed again one of those almost forgotten dreams which, in the time of her suspense, had so tortured her. the old vague terror had seized upon her again. she dreamed once more of a young englishman who pursued a young indian along the wooden galleries of the road above the torrents into the far mists. she could tell as of old the very dress of the native who fled. a thick sheepskin coat swung aside as he ran and gave her a glimpse of gay silk; soft high leather boots protected his feet; and upon his face there was a look of fury and wild fear. but this night there was a difference in the dream. her present distress added a detail. the young englishman who pursued turned his face to her as he disappeared amongst the mists, and she saw that it was the face of dick. but of this she said nothing at all at the breakfast table, nor when she bade dick good-bye at the stile on the further side of the field beyond the garden. "you will come down again, and i shall go to marseilles to see you off," she said, and so let him go. there was something, too, stirring in dick's mind of which he said no word. in the letter of his father, certain sentences had caught his eye, and on his way up to london they recurred to his thoughts, as, indeed, they had more than once during the evening before. "may he meet," harry linforth had written to sybil of his son dick--"may he meet a woman like you, my dear, when his time comes, and love her as i love you." dick linforth fell to thinking of violet oliver. she was in india at this moment. she might still be there when he landed. would he meet her, he wondered, somewhere on the way to chiltistan? chapter xix a gift misunderstood the month was over before linforth at last steamed out of the harbour at marseilles. he was as impatient to reach bombay as a year before shere ali had been reluctant. to shere ali the boat had flown with wings of swiftness, to linforth she was a laggard. the steamer passed stromboli on a wild night of storm and moonlight. the wrack of clouds scurrying overhead, now obscured, now let the moonlight through, and the great cone rising sheer from a tempestuous sea glowed angrily. linforth, in the shelter of a canvas screen, watched the glow suddenly expand, and a stream of bright sparkling red flow swiftly along the shoulder of the mountain, turn at a right angle, and plunge down towards the sea. the bright red would become dull, the dull red grow black, the glare of light above the cone contract for a little while and then burst out again. yet men lived upon the slope of stromboli, even as englishmen--the thought flashed into his mind--lived in india, recognising the peril and going quietly about their work. there was always that glare of menacing light over the hill-districts of india as above the crater of stromboli, now contracting, now expanding and casting its molten stream down towards the plains. at the moment when linforth watched the crown of light above stromboli, the glare was widening over the hill country of chiltistan. ralston so far away as peshawur saw it reddening the sky and was the more troubled in that he could not discover why just at this moment the menace should glow red. the son of abdulla mohammed was apparently quiet and shere ali had not left calcutta. the resident at kohara admitted the danger. every despatch he sent to peshawur pointed to the likelihood of trouble. but he too was at fault. unrest was evident, the cause of it quite obscure. but what was hidden from government house in peshawur and the old mission house at kohara was already whispered in the bazaars. there among the thatched booths which have their backs upon the brink of the water-channel in the great square, men knew very well that shere ali was the cause, though shere ali knew nothing of it himself. one of those queer little accidents possible in the east had happened within the last few weeks. a trifling gift had been magnified into a symbol and a message, and the message had run through chiltistan like fire through a dry field of stubble. and then two events occurred in peshawur which gave to ralston the key of the mystery. the first was the arrival in that city of a hindu lady from gujerat who had lately come to the conclusion that she was a reincarnation of the goddess devi. she arrived in great pomp, and there was some trouble in the streets as the procession passed through to the temple which she had chosen as her residence. for the hindus, on the one hand, firmly believed in her divinity. the lady came of a class which, held in dishonour in the west, had its social position and prestige in india. there was no reason in the eyes of the faithful why she should say she was the goddess devi if she were not. therefore they lined the streets to acclaim her coming. the mohammedans, on the other hand, afghans from the far side of the khyber, men of the hassan and the aka and the adam khel tribes, afridis from kohat and tirah and the araksai country, any who happened to be in that wild and crowded town, turned out, too--to keep order, as they pleasantly termed it, when their leaders were subsequently asked for explanations. in the end a good many heads were broken before the lady was safely lodged in her temple. nor did the trouble end there. the presence of a reincarnated devi at once kindled the hindus to fervour and stimulated to hostility against them the fanatical mohammedans. futteh ali shah, a merchant, a municipal councillor and a landowner of some importance, headed a deputation of elderly gentlemen who begged ralston to remove the danger from the city. danger there was, as ralston on his morning rides through the streets could not but understand. the temple was built in the corner of an open space, and upon that open space a noisy and excited crowd surged all day; while from the countryside around pilgrims in a mood of frenzied piety and pathans spoiling for a fight trooped daily in through the gates of peshawur. ralston understood that the time had come for definite steps to be taken; and he took them with that unconcerned half-weary air which was at once natural to him and impressive to these particular people with whom he had to deal. he summoned two of his native levies and mounted his horse. "but you will take a guard," said colonel ward, of the oxfordshires, who had been lunching with ralston. "i'll send a company down with you." "no, thank you," said ralston listlessly, "i think my two men will do." the colonel stared and expostulated. "you know, ralston, you are very rash. your predecessor never rode into the city without an escort." "i do every morning." "i know," returned the colonel, "and that's where you are wrong. some day something will happen. to go down with two of your levies to-day is madness. i speak seriously. the place is in a ferment." "oh, i think i'll be all right," said ralston, and he rode at a trot down from government house into the road which leads past the gaol and the fort to the gate of peshawur. at the gate he reduced the trot to a walk, and so, with his two levies behind him, passed up along the streets like a man utterly undisturbed. it was not bravado which had made him refuse an escort. on the contrary, it was policy. to assume that no one questioned his authority was in ralston's view the best way and the quickest to establish it. he pushed forward through the crowd right up to the walls of the temple, seemingly indifferent to every cry or threat which was uttered as he passed. the throng closed in behind him, and he came to a halt in front of a low door set in the whitewashed wall which enclosed the temple and its precincts. upon this door he beat with the butt of his crop and a little wicket in the door was opened. at the bars of the wicket an old man's face showed for a moment and then drew back in fear. "open!" cried ralston peremptorily. the face appeared again. "your excellency, the goddess is meditating. besides, this is holy ground. your excellency would not wish to set foot on it. moreover, the courtyard is full of worshippers. it would not be safe." ralston broke in upon the old man's fluttering protestations. "open the door, or my men will break it in." a murmur of indignation arose from the crowd which thronged about him. ralston paid no heed to it. he called to his two levies: "quick! break that door in!" as they advanced the door was opened. ralston dismounted, and bade one of his men do likewise and follow him. to the second man he said, "hold the horses!" he strode into the courtyard and stood still. "it will be touch and go," he said to himself, as he looked about him. the courtyard was as thronged as the open space without, and four strong walls enclosed it. the worshippers were strangely silent. it seemed to ralston that suspense had struck them dumb. they looked at the intruder with set faces and impassive eyes. at the far end of the courtyard there was a raised stone platform, and this part was roofed. at the back in the gloom he could see a great idol of the goddess, and in front, facing the courtyard, stood the lady from gujerat. she was what ralston expected to see--a dancing girl of northern india, a girl with a good figure, small hands and feet, and a complexion of an olive tint. her eyes were large and lustrous, with a line of black pencilled upon the edges of the eyelids, her eyebrows arched and regular, her face oval, her forehead high. the dress was richly embroidered with gold, and she had anklets with silver bells upon her feet. ralston pushed his way through the courtyard until he reached the wall of the platform. "come down and speak to me," he cried peremptorily to the lady, but she took no notice of his presence. she did not move so much as an eyelid. she gazed over his head as one lost in meditation. from the side an old priest advanced to the edge of the platform. "go away," he cried insolently. "you have no place here. the goddess does not speak to any but her priests," and through the throng there ran a murmur of approval. there, was a movement, too--a movement towards ralston. it was as yet a hesitating movement--those behind pushed, those in front and within ralston's vision held back. but at any moment the movement might become a rush. ralston spoke to the priest. "come down, you dog!" he said quite quietly. the priest was silent. he hesitated. he looked for help to the crowd below, which in turn looked for leadership to him. "come down," once more cried ralston, and he moved towards the steps as though he would mount on to the platform and tear the fellow down. "i come, i come," said the priest, and he went down and stood before ralston. ralston turned to the pathan who accompanied him. "turn the fellow into the street." protests rose from the crowd; the protests became cries of anger; the throng swayed and jostled. but the pathan led the priest to the door and thrust him out. again ralston turned to the platform. "listen to me," he called out to the lady from gujerat. "you must leave peshawur. you are a trouble to the town. i will not let you stay." but the lady paid no heed. her mind floated above the earth, and with every moment the danger grew. closer and closer the throng pressed in upon ralston and his attendant. the clamour rose shrill and menacing. ralston cried out to his pathan in a voice which rang clear and audible even above the clamour: "bring handcuffs!" the words were heard and silence fell upon all that crowd, the sudden silence of stupefaction. that such an outrage, such a defilement of a holy place, could be contemplated came upon the worshippers with a shock. but the pathan levy was seen to be moving towards the door to obey the order, and as he went the cries and threats rose with redoubled ardour. for a moment it seemed to ralston that the day would go against him, so fierce were the faces which shouted in his ears, so turbulent the movement of the crowd. it needed just one hand to be laid upon the pathan's shoulder as he forced his way towards the door, just one blow to be struck, and the ugly rush would come. but the hand was not stretched out, nor the blow struck; and the pathan was seen actually at the threshold of the door. then the goddess devi came down to earth and spoke to another of her priests quickly and urgently. the priest went swiftly down the steps. "the goddess will leave peshawur, since your excellency so wills it," he said to ralston. "she will shake the dust of this city from her feet. she will not bring trouble upon its people." so far he had got when the goddess became violently agitated. she beckoned to the priest and when he came to her side she spoke quickly to him in an undertone. for the last second or two the goddess had grown quite human and even feminine. she was rating the priest well and she did it spitefully. it was a crestfallen priest who returned to ralston. "the goddess, however, makes a condition," said he. "if she goes there must be a procession." the goddess nodded her head emphatically. she was clearly adamant upon that point. ralston smiled. "by all means. the lady shall have a show, since she wants one," said he, and turning towards the door, he signalled to the pathan to stop. "but it must be this afternoon," said he. "for she must go this afternoon." and he made his way out of the courtyard into the street. the lady from gujerat left peshawur three hours later. the streets were lined with levies, although the mohammedans assured his excellency that there was no need for troops. "we ourselves will keep order," they urged. ralston smiled, and ordered up a company of regulars. he himself rode out from government house, and at the bend of the road he met the procession, with the lady from gujerat at its head in a litter with drawn curtains of tawdry gold. as the procession came abreast of him a little brown hand was thrust out from the curtains, and the bearers and the rabble behind came to a halt. a man in a rough brown homespun cloak, with a beggar's bowl attached to his girdle, came to the side of the litter, and thence went across to ralston. "your highness, the goddess devi has a word for your ear alone." ralston, with a shrug of his shoulders, walked his horse up to the side of the litter and bent down his head. the lady spoke through the curtains in a whisper. "your excellency has been very kind to me, and allowed me to leave peshawur with a procession, guarding the streets so that i might pass in safety and with great honour. therefore i make a return. there is a matter which troubles your excellency. you ask yourself the why and the wherefore, and there is no answer. but the danger grows." ralston's thoughts flew out towards chiltistan. was it of that country she was speaking? "well?" he asked. "why does the danger grow?" "because bags of grain and melons were sent," she replied, "and the message was understood." she waved her hand again, and the bearers of the litter stepped forward on their march through the cantonment. ralston rode up the hill to his home, wondering what in the world was the meaning of her oracular words. it might be that she had no meaning--that was certainly a possibility. she might merely be keeping up her pose as a divinity. on the other hand, she had been so careful to speak in a low whisper, lest any should overhear. "some melons and bags of grain," he said to himself. "what message could they convey? and who sent them? and to whom?" he wrote that night to the resident at kohara, on the chance that he might be able to throw some light upon the problem. "have you heard anything of a melon and a bag of grain?" he wrote. "it seems an absurd question, but please make inquiries. find out what it all means." the messenger carried the letter over the malakand pass and up the road by dir, and in due time an answer was returned. ralston received the answer late one afternoon, when the light was failing, and, taking it over to the window, read it through. its contents fairly startled him. "i have made inquiries," wrote captain phillips, the resident, "as you wished, and i have found out that some melons and bags of grain were sent by shere ali's orders a few weeks ago as a present to one of the chief mullahs in the town." ralston was brought to a stop. so it was shere ali, after all, who was at the bottom of the trouble. it was shere ali who had sent the present, and had sent it to one of the mullahs. ralston looked back upon the little dinner party, whereby he had brought hatch and shere ali together. had that party been too successful, he wondered? had it achieved more than he had wished to bring about? he turned in doubt to the letter which he held. "it seems," he read, "that there had been some trouble between this man and shere ali. there is a story that shere ali set him to work for a day upon a bridge just below kohara. but i do not know whether there is any truth in the story. nor can i find that any particular meaning is attached to the present. i imagine that shere ali realised that it would be wise--as undoubtedly it was--for him to make his peace with the mullah, and sent him accordingly the melons and the bags of grain as an earnest of his good-will." there the letter ended, and ralston stood by the window as the light failed more and more from off the earth, pondering with a heavy heart upon its contents. he had to make his choice between the resident at kohara and the lady of gujerat. captain phillips held that the present was not interpreted in any symbolic sense. but the lady of gujerat had known of the present. it was matter of talk, then, in the bazaars, and it would hardly have been that had it meant no more than an earnest of good-will. she had heard of the present; she knew what it was held to convey. it was a message. there was that glare broadening over chiltistan. surely the lady of gujerat was right. so far his thoughts had carried him when across the window there fell a shadow, and a young officer of the khyber rifles passed by to the door. captain singleton was announced, and a boy--or so he looked--dark-haired and sunburnt, entered the office. for eighteen months he had been stationed in the fort at landi kotal, whence the road dips down between the bare brown cliffs towards the plains and mountains of afghanistan. with two other english officers he had taken his share in the difficult task of ruling that regiment of wild tribesmen which, twice a week, perched in threes on some rocky promontory, or looking down from a machicolated tower, keeps open the khyber pass from dawn to dusk and protects the caravans. the eighteen months had written their history upon his face; he stood before ralston, for all his youthful looks, a quiet, self-reliant man. "i have come down on leave, sir," he said. "on the way i fetched rahat mian out of his house and brought him in to peshawur." ralston looked up with interest. "any trouble?" he asked. "i took care there should be none." ralston nodded. "he had better be safely lodged. where is he?" "i have him outside." ralston rang for lights, and then said to singleton: "then, i'll see him now." and in a few minutes an elderly white-bearded man, dressed from head to foot in his best white robes, was shown into the room. "this is his excellency," said captain singleton, and rahat mian bowed with dignity and stood waiting. but while he stood his eyes roamed inquisitively about the room. "all this is strange to you, rahat mian," said ralston. "how long is it since you left your house in the khyber pass?" "five years, your highness," said rahat mian, quietly, as though there were nothing very strange in so long a confinement within his doors. "have you never crossed your threshold for five years?" asked ralston. "no, your highness. i should not have stepped back over it again, had i been so foolish. before, yes. there was a deep trench dug between my house and the road, and i used to crawl along the trench when no-one was about. but after a little my enemies saw me walking in the road, and watched the trench." rahat mian lived in one of the square mud windowless houses, each with a tower at a corner which dot the green wheat fields in the khyber pass wherever the hills fall back and leave a level space. his house was fifty yards from the road, and the trench stretched to it from his very door. but not two hundred yards away there were other houses, and one of these held rahat mian's enemies. the feud went back many years to the date when rahat mian, without asking anyone's leave or paying a single farthing of money, secretly married the widowed mother of futteh ali shah. now futteh ali shah was a boy of fourteen who had the right to dispose of his mother in second marriage as he saw fit, and for the best price he could obtain. and this deprivation of his rights kindled in him a great anger against rahat mian. he nursed it until he became a man and was able to buy for a couple of hundred rupees a good pedigree rifle--a rifle which had belonged to a soldier killed in a hill-campaign and for which inquiries would not be made. armed with his pedigree rifle, futteh ali shah lay in wait vainly for rahat mian, until an unexpected bequest caused a revolution in his fortunes. he went down to bombay, added to his bequest by becoming a money-lender, and finally returned to peshawur, in the neighbourhood of which city he had become a landowner of some importance. meanwhile, however, he had not been forgetful of rahat mian. he left relations behind to carry on the feud, and in addition he set a price on rahat mian's head. it was this feud which ralston had it in his mind to settle. he turned to rahat mian. "you are willing to make peace?" "yes," said the old man. "you will take your most solemn oath that the feud shall end. you will swear to divorce your wife, if you break your word?" for a moment rahat mian hesitated. there was no oath more binding, more sacred, than that which he was called upon to take. in the end he consented. "then come here at eight to-morrow morning," said ralston, and, dismissing the man, he gave instructions that he should be safely lodged. he sent word at the same time to futteh ali shah, with whom, not for the first time, he had had trouble. futteh ali shah arrived late the next morning in order to show his independence. but he was not so late as ralston, who replied by keeping him waiting for an hour. when ralston entered the room he saw that futteh ali shah had dressed himself for the occasion. his tall high-shouldered frame was buttoned up in a grey frock coat, grey trousers clothed his legs, and he wore patent-leather shoes upon his feet. "i hope you have not been waiting very long. they should have told me you were here," said ralston, and though he spoke politely, there was just a suggestion that it was not really of importance whether futteh ali shah was kept waiting or not. "i have brought you here that together we may put an end to your dispute with rahat mian," said ralston, and, taking no notice of the exclamation of surprise which broke from the pathan's lips, he rang the bell and ordered rahat mian to be shown in. "now let us see if we cannot come to an understanding," said ralston, and he seated himself between the two antagonists. but though they talked for an hour, they came no nearer to a settlement. futteh ali shah was obdurate; rahat mian's temper and pride rose in their turn. at the sight of each other the old grievance became fresh as a thing of yesterday in both their minds. their dark faces, with the high cheek-bones and the beaked noses of the afridi, became passionate and fierce. finally futteh ali shah forgot all his bombay manners; he leaned across ralston, and cried to rahat mian: "do you know what i would like to do with you? i would like to string my bedstead with your skin and lie on it." and upon that ralston arrived at the conclusion that the meeting might as well come to an end. he dismissed rahat mian, promising him a safe conveyance to his home. but he had not yet done with futteh ali shah. "i am going out," he said suavely. "shall we walk a little way together?" futteh ali shah smiled. landowner of importance that he was, the opportunity to ride side by side through peshawur with the chief commissioner did not come every day. the two men went out into the porch. ralston's horse was waiting, with a scarlet-clad syce at its head. ralston walked on down the steps and took a step or two along the drive. futteh ali shah lagged behind. "your excellency is forgetting your horse." "no," said ralston. "the horse can follow. let us walk a little. it is a good thing to walk." it was nine o'clock in the morning, and the weather was getting hot. and it is said that the heat of peshawur is beyond the heat of any other city from the hills to cape comorin. futteh ali shah, however, could not refuse. regretfully he signalled to his own groom who stood apart in charge of a fine dark bay stallion from the kirghiz steppes. the two men walked out from the garden and down the road towards peshawur city, with their horses following behind them. "we will go this way," said ralston, and he turned to the left and walked along a mud-walled lane between rich orchards heavy with fruit. for a mile they thus walked, and then futteh ali shah stopped and said: "i am very anxious to have your excellency's opinion of my horse. i am very proud of it." "later on," said ralston, carelessly. "i want to walk for a little"; and, conversing upon indifferent topics, they skirted the city and came out upon the broad open road which runs to jamrud and the khyber pass. it was here that futteh ali shah once more pressingly invited ralston to try the paces of his stallion. but ralston again refused. "i will with pleasure later on," he said. "but a little exercise will be good for both of us; and they continued to walk along the road. the heat was overpowering; futteh ali shah was soft from too much good living; his thin patent-leather shoes began to draw his feet and gall his heels; his frock coat was tight; the perspiration poured down his face. ralston was hot, too. but he strode on with apparent unconcern, and talked with the utmost friendliness on the municipal affairs of peshawur." "it is very hot," said futteh ali shah, "and i am afraid for your excellency's health. for myself, of course, i am not troubled, but so much walking will be dangerous to you"; and he halted and looked longingly back to his horse. "thank you," said ralston. "but my horse is fresh, and i should not be able to talk to you so well. i do not feel that i am in danger." futteh ali shah mopped his face and walked on. his feet blistered; he began to limp, and he had nothing but a riding-switch in his hand. now across the plain he saw in the distance the round fort of jamrud, and he suddenly halted: "i must sit down," he said. "i cannot help it, your excellency, i must stop and sit down." ralston turned to him with a look of cold surprise. "before me, futteh ali shah? you will sit down in my presence before i sit down? i think you will not." futteh ali shah gazed up the road and down the road, and saw no help anywhere. only this devilish chief commissioner stood threateningly before him. with a gesture of despair he wiped his face and walked on. for a mile more he limped on by ralston's side, the while ralston discoursed upon the great question of agricultural banks. then he stopped again and blurted out: "i will give you no more trouble. if your excellency will let me go, never again will i give you trouble. i swear it." ralston smiled. he had had enough of the walk himself. "and rahat mian?" he asked. there was a momentary struggle in the zemindar's mind. but his fatigue and exhaustion were too heavy upon him. "he, too, shall go his own way. neither i nor mine shall molest him." ralston turned at once and mounted his horse. with a sigh of relief futteh ali shah followed his example. "shall we ride back together?" said ralston, pleasantly. and as on the way out he had made no mention of any trouble between the landowner and himself, so he did not refer to it by a single word on his way back. but close to the city their ways parted and futteh ali shah, as he took his leave, said hesitatingly, "if this story goes abroad, your excellency--this story of how we walked together towards jamrud--there will be much laughter and ridicule." the fear of ridicule--there was the weak point of the afridi, as ralston very well knew. to be laughed at--futteh ali shah, who was wont to lord it among his friends, writhed under the mere possibility. and how they would laugh in and round about peshawur! a fine figure he would cut as he rode through the streets with every ragged bystander jeering at the man who was walked into docility and submission by his excellency the chief commissioner. "my life would be intolerable," he said, "were the story to get about." ralston shrugged his shoulders. "but why should it get about?" "i do not know, but it surely will. it may be that the trees have ears and eyes and a mouth to speak." he edged a little nearer to the commissioner. "it may be, too," he said cunningly, "that your excellency loves to tell a good story after dinner. now there is one way to stop that story." ralston laughed. "if i could hold my tongue, you mean," he replied. futteh ali shah came nearer still. he rode up close and leaned a little over towards ralston. "your excellency would lose the story," he said, "but on the other hand there would be a gain--a gain of many hours of sleep passed otherwise in guessing." he spoke in an insinuating fashion, which made ralston disinclined to strike a bargain--and he nodded his head like one who wishes to convey that he could tell much if only he would. but ralston paused before he answered, and when he answered it was only to put a question. "what do you mean?" he asked. and the reply came in a low quick voice. "there was a message sent through chiltistan." ralston started. was it in this strange way the truth was to come to him? he sat his horse carelessly. "i know," he said. "some melons and some bags of grain." futteh ali shah was disappointed. this devilish chief commissioner knew everything. yet the story of the walk must not get abroad in peshawur, and surely it would unless the chief commissioner were pledged to silence. he drew a bow at a venture. "can your excellency interpret the message? as they interpret it in chiltistan?" and it seemed to him that he had this time struck true. "it is a little thing i ask of your excellency." "it is not a great thing, to be sure," ralston admitted. he looked at the zemindar and laughed. "but i could tell the story rather well," he said doubtfully. "it would be an amusing story as i should tell it. yet--well, we will see," and he changed his tone suddenly. "interpret to me that present as it is interpreted in the villages of chiltistan." futteh ali shah looked about him fearfully, making sure that there was no one within earshot. then in a whisper he said: "the grain is the army which will rise up from the hills and descend from the heavens to destroy the power of the government. the melons are the forces of the government; for as easily as melons they will be cut into pieces." he rode off quickly when he had ended, like a man who understands that he has said too much, and then halted and returned. "you will not tell that story?" he said. "no," answered ralston abstractedly. "i shall never tell that story." he understood the truth at last. so that was the message which shere ali had sent. no wonder, he thought, that the glare broadened over chiltistan. chapter xx the soldier and the jew these two events took place at peshawur, while linforth was still upon the waters of the red sea. to be quite exact, on that morning when ralston was taking his long walk towards jamrud with the zemindar futteh ali shah, linforth was watching impatiently from his deck-chair the high mosque towers, the white domes and great houses of mocha, as they shimmered in the heat at the water's edge against a wide background of yellow sand. it seemed to him that the long narrow city so small and clear across the great level of calm sea would never slide past the taffrail. but it disappeared, and in due course the ship moved slowly through the narrows into aden harbour. this was on a thursday evening, and the steamer stopped in aden for three hours to coal. the night came on hot, windless and dark. linforth leaned over the side, looking out upon the short curve of lights and the black mass of hill rising dimly above them. three and a half more days and he would be standing on indian soil. a bright light flashed towards the ship across the water and a launch came alongside, bearing the agent of the company. he had the latest telegrams in his hand. "any trouble on the frontier?" linforth asked. "none," the agent replied, and linforth's fever of impatience was assuaged. if trouble were threatening he would surely be in time--since there were only three and a half more days. but he did not know why he had been brought out from england, and the three and a half days made him by just three and a half days too late. for on this very night when the steamer stopped to coal in aden harbour shere ali made his choice. he was present that evening at a prize-fight which took place in a music-hall at calcutta. the lightweight champion of singapore and the east, a jew, was pitted against a young soldier who had secured his discharge and had just taken to boxing as a profession. the soldier brought a great reputation as an amateur. this was his first appearance as a professional, and his friends had gathered in numbers to encourage him. the hall was crowded with soldiers from the barracks, sailors from the fleet, and patrons of the fancy in calcutta. the heat was overpowering, the audience noisy, and overhead the electric fans, which hung downwards from the ceiling, whirled above the spectators with so swift a rotation that those looking up saw only a vague blur in the air. the ring had been roped off upon the stage, and about three sides of the ring chairs for the privileged had been placed. the fourth side was open to the spectators in the hall, and behind the ropes at the back there sat in the centre of the row of chairs a fat red-faced man in evening-dress who was greeted on all sides as colonel joe. "colonel joe" was the referee, and a person on these occasions of great importance. there were several preliminary contests and before each one colonel joe came to the front and introduced the combatants with a short history of their achievements. a hindu boy was matched against a white one, a couple of wrestlers came next, and then two english sailors, with more spirit than skill, had a set-to which warmed the audience into enthusiasm and ended amid shouts, whistles, shrill cat-calls, and thunders of applause. meanwhile the heat grew more and more intense, the faces shinier, the air more and more smoke-laden and heavy. shere ali came on to the stage while the sailors were at work. he exchanged a nod with "colonel joe," and took his seat in the front row of chairs behind the ropes. it was a rough gathering on the whole, though there were some men in evening-dress besides colonel joe, and of these two sat beside shere ali. they were talking together, and shere ali at the first paid no heed to them. the trainers, the backers, the pugilists themselves were the men who had become his associates in calcutta. there were many of them present upon the stage, and in turn they approached shere ali and spoke to him with familiarity upon the chances of the fight. yet in their familiarity there was a kind of deference. they were speaking to a patron. moreover, there was some flattery in the attention with which they waited to catch his eye and the eagerness with which they came at once to his side. "we are all glad to see you, sir," said a small man who had been a jockey until he was warned off the turf. "yes," said shere ali with a smile, "i am among friends." "now who would you say was going to win this fight?" continued the jockey, cocking his head with an air of shrewdness, which said as plainly as words, "you are the one to tell if you will only say." shere ali expanded. deference and flattery, however gross, so long as they came from white people were balm to his wounded vanity. the weeks in calcutta had worked more harm than ralston had suspected. shy of meeting those who had once treated him as an equal, imagining when he did meet them that now they only admitted him to their company on sufferance and held him in their thoughts of no account, he had become avid for recognition among the riff-raff of the town. "i have backed the man from singapore," he replied, "i know him. the soldier is a stranger to me"; and gradually as he talked the voices of his two neighbours forced themselves upon his consciousness. it was not what they said which caught his attention. but their accents and the pitch of their voices arrested him, and swept him back to his days at eton and at oxford. he turned his head and looked carelessly towards them. they were both young; both a year ago might have been his intimates and friends. as it was, he imagined bitterly, they probably resented his sitting even in the next chair to them. the stage was now clear; the two sailors had departed, the audience sat waiting for the heroes of the evening and calling for them with impatient outbursts of applause. shere ali waited too. but there was no impatience on his part, as there was no enthusiasm. he was just getting through the evening; and this hot and crowded den, with its glitter of lights, promised a thrill of excitement which would for a moment lift him from the torture of his thoughts. but the antagonists still lingered in their dressing-rooms while their trainers put the final touch to their preparations. and while the antagonists lingered, the two young men next to him began again to talk, and this time the words fell on shere ali's ears. "i think it ought to be stopped," said one. "it can't be good for us. of course the fellow who runs the circus doesn't care, although he is an englishman, and although he must have understood what was being shouted." "he is out for money, of course," replied the other. "yes. but not half a mile away, just across the maidan there, is government house. surely it ought to be stopped." the speaker was evidently serious. he spoke, indeed, with some heat. shere ali wondered indifferently what it was that went on in the circus in the maidan half a mile from the government house. something which ought to be stopped, something which could not be "good for us." shere ali clenched his hands in a gust of passion. how well he knew the phrase! good for us, good for the magic of british prestige! how often he had used the words himself in the days when he had been fool enough to believe that he belonged to the white people. he had used it in the company of just such youths as those who sat next to him now, and he writhed in his seat as he imagined how they must have laughed at him in their hearts. what was it that was not "good for us" in the circus on the maidan? as he wondered there was a burst of applause, and on the opposite side of the ring the soldier, stripped to the waist, entered with his two assistants. shere ali was sitting close to the lower corner of the ring on the right-hand side of the stage; the soldier took his seat in the upper corner on the other side. he was a big, heavily-built man, but young, active, and upon his open face he had a look of confidence. it seemed to shere ali that he had been trained to the very perfection of his strength, and when he moved the muscles upon his shoulders and back worked under his skin as though they lived. shouts greeted him, shouts in which his surname and his christian name and his nicknames were mingled, and he smiled pleasantly back at his friends. shere ali looked at him. from his cheery, honest face to the firm set of his feet upon the floor, he was typical of his class and race. "oh, i hope he'll be beaten!" shere ali found himself repeating the words in a whisper. the wish had suddenly sprung up within him, but it grew in intensity; it became a great longing. he looked anxiously for the appearance of the jew from singapore. he was glad that, knowing little of either man, he had laid his money against the soldier. meanwhile the two youths beside him resumed their talk, and shere ali learned what it was that was not "good for us"! "there were four girls," said the youth who had been most indignant. "four english girls dancing a _pas de quatre_ on the sand of the circus. the dance was all right, the dresses were all right. in an english theatre no one would have had a word to say. it was the audience that was wrong. the cheaper parts at the back of the tent were crowded with natives, tier above tier--and i tell you--i don't know much hindustani, but the things they shouted made my blood boil. after all, if you are going to be the governing race it's not a good thing to let your women be insulted, eh?" shere ali laughed quietly. he could picture to himself the whole scene, the floor of the circus, the tiers of grinning faces rising up against the back walls of the tent. "did the girls themselves mind?" asked the other of the youths. "they didn't understand." and again the angry utterance followed. "it ought to be stopped! it ought to be stopped!" shere ali turned suddenly upon the speaker. "why?" he asked fiercely, and he thrust a savage face towards him. the young man was taken by surprise; for a second it warmed shere ali to think that he was afraid. and, indeed, there was very little of the civilised man in shere ali's look at this moment. his own people were claiming him. it was one of the keen grim tribesmen of the hills who challenged the young englishman. the englishman, however, was not afraid. he was merely disconcerted by the unexpected attack. he recovered his composure the next moment. "i don't think that i was speaking to you," he said quietly, and then turned away. shere ali half rose in his seat. but he was not yet quite emancipated from the traditions of his upbringing. to create a disturbance in a public place, to draw all eyes upon himself, to look a fool, eventually to be turned ignominiously into the street--all this he was within an ace of doing and suffering, but he refrained. he sat down again quickly, feeling hot and cold with shame, just as he remembered he had been wont to feel when he had committed some gaucherie in his early days in england. at that moment the light-weight champion from singapore came out from his dressing-room and entered the ring. he was of a slighter build than his opponent, but very quick upon his feet. he was shorter, too. colonel joe introduced the antagonists to the audience, standing before the footlights as he did so. and it was at once evident who was the favourite. the shouts were nearly all for the soldier. the jew took his seat in a chair down in the corner where shere ali was sitting, and shere ali leaned over the ropes and whispered to him fiercely, "win! win! i'll double the stake if you do!" the jew turned and smiled at the young prince. "i'll do my best." shere ali leaned back in his chair and the fight began. he followed it with an excitement and a suspense which were astonishing even to him. when the soldier brought his fist home upon the prominent nose of the singapore champion and plaudits resounded through the house, his heart sank with bitter disappointment. when the jew replied with a dull body-blow, his hopes rebounded. he soon began to understand that in the arts of prize-fighting the soldier was a child compared with the man from singapore. the champion of the east knew his trade. he was as hard as iron. the sounding blows upon his forehead and nose did no more than flush his face for a few moments. meanwhile he struck for the body. moreover, he had certain tricks which lured his antagonist to an imprudent confidence. for instance, he breathed heavily from the beginning of the second round, as though he were clean out of condition. but each round found him strong and quick to press an advantage. after one blow, which toppled his opponent through the ropes, shere ali clapped his hands. "bravo!" he cried; and one of the youths at his side said to his companion: "this fellow's a jew, too. look at his face." for twelve rounds the combatants seemed still to be upon equal terms, though those in the audience who had knowledge began to shake their heads over the chances of the soldier. shere ali, however, was still racked by suspense. the fight had become a symbol, almost a message to him, even as his gift to the mullah had become a message to the people of chiltistan. all that he had once loved, and now furiously raged against, was represented by the soldier, the confident, big, heavily built soldier, while, on the other hand, by the victory of the jew all the subject peoples would be vindicated. more and more as the fight fluctuated from round to round the people and the country of chiltistan claimed its own. the soldier represented even those youths at his side, whose women must on no account be insulted. "why should they be respected?" he cried to himself. for at the bottom of his heart lay the thought that he had been set aside as impossible by violet oliver. there was the real cause of his bitterness against the white people. he still longed for violet oliver, still greatly coveted her. but his own people and his own country were claiming him; and he longed for her in a different way. chivalry--the chivalry of the young man who wants to guard and cherish--respect, the desire that the loved one should share ambitions, life work, all--what follies and illusions these things were! "i know," said shere ali to himself. "i know. i am myself the victim of them," and he lowered his head and clasped his hands tightly together between his knees. he forgot the prize-fight, the very sound of the pugilists' feet upon the bare boards of the stage ceased to be audible to his ears. he ached like a man bruised and beaten; he was possessed with a sense of loneliness, poignant as pain. "if i had only taken the easier way, bought and never cared!" he cried despairingly. "but at all events there's no need for respect. why should one respect those who take and do not give?" as he asked himself the question, there came a roar from the audience. he looked up. the soldier was standing, but he was stooping and the fingers of one hand touched the boards. over against the soldier the man from singapore stood waiting with steady eyes, and behind the ropes colonel joe was counting in a loud voice: "one, two, three, four." shere ali's eyes lit up. would the soldier rise? would he take the tips of those fingers from the floor, stand up again and face his man? or was he beaten? "five, six, seven, eight"--the referee counted, his voice rising above the clamour of voices. the audience had risen, men stood upon their benches, cries of expostulation were shouted to the soldier. "nine, ten," counted the referee, and the fight was over. the soldier had been counted out. shere ali was upon his feet like the rest of the enthusiasts. "well done!" he cried. "well done!" and as the jew came back to his corner shere ali shook him excitedly by the hand. the sign had been given; the subject race had beaten the soldier. shere ali was livid with excitement. perhaps, indeed, the young englishmen had been right, and some dim racial sympathy stirred shere ali to his great enthusiasm. chapter xxi shere ali is claimed by chiltistan while these thoughts were seething in his mind, while the excitement was still at its height, the cries still at their loudest, shere all heard a quiet penetrating voice speak in his ear. and the voice spoke in pushtu. the mere sound of the language struck upon shere ali's senses at that moment of exultation with a strange effect. he thrilled to it from head to foot. he heard it with a feeling of joy. and then he took note of the spoken words. "the man who wrote to your highness from calcutta waits outside the doors. as you stand under the gas lamps, take your handkerchief from your pocket if you wish to speak with him." shere ali turned back from the ropes. but the spectators were already moving from their chairs to the steps which led from the stage to the auditorium. there was a crowd about those steps, and shere ali could not distinguish among it the man who was likely to have whispered in his ear. all seemed bent upon their own business, and that business was to escape from the close heat-laden air of the building as quickly as might be. shere ali stood alone and pondered upon the words. the man who had written to him from calcutta! that was the man who had sent the anonymous letter which had caused him one day to pass through the delhi gate of lahore. a money-lender at calcutta, but a countryman from chiltistan. so he had gathered from safdar khan, while heaping scorn upon the message. but now, and on this night of all nights, shere ali was in a mood to listen. there were intrigues on foot--there were always intrigues on foot. but to-night he would weigh those intrigues. he went out from the music-hall, and under the white glare of the electric lamps above the door he stood for a moment in full view. then he deliberately took his handkerchief from his pocket. from the opposite side of the road, a man in native dress, wearing a thick dark cloak over his white shirt and pyjamas, stepped forward. shere ali advanced to meet him. "huzoor, huzoor," said the man, bending low, and he raised shere ali's hand and pressed his forehead upon it, in sign of loyalty. "you wish to speak to me?" said shere ali. "if your highness will deign to follow. i am ahmed ismail. your highness has heard of me, no doubt." shere ali did not so much as smile, nor did he deny the statement. he nodded gravely. after all, vanity was not the prerogative of his people alone in all the world. "yes," he said, "i will follow." ahmed ismail crossed the road once more out of the lights into the shadows, and walked on, keeping close to the lines of houses. shere ali followed upon his heels. but these two were not alone to take that road. a third man, a bengali, bespectacled, and in appearance most respectable, came down the steps of the musichall, a second after shere ali had crossed the road. he, too, had been a witness of the prize-fight. he hurried after shere ali and caught him up. "very good fight, sir," he said. "would prince of chiltistan like to utter some few welcome words to great indian public on extraordinary skill of respective pugilists? i am full-fledged reporter of _bande mataram_, great nationalist paper." he drew out a note-book and a pencil as he spoke. ahmed ismail stopped and turned back towards the two men. the babu looked once, and only once, at the money-lender. then he stood waiting for shere ali's answer. "no, i have nothing to say," said shere ali civilly. "good-night," and he walked on. "great disappointment for indian public," said the bengali. "prince of chiltistan will say nothing. i make first-class leading article on reticence of indian prince in presence of high-class spectacular events. good-night, sir," and the babu shut up his book and fell back. shere ali followed upon the heels of ahmed ismail. the money-lender walked down the street to the maidan, and then turned to the left. the babu, on the other hand, hailed a third-class gharry and, ascending into it gave the driver some whispered instructions. the gharry drove on past the bengal club, and came, at length, to the native town. at the corner of a street the babu descended, paid the driver, and dismissed him. "i will walk the rest of the way," he said. "my home is quite near and a little exercise is good. i have large varicose veins in the legs, or i should have tramped hand and foot all the way." he walked slowly until the driver had turned his gharry and was driving back. then, for a man afflicted with varicose veins the babu displayed amazing agility. he ran through the silent and deserted street until he came to a turning. the lane which ran into the main road was a blind alley. mean hovels and shuttered booths flanked it, but at the end a tall house stood. the babu looked about him and perceived a cart standing in the lane. he advanced to it and looked in. "this is obvious place for satisfactory concealment," he said, as with some difficulty he clambered in. over the edge of the cart he kept watch. in a while he heard the sound of a man walking. the man was certainly at some distance from the turning, but the babu's head went down at once. the man whose footsteps he heard was wearing boots, but there would be one walking in front of that man who was wearing slippers--ahmed ismail. ahmed ismail, indeed, turned an instant afterwards into the lane, passed the cart and walked up to the door of the big house. there he halted, and shere ali joined him. "the gift was understood, your highness," he said. "the message was sent from end to end of chiltistan." "what gift?" asked shere ali, in genuine surprise. "your highness has forgotten? the melons and the bags of grain." shere ali was silent for a few moments. then he said: "and how was the gift interpreted?" ahmed ismail smiled in the darkness. "there are wise men in chiltistan, and they found the riddle easy to read. the melons were the infidels which would be cut to pieces, even as a knife cuts a melon. the grain was the army of the faithful." again shere ali was silent. he stood with his eyes upon his companion. "thus they understand my gift to the mullah?" he said at length. "thus they understood it," said ahmed ismail. "were they wrong?" and since shere ali paused before he answered, ahmed repeated the question, holding the while the key of his door between his fingers. "were they wrong, your highness?" "no," said shere ali firmly. "they were right." ahmed ismail put the key into the lock. the bolt shot back with a grating sound, the door opened upon blackness. "will your highness deign to enter?" he said, standing aside. "yes," said shere ali, and he passed in. his own people, his own country, had claimed and obtained him. chapter xxii the casting of the die ahmed ismail crossed the threshold behind shere ali. he closed the door quietly, bolted and locked it. then for a space of time the two men stood silent in the darkness, and both listened intently--ahmed ismail for the sound of someone stirring in the house, shere ali for a quiet secret movement at his elbow. the blackness of the passage gaping as the door opened had roused him to suspicion even while he had been standing in the street. but he had not thought of drawing back. he had entered without fear, just as now he stood, without fear, drawn up against the wall. there was, indeed, a smile upon his face. then he reached out his hand. ahmed ismail, who still stood afraid lest any of his family should have been disturbed, suddenly felt a light touch, like a caress, upon his face, and then before he could so much as turn his head, five strong lean fingers gripped him by the throat and tightened. "ahmed, i have enemies in chiltistan," said shere ali, between a whisper and a laugh. "the son of abdulla mohammed, for instance," and he loosened his grip a little upon ahmed's throat, but held him still with a straight arm. ahmed did not struggle. he whispered in reply: "i am not of your highness's enemies. long ago i gave your highness a sign of friendship when i prayed you to pass by the delhi gate of lahore." shere ali turned ahmed ismail towards the inner part of the house and loosed his neck. "go forward, then. light a lamp," he said, and ahmed moved noiselessly along the passage. shere ali heard the sound of a door opening upstairs, and then a pale light gleamed from above. shere ali walked to the end of the passage, and mounting the stairs found ahmed ismail in the doorway of a little room with a lighted lamp in his hand. "i was this moment coming down," said ahmed ismail as he stood aside from the door. shere ali walked in. he crossed to the window, which was unglazed but had little wooden shutters. these shutters were closed. shere ali opened one and looked out. the room was on the first floor, and the window opened on to a small square courtyard. a movement of ahmed ismail's brought him swiftly round. he saw the money-lender on his knees with his forehead to the ground, grovelling before his prince's feet. "the time has come, oh, my lord," he cried in a low, eager voice, and again, "the time has come." shere ali looked down and pleasure glowed unwontedly within him. he did not answer, he did not give ahmed ismail leave to rise from the ground. he sated his eyes and his vanity with the spectacle of the man's abasement. even his troubled heart ached with a duller pain. "i have been a fool," he murmured, "i have wasted my years. i have tortured myself for nothing. yes, i have been a fool." a wave of anger swept over him, drowning his pride--anger against himself. he thought of the white people with whom he had lived. "i sought for a recognition of my equality with them," he went on. "i sought it from their men and from their women. i hungered for it like a dog for a bone. they would not give it--neither their men, nor their women. and all the while here were my own people willing at a sign to offer me their homage." he spoke in pushtu, and ahmed ismail drank in every word. "they wanted a leader, huzoor," he said. "i turned away from them like a fool," replied shere ali, "while i sought favours from the white women like a slave." "your highness shall take as a right what you sought for as a favour." "as a right?" cried shere ali, his heart leaping to the incense of ahmed ismail's flattery. "what right?" he asked, suddenly bending his eyes upon his companion. "the right of a conqueror," cried ahmed ismail, and he bowed himself again at his prince's feet. he had spoken shere ali's wild and secret thought. but whereas shere ali had only whispered it to himself, ahmed ismail spoke it aloud, boldly and with a challenge in his voice, like one ready to make good his words. an interval of silence followed, a fateful interval as both men knew. not a sound from without penetrated into that little shuttered room, but to shere ali it seemed that the air throbbed and was heavy with unknown things to come. memories and fancies whirled in his disordered brain without relation to each other or consequence in his thoughts. now it was the two englishmen seated side by side behind the ropes and quietly talking of what was "not good for us," as though they had the whole of india, and the hill-districts, besides, in their pockets. he saw their faces, and, quietly though he stood and impassive as he looked, he was possessed with a longing to behold them within reach, so that he might strike them and disfigure them for ever. now it was violet oliver as she descended the steps into the great courtyard of the fort, dainty and provoking from the arched slipper upon her foot to the soft perfection of her hair. he saw her caught into the twilight swirl of pale white faces and so pass from his sight, thinking that at the same moment she passed from his life. then it was the viceroy in his box at the racecourse and all calcutta upon the lawn which swept past his eyes. he saw the eurasian girls prinked out in their best frocks to lure into marriage some unwary englishman. and again it was colonel dewes, the man who had lost his place amongst his own people, even as he, shere ali, had himself. a half-contemptuous smile of pity for a moment softened the hard lines of his mouth as he thought upon that forlorn and elderly man taking his loneliness with him into cashmere. "that shall not be my way," he said aloud, and the lines of his mouth hardened again. and once more before his eyes rose the vision of violet oliver. ahmed ismail had risen to his feet and stood watching his prince with eager, anxious eyes. shere ali crossed to the table and turned down the lamp, which was smoking. then he went to the window and thrust the shutters open. he turned round suddenly upon ahmed. "were you ever in mecca?" "yes, huzoor," and ahmed's eyes flashed at the question. "i met three men from chiltistan on the lowari pass. they were going down to kurachi. i, too, must make the pilgrimage to mecca." he stood watching the flame of the lamp as he spoke, and spoke in a monotonous dull voice, as though what he said were of little importance. but ahmed ismail listened to the words, not the voice, and his joy was great. it was as though he heard a renegade acknowledge once more the true faith. "afterwards, huzoor," he said, significantly. "afterwards." shere ali nodded his head. "yes, afterwards. when we have driven the white people down from the hills into the plains." "and from the plains into the sea," cried ahmed ismail. "the angels will fight by our side--so the mullahs have said---and no man who fights with faith will be hurt. all will be invulnerable. it is written, and the mullahs have read the writing and translated it through chiltistan." "is that so?" said shere ali, and as he put the question there was an irony in his voice which ahmed ismail was quick to notice. but shere ali put it yet a second time, after a pause, and this time there was no trace of irony. "but i will not go alone," he said, suddenly raising his eyes from the flame of the lamp and looking towards ahmed ismail. ahmed did not understand. but also he did not interrupt, and shere ali spoke again, with a smile slowly creeping over his face. "i will not go alone to mecca. i will follow the example of sirdar khan." the saying was still a riddle to ahmed ismail. "sirdar khan, your highness?" he said. "i do not know him." shere ali turned his eyes again upon the flame of the lamp, and the smile broadened upon his face, a thing not pleasant to see. he wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue and told his story. "sirdar khan is dead long since," he said, "but he was one of the five men of the bodyguard of nana, who went into the bibigarh at cawnpore on july of the year . have you heard of that year, ahmed ismail, and of the month and of the day? do you know what was done that day in the bibigarh at cawnpore?" ahmed ismail watched the light grow in shere ali's eyes, and a smile crept into his face, too. "huzoor, huzoor," he said, in a whisper of delight. he knew very well what had happened in cawnpore, though he knew nothing of the month or the day, and cared little in what year it had happened. "there were women and children, english women, english children, shut up in the bibigarh. at five o'clock--and it is well to remember the hour, ahmed ismail--at five o'clock in the evening the five men of the nana's bodyguard went into the bibigarh and the doors were closed upon them. it was dark when they came out again and shut the doors behind them, saying that all were dead. but it was not true. there was an englishwoman alive in the bibigarh, and sirdar khan came back in the night and took her away." "and she is in mecca now?" cried ahmed ismail. "yes. an old, old woman," said shere ali, dwelling upon the words with a quiet, cruel pleasure. he had the picture clear before his eyes, he saw it in the flame of the lamp at which he gazed so steadily--an old, wizened, shrunken woman, living in a bare room, friendless and solitary, so old that she had even ceased to be aware of her unhappiness, and so coarsened out of all likeness to the young, bright english girl who had once dwelt in cawnpore, that even her own countryman had hardly believed she was of his race. he set another picture side by side with that--the picture of violet oliver as she turned to him on the steps and said, "this is really good-bye." and in his imagination, he saw the one picture merge and coarsen into the other, the dainty trappings of lace and ribbons change to a shapeless cloak, the young face wither from its beauty into a wrinkled and yellow mask. it would be a just punishment, he said to himself. anger against her was as a lust at his heart. he had lost sight of her kindness, and her pity; he desired her and hated her in the same breath. "are you married, ahmed ismail?" he asked. ahmed ismail smiled. "truly, huzoor." "do you carry your troubles to your wife? is she your companion as well as your wife? your friend as well as your mistress?" ahmed ismail laughed. "yet that is what the englishwomen are," said shere ali. "perhaps, huzoor," replied ahmed, cunningly, "it is for that reason that there are some who take and do not give." he came a little nearer to his prince. "where is she, huzoor?" shere ali was startled by the question out of his dreams. for it had been a dream, this thought of capturing violet oliver and plucking her out of her life into his. he had played with it, knowing it to be a fancy. there had been no settled plan, no settled intention in his mind. but to-night he was carried away. it appeared to him there was a possibility his dream might come true. it seemed so not alone to him but to ahmed ismail too. he turned and gazed at the man, wondering whether ahmed ismail played with him or not. but ahmed bore the scrutiny without a shadow of embarrassment. "is she in india, huzoor?" shere ali hesitated. some memory of the lessons learned in england was still alive within him, bidding him guard his secret. but the memory was no longer strong enough. he bowed his head in assent. "in calcutta?" "yes." "your highness shall point her out to me one evening as she drives in the maidan," said ahmed ismail, and again shere ali answered-- "yes." but he caught himself back the next moment. he flung away from ahmed ismail with a harsh outburst of laughter. "but this is all folly," he cried. "we are not in the days of the uprising," for thus he termed now what a month ago he would have called "the mutiny." "cawnpore is not calcutta," and he turned in a gust of fury upon ahmed ismail. "do you play with me, ahmed ismail?" "upon my head, no! light of my life, hope of my race, who would dare?" and he was on the ground at shere ali's feet. "do i indeed speak follies? i pray your highness to bethink you that the summer sets its foot upon the plains. she will go to the hills, huzoor. she will go to the hills. and your people are not fools. they have cunning to direct their strength. see, your highness, is there a regiment in peshawur whose rifles are safe, guard them howsoever carefully they will? every week they are brought over the hills into chiltistan that we may be ready for the great day," and ahmed ismail chuckled to himself. "a month ago, huzoor, so many rifles had been stolen that a regiment in camp locked their rifles to their tent poles, and so thought to sleep in peace. but on the first night the cords of the tents were cut, and while the men waked and struggled under the folds of canvas, the tent poles with the rifles chained to them were carried away. all those rifles are now in kohara. surely, huzoor, if they can steal the rifles from the middle of a camp, they can steal a weak girl among the hills." ahmed ismail waited in suspense, with his forehead bowed to the ground, and when the answer came he smiled. he had made good use of this unexpected inducement which had been given to him. he knew very well that nothing but an unlikely chance would enable him to fulfil his promise. but that did not matter. the young prince would point out the englishwoman in the maidan and, at a later time when all was ready in chiltistan, a fine and obvious attempt should be made to carry her off. the pretence might, if occasion served, become a reality, to be sure, but the attempt must be as public as possible. there must be no doubt as to its author. shere ali, in a word, must be committed beyond any possibility of withdrawal. ahmed ismail himself would see to that. "very well. i will point her out to you," said shere ali, and ahmed ismail rose to his feet. he waited before his master, silent and respectful. shere ali had no suspicion that he was being jockeyed by that respectful man into a hopeless rebellion. he had, indeed, lost sight of the fact that the rebellion must be hopeless. "when," he asked, "will chiltistan be ready?" "as soon as the harvest is got in," replied ahmed ismail. shere ali nodded his head. "you and i will go northwards to-morrow," he said. "to kohara?" asked ahmed ismail. "yes." for a little while ahmed ismail was silent. then he said: "if your highness will allow his servant to offer a contemptible word of advice--" "speak," said shere ali. "then it might be wise, perhaps, to go slowly to kohara. your highness has enemies in chiltistan. the news of the melons and the bags of grain is spread abroad, and jealousy is aroused. for there are some who wish to lead when they should serve." "the son of abdulla mohammed," said shere ali. ahmed ismail shrugged his shoulders as though the son of abdulla mohammed were of little account. there was clearly another in his mind, and shere ali was quick to understand him. "my father," he said quietly. he remembered how his father had received him with his snider rifle cocked and laid across his knees. this time the snider would be fired if ever shere ali came within range of its bullet. but it was unlikely that he would get so far, unless he went quickly and secretly at an appointed time. "i had a poor foolish thought," said ahmed ismail, "not worthy a moment's consideration by my prince." shere ali broke in impatiently upon his words. "speak it." "if we travelled slowly to ajmere, we should come to that town at the time of pilgrimage. there in secret the final arrangements can be made, so that the blow may fall upon an uncovered head." "the advice is good," said shere ali. but he spoke reluctantly. he wanted not to wait at all. he wanted to strike now while his anger was at its hottest. but undoubtedly the advice was good. ahmed ismail, carrying the light in his hand, went down the stairs before shere ali and along the passage to the door. there he extinguished the lamp and cautiously drew back the bolts. he looked out and saw that the street was empty. "there is no one," he said, and shere ali passed out to the mouth of the blind alley and turned to the left towards the maidan. he walked thoughtfully and did not notice a head rise cautiously above the side of a cart in the mouth of the alley. it was the head of the reporter of bande mataram, whose copy would be assuredly too late for the press. shere ali walked on through the streets. it was late, and he met no one. there had come upon him during the last hours a great yearning for his own country. he ran over in his mind, with a sense of anger against himself, the miserable wasted weeks in calcutta--the nights in the glaring bars and halls, the friends he had made, the depths in which he had wallowed. he came to the maidan, and, standing upon that empty plain, gazed round on the great silent city. he hated it, with its statues of viceroys and soldiers, its houses of rich merchants, its insolence. he would lead his own people against all that it symbolised. perhaps, some day, when all the frontier was in flame, and the british power rolled back, he and his people might pour down from the hills and knock even against the gates of calcutta. men from the hills had come down to tonk, and bhopal, and rohilcund, and rampur, and founded kingdoms for themselves. why should he and his not push on to calcutta? he bared his head to the night wind. he was uplifted, and fired with mad, impossible dreams. all that he had learned was of little account to him now. it might be that the english, as colonel dewes had said, had something of an army. let them come to chiltistan and prove their boast. "i will go north to the hills," he cried, and with a shock he understood that, after all, he had recovered his own place. the longing at his heart was for his own country--for his own people. it might have been bred of disappointment and despair. envy of the white people might have cradled it, desire for the white woman might have nursed it into strength. but it was alive now. that was all of which shere ali was conscious. the knowledge filled all his thoughts. he had his place in the world. greatly he rejoiced. chapter xxiii shere ali's pilgrimage there were times when ralston held aloft his hands and cursed the indian administration by all his gods. but he never did so with a more whole-hearted conviction than on the day when he received word that linforth had been diverted to rawal pindi, in order that he might take up purely military duties. it took ralston just seven months to secure his release, and it was not until the early days of autumn had arrived that linforth at last reached peshawur. a landau, with a coachman and groom in scarlet liveries, was waiting for him at the station, and he drove along the broad road through the cantonment to government house. as the carriage swung in at the gates, a tall, thin man came from the croquet-ground on the left. he joined dick in the porch. "you are mr. linforth?" he said. "yes." for a moment a pair of grey, tired eyes ran dick over from head to foot in a careless scrutiny. apparently, however, the scrutiny was favourable. "i am the chief commissioner. i am glad that you have come. my sister will give you some tea, and afterwards, if you are not tired, we might go for a ride together. you would like to see your room first." ralston spoke with his usual indifference. there was no intonation in his voice which gave to any one sentence a particular meaning; and for a particular meaning dick linforth was listening with keen ears. he followed ralston across the hall to his room, and disappointment gained upon him with every step. he had grown familiar with disappointment of late years, but he was still young enough in years and spirit to expect the end of disappointment with each change in his fortunes. he had expected it when the news of his appointment had reached him in calcutta, and disappointment had awaited him in bombay. he had expected it again when, at last, he was sent from rawal pindi to peshawur. all the way up the line he had been watching the far hills of cashmere, and repeating to himself, "at last! at last!" the words had been a song at his heart, tuned to the jolt and rhythm of the wheels. ralston of peshawur had asked for him. so much he had been told. his longing had explained to him why ralston of peshawur had asked for him, and easily he had believed the explanation. he was a linforth, one of the linforths of the road. great was his pride. he would not have bartered his position to be a general in command of a division. ralston had sent for him because of his hereditary title to work upon the road, the broad, permanent, graded road which was to make india safe. and now he walked behind a tired and indifferent commissioner, whose very voice officialdom had made phlegmatic, and on whose aspect was writ large the habit of routine. in this mood he sat, while miss ralston prattled to him about the social doings of peshawur, the hunt, the golf; and in this mood he rode out with ralston to the gate of the city. they passed through the main street, and, turning to the right, ascended to an archway, above which rose a tower. at the archway they dismounted and climbed to the roof of the tower. peshawur, with its crowded streets, its open bazaars, its balconied houses of mud bricks built into wooden frames, lay mapped beneath them. but linforth's eyes travelled over the trees and the gardens northwards and eastwards, to where the foothills of the himalayas were coloured with the violet light of evening. "linforth," ralston cried. he was leaning on the parapet at the opposite side of the tower, and dick crossed and leaned at his side. "it was i who had you sent for," said ralston in his dull voice. "when you were at chatham, i mean. i worried them in calcutta until they sent for you." dick took his elbows from the parapet and stood up. his face took life and fire, there came a brightness as of joy into his eyes. after all, then, this time he was not to be disappointed. "i wanted you to come to peshawur straight from bombay six months ago," ralston went on. "but i counted without the indian government. they brought you out to india, at my special request, for a special purpose, and then, when they had got you, they turned you over to work which anyone else could have done. so six months have been wasted. but that's their little way." "you have special work for me?" said linforth quietly enough, though his heart was beating quickly in his breast. an answer came which still quickened its beatings. "work that you alone can do," ralston replied gravely. but he was a man who had learned to hope for little, and to expect discouragements as his daily bread, and he added: "that is, if you can do it." linforth did not answer at once. he was leaning with his elbows on the parapet, and he raised a hand to the side of his face, that side on which ralston stood. and so he remained, shutting himself in with his thoughts, and trying to think soberly. but his head whirled. below him lay the city of peshawur. behind him the plains came to an end, and straight up from them, like cliffs out of the sea, rose the dark hills, brown and grey and veined with white. here on this tower of northern india, the long dreams, dreamed for the first time on the sussex downs, and nursed since in every moment of leisure--in alpine huts in days of storm, in his own quarters at chatham--had come to their fulfilment. "i have lived for this work," he said in a low voice which shook ever so little, try as he might to quiet it. "ever since i was a boy i have lived for it, and trained myself for it. it is the road." linforth's evident emotion came upon ralston as an unexpected thing. he was carried back suddenly to his own youth, and was surprised to recollect that he, too, had once cherished great plans. he saw himself as he was to-day, and, side by side with that disillusioned figure, he saw himself as he had been in his youth. a smile of friendliness came over his face. "if i had shut my eyes," he said, "i should have thought it was your father who was speaking." linforth turned quickly to ralston. "my father. you knew him?" "yes." "i never did," said dick regretfully. ralston nodded his head and continued: "twenty-six years ago we were here in peshawur together. we came up on to the top of this tower, as everyone does who comes to peshawur. he was like you. he was dreaming night and day of the great road through chiltistan to the foot of the hindu kush. look!" and ralston pointed down to the roof-tops of the city, whereon the women and children worked and played. for the most part they were enclosed within brick walls, and the two men looked down into them as you might look in the rooms of a doll's house by taking off the lid. ralston pointed to one such open chamber just beneath their eyes. an awning supported on wooden pillars sheltered one end of it, and between two of these pillars a child swooped backwards and forwards in a swing. in the open, a woman, seated upon a string charpoy, rocked a cradle with her foot, while her hands were busy with a needle, and an old woman, with a black shawl upon her shoulders and head, sat near by, inactive. but she was talking. for at times the younger woman would raise her head, and, though at that distance no voice could be heard, it was evident that she was answering. "i remember noticing that roof when your father and i were talking up here all those years ago. there was just the same family group as you see now. i remember it quite clearly, for your father went away to chiltistan the next day, and never came back. it was the last time i saw him, and we were both young and full of all the great changes we were to bring about." he smiled, half it seemed in amusement, half in regret. "we talked of the road, of course. well, there's just one change. the old woman, sitting there with the shawl upon her shoulders now, was in those days the young woman rocking the cradle and working with her needle. that's all. troubles there have been, disturbances, an expedition or two--but there's no real change. here are you talking of the road just as your father did, not ambitious for yourself," he explained with a kindly smile which illumined his whole face, "but ambitious for the road, and the road still stops at kohara." "but it will go on--now," cried linforth. "perhaps," said ralston slowly. then he stood up and confronted linforth. "it was not that you might carry on the road that i brought you out from england," he skid. "on the contrary." once more disappointment seized upon dick linforth, and he found it all the more bitter in that he had believed a minute since that his dreams were to be fulfilled. he looked down upon peshawur, and the words which ralston had lately spoken, half in amusement, half with regret, suddenly took for him their full meaning. was it true that there was no change but the change from the young woman to the old one, from enthusiasm to acquiescence? he was young, and the possibility chilled him and even inspired him with a kind of terror. was he to carry the road no further than his father had done? would another linforth in another generation come to the tower in peshawur with hopes as high as his and with the like futility? "on the contrary?" he asked. "then why?" "that you might stop the road from going on," said ralston quietly. in the very midst of his disappointment linforth realised that he had misjudged his companion. here was no official, here was a man. the attitude of indifference had gone, the air of lassitude with it. here was a man quietly exacting the hardest service which it was in his power to exact, claiming it as a right, and yet making it clear by some subtle sympathy that he understood very well all that the service would cost to the man who served. "i am to hinder the making of that road?" cried linforth. "you are to do more. you are to prevent it." "i have lived so that it should be made." "so you have told me," said ralston quietly, and dick was silent. with each quiet sentence ralston had become more and more the dominating figure. he was so certain, so assured. linforth recognised him no longer as the man to argue with; but as the representative of government which overrides predilections, sympathies, ambitions, and bends its servants to their duty. "i will tell you more," ralston continued. "you alone can prevent the extension of the road. i believe it--i know it. i sent to england for you, knowing it. do your duty, and it may be that the road will stop at kohara--an unfinished, broken thing. flinch, and the road runs straight to the hindu kush. you will have your desire; but you will have failed." there was something implacable and relentless in the tone and the words. there was more, too. there was an intimation, subtly yet most clearly conveyed, that ralston who spoke had in his day trampled his ambitions and desires beneath his feet in service to the government, and asked no more now from linforth than he himself had in his turn performed. "i, too, have lived in arcady," he added. it twas this last intimation which subdued the protests in linforth's mind. he looked at the worn face of the commissioner, then he lifted his eyes and swept the horizon with his gaze. the violet light upon the hills had lost its brightness and its glamour. in the far distance the hills themselves were withdrawn. somewhere in that great barrier to the east was the gap of the malakand pass, where the road now began. linforth turned away from the hills towards peshawur. "what must i do?" he asked simply. ralston nodded his head. his attitude relaxed, his voice lost its dominating note. "what you have to understand is this," he explained. "to drive the road through chiltistan means war. it would be the cause of war if we insisted upon it now, just as it was the cause of war when your father went up from peshawur twenty-six years ago. or it might be the consequence of war. if the chiltis rose in arms, undoubtedly we should carry it on to secure control of the country in the future. well, it is the last alternative that we are face to face with now." "the chiltis might rise!" cried linforth. "there is that possibility," ralston returned. "we don't mean on our own account to carry on the road; but the chiltis might rise." "and how should i prevent them?" asked dick linforth in perplexity. "you know shere ali?" said ralston "yes." "you are a friend of his?" "yes." "a great friend. his chief friend?" "yes." "you have some control over him?" "i think so," said linforth. "very well," said ralston. "you must use that control." linforth's perplexity increased. that danger should come from shere ali--here was something quite incredible. he remembered their long talks, their joint ambition. a day passed in the hut in the promontoire of the meije stood out vividly in his memories. he saw the snow rising in a swirl of white over the breche de la meije, that gap in the rock-wall between the meije and the rateau, and driving down the glacier towards the hut. he remembered the eagerness, the enthusiasm of shere ali. "but he's loyal," linforth cried. "there is no one in india more loyal." "he was loyal, no doubt," said ralston, with a shrug of his shoulders, and, beginning with his first meeting with shere ali in lahore, he told linforth all that he knew of the history of the young prince. "there can be no doubt," he said, "of his disloyalty," and he recounted the story of the melons and the bags of grain. "since then he has been intriguing in calcutta." "is he in calcutta now?" linforth asked. "no," said ralston. "he left calcutta just about the time when you landed in bombay. and there is something rather strange--something, i think, very disquieting in his movements since he left calcutta. i have had him watched, of course. he came north with one of his own countrymen, and the pair of them have been seen at cawnpore, at lucknow, at delhi." ralston paused. his face had grown very grave, very troubled. "i am not sure," he said slowly. "it is difficult, however long you stay in india, to get behind these fellows' minds, to understand the thoughts and the motives which move them. and the longer you stay, the more difficult you realise it to be. but it looks to me as if shere ali had been taken by his companion on a sort of pilgrimage." linforth started. "a pilgrimage!" and he added slowly, "i think i understand. a pilgrimage to all the places which could most inflame the passions of a native against the english race," and then he broke out in protest. "but it's impossible. i know shere ali. it's not reasonable--" ralston interrupted him upon the utterance of the word. "reasonable!" he cried. "you are in india. do ever white men act reasonably in india?" and he turned with a smile. "there was a great-uncle of yours in the days of the john company, wasn't there? your father told me about him here on this tower. when his time was up, he sent his money home and took his passage, and then came back--came back to the mountains and disappeared. very likely he may be sitting somewhere beyond that barrier of hills by a little shrine to this hour, an old, old man, reverenced as a saint, with a strip of cloth about his loins, and forgetful of the days when he ruled a district in the plains. i should not wonder. it's not a reasonable country." ralston, indeed, was not far out in his judgment. ahmed ismail had carried shere ali off from calcutta. he had taken him first of all to cawnpore, and had led him up to the gate of the enclosure, wherein are the bibigarh, where the women and children were massacred, and the well into which their bodies were flung. an english soldier turned them back from that enclosure, refusing them admittance. ahmed ismail, knowing well that it would be so, smiled quietly under his moustache; but shere ali angrily pointed to some english tourists who were within the enclosure. "why should we remain outside?" he asked. "they are bilati," said ahmed ismail in a smooth voice as they moved away. "they are foreigners. the place is sacred to the foreigners. it is indian soil; but the indian may not walk on it; no, not though he were born next door. yet why should we grumble or complain? we are the dirt beneath their feet. we are dogs and sons of dogs, and a hireling will turn our princes from the gate lest the soles of our shoes should defile their sacred places. and are they not right, huzoor?" he asked cunningly. "since we submit to it, since we cringe at their indignities and fawn upon them for their insults, are they not right?" "why, that's true, ahmed ismail," replied shere ali bitterly. he was in the mood to make much of any trifle. this reservation of the enclosure at cawnpore was but one sign of the overbearing arrogance of the foreigners, the bilati--the men from over the sea. he had fawned upon them himself in the days of his folly. "but turn a little, huzoor," ahmed whispered in his ear, and led him back. "look! there is the bibigarh where the women were imprisoned. that is the house. through that opening sirdar khan and his four companions went--and shut the door behind them. in that room the women of mecca knelt and prayed for mercy. come away, huzoor. we have seen. those were days when there were men upon the plains of india." and shere ali broke out with a fierce oath. "amongst the hills, at all events, there are men today. there is no sacred ground for them in chiltistan." "not even the road?" asked ahmed ismail; and shere ali stopped dead, and stared at his companion with startled eyes. he walked away in silence after that; and for the rest of that day he said little to ahmed ismail, who watched him anxiously. at night, however, ahmed was justified of his policy. for shere ali appeared before him in the white robes of a mohammedan. up till then he had retained the english dress. now he had discarded it. ahmed ismail fell at his feet, and bowed himself to the ground. "my lord! my lord!" he cried, and there was no simulation in his outburst of joy. "would that your people could behold you now! but we have much to see first. to-morrow we go to lucknow." accordingly the two men travelled the next day to lucknow. shere ali was led up under the broken archway by evans's battery into the grounds of the residency. he walked with ahmed ismail at his elbow on the green lawns where the golden-crested hoopoes flashed in the sunlight and the ruined buildings stood agape to the air. they looked peaceful enough, as they strolled from one battery to another, but all the while ahmed ismail preached his sermon into shere ali's ears. there lawrence had died; here at the top of the narrow lane had stood johannes's house whence nebo the nailer had watched day after day with his rifle in his hand. hardly a man, be he never so swift, could cross that little lane from one quarter of the residency to another, so long as daylight lasted and so long as nebo the nailer stood behind the shutters of johannes's house. shere ali was fired by the story of that siege. by so little was the garrison saved. ahmed ismail led him down to a corner of the grounds and once more a sentry barred the way. "this is the graveyard," said ahmed ismail, and shere ali, looking up, stepped back with a look upon his face which ahmed ismail did not understand. "huzoor!" he said anxiously, and shere ali turned upon him with an imperious word. "silence, dog!" he cried. "stand apart. i wish to be alone." his eyes were on the little church with the trees and the wall girding it in. at the side a green meadow with high trees, had the look of a playing-ground--the playing-ground of some great public school in england. shere ali's eyes took in the whole picture, and then saw it but dimly through a mist. for the little church, though he had never seen it before, was familiar and most moving. it was a model of the royal chapel at eton, and, in spite of himself, as he gazed the tears filled his eyes and the memory of his schooldays ached at his heart. he yearned to be back once more in the shadow of that chapel with his comrades and his friends. not yet had he wholly forgotten; he was softened out of his bitterness; the burden of his jealousy and his anger fell for awhile from his shoulders. when he rejoined ahmed ismail, he bade him follow and speak no word. he drove back to the town, and then only he spoke to ahmed ismail. "we will go from lucknow to-day," he said. "i will not sleep in this town." "as your highness wills," said ahmed ismail humbly, and he went into the station and bought tickets for delhi. it was on a thursday morning that the pair reached that town; and that day ahmed ismail had an unreceptive listener for his sermons. the monument before the post office, the tablets on the arch of the arsenal, even the barracks in the gardens of the moghul palace fired no antagonism in the prince, who so short a time ago had been a boy at eton. the memories evoked by the little church at lucknow had borne him company all night and still clung to him that day. he was homesick for his school. only twice was he really roused. the first instance took place when he was driving along the chandni chauk, the straight broad tree-fringed street which runs from the lahore gate to the fort. ahmed ismail sat opposite to him, and, leaning forward, he pointed to a tree and to a tall house in front of the tree. "my lord," said he, "could that tree speak, what groans would one hear!" "why?" said shere ali listlessly. "listen, your highness," said ahmed ismail. like the rest of his countrymen, he had a keen love for a story. and the love was the keener when he himself had the telling of it. he sat up alertly. "in that house lived an englishman of high authority. he escaped when delhi was seized by the faithful. he came back when delhi was recaptured by the infidels. and there he sat with an english officer, at his window, every morning from eight to nine. and every morning from eight to nine every native who passed his door was stopped and hanged upon that tree, while he looked on. huzoor, there was no inquiry. it might be some peaceable merchant, some poor man from the countryside. what did it matter? there was a lesson to be taught to this city. and so whoever walked down the chandni chauk during that hour dangled from those branches. huzoor, for a week this went on--for a whole week." the story was current in delhi. ahmed ismail found it to his hand, and shere ali did not question it. he sat up erect, and something of the fire which this last day had been extinct kindled again in his sombre eyes. later on he drove along the sinuous road on the top of the ridge, and as he looked over delhi, hidden amongst its foliage, he saw the great white dome of the jumma musjid rising above the tree-tops, like a balloon. "the mosque," he said, standing up in his carriage. "to-morrow we will worship there." before noon the next day he mounted the steep broad flight of steps and passed under the red sandstone arch into the vast enclosure. he performed his ablutions at the fountain, and, kneeling upon the marble tiles, waited for the priest to ascend the ladder on to the wooden platform. he knelt with ahmed ismail at his side, in the open, amongst the lowliest. in front of him rows of worshippers knelt and bowed their foreheads to the tiles--rows and rows covering the enclosure up to the arches of the mosque itself. there were others too--rows and rows within the arches, in the dusk of the mosque itself, and from man to man emotion passed like a spark upon the wind. the crowd grew denser, there came a suspense, a tension. it gained upon all, it laid its clutch upon shere ali. he ceased to think, even upon his injuries, he was possessed with expectancy. and then a man kneeling beside him interrupted his prayers and began to curse fiercely beneath his breath. "may they burn, they and their fathers and their children, to the last generation!" and he added epithets of a surprising ingenuity. the while he looked backwards over his shoulder. shere ali followed his example. he saw at the back of the enclosure, in the galleries which surmounted the archway and the wall, english men and english women waiting. shere ali's blood boiled at the sight. they were laughing, talking. some of them had brought sandwiches and were eating their lunch. others were taking photographs with their cameras. they were waiting for the show to begin. shere ali followed the example of his neighbour and cursed them. all his anger kindled again and quickened into hatred. they were so careful of themselves, so careless of others! "not a mohammedan," he cried to himself, "must set foot in their graveyard at lucknow, but they come to our mosque as to a show." suddenly he saw the priest climb the ladder on to the high wooden platform in front of the central arch of the mosque and bow his forehead to the floor. his voice rang out resonant and clear and confident over that vast assemblage. "there is only one god." and a shiver passed across the rows of kneeling men, as though unexpectedly a wind had blown across a ripe field of corn. shere ali was moved like the rest, but all the while at the back of his mind there was the thought of those white people in the galleries. "they are laughing at us, they are making a mock of us, they think we are of no account." and fiercely he called upon his god, the god of the mohammedans, to root them out from the land and cast them as weeds in the flame. the priest stood up erect upon the platform, and with a vibrating voice, now plaintive and conveying some strange sense of loneliness, now loud in praise, now humble in submission, he intoned the prayers. his voice rose and sank, reverberating back over the crowded courtyard from the walls of the mosque. shere ali prayed too, but he prayed silently, with all the fervour of a fanatic, that it might be his hand which should drive the english to their ships upon the sea. when he rose and came out from the mosque he turned to ahmed ismail. "there are some of my people in delhi?" ahmed ismail bowed. "let us go to them," said shere ali; he sought refuge amongst them from the thought of those people in the galleries. ahmed ismail was well content with the results of his pilgrimage. shere ali, as he paced the streets of delhi with a fierce rapt look in his eyes, had the very aspect of a ghazi fresh from the hills and bent upon murder and immolation. chapter xxiv news from ajmere something of this pilgrimage ralston understood; and what he understood he explained to dick linforth on the top of the tower at peshawur. linforth, however, was still perplexed, still unconvinced. "i can't believe it," he cried; "i know shere ali so well." ralston shook his head. "england overlaid the real man with a pretty varnish," he said. "that's all it ever does. and the varnish peels off easily when the man comes back to an indian sun. there's not one of these people from the hills but has in him the makings of a fanatic. it's a question of circumstances whether the fanaticism comes to the top or not. given the circumstances, neither eton, nor oxford, nor all the schools and universities rolled into one would hinder the relapse." "but why?" exclaimed linforth. "why should shere ali have relapsed?" "disappointment here, flattery in england--there are many reasons. usually there's a particular reason." "and what is that?" asked linforth. "the love of a white woman." ralston was aware that linforth at his side started. he started ever so slightly. but ralston was on the alert. he made no sign, however, that he had noticed anything. "i know that reason held good in shere ali's case," ralston went on; and there came a change in linforth's voice. it grew rather stern, rather abrupt. "why? has he talked?" "not that i know of. nevertheless, i am sure that there was one who played a part in shere ali's life," said ralston. "i have known it ever since i first met him--more than a year ago on his way northwards to chiltistan. he stopped for a day at lahore and rode out with me. i told him that the government expected him to marry as soon as possible, and settle down in his own country. i gave him that advice deliberately. you see i wanted to find out. and i did find out. his consternation, his anger, answered me clearly enough. i have no doubt that there was someone over there in england--a woman, perhaps an innocent woman, who had been merely careless--perhaps--" but he did not finish the sentence. linforth interrupted him before he had time to complete it. and he interrupted without flurry or any sign of agitation. "there was a woman," he said. "but i don't think she was thoughtless. i don't see how she could have known that there was any danger in her friendliness. for she was merely friendly to shere ali. i know her myself." the answer was given frankly and simply. for once ralston was outwitted. dick linforth had violet oliver to defend, and the defence was well done. ralston was left without a suspicion that linforth had any reason beyond the mere truth of the facts to spur him to defend her. "yes, that's the mistake," said ralston. "the woman's friendly and means no more than she says or looks. but these fellows don't understand such friendship. shere ali is here dreaming of a woman he knows he can never marry--because of his race. and so he's ready to run amuck. that's what it comes to." he turned away from the city as he spoke and took a step or two towards the flight of stone stairs which led down from the tower. "where is shere ali now?" linforth asked, and ralston stopped and came back again. "i don't know," he said. "but i shall know, and very soon. there may be a letter waiting for me at home. you see, when there's trouble brewing over there behind the hills, and i want to discover to what height it has grown and how high it's likely to grow, i select one of my police, a pathan, of course, and i send him to find out." "you send him over the malakand," said linforth, with a glance towards the great hill-barrier. he was to be astonished by the answer ralston gave. "no. on the contrary, i send him south. i send him to ajmere, in rajputana." "in ajmere?" cried linforth. "yes. there is a great mohammedan shrine. pilgrims go there from all parts, but mostly from beyond the frontier. i get my fingers on the pulse of the frontier in ajmere more surely than i should if i sent spies up into the hills. i have a man there now. but that's not all. there's a great feast in ajmere this week. and i think i shall find out from there where shere ali is and what he's doing. as soon as i do find out, i want you to go to him." "i understand," said linforth. "but if he has changed so much, he will have changed to me." "yes," ralston admitted. he turned again towards the steps, and the two men descended to their horses. "that's likely enough. they ought to have sent you to me six months ago. anyway, you must do your best." he climbed into the saddle, and linforth did the same. "very well," said dick, as they rode through the archway. "i will do my best," and he turned towards ralston with a smile. "i'll do my best to hinder the road from going on." it was a queer piece of irony that the first real demand made upon him in his life was that he should stop the very thing on the accomplishment of which his hopes were set. but there was his friend to save. he comforted himself with that thought. there was his friend rushing blindly upon ruin. linforth could not doubt it. how in the world could shere ali, he wondered. he could not yet dissociate the shere ali of to-day from the boy and the youth who had been his chum. they passed out of the further gate of peshawur and rode along the broad white road towards government house. it was growing dark, and as they turned in at the gateway of the garden, lights shone in the windows ahead of them. the lights recalled to ralston's mind a fact which he had forgotten to mention. "by the way," he said, turning towards linforth, "we have a lady staying with us who knows you." linforth leaned forward in his saddle and stooped as if to adjust a stirrup, and it was thus a second or two before he answered. "indeed!" he said. "who is she?" "a mrs. oliver," replied ralston, "she was at srinagar in cashmere this summer, staying with the resident. my sister met her there, i think she told mrs. oliver you were likely to come to us about this time." dick's heart leaped within him suddenly. had violet oliver arranged her visit so that it might coincide with his? it was at all events a pleasant fancy to play with. he looked up at the windows of the house. she was really there! after all these months he would see her. no wonder the windows were bright. as they rode up to the porch and the door was opened, he heard her voice. she was singing in the drawing-room, and the door of the drawing-room stood open. she sang in a low small voice, very pretty to the ear, and she was accompanying herself softly on the piano. dick stood for a while listening in the lofty hall, while ralston looked over his letters which were lying upon a small table. he opened one of them and uttered an exclamation. "this is from my man at ajmere," he said, but dick paid no attention. ralston glanced through the letter. "he has found him," he cried. "shere ali is in ajmere." it took a moment or two for the words to penetrate to linforth's mind. then he said slowly: "oh! shere ali's in ajmere. i must start for ajmere to-morrow." ralston looked up from his letters and glanced at linforth. something in the abstracted way in which linforth had spoken attracted his attention. he smiled: "yes, it's a pity," he said. but again it seemed that linforth did not hear. and then the voice at the piano stopped abruptly as though the singer had just become aware that there were people talking in the hall. linforth moved forward, and in the doorway of the drawing-room he came face to face with violet oliver. ralston smiled again. "there's something between those two," he said to himself. but linforth had kept his secrets better half an hour ago. for it did not occur to ralston to suspect that there had been something also between violet oliver and shere ali. chapter xxv in the rose garden "let us go out," said linforth. it was after dinner on the same evening, and he was standing with violet oliver at the window of the drawing-room. behind them an officer and his wife from the cantonment were playing "bridge" with ralston and his sister. violet oliver hesitated. the window opened upon the garden. already linforth's hand was on the knob. "very well," she said. but there was a note of reluctance in her voice. "you will need a cloak," he said. "no," said violet oliver. she had a scarf of lace in her hand, and she twisted it about her throat. linforth opened the long window and they stepped out into the garden. it was a clear night of bright stars. the chill of sunset had passed, the air was warm. it was dark in spite of the stars. the path glimmered faintly in front of them. "i was hoping very much that i should meet you somewhere in india," said dick. "lately i had grown afraid that you would be going home before the chance came." "you left it to chance," said violet. the reluctance had gone from her voice; but in its place there was audible a note of resentment. she had spoken abruptly and a little sharply, as though a grievance present in her mind had caught her unawares and forced her to give it utterance. "no," replied linforth, turning to her earnestly. "that's not fair. i did not know where you were. i asked all who might be likely to know. no one could tell me. i could not get away from my station. so that i had to leave it to chance." they walked down the drive, and then turned off past the croquet lawn towards a garden of roses and jasmine and chrysanthemums. "and chance, after all, has been my friend," he said with a smile. violet oliver stopped suddenly. linforth turned to her. they were walking along a narrow path between high bushes of rhododendrons. it was very dark, so that linforth could only see dimly her face and eyes framed in the white scarf which she had draped over her hair. but even so he could see that she was very grave. "i was wondering whether i should tell you," she said quietly. "it was not chance which brought me here--which brought us together again." dick came to her side. "no?" he asked, looking down into her face. he spoke very gently, and with a graver voice than he had used before. "no," she answered. her eyes were raised to his frankly and simply. "i heard that you were to be here. i came on that account. i wanted to see you again." as she finished she walked forward again, and again linforth walked at her side. dick, though his settled aim had given to him a manner and an aspect beyond his age, was for the same reason younger than his years in other ways. very early in his youth he had come by a great and definite ambition, he had been inspired by it, he had welcomed and clung to it with the simplicity and whole-heartedness which are of the essence of youth. it was always new to him, however long he pondered over it; his joy in it was always fresh. he had never doubted either the true gold of the thing he desired, or his capacity ultimately to attain it. but he had ordered his life towards its attainment with the method of a far older man, examining each opportunity which came his way with always the one question in his mind--"does it help?"--and leaving or using that opportunity according to the answer. youth, however, was the truth of him. the inspiration, the freshness, the simplicity of outlook--these were the dominating elements in his character, and they were altogether compact of youth. he looked upon the world with expectant eyes and an unfaltering faith. nor did he go about to detect intrigues in men or deceits in women. violet's words therefore moved him not merely to tenderness, but to self-reproach. "it is very kind of you to say that," he said, and he turned to her suddenly. "because you mean it." "it is true," said violet simply; and the next moment she was aware that someone very young was standing before her in that indian garden beneath the starlit sky and faltering out statements as to his unworthiness. the statements were familiar to her ears, but there was this which was unfamiliar: they stirred her to passion. she stepped back, throwing out a hand as if to keep him from her. "don't," she whispered. "don't!" she spoke like one who is hurt. amongst the feelings which had waked in her, dim and for the most part hardly understood, two at all events were clear. one a vague longing for something different from the banal path she daily trod, the other a poignant regret that she was as she was. but linforth caught the hand which she held out to thrust him off, and, clasping it, drew her towards him. "i love you," he said; and she answered him in desperation: "but you don't know me." "i know that i want you. i know that i am not fit for you." and violet oliver laughed harshly. but dick linforth paid no attention to that laugh. his hesitation had gone. he found that for this occasion only he had the gift of tongues. there was nothing new and original in what he said. but, on the other hand, he said it over and over again, and the look upon his face and the tone of his voice were the things which mattered. at the opera it is the singer you listen to, and not the words of the song. so in this rose garden violet oliver listened to dick linforth rather than to what he said. there was audible in his voice from sentence to sentence, ringing through them, inspiring them, the reverence a young man's heart holds for the woman whom he loves. "you ought to marry, not me, but someone better," she cried. "there is someone i know--in--england--who--" but linforth would not listen. he laughed to scorn the notion that there could be anyone better than violet oliver; and with each word he spoke he seemed to grow younger. it was as though a miracle had happened. he remained in her eyes what he really was, a man head and shoulders above her friends, and in fibre altogether different. yet to her, and for her, he was young, and younger than the youngest. in spite of herself, the longing at her heart cried with a louder voice. she sought to stifle it. "there is the road," she cried. "that is first with you. that is what you really care for." "no," he replied quietly. she had hoped to take him at a disadvantage. but he replied at once: "no. i have thought that out. i do not separate you from the road. i put neither first. it is true that there was a time when the road was everything to me. but that was before i met you--do you remember?--in the inn at la grave." violet oliver looked curiously at linforth--curiously, and rather quickly. but it seemed that he at all events did not remember that he had not come alone down to la grave. "it isn't that i have come to care less for the road," he went on. "not by one jot. rather, indeed, i care more. but i can't dissociate you from the road. the road's my life-work; but it will be the better done if it's done with your help. it will be done best of all if it's done for you." violet oliver turned away quickly, and stood with her head averted. ardently she longed to take him at his word. a glimpse of a great life was vouchsafed to her, such as she had not dreamt of. that some time she would marry again, she had not doubted. but always she had thought of her husband to be, as a man very rich, with no ambition but to please her, no work to do which would thwart her. and here was another life offered, a life upon a higher, a more difficult plane; but a life much more worth living. that she saw clearly enough. but out of her self-knowledge sprang the insistent question: "could i live it?" there would be sacrifices to be made by her. could she make them? would not dissatisfaction with herself follow very quickly upon her marriage? out of her dissatisfaction would there not grow disappointment in her husband? would not bitterness spring up between them and both their lives be marred? dick was still holding her hand. "let me see you," he said, drawing her towards him. "let me see your face!" she turned and showed it. there was a great trouble in her eyes, her voice was piteous as she spoke. "dick, i can't answer you. when i told you that i came here on purpose to meet you, that i wanted to see you again, it was true, all true. but oh, dick, did i mean more?" "how should i know?" said dick, with a quiet laugh--a laugh of happiness. "i suppose that i did. i wanted you to say just what you have said to-night. yet now that you have said it--" she broke off with a cry. "dick, i have met no one like you in my life. and i am very proud. oh, dick, my boy!" and she gave him her other hand. tears glistened in her eyes. "but i am not sure," she went on. "now that you have spoken, i am not sure. it would be all so different from what my life has been, from what i thought it would be. dick, you make me ashamed." "hush!" he said gently, as one might chide a child for talking nonsense. he put an arm about her, and she hid her face in his coat. "yes, that's the truth, dick. you make me ashamed." so she remained for a little while, and then she drew herself away. "i will think and tell you, dick," she said. "tell me now!" "no, not yet. it's all your life and my life, you know, dick. give me a little while." "i go away to-morrow." "to-morrow?" she cried. "yes, i go to ajmere. i go to find my friend. i must go." violet started. into her eyes there crept a look of fear, and she was silent. "the prince?" she asked with a queer suspense in her voice. "yes--shere ali," and dick became perceptibly embarrassed. "he is not as friendly to us as he used to be. there is some trouble," he said lamely. violet looked him frankly in the face. it was not her habit to flinch. she read and understood his embarrassment. yet her eyes met his quite steadily. "i am afraid that i am the trouble," she said quietly. dick did not deny the truth of what she said. on the other hand, he had as yet no thought or word of blame for her. there was more for her to tell. he waited to hear it. "i tried to avoid him here in india, as i told you i meant to do," she said. "i thought he was safe in chiltistan. i did not let him know that i was coming out. i did not write to him after i had landed. but he came down to agra--and we met. there he asked me to marry him." "he asked _you!_" cried linforth. "he must have been mad to think that such a thing was possible." "he was very unhappy," violet oliver explained. "i told him that it was impossible. but he would not see. i am afraid that is the cause of his unfriendliness." "yes," said dick. then he was silent for a little while. "but you are not to blame," he added at length, in a quiet but decisive voice; and he turned as though the subject were now closed. but violet was not content. she stayed him with a gesture. she was driven that night to speak out all the truth. certainly he deserved that she should make no concealment. moreover, the truth would put him to the test, would show to her how deep his passion ran. it might change his thoughts towards her, and so she would escape by the easiest way the difficult problem she had to solve. and the easiest way was the way which violet oliver always chose to take. "i am to blame," she said. "i took jewels from him in london. yes." she saw dick standing in front of her, silent and with a face quite inscrutable, and she lowered her head and spoke with the submission of a penitent to her judge. "he offered me jewels. i love them," and she spread out her hands. "yes, i cannot help it. i am a foolish lover of beautiful things. i took them. i made no promises, he asked for none. there were no conditions, he stipulated for none. he just offered me the pearls, and i took them. but very likely he thought that my taking them meant more than it did." "and where are they now?" asked dick. she was silent for a perceptible time. then she said: "i sent them back." she heard dick draw a breath of relief, and she went on quickly, as though she had been in doubt what she should say and now was sure. "the same night--after he had asked me to marry him--i packed them up and sent them to him." "he has them now, then?" asked linforth. "i don't know. i sent them to kohara. i did not know in what camp he was staying. i thought it likely he would go home at once." "yes," said dick. they turned and walked back towards the house. dick did not speak. violet was afraid. she walked by his side, stealing every now and then a look at his set face. it was dark; she could see little but the profile. but she imagined it very stern, and she was afraid. she regretted now that she had spoken. she felt now that she could not lose him. "dick," she whispered timidly, laying a hand upon his arm; but he made no answer. the lighted windows of the house blazed upon the night. would he reach the door, pass in and be gone the next morning without another word to her except a formal goodnight in front of the others? "oh, dick," she said again, entreatingly; and at that reiteration of his name he stopped. "i am very sorry," he said gently. "but i know quite well--others have taken presents from these princes. it is a pity.... one rather hates it. but you sent yours back," and he turned to her with a smile. "the others have not always done as much. yes, you sent yours back." violet oliver drew a breath of relief. she raised her face towards his. she spoke with pleading lips. "i am forgiven then?" "hush!" and in a moment she was in his arms. passion swept her away. it seemed to her that new worlds were opening before her eyes. there were heights to walk upon for her--even for her who had never dreamed that she would even see them near. their lips touched. "oh, dick," she murmured. her hands were clasped about his neck. she hid her face against his coat, and when he would raise it she would not suffer him. but in a little while she drew herself apart, and, holding his hands, looked at him with a great pride. "my dick," she said, and she laughed--a low sweet laugh of happiness which thrilled to the heart of her lover. "i'll tell you something," she said. "when i said good-bye to him--to the prince--he asked me if i was going to marry you." "and you answered?" "that you hadn't asked me." "now i have. violet!" he whispered. but now she held him off, and suddenly her face grew serious. "dick, i will tell you something," she said, "now, so that i may never tell you it again. remember it, dick! for both our sakes remember it!" "well?" he asked. "what is it?" "don't forgive so easily," she said very gravely, "when we both know that there is something real to be forgiven." she let go of his hands before he could answer, and ran from him up the steps into the house. linforth saw no more of her that night. chapter xxvi the breaking of the pitcher it is a far cry from peshawur to ajmere, and linforth travelled in the train for two nights and the greater part of two days before he came to it. a little state carved out of rajputana and settled under english rule, it is the place of all places where east and west come nearest to meeting. within the walls of the city the great dargah mosque, with its shrine of pilgrimage and its ancient rites, lies close against the foot of the taragarh hill. behind it the mass of the mountain rises steeply to its white crown of fortress walls. in front, its high bright-blue archway, a thing of cupolas and porticoes, faces the narrow street of the grain-sellers and the locksmiths. here is the east, with its memories of akbar and shah jehan, its fiery superstitions and its crudities of decoration. gaudy chandeliers of coloured glass hang from the roof of a marble mosque, and though the marble may crack and no one give heed to it, the glass chandeliers will be carefully swathed in holland bags. here is the east, but outside the city walls the pile of mayo college rises high above its playing-grounds and gives to the princes and the chiefs of rajputana a modern public school for the education of their sons. from the roof top of the college tower linforth looked to the city huddled under the taragarh hill, and dimly made out the high archway of the mosque. he turned back to the broad playing-fields at his feet where a cricket match was going on. there was the true solution of the great problem, he thought. "here at ajmere," he said to himself, "shere ali could have learned what the west had to teach him. had he come here he would have been spared the disappointments, and the disillusions. he would not have fallen in with violet oliver. he would have married and ruled in his own country." as it was, he had gone instead to eton and to oxford, and linforth must needs search for him over there in the huddled city under the taragarh hill. ralston's pathan was even then waiting for linforth at the bottom of the tower. "sir," he said, making a low salaam when linforth had descended, "his highness shere ali is now in ajmere. every morning between ten and eleven he is to be found in a balcony above the well at the back of the dargah mosque, and to-morrow i will lead you to him." "every morning!" said linforth. "what does he do upon this balcony?" "he watches the well below, and the water-carriers descending with their jars," said the pathan, "and he talks with his friends. that is all." "very well," said linforth. "to-morrow we will go to him." he passed up the steps under the blue portico a little before the hour on the next morning, and entered a stone-flagged court which was thronged with pilgrims. on each side of the archway a great copper vat was raised upon stone steps, and it was about these two vats that the crowd thronged. linforth and his guide could hardly force their way through. on the steps of the vats natives, wrapped to the eyes in cloths to save themselves from burns, stood emptying the caldrons of boiling ghee. and on every side linforth heard the name of shere ali spoken in praise. "what does it mean?" he asked of his guide, and the pathan replied: "his highness the prince has made an offering. he has filled those caldrons with rice and butter and spices, as pilgrims of great position and honour sometimes do. the rice is cooked in the vats, and so many jars are set aside for the strangers, while the people of indrakot have hereditary rights to what is left. sir, it is an act of great piety to make so rich an offering." linforth looked at the swathed men scrambling, with cries of pain, for the burning rice. he remembered how lightly shere ali had been wont to speak of the superstitions of the mohammedans and in what contempt he held the mullahs of his country. not in those days would he have celebrated his pilgrimage to the shrine of khwajah mueeyinudin chisti by a public offering of ghee. linforth looked back upon the indrakotis struggling and scrambling and burning themselves on the steps about the vast caldrons, and the crowd waiting and clamouring below. it was a scene grotesque enough in all conscience, but linforth was never further from smiling than at this moment. a strong intuition made him grave. "does this mark shere ali's return to the ways of his fathers?" he asked himself. "is this his renunciation of the white people?" he moved forward slowly towards the inner archway, and the pathan at his side gave a new turn to his thoughts. "sir, that will be talked of for many months," the pathan said. "the prince will gain many friends who up till now distrust him." "it will be taken as a sign of faith?" asked linforth. "and more than that," said the guide significantly. "this one thing done here in ajmere to-day will be spread abroad through chiltistan and beyond." linforth looked more closely at the crowd. yes, there were many men there from the hills beyond the frontier to carry the news of shere ali's munificence to their homes. "it costs a thousand rupees at the least to fill one of those caldrons," said the pathan. "in truth, his highness has done a wise thing if--" and he left the sentence unfinished. but linforth could fill in the gap. "if he means to make trouble." but he did not utter the explanation aloud. "let us go in," he said; and they passed through the high inner archway into the great court where the saint's tomb, gilded and decked out with canopies and marble, stands in the middle. "follow me closely," said the pathan. "there may be bad men. watch any who approach you, and should one spit, i beseech your excellency to pay no heed." the huge paved square, indeed, was thronged like a bazaar. along the wall on the left hand booths were erected, where food and sweetmeats were being sold. stone tombs dotted the enclosure; and amongst them men walked up and down, shouting and talking. here and there big mango and peepul trees threw a welcome shade. the pathan led linforth to the right between the chisti's tomb and the raised marble court surrounded by its marble balustrade in front of the long mosque of shah jehan. behind the tomb there were more trees, and the shrine of a dancing saint, before which dancers from chitral were moving in and out with quick and flying steps. the pathan led linforth quickly through the groups, and though here and there a man stood in their way and screamed insults, and here and there one walked along beside them with a scowling face and muttered threats, no one molested them. the pathan turned to the right, mounted a few steps, and passed under a low stone archway. linforth found himself upon a balcony overhanging a great ditch between the dargah and taragarh hill. he leaned forward over the balustrade, and from every direction, opposite to him, below him, and at the ends, steps ran down to the bottom of the gulf--twisting and turning at every sort of angle, now in long lines, now narrow as a stair. the place had the look of some ancient amphitheatre. and at the bottom, and a little to the right of the balcony, was the mouth of an open spring. "the prince is here, your excellency." linforth looked along the balcony. there were only three men standing there, in white robes, with white turbans upon their heads. the turban of one was hemmed with gold. there was gold, too, upon his robe. "no," said linforth. "he has not yet come," and even as he turned again to look down into that strange gulf of steps the man with the gold-hemmed turban changed his attitude and showed linforth the profile of his face. linforth was startled. "is that the prince?" he exclaimed. he saw a man, young to be sure, but older than shere ali, and surely taller too. he looked more closely. that small carefully trimmed black beard might give the look of age, the long robe add to his height. yes, it was shere ali. linforth walked along the balcony, and as he approached, shere ali turned quickly towards him. the blood rushed into his dark face; he stood staring at linforth like a man transfixed. linforth held out his hand with a smile. "i hardly knew you again," he said. shere ali did not take the hand outstretched to him; he did not move; neither did he speak. he just stood with his eyes fixed upon linforth. but there was recognition in his eyes, and there was something more. linforth recalled something that violet oliver had told to him in the garden at peshawur--"are you going to marry linforth?" that had been shere ali's last question when he had parted from her upon the steps of the courtyard of the fort. linforth remembered it now as he looked into shere ali's face. "here is a man who hates me," he said to himself. and thus, for the first time since they had dined together in the mess-room at chatham, the two friends met. "surely you have not forgotten me, shere ali?" said linforth, trying to force his voice in to a note of cheery friendliness. but the attempt was not very successful. the look of hatred upon shere ali's face had died away, it is true. but mere impassivity had replaced it. he had aged greatly during those months. linforth recognised that clearly now. his face was haggard, his eyes sunken. he was a man, moreover. he had been little more than a boy when he had dined with linforth in the mess-room at chatham. "after all," linforth continued, and his voice now really had something of genuine friendliness, for he understood that shere ali had suffered--had suffered deeply; and he was inclined to forgive his temerity in proposing marriage to violet oliver--"after all, it is not so much more than a year ago when we last talked together of our plans." shere ali turned to the younger of the two who stood beside him and spoke a few words in a tongue which linforth did not yet understand. the youth--he was a youth with a soft pleasant voice, a graceful manner and something of the exquisite in his person--stepped smoothly forward and repeated the words to linforth's pathan. "what does he say?" asked linforth impatiently. the pathan translated: "his highness the prince would be glad to know what your excellency means by interrupting him." linforth flushed with anger. but he had his mission to fulfil, if it could be fulfilled. "what's the use of making this pretence?" he said to shere ali. "you and i know one another well enough." and as he ended, shere ali suddenly leaned over the balustrade of the balcony. his two companions followed the direction of his eyes; and both their faces became alert with some expectancy. for a moment linforth imagined that shere ali was merely pretending to be absorbed in what he saw. but he, too, looked, and it grew upon him that here was some matter of importance--all three were watching in so eager a suspense. yet what they saw was a common enough sight in ajmere, or in any other town of india. the balcony was built out from a brick wall which fell sheer to the bottom of the foss. but at some little distance from the end of the balcony and at the head of the foss, a road from the town broke the wall, and a flight of steep steps descended to the spring. the steps descended along the wall first of all towards the balcony, and then just below the end of it they turned, so that any man going down to the well would have his face towards the people on the balcony for half the descent and his back towards them during the second half. a water-carrier with an earthen jar upon his head had appeared at the top of the steps a second before shere ali had turned so abruptly away from linforth. it was this man whom the three were watching. slowly he descended. the steps were high and worn, smooth and slippery. he went down with his left hand against the wall, and the lizards basking in the sunlight scuttled into their crevices as he approached. on his right hand the ground fell in a precipice to the bottom of the gulf. the three men watched him, and, it seemed to linforth, with a growing excitement as he neared the turn of the steps. it was almost as though they waited for him to slip just at that turn, where a slip was most likely to occur. linforth laughed at the thought, but the thought suddenly gained strength, nay, conviction in his mind. for as the water-carrier reached the bend, turned in safety and went down towards the well, there was a simultaneous movement made by the three--a movement of disappointment. shere ali did more than merely move. he struck his hand upon the balustrade and spoke impatiently. but he did not finish the sentence, for one of his companions looked significantly towards linforth and his pathan. linforth stepped forward again. "shere ali," he said, "i want to speak to you. it is important that i should." shere ali leaned his elbows on the balustrade, and gazing across the foss to the taragarh hill, hummed to himself a tune. "have you forgotten everything?" linforth went on. he found it difficult to say what was in his mind. he seemed to be speaking to a stranger--so great a gulf was between them now--a gulf as wide, as impassable, as this one at his feet between the balcony and the taragarh hill. "have you forgotten that night when we sat in the doorway of the hut under the aiguilles d'arve? i remember it very clearly. you said to me, of your own accord, 'we will always be friends. no man, no woman, shall come between us. we will work together and we will always be friends.'" by not so much as the flicker of an eyelid did shere ali betray that he heard the words. linforth sought to revive that night so vividly that he needs must turn, needs must respond to the call, and needs must renew the pledge. "we sat for a long while that night, smoking our pipes on the step of the door. it was a dark night. we watched a planet throw its light upwards from behind the amphitheatre of hills on the left, and then rise clear to view in a gap. there was a smell of hay, like an english meadow, from the hut behind us. you pledged your friendship that night. it's not so very long ago--two years, that's all." he came to a stop with a queer feeling of shame. he remembered the night himself, and always had remembered it. but he was not given to sentiment, and here he had been talking sentiment and to no purpose. shere ali spoke again to his courtier, and the courtier stepped forward more bland than ever. "his highness would like to know if his excellency is still talking, and if so, why?" he said to the pathan, who translated it. linforth gave up the attempt to renew his friendship with shere ali. he must go back to peshawur and tell ralston that he had failed. ralston would merely shrug his shoulders and express neither disappointment nor surprise. but it was a moment of bitterness to linforth. he looked at shere ali's indifferent face, he listened for a second or two to the tune he still hummed, and he turned away. but he had not taken more than a couple of steps towards the entrance of the balcony when his guide touched him cautiously upon the elbow. linforth stopped and looked back. the three men were once more gazing at the steps which led down from the road to the well. and once more a water-carrier descended with his great earthen jar upon his head. he descended very cautiously, but as he came to the turn of the steps his foot slipped suddenly. linforth uttered a cry, but the man had not fallen. he had tottered for a moment, then he had recovered himself. but the earthen jar which he carried on his head had fallen and been smashed to atoms. again the three made a simultaneous movement, but this time it was a movement of joy. again an exclamation burst from shere ali's lips, but now it was a cry of triumph. he stood erect, and at once he turned to go. as he turned he met linforth's gaze. all expression died out of his face, but he spoke to his young courtier, who fluttered forward sniggering with amusement. "his highness would like to know if his excellency is interested in a road. his highness thinks it a damn-fool road. his highness much regrets that he cannot even let it go beyond kohara. his highness wishes his excellency good-morning." linforth made no answer to the gibe. he passed out into the courtyard, and from the courtyard through the archway into the grain-market. opposite to him at the end of the street, a grass hill, with the chalk showing at one bare spot on the side of it, ridged up against the sky curiously like a fragment of the sussex downs. linforth wondered whether shere ali had ever noticed the resemblance, and whether some recollection of the summer which he had spent at poynings had ever struck poignantly home as he had stood upon these steps. or were all these memories quite dead within his breast? in one respect shere ali was wrong. the road would go on--now. linforth had done his best to hinder it, as ralston had bidden him to do, but he had failed, and the road would go on to the foot of the hindu kush. old andrew linforth's words came back to his mind: "governments will try to stop it; but the power of the road will be greater than the power of any government. it will wind through valleys so deep that the day's sunshine is gone within the hour. it will be carried in galleries along the faces of the mountains, and for eight months of the year sections of it will be buried deep in snow. yet it will be finished." how rightly andrew linforth had judged! but dick for once felt no joy in the accuracy of the old man's forecast. he walked back through the city silent and with a heavy heart. he had counted more than he had thought upon shere ali's co-operation. his friendship for shere ali had grown into a greater and a deeper force than he had ever imagined it until this moment to be. he stopped with a sense of weariness and disillusionment, and then walked on again. the road would never again be quite the bright, inspiring thing which it had been. the dream had a shadow upon it. in the eton and oxford days he had given and given and given so much of himself to shere ali that he could not now lightly and easily lose him altogether out of his life. yet he must so lose him, and even then that was not all the truth. for they would be enemies, shere ali would be ruined and cast out, and his ruin would be the opportunity of the road. he turned quickly to his companion. "what was it that the prince said," he asked, "when the first of those water-carriers came down the steps and did not slip? he beat his hands upon the balustrade of the balcony and cried out some words. it seemed to me that his companion warned him of your presence, and that he stopped with the sentence half spoken." "that is the truth," linforth's guide replied. "the prince cried out in anger, 'how long must we wait?'" linforth nodded his head. "he looked for the pitcher to fall and it did not fall," he said. "the breaking of the pitcher was to be a sign." "and the sign was given. do not forget that, your excellency. the sign was given." but what did the sign portend? linforth puzzled his brains vainly over that problem. he had not the knowledge by which a man might cipher out the intrigues of the hill-folk beyond the frontier. did the breaking of the pitcher mean that some definite thing had been done in chiltistan, some breaking of the british power? they might look upon the _raj_ as a heavy burden on their heads, like an earthen pitcher and as easily broken. ralston would know. "you must travel back to peshawur to-night," said linforth. "go straight to his excellency the chief commissioner and tell him all that you saw upon the balcony and all that you heard. if any man can interpret it, it will be he. meanwhile, show me where the prince shere ali lodges in ajmere." the policeman led linforth to a tall house which closed in at one end a short and narrow street. "it is here," he said. "very well," said linforth, "i will seek out the prince again. i will stay in ajmere and try by some way or another to have talk with him." but again linforth was to fail. he stayed for some days in ajmere, but could never gain admittance to the house. he was put off with the politest of excuses, delivered with every appearance of deep regret. now his highness was unwell and could see no one but his physician. at another time he was better--so much better, indeed, that he was giving thanks to allah for the restoration of his health in the mosque of shah jehan. linforth could not reach him, nor did he ever see him in the streets of ajmere. he stayed for a week, and then coming to the house one morning he found it shuttered. he knocked upon the door, but no one answered his summons; all the reply he got was the melancholy echo of an empty house. a babu from the customs office, who was passing at the moment, stopped and volunteered information. "there is no one there, mister," he said gravely. "all have skedaddled to other places." "the prince shere ali, too?" asked linforth. the babu laughed contemptuously at the title. "oho, the prince! the prince went away a week ago." linforth turned in surprise. "are you sure?" he asked. the babu told him the very day on which shere ali had gone from ajmere. it was on the day when the pitcher had fallen on the steps which led down to the well. linforth had been tricked by the smiling courtier like any schoolboy. "whither did the prince go?" the babu shrugged his shoulders. "how should i know? they are not of my people, these poor ignorant hill-folk." he went on his way. linforth was left with the assurance that now, indeed, he had really failed. he took the train that night back to peshawur. chapter xxvii an arrested confession linforth related the history of his failure to ralston in the office at peshawur. "shere ali went away on the day the pitcher was broken," he said. "it was the breaking of the pitcher which gave him the notice to go; i am sure of it. if one only knew what message was conveyed--" and ralston handed to him a letter. the letter had been sent by the resident at kohara and had only this day reached peshawur. linforth took it and read it through. it announced that the son of abdulla mahommed had been murdered. "you see?" said ralston. "he was shot in the back by one of his attendants when he was out after markhor. he was the leader of the rival faction, and was bidding for the throne against shere ali. his murder clears the way. i have no doubt your friend is over the lowari pass by this time. there will be trouble in chiltistan. i would have stopped shere ali on his way up had i known." "but you don't think shere ali had this man murdered!" cried linforth. ralston shrugged his shoulders. "why not? what else was he waiting for from ten to eleven in the balcony above the well, except just for this news?" he stopped for a moment, and went on again in a voice which was very grave. "that seems to you horrible. i am very much afraid that another thing, another murder much more horrible, will be announced down to me in the next few days. the son of abdulla mahommed stood in shere ali's way a week ago and he is gone. but the way is still not clear. there's still another in his path." linforth interpreted the words according to the gravity with which they were uttered. "his father!" he said, and ralston nodded his head. "what can we do?" he cried. "we can threaten--but what is the use of threatening without troops? and we mayn't use troops. chiltistan is an independent kingdom. we can advise, but we can't force them to follow our advice. we accept the status quo. that's the policy. so long as chiltistan keeps the peace with us we accept chiltistan as it is and as it may be. we can protect if our protection is asked. but our protection has not been asked. why has shere ali fled so quickly back to his country? tell me that if you can." none the less, however, ralston telegraphed at once to the authorities at lahore. linforth, though he had failed to renew his old comradeship with shere ali, had not altogether failed. he had brought back news which ralston counted as of great importance. he had linked up the murder in chiltistan with the intrigues of shere ali. that the glare was rapidly broadening over that country of hills and orchards ralston was very well aware. but it was evident now that at any moment the eruption might take place, and fire pour down the hills. in these terms he telegraphed to lahore. quietly and quickly, once more after twenty-five years, troops were being concentrated at nowshera for a rush over the passes into chiltistan. but even so ralston was urgent that the concentration should be hurried. he sent a letter in cipher to the resident at kohara, bidding him to expect shere ali, and with shere ali the beginning of the trouble. he could do no more for the moment. so far as he could see he had taken all the precautions which were possible. but that night an event occurred in his own house which led him to believe that he had not understood the whole extent of the danger. it was mrs. oliver who first aroused his suspicions. the four of them--ralston and his sister, linforth and violet oliver were sitting quietly at dinner when violet suddenly said: "it's a strange thing. of course there's nothing really in it, and i am not at all frightened, but the last two nights, on going to bed, i have found that one of my windows was no longer bolted." linforth looked up in alarm. ralston's face, however, did not change. "are you sure that it was bolted before?" "yes, quite sure," said violet. "the room is on the ground floor, and outside one of the windows a flight of steps leads down from the verandah to the ground. so i have always taken care to bolt them myself." "when?" asked ralston. "after dressing for dinner," she replied. "it is the last thing i do before leaving the room." ralston leaned back in his chair, as though a momentary anxiety were quite relieved. "it is one of the servants, no doubt," he said. "i will speak about it afterwards"; and for the moment the matter dropped. but ralston returned to the subject before dinner was finished. "i don't think you need be uneasy, mrs. oliver," he said. "the house is guarded by sentinels, as no doubt you know. they are native levies, of course, but they are quite reliable"; and in this he was quite sincere. so long as they wore the uniform they would be loyal. the time might come when they would ask to be allowed to go home. that permission would be granted, and it was possible that they would be found in arms against the loyal troops immediately afterwards. but they would ask to be allowed to go first. "still," he resumed, "if you carry valuable jewellery about with you, it would be as well, i think, if you locked it up." "i have very little jewellery, and that not valuable," said violet, and suddenly her face flushed and she looked across the table at linforth with a smile. the smile was returned, and a minute later the ladies rose. the two men were left alone to smoke. "you know mrs. oliver better than i do," said ralston. "i will tell you frankly what i think. it may be a mere nothing. there may be no cause for anxiety at all. in any case anxiety is not the word" he corrected himself, and went on. "there is a perfectly natural explanation. the servants may have opened the window to air the room when they were preparing it for the night, and may easily have forgotten to latch the bolt afterwards." "yes, i suppose that is the natural explanation," said linforth, as he lit a cigar. "it is hard to conceive any other." "theft," replied ralston, "is the other explanation. what i said about the levies is true. i can rely on them. but the servants--that is perhaps a different question. they are mahommedans all of them, and we hear a good deal about the loyalty of mahommedans, don't we?" he said, with a smile. "they wear, if not a uniform, a livery. all these things are true. but i tell you this, which is no less true. not one of those mahommedan servants would die wearing the livery, acknowledging their service. every one of them, if he fell ill, if he thought that he was going to die, would leave my service to-morrow. so i don't count on them so much. however, i will make some inquiries, and to-morrow we will move mrs. oliver to another room." he went about the business forthwith, and cross-examined his servants one after another. but he obtained no admission from any one of them. no one had touched the window. was a single thing missing of all that the honourable lady possessed? on their lives, no! meanwhile linforth sought out violet oliver in the drawing-room. he found her alone, and she came eagerly towards him and took his hands. "oh, dick," she said, "i am glad you have come back. i am nervous." "there's no need," said dick with a laugh. "let us go out." he opened the window, but violet drew back. "no, let us stay here," she said, and passing her arm through his she stared for a few moments with a singular intentness into the darkness of the garden. "did you see anything?" he asked. "no," she replied, and he felt the tension of her body relax. "no, there's nothing. and since you have come back, dick, i am no longer afraid." she looked up at him with a smile, and tightened her clasp upon his arm with a pretty air of ownership. "my dick!" she said, and laughed. the door-handle rattled, and violet proved that she had lost her fear. "that's miss ralston," she said. "let us go out," and she slipped out of the window quickly. as quickly linforth followed her. she was waiting for him in the darkness. "dick," she said in a whisper, and she caught him close to her. "violet." he looked up to the dark, clear, starlit sky and down to the sweet and gentle face held up towards his. that night and in this indian garden, it seemed to him that his faith was proven and made good. with the sense of failure heavy upon his soul, he yet found here a woman whose trust was not diminished by any failure, who still looked to him with confidence and drew comfort and strength from his presence, even as he did from hers. alone in the drawing-room she had been afraid; outside here in the garden she had no fear, and no room in her mind for any thought of fear. "when you spoke about your window to-night, violet," he said gently, "although i was alarmed for you, although i was troubled that you should have cause for alarm--" "i saw that," said violet with a smile. "yet i never spoke." "your eyes, your face spoke. oh, my dear, i watch you," and she drew in a breath. "i am a little afraid of you." she did not laugh. there was nothing provocative in her accent. she spoke with simplicity and truth, now as often, what was set down to her for a coquetry by those who disliked her. linforth was in no doubt, however. mistake her as he did, he judged her in this respect more truly than the worldly-wise. she had at the bottom of her heart a great fear of her lover, a fear that she might lose him, a fear that he might hold her in scorn, if he knew her only half as well as she knew herself. "i don't want you to be afraid of me," he said, quietly. "there is no reason for it." "you are hard to others if they come in your way," she replied, and linforth stopped. yes, that was true. there was his mother in the house under the sussex downs. he had got his way. he was on the frontier. the road now would surely go on. it would be a strange thing if he did not manage to get some portion of that work entrusted to his hands. he had got his way, but he had been hard, undoubtedly. "it is quite true," he answered. "but i have had my lesson. you need not fear that i shall be anything but very gentle towards you." "in your thoughts?" she asked quickly. "that you will be gentle in word and in deed--yes, of that i am sure. but will you think gently of me--always? that is a different thing." "of course," he answered with a laugh. but violet oliver was in no mood lightly to be put off. "promise me that!" she cried in a low and most passionate voice. her lips trembled as she pleaded; her dark eyes besought him, shining starrily. "oh, promise that you will think of me gently--that if ever you are inclined to be hard and to judge me harshly, you will remember these two nights in the dark garden at peshawur." "i shall not forget them," said linforth, and there was no longer any levity in his tones. he spoke gravely, and more than gravely. there was a note of anxiety, as though he were troubled. "i promise," he said. "thank you," said violet simply; "for i know that you will keep the promise." "yes, but you speak"--and the note of trouble was still more audible in linforth's voice--"you speak as if you and i were going to part to-morrow morning for the rest of our lives." "no," violet cried quickly and rather sharply. then she moved on a step or two. "i interrupted you," she said. "you were saying that when i spoke about my window, although you were troubled on my account--" "i felt at the same time some relief," linforth continued. "relief?" she asked. "yes; for on my return from ajmere this morning i noticed a change in you." he felt at once violet's hand shake upon his arm as she started; but she did not interrupt him by a word. "i noticed it at once when we met for the first time since we had talked together in the garden, for the first time since your hands had lain in mine and your lips touched mine. and afterwards it was still there." "what change?" violet asked. but she asked the question in a stifled voice and with her face averted from him. "there was a constraint, an embarrassment," he said. "how can i explain it? i felt it rather than noticed it by visible signs. it seemed to me that you avoided being alone with me. i had a dread that you regretted the evening in the garden, that you were sorry we had agreed to live our lives together." violet did not protest. she did not turn to him with any denial in her eyes. she walked on by his side with her face still turned away from his, and for a little while she walked in silence. then, as if compelled, she suddenly stopped and turned. she spoke, too, as if compelled, with a kind of desperation in her voice. "yes, you were right," she cried. "oh, dick, you were right. there was constraint, there was embarrassment. i will tell you the reason--now." "i know it," said dick with a smile. violet stared at him for a moment. she perceived his contentment. he was now quite unharassed by fear. there was no disappointment, no anger against her. she shook her head and said slowly: "you can't know it." "i do." "tell me the reason then." "you were frightened by this business of the window." violet made a movement. she was in the mood to contradict him. but he went on, and so the mood passed. "it was only natural. here were you in a frontier town, a wild town on the borders of a wild country. a window bolted at dinner-time and unlocked at bedtime--it was easy to find something sinister in that. you did not like to speak of it, lest it should trouble your hosts. yet it weighed on you. it occupied your thoughts." "and to that you put down my embarrassment?" she asked quietly. they had come again to the window of the drawing-room. "yes, i do," he answered. she looked at him strangely for a few moments. but the compulsion which she had felt upon her a moment ago to speak was gone. she no longer sought to contradict him. without a word she slipped into the drawing-room. chapter xxviii the thief violet oliver was harassed that night as she had never before been harassed at any moment of her easy life. she fled to her room. she stood in front of her mirror gazing helplessly at the reflection of her troubled face. "what shall i do?" she cried piteously. "what shall i do?" and it was not until some minutes had passed that she gave a thought to whether her window on this night was bolted or not. she moved quickly across the room and drew the curtains apart. this time the bolt was shot. but she did not turn back to her room. she let the curtains fall behind her and leaned her forehead against the glass. there was a moon to-night, and the quiet garden stretched in front of her a place of black shadows and white light. whether a thief lurked in those shadows and watched from them she did not now consider. the rattle of a rifle from a sentry near at hand gave her confidence; and all her trouble lay in the house behind her. she opened her window and stepped out. "i tried to speak, but he would not listen. oh, why did i ever come here?" she cried. "it would have been so easy not to have come." but even while she cried out her regrets, they were not all the truth. there was still alive within her the longing to follow the difficult way--the way of fire and stones, as it would be for her--if only she could! she had made a beginning that night. yes, she had made a beginning though nothing had come of it. that was not her fault, she assured herself. she had tried to speak. but could she keep it up? she turned and twisted; she was caught in a trap. passion had trapped her unawares. she went back to the room and bolted the window. then again she stood in front of her mirror and gazed at herself in thought. suddenly her face changed. she looked up; an idea took shape in her mind. "theft," ralston had said. thus had he explained the unbolted window. she must lock up what jewels she had. she must be sure to do that. violet oliver looked towards the window and shivered. it was very silent in the room. fear seized hold of her. it was a big room, and furtively she peered into the corners lest already hidden behind some curtain the thief should be there. but always her eyes returned to the window. if she only dared! she ran to her trunks. from one of them she took out from its deep hiding-place a small jewel-case, a jewel-case very like to that one which a few months ago she had sealed up in her tent and addressed to kohara. she left it on her dressing-table. she did not open it. then she looked about her again. it would be the easy way--if only she dared! it would be an easier way than trying again to tell her lover what she would have told him to-night, had he only been willing to listen. she stood and listened, with parted lips. it seemed to her that even in this lighted room people, unseen people, breathed about her. then, with a little sob in her throat, she ran to the window and shot back the bolt. she undressed hurriedly, placed a candle by her bedside and turned out the electric lights. as soon as she was in bed she blew out the candle. she lay in the darkness, shivering with fear, regretting what she had done. every now and then a board cracked in the corridor outside the room, as though beneath a stealthy footstep. and once inside the room the door of a wardrobe sprang open. she would have cried out, but terror paralysed her throat; and the next moment she heard the tread of the sentry outside her window. the sound reassured her. there was safety in the heavy regularity of the steps. it was a soldier who was passing, a drilled, trustworthy soldier. "trustworthy" was the word which the commissioner had used. and lulled by the soldier's presence in the garden violet oliver fell asleep. but she waked before dawn. the room was still in darkness. the moon had sunk. not a ray of light penetrated from behind the curtains. she lay for a little while in bed, listening, wondering whether that window had been opened. a queer longing came upon her--a longing to thrust back the curtains, so that--if anything happened--she might see. that would be better than lying here in the dark, knowing nothing, seeing nothing, fearing everything. if she pulled back the curtains, there would be a panel of dim light visible, however dark the night. the longing became a necessity. she could not lie there. she sprang out of bed, and hurried across towards the window. she had not stopped to light her candle and she held her hands outstretched in front of her. suddenly, as she was half-way across the room, her hands touched something soft. she drew them back with a gasp of fright and stood stone-still, stone-cold. she had touched a human face. already the thief was in the room. she stood without a cry, without a movement, while her heart leaped and fluttered within her bosom. she knew in that moment the extremity of mortal fear. a loud scratch sounded sharply in the room. a match spurted into flame, and above the match there sprang into view, framed in the blackness of the room, a wild and menacing dark face. the eyes glittered at her, and suddenly a hand was raised as if to strike. and at the gesture violet oliver found her voice. she screamed, a loud shrill scream of terror, and even as she screamed, in the very midst of her terror, she saw that the hand was lowered, and that the threatening face smiled. then the match went out and darkness cloaked her and cloaked the thief again. she heard a quick stealthy movement, and once more her scream rang out. it seemed to her ages before any answer came, before she heard the sound of hurrying footsteps in the corridors. there was a loud rapping upon her door. she ran to it. she heard ralston's voice. "what is it? open! open!" and then in the garden the report of a rifle rang loud. she turned up the lights, flung a dressing-gown about her shoulders and opened the door. ralston was in the passage, behind him she saw lights strangely wavering and other faces. these too wavered strangely. from very far away, she heard ralston's voice once more. "what is it? what is it?" and then she fell forward against him and sank in a swoon upon the floor. ralston lifted her on to her bed and summoned her maid. he went out of the house and made inquiries of the guard. the sentry's story was explicit and not to be shaken by any cross-examination. he had patrolled that side of the house in which mrs. oliver's room lay, all night. he had seen nothing. at one o'clock in the morning the moon sank and the night became very dark. it was about three when a few minutes after passing beneath the verandah, and just as he had turned the corner of the house, he heard a shrill scream from mrs. oliver's room. he ran back at once, and as he ran he heard a second scream. he saw no one, but he heard a rustling and cracking in the bushes as though a fugitive plunged through. he fired in the direction of the noise and then ran with all speed to the spot. he found no one, but the bushes were broken. ralston went back into the house and knocked at mrs. oliver's door. the maid opened it. "how is mrs. oliver?" he asked, and he heard violet herself reply faintly from the room: "i am better, thank you. i was a little frightened, that's all." "no wonder," said ralston, and he spoke again to the maid. "has anything gone? has anything been stolen? there was a jewel-case upon the dressing-table. i saw it." the maid looked at him curiously, before she answered. "nothing has been touched." then, with a glance towards the bed, the maid stooped quickly to a trunk which stood against the wall close by the door and then slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her. the corridors were now lighted up, as though it were still evening and the household had not yet gone to bed. ralston saw that the maid held a bundle in her hands. "i do not think," she said in a whisper, "that the thief came to steal any thing." she laid some emphasis upon the word. ralston took the bundle from her hands and stared at it. "good god!" he muttered. he was astonished and more than astonished. there was something of horror in his low exclamation. he looked at the maid. she was a woman of forty. she had the look of a capable woman. she was certainly quite self-possessed. "does your mistress know of this?" he asked. the maid shook her head. "no, sir. i saw it upon the floor before she came to. i hid it between the trunk and the wall." she spoke with an ear to the door of the room in which violet lay, and in a low voice. "good!" said ralston. "you had better tell her nothing of it for the present. it would only frighten her"; as he ended he heard violet oliver call out: "adela! adela!" "mrs. oliver wants me," said the maid, as she slipped back into the bedroom. ralston walked slowly back down the corridor into the great hall. he was carrying the bundle in his hands and his face was very grave. he saw dick linforth in the hall, and before he spoke he looked upwards to the gallery which ran round it. even when he had assured himself that there was no one listening, he spoke in a low voice. "do you see this, linforth?" he held out the bundle. there was a thick cloth, a sort of pad of cotton, and some thin strong cords. "these were found in mrs. oliver's room." he laid the things upon the table and linforth turned them over, startled as ralston had been. "i don't understand," he said. "they were left behind," said ralston. "by the thief?" "if he was a thief"; and again linforth said: "i don't understand." but there was now more of anger, more of horror in his voice, than surprise; and as he spoke he took up the pad of cotton wool. "you do understand," said ralston, quietly. linforth's fingers worked. that pad of cotton seemed to him more sinister than even the cords. "for her!" he cried, in a quiet but dangerous voice. "for violet," and at that moment neither noticed his utterance of her christian name. "let me only find the man who entered her room." ralston looked steadily at linforth. "have you any suspicion as to who the man is?" he asked. there was a momentary silence in that quiet hall. both men stood looking at each other. "it can't be," said linforth, at length. but he spoke rather to himself than to ralston. "it can't be." ralston did not press the question. "it's the insolence of the attempt which angers me," he said. "we must wait until mrs. oliver can tell us what happened, what she saw. meanwhile, she knows nothing of those things. there is no need that she should know." he left linforth standing in the hall and went up the stairs. when he reached the gallery, he leaned over quietly and looked down. linforth was still standing by the table, fingering the cotton-pad. ralston heard him say again in a voice which was doubtful now rather than incredulous: "it can't be he! he would not dare!" but no name was uttered. chapter xxix mrs. oliver rides through peshawur violet oliver told her story later during that day. but there was a certain hesitation in her manner which puzzled ralston, at all events, amongst her audience. "when you went to your room," he asked, "did you find the window again unbolted?" "no," she replied. "it was really my fault last night. i felt the heat oppressive. i opened the window myself and went out on to the verandah. when i came back i think that i did not bolt it." "you forgot?" asked ralston in surprise. but this was not the only surprising element in the story. "when you touched the man, he did not close with you, he made no effort to silence you," ralston said. "that is strange enough. but that he should strike a match, that he should let you see his face quite clearly--that's what i don't understand. it looks, mrs. oliver, as if he almost wanted you to recognise him." ralston turned in his chair sharply towards her. "did you recognise him?" he asked. "yes," violet oliver replied. "at least i think i did. i think that i had seen him before." here at all events it was clear that she was concealing nothing. she was obviously as puzzled as ralston was himself. "where had you seen him?" he asked, and the answer increased his astonishment. "in calcutta," she answered. "it was the same man or one very like him. i saw him on three successive evenings in the maidan when i was driving there." "in calcutta?" cried ralston. "some months ago, then?" "yes." "how did you come to notice him in the maidan?" mrs. oliver shivered slightly as she answered: "he seemed to be watching me. i thought so at the time. it made me uncomfortable. now i am sure. he _was_ watching me," and she suddenly came forward a step. "i should like to go away to-day if you and your sister won't mind," she pleaded. ralston's forehead clouded. "of course, i quite understand," he said, "and if you wish to go we can't prevent you. but you leave us rather helpless, don't you?--as you alone can identify the man. besides, you leave yourself too in danger." "but i shall go far away," she urged. "as it is i am going back to england in a month." "yes," ralston objected. "but you have not yet started, and if the man followed you from calcutta to peshawur, he may follow you from peshawur to bombay." mrs. oliver drew back with a start of terror and ralston instantly took back his words. "of course, we will take care of you on your way south. you may rely on that," he said with a smile. "but if you could bring yourself to stay here for a day or two i should be much obliged. you see, it is impossible to fix the man's identity from a description, and it is really important that he should be caught." "yes, i understand," said violet oliver, and she reluctantly consented to stay. "thank you," said ralston, and he looked at her with a smile. "there is one more thing which i should like you to do. i should like you to ride out with me this afternoon through peshawur. the story of last night will already be known in the bazaars. of that you may be very sure. and it would be a good thing if you were seen to ride through the city quite unconcerned." violet oliver drew back from the ordeal which ralston so calmly proposed to her. "i shall be with you," he said. "there will be no danger--or at all events no danger that englishwomen are unprepared to face in this country." the appeal to her courage served ralston's turn. violet raised her head with a little jerk of pride. "certainly i will ride with you this afternoon through peshawur," she said; and she went out of the room and left ralston alone. he sat at his desk trying to puzzle out the enigma of the night. the more he thought upon it, the further he seemed from any solution. there was the perplexing behaviour of mrs. oliver herself. she had been troubled, greatly troubled, to find her window unbolted on two successive nights after she had taken care to bolt it. yet on the third night she actually unbolts it herself and leaving it unbolted puts out her light and goes to bed. it seemed incredible that she should so utterly have forgotten her fears. but still more bewildering even than her forgetfulness was the conduct of the intruder. upon that point he took linforth into his counsels. "i can't make head or tail of it," he cried. "here the fellow is in the dark room with his cords and the thick cloth and the pad. mrs. oliver touches him. he knows that his presence is revealed to her. she is within reach. and she stands paralysed by fear, unable to cry out. yet he does nothing, except light a match and give her a chance to recognise his face. he does not seize her, he does not stifle her voice, as he could have done--yes, as he could have done, before she could have uttered a cry. he strikes a match and shows her his face." "so that he might see hers," said linforth. ralston shook his head. he was not satisfied with that explanation. but linforth had no other to offer. "have you any clue to the man?" "none," said ralston. he rode out with mrs. oliver that afternoon down from his house to the gate of the city. two men of his levies rode at a distance of twenty paces behind them. but these were his invariable escort. he took no unusual precautions. there were no extra police in the streets. he went out with his guest at his side for an afternoon ride as if nothing whatever had occurred. mrs. oliver played her part well. she rode with her head erect and her eyes glancing boldly over the crowded streets. curious glances were directed at her, but she met them without agitation. ralston observed her with a growing admiration. "thank you," he said warmly. "i know this can hardly be a pleasant experience for you. but it is good for these people here to know that nothing they can do will make any difference--no not enough to alter the mere routine of our lives. let us go forward." they turned to the left at the head of the main thoroughfare, and passed at a walk, now through the open spaces where the booths were erected, now through winding narrow streets between high houses. violet oliver, though she held her head high and her eyes were steady, rode with a fluttering heart. in front of them, about them, and behind them the crowd of people thronged, tribesmen from the hills, mohammedans and hindus of the city; from the upper windows the lawyers and merchants looked down upon them; and violet held all of them in horror. the occurrence of last night had inflicted upon her a heavier shock than either ralston imagined or she herself had been aware until she had ridden into the town. the dark wild face suddenly springing into view above the lighted match was as vivid and terrible to her still, as a nightmare to a child. she was afraid that at any moment she might see that face again in the throng of faces. her heart sickened with dread at the thought, and even though she should not see him, at every step she looked upon twenty of his like--kinsmen, perhaps, brothers in blood and race. she shrank from them in repulsion and she shrank from them in fear. every nerve of her body seemed to cry out against the folly of this ride. what were they two and the two levies behind them against the throng? four at the most against thousands at the least. she touched ralston timidly on the arm. "might we go home now?" she asked in a voice which trembled; and he looked suddenly and anxiously into her face. "certainly," he said, and he wheeled his horse round, keeping close to her as she wheeled hers. "it is all right," he said, and his voice took on an unusual friendliness. "we have not far to go. it was brave of you to have come, and i am very grateful. we ask much of the englishwomen in india, and because they never fail us, we are apt to ask too much. i asked too much of you." violet responded to the flick at her national pride. she drew herself up and straightened her back. "no," she said, and she actually counterfeited a smile. "no. it's all right." "i asked more than i had a right to ask," he continued remorsefully. "i am sorry. i have lived too much amongst men. that's my trouble. one becomes inconsiderate to women. it's ignorance, not want of good-will. look!" to distract her thoughts he began to point her out houses and people which were of interest. "do you see that sign there, 'bahadur gobind, barrister-at-law, cambridge b.a.,' on the first floor over the cookshop? yes, he is the genuine article. he went to cambridge and took his degree and here he is back again. take him for all in all, he is the most seditious man in the city. meanly seditious. it only runs to writing letters over a pseudonym in the native papers. now look up. do you see that very respectable white-bearded gentleman on the balcony of his house? well, his daughter-in-law disappeared one day when her husband was away from home--disappeared altogether. it had been a great grief to the old gentleman that she had borne no son to inherit the family fortune. so naturally people began to talk. she was found subsequently under the floor of the house, and it cost that respectable old gentleman twenty thousand rupees to get himself acquitted." ralston pulled himself up with a jerk, realising that this was not the most appropriate story which he could have told to a lady with the overstrained nerves of mrs. oliver. he turned to her with a fresh apology upon his lips. but the apology was never spoken. "what's the matter, mrs. oliver?" he asked. she had not heard the story of the respectable old gentleman. that was clear. they were riding through an open oblong space of ground dotted with trees. there were shops down the middle, two rows backing upon a stream, and shops again at the sides. mrs. oliver was gazing with a concentrated look across the space and the people who crowded it towards an opening of an alley between two houses. but fixed though her gaze was, there was no longer any fear in her eyes. rather they expressed a keen interest, a strong curiosity. ralston's eyes followed the direction of her gaze. at the corner of the alley there was a shop wherein a man sat rounding a stick of wood with a primitive lathe. he made the lathe revolve by working a stringed bow with his right hand, while his left hand worked the chisel and his right foot directed it. his limbs were making three different motions with an absence of effort which needed much practice, and for a moment ralston wondered whether it was the ingenuity of the workman which had attracted her. but in a moment he saw that he was wrong. there were two men standing in the mouth of the alley, both dressed in white from head to foot. one stood a little behind with the hood of his cloak drawn forward over his head, so that it was impossible to discern his face. the other stood forward, a tall slim man with the elegance and the grace of youth. it was at this man violet oliver was looking. ralston looked again at her, and as he looked the colour rose into her cheeks; there came a look of sympathy, perhaps of pity, into her eyes. almost her lips began to smile. ralston turned his head again towards the alley, and he started in his saddle. the young man had raised his head. he was gazing fixedly towards them. his features were revealed and ralston knew them well. he turned quickly to mrs. oliver. "you know that man?" the colour deepened upon her face. "it is the prince of chiltistan." "but you know him?" ralston insisted. "i have met him in london," said violet oliver. so shere ali was in peshawur, when he should have been in chiltistan! "why?" ralston put the question to himself and looked to his companion for the answer. the colour upon her face, the interest, the sympathy of her eyes gave him the answer. this was the woman, then, whose image stood before shere ali's memories and hindered him from marrying one of his own race! just with that sympathy and that keen interest does a woman look upon the man who loves her and whose love she does not return. moreover, there was linforth's hesitation. linforth had admitted there was an englishwoman for whom shere ali cared, had admitted it reluctantly, had extenuated her thoughtlessness, had pleaded for her. oh, without a doubt mrs. oliver was the woman! there flashed before ralston's eyes the picture of linforth standing in the hall, turning over the cords and the cotton pad and the thick cloth. ralston looked down again upon him from the gallery and heard his voice, saying in a whisper: "it can't be he! it can't be he!" what would linforth say when he knew that shere ali was lurking in peshawur? ralston was still gazing at shere ali when the man behind the prince made a movement. he flung back the hood from his face, and disclosing his features looked boldly towards the riders. a cry rang out at ralston's side, a woman's cry. he turned in his saddle and saw violet oliver. the colour had suddenly fled from her cheeks. they were blanched. the sympathy had gone from her eyes, and in its place, stark terror looked out from them. she swayed in her saddle. "do you see that man?" she cried, pointing with her hand. "the man behind the prince. the man who has thrown back his cloak." "yes, yes, i see him," answered ralston impatiently. "it was he who crept into my room last night." "you are sure?" "could i forget? could i forget?" she cried; and at that moment, the man touched shere ali on the sleeve, and they both fled out of sight into the alley. there was no doubt left in ralston's mind. it was shere ali who had planned the abduction of mrs. oliver. it was his companion who had failed to carry it out. ralston turned to the levies behind him. "quick! into that valley! fetch me those two men who were standing there!" the two levies pressed their horses through the crowd, but the alley was empty when they came to it. chapter xxx the needed implement ralston rode home with an uncomfortable recollection of the little dinner-party in calcutta at which hatch had told his story of the englishwoman in mecca. had that story fired shere ali? the time for questions had passed; but none the less this particular one would force itself into the front of his mind. "i would have done better never to have meddled," he said to himself remorsefully--even while he gave his orders for the apprehension of shere ali and his companion. for he did not allow his remorse to hamper his action; he set a strong guard at the gates of the city, and gave orders that within the gates the city should be methodically searched quarter by quarter. "i want them both laid by the heels," he said; "but, above all, the prince. let there be no mistake. i want shere ali lodged in the gaol here before nightfall"; and linforth's voice broke in rapidly upon his words. "can i do anything to help? what can i do?" ralston looked sharply up from his desk. there had been a noticeable eagerness, a noticeable anger in linforth's voice. "you?" said ralston quietly. "_you_ want to help? you were shere ali's friend." ralston smiled as he spoke, but there was no hint of irony in either words or smile. it was a smile rather of tolerance, and almost of regret--the smile of a man who was well accustomed to seeing the flowers and decorative things of life wither over-quickly, and yet was still alert and not indifferent to the change. his work for the moment was done. he leaned back thoughtfully in his chair. he no longer looked at linforth. his one quick glance had shown him enough. "so it's all over, eh?" he said, as he played with his paper-knife. "summer mornings on the cherwell. travels in the dauphiné. the meije and the aiguilles d'arves. oh, i know." linforth moved as he stood at the side of ralston's desk, but the set look upon his face did not change. and ralston went on. there came a kind of gentle mockery into his voice. "the shared ambitions, the concerted plans--gone, and not even a regret for them left, eh? _tempi passati!_ pretty sad, too, when you come to think of it." but linforth made no answer to ralston's probings. violet oliver's instincts had taught her the truth, which ralston was now learning. linforth could be very hard. there was nothing left of the friendship which through many years had played so large a part in his life. a woman had intervened, and linforth had shut the door upon it, had sealed his mind against its memories, and his heart against its claims. the evening at la grave in the dauphiné had borne its fruit. linforth stood there white with anger against shere ali, hot to join in the chase. ralston understood that if ever he should need a man to hunt down that quarry through peril and privations, here at his hand was the man on whom he could rely. linforth's eager voice broke in again. "what can i do to help?" ralston looked up once more. "nothing--for the moment. if shere ali is captured in peshawur--nothing at all." "but if he escapes." ralston shrugged his shoulders. then he filled his pipe and lit it. "if he escapes--why, then, your turn may come. i make no promises," he added quickly, as linforth, by a movement, betrayed his satisfaction. "it is not, indeed, in my power to promise. but there may come work for you--difficult work, dangerous work, prolonged work. for this outrage can't go unpunished. in any case," he ended with a smile, "the road goes on." he turned again to his office-table, and linforth went out of the room. the task which ralston had in view for linforth came by a long step nearer that night. for all night the search went on throughout the city, and the searchers were still empty-handed in the morning. ahmed ismail had laid his plans too cunningly. shere ali was to be compromised, not captured. there was to be a price upon his head, but the head was not to fall. and while the search went on from quarter to quarter of peshawur, the prince and his attendant were already out in the darkness upon the hills. ralston telegraphed to the station on the malakand pass, to the fort at jamrud, even to landi khotal, at the far end of the khyber pass, but shere ali had not travelled along any one of the roads those positions commanded. "i had little hope indeed that he would," said ralston with a shrug of the shoulders. "he has given us the slip. we shall not catch up with him now." he was standing with linforth at the mouth of the well which irrigated his garden. the water was drawn up after the persian plan. a wooden vertical wheel wound up the bucket, and this wheel was made to revolve by a horizontal wheel with the spokes projecting beyond the rim and fitting into similar spokes upon the vertical wheel. a bullock, with a bandage over its eyes, was harnessed to the horizontal wheel, and paced slowly round and round, turning it; while a boy sat on the bullock's back and beat it with a stick. both men stood and listened to the groaning and creaking of the wheels for a few moments, and then linforth said: "so, after all, you mean to let him go?" "no, indeed," answered ralston. "only now we shall have to fetch him out of chiltistan." "will they give him up?" ralston shook his head. "no." he turned to linforth with a smile. "i once heard the political officer described as the man who stands between the soldier and his medal. well, i have tried to stand just in that spot as far as chiltistan is concerned. but i have not succeeded. the soldier will get his medal in chiltistan this year. i have had telegrams this morning from lahore. a punitive force has been gathered at nowshera. the preparations have been going on quietly for a few weeks. it will start in a few days. i shall go with it as political officer." "you will take me?" linforth asked eagerly. "yes," ralston answered. "i mean to take you. i told you yesterday there might be service for you." "in chiltistan?" "or beyond," replied ralston. "shere ali may give us the slip again." he was thinking of the arid rocky borders of turkestan, where flight would be easy and where capture would be most difficult. it was to that work that ralston, looking far ahead, had in his mind dedicated young linforth, knowing well that he would count its difficulties light in the ardour of his pursuit. anger would spur him, and the road should be held out as his reward. ralston listened again to the groaning of the water-wheel, and watched the hooded bullock circle round and round with patient unvarying pace, and the little boy on its back making no difference whatever with a long stick. "look!" he said. "there's an emblem of the indian administration. the wheels creak and groan, the bullock goes on round and round with a bandage over its eyes, and the little boy on its back cuts a fine important figure and looks as if he were doing ever so much, and somehow the water comes up--that's the great thing, the water is fetched up somehow and the land watered. when i am inclined to be despondent, i come and look at my water-wheel." he turned away and walked back to the house with his hands folded behind his back and his head bent forward. "you are despondent now?" linforth asked. "yes," replied ralston, with a rare and sudden outburst of confession. "you, perhaps, will hardly understand. you are young. you have a career to make. you have particular ambitions. this trouble in chiltistan is your opportunity. but it's my sorrow--it's almost my failure." he turned his face towards linforth with a whimsical smile. "i have tried to stand between the soldier and his medal. i wanted to extend our political influence there--yes. because that makes for peace, and it makes for good government. the tribes lose their fear that their independence will be assailed, they come in time to the political officer for advice, they lay their private quarrels and feuds before him for arbitration. that has happened in many valleys, and i had always a hope that though chiltistan has a ruling prince, the same sort of thing might in time happen there. yes, even at the cost of the road," and again his very taking smile illumined for a moment his worn face. "but that hope is gone now. a force will go up and demand shere ali. shere ali will not be given up. even were the demand not made, it would make no difference. he will not be many days in chiltistan before chiltistan is in arms. already i have sent a messenger up to the resident, telling him to come down." "and then?" asked linforth. ralston shrugged his shoulders. "more or less fighting, more or less loss, a few villages burnt, and the only inevitable end. we shall either take over the country or set up another prince." "set up another prince?" exclaimed linforth in a startled voice. "in that case--" ralston broke in upon him with a laugh. "oh, man of one idea, in any case the road will go on to the foot of the hindu kush. that's the price which chiltistan must pay as security for future peace--the military road through kohara to the foot of the hindu kush." linforth's face cleared, and he said cheerfully: "it's strange that shere ali doesn't realise that himself." the cheerfulness of his voice, as much as his words, caused ralston to stop and turn upon his companion in a moment of exasperation. "perhaps he does." he exclaimed, and then he proceeded to pay a tribute to the young prince of chiltistan which took linforth fairly by surprise. "don't you understand--you who know him, you who grew up with him, you who were his friend? he's a man. i know these hill-people, and like every other englishman who has served among them, i love them--knowing their faults. shere ali has the faults of the pathan, or some of them. he has their vanity; he has, if you like, their fanaticism. but he's a man. he's flattered and petted like a lap-dog, he's played with like a toy. well, he's neither a lap-dog nor a toy, and he takes the flattery and the petting seriously. he thinks it's _meant_, and he behaves accordingly. what, then? the toy is thrown down on the ground, the lap-dog is kicked into the corner. but he's not a lap-dog, he's not a toy. he's a man. he has a man's resentments, a man's wounded heart, a man's determination not to submit to flattery one moment and humiliation the next. so he strikes. he tries to take the white, soft, pretty thing which has been dangled before his eyes and snatched away--he tries to take her by force and fails. he goes back to his own people, and strikes. do you blame him? would you rather he sat down and grumbled and bragged of his successes, and took to drink, as more than one down south has done? perhaps so. it would be more comfortable if he did. but which of the pictures do you admire? which of the two is the better man? for me, the man who strikes--even if i have to go up into his country and exact the penalty afterwards. shere ali is one of the best of the princes. but he has been badly treated and so he must suffer." ralston repeated his conclusion with a savage irony. "that's the whole truth. he's one of the best of them. therefore he doesn't take bad treatment with a servile gratitude. therefore he must suffer still more. but the fault in the beginning was not his." thus it fell to ralston to explain, twenty-six years later, the saying of a long-forgotten political officer which had seemed so dark to colonel dewes when it was uttered in the little fort in chiltistan. there was a special danger for the best in the upbringing of the indian princes in england. linforth flushed as he listened to the tirade, but he made no answer. ralston looked at him keenly, wondering with a queer amusement whether he had not blunted the keen edge of that tool which he was keeping at his side because he foresaw the need of it. but there was no sign of any softening upon linforth's face. he could be hard, but on the other hand, when he gave his faith he gave it without reserve. almost every word which ralston had spoken had seemed to him an aspersion upon violet oliver. he said nothing, for he had learned to keep silence. but his anger was hotter than ever against shere ali, since but for shere ali the aspersions would never have been cast. chapter xxxi an old tomb and a new shrine the messenger whom ralston sent with a sealed letter to the resident at kohara left peshawur in the afternoon and travelled up the road by way of dir and the lowari pass. he travelled quickly, spending little of his time at the rest-houses on the way, and yet arrived no sooner on that account. it was not he at all who brought his news to kohara. neither letter nor messenger, indeed, ever reached the resident's door, although captain phillips learned something of the letter's contents a day before the messenger was due. a queer, and to use his own epithet, a dramatic stroke of fortune aided him at a very critical moment. it happened in this way. while captain phillips was smoking a cheroot as he sat over his correspondence in the morning, a servant from the great palace on the hill brought to him a letter in the khan's own handwriting. it was a flowery letter and invoked many blessings upon the khan's faithful friend and brother, and wound up with a single sentence, like a lady's postscript, in which the whole object of the letter was contained. would his excellency the captain, in spite of his overwhelming duties, of which the khan was well aware, since they all tended to the great benefit and prosperity of his state, be kind enough to pay a visit to the khan that day? "what's the old rascal up to now?" thought captain phillips. he replied, with less ornament and fewer flourishes, that he would come after breakfast; and mounting his horse at the appointed time he rode down through the wide street of kohara and up the hill at the end, on the terraced slopes of which climbed the gardens and mud walls of the palace. he was led at once into the big reception-room with the painted walls and the silver-gilt chairs, where the khan had once received his son with a loaded rifle across his knees. the khan was now seated with his courtiers about him, and was carving the rind of a pomegranate into patterns, like a man with his thoughts far away. but he welcomed captain phillips with alacrity and at once dismissed his court. captain phillips settled down patiently in his chair. he was well aware of the course the interview would take. the khan would talk away without any apparent aim for an hour or two hours, passing carelessly from subject to subject, and then suddenly the important question would be asked, the important subject mooted. on this occasion, however, the khan came with unusual rapidity to his point. a few inquiries as to the colonel's health, a short oration on the backwardness of the crops, a lengthier one upon his fidelity to and friendship for the british government and the miserable return ever made to him for it, and then came a question ludicrously inapposite and put with the solemn _naivet,_ of a child. "i suppose you know," said the khan, tugging at his great grey beard, "that my grandfather married a fairy for one of his wives?" it was on the strength of such abrupt questions that strangers were apt to think that the khan had fallen into his second childhood before his time. but the resident knew his man. he was aware that the khan was watching for his answer. he sat up in his chair and answered politely: "so, your highness, i have heard." "yes, it is true," continued the khan. "moreover, the fairy bore him a daughter who is still alive, though very old." "so there is still a fairy in the family," replied captain phillips pleasantly, while he wondered what in the world the khan was driving at. "yes, indeed, i know that. for only a week ago i was asked by a poor man up the valley to secure your highness's intercession. it seems that he is much plagued by a fairy who has taken possession of his house, and since your highness is related to the fairies, he would be very grateful if you would persuade his fairy to go away." "i know," said the khan gravely. "the case has already been brought to me. the fellow _will_ open closed boxes in his house, and the fairy resents it." "then your highness has exorcised the fairy?" "no; i have forbidden him to open boxes in his house," said the khan; and then, with a smile, "but it was not of him we were speaking, but of the fairy in my family." he leaned forward and his voice shook. "she sends me warnings, captain sahib. two nights ago, by the flat stone where the fairies dance, she heard them--the voices of an innumerable multitude in the air talking the chilti tongue--talking of trouble to come in the near days." he spoke with burning eyes fixed upon the resident and with his fingers playing nervously in and out among the hairs of his beard. whether the khan really believed the story of the fairies--there is nothing more usual than a belief in fairies in the countries bordered by the snow-peaks of the hindu kush--or whether he used the story as a blind to conceal the real source of his fear, the resident could not decide. but what he did know was this: the khan of chiltistan was desperately afraid. a whole programme of reform was sketched out for the captain's hearing. "i have been a good friend to the english, captain sahib. i have kept my mullahs and my people quiet all these years. there are things which might be better, as your excellency has courteously pointed out to me, and the words have never been forgotten. the taxes no doubt are very burdensome, and it may be the caravans from bokhara and central asia should pay less to the treasury as they pass through chiltistan, and perhaps i do unjustly in buying what i want from them at my own price." thus he delicately described the system of barefaced robbery which he practised on the traders who passed southwards to india through chiltistan. "but these things can be altered. moreover," and here he spoke with an air of distinguished virtue, "i propose to sell no more of my people into slavery--no, and to give none of them, not even the youngest, as presents to my friends. it is quite true of course that the wood which i sell to the merchants of peshawur is cut and brought down by forced labour, but next year i am thinking of paying. i have been a good friend to the english all my life, colonel sahib." captain phillips had heard promises of the kind before and accounted them at their true value. but he had never heard them delivered with so earnest a protestation. and he rode away from the palace with the disturbing conviction that there was something new in the wind of which he did not know. he rode up the valley, pondering what that something new might be. hillside and plain were ablaze with autumn colours. the fruit in the orchards--peaches, apples, and grapes--was ripe, and on the river bank the gold of the willows glowed among thickets of red rose. high up on the hills, field rose above field, supported by stone walls. in the bosom of the valley groups of great walnut-trees marked where the villages stood. captain phillips rode through the villages. everywhere he was met with smiling faces and courteous salutes; but he drew no comfort from them. the chilti would smile pleasantly while he was fitting his knife in under your fifth rib. only once did phillips receive a hint that something was amiss, but the hint was so elusive that it did no more than quicken his uneasiness. he was riding over grass, and came silently upon a man whose back was turned to him. "so, dadu," he said quietly, "you must not open closed boxes any more in your house." the man jumped round. he was not merely surprised, he was startled. "your excellency rides up the valley?" he cried, and almost he barred the way. "why not, dadu?" dadu's face became impassive. "it is as your excellency wills. it is a good day for a ride," said dadu; and captain phillips rode on. it might of course have been that the man had been startled merely by the unexpected voice behind him; and the question which had leaped from his mouth might have meant nothing at all. captain phillips turned round in his saddle. dadu was still standing where he had left him, and was following the rider with his eyes. "i wonder if there is anything up the valley which i ought to know about?" captain phillips said to himself, and he rode forward now with a watchful eye. the hills began to close in; the bosom of the valley to narrow. nine miles from kohara it became a defile through which the river roared between low precipitous cliffs. above the cliffs on each side a level of stony ground, which here and there had been cleared and cultivated, stretched to the mountain walls. at one point a great fan of débris spread out from a side valley. across this fan the track mounted, and then once more the valley widened out. on the river's edge a roofless ruin of a building, with a garden run wild at one end of it, stood apart. a few hundred yards beyond there was a village buried among bushes, and then a deep nullah cut clean across the valley. it was a lonely and a desolate spot. yet captain phillips never rode across the fan of shale and came within sight of it but his imagination began to people it with living figures and a surge of wild events. he reined in his horse as he came to the brow of the hill, and sat for a moment looking downwards. then he rode very quickly a few yards down the hill. before, he and his horse had been standing out clear against the sky. now, against the background of grey and brown he would be an unnoticeable figure. he halted again, but this time his eyes, instead of roving over the valley, were fixed intently upon one particular spot. under the wall of the great ruined building he had seen something move. he made sure now of what the something was. there were half a dozen horses--no, seven--seven horses tethered apart from each other, and not a syce for any one of them. captain phillips felt his blood quicken. the khan's protestations and dadu's startled question, had primed him to expectation. cautiously he rode down into the valley, and suspense grew upon him as he rode. it was a still, windless day, and noise carried far. the only sound he heard was the sound of the stones rattling under the hoofs of his horse. but in a little while he reached turf and level ground and so rode forward in silence. when he was within a couple of hundred yards of the ruin he halted and tied up his horse in a grove of trees. thence he walked across an open space, passed beneath the remnant of a gateway into a court and, crossing the court, threaded his way through a network of narrow alleys between crumbling mud walls. as he advanced the sound of a voice reached his ears--a deep monotonous voice, which spoke with a kind of rhythm. the words phillips could not distinguish, but there was no need that he should. the intonation, the flow of the sentences, told him clearly enough that somewhere beyond was a man praying. and then he stopped, for other voices broke suddenly in with loud and, as it seemed to phillips, with fierce appeals. but the appeals died away, the one voice again took up the prayer, and again phillips stepped forward. at the end of the alley he came to a doorway in a high wall. there was no door. he stood on the threshold of the doorway and looked in. he looked into a court open to the sky, and the seven horses and the monotonous voice were explained to him. there were seven young men--nobles of chiltistan, as phillips knew from their _chogas_ of velvet and chinese silk--gathered in the court. they were kneeling with their backs towards him and the doorway, so that not one of them had noticed his approach. they were facing a small rough-hewn obelisk of stone which stood at the head of a low mound of earth at the far end of the court. six of them were grouped in a sort of semi-circle, and the seventh, a man clad from head to foot in green robes, knelt a little in advance and alone. but from none of the seven nobles did the voice proceed. in front of them all knelt an old man in the brown homespun of the people. phillips, from the doorway, could see his great beard wagging as he prayed, and knew him for one of the incendiary priests of chiltistan. the prayer was one with which phillips was familiar: the day was at hand; the infidels would be scattered as chaff; the god of mahommed was besought to send the innumerable company of his angels and to make his faithful people invulnerable to wounds. phillips could have gone on with the prayer himself, had the mullah failed. but it was not the prayer which held him rooted to the spot, but the setting of the prayer. the scene was in itself strange and significant enough. these seven gaily robed youths assembled secretly in a lonely and desolate ruin nine miles from kohara had come thither not merely for prayer. the prayer would be but the seal upon a compact, the blessing upon an undertaking where life and death were the issues. but there was something more; and that something more gave to the scene in phillips' eyes a very startling irony. he knew well how quickly in these countries the actual record of events is confused, and how quickly any tomb, or any monument becomes a shrine before which "the faithful" will bow and make their prayer. but that here of all places, and before this tomb of all tombs, the god of the mahommedans should be invoked--this was life turning playwright with a vengeance. it needed just one more detail to complete the picture and the next moment that detail was provided. for phillips moved. his boot rattled upon a loose stone. the prayer ceased, the worshippers rose abruptly to their feet and turned as one man towards the doorway. phillips saw, face to face, the youth robed in green, who had knelt at the head of his companions. it was shere ali, the prince of chiltistan. phillips advanced at once into the centre of the group. he was wise enough not to hold out his hand lest it should be refused. but he spoke as though he had taken leave of shere ali only yesterday. "so your highness has returned?" "yes," replied shere ali, and he spoke in the same indifferent tone. but both men knew, however unconcernedly they spoke, that shere ali's return was to be momentous in the history of chiltistan. shere ali's father knew it too, that troubled man in the palace above kohara. "when did you reach kohara?" phillips asked. "i have not yet been to kohara. i ride down from here this afternoon." shere ali smiled as he spoke, and the smile said more than the words. there was a challenge, a defiance in it, which were unmistakable. but phillips chose to interpret the words quite simply. "shall we go together?" he said, and then he looked towards the doorway. the others had gathered there, the six young men and the priest. they were armed and more than one had his hand ready upon his swordhilt. "but you have friends, i see," he added grimly. he began to wonder whether he would himself ride back to kohara that afternoon. "yes," replied shere ali quietly, "i have friends in chiltistan," and he laid a stress upon the name of his country, as though he wished to show to captain phillips that he recognised no friends outside its borders. again phillips' thoughts were swept to the irony, the tragic irony of the scene in which he now was called to play a part. "does your highness know this spot?" he asked suddenly. then he pointed to the tomb and the rude obelisk. "does your highness know whose bones are laid at the foot of that monument?" shere ali shrugged his shoulders. "within these walls, in one of these roofless rooms, you were born," said phillips, "and that grave before which you prayed is the grave of a man named luffe, who defended this fort in those days." "it is not," replied shere ali. "it is the tomb of a saint," and he called to the mullah for corroboration of his words. "it is the tomb of luffe. he fell in this courtyard, struck down not by a bullet, but by overwork and the strain of the siege. i know. i have the story from an old soldier whom i met in cashmere this summer and who served here under luffe. luffe fell in this court, and when he died was buried here." shere ali, in spite of himself was beginning to listen to captain phillips' words. "who was the soldier?" he asked. "colonel dewes." shere ali nodded his head as though he had expected the name. then he said as he turned away: "what is luffe to me? what should i know of luffe?" "this," said phillips, and he spoke in so arresting a voice that shere ali turned again to listen to him. "when luffe was dying, he uttered an appeal--he bequeathed it to india, as his last service; and the appeal was that you should not be sent to england, that neither eton nor oxford should know you, that you should remain in your own country." the resident had shere ali's attention now. "he said that?" cried the prince in a startled voice. then he pointed his finger to the grave. "the man lying there said that?" "yes." "and no one listened, i suppose?" said shere ali bitterly. "or listened too late," said phillips. "like dewes, who only since he met you in calcutta one day upon the racecourse, seems dimly to have understood the words the dead man spoke." shere ali was silent. he stood looking at the grave and the obelisk with a gentler face than he had shown before. "why did he not wish it?" he asked at length. "he said that it would mean unhappiness for you; that it might mean ruin for chiltistan." "did he say that?" said shere ali slowly, and there was something of awe in his voice. then he recovered himself and cried defiantly. "yet in one point he was wrong. it will not mean ruin for chiltistan." so far he had spoken in english. now he turned quickly towards his friends and spoke in his own tongue. "it is time. we will go," and to captain phillips he said, "you shall ride back with me to kohara. i will leave you at the doorway of the residency." and these words, too, he spoke in his own tongue. there rose a clamour among the seven who waited in the doorway, and loudest of all rose the voice of the mullah, protesting against shere ali's promise. "my word is given," said the prince, and he turned with a smile to captain phillips. "in memory of my friend,"--he pointed to the grave--"for it seems i had a friend once amongst the white people. in memory of my friend, i give you your life." chapter xxxii surprises for captain phillips the young nobles ceased from their outcry. they went sullenly out and mounted their horses under the ruined wall of the old fort. but as they mounted they whispered together with quick glances towards captain phillips. the resident intercepted the glance and had little doubt as to the subject of the whispering. "i am in the deuce of a tight place," he reflected; "it's seven to one against my ever reaching kohara, and the one's a doubtful quantity." he looked at shere ali, who seemed quite undisturbed by the prospect of mutiny amongst his followers. his face had hardened a little. that was all. "and your horse?" shere ali asked. captain phillips pointed towards the clump of trees where he had tied it up. "will you fetch it?" said shere ali, and as phillips walked off, he turned towards the nobles and the old mullah who stood amongst them. phillips heard his voice, as he began to speak, and was surprised by a masterful quiet ring in it. "the doubtful quantity seems to have grown into a man," he thought, and the thought gained strength when he rode his horse back from the clump of trees towards the group. shere ali met him gravely. "you will ride on my right hand," he said. "you need have no fear." the seven nobles clustered behind, and the party rode at a walk over the fan of shale and through the defile into the broad valley of kohara. shere ali did not speak. he rode on with a set and brooding face, and the resident fell once more to pondering the queer scene of which he had been the witness. even at that moment when his life was in the balance his thoughts would play with it, so complete a piece of artistry it seemed. there was the tomb itself--an earth grave and a rough obelisk without so much as a name or a date upon it set up at its head by some past resident at kohara. it was appropriate and seemly to the man without friends, or family, or wife, but to whom the frontier had been all these. he would have wished for no more himself, since vanity had played so small a part in his career. he had been the great force upon the frontier, keeping the queen's peace by the strength of his character and the sagacity of his mind. yet before his grave, invoking him as an unknown saint, the nobles of chiltistan had knelt to pray for the destruction of such as he and the overthrow of the power which he had lived to represent. and all because his advice had been neglected. captain phillips was roused out of his reflections as the cavalcade approached a village. for out of that village and from the fields about it, the men, armed for the most part with good rifles, poured towards them with cries of homage. they joined the cavalcade, marched with it past their homes, and did not turn back. only the women and the children were left behind. and at the next village and at the next the same thing happened. the cavalcade began to swell into a small army, an army of men well equipped for war; and at the head of the gathering force shere ali rode with an impassive face, never speaking but to check a man from time to time who brandished a weapon at the resident. "your highness has counted the cost?" captain phillips asked. "there will be but the one end to it." shere ali turned to the resident, and though his face did not change from its brooding calm, a fire burned darkly in his eyes. "from afghanistan to thibet the frontier will rise," he said proudly. captain phillips shook his head. "from afghanistan to thibet the frontier will wait, as it always waits. it will wait to see what happens in chiltistan." but though he spoke boldly, he had little comfort from his thoughts. the rising had been well concerted. those who flocked to shere ali were not only the villagers of the kohara valley. there were shepherds from the hills, wild men from the far corners of chiltistan. already the small army could be counted with the hundred for its unit. to-morrow the hundred would be a thousand. moreover, for once in a way there was no divided counsel. jealousy and intrigue were not, it seemed, to do their usual work in chiltistan. there was only one master, and he of unquestioned authority. else how came it that captain phillips rode amidst that great and frenzied throng, unhurt and almost unthreatened? down the valley the roof-tops of kohara began to show amongst the trees. the high palace on the hill with its latticed windows bulked against the evening sky. the sound of many drums was borne to the resident's ears. the residency stood a mile and a half from the town in a great garden. a high wall enclosed it, but it was a house, not a fortress; and phillips had at his command but a few levies to defend it. one of them stood by the gate. he kept his ground as shere ali and his force approached. the only movement which he made was to stand at attention, and as shere ali halted at the entrance, he saluted. but it was captain phillips whom he saluted, and not the prince of chiltistan. shere ali spoke with the same quiet note of confident authority which had surprised captain phillips before, to the seven nobles at his back. then he turned to the resident. "i will ride with you to your door," he said. the two men passed alone through the gateway and along a broad path which divided the forecourt to the steps of the house. and not a man of all that crowd which followed shere ali to kohara pressed in behind them. captain phillips looked back as much in surprise as in relief. but there was no surprise on the face of shere ali. he, it was plain, expected obedience. "upon my word," cried phillips in a burst of admiration, "you have got your fellows well in hand." "i?" said shere ali. "i am nothing. what could i do who a week ago was still a stranger to my people? i am a voice, nothing more. but the god of my people speaks through me"; and as he spoke these last words, his voice suddenly rose to a shrill trembling note, his face suddenly quivered with excitement. captain phillips stared. "the man's in earnest," he muttered to himself. "he actually believes it." it was the second time that captain phillips had been surprised within five minutes, and on this occasion the surprise came upon him with a shock. how it had come about--that was all dark to captain phillips. but the result was clear. the few words spoken as they had been spoken revealed the fact. the veneer of shere ali's english training had gone. shere ali had reverted. his own people had claimed him. "and i guessed nothing of this," the resident reflected bitterly. signs of trouble he had noticed in abundance, but this one crucial fact which made trouble a certain and unavoidable thing--that had utterly escaped him. his thoughts went back to the nameless tomb in the courtyard of the fort. "luffe would have known," he thought in a very bitter humility. "nay, he did know. he foresaw." there was yet a third surprise in store for captain phillips. as the two men rode up the broad path, he had noticed that the door of the house was standing open, as it usually did. now, however, he saw it swing to--very slowly, very noiselessly. he was surprised, for he knew the door to be a strong heavy door of walnut wood, not likely to swing to even in a wind. and there was no wind. besides, if it had swung to of its own accord, it would have slammed. its weight would have made it slam. whereas it was not quite closed. as he reined in his horse at the steps, he saw that there was a chink between the door and the door-post. "there's someone behind that door," he said to himself, and he glanced quietly at shere ali. it would be quite in keeping with the chilti character for shere ali politely to escort him home knowing well that an assassin waited behind the door; and it was with a smile of some irony that he listened to shere ali taking his leave. "you will be safe, so long as you stay within your grounds. i will place a guard about the house. i do not make war against my country's guests. and in a few days i will send an escort and set you and your attendants free from hurt beyond our borders. but"--and his voice lost its courtesy--"take care you admit no one, and give shelter to no one." the menace of shere ali's tone roused captain phillips. "i take no orders from your highness," he said firmly. "your highness may not have noticed that," and he pointed upwards to where on a high flagstaff in front of the house the english flag hung against the pole. "i give your excellency no orders," replied shere ali. "but on the other hand i give you a warning. shelter so much as one man and that flag will not save you. i should not be able to hold in my men." shere ali turned and rode back to the gates. captain phillips dismounted, and calling forward a reluctant groom, gave him his horse. then he suddenly flung back the door. but there was no resistance. the door swung in and clattered against the wall. phillips looked into the hall, but the dusk was gathering in the garden. he looked into a place of twilight and shadows. he grasped his riding-crop a little more firmly in his hand and strode through the doorway. in a dark corner something moved. "ah! would you!" cried captain phillips, turning sharply on the instant. he raised his crop above his head and then a crouching figure fell at his feet and embraced his knees; and a trembling voice of fear cried: "save me! your excellency will not give me up! i have been a good friend to the english!" for the second time the khan of chiltistan had sought refuge from his own people. captain phillips looked round. "hush," he whispered in a startled voice. "let me shut the door!" chapter xxxiii in the residency captain phillips with a sharp gesture ordered the khan back to the shadowy corner from which he had sprung out. then he shut the door and, with the shutting of the door, the darkness deepened suddenly in the hall. he shot the bolt and put up the chain. it rattled in his ears with a startling loudness. then he stood without speech or movement. outside he heard shere ali's voice ring clear, and the army of tribesmen clattered past towards the town. the rattle of their weapons, the hum of their voices diminished. captain phillips took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. he had the sensations of a man reprieved. "but it's only a reprieve," he thought. "there will be no commutation." he turned again towards the dark corner. "how did you come?" he asked in a low voice. "by the orchard at the back of the house." "did no one see you?" "i hid in the orchard until i saw the red coat of one of your servants. i called to him and he let me in secretly. but no one else saw me." "no one in the city?" "i came barefoot in a rough cloak with the hood drawn over my face," said the khan. "no one paid any heed to me. there was much noise and running to and fro, and polishing of weapons. i crept out into the hill-side at the back and so came down into your orchard." captain phillips shrugged his shoulders. he opened a door and led the khan into a room which looked out upon the orchard. "well, we will do what we can," he said, "but it's very little. they will guess immediately that you are here of course." "once before--" faltered the khan, and phillips broke in upon him impatiently. "yes, once before. but it's not the same thing. this is a house, not a fort, and i have only a handful of men to defend it; and i am not luffe." then his voice sharpened. "why didn't you listen to him? all this is your fault--yours and dewes', who didn't understand, and held his tongue." the khan was mystified by the words, but phillips did not take the trouble to explain. he knew something of the chilti character. they would have put up with the taxes, with the selling into slavery, with all the other abominations of the khan's rule. they would have listened to the exhortations of the mullahs without anything coming of it, so long as no leader appeared. they were great accepters of facts as they were. let the brother or son or nephew murder the ruling khan and sit in his place, they accepted his rule without any struggles of conscience. but let a man rise to lead them, then they would bethink them of the exhortations of their priests and of their own particular sufferings and flock to his standard. and the man had risen--just because twenty-five years ago the khan would not listen to luffe. "it's too late, however, for explanations," he said, and he clapped his hands together for a servant. in a few moments the light of a lamp gleamed in the hall through the doorway. phillips went quickly out of the room, closing the door behind him. "fasten the shutters first," he said to the servant in the hall. "then bring the lamp in." the servant obeyed, but when he brought the lamp into the room, and saw the khan of chiltistan standing at the table with no more dignity of dress or, indeed, of bearing than any beggar in the kingdom, he nearly let the lamp fall. "his highness will stay in this house," said phillips, "but his presence must not be spoken of. will you tell poulteney sahib that i would like to speak to him?" the servant bowed his forehead to the palms of his hand and turned away upon his errand. but poulteney sahib was already at the door. he was the subaltern in command of the half company of sikhs which served captain phillips for an escort and a guard. "you have heard the news i suppose," said phillips. "yes," replied poulteney. he was a wiry dark youth, with a little black moustache and a brisk manner of speech. "i was out on the hill after chikkor when my shikari saw shere ali and his crowd coming down the valley. he knew all about it and gave me a general idea of the situation. it seems the whole country's rising. i should have been here before, but it seemed advisable to wait until it was dark. i crawled in between a couple of guard-posts. there is already a watch kept on the house," and then he stopped abruptly. he had caught sight of the khan in the background. he had much ado not to whistle in his surprise. but he refrained and merely bowed. "it seems to be a complicated situation," he said to captain phillips. "does shere ali know?" and he glanced towards the khan. "not yet," replied phillips grimly. "but i don't think it will be long before he does." "and then there will be ructions," poulteney remarked softly. "yes, there will be ructions of a highly-coloured and interesting description." "we must do what we can," said phillips with a shrug of his shoulders. "it isn't much, of course," and for the next two hours the twenty-five sikhs were kept busy. the doors were barricaded, the shutters closed upon the windows and loopholed, and provisions were brought in from the outhouses. "it is lucky we had sense enough to lay in a store of food," said phillips. the sikhs were divided into watches and given their appointed places. cartridges were doled out to them, and the rest of the ammunition was placed in a stone cellar. "that's all that we can do," said phillips. "so we may as well dine." they dined with the khan, speaking little and with ears on the alert, in a room at the back of the house. at any moment the summons might come to surrender the khan. they waited for a blow upon the door, the sound of the firing of a rifle or a loud voice calling upon them from the darkness. but all they heard was the interminable babble of the khan, as he sat at the table shivering with fear and unable to eat a morsel of his food. "you won't give me up!... i have been a good friend to the english.... all my life i have been a good friend to the english." "we will do what we can," said phillips, and he rose from the table and went up on to the roof. he lay down behind the low parapet and looked over towards the town. the house was a poor place to defend. at the back beyond the orchard the hill-side rose and commanded the roof. on the east of the house a stream ran by to the great river in the centre of the valley. but the bank of the stream was a steep slippery bank of clay, and less than a hundred yards down a small water-mill on the opposite side overlooked it. the chiltis had only to station a few riflemen in the water-mill and not a man would be able to climb down that bank and fetch water for the residency. on the west stood the stables and the storehouses, and the barracks of the sikhs, a square of buildings which would afford fine cover for an attacking force. only in front within the walls of the forecourt was there any open space which the house commanded. it was certainly a difficult--nay, a hopeless--place to defend. but captain phillips, as he lay behind the parapet, began to be puzzled. why did not the attack begin? he looked over to the city. it was a place of tossing lights and wild clamours. the noise of it was carried on the night wind to phillips' ears. but about the residency there was quietude and darkness. here and there a red fire glowed where the guards were posted; now and then a shower of sparks leaped up into the air as a fresh log was thrown upon the ashes; and a bright flame would glisten on the barrel of a rifle and make ruddy the dark faces of the watchmen. but there were no preparations for an attack. phillips looked across the city. on the hill the palace was alive with moving lights--lights that flashed from room to room as though men searched hurriedly. "surely they must already have guessed," he murmured to himself. the moving lights in the high windows of the palace held his eyes--so swiftly they flitted from room to room, so frenzied seemed the hurry of the search--and then to his astonishment one after another they began to die out. it could not be that the searchers were content with the failure of their search, that the palace was composing itself to sleep. in the city the clamour had died down; little by little it sank to darkness. there came a freshness in the air. though there were many hours still before daylight, the night drew on towards morning. what could it mean, he wondered? why was the residency left in peace? and as he wondered, he heard a scuffling noise upon the roof behind him. he turned his head and poulteney crawled to his side. "will you come down?" the subaltern asked; "i don't know what to do." phillips at once crept back to the trap-door. the two men descended, and poulteney led the way into the little room at the back of the house where they had dined. there was no longer a light in the room; and they stood for awhile in the darkness listening. "where is the khan?" whispered phillips. "i fixed up one of the cellars for him," poulteney replied in the same tone, and as he ended there came suddenly a rattle of gravel upon the shutter of the window. it was thrown cautiously, but even so it startled phillips almost into a cry. "that's it," whispered poulteney. "there is someone in the orchard. that's the third time the gravel has rattled on the shutter. what shall i do?" "have you got your revolver?" asked phillips. "yes." "then stand by." phillips carefully and noiselessly opened the shutter for an inch or two. "who's that?" he asked in a low voice; he asked the question in pushtu, and in pushtu a voice no louder than his own replied: "i want to speak to poulteney sahib." a startled exclamation broke from the subaltern. "it's my shikari," he said, and thrusting open the shutter he leaned out. "well, what news do you bring?" he asked; and at the answer captain phillips for the first time since he had entered into his twilit hall had a throb of hope. the expeditionary troops from nowshera, advancing by forced marches, were already close to the borders of chiltistan. news had been brought to the palace that evening. shere ali had started with every man he could collect to take up the position where he meant to give battle. "i must hurry or i shall be late," said the shikari, and he crawled away through the orchard. phillips closed the shutter again and lit the lamp. the news seemed too good to be true. but the morning broke over a city of women and old men. only the watchmen remained at their posts about the residency grounds. chapter xxxiv one of the little wars the campaign which shere ali directed on the borders of chiltistan is now matter of history, and may be read of, by whoso wills, in the blue-books and despatches of the time. those documents, with their paragraphs and diaries and bare records of facts, have a dry-as-dust look about them which their contents very often belie. and the reader will not rise from the story of this little war without carrying away an impression of wild fury and reckless valour which will long retain its colours in his mind. moreover, there was more than fury to distinguish it. shere ali turned against his enemies the lessons which they had taught him; and a military skill was displayed which delayed the result and thereby endangered the position of the british troops. for though at the first the neighbouring tribes and states, the little village republics which abound in those parts, waited upon the event as phillips had foretold, nevertheless as the days passed, and the event still hung in the balance, they took heart of grace and gathered behind the troops to destroy their communications and cut off their supplies. dick linforth wrote three letters to his mother, who was living over again the suspense and terror which had fallen to her lot a quarter of a century ago. the first letter was brought to the house under the sussex downs at twilight on an evening of late autumn, and as she recognized the writing for her son's a sudden weakness overcame her, and her hand so shook that she could hardly tear off the envelope. "i am unhurt," he wrote at the beginning of the letter, and tears of gratitude ran down her cheeks as she read the words. "shere ali," he continued, "occupied a traditional position of defence in a narrow valley. the kohara river ran between steep cliffs through the bed of the valley, and, as usual, above the cliffs on each side there were cultivated maidans or plateaus. over the right-hand maidan, the road--_our_ road--ran to a fortified village. behind the village, a deep gorge, or nullah, as we call them in these parts, descending from a side glacier high up at the back of the hills on our right, cut clean across the valley, like a great gash. the sides of the nullah were extraordinarily precipitous, and on the edge furthest from us stone sangars were already built as a second line of defence. shere ali occupied the village in front of the nullah, and we encamped six miles down the valley, meaning to attack in the morning. but the chiltis abandoned their traditional method of fighting behind walls and standing on the defence. a shot rang out on the outskirts of our camp at three o'clock in the morning, and in a moment they were upon us. it was reckoned that there were fifteen thousand of them engaged from first to last in this battle, whereas we were under two thousand combatants. we had seven hundred of the imperial service troops, four companies of gurkhas, three hundred men of the punjab infantry, three companies of the oxfordshires, besides cavalry, mountain batteries and irregulars. the attack was unexpected. we bestrode the road, but shere ali brought his men in by an old disused buddhist road, running over the hills on our right hand, and in the darkness he forced his way through our lines into a little village in the heart of our position. he seized the bazaar and held it all that day, a few houses built of stone and with stones upon the roof which made them proof against our shells. meanwhile the slopes on both sides of the valley were thronged with chiltis. they were armed with jezails and good rifles stolen from our troops, and they had some old cannon--sher bachas as they are called. altogether they caused us great loss, and towards evening things began to look critical. they had fortified and barricaded the bazaar, and kept up a constant fire from it. at last a sapper named manders, with half a dozen gurkhas behind him, ran across the open space, and while the gurkhas shot through the loop holes and kept the fire down, manders fixed his gun cotton at the bottom of the door and lighted the fuse. he was shot twice, once in the leg, once in the shoulder, but he managed to crawl along the wall of the houses out of reach of the explosion, and the door was blown in. we drove them out of that house and finally cleared the bazaar after some desperate fighting. shere ali was in the thick of it. he was dressed from head to foot in green, and was a conspicuous mark. but he escaped unhurt. the enemy drew off for the night, and we lay down as we were, dog-tired and with no fires to cook any food. they came on again in the morning, clouds of them, but we held them back with the gatlings and the maxims, and towards evening they again retired. to-day nothing has happened except the arrival of an envoy with an arrogant letter from shere ali, asking why we are straying inside the borders of his country 'like camels without nose-rings.' we shall show him why to-morrow. for to-morrow we attack the fort on the maidan. good-night, mother. i am very tired." and the last sentence took away from sybil linforth all the comfort the letter had brought her. dick had begun very well. he could have chosen no better words to meet her eyes at the commencement than those three, "i am unhurt." but he could have chosen no worse with which to end it. for they had ended the last letter which her husband had written to her, and her mind flew back to that day, and was filled with fore-bodings. but by the next mail came another letter in his hand, describing how the fort had been carried at the point of the bayonet, and shere ali driven back behind the nullah. this, however, was the strongest position of all, and the most difficult to force. the road which wound down behind the fort into the bed of the nullah and zigzagged up again on the far side had been broken away, the cliffs were unscaleable, and the stone sangars on the brow proof against shell and bullet. shere ali's force was disposed behind these stone breastworks right across the valley on both sides of the river. for three weeks the british force sat in front of this position, now trying to force it by the river-bed, now under cover of night trying to repair the broken road. but the chiltis kept good watch, and at the least sound of a pick in the gulf below avalanches of rocks and stones would be hurled down the cliff-sides. moreover, wherever the cliffs seemed likely to afford a means of ascent shere ali had directed the water-channels, and since the nights were frosty these points were draped with ice as smooth as glass. finally, however, mrs. linforth received a third letter which set her heart beating with pride, and for the moment turned all her fears to joy. "the war is over," it began. "the position was turned this morning. the chiltis are in full flight towards kohara with the cavalry upon their heels. they are throwing away their arms as they run, so that they may be thought not to have taken part in the fight. we follow to-morrow. it is not yet known whether shere ali is alive or dead and, mother, it was i--yes, i your son, who found out the road by which the position could be turned. i had crept up the nullah time after time towards the glacier at its head, thinking that if ever the position was to be taken it must be turned at that end. at last i thought that i had made out a way up the cliffs. there were some gullies and a ledge and then some rocks which seemed practicable, and which would lead one out on the brow of the cliff just between the two last sangars on the enemy's left. i didn't write a word about it to you before. i was so afraid i might be wrong. i got leave and used to creep up the nullah in the darkness to the tongue of the glacier with a little telescope and lie hidden all day behind a boulder working out the way, until darkness came again and allowed me to get back to camp. at last i felt sure, and i suggested the plan to ralston the political officer, who carried it to the general-in-command. the general himself came out with me, and i pointed out to him that the cliffs were so steep just beneath the sangars that we might take the men who garrisoned them by surprise, and that in any case they could not fire upon us, while sharpshooters from the cliffs on our side of the nullah could hinder the enemy from leaving their sangars and rolling down stones. i was given permission to try and a hundred gurkhas to try with. we left camp that night at half-past seven, and crept up the nullah with our blankets to the foot of the climb, and there we waited till the morning." the years of training to which linforth had bent himself with a definite aim began, in a word, to produce their results. in the early morning he led the way up the steep face of cliffs, and the gurkhas followed. one of the sharpshooters lying ready on the british side of the nullah said that they looked for all the world like a black train of ants. there were thirteen hundred feet of rock to be scaled, and for nine hundred of it they climbed undetected. then from a sangar lower down the line where the cliffs of the nullah curved outwards they were seen and the alarm was given. but for awhile the defenders of the threatened position did not understand the danger, and when they did a hail of bullets kept them in their shelters. linforth followed by his gurkhas was seen to reach the top of the cliffs and charge the sangars from the rear. the defenders were driven out and bayoneted, the sangars seized, and the chilti force enfolded while reinforcements clambered in support. "in three hours the position, which for eighteen days had resisted every attack and held the british force immobile, was in our hands. the way is clear in front of us. manders is recommended for the victoria cross. i believe that i am for the d.s.o. and above all the road goes on!" thus characteristically the letter was concluded. linforth wrote it with a flush of pride and a great joy. he had no doubt now that he would be appointed to the road. congratulations were showered upon him. down upon the plains, violet would hear of his achievement and perhaps claim proudly and joyfully some share in it herself. his heart leaped at the thought. the world was going very well for dick linforth that night. but that is only one side of the picture. linforth had no thoughts to spare upon shere ali. if he had had a thought, it would not have been one of pity. yet that unhappy prince, with despair and humiliation gnawing at his heart, broken now beyond all hope, stricken in his fortune as sorely as in his love, was fleeing with a few devoted followers through the darkness. he passed through kohara at daybreak of the second morning after the battle had been lost, and stopping only to change horses, galloped off to the north. two hours later captain phillips mounted on to the roof of his house and saw that the guards were no longer at their posts. chapter xxxv a letter from violet within a week the khan was back in his palace, the smoke rose once more above the roof-tops of kohara, and a smiling shikari presented himself before poulteney sahib in the grounds of the residency. "it was a good fight, sahib," he declared, grinning from ear to ear at the recollection of the battles. "a very good fight. we nearly won. i was in the bazaar all that day. yes, it was a near thing. we made a mistake about those cliffs, we did not think they could be climbed. it was a good fight, but it is over. now when will your excellency go shooting? i have heard of some markhor on the hill." poulteney sahib stared, speechless with indignation. then he burst out laughing: "you old rascal! you dare to come here and ask me to take you out when i go shooting, and only a week ago you were fighting against us." "but the fight is all over, excellency," the shikari explained. "now all is as it was and we will go out after the markhor." the idea that any ill-feeling could remain after so good a fight was one quite beyond the shikari's conception. "besides," he said, "it was i who threw the gravel at your excellency's windows." "why, that's true," said poulteney, and a window was thrown up behind him. ralston's head appeared at the window. "you had better take him," the chief commissioner said. "go out with him for a couple of days," and when the shikari had retired, he explained the reason of his advice. "that fellow will talk to you, and you might find out which way shere ali went. he wasn't among the dead, so far as we can discover, and i think he has been headed off from afghanistan. but it is important that we should know. so long as he is free, there will always be possibilities of trouble." in every direction, indeed, inquiries were being made. but for the moment shere ali had got clear away. meanwhile the khan waited anxiously in the palace to know what was going to happen to him; and he waited in some anxiety. it fell to ralston to inform him in durbar in the presence of his nobles and the chief officers of the british force that the government of india had determined to grant him a pension and a residence rent-free at jellundur. "the government of india will rule chiltistan," said ralston. "the word has been spoken." he went out from the palace and down the hill towards the place where the british forces were encamped just outside the city. when he came to the tents, he asked for mr. linforth, and was conducted through the lines. he found linforth sitting alone within his tent on his camp chair, and knew from his attitude that some evil thing had befallen him. linforth rose and offered ralston his chair, and as he did so a letter fluttered from his lap to the ground. there were two sheets, and linforth stooped quickly and picked them up. "don't move," said ralston. "this will do for me," and he sat down upon the edge of the camp bed. linforth sat down again on his chair and, as though he were almost unaware of ralston's presence, he smoothed out upon his knee the sheets of the letter. ralston could not but observe that they were crumpled and creased, as though they had been clenched and twisted in linforth's hand. then linforth raised his head, and suddenly thrust the letter into his pocket. "i beg your pardon," he said, and he spoke in a spiritless voice. "the post has just come in. i received a letter which--interested me. is there anything i can do?" "yes," said ralston. "we have sure news at last. shere ali has fled to the north. the opportunity you asked for at peshawur has come." linforth was silent for a little while. then he said slowly: "i see. i am to go in pursuit?" "yes!" it seemed that linforth's animosity against shere ali had died out. ralston watched him keenly from the bed. something had blunted the edge of the tool just when the time had come to use it. he threw an extra earnestness into his voice. "you have got to do more than go in pursuit of him. you have got to find him. you have got to bring him back as your prisoner." linforth nodded his head. "he has gone north, you say?" "yes. somewhere in central asia you will find him," and as linforth looked up startled, ralston continued calmly, "yes, it's a large order, i know, but it's not quite so large as it looks. the trade-routes, the only possible roads, are not so very many. no man can keep his comings and goings secret for very long in that country. you will soon get wind of him, and when you do you must never let him shake you off." "very well," said linforth, listlessly. "when do i start?" ralston plunged into the details of the expedition and told him the number of men he was to take with him. "you had better go first into chinese turkestan," he said. "there are a number of hindu merchants settled there--we will give you letters to them. some of them will be able to put you on the track of shere ali. you will have to round him up into a corner, i expect. and whatever you do, head him off russian territory. for we want him. we want him brought back into kohara. it will have a great effect on this country. it will show them that the sirkar can even pick a man out of the bazaars of central asia if he is rash enough to stand up against it in revolt." "that will be rather humiliating for shere ali," said linforth, after a short pause; and ralston sat up on the bed. what in the world, he wondered, could linforth have read in his letter, so to change him? he was actually sympathising with shere ali--he who had been hottest in his anger. "shere ali should have thought of that before," ralston said sharply, and he rose to his feet. "i rely upon you, linforth. it may take you a year. it may take you only a few months. but i rely upon you to bring shere ali back. and when you do," he added, with a smile, "there's the road waiting for you." but for once even that promise failed to stir dick linforth into enthusiasm. "i will do my best," he said quietly; and with that ralston left him. linforth sat down in his chair and once more took out the crumpled letter. he had walked with the gods of late, like one immune from earthly troubles. but his bad hour had been awaiting him. the letter was signed violet. he read it through again, and this was what he read: "this is the most difficult letter i have ever written. for i don't feel that i can make you understand at all just how things are. but somehow or other i do feel that this is going to hurt you frightfully, and, oh, dick, do forgive me. but if it will console or help at all, know this," and the words were underlined--as indeed were many words in violet oliver's letters--"that i never was good enough for you and you are well rid of me. i told you what i was, didn't i, dick?--a foolish lover of beautiful things. i tried to tell you the whole truth that last evening in the garden at peshawur, but you wouldn't let me, dick. and i must tell you now. i never sent the pearl necklace back, dick, although i told you that i did. i meant to send it back the night when i parted from the prince. i packed it up and put it ready. but--oh, dick, how can i tell you?--i had had an imitation one made just like it for safety, and in the night i got up and changed them. i couldn't part with it--i sent back the false one. now you know me, dick! but even now perhaps you don't. you remember the night in peshawur, the terrible night? mr. ralston wondered why, after complaining that my window was unbolted, i unbolted it myself. let me tell you, dick! mr. ralston said that 'theft' was the explanation. well, after i tried to tell you in the garden and you would not listen, i thought of what he had said. i thought it would be such an easy way out of it, if the thief should come in when i was asleep and steal the necklace and go away again before i woke up. i don't know how i brought myself to do it. it was you, dick! i had just left you, i was full of thoughts of you. so i slipped back the bolt myself. but you see, dick, what i am. although i wanted to send that necklace back, i couldn't, i _simply couldn't_, and it's the same with other things. i would be very, very glad to know that i could be happy with you, dear, and live your life. but i know that i couldn't, that it wouldn't last, that i should be longing for other things, foolish things and vanities. again, dick, you are well rid of a silly vain woman, and i wish you all happiness in that riddance. i never would have made you a good wife. nor will i make any man a good wife. i have not the sense of a dog. i know it, too! that's the sad part of it all, dick. forgive me, and thanks, a thousand thanks, for the honour you ever did me in wanting me at all." then followed--it seemed to linforth--a cry. "won't you forgive me, dear, dear dick!" and after these words her name, "violet." but even so the letter was not ended. a postscript was added: "i shall always think of the little dreams we had together of our future, and regret that i couldn't know them. that will always be in my mind. remember that! perhaps some day we will meet. oh, dick, good-bye!" dick sat with that letter before his eyes for a long while. violet had told him that he could be hard, but he was not hard to her. he could read between the lines, he understood the struggle which she had had with herself, he recognised the suffering which the letter had caused her. he was touched to pity, to a greater humanity. he had shown it in his forecasts of the humiliation which would befall shere ali when he was brought back a prisoner to kohara. linforth, in a word, had shed what was left of his boyhood. he had come to recognise that life was never all black and all white. he tore up the letter into tiny fragments. it required no answer. "everything is just wrong," he said to himself, gently, as he thought over shere ali, violet, himself. "everything is just not what it might have been." and a few days later he started northwards for turkestan. chapter xxxvi "the little less--" three years passed before linforth returned on leave to england. he landed at marseilles towards the end of september, travelled to his home, and a fortnight later came up from sussex for a few days to london. it was the beginning of the autumn season. people were returning to town. theatres were re-opening with new plays; and a fellow-officer, who had a couple of stalls for the first production of a comedy about which public curiosity was whetted, meeting linforth in the hall of his club, suggested that they should go together. "i shall be glad," said linforth. "i always go to the play with the keenest of pleasure. the tuning-up of the orchestra and the rising of the curtain are events to me. and, to be honest, i have never been to a first night before. let us do the thing handsomely and dine together before we go. it will be my last excitement in london for another three or four years, i expect." the two young men dined together accordingly at one of the great restaurants. linforth, fresh from the deep valleys of chiltistan, was elated by the lights, the neighbourhood of people delicately dressed, and the subdued throb of music from muted violins. "i am the little boy at the bright shop window," he said with a laugh, while his eyes wandered round the room. "i look in through the glass from the pavement outside, and--" his voice halted and stopped; and when he resumed he spoke without his former gaiety. indeed, the change of note was more perceptible than the brief pause. his friend conjectured that the words which linforth now used were not those which he had intended to speak a moment ago. "--and," he said slowly, "i wonder what sort of fairyland it is actually to live and breathe in?" while he spoke, his eyes were seeking an answer to his question, and seeking it in one particular quarter. a few tables away, and behind linforth's friend and a little to his right, sat violet oliver. she was with a party of six or eight people, of whom linforth took no note. he had eyes only for her. bitterness had long since ceased to colour his thoughts of violet oliver. and though he had not forgotten, there was no longer any living pain in his memories. so much had intervened since he had walked with her in the rose-garden at peshawur--so many new experiences, so much compulsion of hard endeavour. when his recollections went back to the rose-garden at peshawur, as at rare times they would, he was only conscious at the worst that his life was rather dull when tested by the high aspirations of his youth. there was less music in it than he had thought to hear. instead of swinging in a soldier's march to the sound of drums and bugles down the road, it walked sedately. to use his own phrase, everything was--_just not_. there was no more in it than that. and indeed at the first it was almost an effort for him to realise that between him and this woman whom he now actually saw, after three years, there had once existed a bond of passion. but, as he continued to look, the memories took substance, and he began to wonder whether in her fairyland it was "just not," too. she had what she had wanted--that was clear. a collar of pearls, fastened with a diamond bow, encircled her throat. a great diamond flashed upon her bosom. was she satisfied? did no memory of the short week during which she had longed to tread the road of fire and stones, the road of high endeavour, trouble her content? linforth was curious. she was not paying much heed to the talk about the table. she took no part in it, but sat with her head a little raised, her eyes dreamily fixed upon nothing in particular. but linforth remembered with a smile that there was no inference to be drawn from that not unusual attitude of hers. it did not follow that she was bored or filled with discontent. she might simply be oblivious. a remark made about her by some forgotten person who had asked a question and received no answer came back to linforth and called a smile to his face. "you might imagine that violet oliver is thinking of the angels. she is probably considering whether she should run upstairs and powder her nose." linforth began to look for other signs; and it seemed to him that the world had gone well with her. she had a kind of settled look, almost a sleekness, as though anxiety never came near to her pillow. she had married, surely, and married well. the jewels she wore were evidence, and linforth began to speculate which of the party was her husband. they were young people who were gathered at the table. in her liking for young people about her she had not changed. of the men no one was noticeable, but violet oliver, as he remembered, would hardly have chosen a noticeable man. she would have chosen someone with great wealth and no ambitions, one who was young enough to ask nothing more from the world than violet oliver, who would not, in a word, trouble her with a career. she might have chosen anyone of her companions. and then her eyes travelled round the room and met his. for a moment she gazed at him, not seeing him at all. in a moment or two consciousness came to her. her brows went up in astonishment. then she smiled and waved her hand to him across the room--gaily, without a trace of embarrassment, without even the colour rising to her cheeks. thus might one greet a casual friend of yesterday. linforth bethought him, with a sudden sting of bitterness which surprised him by its sharpness, of the postscript in the last of the few letters she had written to him. that letter was still vivid enough in his memories for him to be able to see the pages, to recognise the writing, and read the sentences. "i shall always think of the little dreams we had together of our future, and regret that i couldn't know them. that will always be in my mind. remember that!" how much of that postscript remained true, he wondered, after these three years. very little, it seemed. linforth fell to speculating, with an increasing interest, as to which of the men at her table she had mated with. was it the tall youth with the commonplace good looks opposite to her? linforth detected now a certain flashiness in his well grooming which he had not noticed before. or was it the fat insignificant young man three seats away from her? a rather gross young person, linforth thought him--the offspring of some provincial tradesman who had retired with a fortune and made a gentleman of his son. "well, no doubt he has the dibs," linforth found himself saying with an unexpected irritation, as he contemplated the possible husband. and his friend broke in upon his thoughts. "if you are going to eat any dinner, linforth, it might be as well to begin; we shall have to go very shortly." linforth fell to accordingly. his appetite was not impaired, he was happy to notice, but, on the whole, he wished he had not seen violet oliver. this was his last night in london. she might so easily have come to-morrow instead, when he would already have departed from the town. it was a pity. he did not look towards her table any more, but the moment her party rose he was nevertheless aware of its movement. he was conscious that she passed through the restaurant towards the lobby at no great distance from himself. he was aware, though he did not raise his head, that she was looking at him. five minutes afterwards the waiter brought to him a folded piece of paper. he opened it and read: "dick, won't you speak to me at all? i am waiting.--violet." linforth looked up at his friend. "there is someone i must go and speak to," he said. "i won't be five minutes." he rose from the table and walked out of the restaurant. his heart was beating rather fast, but it was surely curiosity which produced that effect. curiosity to know whether with her things were--just not, too. he passed across the hall and up the steps. on the top of the steps she was waiting for him. she had her cloak upon her shoulders, and in the background the gross young man waited for her without interposing--the very image of a docile husband. "dick," she said quickly, as she held out her hand to him, "i did so want to talk to you. i have to rush off to a theatre. so i sent in for you. why wouldn't you speak to me?" that he should have any reason to avoid her she seemed calmly and completely unconscious. and so unembarrassed was her manner that even with her voice in his ears and her face before him, delicate and pretty as of old, dick almost believed that never had he spoken of love to her, and never had she answered him. "you are married?" he asked. violet nodded her head. she did not, however, introduce her husband. she took no notice of him whatever. she did not mention her new name. "and you?" she asked. linforth laughed rather harshly. "no." perhaps the harshness of the laugh troubled her. her forehead puckered. she dropped her eyes from his face. "but you will," she said in a low voice. linforth did not answer, and in a moment or two she raised her head again. the trouble had gone from her face. she smiled brightly. "and the road?" she asked. she had just remembered it. she had almost an air of triumph in remembering it. all these old memories were so dim. but at the awkward difficult moment, by an inspiration she had remembered the great long-cherished aim of dick linforth's life. the road! dick wondered whether she remembered too that there had been a time when for a few days she had thought to have a share herself in the making of that road which was to leave india safe. "it goes on," he said quietly. "it has passed kohara. it has passed the fort where luffe died. but i beg your pardon. luffe belongs to the past, too, very much to the past--more even than i do." violet paid no heed to the sarcasm. she had not heard it. she was thinking of something else. it seemed that she had something to say, but found the utterance difficult. once or twice she looked up at dick linforth and looked down again and played with the fringe of her cloak. in the background the docile husband moved restlessly. "there's a question i should like to ask," she said quickly, and then stopped. linforth helped her out. "perhaps i can guess the question." "it's about--" she began, and linforth nodded his head. "shere ali?" he said. "yes," replied violet. linforth hesitated, looking at his companion. how much should he tell her, he asked himself? the whole truth? if he did, would it trouble her? he wondered. he had no wish to hurt her. he began warily: "after the campaign was over in chiltistan i was sent after him." "yes. i heard that before i left india," she replied. "i hunted him," and it seemed to linforth that she flinched. "there's no other word, i am afraid. i hunted him--for months, from the borders of tibet to the borders of russia. in the end i caught him." "i heard that, too," she said. "i came up with him one morning, in a desert of stones. he was with three of his followers. the only three who had been loyal to him. they had camped as best they could under the shelter of a boulder. it was very cold. they had no coverings and little food. the place was as desolate as you could imagine--a wilderness of boulders and stones stretching away to the round of the sky, level as the palm of your hand, with a ragged tree growing up here and there. if we had not come up with them that day i think they would have died." he spoke with his eyes upon violet, ready to modify his words at the first evidence of pain. she gave that evidence as he ended. she drew her cloak closer about her and shivered. "what did he say?" she asked. "to me? nothing. we spoke only formally. all the way back to india we behaved as strangers. it was easier for both of us. i brought him down through chiltistan and kohara into india. i brought him down--along the road which at eton we had planned to carry on together. down that road we came together--i the captor, he the prisoner." again violet flinched. "and where is he now?" she asked in a low voice. suddenly linforth turned round and looked down the steps, across the hall to the glass walls of the restaurant. "did he ever come here with you?" he asked. "did he ever dine with you there amongst the lights and the merry-makers and the music?" "yes," she answered. linforth laughed, and again there was a note of bitterness in the laughter. "how long ago it seems! shere ali will dine here no more. he is in burma. he was deported to burma." he told her no more than that. there was no need that she should know that shere ali, broken-hearted, ruined and despairing, was drinking himself to death with the riffraff of rangoon, or with such of it as would listen to his abuse of the white women and his slanders upon their honesty. the contrast between shere ali's fate and the hopes with which he had set out was shocking enough. yet even in his case so very little had turned the scale. between the fulfilment of his hopes and the great failure what was there? if he had been sent to ajmere instead of to england, if he and linforth had not crossed the meije to la grave in dauphiné, if a necklace of pearls he had offered had not been accepted--very likely at this very moment he might be reigning in chiltistan, trusted and supported by the indian government, a helpful friend gratefully recognised. to linforth's thinking it was only "just not" with shere ali, too. linforth saw his companion coming towards him from the restaurant. he held out his hand. "i have got to go," he said. "i too," replied violet. but she detained him. "i want to tell you," she said hurriedly. "long ago--in peshawur--do you remember? i told you there was someone else--a better mate for you than i was. i meant it, dick, but you wouldn't listen. there is still the someone else. i am going to tell you her name. she has never said a word to me--but--but i am sure. it may sound mean of me to give her away--but i am not really doing that. i should be very happy, dick, if it were possible. it's phyllis casson. she has never married. she is living with her father at camberley." and before he could answer she had hurried away. but linforth was to see her again that night. for when he had taken his seat in the stalls of the theatre he saw her and her husband in a box. he gathered from the remarks of those about him that her jewels were a regular feature upon the first nights of new plays. he looked at her now and then during the intervals of the acts. a few people entered her box and spoke to her for a little while. linforth conjectured that she had dropped a little out of the world in which he had known her. yet she was contented. on the whole that seemed certain. she was satisfied with her life. to attend the first productions of plays, to sit in the restaurants, to hear her jewels remarked upon--her life had narrowed sleekly down to that, and she was content. but there had been other possibilities for violet oliver. linforth walked back from the theatre to his club. he looked into a room and saw an old gentleman dozing alone amongst his newspapers. "i suppose i shall come to that," he said grimly. "it doesn't look over cheerful as a way of spending the evening of one's days," and he was suddenly seized with the temptation to go home and take the first train in the morning for camberley. he turned the plan over in his mind for a moment, and then swung away from it in self-disgust. he retained a general reverence for women, and to seek marriage without bringing love to light him in the search was not within his capacity. "that wouldn't be fair," he said to himself--"even if violet's tale were true." for with his reverence he had retained his modesty. the next morning he took the train into sussex instead, and was welcomed by sybil linforth to the house under the downs. in the warmth of that welcome, at all events, there was nothing that was just not. huckleberry finn by mark twain part . chapter xvi. we slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. she had four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely. she had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end. there was a power of style about her. it amounted to something being a raftsman on such a craft as that. we went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got hot. the river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on both sides; you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light. we talked about cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. i said likely we wouldn't, because i had heard say there warn't but about a dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them lit up, how was we going to know we was passing a town? jim said if the two big rivers joined together there, that would show. but i said maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again. that disturbed jim--and me too. so the question was, what to do? i said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed, and tell them pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to cairo. jim thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited. there warn't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town, and not pass it without seeing it. he said he'd be mighty sure to see it, because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it he'd be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom. every little while he jumps up and says: "dah she is?" but it warn't. it was jack-o'-lanterns, or lightning bugs; so he set down again, and went to watching, same as before. jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. well, i can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because i begun to get it through my head that he was most free--and who was to blame for it? why, me. i couldn't get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. it got to troubling me so i couldn't rest; i couldn't stay still in one place. it hadn't ever come home to me before, what this thing was that i was doing. but now it did; and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more. i tried to make out to myself that i warn't to blame, because i didn't run jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every time, "but you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody." that was so--i couldn't get around that noway. that was where it pinched. conscience says to me, "what had poor miss watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? what did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean? why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. that's what she done." i got to feeling so mean and so miserable i most wished i was dead. i fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and jim was fidgeting up and down past me. we neither of us could keep still. every time he danced around and says, "dah's cairo!" it went through me like a shot, and i thought if it was cairo i reckoned i would die of miserableness. jim talked out loud all the time while i was talking to myself. he was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free state he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where miss watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an ab'litionist to go and steal them. it most froze me to hear such talk. he wouldn't ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. it was according to the old saying, "give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." thinks i, this is what comes of my not thinking. here was this nigger, which i had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children--children that belonged to a man i didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm. i was sorry to hear jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. my conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last i says to it, "let up on me--it ain't too late yet--i'll paddle ashore at the first light and tell." i felt easy and happy and light as a feather right off. all my troubles was gone. i went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself. by and by one showed. jim sings out: "we's safe, huck, we's safe! jump up and crack yo' heels! dat's de good ole cairo at las', i jis knows it!" i says: "i'll take the canoe and go and see, jim. it mightn't be, you know." he jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as i shoved off, he says: "pooty soon i'll be a-shout'n' for joy, en i'll say, it's all on accounts o' huck; i's a free man, en i couldn't ever ben free ef it hadn' ben for huck; huck done it. jim won't ever forgit you, huck; you's de bes' fren' jim's ever had; en you's de only fren' ole jim's got now." i was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. i went along slow then, and i warn't right down certain whether i was glad i started or whether i warn't. when i was fifty yards off, jim says: "dah you goes, de ole true huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole jim." well, i just felt sick. but i says, i got to do it--i can't get out of it. right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and they stopped and i stopped. one of them says: "what's that yonder?" "a piece of a raft," i says. "do you belong on it?" "yes, sir." "any men on it?" "only one, sir." "well, there's five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head of the bend. is your man white or black?" i didn't answer up prompt. i tried to, but the words wouldn't come. i tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but i warn't man enough--hadn't the spunk of a rabbit. i see i was weakening; so i just give up trying, and up and says: "he's white." "i reckon we'll go and see for ourselves." "i wish you would," says i, "because it's pap that's there, and maybe you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. he's sick--and so is mam and mary ann." "oh, the devil! we're in a hurry, boy. but i s'pose we've got to. come, buckle to your paddle, and let's get along." i buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars. when we had made a stroke or two, i says: "pap'll be mighty much obleeged to you, i can tell you. everybody goes away when i want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and i can't do it by myself." "well, that's infernal mean. odd, too. say, boy, what's the matter with your father?" "it's the--a--the--well, it ain't anything much." they stopped pulling. it warn't but a mighty little ways to the raft now. one says: "boy, that's a lie. what is the matter with your pap? answer up square now, and it'll be the better for you." "i will, sir, i will, honest--but don't leave us, please. it's the--the --gentlemen, if you'll only pull ahead, and let me heave you the headline, you won't have to come a-near the raft--please do." "set her back, john, set her back!" says one. they backed water. "keep away, boy--keep to looard. confound it, i just expect the wind has blowed it to us. your pap's got the small-pox, and you know it precious well. why didn't you come out and say so? do you want to spread it all over?" "well," says i, a-blubbering, "i've told everybody before, and they just went away and left us." "poor devil, there's something in that. we are right down sorry for you, but we--well, hang it, we don't want the small-pox, you see. look here, i'll tell you what to do. don't you try to land by yourself, or you'll smash everything to pieces. you float along down about twenty miles, and you'll come to a town on the left-hand side of the river. it will be long after sun-up then, and when you ask for help you tell them your folks are all down with chills and fever. don't be a fool again, and let people guess what is the matter. now we're trying to do you a kindness; so you just put twenty miles between us, that's a good boy. it wouldn't do any good to land yonder where the light is--it's only a wood-yard. say, i reckon your father's poor, and i'm bound to say he's in pretty hard luck. here, i'll put a twenty-dollar gold piece on this board, and you get it when it floats by. i feel mighty mean to leave you; but my kingdom! it won't do to fool with small-pox, don't you see?" "hold on, parker," says the other man, "here's a twenty to put on the board for me. good-bye, boy; you do as mr. parker told you, and you'll be all right." "that's so, my boy--good-bye, good-bye. if you see any runaway niggers you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it." "good-bye, sir," says i; "i won't let no runaway niggers get by me if i can help it." they went off and i got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because i knowed very well i had done wrong, and i see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little ain't got no show--when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. then i thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s'pose you'd a done right and give jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? no, says i, i'd feel bad--i'd feel just the same way i do now. well, then, says i, what's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? i was stuck. i couldn't answer that. so i reckoned i wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time. i went into the wigwam; jim warn't there. i looked all around; he warn't anywhere. i says: "jim!" "here i is, huck. is dey out o' sight yit? don't talk loud." he was in the river under the stern oar, with just his nose out. i told him they were out of sight, so he come aboard. he says: "i was a-listenin' to all de talk, en i slips into de river en was gwyne to shove for sho' if dey come aboard. den i was gwyne to swim to de raf' agin when dey was gone. but lawsy, how you did fool 'em, huck! dat wuz de smartes' dodge! i tell you, chile, i'spec it save' ole jim--ole jim ain't going to forgit you for dat, honey." then we talked about the money. it was a pretty good raise--twenty dollars apiece. jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat now, and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free states. he said twenty mile more warn't far for the raft to go, but he wished we was already there. towards daybreak we tied up, and jim was mighty particular about hiding the raft good. then he worked all day fixing things in bundles, and getting all ready to quit rafting. that night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away down in a left-hand bend. i went off in the canoe to ask about it. pretty soon i found a man out in the river with a skiff, setting a trot-line. i ranged up and says: "mister, is that town cairo?" "cairo? no. you must be a blame' fool." "what town is it, mister?" "if you want to know, go and find out. if you stay here botherin' around me for about a half a minute longer you'll get something you won't want." i paddled to the raft. jim was awful disappointed, but i said never mind, cairo would be the next place, i reckoned. we passed another town before daylight, and i was going out again; but it was high ground, so i didn't go. no high ground about cairo, jim said. i had forgot it. we laid up for the day on a towhead tolerable close to the left-hand bank. i begun to suspicion something. so did jim. i says: "maybe we went by cairo in the fog that night." he says: "doan' le's talk about it, huck. po' niggers can't have no luck. i awluz 'spected dat rattlesnake-skin warn't done wid its work." "i wish i'd never seen that snake-skin, jim--i do wish i'd never laid eyes on it." "it ain't yo' fault, huck; you didn' know. don't you blame yo'self 'bout it." when it was daylight, here was the clear ohio water inshore, sure enough, and outside was the old regular muddy! so it was all up with cairo. we talked it all over. it wouldn't do to take to the shore; we couldn't take the raft up the stream, of course. there warn't no way but to wait for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the chances. so we slept all day amongst the cottonwood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work, and when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone! we didn't say a word for a good while. there warn't anything to say. we both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnake-skin; so what was the use to talk about it? it would only look like we was finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more bad luck--and keep on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep still. by and by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn't no way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy a canoe to go back in. we warn't going to borrow it when there warn't anybody around, the way pap would do, for that might set people after us. so we shoved out after dark on the raft. anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle a snake-skin, after all that that snake-skin done for us, will believe it now if they read on and see what more it done for us. the place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore. but we didn't see no rafts laying up; so we went along during three hours and more. well, the night got gray and ruther thick, which is the next meanest thing to fog. you can't tell the shape of the river, and you can't see no distance. it got to be very late and still, and then along comes a steamboat up the river. we lit the lantern, and judged she would see it. up-stream boats didn't generly come close to us; they go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs; but nights like this they bull right up the channel against the whole river. we could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she was close. she aimed right for us. often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks he's mighty smart. well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try and shave us; but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit. she was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a sudden she bulged out, big and scary, with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shining like red-hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us. there was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a powwow of cussing, and whistling of steam--and as jim went overboard on one side and i on the other, she come smashing straight through the raft. i dived--and i aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel had got to go over me, and i wanted it to have plenty of room. i could always stay under water a minute; this time i reckon i stayed under a minute and a half. then i bounced for the top in a hurry, for i was nearly busting. i popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of my nose, and puffed a bit. of course there was a booming current; and of course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she stopped them, for they never cared much for raftsmen; so now she was churning along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though i could hear her. i sung out for jim about a dozen times, but i didn't get any answer; so i grabbed a plank that touched me while i was "treading water," and struck out for shore, shoving it ahead of me. but i made out to see that the drift of the current was towards the left-hand shore, which meant that i was in a crossing; so i changed off and went that way. it was one of these long, slanting, two-mile crossings; so i was a good long time in getting over. i made a safe landing, and clumb up the bank. i couldn't see but a little ways, but i went poking along over rough ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and then i run across a big old-fashioned double log-house before i noticed it. i was going to rush by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling and barking at me, and i knowed better than to move another peg. chapter xvii. in about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his head out, and says: "be done, boys! who's there?" i says: "it's me." "who's me?" "george jackson, sir." "what do you want?" "i don't want nothing, sir. i only want to go along by, but the dogs won't let me." "what are you prowling around here this time of night for--hey?" "i warn't prowling around, sir, i fell overboard off of the steamboat." "oh, you did, did you? strike a light there, somebody. what did you say your name was?" "george jackson, sir. i'm only a boy." "look here, if you're telling the truth you needn't be afraid--nobody'll hurt you. but don't try to budge; stand right where you are. rouse out bob and tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. george jackson, is there anybody with you?" "no, sir, nobody." i heard the people stirring around in the house now, and see a light. the man sung out: "snatch that light away, betsy, you old fool--ain't you got any sense? put it on the floor behind the front door. bob, if you and tom are ready, take your places." "all ready." "now, george jackson, do you know the shepherdsons?" "no, sir; i never heard of them." "well, that may be so, and it mayn't. now, all ready. step forward, george jackson. and mind, don't you hurry--come mighty slow. if there's anybody with you, let him keep back--if he shows himself he'll be shot. come along now. come slow; push the door open yourself--just enough to squeeze in, d' you hear?" i didn't hurry; i couldn't if i'd a wanted to. i took one slow step at a time and there warn't a sound, only i thought i could hear my heart. the dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind me. when i got to the three log doorsteps i heard them unlocking and unbarring and unbolting. i put my hand on the door and pushed it a little and a little more till somebody said, "there, that's enough--put your head in." i done it, but i judged they would take it off. the candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and me at them, for about a quarter of a minute: three big men with guns pointed at me, which made me wince, i tell you; the oldest, gray and about sixty, the other two thirty or more--all of them fine and handsome --and the sweetest old gray-headed lady, and back of her two young women which i couldn't see right well. the old gentleman says: "there; i reckon it's all right. come in." as soon as i was in the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and got together in a corner that was out of the range of the front windows --there warn't none on the side. they held the candle, and took a good look at me, and all said, "why, he ain't a shepherdson--no, there ain't any shepherdson about him." then the old man said he hoped i wouldn't mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by it--it was only to make sure. so he didn't pry into my pockets, but only felt outside with his hands, and said it was all right. he told me to make myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself; but the old lady says: "why, bless you, saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be; and don't you reckon it may be he's hungry?" "true for you, rachel--i forgot." so the old lady says: "betsy" (this was a nigger woman), "you fly around and get him something to eat as quick as you can, poor thing; and one of you girls go and wake up buck and tell him--oh, here he is himself. buck, take this little stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some of yours that's dry." buck looked about as old as me--thirteen or fourteen or along there, though he was a little bigger than me. he hadn't on anything but a shirt, and he was very frowzy-headed. he came in gaping and digging one fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one. he says: "ain't they no shepherdsons around?" they said, no, 'twas a false alarm. "well," he says, "if they'd a ben some, i reckon i'd a got one." they all laughed, and bob says: "why, buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in coming." "well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right i'm always kept down; i don't get no show." "never mind, buck, my boy," says the old man, "you'll have show enough, all in good time, don't you fret about that. go 'long with you now, and do as your mother told you." when we got up-stairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a roundabout and pants of his, and i put them on. while i was at it he asked me what my name was, but before i could tell him he started to tell me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day before yesterday, and he asked me where moses was when the candle went out. i said i didn't know; i hadn't heard about it before, no way. "well, guess," he says. "how'm i going to guess," says i, "when i never heard tell of it before?" "but you can guess, can't you? it's just as easy." "which candle?" i says. "why, any candle," he says. "i don't know where he was," says i; "where was he?" "why, he was in the dark! that's where he was!" "well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?" "why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see? say, how long are you going to stay here? you got to stay always. we can just have booming times--they don't have no school now. do you own a dog? i've got a dog--and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in. do you like to comb up sundays, and all that kind of foolishness? you bet i don't, but ma she makes me. confound these ole britches! i reckon i'd better put 'em on, but i'd ruther not, it's so warm. are you all ready? all right. come along, old hoss." cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk--that is what they had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever i've come across yet. buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women. they all smoked and talked, and i eat and talked. the young women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. they all asked me questions, and i told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of arkansaw, and my sister mary ann run off and got married and never was heard of no more, and bill went to hunt them and he warn't heard of no more, and tom and mort died, and then there warn't nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his troubles; so when he died i took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard; and that was how i come to be here. so they said i could have a home there as long as i wanted it. then it was most daylight and everybody went to bed, and i went to bed with buck, and when i waked up in the morning, drat it all, i had forgot what my name was. so i laid there about an hour trying to think, and when buck waked up i says: "can you spell, buck?" "yes," he says. "i bet you can't spell my name," says i. "i bet you what you dare i can," says he. "all right," says i, "go ahead." "g-e-o-r-g-e j-a-x-o-n--there now," he says. "well," says i, "you done it, but i didn't think you could. it ain't no slouch of a name to spell--right off without studying." i set it down, private, because somebody might want me to spell it next, and so i wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like i was used to it. it was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. i hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style. it didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in town. there warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them. there was a big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes they wash them over with red water-paint that they call spanish-brown, same as they do in town. they had big brass dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log. there was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging behind it. it was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got tuckered out. they wouldn't took any money for her. well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. by one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look different nor interested. they squeaked through underneath. there was a couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out behind those things. on the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it, which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they warn't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk, or whatever it was, underneath. this table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. it come all the way from philadelphia, they said. there was some books, too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. one was a big family bible full of pictures. one was pilgrim's progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. i read considerable in it now and then. the statements was interesting, but tough. another was friendship's offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but i didn't read the poetry. another was henry clay's speeches, and another was dr. gunn's family medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. there was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. and there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too--not bagged down in the middle and busted, like an old basket. they had pictures hung on the walls--mainly washingtons and lafayettes, and battles, and highland marys, and one called "signing the declaration." there was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. they was different from any pictures i ever see before --blacker, mostly, than is common. one was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "shall i never see thee more alas." another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "i shall never hear thy sweet chirrup more alas." there was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "and art thou gone yes thou art gone alas." these was all nice pictures, i reckon, but i didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever i was down a little they always give me the fan-tods. everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. but i reckoned that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. she was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. it was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moon--and the idea was to see which pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as i was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it. other times it was hid with a little curtain. the young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me. this young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the presbyterian observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head. it was very good poetry. this is what she wrote about a boy by the name of stephen dowling bots that fell down a well and was drownded: ode to stephen dowling bots, dec'd and did young stephen sicken, and did young stephen die? and did the sad hearts thicken, and did the mourners cry? no; such was not the fate of young stephen dowling bots; though sad hearts round him thickened, 'twas not from sickness' shots. no whooping-cough did rack his frame, nor measles drear with spots; not these impaired the sacred name of stephen dowling bots. despised love struck not with woe that head of curly knots, nor stomach troubles laid him low, young stephen dowling bots. o no. then list with tearful eye, whilst i his fate do tell. his soul did from this cold world fly by falling down a well. they got him out and emptied him; alas it was too late; his spirit was gone for to sport aloft in the realms of the good and great. if emmeline grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by and by. buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. she didn't ever have to stop to think. he said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down another one, and go ahead. she warn't particular; she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful. every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. she called them tributes. the neighbors said it was the doctor first, then emmeline, then the undertaker--the undertaker never got in ahead of emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was whistler. she warn't ever the same after that; she never complained, but she kinder pined away and did not live long. poor thing, many's the time i made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrap-book and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and i had soured on her a little. i liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between us. poor emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some about her now she was gone; so i tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but i couldn't seem to make it go somehow. they kept emmeline's room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. the old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her bible there mostly. well, as i was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on the windows: white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. there was a little old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, i reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing "the last link is broken" and play "the battle of prague" on it. the walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside. it was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day, and it was a cool, comfortable place. nothing couldn't be better. and warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too! chapter xviii. col. grangerford was a gentleman, you see. he was a gentleman all over; and so was his family. he was well born, as the saying is, and that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the widow douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality than a mudcat himself. col. grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. his forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight and hung to his shoulders. his hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it. he carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it. there warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever loud. he was as kind as he could be--you could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards. he didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners --everybody was always good-mannered where he was. everybody loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine most always--i mean he made it seem like good weather. when he turned into a cloudbank it was awful dark for half a minute, and that was enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again for a week. when him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got up out of their chairs and give them good-day, and didn't set down again till they had set down. then tom and bob went to the sideboard where the decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he held it in his hand and waited till tom's and bob's was mixed, and then they bowed and said, "our duty to you, sir, and madam;" and they bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank, all three, and bob and tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give it to me and buck, and we drank to the old people too. bob was the oldest and tom next--tall, beautiful men with very broad shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. they dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and wore broad panama hats. then there was miss charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn't stirred up; but when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks, like her father. she was beautiful. so was her sister, miss sophia, but it was a different kind. she was gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty. each person had their own nigger to wait on them--buck too. my nigger had a monstrous easy time, because i warn't used to having anybody do anything for me, but buck's was on the jump most of the time. this was all there was of the family now, but there used to be more --three sons; they got killed; and emmeline that died. the old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers. sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods daytimes, and balls at the house nights. these people was mostly kinfolks of the family. the men brought their guns with them. it was a handsome lot of quality, i tell you. there was another clan of aristocracy around there--five or six families --mostly of the name of shepherdson. they was as high-toned and well born and rich and grand as the tribe of grangerfords. the shepherdsons and grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was about two mile above our house; so sometimes when i went up there with a lot of our folks i used to see a lot of the shepherdsons there on their fine horses. one day buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse coming. we was crossing the road. buck says: "quick! jump for the woods!" we done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. pretty soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his horse easy and looking like a soldier. he had his gun across his pommel. i had seen him before. it was young harney shepherdson. i heard buck's gun go off at my ear, and harney's hat tumbled off from his head. he grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. but we didn't wait. we started through the woods on a run. the woods warn't thick, so i looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet, and twice i seen harney cover buck with his gun; and then he rode away the way he come--to get his hat, i reckon, but i couldn't see. we never stopped running till we got home. the old gentleman's eyes blazed a minute--'twas pleasure, mainly, i judged--then his face sort of smoothed down, and he says, kind of gentle: "i don't like that shooting from behind a bush. why didn't you step into the road, my boy?" "the shepherdsons don't, father. they always take advantage." miss charlotte she held her head up like a queen while buck was telling his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. the two young men looked dark, but never said nothing. miss sophia she turned pale, but the color come back when she found the man warn't hurt. soon as i could get buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by ourselves, i says: "did you want to kill him, buck?" "well, i bet i did." "what did he do to you?" "him? he never done nothing to me." "well, then, what did you want to kill him for?" "why, nothing--only it's on account of the feud." "what's a feud?" "why, where was you raised? don't you know what a feud is?" "never heard of it before--tell me about it." "well," says buck, "a feud is this way: a man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in--and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. but it's kind of slow, and takes a long time." "has this one been going on long, buck?" "well, i should reckon! it started thirty year ago, or som'ers along there. there was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suit--which he would naturally do, of course. anybody would." "what was the trouble about, buck?--land?" "i reckon maybe--i don't know." "well, who done the shooting? was it a grangerford or a shepherdson?" "laws, how do i know? it was so long ago." "don't anybody know?" "oh, yes, pa knows, i reckon, and some of the other old people; but they don't know now what the row was about in the first place." "has there been many killed, buck?" "yes; right smart chance of funerals. but they don't always kill. pa's got a few buckshot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh much, anyway. bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and tom's been hurt once or twice." "has anybody been killed this year, buck?" "yes; we got one and they got one. 'bout three months ago my cousin bud, fourteen year old, was riding through the woods on t'other side of the river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame' foolishness, and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind him, and sees old baldy shepherdson a-linkin' after him with his gun in his hand and his white hair a-flying in the wind; and 'stead of jumping off and taking to the brush, bud 'lowed he could out-run him; so they had it, nip and tuck, for five mile or more, the old man a-gaining all the time; so at last bud seen it warn't any use, so he stopped and faced around so as to have the bullet holes in front, you know, and the old man he rode up and shot him down. but he didn't git much chance to enjoy his luck, for inside of a week our folks laid him out." "i reckon that old man was a coward, buck." "i reckon he warn't a coward. not by a blame' sight. there ain't a coward amongst them shepherdsons--not a one. and there ain't no cowards amongst the grangerfords either. why, that old man kep' up his end in a fight one day for half an hour against three grangerfords, and come out winner. they was all a-horseback; he lit off of his horse and got behind a little woodpile, and kep' his horse before him to stop the bullets; but the grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered around the old man, and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them. him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the grangerfords had to be fetched home--and one of 'em was dead, and another died the next day. no, sir; if a body's out hunting for cowards he don't want to fool away any time amongst them shepherdsons, becuz they don't breed any of that kind." next sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horseback. the men took their guns along, so did buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. the shepherdsons done the same. it was pretty ornery preaching--all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and i don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest sundays i had run across yet. about an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. buck and a dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun sound asleep. i went up to our room, and judged i would take a nap myself. i found that sweet miss sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took me in her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if i liked her, and i said i did; and she asked me if i would do something for her and not tell anybody, and i said i would. then she said she'd forgot her testament, and left it in the seat at church between two other books, and would i slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say nothing to nobody. i said i would. so i slid out and slipped off up the road, and there warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. if you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different. says i to myself, something's up; it ain't natural for a girl to be in such a sweat about a testament. so i give it a shake, and out drops a little piece of paper with "half-past two" wrote on it with a pencil. i ransacked it, but couldn't find anything else. i couldn't make anything out of that, so i put the paper in the book again, and when i got home and upstairs there was miss sophia in her door waiting for me. she pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the testament till she found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad; and before a body could think she grabbed me and give me a squeeze, and said i was the best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody. she was mighty red in the face for a minute, and her eyes lighted up, and it made her powerful pretty. i was a good deal astonished, but when i got my breath i asked her what the paper was about, and she asked me if i had read it, and i said no, and she asked me if i could read writing, and i told her "no, only coarse-hand," and then she said the paper warn't anything but a book-mark to keep her place, and i might go and play now. i went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon i noticed that my nigger was following along behind. when we was out of sight of the house he looked back and around a second, and then comes a-running, and says: "mars jawge, if you'll come down into de swamp i'll show you a whole stack o' water-moccasins." thinks i, that's mighty curious; he said that yesterday. he oughter know a body don't love water-moccasins enough to go around hunting for them. what is he up to, anyway? so i says: "all right; trot ahead." i followed a half a mile; then he struck out over the swamp, and waded ankle deep as much as another half-mile. we come to a little flat piece of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines, and he says: "you shove right in dah jist a few steps, mars jawge; dah's whah dey is. i's seed 'm befo'; i don't k'yer to see 'em no mo'." then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid him. i poked into the place a-ways and come to a little open patch as big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man laying there asleep--and, by jings, it was my old jim! i waked him up, and i reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him to see me again, but it warn't. he nearly cried he was so glad, but he warn't surprised. said he swum along behind me that night, and heard me yell every time, but dasn't answer, because he didn't want nobody to pick him up and take him into slavery again. says he: "i got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so i wuz a considable ways behine you towards de las'; when you landed i reck'ned i could ketch up wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to shout at you, but when i see dat house i begin to go slow. i 'uz off too fur to hear what dey say to you--i wuz 'fraid o' de dogs; but when it 'uz all quiet agin i knowed you's in de house, so i struck out for de woods to wait for day. early in de mawnin' some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey tuk me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can't track me on accounts o' de water, en dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how you's a-gitt'n along." "why didn't you tell my jack to fetch me here sooner, jim?" "well, 'twarn't no use to 'sturb you, huck, tell we could do sumfn--but we's all right now. i ben a-buyin' pots en pans en vittles, as i got a chanst, en a-patchin' up de raf' nights when--" "what raft, jim?" "our ole raf'." "you mean to say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?" "no, she warn't. she was tore up a good deal--one en' of her was; but dey warn't no great harm done, on'y our traps was mos' all los'. ef we hadn' dive' so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn' ben so dark, en we warn't so sk'yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads, as de sayin' is, we'd a seed de raf'. but it's jis' as well we didn't, 'kase now she's all fixed up agin mos' as good as new, en we's got a new lot o' stuff, in de place o' what 'uz los'." "why, how did you get hold of the raft again, jim--did you catch her?" "how i gwyne to ketch her en i out in de woods? no; some er de niggers foun' her ketched on a snag along heah in de ben', en dey hid her in a crick 'mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin' 'bout which un 'um she b'long to de mos' dat i come to heah 'bout it pooty soon, so i ups en settles de trouble by tellin' 'um she don't b'long to none uv um, but to you en me; en i ast 'm if dey gwyne to grab a young white genlman's propaty, en git a hid'n for it? den i gin 'm ten cents apiece, en dey 'uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo' raf's 'ud come along en make 'm rich agin. dey's mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en whatever i wants 'm to do fur me i doan' have to ast 'm twice, honey. dat jack's a good nigger, en pooty smart." "yes, he is. he ain't ever told me you was here; told me to come, and he'd show me a lot of water-moccasins. if anything happens he ain't mixed up in it. he can say he never seen us together, and it 'll be the truth." i don't want to talk much about the next day. i reckon i'll cut it pretty short. i waked up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over and go to sleep again when i noticed how still it was--didn't seem to be anybody stirring. that warn't usual. next i noticed that buck was up and gone. well, i gets up, a-wondering, and goes down stairs--nobody around; everything as still as a mouse. just the same outside. thinks i, what does it mean? down by the wood-pile i comes across my jack, and says: "what's it all about?" says he: "don't you know, mars jawge?" "no," says i, "i don't." "well, den, miss sophia's run off! 'deed she has. she run off in de night some time--nobody don't know jis' when; run off to get married to dat young harney shepherdson, you know--leastways, so dey 'spec. de fambly foun' it out 'bout half an hour ago--maybe a little mo'--en' i tell you dey warn't no time los'. sich another hurryin' up guns en hosses you never see! de women folks has gone for to stir up de relations, en ole mars saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him 'fo' he kin git acrost de river wid miss sophia. i reck'n dey's gwyne to be mighty rough times." "buck went off 'thout waking me up." "well, i reck'n he did! dey warn't gwyne to mix you up in it. mars buck he loaded up his gun en 'lowed he's gwyne to fetch home a shepherdson or bust. well, dey'll be plenty un 'm dah, i reck'n, en you bet you he'll fetch one ef he gits a chanst." i took up the river road as hard as i could put. by and by i begin to hear guns a good ways off. when i came in sight of the log store and the woodpile where the steamboats lands i worked along under the trees and brush till i got to a good place, and then i clumb up into the forks of a cottonwood that was out of reach, and watched. there was a wood-rank four foot high a little ways in front of the tree, and first i was going to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier i didn't. there was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the steamboat landing; but they couldn't come it. every time one of them showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at. the two boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch both ways. by and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. they started riding towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. all the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started to carry him to the store; and that minute the two boys started on the run. they got half way to the tree i was in before the men noticed. then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after them. they gained on the boys, but it didn't do no good, the boys had too good a start; they got to the woodpile that was in front of my tree, and slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again. one of the boys was buck, and the other was a slim young chap about nineteen years old. the men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. as soon as they was out of sight i sung out to buck and told him. he didn't know what to make of my voice coming out of the tree at first. he was awful surprised. he told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men come in sight again; said they was up to some devilment or other --wouldn't be gone long. i wished i was out of that tree, but i dasn't come down. buck begun to cry and rip, and 'lowed that him and his cousin joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this day yet. he said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two or three of the enemy. said the shepherdsons laid for them in ambush. buck said his father and brothers ought to waited for their relations--the shepherdsons was too strong for them. i asked him what was become of young harney and miss sophia. he said they'd got across the river and was safe. i was glad of that; but the way buck did take on because he didn't manage to kill harney that day he shot at him--i hain't ever heard anything like it. all of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns--the men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses! the boys jumped for the river--both of them hurt--and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing out, "kill them, kill them!" it made me so sick i most fell out of the tree. i ain't a-going to tell all that happened--it would make me sick again if i was to do that. i wished i hadn't ever come ashore that night to see such things. i ain't ever going to get shut of them--lots of times i dream about them. i stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down. sometimes i heard guns away off in the woods; and twice i seen little gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so i reckoned the trouble was still a-going on. i was mighty downhearted; so i made up my mind i wouldn't ever go anear that house again, because i reckoned i was to blame, somehow. i judged that that piece of paper meant that miss sophia was to meet harney somewheres at half-past two and run off; and i judged i ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way she acted, and then maybe he would a locked her up, and this awful mess wouldn't ever happened. when i got down out of the tree i crept along down the river bank a piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and tugged at them till i got them ashore; then i covered up their faces, and got away as quick as i could. i cried a little when i was covering up buck's face, for he was mighty good to me. it was just dark now. i never went near the house, but struck through the woods and made for the swamp. jim warn't on his island, so i tramped off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, red-hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country. the raft was gone! my souls, but i was scared! i couldn't get my breath for most a minute. then i raised a yell. a voice not twenty-five foot from me says: "good lan'! is dat you, honey? doan' make no noise." it was jim's voice--nothing ever sounded so good before. i run along the bank a piece and got aboard, and jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was so glad to see me. he says: "laws bless you, chile, i 'uz right down sho' you's dead agin. jack's been heah; he say he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn' come home no mo'; so i's jes' dis minute a startin' de raf' down towards de mouf er de crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as jack comes agin en tells me for certain you is dead. lawsy, i's mighty glad to git you back again, honey." i says: "all right--that's mighty good; they won't find me, and they'll think i've been killed, and floated down the river--there's something up there that 'll help them think so--so don't you lose no time, jim, but just shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can." i never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the middle of the mississippi. then we hung up our signal lantern, and judged that we was free and safe once more. i hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday, so jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens--there ain't nothing in the world so good when it's cooked right--and whilst i eat my supper we talked and had a good time. i was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was jim to get away from the swamp. we said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. you feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. chapter xix. two or three days and nights went by; i reckon i might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. here is the way we put in the time. it was a monstrous big river down there--sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up--nearly always in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft with them. then we set out the lines. next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come. not a sound anywheres--perfectly still --just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. the first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line--that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away--trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks --rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log-cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it! a little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. and afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off to sleep. wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off towards the other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was a stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor nothing to see--just solid lonesomeness. next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're most always doing it on a raft; you'd see the axe flash and come down --you don't hear nothing; you see that axe go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the k'chunk!--it had took all that time to come over the water. so we would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness. once there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them. a scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing--heard them plain; but we couldn't see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly; it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air. jim said he believed it was spirits; but i says: "no; spirits wouldn't say, 'dern the dern fog.'" soon as it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and talked about all kinds of things--we was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us--the new clothes buck's folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides i didn't go much on clothes, nohow. sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark--which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two--on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. it's lovely to live on a raft. we had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. jim he allowed they was made, but i allowed they happened; i judged it would have took too long to make so many. jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so i didn't say nothing against it, because i've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. we used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest. once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something. after midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three hours the shores was black--no more sparks in the cabin windows. these sparks was our clock--the first one that showed again meant morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away. one morning about daybreak i found a canoe and crossed over a chute to the main shore--it was only two hundred yards--and paddled about a mile up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if i couldn't get some berries. just as i was passing a place where a kind of a cowpath crossed the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could foot it. i thought i was a goner, for whenever anybody was after anybody i judged it was me--or maybe jim. i was about to dig out from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and sung out and begged me to save their lives--said they hadn't been doing nothing, and was being chased for it--said there was men and dogs a-coming. they wanted to jump right in, but i says: "don't you do it. i don't hear the dogs and horses yet; you've got time to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways; then you take to the water and wade down to me and get in--that'll throw the dogs off the scent." they done it, and soon as they was aboard i lit out for our towhead, and in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off, shouting. we heard them come along towards the crick, but couldn't see them; they seemed to stop and fool around a while; then, as we got further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly hear them at all; by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the towhead and hid in the cottonwoods and was safe. one of these fellows was about seventy or upwards, and had a bald head and very gray whiskers. he had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a greasy blue woollen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses--no, he only had one. he had an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet-bags. the other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery. after breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out was that these chaps didn't know one another. "what got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap. "well, i'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth--and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it--but i stayed about one night longer than i ought to, and was just in the act of sliding out when i ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. so i told you i was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out with you. that's the whole yarn--what's yourn? "well, i'd ben a-running' a little temperance revival thar 'bout a week, and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for i was makin' it mighty warm for the rummies, i tell you, and takin' as much as five or six dollars a night--ten cents a head, children and niggers free--and business a-growin' all the time, when somehow or another a little report got around last night that i had a way of puttin' in my time with a private jug on the sly. a nigger rousted me out this mornin', and told me the people was getherin' on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and they'd be along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start, and then run me down if they could; and if they got me they'd tar and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure. i didn't wait for no breakfast--i warn't hungry." "old man," said the young one, "i reckon we might double-team it together; what do you think?" "i ain't undisposed. what's your line--mainly?" "jour printer by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theater-actor --tragedy, you know; take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when there's a chance; teach singing-geography school for a change; sling a lecture sometimes--oh, i do lots of things--most anything that comes handy, so it ain't work. what's your lay?" "i've done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. layin' on o' hands is my best holt--for cancer and paralysis, and sich things; and i k'n tell a fortune pretty good when i've got somebody along to find out the facts for me. preachin's my line, too, and workin' camp-meetin's, and missionaryin' around." nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh and says: "alas!" "what 're you alassin' about?" says the bald-head. "to think i should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded down into such company." and he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with a rag. "dern your skin, ain't the company good enough for you?" says the baldhead, pretty pert and uppish. "yes, it is good enough for me; it's as good as i deserve; for who fetched me so low when i was so high? i did myself. i don't blame you, gentlemen--far from it; i don't blame anybody. i deserve it all. let the cold world do its worst; one thing i know--there's a grave somewhere for me. the world may go on just as it's always done, and take everything from me--loved ones, property, everything; but it can't take that. some day i'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest." he went on a-wiping. "drot your pore broken heart," says the baldhead; "what are you heaving your pore broken heart at us f'r? we hain't done nothing." "no, i know you haven't. i ain't blaming you, gentlemen. i brought myself down--yes, i did it myself. it's right i should suffer--perfectly right--i don't make any moan." "brought you down from whar? whar was you brought down from?" "ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes--let it pass --'tis no matter. the secret of my birth--" "the secret of your birth! do you mean to say--" "gentlemen," says the young man, very solemn, "i will reveal it to you, for i feel i may have confidence in you. by rights i am a duke!" jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that; and i reckon mine did, too. then the baldhead says: "no! you can't mean it?" "yes. my great-grandfather, eldest son of the duke of bridgewater, fled to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time. the second son of the late duke seized the titles and estates--the infant real duke was ignored. i am the lineal descendant of that infant--i am the rightful duke of bridgewater; and here am i, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft!" jim pitied him ever so much, and so did i. we tried to comfort him, but he said it warn't much use, he couldn't be much comforted; said if we was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. he said we ought to bow when we spoke to him, and say "your grace," or "my lord," or "your lordship"--and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain "bridgewater," which, he said, was a title anyway, and not a name; and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for him he wanted done. well, that was all easy, so we done it. all through dinner jim stood around and waited on him, and says, "will yo' grace have some o' dis or some o' dat?" and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him. but the old man got pretty silent by and by--didn't have much to say, and didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on around that duke. he seemed to have something on his mind. so, along in the afternoon, he says: "looky here, bilgewater," he says, "i'm nation sorry for you, but you ain't the only person that's had troubles like that." "no?" "no you ain't. you ain't the only person that's ben snaked down wrongfully out'n a high place." "alas!" "no, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth." and, by jings, he begins to cry. "hold! what do you mean?" "bilgewater, kin i trust you?" says the old man, still sort of sobbing. "to the bitter death!" he took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, "that secret of your being: speak!" "bilgewater, i am the late dauphin!" you bet you, jim and me stared this time. then the duke says: "you are what?" "yes, my friend, it is too true--your eyes is lookin' at this very moment on the pore disappeared dauphin, looy the seventeen, son of looy the sixteen and marry antonette." "you! at your age! no! you mean you're the late charlemagne; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least." "trouble has done it, bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin', exiled, trampled-on, and sufferin' rightful king of france." well, he cried and took on so that me and jim didn't know hardly what to do, we was so sorry--and so glad and proud we'd got him with us, too. so we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort him. but he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him "your majesty," and waited on him first at meals, and didn't set down in his presence till he asked them. so jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this and that and t'other for him, and standing up till he told us we might set down. this done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. but the duke kind of soured on him, and didn't look a bit satisfied with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke's great-grandfather and all the other dukes of bilgewater was a good deal thought of by his father, and was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but the duke stayed huffy a good while, till by and by the king says: "like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this h-yer raft, bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour? it 'll only make things oncomfortable. it ain't my fault i warn't born a duke, it ain't your fault you warn't born a king--so what's the use to worry? make the best o' things the way you find 'em, says i--that's my motto. this ain't no bad thing that we've struck here--plenty grub and an easy life--come, give us your hand, duke, and le's all be friends." the duke done it, and jim and me was pretty glad to see it. it took away all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it, because it would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others. it didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. but i never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. if they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, i hadn't no objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell jim, so i didn't tell him. if i never learnt nothing else out of pap, i learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way. chapter xx. they asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of running --was jim a runaway nigger? says i: "goodness sakes! would a runaway nigger run south?" no, they allowed he wouldn't. i had to account for things some way, so i says: "my folks was living in pike county, in missouri, where i was born, and they all died off but me and pa and my brother ike. pa, he 'lowed he'd break up and go down and live with uncle ben, who's got a little one-horse place on the river, forty-four mile below orleans. pa was pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, jim. that warn't enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way. well, when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day; he ketched this piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to orleans on it. pa's luck didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft one night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel; jim and me come up all right, but pa was drunk, and ike was only four years old, so they never come up no more. well, for the next day or two we had considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and trying to take jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway nigger. we don't run daytimes no more now; nights they don't bother us." the duke says: "leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we want to. i'll think the thing over--i'll invent a plan that'll fix it. we'll let it alone for to-day, because of course we don't want to go by that town yonder in daylight--it mightn't be healthy." towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the leaves was beginning to shiver--it was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see that. so the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see what the beds was like. my bed was a straw tick better than jim's, which was a corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick, and they poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over the dry shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it makes such a rustling that you wake up. well, the duke allowed he would take my bed; but the king allowed he wouldn't. he says: "i should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that a corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on. your grace 'll take the shuck bed yourself." jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when the duke says: "'tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression. misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; i yield, i submit; 'tis my fate. i am alone in the world--let me suffer; can bear it." we got away as soon as it was good and dark. the king told us to stand well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we got a long ways below the town. we come in sight of the little bunch of lights by and by--that was the town, you know--and slid by, about a half a mile out, all right. when we was three-quarters of a mile below we hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten o'clock it come on to rain and blow and thunder and lighten like everything; so the king told us to both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him and the duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. it was my watch below till twelve, but i wouldn't a turned in anyway if i'd had a bed, because a body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week, not by a long sight. my souls, how the wind did scream along! and every second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a h-whack!--bum! bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum--and the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quit--and then rip comes another flash and another sockdolager. the waves most washed me off the raft sometimes, but i hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. we didn't have no trouble about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them. i had the middle watch, you know, but i was pretty sleepy by that time, so jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always mighty good that way, jim was. i crawled into the wigwam, but the king and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warn't no show for me; so i laid outside--i didn't mind the rain, because it was warm, and the waves warn't running so high now. about two they come up again, though, and jim was going to call me; but he changed his mind, because he reckoned they warn't high enough yet to do any harm; but he was mistaken about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper and washed me overboard. it most killed jim a-laughing. he was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway. i took the watch, and jim he laid down and snored away; and by and by the storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that showed i rousted him out, and we slid the raft into hiding quarters for the day. the king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him and the duke played seven-up a while, five cents a game. then they got tired of it, and allowed they would "lay out a campaign," as they called it. the duke went down into his carpet-bag, and fetched up a lot of little printed bills and read them out loud. one bill said, "the celebrated dr. armand de montalban, of paris," would "lecture on the science of phrenology" at such and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten cents admission, and "furnish charts of character at twenty-five cents apiece." the duke said that was him. in another bill he was the "world-renowned shakespearian tragedian, garrick the younger, of drury lane, london." in other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a "divining-rod," "dissipating witch spells," and so on. by and by he says: "but the histrionic muse is the darling. have you ever trod the boards, royalty?" "no," says the king. "you shall, then, before you're three days older, fallen grandeur," says the duke. "the first good town we come to we'll hire a hall and do the sword fight in richard iii. and the balcony scene in romeo and juliet. how does that strike you?" "i'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, bilgewater; but, you see, i don't know nothing about play-actin', and hain't ever seen much of it. i was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace. do you reckon you can learn me?" "easy!" "all right. i'm jist a-freezn' for something fresh, anyway. le's commence right away." so the duke he told him all about who romeo was and who juliet was, and said he was used to being romeo, so the king could be juliet. "but if juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white whiskers is goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe." "no, don't you worry; these country jakes won't ever think of that. besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the difference in the world; juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed, and she's got on her night-gown and her ruffled nightcap. here are the costumes for the parts." he got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was meedyevil armor for richard iii. and t'other chap, and a long white cotton nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. the king was satisfied; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart. there was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangersome for jim; so he allowed he would go down to the town and fix that thing. the king allowed he would go, too, and see if he couldn't strike something. we was out of coffee, so jim said i better go along with them in the canoe and get some. when we got there there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and perfectly dead and still, like sunday. we found a sick nigger sunning himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or too sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the woods. the king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work that camp-meeting for all it was worth, and i might go, too. the duke said what he was after was a printing-office. we found it; a little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shop--carpenters and printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. it was a dirty, littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. the duke shed his coat and said he was all right now. so me and the king lit out for the camp-meeting. we got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most awful hot day. there was as much as a thousand people there from twenty mile around. the woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep off the flies. there was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of watermelons and green corn and such-like truck. the preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was bigger and held crowds of people. the benches was made out of outside slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs. they didn't have no backs. the preachers had high platforms to stand on at one end of the sheds. the women had on sun-bonnets; and some had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones had on calico. some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the children didn't have on any clothes but just a tow-linen shirt. some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on the sly. the first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. he lined out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out two more for them to sing--and so on. the people woke up more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to groan, and some begun to shout. then the preacher begun to preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, "it's the brazen serpent in the wilderness! look upon it and live!" and people would shout out, "glory!--a-a-men!" and so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen: "oh, come to the mourners' bench! come, black with sin! (amen!) come, sick and sore! (amen!) come, lame and halt and blind! (amen!) come, pore and needy, sunk in shame! (a-a-men!) come, all that's worn and soiled and suffering!--come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands open--oh, enter in and be at rest!" (a-a-men! glory, glory hallelujah!) and so on. you couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on account of the shouting and crying. folks got up everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners' bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild. well, the first i knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him over everybody; and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. he told them he was a pirate--been a pirate for thirty years out in the indian ocean--and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to goodness he'd been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back to the indian ocean, and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him, "don't you thank me, don't you give me no credit; it all belongs to them dear people in pokeville camp-meeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!" and then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. then somebody sings out, "take up a collection for him, take up a collection!" well, a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, "let him pass the hat around!" then everybody said it, the preacher too. so the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times--and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get to the indian ocean right off and go to work on the pirates. when we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. and then he had fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a wagon when he was starting home through the woods. the king said, take it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the missionarying line. he said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with. the duke was thinking he'd been doing pretty well till the king come to show up, but after that he didn't think so so much. he had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing-office--horse bills--and took the money, four dollars. and he had got in ten dollars' worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance--so they done it. the price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in advance; they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. he set up a little piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own head--three verses--kind of sweet and saddish--the name of it was, "yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart"--and he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper, and didn't charge nothing for it. well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty square day's work for it. then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged for, because it was for us. it had a picture of a runaway nigger with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and "$ reward" under it. the reading was all about jim, and just described him to a dot. it said he run away from st. jacques' plantation, forty mile below new orleans, last winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him back he could have the reward and expenses. "now," says the duke, "after to-night we can run in the daytime if we want to. whenever we see anybody coming we can tie jim hand and foot with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward. handcuffs and chains would look still better on jim, but it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor. too much like jewelry. ropes are the correct thing--we must preserve the unities, as we say on the boards." we all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble about running daytimes. we judged we could make miles enough that night to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the duke's work in the printing office was going to make in that little town; then we could boom right along if we wanted to. we laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten o'clock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it. when jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says: "huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis trip?" "no," i says, "i reckon not." "well," says he, "dat's all right, den. i doan' mine one er two kings, but dat's enough. dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much better." i found jim had been trying to get him to talk french, so he could hear what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and had so much trouble, he'd forgot it. the garies and their friends frank j. webb preface by harriet beecher stowe to the lady noel byron this book is, by her kind permission, most affectionately inscribed, with profound respect, by her grateful friend, the author. preface. the book which now appears before the public may be of interest in relation to a question which the late agitation of the subject of slavery has raised in many thoughtful minds; viz.--are the race at present held as slaves capable of freedom, self-government, and progress? the author is a coloured young man, born and reared in the city of philadelphia. this city, standing as it does on the frontier between free and slave territory, has accumulated naturally a large population of the mixed and african race. being one of the nearest free cities of any considerable size to the slave territory, it has naturally been a resort of escaping fugitives, or of emancipated slaves. in this city they form a large class--have increased in numbers, wealth, and standing--they constitute a peculiar society of their own, presenting many social peculiarities worthy of interest and attention. the representations of their positions as to wealth and education are reliable, the incidents related are mostly true ones, woven together by a slight web of fiction. the scenes of the mob describe incidents of a peculiar stage of excitement, which existed in the city of philadelphia years ago, when the first agitation of the slavery question developed an intense form of opposition to the free coloured people. southern influence at that time stimulated scenes of mob violence in several northern cities where the discussion was attempted. by prompt, undaunted resistance, however, this spirit was subdued, and the right of free inquiry established; so that discussion of the question, so far from being dangerous in free states, is now begun to be allowed in the slave states; and there are some subjects the mere discussion of which is a half-victory. the author takes pleasure in recommending this simple and truthfully-told story to the attention and interest of the friends of progress and humanity in england. (signed) h.b. stowe. andover, u.s., _august_ , . from lord brougham. i have been requested by one who has long known the deep interest i have ever taken in the cause of freedom, and in the elevation of the coloured race, to supply a few lines of introduction to mr. webb's book. it was the intention of mrs. harriet beecher stowe to introduce this work to the british public, but i am truly sorry to learn that a severe domestic affliction, since her return to america, has postponed the fulfilment of her promise. i am, however, able to state her opinion of the book, expressed in a letter to one of her friends. she says:--"there are points in the book of which i think very highly. the style is simple and unambitious--the characters, most of them faithfully drawn from real life, are quite fresh, and the incident, which is also much of it fact, is often deeply interesting. "i shall do what i can with the preface. i would not do as much unless i thought the book of worth _in itself_. it shows what i long have wanted to show; what the _free people of colour do attain_, and what they can do in spite of all social obstacles." i hope and trust that mr. webb's book will meet with all the success to which its own merit, and the great interest of the subject, so well entitle it. on this, mrs. stowe's authority is naturally of the greatest weight; and i can only lament that this prefatory notice does not come accompanied with her further remarks and illustrations. , grafton-street, _july_ , . * * * * * note.--since the above was written, the preface by mrs. stowe has been received. it was deemed best, however, to still retain the introduction so kindly given by lord brougham, whose deep interest in the freedom and welfare of the african race none feel more grateful for than does the author of the following pages. contents .--in which the reader is introduced to a family of peculiar construction .--a glance at the ellis family .--charlie's trials .--in which mr. winston finds an old friend .--the garies decide on a change .--pleasant news .--mrs. thomas has her troubles .--trouble in the ellis family .--breaking up .--another parting .--the new home .--mr. garie's neighbour .--hopes consummated .--charlie at warmouth .--mrs. stevens gains a triumph .--mr. stevens makes a discovery .--plotting .--mr. stevens falls into bad hands .--the alarm .--the attack .--more horrors .--an anxious day .--the lost one found .--charlie distinguishes himself .--the heir .--home again .--sudbury .--charlie seeks employment .--clouds and sunshine .--many years after .--the thorn rankles .--dear old ess again .--the fatal discovery .--"murder will out" .--the wedding .--and the last chapter i. in which the reader is introduced to a family of peculiar construction. it was at the close of an afternoon in may, that a party might have been seen gathered around a table covered with all those delicacies that, in the household of a rich southern planter, are regarded as almost necessaries of life. in the centre stood a dish of ripe strawberries, their plump red sides peeping through the covering of white sugar that had been plentifully sprinkled over them. geeche limes, almost drowned in their own rich syrup, temptingly displayed their bronze-coloured forms just above the rim of the glass that contained them. opposite, and as if to divert the gaze from lingering too long over their luscious beauty, was a dish of peaches preserved in brandy, a never-failing article in a southern matron's catalogues of sweets. a silver basket filled with a variety of cakes was in close proximity to a plate of corn-flappers, which were piled upon it like a mountain, and from the brown tops of which trickled tiny rivulets of butter. all these dainties, mingling their various odours with the aroma of the tea and fine old java that came steaming forth from the richly chased silver pots, could not fail to produce a very appetising effect. there was nothing about mr. garie, the gentleman who sat at the head of the table, to attract more than ordinary attention. he had the ease of manner usual with persons whose education and associations have been of a highly refined character, and his countenance, on the whole, was pleasing, and indicative of habitual good temper. opposite to him, and presiding at the tea-tray, sat a lady of marked beauty. the first thing that would have attracted attention on seeing her were her gloriously dark eyes. they were not entirely black, but of that seemingly changeful hue so often met with in persons of african extraction, which deepens and lightens with every varying emotion. hers wore a subdued expression that sank into the heart and at once riveted those who saw her. her hair, of jetty black, was arranged in braids; and through her light-brown complexion the faintest tinge of carmine was visible. as she turned to take her little girl from the arms of the servant, she displayed a fine profile and perfectly moulded form. no wonder that ten years before, when she was placed upon the auction-block at savanah, she had brought so high a price. mr. garie had paid two thousand dollars for her, and was the envy of all the young bucks in the neighbourhood who had competed with him at the sale. captivated by her beauty, he had esteemed himself fortunate in becoming her purchaser; and as time developed the goodness of her heart, and her mind enlarged through the instructions he assiduously gave her, he found the connection that might have been productive of many evils, had proved a boon to both; for whilst the astonishing progress she made in her education proved her worthy of the pains he took to instruct her, she returned threefold the tenderness and affection he lavished upon her. the little girl in her arms, and the boy at her side, showed no trace whatever of african origin. the girl had the chestnut hair and blue eyes of her father; but the boy had inherited the black hair and dark eyes of his mother. the critically learned in such matters, knowing his parentage, might have imagined they could detect the evidence of his mother's race, by the slightly mezzo-tinto expression of his eyes, and the rather african fulness of his lips; but the casual observer would have passed him by without dreaming that a drop of negro blood coursed through his veins. his face was expressive of much intelligence, and he now seemed to listen with an earnest interest to the conversation that was going on between his father and a dark-complexioned gentleman who sat beside him. "and so you say, winston, that they never suspected you were coloured?" "i don't think they had the remotest idea of such a thing. at least, if they did, they must have conquered their prejudices most effectually, for they treated me with the most distinguished consideration. old mr. priestly was like a father to me; and as for his daughter clara and her aunt, they were politeness embodied. the old gentleman was so much immersed in business, that he was unable to bestow much attention upon me; so he turned me over to miss clara to be shown the lions. we went to the opera, the theatre, to museums, concerts, and i can't tell where all. the sunday before i left i accompanied her to church, and after service, as we were coming out, she introduced me to miss van cote and her mamma. mrs. van cote was kind enough to invite me to her grand ball." "and did you go?" interrupted mr. garie. "of course, i did--and what is more, as old mr. priestly has given up balls, he begged me to escort clara and her aunt." "well, winston, that is too rich," exclaimed mr. garie, slapping his hand on the table, and laughing till he was red in the face; "too good, by jove! oh! i can't keep that. i must write to them, and say i forgot to mention in my note of introduction that you were a coloured gentleman. the old man will swear till everything turns blue; and as for clara, what will become of her? a fifth-avenue belle escorted to church and to balls by a coloured gentleman!" here mr. garie indulged in another burst of laughter so side-shaking and merry, that the contagion spread even to the little girl in mrs. garie's arms, who almost choked herself with the tea her mother was giving her, and who had to be hustled and shaken for some time before she could be brought round again. "it will be a great triumph for me," said mr. garie. "the old man prides himself on being able to detect evidences of the least drop of african blood in any one; and makes long speeches about the natural antipathy of the anglo-saxon to anything with a drop of negro blood in its veins. oh, i shall write him a glorious letter expressing my pleasure at his great change of sentiment, and my admiration of the fearless manner in which he displays his contempt for public opinion. how he will stare! i fancy i see him now, with his hair almost on end with disgust. it will do him good: it will convince him, i hope, that a man can be a gentleman even though he has african blood in his veins. i have had a series of quarrels with him," continued mr. garie; "i think he had his eye on me for miss clara, and that makes him particularly fierce about my present connection. he rather presumes on his former great intimacy with my father, and undertakes to lecture me occasionally when opportunity is afforded. he was greatly scandalized at my speaking of emily as my wife; and seemed to think me cracked because i talked of endeavouring to procure a governess for my children, or of sending them abroad to be educated. he has a holy horror of everything approaching to amalgamation; and of all the men i ever met, cherishes the most unchristian prejudice against coloured people. he says, the existence of "a gentleman" with african blood in his veins, is a moral and physical impossibility, and that by no exertion can anything be made of that description of people. he is connected with a society for the deportation of free coloured people, and thinks they ought to be all sent to africa, unless they are willing to become the property of some good master." "oh, yes; it is quite a hobby of his," here interposed mr. winston. "he makes lengthy speeches on the subject, and has published two of them in pamphlet form. have you seen them?" "yes, he sent them to me. i tried to get through one of them, but it was too heavy, i had to give it up. besides, i had no patience with them; they abounded in mis-statements respecting the free coloured people. why even here in the slave states--in the cities of savanah and charleston--they are much better situated than he describes them to be in new york; and since they can and do prosper here, where they have such tremendous difficulties to encounter, i know they cannot be in the condition he paints, in a state where they are relieved from many of the oppressions they labour under here. and, on questioning him on the subject, i found he was entirely unacquainted with coloured people; profoundly ignorant as to the real facts of their case. he had never been within a coloured church or school; did not even know that they had a literary society amongst them. positively, i, living down here in georgia, knew more about the character and condition of the coloured people of the northern states, than he who lived right in the midst of them. would you believe that beyond their laundress and a drunken negro that they occasionally employed to do odd jobs for them, they were actually unacquainted with any coloured people: and how unjust was it for him to form his opinion respecting a class numbering over twenty thousand in his own state, from the two individuals i have mentioned and the negro loafers he occasionally saw in the streets." "it is truly unfortunate," rejoined mr. winston, "for he covers his prejudices with such a pretended regard for the coloured people, that a person would be the more readily led to believe his statements respecting them to be correct; and he is really so positive about it, and apparently go deaf to all argument that i did not discuss the subject with him to any extent; he was so very kind to me that i did not want to run a tilt against his favourite opinions." "you wrote me he gave you letters to philadelphia; was there one amongst them to the mortons?" "yes. they were very civil and invited me to a grand dinner they gave to the belgian charge d'affaires. i also met there one or two scions of the first families of virginia. the belgian minister did not seem to be aware that slavery is a tabooed subject in polite circles, and he was continually bringing it forward until slaves, slavery, and black people in general became the principal topic of conversation, relieved by occasional discussion upon some new book or pictures, and remarks in praise of the viands before us. a very amusing thing occurred during dinner. a bright-faced little coloured boy who was assisting at the table, seemed to take uncommon interest in the conversation. an animated discussion had arisen as to the antiquity of the use of salad, one party maintaining that one of the oldest of the english poets had mentioned it in a poem, and the other as stoutly denying it. at last a reverend gentleman, whose remarks respecting the intelligence of the children of ham had been particularly disparaging, asserted that nowhere in chaucer, spencer, nor any of the old english poets could anything relating to it be found. at this, the little waiter became so excited that he could no longer contain himself, and, despite the frowns and nods of our hostess, exclaimed, 'yes it can, it's in chaucer; here,' he continued, taking out a book from the book-case, 'here is the very volume,'[*] and turning over the leaves he pointed out the passage, to the great chagrin of the reverend gentleman, and to the amusement of the guests. the belgian minister enjoyed it immensely. 'ah,' said he, 'the child of ham know more than the child of shem, dis time.' whereupon mrs. morton rejoined that in this case it was not so wonderful, owing to the frequent and intimate relations into which ham and salad were brought, and with this joke the subject was dismissed. i can't say i was particularly sorry when the company broke up." [footnote * see chaucer, "flower and the leaf."] "oh, george, never mind the white people," here interposed mrs. garie. "never mind them; tell us about the coloured folks; they are the ones i take the most interest in. we were so delighted with your letters, and so glad that you found mrs. ellis. tell us all about that." "oh, 'tis a long story, em, and can't be told in a minute; it would take the whole evening to relate it all." "look at the children, my dear, they are half asleep," said mr. garie. "call nurse and see them safe into bed, and when you come back we will have the whole story." "very well;" replied she, rising and calling the nurse. "now remember, george, you are not to begin until i return, for i should be quite vexed to lose a word." "oh, go on with the children, my dear, i'll guarantee he shall not say a word on the subject till you come back." with this assurance mrs. garie left the room, playfully shaking her finger at them as she went out, exclaiming, "not a word, remember now, not a word." after she left them mr. garie remarked, "i have not seen em as happy as she is this afternoon for some time. i don't know what has come over her lately; she scarcely ever smiles now, and yet she used to be the most cheerful creature in the world. i wish i knew what is the matter with her; sometimes i am quite distressed about her. she goes about the house looking so lost and gloomy, and does not seem to take the least interest in anything. you saw," continued he, "how silent she has been all tea time, and yet she has been more interested in what you have been saying than in anything that has transpired for months. well, i suppose women will be so sometimes," he concluded, applying himself to the warm cakes that had just been set upon the table. "perhaps she is not well," suggested mr. winston, "i think she looks a little pale." "well, possibly you may be right, but i trust it is only a temporary lowness of spirits or something of that kind. maybe she will get over it in a day or two;" and with this remark the conversation dropped, and the gentlemen proceeded to the demolition of the sweetmeats before them. and now, my reader, whilst they are finishing their meal, i will relate to you who mr. winston is, and how he came to be so familiarly seated at mr. garie's table. mr. winston had been a slave. yes! that fine-looking gentleman seated near mr. garie and losing nothing by the comparison that their proximity would suggest, had been fifteen years before sold on the auction-block in the neighbouring town of savanah--had been made to jump, show his teeth, shout to test his lungs, and had been handled and examined by professed negro traders and amateur buyers, with less gentleness and commiseration than every humane man would feel for a horse or an ox. now do not doubt me--i mean that very gentleman, whose polished manners and irreproachable appearance might have led you to suppose him descended from a long line of illustrious ancestors. yes--he was the offspring of a mulatto field-hand by her master. he who was now clothed in fine linen, had once rejoiced in a tow shirt that scarcely covered his nakedness, and had sustained life on a peck of corn a week, receiving the while kicks and curses from a tyrannical overseer. the death of his master had brought him to the auction-block, from which, both he and his mother were sold to separate owners. there they took their last embrace of each other--the mother tearless, but heart-broken--the boy with all the wildest manifestations of grief. his purchaser was a cotton broker from new orleans, a warm-hearted, kind old man, who took a fancy to the boy's looks, and pitied him for his unfortunate separation from his mother. after paying for his new purchase, he drew him aside, and said, in a kind tone, "come, my little man, stop crying; my boys never cry. if you behave yourself you shall have fine times with me. stop crying now, and come with me; i am going to buy you a new suit of clothes." "i don't want new clothes--i want my mammy," exclaimed the child, with a fresh burst of grief. "oh dear me!" said the fussy old gentleman, "why can't you stop--i don't want to hear you cry. here," continued he, fumbling in his pocket--"here's a picayune." "will that buy mother back?" said the child brightening up. "no, no, my little man, not quite--i wish it would. i'd purchase the old woman; but i can't--i'm not able to spare the money." "then i don't want it," cried the boy, throwing the money on the ground. "if it won't buy mammy, i don't want it. i want my mammy, and nothing else." at length, by much kind language, and by the prospect of many fabulous events to occur hereafter, invented at the moment by the old gentleman, the boy was coaxed into a more quiescent state, and trudged along in the rear of mr. moyese--that was the name of his purchaser--to be fitted with the new suit of clothes. the next morning they started by the stage for augusta. george, seated on the box with the driver, found much to amuse him; and the driver's merry chat and great admiration of george's new and gaily-bedizened suit, went a great way towards reconciling that young gentleman to his new situation. in a few days they arrived in new orleans. there, under the kind care of mr. moyese, he began to exhibit great signs of intelligence. the atmosphere into which he was now thrown, the kindness of which he was hourly the recipient, called into vigour abilities that would have been stifled for ever beneath the blighting influences that surrounded him under his former master. the old gentleman had him taught to read and write, and his aptness was such as to highly gratify the kind old soul. in course of time, the temporary absence of an out-door clerk caused george's services to be required at the office for a few days, as errand-boy. here he made himself so useful as to induce mr. moyese to keep him there permanently. after this he went through all the grades from errand-boy up to chief-clerk, which post he filled to the full satisfaction of his employer. his manners and person improved with his circumstances; and at the time he occupied the chief-clerk's desk, no one would have suspected him to be a slave, and few who did not know his history would have dreamed that he had a drop of african blood in his veins. he was unremitting in his attention to the duties of his station, and gained, by his assiduity and amiable deportment, the highest regard of his employer. a week before a certain new-year's-day, mr. moyese sat musing over some presents that had just been sent home, and which he was on the morrow to distribute amongst his nephews and nieces. "why, bless me!" he suddenly exclaimed, turning them over, "why, i've entirely forgotten george! that will never do; i must get something for him. what shall it be? he has a fine watch, and i gave him a pin and ring last year. i really don't know what will be suitable," and he sat for some time rubbing his chin, apparently in deep deliberation. "yes, i'll do it!" he exclaimed, starting up; "i'll do it! he has been a faithful fellow, and deserves it. i'll make him a present of himself! now, how strange it is i never thought of that before--it's just the thing;--how surprised and delighted he will be!" and the old gentleman laughed a low, gentle, happy laugh, that had in it so little of selfish pleasure, that had you only heard him you must have loved him for it. having made up his mind to surprise george in this agreeable manner, mr. moyese immediately wrote a note, which he despatched to his lawyers, messrs. ketchum and lee, desiring them to make out a set of free papers for his boy george, and to have them ready for delivery on the morrow, as it was his custom to give his presents two or three days in advance of the coming year. the note found mr. ketchum deep in a disputed will case, upon the decision of which depended the freedom of some half-dozen slaves, who had been emancipated by the will of their late master; by which piece of posthumous benevolence his heirs had been greatly irritated, and were in consequence endeavouring to prove him insane. "look at that, lee," said he, tossing the note to his partner; "if that old moyese isn't the most curious specimen of humanity in all new orleans! he is going to give away clear fifteen hundred dollars as a new-year's gift!" "to whom?" asked mr. lee. "he has sent me orders," replied mr. ketchum, "to make out a set of free papers for his boy george." "well, i can't say that i see so much in that," said lee; "how can he expect to keep him? george is almost as white as you or i, and has the manners and appearance of a gentleman. he might walk off any day without the least fear of detection." "very true," rejoined ketchum, "but i don't think he would do it. he is very much attached to the old gentleman, and no doubt would remain with him as long as the old man lives. but i rather think the heirs would have to whistle for him after moyese was put under ground. however," concluded mr. ketchum, "they won't have much opportunity to dispute the matter, as he will be a free man, no doubt, before he is forty-eight hours older." a day or two after this, mr. moyese entertained all his nephews and nieces at dinner, and each was gratified with some appropriate gift. the old man sat happily regarding the group that crowded round him, their faces beaming with delight. the claim for the seat of honour on uncle moyese's knee was clamorously disputed, and the old gentleman was endeavouring to settle it to the satisfaction of all parties, when a servant entered, and delivered a portentous-looking document, tied with red tape. "oh, the papers--now, my dears, let uncle go. gustave, let go your hold of my leg, or i can't get up. amy, ring the bell, dear." this operation mr. moyese was obliged to lift her into the chair to effect, where she remained tugging at the bell-rope until she was lifted out again by the servant, who came running in great haste to answer a summons of such unusual vigour. "tell george i want him," said mr. moyese. "he's gone down to the office; i hearn him say suffin bout de nordern mail as he went out--but i duno what it was"--and as he finished he vanished from the apartment, and might soon after have been seen with his mouth in close contact with the drumstick of a turkey. mr. moyese being now released from the children, took his way to the office, with the portentous red-tape document that was to so greatly change the condition of george winston in his coat pocket. the old man sat down at his desk, smiling, as he balanced the papers in his hand, at the thought of the happiness he was about to confer on his favourite. he was thus engaged when the door opened, and george entered, bearing some newly-arrived orders from european correspondents, in reference to which he sought mr. moyese's instructions. "i think, sir," said he, modestly, "that we had better reply at once to ditson, and send him the advance he requires, as he will not otherwise be able to fill these;" and as he concluded he laid the papers on the table, and stood waiting orders respecting them. mr. moyese laid down the packet, and after looking over the papers george had brought in, replied: "i think we had. write to him to draw upon us for the amount he requires.--and, george," he continued, looking at him benevolently, "what would you like for a new-year's present?" "anything you please, sir," was the respectful reply. "well, george," resumed mr. moyese, "i have made up my mind to make you a present of----" here he paused and looked steadily at him for a few seconds; and then gravely handing him the papers, concluded, "of yourself, george! now mind and don't throw my present away, my boy." george stood for some moments looking in a bewildered manner, first at his master, then at the papers. at last the reality of his good fortune broke fully upon him, and he sank into a chair, and unable to say more than: "god bless you, mr. moyese!" burst into tears. "now you are a pretty fellow," said the old man, sobbing himself, "it's nothing to cry about--get home as fast as you can, you stupid cry-baby, and mind you are here early in the morning, sir, for i intend to pay you five hundred dollars a-year, and i mean you to earn it," and thus speaking he bustled out of the room, followed by george's repeated "god bless you!" that "god bless you" played about his ears at night, and soothed him to sleep; in dreams he saw it written in diamond letters on a golden crown, held towards him by a hand outstretched from the azure above. he fancied the birds sang it to him in his morning walk, and that he heard it in the ripple of the little stream that flowed at the foot of his garden. so he could afford to smile when his relatives talked about his mistaken generosity, and could take refuge in that fervent "god bless you!" six years after this event mr. moyese died, leaving george a sufficient legacy to enable him to commence business on his own account. as soon as he had arranged his affairs, he started for his old home, to endeavour to gain by personal exertions what he had been unable to learn through the agency of others--a knowledge of the fate of his mother. he ascertained that she had been sold and re-sold, and had finally died in new orleans, not more than three miles from where he had been living. he had not even the melancholy satisfaction of finding her grave. during his search for his mother he had become acquainted with emily, the wife of mr. garie, and discovered that she was his cousin; and to this was owing the familiar footing on which we find him in the household where we first introduced him to our readers. mr. winston had just returned from a tour through the northern states, where he had been in search of a place in which to establish himself in business. the introductions with which mr. garie had kindly favoured him, had enabled him to see enough of northern society to convince him, that, amongst the whites, he could not form either social or business connections, should his identity with, the african race be discovered; and whilst, on the other hand, he would have found sufficiently refined associations amongst the people of colour to satisfy his social wants, he felt that he could not bear the isolation and contumely to which they were subjected. he, therefore, decided on leaving the united states, and on going to some country where, if he must struggle for success in life, he might do it without the additional embarrassments that would be thrown in his way in his native land, solely because he belonged to an oppressed race. chapter ii. a glance at the ellis family. "i wish charlie would come with that tea," exclaimed mrs. ellis, who sat finishing off some work, which had to go home that evening. "i wonder what can keep him so long away. he has been gone over an hour; it surely cannot take him that time to go to watson's." "it is a great distance, mother," said esther ellis, who was busily plying her needle; "and i don't think he has been quite so long as you suppose." "yes; he has been gone a good hour," repeated mrs. ellis. "it is now six o'clock, and it wanted three minutes to five when he left. i do hope he won't forget that i told him half black and half green--he is so forgetful!" and mrs. ellis rubbed her spectacles and looked peevishly out of the window as she concluded.--"where can he be?" she resumed, looking in the direction in which he might be expected. "oh, here he comes, and caddy with him. they have just turned the corner--open the door and let them in." esther arose, and on opening the door was almost knocked down by charlie's abrupt entrance into the apartment, he being rather forcibly shoved in by his sister caroline, who appeared to be in a high state of indignation. "where do you think he was, mother? where _do_ you think i found him?" "well, i can't say--i really don't know; in some mischief, i'll be bound." "he was on the lot playing marbles--and i've had such a time to get him home. just look at his knees; they are worn through. and only think, mother, the tea was lying on the ground, and might have been carried off, if i had not happened to come that way. and then he has been fighting and struggling with me all the way home. see," continued she, baring her arm, "just look how he has scratched me," and as she spoke she held out the injured member for her mother's inspection. "mother," said charlie, in his justification, "she began to beat me before all the boys, before i had said a word to her, and i wasn't going to stand that. she is always storming at me. she don't give me any peace of my life." "oh yes, mother," here interposed esther; "cad is too cross to him. i must say, that he would not be as bad as he is, if she would only let him alone." "esther, please hush now; you have nothing to do with their quarrels. i'll settle all their differences. you always take his part whether he be right or wrong. i shall send him to bed without his tea, and to-morrow i will take his marbles from him; and if i see his knees showing through his pants again, i'll put a red patch on them--that's what i'll do. now, sir, go to bed, and don't let me hear of you until morning." mr. and mrs. ellis were at the head of a highly respectable and industrious coloured family. they had three children. esther, the eldest, was a girl of considerable beauty, and amiable temper. caroline, the second child, was plain in person, and of rather shrewish disposition; she was a most indefatigable housewife, and was never so happy as when in possession of a dust or scrubbing brush; she would have regarded a place where she could have lived in a perpetual state of house cleaning, as an earthly paradise. between her and master charlie continued warfare existed, interrupted only by brief truces brought about by her necessity for his services as water-carrier. when a service of this character had been duly rewarded by a slice of bread and preserves, or some other dainty, hostilities would most probably be recommenced by charlie's making an inroad upon the newly cleaned floor, and leaving the prints of his muddy boots thereon. the fact must here be candidly stated, that charlie was not a tidy boy. he despised mats, and seldom or never wiped his feet on entering the house; he was happiest when he could don his most dilapidated unmentionables, as he could then sit down where he pleased without the fear of his mother before his eyes, and enter upon a game of marbles with his mind perfectly free from all harassing cares growing out of any possible accident to the aforesaid garments, so that he might give that attention to the game that its importance demanded. he was a bright-faced pretty boy, clever at his lessons, and a favourite both with tutors and scholars. he had withal a thorough boy's fondness for play, and was also characterised by all the thoughtlessness consequent thereon. he possessed a lively, affectionate disposition, and was generally at peace with all the world, his sister caddy excepted. caroline had recovered her breath, and her mind being soothed by the judgment that had been pronounced on master charlie, she began to bustle about to prepare tea. the shining copper tea-kettle was brought from the stove where it had been seething and singing for the last half-hour; then the tea-pot of china received its customary quantity of tea, which was set upon the stove to brew, and carefully placed behind the stove pipe that no accidental touch of the elbow might bring it to destruction. plates, knives, and teacups came rattling forth from the closet; the butter was brought from the place where it had been placed to keep it cool, and a corn-cake was soon smoking on the table, and sending up its seducing odour into the room over-head to which charlie had been recently banished, causing to that unfortunate young gentleman great physical discomfort. "now, mother," said the bustling caddy, "it's all ready. come now and sit down whilst the cake is hot--do put up the sewing, esther, and come!" neither esther nor her mother needed much pressing, and they were accordingly soon seated round the table on which their repast was spread. "put away a slice of this cake for father," said mrs. ellis, "for he won't be home until late; he is obliged to attend a vestry meeting to-night." mrs. ellis sat for some time sipping the fragrant and refreshing tea. when the contents of two or three cups one after another had disappeared, and sundry slices of corn-bread had been deposited where much corn-bread had been deposited before, she began to think about charlie, and to imagine that perhaps she had been rather hasty in sending him to bed without his supper. "what had charlie to-day in his dinner-basket to take to school with him?" she inquired of caddy. "why, mother, i put in enough for a wolf; three or four slices of bread, with as many more of corn-beef, some cheese, one of those little pies, and all that bread-pudding which was left at dinner yesterday--he must have had enough." "but, mother, you know he always gives away the best part of his dinner," interposed esther. "he supplies two or three boys with food. there is that dirty kinch that he is so fond of, who never takes any dinner with him, and depends entirely upon charlie. he must be hungry; do let him come down and get his tea, mother?" notwithstanding the observations of caroline that esther was just persuading her mother to spoil the boy, that he would be worse than ever, and many other similar predictions. esther and the tea combined won a signal triumph, and charlie was called down from the room above, where he had been exchanging telegraphic communications with the before-mentioned kinch, in hopes of receiving a commutation of sentence. charlie was soon seated at the table with an ample allowance of corn-bread and tea, and he looked so demure, and conducted himself in such an exemplary manner, that one would have scarcely thought him given to marbles and dirty company. having eaten to his satisfaction he quite ingratiated himself with caddy by picking up all the crumbs he had spilled during tea, and throwing them upon the dust-heap. this last act was quite a stroke of policy, as even caddy began to regard him as capable of reformation. the tea-things washed up and cleared away, the females busied themselves with their sewing, and charlie immersed himself in his lessons for the morrow with a hearty goodwill and perseverance as if he had abjured marbles for ever. the hearty supper and persevering attention to study soon began to produce their customary effect upon charlie. he could not get on with his lessons. many of the state capitals positively refused to be found, and he was beginning to entertain the sage notion that probably some of the legislatures had come to the conclusion to dispense with them altogether, or had had them placed in such obscure places that they could not be found. the variously coloured states began to form a vast kaleidoscope, in which the lakes and rivers had been entirely swallowed up. ranges of mountains disappeared, and gulfs and bays and islands were entirely lost. in fact, he was sleepy, and had already had two or three narrow escapes from butting over the candles; finally he fell from his chair, crushing caddy's newly-trimmed bonnet, to the intense grief and indignation of that young lady, who inflicted summary vengeance upon him before he was sufficiently awake to be aware of what had happened. the work being finished, mrs. ellis and caddy prepared to take it home to mrs. thomas, leaving esther at home to receive her father on his return and give him his tea. mrs. ellis and caddy wended their way towards the fashionable part of the city, looking in at the various shop-windows as they went. numberless were the great bargains they saw there displayed, and divers were the discussions they held respecting them. "oh, isn't that a pretty calico, mother, that with the green ground?" "'tis pretty, but it won't wash, child; those colours always run." "just look at that silk though--now that's cheap, you must acknowledge--only eighty-seven and a half cents; if i only had a dress of that i should be fixed." "laws, caddy!" replied mrs. ellis, "that stuff is as slazy as a washed cotton handkerchief, and coarse enough almost to sift sand through. it wouldn't last you any time. the silks they make now-a-days ain't worth anything; they don't wear well at all. why," continued she, "when i was a girl they made silks that would stand on end--and one of them would last a life-time." they had now reached chestnut-street, which was filled with gaily-dressed people, enjoying the balmy breath of a soft may evening. mrs. ellis and caddy walked briskly onward, and were soon beyond the line of shops, and entered upon the aristocratic quarter into which many of its residents had retired, that they might be out of sight of the houses in which their fathers or grandfathers had made their fortunes. "mother," said caddy, "this is mr. grant's new house--isn't it a splendid place? they say it's like a palace inside. they are great people, them grants. i saw in the newspaper yesterday that young mr. augustus grant had been appointed an attache to the american legation at paris; the newspapers say he is a rising man." "well, he ought to be," rejoined mrs. ellis, "for his old grand-daddy made yeast enough to raise the whole family. many a pennyworth has he sold me. laws! how the poor old folk do get up! i think i can see the old man now, with his sleeves rolled up, dealing out his yeast. he wore one coat for about twenty years, and used to be always bragging about it." as they were thus talking, a door of one of the splendid mansions they were passing opened, and a fashionably-dressed young man came slowly down the steps, and walked on before them with a very measured step and peculiar gait. "that's young dr. whiston, mother," whispered caddy; "he's courting young miss morton." "you don't say so!" replied the astonished mrs. ellis. "why, i declare his grandfather laid her grandfather out! old whiston was an undertaker, and used to make the handsomest coffins of his time. and he is going to marry miss morton! what next, i'd like to know! he walks exactly like the old man. i used to mock him when i was a little girl. he had just that hop-and-go kind of gait, and he was the funniest man that ever lived. i've seen him at a funeral go into the parlour, and condole with the family, and talk about the dear departed until the tears rolled down his cheeks; and then he'd be down in the kitchen, eating and drinking, and laughing, and telling jokes about the corpses, before the tears were dry on his face. how he used to make money! he buried almost all the respectable people about town, and made a large fortune. he owned a burying-ground in coates-street, and when the property in that vicinity became valuable, he turned the dead folks out, and built houses on the ground!" "i shouldn't say it was a very pleasant place to live in, if there are such things as ghosts," said caddy, laughing; "i for one wouldn't like to live there--but here we are at mr. thomas's--how short the way has seemed!" caroline gave a fierce rap at the door, which was opened by old aunt rachel, the fat cook, who had lived with the thomases for a fabulous length of time. she was an old woman when mrs. ellis came as a girl into the family, and had given her many a cuff in days long past; in fact, notwithstanding mrs. ellis had been married many years, and had children almost as old as she herself was when she left mr. thomas, aunt rachel could never be induced to regard her otherwise than as a girl. "oh, it's you, is it?" said she gruffly, as she opened the door; "don't you think better break de door down at once-rapping as if you was guine to tear off de knocker--is dat de way, gal, you comes to quality's houses? you lived here long nuff to larn better dan dat--and dis is twice i've been to de door in de last half-hour--if any one else comes dere they may stay outside. shut de door after you, and come into de kitchen, and don't keep me standin' here all night," added she, puffing and blowing as she waddled back into her sanctum. waiting until the irate old cook had recovered her breath, mrs. ellis modestly inquired if mrs. thomas was at home. "go up and see," was the surly response. "you've been up stars often enuff to know de way--go long wid you, gal, and don't be botherin' me, 'case i don't feel like bein' bothered--now, mind i tell yer.--here, you cad, set down on dis stool, and let that cat alone; i don't let any one play with my cat," continued she, "and you'll jest let him alone, if you please, or i'll make you go sit in de entry till your mother's ready to go. i don't see what she has you brats tugging after her for whenever she comes here--she might jest as well leave yer at home to darn your stockings--i 'spect dey want it." poor caddy was boiling over with wrath; but deeming prudence the better part of valour, she did not venture upon any wordy contest with aunt rachel, but sat down upon the stool by the fire-place, in which a bright fire was blazing. up the chimney an old smoke-jack was clicking, whirling, and making the most dismal noise imaginable. this old smoke-jack was aunt rachel's especial _protege_, and she obstinately and successfully defended it against all comers. she turned up her nose at all modern inventions designed for the same use as entirely beneath her notice. she had been accustomed to hearing its rattle for the last forty years, and would as soon have thought of committing suicide as consenting to its removal. she and her cat were admirably matched; he was as snappish and cross as she, and resented with distended claws and elevated back all attempts on the part of strangers to cultivate amicable relations with him. in fact, tom's pugnacious disposition was clearly evidenced by his appearance; one side of his face having a very battered aspect, and the fur being torn off his back in several places. caddy sat for some time surveying the old woman and her cat, in evident awe of both. she regarded also with great admiration the scrupulously clean and shining kitchen tins that garnished the walls and reflected the red light of the blazing fire. the wooden dresser was a miracle of whiteness, and ranged thereon was a set of old-fashioned blue china, on which was displayed the usual number of those unearthly figures which none but the chinese can create. tick, tick, went the old dutch clock in the corner, and the smoke-jack kept up its whirring noise. old tom and aunt rachel were both napping; and so caddy, having no other resource, went to sleep also. mrs. ellis found her way without any difficulty to mrs. thomas's room. her gentle tap upon the door quite flurried that good lady, who (we speak it softly) was dressing her wig, a task she entrusted to no other mortal hands. she peeped out, and seeing who it was, immediately opened the door without hesitation. "oh, it's you, is it? come in, ellen," said she; "i don't mind you." "i've brought the night-dresses home," said mrs. ellis, laying her bundle upon the table,--"i hope they'll suit." "oh, no doubt they will. did you bring the bill?" asked mrs. thomas. the bill was produced, and mrs. ellis sat down, whilst mrs. thomas counted out the money. this having been duly effected, and the bill carefully placed on the file, mrs. thomas also sat down, and commenced her usual lamentation over the state of her nerves, and the extravagance of the younger members of the family. on the latter subject she spoke very feelingly. "such goings on, ellen, are enough to set me crazy--so many nurses--and then we have to keep four horses--and it's company, company from monday morning until saturday night; the house is kept upside-down continually--money, money for everything--all going out, and nothing coming in!"--and the unfortunate mrs. thomas whined and groaned as if she had not at that moment an income of clear fifteen thousand dollars a year, and a sister who might die any day and leave her half as much more. mrs. thomas was the daughter of the respectable old gentleman whom dr. whiston's grandfather had prepared for his final resting-place. her daughter had married into a once wealthy, but now decayed, carolina family. in consideration of the wealth bequeathed by her grandfather (who was a maker of leather breeches, and speculator in general), miss thomas had received the offer of the poverty-stricken hand of mr. morton, and had accepted it with evident pleasure, as he was undoubtedly a member of one of the first families of the south, and could prove a distant connection with one of the noble families of england. they had several children, and their incessant wants had rendered it necessary that another servant should be kept. now mrs. thomas had long had her eye on charlie, with a view of incorporating him with the thomas establishment, and thought this would be a favourable time to broach the subject to his mother: she therefore commenced by inquiring-- "how have you got through the winter, ellen? everything has been so dear that even we have felt the effect of the high prices." "oh, tolerably well, i thank you. husband's business, it is true, has not been as brisk as usual, but we ought not to complain; now that we have got the house paid for, and the girls do so much sewing, we get on very nicely." "i should think three children must be something of a burthen--must be hard to provide for." "oh no, not at all," rejoined mrs. ellis, who seemed rather surprised at mrs. thomas's uncommon solicitude respecting them. "we have never found the children a burthen, thank god--they're rather a comfort and a pleasure than otherwise." "i'm glad to hear you say so, ellen--very glad, indeed, for i have been quite disturbed in mind respecting you during the winter. i really several times thought of sending to take charlie off your hands: by-the-way, what is he doing now?" "he goes to school regularly--he hasn't missed a day all winter. you should just see his writing," continued mrs. ellis, warming up with a mother's pride in her only son--"he won't let the girls make out any of the bills, but does it all himself--he made out yours." mrs. thomas took down the file and looked at the bill again. "it's very neatly written, very neatly written, indeed; isn't it about time that he left school--don't you think he has education enough?" she inquired. "his father don't. he intends sending him to another school, after vacation, where they teach latin and greek, and a number of other branches." "nonsense, nonsense, ellen! if i were you, i wouldn't hear of it. there won't be a particle of good result to the child from any such acquirements. it isn't as though he was a white child. what use can latin or greek be to a coloured boy? none in the world--he'll have to be a common mechanic, or, perhaps, a servant, or barber, or something of that kind, and then what use would all his fine education be to him? take my advice, ellen, and don't have him taught things that will make him feel above the situation he, in all probability, will have to fill. now," continued she, "i have a proposal to make to you: let him come and live with me awhile--i'll pay you well, and take good care of him; besides, he will be learning something here, good manners, &c. not that he is not a well-mannered child; but, you know, ellen, there is something every one learns by coming in daily contact with refined and educated people that cannot but be beneficial--come now, make up your mind to leave him with me, at least until the winter, when the schools again commence, and then, if his father is still resolved to send him back to school, why he can do so. let me have him for the summer at least." mrs. ellis, who had always been accustomed to regard mrs. thomas as a miracle of wisdom, was, of course, greatly impressed with what she had said. she had lived many years in her family, and had left it to marry mr. ellis, a thrifty mechanic, who came from savanah, her native city. she had great reverence for any opinion mrs. thomas expressed; and, after some further conversation on the subject, made up her mind to consent to the proposal, and left her with the intention of converting her husband to her way of thinking. on descending to the kitchen she awoke caddy from a delicious dream, in which she had been presented with the black silk that they had seen in the shop window marked eighty-seven and a half cents a yard. in the dream she had determined to make it up with tight sleeves and infant waist, that being the most approved style at that period. "five breadths are not enough for the skirt, and if i take six i must skimp the waist and cape," murmured she in her sleep. "wake up, girl! what are you thinking about?" said her mother, giving her another shake. "oh!" said caddy, with a wild and disappointed look--"i was dreaming, wasn't i? i declare i thought i had that silk frock in the window." "the girls' heads are always running on finery--wake up, and come along, i'm going home." caddy followed her mother out, leaving aunt rachel and tom nodding at each other as they dozed before the fire. that night mr. ellis and his wife had a long conversation upon the proposal of mrs. thomas; and after divers objections raised by him, and set aside by her, it was decided that charlie should be permitted to go there for the holidays at least; after which, his father resolved he should be sent to school again. charlie, the next morning, looked very blank on being informed of his approaching fate. caddy undertook with great alacrity to break the dismal tidings to him, and enlarged in a glowing manner upon what times he might expect from aunt rachel. "i guess she'll keep you straight;--you'll see sights up there! she is cross as sin--she'll make you wipe your feet when you go in and out, if no one else can." "let him alone, caddy," gently interposed esther; "it is bad enough to be compelled to live in a house with that frightful old woman, without being annoyed about it beforehand. if i could help it, charlie, you should not go." "i know you'd keep me home if you could--but old cad, here, she always rejoices if anything happens to me. i'll be hanged if i stay there," said he. "i won't live at service--i'd rather be a sweep, or sell apples on the dock. i'm not going to be stuck up behind their carriage, dressed up like a monkey in a tail coat--i'll cut off my own head first." and with this sanguinary threat he left the house, with his school-books under his arm, intending to lay the case before his friend and adviser, the redoubtable and sympathising kinch. chapter iii. charlie's trials. charlie started for school with a heavy heart. had it not been for his impending doom of service in mr. thomas's family, he would have been the happiest boy that ever carried a school-bag. it did not require a great deal to render this young gentleman happy. all that was necessary to make up a day of perfect joyfulness with him, was a dozen marbles, permission to wear his worst inexpressibles, and to be thoroughly up in his lessons. to-day he was possessed of all these requisites, but there was also in the perspective along array of skirmishes with aunt rachel, who, he knew, looked on him with an evil eye, and who had frequently expressed herself regarding him, in his presence, in terms by no means complimentary or affectionate; and the manner in which she had intimated her desire, on one or two occasions, to have an opportunity of reforming his personal habits, were by no means calculated to produce a happy frame of mind, now that the opportunity was about to be afforded her. charlie sauntered on until he came to a lumber-yard, where he stopped and examined a corner of the fence very attentively. "not gone by yet. i must wait for him," said he; and forthwith he commenced climbing the highest pile of boards, the top of which he reached at the imminent risk of his neck. here he sat awaiting the advent of his friend kinch, the absence of death's head and cross bones from the corner of the fence being a clear indication that he had not yet passed on his way to school. soon, however, he was espied in the distance, and as he was quite a character in his way, we must describe him. his most prominent feature was a capacious hungry-looking mouth, within which glistened a row of perfect teeth. he had the merriest twinkling black eyes, and a nose so small and flat that it would have been a prize to any editor living, as it would have been a physical impossibility to have pulled it, no matter what outrage he had committed. his complexion was of a ruddy brown, and his hair, entirely innocent of a comb, was decorated with divers feathery tokens of his last night's rest. a cap with the front torn off, jauntily set on one side of his head, gave him a rakish and wide-awake air, his clothes were patched and torn in several places, and his shoes were already in an advanced stage of decay. as he approached the fence he took a piece of chalk from his pocket, and commenced to sketch the accustomed startling illustration which was to convey to charlie the intelligence that he had already passed there on his way to school, when a quantity of sawdust came down in a shower on his head. as soon as the blinding storm had ceased, kinch looked up and intimated to charlie that it was quite late, and that there was a probability of their being after time at school. this information caused charlie to make rather a hasty descent, in doing which his dinner-basket was upset, and its contents displayed at the feet of the voracious kinch. "now i'll be even with you for that sawdust," cried he, as he pocketed two boiled eggs, and bit an immense piece out of an apple-tart, which he would have demolished completely but for the prompt interposition of its owner. "oh! my golly! charlie, your mother makes good pies!" he exclaimed with rapture, as soon as he could get his mouth sufficiently clear to speak. "give us another bite,--only a nibble." but charlie knew by experience what kinch's "nibbles" were, and he very wisely declined, saying sadly as he did so, "you won't get many more dinners from me, kinch. i'm going to leave school." "no! you ain't though, are you?" asked the astonished kinch. "you are not going, are you, really?" "yes, really," replied charlie, with a doleful look; "mother is going to put me out at service." "and do you intend to go?" asked kinch, looking at him incredulously. "why of course," was the reply. "how can i help going if father and mother say i must?" "i tell you what i should do," said kinch, "if it was me. i should act so bad that the people would be glad to get rid of me. they hired me out to live once, and i led the people they put me with such a dance, that they was glad enough to send me home again." this observation brought them to the school-house, which was but a trifling distance from the residence of mrs. ellis. they entered the school at the last moment of grace, and mr. dicker looked at them severely as they took their seats. "just saved ourselves," whispered kinch; "a minute later and we would have been done for;" and with this closing remark he applied himself to his grammar, a very judicious move on his part, for he had not looked at his lesson, and there were but ten minutes to elapse before the class would be called. the lessons were droned through as lessons usually are at school. there was the average amount of flogging performed; cakes, nuts, and candy, confiscated; little boys on the back seats punched one another as little boys on the back seats always will do, and were flogged in consequence. then the boy who never knew his lessons was graced with the fool's cap, and was pointed and stared at until the arrival of the play-hour relieved him from his disagreeable situation. "what kind of folks are these thomases?" asked kinch, as he sat beside charlie in the playground munching the last of the apple-tart; "what kind of folks are they? tell me that, and i can give you some good advice, may-be." "old mrs. thomas is a little dried-up old woman, who wears spectacles and a wig. she isn't of much account--i don't mind her. she's not the trouble; it's of old aunt rachel, i'm thinking. why, she has threatened to whip me when i've been there with mother, and she even talks to her sometimes as if she was a little girl. lord only knows what she'll do to me when she has me there by myself. you should just see her and her cat. i really don't know," continued charlie, "which is the worst looking. i hate them both like poison," and as he concluded, he bit into a piece of bread as fiercely as if he were already engaged in a desperate battle with aunt rachel, and was biting her in self-defence. "well," said kinch, with the air of a person of vast experience in difficult cases, "i should drown the cat--i'd do that at once--as soon as i got there; then, let me ask you, has aunt rachel got corns?" "corns! i wish you could see her shoes," replied charlie. "why you could sail down the river in 'em, they are so large. yes, she has got corns, bunions, and rheumatism, and everything else." "ah! then," said kinch, "your way is clear enough if she has got corns. i should confine myself to operating on them. i should give my whole attention to her feet. when she attempts to take hold of you, do you jist come down on her corns, fling your shins about kinder wild, you know, and let her have it on both feet. you see i've tried that plan, and know by experience that it works well. don't you see, you can pass that off as an accident, and it don't look well to be scratching and biting. as for the lady of the house, old mrs. what's-her-name, do you just manage to knock her wig off before some company, and they'll send you home at once--they'll hardly give you time to get your hat." charlie laid these directions aside in his mind for future application, and asked, "what did you do, kinch, to get away from the people you were with?" "don't ask me," said kinch, laughing; "don't, boy, don't ask me--my conscience troubles me awful about it sometimes. i fell up stairs with dishes, and i fell down stairs with dishes. i spilled oil on the carpet, and broke a looking-glass; but it was all accidental--entirely accidental--they found i was too ''spensive,' and so they sent me home." "oh, i wouldn't do anything like that--i wouldn't destroy anything--but i've made up my mind that i won't stay there at any rate. i don't mind work--i want to do something to assist father and mother; but i don't want to be any one's servant. i wish i was big enough to work at the shop." "how did your mother come to think of putting you there?" asked kinch. "the lord alone knows," was the reply. "i suppose old mrs. thomas told her it was the best thing that could be done for me, and mother thinks what she says is law and gospel. i believe old mrs. thomas thinks a coloured person can't get to heaven, without first living at service a little while." the school bell ringing put an end to this important conversation, and the boys recommenced their lessons. when charlie returned from school, the first person he saw on entering the house was robberts, mrs. thomas's chief functionary, and the presiding genius of the wine cellar--when he was trusted with the key. charlie learned, to his horror and dismay, that he had been sent by mrs. thomas to inquire into the possibility of obtaining his services immediately, as they were going to have a series of dinner parties, and it was thought that he could be rendered quite useful. "and must i go, mother?" he asked. "yes, my son; i've told robberts that you shall come up in the morning," replied mrs. ellis. then turning to robberts, she inquired, "how is aunt rachel?" at this question, the liveried gentleman from mrs. thomas's shook his head dismally, and answered: "don't ask me, woman; don't ask me, if you please. that old sinner gets worse and worse every day she lives. these dinners we're 'spectin to have has just set her wild--she is mad as fury 'bout 'em--and she snaps me up just as if i was to blame. that is an awful old woman, now mind i tell you." as mr. robberts concluded, he took his hat and departed, giving charlie the cheering intelligence that he should expect him early next morning. charlie quite lost his appetite for supper in consequence of his approaching trials, and, laying aside his books with a sigh of regret, sat listlessly regarding his sisters; enlivened now and then by some cheerful remark from caddy, such as:-- "you'll have to keep your feet cleaner up there than you do at home, or you'll have aunt rach in your wool half a dozen times a day. and you mustn't throw your cap and coat down where you please, on the chairs or tables--she'll bring you out of all that in a short time. i expect you'll have two or three bastings before you have been there a week, for she don't put up with any nonsense. ah, boy," she concluded, chuckling, "you'll have a time of it--i don't envy you!" with these and similar enlivening anticipations, caddy whiled away the time until it was the hour for charlie to retire for the night, which he, did with a heavy heart. early the following morning he was awakened by the indefatigable caddy, and he found a small bundle of necessaries prepared, until his trunk of apparel could be sent to his new home. "oh, cad," he exclaimed, rubbing his eyes, "how i do hate to go up there! i'd rather take a good whipping than go." "well, it is too late now to talk about it; hurry and get your clothes on--it is quite late--you ought to have been off an hour ago." when he came down stairs prepared to go, his mother "hoped that he was going to behave like a man," which exhortation had the effect of setting him crying at once; and then he had to be caressed by the tearful esther, and, finally, started away with very red eyes, followed to the door by his mother and the girls, who stood looking after him for some moments. so hurried and unexpected had been his departure, that he had been unable to communicate with his friend kinch. this weighed very heavily on his spirits, and he occupied the time on his way to mrs. thomas's in devising various plans to effect that object. on arriving, he gave a faint rap, that was responded to by aunt rachel, who saluted him with-- "oh, yer's come, has yer--wipe your feet, child, and come in quick. shut the door after yer." "what shall i do with this?" timidly asked he, holding up his package of clothes. "oh, dem's yer rags is dey--fling 'em anywhere, but don't bring 'em in my kitchen," said she. "dere is enuff things in dere now--put 'em down here on this entry table, or dere, long side de knife-board--any wheres but in de kitchen." charlie mechanically obeyed, and then followed her into her sanctuary. "have you had your breakfast?" she asked, in a surly tone. "'cause if you haven't, you must eat quick, or you won't get any. i can't keep the breakfast things standing here all day." charlie, to whom the long walk had given a good appetite, immediately sat down and ate a prodigious quantity of bread and butter, together with several slices of cold ham, washed down by two cups of tea; after which he rested his knife and fork, and informed aunt rachel that he had done. "well, i think it's high time," responded she. "why, boy, you'll breed a famine in de house if you stay here long enough. you'll have to do a heap of work to earn what you'll eat, if yer breakfast is a sample of yer dinner. come, get up, child! and shell dese 'ere pease--time you get 'em done, old mrs. thomas will be down stairs." charlie was thus engaged when mrs. thomas entered the kitchen. "well, charles--good morning," said she, in a bland voice. "i'm glad to see you here so soon. has he had his breakfast, aunt rachel?" "yes; and he eat like a wild animal--i never see'd a child eat more in my life," was aunt rachel's abrupt answer. "i'm glad he has a good appetite," said mrs. thomas, "it shows he has good health. boys will eat; you can't expect them to work if they don't. but it is time i was at those custards. charlie, put down those peas and go into the other room, and bring me a basket of eggs you will find on the table." "and be sure to overset the milk that's 'long side of it--yer hear?" added aunt rachel. charlie thought to himself that he would like to accommodate her, but he denied himself that pleasure; on the ground that it might not be safe to do it. mrs. thomas was a housekeeper of the old school, and had a scientific knowledge of the manner in which all sorts of pies and puddings were compounded. she was so learned in custards and preserves that even aunt rachel sometimes deferred to her superior judgment in these matters. carefully breaking the eggs, she skilfully separated the whites from the yolks, and gave the latter to charlie to beat. at first he thought it great fun, and he hummed some of the popular melodies of the day, and kept time with his foot and the spatula. but pretty soon he exhausted his stock of tunes, and then the performances did not go off so well. his arm commenced aching, and he came to the sage conclusion, before he was relieved from his task, that those who eat the custards are much better off than those who prepare them. this task finished, he was pressed into service by aunt rachel, to pick and stone some raisins which she gave him, with the injunction either to sing or whistle all the time he was "at 'em;" and that if he stopped for a moment she should know he was eating them, and in that case she would visit him with condign punishment on the spot, for she didn't care a fig whose child he was. thus, in the performance of first one little job and then another, the day wore away; and as the hour approached at which the guests were invited, charlie, after being taken into the dining-room by robberts, where he was greatly amazed at the display of silver, cut glass, and elegant china, was posted at the door to relieve the guests of their coats and hats, which duty he performed to the entire satisfaction of all parties concerned. at dinner, however, he was not so fortunate. he upset a plate of soup into a gentleman's lap, and damaged beyond repair one of the elegant china vegetable dishes. he took rather too deep an interest in the conversation for a person in his station; and, in fact, the bright boy alluded to by mr. winston, as having corrected the reverend gentleman respecting the quotation from chaucer, was no other than our friend charlie ellis. in the evening, when the guests were departing, charlie handed mr. winston his coat, admiring the texture and cut of it very much as he did so. mr. winston, amused at the boy's manner, asked-- "what is your name, my little man?" "charles ellis," was the prompt reply. "i'm named after my father." "and where did your father come from, charlie?" he asked, looking very much interested. "from savanah, sir. now tell me where _you_ came from," replied charles. "i came from new orleans," said mr. winston, with a smile. "now tell me," he continued, "where do you live when you are with your parents? i should like to see your father." charlie quickly put his interrogator in possession of the desired information, after which mr. winston departed, soon followed by the other guests. charlie lay for some time that night on his little cot before he could get to sleep; and amongst the many matters that so agitated his mind, was his wonder what one of mrs. thomas's guests could want with his father. being unable however, to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion respecting it, he turned over and went to sleep. chapter iv. in which mr. winston finds an old friend. in the early part of mr. winston's career, when he worked as a boy on the plantation of his father, he had frequently received great kindness at the hands of one charles ellis, who was often employed as carpenter about the premises. on one occasion, as a great favour, he had been permitted to accompany ellis to his home in savanah, which was but a few miles distant, where he remained during the christmas holidays. this kindness he had never forgotten; and on his return to georgia from new orleans he sought for his old friend, and found he had removed to the north, but to which particular city he could not ascertain. as he walked homewards, the strong likeness of little charlie to his old friend forced itself upon him, and the more he reflected upon it the more likely it appeared that the boy might be his child; and the identity of name and occupation between the father of charlie and his old friend led to the belief that he was about to make some discovery respecting him. on his way to his hotel he passed the old state house, the bell of which was just striking ten. "it's too late to go to-night," said he, "it shall be the first thing i attend to in the morning;" and after walking on a short distance farther, he found himself at the door of his domicile. as he passed through the little knot of waiters who were gathered about the doors, one of them turning to another, asked, "ain't that man a southerner, and ain't he in your rooms, ben?" "i think he's a southerner," was the reply of ben. "but why do you ask, allen?" he enquired. "because it's time he had subscribed something," replied mr. allen. "the funds of the vigilance committee are very low indeed; in fact, the four that we helped through last week have completely drained us. we must make a raise from some quarter, and we might as well try it on him." mr. winston was waiting for a light that he might retire to his room, and was quickly served by the individual who had been so confidentially talking with mr. allen. after giving mr. winston the light, ben followed him into his room and busied himself in doing little nothings about the stove and wash-stand. "let me unbutton your straps, sir," said he, stooping down and commencing on the buttons, which he was rather long in unclosing. "i know, sir, dat you southern gentlemen ain't used to doing dese yer things for youself. i allus makes it a pint to show southerners more 'tention dan i does to dese yer northern folk, 'cause yer see i knows dey'r used to it, and can't get on widout it." "i am not one of that kind," said winston, as ben slowly unbuttoned the last strap. "i have been long accustomed to wait upon myself. i'll only trouble you to bring me up a glass of fresh water, and then i shall have done with you for the night." "better let me make you up a little fire, the nights is werry cool," continued ben. "i know you must feel 'em; i does myself; i'm from the south, too." "are you?" replied mr. winston, with some interest; "from what part!" "from tuckahoe county, virginia; nice place dat." "never having been there i can't say," rejoined mr. winston, smiling; "and how do you like the north? i suppose you are a runaway," continued he. "oh, no sir! no sir!" replied ben, "i was sot free--and i often wish," he added in a whining tone, "dat i was back agin on the old place--hain't got no kind marster to look after me here, and i has to work drefful hard sometimes. ah," he concluded, drawing a long sigh, "if i was only back on de old place!" "i heartily wish you were!" said mr. winston, indignantly, "and wish moreover that you were to be tied up and whipped once a day for the rest of your life. any man that prefers slavery to freedom deserves to be a slave--you ought to be ashamed of yourself. go out of the room, sir, as quick as possible!" "phew!" said the astonished and chagrined ben, as he descended the stairs; "that was certainly a great miss," continued he, talking as correct english, and with as pure northern an accent as any one could boast. "we have made a great mistake this time; a very queer kind of southerner that is. i'm afraid we took the wrong pig by the ear;" and as he concluded, he betook himself to the group of white-aproned gentlemen before mentioned, to whom he related the incident that had just occurred. "quite a severe fall that, i should say," remarked mr. allen. "perhaps we have made a mistake and he is not a southerner after all. well he is registered from new orleans, and i thought he was a good one to try it on." "it's a clear case we've missed it this time," exclaimed one of the party, "and i hope, ben, when you found he was on the other side of the fence, you did not say too much." "laws, no!" rejoined ben, "do you think i'm a fool? as soon as i heard him say what he did, i was glad to get off--i felt cheap enough, now mind, i tell you any one could have bought me for a shilling." now it must be here related that most of the waiters employed in this hotel were also connected with the vigilance committee of the under-ground railroad company--a society formed for the assistance of fugitive slaves; by their efforts, and by the timely information it was often in their power to give, many a poor slave was enabled to escape from the clutches of his pursuers. the house in which they were employed was the great resort of southerners, who occasionally brought with them their slippery property; and it frequently happened that these disappeared from the premises to parts unknown, aided in their flight by the very waiters who would afterwards exhibit the most profound ignorance as to their whereabouts. such of the southerners as brought no servants with them were made to contribute, unconsciously and most amusingly, to the escape of those of their friends. when a gentleman presented himself at the bar wearing boots entirely too small for him, with his hat so far down upon his forehead as almost to obscure his eyes, and whose mouth was filled with oaths and tobacco, he was generally looked upon as a favourable specimen to operate upon; and if he cursed the waiters, addressed any old man amongst them as "boy," and was continually drinking cock-tails and mint-juleps, they were sure of their man; and then would tell him the most astonishing and distressing tales of their destitution, expressing, almost with tears in their eyes, their deep desire to return to their former masters; whilst perhaps the person from whose mouth this tale of woe proceeded had been born in a neighbouring street, and had never been south of mason and dixon's[*] line. this flattering testimony in favour of "the peculiar institution" generally had the effect of extracting a dollar or two from the purse of the sympathetic southerner; which money went immediately into the coffers of the vigilance committee. [footnote *: the line dividing the free from the slave states.] it was this course of conduct they were about to pursue with mr. winston; not because he exhibited in person or manners any of the before-mentioned peculiarities, but from his being registered from new orleans. the following morning, as soon as he had breakfasted, he started in search of mr. ellis. the address was , little green-street; and, by diligently inquiring, he at length discovered the required place. after climbing up a long flight of stairs on the outside of an old wooden building, he found himself before a door on which was written, "charles ellis, carpenter and joiner." on opening it, he ushered himself into the presence of an elderly coloured man, who was busily engaged in planing off a plank. as soon as mr. winston saw his face fully, he recognized him as his old friend. the hair had grown grey, and the form was also a trifle bent, but he would have known him amongst a thousand. springing forward, he grasped his hand, exclaiming, "my dear old friend, don't you know me?" mr. ellis shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked at him intently for a few moments, but seemed no wiser from his scrutiny. the tears started to mr. winston's eyes as he said, "many a kind word i'm indebted to you for--i am george winston--don't you remember little george that used to live on the carter estate?" "why, bless me! it can't be that you are the little fellow that used to go home with me sometimes to savanah, and that was sold to go to new orleans?" "yes, the same boy; i've been through a variety of changes since then." "i should think you had," smilingly replied mr. ellis; "and, judging from appearances, very favourable ones! why, i took you for a white man--and you are a white man, as far as complexion is concerned. laws, child!" he continued, laying his hand familiarly on winston's shoulders, "how you have changed--i should never have known you! the last time i saw you, you were quite a shaver, running about in a long tow shirt, and regarding a hat and shoes as articles of luxury far beyond your reach. and now," said mr. ellis, gazing at him with admiring eyes, "just to look at you! why, you are as fine a looking man as one would wish to see in a day's travel. i've often thought of you. it was only the other day i was talking to my wife, and wondering what had become of you. she, although a great deal older than your cousin emily, used to be a sort of playmate of hers. poor emily! we heard she was sold at public sale in savanah--did you ever learn what became of her?" "oh, yes; i saw her about two months since, when on my way from new orleans. you remember old colonel garie? well, his son bought her, and is living with her. they have two children--she is very happy. i really love him; he is the most kind and affectionate fellow in the world; there is nothing he would not do to make her happy. emily will be so delighted to know that i have seen your wife--but who is mrs. ellis?--any one that i know?" "i do not know that you are acquainted with her, but you should remember her mother, old nanny tobert, as she was called; she kept a little confectionery--almost every one in savanah knew her." "i can't say i do," replied winston, reflectively. "she came here," continued mr. ellis, "some years ago, and died soon after her arrival. her daughter went to live with the thomases, an old philadelphia family, and it was from their house i married her." "thomases?" repeated mr. winston; "that is where i saw your boy--he is the image of you." "and how came you there?" asked ellis, with a look of surprise. "in the most natural manner possible. i was invited there to dinner yesterday--the bright face of your boy attracted my attention--so i inquired his name, and that led to the discovery of yourself." "and do the thomases know you are a coloured man?" asked mr. ellis, almost speechless with astonishment. "i rather think not," laughingly rejoined mr. winston. "it is a great risk you run to be passing for white in that way," said mr. ellis, with a grave look. "but how did you manage to get introduced to that set? they are our very first people." "it is a long story," was winston's reply; and he then, as briefly as he could, related all that had occurred to himself since they last met. "and now," continued he, as he finished his recital, "i want to know all about you and your family; and i also want to see something of the coloured people. since i've been in the north i've met none but whites. i'm not going to return to new orleans to remain. i'm here in search of a home. i wish to find some place to settle down in for life, where i shall not labour under as many disadvantages as i must struggle against in the south." "one thing i must tell you," rejoined mr. ellis; "if you should settle down here, you'll have to be either one thing or other--white or coloured. either you must live exclusively amongst coloured people, or go to the whites and remain with them. but to do the latter, you must bear in mind that it must never be known that you have a drop of african blood in your veins, or you would be shunned as if you were a pestilence; no matter how fair in complexion or how white you may be." "i have not as yet decided on trying the experiment, and i hardly think it probable i shall," rejoined winston. as he said this he took out his watch, and was astonished to find how very long his visit had been. he therefore gave his hand to mr. ellis, and promised to return at six o'clock and accompany him home to visit his family. as he was leaving the shop, mr. ellis remarked: "george, you have not said a word respecting your mother." his face flushed, and the tears started in his eyes, as he replied, in a broken voice, "she's dead! only think, ellis, she died within a stone's throw of me, and i searching for her all the while. i never speak of it unless compelled; it is too harrowing. it was a great trial to me; it almost broke my heart to think that she perished miserably so near me, whilst i was in the enjoyment of every luxury. oh, if she could only have lived to see me as i am now!" continued he; "but he ordered it otherwise, and we must bow. 'twas god's will it should be so. good bye till evening. i shall see you again at six." great was the surprise of mrs. ellis and her daughters on learning from mr. ellis, when he came home to dinner, of the events of the morning; and great was the agitation caused by the announcement of the fact, that his friend was to be their guest in the evening. mrs. ellis proposed inviting some of their acquaintances to meet him; but to this project her husband objected, saying he wanted to have a quiet evening with him, and to talk over old times; and that persons who were entire strangers to him would only be a restraint upon them. caddy seemed quite put out by the announcement of the intended visit. she declared that nothing was fit to be seen, that the house was in a state of disorder shocking to behold, and that there was scarce a place in it fit to sit down in; and she forthwith began to prepare for an afternoon's vigorous scrubbing and cleaning. "just let things remain as they are, will you, caddy dear," said her father. "please be quiet until i get out of the house," he continued, as she began to make unmistakeable demonstrations towards raising a dust. "in a few moments you shall have the house to yourself, only give me time to finish my dinner in peace." esther, her mother, and their sewing were summarily banished to an upstairs room, whilst caddy took undivided possession of the little parlour, which she soon brought into an astonishing state of cleanliness. the ornaments were arranged at exact distances from the corners of the mantelpiece, the looking-glass was polished, until it appeared to be without spot or blemish, and its gilt frame was newly adorned with cut paper to protect it from the flies. the best china was brought out, carefully dusted, and set upon the waiter, and all things within doors placed in a state of forwardness to receive their expected guest. the door-steps were, however, not as white and clean as they might be, and that circumstance pressed upon caddy's mind. she therefore determined to give them a hasty wipe before retiring to dress for the evening. having done this, and dressed herself to her satisfaction, she came down stairs to prepare the refreshments for tea. in doing this, she continually found herself exposing her new silk dress to great risks. she therefore donned an old petticoat over her skirt, and tied an old silk handkerchief over her head to protect her hair from flying particles of dust; and thus arrayed she passed the time in a state of great excitement, frequently looking out of the window to see if her father and their guest were approaching. in one of these excursions, she, to her intense indignation, found a beggar boy endeavouring to draw, with a piece of charcoal, an illustration of a horse-race upon her so recently cleaned door-steps. "you young villain," she almost screamed, "go away from there. how dare you make those marks upon the steps? go off at once, or i'll give you to a constable." to these behests the daring young gentleman only returned a contemptuous laugh, and put his thumb to his nose in the most provoking manner. "ain't you going?" continued the irate caddy, almost choked with wrath at the sight of the steps, over which she had so recently toiled, scored in every direction with black marks. "just wait till i come down, i'll give it to you, you audacious villain, you," she cried, as she closed the window; "i'll see if i can't move you!" caddy hastily seized a broom, and descended the stairs with the intention of inflicting summary vengeance upon the dirty delinquent who had so rashly made himself liable to her wrath. stealing softly down the alley beside the house, she sprang suddenly forward, and brought the broom with all her energy down upon the head of mr. winston, who was standing on the place just left by the beggar. she struck with such force as to completely crush his hat down over his eyes, and was about to repeat the blow, when her father caught her arm, and she became aware of the awful mistake she had made. "why, my child!" exclaimed her father, "what on earth, is the matter with you, have you lost your senses?" and as he spoke, he held her at arm's length from him to get a better look at her. "what are you dressed up in this style for?" he continued, as he surveyed her from head to foot; and then bursting into a loud laugh at her comical appearance, he released her, and she made the quickest possible retreat into the house by the way she came out. bushing breathless upstairs, she exclaimed, "oh, mother, mother, i've done it now! they've come, and i've beat him over the head with a broom!" "beat whom over the head with a broom?" asked mrs. ellis. "oh, mother, i'm so ashamed, i don't know what to do with myself. i struck mr. winston with a broom. mr. winston, the gentleman father has brought home." "i really believe the child is crazy," said mrs. ellis, surveying the chagrined girl. "beat mr. winston over the head with a broom! how came you to do it?" "oh, mother, i made a great mistake; i thought he was a beggar." "he must be a very different looking person from what we have been led to expect," here interrupted esther. "i understood father to say that he was very gentlemanlike in appearance." "so he is," replied caddy. "but you just said you took him for a beggar?" replied her mother. "oh, don't bother me, don't bother me! my head is all turned upside down. do, esther, go down and let them in--hear how furiously father is knocking! oh, go--do go!" esther quickly descended and opened the door for winston and her father; and whilst the former was having the dust removed and his hat straightened, mrs. ellis came down and was introduced by her husband. she laughingly apologized for the ludicrous mistake caddy had made, which afforded great amusement to all parties, and divers were the jokes perpetrated at her expense during the remainder of the evening. her equanimity having been restored by winston's assurances that he rather enjoyed the joke than otherwise--and an opportunity having been afforded her to obliterate the obnoxious marks from the door-steps--she exhibited great activity in forwarding all the arrangements for tea. they sat a long while round the table--much time that, under ordinary circumstances, would have been given to the demolition of the food before them, being occupied by the elders of the party in inquiries after mutual friends, and in relating the many incidents that had occurred since they last met. tea being at length finished, and the things cleared away, mrs. ellis gave the girls permission to go out. "where are you going?" asked their father. "to the library company's room--to-night is their last lecture." "i thought," said winston, "that coloured persons were excluded from such places. i certainly have been told so several times." "it is quite true," replied mr. ellis; "at the lectures of the white library societies a coloured person would no more be permitted to enter than a donkey or a rattle-snake. this association they speak of is entirely composed of people of colour. they have a fine library, a debating club, chemical apparatus, collections of minerals, &c. they have been having a course of lectures delivered before them this winter, and to-night is the last of the course." "wouldn't you like to go, mr. winston?" asked mrs. ellis, who had a mother's desire to secure so fine an escort for her daughters. "no, no--don't, george," quickly interposed mr. ellis; "i am selfish enough to want you entirely to myself to-night. the girls will find beaux enough, i'll warrant you." at this request the girls did not seem greatly pleased, and miss caddy, who already, in imagination, had excited the envy of all her female friends by the grand _entree_ she was to make at the lyceum, leaning on the arm of winston, gave her father a by no means affectionate look, and tying her bonnet-strings with a hasty jerk, started out in company with her sister. "you appear to be very comfortable here, ellis," said mr. winston, looking round the apartment. "if i am not too inquisitive--what rent do you pay for this house?" "it's mine!" replied ellis, with an air of satisfaction; "house, ground, and all, bought and paid for since i settled here." "why, you are getting on well! i suppose," remarked winston, "that you are much better off than the majority of your coloured friends. from all i can learn, the free coloured people in the northern cities are very badly off. i've been frequently told that they suffer dreadfully from want and privations of various kinds." "oh, i see you have been swallowing the usual dose that is poured down southern throats by those northern negro-haters, who seem to think it a duty they owe the south to tell all manner of infamous lies upon us free coloured people. i really get so indignant and provoked sometimes, that i scarcely know what to do with myself. badly off, and in want, indeed! why, my dear sir, we not only support our own poor, but assist the whites to support theirs, and enemies are continually filling the public ear with the most distressing tales of our destitution! only the other day the colonization society had the assurance to present a petition to the legislature of this state, asking for an appropriation to assist them in sending us all to africa, that we might no longer remain a burthen upon the state--and they came very near getting it, too; had it not been for the timely assistance of young denbigh, the son of judge denbigh, they would have succeeded, such was the gross ignorance that prevailed respecting our real condition, amongst the members of the legislature. he moved a postponement of the vote until he could have time to bring forward facts to support the ground that he had assumed in opposition to the appropriation being made. it was granted; and, in a speech that does him honour, he brought forward facts that proved us to be in a much superior condition to that in which our imaginative enemies had described us. ay! he did more--he proved us to be in advance of the whites in wealth and general intelligence: for whilst it was one in fifteen amongst the whites unable to read and write, it was but one in eighteen amongst the coloured (i won't pretend to be correct about the figures, but that was about the relative proportions); and also, that we paid, in the shape of taxes upon our real estate, more than our proportion for the support of paupers, insane, convicts, &c." "well," said the astonished winston, "that is turning the tables completely. you must take me to visit amongst the coloured people; i want to see as much of them as possible during my stay." "i'll do what i can for you, george. i am unable to spare you much time just at present, but i'll put you in the hands of one who has abundance of it at his disposal--i will call with you and introduce you to walters." "who is walters?" asked mr. winston. "a friend of mine--a dealer in real estate." "oh, then he is a white man?" "not by any means," laughingly replied mr. ellis. "he is as black as a man can conveniently be. he is very wealthy; some say that he is worth half a million of dollars. he owns, to my certain knowledge, one hundred brick houses. i met him the other day in a towering rage: it appears, that he owns ten thousand dollars' worth of stock, in a railroad extending from this to a neighbouring city. having occasion to travel in it for some little distance, he got into the first-class cars; the conductor, seeing him there, ordered him out--he refused to go, and stated that he was a shareholder. the conductor replied, that he did not care how much stock he owned, he was a nigger, and that no nigger should ride in those cars; so he called help, and after a great deal of trouble they succeeded in ejecting him." "and he a stockholder! it was outrageous," exclaimed winston. "and was there no redress?" "no, none, practically. he would have been obliged to institute a suit against the company; and, as public opinion now is, it would be impossible for him to obtain a verdict in his favour." the next day winston was introduced to mr. walters, who expressed great pleasure in making his acquaintance, and spent a week in showing him everything of any interest connected with coloured people. winston was greatly delighted with the acquaintances he made; and the kindness and hospitality with which he was received made a most agreeable impression upon him. it was during this period that he wrote the glowing letters to mr. and mrs. garie, the effects of which will be discerned in the next chapter. chapter v. the garies decide on a change. we must now return to the garies, whom we left listening to mr. winston's description of what he saw in philadelphia, and we need not add anything respecting it to what the reader has already gathered from the last chapter; our object being now to describe the effect his narrative produced. on the evening succeeding the departure of winston for new orleans, mr. and mrs. garie were seated in a little arbour at a short distance from the house, and which commanded a magnificent prospect up and down the river. it was overshadowed by tall trees, from the topmost branches of which depended large bunches of georgian moss, swayed to and fro by the soft spring breeze that came gently sweeping down the long avenue of magnolias, laden with the sweet breath of the flowers with which the trees were covered. a climbing rose and cape jessamine had almost covered the arbour, and their intermingled blossoms, contrasting with the rich brown colour of the branches of which it was constructed, gave it an exceedingly beautiful and picturesque appearance. this arbour was their favourite resort in the afternoons of summer, as they could see from it the sun go down behind the low hills opposite, casting his gleams of golden light upon the tops of the trees that crowned their summits. northward, where the chain of hills was broken, the waters of the river would be brilliant with waves of gold long after the other parts of it were shrouded in the gloom of twilight. mr. and mrs. garie sat looking at the children, who were scampering about the garden in pursuit of a pet rabbit which had escaped, and seemed determined not to be caught upon any pretence whatever. "are they not beautiful?" said mr. garie, with pride, as they bounded past him. "there are not two prettier children in all georgia. you don't seem half proud enough of them," he continued, looking down upon his wife affectionately. mrs. garie, who was half reclining on the seat, and leaning her head upon his shoulder, replied, "oh, yes, i am, garie; i'm sure i love them dearly--oh, so dearly!" continued she, fervently--"and i only wish"--here she paused, as if she felt she had been going to say something that had better remain unspoken. "you only wish what, dear? you were going to say something," rejoined her husband. "come, out with it, and let me hear what it was." "oh, garie, it was nothing of any consequence." "consequence or no consequence, let me hear what it was, dear." "well, as you insist on hearing it, i was about to say that i wish they were not little slaves." "oh, em! em!" exclaimed he, reproachfully, "how can you speak in that manner? i thought, dear, that you regarded me in any other light than that of a master. what have i done to revive the recollection that any such relation existed between us? am i not always kind and affectionate? did you ever have a wish ungratified for a single day, if it was in my power to compass it? or have i ever been harsh or neglectful?" "oh, no, dear, no--forgive me, garie--do, pray, forgive me--you are kindness itself--believe me, i did not think to hurt your feelings by saying what i did. i know you do not treat me or them as though we were slaves. but i cannot help feeling that we are such--and it makes me very sad and unhappy sometimes. if anything should happen that you should be taken away suddenly, think what would be our fate. heirs would spring up from somewhere, and we might be sold and separated for ever. respecting myself i might be indifferent, but regarding the children i cannot feel so." "tut, tut, em! don't talk so gloomily. do you know of any one, now, who has been hired to put me to death?" said he, smiling. "don't talk so, dear; remember, 'in the midst of life we are in death.' it was only this morning i learned that celeste--you remember celeste, don't you?--i cannot recall her last name." "no, dear, i really can't say that i do remember whom you refer to." "i can bring her to your recollection, i think," continued she. "one afternoon last fall we were riding together on the augusta-road, when you stopped to admire a very neat cottage, before the door of which two pretty children were playing." "oh, yes, i remember something about it--i admired the children so excessively that you became quite jealous." "i don't remember that part of it," she continued. "but let me tell you my story. last week the father of the children started for washington; the cars ran off the track, and were precipitated down a high embankment, and he and some others were killed. since his death it has been discovered that all his property was heavily mortgaged to old macturk, the worst man in the whole of savannah; and he has taken possession of the place, and thrown her and the children into the slave-pen, from which they will be sold to the highest bidder at a sheriff's sale. who can say that a similar fate may never be mine? these things press upon my spirit, and make me so gloomy and melancholy at times, that i wish it were possible to shun even myself. lately, more than ever, have i felt disposed to beg you to break up here, and move off to some foreign country where there is no such thing as slavery. i have often thought how delightful it would be for us all to be living in that beautiful italy you have so often described to me--or in france either. you said you liked both those places--why not live in one of them?" "no, no, emily; i love america too much to ever think of living anywhere else. i am much too thorough a democrat ever to swear allegiance to a king. no, no--that would never do--give me a free country." "that is just what i say," rejoined mrs. garie; "that is exactly what i want; that is why i should like to get away from here, because this is _not_ a free country--god knows it is not!" "oh, you little traitor! how severely you talk, abusing your native land in such shocking style, it's really painful to hear you," said mr. garie in a jocular tone. "oh, love," rejoined she, "don't joke, it's not a subject for jesting. it is heavier upon my heart than you dream of. wouldn't you like to live in the free states? there is nothing particular to keep you here, and only think how much better it would be for the children: and garie," she continued in a lower tone, nestling close to him as she spoke, and drawing his head towards her, "i think i am going to--" and she whispered some words in his ear, and as she finished she shook her head, and her long curls fell down in clusters over her face. mr. garie put the curls aside, and kissing her fondly, asked, "how long have you known it, dear?" "not long, not very long," she replied. "and i have such a yearning that it should be born a free child. i do want that the first air it breathes should be that of freedom. it will kill me to have another child born here! its infant smiles would only be a reproach to me. oh," continued she, in a tone of deep feeling, "it is a fearful thing to give birth to an inheritor of chains;" and she shuddered as she laid her head on her husband's bosom. mr. garie's brow grew thoughtful, and a pause in the conversation ensued. the sun had long since gone down, and here and there the stars were beginning to show their twinkling light. the moon, which had meanwhile been creeping higher and higher in the blue expanse above, now began to shed her pale, misty beams on the river below, the tiny waves of which broke in little circlets of silver on the shore almost at their feet. mr. garie was revolving in his mind the conversation he had so recently held with mr. winston respecting the free states. it had been suggested by him that the children should be sent to the north to be educated, but he had dismissed the notion, well knowing that the mother would be heart-broken at the idea of parting with her darlings. until now, the thought of going to reside in the north had never been presented for his consideration. he was a southerner in almost all his feelings, and had never had a scruple respecting the ownership of slaves. but now the fact that he was the master as well as the father of his children, and that whilst he resided where he did it was out of his power to manumit them; that in the event of his death they might be seized and sold by his heirs, whoever they might be, sent a thrill of horror through him. he had known all this before, but it had never stood out in such bold relief until now. "what are you thinking of, garie?" asked his wife, looking up into his face. "i hope i have not vexed you by what i've said." "oh, no, dear, not at all. i was only thinking whether you would be any happier if i acceded to your wishes and removed to the north. here you live in good style--you have a luxurious home, troops of servants to wait upon you, a carriage at your disposal. in fact, everything for which you express a desire." "i know all that, garie, and what i am about to say may seem ungrateful, but believe me, dear, i do not mean it to be so. i had much rather live on crusts and wear the coarsest clothes, and work night and day to earn them, than live here in luxury, wearing gilded chains. carriages and fine clothes cannot create happiness. i have every physical comfort, and yet my heart is often heavy--oh, so very heavy; i know i am envied by many for my fine establishment; yet how joyfully would i give it all up and accept the meanest living for the children's freedom--and your love." "but, emily, granted we should remove to the north, you would find annoyances there as well as here. there is a great deal of prejudice existing there against people of colour, which, often exposes them to great inconveniences." "yes, dear, i know all that; i should expect that. but then on the other hand, remember what george said respecting the coloured people themselves; what a pleasant social circle they form, and how intelligent many of them are! oh, garie, how i have longed for friends!--we have visitors now and then, but none that i can call friends. the gentlemen who come to see you occasionally are polite to me, but, under existing circumstances, i feel that they cannot entertain for me the respect i think i deserve. i know they look down upon and despise me because i'm a coloured woman. then there would be another advantage; i should have some female society--here i have none. the white ladies of the neighbourhood will not associate with me, although i am better educated, thanks to your care, than many of them, so it is only on rare occasions, when i can coax some of our more cultivated coloured acquaintances from savannah to pay us a short visit, that i have any female society, and no woman can be happy without it. i have no parents, nor yet have you. we have nothing we greatly love to leave behind--no strong ties to break, and in consequence would be subjected to no great grief at leaving. if i only could persuade you to go!" said she, imploringly. "well, emily," replied he, in an undecided manner, "i'll think about it. i love you so well, that i believe i should be willing to make any sacrifice for your happiness. but it is getting damp and chilly, and you know," said he, smiling, "you must be more than usually careful of yourself now." the next evening, and many more besides, were spent in discussing the proposed change. many objections to it were stated, weighed carefully, and finally set aside. winston was written to and consulted, and though he expressed some surprise at the proposal, gave it his decided approval. he advised, at the same time, that the estate should not be sold, but be placed in the hands of some trustworthy person, to be managed in mr. garie's absence. under the care of a first-rate overseer, it would not only yield a handsome income, but should they be dissatisfied with their northern home, they would have the old place still in reserve; and with the knowledge that they had this to fall back upon, they could try their experiment of living in the north with their minds less harassed than they otherwise would be respecting the result. as mr. garie reflected more and more on the probable beneficial results of the project, his original disinclination to it diminished, until he finally determined on running the risk; and he felt fully rewarded for this concession to his wife's wishes when he saw her recover all her wonted serenity and sprightliness. they were soon in all the bustle and confusion consequent on preparing for a long journey. when mr. garie's determination to remove became known, great consternation prevailed on the plantation, and dismal forebodings were entertained by the slaves as to the result upon themselves. divers were the lamentations heard on all sides, when they were positively convinced that "massa was gwine away for true;" but they were somewhat pacified, when they learned that no one was to be sold, and that the place would not change hands. for mr. garie was a very kind master, and his slaves were as happy as slaves can be under any circumstances. not much less was the surprise which the contemplated change excited in the neighbourhood, and it was commented on pretty freely by his acquaintances. one of them--to whom he had in conversation partially opened his mind, and explained that his intended removal grew out of anxiety respecting the children, and his own desire that they might be where they could enjoy the advantages of schools, &c.--sneered almost to his face at what he termed his crack-brained notions; and subsequently, in relating to another person the conversation he had had with mr. garie, spoke of him as "a soft-headed fool, led by the nose by a yaller wench. why can't he act," he said, "like other men who happen to have half-white children--breed them up for the market, and sell them?" and he might have added, "as i do," for he was well known to have so acted by two or three of his own tawny offspring. mr. garie, at the suggestion of winston, wrote to mr. walters, to procure them a small, but neat and comfortable house, in philadelphia; which, when procured, he was to commit to the care of mr. and mrs. ellis, who were to have it furnished and made ready to receive him and his family on their arrival, as mr. garie desired to save his wife as much as possible, from the care and anxiety attendant upon the arrangement of a new residence. one most important matter, and on which depended the comfort and happiness of his people, was the selection of a proper overseer. on its becoming known that he required such a functionary, numbers of individuals who aspired to that dignified and honourable office applied forthwith; and as it was also known that the master was to be absent, and that, in consequence, the party having it under his entire control, could cut and slash without being interfered with, the value of the situation was greatly enhanced. it had also another irresistible attraction, the absence of the master would enable the overseer to engage in the customary picking and stealing operations, with less chance of detection. in consequence of all these advantages, there was no want of applicants. great bony new england men, traitors to the air they first breathed, came anxiously forward to secure the prize. mean, weasen-faced, poor white georgians, who were able to show testimonials of their having produced large crops with a small number of hands, and who could tell to a fraction how long a slave could be worked on a given quantity of corn, also put in their claims for consideration. short, thick-set men, with fierce faces, who gloried in the fact that they had at various times killed refractory negroes, also presented themselves to undergo the necessary examination. mr. garie sickened as he contemplated the motley mass of humanity that presented itself with such eagerness for the attainment of so degrading an office; and as he listened to their vulgar boastings and brutal language, he blushed to think that such men were his countrymen. never until now had he had occasion for an overseer. he was not ambitious of being known to produce the largest crop to the acre, and his hands had never been driven to that shocking extent, so common with his neighbours. he had been his own manager, assisted by an old negro, called ephraim--most generally known as eph, and to him had been entrusted the task of immediately superintending the hands engaged in the cultivation of the estate. this old man was a great favourite with the children, and clarence, who used to accompany him on his pony over the estate, regarded him as the most wonderful and accomplished coloured gentleman in existence. eph was in a state of great perturbation at the anticipated change, and he earnestly sought to be permitted to accompany them to the north. mr. garie was, however, obliged to refuse his request, as he said, that it was impossible that the place could get on without him. an overseer being at last procured, whose appearance and manners betokened a better heart than that of any who had yet applied for the situation, and who was also highly-recommended for skill and honesty; nothing now remained to prevent mr. garie's early departure. chapter vi. pleasant news. one evening mr. ellis was reading the newspaper, and mrs. ellis and the girls were busily engaged in sewing, when who should come in but mr. walters, who had entered without ceremony at the front door, which had been left open owing to the unusual heat of the weather. "here you all are, hard at work," exclaimed he, in his usual hearty manner, accepting at the same time the chair offered to him by esther. "come, now," continued he, "lay aside your work and newspapers, for i have great news to communicate." "indeed, what is it?--what can it be?" cried the three females, almost in a breath; "do let us hear it!" "oh," said mr. walters, in a provokingly slow tone, "i don't think i'll tell you to-night; it may injure your rest; it will keep till to-morrow." "now, that is always the way with mr. walters," said caddy, pettishly; "he always rouses one's curiosity, and then refuses to gratify it;--he is so tantalizing sometimes!" "i'll tell you this much," said he, looking slily at caddy, "it is connected with a gentleman who had the misfortune to be taken for a beggar, and who was beaten over the head in consequence by a young lady of my acquaintance." "now, father has been telling you that," exclaimed caddy, looking confused, "and i don't thank him for it either; i hear of that everywhere i go--even the burtons know of it." mr. walters now looked round the room, as though he missed some one, and finally exclaimed, "where is charlie? i thought i missed somebody--where is my boy?" "we have put him out to live at mrs. thomas's," answered mrs. ellis, hesitatingly, for she knew mr. walters' feelings respecting the common practice of sending little coloured boys to service. "it is a very good place for him," continued she--"a most excellent place." "that is too bad," rejoined mr. walters--"too bad; it is a shame to make a servant of a bright clever boy like that. why, ellis, man, how came you to consent to his going? the boy should be at school. it really does seem to me that you people who have good and smart boys take the very course to ruin them. the worst thing you can do with a boy of his age is to put him at service. once get a boy into the habit of working for a stipend, and, depend upon it, when he arrives at manhood, he will think that if he can secure so much a month for the rest of his life he will be perfectly happy. how would you like him to be a subservient old numskull, like that old robberts of theirs?" here esther interrupted mr. walters by saying, "i am very glad to hear you express yourself in that manner, mr. walters--very glad. charlie is such a bright, active little fellow; i hate to have him living there as a servant. and he dislikes it, too, as much as any one can. i do wish mother would take him away." "hush, esther," said her mother, sharply; "your mother lived at service, and no one ever thought the worse of her for it." esther looked abashed, and did not attempt to say anything farther. "now, look here, ellen," said mr. walters. (he called her ellen, for he had been long intimate with the family.) "if you can't get on without the boy's earning something, why don't you do as white women and men do? do you ever find them sending their boys out as servants? no; they rather give them a stock of matches, blacking, newspapers, or apples, and start them out to sell them. what is the result? the boy that learns to sell matches soon learns to sell other things; he learns to make bargains; he becomes a small trader, then a merchant, then a millionaire. did you ever hear of any one who had made a fortune at service? where would i or ellis have been had we been hired out all our lives at so much a month? it begets a feeling of dependence to place a boy in such a situation; and, rely upon it, if he stays there long, it will spoil him for anything better all his days." mrs. ellis was here compelled to add, by way of justifying herself, that it was not their intention to let him remain there permanently; his father only having given his consent for him to serve during the vacation. "well, don't let him stay there longer, i pray you," continued walters. "a great many white people think that we are only fit for servants, and i must confess we do much to strengthen the opinion by permitting our children to occupy such situations when we are not in circumstances to compel us to do so. mrs. thomas may tell you that they respect their old servant robberts as much as they do your husband; but they don't, nevertheless--i don't believe a word of it. it is impossible to have the same respect for the man who cleans your boots, that you have for the man who plans and builds your house." "oh, well, walters," here interposed mr. ellis, "i don't intend the boy to remain there, so don't get yourself into an unnecessary state of excitement about it. let us hear what this great news is that you have brought." "oh, i had almost forgotten it," laughingly replied walters, at the same time fumbling in his pocket for a letter, which he at length produced. "here," he continued, opening it, "is a letter i have received from a mr. garie, enclosing another from our friend winston. this mr. garie writes me that he is coming to the north to settle, and desires me to procure them a house; and he says also that he has so far presumed upon an early acquaintance of his wife with mrs. ellis as to request that she will attend to the furnishing of it. you are to purchase all that is necessary to make them comfortable, and i am to foot the bills." "what, you don't mean emily winston's husband?" said the astonished mrs. ellis. "i can't say whose husband it is, but from winston's letter," replied mr. walters, "i suppose he is the person alluded to." "that is news," continued mrs. ellis. "only think, she was a little mite of a thing when i first knew her, and now she is a woman and the mother of two children. how time does fly. i must be getting quite old," concluded she, with a sigh. "nonsense, ellen," remarked mr. ellis, "you look surprisingly young, you are quite a girl yet. why, it was only the other day i was asked if you were one of my daughters." mrs. ellis and the girls laughed at this sally of their father's, who asked mr. walters if he had as yet any house in view. "there is one of my houses in winter-street that i think will just suit them. the former tenants moved out about a week since. if i can call for you to-morrow," he continued, turning to mrs. ellis, "will you accompany me there to take a look at the premises?" "it is a dreadful long walk," replied mrs. ellis. "how provoking it is to think, that because persons are coloured they are not permitted to ride in the omnibuses or other public conveyances! i do hope i shall live to see the time when we shall be treated as civilized creatures should be." "i suppose we shall be so treated when the millennium comes," rejoined walters, "not before, i am afraid; and as we have no reason to anticipate that it will arrive before to-morrow, we shall have to walk to winter-street, or take a private conveyance. at any rate, i shall call for you to-morrow at ten. good night--remember, at ten." "well, this is a strange piece of intelligence," exclaimed mrs. ellis, as the door closed upon mr. walters. "i wonder what on earth can induce them to move on here. their place, i am told, is a perfect paradise. in old colonel garie's time it was said to be the finest in georgia. i wonder if he really intends to live here permanently?" "i can't say, my dear," replied mrs. ellis; "i am as much in the dark as you are." "perhaps they are getting poor, ellis, and are coming here because they can live cheaper." "oh, no, wife; i don't think that can be the occasion of their removal. i rather imagine he purposes emancipating his children. he cannot do it legally in georgia; and, you know, by bringing them here, and letting them remain six months, they are free--so says the law of some of the southern states, and i think of georgia." the next morning mrs. ellis, caddy, and mr. walters, started for winter-street; it was a very long walk, and when they arrived there, they were all pretty well exhausted. "oh, dear," exclaimed mrs. ellis, after walking upstairs, "i am so tired, and there is not a chair in the house. i must rest here," said she, seating herself upon the stairs, and looking out upon the garden. "what a large yard! if ours were only as large as this, what a delightful place i could make of it! but there is no room to plant anything at our house, the garden is so very small." after they were all somewhat rested, they walked through the house and surveyed the rooms, making some favourable commentary upon each. "the house don't look as if it would want much cleaning," said caddy, with a tone of regret. "so much the better, i should say," suggested mr. walters. "not as caddy views the matter," rejoined mrs. ellis. "she is so fond of house-cleaning, that i positively think she regards the cleanly state of the premises as rather a disadvantage than otherwise." they were all, however, very well pleased with the place; and on their way home they settled which should be the best bedroom, and where the children should sleep. they also calculated how much carpet and oilcloth would be necessary, and what style of furniture should be put in the parlour. "i think the letter said plain, neat furniture, and not too expensive, did it not?" asked mrs. ellis. "i think those were the very words," replied caddy; "and, oh, mother, isn't it nice to have the buying of so many pretty things? i do so love to shop!" "particularly with some one else's money," rejoined her mother, with a smile. "yes, or one's own either, when one has it," continued caddy; "i like to spend money under any circumstances." thus in conversation relative to the house and its fixtures, they beguiled the time until they reached their home. on arriving there, mrs. ellis found robberts awaiting her return with a very anxious countenance. he informed her that mrs. thomas wished to see her immediately; that charlie had been giving that estimable lady a world of trouble; and that her presence was necessary to set things to rights. "what has he been doing?" asked mrs. ellis. "oh, lots of things! he and aunt rachel don't get on together at all; and last night he came nigh having the house burned down over our heads." "why, robberts, you don't tell me so! what a trial boys are," sighed mrs. ellis. "he got on first rate for a week or two; but since that he has been raising satan. he and aunt rachel had a regular brush yesterday, and he has actually lamed the old woman to that extent she won't be able to work for a week to come." "dear, dear, what am i to do?" said the perplexed mrs. ellis; "i can't go up there immediately, i am too tired. say to mrs. thomas i will come up this evening. i wonder," concluded she, "what has come over the boy." "mother, you know how cross aunt rachel is; i expect she has been ill-treating him. he is so good-natured, that he never would behave improperly to an old person unless goaded to it by some very harsh usage." "that's the way--go on, esther, find some excuse for your angel," said caddy, ironically. "of course that lamb could not do anything wrong, and, according to your judgment, he never does; but, i tell you, he is as bad as any other boy--boys are boys. i expect he has been tracking over the floor after aunt rachel has scrubbed it, or has been doing something equally provoking; he has been in mischief, depend upon it." things had gone on very well with master charlie for the first two weeks after his introduction into the house of the fashionable descendant of the worthy maker of leathern breeches. his intelligence, combined with the quickness and good-humour with which he performed the duties assigned him, quite won the regard of the venerable lady who presided over that establishment. it is true she had detected him in several attempts upon the peace and well-being of aunt rachel's tom; but with tom she had little sympathy, he having recently made several felonious descents upon her stores of cream and custards. in fact, it was not highly probable, if any of his schemes had resulted seriously to the spiteful _protege_ of aunt rachel, that mrs. thomas would have been overwhelmed with grief, or disposed to inflict any severe punishment on the author of the catastrophe. unfortunately for mrs. thomas, charlie, whilst going on an errand, had fallen in with his ancient friend and adviser--in short, he had met no less a person than the formerly all-sufficient kinch. great was the delight of both parties at this unexpected meeting, and warm, indeed, was the exchange of mutual congratulations on this auspicious event. kinch, in the excess of his delight, threw his hat several feet in the air; nor did his feelings of pleasure undergo the least abatement when that dilapidated portion of his costume fell into a bed of newly-mixed lime, from which he rescued it with great difficulty and at no little personal risk. "hallo! kinch, old fellow, how are you?" cried charlie; "i've been dying to see you--why haven't you been up?" "why, i did come up often, but that old witch in the kitchen wouldn't let me see you--she abused me scandalous. i wanted to pull her turban off and throw it in the gutter. why, she called me a dirty beggar, and threatened to throw cold water on me if i didn't go away. phew! ain't she an old buster!" "why, i never knew you were there." "yes," continued kinch; "and i saw you another time hung up behind the carriage. i declare, charlie, you looked so like a little monkey, dressed up in that sky-blue coat and silver buttons, that i liked to have died a-laughing at you;" and kinch was so overcome by the recollection of the event in question, that he was obliged to sit down upon a door-step to recover himself. "oh, i do hate to wear this confounded livery!' said charlie, dolefully--" the boys scream 'johnny coat-tail' after me in the streets, and call me 'blue jay,' and 'blue nigger,' and lots of other names. i feel that all that's wanting to make a complete monkey of me, is for some one to carry me about on an organ." "what do you wear it for, then?" asked kinch. "because i can't help myself, that's the reason. the boys plague me to that extent sometimes, that i feel like tearing the things into bits--but mother says i must wear it. kinch," concluded he, significantly, "something will have to be done, i can't stand it." "you remember what i told you about the wig, don't you?" asked kinch; and, on receiving an affirmative reply, he continued, "just try that on, and see how it goes--you'll find it'll work like a charm; it's a regular footman-expatriator--just try it now; you'll see if it isn't the thing to do the business for you." "i'm determined to be as bad as i can," rejoined charlie; "i'm tired enough of staying there: that old aunt rach is a devil--i don't believe a saint from heaven could get on with her; i'm expecting we'll have a pitched battle every day." beguiling the time with this and similar conversation, they reached the house to which charlie had been despatched with a note; after which, he turned his steps homeward, still accompanied by the redoubtable kinch. as ill luck would have it, they passed some boys who were engaged in a game of marbles, charlie's favourite pastime, and, on kinch's offering him the necessary stock to commence play, he launched into the game, regardless of the fact that the carriage was ordered for a drive within an hour, and that he was expected to fill his accustomed place in the rear of that splendid vehicle. once immersed in the game, time flew rapidly on. mrs. thomas awaited his return until her patience was exhausted, when she started on her drive without him. as they were going through a quiet street, to her horror and surprise, prominent amidst a crowd of dirty boys, she discovered her little footman, with his elegant blue livery covered with dirt and sketches in white chalk; for, in the excitement of the game, charlie had not observed that kinch was engaged in drawing on the back of his coat his favourite illustration, to wit, a skull and cross-bones. "isn't that our charlie?" said she to her daughter, surveying the crowd of noisy boys through her eye-glass. "i really believe it is--that is certainly our livery; pull the check-string, and stop the carriage." now robberts had been pressed into service in consequence of charlie's absence, and was in no very good humour at being compelled to air his rheumatic old shins behind the family-carriage. it can therefore be readily imagined with what delight he recognized the delinquent footman amidst the crowd, and with what alacrity he descended and pounced upon him just at the most critical moment of the game. clutching fast hold of him by the collar of his coat, he dragged him to the carriage-window, and held him before the astonished eyes of his indignant mistress, who lifted up her hands in horror at the picture he presented. "oh! you wretched boy," said she, "just look at your clothes, all covered with chalk-marks and bespattered with lime! your livery is totally ruined--and your knees, too--only look at them--the dirt is completely ground into them." "but you haven't seed his back, marm," said robberts; "he's got the pirate's flag drawn on it. that boy'll go straight to the devil--i know he will." all this time charlie, to his great discomfiture, was being shaken and turned about by robberts in the most unceremonious manner. kinch, with his usual audacity, was meanwhile industriously engaged in tracing on robbert's coat a similar picture to that he had so skilfully drawn on charlie's, to the great delight of a crowd of boys who stood admiring spectators of his artistic performances. the coachman, however, observing this operation, brought it to a rather hasty conclusion by a well directed cut of the whip across the fingers of the daring young artist. this so enraged kinch, that in default of any other missile, he threw his lime-covered cap at the head of the coachman; but, unfortunately for himself, the only result of his exertions was the lodgment of his cap in the topmost bough of a neighbouring tree, from whence it was rescued with great difficulty. "what _shall_ we do with him?" asked mrs. thomas, in a despairing tone, as she looked at charlie. "put him with the coachman," suggested mrs. morton. "he can't sit there, the horses are so restive, and the seat is only constructed for one, and he would be in the coachman's way. i suppose he must find room on behind with robberts." "i won't ride on the old carriage," cried charlie, nerved by despair; "i won't stay here nohow. i'm going home to my mother;" and as he spoke he endeavoured to wrest himself from robberts' grasp. "put him in here," said mrs. thomas; "it would never do to let him go, for he will run home with some distressing tale of ill-treatment; no, we must keep him until i can send for his mother--put him in here." much to mrs. morton's disgust, charlie was bundled by robberts into the bottom of the carriage, where he sat listening to the scolding of mrs. thomas and her daughter until they arrived at home. he remained in disgrace for several days after this adventure; but as mrs. thomas well knew that she could not readily fill his place with another, she made a virtue of necessity, and kindly looked over this first offence. the situation was, however, growing more and more intolerable. aunt rachel and he had daily skirmishes, in which he was very frequently worsted. he had held several hurried consultations with kinch through the grating of the cellar window, and was greatly cheered and stimulated in the plans he intended to pursue by the advice and sympathy of his devoted friend. master kinch's efforts to console charlie were not without great risk to himself, as he had on two or three occasions narrowly escaped falling into the clutches of robberts, who well remembered kinch's unprecedented attempt upon the sacredness of his livery; and what the result might have been had the latter fallen into his hands, we cannot contemplate without a shudder. these conferences between kinch and charlie produced their natural effect, and latterly it had been several times affirmed by aunt rachel that, "dat air boy was gittin' 'tirely too high--gittin' bove hissef 'pletely--dat he was gittin' more and more aggriwatin' every day--dat she itched to git at him--dat she 'spected nothin' else but what she'd be 'bliged to take hold o' him;" and she comported herself generally as if she was crazy for the conflict which she saw must sooner or later occur. charlie, unable on these occasions to reply to her remarks without precipitating a conflict for which he did not feel prepared, sought to revenge himself upon the veteran tom; and such was the state of his feelings, that he bribed kinch, with a large lump of sugar and the leg of a turkey, to bring up his mother's jerry, a fierce young cat, and they had the satisfaction of shutting him up in the wood-house with the belligerent tom, who suffered a signal defeat at jerry's claws, and was obliged to beat a hasty retreat through the window, with a seriously damaged eye, and with the fur torn off his back in numberless places. after this charlie had the pleasure of hearing aunt rachel frequently bewail the condition of her favourite, whose deplorable state she was inclined to ascribe to his influence, though she was unable to bring it home to him in such a manner as to insure his conviction. chapter vii. mrs. thomas has her troubles. mrs. thomas was affected, as silly women sometimes are, with an intense desire to be at the head of the _ton_. for this object she gave grand dinners and large evening parties, to which were invited all who, being two or three removes from the class whose members occupy the cobbler's bench or the huckster's stall, felt themselves at liberty to look down upon the rest of the world from the pinnacle on which they imagined themselves placed. at these social gatherings the conversation never turned upon pedigree, and if any of the guests chanced by accident to allude to their ancestors, they spoke of them as members of the family, who, at an early period of their lives, were engaged in mercantile pursuits. at such dinners mrs. thomas would sit for hours, mumbling dishes that disagreed with her; smiling at conversations carried on in villanous french, of which language she did not understand a word; and admiring the manners of addle-headed young men (who got tipsy at her evening parties), because they had been to europe, and were therefore considered quite men of the world. these parties and dinners she could not be induced to forego, although the late hours and fatigue consequent thereon would place her on the sick-list for several days afterwards. as soon, however, as she recovered sufficiently to resume her place at the table, she would console herself with a dinner of boiled mutton and roasted turnips, as a slight compensation for the unwholesome french dishes she had compelled herself to swallow on the occasions before mentioned. amongst the other modern fashions she had adopted, was that of setting apart one morning of the week for the reception of visitors; and she had mortally offended several of her oldest friends by obstinately refusing to admit them at any other time. two or three difficulties had occurred with robberts, in consequence of this new arrangement, as he could not be brought to see the propriety of saying to visitors that mrs. thomas was "not at home," when he knew she was at that very moment upstairs peeping over the banisters. his obstinacy on this point had induced her to try whether she could not train charlie so as to fit him for the important office of uttering the fashionable and truthless "not at home" with unhesitating gravity and decorum; and, after a series of mishaps, she at last believed her object was effected, until an unlucky occurrence convinced her to the contrary. mrs. thomas, during the days on which she did not receive company, would have presented, to any one who might have had the honour to see that venerable lady, an entirely different appearance to that which she assumed on gala days. a white handkerchief supplied the place of the curling wig, and the tasty french cap was replaced by a muslin one, decorated with an immense border of ruffling, that flapped up and down over her silver spectacles in the most comical manner possible. a short flannel gown and a dimity petticoat of very antique pattern and scanty dimensions, completed her costume. thus attired, and provided with a duster, she would make unexpected sallies into the various domestic departments, to see that everything was being properly conducted, and that no mal-practices were perpetrated at times when it was supposed she was elsewhere. she showed an intuitive knowledge of all traps set to give intimation of her approach, and would come upon aunt rachel so stealthily as to induce her to declare, "dat old mrs. thomas put her more in mind of a ghost dan of any other libin animal." one morning, whilst attired in the manner described, mrs. thomas had been particularly active in her excursions through the house, and had driven the servants to their wits' ends by her frequent descents upon them at the most unexpected times, thereby effectually depriving them of the short breathing intervals they were anxious to enjoy. charlie in particular had been greatly harassed by her, and was sent flying from place to place until his legs were nearly run off, as he expressed it. and so, when lord cutanrun, who was travelling in america to give his estates in england an opportunity to recuperate, presented his card, charlie, in revenge, showed him into the drawing-room, where he knew that mrs. thomas was busily engaged trimming an oil-lamp. belying on the explicit order she had given to say that she was not at home, she did not even look up when his lordship entered, and as he advanced towards her, she extended to him a basin of dirty water, saying, "here, take this." receiving no response she looked up, and to her astonishment and horror beheld, not charlie, but lord cutanrun. in the agitation consequent upon his unexpected appearance, she dropped the basin, the contents of which, splashing in all directions, sadly discoloured his lordship's light pants, and greatly damaged the elegant carpet. "oh! my lord," she exclaimed, "i didn't--couldn't--wouldn't--" and, unable to ejaculate further, she fairly ran out of the apartment into the entry, where she nearly fell over charlie, who was enjoying the confusion his conduct had created. "oh! you limb!--you little wretch!" said she. "you knew i was not at home!" "why, where are you now?" he asked, with the most provoking air of innocence. "if you ain't in the house now, you never was." "never mind, sir," said she, "never mind. i'll settle with you for this. don't stand there grinning at me; go upstairs and tell mrs. morton to come down immediately, and then get something to wipe up that water. o dear! my beautiful carpet! and for a lord to see me in such a plight! oh! it's abominable! i'll give it to you, you scamp! you did it on purpose," continued the indignant mrs. thomas. "don't deny it--i know you did. what are you standing there for? why don't you call mrs. morton?" she concluded, as charlie, chuckling over the result of his trick, walked leisurely upstairs. "that boy will be the death of me," she afterwards said, on relating the occurrence to her daughter. "just to think, after all the trouble i've had teaching him when to admit people and when not, that he should serve me such a trick. i'm confident he did it purposely." alas! for poor mrs. thomas; this was only the first of a series of annoyances that charlie had in store, with which to test her patience and effect his own deliverance. a few days after, one of their grand dinners was to take place, and charlie had been revolving in his mind the possibility of his finding some opportunity, on that occasion, to remove the old lady's wig; feeling confident that, could he accomplish that feat, he would be permitted to turn his back for ever on the mansion of mrs. thomas. never had mrs. thomas appeared more radiant than at this dinner. all the guests whose attendance she had most desired were present, a new set of china had lately arrived from paris, and she was in full anticipation of a grand triumph. now, to charlie had been assigned the important duty of removing the cover from the soup-tureen which was placed before his mistress, and the little rogue had settled upon that moment as the most favourable for the execution of his purpose. he therefore secretly affixed a nicely crooked pin to the elbow of his sleeve, and, as he lifted the cover, adroitly hooked it into her cap, to which he knew the wig was fastened, and in a twinkling had it off her head, and before she could recover from her astonishment and lay down the soup-ladle he had left the room. the guests stared and tittered at the grotesque figure she presented,--her head being covered with short white hair, and her face as red as a peony at the mortifying situation in which she was placed. as she rose from her chair charlie presented himself, and handed her the wig, with an apology for the _accident_. in her haste to put it on, she turned it wrong side foremost; the laughter of the guests could now no longer be restrained, and in the midst of it mrs. thomas left the room. encountering charlie as she went, she almost demolished him in her wrath; not ceasing to belabour him till his outcries became so loud as to render her fearful that he would alarm the guests; and she then retired to her room, where she remained until the party broke up. it was her custom, after these grand entertainments, to make nocturnal surveys of the kitchen, to assure herself that none of the delicacies had been secreted by the servants for their personal use and refreshment. charlie, aware of this, took his measures for an ample revenge for the beating he had received at her hands. at night, when all the rest of the family had retired, he hastily descended to the kitchen, and, by some process known only to himself, imprisoned the cat in a stone jar that always stood upon the dresser, and into which he was confident mrs. thomas would peep. he then stationed himself upon the stairs, to watch the result. he had not long to wait, for as soon as she thought the servants were asleep, she came softly into the kitchen, and, after peering about in various places, she at last lifted up the lid of the jar. tom, tired of his long confinement, sprang out, and, in so doing, knocked the lamp out of her hand, the fluid from which ignited and ran over the floor. "murder!--fire!--watch!" screamed the thoroughly frightened old woman. "oh, help! help! fire!" at this terrible noise nearly every one in the household was aroused, and hurried to the spot whence it proceeded. they found mrs. thomas standing in the dark, with the lid of the jar in her hand, herself the personification of terror. the carpet was badly burned in several places, and the fragments of the lamp were scattered about the floor. "what has happened?" exclaimed mr. morton, who was the first to enter the kitchen. "what is all this frightful noise occasioned by?" "oh, there is a man in the house!" answered mrs. thomas, her teeth chattering with fright. "there was a man in here--he has just sprung out," she continued, pointing to the bread-jar. "pooh, pooh--that's nonsense, madam," replied the son-in-law. "why an infant could not get in there, much less a man!" "i tell you it was a man then," angrily responded mrs. thomas; "and he is in the house somewhere now." "such absurdity!" muttered mr. morton; adding, in a louder tone: "why, my dear mamma, you've seen a mouse or something of the kind." "mouse, indeed!" interrupted the old lady. "do you think i'm in my dotage, and i don't know a man from a mouse?" just then the cat, whose back had got severely singed in the _melee_, set up a most lamentable caterwauling; and, on being brought to light from the depths of a closet into which he had flown, his appearance immediately discovered the share he had had in the transaction. "it must have been the cat," said robberts. "only look at his back--why here the fur is singed off him! i'll bet anything," continued he, "that air boy has had something to do with this--for it's a clear case that the cat couldn't git into the jar, and then put the lid on hissef." tom's inability to accomplish this feat being most readily admitted on all sides, inquiry was immediately made as to the whereabouts of charlie; his absence from the scene being rather considered as evidence of participation, for, it was argued, if he had been unaware of what was to transpire, the noise would have drawn him to the spot at once, as he was always the first at hand in the event of any excitement. robberts was despatched to see if he was in his bed, and returned with the intelligence that the bed had not even been opened. search was immediately instituted, and he was discovered in the closet at the foot of the stairs. he was dragged forth, shaken, pummelled, and sent to bed, with the assurance that his mother should be sent for in the morning, to take him home, and keep him there. this being exactly the point to which he was desirous of bringing matters, he went to bed, and passed a most agreeable night. aunt rachel, being one of those sleepers that nothing short of an earthquake can rouse until their customary time for awaking, had slept soundly through the stirring events of the past night. she came down in the morning in quite a placid state of mind, expecting to enjoy a day of rest, as she had the night before sat up much beyond her usual time, to set matters to rights after the confusion consequent on the dinner party. what was her astonishment, therefore, on finding the kitchen she had left in a state of perfect order and cleanliness, in a condition that resembled the preparation for an annual house-cleaning. "lord, bless us!" she exclaimed, looking round; "what on yarth has happened? i raly b'lieve dere's bin a fire in dis 'ere house, and i never knowed a word of it. why i might have bin burnt up in my own bed! dere's de lamp broke--carpet burnt--pots and skillets hauled out of the closet--ebery ting turned upside down; why dere's bin a reg'lar 'sturbance down here," she continued, as she surveyed the apartment. at this juncture, she espied tom, who sat licking his paws before the fire, and presenting so altered an appearance, from the events of the night, as to have rendered him unrecognizable even by his best friend. "strange cat in de house! making himself quite at home at dat," said aunt rachel, indignantly. her wrath, already much excited, rose to the boiling point at what she deemed a most daring invasion of her domain. she, therefore, without ceremony, raised a broom, with which she belaboured the astonished tom, who ran frantically from under one chair to another till he ensconced himself in a small closet, from which he pertinaciously refused to be dislodged. "won't come out of dere, won't you?" said she. "i'll see if i can't make you den;" and poor tom dodged behind pots and kettles to avoid the blows which were aimed at him; at last, thoroughly enraged by a hard knock on the back, he sprang fiercely into the face of his tormentor, who, completely upset by the suddenness of his attack, fell sprawling on the floor, screaming loudly for help. she was raised up by robberts, who came running to her assistance, and, on being questioned as to the cause of her outcries, replied:-- "dere's a strange cat in de house--wild cat too, i raly b'lieve;" and spying tom at that moment beneath the table, she made another dash at him for a renewal of hostilities. "why that's tom," exclaimed robberts; "don't you know your own cat?" "oh," she replied, "dat ar isn't tom now, is it? why, what's the matter wid him?" robberts then gave her a detailed account of the transactions of the previous night, in which account the share charlie had taken was greatly enlarged and embellished; and the wrathful old woman was listening to the conclusion when charlie entered. hardly had he got into the room, when, without any preliminary discussion, aunt rachel--to use her own words--pitched into him to give him particular fits. now charlie, not being disposed to receive "particular fits," made some efforts to return the hard compliments that were being showered upon him, and the advice of kinch providentially occurring to him--respecting an attack upon the understanding of his venerable antagonist--he brought his hard shoes down with great force upon her pet corn, and by this _coup de pied_ completely demolished her. with a loud scream she let him go; and sitting down upon the floor, declared herself lamed for life, beyond the possibility of recovery. at this stage of the proceedings, robberts came to the rescue of his aged coadjutor, and seized hold of charlie, who forthwith commenced so brisk an attack upon his rheumatic shins, as to cause him to beat a hurried retreat, leaving charlie sole master of the field. the noise that these scuffles occasioned brought mrs. thomas into the kitchen, and charlie was marched off by her into an upstairs room, where he was kept in "durance vile" until the arrival of his mother. mrs. thomas had a strong liking for charlie--not as a boy, but as a footman. he was active and intelligent, and until quite recently, extremely tractable and obedient; more than all, he was a very good-looking boy, and when dressed in the thomas livery, presented a highly-respectable appearance. she therefore determined to be magnanimous--to look over past events, and to show a christian and forgiving spirit towards his delinquencies. she sent for mrs. ellis, with the intention of desiring her to use her maternal influence to induce him to apologize to aunt rachel for his assault upon her corns, which apology mrs. thomas was willing to guarantee should be accepted; as for the indignities that had been inflicted on herself, she thought it most politic to regard them in the light of accidents, and to say as little about that part of the affair as possible. when mrs. ellis made her appearance on the day subsequent to the events just narrated, mrs. thomas enlarged to her upon the serious damage that aunt rachel had received, and the urgent necessity that something should be done to mollify that important individual. when charlie was brought into the presence of his mother and mrs. thomas, the latter informed him, that, wicked as had been his conduct towards herself, she was willing, for his mother's sake, to look over it; but that he must humble himself in dust and ashes before the reigning sovereign of the culinary kingdom, who, making the most of the injury inflicted on her toe, had declared herself unfit for service, and was at that moment ensconced in a large easy-chair, listening to the music of her favourite smoke-jack, whilst a temporary cook was getting up the dinner, under her immediate supervision and direction. "charlie, i'm quite ashamed of you," said his mother, after listening to mrs. thomas's lengthy statement. "what has come over you, child?"--charlie stood biting his nails, and looking very sullen, but vouchsafed them no answer.--"mrs. thomas is so kind as to forgive you, and says she will look over the whole affair, if you will beg aunt rachel's pardon. come, now," continued mrs. ellis, coaxingly, "do, that's a good boy." "yes, do," added mrs. thomas, "and i will buy you a handsome new suit of livery." this was too much for charlie; the promise of another suit of the detested livery quite overcame him, and he burst into tears. "why, what ails the boy? he's the most incomprehensible child i ever saw! the idea of crying at the promise of a new suit of clothes!--any other child would have been delighted," concluded mrs. thomas. "i don't want your old button-covered uniform," said charlie, "and i won't wear it, neither! and as for aunt rachel, i don't care how much she is hurt--i'm only sorry i didn't smash her other toe; and i'll see her skinned, and be skinned myself, before i'll ask her pardon!" both mrs. thomas and charlie's mother stood aghast at this unexpected declaration; and the result of a long conference, held by the two, was that charlie should be taken home, mrs. ellis being unable to withstand his tears and entreaties. as he passed through the kitchen on his way out, he made a face at aunt rachel, who, in return, threw at him one of the turnips she was peeling. it missed the object for which it was intended, and came plump into the eye of robberts, giving to that respectable individual for some time thereafter the appearance of a prize-fighter in livery. charlie started for home in the highest spirits, which, however, became considerably lower on his discovering his mother's view of his late exploits was very different from his own. mrs. ellis's fondness and admiration of her son, although almost amounting to weakness, were yet insufficient to prevent her from feeling that his conduct, even after making due allowance for the provocation he had received, could not be wholly excused as mere boyish impetuosity and love of mischievous fun. she knew that his father would feel it his duty, not only to reprimand him, but to inflict some chastisement; and this thought was the more painful to her from the consciousness, that but for her own weak compliance with mrs. thomas's request, her boy would not have been placed in circumstances which his judgment and self-command had proved insufficient to carry him through. the day, therefore, passed less agreeably than charlie had anticipated; for now that he was removed from the scene of his trials, he could not disguise from himself that his behaviour under them had been very different from what it ought to have been, and this had the salutary effect of bringing him into a somewhat humbler frame of mind. when his father returned in the evening, therefore, charlie appeared so crest-fallen that even caddy could scarcely help commiserating him, especially as his subdued state during the day had kept him from committing any of those offences against tidiness which so frequently exasperated her. mr. ellis, though very strict on what he thought points of duty, had much command of temper, and was an affectionate father. he listened, therefore, with attention to the details of charlie's grievances, as well as of his misdemeanours, and some credit is due to him for the unshaken gravity he preserved throughout. although he secretly acquitted his son of any really bad intention, he thought it incumbent on him to make charlie feel in some degree the evil consequences of his unruly behaviour. after giving him a serious lecture, and pointing out the impropriety of taking such measures to deliver himself from the bondage in which his parents themselves had thought fit to place him, without even appealing to them, he insisted on his making the apologies due both to mrs. thomas and aunt rachel (although he was fully aware that both had only got their deserts); and, further, intimated that he would not be reinstated in his parents' good graces until he had proved, by his good conduct and docility, that he was really sorry for his misbehaviour. it was a severe trial to charlie to make these apologies; but he well knew that what his father had decided upon must be done--so he made a virtue of necessity, and, accompanied by his mother, on the following day performed his penance with as good a grace as he was able; and, in consideration of this submission, his father, when he came home in the evening, greeted him with all his usual kindness, and the recollection of this unlucky affair was at once banished from the family circle. chapter viii. trouble in the ellis family. since the receipt of mr. garie's letter, mrs. ellis and caddy had been busily engaged in putting the house in a state of preparation for their reception. caddy, whilst superintending its decoration, felt herself in elysium. for the first time in her life she had the supreme satisfaction of having two unfortunate house-cleaners entirely at her disposal; consequently, she drove them about and worried them to an extent unparalleled in any of their former experience. she sought for and discovered on the windows (which they had fondly regarded as miracles of cleanliness) sundry streaks and smears, and detected infinite small spots of paint and whitewash on the newly-scrubbed floors. she followed them upstairs and downstairs, and tormented them to that extent, that charlie gave it as his private opinion that he should not be in the least surprised, on going up there, to find that the two old women had made away with caddy, and hidden her remains in the coal-bin. whilst she was thus engaged, to charlie was assigned the duty of transporting to winter-street her diurnal portion of food, without a hearty share of which she found it impossible to maintain herself in a state of efficiency; her labours in chasing the women about the house being of a rather exhausting nature. when he made the visits in question, charlie was generally reconnoitred by his sister from a window over the door, and was compelled to put his shoes through a system of purification, devised by her for his especial benefit. it consisted of three courses of scraper, and two of mat; this being considered by her as strictly necessary to bring his shoes to such a state of cleanliness as would entitle him to admission into the premises of which she was the temporary mistress. charlie, on two or three occasions finding a window open, made stealthy descents upon the premises without first having duly observed these quarantine regulations; whereupon he was attacked by caddy, who, with the assistance of the minions under her command, so shook and pummelled him as to cause his precipitate retreat through the same opening by which he had entered, and that, too, in so short a space of time as to make the whole manoeuvre appear to him in the light of a well-executed but involuntary feat of ground and lofty tumbling. one afternoon he started with his sister's dinner, consisting of a dish of which she was particularly fond, and its arrival was therefore looked for with unusual anxiety. charlie, having gorged himself to an almost alarming extent, did not make the haste that the case evidently demanded; and as he several times stopped to act as umpire in disputed games of marbles (in the rules of which he was regarded as an authority), he necessarily consumed a great deal of time on the way. caddy's patience was severely tried by the long delay, and her temper, at no time the most amiable, gathered bitterness from the unprecedented length of her fast. therefore, when he at length appeared, walking leisurely up winter-street, swinging the kettle about in the most reckless manner, and setting it down on the pavement to play leap-frog over the fire-plugs, her wrath reached a point that boded no good to the young trifler. now, whilst charlie had been giving his attention to the difficulties growing out of the games of marbles, he did not observe that one of the disputants was possessed of a tin kettle, in appearance very similar to his own, by the side of which, in the excitement of the moment, he deposited his own whilst giving a practical illustration of his view of the point under consideration. having accomplished this to his entire satisfaction, he resumed what he supposed was his kettle, and went his way rejoicing. now, if caddy ellis had a fondness for one dish more than any other, it was for haricot, with plenty of carrots; and knowing she was to have this for her dinner, she, to use her own pointed expression, "had laid herself out to have a good meal." she had even abstained from her customary lunch that she might have an appetite worthy of the occasion; and accordingly, long ere the dinner hour approached, she was hungry as a wolf. notwithstanding this fact, when charlie made his appearance at the door, she insisted on his going through all the accustomed forms with the mat and scraper before entering the house; an act of self-sacrifice on her part entirely uncalled for, as the day was remarkably fine, and charlie's boots unusually clean. he received two or three by no means gentle shoves and pokes as he entered, which he bore with unusual indifference, making not the slightest effort at retaliation, as was his usual practice. the fact is, charlie was, as lions are supposed to be, quite disinclined for a fight after a hearty meal, so he followed caddy upstairs to the second story. here she had got up an extempore dining-table, by placing a pasting board across two chairs. seating herself upon a stool, she jerked off the lid of the kettle, and, to her horror and dismay, found not the favourite haricot, but a piece of cheese-rind, a crust of dry bread, and a cold potatoe. charlie, who was amusing himself by examining the flowers in the new carpet, did not observe the look of surprise and disgust that came over the countenance of his sister, as she took out, piece by piece, the remains of some schoolboy's repast. "look here," she at last burst forth, "do you call this _my_ dinner?" "yes," said charlie, in a deliberate tone, "and a very good one too, i should say; if you can't eat that dinner, you ought to starve; it's one of mother's best haricots." "you don't call this cold potatoe and cheese-rind haricot, do you?" asked caddy, angrily. at this charlie looked up, and saw before her the refuse scraps, which she had indignantly emptied upon the table. he could scarcely believe his eyes; he got up and looked in the kettle, but found no haricot. "well," said he, with surprise, "if that don't beat me! i saw mother fill it with haricot myself; i'm clean beat about it." "tell me what you've done with it, then," almost screamed the angry girl. "i really don't know what has become of it," he answered, with a bewildered air. "i saw--i saw--i--i--" "you saw--you saw," replied the indignant caddy, imitating his tone; and taking up the kettle, she began to examine it more closely. "why, this isn't even our kettle; look at this lid. i'm sure it's not ours. you've been stopping somewhere to play, and exchanged it with some other boy, that's just what you've done." just then it occurred to charlie that at the place where he had adjusted the dispute about the marbles, he had observed in the hands of one of the boys a kettle similar to his own; and it flashed across his mind that he had then and there made the unfortunate exchange. he broke his suspicion to caddy in the gentlest manner, at the same time edging his way to the door to escape the storm that he saw was brewing. the loss of her dinner--and of such a dinner--so enraged the hungry girl, as to cause her to seize a brush lying near and begin to belabour him without mercy. in his endeavour to escape from her his foot was caught in the carpet, and he was violently precipitated down the long flight of stairs. his screams brought the whole party to his assistance; even kinch, who was sitting on the step outside, threw off his usual dread of caddy, and rushed into the house. "oh, take me up," piteously cried charlie; "oh, take me up, i'm almost killed." in raising him, one of the old women took hold of his arm, which caused him to scream again. "don't touch my arm, please don't touch my arm; i'm sure it's broke." "no, no, it's not broke, only sprained, or a little twisted," said she; and, seizing it as she spoke, she gave it a pull and a wrench, for the purpose of making it all right again; at this charlie's face turned deathly pale, and he fainted outright. "run for a doctor," cried the now thoroughly-alarmed caddy; "run for the doctor! my brother's dead!" and bursting into tears, she exclaimed, "oh, i've killed my brother, i've killed my brother!" "don't make so much fuss, child," soothingly replied one of the old women: "he's worth half a dozen dead folk yet. lor bless you, child, he's only fainted." water was procured and thrown in his face, and before kinch returned with the doctor, he was quite restored to consciousness. "don't cry, my little man," said the physician, as he took out his knife and ripped up the sleeve of charlie's coat. "don't cry; let me examine your arm." stripping up the shirt-sleeve, he felt it carefully over, and shaking his head (physicians always shake their heads) pronounced the arm broken, and that, too, in an extremely bad place. at this information charlie began again to cry, and caddy broke forth into such yells of despair as almost to drive them distracted. the physician kindly procured a carriage, and saw charlie comfortably placed therein; and held in the arms of kinch, with the lamenting and disheartened caddy on the opposite seat, he was slowly driven home. the house was quite thrown into confusion by their arrival under such circumstances; mrs. ellis, for a wonder, did not faint, but proceeded at once to do what was necessary. mr. ellis was sent for, and he immediately despatched kinch for dr. burdett, their family physician, who came without a moment's delay. he examined charlie's arm, and at first thought it would be necessary to amputate it. at the mere mention of the word amputate, caddy set up such a series of lamentable howls as to cause her immediate ejectment from the apartment. dr. burdett called in dr. diggs for a consultation, and between them it was decided that an attempt should be made to save the injured member. "now, charlie," said dr. burdett, "i'm afraid we must hurt you, my boy--but if you have any desire to keep this arm you must try to bear it." "i'll bear anything to save my arm, doctor; i can't spare that," said he, manfully. "i'll want it by-and-by to help take care of mother and the girls." "you're a brave little fellow," said dr. diggs, patting him on the head, "so then we'll go at it at once." "stop," cried charlie, "let mother put her arm round my neck so, and es, you hold the good hand. now then, i'm all right--fire away!" and clenching his lips hard, he waited for the doctor to commence the operation of setting his arm. charlie's mother tried to look as stoical as possible, but the corners of her mouth would twitch, and there was a nervous trembling of her under-lip; but she commanded herself, and only when charlie gave a slight groan of pain, stooped and kissed his forehead; and when she raised her head again, there was a tear resting on the face of her son that was not his own. esther was the picture of despair, and she wept bitterly for the misfortune which had befallen her pet brother; and when the operation was over, refused to answer poor caddy's questions respecting charlie's injuries, and scolded her with a warmth and volubility that was quite surprising to them all. "you must not be too hard on caddy," remarked mr. ellis. "she feels bad enough, i'll warrant you. it is a lesson that will not, i trust, be thrown away upon her; it will teach her to command her temper in future." caddy was in truth quite crushed by the misfortune she had occasioned, and fell into such a state of depression and apathy as to be scarcely heard about the house; indeed, so subdued was she, that kinch went in and out without wiping his feet, and tracked the mud all over the stair-carpet, and yet she uttered no word of remonstrance. poor little charlie suffered much, and was in a high fever. the knocker was tied up, the windows darkened, and all walked about the house with sad and anxious countenances. day after day the fever increased, until he grew delirious, and raved in the most distressing manner. the unfortunate haricot was still on his mind, and he was persecuted by men with strange-shaped heads and carrot eyes. sometimes he imagined himself pursued by caddy, and would cry in the most piteous manner to have her prevented from beating him. then his mind strayed off to the marble-ground, where he would play imaginary games, and laugh over his success in such a wild and frightful manner as to draw tears from the eyes of all around him. he was greatly changed; the bright colour had fled from his cheek; his head had been shaved, and he was thin and wan, and at times they were obliged to watch him, and restrain him from tossing about, to the great peril of his broken arm. at last his situation became so critical that dr. burdett began to entertain but slight hopes of his recovery; and one morning, in the presence of caddy, hinted as much to mr. ellis. "oh, doctor, doctor," exclaimed the distracted girl, "don't say that! oh, try and save him! how could i live with the thought that i had killed my brother! oh, i can't live a day if he dies! will god ever forgive me? oh, what a wretch i have been! oh, do think of something that will help him! he _mustn't_ die, you _must_ save him!" and crying passionately, she threw herself on the floor in an agony of grief. they did their best to pacify her, but all their efforts were in vain, until mr. ellis suggested, that since she could not control her feelings, she must be sent to stay with her aunt, as her lamentations and outcries agitated her suffering brother and made his condition worse. the idea of being excluded from the family circle at such a moment had more effect on caddy than all previous remonstrances. she implored to have the sentence suspended for a time at least, that she might try to exert more self-command; and mr. ellis, who really pitied her, well knowing that her heart was not in fault, however reprehensible she was in point of temper, consented; and caddy's behaviour from that moment proved the sincerity of her promises; and though she could not quite restrain occasional outbursts of senseless lamentation, still, when she felt such fits of despair coming on, she wisely retired to some remote corner of the house, and did not re-appear till she had regained her composure. the crisis was at length over, and charlie was pronounced out of danger. no one was more elated by this announcement than our friend kinch, who had, in fact, grown quite ashy in his complexion from confinement and grief, and was now thrown by this intelligence into the highest possible spirits. charlie, although faint and weak, was able to recognize his friends, and derived great satisfaction from the various devices of kinch to entertain him. that young gentleman quite distinguished himself by the variety and extent of his resources. he devised butting matches between himself and a large gourd, which he suspended from the ceiling, and almost blinded himself by his attempts to butt it sufficiently hard to cause it to rebound to the utmost length of the string, and might have made an idiot of himself for ever by his exertions, but for the timely interference of mr. ellis, who put a final stop to this diversion. then he dressed himself in a short gown and nightcap, and made the pillow into a baby, and played the nurse with it to such perfection, that charlie felt obliged to applaud by knocking with the knuckles of his best hand upon the head-board of his bedstead. on the whole, he was so overjoyed as to be led to commit all manner of eccentricities, and conducted himself generally in such a ridiculous manner, that charlie laughed himself into a state of prostration, and kinch was, in consequence, banished from the sick-room, to be re-admitted only on giving his promise to abstain from being as _funny as he could_ any more. after the lapse of a short time charlie was permitted to sit up, and held regular _levees_ of his schoolmates and little friends. he declared it was quite a luxury to have a broken arm, as it was a source of so much amusement. the old ladies brought him jellies and blanc-mange, and he was petted and caressed to such an unparalleled extent, as to cause his delighted mother to aver that she lived in great fear of his being spoiled beyond remedy. at length he was permitted to come downstairs and sit by the window for a few hours each day. whilst thus amusing himself one morning, a handsome carriage stopped before their house, and from it descended a fat and benevolent-looking old lady, who knocked at the door and rattled the latch as if she had been in the daily habit of visiting there, and felt quite sure of a hearty welcome. she was let in by esther, and, on sitting down, asked if mrs. ellis was at home. whilst esther was gone to summon her mother, the lady looked round the room, and espying charlie, said, "oh, there you are--i'm glad to see you; i hope you are improving." "yes, ma'am," politely replied charlie, wondering all the time who their visitor could be. "you don't seem to remember me--you ought to do so; children seldom forget any one who makes them a pleasant promise." as she spoke, a glimmer of recollection shot across charlie's mind, and he exclaimed, "you are the lady who came to visit the school." "yes; and i promised you a book for your aptness, and," continued she, taking from her reticule a splendidly-bound copy of "robinson crusoe," "here it is." mrs. ellis, as soon as she was informed that a stranger lady was below, left caddy to superintend alone the whitewashing of charlie's sick-room, and having hastily donned another gown and a more tasty cap, descended to see who the visitor could be. "you must excuse my not rising," said mrs. bird, for that was the lady's name; "it is rather a difficulty for me to get up and down often--so," continued she, with a smile, "you must excuse my seeming rudeness." mrs. ellis answered, that any apology was entirely unnecessary, and begged she would keep her seat. "i've come," said mrs. bird, "to pay your little man a visit. i was so much pleased with the manner in which he recited his exercises on the day of examination, that i promised him a book, and on going to the school to present it, i heard of his unfortunate accident. he looks very much changed--he has had a very severe time, i presume?" "yes, a very severe one. we had almost given him over, but it pleased god to restore him," replied mrs. ellis, in a thankful tone. "he is very weak yet," she continued, "and it will be a long time before he is entirely recovered." "who is your physician?" asked mrs. bird. "doctor burdett," was the reply; "he has been our physician for years, and is a very kind friend of our family." "and of mine, too," rejoined mrs. bird; "he visits my house every summer. what does he think of the arm?" she asked. "he thinks in time it will be as strong as ever, and recommends sending charlie into the country for the summer; but," said mrs. ellis, "we are quite at a loss where to send him." "oh! let me take him," said mrs. bird--"i should be delighted to have him. i've got a beautiful place--he can have a horse to ride, and there are wide fields to scamper over! only let me have him, and i'll guarantee to restore him to health in a short time." "you're very kind," replied mrs. ellis--"i'm afraid he would only be a burthen to you--be a great deal of trouble, and be able to do but little work." "work! why, dear woman," replied mrs. bird, with some astonishment, "i don't want him to work--i've plenty of servants; i only want him to enjoy himself, and gather as much strength as possible. come, make up your mind to let him go with me, and i'll send him home as stout as i am." at the bare idea of charlie's being brought to such a state of obesity, kinch, who, during the interview, had been in the back part of the room, making all manner of faces, was obliged to leave the apartment, to prevent a serious explosion of laughter, and after their visitor had departed he was found rolling about the floor in a tempest of mirth. after considerable conversation relative to the project, mrs. bird took her leave, promising to call soon again, and advising mrs. ellis to accept her offer. mrs. ellis consulted dr. burdett, who pronounced it a most fortunate circumstance, and said the boy could not be in better hands; and as charlie appeared nothing loth, it was decided he should go to warmouth, to the great grief of kinch, who thought it a most unheard-of proceeding, and he regarded mrs. bird thenceforth as his personal enemy, and a wilful disturber of his peace. chapter ix. breaking up. the time for the departure of the garies having been fixed, all in the house were soon engaged in the bustle of preparation. boxes were packed with books, pictures, and linen; plate and china were wrapped and swaddled, to prevent breakage and bruises; carpets were taken up, and packed away; curtains taken down, and looking-glasses covered. only a small part of the house was left in a furnished state for the use of the overseer, who was a young bachelor, and did not require much space. in superintending all these arrangements mrs. garie displayed great activity; her former cheerfulness of manner had entirely returned, and mr. garie often listened with delight to the quick pattering of her feet, as she tripped lightly through the hall, and up and down the long stairs. the birds that sang about the windows were not more cheerful than herself, and when mr. garie heard her merry voice singing her lively songs, as in days gone by, he experienced a feeling of satisfaction at the pleasant result of his acquiescence in her wishes. he had consented to it as an act of justice due to her and the children; there was no pleasure to himself growing out of the intended change, beyond that of gratifying emily, and securing freedom to her and the children. he knew enough of the north to feel convinced that he could not expect to live there openly with emily, without being exposed to ill-natured comments, and closing upon himself the doors of many friends who had formerly received him with open arms. the virtuous dignity of the northerner would be shocked, not so much at his having children by a woman of colour, but by his living with her in the midst of them, and acknowledging her as his wife. in the community where he now resided, such things were more common; the only point in which he differed from many other southern gentlemen in this matter was in his constancy to emily and the children, and the more than ordinary kindness and affection with which he treated them. mr. garie had for many years led a very retired life, receiving an occasional gentleman visitor; but this retirement had been entirely voluntary, therefore by no means disagreeable; but in the new home he had accepted, he felt that he might be shunned, and the reflection was anything but agreeable. moreover, he was about to leave a place endeared to him by a thousand associations. here he had passed the whole of his life, except about four years spent in travelling through europe and america. mr. garie was seated in a room where there were many things to recall days long since departed. the desk at which he was writing was once his father's, and he well remembered the methodical manner in which every drawer was carefully kept; over it hung a full-length portrait of his mother, and it seemed, as he gazed at it, that it was only yesterday that she had taken his little hand in her own, and walked with him down the long avenue of magnolias that were waving their flower-spangled branches in the morning breeze, and loading it with fragrance. near him was the table on which her work-basket used to stand. he remembered how important he felt when permitted to hold the skeins of silk for her to wind, and how he would watch her stitch, stitch, hour after hour, at the screen that now stood beside the fire-place; the colours were faded, but the recollection of the pleasant smiles she would cast upon him from time to time, as she looked up from her work, was as fresh in his memory as if it were but yesterday. mr. garie was assorting and arranging the papers that the desk contained, when he heard the rattle of wheels along the avenue, and looking out of the window, he saw a carriage approaching. the coachman was guiding his horses with one hand, and with the other he was endeavouring to keep a large, old-fashioned trunk from falling from the top. this was by no means an easy matter, as the horses appeared quite restive, and fully required his undivided attention. the rather unsteady motion of the carriage caused its inmate to put his head out of the window, and mr. garie recognized his uncle john, who lived in the north-western part of the state, on the borders of alabama. he immediately left his desk, and hastened to the door to receive him. "this is an unexpected visit, but none the less pleasant on that account," said mr. garie, his face lighting up with surprise and pleasure as uncle john alighted. "i had not the least expectation of being honoured by a visit from you. what has brought you into this part of the country? business, of course? i can't conceive it possible that you should have ventured so far from home, at this early season, for the mere purpose of paying me a visit." "you may take all the honour to yourself this time," smilingly replied uncle john, "for i have come over for your especial benefit; and if i accomplish the object of my journey, i shall consider the time anything but thrown away." "let me take your coat; and, eph, see you to that trunk," said mr. garie. "you see everything is topsy-turvy with us, uncle john. we look like moving, don't we?" "like that or an annual house-cleaning," he replied, as he picked his way through rolls of carpet and matting, and between half-packed boxes; in doing which, he had several narrow escapes from the nails that protruded from them on all sides. "it's getting very warm; let me have something to drink," said he, wiping his face as he took his seat; "a julep--plenty of brandy and ice, and but little mint." eph, on receiving this order, departed in great haste in search of mrs. garie, as he knew that, whilst concocting one julep, she might be prevailed upon to mix another, and eph had himself a warm liking for that peculiar southern mixture, which liking he never lost any opportunity to gratify. emily hurried downstairs, on hearing of the arrival of uncle john, for he was regarded by her as a friend. she had always received from him marked kindness and respect, and upon the arrival of mr. garie's visitors, there was none she received with as much pleasure. quickly mixing the drink, she carried it into the room where he and her husband were sitting. she was warmly greeted by the kind-hearted old man, who, in reply to her question if he had come to make them a farewell visit, said he hoped not: he trusted to make them many more in the same place. "i'm afraid you won't have an opportunity," she replied. "in less than a week we expect to be on our way to new york.--i must go," continued she, "and have a room prepared for you, and hunt up the children. you'll scarcely know them, they have grown so much since you were here. i'll soon send them," and she hurried off to make uncle john's room comfortable. "i was never more surprised in my life," said the old gentleman, depositing the glass upon the table, after draining it of its contents--"never more surprised than when i received your letter, in which you stated your intention of going to the north to live. a more ridiculous whim it is impossible to conceive--the idea is perfectly absurd! to leave a fine old place like this, where you have everything around you so nice and comfortable, to go north, and settle amongst a parcel of strange yankees! my dear boy, you must give it up. i'm no longer your guardian--the law don't provide one for people of thirty years and upwards--so it is out of my power to say you shall not do it; but i am here to use all my powers of persuasion to induce you to relinquish the project." "uncle john, you don't seem to understand the matter. it is not a whim, by any means--it is a determination arising from a strict sense of duty; i feel that it is an act of justice to emily and the children. i don't pretend to be better than most men; but my conscience will not permit me to be the owner of my own flesh and blood. i'm going north, because i wish to emancipate and educate my children--you know i can't do it here. at first i was as disinclined to favour the project as you are; but i am now convinced it is my duty, and, i must add, that my inclination runs in the same direction." "look here, clarence, my boy," here interrupted uncle john; "you can't expect to live there as you do here; the prejudice against persons of colour is much stronger in some of the northern cities than it is amongst us southerners. you can't live with emily there as you do here; you will be in everybody's mouth. you won't be able to sustain your old connections with your northern friends--you'll find that they will cut you dead." "i've looked at it well, uncle john. i've counted the cost, and have made up my mind to meet with many disagreeable things. if my old friends choose to turn their backs on me because my wife happens to belong to an oppressed race, that is not my fault. i don't feel that i have committed any sin by making the choice i have; and so their conduct or opinions won't influence my happiness much." "listen to me, clary, for a moment," rejoined the old gentleman. "as long as you live here in georgia you can sustain your present connection with impunity, and if you should ever want to break it off, you could do so by sending her and the children away; it would be no more than other men have done, and are doing every day. but go to the north, and it becomes a different thing. your connection with emily will inevitably become a matter of notoriety, and then you would find it difficult to shake her off there, as you could here, in case you wanted to marry another woman." "oh, uncle, uncle, how can you speak so indifferently about my doing such an ungenerous act; to characterize it in the very mildest terms. i feel that emily is as much my wife in the eyes of god, as if a thousand clergymen had united us. it is not my fault that we are not legally married; it is the fault of the laws. my father did not feel that my mother was any more his wife, than i do that emily is mine." "hush, hush; that is all nonsense, boy; and, besides, it is paying a very poor compliment to your mother to rank her with your mulatto mistress. i like emily very much; she has been kind, affectionate, and faithful to you. yet i really can't see the propriety of your making a shipwreck of your whole life on her account. now," continued uncle john, with great earnestness, "i hoped for better things from you. you have talents and wealth; you belong to one of the oldest and best families in the state. when i am gone, you will be the last of our name; i had hoped that you would have done something to keep it from sinking into obscurity. there is no honour in the state to which you might not have aspired with a fair chance of success; but if you carry out your absurd determination, you will ruin yourself effectually." "well; i shall be ruined then, for i am determined to go. i feel it my duty to carry out my design," said mr. garie. "well, well, clary," rejoined his uncle, "i've done my duty to my brother's son. i own, that although i cannot agree with you in your project, i can and do honour the unselfish motive that prompts it. you will always find me your friend under all circumstances, and now," concluded he, "it's off my mind." the children were brought in and duly admired; a box of miniature carpenter's tools was produced; also, a wonderful man with a string through his waist--which string, when pulled, caused him to throw his arms and legs about in a most astonishing manner. the little folks were highly delighted with these presents, which, uncle john had purchased at augusta; they scampered off, and soon had every small specimen of sable humanity on the place at their heels, in ecstatic admiration of the wonderful articles of which they had so recently acquired possession. as uncle john had absolutely refused all other refreshment than the julep before mentioned, dinner was ordered at a much earlier hour than usual. he ate very heartily, as was his custom; and, moreover, persisted in stuffing the children (as old gentlemen will do sometimes) until their mother was compelled to interfere to prevent their having a bilious attack in consequence. whilst the gentlemen were sitting over their desert, mr. garie asked his uncle, if he had not a sister, with whom there was some mystery connected. "no mystery," replied uncle john. "your aunt made a very low marriage, and father cut her off from the family entirely. it happened when i was very young; she was the eldest of us all; there were four of us, as you know--your father, bernard, i, and this sister of whom we are speaking. she has been dead for some years; she married a carpenter whom father employed on the place--a poor white man from new york. i have heard it said, that he was handsome, but drunken and vicious. they left one child--a boy; i believe he is alive in the north somewhere, or was, a few years since." "and did she never make any overtures for a reconciliation?" "she did, some years before father's death, but he was inexorable; he returned her letter, and died without seeing or forgiving her," replied uncle john. "poor thing; i suppose they were very poor?" "i suppose they were. i have no sympathy for her. she deserved her fate, for marrying a greasy mechanic, in opposition to her father's commands, when she might have connected herself with any of the highest families in the state." the gentlemen remained a long while that night, sipping their wine, smoking cigars, and discussing the probable result of the contemplated change. uncle john seemed to have the worst forebodings as to the ultimate consequences, and gave it as his decided opinion, that they would all return to the old place in less than a year. "you'll soon get tired of it," said he; "everything is so different there. here you can get on well in your present relations; but mark me, you'll find nothing but disappointment and trouble where you are going." the next morning he departed for his home; he kissed the children affectionately, and shook hands warmly with their mother. after getting into the carriage, he held out his hand again to his nephew, saying:-- "i am afraid you are going to be disappointed; but i hope you may not. good bye, good bye--god bless you!" and his blue eyes looked very watery, as he was driven from the door. that day, a letter arrived from savannah, informing them that the ship in which they had engaged passage would be ready to sail in a few days; and they, therefore, determined that the first instalment of boxes and trunks should be sent to the city forthwith; and to eph was assigned the melancholy duty of superintending their removal. "let me go with him, pa," begged little clarence, who heard his father giving eph his instructions. "oh, no," replied mr. garie; "the cart will be full of goods, there will be no room for you." "but, pa, i can ride my pony; and, besides, you might let me go, for i shan't have many more chances to ride him--do let me go." "oh, yes, massa, let him go. why dat ar chile can take care of his pony all by hissef. you should just seed dem two de oder day. you see de pony felt kinder big dat day, an' tuck a heap o' airs on hissef, an' tried to trow him--twarn't no go--massa clary conquered him 'pletely. mighty smart boy, dat," continued eph, looking at little clarence, admiringly, "mighty smart. i let him shoot off my pistol toder day, and he pat de ball smack through de bull's eye--dat boy is gwine to be a perfect ramrod." "oh, pa," laughingly interrupted little clarence; "i've been telling him of what you read to me about nimrod being a great hunter." "that's quite a mistake, eph," said mr. garie, joining in the laugh. "well, i knowed it was suffin," said eph, scratching his head; "suffin with a rod to it; i was all right on that pint--but you'r gwine to let him go, ain't yer, massa?" "i suppose, i must," replied mr. garie; "but mind now that no accident occurs to young ramrod." "i'll take care o' dat," said eph, who hastened off to prepare the horses, followed by the delighted clarence. that evening, after his return from savannah, clarence kept his little sister's eyes expanded to an unprecedented extent by his narration of the wonderful occurrences attendant on his trip to town, and also of what he had seen in the vessel. he produced an immense orange, also a vast store of almonds and raisins, which had been given him by the good-natured steward. "but em," said he, "we are going to sleep in such funny little places; even pa and mamma have got to sleep on little shelves stuck up against the wall; and they've got a thing that swings from the ceiling that they keep the tumblers and wine-glasses in--every glass has got a little hole for itself. oh, it's so nice!" "and have they got any nice shady trees on the ship?" asked the wondering little em. "oh, no--what nonsense!" answered clarence, swelling with the importance conferred by his superior knowledge. "why, no, em; who ever heard of such a thing as trees on a ship? they couldn't have trees on a ship if they wanted--there's no earth for them to grow in. but i'll tell you what they've got--they've got masts a great deal higher than any tree, and i'm going to climb clear up to the top when we go to live on the ship." "i wouldn't," said em; "you might fall down like ben did from the tree, and then you'd have to have your head sewed up as he had." the probability that an occurrence of this nature might be the result of his attempt to climb the mast seemed to have considerable weight with master clarence, so he relieved his sister's mind at once by relinquishing the project. the morning for departure at length arrived. eph brought the carriage to the door at an early hour, and sat upon the box the picture of despair. he did not descend from his eminence to assist in any of the little arrangements for the journey, being very fearful that the seat he occupied might be resumed by its rightful owner, he having had a lengthy contest with the sable official who acted as coachman, and who had striven manfully, on this occasion, to take possession of his usual elevated station on the family equipage. this, eph would by no means permit, as he declared, "he was gwine to let nobody drive massa dat day but hissef." it was a mournful parting. the slaves crowded around the carriage kissing and embracing the children, and forcing upon them little tokens of remembrance. blind jacob, the patriarch of the place, came and passed his hands over the face of little em for the last time, as he had done almost every week since her birth, that, to use his own language, "he might see how de piccaninny growed." his bleared and sightless eyes were turned to heaven to ask a blessing on the little ones and their parents. "why, daddy jake, you should not take it so hard," said mr. garie, with an attempt at cheerfulness. "you'll see us all again some day." "no, no, massa, i'se feared i won't; i'se gettin' mighty old, massa, and i'se gwine home soon. i hopes i'll meet you all up yonder," said he, pointing heavenward. "i don't 'spect to see any of you here agin." many of the slaves were in tears, and all deeply lamented the departure of their master and his family, for mr. garie had always been the kindest of owners, and mrs. garie was, if possible, more beloved than himself. she was first at every sick-bed, and had been comforter-general to all the afflicted and distressed in the place. at last the carriage rolled away, and in a few hours they reached savannah, and immediately went on board the vessel. chapter x. another parting. mrs. ellis had been for some time engaged in arranging and replenishing charlie's wardrobe, preparatory to his journey to warmouth with mrs. bird. an entire new suit of grey cloth had been ordered of the tailor, to whom mrs. ellis gave strict injunctions not to make them too small. notwithstanding the unfavourable results of several experiments, mrs. ellis adhered with wonderful tenacity to the idea that a boy's clothes could never be made too large, and, therefore, when charlie had a new suit, it always appeared as if it had been made for some portly gentleman, and sent home to charlie by mistake. this last suit formed no exception to the others, and charlie surveyed with dismay its ample dimensions as it hung from the back of the chair. "oh, gemini!" said he, "but that jacket is a rouser! i tell you what, mother, you'll have to get out a search-warrant to find me in that jacket; now, mind, i tell you!" "nonsense!" replied mrs. ellis, "it don't look a bit too large; put it on." charlie took up the coat, and in a twinkling had it on over his other. his hands were almost completely lost in the excessively long sleeves, which hung down so far that the tips of his fingers were barely visible. "oh, mother!" he exclaimed, "just look at these sleeves--if such a thing were to happen that any one were to offer me a half dollar, they would change their mind before i could get my hand out to take it; and it will almost go twice round me, it is so large in the waist." "oh, you can turn the sleeves up; and as for the waist--you'll soon grow to it; it will be tight enough for you before long, i'll warrant," said mrs. ellis. "but, mother," rejoined charlie, "that is just what you said about the other blue suit, and it was entirely worn out before you had let down the tucks in the trowsers." "never mind the blue suit," persisted mrs. ellis, entirely unbiassed by this statement of facts. "you'll grow faster this time--you're going into the country, you must remember--boys always grow fast in the country; go into the other room and try on the trowsers." charlie retired into another room with the trowsers in question. here he was joined by kinch, who went into fits of laughter over charlie's pea-jacket, as he offensively called the new coat. "why, charlie," said he, "it fits you like a shirt on a bean-pole, or rather it's like a sentry's box--it don't touch you any where. but get into these pants," said he, almost choking with the laughter that charlie's vexed look caused him to suppress--"get into the pants;" at the same time tying a string round charlie's neck. "what are you doing that for?" exclaimed charlie, in an irritated tone; "i shouldn't have thought you would make fun of me!" "oh," said kinch, assuming a solemn look, "don't they always tie a rope round a man's body when they are going to lower him into a pit? and how on earth do you ever expect we shall find you in the legs of them trowsers, unless something is fastened to you?" here charlie was obliged to join in the laugh that kinch could no longer restrain. "stop that playing, boys," cried mrs. ellis, as their noisy mirth reached her in the adjoining room; "you forget i am waiting for you." charlie hastily drew on the trousers, and found that their dimensions fully justified the precaution kinch was desirous of taking to secure him from sinking into oblivion. "oh, i can't wear these things," said charlie, tears of vexation starting from his eyes. "why, they are so large i can't even keep them up; and just look at the legs, will you--they'll have to be turned up a quarter of a yard at least." "here," said kinch, seizing a large pillow, "i'll stuff this in. oh, golly, how you look! if you ain't a sight to see!" and he shouted with laughter as he surveyed charlie, to whom the pillow had imparted the appearance of a london alderman. "if you don't look like squire baker now, i'll give it up. you are as big as old daddy downhill. you are a regular daniel lambert!" the idea of looking like squire baker and daddy downhill, who were the "fat men" of their acquaintance, amused charlie as much as it did his companion, and making the house ring with their mirth, they entered the room where mr. ellis and the girls had joined mrs. ellis. "what on earth is the matter with the child?" exclaimed mr. ellis, as he gazed upon the grotesque figure charlie presented. "what has the boy been doing to himself?" hereupon kinch explained how matters stood, to the infinite amusement of all parties. "oh, ellen," said mr. ellis, "you must have them altered; they're a mile too big for him. i really believe they would fit me." "they do look rather large," said mrs. ellis, reluctantly; "but it seems such a waste to take them in, as he grows so fast." "he would not grow enough in two years to fill that suit," rejoined mr. ellis; "and he will have worn them out in less than six months;" and so, to the infinite satisfaction of charlie, it was concluded that they should be sent back to the tailor's for the evidently necessary alterations. the day for charlie's departure at last arrived. kinch, who had been up since two o'clock in the morning, was found by caddy at the early hour of five waiting upon the door-step to accompany his friend to the wharf. beside him lay a bag, in which there appeared to be some living object. "what have you got in here?" asked caddy, as she gave the bag a punch with the broom she was using. "it's a present for charlie," replied kinch, opening the bag, and displaying, to the astonished gaze of caddy, a very young pig. "why," said she, laughing, "you don't expect he can take that with him, do you?" "why not?" asked kinch, taking up the bag and carrying it into the house. "it's just the thing to take into the country; charlie can fatten him and sell him for a lot of money." it was as much as mrs. ellis could do to convince charlie and kinch of the impracticability of their scheme of carrying off to warmouth the pig in question. she suggested, as it was the exclusive property of kinch, and he was so exceedingly anxious to make charlie a parting gift, that she should purchase it, which she did, on the spot; and kinch invested all the money in a large cross-bow, wherewith charlie was to shoot game sufficient to supply both kinch and his own parents. had charlie been on his way to the scaffold, he could not have been followed by a more solemn face than that presented by kinch as he trudged on with him in the rear the porter who carried the trunk. "i wish you were not going," said he, as he put his arm affectionately over charlie's shoulder, "i shall be so lonesome when you are gone; and what is more, i know i shall get licked every day in school, for who will help me with my sums?" "oh, any of the boys will, they all like you, kinch; and if you only study a little harder, you can do them yourself," was charlie's encouraging reply. on arriving at the boat, they found. mrs. bird waiting for them; so charlie hastily kissed his mother and sisters, and made endless promises not to be mischievous, and, above all, to be as tidy as possible. then tearing himself away from them, and turning to kinch, he exclaimed, "i'll be back to see you all again soon, so don't cry old fellow;" and at the same time thrusting his hand into his pocket, he drew out a number of marbles, which he gave him, his own lips quivering all the while. at last his attempts to suppress his tears and look like a man grew entirely futile, and he cried heartily as mrs. bird took his hand and drew him on board the steamer. as it slowly moved from the pier and glided up the river, charlie stood looking with tearful eyes at his mother and sisters, who, with kinch, waved their handkerchiefs as long as they could distinguish him, and then he saw them move away with the crowd. mrs. bird, who had been conversing with a lady who accompanied her a short distance on her journey, came and took her little _protege_ by the hand, and led him to a seat near her in the after part of the boat, informing him, as she did so, that they would shortly exchange the steamer for the cars, and she thought he had better remain near her. after some time they approached the little town where the passengers took the train for new york. mrs. bird, who had taken leave of her friend, held charlie fast by the hand, and they entered the cars together. he looked a little pale and weak from the excitement of parting and the novelty of his situation. mrs. bird, observing his pallid look, placed him on a seat, and propped him up with shawls and cushions, making him as comfortable as possible. the train had not long started, when the conductor came through to inspect the tickets, and quite started with surprise at seeing charlie stretched at full length upon the velvet cushion. "what are you doing here?" exclaimed he, at the same time shaking him roughly, to arouse him from the slight slumber into which he had fallen. "come, get up: you must go out of this." "what do you mean by such conduct?" asked mrs. bird, very much surprised. "don't wake him; i've got his ticket; the child is sick." "i don't care whether he's sick or well--he can't ride in here. we don't allow niggers to ride in this car, no how you can fix it--so come, youngster," said he, gruffly, to the now aroused boy, "you must travel out of this." "he shall do no such thing," replied mrs. bird, in a decided tone; "i've paid fall price for his ticket, and he shall ride here; you have no legal right to eject him." "i've got no time to jaw about rights, legal or illegal--all i care to know is, that i've my orders not to let niggers ride in these cars, and i expect to obey, so you see there is no use to make any fuss about it." "charlie," said mrs. bird, "sit here;" and she moved aside, so as to seat him between herself and the window. "now," said she, "move him if you think best." "i'll tell you what it is, old woman," doggedly remarked the conductor: "you can't play that game with me. i've made up my mind that no more niggers shall ride in this car, and i'll have him out of here, cost what it may." the passengers now began to cluster around the contending parties, and to take sides in the controversy. in the end, the conductor stopped the train, and called in one or two of the irish brake-men to assist him, if necessary, in enforcing his orders. "you had better let the boy go into the negro car, madam," said one of the gentlemen, respectfully; "it is perfectly useless to contend with these ruffians. i saw a coloured man ejected from here last week, and severely injured; and, in the present state of public feeling, if anything happened to you or the child, you would be entirely without redress. the directors of this railroad control the state; and there is no such thing as justice to be obtained in any of the state courts in a matter in which they are concerned. if you will accept of my arm, i will accompany you to the other car--if you will not permit the child to go there alone, you had better go quietly with him." "oh, what is the use of so much talk about it? why don't you hustle the old thing out," remarked a bystander, the respectability of whose appearance contrasted broadly with his manners; "she is some crack-brained abolitionist. making so much fuss about a little nigger! let her go into the nigger car--she'll be more at home there." mrs. bird, seeing the uselessness of contention, accepted the proffered escort of the gentleman before mentioned, and was followed out of the cars by the conductor and his blackguard assistants, all of them highly elated by the victory they had won over a defenceless old woman and a feeble little boy. mrs. bird shrunk back, as they opened the door of the car that had been set apart for coloured persons, and such objectionable whites as were not admitted to the first-class cars. "oh, what a wretched place!" she exclaimed, as she surveyed the rough pine timbers and dirty floor; "i would not force a dog to ride in such a filthy place." "oh, don't stay here, ma'am; never mind me--i shall get on by myself well enough, i dare say," said charlie; "it is too nasty a place for you to stay in." "no, my child," she replied; "i'll remain with you. i could not think of permitting you to be alone in your present state of health. i declare," she continued, "it's enough to make any one an abolitionist, or anything else of the kind, to see how inoffensive coloured people are treated!" that evening they went on board the steamer that was to convey them to warmouth, where they arrived very early the following morning. charlie was charmed with the appearance of the pretty little town, as they rode through it in mrs. bird's carriage, which awaited them at the landing. at the door of her residence they were met by two cherry-faced maids, who seemed highly delighted at the arrival of their mistress. "now, charlie," said mrs. bird, as she sat down in her large arm-chair, and looked round her snug little parlour with an air of great satisfaction--"now we are at home, and you must try and make yourself as happy as possible. betsey," said she, turning to one of the women, "here is a nice little fellow, whom i have brought with me to remain during the summer, of whom i want you to take the best care; for," continued she, looking at him compassionately, "the poor child has had the misfortune to break his arm recently, and he has not been strong since. the physician thought the country would be the best place for him, and so i've brought him here to stay with us. tell reuben to carry his trunk into the little maple chamber, and by-and-by, after i have rested, i will take a walk over the place with him." "here are two letters for you," said betsey, taking them from the mantelpiece, and handing them to her mistress. mrs. bird opened one, of which she read a part, and then laid it down, as being apparently of no importance. the other, however, seemed to have a great effect upon her, as she exclaimed, hurriedly, "tell reuben not to unharness the horses--i must go to francisville immediately--dear mrs. hinton is very ill, and not expected to recover. you must take good care of charlie until i return. if i do not come back to-night, you will know that she is worse, and that i am compelled to remain there;" and, on the carriage being brought to the door, she departed in haste to visit her sick friend. chapter xi the new home. when mrs. garie embarked, she entertained the idea so prevalent among fresh-water sailors, that she was to be an exception to the rule of father neptune, in accordance with which all who intrude for the first time upon his domain are compelled to pay tribute to his greatness, and humbly bow in acknowledgment of his power. mrs. garie had determined not to be sea-sick upon any account whatever, being fully persuaded she could brave the ocean with impunity, and was, accordingly, very brisk and blithe-looking, as she walked up and down upon the deck of the vessel. in the course of a few hours they sailed out of the harbour, and were soon in the open sea. she began to find out how mistaken she had been, as unmistakable symptoms convinced her of the vanity of all human calculations. "why, you are not going to be ill, em, after all your valiant declarations!" exclaimed mr. garie, supporting her unsteady steps, as they paced to and fro. "oh, no, no!" said she, in a firm tone; "i don't intend to give up to any such nonsense. i believe that people can keep up if they try. i do feel a little fatigued and nervous; it's caused, no doubt, by the long drive of this morning--although i think it singular that a drive should affect me in this manner." thus speaking, she sat down by the bulwarks of the vessel, and a despairing look gradually crept over her face. at last she suddenly rose, to look at the water, as we may imagine. the effect of her scrutiny, however, was, that she asked feebly to be assisted to her state-room, where she remained until their arrival in the harbour of new york. the children suffered only for a short time, and as their father escaped entirely, he was able to watch that they got into no mischief. they were both great favourites with the captain and steward, and, between the two, were so stuffed and crammed with sweets as to place their health in considerable jeopardy. it was a delightful morning when they sailed into the harbour of new york. the waters were dancing and rippling in the morning sun, and the gaily-painted ferry-boats were skimming swiftly across its surface in their trips to and from the city, which was just awaking to its daily life of bustling toil. "what an immense city it is!" said mrs. garie--"how full of life and bustle! why there are more ships at one pier here than there are in the whole port of savanah!" "yes, dear," rejoined her husband; "and what is more, there always will be. our folks in georgia are not waked up yet; and when they do arouse themselves from their slumber, it will be too late. but we don't see half the shipping from here--this is only one side of the city--there is much more on the other. look over there," continued he, pointing to jersey city,--"that is where we take the cars for philadelphia; and if we get up to dock in three or four hours, we shall be in time for the mid-day train." in less time than they anticipated they were alongside the wharf; the trunks were brought up, and all things for present use were safely packed together and despatched, under the steward's care, to the office of the railroad. mr. and mrs. garie, after bidding good-bye to the captain, followed with the children, who were thrown into a great state of excitement by the noise and bustle of the crowded thoroughfare. "how this whirl and confusion distracts me," said mrs. garie, looking out of the carriage-window. "i hope philadelphia is not as noisy a place as this." "oh, no," replied mr. garie; "it is one of the most quiet and clean cities in the world, whilst this is the noisiest and dirtiest. i always hurry out of new york; it is to me such a disagreeable place, with its extortionate hackmen and filthy streets." on arriving at the little steamer in which they crossed the ferry, they found it about to start, and therefore had to hurry on board with all possible speed. under the circumstances, the hackman felt that it would be flying in the face of providence if he did not extort a large fare, and he therefore charged an extravagant price. mr. garie paid him, as he had no time to parley, and barely succeeded in slipping a _douceur_ into the steward's hand, when the boat pushed off from the pier. in a few moments they had crossed the river, and were soon comfortably seated in the cars whirling over the track to philadelphia. as the conductor came through to examine the tickets, he paused for a moment before mrs. garie and the children. as he passed on, his assistant inquired, "isn't that a nigger?" "yes, a half-white one," was the reply. "why don't you order her out, then?--she has no business to ride in here," continued the first speaker. "i guess we had better let her alone," suggested the conductor, "particularly as no one has complained; and there might be a row if she turned out to be the nurse to those children. the whole party are southerners, that's clear; and these southerners are mighty touchy about their niggers sometimes, and kick and cut like the devil about them. i guess we had better let her alone, unless some one complains about her being there." as they drove through the streets of philadelphia on the way to their new home, mrs. garie gave rent to many expressions of delight at the appearance of the city. "oh, what a sweet place! everything is so bright and fresh-looking; why the pavement and doorsteps look as if they were cleaned twice a day. just look at that house, how spotless it is; i hope ours resembles that. ours is a new house, is it not?" she inquired. "not entirely; it has been occupied before, but only for a short time, i believe," was her husband's reply. it had grown quite dark by the time they arrived at winter-street, where caddy had been anxiously holding watch and ward in company with the servants who had been procured for them. a bright light was burning in the entry as the coachman stopped at the door. "this is no. ," said he, opening the door of the carriage, "shall i ring?" "yes, do," replied mr. garie; but whilst he was endeavouring to open the gate of the little garden in front, caddy, who had heard the carriage stop, bounded out to welcome them. "this is mr. garie, i suppose," said she, as he alighted. "yes, i am; and you, i suppose, are the daughter of mr. ellis?" "yes, sir; i'm sorry mother is not here to welcome you; she was here until very late last night expecting your arrival, and was here again this morning," said caddy, taking at the same time one of the little carpet bags. "give me the little girl, i can take care of her too," she continued; and with little em on one arm and the carpet bag on the other, she led the way into the house. "we did not make up any fire," said she, "the weather is very warm to us. i don't know how it may feel to you, though." "it is a little chilly," replied mrs. garie, as she sat down upon the sofa, and looked round the room with a smile of pleasure, and added, "all this place wants, to make it the most bewitching of rooms, is a little fire." caddy hurried the new servants from place to place remorselessly, and set them to prepare the table and get the things ready for tea. she waylaid a party of labourers, who chanced to be coming that way, and hired them to carry all the luggage upstairs--had the desired fire made--mixed up some corn-bread, and had tea on the table in a twinkling. they all ate very heartily, and caddy was greatly praised for her activity. "you are quite a housekeeper," said mrs. garie to caddy. "do you like it?" "oh, yes," she replied. "i see to the house at home almost entirely; mother and esther are so much engaged in sewing, that they are glad enough to leave it in my hands, and i'd much rather do that than sew." "i hope," said mrs. garie, "that your mother will permit you to remain with us until we get entirely settled." "i know she will," confidently replied caddy. "she will be up here in the morning. she will know you have arrived by my not having gone home this evening." the children had now fallen asleep with their heads in close proximity to their plates, and mrs. garie declared that she felt very much fatigued and slightly indisposed, and thought the sooner she retired the better it would be for her. she accordingly went up to the room, which she had already seen and greatly admired, and was soon in the land of dreams. as is always the case on such occasions, the children's night-dresses could not be found. clarence was put to bed in one of his father's shirts, in which he was almost lost, and little em was temporarily accommodated with a calico short gown of caddy's, and, in default of a nightcap, had her head tied up in a madras handkerchief, which gave her, when her back was turned, very much the air of an old creole who had been by some mysterious means deprived of her due growth. the next morning mrs. garie was so much indisposed at to be unable to rise, and took her breakfast in bed. her husband had finished his meal, and was sitting in the parlour, when he observed a middle-aged coloured lady coming into the garden. "look, caddy," cried he, "isn't this your mother?" "oh, yes, that is she," replied caddy, and ran and opened the door, exclaiming, "oh, mother, they're come;" and as she spoke, mr. garie came into the entry and shook hands heartily with her. "i'm so much indebted to you," said he, "for arranging everything so nicely for us--there is not a thing we would wish to alter." "i am very glad you are pleased; we did our best to make it comfortable," was her reply. "and you succeeded beyond our expectation; but do come up," continued he, "emily will be delighted to see you. she is quite unwell this morning; has not even got up yet;" and leading the way upstairs, he ushered mrs. ellis into the bedroom. "why, can this be you?" said she, surveying emily with surprise and pleasure. "if i had met you anywhere, i should never have known you. how you have altered! you were not so tall as my caddy when i saw you last; and here you are with two children--and pretty little things they are too!" said she, kissing little em, who was seated on the bed with her brother, and sharing with him the remains of her mother's chocolate. "and you look much younger that i expected to see you," replied mrs. garie. "draw a chair up to the bed, and let us have a talk about old times. you must excuse my lying down; i don't intend to get up to-day; i feel quite indisposed." mrs. ellis took off her bonnet, and prepared for a long chat; whilst mr. garie, looking at his watch, declared it was getting late, and started for down town, where he had to transact some business. "you can scarcely think, ellen, how much i feel indebted to you for all you have done for us; and we are so distressed to hear about charlie's accident. you must have had a great deal of trouble." "oh, no, none to speak of--and had it been ever so much, i should have been just as pleased to have done it; i was so glad you were coming. what did put it in your heads to come here to live?" continued mrs. ellis. "oh, cousin george winston praised the place so highly, and you know how disagreeable georgia is to live in. my mind was never at rest there respecting these," said she, pointing to the children; "so that i fairly teased garie into it. did you recognize george?" "no, i didn't remember much about him. i should never have taken him for a coloured man; had i met him in the street, i should have supposed him to be a wealthy white southerner. what a gentleman he is in his appearance and manners," said mrs. ellis. "yes, he is all that--my husband thinks there is no one like him. but we won't talk about him now; i want you to tell me all about yourself and family, and then i'll tell you everything respecting my own fortunes." hereupon ensued long narratives from both parties, which occupied the greater part of the morning. mr. garie, on leaving the house, slowly wended his way to the residence of mr. walters. as he passed into the lower part of the city, his attention was arrested by the number of coloured children he saw skipping merrily along with their bags of books on their arms. "this," said he to himself, "don't much resemble georgia."[*] [footnote *: it is a penal offence in georgia to teach coloured children to read.] after walking some distance he took out a card, and read, , easton-street; and on inquiry found himself in the very street. he proceeded to inspect the numbers, and was quite perplexed by their confusion and irregularity. a coloured boy happening to pass at the time, he asked him: "which way do the numbers run, my little man?" the boy looked up waggishly, and replied: "they don't run at all; they are permanently affixed to each door." "but," said mr. garie, half-provoked, yet compelled to smile at the boy's pompous wit, "you know what i mean; i cannot find the number i wish; the street is not correctly numbered." "the street is not numbered at all," rejoined the boy, "but the houses are," and he skipped lightly away. mr. garie was finally set right about the numbers, and found himself at length before the door of mr. walters's house. "quite a handsome residence," said he, as he surveyed the stately house, with its spotless marble steps and shining silver door-plate. on ringing, his summons was quickly answered by a well-dressed servant, who informed him that mr. walters was at home, and ushered him into the parlour. the elegance of the room took mr. garie completely by surprise, as its furniture indicated not only great wealth, but cultivated taste and refined habits. the richly-papered walls were adorned by paintings from the hands of well-known foreign and native artists. rich vases and well-executed bronzes were placed in the most favourable situations in the apartment; the elegantly-carved walnut table was covered with those charming little bijoux which the french only are capable of conceiving, and which are only at the command of such purchasers as are possessed of more money than they otherwise can conveniently spend. mr. garie threw himself into a luxuriously-cushioned chair, and was soon so absorbed in contemplating the likeness of a negro officer which hung opposite, that he did not hear the soft tread of mr. walters as he entered the room. the latter, stepping slowly forward, caught the eye of mr. garie, who started up, astonished at the commanding figure before him. "mr. garie, i presume?" said mr. walters. "yes," he replied, and added, as he extended his hand; "i have the pleasure of addressing mr. walters, i suppose?" mr. walters bowed low as he accepted the proffered hand, and courteously requested his visitor to be seated. as mr. garie resumed his seat, he could not repress a look of surprise, which mr. walters apparently perceived, for a smile slightly curled his lip as he also took a seat opposite his visitor. mr. walters was above six feet in height, and exceedingly well-proportioned; of jet-black complexion, and smooth glossy skin. his head was covered with a quantity of woolly hair, which was combed back from a broad but not very high forehead. his eyes were small, black, and piercing, and set deep in his head. his aquiline nose, thin lips, and broad chin, were the very reverse of african in their shape, and gave his face a very singular appearance. in repose, his countenance was severe in its expression; but when engaged in agreeable conversation, the thin sarcastic-looking lips would part, displaying a set of dazzlingly white teeth, and the small black eyes would sparkle with animation. the neatness and care with which he was dressed added to the attractiveness of his appearance. his linen was the perfection of whiteness, and his snowy vest lost nothing by its contact therewith. a long black frock coat, black pants, and highly-polished boots, completed his attire. "i hope," said he, "your house suits you; it is one of my own, and has never been rented except for a short time to a careful tenant, who was waiting for his own house to be finished. i think you will find it comfortable." "oh, perfectly so, i am quite sure. i must thank you for the prompt manner in which you have arranged everything for us. it seems more like coming to an old home than to a new residence," replied mr. garie. "i am delighted to hear you say so," said mr. walters. "i shall be most happy to call and pay my respects to mrs. garie when agreeable to her. depend upon it, we will do all in our power to make our quiet city pleasant to you both." mr. garie thanked him, and after some further conversation, rose to depart. as he was leaving the room, he stopped before the picture which had so engaged his attention, when mr. walters entered. "so you, too, are attracted by that picture," said mr. walters, with a smile. "all white men look at it with interest. a black man in the uniform of a general officer is something so unusual that they cannot pass it with a glance." "it is, indeed, rather a novelty," replied mr. garie, "particularly to a person from my part of the country. who is it?" "that is toussaint l'ouverture," replied mr. walters; "and i have every reason to believe it to be a correct likeness. it was presented to an american merchant by toussaint himself--a present in return for some kindness shown him. this merchant's son, not having the regard for the picture that his father entertained for it, sold it to me. that," continued mr. walters, "looks like a man of intelligence. it is entirely different from any likeness i ever saw of him. the portraits generally represent him as a monkey-faced person, with a handkerchief about his head." "this," said mr. garie, "gives me an idea of the man that accords with his actions." thus speaking, he continued looking at the picture for a short time, and then took his departure, after requesting mr. walters to call upon him at an early opportunity. chapter xii. mr. garie's neighbour. we must now introduce our readers into the back parlour of the house belonging to mr. garie's next-door neighbour, mr. thomas stevens. we find this gentleman standing at a window that overlooked his garden, enjoying a fragrant havannah. his appearance was not by any means prepossessing; he was rather above than below the middle height, with round shoulders, and long, thin arms, finished off by disagreeable-looking hands. his head was bald on the top, and the thin greyish-red hair, that grew more thickly about his ears, was coaxed up to that quarter, where an attempt had been made to effect such a union between the cords of the hair from each side as should cover the place in question. the object, however, remained unaccomplished; as the hair was either very obstinate and would not be induced to lie as desired, or from extreme modesty objected to such an elevated position, and, in consequence, stopped half-way, as if undecided whether to lie flat or remain erect, producing the effect that would have been presented had he been decorated with a pair of horns. his baldness might have given an air of benevolence to his face, but for the shaggy eyebrows that over-shadowed his cunning-looking grey eyes. his cheekbones were high, and the cadaverous skin was so tightly drawn across them, as to give it a very parchment-like appearance. around his thin compressed lips there was a continual nervous twitching, that added greatly to the sinister aspect of his face. on the whole, he was a person from whom you would instinctively shrink; and had he been president or director of a bank in which you had money deposited, his general aspect would not have given you additional confidence in the stable character or just administration of its affairs. mr. george stevens was a pettifogging attorney, who derived a tolerable income from a rather disreputable legal practice picked up among the courts that held their sessions in the various halls of the state-house. he was known in the profession as slippery george, from the easy manner in which he glided out of scrapes that would have been fatal to the reputation of any other lawyer. did a man break into a house, and escape without being actually caught on the spot with the goods in his possession, stevens was always able to prove an alibi by a long array of witnesses. in fact, he was considered by the swell gentry of the city as their especial friend and protector, and by the members of the bar generally as anything but an ornament to the profession. he had had rather a fatiguing day's labour, and on the evening of which we write, was indulging in his usual cigar, and amusing himself at the same time by observing the gambols of clarence and little em, who were enjoying a romp in their father's garden. "come here, jule," said he, "and look at our new neighbour's children--rather pretty, ain't they?" he was joined by a diminutive red-faced woman, with hair and eyes very much like his own, and a face that wore a peevish, pinched expression. "rather good-looking," she replied, after observing them for a few minutes, and then added, "have you seen their parents?" "no, not yet," was the reply. "i met walters in the street this morning, who informed me they are from the south, and very rich; we must try and cultivate them--ask the children in to play with ours, and strike up an intimacy in that way, the rest will follow naturally, you know. by the way, jule," continued he, "how i hate that nigger walters, with his grand airs. i wanted some money of him the other day on rather ticklish securities for a client of mine, and the black wretch kept me standing in his hall for at least five minutes, and then refused me, with some not very complimentary remarks upon my assurance in offering him such securities. it made me so mad i could have choked him--it is bad enough to be treated with _hauteur_ by a white man, but contempt from a nigger is almost unendurable." "why didn't you resent it in some way? i never would have submitted to anything of the kind from him," interrupted mrs. stevens. "oh, i don't dare to just now; i have to be as mild as milk with him. you forget about the mortgage; don't you know he has me in a tight place there, and i don't see how to get out of it either. if i am called slippery george, i tell you what, jule, there's not a better man of business in the whole of philadelphia than that same walters, nigger as he is; and no one offends him without paying dear for it in some way or other. i'll tell you something he did last week. he went up to trenton on business, and at the hotel they refused to give him dinner because of his colour, and told him they did not permit niggers to eat at their tables. what does he do but buy the house over the landlord's head. the lease had just expired, and the landlord was anxious to negotiate another; he was also making some arrangements with his creditors, which could not be effected unless he was enabled to renew the lease of the premises he occupied. on learning that the house had been sold, he came down to the city to negotiate with the new owner, and to his astonishment found him to be the very man he had refused a meal to the week before. blunt happened to be in walters's office at the time the fellow called. walters, he says, drew himself up to his full height, and looked like an ebony statue. "sir," said he, "i came to your house and asked for a meal, for which i was able to pay; you not only refused it to me, but heaped upon me words such as fall only from the lips of blackguards. you refuse to have me in your house--i object to have you in mine: you will, therefore, quit the premises immediately." the fellow sneaked out quite crestfallen, and his creditors have broken him up completely. "i tell you what, jule, if i was a black," continued he, "living in a country like this, i'd sacrifice conscience and everything else to the acquisition of wealth." as he concluded, he turned from the window and sat down by a small table, upon which a lighted lamp had been placed, and where a few law papers were awaiting a perusal. a little boy and girl were sitting opposite to him. the boy was playing with a small fly-trap, wherein he had already imprisoned a vast number of buzzing sufferers. in appearance he bore a close resemblance to his father; he had the same red hair and sallow complexion, but his grey eyes had a dull leaden hue. "do let them go, george, do!" said the little girl, in a pleading tone. "you'll kill them, shut up there." "i don't care if i do," replied he, doggedly; "i can catch more--look here;" and as he spoke he permitted a few of the imprisoned insects to creep partly out, and then brought the lid down upon them with a force that completely demolished them. the little girl shuddered at this wanton exhibition of cruelty, and offered him a paper of candy if he would liberate his prisoners, which he did rather reluctantly, but promising himself to replenish the box at the first opportunity. "ah!" said he, in a tone of exultation, "father took me with him to the jail to-day, and i saw all the people locked up. i mean to be a jailer some of these days. wouldn't you like to keep a jail, liz?" continued he, his leaden eyes receiving a slight accession of brightness at the idea. "oh, no!" replied she; "i would let all the people go, if i kept the jail." a more complete contrast than this little girl presented to her parents and brother, cannot be imagined. she had very dark chestnut hair, and mild blue eyes, and a round, full face, which, in expression, was sweetness itself. she was about six years old, and her brother's junior by an equal number of years. her mother loved her, but thought her tame and spiritless in her disposition; and her father cherished as much affection for her as he was capable of feeling for any one but himself. mrs. stevens, however, doted on their eldest hope, who was as disagreeable as a thoroughly spoiled and naturally evil-disposed boy could be. as the evenings had now become quite warm, mr. garie frequently took a chair and enjoyed his evening cigar upon the door-step of his house; and as mr. stevens thought his steps equally suited to this purpose, it was very natural he should resort there with the same object. mr. stevens found no difficulty in frequently bringing about short neighbourly conversations with mr. garie. the little folk, taking their cue from their parents, soon became intimate, and ran in and out of each other's houses in the most familiar manner possible. lizzy stevens and little em joined hearts immediately, and their intimacy had already been cemented by frequent consultations on the various ailments wherewith they supposed their dolls afflicted. clarence got on only tolerably with george stevens; he entertained for him that deference that one boy always has for another who is his superior in any boyish pastime; but there was little affection lost between them--they cared very little for each other's society. mrs. garie, since her arrival, had been much confined to her room, in consequence of her protracted indisposition. mrs. stevens had several times intimated to mr. garie her intention of paying his wife a visit; but never having received any very decided encouragement, she had not pressed the matter, though her curiosity was aroused, and she was desirous of seeing what kind of person mrs. garie could be. her son george in his visits had never been permitted farther than the front parlour; and all the information that could be drawn from little lizzy, who was frequently in mrs. garie's bedroom, was that "she was a pretty lady, with great large eyes." one evening, when mr. garie was occupying his accustomed seat, he was accosted from the other side by mrs. stevens, who, as usual, was very particular in her inquiries after the state of his wife's health; and on learning that she was so much improved as to be down-stairs, suggested that, perhaps, she would be willing to receive her. "no doubt she will," rejoined mr. garie; and he immediately entered the house to announce the intended visit. the lamps were not lighted when mrs. stevens was introduced, and faces could not, therefore, be clearly distinguished. "my dear," said mr. garie, "this is our neighbour, mrs. stevens." "will you excuse me for not rising?" said mrs. garie, extending her hand to her visitor. "i have been quite ill, or i should have been most happy to have received you before. my little folks are in your house a great deal--i hope you do not find them troublesome." "oh, by no means! i quite dote on your little emily, she is such a sweet child--so very affectionate. it is a great comfort to have such a child near for my own to associate with--they have got quite intimate, as i hope we soon shall be." mrs. garie thanked her for the kindness implied in the wish, and said she trusted they should be so. "and how do you like your house?" asked mrs. stevens; "it is on the same plan as ours, and we find ours very convenient. they both formerly belonged to walters; my husband purchased of him. do you intend to buy?" "it is very probable we shall, if we continue to like philadelphia," answered mr. garie. "i'm delighted to hear that," rejoined she--"very glad, indeed. it quite relieves my mind about one thing: ever since mr. stevens purchased our house we have been tormented with the suspicion that walters would put a family of niggers in this; and if there is one thing in this world i detest more than another, it is coloured people, i think." mr. garie here interrupted her by making some remark quite foreign to the subject, with the intention, no doubt, of drawing her off this topic. the attempt was, however, an utter failure, for she continued--"i think all those that are not slaves ought to be sent out of the country back to africa, where they belong: they are, without exception, the most ignorant, idle, miserable set i ever saw." "i think," said mr. garie, "i can show you at least one exception, and that too without much trouble. sarah," he cried, "bring me a light." "oh," said mrs. stevens, "i suppose you refer to walters--it is true he is an exception; but he is the only coloured person i ever saw that could make the least pretension to anything like refinement or respectability. "let me show you another," said mr. garie, as he took the lamp from the servant and placed it upon the table near his wife. as the light fell on her face, their visitor saw that she belonged to the very class that she had been abusing in such unmeasured terms and so petrified was she with confusion at the _faux pas_ she had committed, that she was entirely unable to improvise the slightest apology. mrs. garie, who had been reclining on the lounge, partially raised herself and gave mrs. stevens a withering look. "i presume, madam," said she, in a hurried and agitated tone, "that you are very ignorant of the people upon whom you have just been heaping such unmerited abuse, and therefore i shall not think so hardly of you as i should, did i deem your language dictated by pure hatred; but, be its origin what it may, it is quite evident that our farther acquaintance could be productive of no pleasure to either of us--you will, therefore, permit me," continued she, rising with great dignity, "to wish you good evening;" and thus speaking, she left the room. mrs. stevens was completely demolished by this unexpected _denouement_ of her long-meditated visit, and could only feebly remark to mr. garie that it was getting late, and she would go; and rising, she suffered herself to be politely bowed out of the house. in her intense anxiety to relate to her husband the scene which had just occurred, she could not take time to go round and through the gate, but leaped lightly over the low fence that divided the gardens, and rushed precipitately into the presence of her husband. "good heavens! george, what do you think?" she exclaimed; "i've had such a surprise!" "i should think that you had, judging from appearances," replied he. "why, your eyes are almost starting out of your head! what on earth has happened?" he asked, as he took the shade off the lamp to get a better view of his amiable partner. "you would not guess in a year," she rejoined; "i never would have dreamed it--i never was so struck in my life!" "struck with what? do talk sensibly, jule, and say what all this is about," interrupted her husband, in an impatient manner. "come, out with it--what has happened?" "why, would you have thought it," said she; "mrs. garie is a nigger woman--a real nigger--she would be known as such anywhere?" it was now mr. stevens's turn to be surprised. "why, jule," he exclaimed, "you astonish me! come, now, you're joking--you don't mean a real black nigger?" "oh, no, not jet black--but she's dark enough. she is as dark as that sarah we employed as cook some time ago." "you don't say so! wonders will never cease--and he such a gentleman, too!" resumed her husband. "yes; and it's completely sickening," continued mrs. stevens, "to see them together; he calls her my dear, and is as tender and affectionate to her as if she was a circassian--and she nothing but a nigger--faugh! it's disgusting." little clarence had been standing near, unnoticed by either of them during this conversation, and they were therefore greatly surprised when he exclaimed, with a burst of tears, "my mother is not a nigger any more than you are! how dare you call her such a bad name? i'll tell my father!" mr. stevens gave a low whistle, and looking at his wife, pointed to the door. mrs. stevens laid her hand on the shoulder of clarence, and led him to the door, saying, as she did so, "don't come in here any more--i don't wish you to come into my house;" and then closing it, returned to her husband. "you know, george," said she, "that i went in to pay her a short visit. i hadn't the remotest idea that she was a coloured woman, and i commenced giving my opinion respecting niggers very freely, when suddenly her husband called for a light, and i then saw to whom i had been talking. you may imagine my astonishment--i was completely dumb--and it would have done you good to have seen the air with which she left the room, after as good as telling me to leave the house." "well," said mr. stevens, "this is what may be safely termed an unexpected event. but, jule," he continued, "you had better pack these young folks off to bed, and then you can tell me the rest of it." clarence stood for some time on the steps of the house from which he had been so unkindly ejected, with his little heart swelling with indignation. he had often heard the term nigger used in its reproachful sense, but never before had it been applied to him or his, at least in his presence. it was the first blow the child received from the prejudice whose relentless hand was destined to crush him in after-years. it was his custom, when any little grief pressed upon his childish heart, to go and pour out his troubles on the breast of his mother; but he instinctively shrunk from confiding this to her; for, child as he was, he knew it would make her very unhappy. he therefore gently stole into the house, crept quietly up to his room, lay down, and sobbed himself to sleep. chapter xiii. hopes consummated. to emily winston we have always accorded the title of mrs. garie; whilst, in reality, she had no legal claim to it whatever. previous to their emigration from georgia, mr. garie had, on one or two occasions, attempted, but without success, to make her legally his wife. he ascertained that, even if he could have found a clergyman willing to expose himself to persecution by marrying them, the ceremony itself would have no legal weight, as a marriage between a white and a mulatto was not recognized as valid by the laws of the state; and he had, therefore, been compelled to dismiss the matter from his mind, until an opportunity should offer for the accomplishment of their wishes. now, however, that they had removed to the north, where they would have no legal difficulties to encounter, he determined to put his former intention into execution. although emily had always maintained a studied silence on the subject, he knew that it was the darling wish of her heart to be legally united to him; so he unhesitatingly proceeded to arrange matters for the consummation of what he felt assured would promote the happiness of both. he therefore wrote to dr. blackly, a distinguished clergyman of the city, requesting him to perform the ceremony, and received from him an assurance that he would be present at the appointed time. matters having progressed thus far, he thought it time to inform emily of what he had done. on the evening succeeding the receipt of an answer from the rev. dr. blackly--after the children had been sent to bed--he called her to him, and, taking her hand, sat down beside her on the sofa. "emily," said he, as he drew her closer to him, "my dear, faithful emily! i am about to do you an act of justice--one, too, that i feel will increase the happiness of us both. i am going to marry you, my darling! i am about to give you a lawful claim to what you have already won by your faithfulness and devotion. you know i tried, more than once, whilst in the south, to accomplish this, but, owing to the cruel and unjust laws existing there, i was unsuccessful. but now, love, no such difficulty exists; and here," continued he, "is an answer to the note i have written to dr. blackly, asking him to come next wednesday night, and perform the ceremony.--you are willing, are you not, emily?" he asked. "willing!" she exclaimed, in a voice tremulous with emotion--"willing! oh, god! if you only knew how i have longed for it! it has been my earnest desire for years!" and, bursting into tears, she leaned, sobbing, on his shoulder. after a few moments she raised her head, and, looking searchingly in his face, she asked: "but do you do this after full reflection on the consequences to ensue? are you willing to sustain all the odium, to endure all the contumely, to which your acknowledged union with one of my unfortunate race will subject you? clarence! it will be a severe trial--a greater one than any you have yet endured for me--and one for which i fear my love will prove but a poor recompense! i have thought more of these things lately; i am older now in years and experience. there was a time when i was vain enough to think that my affection was all that was necessary for your happiness; but men, i know, require more to fill their cup of content than the undivided affection of a woman, no matter how fervently beloved. you have talents, and, i have sometimes thought, ambition. oh, clarence! how it would grieve me, in after-years, to know that you regretted that for me you had sacrificed all those views and hopes that are cherished by the generality of your sex! have you weighed it well?" "yes, emily--well," replied mr. garie; "and you know the conclusion. my past should be a guarantee for the future. i had the world before me, and chose you--and with, you i am contented to share my lot; and feel that i receive, in your affection, a full reward for any of the so-called sacrifices i may make. so, dry your tears, my dear," concluded he, "and let us hope for nothing but an increase of happiness as the result." after a few moments of silence, he resumed: "it will be necessary, emily, to have a couple of witnesses. now, whom would you prefer? i would suggest mrs. ellis and her husband. they are old friends, and persons on whose prudence we can rely. it would not do to have the matter talked about, as it would expose us to disagreeable comments." mrs. garie agreed perfectly with him as to the selection of mr. and mrs. ellis; and immediately despatched a note to mrs. ellis, asking her to call at their house on the morrow. when she came, emily informed her, with some confusion of manner, of the intended marriage, and asked her attendance as witness, at the same time informing her of the high opinion her husband entertained of their prudence in any future discussion of the matter. "i am really glad he is going to marry you, emily," replied mrs. ellis, "and depend upon it we will do all in our power to aid it. only yesterday, that inquisitive mrs. tiddy was at our house, and, in conversation respecting you, asked if i knew you to be married to mr. garie. i turned the conversation somehow, without giving her a direct answer. mr. garie, i must say, does act nobly towards you. he must love you, emily, for not one white man in a thousand would make such a sacrifice for a coloured woman. you can't tell how we all like him--he is so amiable, so kind in his manner, and makes everyone so much at ease in his company. it's real good in him, i declare, and i shall begin to have some faith in white folks, after all.--wednesday night," continued she; "very well--we shall be here, if the lord spare us;" and, kissing emily, she hurried off, to impart the joyful intelligence to her husband. the anxiously looked for wednesday evening at last arrived, and emily arrayed herself in a plain white dress for the occasion. her long black hair had been arranged in ringlets by mrs. ellis, who stood by, gazing admiringly at her. "how sweet you look, emily--you only want a wreath of orange blossoms to complete your appearance. don't you feel a little nervous?" asked her friend. "a little excited," she answered, and her hand shook as she put back one of the curls that had fallen across her face. just then a loud ringing at the door announced the arrival of dr. blackly, who was shown into the front parlour. emily and mrs. ellis came down into the room where mr. garie was waiting for them, whilst mr. ellis brought in dr. blackly. the reverend gentleman gazed with some surprise at the party assembled. mr. garie was so thoroughly saxon in appearance, that no one could doubt to what race he belonged, and it was equally evident that emily, mrs. ellis, and her husband, were coloured persons. dr. blackly looked from one to the other with evident embarrassment, and then said to mr. garie, in a low, hesitating tone:-- "i think there has been some mistake here--will you do me the favour to step into another room?" mr. garie mechanically complied, and stood waiting to learn the cause of dr. blackly's strange conduct. "you are a white man, i believe?" at last stammered forth the doctor. "yes, sir; i presume my appearance is a sufficient guarantee of that," answered mr. garie. "oh yes, i do not doubt it, and for that reason you must not be surprised if i decline to proceed with the ceremony." "i do not see how my being a white man can act as a barrier to its performance," remarked mr. garie in reply. "it would not, sir, if all the parties were of one complexion; but i do not believe in the propriety of amalgamation, and on no consideration could i be induced to assist in the union of a white man or woman with a person who has the slightest infusion of african blood in their veins. i believe the negro race," he continued, "to be marked out by the hand of god for servitude; and you must pardon me if i express my surprise that a gentleman of your evident intelligence should seek such a connection--you must be labouring under some horrible infatuation." "enough, sir," replied mr. garie, proudly; "i only regret that i did not know it was necessary to relate every circumstance of appearance, complexion, &c. i wished to obtain a marriage certificate, not a passport. i mistook you for a _christian minister_, which mistake you will please to consider as my apology for having troubled you;" and thus speaking, he bowed dr. blackly out of the house. mr. garie stepped back to the door of the parlour and called out mr. ellis. "we are placed in a very difficult dilemma," said he, as he was joined by the latter. "would you believe it? that prejudiced old sinner has actually refused to marry us." "it is no more than you might have expected of him--he's a thorough nigger-hater--keeps a pew behind the organ of his church for coloured people, and will not permit them to receive the sacrament until all the white members of his congregation are served. why, i don't see what on earth induced you to send for him." "i knew nothing of his sentiments respecting coloured people. i did not for a moment have an idea that he would hesitate to marry us. there is no law here that forbids it. what can we do?" said mr. garie, despairingly. "i know a minister who will marry you with pleasure, if i can only catch him at home; he is so much engaged in visiting the sick and other pastoral duties." "do go--hunt him up, ellis. it will be a great favour to me, if you can induce him to come. poor emily--what a disappointment this will be to her," said he, as he entered the room where she was sitting. "what is the matter, dear?" she asked, as she observed garie's anxious face. "i hope there is no new difficulty." mr. garie briefly explained what had just occurred, and informed her, in addition, of mr. ellis having gone to see if he could get father banks, as the venerable old minister was called. "it seems, dear," said she, despondingly, "as if providence looked unfavourably on our design; for every time you have attempted it, we have been in some way thwarted;" and the tears chased one another down her face, which had grown pale in the excitement of the moment. "oh, don't grieve about it, dear; it is only a temporary disappointment. i can't think all the clergymen in the city are like dr. blackly. some one amongst them will certainly oblige us. we won't despair; at least not until ellis comes back." they had not very long to wait; for soon after this conversation footsteps were heard in the garden, and mr. ellis entered, followed by the clergyman. in a very short space of time they were united by father banks, who seemed much affected as he pronounced his blessing upon them. "my children," he said, tremulously, "you are entering upon a path which, to the most favoured, is full of disappointment, care, and anxieties; but to you who have come together under such peculiar circumstances, in the face of so many difficulties, and in direct opposition to the prejudices of society, it will be fraught with more danger, and open to more annoyances, than if you were both of one race. but if men revile you, revile not again; bear it patiently for the sake of him who has borne so much for you. god bless you, my children," said he, and after shaking hands with them all, he departed. mr. and mrs. ellis took their leave soon after, and then mrs. garie stole upstairs alone into the room where the children were sleeping. it seemed to her that night that they were more beautiful than ever, as they lay in their little beds quietly slumbering. she knelt beside them, and earnestly prayed their heavenly father that the union which had just been consummated in the face of so many difficulties might prove a boon to them all. "where have you been, you runaway?" exclaimed her husband as she re-entered the parlour. "you stayed away so long, i began to have all sorts of frightful ideas--i thought of the 'mistletoe hung in the castle hall,' and of old oak chests, and all kind of terrible things. i've been sitting here alone ever since the ellises went: where have you been?" "oh, i've been upstairs looking at the children. bless their young hearts! they looked so sweet and happy--and how they grow! clarence is getting to be quite a little man; don't you think it time, dear, that he was sent to school? i have so much more to occupy my mind here than i had in georgia, so many household duties to attend to, that i am unable to give that attention to his lessons which i feel is requisite. besides, being so much at home, he has associated with that wretched boy of the stevens's, and is growing rude and noisy; don't you think he had better be sent to school?" "oh yes, emily, if you wish it," was mr. garie's reply. "i will search out a school to-morrow, or next day;" and taking out his watch, he continued, "it is near twelve o'clock--how the night has flown away--we must be off to bed. after the excitement of the evening, and your exertions of to-day, i fear that you will be indisposed to-morrow." clarence, although over nine years old, was so backward in learning, that they were obliged to send him to a small primary school which had recently been opened in the neighbourhood; and as it was one for children of both sexes, it was deemed advisable to send little em with him. "i do so dislike to have her go," said her mother, as her husband proposed that she should accompany clarence; "she seems so small to be sent to school. i'm afraid she won't be happy." "oh! don't give yourself the least uneasiness about her not being happy there, for a more cheerful set of little folks i never beheld. you would be astonished to see how exceedingly young some of them are." "what kind of a person is the teacher?" asked mrs. garie. "oh! she's a charming little creature; the very embodiment of cheerfulness and good humour. she has sparkling black eyes, a round rosy face, and can't be more than sixteen, if she is that old. had i had such a teacher when a boy, i should have got on charmingly; but mine was a cross old widow, who wore spectacles and took an amazing quantity of snuff, and used to flog upon the slightest pretence. i went into her presence with fear and trembling. i could never learn anything from her, and that must be my excuse for my present literary short-comings. but you need have no fear respecting em getting on with miss jordan: i don't believe she could be unkind to any one, least of all to our little darling." "then you will take them down in the morning," suggested mrs. garie; "but on no account leave emily unless she wishes to stay." chapter xiv. charlie at warmouth. after the departure of mrs. bird to visit her sick friend, betsey turned to charlie and bid him follow her into the kitchen. "i suppose you haven't been to breakfast," said she, in a patronizing manner; "if you haven't, you are just in time, as we will be done ours in a little while, and then you can have yours." charlie silently followed her down into the kitchen, where a man-servant and the younger maid were already at breakfast; the latter arose, and was placing another plate upon the table, when betsey frowned and nodded disapprovingly to her. "let him wait," whispered she; "i'm not going to eat with niggers." "oh! he's such a nice little fellow," replied eliza, in an undertone; "let him eat with us." betsey here suggested to charlie that he had better go up to the maple chamber, wash his face, and take his things out of his trunk, and that when his breakfast was ready she would call him. "what on earth can induce you to want to eat with a nigger?" asked betsey, as soon as charlie was out of hearing. "i couldn't do it; my victuals would turn on my stomach. i never ate at the same table with a nigger in my life." "nor i neither," rejoined eliza; "but i see no reason why i should not. the child appears to have good manners, he is neat and good-looking, and because god has curled his hair more than he has ours, and made his skin a little darker than yours or mine, that is no reason we should treat him as if he was not a human being." alfred, the gardener, had set down his saucer and appeared very much astonished at this declaration of sentiment on the part of eliza, and sneeringly remarked, "you're an abolitionist, i suppose." "no, i am not," replied she, reddening; "but i've been taught that god made all alike; one no better than the other. you know the bible says god is no respecter of persons." "well, if it does," rejoined alfred, with a stolid-look, "it don't say that man isn't to be either, does it? when i see anything in my bible that tells me i'm to eat and drink with niggers, i'll do it, and not before. i suppose you think that all the slaves ought to be free, and all the rest of the darned stuff these abolitionists are preaching. now if you want to eat with the nigger, you can; nobody wants to hinder you. perhaps he may marry you when he grows up--don't you think you had better set your cap at him?" eliza made no reply to this low taunt, but ate her breakfast in silence. "i don't see what mrs. bird brought him here for; she says he is sick,--had a broken arm or something; i can't imagine what use she intends to make of him," remarked betsey. "i don't think she intends him to be a servant here, at any rate," said eliza; "or why should she have him put in the maple chamber, when there are empty rooms enough in the garret?" "well, i guess i know what she brought him for," interposed alfred. "i asked her before she went away to get a little boy to help me do odd jobs, now that reuben is about to leave; we shall want a boy to clean the boots, run on errands, drive up the cows, and do other little chores.[*] i'm glad he's a black boy; i can order him round more, you know, than if he was white, and he won't get his back up half as often either. you may depend upon it, that's what mrs. bird has brought him here for." the gardener, having convinced himself that his view of the matter was the correct one, went into the garden for his day's labour, and two or three things that he had intended doing he left unfinished, with the benevolent intention of setting charlie at them the next morning. [footnote *: a yankeeism, meaning little jobs about a farm.] charlie, after bathing his face and arranging his hair, looked from the window at the wide expanse of country spread out before him, all bright and glowing in the warm summer sunlight. broad well-cultivated fields stretched away from the foot of the garden to the river beyond, and the noise of the waterfall, which was but a short distance off, was distinctly heard, and the sparkling spray was clearly visible through the openings of the trees. "what a beautiful place,--what grand fields to run in; an orchard, too, full of blossoming fruit-trees! well, this is nice," exclaimed charlie, as his eye ran over the prospect; but in the midst of his rapture came rushing back upon him the remembrance of the cavalier treatment he had met with below-stairs, and he said with a sigh, as the tears sprang to his eyes, "but it is not home, after all." just at this moment he heard his name called by betsey, and he hastily descended into the kitchen. at one end of the partially-cleared table a clean plate and knife and fork had been placed, and he was speedily helped to the remains of what the servants had been eating. "you mustn't be long," said betsey, "for to-day is ironing day, and we want the table as soon as possible." the food was plentiful and good, but charlie could not eat; his heart was full and heavy,--the child felt his degradation. "even the servants refuse to eat with me because i am coloured," thought he. "oh! i wish i was at home!" "why don't you eat?" asked betsey. "i don't think i want any breakfast; i'm not hungry," was the reply. "i hope you are not sulky," she rejoined; "we don't like sulky boys here; why don't you eat?" she repeated. the sharp, cold tones of her voice struck a chill into the child's heart, and his lip quivered as he stammered something farther about not being hungry; and he hurried away into the garden, where he calmed his feelings and allayed his home-sickness by a hearty burst of tears. after this was over, he wandered through the garden and fields until dinner; then, by reading his book and by another walk, he managed to get through the day. the following morning, as he was coming down stairs, he was met by alfred, who accosted him with, "oh! you're up, are you; i was just going to call you." and looking at charlie from head to foot, he inquired, "is that your best suit?" "no, it's my worst," replied charlie. "i have two suits better than this;" and thinking that mrs. bird had arrived, he continued, "i'll put on my best if mrs. bird wants me." "no, she ain't home," was the reply; "it's me that wants you; come down here; i've got a little job for you. take this," said he, handing him a dirty tow apron, "and tie it around your neck; it will keep the blacking off your clothes, you know. now," continued he, "i want you to clean these boots; these two pairs are mr. tyndall's--them you need not be particular with; but this pair is mine, and i want 'em polished up high,--now mind, i tell you. i'm going to wear a new pair of pants to meetin' to-morrow, and i expect to cut a dash, so you'll do 'em up slick, now won't you?" "i'll do my best," said charlie, who, although he did not dislike work, could not relish the idea of cleaning the servants' boots. "i'm afraid i shall find this a queer place," thought he. "i shall not like living here, i know--wait for my meals until the servants have finished, and clean their boots into the bargain. this is worse than being with mrs. thomas." charlie, however, went at it with a will, and was busily engaged in putting the finishing touches on alfred's boots, when he heard his name called, and on looking up, saw mrs. bird upon the piazza above. "why, bless me! child, what are you about?--whose boots are those, and why are you cleaning them?" "oh!" he replied, his face brightening up at the sight of mrs. bird, "i'm so glad you're come; those are mr. tyndall's boots, and these," he continued, holding up the boots on which he was engaged, "are the gardener's." "and who, pray, instructed you to clean them?" "the gardener," replied charlie. "he did, did he?" said mrs. bird, indignantly. "very well; now do you take off that apron and come to me immediately; before you do, however, tell alfred i want him." charlie quickly divested himself of the tow apron, and after having informed the gardener that mrs. bird desired his presence in the parlour, he ran up there himself. alfred came lumbering up stairs, after giving his boots an unusual scraping and cleansing preparatory to entering upon that part of the premises which to him was generally forbidden ground. "by whose direction did you set the child at that dirty work?" asked mrs. bird, after he had entered the room. "i hadn't anybody's direction to set him to work, but i thought you brought him here to do odd jobs. you know, ma'am, i asked you some time ago to get a boy, and i thought this was the one." "and if he had been, you would have taken a great liberty in assigning him any duties without first consulting me. but he is not a servant here, nor do i intend him to be such; and let me inform you, that instead of his cleaning your boots, it will be your duty henceforth to clean his. now," continued she, "you know his position here, let me see that you remember yours. you can go." this was said in so peremptory a manner, as to leave no room for discussion or rejoinder, and alfred, with a chagrined look, went muttering down stairs. "things have come to a pretty pass," grumbled he. "i'm to wait on niggers, black their boots, and drive them out, too, i suppose. i'd leave at once if it wasn't such a good situation. drat the old picture--what has come over her i wonder--she'll be asking old aunt charity, the black washerwoman to dine with her next. she has either gone crazy or turned abolitionist, i don't know which; something has happened to her, that's certain." "now, charlie," said mrs. bird, as the door closed upon the crest-fallen gardener, "go to your room and dress yourself nicely. after i've eaten my breakfast, i am going to visit a friend, and i want you to accompany me; don't be long." "can't i eat mine first, mrs. bird?" he asked, in reply. "i thought you had had yours, long ago," rejoined she. "the others hadn't finished theirs when you called me, and i don't get mine until they have done," said charlie. "until they have done; how happens that?" asked mrs. bird. "i think they don't like to eat with me, because i'm coloured," was charlie's hesitating reply. "that is too much," exclaimed mrs. bird; "if it were not so very ridiculous, i should be angry. it remains for me, then," continued she, "to set them an example. i've not eaten my breakfast yet--come, sit down with me, and we'll have it together." charlie followed mrs. bird into the breakfast-room, and took the seat pointed out by her. eliza, when she entered with the tea-urn, opened her eyes wide with astonishment at the singular spectacle she beheld. her mistress sitting down to breakfast _vis-a-vis_ to a little coloured boy! depositing the urn upon the table, she hastened back to the kitchen to report upon the startling events that were occurring in the breakfast-room. "well, i never," said she; "that beats anything i ever did see; why, mrs. bird must have turned abolitionist. charlie is actually sitting at the same table with her, eating his breakfast as natural and unconcerned as if he was as white as snow! wonders never will cease. you see i'm right though. i said that child wasn't brought here for a servant--we've done it for ourselves now--only think how mad she'll be when she finds he was made to wait for his meals until we have done. i'm glad i wasn't the one who refused to eat with him." "i guess she has been giving alfred a blowing up," said betsy, "for setting him at boot cleaning; for he looked like a thunder-cloud when he came down stairs, and was muttering something about a consarned pet-nigger--he looked anything but pleased." whilst the lower powers were discussing what they were pleased to regard as an evidence of some mental derangement on the part of mrs. bird, that lady was questioning charlie respecting his studies, and inquired if he would like to go to school in warmouth. "after a while, i think i should," he replied; "but for a week i'd like to be free to run about the fields and go fishing, and do lots of things. this is such a pretty place; and now that you have come i shall have nice times--i know i shall." "you seem to have great confidence in my ability to make you happy. how do you know that i am as kind as you seem to suppose?" asked mrs. bird, with a smile. "i know you are," answered charlie, confidently; "you speak so pleasantly to me. and do you know, mrs. bird," continued he, "that i liked you from the first day, when you praised me so kindly when i recited my lessons before you. did you ever have any little boys of your own?" a change immediately came over the countenance of mrs. bird, as she replied: "oh, yes, charlie; a sweet, good boy about your own age:" and the tears stood in her eyes as she continued. "he accompanied his father to england years ago--the ship in which they sailed was never heard of--his name was charlie too." "i didn't know that, or i should not have asked," said charlie, with some embarrassment of manner caused by the pain he saw he had inflicted. "i am very sorry," he continued. mrs. bird motioned him to finish his breakfast, and left the table without drinking the tea she had poured out for herself. there were but one or two families of coloured people living in the small town of warmouth, and they of a very humble description; their faces were familiar to all the inhabitants, and their appearance was in accordance with their humble condition. therefore, when charlie made his debut, in company with mrs. bird, his dress and manners differed so greatly from what they were accustomed to associate with persons of his complexion, that he created quite a sensation in the streets of the usually quiet and obscure little town. he was attired with great neatness; and not having an opportunity of playing marbles in his new suit, it still maintained its spotless appearance. the fine grey broadcloth coat and pants fitted him to a nicety, the jaunty cap was set slightly on one side of his head giving him, a somewhat saucy look, and the fresh colour now returning to his cheeks imparted to his face a much healthier appearance than it had worn for months. he and his kind friend walked on together for some time, chatting about the various things that attracted their attention on the way, until they reached a cottage in the garden of which a gentleman was busily engaged in training a rosebush upon a new trellis. so completely was he occupied with his pursuit that he did not observe the entrance of visitors, and quite started when he was gently tapped upon the shoulder by mrs. bird. "how busy we are," said she, gaily, at the same time extending her hand--"so deeply engaged, that we can scarcely notice old friends that we have not seen for months." "indeed, this is a pleasant surprise," he remarked, when he saw by whom he had been interrupted. "when did you arrive?" "only this morning; and, as usual, i have already found something with which to bore you--you know, mr. whately, i always have something to trouble you about." "don't say trouble, my dear mrs. bird; if you will say 'give me something to occupy my time usefully and agreeably,' you will come much nearer the mark. but who is this you have with you?" "oh, a little _protege_ of mine, poor little fellow--he met with a sad accident recently--he broke his arm; and i have brought him down here to recruit. charlie, walk around and look at the garden--i have a little matter of business to discuss with mr. whately, and when we shall have finished i will call you." mr. whately led the way into his library, and placing a seat for mrs. bird, awaited her communication. "you have great influence with the teacher of the academy, i believe," said she. "a little," replied mr. whately, smiling. "not a little," rejoined mrs. bird, "but a great deal; and, my dear mr. whately, i want you to exercise it in my behalf. i wish to enter as a scholar that little boy i brought with me this morning." "impossible!" said mr. whately. "my good friend, the boy is coloured!" "i am well aware of that," continued mrs. bird; "if he were not there would not be the least trouble about his admission; nor am i sure there will be as it is, if you espouse his cause. one who has been such a benefactor to the academy as yourself, could, i suppose, accomplish anything." "yes; but that is stretching my influence unduly. i would be willing to oblige you in almost anything else, but i hesitate to attempt this. why not send him to the public school?--they have a separate bench for black children; he can be taught there all that is necessary for him to know." "he is far in advance of any of the scholars there. i attended the examination of the school to which he was attached," said mrs. bird, "and i was very much surprised at the acquirements of the pupils; this lad was distinguished above all the rest--he answered questions that would have puzzled older heads, with the greatest facility. i am exceedingly anxious to get him admitted to the academy, as i am confident he will do honour to the interest i take in him." "and a very warm interest it must be, my dear mrs. bird, to induce you to attempt placing him in such an expensive and exclusive school. i am very much afraid you will have to give it up: many of the scholars' parents, i am sure, will object strenuously to the admission of a coloured boy as a scholar." "only tell me that you will propose him, and i will risk the refusal," replied mrs. bird--"it can be tried at all events; and if you will make the effort i shall be under deep obligations to you." "well, mrs. bird, let us grant him admitted--what benefit can accrue to the lad from an education beyond his station? he cannot enter into any of the learned professions: both whilst he is there, and after his education is finished, he will be like a fish out of water. you must pardon me if i say i think, in this case, your benevolence misdirected. the boy's parents are poor, i presume?" "they certainly are not rich," rejoined mrs. bird; "and it is for that reason i wish to do all that i can for him. if i can keep him with me, and give him a good education, it may be greatly for his advantage; there may be a great change in public sentiment before he is a man--we cannot say what opening there may be for him in the future." "not unless it changes very much. i never knew prejudice more rampant than it is at this hour. to get the boy admitted as a right is totally out of the question: if he is received at all, it will be as a special favour, and a favour which--i am sure it will require all my influence to obtain. i will set about it immediately, and, rely upon it, i will do my best for your _protege_." satisfied with the promise, which was as much as mrs. bird had dared to hope for, she called charlie, then shook hands with mr. whately and departed. chapter xv. mrs. stevens gains a triumph. the garies had now become thoroughly settled in philadelphia, and, amongst the people of colour, had obtained a very extensive and agreeable acquaintance. at the south mr. garie had never borne the reputation of an active person. having an ample fortune and a thoroughly southern distaste for labour, he found it by no means inconvenient or unpleasant to have so much time at his disposal. his newspaper in the morning, a good book, a stroll upon the fashionable promenade, and a ride at dusk, enabled him to dispose of his time without being oppressed with _ennui_. it was far happier for him that such was his disposition, as his domestic relations would have been the means of subjecting him to many unpleasant circumstances, from which his comparative retirement in a great measure screened him. once or twice since his settlement in the north his feelings had been ruffled, by the sneering remarks of some of his former friends upon the singularity of his domestic position; but his irritation had all fled before the smiles of content and happiness that beamed from the faces of his wife and children. mrs. garie had nothing left to wish for; she was surrounded by every physical comfort and in the enjoyment of frequent intercourse with intelligent and refined people, and had been greatly attracted toward esther ellis with whom she had become very intimate. one morning in november, these two were in the elegant little bed-room of mrs. garie, where a fire had been kindled, as the weather was growing very chilly and disagreeable. "it begins to look quite like autumn," said mrs. garie, rising and looking out of the window. "the chrysanthemums are drooping and withered, and the dry leaves are whirling and skimming through the air. i wonder," she continued, "if the children were well wrapped up this morning?" "oh, yes; i met them at the corner, on their way to school, looking as warm and rosy as possible. what beautiful children they are! little em has completely won my heart; it really seems a pity for her to be put on the shelf, as she must be soon." "how--what do you mean?" asked mrs. garie. "oh, this will explain," archly rejoined esther, as she held up to view one of the tiny lace trimmed frocks that she was making in anticipation of the event that has been previously hinted. mrs. garie laughed, and turned to look out of the window again. "do you know i found little lizzy stevens, your neighbour's daughter, shivering upon the steps in a neighbouring street, fairly blue with cold? she was waiting there for clarence and em. i endeavoured to persuade her to go on without them, but she would not. from what i could understand, she waits for them there every day." "her mother cannot be aware of it, then; for she has forbidden her children to associate with mine," rejoined mrs. garie. "i wonder she permits her little girl to go to the same school. i don't think she knows it, or it is very likely she would take her away." "has she ever spoken to you since the night of her visit?" asked esther. "never! i have seen her a great many times since; she never speaks, nor do i. there she goes now. that," continued mrs. garie, with a smile, "is another illustration of the truthfulness of the old adage, 'talk of--well, i won't say who,--'and he is sure to appear.'" and, thus speaking, she turned from the window, and was soon deeply occupied in the important work of preparing for the expected little stranger. mrs. garie was mistaken in her supposition that mrs. stevens was unaware that clarence and little em attended the same school to which her own little girl had been sent; for the evening before the conversation we have just narrated, she had been discussing the matter with her husband. "here," said she to him, "is miss jordan's bill for the last quarter. i shall never pay her another; i am going to remove lizzy from that school." "remove her! what for? i thought i heard you say, jule, that the child got on excellently well there,--that she improved very fast?" "so she does, as far as learning is concerned; but she is sitting right next to one of those garie children, and that is an arrangement i don't at all fancy. i don't relish the idea of my child attending the same school that niggers do; so i've come to the determination to take her away." "i should do no such thing," coolly remarked mr. stevens. "i should compel the teacher to dismiss the garies, or i should break up her school. those children have no right to be there whatever. i don't care a straw how light their complexions are, they are niggers nevertheless, and ought to go to a nigger school; they are no better than any other coloured children. i'll tell you what you can do, jule," continued he: "call on mrs. kinney, the roths, and one or two others, and induce them to say that if miss jordan won't dismiss the garies that they will withdraw their children; and you know if they do, it will break up the school entirely. if it was any other person's children but his, i would wink at it; but i want to give him a fall for his confounded haughtiness. just try that plan, jule, and you will be sure to succeed." "i am not so certain about it, stevens. miss jordan, i learn, is very fond of their little em. i must say i cannot wonder at it. she is the most loveable little creature i ever saw. i will say that, if her mother is a nigger." "yes, jule, all that may be; but i know the world well enough to judge that, when she becomes fully assured that it will conflict with her interests to keep them, she will give them up. she is too poor to be philanthropic, and, i believe, has sufficient good sense to know it." "well, i'll try your plan," said mrs. stevens; "i will put matters in train to-morrow morning." early the next morning, mrs. stevens might have been seen directing her steps to the house of mrs. kinney, with whom she was very intimate. she reached it just as that lady was departing to preside at a meeting of a female missionary society for evangelizing the patagonians. "i suppose you have come to accompany me to the meeting," said she to mrs. stevens, as soon as they had exchanged the usual courtesies. "oh, dear, no; i wish i was," she replied. "i've got a troublesome little matter on my hands; and last night my husband suggested my coming to ask your advice respecting it. george has such a high opinion of your judgment, that he would insist on my troubling you." mrs. kinney smiled, and looked gratified at this tribute to her importance. "and moreover," continued mrs. stevens, "it's a matter in which your interest, as well as our own, is concerned." mrs. kinney now began to look quite interested, and, untying the strings of her bonnet, exclaimed, "dear me, what can it be?" "knowing," said mrs. stevens, "that you entertain just the same sentiments that we do relative to associating with coloured people, i thought i would call and ask if you were aware that miss jordan receives coloured as well as white children in her school." "why, no! my dear mrs. stevens, you astound me. i hadn't the remotest idea of such a thing. it is very strange my children never mentioned it." "oh, children are so taken up with their play, they forget such things," rejoined mrs. stevens. "now," continued she, "husband said he was quite confident you would not permit your children to continue their attendance after this knowledge came to your ears. we both thought it would be a pity to break up the poor girl's school by withdrawing our children without first ascertaining if she would expel the little darkies. i knew, if i could persuade you to let me use your name as well as ours, and say that you will not permit your children to continue at her school unless she consents to our wishes, she, knowing the influence you possess, would, i am sure, accede to our demands immediately." "oh, you are perfectly at liberty to use my name, mrs. stevens, and say all that you think necessary to effect your object. but do excuse me for hurrying off," she continued, looking at her watch: "i was to have been at the meeting at ten o'clock, and it is now half-past. i hope you won't fail to call, and let me know how you succeed;" and, with her heart overflowing with tender care for the poor patagonian, mrs. kinney hastily departed. "that's settled," soliloquized mrs. stevens, with an air of intense satisfaction, as she descended the steps--"her four children would make a serious gap in the little school; and now, then," continued she, "for the roths." mrs. stevens found not the slightest difficulty in persuading mrs. roth to allow her name to be used, in connection with mrs. kinney's, in the threat to withdraw their children if the little garies were not immediately expelled. mrs. roth swore by mrs. kinney, and the mere mention of that lady's name was sufficient to enlist her aid. thus armed, mrs. stevens lost no time in paying a visit to miss jordan's school. as she entered, the busy hum of childish voices was somewhat stilled; and lizzy stevens touched little em, who sat next her, and whispered, "there is my mother." mrs. stevens was welcomed very cordially by miss jordan, who offered her the seat of honour beside her. "your school seems quite flourishing," she remarked, after looking around the room, "and i really regret being obliged to make a gap in your interesting circle." "i hope you don't intend to deprive me of your little girl," inquired miss jordan; "i should regret to part with her--not only because i am very fond of her, but in consideration of her own interest--she is coming on so rapidly." "oh, i haven't the slightest fault to find with her progress. _that_," said she, "is not the reason. i have another, of much more weight. of course, every one is at liberty to do as they choose; and we have no right to dictate to you what description of scholars you should receive; but, if they are not such, as we think proper companions for our children, you can't complain if we withdraw them." "i really do not understand you, mrs. stevens," said the teacher, with an astonished look: "i have none here but the children of the most respectable persons--they are all as well behaved as school children generally are." "i did not allude to behaviour; that, for all that i know to the contrary, is irreproachable; it is not character that is in question, but colour. i don't like my daughter to associate with coloured children." "coloured children!" repeated the now thoroughly bewildered teacher--"coloured children! my dear madam," continued she, smiling, "some one has been hoaxing you--i have no coloured pupils--i could not be induced to receive one on any account." "i am very glad to hear you say so," rejoined mrs. stevens, "for that convinces me that my fears were groundless. i was under the impression you had imbibed some of those pestilent abolition sentiments coming into vogue. i see you are not aware of it, but you certainly have two coloured scholars; and there," said she, pointing to clarence, "is one of them." clarence, who, with his head bent over his book, was sitting so near as to overhear a part of this conversation, now looked up, and found the cold, malignant, grey eyes of mrs. stevens fastened on him. he looked at her for a moment--then apparently resumed his studies. the poor boy had, when she entered the room, an instinctive knowledge that her visit boded no good to them. he was beginning to learn the anomalous situation he was to fill in society. he had detested mrs. stevens ever since the night she had ejected him so rudely from her house, and since then had learned to some extent what was meant by the term _nigger woman_. "you must certainly be misinformed," responded miss jordan. "i know their father--he has frequently been here. he is a southerner, a thorough gentleman in his manners; and, if ever a man was white, i am sure he is." "have you seen their mother?" asked mrs. stevens, significantly. "no, i never have," replied miss jordan; "she is in poor health; but she must unquestionably be a white woman--a glance at the children ought to convince you of that." "it might, if i had not seen her, and did not know her to be a coloured woman. you see, my dear miss jordan," continued she, in her blandest tone, "i am their next-door neighbour and have seen their mother twenty times and more; she is a coloured woman beyond all doubt." "i never could have dreamed of such a thing!" exclaimed miss jordan, as an anxious look overspread her face; then, after a pause, she continued: "i do not see what i am to do--it is really too unfortunate--i don't know how to act. it seems unjust and unchristian to eject two such children from my school, because their mother has the misfortune to have a few drops of african blood in her veins. i cannot make up my mind to do it. why, you yourself must admit that they are as white as any children in the room." "i am willing to acknowledge they are; but they have nigger blood in them, notwithstanding; and they are, therefore, as much niggers as the blackest, and have no more right to associate with white children than if they were black as ink. i have no more liking for white niggers than for black ones." the teacher was perplexed, and, turning to mrs. stevens, said, imploringly: "this matter seems only known to you; let me appeal to your generosity--say nothing more about it. i will try to keep your daughter away from them, if you wish--but pray do not urge me to the performance of an act that i am conscious would be unjust." mrs. stevens's face assumed a severe and disagreeable expression. "i hoped you would look at this matter in a reasonable light, and not compel those who would be your friends to appear in the light of enemies. if this matter was known to me alone, i should remove my daughter and say nothing more about it; but, unfortunately for you, i find that, by some means or other, both mrs. kinney and mrs. roth have become informed of the circumstance, and are determined to take their children away. i thought i would act a friend's part by you, and try to prevail on you to dismiss these two coloured children at once. i so far relied upon your right judgment as to assure them that you would not hesitate for a moment to comply with their wishes; and i candidly tell you, that it was only by my so doing that they were prevented from keeping their children at home to-day." miss jordan looked aghast at this startling intelligence; if mrs. roth and mrs. kinney withdrew their patronage and influence, her little school (the sole support of her mother and herself) would be well-nigh broken up. she buried her face in her hands, and sat in silence for a few seconds; then looking at mrs. stevens, with tearful eyes, exclaimed, "god forgive me if it must be so; nothing but the utter ruin that stares me in the face if i refuse induces me to accede to your request." "i am sorry that you distress yourself so much about it. you know you are your own mistress, and can do as you choose," said mrs. stevens; "but if you will be advised by me, you will send them away at once." "after school i will," hesitatingly replied miss jordan. "i hate to appear so pressing," resumed mrs. stevens; "but i feel it my duty to suggest that you had better do it at once, and before the rest of the scholars. i did not wish, to inform you to what extent this thing had gone; but it really has been talked of in many quarters, and it is generally supposed that you are cognisant of the fact that the garies are coloured; therefore you see the necessity of doing something at once to vindicate yourself from the reproach of abolitionism." at the pronunciation of this then terrible word in such connection with herself, miss jordan turned quite pale, and for a moment struggled to acquire sufficient control of her feelings to enable her to do as mrs. stevens suggested; at last, bursting into tears, she said, "oh, i cannot--will not--do it. i'll dismiss them, but not in that unfeeling manner; that i cannot do." the children were now entirely neglecting their lessons, and seemed much affected by miss jordan's tears, of which they could not understand the cause. she observing this, rang the bell, the usual signal for intermission. mrs. stevens, satisfied with the triumph she had effected, took leave of miss jordan, after commending her for the sensible conclusion at which she had arrived, and promising to procure her two more pupils in the room of those she was about to dismiss. miss jordan was a long time writing the note that she intended sending to mr. garie; and one of the elder girls returned to the school-room, wondering at the unusually long time that had been given for recreation. "tell clarence and his sister to come here," said she to the girl who had just entered; and whilst they were on their way upstairs, she folded the note, and was directing it when clarence entered. "clarence," said she, in a soft voice, "put on your hat; i have a note of some importance for you to take to your father--your father remember--don't give it to any one else." taking out her watch, she continued, "it is now so late that you would scarcely get back before the time for dismissal, so you had better take little emily home with you." "i hope, ma'am, i haven't done anything wrong?" asked clarence. "oh, no!" quickly replied she; "you're a dear, good boy, and have never given me a moment's pain since you came to the school." and she hurried out into the hall to avoid farther questioning. she could not restrain the tears as she dressed little em, whose eyes were large with astonishment at being sent home from school at so early an hour. "teacher, is school out?" asked she. "no, dear, not quite; i wanted to send a note to your pa, and so i have let clary go home sooner than usual," replied miss jordan, kissing her repeatedly, whilst the tears were trickling down her cheek. "don't cry, teacher, i love you," said the little blue-eyed angel, whose lip began to quiver in sympathy; "don't cry, i'll come back again to-morrow." this was too much for the poor teacher, who clasped the child in her arms, and gave way to a burst of uncontrollable sorrow. at last, conquering herself with an effort, she led the children down stairs, kissed them both again, and then opening the door she turned them forth into the street--turned away from her school these two little children, such as god received into his arms and blessed, because they were the children of a "_nigger woman_." chapter xvi. mr. stevens makes a discovery. "well, jule, old aunt tabitha is gone at last, and i am not at all sorry for it, i assure you; she's been a complete tax upon me for the last eight years. i suppose you won't lament much, nor yet go into mourning for her," continued mr. stevens, looking at her jocularly. "i'm not sorry, that i admit," rejoined mrs. stevens; "the poor old soul is better off, no doubt; but then there's no necessity to speak of the matter in such an off-hand manner." "now, jule, i beg you won't attempt to put on the sanctified; that's too much from you, who have been wishing her dead almost every day for the last eight years. why, don't you remember you wished her gone when she had a little money to leave; and when she lost that, you wished her off our hands because she had none. don't pretend to be in the least depressed; that won't do with me." "well, never mind that," said mrs. stevens, a little confused; "what has become of her things--her clothing, and furniture?" "i've ordered the furniture to be sold; and all there is of it will not realize sufficient to pay her funeral expenses. brixton wrote me that she has left a bundle of letters directed to me, and i desired him to send them on." "i wonder what they can be," said mrs. stevens. "some trash, i suppose; an early love correspondence, of but little value to any one but herself. i do not expect that they will prove of any consequence whatever." "don't you think one or the other of us should go to the funeral?" asked mrs. stevens. "nonsense. no! i have no money to expend in that way--it is as much as i can do to provide comfortably for the living, without spending money to follow the dead," replied he; "and besides, i have a case coming on in the criminal court next week that will absorb all my attention." "what kind of a case is it?" she inquired. "a murder case. some irishmen were engaged in a row, when one of the party received a knock on his head that proved too much for him, and died in consequence. my client was one of the contending parties; and has been suspected, from some imprudent expressions of his, to have been the man who struck the fatal blow. his preliminary examination comes off to-morrow or next day, and i must be present as a matter of course." at an early hour of the morning succeeding this conversation, mr. stevens might have been seen in his dingy office, seated at a rickety desk which was covered with various little bundles, carefully tied with red tape. the room was gloomy and cheerless, and had a mouldy disagreeable atmosphere. a fire burned in the coal stove, which, however, seemed only to warm, but did not dry the apartment; and the windows were covered with a thin coating of vapour. mr. stevens was busily engaged in writing, when hearing footsteps behind him, he turned and saw mr. egan, a friend of his client, entering the room. "good morning, mr. egan," said he, extending his hand; "how is our friend mccloskey this morning?" "oh, it's far down in the mouth he is, be jabers--the life a'most scared out of him!" "tell him to keep up a good heart and not to be frightened at trifles," laughingly remarked mr. stevens. "can't your honour come and see him?" asked egan. "i can't do that; but i'll give you a note to constable berry, and he will bring mccloskey in here as he takes him to court;" and mr. stevens immediately wrote the note, which egan received and departed. after the lapse of a few hours, mccloskey was brought by the accommodating constable to the office of mr. stevens. "he'll be safe with you, i suppose, stevens;" said the constable, "but then there is no harm in seeing for one's self that all's secure;" and thus speaking, he raised the window and looked into the yard below. the height was too great for his prisoner to escape in that direction; then satisfying himself that the other door only opened into a closet, he retired, locking mr. stevens and his client in the room. mr. stevens arose as soon as the door closed behind the constable, and stuffed a piece of damp sponge into the keyhole; he then returned and took a seat by his client. "now, mccloskey," said he, in a low tone, as he drew his chair closely in front of the prisoner, and fixed his keen grey eyes on him--"i've seen whitticar. and i tell you what it is--you're in a very tight place. he's prepared to swear that he saw you with a slung shot in your hand--that he saw you drop it after the man fell; he picked it up, and whilst the man was lying dead at his tavern, awaiting the coroner's inquest, he examined the wound, and saw in the skull two little dents or holes, which were undoubtedly made by the little prongs that are on the leaden ball of the weapon, as they correspond in depth and distance apart; and, moreover, the ball is attached to a twisted brace which proves to be the fellow to the one found upon a pair of your trousers. what can you say to all this?" mccloskey here gave a smothered groan, and his usually red face grew deadly pale in contemplation of his danger. "now," said mr. stevens, after waiting long enough for his revelation to have its due effect upon him, "there is but one thing to be done. we must buy whitticar off. have you got any money? i don't mean fifty or a hundred dollars--that would be of no more use than as many pennies. we must have something of a lump--three or four hundred at the very least." the prisoner drew his breath very hard at this, and remained silent. "come, speak out," continued mr. stevens, "circumstances won't admit of our delaying--this man's friends will raise heaven and earth to secure your conviction; so you see, my good fellow, it's your money or your life. you can decide between the two--you know which is of the most importance to you." "god save us, squire! how am i to raise that much money? i haven't more nor a hunther dollars in the world." "you've got a house, and a good horse and dray," replied mr. stevens, who was well posted in the man's pecuniary resources. "if you expect me to get you out of this scrape, you must sell or mortgage your house, and dispose of your horse and dray. somehow or other four hundred dollars must be raised, or you will be dangling at a rope's end in less than six months." "i suppose it will have to go then," said mccloskey, reluctantly. "then give me authority," continued mr. stevens, "to arrange for the disposal of the property, and i will have your affairs all set straight in less than no time." the constable here cut short any further colloquy by rapping impatiently on the door, then opening it, and exclaiming, "come, now it is ten o'clock--time that you were in court;" and the two started out, followed by mr. stevens. after having, by some of those mysterious plans with which lawyers are familiar, been enabled to put off the examination for a few days, mr. stephens returned to his office, and found lying upon his table the packet of letters he was expecting from new york. upon breaking the seal, and tearing off the outer covering, he discovered a number of letters, time-worn and yellow with age; they were tied tightly together with a piece of cord; cutting this, they fell scattered over the desk. taking one of them up, he examined it attentively, turning it from side to side to endeavour to decipher the half-effaced post-mark. "what a ninny i am, to waste time in looking at the cover of this, when the contents will, no doubt, explain the whole matter?" thus soliloquising he opened the letter, and was soon deeply absorbed in its contents. he perused and re-perused it; then opened, one after another, the remainder that lay scattered before him. their contents seemed to agitate him exceedingly; as he walked up and down the room with hasty strides, muttering angrily to himself, and occasionally returning to the desk to re-peruse the letters which had so strangely excited him. whilst thus engaged, the door was opened by no less a personage than mr. morton, who walked in and seated himself in a familiar manner. "oh, how are you, morton. you entered with such a ghostly tread, that i scarcely heard you," said mr. stevens, with a start; "what has procured me the honour of a visit from you this morning?" "i was strolling by, and thought i would just step in and inquire how that matter respecting the tenth-street property has succeeded." "not at all--the old fellow is as obstinate as a mule; he won't sell except on his own terms, which are entirely out of all reason. i am afraid you will be compelled to abandon your building speculation in that quarter until his demise--he is old and feeble, and can't last many years; in the event of his death you may be able to effect some more favourable arrangement with his heirs." "and perhaps have ten or fifteen years to wait--no, that won't do. i'd better sell out myself. what would you, advise me to do, stevens?" mr. stevens was silent for a few moments; then having opened the door and looked into the entry, he closed it carefully, placed the piece of sponge in the key-hole, and returned to his seat at the desk, saying:-- "we've transacted enough business together to know one another pretty well. so i've no hesitation in confiding to you a little scheme i've conceived for getting into our hands a large proportion of property in one of the lower districts, at a very low figure; and 'tis probable, that the same plan, if it answers, will assist you materially in carrying out your designs. it will require the aid of two or three moneyed men like yourself; and, if successful, will without doubt be highly remunerative." "if successful," rejoined mr. morton; "yes, there is the rub. how are you to guarantee success?" "hear my plan, and then you can decide. in the first place, you know as well as i that a very strong feeling exists in the community against the abolitionists, and very properly too; this feeling requires to be guided into some proper current, and i think we can give it that necessary guidance, and at the same time render it subservient to our own purposes. you are probably aware that a large amount of property in the lower part of the city is owned by niggers; and if we can create a mob and direct it against them, they will be glad to leave that quarter, and remove further up into the city for security and protection. once get the mob thoroughly aroused, and have the leaders under our control, and we may direct its energies against any parties we desire; and we can render the district so unsafe, that property will be greatly lessened in value--the houses will rent poorly, and many proprietors will be happy to sell at very reduced prices. if you can furnish me the means to start with, i have men enough at my command to effect the rest. we will so control the elections in the district, through these men, as to place in office only such persons as will wink at the disturbances. when, through their agency, we have brought property down sufficiently low, we will purchase all that we can, re-establish order and quiet, and sell again at an immense advantage." "your scheme is a good one, i must confess, and i am ready to join you at any time. i will communicate with carson, who, i think, will be interested, as he desired to invest with me in those tenth-street improvements. i will call in to-morrow, and endeavour to persuade him to accompany me, and then we can discuss the matter more fully." "well, do; but one word before you go. you appear to know everybody--who is anybody--south of mason and dixon's line; can you give me any information respecting a family by the name of garie, who live or formerly did live in the vicinity of savannah?" "oh, yes--i know them, root and branch; although there is but little of the latter left; they are one of the oldest families in georgia--those of whom i have heard the most are of the last two generations. there now remain of the family but two persons--old john or jack garie as he is called, a bachelor--and who i have recently learned is at the point of death; and a crack-brained nephew of his, living in this city--said to be married to a nigger woman--actually married to her. dr. blackly informed me last week, that he sent for him to perform the ceremony, which he very properly refused to do. i have no doubt, however, that he has been successful in procuring the services of some one else. i am sorry to say, there are some clergymen in our city who would willingly assist in such a disgraceful proceeding. what ever could have induced a man with his prospects to throw himself away in that manner, i am at loss to determine--he has an independent fortune of about one hundred thousand dollars, besides expectations from his uncle, who is worth a considerable sum of money. i suppose these little darkies of his will inherit it," concluded mr. morton. "are there no other heirs?" asked mr. stevens, in a tone of deep interest. "there may be. he had an aunt, who married an exceedingly low fellow from the north, who treated her shamefully. the mercenary scoundrel no doubt expected to have acquired a fortune with her, as it was generally understood that she was sole heiress of her mother's property--but it turned out to be an entire mistake. the circumstance made considerable stir at the time. i remember having heard my elders discuss it some years after its occurrence. but why do you take such an interest in it? you charged me with coming upon you like a ghost. i could return the compliment. why, man, you look like a sheet. what ails you?" "me!--i--oh, nothing--nothing! i'm perfectly well--that is to say, i was up rather late last night, and am rather fatigued to day--nothing more." "you looked so strange, that i could not help being frightened--and you seemed so interested. you must have some personal motive for inquiring." "no more than a lawyer often has in the business of his clients. i have been commissioned to obtain some information respecting these people--a mere matter of business, nothing more, believe me. call in again soon, and endeavour to bring carson; but pray be discreet--be very careful to whom you mention the matter." "never fear," said mr. morton, as he closed the door behind him, and sauntered lazily out of the house. mr. morton speculated in stocks and town-lots in the same spirit that he had formerly betted at the racecourse and cockpit in his dear palmetto state. it was a pleasant sort of excitement to him, and without excitement of some kind, he would have found it impossible to exist. to have frequented gaming hells and race courses in the north would have greatly impaired his social position; and as he set a high value upon that he was compelled to forego his favourite pursuits, and associate himself with a set of men who conducted a system of gambling operations upon 'change, of a less questionable but equally exciting character. mr. stevens sat musing at his desk for some time after the departure of his visitor; then, taking up one of the letters that had so strongly excited him, he read and re-read it; then crushing it in his hand, arose, stamped his feet, and exclaimed, "i'll have it! if i--" here he stopped short, and, looking round, caught a view of his face in the glass; he sank back into the chair behind him, horrified at the lividness of his countenance. "good god!" he soliloquized, "i look like a murderer already," and he covered his face with his hands, and turned away from the glass. "but i am wrong to be excited thus; men who accomplish great things approach them coolly, so must i. i must plot, watch, and wait;" and thus speaking, he put on his hat and left the office. as mr. stevens approached his house, a handsome carriage drove up to the door of his neighbour, and mr. garie and his wife, who had been enjoying a drive along the bank of the river, alighted and entered their residence. the rustle of her rich silk dress grated harshly on his ear, and the soft perfume that wafted toward him as she glided by, was the very reverse of pleasant to him. mr. garie bowed stiffly to him as they stood on the steps of their respective residences, which were only divided by the low iron fence; but, beyond the slight inclination of the head, took no further notice of him. "the cursed haughty brute," muttered mr. stevens, as he jerked the bell with violence; "how i hate him! i hated him before i knew--but now i----;" as he spoke, the door was opened by a little servant that mrs. stevens had recently obtained from a charity institution. "you've kept me standing a pretty time," exclaimed he savagely, as he seized her ear and gave it a spiteful twist; "can't you manage to open the door quicker?" "i was up in the garret, and didn't hear the bell," she replied, timidly. "then i'll improve your hearing," he continued malignantly, as he pulled her by the ear; "take that, now, and see if you'll keep me standing at the door an hour again." striding forward into the back parlour, he found his wife holding a small rattan elevated over little lizzy in a threatening attitude. "will you never mind me? i've told you again and again not to go, and still you persist in disobeying me. i'll cut you to pieces if you don't mind. will you ever go again?" she almost screamed in the ears of the terrified child. "oh, no, mother, never; please don't whip me, i'll mind you;" and as she spoke, she shrank as far as possible into the corner of the room. "what's all this--what's the matter, jule? what on earth are you going to whip liz for?" "because she deserves it," was the sharp reply; "she don't mind a word i say. i've forbid her again and again to go next door to visit those little niggers, and she will do it in spite of me. she slipped off this afternoon, and has been in their house over an hour; and it was only this morning i detected her kissing their clarence through the fence." "faugh," said mr. stevens, with a look of disgust; "you kissed a nigger! i'm ashamed of you, you nasty little thing; your mother ought to have taken a scrubbing-brush and cleaned your mouth, never do such a thing again; come here to me." as he spoke, he extended his hand and grasped the delicately rounded arm of his little girl. "what induces you to go amongst those people; hasn't your mother again and again forbidden you to do so. why do you go, i say?" he continued, shaking her roughly by the arm, and frowning savagely. "why don't you answer?--speak!" the child, with the tears streaming down her lovely face, was only able to answer in her defence. "oh, pa, i do love them so." "you do, do you?" replied her exasperated father, stamping his foot, and pushing her from him; "go to bed, and if ever i hear of you going there again, you shall be well whipped." the tearful face lingered about the door in hope of a reprieve that did not come, and then disappeared for the night. "the children must not be suffered to go in there, jule; something i've learned to-day will----" here mr. stevens checked himself; and in answer to his wife's impatient "what have you learned?" replied, "oh, nothing of consequence--nothing that will interest you," and sat with his slipper in his hand, engaged in deep thought. now for mr. stevens to commence a communication to his wife, and then break off in the middle of it, was as novel as disagreeable, as he was generally very communicative, and would detail to her in the evening, with pleasing minuteness, all the rogueries he had accomplished during the day; and his unwillingness to confide something that evidently occupied his mind caused his spouse to be greatly irritated. mr. stevens drank his tea in silence, and during the evening continued absorbed in reflection; and, notwithstanding the various ill-natured remarks of his wife upon his strange conduct retired without giving her the slightest clue to its cause. chapter xvii. plotting. mr. stevens awoke at a very early hour the ensuing morning, and quite unceremoniously shook his wife to arouse her also. this he accomplished after considerable labour; for mrs. stevens was much more sleepy than usual, in consequence of her husband's restlessness the previous night. "i declare," said she, rubbing her eyes, "i don't get any peace of my life. you lie awake, kicking about, half the night, muttering and whispering about no one knows what, and then want me to rise before day. what are you in such, a hurry for this morning,--no more mysteries, i hope?" "oh, come, jule, get up!" said her husband, impatiently. "i must be off to my business very early; i am overburthened with different things this morning." mrs. stevens made a very hasty toilette, and descended to the kitchen, where the little charity-girl was bustling about with her eyes only half open. with her assistance, the breakfast was soon prepared, and mr. stevens called downstairs. he ate rapidly and silently, and at the conclusion of his meal, put on his hat, and wished his amiable spouse an abrupt good morning. after leaving his house, he did not take the usual course to his office, but turned his steps toward the lower part of the city. hastening onward, he soon left the improved parts of it in his rear, and entered upon a shabby district. the morning was very chilly, and as it was yet quite early, but few people were stirring: they were labourers hurrying to their work, milkmen, and trundlers of breadcarts. at length he stopped at the door of a tavern, over which was a large sign, bearing the name of whitticar. on entering, he found two or three forlorn-looking wretches clustering round the stove, endeavouring to receive some warmth upon their half-clothed bodies,--their red and pimpled noses being the only parts about them that did not look cold. they stared wonderingly at mr. stevens as he entered; for a person so respectable as himself in appearance was but seldom seen in that house. the boy who attended the bar inquired from behind the counter what he would take. "mr. whitticar, if you please," blandly replied mr. stevens. hearing this, the boy bolted from the shop, and quite alarmed the family, by stating that there was a man in the shop, who said he wanted to take mr. whitticar, and he suspected that he was a policeman. whitticar, who was seldom entirely free from some scrape, went through another door to take a survey of the new comer, and on ascertaining who it was, entered the room. "you've quite upset the family; we all took you for a constable," said he, approaching mr. stevens, who shook hands with him heartily, and then, laying his arm familiarly on his shoulder, rejoined,-- "i say, whitticar, i want about five minutes' conversation with you. haven't you some room where we can be quite private for a little while?" "yes; come this way," replied he. and, leading his visitor through the bar, they entered a small back room, the door of which they locked behind them. "now, whitticar," said mr. stevens, "i want you to act the part of a friend by the fellow who got in that awkward scrape at this house. as you did not give the evidence you informed me you were possessed of, at the coroner's inquest, it is unnecessary for you to do so before the magistrate at examination. there is no use in hanging the fellow--it cannot result in any benefit to yourself; it will only attract disagreeable notice to your establishment, and possibly may occasion a loss of your licence. we will be willing to make it worth your while to absent yourself, for a short time at least, until the trial is over; it will put money in your purse, and save this poor devil's life besides. what do you say to receiving a hundred and fifty, and going off for a month or two?" "couldn't think of it, mr. stevens, no how. see how my business would suffer; everything would be at loose ends. i should be obliged to hire a man to take my place; and, in that case, i must calculate upon his stealing at least twenty-five per cent. of the receipts: and then there is his wages. no, no that won't do. besides, i'm trying to obtain the nomination for the office of alderman--to secure it, i must be on the spot; nothing like looking out for oneself. i am afraid i can't accommodate you, squire, unless you can offer something better than one hundred and fifty." "you've got no conscience," rejoined mr. stevens, "not a bit." "well, the less of that the better for me; it's a thing of very little use in the rum-selling business; it interferes with trade--so i can't afford to keep a conscience. if you really want me to go, make me a better offer; say two fifty, and i'll begin to think of it. the trial will be over in a month or six weeks, i suppose, and a spree of that length would be very pleasant." "no, i won't do that, whitticar,--that's flat; but i'll tell you what i will do. i'll make it two hundred, and what is more, i'll see to your nomination. i'm all right down here, you know; i own the boys in this district; and if you'll say you'll put some little matters through for me after you are elected, i'll call it a bargain." "then i'm your man," said whitticar, extending his hand. "well, then," added stevens, "come to my office this morning, and you shall have the money; after that i shall expect you to get out of town as quick as possible. goodbye." "so far all right," muttered mr. stevens, with an air of intense satisfaction, as he left the house; "he'll be of great use to me. when it becomes necessary to blind the public by a sham investigation, he will be the man to conduct it; when i want a man released from prison, or a little job of that kind done, he will do it--this act will put him in my power; and i am much mistaken if he won't prove of the utmost service in our riot scheme. now, then, we will have an examination of mccloskey as soon as they like." a few weeks subsequent to the events we have just written, we find mr. stevens seated in his dingy office in company with the mccloskey, who had recently been discharged from custody in default of sufficient evidence being found to warrant his committal for trial. he was sitting with his feet upon the stove, and was smoking a cigar in the most free-and-easy manner imaginable. "so far, so good," said mr. stevens, as he laid down the letter he was perusing; "that simplifies the matter greatly; and whatever is to be done towards his removal, must be done quickly--now that the old man is dead there is but one to deal with." during the interval that had elapsed between the interview of mr. stevens with whitticar and the period to which we now refer, mr. stevens had been actively engaged in promoting his riot scheme; and already several disturbances had occurred, in which a number of inoffensive coloured people had been injured in their persons and property. but this was only a faint indication of what was to follow; and as he had, through the agency of mr. morton and others, been able to prevent any but the most garbled statements of these affairs from getting abroad, there was but little danger of their operations being interfered with. leading articles daily appeared in the public journals (particularly those that circulated amongst the lowest classes), in which the negroes were denounced, in the strongest terms. it was averred that their insolence, since the commencement of the abolition agitation, had become unbearable; and from many quarters was suggested the absolute necessity for inflicting some general chastisement, to convince them that they were still negroes, and to teach them to remain in their proper place in the body politic. many of these articles were written by mr. stevens, and their insertion as editorials procured through the instrumentality of mr. morton and his friends. mr. stevens turned to his visitor, and inquired, "what was done last night--much of anything?" "a great deal, yer honour," replied mccloskey; "a nagur or two half killed, and one house set on fire and nearly burned up." "_is that all_?" said mr. stevens, with a well-assumed look of disappointment. "is that all? why, you are a miserable set: you should have beaten every darky out of the district by this time." "they're not so aisily bate out--they fight like sevin divils. one o' 'em, night before last, split mikey dolan's head clane open, and it's a small chance of his life he's got to comfort himself wid." "chances of war--chances of war!" rejoined mr. stevens,--"mere trifles when you get used to 'em: you mustn't let that stop you--you have a great deal yet to do. what you have already accomplished is a very small matter compared with what is expected, and what i intend you to do: your work has only just begun, man." "jist begun!" replied the astonished mccloskey; "haven't we bin raising the very divil every night for the last week--running a near chance of being kilt all the time--and all for nothing! it's gettin' tiresome; one don't like to be fighting the nagurs all the time for the mere fun of the thing--it don't pay, for divil a cent have i got for all my trouble; and ye said ye would pay well, ye remimber." "so i shall," said mr. stevens, "when you do something worth paying for--the quarter is not accomplished yet. i want the place made so hot down there that the niggers can't stay. go a-head, don't give them any rest--i'll protect you from the consequences, whatever they be: i've great things in store for you," continued he, moving nearer and speaking in a confidential tone; "how should you like to return to ireland a moneyed man?" "i should like it well enough, to be sure; but where's the money to come from, squire?" "oh, there's money enough to be had if you have the courage to earn it." "i'm willin' enough to earn an honest penny, but i don't like risking me neck for it, squire. it's clear ye'll not be afther givin' me a dale of money widout being sure of havin' the worth of it out o' me; and it's dirty work enough i've done, widout the doin' of any more: me conscience is a sore throuble to me about the other job. be the powers i'm out o' that, and divil a like scrape will i get in agin wid my own consint." "your conscience has become troublesome very suddenly," rejoined mr. stevens, with a look of angry scorn; "it's strange it don't appear to have troubled you in the least during the last few weeks, whilst you have been knocking niggers on the head so freely." "well, i'm tired o' that work," interrupted mccloskey; "and what's more, i'll soon be lavin' of it off." "we'll see about that," said mr. stevens. "you're a pretty fellow, now, ain't you--grateful, too--very! here i've been successful in getting you out of a hanging scrape, and require a trifling service in return, and you retire. you'll find this trifling won't do with me," continued mr. stevens, with great sternness of manner. "you shall do as i wish: you are in my power! i need your services, and i will have them--make up your mind to that." mccloskey was somewhat staggered at this bold declaration from mr. stevens; but he soon assumed his former assured manner, and replied, "i'd like to know how i'm in your power: as far as this riot business is concerned, you're as deep in the mud as i'm in the mire; as for the other, be st. patrick, i'm clane out o' that!--they don't try a man twice for the same thing." "don't halloo so loud, my fine fellow," sneeringly rejoined mr. stevens, "you are not entirely out of the wood yet; you are by no means as safe as you imagine--you haven't been _tried_ yet, you have only been examined before a magistrate! they lacked sufficient evidence to commit you for trial--that evidence i can produce at any time; so remember, if you please, you have not been tried yet: when you have been, and acquitted, be kind enough to let me know, will you?" mr. stevens stood for a few moments silently regarding the change his language had brought over the now crestfallen mccloskey; he then continued--"don't think you can escape me--i'll have a thousand eyes upon you; no one ever escapes me that i wish to retain. do as i require, and i'll promote your interest in every possible way, and protect you; but waver, or hold back, and i'll hang you as unhesitatingly as if you were a dog." this threat was given in a tone that left no doubt on the mind of the hearer but that mr. stevens would carry out his expressed intention; and the reflections thereby engendered by no means added to the comfort or sense of security that mccloskey had flattered himself he was in future to enjoy; he, therefore, began to discover the bad policy of offending one who might prove so formidable an enemy--of incensing one who had it in his power to retaliate by such terrible measures. he therefore turned to mr. stevens, with a somewhat humbled manner, and said: "you needn't get so mad, squire--sure it's but natural that a man shouldn't want to get any deeper in the mire than he can help; and i've enough on my hands now to make them too red to look at wid comfort--sure it's not a shade deeper you'd have 'em?" he asked, looking inquiringly at mr. stevens, who was compelled to turn away his face for a moment to hide his agitation. at last he mastered his countenance, and, in as cool a tone as he could assume, replied: "oh, a little more on them will be scarcely a perceptible addition. you know the old adage, 'in for a penny, in for a pound.' you need have no fear," said he, lowering his voice almost to a whisper; "it can be done in a crowd--and at night--no one will notice it." "i don't know about that, squire--in a crowd some one will be sure to notice it. it's, too dangerous--i can't do it." "tut, tut, man; don't talk like a fool. i tell you there is no danger. you, in company with a mob of others, are to attack this man's house. when he makes his appearance, as he will be sure to do, shoot him down." "good god! squire," said mccloskey, his face growing pale at the prospect of what was required of him, "you talk of murder as if it was mere play!" "and still, _i never murdered any one_," rejoined mr. stevens, significantly; "come, come--put your scruples in your pocket, and make up your mind to go through with it like a man. when the thing is done, you shall have five thousand dollars in hard cash, and you can go with it where you please. now, what do you think of that?" "ah, squire, the money's a great timptation! but it's an awful job." "no worse than you did for nothing," replied mr. stevens. "but that was in a fair fight, and in hot blood; it isn't like planning to kill a man, squire." "do you call it a fair fight when you steal up behind a man, and break his skull with a slung shot?" asked mr. stevens. mccloskey was unable to answer this, and sat moodily regarding his tempter. "come, make up your mind to it--you might as well," resumed mr. stevens, in a coaxing tone. "ye seem bent on not giving it up, and i suppose i'll have to do it," replied mccloskey, reluctantly; "but what has the man done to ye's, squire, that you're so down upon him?" "oh, he is one of those infernal abolitionists, and one of the very worst kind; he lives with a nigger woman--and, what is more, he is married to her!" "married to a nigger!" exclaimed mccloskey--"it's a quare taste the animal has--but you're not afther killing him for that; there's something more behind: it's not for having a black wife instead of a white one you'd be afther murthering him--ye'll get no stuff like that down me." "no, it is not for that alone, i acknowledge," rejoined mr. stevens, with considerable embarrassment. "he insulted me some time ago, and i want to be revenged upon him." "it's a dear job to insult you, at that rate, squire; but where does he live?" "in my neighbourhood--in fact, next door to me," replied mr. stevens, with an averted face. "howly mother! not away up there--sure it's crazy ye are. what, away up there in the city limits!--why, they would have the police and the sogers at our heels in less than no time. sure, you're out o' your sinses, to have me go up there with a mob. no, no--there's too much risk--i can't try that." "i tell you there shall be no risk," impatiently replied mr. stevens. "it's not to be done to-night, nor to-morrow night; and, when i say do it, you _shall_ do it, and as safely there as anywhere. only come to the conclusion that a thing _must_ be done, and it is half finished already. you have only to make up your mind that you will accomplish a design in spite of obstacles, and what you once thought to be insurmountable difficulties will prove mere straws in your path. but we are wasting time; i've determined you shall do it, and i hope you now know me well enough to be convinced that it is your best policy to be as obliging as possible. you had better go now, and be prepared to meet me to-night at whitticar's." after the door closed upon the retreating form of mccloskey, the careless expression that mr. stevens's countenance had worn during the conversation, gave place to one full of anxiety and apprehension, and he shuddered as he contemplated the fearful length to which he was proceeding. "if i fail," said he--"pshaw! i'll not fail--i must not fail--for failure is worse than ruin; but cool--cool," he continued, sitting down to his desk--"those who work nervously do nothing right." he sat writing uninterruptedly until quite late in the afternoon, when the fading sunlight compelled him to relinquish his pen, and prepare for home. thrusting the papers into his pocket, he hurried toward the newspaper office from which were to emanate, as editorials, the carefully concocted appeals to the passions of the rabble which he had been all the afternoon so busily engaged in preparing. chapter xviii. mr. stevens falls into bad hands. the amiable partner of mr. stevens sat in high dudgeon, at being so long restrained from her favourite beverage by the unusually deferred absence of her husband. at length she was rejoiced by hearing his well-known step as he came through the garden, and the rattle of his latch-key as he opened the door was quite musical in her ears. "i thought you was never coming," said she, querulously, as he entered the room; "i have been waiting tea until i am almost starved." "you needn't have waited a moment, for you will be obliged to eat alone after all; i'm going out. pour me out a cup of tea--i'll drink it whilst i'm dressing; and," continued mr. stevens, "i want you to get me that old brown over-coat and those striped trowsers i used to wear occasionally." "why, you told me," rejoined mrs. stevens, "that you did not require them again, and so i exchanged them for this pair of vases to-day." "the devil you did!" said mr. stevens, angrily; "you let them lie about the house for nearly a year--and now, just as they were likely to be of some service to me, you've sold them. it's just like you--always doing something at the wrong time." "how on earth, stevens, was i to know you wanted them?" "well, there, jule, they're gone; don't let's have any more talk about it. get me another cup of tea; i must go out immediately." after hastily swallowing the second cup, mr. stevens left his home, and walked to an omnibus-station, from whence he was quickly transported to a street in the lower part of the city, in which were a number of second-hand clothing stores. these places were supported principally by the country people who attended the market in the same street, and who fancied that the clothing they purchased at these shops must be cheap, because it was at second-hand. mr. stevens stopped at the door of one of these establishments, and paused to take a slight survey of the premises before entering. the doorway was hung with coats of every fashion of the last twenty years, and all in various stages of decay. some of them looked quite respectable, from much cleaning and patching; and others presented a reckless and forlorn aspect, as their worn and ragged sleeves swung about in the evening air. old hats, some of which were, in all probability, worn at a period anterior to the revolution, kept company with the well-blacked shoes that were ranged on shelves beside the doorway, where they served in the capacity of signs, and fairly indicated the style of goods to be purchased within. seeing that there were no buyers in the store, mr. stevens opened the door, and entered. the sounds of his footsteps drew from behind the counter no less a personage than our redoubtable friend kinch, who, in the absence of his father, was presiding over the establishment. "well, snowball," said mr. stevens, "do you keep this curiosity-shop?" "my name is not snowball, and this ain't a curiosity-shop," replied kinch. "do you want to buy anything?" "i believe i do," answered mr. stevens. "let me look at some coats--one that i can get on--i won't say fit me, i'm indifferent about that--let me see some of the worst you've got." kinch looked surprised at this request from a gentleman of mr. stevens's appearance, and handed out, quite mechanically, a coat that was but slightly worn. "oh, that won't do--i want something like this," said mr. stevens, taking down from a peg a very dilapidated coat, of drab colour, and peculiar cut. what do you ask for this?" "that's not fit for, a gentleman like you, sir," said kinch. "i'm the best judge of that matter," rejoined mr. stevens. "what is the price of it?" "oh, that coat you can have for a dollar," replied kinch. "then i'll take it. now hand out some trowsers." the trowsers were brought; and from a large number mr. stevens selected a pair that suited him. then adding an old hat to his list of purchases, he declared his fit-out complete. "can't you accommodate me with some place where i can put these on?" he asked of kinch; "i'm going to have a little sport with some friends of mine, and i want to wear them." kinch led the way into a back room, where he assisted mr. stevens to array himself in his newly-purchased garments. by the change in his attire he seemed completely robbed of all appearance of respectability; the most disagreeable points of his physique seemed to be brought more prominently forward by the habiliments he had assumed, they being quite in harmony with his villanous countenance. kinch, who looked at him with wonder, was forced to remark, "why, you don't look a bit like a gentleman now, sir." mr. stevens stepped forward, and surveyed himself in the looking-glass. the transformation was complete--surprising even to himself. "i never knew before," said he, mentally, "how far a suit of clothes goes towards giving one the appearance of a gentleman." he now emptied the pockets of the suit he had on;--in so doing, he dropped upon the floor, without observing it, one of the papers. "fold these up," said he, handing to kinch the suit he had just taken off, "and to-morrow bring them to this address." as he spoke, he laid his card upon the counter, and, after paying for his new purchases, walked out of the shop, and bent his steps in the direction of whitticar's tavern. on arriving there, he found the bar-room crowded with half-drunken men, the majority of whom were irishmen, armed with bludgeons of all sizes and shapes. his appearance amongst them excited but little attention, and he remained there some time before he was recognized by the master of the establishment. "by the howly st. patherick i didn't know you, squire; what have you been doing to yourself?" "hist!" cried mr. stevens, putting his fingers to his lips; "i thought it was best to see how matters were progressing, so i've run down for a little while. how are you getting on?" "fine, fine, squire," replied whitticar; "the boys are ripe for anything. they talk of burning down a nigger church." "not to-night--they must not do such a thing to-night--we are not ready for that yet. i've made out a little list--some of the places on it they might have a dash at to-night, just to keep their hands in." as mr. stevens spoke, he fumbled in his pocket for the list in question, and was quite surprised to be unable to discover it. "can't you find it, squire?" asked whitticar. "i must have lost; it on the way," replied mr. stevens. "i am sure i put it in this pocket," and he made another search. "no use--i'll have to give it up," said he, at length; "but where is mccloskey? i haven't seen him since i came in." "he came here this afternoon, very far gone; he had been crooking his elbow pretty frequently, and was so very drunk that i advised him to go home and go to bed; so he took another dram and went away, and i haven't seen him since." "that's bad, very bad--everything goes wrong this evening--i wanted him to-night particularly." "wouldn't the boys go out with you?" suggested whitticar. "no, no; that wouldn't do at all. i mustn't appear in these things. if i'm hauled up for participation, who is to be your lawyer--eh?" "true for you," rejoined whitticar; "and i'll just disperse the crowd as soon as i can, and there will be one peaceable night in the district at any rate." not liking to give directions to the mob personally, and his useful coadjutor mccloskey not being at hand, mr. stevens came to the conclusion he would return to his home, and on the next evening a descent should be made upon the places marked on the list. taking out his watch, he found it would be too late to return to the store where he had purchased his present adornments, so he determined to start for home. the coat that temporarily adorned the person of mr. stevens was of peculiar cut and colour--it was, in fact, rather in the rowdy style, and had, in its pristine state, bedecked the person of a member of a notorious fire company. these gentry had for a long time been the terror of the district in which they roamed, and had rendered themselves highly obnoxious to some of the rival factions on the borders of their own territory; they had the unpleasant habit of pitching into and maltreating, without the slightest provocation, any one whom their practised eyes discovered to be a rival; and by such outrages they had excited in the bosoms of their victims a desire for revenge that only awaited the occasion to manifest itself. mr. stevens, in happy unconsciousness, that, owing to his habiliments, he represented one of the well-known and hated faction, walked on quite leisurely; but, unfortunately for him, his way home lay directly through the camp of their bitterest and most active enemies. standing in front of a tavern-window, through which a bright light shone, were a group of young men, who bestowed upon mr. stevens more than passing attention. "i'm blest," exclaimed one of them, if there ain't a ranger! now that it a saucy piece of business, ain't it! that fellow has come up here to be able to go back and play brag-game." "let's wallop him, then," suggested another, "and teach him better than to come parading himself in our parts. i owe 'em something for the way they served me when i was down in their district." "well, come on," said the first speaker, "or he will get away whilst we are jawing about what we shall do." advancing to mr. stevens, he tapped that gentleman on the shoulder, and said, with mock civility, and in as bland a tone as he could assume, "it's really very obliging of you, mister, to come up here to be flogged--saves us the trouble of coming down to you. we would like to settle with you for that drubbing you gave one of our boys last week." "you must be mistaken," replied mr. stevens: "i don't know anything of the affair to which you allude." "you don't, eh! well, take that, then, to freshen your memory," exclaimed one of the party, at the same time dealing him a heavy blow on the cheek, which made the lamplights around appear to dance about in the most fantastic style. the first impulse of mr. stevens was to cry out for the watchman; but a moment's reflection suggested the impolicy of that project, as he would inevitably be arrested with the rest; and to be brought before a magistrate in his present guise, would have entailed upon him very embarrassing explanations; he therefore thought it best to beg off--to throw himself, as it were, upon their sympathies. "stop, gentlemen--stop--for god's sake, stop," he cried, as soon as he could regain the breath that had been almost knocked out of him by the tremendous blow he had just received--"don't kill an innocent man; upon my honour i never saw you before, nor ever assaulted any of you in my life. my dear friends," he continued, in a dolorous tone, "please let me go--you are quite mistaken: i assure you i am not the man." "no, we ain't mistaken, either: you're one of the rangers; i know you by your coat," replied one of the assaulters. it now flashed upon mr. stevens that he had brought himself into these difficulties, by the assumption of the dress he then wore; he therefore quickly rejoined--"oh, it is not my coat--i only put it on for a joke!" "that's a likely tale," responded one of the party, who looked very incredulous; "i don't believe a word of it. that's some darned stuff you've trumped up, thinking to gammon us--it won't go down; we'll just give you a walloping, if it's only to teach you to wear your own clothes,"--and suiting the action to the word, he commenced pommelling him unmercifully. "help! help!" screamed mr. stevens. "don't kill me, gentlemen,--don't kill me!" "oh! we won't kill you--we'll only come as near it as we can, without quite finishing you," cried one of his relentless tormenters. on hearing this, their victim made a frantic effort to break away, and not succeeding in it, he commenced yelling at the top of his voice. as is usual in such cases, the watchman was nowhere to be seen; and his cries only exasperated his persecutors the more. "hit him in the bread-crusher, and stop his noise," suggested one of the party farthest off from mr. stevens. this piece of advice was carried into immediate effect, and the unfortunate wearer of the obnoxious coat received a heavy blow in the mouth, which cut his lips and knocked out one of his front teeth. his cries now became so loud as to render it necessary to gag him, which was done by one of the party in the most thorough and expeditious manner. they then dragged him into a wheelwright's shop near by, where they obtained some tar, with which they coated his face completely. "oh! don't he look like a nigger!" said one of the party, when they had finished embellishing their victim. "rub some on his hands, and then let him go," suggested another. "when he gets home i guess he'll surprise his mammy: i don't believe his own dog will know him!" a shout of laughter followed this remark, in the midst of which they ungagged mr. stevens and turned him from the door. "now run for it--cut the quickest kind of time," exclaimed one of them, as he gave him a kick to add impetus to his forward movement. this aid was, however, entirely unnecessary, for mr. stevens shot away from the premises like an arrow from a bow; and that, too, without any observation upon the direction in which he was going. as soon as he felt himself out of the reach of his tormentors, he sat down upon the steps of a mansion, to consider what was best to be done. all the shops, and even the taverns, were closed--not a place was open where he could procure the least assistance; he had not even an acquaintance in the neighbourhood to whom he might apply. he was, indeed, a pitiable object to look upon the hat he had so recently purchased, bad as it was when it came into his possession, was now infinitely less presentable. in the severe trials it had undergone, in company with its unfortunate owner, it had lost its tip and half the brim. the countenance beneath it would, however, have absorbed the gazer's whole attention. his lips were swelled to a size that would have been regarded as large even on the face of a congo negro, and one eye was puffed out to an alarming extent; whilst the coating of tar he had received rendered him such an object as the reader can but faintly picture to himself. the door of the mansion was suddenly opened, and there issued forth a party of young men, evidently in an advanced state of intoxication. "hallo! here's a darkey!" exclaimed one of them, as the light from the hall fell upon the upturned face of mr. stevens. "ha, ha! here's a darkey--now for some fun!" mr. stevens was immediately surrounded by half a dozen well-dressed young men, who had evidently been enjoying an entertainment not conducted upon temperance principles. "spirit of--hic--hic--night, whence co-co-comest thou?" stammered one; "sp-p-peak--art thou a creature of the mag-mag-na-tion-goblin-damned, or only a nigger?--speak!" mr. stevens, who at once recognized one or two of the parties as slight acquaintances, would not open his mouth, for fear that his voice might discover him, as to them, above all persons, he would have shrunk from making himself known, he therefore began to make signs as though he were dumb. "let him alone," said one of the more sober of the party; "he's a poor dumb fellow--let him go." his voice was disregarded, however, as the rest seemed bent on having some sport. a half-hogshead, nearly filled with water, which stood upon the edge of the pavement, for the convenience of the builders who were at work next door, caught the attention of one of them. "let's make him jump into this," he exclaimed, at the same time motioning to mr. stevens to that effect. by dint of great effort they made him understand what was required, and they then continued to make him jump in and out of the hogshead for several minutes; then, joining hands, they danced around him, whilst he stood knee-deep in the water, shivering, and making the most imploring motions to be set at liberty. whilst they were thus engaged, the door again opened, and the fashionable mr. morton (who had been one of the guests) descended the steps, and came to see what had been productive of so much mirth. "what have you got here?" he asked, pressing forward, until he saw the battered form of mr. stevens; "oh, let the poor darkey go," he continued, compassionately, for he had just drunk enough to make him feel humane; "let the poor fellow go, it's a shame to treat him in this manner." as he spoke, he endeavoured to take from the hands of one of the party a piece of chip, with which he was industriously engaged in streaking the face of mr. stevens with lime, "let me alone, morton--let me alone; i'm making a white man of him, i'm going to make him a glorious fellow-citizen, and have him run for congress. let me alone, i say." mr. morton was able, however, after some persuasion, to induce the young men to depart; and as his home lay in a direction opposite to theirs, he said to mr. stevens, "come on, old fellow, i'll protect you." as soon as they were out of hearing of the others, mr. stevens exclaimed, "don't you know me, morton?" mr. morton started back with surprise, and looked at his companion in a bewildered manner, then exclaimed, "no, i'll be hanged if i do. who the devil are you?" "i'm stevens; you know me." "indeed i don't. who's stevens?" "you don't know me! why, i'm george stevens, the lawyer." mr. morton thought that he now recognized the voice, and as they were passing under the lamp at the time, mr. stevens said to him, "put your finger on my face, and you will soon see it is only tar." mr. morton did as he was desired, and found his finger smeared with the sticky article. "what on earth have you been doing with yourself?" he asked, with great surprise; "what is all this masquerading for?" mr. stevens hereupon related his visit at whitticar's, and detailed the events that had subsequently occurred. mr. morton gave vent to shouts of laughter as he listened to the recital of his friend. "by george!" he exclaimed, "i'll have to tell that; it is too good to keep." "oh, no, don't," said mr. stevens; "that won't do--you forget what i came out for?" "true," rejoined mr. morton; "i suppose it will be best to keep mum about it. i'll go home with you, you might fall into the hands of the philistines again." "thank you--thank you," replied mr. stevens, who felt greatly relieved to have some company for his further protection; "and," continued he, "if i could only get some of this infernal stuff off my face, i should be so glad; let us try." accordingly they stopped at the nearest pump, and endeavoured to remove some of the obnoxious tar from his face; but, unfortunately, the only result obtained by their efforts was to rub it more thoroughly in, so they were compelled to give up in despair, and hasten onward. mr. stevens rang so loudly at the door, as to quite startle his wife and the charity-girl, both of whom had fallen into a sound sleep, as they sat together awaiting his return. mr. morton, who, as we have said before, was not entirely sober, was singing a popular melody, and keeping time upon the door with the head of his cane. now, in all her life, mrs. stevens had never heard her husband utter a note, and being greatly frightened at the unusual noise upon the door-step, held a hurried consultation with the charity-girl upon the best mode of proceeding. "call through the key-hole, ma'am," suggested she, which advice mrs. stevens immediately followed, and inquired, "who's there?" "open the door, jule, don't keep me out here with your darned nonsense; let me in quick." "yes, let him in," added mr. morton; "he's brought a gentleman from africa with him." mrs. stevens did not exactly catch the purport of the words uttered by mr. morton; and, therefore, when she opened the door, and her husband, with his well-blacked face, stalked into the entry, she could not repress a scream of fright at the hideous figure he presented. "hush, hush," he exclaimed, "don't arouse the neighbours--it's me; don't you know my voice." mrs. stevens stared at him in a bewildered manner, and after bidding mr. morton "good night," she closed and locked the door, and followed her husband into the back room. in a short time he recapitulated the events of the night to his astonished and indignant spouse, who greatly commiserated his misfortunes. a bottle of sweet oil was brought into requisition, and she made a lengthened effort to remove the tar from her husband's face, in which she only partially succeeded; and it was almost day when he crawled off to bed, with the skin half scraped off from his swollen face. chapter xix. the alarm. immediately after the departure of mr. stevens, master kinch began to consider the propriety of closing the establishment for the night. sliding down from the counter, where he had been seated, reflecting upon the strange conduct of his recent customer, he said, "i feels rather queer round about here," laying his hand upon his stomach; "and i'm inclined to think that some of them 'ere jersey sausages and buckwheat cakes that the old man has been stuffing himself with, wouldn't go down slow. rather shabby in him not to come back, and let me go home, and have a slap at the wittles. i expect nothing else, but that he has eat so much, that he's fell asleep at the supper-table, and won't wake up till bedtime. he's always serving me that same trick." the old man thus alluded to was no other than master kinch's father, who had departed from the shop two or three hours previously, promising to return immediately after tea. this promise appeared to have entirely faded from his recollection, as he was at that moment, as kinch had supposed, fast asleep, and totally oblivious of the fact that such a person as his hungry descendant was in existence. having fully come to the conclusion to suspend operations for the evening, kinch made two or three excursions into the street, returning each time laden with old hats, coats, and shoes. these he deposited on the counter without order or arrangement, muttering, as he did so, that the old man could sort 'em out in the morning to suit himself. the things being all brought from the street, he had only to close the shutters, which operation was soon effected, and our hungry friend on his way home. the next morning mr. de younge (for the father of kinch rejoiced in that aristocratic cognomen) was early at his receptacle for old clothes, and it being market-day, he anticipated doing a good business. the old man leisurely took down the shutters, assorted and hung out the old clothes, and was busily engaged in sweeping out the store, when his eye fell upon the paper dropped by mr. stevens the evening previous. "what's dis 'ere," said he, stooping to pick it up; "bill or suthin' like it, i s'pose. what a trial 'tis not to be able to read writin'; don't know whether 'tis worth keeping or not; best save it though till dat ar boy of mine comes, _he_ can read it--he's a scholar. ah, de children now-a-days has greater 'vantages than deir poor fathers had." whilst he was thus soliloquizing, his attention was arrested by the noise of footsteps in the other part of the shop, and looking up, he discerned the tall form of mr. walters. "why, bless me," said the old man, "dis is an early visit; where you come from, honey, dis time o' day?" "oh, i take a walk every morning, to breathe a little of the fresh air; it gives one an appetite for breakfast, you know. you'll let me take the liberty of sitting on your counter, won't you?" he continued; "i want to read a little article in a newspaper i have just purchased." assent being readily given, mr. walters was soon perusing the journal with great attention; at last he tossed it from him in an impatient manner, and exclaimed, "of all lying rascals, i think the reporters for this paper are the greatest. now, for instance, three or four nights since, a gang of villains assaulted one of my tenants--a coloured man--upon his own doorstep, and nearly killed him, and that, too, without the slightest provocation; they then set fire to the house, which was half consumed before it could be extinguished; and it is here stated that the coloured people were the aggressors, and whilst they were engaged in the _melee_, the house caught fire accidentally." "yes," rejoined mr. de younge; "things are gitting mighty critical even in dese 'ere parts; and i wouldn't live furder down town if you was to give me a house rent-free. why, it's raly dangerous to go home nights down dere." "and there is no knowing how long we may be any better off up here," continued mr. walters; "the authorities don't seem to take the least notice of them, and the rioters appear to be having it all their own way." they continued conversing upon the topic for some time, mr. de younge being meanwhile engaged in sponging and cleaning some coats he had purchased the day before; in so doing, he was obliged to remove the paper he had picked up from the floor, and it occurred to him to ask mr. walters to read it; he therefore handed it to him, saying-- "jist read dat, honey, won't you? i want to know if it's worth savin'. i've burnt up two or three receipts in my life, and had de bills to pay over; and i'se got rale careful, you know. 'taint pleasant to pay money twice over for de same thing." mr. walters took the paper extended to him, and, after glancing over it, remarked, "this handwriting is very familiar to me, very; but whose it is, i can't say; it appears to be a list of addresses, or something of that kind." and he read over various names of streets, and numbers of houses. "why," he exclaimed, with a start of surprise, "here is my own house upon the list, , easton-street; then here is , christian-street; here also are numbers in baker-street, bedford-street, sixth, seventh, and eighth streets; in some of which houses i know coloured people live, for one or two of them are my own. this is a strange affair." as he spoke, he turned over the paper, and read on the other side,--"places to be attacked." "why, this looks serious," he continued, with some excitement of manner. "'places to be attacked,'--don't that seem to you as if it might be a list of places for these rioters to set upon? i really must look into this. who could have left it here?" "i raly don't know," replied the old man. "kinch told me suthin' last night about some gemman comin' here and changing his clothes; p'raps 'twas him. i'd like to know who 'twas myself. well, wait awhile, my boy will come in directly; maybe he can explain it." he had scarcely finished speaking, when master kinch made his appearance, with his hat, as usual, placed upon nine hairs, and his mouth smeared with the eggs and bacon with which he had been "staying and comforting" himself. he took off his hat on perceiving mr. walters, and, with great humility, "hoped that gentleman was well." "yes, very well, kinch," replied mr. walters. "we were waiting for you. can you tell where this came from?" he asked, handing him the mysterious paper. "never seen it before, that i know of," replied kinch, after a short inspection. "well, who was here last night?" asked his father; "you said you sold suthin'?" "so i did," replied kinch; "sold a whole suit; and the gentleman who put it on said he was going out for a lark. he was changing some papers from his pocket: perhaps he dropped it. i'm to take this suit back to him to-day. here is his card." "by heavens!" exclaimed mr. walters, after looking at the card, "i know the fellow,--george stevens, 'slippery george,'--every one knows him, and can speak no good of him either. now i recognize the handwriting of the list; i begin to suspect something wrong by seeing his name in connection with this." hereupon kinch was subjected to a severe cross-examination, which had the effect of deepening mr. walters's impression, that some plot was being concocted that would result to the detriment of the coloured people; for he was confident that no good could be indicated by the mysterious conduct of mr. stevens. after some deliberation, kinch received instructions to take home the clothes as directed, and to have his eyes about him; and if he saw or heard anything, he was to report it. in accordance with his instructions, master kinch made several journeys to mr. stevens's office, but did not succeed in finding that gentleman within; the last trip he made there fatigued him to such a degree, that he determined to wait his arrival, as he judged, from the lateness of the hour, that, if it was his intention to come at all that day, he would soon be there. "i'll sit down here," said kinch, who espied an old box in the back part of the entry, "and give myself a little time to blow." he had not sat long before he heard footsteps on the stairs, and presently the sound of voices became quite audible. "that's him," ejaculated kinch, as mr. stevens was heard saying, in an angry tone,--"yes; and a devil of a scrape i got into by your want of sobriety. had you followed my directions, and met me at whitticar's, instead of getting drunk as a beast, and being obliged to go home to bed, it wouldn't have happened." "well, squire," replied mccloskey, for he was the person addressed by mr. stevens, "a man can't be expected always to keep sober." "he ought to when he has business before him," rejoined mr. stevens, sharply; "how the devil am i to trust you to do anything of importance, when i can't depend on your keeping sober a day at a time? come up to this top landing," continued he, "and listen to me, if you think you are sober enough to comprehend what i say to you." they now approached, and stood within a few feet of the place where kinch was sitting, and mr. stevens said, with a great deal of emphasis, "now, i want you to pay the strictest attention to what i say. i had a list of places made out for you last night, but, somehow or other, i lost it. but that is neither here nor there. this is what i want you to attend to particularly. don't attempt anything to-night; you can't get a sufficient number of the boys together; but, when you do go, you are to take, first, christian-street, between eleventh and twelfth,--there are several nigger families living in that block. smash in their windows, break their furniture, and, if possible, set one of the houses on fire, and that will draw attention to that locality whilst you are operating elsewhere. by that time, the boys will be ripe for anything. then you had better go to a house in easton-street, corner of shotwell: there is a rich nigger living there whose plunder is worth something. i owe him an old grudge, and i want you to pay it off for me." "you keep me pretty busy paying your debts. what's the name of this rich nigger?" "walters," replied mr. stevens; "everybody knows him. now about that other affair." here he whispered so low, that kinch could only learn they were planning an attack on the house of some one, but failed in discovering the name. mccloskey departed as soon as he had received full directions from mr. stevens, and his retreating steps might be still heard upon the stairs, when mr. stevens unlocked his office-door and entered. after giving him sufficient time to get quietly seated, kinch followed, and delivered the clothes left with him the evening previous. he was very much struck with mr. stevens's altered appearance, and, in fact, would not have recognized him, but for his voice. "you don't seem to be well?" remarked kinch, inquiringly. "no, i'm not," he replied, gruffly; "i've caught cold." as kinch was leaving the office, he called after him, "did you find a paper in your shop this morning?" "no, sir," replied kinch, "_i didn't_;" but mentally he observed, "my daddy did though;" and, fearful of some other troublesome question, he took leave immediately. fatigued and out of breath, kinch arrived at the house of mr. walters, where he considered it best to go and communicate what he had learned. mr. walters was at dinner when he received from the maid a summons to the parlour to see a lad, who said his business was a matter "of life or death." he was obliged to smile at the air of importance with which kinch commenced the relation of what he had overheard--but the smile gave place to a look of anxiety and indignation long ere he had finished, and at the conclusion of the communication he was highly excited and alarmed. "the infernal scoundrel!" exclaimed mr. walters. "are you sure it was my house?" "yes, sure," was kinch's reply. "you are the only coloured person living in the square--and he said plain enough for anybody to understand, 'easton-street, corner of shotwell.' i heard every word but what they said towards the last in a whisper." "you couldn't catch anything of it?" asked mr. walters. "no, i missed that; they talked too low for me to hear." after reflecting a few moments, mr. walters said: "not a word of this is to be lisped anywhere except with my permission, and by my direction. have you had your dinner?" "no, sir," was the prompt reply. "i want to despatch a note to mr. ellis, by you, if it won't trouble you too much. can you oblige me?" "oh, yes, sir, by all means," replied kinch, "i'll go there with pleasure." "then whilst i'm writing," continued mr. walters, "you can be eating your dinner, that will economize time, you know." kinch followed the servant who answered the bell into the dining-room which mr. walters had just left. on being supplied with a knife and fork, he helped himself bountifully to the roast duck, then pouring out a glass of wine, he drank with great enthusiasm, to "our honoured self," which proceeding caused infinite amusement to the two servants who were peeping at him through the dining-room door. "der-licious," exclaimed kinch, depositing his glass upon the table; "guess i'll try another;" and suiting the action to the word, he refilled his glass, and dispatched its contents in the wake of the other. having laboured upon the duck until his appetite was somewhat appeased, he leant back in his chair and suffered his plate to be changed for another, which being done, he made an attack upon a peach pie, and nearly demolished it outright. this last performance brought his meal to a conclusion, and with a look of weariness, he remarked, "i don't see how it is--but as soon as i have eat for a little while my appetite is sure to leave me--now i can't eat a bit more. but the worst thing is walking down to mr. ellis's. i don't feel a bit like it, but i suppose i must;" and reluctantly rising from the table, he returned to the parlour, where he found mr. walters folding the note he had promised to deliver. as soon as he had despatched kinch on his errand, mr. walters put on his hat and walked to the office of the mayor. "is his honour in?" he asked of one of the police, who was lounging in the anteroom. "yes, he is--what do you want with him?" asked the official, in a rude tone. "that, sir, is none of your business," replied mr. walters; "if the mayor is in, hand him this card, and say i wish to see him." somewhat awed by mr. walters's dignified and decided manner, the man went quickly to deliver his message, and returned with an answer that his honour would be obliged to mr. walters if he would step into his office. on following the officer, he was ushered into a small room--the private office of the chief magistrate of the city. "take a seat, sir," said the mayor, politely, "it is some time since we have met. i think i had the pleasure of transacting business with you quite frequently some years back if i am not mistaken." "you are quite correct," replied mr. walters, "and being so favourably impressed by your courtesy on the occasions to which you refer, i have ventured to intrude upon you with a matter of great importance, not only to myself, but i think i may say to the public generally. since this morning, circumstances have come under my notice that leave no doubt on my mind that a thoroughly-concerted plan is afoot for the destruction of the property of a large number of our coloured citizens--mine amongst the rest. you must be aware," he continued, "that many very serious disturbances have occurred lately in the lower part of the city." "yes, i've heard something respecting it," replied the mayor, "but i believe they were nothing more than trifling combats between the negroes and the whites in that vicinity." "oh, no, sir! i assure you," rejoined mr. walters, "they were and are anything but trifling. i regard them, however, as only faint indications of what we may expect if the thing is not promptly suppressed; there is an organized gang of villains, who are combined for the sole purpose of mobbing us coloured citizens; and, as we are inoffensive, we certainly deserve protection; and here," continued mr. walters, "is a copy of the list of places upon which it is rumoured an attack is to be made." "i really don't see how i'm to prevent it, mr. walters; with the exception of your own residence, all that are here enumerated are out of my jurisdiction. i can send two or three police for your protection if you think it necessary. but i really can't see my way clear to do anything further." "two or three police!" said mr. walters, with rising indignation at the apathy and indifference the mayor exhibited; "they would scarcely be of any more use than as many women. if that is the extent of the aid you can afford me, i must do what i can to protect myself." "i trust your fears lead you to exaggerate the danger," said the mayor, as mr. walters arose to depart; "perhaps it is _only_ rumour after all." "i might have flattered myself with the same idea, did i not feel convinced by what has so recently occurred but a short distance from my own house; at any rate, if i am attacked, they will find i am not unprepared. good day," and bowing courteously to the mayor, mr. walters departed. chapter xx. the attack. mr. walters lost no time in sending messengers to the various parties threatened by the mob, warning them either to leave their houses or to make every exertion for a vigorous defence. few, however, adopted the latter extremity; the majority fled from their homes, leaving what effects they could not carry away at the mercy of the mob, and sought an asylum in the houses of such kindly-disposed whites as would give them shelter. although the authorities of the district had received the most positive information of the nefarious schemes of the rioters, they had not made the slightest efforts to protect the poor creatures threatened in their persons and property, but let the tide of lawlessness flow on unchecked. throughout the day parties of coloured people might have been seen hurrying to the upper part of the city: women with terror written on their faces, some with babes in their arms and children at their side, hastening to some temporary place of refuge, in company with men who were bending beneath the weight of household goods. mr. walters had converted his house into a temporary fortress: the shutters of the upper windows had been loop-holed, double bars had been placed across the doors and windows on the ground floor, carpets had been taken up, superfluous furniture removed, and an air of thorough preparation imparted. a few of mr. walters's male friends had volunteered their aid in defence of his house, and their services had been accepted. mr. ellis, whose house was quite indefensible (it being situated in a neighbourhood swarming with the class of which the mob was composed), had decided on bringing his family to the house of mr. walters, and sharing with him the fortunes of the night, his wife and daughters having declared they would feel as safe there as elsewhere; and, accordingly, about five in the afternoon, mrs. ellis came up, accompanied by kinch and the girls. caddy and kinch, who brought up the rear, seemed very solicitous respecting the safety of a package that the latter bore in his arms. "what have you there?" asked mr. walters, with a smile; "it must be powder, or some other explosive matter, you take such wonderful pains for its preservation. come, caddy, tell us what it is; is it powder?" "no, mr. walters, it isn't powder," she replied; "it's nothing that will blow the house up or burn it down." "what is it, then? you tell us, kinch." "just do, if you think best," said caddy, giving him a threatening glance; whereupon, master kinch looked as much as to say, "if you were to put me on the rack you couldn't get a word out of me." "i suppose i shall have to give you up," said mr. walters at last; "but don't stand here in the entry; come up into the drawing-room." mrs. ellis and esther followed him upstairs, and stood at the door of the drawing-room surveying the preparations for defence that the appearance of the room so abundantly indicated. guns were stacked in the corner, a number of pistols lay upon the mantelpiece, and a pile of cartridges was heaped up beside a small keg of powder that stood upon the table opposite the fire-place. "dear me!" exclaimed mrs. ellis, "this looks dreadful; it almost frightens me out of my wits to see so many dangerous weapons scattered about." "and how does it affect our quiet esther?" asked mr. walters. "it makes me wish i were a man," she replied, with considerable vehemence of manner. all started at this language from one of her usually gentle demeanour. "why, esther, how you talk, girl: what's come over you?" "talk!" replied she. "i say nothing that i do not feel. as we came through the streets to-day, and i saw so many inoffensive creatures, who, like ourselves, have never done these white wretches the least injury,--to see them and us driven from our homes by a mob of wretches, who can accuse us of nothing but being darker than themselves,--it takes all the woman out of my bosom, and makes me feel like a----" here esther paused, and bit her lip to prevent the utterance of a fierce expression that hovered on the tip of her tongue. she then continued: "one poor woman in particular i noticed: she had a babe in her arms, poor thing, and was weeping bitterly because she knew of no place to go to seek for shelter or protection. a couple of white men stood by jeering and taunting her. i felt as though i could have strangled them: had i been a man, i would have attacked them on the spot, if i had been sure they would have killed me the next moment." "hush! esther, hush! my child; you must not talk so, it sounds unwomanly--unchristian. why, i never heard you talk so before." esther made no reply, but stood resting her forehead upon the mantelpiece. her face was flushed with excitement, and her dark eyes glistened like polished jet. mr. walters stood regarding her for a time with evident admiration, and then said, "you are a brave one, after my own heart." esther hung down her head, confused by the ardent look he cast upon her, as he continued, "you have taken me by surprise; but it's always the way with you quiet people; events like these bring you out--seem to change your very natures, as it were. we must look out," said he, with a smile, turning to one of the young men, "or miss ellis will excel us all in courage. i shall expect great things from her if we are attacked to-night." "don't make a jest of me, mr. walters," said esther, and as she spoke her eyes moistened and her lip quivered with vexation. "no, no, my dear girl, don't misunderstand me," replied he, quickly; "nothing was farther from my thoughts. i truly meant all that i said. i believe you to be a brave girl." "if you really think so," rejoined esther, "prove it by showing me how to load these." as she spoke she took from the mantel one of the pistols that were lying there, and turned it over to examine it. "oh! put that down, esther, put that down immediately," almost screamed mrs. ellis; "what with your speeches and your guns you'll quite set me crazy; do take it from her, walters; it will certainly go off." "there's not the least danger, ellen," he replied; "there's nothing in it." "well, i'm afraid of guns, loaded or unloaded; they are dangerous, all of them, whether they have anything in them or not. do you hear me, esther; do put that down and come out of here." "oh, no, mother," said she, "do let me remain; there, i'll lay the pistols down and won't touch them again whilst you are in the room." "you may safely leave her in my hands," interposed mr. walters. "if she wants to learn, let her; it won't injure her in the least, i'll take care of that." this assurance somewhat quieted mrs. ellis, who left the room and took up her quarters in another apartment. "now, mr. walters," said esther, taking off her bonnet, i'm quite in earnest about learning to load these pistols, and i wish you to instruct me. you may be hard pressed tonight, and unable to load for yourselves, and in such an emergency i could perhaps be of great use to you." "but, my child," replied he, "to be of use in the manner you propose, you would be compelled to remain in quite an exposed situation." "i am aware of that," calmly rejoined esther. "and still you are not afraid?" he asked, in surprise. "why should i be; i shall not be any more exposed than you or my father." "that's enough--i'll teach you. look here," said mr. walters, "observe how i load this." esther gave her undivided attention to the work before her, and when he had finished, she took up another pistol and loaded it with a precision and celerity that would have reflected honour on a more practised hand. "well done!--capital!" exclaimed mr. walters, as she laid down the weapon. "you'll do, my girl; as i said before, you are one after my own heart. now, whilst you are loading the rest, i will go downstairs, where i have some little matters to attend to." on the stair-way he was met by kinch and caddy, who were tugging up a large kettle of water. "is it possible, caddy," asked mr. walters, "that your propensity to dabble in soap and water has overcome you even at this critical time? you certainly can't be going to scrub?" "no, i'm not going to scrub," she replied, "nor do anything like it. we've got our plans, haven't we, kinch?" "let's hear what your plans are. i'd like to be enlightened a little, if convenient," said mr. walters. "well, it's _not_ convenient, mr. walters, so you need not expect to hear a word about them. you'd only laugh if we were to tell you, so we're going to keep it to ourselves, ain't we, kinch?" the latter, thus appealed to, put on an air of profound mystery, and intimated that if they were permitted to pursue the even tenor of their way, great results might be expected; but if they were balked in their designs, he could not answer for the consequences. "you and esther have your plans," resumed caddy, "and we have ours. we don't believe in powder and shot, and don't want anything to do with guns; for my part i'm afraid of them, so please let us go by--do, now, that's a good soul!" "you seem to forget that i'm the commander of this fortress," said mr. walters, "and that i have a right to know everything that transpires within it; but i see you look obstinate, and as i haven't time to settle the matter now, you may pass on. i wonder what they can be about," he remarked, as they hurried on. "i must steal up by-and-by and see for myself." one after another the various friends of mr. walters came in, each bringing some vague report of the designs of the mob. they all described the excitement as growing more intense; that the houses of various prominent abolitionists had been threatened; that an attempt had been made to fire one of the coloured churches; and that, notwithstanding the rioters made little scruple in declaring their intentions, the authorities were not using the slightest effort to restrain them, or to protect the parties threatened. day was fast waning, and the approaching night brought with it clouds and cold. whilst they had been engaged in their preparations for defence, none had time to reflect upon the danger of their situation; but now that all was prepared, and there was nothing to sustain the excitement of the last few hours, a chill crept over the circle who were gathered round the fire. there were no candles burning, and the uncertain glow from the grate gave a rather weird-like look to the group. the arms stacked in the corner of the room, and the occasional glitter of the pistol-barrels as the flames rose and fell, gave the whole a peculiarly strange effect. "we look belligerent enough, i should think," remarked mr. walters, looking around him. "i wish we were well out of this: it's terrible to be driven to these extremities--but we are not the aggressors, thank god! and the results, be they what they may, are not of our seeking. i have a right to defend my own: i have asked protection of the law, and it is too weak, or too indifferent, to give it; so i have no alternative but to protect myself. but who is here? it has grown so dark in the room that i can scarcely distinguish any one. where are all the ladies?" "none are here except myself," answered esther; "all the rest are below stairs." "and where are you? i hear, but can't see you; give me your hand," said he, extending his own in the direction from which her voice proceeded. "how cold your hand is," he continued; "are you frightened?" "frightened!" she replied; "i never felt calmer in my life--put your finger on my pulse." mr. walters did as he was desired, and exclaimed, "steady as a clock. i trust nothing may occur before morning to cause it to beat more hurriedly." "let us put some wood on these coals," suggested mr. ellis; "it will make a slight blaze, and give us a chance to see each other." as he spoke he took up a few small fagots and cast them upon the fire. the wood snapped and crackled, as the flames mounted the chimney and cast a cheerful glow upon the surrounding objects: suddenly a thoroughly ignited piece flew off from the rest and fell on the table in the midst of the cartridges. "run for your lives!" shrieked one of the party. "the powder! the powder!" simultaneously they nearly all rushed to the door. mr. walters stood as one petrified. esther alone, of the whole party, retained her presence of mind; springing forward, she grasped the blazing fragment and dashed it back again into the grate. all this passed in a few seconds, and in the end esther was so overcome with excitement and terror, that she fainted outright. hearing no report, those who had fled cautiously returned, and by their united efforts she was soon restored to consciousness. "what a narrow escape!" said she, trembling, and covering her face with her hands; "it makes me shudder to think of it." "we owe our lives to you, my brave girl," said mr. walters; "your presence of mind has quite put us all to the blush." "oh! move the powder some distance off, or the same thing may happen again. please do move it, mr. walters; i shall have no peace whilst it is there." whilst they were thus engaged, a loud commotion was heard below stairs, and with one accord all started in the direction from whence the noise proceeded. "bring a light! bring a light!" cried mrs. ellis; "something dreadful has happened." a light was soon procured, and the cause of this second alarm fully ascertained. master kinch, in his anxiety to give himself as warlike an appearance as possible, had added to his accoutrements an old sword that he had discovered in an out-of-the-way corner of the garret. not being accustomed to weapons of this nature, he had been constantly getting it between his legs, and had already been precipitated by it down a flight of steps, to the imminent risk of his neck. undaunted, however, by this mishap, he had clung to it with wonderful tenacity, until it had again caused a disaster the noise of which had brought all parties into the room where it had occurred. the light being brought, master kinch crawled out from under a table with his head and back covered with batter, a pan of which had been overturned upon him, in consequence of his having been tripped up by his sword and falling violently against the table on which it stood. "i said you had better take that skewer off," exclaimed caddy: "it's a wonder it hasn't broke your neck before now; but you are such a goose you would wear it," said she, surveying her aide-de-camp with derision, as he vainly endeavoured to scrape the batter from his face. "please give me some water," cried kinch, looking from one to the other of the laughing group: "help a feller to get it off, can't you--it's all in my eyes, and the yeast is blinding me." the only answer to this appeal was an additional shout of laughter, without the slightest effort for his relief. at last caddy, taking compassion upon his forlorn condition, procured a basin of water, and assisted him to wash from his woolly pate what had been intended for the next day's meal. "this is the farce after what was almost a tragedy," said mr. walters, as they ascended the stairs again; "i wonder what we shall have next!" they all returned to their chairs by the drawing-room fire after this occurrence, and remained in comparative silence for some time, until loud cries of "fire! fire!" startled them from their seats. "the whole of the lower part of the city appears to be in a blaze," exclaimed one of the party who had hastened to the window; "look at the flames--they are ascending from several places. they are at their work; we may expect them here soon." "well, they'll find us prepared when they do come," rejoined mr. walters. "what do you propose?" asked mr. ellis. "are we to fire on them at once, or wait for their attack?" "wait for their attack, by all means," said he, in reply;--"if they throw stones, you'll find plenty in that room with which to return the compliment; if they resort to fire-arms, then we will do the same; i want to be strictly on the defensive--but at the same time we must defend ourselves fully and energetically." in about an hour after this conversation a dull roar was heard in the distance, which grew louder and nearer every moment. "hist!" said esther; "do you hear that noise? listen! isn't that the mob coming?" mr. walters opened the shutter, and then the sound became more distinct. on they came, nearer and nearer, until the noise of their voices became almost deafening. there was something awful in the appearance of the motley crowd that, like a torrent, foamed and surged through the streets. some were bearing large pine torches that filled the air with thick smoke and partially lighted up the surrounding gloom. most of them were armed with clubs, and a few with guns and pistols. as they approached the house, there seemed to be a sort of consultation between the ringleaders, for soon after every light was extinguished, and the deafening yells of "kill the niggers!" "down with the abolitionists!" were almost entirely stilled. "i wonder what that means," said mr. walters, who had closed the shutter, and was surveying, through an aperture that had been cut, the turbulent mass below. "look out for something soon." he had scarcely finished speaking, when a voice in the street cried, "one--two--three!" and immediately there followed a volley of missiles, crushing in the windows of the chamber above, and rattling upon the shutters of the room in which the party of defenders were gathered. a yell then went up from the mob, followed by another shower of stones. "it is now our turn," said mr. walters, coolly. "four of you place yourselves at the windows of the adjoining room; the rest remain here. when you see a bright light reflected on the crowd below, throw open the shutters, and hurl down stones as long as the light is shining. now, take your places, and as soon as you are prepared stamp upon the floor." each of the men now armed themselves with two or more of the largest stones they could find, from the heap that had been provided for the occasion; and in a few seconds a loud stamping upon the floor informed mr. walters that all was ready. he now opened the aperture in the shutter, and placed therein a powerful reflecting light which brought the shouting crowd below clearly into view, and in an instant a shower of heavy stones came crashing down upon their upturned faces. yells of rage and agony ascended from the throng, who, not seeing any previous signs of life in the house, had no anticipation of so prompt and severe a response to their attack. for a time they swayed to and fro, bewildered by the intense light and crushing shower of stones that had so suddenly fallen upon them. those in the rear, however, pressing forward, did not permit the most exposed to retire out of reach of missiles from the house; on perceiving which, mr. walters again turned the light upon them, and immediately another stony shower came rattling down, which caused a precipitate retreat. "the house is full of niggers!--the house is full of niggers!" cried several voices--"shoot them! kill them!" and immediately several shots were fired at the window by the mob below. "don't fire yet," said mr. walters to one of the young men who had his hand upon a gun. "stop awhile. when we do fire, let it be to some purpose--let us make sure that some one is hit." whilst they were talking, two or three bullets pierced the shutters, and flattened themselves upon the ceiling above. "those are rifle bullets," remarked one of the young men--"do let us fire." "it is too great a risk to approach the windows at present; keep quiet for a little while; and, when the light is shown again, fire. but, hark!" continued he, "they are trying to burst open the door. we can't reach them there without exposing ourselves, and if they should get into the entry it would be hard work to dislodge them." "let us give them a round; probably it will disperse those farthest off--and those at the door will follow," suggested one of the young men. "we'll try it, at any rate," replied walters. "take your places, don't fire until i show the light--then pick your man, and let him have it. there is no use to fire, you know, unless you hit somebody. are you ready?" he asked. "yes," was the prompt reply. "then here goes," said he, turning the light upon the crowd below--who, having some experience in what would follow, did their best to get out of reach; but they were too late--for the appearance of the light was followed by the instantaneous report of several guns which did fearful execution amidst the throng of ruffians. two or three fell on the spot, and were carried off by their comrades with fearful execrations. the firing now became frequent on both sides, and esther's services came into constant requisition. it was in vain that her father endeavoured to persuade her to leave the room; notwithstanding the shutters had been thrown open to facilitate operations from within and the exposure thereby greatly increased, she resolutely refused to retire, and continued fearlessly to load the guns and hand them to the men. "they've got axes at work upon the door, if they are not dislodged, they'll cut their way in," exclaimed one of the young men--"the stones are exhausted, and i don't know what we shall do." just then the splash of water was heard, followed by shrieks of agony. "oh, god! i'm scalded! i'm scalded!" cried one of the men upon the steps. "take me away! take me away!" in the midst of his cries another volume of scalding water came pouring down upon the group at the door, which was followed by a rush from the premises. "what is that--who could have done that--where has that water come from?" asked mr. walters, as he saw the seething shower pass the window, and fall upon the heads below. "i must go and see." he ran upstairs, and found kinch and caddy busy putting on more water, they having exhausted one kettle-full--into which they had put two or three pounds of cayenne pepper--on the heads of the crowd below. "we gave 'em a settler, didn't we, mr. walters?" asked caddy, as he entered the room. "it takes us; we fight with hot water. this," said she, holding up a dipper, "is my gun. i guess we made 'em squeal." "you've done well, caddy," replied he--"first-rate, my girl. i believe you've driven them off entirely," he continued, peeping out of the window. "they are going off, at any rate," said he, drawing in his head; "whether they will return or not is more than i can say. keep plenty of hot water, ready, but don't expose yourselves, children. weren't you afraid to go to the window?" he asked. "we didn't go near it. look at this," replied caddy, fitting a broom handle into the end of a very large tin dipper. "kinch cut this to fit; so we have nothing to do but to stand back here, dip up the water, and let them have it; the length of the handle keeps us from being seen from the street. that was kinch's plan." "and a capital one it was too. your head, kinch, evidently has no batter within, if it has without; there is a great deal in that. keep a bright look out," continued mr. walters; "i'm going downstairs. if they come again, let them have plenty of your warm pepper-sauce." on returning to the drawing-room, mr. walters found mr. dennis, one of the company, preparing to go out. "i'm about to avail myself of the advantage afforded by my fair complexion, and play the spy," said he. "they can't discern at night what i am, and i may be able to learn some of their plans." "a most excellent idea," said mr. walters; "but pray be careful. you may meet some one who will recognise you." "never fear," replied mr. dennis. "i'll keep a bright look out for that." and, drawing his cap far down over his eyes, to screen his face as much as possible, he sallied out into the street. he had not been absent more than a quarter of an hour, when he returned limping into the house. "have they attacked you--are you hurt?" asked the anxious group by which he was surrounded. "i'm hurt-, but not by them. i got on very well, and gleaned a great deal of information, when i heard a sudden exclamation, and, on looking round, i found myself recognized by a white man of my acquaintance. i ran immediately; and whether i was pursued or not, i'm unable to say. i had almost reached here, when my foot caught in a grating and gave my ancle such a wrench that i'm unable to stand." as he spoke, his face grew pale from the suffering the limb was occasioning. "i'm sorry, very sorry," he continued, limping to the sofa; "i was going out again immediately. they intend making an attack on mr. garie's house: i didn't hear his name mentioned, but i heard one of the men, who appeared to be a ringleader, say, 'we're going up to winter-street, to give a coat of tar and feathers to a white man, who is married to a nigger woman.' they can allude to none but him. how annoying that this accident should have happened just now, of all times. they ought to be warned." "oh, poor emily!" cried esther, bursting into tears; "it will kill her, i know it will; she is so ill. some one must go and warn them. let me try; the mob, even if i met them, surely would not assault a woman." "you mustn't think of such a thing, esther," exclaimed mr. walters; "the idea isn't to be entertained for a moment. you don't know what ruthless wretches they are. your colour discovered you would find your sex but a trifling protection. i'd go, but it would be certain death to me: my black face would quickly obtain for me a passport to another world if i were discovered in the street just now." "i'll go," calmly spoke mr. ellis. "i can't rest here and think of what they are exposed to. by skulking through bye-streets and keeping under the shadows of houses i may escape observation--at any rate, i must run the risk." and he began to button up his coat. "don't let your mother know i'm gone; stick by her, my girl," said he, kissing esther; "trust in god,--he'll protect me." esther hung sobbing on her father's neck. "oh, father, father," said she, "i couldn't bear to see you go for any one but emily and the children." "i know it, dear," he replied; "it's my duty. garie would do the same for me, i know, even at greater risk. good-bye! good-bye!" and, disengaging himself from the weeping girl, he started on his errand of mercy. walking swiftly forwards, he passed over more than two-thirds of the way without the slightest interruption, the streets through which he passed being almost entirely deserted. he had arrived within a couple of squares of the garies, when suddenly, on turning a corner, he found himself in the midst of a gang of ruffians. "here's a nigger! here's a nigger!" shouted two or three of them, almost simultaneously, making at the same time a rush at mr. ellis, who turned and ran, followed by the whole gang. fear lent him wings, and he fast outstripped his pursuers, and would have entirely escaped, had he not turned into a street which unfortunately was closed at the other end. this he did not discover until it was too late to retrace his steps, his pursuers having already entered the street. looking for some retreat, he perceived he was standing near an unfinished building. tearing off the boards that were nailed across the window, he vaulted into the room, knocking off his hat, which fell upon the pavement behind him. scarcely had he groped his way to the staircase of the dwelling when he heard the footsteps of his pursuers. "he can't have got through," exclaimed one of them, "the street is closed up at the end; he must be up here somewhere." lighting one of their torches, they began to look around them, and soon discovered the hat lying beneath the window. "he's in here, boys; we've tree'd the 'coon," laughingly exclaimed one of the ruffians. "let's after him." tearing off the remainder of the boards, one or two entered, opened the door from the inside, and gave admission to the rest. mr. ellis mounted to the second story, followed by his pursuers; on he went, until he reached the attic, from which a ladder led to the roof. ascending this, he drew it up after him, and found himself on the roof of a house that was entirely isolated. the whole extent of the danger flashed upon him at once. here he was completely hemmed in, without the smallest chance for escape. he approached the edge and looked over, but could discover nothing near enough to reach by a leap. "i must sell my life dearly," he said. "god be my helper now--he is all i have to rely upon." and as he spoke, the great drops of sweat fell from his forehead. espying a sheet of lead upon the roof, he rolled it into a club of tolerable thickness, and waited the approach of his pursuers. "he's gone on the roof," he heard one of them exclaim, "and pulled the ladder up after him." just then, a head emerged from the trap-door, the owner of which, perceiving mr. ellis, set up a shout of triumph. "we've got him! we've got him!--here he is!" which cries were answered by the exultant voices of his comrades below. an attempt was now made by one of them to gain the roof; but he immediately received a blow from mr. ellis that knocked him senseless into the arms of his companions. another attempted the same feat, and met a similar fate. this caused a parley as to the best mode of proceeding, which resulted in the simultaneous appearance of three of the rioters at the opening. nothing daunted, mr. ellis attacked them with such fierceness and energy that they were forced to descend, muttering the direst curses. in a few moments another head appeared, at which mr. ellis aimed a blow of great force; and the club descended upon a hat placed upon a stick. not meeting the resistance expected, it flew from his hand, and he was thrown forward, nearly falling down the doorway. with a shout of triumph, they seized his arm, and held him firmly, until one or two of them mounted the roof. "throw him over! throw him over!" exclaimed some of the fiercest of the crowd. one or two of the more merciful endeavoured to interfere against killing him outright; but the frenzy of the majority triumphed, and they determined to cast him into the street below. mr. ellis clung to the chimney, shrieking,--"save me! save me!--help! help! will no one save me!" his cries were unheeded by the ruffians, and the people at the surrounding windows were unable to afford him any assistance, even if they were disposed to do so. despite his cries and resistance, they forced him to the edge of the roof; he clinging to them the while, and shrieking in agonized terror. forcing off his hold, they thrust him forward and got him partially over the edge, where he clung calling frantically for aid. one of the villains, to make him loose his hold, struck on his fingers with the handle of a hatchet found on the roof; not succeeding in breaking his hold by these means, with, an oath he struck with the blade, severing two of the fingers from one hand and deeply mangling the other. with a yell of agony, mr. ellis let go his hold, and fell upon a pile of rubbish below, whilst a cry of triumphant malignity went up from the crowd on the roof. a gentleman and some of his friends kindly carried the insensible man into his house. "poor fellow!" said he, "he is killed, i believe. what a gang of wretches. these things are dreadful; that such a thing can be permitted in a christian city is perfectly appalling." the half-dressed family gathered around the mangled form of mr. ellis, and gave vent to loud expressions of sympathy. a doctor was quickly sent for, who stanched the blood that was flowing from his hands and head. "i don't think he can live," said he, "the fall was too great. as far as i can judge, his legs and two of his ribs are broken. the best thing we can do, is to get him conveyed to the hospital; look in his pockets, perhaps we can find out who he is." there was nothing found, however, that afforded the least clue to his name and residence; and he was, therefore, as soon as persons could be procured to assist, borne to the hospital, where his wounds were dressed, and the broken limbs set. chapter xxi. more horrors. unaware of the impending danger, mr. garie sat watching by the bedside of his wife. she had been quite ill; but on the evening of which we write, although nervous and wakeful, was much better. the bleak winds of the fast approaching winter dealt unkindly with her delicate frame, accustomed as she was to the soft breezes of her southern home. mr. garie had been sitting up looking at the fires in the lower part of the city. not having been out all that day or the one previous, he knew nothing of the fearful state into which matters had fallen. "those lights are dying away, my dear," said he to his wife; "there must have been quite an extensive conflagration." taking out his watch, he continued, "almost two o'clock; why, how late i've been sitting up. i really don't know whether it's worth while to go to bed or not, i should be obliged to get up again at five o'clock; i go to new york to-morrow, or rather to-day; there are some matters connected with uncle john's will that require my personal attention. dear old man, how suddenly he died." "i wish, dear, you could put off your journey until i am better," said mrs. garie, faintly; "i do hate you to go just now." "i would if i could, emily; but it is impossible. i shall be back to-morrow, or the next day, at farthest. whilst i'm there, i'll----" "hush!" interrupted mrs. garie, "stop a moment. don't you hear a noise like the shouting of a great many people." "oh, it's only the firemen," replied he; "as i was about to observe--" "hush!" cried she again. "listen now, that don't sound like the firemen in the least." mr. garie paused as the sound of a number of voices became more distinct. wrapping his dressing-gown more closely about him, he walked into the front room, which overlooked the street. opening the window, he saw a number of men--some bearing torches--coming rapidly in the direction of his dwelling. "i wonder what all this is for; what can it mean," he exclaimed. they had now approached sufficiently near for him to understand their cries. "down with the abolitionist--down with the amalgamationist! give them tar and feathers!" "it's a mob--and that word amalgamationist--can it be pointed at me? it hardly seems possible; and yet i have a fear that there is something wrong." "what is it, garie? what is the matter?" asked his wife, who, with a shawl hastily thrown across her shoulders, was standing pale and trembling by the window. "go in, emily, my dear, for heaven's sake; you'll get your death of cold in this bleak night air--go in; as soon as i discover the occasion of the disturbance, i'll come and tell you. pray go in." mrs. garie retired a few feet from the window, and stood listening to the shouts in the street. the rioters, led on evidently by some one who knew what he was about, pressed forward to mr. garie's house; and soon the garden in front was filled with the shouting crowd. "what do you all want--why are you on my premises, creating this disturbance?" cried mr. garie. "come down and you'll soon find out. you white livered abolitionist, come out, damn you! we are going to give you a coat of tar and feathers, and your black wench nine-and-thirty. yes, come down--come down!" shouted several, "or we will come up after you." "i warn you," replied mr. garie, "against any attempt at violence upon my person, family, or property. i forbid you to advance another foot upon the premises. if any man of you enters my house, i'll shoot him down as quick as i would a mad dog." "shut up your gap; none of your cussed speeches," said a voice in the crowd; "if you don't come down and give yourself up, we'll come in and take you--that's the talk, ain't it, boys?" a general shout of approval answered this speech, and several stones were thrown at mr. garie, one of which struck him on the breast. seeing the utter futility of attempting to parley with the infuriated wretches below, he ran into the room, exclaiming, "put on some clothes, emily! shoes first--quick--quick, wife!--your life depends upon it. i'll bring down the children and wake the servants. we must escape from the house--we are attacked by a mob of demons. hurry, emily! do, for god sake!" mr. garie aroused the sleeping children, and threw some clothes upon them, over which he wrapped shawls or blankets, or whatever came to hand. rushing into the next room, he snatched a pair of loaded pistols from the drawer of his dressing-stand, and then hurried his terrified wife and children down the stairs. "this way, dear--this way!" he cried, leading on toward the back door; "out that way through the gate with the children, and into some of the neighbour's houses. i'll stand here to keep the way." "no, no, garie," she replied, frantically; "i won't go without you." "you must!" he cried, stamping his foot impatiently; "this is no time to parley--go, or we shall all be murdered. listen, they've broken in the door. quick--quick! go on;" and as he spoke, he pressed her and the children out of the door, and closed it behind them. mrs. garie ran down the garden, followed by the children; to her horror, she found the gate locked, and the key nowhere to be found. "what shall we do?" she cried. "oh, we shall all be killed!" and her limbs trembled beneath her with cold and terror. "let us hide in here, mother," suggested clarence, running toward the wood-house; "we'll be safe in there." seeing that nothing better could be done, mrs. garie availed herself of the suggestion; and when she was fairly inside the place, fell fainting upon the ground. as she escaped through the back door, the mob broke in at the front, and were confronting mr. garie, as he stood with his pistol pointed at them, prepared to fire. "come another step forward and i fire!" exclaimed he, resolutely; but those in the rear urged the advance of those in front, who approached cautiously nearer and nearer their victim. fearful of opening the door behind him, lest he should show the way taken by his retreating wife, he stood uncertain how to act; a severe blow from a stone, however, made him lose all reflection, and he immediately fired. a loud shriek followed the report of his pistol, and a shower of stones was immediately hurled upon him. he quickly fired again, and was endeavouring to open the door to effect his escape, when a pistol was discharged close to his head and he fell forward on the entry floor lifeless. all this transpired in a few moments, and in the semi-darkness of the entry. rushing forward over his lifeless form, the villains hastened upstairs in search of mrs. garie. they ran shouting through the house, stealing everything valuable that they could lay their hands upon, and wantonly destroying the furniture; they would have fired the house, but were prevented by mccloskey, who acted as leader of the gang. for two long hours they ransacked the house, breaking all they could not carry off, drinking the wine in mr. garie's cellar, and shouting and screaming like so many fiends. mrs. garie and the children lay crouching with terror in the wood-house, listening to the ruffians as they went through the yard cursing her and her husband and uttering the direst threats of what they would do should she fall into their hands. once she almost fainted on hearing one of them propose opening the wood-house, to see if there was anything of value in it--but breathed again when they abandoned it as not worth their attention. the children crouched down beside her--scarcely daring to whisper, lest they should attract the attention of their persecutors. shivering with cold they drew closer around them the blanket with which they had been providentially provided. "brother, my feet are _so_ cold," sobbed little em. "i can't feel my toes. oh, i'm so cold!" "put your feet closer to me, sissy," answered her brother, baring himself to enwrap her more thoroughly; "put my stockings on over yours;" and, as well as they were able in the dark, he drew his stockings on over her benumbed feet. "there, sis, that's better," he whispered, with an attempt at cheerfulness, "now you'll be warmer." just then clarence heard a groan from his mother, so loud indeed that it would have been heard without but for the noise and excitement around the house--and feeling for her in the dark, he asked, "mother, are you worse? are you sick?" a groan was her only answer. "mother, mother," he whispered, "do speak, please do!" and he endeavoured to put his arm around her. "don't, dear--don't," said she, faintly, "just take care of your sister--you can't do me any good--don't speak, dear, the men will hear you." reluctantly the frightened child turned his attention again to his little sister; ever and anon suppressed groans from his mother would reach his ears--at last he heard a groan even fierce in its intensity; and then the sounds grew fainter and fainter until they entirely ceased. the night to the poor shivering creatures in their hiding place seemed interminably long, and the sound of voices in the house had not long ceased when the faint light of day pierced their cheerless shelter. hearing the voices of some neighbours in the yard, clarence hastened out, and seizing one of the ladies by the dress, cried imploringly, "do come to my mother, she's sick." "why, where did you come from, chil?" said the lady, with a start of astonishment. "where have you been?" "in there," he answered, pointing to the wood-house. "mother and sister are in there." the lady, accompanied by one or two others, hastened to the wood-house. "where is she?" asked the foremost, for in the gloom of the place she could not perceive anything. "here," replied clarence, "she's lying here." on opening a small window, they saw mrs. garie lying in a corner stretched upon the boards, her head supported by some blocks. "she's asleep," said clarence. "mother--mother," but there came no answer. "mother," said he, still louder, but yet there was no response. stepping forward, one of the females opened the shawl, which was held firmly in the clenched hands of mrs. garie--and there in her lap partially covered by her scanty nightdress, was discovered a new-born babe, who with its mother had journeyed in the darkness, cold, and night, to the better land, that they might pour out their woes upon the bosom of their creator. the women gazed in mournful silence on the touching scene before them. clarence was on his knees, regarding with fear and wonder the unnatural stillness of his mother--the child had never before looked on death, and could not recognize its presence. laying his hand on her cold cheek, he cried, with faltering voice, "mother, _can't_ you speak?" but there was no answering light in the fixed stare of those glassy eyes, and the lips of the dead could not move. "why don't she speak?" he asked. "she can't, my dear; you must come away and leave her. she's better off, my darling--she's _dead_." then there was a cry of grief sprung up from the heart of that orphan boy, that rang in those women's ears for long years after; it was the first outbreak of a loving childish heart pierced with life's bitterest grief--a mother's loss. the two children were kindly taken into the house of some benevolent neighbour, as the servants had all fled none knew whither. little em was in a profound stupor--the result of cold and terror, and it was found necessary to place her under the care of a physician. after they had all gone, an inquest was held by the coroner, and a very unsatisfactory and untruthful verdict pronounced--one that did not at all coincide with the circumstances of the case, but such a one as might have been expected where there was a great desire to screen the affair from public scrutiny. chapter xxii. an anxious day. esther ellis, devoured with anxiety respecting the safety of her father and the garies, paced with impatient step up and down the drawing-room. opening the window, she looked to see if she could discover any signs of day. "it's pitchy dark," she exclaimed, "and yet almost five o'clock. father has run a fearful risk. i hope nothing has happened to him." "i trust not. i think he's safe enough somewhere," said mr. walters. "he's no doubt been very cautious, and avoided meeting any one--don't worry yourself, my child, 'tis most likely he remained with them wherever they went; probably they are at the house of some of their neighbours." "i can't help feeling dreadfully oppressed and anxious," continued she. "i wish he would come." whilst she was speaking, her mother entered the room. "any news of your father?" she asked, in a tone of anxiety. esther endeavoured to conceal her own apprehensions, and rejoined, in as cheerful tone as she could assume--"not yet, mother--it's too dark for us to expect him yet--he'll remain most likely until daylight." "he shouldn't have gone had i been here--he's no business to expose himself in this way." "but, mother," interrupted esther, "only think of it--the safety of emily and the children were depending on it--we mustn't be selfish." "i know we oughtn't to be, my child," rejoined her mother, "but it's natural to the best of us--sometimes we can't help it." five--six--seven o'clock came and passed, and still there were no tidings of mr. ellis. "i can bear this suspense no longer," exclaimed esther. "if father don't come soon, i shall go and look for him. i've tried to flatter myself that he's safe; but i'm almost convinced now that something has happened to him, or he'd have come back long before this--he knows how anxious we would all be about him. i've tried to quiet mother and caddy by suggesting various reasons for his delay, but, at the same time, i cannot but cherish the most dismal forebodings. i must go and look for him." "no, no, esther--stay where you are at present--leave that to me. i'll order a carriage and go up to garie's immediately." "well, do, mr. walters, and hurry back: won't you?" she rejoined, as he left the apartment. in a few moments he returned, prepared to start, and was speedily driven to winter-street. he found a group of people gathered before the gate, gazing into the house. "the place has been attacked," said he, as he walked towards the front door--picking his way amidst fragments of furniture, straw, and broken glass. at the entrance of the house he was met by mr. balch, mr. garie's lawyer. "this is a shocking affair, walters," said he, extending his hand--he was an old friend of mr. walters. "very shocking, indeed," he replied, looking around. "but where is garie? we sent to warn them of this. i hope they are all safe." "safe!" repeated mr. balch, with an air of astonishment. "why, man, haven't you heard?" "heard what?" asked mr. walters, looking alarmed. "that mr. and mrs. garie are dead--both were killed last night." the shock of this sudden and totally unexpected disclosure was such that mr. walters leaned against the doorway for support. "it can't be possible," he exclaimed at last, "not dead!" "yes, _dead_, i regret to say--he was shot through the head--and she died in the wood-house, of premature confinement, brought on by fright and exposure." "and the children?" gasped walters. "they are safe, with some neighbours--it's heart-breaking to hear them weeping for their mother." here a tear glistened in the eye of mr. balch, and ran down his cheek. brushing it off, he continued: "the coroner has just held an inquest, and they gave a most truthless verdict: nothing whatever is said of the cause of the murder, or of the murderers; they simply rendered a verdict--death caused by a wound from a pistol-shot, and hers--death from exposure. there seemed the greatest anxiety on the part of the coroner to get the matter over as quickly as possible, and few or no witnesses were examined. but i'm determined to sift the matter to the bottom; if the perpetrators of the murder can be discovered, i'll leave no means untried to find them." "do you know any one who sat on the inquest?" asked walters. "yes, one," was the reply, "slippery george, the lawyer; you are acquainted with him--george stevens. i find he resides next door." "do you know," here interrupted mr. walters, "that i've my suspicions that that villain is at the bottom of these disturbances or at least has a large share in them. i have a paper in my possession, in his handwriting--it is in fact a list of the places destroyed by the mob last night--it fell into the hands of a friend of mine by accident--he gave it to me--it put me on my guard; and when the villains attacked my house last night they got rather a warmer reception than they bargained for." "you astonish me! is it possible your place was assaulted also?" asked mr. balch. "indeed, it was--and a hot battle we had of it for a short space of time. but how did you hear of this affair?" "i was sent for by i can't tell whom. when i came and saw what had happened, i immediately set about searching for a will that i made for mr. garie a few weeks since; it was witnessed and signed at my office, and he brought it away with him. i can't discover it anywhere. i've ransacked every cranny. it must have been carried off by some one. you are named in it conjointly with myself as executor. all the property is left to her, poor thing, and his children. we must endeavour to find it somewhere--at any rate the children are secure; they are the only heirs--he had not, to my knowledge, a single white relative. but let us go in and see the bodies." they walked together into the back room where the bodies were lying. mrs. garie was stretched upon the sofa, covered with a piano cloth; and her husband was laid upon a long table, with a silk window-curtain thrown across his face. the two gazed in silence on the face of mr. garie--the brow was still knit, the eyes staring vacantly, and the marble whiteness of the face unbroken, save by a few gouts of blood near a small blue spot over the eye where the bullet had entered. "he was the best-hearted creature in the world," said walters, as he re-covered the face. "won't you look at her?" asked mr. balch. "no, no--i can't," continued walters; "i've seen horrors enough for one morning. i've another thing on my mind! a friend who assisted in the defence of my house started up here last night, to warn them of their danger, and when i left home he had not returned: it's evident he hasn't been here, and i greatly fear some misfortune has befallen him. where are the children? poor little orphans, i must see them before i go." accompanied by mr. balch, he called at the house where clarence and em had found temporary shelter. the children ran to him as soon as he entered the room. "oh! mr. walters," sobbed clarence, "my mother's dead--my mother's dead!" "hush, dears--hush!" he replied, endeavouring to restrain his own tears, as he took little em in his arms. "don't cry, my darling," said he, as she gave rent to a fresh outburst of tears. "oh, mr. walters!" said she, still sobbing, "she was all the mother i had." mr. balch here endeavoured to assist in pacifying the two little mourners. "why don't father come?" asked clarence. "have you seen him, mr. walters?" mr. walters was quite taken aback by this inquiry, which clearly showed that the children were still unaware of the extent of their misfortunes. "i've seen him, my child," said he, evasively; "you'll see him before long." and fearful of further questioning, he left the house, promising soon to return. unable longer to endure her anxiety respecting her father, esther determined not to await the return of mr. walters, which had already been greatly delayed, but to go herself in search of him. it had occurred to her that, instead of returning from the garies direct to them, he had probably gone to his own home to see if it had been disturbed during the night. encouraged by this idea, without consulting any one, she hastily put on her cloak and bonnet, and took the direction of her home. numbers of people were wending their way to the lower part of the city, to gratify their curiosity by gazing upon the havoc made by the rioters during the past night. esther found her home a heap of smoking ruins; some of the neighbours who recognized her gathered round, expressing their sympathy and regret. but she seemed comparatively careless respecting the loss of their property; and in answer to their kind expressions, could only ask, "have you seen my father?--do you know where my father is?" none, however, had seen him; and after gazing for a short time upon the ruins of what was once a happy home, she turned mournfully away, and walked back to mr. walters's. "has father come?" she inquired, as soon as the door was opened. "not yet!" was the discouraging reply: "and mr. walters, he hasn't come back, either, miss!" esther stood for some moments hesitating whether to go in, or to proceed in her search. the voice of her mother calling her from the stairway decided her, and she went in. mrs. ellis and caddy wept freely on learning from esther the destruction of their home. this cause of grief, added to the anxiety produced by the prolonged absence of mr. ellis, rendered them truly miserable. whilst they were condoling with one another, mr. walters returned. he was unable to conceal his fears that something had happened to mr. ellis, and frankly told them so; he also gave a detailed account of what had befallen the garies, to the great horror and grief of all. as soon as arrangements could be made, mr. walters and esther set out in search of her father. all day long they went from place to place, but gained no tidings of him; and weary and disheartened they returned at night, bringing with them the distressing intelligence of their utter failure to procure any information respecting him. chapter xxiii. the lost one found. on the day succeeding the events described in our last chapter, mr. walters called upon mr. balch, for the purpose of making the necessary preparations for the interment of mr. and mrs. garie. "i think," said mr. balch, "we had better bury them in the ash-grove cemetery; it's a lovely spot--all my people are buried there." "the place is fine enough, i acknowledge," rejoined mr. walters; "but i much doubt if you can procure the necessary ground." "oh, yes, you can!" said mr. balch; "there are a number of lots still unappropriated." "that may very likely be so; but are you sure we can get one if we apply?" "of course we can--what is to prevent?" asked mr. balch. "you forget," replied mr. walters, "that mrs. garie was a coloured woman." "if it wasn't such a solemn subject i really should be obliged to laugh at you, walters," rejoined mr. balch, with a smile--"you talk ridiculously. what can her complexion have to do with her being buried there, i should like to know?" "it has everything to do with it! can it be possible you are not aware that they won't even permit a coloured person to walk through the ground, much less to be buried there!" "you astonish me, walters! are you sure of it?" "i give you my word of honour it is so! but why should you be astonished at such treatment of the dead, when you see how they conduct themselves towards the living? i have a friend," continued mr. walters, "who purchased a pew for himself and family in a white-church, and the deacons actually removed the floor from under it, to prevent his sitting there. they refuse us permission to kneel by the side of the white communicants at the lord's supper, and give us separate pews in obscure corners of their churches. all this you know--why, then, be surprised that they carry their prejudices into their graveyards?--the conduct is all of a piece." "well, walters, i know the way things are conducted in our churches is exceedingly reprehensible; but i really did not know they stretched their prejudices to such an extent." "i assure you they do, then," resumed mr. walters; "and in this very matter you'll find i'm correct. ask stormley, the undertaker, and hear what he'll tell you. oh! a case in point.--about six months ago, one of our wealthiest citizens lost by death an old family servant, a coloured woman, a sort of half-housekeeper--half-friend. she resembled him so much, that it was generally believed she was his sister. well, he tried to have her laid in their family vault, and it was refused; the directors thought it would be creating a bad precedent--they said, as they would not sell lots to coloured persons, they couldn't consistently permit them to be buried in those of the whites." "then ash-grove must be abandoned; and in lieu of that what can you propose?" asked mr. balch. "i should say we can't do better than lay them in the graveyard of the coloured episcopal church." "let it be there, then. you will see to the arrangements, walters. i shall have enough on my hands for the present, searching for that will: i have already offered a large reward for it--i trust it may turn up yet." "perhaps it may," rejoined mr. walters; "we must hope so, at least. i've brought the children to my house, where they are under the care of a young lady who was a great friend of their mother's; though it seems like putting too much upon the poor young creature, to throw them upon her for consolation, when she is almost distracted with her own griefs. i think i mentioned to you yesterday, that her father is missing; and, to add to their anxieties, their property has been all destroyed by the rioters. they have a home with me for the present, and may remain there as long as they please." "oh! i remember you told me something of them yesterday; and now i come to think of it, i saw in the journal this morning, that a coloured man was lying at the hospital very much injured, whose name they could not ascertain. can it be possible that he is the man you are in search of?" "let me see the article," asked mr. walters. mr. balch handed him the paper, and pointed out the paragraph in question. "i'll go immediately to the hospital," said he, as he finished reading, "and see if it is my poor friend; i have great fears that it is. you'll excuse my leaving so abruptly--i must be off immediately." on hastening to the hospital, mr. walters arrived just in time to be admitted to the wards; and on being shown the person whose name they had been unable to discover, he immediately recognized his friend. "ellis, my poor fellow," he exclaimed, springing forward. "stop, stop," cried the attendant, laying his hand upon mr. walters's shoulder; "he is hovering between life and death, the least agitation might be fatal to him. the doctor says, if he survives the night, he may probably get better; but he has small chance of life. i hardly think he will last twelve hours more, he's been dreadfully beaten; there are two or three gashes on his head, his leg is broken, and his hands have been so much cut, that the surgeon thinks they'll never be of any use to him, even if he recovers." "what awful intelligence for his family," said mr. walters; "they are already half distracted about him." mr. ellis lay perfectly unconscious of what was passing around him, and his moans were deeply affecting to hear, unable to move but one limb--he was the picture of helplessness and misery. "it's time to close; we don't permit visitors to remain after this hour," said the attendant; "come to-morrow, you can see your friend, and remain longer with him;" and bidding mr. walters good morning, he ushered him from the ward. "how shall i ever find means to break this to the girls and their mother?" said he, as he left the gates of the hospital; "it will almost kill them; really i don't know what i shall say to them." he walked homeward with hesitating steps, and on arriving at his house, he paused awhile before the door, mustering up courage to enter; at last he opened it with the air of a man who had a disagreeable duty to perform, and had made up his mind to go through with it. "tell miss ellis to come to the drawing-room," said he to the servant; "merely say she's wanted--don't say i've returned." he waited but a few moments before esther made her appearance, looking sad and anxious. "oh, it's you," she said, with some surprise. "you have news of father?" "yes, esther, i have news; but i am sorry to say not of a pleasant character." "oh, mr. walters, nothing serious i hope has happened to him?" she asked, in an agitated tone. "i'm sorry to say there has, esther; he has met with an accident--a sad and severe one--he's been badly wounded." esther turned deadly pale at this announcement, and leaned upon the table for support. "i sent for you, esther," continued mr. walters, "in preference to your mother, because i knew you to be courageous in danger, and i trusted you would be equally so in misfortune. your father's case is a very critical one--very. it appears that after leaving here, he fell into the hands of the rioters, by whom he was shockingly beaten. he was taken to the hospital, where he now remains." "oh, let me go to him at once, do, mr. walters! "my dear child, it is impossible for you to see him to-day, it is long past the visiting hour; moreover, i don't think him in a state that would permit the least agitation. to-morrow you can go with me." esther did not weep, her heart was too full for tears. with a pale face, and trembling lips, she said to mr. walters, "god give us strength to bear up under these misfortunes; we are homeless--almost beggars--our friends have been murdered, and my father is now trembling on the brink of the grave; such troubles as these," said she, sinking into a chair, "are enough to crush any one." "i know it, esther; i know it, my child. i sympathize with you deeply. all that i have is at your disposal. you may command me in anything. give yourself no uneasiness respecting the future of your mother and family, let the result to your father be what it may: always bear in mind that, next to god, i am your best friend. i speak thus frankly to you, esther, because i would not have you cherish any hopes of your father's recovery; from his appearance, i should say there is but little, if any. i leave to you, my good girl, the task of breaking this sad news to your mother and sister; i would tell them, but i must confess, esther, i'm not equal to it, the events of the last day or two have almost overpowered me." esther's lips quivered again, as she repeated the words, "little hope; did the doctor say that?" she asked. "i did not see the doctor," replied he; "perhaps there may be a favourable change during the night. i'd have you prepare for the worst, whilst you hope for the best. go now and try to break it as gently as possible to your mother." esther left the room with heavy step, and walked to the chamber where her mother was sitting. caddy also was there, rocking backwards and forwards in a chair, in an earnest endeavour to soothe to sleep little em, who was sitting in her lap. "who was it, esther?" asked, her mother. "mr. walters," she hesitatingly answered. "was it? well, has he heard anything of your father?" she asked, anxiously. esther turned away her head, and remained silent. "why don't you answer?" asked her mother, with an alarmed look; "if you know anything of him, for god's sake tell me. whatever it may be, it can't be worse than i expect; is he dead?" she asked. "no--no, mother, he's not dead; but he's sick, very sick, mother. mr. walters found him in the hospital." "in the hospital! how came he there? don't deceive me, esther, there's something behind all this; are you telling me the truth? is he still alive?" "mother, believe me, he is still alive, but how long he may remain so, god only knows." mrs. ellis, at this communication, leant her head upon the table, and wept uncontrollably. caddy put down her little charge, and stood beside her mother, endeavouring to soothe her, whilst unable to restrain her own grief. "let us go to him, esther," said her mother, rising; "i must see him--let us go at once." "we can't, mother; mr. walters says it's impossible for us to see him to-day; they don't admit visitors after a certain hour in the morning." "they _must_ admit me: i'll tell them i'm his wife; when they know that, they _can't_ refuse me." quickly dressing themselves, esther, caddy, and their mother were about to start for the hospital, when mr. walters entered. "where are you all going?" he asked. "to the hospital," answered mrs. ellis; "i must see my husband." "i have just sent there, ellen, to make arrangements to hear of him every hour. you will only have the grief of being refused admission if you go; they're exceedingly strict--no one is admitted to visit a patient after a certain hour; try and compose yourselves; sit down, i want to talk to you for a little while." mrs. ellis mechanically obeyed; and on sitting down, little em crept into her lap, and nestled in her arms. "ellen," said mr. walters, taking a seat by her; "it's useless to disguise the fact that ellis is in a precarious situation--how long he may be sick it is impossible to say; as soon as it is practicable, should he get better, we will bring him here. you remember, ellen, that years ago, when i was young and poor, ellis often befriended me--now 'tis my turn. you must all make up your minds to remain with me--for ever, if you like--for the present, whether you like it or not. i'm going to be dreadfully obstinate, and have my own way completely about the matter. here i've a large house, furnished from top to bottom with every comfort. often i've wandered through it, and thought myself a selfish old fellow to be surrounded with so much luxury, and keep it entirely to myself. god has blessed me with abundance, and to what better use can it be appropriated than the relief of my friends? now, ellen, you shall superintend the whole of the establishment, esther shall nurse her father, caddy shall stir up the servants, and i'll look on and find my happiness in seeing you all happy. now, what objection can you urge against that arrangement?" concluded he, triumphantly. "why, we shall put you to great inconvenience, and place ourselves under an obligation we can never repay," answered mrs. ellis. "don't despair of that--never mind the obligation; try and be as cheerful as you can; to-morrow we shall see ellis, and perhaps find him better; let us at least hope for the best." esther looked with grateful admiration at mr. walters, as he left the room. "what a good heart he has, mother," said she, as he closed the door behind him; "just such a great tender heart as one should expect to find in so fine a form." mrs. ellis and her daughters were the first who were found next day, at the office of the doorkeeper of the hospital waiting an opportunity to see their sick friends. "you're early, ma'am," said a little bald-headed official, who sat at his desk fronting the door; "take a chair near the fire--it's dreadful cold this morning." "very cold," replied esther, taking a seat beside her mother; "how long will it be before we can go in?" "oh, you've good an hour to wait--the doctor hasn't come yet," replied the door-keeper. "how is my husband?" tremblingly inquired mrs. ellis. "who is your husband?--you don't know his number, do you? never know names here--go by numbers." "we don't know the number," rejoined esther; "my father's name is ellis; he was brought here two or three nights since--he was beaten by the mob." "oh, yes; i know now who you mean--number sixty--bad case that, shocking bad case--hands chopped--head smashed--leg broke; he'll have to cross over, i guess--make a die of it, i'm afraid." mrs. ellis shuddered, and turned pale, as the man coolly discussed her husband's injuries, and their probable fatal termination. caddy, observing her agitation, said, "please, sir, don't talk of it; mother can't bear it." the man looked at them compassionately for a few moments--then continued: "you mustn't think me hard-hearted--i see so much of these things, that i can't feel them as others do. this is a dreadful thing to you, no doubt, but it's an every-day song to me--people are always coming here mangled in all sorts of ways--so, you see, i've got used to it--in fact, i'd rather miss 'em now if they didn't come. i've sat in this seat every day for almost twenty years;" and he looked on the girls and their mother as he gave them this piece of information as if he thought they ought to regard him henceforth with great reverence. not finding them disposed to converse, the doorkeeper resumed the newspaper he was reading when they entered, and was soon deeply engrossed in a horrible steam-boat accident. the sound of wheels in the courtyard attracting his attention, he looked up, and remarked: "here's the doctor--as soon as he has walked the wards you'll be admitted." mrs. ellis and her daughters turned round as the door opened, and, to their great joy, recognized doctor burdett. "how d'ye do?" said he, extending his hand to mrs. ellis--"what's the matter? crying!" he continued, looking at their tearful faces; "what has happened?" "oh, doctor," said esther, "father's lying here, very much injured; and they think he'll die," said she, giving way to a fresh burst of grief. "very much injured--die--how is this?--i knew nothing of it--i haven't been here before this week." esther hereupon briefly related the misfortunes that had befallen her father. "dear me--dear me," repeated the kind old doctor. "there, my dear; don't fret--he'll get better, my child--i'll take him in hand at once. my dear mrs. ellis, weeping won't do the least good, and only make you sick yourself. stop, do now--i'll go and see him immediately, and as soon as possible you shall be admitted." they had not long to wait before a message came from doctor burdett, informing them that they could now be permitted to see the sufferer. "you must control yourselves," said the doctor to the sobbing women, as he met them at the door; "you mustn't do anything to agitate him--his situation is extremely critical." the girls and their mother followed him to the bedside of mr. ellis, who, ghastly pale, lay before them, apparently unconscious. mrs. ellis gave but one look at her husband, and, with a faint cry, sank fainting upon the floor. the noise partially aroused him; he turned his head, and, after an apparent effort, recognized his daughters standing beside him: he made a feeble attempt to raise his mutilated hands, and murmured faintly, "you've come at last!" then closing his eyes, he dropped his arms, as if exhausted by the effort. esther knelt beside him, and pressed a kiss on his pale face. "father!--father!" said she, softly. he opened his eyes again, and a smile of pleasure broke over his wan face, and lighted up his eyes, as he feebly said, "god bless you, darlings! i thought you'd never come. where's mother and caddy?" "here," answered esther, "here, by me; your looks frightened her so, that she's fainted." doctor burdett here interposed, and said: "you must all go now; he's too weak to bear more at present." "let me stay with him a little longer," pleaded esther. "no, my child, it's impossible," he continued; "besides, your mother will need your attention;" and, whilst he spoke, he led her into an adjoining room, where the others had preceded her. chapter xxiv. charlie distinguishes himself. charlie had now been many weeks under the hospitable roof of mrs. bird, improving in health and appearance. indeed, it would have been a wonder if he had not, as the kind mistress of the mansion seemed to do nought else, from day to day, but study plans for his comfort and pleasure. there was one sad drawback upon the contentment of the dear old lady, and that was her inability to procure charlie's admission to the academy. one morning mr. whately called upon her, and, throwing himself into a chair, exclaimed: "it's all to no purpose; their laws are as unalterable as those of the medes and persians--arguments and entreaty are equally thrown away upon them; i've been closeted at least half a dozen times with each director; and as all i can say won't make your _protege_ a shade whiter, i'm afraid his admission to the academy must be given up." "it's too bad," rejoined mrs. bird. "and who, may i ask, were the principal opposers?" "they all opposed it, except mr. weeks and mr. bentham." "indeed!--why they are the very ones that i anticipated would go against it tooth and nail. and mr. glentworth--surely he was on our side?" "he!--why, my dear madam, he was the most rabid of the lot. with his sanctified face and canting tongue!" "i'm almost ashamed to own it--but it's the truth, and i shouldn't hesitate to tell it--i found the most pious of the directors the least accessible; as to old glentworth, he actually talked to me as if i was recommending the committal of some horrid sin. i'm afraid i shall be set down by him as a rabid abolitionist, i got so warm on the subject. i've cherished as strong prejudices against coloured people as any one; but i tell you, seeing how contemptible it makes others appear, has gone a great way towards eradicating it in me. i found myself obliged to use the same arguments against it that are used by the abolitionists, and in endeavouring to convince others of the absurdity of their prejudices, i convinced myself." "i'd set my heart upon it," said mrs. bird, in a tone of regret; "but i suppose i'll have to give it up. charlie don't know i've made application for his admission, and has been asking me to let him go. a great many of the boys who attend there have become acquainted with him, and it was only yesterday that mr. glentworth's sons were teasing me to consent to his beginning there the next term. the boys," concluded she, "have better hearts than their parents." "oh, i begin to believe it's all sham, this prejudice; i'm getting quite disgusted with myself for having had it--or rather thinking i had it. as for saying it is innate, or that there is any natural antipathy to that class, it's all perfect folly; children are not born with it, or why shouldn't they shrink from a black nurse or playmate? it's all bosh," concluded he, indignantly, as he brought his cane down with a rap. "charlie's been quite a means of grace to you," laughingly rejoined mrs. bird, amused at his vehemence of manner. "well, i'm going to send him to sabbath-school next sunday; and, if there is a rebellion against his admission there, i shall be quite in despair." it is frequently the case, that we are urged by circumstances to the advocacy of a measure in which we take but little interest, and of the propriety of which we are often very sceptical; but so surely as it is just in itself, in our endeavours to convert others we convince ourselves; and, from lukewarm apologists, we become earnest advocates. this was just mr. whately's case: he had begun to canvass for the admission of charlie with a doubtful sense of its propriety, and in attempting to overcome the groundless prejudices of others, he was convicted of his own. happily, in his case, conviction was followed by conversion, and as he walked home from mrs. bird's, he made up his mind that, if they attempted to exclude charlie from the sabbath-school, he would give them a piece of his mind, and then resign his superintendency of it. on arriving at home, he found waiting for him a young lady, who was formerly a member of his class in the sabbath-school. "i've come," said she, "to consult you about forming an adult class in our school for coloured persons. we have a girl living with us, who would be very glad to attend, and she knows two or three others. i'll willingly take the class myself. i've consulted the pastor and several others, and no one seems to anticipate any objections from the scholars, if we keep them on a separate bench, and do not mix them up with the white children." "i'm delighted to hear you propose it," answered mr. whately, quite overjoyed at the opening it presented, "the plan meets my warmest approval. i decidedly agree with you in the propriety of our making some effort for the elevation and instruction of this hitherto neglected class--any aid i can render----" "you astonish me," interrupted miss cass, "though i must say very agreeably. you were the last person from whom i thought of obtaining any countenance. i did not come to you until armed with the consent of almost all the parties interested, because from you i anticipated considerable opposition," and in her delight, the young girl grasped mr. whately's hand, and shook it very heartily. "oh, my opinions relative to coloured people have lately undergone considerable modification; in fact," said he, with some little confusion, "quite a thorough revolution. i don't, think we have quite done our duty by these people. well, well, we must make the future atone for the past." miss cass had entered upon her project with all the enthusiasm of youth, and being anxious that her class, "in point of numbers," should make a presentable appearance, had drafted into it no less a person than aunt comfort. aunt comfort was a personage of great importance in the little village of warmouth, and one whose services were called into requisition on almost every great domestic occasion. at births she frequently officiated, and few young mothers thought themselves entirely safe if the black good-humoured face of aunt comfort was not to be seen at their bedside. she had a hand in the compounding of almost every bridecake, and had been known to often leave houses of feasting, to prepare weary earth-worn travellers for their final place of rest. every one knew, and all liked her, and no one was more welcome at the houses of the good people of warmouth than aunt comfort. but whilst rendering her all due praise for her domestic acquirements, justice compels us to remark that aunt comfort was not a literary character. she could get up a shirt to perfection, and made irreproachable chowder, but she was not a woman of letters. in fact, she had arrived at maturity at a time when negroes and books seldom came in familiar contact; and if the truth must be told, she cared very little about the latter. "but jist to 'blege miss cass," she consented to attend her class, averring as she did so, "that she didn't 'spect she was gwine to larn nothin' when she got thar." miss cass, however, was of the contrary opinion, and anticipated that after a few sabbaths, aunt comfort would prove to be quite a literary phenomenon. the first time their class assembled the white children well-nigh dislocated their necks, in their endeavours to catch glimpses of the coloured scholars, who were seated on a backless bench, in an obscure corner of the room. prominent amongst them shone aunt comfort, who in honour of this extraordinary occasion, had retrimmed her cap, which was resplendent with bows of red ribbon as large as peonies. she had a sunday-school primer in her hand, and was repeating the letters with the utmost regularity, as miss cass pronounced them. they got on charmingly until after crossing over the letter o, as a matter of course they came to p and q. "look here," said aunt comfort, with a look of profound erudition, "here's anoder o. what's de use of having two of 'em?" "no, no, aunt comfort--that's q--the letter q." "umph," grunted the old woman, incredulously, "what's de use of saying dat's a q, when you jest said not a minute ago 'twas o?" "this is not the same," rejoined the teacher, "don't you see the little tail at the bottom of it?" aunt comfort took off her silver spectacles, and gave the glasses of them a furious rub, then after essaying another look, exclaimed, "what, you don't mean dat 'ere little speck down at the bottom of it, does yer?" "yes, aunt comfort, that little speck, as you call it, makes all the difference--it makes o into q." "oh, go 'way, child," said she, indignantly, "you isn't gwine to fool me dat ar way. i knows you of old, honey--you's up to dese 'ere things--you know you allus was mighty 'chevious, and i isn't gwine to b'lieve dat dat ar little speck makes all the difference--no such thing, case it don't--deys either both o's or both q's. i'm clar o' dat--deys either one or tother." knowing by long experience the utter futility of attempting to convince aunt comfort that she was in the wrong, by anything short of a miracle, the teacher wisely skipped over the obnoxious letter, then all went smoothly on to the conclusion of the alphabet. the lesson having terminated, miss cass looked up and discovered standing near her a coloured boy, who she correctly surmised was sent as an addition to her class. "come here, and sit down," said she, pointing to a seat next aunt comfort. "what is your name?" charlie gave his name and residence, which were entered in due form on the teacher's book. "now, charles," she continued, "do you know your letters?" "yes, ma'am," was the answer. "can you spell?" she inquired. to this also charlie gave an affirmative, highly amused at the same time at being asked such a question. miss cass inquired no further into the extent of his acquirements, it never having entered her head that he could do more than spell. so handing him one of the primers, she pointed out a line on which to begin. the spirit of mischief entered our little friend, and he stumbled through b-l-a bla--b-l-i bli--b-l-o blo--b-l-u blu, with great gravity and slowness. "you spell quite nicely, particularly for a little coloured boy," said miss cass, encouragingly, as he concluded the line; "take this next," she continued, pointing to another, "and when you have learned it, i will hear you again." it was the custom of the superintendent to question the scholars upon a portion of bible history, given out the sabbath previous for study during the week. it chanced that upon the day of which we write, the subject for examination was one with which charlie was quite familiar. accordingly, when the questions were put to the school, he answered boldly and quickly to many of them, and with an accuracy that astonished his fellow scholars. "how did you learn the answers to those questions--you can't read?" said miss cass. "yes, but i can read," answered charlie, with a merry twinkle in his eye. "why didn't you tell me so before?" she asked. "because you didn't ask me," he replied, suppressing a grin. this was true enough, so miss cass, having nothing farther to say, sat and listened, whilst he answered the numerous and sometimes difficult questions addressed to the scholars. not so, aunt comfort. she could not restrain her admiration of this display of talent on the part of one of her despised race; she was continually breaking out with expressions of wonder and applause. "jis' hear dat--massy on us--only jis' listen to de chile," said she, "talks jis' de same as if he was white. why, boy, where you learn all dat?" "across the red sea," cried charlie, in answer to a question from the desk of the superintendent. "'cross de red sea! umph, chile, you been dere?" asked aunt comfort, with a face full of wonder. "what did you say?" asked charlie, whose attention had been arrested by the last question. "why i asked where you learned all dat 'bout de children of israel." "oh, i learned that at philadelphia," was his reply; "i learned it at school with the rest of the boys." "you did!" exclaimed she, raising her hands with astonishment. "is dere many more of 'em like you?" charlie did not hear this last question of aunt comfort's, therefore she was rather startled by his replying in a loud tone, "_immense hosts_." "did i ever--jis' hear dat, dere's ''mense hostes' of 'em jest like him! only think of it. is dey all dere yet, honey?" "they were all drowned." "oh, lordy, lordy," rejoined she, aghast with horror; for charlie's reply to a question regarding the fate of pharaoh's army, had been by her interpreted as an answer to her question respecting his coloured schoolmates at philadelphia. "and how did you 'scape, honey," continued she, "from drowning 'long wid the rest of 'em?" "why i wasn't there, it was thousands of years ago." "look here. what do you mean?" she whispered; "didn't you say jest now dat you went to school wid 'em?" this was too much for charlie, who shook all over with suppressed laughter; nor was miss cass proof against the contagion--she was obliged to almost suffocate herself with her handkerchief to avoid a serious explosion. "aunt comfort, you are mistaking him," said she, as soon as she could recover her composure; "he is answering the questions of the superintendent--not yours, and very well he has answered them, too," continued she. "i like to see little boys aspiring: i am glad to see you so intelligent--you must persevere, charlie." "yes, you must, honey," chimed in aunt comfort. "i'se very much like miss cass; i likes to see children--'specially children of colour--have _expiring_ minds." charlie went quite off at this, and it was only by repeated hush--hushes, from miss cass, and a pinch in the back from aunt comfort, that he was restored to a proper sense of his position. the questioning being now finished, mr. whately came to charlie, praised him highly for his aptness, and made some inquiries respecting his knowledge of the catechism; also whether he would be willing to join the class that was to be catechised in the church during the afternoon. to this, charlie readily assented, and, at the close of the school, was placed at the foot of the class, preparatory to going into the church. the public catechizing of the scholars was always an event in the village; but now a novelty was given it, by the addition of a black lamb to the flock, and, as a matter of course, a much greater interest was manifested. had a lion entered the doors of st. stephen's church, he might have created greater consternation, but he could not have attracted more attention than did our little friend on passing beneath its sacred portals. the length of the aisle seemed interminable to him, and on his way to the altar he felt oppressed by the scrutiny of eyes through which he was compelled to pass. mr. dural, the pastor, looked kindly at him, as he stood in front of the chancel, and charlie took heart from his cheering smile. now, to aunt comfort (who was the only coloured person who regularly attended the church) a seat had been assigned beside the organ; which elevated position had been given her that the congregation might indulge in their devotions without having their prejudices shocked by a too close contemplation of her ebony countenance. but aunt comfort, on this occasion, determined to get near enough to hear all that passed, and, leaving her accustomed seat, she planted herself in one of the aisles of the gallery overlooking the altar, where she remained almost speechless with wonder and astonishment at the unprecedented sight of a woolly head at the foot of the altar. charlie got on very successfully until called upon to repeat the lord's prayer; and, strange to say, at this critical juncture, his memory forsook him, and he was unable to utter a word of it: for the life of him he could not think of anything but "now i lay me down to sleep"--and confused and annoyed he stood unable to proceed. at this stage of affairs, aunt comfort's interest in charlie's success had reached such a pitch that her customary awe of the place she was in entirely departed, and she exclaimed, "i'll give yer a start--'our farrer,'"--then overwhelmed by the consciousness that she had spoken out in meeting, she sank down behind a pew-door, completely extinguished. at this there was an audible titter, that was immediately suppressed; after which, charlie recovered his memory, and, started by the opportune prompting of aunt comfort, he recited it correctly. a few questions more terminated the examination, and the children sat down in front of the altar until the conclusion of the service. mrs. bird, highly delighted with the _debut_ of her _protege_, bestowed no end of praises upon him, and even made the coachman walk home, that charlie might have a seat in the carriage, as she alleged she was sure he must be much fatigued and overcome with the excitement of the day; then taking the reins into her own hands, she drove them safely home. chapter xxv. the heir. we must now return to philadelphia, and pay a visit to the office of mr. balch. we shall find that gentleman in company with mr. walters: both look anxious, and are poring over a letter which is outspread before them. "it was like a thunder-clap to me," said mr. balch: "the idea of there being another heir never entered my brain--i didn't even know he had a living relative." "when did you get the letter?" asked walters. "only this morning, and i sent for you immediately! let us read it again--we'll make another attempt to decipher this incomprehensible name. confound the fellow! why couldn't he write so that some one besides himself could read it! we must stumble through it," said he, as he again began the letter as follows:-- "dear sir,--immediately on receipt of your favour, i called upon mr. thurston, to take the necessary steps for securing the property of your late client. to my great surprise, i found that another claimant had started up, and already taken the preliminary measures to entering upon possession. this gentleman, mr.---- "now, what would you call that name, walters?--to me it looks like stimmens, or stunners, or something of the kind!" "never mind the name," exclaimed walters--"skip that--let me hear the rest of the letter; we shall find out who he is soon enough, in all conscience." "well, then," resumed mr. balch--"this gentleman, mr.----, is a resident in your city; and he will, no doubt, take an early opportunity of calling on you, in reference to the matter. it is my opinion, that without a will in their favour, these children cannot oppose his claim successfully, if he can prove his consanguinity to mr. garie. his lawyer here showed me a copy of the letters and papers which are to be used as evidence, and, i must say, they _are entirely_ without flaw. he proves himself, undoubtedly, to be the first cousin of mr. garie. you are, no doubt, aware that these children being the offspring of a slave-woman, cannot inherit, in this state (except under certain circumstances), the property of a white father. i am, therefore, very much afraid that they are entirely at his mercy." "well, then," said walters, when mr. balch finished reading the letter, "it is clear there is an heir, and his claim _must_ be well sustained, if such a man as beckley, the first lawyer in the state, does not hesitate to endorse it; and as all the property (with the exception of a few thousands in my hands) lies in georgia, i'm afraid the poor children will come off badly, unless this new heir prove to be a man of generosity--at all events, it seems we are completely at his mercy." "we must hope for the best," rejoined mr. balch. "if he has any heart, he certainly will make some provision for them. the disappearance of that will is to me most unaccountable! i am confident it was at his house. it seemed so singular that none of his papers should be missing, except that--there were a great many others, deeds, mortgages, &c. scattered over the floor, but no will!" the gentlemen were thus conversing, when they heard a tap at the door. "come in!" cried mr. balch; and, in answer to the request, in walked mr. george stevens. mr. walters and mr. balch bowed very stiffly, and the latter inquired what had procured him the honour of a visit. "i have called upon you in reference to the property of the late mr. garie." "oh! you are acting in behalf of this new claimant, i suppose?" rejoined mr. balch. "sir!" said mr. stevens, looking as though he did not thoroughly understand him. "i said," repeated mr. balch, "that i presumed you called in behalf of this new-found heir to mr. garie's property." mr. stevens looked at him for a moment, then drawing himself up, exclaimed, "i am the heir!" "you!--_you_ the heir!" cried both the gentlemen, almost simultaneously. "yes, i am the heir!" coolly repeated mr. stevens, with an assured look. "i am the first cousin of mr. garie!" "you his first cousin?--it is impossible!" said walters. "you'll discover it is not only possible, but true--i am, as i said, mr. garie's first cousin!" "if you are that, you are more," said walters, fiercely--"you're his murderer!" at this charge mr. stevens turned deathly pale. "yes," continued walters; "you either murdered him, or instigated others to do so! it was you who directed the rioters against both him and me--i have proof of what i say and can produce it. now your motive is clear as day--you wanted his money, and destroyed him to obtain it! his blood is on your hands!" hissed walters through his clenched teeth. in the excitement consequent upon such a charge, mr. stevens, unnoticed by himself, had overturned a bottle of red ink, and its contents had slightly stained his hands. when walters charged him with having mr. garie's blood upon them, he involuntarily looked down and saw his hands stained with red. an expression of intense horror flitted over his face when he observed it; but quickly regaining his composure, he replied, "it's only a little ink." "yes, i know _that_ is ink," rejoined walters, scornfully; "look at him, balch," he continued, "he doesn't dare to look either of us in the face." "it's false," exclaimed stevens, with an effort to appear courageous; "it's as false as hell, and any man that charges me with it is a liar." the words had scarcely passed his lips, when walters sprang upon him with the ferocity of a tiger, and seizing him by the throat, shook and whirled him about as though he were a plaything. "stop, stop! walters," cried mr. balch, endeavouring to loose his hold upon the throat of mr. stevens, who was already purple in the face; "let him go, this violence can benefit neither party. loose your hold." at this remonstrance, walters dashed stevens from him into the farthest corner of the room, exclaiming, "now, go and prosecute me if you dare, and i'll tell for what i chastised you; prosecute me for an assault, if you think you can risk the consequences." mr. balch assisted him from the floor and placed him in a chair, where he sat holding his side, and panting for breath. when he was able to speak, he exclaimed, with a look of concentrated malignity, "remember, we'll be even some day; i never received a blow and forgot it afterwards, bear that in mind." "this will never do, gentlemen," said mr. balch, soothingly: "this conduct is unworthy of you. you are unreasonable both of you. when you have cooled down we will discuss the matter as we should." "you'll discuss it alone then," said stevens, rising, and walking to the door: "and when you have any further communication to make, you must come to me." "stop, stop, don't go," cried mr. balch, following him out at the door, which they closed behind them; "don't go away in a passion, mr. stevens. you and walters are both too hasty. come in here and sit down," said he, opening the door of a small adjoining room, "wait here one moment, i'll come back to you." "this will never do, walters," said he, as he re-entered his office; "the fellow has the upper hand of us, and we must humour him; we should suppress our own feelings for the children's sake. you are as well aware as i am of the necessity of some compromise--we are in his power for the present, and must act as circumstances compel us to." "i can't discuss the matter with him," interrupted walters, "he's an unmitigated scoundrel. i couldn't command my temper in his presence for five minutes. if you can arrange anything with him at all advantageous to the children, i shall be satisfied, it will be more than i expect; only bear in mind, that what i have in my hands belonging to garie we must retain, he knows nothing of that." "very well," rejoined mr. balch, "depend upon it i'll do my best;" and closing the door, he went back to mr. stevens. "now, mr. stevens," said he, drawing up a chair, "we will talk over this matter dispassionately, and try and arrive at some amicable arrangement: be kind enough to inform me what your claims are." "mr. balch, _you_ are a gentleman," began mr. stevens, "and therefore i'm willing to discuss the matter thoroughly with you. you'll find me disposed to do a great deal for these children: but i wish it distinctly understood at the beginning, that whatever i may give them, i bestow as a favour. i concede nothing to them as a right, legally they have not the slightest claim upon me; of that you, who are an excellent lawyer, must be well aware." "we won't discuss that point at present, mr. stevens. i believe you intimated you would be kind enough to say upon what evidence you purposed sustaining your claims?" "well, to come to the point, then," said stevens; "the deceased mr. garie was, as i before said, my first cousin. his father and my mother were brother and sister. my mother married in opposition to her parents' desires; they cut her off from the family, and for years there was no communication between them. at my father's death, my mother made overtures for a reconciliation, which were contemptuously rejected, at length she died. i was brought up in ignorance of who my grandparents were; and only a few months since, on the death of my father's sister, did i make the discovery. here," said he, extending the packet of letters which, the reader will remember once agitated, him so strangely, "here are the letters that passed between my mother and her father." mr. balch took up one and read:-- "_savannah_, -- "madam,--permit me to return this letter (wherein you declare yourself the loving and repentant daughter of bernard garie) and at the same time inform you, that by your own. acts you have deprived yourself of all claim to that relation. in opposition to my wishes, and in open defiance of my express commands, you chose to unite your fortune with one in every respect your inferior. if that union has not resulted as happily as you expected, you must sustain yourself by the reflection that you are the author of your own misfortunes and alone to blame for your present miserable condition.--respectfully yours, "bernard garie." mr. balch read, one after another, letters of a similar purport--in fact, a long correspondence between bernard garie and the mother of mr. stevens. when he had finished, the latter remarked, "in addition to those, i can produce my mother's certificate of baptism, her marriage certificate, and every necessary proof of my being her son. if that does not suffice to make a strong case, i am at a loss to imagine what will." mr. balch pondered a few moments, and then inquired, looking steadily at mr. stevens, "how long have you known of this relationship?" "oh, i've known it these three years." "three years! why, my dear sir, only a few moments ago you said a few months." "oh, did i?" said mr. stevens, very much confused; "i meant, or should have said, three years." "then, of course you were aware that mr. garie was your cousin when he took the house beside you?" "oh, yes--that is--yes--yes; i _was_ aware of it." "and did you make any overtures of a social character?" asked mr. balch. "well, yes--that is to say, my wife did." "_where were you the night of the murder?_" mr. stevens turned pale at this question, and replied, hesitatingly, "why, at home, of course." "you were at home, and saw the house of your cousins assaulted, and made no effort to succour them or their children. the next morning you are one of the coroner's inquest, and hurry through the proceedings, never once saying a word of your relationship to them, nor yet making any inquiry respecting the fate of the children. _it is very singular_." "i don't see what this cross-questioning is to amount to; it has nothing to do with my claim as heir." "we are coming to that," rejoined mr. balch. "this, as i said, is very singular; and when i couple it with some other circumstances that have come to my knowledge, it is more than singular--_it is suspicious_. here are a number of houses assaulted by a mob. two or three days before the assault takes place, a list in your handwriting, and which is headed, '_places to be attacked_,' is found, under circumstances that leave no doubt that it came directly from you. well, the same mob that attacks these places--_marked out by you_--traverse a long distance to reach the house of your next-door neighbour. they break into it, and kill him; and you, who are aware at the time that he is your own cousin, do not attempt to interpose to prevent it, although it can be proved that you were all-powerful with the marauders. no! you allow him to be destroyed without an effort to save him, and immediately claim his property. now, mr. stevens, people disposed to be suspicions--seeing how much you were to be the gainer by his removal, and knowing you had some connection with this mob--might not scruple to say that _you_ instigated the attack by which he lost his life; and i put it to you--now don't you think that, if it was any one else, you would say that the thing looked suspicious?" mr. stevens winced at this, but made no effort to reply. mr. balch continued, "what i was going to remark is simply this. as we are in possession of these facts, and able to prove them by competent witnesses, we should not be willing to remain perfectly silent respecting it, unless you made what _we_ regarded as a suitable provision for the children." "i'm willing, as i said before, to do something; but don't flatter yourself i'll do any more than i originally intended from any fear of disclosures from you. i'm not to be frightened," said mr. stevens. "i'm not at all disposed to attempt to frighten you: however, you know how far a mere statement of these facts would go towards rendering your position in society more agreeable. a person who has been arrested on suspicion of murder is apt to be shunned and distrusted. it can't be helped; people are so very squeamish--they _will_ draw back, you know, under such circumstances." "i don't see how such a suspicion can attach itself to me," rejoined stevens, sharply. "oh, well, we won't discuss that any further: let me hear what you will do for the children." mr. balch saw, from the nervous and embarrassed manner of mr. stevens, that the indirect threat of exposing him had had considerable effect; and his downcast looks and agitation rather strengthened in his mind the suspicions that had been excited by the disclosures of mr. walters. after a few moments' silence, mr. stevens said, "i'll settle three thousand dollars on each of the children. now i think that is treating them liberally." "liberally!" exclaimed balch, in a tone of contempt--"liberally! you acquire by the death of their father property worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and you offer these children, who are the rightful heirs, three thousand dollars! that, sir, won't suffice." "i think it should, then," rejoined stevens. "by the laws of georgia these children, instead of being his heirs, are my slaves. their mother was a slave before them, and they were born slaves; and if they were in savannah, i could sell them both to-morrow. on the whole, i think i've made you a very fair offer, and i'd advise you to think of it." "no, mr. stevens; i shall accept no such paltry sum. if you wish a quick and peaceful possession of what you are pleased to regard as your rights, you must tender something more advantageous, or i shall feel compelled to bring this thing into court, even at the risk of loss; and there, you know, we should be obliged to make a clear statement of _everything_ connected with this business. it might be advantageous to _us_ to bring the thing fully before the court and public--but i'm exceedingly doubtful whether it would advance _your_ interest." stevens winced at this, and asked, "what would you consider a fair offer?" "i should consider _all_ a just offer, half a fair one, and a quarter as little as you could have the conscience to expect us to take." "i don't see any use in this chaffering, mr. balch," said stephens; "you can't expect me to give you any such sums as you propose. name a sum that you can reasonably expect to get." "well," said mr. balch, rising, "you must give us fifteen thousand dollars, and you should think yourself well off then. we could commence a suit, and put you to nearly that expense to defend it; to say nothing of the notoriety that the circumstance would occasion you. both walters and i are willing to spend both money and time in defence of these children's rights; i assure you they are not friendless." "i'll give twelve thousand, and not a cent more, if i'm hung for it," said mr. stevens, almost involuntarily. "who spoke of hanging?" asked mr. balch. "oh!" rejoined stevens, "that is only my emphatic way of speaking." "of course, you meant figuratively," said mr. balch, in a tone of irony; mentally adding, "as i hope you may be one day literally." mr. stevens looked flushed and angry, but mr. balch continued, without appearing to notice him, and said: "i'll speak to walters. should he acquiesce in your proposal, i am willing to accept it; however, i cannot definitely decide without consulting him. to-morrow i will inform you of the result." chapter xxvi. home again. to charlie the summer had been an exceedingly short one--time had flown so pleasantly away. everything that could be done to make the place agreeable mrs. bird had effected. amongst the number of her acquaintances who had conceived a regard for her young _protege_ was a promising artist to whom she had been a friend and patroness. charlie paid him frequent visits, and would sit hour after hour in his studio, watching the progress of his work. having nothing else at the time to amuse him, he one day asked the artist's permission to try his hand at a sketch. being supplied with the necessary materials, he commenced a copy of a small drawing, and was working assiduously, when the artist came and looked over his shoulder. "did you ever draw before?" he asked, with a start of surprise. "never," replied charlie, "except on my slate at school. i sometimes used to sketch the boys' faces." "and you have never received any instructions?" "never--not even a hint," was the answer. "and this is the first time you have attempted a sketch upon paper?" "yes; the very first." "then you are a little prodigy," said the artist, slapping him upon the shoulder. "i must take you in hand. you have nothing else to do; come here regularly every day, and i'll teach you. will you come?" "certainly, if you wish it. but now, tell me, do you really think that drawing good?" "well, charlie, if i had done it, it would be pronounced very bad for me; but, coming from your hands, it's something astonishing." "really, now--you're not joking me?" "no, charlie, i'm in earnest--i assure you i am; it is drawn with great spirit, and the boy that you have put in by the pump is exceedingly well done." this praise served as a great incentive to our little friend, who, day after day thenceforth, was found at the studio busily engaged with his crayons, and making rapid progress in his new art. he had been thus occupied some weeks, and one morning was hurrying to the breakfast-table, to get through his meal, that he might be early at the studio, when he found mrs. bird in her accustomed seat looking very sad. "why, what is the matter?" he asked, on observing the unusually grave face of his friend. "oh, charlie, my dear! i've received very distressing intelligence from philadelphia. your father is quite ill." "my father ill!" cried he, with a look of alarm. "yes, my dear! quite sick--so says my letter. here are two for you." charlie hastily broke the seal of one, and read as follows:-- "my dear little brother,--we are all in deep distress in consequence of the misfortunes brought upon us by the mob. our home has been destroyed; and, worse than all, our poor father was caught, and so severely beaten by the rioters that for some days his life was entirely despaired of. thank god! he is now improving, and we have every reasonable hope of his ultimate recovery. mother, caddy, and i, as you may well suppose, are almost prostrated by this accumulation of misfortunes, and but for the kindness of mr. walters, with whom we are living, i do not know what would have become of us. dear mr. and mrs. garie--[here followed a passage that was so scored and crossed as to be illegible. after a short endeavour to decipher it, he continued:] we would like to see you very much, and mother grows every day more anxious for your return. i forgot to add, in connection with the mob, that mr. walters's house was also attacked, but unsuccessfully, the rioters having met a signal repulse. mother and caddy send a world of love to you. so does kinch, who comes every day to see us and is, often extremely useful. give our united kind regards to mrs. bird, and thank her in our behalf for her great kindness to you.--ever yours, "esther. "p.s.--do try and manage to come home soon." the tears trickled down charlie's cheek as he perused the letter, which, when he had finished reading, he handed to mrs. bird, and then commenced the other. this proved to be from kinch, who had spent all the spare time at his disposal since the occurrence of the mob in preparing it. "to mr. charles ellis, esq., at mrs. bird's. "_philadelphia_. "dear sir and honnored friend.--i take this chance to write to you to tell you that i am well, and that we are all well except your father, who is sick; and i hope you are enjoying the same blessin. we had an awful fight, and i was there, and i was one of the captings. i had a sord on; and the next mornin we had a grate brekfast. but nobody eat anything but me, and i was obliged to eat, or the wittles would have spoiled. the mob had guns as big as cannun; and they shot them off, and the holes are in the shutter yet; and when you come back, i will show them to you. your father is very bad; and i have gone back to school, and i am licked every day because i don't know my lesson. a great big boy, with white woolly hair and pinkish grey eyes, has got your seat. i put a pin under him one day, and he told on me; and we are to have a fight tomorrow. the boys call him 'short and dirty,' because he ain't tall, and never washes his face. we have got a new teacher for the th division. he's a scorcher, and believes in rat tan. i am to wear my new cloths next sunday. excuse this long letter. your friend till death, "kinch sanders de younge. [illustration: skull and cross bones] "p.s. this it the best skull and cross-bones that i can make. come home soon, yours &c., "k. s. de younge, esq." charlie could not but smile through his tears, as he read this curious epistle, which was not more remarkable for its graceful composition than its wonderful chirography. some of the lines were written in blue ink, some in red, and others in that pale muddy black which is the peculiar colour of ink after passing through the various experiments of school-boys, who generally entertain the belief that all foreign substances, from molasses-candy to bread-crumbs, necessarily improve the colour and quality of that important liquid. "why every other word almost is commenced with a capital; and i declare he's even made some in german text," cried charlie, running his finger mirthfully along the lines, until he came to "your father is very bad." here the tears came welling up again--the shower had returned almost before the sun had departed; and, hiding his face in his hands, he leant sobbing on the table. "cheer up, charlie!--cheer up, my little man! all may go well yet." "mrs. bird," he sobbed, "you've been very kind to me; yet i want to go home. i must see mother and father. you see what esther writes,--they want me to come home; do let me go." "of course you shall go, if you wish. yet i should like you to remain with me, if you will." "no, no, mrs. bird, i mustn't stay; it wouldn't be right for me to remain here, idle and enjoying myself, and they so poor and unhappy at home. i couldn't stay," said he, rising from the table,--"i must go." "well, my dear, you can't go now. sit down and finish your breakfast, or you will have a head-ache." "i'm not hungry--i can't eat," he replied; "my appetite has all gone." and stealing away from the room, he went up into his chamber, threw himself on the bed, and wept bitterly. mrs. bird was greatly distressed at the idea of losing her little favourite. he had been so much with her that she had become strongly attached to him, and therefore looked forward to his departure with unfeigned regret. but charlie could not be persuaded to stay; and reluctantly mrs. bird made arrangements for his journey home. even the servants looked a little sorry when they heard of his intended departure; and reuben the coachman actually presented him with a jack-knife as a token of his regard. mrs. bird accompanied him to the steamer, and placed him under the special care of the captain; so that he was most comfortably provided for until his arrival in new york, where he took the cars direct for home. not having written to inform them on what day he might be expected, he anticipated giving them a joyful surprise, and, with this end in view, hastened in the direction of mr. walters's. as he passed along, his eye was attracted by a figure before him which he thought he recognized, and on closer inspection it proved to be his sister caddy. full of boyish fun, he crept up behind her, and clasped his hands over her eyes, exclaiming, in an assumed voice, "now, who am i?" "go away, you impudent, nasty thing!" cried caddy, plunging violently. charlie loosed his hold; she turned, and beheld her brother. "oh! charlie, charlie! is it you? why, bless you, you naughty fellow, how you frightened me!" said she, throwing her arms round his neck, and kissing him again and again. "when did you come? oh, how delighted mother and ess will be!" "i only arrived about half an hour ago. how are mother and father and esther?" "mother and ess are well, and father better. but i'm so glad to see you," she cried, with a fresh burst of tears and additional embraces. "why, cad," said he, endeavouring to suppress some watery sensations of his own, "i'm afraid you're not a bit pleased at my return--you're actually crying about it." "oh, i'm so glad to see you that i can't help it," she replied, as she fell to crying and kissing him more furiously than before. charlie became much confused at these repeated demonstrations of joyful affection in the crowded street, and, gently disengaging her, remarked, "see, caddy, everybody is looking at us; let us walk on." "i had almost forgot i was sent on an errand--however, it's not of much consequence--i'll go home again with you;" and taking his hand, they trudged on together. "how did you say father was?" he asked again. "oh, he's better bodily; that is, he has some appetite, sits up every day, and is gradually getting stronger; but he's all wrong here," said she, tapping her forehead. "sometimes he don't know any of us--and it makes us all feel so bad." here the tears came trickling down again, as she continued: "oh, charlie! what those white devils will have to answer for! when i think of how much injury they have done us, i _hate_ them! i know it's wrong to hate anybody--but i can't help it; and i believe god hates them as much as i do!" charlie looked gloomy; and, as he made no rejoinder, she continued, "we didn't save a thing, not even a change of clothes; they broke and burnt up everything; and then the way they beat poor father was horrible--horrible! just think--they chopped his fingers nearly all off, so that he has only the stumps left. charlie, charlie!" she cried, wringing her hands, "it's heart-rending to see him--he can't even feed himself, and he'll never be able to work again!" "don't grieve, cad," said charlie, with an effort to suppress his own tears; "i'm almost a man now," continued he, drawing himself up--"don't be afraid, i'll take care of you all!" thus conversing, they reached mr. walters's. caddy wanted charlie to stop and look at the damage effected by the mob upon the outside of the house, but he was anxious to go in, and ran up the steps and gave the bell a very sharp pull. the servant who opened the door was about to make some exclamation of surprise, and was only restrained by a warning look from charlie. hurrying past them, caddy led the way to the room where her mother and esther were sitting. with a cry of joy mrs. ellis caught him in her arms, and, before he was aware of their presence, he found himself half smothered by her and esther. they had never been separated before his trip to warmouth; and their reunion, under such circumstances, was particularly affecting. none of them could speak for a few moments, and charlie clung round his mother's neck as though he would never loose his hold. "mother, mother!" was all he could utter; yet in that word was comprised a world of joy and affection. esther soon came in for her share of caresses; then charlie inquired, "where's father?" "in here," said mrs. ellis, leading the way to an adjoining room. "i don't think he will know you--perhaps he may." in one corner of the apartment, propped up in a large easy chair by a number of pillows, sat poor mr. ellis, gazing vacantly about the room and muttering to himself. his hair had grown quite white, and his form was emaciated in the extreme; there was a broad scar across his forehead, and his dull, lustreless eyes were deeply sunken in his head. he took no notice of them as they approached, but continued muttering and looking at his hands. charlie was almost petrified at the change wrought in his father. a few months before he had left him in the prime of healthful manhood; now he was bent and spectrelike, and old in appearance as if the frosts of eighty winters had suddenly fallen on him. mrs. ellis laid her hand gently upon his shoulder, and said, "husband, here's charlie." he made no reply, but continued muttering and examining his mutilated hands. "it's charlie," she repeated. "oh, ay! nice little boy!" he replied, vacantly; "whose son is he?" mrs. ellis's voice quivered as she reiterated, "it's charlie--our charlie!--don't you know him?" "oh, yes! nice little boy--nice little boy. oh!" he continued, in a suppressed and hurried tone, as a look of alarm crossed his face; "run home quick, little boy! and tell your mother they're coming, thousands of them; they've guns, and swords, and clubs. hush! there they come--there they come!" and he buried his face in the shawl, and trembled in an agony of fright. "oh, mother, this is dreadful!" exclaimed charlie. "don't he know any of you?" "yes; sometimes his mind comes back--very seldom, though--only for a very little while. come away: talking to him sometimes makes him worse." and slowly and sorrowfully the two left the apartment. that evening, after mr. ellis had been safely bestowed in bed, the family gathered round the fire in the room of mrs. ellis, where charlie entertained them with a description of warmouth and of the manner in which he had passed the time whilst there. he was enthusiastic respecting mrs. bird and her kindness. "mother, she is such a _dear_ old lady: if i'd been as white as snow, and her own son, she couldn't have been kinder to me. she didn't want me to come away, and cried ever so much. let me show you what she gave me!" charlie thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew out a small wallet, from which he counted out four ten-dollar bills, two fives, and a two dollar and a half gold piece, "ain't i rich!" said he, as, with the air of a millionaire, he tossed the money upon a table. "now," he continued, "do you know what i'm about to do?" not receiving any answer from his wondering sisters or mother, he added, "why, just this!--here, mother, this is yours," said he, placing the four ten-dollar bills before her; "and here are five apiece for esther and cad; the balance is for your humble servant. now, then," he concluded, "what do you think of that?" mrs. ellis looked fondly at him, and, stroking his head, told him that he was a good son; and esther and caddy declared him to be the best brother in town. "now, girls," said he, with the air of a patriarch, "what do you intend to do with your money?" "mine will go towards buying me a dress, and esther will save hers for a particular purpose," said caddy. "i'll tell you something about her and mr. walters," continued she, with a mischievous look at her sister. "oh, caddy--don't! ain't you ashamed to plague me so?" asked esther, blushing to the roots of her hair. "mother, pray stop her," cried she, pleadingly. "hush, caddy!" interposed her mother, authoritatively; "you shall do no such thing." "well," resumed caddy, "mother says i mustn't tell; but i can say this much----" esther here put her hand over her sister's mouth and effectually prevented any communication she was disposed to make. "never mind her, ess!" cried charlie; "you'll tell me all in good time, especially if it's anything worth knowing." esther made no reply, but, releasing her sister, hurried out of the room, and went upstairs to charlie's chamber, where he found her on retiring for the night. "i'm glad you're here, ess," said he, "you'll indulge me. here is the key--open my trunk and get me out a nightcap; i'm too tired, or too lazy, to get it for myself." esther stooped down, opened the trunk, and commenced searching for the article of head-gear in question. "come, ess," said charles, coaxingly, "tell me what this is about you and mr. walters." she made no reply at first, but fumbled about in the bottom of the trunk, professedly in search of the nightcap which she at that moment held in her hand. "can't you tell me?" he again asked. "oh, there's nothing to tell, charlie!" she answered. "there must be something, ess, or you wouldn't have blushed up so when cad was about to speak of it. do," said he, approaching her, and putting his arm round her neck--"do tell me all about it--i am sure there is some secret!" "oh, no, charlie--there is no secret; it's only this----" here she stopped, and, blushing, turned her head away. "ess, this is nonsense," said charlie, impatiently: "if it's anything worth knowing, why can't you tell a fellow? come," said he, kissing her, "tell me, now, like a dear old ess as you are." "well, charlie," said she, jerking the words out with an effort, "mr.--mr. walters has asked me to marry him!" "phew--gemini! that is news!" exclaimed charlie. "and are you going to accept him ess?" "i don't know," she answered. "don't know!" repeated charlie, in a tone of surprise. "why, ess, i'm astonished at you--such a capital fellow as he is! half the girls of our acquaintance would give an eye for the chance." "but he is so rich!" responded esther. "well, now, that's a great objection, ain't it! i should say, all the better on that account," rejoined charlie. "the money is the great stumbling-block," continued she; "everybody would say i married him for that." "then _everybody_ would lie, _as_ everybody very often does! if i was you, ess, and loved him, i shouldn't let his fortune stand in the way. i wish," continued he, pulling up his shirt-collar, "that some amiable young girl with a fortune of a hundred thousand dollars, would make me an offer--i'd like to catch myself refusing her!" the idea of a youth of his tender years marrying any one, seemed so ludicrous to esther, that she burst into a hearty fit of laughter, to the great chagrin of our hero, who seemed decidedly of the opinion that his sister had not a proper appreciation of his years and inches. "don't laugh, ess; but tell me--do you really intend to refuse him?" "i can't decide yet, charlie," answered she seriously; "if we were situated as we were before--were not such absolute paupers--i wouldn't hesitate to accept him; but to bring a family of comparative beggars upon him--i can't make up my mind to do that." charlie looked grave as esther made this last objection; boy as he was, he felt its weight and justice. "well, ess," rejoined he, "i don't know what to say about it--of course i can't advise. what does mother say?" "she leaves it entirely to me," she answered. "she says i must act just as i feel is right." "i certainly wouldn't have him at all, ess, if i didn't love him; and if i did, i shouldn't let the money stand in the way--so, good night!" charlie slept very late the next morning, and was scarcely dressed when esther knocked at his door, with the cheerful tidings that her father had a lucid interval and was waiting to see him. dressing himself hastily, he followed her into their father's room. when he entered, the feeble sufferer stretched out his mutilated arms towards him and clasped him round the neck, "they tell me," said he, "that you came yesterday, and that i didn't recognize you. i thought, when i awoke this morning, that i had a dim recollection of having seen some dear face; but my head aches so, that i often forget--yes, often forget. my boy," he continued, "you are all your mother and sisters have to depend upon now; i'm--i'm----" here his voice faltered, as he elevated his stumps of hands--"i'm helpless; but you must take care of them. i'm an old man now," said he despondingly. "i will, father; i'll try _so_ hard" replied charlie. "it was cruel in them, wasn't it, son," he resumed. "see, they've made me helpless for ever!" charlie restrained the tears that were forcing themselves up, and rejoined, "never fear, father! i'll do my best; i trust i shall soon be able to take care of you." his father did not understand him--his mind was gone again, and he was staring vacantly about him. charlie endeavoured to recall his attention, but failed, for he began muttering about the mob and his hands; they were compelled to quit the room, and leave him to himself, as he always became quiet sooner by being left alone. chapter xxvii. sudbury. we must now admit our readers to a consultation that is progressing between mr. balch and mr. walters, respecting the future of the two garie children. they no doubt entered upon the conference with the warmest and most earnest desire of promoting the children's happiness; but, unfortunately, their decision failed to produce the wished-for result. "i scarcely thought you would have succeeded so well with him," said walters, "he is such an inveterate scoundrel; depend upon it nothing but the fear of the exposure resulting from a legal investigation would ever have induced that scamp to let twelve thousand dollars escape from his clutches. i am glad you have secured that much; when we add it to the eight thousand already in my possession it will place them in very comfortable circumstances, even if they never get any more." "i think we have done very well," rejoined mr. balch; "we were as much in his power as he was in ours--not in the same way, however; a legal investigation, no matter how damaging it might have been to his reputation, would not have placed us in possession of the property, or invalidated his claim as heir. i think, on the whole, we may as well be satisfied, and trust in providence for the future. so now, then, we will resume our discussion of that matter we had under consideration the other day. i cannot but think that my plan is best adapted to secure the boy's happiness." "i'm sorry i cannot agree with you, mr. balch. i have tried to view your plan in the most favourable light, yet i cannot rid myself of a presentiment that it will result in the ultimate discovery of his peculiar position, and that most probably at some time when his happiness is dependent upon its concealment. an undetected forger, who is in constant fear of being apprehended, is happy in comparison with that coloured man who attempts, in this country, to hold a place in the society of whites by concealing his origin. he must live in constant fear of exposure; this dread will embitter every enjoyment, and make him the most miserable of men." "you must admit," rejoined mr. balch, "that i have their welfare at heart. i have thought the matter over and over, and cannot, for the life of me, feel the weight of your objections. the children are peculiarly situated; everything seems to favour my views. their mother (the only relative they had whose african origin was distinguishable) is dead, and both of them are so exceedingly fair that it would never enter the brain of any one that they were connected with coloured people by ties of blood. clarence is old enough to know the importance of concealing the fact, and emily might be kept with us until her prudence also might be relied upon. you must acknowledge that as white persons they will be better off." "i admit," answered mr. walters, "that in our land of liberty it is of incalculable advantage to be white; that is beyond dispute, and no one is more painfully aware of it than i. often i have heard men of colour say they would not be white if they could--had no desire to change their complexions; i've written some down fools; others, liars. why," continued he, with a sneering expression of countenance, "it is everything to be white; one feels that at every turn in our boasted free country, where all men are upon an equality. when i look around me, and see what i have made myself in spite of circumstances, and think what i might have been with the same heart and brain beneath a fairer skin, i am almost tempted to curse the destiny that made me what i am. time after time, when scraping, toiling, saving, i have asked myself. to what purpose is it all?--perhaps that in the future white men may point at and call me, sneeringly, 'a nigger millionaire,' or condescend to borrow money of me. ah! often, when some negro-hating white man has been forced to ask a loan at my hands, i've thought of shylock and his pound of flesh, and ceased to wonder at him. there's no doubt, my dear sir, but what i fully appreciate the advantage of being white. yet, with all i have endured, and yet endure from day to day, i esteem myself happy in comparison with that man, who, mingling in the society of whites, is at the same time aware that he has african blood in his veins, and is liable at any moment to be ignominiously hurled from his position by the discovery of his origin. he is never safe. i have known instances where parties have gone on for years and years undetected; but some untoward circumstance brings them out at last, and down they fall for ever." "walters, my dear fellow, you will persist in looking upon his being discovered as a thing of course: i see no reason for the anticipation of any such result. i don't see how he is to be detected--it may never occur. and do you feel justified in consigning them to a position which you know by painful experience to be one of the most disagreeable that can be endured. ought we not to aid their escape from it if we can?" mr. walters stood reflectively for some moments, and then exclaimed, "i'll make no farther objection; i would not have the boy say to me hereafter, 'but for your persisting in identifying me with a degraded people, i might have been better and happier than i am.' however, i cannot but feel that concealments of this kind are productive of more misery than comfort." "we will agree to differ about that, walters; and now, having your consent, i shall not hesitate to proceed in the matter, with full reliance that the future will amply justify my choice." "well, well! as i said before, i will offer no further objection. now let me hear the details of your plan." "i have written," answered mr. balch, "to mr. eustis, a friend of mine living at sudbury, where there is a large preparatory school for boys. at his house i purpose placing clarence. mr. eustis is a most discreet man, and a person of liberal sentiments. i feel that i can confide everything to him without the least fear of his ever divulging a breath of it. he is a gentleman in the fullest sense of the term, and at his house the boy will have the advantage of good society, and will associate with the best people of the place." "has he a family?" asked mr. walters. "he is a widower," answered mr. balch; "a maiden sister of his wife's presides over his establishment; she will be kind to clarence, i am confident; she has a motherly soft heart, and is remarkably fond of children. i have not the least doubt but that he will be very happy and comfortable there. i think it very fortunate, walters," he continued, "that he has so few coloured acquaintances--no boyish intimacies to break up; and it will be as well to send him away before he has an opportunity of forming them. besides, being here, where everything will be so constantly reviving the remembrance of his recent loss, he may grow melancholy and stupid. i have several times noticed his reserve, so unusual in a child. his dreadful loss and the horrors that attended it have made, a deep impression--stupified him, to a certain extent, i think. well, well! we will get him off, and once away at school, and surrounded by lively boys, this dulness will soon wear off." the gentlemen having fully determined upon his being sent, it was proposed to bring him in immediately and talk to him relative to it. he was accordingly sent for, and came into the room, placing himself beside the chair of mr. walters. clarence had altered very much since the death of his parents. his face had grown thin and pale, and he was much taller than when he came to philadelphia: a shade of melancholy had overspread his face; there was now in his eyes that expression of intense sadness that characterized his mother's. "you sent for me?" he remarked, inquiringly, to mr. walters. "yes, my boy," he rejoined, "we sent for you to have a little talk about school. would you like to go to school again?" "oh, yes!" answered clarence, his face lighting up with pleasure; "i should like it of all things; it would be much better than staying at home all day, doing nothing; the days are so long," concluded he, with a sigh. "ah! we will soon remedy that," rejoined mr. balch, "when you go to sudbury." "sudbury!" repeated clarence, with surprise; "where is that? i thought you meant, to go to school here." "oh, no, my dear," said mr. balch, "i don't know of any good school here, such as you would like; we wish to send you to a place where you will enjoy yourself finely,--where you will have a number of boys for companions in your studies and pleasures." "and is em going with me?" he asked. "oh, no, that is not possible; it is a school for boys exclusively; you can't take your sister there," rejoined mr. walters. "then i don't want to go," said clarence, decidedly; "i don't want to go where i can't take em with me." mr. balch exchanged glances with mr. walters, and looked quite perplexed at this new opposition to his scheme. nothing daunted, however, by this difficulty, he, by dint of much talking and persuasion, brought clarence to look upon the plan with favour, and to consent reluctantly to go without his sister. but the most delicate part of the whole business was yet to come--they must impress upon the child the necessity of concealing the fact that he was of african origin. neither seemed to know how to approach the subject. clarence, however, involuntarily made an opening for them by inquiring if emily was to go to miss jordan's school again. "no, my dear," answered mr. balch, "miss jordan won't permit her to attend school there." "why?" asked clarence. "because she is a coloured child," rejoined mr. balch. "now, clarence," he continued, "you are old enough, i presume, to know the difference that exists between the privileges and advantages enjoyed by the whites, and those that are at the command of the coloured people. white boys can go to better schools, and they can enter college and become professional men, lawyers, doctors, &c, or they may be merchants--in fact, they can be anything they please. coloured people can enjoy none of these advantages; they are shut out from them entirely. now which of the two would you rather be--coloured or white?" "i should much rather be white, of course," answered clarence; "but i am coloured, and can't help myself," said he, innocently. "but, my child, we are going to send you where it is not known that you are coloured; and you must _never, never_ tell it, because if it became known, you would be expelled from the school, as you were from miss jordan's." "i didn't know we were expelled," rejoined clarence. "i know she sent us home, but i could not understand what it was for. i'm afraid they will send me from the other school. won't they know i am coloured?" "no, my child, i don't think they will discover it unless you should be foolish enough to tell it yourself, in which case both mr. walters and myself would be very much grieved." "but suppose some one should ask me," suggested clarence. "no one will ever ask you such a question," said mr. balch, impatiently; "all you have to do is to be silent yourself on the subject. should any of your schoolmates ever make inquiries respecting your parents, all you have to answer is, they were from georgia, and you are an orphan." clarence's eyes began to moisten as mr. balch spoke of his parents, and after a few moments he asked, with some hesitation, "am i never to speak of mother? i love to talk of mother." "yes, my dear, of course you can talk of your mother," answered mr. balch, with great embarrassment; "only, you know, my child, you need not enter into particulars as regards her appearance; that is, you--ah!--need not say she was a coloured woman. you _must not_ say that; you understand?" "yes, sir," answered clarence. "very well, then; bear that in mind. you must know, clarence," continued he, "that this concealment is necessary for your welfare, or we would not require it; and you must let me impress it upon you, that it is requisite that you attend strictly to our directions." mr. walters remained silent during most of this conversation. he felt a repugnance to force upon the child a concealment the beneficial results of which were the reverse of obvious, so he merely gave clarence some useful advice respecting his general conduct, and then permitted him to leave the room. the morning fixed upon for their departure for sudbury turned out to be cold and cheerless; and clarence felt very gloomy as he sat beside his sister at their early breakfast, of which he was not able to eat a morsel. "do eat something, clary," said she, coaxingly; "only look what nice buckwheat cakes these are; cook got up ever so early on purpose to bake them for you." "no, sis," he replied, "i can't eat. i feel so miserable, everything chokes me." "well, eat a biscuit, then," she continued, as she buttered it and laid it on his plate; "do eat it, now." more to please her than from a desire to eat, he forced down a few mouthfuls of it, and drank a little tea; then, laying his arm round her neck, he said, "em, you must try hard to learn to write soon, so that i may hear from you at least once a week." "oh! i shall soon know how, i'm in g's and h's now. aunt esther--she says i may call her aunt esther--teaches me every day. ain't i getting on nicely?" "oh, yes, you learn very fast," said esther, encouragingly, as she completed the pile of sandwiches she was preparing for the young traveller; then, turning to look at the timepiece on the mantel, she exclaimed, "quarter to seven--how time flies! mr. balch will soon be here. you must be all ready, clarence, so as not to keep him waiting a moment." clarence arose from his scarcely tasted meal, began slowly to put on his overcoat, and make himself ready for the journey. em tied on the warm woollen neck-comforter, kissing him on each cheek as she did so, and whilst they were thus engaged, mr. balch drove up to the door. charlie, who had come down to see him off, tried (with his mouth full of buckwheat cake) to say something consolatory, and gave it as his experience, "that a fellow soon got over that sort of thing; that separations must occur sometimes," &c.--and, on the whole, endeavoured to talk in a very manly and philosophical strain; but his precepts and practice proved to be at utter variance, for when the moment of separation really came and he saw the tearful embrace of em and her brother, he caught the infection of grief, and cried as heartily as the best of them. there was but little time, however, to spare for leave-takings, and the young traveller and his guardian were soon whirling over the road towards new york. by a singular chance, clarence found himself in the same car in which he had formerly rode when they were on their way to philadelphia: he recognized it by some peculiar paintings on the panel of the door, and the ornamental border of the ceiling. this brought back a tide of memories, and he began contrasting that journey with the present. opposite was the seat on which his parents had sat, in the bloom of health, and elate with; joyous anticipations; he remembered--oh! so well--his father's pleasant smile, his mother's soft and gentle voice. both now were gone. death had made rigid that smiling face--her soft voice was hushed for ever--and the cold snow was resting on their bosoms in the little churchyard miles away. truly the contrast between now and then was extremely saddening, and the child bowed his head upon the seat, and sobbed in bitter grief. "what is the matter?" asked mr. balch; "not crying again, i hope. i thought you were going to be a man, and that we were not to have any more tears. come!" continued he, patting him encouragingly on the back, "cheer up! you are going to a delightful place, where you will find a number of agreeable playmates, and have a deal of fun, and enjoy yourself amazingly." "but it won't be _home_," replied clarence. "true," replied mr. balch, a little touched, "it won't seem so at first; but you'll soon like it, i'll guarantee that." clarence was not permitted to indulge his grief to any great extent, for mr. balch soon succeeded in interesting him in the various objects that they passed on the way. on the evening of the next day they arrived at their destination, and clarence alighted from the cars, cold, fatigued, and spiritless. there had been a heavy fall of snow a few days previous, and the town of sudbury, which was built upon the hill-side, shone white and sparkling in the clear winter moonlight. it was the first time that clarence had ever seen the ground covered with snow, and he could not restrain his admiration at the novel spectacle it presented to him. "oh, look!--oh, do look! mr. balch," he exclaimed, "how beautifully white it looks; it seems as if the town was built of salt." it was indeed a pretty sight. near them stood a clump of fantastic-shaped trees, their gnarled limbs covered with snow, and brilliant with the countless icicles that glistened like precious stones in the bright light that was reflected upon them from the windows of the station. a little farther on, between them and the town, flowed a small stream, the waters of which were dimpling and sparkling in the moonlight. beside its banks arose stately cotton-mills, and from their many windows hundreds of lights were shining. behind them, tier above tier, were the houses of the town; and crowning the hill was the academy, with its great dome gleaming on its top like a silver cap upon a mountain of snow. the merry sleigh-bells and the crisp tramp of the horses upon the frozen ground were all calculated to make a striking impression on one beholding such a scene for the first time. clarence followed mr. balch into the sleigh, delighted and bewildered with the surrounding objects. the driver whipped up his horses, they clattered over the bridge, dashed swiftly through the town, and in a very short period arrived at the dwelling of mr. eustis. the horses had scarcely stopped, when the door flew open, and a stream of light from the hall shone down the pathway to the gate. mr. eustis came out on the step to welcome them. after greeting mr. balch warmly, he took clarence by the hand, and led him into the room where his sister was sitting. "here is our little friend," said he to her, as she arose and approached them; "try and get him warm, ada--his hands are like ice." miss ada bell welcomed clarence in the most affectionate manner, assisted him to remove his coat, unfastened his woollen neck-tie, and smoothed down his glossy black hair; then, warming a napkin, she wrapped it round his benumbed hands, and held them in her own until the circulation was restored and they were supple and comfortable again. miss ada bell appeared to be about thirty-five. she had good regular features, hazel eyes, and long chestnut curls: a mouth with the sweetest expression, and a voice so winning and affectionate in its tone that it went straight to the hearts of all that listened to its music. "had you a pleasant journey?" she asked. "it was rather cold," answered clarence, "and i am not accustomed to frosty weather." "and did you leave all your friends well?" she continued, as she chafed his hands. "quite well, i thank you," he replied. "i hear you have a little sister; were you not sorry to leave her behind?" this question called up the tearful face of little em and her last embrace. he could not answer; he only raised his mournful dark eyes to the face of miss ada, and as he looked at her they grew moist, and a tear sparkled on his long lashes. miss ada felt that she had touched a tender chord, so she stooped down and kissed his forehead, remarking, "you have a good face, clarence, and no doubt an equally good heart; we shall get on charmingly together, i know." those kind words won the orphan's heart, and from that day forth. clarence loved her. tea was soon brought upon the table, and they all earnestly engaged in the discussion of the various refreshments that miss ada's well-stocked larder afforded. everything was so fresh and nicely flavoured that both the travellers ate very heartily; then, being much fatigued with their two days' journey, they seized an early opportunity to retire. * * * * * here we leave clarence for many years; the boy will have become a man ere we re-introduce him, and, till then, we bid him adieu. chapter xxviii. charlie seeks employment. charlie had been at borne some weeks, comparatively idle; at least he so considered himself, as the little he did in the way of collecting rents and looking up small accounts for mr. walters he regarded as next to nothing, it not occupying half his time. a part of each day he spent in attendance on his father, who seemed better satisfied with his ministrations than with those of his wife and daughters. this proved to be very fortunate for all parties, as it enabled the girls to concentrate their attention on their sewing--of which they had a vast deal on hand. one day, when esther and charlie were walking out together, the latter remarked: "ess, i wish i could find some regular and profitable employment, or was apprenticed to some good trade that would enable me to assist mother a little; i'd even go to service if i could do no better--anything but being idle whilst you are all so hard at work. it makes me feel very uncomfortable." "i would be very glad if you could procure some suitable employment. i don't wish you to go to service again, that is out of the question. of whom have you made inquiry respecting a situation." "oh, of lots of people; they can tell me of any number of families who are in want of a footman, but no one appears to know of a 'person who is willing to receive a black boy as an apprentice to a respectable calling. it's too provoking; i really think, ess, that the majority of white folks imagine that we are only fit for servants, and incapable of being rendered useful in any other capacity. if that terrible misfortune had not befallen father, i should have learned his trade." "ah!" sighed esther, "but for that we should all have been happier. but, charlie," she added, "how do you know that you cannot obtain any other employment than that of a servant? have you ever applied personally to any one?" "no, esther, i haven't; but you know as well as i that white masters won't receive coloured apprentices." "i think a great deal of that is taken for granted," rejoined esther, "try some one yourself." "i only wish i knew of any one to try," responded charlie, "i'd hazard the experiment at any rate." "look over the newspaper in the morning," advised esther; "there are always a great many wants advertised--amongst them you may perhaps find something suitable." "well, i will ess--now then we won't talk about that any more--pray tell me, if i'm not too inquisitive, what do you purpose buying with your money--a wedding-dress, eh?" he asked, with a merry twinkle in his eye. esther blushed and sighed, as she answered: "no, charlie, that is all over for the present. i told him yesterday i could not think of marrying now, whilst we are all so unsettled. it grieved me to do it, charlie, but i felt that it was my duty. cad and i are going to add our savings to mother's; that, combined with what we shall receive for father's tools, good-will, &c, will be sufficient to furnish another house; and as soon as we can succeed in that, we will leave mr. walters, as it is embarrassing to remain under present circumstances." "and what is to become of little em?--she surely won't remain alone with him?" "mr. walters has proposed that when we procure a house she shall come and board with us. he wants us to take one of his houses, and offers some fabulous sum for the child's board, which it would be unreasonable in us to take. dear, good man, he is always complaining that we are too proud, and won't let him assist us when he might. if we find a suitable house i shall be delighted to have her. i love the child for her mother's sake and her own." "i wonder if they will ever send her away, as they did clarence?" asked charlie. "i do not know," she rejoined. "mr. balch told me that he should not insist upon it if the child was unwilling." the next day charlie purchased all the morning papers he could obtain, and sat down to look over the list of wants. there were hungry people in want of professed cooks; divers demands for chamber-maids, black or white; special inquiries for waiters and footmen, in which the same disregard of colour was observable; advertisements for partners in all sorts of businesses, and for journeymen in every department of mechanical operations; then there were milliners wanted, sempstresses, and even theatrical assistants, but nowhere in the long columns could he discover: "wanted, a boy." charlie searched them over and over, but the stubborn fact stared him in the face--there evidently were no boys wanted; and he at length concluded that he either belonged to a very useless class, or that there was an unaccountable prejudice existing in the city against the rising generation. charlie folded up the papers with a despairing sigh, and walked to the post-office to mail a letter to mrs. bird that he had written the previous evening. having noticed a number of young men examining some written notices that were posted up, he joined the group, and finding it was a list of wants he eagerly read them over. to his great delight he found there was one individual at least, who thought boys could be rendered useful to society, and who had written as follows: "wanted, a youth of about thirteen years of age who writes a good hand, and is willing to make himself useful in an office.--address, box no. , post-office." "i'm their man!" said charlie to himself, as he finished perusing it--"i'm just the person. i'll go home and write to them immediately;" and accordingly he hastened back to the house, sat down, and wrote a reply to the advertisement. he then privately showed it to esther, who praised the writing and composition, and pronounced the whole very neatly done. charlie then walked down to the post-office to deposit his precious reply; and after dropping it into the brass mouth of the mail-box, he gazed in after it, and saw it glide slowly down into the abyss below. how many more had stopped that day to add their contributions to the mass which charlie's letter now joined? merchants on the brink of ruin had deposited missives whose answer would make or break them; others had dropped upon the swelling heap tidings that would make poor men rich--rich men richer; maidens came with delicately written notes, perfumed and gilt-edged, eloquent with love--and cast them amidst invoices and bills of lading. letters of condolence and notes of congratulation jostled each other as they slid down the brass throat; widowed mothers' tender epistles to wandering sons; the letters of fond wives to absent husbands; erring daughters' last appeals to outraged parents; offers of marriage; invitations to funerals; hope and despair; joy and sorrow; misfortune and success--had glided in one almost unbroken stream down that ever-distended and insatiable brass throat. charlie gave one more look at the opening, then sauntered homeward, building by the way houses of fabulous dimensions, with the income he anticipated from the situation if he succeeded in procuring it. throughout the next day he was in a state of feverish anxiety and expectation, and mrs. ellis two or three times inquired the meaning of the mysterious whisperings and glances that were exchanged between him and esther. the day wore away, and yet no answer--the next came and passed, still no communication; and charlie had given up in despair, when he was agreeably surprised by the following:---- "messrs. twining, western, and twining will be much obliged to charles ellis, if he will call at their office, , water-street, to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock, as they would like to communicate further with him respecting a situation in their establishment." charlie flew up stairs to esther's room, and rushing in precipitately, exclaimed, "oh! ess--i've got it, i've got it--see here," he shouted, waving the note over his head; "hurrah! hurrah! just read it, ess, only just read it!" "how can i, charlie?" said she, with a smile, "if you hold it in your hand and dance about in that frantic style--give it me. there now--keep quiet a moment, and let me read it." after perusing it attentively, esther added, "don't be too sanguine, charlie. you see by the tenor of the note that the situation is not promised you; they only wish to see you respecting it. you may not secure it, after all--some obstacle may arise of which we are not at present aware." "go on, old raven--croak away!" said charlie, giving her at the same time a facetious poke. "there's many a slip between the cup and the lip," she added. "oh, ess!" he rejoined, "don't throw cold water on a fellow in that style--don't harbour so many doubts. do you think they would take the trouble to write if they did not intend to give me the situation? go away, old raven," concluded he, kissing her, "and don't let us have any more croaking." charlie was bounding from the room, when he was stopped by his sister, who begged him not to say anything to their mother respecting it, but wait until they knew the issue of the interview; and, if he secured the situation, it would be a very agreeable surprise to her. we will now visit, in company with the reader, the spacious offices of messrs. twining, western, and twining, where we shall find mr. western about consigning to the waste-paper basket a large pile of letters. this gentleman was very fashionably dressed, of dark complexion, with the languid air and drawling intonation of a southerner. at an adjoining desk sat an elderly sharp-faced gentleman, who was looking over his spectacles at the movements of his partner. "what a mass of letters you are about to destroy," he remarked. mr. western took from his month the cigar he was smoking, and after puffing from between his lips a thin wreath of smoke, replied: "some of the most atwocious scwawls that man ever attempted to pewuse,--weplies to the advertisement. out of the whole lot there wasn't more than a dozen amongst them that were weally pwesentable. here is one wemawkably well witten: i have desiwed the witer to call this morning at eleven. i hope he will make as favouwable an impwession as his witing has done. it is now almost eleven--i pwesume he will be here soon." scarcely had mr. western finished speaking, ere the door opened, and esther entered, followed by charlie. both the gentlemen rose, and mr. twining offered her a chair. esther accepted the proffered seat, threw up her veil, and said, in a slightly embarrassed tone, "my brother here, took the liberty of replying to an advertisement of yours, and you were kind enough to request him to call at eleven to-day." "we sent a note to _your_ brother?" said mr. twining, in a tone of surprise. "yes, sir, and here it is," said she, extending it to him. mr. twining glanced over it, and remarked, "this is your writing, western;" then taking charlie's letter from the desk of mr. western, he asked, in a doubting tone, "is this your own writing and composition?" "my own writing and composing," answered charlie. "and it is vewy cweditable to you, indeed," said mr. western. both the gentlemen looked at the note again, then at charlie, then at esther, and lastly at each other; but neither seemed able to say anything, and evident embarrassment existed on both sides. "and so you thought you would twy for the situation," at last remarked mr. western to charlie. "yes, sir," he answered. "i was and am very anxious to obtain some employment." "have you a father?" asked mr. twining. "yes, sir; but he was badly injured by the mob last summer, and will never be able to work again." "that's a pity," said western, sympathisingly; "and what have you been doing?" "nothing very recently. i broke my arm last spring, and was obliged to go into the country for my health. i have not long returned." "do your pawents keep house?" "not at present. we are staying with a friend. our house was burned down by the rioters." this conversation recalled so vividly their past trials, that esther's eyes grew watery, and she dropped her veil to conceal a tear that was trembling on the lid. "how vewy unfortunate!" said mr. western, sympathisingly; "vewy twying, indeed!" then burying his chin in his hand, he sat silently regarding them for a moment or two. "have you come to any decision about taking him?" esther at last ventured to ask of mr. twining. "taking him!--oh, dear me, i had almost forgot. charles, let me see you write something--here, take this seat." charlie sat down as directed, and dashed off a few lines, which he handed to mr. twining, who looked at it over and over; then rising, he beckoned to his partner to follow him into an adjoining room. "well, what do you say?" asked western, after they had closed the door behind them. "don't you think we had better engage him?" "engage _him_!" exclaimed twining--"why, you surprise me, western--the thing's absurd; engage a coloured boy as under clerk! i never heard of such a thing." "i have often," drawled western; "there are the gweatest number of them in new orleans." "ah, but new orleans is a different place; such a thing never occurred in philadelphia." "well, let us cweate a pwecedent, then. the boy wites wemarkably well, and will, no doubt, suit us exactly. it will be a chawity to take him. we need not care what others say--evewybody knows who we are and what we are?" "no, western; i know the north better than you do; it wouldn't answer at all here. we cannot take the boy--it is impossible; it would create a rumpus amongst the clerks, who would all feel dreadfully insulted by our placing a nigger child on an equality with them. i assure you the thing is out of the question." "well, i must say you northern people are perfectly incompwehensible. you pay taxes to have niggers educated, and made fit for such places--and then won't let them fill them when they are pwepared to do so. i shall leave you, then, to tell them we can't take him. i'm doosed sowwy for it--i like his looks." whilst mr. western and his partner were discussing in one room, charlie and esther were awaiting with some anxiety their decision in the other. "i think they are going to take me," said charlie; "you saw how struck they appeared to be with the writing." "they admired it, i know, my dear; but don't be too sanguine." "i feel _sure_ they are going to take me," repeated he with a hopeful countenance. esther made no reply, and they remained in silence until mr. twining returned to the room. after two or three preparatory ahems, he said to esther; "i should like to take your brother very much; but you see, in consequence of there being so much excitement just now, relative to abolitionism and kindred subjects, that my partner and myself--that is, i and mr. western--think--or rather feel--that just now it would be rather awkward for us to receive him. we should like to take him; but his _colour_, miss--his complexion is a _fatal_ objection. it grieves me to be obliged to tell you this; but i think, under the circumstances, it would be most prudent for us to decline to receive him. we are _very_ sorry--but our clerks are all young men, and have a great deal of prejudice, and i am sure he would be neither comfortable nor happy with them. if i can serve you in any other way--" "there is nothing that you can do that i am aware of," said esther, rising; "i thank you, and am sorry that we have occupied so much of your time." "oh, don't mention it," said mr. twining, evidently happy to get rid of them; and, opening the door, he bowed them out of the office. the two departed sadly, and they walked on for some distance in silence. at last esther pressed his hand, and, in a choking voice, exclaimed, "charlie, my dear boy, i'd give my life if it would change your complexion--if it would make you white! poor fellow! your battle of life will be a hard one to fight!" "i know it, ess; but i shouldn't care to be white if i knew i would not have a dear old ess like you for a sister," he answered, pressing her hand affectionately. "i don't intend to be conquered," he continued; "i'll fight it out to the last--this won't discourage me. i'll keep on trying," said he, determinedly--"if one won't, perhaps another will." for two or three days charlie could hear of nothing that would be at all suitable for him. at last, one morning he saw an advertisement for a youth to learn the engraver's business--one who had some knowledge of drawing preferred; to apply at thomas blatchford's, bank-note engraver. "thomas blatchford," repeated mr. walters, as charlie read it over--"why that is _the_ mr. blatchford, the abolitionist. i think you have some chance there most decidedly--i would advise you to take those sketches of yours and apply at once." charlie ran upstairs, and selecting the best-executed of his drawings, put them in a neat portfolio, and, without saying anything to esther or his mother, hastened away to mr. blatchford's. he was shown into a room where a gentleman was sitting at a table examining some engraved plates. "is this mr. blatchford's?" asked charlie. "that is my name, my little man--do you want to see me," he kindly inquired. "yes, sir. you advertised for a boy to learn the engraving business, i believe." "well; and what then?" "i have come to apply for the situation." "_you--you_ apply?" said he, in a tone of surprise. "yes, sir," faltered charlie; "mr. walters recommended me to do so." "ah, you know mr. walters, then," he rejoined. "yes, sir; he is a great friend of my father's--we are living with him at present." "what have you in your portfolio, there?" enquired mr. blatchford. charlie spread before him the sketches he had made during the summer, and also some ornamental designs suitable for the title-pages of books. "why, these are excellently well done," exclaimed he, after examining them attentively; "who taught you?" charlie hereupon briefly related his acquaintance with the artist, and his efforts to obtain employment, and their results, besides many other circumstances connected with himself and family. mr. blatchford became deeply interested, and, at the end of a long conversation, delighted charlie by informing him that if he and his mother could agree as to terms he should be glad to receive him as an apprentice. charlie could scarcely believe the evidence of his own ears, and leaving his portfolio on the table was hastening away. "stop! stop!" cried mr. blatchford, with a smile; "you have not heard all i wish to say. i would be much obliged to your mother if she would call at my house this evening, and then we can settle the matter definitely." charlie seemed to tread on air as he walked home. flying up to esther--his usual confidant--be related to her the whole affair, and gave at great length his conversation with mr. blatchford. "that looks something like," said she; "i am delighted with the prospect that is opening to you. let us go and tell mother,"--and, accordingly, off they both started, to carry the agreeable intelligence to mrs. ellis. that, evening charlie, his mother, and mr. walters went to the house of mr. blatchford. they were most, kindly received, and all the arrangements made for charlie's apprenticeship. he was to remain one month on trial; and if, at the end of that period, all parties were satisfied, he was to be formally indentured. charlie looked forward impatiently to the following monday, on which day he was to commence his apprenticeship. in the intervening time he held daily conferences with kinch, as he felt their intimacy would receive a slight check after he entered upon his new pursuit. "look here, old fellow," said charlie; "it won't do for you to be lounging on the door-steps of the office, nor be whistling for me under the windows. mr. blatchford spoke particularly against my having playmates around in work hours; evenings i shall always be at home, and then you can come and see me as often as you like." since his visit to warmouth, charlie had been much more particular respecting his personal appearance, dressed neater, and was much more careful of his clothes. he had also given up marbles, and tried to persuade kinch to do the same. "i'd cut marbles, kinch," said he to him one evening, when they were walking together, "if i were you; it makes one such a fright--covers one with chalk-marks and dirt from head to foot. and another thing, kinch; you have an abundance of good clothes--do wear them, and try and look more like a gentleman." "dear me!" said kinch, rolling up the white of his eyes--"just listen how we are going on! hadn't i better get an eye-glass and pair of light kid gloves?" "oh, kinch!" said charlie, gravely, "i'm not joking--i mean what i say. you don't know how far rough looks and an untidy person go against one. i do wish you would try and keep yourself decent." "well, there then--i will," answered kinch. "but, charlie, i'm afraid, with your travelling and one thing or other, you will forget your old playmate by-and-by, and get above him." charlie's eyes moistened; and, with a boy's impulsiveness, he threw his arm over kinch's shoulder, and exclaimed with emphasis, "never, old fellow, never--not as long as my name is charlie ellis! you mustn't be hurt at what i said, kinch--i think more of these things than i used to--i see the importance of them. i find that any one who wants to get on must be particular in little things as well great, and i must try and be a man now--for you know things don't glide on as smoothly with us as they used. i often think of our fun in the old house--ah, perhaps we'll have good times in another of our own yet!"--and with this charlie and his friend separated for the night. chapter xxix. clouds and sunshine. the important monday at length arrived, and charlie hastened to the office of mr. blatchford, which he reached before the hour for commencing labour. he found some dozen or more journeymen assembled in the work-room; and noticed that upon his entrance there was an interchange of significant glances, and once or twice he overheard the whisper of "nigger." mr. blatchford was engaged in discussing some business matter with a gentleman, and did not observe the agitation that charlie's entrance had occasioned. the conversation having terminated, the gentleman took up the morning paper, and mr. blatchford, noticing charlie, said, "ah! you have come, and in good time, too. wheeler," he continued, turning to one of the workmen, "i want you to take this boy under your especial charge: give him a seat at your window, and overlook his work." at this there was a general uprising of the workmen, who commenced throwing off their caps and aprons. "what is all this for?" asked mr. blatchford in astonishment--"why this commotion?" "we won't work with niggers!" cried one; "no nigger apprentices!" cried another; and "no niggers--no niggers!" was echoed from all parts of the room. "silence!" cried mr. blatchford, stamping violently--"silence, every one of you!" as soon as partial order was restored, he turned to wheeler, and demanded, "what is the occasion of all this tumult--what does it mean?" "why, sir, it means just this: the men and boys discovered that you intended to take a nigger apprentice, and have made up their minds if you do they will quit in a body." "it cannot be possible," exclaimed the employer, "that any man or boy in my establishment has room in his heart for such narrow contemptible prejudices. can it be that you have entered into a conspiracy to deprive an inoffensive child of an opportunity of earning his bread in a respectable manner? come, let me persuade you--the boy is well-behaved and educated!" "damn his behaviour and education!" responded a burly fellow; "let him be a barber or shoe-black--that is all niggers are good for. if he comes, we go--that's so, ain't it, boys?" there was a general response of approval to this appeal; and mr. blatchford, seeing the utter uselessness of further parleying, left the room, followed by charlie and the gentleman with whom he had been conversing. mr. blatchford was placed in a most disagreeable position by this revolt on the part of his workmen; he had just received large orders from some new banks which were commencing operations, and a general disruption of his establishment at that moment would have ruined him. to accede to his workmen's demands he must do violence to his own conscience; but he dared not sacrifice his business and bring ruin on himself and family, even though he was right. "what would you do, burrell?" he asked of the gentleman who had followed them out. "there is no question as to what you must do. you mustn't ruin yourself for the sake of your principles. you will have to abandon the lad; the other alternative is not to be thought of for a moment." "well, charles, you see how it is," said mr. blatchford, reluctantly. charlie had been standing intently regarding the conversation that concerned him so deeply. his face was pale and his lips quivering with agitation. "i'd like to keep you, my boy, but you see how i'm situated, i must either give up you or my business; the latter i cannot afford to do." with a great effort charlie repressed his tears, and bidding them good morning in a choking voice, hastened from the room. "it's an infernal shame!" said mr. blatchford, indignantly; "and i shall think meanly of myself for ever for submitting to it; but i can't help myself, and must make the best of it." charlie walked downstairs with lingering steps, and took the direction of home. "all because i'm coloured," said he, bitterly, to himself--"all because i'm coloured! what will mother and esther say? how it will distress them--they've so built upon it! i wish," said he, sadly, "that i was dead!" no longer able to repress the tears that were welling up, he walked towards the window of a print-store, where he pretended to be deeply interested in some pictures whilst he stealthily wiped his eyes. every time he turned to leave the window, there came a fresh flood of tears; and at last he was obliged to give way entirely, and sobbed as if his heart would break. he was thus standing when he felt a hand laid familiarly on his shoulder, and, on turning round, he beheld the gentleman he had left in mr. blatchford's office. "come, my little man," said he, "don't take it so much to heart. cheer up--you may find some other person willing to employ you. come, walk on with me--where do you live?" charlie dried his eyes and gave him his address as they walked on up the street together. mr. burrell talked encouragingly, and quite succeeded in soothing him ere they separated. "i shall keep a look out for you," said he, kindly; "and if i hear of anything likely to suit you, i shall let you know." charlie thanked him and sauntered slowly home. when he arrived, and they saw his agitated looks, and his eyes swollen from the effect of recent tears, there was a general inquiry of "what has happened? why are you home so early; are you sick?" charlie hereupon related all that had transpired at the office--his great disappointment and the occasion of it--to the intense indignation and grief of his mother and sisters. "i wish there were no white folks," said caddy, wrathfully; "they are all, i believe, a complete set of villains and everything else that is bad." "don't be so sweeping in your remarks, pray don't, caddy," interposed esther; "you have just heard what charlie said of mr. blatchford--his heart is kindly disposed, at any rate; you see he is trammelled by others." "oh! well, i don't like any of them--i hate them all!" she continued bitterly, driving her needle at the same time into the cloth she was sewing, as if it was a white person she had in her lap and she was sticking pins in him. "don't cry, charlie," she added; "the old white wretches, they shouldn't get a tear out of me for fifty trades!" but charlie could not be comforted; he buried his head in his mother's lap, and wept over his disappointment until he made himself sick. that day, after mr. burrell had finished his dinner, he remarked to his wife, "i saw something this morning, my dear, that made a deep impression on me. i haven't been able to get it out of my head for any length of time since; it touched me deeply, i assure you." "why, what could it have been? pray tell me what it was." thereupon, he gave his wife a graphic account of the events that had transpired at blatchford's in the morning; and in conclusion, said, "now, you know, my dear, that no one would call _me_ an _abolitionist_; and i suppose i have some little prejudice, as well as others, against coloured people; but i had no idea that sensible men would have carried it to that extent, to set themselves up, as they did, in opposition to a little boy anxious to earn his bread by learning a useful trade." mrs. burrell was a young woman of about twenty-two, with a round good-natured face and plump comfortable-looking figure; she had a heart overflowing with kindness, and was naturally much affected by what he related. "i declare it's perfectly outrageous," exclaimed she, indignantly; "and i wonder at blatchford for submitting to it. i wouldn't allow myself to be dictated to in that manner--and he such an abolitionist too! had i been him, i should have stuck to my principles at any risk. poor little fellow! i so wonder at blatchford; i really don't think he has acted manly." "not so fast, my little woman, if you please--that is the way with almost all of you, you let your hearts run away with your heads. you are unjust to blatchford; he could not help himself, he was completely in their power. it is almost impossible at present to procure workmen in our business, and he is under contract to finish a large amount of work within a specified time; and if he should fail to fulfil his agreement it would subject him to immense loss--in fact, it would entirely ruin him. you are aware, my dear, that i am thoroughly acquainted with the state of his affairs; he is greatly in debt from unfortunate speculations, and a false step just now would overset him completely; he could not have done otherwise than he has, and do justice to himself and his family. i felt that he could not; and in fact advised him to act as he did." "now, george burrell, you didn't," said she, reproachfully. "yes i did, my dear, because i thought of his family; i really believe though, had i encouraged him, he would have made the sacrifice." "and what became of the boy?" "oh; poor lad, he seemed very much cut down by it--i was quite touched by his grief. when i came out, i found him standing by a shop window crying bitterly. i tried to pacify him, and told him i would endeavour to obtain a situation for him somewhere--and i shall." "has he parents?" asked mrs. burrell. "yes; and, by the way, don't you remember whilst the mob was raging last summer, we read an account of a man running to the roof of a house to escape from the rioters? you remember they chopped his hands off and threw him over?" "oh, yes, dear, i recollect; don't--don't mention it," said she, with a shudder of horror. "i remember it perfectly." "well, this little fellow is his son," continued mr. burrell. "indeed! and what has become of his father--did he die?" "no, he partially recovered, but is helpless, and almost an idiot. i never saw a child, apparently so anxious to get work; he talked more like a man with a family dependent upon him for support, than a youth. i tell you what, i became quite interested in him; he was very communicative, and told me all their circumstances; their house was destroyed by the mob, and they are at present residing with a friend." just then the cry of a child was heard in the adjoining room, and mrs. burrell rushed precipitately away, and soon returned with a fat, healthy-looking boy in her arms, which, after kissing, she placed in her husband's lap. he was their first-born and only child, and, as a matter of course, a great pet, and regarded by them as a most wonderful boy; in consequence, papa sat quite still, and permitted him to pull the studs out of his shirt, untie his cravat, rumple his hair, and take all those little liberties to which babies are notoriously addicted. mrs. burrell sat down on a stool at her husband's feet, and gazed at him and the child in silence for some time. "what's the matter, jane; what has made you so grave?" "i was trying to imagine, burrell, how i should feel if you, i, and baby were coloured; i was trying to place myself in such a situation. now we know that our boy, if he is honest and upright--is blest with great talent or genius--may aspire to any station in society that he wishes to obtain. how different it would be if he were coloured!--there would be nothing bright in the prospective for him. we could hardly promise him a living at any respectable calling. i think, george, we treat coloured people with great injustice, don't you?" mr. burrell hemmed and ha'd at this direct query, and answered, "well, we don't act exactly right toward them, i must confess." mrs. burrell rose, and took the vacant knee of her husband, and toying with the baby, said, "now, george burrell, i want to ask a favour of you. why can't _you_ take this boy ?" "i take him! why, my dear, i don't want an apprentice." "yes, but you must _make_ a want. you said he was a bright boy, and sketched well. why, i should think that he's just what you ought to have. there is no one at your office that would oppose it. cummings and dalton were with your father before you, they would never object to anything reasonable that you proposed. come, dear! do now make the trial--won't you?" mr. burrell was a tender-hearted, yielding sort of an individual; and what was more, his wife was fully aware of it; and like a young witch as she was, she put on her sweetest looks, and begged so imploringly, that he was almost conquered. but when she took up the baby, and made him put his chubby arms round his father's neck, and say "pese pop-pop," he was completely vanquished, and surrendered at discretion. "i'll see what can be done," said he, at last. "and will you do it afterwards?" she asked, archly. "yes, i will, dear, i assure you," he rejoined. "then i know it will be done," said she, confidently; "and none of us will be the worse off for it, i am sure." after leaving home, mr. burrell went immediately to the office of mr. blatchford; and after having procured charlie's portfolio, he started in the direction of his own establishment. he did not by any means carry on so extensive a business as mr. blatchford, and employed only two elderly men as journeymen. after he had sat down to work, one of them remarked, "tucker has been here, and wants some rough cuts executed for a new book. i told him i did not think you would engage to do them; that you had given up that description of work." "i think we lose a great deal, cummings, by being obliged to give up those jobs," rejoined mr. burrell. "why don't you take an apprentice then," he suggested; "it's just the kind of work for them to learn upon." "well i've been thinking of that," replied he, rising and producing the drawings from charlie's portfolio. "look here," said he, "what do you think of these as the work of a lad of twelve or fourteen, who has never had more than half a dozen lessons?" "i should say they were remarkably well done," responded cummings. "shouldn't you say so, dalton?" the party addressed took the sketches, and examined them thoroughly, and gave an approving opinion of their merits. "well," said mr. burrell, "the boy that executed those is in want of a situation, and i should like to take him; but i thought i would consult you both about it first. i met with him under very singular circumstances, and i'll tell you all about it." and forthwith he repeated to them the occurrences of the morning, dwelling upon the most affecting parts, and concluding by putting the question to them direct, as to whether they had any objections to his taking him. "why no, none in the world," readily answered cummings. "laws me! colour is nothing after all; and black fingers can handle a graver as well as white ones, i expect." "i thought it best to ask you, to avoid any after difficulty. you have both been in the establishment so long, that i felt that you ought to be consulted." "you needn't have taken that trouble," said dalton. "you might have known that anything done by your father's son, would be satisfactory to us. i never had anything to do with coloured people, and haven't anything against them; and as long as you are contented i am." "well, we all have our little prejudices against various things; and as i did not know how you both would feel, i thought i wouldn't take any decided steps without consulting you; but now i shall consider it settled, and will let the lad know that i will take him." in the evening, he hastened home at an earlier hour than usual, and delighted his wife by saying--"i have succeeded to a charm, my dear--there wasn't the very slightest objection. i'm going to take the boy, if he wishes to come." "oh, i'm delighted," cried she, clapping her hands. "cry hurrah for papa!" said she to the baby; "cry hurrah for papa!" the scion of the house of burrell gave vent to some scarcely intelligible sounds, that resembled "hoo-rogler pop-pop!" which his mother averred was astonishingly plain, and deserving of a kiss; and, snatching him up, she gave him two or three hearty ones, and then planted him in his father's lap again." "my dear," said her husband, "i thought, as you proposed my taking this youth, you might like to have the pleasure of acquainting him with his good fortune. after tea, if you are disposed, we will go down there; the walk will do you good." "oh, george burrell," said she, her face radiant with pleasure, "you are certainly trying to outdo yourself. i have been languishing all day for a walk! what a charming husband you are! i really ought to do something for you. ah, i know what--i'll indulge you; you may smoke all the way there and back. i'll even go so far as to light the cigars for you myself." "that is a boon," rejoined her husband with a smile; "really 'virtue rewarded,' i declare." tea over, the baby kissed and put to bed, mrs. burrell tied on the most bewitching of bonnets, and donning her new fur-trimmed cloak, declared herself ready for the walk; and off they started. mr. burrell puffed away luxuriously as they walked along, stopping now and then at her command, to look into such shop-windows as contained articles adapted to the use of infants, from india-rubber rings and ivory rattles, to baby coats and shoes. at length they arrived at the door of mr. walters, and on, looking up at the house, he exclaimed, "this is , but it can't be the place; surely coloured people don't live in as fine an establishment as this." then, running up the steps, he examined the plate upon the door. "the name corresponds with the address given me," said he; "i'll ring. is there a lad living here by the name of charles ellis?" he asked of the servant who opened the door. "yes, sir," was the reply. "will you walk in?" when they were ushered into the drawing-room, mr. burrell said,--"be kind enough to say that a gentleman wishes to see him." the girl departed, closing the door behind her, leaving them staring about the room. "how elegantly it is furnished!" said she. "i hadn't an idea that there were any coloured people living in such style." "some of them are very rich," remarked her husband. "but you said this boy was poor." "so he is. i understand they are staying with the owner of this house." whilst they were thus conversing the door opened, and esther entered. "i am sorry," said she, "that my brother has retired. he has a very severe head-ache, and was unable to remain up longer. his mother is out: i am his sister, and shall be most happy to receive any communication for him." "i regret to hear of his indisposition," replied mr. burrell; "i hope it is not consequent upon his disappointment this morning?" "i fear it is. poor fellow! he took it very much to heart. it was a disappointment to us all. we were congratulating ourselves on having secured him an eligible situation." "i assure you the disappointment is not all on one side; he is a very promising boy, and the loss of his prospective services annoying. nothing but stern necessity caused the result." "oh, we entirely acquit you, mr. blatchford, of all blame in the matter. we are confident that what happened was not occasioned by any indisposition on your part to fulfil your agreement." "my dear," interrupted mrs. burrell, "she thinks you are mr. blatchford." "and are you not?" asked esther, with some surprise. "oh, no; i'm an intimate friend of his, and was present this morning when the affair happened." "oh, indeed," responded esther. "yes; and he came home and related it all to me,--the whole affair," interrupted mrs. burrell. "i was dreadfully provoked; i assure you, i sympathized with him very much. i became deeply interested in the whole affair; i was looking at my little boy,--for i have a little boy," said she, with matronly dignity,--"and i thought, suppose it was my little boy being treated so, how should i like it? so bringing the matter home to myself in that way made me feel all the more strongly about it; and i just told george burrell he must take him, as he is an engraver; and i and the baby gave him no rest until he consented to do so. he will take him on the same terms offered by mr. blatchford; and then we came down to tell you; and--and," said she, quite out of breath, "that is all about it." esther took the little woman's plump hand in both her own, and, for a moment, seemed incapable of even thanking her. at last she said, in a husky voice, "you can't think what a relief this is to us. my brother has taken his disappointment so much to heart--i can't tell you how much i thank you. god will reward you for your sympathy and kindness. you must excuse me," she continued, as her voice faltered; "we have latterly been so unaccustomed to receive such sympathy and kindness from persons of your complexion, that this has quite overcome me." "oh, now, don't! i'm sure it's no more than our duty, and i'm as much pleased as you can possibly be--it has given me heartfelt gratification, i assure you." esther repeated her thanks, and followed them to the door, where she shook hands with mrs. burrell, who gave her a pressing invitation to come and see her baby. "how easy it is, george burrell," said the happy little woman, "to make the hearts of others as light as our own-mine feels like a feather," she added, as she skipped along, clinging to his arm. "what a nice, lady-like girl his sister is--is her brother as handsome as she ?" "not quite," he answered; "still, he is very good-looking, i'll bring him home with me to-morrow at dinner, and then you can see him." chatting merrily, they soon arrived at home. mrs. burrell ran straightway upstairs to look at that "blessed baby;" she found him sleeping soundly, and looking as comfortable and happy as it is possible for a sleeping baby to look--so she bestowed upon him a perfect avalanche of kisses, and retired to her own peaceful pillow. and now, having thus satisfactorily arranged for our young friend charlie, we will leave him for a few years engaged in his new pursuits. chapter xxx. many years after. old father time is a stealthy worker. in youth we are scarcely able to appreciate his efforts, and oftentimes think him an exceedingly slow and limping old fellow. when we ripen into maturity, and are fighting our own way through the battle of life, we deem him swift enough of foot, and sometimes rather hurried; but when old age comes on, and death and the grave are foretold by trembling limbs and snowy locks, we wonder that our course has been so swiftly run, and chide old time for a somewhat hasty and precipitate individual. the reader must imagine that many years have passed away since the events narrated in the preceding chapters transpired, and permit us to re-introduce the characters formerly presented, without any attempt to describe how that long period has been occupied. first of all, let us resume our acquaintance with mr. stevens. to effect this, we must pay that gentleman a visit at his luxurious mansion in fifth avenue, the most fashionable street of new york--the place where the upper ten thousand of that vast, bustling city most do congregate. as he is an old acquaintance (we won't say friend), we will disregard ceremony, and walk boldly into the library where that gentleman is sitting. he is changed--yes, sadly changed. time has been hard at work with him, and, dissatisfied with what his unaided agency could produce, has called in conscience to his aid, and their united efforts have left their marks upon him. he looks old--aye, very old. the bald spot on his head has extended its limits until there is only a fringe of thin white hair above the ears. there are deep wrinkles upon his forehead; and the eyes, half obscured by the bushy grey eyebrows, are bloodshot and sunken; the jaws hollow and spectral, and his lower lip drooping and flaccid. he lifts his hand to pour out another glass of liquor from the decanter at his side, when his daughter lays her hand upon it, and looks appealingly in his face. she has grown to be a tall, elegant woman, slightly thin, and with a careworn and fatigued expression of countenance. there is, however, the same sweetness in her clear blue eyes, and as she moves her head, her fair flaxen curls float about her face as dreamily and deliciously as ever they did of yore. she is still in black, wearing mourning for her mother, who not many months before had been laid in a quiet nook on the estate at savanah. "pray, papa, don't drink any more," said she, persuasively--"it makes you nervous, and will bring on one of those frightful attacks again." "let me alone," he remonstrated harshly--"let me alone, and take your hand off the glass; the doctor has forbidden laudanum, so i will have brandy instead--take off your hand and let me drink, i say." lizzie still kept her hand upon the decanter, and continued gently: "no, no, dear pa--you promised me you would only drink two glasses, and you have already taken three--it is exceedingly injurious. the doctor insisted upon it that you should decrease the quantity--and you are adding to it instead." "devil take the doctor!" exclaimed he roughly, endeavouring to disengage her hold--"give me the liquor, i say." his daughter did not appear the least alarmed at this violence of manner, nor suffer her grasp upon the neck of the decanter to be relaxed; but all the while spoke soothing words to the angry old man, and endeavoured to persuade him to relinquish his intention of drinking any more. "you don't respect your old father," he cried, in a whining tone--"you take advantage of my helplessness, all of you--you ill-treat me and deny me the very comforts of life! i'll tell--i'll tell the doctor," he continued, as his voice subsided into an almost inaudible tone, and he sank back into the chair in a state of semi-stupor. removing the liquor from his reach, his daughter rang the bell, and then walked towards the door of the room. "who procured that liquor for my father?" she asked of the servant who entered. "i did, miss," answered the man, hesitatingly. "let this be the last time you do such a thing," she rejoined, eyeing him sternly, "unless you wish to be discharged. i thought you all fully understood that on no consideration was my father to have liquor, unless by the physician's or my order--it aggravates his disease and neutralizes all the doctor's efforts--and, unless you wish to be immediately discharged, never repeat the same offence. now, procure some assistance--it is time my father was prepared for bed." the man bowed and left the apartment; but soon returned, saying there was a person in the hall who had forced his way into the house, and who positively refused to stir until he saw mr. stevens. "he has been here two or three times," added the man, "and he is very rough and impudent." "this is most singular conduct," exclaimed miss stevens. "did he give his name?" "yes, miss; he calls himself mccloskey." at the utterance of this well-known name, mr. stevens raised his head, and stared at the speaker with a look of stupid fright, and inquired, "who here--what name is that?--speak louder--what name?" "mccloskey," answered the man, in a louder tone. "what! he--_he_!" cried mr. stevens, with a terrified look. "where--where is he?" he continued, endeavouring to rise--"where is he?" "stop, pa," interposed his daughter, alarmed at his appearance and manner. "do stop--let me go," "no--no!" said the old man wildly, seizing her by the dress to detain her--"_you_ must not go--that would never do! he might tell her," he muttered to himself--"no, no--i'll go!"--and thus speaking, he made another ineffectual attempt to reach the door. "dear father! do let me go!" she repeated, imploringly. "you are incapable of seeing any one--let me inquire what he wants!" she added, endeavouring to loose his hold upon her dress. "no--you shall not!" he replied, clutching her dress still tighter, and endeavouring to draw her towards him. "oh, father!" she asked distractedly, "what can this mean? here," said she, addressing the servant, who stood gazing in silent wonder on this singular scene, "help my father into his chair again, and then tell this strange man to wait awhile." the exhausted man, having been placed in his chair, motioned to his daughter to close the door behind the servant, who had just retired. "he wants money," said he, in a whisper--"he wants money! he'll make beggars of us all--and yet i'll have to give him some. quick! give me my cheque-book--let me give him something before he has a chance to talk to any one--quick! quick!" the distracted girl wrung her hands with grief at what she imagined was a return of her father's malady, and exclaimed, "oh! if george only would remain at home--it is too much for me to have the care of father whilst he is in such a state." then pretending to be in search of the cheque-book, she turned over the pamphlets and papers upon his desk, that she might gain time, and think how it was best to proceed. whilst she was thus hesitating, the door of the room was suddenly opened, and a shabbily dressed man, bearing a strong odour of rum about him, forced his way into the apartment, saying, "i will see him. d----n it, i don't care haporth how sick he is--let me go, or by the powers i'll murther some of yes." the old man's face was almost blanched with terror when he heard the voice and saw the abrupt entry of the intruder. he sprang from the chair with a great effort, and then, unable to sustain himself, sunk fainting on the floor. "oh, you have killed my father--you have killed my father! who are you, and what do you want, that you dare thrust yourself upon him in this manner?" said she, stooping to assist in raising him; "cannot you see he is entirely unfit for any business?" mr. stevens was replaced in his chair, and water thrown in his face to facilitate his recovery. meanwhile, mccloskey had poured himself out a glass of brandy and water, which he stood sipping as coolly as if everything in the apartment was in a state of the most perfect composure. the singular terror of her father, and the boldness and assurance of the intruder, were to miss stevens something inexplicable--she stood looking from one to the other, as though seeking an explanation, and on observing symptoms of a return to consciousness on the part of her parent, she turned to mccloskey, and said, appealingly: "you see how your presence has agitated my father. pray let me conjure you--go. be your errand what it may, i promise you it shall have the earliest attention. or," said she, "tell me what it is; perhaps i can see to it--i attend a great deal to father's business. pray tell me!" "no, no!" exclaimed the old man, who had caught the last few words of his daughter. "no, no--not a syllable! here, i'm well--i'm well enough. i'll attend to you. there, there--that will do," he continued, addressing the servant; "leave the room. and you," he added, turning to his daughter, "do you go too. i am much better now, and can talk to him. go! go!" he cried, impatiently, as he saw evidences of a disposition to linger, on her part; "if i want you i'll ring. go!--this person won't stay long." "not if i get what i came for, miss," said mccloskey, insolently; "otherwise, there is no knowing how long i may stay." with a look of apprehension, lizzie quitted the room, and the murderer and his accomplice were alone together. mr. stevens reached across the table, drew the liquor towards him, and recklessly pouring out a large quantity, drained the glass to the bottom--this seemed to nerve him up and give him courage, for he turned to mccloskey and said, with a much bolder air than he had yet shown in addressing him, "so, you're back again, villain! are you? i thought and hoped you were dead;" and he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as if to shut out some horrid spectre. "i've been divilish near it, squire, but providence has preserved me, ye see--jist to be a comfort to ye in yer old age. i've been shipwrecked, blown up in steamboats, and i've had favers and choleray and the divil alone knows what--but i've been marcifully presarved to ye, and hope ye'll see a good dale of me this many years to come." mr. stevens glared at him fiercely for a few seconds, and then rejoined, "you promised me solemnly, five years ago, that you would never trouble me again, and i gave you money enough to have kept you in comfort--ay, luxury--for the remainder of your life. where is it all now?" "that's more than i can tell you, squire. i only know how it comes. i don't trouble myself how it goes--that's your look out. if ye are anxious on that score you'd better hire a bookkeeper for me--he shall send yer honour a quarterly account, and then it won't come on ye so sudden when it's all out another time." "insolent!" muttered mr. stevens. mccloskey gave mr. stevens an impudent look, but beyond that took no farther notice of his remark, but proceeded with the utmost coolness to pour out another glass of brandy--after which he drew his chair closer to the grate, and placed his dirty feet upon the mantelpiece in close proximity to an alabaster clock. "you make yourself very much at home," said stevens, indignantly. "why shouldn't i?" answered his tormentor, in a tone of the most perfect good humour. "why shouldn't i--in the house of an ould acquaintance and particular friend--just the place to feel at home, eh, stevens?" then folding his arms and tilting back his chair, he asked, coolly: "you haven't a cigar, have ye?" "no," replied stevens, surlily; "and if i had, you should not have it. your insolence is unbearable; you appear," continued he, with some show of dignity, "to have forgotten who i am, and who you are." "ye're mistaken there, squire. divil a bit have i. i'm mccloskey, and you are slippery george--an animal that's known over the 'varsal world as a philadelphia lawyer--a man that's chated his hundreds, and if he lives long enough, he'll chate as many more, savin' his friend mr. mccloskey, and him he'll not be afther chating, because he won't be able to get a chance, although he'd like to if he could--divil a doubt of that." "it's false--i never tried to cheat you," rejoined stevens, courageously, for the liquor was beginning to have a very inspiriting effect. "it's a lie--i paid you all i agreed upon, and more besides; but you are like a leech--never satisfied. you have had from me altogether nearly twenty thousand dollars, and you'll not get much more--now, mind i tell you." "the divil i won't," rejoined he, angrily; "that is yet to be seen. how would you like to make yer appearance at court some fine morning, on the charge of murther, eh?" mr. stevens gave a perceptible shudder, and looked round, whereupon mccloskey said, with a malevolent grin, "ye see i don't stick at words, squire; i call things by their names." "so i perceive," answered stevens. "you were not so bold once." "ha, ha!" laughed mccloskey. "i know _that_ as well as you--then _i_ was under the thumb--that was before we were sailing in the one boat; now ye see, squire, the boot is on the other leg." mr. stevens remained quiet for a few moments, whilst his ragged visitor continued to leisurely sip his brandy and contemplate the soles of his boots as they were reflected in the mirror above--they were a sorry pair of boots, and looked as if there would soon be a general outbreak of his toes--so thin and dilapidated did the soles appear. "look at thim boots, and me suit ginerally, and see if your conscience won't accuse ye of ingratitude to the man who made yer fortune--or rather lets ye keep it, now ye have it. isn't it a shame now for me, the best friend you've got in the world, to be tramping the streets widdout a penny in his pocket, and ye livin' in clover, with gold pieces as plenty as blackberries. it don't look right, squire, and mustn't go on any longer." "what do you want--whatever will satisfy you?" asked stevens. "if i give you ever so much now, what guarantee have i that you'll not return in a month or so, and want as much more?" "i'll pledge ye me honour," said mccloskey, grandly. "your honour!" rejoined stevens, "that is no security." "security or no security," said mccloskey, impatiently, "you'll have to give me the money--it's not a bit of use now this disputin, bekase ye see i'm bound to have it, and ye are wise enough to know ye'd better give it to me. what if ye have give me thousands upon thousands," continued he, his former good-humoured expression entirely vanishing; "it's nothing more than you ought to do for keeping yer secrets for ye--and as long as ye have money, ye may expect to share it with me: so make me out a good heavy cheque, and say no more about it." "what do you call a heavy cheque?" asked stevens, in a despairing tone. "five or six thousand," coolly answered his visitor. "five or six thousand!" echoed mr. stevens, "it is impossible." "it had better not be," said mccloskey, looking angry; "it had better not be--i'm determined not to be leading a beggar's life, and you to be a rolling in wealth." "i can't give it, and won't give it--if it must come to that," answered stevens, desperately. "it is you that have the fortune--i am only your banker at this rate. i can't give it to you--i haven't got that much money." "you must find it then, and pretty quick at that," said mccloskey. "i'm not to be fooled with--i came here for money, and i must and will have it." "i am willing to do what is reasonable," rejoined mr. stevens, in a more subdued tone. "you talk of thousands as most men do of hundreds. i really haven't got it." "oh, bother such stuff as that," interrupted mccloskey, incredulously. "i don't believe a word of it--i've asked them that know, and every one says you've made a mint of money by speculation--that since ye sold out in the south and came here to live, there's no end to the money ye've made; so you see it don't do to be making a poor mouth to me. i've come here for a check for five thousand dollars, and shan't go away without it," concluded he, in a loud and threatening tone. during this conversation, lizzie stevens had been standing at the door, momentarily expecting a recall to the apartment. she heard the low rumble of their voices, but could not distinguish words. at length, hearing mccloskey's raised to a higher key, she could no longer restrain her impatience, and gently opening the door, looked into the room. both their faces were turned in the opposite direction, so that neither noticed the gentle intrusion of lizzie, who, fearing to leave her father longer alone, ventured into the apartment. "you need not stand looking at me in that threatening manner. you may do as you please--go tell what you like; but remember, when i fall, so do you; i have not forgotten that affair in philadelphia from which i saved you--don't place me in a situation that will compel me to recur to it to your disadvantage." "ah, don't trouble yerself about that, squire; i don't--that is entirely off my mind; for now whitticar is dead, where is yer witnesses?" "whitticar dead!" repeated stevens. "yes; and what's more, he's buried--so he's safe enough, squire; and i shouldn't be at all surprised if you'd be glad to have me gone too." "i would to god you had been, before i put myself in your power." "'twas your own hastiness. when it came to the pinch, i wasn't equal to the job, so ye couldn't wait for another time, but out with yer pistol, and does it yerself." the wretched man shuddered and covered his face, as mccloskey coolly recounted his murder of mr. garie, every word of which was too true to be denied. "and haven't i suffered," said he, shaking his bald head mournfully; "haven't i suffered--look at my grey hairs and half-palsied frame, decrepit before i'm old--sinking into the tomb with a weight of guilt and sin upon me that will crush me down to the lowest depth of hell. think you," he continued, "that because i am surrounded with all that money can buy, that i am happy, or ever shall be, with this secret gnawing at my heart; every piece of gold i count out, i see his hands outstretched over it, and hear him whisper 'mine!' he gives me no peace night or day; he is always by me; i have no rest. and you must come, adding to my torture, and striving to tear from me that for which i bartered conscience, peace, soul, everything that would make life desirable. if there is mercy in you, leave me with what i give you, and come back no more. life has so little to offer, that rather than bear this continued torment and apprehension i daily suffer, i will cut my throat, and then _your_ game is over." lizzie stevens stood rooted to the spot whilst her father made the confession that was wrung from him by the agony of the moment. "well, well!" said mccloskey, somewhat startled and alarmed at stevens's threat of self-destruction--"well, i'll come down a thousand--make it four." "that i'll do," answered the old man, tremblingly; and reaching over, he drew towards him the cheque-book. after writing the order for the sum, he was placing it in the hand of mccloskey, when, hearing a faint moan, he looked towards the door, and saw his daughter fall fainting to the ground. chapter xxxi. the thorn rankles. we left the quiet town of sudbury snow-clad and sparkling in all the glory of a frosty moonlight night; we now return to it, and discover it decked out in its bravest summer garniture. a short distance above the hill upon which it is built, the water of the river that glides along its base may be seen springing over the low dam that obstructs its passage, sparkling, glistening, dancing in the sunlight, as it falls splashing on the stones below; and then, as though subdued by the fall and crash, it comes murmuring on, stopping now and then to whirl and eddy round some rock or protruding stump, and at last glides gently under the arch of the bridge, seemingly to pause beneath its shadow and ponder upon its recent tumble from the heights above. seated here and there upon the bridge are groups of boys, rod in hand, endeavouring, with the most delicious-looking and persuasive of baits, to inveigle finny innocents from the cool depths below. the windows of the mills are all thrown open, and now and then the voices of some operatives, singing at their work, steal forth in company with the whir and hum of the spindles, and mingle with the splash of the waterfall; and the united voices of nature, industry, and man, harmonize their swelling tones, or go floating upward on the soft july air. the houses upon the hill-side seem to be endeavouring to extricate themselves from bowers of full-leafed trees; and with their white fronts, relieved by the light green blinds, look cool and inviting in the distance. high above them all, as though looking down in pride upon the rest, stands the academy, ennobled in the course of years by the addition of extensive wings and a row of stately pillars. on the whole, the town looked charmingly peaceful and attractive, and appeared just the quiet nook that a weary worker in cities would select as a place of retirement after a busy round of toils or pleasure. there were little knots of idlers gathered about the railroad station, as there always is in quiet towns--not that they expect any one; but that the arrival and departure of the train is one of the events of the day, and those who have nothing else particular to accomplish feel constrained to be on hand to witness it. every now and then one of them would look down the line and wonder why the cars were not in sight. amongst those seemingly the most impatient was miss ada bell, who looked but little older than when she won the heart of the orphan clarence, years before, by that kind kiss upon his childish brow. it was hers still--she bound it to her by long years of affectionate care, almost equalling in its sacrificing tenderness that which a mother would have bestowed upon her only child. clarence, her adopted son, had written to her, that he was wretched, heart-sore, and ill, and longed to come to her, his almost mother, for sympathy, advice, and comfort: so she, with yearning heart, was there to meet him. at last the faint scream of the steam-whistle was heard, and soon the lumbering locomotive came puffing and snorting on its iron path, dashing on as though it could never stop, and making the surrounding hills echo with the unearthly scream of its startling whistle, and arousing to desperation every dog in the quiet little town. at last it stopped, and stood giving short and impatient snorts and hisses, whilst the passengers were alighting. clarence stepped languidly out, and was soon in the embrace of miss ada. "my dear boy, how thin and pale you look!" she exclaimed; "come, get into the carriage; never mind your baggage, george will look after that; your hands are hot--very hot, you must be feverish." "yes, aunt ada," for so he had insisted on his calling her "i am ill--sick in heart, mind, and everything. cut up the horses," said he, with slight impatience of manner; "let us get home quickly. when i get in the old parlour, and let you bathe my head as you used to, i am sure i shall feel better. i am almost exhausted from fatigue and heat." "very well then, dear, don't talk now," she replied, not in the least noticing his impatience of manner; "when you are rested, and have had your tea, will be time enough." they were soon in the old house, and clarence looked round with a smile of pleasure on the room where he had spent so many happy hours. good aunt ada would not let him talk, but compelled him to remain quiet until he had rested himself, and eaten his evening meal. he had altered considerably in the lapse of years, there was but little left to remind one of the slight, melancholy-looking boy, that once stood a heavy-hearted little stranger in the same room, in days gone by. his face was without a particle of red to relieve its uniform paleness; his eyes, large, dark, and languishing, were half hidden by unusually long lashes; his forehead broad, and surmounted with clustering raven hair; a glossy moustache covered his lip, and softened down its fulness; on the whole, he was strikingly handsome, and none would pass him without a second look. tea over, miss ada insisted that he should lie down upon the sofa again, whilst she, sat by and bathed his head. "have you seen your sister lately?" she asked. "no, aunt ada," he answered, hesitatingly, whilst a look of annoyance darkened his face for a moment; "i have not been to visit her since last fall--almost a year." "oh! clarence, how can you remain so long away?" said she, reproachfully. "well, i can't go there with any comfort or pleasure," he answered, apologetically; "i can't go there; each year as i visit the place, their ways seem more strange and irksome to me. whilst enjoying her company, i must of course come in familiar contact with those by whom she is surrounded. sustaining the position that i do--passing as i am for a white man--i am obliged to be very circumspect, and have often been compelled to give her pain by avoiding many of her dearest friends when i have encountered them in public places, because of their complexion. i feel mean and cowardly whilst i'm doing it; but it is necessary--i can't be white and coloured at the same time; the two don't mingle, and i must consequently be one or the other. my education, habits, and ideas, all unfit me for associating with the latter; and i live in constant dread that something may occur to bring me out with the former. i don't avoid coloured people, because i esteem them my inferiors in refinement, education, or intelligence; but because they are subjected to degradations that i shall be compelled to share by too freely associating with them." "it is a pity," continued he, with a sigh, "that i was not suffered to grow up with them, then i should have learnt to bear their burthens, and in the course of time might have walked over my path of life, bearing the load almost unconsciously. now it would crush me, i know. it was a great mistake to place me in my present false position," concluded he, bitterly; "it has cursed me. only a day ago i had a letter from em, reproaching me for my coldness; yet, god help me! what am i to do!" miss ada looked at him sorrowfully, and continued smoothing down his hair, and inundating his temples with cologne; at last she ventured to inquire, "how do matters progress with you and miss bates? clary, you have lost your heart there!" "too true," he replied, hurriedly; "and what is more--little birdie (i call her little birdie) has lost hers too. aunt ada, we are engaged!" "with her parents' consent?" she asked. "yes, with her parents' consent; we are to be married in the coming winter." "then they know _all_, of course--they know you are coloured?" observed she. "they know all!" cried he, starting up. "_who_ said they did--_who_ told them?--tell me that, i say! who has _dared_ to tell them i am a coloured man?" "hush, clarence, hush!" replied she, attempting to soothe him. "i do not know that any one has informed them; i only inferred so from your saying you were engaged. i thought _you_ had informed them yourself. don't you remember you wrote that you should?--and i took it for granted that you had." "oh! yes, yes; so i did! i fully intended to, but found myself too great a coward. _i dare not_--i cannot risk losing her. i am fearful that if she knew it she would throw me off for ever." "perhaps not, clarence--if she loves you as she should; and even if she did, would it not be better that she should know it now, than have it discovered afterwards, and you both be rendered miserable for life." "no, no, aunt ada--i cannot tell her! it must remain a secret until after our marriage; then, if they find it out, it will be to their interest to smooth the matter over, and keep quiet about it." "clary, clary--that is _not_ honourable!" "i know it--but how can i help it? once or twice i thought of telling her, but my heart always failed me at the critical moment. it would kill me to lose her. oh! i love her, aunt ada," said he, passionately--"love her with all the energy and strength of my father's race, and all the doating tenderness of my mother's. i could have told her long ago, before my love had grown to its present towering strength, but craft set a seal upon my lips, and bid me be silent until her heart was fully mine, and then nothing could part us; yet now even, when sure of her affections, the dread that her love would not stand the test, compels me to shrink more than ever from the disclosure." "but, clarence, you are not acting generously; i know your conscience does not approve your actions." "don't i know that?" he answered, almost fiercely; "yet i dare not tell--i must shut this secret in my bosom, where it gnaws, gnaws, gnaws, until it has almost eaten my heart away. oh, i've thought of that, time and again; it has kept me awake night after night, it haunts me at all hours; it is breaking down my health and strength--wearing my very life out of me; no escaped galley-slave ever felt more than i do, or lived in more constant fear of detection: and yet i must nourish this tormenting secret, and keep it growing in my breast until it has crowded out every honourable and manly feeling; and then, perhaps, after all my sufferings and sacrifice of candour and truth, out it will come at last, when i least expect or think of it." aunt ada could not help weeping, and exclaimed, commiseratingly, "my poor, poor boy," as he strode up and down the room. "the whole family, except her, seem to have the deepest contempt for coloured people; they are constantly making them a subject of bitter jests; they appear to have no more feeling or regard for them than if they were brutes--and i," continued he, "i, miserable, contemptible, false-hearted knave, as i am, i--i--yes, i join them in their heartless jests, and wonder all the while my mother does not rise from her grave and _curse_ me as i speak!" "oh! clarence, clarence, my dear child!" cried the terrified aunt ada, "you talk deliriously; you have brooded over this until it has almost made you crazy. come here--sit down." and seizing him by the arm, she drew him on the sofa beside her, and began to bathe his hot head with the cologne again. "let me walk, aunt ada," said he after a few moments,--"let me walk, i feel better whilst i am moving; i can't bear to be quiet." and forthwith he commenced striding up and down the room again with nervous and hurried steps. after a few moments he burst out again---- "it seems as if fresh annoyances and complications beset me every day. em writes me that she is engaged. i was in hopes, that, after i had married, i could persuade her to come and live with me, and so gradually break off her connection with, coloured people; but that hope is extinguished now: she is engaged to a coloured man." aunt ada could see no remedy for this new difficulty, and could only say, "indeed!" "i thought something of the kind would occur when i was last at home, and spoke to her on the subject, but she evaded giving me any definite answer; i think she was afraid to tell me--she has written, asking my consent." "and will you give it?" asked aunt ada. "it will matter but little if i don't; em has a will of her own, and i have no means of coercing her; besides, i have no reasonable objection to urge: it would be folly in me to oppose it, simply because he is a coloured man--for, what am i myself? the only difference is, that his identity with coloured people is no secret, and he is not ashamed of it; whilst i conceal my origin, and live in constant dread that some one may find it out." when clarence had finished, he continued to walk up and down the room, looking very careworn and gloomy. miss bell remained on the sofa, thoughtfully regarding him. at last, she rose up and took his hand in hers, as she used to when he was a boy, and walking beside him, said, "the more i reflect upon it, the more necessary i regard it that you should tell this girl and her parents your real position before you marry her. throw away concealment, make a clean breast of it! you may not be rejected when they find her heart is so deeply interested. if you marry her with this secret hanging over you, it will embitter your life, make you reserved, suspicious, and consequently ill-tempered, and destroy all your domestic happiness. let me persuade you, tell them ere it be too late. suppose it reached them through some other source, what would they then think of you?" "who else would tell them? who else knows it? you, you," said he suspiciously--"_you_ would not betray me! i thought you loved me, aunt ada." "clarence, my dear boy," she rejoined, apparently hurt by his hasty and accusing tone, "you _will_ mistake me--i have no such intention. if they are never to learn it except through _me_, your secret is perfectly safe. yet i must tell you that i feel and think that the true way to promote her happiness and your own, is for you to disclose to them your real position, and throw yourself upon their generosity for the result." clarence pondered for a long time over miss bell's advice, which she again and again repeated, placing it each time before him in a stronger light, until, at last, she extracted from him a promise that he would do it. "i know you are right, aunt ada," said he; "i am convinced of that--it is a question of courage with me. i know it would be more honourable for me to tell her now. i'll try to do it--i will make an effort, and summon up the courage necessary--god be my helper!" "that's a dear boy!" she exclaimed, kissing him affectionately; "i know you will feel happier when it is all over; and even if she should break her engagement, you will be infinitely better off than if it was fulfilled and your secret subsequently discovered. come, now," she concluded, "i am going to exert my old authority, and send you to bed; tomorrow, perhaps, you may see this in a more hopeful light." two days after this, clarence was again in new york, amid the heat and dust of that crowded, bustling city. soon, after his arrival, he dressed himself, and started for the mansion of mr. bates, trembling as he went, for the result of the communication he was about to make. once on the way he paused, for the thought had occurred to him that he would write to them; then reproaching himself for his weakness and timidity, he started on again with renewed determination. "i'll see her myself," he soliloquized. "i'll tell little birdie all, and know my fate from her own lips. if i must give her up, i'll know the worst from her." when clarence was admitted, he would not permit himself to be announced, but walked tiptoe upstairs and gently opening the drawing-room door, entered the room. standing by the piano, turning over the leaves of some music, and merrily humming an air, was a young girl of extremely _petite_ and delicate form. her complexion was strikingly fair; and the rich curls of dark auburn that fell in clusters on her shoulders, made it still more dazzling by the contrast presented. her eyes were grey, inclining to black; her features small, and not over-remarkable for their symmetry, yet by no means disproportionate. there was the sweetest of dimples on her small round chin, and her throat white and clear as the finest marble. the expression of her face was extremely childlike; she seemed more like a schoolgirl than a young woman of eighteen on the eve of marriage. there was something deliriously airy and fairylike in her motions, and as she slightly moved her feet in time to the music she was humming, her thin blue dress floated about her, and undulated in harmony with her graceful motions. after gazing at her for a few moments, clarence called gently, "little birdie." she gave a timid joyous little cry of surprise and pleasure, and fluttered into his arms. "oh, clary, love, how you startled me! i did not dream there was any one in the room. it was so naughty in you," said she, childishly, as he pushed back the curls from her face and kissed her. "when did you arrive?" "only an hour ago," he answered. "and you came here at once? ah, that was so lover-like and kind," she rejoined, smiling. "you look like a sylph to-night, anne," said he, as she danced about him. "ah," he continued, after regarding her for a few seconds with a look of intense admiration, "you want to rivet my chains the tighter,--you look most bewitching. why are you so much dressed to-night?--jewels, sash, and satin slippers," he continued; "are you going out?" "no, clary," she answered. "i was to have gone to the theatre; but just at the last moment i decided not to. a singular desire to stay at home came over me suddenly. i had an instinctive feeling that i should lose some greater enjoyment if i went; so i remained at home; and here, love, are you. but what is the matter? you look sad and weary." "i am a little fatigued," said he, seating himself and holding her hand in his: "a little weary; but that will soon wear off; and as for the sadness," concluded he, with a forced smile, "that _must_ depart now that i am with you, little birdie." "i feel relieved that you have returned safe and well," said she, looking up into his face from her seat beside him; "for, clary, love, i had such a frightful dream, such a singular dream about you. i have endeavoured to shake it out of my foolish little head; but it won't go, clary,--i can't get rid of it. it occurred after you left us at saratoga. oh, it was nothing though," said she, laughing and shaking her curls,--"nothing; and now you are safely returned, i shall not think of it again. tell me what you have seen since you went away; and how is that dear aunt ada of yours you talk so much about?" "oh, she is quite well," answered he; "but tell, anne, tell me about that dream. what was it, birdie?--come tell me." "i don't care to," she answered, with a slight shudder,--"i don't want to, love." "yes, yes,--do, sweet," importuned he; "i want to hear it." "then if i must," said she, "i will. i dreamed that you and i were walking on a road together, and 'twas such a beautiful road, with flowers and fruit, and lovely cottages on either side. i thought you held my hand; i felt it just as plain as i clasp yours now. presently a rough ugly man overtook us, and bid you let me go; and that you refused, and held me all the tighter. then he gave you a diabolical look, and touched you on the face, and you broke out in loathsome black spots, and screamed in such agony and frightened me so, that i awoke all in a shiver of terror, and did not get over it all the next day." clarence clutched her hand tighter as she finished, so tight indeed, that she gave a little scream of pain and looked frightened at him. "what is the matter?" she inquired; "your hand is like ice, and you are paler than ever. you haven't let that trifling dream affect you so? it is nothing." "i am superstitious in regard to dreams," said clarence, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "go," he asked, faintly, "play me an air, love,--something quick and lively to dispel this. i wish you had not told me." "but you begged me to," said she, pouting, as she took her seat at the instrument. "how ominous," muttered he,--"became covered with black spots; that is a foreshadowing. how can i tell her," he thought. "it seems like wilfully destroying my own happiness." and he sat struggling with himself to obtain the necessary courage to fulfil the purpose of his visit, and became so deeply engrossed with his own reflections as to scarcely even hear the sound of the instrument. "it is too bad," she cried, as she ceased playing: "here i have performed some of your favourite airs, and that too without eliciting a word of commendation. you are inexpressibly dull to-night; nothing seems to enliven you. what is the matter?" "oh," rejoined he, abstractedly, "am i? i was not aware of it." "yes, you are," said little birdie, pettishly; "nothing seems to engage your attention." and, skipping off to the table, she took up the newspaper, and exclaimed,--"let me read you something very curious." "no, no, anne dear," interrupted he; "sit here by me. i want to say something serious to you--something of moment to us both." "then it's something very grave and dull, i know," she remarked; "for that is the way people always begin. now i don't want to hear anything serious to-night; i want to be merry. you _look_ serious enough; and if you begin to talk seriously you'll be perfectly unbearable. so you must hear what i am going to read to you first." and the little tyrant put her finger on his lip, and looked so bewitching, that he could not refuse her. and the important secret hung on his lips, but was not spoken. "listen," said she, spreading out the paper before her and running her tiny finger down the column. "ah, i have it," she exclaimed at last, and began:-- "'we learn from unimpeachable authority that the hon. ---- ----, who represents a district of our city in the state legislature, was yesterday united to the quateroon daughter of the late gustave almont. she is said to be possessed of a large fortune, inherited from her father; and they purpose going to france to reside,--a sensible determination; as, after such a _mesalliance_, the honourable gentleman can no longer expect to retain his former social position in our midst.--_new orleans watchman_.'" "isn't it singular," she remarked, "that a man in his position should make such a choice?" "he loved her, no doubt," suggested clarence; "and she was almost white." "how could he love her?" asked she, wonderingly. "love a coloured woman! i cannot conceive it possible," said she, with a look of disgust; "there is something strange and unnatural about it." "no, no," he rejoined, hurriedly, "it was love, anne,--pure love; it is not impossible. i--i--" "am coloured," he would have said; but he paused and looked full in her lovely face. he could not tell her,--the words slunk back into his coward heart unspoken. she stared at him in wonder and perplexity, and exclaimed,--"dear clarence, how strangely you act! i am afraid you are not well. your brow is hot," said she, laying her hand on his forehead; "you have been travelling too much for your strength." "it is not that," he replied. "i feel a sense of suffocation, as if all the blood was rushing to my throat. let me get the air." and he rose and walked to the window. anne hastened and brought him a glass of water, of which he drank a little, and then declared himself better. after this, he stood for a long time with her clasped in his arms; then giving her one or two passionate kisses, he strained her closer to him and abruptly left the house, leaving little birdie startled and alarmed by his strange behaviour. chapter xxxii. dear old ess again. let us visit once more the room from which mr. walters and his friends made so brave a defence. there is but little in its present appearance to remind one of that eventful night,--no reminiscences of that desperate attack, save the bullet-hole in the ceiling, which mr. walters declares shall remain unfilled as an evidence of the marked attention he has received at the hands of his fellow-citizens. there are several noticeable additions to the furniture of the apartment; amongst them an elegantly-carved work-stand, upon which some unfinished articles of children's apparel are lying; a capacious rocking-chair, and grand piano. then opposite to the portrait of toussaint is suspended another picture, which no doubt holds a higher position in the regard of the owner of the mansion than the african warrior aforesaid. it is a likeness of the lady who is sitting at the window,--mrs. esther walters, _nee_ ellis. the brown baby in the picture is the little girl at her side,--the elder sister of the other brown baby who is doing its best to pull from its mother's lap the doll's dress upon which she is sewing. yes, that is "dear old ess," as charlie calls her yet, though why he will persist in applying the adjective we are at a loss to determine. esther looks anything but old--a trifle matronly, we admit--but old we emphatically say she is not; her hair is parted plainly, and the tiniest of all tiny caps sits at the back of her head, looking as if it felt it had no business on such raven black hair, and ought to be ignominiously dragged off without one word of apology. the face and form are much more round and full, and the old placid expression has been undisturbed in the lapse of years. the complexion of the two children was a sort of compromise between the complexions of their parents--chubby-faced, chestnut-coloured, curly-headed, rollicking little pests, who would never be quiet, and whose little black buttons of eyes were always peering into something, and whose little plugs of fingers would, in spite of every precaution to prevent, be diving into mother's work-box, and various other highly inconvenient and inappropriate places. "there!" said esther, putting the last stitch into a doll she had been manufacturing; "now, take sister, and go away and play." but little sister, it appeared, did not wish to be taken, and she made the best of her way off, holding on by the chairs, and tottering over the great gulfs between them, until she succeeded in reaching the music-stand, where she paused for a while before beginning to destroy the music. just at this critical juncture a young lady entered the room, and held up her hands in horror, and baby hastened off as fast as her toddling limbs could carry her, and buried her face in her mother's lap in great consternation. emily garie made two or three slight feints of an endeavour to catch her, and then sat down by the little one's mother, and gave a deep sigh. "have you answered your brother's letter?" asked esther. "yes, i have," she replied; "here it is,"--and she laid the letter in esther's lap. baby made a desperate effort to obtain it, but suffered a signal defeat, and her mother opened it, and read-- "dear brother,--i read your chilling letter with deep sorrow. i cannot say that it surprised me; it is what i have anticipated during the many months that i have been silent on the subject of my marriage. yet, when i read it, i could not but feel a pang to which heretofore i have been a stranger. clarence, you know i love you, and should not make the sacrifice you demand a test of my regard. true, i cannot say (and most heartily i regret it) that there exists between us the same extravagant fondness we cherished as children--but that is no fault of mine. did you not return to me, each year, colder and colder--more distant and unbrotherly--until you drove back to their source the gushing streams of a sister's love that flowed so strongly towards you? you ask me to resign charles ellis and come to you. what can you offer me in exchange for his true, manly affection?--to what purpose drive from my heart a love that has been my only solace, only consolation, for your waning regard! we have grown up together--he has been warm and kind, when you were cold and indifferent--and now that he claims the reward of long years of tender regard, and my own heart is conscious that he deserves it, you would step between us, and forbid me yield the recompense that it will be my pride and delight to bestow. it grieves me to write it; yet i must, clary--for between brother and sister there is no need of concealments; and particularly at such a time should everything be open, clear, explicit. do not think i wish to reproach you. what you are, clarence, your false position and unfortunate education have made you. i write it with pain--your demand seems extremely selfish. i fear it is not of _me_ but of _yourself_ you are thinking, when you ask me to sever, at once and for ever, my connection with a people who, you say, can only degrade me. yet how much happier am i, sharing their degradation, than you appear to be! is it regard for me that induces the desire that i should share the life of constant dread that i cannot but feel you endure--or do you fear that my present connections will interfere with your own plans for the future? "even did i grant it was my happiness alone you had in view, my objections would be equally strong. i could not forego the claims of early friendship, and estrange myself from those who have endeared themselves to me by long years of care--nor pass coldly and unrecognizingly by playmates and acquaintances, because their complexions were a few shades darker than my own. this i could never do--to me it seems ungrateful: yet i would not reproach you because you can--for the circumstances by which you have been surrounded have conspired to produce that result--and i presume you regard such conduct as necessary to sustain you in your present position. from the tenor of your letter i should judge that you entertained some fear that i might compromise you with your future bride, and intimate that _my_ choice may deprive you of _yours_. surely that need not be. _she_ need not even know of my existence. do not entertain a fear that i, or my future husband, will ever interfere with your happiness by thrusting ourselves upon you, or endanger your social position by proclaiming our relationship. our paths lie so widely apart that they need never cross. you walk on the side of the oppressor--i, thank god, am with the oppressed. "i am happy--more happy, i am sure, than you could make me, even by surrounding me with the glittering lights that shine upon your path, and which, alas! may one day go suddenly out, and leave you wearily groping in the darkness. i trust, dear brother, my words may not prove a prophecy; yet, should they be, trust me, clarence, you may come back again, and a sister's heart will receive you none the less warmly that you selfishly desired her to sacrifice the happiness of a lifetime to you. i shall marry charles ellis. i ask you to come and see us united--i shall not reproach you if you do not; yet i shall feel strange without a single relative to kiss or bless me in that most eventful hour of a woman's life. god bless you, clary! i trust your union may be as happy as i anticipate my own will be--and, if it is not, it will not be because it has lacked the earnest prayers of your neglected but still loving sister." "esther, i thought i was too cold in that--tell me, do you think so?" "no, dear, not at all; i think it a most affectionate reply to a cold, selfish letter." "oh, i'm glad to hear you say that. i can trust better to your tenderness of others' feelings than to my own heart. i felt strongly, esther, and was fearful that it might be too harsh or reproachful. i was anxious lest my feelings should be too strikingly displayed; yet it was better to be explicit--don't you think so?" "undoubtedly," answered esther; and handing back the letter, she took up baby, and seated herself in the rocking-chair. now baby had a prejudice against caps, inveterate and unconquerable; and grandmamma, nurse, and esther were compelled to bear the brunt of her antipathies. we have before said that esther's cap _looked_ as though it felt itself in an inappropriate position--that it had got on the head of the wrong individual--and baby, no doubt in deference to the cap's feelings, tore it off, and threw it in the half-open piano, from whence it was extricated with great detriment to the delicate lace. emily took a seat near the window, and drawing her work-table towards her, raised the lid. this presenting another opening for baby, she slid down from her mother's lap, and hastened towards her. she just arrived in time to see it safely closed, and toddled back to her mother, as happy as if she had succeeded in running riot over its contents, and scattering them all over the floor. emily kept looking down the street, as though in anxious expectation of somebody; and whilst she stood there, there was an opportunity of observing how little she had changed in the length of years. she is little em magnified, with a trifle less of the child in her face. her hair has a slight kink, is a little more wavy than is customary in persons of entire white blood; but in no other way is her extraction perceptible, only the initiated, searching for evidences of african blood, would at all notice this slight peculiarity. her expectation was no doubt about to be gratified, for a smile broke over her face, as she left the window and skipped downstairs; when she re-entered, she was accompanied by her intended husband. there was great commotion amongst the little folk in consequence of this new arrival. baby kicked, and screamed out "unker char," and went almost frantic because her dress became entangled in the buckle of her mamma's belt, and her sister received a kiss before she could be extricated. charlie is greatly altered--he is tall, remarkably athletic, with a large, handsomely-shaped head, covered with close-cut, woolly hair; high forehead, heavy eyebrows, large nose, and a mouth of ordinary size, filled with beautifully white teeth, which he displays at almost every word he speaks; chin broad, and the whole expression of his face thoughtful and commanding, yet replete with good humour. no one would call him handsome, yet there was something decidedly attractive in his general appearance. no one would recognize him as the charlie of old, whose escapades had so destroyed the comfort and harmony of mrs. thomas's establishment; and only once, when he held up the baby, and threatened to let her tear the paper ornaments from the chandelier, was there a twinkle of the charlie of old looking out of his eyes. "how are mother and father to-day?" asked esther. "oh, both well. i left them only a few minutes ago at the dinner table. i had to hurry off to go to the office." "so i perceive," observed esther, archly, "and of course, coming here, which is four squares out of your way, will get you there much sooner." emily blushed, and said, smilingly, esther was "a very impertinent person;" and in this opinion charlie fully concurred. they then walked to the window, where they stood, saying, no doubt, to each other those little tender things which are so profoundly interesting to lovers, and so exceedingly stupid to every one else. baby, in high glee, was seated on charlie's shoulder, where she could clutch both hands in his hair and pull until the tears almost started from his eyes. "emily and you have been talking a long while, and i presume you have fully decided on what day you are both to be rescued from your misery, and when i am to have the exquisite satisfaction of having my house completely turned upside down for your mutual benefit," said esther. "i trust it will be as soon as possible, as we cannot rationally expect that either of you will be bearable until it is all over, and you find yourselves ordinary mortals again. come now, out with it. when is it to be?" "i say next week," cried charlie. "next week, indeed," hastily rejoined emily. "i could not think of such a thing--so abrupt." "so abrupt," repeated charlie, with a laugh. "why, haven't i been courting you ever since i wore roundabouts, and hasn't everybody been expecting us to be married every week within the last two years. fie, em, it's anything but abrupt." emily blushed still deeper, and looked out of the window, down the street and up the street, but did not find anything in the prospect at either side that at all assisted her to come to a decision, so she only became more confused and stared the harder; at last she ventured to suggest that day two months. "this day two months--outrageous!" said charlie. "come here, dear old ess, and help me to convince this deluded girl of the preposterous manner in which she is conducting herself." "i must join her side if you _will_ bring me into the discussion. i think she is right, charlie--there is so much to be done: the house to procure and furnish, and numberless other things that you hasty and absurd men know nothing about." by dint of strong persuasion from charlie, emily finally consented to abate two weeks of the time, and they decided that a family council should be held that evening at mrs. ellis's, when the whole arrangements should be definitely settled. a note was accordingly despatched by esther to her mother--that she, accompanied by emily and the children, would come to them early in the afternoon, and that the gentlemen would join them in the evening at tea-time. caddy was, of course, completely upset by the intelligence; for, notwithstanding that she and the maid-of-all-work lived in an almost perpetual state of house-cleaning, nothing appeared to her to be in order, and worse than all, there was nothing to eat. "nothing to eat!" exclaimed mrs. ellis. "why, my dear child, there are all manner of preserves, plenty of fresh peaches to cut and sugar down, and a large pound-cake in the house, and any quantity of bread can be purchased at the baker's." "bread--plain bread!" rejoined caddy, indignantly, quite astonished at her mother's modest idea of a tea--and a company-tea at that. "do you think, mother, i'd set mr. walters down to plain bread, when we always have hot rolls and short-cake at their house? it is not to be thought of for a moment: they must have some kind of hot cake, be the consequences what they may." caddy bustled herself about, and hurried up the maid-of-all-work in an astonishing manner, and before the company arrived had everything prepared, and looked as trim and neat herself as if she had never touched a rolling-pin, and did not know what an oven was used for. behold them all assembled. mrs. ellis at the head of the table with a grandchild on each side of her, and her cap-strings pinned upon the side next to baby. esther sits opposite her husband, who is grown a little grey, but otherwise is not in the least altered; next to her is her father, almost buried in a large easy-chair, where he sits shaking his head from time to time, and smiling vacantly at the children; then come emily and charlie at the foot, and at his other hand caddy and kinch--kinch the invincible--kinch the dirty--kinch the mischievous, now metamorphosed into a full-blown dandy, with faultless linen, elegant vest, and fashionably-cut coat. oh, kinch, what a change--from the most shabby and careless of all boys to a consummate exquisite, with heavy gold watch and eye-glass, and who has been known to dress regularly twice a day! there was a mighty pouring out of tea at mrs. ellis's end of the table, and baby of course had to be served first with some milk and bread. between her and the cat intimate relations seemed to exist, for by their united efforts the first cap was soon disposed of, and baby was clamouring for the second before the elder portions of the family had been once served round with tea. charlie and emily ate little and whispered a great deal; but kinch, the voracity of whose appetite had not at all diminished in the length of years, makes up for their abstinence by devouring the delicious round short-cakes with astonishing rapidity. he did not pretend to make more than two bites to a cake, and they slipped away down his throat as if it was a railroad tunnel and they were a train of cars behind time. caddy felt constrained to get up every few moments to look after something, and to assure herself by personal inspection that the reserved supplies in the kitchen were not likely to be exhausted. esther occupied herself in attending upon her helpless father, and fed him as tenderly and carefully as if he was one of her babies. "i left you ladies in council. what was decided?" said charlie, "don't be at all bashful as regards speaking before kinch, for he is in the secret and has been these two months. kinch is to be groomsman, and has had three tailors at work on his suit for a fortnight past. he told me this morning that if you did not hurry matters up, his wedding coat would be a week out of fashion before he should get a chance to wear it." "how delightful--kinch to be groomsman," said esther, "that is very kind in you, kinch, to assist us to get charlie off our hands." "and who is to be bridesmaid?" asked walters. "oh, caddy of course--i couldn't have any one but caddy," blushingly answered emily. "that is capital," cried charlie, giving kinch a facetious poke, "just the thing, isn't it, kinch--it will get her accustomed to these matters. you remember what you told me this morning, eh, old boy?" he concluded, archly. kinch tried to blush, but being very dark-complexioned, his efforts in that direction were not at all apparent, so he evidenced his confusion by cramming a whole short-cake into his mouth, and almost caused a stoppage in the tunnel; caddy became excessively red in the face, and was sure they wanted more cakes. but mr. walters was equally confident they did not, and put his back against the door and stood there, whilst mrs. ellis gravely informed them that she soon expected to be her own housekeeper, for that she had detected caddy and kinch in a furniture establishment, pricing a chest of drawers and a wash-stand; and that kinch had unblushingly told her they had for some time been engaged to be married, but somehow or other had forgotten to mention it to her. this caused a general shout of laughter around the table, in which baby tumultuously joined, and rattled her spoon against the tea-urn until she almost deafened them. this noise frightened mr. ellis, who cried, "there they come! there they come!" and cowered down in his great chair, and looked so exceedingly terrified, that the noise was hushed instantly, and tears sprang into the eyes of dear old ess, who rose and stood by him, and laid his withered face upon her soft warm bosom, smoothed down the thin grey hair, and held him close to her throbbing tender heart, until the wild light vanished from his bleared and sunken eyes, and the vacant childish smile came back on his thin, wan face again, when she said, "pray don't laugh so very loud, it alarms father; he is composed now, pray don't startle him so again." this sobered them down a little, and they quietly recommenced discussing the matrimonial arrangements; but they were all in such capital spirits that an occasional hearty and good-humoured laugh could not be suppressed. mr. walters acted in his usual handsome manner, and facetiously collaring charlie, took him into a corner and informed him that he had an empty house that be wished him to occupy, and that if he ever whispered the word rent, or offered him any money before he was worth twenty thousand dollars, he should believe that he wanted to pick a quarrel with him, and should refer him to a friend, and then pistols and coffee would be the inevitable result. then it came out that caddy and kinch had been, courting for some time, if not with mrs. ellis's verbal consent, with at least no objection from that good lady; for master kinch, besides being an exceedingly good-natured fellow, was very snug in his boots, and had a good many thousand dollars at his disposal, bequeathed him by his father. the fates had conspired to make that old gentleman rich. he owned a number of lots on the outskirts of the city, on which he had been paying taxes a number of years, and he awoke one fine morning to find them worth a large sum of money. the city council having determined to cut a street just beside them, and the property all around being in the hands of wealthy and fashionable people, his own proved to be exceedingly valuable. it was a sad day for the old man, as kinch and his mother insisted that he should give up business, which he did most reluctantly, and kinch had to be incessantly on the watch thereafter, to prevent him from hiring cellars, and sequestering their old clothes to set up in business again. they were both gone now, and kinch was his own master, with a well-secured income of a thousand dollars a-year, with a prospect of a large increase. they talked matters over fully, and settled all their arrangements before the time for parting, and then, finding the baby had scrambled into mrs. ellis's lap and gone fast asleep, and that it was long after ten o'clock, each departed, taking their several ways for home. chapter xxxiii. the fatal discovery. there is great bustle and confusion in the house of mr. bates. mantua-makers and milliners are coming in at unearthly hours, and consultations of deep importance are being duly held with maiden aunts and the young ladies who are to officiate as bridesmaids at the approaching ceremony. there are daily excursions to drapers' establishments, and jewellers, and, in fact, so much to be done and thought of, that little birdie is in constant confusion, and her dear little curly head is almost turned topsy-turvy. twenty times in each day is she called upstairs to where the sempstresses are at work, to have something tried on or fitted. poor little birdie! she declares she never can stand it: she did not dream that to be married she would have been subjected to such a world of trouble, or she would never have consented,--_never_! and then clarence, too, comes in every morning, and remains half the day, teasing her to play, to talk, or sing. inconsiderate clarence! when she has so much on her mind; and when at last he goes, and she begins to felicitate herself that she is rid of him, back he comes again in the evening, and repeats the same annoyance. o, naughty, tiresome, clarence! how can you plague little birdie so? perhaps you think she doesn't dislike it; you may be right, very likely she doesn't. she sometimes wonders why he grows paler and thinner each day, and his nervous and sometimes distracted manner teases her dreadfully; but she supposes all lovers act thus, and expects they cannot help it--and then little birdie takes a sly peep in the glass, and does not so much wonder after all. yet if she sometimes deems his manner startling and odd, what would she say if she knew that, night after night, when he left her side, he wandered for long hours through the cold and dreary streets, and then went to his hotel, where he paced his room until almost day? ah, little birdie, a smile will visit his pale face when you chirp tenderly to him, and a faint tinge comes upon his cheek when you lay your soft tiny hand upon it; yet all the while there is that desperate secret lying next his heart, and, like a vampire, sucking away, drop by drop, happiness and peace. not so with little birdie; she is happy--oh, _so_ happy: she rises with a song upon her lips, and is chirping in the sunshine she herself creates, the live-long day. flowers of innocence bloom and flourish in her peaceful lithesome heart. poor, poor, little birdie! those flowers are destined to wither soon, and the sunlight fade from thy happy face for ever. one morning, clarence, little birdie, and her intended bridesmaid, miss ellstowe, were chatting together, when a card was handed to the latter, who, on looking at it, exclaimed, "oh, dear me! an old beau of mine; show him up," and scampering off to the mirror, she gave a hasty glance, to see that every curl was in its effective position. "who is it?" asked little birdie, all alive with curiosity; "do say who it is." "hush!" whispered miss ellstowe, "here he comes, my dear; he is very rich--a great catch; are my curls all right?" scarcely had she asked the question, and before an answer could be returned, the servant announced mr. george stevens, and the gentleman walked into the room. start not, reader, it is not the old man we left bent over the prostrate form of his unconscious daughter, but george stevens, junior, the son and heir of the old man aforesaid. the heart of clarence almost ceased to beat at the sound of that well-known name, and had not both the ladies been so engrossed in observing the new-comer, they must have noticed the deep flush that suffused his face, and the deathly pallor that succeeded it. mr. stevens was presented to miss bates, and miss ellstowe turned to present him to clarence. "mr. garie--mr. stevens," said she. clarence bowed. "pardon me, i did not catch the name," said the former, politely. "mr. clarence garie," she repeated, more distinctly. george stevens bowed, and then sitting down opposite clarence, eyed him for a few moments intently. "i think we have met before," said he at last, in a cold, contemptuous tone, not unmingled with surprise, "have we not?" clarence endeavoured to answer, but could not; he was, for a moment, incapable of speech; a slight gurgling noise was heard in his throat, as he bowed affirmatively. "we were neighbours at one time, i think," added george stevens. "we were," faintly ejaculated clarence. "it is a great surprise to me to meet _you_ here," pursued george stevens. "the surprise is mutual, i assure you, sir," rejoined clarence, coldly, and with slightly agitated manner. hereupon ensued an embarrassing pause in the conversation, during which the ladies could not avoid observing the livid hue of clarence's face. there was a perfect tumult raging in his breast; he knew that now his long-treasured secret would be brought out; this was to be the end of his struggle to preserve it--to be exposed at last, when on the brink of consummating his happiness. as he sat there, looking at george stevens, he became a murderer in his heart; and if an invisible dagger could have been placed in his hands, he would have driven it to the hilt in his breast, and stilled for ever the tongue that was destined to betray him. but it was too late; one glance at the contemptuous, malignant face of the son of his father's murderer, told him his fate was sealed--that it was now too late to avert exposure. he grew faint, dizzy, ill,--and rising, declared hurriedly he must go, staggered towards the door, and fell upon the carpet, with a slight stream of blood spirting from his mouth. little birdie screamed, and ran to raise him; george stevens and miss ellstowe gave their assistance, and by their united efforts he was placed upon the sofa. little birdie wiped the bloody foam from his mouth with her tiny lace handkerchief, bathed his head, and held cold water to his lips; but consciousness was long returning, and they thought he was dying. poor torn heart! pity it was thy beatings were not stilled then for ever. it was not thy fate; long, long months of grief and despair were yet to come before the end approached and day again broke upon thee. just at this crisis mr. bates came in, and was greatly shocked and alarmed by clarence's deathly appearance. as he returned to consciousness he looked wildly about him, and clasping little birdie's hand in his, gazed at her with a tender imploring countenance: yet it was a despairing look--such a one as a shipwrecked seaman gives when, in sight of land, he slowly relaxes his hold upon the sustaining spar that he has no longer the strength to clutch, and sinks for ever beneath the waters. a physician was brought in, who declared he had ruptured a minor blood-vessel, and would not let him utter a whisper, and, assisted by mr. bates, placed him in his carriage, and the three were driven as swiftly as possible to the hotel where clarence was staying. little birdie retired to her room in great affliction, followed by miss ellstowe, and george stevens was left in the room alone. "what can the fellow have been doing here?" he soliloquised; "on intimate terms too, apparently; it is very singular; i will wait miss ellstowe's return, and ask an explanation." when miss ellstowe re-entered the room, he immediately inquired, "what was that mr. garie doing here? he seems on an exceedingly intimate footing, and your friend apparently takes a wonderful interest in him." "of course she does; that is her _fiance_." "_impossible_!" rejoined he, with an air of astonishment. "impossible!--why so? i assure you he is. they are to be married in a few weeks. i am here to officiate as bridesmaid." "phew!" whistled george stevens; and then, after pausing a moment, he asked, "do you know anything about this mr. garie--anything, i mean, respecting his family?" "why, no--that is, nothing very definite, more than that he is an orphan, and a gentleman of education and independent means." "humph!" ejaculated george stevens, significantly. "humph!" repeated miss ellstowe, "what do you mean? do you know anything beyond that? one might suppose you did, from your significant looks and gestures." "yes, i _do_ know something about this mr. garie," he replied, after a short silence. "but tell me what kind of people are these you are visiting--abolitionists, or anything of that sort?" "how absurd, mr. stevens, to ask such a question; of course they are not," said she, indignantly; "do you suppose i should be here if they were? but why do you ask--is this mr. garie one?" "no, my friend," answered her visitor; "_i wish that was all_." "that was all!--how strangely you talk--you alarm me," continued she, with considerable agitation. "if you know anything that will injure the happiness of my friend--anything respecting mr. garie that she or her father should know--make no secret of it, but disclose it to me at once. anne is my dearest friend, and i, of course, must be interested in anything that concerns her happiness. tell me, what is it you know?" "it is nothing, i assure you, that it will give me any pleasure to tell," answered he. "do speak out, mr. stevens. is there any stain on his character, or that of his family? did he ever do anything dishonourable?" "_i wish that was all_," coolly repeated george stevens. "i am afraid he is a villain, and has been imposing himself upon this family for what he is not." "good heavens! mr. stevens, how is he a villain or impostor?" "you all suppose him to be a white man, do you not?" he asked. "of course we do," she promptly answered. "then you are all grievously mistaken, for he is not. did you not notice how he changed colour, how agitated he became, when i was presented? it was because he knew that his exposure was at hand. i know him well--in fact, he is the illegitimate son of a deceased relative of mine, by a mulatto slave." "it cannot be possible," exclaimed miss ellstowe, with a wild stare of astonishment. "are you sure of it?" "sure of it! of course i am. i should indeed be a rash man to make such a terrible charge unless perfectly able to substantiate it. i have played with him frequently when a child, and my father made a very liberal provision for this young man and his sister, after the death of their father, who lost his life through imprudently living with this woman in philadelphia, and consequently getting himself mixed up with these detestable abolitionists." "can this be true?" asked miss ellstowe, incredulously. "i assure you it is. we had quite lost sight of them for a few years back, and i little supposed we should meet under such circumstances. i fear i shall be the cause of great discomfort, but i am sure in the end i shall be thanked. i could not, with any sense of honour or propriety, permit such a thing as this marriage to be consummated, without at least warning your friends of the real position of this fellow. i trust, miss ellstowe, you will inform them of what i have told you." "how can i? oh, mr. stevens!" said she, in a tone of deep distress, "this will be a terrible blow--it will almost kill anne. no, no; the task must not devolve on me--i cannot tell them. poor little thing! it will break her heart, i am afraid." "oh, but you must, miss ellstowe; it would seem very impertinent in me--a stranger--to meddle in such a matter; and, besides, they may be aware of it, and not thank me for my interference." "no, i assure you they are not; i am confident they have not the most distant idea of such a thing--they would undoubtedly regard it as an act of kindness on your part. i shall insist upon your remaining until the return of mr. bates, when i shall beg you to repeat to him what you have already revealed to me." "as you insist upon it, i suppose i must," repeated he, after some reflection; "but i must say i do not like the office of informer," concluded he, with assumed reluctance. "i am sorry to impose it upon you; yet, rest assured, they will thank you. excuse me for a few moments--i will go and see how anne is." miss ellstowe returned, after a short interval, with the information that little birdie was much more composed, and would, no doubt, soon recover from her fright. "to receive a worse blow," observed george stevens. "i pity the poor little thing--only to think of the disgrace of being engaged to a nigger. it is fortunate for them that they will make the discovery ere it be too late. heavens! only think what the consequences might have been had she married this fellow, and his peculiar position became known to them afterwards! she would have been completely 'done for.'" thus conversing respecting clarence, they awaited the return of mr. bates. after the lapse of a couple of hours he entered the drawing-room. mr. stevens was presented to him by miss ellstowe, as a particular friend of herself and family. "i believe you were here when i came in before; i regret i was obliged to leave so abruptly," courteously spoke mr. bates, whilst bowing to his new acquaintance; "the sudden and alarming illness of my young friend will, i trust, be a sufficient apology." "how is he now?" asked miss ellstowe. "better--much better," answered he, cheerfully; "but very wild and distracted in his manner--alarmingly so, in fact. he clung to my hand, and wrung it when we parted, and bid me good bye again and again, as if it was for the last time. poor fellow! he is frightened at that hemorrhage, and is afraid it will be fatal; but there is not any danger, he only requires to be kept quiet--he will soon come round again, no doubt. i shall have to ask you to excuse me again," said he, in conclusion; "i must go and see my daughter." mr. bates was rising to depart, when george stevens gave miss ellstowe a significant look, who said, in a hesitating tone, "mr. bates, one moment before you go. my friend, mr. stevens, has a communication to make to you respecting mr. garie, which will, i fear, cause you, as it already has me, deep distress." "indeed!" rejoined mr. bates, in a tone of surprise; "what is it? nothing that reflects upon his character, i hope." "i do not know how my information will influence your conduct towards him, for i do not know what your sentiments may be respecting such persons. i know society in general do not receive them, and my surprise was very great to find him here." "i do not understand you; what do you mean?" demanded mr. bates, in a tone of perplexity; "has he ever committed any crime?" "he is a coloured man," answered george stevens, briefly. mr. bates became almost purple, and gasped for breath; then, after staring at his informant for a few seconds incredulously, repeated the words "coloured man," in a dreamy manner, as if in doubt whether he had really heard them. "yes, coloured man," said george stevens, confidently; "it grieves me to be the medium of such disagreeable intelligence; and i assure you i only undertook the office upon the representation of miss ellstowe, that you were not aware of the fact, and would regard my communication as an act of kindness." "it--it _can't_ be," exclaimed mr. bates, with the air of a man determined not to be convinced of a disagreeable truth; "it cannot be possible." hereupon george stevens related to him what he had recently told miss ellstowe respecting the parentage and position of clarence. during the narration, the old man became almost frantic with rage and sorrow, bursting forth once or twice with the most violent exclamations; and when george stevens concluded, he rose and said, in a husky voice-- "i'll kill him, the infernal hypocrite! oh! the impostor to come to my house in this nefarious manner, and steal the affections of my daughter--the devilish villain! a bastard! a contemptible black-hearted nigger. oh, my child--my child! it will break your heart when you know what deep disgrace has come upon you. i'll go to him," added he, his face flushed, and his white hair almost erect with rage; "i'll murder him--there's not a man in the city will blame me for it," and he grasped his cane as though he would go at once, and inflict summary vengeance upon the offender. "stop, sir, don't be rash," exclaimed george stevens; "i would not screen this fellow from the effects of your just and very natural indignation--he is abundantly worthy of the severest punishment you can bestow; but if you go in your present excited state, you might be tempted to do something which would make this whole affair public, and injure, thereby, your daughter's future. you'll pardon me, i trust, and not think me presuming upon my short acquaintance in making the suggestion." mr. bates looked about him bewilderedly for a short time, and then replied, "no, no, you need not apologize, you are right--i thank you; i myself should have known better. but my poor child! what will become of her?" and in an agony of sorrow he resumed his seat, and buried his face in his hands. george stevens prepared to take his departure, but mr. bates pressed him to remain. "in a little while," said he, "i shall be more composed, and then i wish you to go with me to this worthless scoundrel. i must see him at once, and warn him what the consequences will be should he dare approach my child again. don't fear me," he added, as he saw george stevens hesitated to remain; "that whirlwind of passion is over now. i promise you i shall do nothing unworthy of myself or my child." it was not long before they departed together for the hotel at which clarence was staying. when they entered his room, they found him in his bed, with the miniature of little birdie in his hands. when he observed the dark scowl on the face of mr. bates, and saw by whom he was accompanied, he knew his secret was discovered; he saw it written on their faces. he trembled like a leaf, and his heart seemed like a lump of ice in his bosom. mr. bates was about to speak, when clarence held up his hand in the attitude of one endeavouring to ward off a blow, and whispered hoarsely-- "don't tell me--not yet--a little longer! i see you know all. i see my sentence written on your face! let me dream a little longer ere you speak the words that must for ever part me and little birdie. i know you have come to separate us--but don't tell me yet; for when you do," said he, in an agonized tone, "it will kill me!" "i wish to god it would!" rejoined mr. bates. "i wish you had died long ago; then you would have never come beneath my roof to destroy its peace for ever. you have acted basely, palming yourself upon us--counterfeit as you were! and taking in exchange her true love and my honest, honourable regard." clarence attempted to speak, but mr. bates glared at him, and continued--"there are laws to punish thieves and counterfeits--but such as you may go unchastised, except by the abhorrence of all honourable men. had you been unaware of your origin, and had the revelation of this gentleman been as new to you as to me, you would have deserved sympathy; but you have been acting a lie, claiming a position in society to which you knew you had no right, and deserve execration and contempt. did i treat you as my feelings dictated, you would understand what is meant by the weight of a father's anger; but i do not wish the world to know that my daughter has been wasting her affections upon a worthless nigger; that is all that protects you! now, hear me," he added, fiercely,--"if ever you presume to darken my door again, or attempt to approach my daughter, i will shoot you, as sure as you sit there before me!" "and serve you perfectly right!" observed george stevens. "silence, sir!" rejoined clarence, sternly. "how dare you interfere? he may say what he likes--reproach me as he pleases--_he_ is _her_ father--i have no other reply; but if you dare again to utter a word, i'll--" and clarence paused and looked about him as if in search of something with which to enforce silence. feeble-looking as he was, there was an air of determination about him which commanded acquiescence, and george stevens did not venture upon another observation during the interview. "i want my daughter's letters--every line she ever wrote to you; get them at once--i want them now," said mr. bates, imperatively. "i cannot give them to you immediately, they are not accessible at present. does she want them?" he asked, feebly--"has she desired to have them back?" "never mind that!" said the old man, sternly; "no evasions. give me the letters!" "to-morrow i will send them," said clarence. "i will read them all over once again," thought he. "i cannot believe you," said mr. bates. "i promise you upon my honour i will send them tomorrow!" "_a nigger's honour!_" rejoined mr. bates, with a contemptuous sneer. "yes, sir--a nigger's honour!" repeated clarence, the colour mounting to his pale cheeks. "a few drops of negro blood in a man's reins do not entirely deprive him of noble sentiments. 'tis true my past concealment does not argue in my favour.--i concealed that which was no fault of my own, but what the injustice of society has made a crime." "i am not here for discussion; and i suppose i must trust to your _honour_," interrupted mr. bates, with a sneer. "but remember, if the letters are not forthcoming to-morrow i shall be here again, and then," concluded he in a threatening tone, "my visit will not be as harmless as this has been!" after they had gone, clarence rose and walked feebly to his desk, which, with great effort and risk, he removed to the bed-side; then taking from it little birdie's letters, he began their perusal. ay! read them again--and yet again; pore over their contents--dwell on those passages replete with tenderness, until every word is stamped upon thy breaking heart--linger by them as the weary traveller amid sahara's sand pauses by some sparkling fountain in a shady oasis, tasting of its pure waters ere he launches forth again upon the arid waste beyond. this is the last green spot upon thy way to death; beyond whose grim portals, let us believe, thou and thy "little birdie" may meet again. chapter xxxiv. "murder will out." the city clocks had just tolled out the hour of twelve, the last omnibus had rumbled by, and the silence without was broken only at rare intervals when some belated citizen passed by with hurried footsteps towards his home. all was still in the house of mr. stevens--so quiet, that the ticking of the large clock in the hall could be distinctly heard at the top of the stairway, breaking the solemn stillness of the night with its monotonous "click, click--click, click!" in a richly furnished chamber overlooking the street a dim light was burning; so dimly, in fact, that the emaciated form of mr. stevens was scarcely discernible amidst the pillows and covering of the bed on which he was lying. above him a brass head of curious workmanship held in its clenched teeth the canopy that overshadowed the bed; and as the light occasionally flickered and brightened, the curiously carved face seemed to light up with a sort of sardonic grin; and the grating of the curtain-rings, as the sick man tossed from side to side in his bed, would have suggested the idea that the odd supporter of the canopy was gnashing his brazen teeth at him. on the wall, immediately opposite the light, hung a portrait of mrs. stevens; not the sharp, hard face we once introduced to the reader, but a smoother, softer countenance--yet a worn and melancholy one in its expression. it looked as if the waves of grief had beaten upon it for a long succession of years, until they had tempered down its harsher peculiarities, giving a subdued appearance to the whole countenance. "there is twelve o'clock--give me my drops again, lizzie," he remarked, faintly. at the sound of his voice lizzie emerged from behind the curtains, and essayed to pour into a glass the proper quantity of medicine. she was twice obliged to pour back into the phial what she had just emptied forth, as the trembling of her hands caused her each time to drop too much; at last, having succeeded in getting the exact number of drops, she handed him the glass, the contents of which he eagerly drank. "there!" said he, "thank you; now, perhaps, i may sleep. i have not slept for two nights--such has been my anxiety about that man; nor you either, my child--i have kept you awake also. you can sleep, though, without drops. to-morrow, when you are prepared to start, wake me, if i am asleep, and let me speak to you before you go. remember, lizzie, frighten him if you can! tell him, i am ill myself--that i can't survive this continued worriment and annoyance. tell him, moreover, i am not made of gold, and will not be always giving. i don't believe he is sick--dying--do you?" he asked, looking into her face, as though he did not anticipate an affirmative answer. "no, father, i don't think he is really ill; i imagine it is another subterfuge to extract money. don't distress yourself unnecessarily; perhaps i may have some influence with him--i had before, you know!" "yes, yes, dear, you managed him very well that time--very well," said he, stroking down her hair affectionately. "i--i--my child, i could never have told you of that dreadful secret; but when i found that you knew it all, my heart experienced a sensible relief. it was a selfish pleasure, i know; yet it eased me to share my secret; the burden is not half so heavy now." "father, would not your mind be easier still, if you could be persuaded to make restitution to his children? this wealth is valueless to us both. you can never ask forgiveness for the sin whilst you cling thus tenaciously to its fruits." "tut, tut--no more of that!" said he, impatiently; "i cannot do it without betraying myself. if i gave it back to them, what would become of you and george, and how am i to stop the clamours of that cormorant? no, no! it is useless to talk of it--i cannot do it!" "there would be still enough left for george, after restoring them their own, and you might give this man my share of what is left. i would rather work day and night," said she, determinedly, "than ever touch a penny of the money thus accumulated." "i've thought all that over, long ago, but i dare not do it--it might cause inquiries to be made that might result to my disadvantage. no, i cannot do that; sit down, and let us be quiet now." mr. stevens lay back upon his pillow, and for a moment seemed to doze; then starting up again suddenly, he asked, "have you told george about it? have you ever confided anything to him?" "no, papa," answered she soothingly, "not a breath; i've been secret as the grave." "that's right!" rejoined he--"that is right! i love george, but not as i do you. he only comes to me when he wants money. he is not like you, darling--you take care of and nurse your poor old father. has he come in yet?" "not yet; he never gets home until almost morning, and is then often fearfully intoxicated." the old man shook his head, and muttered, "the sins of the fathers shall--what is that? did you hear that noise?--hush!" lizzie stood quietly by him for a short while, and then walked on tiptoe to the door--"it is george," said she, after peering into the gloom of their entry; "he has admitted him self with his night-key." the shuffling sound of footsteps was now quite audible upon the stairway, and soon the bloated face of mr. stevens's hopeful son was seen at the chamber door. in society and places where this young gentleman desired to maintain a respectable character he could be as well behaved, as choice in his language, and as courteous as anybody; but at home, where he was well known, and where he did not care to place himself under any restraint, he was a very different individual. "let me in, liz," said he, in a thick voice; "i want the old man to fork over some money--i'm cleaned out." "no, no--go to bed, george," she answered, coaxingly, "and talk to him about it in the morning." "i'm coming in _now_," said he, determinedly; "and besides, i want to tell you something about that nigger garie." "tell us in the morning," persisted lizzy. "no--i'm going to tell you now," rejoined he, forcing his way into the room--"it's too good to keep till morning. pick up that wick, let a fellow see if you are all alive!" lizzie raised the wick of the lamp in accordance with his desire, and then sat down with an expression of annoyance and vexation on her countenance. george threw himself into an easy chair, and began, "i saw that white nigger garie to-night, he was in company with a gentleman, at that--the assurance of that fellow is perfectly incomprehensible. he was drinking at the bar of the hotel; and as it is no secret why he and miss bates parted, i enlightened the company on the subject of his antecedents. he threatened to challenge me! ho! ho!--fight with a nigger--that is too good a joke!" and laughing heartily, the young ruffian leant back in his chair. "i want some money to-morrow, dad," continued he. "i say, old gentleman, wasn't it a lucky go that darkey's father was put out of the way so nicely, eh?--we've been living in clover ever since--haven't we?" "how dare you address me-in that disrespectful manner? go out of the room, sir!" exclaimed mr. stevens, with a disturbed countenance. "come, george, go to bed," urged his sister wearily. "let father sleep--it is after twelve o'clock. i am going to wake the nurse, and then retire myself." george rose stupidly from his chair, and followed his sister from the room. on the stairway he grasped her arm rudely, and said, "i don't understand how it is that you and the old man are so cursed thick all of a sudden. you are thick as two thieves, always whispering and talking together. act fair, liz--don't persuade him to leave you all the money. if you do, we'll quarrel--that's flat. don't try and cozen him out of my share as well as your own--you hear!" "oh, george!" rejoined she reproachfully--"i never had such an idea." "then what are you so much together for? why is there so much whispering and writing, and going off on journeys all alone? what does it all mean, eh?" "it means nothing at all, george. you are not yourself to-night," said she evasively; "you had better go to bed." "it is _you_ that are not yourself," he retorted. "what makes you look so pale and worried--and why do you and the old man start if the door cracks, as if the devil was after you? what is the meaning of that?" asked he with a drunken leer. "you had better look out," concluded he; "i'm watching you both, and will find out all your secrets by-and-by." "learn all our secrets! ah, my brother!" thought she, as he disappeared into his room, "you need not desire to have their fearful weight upon you, or you will soon grow as anxious, thin, and pale as i am." the next day at noon lizzie started on her journey, after a short conference with her father. night had settled upon her native city, when she was driven through its straight and seemingly interminable thoroughfares. the long straight rows of lamps, the snowy steps, the scrupulously clean streets, the signs over the stores, were like the faces of old acquaintances, and at any other time would have caused agreeable recollections; but the object of her visit pre-occupied her mind, to the exclusion of any other and more pleasant associations. she ordered the coachman to take her to an obscure hotel, and, after having engaged a room, she left her baggage and started in search of the residence of mccloskey. she drew her veil down over her face very closely, and walked quickly through the familiar streets, until she arrived at the place indicated in his letter. it was a small, mean tenement, in a by street, in which there were but one or two other houses. the shutters were closed from the upper story to the lowest, and the whole place wore an uninhabited appearance. after knocking several times, she was about to give up in despair, when she discovered through the glass above the door the faint glimmer of a light, and shortly after a female voice demanded from the inside, "who is there?" "does mr. mccloskey live here?" asked lizzie. hearing a voice not more formidable than her own, the person within partially opened the door; and, whilst shading with one hand the candle she held in the other, gazed out upon the speaker. "does mr. mccloskey live here?" repeated lizzie. "yes, he does," answered the woman, in a weak voice; "but he's got the typers." "has the what?" inquired lizzie, who did not exactly understand her. "got the typers--got the fever, you know." "the typhus fever!" said lizzie, with a start; "then he is really sick." "really sick!" repeated the woman--"really sick! well, i should think he was! why, he's been a raving and swearing awful for days; he stormed and screamed so loud that the neighbours complained. law! they had to even shave his head." "is he any better?" asked lizzie, with a sinking heart. "can i see him?" "'praps you can, if you go to the hospital to-morrow; but whether you'll find him living or dead is more than i can say. i couldn't keep him here--i wasn't able to stand him. i've had the fever myself--he took it from me. you must come in," continued the woman, "if you want to talk--i'm afraid of catching cold, and can't stand at the door. maybe you're afraid of the fever," she further observed, as she saw lizzie hesitate on the door-step. "oh, no, i'm not afraid of that," answered lizzie quickly--"i am not in the least afraid." "come in, then," reiterated the woman, "and i'll tell you all about it." the woman looked harmless enough, and lizzie hesitated no longer, but followed her through the entry into a decently furnished room. setting the candlestick upon the mantelpiece, she offered her visitor a chair, and then continued-- "he came home this last time in an awful state. before he left some one sent him a load of money, and he did nothing but drink and gamble whilst it lasted. i used to tell him that he ought to take care of his money, and he'd snap his fingers and laugh. he used to say that he owned the goose that laid the golden eggs, and could have money whenever he wanted it. well, as i was a saying, he went; and when he came back he had an awful attack of _delirium tremens_, and then he took the typers. oh, laws mercy!" continued she, holding up her bony hands, "how that critter raved! he talked about killing people." "he did!" interrupted lizzie, with a gesture of alarm, and laying her hand upon her heart, which beat fearfully--"did he mention any name?" the woman did not stop to answer this question, but proceeded as if she had not been interrupted. "he was always going on about two orphans and a will, and he used to curse and swear awfully about being obliged to keep something hid. it was dreadful to listen to--it would almost make your hair stand on end to hear him." "and he never mentioned names?" said lizzie inquiringly. "no, that was so strange; he never mentioned no names--_never_. he used to rave a great deal about two orphans and a will, and he would ransack the bed, and pull up the sheets, and look under the pillows, as if he thought it was there. oh, he acted very strange, but never mentioned no names. i used to think he had something in his trunk, he was so very special about it. he was better the day they took him off; and the trunk went with him--he would have it; but since then he's had a dreadful relapse, and there's no knowin' whether he is alive or dead." "i must go to the hospital," said lizzie, rising from her seat, and greatly relieved to learn that nothing of importance had fallen from mccloskey during his delirium. "i shall go there as quickly as i can," she observed, walking to the door. "you'll not see him to-night if you do," rejoined the woman. "are you a relation?" "oh, no," answered lizzie; "my father is an acquaintance of his. i learned that he was ill, and came to inquire after him." had the woman not been very indifferent or unobservant, she would have noticed the striking difference between the manner and appearance of lizzie stevens and the class who generally came to see mccloskey. she did not, however, appear to observe it, nor did she manifest any curiosity greater than that evidenced by her inquiring if he was a relative. lizzie walked with a lonely feeling through the quiet streets until she arrived at the porter's lodge of the hospital. she pulled the bell with trembling hands, and the door was opened by the little bald-headed man whose loquacity was once (the reader will remember) so painful to mrs. ellis. there was no perceptible change in his appearance, and he manifestly took as warm an interest in frightful accidents as ever. "what is it--what is it?" he asked eagerly, as lizzie's pale face became visible in the bright light that shone from the inner office. "do you want a stretcher?" the rapidity with which he asked these questions, and his eager manner, quite startled her, and she was for a moment unable to tell her errand. "speak up, girl--speak up! do you want a stretcher--is it burnt or run over. can't you speak, eh?" it now flashed upon lizzie that the venerable janitor was labouring under the impression that she had come to make application for the admission of a patient, and she quickly answered-- "oh, no; it is nothing of the kind, i am glad to say." "glad to say," muttered the old man, the eager, expectant look disappearing from his face, giving place to one of disappointment--"glad to say; why there hasn't been an accident to-day, and here you've gone and rung the bell, and brought me here to the door for nothing. what do you want then?" "i wish to inquire after a person who is here." "what's his number?" gruffly inquired he. "that i cannot tell," answered she; "his name is mccloskey." "i don't know anything about him. couldn't tell who he is unless i go all over the books to-night. we don't know people by their names here; come in the morning--ten o'clock, and don't never ring that bell again," concluded he, sharply, "unless you want a stretcher: ringing the bell, and no accident;" and grumbling at being disturbed for nothing, he abruptly closed the door in lizzie's face. anxious and discomfited, she wandered back to her hotel; and after drinking a weak cup of tea, locked her room-door, and retired to bed. there she lay, tossing from side to side--she could not sleep--her anxiety respecting her father's safety; her fears, lest in the delirium of fever mccloskey should discover their secret, kept her awake far into the night, and the city clocks struck two ere she fell asleep. when she awoke in the morning the sun was shining brightly into her room; for a few moments she could not realize where she was; but the events of the past night soon came freshly to her; looking at her watch, she remembered that she was to go to the hospital at ten, and it was already half-past nine; her wakefulness the previous night having caused her to sleep much later than her usual hour. dressing herself in haste, she hurried down to breakfast; and after having eaten a slight meal, ordered a carriage, and drove to the hospital. the janitor was in his accustomed seat, and nodded smilingly to her as she entered. he beckoned her to him, and whispered, "i inquired about him. mccloskey, fever-ward, no. , died this morning at two o'clock and forty minutes." "dead!" echoed lizzie, with a start of horror. "yes, dead," repeated he, with a complacent look; "any relation of yours--want an order for the body?" lizzie was so astounded by this intelligence, that she could not reply; and the old man continued mysteriously. "came to before he died--wish he hadn't--put me to a deal of trouble--sent for a magistrate--then for a minister--had something on his mind--couldn't die without telling it, you know; then there was oaths, depositions--so much trouble. are you his relation--want an order for the body?" "oaths! magistrate!--a confession no doubt," thought lizzie; her limbs trembled; she was so overcome with terror that she could scarcely stand; clinging to the railing of the desk by which she was standing for support, she asked, hesitatingly, "he had something to confess then?" the janitor looked at her for a few moments attentively, and seemed to notice for the first time her ladylike appearance and manners; a sort of reserve crept over him at the conclusion of his scrutiny, for he made no answer to her question, but simply asked, with more formality than before, "are you a relation--do you want an order for the body?" ere lizzie could answer his question, a man, plainly dressed, with keen grey eyes that seemed to look restlessly about in every corner of the room, came and stood beside the janitor. he looked at lizzie from the bow on the top of her bonnet to the shoes on her feet; it was not a stare, it was more a hasty glance--and yet she could not help feeling that he knew every item of her dress, and could have described her exactly. "are you a relative of this person," he asked, in a clear sharp voice, whilst his keen eyes seemed to be piercing her through in search of the truth. "no, sir," she answered, faintly. "a friend then, i presume," continued he, respectfully. "an acquaintance," returned she. the man paused for a few moments, then taking out his watch, looked at the time, and hastened from the office. this man possessed lizzie with a singular feeling of dread--why she could not determine; yet, after he was gone, she imagined those cold grey eyes were resting on her, and bidding the old janitor, who had grown reserved so suddenly, good morning, she sprang into her carriage as fast as her trembling limbs could carry her, and ordered the coachman to drive back to the hotel. "father must fly!" soliloquized she; "the alarm will, no doubt, lend him energy. i've heard of people who have not been able to leave their rooms for months becoming suddenly strong under the influence of terror. we must be off to some place of concealment until we can learn whether he is compromised by that wretched man's confession." lizzie quickly paid her bill, packed her trunk, and started for the station in hopes of catching the mid-day train for new york. the driver did not spare his horses, but at her request drove them at their utmost speed--but in vain. she arrived there only time enough to see the train move away; and there, standing on the platform, looking at her with a sort of triumphant satisfaction, was the man with the keen grey eyes. "stop! stop!" cried she. "too late, miss," said a bystander, sympathizingly; "just too late--no other train for three hours." "three hours!" said lizzie, despairingly; "three hours! yet i must be patient--there is no remedy," and she endeavoured to banish her fears and occupy herself in reading the advertisements that were posted up about the station. it was of no avail, that keen-looking man with his piercing grey eyes haunted her; and she could not avoid associating him in her thoughts with her father and mccloskey. what was he doing on the train, and why did he regard her with that look of triumphant satisfaction. those were to her the three longest hours of her life. wearily and impatiently she paced up and down the long saloon, watching the hands of the clock as they appeared to almost creep over the dial-plate. twenty times during those three hours did she compare the clock with her watch, and found they moved on unvaryingly together. at last the hour for the departure of the train arrived; and seated in the car, she was soon flying at express speed on the way towards her home. "how much sooner does the other train arrive than we?" she asked of the conductor. "two hours and a half, miss," replied he, courteously; "we gain a half-hour upon them." "a half-hour--that is something gained," thought she; "i may reach my father before that man. can he be what i suspect?" on they went--thirty--forty--fifty miles an hour, yet she thought it slow. dashing by villages, through meadows, over bridges,--rattling, screaming, puffing, on their way to the city of new york. in due time they arrived at the ferry, and after crossing the river were in the city itself. lizzie took the first carriage that came to hand, and was soon going briskly through the streets towards her father's house. the nearer she approached it, the greater grew her fears; a horrible presentiment that something awful had occurred, grew stronger and stronger as she drew nearer home. she tried to brave it off--resist it--crush it--but it came back upon her each time with redoubled force. on she went, nearer and nearer every moment, until at last she was in the avenue itself. she gazed eagerly from the carriage, and thought she observed one or two persons run across the street opposite her father's house. it could not be!--she looked again--yes, there was a group beneath his window. "faster! faster!" she cried frantically; "faster if you can." the door was at last reached; she sprang from the carriage and pressed through the little knot of people who were gathered on the pavement. alas! her presentiments were correct. there, lying on the pavement, was the mangled form of her father, who had desperately sprung from the balcony above, to escape arrest from the man with the keen grey eyes, who, with the warrant in his hand, stood contemplating the lifeless body. "father! father!" cried lizzie, in an anguished voice; "father, speak once!" too late! too late! the spirit had passed away--the murderer had rushed before a higher tribunal--a mightier judge--into the presence of one who tempers justice with mercy. chapter xxxv. the wedding. the night that lizzie stevens arrived in philadelphia was the one decided upon for the marriage of emily garie and charles ellis; and whilst she was wandering so lonely through the streets of one part of the city, a scene of mirth and gaiety was transpiring in another, some of the actors in which would be made more happy by events that would be productive of great sorrow to her. throughout that day bustle and confusion had reigned supreme in the house of mr. walters. caddy, who had been there since the break of day, had taken the domestic reins entirely from the hands of the mistress of the mansion, and usurped command herself. quiet esther was well satisfied to yield her full control of the domestic arrangements for the festivities, and caddy was nothing loath to assume them. she entered upon the discharge of her self-imposed duties with such ardour as to leave no doubt upon the minds of the parties most interested but that they would be thoroughly performed, and with an alacrity too that positively appalled quiet esther's easy-going servants. great doubts had been expressed as to whether caddy could successfully sustain the combined characters of _chef de cuisine_ and bridesmaid, and a failure had been prophesied. she therefore felt it incumbent upon her to prove these prognostications unfounded, and demonstrate the practicability of the undertaking. on the whole, she went to work with energy, and seemed determined to establish the fact that her abilities were greatly underrated, and that a woman could accomplish more than one thing at a time when she set about it. the feelings of all such persons about the establishment of mr. walters as were "constitutionally tired" received that day divers serious shocks at the hands of miss caddy--who seemed endowed with a singular faculty which enabled her to discover just what people did not want to do, and of setting them at it immediately. for instance, jane, the fat girl, hated going upstairs excessively. caddy employed her in bringing down glass and china from a third-story pantry; and, moreover, only permitted her to bring a small quantity at a time, which rendered a number of trips strictly necessary, to the great aggravation and serious discomfort of the fat girl in question. on the other hand, julia, the slim chambermaid, who would have been delighted with such employment, and who would have undoubtedly refreshed herself on each excursion upstairs with a lengthened gaze from the window, was condemned to the polishing of silver and dusting of plates and glass in an obscure back pantry, which contained but one window, and that commanding a prospect of a dead wall. miss caddy felt in duty bound to inspect each cake, look over the wine, and (to the great discomfiture of the waiter) decant it herself, not liking to expose him to any unnecessary temptation. she felt, too, all the more inclined to assume the office of butler from the fact that, at a previous party of her sister's, she had detected this same gentleman with a bottle of the best sherry at his mouth, whilst he held his head thrown back in a most surprising manner, with a view, no doubt, of contemplating the ceiling more effectually from that position. before night such was the increasing demand for help in the kitchen that caddy even kidnapped the nurse, and locked the brown baby and her sister in the bath-room, where there was no window in their reach, nor any other means at hand from which the slightest injury could result to them. here they were supplied with a tub half filled with water, and spent the time most delightfully in making boats of their shoes, and lading them with small pieces of soap, which they bit off from the cake for the occasion; then, coasting along to the small towns on the borders of the tub, they disposed of their cargoes to imaginary customers to immense advantage. walters had declared the house uninhabitable, and had gone out for the day. esther and emily busied themselves in arranging the flowers in the drawing-room and hall, and hanging amidst the plants on the balcony little stained glass lamps; all of which caddy thought very well in its way, but which she was quite confident would be noticed much less by the guests than the supper--in which supposition she was undoubtedly correct. kinch also lounged in two or three times during the day, to seek consolation at the hands of esther and emily. he was in deep distress of mind--in great perturbation. his tailor had promised to send home a vest the evening previous and had not fulfilled his agreement. after his first visit kinch entered the house in the most stealthy manner, for fear of being encountered by caddy; who, having met him in the hall during the morning, posted him off for twenty pounds of sugar, a ball of twine, and a stone jar, despite his declaration of pre-engagements, haste, and limited knowledge of the articles in question. whilst lizzie stevens was tremblingly ringing the bell at the lodge of the hospital, busy hands were also pulling at that of mr. walters's dwelling. carriage after carriage rolled up, and deposited their loads of gay company, who skipped nimbly over the carpet that was laid down from the door to the curbstone. through the wide hall and up the stairway, flowers of various kinds mingled their fragrance and loaded the air with their rich perfume; and expressions of delight burst from the lips of the guests as they passed up the brilliantly-lighted stairway and thronged the spacious drawing-rooms. there were but few whites amongst them, and they particular friends. there was mrs. bird, who had travelled from warmouth to be present at the ceremony; mr. balch, the friend and legal adviser of the bride's father; father banks, who was to tie the happy knot; and there, too, was mrs. burrell, and that baby, now grown to a promising lad, and who would come to the wedding because charlie had sent him a regular invitation written like that sent his parents. mr. and mrs. ellis were of course there,--the latter arrayed in a rich new silk made up expressly for the occasion--and the former almost hidden in his large easy chair. the poor old gentleman scarcely seemed able to comprehend the affair, and apparently laboured under the impression that it was another mob, and looked a little terrified at times when the laughter or conversation grew louder than usual. the hour for the ceremony was fast approaching, and esther left the assembled guests and went up into emily garie's room to assist the young ladies in preparing the bride. they all besought her to be calm, not to agitate herself upon any consideration; and then bustled about her, and flurried themselves in the most ridiculous manner, with a view, no doubt, of tranquillizing her feelings more effectually. "little em," soon to be mrs. ellis, was busily engaged in dressing; the toilet-table was covered with lighted candles, and all the gas-burners in the room were in full blaze, bringing everything out in bold relief. "we are having quite an illumination; the glare almost blinds me," said emily. "put out some of the candles." "no, no, my dear," rejoined one of the young ladies engaged in dressing her; "we cannot sacrifice a candle. we don't need them to discern your charms, em; only to enable us to discover how to deck them to the best advantage. how sweet you look!" emily gazed into the mirror; and from the blush that suffused her face and the look of complacency that followed, it was quite evident that she shared her friend's opinion. she did, indeed, look charming. there was a deeper colour than usual on her cheeks, and her eyes were illumined with a soft, tender light. her wavy brown hair was parted smoothly on the front, and gathered into a cluster of curls at the back. around her neck glistened a string of pearls, a present from mr. winston, who had just returned from south america. the pure white silk fitted to a nicety, and the tiny satin slippers seemed as if they were made upon her feet, and never intended to come off again. her costume was complete, with the exception of the veil and wreath, and esther opened the box that she supposed contained them, for the purpose of arranging them on the bride. "where have you put the veil, my dear?" she asked, after raising the lid of the box, and discovering that they were not there. "in the box, are they not?" answered one of the young ladies. "no, they are not there," continued esther, as she turned over the various articles with which the tables were strewed. all in vain; the veil and wreath could be nowhere discovered. "are you sure it came home?" asked one. "of course," replied another; "i had it in my hand an hour ago." then a thorough search was commenced, all the drawers ransacked, and everything turned over again and again; and just when they were about to abandon the search in despair, one of the party returned from the adjoining room, dragging along the brown baby, who had the veil wrapped about her chubby shoulders as a scarf, and the wreath ornamenting her round curly head. even good-natured esther was a little ruffled at this daring act of baby's, and hastily divested that young lady of her borrowed adornments, amidst the laughter of the group. poor baby was quite astonished at the precipitate manner in which she was deprived of her finery, and was for a few moments quite overpowered by her loss; but, perceiving a drawer open in the toilet-table, she dried her eyes, and turned her attention in that direction, and in tossing its contents upon the floor amply solaced herself for the deprivation she had just undergone. "caddy is a famous chief bridesmaid--hasn't been here to give the least assistance," observed esther; "she is not even dressed herself. i will ring, and ask where she can be--in the kitchen or supper-room i've no doubt. where is miss ellis?" she asked of the servant who came in answer her summons. "downstairs, mem--the boy that brought the ice-cream kicked over a candy ornament, and miss ellis was very busy a shaking of him when i came up." "do beg her to stop," rejoined esther, with a laugh, "and tell her i say she can shake him in the morning--we are waiting for her to dress now; and also tell mr. de younge to come here to the door--i want him." kinch soon made his appearance, in accordance with esther's request, and fairly dazzled her with his costume. his blue coat was brazen with buttons, and his white cravat tied with choking exactness; spotless vest, black pants, and such patent leathers as you could have seen your face in with ease. "how fine you look, kinch," said esther admiringly. "yes," he answered; "the new vest came home--how do you like it?" "oh, admirable! but, kinch, can't you go down, and implore caddy to come up and dress--time is slipping away very fast?" "oh, i daren't," answered kinch, with a look of alarm--"i don't dare to go down now that i'm dressed. she'll want me to carry something up to the supper-room if i do--a pile of dishes, or something of the kind. i'd like to oblige you, mrs. walters, but it's worth my new suit to do it." under these circumstances, kinch was excused; and a deputation, headed by mr. walters, was sent into the lower regions to wait upon caddy, who prevailed upon her to come up and dress, which she did, being all the while very red in the face, and highly indignant at being sent for so often. "good gracious!" she exclaimed, "what a pucker you are all in!" "why, caddy, it's time to be," replied esther--"it wants eight minutes of the hour." "and that is just three minutes more than i should want for dressing if i was going to be married myself," rejoined she; and hastening away, she returned in an incredibly short time, all prepared for the ceremony. charlie was very handsomely got up for the occasion. emily, esther, caddy--in fact, all of them--agreed that he never looked better in his life. "that is owing to me--all my doings," said kinch exultingly. "he wanted to order his suit of old forbes, who hasn't looked at a fashion-plate for the last ten years, and i wouldn't let him. i took him to my man, and see what he has made of him--turned him out looking like a bridegroom, instead of an old man of fifty! it's all owing to me," said the delighted kinch, who skipped about the entry until he upset a vase of flowers that stood on a bracket behind him; whereupon caddy ran and brought a towel, and made him take off his white gloves and wipe up the water, in spite of his protestations that the shape of his pantaloons would not bear the strain of stooping. at last the hour arrived, and the bridal party descended to the drawing-room in appropriate order, and stood up before father banks. the ceremony was soon over, and emily was clasped in mrs. ellis's arms, who called her "daughter," and kissed her cheek with such warm affection that she no longer felt herself an orphan, and paid back with tears and embraces the endearments that were lavished upon her by her new relatives. father banks took an early opportunity to give them each some good advice, and managed to draw them apart for that purpose. he told them how imperfect and faulty were all mankind--that married life was not all _couleur de rose_--that the trials and cares incident to matrimony fully equalled its pleasures; and besought them to bear with each other patiently, to be charitable to each other's faults--and a reasonable share of earthly happiness must be the result. then came the supper. oh! such a supper!--such quantities of nice things as money and skill alone can bring together. there were turkeys innocent of a bone, into which you might plunge your knife to the very hilt without coming in contact with a splinter--turkeys from which cunning cooks had extracted every bone leaving the meat alone behind, with the skin not perceptibly broken. how brown and tempting they looked, their capacious bosoms giving rich promise of high-seasoned dressing within, and looking larger by comparison with the tiny reed-birds beside them, which lay cosily on the golden toast, looking as much as to say, "if you want something to remember for ever, come and give me a bite!" then there were dishes of stewed terrapin, into which the initiated dipped at once, and to which they for some time gave their undivided attention, oblivious, apparently, of the fact that there was a dish of chicken-salad close beside them. then there were oysters in every variety--silver dishes containing them stewed, their fragrant macey odour wafting itself upward, and causing watery sensations about the mouth. waiters were constantly rushing into the room, bringing dishes of them fried so richly brown, so smoking hot, that no man with a heart in his bosom could possibly refuse them. then there were glass dishes of them pickled, with little black spots of allspice floating on the pearly liquid that contained them. and lastly, oysters broiled, whose delicious flavour exceeds my powers of description--these, with ham and tongue, were the solid comforts. there were other things, however, to which one could turn when the appetite grew more dainty; there were jellies, blancmange, chocolate cream, biscuit glace, peach ice, vanilla ice, orange-water ice, brandy peaches, preserved strawberries and pines; not to say a word of towers of candy, bonbons, kisses, champagne, rhine wine, sparkling catawba, liquors, and a man in the corner making sherry cobblers of wondrous flavour, under the especial supervision of kinch; on the whole, it was an american supper, got up regardless of expense--and whoever has been to such an entertainment knows very well what an american supper is. what a merry happy party it was--how they all seemed to enjoy themselves--and how they all laughed, when the bride essayed to cut the cake, and could not get the knife through the icing--and how the young girls put pieces away privately, that they might place them under their pillows to dream upon! what a happy time they had! father banks enjoyed himself amazingly; he eat quantities of stewed terrapin, and declared it the best he ever tasted. he talked gravely to the old people--cheerfully and amusingly to the young; and was, in fact, having a most delightful time--when a servant whispered to him that there was a person in the entry who wished to see him immediately. "oh dear!" he exclaimed to mr. balch, "i was just congratulating myself that i should have one uninterrupted evening, and you see the result--called off at this late hour." father banks followed the servant from the room, and inquired of the messenger what was wanted. "you must come to the hospital immediately, sir; the man with the typhus-fever--you saw him yesterday--he's dying; he says he must see you--that he has something important to confess. i'm to go for a magistrate as well." "ah!" said father banks, "you need go no further, alderman balch is here--he is quite competent to receive his depositions." "i'm heartily glad of it," replied the man, "it will save me another hunt. i had a hard time finding you. i've been to your house and two or three other places, and was at last sent here. i'll go back and report that you are coming and will bring a magistrate with you." "very good," rejoined father banks, "do so. i will be there immediately." hastening back to the supper room, he discovered mr. balch in the act of helping himself to a brandy peach, and apprised him of the demand for his services. "now, banks," said he, good-humouredly, "that is outrageous. why did you not let him go for some one else? it is too bad to drag me away just when the fun is about to commence." there was no alternative, however, and mr. balch prepared to follow the minister to the bedside of mccloskey. when they arrived at the hospital, they found him fast sinking--the livid colour of his face, the sunken glassy eyes, the white lips, and the blue tint that surrounded the eyes and mouth told at once the fearful story. death had come. he was in full possession of his faculties, and told them all. how stevens had saved him from the gallows--and how he agreed to murder mr. garie--of his failure when the time of action arrived, and how, in consequence, stevens had committed the deed, and how he had paid him time after time to keep his secret. "in my trunk there," said he, in a dying whisper,--"in my trunk is the will. i found it that night amongst his papers. i kept it to get money out of his children with when old stevens was gone. here," continued he, handing his key from beneath the pillow, "open my trunk and get it." mr. balch eagerly unlocked the trunk, and there, sure enough, lay the long-sought-for and important document. "i knew it would be found at last. i always told walters so; and now," said he, exultingly, "see my predictions are verified." mccloskey seemed anxious to atone for the past by making an ample confession. he told them all he knew of mr. stevens's present circumstances--how his property was situated, and every detail necessary for their guidance. then his confession was sworn to and witnessed; and the dying man addressed himself to the affairs of the next world, and endeavoured to banish entirely from his mind all thoughts of this. after a life passed in the exercise of every christian virtue--after a lengthened journey over its narrow stony pathway, whereon temptations have been met and triumphed over--where we have struggled with difficulties, and borne afflictions without murmur or complaint, cheering on the weary we have found sinking by the wayside, comforting and assisting the fallen, endeavouring humbly and faithfully to do our duty to god and humanity--even after a life thus passed, when we at last lie down to die the most faithful and best may well shrink and tremble when they approach the gloomy portals of death. at such an hour memory, more active than every other faculty, drags all the good and evil from the past and sets them in distinct array before us. then we discover how greatly the latter exceeds the former in our lives, and how little of our father's work we have accomplished after all our toils and struggles. 'tis then the most devoted servant of our common master feels compelled to cry, "mercy! o my father!--for justice i dare not ask." if thus the christian passes away--what terror must fill the breast of one whose whole life has been a constant warfare upon the laws of god and man? how approaches he the bar of that awful judge, whose commands he has set at nought, and whose power he has so often contemned? with a fainting heart, and tongue powerless to crave the mercy his crimes cannot deserve! mccloskey struggled long with death--died fearfully hard. the phantoms of his victims seemed to haunt him in his dying hour, interposing between him and god; and with distorted face, clenched hands, and gnashing teeth, he passed away to his long account. from the bedside of the corpse mr. balch went--late as it was--to the office of the chief of police. there he learned, to his great satisfaction, that the governor was in town; and at an early hour the next morning he procured a requisition for the arrest of mr. stevens, which he put into the hands of the man with the keen grey eyes for the purpose of securing the criminal; and with the result of his efforts the reader is already acquainted. chapter xxxvi. and the last. with such celerity did mr. balch work in behalf of his wards, that he soon had everything in train for the recovery of the property. at first george stevens was inclined to oppose the execution of the will, but he was finally prevailed upon by his advisers to make no difficulty respecting it, and quietly resign what he must inevitably sooner or later relinquish. lizzie stevens, on the contrary, seemed rather glad that an opportunity was afforded to do justice to her old playmates, and won the good opinion of all parties by her gentleness and evident anxiety to atone for the wrong done them by her father. even after the demands of the executors of mr. garie were fully satisfied, such had been the thrift of her father that there still remained a comfortable support for her and her brother. to poor clarence this accession of fortune brought no new pleasure; he already had sufficient for his modest wants; and now that his greatest hope in life had been blighted, this addition of wealth became to him rather a burden than a pleasure. he was now completely excluded from the society in which he had so long been accustomed to move; the secret of his birth had become widely known, and he was avoided by his former friends and sneered at as a "nigger." his large fortune kept some two or three whites about him, but he knew they were leeches seeking to bleed his purse, and he wisely avoided their society. he was very wretched and lonely: he felt ashamed to seek the society of coloured men now that the whites despised and rejected him, so he lived apart from both classes of society, and grew moody and misanthropic. mr. balch endeavoured to persuade him to go abroad--to visit europe: he would not. he did not confess it, but the truth was, he could not tear himself away from the city where little birdie dwelt, where he now and then could catch a glimpse of her to solace him in his loneliness. he was growing paler and more fragile-looking each day, and the doctor at last frankly told him that, if he desired to live, he must seek some warmer climate for the winter. reluctantly clarence obeyed; in the fall he left new york, and during the cold months wandered through the west india islands. for a while his health improved, but when the novelty produced by change of scene began to decline he grew worse again, and brooded more deeply than ever over his bitter disappointment, and consequently derived but little benefit from the change; the spirit was too much broken for the body to mend--his heart was too sore to beat healthily or happily. he wrote often now to emily and her husband, and seemed desirous to atone for his past neglect. emily had written to him first; she had learned of his disappointment, and gave him a sister's sympathy in his loneliness and sorrow. the chilly month of march had scarcely passed away when they received a letter from him informing them of his intention to return. he wrote, "i am no better, and my physician says that a longer residence here will not benefit me in the least--that i came _too late_. i cough, cough, cough, incessantly, and each day become more feeble. i am coming home, emmy; coming home, i fear, to die. i am but a ghost of my former self. i write you this that you may not be alarmed when you see me. it is too late now to repine, but, oh! em, if my lot had only been cast with yours--had we never been separated--i might have been to-day as happy as you are." it was a clear bright morning when charlie stepped into a boat to be conveyed to the ship in which clarence had returned to new york: she had arrived the evening previous, and had not yet come up to the dock. the air came up the bay fresh and invigorating from the sea beyond, and the water sparkled as it dripped from the oars, which, with monotonous regularity, broke the almost unruffled surface of the bay. some of the ship's sails were shaken out to dry in the morning sun, and the cordage hung loosely and carelessly from the masts and yards. a few sailors lounged idly about the deck, and leaned over the side to watch the boat as it approached. with their aid it was soon secured alongside, and charlie clambered up the ladder, and stood upon the deck of the vessel. on inquiring for clarence, he was shown into the cabin, where he found him extended on a sofa. he raised himself as he saw charlie approach, and, extending his hand, exclaimed,--"how kind! i did not expect you until we reached the shore." for a moment, charlie could not speak. the shock caused by clarence's altered appearance was too great,--the change was terrible. when he had last seen him, he was vigorous-looking, erect, and healthful; now he was bent and emaciated to a frightful extent. the veins on his temples were clearly discernible; the muscles of his throat seemed like great cords; his cheeks were hollow, his sunken eyes were glassy bright and surrounded with a dark rim, and his breathing was short and evidently painful. charlie held his thin fleshless hand in his own, and gazed in his face with an anguished expression. "i look badly,--don't i charlie?" said he, with assumed indifference; "worse than you expected, eh?" charlie hesitated a little, and then answered,--"rather bad; but it is owing to your sea-sickness, i suppose; that has probably reduced you considerably; then this close cabin must be most unfavourable to your health. ah, wait until we get you home, we shall soon have you better." "home!" repeated clarence,--"home! how delightful that word sounds! i feel it is going _home_ to go to you and em." and he leant back and repeated the word "home," and paused afterward, as one touches some favourite note upon an instrument, and then silently listens to its vibrations. "how is em?" he asked at length. "oh, well--very well," replied charlie. "she has been busy as a bee ever since she received your last letter; such a charming room as she has prepared for you!" "ah, charlie," rejoined clarence, mournfully, "i shall not live long to enjoy it, i fear." "nonsense!" interrupted charlie, hopefully; "don't be so desponding, clary: here is spring again,--everything is thriving and bursting into new life. you, too, will catch the spirit of the season, and grow in health and strength again. why, my dear fellow," continued he, cheerfully, "you can't help getting better when we once get hold of you. mother's gruels, doctor burdett's prescriptions, and em's nursing, would lift a man out of his coffin. come, now, don't let us hear anything more about dying." clarence pressed his hand and looked at him affectionately, as though he appreciated his efforts to cheer him and felt thankful for them; but he only shook his head and smiled mournfully. "let me help your man to get you up. when once you get ashore you'll feel better, i've no doubt. we are not going to an hotel, but to the house of a friend who has kindly offered to make you comfortable until you are able to travel." with the assistance of charlie and the servant, clarence was gradually prepared to go ashore. he was exceedingly weak, could scarcely totter across the deck; and it was with some difficulty that they at last succeeded in placing him safely in the boat. after they landed, a carriage was soon procured, and in a short time thereafter clarence was comfortably established in the house of charlie's friend. their hostess, a dear old motherly creature, declared that she knew exactly what clarence needed; and concocted such delicious broths, made such strengthening gruels, that clarence could not avoid eating, and in a day or two he declared himself better than he had been for a month, and felt quite equal to the journey to philadelphia. the last night of their stay in new york was unusually warm; and clarence informed charlie he wished to go out for a walk. "i wish to go a long distance,--don't think me foolish when i tell you where. i want to look at the house where little birdie lives. it may be for the last time. i have a presentiment that i shall see her if i go,--i am sure i shall," added he, positively, as though he felt a conviction that his desire would be accomplished. "i would not, clary," remonstrated charlie. "your health won't permit the exertion; it is a long distance, too, you say; and, moreover, don't you think, my dear fellow, that it is far more prudent to endeavour, if possible, to banish her from your mind entirely. don't permit yourself to think about her, if you can help it. you know she is unattainable by you, and you should make an effort to conquer your attachment." "it is too late--too late now, charlie," he replied, mournfully. "i shall continue to love her as i do now until i draw my last breath. i know it is hopeless--i know she can never be more to me than she already is; but i cannot help loving her. let us go; i may see her once again. ah, charlie, you cannot even dream what inexpressible pleasure the merest glimpse of her affords me! come, let us go." charlie would not permit him to attempt to walk; and they procured a carriage, in which they rode to within a short distance of the house. the mansion of mr. bates appeared quite gloomy as they approached it. the blinds were down, and no lights visible in any part of the house. "i am afraid they are out of town," remarked charlie, when clarence pointed out the house; "everything looks so dull about it. let us cross over to the other pavement." and they walked over to the other side of the street, and gazed upward at the house. "let us sit down here," suggested clarence,--"here, on this broad stone; it is quite dark now, and no one will observe us." "no, no!" remonstrated charlie; "the stone is too damp and cold." "is it?" said clarence vacantly. and taking out his handkerchief, he spread it out, and, in spite of charlie's dissuasions, sat down upon it. "charlie," said he, after gazing at the house a long time in silence, "i have often come here and remained half the night looking at her windows. people have passed by and stared at me as though they thought me crazy; i was half crazy then, i think. one night i remember i came and sat here for hours; far in the night i saw her come to the window, throw up the casement, and look out. that was in the summer, before i went away, you know. there she stood in the moonlight, gazing upward at the sky, so pale, so calm and holy-looking, in her pure white dress, that i should not have thought it strange if the heavens had opened, and angels descended and borne her away with them on their wings." and clarence closed his eyes as he concluded, to call back upon the mirror of his mind the image of little birdie as she appeared that night. they waited a long while, during which there was no evidence exhibited that there was any one in the house. at last, just as they were about to move away, they descried the glimmer of a light in the room which clarence declared to be her room. his frame trembled with expectation, and he walked to and fro opposite the house with an apparent strength that surprised his companion. at length the light disappeared again, and with it clarence's hopes. "now then we must go," said charlie, "it is useless for you to expose yourself in this manner. i insist upon your coming home." reluctantly clarence permitted himself to be led across the street again. as they were leaving the pavement, he turned to look back again, and, uttering a cry of surprise and joy, he startled charlie by clutching his arm. "look! look!" he cried, "there she is--my little birdie." charlie looked up at the window almost immediately above them, and observed a slight pale girl, who was gazing up the street in an opposite direction. "little birdie--little birdie," whispered clarence, tenderly. she did not look toward them, but after standing there a few seconds, moved from between the curtains and disappeared. "thank god for that!" exclaimed clarence, passionately, "i knew--i knew i should see her. _i knew it_," repeated he, exultingly; and then, overcome with joy, he bowed his head upon charlie's shoulder and wept like a child. "don't think me foolish, charlie," apologized he, "i cannot help it. i will go home now. oh, brother, i feel so much happier." and with a step less faint and trembling, he walked back to the carriage. the following evening he was at home, but so enfeebled with the exertions of the last two days, as to be obliged to take to his bed immediately after his arrival. his sister greeted him affectionately, threw her arms about his neck and kissed him tenderly; years of coldness and estrangement were forgotten in that moment, and they were once more to each other as they were before they parted. emily tried to appear as though she did not notice the great change in his appearance, and talked cheerfully and encouragingly in his presence; but she wept bitterly, when alone, over the final separation which she foresaw was not far distant. the nest day doctor burdett called, and his grave manner and apparent disinclination to encourage any hope, confirmed the hopeless impression they already entertained. aunt ada came from sudbury at emily's request; she knew her presence would give pleasure to clarence, she accordingly wrote her to come, and she and emily nursed by turns the failing sufferer. esther and her husband, mrs. ellis and caddy, and even kinch, were unremitting in their attentions, and did all in their power to amuse and comfort him. day by day he faded perceptibly, grew more and more feeble, until at last doctor burdett began to number days instead of weeks as his term of life. clarence anticipated death with calmness--did not repine or murmur. father banks was often with him cheering him with hopes of a happier future beyond the grave. one day he sent for his sister and desired her to write a letter for him. "em," said he, "i am failing fast; these fiery spots on my cheek, this scorching in my palms, these hard-drawn, difficult breaths, warn me that the time is very near. don't weep, em!" continued he, kissing her--"there, don't weep--i shall be better off--happier--i am sure! don't weep now--i want you to write to little birdie for me. i have tried, but my hand trembles so that i cannot write legibly--i gave it up. sit down beside me here, and write; here is the pen." emily dried her eyes, and mechanically sat down to write as he desired. motioning to him that she was ready, he dictated-- "my dear little birdie,--i once resolved never to write to you again, and partially promised your father that i would not; then i did not dream that i should be so soon compelled to break my resolution. little birdie, i am dying! my physician informs me that i have but a few more days to live. i have been trying to break away from earth's affairs and fix my thoughts on other and better things. i have given up all but you, and feel that i cannot relinquish you until i see you once again. do not refuse me, little birdie! show this to your father--he must consent to a request made by one on the brink of the grave." "there, that will do; let me read it over," said he, extending his hand for the note. "yes, i will sign it now--then do you add our address. send it now, emily--send it in time for to-night's mail." "clary, do you think she will come?" inquired his sister. "yes," replied he, confidently; "i am sure she will if the note reaches her." emily said no more, but sealed and directed the note, which she immediately despatched to the post-office; and on the following day it reached little birdie. from the time when the secret of clarence's birth had been discovered, until the day she had received his note, she never mentioned his name. at the demand of her father she produced his letters, miniature, and even the little presents he had given her from time to time, and laid them down before him without a murmur; after this, even when he cursed and denounced him, she only left the room, never uttering a word in his defence. she moved about like one who had received a stunning blow--she was dull, cold, apathetic. she would smile vacantly when her father smoothed her hair or kissed her cheek; but she never laughed, or sang and played, as in days gone by; she would recline for hours on the sofa in her room gazing vacantly in the air, and taking apparently no interest in anything about her. she bent her head when she walked, complained of coldness about her temples, and kept her hand constantly upon her heart. doctors were at last consulted; they pronounced her physically well, and thought that time would restore her wonted animation; but month after month she grew more dull and silent, until her father feared she would become idiotic, and grew hopeless and unhappy about her. for a week before the receipt of the note from clarence, she had been particularly apathetic and indifferent, but it seemed to rouse her into life again. she started up after reading it, and rushed wildly through the hall into her father's library. "see here!" exclaimed she, grasping his arm--"see there--i knew it! i've felt day after day that it was coming to that! you separated us, and now he is dying--dying!" cried she. "read it--read it!" her father took the note, and after perusing it laid it on the table, and said coldly, "well--" "well!" repeated she, with agitation--"oh, father, it is not well! father!" said she, hurriedly, "you bid me give him up--told me he was unworthy--pointed out to me fully and clearly why we could not marry: i was convinced we could not, for i knew you would never let it be. yet i have never ceased to love him. i cannot control my heart, but i could my voice, and never since that day have i spoken his name. i gave him up--not that i would not have gladly married, knowing what he was--because you desired it--because i saw either your heart must break or mine. i let mine go to please you, and have suffered uncomplainingly, and will so suffer until the end; but i _must_ see him once again. it will be a pleasure to him to see me once again in his dying hour, and i _must_ go. if you love me," continued she, pleadingly, as her father made a gesture of dissent, "let us go. you see he is dying--begs you from the brink of the grave. let me go, only to say good bye to him, and then, perhaps," concluded she, pressing her hand upon her heart, "i shall be better here." her father had not the heart to make any objection, and the next day they started for philadelphia. they despatched a note to clarence, saying they had arrived, which emily received, and after opening it, went to gently break its contents to her brother. "you must prepare yourself for visitors, clary," said she, "no doubt some of our friends will call to-day, the weather is so very delightful." "do you know who is coming?" he inquired. "yes, dear," she answered, seating herself beside him, "i have received a note stating that a particular friend will call to-day--one that you desire to see." "ah!" he exclaimed, "it is little birdie, is it not?" "yes," she replied, "they have arrived in town, and will be here to-day." "did not i tell you so?" said he, triumphantly. "i knew she would come. i knew it," continued he, joyfully. "let me get up--i am strong enough--she is come--o! she has come." clarence insisted on being dressed with extraordinary care. his long fierce-looking beard was trimmed carefully, and he looked much better than he had done for weeks; he was wonderfully stronger, walked across the room, and chatted over his breakfast with unusual animation. at noon they came, and were shown into the drawing-room, where emily received them. mr. bates bowed politely, and expressed a hope that mr. garie was better. emily held out her hand to little birdie, who clasped it in both her own, and said, inquiringly: "you are his sister?" "yes," answered emily. "you, i should have known from clarence's description--you are his little birdie?" she did not reply--her lip quivered, and she pressed emily's hand and kissed her. "he is impatient to see you," resumed emily, "and if you are so disposed, we will go up immediately." "i will remain here," observed mr. bates, "unless mr. garie particularly desires to see me. my daughter will accompany you." emily took the hand of little birdie in her own, and they walked together up the stairway. "you must not be frightened at his appearance," she remarked, tearfully, "he is greatly changed." little birdie only shook her head--her heart seemed too full for speech--and she stepped on a little faster, keeping her hand pressed on her breast all the while. when they reached the door, emily was about to open it, but her companion stopped her, by saying: "wait a moment--stop! how my heart beats--it almost suffocates me." they paused for a few moments to permit little birdie to recover from her agitation, then throwing open the door they advanced into the room. "clarence!" said his sister. he did not answer; he was looking down into the garden. she approached nearer, and gently laying her hand on his shoulder, said, "here is your little birdie, clarence." he neither moved nor spoke. "clarence!" cried she, louder. no answer. she touched his face--it was warm. "he's fainted!" exclaimed she; and, ringing the bell violently, she screamed for help. her husband and the nurse rushed into the room; then came aunt ada and mr. bates. they bathed his temples, held strong salts to his nostrils--still he did not revive. finally, the nurse opened his bosom and placed her hand upon his heart. _it was still--quite still_: clarence was dead! at first they could not believe it. "let me speak to him," exclaimed little birdie, distractedly; "he will hear my voice, and answer. clarence! clarence!" she cried. all in vain--all in vain. clarence was dead! they gently bore her away. that dull, cold look came back again upon her face, and left it never more in life. she walked about mournfully for a few years, pressing her hand upon her heart; and then passed away to join her lover, where distinctions in race or colour are unknown, and where the prejudices of earth cannot mar their happiness. our tale is now soon finished. they buried clarence beside his parents; coloured people followed him to his last home, and wept over his grave. of all the many whites that he had known, aunt ada and mr. balch were the only ones that mingled their tears with those who listened to the solemn words of father banks, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." we, too, clarence, cast a tear upon thy tomb--poor victim of prejudice to thy colour! and deem thee better off resting upon thy cold pillow of earth, than battling with that malignant sentiment that persecuted thee, and has crushed energy, hope, and life from many stronger hearts. * * * * * aunt ada bell remained for a short time with emily, and then returned to sudbury, where, during the remainder of her life, she never omitted an opportunity of doing a kindness to a coloured person; and when the increasing liberality of sentiment opened a way for the admission of coloured pupils to the famous schools of sudbury, they could always procure board at her house, and aunt ada was a friend and mother to them. walters and dear old ess reared a fine family; and the brown baby and her sister took numberless premiums at school, to the infinite delight of their parents. they also had a boy, whom they named "charlie;" he inherited his uncle's passionate fondness for marbles, which fondness, it has been ascertained, is fostered by his uncle, who, 'tis said, furnishes the sinews of war when there is a dearth in the treasury of master walters. kinch and caddy were finally united, after various difficulties raised by the latter, who found it almost impossible to procure a house in such a state of order as would warrant her entering upon the blissful state of matrimony. when it was all over, kinch professed to his acquaintances generally to be living in a perfect state of bliss; but he privately intimated to charlie that if caddy would permit him to come in at the front door, and not condemn him to go through the alley, whenever there happened to be a shower--and would let him smoke where he liked--he would be much more contented. when last heard from they had a little caddy, the very image of its mother--a wonderful little girl, who, instead of buying candy and cake with her sixpences, as other children did, gravely invested them in miniature wash-boards and dust-brushes, and was saving up her money to purchase a tiny stove with a full set of cooking utensils. caddy declares her a child worth having. charles and emily took a voyage to europe for the health of the latter, and returned after a two years' tour to settle permanently in his native city. they were unremitting in their attention to father and mother ellis, who lived to good old age, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. the end. [illustration: "yes, cissie, i understand now"] birthright a novel by t.s. stribling illustrated by f. luis mora to my mother amelia waits stribling list of illustrations "yes, cissie, i understand now" peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and spears of the knights and ladies of tabor up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village in the siner cabin old caroline siner berated her boy the old gentleman turned around at last "you-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, cissie?" he stammered "naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "you turn roun' an' march on to niggertown" the bridal couple embarked for cairo birthright chapter i at cairo, illinois, the pullman-car conductor asked peter siner to take his suitcase and traveling-bag and pass forward into the jim crow car. the request came as a sort of surprise to the negro. during peter siner's four years in harvard the segregation of black folk on southern railroads had become blurred and reminiscent in his mind; now it was fetched back into the sharp distinction of the present instant. with a certain sense of strangeness, siner picked up his bags, and saw his own form, in the car mirrors, walking down the length of the sleeper. he moved on through the dining-car, where a few hours before he had had dinner and talked with two white men, one an oregon apple-grower, the other a wisconsin paper-manufacturer. the wisconsin man had furnished cigars, and the three had sat and smoked in the drawing-room, indeed, had discussed this very point; and now it was upon him. at the door of the dining-car stood the porter of his pullman, a negro like himself, and peter mechanically gave him fifty cents. the porter accepted it silently, without offering the amenities of his whisk-broom and shoe-brush, and peter passed on forward. beyond the dining-car and pullmans stretched twelve day-coaches filled with less-opulent white travelers in all degrees of sleepiness and dishabille from having sat up all night. the thirteenth coach was the jim crow car. framed in a conspicuous place beside the entrance of the car was a copy of the kentucky state ordinance setting this coach apart from the remainder of the train for the purposes therein provided. the jim crow car was not exactly shabby, but it was unkept. it was half filled with travelers of peter's own color, and these passengers were rather more noisy than those in the white coaches. conversation was not restrained to the undertones one heard in the other day-coaches or the pullmans. near the entrance of the car two negroes in soldiers' uniforms had turned a seat over to face the door, and now they sat talking loudly and laughing the loose laugh of the half intoxicated as they watched the inflow of negro passengers coming out of the white cars. the windows of the jim crow car were shut, and already it had become noisome. the close air was faintly barbed with the peculiar, penetrating odor of dark, sweating skins. for four years peter siner had not known that odor. now it came to him not so much offensively as with a queer quality of intimacy and reminiscence. the tall, carefully tailored negro spread his wide nostrils, vacillating whether to sniff it out with disfavor or to admit it for the sudden mental associations it evoked. it was a faint, pungent smell that played in the back of his nose and somehow reminded him of his mother, caroline siner, a thick-bodied black woman whom he remembered as always bending over a wash-tub. this was only one unit of a complex. the odor was also connected with negro protracted meetings in hooker's bend, and the harvard man remembered a lanky black preacher waving long arms and wailing of hell-fire, to the chanted groans of his dark congregation; and he, peter siner, had groaned with the others. peter had known this odor in the press-room of tennessee cotton-gins, over a river packet's boilers, where he and other roustabouts were bedded, in bunk-houses in the woods. it also recalled a certain octoroon girl named ida may, and an intimacy with her which it still moved and saddened peter to think of. indeed, it resurrected innumerable vignettes of his life in the negro village in hooker's bend; it was linked with innumerable emotions, this pungent, unforgetable odor that filled the jim crow car. somehow the odor had a queer effect of appearing to push his conversation with the two white northern men in the drawing-room back to a distance, an indefinable distance of both space and time. the negro put his suitcase under the seat, hung his overcoat on the hook, and placed his hand-bag in the rack overhead; then with some difficulty he opened a window and sat down by it. a stir of travelers in the cairo station drifted into the car. against a broad murmur of hurrying feet, moving trucks, and talking there stood out the thin, flat voice of a southern white girl calling good-by to some one on the train. peter could see her waving a bright parasol and tiptoeing. a sandwich boy hurried past, shrilling his wares. siner leaned out, with fifteen cents, and signaled to him. the urchin hesitated, and was about to reach up one of his wrapped parcels, when a peremptory voice shouted at him from a lower car. with a sort of start the lad deserted siner and went trotting down to his white customer. a moment later the train bell began ringing, and the dixie flier puffed deliberately out of the cairo station and moved across the ohio bridge into the south. half an hour later the blue-grass fields of kentucky were spinning outside of the window in a vast green whirlpool. the distant trees and houses moved forward with the train, while the foreground, with its telegraph poles, its culverts, section-houses, and shrubbery, rushed backward in a blur. now and then into the jim crow window whipped a blast of coal smoke and hot cinders, for the engine was only two cars ahead. peter siner looked out at the interminable spin of the landscape with a certain wistfulness. he was coming back into the south, into his own country. here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and fruitlessly, yet the fat green fields hurtling past him told with what skill and patience their black hands had labored. the negro shrugged away such thoughts, and with a certain effort replaced them with the constructive idea that was bringing him south once more. it was a very simple idea. siner was returning to his native village in tennessee to teach school. he planned to begin his work with the ordinary public school at hooker's bend, but, in the back of his head, he hoped eventually to develop an institution after the plan of tuskeegee or the hampton institute in virginia. to do what he had in mind, he must obtain aid from white sources, and now, as he traveled southward, he began conning in his mind the white men and white women he knew in hooker's bend. he wanted first of all to secure possession of a small tract of land which he knew adjoined the negro school-house over on the east side of the village. before the negro's mind the different villagers passed in review with that peculiar intimacy of vision that servants always have of their masters. indeed, no white southerner knows his own village so minutely as does any member of its colored population. the colored villagers see the whites off their guard and just as they are, and that is an attitude in which no one looks his best. the negroes might be called the black recording angels of the south. if what they know should be shouted aloud in any southern town, its social life would disintegrate. yet it is a strange fact that gossip seldom penetrates from the one race to the other. so peter siner sat in the jim crow car musing over half a dozen villagers in hooker's bend. he thought of them in a curious way. although he was now a b.a. of harvard university, and although he knew that not a soul in the little river village, unless it was old captain renfrew, could construe a line of greek and that scarcely two had ever traveled farther north than cincinnati, still, as peter recalled their names and foibles, he involuntarily felt that he was telling over a roll of the mighty. the white villagers came marching through his mind as beings austere, and the very cranks and quirks of their characters somehow held that austerity. there were the brownell sisters, two old maids, molly and patti, who lived in a big brick house on the hill. peter remembered that miss molly brownell always doled out to his mother, at monday's washday dinner, exactly one biscuit less than the old negress wanted to eat, and she always paid her in old clothes. peter remembered, a dozen times in his life, his mother coming home and wondering in an impersonal way how it was that miss molly brownell could skimp every meal she ate at the big house by exactly one biscuit. it was miss brownell's thin-lipped boast that she understood negroes. she had told peter so several times when, as a lad, he went up to the big house on errands. peter siner considered this remembrance without the faintest feeling of humor, and mentally removed miss molly brownell from his list of possible subscribers. yet, he recalled, the whole brownell estate had been reared on negro labor. then there was henry hooker, cashier of the village bank. peter knew that the banker subscribed liberally to foreign missions; indeed, at the cashier's behest, the white church of hooker's bend kept a paid missionary on the upper congo. but the banker had sold some village lots to the negroes, and in two instances, where a streak of commercial phosphate had been discovered on the properties, the lots had reverted to the hooker estate. there had been in the deed something concerning a mineral reservation that the negro purchasers knew nothing about until the phosphate was discovered. the whole matter had been perfectly legal. a hand shook siner's shoulder and interrupted his review. peter turned, and caught an alcoholic breath over his shoulder, and the blurred voice of a southern negro called out above the rumble of the car and the roar of the engine: "'fo' gawd, ef dis ain't peter siner i's been lookin' at de las' twenty miles, an' not knowin' him wid sich skeniptious clo'es on! wha you fum, nigger?" siner took the enthusiastic hand offered him and studied the heavily set, powerful man bending over the seat. he was in a soldier's uniform, and his broad nutmeg-colored face and hot black eyes brought peter a vague sense of familiarity; but he never would have identified his impression had he not observed on the breast of the soldier's uniform the congressional military medal for bravery on the field of battle. its glint furnished peter the necessary clew. he remembered his mother's writing him something about tump pack going to france and getting "crowned" before the army. he had puzzled a long time over what she meant by "crowned" before he guessed her meaning. now the medal aided peter in reconstructing out of this big umber-colored giant the rather spindling tump pack he had known in hooker's bend. siner was greatly surprised, and his heart warmed at the sight of his old playmate. "what have you been doing to yourself, tump?" he cried, laughing, and shaking the big hand in sudden warmth. "you used to be the size of a dime in a jewelry store." "been in 'e army, nigger, wha i's been fed," said the grinning brown man, delightedly. "i sho is picked up, ain't i?" "and what are you doing here in cairo?" "tryin' to bridle a lil white mule." mr. pack winked a whisky-brightened eye jovially and touched his coat to indicate that some of the "white mule" was in his pocket and had not been drunk. "how'd you get here?" "wucked my way down on de st. louis packet an' got paid off at padjo [paducah, kentucky]; 'n 'en i thought i'd come on down heah an' roll some bones. been hittin' 'em two days now, an' i sho come putty nigh bein' cleaned; but i put up lil joe heah, an' won 'em all back, 'n 'en some." he touched the medal on his coat, winked again, slapped siner on the leg, and burst into loud laughter. peter was momentarily shocked. he made a place on the seat for his friend to sit. "you don't mean you put up your medal on a crap game, tump?" "sho do, black man." pack became soberer. "dat's one o' de great benefits o' bein' dec'rated. dey ain't a son uv a gun on de river whut kin win lil joe; dey all tried it." a moment's reflection told peter how simple and natural it was for pack to prize his military medal as a good-luck piece to be used as a last resort in crap games. he watched tump stroke the face of his medal with his fingers. "my mother wrote me; about your getting it, tump. i was glad to hear it." the brown man nodded, and stared down at the bit of gold on his barrel- like chest. "yas-suh, dat 'uz guv to me fuh bravery. you know whut a skeery lil nigger i wuz roun' hooker's ben'; well, de sahgeant tuk me an' he drill ever' bit o' dat right out 'n me. he gimme a baynit an' learned me to stob dummies wid it over at camp oglethorpe, ontil he felt lak i had de heart to stob anything; 'n' 'en he sont me acrost. i had to git a new pair breeches ever' three weeks, i growed so fas'." here he broke out into his big loose laugh again, and renewed the alcoholic scent around peter. "and you made good?" "sho did, black man, an', 'fo' gawd, i 'serve a medal ef any man ever did. dey gimme dish-heah fuh stobbin fo' white men wid a baynit. 'fo' gawd, nigger, i never felt so quare in all my born days as when i wuz a- jobbin' de livers o' dem white men lak de sahgeant tol' me to." tump shook his head, bewildered, and after a moment added, "yas-suh, i never wuz mo' surprised in all my life dan when i got dis medal fuh stobbin' fo' white men." peter siner looked through the jim crow window at the vast rotation of the kentucky landscape on which his forebears had toiled; presently he added soberly: "you were fighting for your country, tump. it was war then; you were fighting for your country." * * * * * at jackson, tennessee, the two negroes were forced to spend the night between trains. tump pack piloted peter siner to a negro cafe where they could eat, and later they searched out a negro lodging-house on gate street where they could sleep. it was a grimy, smelly place, with its own odor spiked by a phosphate-reducing plant two blocks distant. the paper on the wall of the room peter slept in looked scrofulous. there was no window, and peter's four-years régime of open windows and fresh- air sleep was broken. he arranged his clothing for the night so it would come in contact with nothing in the room but a chair back. he felt dull next morning, and could not bring himself either to shave or bathe in the place, but got out and hunted up a negro barber-shop furnished with one greasy red-plush barber-chair. a few hours later the two negroes journeyed on down to perryville, tennessee, a village on the tennessee river where they took a gasolene launch up to hooker's bend. the launch was about fifty feet long and had two cabins, a colored cabin in front of, and a white cabin behind, the engine-room. this unremitting insistence on his color, this continual shunting him into obscure and filthy ways, gradually gave peter a loathly sensation. it increased the unwashed feeling that followed his lack of a morning bath. the impression grew upon him that he was being handled with tongs, along back-alley routes; that he and his race were something to be kept out of sight as much as possible, as careful housekeepers manoeuver their slops. at perryville a number of passengers boarded the up-river boat; two or three drummers; a yellowed old hill woman returning to her wayne county home; a red-headed peanut-buyer; a well-groomed white girl in a tailor suit; a youngish man barely on the right side of middle age who seemed to be attending her; and some negro girls with lunches. the passengers trailed from the railroad station down the river bank through a slush of mud, for the river had just fallen and had left a layer of liquid mud to a height of about twenty feet all along the littoral. the passengers picked their way down carefully, stepping into one another's tracks in the effort not to ruin their shoes. the drummers grumbled. the youngish man piloted the girl down, holding her hand, although both could have managed better by themselves. following the passengers came the trunks and grips on a truck. a negro deck-hand, the truck-driver, and the white master of the launch shoved aboard the big sample trunks of the drummers with grunts, profanity, and much stamping of mud. presently, without the formality of bell or whistle, the launch clacked away from the landing and stood up the wide, muddy river. the river itself was monotonous and depressing. it was perhaps half a mile wide, with flat, willowed mud banks on one side and low shelves of stratified limestone on the other. trading-points lay at ten- or fifteen-mile intervals along the great waterway. the typical landing was a dilapidated shed of a store half covered with tin tobacco signs and ancient circus posters. usually, only one man met the launch at each landing, the merchant, a democrat in his shirt-sleeves and without a tie. his voice was always a flat, weary drawl, but his eyes, wrinkled against the sun, usually held the shrewdness of those who make their living out of two-penny trades. at each place the red-headed peanut-buyer slogged up the muddy bank and bargained for the merchant's peanuts, to be shipped on the down-river trip of the first st. louis packet. the loneliness of the scene embraced the trading-points, the river, and the little gasolene launch struggling against the muddy current. it permeated the passengers, and was a finishing touch to peter siner's melancholy. the launch clacked on and on interminably. sometimes it seemed to make no headway at all against the heavy, silty current. tump pack, the white captain, and the negro engineer began a game of craps in the negro cabin. presently, two of the white drummers came in from the white cabin and began betting on the throws. the game was listless. the master of the launch pointed out places along the shores where wildcat stills were located. the crap-shooters, negro and white, squatted in a circle on the cabin floor, snapping their fingers and calling their points monotonously. one of the negro girls in the negro cabin took an apple out of her lunch sack and began eating it, holding it in her palm after the fashion of negroes rather than in her fingers, as is the custom of white women. both doors of the engine-room were open, and peter siner could see through into the white cabin. the old hill woman was dozing in her chair, her bonnet bobbing to each stroke of the engines. the youngish man and the girl were engaged in some sort of intimate lovers' dispute. when the engines stopped at one of the landings, peter discovered she was trying to pay him what he had spent on getting her baggage trucked down at perryville. the girl kept pressing a bill into the man's hand, and he avoided receiving the money. they kept up the play for sake of occasional contacts. when the launch came in sight of hooker's bend toward the middle of the afternoon, peter siner experienced one of the profoundest surprises of his life. somehow, all through his college days he had remembered hooker's bend as a proud town with important stores and unapproachable white residences. now he saw a skum of negro cabins, high piles of lumber, a sawmill, and an ice-factory. behind that, on a little rise, stood the old brownell manor, maintaining a certain shabby dignity in a grove of oaks. behind and westward from the negro shacks and lumber- piles ranged the village stores, their roofs just visible over the top of the bank. moored to the shore, lay the wharf-boat in weathered greens and yellows. as a background for the whole scene rose the dark-green height of what was called the "big hill," an eminence that separated the negro village on the east from the white village on the west. the hill itself held no houses, but appeared a solid green-black with cedars. the ensemble was merely another lonely spot on the south bank of the great somnolent river. it looked dead, deserted, a typical river town, unprodded even by the hoot of a jerk-water railroad. as the launch chortled toward the wharf, peter siner stood trying to orient himself to this unexpected and amazing minifying of hooker's bend. he had left a metropolis; he was coming back to a tumble-down village. yet nothing was changed. even the two scraggly locust-trees that clung perilously to the brink of the river bank still held their toe-hold among the strata of limestone. the negro deck-hand came out and pumped the hand-power whistle in three long discordant blasts. then a queer thing happened. the whistle was answered by a faint strain of music. a little later the passengers saw a line of negroes come marching down the river bank to the wharf-boat. they marched in military order, and from afar peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and spears of the knights and ladies of tabor, a colored burial association. siner wondered what had brought out the knights and ladies of tabor. the singing and the drumming gradually grew upon the air. the passengers in the white cabin, came out on the guards at this unexpected fanfare. as soon as the white travelers saw the marching negroes, they began joking about what caused the demonstration. the captain of the launch thought he knew, and began an oath, but stopped it out of deference to the girl in the tailor suit. he said it was a dead nigger the society was going to ship up to savannah. the girl in the tailor suit was much amused. she said the darkies looked like a string of caricatures marching down the river bank. peter noticed her northern accent, and fancied she was coming to hooker's bend to teach school. one of the drummers turned to another. "did you ever hear bob taylor's yarn about uncle 'rastus's funeral? funniest thing bob ever got off." he proceeded to tell it. every one on the launch was laughing except the captain, who was swearing quietly; but the line of negroes marched on down to the wharf- boat with the unshakable dignity of black folk in an important position. they came singing an old negro spiritual. the women's sopranos thrilled up in high, weird phrasing against an organ-like background of male voices. but the black men carried no coffin, and suddenly it occurred to peter siner that perhaps this celebration was given in honor of his own home- coming. the mulatto's heart beat a trifle faster as he began planning a suitable response to this ovation. sure enough, the singing ranks disappeared behind the wharf-boat, and a minute later came marching around the stern and lined up on the outer guard of the vessel. the skinny, grizzly-headed negro commander held up his sword, and the knights and ladies of tabor fell silent. the master of the launch tossed his head-line to the wharf-boat, and yelled for one of the negroes to make it fast. one did. then the commandant with the sword began his address, but it was not directed to peter. he said: [illustration: peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and spears of the knights and ladies of tabor] "brudder tump pack, we, de hooker's ben' lodge uv de knights an' ladies uv tabor, welcome you back to yo' native town. we is proud uv you, a colored man, who brings back de highes' crown uv bravery dis newnighted states has in its power to bestow. "two yeahs ago, brudder tump, we seen you marchin' away fum hooker's ben' wid thirteen udder boys, white an' colored, all marchin' away togedder. fo' uv them boys is already back home; three, we heah, is on de way back, but six uv yo' brave comrades, brudder pack, is sleepin' now in france, an' ain't never goin' to come home no mo'. when we honors you, we honors them all, de libin' an' de daid, de white an' de black, who fought togedder fuh one country, fuh one flag." gasps, sobs from the line of black folk, interrupted the speaker. just then a shriveled old negress gave a scream, and came running and half stumbling out of the line, holding out her arms to the barrel-chested soldier on the gang-plank. she seized him and began shrieking: "bless gawd! my son's done come home! praise de lawd! bless his holy name!" here her laudation broke into sobbing and choking and laughing, and she squeezed herself to her son. tump patted her bony black form. "i's heah, mammy," he stammered uncertainly. "i's come back, mammy." half a dozen other negroes caught the joyful hysteria. they began a religious shouting, clapping their hands, flinging up their arms, shrieking. one of the drummers grunted: "good god! all this over a nigger getting back!" at the extreme end of the dark line a tall cream-colored girl wept silently. as peter siner stood blinking his eyes, he saw the octoroon's shoulders and breasts shake from the sobs, which her white blood repressed to silence. a certain sympathy for her grief and its suppression kept peter's eyes on the young woman, and then, with the queer effect of one picture melting into another, the strange girl's face assumed familiar curves and softnesses, and he was looking at ida may. a quiver traveled deliberately over peter from his crisp black hair to the soles of his feet. he started toward her impulsively. at that moment one of the drummers picked up his grip, and started down the gang-plank, and with its leathern bulk pressed tump pack and his mother out of his path. he moved on to the shore through the negroes, who divided at his approach. the captain of the launch saw that other of his white passengers were becoming impatient, and he shouted for the darkies to move aside and not to block the gangway. the youngish man drew the girl in the tailor suit close to him and started through with her. peter heard him say, "they won't hurt you, miss negley." and miss negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a northern woman, replied: "oh, i'm not afraid. we waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when you see them--" at that moment peter heard a cry in his ears and felt arms thrown about his neck. he looked down and saw his mother, caroline siner, looking up into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and this joy of her own. caroline had changed since peter last saw her. her eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very gray. something warm and melting moved in peter siner's breast. he caressed his mother and murmured incoherently, as had tump pack. presently the master of the launch came by, and touched the old negress, not ungently, with the end of a spike-pole. "you'll have to move, aunt ca'line," he said. "we're goin' to get the freight off now." the black woman paused in her weeping. "yes, mass' bob," she said, and she and peter moved off of the launch onto the wharf-boat. the knights and ladies of tabor were already up the river bank with their hero. peter and his mother were left alone. now they walked around the guards of the wharf-boat to the bank, holding each other's arms closely. as they went, peter kept looking down at his old black mother, with a growing tenderness. she was so worn and heavy! he recognized the very dress she wore, an old black silk which she had "washed out" for miss patti brownell when he was a boy. it had been then, it was now, her best dress. during the years the old negress had registered her increasing bulk by letting out seams and putting in panels. some of the panels did not agree with the original fabric either in color or in texture and now the seams were stretching again and threatening a rip. peter's own immaculate clothes reproached him, and he wondered for the hundredth, or for the thousandth time how his mother had obtained certain remittances which she had forwarded him during his college years. as peter and his mother crept up the bank of the river, stopping occasionally to let the old negress rest, his impression of the meanness and shabbiness of the whole village grew. from the top of the bank the single business street ran straight back from the river. it was stony in places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, broken planking, excelsior, and straw that had been used for packing. charred rubbish- piles lay in front of every store, which the clerks had swept out and attempted to burn. hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the merchants. the stores that peter had once looked upon as show-places were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear and weather. the white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in chairs on the brick pavements before their stores and who moved slowly when a customer entered their doors. and, strange to say, it was this fall of his white townsmen that moved peter siner with a sense of the greatest loss. it seemed fantastic to him, this sudden land-slide of the mighty. as peter and his mother came over the brow of the river bank, they saw a crowd collecting at the other end of the street. the main street of hooker's bend is only a block long, and the two negroes could easily hear the loud laughter of men hurrying to the focus of interest and the blurry expostulations of negro voices. the laughter spread like a contagion. merchants as far up as the river corner became infected, and moved toward the crowd, looking back over their shoulders at every tenth or twelfth step to see that no one entered their doors. presently, a little short man, fairly yipping with laughter, stumbled back up the street to his store with tears of mirth in his eyes. a belated merchant stopped him by clapping both hands on his shoulders and shaking some composure into him. "what is it? what's so funny? damn it! i miss ever'thing!" "i-i-it's that f-fool tum-tump pack. bobbs's arrested him!" the inquirer was astounded. "how the hell can he arrest him when he hit town this minute?" "wh-why, bobbs had an old warrant for crap-shoot--three years old-- before the war. just as tump was a-coming down the street at the head of the coons, out steps bobbs--" here the little man was overcome. the merchant from the corner opened his eyes. "arrested him on an old crap charge?" the little man nodded. they gazed at each other. then they exploded simultaneously. peter left his obese mother and hurried to the corner, dawson bobbs, the constable, had handcuffs on tump's wrists, and stood with his prisoner amid a crowd of arguing negroes. bobbs was a big, fleshy, red-faced man, with chilly blue eyes and a little straight slit of a mouth in his wide face. he was laughing and chewing a sliver of toothpick. "o tump pack," he called loudly, "you kain't git away from me! if you roll bones in hooker's bend, you'll have to divide your winnings with the county." dawson winked a chill eye at the crowd in general. "but hit's out o' date, mr. bobbs," the old gray-headed minister, parson ranson, was pleading. "may be that, parson, but hit's easier to come up before the j.p. and pay off than to fight it through the circuit court." siner pushed his way through the crowd. "how much do you want, mr. bobbs?" he asked briefly. the constable looked with reminiscent eyes at the tall, well-tailored negro. he was plainly going through some mental card-index, hunting for the name of peter siner on some long-forgotten warrant. apparently, he discovered nothing, for he said shortly: "how do i know before he's tried? come on, tump!" the procession moved in a long noisy line up pillow street, the white residential street lying to the west. it stopped before a large shaded lawn, where a number of white men and women were playing a game with cards. the cards used by the lawn party were not ordinary playing-cards, but had figures on them instead of spots, and were called "rook" cards. the party of white ladies and gentlemen were playing "rook." on a table in the middle of the lawn glittered some pieces of silver plate which formed the first, second, and third prizes for the three leading scores. the constable halted his black company before the lawn, where they stood in the sunshine patiently waiting for the justice of the peace to finish his game and hear the case of the state of tennessee, plaintiff, versus tump pack, defendant. chapter ii on the eastern edge of hooker's bend, drawn in a rough semicircle around the big hill, lies niggertown. in all the half-moon there are perhaps not two upright buildings. the grimy cabins lean at crazy angles, some propped with poles, while others hold out against gravitation at a hazard. up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village. here children of all colors from black to cream fight and play; deep-chested negresses loiter to and fro, some on errands to the white section of the village on the other side of the hill, where they go to scrub or cook or wash or iron. others go down to the public well with a bucket in each hand and one balanced on the head. the public well itself lies at the southern end of this miserable street, just at a point where the drainage of the big hill collects. the rainfall runs down through niggertown, under its sties, stables, and outdoor toilets, and the well supplies the negroes with water for cooking, washing, and drinking. or, rather, what was once a well supplies this water, for it is a well no longer. its top and curbing caved in long ago, and now there is simply a big hole in the soft, water-soaked clay, about fifteen feet wide, with water standing at the bottom. here come the unhurried colored women, who throw in their buckets, and with a dexterity that comes of long practice draw them out full of water. black mothers shout at their children not to fall into this pit, and now and then, when a pig fails to come up for its evening slops, a black boy will go to the public well to see if perchance his porker has met misfortune there. the inhabitants of niggertown suffer from divers diseases; they develop strange ailments that no amount of physicking will overcome; young wives grow sickly from no apparent cause. although only three or four hundred persons live in niggertown, two or three negroes are always slowly dying of tuberculosis; winter brings pneumonia; summer, malaria. about once a year the state health officer visits hooker's bend and forces the white soda-water dispensers on the other side of the hill to sterilize their glasses in the name of the sovereign state of tennessee. the siner home was a three-room shanty about midway in the semicircle. peter siner stood in the sunlight just outside the entrance, watching his old mother clean the bugs out of a tainted ham that she had bought for a pittance from some white housekeeper in the village. it had been too high for white people to eat. old caroline patiently tapped the honeycombed meat to scare out the last of the little green householders, and then she washed it in a solution of soda to freshen it up. the sight of his bulky old mother working at the spoiled ham and of the negro women in the street moving to and from the infected well filled peter siner with its terrible pathos. although he had seen these surroundings all of his life, he had a queer impression that he was looking upon them for the first time. during his boyhood he had accepted all this without question as the way the world was made. during his college days a criticism had arisen in his mind, but it came slowly, and was tempered by that tenderness every one feels for the spot called home. now, as he stood looking at it, he wondered how human beings lived there at all. he wondered if ida may used water from the niggertown well. he turned to ask old caroline, but checked himself with a man's instinctive avoidance of mentioning his intimacies to his mother. at that moment, oddly enough, the old negress brought up the topic herself. "ida may wuz 'quirin' 'bout you las' night, peter." a faint tingle filtered through peter's throat and chest, but he asked casually enough what she had said. "didn' say; she wrote." peter looked around, frankly astonished. "wrote?" "yeah; co'se she wrote." "what made her write?" a fantasy of ida may dumb flickered before the mulatto. [illustration: up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village] "why, ida may's in nashville." caroline looked at peter. "she wrote to cissie, astin' 'bout you. she ast is you as bright in yo' books as you is in yo' color." the old negress gave a pleased abdominal chuckle as she admired her broad-shouldered brown son. "but i saw ida may standing on the wharf-boat the day i came home," protested peter, still bewildered. "no you ain't. i reckon you seen cissie. dey looks kind o' like when you is fur off." "cissie?" repeated peter. then he remembered a smaller sister of ida may's, a little, squalling, yellow, wet-nosed nuisance that had annoyed his adolescence. so that little spoil-sport had grown up into the girl he had mistaken for ida may. this fact increased his sense of strangeness--that sense of great change that had fallen on the village in his absence which formed the groundwork of all his renewed associations. peter's prolonged silence aroused certain suspicions in the old negress. she glanced at her son out of the tail of her eyes. "cissie dildine is tump pack's gal," she stated defensively, with the jealousy all mothers feel toward all sons. a diversion in the shouts of the children up the mean street and a sudden furious barking of dogs drew peter from the discussion. he looked up, and saw a negro girl of about fourteen coming down the curved street, with long, quick steps and an occasional glance over her shoulder. from across the thoroughfare a small chocolate-colored woman, with her wool done in outstanding spikes, thrust her head out at the door and called: "whut's de matter, ofeely?" the girl lifted a high voice: "oh, miss nan, it's that constable goin' th'ugh the houses!" the girl veered across the street to the safety of the open door and one of her own sex. "good lawd!" cried the spiked one in disgust, "ever', time a white pusson gits somp'n misplaced--" she moved to one side to allow the girl to enter, and continued staring up the street, with the whites of her eyes accented against her dark face, after the way of angry negroes. around the crescent the dogs were furious. they were niggertown dogs, and the sight of a white man always drove them to a frenzy. presently in the hullabaloo, peter heard dawson bobbs's voice shouting: "aunt mahaly, if you kain't call off this dawg, i'm shore goin' to kill him." then an old woman's scolding broke in and complicated the mêlée. presently peter saw the bulky form of dawson bobbs come around the curve, moving methodically from cabin to cabin. he held some legal- looking papers in his hands, and peter knew what the constable was doing. he was serving a blanket search-warrant on the whole black population of hooker's bend. at almost every cabin a dog ran out to blaspheme at the intruder, but a wave of the man's pistol sent them yelping under the floors again. when the constable entered a house, peter could hear him bumping and rattling among the furnishings, while the black householders stood outside the door and watched him disturb their housekeeping arrangements. presently bobbs came angling across the street toward the siner cabin. as he entered the rickety gate, old caroline called out: "whut is you after, anyway, white man?" bobbs turned cold, truculent eyes on the old negress. "a turkey roaster," he snapped. "some o' you niggers stole miss lou arkwright's turkey roaster." "tukky roaster!" cried the old black woman, in great disgust. "whut you s'pose us niggers is got to roast in a tukky roaster?" the constable answered shortly that his business was to find the roaster, not what the negroes meant to put in it. "i decla'," satirized old caroline, savagely, "dish-heah niggertown is a white man's pocket. ever' time he misplace somp'n, he feel in his pocket to see ef it ain't thaiuh. don'-chu turn over dat sody-water, white man! you know dey ain't no tukky roaster under dat sody-water. i 'cla' 'fo' gawd, ef a white man wuz to eat a flapjack, an' it did n' give him de belly-ache, i 'cla' 'fo' gawd he'd git out a search-wa'nt to see ef some nigger had n' stole dat flapjack goin' down his th'oat." "mr. bobbs has to do his work, mother," put in peter. "i don't suppose he enjoys it any more than we do." "den let 'im git out'n dis business an' git in anudder," scolded the old woman. "dis sho is a mighty po' business." the ponderous mr. bobbs finished with a practised thoroughness his inspection of the cabin, and then the inquisition proceeded down the street, around the crescent, and so out of sight and eventually out of hearing. old caroline snapped her chair back beside her greasy table and sat down abruptly to her spoiled ham again. "dat make me mad," she grumbled. "ever' time a white pusson fail to lay dey han' on somp'n, dey comes an' turns over ever'thing in my house." she paused a moment, closed her eyes in thought, and then mused aloud: "i wonder who is got miss arkwright's roaster." the commotion of the constable's passing died in his wake, and niggertown resumed its careless existence. dogs reappeared from under the cabins and stretched in the sunshine; black children came out of hiding and picked up their play; the frightened ophelia came out of nan's cabin across the street and went her way; a lanky negro youth in blue coat and pin-striped trousers appeared, coming down the squalid thoroughfare whistling the "memphis blues" with bird-like virtuosity. the lightness with which niggertown accepted the moral side glance of a blanket search-warrant depressed siner. caroline called her son to dinner, as the twelve-o'clock meal is called in hooker's bend, and so ended his meditation. the harvard man went back into the kitchen and sat down at a rickety table covered with a red- checked oil-cloth. on it were spread the spoiled ham, a dish of poke salad, a corn pone, and a pot of weak coffee. a quaint old bowl held some brown sugar. the fat old negress made a slight, habitual settling movement in her chair that marked the end of her cooking and the beginning of her meal. then she bent her grizzled, woolly head and mumbled off one of those queer old-fashioned graces which consist of a swift string of syllables without pauses between either words or sentences. peter sat watching his mother with a musing gaze. the kitchen was illuminated by a single small square window set high up from the floor. now the disposition of its single ray of light over the dishes and the bowed head of the massive negress gave peter one of those sharp, tender apprehensions of formal harmony that lie back of the genre in art. it stirred his emotion in an odd fashion. when old caroline raised her head, she found her son staring with impersonal eyes not at herself, but at the whole room, including her. the old woman was perplexed and a little apprehensive. "why, son!" she ejaculated, "didn' you bow yo' haid while yo' mammy ast de grace?" peter was a little confused at his remissness. then he leaned a little forward to explain the sudden glamour which for a moment had transfigured the interior of their kitchen. but even as he started to speak, he realized that what he meant to say would only confuse his mother; therefore he cast about mentally for some other explanation of his behavior, but found nothing at hand. "i hope you ain't forgot yo' 'ligion up at de 'versity, son." "oh, no, no, indeed, mother, but just at that moment, just as you bowed your head, you know, it struck me that--that there is something noble in our race." that was the best he could put it to her. "noble--" "yes. you know," he went on a little quickly, "sometimes i--i've thought my father must have been a noble man." the old negress became very still. she was not looking quite at her son, or yet precisely away from him. "uh--uh noble nigger,"--she gave her abdominal chuckle. "why--yeah, i reckon yo' father wuz putty noble as--as niggers go." she sat looking at her son, oddly, with a faint amusement in her gross black face, when a careful voice, a very careful voice, sounded in the outer room, gliding up politely on the syllables: "ahnt carolin'! oh, ahnt carolin', may i enter?" the old woman stirred. "da''s cissie, peter. go ast her in to de fambly-room." when siner opened the door, the vague resemblance of the slender, creamy girl on the threshold to ida may again struck him; but cissie dildine was younger, and her polished black hair lay straight on her pretty head, and was done in big, shining puffs over her ears in a way that ida may's unruly curls would never have permitted. her eyes were the most limpid brown peter had ever seen, but her oval face was faintly unnatural from the use of negro face powder, which colored women insist on, and which gives their yellows and browns a barely perceptible greenish hue. cissie wore a fluffy yellow dress some three shades deeper than the throat and the glimpse of bosom revealed at the neck. the girl carried a big package in her arms, and now she manipulated this to put out a slender hand to peter. "this is cissie dildine, mister siner." she smiled up at him. "i just came over to put my name down on your list. there was such a mob at the benevolence hall last night i couldn't get to you." the girl had a certain finical precision to her english that told peter she had been away to some school, and had been taught to guard her grammar very carefully as she talked. peter helped her inside amid the handshake and said he would go fetch the list. as he turned, cissie offered her bundle. "here is something i thought might be a little treat for you and ahnt carolin'." she paused, and then explained remotely, "sometimes it is hard to get good things at the village market." peter took the package, vaguely amused at cissie's patronage of the hooker's bend market. it was an attitude instinctively assumed by every girl, white or black, who leaves the village and returns. the bundle was rather large and wrapped in newspapers. he carried it into the kitchen to his mother, and then returned with the list. the sheet was greasy from the handling of black fingers. the girl spread it on the little center-table with a certain daintiness, seated herself, and held out her hand for peter's pencil. she made rather a graceful study in cream and yellow as she leaned over the table and signed her name in a handwriting as perfect and as devoid of character as a copy- book. she began discussing the speech peter had made at the benevolence hall. "i don't know whether i am in favor of your project or not, mr. siner," she said as she rose from the table. "no?" peter was surprised and amused at her attitude and at her precise voice. "no, i'm rather inclined toward mr. dubois's theory of a literary culture than toward mr. washington's for a purely industrial training." peter broke out laughing. "for the love of mike, cissie, you talk like the instructor in sociology b! and haven't we met before somewhere? this 'mister siner' stuff--" the girl's face warmed under its faint, greenish powder. "if i aren't careful with my language, peter," she said simply, "i'll be talking just as badly as i did before i went to the seminary. you know i never hear a proper sentence in hooker's bend except my own." a certain resignation in the girl's soft voice brought peter a qualm for laughing at her. he laid an impulsive hand on her young shoulder. "well, that's true, certainly, but it won't always be like that, cissie. more of us go off to school every year. i do hope my school here in hooker's bend will be of some real value. if i could just show our people how badly we fare here, how ill housed, and unsanitary--" the girl pressed peter's fingers with a woman's optimism for a man. "you'll succeed, peter, i know you will. some day the name siner will mean the same thing to coloured people as tanner and dunbar and braithwaite do. anyway, i've put my name down for ten dollars to help out." she returned the pencil. "i'll have tump pack come around and pay you my subscription, peter." "i'll watch out for tump," promised peter in a lightening mood, "--and make him pay." "he'll do it." "i don't doubt it. you ought to have him under perfect control. i meant to tell you what a pretty frock you have on." the girl dimpled, and dropped him a little curtsy, half ironical and wholly graceful. peter was charmed. "now keep that way, cissie, smiling and human, not so grammatical. i wish i had a brooch." "a brooch?" "i'd give it to you. your dress needs a brooch, an old gold brooch at the bosom, just a glint there to balance your eyes." cissie flushed happily, and made the feminine movement of concealing the v-shaped opening at her throat. "it's a pleasure to doll up for a man like you, peter. you see a girl's good points--if she has any," she tacked on demurely. "oh, just any man--" "don't think it! don't think it!" waved down cissie, humorously. "but, cissie, how is it possible--" "just blind." cissie rippled into a boarding-school laugh. "i could wear the whole rue del opera here in niggertown, and nobody would ever see it but you." cissie was moving toward the door. peter tried to detain her. he enjoyed the implication of tump pack's stupidity, in their badinage, but she would not stay. he was finally reduced to thanking her for her present, then stood guard as she tripped out into the grimy street. in the sunshine her glossy black hair and canary dress looked as trim and brilliant as the plumage of a chaffinch. peter siner walked back into the kitchen with the fixed smile of a man who is thinking of a pretty girl. the black dowager in the kitchen received him in silence, with her thick lips pouted. when peter observed it, he felt slightly amused at his mother's resentment. "well, you sho had a lot o' chatter over signin' a lil ole paper." "she signed for ten dollars," said peter, smiling. "huh! she'll never pay it." "said tump pack would pay it." "huh!" the old negress dropped the subject, and nodded at a huge double pan on the table. "dat's whut she brung you." she grunted disapprovingly. "and it's for you, too, mother." "ya-as, i 'magine she brung somp'n fuh me." peter walked across to the double pans, and saw they held a complete dinner--chicken, hot biscuits, cake, pickle, even ice-cream. the sight of the food brought peter a realization that he was keenly hungry. as a matter of fact, he had not eaten a palatable meal since he had been evicted from the white dining-car at cairo, illinois. siner served his own and his mother's plate. the old woman sniffed again. "seems to me lak you is mighty onobsarvin' fuh a nigger whut's been off to college." "anything else?" peter looked into the pans again. "ain't you see whut it's all in?" "what it's in?" "yeah; whut it's in. you heared whut i said." "what is it in?" "why, it's in miss arkwright's tukky roaster, dat's whut it's in." the old negress drove her point home with an acid accent. peter siner was too loyal to his new friendship with cissie dildine to allow his mother's jealous suspicions to affect him; nevertheless the old woman's observations about the turkey roaster did prevent a complete and care-free enjoyment of the meal. certainly there were other turkey roasters in hooker's bend than mrs. arkwright's. cissie might very well own a roaster. it was absurd to think that cissie, in the midst of her almost pathetic struggle to break away from the uncouthness of niggertown, would stoop to--even in his thoughts peter avoided nominating the charge. and then, somehow, his memory fished up the fact that years ago ida may, according to village rumor, was "light-fingered." at that time in peter's life "light-fingeredness" carried with it no opprobrium whatever. it was simply a fact about ida may, as were her sloe eyes and curling black hair. his reflections renewed his perpetual sense of queerness and strangeness that hall-marked every phase of niggertown life since his return from the north. * * * * * cissie dildine's contribution tailed out the one hundred dollars that peter needed, and after he had finished his meal, the mulatto set out across the big hill for the white section of the village, to complete his trade. it was peter's program to go to the planter's bank, pay down his hundred, and receive a deed from one elias tomwit, which the bank held in escrow. two or three days before peter had tried to borrow the initial hundred from the bank, but the cashier, henry hooker, after going into the transaction, had declined the loan, and therefore siner had been forced to await a meeting of the sons and daughters of benevolence. at this meeting the subscription had gone through promptly. the land the negroes purposed to purchase for an industrial school was a timbered tract tying southeast of hooker's bend on the head-waters of ross creek. a purchase price of eight hundred dollars had been agreed upon. the timber on the tract, sold on the stump, would bring almost that amount. it was siner's plan to commandeer free labor in niggertown, work off the timber, and have enough money to build the first unit of his school. a number of negro men already had subscribed a certain number of days' work in the timber. it was a modest and entirely practical program, and peter felt set up over it. the brown man turned briskly out into the hot afternoon sunshine, down the mean semicircular street, where piccaninnies were kicking up clouds of dust. he hurried through the dusty area, and presently turned off a by-path that led over the hill, through a glade of cedars, to the white village. the glade was gloomy, but warm, for the shade of cedars somehow seems to hold heat. a carpet of needles hushed siner's footfalls and spread a sabbatical silence through the grove. the upward path was not smooth, but was broken with outcrops of the same reddish limestone that marks the whole stretch of the tennessee river. here and there in the grove were circles eight or ten feet in diameter, brushed perfectly clean of all needles and pebbles and twigs. these places were crap-shooters' circles, where black and white men squatted to shoot dice. under the big stones on the hillside, peter knew, was cached illicit whisky, and at night the boot-leggers carried on a brisk trade among the gamblers. more than that, the glade on the big hill was used for still more demoralizing ends. it became a squalid grove of ashtoreth; but now, in the autumn evening, all the petty obscenities of white and black sloughed away amid the religious implications of the dark-green aisles. the sight of a white boy sitting on an outcrop of limestone with a strap of school-books dropped at his feet rather surprised peter. the negro looked at the hobbledehoy for several seconds before he recognized in the lanky youth a little arkwright boy whom he had known and played with in his pre-college days. now there was such an exaggerated wistfulness in young arkwright's attitude that peter was amused. "hello, sam," he called. "what you doing out here?" the arkwright boy turned with a start. "aw, is that you, siner?" before the negro could reply, he added: "was you on the harvard football team, siner? guess the white fellers have a pretty gay time in harvard, don't they, siner? geemenettie! but i git tired o' this dern town! d' reckon i could make the football team? looks like i could if a nigger like you could, siner." none of this juvenile outbreak of questions required answers. peter stood looking at the hobbledehoy without smiling. "aren't you going to school?" he asked. arkwright shrugged. "aw, hell!" he said self-consciously. "we got marched down to the protracted meetin' while ago--whole school did. my seat happened to be close to a window. when they all stood up to sing, i crawled out and skipped. don't mention that, siner." "i won't." "when a fellow goes to college he don't git marched to preachin', does he, siner?" "i never did." "we-e-ll," mused young sam, doubtfully, "you're a nigger." "i never saw any white men marched in, either." "oh, hell! i wish i was in college." "what are you sitting out here thinking about?" inquired peter of the ingenuous youngster. "oh--football and--women and god and--how to stack cards. you think about ever'thing, in the woods. damn it! i got to git out o' this little jay town. d' reckon i could git in the navy, siner?" "don't see why you couldn't, sam. have you seen tump pack anywhere?" "yeah; on hobbett's corner. say, is cissie dildine at home?" "i believe she is." "she cooks for us," explained young arkwright, "and mammy wants her to come and git supper, too." the phrase "get supper, too," referred to the custom in the white homes of hooker's bend of having only two meals cooked a day, breakfast and the twelve-o'clock dinner, with a hot supper optional with the mistress. peter nodded, and passed on up the path, leaving young arkwright seated on the ledge of rock, a prey to all the boiling, erratic impulses of adolescence. the negro sensed some of the innumerable difficulties of this white boy's life, and once, as he walked on over the silent needles, he felt an impulse to turn back and talk to young sam arkwright, to sit down and try to explain to the youth what he could of this hazardous adventure called life. but then, he reflected, very likely the boy would be offended at a serious talk from a negro. also, he thought that young arkwright, being white, was really not within the sphere of his ministry. he, peter siner, was a worker in the black world of the south. he was part of the black world which the white south was so meticulous to hide away, to keep out of sight and out of thought. a certain vague sense of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of peter's mind. it was so subtle that peter himself would have been the first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives were altruistic. once he looked back through the cedars. he could still see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring at the mat of needles. as peter turned the brow of the big hill, he saw at its eastern foot the village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire. its side was perforated by four tall arched windows. each was a memorial window of stained glass, which gave the building a black look from the outside. as peter walked down the hill toward the church he heard the and somewhat nasal singing of uncultivated voices mingled with the snoring of a reed organ. when he reached main street, peter found the whole business portion virtually deserted. all the stores were closed, and in every show-window stood a printed notice that no business would be transacted between the hours of two and three o'clock in the afternoon during the two weeks of revival then in progress. beside this notice stood another card, giving the minister's text for the current day. on this particular day it read: go ye into all the world come hear rev. e.b. blackwater's great missionary address on christianizing africa eloquent, profound, heart-searching. illustrated with slides. half a dozen negroes lounged in the sunshine on hobbett's corner as peter came up. they were amusing themselves after the fashion of blacks, with mock fights, feints, sudden wrestlings. they would seize one another by the head and grind their knuckles into one another's wool. occasionally, one would leap up and fall into one of those grotesque shuffles called "breakdowns." it all held a certain rawness, an irrepressible juvenility. as peter came up, tump pack detached himself from the group and gave a pantomime of thrusting. he was clearly reproducing the action which had won for him his military medal. then suddenly he fell down in the dust and writhed. he was mimicking with a ghastly realism the death-throes of his four victims. his audience howled with mirth at this dumb show of the bayonet-fight and of killing four men. tump himself got up out of the dust with tears of laughter in his eyes. peter caught the end of his sentence, "sho put it to 'em, black boy. fo' white men--" his audience roared again, swayed around, and pounded one another in an excess of mirth. siner shouted from across the street two or three times before he caught tump's attention. the ex-soldier looked around, sobered abruptly. "whut-chu want, nigger?" his inquiry was not over-cordial. peter nodded him across the street. the heavily built black in khaki hesitated a moment, then started across the street with the dragging feet of a reluctant negro. peter looked at him as he came up. "what's the matter, tump?" he asked playfully. "ain't nothin' matter wid me, nigger." peter made a guess at tump's surliness. "look here, are you puffed up because cissie dildine struck you for a ten?" tump's expression changed. "is she struck me fuh a ten?" "yes; on that school subscription." "is dat whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over thaiuh in yo' house?" "exactly." peter showed the list, with cissie's name on it. "she told me to collect from you." tump brightened up. "so dat wuz whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over at yo' house." he ran a fist down into his khaki, and drew out three or four one-dollar bills and about a pint of small change. it was the usual crap-shooter's offering. the two negroes sat down on the ramshackle porch of an old jeweler's shop, and tump began a complicated tally of ten dollars. by the time he had his dimes, quarters, and nickels in separate stacks, services in the village church were finished, and the congregation came filing up the street. first came the school-children, running and chattering and swinging their books by the straps; then the business men of the hamlet, rather uncomfortable in coats and collars, hurrying back to their stores; finally came the women, surrounding the preacher. tump and peter walked on up to the entrance of the planter's bank and there awaited mr. henry hooker, the cashier. presently a skinny man detached himself from the church crowd and came angling across the dirty street toward the bank. mr. hooker wore somewhat shabby clothes for a banker; in fact, he never could recover from certain personal habits formed during a penurious boyhood. he had a thin hatchet face which just at this moment was shining though from some inward glow. although he was an unhandsome little man, his expression was that of one at peace with man and god and was pleasant to see. he had been so excited by the minister that he was constrained to say something even to two negroes. so as he unlocked the little one-story bank, he told tump and peter that he had been listening to a man who was truly a man of god. he said blackwater could touch the hardest heart, and, sure enough, mr. hooker's rather popped and narrow-set eyes looked as though he had been crying. all this encomium was given in a high, cracked voice as the cashier opened the door and turned the negroes into the bank. tump, who stood with his hat off, listening to all the cashier had to say, said he thought so, too. the shabby interior of the little bank, the shabby little banker, renewed that sense of disillusion that pervaded peter's home-coming. in boston the mulatto had done his slight banking business in a white marble structure with tellers of machine-like briskness and neatness. mr. hooker strolled around into his grill-cage; when he was thoroughly ensconced he began business in his high voice: "you came to see me about that land, peter?" yes, sir." "sorry to tell you, peter, you are not back in time to get the tomwit place." peter came out of his musing over the boston banks with a sense of bewilderment. "how's that? why, i bought that land--" "but you paid nothing for your option, siner." "i had a clear-cut understanding with mr. tomwit--" mr. hooker smiled a smile that brought out sharp wrinkles around the thin nose on his thin face. "you should have paid him an earnest, siner, if you wanted to bind your trade. you colored folks are always stumbling over the law." peter stared through the grating, not knowing what to do. "i'll go see mr. tomwit," he said, and started uncertainly for the door. the cashier's falsetto stopped him: "no use, peter. mr. tomwit surprised me, too, but no use talking about it. i didn't like to see such an important thing as the education of our colored people held up, myself. i've been thinking about it." "especially when i had made a fair square trade," put in peter, warmly. "exactly," squeaked the cashier. "and rather than let your project be delayed, i'm going to offer you the old dillihay place at exactly the same price, peter--eight hundred." "the dillihay place?" "yes; that's west of town; it's bigger by twenty acres than old man tomwit's place." peter considered the proposition. "i'll have to carry this before the sons and daughters of benevolence, mr. hooker." the cashier repeated the smile that bracketed his thin nose in wrinkles. "that's with you, but you know what you say goes with the niggers here in town, and, besides, i won't promise how long i'll hold the dillihay place. real estate is brisk around here now. i didn't want to delay a good work on account of not having a location." mr. hooker turned away to a big ledger on a breast-high desk, and apparently was about to settle himself to the endless routine of bank work. peter knew the dillihay place well. it lacked the timber of the other tract; still, it was fairly desirable. he hesitated before the tarnished grill. "what do you think about it, tump?" "you won't make a mistake in buying," answered the high voice of mr. hooker at his ledger. "i don' think you'll make no mistake in buyin', peter," repeated tump's bass. peter turned back a little uncertainly, and asked how long it would take to fix the new deed. he had a notion of making a flying canvass of the officers of the sons and daughters in the interim. he was surprised to find that mr. hooker already had the deed and the notes ready to sign, in anticipation of peter's desires. here the banker brought out the set of papers. "i'll take it," decided peter; "and if the lodge doesn't want it, i'll keep the place myself." "i like to deal with a man of decision," piped the cashier, a wrinkled smile on his sharp face. peter pushed in his bag of collections, then mr. hooker signed the deed, and peter signed the land notes. they exchanged the instruments. peter received the crisp deed, bound in blue manuscript cover. it rattled unctuously. to peter it was his first step toward a second tuskegee. the two negroes walked out of the planter's bank filled with a sense of well-doing. tump pack was openly proud of having been connected, even in a casual way, with the purchase. as he walked down the steps, he turned to peter. "don' reckon nobody could git a deed off on you wid stoppers in it, does you?" "we don't know any such word as 'stop,' tump," declared peter, gaily. for peter was gay. the whole incident at the bank was beginning to please him. the meeting of a sudden difficulty, his quick decision--it held the quality of leadership. napoleon had it. the two colored men stepped briskly through the afternoon sunshine along the mean village street. here and there in front of their doorways sat the merchants yawning and talking, or watching pigs root in the piles of waste. in peter's heart came a wonderful thought. he would make his industrial institution such a model of neatness that the whole village of hooker's bend would catch the spirit. the white people should see that something clean and uplifting could come out of niggertown. the two races ought to live for a mutual benefit. it was a fine, generous thought. for some reason, just then, there flickered through peter's mind a picture of the arkwright boy sitting hunched over in the cedar glade, staring at the needles. all this musing was brushed away by the sight of old mr. tomwit crossing the street from the east side to the livery-stable on the west. that human desire of wanting the person who has wronged you to know that you know your injury moved peter to hurry his steps and to speak to the old gentleman. mr. tomwit had been a confederate cavalryman in the civil war, and there was still a faint breeze and horsiness about him. he was a hammered-down old gentleman, with hair thin but still jet-black, a seamed, sunburned face, and a flattened nose. his voice was always a friendly roar. now, when he saw peter turning across the street to meet him, he halted and called out at once: "now peter, i know what's the matter with you. i didn't do you right." peter went closer, not caring to take the whole village into his confidence. "how came you to turn down my proposition, mr. tomwit," he asked, "after we had agreed and drawn up the papers?" "we-e-ell, i had to do it, peter," explained the old man, loudly. "why, mr. tomwit?" "a white neighbor wanted me to, peter," boomed the cavalryman. "who, mr. tomwit?" "henry hooker talked me into it, peter. it was a mean trick, peter. i done you wrong." he stood nodding his head and rubbing his flattened nose in an impersonal manner. "yes, i done you wrong, peter," he acknowledged loudly, and looked frankly into peter's eyes. the negro was immensely surprised that henry hooker had done such a thing. a thought came that perhaps some other henry hooker had moved into town in his absence. "you don't mean the cashier of the bank?" old mr. tomwit drew out a plug of black mule tobacco, set some gapped, discolored teeth into corner, nodded at peter silently, at the same time utilizing the nod to tear off a large quid. he rolled tin about with his tongue and after a few moments adjusted it so that he could speak. "yeah," he proceeded in a muffled tone, "they ain't but one henry hooker; he is the one and only henry. he said if i sold you my land, you'd put up a nigger school and bring in so many blackbirds you'd run me clean off my farm. he said it'd ruin the whole town, a nigger school would." peter was astonished. "why, he didn't talk that way to me!" "natchelly, natchelly," agreed the old cavalryman, dryly.--"henry has a different way to talk to ever' man, peter." "in fact," proceeded peter, "mr. hooker sold me the old dillihay place in lieu of the deal i missed with you." old mr. tomwit moved his quid in surprise. "the hell he did!" "that at least shows he doesn't think a negro school would ruin the value of his land. he owns farms all around the dillihay place." old mr. tomwit turned his quid over twice and spat thoughtfully. "that your deed in your pocket?" with the air of a man certain of being obeyed he held out his hand for the blue manuscript cover protruding from the mulatto's pocket. peter handed it over. the old gentleman unfolded the deed, then moved it carefully to and from his eyes until the typewriting was adjusted to his focus. he read it slowly, with a movement of his lips and a drooling of tobacco-juice. finally he finished, remarked, "i be damned!" in a deliberate voice, returned the deed, and proceeded across the street to the livery-stable, which was fronted by an old mulberry-tree, with several chairs under it. in one of these chairs he would sit for the remainder of the day, making an occasional loud remark about the weather or the crops, and watching the horses pass in and out of the stable. siner had vaguely enjoyed old mr. tomwit's discomfiture over the deed, if it was discomfiture that had moved the old gentleman to his sententious profanity. but the negro did not understand henry hooker's action at all. the banker had abused his position of trust as holder of a deed in escrow snapping up the sale himself; then he had sold peter the dillihay place. it was a queer shift. tump pack caught his principal's mood with that chameleon-like mental quality all negroes possess. "dat henry hooker," criticized tump, "allus was a lil ole dried-up snake in de grass." "he abused his position of trust," said peter, gloomily; "i must say, his motives seem very obscure to me." "dat sho am a fine way to put hit," said tump, admiringly. "why do you suppose he bought in the tomwit tract and sold me the dillihay place?" asked for an opinion, tump began twiddling military medal and corrugated the skin on his inch-high brow. "now you puts it to me lak dat, peter," he answered with importance, "i wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat deed he guv you. he mout of." such remarks as that from tump always annoyed peter. tump's intellectual method was to talk sense just long enough to gain his companion's ear, and then produce something absurd and quash the tentative interest. siner turned away from him and said, "piffle." tump was defensive at once. "'t ain't piffle, either! i's talkin' sense, nigger." peter shrugged, and walked a little way in silence, but the soldier's nonsense stuck in his brain and worried him. finally he turned, rather irritably. "stoppers--what do you mean by stoppers?" tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites. "i means nigger- stoppers," he reiterated, amazed in his turn. "negro-stoppers--" peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit the conversation. such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power. "look heah, black man, i knows i _is_ right. heah, lonme look at dat-aiuh, deed. maybe i can find 'em. i knows i suttinly is right." peter walked on, paying no attention to the request until tump caught his arm and drew him up short. "look heah, nigger," said tump, in a different tone, "i faded dad deed fuh ten iron men, an' i reckon i got a once-over comin' fuh my money." the soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack. to fight tump, to fight any negro at all, would be peter's undoing; it would forfeit the moral leadership he hoped to gain. moreover, he had no valid grounds for a disagreement with tump. he passed over the deed, and the two negroes moved on their way to niggertown. tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the unaccustomed labor of reading. his thick lips moved at the individual letters, and constructed them bunglingly into syllables and words. he was trying to uncover the verbal camouflage by which the astute white brushed away all rights of all black men whatsoever. to peter there grew up something sadly comical in tump's efforts. the big negro might well typify all the colored folk of the south, struggling in a web of law and custom they did not understand, misplacing their suspicions, befogged and fearful. a certain penitence for having been irritated at tump softened peter. "that's all right, tump; there's nothing to find." at that moment the soldier began to bob his head. "eh! eh! eh! w-wait a minute!" he stammered. "whut dis? b'lieve i done foun' it! i sho is! heah she am! heah's dis nigger-stopper, jes lak i tol' you!" tump marked a sentence in the guaranty of the deed with a rusty forefinger and looked up at peter in mixed triumph and accusation. peter leaned over the deed, amused. "let's see your mare's nest." "well, she 'fo' god is thaiuh, an' you sho let loose a hundud dollars uv our 'ciety's money, an' got nothin' fuh hit but a piece o' paper wid a nigger-stopper on hit!" tump's voice was so charged with contempt that peter looked with a certain uneasiness at his find. he read this sentence switched into the guaranty of the indenture: "be it further understood and agreed that no negro, black man, afro- american, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, or any person whatsoever of colored blood or lineage, shall enter upon, seize, hold, occupy, reside upon, till, cultivate, own or possess any part or parcel of said property, or garner, cut, or harvest therefrom, any of the usufruct, timber, or emblements thereof, but shall by these presents be estopped from so doing forever." tump pack drew a shaken, unhappy breath. "now, i reckon you see whut a nigger-stopper is." peter stood in the sunshine, looking at the estoppel clause, his lips agape. twice he read it over. it held something of the quality of those comprehensive curses that occur in the old testament. he moistened his lips and looked at tump. "why that can't be legal." his voice sounded empty and shallow. "legal! 'fo' gawd, nigger, whauh you been to school all dese yeahs, never to heah uv a nigger-stopper befo'!" "but--but how can a stroke of the pen, a mere gesture, estop a whole class of american citizens forever?" cried peter, with a rising voice. "turn it around. suppose they had put in a line that no white man should own that land. it--it's empty! i tell you, it's mere words!" tump cut into his diatribe: "no use talkin' lak dat. our 'ciety thought you wuz a aidjucated nigger. we didn't think no white man could put nothin' over on you." "education!" snapped siner. "education isn't supposed to keep you away from shysters!" "keep you away fum 'em!" cried tump, in a scandalized voice. "'fo' gawd, nigger, you don' know nothin'! o' co'se a aidjucation ain't to keep you away fum shysters; hit's to mek you one 'uv 'em!" peter stood breathing irregularly, looking at his deed. a determination not to be cheated grew up and hardened in his nerves. with unsteady hands he refolded his deed and put it into his pocket, then he turned about and started back up the village street toward the bank. tump stared after him a moment and presently called out: "heah, nigger, whut you gwine do?" a moment later he repeated to his friend's back: "look heah, nigger, i 'vise you ag'inst anything you's gwine do, less'n you's ready to pass in you' checks!" as peter strode on he lifted his voice still higher: "peter! hey, peter, i sho' 'vise you 'g'inst anything you's 'gwine do!" a pulse throbbed in siner's temples. the wrath of the cozened heated his body. his clothes felt hot. as he strode up the trash-piled street, the white merchants lolling in their doors began smiling. presently a laugh broke out at one end of the street and was caught up here and there. it was the undying minstrel jest, the comedy of a black face. dawson bobbs leaned against the wide brick entrance of the livery-stable, his red face balled into shining convexities by a quizzical smile. "hey, peter," he drawled, winking at old mr. tomwit, "been investin' in real estate?" and broke into homeric laughter. as peter passed on, the constable dropped casually in behind the brown man and followed him up to the bank. to peter siner the walk up to the bank was an emotional confusion. he has a dim consciousness that voices said things to him along the way and that there was laughter. all this was drowned by desperate thoughts and futile plans to regain his lost money, flashing through his head. the cashier would exchange the money for the deed; he would enter suit and carry it to the supreme court; he would show the money had not been his, he had had no right to buy; he would beg the cashier. his head seemed to spin around and around. he climbed the steps into the planter's bank and opened the screen-door. the cashier glanced up briefly, but continued busily at his ledger. peter walked shakenly to the barred window in the grill. "mr. hooker." "very busy now, peter," came the high voice. "i want to know about this deed." the banker was nimbly setting down long rows of figures. "no time to explain deeds, peter." "but--but there is a clause in this deed, mr. hooter, estopping colored persons from occupying the dillihay place." "precisely. what about it?" mr. hooker snapped out his inquiry and looked up suddenly, catching peter full in the face with his narrow-set eyes. it was the equivalent of a blow. "according to this, i--i can't establish a school on it." "you cannot." "then what can i do with it?" cried peter. "sell it. you have what lawyers call a cloud on the title. sell it. i'll give you ten dollars for your right in it, just to clear up my title." a queer trembling seized peter. the little banker turned to a fantastic caricature of a man. his hatchet face, close-set eyes, harsh, straight hair, and squeaky voice made him seem like some prickly, dried-up gnome a man sees in a fever. at that moment the little wicket-door of the window opened under the pressure of peter's shoulder. inside on the desk, lay neat piles of bills of all denominations, ready to be placed in the vault. in a nervous tremor peter dropped in his blue-covered deed and picked up a hundred-dollar bill. "i--i won't trade," he jibbered. "it--it wasn't my money. here's your deed!" peter was moving away. he felt a terrific impulse to run, but he walked. the banker straightened abruptly. "stop there, peter!" he screeched. at that moment dawson bobbs lounged in at the door, with his perpetual grin balling up his broad red face. he had a toothpick, in his mouth. "'s matter?" he asked casually. "peter there," said the banker, with a pale, sharp face, "doesn't want to stick to his trade. he is just walking off with one of my hundred- dollar bills." "sick o' yo' deal, peter?" inquired bobbs, smiling and shifting the toothpick. he bit down on it. "well, whut-chu want done, henry?" "oh," hesitated the cashier in a quandary, "nothing, i suppose. siner was excited; you know how niggers are. we can't afford to send every nigger to the pen that breaks the law." he stood studying peter out of his close-set eyes. "here's your deed, peter." he shoved it back under the grill. "and lemme give you a little friendly advice. i'd just run an ordinary nigger school if i was you. this higher education don't seem to make a nigger much smarter when he comes back than when he starts out." a faint smile bracketed the thin nose. dawson bobbs roared with sudden appreciation, took the bill from peter's fingers, and pushed it back under the grill. the cashier picked up the money, casually. he considered a moment, then reached for a long envelop. as he did so, the incident with peter evidently passed from his mind, for his hatchet face lighted up as with some inward illumination. "bobbs," he said warmly, "that was a great sermon brother blackwater preached. it made me want to help according as the lord has blessed me. couldn't you spare five dollars, bobbs, to go along with this?" the constable tried to laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill and handed it in. mr. hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed it, and handed it to the constable. "jest drop that in the post-office as you go down the street, bobbs," he directed in his high voice. peter caught a glimpse of the type-written address. it was rev. lemuel hardiman, c/o united missions, katuako post, bahr el ghazal, sudan, east africa. chapter iii the white population of hooker's bend was much amused and gratified at the outcome of the hooker-siner land deal. every one agreed that the cashier's chicanery was a droll and highly original turn to give to a negro exclusion clause drawn into a deed. then, too, it involved several legal points highly congenial to the hooker's bend intellect could the sons and daughters of benevolence recover their hundred dollars? could henry hooker force them to pay the remaining seven hundred? could not siner establish his school on the dillihay place regardless of the clause, since the cashier would be estopped from obtaining an injunction by his own instrument? as a matter of fact, the sons and daughters of benevolence sent a committee to wait on mr. hooker to see what action he meant to take on the notes that paid for his spurious deed. this brought another harvest of rumors. street gossip reported that henry had compromised for this, that, and the other amount, that he would not compromise, that he had persuaded the fool niggers into signing still other instruments. peter never knew the truth. he was not on the committee. but high above the legal phase of interest lay the warming fact that peter siner, a negro graduate of harvard, on his first tilt in hooker's bend affairs had ridden to a fall. this pleased even the village women, whose minds could not follow the subtle trickeries of legal disputation. the whole affair simply proved what the white village had known all along: you can't educate a nigger. hooker's bend warmed with pleasure that half of its population was ineducable. white sentiment in hooker's bend reacted strongly on niggertown. peter siner's prestige was no more. the cause of higher education for negroes took a mighty slump. junius gholston, a negro boy who had intended to go to nashville to attend fisk university, reconsidered the matter, packed away his good clothes, put on overalls, and shipped down the river as a roustabout instead. in the siner cabin old caroline siner berated her boy for his stupidity in ever trading with that low-down, twisting snake in the grass, henry hooker. she alternated this with floods of tears. caroline had no sympathy for her offspring. she said she had thrown away years of self- sacrifice, years of washing, a thousand little comforts her money would have bought, all for nothing, for less than nothing, to ship a fool nigger up north and to ship him back. of all niggertown, caroline was the most unforgiving because peter had wounded her in her pride. every other negro in the village felt that genial satisfaction in a great man's downfall that is balm to small souls. but the old mother knew not this consolation. peter was her proxy. it was she who had fallen. the only person in niggertown who continued amiable to peter siner was cissie dildine. the octoroon, perhaps, had other criteria by which to judge a man than his success or mishaps dealing with a pettifogger. two or three days after the catastrophe, cissie made an excursion to the siner cabin with a plate of cookies. cissie was careful to place her visit on exactly a normal footing. she brought her little cakes in the role of one who saw no evil, spoke no evil, and heard no evil. but somehow cissie's visit increased the old woman's wrath. she remained obstinately in the kitchen, and made remarks not only audible, but arresting, through the thin partition that separated it from the poor living-room. cissie was hardly inside when a voice stated that it hated to see a gal running after a man, trying to bait him with a lot of fum-diddles. cissie gave peter a single wide-eyed glance, and then attempted to ignore the bodiless comment. "here are some cookies, mr. siner," began the girl, rather nervously. "i thought you and ahnt carolin'--" "yeah, i 'magine dey's fuh me!" jeered the spectral voice. "might like them," concluded the girl, with a little gasp. "i suttinly don' want no light-fingered hussy ma'yin' my son," proceeded the voice, "an' de whole dildine fambly 'll bear watchin'." [illustration: in the siner cabin old caroline siner berated her boy.] "won't you have a seat?" asked peter, exquisitely uncomfortable. cissie handed him her plate in confusion. "why, no, mr. siner," she hastened on, in her careful grammar, "i just-- ran over to--" "to fling herse'f in a nigger's face 'cause he's been north and got made a fool uv," boomed the hidden censor. "i must go now," gasped cissie. peter made a harried gesture. "wait--wait till i get my hat." he put the plate down with a swift glance around for his hat. he found it, and strode to the door, following the girl. the two hurried out into the street, followed by indistinct strictures from the kitchen. cissie breathed fast, with open lips. they moved rapidly along the semicircular street almost with a sense of flight. the heat of the early autumn sun stung them through their clothes. for some distance they walked in a nervous silence, then cissie said: "your mother certainly hates me, peter." "no," said peter, trying to soften the situation; "it's me; she's terribly hurt about--" he nodded to-ward the white section--"that business." cissie opened her clear brown eyes. "your own mother turned against you!" "oh, she has a right to be," began peter, defensively. "i ought to have read that deed. it's amazing i didn't, but i--i really wasn't expecting a trick, mr. hooker seemed so--so sympathetic--" he came to a lame halt, staring at the dust through which they picked their way. "of course you weren't expecting tricks!" cried cissie, warmly. "the whole thing shows you're a gentleman used to dealing with gentlemen. but of course these hooker's bend negroes will never see that!" peter, surprised and grateful, looked at cissie. her construction of the swindle was more flattering than any apology he had been able to frame for himself. "still, cissie, i ought to have used the greatest care--" "i'm not talking about what you 'ought,'" stated the octoroon, crisply; "i'm talking about what you are. when it comes to 'ought,' we colored people must get what we can, any way we can. we fight from the bottom." the speech held a viperish quality which for a moment caught the brown man's attention; then he said: "one thing is sure, i've lost my prestige, whatever it was worth." the girl nodded slowly. "with the others you have, i suppose." peter glanced at cissie. the temptation was strong to give the conversation a personal turn, but he continued on the general topic: "well, perhaps it's just as well. my prestige was a bit too flamboyant, cissie. all i had to do was to mention a plan. the sons and daughters didn't even discuss it. they put it right through. that wasn't healthy. our whole system of society, all democracies are based on discussion. our old witenagemot--" "but it wasn't _our_ old witenagemot," said the girl. "well--no," admitted the mulatto, "that's true." they moved along for some distance in silence, when the girl asked: "what are you going to do now, peter?" "teach, and keep working for that training-school," stated peter, almost belligerently. "you didn't expect a little thing like a hundred dollars to stop me, did you?" "no-o-o," conceded cissie, with some reserve of judgment in her tone. presently she added, "you could do a lot better up north, peter." "for whom?" "why, yourself," said the girl, a little surprised. siner nodded. "i thought all that out before i came back here, cissie. a friend of mine named farquhar offered me a place with him up in chicago,--a string of garages. you'd like farquhar, cissie. he's a materialist with an absolutely inexorable brain. he mechanizes the universe. i told him i couldn't take his offer. 'it's like this,' i argued: 'if every negro with a little ability leaves the south, our people down there will never progress.' it's really that way, cissie, it takes a certain mental atmosphere to develop a people as a whole. a few individuals here and there may have the strength to spring up by themselves, but the run of the people--no. i believe one of the greatest curses of the colored race in the south is the continual draining of its best individuals north. farquhar argued--" just then peter saw that cissie was not attending his discourse. she was walking at his side in a respectful silence. he stopped talking, and presently she smiled and said: "you haven't noticed my new brooch, peter." she lifted her hand to her bosom, and twisted the face of the trinket toward him. "you oughtn't to have made me show it to you after you recommended it yourself." she made a little _moue_ of disappointment. it was a pretty bit of old gold that complimented the creamy skin. peter began admiring it at once, and, negro fashion, rather overstepped the limits white beaux set to their praise, as he leaned close to her. at the moment the two were passing one of the oddest houses in niggertown. it was a two-story cabin built in the shape of a steamboat. a little cupola represented a pilot-house, and two iron chimneys served for smoke-stacks. this queer building had been built by a negro stevedore because of a deep admiration for the steamboats on which he had made his living. instead of steps at the front door, this boat-like house had a stage- plank. as peter strolled down the street with cissie, admiring her brooch, and suffused with a sense of her nearness, he happened to glance up, and saw tump pack walk down the stage-plank, come out, and wait for them at the gate. there was something grim in the ex-soldier's face and in the set of his gross lips as the two came up, but the aura of the girl prevented peter from paying much attention to it. as the two reached tump, peter had just lifted his hand to his hat when tump made a quick step out at the gate, in front of them, and swung a furious blow at peter's head. cissie screamed. siner staggered back with flames dancing before his eyes. the soldier lunged after his toppling man with gorilla-like blows. hot pains shot through peter's body. his head roared like a gong. the sunlight danced about him in flashes. the air was full of black fists smashing him, and not five feet away, the bullet head of tump pack bobbed this way and that in the rapid shifts of his attack. a stab of pain cut off peter's breath. he stood with his diaphragm muscles tense and paralyzed, making convulsive efforts to breathe. at that moment he glimpsed the convexity of tump's stomach. he drop-kicked at it with foot-ball desperation. came a loud explosive groan. tump seemed to rise a foot or two in air, turned over, and thudded down on his shoulders in the dust. the soldier made no attempt to rise, but curled up, twisting in agony. peter stood in the dust-cloud, wabbly, with roaring head. his open mouth was full of dust. then he became aware that negroes were running in from every direction, shouting. their voices whooped out what had happened, who it was, who had licked. tump pack's agonized spasms brought howls of mirth from the black fellows. negro women were in the crowd, grinning, a little frightened, but curious. some were in mother-hubbards; one had her hair half combed, one side in a kinky mattress, the other lying flat and greased down to her scalp. when peter gradually became able to breathe and could think at all, there was something terrible to him in tump's silent attack and in this extravagant black mirth over mere suffering. cissie was gone,--had fled, no doubt, at the beginning of the fight. the prostrate man's tortured abdomen finally allowed him to twist around toward peter. his eyes were popped, and seemed all yellows and streaked with swollen veins. "i'll git you fuh dis," he wheezed, spitting dust "you did n' fight fair, you--" the black chorus rolled their heads and pounded one another in a gale of merriment. peter siner turned away toward his home filled with sick thought. he had never realized so clearly the open sore of niggertown life and its great need of healing, yet this very episode would further bar him, peter, from any constructive work. he foresaw, too plainly, how the white town and niggertown would react to this fight. there would be no discrimination in the scandal. he, peter siner, would be grouped with the boot-leggers and crap-shooters and women-chasers who filled niggertown with their brawls. as a matter of simple fact, he had been fighting with another negro over a woman. that he was subjected to an attack without warning or cause would never become a factor in the analysis. he knew that very well. two of peter's teeth were loose; his left jaw was swelling; his head throbbed. with that queer perversity of human nerves, he kept biting his sore teeth together as he walked along. when he reached home, his mother met him at the door. thanks to the swiftness with which gossip spreads among black folk, she had already heard of the fight, and incidentally had formed her judgment of the matter. now she looked in exasperation at her son's swelling face. "i 'cla' 'fo' gawd!--ain't been home a week befo' he's fightin' over a nigger wench lak a roustabout!" peter's head throbbed so he could hardly make out the details of caroline's face. "but, mother--" he began defensively, "i--" "me sweatin' over de wash-pot," the negress went on, "so's you could go up north an' learn a lil sense; heah you comes back chasin' a dutty slut!" "but, mother," he begged thickly, "i was simply walking home with miss dildine." "miss dildine! miss dildine!" exploded the ponderous woman, with an erasing gesture. "ef you means dat stuck-up fly-by-night cissie dildine, say so, and don' stan' thaiuh mouthin', 'miss dildine, miss dildine'!" "mother," asked peter, thickly, through his swelling mouth, "do you want to know what did happen?" "i knows. i tol' you to keep away fum dat hussy. she's a fool 'bout her bright color an' straight hair. needn't be givin' herse'f no airs!" peter stood in the doorway, steadying himself by the jamb. the world still swayed from the blows he had received on the head. "what girl would you be willing for me to go with?" he asked in faint satire. "heah in niggertown?" peter nodded. the movement increased his headache. "none a-tall. no niggertown wench a-tall. when you mus' ma'y, i's 'speckin' you to go off summuhs an' pick yo' gal, lak you went off to pick yo' aidjucation." she swung out a thick arm, and looked at peter out of the corner of her eyes, her head tilted to one side, as negresses do when they become dramatically serious. peter left his mother to her stare and went to his own room. this constant implication among niggertown inhabitants that niggertown and all it held was worthless, mean, unhuman depressed peter. the mulatto knew the real trouble with niggertown was it had adopted the white village's estimate of it. the sentiment of the white village was overpowering among the imitative negroes. the black folk looked into the eyes of the whites and saw themselves reflected as chaff and skum and slime, and no human being ever suggested that they were aught else. peter's room was a rough shed papered with old newspapers. all sorts of yellow scare-heads streaked his walls. hanging up was a crayon enlargement of his mother, her broad face as unwrinkled as an egg and drawn almost white, for the picture agents have discovered the only way to please their black patrons is to make their enlargements as nearly white as possible. in one corner, on a home-made book-rack, stood peter's library,--a greek book or two, an old calculus, a sociology, a psychology, a philosophy, and a score of other volumes he had accumulated in his four college years. as peter, his head aching, looked at these, he realized how immeasurably removed he was from the cool abstraction of the study. the brown man sat down in an ancient rocking-chair by the window, leaned back, and closed his eyes. his blood still whispered in his ears from his fight. notwithstanding his justification, he gradually became filled with self-loathing. to fight--to hammer and kick in niggertown's dust-- over a girl! it was an indignity. peter shifted his position in his chair, and his thoughts took another trail. tump's attack had been sudden and silent, much like a bulldog's. the possibility of a simple friendship between a woman and a man never entered tump's head; it never entered any niggertown head. here all attraction was reduced to the simplest terms of sex. niggertown held no delicate intimacies or reserves. two youths could not go with the same girl. black women had no very great powers of choice over their suitors. the strength of a man's arm isolated his sweetheart. that did not seem right, resting the power of successful mating entirely upon brawn. as peter sat thinking it over, it came to him that the progress of any race depended, finally, upon the woman having complete power of choosing her mate. it is woman alone who consistently places the love accent upon other matters than mere flesh and muscle. only woman has much sex selectiveness, or is inclined to select individuals with qualities of mind and spirit. for millions of years these instinctive spiritualizers of human breeding stock have been hampered in their choice of mates by the unrestrained right of the fighting male. indeed, the great constructive work of chivalry in the middle ages was to lay, unconsciously, the corner-stone of modern civilization by resigning to the woman the power of choosing from a group of males. siner stirred in his chair, surprised at whither his reverie had lead him. he wondered how he had stumbled upon these thoughts. had he read them in a book? in point of fact, a beating administered by tump pack had brought the brown man the first original idea he had entertained in his life. by this time, peter's jaw had reached its maximum swelling and was eased somewhat. he looked out of his little window, wondering whether cissie dildine would choose him--or tump pack. peter was surprised to find blue dusk peering through his panes. all the scare-heads on his walls had lapsed into a common obscurity. as he rose slowly, so as not to start his head hurting again, he heard three rapid pistol shots in the cedar glade between niggertown and the white village. he knew this to be the time-honored signal of boot-leggers announcing that illicit whisky was for sale in the blackness of the glade. chapter iv next day the siner-pack fight was the focus of news interest in hooker's bend. white mistresses extracted the story from their black maids, and were amused by it or deprecated cissie dildine's morals as the mood moved them. along main street in front of the village stores, the merchants and hangers-on discussed the affair. it was diverting that a graduate of harvard should come back to hooker's bend and immediately drop into such a fracas. old captain renfrew, one-time attorney at law and representative of his county in the state legislature, sat under the mulberry in front of the livery-stable and plunged into a long monologue, with old mr. tomwit as listener, on the uneducability of the black race. "take a horse, sir," expounded the captain; "a horse can be trained to add and put its name together out of an alphabet, but no horse could ever write a promissory note and figure the interest on it, sir. take a dog. i've known dogs, sir, that could bring your mail from the post- office, but i never saw a dog stop on the way home, sir, to read a post- card." here the old ex-attorney spat and renewed the tobacco in a black brier, then proceeded to draw the parrallel between dogs and horses and peter siner newly returned from harvard. "god'lmighty has set his limit on dogs, horses, and niggers, mr. tomwit. thus far and no farther. take a nigger baby at birth; a nigger baby has no fontanelles. it has no window toward heaven. its skull is sealed up in darkness. the nigger brain can never expand and absorb the universe, sir. it can never rise on the wings of genius and weigh the stars, nor compute the swing of the pleiades. thus far and no farther! it's congenital. "now, take this peter siner and his disgraceful fight over a nigger wench. would you expect an educated stud horse to pay no attention to a mare, sir? you can educate a stud till--" "but hold on!" interrupted the old cavalryman. "i've known as gentlemanly stallions as--as anybody!" the old attorney cleared his throat, momentarily taken aback at this failure of his metaphor. however he rallied with legal suppleness: "you are talking about thoroughbreds, sir." "i am, sir." "good god, tomwit! you don't imagine i'm comparing a nigger to a thoroughbred, sir!" on the street corners, or piled around on cotton-bales down on the wharf, the negro men of the village discussed the fight. it was for the most part a purely technical discussion of blows and counters and kicks, and of the strange fact that a college education failed to enable siner utterly to annihilate his adversary. jim pink staggs, a dapper gentleman of ebony blackness, of pin-stripe flannels and blue serge coat-- altogether a gentleman of many parts--sat on one of the bales and indolently watched an old black crone fishing from a ledge of rocks just a little way below the wharf-boat. around jim pink lounged and sprawled black men and youths, stretching on the cotton-bales like cats in the sunshine. jim pink was discussing peter's education. "i 'fo' gawd kain't see no use goin' off lak dat an' den comin' back an' lettin' a white man cheat you out'n yo' hide an' taller, an' lettin' a black man beat you up tull you has to 'kick him in the spivit. ef a aidjucation does you any good a-tall, you'd be boun' to beat de white man at one en' uv de line, or de black man at de udder. ef peter ain't to be foun' at eider en', wha is he?" "um-m-m!" "eh-h-h!" "you sho spoke a moufful, jim pink!" came an assenting chorus from the bales. eventually such gossip died away and took another flurry when a report went abroad that tump pack was carrying a pistol and meant to shoot peter on sight. then this in turn ceased to be news and of human interest. it clung to peter's mind longer than to any other person's in hooker's bend, and it presented to the brown man a certain problem in casuistry. should he accede to tump pack's possession of cissie dildine and give up seeing the girl? such a course cut across all his fine-spun theory about women having free choice of their mates. however, the harvard man could not advocate a socialization of courtship when he himself would be the first beneficiary. the prophet whose finger points selfward is damned. furthermore, all niggertown would side with tump pack in such a controversy. it was no uncommon thing for the very negro women to fight over their beaux and husbands. as for any social theory changing this régime, in the first place the negroes couldn't understand the theory; in the second, it would have no effect if they could. actions never grow out of theories; theories grow out of actions. a theory is a looking- glass that reflects the past and makes it look like the future, but the glass really hides the future, and when humanity comes to a turn in its course, there is always a smash-up, and a blind groping for the lost path. now, in regard to cissie dildine, peter was not precisely afraid of tump pack, but he could not clear his mind of the fact that tump had been presented with a medal by the congress of the united states for killing four men. good sense and a care for his reputation and his skin told peter to abandon his theory of free courtship for the time being. this meant a renunciation of cissie dildine; but he told himself he renounced very little. he had no reason to think that cissie cared a picayune about him. peter's work kept him indoors for a number of days following the encounter. he was reviewing some primary school work in order to pass a teacher's examination that would be held in jonesboro, the county seat, in about three weeks. to the uninitiated it may seem strange to behold a harvard graduate stuck down day after day poring over a pile of dog-eared school-books-- third arithmetics, primary grammars, beginners' histories of tennessee, of the united states, of england; physiology, hygiene. it may seem queer. but when it comes to standing a wayne county teacher's examination, the specific answers to the specific questions on a dozen old examination slips are worth all the degrees harvard ever did confer. so, in his newspapered study, peter siner looked up long lists of questions, and attempted to memorize the answers. but the series of missteps he had made since returning to hooker's bend besieged his brain and drew his thoughts from his catechism. it seemed strange that in so short a time he should have wandered so far from the course he had set for himself. his career in niggertown formed a record of slight mistakes, but they were not to be undone, and their combined force had swung him a long way from the course he had plotted for himself. there was no way to explain. hooker's bend would judge him by the sheer surface of his works. what he had meant to do, his dreams and altruisms, they would never surmise. that was the irony of the thing. then he thought of cissie dildine who did understand him. this thought might have been cissie's cue to enter the stage of peter's mind. her oval, creamy face floated between peter's eyes and the dog-eared primer. he thought of cissie wistfully, and of her lonely fight for good english, good manners, and good taste. there was a pathos about cissie. peter got up from his chair and looked out at his high window into the early afternoon. he had been poring over primers for three days, stuffing the most heterogeneous facts. his head felt thick and slightly feverish. through his window he saw the side of another negro cabin, but by looking at an angle eastward he could see a field yellow with corn, a valley, and, beyond, a hill wooded and glowing with the pageantry of autumn. he thought of cissie dildine again, of walking with her among the burning maples and the golden elms. he thought of the restfulness such a walk with cissie would bring. as he mused, peter's soul made one of those sharp liberating movements that occasionally visit a human being. the danger of tump pack's jealousy, the loss of his prestige, the necessity of learning the specific answers to the examination questions, all dropped away from him as trivial and inconsequent. he turned from the window, put away his books and question-slips, picked up his hat, and moved out briskly through his mother's room toward the door. the old woman in the kitchen must have heard him, for she called to him through the partition, and a moment later her bulky form filled the kitchen entrance. she wiped her hands on her apron and looked at him accusingly. "wha you gwine, son?" "for a walk." the old negress tilted her head aslant and looked fixedly at him. "you's gwine to dat cissie dildine's, peter." peter looked at his mother, surprised and rather disconcerted that she had guessed his intentions from his mere footsteps. the young man changed his plans for his walk, and began a diplomatic denial: "no, i'm going to walk by myself. i'm tired; i'm played out." "tired?" repeated his mother, doubtfully. "you ain't done nothin' but set an' turn th'ugh books an' write on a lil piece o' paper." peter was vaguely amused in his weariness, but thought that he concealed his mirth from his mother. "that gets tiresome after a while." she grunted her skepticism. as peter moved for the door she warned him: "peter, you knows ef tump pack sees you, he's gwine to shoot you sho!" "oh, no he won't; that's tump's talk." "talk! talk! whut's matter wid you, peter? dat nigger done git crowned fuh killin' fo' men!" she stood staring at him with white eyes. then she urged, "now, look heah, peter, come along an' eat yo' supper." "no, i really need a walk. i won't walk through niggertown. i'll walk out in the woods." "i jes made some salmon coquettes fuh you whut'll spile ef you don' eat 'em now." "i didn't know you were making croquettes," said peter, with polite interest. "well, i is. i gotta can o' salmon fum miss mollie brownell she'd opened an' couldn't quite use. i doctered 'em up wid a lil vinegar an' sody, an' dey is 'bout as pink as dey ever wuz." a certain uneasiness and annoyance came over peter at this persistent use of unwholesome foods. "look here, mother, you're not using old canned goods that have been left over?" the old negress stood looking at him in silence, but lost her coaxing expression. "i've told and told you about using any tainted or impure foods that the white people can't eat." "well, whut ef you is?" "if it's too bad for them, it's too bad for you!" caroline made a careless gesture. "good lawd, boy! i don' 'speck to eat whut's good fuh me! all i says is, 'grub, keep me alive. ef you do dat, you done a good day's wuck.'" peter was disgusted and shocked at his mother's flippancy. modern colleges are atheistic, but they do exalt three gods,--food, cleanliness, and exercise. now here was peter's mother blaspheming one of his trinity. "i wish you 'd let me know when you want anything mother. i'll get it fresh for you." his words were filial enough, but his tone carried his irritation. the old negress turned back to the kitchen. "huh, boy! you been fotch up on lef'-overs," she said, and disappeared through the door. peter walked to the gate, let himself out, and started off on his constitutional. his tiff with his mother renewed all his nervousness and sense of failure. his litany of mistakes renewed their dolor in his mind. an autumn wind was blowing, and long plumes of dust whisked up out of the curving street and swept over the ill-kept yards, past the cabins, and toward the sere fields and chromatic woods. the wind beat at the brown man; the dust whispered against his clothes, made him squint his eyes to a crack and tickled his nostrils at each breath. when peter had gone two or three hundred yards, he became aware that somebody was walking immediately behind him. tump pack popped into his mind. he looked over his shoulder and then turned. through the veils of flying dust he made out some one, and a moment later identified not tump pack, but the gangling form of jim pink staggs, clad in a dark-blue sack-coat and white flannel trousers with pin stripes. it was the sort of costume affected by interlocutors of minstrel shows; it had a minstrel trigness about it. as a matter of fact, jim pink was a sort of semi-professional minstrel. ordinarily, he ran a pressing-shop in the niggertown crescent, but occasionally he impressed all the dramatic talent of niggertown and really did take the road with a minstrel company. these barn-storming expeditions reached down into alabama, mississippi, and arkansas. sometimes they proved a great success, and the darkies rode back several hundred dollars ahead. sometimes they tramped back. jim pink hailed peter with a wave of his hand and a grotesque displacement of his mouth to one side of his face, which he had found effective in his minstrel buffoonery. "whut you raisin' so much dus' about?" he called out of the corner of his mouth, while looking at peter out of one half-closed eye. peter shook his head and smiled. "thought it mout be mister hooker deliverin' dat lan' you bought." jim pink flung his long, flexible face into an imitation of convulsed laughter, then next moment dropped it into an intense gravity and declared, "'dus' thou art, to dus' returnest.'" the quotation seemed fruitless and silly enough, but jim pink tucked his head to one side as if listening intently to himself, then repeated sepulchrally, "'dus' thou art, to dus' returnest.' by the way, peter," he broke off cheerily, "you ain't happen to see tump pack, is you?" "no," said peter, unamused. "is he borrowed a gun fum you?" inquired the minstrel, solemnly. "no-o." peter looked questioningly at the clown through half-closed eyes. "huh, now dat's funny." jim pink frowned, and pulled down his loose mouth and seemed to study. he drew out a pearl-handled knife, closed his hand over it, blew on his fist, then opened the other hand, and exhibited the knife lying in its palm, with the blade open. he seemed surprised at the change and began cleaning his finger-nails. jim pink was the magician at his shows. peter waited patiently for jim pink to impart his information, "well, what's the idea?" he asked at last. "don' know. 'pears lak dat knife won't stay in any one han'." he looked at it, curiously. "i mean about tump," said peter, impatiently. "o-o-oh, yeah; you mean 'bout tump. well, i thought tump mus' uv borrowed a gun fum you. he lef' hobbett's corner wid a great big forty- fo', inquirin' wha you is." just then he glanced up, looked penetratingly through the dust-cloud, and added, "why, i b'lieve da' 's tump now." with a certain tightening of the nerves, peter followed his glance, but made out nothing through the fogging dust. when he looked around at jim pink again, the buffoon's face was a caricature of immense mirth. he shook it sober, abruptly, minstrel fashion. "maybe i's mistooken," he said solemnly. "tump did start over heah wid a gun, but mister dawson bobbs done tuk him up fuh ca'yin' concealed squidjulums; so tump's done los' dat freedom uv motion in de pu'suit uv happiness gua'anteed us niggers an' white folks by the constitution uv de newnighted states uv america." here jim pink broke into genuine laughter, which was quite a different thing from his stage grimaces. peter stared at the fool astonished. "has he gone to jail?" "not prezactly." "well--confound it!--exactly what did happen, jim pink?" "he gone to mr. cicero throgmartins'." "what did he go there for?" "couldn't he'p hisse'f." "look here, you tell me what's happened." "mr. bobbs ca'ied tump thaiuh. y' see, mr. throgmartin tried to hire tump to pick cotton. tump didn't haf to, because he'd jes shot fo' natchels in a crap game. so to-day, when tump starts over heah wid his gun, mr. bobbs 'resses tump. mr. throgmartin bails him out, so now tump's gone to pick cotton fuh mr. throgmartin to pay off'n his fine." here jim pink yelped into honest laughter at tump's undoing so that dust got into his nose and mouth and set him sneezing and coughing. "how long's he up for?" asked peter, astonished and immensely relieved at this outcome of tump's expedition against himself. jim pink controlled his coughing long enough to gasp: "th-thutty days, ef he don' run off," and fell to laughing again. peter siner, long before, had adopted the literate man's notion of what is humorous, and tump's mishap was slap-stick to him. nevertheless, he did smile. the incident filled him with extraordinary relief and buoyancy. at the next corner he made some excuse to jim pink, and turned off up an alley. * * * * * peter walked along with his shoulders squared and the dust peppering his back. not till tump was lifted from his mind did he realize what an incubus the soldier had been. peter had been forced into a position where, if he had killed tump, he would have been ruined; if he had not, he would probably have murdered. now he was free--for thirty days. he swung along briskly in the warm sunshine toward the multicolored forest. the day had suddenly become glorious. presently he found himself in the back alleys near cissie's house. he was passing chicken-houses and stables. hogs in open pens grunted expectantly at his footsteps. peter had not meant to go to cissie's at all, but now, when he saw he was right behind her dwelling, she seemed radiantly accessible to him. still, it struck him that it would not be precisely the thing to call on cissie immediately after tump's arrest. it might look as if--then the thought came that, as a neighbor, he should stop and tell cissie of tump's misfortune. he really ought to offer his services to cissie, if he could do anything. at cissie's request he might even aid tump pack himself. peter got himself into a generous glow as he charged up a side alley, around to a rickety front gate. let niggertown criticize as it would, he was braced by a high altruism. peter did not shout from the gate, as is the fashion of the crescent, but walked up a little graveled path lined with dusty box-shrubs and tapped at the unpainted door. doors in niggertown never open straight away to visitors. a covert inspection first takes place from the edges of the window-blinds. peter stood in the whipping dust, and the caution of the inmates spurred his impatience to see cissie. at last the door opened, and cissie herself was in the entrance. she stood quite still a moment, looking at peter with eyes that appeared frightened. "i--i wasn't expecting to see you," she stammered. "no? i came by with news, cissie." "news?" she seemed more frightened than ever. "peter, you--you haven't-- " she paused, regarding him with big eyes. "tump pack's been arrested," explained peter, quickly, sensing the tragedy in her thoughts. "i came by to tell you. if there's anything i can do for you--or him, i'll do it." his altruistic offer sounded rather foolish in the actual saying. he could not tell from her face whether she was glad or sorry. "what did they arrest him for?" "carrying a pistol." she paused a moment. "will he--get out soon?" "he's sentenced for thirty days." cissie dropped her hands with a hopeless gesture. "oh, isn't this all sickening!--sickening!" she exclaimed. she looked tired. ghosts of sleepless nights circled her eyes. suddenly she said, "come in. oh, do come in, peter." she reached out and almost pulled him in. she was so urgent that peter might have fancied tump pack at the gate with his automatic. he did glance around, but saw nobody passing except the arkwright boy. the hobbledehoy walked down the other side of the street, hands thrust in pockets, with the usual discontented expression on his face. cissie slammed the door shut, and the two stood rather at a loss in the sudden gloom of the hall. cissie broke into a brief, mirthless laugh. "peter, it's hard to be nice in niggertown. i--i just happened to think how folks would gossip--you coming here as soon as tump was arrested." "perhaps i'd better go," suggested peter, uncomfortably. cissie reached up and caught his lapel. "oh, no, don't feel that way! i'm glad you came, really. here, let's go through this way to the arbor. it isn't a bad place to sit." she led the way silently through two dark rooms. before she opened the back door, peter could hear cissie's mother and a younger sister moving around the outside of the house to give up the arbor to cissie and her company. the arbor proved a trellis of honeysuckle over the back door, with a bench under it. a film of dust lay over the dense foliage, and a few withered blooms pricked its grayish green. the earthen floor of the arbor was beaten hard and bare by the naked feet of children. cissie sat down on the bench and indicated a place beside her. "i've been so uneasy about you! i've been wondering what on earth you could do about it." "it's a snarl, all right," he said, and almost immediately began discussing the peculiar _impasse_ in which his difficulty with tump had landed him. cissie sat listening with a serious, almost tragic face, giving a little nod now and then. once she remarked in her precise way: "the trouble with a gentleman fighting a rowdy, the gentleman has all to lose and nothing to gain. if you don't live among your own class, peter, your life will simmer down to an endless diplomacy." "you mean deceit, i suppose." "no, i mean diplomacy. but that isn't a very healthy frame of mind,-- always to be suppressing and guarding yourself." peter didn't know about that. he was inclined to argue the matter, but cissie wouldn't argue. she seemed to assume that all of her statements were axioms, truths reduced to the simplest possible mental terms, and that proof was unnecessary, if not impossible. so the topic went into the discard. "been baking my brains over a lot of silly little exam questions," complained peter. "can you trace the circulation of the blood? i think it leaves the grand central station through the right aorta, and then, after a schedule run of nine minutes, you can hear it coming up the track through the left ventricle, with all the passengers eager to get off and take some refreshment at the lungs. i have the general idea, but the exact routing gets me." cissie laughed accommodatingly. "i wonder why it's necessary for everybody to know that once. i did. i could follow the circulation the right way or backward." "must have been harder backward, going against the current." cissie laughed again. a girl's part in a witty conversation might seem easy at first sight. she has only to laugh at the proper intervals. however, these intervals are not always distinctly marked. some girls take no chances and laugh all the time. cissie's appreciation was the sedative peter needed. the relief of her laughter and her presence ran along his nerves and unkinked them, like a draft of kentucky special after a debauch. the curves of her cheek, the tilt of her head, and the lift of her dull-blue blouse at the bosom wove a great restfulness about peter. the brooch of old gold glinted at her throat. the heavy screen of the arbor gave them a sweet sense of privacy. the conversation meandered this way and that, and became quite secondary to the feeling of the girl's nearness and sympathy. their talk drifted back to peter's mission here in hooker's bend, and cissie was saying: "the trouble is, peter, we are out of our _milieu_." some portion of peter's brain that was not basking in the warmth and invitation of the girl answered quite logically: "yes, but if i could help these people, cissie, reconstruct our life here culturally--" cissie shook her head. "not culturally." this opposition shunted more of peter's thought to the topic in hand. he paused interrogatively. "racially," said cissie. "racially?" repeated the man, quite lost. cissie nodded, looking straight into his eyes. "you know very well, peter, that you and i are not--are not anything near full bloods. you know that racially we don't belong in--niggertown." peter never knew exactly how this extraordinary sentence had come about, but in a kind of breath he realized that he and this almost white girl were not of niggertown. no doubt she had been arguing that he, peter, who was one sort of man, was trying to lead quite another sort of men moved by different racial impulses, and such leading could only come to confusion. he saw the implications at once. it was an extraordinary idea, an explosive idea, such as cissie seemed to have the faculty of touching off. he sat staring at her. it was the white blood in his own veins that had sent him struggling up north, that had brought him back with this flame in his heart for his own people. it was the white blood in cissie that kept her struggling to stand up, to speak an unbroken tongue, to gather around her the delicate atmosphere and charm of a gentlewoman. it was the caucasian in them buried here in niggertown. it was their part of the tragedy of millions of mixed blood in the south. their common problem, a feeling of their joint isolation, brought peter to a sense of keen and tingling nearness to the girl. she was talking again, very earnestly, almost tremulously: "why don't you go north, peter? i think and think about you staying here. you simply can't grow up and develop here. and now, especially, when everybody doubts you. if you'd go north--" "what about you, cissie? you say we're together--" "oh, i'm a woman. we haven't the chance to do as we will." a kind of titillation went over peter's scalp and body. "then you are going to stay here and marry--tump?" he uttered the name in a queer voice. tears started in cissie's eyes; her bosom lifted to her quick breathing. "i--i don't know what i'm going to do," she stammered miserably. peter leaned over her with a drumming heart; he heard her catch her breath. "you don't care for tump?" he asked with a dry mouth. she gasped out something, and the next moment peter felt her body sink limply in his groping arms. they clung together closely, quiveringly. three nights of vigil, each thinking miserably and wistfully of the other, had worn the nerves of both man and girl until they were ready to melt together at a touch. her soft body clinging to his own, the little nervous pressures of her arms, her eased breathing at his neck, wiped away siner's long sense of strain. strength and peace seemed to pour from her being into his by a sort of spiritual osmosis. she resigned her head to his palm in order that he might lift her lips to his when he pleased. after all, there is no way for a man to rest without a woman. all he can do is to stop work. for a long time they sat transported amid the dusty honeysuckles and withered blooms, but after a while they began talking a little at a time of the future, their future. they felt so indissolubly joined that they could not imagine the future finding them apart. there was no need for any more trouble with tump pack. they would marry quietly, and go away north to live. peter thought of his friend farquhar. he wondered if farquhar's attitude would be just the same toward cissie as it was toward him. "north," was the burden of the octoroon's dreams. they would go north to chicago. there were two hundred and fifty thousand negroes in chicago, a city within itself three times the size of nashville. up north she and peter could go to theaters, art galleries, could enter any church, could ride in street-cars, railroad-trains, could sleep and eat at any hotel, live authentic lives. it was cissie planning her emancipation, planning to escape her lifelong disabilities. "oh, i'll be so glad! so glad! so glad!" she sobbed, and drew peter's head passionately down to her deep bosom. chapter v peter siner walked home from the dildine cabin that night rather dreading to meet his mother, for it was late. cissie had served sandwiches and coffee on a little table in the arbor, and then had kept peter hours afterward. around him still hung the glamour of cissie's little supper. he could still see her rounded elbows that bent softly backward when she extended an arm, and the glimpses of her bosom when she leaned to hand him cream or sugar. she had accomplished the whole supper in the white manner, with all poise and daintiness. in fact, no one is more exquisitely polite than an octoroon woman when she desires to be polite, when she elevates the subserviency of her race into graciousness. however, the pleasure and charm of cissie were fading under the approaching abuse that caroline was sure to pour upon the girl. peter dreaded it. he walked slowly down the dark semicircle, planning how he could best break to his mother the news of his engagement. peter knew she would begin a long bill of complaints,--how badly she was treated, how she had sacrificed herself, her comfort, how she had washed and scrubbed. she would surely charge cissie with being a thief and a drab, and all the announcements of engagements that peter could make would never induce the old woman to soften her abuse. indeed, they would make her worse. so peter walked on slowly, smelling the haze of dust that hung in the blackness. out on the big hill, in the glade, peter caught an occasional glimmer of light where crap-shooters and boot-leggers were beginning their nightly carousal. these evidences of illicit trades brought peter a thrill of disgust. in a sort of clear moment he saw that he could not keep cissie in such a sty as this. he could not rear in such a place as this any children that might come to him and cissie. his thoughts drifted back to his mother, and his dread of her tongue. the siner cabin was dark and tightly shut when peter let himself in at the gate and walked to the door. he stood a moment listening, and then gently pressed open the shutter. a faint light burned on the inside, a night-lamp with an old-fashioned brass bowl. it sat on the floor, turned low, at the foot of his mother's bed. the mean room was mainly in shadow. the old-style four-poster in which caroline slept was an indistinct mound. the air was close and foul with the bad ventilation of all negro sleeping-rooms. the brass lamp, turned low, added smoke and gas to the tight quarters. the odor caught peter in the nose and throat, and once more stirred up his impatience with his mother's disregard of hygiene. he tiptoed into the room and decided to remove the lamp and open the high, small window to admit a little air. he moved noiselessly and had stooped for the lamp when there came a creaking and a heavy sigh from the bed, and the old negress asked: "is dat you, son?" peter was tempted to stand perfectly still and wait till his mother dozed again, thus putting off her inevitable tirade against cissie; but he answered in a low tone that it was he. "whut you gwine do wid dat lamp, son?" "go to bed by it, mother." "well, bring hit back." she breathed heavily, and moved restlessly in the old four-poster. as peter stood up he saw that the patched quilts were all askew over her shapeless bulk. evidently, she had not been resting well. peter's conscience smote him again for worrying his mother with his courtship of cissie, yet what could he do? if he had wooed any other girl in the world, she would have been equally jealous and grieved. it was inevitable that she should be disappointed and bitter; it was bound up in the very part and parcel of her sacrifice. a great sadness came over peter. he almost wished his mother would berate him, but she continued to lie there, breathing heavily under her disarranged covers. as peter passed into his room, the old negress called after him to remind him to bring the light back when he was through with it. this time something in her tone alarmed peter. he paused in the doorway. "are you sick, mother?" he asked. the old woman gave a yawn that changed to a groan. "i--i ain't feelin' so good." "what's the matter, mother?" "my stomach, my--" but at that moment her sentence changed to an inarticulate sound, and she doubled up in bed as if caught in a spasm of acute agony. peter hurried to her, thoroughly frightened, and saw sweat streaming down her face. he stared down at her. "mother, you are sick! what can i do?" he cried, with a man's helplessness. she opened her eyes with an effort, panting now as the edge of the agony passed. there was a movement under the quilts, and she thrust out a rubber hot-water bottle. "fill it--fum de kittle," she wheezed out, then relaxed into groans, and wiped clumsily at the sweat on her shining black face. peter seized the bottle and ran into the kitchen. there he found a brisk fire popping in the stove and a kettle of water boiling. it showed him, to his further alarm, that his mother had been trying to minister to herself until forced to bed. the man scalded a finger and thumb pouring water into the flared mouth, but after a moment twisted on the top and hurried into the sick-room. he reached the old negress just as another knife of pain set her writhing and sweating. she seized the hot-water bottle, pushed it under the quilts, and pressed it to her stomach, then lay with eyes and teeth clenched tight, and her thick lips curled in a grin of agony. peter set the lamp on the table, said he was going for the doctor, and started. the old woman hunched up in bed. with the penuriousness of her station and sacrifices, she begged peter not to go; then groaned out, "go tell mars' renfrew," but the next moment did not want peter to leave her. peter said he would get nan berry to stay while he was gone. the berry cabin lay diagonally across the street. peter ran over, thumped on the door, and shouted his mother's needs. as soon as he received an answer, he started on over the big hill toward the white town. peter was seriously frightened. his run to dr. jallup's, across the big hill, was a series of renewed strivings for speed. every segment of his journey seemed to seize him and pin him down in the midst of the night like a bug caught in a black jelly. he seemed to progress not at all. now he was in the cedar glade. his muffled flight drove in the sentries of the crap-shooters, and gamesters blinked out their lights and listened to his feet stumbling on through the darkness. after an endless run in the glade, peter found himself on top of the hill, amid boulders and outcrops limestone and cedar-shrubs. his flash- light picked out these objects, limned them sharply against the blackness, then dropped them into obscurity again. he tried to run faster. his impatience subdivided the distance into yards and feet. now he was approaching that boulder, now he was passing it; now he was ten feet beyond, twenty, thirty. perhaps his mother was dying, alone save for stupid nan berry. now he was going down the hill past the white church. all that was visible was its black spire set against a web of stars. he was making no speed at all. he panted on. his heart hammered. his legs drummed with lilliputian paces. now he was among the village stores, all utterly black. at one point the echo of his feet chattered back at him, as if some other futile runner strained amid vast spaces of blackness. after a long time he found himself running up a residential street, and presently, far ahead, he saw the glow of dr. jallup's porch light. its beam had the appearance of coming from a vast distance. when he reached the place, he flung his breast against the top panel of the doctor's fence and held on, exhausted. he drew in his breath, and began shouting, "hello, doctor!" peter called persistently, and as he commanded more breath, he called louder and louder, "hello, doctor! hello, doctor! hello, doctor!" in tones edging on panic. the doctor's house might have been dead. somewhere a dog began barking. high in the southern sky a star looked down remotely on peter's frantic haste. the black man stood in the black night with cries: "hello, doctor! hello, doctor! hello, doctor!" at last, in despair, he tried to think of other doctors. he thought of telephoning to jonesboro. just as he decided he must turn away there came a stirring in the dead house, a flicker of light appeared on the inside now here, now there; it steadied into a tiny beam and approached the door. the door opened, and dr. jallup's head and breast appeared, illuminated against the black interior. "my mother's sick, doctor," began peter, in immense relief. "who is it?" inquired the half-clad man, impassively. "caroline siner; she's been taken with a--" the physician lifted his light a trifle in an effort to see peter. "lemme see: she's that fat nigger woman that lives in a three-roomed house--" "i'll show you the way," said peter. "she's very ill." the half-dressed man shook his head. "no, ca'line siner owes me a five-dollar doctor's bill already. our county medical association made a rule that no niggers should--" with a drying mouth, peter siner stared at the man of medicine. "but, my god, doctor," gasped the son, "i'll pay you--" "have you got the money there in your pocket?" asked jallup, impassively. a sort of chill traveled deliberately over peter's body and shook his voice. "n-no, but i can get it--" "yes, you can all get it," stated the physician in dull irritation. "i'm tired of you niggers running up doctors' bills nobody can collect. you never have more than the law allows; your wages never get big enough to garnishee." his voice grew querulous as he related his wrongs. "no, i'm not going to see ca'line siner. if she wants me to visit her, let her send ten dollars to cover that and back debts, and i'll--" the end of his sentence was lost in the closing of his door. the light he carried declined from a beam to a twinkling here and there, and then vanished in blackness. dr. jallup's house became dead again. the little porch light in its glass box might have been a candle burning before a tomb. peter siner stood at the fence, licking his dry lips, with nerves vibrating like a struck bell. he pushed himself slowly away from the top plank and found his legs so weak that he could hardly walk. he moved slowly, back down the unseen street. the dog he had disturbed gave a few last growls and settled into silence. peter moved along, wetting his dry lips, and stirring feebly among his dazed thoughts, hunting some other plan of action. there was a tiny burning spot on the left side of his occiput. it felt like a heated cambric needle which had been slipped into his scalp. then he realized that he must go home, get ten dollars, and bring them back to dr. jallup. he started to run, but almost toppled over on his leaden legs. he plodded through the darkness, retracing the endless trail to niggertown. as he passed a dark mass of shrubbery and trees, he recalled his mother's advice to ask aid of captain renfrew. it was the old renfrew place that peter was passing. the negro hesitated, then turned in at the gate in the bare hope of obtaining the ten dollars at once. inside the gate peter's feet encountered the scattered bricks of an old walk. the negro stood and called captain renfrew's name in a guarded voice. he was not at all sure of his action. peter had called twice and was just about to go when a lamp appeared around the side of the house on a long portico that extended clear around the building. bathed in the light of the lamp which he held over his head, there appeared an old man wearing a worn dressing gown. "who is it?" he asked in a wavery voice. peter told his name and mission. the old captain continued holding up his light. "oh, peter siner; caroline siner's sick? all right i'll have jallup run over; i'll phone him." peter was beginning his thanks preparatory to going, when the old man interrupted. "no, just stay here until jallup comes by in his or he'll pick us both up. it'll save time. come on inside. what's the matter with old caroline?" the old dressing-gown led the way around the continuous piazza, to a room that stood open and brightly lighted on the north face of the old house. a great relief came to peter at this unexpected succor. he followed around the piazza, trying to describe caroline's symptoms. the room peter entered was a library, a rather stately old room, lined with books all around the walls to about as high as a man could reach. spaces for doors and windows were let in among the book-cases. the volumes themselves seemed composed mainly of histories and old-fashioned scientific books, if peter could judge from a certain severity of their bindings. on a big library table burned a gasolene-lamp, which threw a brilliant whiteness all over the room. the table was piled with books and periodicals. books and papers were heaped on every chair in the study except a deep morris chair in which the old captain had been sitting. a big meridional globe, about two and a half feet in diameter, gleamed through a film of dust in the embrasure of a window. the whole room had the womanless look of a bachelor's quarters, and was flavored with tobacco and just a hint of whisky. old captain renfrew evidently had been reading when peter called from the gate. now the old man went to a telephone and rang long and briskly to awaken the boy who slept in the central office. peter fidgeted as the old captain stood with receiver to ear. "hard to wake." the old gentleman spoke into the transmitter, but was talking to peter. "don't be so uneasy, peter. human beings are harder to kill than you think." there was a kindliness, even a fellowship, in captain renfrew's tones that spread like oil over peter's raw nerves. it occurred to the negro that this was the first time he had been addressed as an authentic human being since his conversation with the two northern men on the pullman, up in illinois. it surprised him. it was sufficient to take his mind momentarily from his mother. he looked a little closely at the old man at the telephone. the captain wore few indices of kindness. lines of settled sarcasm netted his eyes and drooped away from his old mouth. the very swell of his full temples and their crinkly veins marked a sardonic old man. at last he roused central over the wire, and impressed upon him the necessity of creating a stridor in dr. jallup's dead house, and a moment later a continued buzzing in the receiver betokened the operator's efforts to do so. the old gentleman turned around at last, holding the receiver a little distance from his ear. "i understand you went to harvard, peter." "yes, sir." peter took his eyes momentarily from the telephone. the old southerner in the dressing-gown scrutinized the brown man. he cleared his throat. "you know, peter, it gives me a--a certain satisfaction to see a harvard man in hooker's bend. i'm a harvard man myself." peter stood in the brilliant light, astonished, not at captain renfrew's being a harvard man,--he had known that,--but that this old gentleman was telling the fact to him, peter siner, a negro graduate of harvard. it was extraordinary; it was tantamount to an offer of friendship, not patronage. such an offer in the south disturbed peter's poise; it touched him queerly. and it seemed to explain why captain renfrew had received peter so graciously and was now arranging for dr. jallup to visit caroline. peter was moved to the conventional query, asking in what class the captain had been graduated. but while his very voice was asking it, peter thought what a strange thing it was that he, peter siner, a negro, and this lonely old gentleman, his benefactor, were spiritual brothers, both sprung from the loins of harvard, that ancient mother of souls. [illustration: the old gentleman turned around at last] from the darkness outside, dr. jallup's horn summmoned the two men. captain renfrew got out of his gown and into his coat and turned off his gasolene light. they walked around the piazza to the front of the house. in the street the head-lights of the roadster shot divergent rays through the darkness. they went out. the old captain took a seat in the car beside the physician, while peter stood on the running-board. a moment later, the clutch snarled, and the machine puttered down the street. peter clung to the standards of the auto top, peering ahead. the men remained almost silent. once dr. jallup, watching the dust that lay modeled in sharp lights and shadows under the head-lights, mentioned lack of rain. their route did not lead over the big hill. they turned north at hobbett's corner, drove around by river street, and presently entered the northern end of the semicircle. the speed of the car was reduced to a crawl in the bottomless dust of the crescent. the head-lights swept slowly around the cabins on the concave side of the street, bringing them one by one into stark brilliance and dropping them into obscurity. the smell of refuse, of uncleaned stables and sties and outhouses hung in the darkness. peter bent down under the top of the motor and pointed out his place. a minute later the machine came to a noisy halt and was choked into silence. at that moment, in the sweep of the head-light, peter saw viny berry, one of nan's younger sisters, coming up from niggertown's public well, carrying two buckets of water. viny was hurrying, plashing the water over the sides of her buckets. the importance of her mission was written in her black face. "she's awful thirsty," she called to peter in guarded tones. "nan called me to fetch some fraish water fum de well." peter took the water that had been brought from the semi-cesspool at the end of the street. viny hurried across the street to home and to bed. with the habitual twinge of his sanitary conscience, peter considered the water in the buckets. "we'll have to boil this," he said to the doctor. "boil it?" repeated jallup, blankly. then, he added: "oh, yes--boil. certainly." * * * * * a repellent odor of burned paper, breathed air, and smoky lights filled the close room. nan had lighted another lamp and now the place was discernible in a dull yellow glow. in the corner lay a half-burned wisp of paper. nan herself stood by the mound on the bed, putting straight the quilts that her patient had twisted awry. "she sho am bad, doctor," said the colored woman, with big eyes. seen in the light, dr. jallup was a little sandy-bearded man with a round, simple face, oddly overlaid with that inscrutability carefully cultivated by country doctors. with professional cheeriness, he approached the mound of bedclothes. "a little under the weather, aunt ca'line?" he slipped his fingers alongside her throat to test her temperature, at the same time drawing a thermometer from his waistcoat pocket. the old negress stirred, and looked up out of sick eyes. "doctor," she gasped, "i sho got a misery heah." she indicated her stomach. "how do you feel?" he asked hopefully. the woman panted, then whispered: "lak a knife was a-cuttin' an' a-tearin' out my innards." she rested, then added, "not so bad now; feels mo' lak somp'n's tearin' in de nex' room." "like something tearing in the next room?" repeated jallup, emptily. "yes, suh," she whispered. "i jes can feel hit--away off, lak." the doctor attempted to take her temperature, but the thermometer in her mouth immediately nauseated her, so he slipped the instrument under her arm. old caroline groaned at the slightest exertion, then, as she tossed her black head, she caught a glimpse of old captain renfrew. she halted abruptly in her restlessness, stared at the old gentleman, wet her dry lips with a queer brown-furred tongue. "is dat you, mars' milt?" she gasped in feeble astonishment. a moment later she guessed the truth. "i s'pose you had to bring de doctor. 'fo' gawd, mars' milt--" she lay staring, with the covers rising and falling as she gasped for breath. her feverish eyes shifted back and forth between the grim old gentleman and the tall, broad-shouldered brown man at the foot of her bed. she drew a baggy black arm from under the cover. "da' 's peter, mars' milt," she pointed. "da' 's peter, my son. he--he use' to be my son 'fo' he went off to school; but sence he come home, he been a-laughin' at me." tears came to her eyes; she panted for a moment, then added: "yeah, he done marked his mammy down fuh a nigger, mars' milt. whut i thought wuz gwine be sweet lays bitter in my mouf." she worked her thick lips as if the rank taste of her sickness were the very flavor of her son's ingratitude. a sudden gasp and twist of her body told nan that the old woman was again seized with a spasm. the neighbor woman took swift control, and waved out peter and old mr. renfrew, while she and the doctor aided the huge negress. the two evicted men went into peter's room and shut the door. peter, unnerved, groped, and presently found and lighted a lamp. he put it down on his little table among his primary papers and examination papers. he indicated to captain renfrew the single chair in the room. but the old gentleman stood motionless in the mean room, with its head- line streaked walls. sounds of the heavy lifting of peter's mother came through the thin door and partition with painful clearness. peter opened his own small window, for the air in his room was foul. captain renfrew stood in silence, with a remote sarcasm in his wrinkled eyes. what was in his heart, why he had subjected himself to the noisomeness of failing flesh, peter had not the faintest idea. once, out of studently habit, he glanced at peter's philosophic books, but apparently he read the titles without really observing them. once he looked at peter. "peter," he said colorlessly, "i hope you'll be careful of caroline's feelings if she ever gets up again. she has been very faithful to you, peter." peter's eyes dampened. a great desire mounted in him to explain himself to this strange old gentleman, to show him how inevitable had been the breach. for some reason a veritable passion to reveal his heart to this his sole benefactor surged through the youth. "mr. renfrew," he stammered, "mr. renfrew--i--i--" his throat abruptly ached and choked. he felt his face distort in a spasm of uncontrollable grief. he turned quickly from this strange old man with a remote sarcasm in his eyes and a remote affection in his tones. peter clenched his jaws, his nostrils spread in his effort stoically to bottle up his grief and remorse, like a white man; in an effort to keep from howling his agony aloud, like a negro. he stood with aching throat and blurred eyes, trembling, swallowing, and silent. presently nan berry opened the door. she held a half-burned paper in her hand; dr. jallup stood near the bed, portioning out some calomel and quinine. the prevalent disease in hooker's bend is malaria; dr. jallup always physicked for malaria. on this occasion he diagnosed it must be a very severe attack of malaria indeed, so he measured out enormous doses. he took a glass of the water that viny had brought, held up old caroline's head, and washed down two big capsules into the already poisoned stomach of the old negress. his simple face was quite inscrutable as he did this. he left other capsules for nan to administer at regular intervals. then he and captain renfrew motored out of niggertown, out of its dust and filth and stench. at four o'clock in the morning caroline siner died. chapter vi when nan berry saw that caroline was dead, the black woman dropped a glass of water and a capsule of calomel and stared. a queer terror seized her. she began such a wailing that it aroused others in niggertown. at the sound they got out of their beds and came to the siner cabin, their eyes big with mystery and fear. at the sight of old caroline's motionless body they lifted their voices through the night. the lamentation carried far beyond the confines of niggertown. the last gamblers in the cedar glade heard it, and it broke up their gaming and drinking. white persons living near the black crescent were waked out of their sleep and listened to the eerie sound. it rose and fell in the darkness like a melancholy organ chord. the wailing of the women quivered against the heavy grief of the men. the half-asleep listeners were moved by its weirdness to vague and sinister fancies. the dolor veered away from what the anglo-saxon knows as grief and was shot through with the uncanny and the terrible. white children crawled out of their small beds and groped their way to their parents. the women shivered and asked of the darkness, "_what_ makes the negroes howl so?" nobody knew,--least of all, the negroes. nobody suspected that the bedlam harked back to the jungle, to black folk in african kraals beating tom-toms and howling, not in grief, but in an ecstasy of terror lest the souls of their dead might come back in the form of tigers or pythons or devils and work woe to the tribe. through the night the negroes wailed on, performing through custom an ancient rite of which they knew nothing. they supposed themselves heartbroken over the death of caroline siner. amid this din peter siner sat in his room, stunned by the sudden taking off of his mother. the reproaches that she had expressed to old captain renfrew clung in peter's brain. the brown man had never before realized the faint amusement and condescension that had flavored all his relations with his mother since his return home. but he knew now that she had felt his disapproval of her lifelong habits; that she saw he never explained or attempted to explain his thoughts to her, assuming her to be too ignorant; as she put it, "a fool." the pathos of his mother's last days, what she had expected, what she had received, came to peter with the bitterness of what is finished and irrevocable. she had been dead only a few minutes, yet she could never know his grief and remorse; she could never forgive him. she was utterly removed in a few minutes, in a moment in the failing of a breath. the finality of death overpowered him. into his room, through the thin wall, came the catch of numberless sobs, the long-drawn open wails, and the spasms of sobbing. blurred voices called, "o gawd! gawd hab mercy! hab mercy!" now words were lost in the midst of confusion. the clamor boomed through the thin partition as if it would shake down his newspapered walls. with wet cheeks and an aching throat, peter sat by his table, staring at his book-case in silence, like a white man. the dim light of his lamp fell over his psychologies and philosophies. these were the books that had given him precedence over the old washwoman who kept him in college. it was reading these books that had made him so wise that the old negress could not even follow his thoughts. now in the hour of his mother's death the backs of his metaphysics blinked at him emptily. what signified their endless pages about dualism and monism, about phenomenon and noumenon? his mother was dead. and she had died embittered against him because he had read and had been bewildered by these empty, wordy volumes. a sense of profound defeat, of being ultimately fooled and cozened by the subtleties of white men, filled peter siner. he had eaten at their table, but their meat was not his meat. the uproar continued. standing out of the din arose the burden of negro voices "hab mercy! gawd hab mercy!" in the morning the ladies of tabor came and washed and dressed caroline siner's body and made it ready for burial. for twenty years the old negress had paid ten cents a month to her society to insure her burial, and now the lodge made ready to fulfil its pledge. after many comings and goings, the black women called peter to see their work, as if for his approval. the huge dead woman lay on the four-poster with a sheet spread over the lower part of her body. the ministrants had clothed it in the old black- silk dress, with its spreading seams and panels of different materials. it reminded peter of the new dress he had meant to get his mother, and of the modish suit which at that moment molded his own shoulders and waist. the pitifulness of her sacrifices trembled in peter's throat. he pressed his lips together, and nodded silently to the black ladies of tabor. presently the white undertaker, a silent little man with a brisk yet sympathetic air, came and made some measurements. he talked to peter in undertones about the finishing of the casket, how much the knights of tabor would pay, what peter wanted. then he spoke of the hour of burial, and mentioned a somewhat early hour because some of the negroes wanted to ship as roustabouts on the up-river packet, which was due at any moment. these decisions, asked of peter, kept pricking him and breaking through the stupefaction of this sudden tragedy. he kept nodding a mechanical agreement until the undertaker had arranged all the details. then the little man moved softly out of the cabin and went stepping away through the dust of niggertown with professional briskness. a little later two black grave-diggers set out with picks and shovels for the negro graveyard. numberless preparations for the funeral were going on all over niggertown. the knights of tabor were putting on their regalia. negro women were sending out hurry notices to white mistresses that they would be unable to cook the noonday meal. dozens of negro girls flocked to the hair-dressing establishment of miss mallylou speers. all were bent on having their wool straightened for the obsequies, and as only a few of them could be accommodated, the little room was packed. a smell of burning hair pervaded it. the girls sat around waiting their turn. most of them already had their hair down,--or, rather loose, for it stood out in thick mats. the hair-dresser had a small oil stove on which lay heating half a dozen iron combs. with a hot comb she teased each strand of wool into perfect straightness and then plastered it down with a greasy pomade. the result was a stiff effect, something like the hair of the japanese. it required about three hours to straighten the hair of one negress. the price was a dollar and a half. by half-past nine o'clock a crowd of negro men, in lodge aprons and with spears, and negro women, with sashes of ribbon over their shoulders and across the breasts, assembled about the siner cabin. in the dusty curving street were ranged half a dozen battered vehicles,--a hearse, a delivery wagon, some rickety buggies, and a hack. presently the undertaker arrived with a dilapidated black hearse which he used especially for negroes. he jumped down, got out his straps and coffin stands, directed some negro men to bring in the coffin, then hurried into the cabin with his air of brisk precision. he placed the coffin on the stands near the bed; then a number of men slipped the huge black body into it. the undertaker settled old caroline's head against the cotton pillows, running his hand down beside her cheek and tipping her face just so. then he put on the cover, which left a little oval opening just above her dead face. the sight of old caroline's face seen through the little oval pane moved some of the women to renewed sobs. eight black men took up the coffin and carried it out with the slow, wide-legged steps of roustabouts. parson ranson, in a rusty prince albert coat, took peter's arm and led him to the first vehicle after the hearse. it was a delivery wagon, but it was the best vehicle in the procession. as peter followed the coffin out, he saw the knights and ladies of tabor lined up in marching order behind the van. the men held their spears and swords at attention; the women carried flowers. behind the marchers came other old vehicles, a sorry procession. at fifteen minutes to ten the bell in the steeple of the colored church tolled a single stroke. the sound quivered through the sunshine over niggertown. at its signal the poor procession moved away through the dust. at intervals the bell tolled after the vanishing train. as the negroes passed through the white town the merchants, lolling in their doors, asked passers-by what negro had died. the idlers under the mulberry in front of the livery-stable nodded at the old negro preacher in his long greenish-black coat, and dawson bobbs remarked: "well, old parson ranson's going to tell 'em about it to-day," and he shifted his toothpick with a certain effect of humor. old mr. tomwit asked if his companions had ever heard how newt bodler, a wit famous in wayne county, once broke up a negro funeral with a hornets' nest. the idlers nodded a smiling affirmative as they watched the cortège go past. they had all heard it. but mr. tomwit would not be denied. he sallied forth into humorous reminiscence. another loafer contributed an anecdote of how he had tied ropes to a dead negro so as to make the corpse sit up in bed and frighten the mourners. all their tales were of the vintage of the years immediately succeeding the civil war,--pioneer humor, such as convulsed the readers of peck's bad boy, mr. bowser, sut lovingood. the favorite dramatic properties of such writers were the hornets' nest, the falling ladder, the banana peel. they cultivated the humor of contusions, the wit of impact. this style still holds the stage of hooker's bend. in telling these tales the white villagers meant no special disrespect to the negro funeral. it simply reminded them of humorous things; so they told their jokes, like the naïve children of the soil that they were. at last the poor procession passed beyond the white church, around a bend in the road, and so vanished. presently the bell in niggertown ceased tolling. * * * * * peter always remembered his mother's funeral in fragments of intolerable pathos,--the lifting of old parson ranson's hands toward heaven, the songs of the black folk, the murmur of the first shovelful of dirt as it was lowered to the coffin, and the final raw mound of earth littered with a few dying flowers. with that his mother--who had been so near to, and so disappointed in, her son--was blotted from his life. the other events of the funeral flowed by in a sort of dream: he moved about; the negroes were speaking to him in the queer overtones one uses to the bereaved; he was being driven back to niggertown; he reentered the siner cabin. one or two of his friends stayed in the room with him for a while and said vague things, but there was nothing to say. later in the afternoon cissie dildine and her mother brought his dinner to him. vannie dildine, a thin yellow woman, uttered a few disjointed words about sister ca'line being a good woman, and stopped amid sentence. there was nothing to say. death had cut a wound across peter siner's life. not for days, nor weeks, nor months, would his existence knit solidly back together. the poison of his ingratitude to his faithful old black mother would for a long, long day prevent the healing. chapter vii during a period following his mother's death peter siner's life drifted emptily and without purpose. he had the feeling of one convalescing in a hospital. his days passed unconnected by any thread of purpose; they were like cards scattered on a table, meaning nothing. at times he struggled against his lethargy. when he awoke in the morning and found the sun shining on his dusty primers and examination papers, he would think that he ought to go back to his old task; but he never did. in his heart grew a conviction that he would never teach school at hooker's bend. he would rise and dress slowly in the still cabin, thinking he must soon make new plans and take up some work. he never decided precisely what work; his thoughts trailed on in vague, idle designs. in fact, during peter's reaction to his shock there began to assert itself in him that capacity for profound indolence inherent in his negro blood. to a white man time is a cumulative excitant. continuous and absolute idleness is impossible; he must work, hunt, fish, play, gamble, or dissipate,--do something to burn up the accumulating sugar in his muscles. but to a negro idleness is an increasing balm; it is a stretching of his legs in the sunshine, a cat-like purring of his nerves; while his thoughts spread here and there in inconsequences, like water without a channel, making little humorous eddies, winding this way and that into oddities and fantasies without ever feeling that constraint of sequence which continually operates in a white brain. and it is this quality that makes negroes the entertainers of children _par excellence_. peter siner's mental slackening made him understandable, and gave him a certain popularity in nigger-town. black men fell into the habit of dropping in at the siner cabin, where they would sit outdoors, with chairs propped against the wall, and philosophize on the desultory life of the crescent. sometimes they would relate their adventures on the river packets and around the docks at paducah, cairo, st. joe, and st. louis; usually a recountal of drunkenness, gaming, fighting, venery, arrests, jail sentences, petty peculations, and escapes. through these iliads of vagabondage ran an irresponsible gaiety, a non-morality, and a kind of unbrave zest for adventure. they told of their defeats and flights with as much relish and humor as of their charges and victories. and while the spirit was thoroughly pagan, these accounts were full of the clichés of religion. a roustabout whom every one called the persimmon confided to peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them up again, and claim the prize-money for salvaging them, god willing. the persimmon was so called from a scar on his long slanting head. a steamboat mate had once found him asleep in the passageway of a lumber pile which the boat was lading, and he waked the negro by hitting him in the head with a persimmon bolt. in this there was nothing unusual or worthy of a nickname. the point was, the mate had been mistaken: the persimmon was not working on his boat at all. in time this became one of the stock anecdotes which pilots and captains told to passengers traveling up and down the river. the persimmon was a queer-looking negro; his head was a long diagonal from its peak down to his pendent lower lip, for he had no chin. the salient points on this black slope were the persimmon's sad, protruding yellow eyeballs, over which the lids always drooped about half closed. an habitual tipping of this melancholy head to one side gave the persimmon the look of one pondering and deploring the amount of sin there was in the world. this saintly impression the persimmon's conduct and language never bore out. at the time of the persimmon's remarks about the raft two of peter's callers, jim pink staggs and parson ranson, took the roustabout to task. jim pink based his objection on the grounds of glutting the labor market. "ef us niggers keeps turnin' too many raf's loose fuh de prize-money," he warned, "somebody's goin' to git 'spicious, an' you'll ruin a good thing." the persimmon absorbed this with a far-away look in his half-closed eyes. "it's a ticklish job," argued parson ranson, "an' i wouldn't want to wuck at de debbil's task aroun' de ribber, ca'se you mout fall in, persimmon, an' git drownded." "i wouldn't do sich a thing a-tall," admitted the persimmon, "but i jes' natchelly got to git ten dollars to he'p pay on my divo'ce." "i kain't see whut you want wid a divo'ce," said jim pink, yawning, "when you been ma'ied three times widout any." "it's fuh a christmas present," explained the persimmon, carelessly, "fuh th' woman i'm libin' wid now. mahaly's a great woman fuh style. i'm goin' to divo'ce my other wives, one at a time lak my lawyer say." "on what grounds?" asked peter, curiously. "desuhtion." "desertion?" "uh huh; i desuhted 'em." jim pink shook his head, picked up a pebble, and began idly juggling it, making it appear double, single, treble, then single again. "too many divo'ces in dis country now, persimmon," he moralized. "well, whut's de cause uv 'em?" asked the persimmon, suddenly bringing his protruding yellow eyes around on the sleight-of-hand performer. jim pink was slightly taken aback; then he said: "'spicion; nothin' but 'spicion." "yeah, 'spicion," growled the persimmon; "'spicion an' de husban' leadin' a irreg'lar life." jim pink looked at his companion, curiously. "the husban'--leadin' a irreg'lar life?" "yeah,"--the persimmon nodded grimly,--"the husban' comin' home at onexpected hours. you know whut i means, jim pink." jim pink let his pebble fall and lowered the fore legs of his chair softly to the ground. "now, look heah, persimmon, you don' want to be draggin' no foreign disco'se into yo' talk heah befo' mr. siner an' parson ranson." the persimmon rose deliberately. "all i want to say is, i drapped off'n de matrimonial tree three times a'ready, jim pink, an' i think i feels somebody shakin' de limb ag'in." the old negro preacher rose, too, a little behind jim pink. "now, boys! boys!" he placated. "you jes think dat, persimmon." "yeah," admitted persimmon, "i jes think it; but ef i b'lieve ever'thing is so whut i think is so, i'd part jim pink's wool wid a brickbat." parson ranson tried to make peace, but the persimmon spread his hands in a gesture that included the three men. "now, i ain't sayin' nothin'," he stated solemnly, "an' i ain't makin' no threats; but ef anything happens, you-all kain't say that nobody didn' tell nobody about nothin'." with this the persimmon walked to the gate, let himself out, still looking back at jim pink, and then started down the dusty street. mr. staggs seemed uncomfortable under the persimmon's protruding yellow stare, but finally, when the roustabout was gone, he shrugged, regained his aplomb, and remarked that some niggers spent their time in studyin' 'bout things they hadn't no info'mation on whatever. then he strolled off up the crescent in the other direction. all this would have made fair minstrel patter if peter siner had shared the white conviction that every emotion expressed in a negro's patois is humorous. unfortunately, peter was too close to the negroes to hold such a tenet. he knew this quarrel was none the less rancorous for having been couched in the queer circumlocution of black folk. and behind it all shone the background of racial promiscuity out of which it sprang. it was like looking at an open sore that touched all of niggertown, men and boys, young girls and women. it caused tragedies, murders, fights, and desertions in the black village as regularly as the rotation of the calendar; yet there was no public sentiment against it. peter wondered how this attitude of his whole people could possibly be. with the query the memory of ida may came back to him, with its sense of dim pathos. it seemed to peter now as if their young and uninstructed hands had destroyed a safety-vault to filch a penny. the reflex of a thought of ida may always brought peter to cissie; it always stirred up in him a desire to make this young girl's path gentle and smooth. there was a fineness, a delicacy about cissie, that, it seemed to peter, ida may had never possessed. then, too, cissie was moved by a passion for self-betterment. she deserved a cleaner field than the niggertown of hooker's bend. peter took parson ranson's arm, and the two moved to the gate by common consent. it was no longer pleasant to sit here. the quarrel they had heard somehow had flavored their surroundings. peter turned his steps mechanically northward up the crescent toward the dildine cabin. nothing now restrained him from calling on cissie; he would keep no dinner waiting; he would not be warned and berated on his return home. the nagging, jealous love of his mother had ended. as the two men walked along, it was borne in upon peter that his mother's death definitely ended one period of his life. there was no reason why he should continue his present unsettled existence. it seemed best to marry cissie at once and go north. further time in this place would not be good for the girl. even if he could not lift all niggertown, he could at least help cissie. he had had no idea, when he first planned his work, what a tremendous task he was essaying. the white village had looked upon the negroes so long as non-moral and non- human that the negroes, with the flexibility of their race, had assimilated that point of view. the whites tried to regulate the negroes by endless laws. the negroes had come to accept this, and it seemed that they verily believed that anything not discovered by the constable was permissible. mr. dawson bobbs was niggertown's conscience. it was best for peter to take from this atmosphere what was dearest to him, and go at once. the brown man's thoughts came trailing back to the old negro parson hobbling at his side. he looked at the old man, hesitated a moment, then told him what was in his mind. parson ranson's face wrinkled into a grin. "you's gwine to git ma'ied?" "and i thought i'd have you perform the ceremony." this suggestion threw the old negro into excitement. "me, mr. peter?" "yes. why not?" "why, mr. peter, i kain't jine you an' miss cissie dildine." peter looked at him, astonished. "why can't you?" "whyn't you git a white preacher?" "well," deliberated peter, gravely, "it's a matter of principle with me, parson ranson. i think we colored people ought to be more self-reliant, more self-serving. we ought to lead our own lives instead of being mere echoes of white thought." he made a swift gesture, moved by this passion of his life. "i don't mean racial equality. to my mind racial equality is an empty term. one might as well ask whether pink and violet are equal. but what i do insist on is autonomous development." the old preacher nodded, staring into the dust. "sho! 'tonomous 'velopment." peter saw that his language, if not his thought, was far beyond his old companion's grasp, and he lacked the patience to simplify himself. "why don't you want to marry us, parson?" parson ranson lifted his brows and filled his forehead with wrinkles. "well, i dunno. you an' miss cissie acts too much lak white folks fuh a nigger lak me to jine you, mr. peter." peter made a sincere effort to be irritated, but he was not. "that's no way to feel. it's exactly what i was talking about,--racial self-reliance. you've married hundreds of colored couples." "ya-as, suh,"--the old fellow scratched his black jaw.--"i kin yoke up a pair uv ordina'y niggers all right. sometimes dey sticks, sometimes dey don't." the old man shook his white, kinky head. "i'll bust in an' try to hitch up you-all. i--i dunno whedder de cer'mony will hol' away up north or not." "it'll be all right anywhere, parson," said peter, seriously. "your name on the marriage-certificate will--can you write?" "n-no, suh." after a brief hesitation peter repeated determinedly: "it'll be all right. and, by the way, of course, this will be a very quiet wedding." "yas-suh." the old man bobbed importantly. "i wouldn't mention it to any one." "no, suh; no, suh. i don' blame you a-tall, mr. peter, wid dat tump pack gallivantin' roun' wid a forty-fo'. hit would keep 'mos' anybody's weddin' ve'y quiet onless he wuz lookin' fuh a short cut to heab'n." as the two negroes passed the berry cabin, nan berry thrust out her spiked head and called to peter captain renfrew wanted to see him. peter paused, with quickened interest in this strange old man who had come to his mother's death-bed with a doctor. peter asked nan what the captain wanted. nan did not know. wince washington had told nan that the captain wanted to see peter. bluegum frakes had told wince; jerry dillihay had told bluegum; but any further meanderings of the message, when it started, or what its details might be, nan could not state. it was a typical message from a resident of the white town to a denizen of niggertown. such messages are delivered to any black man for any other black man, not only in the village, but anywhere in the outlying country. it may be passed on by a dozen or a score of mouths before it reaches its objective. it may be a day or a week in transit, but eventually it will be delivered verbatim. this queer system of communication is a relic of slavery, when the master would send out word for some special negro out of two or three hundred slaves to report at the big house. however, as peter approached the dildine cabin, thoughts of his approaching marriage drove from his mind even old captain renfrew's message. his heart beat fast from having made his first formal step toward wedlock. the thought of having cissie all to himself, swept his nerves in a gust. he opened the gate, and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box, eager to tell her what he had done. he thumped on the cracked, unpainted door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge of the window-blinds. this was unduly drawn out. presently he heard women's voices whispering to each other inside. they seemed urgent, almost angry voices. now and then he caught a sentence: "what difference will it make?" "i couldn't." "why couldn't you?" "because--" "that's because you've been to nashville." "oh, well--" a chair was moved over a bare floor. a little later footsteps came to the entrance, the door opened, and cissie's withered yellow mother stood before him. vannie offered her hand and inquired after peter's health with a stopped voice that instantly recalled his mother's death. after the necessary moment of talk, the mulatto inquired for cissie. the yellow woman seemed slightly ill at ease. "cissie ain't so well, peter." "she's not ill?" "n-no; but the excitement an' ever'thing--" answered vannie, vaguely. in the flush of his plans, peter was keenly disappointed. "it's very important, mrs. dildine." vannie's dried yellow face framed the ghost of a smile. "ever'thing a young man's got to say to a gal is ve'y important, peter." it seemed to peter a poor time for a jest; his face warmed faintly. "it--it's about some of the details of our--our wedding." "if you'll excuse her to-day, peter, an' come after supper--" peter hesitated, and was about to go away when cissie's voice came from an inner room, telling her mother to admit him. the yellow woman glanced at the door on the left side of the hall, crossed over and opened it, stood to one side while peter entered, and closed it after him, leaving the two alone. the room into which peter stepped was dark, after the fashion of negro houses. only after a moment's survey did he see cissie sitting near a big fireplace made of rough stone. the girl started to rise as peter advanced toward her, but he solicitously forbade it and hurried over to her. when he leaned over her and put his arms about her, his ardor was slightly dampened when she gave him her cheek instead of her lips to kiss. "surely, you're not too ill to be kissed?" he rallied faintly. "you kissed me. i thought we had agreed, peter, you were not to come in the daytime any more." "oh, is that it?" peter patted her shoulder, cheerfully. "don't worry; i have just removed any reason why i shouldn't come any time i want to." cissie looked at him, her dark eyes large in the gloom. "what have you done?" "got a preacher to marry us; on my way now for a license. dropped in to ask if you 'll be ready by tomorrow or next day." the girl gasped. "but, peter--" peter drew a chair beside her in a serious argumentative mood. "yes i think we ought to get married at once. no reason why we shouldn't get it over with--why, what's the matter?" "so soon after your mother's death, peter?" "it's to get away from hooker's bend, cissie--to get you away. i don't like for you to stay here. it's all so--" he broke off, not caring to open the disagreeable subject. the girl sat staring down at some fagots smoldering on the hearth. at that moment they broke into flame and illuminated her sad face. "you'll go, won't you?" asked peter at last, with a faint uncertainty. the girl looked up. "oh--i--i'd be glad to, peter,"--she gave a little shiver. "ugh! this niggertown is a--a terrible place!" peter leaned over, took one of her hands, and patted it. "then we'll go," he said soothingly. "it's decided--tomorrow. and we'll have a perfectly lovely wedding trip," he planned cheerfully, to draw her mind from her mood. "on the car going north i'll get a whole drawing-room. i've always wanted a drawing-room, and you'll be my excuse. we'll sit and watch the fields and woods and cities slip past us, and know, when we get off, we can walk on the streets as freely as anybody. we'll be a genuine man and wife." his recital somehow stirred him. he took her in his arms, pressed her cheek to his, and after a moment kissed her lips with the trembling ardor of a bridegroom. cissie remained passive a moment, then put up he hands, turned his face away, and slowly released herself. peter was taken aback. "what _is_ the matter, cissie?" "i can't go, peter." peter looked at her with a feeling of strangeness. "can't go?" the girl shook her head. "you mean--you want us to live here?" cissie sat exceedingly still and barely shook her head. the mulatto had a sensation as if the portals which disclosed a new and delicious life were slowly closing against him. he stared into her oval face. "you don't mean, cissie--you don't mean you don't want to marry me?" the fagots on the hearth burned now with a cheerful flame. cissie stared at it, breathing rapidly from the top of her lungs. she seemed about to faint. as peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him. "look here, cissie," he said in a queer voice, "you--you don't mean, after all, that tump pack is--" "oh no! no!" her face showed her repulsion. then she drew a long breath and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal. "peter," she asked in a low tone, "did you ever think what we colored people are trying to reach?" she stared into his uncomprehending eyes. "i mean what is our aim, our goal, whom are we trying to be like?" "we aren't trying to be like any one." peter was entirely at a loss. "oh, yes, we are," cissie hurried on. "why do colored girls straighten their hair, bleach their skins, pinch their feet? aren't they trying to look like white girls?" peter agreed, wondering at her excitement. "and you went north to college, peter, so you could think and act like a white man--" peter resisted this at once; he was copying nobody. the whole object of college was to develop one's personality, to bring out-- the girl stopped his objections almost piteously. "oh, don't argue! you know arguing throws me off. i--now i've forgotten how i meant to say it!" tears of frustration welled up in her eyes. her mood was alarming, almost hysterical. peter began comforting her. "there, there, dear, dear cissie, what is the matter? don't say it at all." then, inconsistently, he added: "you said i copied white men. well, what of it?" cissie breathed her relief at having been given the thread of her discourse. she sat silent for a moment with the air of one screwing up her courage. "it's this," she said in an uncertain voice: "sometimes we--we--girls-- here in niggertown copy the wrong thing first." peter looked blankly at her. "the wrong thing first, cissie?" "oh, yes; we--we begin on clothes and--and hair and--and that isn't the real matter." "why, no-o-o, that isn't the real matter," said peter puzzled. cissie looked at his face and became hopeless. "oh, _don't_ you understand! lots of us--lots of us make that mistake! i--i did; so--so, peter, i can't go with you!" she flung out the last phrase, and suddenly collapsed on the arm of her chair, sobbing. peter was amazed. he got up, sat on the arm of his own chair next to hers and put his arms about her, bending over her, mothering her. her distress was so great that he said as earnestly as his ignorance permitted: "yes, cissie, i understand now." but his tone belied his words, and the girl shook her head. "yes, i do, cissie," he repeated emptily. but she only shook her head as she leaned over him, and her tears slowly formed and trickled down on his hand. then all at once old caroline's accusation against cissie flashed on peter's mind. she had stolen that dinner in the turkey roaster, after all. it so startled him that he sat up straight. cissie also sat up. she stopped crying, and sat looking into the fire. "you mean--morals?" said peter in a low tone. cissie barely nodded, her wet eyes fixed on the fire. "i see. i was stupid." the girl sat a moment, drawing deep breaths. at last she rose slowly. "well--i'm glad it's over. i'm glad you know." she stood looking at him almost composedly except for her breathing and her tear-stained face. "you see, peter, if you had been like tump pack or wince or any of the boys around here, it--it wouldn't have made much difference; but--but you went off and--and learned to think and feel like a white man. you-- you changed your code, peter." she gave a little shaken sound, something between a sob and a laugh. "i--i don't think th-that's very fair, peter, to--to go away an'--an' change an' come back an' judge us with yo' n-new code." cissie's precise english broke down. just then peter's logic caught at a point. "if you didn't know anything about my code, how do you know what i feel now?" he asked. she looked at him with a queer expression. "i found out when you kissed me under the arbor. it was too late then." she stood erect, with dismissal very clearly written in her attitude. peter walked out of the room. chapter viii with a certain feeling of clumsiness peter groped in the dark hall for his hat, then, as quietly as he could, let himself out at the door. outside he was surprised to find that daylight still lingered in the sky. he thought night had fallen. the sun lay behind the big hill, but its red rays pouring down through the boles of the cedars tinted long delicate avenues in the dusty atmosphere above his head. a sharp chill in the air presaged frost for the night. somewhere in the crescent a boy yodeled for his dog at about half-minute intervals, with the persistence of children. peter walked a little distance, but finally came to a stand in the dust, looking at the negro cabins, not knowing where to go or what to do. cissie's confession had destroyed all his plans. it had left him as adynamic as had his mother's death. it seemed to peter that there was a certain similarity between the two events; both were sudden and desolating. and just as his mother had vanished utterly from his reach, so now it seemed cissie was no more. cissie the clear-eyed, cissie the ambitious, cissie the refined, had vanished away, and in her place stood a thief. the thing was grotesque. peter began a sudden shuddering in the cold. then he began moving toward the empty cabin where he slept and kept his things. he moved along, talking to himself in the dusty emptiness of the crescent. he decided that he would go home, pack his clothes, and vanish. a st. louis boat would be down that night, and he would just have time to pack his clothes and catch it. he would not take his books, his philosophies. he would let them remain, in the newspapered room, until all crumbled into uniform philosophic dust, and the teachings of aristotle blew about niggertown. then, as he thought of traveling north, the vision of the honeymoon he had just planned revived his numb brain into a dismal aching. he looked back through the dusk at the dildine roof. it stood black against an opalescent sky. out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and green. the whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. he thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury of cissie, to tell her it made no difference; and somehow, just at that moment it seemed not to. then the point of view which peter had been four years acquiring swept away the impulse, and it left him moving toward his cabin again, empty, cold, and planless. he was drawn out of his reverie by the soft voice of a little negro boy asking him apprehensively whom he was talking to. peter stopped, drew forth a handkerchief and dabbed the moisture from his cold face in the meticulous fashion of college men. with the boy came a dog which was cautiously smelling peter's shoes and trousers. both boy and dog were investigating the phenomenon of peter. peter, in turn, looked down at them with a feeling that they had materialized out of nothing. "what did you say?" he asked vaguely. the boy was suddenly overcome with the excessive shyness of negro children, and barely managed to whisper: "i--i ast wh-who you wuz a-talkin' to." "was i talking?" the little negro nodded, undecided whether to stand his ground or flee. peter touched the child's crisp hair. "i was talking to myself," he said, and moved forward again. the child instantly gained confidence at the slight caress, took a fold of peter's trousers in his hand for friendliness, and the two trudged on together. "wh-whut you talkin' to yo' se'f for?" peter glanced down at the little black head that promised to think up a thousand questions. "i was wondering where to go." "lawsy! is you los' yo' way?" he stroked the little head with a rush of self-pity. "yes, i have, son; i've completely lost my way." the child twisted his head around and peered up alongside peter's arm. presently he asked: "ain't you mr. peter siner?" "yes." "ain't you de man whut's gwine to ma'y miss cissie dildine?" peter looked down at his small companion with a certain concern that his marriage was already gossip known to babes. "i'm peter siner," he repeated. "den i knows which way you wants to go," piped the youngster in sudden helpfulness. "you wants to go over to cap'n renfrew's place acrost de big hill. he done sont fuh you. mr. wince washington tol' me, ef i seed you, to tell you dat cap'n renfrew wants to see you. i dunno whut hit's about. i ast wince, an' he didn' know." peter recalled the message nan berry had given him some hours before. now the same summons had seeped around to him from another direction. "i--i'll show you de way to cap'n renfrew's ef--ef you'll come back wid me th'ugh de cedar glade," proposed the child. "i--i ain't skeered in de cedar glade, b-b-but hit's so dark i kain't see my way back home. i--i--" peter thanked him and declined his services. after all, he might as well go to see captain renfrew. he owed the old gentleman some thanks--and ten dollars. the only thing of which peter siner was aware during his walk over the big hill and through the village was his last scene with cissie. he went over it again and again, repeating their conversation, inventing new replies, framing new action, questioning more fully into the octoroon's vague confession and his benumbed acceptance of it. the moment his mind completed the little drama it started again from the very beginning. at captain renfrew's gate this mental mummery paused long enough for him to vacillate between walking in or going around and shouting from the back gate. it is a point of etiquette in hooker's bend that negroes shall enter a white house from the back stoop. peter had no desire to transgress this custom. on the other hand, if captain renfrew was receiving him as a fellow of harvard, the back door, in its way, would prove equally embarrassing. after a certain indecision he compromised by entering the front gate and calling the captain's name from among the scattered bricks of the old walk. the house lay silent, half smothered in a dark tangle of shrubbery. peter called twice before he heard the shuffle of house slippers, and then saw the captain's dressing-gown at the piazza steps. "is that you, peter?" came a querulous voice. "yes, captain. i was told you wanted to see me." "you've been deliberate in coming," criticized the old gentleman, testily. "i sent you word by some black rascal three days ago." "i just received the message to-day." peter remained discreetly at the gate. "yes; well, come in, come in. see if you can do anything with this damnable lamp." the old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing- gown and moved back. apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the whole content of the captain's summons to peter. there was something so characteristic in this incident that peter was moved to a vague sense of mirth. it was just like the old régime to call in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp. peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his study. there, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more delicate parts of the lamp. "it's extraordinary to me," criticized the captain, "why they can't make a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition." "has it been out of fix for three days?" asked peter, sorry that the old gentleman should have lacked a light for so long. "no," growled the captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last night; so i put it out and went to bed. i've been working at it this evening. there's a little hole in the tip,--if i could see it,--a hair- sized hole, painfully small. why any man wants to make gasolene lamps with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will become clogged i cannot conceive." peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if the captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more light, he thought he could unstop the hole. the captain looked at his helper and shook his head. "i am surprised at you, peter. when i was your age, i could see an aperture like that hole under the last quarter of the moon. in this strong light i could have--er--lunged the cleaner through it, sir. you must have strained your eyes in college." he paused, then added: "you'll find hand-lamps in any of the rooms fronting this porch. i don't know whether they have oil in them or not--the shiftless niggers that come around to take care of this building--no dependence to be put in them. when i try it myself, i do even worse." the old gentleman's tone showed that he was thawing out of his irritable mood, and peter sensed that he meant to be amusing in an austere, unsmiling fashion. the captain rubbed his delicate wrinkled hands together in a pleased fashion and sat down in a big porch chair to await peter's assembling of the lamp. the brown man started down the long piazza, in search of a hand-light. he found a lamp in the first room he entered, returned to the piazza, sat down on the edge of it, and began his tinkering. the old captain apparently watched him with profound satisfaction. presently, after the fashion of the senile, he began endless and minute instructions as to how the lamp should be cleaned. "take the wire in your left hand, peter,--that's right,--now hold the tip a little closer to the light--no, place the mantels on the right side--that's the way i do it. system...." the old man's monologue ran on and on, and became a murmur in peter's ears. it was rather soothing than otherwise. now and then it held tremulous vibrations that might have been from age or that might have been from some deep satisfaction mounting even to joy. but to peter that seemed hardly probable. no doubt it was senility. the captain was a tottery old man, past the age for any fundamental joy. night had fallen now, and a darkness, musky with autumn weeds, hemmed in the sphere of yellow light on the old piazza. a black-and-white cat materialized out of the gloom, purring, and arching against a pillar. the whole place was filled with a sense of endless leisure. the old man, the cat, the perfume of the weeds, soothed in peter even the rawness of his hurt at cissie. indeed, in a way, the old manor became a sort of apology for the octoroon girl. the height and the reach of the piazza, exaggerated by the darkness, suggested a time when retinues of negroes passed through its dignified colonnades. those black folk were a part of the place. they came and went, picked up and used what they could, and that was all life held for them. they were without wage, without rights, even to the possession of their own bodies; so by necessity they took what they could. that was only fifty-odd years ago. thus, in a way, peter's surroundings began a subtle explanation of and apology for cissie, the whole racial training of black folk in petty thievery. and that this should have touched cissie--the meanness, the pathos of her fate moved peter. the negro was aroused from his reverie by the old captain's getting out of his chair and saying, "very good," and then peter saw that he had finished the lamp. the two men rose and carried it into the study, where peter pumped and lighted it; a bit later its brilliant white light flooded the room. "quite good." the old captain stood rubbing his hands with his odd air of continued delight. "how do you like this place, anyway, peter?" he wrapped his gown around him, sat down in the old morris chair beside the book-piled table, and indicated another seat for peter. the mulatto took it, aware of a certain flexing of hooker's bend custom, where negroes, unless old or infirm, are not supposed to sit in the presence of whites. "do you mean the study, captain?" "yes, the study, the whole place." "it's very pleasant," replied peter; "it has the atmosphere of age." captain renfrew nodded. "these old places," pursued peter, "always give me an impression of statesmanship, somehow. i always think of grave old gentlemen busy with the cares of public policy." the old man seemed gratified. "you are sensitive to atmosphere. if i may say it, every southron of the old régime was a statesman by nature and training. the complete care of two or three hundred negroes, a regard for their bodily, moral, and spiritual welfare, inevitably led the master into the impersonal attitude of statecraft. it was a training, sir, in leadership, in social thinking, in, if you please, altruism." the old gentleman thumped the arm of his chair with a translucent palm. "yes, sir, negro slavery was god's great lesson to the south in altruism and loving-kindness, sir! my boy, i do believe with all my heart that the institution of slavery was placed here in god's country to rear up giants of political leadership, that our nation might weather the revolutions of the world. oh, the yankees are necessary! i know that!" the old captain held up a palm at peter as if repressing an imminent retort. "i know the yankees are the marthas of the nation. they furnish food and fuel to the ship of state, but, my boy, the reservoir of our country's spiritual and mental strength, the mary of our nation, must always be the south. virginia is the mother of presidents!" the captain's oration left him rather breathless. he paused a moment, then asked: "peter, have you ever thought that we men of the leisure class owe a debt to the world?" peter smiled. "i know the theory of the leisure class, but i've had very little practical experience with leisure." "well, that's a subject close to my heart. as a scholar and a thinker, i feel that i should give the fruits of my leisure to the world. er--in fact, peter, that is why i sent for you to come and see me." "why you sent for me?" peter was surprised at this turn. "precisely. you." here the old gentleman got himself out of his chair, walked across to one of a series of drawers in his bookcases, opened it, and took out a sheaf of papers and a quart bottle. he brought the papers and the bottle back to the table, made room for them, put the papers in a neat pile, and set the bottle at a certain distance from the heap. "now, peter, please hand me one of those wineglasses in the religious section of my library--i always keep two or three glasses among my religious works, in memory of the fact that our lord and master wrought a miracle at the feast of cana, especially to bless the cup. indeed, peter, thinking of that miracle at the wedding-feast, i wonder, sir, how the prohibitionists can defend their conduct even to their own consciences, because logically, sir, logically, the miracle of our gracious lord completely cuts away the ground from beneath their feet! "no wonder, when the mikado sent a japanese envoy to america to make a tentative examination of christianity as a proper creed for the state religion of japan--no wonder, with this miracle flouted by the prohibitionists, the embassy carried back the report that americans really have no faith in the religion they profess. shameful! shameful! place the glass there on the left of the bottle. a little farther away from the bottle, please, just a trifle more. thank you." the captain poured himself a tiny glassful, and its bouquet immediately filled the room. there was no guessing how old that whisky was. "i will not break the laws of my country, peter, no matter how godless and sacrilegious those laws may be; therefore i cannot offer you a drink, but you will observe a second glass among the religious works, and the bottle sits in plain view on the table--er--em." he watched peter avail himself of his opportunity, and then added, "now, you may just drink to me, standing, as you are, like that." they drank, peter standing, the old gentleman seated. "it is just as necessary," pursued the old connoisseur, when peter was reseated, "it is just as necessary for a gentleman to have a delicate palate for the tints of the vine as it is for him to have a delicate eye for the tints of the palette. nature bestowed a taste both in art and wine on man, which he should strive to improve at every opportunity. it is a gift from god. perhaps you would like another glass. no? then accommodate me." he drained this one, with peter standing, worked his withered lips back and forth to experience its full taste, then swallowed, and smacked. "now, peter," he said, "the reason i asked you to come to see me is that i need a man about this house. that will be one phase of your work. the more important part is that you shall serve as a sort of secretary. i have here a manuscript." he patted the pile of papers. "my handwriting is rather difficult. i want you to copy this matter out and get it ready for the printer." peter became more and more astonished. "are you offering me a permanent place, captain renfrew?" he asked. the old man nodded. "i need a man with a certain liberality of culture. i will no doubt have you run through books and periodicals and make note of any points germane to my thesis." peter looked at the pile of script on the table. "that is very flattering, captain; but the fact is, i came by your place at this hour because i am just in the act of leaving here on the steamboat to-night." the captain looked at peter with concern on his face. "leaving hooker's bend?" "yes, sir." "why?" peter hesitated. "well, my mother is dead--" "yes, but your--your--your work is still here, peter." the captain fell into a certain confusion. "a man's work, peter; a man's work." "do you mean my school-teaching?" then came a pause. the conversation somehow had managed to leave them both somewhat at sea. the captain began again, in a different tone: "peter, i wish you to remain here with me for another reason. i am an old man, peter. anything could happen to me here in this big house, and nobody would know it. i don't like to think of it." the old man's tone quite painted his fears. "i am not afraid of death, peter. i have walked before god all my life save in one or two points, which, i believe, in his mercy, he has forgiven me; but i cannot endure the idea of being found here some day in some unconsidered posture, fallen out of a chair, or a-sprawl on the floor. i wish to die with dignity, peter, as i have lived." "then you mean that you want me to stay here with you until--until the end, captain?" the old man nodded. "that is my desire, peter, for an honorarium which you yourself shall designate. at my death, you will receive some proper portion of my estate; in fact, the bulk of my estate, because i leave no other heirs. i am the last renfrew of my race, peter." peter grew more and more amazed as the old gentleman unfolded this strange proposal. what queerer, pleasanter berth could he find than that offered him here in the quietude of the old manor, among books, tending the feeble flame of this old aristocrat's life? an air of scholasticism hung about the library. in some corner of this dark oaken library his philosophies would rest comfortably. then it occurred to peter that he would have to continue his sleeping and eating in niggertown, and since his mother had died and his rupture with cissie, the squalor and smells of the crescent had become impossible. he told the old captain his objections as diplomatically as possible. the old man made short work of them. he wanted peter to sleep in the manor within calling distance, and he might begin this very night and stay on for a week or so as a sort of test whether he liked the position or not. the captain waited with some concern until peter agreed to a trial. after that the old gentleman talked on interminably of the south, of the suffrage movement, the destructive influence it would have on the home, the irish question, the indian question, whether the mound-builders did not spring from the two lost tribes of israel--an endless outpouring of curious facts, quaint reasoning, and extraordinary conclusions, all delivered with the great dignity and in the flowing periods of an orator. it was fully two o'clock in the morning when it occurred to the captain that his new secretary might like to go to bed. the old man took the hand-lamp which was still burning and led the way out to the back piazza past a number of doors to a corner bedroom. he shuffled along in his carpet slippers, followed by the black-and-white cat, which ran along, making futile efforts to rub itself against his lean shanks. peter followed in a sort of stupor from the flood of words, ideas, and strange fancies that had been poured into his ears. the captain turned off the piazza into one of those old-fashioned southern rooms with full-length windows, which were really glazed doors, a ceiling so high that peter could make out only vague concentric rings of stucco-work among the shadows overhead, and a floor space of ball- room proportions. in one corner was a huge canopy bed, across from it a clothes-press of dark wood, and in another corner a large screen hiding the bathing arrangements. peter's bedroom was a sleeping apartment, in the old sense of the word before the term "apartment" had lost its dignity. the captain placed the lamp on the great table and indicated peter's possession with a wave of the hand. "if you stay here, peter, i will put in a call-bell, so i can awaken you if i need you during the night. now i wish you healthful slumbers and pleasant dreams." with that the old gentleman withdrew ceremoniously. when the captain was gone, the mulatto remained standing in the vast expanse, marveling over this queer turn of fortune. why captain renfrew had selected him as a secretary and companion peter could not fancy. the magnificence of his surroundings revived his late dream of a honeymoon with cissie. certainly, in his fancy, he had visioned a honeymoon in pullman parlor cars and suburban bungalows. he had been mistaken. this great chamber rose about him like a corrected proof of his desire. into just such a room he would like to lead cissie; into this great room that breathed pride and dignity. what a glowing heart the girl would have made for its somber magnificence! he walked over to the full-length windows and opened them; then he unbolted the jalousies outside and swung them back. the musk of autumn weeds breathed in out of the darkness. peter drew a long breath, with a sort of wistful melting in his chest. chapter ix a turmoil aroused peter siner the next morning, and when he discovered where he was, in the big canopy bed in the great room, he listened curiously and heard a continuous chattering and quarreling. after a minute or two he recognized the voice of old rose hobbett. rose was cooking the captain's breakfast, and she performed this function in a kind of solitary rage. she banged the vessels, slammed the stove-eyes on and off, flung the stove-wood about, and kept up a snarling animadversion upon every topic that drifted through her kinky head. she called the kitchen a rat-hole, stated the captain must be as mean as the devil to live as long as he did, complained that no one ever paid any attention to her, that she might as well be a stray cat, and so on. as peter grew wider awake, the monotony of the old negress's rancor faded into an unobserved noise. he sat up on the edge of his bed between the parted curtains and divined there was a bath behind the screen in the corner of his room. sure enough, he found two frayed but clean towels, a pan, a pitcher, and a small tub all made of tin. peter assembled his find and began splashing his heavily molded chest with a feeling of well-being. as he splashed on the water, he amused himself by listening again to old rose. she was now complaining that some white young'uns had called her "raving rose." she hoped "god'lmighty would send down two she bears and eat 'em up." peter was amazed by the old crone's ability to maintain an unending flow of concentrated and aimless virulence. the kitchen of the renfrew manor was a separate building, and presently peter saw old rose carrying great platters across the weed-grown compound into the dining-room. she bore plate after plate piled high with cookery,--enough for a company of men. a little later came a clangor on a rusty triangle, as if she were summoning a house party. old rose did things in a wholesale spirit. peter started for his door, but when he had opened the shutter, he stood hesitating. breakfast introduced another delicate problem. he decided not to go to the dining-room at once, but to wait and allow captain renfrew to indicate whether he, peter, should break his fast with the master in the dining-room or with old rose in the kitchen. a moment later he saw the captain coming down the long back piazza. peter almost addressed his host, but the old southerner proceeded into the dining-room apparently without seeing peter at all. the guest was gathering his breath to call good morning, but took the cue with a negro's sensitiveness, and let his eyes run along the weeds in the compound. the drying stalks were woven with endless spider-webs, all white with frost. peter stood regarding their delicate geometries a moment longer and then reentered his room, not knowing precisely what to do. he could hear rose walking across the piazza to and from the dining- room, and the clink of tableware. a few minutes later a knock came at his door, and the old woman entered with a huge salver covered with steaming dishes. the negress came into the room scowling, and seemed doubtful for a moment just how to shut the door and still hold the tray with both hands. she solved the problem by backing against the door tremendously. then she saw peter. she straightened and stared at him with outraged dignity. "well, 'fo' gawd! is i bringin' dish-here breakfus' to a nigger?" "i suppose it's mine," agreed peter, amused. "but whuffo, whuffo, nigger, is it dat you ain't come to de kitchen an' eat off'n de shelf? is you sick?" peter admitted fair bodily vigor. "den whut de debbil is i got into!" cried rose, angrily. "i ain't gwine wuck at no sich place, ca'yin' breakfus' to a big beef uv a nigger, stout as a mule. say, nigger, wha-chu doin' in heah, anyway? hoccum dis?" peter tried to explain that he was there to do a little writing for the captain. "well, 'fo' gawd, when niggers gits to writin' fuh white folks, ants'll be jumpin' fuh bullfrogs--an havin' other niggers bring dey breakfusses. you jes as much a nigger as i is, peter siner, de brightes' day you ever seen!" peter began a conciliatory phrase. old rose banged the platter on the table and then threatened: "dis is de las' time i fetches a moufful to you, peter siner, or any other nigger. you ain't no black jesus, even ef you is a woods calf." peter paused in drawing a chair to the table. "what did you say, rose?" he asked sharply. "you heared whut i say." a wave of anger went over peter. "yes, i did. you ought to be ashamed to speak ill of the dead." the crone tossed her malicious head, a little abashed, perhaps, yet very glad she had succeeded in hurting peter. she turned and went out the door, mumbling something which might have been apology or renewed invectives. peter watched the old virago close the door and then sat down to his breakfast. his anger presently died away, and he sat wondering what could have happened to rose hobbett that had corroded her whole existence. did she enjoy her vituperation, her continual malice? he tried to imagine how she felt. the breakfast rose had brought him was delicious: hot biscuits of feathery lightness, three wide slices of ham, a bowl of scrambled eggs, a pot of coffee, some preserved raspberries, and a tiny glass of whisky. the plate which captain renfrew had set before his guest was a delicate dawn pink ringed with a wreath of holly. it was old worcester porcelain of about the decade of . the coffee-pot was really an old whieldon teapot in broad cauliflower design. age and careless heating had given the surface a fine reticulation. his cup and saucer, on the contrary, were thick pieces of ware such as the cabin-boys toss about on steamboats. the whole ceramic mélange told of the fortuities of english colonial and early american life, of the migration of families westward. no doubt, once upon a time, that dawn-pink worcester had married into a whieldon cauliflower family. a queer sort of genealogy might be traced among southern families through their mixtures of tableware. as peter mused over these implications of long ancestral lines, it reminded him that he had none. over his own past, over the lineage of nearly every negro in the south, hung a curtain. even the names of the colored folk meant nothing, and gave no hint of their kin and clan. at the end of the war between the states, peter's people had selected names for themselves, casually, as children pick up a pretty stone. they meant nothing. it occurred to peter for the first time, as he sat looking at the chinaware, that he knew nothing about himself; whether his kinsmen were valiant or recreant he did not know. even his own father he knew little about except that his mother had said his name was peter, like his own, and that he had gone down the river on a tie boat and was drowned. a faint sound attracted peter's attention. he looked out at his open window and saw old rose making off the back way with something concealed under her petticoat. peter knew it was the unused ham and biscuits that she had cooked. for once the old negress hurried along without railing at the world. she moved with a silent, but, in a way, self-respecting, flight. peter could see by the tilt of her head and the set of her shoulders that not only did her spoil gratify her enmity to mankind in general and the captain in particular, but she was well within her rights in her acquisition. she disappeared around a syringa bush, and was heard no more until she reappeared to cook the noon meal, as vitriolic as ever. * * * * * when peter entered the library, old captain renfrew greeted him with morning wishes, thus sustaining the fiction that they had not seen each other before, that morning. the old gentleman seemed pleased but somewhat excited over his new secretary. he moved some of his books aimlessly from one table to another, placed them in exact piles as if he were just about to plunge into heroic labor, and could not give time to such details once he had begun. as he arranged his books just so, he cleared his throat. "now, peter, we want to get down to this," he announced dynamically; "do this thing, shove this work out!" he started with tottery briskness around to his manuscript drawer, but veered off to the left to aline some magazines. "system, peter, system. without system one may well be hopeless of performing any great literary labor; but with system, the constant piling up of brick on brick, stone on stone--it's the way rome was built, my boy." peter made a murmur supposed to acknowledge the correctness of this view. eventually the old captain drew out his drawer of manuscript, stood fumbling with it uncertainly. now and then he glanced at peter, a genuine secretary who stood ready to help him in his undertaking. the old gentleman picked up some sheets of his manuscript, seemed about to read them aloud, but after a moment shook his head, and said, "no, we'll do that to-night," and restored them to their places. finally he turned to his helper. "now, peter," he explained, "in doing this work, i always write at night. it's quieter then,--less distraction. my mornings i spend downtown in conversation with my friends. if you should need me, peter, you can walk down and find me in front of the livery-stable. i sit there for a while each morning." the gravity with which he gave this schedule of his personal habits amused peter, who bowed with a serious, "very well, captain." "and in the meantime," pursued the old man, looking vaguely about the room, "you will do well to familiarize yourself with my library in order that you may be properly qualified for your secretarial labors." peter agreed again. "and now if you will get my hat and coat, i will be off and let you go to work," concluded the captain, with an air of continued urgency. peter became thoroughly amused at such an outcome of the old gentleman's headlong attack on his work,--a stroll down to the village to hold conversation with friends. the mulatto walked unsmilingly to a little closet where the captain hung his things. he took down the old gentleman's tall hat, a gray greatcoat worn shiny about the shoulders and tail, and a finely carved walnut cane. some reminiscence of the manners of butlers which peter had seen in theaters caused him to swing the overcoat across his left arm and polish the thin nap of the old hat with his right sleeve. he presented it to his employer with a certain duplication of a butler's obsequiousness. he offered the overcoat to the old gentleman's arms with the same air. then he held up the collar of the greatcoat with one hand and with the other reached under its skirts, and drew down the captain's long day coat with little jerks, as if he were going through a ritual. peter grew more and more hilarious over his barber's manners. it was his contribution to the old gentleman's literary labors, and he was doing it beautifully, so he thought. he was just making some minute adjustments of the collar when, to his amazement, captain renfrew turned on him. "damn it, sir!" he flared out. "what do you think you are? i didn't engage you for a kowtowing valet in waiting, sir! i asked you, sir, to come under my roof as an intellectual co-worker, as one gentleman asks another, and here you are making these niggery motions! they are disgusting! they are defiling! they are beneath the dignity of one gentleman to another, sir! what makes it more degrading, i perceive by your mannerism that you assume a specious servility, sir, as if you would flatter me by it!" the old lawyer's face was white. his angry old eyes jerked peter out of his slight mummery. the negro felt oddly like a grammar-school boy caught making faces behind his master's back. it shocked him into sincerer manners. "captain," he said with a certain stiffness, "i apologize for my mistake; but may i ask how you desire me to act?" "simply, naturally, sir," thundered the captain, "as one alumnus of harvard to another! it is quite proper for a young man, sir, to assist an old gentleman with his hat and coat, but without fripperies and genuflections and absurdities!" the old man's hauteur touched some spring of resentment in peter. he shook his head. "no, captain; our lack of sympathy goes deeper than manners. my position here is anomalous. for instance, i can talk to you sitting, i can drink with you standing, but i can't breakfast with you at all. i do that _in camera_, like a disgraceful divorce proceeding. it's precisely as i was treated coming down here south again; it's as i've been treated ever since i've been back; it's--" he paused abruptly and swallowed down the rancor that filled him. "no," he repeated in a different tone, "there is no earthly excuse for me to remain here, captain, or to let you go on measuring out your indulgences to me. there is no way for us to get together or to work together--not this far south. let me thank you for a night's entertainment and go." peter turned about, meaning to make an end of this queer adventure. the old captain watched him, and his pallor increased. he lifted an unsteady hand. "no, no, peter," he objected, "not so soon. this has been no trial, no fair trial. the little--little--er--details of our domestic life here, they will--er--arrange themselves, peter. gossip--talk, you know, we must avoid that." the old lawyer stood staring with strange eyes at his protégé. "i--i'm interested in you, peter. my actions may seem--odd, but--er--a negro boy going off and doing what you have done-- extraordinary. i--i have spoken to your mother, caroline, about you often. in fact, peter, i--i made some little advances in order that you might complete your studies. now, now, don't thank me! it was purely impersonal. you seemed bright. i have often thought we gentle people of the south ought to do more to encourage our black folk--not--not as social equals--" here the old gentleman made a wry mouth as if he had tasted salt. "stay here and look over the library," he broke off abruptly. "we can arrange some ground of--of common action, some--" he settled the lapels of his great-coat with precision, addressed his palm to the knob of his stick, and marched stiffly out of the library, around the piazza, and along the dismantled walk to the front gate. peter stood utterly astonished at this strange information. suddenly he ran after the old lawyer, and rounded the turn of the piazza in time to see him walk stiffly down the shaded street with tremulous dignity. the old gentleman was much the same as usual, a little shakier, perhaps, his tall hat a little more polished, his shiny gray overcoat set a little more snugly at the collar. chapter x the village of hooker's bend amuses itself mainly with questionable jests that range all the way from the slightly brackish to the hopelessly obscene. now, in using this type of anecdote, the hooker's- benders must not be thought to design an attack upon the decencies of life; on the contrary, they are relying on the fact that their hearers have, in the depths of their beings, a profound reverence for the object of their sallies. and so, by taking advantage of the moral shock they produce and linking it to the idea of an absurdity, they convert the whole psychical reaction into an explosion of humor. thus the ring of raconteurs telling blackguardly stories around the stoves in hooker's bend stores, are, in reality, exercising one another in the more delicate sentiments of life, and may very well be classed as a round table of sir galahads, _sans peur et sans reproche_. however, the best men weary in well doing, and for the last few days hooker's bend had switched from its intellectual staple of conversation to consider the comedy of tump pack's undoing. the incident held undeniably comic elements. for tump to start out carrying a forty-four, meaning to blow a rival out of his path, and to wind up hard at work, picking cotton at nothing a day for a man whose offer of three dollars a day he had just refused, certainly held the makings of a farce. on the heels of this came the news that peter siner meant to take advantage of tump's arrest and marry cissie dildine. old parson ranson was responsible for the spread of this last rumor. he had fumbled badly in his effort to hold peter's secret. not once, but many times, always guarded by a pledge of secrecy, had he revealed the approaching wedding. when pressed for a date, the old negro said he was "not at lib'ty to tell." up to this point white criticism viewed the stage-setting of the black comedy with the impersonal interest of a box party. some of the round table said they believed there would be a dead coon or so before the scrape was over. dawson bobbs, the ponderous constable, went to the trouble to telephone mr. cicero throgmartin, for whom tump was working, cautioning throgmartin to make sure that tump pack was in the sleeping-shack every night, as he might get wind of the wedding and take a notion to bolt and stop it. "you know, you can't tell what a fool nigger'll do," finished bobbs. throgmartin was mildly amused, promised the necessary precautions, and said: "it looks like peter has put one over on tump, and maybe a college education does help a nigger some, after all." the constable thought it was just luck. "well, i dunno," said throgmartin, who was a philosopher, and inclined to view every matter from various angles. "peter may of worked this out somehow." "have you heard what henry hooker done to siner in the land deal?" throgmartin said he had. "no, i don't mean _that_. i mean henry's last wrinkle in garnisheeing old ca'line's estate in his bank for the rest of the purchase money on the dilihay place." there was a pause. "you don't mean it!" "damn 'f i don't." the constable's sentence shook with suppressed mirth, and the next moment roars of laughter came over the telephone wire. "say, ain't he the bird!" "he's the original early bird. i'd like to get a snap-shot of the worm that gets away from him." both men laughed heartily again. "but, say," objected throgmartin, who was something of a lawyer himself,--as, indeed, all southern men are,--"i thought the sons and daughters of benevolence owed hooker, not peter siner, nor ca'line's estate." "well, it _is_ the sons and daughters, but ca'line was one of 'em, and they ain't no limited li'bility 'sociation. henry can jump on anything any of 'em's got. henry got the persimmon to bring him a copy of their by-laws." "well, i swear! say, if henry wasn't kind of held back by his religion, he'd use a gun, wouldn't he?" "i dunno. i can say this for henry's religion: 'it's jest like henry's wife,--it's the dearest thing to his heart; he'd give his life for it, but it don't do nobody a damn bit of good except jest henry.'" the constable's little eyes twinkled as he heard throgmartin roaring with laughter and sputtering appreciative oaths. at that moment a ringing of the bell jarred the ears of both telephonists. a voice asked for dr. jallup. it was an ill time to interrupt two gentlemen. the flair of a jest is lost in a pause. the officer stated sharply that he was the constable of wayne county and was talking business about the county's prisoners. his tone was so charged with consequence that the voice that wanted a doctor apologized hastily and ceased. came a pause in which neither man found anything to say. laughter is like that,--a gay bubble that a touch will destroy. presently bobbs continued, gravely enough: "talking about siner, he's stayin' up at old man renfrew's now." "'at so?" "old rose hobbett swears he's doin' some sort of writin' up there and livin' in one of the old man's best rooms." "hell he is!" "yeah?" the constable's voice questioned throgmartin's opinion about such heresy and expressed his own. "d' recken it's so? old rose is such a thief and a liar." "nope," declared the constable, "the old nigger never would of made up a lie like that,--never would of thought of it. old cap'n renfrew's gettin' childish; this nigger's takin' advantage of it. down at the liver'-stable the boys were talkin' about siner goin' to git married, an' dern if old man renfrew didn't git cut up about it!" "well," opined throgmartin, charitably, "the old man livin' there all by himself--i reckon even a nigger is some comp'ny. they're funny damn things, niggers is; never know a care nor trouble. lord! i wish i was as care-free as they are!" "don't you, though!" agreed the constable, with the weight of the white man's burden on his shoulders. for this is a part of the southern credo,--that all negroes are gay, care-free, and happy, and that if one could only be like the negroes, gay, care-free, and happy--ah, if one could only be like the negroes! none of this gossip reached peter directly, but a sort of back-wash did catch him keenly through young sam arkwright and serve as a conundrum for several days. one morning peter was bringing an armful of groceries up the street to the old manor, and he met the boy coming in the opposite direction. the negro's mind was centered on a peculiar problem he had found in the renfrew library, so, according to a habit he had acquired in boston, he took the right-hand side of the pavement, which chanced to be the inner side. this violated a hooker's-bend convention, which decrees that when a white and a black meet on the sidewalk, the black man invariably shall take the outer side. for this _faux pas_ the gangling youth stopped peter, fell to abusing and cursing him for his impudence, his egotism, his attempt at social equality,--all of which charges, no doubt, were echoes from the round table. such wrath over such an offense was unusual. ordinarily, a white villager would have thought several uncomplimentary things about peter, but would have said nothing. peter stopped with a shock of surprise, then listened to the whole diatribe with a rising sense of irritation and irony. finally, without a word, he corrected his mistake by retracing his steps and passing sam again, this time on the outside. peter walked on up the street, outwardly calm, but his ears burned, and the queer indignity stuck in his mind. as he went along he invented all sorts of ironical remarks he might have made to arkwright, which would have been unwise; then he thought of sober reasoning he could have used, which would perhaps have been just as ill-advised. still later he wondered why arkwright had fallen into such a rage over such a trifle. peter felt sure there was some contributing rancor in the youth's mind. perhaps he had received a scolding at home or a whipping at school, or perhaps he was in the midst of one of those queer attacks of megalomania from which adolescents are chronic sufferers. peter fancied this and that, but he never came within hail of the actual reason. when the brown man reached the old manor, the quietude of the library, with its blackened mahogany table, its faded green axminster, the meridional globe with its dusty twinkle, banished the incident from his mind. he returned to his work of card-indexing the captain's books. he took half a dozen at a time from the shelves, dusted them on the piazza, then carried them to the embrasure of the window, which offered a pleasant light for reading and for writing the cards. he went through volume after volume,--speeches by clay, calhoun, yancy, prentiss, breckenridge; an old life of general taylor, foxe's "book of martyrs"; a collection of the old middle-english dramatists, such as lillo, garrick, arthur murphy, charles macklin, george colman, charles coffey, men whose plays have long since declined from the boards and disappeared from the reading-table. the captain's collection of books was strongly colored by a religious cast,--john wesley's sermons, charles wesley's hymns; a treatise presenting a biblical proof that negroes have no souls; a little book called "flowers gathered," which purported to be a compilation of the sayings of ultra-pious children, all of whom died young; an old book called "elements of criticism," by henry home of kames; another tome entitled "studies of nature," by st. pierre. this last was a long argument for the miraculous creation of the world as set forth in genesis. the proof offered was a résumé of the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms, showing their perfect fitness for man's use, and the immediate induction was that they were designed for man's use. still another work calculated the exact age of the earth by the naïve method of counting the generations from adam to christ, to the total adding eighteen hundred and eighty-five years (for the book was written in ), and the original six days it required the lord to build the earth. by referring to genesis and finding out precisely what the creator did on the morning of the first day, the writer contrived to bring his calculation of the age of the earth and everything in the world to a precision of six hours, give or take,--a somewhat closer schedule than that made by the tennessee river boats coming up from st. louis. these and similar volumes formed the scientific section of captain renfrew's library, and it was this paucity of the natural sciences that formed the problem which peter tried to solve. all scientific additions came to an abrupt stop about the decade of - . that was the date when charles darwin's great fructifying theory, enunciated in , began to seep into the south. in the captain's library the only notice of evolution was a book called "darwinism dethroned." as for the elaborations of the darwinian hypothesis by spencer, fiske, devries, weismann, haeckel, kidd, bergson, and every subsequent philosophic or biologic writer, all these men might never have written a line so far as captain renfrew's library was informed. now, why such extraordinary occlusions? why should captain renfrew deny himself the very commonplaces of thought, theories familiarly held by the rest of america, and, indeed, by all the rest of the civilized world? musing by the window, peter succeeded in stating his problem more broadly: why was captain renfrew an intellectual reactionist? the old gentleman was the reverse of stupid. why should he confine his selection of books to a few old oddities that had lost their battle against a theory which had captured the intellectual world fifty years before? nor was it captain renfrew alone. now and then peter saw editorials appearing in leading southern journals, seriously attacking the evolutionary hypothesis. ministers in respectable churches still fulminated against it. peter knew that the whole south still clings, in a way, to the miraculous and special creation of the earth as described in genesis. it clings with an intransigentism and bitterness far exceeding other part of america. why? to peter the problem appeared insoluble. he sat by the window lost in his reverie. just outside the ledge half a dozen english sparrows abused one another with chirps that came faintly through the small diamond panes. their quick movements held peter's eyes, and their endless quarreling presently recalled his episode with young arkwright. it occurred to him, casually, that when arkwright grew up he would subscribe to every reactionary doctrine set forth in the library peter was indexing. with that thought came a sort of mental flare, as if he were about to find the answer to the whole question through the concrete attack made on him by sam. it is an extraordinary feeling,--the sudden, joyful dawn of a new idea. peter sat up sharply and leaned forward with a sense of being right on the fringe of a new and a great perception. young arkwright, the old captain, the whole south, were unfolding themselves in a vast answer, when a movement outside the window caught the negro's introspective eyes. a girl was passing; a girl in a yellow dress was passing the renfrew gate. even then peter would not have wavered in his synthesis had not the girl paused slightly and given a swift side glance at the old manor. then the man in the window recognized cissie dildine. a slight shock traveled through siner's body at the sight of cissie's colorless face and darkened eyes. he stood up abruptly, with a feeling that he had some urgent thing to say to the young woman. his sharp movement toppled over the big globe. the crash caused the girl to stop and look. for a moment they stood thus, the girl in the chill street, the man in the pleasant window, looking at each other. next moment cissie hurried on up the village street toward the arkwright house. no doubt she was on her way to cook the noon meal. peter remained standing at the window, with a heavily beating heart. he watched her until she vanished behind a wing of the shrubbery in the renfrew yard. when she had gone, he looked at his books and cards, sat down, and tried to resume his indexing. but his mind played away from it like a restive horse. it had been two weeks since he last saw cissie. two weeks.... his nerves vibrated like the strings of a pianoforte. he had scarcely thought of her during the fortnight; but now, having seen her, he found himself powerless to go on with his work. he pottered a while longer among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. they appeared an utter futility. why index a lot of nonsense? somehow this recalled his flare, his adumbration of some great idea connected with young arkwright and the old captain, and the south. he put his trembling nerves to work, trying to recapture his line of thought. he sat for ten minutes, following this mental train, then that, losing one, groping for another. his thoughts were jumpy. they played about arkwright, the captain, cissie, his mother's death, tump pack in prison, the quarrel between the persimmon and jim pink staggs. the whole of niggertown came rushing down upon him, seizing him in its passion and dustiness and greasiness, putting to flight all his cultivated white-man ideas. after half an hour's searching he gave it up. before he left the room he stooped, and tried to set up again the globe that the passing of the girl had caused him to throw down; but its pivot was out of plumb, and he had to lean it against the window-seat. the sight of captain renfrew coming in at the gate sent peter to his room. the hour was near twelve, and it had become a little point of household etiquette for the mulatto and the white man not to be together when old rose jangled the triangle. by this means they forestalled the mute discourtesy of the old captain's walking away from his secretary to eat. the subject of their separate meals had never been mentioned since their first acrimonious morning. the matter had dropped into the abeyance of custom, just as the old gentleman had predicted. peter had left open his jalousies, but his windows were closed, and now as he entered he found his apartment flooded with sunshine and filled with that equable warmth that comes of straining sunbeams through glass. he prepared for dinner with his mind still hovering about cissie. he removed a book and a lamp from the lion-footed table, and drew up an old chair with which the captain had furnished his room. it was a delicate old heppelwhite of rosewood. it had lost a finial from one of its back standards, and a round was gone from the left side. peter never moved the chair that vague plans sometime to repair it did not occur to him. when he had cleared his table and placed his chair beside it, he wandered over to his tall west window and stood looking up the street through the brilliant sunshine, toward the arkwright home. no one was in sight. in hooker's bend every one dines precisely at twelve, and at that hour the streets are empty. it would be some time before cissie came back down the street on her way to niggertown. she first would have to wash and put away the arkwright dishes. it would be somewhere about one o'clock. nevertheless, he kept staring out through the radiance of the autumn sunlight with an irrational feeling that she might appear at any moment. he was afraid she would slip past and he not see her at all. the thought disturbed him somewhat. it kept him sufficiently on the alert to stand tapping the balls of his fingers against the glass and looking steadily toward the arkwright house. presently the watcher perceived that a myriad spider-webs filled the sunshine with a delicate dancing glister. it was the month of voyaging spiders. invisible to peter, the tiny spinners climbed to the tip-most twigs of the dead weeds, listed their abdomens, and lassoed the wind with gossamer lariats; then they let go and sailed away to a hazard of new fortunes. the air was full of the tiny adventurers. as he stared up the street, peter caught the glint of these invisible airships whisking away to whatever chance might hold for them. there was something epic in it. it recalled to the mulatto's mind some of fabre's lovely descriptions. it reminded him of two or three books on entomology which he had left in his mother's cabin. he felt he ought to go after them while the spiders were migrating. he suddenly made up his mind he would go at once, as soon as he had had dinner; somewhere about one o'clock. he looked again at the arkwright house. the thought of walking down the street with cissie, to get his books, quickened his heart. he was still at the window when his door opened and old rose entered with his dinner. she growled under her breath all the way from the door to the table on which she placed the tray. only a single phrase detached itself and stood out clearly amid her mutterings, "hope it chokes you." peter arranged his chair and table with reference to the window, so he could look up the street while he was eating his dinner. the ill-wishing rose had again furnished a gourmet's meal, but peter's preoccupation prevented its careful and appreciative gustation. an irrational feeling of the octoroon's imminence spurred him to fast eating. he had hardly begun his soup before he found himself drinking swiftly, looking up the street over his spoon, as if he meant to rush out and swing aboard a passing train. siner checked his precipitation, annoyed at himself. he began again, deliberately, with an attempt to keep his mind on the savor of his food. he even thought of abandoning his little design of going for the books; or he would go at a different hour, or to-morrow, or not at all. he told himself he would far better allow cissie dildine to pass and repass unspoken to, instead of trying to arrange an accidental meeting. but the brown man's nerves wouldn't hear to it. that automatic portion of his brain and spinal column which, physiologists assert, performs three fourths of a man's actions and conditions nine tenths of his volitions-- that part of peter wouldn't consider it. it began to get jumpy and scatter havoc in peter's thoughts at the mere suggestion of not seeing cissie. imperceptibly this radical left wing of his emotions speeded up his meal, again. he caught himself, stopped his knife and fork in the act of rending apart a broiled chicken. "confound it! i'll start when she comes in sight, no matter whether i've finished this meal or not," he promised himself. and suddenly he felt unhurried, in the midst of a large leisure, with a savory broiled chicken dinner before him,--not exactly before him, either; most of it had been stuffed away. only the fag-end remained on his plate. a perfectly good meal had been ruined by an ill-timed resistance to temptation. the glint of a yellow dress far up the street had just prompted him to swift action when the door opened and old rose put her head in to say that captain renfrew wanted to see peter in the library. the brown man came to a shocked standstill. "what! right now?" he asked. "yeah, right now," carped rose. "ever'thing he wants, he wants right now. he's been res'less as a cat in a bulldog's den ever sence he come home fuh dinner. dunno whut's come into he ole bones, runnin' th'ugh his dinner lak a razo'-back." she withdrew in a continued mumble of censure. peter cast a glance up the street, timed cissie's arrival at the front gate, picked up his hat, and walked briskly to the library in the hope of finishing any business the captain might have, in time to encounter the octoroon. he even began making some little conversational plans with which he could meet cissie in a simple, unstudied manner. he recalled with a certain satisfaction that he had not said a word of condemnation the night of cissie's confession. he would make a point of that, and was prepared to argue that, since he had said nothing, he meant nothing. in fact he was prepared to throw away the truth completely and enter the conversation as an out-and-out opportunist, alleging whatever appeared to fit the occasion, as all men talk to all women. the old captain was just getting into his chair as peter entered. he paused in the midst of lowering himself by the chair-arms and got erect again. he began speaking a little uncertainly: "ah--by the way, peter--i sent for you--" "yes, sir." peter looked out at the window. the old gentleman scrutinized peter a moment; then his faded eyes wandered about the library. "still working at the books, cross-indexing them--" "yes, sir." peter could divine by the crinkle of his nerves the very loci of the girl as she passed down the thoroughfare. "very good," said the old lawyer, absently. he was obviously preoccupied with some other topic. "very good," he repeated with racking deliberation; "quite good. how did that globe get bent?" peter, looking at it, did not remember either knocking it over or setting it up. "i don't know," he said rapidly. "i hadn't noticed it." "old rose did it," meditated the captain aloud, "but it's no use to accuse her of it; she'd deny it. and yet, on the other hand, peter, she'll be nervous until i do accuse her of it. she'll be dropping things, breaking up my china. i dare say i'd best accuse her at once, storm at her some to quiet her nerves, and get it over." this monologue spurred peter's impatience into an agony. "i believe you were wanting me, captain?" he suggested, with a certain urge for action. the captain's little pleasantry faded. he looked at peter and became uncomfortable again. "well, yes, peter. downtown i heard--well, a rumor connected with you--" such an extraordinary turn caught the attention of even the fidgety peter. he looked at his employer and wondered blankly what he had heard. "i don't want to intrude on your private affairs, peter, not at all-- not--not in the least--" "no-o-o," agreed peter, completely at a loss. the old gentleman rubbed his thin hands together, lifted his eyebrows up and down nervously. "are--are you about to--to leave me, peter?" peter was greatly surprised at the slightness and simplicity of this question and at the evidence of emotion it carried. "why, no," he cried; "not at all! who told you i was? it is a deep gratification to me--" "to be exact," proceeded the old man, with a vague fear still in his eyes, "i heard you were going to marry." "marry!" this flaw took peter's sails even more unexpectedly than the other. "captain, who in the world--who could have told--" "are you?" "no." "you aren't?" "indeed, no!" "i heard you were going to marry a negress here in town called cissie dildine." a question was audible in the silence that followed this statement. the obscure emotion that charged all the old man's queries affected peter. "i am not, captain," he declared earnestly; "that's settled." "oh--you say it's settled," picked up the old lawyer, delicately. "yes." "then you had thought of it?" immediately, however, he corrected this breach of courtesy into which his old legal habit of cross-questioning had led him. "well, at any rate," he said in quite another voice, "that eases my mind, peter. it eases my mind. it was not only, peter, the thought of losing you, but this girl you were thinking of marrying--let me warn you, peter--she's a negress." the mulatto stared at the strange objection. "a negress!" the old man paused and made that queer movement with his wrinkled lips as if he tasted some salty flavor. "i--i don't mean exactly a--a negress," stammered the old gentleman; "i mean she's not a--a good girl, peter; she's a--a thief, in fact--she's a thief--a thief, peter. i couldn't endure for you to marry a thief, peter." it seemed to peter siner that some horrible compulsion kept the old captain repeating over and over the fact that cissie dildine was a thief, a thief, a thief. the word cut the very viscera in the brown man. at last, when it seemed the old gentleman would never cease, peter lifted a hand. "yes, yes," he gasped, with a sickly face, "i--i've heard that before." he drew a shaken breath and moistened his lips. the two stood looking at each other, each profoundly at a loss as to what the other meant. old captain renfrew collected himself first. "that is all, peter." he tried to lighten his tones. "i think i'll get to work. let me see, where do i keep my manuscript?" peter pointed mechanically at a drawer as he walked out at the library door. once outside, he ran to the front piazza, then to the front gate, and with a racing heart stood looking up and down the sleepy thoroughfare. the street was quite empty. chapter xi old captain renfrew was a trustful, credulous soul, as, indeed, most gentleman who lead a bachelor's life are. such men lack that moral hardening and whetting which is obtained only amid the vicissitudes of a home; they are not actively and continuously engaged in the employment and detection of chicane; want of intimate association with a woman and some children begets in them a soft and simple way of believing what is said to them. and their faith, easily raised, is just as easily shattered. their judgment lacks training. peter siner's simple assertion to the old captain that he was not going to marry cissie dildine completely allayed the old gentleman's uneasiness. even the further information that peter had had such a marriage under advisement, but had rejected it, did not put him on his guard. from long non-intimacy with any human creature, the old legislator had forgotten that human life is one long succession of doing the things one is not going to do; he had forgotten, if he ever knew, that the human brain is primarily not a master, but a servant; its function is not to direct, but to devise schemes and apologies to gratify impulses. it is the ways and means committee to the great legislature of the body. for several days after his fear that peter siner would marry cissie dildine old captain renfrew was as felicitous as a lover newly reconciled to his mistress. he ambled between the manor and the livery- stable with an abiding sense of well-being. when he approached his home in the radiance of high noon and saw the roof of the old mansion lying a bluish gray in the shadows of the trees, it filled his heart with joy to feel that it was not an old and empty house that awaited his coming, but that in it worked a busy youth who would be glad to see him enter the gate. the fear of some unattended and undignified death which had beset the old gentleman during the last eight or ten years of his life vanished under peter's presence. when he thought of it at all now, he always previsioned himself being lifted in peter's athletic arms and laid properly on his big four-poster. at times, when peter sat working over the books in the library, the captain felt a prodigious urge to lay a hand on the young man's broad and capable shoulder. but he never did. again, the old lawyer would sit for minutes at a time watching his secretary's regular features as the brown man pursued his work with a trained intentness. the old gentleman derived a deep pleasure from such long scrutinies. it pleased him to imagine that, when he was young, he had possessed the same vigor, the same masculinity, the same capacity for persistent labor. indeed, all old gentlemen are prone to choose the most personable and virile young man they can find for themselves to have been like. the two men had little to say to each other. their thoughts beat to such different tempos that any attempt at continued speech discovered unequal measures. as a matter of fact, in all comfortable human conversation, words are used as mere buoys dropped here and there to mark well-known channels of thought and feeling. similarity of mental topography is necessary to mutual understanding. between any two generations the landscape is so changed as to be unrecognizable. our fathers are monarchists; our sons, bolsheviki. old rose hobbett was more of an age with the captain, and these two talked very comfortably as the old virago came and went with food at meal-time. for instance, the captain always asked his servant if she had fed his cat, and old rose invariably would sulk and poke out her lips and put off answering to the last possible moment of insolence, then would grumble out that she was jes 'bout to feed the varmint, an' 't wuz funny nobody couldn't give a hard-wuckin' colored woman breathin'-space to turn roun' in. this reply was satisfactory to the captain, because he knew what it meant,--that rose had half forgotten the cat, and had meant wholly to forget it, but since she had been snapped up, so to speak, in the very act of forgetting, she would dole it out a piece or two of the meat that she had meant to abscond with as soon as the dishes were done. while rose was fulminating, the old gentleman recalled his bent globe and decided the moment had come for a lecture on that point. it always vaguely embarrassed the captain to correct rose, and this increased his dignity. now he cleared his throat in a certain way that brought the old negress to attention, so well they knew each other. "by the way, rose, in the future i must request you to use extraordinary precautions in cleansing and dusting articles of my household furniture, or, in case of damage, i shall be forced to withhold an indemnification out of your pay." eight or ten years ago, when the captain first repeated this formula to his servant, the roll and swing of his rhetoric, and the last word, "pay," had built up lively hopes in rose that the old gentleman was announcing an increase in her regular wage of a dollar a week. experience, however, had long since corrected this faulty interpretation. she came to a stand in the doorway, with her kinky gray head swung around, half puzzled, wholly rebellious. "whut is i bruk now?" "my globe." the old woman turned about with more than usual innocence. "why, i ain't tech yo' globe!" "i foresaw that," agreed the captain, with patient irony, "but in the future don't touch it more carefully. you bent its pivot the last time you refrained from handling it." "but i tell you i ain't tech yo' globe!" cried the negress, with the anger of an illiterate person who feels, but cannot understand, the satire leveled at her. "i agree with you," said the captain, glad the affair was over. this verbal ducking into the cellar out of the path of her storm stirred up a tempest. "but i tell you i ain't bruk it!" "that's what i said." "yeah, yeah, yeah," she flared; "you says i ain't, but when you says i ain't, you means i is, an' when you says i is, you means i ain't. dat's de sort o' flapjack i's wuckin' fur!" the woman flirted out of the dining-room, and the old gentleman drew another long breath, glad it was over. he really had little reason to quarrel about the globe, bent or unbent; he never used it. it sat in his study year in and year out, its dusty twinkle brightened at long intervals by old rose's spiteful rag. the captain ate on placidly. there had been a time when he was dubious about such scenes with rose. once he felt it beneath his dignity as a southern gentleman to allow any negro to speak to him disrespectfully. he used to feel that he should discharge her instantly and during the first years of their entente had done so a number of times. but he could get no one else who suited him so well; her biscuits, her corn-light- bread, her lye-hominy, which only the old darkies know how to make. and, to tell the truth, he missed the old creature herself, her understanding of him and his ideas, her contemporaneity; and no one else would work for a dollar a week. presently in the course of his eating the old gentleman required another biscuit, and he wanted a hot one. three mildly heated disks lay on a plate before him, but they had been out of the oven for five minutes and had been reduced to an unappetizing tepidity. a little hand-bell sat beside the captain's plate whose special use was to summon hot biscuits. now, the old lawyer looked at its worn handle speculatively. he was not at all sure rose would answer the bell. she would say she hadn't heard it. he felt faintly disgruntled at not foreseeing this exigency and buttering two biscuits while they were hot, or even three. he considered momentarily a project of going after a hot biscuit for himself, but eventually put it by. south of the mason-dixon line, self- help is half-scandal. at last, quite dubiously, he did pick up the bell and gave it a gentle ring, so if old rose chose not to hear it, she probably wouldn't: thus he could believe her and not lose his temper and so widen an already uncomfortable breach. to the captain's surprise, the old creature not only brought the biscuits, but she did it promptly. no sooner had she served them, however, than the captain saw she really had returned with a new line of defense. she mumbled it out as usual, so that her employer was forced to guess at a number of words: "dat nigger, peter, mus' 'a' busted yo' gl--" "no, he didn't." "mus' uv." "no, he didn't. i asked him, and he said he didn't." the old harridan stared, and her speech suddenly became clear-cut: "well, 'fo' gawd, i says i didn't, too!" at this point the captain made an unintelligible sound and spread the butter on his hot biscuit. "he's jes a nigger, lak i is," stated the cook, warmly. the captain buttered a second hot biscuit. "we's jes two niggers." the captain hoped she would presently sputter herself out. "now look heah," cried the crone, growing angrier and angrier as the reaches of the insult spread itself before her, "is you gwine to put one o' us niggers befo' de udder? ca'se ef you is, i mus' say, it's kady- lock-a-do' wid me." the captain looked up satirically. "what do you mean by katie-lock-the-door with you?" he asked, though he had an uneasy feeling that he knew. "you know whut i means. i means i 's gwine to leab dis place." "now look here, rose," protested the lawyer, with dignity, "peter siner occupies almost a fiduciary relation to me." the old negress stared with a slack jaw. "a relation o' yo's!" the lawyer hesitated some seconds, looking at the hag. his high-bred old face was quite inscrutable, but presently he said in a serious voice: "peter occupies a position of trust with me, rose." "yeah," mumbled rose; "i see you trus' him." "one day he is going to do me a service, a very great service, rose." the hag continued looking at him with a stubborn expression. "you know better than any one else, rose, my dread of some--some unmannerly death--" the old woman made a sound that might have meant anything. "and peter has promised to stay with me until--until the end." the old negress considered this solemn speech, and then grunted out: "which en'?" "which end?" the captain was irritated. "yeah; yo' en' or peter's en'?" "by every law of probability, peter will outlive me." "yeah, but peter 'll come to a en' wid you when he ma'ies dat stuck-up yellow fly-by-night, cissie dildine." "he's not going to marry her," said the captain, comfortably. "huh!" "peter told me he didn't intend to marry cissie dildine." "shu! then whut fur dey go roun' peepin' at each other lak a couple o' niggers roun' a haystack?" the old lawyer was annoyed. "peeping where?" "why, right in front o' dis house, dat's wha; ever' day when dat hussy passes up to de arkwrights', wha she wucks. she pokes along an' walls her eyes roun' at dis house lak a calf wid de splivins." "that going on now?" "ever' day." a deep uneasiness went through the old man. he moistened his lips. "but peter said--" "good gawd! mars' renfrew, whut diff'ence do it make whut peter say? ain't you foun' out yit when a he-nigger an' a she-nigger gits to peepin' at each udder, whut dey says don't lib in de same neighbo'hood wid whut dey does?" this was delivered with such energy that it completely undermined the captain's faith in peter, and the fact angered the old gentleman. "that'll do, rose; that'll do. that's all i need of you." the old crone puffed up again at this unexpected flare, and went out of the room, plopping her feet on floor and mumbling. among these ungracious sounds the captain caught, "blin' ole fool!" but there was no need becoming offended and demanding what she meant. her explanation would have been vague and unsatisfactory. the verjuice which old rose had sprinkled over peter and cissie by calling them "he-nigger" and "she-nigger" somehow minimized them, animalized them in the old lawyer's imagination. rose's speech was charged with such contempt for her own color that it placed the mulatto and the octoroon down with apes and rabbits. the lawyer fought against his feeling, for the sake of his secretary, who had come to occupy so wide a sector of his comfort and affection. yet the old virago evidently spoke from a broad background of experience. she was at least half convincing. while the captain repelled her charge against his quiet, hard-working brown helper, he admitted it against cissie dildine, whom he did not know. she was an animal, a female centaur, a wanton and a strumpet, as all negresses are wantons and strumpets. all white men in the south firmly believe that. they believe it with a peculiar detestation; and since they used these persons very profitably for a hundred and fifty years as breeding animals, one might say they believe it a trifle ungratefully. chapter xii the semi-daily passings of cissie dildine before the old renfrew manor on her way to and from the arkwright home upset peter siner's working schedule to an extraordinary degree. after watching for two or three days, peter worked out a sort of time- table for cissie. she passed up early in the morning, at about five forty-five. he could barely see her then, and somehow she looked very pathetic hurrying along in the cold, dim light of dawn. after she had cooked the arkwright breakfast, swept the arkwright floors, dusted the arkwright furniture, she passed back toward niggertown, somewhere near nine. about eleven o'clock she went up to cook dinner, and returned at one or two in the afternoon. occasionally, she made a third trip to get supper. this was as exactly as peter could predict the arrivals and departures of cissie, and the schedule involved a large margin of uncertainty. for half an hour before cissie passed she kept peter watching the clock at nervous intervals, wondering if, after all, she had gone by unobserved. invariably, he would move his work to a window where he had the whole street under his observation. then he would proceed with his indexing with more and more difficulty. at first the paragraphs would lose connection, and he would be forced to reread them. then the sentences would drop apart. immediately before the girl arrived, the words themselves grew anarchic. they stared him in the eye, each a complete entity, self-sufficient, individual, bearing no relation to any other words except that of mere proximity,--like a spelling lesson. only by an effort could peter enforce a temporary cohesion among them, and they dropped apart at the first slackening of the strain. strange to say, when the octoroon actually was walking past, peter did not look at her steadily. on the contrary, he would think to himself: "how little i care for such a woman! my ideal is thus and so--" he would look at her until she glanced across the yard and saw him sitting in the window; then immediately he bent over his books, as if his stray glance had lighted on her purely by chance, as if she were nothing more to him than a passing dray or a fluttering leaf. indeed, he told himself during these crises that he had no earthly interest in the girl, that she was not the sort of woman he desired,--while his heart hammered, and the lines of print under his eyes blurred into gray streaks across the page. one afternoon peter saw cissie pass his gate, hurrying, almost running, apparently in flight from something. it sent a queer shock through him. he stared after her, then up and down the street. he wondered why she ran. even when he went to bed that night the strangeness of cissie's flight kept him awake inventing explanations. * * * * * none of peter's preoccupations was lost upon captain renfrew. none is so suspicious as a credulous man aroused. after rose had struck her blow at the secretary, the old gentleman noted all of peter's permutations and misconstrued a dozen quite innocent actions on peter's part into signs of bad faith. by a little observation he identified cissie dildine and what he saw did not reëstablish his peace of mind. on the contrary, it became more than probable that the cream-colored negress would lure peter away. this possibility aroused in the old lawyer a grim, voiceless rancor against cissie. in his thoughts he linked the girl with every manner of evil design against peter. she was an adventuress, a cyprian, a seductress attempting to snare peter in the brazen web of her comeliness. for to the old gentleman's eyes there was an abiding impudicity about cissie's very charms. the passionate repose of her face was immodest; the possession of a torso such as a sculptor might have carved was brazen. the girl was shamefully well appointed. one morning as captain renfrew came home from town, he chanced to walk just behind the octoroon, and quite unconsciously the girl delivered an added fillip to the old gentleman's uneasiness. just before cissie passed in front of the renfrew manor, womanlike, she paused to make some slight improvements in her appearance before walking under the eyes of her lover. she adjusted some strands of hair which had blown loose in the autumn wind, looked at herself in a purse mirror, retouched her nose with her greenish powder; then she picked a little sprig of sumac leaves that burned in the corner of a lawn and pinned its flame on the unashamed loveliness of her bosom. this negro instinct for brilliant color is the theme of many jests in the south, but it is entirely justified esthetically, although the constant sarcasm of the whites has checked its satisfaction, if it has not corrupted the taste. the bit of sumac out of which the octoroon had improvised a nosegay lighted up her skin and eyes, and created an ensemble as closely resembling a henri painting as anything the streets of hooker's bend were destined to see. but old captain renfrew was far from appreciating any such bravura in scarlet and gold. at first he put it down to mere niggerish taste, and his dislike for the girl edged his stricture; then, on second thought, the oddness of sumac for a nosegay caught his attention. nobody used sumac for a buttonhole. he had never heard of any woman, white or black, using sumac for a bouquet. why should this cissie dildine trig herself out in sumac? the captain's suspicions came to a point like a setter. he began sniffing about for cissie's motives in choosing so queer an ornament. he wondered if it had anything to do with peter siner. all his life, captain renfrew's brain had been deliberate. he moved mentally, as he did physically, with dignity. to tell the truth, the captain's thoughts had a way of absolutely stopping now and then, and for a space he would view the world as a simple collection of colored surfaces without depth or meaning. during these intervals, by a sort of irony of the gods the old gentleman's face wore a look of philosophic concentration, so that his mental hiatuses had given him a reputation for profundity, which was county wide. it had been this, years before, that had carried him by a powerful majority into the tennessee legislature. the voters agreed, almost to a man, that they preferred depth to a shallow facility. the rival candidate had been shallow and facile. the polls returned the captain, and the young gentleman--for the captain was a young gentleman in those days--was launched on a typical politician's career. but some republican member from east tennessee had impugned the rising statesman's honor with some sort of improper liaison. in those days there seemed to be proper and improper liaisons. there had been a duel on the banks of the cumberland river in which the captain succeeded in wounding his traducer in the arm, and was thus vindicated by the gods. but the incident ended a career that might very well have wound up in the governor's chair, or even in the united states senate, considering how very deliberate the captain was mentally. to-day, as the captain walked up the street following cissie dildine, one of these vacant moods fell upon him and it was not until they had reached his own gate that it suddenly occurred to the old gentleman just what cissie's sumac did mean. it was a signal to peter. the simplicity of the solution stirred the old man. its meaning was equally easy to fathom. when a woman signals any man it conveys consent. denials receive no signals; they are inferred. in this particular case captain renfrew found every reason to believe that this flaring bit of sumac was the prelude to an elopement. in the window of his library the captain saw his secretary staring at his cards and books with an intentness plainly assumed. peter's fixed stare had none of those small movements of the head that mark genuine intellectual labor. so peter was posing, pretending he did not see the girl, to disarm his employer's suspicions,--pretending not to see a girl rigged out like that! such duplicity sent a queer spasm of anguish through the old lawyer. peter's action held half a dozen barbs for the captain. a fellow-alumnus of harvard staying in his house merely for his wage and keep! peter bore not the slightest affection for him; the mulatto lacked even the chivalry to notify the captain of his intentions, because he knew the captain objected. and yet all these self-centered objections were nothing to what old captain renfrew felt for peter's own sake. for peter to marry a nigger and a strumpet, for him to elope with a wanton and a thief! for such an upstanding lad, the very picture of his own virility and mental alertness when he was of that age, for such a boy to fling himself away, to drop out of existence--oh, it was loathly! the old man entered the library feeling sick. it was empty. peter had gone to his room, according to his custom. but in this particular instance it seemed to captain renfrew his withdrawal was flavored with a tang of guilt. if he were innocent, why should not such a big, strong youth have stayed and helped an old gentleman off with his overcoat? the old captain blew out a windy breath as he helped himself out of his coat in the empty library. the bent globe still leaned against the window-seat. the room had never looked so somber or so lonely. at dinner the old man ate so little that rose hobbett ceased her monotonous grumbling to ask if he felt well. he said he had had a hard day, a difficult day. he felt so weak and thin that he foretold the gray days when he could no longer creep to the village and sit with his cronies at the livery-stable, when he would be house-fast, through endless days, creeping from room to room like a weak old rat in a huge empty house, finally to die in some disgusting fashion. and now peter was going to leave him, was going to throw himself away on a lascivious wench. a faint moisture dampened the old man's withered eyes. he drank an extra thimbleful of whisky to try to hearten himself. its bouquet filled the time-worn stateliness of the dining-room. * * * * * during the weeks of peter's stay at the manor it had grown to be the captain's habit really to write for two or three hours in the afternoon, and his pile of manuscript had thickened under his application. the old man was writing a book called "reminiscences of peace and war." his book would form another unit of that extraordinary crop of personal reminiscences of the old south which flooded the presses of america during the decade of - . during just that decade it seemed as if the aged men and women of the south suddenly realized that the generation who had lived through the picturesqueness and stateliness of the old slave régime was almost gone, and over their hearts swept a common impulse to commemorate, in the sunset of their own lives, its fading splendor and its vanished deeds. on this particular afternoon the captain settled himself to work, but his reminiscences did not get on. he pinched a bit of floss from the nib of his pen and tried to swing into the period of which he was writing. he read over a few pages of his copy as mental priming, but his thoughts remained flat and dull. indeed, his whole life, as he reviewed it in the waning afternoon, appeared empty and futile. it seemed hardly worth while to go on. the captain had come to that point in his memoirs where the republican representative from knox county had set going the petard which had wrecked his political career. from the very beginnings of his labors the old lawyer had looked forward to writing just this period of his life. he meant to clear up his name once for all. he meant to use invective, argument, testimony and a powerful emotional appeal, such as a country lawyer invariably attempts with a jury. but now that he had arrived at the actual composition of his defense, he sat biting his penholder, with all the arguments he meant to advance slipped from his mind. he could not recall the points of the proof. he could not recall them with peter siner moving restlessly about the room, glancing through the window, unsettled, nervous, on the verge of eloping with a negress. his secretary's tragedy smote the old man. the necessity of doing something for peter put his thoughts to rout. a wild idea occurred to the captain that if he should write the exact truth, perhaps his memoirs might serve peter as a signal against a futile, empty journey. but the thought no sooner appeared than it was rejected. in the anglo- saxon, especially the anglo-saxon of the southern united states, abides no such gallic frankness as moved a jean-jacques. southern memoirs always sound like the conversation between two maiden ladies,--nothing intimate, simply a few general remarks designed to show from what nice families they came. so the captain wrote nothing. during all the afternoon he sat at his desk with a leaden heart, watching peter move about the room. the old man maintained more or less the posture of writing, but his thoughts were occupied in pitying himself and pitying peter. half a dozen times he looked up, on the verge of making some plea, some remonstrance, against the madness of this brown man. but the sight of peter sitting in the window-seat staring out into the street silenced him. he was a weak old man, and peter's nerves were strung with the desire of youth. at last the two men heard old rose clashing in the kitchen. a few minutes later the secretary excused himself from the library, to go to his own room. as peter was about to pass through the door, the captain was suddenly galvanized into action by the thought that this perhaps was the last time he would ever see him. he got up from his chair and called shakenly to peter. the negro paused. the captain moistened his lips and controlled his voice. "i want to have a word with you, peter, about a--a little matter. i-- i've mentioned it before." "yes, sir." the negro's tone and attitude reminded the captain that the supper gong would soon sound and they would best separate at once. "it--it's about cissie dildine," the old lawyer hurried on. peter nodded slightly. "yes, you mentioned that before." the old man lifted a thin hand as if to touch peter's arm, but he did not. a sort of desperation seized him. "but listen, peter, you don't want to do--what's in your mind!" "what is in my mind, captain?" "i mean marry a negress. you don't want to marry a negress!" the brown man stared, utterly blank. "not marry a negress!" "no, peter; no," quavered the old man. "for yourself it may make no difference, but your children--think of your children, your son growing up under a brown veil! you can't tear it off. god himself can't tear it off! you can never reach him through it. your children, your children's children, a terrible procession that stretches out and out, marching under a black shroud, unknowing, unknown! all you can see are their sad forms beneath the shroud, marching away--marching away. god knows where! and yet it's your own flesh and blood!" suddenly the old lawyer's face broke into the hard, tearless contortions of the aged. his terrible emotion communicated itself to the sensitive brown man. "but, captain, i myself am a negro. whom should i marry?" "no one; no one! let your seed wither in your loins! it's better to do that; it's better--" at that moment the clashing of the supper gong fell on the old man's naked nerves. he straightened up by some reflex mechanism, turned away from what he thought was his last interview with his secretary, and proceeded down the piazza into the great empty dining-room. chapter xiii with overwrought nerves peter siner entered his room. at five o'clock that afternoon he had seen cissie dildine go up the street to the arkwright home to cook one of those occasional suppers. he had been watching for her return, and in the midst of it the captain's extraordinary outburst had stirred him up. once in his room, the negro placed the broken hepplewhite in such a position that he could rake the street with a glance. then he tried to compose himself and await the coming of his supper and the passage of cissie. there was something almost pathetic in peter's endless watching, all for a mere glimpse or two of the girl in yellow. he himself had no idea how his nerves and thoughts had woven themselves around the young woman. he had no idea what a passion this continual doling out of glimpses had begotten. he did not dream how much he was, as folk naïvely put it, in love with her. his love was strong enough to make him forget for a while the old lawyer's outbreak. however, as the dusk thickened in the shrubbery and under the trees, certain of the old gentleman's phrases revisited the mulatto's mind: "a terrible procession ... marching under a black shroud.... your children, your children's children, a terrible procession,... marching away, god knows where.... and yet--it's your own flesh and blood!" they were terrific sentences, as if the old man had been trying to tear from his vision some sport of nature, some deformity. as the implications spread before peter, he became more and more astonished at its content. even to captain renfrew black men were dehumanized,--shrouded, untouchable creatures. it delivered to peter a slow but a profound shock. he glanced about at the faded magnificence of the room with a queer feeling that he had been introduced into it under a sort of misrepresentation. he had taken up his abode with the captain, at least on the basis of belonging to the human family, but this passionate outbreak, this puzzling explosion, cut that ground from under his feet. the more peter thought about it, the stranger grew his sensation. not even to be classed as a human being by this old gentleman who in a weak, helpless fashion had crept somewhat into peter's affections,--not to be considered a man! the mulatto drew a long, troubled breath, and by the mere mechanics of his desire kept staring through the gloom for cissie. peter siner had known all along that the unread whites of hooker's bend --and that included nearly every white person in the village--considered black men as simple animals; but he had supposed that the more thoughtful men, of whom captain renfrew was a type, at least admitted the afro- american to the common brotherhood of humanity. but they did not. as peter sat staring into the darkness the whole effect of the dehumanizing of the black folk of the south began to unfold itself before his imagination. it explained to him the tragedies of his race, their sufferings at the hand of mob violence; the casualness, even the levity with which black men were murdered: the chronic dishonesty with which negroes were treated: the constant enactment of adverse legislation against them; the cynical use of negro women. they were all vermin, animals; they were one with the sheep and the swine; a little nearer the human in form, perhaps, and, oddly enough, one that could be bred to a human being, as testified a multitude of brown and yellow and cream-colored folk, but all marching away, as the captain had so passionately said, marching away, their forms hidden from human intercourse under a shroud of black, an endless procession marching away, god knew whither! and yet they were the south's own flesh and blood. the horror of such a complex swelled in peter's mind to monstrous proportions. as night thickened at his window, the negro sat dazed and wondering at the mightiness of his vision. his thoughts went groping, trying to solve some obscure problem it posed. he thought of the arkwright boy; he thought of the white men smiling as his mother's funeral went past the livery-stable; he thought of captain renfrew's manuscript that he was transcribing. through all the old man's memoirs ran a certain lack of sincerity. peter always felt amid his labors that the old captain was making an attorney's plea rather than a candid exposition. at this point in his thoughts there gradually limned itself in the brown man's mind the answer to that enigma which he almost had unraveled on the day he first saw cissie dildine pass his window. with it came the answer to the puzzle contained in the old captain's library. the library was not an ordinary compilation of the world's thought; it, too, was an attorney's special pleading against the equality of man. any book or theory that upheld the equality of man was carefully excluded from the shelves. darwin's great hypothesis, and every development springing from it, had been banned, because the moment that a theory was propounded of the great biologic relationship of all flesh, from worms to vertebrates, there instantly followed a corollary of the brotherhood of man. what christ did for theology, darwin did for biology,--he democratized it. the one descended to man's brotherhood from the trinity; the other climbed up to it from the worms. the old captain's library lacked sincerity. southern orthodoxy, which persists in pouring its religious thought into the outworn molds of special creation, lacks sincerity. scarcely a department of southern life escapes this fundamental attitude of special pleader and disingenuousness. it explains the southern fondness for legal subtleties. all attempts at southern poetry, belles-lettres, painting, novels, bear the stamp of the special plea, of authors whose exposition is careful. peter perceived what every one must perceive, that when letters turn into a sort of glorified prospectus of a country, all value as literature ceases. the very breath of art and interpretation is an eager and sincere searching of the heart. this sincerity the south lacks. her single talent will always be forensic, because she is a lawyer with a cause to defend. and such is the curse that arises from lynchings and venery and extortions and dehumanizings,--sterility; a dumbness of soul. peter siner's thoughts lifted him with the tremendous buoyancy of inspiration. he swung out of his chair and began tramping his dark room. the skin of his scalp tickled as if a ghost had risen before him. the nerves in his thighs and back vibrated. he felt light, and tingled with energy. unaware of what he was doing, he set about lighting the gasolene-lamp. he worked with nervous quickness, as if he were in a great hurry. presently a brilliant light flooded the room. it turned the gray illumination of the windows to blackness. joy enveloped peter. his own future developed under his eyes with the same swift clairvoyance that marked his vision of the ills of his country. he saw himself remedying those ills. he would go about showing white men and black men the simple truth, the spiritual necessity for justice and fairness. it was not a question of social equality; it was a question of clearing a road for the development of southern life. he would show white men that to weaken, to debase, to dehumanize the negro, inflicted a more terrible wound on the south than would any strength the black man might develop. he would show black men that to hate the whites, constantly to suspect, constantly to pilfer from them, only riveted heavier shackles on their limbs. it was all so clear and so simple! the white south must humanize the black not for the sake of the negro, but for the sake of itself. no one could resist logic so fundamental. peter's heart sang with the solemn joy of a man who had found his work. all through his youth he had felt blind yearnings and gropings for he knew not what. it had driven him with endless travail out of niggertown, through school and college, and back to niggertown,--this untiring hound of heaven. but at last he had reached his work. he, peter siner, a mulatto, with the blood of both white and black in his veins, would come as an evangel of liberty to both white and black. the brown man's eyes grew moist from joy. his body seemed possessed of tremendous energy. as he paced his room there came into the glory of peter's thoughts the memory of the arkwright boy as he sat in the cedar glade brooding on the fallen needles peter recalled the hobbledehoy's disjointed words as he wrestled with the moral and physical problems of adolescence. peter recalled his impulse to sit down by young sam arkwright, and, as best he might, give him some clue to the critical and feverish period through which he was passing. he had not done so, but peter remembered the instance down to the very desperation in the face of the brooding youngster. and it seemed to peter that this rejected impulse had been a sign that he was destined to be an evangel to the whites as well as to the blacks. the joy of peter's mission bore him aloft on vast wings. his room seemed to fall away from him, and he was moving about his country, releasing the two races from their bonds of suspicion and cruelty. * * * * * slowly the old manor formed about peter again, and he perceived that a tapping on the door had summoned him back. he walked to the door with his heart full of kindness for old rose. she was bringing him his supper. he felt as if he could take the old woman in his arms, and out of the mere hugeness of his love sweeten her bitter life. the mulatto opened the door as eagerly as if he were admitting some long-desired friend; but when the shutter swung back, the old crone and her salver were not there. all he could discern in the darkness were the white pillars marking the night into panels. there was no light in the outer kitchen. the whole manor was silent. as he stood listening, the knocking was repeated, this time more faintly. he fixed the sound at the window. he closed the door, walked across the brilliant room, and opened the shutters. for several moments he saw nothing more than the tall quadrangle of blackness which the window framed; then a star or two pierced it; then something moved. he saw a woman's figure standing close to the casement, and out of the darkness cissie dildine's voice asked in its careful english: "peter, may i come in?" chapter xiv for a full thirty seconds peter siner stared at the girl at the window before, even with her prompting, he thought of the amenity of asking her to come inside. as a further delayed courtesy, he drew the heppelwhite chair toward her. cissie's face looked bloodless in the blanched light of the gasolene- lamp. she forced a faint, doubtful smile. "you don't seem very glad to see me, peter." "i am," he assured her, mechanically, but he really felt nothing but astonishment and dismay. they filled his voice. he was afraid some one would see cissie in his room. his thoughts went flitting about the premises, calculating the positions of the various trees and shrubs in relation to the windows, trying to determine whether, and just where, in his brilliantly lighted chamber the girl could be seen from the street. the octoroon made no further comment on his confusion. her eyes wandered from him over the stately furniture and up to the stuccoed ceiling. "they told me you lived in a wonderful room," she remarked absently. "yes, it's very nice," agreed peter in the same tone, wondering what might be the object of her hazardous visit. a flicker of suspicion suggested that she was trying to compromise him out of revenge for his renouncement of her, but the next instant he rejected this. the girl accepted the chair peter offered and continued to look about. "i hope you don't mind my staring, peter," she said. "i stared when i first came here to stay," assisted peter, who was getting a little more like himself, even if a little uneasier at the consequences of this visit. "is that a highboy?" she nodded nervously at the piece of furniture. "i've seen pictures of them." "uh huh. revolutionary, i believe. the night wind is a little raw." he moved across the room and closed the jalousies, and thus cut off the night wind and also the west view from the street. he glanced at the heavy curtains parted over his front windows, with a keen desire to swing them together. some fragment of his mind continued the surface conversation with cissie. "is it post-revolutionary or pre-revolutionary?" she asked with a preoccupied air. "post, i believe. no, pre. i always meant to examine closely." "to have such things would almost teach one history," cissie said. "yeah; very nice." peter had decided that the girl was in direct line with the left front window and an opening between the trees to the street. the girl's eyes followed his. "are those curtains velour, peter?" "i--i believe so," agreed the man, unhappily. "i--i wonder how they look spread." peter seized on this flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and thankfulness to cissie. he had to restrain himself as he strode across the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in order to preserve an appearance of an exhibit. his fingers were so nervous that he bungled a moment at the heavy cords, but finally the two draperies swung together, loosing a little cloud of dust. he drew together a small aperture where the hangings stood apart, and then turned away in sincere relief. cissie's own interest in historic furniture and textiles came to an abrupt conclusion. she gave a deep sigh and settled back into her chair. she sat looking at peter seriously, almost distressfully, as he came toward her. with the closing of the curtains and the establishment of a real privacy peter became aware once again of the sweetness and charm cissie always held for him. he still wondered what had brought her, but he was no longer uneasy. "perhaps i'd better build a fire," he suggested, quite willing now to make her visit seem not unusual. "oh, no,"--she spoke with polite haste,--"i'm just going to stay a minute. i don't know what you'll think of me." she looked intently at him. "i think it lovely of you to come." he was disgusted with the triteness of this remark, but he could think of nothing else. "i don't know," demurred the octoroon, with her faint doubtful smile. "persons don't welcome beggars very cordially." "if all beggars were so charming--" apparently he couldn't escape banalities. but cissie interrupted whatever speech he meant to make, with a return of her almost painful seriousness. "i really came to ask you to help me, peter." "then your need has brought me a pleasure, at least." some impulse kept the secretary making those foolish complimentary speeches which keep a conversation empty and insincere. "oh, peter, i didn't come here for you to talk like that! will you do what i want?" "what do you want, cissie?" he asked, sobered by her voice and manner. "i want you to help me, peter." "all right, i will." he spaced his words with his speculations about the nature of her request. "what do you want me to do?" "i want you to help me go away." peter looked at her in surprise. he hardly knew what he had been expecting, but it was not this. some repressed emotion crept into the girl's voice. "peter, i--i can't stay here in hooker's bend any longer. i want to go away. i--i've got to go away." peter stood regarding her curiously and at the same time sympathetically. "where do you want to go, cissie?" the girl drew a long breath; her bosom lifted and dropped abruptly. "i don't know; that was one of the things i wanted to ask you about." "you don't know where you want to go?" he smiled faintly. "how do you know you want to go at all?" "oh, peter, all i know is i must leave hooker's bend!" she gave a little shiver. "i'm tired of it, sick of it--sick." she exhaled a breath, as if she were indeed physically ill. her face suggested it; her eyes were shadowed. "some northern city, i suppose," she added. "and you want me to help you?" inquired peter, puzzled. she nodded silently, with a woman's instinct to make a man guess the favor she is seeking. then it occurred to peter just what sort of assistance the girl did want. it gave him a faint shock that a girl could come to a man to beg or to borrow money. it was a white man's shock, a notion he had picked up in boston, because it happens frequently among village negroes, and among them it holds as little significance as children begging one another for bites of apples. peter thought over his bank balance, then started toward a chest of drawers where he kept his checkbook. "cissie, if i can he of any service to you in a substantial way, i'll be more than glad to--" she put out a hand and stopped him; then talked on in justification of her determination to go away. "i just can't endure it any longer, peter." she shuddered again. "i can't stand niggertown, or this side of town--any of it. they--they have no _feeling_ for a colored girl, peter, not--not a speck!" she rave a gasp, and after a moment plunged on into her wrongs: "when--when one of us even walks past on the street, they--they whistle and say a-all kinds of things out loud, j-just as if w-we weren't there at all. th- they don't c-care; we're just n-nigger w-women." cissie suddenly began sobbing with a faint catching noise, her full bosom shaken by the spasms; her tears slowly welling over. she drew out a handkerchief with a part of its lace edge gone, and wiped her eyes and cheeks, holding the bit of cambric in a ball in her palm, like a negress, instead of in her fingers, like a white woman, as she had been taught. then she drew a deep breath, swallowed, and became more composed. peter stood looking in helpless anger at this representative of all women of his race. "cissie, that's street-corner scum--the dirty sewage--" "they make you feel naked," went on cissie in the monotone that succeeds a fit of weeping, "and ashamed--and afraid." she blinked her eyes to press out the undue moisture, and looked at peter as if asking what else she could do about it than to go away from the village. "will it be any better away from here?" suggested peter, doubtfully. cissie shook her head. "i--i suppose not, if--if i go alone." "i shouldn't think so," agreed peter, somberly. he started to hearten her by saying white women also underwent such trials, if that would be a consolation; but he knew very well that a white woman's hardships were as nothing compared to those of a colored woman who was endowed with any grace whatever. "and besides, cissie," went on peter, who somehow found himself arguing against the notion of her going, "i hardly see how a decent colored woman gets around at all. colored boarding-houses are wretched places. i ate and slept in one or two, coming home. rotten." the possibility of cissie finding herself in such a place moved peter. the girl nodded submissively to his judgment, and said in a queer voice: "that's why i--i didn't want to travel alone, peter." "no, it's a bad idea--" and then peter perceived that a queer quality was creeping into the tête-à-tête. she returned his look unsteadily, but with a curious persistence. [illustration: "you-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, cissie?" he stammered] "i--i d-don't want to travel a-alone, peter," she gasped. her look, her voice suddenly brought home to the an the amazing connotation of her words. he stared at her, felt his face grow warm with a sharp, peculiar embarrassment. he hardly knew what to say or do before her intent and piteous eyes. "you--you mean you want m-me--to go with you, cissie?" he stammered. the girl suddenly began trembling, now that her last reserve of indirection had been torn away. "listen, peter," she began breathlessly. "i'm not the sort of woman you think. if i hadn't accused myself, we'd be married now. i--i wanted you more than anything in the world, peter, but i did tell you. surely, surely, peter, that shows i am a good woman--th-the real i. dear, dear peter, there is a difference between a woman and her acts. peter, you're the first man in all my life, in a-all my life who ever came to me k- kindly and gently; so i had to l-love you and t-tell you, peter." the girl's wavering voice broke down completely; her face twisted with grief. she groped for her chair, sat down, buried her face in her arms on the table, and broke into a chattering outbreak of sobs that sounded like some sort of laughter. her shoulders shook; the light gleamed on her soft, black caucasian hair. there was a little rent in one of the seams in her cheap jacket, at one of the curves where her side molded into her shoulder. the customer made garment had found cissie's body of richer mold than it had been designed to shield. and yet in peter's distress and tenderness and embarrassment, this little rent held his attention and somehow misprized the wearer. it seemed symbolic in the searching white light. he could see the very break in the thread and the widened stitches at the ends of the rip. her coat had given way because she was modeled more nearly like the venus de milo than the run of womankind. he felt the little irony of the thing, and yet was quite unable to resist the comparison. and then, too, she had referred again to her sin of peculation. a woman enjoys confessions from a man. a man's sins are mostly vague, indefinite things to a woman, a shadowy background which brings out the man in a beautiful attitude of repentance; but when a woman confesses, the man sees all her past as a close-up with full lighting. he has an intimate acquaintance with just what she's talking about, and the woman herself grows shadowy and unreal. men have too many blots not to demand whiteness in women. by striking some such average, nature keeps the race a going moral concern. so peter, as he stood looking down on the woman who was asking him to marry her, was filled with as unhappy and as impersonal a tenderness as a born brother. he recalled the thoughts which had come to him when he saw cissie passing his window. she was not the sort of woman he wanted to marry; she was not his ideal. he cast about in his head for some gentle way of putting her off, so that he would not hurt her any further, if such an easement were possible. as he stood thinking, he found not a pretext, but a reality. he stooped over, and put a hand lightly on each of her arms. "cissie," he said in a serious, even voice, "if i should ever marry any one, it would be you." the girl paused in her sobbing at his even, passionless voice. "then you--you won't?" she whispered in her arms. "i can't, cissie." now that he was saying it, he uttered the words very evenly and smoothly. "i can't, dear cissie, because a great work has just come into my life." he paused, expecting her to ask some question, but she lay silent, with her face in her arms, evidently listening. "cissie, i think, in fact i know, i can demonstrate to all the south, both white and black, the need of a better and more sincere understanding between our two races." peter did not feel the absurdity of such a speech in such a place. he patted her arm, but there was something in the warmth of her flesh that disturbed his austerity and caused him to lift his hand to the more impersonal axis of her shoulder. he proceeded to develop his idea. "cissie, just a moment ago you were complaining of the insults you meet everywhere. i believe if i can spread my ideas, cissie, that even a pretty colored girl like you may walk the streets without being subjected to obscenity on every corner." his tone unconsciously patronized cissie's prettiness with the patronage of the male for the less significant thing, as though her ripeness for love and passion and children were, after all, not comparable with what he, a male, could do in the way of significantly molding life. cissie lifted her head and dried her eyes. "so you aren't going to marry me, peter?" woman-like, now that she was well into the subject, she was far less embarrassed than peter. she had had her cry. "why--er--considering this work, cissie--" "aren't you going to marry anybody, peter?" the artist in peter, the thing the girl loved in him, caught again that messianic vision of himself. "why, no, cissie," he said, with a return of his inspiration of an hour ago; "i'll be going here and there all over the south preaching this gospel of kindliness and tolerance, of forgiveness of the faults of others." cissie looked at him with a queer expression. "i'll show the white people that they should treat the negro with consideration not for the sake of the negro, but for the sake of themselves. it's so simple, cissie, it's so logical and clear--" the girl shook her head sadly. "and you don't want me to go with you, peter?" "why, n-no, cissie; a girl like you couldn't go. perhaps i'll be misunderstood in places, perhaps i may have to leave a town hurriedly, or be swung over the walls, like paul, in a basket." he attempted to treat it lightly. but the girl looked at him with a horror dawning in her melancholy face. "peter, do you really mean that?" she whispered. "why, truly. you don't imagine--" the octoroon opened her dark eyes until she might have been some weird. "oh, peter, please, please put such a mad idea away from you! peter, you've been living here alone in this old house until you don't see things clearly. dear peter, don't you _know?_ you can't go out and talk like that to white folks and--and not have some terrible thing happen to you! oh, peter, if you would only marry me, it would cure you of such wildness!" involuntarily she got up, holding out her arms to him, offering herself to his needs, with her frightened eyes fixed on his. it made him exquisitely uncomfortable again. he made a little sound designed to comfort and reassure her. he would do very well. he was something of a diplomat in his way. he had got along with the boys in harvard very well indeed. in fact, he was rather a man of the world. no need to worry about him, though it was awfully sweet of her. cissie picked up her handkerchief with its torn edge, which she had laid on the table. evidently she was about to go. "i surely don't know what will become of me," she said, looking at it. in a reversal of feeling peter did not want her to go away quite then. he cast about for some excuse to detain her a moment longer. "now, cissie," he began, "if you are really going to leave hooker's bend--" "i'm not going," she said, with a long exhalation. "i--" she swallowed-- "i just thought that up to--ask you to--to--you see," she explained, a little breathless, "i thought you still loved me and had forgiven me by the way you watched for me every day at the window." this speech touched peter more keenly than any of the little drama the girl had invented. it hit him so shrewdly he could think of nothing more to say. cissie moved toward the window and undid the latch. "good night, peter." she paused a moment, with her hand on the catch. "peter," she said, "i'd almost rather see you marry some other girl than try so terrible a thing." the big, full-blooded athlete smiled faintly. "you seem perfectly sure marriage would cure me of my mission." cissie's face reddened faintly. "i think so," she said briefly. "good night," and she disappeared in the dark space she had opened, and closed the jalousies softly after her. chapter xv cissie dildine's conviction that marriage would cure peter of his mission persisted in the mulatto's mind long after the glamour of the girl had faded and his room had regained the bleak emptiness of a bachelor's bedchamber. cissie had been so brief and positive in her statement that peter, who had not thought on the point at all, grew more than half convinced she was right. now that he pondered over it, it seemed there was a difference between the outlook of a bachelor and that of a married man. the former considered humanity as a balloonist surveys a throng,--immediately and without perspective,--but the latter always sees mankind through the frame of his family. a single man tends naturally to philosophy and reform; a married man to administration and statesmanship. there have been no great unmarried statesmen; there have been no great married philosophers or reformers. now that cissie had pointed out this universal rule, peter saw it very clearly. and peter suspected that beneath this rough classification, and conditioning it, lay a plexus of obscure mental and physical reactions set up by the relations between husband and wife. it might very well be there was a difference between the actual cerebral and nervous structure of a married man and that of a single man. at any rate, after these reflections, peter now felt sure that marriage would cure him of his mission; but how had cissie known it? how had she struck out so involved a theory, one might say, in the toss of a head? the more peter thought it over the more extraordinary it became. it was another one of those explosive ideas which cissie, apparently, had the faculty of creating out of a pure mental vacuum. all this philosophy aside, cissie's appearance just in the nick of his inspiration, her surprising proposal of marriage, and his refusal, had accomplished one thing: it had committed peter to the program he had outlined to the girl. indeed, there seemed something fatalistic in such a concatenation of events. siner wondered whether or not he would have obeyed his vision without this added impulse from cissie. he did not know; but now, since it had all come about just as it had, he suspected he would have been neglectful. he felt as if a dangerous but splendid channel had been opened before his eyes, and almost at the same instant a hand had reached down and directed his life into it. this fancy moved the mulatto. as he got himself ready for bed, he kept thinking: "well, my life is settled at last. there is nothing else for me to do. even if this should end terribly for me, as cissie imagines, my life won't be wasted." next morning peter siner was awakened by old rose hobbett thrusting her head in at his door, staring around, and finally, seeing peter in bed, grumbling: "why is you still heah, black man?" the secretary opened his eyes in astonishment. "why shouldn't i be here?" "nobody wuz 'speckin' you to be heah." the crone withdrew her head and vanished. peter wondered at this unaccustomed interest of rose, then hurried out of bed, supposing himself late for breakfast. a dense fog had come up from the river, and the moisture floating into his open windows had dampened his whole room. peter stepped briskly to the screen and began splashing himself. it was only in the midst of his ablutions that he remembered his inspiration and resolve of the previous evening. as he squeezed the water over his powerfully molded body, he recalled it almost impersonally. it might have happened to some third person. he did not even recall distinctly the threads of the logic which had lifted him to such a pisgah, and showed him the whole south as a new and promised land. however, he knew that he could start his train of thought again, and again ascend the mountain. floating through the fog into his open window came the noises of the village as it set about living another day, precisely as it had lived innumerable days in the past. the blast of the six-o'clock whistle from the planing-mill made the loose sashes of his windows rattle. came a lowing of cows and a clucking of hens, a woman's calling. the voices of men in conversation came so distinctly through the pall that it seemed a number of persons must be moving about their morning work, talking and shouting, right in the renfrew yard. but the thing that impressed peter most was the solidity and stability of this southern village that he could hear moving around him, and its certainty to go on in the future precisely as it had gone on in the past. it was a tremendous force. the very old manor about him seemed huge and intrenched in long traditions, while he, peter siner, was just a brown man, naked behind a screen and rather cold from the fog and damp of the morning. he listened to old rose clashing the kitchen utensils. as he drew on his damp underwear, he wondered what he could say to old rose that would persuade her into a little kindliness and tolerance for the white people. as he listened he felt hopeless; he could never explain to the old creature that her own happiness depended upon the charity she extended to others. she could never understand it. she would live and die precisely the same bitter old beldam that she was, and nothing could ever assuage her. while peter was thinking of the old creature, she came shuffling along the back piazza with his breakfast. she let herself in by lifting one knee to a horizontal, balancing the tray on it, then opening the door with her freed hand. when the shutter swung open, it displayed the crone standing on one foot, wearing a man's grimy sock, which had fallen down over a broken, run-down shoe. in peter's mood the thought of this wretched old woman putting on such garments morning after morning was unspeakably pathetic. he thought of his own mother, who had lived and died only a shade or two removed from the old crone's condition. rose put down her foot, and entered the room with her lips poked out, ready to make instant attack if peter mentioned his lack of supper the night before. "aunt rose," asked the secretary, with his friendly intent in his tones, "how came you to look in this morning and say you didn't expect to find me in my room?" she gave an unintelligible grunt, pushed the lamp to one side, and eased her tray to the table. peter finished touching his tie before one of those old-fashioned mirrors, not of cut-glass, yet perfectly true. he came from the mirror and moved his chair, out of force of habit, so he could look up the street toward the arkwrights'. "aunt rose," said the young man, wistfully, "why are you always angry?" she bridled at this extraordinary inquiry. "me?" "yes, you." she hesitated a moment, thinking how she could make her reply a personal assault on peter. "'cause you come heah, 'sputin' my rights, da' 's' why." "no," demurred peter, "you were quarreling in the kitchen the first morning i came here, and you didn't know i was on the place." "well--i got my tribulations," she snapped, staring suspiciously at these unusual questions. there was a pause; then peter said placatingly: "i was just thinking, aunt rose, you might forget your tribulations if you didn't ride them all the time." "hoccum! what you mean, ridin' my tribulations?" "thinking about them. the old captain, for instance; you are no happier always abusing the old captain." the old virago gave a sniff, tossed her head, but kept her eyes rolled suspiciously on peter. "very often the way we think and act makes us happy or unhappy," moralized peter, broadly. "look heah, nigger, you ain't no preacher sont out by de lawd to me!" "anyway, i am sure you would feel more friendly toward the captain if you acted openly with him; for instance, if you didn't take off all his cold victuals, and handkerchiefs and socks, soap, kitchenware--" the cook snorted. "i'd feel dat much mo' nekked an' hongry, dat's how i'd feel." "perhaps, if you'd start over, he might give you a better wage." "huh!" she snorted in an access of irony. "i see dat skinflint gib'n' me a better wage. puuh!" the suddenly she realized where the conversation had wandered, and stared at the secretary with widening eyes "good lawd! did dat fool cap'n set up a nigger in dis bedroom winder jes to ketch ole rose packin' off a few ole lef'-overs?" peter began a hurried denial, but she rushed on: "'fo' gawd, i hopes his viddles chokes him! i hope his ole smoke-house falls down on his ole haid. i hope to jesus--" peter pleaded with her not to think the captain was behind his observations, but the hag rushed out of the bedroom, swinging her head from side to side, uttering the most terrible maledictions. she would show him! she wouldn't put another foot in his old kitchen. wild horses couldn't drag her into his smoke-house again. peter ran to the door and called after her down the piazza, trying to exonerate the captain: but she either did not or would not hear, and vanished into the kitchen, still furious. old rose made peter so uneasy that he deserted his breakfast midway and hurried to the library. in the solemn old room he found the captain alone and in rather a pleased mood. the old gentleman stood patting and alining a pile of manuscript. as the mulatto entered he exclaimed: "well, here's peter again!" as if his secretary had been off on a long journey. immediately afterward he added, "peter, guess what i did last night." his voice was full of triumph. peter was thinking about aunt rose, and stood looking at the captain without the slightest idea. "i wrote all of this,"--he indicated his manuscript,--"over a hundred pages." peter considered the work without much enthusiasm. "you must have worked all night." the old attorney rubbed his hands. "i think i may claim a touch of inspiration last night, peter. reminiscences rippled from under my pen, propitious words, prosperous sentences. er--the fact is, peter, you will see, when you begin copying, i had come to a matter--a--a matter of some moment in my life. every life contains such moments, peter. i had meant to write something in the nature of a defen--an explanation, peter. but after you left the library last night it suddenly occurred to me just to give each fact as it took place, quite frankly. so i did that--not--not what i meant to write, at all--ah. as you copy it, you may find it not entirely without some interest to yourself, peter." "to me?" repeated peter, after the fashion of the unattentative. "yes, to yourself." the captain was oddly moved. he took his hands off the script, walked a little away from the table, came back to it. "it-- ah--may explain a good many things that--er--may have puzzled you." he cleared his throat and shifted his subject briskly. "we ought to be thinking about a publisher. what publisher shall we have publish these reminiscences? make some stir in tennessee's political circles, peter; tremendous sales; clear up questions everybody is interested in. h-m--well, i'll walk down town and you"--he motioned to the script-- "begin copying--" "by the way, captain," said peter as the old gentleman turned for the door, "has rose said anything to you yet?" the old man detached his mind from his script with an obvious effort. "what about?" "about leaving your service." "no-o, not especially; she's always leaving my service." "but in this case it was my fault; at least i brought it about. i remonstrated with her about taking your left-over victuals and socks and handkerchiefs and things. she was quite offended." "yes, it always offends her," agreed the old man, impatiently. "i never mention it myself unless i catch her red-handed; then i storm a little to keep her in bounds." naturally, peter knew of this extraordinary system of service in the south; nevertheless he was shocked at its implications. "captain," suggested peter, "wouldn't you find it to your own interest to give old rose a full cash payment for her services and allow her to buy her own things?" the captain dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "she's a nigger, peter; you can't hire a nigger not to steal. born in 'em. then i'm not sure but what it would be compounding a felony, hiring a person not to steal; might be so construed. well, now, there's the script. read it carefully, my boy, and remember that in order to gain a certain _status quo_ certain antecedents are--are absolutely necessary, peter. without them my--my life would have been quite empty, peter. it's--it's very strange--amazing. you will understand as you read. i'll be back to dinner, so good-by." in the strangest agitation the old captain walked out of the library. the last glimpse peter had of him was his meager old figure silhouetted against the cold gray fog that filled the compound. neither the captain's agitation nor his obvious desire that peter should at once read the new manuscript really got past the threshold of the mulatto's consciousness. peter's thoughts still hovered about old rose, and from that point spread to the whole system of colored service in the south. for rose's case was typical. the wage of cooks in small southern villages is a pittance--and what they can steal. the tragedy of the mothers of a whole race working for their board and thievings came over peter with a rising grimness. and there was no public sentiment against such practice. it was accepted everywhere as natural and inevitable. the negresses were never prosecuted; no effort was made to regain the stolen goods. the employers realized that what they paid would not keep soul and body together; that it was steal or perish. it was a fantastic truth that for any colored girl to hire into domestic service in hooker's bend was more or less entering an apprenticeship in peculation. what she could steal was the major portion of her wage, if two such anomalous terms may be used in conjunction. yet, strange to say, the negro women of the village were quite honest in other matters. they paid their small debts. they took their mistresses' pocket-books to market and brought back the correct change. and if a mistress grew too indignant about something they had stolen, they would bring it back and say: "here is a new one. i'd rather buy you a new one than have you think i would take anything." the whole system was the lees of slavery, and was surely the most demoralizing, the most grotesque method of hiring service in the whole civilized world. it was so absurd that its mere relation lapses into humor, that bane of black folk. such painful thoughts filled the gloomy library and harassed peter in his copying. he took his work to the window and tried to concentrate upon it, but his mind kept playing away. indeed, it seemed to peter that to sit in this old room and rewrite the wordy meanderings of the old gentleman's book was the very height of emptiness. how utterly futile, when all around him, on every hand, girls like cissie dildine were being indentured to corruption! and, as far as peter knew, he was the only person in the south who saw it or felt it or cared anything at all about it. when cissie dildine came to the surface of peter's mind she remained there, whirling around and around in his chaotic thoughts. he began talking to her image, after a certain dramatic trick of his mind, and she began offering her environment as an excuse for what had come between them and estranged them. she stole, but she had been trained to steal. she was a thief, the victim of an immense immorality. the charm of cissie, her queer, swift-working intuition, the candor of her confession, her voluptuousness--all came rushing down on peter, harassing him with anger and love and desire. to copy any more script became impossible. he lost his place; he hardly knew what he was writing. he flung aside the whole work, got to his feet with the imperative need of an athlete for the open. he started out of the room, but as an afterthought scribbled a nervous line, telling the captain he might not be back for dinner. then he found his hat and coat and walked briskly around the piazza to the front gate. the trees and shrubs were dripping, but the fog had almost cleared away, leaving only a haze in the air. a pale, level line of it cut across the scarp of the big hill. the sun shone with a peculiar soft light through the vapors. as peter passed out at the gate, the fancy came to him that he might very well be starting on his mission. it came with a sort of surprise. he wondered how other men had set about reforms. with unpremeditation? he wondered to whom jesus of nazareth preached his first sermon. the thought of that young galilean, sensitive, compassionate, inexperienced, speaking to his first hearer, filled peter with a strange trembling tenderness. he looked about the familiar street of hooker's bend, the old trees over the pavement, the shabby village houses, and it all held a strangeness when thus juxtaposed to the thought of nazareth nineteen hundred years before. the mulatto started down the street with his footsteps quickened by a sense of spiritual adventure. chapter xvi on the corner, against the blank south wall of hobbett's store, peter siner saw the usual crowd of negroes warming themselves in the soft sunshine. they were slapping one another, scuffling, making feints with knives or stones, all to an accompaniment of bragging, profanity, and loud laughter. their behavior was precisely that of adolescent white boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age. jim pink staggs was furnishing much amusement with an impromptu sleight- of-hand exhibition. the black audience clustered around jim pink in his pinstripe trousers and blue-serge coat. they exhibited not the least curiosity as to the mechanics of the tricks, but asked for more and still more, with the naïve delight of children in the mysterious. peter siner walked down the street with his messianic impulse strong upon him. he was in that stage of feeling toward his people where a man's emotions take the color of religion. now, as he approached the crowd of negroes, he wondered what he could say, how he could transfer to them the ideas and the emotion that lifted up his own heart. as he drew nearer, his concern mounted to anxiety. indeed, what could he say? how could he present so grave a message? he was right among them now. one of the negroes jostled him by striking around his body at another negro. peter stopped. his heart beat, and he had a queer sensation of being operated by some power outside himself. next moment he heard himself saying in fairly normal tones: "fellows, do you think we ought to be idling on the street corners like this? we ought to be at work, don't you think?" the horse-play stopped at this amazing sentiment. "whuffo, peter?" asked a voice. "because the whole object of our race nowadays is to gain the respect of other races, and more particularly our own self-respect. we haven't it now. the only way to get it is to work, work, work." "ef you feel lak you'd ought to go to wuck," suggested one astonished hearer, "you done got my p'mission, black boy, to hit yo' natchel gait to de fust job in sight." peter was hardly less surprised than his hearers at what he was saying. he paid no attention to the interruption. "fellows, it's the only way our colored people can get on and make the most out of life. persistent labor is the very breath of the soul, men; it--it is." here peter caught an intimation of the whole flow of energy through the universe, focusing in man and being transformed into mental and moral values. and it suddenly occurred to him that the real worth of any people was their efficiency in giving this flow of force moral and spiritual forms. that is the end of man; that is what is prefigured when a baby's hand reaches for the sun. but peter considered his audience, and his thought stammered on his tongue. the persimmon, with his protruding, half-asleep eyes, was saying: "i don' know, peter, as i 's so partic'lar 'bout makin' de mos' out'n dis worl'. you know de bible say--hit say,"--here the persimmon's voice dropped a tone lower, in unconscious imitation of negro preachers,--"la- ay not up yo' treasure on uth, wha moss do corrup', an' thieves break th'ugh _an'_ steal." came a general nodding and agreement of soft, blurry voices. "'at sho whut it say, black man!" "sho do!" "lawd god loves a nigger on a street corner same as he do a millionaire in a six-cylinder, peter." "sho do, black man; but he's jes about de onlies' thing on uth 'at do." "well, i don' know," came a troubled rejoinder. "thaiuh 's de debbil, ketchin' mo' niggers nowadays dan he do white men, i 'fo' gawd b'liebes." "well, dat's because dey _is_ so many mo' niggers dan dey is white folks," put in a philosopher. "whut you say 'bout dat, brudder peter?" inquired the persimmon, seriously. none of this discussion was either derision or burlesque. none of the crowd had the slightest feeling that these questions were not just as practical and important as the suggestion that they all go to work. when peter realized how their ignorant and undisciplined thoughts flowed off into absurdities, and that they were entirely unaware of it, it brought a great depression to his heart. he held up a hand with an earnestness that caught their vagrant attention. "listen!" he pleaded. "can't you see how much there is for us black folks to do, and what little we have done?" "sho is a lot to do; we admits dat," said bluegum frakes. "but whut's de use doin' hit ef we kin manage to shy roun' some o' dat wuck an' keep on libin' anyhow, specially wid wages so high?" the question stopped peter. neither his own thoughts, nor any book that he had ever read nor any lecture that he had heard ever attempted to explain the enormous creative urge which is felt by every noble mind, and which, indeed, is shared to some extent by every human creature. put to it like that, siner concocted a sort of allegory, telling of a negro who was shiftless in the summer and suffered want in the winter, and applied it to the present high wage and to the low wage that was coming; but in his heart peter knew such utilitarianism was not the true reason at all. men do not weave tapestries to warm themselves, or build temples to keep the rain away. the brown man passed on around the corner, out of the faint warmth of the sunshine and away from the empty and endless arguments which his coming had provoked among the negroes. the futile ending of his first adventure surprised peter. he walked uncertainly up the business street of the village, hardly knowing where to turn next. cold weather had driven the merchants indoors, and the thoroughfare was quite deserted except for a few hogs rooting among the refuse heaps piled in front of the stores. it was not a pleasant sight, and it repelled peter all the more because he was accustomed to the antiseptic look of a northern city. he walked up to the third door from the corner, when a buzz of voices brought him to a standstill and finally persuaded him inside. at the back end of a badly lighted store a circle of white men and boys had formed around an old-fashioned, egg-shaped stove. near by, on some meal-bags, sat two negroes, one of whom wore a broad grin, the other, a funny, sheepish look. the white men were teasing the latter negro about having gone to jail for selling a mortgaged cow. the men went about their fun-making leisurely, knowing quite well the negro could not get angry or make any retort or leave the store, all of these methods of self-defense being ruled out by custom. "you must have forgot your cow was mortgaged, bob." "no-o-o, suh; i--i--i didn't fuhgit," drawling his vowels to a prodigious length. "didn't you know you'd get into trouble?" "no-o-o, suh." "know it now, don't you?" "ya-a-s, suh." "have a good time in jail, bob?" "ya-a-s, suh. shot cra-a-aps nearly all de time tull de jailer broke hit up." "wouldn't he let you shoot any more?" "no-o-o, suh; not after he won all our money." here bob flung up his head, poked out his lips like a bugle, and broke into a grotesque, "hoo! hoo! hoo!" it was such an absurd laugh, and bob's tale had come to such an absurd denouement, that the white men roared, and shuffled their feet on the flared base of the stove. some spat in or near a box filled with sawdust, and betrayed other nervous signs of satisfaction. when a man so spat, he stopped laughing abruptly, straightened his face, and stared emptily at the rusty stove until further inquisition developed some other preposterous escapade in bob's jail career. the merchant, looking up at one of these intermissions, saw peter standing at his counter. he came out of the circle and asked peter what he wanted. the mulatto bought a package of soda and went out. the chill north wind smelled clean after the odors of the store. peter stood with his package of soda, breathing deeply, looking up and down the street, wondering what to do next. without much precision of purpose, he walked diagonally across the street, northward toward a large faded sign that read, "killibrew's grocery." a little later peter entered a big, rather clean store which smelled of spices, coffee, and a faint dash of decayed potatoes. mr. killibrew himself, a big, rotund man, with a round head of prematurely white hair, was visible in a little glass office at the end of his store. even through the glazed partition peter could see mr. killibrew smiling as he sat comfortably at his desk. indeed, the grocer's chief assets were a really expansive friendliness and a pleasant, easily provoked laughter. he was fifty-two years old, and had been in the grocery business since he was fifteen. he had never been to school at all, but had learned bookkeeping, business mathematics, salesmanship, and the wisdom of the market-place from his store, from other merchants, and from the drummers who came every week with their samples and their worldly wisdom. these drummers were, almost to a man, very sincere friends of mr. killibrew, and not infrequently they would write the grocer from the city, or send him telegrams, advising him to buy this or to unload that, according to the exigencies of the market. as a result of this was very well off indeed, and all because he was a friendly, agreeable sort of man. the grocer heard peter enter and started to come out of his office, when peter stopped him and asked if he might speak with him alone. the white-haired man with the pink, good-natured face stood looking at peter with rather a questioning but pleasant expression. "why, certainly, certainly." he turned back to the swivel-chair at his desk, seated himself, and twisted about on peter as he entered. mr. killibrew did not offer peter a seat,--that would have been an infraction of hooker's bend custom,--but he sat leaning back, evidently making up his mind to refuse peter credit, which he fancied the mulatto would ask for and yet do it pleasantly. "i was wondering, mr. killibrew," began peter feeling his way along, "i was wondering if you would mind talking over a little matter with me. it's considered a delicate subject, i believe, but i thought a frank talk would help." during the natural pauses of peter's explanation mr. killibrew kept up a genial series of nods and ejaculations. "certainly, peter. i don't see why, peter. i'm sure it will help, peter." "i'd like to talk frankly about the relations of our two races in the south, in hooker's bend." the grocer stopped his running accompaniment of affirmations and looked steadfastly at peter. presently he seemed to solve some question and broke into a pleasant laugh. "now, peter, if this is some political shenanigan, i must tell you i'm a democrat. besides that, i don't care a straw about politics. i vote, and that's all." peter put down the suspicion that he was on a political errand. "not that at all, mr. killibrew. it's a question of the white race and the black race. the particular feature i am working on is the wages paid to cooks." "i didn't know you were a cook," interjected the grocer in surprise. "i am not." mr. killibrew looked at peter, thought intensely for a few moments, and came to an unescapable conclusion. "you don't mean you've formed a cook's union here in hooker's bend, peter!" he cried, immensely amazed. "not at all. it's this," clarified peter. "it may seem trivial, but it illustrates the principle i'm trying to get at. doesn't your cook carry away cold food?" it required perhaps four seconds for the merchant to stop his speculations on what peter had come for and adjust his mind to the question. "why, yes, i suppose so," he agreed, very much at sea. "i--i never caught up with her." he laughed a pleasant, puzzled laugh. "of course she doesn't come around and show me what she's making off with. why?" "well, it's this. wouldn't you prefer to give your cook a certain cash payment instead of having her taking uncertain amounts of your foodstuffs and wearing apparel?" the merchant leaned forward in his chair. "did old becky davis send you to me with any such proposition as that, peter?" "no, not at all. but, mr. killibrew, wouldn't you like better and more trustworthy servants as cooks, as farm-hands, chauffeurs, stable-boys? you see, you and your children and your children's children are going to have to depend on negro labor, as far as we can see, to the end of time." "we-e-ell, yes," admitted mr. killibrew, who was not accustomed to considering the end of time. "wouldn't it be better to have honest, self-respecting help than dishonest help?" "certainly." "then let's think about cooks. how can one hope to rear an honest, self- respecting citizenry as long as the mothers of the race are compelled to resort to thievery to patch out an insufficient wage?" "why, i don't suppose niggers ever will be honest," admitted the grocer, very frankly. "you naturally don't trust a nigger. if you credit one for a dime, the next time he has any money he'll go trade somewhere else." the grocer broke into his contagious laugh. "do you know how i've built up my business here, peter? by never trusting a nigger." mr. killibrew continued his pleased chuckle. "yes, i get the whole cash trade of the niggers in hooker's bend by never cheating one and never trusting one." the grocer leaned back in his squeaking chair and looked out through the glass partition, over the brightly colored packages that lined his shelves from floor to ceiling. all that prosperity had come about through a policy of honesty and distrust. it was something to be proud of. "now, let me see," he proceeded, recurring pleasantly to what he recalled of peter's original proposition: "aunt becky sent you here to tell me if i'd raise her pay, she'd stop stealin' and--and raise some honest children." mr. killibrew threw back his head broke into loud, jelly-like laughter. "why, don't you know, peter, she's an old liar. if i gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. and children! why, the old humbug! she's too old; she's had her crop. and, besides all that, i don't mind what the old woman takes. it isn't much. she's a good old darky, faithful as a dog." he arose from his swivel-chair briskly and floated peter out before him. "tell her, if she wants a raise," he concluded heartily, "and can't pinch enough out of my kitchen and the two dollars i pay her--tell her to come to me, straight out, and i'll give her more, and she can pinch more." mr. killibrew moved down the aisle of his store between fragrant barrels and boxes, laughing mellowly at old aunt becky's ruse, as he saw it. as he turned peter out, he invited him to come again when he needed anything in the grocery line. and he was so pleasant, hearty, and sincere in his friendliness toward both peter and old aunt becky that peter, even amid the complete side- tracking and derailing of his mission, decided that it ever he did have occasion to purchase any groceries, he would do his trading at this market ruled by an absolute honesty with, and a complete distrust in, his race. at the conclusion of the killibrew interview peter instinctively felt that he had just about touched the norm of hooker's bend. the village might contain men who would dive a little deeper into the race question with peter; assuredly, there would be hundreds who would not dive so deep. mr. killibrew's attitude on the race question turned on how to hold the negro patronage of the village to his grocery. it was not an abstract question at all, but a concrete fact, which he had worked out to his own satisfaction. with mr. killibrew, with all hooker's bend, there was no negro question. chapter xvii when peter siner started on his indefinite errand among the village stores he believed it would require much tact and diplomacy to discuss the race question without offense. to his surprise, no precaution was necessary. everybody agreed at once that the south would be benefited by a more trustworthy labor, that if the negroes were trustworthy they could be paid more; but nobody agreed that if negroes were paid more they would become more trustworthy. the prevailing dictum was, a nigger's a nigger. as peter came out into the shabby little street of hooker's bend discouragement settled upon him. he felt as if he had come squarely against some blank stone wall that no amount of talking could budge. the black man would have to change his psychology or remain where he was, a creature of poverty, hovels, and dirt; but amid such surroundings he could not change his psychology. the point of these unhappy conclusions somehow turned against cissie dildine. the mulatto became aware that his whole crusade had been undertaken in behalf of the octoroon. everything the merchants said against negroes became accusations against cissie in a sharp personal way. "a nigger is a nigger"; "a thief is a thief"; "she wouldn't quit stealing if i paid her a hundred a week." every stroke had fallen squarely on cissie's shoulders. a nigger, a thief; and she would never be otherwise. it was all so hopeless, so unchangeable, that peter walked down the bleak street unutterably depressed there was nothing he could do. the situation was static. it seemed best that he should go away north and save his own skin. it was impossible to take cissie with him. perhaps in time he would come to forget her, and in so doing he would forget the pauperism and pettinesses of all the black folk of the south. because through cissie peter saw the whole negro race. she was flexuous and passionate, kindly and loving, childish and naïvely wise; on occasion she could falsify and steal, and in the depth of her peter sensed a profound capacity for fury and violence. for all her precise english, she was untamed, perhaps untamable. cissie was a far cry from the sort of woman peter imagined he wanted for a mate; yet he knew that if he stayed on in hooker's bend, seeing her, desiring her, with her luxury mocking the loneliness of the old renfrew manor, presently he would marry her. already he had had his little irrational moments when it seemed to him that cissie herself was quite fine and worthy and that her speculations were something foreign and did not pertain to her at all. he would better go north. it would be safer up there. no doubt he could find another colored girl in the north. the thought of fondling any other woman filled peter with a sudden, sharp repulsion. however, peter was wise. he knew he would get over that in time. with this plan in mind, peter set out down the street, intending to cross the big hill at the church, walk over to his mother's shack, and pack his few belongings preparatory to going away. it was not a heroic retreat. the conversation which he had had with his college friend farquhar recurred to peter. farquhar had tried to persuade peter to remain north and take a position in a system of garages out of chicago. "you can do nothing in the south, siner," assured farquhar; "your countrymen must stand on their own feet, just as you are doing." peter had argued the vast majority of the negroes had no chance, but farquhar pressed the point that peter himself disproved his own statement. at the time peter felt there was an clench in the illinoisan's logic, but he was not skilful enough to analyze it. now the mulatto began to see that farquhar was right. the negro question was a matter of individual initiative. critics forgot that a race was composed of individual men. peter had an uneasy sense that this was exceedingly thin logic, a mere smoke screen behind which he meant to retreat back up north. he walked on down the poor village street, turning it over and over in his mind, affirming it positively to himself, after the manner of uneasy consciences. an unusual stir among the negroes on hobbett's corner caught peter's attention and broke into his chain of thought. half a dozen negroes stood on the corner, staring down toward the white church. a black boy suddenly started running across the street, and disappeared among the stores on the other side. peter caught glimpses of him among the wretched alleyways and vacant lots that lie east of main street. the boy was still running toward niggertown. by this time peter was just opposite the watchers on the corner. he lifted his voice and asked them the matter, but at the moment they began an excited talking, and no one heard him. jim pink staggs jerked off his fur cap, made a gesture, contorted his long, black face into a caricature of fright, and came loping across the street, looking back over his shoulder, mimicking a run for life his mummery set his audience howling. the buffoon would have collided with peter, but the mulatto caught jim pink by the arm and shoulder, brought him to a halt, and at the same time helped him keep his feet. to peter's inquiry what was the matter, the black fellow whirled and blared out loudly, for the sake of his audience: "'fo' gawd, nigger, i sho thought mr. bobbs had me!" and he writhed his face into an idiotic grimace. the audience reeled about in their mirth. because with negroes, as with white persons, two thirds of humor is in the reputation, and jim pink was of prodigious repute. peter walked along with him patiently, because he knew that until they were out of ear-shot of the crowd there was no way of getting a sensible answer out of jim pink. "where are you going?" he asked presently. "thought i'd step over to niggertown." jim pink's humorous air was still upon him. "what's doing over there? what were the boys raising such a hullabaloo about?" "such me." "why did that boy go running across like that?" jim pink rolled his eyes on peter with a peculiar look. "reckon he mus' 'a' wanted to git on t'other side o' town." peter flattered the punchinello by smiling a little. "come, jim pink, what do you know?" he asked. the magician poked out his huge lips. "mr. bobbs turn acrost by de church, over de big hill. da' 's always a ba-ad sign." peter's brief interest in the matter flickered out. another arrest for some niggerish peccadillo. the history of niggertown was one long series of petty offenses, petty raids, and petty punishments. peter would be glad to get well away from such a place. "think i'll go north, jim pink," remarked peter, chiefly to keep up a friendly conversation with his companion. "whut-chu goin' to do up thaiuh?" "take a position in a system of garages." "a position is a job wid a white color on it," defined the minstrel. "whut you goin' to do wid cissie?" peter looked around at the foolish face. "with cissie?--cissie dildine?" "uh huh." "why, what makes you think i'm going to do anything with cissie?" "m-m, visitin' roun'." the fool flung his face into a grimace, and dropped it as one might shake out a sack. peter watched the contortion uneasily. "what do you mean--visiting around?" "diff'nt folks go visitin' roun'; some goes up an' some goes down." apparently jim pink had merely quoted a few words from a poem he knew. he stared at the green-black depth of the glade, which set in about half-way up the hill they were climbing. "ef this weather don' ever break," he observed sagely, "we sho am in fuh a dry spell." peter did not pursue the topic of the weather. he climbed the hill in silence, wondering just what the buffoon meant. he suspected he was hinting at cissie's visit to his room. however, he did not dare ask any questions or press the point in any manner, lest he commit himself. the minstrel had succeeded in making peter's walk very uncomfortable, as somehow he always did. peter went on thinking about the matter. if jim pink knew of cissie's visit, all niggertown knew it. no woman's reputation, nobody's shame or misery or even life, would stand between jim pink and what he considered a joke. the buffoon was the crudest thing in this world--a man who thought himself a wit. peter could imagine all the endless tweaks to cissie's pride niggertown would give the octoroon. she had asked peter to marry her and had been refused. she had humbled herself for naught. that was the very tar of shame. peter knew that in the moral categories of niggertown cissie would suffer more from such a rebuff than if she had lied or committed theft and adultery every day in the calendar. she had been refused marriage. all the folk-ways of niggertown were utterly topsyturvy. it was a crazy-house filled with the most grotesque moral measures. it seemed to peter as he entered the cedar-glade that he had lost all sympathy with this people from which he had sprung. he looked upon them as strange, incomprehensible beings, just as a man will forget his own childhood and look upon children as strange, incomprehensible little creatures. in the midst of his thoughts he heard himself saying to jim pink: "i suppose it is as dusty as ever." "dustier 'an ever," assured jim pink. apparently their conversation had recurred to the weather, after all. a chill silence encompassed the glade. the path the negroes followed wound this way and that among reddish boulders, between screens of intergrown cedars, and over a bronze mat of needles. their steps were noiseless. the odor of the cedars and the temple-like stillness brought to peter's mind the night of his mother's death. it seemed to him a long time since he had come running through the glade after a doctor, and yet, by a queer distortion of his sense of time, his mother's death and burial bulked in his past as if it had occurred yesterday. there was no sound in the glade to disturb peter's thoughts except a murmur of human voices from some of the innumerable privacies of the place, and the occasional chirp of a waxwing busy over clusters of cedar-balls. it had been five weeks and a day since caroline died. five weeks and a day; his mother's death drifting away into the mystery and oblivion of the past. likewise, twenty-five years of his own life completed and gone. a procession of sad, wistful thoughts trailed through peter's brain: his mother, and ida may, and now cissie. it seemed to peter that all any woman had ever brought him was wistfulness and sadness. his mother had been jealous, and instead of the great happiness he had expected, his home life with her had turned out a series of small perplexities and pains. before that was ida may, and now here was her younger sister. peter wondered if any man ever reached the peace and happiness foreshadowed in his dream of a woman. * * * * * a voice calling his name checked peter's stride mechanically, and caused him to look about with the slight bewilderment of a man aroused from a reverie. at the first sound, however, jim pink became suddenly alert. he took three strides ahead of peter, and as he went he whispered over his shoulder: "beat it, nigger! beat it!" the mulatto recognized one of jim pink's endless stupid attempts at comedy. it would be precisely jim pink's idea of a jest to give peter a little start. as the mulatto stood looking about among the cedars for the person who had called his name, it amazed him that jim pink could be so utterly insane; that he performed some buffoonery instantly, by reflex action as it were, upon the slightest provocation. it was almost a mania with jim pink; it verged on the pathological. the clown, however, was pressing his joke. he was pretending great fear, and was shouting out in his loose minstrel voice: "hey, don' shoot down dis way, black man, tull i makes my exit!" and a voice, rich with contempt, called back: "you needn't be skeered, you fool rabbit of a nigger!" peter turned with a qualm. quite close to him, and in another direction from which he had been looking, stood tump pack. the ex-soldier looked the worse for wear after his jail sentence. his uniform was frayed, and over his face lay a grayish cast that marks negroes in bad condition. at his side, attached by a belt and an elaborate shoulder holster, hung a big army revolver, while on the greasy lapel of his coat was pinned his military medal for exceptional bravery on the field of battle. "been lookin' fuh you fuh some time, peter," he stated grimly. peter considered the formidable figure with a queer sensation. he tried to take tump's appearance casually; he tried to maintain an air of ordinariness. "didn't know you were back." "yeah, i's back." "have you--been looking for me?" "yeah." "didn't you know where i was staying?" "co'se i did; up 'mong de white folks. you know dey don' 'low no shootin' an' killin' 'mong de white folks." he drew his pistol from the holster with the address of an expert marksman. [illustration: "naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "you turn roun' an' march on to niggertown"] peter stood, with a quickening pulse, studying his assailant. the glade, the air, the sunshine, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to, break into violent commotion. his abrupt danger brought peter to a feeling of lightness and power. a quiver went along his spine. his nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at tump's gun. the soldier took a step backward, at the same time bringing the barrel to a ready. "naw you don't," he warned sharply. "you turn roun' an' march on to niggertown." "what for?" peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new overtones. "because, nigger, i means to drap you right on de main street o' niggertown, 'fo' all dem niggers whut's been a-raggin' me 'bout you an' cissie. i's gwine show dem fool niggers i don' take no fumi-diddles off'n nobody." "tump," gasped jim pink, in a husky voice, "you oughtn't shoot peter; he mammy jes daid." "'en she won' worry none. turn roun', peter, an' when i says, 'march,' you march." he leveled his pistol. "'tention! rat about face! march!" peter turned and moved off down the noiseless path, walking with the stiff gait of a man who expects a terrific blow from behind at any instant. the mulatto walked twenty or more paces amid a confusion of self- protective impulses. he thought of whirling on tump even at this late date. he thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man forbade his getting himself killed while running away. it was too undignified a death. presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort of complaint: "how came you with the pistol, tump? thought it was against the law to carry one." "you kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in a wooden voice. "mr. bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back." the irony of the thing caught peter, for the authorities to arrest tump not because he was trying to kill peter, but because he went about his first attempt in an illegal manner. for the first time in his life the mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors every negro's thoughts. here for thirty days his life had been saved by a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by another technical law, tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. it was grotesque; it was absurd. it filled peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole white régime. his thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement. at the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle of niggertown. here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of pale wood smoke lifted into the chill sunshine. the sight of the houses brought peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving street beneath him. a shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life rushed over him. just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait. all at once he began talking, arguing. he tried to speak at an ordinary tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster: "tump, i'm not going to marry cissie dildine." "i knows you ain't, peter." "i mean, if you let me alone, i didn't mean to." "i ain't goin' to let you alone." "tump, we had already decided not to marry." after a short pause tump said in a slightly different tone: "'pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her--comin' to yo' room." a queer sinking came over the mulatto. "listen, tump, i--we--in my room --we simply talked, that's all. she came to tell me she was goin away. i--i didn't harm her, tump." peter swallowed. he despaired of being believed. but his defense only infuriated the soldier. he suddenly broke into violent profanity. "hot damn you! shut yo black mouf! whut i keer whut-chu done! you weaned her away fum me. she won't speak to me! she won't look at me!" a sudden insanity of rage seized tump. he poured on his victim every oath and obscenity he had raked out of the whole army. strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to peter siner. it exonerated him. he was not suspected of wronging cissie; or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to tump. peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where cissie could see him and desire him rather than tump. why it calmed peter to know that tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto himself could not have told. tump's violence showed peter the certainty of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of escape. half-way down the hill they entered the edge of niggertown. the smell of sties and stables came to them. peter's thoughts moved here and there, like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave a pleasure-ground. peter knew that jim pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear, would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death. he thought of tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the nashville penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished. he thought of cissie. he was being murdered because cissie desired him. and then peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life had taught him. it was this: no people can become civilized until the woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand. the history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman's power of choice. among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed, civilization is curtailed. it was this principle that exalted chivalry. upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric. so deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men revolves about some woman's choice of her mate being thwarted by power or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman's choice is finally justified. the burden of every song is love, true love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love. and in his moment of clairvoyance peter saw that these songs and stories were profoundly true. against a woman's selectiveness no other social force may count. that was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. the males of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. they were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin. this very act of violence against his person condemned his whole race. these thoughts brought the mulatto an unspeakable sadness, not only for his own particular death, but that this idea, this great redeeming truth, which burned so brightly in his brain, would in another moment flicker out, unrevealed, and be no more. chapter xviii the coughing and rattling of an old motor-car as it rounded the niggertown curve delayed tump pack's act of violence. instinctively, the three men waited for the machine to pass before peter walked out into the road. next moment it appeared around the turn, moving slowly through the dust and spreading a veritable fog behind it. all three negroes recognized the first glimpse of the hood and top, for there are only three or four cars in hooker's bend, and these are as well known as the faces of their owners. this particular motor belonged to constable bobbs, and the next moment the trio saw the ponderous body of the officer at the wheel, and by his side a woman. as the machine clacked toward them peter felt a certain surprise to see that it was cissie dildine. the constable in the car scrutinized the black men, by the roadside in a very peculiar way. as he came near, he leaned across cissie and almost eclipsed the girl. he eyed the trio with his perpetual menace of a grin on his broad red face. his right hand, lying across cissie's lap, held a revolver. when closest he shouted above the clangor of his engine: "now, none o' that, boys! none o' that! you'll prob'ly hit the gal if you shoot, an' i'll pick you off lak three black skunks." he brandished his revolver at them, but the gesture was barely seen, and instantly concealed by the cloud; of dust following the motor. next moment it enveloped the negroes and hid them even from one another. it was only after peter was lost in the dust-cloud that the mulatto really divined what was meant by cissie's strange appearance with the constable, her chalky face, her frightened brown eyes. the significance of the scene grew in his mind. he stood with eyes screwed to slits staring into the apricot-colored dust in the direction of the vanishing noise. presently tump pack's form outlined itself in the yellow obscurity, groping toward peter. he still held his pistol, but it swung at his side. he called peter's name in the strained voice of a man struggling not to cough: "peter--is mr. bobbs done--'rested cissie?" peter could hardly talk himself. "don't know. looks like it." the two negroes stared at each other through the dust. "fuh gawd's sake! cissie 'rested!" tump began to cough. then he wheezed: "mine an' yo' little deal's off, peter. you gotta he'p git her out." here he fell into a violent fit of coughing, and started groping his way to the edge of the dust-cloud. in the rush of the moment the swift change in peter's situation appeared only natural. he followed tump, so distressed by the dust and disturbed over cissie that he hardly thought of his peculiar position. the dust pinched the upper part of his throat, stung his nose. tears trickled from his eyes, and he pressed his finger against his upper lip, trying not to sneeze. he was still struggling against the sneeze when tump recovered his speech. "wh-whut you reckon she done, peter? she don' shoot craps, nor boot- laig, nor--" he fell to coughing. peter got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. "let's go--to the dildine house," he said. the two moved hurriedly through the thinning cloud, and presently came to breathable air, where they could see the houses around them. "i know she done somp'n; i know she done somp'n," chanted tump, with the melancholy cadence of his race. he shook his dusty head. "you ain't never been in jail, is you, black man?" peter said he had not. "lawd! it ain't no place fuh a woman," declared tump. "you dunno nothin' 'bout it, black man. it sho ain't no place fuh a woman." a notion of an iron cage floated before peter's mind. the two negroes trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a little trail of dust in the air behind them. their faces and clothes were of a uniform dust color. streaks of mud marked the runnels of their tears down their cheeks. the shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were quite dead. even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led from the gate to the door of the dildine home. the two colored men walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds. none came. the worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard. the door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and vannie dildine stood before them. the quadroon's eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping. she looked so frail and miserable that peter instinctively stepped inside and took her arm to assist her in the mere physical effort of standing. "what is the matter, mrs. dildine?" he asked in a shocked tone. "what's happened to cissie?" vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her flat chest. "it's--it's--o-o-oh, peter!" she put an arm about him and began weeping against him. he soothed her, patted her shoulder, at the same time staring at the side of her head, wondering what could have dealt her this blow. presently she steadied herself and began explaining in feeble little phrases, sandwiched between sobs and gasps: "she--tuk a brooch--kep'--kep' layin' it roun' in--h-her way, th-that young sam arkwright did,--a-an' finally she--she tuk hit. n-nen, when he seen he h-had her, he said sh-sh-she 'd haf to d-do wh-whut he said, or he'd sen' her to-to ja-a-il!" vannie sobbed drearily for a few moments on peter's breast. "sh-she did fuh a while: 'n 'en sh-she broke off wid h-him, anyhow, an'--an' he swo' out a wa'nt an sont her to jail!" the mother sobbed without comfort, and finally added: "sh-she in a delicate fix now, an' 'at jail goin' to be a gloomy place fuh cissie." the three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save for the racking of vannie's sobs. tump pack stirred himself. "well, we gotta git her out." his words trailed off. he stood wrinkling his half-inch of brow. "i wonder would dey exchange pris'ners; wonder ef i could go up an' serve out cissie's term." "oh, tump!" gasped the woman, "ef you only could!" "i'll step an' see, miss vannie. 'at sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak cissie." tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner. peter supported vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth. there was where he had sat the evening cissie made her painful confession to him. only now did he realize the whole of what cissie was trying to confess. peter siner overtook tump pack a little way down the crescent, opposite the berry cabin. the thoroughfare was deserted, because the weather was cold and the scantily clad children were indoors. however, from every cabin came sound of laughing and romping, and now and then a youngster darted through the cold from one hut to another. it seemed to peter siner only a little while since he and ida may were skittering through wintry weather from one fire to another, with cissie, a wailing, wet-nosed little spoil-sport, trailing after them. and then, with a wheeling of the years, they were scattered everywhere. as the negroes passed the berry cabin, nan berry came out with an old shawl around her bristling spikes. she stopped the two men and drew them to her gate with a gesture. "wha you gwine?" "jonesbuh." "whut you goin' do 'bout po-o-o' cissie?" "goin' to see ef the sheriff won' take me 'stid o' cissie." "tha's right," said nan, nodding solemnly. "i hopes he will. you is mo' used to it, tump." "yeah, an' 'at jail sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak cissie." "sho ain't," agreed nan. peter interrupted to say he was sure the sheriff would not exchange. the hopes of his listeners fell. "weh-ul," dragged out nan, with a long face, "of co'se now it's lak dis: ef cissie goin' to stay in dat ja-ul, she's goin' to need some mo' clo'es 'cep'n whut she's got on,--specially lak she is." tump stared down the swing of the crescent. "'fo' gawd, dis sho don' seem lak hit's right to me," he said. nan let herself out at the rickety gate. "you niggers wait heah tull i runs up to miss vannie's an' git some o' cissie's clo'es fuh you to tote her." tump objected. "jail ain't no place fuh clean clo'es. she jes better serve out her term lak she is, an' wash up when she gits th'ugh." "you fool nigger!" snapped nan. "she kain't serve out her term lak she is!" "da' 's so," said tump. the three stood silent, nan and tump lost in blankness, trying to think of something to do for cissie. finally nan said: "i heah she done commit gran' larceny, an' they goin' sen' her to de pen." "whut is gran' larceny?" asked tump. "it's takin' mo' at one time an' de white folks 'speck you to take," defined the woman. "well, i'll go git her clo'es." she hurried off up the crescent. peter and tump waited in the berry cabin for nan's return. outside, the berry cabin was the usual clapboard-roofed, weather-stained structure; inside, it was dark, windowless, and strong with the odor of black folk. some children were playing around the hearth, roasting chestnuts. their elders sat in a circle of decrepit chairs. it was so dark that when peter first entered he could not make out the little group, but he soon recognized their voices: parson ranson, wince washington, jerry dillihay, and all of the berry family. they were talking of cissie, of course. they hoped cissie wouldn't really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her out in time for her to have her child at home. parson ranson thought it would be bad luck for a child to be born in jail. wince washington, who had been in jail a number of times, suggested that they bail cissie out by signing their names to a paper. he had been set free by this means once or twice. sally, nan's little sister, observed tartly that if cissie hadn't acted so, she wouldn't have been in jail. "don' speak lak dat uv dem as is in trouble, sally," reproved old parson ranson, solemnly; "anybody can say 'ef.'" "sho am de troof," agreed jerry dillihay. "sho am, black man." the conversation drifted into the endless moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of cissie. from the tone of the negroes one would have thought some impersonal disaster had overtaken her. every one was planning how to help cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. they were the black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness is only to the well placed and the untempted. presently nan came back with a bundle of cissie's clothes. tump took the bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved, and set forth on his quixotic errand. he tied it to his shoulder-holster and set out. peter went a little of the way with him. it was almost dusk when they started. the chill of approaching night stung the men's faces. as they walked past the footpath that led over the big hill, three pistol-shots from the glade announced that the boot-leggers had opened business for the night. tump paused and shivered. he said it was a cold night. he thought he would like to get a kick of "white mule" to put a little heart in him. it was a long walk to jonesboro. he hesitated a moment, then turned off the road around the crescent for the path through the glade. a thought to dissuade tump from drinking the fiery "singlings" of the moonshiners crossed peters mind, but he put it aside. tump was a habitué of the glade. all the physiological arguments upon which peter could base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier's comprehension. so tump turned off through the dark trees. peter watched him until all he could see was the white blur of cissie's underwear swinging against his holster. after tump's disappearance, peter stood for several minutes thinking. his brief crusade into niggertown had ended in a situation far outside of his volition. that morning he had started out with some vague idea of taking niggertown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his white ideas; but niggertown had taken peter into its hands, had threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face set over the big hill for white town. as peter stood there it seemed to him there was something symbolic in his attitude. he was no longer of the black world; he was of the white. he did not understand his people; they eluded him. he belonged to the white world; not to the village across the hill, but to the north. nothing now prevented him from going north and taking the position with farquhar. cissie dildine was impossible for him now. niggertown was immovable, at least for him. he was no washington to lead his people to a loftier plane. in fact, peter began to suspect that he was no leader at all. he saw now that his initial success with the sons and daughters of benevolence had been effected merely by the aura of his college training. after his first misstep he had never rehabilitated himself. he perhaps had a dash of the artistic in him, and the power to mold ideas often confuses itself subjectively with the power to mold human beings. in reality he did not even understand the people he assumed to mold. a suspicion came to him that under the given conditions their ways were more rational than his own. as for cissie dildine, his duty by the girl, his queer protective passion for her--all that was surely past now. after her lapse from all decency there was no reason why he should spend another thought on her. he would go north to chicago. the last of the twilight was fading in swift, visible gradations of light. the cedars, the cabins, and the hill faded in pulse-beats of darkness. above the big hill the last ember of day smoldered against a green-blue infinity. here and there a star pricked the dome with a wintry brilliance. then, somehow, the thought of cissie looking out on that chilly sky through iron bars tightened peter's throat. he caught himself up sharply for his emotion. he began a vague defense of the white man's laws on grounds as cold and impersonal as the winter evening. laws, customs, and conventions were for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to winnow the weak. it was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man. but somehow the stars multiplied and kept cissie's image before peter--a cold, frightened girl, harassed with coming motherhood, peering at those chill, distant lights out of the blackness of a jail. the mulatto decided to spend the night in his mother's cabin. he would do his packing, and be ready for the down-river boat in the morning. he found his way to his own gate in the darkness. he lifted it around, entered, and walked to his door. when he tried to open it, he found some one had bored holes through the shutter and the jamb and had wired it shut. peter struck a match to see just what had been done. the flame displayed a small sheet tacked on the door. he spent two matches investigating it. it was a notice of levy, posted by the constable in an action of debt brought against the estate of caroline siner by henry hooker. the owner of the estate and the public in general were warned against removing anything whatsoever from the premises under penalty exacted by the law governing such offenses. then peter untwisted the wire and entered. peter searched about and found the tiny brass night-lamp which his mother always had used. the larger glass-bowled lamp was gone. the interior of the cabin was clammy from cold and foul from long lack of airing. in the corner his mother's old four-poster loomed in the shadows, but he could see some of its covers had been taken. he passed into the kitchen with a notion of building a fire and eating a bite, but everything edible had been abstracted. even one of the lids of the old step-stove was gone. most of the pans and kettles had disappeared, but the pretty old dutch sugar-bowl remained on a bare paper-covered shelf. negro-like, whatever person or persons who had ransacked peter's home considered the sugar-bowl too fine to take. or they may have thought that peter would want this bowl for a keepsake, and with that queer compassion that permeates a negro's worst moments they allowed it to remain. and peter knew if he raised an outcry about his losses, much of the property would be surreptitiously restored, or perhaps his neighbors would bring back his things and say they had found them. they would help him as best they could, just as they of the crescent would help cissie as best they could, and would receive her back as one of them when she and her baby were finally released from jail. they were a queer people. they were a people who would never get on well and do well. they lacked the steel-like edge that the white man achieves. by virtue of his hardness, a white man makes his very laws and virtues instruments to crush and mulct his fellow-man; but negroes are so softened by untoward streaks of sympathy that they lose the very uses of their crimes. the depression of the whole day settled upon peter with the deepening night. he held his poor light above his head and picked his way to his own room. after the magnificence of the renfrew manor, it had contracted to a grimy little box lined with yellowed papers. his books were still intact, but henry hooker would get them as part payment on the dillihay place, which henry owned. on his little table still lay the pile of old examination papers, lists of incoherent questions which somebody somewhere imagined formed a test of human ability to meet and answer the mysterious searchings of life. peter was familiar with the books; many of the questions he had learned by rote, but the night and the crescent, and the thought of a pregnant girl caged in the blackness of a jail filled his soul with a great melancholy query to which he could find no answer. chapter xix two voices talking, interrupting each other with ejaculations, after the fashion of negroes under excitement, aroused peter siner from his sleep. he caught the words: "he did! tump did! the jailer did! 'fo' god! black man, whut's cissie doin'?" overtones of shock, even of horror, in the two voices brought peter wide awake the moment he opened his eyes. he sat up suddenly in his bed, remained perfectly still, listening with his mouth open. the voices, however, were passing. the words became indistinct, then relapsed into that bubbling monotone of human voices at a distance, and presently ceased. these fragmentary phrases, however, feathered with consternation, filled peter with vague premonitions. he whirled his legs out of bed and began drawing on his clothes. when he was up and into the crescent, however, nobody was in sight. he stood breathing the chill, damp air, blinking his eyes. lack of his cold bath made him feel chilly and lethargic. he wriggled his shoulders and considered going back, after all, and having his splash. just then he saw the persimmon coming around the crescent. peter called to the roustabout and asked about tump pack. the persimmon looked at peter with his half-asleep, protruding eyeballs. "don' you know 'bout tump pack already, mister siner?" "no." peter was astonished at the formality of the "mr. siner." "then is you 'spectin' somp'n 'bout him?" "why, no, but i was asleep in there a moment ago, and somebody came along talking about tump and cissie. they--they aren't married, are they?" "oh, no-o, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o." the persimmon waggled his bullet head slowly from side to side. "i heared tump got into a lil trouble wid de jailer las' night." "serious?" "i dunno." the persimmon closed one of his protruding yellow eyes. "owin' to whut you call se'ius; maybe whut i call se'ius wouldn't be se'ius to you at all; 'n 'en maybe whut you call se'ius would be ve'y insince'ius to tump." the roustabout's philosophy, which consisted in a monotonous recasting of a given proposition, trickled on and on in the cold wind. after a while it fizzled out to nothing at all, and the persimmon asked in a queer manner: "did you give tump some women's clo'es, peter?" it was such an odd question that at first peter was at loss; then he recalled nan berry's despatching cissie some underwear. he explained this to the persimmon, and tacked on a curious, "why?" "oh, nothin'; nothin' 'tall. ever'body say you a mighty long-haided nigger. jim pink he tell us 'bout tump pack marchin' you 'roun' wid a gun. i sho don' want you ever git mad at me, mister siner. man wid a gun an' you turn yo' long haid on him an' blow him away wid a wad o' women's clo'es. i sho don' want you ever cross yo' fingers at me, mister siner." peter stared at the grotesque, bullet-headed roustabout. "persimmon," he said uneasily, "what in the world are you talking about?" the persimmon smiled a sickly, white-toothed smile. "jim pink say yo' aidjucation is a flivver. i say, 'jim pink, no nigger don' go off an' study fo' yeahs in college whut 'n he comes back an' kin throw some kin' uv a hoodoo over us fool niggers whut ain't got no brains. now, tump wid a gun, an' you wid jes ordina'y women's clo'es! 'fo' gawd, aidjucation is a great thing; sho is a great thing." the persimmon gave peter an apprehensive wink and moved on. there was no use trying to extract information from the persimmon unless he was minded to give it. his talk would merely become vaguer and vaguer. peter watched him go, then turned and attempted to throw the whole matter off his mind by assuming a certain brisk northern mood. he must pack, get ready for the down-river gasolene launch. the doings of tump pack and cissie dildine were, after all, nothing to him. he started inside, when the levy notice on the door again met his eyes. he paused, read it over once more, and decided that he must go over the hill to the planter's bank and get henry hooker's permission to remove certain small personal belongings that he wanted to take with him. the mere clear-cut decision to go invigorated peter. some of the energy that always filled him during his college days in boston seemed to come to him now from the mere thought of the north. soon he would be in the midst of it, moving briskly, talking to wide- awake men to whom a slightly unusual english word would not form a stumbling-block to conversation. he set out down the crescent and across the big hill at a swinging stride. he was glad to get away. beyond the white church on the other side of the hill he heard a motor coming in on the jonesboro road. presently he saw a battered car moving around the long swing of the pike, spewing a trail of dust down the wind. its clacking became prodigious. the mulatto was just entering that indefinite stretch of thoroughfare where a country road becomes a village street when there came a wail of brakes behind him and he looked around. it was dawson bobbs's car. the fat man now slowed up not far from the mulatto and called to him. "yes, sir," said peter. dawson bobbed his fat head backward and upward in a signal for peter to approach. it held the casualness of one certain to be obeyed. although peter had done no crime, nor had even harbored a criminal intention, a trickle of apprehension went through him at bobbs's nod. he recalled jim pink's saying that it was bad luck to see the constable. he walked up to the shuddering motor and stood about three feet from the running-board. the officer bit on a sliver of toothpick that he held in his thin lips. "accident up jonesboro las' night, peter." "what was it, mr. bobbs?" "tump pack got killed." peter continued looking fixedly at mr. bobbs's broad red face. the dusty road beneath him seemed to give a little dip. he repeated the information emptily, trying to orient himself to this sudden change in his whole mental horizon. the officer was looking at peter fixedly with his chill slits of eyes. "yeah; trying to make a jail delivery." the two men continued looking at each other, one from the road, the other from the motor. the flow of peter's thoughts seemed to divide. the greater part was occupied with tump pack. peter could vision the formidable ex-soldier lying dead in jonesboro jail, with his little congressional medal on his breast. some lighter portion of his mind nickered about here and there on trivial things. he observed a little hole rusted in the running-board of the motor. he noticed that the officer's eyes were just the same chill, washed blue as the winter sky above his head. he remembered a tale that, before electrocution became a law in tennessee the county sheriff's nerve had failed him at a hanging, and the constable dawson bobbs had sprung the drop. there was something terrible about the fat man. he would do anything, absolutely anything, that came to his hands in the way of legal sewage. in the midst of these thoughts peter heard himself saying. "he--was trying to get cissie out?" "yep." "he--must have been drunk." "oh, yeah." mr. bobbs sat studying the mulatto. as he studied him he said slowly: "some of 'em say he was disguised as a woman. others say he had some women's clothes along, ready to put on. now, me and the sheriff knowed tump pack purty well, peter, and we knowed that nigger never in the worl' would 'a' thought up sich a plan by hisself." he sat looking at peter so interrogatively that the mulatto began, in a strained, earnest voice, telling the constable precisely what had happened in regard to the clothes. mr. bobbs sat listening impassively, moving his toothpick up and down from one side to the other of his small, thin-lipped mouth. at last he nodded. "well, i guess that's about the way of it. i didn't exactly understand the women's clothes business,--damn' fool disguise,--but we figgered it might pop into the head of a' edjucated nigger." he sucked his teeth, reflectively. "peter," he said at last, "seems to me, if i was you, i'd drift on away from this town. the niggers around here ain't strong for you now; some say you're a hoodoo; some say this an' some that. the white folks don't exactly like you trying to get up a cook's union. it's your right to do that if you want to, of course, but this is a mighty small city to have unions and things. the fact is, it ain't a big enough place for a nigger of yore ability, peter. i b'lieve, if i was you, i'd jes drift on some'eres else." the officer tipped up his toothpick so that it lifted his upper lip in a little v-shaped opening and exposed a strong, yellowish tooth. at the moment his machine started slowly forward. it gave him the appearance of accidentally rolling off while immersed in deep thought. * * * * * the death of tump pack moved peter with a sense of strange pathos. he always remembered tump tramping away through the night to carry cissie some underclothes and, if possible, to take her place in jail. at the foundation of tump's being lay a faithfulness and devotion to cissie that reached the heights of a dog's. and yet, he might have deserted her, he would probably have beaten her, and he most certainly would have betrayed her many, many times. it was inexplicable. now that tump was dead, the mantle of his fidelity somehow seemed to fall on peter. for some reason peter felt that he should assume tump's place as cissie dildine's husband and protector. had tump lived, peter might have gone north in peace, if not in happiness. now such a journey, without cissie, had become impossible. he had a feeling that it would not be right. as for the disgrace of marrying such a woman as cissie dildine, peter slowly gave that idea up. the "worthinesses" and "disgraces" implicit in harvard atmosphere, which peter had spent four years of his life imbibing, slowly melted away in the air of niggertown. what was honorable there, what was disgraceful there, somehow changed its color here. by virtue of this change peter felt intuitively that cissie dildine was neither disgraced by her arrest nor soiled by her physical condition. somehow she seemed just as "nice" a girl, just as "good" a girl, as ever she was before. moreover, every other darky in niggertown held these same instinctive beliefs. had it not been for that, peter would have thought it was his passion pleading for the girl, justifying itself by a grotesque morality, as passions often do. but this was not the correct solution. the sentiment was enigmatic. peter puzzled over it time and time again as he waited in hooker's bend for the outcome of cissie's trial. the octoroon's imprisonment came to an end on the third day after tump's death. sam arkwright's parents had not known of their son's legal proceedings, and mr. arkwright immediately quashed the warrant, and hushed up the unfortunate matter as best he could. young sam was suddenly sent away from home to college, as the best step in the circumstances. and so the wishes of the adolescent in the cedar-glade came queerly to pass, even if peter did withhold any grave, mature advice on the subject which he may have possessed. naturally, there was much mirth among the men of hooker's bend and much virulence among the women over the peculiar conditions under which young sam made his pilgrimage in pursuit of wisdom and morals and the right conduct of life. and life being problematic and uncertain as it is, and prone to wind about in the strangest way, no one may say with certitude that young sam did not make a promising start. certainly, over the affair the knights of the round table launched many a quip and jest, but that simply proved the fineness of their sentiments toward a certain delicate human relation which forms mankind's single awful approach to the creative and the holy. tump pack became almost a mythical figure in niggertown. jim pink staggs composed a saga relating the soldier's exploits in france, his assault on the jail to liberate cissie, and his death. in his songs--and jim pink had composed a good many--the minstrel instinctively avoided humor. he always improvised them to the sobbing of a guitar, and they were as invariably sad as the poetry of adolescents. it was called "tump pack's lament." the negroes of hooker's bend learned it from jim pink, and with them it drifted up and down the three great american rivers, and now it is sung by the roustabouts, stevedores, and underlings of our strange black american world. this song commemorating tump pack's bravery and faithfulness to his love may very well take the place of the congressional medal which, unfortunately, was lost on the night the soldier was killed. between the two, there is little doubt that the accolade of fame bestowed in the buffoon's simple melody is more vital and enduring than that accorded by special act of the congress of the united states of america. when cissie dildine returned from jail, she and her mother arranged the dildine-siner wedding as nearly according to white standards in similar circumstances as they could conceive. they agreed that it should be a simple, quiet home wedding. however, as every soul in niggertown, a number of colored friends in jonesboro, and a contingent from up-river villages meant to attend, it became necessary to hold the service in the church. the officiating minister was not parson ranson after all, but a reverend cleotus haidus, the presiding elder of that circuit of the afro-american methodist church, whose duties happened to call him to hooker's bend that day. so, notwithstanding cissie's efforts at simplicity, the wedding, after all, was resolved into an affair. once, in one of her moments of clairvoyance, cissie said to peter: "our trouble is, peter, we are trying to mix what i have learned in nashville and what you have learned in boston with what we both feel in hooker's bend. i--i'm almost ashamed to say it, but i don't really feel sad and plaintive at all, peter. i feel glad, gloriously glad. oh, my dear, dear peter!" and she flung her arms around peter's neck and held him with all her might against her ripening bosom. to cissie her theft, her jail sentence, her pregnancy, were nothing more than if she had taken a sip of water. however, with the imitativeness of her race and the histrionic ability of her sex, she appeared pensive and subdued during the elaborate double-ring ceremony performed by the reverend cleotus haidus. nobody in the packed church knew how tremendously cissie's heart was beating except peter, who held her hand. the ethical engine that peter had patiently builded in harvard almost ceased to function in this weird morality of niggertown. whether he were doing right or doing wrong, peter could not determine. he lost all his moorings. at times he felt himself walking according to the ethnological law, which is the harvard way of saying walking according to the will of god; but at other times he felt party to some unpardonable obscenity. so deeply was he disturbed that out of the dregs of his mind floated up old bits of the scriptures that he was unaware of possessing: "there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." and peter wondered if he were not in that way. [illustration: the bridal couple embarked for cairo] the bridal couple embarked for cairo on the _red cloud_, a packet in the dubuque, ohio, and tennessee river trade. peter and cissie were not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts. then they went through the heat and steam of the engine-room up a small companionway that led through the toilet, on to the rear guard of the main deck, and thence back to a little cuddy behind the main saloon called the chambermaid's cabin. the chambermaid's cabin was filled with the perpetual odor of hot soap- suds, soiled laundry, and the broader smell of steam and the boat's machinery. the little place trembled night and day, for the steamer's engines were just beneath them, and immediately behind them thundered the great stern-wheel of the packet. a single square window in the end of the chambermaid's cabin looked out on the wheel, but at all times, except when the wind was blowing from just the right quarter, this window was deluged with a veritable niagara of water. the continual shake of the cabin, the creak of the rudder-beam working to and fro, the watery thunder of the wheel, and the solemn rumble of the engines made conversation impossible until the travelers grew accustomed to the noises. still, cissie found it pleasant. she liked to sit and look out into the main saloon, with its interminable gilded scrolls extending away up the long cabin, a suave perspective. she liked to watch the white passengers dine--the white napery, the bouquets, the endless tables all filled with diners; some swathed in napkins from chin to waistband, others less completely protected. it gave cissie a certain tang of triumph to smile at the swathed ones and to think that she knew better than that. at night a negro string-band played for the white excursionists to dance, and cissie would sit, with glowing eyes, clenching peter's hand, every fiber of her asway to the music, and it seemed as if her heart would go mad. all these inhibitions, all this spreading before her of forbidden joys, did not daunt her delight. she reveled in them by propinquity. the chambermaid was a mrs. antolia higgman, a strong, full-bodied _café-au-lait_ negress. she was a very sensible woman, and during her work on the boat she had picked up a northern accent and a number of little mannerisms from the chicago and st. louis excursionists, who made ten-day round trips from dubuque to florence, alabama, and return. when mrs. higgman was not running errands for the women passengers, she was working at her perpetual laundering. at first peter was a little uneasy as to how mrs. higgman would treat cissie, but she turned out a good-hearted woman, and did everything she could to make the young wife comfortable. it soon became clear that mrs. higgman knew the whole situation, for one day she said to cissie in her odd dialect, burred with yankeeish "r's" and "ing's." "these river-r towns, mrs. siner-r, are jest like one big village, with the river-r for its main street. i know ever-r'thang that goes on, through the cabin-boys an' cooks, an'--an'--you cerrtainly ar-re a dear- r, mrs. siner-r," and thereupon, quite unexpectedly, she kissed cissie. so on about the second day down the river cissie dropped her saddened manner and became frankly, freely, and riotously happy. after the fashion of village negresses, she insisted on helping mrs. higgman with her work, and, incidentally, she cultivated mrs. higgman's northern accent. when the chambermaid was out on her errands and cissie found a moment alone with peter, she would tweak his ear or pull his cheek and provoke him to kiss her. indeed, it was all the hot, shuddering little laundry-room could do to contain the gay and bubbling cissie. peter thought and thought, resignedly now, but persistently, how this strange happiness that belonged to them both could be. he was content, yet he felt he ought not to be content. he thought there must be something base in himself, yet he felt that there was not. he drank the wine of his honeymoon marveling. on the morning before the _red cloud_ entered the port of cairo mrs. higgman was out of the cabin, and peter stood at the little square window, with his arm about cissie's waist, looking out to the rear of the steamer. a strong east wind blew the spray away from the glass, and peter could see the huge wheel covered with a waterfall thundering beneath him. back of the wheel stretched a long row of even waves and troughs. every seventh or eighth wave tumbled over on itself in a swash of foam. these flashing stern waves strung far up the river. on each side of the great waterway stretched the flat shores of kentucky and ohio. here and there over the broad clay-colored water moved other boats--tow-boats, a string of government auto-barges, a snag-boat, another packet. peter gave up his question. the curves of cissie's form in his arm held a sweetness and a restfulness that her maidenhood had never promised. he felt so deeply sure of his happiness that it seemed strange to him that he could not aline his emotions and his mind. as peter stood staring up the ohio river, it occurred to him that perhaps, in some queer way, the morals of black folk were not the morals of white folk; perhaps the laws that bound one race were not the laws that bound the other. it might be that white anathemas were black blessings. peter thought along this line peacefully for several minutes. and finally he concluded that, after all, morals and conventions, right and wrong, are merely those precepts that a race have practised and found good in its evolution. morals are the training rules that keep a people fit. it might very well be that one moral régime is applicable to one race, and quite another to another. the single object of all morals is racial welfare, the racial integrity, the breeding of strong children to perpetuate the species. if the black race possess a more exuberant vitality than some other race, then the black would not be forced to practise so severe a vital economy as some less virile folk. racial morals are simply a question of having and spending within safety limits. peter knew that for years white men had held a prejudice against marrying widows. this is utterly without grounds except for one reason: the first born of a woman is the lustiest. among the still weaker aryans of india the widows burn themselves. among certain south sea islanders only the first-born may live and mate; all other children are slain. among nearly every white race marriage lines are strictly drawn, and the tendency is to have few children to a family, to conserve the precious vital impulse. so strong is this feeling of birth control that to-day nearly all american white women are ashamed of large families. this shame is the beginning of a convention; the convention may harden into a cult, a law, or a religion. and here is the amazing part of morals. morals are always directed toward one particular race, but the individual members of that race always feel that their brand of morals does and should apply to all the peoples of the earth; so one has the spectacle of nations sending out missionaries and battle-ships to teach and enforce their particular folk-ways. another queer thing is that whereas the end of morals is designed solely for the betterment of the race, and is entirely regardless of the person, to the conscience of the person morals are always translated as something that binds him personally, that will shame him or honor him personally not only for the brief span of this worldly life, but through an eternity to come. to him, his particular code, surrounded by all the sanctions of custom, law, and religion, appears earth-embracing, hell-deep, and heaven-piercing, and any human creature who follows any other code appears fatally wicked, utterly shameless, and ineluctably lost. and yet there is no such thing as absolute morals. morals are as transitory as the sheen on a blackbird's wing; they change perpetually with the necessities of the race. any people with an abounding vitality will naturally practise customs which a less vital people must shun. morals are nothing more than the engines controlling the stream of energy that propel a race on its course. all engines are not alike, nor are all races bound for the same port. here peter siner made the amazing discovery that although he had spent four years in harvard, he had come out, just as he went in, a negro. a great joy came over him. he took cissie whole-heartedly in his arms and kissed again and again the deep crimson of her lips. his brain and his heart were together at last. as he stood looking out at the window, pressing cissie to him, he wondered, when he reached chicago, if he could ever make farquhar understand. huckleberry finn by mark twain part . notice persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. by order of the author, per g.g., chief of ordnance. explanatory in this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods southwestern dialect; the ordinary "pike county" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. the shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. i make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. the author. huckleberry finn scene: the mississippi valley time: forty to fifty years ago chapter i. you don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of the adventures of tom sawyer; but that ain't no matter. that book was made by mr. mark twain, and he told the truth, mainly. there was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. that is nothing. i never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was aunt polly, or the widow, or maybe mary. aunt polly--tom's aunt polly, she is--and mary, and the widow douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as i said before. now the way that the book winds up is this: tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. we got six thousand dollars apiece--all gold. it was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. well, judge thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round --more than a body could tell what to do with. the widow douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when i couldn't stand it no longer i lit out. i got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. but tom sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and i might join if i would go back to the widow and be respectable. so i went back. the widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. she put me in them new clothes again, and i couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. well, then, the old thing commenced again. the widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. when you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them,--that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. in a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better. after supper she got out her book and learned me about moses and the bulrushers, and i was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then i didn't care no more about him, because i don't take no stock in dead people. pretty soon i wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. but she wouldn't. she said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and i must try to not do it any more. that is just the way with some people. they get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. here she was a-bothering about moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. and she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself. her sister, miss watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. she worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. i couldn't stood it much longer. then for an hour it was deadly dull, and i was fidgety. miss watson would say, "don't put your feet up there, huckleberry;" and "don't scrunch up like that, huckleberry--set up straight;" and pretty soon she would say, "don't gap and stretch like that, huckleberry--why don't you try to behave?" then she told me all about the bad place, and i said i wished i was there. she got mad then, but i didn't mean no harm. all i wanted was to go somewheres; all i wanted was a change, i warn't particular. she said it was wicked to say what i said; said she wouldn't say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. well, i couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so i made up my mind i wouldn't try for it. but i never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn't do no good. now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. she said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. so i didn't think much of it. but i never said so. i asked her if she reckoned tom sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. i was glad about that, because i wanted him and me to be together. miss watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. by and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. i went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it on the table. then i set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. i felt so lonesome i most wished i was dead. the stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and i heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and i couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. then away out in the woods i heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. i got so down-hearted and scared i did wish i had some company. pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and i flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before i could budge it was all shriveled up. i didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so i was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. i got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then i tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. but i hadn't no confidence. you do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but i hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you'd killed a spider. i set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't know. well, after a long time i heard the clock away off in the town go boom--boom--boom--twelve licks; and all still again--stiller than ever. pretty soon i heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees --something was a stirring. i set still and listened. directly i could just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!" down there. that was good! says i, "me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as i could, and then i put out the light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed. then i slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was tom sawyer waiting for me. chapter ii. we went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our heads. when we was passing by the kitchen i fell over a root and made a noise. we scrouched down and laid still. miss watson's big nigger, named jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. he got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. then he says: "who dah?" he listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close together. there was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but i dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. seemed like i'd die if i couldn't scratch. well, i've noticed that thing plenty times since. if you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy--if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. pretty soon jim says: "say, who is you? whar is you? dog my cats ef i didn' hear sumf'n. well, i know what i's gwyne to do: i's gwyne to set down here and listen tell i hears it agin." so he set down on the ground betwixt me and tom. he leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. my nose begun to itch. it itched till the tears come into my eyes. but i dasn't scratch. then it begun to itch on the inside. next i got to itching underneath. i didn't know how i was going to set still. this miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. i was itching in eleven different places now. i reckoned i couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but i set my teeth hard and got ready to try. just then jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore--and then i was pretty soon comfortable again. tom he made a sign to me--kind of a little noise with his mouth--and we went creeping away on our hands and knees. when we was ten foot off tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie jim to the tree for fun. but i said no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out i warn't in. then tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. i didn't want him to try. i said jim might wake up and come. but tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and tom laid five cents on the table for pay. then we got out, and i was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do tom but he must crawl to where jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. i waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome. as soon as tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. tom said he slipped jim's hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. afterwards jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the state, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. and next time jim told it he said they rode him down to new orleans; and, after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. niggers would come miles to hear jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, jim would happen in and say, "hm! what you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. niggers would come from all around there and give jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches. well, when tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. we went down the hill and found jo harper and ben rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. so we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore. we went to a clump of bushes, and tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands and knees. we went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole. we went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. tom says: "now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it tom sawyer's gang. everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood." everybody was willing. so tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. it swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. and nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. and if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever. everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked tom if he got it out of his own head. he said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it. some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. then ben rogers says: "here's huck finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout him?" "well, hain't he got a father?" says tom sawyer. "yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. he used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen in these parts for a year or more." they talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and square for the others. well, nobody could think of anything to do--everybody was stumped, and set still. i was most ready to cry; but all at once i thought of a way, and so i offered them miss watson--they could kill her. everybody said: "oh, she'll do. that's all right. huck can come in." then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and i made my mark on the paper. "now," says ben rogers, "what's the line of business of this gang?" "nothing only robbery and murder," tom said. "but who are we going to rob?--houses, or cattle, or--" "stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery; it's burglary," says tom sawyer. "we ain't burglars. that ain't no sort of style. we are highwaymen. we stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money." "must we always kill the people?" "oh, certainly. it's best. some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them--except some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they're ransomed." "ransomed? what's that?" "i don't know. but that's what they do. i've seen it in books; and so of course that's what we've got to do." "but how can we do it if we don't know what it is?" "why, blame it all, we've got to do it. don't i tell you it's in the books? do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?" "oh, that's all very fine to say, tom sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? --that's the thing i want to get at. now, what do you reckon it is?" "well, i don't know. but per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead." "now, that's something like. that'll answer. why couldn't you said that before? we'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they'll be, too--eating up everything, and always trying to get loose." "how you talk, ben rogers. how can they get loose when there's a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?" "a guard! well, that is good. so somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. i think that's foolishness. why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?" "because it ain't in the books so--that's why. now, ben rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don't you?--that's the idea. don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? do you reckon you can learn 'em anything? not by a good deal. no, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way." "all right. i don't mind; but i say it's a fool way, anyhow. say, do we kill the women, too?" "well, ben rogers, if i was as ignorant as you i wouldn't let on. kill the women? no; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. you fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any more." "well, if that's the way i'm agreed, but i don't take no stock in it. mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers. but go ahead, i ain't got nothing to say." little tommy barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't want to be a robber any more. so they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. but tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some people. ben rogers said he couldn't get out much, only sundays, and so he wanted to begin next sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on sunday, and that settled the thing. they agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected tom sawyer first captain and jo harper second captain of the gang, and so started home. i clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking. my new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and i was dog-tired. chapter iii. well, i got a good going-over in the morning from old miss watson on account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that i thought i would behave awhile if i could. then miss watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. she told me to pray every day, and whatever i asked for i would get it. but it warn't so. i tried it. once i got a fish-line, but no hooks. it warn't any good to me without hooks. i tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow i couldn't make it work. by and by, one day, i asked miss watson to try for me, but she said i was a fool. she never told me why, and i couldn't make it out no way. i set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. i says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't deacon winn get back the money he lost on pork? why can't the widow get back her silver snuffbox that was stole? why can't miss watson fat up? no, says i to my self, there ain't nothing in it. i went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was "spiritual gifts." this was too many for me, but she told me what she meant--i must help other people, and do everything i could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself. this was including miss watson, as i took it. i went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but i couldn't see no advantage about it--except for the other people; so at last i reckoned i wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go. sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about providence in a way to make a body's mouth water; but maybe next day miss watson would take hold and knock it all down again. i judged i could see that there was two providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's providence, but if miss watson's got him there warn't no help for him any more. i thought it all out, and reckoned i would belong to the widow's if he wanted me, though i couldn't make out how he was a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing i was so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery. pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; i didn't want to see him no more. he used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though i used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. well, about this time he was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so people said. they judged it was him, anyway; said this drownded man was just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all like pap; but they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all. they said he was floating on his back in the water. they took him and buried him on the bank. but i warn't comfortable long, because i happened to think of something. i knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on his back, but on his face. so i knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes. so i was uncomfortable again. i judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though i wished he wouldn't. we played robber now and then about a month, and then i resigned. all the boys did. we hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just pretended. we used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived any of them. tom sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and marked. but i couldn't see no profit in it. one time tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the gang to get together), and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of spanish merchants and rich a-rabs was going to camp in cave hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. he said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. he never could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. i didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of spaniards and a-rabs, but i wanted to see the camels and elephants, so i was on hand next day, saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. but there warn't no spaniards and a-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. it warn't anything but a sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at that. we busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though ben rogers got a rag doll, and jo harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. i didn't see no di'monds, and i told tom sawyer so. he said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was a-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. i said, why couldn't we see them, then? he said if i warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called don quixote, i would know without asking. he said it was all done by enchantment. he said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an infant sunday-school, just out of spite. i said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. tom sawyer said i was a numskull. "why," said he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say jack robinson. they are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church." "well," i says, "s'pose we got some genies to help us--can't we lick the other crowd then?" "how you going to get them?" "i don't know. how do they get them?" "why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. they don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a sunday-school superintendent over the head with it--or any other man." "who makes them tear around so?" "why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. they belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. if he tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from china for you to marry, they've got to do it--and they've got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. and more: they've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand." "well," says i, "i think they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. and what's more--if i was one of them i would see a man in jericho before i would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp." "how you talk, huck finn. why, you'd have to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not." "what! and i as high as a tree and as big as a church? all right, then; i would come; but i lay i'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country." "shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, huck finn. you don't seem to know anything, somehow--perfect saphead." i thought all this over for two or three days, and then i reckoned i would see if there was anything in it. i got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till i sweat like an injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use, none of the genies come. so then i judged that all that stuff was only just one of tom sawyer's lies. i reckoned he believed in the a-rabs and the elephants, but as for me i think different. it had all the marks of a sunday-school. chapter iv. well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter now. i had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and i don't reckon i could ever get any further than that if i was to live forever. i don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. at first i hated the school, but by and by i got so i could stand it. whenever i got uncommon tired i played hookey, and the hiding i got next day done me good and cheered me up. so the longer i went to school the easier it got to be. i was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they warn't so raspy on me. living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather i used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. i liked the old ways best, but i was getting so i liked the new ones, too, a little bit. the widow said i was coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. she said she warn't ashamed of me. one morning i happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. i reached for some of it as quick as i could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but miss watson was in ahead of me, and crossed me off. she says, "take your hands away, huckleberry; what a mess you are always making!" the widow put in a good word for me, but that warn't going to keep off the bad luck, i knowed that well enough. i started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. there is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them kind; so i never tried to do anything, but just poked along low-spirited and on the watch-out. i went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go through the high board fence. there was an inch of new snow on the ground, and i seen somebody's tracks. they had come up from the quarry and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden fence. it was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so. i couldn't make it out. it was very curious, somehow. i was going to follow around, but i stooped down to look at the tracks first. i didn't notice anything at first, but next i did. there was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil. i was up in a second and shinning down the hill. i looked over my shoulder every now and then, but i didn't see nobody. i was at judge thatcher's as quick as i could get there. he said: "why, my boy, you are all out of breath. did you come for your interest?" "no, sir," i says; "is there some for me?" "oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night--over a hundred and fifty dollars. quite a fortune for you. you had better let me invest it along with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it." "no, sir," i says, "i don't want to spend it. i don't want it at all --nor the six thousand, nuther. i want you to take it; i want to give it to you--the six thousand and all." he looked surprised. he couldn't seem to make it out. he says: "why, what can you mean, my boy?" i says, "don't you ask me no questions about it, please. you'll take it --won't you?" he says: "well, i'm puzzled. is something the matter?" "please take it," says i, "and don't ask me nothing--then i won't have to tell no lies." he studied a while, and then he says: "oho-o! i think i see. you want to sell all your property to me--not give it. that's the correct idea." then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says: "there; you see it says 'for a consideration.' that means i have bought it of you and paid you for it. here's a dollar for you. now you sign it." so i signed it, and left. miss watson's nigger, jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. he said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. so i went to him that night and told him pap was here again, for i found his tracks in the snow. what i wanted to know was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. it fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened. but it warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. he said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money. i told him i had an old slick counterfeit quarter that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver a little, and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass didn't show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every time. (i reckoned i wouldn't say nothing about the dollar i got from the judge.) i said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. he said he would split open a raw irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next morning you couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. well, i knowed a potato would do that before, but i had forgot it. jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened again. this time he said the hair-ball was all right. he said it would tell my whole fortune if i wanted it to. i says, go on. so the hair-ball talked to jim, and jim told it to me. he says: "yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay. de bes' way is to res' easy en let de ole man take his own way. dey's two angels hoverin' roun' 'bout him. one uv 'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black. de white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. a body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las'. but you is all right. you gwyne to have considable trouble in yo' life, en considable joy. sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin. dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. one uv 'em's light en t'other one is dark. one is rich en t'other is po'. you's gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by. you wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung." when i lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap--his own self! chapter v. i had shut the door to. then i turned around and there he was. i used to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. i reckoned i was scared now, too; but in a minute i see i was mistaken--that is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being so unexpected; but right away after i see i warn't scared of him worth bothring about. he was most fifty, and he looked it. his hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. it was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers. there warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawl--a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. as for his clothes--just rags, that was all. he had one ankle resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. his hat was laying on the floor--an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. i stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair tilted back a little. i set the candle down. i noticed the window was up; so he had clumb in by the shed. he kept a-looking me all over. by and by he says: "starchy clothes--very. you think you're a good deal of a big-bug, don't you?" "maybe i am, maybe i ain't," i says. "don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "you've put on considerable many frills since i been away. i'll take you down a peg before i get done with you. you're educated, too, they say--can read and write. you think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't? i'll take it out of you. who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?--who told you you could?" "the widow. she told me." "the widow, hey?--and who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of her business?" "nobody never told her." "well, i'll learn her how to meddle. and looky here--you drop that school, you hear? i'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better'n what he is. you lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? your mother couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. none of the family couldn't before they died. i can't; and here you're a-swelling yourself up like this. i ain't the man to stand it--you hear? say, lemme hear you read." i took up a book and begun something about general washington and the wars. when i'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. he says: "it's so. you can do it. i had my doubts when you told me. now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. i won't have it. i'll lay for you, my smarty; and if i catch you about that school i'll tan you good. first you know you'll get religion, too. i never see such a son." he took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and says: "what's this?" "it's something they give me for learning my lessons good." he tore it up, and says: "i'll give you something better--i'll give you a cowhide." he set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says: "ain't you a sweet-scented dandy, though? a bed; and bedclothes; and a look'n'-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floor--and your own father got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. i never see such a son. i bet i'll take some o' these frills out o' you before i'm done with you. why, there ain't no end to your airs--they say you're rich. hey?--how's that?" "they lie--that's how." "looky here--mind how you talk to me; i'm a-standing about all i can stand now--so don't gimme no sass. i've been in town two days, and i hain't heard nothing but about you bein' rich. i heard about it away down the river, too. that's why i come. you git me that money to-morrow--i want it." "i hain't got no money." "it's a lie. judge thatcher's got it. you git it. i want it." "i hain't got no money, i tell you. you ask judge thatcher; he'll tell you the same." "all right. i'll ask him; and i'll make him pungle, too, or i'll know the reason why. say, how much you got in your pocket? i want it." "i hain't got only a dollar, and i want that to--" "it don't make no difference what you want it for--you just shell it out." he took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day. when he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when i reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if i didn't drop that. next day he was drunk, and he went to judge thatcher's and bullyragged him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then he swore he'd make the law force him. the judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther not take a child away from its father. so judge thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business. that pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. he said he'd cowhide me till i was black and blue if i didn't raise some money for him. i borrowed three dollars from judge thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. but he said he was satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for him. when he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. so he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. and after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. the judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. the old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. and when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says: "look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it. there's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before he'll go back. you mark them words--don't forget i said them. it's a clean hand now; shake it--don't be afeard." so they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. the judge's wife she kissed it. then the old man he signed a pledge--made his mark. the judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. and when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it. the judge he felt kind of sore. he said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way. huckleberry finn by mark twain part . chapter xxvi. well, when they was all gone the king he asks mary jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for uncle william, and she'd give her own room to uncle harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it. the king said the cubby would do for his valley--meaning me. so mary jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain but nice. she said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took out of her room if they was in uncle harvey's way, but he said they warn't. the frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. there was an old hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar-box in another, and all sorts of little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room with. the king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for these fixings, and so don't disturb them. the duke's room was pretty small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby. that night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there, and i stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them, and the niggers waited on the rest. mary jane she set at the head of the table, with susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was--and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop, and said so--said "how do you get biscuits to brown so nice?" and "where, for the land's sake, did you get these amaz'n pickles?" and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know. and when it was all done me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up the things. the hare-lip she got to pumping me about england, and blest if i didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes. she says: "did you ever see the king?" "who? william fourth? well, i bet i have--he goes to our church." i knowed he was dead years ago, but i never let on. so when i says he goes to our church, she says: "what--regular?" "yes--regular. his pew's right over opposite ourn--on t'other side the pulpit." "i thought he lived in london?" "well, he does. where would he live?" "but i thought you lived in sheffield?" i see i was up a stump. i had to let on to get choked with a chicken bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. then i says: "i mean he goes to our church regular when he's in sheffield. that's only in the summer time, when he comes there to take the sea baths." "why, how you talk--sheffield ain't on the sea." "well, who said it was?" "why, you did." "i didn't nuther." "you did!" "i didn't." "you did." "i never said nothing of the kind." "well, what did you say, then?" "said he come to take the sea baths--that's what i said." "well, then, how's he going to take the sea baths if it ain't on the sea?" "looky here," i says; "did you ever see any congress-water?" "yes." "well, did you have to go to congress to get it?" "why, no." "well, neither does william fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea bath." "how does he get it, then?" "gets it the way people down here gets congress-water--in barrels. there in the palace at sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water hot. they can't bile that amount of water away off there at the sea. they haven't got no conveniences for it." "oh, i see, now. you might a said that in the first place and saved time." when she said that i see i was out of the woods again, and so i was comfortable and glad. next, she says: "do you go to church, too?" "yes--regular." "where do you set?" "why, in our pew." "whose pew?" "why, ourn--your uncle harvey's." "his'n? what does he want with a pew?" "wants it to set in. what did you reckon he wanted with it?" "why, i thought he'd be in the pulpit." rot him, i forgot he was a preacher. i see i was up a stump again, so i played another chicken bone and got another think. then i says: "blame it, do you suppose there ain't but one preacher to a church?" "why, what do they want with more?" "what!--to preach before a king? i never did see such a girl as you. they don't have no less than seventeen." "seventeen! my land! why, i wouldn't set out such a string as that, not if i never got to glory. it must take 'em a week." "shucks, they don't all of 'em preach the same day--only one of 'em." "well, then, what does the rest of 'em do?" "oh, nothing much. loll around, pass the plate--and one thing or another. but mainly they don't do nothing." "well, then, what are they for?" "why, they're for style. don't you know nothing?" "well, i don't want to know no such foolishness as that. how is servants treated in england? do they treat 'em better 'n we treat our niggers?" "no! a servant ain't nobody there. they treat them worse than dogs." "don't they give 'em holidays, the way we do, christmas and new year's week, and fourth of july?" "oh, just listen! a body could tell you hain't ever been to england by that. why, hare-l--why, joanna, they never see a holiday from year's end to year's end; never go to the circus, nor theater, nor nigger shows, nor nowheres." "nor church?" "nor church." "but you always went to church." well, i was gone up again. i forgot i was the old man's servant. but next minute i whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was different from a common servant and had to go to church whether he wanted to or not, and set with the family, on account of its being the law. but i didn't do it pretty good, and when i got done i see she warn't satisfied. she says: "honest injun, now, hain't you been telling me a lot of lies?" "honest injun," says i. "none of it at all?" "none of it at all. not a lie in it," says i. "lay your hand on this book and say it." i see it warn't nothing but a dictionary, so i laid my hand on it and said it. so then she looked a little better satisfied, and says: "well, then, i'll believe some of it; but i hope to gracious if i'll believe the rest." "what is it you won't believe, joe?" says mary jane, stepping in with susan behind her. "it ain't right nor kind for you to talk so to him, and him a stranger and so far from his people. how would you like to be treated so?" "that's always your way, maim--always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. i hain't done nothing to him. he's told some stretchers, i reckon, and i said i wouldn't swallow it all; and that's every bit and grain i did say. i reckon he can stand a little thing like that, can't he?" "i don't care whether 'twas little or whether 'twas big; he's here in our house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it. if you was in his place it would make you feel ashamed; and so you oughtn't to say a thing to another person that will make them feel ashamed." "why, maim, he said--" "it don't make no difference what he said--that ain't the thing. the thing is for you to treat him kind, and not be saying things to make him remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks." i says to myself, this is a girl that i'm letting that old reptle rob her of her money! then susan she waltzed in; and if you'll believe me, she did give hare-lip hark from the tomb! says i to myself, and this is another one that i'm letting him rob her of her money! then mary jane she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely again--which was her way; but when she got done there warn't hardly anything left o' poor hare-lip. so she hollered. "all right, then," says the other girls; "you just ask his pardon." she done it, too; and she done it beautiful. she done it so beautiful it was good to hear; and i wished i could tell her a thousand lies, so she could do it again. i says to myself, this is another one that i'm letting him rob her of her money. and when she got through they all jest laid theirselves out to make me feel at home and know i was amongst friends. i felt so ornery and low down and mean that i says to myself, my mind's made up; i'll hive that money for them or bust. so then i lit out--for bed, i said, meaning some time or another. when i got by myself i went to thinking the thing over. i says to myself, shall i go to that doctor, private, and blow on these frauds? no--that won't do. he might tell who told him; then the king and the duke would make it warm for me. shall i go, private, and tell mary jane? no--i dasn't do it. her face would give them a hint, sure; they've got the money, and they'd slide right out and get away with it. if she was to fetch in help i'd get mixed up in the business before it was done with, i judge. no; there ain't no good way but one. i got to steal that money, somehow; and i got to steal it some way that they won't suspicion that i done it. they've got a good thing here, and they ain't a-going to leave till they've played this family and this town for all they're worth, so i'll find a chance time enough. i'll steal it and hide it; and by and by, when i'm away down the river, i'll write a letter and tell mary jane where it's hid. but i better hive it tonight if i can, because the doctor maybe hasn't let up as much as he lets on he has; he might scare them out of here yet. so, thinks i, i'll go and search them rooms. upstairs the hall was dark, but i found the duke's room, and started to paw around it with my hands; but i recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let anybody else take care of that money but his own self; so then i went to his room and begun to paw around there. but i see i couldn't do nothing without a candle, and i dasn't light one, of course. so i judged i'd got to do the other thing--lay for them and eavesdrop. about that time i hears their footsteps coming, and was going to skip under the bed; i reached for it, but it wasn't where i thought it would be; but i touched the curtain that hid mary jane's frocks, so i jumped in behind that and snuggled in amongst the gowns, and stood there perfectly still. they come in and shut the door; and the first thing the duke done was to get down and look under the bed. then i was glad i hadn't found the bed when i wanted it. and yet, you know, it's kind of natural to hide under the bed when you are up to anything private. they sets down then, and the king says: "well, what is it? and cut it middlin' short, because it's better for us to be down there a-whoopin' up the mournin' than up here givin' 'em a chance to talk us over." "well, this is it, capet. i ain't easy; i ain't comfortable. that doctor lays on my mind. i wanted to know your plans. i've got a notion, and i think it's a sound one." "what is it, duke?" "that we better glide out of this before three in the morning, and clip it down the river with what we've got. specially, seeing we got it so easy--given back to us, flung at our heads, as you may say, when of course we allowed to have to steal it back. i'm for knocking off and lighting out." that made me feel pretty bad. about an hour or two ago it would a been a little different, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed, the king rips out and says: "what! and not sell out the rest o' the property? march off like a passel of fools and leave eight or nine thous'n' dollars' worth o' property layin' around jest sufferin' to be scooped in?--and all good, salable stuff, too." the duke he grumbled; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn't want to go no deeper--didn't want to rob a lot of orphans of everything they had. "why, how you talk!" says the king. "we sha'n't rob 'em of nothing at all but jest this money. the people that buys the property is the suff'rers; because as soon 's it's found out 'at we didn't own it--which won't be long after we've slid--the sale won't be valid, and it 'll all go back to the estate. these yer orphans 'll git their house back agin, and that's enough for them; they're young and spry, and k'n easy earn a livin'. they ain't a-goin to suffer. why, jest think--there's thous'n's and thous'n's that ain't nigh so well off. bless you, they ain't got noth'n' to complain of." well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all right, but said he believed it was blamed foolishness to stay, and that doctor hanging over them. but the king says: "cuss the doctor! what do we k'yer for him? hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? and ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" so they got ready to go down stairs again. the duke says: "i don't think we put that money in a good place." that cheered me up. i'd begun to think i warn't going to get a hint of no kind to help me. the king says: "why?" "because mary jane 'll be in mourning from this out; and first you know the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up and put 'em away; and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not borrow some of it?" "your head's level agin, duke," says the king; and he comes a-fumbling under the curtain two or three foot from where i was. i stuck tight to the wall and kept mighty still, though quivery; and i wondered what them fellows would say to me if they catched me; and i tried to think what i'd better do if they did catch me. but the king he got the bag before i could think more than about a half a thought, and he never suspicioned i was around. they took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw tick that was under the feather-bed, and crammed it in a foot or two amongst the straw and said it was all right now, because a nigger only makes up the feather-bed, and don't turn over the straw tick only about twice a year, and so it warn't in no danger of getting stole now. but i knowed better. i had it out of there before they was half-way down stairs. i groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till i could get a chance to do better. i judged i better hide it outside of the house somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good ransacking: i knowed that very well. then i turned in, with my clothes all on; but i couldn't a gone to sleep if i'd a wanted to, i was in such a sweat to get through with the business. by and by i heard the king and the duke come up; so i rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was going to happen. but nothing did. so i held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't begun yet; and then i slipped down the ladder. chapter xxvii. i crept to their doors and listened; they was snoring. so i tiptoed along, and got down stairs all right. there warn't a sound anywheres. i peeped through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. the door was open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both rooms. i passed along, and the parlor door was open; but i see there warn't nobody in there but the remainders of peter; so i shoved on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there. just then i heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. i run in the parlor and took a swift look around, and the only place i see to hide the bag was in the coffin. the lid was shoved along about a foot, showing the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his shroud on. i tucked the money-bag in under the lid, just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and then i run back across the room and in behind the door. the person coming was mary jane. she went to the coffin, very soft, and kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief, and i see she begun to cry, though i couldn't hear her, and her back was to me. i slid out, and as i passed the dining-room i thought i'd make sure them watchers hadn't seen me; so i looked through the crack, and everything was all right. they hadn't stirred. i slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing playing out that way after i had took so much trouble and run so much resk about it. says i, if it could stay where it is, all right; because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two i could write back to mary jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain't the thing that's going to happen; the thing that's going to happen is, the money 'll be found when they come to screw on the lid. then the king 'll get it again, and it 'll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smouch it from him. of course i wanted to slide down and get it out of there, but i dasn't try it. every minute it was getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and i might get catched--catched with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. i don't wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, i says to myself. when i got down stairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the watchers was gone. there warn't nobody around but the family and the widow bartley and our tribe. i watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but i couldn't tell. towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full. i see the coffin lid was the way it was before, but i dasn't go to look in under it, with folks around. then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. there warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and blowing noses--because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church. when the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. he never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done it with nods, and signs with his hands. then he took his place over against the wall. he was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man i ever see; and there warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham. they had borrowed a melodeum--a sick one; and when everything was ready a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion. then the reverend hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait--you couldn't hear yourself think. it was right down awkward, and nobody didn't seem to know what to do. but pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, "don't you worry--just depend on me." then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads. so he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar. then in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off. in a minute or two here comes this undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "he had a rat!" then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. you could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. a little thing like that don't cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. there warn't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was. well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome; and then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the coffin with his screw-driver. i was in a sweat then, and watched him pretty keen. but he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along as soft as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. so there i was! i didn't know whether the money was in there or not. so, says i, s'pose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly?--now how do i know whether to write to mary jane or not? s'pose she dug him up and didn't find nothing, what would she think of me? blame it, i says, i might get hunted up and jailed; i'd better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the thing's awful mixed now; trying to better it, i've worsened it a hundred times, and i wish to goodness i'd just let it alone, dad fetch the whole business! they buried him, and we come back home, and i went to watching faces again--i couldn't help it, and i couldn't rest easy. but nothing come of it; the faces didn't tell me nothing. the king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up, and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his congregation over in england would be in a sweat about him, so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home. he was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. and he said of course him and william would take the girls home with them; and that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls, too--tickled them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world; and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. them poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so, but i didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune. well, blamed if the king didn't bill the house and the niggers and all the property for auction straight off--sale two days after the funeral; but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to. so the next day after the funeral, along about noon-time, the girls' joy got the first jolt. a couple of nigger traders come along, and the king sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to memphis, and their mother down the river to orleans. i thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. the girls said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. i can't ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying; and i reckon i couldn't a stood it all, but would a had to bust out and tell on our gang if i hadn't knowed the sale warn't no account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two. the thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way. it injured the frauds some; but the old fool he bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and i tell you the duke was powerful uneasy. next day was auction day. about broad day in the morning the king and the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and i see by their look that there was trouble. the king says: "was you in my room night before last?" "no, your majesty"--which was the way i always called him when nobody but our gang warn't around. "was you in there yisterday er last night?" "no, your majesty." "honor bright, now--no lies." "honor bright, your majesty, i'm telling you the truth. i hain't been a-near your room since miss mary jane took you and the duke and showed it to you." the duke says: "have you seen anybody else go in there?" "no, your grace, not as i remember, i believe." "stop and think." i studied awhile and see my chance; then i says: "well, i see the niggers go in there several times." both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn't ever expected it, and then like they had. then the duke says: "what, all of them?" "no--leastways, not all at once--that is, i don't think i ever see them all come out at once but just one time." "hello! when was that?" "it was the day we had the funeral. in the morning. it warn't early, because i overslept. i was just starting down the ladder, and i see them." "well, go on, go on! what did they do? how'd they act?" "they didn't do nothing. and they didn't act anyway much, as fur as i see. they tiptoed away; so i seen, easy enough, that they'd shoved in there to do up your majesty's room, or something, s'posing you was up; and found you warn't up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn't already waked you up." "great guns, this is a go!" says the king; and both of them looked pretty sick and tolerable silly. they stood there a-thinking and scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and says: "it does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. they let on to be sorry they was going out of this region! and i believed they was sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. don't ever tell me any more that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent. why, the way they played that thing it would fool anybody. in my opinion, there's a fortune in 'em. if i had capital and a theater, i wouldn't want a better lay-out than that--and here we've gone and sold 'em for a song. yes, and ain't privileged to sing the song yet. say, where is that song--that draft?" "in the bank for to be collected. where would it be?" "well, that's all right then, thank goodness." says i, kind of timid-like: "is something gone wrong?" the king whirls on me and rips out: "none o' your business! you keep your head shet, and mind y'r own affairs--if you got any. long as you're in this town don't you forgit that--you hear?" then he says to the duke, "we got to jest swaller it and say noth'n': mum's the word for us." as they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again, and says: "quick sales and small profits! it's a good business--yes." the king snarls around on him and says: "i was trying to do for the best in sellin' 'em out so quick. if the profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considable, and none to carry, is it my fault any more'n it's yourn?" "well, they'd be in this house yet and we wouldn't if i could a got my advice listened to." the king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around and lit into me again. he give me down the banks for not coming and telling him i see the niggers come out of his room acting that way--said any fool would a knowed something was up. and then waltzed in and cussed himself awhile, and said it all come of him not laying late and taking his natural rest that morning, and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it again. so they went off a-jawing; and i felt dreadful glad i'd worked it all off on to the niggers, and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it. chapter xxviii. by and by it was getting-up time. so i come down the ladder and started for down-stairs; but as i come to the girls' room the door was open, and i see mary jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she'd been packing things in it--getting ready to go to england. but she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying. i felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. i went in there and says: "miss mary jane, you can't a-bear to see people in trouble, and i can't --most always. tell me about it." so she done it. and it was the niggers--i just expected it. she said the beautiful trip to england was most about spoiled for her; she didn't know how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children warn't ever going to see each other no more--and then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says: "oh, dear, dear, to think they ain't ever going to see each other any more!" "but they will--and inside of two weeks--and i know it!" says i. laws, it was out before i could think! and before i could budge she throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it again, say it again, say it again! i see i had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place. i asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person that's had a tooth pulled out. so i went to studying it out. i says to myself, i reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though i ain't had no experience, and can't say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here's a case where i'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth is better and actuly safer than a lie. i must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it's so kind of strange and unregular. i never see nothing like it. well, i says to myself at last, i'm a-going to chance it; i'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to. then i says: "miss mary jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you could go and stay three or four days?" "yes; mr. lothrop's. why?" "never mind why yet. if i'll tell you how i know the niggers will see each other again inside of two weeks--here in this house--and prove how i know it--will you go to mr. lothrop's and stay four days?" "four days!" she says; "i'll stay a year!" "all right," i says, "i don't want nothing more out of you than just your word--i druther have it than another man's kiss-the-bible." she smiled and reddened up very sweet, and i says, "if you don't mind it, i'll shut the door--and bolt it." then i come back and set down again, and says: "don't you holler. just set still and take it like a man. i got to tell the truth, and you want to brace up, miss mary, because it's a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it. these uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at all; they're a couple of frauds --regular dead-beats. there, now we're over the worst of it, you can stand the rest middling easy." it jolted her up like everything, of course; but i was over the shoal water now, so i went right along, her eyes a-blazing higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung herself on to the king's breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times--and then up she jumps, with her face afire like sunset, and says: "the brute! come, don't waste a minute--not a second--we'll have them tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!" says i: "cert'nly. but do you mean before you go to mr. lothrop's, or--" "oh," she says, "what am i thinking about!" she says, and set right down again. "don't mind what i said--please don't--you won't, now, will you?" laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that i said i would die first. "i never thought, i was so stirred up," she says; "now go on, and i won't do so any more. you tell me what to do, and whatever you say i'll do it." "well," i says, "it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and i'm fixed so i got to travel with them a while longer, whether i want to or not--i druther not tell you why; and if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, and i'd be all right; but there'd be another person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble. well, we got to save him, hain't we? of course. well, then, we won't blow on them." saying them words put a good idea in my head. i see how maybe i could get me and jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave. but i didn't want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard to answer questions but me; so i didn't want the plan to begin working till pretty late to-night. i says: "miss mary jane, i'll tell you what we'll do, and you won't have to stay at mr. lothrop's so long, nuther. how fur is it?" "a little short of four miles--right out in the country, back here." "well, that 'll answer. now you go along out there, and lay low till nine or half-past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again --tell them you've thought of something. if you get here before eleven put a candle in this window, and if i don't turn up wait till eleven, and then if i don't turn up it means i'm gone, and out of the way, and safe. then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats jailed." "good," she says, "i'll do it." "and if it just happens so that i don't get away, but get took up along with them, you must up and say i told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can." "stand by you! indeed i will. they sha'n't touch a hair of your head!" she says, and i see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too. "if i get away i sha'n't be here," i says, "to prove these rapscallions ain't your uncles, and i couldn't do it if i was here. i could swear they was beats and bummers, that's all, though that's worth something. well, there's others can do that better than what i can, and they're people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as i'd be. i'll tell you how to find them. gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. there--'royal nonesuch, bricksville.' put it away, and don't lose it. when the court wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to bricksville and say they've got the men that played the royal nonesuch, and ask for some witnesses--why, you'll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, miss mary. and they'll come a-biling, too." i judged we had got everything fixed about right now. so i says: "just let the auction go right along, and don't worry. nobody don't have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till they get that money; and the way we've fixed it the sale ain't going to count, and they ain't going to get no money. it's just like the way it was with the niggers--it warn't no sale, and the niggers will be back before long. why, they can't collect the money for the niggers yet--they're in the worst kind of a fix, miss mary." "well," she says, "i'll run down to breakfast now, and then i'll start straight for mr. lothrop's." "'deed, that ain't the ticket, miss mary jane," i says, "by no manner of means; go before breakfast." "why?" "what did you reckon i wanted you to go at all for, miss mary?" "well, i never thought--and come to think, i don't know. what was it?" "why, it's because you ain't one of these leather-face people. i don't want no better book than what your face is. a body can set down and read it off like coarse print. do you reckon you can go and face your uncles when they come to kiss you good-morning, and never--" "there, there, don't! yes, i'll go before breakfast--i'll be glad to. and leave my sisters with them?" "yes; never mind about them. they've got to stand it yet a while. they might suspicion something if all of you was to go. i don't want you to see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town; if a neighbor was to ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something. no, you go right along, miss mary jane, and i'll fix it with all of them. i'll tell miss susan to give your love to your uncles and say you've went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or to see a friend, and you'll be back to-night or early in the morning." "gone to see a friend is all right, but i won't have my love given to them." "well, then, it sha'n't be." it was well enough to tell her so--no harm in it. it was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it's the little things that smooths people's roads the most, down here below; it would make mary jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. then i says: "there's one more thing--that bag of money." "well, they've got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think how they got it." "no, you're out, there. they hain't got it." "why, who's got it?" "i wish i knowed, but i don't. i had it, because i stole it from them; and i stole it to give to you; and i know where i hid it, but i'm afraid it ain't there no more. i'm awful sorry, miss mary jane, i'm just as sorry as i can be; but i done the best i could; i did honest. i come nigh getting caught, and i had to shove it into the first place i come to, and run--and it warn't a good place." "oh, stop blaming yourself--it's too bad to do it, and i won't allow it --you couldn't help it; it wasn't your fault. where did you hide it?" i didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and i couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. so for a minute i didn't say nothing; then i says: "i'd ruther not tell you where i put it, miss mary jane, if you don't mind letting me off; but i'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and you can read it along the road to mr. lothrop's, if you want to. do you reckon that 'll do?" "oh, yes." so i wrote: "i put it in the coffin. it was in there when you was crying there, away in the night. i was behind the door, and i was mighty sorry for you, miss mary jane." it made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when i folded it up and give it to her i see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the hand, hard, and says: "good-bye. i'm going to do everything just as you've told me; and if i don't ever see you again, i sha'n't ever forget you and i'll think of you a many and a many a time, and i'll pray for you, too!"--and she was gone. pray for me! i reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more nearer her size. but i bet she done it, just the same--she was just that kind. she had the grit to pray for judus if she took the notion--there warn't no back-down to her, i judge. you may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl i ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. it sounds like flattery, but it ain't no flattery. and when it comes to beauty--and goodness, too--she lays over them all. i hain't ever seen her since that time that i see her go out of that door; no, i hain't ever seen her since, but i reckon i've thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever i'd a thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if i wouldn't a done it or bust. well, mary jane she lit out the back way, i reckon; because nobody see her go. when i struck susan and the hare-lip, i says: "what's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that you all goes to see sometimes?" they says: "there's several; but it's the proctors, mainly." "that's the name," i says; "i most forgot it. well, miss mary jane she told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry--one of them's sick." "which one?" "i don't know; leastways, i kinder forget; but i thinks it's--" "sakes alive, i hope it ain't hanner?" "i'm sorry to say it," i says, "but hanner's the very one." "my goodness, and she so well only last week! is she took bad?" "it ain't no name for it. they set up with her all night, miss mary jane said, and they don't think she'll last many hours." "only think of that, now! what's the matter with her?" i couldn't think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so i says: "mumps." "mumps your granny! they don't set up with people that's got the mumps." "they don't, don't they? you better bet they do with these mumps. these mumps is different. it's a new kind, miss mary jane said." "how's it a new kind?" "because it's mixed up with other things." "what other things?" "well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and yaller janders, and brain-fever, and i don't know what all." "my land! and they call it the mumps?" "that's what miss mary jane said." "well, what in the nation do they call it the mumps for?" "why, because it is the mumps. that's what it starts with." "well, ther' ain't no sense in it. a body might stump his toe, and take pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, 'why, he stumped his toe.' would ther' be any sense in that? no. and ther' ain't no sense in this, nuther. is it ketching?" "is it ketching? why, how you talk. is a harrow catching--in the dark? if you don't hitch on to one tooth, you're bound to on another, ain't you? and you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, as you may say--and it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to get it hitched on good." "well, it's awful, i think," says the hare-lip. "i'll go to uncle harvey and--" "oh, yes," i says, "i would. of course i would. i wouldn't lose no time." "well, why wouldn't you?" "just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. hain't your uncles obleegd to get along home to england as fast as they can? and do you reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves? you know they'll wait for you. so fur, so good. your uncle harvey's a preacher, ain't he? very well, then; is a preacher going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive a ship clerk? --so as to get them to let miss mary jane go aboard? now you know he ain't. what will he do, then? why, he'll say, 'it's a great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the best way they can; for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps, and so it's my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she's got it.' but never mind, if you think it's best to tell your uncle harvey--" "shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in england whilst we was waiting to find out whether mary jane's got it or not? why, you talk like a muggins." "well, anyway, maybe you'd better tell some of the neighbors." "listen at that, now. you do beat all for natural stupidness. can't you see that they'd go and tell? ther' ain't no way but just to not tell anybody at all." "well, maybe you're right--yes, i judge you are right." "but i reckon we ought to tell uncle harvey she's gone out a while, anyway, so he won't be uneasy about her?" "yes, miss mary jane she wanted you to do that. she says, 'tell them to give uncle harvey and william my love and a kiss, and say i've run over the river to see mr.'--mr.--what is the name of that rich family your uncle peter used to think so much of?--i mean the one that--" "why, you must mean the apthorps, ain't it?" "of course; bother them kind of names, a body can't ever seem to remember them, half the time, somehow. yes, she said, say she has run over for to ask the apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house, because she allowed her uncle peter would ruther they had it than anybody else; and she's going to stick to them till they say they'll come, and then, if she ain't too tired, she's coming home; and if she is, she'll be home in the morning anyway. she said, don't say nothing about the proctors, but only about the apthorps--which 'll be perfectly true, because she is going there to speak about their buying the house; i know it, because she told me so herself." "all right," they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message. everything was all right now. the girls wouldn't say nothing because they wanted to go to england; and the king and the duke would ruther mary jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of doctor robinson. i felt very good; i judged i had done it pretty neat--i reckoned tom sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself. of course he would a throwed more style into it, but i can't do that very handy, not being brung up to it. well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little scripture now and then, or a little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly. but by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold --everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. so they'd got to work that off--i never see such a girafft as the king was for wanting to swallow everything. well, whilst they was at it a steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a-whooping and yelling and laughing and carrying on, and singing out: "here's your opposition line! here's your two sets o' heirs to old peter wilks--and you pays your money and you takes your choice!" chapter xxix. they was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. and, my souls, how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up. but i didn't see no joke about it, and i judged it would strain the duke and the king some to see any. i reckoned they'd turn pale. but no, nary a pale did they turn. the duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them new-comers like it give him the stomach-ache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. oh, he done it admirable. lots of the principal people gethered around the king, to let him see they was on his side. that old gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death. pretty soon he begun to speak, and i see straight off he pronounced like an englishman--not the king's way, though the king's was pretty good for an imitation. i can't give the old gent's words, nor i can't imitate him; but he turned around to the crowd, and says, about like this: "this is a surprise to me which i wasn't looking for; and i'll acknowledge, candid and frank, i ain't very well fixed to meet it and answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes; he's broke his arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the night by a mistake. i am peter wilks' brother harvey, and this is his brother william, which can't hear nor speak--and can't even make signs to amount to much, now't he's only got one hand to work them with. we are who we say we are; and in a day or two, when i get the baggage, i can prove it. but up till then i won't say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait." so him and the new dummy started off; and the king he laughs, and blethers out: "broke his arm--very likely, ain't it?--and very convenient, too, for a fraud that's got to make signs, and ain't learnt how. lost their baggage! that's mighty good!--and mighty ingenious--under the circumstances!" so he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. one of these was that doctor; another one was a sharp-looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made out of carpet-stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then and nodding their heads--it was levi bell, the lawyer that was gone up to louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along and listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the king now. and when the king got done this husky up and says: "say, looky here; if you are harvey wilks, when'd you come to this town?" "the day before the funeral, friend," says the king. "but what time o' day?" "in the evenin'--'bout an hour er two before sundown." "how'd you come?" "i come down on the susan powell from cincinnati." "well, then, how'd you come to be up at the pint in the mornin'--in a canoe?" "i warn't up at the pint in the mornin'." "it's a lie." several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher. "preacher be hanged, he's a fraud and a liar. he was up at the pint that mornin'. i live up there, don't i? well, i was up there, and he was up there. i see him there. he come in a canoe, along with tim collins and a boy." the doctor he up and says: "would you know the boy again if you was to see him, hines?" "i reckon i would, but i don't know. why, yonder he is, now. i know him perfectly easy." it was me he pointed at. the doctor says: "neighbors, i don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if these two ain't frauds, i am an idiot, that's all. i think it's our duty to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this thing. come along, hines; come along, the rest of you. we'll take these fellows to the tavern and affront them with t'other couple, and i reckon we'll find out something before we get through." it was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends; so we all started. it was about sundown. the doctor he led me along by the hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand. we all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and fetched in the new couple. first, the doctor says: "i don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but i think they're frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. if they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold peter wilks left? it ain't unlikely. if these men ain't frauds, they won't object to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're all right--ain't that so?" everybody agreed to that. so i judged they had our gang in a pretty tight place right at the outstart. but the king he only looked sorrowful, and says: "gentlemen, i wish the money was there, for i ain't got no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation o' this misable business; but, alas, the money ain't there; you k'n send and see, if you want to." "where is it, then?" "well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her i took and hid it inside o' the straw tick o' my bed, not wishin' to bank it for the few days we'd be here, and considerin' the bed a safe place, we not bein' used to niggers, and suppos'n' 'em honest, like servants in england. the niggers stole it the very next mornin' after i had went down stairs; and when i sold 'em i hadn't missed the money yit, so they got clean away with it. my servant here k'n tell you 'bout it, gentlemen." the doctor and several said "shucks!" and i see nobody didn't altogether believe him. one man asked me if i see the niggers steal it. i said no, but i see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and i never thought nothing, only i reckoned they was afraid they had waked up my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. that was all they asked me. then the doctor whirls on me and says: "are you english, too?" i says yes; and him and some others laughed, and said, "stuff!" well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about supper, nor ever seemed to think about it--and so they kept it up, and kept it up; and it was the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. they made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his'n; and anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a seen that the old gentleman was spinning truth and t'other one lies. and by and by they had me up to tell what i knowed. the king he give me a left-handed look out of the corner of his eye, and so i knowed enough to talk on the right side. i begun to tell about sheffield, and how we lived there, and all about the english wilkses, and so on; but i didn't get pretty fur till the doctor begun to laugh; and levi bell, the lawyer, says: "set down, my boy; i wouldn't strain myself if i was you. i reckon you ain't used to lying, it don't seem to come handy; what you want is practice. you do it pretty awkward." i didn't care nothing for the compliment, but i was glad to be let off, anyway. the doctor he started to say something, and turns and says: "if you'd been in town at first, levi bell--" the king broke in and reached out his hand, and says: "why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often about?" the lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased, and they talked right along awhile, and then got to one side and talked low; and at last the lawyer speaks up and says: "that 'll fix it. i'll take the order and send it, along with your brother's, and then they'll know it's all right." so they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something; and then they give the pen to the duke--and then for the first time the duke looked sick. but he took the pen and wrote. so then the lawyer turns to the new old gentleman and says: "you and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names." the old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn't read it. the lawyer looked powerful astonished, and says: "well, it beats me"--and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then them again; and then says: "these old letters is from harvey wilks; and here's these two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't write them" (the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, i tell you, to see how the lawyer had took them in), "and here's this old gentleman's hand writing, and anybody can tell, easy enough, he didn't write them--fact is, the scratches he makes ain't properly writing at all. now, here's some letters from--" the new old gentleman says: "if you please, let me explain. nobody can read my hand but my brother there--so he copies for me. it's his hand you've got there, not mine." "well!" says the lawyer, "this is a state of things. i've got some of william's letters, too; so if you'll get him to write a line or so we can com--" "he can't write with his left hand," says the old gentleman. "if he could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and mine too. look at both, please--they're by the same hand." the lawyer done it, and says: "i believe it's so--and if it ain't so, there's a heap stronger resemblance than i'd noticed before, anyway. well, well, well! i thought we was right on the track of a solution, but it's gone to grass, partly. but anyway, one thing is proved--these two ain't either of 'em wilkses"--and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke. well, what do you think? that muleheaded old fool wouldn't give in then! indeed he wouldn't. said it warn't no fair test. said his brother william was the cussedest joker in the world, and hadn't tried to write --he see william was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the pen to paper. and so he warmed up and went warbling right along till he was actuly beginning to believe what he was saying himself; but pretty soon the new gentleman broke in, and says: "i've thought of something. is there anybody here that helped to lay out my br--helped to lay out the late peter wilks for burying?" "yes," says somebody, "me and ab turner done it. we're both here." then the old man turns towards the king, and says: "perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast?" blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick, or he'd a squshed down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him so sudden; and, mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make most anybody sqush to get fetched such a solid one as that without any notice, because how was he going to know what was tattooed on the man? he whitened a little; he couldn't help it; and it was mighty still in there, and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him. says i to myself, now he'll throw up the sponge--there ain't no more use. well, did he? a body can't hardly believe it, but he didn't. i reckon he thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out, so they'd thin out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away. anyway, he set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says: "mf! it's a very tough question, ain't it! yes, sir, i k'n tell you what's tattooed on his breast. it's jest a small, thin, blue arrow --that's what it is; and if you don't look clost, you can't see it. now what do you say--hey?" well, i never see anything like that old blister for clean out-and-out cheek. the new old gentleman turns brisk towards ab turner and his pard, and his eye lights up like he judged he'd got the king this time, and says: "there--you've heard what he said! was there any such mark on peter wilks' breast?" both of them spoke up and says: "we didn't see no such mark." "good!" says the old gentleman. "now, what you did see on his breast was a small dim p, and a b (which is an initial he dropped when he was young), and a w, with dashes between them, so: p--b--w"--and he marked them that way on a piece of paper. "come, ain't that what you saw?" both of them spoke up again, and says: "no, we didn't. we never seen any marks at all." well, everybody was in a state of mind now, and they sings out: "the whole bilin' of 'm 's frauds! le's duck 'em! le's drown 'em! le's ride 'em on a rail!" and everybody was whooping at once, and there was a rattling powwow. but the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and says: "gentlemen--gentlemen! hear me just a word--just a single word--if you please! there's one way yet--let's go and dig up the corpse and look." that took them. "hooray!" they all shouted, and was starting right off; but the lawyer and the doctor sung out: "hold on, hold on! collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch them along, too!" "we'll do it!" they all shouted; "and if we don't find them marks we'll lynch the whole gang!" i was scared, now, i tell you. but there warn't no getting away, you know. they gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole town at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the evening. as we went by our house i wished i hadn't sent mary jane out of town; because now if i could tip her the wink she'd light out and save me, and blow on our dead-beats. well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like wildcats; and to make it more scary the sky was darking up, and the lightning beginning to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver amongst the leaves. this was the most awful trouble and most dangersome i ever was in; and i was kinder stunned; everything was going so different from what i had allowed for; stead of being fixed so i could take my own time if i wanted to, and see all the fun, and have mary jane at my back to save me and set me free when the close-fit come, here was nothing in the world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tattoo-marks. if they didn't find them-- i couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, i couldn't think about nothing else. it got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful time to give the crowd the slip; but that big husky had me by the wrist --hines--and a body might as well try to give goliar the slip. he dragged me right along, he was so excited, and i had to run to keep up. when they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it like an overflow. and when they got to the grave they found they had about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't thought to fetch a lantern. but they sailed into digging anyway by the flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house, a half a mile off, to borrow one. so they dug and dug like everything; and it got awful dark, and the rain started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed; but them people never took no notice of it, they was so full of this business; and one minute you could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the shovelfuls of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped it all out, and you couldn't see nothing at all. at last they got out the coffin and begun to unscrew the lid, and then such another crowding and shouldering and shoving as there was, to scrouge in and get a sight, you never see; and in the dark, that way, it was awful. hines he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so, and i reckon he clean forgot i was in the world, he was so excited and panting. all of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and somebody sings out: "by the living jingo, here's the bag of gold on his breast!" hines let out a whoop, like everybody else, and dropped my wrist and give a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way i lit out and shinned for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can tell. i had the road all to myself, and i fairly flew--leastways, i had it all to myself except the solid dark, and the now-and-then glares, and the buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of the thunder; and sure as you are born i did clip it along! when i struck the town i see there warn't nobody out in the storm, so i never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the main one; and when i begun to get towards our house i aimed my eye and set it. no light there; the house all dark--which made me feel sorry and disappointed, i didn't know why. but at last, just as i was sailing by, flash comes the light in mary jane's window! and my heart swelled up sudden, like to bust; and the same second the house and all was behind me in the dark, and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this world. she was the best girl i ever see, and had the most sand. the minute i was far enough above the town to see i could make the towhead, i begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow, and the first time the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained i snatched it and shoved. it was a canoe, and warn't fastened with nothing but a rope. the towhead was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the river, but i didn't lose no time; and when i struck the raft at last i was so fagged i would a just laid down to blow and gasp if i could afforded it. but i didn't. as i sprung aboard i sung out: "out with you, jim, and set her loose! glory be to goodness, we're shut of them!" jim lit out, and was a-coming for me with both arms spread, he was so full of joy; but when i glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in my mouth and i went overboard backwards; for i forgot he was old king lear and a drownded a-rab all in one, and it most scared the livers and lights out of me. but jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and bless me, and so on, he was so glad i was back and we was shut of the king and the duke, but i says: "not now; have it for breakfast, have it for breakfast! cut loose and let her slide!" so in two seconds away we went a-sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and nobody to bother us. i had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack my heels a few times--i couldn't help it; but about the third crack i noticed a sound that i knowed mighty well, and held my breath and listened and waited; and sure enough, when the next flash busted out over the water, here they come!--and just a-laying to their oars and making their skiff hum! it was the king and the duke. so i wilted right down on to the planks then, and give up; and it was all i could do to keep from crying. chapter xxx. when they got aboard the king went for me, and shook me by the collar, and says: "tryin' to give us the slip, was ye, you pup! tired of our company, hey?" i says: "no, your majesty, we warn't--please don't, your majesty!" "quick, then, and tell us what was your idea, or i'll shake the insides out o' you!" "honest, i'll tell you everything just as it happened, your majesty. the man that had a-holt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous fix; and when they was all took by surprise by finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me and whispers, 'heel it now, or they'll hang ye, sure!' and i lit out. it didn't seem no good for me to stay--i couldn't do nothing, and i didn't want to be hung if i could get away. so i never stopped running till i found the canoe; and when i got here i told jim to hurry, or they'd catch me and hang me yet, and said i was afeard you and the duke wasn't alive now, and i was awful sorry, and so was jim, and was awful glad when we see you coming; you may ask jim if i didn't." jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, "oh, yes, it's mighty likely!" and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he'd drownd me. but the duke says: "leggo the boy, you old idiot! would you a done any different? did you inquire around for him when you got loose? i don't remember it." so the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in it. but the duke says: "you better a blame' sight give yourself a good cussing, for you're the one that's entitled to it most. you hain't done a thing from the start that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue-arrow mark. that was bright--it was right down bully; and it was the thing that saved us. for if it hadn't been for that they'd a jailed us till them englishmen's baggage come--and then--the penitentiary, you bet! but that trick took 'em to the graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the excited fools hadn't let go all holts and made that rush to get a look we'd a slept in our cravats to-night--cravats warranted to wear, too--longer than we'd need 'em." they was still a minute--thinking; then the king says, kind of absent-minded like: "mf! and we reckoned the niggers stole it!" that made me squirm! "yes," says the duke, kinder slow and deliberate and sarcastic, "we did." after about a half a minute the king drawls out: "leastways, i did." the duke says, the same way: "on the contrary, i did." the king kind of ruffles up, and says: "looky here, bilgewater, what'r you referrin' to?" the duke says, pretty brisk: "when it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was you referring to?" "shucks!" says the king, very sarcastic; "but i don't know--maybe you was asleep, and didn't know what you was about." the duke bristles up now, and says: "oh, let up on this cussed nonsense; do you take me for a blame' fool? don't you reckon i know who hid that money in that coffin?" "yes, sir! i know you do know, because you done it yourself!" "it's a lie!"--and the duke went for him. the king sings out: "take y'r hands off!--leggo my throat!--i take it all back!" the duke says: "well, you just own up, first, that you did hide that money there, intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it up, and have it all to yourself." "wait jest a minute, duke--answer me this one question, honest and fair; if you didn't put the money there, say it, and i'll b'lieve you, and take back everything i said." "you old scoundrel, i didn't, and you know i didn't. there, now!" "well, then, i b'lieve you. but answer me only jest this one more--now don't git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it?" the duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says: "well, i don't care if i did, i didn't do it, anyway. but you not only had it in mind to do it, but you done it." "i wisht i never die if i done it, duke, and that's honest. i won't say i warn't goin' to do it, because i was; but you--i mean somebody--got in ahead o' me." "it's a lie! you done it, and you got to say you done it, or--" the king began to gurgle, and then he gasps out: "'nough!--i own up!" i was very glad to hear him say that; it made me feel much more easier than what i was feeling before. so the duke took his hands off and says: "if you ever deny it again i'll drown you. it's well for you to set there and blubber like a baby--it's fitten for you, after the way you've acted. i never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything --and i a-trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. you ought to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on to a lot of poor niggers, and you never say a word for 'em. it makes me feel ridiculous to think i was soft enough to believe that rubbage. cuss you, i can see now why you was so anxious to make up the deffisit--you wanted to get what money i'd got out of the nonesuch and one thing or another, and scoop it all!" the king says, timid, and still a-snuffling: "why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffisit; it warn't me." "dry up! i don't want to hear no more out of you!" says the duke. "and now you see what you got by it. they've got all their own money back, and all of ourn but a shekel or two besides. g'long to bed, and don't you deffersit me no more deffersits, long 's you live!" so the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort, and before long the duke tackled his bottle; and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got the lovinger they got, and went off a-snoring in each other's arms. they both got powerful mellow, but i noticed the king didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag again. that made me feel easy and satisfied. of course when they got to snoring we had a long gabble, and i told jim everything. the rising tide of color against white world-supremacy the rising tide of color against white world-supremacy by lothrop stoddard, a.m., ph.d. (harv.) author of "the stakes of the war," "present-day europe: its national states of mind," "the french revolution in san domingo," etc. with an introduction by madison grant chairman new york zoological society; trustee american museum of natural history; councillor american geographical society; author of "the passing of the great race" new york charles scribner's sons copyright, , by charles scribner's sons _all rights reserved_ published april, reprinted june, july, september, october, ; february, preface more than a decade ago i became convinced that the key-note of twentieth-century world-politics would be the relations between the primary races of mankind. momentous modifications of existing race-relations were evidently impending, and nothing could be more vital to the course of human evolution than the character of these modifications, since upon the _quality_ of human life all else depends. accordingly, my attention was thenceforth largely directed to racial matters. in the preface to an historical monograph ("the french revolution in san domingo") written shortly before the great war, i stated: "the world-wide struggle between the primary races of mankind--the 'conflict of color,' as it has been happily termed--bids fair to be the fundamental problem of the twentieth century, and great communities like the united states of america, the south african confederation, and australasia regard the 'color question' as perhaps the gravest problem of the future." those lines were penned in june, . before their publication the great war had burst upon the world. at that time several reviewers commented upon the above dictum and wondered whether, had i written two months later, i should have held a different opinion. as a matter of fact, i should have expressed myself even more strongly to the same effect. to me the great war was from the first the white civil war, which, whatever its outcome, must gravely complicate the course of racial relations. before the war i had hoped that the readjustments rendered inevitable by the renascence of the brown and yellow peoples of asia would be a gradual, and in the main a pacific, process, kept within evolutionary bounds by the white world's inherent strength and fundamental solidarity. the frightful weakening of the white world during the war, however, opened up revolutionary, even cataclysmic, possibilities. in saying this i do not refer solely to military "perils." the subjugation of white lands by colored armies may, of course, occur, especially if the white world continues to rend itself with internecine wars. however, such colored triumphs of arms are less to be dreaded than more enduring conquests like migrations which would swamp whole populations and turn countries now white into colored man's lands irretrievably lost to the white world. of course, these ominous possibilities existed even before , but the war has rendered them much more probable. the most disquieting feature of the present situation, however, is not the war but the peace. the white world's inability to frame a constructive settlement, the perpetuation of intestine hatreds, and the menace of fresh white civil wars complicated by the spectre of social revolution, evoke the dread thought that the late war may be merely the first stage in a cycle of ruin. in fact, so absorbed is the white world with its domestic dissensions that it pays scant heed to racial problems whose importance for the future of mankind far transcends the questions which engross its attention to-day. this relative indifference to the larger racial issues has determined the writing of the present book. so fundamental are these issues that a candid discussion of them would seem to be timely and helpful. in the following pages i have tried to analyze in their various aspects the present relations between the white and non-white worlds. my task has been greatly aided by the introduction from the pen of madison grant, who has admirably summarized the biological and historical background. a life-long student of biology, mr. grant approaches the subject along that line. my own avenue of approach being world-politics, the resulting convergence of different view-points has been a most useful one. for the stimulating counsel of mr. grant in the preparation of this book my thanks are especially due. i desire also to acknowledge my indebtedness for helpful suggestions to messrs. alleyne ireland, glenn frank, and other friends. lothrop stoddard. new york city, february , . contents page introduction by madison grant xi part i the rising tide of color chapter i. the world of color ii. yellow man's land iii. brown man's land iv. black man's land v. red man's land part ii the ebbing tide of white vi. the white flood vii. the beginning of the ebb viii. the modern peloponnesian war ix. the shattering of white solidarity part iii the deluge on the dikes x. the outer dikes xi. the inner dikes xii. the crisis of the ages index maps page i distribution of the primary races ii categories of white world-supremacy iii distribution of the white races introduction mr. lothrop stoddard's "the rising tide of color," following so closely the great war, may appear to some unduly alarming, while others, as his thread of argument unrolls, may recoil at the logic of his deductions. in our present era of convulsive changes, a prophet must be bold, indeed, to predict anything more definite than a mere trend in events, but the study of the past is the one safe guide in forecasting the future. mr. stoddard takes up the white man's world and its potential enemies as they are to-day. a consideration of their early relations and of the history of the nordic race, since its first appearance three or four thousand years ago, tends strongly to sustain and justify his conclusions. for such a consideration we must first turn to the map, or, better, to the globe. viewed in the light of geography and zoölogy, europe west of russia is but a peninsula of asia with the southern shores of the mediterranean sea included. true africa, or rather ethiopia, lies south of the sahara desert and has virtually no connection with the north except along the valley of the nile. this eurasiatic continent has been, perhaps, since the origin of life itself, the most active centre of evolution and radiation of the higher forms. confining ourselves to the mammalian orders, we find that a majority of them have originated and developed there and have spread thence to the outlying land areas of the globe. all the evidence points to the origin of the primates in eurasia and we have every reason to believe that this continent was also the scene of the early evolution of man from his anthropoid ancestors. the impulse that inaugurated the development of mankind seems to have had its basic cause in the stress of changing climatic conditions in central asia at the close of the pliocene, and the human inhabitants of eurasia have ever since exhibited in a superlative degree the energy developed at that time. this energy, however, has not been equally shared by the various species of man, either extinct or living, and the survivors of the earlier races are, for the most part, to be found on the other continents and islands or in the extreme outlying regions of eurasia itself. in other words those groups of mankind which at an early period found refuge in the americas, in australia, in ethiopia, or in the islands of the sea, represent to a large extent stages in man's physical and cultural development, from which the more energized inhabitants of eurasia have long since emerged. in some cases, as in mexico and peru, the outlying races developed in their isolation a limited culture of their own, but, for the most part, they have exhibited, and continue to this day to exhibit, a lack of capacity for sustained evolution from within as well as a lack of capacity to adjust themselves of their own initiative to the rapid changes which modern times impose upon them from without. in eurasia itself this same inequality of potential capacity is found, but in a lesser degree, and consequently, in the progress of humanity, there has been constant friction between those who push forward and those who are unable to keep pace with changing conditions. owing to these causes the history of mankind has been that of a series of impulses from the eurasiatic continent upon the outlying regions of the globe, but there has been an almost complete lack of reaction, either racial or cultural, from them upon the masses of mankind in eurasia itself. there have been endless conflicts between the different sections of eurasia, but neither amerinds, nor austroloids, nor negroes, have ever made a concerted attack upon the great continent. * * * * * without attempting a scientific classification of the inhabitants of eurasia, it is sufficient to describe the three main races. the first are the yellow-skinned, straight black-haired, black-eyed, round-skulled mongols and mongoloids massed in central and eastern asia north of the himalayan system. to the west of them, and merged with them, lie the alpines, also characterized by dark, but not straight, hair, dark eyes, relatively short stature, and round skulls. these alpines are thrust like a wedge into europe between the nordics and the mediterraneans, with a tip that reaches the atlantic ocean. those of western europe are derived from one or more very ancient waves of round-skulled invaders from the east, who probably came by way of asia minor and the balkans, but they have been so long in their present homes that they retain little except their brachycephalic skull-shape to connect them with the asiatic mongols. south of the himalayas and westward in a narrow belt to the atlantic, and on both sides of the inland sea, lies the mediterranean race, more or less swarthy-skinned, black-haired, dark-eyed, and long-skulled. on the northwest, grouped around the baltic and north seas, lies the great nordic race. it is characterized by a fair white skin, wavy hair with a range of color from dark brown to flaxen, light eyes, tall stature, and long skulls. these races show other physical characters which are definite but difficult to describe, such as texture of skin and cast of features, especially of the nose. the contrast of mental and spiritual endowments is equally definite, but even more elusive of definition. it is with the action and interaction of these three groups, together with internal civil wars, that recorded history deals. while, so far as we know, these three races have occupied their present relative positions from the beginning, there have been profound changes in their distribution. the two essential phenomena, however, are, first, the retreat of the nordic race westward from the grasslands of western asia and eastern europe to the borders of the atlantic, until it occupies a relatively small area on the periphery of eurasia. the second phenomenon is of equal importance, namely, the more or less thorough nordicizing of the westernmost extensions of the other two races, namely, the mediterranean on the north coast of the inland sea, who have been completely aryanized in speech, and have been again and again saturated with nordic blood, and the even more profound nordicization in speech and in blood of the short, dark, round-skulled inhabitants of central europe, from brittany through central france, southern germany, and northern italy into austrian and balkan lands. so thorough has been this process that the western alpines have at the present time no separate race consciousness and are to be considered as wholly european. as to the alpines of eastern and central europe, the slavs, the case is somewhat different. east of a line drawn from the adriatic to the baltic the nordicizing process has been far less perfect, although nearly complete as to speech, since all the slavic languages are aryan. throughout these slavic lands, great accessions of pure mongoloid blood have been introduced within relatively recent centuries. east of this belt of imperfectly nordicized alpines we reach the asiatic alpines, as yet entirely untouched by western blood or culture. these groups merge into the mongoloids of eastern asia. so we find, thrust westward from the heartland, a race touching the atlantic at brittany, thoroughly asiatic and mongoloid in the east, very imperfectly nordicized in the centre, and thoroughly nordicized culturally in the far west of europe, where it has become, and must be accepted as, an integral part of the white world. as to the great nordic race, within relatively recent historic times it occupied the grasslands north of the black and caspian seas eastward to the himalayas. traces of nordic peoples in central asia are constantly found, and when archæological research there becomes as intensive as in europe we shall be astonished to find how long, complete, and extended was their occupation of western asia. during the second millennium before our era successive waves of nordics began to cross the afghan passes into india until finally they imposed their primitive aryan language upon hindustan and the countries lying to the east. all those regions lying northwest of the mountains appear to have been largely a white man's country at the time of alexander the great. in turkestan the newly discovered tokharian language, an aryan tongue of the western division, seems to have persisted down to the ninth century. the decline of the nordics in these lands, however, began probably far earlier than alexander's time, and must have been nearly completed at the beginning of our era. such blond traits as are still found in western asia are relatively unimportant, and for the last two thousand years these countries must be regarded as lost to the nordic race. the impulse that drove the early nordics like a fan over the himalayan passes into india, the later nordics southward into mesopotamian lands, as kassites, mitanni, and persians, into greece and anatolia as achæans, dorians, and phrygians, westward as the aryan-speaking invaders of italy and as the celtic vanguards of the nordic race across the rhine into gaul, spain, and britain, may well have been caused by mongoloid pressure from the heart of central asia. of course, we have no actual knowledge of this, but the analogy to the history of later migrations is strong, and the conviction is growing among historians that the impulse that drove the hellenic nordics upon the early Ægean culture world was the same as that which later drove germanic nordics into the roman empire. north of the caspian and black seas the boundaries of europe receded steadily before asia for nearly a thousand years after our era opened, but we have scant record of the struggles which resulted in the eviction of the nordics from their homes in russia, poland, the austrian and east german lands. by the time of charlemagne the white man's world was reduced to scandinavia, germany west of the elbe, the british isles, the low countries, and northern france and italy, with outlying groups in southern france and spain. this was the lowest ebb for the nordics and it was the crowning glory of charlemagne's career that he not only turned back the flood, but began the organization of a series of more or less nordicized marches or barrier states from the baltic to the adriatic, which have served as ramparts against asiatic pressure from his day to ours. west of this line the feudal states of mediæval europe developed into western christendom, the nucleus of the civilized world of to-day. south of the caspian and black seas, after the first swarming of the nordics over the mountains during the second millennium before christ, the east pressed steadily against europe until the strain culminated in the persian wars. the defeat of asia in these wars resulted later in alexander's conquest of western asia to the borders of india. alexander's empire temporarily established hellenic institutions throughout western asia and some of the provinces remained superficially greek until they were incorporated in the roman empire and ultimately became part of early christendom. on the whole, however, from the time of alexander the elimination of european blood, classic culture, and, finally, of christianity, went on relentlessly. by later roman times the aryan language of the persians, parthians, and people of india together with some shreds of greek learning were about all the traces of europe that were to be found east of the oscillating boundary along the euphrates. the roman and byzantine empires struggled for centuries to check the advancing tide of asiatics, but arab expansions under the impulse of the mohammedan religion finally tore away all the eastern and southern coasts of the mediterranean sea, while from an arabized spain they threatened western europe. with the white man's world thus rapidly receding in the south, a series of pure mongol invasions from central asia, sweeping north of the caspian and black seas, burst upon central europe. attila and his huns were the first to break through into nordic lands as far as the plains of northern france. none of the later hordes were able to force their way so far into nordic territories, but spent their strength upon the alpines of the balkans and eastern europe. eastern germany, the austrian states, poland, and russia had been nordic lands before the slavs emerged after the fall of rome. whether the occupation of teutonic lands by the wends and slavs in eastern europe was an infiltration or a conquest is not known, but the conviction is growing that, like other movements which preceded and followed, it was caused by mongoloid pressure. that the western slavs or wends had been long nordicized in speech is indicated by the thoroughly aryan character of the slavic languages. they found in the lands they occupied an underlying teutonic population. they cannot be regarded as the original owners of poland, bohemia, silesia, or other wendish provinces of eastern germany and austria. the teutonic marcomanni and quadi were in bohemia long before the czechs came in through the moravian gate in the sixth century. pomerania and the prussias were the home of teutonic lombards, burgunds, vandals, and suevi, while the crimea and the northwestern coast of the black sea were long held by the nordic goths, who, just before our era, had migrated overland from the baltic by way of the vistula. no doubt some of this nordic blood remained to ennoble the stock of the later invaders, but by the time of charlemagne, in the greater part of europe east of the elbe, the aryan language was the only bond with europe. when the frankish empire turned the tide and christianized these wendish and polish lands, civilization was carried eastward until it met the byzantine influences which brought to russia and the lands east of the carpathians the culture and orthodox christianity of the eastern or greek empire. the nucleus of russia was organized in the ninth century by scandinavian varangians, the franks of the east, who founded the first civilized state amid a welter of semi-mongoloid tribes. how much nordic blood they found in the territories which afterward became russia we have no means of knowing, but it must have been considerable because we do know that from the middle ages to the present time there has been a progressive increase in brachycephaly or broad-headedness, to judge from the rise in the percentage of round skulls found in the cemeteries of moscow and elsewhere in russia. such was the condition of eastern europe when a new and terrible series of mongoloid invasions swept over it, this time directly from the centre of asia. the effect of these invasions was so profound and lasting that it may be well to consider briefly the condition of eastern europe after the elimination of the nordics and its partial occupation by the so-called slavs. beginning with attila and his huns, in the fourth century, there was a series of purely mongoloid tribes entering from asia in wave after wave. similar waves ultimately passed south of the black and caspian seas, and were called turks, but these were long held back by the power of the byzantine empire, to which history has done scant justice. in the north these invaders, called in the later days tatars, but all essentially of central asiatic mongol stock, occupied balkan lands after the expansion of the south slavs in those countries. they are known by various names, but they are all part of the same general movement, although there was a gradual slowing down of the impulse. prior to jenghiz khan the later hordes did not reach quite as far west as the earlier ones. the first wave, attila's huns, were followed during the succeeding centuries by the avars, the bulgars, the hunagar magyars, the patzinaks and the cumans. all of these tribes forced their way over the carpathians and the danube, and much of their blood, notably in that of the bulgars and magyars, is still to be found there. most of them adopted slavic dialects and merged in the surrounding population, but the magyars retain their asiatic speech to this day. other tatar and mongoloid tribes settled in southern and eastern russia. chief among these were the mongol chazars, who founded an extensive and powerful empire in southern and southeastern russia as early as the eighth century. it is interesting to note that they accepted judaism and became the ancestors of the majority of the jews of eastern europe, the round-skulled ashkenazim. into this mixed population of christianized slavs and more or less christianized and slavized mongols burst jenghiz khan with his great hordes of pure mongols. all southern russia, poland, and hungary collapsed before them, and in southern russia the rule of the mongol persisted for centuries, in fact the golden horde of tatars retained control of the crimea down to . many of these later tatars had accepted islam, but entire groups of them have retained their asiatic speech and to this day profess the mohammedan religion. the most lasting result of these mongol invasions was that southern poland and all the countries east and north of the carpathians, including rumania and the ukraine, were saturated anew with tatar blood, and, in dealing with these populations and with the new nations founded among them, this fact must not be forgotten. the conflict between the east and the west--europe and asia--has thus lasted for centuries, in fact it goes back to the persian wars and the long and doubtful duel between rome and parthia along the eastern boundary of syria. as we have already said, the saracens had torn away many of the provinces of the eastern empire, and the crusades, for a moment, had rolled back the east, but the event was not decided until the seljukian and osmanli turks accepted islam. if these turks had remained heathen they might have invaded and conquered asia minor and the balkan states, just as their cousins, the tartars, had subjected vast territories north of the black sea, but they could not have held their conquests permanently unless they had been able to incorporate the beaten natives into their own ranks through the proselytizing power of islam. even in roman times the greek world had been steadily losing, first its nordic blood and then later the blood of its nordicized european population, and it became in its declining years increasingly asiatic until the final fall of constantinople in . byzantium once fallen, the turks advanced unchecked, conquering the alpine slav kingdoms of the balkans and menacing christendom itself. in these age-long conflicts between asia and europe the crusades seem but an episode, although tragically wasteful of nordic stock. the nordic frankish nobility of western europe squandered its blood for two hundred years on the desert sands of syria and left no ethnic trace behind, save, perhaps, some doubtful blond remnants in northern syria and edessa. if the predictions of mr. stoddard's book seem far-fetched, one has but to consider that four times since the fall of rome asia has conquered to the very confines of nordic europe. the nordicized alpines of eastern europe and the nordicized mediterraneans of southern europe have proved too feeble to hold back the asiatic hordes, mongol or saracen. it was not until the realms of pure nordics were reached that the invaders were turned back. this is shown by the fact that the arabs had quickly mastered northern africa and conquered spain, where the nordic goths were too few in number to hold them back, while southern france, which was not then, and is not now, a nordic land, had offered no serious resistance. it was not until the arabs, in , at tours, dashed themselves to pieces against the solid ranks of heavy-armed nordics, that islam receded. the same fate had already been encountered by attila and his huns, who, after dominating hungary and southern germany and destroying the burgundians on the rhine, had pushed into northern france as far as châlons. here, in , he was beaten, not by the romanized gauls but by the nordic visigoths, whose king, roderick, died on the field. these two victories, one against the arab south and the other over the mongoloid east, saved nordic europe, which was at that time shrunken to little more than a fringe on the seacoast. how slender the thread and how easily snapped, had the event of either day turned out otherwise! never again did asia push so far west, but the danger was not finally removed until charlemagne and his successors had organized the western empire. christendom, however, had sore trials ahead when the successors of jenghiz khan destroyed moscovy and poland and devastated eastern europe. the victorious career of the tatars was unchecked, from the chinese sea on the east to the indian ocean on the south, until in , at wahlstatt in silesia, they encountered pure nordic fighting men. then the tide turned. though outnumbering the christians five to one and victorious in the battle itself, the tatars were unable to push farther west and turned south into hungary and other alpine lands. some conception of the almost unbelievable horrors that western europe escaped at this time may be gathered from the fate of the countries which fell before the irresistible rush of the mongols, whose sole discernible motive seems to have been blood lust. the destruction wrought in china, central asia, and persia is almost beyond conception. in twelve years, in china and the neighboring states, jenghiz khan and his lieutenants slaughtered more than , , human beings. after the sack of merv in khorasan, the "garden of asia," the corpses numbered , , , and after herat was taken , , are said to have perished. similar fates befell every city of importance in central asia, and to this day those once populous provinces have never recovered. the cities of russia and poland were burned, their inhabitants tortured and massacred, with the consequence that progress was retarded for centuries. almost in modern times these same mongoloid invaders, entering by way of asia minor, and calling themselves turks, after destroying the eastern empire, the balkan states, and hungary, again met the nordic chivalry of western europe under the walls of vienna, in , and again the asiatics went down in rout. on these four separate occasions the nordic race and it alone saved modern civilization. the half-nordicized lands to the south and to the east collapsed under the invasions. unnumbered nordic tribes, nameless and unsung, have been massacred, or submerged, or driven from their lands. the survivors had been pushed ever westward until their backs were against the northern ocean. there the nordics came to bay--the tide was turned. few stop to reflect that it was more than sixty years after the first american legislature sat at jamestown, virginia, that asia finally abandoned the conquest of europe. one of the chief results of forcing the nordic race back to the seacoast was the creation of maritime power and its development to a degree never before known even in the days of the phoenicians and carthaginians. with the recession of the turkish flood, modern europe emerges and inaugurates a counter-attack on asia which has placed virtually the entire world under european domination. * * * * * while in the mediæval conflicts between europe and asia the latter was the aggressor, the case was otherwise in the early wars between the nordic and the mediterranean peoples. here for three thousand years the nordics were the aggressors, and, although these wars were terribly destructive to their numbers, they were the medium through which classic civilization was introduced into nordic lands. as to the ethnic consequences, northern barbarians poured over the passes of the balkans, alpines, and pyrenees into the sunny lands of the south only to slowly vanish in the languid environment which lacked the stimulus of fierce strife with hostile nature and savage rivals. nevertheless, long before the opening of the christian era the alpines of western europe were thoroughly nordicized, and in the centuries that followed, the old nordic element in spain, italy, and france has been again and again strongly reinforced, so that these lands are now an integral part of the white world. in recent centuries russia was again superficially nordicized with a top dressing of nordic nobility, chiefly coming from the baltic provinces. along with this process there was everywhere in europe a resurgence among the submerged and forgotten alpines and among the mediterranean elements of the british isles, while bolshevism in russia means the elimination of the nordic aristocracy and the dominance of the half-asiatic slavic peasantry. * * * * * all wars thus far discussed have been race wars of europe against asia, or of the nordics against mediterraneans. the wars against the mongols were necessary and vital; there was no alternative except to fight to the finish. but the wars of northern europe against the south, from the racial point of view, were not only useless but destructive. bad as they were, however, they left untouched to a large extent the broodland of the race in the north and west. another class of wars, however, has been absolutely deadly to the nordic race. there must have been countless early struggles where one nordic tribe attacked and exterminated its rival, such as the trojan war, fought between achæans and phrygians, both nordics, while the later peloponnesian war was a purely civil strife between greeks and resulted in the racial collapse of hellas. rome, after she emerged triumphant from her struggle with the carthaginians, of mediterranean race, plunged into a series of civil wars which ended in the complete elimination of the native nordic element in rome. her conquests also were destructive to the nordic race; particularly so was that of cæsar in gaul, one of the few exceptional cases where the north was permanently conquered by the south. the losses of that ten-year conquest fell far more heavily upon the nordic celts in gaul and britain than on the servile strata of the population. in the same way the saxon conquest of england destroyed the nordic brythons to a greater degree than the pre-nordic neolithic mediterranean element. from that time on all the wars of europe, other than those against the asiatics and saracens, were essentially civil wars fought between peoples or leaders of nordic blood. mediæval europe was one long welter of nordic immolation until the wars of the roses in england, the hundred years' war in the lowlands, the religious, revolutionary, and napoleonic wars in france, and the ghastly thirty years' war in germany dangerously depleted the ruling nordic race and paved the way for the emergence from obscurity of the servile races which for ages had been dominated by them. to what extent the present war has fostered this tendency, time alone will show, but mr. stoddard has pointed out some of the immediate and visible results. the backbone of western civilization is racially nordic, the alpines and mediterraneans being effective precisely to the extent in which they have been nordicized and vitalized. if this great race, with its capacity for leadership and fighting, should ultimately pass, with it would pass that which we call civilization. it would be succeeded by an unstable and bastardized population, where worth and merit would have no inherent right to leadership and among which a new and darker age would blot out our racial inheritance. such a catastrophe cannot threaten if the nordic race will gather itself together in time, shake off the shackles of an inveterate altruism, discard the vain phantom of internationalism, and reassert the pride of race and the right of merit to rule. the nordic race has been driven from many of its lands, but still grasps firmly the control of the world, and it is certainly not at a greater numerical disadvantage than often before in contrast to the teeming population of eastern asia. it has repeatedly been confronted with crises where the accident of battle, or the genius of a leader, saved a well-nigh hopeless day. it has survived defeat, it has survived the greater danger of victory, and, if it takes warning in time, it may face the future with assurance. fight it must, but let that fight be not a civil war against its own blood kindred but against the dangerous foreign races, whether they advance sword in hand or in the more insidious guise of beggars at our gates, pleading for admittance to share our prosperity. if we continue to allow them to enter they will in time drive us out of our own land by mere force of breeding. the great hope of the future here in america lies in the realization of the working class that competition of the nordic with the alien is fatal, whether the latter be the lowly immigrant from southern or eastern europe or whether he be the more obviously dangerous oriental against whose standards of living the white man cannot compete. in this country we must look to such of our people--our farmers and artisans--as are still of american blood to recognize and meet this danger. our present condition is the result of following the leadership of idealists and philanthropic doctrinaires, aided and abetted by the perfectly understandable demand of our captains of industry for cheap labor. to-day the need for statesmanship is great, and greater still is the need for thorough knowledge of history. all over the world the first has been lacking, and in the passions of the great war the lessons of the past have been forgotten both here and in europe. the establishment of a chain of alpine states from the baltic to the adriatic, as a sequel to the war, all of them organized at the expense of the nordic ruling classes, may bring europe back to the days when charlemagne, marching from the rhine to the elbe, found the valley of that river inhabited by heathen wends. beyond lay asia, and his successors spent a thousand years pushing eastward the frontiers of europe. now that asia, in the guise of bolshevism with semitic leadership and chinese executioners, is organizing an assault upon western europe, the new states--slavic-alpine in race, with little nordic blood--may prove to be not frontier guards of western europe but vanguards of asia in central europe. none of the earlier alpine states have held firm against asia, and it is more than doubtful whether poland, bohemia, rumania, hungary, and jugo-slavia can face the danger successfully, now that they have been deprived of the nordic ruling classes through democratic institutions. democratic ideals among an homogeneous population of nordic blood, as in england or america, is one thing, but it is quite another for the white man to share his blood with, or intrust his ideals to, brown, yellow, black, or red men. this is suicide pure and simple, and the first victim of this amazing folly will be the white man himself. madison grant. new york, march , . _part i_ the rising tide of color chapter i the world of color the man who, on a quiet spring evening of the year , opened his atlas to a political map of the world and pored over its many-tinted patterns probably got one fundamental impression: the overwhelming preponderance of the white race in the ordering of the world's affairs. judged by accepted canons of statecraft, the white man towered the indisputable master of the planet. forth from europe's teeming mother-hive the imperious sons of japhet had swarmed for centuries to plant their laws, their customs, and their battle-flags at the uttermost ends of the earth. two whole continents, north america and australia, had been made virtually as white in blood as the european motherland; two other continents, south america and africa, had been extensively colonized by white stocks; while even huge asia had seen its empty northern march, siberia, pre-empted for the white man's abode. even where white populations had not locked themselves to the soil few regions of the earth had escaped the white man's imperial sway, and vast areas inhabited by uncounted myriads of dusky folk obeyed the white man's will. beside the enormous area of white settlement or control, the regions under non-white governance bulked small indeed. in eastern asia, china, japan, and siam; in western asia, turkey, afghanistan, and persia; in africa, abyssinia, and liberia; and in america the minute state of haiti: such was the brief list of lands under non-white rule. in other words, of the , , square miles which (excluding the polar regions) constitute the land area of the globe, only , , square miles had non-white governments, and nearly two-thirds of this relatively modest remainder was represented by china and its dependencies. since the world has been convulsed by the most terrible war in recorded history. this war was primarily a struggle between the white peoples, who have borne the brunt of the conflict and have suffered most of the losses. nevertheless, one of the war's results has been a further whittling down of the areas standing outside white political control. turkey is to-day practically an anglo-french condominium, persia is virtually a protectorate of the british empire, while the united states has thrown over the endemic anarchy of haiti the ægis of the _pax americana_. study of the political map might thus apparently lead one to conclude that white world-predominance is immutable, since the war's ordeal has still further broadened the territorial basis of its authority. at this point the reader is perhaps asking himself why this book was ever undertaken. the answer is: the dangerous delusion created by viewing world affairs solely from the angle of politics. the late war has taught many lessons as to the unstable and transitory character of even the most imposing political phenomena, while a better reading of history must bring home the truth that the basic factor in human affairs is not politics, but race. the reader has already encountered this fundamental truth on every page of the introduction. he will remember, for instance, how west-central asia, which in the dawn of history was predominantly white man's country, is to-day racially brown man's land in which white blood survives only as vestigial traces of vanishing significance. if this portion of asia, the former seat of mighty white empires and possibly the very homeland of the white race itself, should have so entirely changed its ethnic character, what assurance can the most impressive political panorama give us that the present world-order may not swiftly and utterly pass away? the force of this query is exemplified when we turn from the political to the racial map of the globe. what a transformation! instead of a world politically nine-tenths white, we see a world of which only four-tenths at the most can be considered predominantly white in blood, the rest of the world being inhabited mainly by the other primary races of mankind--yellows, browns, blacks, and reds. speaking by continents, europe, north america to the rio grande, the southern portion of south america, the siberian part of asia, and australasia constitute the real white world; while the bulk of asia, virtually the whole of africa, and most of central and south america form the world of color. the respective areas of these two racially contrasted worlds are , , square miles for the whites and , , square miles for the colored races. furthermore it must be remembered that fully one-third of the white area (notably australasia and siberia) is very thinly inhabited and is thus held by a very slender racial tenure--the only tenure which counts in the long run. the statistical disproportion between the white and colored worlds becomes still more marked when we turn from surveys of area to tables of population. the total number of human beings alive to-day is about , , , . of these , , are white, while , , , are colored. the colored races thus outnumber the whites more than two to one. another fact of capital importance is that the great bulk of the white race is concentrated in the european continent. in the population of europe was approximately , , . the late war has undoubtedly caused an absolute decrease of many millions of souls. nevertheless, the basic fact remains that some four-fifths of the entire white race is concentrated on less than one-fifth of the white world's territorial area (europe), while the remaining one-fifth of the race (some , , souls), scattered to the ends of the earth, must protect four-fifths of the white territorial heritage against the pressure of colored races eleven times its numerical strength. as to the , , , of the colored world, they are divided, as already stated, into four primary categories: yellows, browns, blacks, and reds. the yellows are the most numerous of the colored races, numbering over , , . their habitat is eastern asia. nearly as numerous and much more wide-spread than the yellows are the browns, numbering some , , . the browns spread in a broad belt from the pacific ocean westward across southern asia and northern africa to the atlantic ocean. the blacks total about , , . their centre is africa south of the sahara desert, but besides the african continent there are vestigial black traces across southern asia to the pacific and also strong black outposts in the americas. least numerous of the colored race-stocks are the reds--the "indians" of the western hemisphere. mustering a total of less than , , , the reds are almost all located south of the rio grande in "latin america." such is the ethnic make-up of that world of color which, as already seen, outnumbers the white world two to one. that is a formidable ratio, and its significance is heightened by the fact that this ratio seems destined to shift still further in favor of color. there can be no doubt that at present the colored races are increasing very much faster than the white. treating the primary race-stocks as units, it would appear that whites tend to double in eighty years, yellows and browns in sixty years, blacks in forty years. the whites are thus the slowest breeders, and they will undoubtedly become slower still, since section after section of the white race is revealing that lowered birth-rate which in france has reached the extreme of a stationary population. on the other hand, none of the colored races shows perceptible signs of declining birth-rate, all tending to breed up to the limits of available subsistence. such checks as now limit the increase of colored populations are wholly external, like famine, disease, and tribal warfare. but by a curious irony of fate, the white man has long been busy removing these checks to colored multiplication. the greater part of the colored world is to-day under white political control. wherever the white man goes he attempts to impose the bases of his ordered civilization. he puts down tribal war, he wages truceless combat against epidemic disease, and he so improves communications that augmented and better distributed food-supplies minimize the blight of famine. in response to these life-saving activities the enormous death-rate which in the past has kept the colored races from excessive multiplication is falling to proportions comparable with the death-rate of white countries. but to lower the colored world's prodigious birth-rate is quite another matter. the consequence is a portentous increase of population in nearly every portion of the colored world now under white political sway. in fact, even those colored countries which have maintained their independence, such as china and japan, are adopting the white man's life-conserving methods and are experiencing the same accelerated increase of population. now what must be the inevitable result of all this? it can mean only one thing: a tremendous and steadily augmenting outward thrust of surplus colored men from overcrowded colored homelands. remember that these homelands are already populated up to the available limits of subsistence. of course present limits can in many cases be pushed back by better living conditions, improved agriculture, and the rise of modern machine industry such as is already under way in japan. nevertheless, in view of the tremendous population increases which must occur, these can be only palliatives. where, then, should the congested colored world tend to pour its accumulating human surplus, inexorably condemned to emigrate or starve? the answer is: into those emptier regions of the earth under white political control. but many of these relatively empty lands have been definitely set aside by the white man as his own special heritage. the upshot is that the rising flood of color finds itself walled in by white dikes debarring it from many a promised land which it would fain deluge with its dusky waves. thus the colored world, long restive under white political domination, is being welded by the most fundamental of instincts, the instinct of self-preservation, into a common solidarity of feeling against the dominant white man, and in the fire of a common purpose internecine differences tend, for the time at least, to be burned away. before the supreme fact of white political world-domination, antipathies within the colored world must inevitably recede into the background. the imperious urge of the colored world toward racial expansion was well visualized by that keen english student of world affairs, doctor e. j. dillon, when he wrote more than a decade ago: "the problem is one of life and death--a veritable sphinx-question--to those most nearly concerned. for, no race, however inferior it may be, will consent to famish slowly in order that other people may fatten and take their ease, especially if it has a good chance to make a fight for life."[ ] this white statement of the colored thesis is an accurate reflection of what colored men say themselves. for example, a japanese scholar, professor ryutaro nagai, writes: "the world was not made for the white races, but for the other races as well. in australia, south africa, canada, and the united states, there are vast tracts of unoccupied territory awaiting settlement, and although the citizens of the ruling powers refuse to take up the land, no yellow people are permitted to enter. thus the white races seem ready to commit to the savage birds and beasts what they refuse to intrust to their brethren of the yellow race. surely the arrogance and avarice of the nobility in apportioning to themselves the most and the best of the land in certain countries is as nothing compared with the attitude of the white races toward those of a different hue."[ ] the bitter resentment of white predominance and exclusiveness awakened in many colored breasts is typified by the following lines penned by a brown man, a british-educated afghan, shortly before the european war. inveighing against our "racial prejudice, that cowardly, wretched caste-mark of the european and the american the world over," he exultantly predicts "a coming struggle between asia, all asia, against europe and america. you are heaping up material for a jehad, a pan-islam, a pan-asia holy war, a gigantic day of reckoning, an invasion of a new attila and tamerlane--who will use rifles and bullets, instead of lances and spears. you are deaf to the voice of reason and fairness, and so you must be taught with the whirring swish of the sword when it is red."[ ] of course in these statements there is nothing either exceptional or novel. the colored races never welcomed white predominance and were always restive under white control. down to the close of the nineteenth century, however, they generally accepted white hegemony as a disagreeable but inevitable fact. for four hundred years the white man had added continent to continent in his imperial progress, equipped with resistless sea-power and armed with a mechanical superiority that crushed down all local efforts at resistance. in time, therefore, the colored races accorded to white supremacy a fatalistic acquiescence, and, though never loved, the white man was usually respected and universally feared. during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, to be sure, premonitory signs of a change in attitude began to appear. the yellow and brown races, at least, stirred by the very impact of western ideas, measured the white man with a more critical eye and commenced to wonder whether his superiority was due to anything more than a fortuitous combination of circumstances which might be altered by efforts of their own. japan put this theory to the test by going sedulously to the white man's school. the upshot was the russo-japanese war of , an event the momentous character of which is even now not fully appreciated. of course, that war was merely the sign-manual of a whole nexus of forces making for a revivified asia. but it dramatized and clarified ideas which had been germinating half-unconsciously in millions of colored minds, and both asia and africa thrilled with joy and hope. above all, the legend of white invincibility lay, a fallen idol, in the dust. nevertheless, though freed from imaginary terrors, the colored world accurately gauged the white man's practical strength and appreciated the magnitude of the task involved in overthrowing white supremacy. that supremacy was no longer acquiesced in as inevitable and hopes of ultimate success were confidently entertained, but the process was usually conceived as a slow and difficult one. fear of white power and respect for white civilization thus remained potent restraining factors. then came the great war. the colored world suddenly saw the white peoples which, in racial matters had hitherto maintained something of a united front, locked in an internecine death-grapple of unparalleled ferocity; it saw those same peoples put one another furiously to the ban as irreconcilable foes; it saw white race-unity cleft by political and moral gulfs which white men themselves continuously iterated would never be filled. as colored men realized the significance of it all, they looked into each other's eyes and there saw the light of undreamed-of hopes. the white world was tearing itself to pieces. white solidarity was riven and shattered. and--fear of white power and respect for white civilization together dropped away like garments outworn. through the bazaars of asia ran the sibilant whisper: "the east will see the west to bed!" the chorus of mingled exultation, hate, and scorn sounded from every portion of the colored world. chinese scholars, japanese professors, hindu pundits, turkish journalists, and afro-american editors, one and all voiced drastic criticisms of white civilization and hailed the war as a well-merited nemesis on white arrogance and greed. this is how the constantinople _tanine_, the most serious turkish newspaper, characterized the european powers: "they would not look at the evils in their own countries or elsewhere, but interfered at the slightest incident in our borders; every day they would gnaw at some part of our rights and our sovereignty; they would perform vivisection on our quivering flesh and cut off great pieces of it. and we, with a forcibly controlled spirit of rebellion in our hearts and with clinched but powerless fists, silent and depressed, would murmur as the fire burned within: 'oh, that they might fall out with one another! oh, that they might eat one another up!' and lo! to-day they are eating each other up, just as the turk wished they would."[ ] the afro-american author, w. e. burghardt dubois, wrote of the colored world: "these nations and races, composing as they do a vast majority of humanity, are going to endure this treatment just as long as they must and not a moment longer. then they are going to fight, and the war of the color line will outdo in savage inhumanity any war this world has yet seen. for colored folk have much to remember and they will not forget."[ ] "what does the european war mean to us orientals?" queried the japanese writer, yone noguchi. "it means the saddest downfall of the so-called western civilization; our belief that it was builded upon a higher and sounder footing than ours was at once knocked down and killed; we are sorry that we somehow overestimated its happy possibility and were deceived and cheated by its superficial glory. my recent western journey confirmed me that the so-called dynamic western civilization was all against the asiatic belief. and when one does not respect the others, there will be only one thing to come, that is, fight, in action or silence."[ ] [illustration: distribution of the primary races] such was the colored world's reaction to the white death-grapple, and as the long struggle dragged on both asia and africa stirred to their very depths. to be sure, no great explosions occurred during the war years, albeit lifting veils of censorship reveal how narrowly such explosions were averted. nevertheless, asia and africa are to-day in acute ferment, and we must not forget that this ferment is not primarily due to the war. the war merely accelerated a movement already existent long before . even if the great war had been averted, the twentieth century must have been a time of wide-spread racial readjustments in which the white man's present position of political world-domination would have been sensibly modified, especially in asia. however, had the white race and white civilization been spared the terrific material and moral losses involved in the great war and its still unliquidated aftermath, the process of racial readjustment would have been far more gradual and would have been fraught with far fewer cataclysmic possibilities. had white strength remained intact it would have acted as a powerful shock-absorber, taking up and distributing the various colored impacts. as a result, the coming modification of the world's racial equilibrium, though inevitable, would have been so graduated that it would have seemed more an evolution than a revolution. such violent breaches as did occur might have been localized, and anything like a general race-cataclysm would probably have been impossible. but it was not to be. the heart of the white world was divided against itself, and on the fateful st of august, , the white race, forgetting ties of blood and culture, heedless of the growing pressure of the colored world without, locked in a battle to the death. an ominous cycle opened whose end no man can foresee. armageddon engendered versailles; earth's worst war closed with an unconstructive peace which left old sores unhealed and even dealt fresh wounds. the white world to-day lies debilitated and uncured; the colored world views conditions which are a standing incitement to rash dreams and violent action. such is the present status of the world's race-problem, expressed in general terms. the analysis of the specific elements in that complex problem will form the subject of the succeeding chapters. chapter ii yellow man's land yellow man's land is the far east. here the group of kindred stocks usually termed mongolian have dwelt for unnumbered ages. down to the most recent times the yellows lived virtually a life apart. sundered from the rest of mankind by stupendous mountains, burning deserts, and the illimitable ocean, the far east constituted a world in itself, living its own life and developing its own peculiar civilization. only the wild nomads of its northern marches--huns, mongols, tartars, and the like--succeeded in gaining direct contact with the brown and white worlds to the west. the ethnic focus of the yellow world has always been china. since the dawn of history this immense human ganglion has been the centre from which civilization has radiated throughout the far east. about this "middle kingdom," as it sapiently styled itself, the other yellow folk were disposed--japanese and koreans to the east; siamese, annamites, and cambodians to the south; and to the north the nomad mongols and manchus. to all these peoples china was the august preceptor, sometimes chastising their presumption, yet always instilling the principles of its ordered civilization. however diverse may have been the individual developments of the various far eastern peoples, they spring from a common chinese foundation. despite modern japan's meteoric rise to political mastery of the far east, it must not be forgotten that china remains not only the cultural but also the territorial and racial centre of the yellow world. four-fifths of the yellow race is concentrated in china, there being nearly , , chinese as against , , japanese, , , koreans, , , indo-chinese, and perhaps , , people of non-chinese stocks included within china's political frontiers. the age-long seclusion of the yellow world, first decreed by nature, was subsequently maintained by the voluntary decision of the yellow peoples themselves. the great expansive movement of the white race which began four centuries ago soon brought white men to the far east, by sea in the persons of the portuguese navigators and by land with the cossack adventurers ranging through the empty spaces of siberia. yet after a brief acquaintance with the white strangers the yellow world decided that it wanted none of them, and they were rigidly excluded. this exclusion policy was not a chinese peculiarity; it was common to all the yellow peoples and was adopted spontaneously at about the same time. in china, japan, korea, and indo-china, the same reaction produced the same results. the yellow world instinctively felt the white man to be a destructive, dissolving influence on its highly specialized line of evolution, which it wished to maintain unaltered. for three centuries the yellow world succeeded in maintaining its isolation, then, in the middle of the last century, insistent white pressure broke down the barriers and forced the yellow races into full contact with the outer world. at the moment, the "opening" of the far east was hailed by white men with general approval, but of late years many white observers have regretted this forcible dragging of reluctant races into the full stream of world affairs. as an australian writer, j. liddell kelly, remarks: "we have erred grievously by prematurely forcing ourselves upon asiatic races. the instinct of the asiatic in desiring isolation and separation from other forms of civilization was much more correct than our craze for imposing our forms of religion, morals, and industrialism upon them. it is not race-hatred, nor even race-antagonism, that is at the root of this attitude; it is an unerring intuition, which in years gone by has taught the asiatic that his evolution in the scale of civilization could best be accomplished by his being allowed to develop on his own lines. pernicious european compulsion has led him to abandon that attitude. let us not be ashamed to confess that he was right and we were wrong."[ ] however, rightly or wrongly, the deed was done, and the yellow races, forced into the world-arena, proceeded to adapt themselves to their new political environment and to learn the correct methods of survival under the strenuous conditions which there prevailed. in place of their traditional equilibrated, self-sufficient order, the yellow peoples now felt the ubiquitous impacts of the dynamic western spirit, insistent upon rapid material progress and forceful, expansive evolution. japan was the first yellow people to go methodically to the white man's school, and japan's rapid acquirement of the white man's technology soon showed itself in dramatic demonstrations like her military triumphs over china in , and over russia a decade later. japan's easy victory over huge china astounded the whole world. that these "highly intelligent children," as one of the early british ministers to japan had characterized them, should have so rapidly acquired the technique of western methods was almost unbelievable. indeed, the full significance of the lesson was not immediately grasped, and the power of new japan was still underestimated. a good example of europe's underestimation of japanese strength was the proposal a dutch writer made in to curb possible japanese aggression on the dutch indies by taking from japan the island of formosa which japan had acquired from china as one of the fruits of victory. "holland," asserted this writer, "must take possession of formosa."[ ] the grotesqueness of this dictum as it appears to us in the light of subsequent history shows how the world has moved in twenty-five years. but even at that time japan's expansionist tendencies were well developed, and voices were warning against japanese imperialism. in the very month when our hollander was advocating a dutch seizure of formosa, an australian wrote the following lines in a melbourne newspaper concerning his recent travels in japan: "while in a car with several japanese officers, they were conversing about australia, saying that it was a fine, large country, with great forests and excellent soil for the cultivation of rice and other products. the whites settled in australia, so thought these officers, are like the dog in the manger. some one will have to take a good part of australia to develop it, for it is a pity to see so fine a country lying waste. if any ill-feeling arose between the two countries, it would be a wise thing to send some battleships to australia and annex part of it."[ ] whatever may have been the world's misreading of the chino-japanese conflict, the same cannot be said of the russo-japanese war of . the echoes of that yellow triumph over one of the great white powers reverberated to the ends of the earth and started obscure trains of consequences even to-day not yet fully disclosed. the war's reactions in these remoter fields will be discussed in later chapters. its effect upon the far east is our present concern. and the well-nigh unanimous opinion of both natives and resident europeans was that the war signified a body-blow to white ascendancy. so profound an english student of the orient as meredith townsend wrote: "it may be taken as certain that the victory of japan will be profoundly felt by the majority of european states. with the exception of austria, all european countries have implicated themselves in the great effort to conquer asia, which has now been going on for two centuries, but which, as this author thinks, must now terminate.... the disposition, therefore, to edge out intrusive europeans from their asiatic possessions is certain to exist even if it is not manifested in tokio, and it may be fostered by a movement of which, as yet, but little has been said. no one who has ever studied the question doubts that as there is a comity of europe, so there is a comity of asia, a disposition to believe that asia belongs of right to asiatics, and that any event which brings that right nearer to realization is to all asiatics a pleasurable one. japanese victories will give new heart and energy to all the asiatic nations and tribes which now fret under european rule, will inspire in them a new confidence in their own power to resist, and will spread through them a strong impulse to avail themselves of japanese instruction. it will take, of course, many years to bring this new force into play; but time matters nothing to asiatics, and they all possess that capacity for complete secrecy which the japanese displayed."[ ] that meredith townsend was reading the asiatic mind aright seems clear from the pronouncements of orientals themselves. for example, _buddhism_, of rangoon, burmah, a country of the indo-chinese borderland between the yellow and brown worlds, expressed hopes for an oriental alliance against the whites. "it would, we think," said this paper, "be no great wonder if a few years after the conclusion of this war saw the completion of a defensive alliance between japan, china, and not impossibly siam--the formulation of a new monroe doctrine for the far east, guaranteeing the integrity of existing states against further aggression from the west. the west has justified--perhaps with some reason--every aggression on weaker races by the doctrine of the survival of the fittest; on the ground that it is best for future humanity that the unfit should be eliminated and give place to the most able race. that doctrine applies equally well to any possible struggle between aryan and mongolian--whichever survives, should it ever come to a struggle between the two for world-mastery, will, on their own doctrine, be the one most fit to do so, and if the survivor be the mongolian, then is the mongolian no 'peril' to humanity, but the better part of it."[ ] the decade which elapsed between the russo-japanese and european wars saw in the far east another event of the first magnitude: the chinese revolution of . toward the close of the nineteenth century the world had been earnestly discussing the "break-up" of china. the huge empire, with its , , of people, one-fourth the entire human race, seemed at that time plunged in so hopeless a lethargy as to be foredoomed to speedy ruin. about the apparently moribund carcass the eagles of the earth were already gathered, planning a "partition of china" analogous to the recent partition of africa. the partition of china, however, never came off. the prodigious moral shock of the japanese war roused china's élite to the imminence of their country's peril. first attempts at reform were blocked by the dowager empress, but her reactionary lurch ended in the boxer nightmare and the frightful occidental chastisement of . this time the lesson was learned. china was at last shaken broad awake. the bourbon manchu court, it is true, wavered, but popular pressure forced it to keep the upward path. every year after saw increasingly rapid reform--reform, be it noted, not imposed upon the country from above but forced upon the rulers from below. when the slow-footed manchus showed themselves congenitally incapable of keeping step with the quickening national pace, the rising tide of national life overwhelmed them in the republican revolution of , and they were no more. even with the manchu handicap, the rate of progress during those years was such as to amaze the wisest foreign observers. "could the sage, confucius, have returned a decade ago," wrote that "old china hand," w. r. manning, in , "he would have felt almost as much at home as when he departed twenty-five centuries before. should he return a decade hence he will feel almost as much out of place as rip van winkle, if the recent rate of progress continues."[ ] toward the close of a close student of things chinese, harlan p. beach, remarked: "those who, like myself, can compare the china of twenty-five years ago with the china of this year, can hardly believe our senses."[ ] it was on top of all this that there came the revolution, a happening hailed by so sophisticated an observer as doctor dillon as "the most momentous event in a thousand years."[ ] whatever may have been the political blunders of the revolutionists (and they were many), the revolution's moral results were stupendous. the stream of western innovation flowed at a vastly accelerated pace into every chinese province. the popular masses were for the first time awakened to genuine interest in political, as distinguished from economic or personal, questions. lastly, the semi-religious feeling of family kinship, which in the past had been almost the sole recognized bond of chinese race-solidarity, was powerfully supplemented by those distinctively modern concepts, national self-consciousness and articulate patriotism. here was the far eastern situation at the outbreak of the great war--a thoroughly modernized, powerful japan, and a thoroughly aroused, but still disorganized, china. the great war automatically made japan supreme in the far east by temporarily reducing all the european powers to ciphers in oriental affairs. how japan proceeded to buttress this supremacy by getting a strangle-hold on china, every one knows. japan's methods were brutal and cynical, though not a whit more so than the methods employed by white nations seeking to attain vital ends. and "vital" is precisely how japan regards her hold over china. an essentially poor country with a teeming population, japan feels that the exploitation of china's incalculable natural resources, a privileged position in the chinese market, and guidance of chinese national evolution in ways not inimical to japan, can alone assure her future. japan's attitude toward her huge neighbor is one of mingled superiority and apprehension. she banks on china's traditional pacifism, yet she is too shrewd not to realize the explosive possibilities latent in the modern nationalist idea. as a japanese publicist, adachi kinnosuke, remarks: "the twentieth century jenghiz khan threatening the sun-flag with a mongol horde armed with krupp guns may possibly strike the western sense of humor. but it is not altogether pleasing to contemplate a neighbor of , , population with modern armament and soldiers trained on the modern plan. the awakening of china means all this and a little more which we of the present are not sure of. japan cannot forget that between this nightmare of armed china and herself there is only a very narrow sea."[ ] certainly, "young china" has already displayed much of that unpleasant ebullience which usually accompanies nationalist awakenings. a french observer, jean rodes, writes on this point: "one of the things that most disquiet thinking men is that this new generation, completely neglecting chinese studies while knowing nothing of western science, yet convinced that it knows everything, will no longer possess any standard of values, national culture, or foreign culture. we can only await with apprehension the results of such ignorance united with unbounded pride as characterize the chinese youth of to-day."[ ] and another french observer, rené pinon, as far back as , found the primary school children of kiang-su province chanting the following lines: "i pray that the frontiers of my country become hard as bronze; that it surpass europe and america; that it subjugate japan; that its land and sea armies cover themselves with resplendent glory; that over the whole earth float the dragon standard; that the universal mastery of the empire extend and progress. may our empire, like a sleeping tiger suddenly awakened, spring roaring into the arena of combats."[ ] japan's masterful policy in china is thus unquestionably hazardous. chinese national feeling is to-day genuinely aroused against japan, and resentment over japanese encroachments is bitter and wide-spread. nevertheless, japan feels that the game is worth the risk and believes that both chinese race-psychology and the general drift of world affairs combine to favor her ultimate success. she knows that china has in the past always acquiesced in foreign domination when resistance has proved patently impossible. she also feels that her aspirations for white expulsion from the far east and for the winning of wider spheres for racial expansion should appeal strongly to yellow peoples generally and to the chinese in particular. to turn china's nascent nationalism into purely anti-white channels and to transmute chinese patriotism into a wider "pan-mongolism" would constitute a japanese triumph of incalculable splendor. it would increase her effective force manyfold and would open up almost limitless vistas of power and glory. nor are the chinese themselves blind to the advantages of chino-japanese co-operation. they have an instinctive assurance in their own capacities, they know how they have ultimately digested all their conquerors, and many chinese to-day think that from a chino-japanese partnership, no matter how framed, the inscrutable "sons of han" would eventually get the lion's share. certainly no one has ever denied the chinaman's extraordinary economic efficiency. winnowed by ages of grim elimination in a land populated to the uttermost limits of subsistence, the chinese race is selected as no other for survival under the fiercest conditions of economic stress. at home the average chinese lives his whole life literally within a hand's breadth of starvation. accordingly, when removed to the easier environment of other lands, the chinaman brings with him a working capacity which simply appalls his competitors. that urbane celestial, doctor wu-ting-fang, well says of his own people: "experience proves that the chinese as all-round laborers can easily outdistance all competitors. they are industrious, intelligent, and orderly. they can work under conditions that would kill a man of less hardy race; in heat that would kill a salamander, or in cold that would please a polar bear, sustaining their energies through long hours of unremitting toil with only a few bowls of rice."[ ] this chinese estimate is echoed by the most competent foreign observers. the australian thinker, charles h. pearson, wrote of the chinese a generation ago in his epoch-making book, "national life and character": "flexible as jews, they can thrive on the mountain plateaux of thibet and under the sun of singapore; more versatile even than jews, they are excellent laborers, and not without merit as soldiers and sailors; while they have a capacity for trade which no other nation of the east possesses. they do not need even the accident of a man of genius to develop their magnificent future."[ ] and lafcadio hearn says: "a people of hundreds of millions disciplined for thousands of years to the most untiring industry and the most self-denying thrift, under conditions which would mean worse than death for our working masses--a people, in short, quite content to strive to the uttermost in exchange for the simple privilege of life."[ ] this economic superiority of the chinaman shows not only with other races, but with his yellow kindred as well. as regards the japanese, john chinaman has proved it to the hilt. wherever the two have met in economic competition, john has won hands down. even in japanese colonies like korea and formosa, the japanese, with all the backing of their government behind them, have been worsted. in fact, japan itself, so bitter at white refusals to receive her emigrants, has been obliged to enact drastic exclusion laws to protect her working classes from the influx of "chinese cheap labor." it seems, therefore, a just calculation when chinese estimate that japanese triumphs against white adversaries would inure largely to china's benefit. after all, chinese and japanese are fundamentally of the same race and culture. they may have their very bitter family quarrels, but in the last analysis they understand each other and may arrive at surprisingly sudden agreements. one thing is certain: both these over-populated lands will feel increasingly the imperious need of racial expansion. for all these reasons, then, the present political tension between china and japan cannot be reckoned as permanent, and we would do well to envisage the possibility of close chinese co-operation in the ambitious programme of japanese foreign policy. this japanese programme looks first to the prevention of all further white encroachment in the far east by the establishment of a far eastern monroe doctrine based on japanese predominance and backed if possible by the moral support of the other far eastern peoples. the next stage in japanese foreign policy seems to be the systematic elimination of all existing white holdings in the far east. thus far practically all japanese appear to be in substantial agreement. beyond this point lies a wide realm of aspiration ranging from determination to secure complete racial equality and freedom of immigration into white lands to imperialistic dreams of wholesale conquests and "world-dominion." these last items do not represent the united aspiration of the japanese nation, but they are cherished by powerful circles which, owing to japan's oligarchical system of government, possess an influence over governmental action quite disproportionate to their numbers. although japanese plans and aspirations have broadened notably since , their outlines were well defined a decade earlier. immediately after her victory over russia, japan set herself to strengthen her influence all over eastern asia. special efforts were made to establish intimate relations with the other asiatic peoples. asiatic students were invited to attend japanese universities and as a matter of fact did attend by the thousand, while a whole series of societies was formed having for their object the knitting of close cultural and economic ties between japan and specific regions like china, siam, the pacific, and even india. the capstone was a "pan-asiatic association," founded by count okuma. some of the facts regarding these societies, about which too little is known, make interesting reading. for instance, there was the "pacific ocean society" ("taheijoka"), whose preamble reads in part: "for a century the pacific ocean has been a battle-ground wherein the nations have struggled for supremacy. to-day the prosperity or decadence of a nation depends on its power in the pacific: to possess the empire of the pacific is to be the master of the world. as japan finds itself at the centre of that ocean, whose waves bathe its shores, it must reflect carefully and have clear views on pacific questions."[ ] equally interesting is the "indo-japanese association," whose activities appear somewhat peculiar in view of the political alliance between japan and the british empire. one of the first articles of its constitution (from count okuma's pen, by the way) reads: "all men were born equal. the asiatics have the same claim to be called men as the europeans themselves. it is therefore quite unreasonable that the latter should have any right to predominate over the former."[ ] no mention is made anywhere in the document of india's political connection with england. in fact, count okuma, in the autumn of , had this to say regarding india: "being oppressed by the europeans, the , , people of india are looking for japanese protection. they have commenced to boycott european merchandise. if, therefore, the japanese let the chance slip by and do not go to india, the indians will be disappointed. from old times, india has been a land of treasure. alexander the great obtained there treasure sufficient to load a hundred camels, and mahmoud and attila also obtained riches from india. why should not the japanese stretch out their hands toward that country, now that the people are looking to the japanese? the japanese ought to go to india, the south ocean, and other parts of the world."[ ] in , putnam weale, a competent english student of oriental affairs, asserted: "it can no longer be doubted that a very deliberate policy is certainly being quietly and cleverly pursued. despite all denials, it is a fact that japan has already a great hold in the schools and in the vernacular newspapers all over eastern asia, and that the gospel of 'asia for the asiatics' is being steadily preached not only by her schoolmasters and her editors, but by her merchants and peddlers, and every other man who travels."[ ] exactly how much these japanese propagandist efforts accomplished is impossible to say. certain it is, however, that during the years just previous to the great war the white colonies in the far east were afflicted with considerable native unrest. in french indo-china, for example, revolutionary movements during the year necessitated reinforcing the french garrison by nearly , men, and though the disturbances were sternly repressed, fresh conspiracies were discovered in and . much sedition and some sharp fighting also took place in the dutch indies, while in the philippines the independence movement continued to gain ground. what the growing self-consciousness of the far east portended for the white man's ultimate status in those regions was indicated by an english publicist, j. d. whelpley, who wrote, shortly after the outbreak of the european war: "with the aid of western ideas the far east is fast attaining a solidarity impossible under purely oriental methods. the smug satisfaction expressed in the west at what is called the 'modernization' of the east shows lack of wisdom or an ineffective grasp of the meaning of comparatively recent events in japan, china, eastern siberia, and even in the philippines. in years past the solidarity of the far east was largely in point of view, while in other matters the powerful nations of the west played the game according to their own rules. to-day the solidarity of mental outlook still maintains, while in addition there is rapidly coming about a solidarity of political and material interests which in time will reduce western participation in far eastern affairs to that of a comparatively unimportant factor. it might truly be said that this point is already reached, and that it only needs an application of the test to prove to the world that the far east would resent western interference as an intolerable impertinence."[ ] the scope of japan's aspirations, together with differences of outlook between various sections of japanese public opinion as to the rate of progress feasible for japanese expansion, account for japan's differing attitudes toward the white powers. officially, the keystone of japan's foreign policy since the beginning of the present century has been the alliance with england, first negotiated in and renewed with extensive modifications in . the alliance was universally popular in japan. it was directed specifically against russia and represented the common apprehensions of both the contracting parties. by , however, the situation had radically altered. japan's aspirations in the far east, particularly as regards china, were arousing wide-spread uneasiness in many quarters, and the english communities in the far east generally condemned the new alliance as a gross blunder of british diplomacy. in japan also there was considerable protest. the official organs, to be sure, stressed the necessity of friendship with the mistress of the seas for an island empire like japan, but opposition circles pointed to england's practical refusal to be drawn into a war with the united states under any circumstances which constituted the outstanding feature of the new treaty and declared that japan was giving much and receiving nothing in return. the growing divergence between japanese and english views regarding china increased anti-english feeling, and in the semi-official _japan magazine_ asserted roundly that the general feeling in japan was that the alliance was a detriment rather than a benefit, going on to forecast a possible alignment with russia and germany, and remarking of the latter: "germany's healthy imperialism and scientific development would have a wholesome effect upon our nation and progress, while the german habit of perseverance and frugality is just what we need. german wealth and industry are gradually creeping upward to that of great britain and america, and the efficiency of the german army and navy is a model for the world. her lease of the territory of kiaochow bay brings her into contact with us, and her ambition to exploit the coal-mines of shantung lends her a community of interest with us. it is not too much to say that german interests in china are greater than those of any other european power. if the alliance with england should ever be abrogated, we might be very glad to shake hands with germany."[ ] the outbreak of the european war gave japan a golden opportunity (of which she was not slow to take advantage) to eliminate one of the white powers from the far east. the german stronghold of kiaochow was promptly reduced, while germany's possessions in the pacific ocean north of the equator, the caroline, pelew, marianne, and marshall island-groups, were likewise occupied by japanese forces. here japan stopped and politely declined all proposals to send armies to europe or western asia. her sphere was the far east; her real objectives were the reduction of white influence there and the riveting of her control over china. japanese comment was perfectly candid on these matters. as the semi-official _japanese colonial journal_ put it in the autumn of : "to protect chinese territory japan is ready to fight no matter what nation. not only will japan try to erase the ambitions of russia and germany; it will also do its best to prevent england and the united states from touching the chinese cake. the solution of the chinese problem is of great importance for japan, and great britain has little to do with it."[ ] equally frank were japanese warnings to the english ally not to oppose japan's progress in china. english criticism of the series of ultimatums by which japan forced reluctant china to do her bidding roused angry admonitions like the following from the tokio _universe_ in april, : "hostile english opinion seems to want to oppose japanese demands in china. the english forget that japan has, by her alliance, rendered them signal services against russia in and in the present war by assuring security in their colonies of the pacific and the far east. if japan allied herself with england, it was with the object of establishing japanese preponderance in china and against the encroachments of russia. to-day the english seem to be neglecting their obligations toward japan by not supporting her cause. let england beware! japan will tolerate no wavering; she is quite ready to abandon the anglo-japanese alliance and turn to russia--a power with whom she can agree perfectly regarding far eastern interests. in the future, even, she is ready to draw closer to germany. the english colonies will then be in great peril."[ ] as to the imminence of a russo-japanese understanding, the journal just quoted proved a true prophet, for a year later, in july, , the japanese and russian governments signed a diplomatic instrument which amounted practically to an alliance. by this document russia recognized japan's paramountcy over the bulk of china, while japan recognized russia's special interests in china's western dependencies, mongolia and turkestan. japan had thus eliminated another of the white powers from the far east, since russia renounced those ambitions to dominate china proper which had provoked the war of . meanwhile the press campaign against england continued. a typical sample is this editorial from the tokio _yamato_: "great britain never wished at heart to become japan's ally. she did not wish to enter into such intimate relations with us, for she privately regarded us as an upstart nation radically different from us in blood and religion. it was simply the force of circumstances which compelled her to enter into an alliance with us. it is the height of conceit on our part to think that england really cared for our friendship, for she never did. it was the russian menace to india and persia on the one hand, and the german ascendancy on the other, which compelled her to clasp our hands."[ ] at the same time many good things were being said about germany. at no time during the war was any real hostility to the germans apparent in japan. germany was of course expelled from her far eastern footholds in smart, workmanlike fashion, but the fighting before kiaochow was conducted without a trace of hatred, the german prisoners were treated as honored captives, and german civilians in japan suffered no molestation. japanese writers were very frank in stating that, once germany resigned herself to exclusion from the far east and acquiesced in japanese predominance in china, no reason existed why japan and germany should not be good friends. unofficial diplomatic exchanges certainly took place between the two governments during the war, and no rancor for the past appears to exist on either side to-day. the year brought three momentous modifications into the world-situation: the entrance of the united states and china into the great war and the russian revolution. the first two were intensely distasteful to japan. the transformation of virtually unarmed america into a first-class fighting power reacted portentously upon the far east, while china's adhesion to the grand alliance (bitterly opposed in tokio) rescued her from diplomatic isolation and gave her potential friends. the russian revolution was also a source of perplexity to tokio. in , as we have seen, japan had arrived at a thorough understanding with the czarist régime. the new russian government was an unknown quantity, acting quite differently from the old. russia's collapse into bolshevist anarchy, however, presently opened up new vistas. not merely northern manchuria, but also the huge expanse of siberia, an almost empty world of vast potential riches, lay temptingly exposed. at once the powerful imperialist elements in japanese political life began clamoring for "forward" action. an opportunity for such action was soon vouchsafed by the allied determination to send a composite force to siberia to checkmate the machinations of the russian bolsheviki, now hostile to the allies and playing into the hands of germany. the imperialist party at tokio took the bit in its teeth, and, in flagrant disregard of the inter-allied agreement, poured a great army into siberia, occupying the whole country as far west as lake baikal. this was in the spring of . the allies, then in their supreme death-grapple with the germans, dared not even protest, but in the autumn, when the battle-tide had turned in europe, japan was called to account, the united states taking the lead in the matter. a furious debate ensued at tokio between the imperialist and moderate parties, the hotter jingoes urging defiance of the united states even at the risk of war. then, suddenly, came the news that germany was cracking, and the moderates had their way. the japanese armies in siberia were reduced, albeit they still remained the most powerful military factor in the situation. germany's sudden collapse and the unexpectedly quick ending of the war was a blow to japanese hopes and plans in more ways than one. despite official felicitations, the nation could hardly disguise its chagrin. for japan the war had been an unmixed benefit. it had automatically made her mistress of the far east and had amazingly enriched her economic life. every succeeding month of hostilities had seen the white world grow weaker and had conversely increased japanese power. japan had counted on at least one more year of war. small wonder that the sudden passing of this halcyon time provoked disappointment and regret. the above outline of japanese foreign policy reveals beneath all its surface mutations a fundamental continuity. whatever may be its ultimate goals, japanese foreign policy has one minimum objective: japan as hegemon of a far east in which white influence shall have been reduced to a vanishing quantity. that is the bald truth of the matter--and no white man has any reason for getting indignant about it. granted that japanese aims endanger white vested interests in the far east. granted that this involves rivalry and perhaps war. that is no reason for striking a moral attitude and inveighing against japanese "wickedness," as many people are to-day doing. these mighty racial tides flow from the most elemental of vital urges: self-expansion and self-preservation. both outward thrust of expanding life and counter-thrust of threatened life are equally normal phenomena. to condemn the former as "criminal" and the latter as "selfish" is either silly or hypocritical and tends to envenom with unnecessary rancor what objective fairness might keep a candid struggle, inevitable yet alleviated by mutual comprehension and respect. this is no mere plea for "sportsmanship"; it is a very practical matter. there are critical times ahead; times in which intense race-pressures will engender high tensions and perhaps wars. if men will keep open minds and will eschew the temptation to regard those opposing their desires to defend or possess respectively as impious fiends, the struggles will lose half their bitterness, and the wars (if wars there must be) will be shorn of half their ferocity. the unexpected ending of the european war was, as we have seen, a blow to japanese calculations. nevertheless, the skill of her diplomats at the ensuing versailles conference enabled japan to harvest most of her war gains. japan's territorial acquisitions in china were definitely written into the peace treaty, despite china's sullen veto, and japan's preponderance in chinese affairs was tacitly acknowledged. japan also took advantage of the occasion to pose as the champion of the colored races by urging the formal promulgation of "racial equality" as part of the peace settlement, especially as regards immigration. of course the japanese diplomats had no serious expectation of their demands being acceded to; in fact, they might have been rather embarrassed if they had succeeded, in view of japan's own stringent laws against immigration and alien landholding. nevertheless, it was a politic move, useful for future propagandist purposes, and it advertised japan broadcast as the standard-bearer of the colored cause. the notable progress that japan has made toward the mastery of the far east is written plainly upon the map, which strikingly portrays the broadening territorial base of japanese power effected in the past twenty-five years. japan now owns the whole island chain masking the eastern sea frontage of asia, from the tip of kamchatka to the philippines, while her acquisition of germany's oceanican islands north of the equator gives her important strategic outposts in mid-pacific. her bridge-heads on the asiatic continent are also strong and well located. from the korean peninsula (now an integral part of japan) she firmly grasps the vast chinese dependency of manchuria, while just south of manchuria across the narrow waters of the pechili strait lies the rich chinese province of shantung, become a japanese sphere of influence as a result of the late war. thus japan holds china's capital, peking, as in the jaws of a vice and can apply military pressure whenever she so desires. in southern china lies another japanese sphere of influence, the province of fukien opposite the japanese island of formosa. lastly, all over china runs a veritable network of japanese concessions like the recently acquired control of the great iron deposits near hankow, far up the yangtse river in the heart of china. whether this japanese _imperium_ over china maintains itself or not, one thing seems certain: future white expansion in the far east has become impossible. any such attempt would instantly weld together japanese imperialism and chinese nationalism in a "sacred union" whose result would probably be at the very least the prompt expulsion of the white man from every foothold in eastern asia. that is what will probably come anyway as soon as japan and china, impelled by overcrowding and conscious of their united potentialities, shall have arrived at a genuine understanding. since population-pressure seems to be the basic factor in the future course of far eastern affairs, it would be well to survey possible outlets for surplus population within the far east itself, in order to determine how much of this race-expansion can be satisfied at home, thereby diminishing, or at least postponing, acute pressure upon the political and ethnic frontiers of the white world. to begin with, the population of japan (approximately , , ) is increasing at the rate of about , per year. china has no modern vital statistics, but the annual increase of her , , population, at the japanese rate, would be , , . now the settled parts of both japan and china may be considered as fully populated so far as agriculture is concerned, further extensive increases of population being dependent upon the rise of machine industry. both countries have, however, thinly settled areas within their present political frontiers. japan's northern island of hokkaido (yezo) has a great amount of good agricultural land as yet almost unoccupied, some of her other island possessions offer minor outlets, while korea and manchuria afford extensive colonizing possibilities albeit chinese and korean competition preclude a japanese colonization on the scale which the size and natural wealth of these regions would at first sight seem to indicate. china has even more extensive colonizable areas. both mongolia and chinese turkestan, though largely desert, contain within their vast areas enough fertile land to support many millions of chinese peasants as soon as modern roads and railways are built. the chinese colonization of manchuria is also proceeding apace, and will continue despite anything japan may do to keep it down. lastly, the cold but enormous plateau of tibet offers considerable possibilities. allowing for all this, however, it cannot be said that either china or japan possess within their present political frontiers territories likely to absorb those prodigious accretions of population which seem destined to occur within the next couple of generations. from the resultant congestion two avenues of escape will naturally present themselves: settlement of other portions of the far east to-day under white political control, but inhabited by colored populations; and pressure into accessible areas not merely under white political control, but also containing white populations. it is obvious that these are two radically distinct issues, for while a white nation might not unalterably oppose mongolian immigration into its colored dependencies, it would almost certainly fight to the limit rather than witness the racial swamping of lands settled by its own flesh and blood. considering the former issue, then, it would appear that virtually all the peninsulas and archipelagoes lying between china and australia offer attractive fields for yellow, particularly chinese, race-expansion. ethnically they are all colored men's lands; politically they are all, save siam, under white control; britain, france, holland, and the united states being the titular owners of these extensive territories. so far as the native races are concerned, none of them seem to possess the vitality and economic efficiency needed to maintain themselves against unrestricted chinese immigration. whether in the british straits settlements and north borneo, french indo-china, the dutch indies, the american philippines, or independent siam, the chinaman, so far as he has been allowed, has displayed his practical superiority, and in places where, like the straits settlements, he has been allowed a free hand, he has virtually supplanted the native stock, reducing the latter to an impotent and vanishing minority. the chief barriers to chinese race-expansion in these regions are legal hindrances or prohibitions of immigration, and of course such barriers are in their essence artificial and liable to removal under any shift of circumstances. many observers predict that most of these lands will ultimately become chinese. says alleyne ireland, a recognized authority on these regions: "there is every reason to suppose that, throughout the tropics, possibly excepting india, the chinaman, even though he should continue to emigrate in no greater force than hitherto, will gradually supersede all the native races."[ ] certainly, if this be true, china has here a vast outlet for her surplus population. it has been estimated that the undeveloped portions of the dutch indies alone are capable of supporting , , people living on the frugal chinese plane. their present population is , , semi-savages. china's possibilities of race-expansion in the colored regions of the far east are thus excellent. the same cannot be said, however, for japan. the japanese, bred in a distinctively temperate, island environment, have not the chinese adaptability to climatic variation. the japanese, like the white man, does not thrive in tropic heat, nor does he possess the white man's ability to resist sub-arctic cold. formosa is not in the real tropics, yet japanese colonists have not done well there. on the other hand, even the far-from-arctic winters of hokkaido (part of the japanese archipelago) seem too chilly for the japanese taste. japan thus does not have the same vital interest as china in the asiatic tropics. undoubtedly they would for japan be valuable colonies of exploitation, just as they to-day are thus valuable for white nations. but they could never furnish outlets for japan's excess population, and even commercially japan would be exposed to increasing chinese competition, since the chinaman excels the japanese in trade as well as in migrant colonization. japanese lack of climatic adaptability is also the reason why japan's present military excursion in eastern siberia, even if it should develop into permanent occupation, would yield no adequate solution of japan's population problem. for the chinaman, siberia would do very well. he would breed amazingly there and would fill up the whole country in a remarkably short space of time. but the japanese peasant, so averse to the winters of hokkaido, would find the sub-arctic rigors of siberia intolerable. thus, for japanese migration, neither the empty spaces of northern or southern asia will do. the natural outlets lie outside asia in the united states, australasia, and the temperate parts of latin america. but all these outlets are rigorously barred by the white man, who has marked them for his own race-heritage, and nothing but force will break those barriers down. there lies a danger, not merely to the peace of the far east, but to the peace of the world. fired by a fervent patriotism; resolved to make their country a leader among the nations; the japanese writhe at the constriction of their present race-bounds. placed on the flank of the chinese giant whose portentous growth she can accurately forecast, japan sees herself condemned to ultimate renunciation of her grandiose ambitions unless she can somehow broaden the racial as well as the political basis of her power. in short: japan must find lands where japanese can breed by the tens of millions if she is not to be automatically overshadowed in course of time, even assuming that she does not suffocate or blow up from congestion before that time arrives. this is the secret of her aggressive foreign policy, her chronic imperialism, her extravagant dreams of conquest and "world-dominion." the longing to hack a path to greatness by the samurai sword lurks ever in the back of japanese minds. the library of nippon's chauvinist literature is large and increasing. a good example of the earlier productions is satori kato's brochure entitled "mastery of the pacific," published in . herein the author announces confidently: "in the event of war japan could, as if aided by a magician's wand, overrun the pacific with fleets manned by men who have made nelson their model and transported to the armadas of the far east the spirit that was victorious at trafalgar. whether japan avows it or not, her persistent aim is to gain the mastery of the pacific. although peace seems to prevail over the world at present, no one can tell how soon the nations may be engaged in war. it does not need the english alliance to secure success for japan. that alliance may be dissolved at any moment, but japan will suffer no defeat. her victory will be won by her men, not by armor-plates--things weak by comparison."[ ] the late war has of course greatly stimulated these bellicose emotions. viewing their own increased power and the debilitation of the white world, japanese jingoes glimpse prospects of glorious fishing in troubled waters. the "world-dominion" note is stressed more often than of yore. for instance, in the summer of the tokio _hochi_, count okuma's organ, prophesied exultantly: "that age in which the anglo-japanese alliance was the pivot and american-japanese co-operation an essential factor of japanese diplomacy is gone. in future we must not look eastward for friendship but westward. let the bolsheviki of russia be put down and the more peaceful party established in power. in them japan will find a strong ally. by marching then westward to the balkans, to germany, to france, and italy, the greater part of the world may be brought under our sway. the tyranny of the anglo-saxons at the peace conference is such that it has angered both gods and men. some may abjectly follow them in consideration of their petty interests, but things will ultimately settle down as has just been indicated."[ ] still more striking are the following citations from a japanese imperialist pronouncement written in the autumn of : "fifty millions of our race wherewith to conquer and possess the earth! it is indeed a glorious problem!... to begin with, we now have china; china is our steed! far shall we ride upon her! even as rome rode latium to conquer italy, and italy to conquer the mediterranean; even as napoleon rode italy and the rhenish states to conquer germany, and germany to conquer europe; even as england to-day rides her colonies and her so-called 'allies' to conquer her robust rival, germany--even so shall we ride china. so becomes our , , race , , strong; so grow our paltry hundreds of millions of gold into billions! "how well have done our people! how well have our statesmen led them! no mistakes! there must be none now. in we conquered china--russia, germany, and france stole from us the booty. how has our strength grown since then--and still it grows! in ten years we punished and retook our own from russia; in twenty years we squared and retook from germany; with france there is no need for haste. she has already realized why we withheld the troops which alone might have driven the invader from her soil! her fingers are clutching more tightly around her oriental booty; yet she knows it is ours for the taking. but there is no need of haste: the world condemns the paltry thief; only the glorious conqueror wins the plaudits and approval of mankind. "we are now well astride of our steed, china; but the steed has long roamed wild and is run down: it needs grooming, more grain, more training. further, our saddle and bridle are as yet mere makeshifts: would steed and trappings stand the strain of war? and what would that strain be? "as for america--that fatuous booby with much money and much sentiment, but no cohesion, no brains of government; stood she alone we should not need our china steed. well did my friend speak the other day when he called her people a race of thieves with the hearts of rabbits. america, to any warrior race, is not as a foe, but as an immense melon, ripe for the cutting. but there are other warrior races--england, germany--would they look on and let us slice and eat our fill? would they? "but, using china as our steed, should our first goal be the land? india? or the pacific, the sea that must be our very own, even as the atlantic is now england's? the land is tempting and easy, but withal dangerous. did we begin there, the coarse white races would too soon awaken, and combine, and forever immure us within our long since grown intolerable bounds. it must, therefore, be the sea; but the sea means the western americas and all the islands between; and with those must soon come australia, india. and then the battling for the balance of world-power, for the rest of north america. once that is ours, we own and control the whole--a dominion worthy of our race! "north america alone will support a billion people; that billion shall be japanese with their slaves. not arid asia, nor worn-out europe (which, with its peculiar and quaint relics and customs should in the interests of history and culture, be in any case preserved), nor yet tropical africa, is fit for our people. but north america, that continent so succulently green, fresh, and unsullied--except for the few chattering, mongrel yankees--should have been ours by right of discovery: it shall be ours by the higher, nobler right of conquest."[ ] this apostle of japanese world-dominion then goes on to discuss in detail how his programme can best be attained. it should be remembered that at the time he wrote america was still an unarmed nation, apparently ridden by pacifism. such imperialist extravagances as the above do not represent the whole of japan. but they do represent a powerful element in japan, against which the white world should be forewarned. chapter iii brown man's land brown man's land is the near and middle east. the brown world stretches in an immense belt clear across southern asia and northern africa, from the pacific to the atlantic oceans. the numbers of brown and yellow men are not markedly unequal ( , , browns as against , , yellows), but in most other respects the two worlds are sharply contrasted. in the first place, while the yellow world is a fairly compact geographical block, the brown world sprawls half-way round the globe, and is not only much greater in size, but also infinitely more varied in natural features. this geographical diversity is reflected both in its history and in the character of its inhabitants. unlike the secluded yellow world, the brown world is nearly everywhere exposed to foreign influences and has undergone an infinite series of evolutionary modifications. racially it has been a vast melting-pot, or series of melting-pots, wherein conquest and migration have continually poured new heterogeneous elements, producing the most diverse racial amalgamations. in fact, there is to-day no generalized brown type-norm as there are generalized yellow or white type-norms, but rather a series of types clearly distinguished from one another. some of these types, like the persians and ottoman turks, are largely white; others, like the southern indians and yemenite arabs, are largely black; while still others, like the himalayan and central asian peoples, have much yellow blood. again, there is no generalized brown culture like those possessed by yellows and whites. the great spiritual bond is islam, yet in india, the chief seat of brown population, islam is professed by only one-fifth of the inhabitants. nevertheless, there is a fundamental comity between the brown peoples. this comity is subtle and intangible in character, yet it exists, and under certain circumstances it is capable of momentous manifestations. its salient feature is the instinctive recognition by all near and middle eastern peoples that they are fellow asiatics, however bitter may be their internecine feuds. this instinctive asiatic feeling has been noted by historians for more than two thousand years, and it is just as true to-day as in the past. of course it comes out most strongly in face of the non-asiatic--which in practice has always meant the white man. the action and reaction of the brown and white worlds has, indeed, been a constant historic factor, the rôles of hammer and anvil being continually reversed through the ages. for the last four centuries the white world has, in the main, been the dynamic factor. certainly, during the last hundred years the white world has displayed an unprecedentedly aggressive vigor, the brown world playing an almost passive rôle. here again is seen a difference between browns and yellows. the yellow world did not feel the full tide of white aggression till the middle of the last century, while even then it never really lost its political independence and soon reacted so powerfully that its political freedom has to-day been substantially regained. the brown world, on the other hand, felt the impact of the white tide much earlier and was politically overwhelmed. the so-called "independence" of brown states has long been due more to white rivalries than to their own inherent strength. one by one they have been swallowed up by the white powers. in only three (turkey, persia, and afghanistan) survived, and the late war has sent them the way of the rest. turkey and persia have lost their independence, however they may still be painted on the map, while afghanistan has been compelled to recognize white supremacy as never before. thus the cycle is fulfilled, and white political mastery over the brown world is complete. political triumphs, however, of themselves guarantee nothing, and the permanence of the present order of things in the brown world appears more than doubtful when we glance beyond the map. the brown world, like the yellow world, is to-day in acute reaction against white supremacy. in fact, the brown reaction began a full century ago, and has been gathering headway ever since, moved thereto both by its own inherent vitality and by the external stimulus of white aggression. the great dynamic of this brown reaction is the mohammedan revival. but before analyzing that movement it would be well to glance at the human elements involved. four salient groupings stand out among the brown peoples: india, irán, "arabistán," and "turkestán." the last two words are used in a special sense to denote ethnic and cultural aggregations for which no precise terms have hitherto been coined. india is the population-centre of the brown world. more than , , souls live within its borders--two-thirds of all the brown men on earth. india has not, however, been the brown world's spiritual or cultural dynamic, those forces coming chiefly from the brown lands to the westward. irán (the persian plateau) is comparatively small in area and has less than , , inhabitants, but its influence upon the brown world has been out of all proportion to its size and population. "arabistán" denotes the group of peoples, arab in blood or arabized in language and culture, who inhabit the arabian peninsula and its adjacent annexes, syria and mesopotamia, together with the vast band of north africa lying between the mediterranean and the sahara desert. the total number of these arabic peoples is , , , three-fourths of them living in north africa. the term "turkestán" covers the group of kindred peoples, often called "turanians," who stretch from constantinople to central asia, including the ottoman turks of asia minor, the tartars of south russia and transcaucasia, and the central asian turkomans. they number in all about , , . such are the four outstanding race-factors in the brown world. let us now examine that spiritual factor, islam, from which the brown renaissance originally proceeded, and on which most of its present manifestations are based. islam's warlike vigor has impressed men's minds ever since the far-off days when its pristine fervor bore the fiery crescent from france to china. but with the passing cycles this fervor waned, and a century ago islam seemed plunged in the stupor of senile decay. the life appeared to have gone out of it, leaving naught but the dry husks of empty formalism and soulless ritual. yet at this darkest hour a voice came crying from out the vast arabian desert, the cradle of islam, calling the faithful to better things. this puritan reformer was the famous abd-el-wahab, and his followers, known as wahabees, soon spread over the length and breadth of the mohammedan world, purging islam of its sloth and rekindling the fervor of olden days. thus began the great mohammedan revival. that revival, like all truly regenerative movements, had its political as well as its spiritual side. one of the first things which struck the reformers was the political weakness of the moslem world and its increasing subjection to the christian west. it was during the early decades of the nineteenth century that the revival spread through islam. but this was the very time when europe, recovering from the losses of the napoleonic wars, began its unparalleled aggressions upon the moslem east. the result in islam was a fusing of religion and patriotism into a "sacred union" for the combined spiritual regeneration and political emancipation of the moslem world. of course europe's material and military superiority were then so great that speedy success was recognized to be a vain hope. nevertheless, with true oriental patience, the reformers were content to work for distant goals, and the results of their labors, though hidden from most europeans, was soon discernible to a few keen-sighted white observers. half a century ago the learned orientalist palgrave wrote these prophetic lines: "islam is even now an enormous power, full of self-sustaining vitality, with a surplus for aggression; and a struggle with its combined energies would be deadly indeed.... the mohammedan peoples of the east have awakened to the manifold strength and skill of their western christian rivals; and this awakening, at first productive of respect and fear, not unmixed with admiration, now wears the type of antagonistic dislike, and even of intelligent hate. no more zealous moslems are to be found in all the ranks of islam than they who have sojourned longest in europe and acquired the most intimate knowledge of its sciences and ways.... mohammedans are keenly alive to the ever-shifting uncertainties and divisions that distract the christianity of to-day, and to the woful instability of modern european institutions. from their own point of view, moslems are as men standing on a secure rock, and they contrast the quiet fixity of their own position with the unsettled and insecure restlessness of all else."[ ] this stability to which palgrave alludes must not be confused with dead rigidity. too many of us still think of the moslem east as hopelessly petrified. but those westerners best acquainted with the islamic world assert that nothing could be farther from the truth; emphasizing, on the contrary, islam's present plasticity and rapid assimilation of western ideas and methods. "the alleged rigidity of islam is a european myth,"[ ] says theodore morison, late principal of the mohammedan anglo-oriental college at aligarh, india; and another orientalist, marmaduke pickthall, writes: "there is nothing in islam, any more than in christianity, which should halt progress. the fact is that christianity found, some time ago, a _modus vivendi_ with modern life, while islam has not yet arrived thither. but this process is even now being worked out."[ ] the way in which the mohammedan world has availed itself of white institutions such as the newspaper in forging its new solidarity is well portrayed by bernard temple. "it all comes to this, then," he writes. "world-politics, as viewed by mohammedanism's political leaders, resolve themselves into a struggle--not necessarily a bloody struggle, but still an intense and vital struggle--for place and power between the three great divisions of mankind. the moslem mind is deeply stirred by the prospect. every moslem country is in communication with every other moslem country: directly, by means of special emissaries, pilgrims, travellers, traders, and postal exchanges; indirectly, by means of mohammedan newspapers, books, pamphlets, leaflets, and periodicals. i have met with cairo newspapers in bagdad, teheran, and peshawar; constantinople newspapers in basra and bombay; calcutta newspapers in mohammerah, kerbela, and port said."[ ] these european judgments are confirmed by what asiatics say themselves. for example, a syrian christian, ameen rihani, thus characterizes the present strength and vitality of the moslem world: "a nation of , , souls, more than one-half under christian rule, struggling to shake off its fetters; to consolidate its opposing forces; replenishing itself in the south and in the east from the inexhaustible sources of the life primitive; assimilating in the north, but not without discrimination, the civilization of europe; a nation with a glorious past, a living faith and language, an inspired book, an undying hope, might be divided against itself by european diplomacy but can never be subjugated by european arms.... what islam is losing on the borders of europe it is gaining in africa and central asia through its modern propaganda, which is conducted according to christian methods. and this is one of the grand results of 'civilization by benevolent assimilation.' europe drills the moslem to be a soldier who will ultimately turn his weapons against her; and she sends her missionaries to awaken in the ulema the proselytizing evil."[ ] typical of mohammedan literature on this subject are the following excerpts from a book published at cairo in by an egyptian, yahya siddyk, significantly entitled "the awakening of the islamic peoples in the fourteenth century of the hegira."[ ] the book is doubly interesting because the author has a thorough western education, holding a law degree from the french university of toulouse, and is a judge on the egyptian bench. although writing as far back as , yahya siddyk clearly foresaw the imminence of the european war. "behold," he writes, "these great powers ruining themselves in terrifying armaments; measuring each other's strength with defiant glances; menacing each other; contracting alliances which continually break and which presage those terrible shocks which overturn the world and cover it with ruins, fire, and blood! the future is god's, and nothing is lasting save his will!" he considers the white world degenerate. "does this mean," he asks, "that europe, our 'enlightened guide,' has already reached the summit of its evolution? has it already exhausted its vital force by two or three centuries of hyper-exertion? in other words: is it already stricken with senility, and will it see itself soon obliged to yield its civilizing rôle to other peoples less degenerate, less neurasthenic; that is to say, younger, more robust, more healthy, than itself? in my opinion, the present marks europe's apogee, and its immoderate colonial expansion means, not strength, but weakness. despite the aureole of so much grandeur, power, and glory, europe is to-day more divided and more fragile than ever, and ill conceals its malaise, its sufferings, and its anguish. its destiny is inexorably working out!... "the contact of europe on the east has caused us both much good and much evil: good, in the material and intellectual sense; evil, from the moral and political point of view. exhausted by long struggles, enervated by a brilliant civilization, the moslem peoples inevitably fell into a malaise, but they are not stricken, they are not dead! these peoples, conquered by the force of cannon, have not in the least lost their unity, even under the oppressive régimes to which the europeans have long subjected them.... i have said that the european contact has been salutary to us from both the material and the intellectual point of view. what reforming moslem princes wished to impose by force on their moslem subjects is to-day realized a hundredfold. so great has been our progress in the last twenty-five years in science, letters, and art that we may well hope to be in all these things the equals of europeans in less than half a century.... "a new era opens for us with the fourteenth century of the hegira, and this happy century will mark our renaissance and our great future! a new breath animates the mohammedan peoples of all races; all moslems are penetrated with the necessity of work and instruction! we all wish to travel, do business, tempt fortune, brave dangers. there is in the east, among the mohammedans, a surprising activity, an animation, unknown twenty-five years ago.... there is to-day a real public opinion throughout the east." the author concludes: "let us hold firm, each for all, and let us hope, hope, hope! we are fairly launched on the path of progress: let us profit by it! it is europe's very tyranny which has wrought our transformation! it is our continued contact with europe which favors our evolution and inevitably hastens our revival! it is simply history repeating itself; the will of god fulfilling itself despite all opposition and all resistance.... europe's tutelage over asiatics is becoming more and more nominal--the gates of asia are closing against the european! surely we glimpse before us a revolution without parallel in the world's annals. a new age is at hand!"[ ] if this be indeed the present spirit of islam it is a portentous fact, for its numerical strength is very great. the total number of mohammedans is estimated at from , , to , , , and they not only predominate throughout the brown world with the exception of india, but they also count , , adherents in china and are gaining prodigiously among the blacks of africa. the proselyting power of islam is extraordinary, and its hold upon its votaries is even more remarkable. throughout history there has been no single instance where a people, once become moslem, has ever abandoned the faith. extirpated they may have been, like the moors of spain, but extirpation is not apostasy. this extreme tenacity of islam, this ability to keep its hold, once it has got a footing, under all circumstances short of downright extirpation, must be borne in mind when considering the future of regions where islam is to-day advancing. and, save in eastern europe, it is to-day advancing along all its far-flung frontiers. its most signal victories are being won among the negro races of central africa, and this phase will be discussed in the next chapter, but elsewhere the same conditions, in lesser degree, prevail. every moslem is a born missionary and instinctively propagates his faith among his non-moslem neighbors. the quality of this missionary temper has been well analyzed by meredith townsend. "all the emotions which impel a christian to proselytize," he writes, "are in a mussulman strengthened by all the motives which impel a political leader and all the motives which sway a recruiting sergeant, until proselytism has become a passion, which, whenever success seems practicable, and especially success on a large scale, develops in the quietest mussulman a fury of ardor which induces him to break down every obstacle, his own strongest prejudices included, rather than stand for an instant in the neophyte's way. he welcomes him as a son, and whatever his own lineage, and whether the convert be negro, or chinaman, or indian, or even european, he will without hesitation or scruple give him his own child in marriage, and admit him fully, frankly, and finally into the most exclusive circle in the world."[ ] such is the vast and growing body of islam, to-day seeking to weld its forces into a higher unity for the combined objectives of spiritual revival and political emancipation. this unitary movement is known as "pan-islamism." most western observers seem to think that pan-islamism centres in the "caliphate," and european writers to-day hopefully discuss whether the caliphate's retention by the discredited turkish sultans, its transferrence to the rulers of the new arab hedjaz kingdom, or its total suppression, will best clip islam's wings. this, however, is a very short-sighted and partial view. the khalifa or "caliph" (to use the europeanized form), the prophet's representative on earth, has played an important historic rôle, and the institution is still venerated in islam. but the pan-islamic leaders have long been working on a much broader basis. pan-islamism's real driving power lies, not in the caliphate, but in institutions like the "hajj" or pilgrimage to mecca, the propaganda of the "habl-ul-matin" or "tie of true believers," and the great religious fraternities. the meccan hajj, where tens of thousands of picked zealots gather every year from every quarter of the moslem world, is really an annual pan-islamic congress, where all the interests of the faith are discussed at length, and where plans are elaborated for its defense and propagation. similarly ubiquitous is the pan-islamic propaganda of the habl-ul-matin, which works tirelessly to compose sectarian differences and traditional feuds. lastly, the religious brotherhoods cover the islamic world with a network of far-flung associations, quickening the zeal of their myriad members and co-ordinating their energies for potential action. the greatest of these brotherhoods (though there are others of importance) is the famous senussiyah, and its history well illustrates islam's evolution during the past hundred years. its founder, seyyid mahommed ben senussi, was born in algeria about the beginning of the nineteenth century. he was of high arab lineage, tracing his descent from fatima, the daughter of the prophet. in early youth he went to arabia and there came under the influence of the wahabee movement. in middle life he returned to africa, settling in the sahara desert, and there built up the fraternity which bears his name. before his death the order had spread to all parts of the mohammedan world, but it is in northern africa that it has attained its peculiar pre-eminence. the senussi order is divided into local "zawias" or lodges, all absolutely dependent upon the grand lodge, headed by the master, el senussi. the grand mastership still remains in the family, a grandson of the founder being the order's present head. the senussi stronghold is an oasis in the very heart of the sahara. only one european eye has ever seen this mysterious spot. surrounded by absolute desert, with wells many leagues apart and the routes of approach known only to experienced senussi guides, every one of whom would suffer a thousand deaths rather than betray him, el senussi, the master, sits serenely apart, sending his orders throughout north africa. the sahara itself is absolutely under senussi control, while "zawias" abound in distant regions like morocco, lake chad, and somaliland. these local zawias are more than mere "lodges." their spiritual and secular heads, the "mokaddem" or priest and the "wekil" or civil governor, have discretionary authority not merely over the zawia members, but also over the community at large--at least, so great is the awe inspired by the senussi throughout north africa that a word from wekil or mokaddem is always listened to and obeyed. thus, beside the various european authorities, british, french, or italian as the case may be, there exists an occult government with which the colonial authorities are careful not to come into conflict. on their part, the senussi are equally careful to avoid a downright breach with the european powers. their long-headed, cautious policy is truly astonishing. for more than half a century the order has been a great force, yet it has never risked the supreme adventure. in all the numerous fanatic risings against europeans which have occurred in various parts of africa, local senussi have undoubtedly taken part, but the order has never officially entered the lists. these fabian tactics as regards open warfare do not mean that the senussi are idle. far from it. on the contrary, they are ceaselessly at work with the spiritual arms of teaching, discipline, and conversion. the senussi programme is the welding, first of moslem africa, and later of the whole moslem world, into the revived "imamat" of islam's early days; into a great theocracy, embracing all true believers--in other words, pan-islamism. but they believe that the political liberation of islam from christian domination must be preceded by a profound spiritual regeneration, thereby engendering the moral forces necessary both for the war of liberation and for the fruitful reconstruction which should follow thereafter. this is the secret of the order's extraordinary self-restraint. this is the reason why, year after year, and decade after decade, the senussi advance slowly, calmly, coldly, gathering great latent power but avoiding the temptation to expend it one instant before the proper time. meanwhile they are covering africa with their lodges and schools, disciplining the people to the voice of their mokaddems and wekils--and converting millions of pagan negroes to the faith of islam. and what is true of the senussi holds equally for the other wise leaders who guide the pan-islamic movement. they know both europe's strength and their own weakness. they know the peril of premature action. feeling that time is on their side, they are content to await the hour when internal regeneration and external pressure shall have filled to overflowing the cup of wrath. this is why islam has offered only local resistance to the unparalleled white aggressions of the last twenty years. this is the main reason why there was no real "holy war" in . but the materials for a holy war have long been piling high, as a retrospective glance will show. europe's conquests of africa and central asia toward the close of the last century, and the subsequent anglo-french agreement mutually appropriating egypt and morocco, evoked murmurs of impotent fury from the moslem world. under such circumstances the russo-japanese war of sent a feverish tremor throughout islam. the japanese might be idolaters, but the traditional moslem loathing of idolaters as beings much lower than christians and jews (recognized by mohammed as "peoples of the book") was quite effaced by the burning sense of subjugation to the christian yoke. accordingly, the japanese were hailed as heroes throughout islam. here we see again that tendency toward an understanding between asiatic and african races and creeds (in other words, a "pan-colored" alliance against white domination) which has been so patent in recent years. the way in which islamic peoples began looking to japan is revealed by this editorial in a persian newspaper, written in the year : "desirous of becoming as powerful as japan and of safeguarding its national independence, persia should make common cause with it. an alliance becomes necessary. there should be a japanese ambassador at teheran. japanese instructors should be chosen to reorganize the army. commercial relations should also be developed."[ ] indeed, some pious moslems hoped to bring this heroic people within the islamic fold. shortly after the russo-japanese war a chinese mohammedan sheikh wrote: "if japan thinks of becoming some day a very great power and making asia the dominator of the other continents, it will be only by adopting the blessed religion of islam."[ ] and _al mowwayad_, an egyptian nationalist journal, remarked: "england, with her , , indian moslems, dreads this conversion. with a mohammedan japan, mussulman policy would change entirely."[ ] as a matter of fact, mohammedan missionaries actually went to japan, where they were smilingly received. of course the japanese had not the faintest intention of turning moslems, but these spontaneous approaches from the brown world were quite in line with their ambitious plans, which, as the reader will remember, were just then taking concrete shape. however, it soon became plain that japan had no present intention of going so far afield as western asia, and islam presently had to mourn fresh losses at christian hands. in came italy's barefaced raid on turkey's african dependency of tripoli. so bitter was the anger in all mohammedan lands at this unprovoked aggression that many european observers became seriously alarmed. "why has italy found 'defenseless' tripoli such a hornet's nest?" queried gabriel hanotaux, a former french minister of foreign affairs. "it is because she has to do, not merely with turkey, but with islam as well. italy has set the ball rolling--so much the worse for her--and for us all."[ ] but the tripoli expedition was only the beginning of the christian assault, for next year came the balkan war, which sheared away turkey's european holdings to the walls of constantinople and left her crippled and discredited. at these disasters a cry of wrathful anguish swept the world of islam from end to end. here is how a leading indian moslem interpreted the balkan conflict: "the king of greece orders a new crusade. from the london chancelleries rise calls to christian fanaticism, and saint petersburg already speaks of the planting of the cross on the dome of sant' sophia. to-day they speak thus; to-morrow they will thus speak of jerusalem and the mosque of omar. brothers! be ye of one mind, that it is the duty of every true believer to hasten beneath the khalifa's banner and to sacrifice his life for the safety of the faith."[ ] and another indian moslem leader thus adjured the british authorities: "i appeal to the present government to change its anti-turkish attitude before the fury of millions of moslem fellow subjects is kindled to a blaze and brings disaster."[ ] still more significant were the appeals made by the indian moslems to their brahman fellow countrymen, the traditionally despised "idolaters." these appeals betokened a veritable revolution in outlook, as can be gauged from the text of one of them, significantly entitled "the message of the east." "spirit of the east," reads this noteworthy document, "arise and repel the swelling flood of western aggression! children of hindustan, aid us with your wisdom, culture, and wealth; lend us your power, the birthright and heritage of the hindu! let the spirit powers hidden in the himalayan mountain-peaks arise. let prayers to the god of battles float upward; prayers that right may triumph over might; and call to your myriad gods to annihilate the armies of the foe!"[ ] in china also the same fraternizing spirit was visible. during the republican revolution the chinese mohammedans, instead of holding jealously aloof, co-operated whole-heartedly with their buddhist and confucian fellow citizens, and doctor sun-yat-sen, the republican leader, announced gratefully: "the chinese will never forget the assistance which their moslem compatriots have rendered in the interest of order and liberty."[ ] the great war thus found islam deeply stirred against european aggression, keenly conscious of its own solidarity, and frankly reaching out for colored allies in the projected struggle against white domination. under these circumstances it may at first sight appear strange that no general islamic explosion occurred when turkey entered the lists at the close of and the sultan-khalifa issued a formal summons to the holy war. of course this summons was not the flat failure which allied reports led the west to believe at the time. as a matter of fact there was trouble in practically every mohammedan land under allied control. to name only a few of many instances: egypt broke into a tumult smothered only by overwhelming british reinforcements, tripoli burst into a flame of insurrection that drove the italians headlong to the coast, persia was prevented from joining turkey only by prompt russian intervention, and the indian northwest frontier was the scene of fighting that required the presence of a quarter of a million anglo-indian troops. the british government has officially admitted that during the allies' asiatic and african possessions stood within a hand's breadth of a cataclysmic insurrection. that insurrection would certainly have taken place if islam's leaders had everywhere spoken the fateful word. but the word was not spoken. instead, influential moslems outside of turkey generally condemned the latter's action and did all in their power to calm the passions of the fanatic multitude. the attitude of these leaders does credit to their discernment. they recognized that this was neither the time nor the occasion for a decisive struggle with the west. they were not yet materially prepared, and they had not perfected their understandings either among themselves or with their prospective non-moslem allies. above all, the moral urge was lacking. they knew that athwart the khalifa's writ was stencilled "made in germany." they knew that the "young turk" clique which had engineered the coup was made up of europeanized renegades, many of them not even nominal moslems, but atheistic jews. far-sighted moslems had no intention of pulling germany's chestnuts out of the fire, nor did they wish to further prussian schemes of world-dominion which for themselves would have meant a mere change of masters. far better to let the white world fight out its desperate feud, weaken itself, and reveal fully its future intentions. meanwhile islam could bide its time, grow in strength, and await the morrow. the versailles peace conference was just such a revelation of european intentions as the pan-islamic leaders had been awaiting in order to perfect their programmes and enlist the moral solidarity of their peoples. at versailles the european powers showed unequivocally that they had no intention of relaxing their hold upon the near and middle east. by a number of secret treaties negotiated during the war the ottoman empire had been virtually partitioned between the victorious allies, and these secret treaties formed the basis of the versailles settlement. furthermore, egypt had been declared a british protectorate at the very beginning of the european struggle, while the versailles conference had scarcely adjourned before england announced an "agreement" with persia which made that country another british protectorate, in fact, if not in name. the upshot was, as already stated, that the near and middle east were subjected to european political domination as never before. but there was another side to the shield. during the war years the allied statesmen had officially proclaimed times without number that the war was being fought to establish a new world-order based on such principles as the rights of small nations and the liberty of all peoples. these pronouncements had been treasured and memorized throughout the east. when, therefore, the east saw a peace settlement based, not upon these high professions, but upon the imperialistic secret treaties, it was fired with a moral indignation and sense of outraged justice never known before. a tide of impassioned determination began rising which has already set the entire east in tumultuous ferment, and which seems merely the premonitory ground-swell of a greater storm. many european students of eastern affairs are gravely alarmed at the prospect. here, for example, is the judgment of leone caetani, duke of sermoneta, an italian authority on oriental and mohammedan questions. speaking in the spring of on the war's effect on the east, he said: "the convulsion has shaken islamitic and oriental civilization to its foundations. the entire oriental world, from china to the mediterranean, is in ferment. everywhere the hidden fire of anti-european hatred is burning. riots in morocco, risings in algiers, discontent in tripoli, so-called nationalist attempts in egypt, arabia, and lybia, are all different manifestations of the same deep sentiment, and have as their object the rebellion of the oriental world against european civilization."[ ] the state of affairs in egypt is a typical illustration of what has been going on in the east ever since the close of the late war. egypt was occupied by england in , and british rule has conferred immense material benefits, raising the country from anarchic bankruptcy to ordered prosperity. yet british rule was never really popular, and as the years passed a "nationalist" movement steadily grew in strength, having for its slogan the phrase "egypt for the egyptians," and demanding britain's complete evacuation of the country. this demand great britain refused even to consider. practically all englishmen are agreed that egypt with the suez canal is the vital link between the eastern and western halves of the british empire, and they therefore consider the permanent occupation of egypt an absolute necessity. there is thus a clear deadlock between british imperial and egyptian national convictions. some years before the war egypt became so unruly that england was obliged to abandon all thoughts of conciliation and initiated a régime of frank repression enforced by lord kitchener's heavy hand. the european war and turkey's adhesion to the teutonic powers caused fresh outbreaks in egypt, but these were quickly repressed and england took advantage of ottoman belligerency to abolish the fiction of turkish overlordship and declare egypt a protectorate of the british empire. during the war egypt, flooded with british troops, remained quiet, but the end of the war gave the signal for an unparalleled outburst of nationalist activity. basing their claims on such doctrines as the "rights of small nations" and the "self-determination of peoples," the nationalists demanded immediate independence and attempted to get egypt's case before the versailles peace conference. in defiance of english prohibitions, they even held a popular plebiscite which upheld their claims. when the british authorities answered this defiance by arresting nationalist leaders, egypt flamed into rebellion from end to end. everywhere it was the same story. railways and telegraph lines were systematically cut. trains were stalled and looted. isolated british officers and soldiers were murdered. in cairo alone, thousands of houses were sacked by the mob. soon the danger was rendered more acute by the irruption out of the desert of swarms of bedouin arabs bent on plunder. for a few days egypt trembled on the verge of anarchy, and the british government admitted in parliament that all egypt was in a state of insurrection. the british authorities, however, met the crisis with vigor and determination. the number of british troops in egypt was very large, trusty black regiments were hurried up from the sudan, and the well-disciplined egyptian native police generally obeyed orders. the result was that after several weeks of sharp fighting, lasting through the spring of , egypt was again gotten under control. the outlook for the future is, however, ominous in the extreme. order is indeed restored, but only the presence of massed british and sudanese black troops guarantees that order will be maintained. even under the present régime of stern martial law hardly a month passes without fresh rioting and heavy loss of life. egypt appears nationalist to the core, its spokesmen swear they will accept nothing short of independence, and in the long run britain will realize the truth of that pithy saying: "you can do everything with bayonets except sit on them." india is likewise in a state of profound unrest. the vast peninsula has been controlled by england for almost two centuries, yet here again the last two decades have witnessed a rapidly increasing movement against british rule. this movement was at first confined to the upper-class hindus, the great mohammedan element preserving its traditional loyalty to the british "raj," which it considered a protection against the brahmanistic hindu majority. but, as already seen, the pan-islamic leaven presently reached the indian moslems, european aggressions on islam stirred their resentment, and at length moslem and hindu adjourned their ancient feud in their new solidarity against european tutelage. the great war provoked relatively little sedition in india. groups of hindu extremists, to be sure, hatched terroristic plots and welcomed german aid, but india as a whole backed england and helped win the war with both money and men. at the same time, indians gave notice that they expected their loyalty to be rewarded, and at the close of the war various memorials were drawn up calling for drastic modifications of the existing governmental régime. india is to-day governed by an english civil service whose fairness, honesty, and general efficiency no informed person can seriously impugn. but this no longer contents indian aspirations. india desires not merely good government but self-government. the ultimate goal of all indian reformers is emancipation from european tutelage, though they differ among themselves as to how and when this emancipation is to be attained. the most conservative would be content with self-government under british guidance, the middle group asks for the full status of a dominion of the british empire like canada and australia, while the radicals demand complete independence. even the most conservative of these demands would, however, involve great changes of system and a diminution of british control. such demands arouse in england mistrust and apprehension. englishmen point out that india is not a nation but a congeries of diverse peoples spiritually sundered by barriers of blood, language, culture, and religion, and they conclude that, if england's control were really relaxed, india would get out of hand and drift toward anarchy. as for indian independence, the average englishman cannot abide the thought, holding it fatal both for the british empire and for india itself. the result has been that england has failed to meet indian demands, and this, in turn, has roused an acute recrudescence of dissatisfaction and unrest. the british government has countered with coercive legislation like the rowlatt acts and has sternly repressed rioting and terrorism. british authority is still supreme in india. but it is an authority resting more and more upon force. in fact, some englishmen have long considered british rule in india, despite its imposing appearance, a decidedly fragile affair. many years ago meredith townsend, who certainly knew india well, wrote: "the english think they will rule india for many centuries or forever. i do not think so, holding rather the older belief that the empire which came in a day will disappear in a night.... above all this inconceivable mass of humanity, governing all, protecting all, taxing all, rises what we call here 'the empire,' a corporation of less than , men, partly chosen by examination, partly by co-optation, who are set to govern, and who protect themselves in governing by finding pay for a minute white garrison of , men, one-fifth of the roman legions--though the masses to be controlled are double the subjects of rome. that corporation and that garrison constitute the 'indian empire.' there is nothing else. banish those , men in black, defeat that slender garrison in red, and the empire has ended, the structure disappears, and brown india emerges, unchanged and unchangeable. to support the official world and its garrison--both, recollect, smaller than those of belgium--there is, except indian opinion, absolutely nothing. not only is there no white race in india, not only is there no white colony, but there is no white man who purposes to remain.... there are no white servants, not even grooms, no white policemen, no white postmen, no white anything. if the brown men struck for a week, the 'empire' would collapse like a house of cards, and every ruling man would be a starving prisoner in his own house. he could not move or feed himself or get water."[ ] these words aptly illustrate the truth stated at the beginning of this book that the basic factor in human affairs is not politics but race, and that the most imposing political phenomena, of themselves, mean nothing. and that is just the fatal weakness underlying the white man's present political domination over the brown world. throughout that entire world there is no settled white population save in the french colonies of algeria and tunis along the mediterranean seaboard, where whites form perhaps one-sixth of the total. elsewhere, from morocco to the dutch indies, there is in the racial sense, as townsend well says, "no white anything," and if white rule vanished to-morrow it would not leave a human trace behind. white rule is therefore purely political, based on prescription, prestige, and lack of effective opposition. these are indeed fragile foundations. let the brown world once make up its mind that the white man _must_ go, and he _will_ go, for his position will have become simply impossible. it is not solely a question of a "holy war"; mere passive resistance, if genuine and general, would shake white rule to its foundations. and it is precisely the determination to get rid of white rule which seems to be spreading like wild-fire over the brown world to-day. the unrest which i have described in egypt and india merely typify what is going on in morocco, central asia, the dutch indies, the philippines, and every other portion of the brown world whose inhabitants are above the grade of savages. another factor favoring the prospects of brown emancipation is the lack of sustained resistance which the white world would probably offer. for the white world's interests in these regions, though great, are not fundamental; that is to say, racial. however grievously they might suffer politically and economically, racially the white peoples would lose almost nothing. here again we see the basic importance of race in human affairs. contrast, for example, england's attitude toward an insurgent india with france's attitude toward an insurgent north africa. england, with nothing racial at stake, would hesitate before a reconquest of india involving millions of soldiers and billions of treasure. france, on the other hand, with nearly a million europeans in her north african possessions, half of these full-blooded frenchmen, might risk her last franc and her last _poilu_ rather than see these blood-brothers slaughtered and enslaved. assuming, then, what to-day seems probable, that white political control over the brown world is destined to be sensibly curtailed if not generally eliminated, what are the larger racial implications? above all: will the browns tend to impinge on white race-areas as the yellows show signs of doing? probably, no; at least, not to any great extent. in the first place, the brown world has within its present confines plenty of room for potential race-expansion. outside india, egypt, java, and a few lesser spots, there is scarcely a brown land where natural improvements such as irrigation would not open up extensive settlement areas. mesopotamia alone, now almost uninhabited, might support a vast population, while persia could nourish several times its present inhabitants. india, to be sure, is almost as congested as china, and the spectre of the indian coolie has lately alarmed white lands like canada and south africa almost as much as the chinese coolie has done. but an independent india would fall under the same political blight as the rest of the brown world--the blight of internecine dissensions and wars. the brown world's present growing solidarity is not a positive but a negative phenomenon. it is an alliance, against a common foe, of traditional enemies who, once the bond was loosed in victory, would inevitably quarrel among themselves. turk would fly at arab and turkoman at persian, as of yore, while india would become a welter of contending hindus, moslems, sikhs, gurkhas, and heaven knows what, until perchance disciplined anew by the pressure of a yellow peril. in western asia it is possible that the spiritual and cultural bonds of islam might temper these struggles, but western asia is precisely that part of the brown world where population-pressure is absent. india, the overpeopled brown land, would undergo such a cycle of strife as would devour its human surplus and render distant aggressions impossible. a potential brown menace to white race-areas would, indeed, arise in case of a brown-yellow alliance against the white peoples. but such an alliance could occur only in the first stages of a pan-colored war of liberation while the pressure of white world-predominance was still keenly felt and before the divisive tendencies within the brown world had begun to take effect. short of such an alliance (wherein the browns would abet the yellows' aggressive, racial objectives in return for yellow support of their own essentially defensive, political ends), the brown world's emancipation from white domination would apparently not result in more than local pressures on white race-areas. it would, however, affect another sphere of white political control--black africa. the emancipation of brown, islamic north africa would inevitably send a sympathetic thrill through every portion of the dark continent and would stir both mohammedan and pagan negroes against white rule. islam is, in fact, the intimate link between the brown and black worlds. but this subject, with its momentous implications, will be discussed in the next chapter. chapter iv black man's land black man's land is primarily africa south of the sahara desert. here dwell the bulk of all the , , black men on earth. the negro and negroid population of africa is estimated at about , , --four-fifths of the black race-total. besides its african nucleus the black race has two distant outposts: the one in australasia, the other in the americas. the eastern blacks are found mainly in the archipelagoes lying between the asiatic land-mass and australia. they are the oriental survivors of the black belt which in very ancient times stretched uninterruptedly from africa across southern asia to the pacific ocean. the asiatic blacks were overwhelmed by other races ages ago, and only a few wild tribes like the "negritos" of the philippines and the jungle-dwellers of indo-china and southern india survive as genuine negroid stocks. all the peoples of southern asia, however, are darkened by this ancient negroid strain. the peoples of south india are notably tinged with black blood. as for the pure blacks of the australasian archipelagoes, they are so few in numbers (about , , ) and so low in type that they are of negligible importance. quite otherwise are the blacks of the far west. in the western hemisphere there are some , , persons of more or less mixed black blood, brought thither in modern times as slaves by the white conquerors of the new world. still, whatever may be the destiny of these transplanted black folk, the black man's chief significance, from the world aspect, must remain bound up with the great nucleus of negro population in the african homeland. black africa, as i have said, lies south of the sahara desert. here the negro has dwelt for unnumbered ages. the key-note of black history, like yellow history, has been isolation. cut off from the mediterranean by the desert which he had no means of crossing, and bounded elsewhere by oceans which he had no skill in navigating, the black man vegetated in savage obscurity, his habitat being well named the "dark continent." until the white tide began breaking on its sea-fronts four centuries ago, the black world's only external stimuli had come from brown men landing on its eastern coasts or ascending the valley of the nile. as time passed, both brown and white pressures became more intense, albeit the browns long led in the process of penetration. advancing from the east and trickling across the desert from the north, arab or arabized adventurers conquered black africa to the equator; and this political subjugation had also a racial side, for the conquerors sowed their blood freely and set a brownish stamp on many regions. as for the whites, they long remained mere birds of passage. half a century ago they possessed little more than trading-posts along the littorals, their only real settlement lying in the extreme south. then, suddenly, all was changed. in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, europe turned its gaze full upon the dark continent, and within a generation africa was partitioned between the european powers. negro and arab alike fell under european domination. only minute liberia and remote abyssinia retained a qualified independence. furthermore, white settlement also made distinct progress. the tropical bulk of africa defied white colonization, but the continent's northern and southern extremities were climatically "white man's country." accordingly, there are to-day nearly a million whites settled along the algerian and tunisian seaboard, while in south africa, dutch and british blood has built up a powerful commonwealth containing fully one and one-half million white souls. in africa, unlike asia, the european has taken root, and has thus gained at least local tenures of a fundamental nature. the crux of the african problem therefore resolves itself into the question whether the white man, through consolidated racial holds north and south, will be able to perpetuate his present political control over the intermediate continental mass which climate debars him from populating. this is a matter of great importance, for africa is a land of enormous potential wealth, the natural source of europe's tropical raw materials and foodstuffs. whether europe is to retain possession depends, in the last analysis, on the character of the inhabitants. it is, then, to the nature of the black man and his connection with the brown world that we must direct our attention. from the first glance we see that, in the negro, we are in the presence of a being differing profoundly not merely from the white man but also from those human types which we discovered in our surveys of the brown and yellow worlds. the black man is, indeed, sharply differentiated from the other branches of mankind. his outstanding quality is superabundant animal vitality. in this he easily surpasses all other races. to it he owes his intense emotionalism. to it, again, is due his extreme fecundity, the negro being the quickest of breeders. this abounding vitality shows in many other ways, such as the negro's ability to survive harsh conditions of slavery under which other races have soon succumbed. lastly, in ethnic crossings, the negro strikingly displays his prepotency, for black blood, once entering a human stock, seems never really bred out again. negro fecundity is a prime factor in africa's future. in the savage state which until recently prevailed, black multiplication was kept down by a wide variety of checks. both natural and social causes combined to maintain an extremely high death-rate. the negro's political ineptitude, never rising above the tribal concept, kept black africa a mosaic of peoples, warring savagely among themselves and widely addicted to cannibalism. then, too, the native religions were usually sanguinary, demanding a prodigality of human sacrifices. the killings ordained by negro wizards and witch-doctors sometimes attained unbelievable proportions. the combined result of all this was a wastage of life which in other races would have spelled a declining population. since the establishment of white political control, however, these checks on black fecundity are no longer operative. the white rulers fight filth and disease, stop tribal wars, and stamp out superstitious abominations. in consequence, population increases by leaps and bounds, the latent possibilities being shown in the native reservations in south africa, where tribes have increased as much as tenfold in fifty or sixty years. it is therefore practically certain that the african negroes will multiply prodigiously in the next few decades. now, what will be the attitude of these augmenting black masses toward white political dominion? to that momentous query no certain answer can be made. one thing, however, seems clear: the black world's reaction to white ascendancy will be markedly different from those of the brown and yellow worlds, because of the profound dissimilarities between negroes and men of other stocks. to begin with, the black peoples have no historic pasts. never having evolved civilizations of their own, they are practically devoid of that accumulated mass of beliefs, thoughts, and experiences which render asiatics so, impenetrable and so hostile to white influences. although the white race displays sustained constructive power to an unrivalled degree, particularly in its nordic branches, the brown and yellow peoples have contributed greatly to the civilization of the world and have profoundly influenced human progress. the negro, on the contrary, has contributed virtually nothing. left to himself, he remained a savage, and in the past his only quickening has been where brown men have imposed their ideas and altered his blood. the originating powers of the european and the asiatic are not in him. this lack of constructive originality, however, renders the negro extremely susceptible to external influences. the asiatic, conscious of his past and his potentialities, is chary of foreign innovations and refuses to recognize alien superiority. the negro, having no past, welcomes novelty and tacitly admits that others are his masters. both brown and white men have been so accepted in africa. the relatively faint resistance offered by the naturally brave blacks to white and brown conquest, the ready reception of christianity and islam, and the extraordinary personal ascendancy acquired by individual arabs and europeans, all indicate a willingness to accept foreign tutelage which in the asiatic is wholly absent. the arab and the european are, in fact, rivals for the mastership of black africa. the arab had a long start, but the european suddenly overtook him and brought not only the blacks but the african arabs themselves under his sway. it remains to be seen whether the arab, allying himself with the blacks, can oust his white rival. that some such move will be attempted, in view of the brown world's renaissance in general and the extraordinary activity of the arab peoples in particular, seems a foregone conclusion. how the matter will work out depends on three things: ( ) the brown man's inherent strength in africa; ( ) the possibilities of black disaffection against white tutelage; ( ) the white man's strength and power of resistance. the seat of brown power in africa is of course the great belt of territory north of the sahara. from egypt to morocco the inhabitants are arabized in culture and mohammedan in faith, while arab blood has percolated ever since the moslem conquest twelve centuries ago. in the eastern half of this zone arabization has been complete, and egypt, tripoli, and the sudan can be considered as unalterably wedded to the brown islamic world. the zone's western half, however, is in different case. the majority of its inhabitants are berbers, an ancient stock generally considered white, with close affinities to the latin peoples across the mediterranean. as usual, blood tells. the berbers have been under arab tutelage for over a thousand years, yet their whole manner of life remains distinct, they have largely kept their language, and there has been comparatively little intermarriage. pure-blooded arabs abound, but they are still, in a way, foreigners. to-day the entire region is under white, french, rule. algeria, in particular, has been politically french for almost a hundred years. europeans have come in and number nearly a million souls. the arab element shows itself sullen and refractory, but the berbers display much less aversion to french rule, which, as usual, is considerate of native susceptibilities. the french colonial authorities are alive to the berber's ethnic affinities and tactfully seek to stimulate his dormant white consciousness. in algeria intermarriage between europeans and berbers has actually begun. of course the process is merely in its first stages. still, the blood is there, the leaven is working, and in time northwest africa may return to the white world, where it was in roman days and where it racially belongs. in the anti-european disturbances now taking place in algeria and tunis it is safe to say that the arab element is making most of the trouble. it is northeast africa, then, which is the real nucleus of arabism. here arabism and islam rule unchecked, and in the preceding chapter we saw how the senussi order was marshalling the fierce nomads of the desert. these tribesmen are relatively few in numbers, but more splendid fighting material does not exist in the wide world. furthermore, the arab-negroid peoples which have developed along the southern edge of the desert so blend the martial qualities of both strains that they frequently display an almost demoniacal fighting-power. it is pan-islamism's hope to use these arab or arabized fanatics as an officers' corps for the black millions whom it is converting to the faith. concerning islam's steady progress in black africa there can be no shadow of a doubt. every candid european observer tells the same story. "mohammedanism," says sir charles elliott, "can still give the natives a motive for animosity against europeans and a unity of which they are otherwise incapable."[ ] twenty years ago another english observer, t. r. threlfall, wrote: "mohammedanism is making marvellous progress in the interior of africa. it is crushing paganism out. against it the christian propaganda is a myth.... the rapid spread of militant mohammedanism among the savage tribes to the north of the equator is a serious factor in the fight for racial supremacy in africa. with very few exceptions the colored races of africa are pre-eminently fighters. to them the law of the stronger is supreme; they have been conquered, and in turn they conquered. to them the fierce, warlike spirit inherent in mohammedanism is infinitely more attractive than is the gentle, peace-loving, high moral standard of christianity: hence, the rapid headway the former is making in central africa, and the certainty that it will soon spread to the south of the zambezi."[ ] the way in which islam is marching southward is dramatically shown by a recent incident. a few years ago the british authorities suddenly discovered that mohammedanism was pervading nyassaland. an investigation brought out the fact that it was the work of zanzibar arabs. they began their propaganda about . ten years later almost every village in southern nyassaland had its moslem teacher and its mosque-hut. although the movement was frankly anti-european, the british authorities did not dare to check it for fear of repercussions elsewhere. another interesting fact, probably not unconnected, is that nyassaland has lately been the theatre of an anti-white "christian" propaganda--the so-called "ethiopian church," of which i shall presently speak. islam has thus two avenues of approach to the african negro--his natural preference for a militant faith and his resentment at white tutelage. it is the disinclination of the more martial african peoples for a pacific creed which perhaps accounts for christianity's slow progress among the very warlike tribes of south africa, such as the zulus and the matabele. islam is as yet unknown south of the zambezi, but white men universally dread the possibility of its appearance, fearing its effect upon the natives. of course christianity has made distinct progress in the dark continent. the natives of the south african union are predominantly christianized. in east-central africa christianity has also gained many converts, particularly in uganda, while on the west african guinea coast christian missions have long been established and have generally succeeded in keeping islam away from the seaboard. certainly, all white men, whether professing christians or not, should welcome the success of missionary efforts in africa. the degrading fetishism and demonology which sum up the native pagan cults cannot stand, and all negroes will some day be either christians or moslems. in so far as he is christianized, the negro's savage instincts will be restrained and he will be disposed to acquiesce in white tutelage. in so far as he is islamized, the negro's warlike propensities will be inflamed, and he will be used as the tool of arab pan-islamism seeking to drive the white man from africa and make the continent its very own. as to specific anti-white sentiments among negroes untouched by moslem propaganda, such sentiments undoubtedly exist in many quarters. the strongest manifestations are in south africa, where interracial relations are bad and becoming worse, but there is much diffused, half-articulate dislike of white men throughout central africa as well. devoid though the african savage is of either national or cultural consciousness, he could not be expected to welcome a tutelage which imposed many irksome restrictions upon him. furthermore, the african negro does seem to possess a certain rudimentary sense of race-solidarity. the existence of both these sentiments is proved by the way in which the news of white military reverses have at once been known and rejoiced in all over black africa; spread, it would seem, by those mysterious methods of communication employed by negroes everywhere and called in our southern states "grape-vine telegraph." the russo-japanese war, for example, produced all over the dark continent intensely exciting effects. this generalized anti-white feeling has, during the past decade, taken tangible form in south africa. the white population of the union, though numbering , , , is surrounded by a black population four times as great and increasing more rapidly, while in many sections the whites are outnumbered ten to one. the result is a state of affairs exactly paralleling conditions in our own south, the south african whites feeling obliged to protect their ascendancy by elaborate legal regulations and social taboos. the negroes have been rapidly growing more restive under these discriminations, and unpleasant episodes like race-riots, rapings, and lynchings are increasing in south africa from year to year. one of the most significant, not to say ominous, signs of the times is the "ethiopian church" movement. the movement began about fifteen years ago, some of its founders being afro-american methodist preachers--a fact which throws a curious light on possible american negro reflexes upon their ancestral homeland. the movement spread rapidly, many native mission congregations cutting loose from white ecclesiastical control and joining the negro organization. it also soon displayed frankly anti-white tendencies, and the government became seriously alarmed at its unsettling influence upon the native mind. it was suspected of having had a hand in the zulu rising which broke out in natal in and which was put down only after many whites and thousands of natives had lost their lives. shortly afterward the authorities outlawed the ethiopian church and forbade afro-american preachers to enter south africa, but the movement, though legally suppressed, lived surreptitiously on and appeared in new quarters. in a peculiarly fanatical form of ethiopianism broke out in nyassaland. its leader was a certain john chilembwe, an ethiopian preacher who had been educated in the united states. his propaganda was bitterly anti-white, asserting that africa belonged to the black man, that the white man was an intruder, and that he ought to be killed off until he grew discouraged and abandoned the country. chilembwe plotted a rising all over nyassaland, the killing of the white men, and the carrying off of the white women. in january, , the rising took place. some plantations were sacked and several whites killed, their heads being carried to chilembwe's "church," where a thanksgiving service for victory was held. the whites, however, acted with great vigor, the poorly armed insurgents were quickly scattered, and john chilembwe himself was soon hunted down and killed. in itself, the incident was of slight importance, but, taken in connection with much else, it does not augur well for the future.[ ] an interesting indication of the growing sense of negro race-solidarity was the "pan-african congress" held at paris early in . here delegates from black communities throughout the world gathered to discuss matters of common interest. most of the delegates were from africa and the americas, but one delegate from new guinea was also present, thus representing the australasian branch of the black race. the congress was not largely attended and was of a somewhat provisional character, but arrangements for the holding of subsequent congresses were made. here, then, is the african problem's present status: to begin with, we have a rapidly growing black population, increasingly restive under white tutelage and continually excited by pan-islamic propaganda with the further complication of another anti-white propaganda spread by negro radicals from america. the african situation is thus somewhat analogous to conditions in asia. but the analogy must not be pressed too far. in asia white hegemony rests solely on political bases, while the asiatics themselves, browns and yellows alike, display constructive power and possess civilizations built up by their own efforts from the remote past. the asiatics are to-day once more displaying their innate capacity by not merely adopting, but adapting, white ideas and methods. we behold an asiatic _renaissance_, whose genuineness is best attested by the fact that there have been similar movements in past times. none of this applies to africa. the black race has never shown real constructive power. it has never built up a native civilization. such progress as certain negro groups have made has been due to external pressure and has never long outlived that pressure's removal, for the negro, when left to himself, as in haiti and liberia, rapidly reverts to his ancestral ways. the negro is a facile, even eager, imitator; but there he stops. he adopts; but he does not adapt, assimilate, and give forth creatively again. the whole of history testifies to this truth. as the englishman meredith townsend says: "none of the black races, whether negro or australian, have shown within the historic time the capacity to develop civilization. they have never passed the boundaries of their own habitats as conquerors, and never exercised the smallest influence over peoples not black. they have never founded a stone city, have never built a ship, have never produced a literature, have never suggested a creed.... there seems to be no reason for this except race. it is said that the negro has been buried in the most 'massive' of the four continents, and has been, so to speak, lost to humanity; but he was always on the nile, the immediate road to the mediterranean, and in west and east africa he was on the sea. africa is probably more fertile, and almost certainly richer than asia, and is pierced by rivers as mighty, and some of them at least as navigable. what could a singularly healthy race, armed with a constitution which resists the sun and defies malaria, wish for better than to be seated on the nile, or the congo, or the niger, in numbers amply sufficient to execute any needed work, from the cutting of forests and the making of roads up to the building of cities? how was the negro more secluded than the peruvian; or why was he 'shut up' worse than the tartar of samarcand, who one day shook himself, gave up all tribal feuds, and, from the sea of okhotsk to the baltic and southward to the nerbudda, mastered the world?... the negro went by himself far beyond the australian savage. he learned the use of fire, the fact that sown grain will grow, the value of shelter, the use of the bow and the canoe, and the good of clothes; but there to all appearances he stopped, unable, until stimulated by another race like the arab, to advance another step."[ ] unless, then, every lesson of history is to be disregarded, we must conclude that black africa is unable to stand alone. the black man's numbers may increase prodigiously and acquire alien veneers, but the black man's nature will not change. black unrest may grow and cause much trouble. nevertheless, the white man must stand fast in africa. no black "renaissance" impends, and africa, if abandoned by the whites, would merely fall beneath the onset of the browns. and that would be a great calamity. as stated in the preceding chapter, the brown peoples, of themselves, do not directly menace white race-areas, while pan-islamism is at present an essentially defensive movement. but islam is militant by nature, and the arab is a restless and warlike breed. pan-islamism once possessed of the dark continent and fired by militant zealots, might forge black africa into a sword of wrath, the executor of sinister adventures. fortunately the white man has every reason for keeping a firm hold on africa. not only are its central tropics prime sources of raw materials and foodstuffs which white direction can alone develop, but to north and south the white man has struck deep roots into the soil. both extremities of the continent are "white man's country," where strong white peoples should ultimately arise. two of the chief white powers, britain and france, are pledged to the hilt in this racial task and will spare no effort to safeguard the heritage of their pioneering children. brown influence in africa is strong, but it is supreme only in the northeast and its line of communication with the asiatic homeland runs over the narrow neck of suez. should stern necessity arise, the white world could hold suez against asiatic assault and crush brown resistance in africa. in short, the real danger to white control of africa lies, not in brown attack or black revolt, but in possible white weakness through chronic discord within the white world itself. and that subject must be reserved for later chapters. chapter v red man's land red man's land is the americas between the rio grande and the tropic of capricorn. here dwells the "amerindian" race. at the time of columbus the whole western hemisphere was theirs, but the white man has extirpated or absorbed them to north and south, so that to-day the united states and canada in north america and the southern portions of south america are genuine "white man's country." in the intermediate zone above mentioned, however, the amerindian has survived and forms the majority of the population, albeit considerably mixed with white and to a lesser degree with negro blood. the total number of "indians," including both full-bloods and mixed types, is about , , --more than two-thirds of the whole population. in addition, there are several million negroes and mulattoes, mostly in brazil. the white population of the intermediate zone, even if we include "near-whites," does not average more than per cent, though it varies greatly with different regions. the reader should remember that neither the west india islands nor the southern portion of the south american continent are included in this generalization. in the west indies the amerindian has completely died out and has been replaced by the negro, while southern south america, especially argentina and uruguay, are genuine white man's country in which there is little indian and no negro blood. despite these exceptions, however, the fact remains that, taken as a whole, "latin america," the vast land-block from the rio grande to cape horn, is racially not "latin" but amerindian or negroid, with a thin spanish or portuguese veneer. in other words, though commonly considered part of the white world, most of latin america is ethnically colored man's land, which has been growing more colored for the past hundred years. latin america's evolution was predetermined by the spanish conquest. that very word "conquest" tells the story. the united states was _settled_ by colonists planning homes and bringing their women. it was thus a genuine migration, and resulted in a full transplanting of white stock to new soil. the indians encountered were wild nomads, fierce of temper and few in number. after sharp conflicts they were extirpated, leaving virtually no ethnic traces behind. the colonization of latin america was the exact antithesis. the spanish _conquistadores_ were bold warriors descending upon vast regions inhabited by relatively dense populations, some of which, as in mexico and peru, had attained a certain degree of civilization. the spaniards, invincible in their shining armor, paralyzed with terror these people still dwelling in the age of bronze and polished stone. with ridiculous ease mere handfuls of whites overthrew empires and lorded it like gods over servile and adoring multitudes. cortez marched on mexico with less than followers, while pizarro had but companions when he started his conquest of peru. of course the fabulous treasures amassed in these exploits drew swarms of bold adventurers from spain. nevertheless, their numbers were always infinitesimal compared with the vastness of the quarry, while the proportion of women immigrants continued to lag far behind that of the men. the breeding of pure whites in latin america was thus both scanty and slow. on the other hand, the breeding of mixed-bloods began at once and attained notable proportions. having slaughtered the indian males or brigaded them in slave-gangs, the conquistadores took the indian women to themselves. the humblest man-at-arms had several female attendants, while the leaders became veritable pashas with great harems of concubines. the result was a prodigious output of half-breed children, known as "mestizos" or "cholos." and soon a new ethnic complication was added. the indians having developed a melancholy trick of dying off under slavery, the spaniards imported african negroes to fill the servile ranks, and since they took negresses as well as indian women for concubines, other half-breeds--mulattoes--appeared. here and there indians and negroes mated on their own account, the offspring being known as "zambos." in time these various hybrids bred among themselves, producing the most extraordinary ethnic combinations. as garcia-calderon well puts it: "grotesque generations with every shade of complexion and every conformation of skull were born in america--a crucible continually agitated by unheard-of fusions of races.... but there was little latin blood to be found in the homes formed by the sensuality of the first conquerors of a desolated america."[ ] to be sure, this mongrel population long remained politically negligible. the spaniards regarded themselves as a master-caste, and excluded all save pure whites from civic rights and social privileges. in fact, the european-born spaniards refused to recognize even their colonial-born kinsmen as their equals, and "creoles"[ ] could not aspire to the higher distinctions or offices. this attitude was largely inspired by the desire to maintain a lucrative monopoly. yet the european's sense of superiority had some valid grounds. there can be no doubt that the creole whites, as a class, showed increasing signs of degeneracy. climate was a prime cause in the hotter regions, but there were many plateau areas, as in colombia, mexico, and peru, which though geographically in the tropics had a temperate climate from their elevation. even more than by climate the creole was injured by contact with the colored races. pampered and corrupted from birth by obsequious slaves, the creole usually led an idle and vapid existence, disdaining work as servile and debarred from higher callings by his european-born superiors. as time passed, the degeneracy due to climate and custom was intensified by degeneracy of blood. despite legal enactment and social taboo, colored strains percolated insidiously into the creole stock. the leading families, by elaborate precautions, might succeed in keeping their escutcheons clean, but humbler circles darkened significantly despite fervid protestations of "pure-white" blood. still, so long as spain kept her hold on latin america, the process of miscegenation, socially considered, was a slow one. the whole social system was based on the idea of white superiority, and the colors were carefully graded. "in america," wrote humboldt toward the close of spanish rule, "the more or less white skin determines the position which a man holds in society."[ ] the revolution against spain had momentous consequences for the racial future of latin america. in the beginning, to be sure, it was a white civil war--a revolt of the creoles against european oppression and discrimination. the heroes of the revolution--bolívar, miranda, san martín, and the rest--were aristocrats of pure-white blood. but the revolution presently developed new features. to begin with, the struggle was very long. commencing in , it lasted almost twenty years. the whites were decimated by fratricidal fury, and when the spanish cause was finally lost, multitudes of loyalists mainly of the superior social classes left the country. meanwhile, the half-castes, who had rallied wholesale to the revolutionary banner, were demanding their reward. the creoles wished to close the revolutionary cycle and establish a new society based, like the old, upon white supremacy, with themselves substituted for the spaniards. bolívar planned a limited monarchy and a white electoral oligarchy. but this was far from suiting the half-castes. for them the revolution had just begun. raising the cry of "democracy," then become fashionable through the north american and french revolutions, they proclaimed the doctrine of "equality" regardless of skin. disillusioned and full of foreboding, bolívar, the master-spirit of the revolution, disappeared from the scene, and his lieutenants, like the generals of alexander, quarrelled among themselves, split latin america into jarring fragments, and waged a long series of internecine wars. the flood-gates of anarchy were opened, the result being a steady weakening of the whites and a corresponding rise of the half-castes in the political and social scale. everywhere ambitious soldiers led the mongrel mob against the white aristocracy, breaking its power and making themselves dictators. these "caudillos" were apostles of equality and miscegenation. says garcia-calderon: "tyrants found democracies; they lean on the support of the people, the half-breeds and negroes, against the oligarchies; they dominate the colonial nobility, favor the crossing of races, and free the slaves."[ ] the consequences of all this were lamentable in the extreme. latin america's level of civilization fell far below that of colonial days. spanish rule, though narrow and tyrannical, had maintained peace and social stability. now all was a hideous chaos wherein frenzied castes and colors grappled to the death. ignorant mestizos and brutal negroes trampled the fine flowers of culture under foot, while as by a malignant inverse selection the most intelligent and the most cultivated perished. these deplorable conditions prevailed in latin america until well past the middle of the nineteenth century. of course, here as elsewhere, anarchy engendered tyranny, and strong caudillos sometimes perpetuated their dictatorship for decades, as in paraguay under doctor francia and in mexico under porfirio diaz. however, these were mere interludes, of no constructive import. always the aging lion lost his grip, the lurking hyenas of anarchy downed him at last, and the land sank once more into revolutionary chaos. some parts of latin america did, indeed, definitely emerge into the light of stable progress. but those favored regions owed their deliverance, not to dictatorship, but to race. one of two factors always operated: either ( ) an efficient white oligarchy; or ( ) aryanization through wholesale european immigration. stabilization through oligarchy is best illustrated by chile. chilean history differs widely from that of the rest of latin america. a land of cool climate, no gold, and warlike araucanian indians, chile attracted the pioneering settler rather than the swashbuckling seeker of treasure-trove. now the pioneering types in spain come mainly from those northern provinces which have retained considerable nordic blood. the chilean colonists were thus largely blond asturians or austere, reasonable basques, seeking homes and bringing their women. of course there was crossing with the natives, but the fierce araucanian aborigines clung to their wild freedom and kept up an interminable frontier warfare in which the occasions for race-mixture were relatively few. the country was thus settled by a resident squirearchy of an almost english type. this ruling gentry jealously guarded its racial integrity. in fact, it possessed not merely a white but a nordic race-consciousness. the chilean gentry called themselves sons of the visigoths, scions of euric and pelayo, who had found in remote araucania a chance to slake their racial thirst for fighting and freedom. in chile, as elsewhere, the revolution provoked a cycle of disorder. but the cycle was short, and was more a political struggle between white factions than a social welter of caste and race. furthermore, chile was receiving fresh accessions of nordic blood. many english, scotch, and irish gentleman-adventurers, taking part in the war of independence, settled down in a land so reminiscent of their own. germans also came in considerable numbers, settling especially in the colder south. thus the chilean upper classes, always pure white, became steadily more nordic in ethnic character. the political and social results were unmistakable. chile rapidly evolved a stable society, essentially oligarchic and consciously patterned on aristocratic england. efficient, practical, and extremely patriotic, the chilean oligarchs made their country at once the most stable and the most dynamic factor in latin america. the distinctly "northern" character of chile and the chileans strike foreign observers. here, for example, are the impressions of a recent visitor, the north american sociologist, professor e. a. ross. landing at the port of valparaiso, he is "struck by signs of english influence. on the commercial streets every third man suggests the briton, while a large proportion of the business people look as if they have their daily tub. the cleanliness of the streets, the freshness of the parks and squares, the dressing of the shop-windows, and the style of the mounted police remind one of england."[ ] as to the nordic affinities of the upper classes: "one sees it in stature, eye color, and ruddy complexion.... among the pupils of santiago college there are as many blonds as brunets."[ ] even among the peon or "roto" class, despite considerable indian crossing, professor ross noted the strong nordic strain, for he met chilean peasants "whose stature, broad shoulders, big faces, and tawny mustaches proclaimed them as genuine norsemen as the icelanders in our red river valley."[ ] chile is thus the prime example of social stability and progress attained through white oligarchic rule. other, though less successful, instances are to be noted in peru, colombia, and costa rica. peru and colombia, though geographically within the tropics, have extensive temperate plateaux. here numerous whites settled during the colonial period, forming an upper caste over a large indian population. unlike chile, few nordics came to leaven society with those qualities of constructive genius and racial self-respect which are the special birthright of nordic man. unlike chile again, not only were there dense indian masses, but there was also an appreciable negro element. lastly, the number of mixed-bloods was very large. it is thus not surprising that for both peru and colombia the revolution ushered in a period of turmoil from which neither have even yet emerged. the whites have consistently fought among themselves, invoking the half-castes as auxiliaries and using indians and negroes as their pawns. the whites are still the dominant element, but only the first families retain their pure blood, and miscegenation creeps upward with every successive generation. as for costa rica, it is a tiny bit of cool hill-country, settled by whites in colonial times, and to-day rises an oasis of civilization, above the tropic jungle of degenerate, mongrel central america. the second method of social stabilization in latin america--aryanization through wholesale european immigration--is exemplified by argentina and uruguay. neither of these lands had very promising beginnings. their populations, at the revolution, contained strong indian infusions and traces of negro blood, while after the revolution both fell under the sway of tyrannical dictators who persecuted the white aristocrats and favored miscegenation. however, argentina and uruguay possessed two notable advantages: they were climatically white man's country, and they at first contained a very small population. since they produced neither gold nor tropical luxuries, spain had neglected them, so that at the revolution they consisted of little more than the port-towns of buenos aires and montevideo with a few dependent river-settlements. their vast hinterlands of fertile prairie then harbored only wandering tribes of nomad savages. during the last half of the nineteenth century, however, the development of ocean transport gave these antipodean prairies value as stock-raising and grain-growing sources for congested europe, and europe promptly sent immigrants to supply her needs. this immigrant stream gradually swelled to a veritable deluge. the human tide was, on the whole, of sound stock, mostly spaniards and north italians, with some nordic elements from northern europe in the upper strata. thus europe locked antipodean america securely to the white world. as for the colonial stock, it merged easily into the newer, kindred flood. here and there signs of former miscegenation still show, the argentino being sometimes, as madison grant well puts it, "suspiciously swarthy."[ ] nevertheless, these are but vestigial traces which the ceaseless european inflow will ultimately eradicate. the large impending german immigration to argentina and uruguay should bring valuable nordic elements. this same tide of european immigration has likewise pretty well aryanized the southern provinces of brazil, adjacent to the uruguayan border. those provinces were neglected by portugal as argentina and uruguay were by spain, and half a century ago they had a very sparse population. to-day they support millions of european immigrants, mostly italians and european portuguese, but with the further addition of nearly half a million germans. brazil is, in fact, evolving into two racially distinct communities. the southern provinces are white man's country, with little indian or negro blood, and with a distinct "color line." the tropical north is saturated with indian and negro strains, and the whites are rapidly disappearing in a universal mongrelization. ultimately this must produce momentous political consequences. bearing in mind the exceptions above noted, let us now observe the vast tropical and semi-tropical bulk of latin america. here we find notable changes since colonial days. white predominance is substantially a thing of the past. persons of unmixed spanish or portuguese descent are relatively few, most of the so-called "whites" being really _near_-whites, more or less deeply tinged with colored bloods. it is a striking token of white race-prestige that these near-whites, despite their degeneracy and inefficiency, are yet the dominant element; occupying, in fact, much the same status as the aristocratic creoles immediately after the war of independence. nevertheless, the near-whites' supremacy is now threatened. every decade of chronic anarchy favors the darker half-breeds, while below these, in turn, the indian and negro full-bloods are beginning to stir, as in mexico to-day. most informed observers agree that the mixed-bloods of latin america are distinctly inferior to the whites. this applies to both mestizos and mulattoes, albeit the mestizo (the cross between white and indian) seems less inferior than the mulatto--the cross between white and black. as for the zambo, the indian-negro cross, everybody is agreed that it is a very bad one. analyses of these hybrid stocks show remarkable similarities to the mongrel chaos of the declining roman empire. here is the judgment of garcia-calderon, a peruvian scholar and generally considered the most authoritative writer on latin america. "the racial question," he writes, "is a very serious problem in american history. it explains the progress of certain peoples and the decadence of others, and it is the key to the incurable disorder which divides america. upon it depend a great number of secondary phenomena; the public wealth, the industrial system, the stability of governments, the solidity of patriotism.... this complication of castes, this admixture of diverse bloods, has created many problems. for example, is the formation of a national consciousness possible with such disparate elements? would such heterogeneous democracies be able to resist the invasion of superior races? finally, is the south american half-caste absolutely incapable of organization and culture?"[ ] while qualifying his answers to these queries, garcia-calderon yet deplores the half-caste's "decadence."[ ] "in the iberian democracies," he says, "an inferior latinity, a latinity of the decadence, prevails; verbal abundance, inflated rhetoric, oratorical exaggeration, just as in roman spain.... the half-caste loves grace, verbal elegance, quibbles even, and artistic form; great passions and desires do not move him. in religion he is sceptical, indifferent, and in politics he disputes in the byzantine manner. no one could discover in him a trace of his spanish forefather, stoical and adventurous."[ ] garcia-calderon therefore concludes: "the mixture of rival castes, iberians, indians, and negroes, has generally had disastrous consequences.... none of the conditions established by the french psychologists are realized by the latin american democracies, and their populations are therefore degenerate. the lower castes struggle successfully against the traditional rules: the order which formerly existed is followed by moral anarchy; solid conviction by a superficial scepticism; and the castilian tenacity by indecision. the black race is doing its work, and the continent is returning to its primitive barbarism."[ ] this melancholy fate can, according to garcia-calderon, be averted only by wholesale white immigration: "in south america civilization is dependent upon the numerical predominance of the victorious spaniard, on the triumph of the white man over the mulatto, the negro, and the indian. only a plentiful european immigration can re-establish the shattered equilibrium of the american races."[ ] garcia-calderon's pronouncements are echoed by foreign observers. during his south american travels professor ross noted the same melancholy symptoms and pointed out the same unique remedy. speaking of ecuador, he says: "i found no foreigners who have faith in the future of this people. they point out that while this was a spanish colony there was a continual flow of immigrants from spain, many of whom, no doubt, were men of force. political separation interrupted this current, and since then the country has really gone back. spain had provided a ruling, organizing element, and, with the cessation of the flow of spaniards, the mixed-bloods took charge of things, for the pure-white element is so small as to be negligible. no one suggests that the mestizos equal the white stock either in intellect or in character.... among the rougher foreigners and peruvians the pet name for these people is 'monkeys.' the thoughtful often liken them to eurasians, clever enough, but lacking in solidity of character. natives and foreigners alike declare that a large white immigration is the only hope for ecuador."[ ] concerning bolivia, professor ross writes: "the wisest sociologist in bolivia told me that the zambo, resulting from the union of indian with negro, is inferior to both the parent races, and that likewise the mestizo is inferior to both white and indian in physical strength, resistance to disease, longevity, and brains. the failure of the south american republics has been due, he declares, to mestizo domination. through the colonial period there was a flow of spaniards to the colonies, and all the offices down to _corregidor_ and _cura_ were filled by white men. with independence, the whites ceased coming, and the lower offices of state and church were filled with mestizos. then, too, the first crossing of white with indian gave a better result than the union between mestizos, so that the stock has undergone progressive degeneration. the only thing, then, that can make these countries progress is a large white immigration, something much talked about by statesmen in all these countries, but which has never materialized."[ ] these judgments refer particularly to spanish america. regarding portuguese brazil, however, the verdict seems to be the same. many years ago professor agassiz wrote: "let any one who doubts the evil of this mixture of races, and is inclined from mistaken philanthropy to break down all barriers between them, come to brazil. he cannot deny the deterioration consequent upon the amalgamation of races, more wide-spread here than in any country in the world, and which is rapidly effacing the best qualities of the white man, the negro, and the indian, leaving a mongrel, nondescript type, deficient in physical and mental energy."[ ] the mongrel's political ascendancy produces precisely the results which might have been expected. these unhappy beings, every cell of whose bodies is a battle-ground of jarring heredities, express their souls in acts of hectic violence and aimless instability. the normal state of tropical america is anarchy, restrained only by domestic tyrants or foreign masters. garcia-calderon exactly describes its psychology when he writes: "precocious, sensual, impressionable, the americans of these vast territories devote their energies to local politics. industry, commerce, and agriculture are in a state of decay, and the unruly imagination of the creole expends itself in constitutions, programmes, and lyrical discourses; in these regions anarchy is sovereign mistress."[ ] the tropical republics display, indeed, a tendency toward "atomic disintegration.... given to dreaming, they are led by presidents suffering from neurosis."[ ] the stock feature of the mongrel tropics is, of course, the "revolution." these senseless and perennial outbursts are often ridiculed in the united states as comic opera, but the grim truth of the matter is that few latin american revolutions are laughing matters. the numbers of men engaged may not be very large according to our standards, but measured by the scanty populations of the countries concerned, they lay a heavy blood-tax on the suffering peoples. the tatterdemalion "armies" may excite our mirth, but the battles are real enough, often fought out to the death with razor-edged machetes and rusty bayonets, and there is no more ghastly sight than a latin american battle-field. the commandeerings, burnings, rapings, and assassinations inflicted upon the hapless civilian population cry to heaven. there is always wholesale destruction of property, frequently appalling loss of life, and a general paralysis of economic and social activity. these wretched lands have now been scourged by the revolutionary plague for a hundred years, and w. b. hale does not overstate the consequences when he says: "most of the countries clustering about the caribbean have sunk into deeper and deeper mires of misrule, unmatched for profligacy and violence anywhere on earth. revolution follows revolution; one band of brigands succeeds another; atrocities revenge atrocities; the plundered people grow more and more abject in poverty and slavishness; vast natural resources lie neglected, while populations decrease, civilization recedes, and the jungle advances."[ ] of course, under these frightful circumstances, the national character, weak enough at best, degenerates at an ever-quickening pace. peaceful effort of any sort appears vain and ridiculous, and men are taught that wealth is procurable only by violence and extortion. another important point should be noted. i have said that latin american anarchy was restrained by dictatorship. but the reader must not infer that dictatorships are halcyon times--for the dictated. on the contrary, they are usually only a trifle less wretched and demoralizing than times of revolution. the "caudillos" are nearly always very sinister figures. often they are ignorant brutes; oftener they are blood-thirsty, lecherous monsters; oftenest they are human spiders who suck the land dry of all fluid wealth, banking it abroad against the day when they shall fly before the revolutionary blast to the safe haven of paris and the congenial debaucheries of montmartre. the millions amassed by tyrants like castro of venezuela and zelaya of nicaragua are almost beyond belief, considering the backward, bankrupt lands they have "administered." yet how can it be otherwise? consider critchfield's incisive account of a caudillo's accession to power: "when an ignorant and brutal man, whose entire knowledge of the world is confined to a few indian villages, and whose total experience has been gained in the raising of cattle, doffs his _alpagartes_, and, machete in hand, cuts his way to power in a few weeks, with a savage horde at his back who know nothing of the amenities of civilization and care less than they know--when such a man comes to power, evil and evil only can result. even if the new dictator were well-intentioned, his entire ignorance of law and constitutional forms, of commercial processes and manufacturing arts, and of the fundamental and necessary principles underlying all stable and free governments, would render a successful administration by him extremely difficult, if not impossible. but he is surrounded by all the elements of vice and flattery, and he is imbued with that vain and absurd egotism which makes men of small caliber imagine themselves to be napoleons or cæsars. thus do petty despotisms, unrestrained by constitutional provisions or by anything like a virile public opinion, lead from absurdity to outrage and crime."[ ] such is the situation in mongrel-ruled america: revolution breeding revolution, tyranny breeding tyranny, and the twain combining to ruin their victims and force them ever deeper into the slough of degenerate barbarism. the whites have lost their grip and are rapidly disappearing. the mixed-breeds have had their chance and have grotesquely failed. the oft-quoted panacea--white immigration--is under present conditions a vain dream, for white immigrants will not expose themselves (and still less their women) to the horrors of mongrel rule. so far, their, as internal factors are concerned, anarchy seems destined to continue unchecked. in fact, new conflicts loom on the horizon. the indian masses, so docile to the genuine white man, begin to stir. the aureole of white prestige has been besmirched by the near-whites and half-castes who have traded so recklessly upon its sanctions. strong in the poise of normal heredity, the indian full-blood commences to despise these chaotic masters who turn his homelands into bear-gardens and witches' sabbaths. an "indianista" movement is to-day on foot throughout mongrel-ruled america. it is most pronounced in mexico, whose interminable agony becomes more and more a war of indian resurgence, but it is also starting along the west coast of south america. long ago, wise old professor pearson saw how the wind was blowing. noting how whites and near-whites were "everywhere fighting and intriguing for the spoils of office," he also noted that the indian masses, though relatively passive and "seemingly unobservant," were yet "conquering a place for themselves in other ways than by increasing and multiplying," and he concluded: "the general level of the autochthonous race is being raised; it is acquiring riches and self-respect, and must sooner or later get the country back into its hands."[ ] recent visitors to the south american west coast note the signs of indian unrest. some years ago lord bryce remarked of bolivia: "there have been indian risings, and firearms are more largely in their hands than formerly. they so preponderate in numbers that any movement which united them against the upper class might, could they find a leader, have serious consequences."[ ] still more recently professor ross wrote concerning peru: "in cuzco i met a gentleman of education and travel who is said to be the only living lineal descendant of the incas. he has great influence with the native element and voices their bitterness and their aspirations. he declares that the politics of peru is a struggle between the spanish mestizos of lima and the coast and the natives of cuzco and the interior, and predicts an uprising unless cuzco is made the capital of the nation. he even dreams of a kechua republic, with cuzco as its capital and the united states its guarantor, as she is guarantor of the cuban republic."[ ] and of bolivia, professor ross writes: "lately there has been a general movement of the bolivian indians for the recovery of the lands of which they have been robbed piecemeal. conflicts have broken out and, although the government has punished the ringleaders, there is a feeling that, so long as the exploiting of the indian goes on, bolivians are living 'in the crater of a slumbering volcano.'"[ ] since the white man has gone and the indian is preparing to wrest the sceptre of authority from the mongrel's worthless hands, let us examine this indian race, to see what potentiality it possesses of restoring order and initiating progress. to begin with, there can be no doubt that the indian is superior to the negro. the negro, even when quickened by foreign influences, never built up anything approaching a real civilization; whereas the indian, though entirely sundered from the rest of mankind, evolved genuine polities and cultures like the aztec of mexico, the inca of peru, and the maya of yucatan. the indian thus possesses creative capacity to an appreciable degree. however, that degree seems strictly limited. the researches of archæologists have sadly discounted the glowing tales of the conquistadores, and the "empires" of mexico and peru, though far from contemptible, certainly rank well below the achievements of european and asiatic races in mediæval and even in classic times. the indian possesses notable stability and poise, but the very intensity of these qualities fetters his progress and renders questionable his ability to rise to the modern plane. his conservatism is immense. with incredible tenacity he clings to his ancestral ways and exhibits a dull indifference to alien innovation. of course the indian sub-races differ considerably among themselves, but the same fundamental tendencies are visible in all of them. says professor ellsworth huntington: "the indians are very backward. they are dull of mind and slow to adopt new ideas. perhaps in the future they will change, but the fact that they have been influenced so little by four hundred years of contact with the white man does not afford much ground for hope. judging from the past, there is no reason to think that their character is likely to change for many generations.... those who dwell permanently in the white man's cities are influenced somewhat, but here as in other cases the general tendency seems to be to revert to the original condition as soon as the special impetus of immediate contact with the white man is removed."[ ] and lord bryce writes in similar vein: "with plenty of stability, they lack initiative. they make steady soldiers, and fight well under white or mestizo leaders, but one seldom hears of a pure indian accomplishing anything or rising either through war or politics, or in any profession, above the level of his class...."[ ] the truth about the indian seems to be substantially this: left alone, he would probably have continued to progress, albeit much more slowly than either white or asiatic peoples. but the indian was not left alone. on the contrary, he was suddenly felled by brutal and fanatical conquerors, who uprooted his native culture and plunged him into abject servitude. the indian's spiritual past was shorn away and his evolution was perverted. prevented from developing along his own lines, and constitutionally incapable of adapting himself to the ways of his spanish conquerors, the indian vegetated, learning nothing and forgetting much that he knew. this has continued for four hundred years. is it not likely that his ancestral aptitudes have atrophied or decayed? slavery and mental sloth have indeed scarred him with their fell stigmata. says garcia-calderon: "without sufficient food, without hygiene, a distracted and laborious beast, he decays and perishes; to forget the misery of his daily lot he drinks, becomes an alcoholic, and his numerous progeny present the characteristics of degeneracy."[ ] furthermore, the indian degenerates from another cause--mongrelization. miscegenation is a dual process. it works upward and downward at one and the same time. in latin america hybridization has been prodigious, the hybrids to-day numbering millions. in some regions, as in venezuela and parts of central america, there are very few full-blooded indians left, hybrids forming practically the entire population. now, on the whole, the white or "mestizo" crossing seems hurtful to the indian, for what he gains in intelligence he more than loses in character. but the mestizo crossing is not the worst. there is another, much graver, racial danger. the hot coastlands swarm with negroes, and the zambo or negro-indian is universally adjudged the worst of matings. thus, for the indian, white blood appears harmful, while black blood is absolutely fatal. yet the mongrelizing tide sweeps steadily on. the indian draws no "color line," and continually impairs the purity of his blood and the poise of his heredity. bearing all the above facts in mind, can we believe the indian capable of drawing mongrel-ruled america from its slough of despond? can he set it on the path of orderly progress? it does not seem possible. assuming for the sake of argument complete freedom from foreign intervention, the indian might in time displace his mongrel rulers--provided he himself were not also mongrelized. but the present "indianista" movement is not a sign of indian political efficiency; not the harbinger of an indian "renaissance." it is the instinctive turning of the harried beast on his tormentor. maddened by the cruel vagaries of mongrel rule and increasingly conscious of the mongrel's innate worthlessness, the indian at last bares his teeth. under civilized white tutelage the "indianista" movement would have been practically inconceivable. however, guesses as to the final outcome of an indian-mongrel conflict are academic speculation, because mongrel america will not be left to itself. mongrel america cannot stand alone. indeed, it never has stood alone, for it has always been bolstered up by the monroe doctrine. but for our protection, outside forces would have long since rushed into this political and economic vacuum, and every omen to-day denotes that this vacuum, like all others, will presently be filled. a world close packed as never before will not tolerate countries that are a torment to themselves and a dangerous nuisance to their neighbors. a world half bankrupt will not allow vast sources of potential wealth to lie in hands which idle or misuse. thus it is practically certain that mongrel america will presently pass under foreign tutelage. exactly how, is not yet clear. it may be done by the united states alone, or, what is more probable, in "pan-american" co-operation with the lusty young white nations of the antipodean south. it may be done by an even larger combination, including some european states. after all, the details of such action do not lie within the scope of this book, since they fall exclusively within the white man's sphere of activity. there is, however, another dynamic which might transform mongrel america. this dynamic is yellow asia. the far east teems with virile and laborious life. it thrills to novel ambitions and desires. avid with the urge of swarming myriads, it hungrily seeks outlets for its superabundant vitality. we have already seen how the mongolian has earmarked the whole far east for his own, and in subsequent pages we shall see how he also beats restlessly against the white world's race-frontiers. but mongrel america! what other field offers such tempting possibilities for mongolian race-expansion? vast regions of incalculable, unexploited wealth, sparsely inhabited by stagnant populations cursed with anarchy and feeble from miscegenation--how could such lands resist the onslaught of tenacious and indomitable millions? the answer is self-evident. they could not resist; and such an invasion, once begun, would be consummated with a celerity and thoroughness perhaps unexampled in human history. now the yellow world is alive to this momentous possibility. japan, in particular, has glimpsed in latin america precious avenues to that racial expansion which is the key-note of japanese foreign policy. for years japanese statesmen and publicists have busied themselves with the problem. the chinese had, in fact, already pointed the way, for during the later decades of the nineteenth century chinamen frequented latin america's pacific coast, economically vanquishing the natives with ease, and settling in peru in such numbers that the alarmed peruvians hastily stopped the inflow by drastic exclusion acts. the successes of these chinese pioneers, humble coolies entirely without official backing, have fired the japanese imagination. the japanese press has long discussed latin america in optimistic vein. count okuma is a good exemplar of these japanese aspirations. some years ago he told the american sociologist professor ross: "south america, especially the northern part, will furnish ample room for our surplus."[ ] to his fellow countrymen count okuma was still more specific. in he stated in the tokio _economist_ that the japanese were to overspread the earth like a cloud of locusts, alighting on the north american coasts, and swarming into central and south america. count okuma expressed a strong preference for latin american countries as fields for japanese immigration, because most of them were "much easier to include within the sphere of influence of japan in the future."[ ] and the japanese have supplemented words with deeds. especially since , japanese activity in latin america has been ubiquitous and striking. the west coast of south america, in particular, is to-day flooded with japanese goods, merchants, commercial missions, and financial agents seeking concessions of every kind. our state department has had to exercise special vigilance concerning japanese concession-hunting in mexico. japan's present activity is of course mere reconnoitring--testings and mappings of terrain for possible later action on a more extensive scale. one thing alone gives japan pause--our veto. japan knows that real aggression against our southern neighbors would spell war with the united states. japan does not contemplate war with us at present. she has many fish to fry in the far east. so in latin america she plays safe. but she bides her time. in latin america itself she has friends--even partisans. japan seeks to mobilize to her profit that distrust of the "yanqui" which permeates latin america. the half-castes, in particular, rage at our "color line" and see in the united states the nemesis of their anarchic misrule. they flout the monroe doctrine, caress dreams of japanese aid, and welcome nippon's pose as the champion of color throughout the world. japanese activities in mexico are of especial interest. here japan has three strong strings to her bow: ( ) patriotic dislike of the united states; ( ) mestizo hatred of the white "gringo"; ( ) the indianista movement. in mexico the past decade of revolutionary turmoil has developed into a complicated race-war of the mestizos against the white or near-white upper class and of the indian full-bloods against both whites and mestizos. the one bond of union is dislike of the gringo, which often rises to fanatical hatred. our war against mexico in has never been forgotten, and many mexicans cherish hopes of revenge and even aspire to recover the territories then ceded to us. during the early stages of the european war our military unpreparedness and apparent pacifism actually emboldened some mexican hotheads to concoct the notorious "plan of san diego." the conspirators plotted to rouse the mexican population of our southern border, sow disaffection among our southern negroes, and explode the mine at the psychological moment by means of a "reconquering equitable army" invading texas. our whole southwest was to be rejoined to mexico, while our southern states were to form a black republic. the projected war was conceived strictly in terms of race, the reconquering equitable army to be composed solely of "latins," negroes, and japanese. the racial results were to be decisive, for the entire white population of both our south and southwest was to be pitilessly massacred. of course the plot completely miscarried, and sporadic attempts to invade texas during were easily repulsed. nevertheless, this incident reveals the trend of many mexican minds. the framers of the "plan of san diego" were not ignorant peons, but persons of some standing. the outrages and tortures inflicted upon numerous americans in mexico during recent years are further indications of that wide-spread hatred which expresses itself in vitriolic outbursts like the following editorial of a mexican provincial paper, written during our chase after the bandit villa in : "above all, do not forget that at a time of national need, humanity is a crime and frightfulness is a virtue. pull out eyes, snatch out hearts, tear open breasts, drink--if you can--the blood in the skulls of the invaders from the cities of yankeeland. in defense of liberty be a nero, be a caligula--that is to be a good patriot. peace between mexico and the united states will be closed in throes of terror and barbarism."[ ] all this is naturally grist for the japanese mill. especially interesting are japanese attempts to play upon mexican indianista sentiment. japanese writers point out physical and cultural similarities between the mexican native races and themselves, deducing therefrom innate racial affinities springing from the remote and forgotten past. all possible sympathetic changes were rung during the diplomatic mission of señor de la barra to japan at the beginning of . his reception in tokio was a memorable event. señor de la barra was greeted by cheering multitudes, and on every occasion the manifold bonds between the two peoples were emphasized. this of course occurred before the european war. during the war japanese-mexican relations remained amicable. so far as official evidence goes, the japanese government has never entered into any understandings with the mexican government, though some mexicans have hinted at a secret agreement, and one mexican writer, gutierrez de lara, asserts that in francisco madero, then president, "threw himself into the arms of japan," and goes on: "we are well aware of the importance of this statement and of its tremendous international significance, but we make it deliberately with full confidence in our authority. not only did madero enlist the ardent support of the south american republics in the cause of mexico's inviolability, but he entered into negotiations with the japanese minister in mexico city for a close offensive and defensive alliance with japan to checkmate united states aggression. when during the fateful twelve days' battle in mexico city a rumor of american intervention, more alarming than usual, was communicated to madero, he remarked coldly that he was thoroughly anxious for that intervention, for he was confident of the surprise the american government would receive in discovering that they had to deal with japan."[ ] but, after all, an official japanese-mexican understanding is not the fundamental issue. the really significant thing is mexican popular antagonism to the united states, which is so wide-spread that japan could in a crisis probably count on mexican benevolent neutrality if not on mexican support. the present carranza government of mexico is of course notoriously anti-american. its consistent policy, notably revealed in its complaisance toward germany and its intrigues with other anti-american régimes like those of colombia and venezuela, makes mexico the centre of anti-americanism in latin america. as for the numerous japanese residents in mexico, they have lost no opportunity to abet this attitude. here, for instance, is the text of a manifesto signed by prominent members of the japanese colony during the american-mexican crisis of : "japanese: mexico is a friendly nation. our commercial bonds with her are great. she is, like us, a nation of heroes who will never consent to the world-domination of a hard and brutal race, as are the yankees. we cannot abandon mexico in her struggle against a nation supposedly stronger. the mexicans know how to defend themselves, but there is lacking aid which we can furnish. if the yankees invade mexico, if they seize the california coasts, japanese commerce and the japanese navy will face a grave peril. the yankees believe us impotent because of the european war, and we will be expelled from american soil and our children from american schools. we will aid the mexicans. we will aid mexico against yankee rapacity. this great and beautiful country is a victim of yankee hatred toward japan. our indifference would be a lack of patriotism, since the yankees already are against us and our divine emperor. they have seized hawaii, they have seized the philippine islands, near our coasts, and are now about to crush under foot our friend and possible ally, and injure our commerce and imperil our naval power."[ ] the fact is that latin america's attitude toward the yellow world tends everywhere to crystallize along race lines. the half-castes, naturally hostile to the united states, see in japan a welcome offset to the "colossus of the north." the self-conscious indianista elements likewise heed japanese suggestions of ethnic affinity. on the other hand, the whites and near-whites instinctively react against japanese advances. even those who have no love for the yankee see in the mongolian the greatest of perils. garcia-calderon typifies this point of view. he dreads our imperialistic tendencies, yet he reproves those latin americans who, in a japanese-american clash, would favor japan. "victorious," he writes, "the japanese would invade western america and convert the pacific into a vast closed sea, closed to foreign ambitions, _mare nostrum_, peopled with japanese colonies. the japanese hegemony would not be a mere change of tutelage for the nations of america. in spite of essential differences, the latins oversea have certain common ties with the people of the (united) states: a long-established religion, christianity, and a coherent, european, occidental civilization. perhaps there is some obscure fraternity between the japanese and the american indians, between the yellow men of nippon and the copper-colored quechuas, a disciplined and sober people. but the ruling race, the dominant type of spanish origin, which imposes the civilization of the white man upon america, is hostile to the entire invading east."[ ] white men throughout latin america generally echo these sentiments. chile and argentina repulse oriental immigration, and the white oligarchs of peru dread keenly japanese designs directed so specifically against their country. very recently a peruvian, doctor jorge m. corbacho,[ ] wrote most bitterly about the japanese infiltration into peru and adjacent bolivia, while some years ago señor augustin edwards, owner of the leading chilean periodical, _el mercurio_, denounced count okuma's menaces and called for a pan-american rampart against asia from behring strait to cape horn. "japanese immigration," asserted señor edwards, "must be firmly opposed, not only in south america, but in the whole american continent. the same remark applies to chinese immigration.... in short, these threats of okuma should induce the nations of south america to adopt the monroe doctrine--an invincible weapon against the plans and intentions of that 'empire of the orient,' which has so lately risen up to new life, and already manifests so dire a greed of conquest."[ ] from central america similar voices arise. a salvadorean writer urges political federation with the united states as the sole refuge against the "yellow peril," to avoid becoming "slaves and utterly insignificant";[ ] and a well-known nicaraguan politician, señor moncada,[ ] writes in similar vein. the momentous implications of mongolian pressure upon latin america are admirably described by professor ross. "provided that no barrier be interposed to the inflow from man-stifled asia," he says, "it is well within the bounds of probability that by the close of this century south america will be the home of twenty or thirty millions of orientals and descendants of orientals.... but asiatic immigration of such volume would change profoundly the destiny of south america. for one thing, it would forestall and frustrate that great immigration of europeans which south american statesmen are counting on to relieve their countries from mestizo unprogressiveness and misgovernment. the white race would withhold its increase or look elsewhere for outlets; for those with the higher standard of comfort always shun competition with those of a lower standard. again, large areas of south america might cease to be parts of christendom. some of the republics there might come to be as dependent upon asiatic powers as the cuban republic is dependent upon the united states."[ ] very pertinent is professor ross's warning as to the fate of the indian population--a warning which indianista believers in japanese "affinity" should seriously take to heart. whatever might be the lot of the latin american whites, professor ross points out that "an asiatic influx would seal the doom of the indian element in these countries.... the indians could make no effective economic stand against the wide-awake, resourceful, and aggressive japanese or chinese. the oriental immigrants could beat the indians at every point, block every path upward, and even turn them out of most of their present employments. in great part the indians would become a cringing _sudra_ caste, tilling the poorer lands and confined to the menial or repulsive occupations. filled with despair, and abandoning themselves even more than they do now to pisco and coca, they would shrivel into a numerically negligible element in the population."[ ] such are the underlying factors in the latin american situation. once more we see the essential instability of mere political phenomena. once more we see the supreme importance of race. no conquest could have been completer than that of the spaniards four centuries ago. the indians were helpless as sheep before the mail-clad conquistadores. and military conquest was succeeded by complete political domination. the indian even lost his cultural heritage, and became a passive tool in the hands of his white masters. but the spaniard did not seal his title-deed with the indelible signet of race. indian blood remained numerically predominant, and the conqueror further weakened his tenure by bringing in black blood--the most irreducible of ethnic factors. the inflow of white blood was small, and much of what did come lost itself in the dismal swamp of miscegenation. lastly, the whites quarrelled among themselves. the result was inevitable. the colonial whites triumphed only by aid of the half-castes, who promptly claimed their reward. a fresh struggle ensued, ending (save in the antipodean regions) in the triumph of the half-castes. but these, in turn, had called in the indians and negroes. furthermore, the half-castes recklessly squandered the white political heritage. so the colored full-bloods stirred in their turn, and a new movement began which, if allowed to run its natural course, might result in complete de-aryanization. in other words, the white race has been going back, and latin america has been getting more indian and negro for the past hundred years. this cycle, however, now nears its end. latin america will be neither red nor black. it will ultimately be either white or yellow. the indian is patently unable to construct a progressive civilization. as for the negro, he has proved as incapable in the new world as in the old. everywhere his presence has spelled regression, and his one new world field of triumph--haiti--has resulted in an abysmal plunge to the jungle-level of guinea and the congo. thus is created a political vacuum. and this vacuum unerring nature makes ready to fill. the latin american situation is, indeed, akin to that of africa. latin america, like africa, cannot stand alone. an inexorable dilemma impends: white or yellow. the white man has been first in the field and holds the central colored zone between two strong bases, north and south, where his tenure is the unimpeachable title of race. the yellow man has to conquer every step, though he has already acquired footholds and has behind him the welling reservoirs of asia. nevertheless, white victory in latin america is sure--if internecine discord does not rob the white world of its strength. in latin america, as in africa, therefore, the whites must stand fast--and stand together. _part ii_ the ebbing tide of white chapter vi the white flood the world-wide expansion of the white race during the four centuries between and is the most prodigious phenomenon in all recorded history. in my opening pages i sketched both the magnitude of this expansion and its ethnic and political implications. i there showed that the white stocks together constitute the most numerous single branch of the human species, nearly one-third of all the human souls on earth to-day being whites. i also showed that white men racially occupy four-tenths of the entire habitable land-area of the globe, while nearly nine-tenths of this area is under white political control. such a situation is unprecedented. never before has a race acquired such combined preponderance of numbers and dominion. this white expansion becomes doubly interesting when we realize how sudden was its inception and how rapid its evolution. a single decade before the voyage of columbus, he would have been a bold prophet who should have predicted this high destiny. at the close of the fifteenth century the white race was confined to western and central europe, together with scandinavia and the northwestern parts of european russia. the total white race-area was then not much over , , square miles--barely one-tenth its area to-day. and in numbers the proportion was almost as unfavorable. at that moment (say, a. d. ) england could muster only about , , inhabitants, the entire population of the british isles not much exceeding , , souls. to be sure, the continent was relatively better peopled. still, the population of europe in was probably not one-sixth that of . furthermore, population had dwindled notably in the preceding one hundred and fifty years. during the fourteenth century europe had been hideously scourged by the "black death" (bubonic plague), which carried off fully one-half of its inhabitants, while thereafter a series of great wars had destroyed immense numbers of people. these losses had not been repaired. mediæval society was a static, equilibrated affair, which did not favor rapid human multiplication. in fact, european life had been intensive and recessive ever since the fall of the roman empire a thousand years before. europe's one mediæval attempt at expansion (the crusades) had utterly failed. in fact, far from expanding, white europe had been continuously assailed by brown and yellow asia. beginning with the huns in the last days of rome, continuing with the arabs, and ending with the mongols and ottoman turks, europe had undergone a millennium of asiatic aggression; and though europe had substantially maintained its freedom, many of its outlying marches had fallen under asiatic domination. in , for example, the turk was marching triumphantly across southeastern europe, embryonic russia was a tartar dependency, while the moor still clung to southern spain. the outlook for the white race at the close of the fifteenth century thus seemed gloomy rather than bright. with a stationary or declining population, exposed to the assaults of powerful external foes, and racked by internal pains betokening the demise of the mediæval order, white europe's future appeared a far from happy one. suddenly, in two short years, all was changed. in columbus discovered america, and in vasco da gama, doubling africa, found the way to india. the effect of these discoveries cannot be overestimated. we can hardly conceive how our mediæval forefathers viewed the ocean. to them the ocean was a numbing, constricting presence; the abode of darkness and horror. no wonder mediæval europe was static, since it faced on ruthless, aggressive asia, and backed on nowhere. then, in the twinkling of an eye, dead-end europe became mistress of the ocean--and thereby mistress of the world. no such strategical opportunity had, in fact, ever been vouchsafed. from classic times down to the end of the fifteenth century, white europe had confronted only the most martial and enterprising of asiatics. with such peoples war and trade had alike to be conducted on practically equal terms, and by frontal assault no decisive victory could be won. but, after the great discoveries, the white man could flank his old opponents. whole new worlds peopled by primitive races were unmasked, where the white man's weapons made victory certain, and whence he could draw stores of wealth to quicken his home life and initiate a progress that would soon place him immeasurably above his once-dreaded assailants. and the white man proved worthy of his opportunity. his inherent racial aptitudes had been stimulated by his past. the hard conditions of mediæval life had disciplined him to adversity and had weeded him by natural selection. the hammer of asiatic invasion, clanging for a thousand years on the brown-yellow anvil, had tempered the iron of europe into the finest steel. the white man could think, could create, could fight superlatively well. no wonder that redskins and negroes feared and adored him as a god, while the somnolent races of the farther east, stunned by this strange apparition rising from the pathless ocean, offered no effective opposition. thus began the swarming of the whites, like bees from the hive, to the uttermost ends of the earth. and, in return, europe was quickened to intenser vitality. goods, tools, ideas, men: all were produced at an unprecedented rate. so, by action and reaction, white progress grew by leaps and bounds. the spanish and portuguese pioneers presently showed signs of lassitude, but the northern nations--even more vigorous and audacious--instantly sprang to the front and carried forward the proud oriflamme of white expansion and world-dominion. for four hundred years the pace never slackened, and at the close of the nineteenth century the white man stood the indubitable master of the world. now four hundred years of unbroken triumph naturally bred in the white race an instinctive belief that its expansion would continue indefinitely, leading automatically to ever higher and more splendid destinies. before the russo-japanese war of the thought that white expansion could be stayed, much less reversed, never entered the head of one white man in a thousand. why should it, since centuries of experience had taught the exact contrary? the settlement of america, australasia, and siberia, where the few colored aborigines vanished like smoke before the white advance; the conquest of brown asia and the partition of africa, where colored millions bowed with only sporadic resistance to mere handfuls of whites; both sets of phenomena combined to persuade the white man that he was invincible, and that the colored types would everywhere give way before him and his civilization. the continued existence of dense colored populations in the tropics was ascribed to climate; and even in the tropics it was assumed that whites would universally form a governing caste, directing by virtue of higher intelligence and more resolute will, and exploiting natural resources to the incalculable profit of the whole white race. indeed, some persons believed that the tropics would become available for white settlement as soon as science had mastered tropical diseases and had prescribed an adequate hygiene. this uncritical optimism, suggested by experience, was fortified by ill-assimilated knowledge. during the closing decades of the past century, not only were biology and economics less advanced than to-day, but they were also infinitely less widely understood, exact knowledge being confined to academic circles. the general public had only a vulgarized smattering, mostly crystallizing about catchwords into which men read their prepossessions and their prejudices. for instance: biologists had recently formulated the law of the "survival of the fittest." this sounded very well. accordingly, the public, in conformity with the prevailing optimism, promptly interpreted "fittest" as synonymous with "best," in utter disregard of the grim truth that by "fittest" nature denotes only the type best adapted to existing conditions of environment, and that if the environment favors a low type, this low type (unless humanly prevented) will win, regardless of all other considerations. so again with economics. a generation ago relatively few persons realized that low-standard men would drive out high-standard men as inevitably as bad money drives out good, no matter what the results to society and the future of mankind. these are but two instances of that shallow, cock-sure nineteenth-century optimism, based upon ignorance and destined to be so swiftly and tragically disillusioned. however, for the moment, ignorance was bliss. accordingly, the _fin de siècle_ white world, having partitioned africa and fairly well dominated brown asia, prepared to extend its sway over the one portion of the colored world which had hitherto escaped subjection--the yellow far east. men began speaking glibly of "manifest destiny" or piously of "the white man's burden." european publicists wrote didactically on "the break-up of china," while russia, bestriding siberia, dipped behemoth paws in pacific waters and eyed japan. [illustration: categories of white world-supremacy] such was the white world's confident, aggressive temper at the close of the last century. to be sure, voices were occasionally raised warning that all was not well. such were the writings of professor pearson and meredith townsend. but the white world gave these cassandras the reception always accorded prophets of evil in joyous times--it ignored them or laughed them to scorn. in fact, few of the prophets displayed pearson's immediate certainty. most of them qualified their prophecies with the comforting assurance that the ills predicted were relatively remote. meredith townsend is a good case in point. the reader may recall his prophecy of white expulsion from asia, quoted in my second chapter.[ ] that prophecy occurs in the preface to the fourth edition, published in , and written in the light of the russo-japanese war. now, of course, mr. townsend's main thesis--europe's inability permanently to master and assimilate asia--had been elaborated by him long before the close of the nineteenth century. nevertheless, the preface to the fourth edition speaks of europe's failure to conquer asia as absolute and eviction from present holdings as probable within a relatively short time; whereas, in his original introduction, written in , he foresaw a great european assault upon asia, which would probably succeed and from which asia would shake itself free only after the lapse of more than a century. in fact, mr. townsend's words of so exactly portray white confidence at that moment that i cannot do better than quote him. his object in publishing his book is, he says, "to make asia stand out clearer in english eyes, because it is evident to me that the white races under the pressure of an entirely new impulse are about to renew their periodic attempt to conquer or at least to dominate that vast continent.... so grand is the prize that failures will not daunt the europeans, still less alter their conviction. if these movements follow historic lines they will recur for a time upon a constantly ascending scale, each repulse eliciting a greater effort, until at last asia like africa is 'partitioned,' that is, each section is left at the disposal of some white people. if europe can avoid internal war, or war with a much-aggrandized america, she will by a. d. be mistress in asia, and at liberty, as her people think, to enjoy."[ ] if the reader will compare these lines with mr. townsend's judgment, he will get a good idea of the momentous change wrought in white minds by asia's awakening during the first decade of the twentieth century as typified by the russo-japanese war. was, indeed, the high-water mark of the white tide which had been flooding for four hundred years. at that moment the white man stood on the pinnacle of his prestige and power. pass four short years, and the flash of the japanese guns across the murky waters of port arthur harbor revealed to a startled world--the beginning of the ebb. chapter vii the beginning of the ebb the russo-japanese war is one of those landmarks in human history whose significance increases with the lapse of time. that war was momentous, not only for what it did, but even more for what it revealed. the legend of white invincibility was shattered, the veil of prestige that draped white civilization was torn aside, and the white world's manifold ills were laid bare for candid examination. of course previous blindness to the trend of things had not been universal. the white world had had its cassandras, while keen-sighted asiatics had discerned symptoms of white weakness. nevertheless, so imposing was the white world's aspect and so unbroken its triumphant progress that these seers had been a small and discredited minority. the mass of mankind, white and non-white alike, remained oblivious to signs of change. this, after all, was but natural. not only had the white advance been continuous, but its tempo had been ever increasing. the nineteenth century, in particular, witnessed an unprecedented outburst of white activity. we have already surveyed white territorial gains, both as to area of settlement and sphere of political control. but along many other lines white expansion was equally remarkable. white race-increase--the basis of all else--was truly phenomenal. in the year the white race (then confined to europe) could not have numbered more than , , . in the population of europe was , , , while the whites living outside europe numbered over , , . the white race had thus a trifle more than doubled its numbers in three centuries. but in the year the population of europe was nearly , , , while the extra-european whites numbered fully , , . thus the whites had increased threefold in the european homeland, while in the new areas of settlement outside europe they had increased tenfold. the total number of whites at the end of the nineteenth century was thus nearly , , --a gain in numbers of almost , , , or over per cent. this spelled an increase six times as great as that of the preceding three centuries. white race-growth is most strikingly exemplified by the increase of its most expansive and successful branch--the anglo-saxons. in , as already seen, the population of england proper was not much over , , . of course this figure was abnormally low even for mediæval times, it being due to the terrible vital losses of the wars of the roses, then drawing to a close. a century later, under elizabeth, the population of england had risen to , , . in the population of england was , , , and in it was , , , the population of the british isles at the latter date being , , . but in the intervening centuries british blood had migrated to the ends of the earth, so that the total number of anglo-saxons in the world to-day cannot be much less than , , . this figure includes scotch and scotch-irish strains (which are of course identical with english in the anglo-saxon sense), and adopts the current estimate that some , , of people in the united states are predominantly of anglo-saxon origin. thus, in four centuries, the anglo-saxons multiplied between forty and fifty fold. the prodigious increase of the white race during the nineteenth century was due not only to territorial expansion but even more to those astounding triumphs of science and invention which gave the race unprecedented mastery over the resources of nature. this material advance is usually known as the "industrial revolution." the industrial revolution began in the later decades of the eighteenth century, but it matured during the first half of the nineteenth century, when it swiftly and utterly transformed the face of things. this transformation was, indeed, absolutely unprecedented in the world's history. hitherto man's material progress had been a gradual evolution. with the exception of gunpowder, he had tapped no new sources of material energy since very ancient times. the horse-drawn mail-coach of our great-grandfathers was merely a logical elaboration of the horse-drawn egyptian chariot; the wind-driven clipper-ship traced its line unbroken to ulysses's lateen bark before troy; while industry still relied on the brawn of man and beast or upon the simple action of wind and waterfall. suddenly all was changed. steam, electricity, petrol, the hertzian wave, harnessed nature's hidden powers, conquered distance, and shrunk the terrestrial globe to the measure of human hands. man entered a new material world, differing not merely in degree but in kind from that of previous generations. when i say "man," i mean, so far as the nineteenth century was concerned, the white man. it was the white man's brain which had conceived all this, and it was the white man alone who at first reaped the benefits. the two outstanding features of the new order were the rise of machine industry with its incalculable acceleration of mass-production, and the correlative development of cheap and rapid transportation. both these factors favored a prodigious increase in population, particularly in europe, since europe became the workshop of the world. in fact, during the nineteenth century, europe was transformed from a semi-rural continent into a swarming hive of industry, gorged with goods, capital, and men, pouring forth its wares to the remotest corners of the earth, and drawing thence fresh stores of raw material for new fabrication and exchange. the amount of wealth amassed by the white world in general and by europe in particular since the beginning of the nineteenth century is simply incalculable. some faint conception of it can be gathered from the growth of world-trade. in the year the entire volume of international commerce was valued at only $ , , , . in other words, after countless millenniums of human life upon our globe, man had been able to produce only that relatively modest volume of world-exchange. in the volume of world-trade had grown to $ , , , . in it had increased to $ , , , , and in it swelled to the inconceivable total of $ , , , --a twentyfold increase in a short hundred years. such were the splendid achievements of nineteenth-century civilization. but there was a seamy side to this cloth of gold. the vices of our age have been portrayed by a thousand censorious pens, and there is no need here to recapitulate them. they can mostly be summed up by the word "materialism." that absorption in material questions and neglect of idealistic values which characterized the nineteenth century has been variously accounted for. but, after all, was it not primarily due to the profound disturbance caused by drastic environmental change? civilized man had just entered a new material world, differing not merely in degree but in kind from that of his ancestors. it is a scientific truism that every living organism, in order to survive, must adapt itself to its environment. therefore any change of environment must evoke an immediate readjustment on the part of the organism, and the more pronounced the environmental change, the more rapid and thoroughgoing the organic readjustment must be. above all, speed is essential. nature brooks no delay, and the disharmonic organism must attune itself or perish. now, is not readaptation precisely the problem with which civilized man has been increasingly confronted for the past hundred years? no one surely can deny that our present environment differs vastly from that of our ancestors. but if this be so, the necessity for profound and rapid adaptation becomes equally true. in fact, the race has instinctively sensed this necessity, and has bent its best energies to the task, particularly on the materialistic side. that was only natural. the pioneer's preoccupation with material matters in opening up new country is self-evident, but what is not so generally recognized is the fact that nineteenth-century europe and the eastern united states are in many respects environmentally "newer" than remote backwoods settlements. of course the changed character of our civilization called for idealistic adaptations no less sweeping. these were neglected, because their necessity was not so compellingly patent. indeed, man was distinctly attached to his existing idealistic outfit, to the elaboration of which he had so assiduously devoted himself in former days, and which had fairly served the requirements of his simpler past. therefore nineteenth-century man concentrated intensively, exclusively upon materialistic problems, feeling that he could thus concentrate because he believed that the idealistic conquests of preceding epochs had given him sound moral bases upon which to build the new material edifice. unfortunately, that which had at first been merely a means to an end presently became an end in itself. losing sight of his idealisms, nineteenth-century man evolved a thoroughly materialistic philosophy. the upshot was a warped, one-sided development which quickly revealed its unsoundness. the fact that man was much less culpable for his errors than many moralists aver is quite beside the point, so far as consequences are concerned. nature takes no excuses. she demands results, and when these are not forthcoming she inexorably inflicts her penalties. as the nineteenth century drew toward its close the symptoms of a profound _malaise_ appeared on every side. even those most fundamental of all factors, the vitality and quality of the race, were not immune. vital statistics began to display features highly disquieting to thoughtful minds. the most striking of these phenomena was the declining birth-rate which affected nearly all the white nations toward the close of the nineteenth century and which in france resulted in a virtually stationary population. of course the mere fact of a lessened birth-rate, taken by itself, is not the unmixed evil which many persons assume. man's potential reproductive capacity, like that of all other species, is very great. in fact, the whole course of biological progress has been marked by a steady checking of that reproductive exuberance which ran riot at the beginning of life on earth. as havelock ellis well says: "of one minute organism it is estimated that, if its reproduction were not checked by death or destruction, in thirty days it would form a mass a million times larger than the sun. the conger-eel lays , , eggs, and if they all grew up, and reproduced themselves on the same scale, in two years the whole sea would become a wriggling mass of fish. as we approach the higher forms of life reproduction gradually dies down. the animals nearest to man produce few offspring, but they surround them with parental care, until they are able to lead independent lives with a fair chance of surviving. the whole process may be regarded as a mechanism for slowly subordinating quantity to quality, and so promoting the evolution of life to ever higher stages."[ ] while man's reproductive power is slight from the standpoint of bacteria and conger-eels, it is yet far from negligible, as is shown by the birth-rate of the less-advanced human types at all times, and by the birth-rate of the higher types under exceptionally favorable circumstances. the nineteenth century was one of these favorable occasions. in the new areas of settlement outside europe, vast regions practically untenanted by colored competitors invited the white colonists to increase and multiply; while europe itself, though historically "old country," was so transformed environmentally by the industrial revolution that it suddenly became capable of supporting a much larger population than heretofore. by the close of the century, however, the most pressing economic stimuli to rapid multiplication had waned in europe and in many of the race dependencies. therefore the rate of increase, even under the most favorable biological circumstances, should have shown a decline. the trouble was that this diminishing human output was of less and less biological value. wherever one looked in the white world, it was precisely those peoples of highest genetic worth whose birth-rate fell off most sharply, while within the ranks of the several peoples it was those social classes containing the highest proportion of able strains which were contributing the smallest quotas to the population. everywhere the better types (on which the future of the race depends) were numerically stationary or dwindling, while conversely, the lower types were gaining ground, their birth-rate showing relatively slight diminution. this "disgenic" trend, so ominous for the future of the race, is a melancholy commonplace of our time, and many efforts have been made to measure its progress in economic or social terms. one of the most striking and easily measured examples, however, is furnished by the category of race. as explained in the introduction, the white race divides into three main sub-species--the nordics, the alpines, and the mediterraneans. all three are good stocks, ranking in genetic worth well above the various colored races. however, there seems to be no question that the nordic is far and away the most valuable type; standing, indeed, at the head of the whole human genus. as madison grant well expresses it, the nordic is "the great race." now it is the nordics who are most affected by the disgenic aspects of our civilization. in the newer areas of white settlement like our pacific coast or the canadian northwest, to be sure, the nordics even now thrive and multiply. but in all those regions which typify the transformation of the industrial revolution, the nordics do not fit into the altered environment as well as either alpines or mediterraneans, and hence tend to disappear. before the industrial revolution the nordic's chief eliminator was war. his pre-eminent fighting ability, together with the position of leadership which he had generally acquired, threw on his shoulders the brunt of battle and exposed him to the greatest losses, whereas the more stolid alpine and the less robust mediterranean stayed at home and reproduced their kind. the chronic turmoil of both the mediæval and modern periods imposed a perpetual drain on the nordic stock, while the era of discovery and colonization which began with the sixteenth century further depleted the nordic ranks in europe, since it was adventurous nordics who formed the overwhelming majority of explorers and pioneers to new lands. thus, even at the end of the eighteenth century, europe was much less nordic than it had been a thousand years before. nevertheless, down to the close of the eighteenth century, the nordics suffered from no other notable handicaps than war and migration, and even enjoyed some marked advantages. being a high type, the nordic is naturally a "high standard" man. he requires healthful living conditions, and quickly pines when deprived of good food, fresh air, and exercise. down to the close of the eighteenth century, europe was predominantly agricultural. in cool northern and central europe, therefore, environment actually favored the big, blond nordics, especially as against the slighter, less muscular mediterranean; while in the hotter south the nordic upper class, being the rulers, were protected from field labor, and thus survived as an aristocracy. in peaceful times, therefore, the nordics multiplied and repaired the gaps wrought by proscription and war. the industrial revolution, however, profoundly modified this state of things. europe was transformed from an agricultural to an urbanized, industrial area. numberless cities and manufacturing centres grew up, where men were close packed and were subjected to all the evils of congested living. of course such conditions are not ideal for any stock. nevertheless, the nordic suffered more than any one else. the cramped factory and the crowded city weeded out the big, blond nordic with portentous rapidity, whereas the little brunet mediterranean, in particular, adapted himself to the operative's bench or the clerk's stool, prospered--and reproduced his kind. the result of these new handicaps, combined with the continuance of the traditional handicaps (war and migration), has been a startling decrease of nordics all over europe throughout the nineteenth century, with a corresponding resurgence of the alpine, and still more of the mediterranean, elements. in the united states it has been the same story. our country, originally settled almost exclusively by nordics, was toward the close of the nineteenth century invaded by hordes of immigrant alpines and mediterraneans, not to mention asiatic elements like levantines and jews. as a result, the nordic native american has been crowded out with amazing rapidity by these swarming, prolific aliens, and after two short generations he has in many of our urban areas become almost extinct. the racial displacements induced by a changed economic or social environment are, indeed, almost incalculable. contrary to the popular belief, nothing is more _unstable_ than the ethnic make-up of a people. above all, there is no more absurd fallacy than the shibboleth of the "melting-pot." as a matter of fact, the melting-pot may mix but does not melt. each race-type, formed ages ago, and "set" by millenniums of isolation and inbreeding, is a stubbornly persistent entity. each type possesses a special set of characters: not merely the physical characters visible to the naked eye, but moral, intellectual, and spiritual characters as well. all these characters are transmitted substantially unchanged from generation to generation. to be sure, where members of the same race-stock intermarry (as english and swedish nordics, or french and british mediterraneans), there seems to be genuine amalgamation. in most other cases, however, the result is not a blend but a mechanical mixture. where the parent stocks are very diverse, as in matings between whites, negroes, and amerindians, the offspring is a mongrel--a walking chaos, so consumed by his jarring heredities that he is quite worthless. we have already viewed the mongrel and his works in latin america. such are the two extremes. where intermarriage takes place between stocks relatively near together, as in crossings between the main divisions of the white species, the result may not be bad, and is sometimes distinctly good. nevertheless, there is no true amalgamation. the different race-characters remain distinct in the mixed offspring. if the race-types have generally intermarried, the country is really occupied by two or more races, the races always tending to sort themselves out again as pure types by mendelian inheritance. now one of these race-types will be favored by the environment, and it will accordingly tend to gain at the other's expense, while conversely the other types will tend to be bred out and to disappear. sometimes a modification of the environment through social changes will suddenly reverse this process and will penalize a hitherto favored type. we then witness a "resurgence," or increase, of the previously submerged element. a striking instance of this is going on in england. england is inhabited by two race-stocks--nordics and mediterraneans. down to the eighteenth century, england, being an agricultural country with a cool climate, favored the nordics, and but for the nordic handicaps of war and migration the mediterraneans might have been entirely eliminated. two hundred years ago the mediterranean element in england was probably very small. the industrial revolution, however, reversed the selective process, and to-day the small, dark types in england increase noticeably with every generation. the swart "cockney" is a resurgence of the primitive mediterranean stock, and is probably a faithful replica of his ancestors of neolithic times. such was the ominous "seamy side" of nineteenth-century civilization. the regressive trend was, in fact, a vicious circle. an ill-balanced, faulty environment penalized the superior strains and favored the inferior types; while, conversely, the impoverishing race-stocks, drained of their geniuses and overloading with dullards and degenerates, were increasingly unable to evolve environmental remedies. thus, by action and reaction, the situation grew steadily worse, disclosing its parlous state by numberless symptoms of social ill-health. all the unlovely _fin de siècle_ phenomena, such as the decay of ideals, rampant materialism, political disruption, social unrest, and the "decadence" of art and literature, were merely manifestations of the same basic ills. of course a thoughtful minority, undazzled by the prevalent optimism, pointed out evils and suggested remedies. unfortunately these "remedies" were superficial, because the reformers confused manifestations with causes and combated symptoms instead of fighting the disease. for example: the white world's troubles were widely ascribed to the loss of its traditional ideals, especially the decay of religious faith. but, as the belgian sociologist réné gérard acutely remarks, "to reason in this manner is, we think, to mistake the effect for the cause. to believe that philosophic and religious doctrines create morals and civilizations is a seductive error, but a fatal one. to transplant the beliefs and the institutions of a people to new regions in the hope of transplanting thither their virtues and their civilization as well is the vainest of follies.... the greater or less degree of vigor in a people depends on the power of its vital instinct, of its greater or less faculty for adapting itself to and dominating the conditions of the moment. when the vital instinct of a people is healthy, it readily suggests to the people the religious and moral doctrines which assure its survival. it is not, therefore, because a people possesses a definite belief that it is healthy and vigorous, but rather because the people is healthy and vigorous that it adopts or invents the belief which is useful to itself. in this way, it is not because it ceases to believe that it falls into decay, it is because it is in decay that it abandons the fertile dream of its ancestors without replacing this by a new dream, equally fortifying and creative of energy."[ ] thus we return once more to the basic principle of race. for what is "vital instinct" but the imperious urge of superior heredity? as madison grant well says: "the lesson is always the same, namely, that race is everything. without race there can be nothing except the slave wearing his master's clothes, stealing his master's proud name, adopting his master's tongue, and living in the crumbling ruins of his master's palace."[ ] the disastrous consequences of failure to realize this basic truth is nowhere more strikingly exemplified than in the field of white world-politics during the half-century preceding the great war. that period was dominated by two antithetical schools of political thinking: national-imperialism and internationalism. swayed by the ill-balanced spirit of the times, both schools developed extremist tendencies; the former producing such monstrous aberrations as pan-germanism and pan-slavism, the latter evolving almost equally vicious concepts like cosmopolitanism and proletarianism. the adherents of these rival schools combated one another and wrangled among themselves. they both disregarded the basic significance of race, together with its immediate corollary, the essential solidarity of the white world. as a matter of fact, white solidarity has been one of the great constants of history. for ages the white peoples have possessed a true "symbiosis" or common life, ceaselessly mingling their bloods and exchanging their ideas. accordingly, the various white nations which are the race's political expression may be regarded as so many planets gravitating about the sun of a common civilization. no such sustained and intimate race-solidarity has ever before been recorded in human annals. not even the solidarity of the yellow peoples is comparable in scope. of course the white world's internal frictions have been legion, and at certain times these frictions have become so acute that white men have been led to disregard or even to deny their fundamental unity. this is perhaps also because white solidarity is so pervasive that we _live in it_, and thus ordinarily do not perceive it any more than we do the air we breathe. should white men ever really lose their instinct of race-solidarity, they would asphyxiate racially as swiftly and surely as they would asphyxiate physically if the atmospheric oxygen should suddenly be withdrawn. however, down to at least, the white world never came within measurable distance of this fatal possibility. on the contrary, the white peoples were continually expressing their fundamental solidarity by various unifying concepts like the "pax romana" of antiquity, the "civitas dei" or christian commonwealth of the middle ages, and the "european concert" of nineteenth-century diplomacy. it was typical of the _malaise_ which was overtaking the white world that the close of the nineteenth century should have witnessed an ominous ignoring of white solidarity; that national-imperialists should have breathed mutual slaughter while internationalists caressed visions of "human solidarity" culminating in universal race-amalgamation; lastly, that asia's incipient revolt against white supremacy, typified by the russo-japanese war, should have found zealous white sponsors and abetters. nothing, indeed, better illustrates the white world's unsoundness at the beginning of the present century than its reaction to the russo-japanese conflict. the tremendous significance of that event was no more lost upon the whites than it was upon the colored peoples. most far-seeing white men recognized it as an omen of evil import for their race-future. and yet, even in the first access of apprehension, these same persons generally admitted that they saw no prospect of healing, constructive action to remedy the ills which were driving the white world along the downward path. analyzing the possibility of europe's presenting a common front to the perils disclosed by the japanese victories, the french publicist réné pinon sadly concluded in the negative, believing that political passions, social hates, and national rivalries would speak louder than the general interest. "contemporary europe," he wrote, in , "is probably not ready to receive and understand the lesson of the war. what are the examples of history to those gigantic commercial houses, uneasy for their new year's balances, which are our modern nations? it is in the nature of states founded on mercantilism to content themselves with a hand-to-mouth policy, without general views or idealism, satisfied with immediate gains and unable to prepare against a distant future. "whence, in the europe of to-day, could come the principle of an _entente_, and on what could it be based? too many divergent interests, too many rival ambitions, too many festering hates, too many 'dead who speak,' are present to stifle the voice of europe's conscience. "however menacing the external danger, we fear that political rancors would not down; that the enemy from without would find accomplices, or at least unconscious auxiliaries, within. far more than in its regiments and battleships, the power of japan lies in our discords, in the absence of an ideal capable of lifting the european peoples above the daily pursuit of immediate interests, capable of stirring their hearts with the thrill of a common emotion. the true 'yellow peril' lies within us."[ ] réné pinon was a true prophet. not only was the "writing on the wall" not taken to heart, the decade following the russo-japanese conflict witnessed a prodigious aggravation of all the ills which had afflicted white civilization during the nineteenth century. as if scourged by a tragic fate, the white world hurtled along the downward path, until it entered the fell shadow of--the modern peloponnesian war. chapter viii the modern peloponnesian war the peloponnesian war was the suicide of greek civilization. it is the saddest page of history. in the brief periclean epoch preceding the catastrophe hellas had shone forth with unparalleled splendor, and even those wonderful achievements seemed but the prelude to still loftier heights of glory. on the eve of its self-immolation the greek race, far from being exhausted, was bubbling over with exuberant vitality and creative genius. but the half-blown rose was nipped by the canker of discord. jealous rivalries and mad ambitions smouldered till they burst into a consuming flame. for a generation hellas tore itself to pieces in a delirium of fratricidal strife. and even this was not the worst. the "peace" which closed the peloponnesian war was no peace. it was a mere truce, dictated by the victors of the moment to sullen and vengeful enemies. imposed by the sword and infused with no healing or constructive virtue, the peloponnesian war was but the first of a war cycle which completed hellas's ruin. the irreparable disaster had, indeed, occurred: the gulfs of sundering hatred had become fixed, and the sentiment of greek race-unity was destroyed. having lost its soul, the greek race soon lost its body as well. drained of its best strains, the diminished remnant bowed to foreign masters and bastardized its blood with the hordes of inferior aliens who swarmed into the land. by the time of the roman conquest the greeks were degenerate, and the roman epithet "græculus" was a term of deserved contempt. thus perished the greeks--the fairest slip that ever budded on the tree of life. they perished by their own hands, in the flower of their youth, carrying with them to the grave, unborn, potencies which might have blessed and brightened the world for ages. nature is inexorable. no living being stands above her law; and protozoön or demigod, if they transgress, alike must die. the greek tragedy should be a warning to our own day. despite many unlikenesses, the nineteenth century was strangely reminiscent of the periclean age. in creative energy and fecund achievement, surely, its like had not been seen since "the glory that was greece," and the way seemed opening to yet higher destinies. but the brilliant sunrise was presently dimmed by gathering clouds. the birth of the twentieth century was attended with disquieting omens. the ills which had afflicted the preceding epoch grew more acute, synchronizing into an all-pervading, militant unrest. the spirit of change was in the air. ancient ideals and shibboleths withered before the fiery breath of a destructive criticism, while the solid crust of tradition cracked and heaved under the premonitory tremors of volcanic forces working far below. everywhere were seen bursting forth increasingly acute eruptions of human energy: a triumph of the dynamic over the static elements of life; a growing preference for violent and revolutionary, as contrasted with peaceful and evolutionary, solutions, running the whole politico-social gamut from "imperialism" to "syndicalism." everywhere could be discerned the spirit of unrest setting the stage for the great catastrophe. grave disorders were simply inevitable. they might perhaps have been localized. they might even have taken other forms. but the ills of our civilization were too deep-seated to have avoided grave disturbances. the prussian plotters of "weltmacht" did, indeed, precipitate the impending crisis in its most virulent and concentrated form, yet after all they were but sublimations of the abnormal trend of the times. the best proof of this is the white world's acutely pathological condition during the entire decade previous to the great war. that fierce quest after alliances and mad piling-up of armaments; those paroxysmal "crises" which racked diplomacy's feverish frame; those ferocious struggles which desolated the balkans: what were all these but symptoms denoting a consuming disease? to-day, by contrast, we think of the great war as having smitten a world basking in profound peace. what a delusion! cast back the mind's eye, and recall how hectic was the eve of the great war, not merely in politics but in most other fields as well. those opening months of ! why, europe seethed from end to end! when the great war began, england was on the verge of civil strife, russia was in the throes of an acute social revolt, italy had just passed through a "red week" threatening anarchy, and every european country was suffering from grave internal disorders. it was a strange, nightmarish time, that early summer of , to-day quite overshadowed by subsequent events, but which later generations will assign a proper place in the chain of world-history. well, armageddon began and ran its horrid course. with the grim chronology of those dreary years this book is not concerned. it is with the aftermath that we here deal. and that is a sufficiently gloomy theme. the material losses are prodigious, the vital losses appalling, while the spiritual losses have well-nigh bankrupted the human soul. turning first to the material losses, they are of course in the broadest sense incalculable, but approximate estimates have been made. perhaps the best of them is the analysis made by professor ernest l. bogert, who places the direct costs of the war at $ , , , and the indirect costs at $ , , , , thus arriving at the stupendous total of $ , , , . these well-nigh inconceivable estimates still do not adequately represent the total losses, figured even in monetary terms, for, as professor bogert remarks: "the figures presented in this summary are both incomprehensible and appalling, yet even these do not take into account the effect of the war on life, human vitality, economic well-being, ethics, morality, or other phases of human relationships and activities which have been disorganized and injured. it is evident from the present disturbances in europe that the real costs of the war cannot be measured by the direct money outlays of the belligerents during the five years of its duration, but that the very breakdown of modern economic society might be the price exacted."[ ] yet prodigious as has been the destruction of wealth, the destruction of life is even more serious. wealth can sooner or later be replaced, while vital losses are, by their very nature, irreparable. never before were such masses of men arrayed for mutual slaughter. during the late war nearly , , soldiers were mobilized, and the combatants suffered , , casualties, of whom nearly , , were killed or died of disease, nearly , , were wounded, and , , taken prisoners. the greatest sufferer was russia, which had over , , casualties, while next in order came germany with , , and france with , , casualties. the british empire had , , casualties. america's losses were relatively slight, our total casualties being a trifle under , . and this is only the beginning of the story. the figures just quoted refer only to fighting men. they take no account of the civilian population. but the civilian losses were simply incalculable, especially in eastern europe and the ottoman empire. it is estimated that for every soldier killed, five civilians perished by hunger, exposure, disease, massacre, or heightened infant mortality. the civilian deaths in poland and russia are placed at many millions, while other millions died in turkey and serbia through massacre and starvation. one item alone will give some idea of the wastage of human life during the war. the deaths beyond the normal mortality due to influenza and pneumonia induced by the war are estimated at , , . the total loss of life directly attributable to the war is probably fully , , , while if decreased birth-rates be added the total would rise to nearly , , . furthermore, so far as civilian deaths are concerned, the terrible conditions prevailing over a great part of europe since the close of have caused additional losses relatively as severe as those during the war years. the way in which europe's population has been literally decimated by the late war is shown by the example of france. in the population of france was , , . from this relatively moderate population nearly , , men were mobilized during the war. of these, nearly , , were killed, , , were wounded, and more than , were made prisoners. of the wounded, between , and , were left permanent physical wrecks. thus fully , , men--mostly drawn from the flower of french manhood--were dead or hopelessly incapacitated. meanwhile, the civilian population was also shrinking. omitting the civilian deaths in the northern departments under german occupation, the excess of deaths over births was more than , for , and averaged nearly , for the four succeeding war years. and the most alarming feature was that these losses were mainly due, not to deaths of adults, but to a slump in the birth-rate. french births, which had been , in , dropped to , in and , in . all told, it seems probable that between and the population of france diminished by almost , , --nearly one-tenth of the entire population. france's vital losses are only typical of what has to a greater or less extent occurred all over europe. the disgenic effect of the great war is simply appalling. the war was nothing short of a headlong plunge into white race-suicide. it was essentially a civil war between closely related white stocks; a war wherein every physical and mental effective was gathered up and hurled into a hell of lethal machinery which killed out unerringly the youngest, the bravest, and the best. even in the first frenzied hours of august, , wise men realized the horror that stood upon the threshold. the crowd might cheer, but the reflective already mourned in prospect the losses which were in store. as the english writer harold begbie then said: "remember this. among the young conscript soldiers of europe who will die in thousands, and perhaps millions, are the very flower of civilization; we shall destroy brains which might have discovered for us in ten or twenty years easements for the worst of human pains and solutions for the worst of social dangers. we shall blot those souls out of our common existence. we shall destroy utterly those splendid burning spirits reaching out to enlighten our darkness. our fathers destroyed those strange and valuable creatures whom they called 'witches.' we are destroying the brightest of our angels."[ ] but it is doubtful if any of these seers realized the full price which the race was destined to pay during more than four long, agonizing years. never before had war shown itself such an unerring gleaner of the best racial values. as early as the summer of mr. will irwin, an american war correspondent, remarked the growing convictions among all classes, soldiers as well as civilians, that the war was fatally impoverishing the race. "i have talked," he wrote, "with british officers and british tommies, with english ladies of fashion and english housewives, with french deputies and french cabmen, and in all minds alike i find the same idea fixed--what is to become of the french race and the british race, yes, and the german race, if this thing keeps up?" mr. irwin then goes on to describe the cumulative process by which the fittest were selected--for death. "i take it for granted," he says, "that, in a general way, the bravest are the best, physically and spiritually. now, in this war of machinery, this meat-mill, it is the bravest who lead the charges and attempt the daring feats, and, correspondingly, the loss is greatest among those bravest. "so much when the army gets into line. but in the conscript countries, like france and germany, there is a process of selection in picking the army by which the best--speaking in general terms--go out to die, while the weakest remain. the undersized, the undermuscled, the underbrained, the men twisted by hereditary deformity or devitalized by hereditary disease--they remain at home to propagate the breed. the rest--all the rest--go out to take chances. "furthermore, as modern conscript armies are organized, it is the youngest men who sustain the heaviest losses--the men who are not yet fathers. and from the point of view of the race, that is, perhaps, the most melancholy fact of all. "all the able-bodied men between the ages of nineteen and forty-five are in the ranks. but the older men do not take many chances with death.... these european conscript armies are arranged in classes according to age, and the younger classes are the men who do most of the actual fighting. the men in their late thirties or their forties, the 'territorials,' guard the lines, garrison the towns, generally attend to the business of running up the supplies. when we come to gather the statistics of this war we shall find that an overwhelming majority of the dead were less than thirty years old, and probably that the majority were under twenty-five. now, the territorial of forty or forty-five has usually given to the state as many children as he is going to give, while the man of twenty-five or under has usually given the state no children at all."[ ] mr. irwin was gauging the racial cost by the criterion of youth. a leading english scholar, mr. h. a. l. fisher, obtained equally alarming results by applying the test of genius. he analyzed the casualty lists "filled with names which, but for the fatal accidents of war, would certainly have been made illustrious for splendid service to the great cause of life.... a government actuated by a cold calculus of economic efficiency would have made some provision for sheltering from the hazards of war young men on whose exceptional intellectual powers our future progress might be thought to depend. but this has not been done, and it is impossible to estimate the extent to which the world will be impoverished in quality by the disappearance of so much youthful genius and talent.... the spiritual loss to the universe cannot be computed, and probably will exceed the injury inflicted on the world by the wide and protracted prevalence of the celibate orders in the middle ages."[ ] the american biologist s. k. humphrey did not underestimate the extent of the slaughter of genius-bearing strains when he wrote: "it is safe to say that among the millions killed will be a million who are carrying _superlatively_ effective inheritances--the dependence of the race's future. nothing is more absurd than the notion that these inheritances can be replaced in a few generations by encouraging the fecundity of the survivors. they are gone forever. the survivors are going to reproduce their own less-valuable kind. words fail to convey the appalling nature of the loss."[ ] it is the same melancholy tale when we apply the test of race. of course the war bore heavily on all the white race-stocks, but it was the nordics--the best of all human breeds--who suffered far and away the greatest losses. war, as we have seen, was always the nordic's deadliest scourge, and never was this truer than in the late struggle. from the racial standpoint, indeed, armageddon was a nordic civil war, most of the officers and a large proportion of the men on both sides belonging to the nordic race. everywhere it was the same story: the nordic went forth eagerly to battle, while the more stolid alpine and, above all, the little brunet mediterranean either stayed at home or even when at the front showed less fighting spirit, took fewer chances, and oftener saved their skins. the great war has thus unquestionably left europe much poorer in nordic blood, while conversely it has relatively favored the mediterraneans. madison grant well says: "as in all wars since roman times, from the breeding point of view the little dark man is the final winner."[ ] furthermore, it must be remembered that those disgenic effects which i have been discussing refer solely to losses inflicted upon the actual combatants. but we have already seen that for every soldier killed the war took five civilian lives. in fact, the war's profoundly devitalizing effects upon the general population can hardly be overestimated. those effects include not merely such obvious matters as privation and disease, but also obscurer yet highly destructive factors like nervous shock and prolonged overstrain. to take merely one instance, consider havelock ellis's remarks concerning "the ever-widening circles of anguish and misery and destitution which every fatal bullet imposes on humanity." he concludes: "it is probable that for every , , soldiers who fall on the field, , , other persons at home are plunged into grief, or poverty, or some form of life-diminishing trouble."[ ] most serious has been the war's effect upon the children. at home, as at the front, it is the young who have been sacrificed. the heaviest civilian losses have come through increased infant mortality and decreased birth-rates. the "slaughter of the innocents" has thus been twofold: it has slain millions of those already alive, and it has prevented millions more from being born or conceived. the decreased fecundity of women during the war even under good material conditions apparently shows that war's psychological reflexes tend to induce sterility. an italian savant, professor sergi, has elaborated this hypothesis in considerable detail. he contends that "war continued for a long time is the origin of this phenomenon (relative sterility), not only in the absolute sense of the loss of men in battle, but also through a series of special conditions which arise simultaneously with an unbalancing of vital processes and which create in the latter a complex phenomenon difficult to examine in every one of its elements. "the biological disturbance does not derive solely from the destruction of young lives, the ones best adapted to fecundity, but also from the unfavorable conditions into which a nation is unexpectedly thrown; from these come disorders of a mental and sentimental nature, nervousness, anxiety, grief, and pain of all kinds, to which the serious economic conditions of war-time also contribute; all these things have a harmful effect on the general organic economy of nations."[ ] from the combination of these losses on the battle-field and in the cradle arises what the biologist doctor saleeby terms "the menace of the dearth of youth." the european populations to-day contain an undue proportion of adults and the aged, while "the younger generation is no longer knocking at the door. we senescents may grow old in peace; but the facts bode ill for our national future."[ ] furthermore, this "dearth of youth" will not be easily repaired. the war may be over, but its aftermath is only a degree less unfavorable to human multiplication, especially of the better kinds. bad industrial conditions and the fearfully high cost of living continue to depress the birth-rate of all save the most reckless and improvident elements, whose increase is a curse rather than a blessing. to show only one of the many causes that to-day keep down the birth-rate, take the crushing burden of taxation, which hits especially the increase of the upper classes. the london _saturday review_ recently explained this very clearly when it wrote: "from a man with £ , a year the tax-gatherer takes £ . the remaining £ , , owing to the decreased value of money, has a purchasing power about equal to £ a year before the war. no young man will therefore think of marrying on less than £ , a year. we are thinking of the young man in the upper and middle classes. the man who starts with nothing does not, as a rule, arrive at £ , a year until he is past the marrying age. so the continuance of the species will be carried on almost exclusively by the class of manual workers of a low average caliber of brain. the matter is very serious. reading the letters and memoirs of a hundred years ago, one is struck by the size of the families of the aristocracy. one smiles at reading of the overflowing nurseries of edens, and cokes, and fitzgeralds. fourteen or fifteen children were not at all unusual amongst the county families."[ ] europe's convalescence must, at the very best, be a slow and difficult one. both materially and spiritually the situation is the reverse of bright. to begin with, the political situation is highly unsatisfactory. the diplomatic arrangements made by the versailles peace conference offer neither stability nor permanence. in the next chapter i shall have more to say about the versailles conference. for the moment, let me quote the observations of the well-known british publicist j. l. garvin, who adequately summarizes the situation when he says: "as matters stand, no great war ever was followed by a more disquieting and limited peace. everywhere the democratic atmosphere is charged with agitation. there is still war or anarchy, or both, between the baltic and the pacific across a sixth part of the whole earth. without a restored russia no outlook can be confident. either a bolshevist or reactionary or even a patriotic junction between germany and russia might disrupt civilization as violently as before or to even worse effect."[ ] political uncertainty is a poor basis on which to rebuild europe's shattered economic life. and this economic reconstruction would, under the most favorable circumstances, be very difficult. we have already seen how, owing to the industrial revolution, europe became the world's chief workshop, exporting manufactured products in return for foodstuffs to feed its workers and raw materials to feed its machines, these imports being drawn from the four quarters of the globe. in other words, europe had ceased to be self-sufficing, the very life of its industries and its urban populations being dependent upon foreign importations from the most distant regions. europe's prosperity before the war was due to the development of a marvellous system of world-trade; intricate, nicely adjusted, functioning with great efficiency, and running at high speed. then down upon this delicately organized mechanism crashed the trip-hammer of the great war, literally smashing it to pieces. to reconstruct so intricate a fabric takes time. meanwhile, how are the huge urban masses to live, unfitted and unable as they are to draw their sustenance from their native soil? if their sufferings become too great there is a real danger that all europe may collapse into hopeless chaos. mr. frank a. vanderlip did not overstate the danger when he wrote: "i believe it is possible that there may be let loose in europe forces that will be more terribly destructive than have been the forces of the great war."[ ] the best description of europe's economic situation is undoubtedly that of mr. herbert hoover, who, from his experience as inter-allied food controller, is peculiarly qualified to pass authoritative judgment. says mr. hoover: "the economic difficulties of europe as a whole at the signature of peace may be almost summarized in the phrase 'demoralized productivity.' the production of necessaries for this , , population (including russia) has never been at so low an ebb as at this day. "a summary of the unemployment bureaus in europe will show that , , families are receiving unemployment allowances in one form or another, and are, in the main, being paid by constant inflation of currency. a rough estimate would indicate that the population of europe is at least , , greater than can be supported without imports, and must live by the production and distribution of exports; and their situation is aggravated not only by lack of raw materials, and imports, but also by low production of european raw materials. due to the same low production, europe is to-day importing vast quantities of certain commodities which she formerly produced for herself and can again produce. generally, in production, she is not only far below even the level of the time of the signing of the armistice, but far below the maintenance of life and health without an unparalleled rate of import.... "from all these causes, accumulated to different intensity in different localities, there is the essential fact that, unless productivity can be rapidly increased, there can be nothing but political, moral, and economic chaos, finally interpreting itself in loss of life on a scale hitherto undreamed of."[ ] such are the material and vital losses inflicted by the great war. they are prodigious, and they will not easily be repaired. europe starts its reconstruction under heavy handicaps, not the least of these being the drain upon its superior stocks, which has deprived it of much of the creative energy that it so desperately needs. those , , or more dead or incapacitated soldiers represented the flower of europe's young manhood--the very men who are especially needed to-day. it is young men who normally alone possess both maximum driving power and maximum plasticity of mind. all the european belligerents are dangerously impoverished in their stock of youth. the resultant handicap both to europe's working ability and europe's brain-activity is only too plain. moreover, material and even vital losses do not tell the whole story. the moral and spiritual losses, though not easily measured, are perhaps even more appalling. in fact, the darkest cloud on the horizon is possibly the danger that reconstruction will be primarily material at the expense of moral and spiritual values, thus leading to a warped development even more pronounced than that of the nineteenth century and leading inevitably to yet more disastrous consequences. the danger of purely material reconstruction is of course the peril which lurks behind every great war, and which in the past has wrought such tragic havoc. at the beginning of the late war we heard much talk of its morally "regenerative" effects, but as the grim holocaust went on year after year, far-sighted moralists warned against a fatal drain of europe's idealistic forces which might break the thin crust of european civilization so painfully wrought since the dark ages. that these warning voices were not without reason is proved by the chaos of spiritual, moral, and even intellectual values which exists in europe to-day, giving play to such monstrous insanities as bolshevism. the danger is that this chaos may be prolonged and deepened by the complex of two concurrent factors: spiritual drain during the war, and spiritual neglect in the immediate future due to overconcentration upon material reconstruction. many of the world's best minds are seriously concerned at the outlook. for example, doctor gore, the bishop of oxford, writes: "there is the usual depression and lowering of moral aims which always follows times of war. for the real terror of the time of war is not during the war; then war has certain very ennobling powers. it is after-war periods which are the curse of the world, and it looks as if the same were going to prove true of this war. i own that i never felt anxiety such as i do now. i think the aspect of things has never been so dark as at this moment. i think the temper of the nations has degraded since the declaration of the armistice to a degree that is almost terrifying."[ ] the intellectual impoverishment wrought by the war is well summarized by professor c. g. shaw. "we did more before the war than we shall do after it," he writes. "war will have so exhausted man's powers of action and thought that he will have little wit or will left for the promotion of anything over and above necessary repair."[ ] europe's general impoverishment in all respects was vividly portrayed by a leading article of the london _saturday review_ entitled "the true destructiveness of war." pointing to the devastated areas of northern france as merely symptomatic of the devastation wrought in spiritual as well as material fields, it said: "reflection only adds to the effect upon us of these miles of wasted country and ruined towns. all this represents not a thousandth part of the desolation which the war has brought upon our civilization. these devastated areas scarring the face of europe are but a symbol of the desolation which will shadow the life of the world for at least a generation. the coming years will be bleak, in respect of all the generous and gracious things which are the products of leisure and of minds not wholly taken up by the necessity to live by bread alone. for a generation the world will have to concentrate upon material problems. "the tragedy of the great war--a tragedy which enhances the desolation of rheims--is that it should have killed almost everything which the best of our soldiers died to preserve, and that it should have raised more problems than it has solved. "we would sacrifice a dozen cathedrals to preserve what the war has destroyed in england.... we would readily surrender our ten best cathedrals to be battered by the artillery of hindenburg as a ransom. surely it would be better to lose westminster abbey than never again to have anybody worthy to be buried there."[ ] europe is, indeed, passing through the most critical spiritual phase of the war's aftermath--what i may term the zero hour of the spirit. when the trenches used to fill with infantry waiting in the first cold flicker of the dawn for the signal to go "over the top," they called it the "zero hour." well, europe now faces the zero hour of peace. it is neither a pleasant nor a stimulating moment. the "tumult and the shouting" have died. the captains, kings--and presidents--have departed. war's hectic urge wanes, losses are counted, the heroic pose is dropped. such is the moment when the peoples are bidden to go "over the top" once more, this time toward peace objectives no less difficult than those of the battle-field. weakened, tired europe knows this, feels this--and dreads the plunge into the unknown. hence the _malaise_ of the zero hour. the extraordinary turmoil of the european soul is strikingly set forth by the french thinker paul valéry. "we civilizations," he writes, "now know that we are mortal. we had heard tell of whole worlds vanished, of empires gone to the bottom with all their engines; sunk to the inexplorable bottom of the centuries with their gods and their laws, their academies, their science, pure and applied; their grammars, their dictionaries, their classics, their romantics and their symbolists, their critics and their critics' critics. we knew well that all the apparent earth is made of ashes, and that ashes have a meaning. we perceived, through the mists of history, phantoms and huge ships laden with riches and spiritual things. we could not count them. but these wrecks, after all, were no concern of ours. "elam, nineveh, babylon were vague and lovely names, and the total ruin of these worlds meant as little to us as their very existence. but france, england, russia--these would also be lovely names. lusitania also is a lovely name. and now we see that the abyss of history is large enough for every one. we feel that a civilization is as fragile as a life. circumstances which would send the works of baudelaire and keats to rejoin the works of menander are no longer in the least inconceivable; they are in all the newspapers.... "thus the spiritual persepolis is ravaged equally with the material susa. all is not lost, but everything has felt itself perish. "an extraordinary tremor has run through the spinal marrow of europe. it has felt, in all its thinking substance, that it recognized itself no longer, that it no longer resembled itself, that it was about to lose consciousness--a consciousness acquired by centuries of tolerable disasters, by thousands of men of the first rank, by geographical, racial, historical chances innumerable.... "the military crisis is perhaps at an end; the economic crisis is visibly at its zenith; but the intellectual crisis--it is with difficulty that we can seize its true centre, its exact phase. the facts, however, are clear and pitiless: there are thousands of young writers and young artists who are dead. there is the lost illusion of a european culture, and the demonstration of the impotence of knowledge to save anything whatever; there is science, mortally wounded in its moral ambitions, and, as it were, dishonored by its applications; there is idealism, victor with difficulty, grievously mutilated, responsible for its dreams; realism, deceived, beaten, with crimes and misdeeds heaped upon it; covetousness and renunciation equally put out; religions confused among the armies, cross against cross, crescent against crescent; there are the sceptics themselves, disconcerted by events so sudden, so violent, and so moving, which play with our thoughts as a cat with a mouse--the sceptics lose their doubts, rediscover them, lose them again, and can no longer make use of the movements of their minds. "the rolling of the ship has been so heavy that at the last the best-hung lamps have been upset. "from an immense terrace of elsinore which extends from basle to cologne, and touches the sands of nieuport, the marshes of the somme, the chalk of champagne, and the granite of alsace, the hamlet of europe now looks upon millions of ghosts."[ ] such is europe's deplorable condition as she staggers forth from the hideous ordeal of the great war; her fluid capital dissipated, her fixed capital impaired, her industrial fabric rent and tattered, her finances threatened with bankruptcy, the flower of her manhood dead on the battle-field, her populations devitalized and discouraged, her children stunted by malnutrition. a sombre picture. and europe is the white homeland, the heart of the white world. it is europe that has suffered practically all the losses of armageddon, which may be considered the white civil war. the colored world remains virtually unscathed. here is the truth of the matter: the white world to-day stands at the crossroads of life and death. it stands where the greek world stood at the close of the peloponnesian war. a fever has racked the white frame and undermined its constitution. the unsound therapeutics of its diplomatic practitioners retard convalescence and endanger real recovery. worst of all, the instinct of race-solidarity has partially atrophied. grave as is the situation, it is not yet irreparable, any more than greece's condition was hopeless after Ægospotami. it was not the peloponnesian war which sealed hellas's doom, but the cycle of political anarchy and moral chaos of which the peloponnesian war was merely the opening phase. our world is too vigorous for even the great war, of itself, to prove a mortal wound. the white world thus still has its choice. but it must be a positive choice. decisions--firm decisions--must be made. constructive measures--drastic measures--must be taken. above all: time presses, and drift is fatal. the tide ebbs. the swimmer must put forth strong strokes to reach the shore. else--swift oblivion in the dark ocean. chapter ix the shattering of white solidarity the instinctive comity of the white peoples is, as i have already said, perhaps the greatest constant of history. it is the psychological basis of white civilization. cohesive instinct is as vital to race as gravitation is to matter. without them, atomic disintegration would alike result. in speaking of race-instinct, i am not referring merely to the ethnic theories that have been elaborated at various times. those theories were, after all, but attempts to explain intellectually the urge of that profound emotion known to sociologists as the "consciousness of kind." white race-consciousness has been of course perturbed by numberless internal frictions, which have at times produced partial inhibitions of unitary feeling. nevertheless, when really faced by non-white opposition, white men have in the past instinctively tended to close their ranks against the common foe. one of the great war's most deplorable results has been an unprecedented weakening of white solidarity which, if not repaired, may produce the most disastrous consequences. during the nineteenth century the sentiment of white solidarity was strong. the great explorers and empire-builders who spread white ascendancy to the ends of the earth felt that they were apostles of their race and civilization as well as of a particular country. rivalries might be keen and colonial boundary questions acute; nevertheless, in their calmer moments, the white peoples felt that the expansion of one white nation buttressed the expansion of all. professor pearson undoubtedly voiced the spirit of the day when he wrote (about ) that it would be well "if european statesmen could understand that the wars which carry desolation into civilized countries are allowing the lower races to recruit their numbers and strength. two centuries hence it may be matter of serious concern to the world if russia has been displaced by china on the amoor, if france has not been able to colonize north africa, or if england is not holding india. for civilized men there can be only one fatherland, and whatever extends the influence of those races that have taken their faith from palestine, their laws of beauty from greece, and their civil law from rome, ought to be matter of rejoicing to russian, german, anglo-saxon, and frenchman alike."[ ] the progress of science also fortified white race-consciousness with its sanctions. the researches of european scholars identified the founders of our civilization with a race of tall, white-skinned barbarians, possessing regular features, brown or blond hair, and light eyes. this was, of course, what we now know as the nordic type. at first the problem was ill understood, the tests applied being language and culture rather than physical characteristics. for these reasons the early "caucasian" and "aryan" hypotheses were self-contradictory and inadequate. nevertheless, the basis was sound, and the effects on white popular psychology were excellent. particularly good were the effects upon the peoples predominantly of nordic blood. obviously typifying as they did the prehistoric creators of white civilization, nordics everywhere were strengthened in consciousness of genetic worth, feeling of responsibility for world-progress, and urge toward fraternal collaboration. the supreme value of nordic blood was clearly analyzed by the french thinker count arthur de gobineau as early as [ ] (albeit gobineau employed the misleading "aryan" terminology), and his thesis was subsequently elaborated by many other writers, notably by englishmen, germans, and scandinavians. the results of all this were plainly apparent by the closing years of the nineteenth century. quickened nordic race-consciousness played an important part in stimulating anglo-american fraternization, and induced acts like the oxford scholarship legacy of cecil rhodes. the trend of this movement, though cross-cut by nationalistic considerations, was clearly in the direction of a nordic _entente_--a pan-nordic syndication of power for the safeguarding of the race-heritage and the harmonious evolution of the whole white world. it was a glorious aspiration, which, had it been realized, would have averted armageddon. unfortunately the aspiration remained a dream. the ill-balanced tendencies of the late nineteenth century were against it, and they ultimately prevailed. the abnormal growth of national-imperialism, in particular, wrought fatal havoc. the exponents of imperialistic propagandas like pan-germanism and pan-slavism put forth literally boundless pretensions, planning the domination of the entire planet by their special brand of national-imperialism. such men had scant regard for race-lines. all who stood outside their particular nationalistic group were vowed to the same subjection. indeed, the national-imperialists presently seized upon race teachings, and prostituted them to their own ends. a notable example of this is the extreme pan-german propaganda of houston stewart chamberlain[ ] and his fellows. chamberlain makes two cardinal assumptions: he conceives modern germany as racially almost purely nordic; and he regards all nordics outside the german linguistic-cultural group as either unconscious or renegade teutons who must at all costs be brought into the german fold. to any one who understands the scientific realities of race, the monstrous absurdity of these assumptions is instantly apparent. the fact is that modern germany, far from being purely nordic, is mainly alpine in race. nordic blood preponderates only in the northwest, and is merely veneered over the rest of germany, especially in the upper classes. while the _germania_ of roman days was unquestionably a nordic land, it has been computed that of the , , inhabitants of the german empire in , only , , were purely nordic in character. this displacement of the german nordics since classic times is chiefly due to germany's troubled history, especially to the horrible thirty years' war which virtually annihilated the nordics of south germany. this racial displacement has wrought correspondingly profound changes in the character of the german people. the truth of the matter is, of course, that the pan-germans were thinking in terms of nationality instead of race, and that they were using pseudo-racial arguments as camouflage for essentially political ends. the pity of it is that these arguments have had such disastrous repercussions in the genuine racial sphere. the late war has not only exploded pan-germanism, it has also discredited nordic race-feeling, so unjustly confused by many persons with pan-german nationalistic propaganda. such persons should remember that the overwhelming majority of nordics live outside of germany, being mainly found in scandinavia, the anglo-saxon countries, northern france, the netherlands, and baltic russia. to let teuton propaganda gull us into thinking of germany as the nordic fatherland is both a danger and an absurdity. while pan-germanism was mainly responsible for precipitating armageddon with all its disastrous consequences, it was russian pan-slavism which dealt the first shrewd blow to white solidarity. toward the close of the nineteenth century, pan-slavism's "eastern" wing, led by prince ukhtomsky and other chauvinists of his ilk, went so far in its imperialistic obsession as actually to deny russia's white blood. these pan-slavists boldly proclaimed the morbid, mystical dogma that russia was asiatic, not european, and thereupon attempted to seize china as a lever for upsetting, first the rest of asia, and then the non-russian white world--elegantly described as "the rotten west." the white power immediately menaced was, of course, england, who in acute fear for her indian empire, promptly riposted by allying herself with japan. russia was diplomatically isolated and militarily beaten in the russo-japanese war. thus the russo-japanese war, that destroyer of white prestige whose ominous results we have already noted, was precipitated mainly by the reckless short-sightedness of white men themselves. a second blow to white solidarity was presently administered--this time by england in concluding her second alliance-treaty with japan. the original alliance, signed in , was negotiated for a definite, limited objective--the checkmating of russia's over-weening imperialism. even that instrument was dangerous, but under the circumstances it was justifiable and inevitable. the second alliance-treaty, however, was so general and far-reaching in character that practically all white men in the far east, including most emphatically englishmen themselves, pronounced it a great disaster. meanwhile, german imperialism was plotting even deadlier strokes at white race-comity, not merely by preparing war against white neighbors in europe, but also by ingratiating itself with the moslem east and by toying with schemes for building up a black military empire in central africa. lastly, france was actually recruiting black, brown, and yellow hordes for use on european battle-fields; while italy, by her buccaneering raid on tripoli, outraged islam's sense of justice and strained its patience to the breaking-point. thus, in the years preceding armageddon, all the european powers displayed a reckless absorption in particularistic ambitions and showed a callous indifference to larger race-interests. the rapid weakening of white solidarity was clearly apparent. however, white solidarity, though diplomatically compromised, was emotionally not yet really undermined. those dangerous games above mentioned were largely the work of cynical chancelleries and ultra-imperialist propagandas. the average european, whatever his nationality, still tended to react instinctively against such practices. this was shown by the sharp criticism which arose from the most varied quarters. for example: russia and britain were alike sternly taken to task both at home and abroad for their respective far eastern policies; proposed german alliances with pan-islamism and japan preached by disciples of _machtpolitik_ were strenuously opposed as race-treason by powerful sections of german thought; while italy's tripolitan imbroglio was generally denounced as the most foolhardy trifling with the common european interest. a good illustration of instinctive white solidarity in the early years of the twentieth century is a french journalist's description of the attitude of the white spectators (of various nationalities) gathered to watch the landing in japan of the first russian prisoners taken in the russo-japanese war. this writer depicts in moving language the literally horrifying effect of the spectacle upon himself and his fellows. "what a triumph," he exclaims, "what a revenge for the little nippons to see thus humiliated these big, splendid men who, for them, represented, not only russians, but those europeans whom they so detest! this scene tragic in its simplicity, this grief passing amid joy, these whites, vanquished and captives, defiling before those free and triumphant yellows--this was not russia beaten by japan, not the defeat of one nation by another; it was something new, enormous, prodigious; it was the victory of one world over another; it was the revenge which effaced the centuries of humiliations borne by asia; it was the awakening hope of the oriental peoples; it was the first blow given to the other race, to that accursed race of the west, which, for so many years, had triumphed without even having to struggle. and the japanese crowd felt all this, and the few other asiatics who found themselves there shared in this triumph. the humiliation of these whites was solemn, frightful. i completely forgot that these captives were russians, and i would add that the other europeans there, though anti-russian, felt the same _malaise_: they also were forced to feel that these captives were their own kind. when we took the train for kobè, an instinctive solidarity drove us huddling into the same compartment."[ ] thus white solidarity, while unquestionably weakened, was still a weighty factor down to august, . but the first shots of armageddon saw white solidarity literally blown from the muzzles of the guns. an explosion of internecine hatred burst forth more intense and general than any ever known before. both sets of combatants proclaimed a duel to the death; both sides vowed the enemy to something near annihilation; while even scientists and _littérateurs_, disrupting the ancient commonwealths of wisdom and beauty, put one another furiously to the ban. in their savage death-grapple neither side hesitated for an instant to grasp at any weapon, whatever the ultimate consequences to the race. the allies poured into white europe colored hordes of every pigment under the sun; the teutonic powers wielded pan-islam as a besom of wrath to sweep clean every white foothold in hither asia and north africa; while far and wide over the dark continent black armies fought for their respective masters--and learned the hidden weakness of the white man's power. in the far east, japan, left to her own devices, bent amorphous china to her imperious will, thereby raising up a potential menace for the entire earth. every day the tide of intestine hatred within the white world rose higher, until the very concept of a common blood and cultural past seemed in danger of being blotted out. a symposium of the "hate literature" of the great war is fortunately no part of my task, but the reader will readily recall both its abysmal fury and its irreconcilable implications. the most appalling feature was the way in which many writers assumed that this state of mind would be permanent; that the end of the great war might be only the beginning of a war-cycle leading to the utter disruption of white solidarity and civilization. in the spring of , the london _nation_ remarked gloomily: "europe is now being mentally conceived as inevitably and permanently dual. we are ceasing to think of europe. the normal end of war (which is peace) is to be submerged in the idea of a war-series indefinitely prolonged. soon the entire continent will have but one longing--the longing for rest. the cup is to be dashed from its lips! for a world steeped in fear and ruled by the barren logomachy of hate, diplomatic intercourse would almost cease to be possible.... in the matter of culture, modern europe would tend to relapse to a state inferior even to that of mediæval europe, and to sink far below that of the renaissance."[ ] in similar vein, the noted german historian eduard meyer[ ] predicted that armageddon was only the first of a long series of anglo-german "punic wars" in which modern civilization would retrograde to a condition of semi-barbarism. germany, according to this prophecy, would be the victor--but a pyrrhic victor, for the colored races, taking advantage of white decadence, would destroy european supremacy and involve all the white nations in a common ruin. the ulcerated state of european war-psychology did, in fact, lend ominous emphasis to these gloomy prognostications. before , as we have seen, imperialistic trafficking with common race-interests usually roused wide-spread criticism, while even more, the use of colored troops in white quarrels always roused bitter popular condemnation. in the darkest hours of the boer war, english public opinion had refused to sanction the use of either black african or brown indian troops against the white foe, while french plans for raising black armies of african savages for use in europe were almost universally reprobated. before armageddon there thus existed a genuine moral repugnance against settling domestic differences by calling in the alien without the gates. the great war, however, sent all such scruples promptly into the discard. not only did the belligerent governments use all the colored troops they could equip, but the belligerent peoples hailed this action with unqualified approval. the allies were of course the more successful in practice, but the germans were just as eager, and the exertions of the prussian general liman von sanders actually got turkish divisions to the european battle-fronts. the psychological effect of these colored auxiliaries in deepening the hatred of the white combatants was deplorable. germany's use of turks raised among the allies wrathful emotions reminiscent of the crusades, while the havoc wrought in the teutonic ranks by black senegalese and yellow gurkhas, together with allied utterances like lord curzon's wish to see bengal lancers on the unter den linden and gurkhas camping at sans souci, so maddened the german people that the very suggestion of white solidarity was jeeringly scoffed at as the most idiotic sentimentality. here is a german officer's account of a senegalese attack on his position, which vividly depicts the mingled horror and fury awakened in german hearts by these black opponents: "they came. first singly, at wide intervals. feeling their way, like the arms of a horrible cuttlefish. eager, grasping, like the claws of a mighty monster. thus they rushed closer, flickering and sometimes disappearing in the cloud. entire bodies and single limbs, now showing in the harsh glare, now sinking in the shadows, came nearer and nearer. strong, wild fellows, their log-like, fat, black skulls wrapped in pieces of dirty rags. showing their grinning teeth like panthers, with their bellies drawn in and their necks stretched forward. some with bayonets on their rifles. many only armed with knives. monsters all, in their confused hatred. frightful their distorted, dark grimaces. horrible their unnaturally wide-opened, burning, bloodshot eyes. eyes that seem like terrible beings themselves. like unearthly, hell-born beings. eyes that seemed to run ahead of their owners, lashed, unchained, no longer to be restrained. on they came like dogs gone mad and cats spitting and yowling, with a burning lust for human blood, with a cruel dissemblance of their beastly malice. behind them came the first wave of the attackers, in close order, a solid, rolling black wall, rising and falling, swaying and heaving, impenetrable, endless."[ ] here, again, is the proposal of a british officer, to raise a million black savages from england's african colonies for use on the western front. major stuart-stephens exults in britain's "almost unlimited reservoir of african man-power." in northern nigeria alone, he remarks, there are to-day more than , warlike tribesmen. "let them be used!" says the major. "these 'bonny fechters' are now engaged in the pastoral arts of peace. but i would make bold to assert that a couple of hundred thousand could, after six months' training, be usefully employed in daredevil charges into german trenches." major stuart-stephens hopes that at least the sudanese battalions will be transferred _en masse_ to the western front. "this," he concludes, "would mean the placing at once in the trenches of, say, , big, lusty coal-black devils, the time of whose life is the wielding of the bayonet, and whose advent would not be regarded by the boches as a pleasing omen of more to come of the same sort."[ ] the military possibilities are truly engaging! there are literally tens of millions of fighting blacks and scores of millions of fighting asiatics now living under white rule who could conceivably be armed and shipped to european battle-fields. after which, of course, europe, the white homeland, would be--a queer place. fortunately for our race, the late war did not see this sort of thing carried to its logical conclusion. but the harm done was bad enough. the white world grew accustomed to the use of colored mercenaries and to the contracting of alliances with colored peoples against white opponents as a mere matter of course. the german war-mind, in particular, teemed with colored alliance-projects. unable to compete with the allies in getting colored troops to europe, germans planned to revenge themselves in other fields. the turkish alliance and the resulting "holy war" proclamation were hailed with delight. "over there in turkey," wrote the well-known german publicist ernst jaeckh, "stretch anatolia and mesopotamia: anatolia, the 'land of the sunrise'; mesopotamia, the region of ancient paradise. may these names be to us a sign: may this world war bring to germany and turkey the sunrise and the paradise of a new time; may it confer upon an assured turkey and a greater germany the blessing of a fruitful turco-teutonic collaboration in peace after a victorious turco-teutonic collaboration in war."[ ] the scope of germany's asiatic aspirations during the war is exemplified by an article from the pen of the learned orientalist professor bernhardt molden.[ ] germany's aid to turkey, contends professor molden, is merely symptomatic of her policy to raise the other asiatic peoples now crushed beneath english and russian domination. thus germany will create puissant allies for the "second punic war." germany must therefore strive to solidify the great central asian _bloc_--turkey, persia, afghanistan, china. professor molden urges a "pan-asian railroad" from constantinople to peking. this should be especially alluring to afghanistan, which would thereby become one of the great pivots of world-politics and trade. in fine: "germany must free asia." as another prominent german writer, friedrich delitzsch, wrote in similar vein: "to renovate the east--such is germany's mission."[ ] in such a mood, germans hailed japan's absence of genuine hostility with the greatest satisfaction. the gust of rage which swept germany at japan's seizure of kiao-chao was soon allayed by numerous writers preaching reconciliation and eventual alliance with the mistress of the far east. typical of this pro-japanese propaganda is an article by herr j. witte, a former official in the far east, which appeared in . herr witte chides his countrymen for their talk about the yellow peril. such a peril may exist in the future, but it is not pressing at this moment, "at any rate for us germans, who have no great territorial possessions in the far east.... we might permit ourselves to speak of a yellow peril if there was a white solidarity. this, however, does not exist. we are learning this just now by bitter experience on our own flesh and blood. our foes have marshalled peoples of all races against us in battle. so long as this helps them, all race-antipathies and race-interests are to them matters of supreme indifference. under these circumstances, in the midst of a life-and-death struggle against the peoples of the white race, shall we play the rôle of guardian angel of these peoples against the yellow peoples? for us, as germans, there is now only one supreme life-interest, to which all other interests must be subordinated: the safety and advancement of germany and of _deutschtum_ in the world." herr witte therefore advocates a "close political understanding between germany and japan. in future we can accomplish nothing in the teeth of japan. therefore we must get on good terms with japan. and we can do it, too. germany is, in fact, the country above all others who in the future has the best prospect of allying herself advantageously with the far eastern peoples."[ ] and so it went throughout the war-years: both sides using all possible colored aid to down the white foe; both sides alike reckless of the ultimate racial consequences. in fact, leaving ultimate consequences aside, many persons feared during the later phases of the war that europe might be headed for immediate dissolution. as early as mid- , lord loreburn expressed apprehension lest the war was entailing general bankruptcy and "such a destruction of the male youth of europe as will break the thin crust of civilization which has been built up since the dark ages."[ ] these fears were intensified by the russian revolution of , with its hideous corollary of bolshevism which definitely triumphed before the close of that year. the bolshevik triumph evoked despairing predictions like lord lansdowne's: "we are not going to lose this war, but its prolongation will spell ruin for the civilized world."[ ] well, the war was prolonged for another year, ending in the triumph of the allies and america, though leaving europe in the deplorable condition reviewed in the preceding chapter. the hopes of mankind were now centred on the peace conference, but these hopes were oversanguine, for the versailles "settlement" was riddled with political and economic imperfections from the saar to shantung. this was what a sceptical minority had feared from the first. at the very beginning of the war, for instance, the french publicist urbain gohier had predicted that when the diplomats gathered at the end of the conflict they would find the problem of constructive settlement insoluble.[ ] most persons, however, had been more hopeful. disappointment and disillusionment were therefore correspondingly intense. the majority of liberal-minded, forward-looking men and women throughout the world deplored the versailles settlement's faulty character, some, however, accepting the situation as the best of a bad business, others entirely repudiating it on the ground that by crystallizing an intolerable status it would entail worse disasters in the near future. general smuts, the south african delegate to the conference, well represents the first attitude. in a formal protest against the versailles settlement, general smuts stated: "i have signed the peace treaty, not because i consider it a satisfactory document, but because it is imperatively necessary to close the war; because the world needs peace above all, and nothing could be more fatal than the continuance of the state of suspense between war and peace. the six months since the armistice was signed have, perhaps, been as upsetting, unsettling, and ruinous to europe as the previous four years of war. i look upon the peace treaty as the close of these two chapters of war and armistice, and only on that ground do i agree to it. i say this now, not in criticism, but in faith; not because i wish to find fault with the work done, but rather because i feel that in the treaty we have not yet achieved the real peace to which our peoples were looking, and because i feel that the real work of making peace will only begin after this treaty has been signed, and a definite halt has thereby been called to the destructive passions that have been desolating europe for nearly five years."[ ] the english economist j. l. garvin, who, like general smuts, accepted the treaty _faute de mieux_, makes these trenchant comments upon the settlement itself: "derisive human genius surveying with pity and laughter the present state of mankind and some of the obsolete means adopted at paris to remedy it, might do most good by another satire like rabelais, gulliver, or candide. but let us put from us here the temptation to conjure up vistas of the grotesque. let us pursue these plain studies in common sense. a treaty even when signed is paper. it is in itself inoperative without the action or control of living forces which it seeks to express or repress. treaties not drawn against sound and certain assets may be dishonored in the sequel like bad checks or bills. you do not get peace merely by putting it on paper. and, much more to the point, all that is called peace does not necessarily spell prosperity any more than all that glitters is gold. you can 'make a solitude and call it peace.' the quintessence of death or stupefaction resembles a kind of peace. you can prolong relative stagnation and depression and yet say that it is peace. but that would not be the reconciling and lasting, the constructive and the creative peace, as it was visioned by the allied peoples in their greatest moments of insight and inspiration during the war. for that higher and wiser thing we lavished our pent-up energies and the accumulated treasure of a hundred years, and sent so many of our best to die."[ ] that veteran student of world-politics doctor e. j. dillon put the matter succinctly when he wrote: "the peace is being made not, as originally projected, on the basis of the fourteen points, nor on the lines of territorial equilibrium, but by a compromise which misses the advantage of either, and combines certain evils of both. the treaty has failed to lay the axe to the roots of war, has perhaps increased their number while purporting to destroy them. the germs of future conflicts, not only between the recent belligerents, but also between other groups of states, are numerous, and if present symptoms may be trusted will sprout up in the fulness of time."[ ] the badness of the versailles treaties is nowhere more manifest than in the way they have alienated idealistic support and enthusiasm from the inchoate league of nations. multitudes of persons once zealous leaguers now feel that the league has no moral foundation. such persons contend that even were the covenant theoretically perfect, the league could no more succeed on the basis of the present peace settlement than a flawlessly designed palace could be erected if superimposed upon a quicksand. europe is thus in evil case. her statesmen have failed to formulate a constructive settlement. old problems remain unsolved while fresh problems arise. the danger is redoubled by the fact that both europe and the entire world are faced with a new peril--bolshevism. the menace of bolshevism is simply incalculable. bolshevism is a peril in some ways unprecedented in the world's history. it is not merely a war against a social system, not merely a war against our civilization; it is a war of the hand against the brain. for the first time since man was man there is a definite schism between the hand and the head. every principle which mankind has thus far evolved: community of interest, the solidarity of civilization and culture, the dignity of labor, of muscle, of brawn, dominated and illumined by intellect and spirit--all these bolshevism howls down and tramples in the mud. bolshevism's cardinal tenets--the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the destruction of the "classes" by social war--are of truly hideous import. the "classes," as conceived by bolshevism, are very numerous. they comprise not merely the "idle rich," but also the whole of the upper and middle social strata, the landowning country folk, the skilled working men; in short, all except those who work with their untutored hands, _plus_ the elect few who philosophize for those who work with their untutored hands. the effect of such ideas, if successful, not only on our civilization, but also on the very fibre of the race, can be imagined. the death or degradation of nearly all persons displaying constructive ability, and the tyranny of the ignorant and anti-social elements, would be the most gigantic triumph of disgenics ever seen. beside it the ill effects of war would pale into insignificance. civilization would wither like a plant stricken by blight, while the race, summarily drained of its good blood, would sink like lead into the depths of degenerate barbarism. this is precisely what is occurring in russia to-day. bolshevism has ruled russia less than three years--and russia is ruined. she ekes out a bare existence on the remains of past accumulations, on the surviving scraps of her material and spiritual capital. everywhere are hunger, cold, disease, terror, physical and moral death. the "proletariat" is making its "clean sweep." the "classes" are being systematically eliminated by execution, massacre, and starvation. the racial impoverishment is simply incalculable. meanwhile lenine, surrounded by his chinese executioners, sits behind the kremlin walls, a modern jenghiz khan plotting the plunder of a world. lenine's chinese "braves" are merely symptomatic of the intrigues which bolshevism is carrying on throughout the non-white world. bolshevism is, in fact, as anti-racial as it is anti-social. to the bolshevik mind, with its furious hatred of constructive ability and its fanatical determination to enforce levelling, proletarian equality, the very existence of superior biological values is a crime. bolshevism has vowed the proletarianization of the world, beginning with the white peoples. to this end it not only foments social revolution within the white world itself, but it also seeks to enlist the colored races in its grand assault on civilization. the rulers of soviet russia are well aware of the profound ferment now going on in colored lands. they watch this ferment with the same terrible glee that they watched the great war and the fiasco of versailles--and they plot to turn it to the same profit. accordingly, in every quarter of the globe, in asia, africa, latin america, and the united states, bolshevik agitators whisper in the ears of discontented colored men their gospel of hatred and revenge. every nationalist aspiration, every political grievance, every social discrimination, is fuel for bolshevism's hellish incitement to racial as well as to class war. and this bolshevik propaganda has not been in vain. its results already show in the most diverse quarters, and they are ominous for the future. china, japan, afghanistan, india, java, persia, turkey, egypt, brazil, chile, peru, mexico, and the "black belts" of our own united states: here is a partial list of the lands where the bolshevik leaven in color is clearly at work. bolshevism thus reveals itself as the arch-enemy of civilization and the race. bolshevism is the renegade, the traitor within the gates, who would betray the citadel, degrade the very fibre of our being, and ultimately hurl a rebarbarized, racially impoverished world into the most debased and hopeless of mongrelizations. therefore, bolshevism must be crushed out with iron heels, no matter what the cost. if this means more war, let it mean more war. we know only too well war's dreadful toll, particularly on racial values. but what war-losses could compare with the losses inflicted by the living death of bolshevism? there are some things worse than war, and bolshevism stands foremost among those dread alternatives. so ends our survey of the white world as it emerges from the great war. the prospect is not a brilliant one. weakened and impoverished by armageddon, handicapped by an unconstructive peace, and facing internal bolshevist disaffection which must at all costs be mastered, the white world is ill-prepared to confront--the rising tide of color. what that tide portends will be the subject of the concluding chapters. _part iii_ the deluge on the dikes chapter x the outer dikes in my first chapter i showed that the rising tide of color to-day finds itself confronted by dikes erected by the white race during the centuries of its expansion. the reader will also remember that white expansion has taken two forms: settlement and political control. these two phases differ profoundly in character. areas of settlement like north america have become integral portions of the white world. on the other hand, regions of political control like india are merely white dependencies, highly valuable perhaps, yet in the last analysis held by title of the sword. between these clearly contrasted categories lies an intermediate class of territories typified by south africa, where whites have settled in large numbers without displacing the native populations. lastly, there exist certain white territories which may be called "enclaves." these enclaves have become thoroughly white by settlement, yet they are so distant from the main body of the white world and so contiguous to colored race-areas that white tenure does not possess that security which settlement and displacement of the aborigines normally confer. australia typifies this anomalous class of cases. the white defenses against the colored tide can be divided into what may be termed the "outer" and the "inner" dikes. the outer dikes (the regions of white political control) contain no settled white population, so that their abandonment, whatever the political or economic loss, would not directly affect white race-integrity. the question of their retention or abandonment should therefore (save in a few exceptional cases) be judged by political, economic, or strategic considerations. the inner dikes (the areas of white settlement), however, are a very different matter. peopled as they are wholly or largely by whites, they have become parts of the race-heritage, which should be defended to the last extremity no matter if the costs involved are greater than their mere economic value would warrant. they are the true bulwarks of the race, the patrimony of future generations who have a right to demand of us that they shall be born white in a white man's land. ill will it fare if ever our race should close its ears to this most elemental call of the blood. then, indeed, would be manifest the writing on the wall. that issue, however, is reserved for the next chapter. let us here examine the matter of the outer dikes--the regions of white political control. there, where the white man is not settler but suzerain, his suzerainty should, in the last analysis, depend on the character of the inhabitants. right here, let us clear away the doctrinaire pedantry that commonly obscures discussion about the retention or abandonment of white political control over racially non-white regions. argument usually tends to crystallize around two antitheses. on the one side are the doctrinaire liberals, who maintain the "imprescriptible right" of every human group to attain independence, and of every sovereign state to retain independence. on the opposite side are the doctrinaire imperialists, who maintain the equally imprescriptible right of their particular nation to "vital expansion" regardless of injuries thereby inflicted upon other nations. now i submit that both these assumptions are unwarranted. there is no "imprescriptible right" to either independence or empire. it depends on the realities of each particular case. the extreme cases at either end of the scale can be adjudged offhand by ordinary common sense. no one except a doctrinaire liberal would be likely to assert that the andaman islanders had an imprescriptible right to independence, or that haiti, which owed its independence only to a turn in european politics,[ ] should forever remain a sovereign--international nuisance. on the other hand, the whole world (with the exception of teutonic imperialists) denounced germany's attempt to swallow highly civilized belgium as a crime against humanity. in other words: realities, not abstract theories, decide. that does not please the doctrinaires, who insist on setting up procrustean beds of theory on which realities should be racked or crammed. it does, however, conform to the dictates of nature, which decree that what is attuned shall live while the disharmonic and degenerate shall pass away. and nature usually has the last word. surveying the regions of white political control over non-white peoples in this realistic way, thereby avoiding the pitfalls of doctrinaire theory and blind prejudice, we may arrive at a series of conclusions which, though lacking the trim symmetry of the idealogue, will correspond to the facts in the various cases. one thing is certain: the white man will have to recognize that the practically absolute world-dominion which he exercised during the nineteenth century can no longer be maintained. largely because of that very dominion, colored races have been drawn out of their traditional isolation and have been quickened by white ideas, while the life-conserving nature of white rule has everywhere favored colored multiplication. these factors have combined to produce a wide-spread ferment which has been clearly visible for the past two decades, and which is destined to grow more acute in the near future. this ferment would have developed even if the great war had never occurred. however, the white world's weakening through armageddon has immensely accelerated the process and has opened up the possibility of violent "short cuts" which would have mutually disastrous consequences. especially has it evoked in bellicose and fanatical minds the vision of a "pan-colored" alliance for the universal overthrow of white hegemony at a single stroke--a dream which would turn into a nightmare of race-war beside which the late struggle in europe would seem the veriest child's play. [illustration: distribution of the white races] the effective centres of colored unrest are the brown and yellow worlds of asia. both those worlds are not merely in negative opposition to white hegemony, but are experiencing a real _renaissance_ whose genuineness is best attested by the fact that it is a faithful replica of similar movements in past times. white men must get out of their heads the idea that asiatics are necessarily "inferior." as a matter of fact, while asiatics do not seem to possess that sustained constructive power with which the whites, particularly the nordics, are endowed, the browns and yellows are yet gifted peoples who have profoundly influenced human progress in the past and who undoubtedly will contribute much to world-civilization. the asiatics have by their own efforts built up admirable cultures rooted in remote antiquity and worthy of all respect. they are to-day once more displaying their innate capacity by not merely adopting, but adapting, white ideas and methods. that this profound asiatic renaissance will eventually result in the substantial elimination of white political control from anatolia to the philippines is as natural as it is inevitable. this does not mean a precipitate white "scuttle" from asia. far from it. it does mean, however, a candid facing of realities and a basing of policy on realities rather than on prepossessions or prejudices. unless the white man does this, he will injure himself more than any one else. if asia is to-day really renascent, asia will ultimately reap the political fruits. men worthy of independence will sooner or later get independence. this is as certain as is the converse truth that men unworthy of independence, though they cry for it never so loudly, will either remain subject or will quickly relapse into subjection should they by some lucky circumstance obtain what they could only misuse. if, then, asia deserves to be free, she will be free. the only question is, how she will attain her freedom. shall it be an evolutionary process, in the main peaceful, based upon mutual respect, with mutual recognition of both increasing asiatic fitness and white vested interests? or shall it come through cataclysmic revolution? this is the dilemma which those imperialists should ponder who object to any relaxation of white political control over asia because of the "value" of the subject regions. that white control over asiatic lands has been, and still is, immensely profitable, cannot be denied. but what basis for this value is there except lack of effective opposition? if real, sustained opposition now develops, if subject asia becomes chronically rebellious, if its peoples resolutely boycott white goods--as china and india have shown asiatics capable of doing, will not white control be transformed from an asset into a liability? above all, let us remember that no race-values are involved. no white race-areas would have to be abandoned to non-white domination. white control over asia is political, and can thus be judged by the criteria of material interest undisturbed by the categorical imperative of race-duty. the need for sympathetic open-mindedness toward awakening asia if cataclysmic disasters are to be averted becomes all the clearer when we realize that on important issues lying outside asia the white world must resolutely oppose asiatic desires. we whites should be the more generous in our attitude toward asia because imperative reasons of self-protection require us to deny to asiatics some of their best opportunities in the outer world. in my opening chapters i discussed the rapid growth of asiatic populations and the resultant steadily augmenting outward thrust of surplus asiatics (principally yellow men, but also in lesser degree brown men) from overcrowded homelands toward the less-crowded regions of the earth. it is, in fact, asiatics, and above all mongolian asiatics, who form the first waves of the rising tide of color. unfortunately, the white world cannot permit this rising tide free scope. white men cannot, under peril of their very race-existence, allow wholesale asiatic immigration into white race-areas. this prohibition, which will be discussed in the next chapter, is already a serious blow to asiatic aspirations. but the matter does not end there. the white world also cannot permit with safety to itself wholesale asiatic penetration of non-asiatic colored regions like black africa and tropical latin america. to permit asiatic colonization and ultimate control of these vast territories with their incalculable resources would be to overturn in favor of asia the political, the economic, and eventually the racial balance of power in the world. at present the white man controls these regions. and he must stand fast. no other course is possible. neither black africa nor mongrel-ruled tropical america can stand alone. if the white man goes, the asiatic comes--browns to africa, yellows to latin america. and there is no reason under heaven why we whites should deliberately present asia with the richest regions of the tropics, to our own impoverishment and probable undoing. our race-duty is therefore clear. we must resolutely oppose both asiatic permeation of white race-areas and asiatic inundation of those non-white, but equally non-asiatic, regions inhabited by the really inferior races. but we should also recognize that by taking this attitude we debar asiatics from golden opportunities and render impossible the realization of aspirations intrinsically just as normal and laudable as our own. and, having closed in their faces so many doors of hope, can we refuse to discuss with gifted and capable asiatics the problem of turning over to them the keys of their own house without causing festering hatreds whose poison may spread far beyond asia into other colored lands and possibly into white lands as well? neither a pan-colored nor a colored-bolshevist alliance are impossibilities, far-fetched though these terms may sound. the fact is, we whites are in no position to indulge in the luxury of bourbonism. weakened by armageddon, hampered by versailles, and harassed by bolshevism, the white world can ill afford to flout legitimate asiatic aspirations to independence. our imperialists may argue that this means abandoning "outer dikes," but i contend that white positions in asia are not protective dikes but strategic blockhouses, built upon the sands during the long asiatic ebb-tide, and which the now rising asiatic waves must ultimately engulf. is it not the part of wisdom to quit these outposts before they collapse into the swirling waters? our true "outer dikes" stand, not in asia, but in africa and latin america. let us not exhaust ourselves by stubborn resistance in asia which in the end must prove futile. let us conserve our strength, remembering that by the time asia has been submerged the flood should have lost much of its pent-up power. particularly should this be true of the moral "imponderables." by taking a reasonable, conciliatory attitude toward asiatic aspirations to independence we would thereby eliminate the moral factors in asia's present hostility toward ourselves. many asiatics would still be our foes from resentment at balked expansion, but we should have separated the sheep from the goats. and the sheep are the more numerous. there are of course irreconcilables like japanese imperialists and pan-islamic fanatics who would like to upset the whole world. however, taken by and large, asia is peopled neither by fire-eating jingoes nor howling dervishes. the average asiatic is by nature less restless, less ambitious, and consequently less aggressive than ourselves. to-day asiatics are everywhere aroused by a whole complex of stimuli like overcrowding, white domination, and white denial of nationalistic aspirations, to an access of hatred and fury. those last-mentioned stimuli to anti-white hostility we can remove. the first-mentioned cause of hostility--over-population--we cannot remove. only the asiatic himself can do that by controlling his reckless procreation. of course over-population is of itself a sufficiently serious provoker of trouble. there is no more certain breeder of strife than the expansive urge of a fast-breeding people. nevertheless, this hostile stimulus applies primarily to yellow asia. brown asia, once free or clearly on the road to freedom, would be either satisfied or engrossed in its intestine broils. at any rate, the twin spectres of a pan-asian or a pan-colored alliance would probably vanish like a mirage of the desert, and the white world would be far better able to deal with yellow pressure on its race-frontiers--no light task, weakened and distracted as the white world finds itself to-day. unfortunately, no such wise foresight seems to have been vouchsafed our statesmen. imperialistic secret treaties formed the basis for versailles's treatment of asiatic questions, and those treaties were drawn precisely as though armageddon were a skirmish and asia the sleeping giant of a century ago. upon the brown world, in particular, white domination was riveted rather than relaxed. this amazing disregard of present-day realities augurs ill for the future. indeed, its evil first-fruits are already apparent. the brown world, convinced that its aspirations can be realized only by force, turns to the yellow world and listens to bolshevik propaganda, while pan-islamism redoubles its efforts in africa. thus is once more manifest the diplomatic bankruptcy of versailles. the white man, like king canute, seats himself upon the tidal sands and bids the waves be stayed. he will be lucky if he escapes merely with wet shoes. chapter xi the inner dikes we come now to the frontiers of the white world--to its true frontiers, marked, not by boundary-stones, but by flesh and blood. these frontiers are not continuous: far from the european homeland, some run in remote quarters of the earth, sundered by vast stretches of ocean and connected only by the slate-gray thread of sea-power--the master-talisman which the white man still grasps firmly in his hand. but against these race-frontiers--these "inner dikes"--the rising tide of color has for decades been beating, and will beat yet more fiercely as congesting population, quickened self-consciousness, and heightened sense of power impel the colored world to expansion and dominion. above the eastern horizon the dark storm-clouds lower, and the weakened, distracted white world must soon face a colored peril threatening its integrity and perhaps its existence. this colored peril has three facets: the peril of arms, the peril of markets, and the peril of migration. all three contain ominous potentialities, both singly and in combination. let us review them in turn, to appraise their dynamic possibilities. first, the peril of arms. the military potencies of the colored races have been the subject of earnest, and frequently alarmist, speculation for the past twenty years, particularly since the russo-japanese war. the exciting effects of pan-islamism upon the warlike peoples of asia and africa have been frequently discussed, while the "yellow peril" has long been a journalistic commonplace. how shall we appraise the colored peril of arms? on the whole, it would appear as though the colored military danger, in its isolated, purely aggressive aspect, had been exaggerated. visions of a united asia, rising suddenly in fanatic frenzy and hurling brown and yellow myriads upon the white west _seem_ to be the products of superheated imaginations. i say "seem," because there are unquestionably mysterious emotional depths in the asiatic soul which may yet justify the prophets of cataclysmic war. as hyndman says: "with all the facts before us, and with prejudice thrown aside, we are still unable to lay bare the causes of the gigantic asian movements of the past. they were certainly not all economic in their origin, unless we stretch the boundaries of theory so far as to include the massacre of whole populations and the destruction of their wealth within the limits of the invaders' desire for material gain. and, whether these movements arose from material or emotional causes, they have been before, and they may occur again. forecast here is impossible. a new mohammed is quite as likely to make his appearance as a new buddha, a reborn confucius, or a modern christ.... asia raided and scourged europe for more than a thousand years. now, for five hundred years, the counter-attack of europe upon asia has been steadily going on, and it may be that the land of long memories will cherish some desire to avenge this period of wrong and rapine in turn. the seed of hatred has already been but too well sown."[ ] of course, on this particular point, forecast is, indeed, impossible. nevertheless, the point should be noted, for asiatic war-fever may appear, if not in isolation, then in conjunction with other stimuli to warlike action, like population-pressure or imperialistic ambition, which to-day exist and whose amplitude can be approximately gauged. we have already analyzed the military potencies of pan-islamism and japan, and china also should not be forgotten. pacifist though china has long been, she has had her bellicose moments in the past and may have them in the future. should this occur, china, as the world's greatest reservoir of intelligent man-power, would be immensely formidable. pearson visualizes a china "become an aggressive military power, sending out her armies in millions to cross the himalayas and traverse the steppes, or occupying the islands and the northern parts of australia, by pouring in immigrants protected by fleets. luther's old name for the turks, that they were 'the people of the wrath of god,' may receive a new and terrible application."[ ] granted that the chinese will never become the fighting equals of the world's warrior races, their incredible numbers combined with their tenacious vitality might overcome opponents individually their superiors. says professor ross: "to the west the toughness of the chinese physique may have a sinister military significance. nobody fears lest in a stand-up fight chinese troops could whip an equal number of well-conditioned white troops. but few battles are fought by men fresh from tent and mess. in the course of a prolonged campaign involving irregular provisioning, bad drinking-water, lying out, loss of sleep, exhausting marches, exposure, excitement, and anxiety, it may be that the white soldiers would be worn down worse than the yellow soldiers. in that case the hardier men with less of the martial spirit might in the closing grapple beat the better fighters with the less endurance."[ ] the potentialities of the chinese soldier would acquire vastly greater significance if china should be thoroughly subjugated by, or solidly leagued to, ambitious and militaristic japan. the combined military energies of the far east, welded into an aggressive unity, would be a weapon of tremendous striking-power. the colored peril of arms may thus be summarized: the brown and yellow races possess great military potentialities. these (barring the action of certain ill-understood emotional stimuli) are unlikely to flame out in spontaneous fanaticism; but, on the other hand, they are very likely to be mobilized for political reasons like revolt against white dominion or for social reasons like over-population. the black race offers no real danger except as the tool of pan-islamism. as for the red men of the americas, they are of merely local significance. we are now ready to examine the economic facet of the colored peril: the industrial-mercantile phase. in the second part of this volume i showed the profound effect of the "industrial revolution" in furthering white world-supremacy, and i pointed out the tremendous advantages accruing to the white world from exploitation of undeveloped colored lands and from exports of manufactured goods to colored markets. the prodigious wealth thereby amassed has been a prime cause of white prosperity, has buttressed the maintenance of white world-hegemony, and has made possible much of the prodigious increase of white population. we little realize what the loss of these advantages would mean. as a matter of fact, it would mean throughout the white world diminished prosperity, lessened political and military strength, and such relative economic and social stagnation as would depress national vigor and check population. it is even possible to visualize a white world reverting to the condition of europe in the fifteenth century--thrown back upon itself, on the defensive, and with a static rather than a progressive civilization. such conditions could of course occur only as the result of colored military and industrial triumphs of the most sweeping character. but the possibility exists, nevertheless, as i shall endeavor to show. down to the close of the nineteenth century white supremacy was as absolute in industry as it was in politics and war. even the civilized brown and yellow peoples were negligible from the industrial point of view. asia was economically on an agricultural basis. such industries as she possessed were still in the "house-industry" stage, and her products, while often exquisite in quality, were produced by such slow, antiquated methods that their quantity was limited and their market-price relatively high. despite very low wages, asiatic products not only could not compete in the world-market with european and american machine-made, mass-produced articles, but were hard hit in their home-markets as well. the way in which an ancient asiatic handicraft like the indian textiles was literally annihilated by the destructive competition of lancashire cottons is only one of many similar instances. with the beginning of the twentieth century, however, asia began to show signs of an economic activity as striking in its way as the activity which asia was displaying in idealistic and political fields. japan had already laid the foundations of her flourishing industrial life based on the most up-to-date western models, while in other asiatic lands, notably in china and india, the whir of machinery and the smoke of tall factory chimneys proclaimed that the east was fathoming the industrial secrets of the west. what asiatics were seeking in their industrial revival was well expressed a decade ago by a hindu, who wrote in a leading indian periodical: "in one respect the orient is really menacing the west, and so earnest and open-minded is asia that no pretense or apology whatever is made about it. the easterner has thrown down the industrial gantlet, and from now on asia is destined to witness a progressively intense trade warfare, the occidental scrambling to retain his hold on the markets of the east, and the oriental endeavoring to beat him in a battle in which heretofore he has been an easy victor.... in competing with the occidental commercialists, the oriental has awakened to a dynamic realization of the futility of pitting unimproved machinery and methods against modern methods and appliances. casting aside his former sense of self-complacency, he is studying the sciences and arts that have given the west its material prosperity. he is putting the results of his investigations to practical use, as a rule, recasting the occidental methods and tools to suit his peculiar needs, and in some instances improving upon them."[ ] the accuracy of this hindu statement of asia's industrial awakening is indorsed by the statements of white observers. at the very moment when the above article was penned, an american economic writer, clarence poe, was making a study tour of the orient, from which he brought back the following report: "the real cause of asia's poverty lies in just two things: the failure of asiatic governments to educate their people, and the failure of the people to increase their productive capacity by the use of machinery. ignorance and lack of machinery are responsible for asia's poverty; knowledge and modern tools are responsible for america's prosperity." but, continues mr. poe, we must watch out. asia now realizes these things and is doing much to remedy the situation. hence, "we must face in ever-increasing degree the rivalry of awakening peoples who are strong with the strength that comes from struggle with poverty and hardship, and who have set themselves to master and apply all our secrets in the coming world-struggle for industrial supremacy and for racial readjustment."[ ] and more recently another american observer of asiatic economic conditions reports: "all asia is being permeated with modern industry and present-day mechanical progress."[ ] take, for example, the momentous possibilities involved in the industrial awakening of china. china is not merely the most populous of lands, containing as it does nearly one-fourth of all the human beings on earth, but it is also dowered with immense natural resources, notably coal and iron--the prime requisites of modern industrial life. hitherto china has been on an agricultural basis, with virtually no exploitation of her mineral wealth and with no industry in the modern sense. but the day when any considerable fraction of china's laborious millions turn from the plough and handicrafts to the factory must see a portentous reaction in the most distant markets. thirty years ago, professor pearson forecast china's imminent industrial transformation. "does any one doubt," he asks, "that the day is at hand when china will have cheap fuel from her coal-mines, cheap transport by railways and steamers, and will have founded technical schools to develop her industries? whenever that day comes, she may wrest the control of the world's markets, especially throughout asia, from england and germany."[ ] much of what professor pearson prophesied has already come to pass, for china to-day has the beginnings of a promising industrial life. even a decade ago professor ross wrote of industrial conditions there: "assuredly the cheapness of chinese labor is something to make a factory owner's mouth water. the women reelers in the silk filatures of shanghai get from eight to eleven cents for eleven hours of work. but shanghai is dear; and, besides, everybody there complains that the laborers are knowing and spoiled. in the steel works at hanyang common labor gets three dollars a month, just a tenth of what raw slavs command in the south chicago iron-works. skilled mechanics get from eight to twelve dollars. in a coal-mine near ichang a thousand miles up the yangtse the coolie receives one cent for carrying a -pound load of coal on his back down to the river a mile and a half away. he averages ten loads a day but must rest every other week. the miners get seven cents a day and found; that is, a cent's worth of rice and meal. they work eleven hours a day up to their knees in water, and all have swollen legs. after a week of it they have to lie off a couple of days. no wonder the cost of this coal (semi-bituminous) at the pit's mouth is only thirty-five cents a ton. at chengtu servants get a dollar and a half a month and find themselves. across szechuan lusty coolies were glad to carry our chairs half a day for four cents each. in sianfu the common coolie gets three cents a day and feeds himself, or eighty cents a month. through shansi roving harvesters were earning from four to twelve cents a day, and farm-hands got five or six dollars a year and their keep. speaking broadly, in any part of the empire, willing laborers of fair intelligence may be had in any number at from eight to fifteen cents a day. "with an ocean of such labor power to draw on, china would appear to be on the eve of a manufacturing development that will act like a continental upheaval in changing the trade map of the world. the impression is deepened by the tale of industries that have already sprung up."[ ] of course there is another side to the story. low wages alone do not insure cheap production. as professor ross remarks: "for all his native capacity, the coolie will need a long course of schooling, industrial training, and factory atmosphere before he inches up abreast of the german or american working man."[ ] in the technical and directing staffs there is the same absence of the modern industrial spirit, resulting in chronic mismanagement, while chinese industry is further handicapped by traditional evils like "squeeze," nepotism, lust for quick profits, and incapacity for sustained business team-play. these failings are not peculiar to china; they hamper the industrial development of other asiatic countries, notably india. still, the way in which japanese industry, with all its faults, is perfecting both its technic and its methods shows that these failings will be gradually overcome and indicates that within a generation asiatic industry will probably be sufficiently advanced to supply at least the asiatic home-markets with most of the staple manufactures. thus it looks as though white manufactures will tend to be progressively eliminated from asiatic markets, even under conditions of absolutely free competition. but it is a very moot point whether competition will remain free--whether, on the contrary, white wares will not be increasingly penalized. the asiatic takes a keen interest in his industrial development and consciously favors it even where whites are in political control. the "swadeshi" movement in india is a good example, while the chinese and egyptian boycotts of foreign as against native goods are further instances in point. the japanese have supplemented these spontaneous popular movements by systematic governmental discrimination in favor of japanese products and the elimination of white competition from japan and its dependencies. this japanese policy has been markedly successful, and should japan's present hegemony over china be perpetuated the white man may soon find himself economically as well as politically expelled from the whole far east. a decade ago putnam weale wrote warningly: "if china is forced, owing to the short-sighted diplomacy of those for whom the question has really supreme importance, to make common cause with japan as a _pis aller_, then it may be accepted as inevitable that in the course of time there will be created a _mare clausum_, which will extend from the island of saghalien down to cochin-china and siam, including all the island-groups, and the shores of which will be openly hostile to the white man.... "and since there will be no danger from the competition of white workmen, but rather from the white man's ships, the white man's merchants, his inventions, his produce--it will be these which will be subjected to humiliating conditions.... it is not a very far cry from tariffs on goods to tariffs and restrictions on foreign shipping, on foreign merchants, on everything foreign--restrictions which by imposing vast and unequal burdens on the activities of aliens will soon totally destroy such activities.... what can very easily happen is that the federation of eastern asia and the yellow races will be finally arranged in such a manner as to exclude the white man and his commerce more completely than any one yet dreams of."[ ] this latter misfortune may be averted by concerted white action, but it is difficult to see how the gradual elimination of white goods from asiatic markets as the result of successful asiatic competition can be averted. certainly the stubborn maintenance of white political domination over a rebellious asia would be no remedy. that would merely intensify swadeshi boycotts in the subject regions, while in the lands freed from white political control it would further japan's policy of excluding everything white. if asiatics resolve to buy their own products instead of ours we may as well reconcile ourselves to the loss. here again frank recognition of the inevitable will enable us to take a much stronger and more justifiable position on the larger world-aspects of the problem. for asia's industrial transformation is destined to cause momentous reactions in other parts of the globe. if asiatic industry really does get on an efficient basis, its potentialities are so tremendous that it must presently not only monopolize the home-markets but also seek to invade white markets as well, thus presenting the white world with commercial and economic problems as unwelcome as they will be novel. again, industrialization will in some respects aggravate asiatic longings for migration and dominion. in my opening pages i mentioned industrialization as a probable reliever of population-pressure in asiatic countries by affording new livelihoods to the congested masses. this is true. but, looking a trifle farther, we can also see that industrialization would stimulate a further prodigious increase of population. consider the growth of europe's population during the nineteenth century under the stimulus of the industrial revolution, making possible the existence in our industrialized europe of three times as many people as existed in the agricultural europe of a hundred years ago. why should not a similar development occur in asia? to-day asia, though still upon a basis as agricultural as eighteenth-century europe, contains fully , , people. that even a partially industrialized asia might support twice that number would (judging by the european precedent) be far from improbable. but this would mean vastly increased incentives to expansion--commercial, political, racial--beyond the bounds of asia. it would mean intensified encroachments, not only upon areas of white settlement, but perhaps even more upon non-asiatic colored regions of white political control like africa and tropical america. here again we see why the white man, however conciliatory in asia, must stand like flint in africa and latin america. to allow the whole tropic belt clear round the world to pass into asiatic hands would practically spell white race-suicide. professor pearson paints a truly terrible picture of the stagnation and hopelessness which would ensue. "let us conceive," he writes, "the leading european nations to be stationary, while the black and yellow belt, including china, malaysia, india, central africa, and tropical america, is all teeming with life, developed by industrial enterprise, fairly well administered by native governments, and owning the better part of the carrying trade of the world. can any one suppose that, in such a condition of political society, the habitual temper of mind in europe would not be profoundly changed? depression, hopelessness, a disregard of invention and improvement, would replace the sanguine confidence of races that at present are always panting for new worlds to conquer. here and there, it may be, the more adventurous would profit by the traditions of old supremacy to get their services accepted in the new nations, but as a rule there would be no outlet for energy, no future for statesmanship. the despondency of the english people, when their dream of conquest in france was dissipated, was attended with a complete decay of thought, with civil war, and with a standing still, or perhaps a decline of population, and to a less degree of wealth.... it is conceivable that our later world may find itself deprived of all that is valued on earth, of the pageantry of subject provinces and the reality of commerce, while it has neither a disinterred literature to amuse it nor a vitalized religion to give it spiritual strength."[ ] to sum up: the economic phase of the colored peril, though not yet a major factor, must still be seriously reckoned with by forward-looking statesmanship as something which will increasingly complicate the relations of the white and non-white worlds. in fact, even to-day it tends to intensify asiatic desires for expansion, and thus exacerbates the third, or migratory, phase of the colored peril, which is already upon us. the question of asiatic immigration is incomparably the greatest external problem which faces the white world. supreme phase of the colored peril, it already presses, and is destined to press harder in the near future. it infinitely transcends the peril of arms or markets, since it threatens not merely our supremacy or prosperity but our very race-existence, the wellsprings of being, the sacred heritage of our children. that this is no overstatement of the issue, a bare recital of a few biological axioms will show. we have already seen that nothing is more _unstable_ than the racial make-up of a people, while, conversely, nothing is more _unchanging_ than the racial divisions of mankind. we have seen that true amalgamation is possible only between members of the same race-stock, while in crossings between stocks even as relatively near together as the main divisions of the white species, the race-characters do not really fuse but remain distinct in the mixed offspring and tend constantly to resort themselves as pure types by mendelian inheritance. thus a country inhabited by a mixed population is really inhabited by different races, one of which always tends to dominate and breed the other out--the outbred strains being lost to the world forever. now, since the various human stocks differ widely in genetic worth, nothing should be more carefully studied than the relative values of the different strains in a population, and nothing should be more rigidly scrutinized than new strains seeking to add themselves to a population, because such new strains may hold simply incalculable potentialities for good or for evil. the potential reproductive powers of any stock are almost unlimited. therefore the introduction of even a small group of prolific and adaptable but racially undesirable aliens may result in their subsequent prodigious multiplication, thereby either replacing better native stocks or degrading these by the injection of inferior blood. the admission of aliens should, indeed, be regarded just as solemnly as the begetting of children, for the racial effect is essentially the same. there is no more damning indictment of our lopsided, materialistic civilization than the way in which, throughout the nineteenth century, immigration was almost universally regarded, not from the racial, but from the material point of view, the immigrant being viewed not as a creator of race-values but as a mere vocal tool for the production of material wealth. immigration is thus, from the racial standpoint, a form of procreation, and like the more immediate form of procreation it may be either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse. human history is largely the story of migrations, making now for good and now for ill. migration peopled europe with superior white stocks displacing ape-like aborigines, and settled north america with nordics instead of nomad redskins. but migration also bastardized the roman world with levantine mongrels, drowned the west indies under a black tide, and is filling our own land with the sweepings of the european east and south. migration, like other natural movements, is of itself a blind force. it is man's divine privilege as well as duty, having been vouchsafed knowledge of the laws of life, to direct these blind forces, rejecting the bad and selecting the good for the evolution of higher and nobler destinies. colored immigration is merely the most extreme phase of a phenomenon which has already moulded prodigiously the development of the white world. in fact, before discussing the specific problems of colored immigration, it would be well to survey the effects of the immigration of various white stocks. when we have grasped the momentous changes wrought by the introduction of even relatively near-related and hence relatively assimilable strains, we will be better able to realize the far more momentous consequences which the introduction of colored stocks into white lands would entail. the racial effects of immigration are ably summarized by that lifelong student of immigration problems, prescott f. hall. these effects are, he truly remarks, "more far-reaching and potent than all others. the government, the state, society, industry, the political party, social and political ideals, all are concepts and conventions created by individual men; and when individuals change these change with them. recent discoveries in biology show that in the long run heredity is far more important than environment or education; for though the latter can develop, it cannot create. they also show what can be done in a few years in altering species, and in producing new ones with qualities hitherto unknown, or unknown in combination."[ ] the ways in which admixture of alien blood can modify or even destroy the very soul of a people have been fully analyzed both by biologists and by social psychologists like doctor gustave le bon.[ ] the way in which wholesale immigration, even though mainly white, has already profoundly modified american national character is succinctly stated by mr. eliot norton. "if," he writes, "one considers the american people from, say, to , it is clear that a well-defined national character was in process of formation. what variations there were, were all of the same type, and these variations would have slowly grown less and less marked. it needs little study to see of what great value to any body of men, women, and children a national or racial type is. it furnishes a standard of conduct by which any one can set his course. the world is a difficult place in which to live, and to establish moral standards has been one of the chief occupations of mankind. without such standards, man feels as a mariner without a compass. religions, rules, laws, and customs are only the national character in the form of standards of conduct. now national character can be formed only in a population which is stable. the repeated introduction into a body of men of other men of different type or types cannot but tend to prevent its formation. thus the , , of immigrants that have landed have tended to break up the type which was forming, and to make the formation of any other type difficult. every million more will only intensify this result, and the absence of a national character is a loss to every man, woman, and child. it will show itself in our religions, rules of conduct, in our laws, in our customs."[ ] the vital necessity of restriction and selection in immigration to conserve and build race-values is thus set forth by mr. hall: "there is one aspect of immigration restriction in the various countries which does not often receive much attention; namely, the possibility of its use as a method of world-eugenics. most persons think of migration in terms of space--as the moving of a certain number of people from one part of the earth's surface to another. whereas the much more important aspect of it is that of a functioning in time. "this comes from two facts. the first is that the vacuum left in any country by emigration is rapidly filled up through a rise in the birth-rate.... the second fact is that immigration to any country of a given stratum of population tends to sterilize all strata of higher social and economic levels already in that country. so true is this that nearly all students of the matter are agreed that the united states would have a larger population to-day if there had been no immigration since , and, it is needless to add, a much more homogeneous population. as long as the people of any community are relatively homogeneous, what differences of wealth and social position there may be do not affect the birth-rate, or do so only after a considerable time. but put into that community a number of immigrants, inferior mentally, socially, and economically, and the natives are unwilling to have their children associate with them in work or social life. they then limit the number of their children in order to give them the capital or education to enter occupations in which they will not be brought into contact with the new arrivals. this result is quite apparent in new england, where successive waves of immigration from lower and lower levels have been coming in for eighty years. in the west, the same new england stock has a much higher birth-rate, showing that its fertility is in no way diminished. in the south, where until very recently there was no immigration at all, and the only socially inferior race was clearly separated by the accident of color, the birth-rate has remained very high, and the very large families of the colonial period are even now not uncommon. "this is not to say that other causes do not contribute to lower the birth-rate of a country, for that is an almost world-wide phenomenon. but the desire to be separated from inferiors is as strong a motive to birth-control as the desire for luxury or to ape one's economic superiors. races follow gresham's law as to money: the poorer of two kinds in the same place tends to supplant the better. mark you, _supplant_, not drive out. one of the most common fallacies is the idea that the natives whose places are taken by the lower immigrants are 'driven up' to more responsible positions. a few may be pushed up; more are driven to a new locality, as happened in the mining regions; _but most are prevented from coming into existence at all_. "what is the result, then, of the migration of , , persons of lower level into a country where the average is of a higher level? considering the world as a whole, there are, after a few years, , , persons of the lower type in the world, and probably from , to , , less of the higher type. the proportion of lower to higher in the country from which the migration goes may remain the same; but in the country receiving it, it has _risen_. is the world as a whole the gainer? "of course the euthenist[ ] says at once that these immigrants are improved. we may grant that, although the improvement is probably much exaggerated. you cannot make bad stock into good by changing its meridian, any more than you can turn a cart-horse into a hunter by putting it into a fine stable, or make a mongrel into a fine dog by teaching it tricks. but such improvement as there is involves time, expense, and trouble; and, when it is done, has anything been gained? will any one say that the races that have supplanted the old nordic stock in new england are any better, or as good, as the descendants of that stock would have been if their birth-rate had not been lowered? "further, in addition to the purely biological aspects of the matter, there are certain psychological ones. although a cosmopolitan atmosphere furnishes a certain freedom in which strong congenital talents can develop, it is a question whether as many are not injured as helped by this. indeed, there is considerable evidence to show that for the production of great men, a certain homogeneity of environment is necessary. the reason of this is very simple. in a homogeneous community, opinions on a large number of matters are fixed. the individual does not have to attend to such things, but is free to go ahead on some special line of his own, to concentrate to his limit on his work, even though that work be fighting the common opinions. "but in a community of many races, there is either cross-breeding or there is not. if there is, the children of such cross-breeding are liable to inherit two souls, two temperaments, two sets of opinions, with the result in many cases that they are unable to think or act strongly and consistently in any direction. the classic examples are cuba, mexico, and brazil. on the other hand, if there is no cross-breeding, the diversity exists in the original races, and in a community full of diverse ideals of all kinds much of the energy of the higher type of man is dissipated in two ways. first, in the intellectual field there is much more doubt about everything, and he tends to weigh, discuss, and agitate many more subjects, in order to arrive at a conclusion amid the opposing views. second, in practical affairs, much time and strength have to be devoted to keeping things going along old lines, which could have been spent in new research and development. in how many of our large cities to-day are men of the highest type spending their whole time fighting, often in vain, to maintain standards of honesty, decency, and order, and in trying to compose the various ethnic elements, who should be free to build new structures upon the old! "the moral seems to be this: eugenics among individuals is encouraging the propagation of the fit, and limiting or preventing the multiplication of the unfit. world-eugenics is doing precisely the same thing as to races considered as wholes. immigration restriction is a species of segregation on a large scale, by which inferior stocks can be prevented from both diluting and supplanting good stocks. just as we isolate bacterial invasions, and starve out the bacteria by limiting the area and amount of their food-supply, so we can compel an inferior race to remain in its native habitat, where its own multiplication in a limited area will, as with all organisms, eventually limit its numbers and therefore its influence. on the other hand, the superior races, more self-limiting than the others, with the benefits of more space and nourishment will tend to still higher levels. "this result is not merely a selfish benefit to the higher races, but a good to the world as a whole. the object is to produce the greatest number of those fittest not 'for survival' merely, but fittest for all purposes. the lower types among men progress, so far as their racial inheritance allows them to, chiefly by imitation and emulation. the presence of the highest development and the highest institutions among any race is a distinct benefit to all the others. it is a gift of _psychological environment_ to any one capable of appreciation."[ ] the impossibility of any advanced and prosperous community maintaining its social standards and handing them down to its posterity in these days of cheap and rapid transportation except by restrictions upon immigrations is thus explained by professor ross: "now that cheap travel stirs the social deeps and far-beckoning opportunity fills the steerage, immigration becomes ever more serious to the people that hopes to rid itself at least of slums, 'masses,' and 'submerged.' what is the good of practising prudence in the family if hungry strangers may crowd in and occupy at the banquet table of life the places reserved for its children? shall it, in order to relieve the teeming lands of their unemployed, abide in the pit of wolfish competition and renounce the fair prospect of growth in suavity, comfort, and refinement? if not, then the low-pressure society must not only slam its doors upon the indraft, but must double-lock them with forts and iron-clads, lest they be burst open by assault from some quarter where 'cannon food' is cheap."[ ] these admirable summaries of the immigration problem in its world-aspect are strikingly illustrated by our own country, which may be considered as the leading, if not the "horrible," example. probably few persons fully appreciate what magnificent racial treasures america possessed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. the colonial stock was perhaps the finest that nature had evolved since the classic greeks. it was the very pick of the nordics of the british isles and adjacent regions of the european continent--picked at a time when those countries were more nordic than now, since the industrial revolution had not yet begun and the consequent resurgence of the mediterranean and alpine elements had not taken place. the immigrants of colonial times were largely exiles for conscience's sake, while the very process of migration was so difficult and hazardous that only persons of courage, initiative, and strong will-power would voluntarily face the long voyage overseas to a life of struggle in an untamed wilderness haunted by ferocious savages. thus the entire process of colonial settlement was one continuous, drastic cycle of eugenic selection. only the racially fit ordinarily came, while the few unfit who did come were mostly weeded out by the exacting requirements of early american life. the eugenic results were magnificent. as madison grant well says: "nature had vouchsafed to the americans of a century ago the greatest opportunity in recorded history to produce in the isolation of a continent a powerful and racially homogeneous people, and had provided for the experiment a pure race of one of the most gifted and vigorous stocks on earth, a stock free from the diseases, physical and moral, which have again and again sapped the vigor of the older lands. our grandfathers threw away this opportunity in the blissful ignorance of national childhood and inexperience."[ ] the number of great names which america produced at the beginning of its national life shows the high level of ability possessed by this relatively small people (only about , , whites in ). with our hundred-odd millions we have no such output of genius to-day. the opening decades of the nineteenth century seemed to portend for america the most glorious of futures. for nearly seventy years after the revolution, immigration was small, and during that long period of ethnic isolation the colonial stock, unperturbed by alien influences, adjusted its cultural differences and began to display the traits of a genuine new type, harmonious in basic homogeneity and incalculably rich in racial promise. the general level of ability continued high and the output of talent remained extraordinarily large. perhaps the best feature of the nascent "native american" race was its strong idealism. despite the materialistic blight which was then creeping over the white world, the native american displayed characteristics more reminiscent of his elizabethan forebears than of the materialistic hanoverian englishman. it was a wonderful time--and it was only the dawn! but the full day of that wondrous dawning never came. in the late forties of the nineteenth century the first waves of the modern immigrant tide began breaking on our shores, and the tide swelled to a veritable deluge which never slackened till temporarily restrained by the late war. this immigration, to be sure, first came mainly from northern europe, was thus largely composed of kindred stocks, and contributed many valuable elements. only during the last thirty years have we been deluged by the truly alien hordes of the european east and south. but, even at its best, the immigrant tide could not measure up to the colonial stock _which it displaced_, not reinforced, while latterly it became a menace to the very existence of our race, ideals, and institutions. all our slowly acquired balance--physical, mental, and spiritual--has been upset, and we to-day flounder in a veritable serbonian bog, painfully trying to regain the solid ground on which our grandsires confidently stood. the dangerous fallacy in that short-sighted idealism which seeks to make america the haven of refuge for the poor and oppressed of all lands, and its evil effects not only on america but on the rest of the world as well, has been convincingly exposed by professor ross. he has scant patience with those social "uplifters" whose sympathy with the visible alien at the gate is so keen that they have no feeling for the _invisible_ children of _our_ poor who will find the chances gone, nor for those at the gate of the to-be, who might have been born, but will not be. "i am not of those," he writes, "who consider humanity and forget the nation, who pity the living but not the unborn. to me, those who are to come after us stretch forth beseeching hands as well as do the masses on the other side of the globe. nor do i regard america as something to be spent quickly and cheerfully for the benefit of pent-up millions in the backward lands. what if we become crowded without their ceasing to be so? i regard it (america) as a nation whose future may be of unspeakable value to the rest of mankind, provided that the easier conditions of life here be made permanent by high standards of living, institutions, and ideals, which finally may be appropriated by all men. we could have helped the chinese a little by letting their surplus millions swarm in upon us a generation ago; but we have helped them infinitely more by protecting our standards and having something worth their copying when the time came."[ ] the perturbing influence of recent immigration must vex american life for many decades. even if laws are passed to-morrow so drastic as to shut out permanently the influx of undesirable elements, it will yet take several generations before the combined action of assimilation and elimination shall have restabilized our population and evolved a new type-norm approaching in fixity that which was on the point of crystallizing three-quarters of a century ago. the biologist humphrey thus punctures the "melting-pot" delusion: "our 'melting-pot,'" he writes, "would not give us in a thousand years what enthusiasts expect of it--a _fusing_ of all our various racial elements into a new type which shall be the true american. it _will_ give us for many generations a perplexing diversity in ancestry, and since our successors must reach back into their ancestry for characteristics, this diversity will increase the uncertainty of their inheritances. they will inherit no stable blended character, because there is no such thing. they will inherit from a mixture of unlike characteristics contributed by unlike peoples, and in their inheritance they will have certain of these characteristics in full identity, while certain others they will not have at all."[ ] thus, under even the most favorable circumstances, we are in for generations of racial readjustment--an immense travail, essentially needless, since the final product will probably not measure up to the colonial standard. we will probably never (unless we adopt positive eugenic measures) be the race we might have been if america had been reserved for the descendants of the picked nordics of colonial times. but that is no reason for folding our hands in despairing inaction. on the contrary, we should be up and doing, for though some of our race-heritage has been lost, more yet remains. we can still be a very great people--if we will it so. heaven be praised, the colonial stock was immensely prolific before the alien tide wrought its sterilizing havoc. even to-day nearly one-half of our population is of the old blood, while many millions of the immigrant stock are sound in quality and assimilable in kind. only--the immigrant tide must at all costs be stopped and america given a chance to stabilize her ethnic being. it is the old story of the sibylline books. some, to be sure, are ashes of the dead past; all the more should we conserve the precious volumes which remain. one fact should be clearly understood: if america is not true to her own race-soul, she will inevitably lose it, and the brightest star that has appeared since hellas will fall like a meteor from the human sky, its brilliant radiance fading into the night. "we americans," says madison grant, "must realize that the altruistic ideals which have controlled our social development during the past century and the maudlin sentimentalism that has made america 'an asylum for the oppressed,' are sweeping the nation toward a racial abyss. if the melting-pot is allowed to boil without control and we continue to follow our national motto and deliberately blind ourselves to 'all distinctions of race, creed, or color,' the type of native american of colonial descent will become as extinct as the athenian of the age of pericles and the viking of the days of rollo."[ ] and let us not lay any sacrificial unction to our souls. if we cheat our country and the world of the splendid promise of american life, we shall have no one to blame but ourselves, and we shall deserve, not pity, but contempt. as professor ross well puts it: "a people that has no more respect for its ancestors and no more pride of race than this deserves the extinction that surely awaits it."[ ] this extended discussion of the evil effects of even white immigration has, in my opinion, been necessary in order to get a proper perspective for viewing the problem of colored immigration. for it is perfectly obvious that if the influx of inferior kindred stocks is bad, the influx of wholly alien stocks is infinitely worse. when we see the damage wrought in america, for example, by the coming of persons who, after all, belong mostly to branches of the white race and who nearly all possess the basic ideals of white civilization, we can grasp the incalculably greater damage which would be wrought by the coming of persons wholly alien in blood and possessed of idealistic and cultural backgrounds absolutely different from ours. if the white immigrant can gravely disorder the national life, it is not too much to say that the colored immigrant would doom it to certain death. this doom would be all the more certain because of the enormous potential volume of colored immigration. beside it, the white immigrant tide of the past century would pale into insignificance. leaving all other parts of the colored world out of the present discussion, three asiatic countries--china, japan, and india--together have a population of nearly , , . that is practically twice the population of europe--the source of white immigration. and the vast majority of these , , asiatics are potential immigrants into white territories. their standards of living are so inconceivably low, their congestion is so painful, and their consequent desire for relief so keen that the high-standard, relatively empty white world seems to them a perfect paradise. only the barrier of the white man's veto has prevented a perfect deluge of colored men into white lands, and even as it is the desperate seekers after fuller life have crept and crawled through every crevice in that barrier, until even these advance-guards to-day constitute serious local problems along the white world's race-frontiers. the simple truth of the matter is this: a mighty problem--a planet-wide problem--confronts us to-day and will increasingly confront us in the days to come. says putnam weale: "a struggle has begun between the white man and all the other men of the world to decide whether non-white men--that is, yellow men, or brown men, or black men--may or may not invade the white man's countries in order there to gain their livelihood. the standard of living being low in the lands of colored men and high in the lands of the white man, it has naturally followed that it has been in the highest degree attractive for men of color during the past few decades to proceed to regions where their labor is rewarded on a scale far above their actual requirements--that is, on the white man's scale. this simple economic truth creates the inevitable contest which has for years filled all the countries bordering on the pacific with great dread; and which, in spite of the temporary truce which the so-called 'exclusion policy' has now enforced, will go much farther than it has yet gone."[ ] the world-wide significance of colored immigration and the momentous conflicts which it will probably provoke are ably visualized by professor ross. "the rush of developments," he writes, "makes it certain that the vision of a globe 'lapped in universal law' is premature. if the seers of the mid-century who looked for the speedy triumph of free trade had read their malthus aright, they might have anticipated the tariff barriers that have arisen on all hands within the last thirty years. so, to-day one needs no prophet's mantle to foresee that presently the world will be cut up with immigration barriers which will never be levelled until the intelligent accommodation of numbers to resources has greatly equalized population-pressure all over the globe.... dams against the color races, with spillways of course for students, merchants, and travellers, will presently enclose the white man's world. within this area minor dams will protect the high wages of the less prolific peoples against the surplus labor of the more prolific. "assuredly, every small-family nation will try to raise such a dam, and every big-family nation will try to break it down. the outlook for peace and disarmament is, therefore, far from bright. one needs but compare the population-pressures in france, germany, russia, and japan to realize that, even to-day, the real enemy of the dove of peace is not the eagle of pride or the vulture of greed, but the stork! "the great point of doubt in birth restriction is the ability of the western nations to retain control of the vast african, australasian, and south american areas they have staked out as preserves to be peopled at their leisure with the diminishing overflow of their population. if underbreeding should leave them without the military strength that alone can defend their far-flung frontiers in the southern hemisphere, those huge underdeveloped regions will assuredly be filled with the children of the brown and the yellow races."[ ] thus, white men, of whatever country and however far removed from personal contact with colored competitors, must realize that the question of colored immigration vitally concerns every white man, woman, and child; because nowhere--_absolutely nowhere_--can white labor compete on equal terms with colored immigrant labor. the grim truth is that there are enough hard-working colored men to swamp the whole white world. no palliatives will serve to mitigate the ultimate issue, for if the white race should to-day surrender enough of its frontiers to ease the existing colored population-pressure, so quickly would these surrendered regions be swamped, and so rapidly would the fast-breeding colored races fill the homeland gaps, that in a very short time the diminished white world would be faced with an even louder colored clamor for admittance--backed by an increased power to enforce the colored will. the profoundly destructive effects of colored competition upon white standards of labor and living has long been admitted by all candid students of the problem. so warm a champion of asiatics as mr. hyndman acknowledges that "the white workers cannot hold their own permanently against chinese competition in the labor market. the lower standard of life, the greater persistence, the superior education of the chinese will beat them, and will continue to beat them."[ ] wherever the white man has been exposed to colored competition, particularly asiatic competition, the story is the same. says the australian professor pearson: "no one in california or australia, where the effects of chinese competition have been studied, has, i believe, the smallest doubt that chinese laborers, if allowed to come in freely, could starve all the white men in either country out of it, or force them to submit to harder work and a much lower standard of wages."[ ] and a south african, writing of the effects of hindu immigration into natal, remarks in similar vein: "the condition of south africa--especially of natal--is a warning to other lands to bar asiatic immigrants.... both economically and socially the presence of a large oriental population is bad. the asiatics either force out the white workers, or compel the latter to live down to the asiatic level. there must be a marked deterioration amongst the white working classes, which renders useless a great deal of the effort made in educational work. the white population is educated and trained according to the best ideas of the highest form of western civilization--and has to compete for a livelihood against asiatics! in south africa this competition is driving out the white working class, because the average european cannot live down to the asiatic level--and if it is essential that the european must do so, for the sake of his own happiness, do not educate him up to better things. if cheapness is the only consideration, if low wages are to come before everything else, then it is not only waste of money, but absolute cruelty, to inspire in the white working classes tastes and aspirations which it is impossible for them to realize. to meet asiatic competition squarely, it would be necessary to train the white children to be asiatics. even the pro-orientals would hardly advocate this."[ ] the lines just quoted squarely counter the "survival of the fittest" plea so often made by asiatic propagandists for colored immigration. the argument runs that, since the oriental laborer is able to underbid the white laborer, the oriental is the "fittest" and should therefore be allowed to supplant the white man in the interests of human progress. this is of course merely clever use of the well-known fallacy which confuses the terms "fittest" and "best." the idea that, because a certain human type "fits" in certain ways a particular environment (often an unhealthy, man-made social environment), it should be allowed to drive out another type endowed with much richer potentialities for the highest forms of human evolution, is a sophistry as absurd as it is dangerous. professor ross puts the matter very aptly when he remarks concerning chinese immigration: "the competition of white laborer and yellow is not so simple a test of human worth as some may imagine. under good conditions the white man can best the yellow man in turning off work. but under bad conditions the yellow man can best the white man, because he can better endure spoiled food, poor clothing, foul air, noise, heat, dirt, discomfort, and microbes. reilly can _outdo_ ah-san, but ah-san can _underlive_ reilly. ah-san cannot take away reilly's job as being a better workman; but because he can live and do some work at a wage on which reilly cannot keep himself fit to work at all, three or four ah-sans can take reilly's job from him. and they will do it, too, unless they are barred out of the market where reilly is selling his labor. reilly's endeavor to exclude ah-san from his labor market is not the case of a man dreading to pit himself on equal terms against a better man. indeed, it is not quite so simple and selfish and narrow-minded as all that. it is a case of a man fitted to get the most out of good conditions refusing to yield his place to a weaker man able to withstand bad conditions."[ ] all this is no disparagement of the asiatic. he is perfectly justified in trying to win broader opportunities in white lands. but we whites are equally justified in keeping these opportunities for ourselves and our children. the hard facts are that there is not enough for both; that when the enormous outward thrust of colored population-pressure bursts into a white land _it cannot let live_, but automatically crushes the white man out--first the white laborer, then the white merchant, lastly the white aristocrat; until every vestige of white has gone from that land forever. this inexorable process is thus described by an australian: "the colored races become agencies of economic disturbance and social degradation. they sap and destroy the upward tendencies of the poorer whites. the latter, instead of always having something better to look at and strive after, have a lower standard of living, health, and cleanliness set before them, and the results are disastrous. they sink to the lower level of the asiatics, and the degrading tendency proceeds upward by saturation, affecting several grades of society.... there is an insidious, yet irresistible, process of social degradation. the colored race does not intentionally, or even consciously, lower the european; it simply happens so, by virtue of a natural law which neither race can control. as debased coinage will drive out good currency, so a lowered standard of living will inexorably spread until its effects are universally felt."[ ] it all comes down to a question of self-preservation. and, despite what sentimentalists may say, self-preservation _is_ the first law of nature. to love one's cultural, idealistic, and racial heritage; to swear to pass that heritage unimpaired to one's children; to fight, and, if need be, to die in its defense: all this is eternally right and proper, and no amount of casuistry or sentimentality can alter that unalterable truth. an englishman put the thing in a nutshell when he wrote: "asiatic immigration is not a question of sentiment, but of sheer existence. the whole problem is summed up in lafcadio hearn's pregnant phrase: 'the east can _underlive_ the west.'"[ ] rigorous exclusion of colored immigrants is thus vitally necessary for the white peoples. unfortunately, this exclusion policy will not be easily maintained. colored population-pressure is insistent and increasing, while the matter is still further complicated by the fact that, while no white _community_ can gain by colored immigration, white _individuals_--employers of labor--may be great gainers and hence often tend to put private interest above racial duty. barring a handful of sincere but misguided cosmopolitan enthusiasts, it is unscrupulous business interests which are behind every white proposal to relax the exclusion laws protecting white areas. in fairness to these business interests, however, let us realize their great temptations. to the average employer, especially in the newer areas of white settlement where white labor is scarce and dictatorial, what could be more enticing than the vision of a boundless supply of cheap and eager colored labor? consider this californian appraisement of the chinese coolie: "the chinese coolie is the ideal industrial machine, the perfect human ox. he will transform less food into more work, with less administrative friction, than any other creature. even now, when the scarcity of chinese labor and the consequent rise in wages have eliminated the question of cheapness, the chinese have still the advantage over all other servile labor in convenience and efficiency. they are patient, docile, industrious, and above all 'honest' in the business sense that they keep their contracts. also, they cost nothing but money. any other sort of labor costs human effort and worry, in addition to the money. but chinese labor can be bought like any other commodity, at so much a dozen or a hundred. the chinese contractor delivers the agreed number of men, at the agreed time and place, for the agreed price, and if any one should drop out he finds another in his place. the men board and lodge themselves, and when the work is done they disappear from the employer's ken until again needed. the entire transaction consists in paying the chinese contractor an agreed number of dollars for an agreed result. this elimination of the human element reduces the labor problem to something the employer can understand. the chinese labor-machine, from his standpoint, is perfect."[ ] what is true of the chinese is true to a somewhat lesser extent of all "coolie" labor. hence, once introduced into a white country, it becomes immensely popular--among employers. how it was working out in south africa, before the exclusion acts there, is clearly explained in the following lines: "the experience of south africa is that when once asiatic labor is admitted, the tendency is for it to grow. one manufacturer secures it and is able to cut prices to such an extent that the other manufacturers are forced either to employ asiatics also or to reduce white wages to the asiatic level. oriental labor is something which does not stand still. the taste for it grows. a party springs up financially interested in increasing it. in natal to-day the suggestion that indian labor should no longer be imported is met by an outcry from the planters, the farmers, and landowners, and a certain number of manufacturers, that industries and agriculture will be ruined. so the coolie ships continue to arrive at durban, and natal becomes more and more a land of black and brown people and less a land of white people. instead of becoming a canada or new zealand, it is becoming a trinidad or cuba. instead of white settlers, there are brown settlers.... the working-class white population has to go, as it is going in natal. the country becomes a country of white landlords and supervisors controlling a horde of asiatics. it does not produce a nation or a free people. it becomes what in the old days of english colonization was called a 'plantation.'"[ ] all this gives a clearer idea of the difficulties involved in a successful guarding of the gates. but it also confirms the conviction that the gates must be strictly guarded. if anything further were needed to reinforce that conviction it should be the present state of those white outposts where the gates have been left ajar. hawaii is a good example. this mid-pacific archipelago was brought under white control by masterful american nordics, who established anglo-saxon institutions and taught the natives the rudiments of anglo-saxon civilization. the native hawaiians, like the other polynesian races, could not stand the pressure of white civilization, and withered away. but the white oligarchy which controlled the islands determined to turn their marvellous fertility to immediate profit. labor was imported from the ends of the earth, the sole test being working ability without regard to race or color. there followed a great influx of asiatic labor--at first chinese until annexation to the united states brought hawaii under our chinese exclusion laws; later on filipinos, koreans, and, above all, japanese. the results are highly instructive. these asiatics arrived as agricultural laborers to work on the plantations. but they did not stay there. saving their wages, they pushed vigorously into all the middle walks of life. the hawaiian fisherman and the american artisan or shopkeeper were alike ousted by ruthless undercutting. to-day the american mechanic, the american storekeeper, the american farmer, even the american contractor, is a rare bird indeed, while japanese corporations are buying up the finest plantations and growing the finest pineapples and sugar. fully half the population of the islands is japanese, while the americans are being literally encysted as a small and dwindling aristocracy. in the births of the two races were: american, ; japanese, , ! comment is superfluous. clear round the globe, the island of mauritius, the half-way house between asia and africa, tells the same tale. originally settled by europeans, mostly french, mauritius imported negroes from africa to work its rich soil. this at once made impossible the existence of a white laboring class, though the upper, middle, and artisan classes remained unaffected by the economically backward blacks. a hundred years ago one-third of the population were whites. but after the abolition of slavery the negroes quit work, and asiatics were imported to take their place. the upshot was that the whites were presently swamped beneath the asiatic tide--here mostly hindus. to-day the hindus alone form more than two-thirds of the whole population, the whites numbering less than one-tenth. indeed, the very outward aspect of the island is changing. the old french landmarks are going, and the fabled land of "paul and virginia" is becoming a bit of hindustan, with a chinese fringe. even port louis, the capital town, has mostly passed from white to indian or chinese hands. now what do these two world-sundered cases mean? they mean, as an english writer justly remarks, "that under the british flag mauritius has become an outpost of asia, just as hawaii is another such and under the stars and stripes."[ ] and, of course, there is natal, already mentioned, which, at the moment when the recent south african exclusion act stayed the hindu tide, had not only been partially transformed into an asiatic land, but was fast becoming a centre of asiatic radiation all over south africa. with such grim warnings before their eyes, it is not strange that the lusty young anglo-saxon communities bordering the pacific--australia, new zealand, british columbia, and our own "coast"--have one and all set their faces like flint against the oriental and have emblazoned across their portals the legend: "all white." nothing is more striking than the instinctive and instantaneous solidarity which binds together australians and afrikanders, californians and canadians, into a "sacred union" at the mere whisper of asiatic immigration. everywhere the slogan is the same. "the 'white australia' idea," cries an antipodean writer, "is not a political theory. it is a gospel. it counts for more than religion; for more than flag, because the flag waves over all kinds of races; for more than the empire, for the empire is mostly black, or brown or yellow; is largely heathen, largely polygamous, partly cannibal. in fact, the white australia doctrine is based on the necessity for choosing between national existence and national suicide."[ ] "white australia!" writes another australian in similar vein. "australians of all classes and political affiliations regard the policy much as americans regard the constitution. it is their most articulate article of faith. the reason is not far to seek.... australian civilization is little more than a partial fringe round the continental coastline of , miles. the coast and its hinterlands are settled and developed, although not completely for the entire circumference; in the centre of the country lie the apparently illimitable wastes of the never-never land, occupied entirely by scrub, snakes, sand, and blackfellows. the almost manless regions of the island-continent are a terrible menace. it is impossible to police at all adequately such an enormous area. and the peoples of asia, beating at the bars that confine them, rousing at last from their age-long slumber, are chafing at the restraints imposed upon their free entry into and settlement of such uninhabited, undeveloped lands."[ ] so the australians, , , whites in a far-off continent as large as the united states, defy clamoring asia and swear to keep australia a white man's land. says professor pearson: "we are guarding the last part of the world in which the higher races can increase and live freely, for the higher civilization. we are denying the yellow race nothing but what it can find in the home of its birth, or in countries like the indian archipelago, where the white man can never live except as an exotic."[ ] so australia has raised drastic immigration barriers conceived on the lines laid down by sir henry parkes many years ago: "it is our duty to preserve the type of the british nation, and we ought not for any consideration whatever to admit any element that would detract from, or in any appreciable degree lower, that admirable type of nationality. we should not encourage or admit amongst us any class of persons whatever whom we are not prepared to advance to all our franchises, to all our privileges as citizens, and all our social rights, including the right of marriage. i maintain that no class of persons should be admitted here who cannot come amongst us, take up all our rights, perform on a ground of equality all our duties, and share in our august and lofty work of founding a free nation."[ ] from canada rises an equally uncompromising determination. listen to mr. vrooman, a high official of british columbia: "our province is becoming orientalized, and one of our most important questions is whether it is to remain a british province or become an oriental colony--for we have three races demanding seats in our drawing-room, as well as places at our board--the japanese, chinese, and east indian."[ ] and a well-known canadian writer, miss laut, thus defines the issue: "if the resident hindu had a vote--and as a british subject, why not?--and if he could break down the immigration exclusion act, he could outvote the native-born canadian in ten years. in canada are , , native-born, , , aliens. in india are hundreds of millions breaking the dikes of their own natural barriers and ready to flood any open land. take down the barriers on the pacific coast, and there would be , , hindus in canada in ten years."[ ] our pacific coast takes precisely the same attitude. says chester h. rowell, a california writer: "there is no right way to solve a race problem except to stop it before it begins.... the pacific coast is the frontier of the white man's world, the culmination of the westward migration which is the white man's whole history. it will remain the frontier so long as we regard it as such; no longer. unless it is maintained there, there is no other line at which it can be maintained without more effort than american government and american civilization are able to sustain. the multitudes of asia are awake, after their long sleep, as the multitudes of europe were when our present flood of immigration began. we know what could happen, on the asiatic side, by what did happen and is happening on the european side. on that side we have survived.... but against asiatic immigration we could not survive. the numbers who would come would be greater than we could encyst, and the races who would come are those which we could never absorb. the permanence not merely of american civilization, but of the white race on this continent, depends on our not doing on the pacific side what we have done on the atlantic coast."[ ] says another californian, justice burnett: "the pacific states comprise an empire of vast potentialities and capable of supporting a population of many millions. those now living there propose that it shall continue to be a home for them and their children, and that they shall not be overwhelmed and driven eastward by an ever-increasing yellow and brown flood."[ ] all "economic" arguments are summarily put aside. "they say," writes another californian, "that our fruit-orchards, mines, and seed-farms cannot be worked without them (oriental laborers). it were better that they never be developed than that our white laborers be degraded and driven from the soil. the same arguments were used a century and more ago to justify the importation of african labor.... as it is now, no self-respecting white laborer will work beside the mongolian upon any terms. the proposition, whether we shall have white or yellow labor on the pacific coast, must soon be settled, for we cannot have both. if the mongolian is permitted to occupy the land, the white laborer from east of the rockies will not come here--he will shun california as he would a pestilence. and who can blame him?"[ ] the middle as well as the working class is imperilled by any large number of orientals, for "the presence of the japanese trader means that the white man must either go out of business or abandon his standard of comfort and sink to the level of the asiatic, who will sleep under his counter and subsist upon food that would mean starvation to his white rival."[ ] indeed, californian assertions that oriental immigration menaces, not merely the coast, but the whole continent, seem well taken. this view was officially indorsed by mr. caminetti, commissioner-general of immigration, who testified before a congressional committee some years ago: "asiatic immigration is a menace to the whole country, and particularly to the pacific coast. the danger is general. no part of the united states is immune. the chinese are now spread over the entire country, and the japanese want to encroach. the chinese have become so acclimated that they can prosper in any part of our country.... i would have a law to register the asiatic laborers who come into the country. it is impossible to protect ourselves from persons who come in surreptitiously."[ ] fortunately, the majority of thinking americans are to-day convinced that oriental immigration must not be tolerated. most of our leading men have so expressed themselves. for example, woodrow wilson, during his first presidential campaign, declared on may , : "in the matter of chinese and japanese coolie immigration, i stand for the national policy of exclusion. the whole question is one of assimilation of diverse races. we cannot make a homogeneous population of a people who do not blend with the caucasian race. their lower standard of living as laborers will crowd out the white agriculturist and is in other fields a most serious industrial menace. the success of free democratic institutions demands of our people education, intelligence, and patriotism, and the state should protect them against unjust and impossible competition. remunerative labor is the basis of contentment. democracy rests on the equality of the citizen. oriental coolieism will give us another race-problem to solve and surely we have had our lesson."[ ] the necessity for rigid oriental exclusion is nowhere better exemplified than by the alarm felt to-day in california by the extraordinarily high birth-rate of its japanese residents. there are probably not over , japanese in the whole united states, their numbers being kept down by the "gentlemen's agreement" entered into by the japanese and american governments. but, few though they are, they bring in their women--and these women bring many children into the world. the california japanese settle in compact agricultural colonies, which so teem with babies that a leading california organ, the los angeles _times_, thus seriously discusses the matter: "there may have been a time when an anti-japanese land bill would have limited japanese immigration. but such a law would be impotent now to keep native japanese from possessing themselves of the choicest agricultural and horticultural land in california. for there are now more than , children in the state of japanese parentage, native-born; they possess all the rights of leasing and ownership held by white children born here.... the birth statistics seem to prove that the danger is not from the japanese soldiers, but from the picture brides. the fruitfulness of those brides is almost uncanny.... here is a japanese problem of sufficient gravity to merit serious consideration. we are threatened with an over-production of japanese children. first come the men, then the picture brides, then the families. if california is to be preserved for the next generation as a 'white man's country' there must be some movement started that will restrict the japanese birth-rate in california. when a condition is reached in which two children of japanese parentage are born in some districts for every white child, it is about time something else was done than making speeches about it in the american senate.... if the same present birth-ratio were maintained for the next ten years, there would be , children of japanese descent born in california in and but , white children. and in the majority of the population of california would be japanese, ruling the state."[ ] the alarm of our california contemporary may, in this particular instance, be exaggerated. nevertheless, when we remember the practically unlimited expansive possibilities of even small human groups under favorable conditions, the picture drawn contains no features inherently impossible of realization. what is absolutely certain is that any wholesale oriental influx would inevitably doom the whites, first of the pacific coast, and later of the whole united states, to social sterilization and ultimate racial extinction. thus all those newer regions of the white world won by the white expansion of the last four centuries are alike menaced by the colored migration peril; whether these regions be under-developed, under-populated frontier marches like australia and british columbia, or older and better-populated countries like the united states. and let not europe, the white brood-land, the heart of the white world, think itself immune. in the last analysis, the self-same peril menaces it too. this has long been recognized by far-sighted men. for many years economists and sociologists have discussed the possibility of asiatic immigration into europe. low as wages and living standards are in many european countries, they are yet far higher than in the congested east, while the rapid progress of social betterment throughout europe must further widen the gap and make the white continent seem a more and more desirable haven for the swarming, black-haired bread-seekers of china, india, and japan. indeed, a few observers of modern conditions have come to the conclusion that this invasion of europe by asiatic labor is unescapable, and they have drawn the most pessimistic conclusions. for example, more than a decade ago an english writer asserted gloomily: "no level-headed thinker can imagine that it will always be possible to prevent the free migration of intelligent races, representing in the aggregate half the peoples of the world, should those peoples actively conceive that their welfare demands that they should seek employment in europe. in these days of rapid transit, of aviation, such a measure of repression is impossible.... we shall not be destroyed, perhaps, by the sudden onrush of invaders, as rome was overwhelmed by the northern hordes; we shall be gradually subdued and absorbed by the 'peaceful penetration' of more virile races."[ ] now, mark you! all that i have thus far written concerning colored immigration has been written without reference to the late war. in other words, the colored-migration peril would have been just as grave as i have described it even if the white world were still as strong as in the years before . but the war has of course immensely aggravated an already critical situation. the war has shaken both the material and psychological bases of white resistance to colored infiltration, while it has correspondingly strengthened asiatic hopes and hardened asiatic determination to break down the barriers debarring colored men from white lands. asia's perception of what the war signified in this respect was instantaneous. the war was not a month old before japanese journals were suggesting a relaxation of asiatic exclusion laws in the british colonies as a natural corollary to the anglo-japanese alliance and anglo-japanese comradeship in arms. said the tokio _mainichi deupo_ in august, : "we are convinced that it is a matter of the utmost importance that britons beyond the seas should make a better attempt at fraternizing with japan, as better relations between the english-speaking races and japan will have a vital bearing on the destiny of the empire. there is no reason why the british colonies fronting on the pacific should not actively participate in the anglo-japanese alliance. britain needs population for her surplus land and japan needs land for her surplus population. this fact alone should draw the two races closer together. moreover, the british people have ample capital but deficiency of labor, while it is the reverse with japan.... the harmonious co-operation of britain and her colonies with japan insures safety to british and japanese interests alike. without such co-operation, japan and great britain are both unsafe."[ ] what this "co-operation" implies was very frankly stated by _the japan magazine_ at about the same date: "there is nothing that would do so much to bind east and west firmly together as the opening of the british colonies to japanese immigration. then, indeed, britain would be a lion endowed with wings. large numbers of japanese in the british colonies would mean that britain would have the assistance of japan in the protection of her colonies. but if an anti-japanese agitation is permitted, both countries will be making the worst instead of the best of the anglo-japanese alliance. thus it would be allowed to make japan an enemy instead of a friend. it seems that the british people both at home and in the colonies are not yet alive to the importance of the policy suggested, and it is, therefore, pointed out and emphasized before it is too late."[ ] the covert threat embodied in those last lines was a forerunner of the storm of anti-white abuse which rose from the more bellicose sections of the japanese press as soon as it became evident that neither the british dominions nor the united states were going to relax their immigration laws. some of this anti-white comment, directed particularly against the anglo-saxon peoples, i have already noted in the second chapter of this book, but such comment as bears directly on immigration matters i have reserved for discussion at this point. for example, the tokio _yorodzu_ wrote early in : "japan has been most faithful to the requirements of the anglo-japanese alliance, and yet the treatment meted out to our countrymen in canada, australia, and other british colonies has been a glaring insult to us."[ ] a year later a writer in _the japan magazine_ declared: "the agitation against japanese in foreign countries must cease, even if japan has to take up arms to stop it. she should not allow her immigration to be treated as a race-question."[ ] and in the _yorodzu_ thus paid its respects to the exclusionist activity of our pacific coast states: "whatever may be their object, their actions are more despicable than those of the germans whose barbarities they attacked as worthy of huns. at least, these americans are barbarians who are on a lower plane of civilization than the japanese."[ ] the war produced no letting down of immigration barriers along the white world's exposed frontiers, where men are fully alive to the peril. but the war did produce temporary waverings of sentiment in the united states, while in europe colored labor was imported wholesale in ways which may have ominous consequences. our own acute labor shortage during the war, particularly in agriculture, led many americans, especially employers, to cast longing eyes at the tempting reservoirs of asia. typical of this attitude is an article by hudson maxim in the spring of . mr. maxim urged the importation of a million chinese to solve our farming and domestic-service problems. "if it is possible," he wrote, "by the employment of chinese methods of intensive farming, to increase the production of our lands to such an extent, how stupendous would be the benefit of wide introduction of such methods. the exhausted lands of new england could be made to produce like a tropical garden. the vast areas of the great west that are to-day not producing per cent of what they ought to produce could be made to produce the other per cent by the introduction of chinese labor.... the average american does not like farming. the sons of the prosperous farmers do not take kindly to the tilling of the soil with their own hands. they prefer the excitement and the diversions and stimulus of the life of city and town, and they leave the farm for the office and factory.... "chinese, imported as agricultural laborers and household servants, would solve the agricultural labor problem and the servant problem, and we should have the best agricultural workers in the world and the best household servants in the world, in unlimited numbers."[ ] now i submit that such arguments, however well-intentioned, are nothing short of race-treason. if there be one truth which history has proved, it is the solemn truth that those who _work_ the land will ultimately _own_ the land. furthermore, the countryside is the seed-bed from which the city populations are normally recruited. the one bright spot in our otherwise dubious ethnic future is the fact that most of our unassimilable aliens have stopped in the towns, while many of the most assimilable immigrants have settled in the country, thus reinforcing rather than replacing our native american rural population. any suggestion which advocates the settlement of our countryside by asiatics and the deliberate driving of our native stocks to the towns, there to be sterilized and eliminated, is simply unspeakable. fortunately, such fatal counsels were with us never acted upon, albeit they should be remembered as lurking perils which will probably be urged again in future times of stress. but during europe's war-agony, yellow, brown, and black men were imported wholesale, not only for the armies, but also for the factories and fields. these colored aliens have mostly been shipped back to their homes. nevertheless, they have carried with them vivid recollections of the marvellous west, and the tale will spread to the remotest corners of the colored world, stirring hard-pressed colored bread-seekers to distant ventures. furthermore, europe has had a practical demonstration of the colored alien's manifold usefulness, and if europe's troubles are prolonged, the colored man may be increasingly employed there both in peace and war. even during the war the french and english working classes felt the pressure of colored competition. race-feeling grew strained, and presently both england and france witnessed the (to them) unwonted spectacles of race-riots in their port-towns where the colored aliens were most thickly gathered. an american observer thus describes the "breaking of the exclusion walls erected against the chinese": "in london, one wednesday evening, twenty-four months ago (_i. e._, in ), there was a mass-meeting held on the corner of piggot street, limehouse, to protest against the influx of john chinaman into bonny old england.... the london navvies that night heard a protest against 'the chinese invasion' of britain. they knew that down on the london docks there were two chinamen to every white man since the coming of war. they knew that many of these yellow aliens were married. they knew, too, that a big chinese restaurant had just opened down the west india dock road. "the sailors' and firemen's union--one of the most powerful in england--carried the protest into the trades-union congress held at birmingham. there, alarm was voiced at the steady increase in the number of chinese hands on britain's ships. it was an increase, true, since the stress of war-times had begun to try britain. but what england's sons of the seven seas wanted to know was: when is 'this orientalizing' of the british marine to stop?... the seamen's unions were willing to do their bit for john bull, but they wondered what was going to happen after the coming of peace. would the chinese continue to man john bull's ships?... "such is one manifestation of the decisive lifting of gates and barriers that has taken place since the white world went to war. to-day the chinese--for decades finding a wall in every white man's country--are numbered by the tens of thousands in the service of the allies. they have made good. they are a war-factor.... all told, , chinese are 'carrying on' in the war-zone, laboring behind the lines, in munition-works and factories, manning ships.... "what will happen when peace comes upon this red world--a world turned topsyturvy by the white man's great war, which has taken john chinaman from shantung, chihli, and kwangtung to that battle-ground in france?... that makes the drafting of china's man-power one of the most supremely important events in the great war. the family of nations is taking on a new meaning--john chinaman overseas has a place in it. as italian harvest-labor before the war went to and from argentina for a few months' work, so the chinese have gone to europe under contract and go home again. perhaps this action will have a bearing on the solution of the far west's agricultural labor problem. "do not believe for a moment that the armies of chinese in europe will forget the lessons taught them in the west. when these sons of han come home, the great war will be found to have given birth to a new east."[ ] so ends our survey. it has girdled the globe. and the lesson is always the same: colored migration is a _universal_ peril, menacing every part of the white world. nowhere can the white man endure colored competition; everywhere "the east can _underlive_ the west." the grim truth of the matter is this: the whole white race is exposed, immediately or ultimately, to the possibility of social sterilization and final replacement or absorption by the teeming colored races. what this unspeakable catastrophe would mean for the future of the planet, and how the peril may be averted, will form the subject of my concluding pages. chapter xii the crisis of the ages ours is a solemn moment. we stand at a crisis--the supreme crisis of the ages. for unnumbered millenniums man has toiled upward from the dank jungles of savagery toward glorious heights which his mental and spiritual potentialities give promise that he shall attain. his path has been slow and wavering. time and again he has lost his way and plunged into deep valleys. man's trail is littered with the wrecks of dead civilizations and dotted with the graves of promising peoples stricken by an untimely end. humanity has thus suffered many a disaster. yet none of these disasters were fatal, because they were merely local. those wrecked civilizations and blighted peoples were only parts of a larger whole. always some strong barbarians, endowed with rich, unspoiled heredities, caught the falling torch and bore it onward flaming high once more. out of the prehistoric shadows the white races pressed to the front and proved in a myriad ways their fitness for the hegemony of mankind. gradually they forged a common civilization; then, when vouchsafed their unique opportunity of oceanic mastery four centuries ago, they spread over the earth, filling its empty spaces with their superior breeds and assuring to themselves an unparalleled paramountcy of numbers and dominion. three centuries later the whites took a fresh leap forward. the nineteenth century was a new age of discovery--this time into the realms of science. the hidden powers of nature were unveiled, incalculable energies were tamed to human use, terrestrial distance was abridged, and at last the planet was integrated under the hegemony of a single race with a common civilization. the prospects were magnificent, the potentialities of progress apparently unlimited. yet there were commensurate perils. towering heights mean abysmal depths, while the very possibility of supreme success implies the possibility of supreme failure. all these marvellous achievements were due solely to superior heredity, and the mere maintenance of what had been won depended absolutely upon the prior maintenance of race-values. civilization of itself means nothing. it is merely an effect, whose cause is the creative urge of superior germ-plasm. civilization is the body; the race is the soul. let the soul vanish, and the body moulders into the inanimate dust from which it came. two things are necessary for the continued existence of a race: it must remain itself, and it must breed its best. every race is the result of ages of development which evolves specialized capacities that make the race what it is and render it capable of creative achievement. these specialized capacities (which particularly mark the superior races), being relatively recent developments, are highly unstable. they are what biologists call "recessive" characters; that is, they are not nearly so "dominant" as the older, generalized characters which races inherit from remote ages and which have therefore been more firmly stamped upon the germ-plasm. hence, when a highly specialized stock interbreeds with a different stock, the newer, less stable, specialized characters are bred out, the variation, no matter how great its potential value to human evolution, being _irretrievably lost_. this occurs even in the mating of two superior stocks if these stocks are widely dissimilar in character. the valuable specializations of both breeds cancel out, and the mixed offspring tend strongly to revert to generalized mediocrity. and, of course, the more primitive a type is, the more prepotent it is. this is why crossings with the negro are uniformly fatal. whites, amerindians, or asiatics--all are alike vanquished by the invincible prepotency of the more primitive, generalized, and lower negro blood. there is no immediate danger of the world being swamped by black blood. but there is a very imminent danger that the white stocks may be swamped by asiatic blood. the white man's very triumphs have evoked this danger. his virtual abolition of distance has destroyed the protection which nature once conferred. formerly mankind dwelt in such dispersed isolation that wholesale contact of distant, diverse stocks was practically impossible. but with the development of cheap and rapid transportation, nature's barriers are down. unless man erects and maintains artificial barriers the various races will increasingly mingle, and the inevitable result will be the supplanting or absorption of the higher by the lower types. we can see this process working out in almost every phase of modern migration. the white immigration into latin america is the exception which proves the rule. that particular migration is, of course, beneficent, since it means the influx of relatively high types into undeveloped lands, sparsely populated by types either no higher or much lower than the new arrivals. but almost everywhere else, whether we consider interwhite migrations or colored encroachments on white lands, the net result is an expansion of lower and a contraction of higher stocks, the process being thus a disgenic one. even in asia the evils of modern migration are beginning to show. the japanese government has been obliged to prohibit the influx of chinese and korean coolies who were undercutting japanese labor and thus undermining the economic bases of japanese life. furthermore, modern migration is itself only one aspect of a still more fundamental disgenic trend. the whole course of modern urban and industrial life is disgenic. over and above immigration, the tendency is toward a replacement of the more valuable by the less valuable elements of the population. all over the civilized world racial values are diminishing, and the logical end of this disgenic process is racial bankruptcy and the collapse of civilization. now why is all this? it is primarily because we have not yet adjusted ourselves to the radically new environment into which our epochal scientific discoveries led us a century ago. such adaptation as we have effected has been almost wholly on the material side. the no less sweeping idealistic adaptations which the situation calls for have not been made. hence, modern civilization has been one-sided, abnormal, unhealthy--and nature is exacting penalties which will increase in severity until we either fully adapt or _finally perish_. "finally perish!" that is the exact alternative which confronts the white race. for white civilization is to-day conterminous with the white race. the civilizations of the past were local. they were confined to a particular people or group of peoples. if they failed, there were always some unspoiled, well-endowed barbarians to step forward and "carry on." but to-day _there are no more white barbarians_. the earth has grown small, and men are everywhere in close touch. if white civilization goes down, the white race is irretrievably ruined. it will be swamped by the triumphant colored races, who will obliterate the white man by elimination or absorption. what has taken place in central asia, once a white and now a brown or yellow land, will take place in australasia, europe, and america. not to-day, nor yet to-morrow; perhaps not for generations; but surely in the end. if the present drift be not changed, we whites are all ultimately doomed. unless we set our house in order, the doom will sooner or later overtake us all. and that would mean that the race obviously endowed with the greatest creative ability, the race which had achieved most in the past and which gave the richer promise for the future, had passed away, carrying with it to the grave those potencies upon which the realization of man's highest hopes depends. a million years of human evolution might go uncrowned, and earth's supreme life-product, man, might never fulfil his potential destiny. this is why we to-day face "the crisis of the ages." to many minds the mere possibility of such a catastrophe may seem unthinkable. yet a dispassionate survey of the past shows that it is not only possible but probable if present conditions go on unchanged. the whole history of life, both human and subhuman, teaches us that nature will not condone disobedience; that, as i have already phrased it, "no living being stands above her law, and protozoön or demigod, if they transgress, alike must die." now we have transgressed; grievously transgressed--and we are suffering grievous penalties. but pain is really kind. pain is the importunate tocsin which rouses to dangerous realities and spurs to the seeking of a cure. as a matter of fact we are confusedly aware of our evil plight, and legion are the remedies to-day proposed. some of these are mere quack nostrums. others contain valuable remedial properties. to be sure, there is probably no _one_ curative agent, since our troubles are complex and magic elixirs heal only in the realm of dreams. but one element should be fundamental to all the compoundings of the social pharmacopoeia. that element is _blood_. it is clean, virile, genius-bearing blood, streaming down the ages through the unerring action of heredity, which, in anything like a favorable environment, will multiply itself, solve our problems, and sweep us on to higher and nobler destinies. what we to-day need above all else is a changed attitude of mind--a recognition of the supreme importance of heredity, not merely in scientific treatises but in the practical ordering of the world's affairs. we are where we are to-day primarily because we have neglected this vital principle; because we have concerned ourselves with dead things instead of with living beings. this disregard of heredity is perhaps not strange. it is barely a generation since its fundamental importance was scientifically established, and the world's conversion to even the most vital truth takes time. in fact, we also have much to unlearn. a little while ago we were taught that all men were equal and that good conditions could, of themselves, quickly perfect mankind. the seductive charm of these dangerous fallacies lingers and makes us loath to put them resolutely aside. fortunately, we now know the truth. at last we have been vouchsafed clear insight into the laws of life. we now know that men are not, and never will be, equal. we know that environment and education can develop only what heredity brings. we know that the acquirements of individuals are either not inherited at all or are inherited in so slight a degree as to make no perceptible difference from generation to generation. in other words: we now know that heredity is paramount in human evolution, all other things being secondary factors. this basic truth is already accepted by large numbers of thinking men and women all over the civilized world, and if it becomes firmly fixed in the popular consciousness it will work nothing short of a revolution in the ordering of the world's affairs. for race-betterment is such an intensely _practical_ matter! when peoples come to realize that the _quality_ of the population is the source of all their prosperity, progress, security, and even existence; when they realize that a single genius may be worth more in actual dollars than a dozen gold-mines, while, conversely, racial decline spells material impoverishment and decay; when such things are really believed, we shall see much-abused "eugenics" actually moulding social programmes and political policies. were the white world to-day really convinced of the supreme importance of race-values, how long would it take to stop debasing immigration, reform social abuses that are killing out the fittest strains, and put an end to the feuds which have just sent us through hell and threaten to send us promptly back again? well, perhaps our change of heart may come sooner than now appears. the horrors of the war, the disappointment of the peace, the terror of bolshevism, and the rising tide of color have knocked a good deal of the nonsense out of us, and have given multitudes a hunger for realities who were before content with a diet of phrases. said wise old benjamin franklin: "dame experience sets a dear school, but fools will have no other." our course at the dame's school is already well under way and promises to be exceeding dear. only, it is to be hoped our education will be rapid, for time presses and the hour is grave. if certain lessons are not learned and acted upon shortly, we may be overwhelmed by irreparable disasters and all our dear schooling will go for naught. what are the things we _must_ do promptly if we would avert the worst? this "irreducible minimum" runs about as follows: first and foremost, the wretched versailles business will have to be thoroughly revised. as it stands, dragon's teeth have been sown over both europe and asia, and unless they be plucked up they will presently grow a crop of cataclysms which will seal the white world's doom. secondly, some sort of provisional understanding must be arrived at between the white world and renascent asia. we whites will have to abandon our tacit assumption of permanent domination over asia, while asiatics will have to forego their dreams of migration to white lands and penetration of africa and latin america. unless some such understanding is arrived at, the world will drift into a gigantic race-war--and genuine race-war means war to the knife. such a hideous catastrophe should be abhorrent to both sides. nevertheless, asia should be given clearly to understand that we cannot permit either migration to white lands or penetration of the non-asiatic tropics, and that for these matters we prefer to fight to a finish rather than yield to a finish--because our "finish" is precisely what surrender on these points would mean. thirdly, even within the white world, migrations of lower human types like those which have worked such havoc in the united states must be rigorously curtailed. such migrations upset standards, sterilize better stocks, increase low types, and compromise national futures more than war, revolutions, or native deterioration. such are the things which simply _must_ be done if we are to get through the next few decades without convulsions which may render impossible the white world's recovery. these things will not bring in the millennium. far from it. our ills are so deep-seated that in nearly every civilized country racial values would continue to depreciate even if all three were carried into effect. but they will at least give our wounds a chance to heal, and they will give the new biological revelation time to permeate the popular consciousness and transfuse with a new idealism our materialistic age. as the years pass, the supreme importance of heredity and the supreme value of superior stocks will sink into our being, and we will acquire a true _race_-consciousness (as opposed to national or cultural consciousness) which will bridge political gulfs, remedy social abuses, and exorcise the lurking spectre of miscegenation. in those better days, we or the next generation will take in hand the problem of race-depreciation, and segregation of defectives and abolition of handicaps penalizing the better stocks will put an end to our present racial decline. by that time biological knowledge will have so increased and the popular philosophy of life will have been so idealized that it will be possible to inaugurate positive measures of race-betterment which will unquestionably yield the most wonderful results. those splendid tasks are probably not ours. they are for our successors in a happier age. but we have our task, and god knows it is a hard one--the salvage of a shipwrecked world! ours it is to make possible that happier age, whose full-fruits we shall never see. well, what of it? does not the new idealism teach us that we are links in a vital chain, charged with high duties both to the dead and the unborn? in very truth we are at once sons of sires who sleep in calm assurance that we will not betray the trust they confided to our hands, and sires of sons who in the beyond wait confident that we shall not cheat them of their birthright. let us, then, act in the spirit of kipling's immortal lines: "our fathers in a wondrous age, ere yet the earth was small, ensured to us an heritage, and doubted not at all that we, the children of their heart, which then did beat so high, in later time should play like part for our posterity. * * * * * then, fretful, murmur not they gave so great a charge to keep, nor dream that awestruck time shall save their labor while we sleep. dear-bought and clear, a thousand year our fathers' title runs. make we likewise their sacrifice, defrauding not our sons."[ ] index abd-el-wahab, abyssinia, , afghanistan, independence of, , ; germany's relations with, ; bolshevik propaganda in, africa, , ; effect of russo-japanese war on, , ; partition of, , , _ff._, ; european conquests in, ; growth of mohammedanism in, ; ; germany in, north, brown race in, ; , , _ff._, ; bolshevik agitators in, ; brown power in, _ff._; spread of arab blood in, ; native white blood in, _ff._; rule of islam in, , , , , south, , ; home of black race, , , _ff._; white colonization of, ; wealth of, _ff._; result of white rule in, , ; spread of islam in, _ff._, ; christianity in, _ff._; anti-white sentiment in, _ff._; uprising of , ; situation of, _ff._; white settlement in, ; danger of asiatic penetration into, , ; results of asiatic penetration into, _ff._, ; exclusion act in, , ; result of asiatic labor in, , ; mauritius settled from, algeria, ; riots in, , ; white blood in, _ff._ allies of the great war, , _al mowwayad_, alpine race, _ff._, ; and the war, ; , america, ; black race in, , _ff._ ; race prejudice in, ; ; military preparations in, ; japan's attitude toward, _ff._; red man in, ; discovery of, ; settlement of, ; cost of war in, ; triumph of, ; danger to white race in, central, white civilization in, ; race-mixture in, _ff._; japanese in, , _ff._ latin, red man in, , ; japanese in, , _ff._; evolution of, ; mixed blood in, _ff._, _ff._, , _ff._, ; revolution in, _ff._; results of revolution in, _ff._; oligarchies in, _ff._; immigration into, ; loss of white supremacy in, ; anarchy in, _ff._; inability of, to rule self, _ff._; asiatics in, _ff._, ; anti-americanism in, ; attitude of, toward yellow race, _ff._; pressure of yellow race on, ; present situation in, _ff._; future of, _ff._; bolshevik agitation in, ; danger of asiatic penetration of, _ff._, _ff._, ; white migration into, north, white man's land, , , , ; attitude of japs toward, ; japs in, ; nordics in, ; result of immigration on, _ff._, _ff._; need for prohibiting immigration into, _ff._; a frontier against asia, south, colonization of, ; white man's country, , ; colored man's country, ; half-caste in, ; need for white immigration into, ; "indianista" movement, ; japs in, , . _see also_ latin america american indian, home of, ; number of, ; spanish conquest of, _ff._; racial mixtures of, _ff._, _ff._, _ff._, , ; relations with spaniards, ; in chile, _ff._; in peru, ; in colombia, ; in costa rica, ; in argentina, ; in uruguay, ; in northern brazil, ; anti-white sentiment among, _ff._; ancient civilizations among, ; capability of, _ff._; influence of spaniards on, ; "indianista" movement, ; japanese relations with, _ff._, amerindian. _see_ american indian amoor, anatolia, , andaman islanders, anglo-french agreement, anglo-japanese alliance, _ff._ anglo-oriental college, anglo-saxons, japanese agitation against, , ; race-growth of, _ff._; "sacred union" of, annamites, arab-negroid, arabia, location of, ; senussi in, ; nationalist movements in, arabistan, definition of, ; population of, arabs, _ff._, _ff._, , araucania, argentina, white man in, ; population of, ; agricultural development of, ; immigration into, ; japanese immigration into, aryan race, , asia, , ; home-land of white race, ; of yellow race, ; of brown race, ; black race in, ; antagonism toward white continents, _ff._, , ; japan in, , , , ; european conquests in, ; renaissance in, ; latin america invaded by, , , ; europe assailed by, _ff._, ; white man in, _ff._, _ff._; anti-white sentiment in, , ; russia in, , _ff._; bolshevik agitators in, ; centre of colored unrest, _ff._; non-asiatic lands penetrated by, ; independence of, _ff._; economic activity in, _ff._, , ; causes of poverty in, ; population of, ; hawaii penetrated by, ; mauritius settled by, ; pacific coast settled by, ; need in u. s. for laborers from, ; evils of modern migration in, ; white world's need for understanding with, _ff._ asia minor, asturians, australasia, , , , , australia, ; japanese desire for, , ; chinese need for land in, ; ; black race in, ; settlement of, ; ; chinese invasion of, , ; "white australia" doctrine in, _ff._; number of white in, ; immigration menace to, ; japanese in, austria, aztec civilization, , bagdad, balkans, balkans, war, basques, basra, behring strait, belgium, bengal lancers, berbers, white blood of, ; acceptance of french rule, ; european intermarriage with, birmingham, black death, black race, ; numbers of, , ; home of, , _ff._; mohammedanism in, , ; brown race's relations with, _ff._, , _ff._; white race's relations with, _ff._, , ; character of, , _ff._; other races compared with, _ff._; influence of other races on, ; spread of islam in, _ff._, , ; spread of christianity in, _ff._; anti-white sentiments of, ; "ethiopian church" movement and, _ff._; in latin america, , _ff._, _ff._; race-mixtures with, _ff._, , , , ; germany's relations with, ; france's relations with, ; in european war, , _ff._, ; white lands entered by, boer war, bolivar, _ff._ bolivia, mixed blood in, ; need of immigration in, ; indian rising in, _ff._; japanese immigration into, bolsheviki, bolshevism, , , ; tenets of, _ff._; menace to white race, _ff._, bombay, brahman. _see_ hindu brazil, ; bolshevik propaganda in, ; portugal's neglect of, ; immigration into, ; white man in, ; indians in, ; result of race-mixtures in, , british columbia, exclusion policy of, , ; colored immigration menace against, british dominion. _see_ british empire british empire, ; japan's relations with, ; india's relations with, ; egypt's relations with, ; war losses of, ; immigration laws of, . _see_ england and great britain british straits settlements, brown race, ; numbers of, , ; home of, , ; , , ; types of, _ff._; unity of, ; white race's relations with, _ff._, ; groupings of, ; islam's relations with, _ff._; unrest under white rule, _ff._, , ; possibility of brown-yellow alliance, _ff._; black race's relations with, , , _ff._, _ff._; europe assailed by, , ; germany's relations with, ; france's relations with, ; italy's relations with, ; in european war, _ff._, ; africa colonized by, ; military potency of, _ff._; industrial conditions of, ; white lands penetrated by, ; mauritius settled by, ; south africa penetrated by, _ff._; central asia taken by, bryce, lord, , buddhism, , , buenos aires, cairo, , , calcutta, california, result of chinese labor in, ; exclusion policy of, ; japanese in, _ff._ cambodians, canada, desire of yellow race for, ; ; fear of asiatic immigration into, ; white man's country, ; ; exclusion policy of, , ; population of, ; nordics in, ; danger of hindu immigration into, _ff._; caribbean, ; caroline islands, ; carranza, ; cape horn, , ; castro of venezuela, ; caucasian, chengtu, chile, ; nordic colonists of, ; race-mixture in, ; stabilization of, ; characteristics of, ; progress of, ; japanese immigration into, ; bolshevik propaganda in, chilembwe, john, china, white control of, ; independence of, ; yellow world centred in, , ; population of, ; exclusion policy, ; japanese war with, _ff._, _ff._; revolution in, _ff._, ; partition of, ; boxer war in, ; japan's relations with, _ff._, _ff._, , _ff._, , , _ff._, , , , , ; "young china" movement in, ; economic efficiency of, _ff._; population of, ; colonizing possibilities of, _ff._; mohammedans in, ; effect of war on, ; congestion in, ; latin america penetrated by, , ; "break-up" of, , ; russia's relations with, ; germany's relations with, ; bolshevik propaganda in, ; white goods boycotted by, , _ff._; military potency of, _ff._; industrial life of, , _ff._, ; labor conditions in, _ff._, , _ff._, _ff._; hawaii settled by, ; british columbia penetrated by, ; united states settled by, ; europe penetrated by, ; u. s. need for, _ff._; england settled by, ; in war zone, christianity, in africa, , _ff._; in latin america, civitas dei, cochin-china, colombia, settlement of, , ; revolution in, ; anti-american sentiment in, colored-bolshevist alliance, columbus, christopher, , , confucius, ; followers of, congo, , _conquistadores_, _ff._, , constantinople, , , , constantinople _tanine_, _contemporary review_, cortez, costa rica, creoles, and _n._; degeneracy of, _ff._; anti-spain revolt of, _ff._; "democracy" of, ; status of, crusades, , cuba, , ; cross-breeding in, , cuzco, "dark continent," _ff._, , de gama, vasco, de la barra, señor, diaz, porfirio, dillon, doctor e. j., , , durban, dutch indies, , , ; colonization of, ; population of, , ecuador, mixed blood in, ; need for immigration into, egypt, taken by england, , _ff._; revolt in, ; nationalist movement in, _ff._; effect of versailles conference on, ; insurrection in, _ff._; unrest in, , ; islam's ascendancy in, ; bolshevik propaganda in, ; white products boycotted in, _ff._ _el mercurio_ (chile), england, india's relations with, , _ff._; japan's relations with, _ff._, _ff._, ; islamite appeal to, ; egypt's relations with, _ff._; chile compared with, ; population of, , _ff._; race-stocks in, beginning of war in, , ; cost of war to, , , ; russia's threat against, ; japan allied with, _ff._; china's industrial rivalry with, ; colored labor in, _ff._; race-riots in, _ff._ english civil service, "ethiopian church," ; founding of, ; anti-white teachings of, ; zulu rebellion caused by, ethiopianism, europe, , , , ; asia's hostility toward, , , ; moslem east attacked by, ; relations with islam, ; height attained by, _ff._, ; argentine and uruguay settled by, , ; black death in, ; expansion attempted by, ; asia's attacks on, _ff._; results of discovery of america in, ; results of asian conflicts on, , _ff._; industrial revolution in, _ff._, , ; nordic ranks in, ; results of russo-jap war in, _ff._; results of versailles conference on, , , ; bolshevism's menace to, _ff._; effect of colored migration on, , ; danger of oriental immigration into, _ff._; colored labor imported into, , _ff._ _see also_ european war "european concert," european war, , , _ff._, , , , _ff._; germany's collapse in, ; end of, ; prophecy of, ; islam at beginning of, ; egypt at beginning of, ; east affected by, ; india in, ; u. s. in, , , , , , ; cost of, _ff._; in civil life, _ff._, _ff._; results of, _ff._, _ff._, ; "hate literature" of, ; use of colored troops in, _ff._, , , ; asia's attitude affected by, _ff._; colored labor in, _ff._ "exclusion policy," far east. _see_ china, japan fatima, filipinos in hawaii, fisher, h. a. l., formosa, _ff._, , , france, birth-rate of, , ; japan's attitude toward, _ff._, _ff._, ; cost of war in, , _ff._; conscription in, , ; nordics in, , , , ; colored labor in, _ff._; race-riots in, "gentlemen's agreement," germany, chinese interests of, ; japan's relations with, , , _ff._; asiatic expulsion of, _ff._; bolshevism's aid to, ; collapse of, , _ff._; islam's relations with, ; south american immigrations of, , ; mexico's relations with, ; cost of war in, , ; conscription in, ; russia's relations with, ; nordic race in, ; alpine race in, ; population of, ; in central africa, ; belgium invaded by, ; chinese industrial rivalry with, , grand alliance, grant, madison, , , , , great britain, _ff._; japan's relations with, , _ff._ _see also_ england and british empire great war. _see_ european war greece, , , guinea, gurkhas, "habl-ul-matin," _ff._ haiti, , , , and _n._ "hajj," _ff._ hall, prescott f., , hangkow, hanyang, hawaii, ; white rule in, ; asiatic labor in, _ff._; u. s. annexation of, ; americans in, _ff._ hedjaz kingdom, himalayans, , hindustan, islam's relations with, ; england's relations with, ; mauritius a part of, hokkaido, , _ff._ holland, , huns, , ichang, incas, _ff._ india, japanese relations with, _ff._; english relations with, , ; population of, , ; wealth of, ; russian menace to, , ; , ; southern, ; brown world centred in, ; revolt in northwest, ; unrest in, ; government of, _ff._; congestion in, _ff._, , ; "negritos" in, , , ; bolshevik propaganda in, , ; foreign goods boycotted by, ; industrial growth of, ; handicaps to, ; "swadeshi" movement, , ; in south africa, ; in british columbia, ; in europe, indian archipelago, "indianista" movement, , , ; japanese support of, , , indians of america. _see_ american indians indo-china, population of, ; exclusion policy of, , ; revolutions in, _ff._, , indo-japanese association, iran, population of, ; influence on, islam, brown race united by, ; in india, , , , ; ; power of, _ff._; revival of, ; progress of, , _ff._; communication in, ; numerical strength of, , ; european relations with, _ff._; proselytizing power of, ; the senussi in, _ff._; effect of russo-japanese war on, ; japanese relations with, _ff._; tripoli taken from, _ff._, ; effect of balkan war on, ; england's relations with, ; in china, ; in the european war, ; versailles conference and, _ff._; black race's relations with, , , ; south african progress of, _ff._, italy, ; tripoli seized by, _ff._, ; south american immigration from, _ff._; conditions in, japan, independence of, , ; effect of white civilization on, , ; russian war with, , _ff._, ; population of, , ; exclusion policy of, ; western civilization in, ; chinese war with, _ff._; imperialism in, ; european war and, , , ; chinese subjection to, , _ff._, , , ; white race expelled from asia by, ; asia influenced by, , , ; england's relations with, , _ff._, _ff._; germany's relations with, , _ff._; russian understanding with, ; in siberia, ; versailles conference and, ; colonizing possibilities of, ; climatic requirements of, _ff._; militarism of, _ff._; islam's relations with, _ff._; latin america's relations with, _ff._, ; american relations with, , , _ff._; mexican relations with, _ff._; indians affected by, ; power of, , ; russian prisoners in, _ff._; bolshevik propaganda in, ; industrial conditions in, , _ff._; excess population in, , ; hawaii settled by, _ff._; british columbia settled by, ; chinese excluded by, ; koreans excluded by, _japan magazine_, , , _japanese colonial journal_, java, ; bolshevik propaganda in, jerusalem, jews in america, kamchatka, kechua republic, possibility of, kerbela, kiang su, province of, kiaochow bay, germany's lease of, ; germany driven from, , , kitchener, lord, kobè, korea, population of, ; exclusion policy in, ; japanese possession of, , ; colonization in, ; hawaii settled by, ; japanese exclusion policy against, lake baikal, lake chad, league of nations, lenine, _ff._ levantines in u. s., ; in rome, liberia, , , lima, limehouse, london, , london _nation_, london _saturday review_, los angeles times, lybia, nationalist movement in, madero, francisco, malaysia, manchuria, japanese threat against, , ; colonization in, manchus, , marianne islands, marshall islands, matabele, mauritius, french in, ; importation of blacks into, ; importation of asiatics into, ; present conditions in, maya civilization, mecca, mediterranean race, _ff._, ; in u. s., ; in england, _ff._; in war, , mediterranean sea, , , , , , melbourne _argus_, mesopotamia, , , mexican war, mexico, conquest of, _ff._, ; dictatorship in, ; unrest in, ; indian rising in, ; aztec civilization in, ; japanese relations with, , _ff._; anti-american feeling in, _ff._, ; "plan of san diego" plotted in, ; bolshevik propaganda in, ; cross-breeding in, mexico city, "middle kingdom," miranda, mohammedan revival, , _ff._ mohammedanism. _see_ islam mohammerah, mongolia, russia in, ; colonization of, mongolians, , , , , , , monroe doctrine, , , "monroe doctrine for far east," , montevideo, moors, , morocco, senussi order in, ; french possession of, ; riots in, , _ff._, moslem. _see_ islam napoleonic wars, natal, revolt in, ; asian immigration into, _ff._, ; south african exclusion act in, _ff._ near and middle east, brown man's land, _ff._; european domination of, _ff._ "negritos," negro. _see_ black race netherlands, a nordic country, new england, , , new guinea, new zealand, ; exclusion policy of, nicaragua, niger, nigeria, nile, , nordic race, _ff._, ; decreasing birth-rate of, ; character of, ; effect of industrial revolution on, ; in u. s., , , , ; in england, _ff._; cost of war to, ; worth of, _ff._; in germany, _ff._; constructive power of, north borneo, nyassaland, mohammedanism in, _ff._; rebellion in, okuma, count, _ff._, , , ottoman empire, partition of, ; cost of war to, _ff._ ottoman turk, , , pacific ocean society, pan-african congress, _ff._ pan-america, , pan-asia alliance, pan-asia holy war, pan-asian railroad, pan-asiatic association, "pan-colored" alliance, , , _ff._ pan-germanism, , _ff._ pan-islam holy war, , pan-islamism, driving power of, _ff._; progress toward, ; result of peace conference on, , , ; the negro the tool of, , , , ; in the european war, _ff._, _ff._; asia affected by, ; military potency of, , pan-mongolism, pan-nordic union, pan-slavism, , , paraguay, paris, , , _pax americana_, _pax romana_, peace conference. _see_ versailles conference pechili strait, peking, , pelew islands, peloponnesian war, _ff._, persia, ; russian menace to, ; independence of, ; japan's relations with, _ff._; in war, ; england the protector of, , ; germany's relations with, peru, conquest of, _ff._, ; settlement of, ; revolution in, ; politics of, ; incas in, ; chinese in, ; japanese in, peshawar, philippines, independence movement in, , , , , , , pizarro, "plan of san diego," poland, cost of war in, port arthur, port louis, port said, portugal, , rangoon, red race, ; number of, , ; home of, , _ff._; cross-breeding with, _ff._, _ff._, , ; anti-spain revolution of, _ff._; in chile, ; in peru, ; in colombia, ; in argentine, ; in uruguay, ; in northern brazil, ; anti-white sentiment of, _ff._; character of, _ff._; yellow race's relations with, _ff._, , ; effect of spaniards on, ; future of, _ff._ rhodes, cecil, rio grande, , , , roman empire, ; fall of, rome, , , , ross, professor e. a., , , , , , , _ff._, , , , , russia, japanese war with, , _ff._, , ; japan's relations with, _ff._, , ; revolution in, , ; bolshevism in, , _ff._, ; persia's relations with, ; white race in, ; and european war, ; cost of war in, _ff._; germany's relations with, , , ; nordics in, ; as part of asia, _ff._, russo-japanese war, ; japan's strength revealed by, _ff._, ; ; effect on islam, ; african results of, , , ; effect on white race, , , saar, saghalien, island of, sahara desert, , , ; senussi control of, , _ff._, sailors' and firemen's union, san martín, santiago college, scandinavia, , senegalese, _ff._ senussiyah, history of, ; organization of, ; stronghold of, _ff._; european relations with, ; programme of, , serbia, cost of war in, seyyid, mohammed ben senussi, _ff._ shanghai, shansi, shantung, germany in, ; japan in, , , siam, , , ; japan's relation with, , , sianfu, siberia, , , , ; danger of bolshevism to, ; japanese army in, ; colonized by chinese, ; colonized by japanese, ; settlement of, ; russia in, siddyk, yahya, singapore, somaliland, south african union, ; white population of, spain, the moors in, , ; in latin america, , , , , ; argentina settled by, ; uruguay settled by, spanish conquest, steppes, sudan, , sudanese, in war, suez, , "survival of fittest," , , syria, szechuan, tartars, , teheran, , teutonic powers, texas, thibet, ; as chinese colony, thirty years' war, tokio, , _ff._, tokio _economist_, tokio _hochi_, tokio _mainichi deupo_, tokio _universe_, tokio _yamato_, tokio _yorodzu_, _ff._ trades union congress, transcaucasia, trinidad, tripoli, seized by italy, _ff._; in revolt, , , tunis, , "turanians," turkestan, ; chinese section of, ; colonization possibilities in, turkestan, composition of, ; population of, turkey, ; independence of, ; tripoli taken from, ; balkan war losses to, ; in european war, , , ; war losses of, ; german alliance with, _ff._ turkomans, uganda, christianity in, united states, , , ; in war, , ; japanese relations with, , , , ; settlement of, , , , , ; mexican relations with, _ff._; mexican plot against, ; mexican-japanese alliance against, , ; latin american hostility toward, _ff._; latin american ties with, , ; nordic race in, ; bolshevik propaganda in, ; effect of immigration in, ; hawaiian relations with, _ff._, ; immigration menace to, , ; chinese in, , _ff._; japanese in, _ff._; japanese excluded from, _ff._; immigration laws in, uruguay, ; population of, ; agricultural development of, ; european immigration into, _ff._ valparaiso, ; english character of, venezuela, ; indians in, ; anti-american sentiment in, versailles peace conference, , ; islam and, _ff._, ; failure of, _ff._, , , wahabees, , wars of roses, west african guinea, christian missions in, west indian islands, , white race, , , , _ff._; , , ; numbers of, , ; _ff._, ; expulsion from far east, , , ; asia controlled by, , _ff._, ; brown race's relation with, _ff._, , ; _ff._, ; india's relation with, _ff._, _ff._; brown-yellow alliance against, ; black race ruled by, , _ff._, _ff._; in northeast africa, _ff._; african hostility toward, _ff._; in africa, , ; in north america, _ff._; in latin america, _ff._, _ff._, _ff._, , _ff._, , ; indian race-mixture with, _ff._, _ff._; mexican hostility toward, _ff._; yellow race's relations with, _ff._, , , , _ff._; expansion of, ; original location of, ; original area of, _ff._; original number of, ; effect of fifteenth-century discoveries on, ; progress of, _ff._, ; effect of russo-japanese war on, , _ff._, ; effect of industrial revolution on, _ff._; birth-rate of, ; division of, ; solidarity of, _ff._, _ff._, _ff._, _ff._; in european war, _ff._, , ; bolshevik menace to, _ff._; danger to, _ff._, _ff._, _ff._, , ; effect of immigration on, _ff._, _ff._; exclusion policy of, _ff._, _ff._; rise of, _ff._ yangtse river, , yellow peril, , , , , yellow race, ; numbers of, ; home of, , , , _ff._; russo-japanese war triumph of, , ; expansion of, , _ff._, ; white aggression resisted by, ; brown race's relations with, , , ; americas penetrated by, _ff._, ; latin american attitude toward, , , _ff._; white race's relations with, , , _ff._, _ff._, , _ff._; in france, ; in war, _ff._, ; germany's relations with, ; military potency of, _ff._; industrial conditions in, , _ff._; in hawaii, ; in australia, ; in british columbia ; in central asia, yemenite arabs, yucatan, ancient civilization in, zambezi, _ff._ zanzibar arabs, zawias. _see_ senussi zelaya of nicaragua, zulus, , ; revolt of, footnotes: [ ] e. j. dillon, "the asiatic problem," _contemporary review_, february, . [ ] ryutaro nagai in _the japan magazine_. quoted from _the american review of reviews_, july, , p. . [ ] achmet abdullah, "seen through mohammedan spectacles," _forum_, october, . [ ] quoted from _the literary digest_, october , , p. . [ ] w. e. burghardt dubois, "the african roots of war," _atlantic monthly_, may, . [ ] yone noguchi, "the downfall of western civilization," _the nation_ (new york), october , . [ ] j. liddell kelly, "what is the matter with the asiatic?" _westminster review_, september, . [ ] professor schlegel in the hague _dagblad_. quoted from _the literary digest_, november , , p. . [ ] audley coote in the melbourne _argus_. quoted from _the literary digest_, november , , p. . [ ] meredith townsend, "asia and europe" (fourth edition, ). from the preface to the fourth edition, pages xvii-xix. [ ] quoted from _the american review of reviews_, february, , p. . [ ] w. r. manning, "china and the powers since the boxer movement," _american journal of international law_, october, . [ ] quoted by manning, _supra_. [ ] e. j. dillon, "the most momentous event in a thousand years," _contemporary review_, december, . [ ] adachi kinnosuke, "does japanese trade endanger the peace of asia?" _world's work_, april, . [ ] jean rodes in _l'asie française_, june, . [ ] rené pinon, "la lutte pour le pacifique," p. (paris, ). [ ] quoted by alleyne ireland, "commercial aspects of the yellow peril," _north american review_, september, . [ ] charles h. pearson, "national life and character," p. ( d edition). [ ] quoted by ireland, _supra_. [ ] quoted by scie-ton-fa, "la chine et le japon," _revue politique internationale_, september, . [ ] _the literary digest_, march , , p. . [ ] _the literary digest_, january , , p. . [ ] b. l. putnam weale, "the conflict of color," pp. - (new york, ). [ ] j. d. whelpley, "east and west: a new line of cleavage," _fortnightly review_, may, . [ ] _the literary digest_, july , , p. . [ ] quoted by scie-ton-fa, _supra_. [ ] quoted by scie-ton-fa, _supra_. [ ] _the literary digest_, february , , pp. - . [ ] alleyne ireland, "commercial aspects of the yellow peril," _north american review_, september, . [ ] _the literary digest_, november , . [ ] _the literary digest_, july , , p. . [ ] _the military historian and economist_, january, , pp. - . [ ] w. g. palgrave, "essays on eastern questions," pp. - (london, ). [ ] theodore morison, "can islam be reformed?" _nineteenth century_, october, . [ ] marmaduke pickthall, "l'angleterre et la turquie," _revue politique internationale_, january, . [ ] bernard temple, "the place of persia in world-politics," _proceedings of the central asian society_, may, . [ ] ameen rihani, "the crisis of islam," _forum_, may, . [ ] _i. e._, the twentieth century of the christian era. [ ] yahya siddyk, "le réveil des peuples islamiques au quatorzième siècle de l'hégire" (cairo, ). [ ] meredith townsend, "asia and europe," pp. - . [ ] f. farjanel, "le japon et l'islam," _revue du monde musulman_, november, . [ ] farjanel, _supra_. [ ] _ibid._ [ ] gabriel hanotaux, "la crise méditerranéenne et l'islam," _revue hebdomadaire_, april , . [ ] arminius vambèry, "die türkische katastrophe und die islamwelt," _deutsche revue_, july, . [ ] shah mohammed naimatullah, "recent turkish events and moslem india," _asiatic review_, october, . [ ] vambèry, _supra_. [ ] arminius vambèry, "an approach between moslems and buddhists," _nineteenth century_, april, . [ ] special cable to the new york _times_, dated rome, may , . [ ] townsend, _op. cit._, pp. - . [ ] a. r. colquhoun, "pan-islam," _north american review_, june, . [ ] t. r. threlfall, "senussi and his threatened holy war," _nineteenth century_, march, . [ ] for details, see _the annual register_ for and . [ ] townsend, _op. cit._, pp. , - . [ ] f. garcia-calderon, "latin america: its rise and progress," p. (english translation, london, ). [ ] although loose usage has since obscured its true meaning, the term "creole" has to do, not with race, but with birthplace. "creole" originally meant "one born in the colonies." down to the nineteenth century, this was perfectly clear. whites were "creole" or "european"; negroes were "creole" or "african." [ ] garcia-calderon, p. . [ ] garcia-calderon, p. . [ ] edward alsworth ross, "south of panama," pp. - (new york, ). [ ] ross, p. . [ ] ross, p. . [ ] madison grant, "the passing of the great race," p. . ( d edition, new york, .) [ ] garcia-calderon, pp. - . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] garcia-calderon, pp. - . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] ross, "south of panama," pp. - . [ ] ross, p. . [ ] a. p. schultz, "race or mongrel," p. (boston, ). [ ] garcia-calderon, p. . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] w. b. hale, "our danger in central america," _world's work_, august, . [ ] g. w. critchfield, "american supremacy," vol. i, p. (new york, ). [ ] pearson, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] james bryce, "south america," p. (london, ). [ ] ross, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] ross, p. . [ ] ellsworth huntington, "the adaptability of the white man to tropical america," _journal of race development_, october, . [ ] bryce, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] garcia-calderon, p. . [ ] ross, p. . [ ] _the american review of reviews_, november, , p. . [ ] the newspaper was _la reforma_ of saltillo. the editorial was quoted in an associated press despatch dated el paso, texas, june , . the despatch mentions _la reforma_ as "a semi-official paper." [ ] gutierrez de lara, "the mexican people: their struggle for freedom" (new york, ). [ ] _the literary digest_, september , , p. . [ ] garcia-calderon, pp. - . [ ] despatch to _la prensa_ (new york), december , . [ ] _the american review of reviews_, november, , p. . [ ] _the literary digest_, december , , p. . [ ] j. m. moncada, "social and political influences of the united states in central america" (new york, ). [ ] ross, pp. - . [ ] ross, pp. - . [ ] p. . [ ] townsend ("asia and europe"), pp. - . [ ] havelock ellis, "essays in war-time," p. (american edition, boston, ). [ ] réné gérard, "civilization in danger," _the hibbert journal_, january, . [ ] grant, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] réné pinon, "la lutte pour le pacifique," pp. - . [ ] _new york times current history_, december, , p. . [ ] _the literary digest_, august , , p. . [ ] _the literary digest_, august , . [ ] _ibid._, august , . [ ] s. k. humphrey, "mankind: racial values and the racial prospect," p. (new york, ). [ ] grant, p. . [ ] ellis, p. . [ ] _new york times current history_, vol. ix, p. ; october-december, . [ ] _current opinion_, april, , p. . [ ] _saturday review_, november , , p. . [ ] j. l. garvin, "the economic foundations of peace," page xiv (london, ). [ ] frank a. vanderlip, "political and economic conditions in europe," _the american review of reviews_, july, , p. . [ ] herbert hoover, "the economic situation in europe," _world's work_, november, , pp. - . [ ] _the literary digest_, may , , pp. - . [ ] _current opinion_, april, , p. . [ ] quoted from _the living age_, june , , pp. - . [ ] quoted from _the living age_, may , , pp. - . [ ] pearson, pp. - . [ ] his book "de l'inégalité des races humaines" first appeared at that date. [ ] especially as expounded in chamberlain's chief work, "die grundlagen des neunzehnten jahrhunderts" ("the foundations of the nineteenth century"). [ ] pinon, "la lutte pour le pacifique," p. . [ ] _the nation_ (london), april , , pp. - . [ ] eduard meyer, "england: its political organization and development and the war against germany" (english translation, boston, ). [ ] captain rheinhold eichacker, "the blacks attack!" _new york times current history_, vol. xi, pp. - , april-june, . [ ] major darnley stuart-stephens, "our million black army," _english review_, october, . [ ] ernst jaeckh, "die deutsch-türkische waffenbruderschaft," p. (berlin, ). [ ] bernhardt molden, "die bedeutung asiens im kampf für unsere zukunft," _preussische jahrbücher_, december, . see also his article "europa und asien," _preussische jahrbücher_, october, . [ ] friedrich delitzsch, "deutschland und asien" (pamphlet) (berlin, ). [ ] lic. missionsinspektor j. witte, "deutschland und die völker ostasiens in vergangenheit und zukunft," _preussische jahrbücher_, may, . [ ] _the economist_ (london), june , , p. . [ ] _the literary digest_, december , , p. . [ ] _the literary digest_, december , , p. . [ ] official document. [ ] j. l. garvin, "the heritage of armageddon," _the observer_ (london). reprinted in _the living age_, september , . [ ] in _the daily telegraph_ (london). quoted in _the nation_ (new york), june , , p. . [ ] despite the legends which have grown up about the gaining of haitian independence, such is the fact. despite the handicap of yellow fever, the french were on the point of stamping out the negro insurgents when the renewal of war with england, in , cut off the french sea-communications. the story of haiti offers many interesting and instructive points to the student of race-questions. it was the first real shock between the ideals of white supremacy and race-equality; a prologue to the mighty drama of our own day. it also shows what real race-war means. to the historical student i cite my "french revolution in san domingo" (boston, ), wherein the entire revolutionary cycle between and is described, based largely upon hitherto unexploited archival material. [ ] h. m. hyndman, "the awakening of asia," pp. - . (new york, ). [ ] pearson, pp. - . [ ] edward alsworth ross, "the changing chinese," pp. - (new york, ). [ ] _the literary digest_, november , , p. (from _the indian review_, madras). [ ] clarence poe, "what the orient can teach us," _world's work_, july, . [ ] clayton s. cooper, "the modernizing of the orient," p. (new york, ). [ ] pearson, p. . [ ] ross, pp. - . [ ] ross, p. . [ ] b. l. putnam weale, "the conflict of color," pp. - . [ ] pearson, pp. , . [ ] prescott f. hall, "immigration," p. (new york, ). [ ] see especially his "psychology of peoples" (london, , english translation). [ ] eliot norton, in _annals of the american academy of political and social science_, vol. xxiv, p. , july, . of course, since mr. norton wrote, millions more aliens have entered the united states, and the situation is much worse. [ ] _i. e._, a person believing in the preponderance of environment rather than heredity. [ ] prescott f. hall, "immigration restriction and world eugenics," _the journal of heredity_, march, . [ ] edward alsworth ross, "changing america," pp. - (new york, ). [ ] madison grant, "the passing of the great race," p. . [ ] edward alsworth ross, "the old world in the new," preface, p. (new york, ). [ ] s. k. humphrey, "mankind: racial values add the racial prospect," p. . [ ] grant, p. . [ ] ross, "the old world in the new," p. . [ ] putnam weale, "the conflict of color," pp. - . [ ] ross, "changing america," pp. - . [ ] hyndman, "the awakening of asia," p. . [ ] pearson, p. . [ ] l. e. neame, "oriental labor in south africa," _annals of the american academy of political and social science_, vol. xxxiv, pp. - , september, . [ ] ross, "the changing chinese," pp. - . [ ] j. liddell kelly, "what is the matter with the asiatic?" _westminster review_, september, . [ ] from an article in _the pall-mall gazette_ (london). quoted in _the literary digest_, may , , pp. - . [ ] chester h. rowell, "chinese and japanese immigrants," _annals of the american academy_, vol. xxxiv, p. , september, . [ ] neame, "oriental labor in south africa," _annals of the american academy_, vol. xxxiv, p. . [ ] viator, "asia contra mundum," _fortnightly review_, february, . [ ] quoted by j. f. abbott, "japanese expansion and american policies," p. (new york, ). [ ] h. c. douglas, "what may happen in the pacific," _american review of reviews_, april, . [ ] pearson, p. . [ ] neame, _op. cit._, _annals of the american academy_, vol. xxxiv, pp. - . [ ] quoted by archibald hurd, "the racial war in the pacific," _fortnightly review_, june, . [ ] agnes c. laut, "the canadian commonwealth," p. (indianapolis, ). [ ] rowell, _op. cit._, _annals of the american academy_, vol. xxxiv, p. . [ ] honorable a. g. burnett, "misunderstanding of eastern and western states regarding oriental immigration," _annals of the american academy_, vol. xxxiv, p. . [ ] a. e. yoell, "oriental versus american labor," _annals of the american academy_, vol. xxxiv, p. . [ ] s. g. p. coryn, "the japanese problem in california," _annals of the american academy_, vol. xxxiv, pp. - . [ ] quoted by j. d. whelpley, "japan and the united states," _fortnightly review_, may, . [ ] quoted by montaville flowers, "the japanese conquest of american opinion," p. (new york, ). [ ] _the literary digest_, august , , p. . [ ] j. s. little, "the doom of western civilization," pp. and (london, ). [ ] _the literary digest_, august , , p. . [ ] _the literary digest_, august , , pp. - . [ ] _ibid._, april , , p. . [ ] quoted in _the review of reviews_ (london), february, , p. . [ ] _the literary digest_, july , , p. . [ ] _leslie's weekly_, may , . [ ] g. c. hodges in _the sunset magazine_. quoted by _the literary digest_, september , , pp. - . [ ] rudyard kipling, "the heritage." dedicatory poem to the volume entitled "the empire and the century" (london, ), the volume being a collaboration by prominent british writers. http://www.archive.org/details/unfetterednovel grigrich unfettered. a novel. by sutton e. griggs, author of "imperium in imperio," "overshadowed," "dorlan's plan," etc. nashville, tenn.: the orion publishing company. . copyright by sutton e. griggs. . _dedication._ _while a last beloved sister mary, was, with patience and fortitude, awaiting the slow but certain tread of the grim reaper, she spared strength enough to read, from beginning to end, "overshadowed," that came to greet her ere she sped to the home of the departed. were she mindful of happenings on the earth to-day the author of this volume would be sure of at least one sympathetic reader. to her memory "unfettered" is affectionately dedicated._ _the author._ * * * * * "the chains that bound the body * * were as tender chords of mercy compared with the shackles that gyved his mind * *."--_kelley miller._ author's preface. on a sad occasion in days gone by, the people of the united states were called upon to deal with the negro's woes, and in the haze of battle there arose to thrill the hearts of men a fort sumter, a bull run, a gettysburg, and, at last, an appomattox. since those pregnant days, in spite of a seeming retrogression in some quarters, there has been a steady, unbroken march of the negro in an upward direction. one day our great nation that once dealt with the negro's woes will be summoned to deal with his strength, to kindly accept or finally reject _all_ that he can do. * * * * * as the day of final adjustment is inevitable, it is wise for all of us who love our country to make a study of the internal workings of a race now shaking itself loose from the death sleep of the ages. it is the aim of "unfettered" to lead the reader into the inner life of the negro race and lay bare the aspirations that are fructifying there. those who come to these pages in quest of pen pictures of either angels or demons, are not likely to find what they seek, for our story has to do with human beings, simply. that is, we should say, with the exception of--but you will make your own exceptions when the tale is fully told. the author. contents. chapter. page. i. an anglo-saxon's death ii. "a new king ... which knew not joseph" iii. a fallen man shoots iv. the clans gather v. breeds trouble for after years vi. an act of which nobody is proud vii. a man against a regiment viii. the hint not taken ix. dorlan warthell x. cupid should be more careful xi. a stormy interview xii. morlene and dorlan xiii. a whole city stirred xiv. bloodworth at work xv. harry becomes a tool xvi. a woman aroused xvii. clandestinely, yet in honor xviii. who wins? xix. the scene shifts xx. the bystanders cheer xxi. to begin life anew, as it were xxii. excusable rudeness xxiii. a street parade xxiv. going forth to unfetter xxv. tony marshall xxvi. a morning ride xxvii. they fear each other xxviii. "o death, where is thy sting?" xxix. in the balances xxx. the telegram dorlan's plan. page. foreword where the trouble arises our problem the inspiration of the opposition still in the balances he who has hitherto followed called upon to lead revisiting the orient clasping hands renovation where to begin "there is no place like home" religion a factor to wear well our crown in the upper realms "of making many books there is no end" we eat to live little africas "ye have the poor with you always" the winds have veered "the field is the world" where the gale blows fiercest with the hen goes her brood the problem of the other man our last foe mightier than the sword the end draweth nigh chapter i. an anglo-saxon's death. gently the midsummer breezes rustled the green leaves of the giant oaks and towering poplars that stood guard over the dalton house, which, as though spurning their protection, rose majestically above them and commanded a splendid view of the tennessee fields and woodlands, stretching far out on either side of the leisurely flowing cumberland. the subdued whisperings of the winds, their elf-like tread as they cautiously crept from tree top to tree top, tended to create the suspicion that they were aware of the tragedy which their mother, nature, was so soon to enact within the walls of the house around which we now see them hovering. in a sumptuously furnished room of this magnificent structure, maurice dalton, the present owner thereof, lies dying; battling heroically yet losingly in that last, inevitable conflict which he had been summoned to wage with the forces of decay. the head of this dying anglo-saxon rests, in these its last moments, on the bosom of aunt catherine, an aged negro woman, who was his first and loving nurse in infancy, and has been his one unswerving friend and worshipper in all of his after life. on former occasions, when disease had drawn him to the edge of the grave, so skillfully did aunt catherine second the recuperative work of nature that he was led back to life and health. now that her healing art has failed her, she sits heartbroken, and, like rachel weeping for her children, refuses to be comforted. no mother ever loved an offspring with greater intensity than aunt catherine loved "maury," as she called him. near to aunt catherine stands lemuel dalton, a nephew and the sole surviving relative of maurice dalton. tall, slender and well featured, he was an interesting figure at any time. his firm, gray eyes give evidence of great grief over the approaching death of his uncle, although the death of this uncle is his only known means of an early escape from poverty. at the foot of the bed on which maurice dalton lies, stands morlene, a beautiful girl just budding into womanhood. she is a negro, although her very pleasing complexion is so light as to give plain evidence of a strong infusion of anglo-saxon blood. a wealth of lovely black hair crowning a head of perfect shape and queenly poise; a face, the subtle charm of which baffles description; two lustrous black eyes, wondrously expressive, presided over by eyebrows that were ideally beautiful; a neck which, with infinite regard for the requirements of perfect art, descended and expanded so as to form part of a faultless bust; as to form, magnificently well proportioned; when viewed as a whole, the very essence of loveliness. such was the picture of morlene, who, once seen, left an image that never again passed from the mind of the beholder. morlene's bosom is just now the abode of many surging emotions. she views in a dying and speechless state the person who alone on earth knows the secret of her parentage. maurice dalton had promised to impart this information to morlene at some time, but has delayed doing so until now it appears to be too late. add to the fact that maurice dalton is carrying to the silence of the grave the information so earnestly, passionately desired by morlene, the further fact that he had been her support, protection, and sole dependence from earliest infancy. so keen had been his interest in morlene that only his known piety saved him from the suspicion that he was her father. in addition to the sense of personal loss that morlene is to sustain, she must contend with her grief over the approaching death of a man whose sweetness of soul and fatherly care had won from her almost a daughter's love. with hands clasped like unto one supplicating, she strains her beautiful eyes, as if, in her solicitude, to watch the soul along the whole distance of its flight into the great unknown. standing here and there in the room are distinguished white neighbors, intimate friends, ready to testify that the noblest roman of them all is passing away. in an adjoining room, still other white neighbors are recounting in undertones the many noble deeds performed by maurice dalton. huddled together under the trees in the yard to the back of the house are the negroes of this and other plantations, who, with woeful looks, peer anxiously in the direction of the "big house," eager for news as to how the battle was going. the vitality of maurice dalton was surprisingly great, and he grappled with this "last of foes" far longer than had been deemed possible. probably it was his unfulfilled promise to morlene that caused his spirit to linger here so long after it had received the final summons. morning wore away into the afternoon. the air grew humid and signs of coming rain multiplied; yet the negroes stood their ground, determined to be as near as possible to their beloved landlord in the supreme moment. dark clouds which, ascending from the horizon, had been curtaining the skies, now passed beneath the sun, intercepted his kindly rays and journeyed onward until not a patch of blue was anywhere to be seen. excitedly the lightning displayed his fierce glance in the disturbed heavens, first here and then there, and the occasional mutterings of the thunders were heard. the negroes at last mustered sufficient courage to make the attempt to have maurice dalton to die, if die he must, in what they regarded as the ideal manner. any negro that could die "happy," die in the midst of a frenzy of joyous emotions, was deemed by the mass of negroes as assured of an entrance into heaven. in order to produce this condition of ecstasy, they would gather about the bedside of the dying and sing such songs as were calculated to deeply stir the emotions of the passing one. they now concluded to use their singing upon maurice dalton. leaving the shelter of the trees they all drew near to the house and stood under a window of the room in which lay the dying man. in plaintive tones, low, timorous and wavering at first, then louder and bolder, in sweetest melody, they sang: "swing low, sweet chariot, cum fur ter carry me home; swing low, sweet chariot, cum fur to carry me home." ofttimes as a boy maurice dalton had stood on the outer edge of negro open air camp meetings and had heard, with deep emotion, this chant; and as the music now comes floating into his room his paroxysms cease, a smile plays upon his face which, though wasted, is handsome still. suddenly he sat bolt upright in his bed. "hush!" said he, feebly waving his hand, as he turned his ear in an attitude of listening. "did they say the chariot had come?" he enquired of the weeping aunt catherine. casting a faint look of recognition on those who stood near him, he fell back upon the bosom of aunt catherine--a corpse. the wild cry of anguish that escaped the lips of aunt catherine told its own story to the negroes in the yard. the singing ceased and they turned to go. tears were falling from their eyes, and nature, as if in sympathy, began to weep also. in after days the minds of the negroes oft reverted to the darkness and gloominess and utter dreariness of the day when maurice dalton died. chapter ii. "a new king ... which knew not joseph." "morlene, you and catherine will come into the library as soon as your breakfast duties are over." such was a command addressed to morlene by lemuel dalton while he was sitting at the breakfast table in the dalton house, a few days subsequent to the happenings recorded in the preceding chapter. morlene passed out of the dining room into the kitchen to tell aunt catherine what lemuel dalton had said. but aunt catherine had heard for herself and was so much agitated by what she thought were sinister purposes revealed by his tone of voice, that she began to tremble violently. a plate which she was washing fell to the floor and broke, whereupon she whispered to morlene in tremulous tones: "dar, now! i shuah knows dar is trubble brewin' 'round 'bout heah. las' night i drempt 'bout snakes an' didn't git to kill 'um. all dis mornin' my right eye hez been jumpin' fit to kill, an' now i dun broke dis plate. w'en hez aunt catherine broke er plate afo' dis? shuah's yer bawn, chile, dar is trubble brewin' in dis 'neck ub de woods.'" in a still lower whisper she said: "i wondah whut debbilmint our young marster's got in his he'd ter sen' fur us?" morlene, who was also apprehensive, shook her head slowly, signifying that the master was an enigma to her as well. after the lapse of a few minutes, aunt catherine and morlene repaired to the library, where they found lemuel dalton tilted back in his desk chair, his hands clasped behind his head. turning the gaze of his gray eyes full upon aunt catherine and morlene, who were sitting together, he began: "both of you are aware of the fact that i am now the proprietor of this place. i have one more task which i wish to perform as plain lemuel dalton. i will be rid of that task to-day, i think. to-morrow i intend assuming charge here. i shall have no negroes whatever about me, and the two of you will please prepare to leave when i take charge to-morrow." aunt catherine groaned audibly at the announcement and her dilated eyes showed that she viewed the suggestion with a species of horror. morlene was self-contained, being careful not to exhibit any emotion, if she felt any. lemuel dalton, desirous of preventing an outburst of grief from aunt catherine, hastened to say: "you will go from the place well provided for. i find, according to my uncle's memorandum, that there are six hundred and forty-eight dollars to your credit, money which was due you, but not called for by you. i notice that you have been accustomed to give largely to objects of charity, else this sum to your credit would be the larger. you will find the amount in this package." so saying, he lightly tossed the package into her lap. "morlene, i find a note in my uncle's memorandum which states that you are entitled to be cared for by the dalton estate so long as you live. i know not what is the ground of your claim, nor do i care to know. i shall see to it that you do not suffer. understand, however, that you will always apply to my lawyers for aid and not to me. with this one thousand dollars which i now hand to you, our personal dealings come to a close." he tossed the package of money, which was in currency, toward morlene, but she took pains to see that it fell upon the floor and not upon her lap. this was done so adroitly that lemuel dalton did not know but that the failure of the package to reach its destination was due to his poor marksmanship. aunt catherine asked in broken tones: "marse lemuel, will yer 'mit me ter say er word?" a frown of impatience appeared upon lemuel dalton's brow, but he nodded assent. aunt catherine stood up and began: "marse lemuel, i wuz bawned on dis place. i wuz brung up hear ez a chile, and all de fun an' frolics i ebber hed wuz right heah. marse an' missus 'lowed me an' my ole man ter marry heah. it was in front ub dis very house whar us, my ole man an' me, jumpt ober de brum stick es a marrige cerimony. since i hez been an 'oman ebry baby bawn in dis hous' hez cum in ter dese arms fust. yer own daddy erasmus wuz one ob um, an' a lackly littul fellah he wuz, too. dese hans you see heah hez shrouded de dalton dead since i ken ricermimber. durin' war times, w'en udder darkies wuz brakin' dey necks ter go ter de yankees, i staid right by missus an' i'se been in dis house ebber since. "nachally, marse lemuel, i lubs dis spot. i jes' doan' know nuthin' else. i hed hoped to die heah an' be bur'i'd at de feet ub missus, for she promis' me wid her dyin' bref ter let me wait fur de trump ub gabrul by her side. now, marse lemuel, doan' dribe me erway. i'll wuck an' not charge nary cent. i wants to stay whar i ken plant flowers on de grave ub maury an' de rest. gib me er cot an' let me sleep in de ole barn lof' whar i played ez er gal; but doan' dribe me erway." here aunt catherine burst forth into sobbing. lemuel dalton's frown deepened. he arose and walked to the window, his back to aunt catherine, who now dropped upon her knees to pray for god to reinforce her plea. lemuel turned, and discovering aunt catherine in an attitude of prayer, said: "that is all unnecessary, catherine. my mind is made up. i do not mean to be unkind, but i simply shall not have negroes about me." aunt catherine finished her prayer and arose. taking the money which lemuel dalton had given her, she said in gentle tones: "whut i did fur our folkses wuz fur lub. you shan't spile my lub by payin' me fur whut i hez dun." so saying, she walked over to lemuel dalton in an humble attitude and dropped the package of money at his feet. she then turned and went slowly and disconsolately out of the room, her head drooping as she shuffled along. morlene, who had manifested great self-control during the whole of the affecting scene, now arose and boldly faced lemuel dalton. "sir," said she, her eyes filled with tears, "it takes no prophet to foretell that terrible sorrows await you! he who ignores human emotions, will find many in this world more than a match for him at his own game! as for the money which you gave me, i shall not touch one penny of it. really, i do not care to have my life linked by means of the smallest thread to a man who shall come forth from the 'mills of the gods' ground as you will be. you have not my anger, sir, but my most profound pity." so saying, she, too, left the room. lemuel dalton was seized with a nameless, indefinable terror, that caused his blood to grow chill; and in that instant the consciousness came to him with the certainty of a revelation that morlene had spoken the truth. but this feeling only remained for a few seconds. it was but a forerunner, years ahead of its time. he cast it off, seeking to assure himself that belief in a premonition was but an idle superstition. when he had fully recovered his composure he said: "now, i like that plucky spirit manifested by the girl. give me, every time, the haughty sufferer, too proud to crouch beneath the lash even when its sting is keenest. i want none of your whining suppliants. a plague on these negroes who meet injury with woe-begone expressions. that sort of thing tends to make the anglo-saxon chicken-hearted in dealing with them. the more a negro whines and supplicates the worse i hate him. but i tell you i like the spirit of that girl." such was lemuel dalton's soliloquy. "but other tasks await me," he said. taking a pistol from his hip pocket, he thoroughly examined it to see that it was in prime condition in every respect. satisfied on this score, he put it back into the pocket from which he had taken it. going out to the stable, he mounted his horse and rode away, taking the road that had been made to pass through and connect the several parts of the vast dalton estate. on every side of him were tokens of what the forces of nature were doing for him. the earth holding in her bosom the roots of acres of indian corn, was yielding up her substance that the grain might ripen unto harvest. the stalks were bravely bearing the swelling ears. the beautiful drooping blades drank in the contributions that the sun and the air had to bestow. thus all nature was at one working for the welfare of the future master of the dalton place. but he had no eye for nature's loving panorama. a master passion had his soul within its grasp. chapter iii. a fallen man shoots. about one dozen years prior to the time of the beginning of our story, lemuel dalton, then a lad, was fishing on the banks of a body of water known as "murray's pond." the scene surrounding it was one of extreme loveliness, and lemuel, though a child, was yet poet enough to be silent while nature was speaking to him so eloquently and yet so soothingly. there was the shining sun above bathing the scene with its summer warmth. there were the trees standing around, lazily luxuriant, surfeited. wild flowers of varied hues were present in great profusion, as much as to say, "see, this is not so bad a world after all, else we could not be here." the trees that stood near to the pond cast their shadows upon its clear waters and saw with satisfaction themselves mirrored therein. a few cows had come to the pond and stood in one section thereof, the embodiment of contentment, leisurely tinkling their bells. lemuel was absorbed in the contemplation of this scene. a negro boy, about lemuel's age, but much larger, was fishing on the other side of the pond. the scenery had no charms for this boy, who, tiring of the monotony of unsuccessful angling, decided to leave his side of the pond and engage in a conversation with lemuel. when he drew near, lemuel paid no attention to him, not so much as casting a glance in his direction. nothing daunted by this seeming indifference, the negro boy attempted to start up a conversation. "good place to fish, ain't it?" he said. not a muscle in lemuel's face moved. drawing a little closer, the negro boy touched lemuel on the shoulder, and with a smile said, "good place to fish, ain't it?" lemuel moved away, neither speaking to nor looking at the boy. the negro boy now got angry, and, throwing his fishing pole across his shoulder, started away, saying with a sort of lilt that resembled singing: "i like sugar, i like hash, i'd rather be a nigger than poor white trash." this was the taunting reply used by negro children to avenge insults, real or imaginary, coming from white children. it was tantamount to a declaration of war, and was everywhere regarded as a _casus belli_, and lemuel dalton accepted it as such. he sprang to his feet and was soon engaged in a fisticuff with the negro boy, who, however, proved to be his superior and signally defeated him. lemuel dalton, the man, is on his way to see this negro, now also a man. it is his purpose to settle this old score before assuming charge of his estate on the morrow. we shall now acquaint you more fully with his prospective antagonist. there lived on the dalton estate a negro of middle age and medium height, who bore the name of stephen dalton. in his youth he was a slave of the dalton's and remained on the place after the coming of freedom. sober, industrious, thrifty, thoroughly honest, peaceably inclined, he enjoyed to a remarkable degree the esteem of the white and colored people of all classes. maurice dalton was only nominally the head of the dalton estate, the practical operations of his farming affairs being entrusted to the care of this negro, stephen dalton. stephen dalton's household consisted of himself, a son and a daughter, his wife being dead. it was this son, who years ago, had had the fight with lemuel dalton. harry dalton, for such was the son's name, was now a very handsome, vigorous looking young man. he was conscious of his acceptable personal appearance and was somewhat vain. this vanity was not lessened, of course, by his knowledge of the fact that he was the best farm hand in all that section of country. he was, however, very companionable, and his uniformly cheerful disposition made him a sort of favorite with all, in spite of his touch of vanity. he had attended the public school located in his vicinity, and while not very proficient, had succeeded in mastering about all that the teacher could impart. on this particular day harry has abandoned his field duties, and, watched by his very devoted sister, beulah, is engaged in practice in order that he may be in prime condition for the sports incident to the coming of an excursion from the neighboring city to a nearby grove. harry was the champion runner, jumper, boxer and baseball player, and was quite eager to maintain his proud distinction. beulah, who stood in the doorway of the three-room farm house in which they lived, said to harry, "look behind you! yonder comes old lemuel dalton!" harry glanced over his shoulder, but did not desist from his practice. lemuel dalton rode up to where harry was, dismounted, hitched his horse, and came directly in front of harry. since their fight at murray's pond the two had not spoken to each other, and both now understood that a fight was to ensue. in a biting tone lemuel dalton began: "i suppose you know that i am owner of this place. i have come to lay down my law to you. you are the leading sport on the place. regardless of the condition of crops you quit to go to picnics, shows, dances, camp meetings, funerals, and on every excursion that comes along. your example is demoralizing to the whole farm. i assume charge of this place to-morrow, and i want you to understand that you cannot go to the picnic scheduled for that day." harry was fairly enraged that a white man should speak to him as though he were a slave. before he could suppress his anger enough to trust himself to speak, beulah cried out from the door: "don't that beat you? some poor white trash that gets places by the death of their uncles don't know that grant whipped lee and jeff davis was hung to a sour apple tree." quivering with rage, lemuel dalton said to harry: "you apologize for what that girl has said." "she has spoken my sentiments," said harry. the two now began to prepare for battle. lemuel dalton advanced toward harry and began the conflict with a stinging blow on harry's left cheek. the battle was then on in earnest. harry had the advantage in point of native strength. lemuel's reach was longer than that of harry, and he was by far the more skillful. he had for years been taking boxing lessons secretly, that he might be prepared for this very occasion. lemuel dalton had the further advantage of coolness. harry, allowing his emotions of anger to influence him too largely, struck out wildly and thus dissipated much of his strength. lemuel's wariness in evading harry's onslaughts and skill in delivering blows added to harry's irritation. as the battle progressed it began to dawn on harry that somehow he had met with more than his match. the thought of being defeated by lemuel and in the presence of beulah was too galling, and harry determined to prevent such an outcome at all hazards. in a fit of exasperation, and in return for a well aimed blow from lemuel, harry delivered a powerful kick in his abdomen. lemuel staggered backward and fell to the ground, harry rushing toward him. "is that your game?" shouted lemuel. half raising himself by means of his left elbow, with his right hand he drew his pistol in time to shoot harry just as the latter was about to throw himself upon him. harry now fell to the ground seriously wounded. beulah came rushing to harry's side screaming loudly. "that comes of insulting poor white trash," said lemuel dalton, as he mounted his horse. as he turned to go he cast a look of triumph and contempt at the wounded negro and his screaming sister. beulah's cries brought help from the field near by, and strong hands bore harry into the house. chapter iv. the clans gather. news of the fight between lemuel dalton and harry dalton soon spread throughout the surrounding regions. the diffusion of news was so rapid because in the country each person regarded himself as a courier in duty bound to convey word to his immediate neighbors. the white farmers abandoned their tasks, armed themselves and hurried to the dalton house. at nightfall the negro farm hands from far and near hastened to stephen dalton's home, secreting in their clothes such weapons as pistols, hatchets, razors, bowie knives, clubs, etc. thus, what was originally a personal encounter between two individuals contained the germs of a race war. when a sufficient number of the whites had gathered at the dalton house to justify it, an informal meeting was held in the large front room. 'squire mullen, a short, fat man, with a face of full length but somewhat narrower than it might have been, assumed the leadership of the meeting. his upper lip was shaved clean, while his chin supported a beard about three inches long. he spoke in a quick, jerky fashion, addressing lemuel dalton in the name of the assemblage as follows: "we have heard of the difficulty between you and one of the darkeys on your place. we have come to learn from you the particulars about it, to find out just what action must be taken by us. we are not seeking to interfere with your affairs, but darkeys must be made to feel always that whatever any one of them does to one white man is considered as done to all white men; we shall be pleased, therefore, to receive any information that you may see fit to give." in response to this address lemuel dalton gave to the assemblage a full and truthful account of the happening. when he was through, 'squire mullen sprang to his feet saying, "permit me, sir, to voice the sentiments of my fellows. we did not come here to sit in judgment on your action. we came here under the inspiration of the anglo-saxon motto, which is summed up in these words, 'my country, may she be always right. but, right or wrong, my country.' we came here, sir, to take up your cause; but your account shows that you have struck us a blow in the face--square in the face." "you will, of course, explain your remarks," interposed lemuel dalton, in a tone which signified his non-acceptance of 'squire mullen's view of matters. "certainly, certainly, sir. in the midst of circumstances such as exist in the south, the greatest force that makes for peace is the cultivation in the white man of a sense of superiority and in the darkey a sense of inferiority. engender in the darkey a sense of his inferiority and it will paralyze his aggressiveness and do more to keep him down than a standing army. what we practice in the south is racial hypnotism. we erect signs everywhere, notifying the darkey of his inferiority. to be effective this work must be co-operated in by practically the whole body of white men. that's why we object to any white man's attempt to disabuse the negro's mind of this sense of inferiority. you, sir, have acted in a manner to cause us to lose the aid of this sense of inferiority in dealing with our darkeys. you have made our task of controlling them the harder. you have thus done us harm and the darkeys harm." "you have not yet shown how my actions transgress your mode of procedure," said lemuel dalton. "why, sir, you fought the darkey on terms of equality. you fought him man to man. you should have sat on your horse and scolded him. if he had spoken insultingly, you should have used your horsewhip on him. if he had proven dangerous, it was your duty to have shot him without further ado. a fisticuff between a white man and a darkey savors too much of equality, a feeling that must be kept out of the negro at all hazards." "permit me to add a word," requested a feeble-voiced young man, rising in a most timid manner, rubbing his hands together nervously. 'squire mullen gave him a reassuring look and he proceeded. "i simply wish to reinforce what 'squire mullen has said by a historical incident. on a certain occasion when the scythians were returning from a war in which they had been engaged, they received news that the servants whom they had left behind had mutinied and taken possession of the city and the households of their former masters. the scythians were preparing to attack the slaves with a full accoutrement of arms when one of their number protested. he told his fellows that the best way to conquer the slaves was to discard arms and go with whips simply. he held that arms would suggest equality, while whips would be a reminder to the slaves as to what they were. the experiment succeeded and the scythians effected a re-enslavement without any bloodshed. so, i agree with 'squire mullen that it is a great help to superiors to keep alive in inferiors a well developed sense of their inferiority. it certainly helps to keep them in subjection. the scythian whips, which had as an aid the feeling of inferiority, were more successful than arms would have been, carrying along with them the idea of equality. "a profound thinker of our day sets forth this idea in these words: "'there are the respective mental traits produced by daily exercise of power and by daily submission to power. the ideas, and sentiments, and modes of behavior, perpetually repeated, generate on the one side an inherited fitness for command, and on the other side an inherited fitness for obedience; with the result that, in course of time, there arises on both sides the belief that the established relations of classes are the natural ones.'" the young man dropped into his seat and looked around rather bashfully and wistfully, hoping that he would be regarded as having made an acceptable contribution to the dominant thought of the occasion. all eyes were now directed to lemuel dalton, awaiting his reply. "gentlemen," said he, "if you will but go a little deeper into the subject you will see that my action was in accordance with and not contrary to the philosophy which you enunciate." there was a slight bustle of astonishment at this claim, but lemuel proceeded without regard thereto. "when i was a lad, that negro insulted and then beat me. no doubt he carried with him for years the thought that he was physically my superior. i was determined to wrest from him this conception. had i proceeded against him on terms which he regarded as unfair, he would not have inwardly restored to me the palm which he wrested from me years ago. but, proceeding against him on terms of equality as i did, he is forced to acknowledge in his innermost consciousness that i am physically his superior. i, for one, think that we white men make a mistake in not seeking by physical culture to maintain even our physical superiority. i am in favor of the doctrine of anglo-saxon superiority in all realms, even the physical." 'squire mullen, with a smile upon his face, came forward and grasped lemuel dalton by the hand. "we understand you better now, sir. we are proud of you, sir. lads, hear what he says. in developing brain don't forget brawn. the darkey now has brawn. his strong physique and reproductive powers, show that he is in the world to stay to the end of time. if, in the years to come, he adds mental to physical endowment, we may be in the lurch unless we take care of the physical side of our development. give me your hand again, sir," said 'squire mullen, once more shaking hands with lemuel dalton. this matter having been disposed of, consideration was now given to harry and beulah. it was the concensus of opinion that the education which harry and beulah had received was mainly responsible for what the whites termed "arrogant assumption of equality." the advisability and inadvisability of educating the negro was gone into and the conclusion reached that the only safe education for the negro was the education that taught him better how to work. it was decided that harry had been punished equitably for his offense against lemuel dalton as an _individual_. they held that something must be done however, to avenge the insult to the white _race_, perpetrated when one of their number was assailed. as a result of their deliberations, lasting well up into the night, it was decided to drive harry and beulah out of the settlement, both as a punishment for their offense and as a warning to other negroes against "impudence towards their superiors." in the meanwhile the negroes had been coming and going at stephen dalton's. they came in part from curiosity, in part to see if they were in danger, and in part out of sympathy. they all listened critically to beulah's recital of the trouble. the practically unanimous verdict was that beulah and harry could and should have avoided the conflict. arriving at this conclusion they all left, not being disposed to help in a case where all of the blame was not on the white man. in the dead of the night the whites rode up to the house and tacked thereon a notice, warning harry and beulah dalton to remove from the settlement forever before the dawn of day on the first of january of the incoming year. when the negroes heard of this decree they were incensed. "ernuf is ernuf," said one. "an' a nigger ain't er dog. 'twuz ernuf ter shoot de nigger. we didun't do nuffin' 'bout dat, kase de niggers wuz some'ut ter blame. but dey ez carrin' de thing too fur. ernuf is ernuf!" this sentiment was universal among the negroes, and they decided, one and all, to retaliate by leaving the settlement along with harry and beulah. about thirty miles distant was the city of r----, the great commercial center of all the surrounding sections. this city now became the mecca of these negroes. but other troubles were to ensue ere they accomplished their design to enter r----. chapter v. breeds trouble for after years. when lemuel dalton rode into his yard fresh from his encounter with harry dalton, aunt catherine and morlene were in a wagon ready to be driven to the city, where it was their purpose to dwell. lemuel dalton noticed the look of inquiry which his battered appearance evoked from morlene's expressive eyes, and, as if to prevent her from thinking that he had been worsted and that her prophecy was already coming true, said in a haughty tone: "i do not know how much interest a knowledge of the fact may be to you, yet, i inform you that i have just shot down that impudent negro, harry dalton." morlene was of a deeply sympathetic mould, and, upon receiving this information, tears came into her eyes. alighting from the wagon, she said: "go! go! aunt catherine, from this accursed place. i will come to the city soon. it may be that harry is not killed. if i can save his life i can ward off that much of the terrible debt that this man is piling up against himself." gathering her skirts about her, weeping as she ran, she arrived at stephen dalton's house and assumed charge of the nursing of harry. harry's wound was an exceedingly dangerous one, but the doctor's skill, supplemented by morlene's zealous care, eventually brought him to a stage of convalescence. but morlene's tenderness of heart had brought her into a situation where unforeseen complications arose to sorely disturb her peace of mind. so, soon as harry became conscious of morlene's presence in his home as his nurse, he began to look upon his being shot as an especially kind act on the part of providence. from early childhood he had been an ardent admirer of morlene, but her stay at the dalton house under the guardianship of maurice dalton, had caused him to feel that there was an impassable gulf between them. he had never been able to summon sufficient courage to go up to the "big house" with the intention of paying his respects to morlene. he now entertained not one spark of ill will toward lemuel dalton for shooting him, since it was the means of drawing morlene to his side. the scrupulous care and great tenderness exercised by her in the nursing of harry, were construed by him to be indications of a strong attachment, and his hopes of a favorable outcome of his suit grew greater from day to day, until he at last regarded his acceptance as an assured fact. one day, after he was able to sit up, he beckoned for morlene to come to his side, intending to make a declaration of love. morlene came and looked into harry's face tenderly, awaiting his request, which she presumed would be upon some matter in line with her duties as a nurse. when harry looked up into her face, so tenderly beautiful, his heart failed him. "too beautiful for a fellow like me," he thought. "i have changed my mind, miss dalton," said harry, abandoning his purpose for the time being. morlene looked at harry out of those wondrous eyes of hers, playfully feigning reproach, shaking her forefinger at him the while, in no wise dreaming of the emotions at work in harry's bosom. the day at last came when harry found himself possessing sufficient courage to make a declaration of love. it was indeed a rude awakening for morlene when she realized in what manner she had been the object of harry's thoughts, a contingency upon which she had in no wise calculated. when her emotion of surprise had sufficiently abated to permit it, she told harry in a very pleasant manner that he was sick and should wait until he was well before giving attention to so grave a question as marriage. harry had discerned how his proposal had surprised morlene, and he now knew that she had not given him one thought as a possible husband. he saw clearly that morlene's many acts of kindness to him were based purely on sympathy, not love. this so discouraged harry that it was not many days before he began to grow worse. his decline was so persistent, refusing to yield to any treatment, that the doctor was sorely puzzled as to the cause of the relapse and the treatment necessary to effect a change. harry's illness now reached such a stage that all began to despair of his life. beulah kept constant watch at his bedside, noting his every expression. she noticed how harry's eyes followed wherever morlene moved about in the room; how that he was restless when she was out of sight and contented when she was near. and in all this devotion exhibited by harry she intuitively felt the presence of hopelessness. she framed the theory in her mind that the mysterious cause of harry's decline was none other than an unrequited love for morlene. the doctor came, felt harry's pulse, shook his head, and left the room. beulah also went out and revealed to him her thoughts. "by jove!" said he, "why did i not think of that myself? the girl is as beautiful as a sylph. she can save him, i am sure. that boy's relapse can be explained on no other hypothesis. see what you can do with the girl. it is the only hope left." so saying, the doctor went his way. beulah now re-entered the house and asked morlene to take a walk with her. arm in arm the two girls went down the little pathway leading from the house. coming opposite to a grove of trees they turned toward it, entered, and sat down upon a fallen log. "morlene, are you in love with any one?" asked beulah. "no, my dear. why do you ask?" replied morlene. "i have a request to make of you, which i can the more freely do since you say that you are not in love." morlene's face took on a puzzled expression. "what possible relation does my not being in love bear to any request that you might make?" inquired morlene. "the doctor has told me that the only hope of saving harry's life lies in your consenting to marry him. he is dying of love for you," said beulah. morlene stood up affrighted. beulah continued: "harry looks at you so sad-like. a word from you, morlene, will save him." morlene sat down and raised a hand to her forehead. "beulah," said she, "i fear that there is something in what you say. i now recall that his decline in health began about the time when i refused to consider a proposal of marriage which he made. but beulah, i do not _love_ harry. i think well of him, but i do not love him." "you could learn to love him," said beulah. "no, i am quite sure, beulah, that i could never love a man on harry's order. something within tells me that somewhere in the world there is an ideal man that awaits my coming. he shall awaken all the slumbering fires of my soul and my life shall entwine itself about his. beulah, i believe all this with my whole heart." morlene spoke in tones quavering with emotion, her beautiful face showing signs of tragic earnestness and her eyes assuming a far-off expression as if the soul was seeking to divine the future. "morlene, you and i are poor country girls and can talk plainly to each other. you have been reading books up at the dalton house which set forth the deeds of mighty men. out of all that you have gleaned from books you have constructed your ideal man whom you feel awaits you in the world. morlene, we country girls have only a limited education and know but little of the requirements of the higher walks of life. the man whom your imagination has selected will be so much your superior in point of culture that he will not notice you." this was a well directed shaft and morlene's body twitched as if it had been entered by some deadly missile; for it had been the one dread of her life that the man whom she could love would consider her mind too poorly trained to become his companion. morlene buried her face in her hands. beulah followed up the advantage which she saw that she had gained, saying: "morlene, your own judgment must teach you that your ideal is impossible of attainment. put over against this impracticable ideal my honest, industrious, wounded brother, who is being destroyed by his love for you. do not, morlene, allow poor harry to die because of a vague hope." a pet squirrel which had been tamed by harry, and which was very fond of him, was jumping from limb to limb in a neighboring tree. spying morlene and beulah, it began to descend, making looks of inquiry at various stages of its journey. upon reaching the ground, it began to hop in the direction of the two girls, halting now and then to turn its little head first one way and then another, always keeping one or the other of his brown eyes looking in their direction. when only a few feet from them, it reared upon its hind feet and looked intently at them. they were evidently too sad in appearance, for it immediately scampered away to resume its sport. "even the squirrel has come to plead for harry, morlene," said beulah. morlene's answer was a deep sigh. "beulah," said morlene, taking her hands from her face, "you hardly know what you ask. this love which god has planted in a woman's bosom is the source of the highest joy that she knows during her stay on earth. you are asking me to surrender the most precious gift of my creator, my one chance of supreme happiness." beulah now burst into crying, calling into play woman's most formidable weapons--her tears. "all right, morlene. poor harry will be dead to-morrow, and i shall soon die of grief. you know how my dear father loves us. our deaths will break his heart. when we are dead, morlene, remember that the surrender of an idle hope on your part would have saved us all." beulah, weeping bitterly, now arose to go. morlene's sympathetic nature could not longer resist the strain. "beulah, beulah, it is hard to do as you ask. how hard, the future alone can tell. i consent to sacrifice myself. i don't understand this world, anyway! why am i placed in such a trying situation? i will marry harry!" it was now morlene's time to cry. she wept bitterly, her gentle spirit chiding the cruel fate that had woven such a web about her feet. parentless, homeless, friendless, now doomed to a loveless marriage, she considered her lot an inexpressibly hard one. the two girls wept together, beulah now weeping over the necessity of imposing such a marriage on morlene. having as harry's sister persuaded morlene into agreeing to the marriage, she now as a woman wept in sympathy with morlene over a prospective wedlock without love. when the two had regained self-control, they returned to the house. morlene went to harry's bedside and knelt there. she took his enfeebled arm and laid it across her shoulder, smiling at him sweetly the while. "harry," said she, "i have come to tell you that i am going to be your wife, a true wife--one that will do all that is in her power for your comfort and welfare." so saying she leaned forward and sealed her doom with a kiss. beulah, eager to insure harry's recovery, and fearing that morlene, after a period of reflection, might deny the binding force of a vow extorted from her in the dread presence of death, hastened matters. the next day harry and morlene were duly pronounced man and wife. when a woman's hand is chained and her heart is free! chapter vi. an act of which nobody is proud. the decision reached by the assemblage of negroes in the first burst of excitement over the posting of the notice demanding that harry and beulah leave the settlement, was adhered to, and on christmas eve several wagon loads of young negro men and women started on their journey to the city. the crops had been marketed and each one had come into possession of the profits on his year's labor. in no case was the amount very large, but it caused all to be in good cheer. the occupants of the wagons were as numerous as the wagons could well hold, and they rode standing up, holding to each other to keep from falling whenever the uneven character of the road caused the wagons to jolt. a jug of whiskey had been placed in each wagon and from it bottles were filled and passed around, men, women and children alike taking each a "dram." loud laughing, playful bantering, sallies of coarse wit, ribald singing, characterized this journey to the city. the more sober and religious element of the negroes, who were disgusted with this sort of conduct, stayed behind to avoid contact with those inclined toward rowdyism. they wished also to improve the occasion by holding one more service of worship in their country church house. on christmas morning the church was filled with those who had come to worship god there, perhaps for the last time. the minister was expected to preach a sermon appropriate to the occasion. recognizing this expectation, he sought to fulfill it, and chose for his text, hebrews xi: : "but now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore god is not ashamed to be called their god: for he hath prepared for them a city." the preacher began his discourse in that deeply pathetic tone accompanied with prolonged mournful cadences, once so largely in vogue among a certain class of negro preachers. this tone, so full of the note of sorrow, found responsive chords in the bosoms of his hearers and a bond of fellowship for the occasion was at once established between him and them. his every utterance was saluted with an answering groan or sympathetic manifestation of some kind, evoked as much by the tone of voice as by the sentiment expressed. the responses of the people heightened the emotions of the preacher. thus the preacher and the people acting and reacting upon each other, produced a highly emotional state of affairs. the burden of the preacher's discourse was an account of the wanderings of abraham and the subsequent sorrowful career of his descendants in the land of egypt. with a constantly swelling tide of emotions the hearers followed the dolorous account, which was made the more touching by instituting comparisons, the purport of which was to show that the negroes were having similar experiences. in drawing to a close, he emphasized the thought that the god that prepared a goodly land for the jews would take care of the negroes. he urged them to leave the question of their earthly welfare in the hands of god and center their thoughts on heaven. he entered into a dramatic description of the christian's getting ready to wade across the jordan of death. then came a vivid word painting of the scenes beyond--the green fields of eden; the pearly gates standing ajar; the gold paved streets; the jasper walls; the tree of life; the long white robes; the silver slippers; the starry crown; the palms of victory; the harps of gold. the christian was to go into the city, he set forth, and sit upon a throne singing god's praise, looking out of the window of heaven while the sun was covered with sackcloth and ashes and the moon was dripping away in blood. his very last remarks were made sitting down, in representation of the final rest of the christian in the midst of the stirring scenes depicted. the tumultuous scene which accompanied and followed this highly dramatic peroration beggars description. women screamed and shouted and fainted, while men wept like babes and clambered from seat to seat wild with emotion. such was the character of the religious preparation that the negroes had for the grave responsibilities of life in the city. while these things were transpiring at the church, a frightful tragedy was being enacted elsewhere. a short outline of the circumstances leading up thereto is now necessary. when the white farmers became aware of the fact that there was to be a wholesale exodus of negroes from the settlement, they were much enraged. they recognized the fact that the negro made a very good laborer, in spite of his foibles, and they were loth to let him go. their course toward him was not, as they understood it, dictated by prejudice nor tainted with injustice. they were thoroughly imbued with the doctrine that they were inherently superior to the negro and instituted repressive measures to keep alive recognition of this claim. this was the alpha and omega of their purposes, and they were angered, that their course, to them righteous, should be accepted in any other spirit, and should operate to disturb the social fabric. they argued with the negroes, endeavoring to show them that they were not opposed to negroes _per se_, but to "sassy" negroes that tried to put on airs and represent themselves to be as good as white people. all efforts to stem the tide of emigration failed, however. lemuel dalton alone was undisturbed by the outcome. years before, as the prospective landlord of the dalton place, he had made a careful study as to how he could operate the plantation without the aid of negroes. he had come to the conclusion that the presence of the negro on the farm lands of the south, was the chief cause of its backwardness. he looked upon the negro as being of too conservative a mold, averse, like all primitive people, to innovations. he had given earnest study to improved methods of farming and had determined upon many changes that would dispense with much labor. he had in mind to substitute barbed wire for rail fences and thus be rid of negro rail-splitters. improved plows, planting, threshing and harvesting machines--in fact, the whole category of labor-saving devices for farming were to be brought into use. by thus elevating farm life from a condition of extreme drudgery he felt hopeful of securing white farm hands to take the place of negroes. so the contemplated exodus did not in the least affect lemuel dalton's peace of mind. not so with other young white men of the settlement, yet living on their fathers' places. in view of a prospective scarcity of "hands" they had been notified that they would have to abandon their lives of ease and help to man the farms. the thought of performing the drudgery incident to farm life was very distasteful to them, and they became very bitter in their feelings toward the negroes. on this christmas morning, a number of these young white men went to the one whisky shop in the vicinity to drink off their troubles. as they became intoxicated, their fury rose until it was evident that trouble of some sort was certain to ensue. one of the drunken lot said, "boys, what say you? down with the cause of all our troubles! what shall we do with beulah dalton?" "kill her! kill her! kill her!" rang out from the throats of the half-drunken crowd. with much yelling and hooting, they started toward stephen dalton's home. beulah had always been disliked by the young white men, as she persistently refused to speak to any of them that did not call her "miss beulah." this long nourished feeling of animosity was no doubt a factor, though unconsciously so, in the present movement against her. beulah had remained at home, while the others went to the church. she was completing her preparations for the journey to the city, to take place on the morrow. she heard the wild shouts drawing nearer and nearer, and looked out of her window to discover the meaning thereof. the crowd caught sight of her, and with a yell of savage delight, came toward the house at full speed. beulah had the presence of mind to barricade the doors. the windows were furnished with thick oak doors that closed from the inside and effected a protection for the apertures supplementary to that of the window panes. these doors beulah closed. when the crowd arrived at the house they found beulah securely ensconced. as their doings were not premeditated, they had come from their homes without implements with which to batter down the doors. finding their purpose of capturing beulah thwarted, they were under the necessity of providing another mode of procedure. "burn her up!" said one. "you are a coward. the gal ain't no rat. give her a chance, fool," replied another. "who calls me a fool?" shouted the first speaker. "i will kill the scoundrel," he added. a wrangle here broke out and a free for all fight was threatened, some favoring one of the disputants and some the other. while they were engaged in this drunken squabble, one of their number had gotten into the kitchen and had saturated the floor with kerosene oil. he then set fire to the building. beulah heard the roaring flames and decided to make a bold dash for life. she was a country girl, vigorous of frame and fleet of foot and hoped to outrun the crowd in their drunken condition. quietly unpinning the barred door, she leaped out and began to run. she chose the side of the house opposite to the one where she heard the noise, and supposed that at least a short interval would intervene before the crowd discovered that she had escaped. but the young man who had set the house on fire had gone to that side of the house in anticipation of an attempt to escape. when he saw beulah run forth from the building, he uttered a yell and with great effort of will steadied himself sufficiently to hurl at the fleeing girl a stick of stove wood which he had gotten in the kitchen. the stick struck her on the back of her head. beulah fell forward and in a few minutes breathed her last. when the negroes returned from church, they found the ashes of the house and, a short distance away, beulah lying on her face in a puddle of blood. the perpetrators of the crime had fled. chapter vii. a man against a regiment. stephen dalton, whose conservatism was proverbial; who had been from time immemorial the assuager of race animosities; who had so successfully mediated between the whites and the negroes at every previous crisis, was at last thoroughly aroused to action. the ills of which the negroes had complained, and concerning which he had always counseled moderation, were now brought home to his own door. as a result of the race feeling his son had been wounded, his house burned, the friendly relations of a lifetime destroyed, and his daughter, the pride of his heart, murdered while at home unprotected. with his gun on his shoulder he tramped from house to house for miles around exhorting the negroes to repair to a designated spot where they would march in unison to attack the whites. the negroes felt that the time for action had assuredly come if "cool headed" stephen, as he was called, was aroused to the point of action. their long pent-up feelings of resentment now became rampant and they gathered in force at the point selected by stephen. they came armed with such weapons as they could buy, borrow or steal. the white people of the settlement became thoroughly alarmed; for, though the negro was regarded as a normally peaceful being, they felt that there was a latent sanguinary nature and a sort of reckless dare-devil bravery that burst forth upon occasion and was dangerous. they telephoned to all nearby stores, requesting that firearms and munitions of war be denied to all would-be negro purchasers. word was sent to neighboring settlements to guard the crossroads and prevent other negroes from different sections coming to the assistance of those already in arms. the telegraph and telephone stations were put under strict censorship, and all newspaper reporters were warned to send out no accounts of the trouble that would create the least vestige of a doubt as to the entire justice of all the proceedings of the whites. messages were sent to the governor that a race riot was imminent, and an urgent plea was made for several companies of state troops. these were forthwith dispatched. the whites who had armed themselves, now joined the ranks of the state troops to assist in quelling the uprising of the negroes. there was no desire among the whites for bloodshed, and, being fully prepared for war, now cast about for a means of bringing about peace. the usual mediator, stephen dalton, being the leader of the negroes, they had to search for another. they decided to impress into their service for that task the negro public school teacher. the negro school teacher has perhaps been the greatest conservator of peace in the south, laboring _for_ the negroes by the _appointment_ of the whites, being thus placed in a position where it was to his interest to keep on good terms with both races. thus the whites on this occasion sent the school teacher to confer with the negroes. arriving at the negro assemblage the teacher approached stephen dalton. "good evening, sir," said he to stephen. "good evenin'," was stephen's gruff response. by this time a number of stephen's lieutenants had clustered around the two, eagerly looking from the teacher to stephen and from stephen to the teacher, bent on catching whatever might pass between them. they made no attempt to conceal their feeling of curiosity, which was as manifest as in the case of children. "may i be allowed to address this gathering?" asked the teacher of stephen. "whar is you frum?" queried stephen, grumly. "i have just come from the white people's rendezvous," he replied. "thought so. bettah go back dar, i 'specks," said stephen, turning his back and walking away. the teacher now turned to the others who had crowded about him. "men," said he, "i have something to say that concerns you all. uncle stephen is interested in this whole affair in too personal a manner for you men to commit your interests blindly to him. in times like these you need a man who is in such a frame of mind that he can weigh everything. now, you all know that uncle stephen has had enough to unbalance anybody, and, i tell you, men, unbalanced minds are not safe guides in such times as these." the men gathered about the teacher now looked in the direction of stephen. he, seeing that the teacher was engaging the attention of the crowd, decided to return and order him away. "i is cummander in chief, heah, sur, and you mus' leave dis groun' at once, sur," said stephen to the teacher. the teacher now lifted his voice and said in tones that many could hear. "in former times when other people's oxen were gored, uncle stephen was not driven away when he came to see you. uncle stephen is a good man, but i don't think he is that much better than the rest of you. if _your_ matters could be talked of, it seems to be that _his_ might be talked of, too." this blow was well aimed. there seems to be a feeling in the negro race to keep all upon a level and to resent anything that savors of superiority of one negro over another. no man who attempts to lead them can have any measure of success unless he is thoroughly democratic in his behavior, tastes and manner of approach. the teacher knew of this feeling, and his remark was an adroit bid for its support. the negroes now felt a little sullen toward stephen dalton, their commander, because he desired to prevent free speech on this occasion when he had availed himself of it so often in times of threatened trouble. "uncle stephen is in a mighty heap of trouble, an' ain't 'zactly at hisself. go er head, teacher, we'll hear you," said one. a murmur of approval went through the crowd, which had now swelled to large proportions. seeing that he had gained audience the teacher began. in his speech he set forth that the killing of beulah was not indicative of the feelings of the best white people toward the negroes, nor of the real feelings of the worse elements of whites. he said that liquor was at the root of the murder, and that in a measure the colored people were responsible, because it was their vote that kept liquor from being voted out of the county at a local option election held a short while previous. to this the negroes nodded assent, for they knew it to be true. the teacher asked why, as sensible people, they were going to have all the folks of the community, good and bad, white and colored, killed for an act that liquor was mainly responsible for, they being responsible for the liquor. then the teacher recited the facts as to the superior training, numbers, equipment, transportation facilities, means of inter-communication of the whites. he dwelt upon the fact that the negroes were practically cut off from all other negroes, and the battle would really be between that little handful of negroes and the whole body of white people of the south. the teacher spoke earnestly, and impressed the throng that he was doing them a service in calling their attention to their hopeless plight. when the teacher was through his hearers were won over to his way of thinking. stephen dalton had foreseen what would be the outcome, knowing from experience how susceptible the negroes were to argument at such times. before the teacher had concluded he dropped his gun and ammunition and walked away quite rapidly. arriving at the place where the white soldiers were stationed, he pulled off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, clenched his fists, stepped forward and spoke as follows, his eyes gleaming with rage: "gentlemens, the man whut you done sent up yonder will turn them people, an' i reckin it's best. dare aint no use'n er whole lots er folks dyin' fur me one. now i wants to make a fair propursition ter you." stephen's voice grew loud and strident. "my house is burned, my boy is shot, my gal is killed, an' me all broke up at dis age. gentlemens, justis' comes in som'ers. uv course nairy one man uv you could stan er show befo' me, fair fist an' skull fight. pick out any two men an' sen um to me an' i'll lick um. gentlemens, on dat plan i'll take the whole regurment uv you. now, gentlemens, i ax yer in de name uv justis, consider my propursition. ef you think that ain't fair, i'll take any three uv yer fair fist and skull." stephen now awaited an answer. the whites, who at heart sympathized with stephen in his grief, regarded him as unbalanced by trouble. no one replied, and there was no thought of harming him. "ah! gentlemens, you kill er pore gal when her daddy wuz erway, but you won't fight him, i see. gentlemens, dare uster be bettah blood dan dat. i was in de war wid my marster, an' he showd good blood to de yankees. is it all gone, dat three uv you won't fight ur 'nigger,' ez you call him?" by this time the teacher had arrived, accompanied by two friends of stephen. they came to report that the negroes had disbanded and would give no more trouble. stephen's two friends now approached him and stationing themselves on either side, begged him to leave. the old man's head drooped upon his bosom. he had at last collapsed, having been so long under a severe mental strain. his two friends supported him between them and bore him from the spot, stephen repeating over and over in a broken voice: "boys, dey don't fight fair. dey don't fight fair, boys. beulah! beulah! your daddy can't do nuthin'. he would if he could. boys, dey won't fight fair." the negroes _en masse_ now gathered up their few belongings and removed to the city of r---- with all of its aggregation of vice, of temptation, of hardships, of alluring promises, of elusive hopes. as they enter this typical american city, we fain would follow them, but cannot just now. may the fates deal kindly with them. chapter viii. the hint not taken. the eyes of the civilized world were now directed to the settlement wherein beulah was murdered, in order to witness there the workings of the sentiment of justice. the poet's pen, the artist's brush, the sculptor's chisel, have long since despaired of adequately setting forth the natural charms of the southland, the home of birds and flowers, grand with mountains, beautiful with valleys, restful in the girdling arms of her majestic streams, presided over by skies that are the bluest of the blue. knowing the proud place given the southland by the fiat of nature, the world of mankind riveted its gaze upon her eagerly and pressed to know the fate of those who murdered beulah. the great heart of the south throbbed with a sense of shame over the perpetration of the crime and now sought to shake itself loose from the benumbing influences of an ever-pervading race feeling that was so powerful as to render inoperative so many higher sentiments. the pulpit and the press spoke in terrible tones to the hearts and consciences of the whites in denunciation of the crime and in demand that the guilty parties be brought to trial. in addition to their natural horror of the crime, the best white people of the south had another incentive for desiring that they should act worthily in the matter. the white people had arrogated to themselves the right of exclusive control of public affairs. this act had been quietly submitted to by the negroes, and the people of the north at that time appeared to be disposed to accept in great measure the southern white man's view of his own problem. with all that they demanded practically conceded, they felt the more under obligations to make human life within their borders safe and sacred. the governor of the state offered large rewards for the apprehension and conviction of the perpetrators of the crime. in spite, however, of all the indignation of the south, no arrests were made. the members of the mob were in some way related to practically every influential family in the county in which the crime had been committed. in many cases the prosecutors would have found themselves proceeding against their closest kin. the coroner's jury, duly impanelled and sworn, viewed the remains of beulah and brought in the stereotyped verdict that "the deceased came to her death at the hands of a party or parties to the jury unknown." this verdict brought the incident to a close, so far as society, acting through legally constituted agencies, was concerned. but the incident was not in reality closed; for when a given agency fails to adequately meet the demands of humanity, the people find a way of making their power felt. public sentiment began to mete out, in its own peculiar way, the justice which the courts had felt unable to administer. the young men who had committed the crime, found themselves ostracized on every hand. those who were engaged to be married, received notes cancelling their engagements. when the people so elect they can make a citizen's garb burn into the soul of a man with an intensity equal to that of prison stripes. if the perpetrators of the crime were not convicts, the difference would not have been discovered by a comparison of their feelings with those of real convicts. it came to the ears of 'squire mullen that his son alfred had been the one to apply the torch and to strike the blow that brought on beulah's death. the 'squire was the soul of honor, as he understood it, and while he believed it to be the design of god that the white man should keep the negro in a subordinate place, he yet deemed it an unspeakable horror to needlessly afflict a helpless people. 'squire mullen went to the room of his son on the night of the day on which he had heard of the part that the young man had played in the matter. the hour was late; his son was asleep in bed. the father said to himself as he looked at his sleeping offspring: "i do not yet know that my boy is _that_ guilty. let me stroke those saxon curls and kiss his cheek once more before i find out whether or not he is guilty." his caressings awoke alfred, and the tenderness died out of the 'squire's face, a look of stern justice mounted the throne. he said: "alfred, news reaches me that you applied the torch to uncle stephen's house while his daughter was in there, and that you struck the blow that killed her. i have come to know of you, my son, as to whether you did or did not do these things." alfred sat up in bed, a look of deep remorse upon his young and handsome face. "father," he said, "i would give the world to be able to truthfully say that the statements are false; but i cannot. the statements are true, too true!" 'squire mullen's eyes closed, his features became pinched, a harrowing groan escaped his lips. in his heart, honor and justice were throttling the love of his son. the moment was as excruciating as the soul of man ever knew. the struggle was great, for the opposing forces were great; but the conflict was of but a moment's duration. 'squire mullen turned and dragged himself out of the room. his step was no longer elastic. that instant had brought on the old age which his energetic will had persisted in delaying. in a few minutes he returned, bringing with him the family pistol. he placed it on the lamp-stand that stood at the head of alfred's bed. without saying a word he left the room. he went to bed, but, alas, could not sleep. he lay throughout the night expecting a sound that failed to come. when the fowls in the barnyard began to signal the approach of day, he arose and went to alfred's room again. he said, "alfred! alfred! alfred!" alfred awoke. "can you sleep on such a night?" said the 'squire, in tones of agony. "is the family honor that low also? can we thus bear open disgrace? alfred! alfred! there is a pistol at the head of your bed." so saying, the 'squire returned to his room to again listen for the sound that would have been the most welcome of any that could be made. alfred now understood that his father desired him to commit suicide. he grasped the pistol and held it in his hand. he longed at that moment for the courage to die, but it was missing. he had been brought up from infancy by a "black mammy," and she had succeeded in imbuing his soul with her living fear of hell and her conceptions of a personal devil. as he sought to lift the pistol to his head, vivid pictures of lurid flames and grinning demons arose and paralyzed the hand that he desired to pull the trigger. day broke and he was yet alive. the 'squire now came and took the pistol from the table where alfred had replaced it, saying not a word to his son. that day he summoned all of his relations that were near by to gather at his home. in response to his request they came, their wives and daughters accompanying them. in the middle of the afternoon the men repaired to the front yard, leaving the women in the house. it was somewhat cold and a bonfire was started to keep them warm. a circle of chairs was formed around the fire and the men sat down, two chairs having been put within the circle to be occupied by 'squire mullen and alfred. these two now took their seats side by side. a huge leather back book was in the 'squire's hands. his face wore a stern aspect, but one could tell that grief born of love was gnawing at his vitals. since the previous night his hair had whitened and his brave eye had lost its glitter. he arose to address the meeting. opening the book which he had in hand, he said: "kinsmen, i hold in my hand the record book of the mullens. i shall on this occasion read to you a terse statement of the most notable achievements of the mullens from the time of william of normandy until the present." they all listened attentively while he read, alfred's eyes being cast upon the ground. having traced the family history to his own generation, the 'squire read of the deeds of prowess of himself and the others assembled who had rendered excellent service to the cause of the southern confederacy. when through with this he called the name of alfred mullen. the 'squire paused, then said: "kinsmen, it would appear that i must now record the deed of one who claims to be my offspring and a partaker of the blood of our illustrious family. if so be, then the record must read that alfred mullen, on a _christmas_ morn, murdered a negro _girl_ in the absence of all _male_ protection. the murder was _unprovoked_, and committed by alfred mullen while he had the protection of a gang of his fellows. "kinsmen, i have summoned you here to know if this deed must go on record. if you decide that it shall not go on record, you know what that means." turning to alfred, he said: "it means that you must abandon the name of mullen upon pain of being killed; that you must never lay claim to kinship with us; that you must go forth with the mark of cain upon your brow." the 'squire now took his seat. there was a short pause. then one by one the relatives arose and, with becoming gravity, made speeches repudiating alfred, insisting that his sin against the traditional honor of the house of mullen was unpardonable. before taking a final vote, alfred was asked as to whether he had anything to say. he made no reply; his head was still bowed. a vote was then taken and alfred stood expelled from the mullen family forever. the assembly now adjourned, and all the men, save alfred, returned to the house, where sat the women in silence and in sorrow. alfred, the out-cast, had gone. when the men entered the room mrs. mullen read in their countenances the fate of her boy, and she uttered a short, sharp scream of anguish that she could not repress. "mourn not for cain," said 'squire mullen, whose twitching face belied the sternness of his voice. his heart, too, was sadly, cruelly torn by what had befallen his boy, but as best he could he maintained an outward calm. that night a mob was formed at 'squire mullen's house. in silence the men proceeded to the barroom where their sons had imbibed the inspiration for their nefarious crime. they dragged out all of the kegs and barrels containing liquor, and emptied the contents on the ground. they then set the building on fire, and it was soon an ash-heap. a committee waited upon the barkeeper, reimbursed him for his losses and warned him to never more sell liquor in that settlement. chapter ix. dorlan warthell. a few years subsequent to the events recorded in the last chapter, in the city of r----, where our country friends had gone to live, on a sultry summer evening, near sunset, morlene went forth into the front yard of her home for the purpose of watering her flowers. she had on an evening gown, while her head was hidden in a bonnet. with her back to the street, she stood leveling the water from the hose at the various flower groups. while she was thus engaged, a man above the average in height, possessing a form that conveyed the impression of nobility and strength, was in the act of passing by. when he came directly behind morlene, having a keen relish for nature's supreme efforts at the artistic, he was so struck with the outlines of her form that he involuntarily stopped. "now that is what i call beauty," he exclaimed, without knowing that he spoke. morlene vaguely felt that some one had stopped, the fact of the cessation of the footsteps dawning upon her consciousness. she turned full around and her eyes fell on the handsome face of the man gazing at her. his skin was smooth, his features regular, his eye intelligent and his head so formed as to indicate great brain power. as to color he was black, but even those prejudiced to color forgot that prejudice when they gazed upon this ebony-like apollo. wherever he appeared he was sure to attract attention as a rare specimen of physical manhood. his was evidently an open, frank nature, and his soul was in his face. as morlene looked upon him, she felt her strength give way. the hose fell from her hands. her very soul sent up a wail: "alas, o god, there he is! why did you let him come?" she turned and fled to her house. dorlan warthell, for such was the name of the man, was much discomfited that he had so terrified the lady, and resolved at some convenient time to apologize for the shock that his behavior had caused. he entered the yard, stopped the waste of water from the hose and proceeded on his journey, carrying in his mind the image of the most beautiful woman on whom he had ever laid eyes. morlene on entering her room, locked the door, burst into tears, buried her face in her hands, sobbed violently. judge her not too harshly, dear reader. allow her this brief moment of weeping over the re-opened grave of her long buried ideal; for, one glance at dorlan warthell, say what you will against love at sight, had somehow sufficed to tell her penetrating spirit that he was the one man, who, had she been free, could have exacted that full strength of love, which, struggle as painfully as she might, would not yield allegiance to harry whom she had married under a species of duress. morlene dropped her hands from her face, forced a smile to appear, stamped a pretty foot upon the floor and said between gritted teeth: "avaunt, ye idle dreams of youth; i am a woman now, a man's lawfully wedded wife! come not here to haunt me with visions of what might have been!" when harry came home from his work that evening morlene met him with a greeting of more than usual warmth, as much as to say, "poor harry, your place in my heart is the safer, now that my dreams of other days have been met in concrete form and gloriously vanquished." she now consoled herself with the thought that she would one day love harry as she had always desired to love a husband. happy in this thought, she retired to rest, and, much to her chagrin and annoyance, dreamed of the handsome stranger whom she had seen. chapter x. cupid should be more careful. "this is a matter worthy of investigation," mused dorlan warthell, some few moments after his chance meeting with morlene. his head was inclined forward slightly, an unwonted sparkle was in his eye, and half a smile played upon his serious face. his mind was seeking to grasp the outlines of that beautiful face which he had just passed. "never," said he, "has dorlan warthell, the serious, allowed physical beauty to so charm him. but is it mere physical beauty that has so suddenly thrown itself across the pathway of my mind so that it will not move on? has nothing met me more than that lovely form, the head of a queen, angel face, eyes that thrill? i may be mistaken, but methinks that nature has given that choice dressing to a choice spirit. at any rate i hope to meet her again." dorlan warthell arrived at his boarding place within a few minutes and, when seated at the supper table, spoke as follows to mrs. morgan, his landlady: "i notice that our street has some new denizens since the time of my sojourn here a few years ago." "yes," replied mrs. morgan, "there are mr. crutchfield, mr. yearby and mr. dalton. these gentlemen have all come to this street since you were with us last." "who lives in that beautiful cottage painted white, with that wonderful assortment of prettily arranged flowers in the front yard?" "mr. and mrs. dalton live there," replied mrs. morgan, looking intently at dorlan, seeking to fathom the secret purpose which she felt inspired his question; for she knew that dorlan paid but little attention to the matter of houses and neighbors. "have mr. and mrs. dalton any children--a daughter?" asked dorlan, giving strict attention to the food on his plate. "no; they are childless," said mrs. morgan, her interest growing. "i saw a young woman up there as i passed this evening; i suppose she is visiting them." "i see the point--a young woman," said mrs. morgan inwardly. aloud she said, "perhaps so. if you could describe her i might be able to tell who she is." dorlan looked up quickly as much as to say, "who in the world can describe that beautiful woman." he kept that reflection to himself. he began to describe the lady, when mrs. morgan interrupted him to say. "oh, that was mrs. dalton--mrs. harry dalton--undoubtedly the most beautiful negro girl in the country." dorlan finished his meal in silence. he inwardly belabored himself for having allowed his mind to be so taken up with the image of a married woman. repairing to his room, he was soon deeply engrossed in a book, as thoroughly oblivious of morlene, he thought, as if he had never seen or heard of such a person. on the following day at ten o'clock morlene called at the residence of mrs. morgan, it being her usual time for giving music lessons to that lady's young daughter. the girl had gone away on an errand for her mother and had not yet returned. morlene entered the music room and decided to amuse herself by playing until the child should come. dorlan was in a room directly over the one in which morlene was to play. neither of them knew of the presence of the other in the house. morlene first began to play a light air upon the piano. but as she struck the keys and brought forth harmonies, other and deeper emotions in her bosom craved for expression. soon she was making the piano tell her heart's full story, to be borne away, as she thought, upon the wings of the passing breeze. the sounds floated up to dorlan's open window and into his room. at first he slightly knitted his brow, fearing that he was to be bored by some mechanical performer; but the frown relaxed and gave place to a look of supreme contentment as the harmonies deepened. he closed the book that he was reading, folded his arms and gazed out of his window into the distance. he was simply enraptured and had a keen desire to know who it was that could make lifeless matter pay such eloquent tribute to the longings of the human soul. at length morlene began to play and sing: "john brown's body lies moulding in the clay; john brown's body lies moulding in the clay; john brown's body lies moulding in the clay, as we go marching on. glory! glory! hallelujah! glory! glory! hallelujah! glory! glory! hallelujah! as we go marching on!" morlene's voice was a rich soprano and her tones were so round, full and melodious that they made one feel that they did not belong to earth. her voice seemed to shake loose from each word tremblingly in that part of the song setting forth the sad fate of john brown. but as she reached the words, "hallelujah," the notes swelled into a grand paen of triumph, her voice trilling so wondrously, even upon such a high elevation. then came the refrain in low, reverential tones, beauty muffling itself in the presence of higher sentiments. dorlan warthell sprang to his feet, clasped his hands over his ears, saying half aloud: "spare me! oh, spare me! i cannot, i cannot hear those strains and perform the tasks before me. and yet i must! i must! i must!" charles sumner, who, upon the floor of the united states senate, in tones that resounded throughout the world, urged our republic to clear her skirts of the blood of the slave; horace greeley, who, daily in the columns of his great newspaper, refused sleep to the american conscience until slavery was extirpated; henry ward beecher, whose eloquence across the seas quieted the growlings of the british lion all but ready to aid the south; these three men, ere they fell asleep, saw fit to abandon the political party under whose banner they had hitherto fought. and now dorlan warthell felt called upon to do likewise. on the eve of the severing of his tender relations, some angel voice has come to serenade his soul and conjure up the hallowed past. ah! 'tis painful when the path of duty must be paved with one's heart strings. it is also sometimes strewn with one's blood. chapter xi. a stormy interview. on a night shortly subsequent to the day on which the playing and singing of morlene had so greatly affected dorlan, he had a visitor. "how goes it, dorl, old boy" said his visitor, slapping dorlan on the shoulder familiarly. "i am doing well, i hope, congressman bloodworth. accept a seat in my humble quarters," dorlan replied. congressman bloodworth dropped into a chair, crossed his short legs and began stroking his red mustache. congressman bloodworth was a white man, with an abnormally large head and a frame somewhat corpulent. his complexion was sallow and his skin very coarse. his eyes were large but exceedingly tame in appearance. he lifted his hat from his head revealing an abundance of hair of a brilliantly red hue. dorlan took a seat at some little distance from congressman bloodworth anticipating that the interview was not to end pleasantly. "well, dorlan, i have come for my answer," said congressman bloodworth in his gross voice. "mr. bloodworth, when we were last together i gave you to understand very fully what to expect of me. nothing has transpired since to cause me to change and i am sure that i shall adhere to the course which i have chosen, unto the end," said dorlan, in a pleasant but most positive manner. "dorlan, have you a memory?" queried congressman bloodworth. dorlan nodded assent. "then bear me witness, sir." so saying he took from his pocket a typewritten document, which he proceeded to read. he began, "from the year until january , , the negro race was subjected to slavery in the united states. the superior numbers, greater intelligence and determined spirit of the enslavers prevented the enslaved from cherishing any hope of setting themselves free. the great task of redemption which the negroes saw no way of accomplishing for themselves, the republican party accomplished for them at a cost of much treasure and of hundreds of thousands of precious lives. this party enacted such laws as made a recurrence of slavery absolutely impossible. it clothed the freedman with the rights of a citizen. it extended to him the strong arm of the federal government in the protection of those rights. the claim that these facts establish over the allegiance of every negro, i leave to the judgment of any sane mind. so much for the relationship which by implication should exist between _you_ and the political party named. "i now advert to my own peculiar claims upon you. your early years you spent in school and received great mental development. you found employment as a stable boy in the home of an eminent statesman. during your leisure hours you perused his library and became thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the statesman. owing to your residence in the south, there was no outlet for your powers, as the south was not permitting men with black faces to aid in running the government. by accident we met, you and i. i discovered that you had great talent. i was lacking in native ability. i decided that, as you had the necessary brains and i the white face, we might form a combination. you planned, i executed; you acquired information, i exhibited it. by your secret aid i went to congress. through you i arose from the ranks to a commanding place in the public eye. for the past few years my speeches in and out of congress have been regarded as so full of merit that they have been used as highly acceptable campaign documents. these speeches were composed by you. in return for your furnishing me brain i have paid you every cent of money which i have received as compensation for public service. making use of my white face you have been able to allow full play to your intellect, which delights in grappling with great questions. "dorlan warthell, i come to you to-night with this carefully prepared statement, that i may secure your final answer. will you or will you not, continue working through me and for the republican party?" congressman bloodworth folded the paper from which he had read and looked steadily at dorlan. dorlan replied, "congressman bloodworth, i am thoroughly convinced that the republican party is in error in the chief tenet of its present day creed. my devotion to truth is far greater than my devotion to party. and, mr. bloodworth, it was truth that set my people free. the republican party became the willing instrument of truth to effect that result. now that the result has been achieved, i must not confound the power with its instrument. i worship at the shrine of truth, not at that of its temporary agents. my spirit is free to choose its own allegiance, for no human instrumentality has freed my spirit; its freedom came from god." "sir," spoke out congressman bloodworth, "you deny my and the republican party's authority over you, in spite of what we have done for you?" "i assert that no event in the history of the world has yet happened that makes it my duty to follow error," said dorlan vehemently. "you shall die the death of a dog," shouted congressman bloodworth in rage. the two men had now risen and were glaring fiercely at each other. congressman bloodworth looked as though it would please him to tear dorlan to shreds; but dorlan's powerful, well constructed frame was too potent an argument against such an attempt. congressman bloodworth turned away and left the room. murder was in his heart and stamped its impress on every lineament of his face. chapter xii. morlene and dorlan. the day following the night of the stormy interview was morlene's day to give lessons at dorlan's boarding place. the teaching over, morlene proceeded to amuse herself by playing on the piano. she was in a buoyant mood and was disposing of first one and then another wild, dashing air. desirous of a diversion, dorlan came down from his room and glided stealthily into the parlor to listen unobserved to morlene. great was his astonishment on discovering that the beautiful lady whom he had passed was none other than the accomplished pianist and divine singer. for a few moments he lived a divided existence, his eye surveying the beautiful form of morlene, while his ear was appropriating the rich harmonies which her splendid touch was evoking from the keyboard. with a merry laugh at her own frolicsomeness, morlene struck the piano keys a farewell blow and arose to go. wheeling around she saw dorlan. the light died out of her face. a feeling of terror crept over her as the thought occurred that fate, relentless fate, seemed determined to throw that fascinating stranger in her pathway. "do not be angry with me for my intrusion," said dorlan. "my soul is the seat of a long continued storm these days, and your music was so refreshing," he continued. dorlan's air of deference and his pleasing, well modulated voice caused morlene to at once recover her composure. the note of sadness in dorlan's voice caught morlene's ear and her sympathetic nature at once craved to know his troubles that she might, if possible, dissipate them. she saw that dorlan was depending upon her to begin a conversation as an assurance that he had given no offense. morlene sat down in the seat nearest her. "you speak of a storm," she said. "when you speak thus you arouse my interest, for to my mind a storm is the most sublime occurrence in nature. to see the winds aroused; to hear their mad rushing; to behold them as with the multiplied strength of giants they grasp and overturn the strongest works of man's hands--to see this, inspires one with awe and reverence for the great force that pervades this universe, and impels us, whether we so will or not, to conform to its ripening purposes. "if there is a storm in your bosom, matters exterior to yourself have produced it. as an admirer of storms i beg you to lay bare to me such portions of the journeyings of the winds as a stranger may be permitted to view." "do you believe in strangers?" asked dorlan, "i hold that no human beings are, at bottom, strangers to each other. with emerson i hold that 'there is one mind common to all individual men. every man is an inlet to the same and to all the same. who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.' "those souls are quickest to recognize this fact which are best equipped to reveal themselves and to comprehend the revelations of other souls. we know some souls at a glance as thoroughly as one soul ever knows another." to these observations morlene made no reply. too well did she know that the human being before her, was somehow, no stranger to her. "starting out with the assumption that you shall find nothing strange in me when you fully understand me, i am ready to show you the pathway of the storm," continued dorlan. "thank you," said morlene, smiling, and partially revealing a set of teeth as beautiful as fair lady ever desired. "a presidential election is fast approaching. i have heretofore labored with the republican party. in this campaign i part company with them," said dorlan. "my dear sir," said morlene, rising, the picture of excitement, "are you a democrat?" dorlan smiled at the intensity of the feeling displayed in the tone of voice used for the question. "oh, no," said he, reassuringly. "in the south, democracy's chief tenets are white man's supremacy and exclusiveness in governmental affairs. not having a white skin, self-preservation would prevent me from entering the folds of that party." morlene heaved a sigh of relief. she said, "i am glad to know that the seeming hopelessness of our plight in the south has not caused you to seek to influence us to surrender to this dictum of southern democracy. proceed, if you please." "i am thoroughly displeased with the policy of the republican party toward the inhabitants of the philippine islands, and in spite of the endearing relations of the past, i am moved to part company with the party on this issue," remarked dorlan. "oh, i am an enthusiastic expansionist, mr.----." "warthell is my name," supplied dorlan. "mr. warthell," said morlene, the glow of eloquence on her face, "i have a dream. i dream that wars and revolutions shall one day cease. the classification of mankind into groups called nations, affords a feeling of estrangement which destroys or modifies the thought of universal brotherhood, and gives rise to the needless bickerings which result in wars. i delight in any movement that sweeps away these pseudo-national boundaries. the more separate nations that are congealed under one head, the less is the area where conflicts are probable. when the tendency to consolidate finally merges all governments into one, wars shall cease. our territorial expansion is but the march of destiny toward the ultimate goal of all things. i am delighted to see our nation thus move forward, because we have such an elastic form of government, so responsive to the needs and sentiments of the people that bloody revolutions become unnecessary wherever our flag floats. just think how much our expansion makes for universal peace by erasing the thought of separateness existing between peoples, and giving to the federated powers such an ideal form of government. "when our flag floats over the whole of the western hemisphere there will be nobody over here to fight us; we shall not fight among ourselves and we shall dare the european and asiatic powers to go to war." "you are indeed an expansionist," remarked dorlan. "yes, yes," said morlene, wrought up in the subject that was stirring the american people. "some are expansionists for the sake of finding outlets for the ever-increasing excess of our production. they hold that we are producing far more than what we can consume, and must have outside buyers to avoid a terrible congestion at home. others are expansionists on the ground that outlying possessions are a strategetical necessity in the time of war. our statesmen are expansionists, some of them, because our nation's becoming a world power gives a broader scope for their intellects. some are expansionists because they desire to see weaker people have the benefits of a higher civilization. while i admit the possible weight of these various contentions, my interest in expansion is broadly humanitarian. england was at one time a seething mass of warring tribes. the expansion of a central power over the entire islands brought order out of chaos. let the process extend to the entire earth as fast as honorable opportunity presents itself, and may the stars and stripes lead in the new evangel of universal peace." thus spoke morlene. "beautiful, beautiful dream. but it is my fear that enthusiasm over expansion may cause us to lose sight of fundamental tenets of our political faith. this leads me to state the point of difference between myself and the republican party," said dorlan. the subject was one, as may be seen, of absorbing interest to morlene, and she leaned forward slightly, eager to catch each word that dorlan might utter. he began: "the republican party has not informed the world as to what will be the ultimate status of the filipino. in the final adjustment of things, whatever _that_ may be, will the filipino be able to say that he stands upon the same plane, politically and otherwise, with all other free and equal human beings. i labored earnestly to have the republican party to declare that no violence would be done to our national conception that every man is inherently the political equal of every other man. the party has promised that full physical, civil and religious liberty shall be guaranteed. on the question of political liberty there is silence. because of this silence i leave it." "in what manner, mr. warthell, do you hope to affect the result in the pending campaign?" enquired morlene. "the negroes, you know, are vitally affected by the issues in this campaign. with england imposing its will upon india, with the southern whites imposing their will on the negroes, only one great branch of the white race exists which is not imposing its will upon a feebler race. i allude to the white people of the north. "should our nation impose its will upon the filipinos, by the force of arms and without the underlying purpose of ultimately granting to them full political liberty, the weaker peoples the world over will lose their only remaining advocate in the white race, namely the people of the north. "i hope to be able to show the negroes that they, of all citizens in this country, cannot afford to permit either silence as to, or the abandonment of, the doctrine of the inherent equality of all men. the negroes of the pivotal states, when, united, can easily decide the election in whatever direction they choose. it is my purpose to attempt to weld together the negroes in the hope of defeating any man that will not unequivocally and openly declare in favor of the ultimate political equality of the filipinos." "are you not leaning on a broken reed, mr. warthell?" asked morlene in earnest tones. "have the negroes acquired sufficient self-confidence to feel justified in pitting their judgment against that of the republican party? can the recent beneficiary be so soon transformed into a dictator? more important still, can you uproot those tender memories which flourish in the sentimental bosom of the negro, associating, indissolubly his freedom with the republican party?" she asked. dorlan sighed deeply. he recalled how madly he had to fight against the tender memories aroused by morlene's singing when we saw him so deeply stirred. he remembered how that on that occasion her playing and singing had carried his mind back to those great days when the freedom of the negroes was in the balances. he knew what an effort it required on his part to persuade his heart to allow him to strike a blow at that hitherto hallowed name--republican. dorlan not replying, morlene resumed, "mr. warthell, in attempting to disillusion the negroes with regard to the republican party you shall march against one of the strongest attachments in all of human history. i have known deaths to result from assailing attachments far less deep-seated than that. may a special providence preserve you." morlene now arose to go, her beautiful face giving signs of the fear for dorlan's safety that had stolen into her heart. subsequent happenings showed how well grounded were her fears. chapter xiii. a whole city stirred. the editor of one of the leading morning papers of r---- sat at his desk one afternoon, knitting his brows as he read a document spread out before him. having finished reading it once, he began the second reading, wearing on his face the same intent expression. having concluded the second reading, he laid the article down, rested his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes as if in deep meditation. after a few moments' reflection he decided upon the third reading of the document. when he had finished this last perusal, he went to the telephone and summoned dorlan warthell to an immediate conference with him. dorlan soon arrived and was ushered into the editors's private office. "be seated," said the editor, in a most cordial manner. "mr. warthell," said he, "i have read your document the third time and i now desire to ask you two questions. the character of your answers to them will determine whether i shall propound to you a third." looking earnestly into dorlan's face, he enquired, "was it your desire and expectation that this article should be published?" "most assuredly," said dorlan, manifesting surprise that the editor should deem it necessary to ask such a question. "again," said the editor, "are you well acquainted with the moods of your people?" "it is my impression that few men have studied them more earnestly than i have," said dorlan. "i see that i must ask my third question. thinking that your article would be published, knowing your people, have you exercised foresight enough to have your life insured? if you have not, fail not to do so to-night; for a straw in a whirlwind will account itself blessed in comparison with your lot after this article appears to-morrow morning," said the editor. "i am content to abide by the consequences of my act," said dorlan, quietly. "your blood be upon your own head," said the editor. this brought the interview to a close and dorlan took his departure. the next morning the following seemingly harmless article from the pen of dorlan warthell appeared in the paper whose editor we saw pondering it. it ran as follows: "in the great crisis of the sixties, the republican party appeared before the sepulchre of the buried manhood of the negro race, called it forth from the tomb and divested it of the habiliments of the grave. this portentous achievement shook the earth. the pillars of the republic tottered but were caught within the titantic grasp of the republican party, which thereupon made the foundations and superstructure more secure than ever before. as long as the ocean mirrors in her bosom the face of the king of day, just so long shall the hearts of the negroes cherish the memories of the noble army of men who wrought so nobly for humanity. "to further the ends so righteously sought a party name was adopted and party machinery created by them. when their tasks were done and they had, for the most part, been gathered to their fathers, other leaders arose and began to operate under this same name and with this same machinery. the charge has often been made that we bestow upon these instruments of our salvation the same devotion that we yielded to the creators and original wielders of the instruments. it is said that we blindly follow the party name regardless of those wielding it and the use to which it is put. the charge may be illustrated by the following comparison: "a noble man does a cripple a kindness. the man dies and a thrifty neighbor comes into possession of the shoes, clothes and hat that he wore at the time of helping the cripple. the neighbor puts on the leavings of the dead man, appears before the cripple and demands his allegiance because of the clothes worn. the cripple yields the devotion asked for, giving evidence that he was ready to consider the dead man and the clothes as one and inseparable. we are charged with acting like unto this cripple, in the matter of rendering devotion to the party name and machinery, the clothes left behind by the men who did the actual work of liberating us. "in the past we have had no suitable opportunity to clear by an overt act our skirts of the charge which has been exceedingly damaging to our reputation for intelligence; for the policies of the party have been mainly good. but unforeseen circumstances have brought us face to face with the golden opportunity of proving that the picture is overdrawn, that we have not riveted political chains upon ourselves, to take the place of the actual chains torn from us at so fearful a cost. while adding to our own good name we can also do the cause of humanity untold good. "the spanish-american war has brought us into contact with many million filipinos. we must decide what are to be our relations with them. shall we or shall we not deal with them on the principle that they are and shall ever be regarded as our equals, is the burning question with the american people. the party with which we have hitherto affiliated, claims to be so busily engaged with our present duties on the islands that they must postpone consideration as to the final status of the people thereof. the negroes can favor only one solution of the problem, the recognition of the fact that all men are created equal. they should favor no postponement of a decision, having themselves suffered from a postponement that lasted from midnight of july th, , until january st, , the time that elapsed between the promulgation of the declaration that all men are created equal, and the application of that declaration to the american slave. "in view of the silence of the republican party upon the question of the ultimate status of the filipinos, it has been decided to organize a party that will spurn silence, that will insist that 'old glory' shall continue to float over human beings that can look each other in the face and shout 'we are all equals; no man among us is, in any sense, less free than another.' "all american citizens willing to consecrate their political efforts to the attainment of this end are invited to elect delegates to be present at sinclair hall on the fifteenth of the incoming month. the negroes having been the chief sufferers from the non-recognition of the principles for which our new party will stand, are expected to take the lead in the new organization. "yours for humanity, "dorlan warthell." the manifest purpose of dorlan to withdraw the negro vote from the republicans with the view of forming a new party created a profound sensation. it was discussed by white and colored people, was the theme of conversation in the street cars, hotel corridors, stores, barber shops, saloons, brothels, and on every street corner. there are in the south, men and women, white and colored, who are endeavoring to meet every issue that arises upon the highest possible plane. the sentiments of such people found expression in the following editorial which accompanied dorlan's pronunciamento. it ran as follows: "a negro has been found to display political independence and moral courage of a high order. he has placed himself in a position where the unthinking will liken him unto the serpent that buried its fangs in the bosom that warmed it. none the less, his act is one of marked heroism. while not endorsing his third party scheme (our party is good enough) we endorse the spirit of initiative and independence that prompts it. we would that this spirit of rebellion against party slavery characterized all the voters of the southland. "it is an open secret that the great body of the people of both races in the south are prone to regard elections as nothing more nor less than a perennial struggle for supremacy between the two races. this one issue has been allowed to dwarf all other considerations. indeed, the south is deaf to all appeals, however urgent, to give consideration to the grave questions arising from time to time affecting the welfare of us all and determining our destiny. such a condition of isolation from the centers of thought activity is deplorable in the extreme. "think of it: by birth a man comes into possession of a full set of political opinions. he is born into a condition of intellectual serfdom; the mind dares not to wander by a hair's breadth from the narrow estate of thought on which it is born. he who elects to devote his attention to the questions of state must reduce his mentality to the level of the parrot and feel that his life's work will consist in learning to repeat glibly and without alteration whatever party managers may promulgate. what a crime against the human mind whose native air is freedom, to secure which bonfires have been lighted with the thrones of kings! "what the south needs is a new emancipation. her giant minds must be allowed to enter the arena of intellectual conflict unfettered, if they are to bring back to the south her departed glory. the negroes can help to bring about this emancipation. when they cease to vote _en masse_; when they cease going to the polls as a mark of gratitude to the invaders of the south who now sleep their last sleep and would discountenance, if they could, the perpetuation of race hatred over past issues; when the sentiment within the negro race is sufficiently liberal to allow each negro his manhood right to record with his vote his own best judgment; when, we say, these desirable conditions obtain among the negroes, we whites will have an opportunity to escape the scourge with which the party magnates herd us together even as gratitude has herded the negroes. "with joy we hail the advent of dorlan warthell in his new role. may he succeed in inaugurating an era of independent thought among the negroes. let us all hope that we are now beholding a streak of dawn, instead of the trail of a falling star, whose soon fading light will leave our skies but the darker. let us hope that the hour is upon us when the sober torch of reason and not the withering flames of passion, may guide all of our voters, white and colored, to the polls." there are many people in the south who never read, who never ponder grave questions, but assume the right to wreak vengeance on the heads of those who perchance wander from beaten paths in search of truth. in the above editorial the more enlightened element had spoken; but the unthinking were also to be heard from. if dorlan is depending upon his exalted patriotism, his broad love of humanity, his eager, unselfish striving after the good of all--if, we say, he is depending upon these things to shield him from the wrath of those whom his act affronted, let him remember that virtue was no shield to him whose blood, in the days of yore, anointed the spear of a roman soldier upon a hillside on the outskirts of jerusalem. chapter xiv. bloodworth at work. the hon. hezekiah t. bloodworth had returned to his home from his interview with dorlan chagrined, dejected, sorely puzzled as to what to do next. it was being declared on all sides that the day of isolation was over with the united states, and that it was henceforth to be a world power. instead of simply directing the affairs of the nation, her statesmen would now be called upon to assist in shaping the destinies of the peoples of the whole earth. bloodworth had been cherishing the fond hope that he would be one of the first of american statesmen that would leap into world prominence. his bosom heaved as he thought of the day when his speeches would be read by the inhabitants of all lands and his name would be a household word unto the uttermost parts of the earth. he had unlimited faith in dorlan's ability and felt that dorlan could rise equal to the emergency and furnish him the brain power for his widened responsibilities. at the very moment when he felt the need of dorlan the keenest in all his life, dorlan refuses to be his mentor. bloodworth wept. his tears were not alexandrian tears of regret that there were no more worlds to conquer, but bloodworthian tears shed because he could neither borrow nor buy the brains necessary to conquer a world that had come within his reach. "hezzy, dear, what on earth troubles you?" asked mrs. bloodworth of her perturbed husband. "my ancestors, confound them," roughly responded bloodworth. "he is going crazy," thought mrs. bloodworth. "how do your ancestors trouble you, hezzy?" further queried mrs. bloodworth. "they have handed down to me no brains," roared bloodworth. "there, i thought it was brain trouble," thought mrs. bloodworth. "oh, dear, you have brains," said his wife. "so has a rabbit. let me alone, now." this colloquy had taken place at the dinner table where bloodworth was voraciously devouring food, in an effort, it would appear, to be strong abdominally if not intellectually. his grief over his plight had not yet affected his appetite. when nearly through the meal a telegram was handed him. it was from the speakers' bureau and read thus: "_hon. hezekiah t. bloodworth_: "your services are badly needed in the pivotal states. campaign a flat failure without your lucid speeches. delay no longer. report at headquarters at once. the aftermath." bloodworth had been given the assurance of a cabinet portfolio in case his party succeeded. the words, "the aftermath," in the telegram were intended to call attention to the fact that his preferment was contingent upon his campaign labors. he arose from the table in such an abrupt manner that he upset it, much to the horror of mrs. bloodworth. "do you wish to send a return message?" asked the messenger boy. "tell the speakers' bureau and the pivotal states to go to the habitation of the accursed," exclaimed bloodworth, trudging about the floor, holding the open telegram in both hands as though it was a heavy load. the messenger boy backed out of the room and hurried away, glad to get out of the presence of the enraged bloodworth. "confound it; i will not be ruined thus" said bloodworth. grasping his hat he hurried out of his house to the market. he soon returned and, thrusting a package down on a table in his kitchen, said, "cook, feed me on fish at every meal. get the very best fish. here are some good ones. begin at supper time. fish is good for brain food, they say, and i need brains!" bloodworth dieted himself on fish for a few days and then began the preparation of the speech with which he was to open his campaign tour in the pivotal states. after great labor the speech was at last finished, and congressman bloodworth invited a few intimate friends to hear him deliver it to them in private. "friends," said he to the select audience, "of late my mind (meaning dorlan warthell) has been a little erratic. it will not serve me as it once did. i have called you here to ask you to tell me whether much of its vigor has departed. if there is too great a gap between my past efforts and my present one, i shall retire from public life. remember, gentlemen, how much depends on your decision, and be frank with me." congressman bloodworth then began his speech. with great effort his hearers refrained from laughter as they listened to what they thought was the most bunglesome address that ever came from the lips of a public servant in a civilized land. "mr. bloodworth, for heaven's sake, do not take the stump in this campaign. you will be the butt of ridicule of the entire nation." such was the verdict rendered by one and acquiesced in by the others after listening to the speech. bloodworth now completely collapsed. "gentlemen," he said between his sobs, "take me to my room. i am ill. i knew that a breakdown was due to a man who has worked as hard for his country as i have. take me to my room, gentlemen." bloodworth was borne to his room and put to bed. he then dictated a telegram to the speakers' bureau, informing them of his illness and consequent inability to participate in the campaign. the hon. hezekiah t. bloodworth was removed to the city of r---- to a private sanitarium in order, he said, that he might receive the best medical attention. each day he would lay abed feigning that he was sick. the doctors were unable to tell what was troubling their patient, but were quite content to have him remain with them, so handsomely were they being paid. bulletins as to the state of his health were sent over the country daily. bloodworth succeeded in bribing his night nurses. with their collusion he was able to escape from the sanitarium each night, returning just before daybreak in the morning. these nights were spent by him in the lowest parts of the city, in gambling dens patronized by the negroes. he had become aware of the great upheaval among the negroes against dorlan and he had decided that the time was auspicious for the murder. his midnight orgies enabled him to secure tools for his work. chapter xv. harry becomes a tool. the excitement among the negroes was so very great that dorlan decided that something ought to be done to allay it, to the end that the convention which he had called might find a more congenial atmosphere. he issued a call for a public mass meeting, hoping at that meeting to put himself in a better light before the people. congressman bloodworth heard of this proposed mass meeting and chose it as the occasion on which to put an end to dorlan's life. in his rounds by night he had heard how that harry dalton, a ward chairman of the republican party, was extremely bitter in his feelings toward dorlan. one night he called at harry's residence. morlene met him at the door and his countenance fell. he had not expected to find such intelligence as morlene's face indicated in a home where dwelled a man as rancorous as harry had been represented to be. morlene invited him in. when he saw harry his spirits rose. his first glance impressed him that harry could be used as a tool. morlene intuitively read sinister purposes in bloodworth's face. he avoided her searching gaze as much as possible. "may i have a private interview with you?" asked bloodworth of harry. "certainly, certainly," said harry, rising and leading the way to an adjoining room, closing the door behind them. they took seats, bloodworth putting his chair near to harry. "i have come to see you on an important matter," said bloodworth. "but before i begin i have one question to ask you," he continued. pausing, and looking directly into harry's eyes, he asked, "are you a republican?" an angry flush passed over harry's face. "you insult me, sir, to come into my house to ask me if i am a republican. i was born a republican and will die one." "don't talk so loud," said bloodworth, glancing uneasily toward the door, where he thought morlene might be listening. "well, you must not insult me, sir. my color ought to tell you what i am." "yes, yes," said bloodworth, in a sad tone. "there was a time when all colored men were true blue republicans, but that day is past. a man right here in your ward has gone astray." "don't you compare me with that infernal scoundrel, dorlan warthell. he claims to be an educated man, and has deserted the republican party. i could tear his liver out and show it to him, that i could." "i have come to talk to you about him." "if you have got any good to say of him, it's no use for you to begin. but if you can tell of any way to get rid of the scoundrel, i am with you." "let me tell you my history," said bloodworth. bloodworth now assumed a piteous tone and began: "i am a southern man. before the war my father was rich, but would never own a slave, though he lived right in the south. "when the war broke out, we turned our back on the south and joined the union army. that is, my two brothers did. i stayed at home to care for my aged parents. "when the war was over, the negroes needed leaders. i decided to lead them. this made all of the southern white people mad at me, and they called me a scalawag. but i led them just the same, and held office so that the negroes could say that a republican was in office. i wanted to go higher. i found a colored boy who was poor but brainy. i gave him all the money i made from politics in return for his help to me. he worked along with me until he had gotten thousands of dollars. then he left me. he left me just when the republican party needed him most." here bloodworth managed to slip an onion near his eyes and tears appeared. harry was deeply moved at this show of emotion. he groaned audibly over the perfidy of the negro who deserted so true a republican. "yes, harry," sobbed bloodworth, "he deserted the party of lincoln, the party that made his people free, the party that made it possible for you all to be what you are. he deserted me, his true and tried friend. he deserted his own race. dorlan warthell is that man." harry was now moved to tears--tears of sympathy, tears of shame over the nefarious deed of a colored man, tears of rage. "i am a christian," said harry. "i am a deacon of a church. but i swear by high heaven that no such scoundrel shall be allowed to live! i shall kill him!" "nobly spoken! nobly spoken!" said bloodworth, grasping harry's hand warmly. "i am proud that i--that is, that my brothers shed their blood to give freedom to such noble men as you. i am not afraid for the future of your race while such men as you are living." harry was grateful to the center of his heart for this tribute to his worth. "may i ever prove worthy of your kind words," said harry. "i have no doubt of that. the man who takes dorlan warthell out of the way will do enough good to make up for any shortcomings that he might have. i have a well arranged plan for his murder and was only looking for a man worthy of the role of principal actor. lo, i have found him!" bloodworth now unfolded the details of his plot to harry, and explained to him the part that the latter was to take in the killing. morlene, who had listened at the keyhole, had heard in great agony the plottings against the life of dorlan warthell. she had no qualms of conscience about listening, for, having seen crime stamped on bloodworth's face, she had employed the usual method of entrapping criminals--spying. bloodworth and harry were fully determined upon dorlan's murder. morlene determined to save his life, even if in so doing she lost her own. chapter xvi. a woman aroused. morlene fully realized the gravity as well as the delicacy of the situation that confronted her. a murder was being planned, the intended victim being an innocent man and one for whom she entertained the greatest possible respect; while the man chosen to strike the fatal blow was none other than her own husband. her first impulse was to confront harry, but sober second thought caused her to abandon this purpose, for she remembered that harry was headstrong; that he never abandoned anything that he had firmly resolved upon doing. she saw that confronting harry would only have the effect of causing him to lay his plans the deeper and perhaps so far away that she could not by any means intercept them. morlene began to consider the advisability of putting in motion a counter current of sentiment in favor of granting the individual citizen the right of independent action, hoping to create such a broad spirit of tolerance that the party or parties who were to use harry as a tool would be afraid to carry out their programme of murder. while harry and morlene were sitting at the breakfast table one morning, she said to him, "harry, i have come across a very good campaign book and would like to act as agent for it during the next few days. do you object?" without looking up harry replied, "of course, not," and continued in meditation of what he regarded as dorlan's traitorous crime. every now and then he would lay down his knife and fork and rest his hands on the table, his eyes down-cast, so thoroughly was he aroused over dorlan's presumption in claiming the right to find fault with the republican party. when harry had gone to his work, morlene took her canvassing outfit and began her labors. she chose with much deliberation the parties to whom she went to sell the book. her first task upon meeting the party was to set forth the claims of the book. she never failed in effecting a sale, for the parties accosted were willing to pay the price of the book for the privilege of being brought into contact with a woman of such remarkable beauty. they could hardly listen to her recital of the claims of the book for stealing glances at her well shaped, queenly poised head, her pleading, thrilling eyes, her beautiful face, her perfect form. they sought by prolonging the conversation to detain her in their presence as long as possible. when through talking of her book, morlene invariably brought up the "warthell movement" in order that she might discover the temper of the people and find out just how much hope there was of arousing public interest in the matter of securing dorlan's immunity from attack because he had essayed to pursue an independent course. a very eminent lawyer, the real head of the democratic party of the state, expressed himself thus to morlene: "to be frank with you, mrs. dalton, the fact that the "warthell movement" might in the end break the solidarity of the negro vote and cause a fraction of that vote to eventually drift to us, has no charms for the democratic party. for several reasons we do not desire, at present, a contingent of negro voters. first of all, the coming of the negro into our ranks will cause our party to disintegrate, many men now being held in it because they there escape contact with the negro. in the second place, the anglo-saxon habit of thought and the negro habit of thought are so essentially different that we prefer their separation." "please explain yourself," requested morlene. "certainly," said the lawyer, not at all weary of the pleasure of looking at and talking to the beauty. "let me cite you to a bible incident," he resumed. "when peter, in preaching to the jews, set forth that god had raised jesus christ from the dead, and had bestowed upon him greater power and glory than he had before possessed, the assertion proved to be a befitting climax to a sermon which resulted in the conversion of some three thousand persons. paul, in closing a sermon to the greeks at athens, alluded to this same resurrection of the dead. instead of proving to be the effective climax that it was when peter was preaching to the jews, it operated as the weakest point in the discourse, for we are told that at that point, 'some mocked,' and the assemblage postponed the hearing. paul in summing up the difference between the jew and the greek habit of thought, remarked that the jews require a sign, and the greeks seek after wisdom. you note that the very thing that appealed most strongly to the mind of the jew--the miraculous raising of the jesus--was the most repellant to the greek, who, in his search for wisdom, demanded to know the how of every assertion. "returning to the anglo-saxon and the negro--i think i can name a number of differences in their mental attitudes: " . the negro's talent is largely acquisitive; that of the anglo-saxon, inquisitive. " . the negro is of a restful temperament; the anglo-saxon is characterized by a 'restless discontented, striving, burning energy.' as a result the negro is painfully conservative, while the anglo-saxon is daringly progressive. " . the negro deals with the immediate; the anglo-saxon has a keen eye for the remote. " . the negro is prone to accept statements that lay claim to being postulates; the anglo-saxon is skeptical, examining into the foundation of things. " . the negro is impulsive, and is led to act largely by an immediately exciting stimulus, causing the net results of his labors to appear as a series of fits and jerks; the anglo-saxon is deliberate, cautious without stagnation, wary and persistent, and his history reveals an unbroken tendency in a given direction. " . hitherto the preponderating tendency of the negro has been toward disintegration, showing the lack of a proper measure of fellow-feeling; the tendency of the anglo-saxon is toward racial integration. " . the negro proceeds by analogies; the anglo-saxon by logic. " . the anglo-saxon is fond of serious discussion and you reach him best through the sublime; the negro is inordinately fond of joking and you get closest to him through the ludicrous. i do not pretend to say that these are hard and fast lines, separating the anglo-saxon and negro minds into distinct classes, but they indicate a general unlikeness in many particulars. "now, we democrats know how to reach anglo-saxon minds and the process is congenial to our general habit of thought. when we address negroes, we really have to readjust our faculties of approach. public speakers find that various sections of the same country present this difference, even when all of the people are of the same race. how much greater must be the chasm between two such widely diverging races." morlene exhibited no signs of abating interest, so the lawyer proceeded further with his remarks. "two other reasons may be given why we prefer to be rid of the negro," he continued. "the mass of negroes are poor, some of them very poor, and we have men among us who would not scruple at perpetually bribing these poor by little acts of kindness. a poverty stricken, oppressed, helpless people are comparatively easy prey for the well to do element of an opposite race. in national politics the negro's devotion to the republican party exempts him from the chicanery of designing whites who would debauch the suffrage. we do not desire the ignorant negro vote in municipal affairs for the same reason that the nations of europe oppose the dismemberment of turkey. the struggle for possession would be too fierce and demoralizing among the parties desiring the furtherance of their interests. the other reason for not wanting the negro vote is that the respective traditions of the two races are so essentially different. "you see they (the negroes) revere lincoln, sumner, whittier, lovejoy, harriet beecher stowe, frederick douglass, grant, john brown, etc. we have no peculiar fondness for these characters. jefferson davis, r. e. lee, stonewall jackson, pickett, albert sidney johnson, etc., are the objects of our love and enthusiasm. you see, it is quite natural that people having such widely differing sentiments should in a measure live apart." morlene saw clearly that there was no hope of arousing in this man enthusiasm over dorlan's work of altering the existing status in matters political. she now departed, the lines of sadness deepening on her face. the lawyer followed her to the door, bade her a polite adieu and turned away, somehow full of the thought that he had conversed with a superior creature. morlene next went to the head of the democratic "machine." he was the man chosen to do the work of "counting out" the opposition if the occasion seemed to require it. he readily purchased a book, and, when called upon, expressed his opinion as to the "warthell movement." "to tell the truth, we do not want that fellow to succeed. we hold our people in line by threatening them with the bludgeon of mass voting and negro domination. the white people let us machine fellows have our own way and will scarcely fight us under any consideration for fear that in destroying the evil that we may represent, they might fall upon another that is worse, namely, "nigger rule," as they call it. of course, then, we machine fellows don't want any such times as that fellow is trying to inaugurate." morlene found the white republican machine equally antagonistic to dorlan. they feared that the abandonment of the republican party by the great mass of negroes of the south would cause a great influx of southern whites, which would mean that the day of the small man was over; for many of the white men who were giants among the negroes, simply because of their white faces and professed sympathy, would appear to be only pigmies when brought into contact with the abler sections of the whites. the negro politicians of the smaller calibre that affiliated with the machine viewed dorlan's actions with contempt. their interest in political campaigns ended with ward meetings, county, district, state and national conventions. whatever profit a campaign was to bring to them personally, they labored to secure while conventions were being held, for they knew that they would be no more an important factor until the time arrived for another series of conventions. not seeing where dorlan was to profit personally by his course, they took him to be an enthusiastic crank of some sort. "how much is there in it," was the shibboleth of their creed, learned in the school of "peanut" politics where they operated. morlene found many intelligent white and colored men who held views directly opposite to those cited, but they almost invariably wound up by saying, "but warthell, it turns out, is ahead of his day. conditions in the south are such that good men of both races are better off out of politics." they were averse to taking any active part in the matter, fearing that, in view of the inflamed state of the public mind, other interests of theirs might be jeopardized. finding that all hope of enlisting public sentiment in dorlan's favor had to be abandoned, morlene, with a heavy burden on her heart, now turned in the direction of police headquarters. the chief was out, but a subordinate presented himself and desired to know her business. "sir," said she, "there is a plan on foot to assassinate dorlan warthell, a highly respected negro of this city." an angry look came into the face of the policeman. morlene felt encouraged by this, hoping that she was at last in a place where dorlan had a friend. she now gave the officer the plans of the conspirators as she had overheard them, taking pains to emphasize the fact that harry, her husband, was but a weakling in the hands of the chief conspirator, and that she desired that he be wrested from his grasp. the officer took a memorandum of what morlene had said. when morlene had gotten some distance away she recollected something that she deemed it advisable to tell. she retraced her steps to headquarters, and, as she drew near the office door, heard warthell's name called by the officer with whom she had conferred. her heart seemed to cease to beat as she heard this officer say, "yes, i hope they will kill the scoundrel. i believe in every man being true to his race. i call a negro who will work against the republicans lower than the dogs. i call a southern white man who will work against the democrats as even lower still. yes, i hope they will kill the scoundrel. let every man stay with his own race, by gosh." morlene turned away trembling in every fibre. when she had proceeded some distance she turned, and pointing her finger in the direction of the building from which she had just come, said, "ah! justice, justice, whither art thou fled? red-handed murder now sits in thy temple and occupies thy throne! how long wilst thou withhold thy presence from this beautiful, but blighted southland?" passers by did not know what to make of this beautiful woman standing with outstretched hand, a look of sorrow and lofty scorn upon her face. chapter xvii. clandestinely, yet in honor. returning to her home, morlene sent the following note to dorlan: "mr. dorlan warthell: "dear sir--i have come into possession of information that renders an interview with you imperative. for reasons that are entirely satisfactory to my conscience, i desire that the interview be private. i assure you that nothing but the most _desperate_ circumstances could influence me to take this step. upon the peril of your life meet me at the end of the broad street car line promptly at eight o'clock. "the ardent expansionist." a few minutes before the appointed hour, dorlan was at the place designated. a thickly-veiled lady stepped off of the eight o'clock car and her shapeliness told dorlan that it was morlene. the two walked onward together until they were at such a distance as not to encounter inquisitive passers-by. "mr. warthell," began morlene, "my first task is to impart to you certain information. there exists a conspiracy, the object of which is to effect your murder at the mass meeting which you are to hold." "nothing that happens in the south any longer excites surprise in me," said dorlan, no trace of emotion in his voice. not a muscle of his noble face twitched at the news. morlene resumed: "i have further to say, that the state of the public mind toward you is such as is calculated to encourage rather than to destroy criminal intentions directed against you. enlightened or unenlightened, the forces in favor of the existing order of things regard you as a disturbing factor in the body politic. your position is peculiarly dangerous in that the weaker minds will grow to regard your murder as a civic duty." "no one can gainsay the elements of danger in the situation," said dorlan. "the police, i fear, will not furnish you the protection that you need," remarked morlene. "perhaps not," responded dorlan. morlene now threw back her veil and turned her anxious eyes full on dorlan. "mr. warthell," she said, "the cool manner in which you receive the information which i give, indicates that you are not as regardful of your life as might be the case." dorlan replied: "my life has no charms for me, _per se_. i am wedded to certain purposes for which i have learned to live. i will gladly yield my life for their furtherance at any time that result can be achieved. if the ends for which i strive are found to be unattainable, life has no further interest for me." "mr. warthell, the world needs your services," said morlene in earnest tones. "it may be that the world has a greater need for my death. i am enough of a fatalist to believe that whatever the world needs it gets. note how opportune have been the great births and deaths of history," replied dorlan. "mr. warthell, i have not come here to theorize on the comparative value of life and death. i have come to save your life. have you any relatives living?" "none," said dorlan. "oh, that there was a mother or a sister to make the plea that i must make!" said morlene, sorrowfully. "wait," she said, as though a new idea had struck her. "mr. warthell, is there not somewhere in the world a noble girl whose heart you have won and who has accepted you as the companion by whose side she is to journey through life?" "my life has not been altogether without love," said dorlan, a trace of emotion appearing in his voice. "but it was a boyish love. the little girl fell asleep in her twelfth summer. were she alive to-night there might be something to chain me to life. as it is my personal life is barren of inducements and i am free to offer myself upon the altar for the good of my country." morlene dropped upon her knees; tears had made their appearance in her eyes. with clasped hands and face upraised to his, she said: "mr. warthell, i beg of you, spare your life. spare me the horror of knowing that you were foully murdered. you have no mother, no sister, no lover. i am only a stranger to you. argument fails me and i can only plead." dorlan turned away, unable to look into that sweet, sorrowful face and say it nay. "it is best that i die," said dorlan to himself. "if i lived i could not escape falling in love with this divine being." to morlene he remarked, his head still averted, "sweet is your voice and earnest your pleadings. think it not ungallant in me to say that the stern voice of duty engrosses my ear and i obey its summons. if i die at my post of duty you will be one to revere my memory." morlene arose and moved around so as to be face to face with dorlan who was seeking to avoid her gaze. "answer one question for me, mr. warthell. is there anything connected with your life that causes you to think that death would be a personal gain to you as well as a gain to your country? i do not ask out of curiosity, you must know. it behooves me to know all the factors to be reckoned with in my attempt to save your life." "no personal considerations would induce me to _seek_ to destroy my life. let that information suffice," said dorlan. the very suppression manifest in dorlan's reply and tone of voice revealed to morlene that the full answer to her query was "yes." she now ceased her pleading. she saw that the labor of saving dorlan's life was more largely upon her than she had at first supposed. she had even his indifference to life to combat. undaunted by this fresh complication she girded her spirit for the conflict. in silence the two went toward the place where morlene was to board the car to return to her home. when they arrived at the place of parting, morlene said, "remember, i say, you shall not die." dorlan looked at her, smiled sadly, turned and walked away. chapter xviii. who wins? the night of the mass meeting came at last, and there was a tremendous outpouring of the negroes, recruited mainly from the ranks of the toiling masses. scattered here and there in the audience were a few of the educated negroes, drawn to the meeting to see how dorlan was to fare in his attempt to breast the current of negro loyalty to the republican party. the women in the audience outnumbered the men, a fact not to be wondered at, when it is known that the negro women of the south are, perhaps, the most ardent and unyielding republicans in the whole length and breadth of the land. closely veiled, morlene sat in the audience, the embodiment of anxiety. the moment for the supreme contest between herself on the one hand and bloodworth and harry on the other, for the life of dorlan, was drawing frightfully near. at the appointed hour dorlan entered the building from the rear door, walked across the platform and took his seat. somehow the world expects the body of a man to give some indication of the soul within; wherefore all pictures of satan represent him as being ugly. those who came to the meeting hating dorlan felt a more kindly feeling creeping into their consciousness as they saw that heaven had thought kindly enough of him to grant unto him the form of a prince, an intellectual brow, a truly handsome face that wore a look of earnest, honest purpose. as dorlan scanned the audience his heart swelled with joy at its immense proportions. wrong though they sometimes were, dorlan had the most profound faith in the good intentions of the negro masses. he held that the intentions of no people on earth were better, and that the sole need of the negroes was proper light. dorlan's analysis of the situation was as follows: the feeling encountered was largely a religious one. the negroes believed unqualifiedly in the direct interposition of god in the affairs of men. they believed in the personality, activity and insidiousness of the devil. they believed that god had specifically created the republican party to bring about their emancipation. on the other hand they regarded the democratic party as the earthly abode of the devil, created specifically and solely for the purpose of harassing them. thus, whoever opposed the republican party was sinning against god; and whoever voted against that party was in league with the devil. such were the views held by the less enlightened, dorlan felt. in order to meet the situation he had prepared a speech that traced from a human point of view the development of the two parties. once disabuse their minds of the direct, specific heavenly origin of the republican party, and the way would be open to show, that as men made it, men could improve upon its policies. so at the appointed hour he arose and began his speech. it riveted the attention of his hearers, and they listened with eager ears to dorlan's recital of the workings of the forces and counter forces that brought about their emancipation. freedom had burst upon them so suddenly, was so glorious a boon, that their simple minds readily concluded that it dropped bodily, as it were, from the skies. they were now glad to gain a clear understanding of that phenomenal happening. their feelings of resentment died away entirely, and they who came to jeer, frequently broke forth into applause. dorlan closed his speech with a thrilling peroration, urging the negroes to gird themselves for the holy task of carrying to the uttermost parts of the earth the doctrine of the inherent, inalienable equality of all men. morlene could scarcely repress tears of joy over the happy turn of events. but her joy was to be short lived. bloodworth had employed a number of viciously inclined negroes to put out the lights, bar the doors and foment excitement. in the midst of the disturbance harry was to effect the murder of dorlan. bigoted harry had not been in the least affected, nor were his mercenary compatriots in any wise moved, by dorlan's utterances. when the speech was finished, at a given signal the lights were extinguished and a tumult raised. harry had closely noted the position of dorlan on the platform, and as soon as the lights were out began to make his way toward him. as there was no one on the platform but dorlan, he did not fear making a mistake as to the man he was to assault. morlene had employed a young man of strength and courage to sit by and keep close watch on harry to thwart any attempts he might make. as harry made his way with eager cat-like tread, he was followed by the young man appointed to watch him. when near dorlan, harry drew his pistol but felt it wrenched from his hand by some one of superior strength. discovering that he was followed, harry turned and sought to mingle with the crowd in the hope of eluding his pursuer. in this he was successful. morlene, thickly veiled, had been sitting in a corner of the auditorium throughout the meeting. in a satchel she had brought along a small lighted lantern. she knew the building well, and even in the midst of the hubbub and excitement incident to the putting out of the lights, had made her way to the platform whereon was dorlan. now handling her lantern so that it guided her directly to dorlan, without informing others of her movements, she crept to his side. she found him seated, his head bent forward resting on his hand. even now his first thought was of the future of the race, seeking to keep alive in his bosom to the moment of death, the hope that it would rise in spite of the unthinking element that now sought his life. morlene whispered into his ear, "mr. warthell, do not die here. as a friend, a sincere friend, i plead with you to live for all our sakes." the presence of morlene in such a dangerous situation thoroughly aroused dorlan. he sprang to his feet determined to live until she was out of danger, at least. "here is a lantern," said she, handing it to him. "keep close to me," said dorlan to morlene. to the throng he said: "gentlemen, vacate the aisle to the extreme right. whoever obstructs that pathway to the door, does so at the peril of his life. i have given fair warning and hold you accountable for whatever results from your failure to obey." his voice was so commanding and he spoke with such self-assurance, that the movement to clear the aisle designated began at once; but the words had scarcely escaped his lips when he was stabbed from the rear. turning upon his assailant, he felled him to the floor with a powerful blow. flashing the light across the face of the fallen man, dorlan and morlene both saw that it was harry. "my duty is here," said morlene, as she stooped and took harry's head upon her lap. "good-bye. i must go. i am wounded," said dorlan to morlene, as he started for the door. morlene assured herself that harry was not seriously hurt, and administered restoratives which she had been thoughtful enough to bring along. she was the while experiencing anxious thoughts as to the dangerousness of dorlan's wound. at the earliest possible moment morlene left harry, (who was now reviving) and went to telephone for the ambulance. it came and, with the aid of lanterns, following a trail of blood, they came upon dorlan, unconscious, the wondering stars peeping down upon his upturned face. * * * * * morlene reached home on that eventful night some time before harry. after his murderous assault on dorlan, having recovered from the stunning effects of the blow that had felled him, he had gone from saloon to saloon, drinking and very hilarious over his night's work. at three o'clock in the morning he reached his home in a half-drunken state. morlene had been anxiously awaiting his coming. as harry stepped into the room, one glance at morlene's face had the effect of somewhat sobering him. her face, her eyes, her attitude and, when she spoke, her voice, conveyed to the half-drunken harry her feelings of utter scorn and indignation. he dropped into a chair. his eyes were bleared, his lips slightly ajar and his hands limp at his side, as he looked at the wrathful morlene. "harry dalton," said she, "you are to all intents and purposes a villainous murderer. i know of your nefarious plottings and i witnessed your cowardly attempt to assassinate mr. warthell, a man, the latchet of whose shoes the possessor of a heart like yours is unworthy to unloose. but your intended victim shall not die, unless an evil genius presides over the affairs of men. i have only waited here to tell you how i loathe your crime and that i exhausted every known means to thwart you. now i leave you!" morlene started toward the door through which harry had just come and which led into the hallway. harry, who had taken a seat not far from the door, arose as if to intercept her. "stand back from that door, harry," said morlene pulling a pistol from her pocket and pointing it at him. morlene had been careful to see that every chamber of the pistol was empty, so that no actual physical harm would result from the drawing of it. harry knew that morlene, when a country girl, had learned to shoot well, and her angry looks made him feel that her knowledge as to how to shoot was supplemented with a determination to shoot if he disobeyed her. lifting his hands as if imploring her not to shoot, harry recoiled and morlene glided out of the room, locking the door behind her. for some time harry stood in the floor bewildered by the sudden and most unexpected turn of events. at length he aroused himself and succeeded in breaking out of the room. it was too late, however, to find any trace of morlene. she had made good her escape. chapter xix. the scene shifts. an aged negro woman trudged along newton street in the city of chicago. the ponderous strokes of father time had at last bent her form forward, pushing it toward the dust whence it came. she was aided in her shuffling gait by a crooked and knotted walking stick, which she made use of with her left hand. her attire betokened extreme poverty and was evidently unequal to the task of shielding her from the chilly winds, which sought with zeal every unprotected spot, and whipped the tears from her eyes. in her right hand she carried a small tin box, her bony fingers clasping it as tightly as they could. a shawl was thrown over her head somewhat concealing her features. strange to say, a close inspection of the woman's face impressed one that there was cheerfulness, even happiness, written thereon, despite her forlorn condition. as she crept along she scanned the buildings closely, evidently trying to locate some particular house. a young woman standing in the doorway of the lincoln hospital, attired in the garb of a sick nurse, saw the old woman drawing near. "the poor soul must be suffering greatly," said the nurse, reaching for her pocketbook. she had determined upon emptying its contents into the aged woman's hand as the latter passed by. instead of passing, however, the woman stopped a short distance from the nurse. her frame shivering from cold, her eyes surveyed the entire front of the building in the doorway of which stood the nurse. seemingly satisfied with the result of her inspection she drew nearer and said: "leddy, please, miss, is dis de linktum horsepittul?" "yes, aunty, this is the lincoln hospital," the nurse replied. the woman dropped her stick and the tin box and clapped her hands, saying, "thankee! thankee jesus! thankee! heah at las'! de ole' ship dun foun' er harbur. got er place ter cross ober jordun." looking at the nurse, she said, "chile, does yer know anyt'ing 'bout jesus? oh! he promis' me dis, an' he's kep' his word." fumbling in her pocket, she drew out a soiled and crumpled piece of paper. this she handed to the nurse, who found that it entitled the woman to admission into the hospital. "come with me," said the nurse in kindly tones. gathering up her stick and tin box, she did as she was bidden. the woman was duly registered and assigned to the ward in which the nurse was an attendant. one afternoon, the nurse sat by the bedside of her new patient humming a tune. the woman almost stopped breathing to listen. sitting up in her bed, she said to the nurse, "leddy, ken you fin' a pair ub specks fitten' fur one ob my age?" "i will try, aunty," replied the nurse. after a diligent search, the nurse succeeded in finding a pair, wondering as she searched what possible use the woman could have for them. the woman adjusted the spectacles to her eyes and bent her gaze on the nurse. "leddy, please sing dat chune ergin," she said. the nurse did as requested. before she had proceeded far with the singing, the woman burst forth, "laws 'a mussy! ef it ain't lenie!" "aunt catherine!" exclaimed the nurse, springing to her feet and throwing her arms around the woman's neck. aunt catherine's bedimmed eyesight and impaired hearing had prevented her from discovering before this that her nurse was none other than morlene. on the other hand, aunt catherine's changed appearance was what interfered with morlene's recognition of her when they first met. when the woman said "lenie," it was all that was needed, for it was an appellation used in addressing morlene by aunt catherine only. after many exchanges of tender greetings, morlene disentangled herself from aunt catherine's loving embrace, saying, "dear aunt catherine, do tell me all about yourself since the day i left you to wait on--on--harry. i searched r---- from one end to the other, time and again, looking for you. and here you are in chicago! tell me how you have fared?" "chile," said aunt catherine, "seein' you, lenie, hez driv' erway all my trubbuls. 'pears ter me, i dun got young ergin an' am down souf at de ole home." after an interval aunt catherine proceeded to tell her experiences, not, however, before she had taken the tin box from under her pillow. with that clasped fondly, she began: "w'en i retched de city arter leavin' de ole homestid, i 'gun ter hunt fur wuck. i got er place ter cook fur er white fambly. de leddy dat hi'ed me wuzunt rich. she wus jes a good liver. her husban's bizness fell off an' she had ter hire jes' one 'oman ter cook, an' wash, an' i'ne, an' scrub de floors, an' keep house. i wuz de fus' ter try it, but i kudden' hole out, chile. i jes' kudden'. er sprightly gal tuck my place. den i hed er hard time, lenie. yer aunt catharine hed ter beg frum door ter door. i slep' on bar' floors in shackly houses, dat wuz empty kase folks wouldn't rent 'um. i went to de dumps an' scratched in de trash piles fur charcoals and scraps ter burn ter keep me warm. i begged money ernuf ter cum ter churcargo, an' heah i is. dey tole me dat linktum wuz frum dis state an' i wuz in hopes ub doin' bettah up heah. but, lenie, 'pears ter me dat de po darky aint got much ub er show enywhurs. i hez found it hard norf an' souf." "well, henceforth, i shall take charge of you, and walk through life by your side, my dear aunt catherine," said morlene, feelingly. the woman dropped the tin box, pulled her spectacles down a little and looked over them at morlene. "ain't the doctah tole yer yit?" asked aunt catherine, in evident surprise. "told me what, my dear?" enquired morlene. "why, chile, i aint heah fur long. de doctahs sez i kaint git well. de gospil train dun blowed. it is rollin' into de depot. capting jesus is de cunducter. i hez my ticket ready." aunt catherine with her broken voice now tried to sing the following lines, swinging to and fro as she sang: "de gospil train am comin', i heah it jes' at han', i heah de car wheels movin', er rumblin' through de lan' git on bo'd, little chillun, git on bo'd, little chillun, git on bo'd, little chillun, dare's room fur many mo'." "yes, lenie, i'll soon be on bo'd," resumed aunt catherine. "de yankees was mighty anxious to set us poor darkeys free, but it ain't done me no good. fack ub de mattah, lenie, freedum mebbe good fur you young uns who wuzunt use ter de ole times. fur your sakes i is glad its come. but i'se hed a hard time. enyhow, it is mos' ober now. marse maury is ded, an' missus is ded, an' a upstart is on de ole place, an' hez been driftin' 'bout frum 'pillar ter pos'.'" aunt catherine's mind now ran back to the good old past and a joyful light came into her face. "do yer see dis tin box?" she asked, breaking her silence. morlene nodded affirmatively, not trusting herself to speak, so torn up were her feelings over the account of faithful aunt catherine's sufferings. "lenie," said she, leaning toward morlene, a most serious look upon her face, "as yer value yer own soul, do wid dis tin box lack i'm gwine ter tell yer." aunt catherine was now speaking in low and solemn tones. "w'en yer wuz er gal, lenie, did yer ebber heah dat our fust juty on jedgment day would be to git up frum whar eber we wuz burrit and hunt fur de diff'runt pieces ub our finger nails dat we hed cut off all through life?" "yes, aunt catherine," responded morlene. "wal, dis box hez got all my finger nails dat i cut off since i wuz er gal. bury dis box at de foot ub maury and missus, lenie. w'en jedgment day comes i want ter git up wid dem. ef my nails is burrit by dem, i'll have ter go dare whar dey is. see? yer know white folks ginilly ain't got heart-felt 'ligun like cullud folks. but marse and missus shuah got shuah 'nuf 'ligun. i wants ter git up wid 'um an' stan' by 'um in jedgment, ter speak up fur um, ef eny body wants ter go ergin' um jes' kase dey is white. see? ef dey doan b'long in hebun, den nobody doan." here aunt catherine paused, the talk having nearly exhausted her. "but, aunt catherine," interposed morlene, "when you do pass away, which i hope will not be soon, let me bury your _whole body_ where you tell me to put this tin box. lemuel dalton surely would not refuse to allow the fulfillment of the solemn promise made to you by uncle maurice and his wife." "chile, i hed ter sell dis ole body ter de doctah ter git mony ter lib on while heah." "oh, aunt catherine!" exclaimed morlene, holding up her hands in horror. "ha, ha, ha!" laughed aunt catherine. "that aint so bad, lenie," she said. "i sole my soul ter jesus long ergo, an' w'en he takes it, dese doctahs kin do whut dey choose wid my pore ole body." morlene now burst into tears. lovingly aunt catherine stroked morlene's hair with her hand, saying: "bettah be laughin' fur joy, chile, fur er few more risin's an' settin's ub de sun an' i'll be in glory." unable to longer endure the contemplation of aunt catherine's sufferings and approaching end, morlene arose and fled to her room. a few days after the conversation herein recorded aunt catherine passed peacefully away. the doctors that had purchased the body presented themselves and laid claim thereto. morlene told them the story of aunt catherine's life of faithful service and subsequent sufferings, and begged the boon of taking the body back to tennessee for burial. her request was refused, however, the physicians deciding that they would not allow a matter of sentiment to stand in the way of advancing the interests of science. taking the tin box, so solemnly committed to her charge, morlene turned her face toward tennessee, journeying thither to fulfill the last request of aunt catherine. for some time morlene had been pondering a proper course to be pursued toward harry for the future, and her approaching visit to r----accentuated the matter. more and more she began to regard him as an unbalanced enthusiast, whose errors, in view of his outlook, were not altogether unnatural. pity, deep pity, stole into her heart for poor harry, and she decided, as her train was speeding onward, to return to him in the hope of widening his horizon and giving him a clearer view of what was required of an american citizen. if she would be of service to harry, her train must move at a faster rate than that at which it is now traveling. chapter xx. the bystanders cheer. from his quest of morlene, on the morning of her escape, harry returned to his home in a sullen mood. morlene's lack of appreciation of his disinterested patriotism which her course revealed to him, was a blow in itself, apart from his loss of her as a wife. the fact that he had lost his wife and had not slept any during the whole night did not, however, cause him to remain away from his accustomed labor that day. cooking his own breakfast, he ate his solitary meal and went forth to his daily task. anxious to learn what view others took of the happening of the previous night, he purchased a copy of a morning paper and read its comments thereon. it was the same paper that had commented so favorably upon what it termed the "warthell movement." harry turned immediately to the editorial columns and read far enough to see that his act was being condemned. thereupon he tore the paper into shreds, threw it to the ground and trampled upon it. "sure sign that i did right to attack that scoundrel warthell, if it has made this old democratic paper mad. ha, ha, ha! morlene thought i was doing wrong. i wasn't though, anybody can see, for what would this old democratic paper be kicking about if what i did wasn't against it?" thus muttered harry to himself as he went on to his work. "we'll hear a different tune when the northern republican papers begin to discuss our attempt to get rid of these negro traitors who are plotting to undo all that the north has done for us. i take my medicine from the north; let the south go where it please. see? any negro that will stand up for the south against the north is an infernal, ungrateful, good for nothing rascal, and _ought_ to be killed. tell him i said so." these last words, addressed by harry to himself, were accompanied with the shaking of a clenched fist at an imaginary foe. the more he pondered his course, the more he praised himself, and the more outrageous morlene's desertion of him seemed. eagerly he awaited the coming of the northern papers that he might regard his vindication as complete. harry went about his daily task in a half cheerful, half moody frame of mind, pondering what steps to take with reference to his wife, but arriving at no definite conclusion. after the lapse of a day or so the eagerly-looked-for northern republican paper came. harry smiled with satisfaction, saying to himself: "now we shall hear the thing talked about right." the article was headed, "a crime against freedom." harry now thought that the article was going to gibbet dorlan warthell for having committed a crime against the freedom of the negro by refusing to longer affiliate with the party that gave him freedom. he re-read the caption, "a crime against freedom." "yes, yes; only it ought to be 'an unpardonable crime,' for that is what it was." eager to feast on the invectives to be hurled at dorlan, he stood still on the street corner and began to read: "the united states of america is a government ruled by the duly ascertained will of a majority of its citizens. each qualified citizen has the right of casting one vote in support of whatever side of an issue that pleases him. each citizen has the further right to use all legitimate means in his power to induce other citizens to cast their votes as he casts his. "the right of advocacy is, if possible, more sacred than the right to vote, for the votes of fellow citizens go well nigh the whole length in shaping a man's environments. since the votes of others are the majority influence in determining a man's environments, it is manifestly unjust to deny him the opportunity of influencing these votes. he who strikes at freedom of speech strikes at the corner-stone of our republic, and, to our view, commits the greatest crime that a citizen can commit against a government. "it is well known that we are in full accord with the republican party's policy with reference to the philippine islands. while we are firmly of the opinion that the party is right, we nevertheless strenuously insist that those who hold contrary views be accorded the right to advocate those views. "dorlan warthell, a negro in the south, has seen fit to publicly disapprove of a portion of the party's policy, whereupon a negro republican zealot has sought to take his life. the republican party repudiates such vile methods and the man who resorts to them. "mr. warthell has as much right to express his views, whatever they may be, as the president of the nation. the fact that he is a member of a race that obtained its freedom through the instrumentality of the republican party does not alter the matter in the least. the republican party has no political slaves and desires none. it seeks to commend itself to the hearts and consciences of men, and spurns every semblance of coercion. "the miscreant who sought to kill mr. warthell, because that individual dared to be a man, is unworthy of life. if the arms of justice are too short to reach him, it is hardly to be hoped that he will have the good sense to bring his own unprofitable existence to a close." when harry had finished he let the paper fall to the ground. he felt as though the very skies had fallen down upon him. to find the great republican party lifting its voice in condemnation of his act was more than he could bear. stooping down, he picked up the paper and re-read the closing paragraph. "i can surprise them yet. they say 'it is hardly to be hoped that he will have the good sense to bring his own unprofitable existence to a close.' aha! we shall see!" said harry, a grim determination settling over his gloomy soul. deserted by morlene, repudiated by the republican party, which he had always regarded as the vicegerent of god, harry decided to have his life come to a close in some way. he began to give earnest thought to the finding of the proper method of departure. in the matter of closing his earthly career, he was hampered by his religious views. he was a firm believer in heaven and in a literal hell. in common with many other negroes, he believed that the bible contained a specific declaration to the effect that all sins could be forgiven a man except the sin of self-murder. to cause himself to die and yet escape hell was the problem that now occupied harry's mind. from day to day he deliberated on the matter. at one time he was attracted by the thought of laying down upon a railroad track in some isolated spot in the hope that he would fall asleep and fail to awake on the approach of a train. in case he did not awake, he thought that his death could properly be construed as an accident. then he thought of becoming an attendant upon the sick, choosing such patients to serve as were afflicted with dangerous contagious diseases. months and months passed, summer and fall sped by and made way for winter, but harry's purpose remained. the question of a way to die was at last solved for him in a most unexpected manner. one afternoon as he was returning from work, he saw far ahead of him, coming in his direction, a pair of runaway horses hitched to a double seated carriage. as the carriage came near he saw that the driver's seat was empty and that a white lady and three children were seated in the carriage in imminent peril of their lives. "thank god!" harry murmured, "the way appears." as the horses came galloping down the street, harry stationed himself in such a position that he would be able to make an effort to intercept them. "get out of the way, you fool!" frantically shouted one after another of the bystanders. "those horses will kill you." to all of this harry paid no heed. harry's sublime heroism stilled the shoutings of the multitude. the people stood mute gazing at harry, so unflinchingly awaiting the coming of the runaways. when the horses came sweeping by, harry leapt to the head of the one nearest him and grappled the bridle. the maddened horses bore him from his feet and onward, but harry clung to the bridle. unable to longer carry so heavy a weight clinging to his mouth, the horse to which harry was holding checked his speed and brought his fellow to a stand. this result was not achieved, however, without fatal injuries to harry. turning the bridle loose harry fell at the feet of the horses, others now rushing forward to take charge of them. as harry lay upon the ground covered with dust and blood, a crowd of citizens gathered about him. the lady whose life had been saved, the wife of a leading banker, got out of the carriage, and, elbowing her way through the crowd, stooped down to wipe the blood stains from harry's face. harry who had been unconscious revived and smiled feebly in recognition of the kindness. the crowd that had witnessed his heroic deed now gave a mighty cheer, joyful that he was alive. before the cheering subsided, the light of life died out of harry's eyes and his soul had sped. chapter xxi. to begin life anew, as it were. when a few hours later morlene arrived at her home in r----, she found crepe on the door, and was told by a neighbor that was just leaving, that harry had died that day. she stood as if rooted to the spot, her beautiful eyes recording the storm of pity that was rising in her bosom. mechanically she turned and placed one foot on the step to the porch, as if to leave. "horror! horror! horror everywhere!" she cried out. "but why am i fleeing? it is abroad in the whole expanse of earth. if harry _was_ to die, tell me, tell me, why he could not have awaited to carry my forgiveness with him." in that moment, looking back upon her whole career since the death of maurice dalton, she felt her faith in the benevolent character of the arbiter of human destinies rudely shaken. her body recoiled in response to a like impulse of her soul that shrank from the benumbing misanthropism that sought to lay its cold dead fingers on her heart. in one last supreme effort to retain her faith she burst forth into song. in tones angelic, from a heaving bosom, she poured forth the following words: "abide with me! fast falls the eventide; the darkness deepens--lord, with me abide! when other helpers fail, and comforts flee, help of the helpless,--o abide with me!" when morlene began to sing her eyes glistened with tears; but these now disappeared as a look of submission stole therein. again humbly obedient to the forces that were guiding her life, she entered her home, knelt and gazed long at the features of harry, her spirit seeking to unravel that mystic smile that his face was wearing even in death. * * * * * two days later the business men of r---- swore, the housewives grew red in the face, but it was all of no avail. the negro laboring men and cooks were determined upon going to harry's funeral, even if it cost them their jobs. so, business was partially paralyzed and the white women of fashionable circles had to enter their own kitchens while the negroes thronged to the church wherein the funeral services were to be held. though the funeral was to take place at two o'clock, the edifice was crowded at twelve, those anxious for seats rushing there thus early. according to the custom of the church to which harry belonged, his body had lain therein all the night previous and his brethren and sisters of the church had assembled and conducted a song and prayer service over his remains. when the hour for the funeral arrived, the pulpit was full of ministers of various denominations. harry had, according to the custom prevailing, chosen the hymns to be sung at his funeral, the text from which the funeral sermon was to be preached, the ministers who were to officiate--in fact, had arranged for every detail of the occasion. everything was done according to his wishes. the services were at last brought to a close and the funeral procession was formed. the hearse led the way being followed by the great concourse of the members of the church, walking _en masse_ and chanting mournful dirges as they proceeded. following the throng came the carriage containing morlene and stephen dalton, harry's father. the old man's form is now bent, his short hair white and he is sad at heart that it is harry's funeral and not his own. following this carriage containing morlene and stephen dalton was that of the banker, who with his wife and children had come to pay this tribute of respect to the memory of harry. when the procession reached the cemetery, twilight had come to render the interment peculiarly solemn. harry was lowered to his last resting place and each one of his immediate friends picked up a clod and cast it into the open grave, the good-bye salutation for the dead. all staid until the grave was covered over, then turned to leave. the cemetery in which harry had been laid to rest was upon an elevation. when the carriage containing morlene had proceeded homeward for some distance and was at the point where the slowly declining elevation had reached a level with the lower lands, she caused the driver to stop for a few minutes while she and stephen dalton alighted. the two stood and looked for awhile in silence toward the cemetery above them, the lighted lamps burning dimly among the trees up there. one solitary star peered out of the eastern sky. its lonely light, like words spoken in the hour of grief, evidently sought to cheer, but only served to make the feeling of sadness deepen. by and by in tones soft and low and earnest, morlene broke the silence, saying: "father, harry's body lies up yonder, and, behold, the place is lighted. may we not hope that his spirit, in spite of his weaknesses, has gone _upward_, and may we not also hope that there the spirit, too, has light, more light than came to it in this darkened world?" stephen dalton made no reply. the only thing that he now cared to answer was the final summons. he regarded himself as an alien on earth. the two re-entered the carriage and drove to the city. the next day, morlene repaired to the dalton estate and buried at the designated spot the box that aunt catherine had entrusted to her care. thus came to close one epoch in morlene's life. chapter xxii. excusable rudeness. we left dorlan sorely wounded on the night of the mass meeting. though he was immediately furnished with the best available medical attention, it did not prevent the setting in of a species of blood poisoning which rendered his condition peculiarly precarious. as soon as it was deemed advisable, he was carried north and placed under the care of an eminent specialist. dorlan began to slowly improve, but at such a rate that he now saw that he was to be a mere onlooker to the presidential campaign in which he had hoped to be the determining factor. on the day of the election his interest was so great that he got out of bed and sat at his window, eagerly scanning the faces of the voters as they went, and came from the polls, hoping, it seemed, to tell from their countenances what verdicts they were rendering. he had made arrangements with a newsboy to bring him a copy of the first "extra" to be issued giving information as to how the conflict had terminated. at a comparatively early hour of the night the newsboy knocked on dorlan's door. "come in," called out dorlan. the boy poked his head in the door, cast a quick glance about, then entered. "here's your paper, mister. good news for _you_," said he, smiling as he handed the paper to dorlan. "how do you know that it contains news pleasing to me?" inquired dorlan, looking at the boy earnestly. "'cause you are a colored man," responded the boy, with an air of complete assurance. having been paid, he now hurried out to proceed on his route. "even the children feel that they know the politics of every negro by glancing at his skin. too bad! i suppose the boy means to say the republicans have won," mused dorlan. he now looked at his paper and soon was convinced that the republicans had won an overwhelming victory. dorlan was stunned. "what!" he exclaimed, "has a reaction against that idealism which has hitherto been its chief glory really set in in the anglo-saxon race? has commercialism really throttled altruism? has the era of the recognition of the inherent rights of men come to a close? has our government lent its sanction to the code of international morals that accords the strong the right to rule the weak, brushing aside by the force of arms every claim of the weak? alas! alas!" for many days dorlan was very, very despondent. the _north_ had voted to re-enthrone the republican party without exacting of it a specific promise as to the regard to be had to the claims of the filipinos to inherent equality. this amazed him. but as the political excitement subsided and he could feel the pulse of the american people apart from the influence of partizan zeal, he was the better able to analyze their verdict. first, the failure to declare as to the ultimate status of the filipinos was in a measure due to the politicians whose uniform policy is to postpone action on new problems until public sentiment has had time to crystallize. they were not quite certain as to what was the full import of the new national appetite and they were avoiding specific declarations until they could find out. secondly, the people of the north were in no mood to be hurried as to their policy with regard to the filipinos. they had before them the example of negroes of the south even then calling upon the north to return and set them free again. with this example of imperfect work before them the people of the north refused to be wrought up into a great frenzy of excitement over giving titular independence to the filipinos. thirdly, dorlan discovered that the election, instead of revealing a decline in altruism, on the contrary, gave evidence of the broadening and deepening of that spirit. he now saw in the verdict of the north the high resolve to begin at the very foundation and actually lift the filipinos to such a plane that they would not only have freedom, but the power to properly exercise and preserve the same. instead of losing its position as the teacher of nations, our government was, he saw, to confirm its title to that proud position. so nobly, so thoroughly, was it to do its work of leading the filipinos into all the blessings of higher civilization, that other nations in contact with weaker peoples might find here a guide for their statesmen to follow. thus he found written in the _hearts_ of the noble people of the north the plank which provided adequately for the ultimate status of the filipinos, which plank he had earnestly longed to see appear in the platforms of all political parties aspiring for the control of the government. his faith in the people did not, however, influence him to forget that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." he was still of the opinion that the nation needed a balance wheel, needed a free lance ready to bear down upon all who, drunk with the wine of prosperity or maddened by greed for gain, might seek to lure the american people from the faith of the fathers. thus dorlan, intending to begin anew his movement which we saw so tragically interrupted, returned to r----, only to suffer a second interruption in a manner now to be detailed. one afternoon as dorlan sat in his room in the city of r----, musing on the task before him, his elbows on the table and his noble, handsome face resting in his hands, rich music, as on a former occasion more than a year ago, came floating up to him. the music revealed the touch and the voice of morlene. he had not seen nor heard from her since that eventful night on which she labored so valiantly to save his life. dorlan arose and went down stairs with a view to renewing his acquaintance with morlene. he knew nothing whatever of harry's death, which had transpired in his absence. dorlan entered the room where morlene was playing. she turned to receive the new comer whoever it might be. a joyful exclamation escaped her lips when she perceived that it was dorlan. "mr. warthell, i am so very glad to see you alive and well. how often have i subjected my actions to the closest scrutiny, disposed to accuse myself of not doing all that might have been done to prevent that dastardly assault upon you." dorlan was so entranced with morlene's loveliness that he did not catch the full purport of what she was saying. morlene was clad in mourning and dorlan was drinking in the beauty of her loveliness in this new combination. when morlene finished her sentence and it was incumbent upon dorlan to reply, he was momentarily embarrassed, not knowing what to say, having lost what morlene was saying by absorption in contemplating her great beauty. it was tolerably clear to him that her remark was one of solicitous interest in himself, and after a very brief pause he said: "excuse me for not desiring to give attention to myself, in view of the fact that i am but now made aware by your mourning that some dear one has passed away." "you have not heard, then," said morlene, a look of sadness creeping over her face. she sat down on the piano stool whence she had arisen. "i have lost my husband. he was killed in the act of stopping some runaway horses more than a year ago." immediately there burst upon dorlan's consciousness the thought that morlene was free and that he might aspire for her hand. so great a hope thrust upon him so suddenly bewildered him by its very glory. ordinarily imperturbable, even in the face of unexpected situations, he was now visibly agitated. he knew that he ought to frame words of condolence, but the new hope, springing from the secret chambers of his heart where he had long kept it in absolute bondage, clamored so loudly for a hearing that he could not deploy enough of his wits to speak in keeping with the amenities of the situation. "excuse me for a few moments, mrs. dalton," asked dorlan, leaving the room. he went up the stairs leading to his room, taking two steps at a bound. entering, he locked his door. thrusting his hands into his pockets, he gazed abstractedly at the floor for a moment, then up at the ceiling. the word which as a boy he had used to denote great astonishment now came unbidden to his lips. "gee-whillikens!" he exclaimed. "and that divine woman is free! thought, i wish you would sink into my consciousness at once," said dorlan, apostrophizing. a few moments succeeded in imparting to him an outward look of calm. he then returned and expressed his feelings of condolence in words that suggested themselves to him as being appropriate. he soon excused himself from morlene's presence with a view to rearranging his whole system of thinking so as to be in keeping with the new conditions with which he was thus unexpectedly confronted. "i have a little problem of desired expansion on my own hands, and i fear the government will have to wag along without me the best way it can for a while," said dorlan to himself. the ultimate status of morlene dalton was now of more importance to him than the ultimate status of the filipinos. chapter xxiii. a street parade. a band of negro musicians playing a popular air, was passing through the street on which dorlan resided. he was in the act of going out of the gate as the procession got opposite to him, and paused to allow it to pass. there was a great concourse of negro boys and girls, men and women, following the band of musicians. their clothes were unclean, ragged and ill-fitting. their faces and hands were soiled and seemed not to have been washed for many a day. the motley throng seemed to be utterly oblivious of its gruesome appearance, and all were walking along in boldness and with good cheer. "now those negroes are moulding sentiment against the entire race," thought dorlan, as his eye scanned the unsightly mass. "be the requirement just or unjust the polished negro is told to return and bring his people with him, before coming into possession of that to which his attainments would seem to entitle him. it is my opinion that there must be developed within the race a stronger altruistic tie before it can push forward at a proper gait. the classes must love the masses, in spite of the bad name the race is given by the indolent, the sloven and the criminal element." taking another survey of the throng he said, "ah! the squalor and misery of my poor voiceless race! what we see here is but a bird's-eye view. the heart grows sick when it contemplates the plight of the negroes of the cities." dorlan's eye now wandered from the people to the band. in the midst of the musicians he saw a cart pulled by five dogs hitched abreast. in the cart stood a man holding aloft a banner which bore a peculiar inscription. dorlan read the inscription on the banner and looked puzzled. coming out of his gate he kept pace with the procession, never withdrawing his eye from the banner. he read it the second, third, fourth and fifth times. at length he called out, "hold! here am i." the occupant of the cart leapt up and gazed wildly over the throng, endeavoring to see the person that had spoken. "here," said dorlan. the man looked at dorlan, jumped from his cart and rushed through the crowd and ran to dorlan's side. taking a knife from his pocket he quickly made a slit in dorlan's clothes just over the muscular part of his left arm. the purposes of the man were so evidently amicable that dorlan interposed no objection. the man seemed to be satisfied with what he saw. he now threw himself at dorlan's feet and uttered loud exclamations of joy. arising he turned to pay and dismiss the band. the throng by this time was thoroughly excited over the curious antics of the stranger, and had clustered around dorlan wondering what it was that had caused such an abrupt cessation of the open air concert which they were enjoying. the stranger now locked his arm in that of dorlan and the two returned to dorlan's home. the crowd followed and stood for a long time at dorlan's gate hoping that the two would return and afford an explanation. as this did not happen, they at length dispersed. when dorlan and the stranger entered the former's room and were seated, they looked at each other in silence, dorlan awaiting to be addressed and the stranger seeking to further assure himself that he was not mistaken. he arose and again looked at the markings on dorlan's arm. he now spoke some words in a strange tongue. dorlan readily replied in the same language. the stranger now felt safe in beginning his narrative. said he, in english, "my name is ulbah kumi. i hail from africa. i am one of an army of commissioners sent out by our kingdom into all parts of the world where negroes have been held in modern times as slaves. we are hunting for the descendants of a lost prince. this prince was the oldest son of our reigning king, and was taken captive in a battle fought with a rival kingdom. he was sold into slavery. the royal family had a motto and a family mark. you recognized the motto on the banner; you have the royal mark. you also look to be a prince. tell me your family history and i will make to you further disclosures." dorlan now told of his father and his grandfather. his grandfather had always claimed to be the heir to an african throne, had imbued his, dorlan's father, with that thought. the father had taught the same to dorlan. a certain formula, said to be known to no others on earth, was cherished in their family. "now! now!" said kumi when dorlan recited that fact. "that formula is no doubt a key that will unfold the hiding place of treasures that will make you the richest man in the world. here is an inventory of what is to be found in that hiding place." dorlan took the reputed inventory. the enormous value of the items cited staggered his imagination. "this is incredulous," said dorlan. "how could africans, unlearned in the values of civilized nations, know how to store away these things." "easily explained," said kumi. "a white explorer spent years in our kingdom collecting these things. we deemed them worthless, gave them to him readily and called him fool. he took sick in our country and saw that he was going to die. he called your great grandfather, our king, to his bedside, told him that civilization would make its way into africa one day, and urged him at all hazards to preserve and secrete the treasures that he had collected. our king was led to believe that these treasures would make him one of the greatest rulers of earth, and he obeyed the dying man's injunction. the white man left this inventory and a document giving the location of his european home, the names and family history of his kin, asking that our king remember them in the day of his affluence. "our king gave the formula that leads to the hiding place to your grandfather, your grandfather told it to your father, your father has, i see, no doubt, told it to you. "as a further proof that i speak the truth i hand you now a few specimen stones that were reserved to prevent this affair from being classed as a myth." he now took from a pocket a box of costly stones and handed them to dorlan. "how these things would grace morlene," thought dorlan, as his eye passed from one sparkling jewel to another. it now occurred to dorlan that the acceptance of this fortune might entail upon him a sacrifice of which he was incapable. it might involve his leaving this country, a step that he could not even contemplate in view of the fact that morlene was now free. the looming of this contingency before his mind caused him to drop the jewels as though they had suddenly become hot. kumi looked up at him in great astonishment. dorlan's face now wore a pained expression. he had always been profoundly interested in africa and was congratulating himself on the opportunity now offered to convert the proffered kingdom into an enlightened republic. it now seemed that his own interests and those of his ancestral home were about to clash. he cannot endure the thought of putting an ocean between morlene and himself. nor can he with equanimity think of allowing africa to remain in her existing condition. "when am i expected to go to africa?" enquired dorlan in serious tones. "you may not have to come at all, and yet serve our purpose." "how so?" asked dorlan, arising and drawing near to kumi. the latter began: "we africans are engaged in a sociological investigation of many questions. we are seeking to know definitely what part the climate, the surface, the flora and the fauna have played in keeping us in civilization's back yard. huxley thinks that our woolly hair and black skins came to us only after our race took up its abode in africa. he holds that it was nature's contribution to render us immune from the yellow fever germs so abundant in swampy regions. "he thinks that those of our race who did not take on a dark hue and woolly texture of hair were the less adapted to life in the tropics and eventually died out, leaving those that were better adjusted to survive. "he thinks that these beneficial modifications were preserved and transmitted with increasing strength from generation to generation until our hue and our hair or the physical attributes for which they stand rendered us immune from yellow fever. i may add that livingstone says of us, 'heat alone does not produce blackness of skin, but heat with moisture seems to insure the deepest hue.' "now, nature, in thus protecting us against yellow fever, by changing our color from the original, whatever it was, has painted upon us a sign that causes some races to think that there is a greater difference between us and them than there really is. so much for our color and the ills that it has entailed." dorlan interrupted kumi to remark very feelingly: "i am truly glad that you are not inoculated with that utterly nonsensical view to be met with in this country, which represents that the negro's color is the result of a curse pronounced by noah upon his recovery from a drunken stupor. please proceed." kumi resumed his remarks. "mr. herbert spencer holds that our comparative lack of energy is due to heat and _moisture_. he states that 'the earliest recorded civilization grew up in a hot and dry region--egypt; and in hot and dry regions also arose the babylonian, assyrian and phoenician civilizations.' he points out that all 'the conquering races of the world have hailed from within or from the borders of the hot and dry region marked on the rain map 'rainless districts,' and extending across north africa, arabia, persia, and on through thibet into mongolia.' "he, therefore, would ascribe our backwardness principally to a woful lack of energy, a condition brought on by our hot and moist climate. "when our investigation of these questions is complete," continued kumi, "we will know just what has brought us where we are and can determine whether artificial appliances sufficient to counteract existing influences can be discovered and instituted. "mr. benjamin kidd seems to think that the tropics can never develop the highest type of civilization. in the event that the government of the tropics is to be conducted from the temperate zones, we tropical people will desire negroes to remain in the temperate zones, to advocate such policies and form such alliances as shall be for our highest good. "so, it may turn out to be the best for you, our king, to remain here, for our welfare, owing to our peculiar environments, depends, just now, as much upon what others think of us as upon what we ourselves may do. the question of your going to africa is not, therefore, a pressing one, yet." "that leaves me somewhat free to deal with a question that _is_ pressing, and pressing hard," said dorlan, clasping kumi's hand in joy, now that the way was clear for him to serve without conflict his own heart and the home of his fathers. kumi looked at dorlan puzzled as to what question it was that was pressing for a settlement. dorlan did not enlighten him on the subject, however. but we know, do we not, dear reader? chapter xxiv. going forth to unfetter. morlene was yet wearing mourning for harry, and, as a consequence, dorlan was forced to delay the inauguration of his suit. if you think that this procedure, or rather non-procedure, was to his liking, but ask the stars unto whom his heart so often entrusted its secrets; ask the wee small hours of the night who saw him restless, times without number. somehow his business seemed to require him to pass morlene's house rather often; and yet the business could not have been so very urgent, in that he found so much time to spare, talking to morlene in an informal way at her gate. and, to go further, if the truth must out, morlene's presence at that gate at dorlan's time of passing did happen, we must admit, rather often to be placed in the category with usual _accidental_ occurrences. now and then, at rare intervals, dorlan would pay morlene a call on some matter of business, he would say. on those occasions it was interesting to note how quickly the business matter was disposed of--in fact, was so often actually forgotten by dorlan and, it must be confessed, by morlene, too. the truth of the matter is, to be plain, these two individuals had discovered that their souls were congenial spirits, each seeming to need the other, if it would have a sense of completeness. now, this was the latent dorlan and the latent morlene, the apparent dorlan and the apparent morlene co-operating with society in its policy of adding to the duration of the marriage vow, which reads until death, but which has been stretched by society to an indefinite period thereafter. this discovery of a bond of affinity, we say, was purely the work of the latent dorlan and the latent morlene, for were not those two members of society abstaining from all mention of the regard, the deep regard, the boundless----excuse us, the period of mourning has not passed. one day dorlan discovered by consulting his memorandum that about the usual time between those business (?) propositions had elapsed and he searched his mind for a plausible excuse for making a call. when dorlan arrived at morlene's home that night, imagine his feelings when he saw on entering the parlor that she had at last laid aside her mourning attire. the thought that she was now approachable set his soul ablaze. what dorlan took to be the most wicked of all demons, seemed to say to him, "don't declare yourself on this the very first occasion. those gate talks and business visits are not supposed to have been acts of courtship, remember." "will you please leave me?" whispered dorlan's soul to the imaginary grinning demon that made the suggestion. utterly repudiating all thought of further delay, dorlan drew close to morlene. she saw the love signals in dorlan's eyes. rather than have her soul flash back replies, she inclined her head forward and looking down, clutched the table near which she stood. "morlene," said dorlan, "i really believe that my heart will burst if i do not let out its secret. morlene, i love you. but you know that and you know how well. you have read this and more, too, in my countenance. will you be my wife?" those words spoken into morlene's ear at close range were elixir unto her soul. looking up into dorlan's face, her eyes told of love, deep, boundless. this dorlan saw. but he saw more than love. he saw despair written so legibly upon that sweet face that it could not be misunderstood and would not be ignored. "come," said dorlan, leading morlene to a seat. sitting down by her side and taking one of her lovely hands in his, he said in tones charged with deepest emotion: "tell me, dear girl, that you will be my wife. may i, poor worm of the dust, be allowed to call you my own?" plead dorlan, bestowing on morlene that peculiar look born of love stirred to its depths by anxiety. "i do not know, mr. warthell, i do not know. it----" "do not know," gasped dorlan, dropping the hand tenderly. "my god! she does not know!" he groaned. "wait but a second, and all will be plain," said morlene, placing a hand upon dorlan's arm and looking eagerly into his grief-torn face. "wait a second," repeated dorlan mechanically. "a second in moments like these seems akin to an eternity. but i wait." "now, mr. warthell, be fair to yourself," said morlene, soothingly. "you remarked that i must have read some things in your countenance. remember your soul has an eyesight, and you have done some reading, too." her eyes were averted, her tones low, her speech halting as she made this half-confession to dorlan's eager ears. dorlan, who had been feeling more like an arctic explorer than a suitor for a lady's hand, felt his blood running warmer from the effects of this morsel of cheer. "i will explain to you what it is that i do not know, mr. warthell. i do not know how long it will be before conditions in the south will warrant women of my way of thinking in becoming wives of men of your mould." "if," said dorlan, rising, "consideration of this matter is to be postponed until my environments enable me to prove myself worthy of you, my doom is certain. for the most benign influences of earth have not produced the man that could claim your hand on the ground of merit." "mr. warthell, you misapprehend. a second thought would have told you not to place a construction on my remarks that causes them to savor of egotism on my part. it is far from me to suggest that anything is needed to make you worthy of any woman. to the contrary, your esteem is a tribute than which there is nothing higher, so i feel. now, hear me calmly," said morlene. "not until i have purged myself of contempt," said dorlan, deferentially. "i hold that egotism is inordinate self-esteem, esteem carried beyond what is deserved. under this definition, show me, please, how you could manifest egotism. it is absolutely unthinkable from my point of view." morlene waved her hand deprecatingly, told dorlan to be seated and began an explanation of the peculiar situation in which they found themselves. dorlan was calmer now; he realized an undercurrent of love in all that morlene was saying and he knew, as all men know, that love will eventually assert itself. so he bore morlene's attempt to tie cords about her affections, much in the spirit of one who might see a web woven across the sky for the feet of the sun. morlene said: "mr. warthell, to my mind it is the function of the wife to idealize the aims of a husband, to quicken the energies that would flag, to be at once the incentive and perennial inspiration of his noble achievements, to point him to the stars and steady his hand as he carves his name upon the skies. in the south the negro wife is robbed of this holy task. we are being taught in certain high quarters that self-repression is the negro's chiefest virtue. our bodies are free--they no longer wear the chains, but our spirits are yet in fetters. i have firmly resolved, mr. warthell, to accept no place by a husband's side until i can say to his spirit, 'go forth to fill the earth with goodness and glory.'" morlene paused for an instant. "mr. warthell, in you may slumber the genius of a pericles, but a wife in the south dare not urge upon you to become a town constable or a justice of the peace. talk about slavery! ah! the chains that fetter the body are but as ropes of down when compared to those that fetter the mind, the spirit of man. and think ye i would enter your home simply to inspire that great soul of yours to restlessness and fruitless tuggings at its chains! in the day when a negro has a man's chance in the race of life, i will let my heart say to you, mr. warthell, all that it wishes to say." morlene ceased speaking and the two sat long in silence. dorlan was the first to speak. "morlene, i confess i am a slave. my neighbors, my white fellow citizens, have formed a pen, have drawn a zigzag line about me and told me that i must not step across on pain of death. having a mind as other men, such arbitrary restrictions are galling. i am then a slave, limited not by my capacity to feel and do, but by the color of my skin. you do not wish to marry a slave; refuse him for his own good. all of that is clear to me, and i chide you not. come! there are lands where a man's color places no restrictions on his aspirations for what is high and useful. let us flee thither!" "no, no, no, mr. warthell! let us not flee. at least, not yet. our dignity as a people demands that the manhood rights of the race be recognized on every foot of soil on which the sun sees fit to cast his rays." "now, morlene," said dorlan, "you as good as tell me that you will never be my wife. pray, tell me, why am i so rudely tossed about upon the bosom of life's heaving ocean?" these words were spoken in tones of utter despair. "i have not said that i would not be your wife, dorlan. i am trying every day i live to devise a solution for our southern problem." "she called me dorlan, she called me dorlan," said he to himself, rejoicing inwardly over this fresh burst of sunshine just as his gloom was deepening. suddenly his face showed the illumination of a great hope. "morlene! morlene!" cried dorlan, in a rush of enthusiasm, "suppose i, dorlan warthell, solve this problem; suppose i unfetter the mind of the negro and allow it full scope for operation; suppose i offer to you a thoroughly substantial hope of racial regeneration, will you----" here dorlan paused and looked lovingly into the sweet face upturned to his. "if i do these things," he resumed in sober tone, "will you be my wife?" "mr. warthell, if you can open the way for me to really be your wife, there is nothing in my heart that bids me shrink from the love you offer." dorlan's mind entertained one great burst of hope, then fled at once to the great race problem that had hung pall-like over the heads of the american people for so many generations, and now stood between himself and morlene. a sense of the enormity of the task that he had undertaken now overwhelmed him. dorlan bowed his head, the following thoughts coursing through his agitated mind: "i am to weld two heterogeneous elements into a homogeneous entity. i am to make a successful blend of two races that differ so widely as do the whites and the negroes. each race has manifested its racial instincts, and has shown us all, that wise planning must take account of these. the problem is inherently a difficult one and of a highly complex nature. but with an incentive such as i have, surely it can be solved. thomas jefferson and abraham lincoln said the problem was incapable of solution, that the two races could not live together on terms of equality. they were great and wise, but not infallible. with morlene as a prize, i shall prove them wrong." morlene, taking advantage of his abstraction, bestowed on him an unreserved look of pitying love. dorlan looked up suddenly from his reverie, and their eyes met once more. there was no reserve now and dorlan's joy was so keen that it seemed to pain him. arising to go, he said: "i go from you consecrating my whole power to the task before me. fortunate it is, indeed, for the south that she has at least one man so surrounded that he cannot be happy himself until he makes this wilderness of woe blossom as a rose. farewell." dorlan now left and walked slowly toward his home. he reflected, "i will have no business at her home now until this problem is solved. suppose i do not solve it." dorlan's fears began to assert themselves. "i may never, never see that face again. think of it!" he said. this thought was too much for dorlan. he paused, leaned upon the fence, thrust his hat back from his fevered brow. he turned and retraced his steps to morlene's home. she met him at the door and was not surprised at his return. her heart was craving for just another sight of its exiled lord. re-entering the parlor, they stood facing each other. "morlene," said dorlan, "i have come to ask a boon of you. i can labor so much better with a full assurance of your love. from your eyes, from your words, i say humbly, i have come to feel that you have honored me with that love. but the testimony is incomplete. will you grant unto me the one remaining assurance? will you seal our most holy compact with a kiss?" morlene's lips parted not, but she attempted an answer, nevertheless. her queenlike head was shaking negatively, saying, "please do not require that." but those telltale eyes were saying, "why, young man the whole matter rests with you." morlene was conscious that her eyes were contradicting the negative answer that her head was giving. to punish the two beautiful traitors she turned them away from dorlan and made them look at the carpet. morlene in this attitude was so exquisitely beautiful that dorlan was powerless to resist the impulse that made him take her into his arms. one rapturous kiss, and dorlan was gone! chapter xxv. tony marshall. tony marshall was one of the negroes of the younger class who had left the country district and had come to r---- as a result of the imbroglio between lemuel dalton and harry dalton. he had come to the city with the untried innocence of country life, sober, industrious and frugal, acceptable as a wholesome infusion into negro life in the city, which, so far as the masses were concerned, stood sadly in need thereof. without much difficulty he had secured work as a porter in a hardware store. after a few years' sojourn in the city, he had fallen in love and married. among the negroes of r---- mrs. tony marshall was variously designated as "a good looking woman," "a fine looking woman," and among the older ones as "a likely gal;" and she richly deserved these encomiums passed on her personal appearance. she was not a small woman, nor yet could you call her large. her form, while not delicately chiseled, presented an appearance that seemed to be a satisfactory compromise between beauty and strength, each struggling to be noted in this one form. her face was well featured, her hazle colored eyes making it very attractive. as to complexion, she was dark, quite dark, and of a hue so soft and attractive therewith that her complexion made her an object of envy. tony marshall adored his wife, and it was his one ambition to see her happy. everything that he did was with a view to her comfort and happiness. on the meagre wages which he received he had not been able to provide for her as he had desired. noticing that young white men who had entered the employ of the hardware company after his coming and knew no more of the requirements of the business than he did--noticing that these had several times been promoted, tony marshall made an application for an increase in his wages. the head of the firm looked at him in astonishment. it was an unwritten and inexorable rule in that and in many other establishments that the wages of negro employes were to remain the same forever, however efficient the labor and however long the term of service. failing of promotion where he was, and noting that the rate of one dollar per day prevailed almost universally, tony marshall saw no relief in changing employment, and decided to increase his own wages at his employers' expense. he made a comparison between the salary which he was receiving and that being received by the white employees who did work similar in character to his. he began, therefore, to purloin the wares of the company and dispose of them at various pawn shops. as a "sop" to his conscience he stole only so much as sufficed to bring his wages to the level of others who did work like his. his thefts were the more easily committed because he had won the unlimited confidence of his employers. tony has just rented a more commodious house for the pleasure of his wife, and as his rent is to be increased, he is pondering how to further increase his income. on this particular morning when our story finds him, he is debating this question as he walks to his work. at last he concluded to steal that day a very fine pistol from the stock under his care, which theft he hoped would net him such a nice sum that he could suspend pilfering for a while. when he returned home that evening he carried the pistol with him, and hid it under the front doorstep, it being his rule to not allow his wife to know anything of his misdoings; for he could not bear the thought of forfeiting her respect. "i am going to my lodge meeting now; i may not return until very late," said tony that night, as he kissed his wife good-bye. instead of going to the lodge meeting, however, tony marshall went to the section of the city where were congregated practically all of the vicious negroes of r----. entering a house, the front room of which was the abode of an aged couple, he passed to the rear through a hall way. giving the proper rap at a door, he was admitted. he was now in a long room well crowded with negro men and many women, who sat at tables engaged in various kinds of gaming. the occupants of the room gazed up at the newcomer, quickly, enquiringly, but seeing that it was the well known tony, their attention returned to the matters before them. the flapping of cards, the rolling of dice, outbursts of profanity, the clinking of glasses as liquor drinking progressed, were the sounds that filled the room. tony found room at a dice table and was soon deeply engaged in the game. at a late hour the accustomed rap was heard at the door and it was opened. great was the consternation of all when the newcomers were discovered to be a half dozen policemen. the inmates of the gambling house saw at once that some frequenter of the place had proven traitor and furnished the officers with information. they were all placed under arrest and formed into a line to be marched to the city jail. the negroes had submitted with such good grace that the officers felt able to dispense with the patrol wagon, the jail being near. tony marshall's thoughts were of his wife, lula. she was of a highly respectable family and her mortification would be boundless should she know of his arrest in the gambling den and hear of his being in the chain gang working out his fine on the public highways. tony marshall decided to escape at the risk of his life. the gambling fraternity had a code of signals that could give the cue to the proper course to be pursued under any given circumstances. the leader of the gang now gave three coughs, which meant, "raise a row among yourselves." the idea was to get up a fight among the prisoners and while the officers were attempting to quell the fight, as many as could were to make their escape. it was the rule that all who made their escape were to employ lawyers and raise money to help out those left behind. a group began quarreling among themselves, and a fight soon followed. the officers interposed to quell the disturbance and prisoners broke and ran in all directions. the officers found that they had a larger number than they could well manage under the circumstances, and they gave their attention to corralling a few, letting the others escape in the hope of tracing them out and re-arresting them on the morrow. among those that escaped was tony marshall. running by his home, he secured the stolen pistol from beneath the doorstep, got his bicycle from the woodhouse and was soon speeding out of the city. he chose the road that led to the settlement whence he had come to the city. it was his intention from that point to write to his wife, telling her that he had received a most urgent call to see his aged mother who was represented to him to be dying. throughout the night tony rode at a rapid rate, putting many miles between himself and the city. about daybreak, as he was speeding along on his bicycle, he glanced up into a tree and saw therein a squirrel. "good luck!" said he, "there is my breakfast." jumping from his bicycle, he got on the side of the road opposite to the tree that held the squirrel. elevating his pistol, he took aim and was upon the eve of pulling the trigger when he heard the clatter of the hoofs of a horse galloping in his direction. he dropped the pistol to his side and peered around the bend of the road to catch sight of the newcomer on the scene. for a few minutes only we leave him standing thus that we may fully acquaint you with the newcomer, that the horror of the meeting between the two may not come as too great a shock to you. "but how is the waiting, struggling, hoping dorlan concerned in all of this?" the reader asks. that, too, in due time will be apparent. chapter xxvi. a morning ride. we are at the dalton house once more. it is the night on which we followed tony marshall to the gambling den, which we saw raided by the officers of the law. under the window of lemuel dalton's bed room a dog had stationed himself, and throughout the night uttered long, loud and piteous howls. lemuel dalton professed to be above superstition and detested that in the negroes more than he did anything else, perhaps. while professing to the contrary, he was in reality superstitious to a marked degree, even against his own better sense. this semi-consciousness of the presence of a latent superstition in the crevices of his inner-self, no doubt served to intensify his antipathies against a people who had thus in spite of himself injected superstition into him; for he blamed the negroes for the prevalence of superstition in the southern states. so the howling of this homeless dog bothered lemuel, although he sought to assure himself, over and over again, that it did not. he had arisen more than once and fired his pistol out of the window in order to stop the noise of the dog. the dog would quiet down for a brief period and then resume his canine lamentations. the howling of the dog, coupled with its persistence, produced in lemuel dalton a state of mind bordering on terror. the negroes held that the howling of a dog beneath a window was a sure sign that an inmate of the house was soon to die. arising very early the next morning, lemuel dalton entered his library and took a seat. he wheeled his chair until it faced the east window and, tilting back in it, mechanically twirled his mustache, a look of deep meditation coming over his face. "confound the people who first brought the negroes to this country," he said. he was worried that he could not shake off the superstition as to death following the howling of a dog. in the midst of his broodings lemuel dalton's pretty little wife (for he is married now) came dashing into the room attired in a riding habit. lemuel dalton wheeled around to meet her and her quick eye caught the cloud that was just vanishing from his face. "lemuel, my dear, what on earth are you allowing to trouble you?" she said, shaking her riding whip at him, playfully, while her eyes were shining with the love that she cherished for him. "i may tell you when you return from your morning ride," he said, opening his arms to receive his wife. "you naughty lad," she cried, looking into his eyes with mock earnestness. "when did you ever hear of a woman consenting to wait a moment to obtain a secret? tell me _now_ on pain of being doomed to bear this burden, my humble self, in your arms for ever." "the very penalty that you affix as a menace is an inducement for me to disobey. i resist the temptation, however, and tell you the subject of my thoughts. i was thinking of the negroes." a shiver ran over the frame of mrs. dalton and the cheerful smile died out of her face. "lemuel, will you people of the south ever be rid of this eternal nightmare?" queried mrs. dalton, looking up into lemuel's face. lemuel tenderly stroked her beautiful hair, but did not essay to answer her question. the fact of the matter was, he regarded the negro problem as growing graver and more complicated as time wore on. the strenuous efforts of the negro to rise and the decrease of the distance between the two races he viewed with alarm. he did not care to communicate his real feelings to his wife, so he said nothing. mrs. dalton's nature was of a light and volatile kind and she thought of the negroes only for an instant. wresting herself out of her husband's arms, she skipped out of the room. she immediately reappeared at the door of the library and threw a kiss at lemuel in girlish fashion and was soon mounted and riding out to get the benefit of the brisk morning air. as she saunters along, we may learn a few points in her history that bear upon the case unto which events are leading. she was born and reared in a section of the state of maine where no negroes whatever live. it was here that lemuel dalton found, wooed, and wedded her. she had read from time to time of the crimes of brutal negroes and the summary punishments administered to them, and she had rather imperceptibly grown to regard the prevailing race type of the negroes as being criminal. this opinion was not an unnatural outgrowth of the newspaper habit of giving unlimited space and flaming headlines to the vicious negro, the exotic, while the many millions who day by day went uncomplainingly to their daily tasks and wrought worthily for the country's welfare, received but scant attention. the opinion that this state of affairs caused mrs. dalton to imbibe, was the further fostered by the atmosphere of the dalton house, which was so thoroughly hostile to the negro. the whole of the dalton place was now manned by white help, and negroes would not so much as go there on errands of business. it was from such a home and under the conditions outlined that mrs. dalton went forth for her morning ride. it was the noise of mrs. dalton's horse that caused tony marshall to pause in his attempt to kill the squirrel. chapter xxvii. they fear each other. as tony peered around the bend in the road, mrs. dalton caught sight of him and uttered a piercing scream. tony knew the horse to be that of lemuel dalton and he perceived at once that the situation was full of danger for him, as the unintentional frightening of white women in the south had furnished more than one victim for the mob. knowing so well the feelings of lemuel dalton toward negroes, he reasoned that if the white woman who had become frightened at him, returned to the house and reported that she had come upon a negro with a drawn pistol, public opinion among the whites would at once adjudge him guilty of harboring a purpose of committing a dastardly crime against woman's honor. he knew that a strong suspicion to this effect meant instant and violent death to the party suspected. he was determined to see to it that the woman did not leave him in a disturbed frame of mind. rushing forward, he grasped the horse's bridle. this all the more frightened and excited mrs. dalton. "lady," said tony, fear in every lineament of his face; "lady," he repeated, in anxious tones, "don't be afraid. i am not going to harm you." mrs. dalton instinctively looked down at the pistol, which seemed to be a contradiction to his words. seeing the look and interpreting it, tony said, "there, i have thrown it away," accompanying his words with the casting of the pistol by the roadside. mrs. dalton yet said nothing, her eye following the pistol. she noted that tony had not thrown it very far away. tony, who was studying her countenance with a full knowledge of the fact that his life depended upon the outcome of the interview, read her impression that the casting aside of the pistol was but a ruse. "lady," said tony, "i have caught hold of your horse to keep you from going away from me frightened, for the white people will kill me on a mere suspicion of wrong intention on my part. i am harmless. i used to live out here." this last remark increased mrs. dalton's agitation. she had heard of harry dalton, knew nothing of his death and feared that this was he, returning for vengeance. "i got into trouble in the city and am running away. that's how i am out here so early." "oh, he is a criminal," said mrs. dalton, excitedly. tony saw that talking did not better his case, so he stopped. he bowed his head to meditate. mrs. dalton thought that he was planning an attack, and her agitation was increasing every second. "plague on it!" said tony. "i am in a pretty fix. i'll swear i wish those 'cops' had me safe in prison. i have swapped the witch for the devil." addressing mrs. dalton he said: "well, lady, i'll let you go and take my chances." as soon as tony turned loose the bridle mrs. dalton gave whip to her horse, intending to flee as fast as the speed of the animal would permit. tony saw that his action in turning the horse loose had not inspired confidence in the woman and that she was leaving him fully impressed that his purposes were evil. he now decided to take advantage of every circumstance that he could to save his life. seizing his pistol, he ran forward and fired, intending to kill the horse and thus have a better chance to escape before the woman could reach her home and start others in pursuit. at his second shot the horse reared and mrs. dalton fell off to the ground. the horse also fell, a part of his huge frame falling upon and crushing her prostrate form. when tony marshall saw what he had done, he turned to flee. proceeding a short distance, he halted. "i must go back to find out whether the woman is dead," he said. he therefore turned and walked in a timorous manner toward the fallen woman. "some one may have heard the shot and may be hurrying here," he thought, and halted again, casting furtive glances first up and then down the road. "what, oh, what have i done to be in such a fix!" he exclaimed in terror. continuing to look about him fearfully, tony approached the spot where the horse and the woman lay. by dint of hard labor, he succeeded in removing that portion of the horse that lay upon her. he was overjoyed to find from her pulse that she was still alive. "what must i do next," he said. he sat down to meditate. "i haven't yet murdered anybody and i shall not let this woman die if i can help it," he said with determination. tony arose and, going to mrs. dalton, lifted her in his arms and proceeded in the direction of her home. after many pauses by the wayside for rest, he at last reached the dalton estate. through the window of his library, lemuel dalton saw his wife being brought home to him in an apparently lifeless condition. at once morlene's prophecy came back to him. raising the window and leaping out, he rushed to meet tony and gathered his wife in his arms. "eulalie! eulalie! oh! eulalie!" he cried. "speak to me, beloved." "lemuel," she murmured, as she looked at him out of half opened eyes. "thank god! oh! thank god, she lives," he exclaimed, bearing his wife rapidly yet tenderly to her bedroom. the family physician was summoned and he hastened to the bedside with all possible speed. only a slight examination, however, was needed to disclose the fact that human skill would be of no avail. chapter xxviii. "o death, where is thy sting?" dorlan had just drawn down the curtains to the windows of his room, thus bringing to a close the contest that the artificial light of the room was waging with the fading twilight, the last feeble protest of the sun, for that day deposed. he was standing before his desk which was strewn with books, pamphlets and newspaper clippings, bearing on the subject engaging his attention, when suddenly his door was thrust open. quickly turning to learn who his unceremonious visitor was, dorlan saw the hon. hezekiah t. bloodworth standing in the doorway pointing a pistol toward him. the pistol hand swayed to and fro, signifying the unsteadiness of a drunken man, while bloodworth's bloated face and reddened eyes emphasized the fact of his debauchery. "oh--hic--yes--hic--i've got--hic-hic-hic you--hic. i'll--hic--kill--hic--hic--you--hic," stammered bloodworth, attempting to impart force enough to his unsteady fingers to pull the trigger of the pistol. dorlan started in the direction of the drunken man intending to disarm him. just then some one implanted a blow upon the base of bloodworth's skull, which sent that gentleman to the floor in a sprawling attitude. the pistol which was in bloodworth's hand exploded upon striking the floor, but no serious damage resulted. a tall, somewhat slender white man had delivered the blow. this stranger now forced bloodworth to rise and accompany him down the stairs. bloodworth whined after the manner of a child, as he staggered along. the stranger hailed a passing policeman and handed bloodworth over to him. he then returned to dorlan's room. as he entered, dorlan was struck with the look of sorrow so legibly written in the face of the man. such utter woe dorlan had never before seen depicted in a human countenance. the man, though invited to sit down, declined to do so. looking dorlan in the face, the stranger said, "my name is lemuel dalton. i perceive that you glean from my countenance that fate has hurled its harpoon into my soul." lemuel dalton's frame shook as a tempest of emotions swept through him. "my wife," he continued, "the most beautiful, the most angelic, the most beloved woman of earth, has been needlessly slain." dorlan was listening with absorbing interest and evident sympathy. "circumstances killed my wife, sir. circumstances--cold, cruel, circumstances." lemuel dalton paused as though desiring to give his words ample opportunity to convey their awful message. "it was on this wise," he resumed. "she met a negro who was fleeing from justice. she had heard so much of late of the crimes of negroes against white women that she was terribly frightened by the mere fact of seeing this negro. the negro was frightened over the consequences likely to ensue as a result of her fright. he sought to reassure her. she mistrusted him the more. to keep her from reaching me in time to institute a successful pursuit, the negro killed the horse that she was riding. the horse in falling caught my wife partially under his huge frame. she was fatally injured." lemuel dalton now turned away from dorlan to hide the tears that had gathered in his eyes. "she died," said he, in broken tones. "on her dying bed she begged me to not prosecute the negro on the charge of murder. in her last moments she said to me, 'lemuel, good bye. save other homes from a like fate. dispel this atmosphere of suspicion in which i have been stifled unto my death.' i have obeyed her request with regard to the negro. a careful investigation demonstrated that he had told my wife and me the truth in every detail. he is now in prison serving his sentence for the offenses committed prior to his chance meeting with my wife." pointing his finger at dorlan he raised his tremulous voice and said in ringing tones, "do you realize, sir, that the social fabric of which you are a part, furnished the viper that has stung me in a vital spot? where, sir, are your churches, your school rooms, all of your influences that are supposed to produce worthy beings?" lemuel dalton's manner was so frantic that dorlan began to feel that he was dangerously near insanity. lemuel dalton divined the thought that was passing through dorlan's mind and answered it, lowering his voice as he did so. "oh, no! i am not at all unbalanced. to show you that i am not i shall answer my own question. you negroes need more from us southern whites than a feeling of indifference, or a spirit of 'make it if you can.' i have come to learn at so sad a cost that the safety and happiness of my race is inexorably bound up with the virtue and well-being of your race." the look of intensity now faded from his face; a sort of vacant expression appeared. as though listlessly looking at something in the distance, he said, half musingly, "morlene dalton sent me to you. i went to her because she told me years ago that i would come to this. i am here to-night to offer my help to your race, and to ask what you all desire of me." he spoke slowly and in solemn tones. "but, hold! before you speak, let me tell you that about me which is subject to no compromise," he burst forth excitedly. said he: "i am an exclusive; i want no mixture of blood, thought or activities with the negro race. i want this white race to keep on manifesting its true inwardness to the world. i wish our whole civilization to be permeated with our own peculiar fragrance and that only. whatever i can do for your people without jeopardy to this conception i stand ready to do. true, this means that i desire you to be an alien in our midst. but my present position is an improvement on my former, in that i am now willing to do all that can be done to make this alien, happy, prosperous and virtuous; but an alien ever, remember. will you kindly point out to a white man standing on this platform what _he_ may consistently do for the negro?" lemuel dalton ceased speaking and now sat in the chair which he had previously refused. "i am grieved, profoundly grieved that your wife, who may be the prototype of hundreds, has been drawn into the awful vortex of this race trouble." lemuel dalton arose from his seat and with glaring eyes looked down upon dorlan intently. again the impression came to dorlan that he was dealing with a mad man, and he began to ponder a line of action based on that thought. "tut, tut, you persist in thinking i am crazy," said lemuel dalton, again guessing dorlan's thoughts and bringing his will to bear to cause a more calm expression to appear on his (lemuel's) face. drawing near to dorlan, he said: "i came to discuss the race question with you, but i am in no mood for that." he paused for an instant. resuming in a lower tone of voice, he said, slowly, "you colored folks believe in god. i don't." again he paused. "that is, i didn't. but the morning eulalie, my wife, was brought home wounded, i called god's name for the first time since my early childhood." here he paused again. "eulalie was a christian," he said, looking into dorlan's face piercingly. "tell me the truth. do you, do you," he asked falteringly. "do you think that--" here a pause--"i shall meet--eulalie again?" the last words were uttered in a loud screeching voice. without waiting for an answer lemuel dalton turned away to hide his fast falling tears. out of the room he walked, out into the darkness he went, alternately imploring and cursing the great force, whatever it might be, that was operating through all creation, and had suffered so terrible a load to fall upon his shoulders. as for dorlan, he sat far into the night musing on the occurrences of the evening. "to-night i have been confronted with an epitome of the situation of the negro in this country," he said. "one white man comes who is angry because i will not be his tool. then follows the exclusive, who feels that my touch is contaminating. truly the negro is between the upper and the nether millstones. "ah, morlene what a task you have assigned unto this pilot, called by you to guide the bark of the negro over this perilous sea. as i take my post, happy am i, that in my love of humanity i find my chart; in my love for my race i have a compass; and in my love for you i have a lighthouse on the shore. "shine on, sweet soul, that i may pilot this vessel through the breakers, above whose hidden heads the waves are ever chanting the solemn song of death." happy was dorlan in this hour that his inherited riches would enable him to conquer ills which the poverty of the race had hitherto rendered insurmountable. chapter xxix. in the balances. at last the day came on which dorlan was to submit his plan to morlene. he arose early that morning, packed his trunk, boxed up his most important papers and wrote out instructions as to the disposition to be made of his other possessions. these preparations completed, he walked down town to the post office and sent his plan to morlene as registered matter. having done this, dorlan returned to his boarding place and bade all a sorrowful good-bye, stating that a great deal of uncertainty was attendant upon his journey, and that he knew not whether he would ever return to r----. going down to the depot, he was soon aboard a train speeding away. in the meanwhile morlene had received the documents sent to her. in addition to the plan, dorlan had sent a personal letter, on the envelope of which were written these words, "please do not read the enclosed letter until you have read and passed upon the plan." morlene lifted the envelope to her lips, kissed it, and laid it away, intending to read the letter after her study of the plan, in keeping with dorlan's wishes. morlene was deeply conscious as to how much depended upon her verdict on dorlan's plan. her own and the happiness of dorlan were involved. the suffering, restless negroes were to be offered a panacea and she was their representative to accept or reject the proffered medicine. the welfare of the south and the peace of the nation were at stake. upon the outcome of the race question in america the hopes of the darker races of the world depended. even the cause of popular government was involved, she felt, for it was to be seen whether a republic could deal with a race problem of so virulent a type. thus, with the eyes of the world upon her, morlene unfolded the manuscript and began its study. as the document was somewhat voluminous, and as the issues involved were of such grave import to the cause of humanity, morlene decided that she would proceed about her task with much deliberation. had she known the contents of dorlan's personal letter she would have proceeded with more dispatch. this dorlan knew, and not desiring the personal element to appear in her study of the plan enjoined that she should pursue her work without being influenced by what was contained in his letter. so, after reading a while, morlene laid the manuscript aside and spent the remainder of the day in meditating on what she had read. the second day she did likewise. morlene began to be much elated, for, as the paper progressed, she saw that dorlan was treating the subject in a most comprehensive way. thus, from day to day, she read and pondered, her hopes rising higher and higher. sometimes when dorlan would enter upon the discussion of some particularly difficult question, her old feeling of fear would return, but when in a most masterly manner he would sweep away the seeming difficulties just as though they were so many cobwebs, her heart would leap joyfully. by and by, after the lapse of many days morlene drew near to the close of the document. when, on the last day of her perusal, she read the last words of the last page, and her mind flashed back to the beginning and surveyed in general outline the whole, her enthusiasm knew no bounds. in quavering tones the sweet voice of this girl, charged and surcharged with love and patriotism, murmured the words, "columbia is saved. let all mankind henceforth honor the name of dorlan, the hero of humanity." she now secured dorlan's letter, broke the seal and read as follows, a look of pain deepening on her beautiful face as she read. the letter. "dear morlene: "as best i could, heaven knows, i have wrestled with the problem assigned to me by you, the queen of my heart. some one has said that the most _sublime_ incident in all of human history was martin luther's standing alone before the diet of worms. side by side with that statement let all men now write that my situation is the most excruciatingly _painful_ one that a human being has ever been called upon to endure. when i first met you, circumstances forced me to stifle the love that was ready to burst into a flame. subsequently, fate decreed that you should be free, and my heart ran riot. "but fate was determined that one so beautiful and so worthy as yourself should not be won until the wooer appeared in some degree worthy of the lady whose hand was desired. "now, dear morlene, tell me by what process, human or divine, i could be made in any measure worthy of you? if this plan is supposed to achieve that result, is supposed to mark me as worthy of your hand, it has failure written on its face. this conclusion would seem to be beyond the realm of debate. and yet my reason tells me that the plan must of necessity succeed; that, being based upon incontrovertible laws there is no way for it to fail. "now, morlene, my darling, with my powers of intuition telling me that i must fail of winning your hand and with my reason telling me i have successfully performed the task assigned me, what must i do? hope and fear have come to terms in my bosom, and one occupies the throne one minute and the other the next. they alternate thus by day and by night. in my dreams i am sometimes as happy as the angels are reputed to be--happier than they, i should say. but the joy is short-lived, and in my dreams i find myself tumbling over precipices and wading through miry swamps. "i could not stay in r----, and in quietness await your verdict. i have had to travel, to lessen, if possible, the strain of anxiety upon my mind. so, when you find yourself reading this letter, i shall be hundreds of miles away at galveston, texas, on the beach of the great gulf. i am here awaiting your verdict. if it is favorable, i shall return to you forthwith. if unfavorable, i am at a port where ships are daily leaving for all parts of the world. enough for that. "finally, dear one, if the scheme which i submitted to you affords the necessary assurance that the problem will be solved, telegraph to me the one word, 'unfettered.' if it does not afford such assurance, let your message be 'fettered still.' "am i yours, _forever or never_? "dorlan warthell." when morlene finished reading the letter it was covered with the tears that had sped down her cheeks. "dear, dear boy! how much he must have suffered, if he loves me thus!" so saying, she arose and hastened toward the telegraph office for the purpose of sending a message to dorlan. "suppose my delay has begotten in dorlan the recklessness of despair," thought morlene, and fear born of the terrible thought seemed to lend her wings. chapter xxx. the telegram. arriving in the city of galveston, dorlan, anxious to receive the expected message from morlene at the earliest possible moment, took up his abode in an establishment just opposite the telegraph office. day after day dorlan took his seat at the window of his room and watched the messenger boys as they hurried to an fro delivering messages. he thought of how much anxiety the countless messages represented, but concluded that his was equal to all the other anxieties combined. each night, when he regarded the hour as too late to reasonably expect a message from morlene, he would go down to the beach and gaze out upon the great expanse of waters. the tossing waves and the heaving billows reminded him of his own heart. the tides would roll in to the shore and the waves would lap his feet with their spray, as much as to say, "come with us. we are like you. we are restless. come with us." dorlan would look up at the watching stars and out into the depths of the silent dark. then he would whisper to the pleading waves: "not yet. perhaps some day." dorlan's _love_, in keeping with the well earned reputation of that master passion, had led him to hope for an early answer from morlene, in spite of the extreme gravity and manifold complexity of the question that she was now trying to decide. his _reason_ told him better than to expect so early a reply. thus, when love gave evidence of disappointment, reason would say, "much love hath made thee mad, my boy. give the dear girl a chance, will you?" at the close of each day this colloquy between love and reason would take place. but morlene's delay began to extend beyond the utmost limits that dorlan had set. thereupon love's tone became more insistent and the voice of reason grew correspondingly feeble. dorlan at last concluded that morlene's decision was unfavorable to him, and that she hesitated to deliver the final blow. every vestige of hope had fled and he now kept up his daily vigil purely out of respect for morlene, not that he longer expected a favorable answer. unwilling for morlene's sake to listen in the nights' solitude to the wooing of the restless waves, dorlan changed his nightly course and moved about in the city. as he was listlessly wandering through the city one night, he came upon a crowd standing in a vacant lot listening to a man detail the reputed virtues of medicines which he was trying to sell. the medicine man's face was handsome, his head covered with a profusion of flaxen hair which fell in curls over his shoulders. his voice had a pleasing ring and his whole personality was alluring. on the platform with the man was a group of negro boys who provided entertainment for the crowd in the intervals between the introduction of the various medicines. dorlan stood on the outer edge of the throng and thought on the spectacle presented. the white people of the south, as evidenced by their pleasure in negro minstrelsy, were prone to regard the negro as a joke. and the unthinking youths were now employed to dance and sing and laugh away the aspirations of a people. dorlan's veins began to pulsate with indignation as he reflected on the fact that the ludicrous in the race was the only feature that had free access to the public gaze. he was longing for an opportunity to show to the audience that there was something in the negro that could make their bosoms thrill with admiration. in a most unexpected manner the opportunity was to come. the medicine man near the hour of closing addressed the audience, saying: "gentlemen, it pains me to state that our aeronaut is confined to his bed and will be unable to-night to make his customary balloon ascension and descent in the parachute. that part of our evening's entertainment must therefore be omitted, unless some one of you will volunteer to act in his stead." the last remark was accompanied with a smile, the speaker taking it for granted that no one would be willing to take the risk. "two birds with one stone," said dorlan. "the boys have taught this audience how to laugh. i can show them an act of bravery. one bird! "there must be a great force somewhere directing the affairs of the universe. his plannings puzzle me. men have accidentally gone from balloons to solve the great mystery of all things. bird number two! morlene evidently does not care." elbowing his way through the crowd, dorlan clambered upon the platform and said: "gentlemen, the phases of negro character are as varied as those of other men. there is in us the sense of the humorous and the possibilities of the tragic. we can partake of life to satiety, we can die of grief. these boys have made you laugh. allow me to awaken in you higher emotions. i will make the ascension and descent and thus prevent the marring of our evening's entertainment." the medicine man looked at dorlan in astonishment, approached him and talked with him a short while. concluding that dorlan was sane, knew what he was about, and would not undertake the feat if incapable of successfully performing it, the man now had the balloon prepared. the audience, glad that they were not to be robbed of their expected pleasure, cheered lustily when it was found that dorlan was to make the trip into the air. dorlan stepped into the balloon and was soon being whirled upward. his soul felt a measure of relief as he rose above the staring crowd, above the tall buildings, as he entered the regions of floating clouds, as he passed upward toward the brightly shining moon and the quiet light of the stars. on and on he swept. the pure air into which he had now come refreshed his spirit and he could look at matters with a clearer vision. "think," said dorlan, as he stood in the balloon and gazed into the stellar depths, "how long it took this universe to evolve unto its present state. think of the seemingly slow process of world formation now going on in the nebulae scattered through those realms yonder." his mind reverting to his attitude toward morlene, he said: "and here i am impatient because that dear girl on whose heart the woes of the world now rest has not hastened in deciding that i had harnessed the forces that will solve one of the most difficult problems that ever perplexed mankind." the utter unreasonableness of expecting so early an answer upon a question that demanded such earnest thought, now appeared to him as almost criminal. he saw that the time allowed morlene, in what he regarded as his saner moods, was thoroughly inadequate. these moments of elevation and reflection restored hope to his bosom. stimulated by the thought that morlene was not necessarily lost to him as yet, dorlan now caused the balloon to start toward the earth. he would have liked to come down all the way in the balloon since he was no longer yearning for death, but he remembered his brave speech and the expectations of the crowd below. so, in spite or his keen desire to live, he decided to maintain his honor in the eyes of the waiting audience and descend in the parachute at whatever cost. not knowing what would be his fate, dorlan sprang out of the balloon, trusting to the parachute. at a terrific speed he shot downward toward the earth. for a few seconds the parachute seemed that it was not going to bear him safely to earth, but, happily for the innocent morlene, soon readjusted itself. down, down, down, it came bringing to the murky atmosphere, to the crowded streets, to the regions of jarring ambitions, the troubled spirit that sought in an hour of despair to fly its ills. dorlan reached the ground in safety and received the congratulations of the spectators, who, guided by the light attached to the balloon, had succeeded in locating the possible point of descent. dorlan now went home, fully resolved to await in calmer spirit the expected answer. one day as dorlan was sitting before his window, he saw a messenger boy come out of the telegraph office, pause and look up at the number on the house in which he was stopping. the boy then started across the street in dorlan's direction. dorlan ran out of his room and down the steps, reaching the door before the boy. sure enough the telegram was for dorlan. he snatched it from the boy and handed him a dollar. dorlan turned to go upstairs. "wait for your change, mister. we don't get but ten cents extra." "keep the dollar, lad," said dorlan, hurrying up the stairway. entering his room he gently laid the telegram upon the center table and stood back to gaze upon it. dorlan could not conceive how he could endure the excess of grief if the message was unfavorable, or the excess of joy if it was favorable. cautiously he approached the table, then seized the telegram and tore it open. the next instant the lady of the house verily thought that a comanche indian had broken into her establishment, so loud was dorlan's shout of joy when his eyes fell on the one word, "unfettered." her astonishment was even greater when dorlan so suddenly departed, leaving in her hands a roll of money far in excess of her charges. dorlan had no time for explanations. the soul that had come into the world to mate with his was calling for him and all other considerations had to fade away. * * * * * as the train rolled into the shed adjacent to the great depot at r----, dorlan, who was standing on the platform of a coach, caught sight of morlene, who had come down to the station to meet him. he seemed to feel that he could cover the remaining distance between himself and morlene quicker than the train, for he leapt upon the platform before the train stopped and urged his way through the throng to the spot where she stood. then, half forgetting and half remembering the multitude present, dorlan grasped the outstretched hands of morlene drew her to him, and planted on her lips a kiss--just one, mark you. the ladies who were standing near looked searchingly at dorlan, and rendered a silent verdict that morlene could be excused for not resenting the salutation from so handsome and so noble looking a man. the men looked at morlene and wondered how dorlan could be content with just that one. those men always thereafter gave dorlan the credit of being a man of marvelous self-control. you see, they did not consult morlene on that point, who and who alone knew how frequent and how fervent were those manifestations of regard after the proper authorities had said that she was to be mrs. morlene warthell thenceforth until death. * * * * * over the hillsides of life, through its many valleys, alongside its babbling brooks, in the splendor of the noonday, in the gloaming, in deepest shades of evening, on and on, dorlan and morlene go, happy that they are freed from the narrow and narrowing problems of race; happy that at last they, in common with the rest of mankind, may labor for the solution of those larger humanistic problems that have so long vexed the heart of earth. we now bid this loving and laboring couple a fond adieu, well knowing that wherever in this broad world these true souls may wander they will be gladly received and housed as the benefactors of mankind. the end of unfettered. dorlan's plan. (sequel to "unfettered.") a dissertation on the race problem. by sutton e. griggs. * * * * * "the solution of the negro problem involves the honor or dishonor, the glory or shame, the happiness or misery of the entire american people."--_frederick douglass_. "i had rather see my people render back this question rightly solved than to see them gather all the spoils over which faction has contended since cataline conspired and cæsar fought."--_henry w. grady_. foreword. prior to the coming of dorlan warthell, there were many to be found in the united states who utterly despaired of a happy solution of the problem of adjusting the relations of the anglo-saxon and negro races to each other on an honorable and mutually satisfactory basis, taking care the while to meet the highest demands of the present and of all future ages. others, while not despairing, confessed that in the horizon subject to their vision not a glimmer of light appeared; confessed that they were only sustained by their general knowledge of nature's power to solve, through tears and years, all her problems. thus, until the day when dorlan came, columbia sat chained on the one side by benumbing pessimism and on the other by deferred hope. accepting the judgment of so sweet and true a soul as morlene, it was he who solved the problem. in view of the complicated nature of the problem and the great interests involved, its solution must ever be regarded as a noteworthy achievement. it occurred to us that the ages which now sleep in the womb of time would be pleased to ponder the achievement, hoping to find in the spirit and method of its undertaking, suggestions that would enable them to deal wisely with the problems of their day. for the sake, therefore, of posterity we have concluded to place on record a copy of dorlan's plan by means of which he swept away the last barrier that stood between himself and the woman who had entered into his life to give color to the whole of his existence in this world and in such other worlds as may afford a dwelling place for the spirit of man. perhaps a majority of those who have read "unfettered" and have learned to share dorlan's exalted opinion of morlene, will not care to read the plan, being content to rest the whole matter upon morlene's decision. those who pay such a tribute to our heroine may thus escape the tedium of wading through the dry details of a plan by means of which a long suffering race was saved. others who may be disposed to question morlene's judgment, who think that her love for dorlan influenced her to decide in his favor, are hereby furnished with the plan and ordered to read it as a befitting punishment for their temerity. as these "doubting thomases" wearily plod their way through the plan we hope that they will have ever present with them to add to their torture, the thought that they would have escaped the punishment of reading all that dorlan wrote had they meekly accepted morlene's verdict. as wail after wail shall arise proclaiming what dull reading the plan makes, we shall chuckle gleefully and rub our hands joyfully, happy that those who would not take the word of our heroine have come to the end so richly deserved. those who accepted morlene's verdict and now read the plan simply for the purpose of defending her from hypercritical personages are heroes indeed. for, be it remembered, it often requires more courage to read some books than it does to fight a battle. such may be the case with dorlan's plan, and all have fair warning. the author. dorlan's plan. where the trouble arises. the negro is a human being. he has manifested every essential trait of human nature. the following words from emerson, spoken of each individual member of the human family, may be specially affirmed with regard to the negro: "what plato has thought he may think; what a saint has felt he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand." the general laws governing the physical and psychic natures of men; that unfold the workings of the human body and the mental, moral, religious, social and æsthetic processes of the soul--the general laws governing these operations may be applied with as much force to the negro as to any other human being. this has been an age of astounding discoveries; but the physiologist, the psychist, the ethical writer, the ecclesiastic, the sociologist, the investigator of æsthetic manifestations, the ethnologist, the philologist, the natural scientist, though searching eagerly, have discovered naught to controvert or in anywise impair the doctrine of the unity of the human race as set forth in the declaration of paul, "that all nations of men" have been "made of one blood to dwell on all the face of the earth." those who concede to the humanity of the negro and hold to the theory that man is upon the earth through the direct, specific, creative fiat of god, are forced to admit that the negro's certificate of membership in the human family is signed by the deity, and by virtue of that fact must be received at face value. he who holds with the evolutionist that man is the product of evolutionary forces, working incessantly through the countless ages that lie behind us, must perceive that, in that event, the negro can point to the fact that his presence in the human family has the sanction of the multiplied myriads of experiences that, from one forge, out of one material, through the one process, made him along with other human beings. if god is represented as presiding over the forces of evolution, the negro may claim that god and nature have fixed his status as a human being. being forever established by the supreme architect of the universe within the line drawn to encircle humanity to the exclusion of all things else, the negro is entitled to every right that inheres in the fact of his humanity. he is entitled to all the benefits of the feeling of distinctive fellowship--that feeling which operates to bind ant to ant, bird to bird, and man to man, as apart from other orders of beings. he is entitled to the designation, brother. the negro has identically the same right to live as other human beings; the same right as they to tread unfettered any and all of the pathways that destiny has marked out for human feet. it is this conception of the basic, inherent right of the negro to share on equal terms with all other human beings all the rights and privileges appertaining to membership in the human family that gives rise to the race problem in the united states of america. for, while the claim is passionately cherished by the negroes and is espoused with varying degrees of warmth by one section of the american whites, it is most vigorously opposed by another. our problem. it is our task to so utilize the forces at our command as to nullify all artificial hindrances to the development of the negro; to remove from his soul the man-imposed fetters; to so open the way that the man with a black skin shall have his opportunities limited solely by his capacity, as is the case with those not of his color. we are to institute merit as the test of preferment; mind, as the measure of the man. to reverse the standard of measurement, to transfer it from color to culture, is our problem. the plan to be submitted must take cognizance of all the factors in the situation; must be capable of being operated by the race constituted, environed and conditioned as it is. with this conception of our task we begin our labors. the inspiration of the opposition. it is well in every species of combat for a man to seek to know the exact nature of the opposing force. knowing this, one understands the better how to gauge his efforts. with this aim in view, we shall make a reconnoitre to discover just what is arrayed against us. mr. herbert spencer says: "it has come to be a maxim of science that in the causes still at work, are to be identified the causes which, similarly at work during past times, have produced the state of things now existing." we would expect, therefore, to find the past yet affecting the negro, and such is indeed the case. from the year until the close of the civil war, the white people of the south held the negroes in slavery. it is the habit of nature to confer upon a man those equalities that the better fit him for his line of work. in order to successfully hold slaves, the southern man fostered the belief that the negro's humanity was somehow of a different brand from his own. having satisfied himself that essential differences existed between himself and the negro, he was the better prepared to mete out treatment which he would have deemed outrageous if applied to himself by another. to prevent uprisings on the part of the slaves repressive measures were instituted, and the southern white man became an adept in the art of controlling others, and his nature became inured to the task. the traits of character acquired in one generation were transmitted to succeeding generations, so that notions of inherent superiority and the belief in the right of repression became ingrained in southern character. in confirmation of this conclusion, we again quote from mr. herbert spencer, who says: "the emotional nature prompting the general mode of conduct is derived from ancestors--is a product of all ancestral activities. * * * the governing sentiment is, in short, mainly the accumulated and organized sentiment of the past." in view of the foregoing, it becomes evident that the repression which the negro encounters to-day is but the offspring of his repression of yesterday. still in the balances. in prof. giddings' "analysis of the population of the united states according to race, he says that the english temperament is represented by about - / per cent., the prevailing irish by about per cent., and the prevailing scotch by about per cent. the percentage, not of course precise, is, he thinks, indicative of the influence on the american life and character of these racial tendencies." we are laboring to add the voice of the negro to this national chorus. the giving of the negro an opportunity for untrammeled activity in the national government means that much of an addition to and consequent alteration of our characteristic americanism. it is evident that the negro will bring into the national spirit the influence of his peculiar characteristics. now this adding to and taking from the national spirit is a most grave matter. often the characteristic spirit of a people is a sole remaining reliance; is often the only asset that the fluctuations of capricious fortune has not swept away. the great importance that attaches to the spirit that characterizes a nation is set forth by napoleon bonaparte in the following words: "had i been in the choice of the english as i was of the french, i might have lost the battle of waterloo without losing a vote in the legislature or a soldier from my ranks." allusion is here made to that british tendency to persist in a given course and adhere to the standards of chosen leaders in the midst of circumstances adverse and even appalling. on the soil of england and on many another spot where the englishman's foot has trod, from the dying embers, yea, the smouldering ashes of defeat, victory has so often sprung as the result of the spirit to which napoleon bonaparte paid tribute. the english speaking race holds woman in high esteem, but she has thus far been denied the right of suffrage because of the uncertainty as to what would be the resultant blend arising from her more active participation in the affairs of state. mr. wm. e. lecky, in opposing the granting of the right of suffrage to the women of england, gave it as his opinion that the emotional element in politics was already sufficiently great without the addition of the strongly developed emotionalism of woman. the same sentiment of conservatism that operates to cause woman's rejection is, beyond question, a factor in our problem. the negro has but lately entered civilization's parlor. he possesses an oriental nature called to service in an occidental civilization. of remarkably quiescent tendencies he must play a part in a government born of a revolutionary spirit and so devised that revolutions may be effected whenever desired through means of the ballot box. the remarkable manner in which we have responded to the quickening touch of civilization; the revelation of traits of a sublime nature unparalleled in the world's history (witness the keen sense of honor that led us to care for the helpless wives and children of those who were at the seat of war fighting for our continued enslavement); the successful meeting, where conditions were favorable, of every test that civilization has thus far imposed--these considerations influence us to believe that the grasping of the flagstaff by negro hands but means that the flag will float the higher and flutter the prouder and diffuse through the earth even greater glory than before our coming. before we can take up the full place for which we aspire, we must meet and combat the timorous conservatism that has hitherto impeded our progress. thus are the lines of battle drawn. on one field stands the hopeful negro never to be contented save with a man's place. on the opposing field stands the southern white man with an inherited nature and cultivated sentiments that render the repression of the negro a congenial task. to one side stands the representative of civilization at large, hesitating about doing more in our behalf until we have fully cleared our skirts of the suspicion that attaches to a new comer into civilization. with this conception of the influences which we are to combat, we now plan for the momentous struggle. he who has hitherto followed called upon to lead. napoleon has said that men of imagination rule the world. when society is in a transitional state, men of imagination are able through clear comprehension of the forces at work, to project themselves into the new era, and, seeing where the movement tends, place themselves at the head of the procession. those deficient in this faculty cannot perceive the ultimate goal of the processes forming before their very eyes; and, even when new conditions have come bearing the stamp of immortality, they yet are dreaming of a relapse into old conditions that are gone forever. they are thus unfit for the duties of the new era, being devotees of the past. the ruling of the world is, therefore, left, as napoleon asserts, to men of imagination. the present moment is one calling for the exercise of this faculty of the mind on the part of the negro in the united states. hitherto the republican party has been looked upon as the agency which was to solve all his problems. this was a very natural expectation as that party has been the agency by means of which so much tending in that direction has been accomplished. a political party, aspiring for control of the government, may choose a paramount issue, but one in power labors to take care of all interests committed to it. now that the republican party has won a place in the hearts of the american people, the business interests of the country are insistent that they be cared for first and foremost. the nation is making an effort to extend its commerce into all parts of the earth, and the republican party is implored to be the agency through which this is to be accomplished. in view of the many interests committed to its care, the republican party seems disinclined to make a specialty of the negro problem. while reaffirming its old time position on that subject, it does not see its way clear to jeopardize all other interests for the sake of that one plank of its platform. while the friendship and moral support of that party is to be retained, and while negroes who sympathize with its economic policies should abide with it, it is not wise for the race to rely upon it solely for the proper adjustment of the race problem. in fact, the hour has come when the race must take the matter of its salvation into its own hands. in times past, when the battles of the race were to be fought, others led and the trusting negro followed. in this new era the negroes must lead, must bear the main brunt of the battle. thus, while estranging no friends of the past, and fully appreciating the continued necessity of outside assistance wherever attainable, the foreword of our new propaganda shall be self-reliance. having hitherto been concerned with the task of comprehending and imbibing a civilization which we had no appreciable share in developing, our passivity, quiescence, docility, the readiness to follow others, were the characteristics which we mainly manifested. now that we are to cast off the role of a nursling and take our place as co-creators of whatever the future has in store for the human race, a new order of talents must be called into operation and a new mode of procedure adopted. fortunately for us we have the incentive of a largely inglorious past to be redeemed, and the light of all of man's past to serve as our guide. revisiting the orient. to gain our first lesson in the work before us, we transport ourselves over land and sea until, standing in the valley of the nile, we can pause and gaze upon the pyramids of egypt, reminders of the day when our ancestral home held aloft the torch of civilization. in those pyramids, we behold that stones of enormous size and weight have been lifted to such distances from the earth as to stagger the imagination and inspire wonder in the hearts of all generations of all races that have seen or heard of the feat unparalleled in ancient or modern times. some african genius of the long ago constructed a device, now unknown to earth, whereby the several strengths of individuals could be conjoined and the sum of their strengths thus obtained applied to the task of lifting the ponderous stones. innumerable hosts would have failed in lifting those pyramidal stones to the positions which they occupy had it not been for the aid of the device that enabled them to work conjointly. from these pyramids, eloquent in their silence, persistent reminders of the departed glory of africa, let the scattered sons of that soil learn their first great need--co-operation. our initial step must be the creation of a device whereby the several strengths of the millions of negroes in the world may be harnessed to the huge stone of a world hate, to the end that said stone shall be swung aloft and hurled into the sea, sinking by the force of its own weight into eternal oblivion. clasping hands. in view of the fact that we cannot now point to any organization capable of amassing the full strength of the race, and as the absence of such an organization might be construed to indicate that there is no need for such, we now quote authorities that thoroughly demonstrate the absolute need of co-operative effort. prince kropotkin, the eminent russian naturalist, in discussing co-operation among lower animals, remarks: "if we * * * * ask nature, 'who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?' we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. they have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization." darwin, giving the results of his observation among the lower animals, pays tribute to the spirit of co-operation, when he says: "those communities (of animals) which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best." ascending from the lower animals, we find that co-operation is equally as valuable and necessary for man. in the march of humanity toward an ideal civilization, we find those races in the van which have best acquired the art of co-operating, while the rear is brought up by those peoples in whom the instinct of co-operation is thus far missing or but feebly developed. prof. henry drummond remarks: "to create units in indefinite quantities and scatter them over the world is not even to take one single step in progress. before any higher evolution can take place these units must by some means be brought into relation so as not only to act together, but to react upon each other. according to well known biological laws, it is only in combinations, whether of atoms, cells, animals, or human beings that individual units can make any progress, and to create such combinations is in every case the first condition of development. hence the first commandment of evolution everywhere is, 'thou shalt mass, segregate, combine, grow large.'" a recent writer has expressed the thought that "neither material prosperity, nor happiness, nor physical vigor, nor higher intelligence," constitute the difference between the 'higher' and the 'lower' races, but that "those are higher in which broad social instincts and the habit of co-operation exist." in whatever direction we turn we find evidence of the universality of this law. the voices of science, history and sociology in unbroken harmony sing to the negro of the necessity of co-operative effort. we must, therefore, proceed at once to the formation of a racial organization truly representative, and able to present the combined resources of the race to the work before us. when this is done the race problem will at once assume an acute phase; for the aggregate wisdom and power of the negro none can wisely ignore. especially is it to be borne in mind that an aggregation of the kind indicated is calculated to reveal, to develop, to impart added greatness to men already peculiarly endowed with powers of aggressive leadership. we must, then, add to the equation the enormous impetus to be given to causes by the presence of great spirits arousing and guiding the thoughts and energies of earnest, daring millions. renovation. when our great organization has been effected it must proceed to the diligent study of such traits and environing influences as have in the past operated to impair the spirit of co-operation. locating the weak points, we must proceed to induce in the negro such mental and moral characteristics, and must so regulate his environments as to insure efficient co-operation for all the future. it is an evident fact that the spirit of jealousy is more prevalent in some individuals than in others. the like may be asserted with regard to races. among the negroes there appears to be an inordinate development of this feeling of jealousy, which makes itself felt among the humblest and among the highest. success on the part of a negro would appear to be a standing invitation for the shooting of arrows into his bosom. while a strict surveillance over leaders is highly commendable, the baneful effects of hypercriticism and jealous intrigues are far reaching. our racial organization must tear up by the roots this extraordinary predisposition toward jealousy and plant in its stead the flower of brotherly love. during our prolonged existence in a state of individualism, each man working for himself and by himself, there was but little to engender in a man the spirit of sacrifice in the interest of the race as an aggregation. when our racial organization is perfected we must write upon every man's heart the following words, causing each one to feel in his own case: "it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people." in the work of further congealing the race, of inducing in it the social instincts so needful for efficient co-operation, we have the aid of the scorching flames of race prejudice which flash in the faces of all negroes thus driving them closer together. as the wars of david with surrounding enemies made a nation of the loose aggregation of the twelve tribes of israel; as the hundred years of fighting with france effected the integration of the people of england; as the war of the revolution sowed the seed that enabled the american people to form a nation out of the thirteen colonies; as the compact german empire of to-day is the result of outside pressure; just so is american prejudice producing a oneness of sentiment in the negroes which inevitably leads toward their acting as a unit in matters affecting their salvation. having arranged for our organization, we are now to point out the lines along which it is to labor. where to begin. realizing that we must at every point demonstrate that we are intrinsically as well as constitutionally entitled to the lofty estate of american citizenship, our racial organization must neglect nothing needful in the fitting of the race for the high destiny unto which it is called. in the work of preparing the race, first and foremost, attention must be given to character building. any hopes founded on aught else, are illusive. character is the bedrock on which we must build. in describing the successful nation, mr. lecky gives voice to the following sentiments unto which we must pay utmost heed: "its foundation is laid in pure domestic life, in commercial integrity, in a high standard of moral worth and of public spirit, in simple habits, in courage, uprightness, and a certain soundness and moderation of judgment which springs quite as much from character as from intellect. if you would form a wise judgment of the future of a nation, observe carefully whether these qualities are increasing or decaying. observe especially what qualities count for most in public life. is character becoming of greater or less importance? are the men who obtain the highest posts in the nation, men of whom in private life and irrespective of party, competent judges speak with genuine respect? are they of sincere convictions, consistent lives, indisputable integrity? * * * it is by observing this moral current that you can best cast the horoscope of a nation." "there is no place like home." in the matter of character building, first, attention must be paid to the home. prof. henry drummond has remarked that "the first great schoolroom of the human race is the home." he further remarks that "it is the mature opinion of every one who has thought upon the history of the world, that the thing of highest importance for all times and to all nations is family life." the home life of the negro has had to encounter many antagonistic influences. the work of home building could not progress under the institution of slavery. the present builders of negro homes are, therefore, pioneers, in the work, lacking the aptitude that would be theirs did they inherit natures that descended from many generations of home builders. conditions under freedom, though an improvement on the past, have retarded the proper development of the home life of the negro. often the negro husband, having been accustomed to seeing women labor, has no scruples as to his wife's being a laborer, even when her home is full of children. the negro woman having been accustomed to work often continues to do so, after her aid is no longer needed to help support the family. the average home is small and housekeeping duties are not onerous. not many possess libraries, and reading is not much in vogue. thus many work in order to keep employed. in other cases the scale of wages paid to the men is so very low that the woman has to come to the rescue as a wage earner. this calls her from her home and children. it is often the case in large families that the united savings of the husband and wife are insufficient to take care of the family wants, and consequently the children are sent out to work. the hours of toil for all classes of laborers are very long, so that families are separated from early morning until after nightfall. so close has been the confinement all the week that sunday becomes the day for general visiting and pleasure seeking. it is very evident that the home life has but a fighting chance under such conditions. and yet other factors are to be added. the child being required to support himself early, assumes an air of independence, and parental authority is correspondingly weakened. the home life of the negro is also quite largely affected by the peculiar hold which the secret society has upon the race. the thought that he will enter a realm where much wisdom abides operates to draw the negro to the secret society. then, too, if he is a member of such a body, he has, in the fact of membership, a passport bearing testimony as to his social standing. again, the aid furnished by these societies during sickness, and their public displays upon the occasion of the burial of their members are strong attractions for the negroes of limited means and of little note. the negro not content with membership in one such organization usually joins as many as his means will permit. the meetings of the societies are numerous and are held at night, necessitating much absence from home on the part of both the father and the mother. the lodge meeting also furnishes an excuse to such husbands as may have other reasons for not spending evenings at home. the weekly church services are held at night, calling for more time from home. in view of all of which it is apparent that we are weak at the foundation, the family life, and strenuous efforts are needed at this point. our organization must employ an army of workers to co-operate with negro mothers in the work of home building. christian institutions where negro boys and girls are being trained must be induced to pay especial attention to the question of the negro's home. the laborers' working day must be shortened, so that they may have more time at home. the white families must be induced to have earlier suppers, so that those who cook for them may return to their several homes the earlier. the scale of wages must be increased so that the mother and children may be exempt from the task of bread winning. with an increase in wages and the consequent ability to save a portion of his earnings for the 'rainy day,' the lodge will not be the absolute necessity to the negro that it now appears to him to be. under these improved conditions the mother and the father can the better co-operate and make the home what it must be. our racial organization must bend its energies in the direction to accomplish these results. for one thing it must link its great influence to that of the forces laboring for the improvement of the condition of the toiling masses. religion a factor. in his very brilliant work on "social evolution," benjamin kidd remarks that "there is not that direct connection between social development and high intellectual development which has hitherto been almost universally assumed to exist," and "that the wide interval between the peoples who have attained the highest social development and the lowest, is not mainly the result of a difference in intellectual, but a difference in ethical development." he further states that the human race "would, in fact, appear to be growing more and more religious, the winning sections being those in which, _caeteris paribus_, this type of character is most fully developed." he is firmly of the opinion that "the evolution which is slowly proceeding in society is not primarily intellectual, but religious in character." the influence of religion upon a people's life is admittedly so great that any program looking to betterment of their condition must take note of the prevailing religious belief. the christian religion was ingrafted upon our racial life in the days of slavery. as we were in an abnormal state, it should not occasion surprise if many did not get a normal grasp upon the christian religion. in the days of slavery the negro felt that his lot in this world was a rather hopeless one. no where could he catch a glimmer of hope. to him the earth was without form and void. but his optimistic nature had to be fed, and the glories of the world to come, pictured in the bible, to him became a living reality. thenceforth his mind rested not on earth. the death bed, the funeral, the grave, the world to come, received the wealth of his spiritual energies. as a natural result the bearings of religion on this present life were lightly passed over, lethargic conditions ensued and the spirit of wise prevision was in large measure absent. the morbid dwelling of the mind of the negro on anticipated worlds must be discountenanced; a more rounded view of religion inculcated. without entering into sectarianism our racial organization must foster such conceptions of religion as will make its ethical teachings, applicable to life in this world, more prominent. with the home life cared for and proper religious instruction guaranteed, our racial organization will have laid secure foundations. to wear well our crown. our racial organization must bear in mind that we are struggling for untrammeled freedom in the greatest government that human intellect has ever evolved. without proper culture we cannot meet the requirements of worthy citizenship. we must pay especial attention to our public schools, and see to it that knowledge shall not be lacking. the value that education will be to the citizen is admirably outlined by thomas jefferson, in the following words used in setting forth the purposes of education. education is intended: . "to give every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business. . "to enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing. . "to improve, by reading, his morals and faculties. . "to understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either. . "to know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment. and in general to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed." in order to insure the education of the masses, the following steps must be taken: . the negroes must be stimulated to acquire taxable values to such an extent that the southern states shall not administer the school funds for the negroes with the feeling that they are making a charitable donation to the race. . night schools must be fostered for adults. . money must be provided for the lengthening of the school term. . salaries for teaching must be raised that a high order of talent may be the more easily enlisted. . books must be supplied to the children too poor to buy. . means must be instituted to prevent the too common habit of withdrawing the negro child from school at so early an age to help support the family. these and such other measures as close scrutiny may from time to time suggest must be employed to make the public school system among the negroes what it ought to be. in the upper realms. it is not enough to provide elementary training for our people. the great minds of earth choose the devious pathways to be threaded by the wavering feet of humanity. they pass upon what is true and what is false, what is right and what is wrong, what is expedient and what is inexpedient. tremendous is the influence that has been exerted on human history by the teachings of the great. through the training of the intellect the negroes must develop men capable of interpreting and influencing world movements, men able to adjust the race to any new conditions that may arise. we need men to do for the negro race what prof. henry drummond sought to do for the christian religion. in the upper chamber of the house of human knowledge, the congress of scientists presided over by charles darwin, and representing the culture of the ages, met to promulgate a new religion; a religion that would establish nature as our ethical teacher, pointing with the finger of evolution, the way for man to go. by dint of patient, faithful labor and notable achievements in the realm of science, prof. drummond secured admittance into this upper chamber and took his seat at the council table. soon the world heard his voice proclaiming in the tone of one speaking with authority that the new revelations of science contained no poison for christianity; that the new teacher, nature, was the friend, not the enemy, of the old teacher, the bible. he declared that evolution and christianity have "the same author, the same end and the same spirit." thus drummond was on hand to seek to stay the darwinian hand, if, after shattering other conceptions, it had attempted to demolish the one worship that modern civilization has thus far failed to destroy. to prepare negroes for taking care of our interests in the realms of highest thought, our racial organization must found universities, liberally endow scholarships, provide equipments for original investigations and so foster the cause of higher education that no race can boast of superior intellectual attainments. "of making many books there is no end." books are the means by which each successive generation comes into possession of the best (of which the records have been kept) that was wrought during all preceding generations of human endeavor. not only does the art of printing thus connect with all that was good in the past, but it also affords a man the opportunity of becoming a part of all that is being done in his day. in view of these considerations it is evident that a race that does not read must ever be a laggard race. our racial organization must, therefore, found libraries throughout the regions in which negroes dwell, to the end that we may have the benefit of all the elevating influences of good literature. our problem is, however, deeper than the mere founding of libraries, as is apparent from the following considerations: during their sojourn in america the great majority of negroes have had such work assigned to them as required much bodily exercise. but a comparatively few have led sedentary lives. the laboring negroes have been accustomed to sing as they worked or have relieved the monotony of their labors by jovial bantering. the occupations of a race eventually make themselves felt in more or less marked racial characteristics. thus, when a cotton factory was established recently to be operated by negro labor, it failed, the manager assigning as a partial cause thereof the fact that the negroes did not make the best operatives, in that sitting still and being quiet caused them to be rather listless and sleepily inclined. while, in other instances, tendencies in that direction have perhaps been overcome, this one case serves to suggest that the inattention to reading on the part of so many may be traceable to the same inherited indisposition to sit still and be quiet, necessary concomitants of the reading habit. our racial organization must not, therefore, feel that its labors are complete when the libraries are founded. systematic efforts must be put forth to create in our people a thirst for reading so that they may have ears to hear what the past and present are thundering at us. we eat to live. however brave, brilliant and resourceful a general commanding an army may be, however loyal and enthusiastic are his soldiers, he must inevitably fail if he neglects his commissary department. the cravings of the human stomach must be provided for or there will be no soul left in the emaciated body to aspire for higher things. in arranging, therefore, for the welfare of the race our racial organization must not neglect the material needs of our people. an advancing army must protect at all hazzards its base of supplies. we now outline a course of action in keeping with this thought. the man who knows that there is a prejudice against him, owes it to himself to so contrive that he shall be as nearly as possible independent of the workings of this prejudice. negroes, therefore, should, in the main, seek those callings in which they shall be above the whims and prejudices of men. the land owner, the farmer, can come as near to being independent of his fellows as a man may in these days attain. the sun, the elements, the soil, his own strong arm, are his chief reliance and these forces are not subject to enslavement, nor can prejudice weaken them. nature has no favorites among men. the rains fall upon the just and the unjust alike. back to the farms, therefore, should in a large measure be our cry. with a strong agricultural backbone the position of the race is much the more secure. the conditions that operated to cause the negroes to so largely abandon the farms must be studied and altered when possible. our racial organization shall give due recognition to the following needs, doing all that is necessary to see that they are attained: . the negro must become the owner of the soil he tills. . he must be placed above the conditions of dire necessity that causes him to resort to the credit system of buying and the mortgaging of his crops, which things have hitherto wrought his ruin. . provisions must be made whereby he may secure modern appliances with which to farm. . he must be educated so that he may know how to obtain the best possible results from the soil. . he must be taught to keep fully posted upon the important happenings in the commercial world bearing upon his interests. . the negro must join hands with the students of the agricultural problem in general, ready to avail himself of any new developments of value that may arise. little africas. in practically every southern city there are certain sections inhabited almost exclusively by the poorer, shiftless, more ignorant class of negroes. the houses in these negro settlements are small, dilapidated and often situated in marshy regions. the streets or alleys thereof are narrow and crooked and destitute of drainage. in such sections barrooms thrive, gambling dens flourish, and gathering places are afforded for lewd women and vicious men. by day negro women in filthy, unbecoming attire, barefooted and bareheaded, congregate in the street and engage in loud, unseemly talk. idle negro men are to be seen lounging around these settlements. garbage is emptied into the streets there to remain. such settlements as these breed disease and are menaces to the health of the cities. they are the places where crimes and criminals of all kinds are developed. they mar the beauty of the cities and keep down the price of real estate in their neighborhoods. they do much to bring the whole negro race into disrepute. a revolution must be wrought in these settlements at all hazards. the more refined among the negroes must be employed to labor among the masses and thus ameliorate the ills herein set forth. tracts of land should be purchased just beyond corporate limits, in easy access to the business centers. commodious houses should be constructed and sold to the negroes at moderate prices and on easy terms. "ye have the poor with you always." the earnings of the negroes being small, they have but little opportunity to accumulate a surplus for old age and decrepitude. this evil is accentuated by improvidence. so long as these conditions exist, there must be aged negroes unable to take care of themselves. for these homes should be established. orphan asylums are sadly needed and must be provided for the tens of thousands of young cast adrift annually through the deaths of impoverished parents. at present youthful negro offenders are sent to prisons where they are in daily contact with hardened criminals. reformatories must be established where these beginners in crime may be lured from the paths of vice, instead of being the better educated for evil as at present. comparisons unfavorable to the negro have been so often instituted that the passion for appearing as well or better than the whites has taken hold of many. living side by side with a wealthy rival race, the negro often overstrains himself in an endeavor to keep well in sight of the white man. as outgrowths of this condition their church houses, very often, their dwellings, the furnishings for their homes, their dress are wont to cost more than their earnings would warrant. there are money-seeking men who have discovered the depths of this desire of the negro to appear well. they have formed loan companies and accept mortgages on all sorts of possessions of the negroes and exact rates of interest that are astounding. dealers in various lines of ware do not hesitate to sell to the negroes the most costly articles on the installment plan, taking care to place charges thereon far above their real value. thus the meagre earnings of the race are so largely absorbed in the manner indicated. it means perpetual poverty to the masses unless corrected. negroes must be taught to live simply, in keeping with their financial condition. penny saving banks must everywhere be established, and forces set to work to urge the negroes to save their money, thus counteracting the influence of the myriad loan offices that tempt them to their financial ruin. the winds have veered. the age in which we live is fast shifting from a basis in which brute force is a great factor, to one in which skill and intelligence are the prime essentials. the day of the man who has naught to offer save his native strength is fast drawing to a close, and his night is all but upon us. the general refinement of taste requiring a higher order of intelligence to satisfy it; the inventive genius of man bringing into use complicated machinery--these are influences at work rendering necessary a greater measure of skill and a higher order of intelligence in the modern laborer. if the negro would not be lost in the shift of the age, he must be trained with a view to the requirements of modern civilization. to this end technological schools must be established throughout the south and other centers of negro labor. "the field is the world." the negroes have evinced a keen desire for education, until now there are more educated young men and women than there is congenial labor for them. the schools have sent them forth far faster than conditions have permitted them to be absorbed. the negro parent that has to submit to great privations to educate his child, viewing education from the simple standpoint of its ability to afford a livelihood, has now under consideration the advisability of continuing his effort to educate his offspring. the pupil, confronted with so many of his fellows that have gone through school and failed of congenial employment, is inclined to lay down his books and bring his school days to a close. to relieve this very annoying congestion, negroes must invade all the avenues of trade and found enterprises that will give employment to the trained members of the race. the labor of the race is fully able to sustain all branches of endeavor incident to civilized life. simultaneous with this development of the home field, puerto rico, cuba, hawaii, the philippines and africa must be utilized to relieve this congestion. the well equipped young men and women must be inoculated with more of the pioneer spirit. where the gale blows fiercest. in labor, business, social and religious circles, a citizen is at liberty to avoid contact with an undesirable neighbor if he so elects. as these constitute the bulk of the activities of the american people, the normal relation of the negroes and whites is a peaceful one. but there are points where contact is unavoidable. we have a common political structure, common courts and common public utilities. at these points all citizens must meet and such friction as arises comes mainly from these sources. we now outline the program to be carried out by our racial organization at these points, beginning with the ballot box. the united states is pre-eminently a political country, politics occupying a relatively large space in the public mind. with the national thought focused on politics, in that arena a man is more sorely tried, his powers put to more severe tests, his strong and his weak points more clearly developed than in any other sphere of activity. he who emerges from the galling fire of american politics unscathed, must be accorded a crown of unfading glory. to illustrate the ordeal through which one must pass, we cite the following comment: "in turning over the files of the american press, we read of washington as an embezzler; of jefferson as an atheist, an anarchist and a libertine; of adams as a tyrant; and of jackson as a bully, a border ruffian and an assassin. van buren was accused of stealing gold spoons from the 'white house.' the stock epithet applied to president lincoln was the 'illinois baboon.' president johnson was habitually described as a 'drunken boor.' what was said by the newspapers of our later presidents, from general grant to mr. cleveland, is fresh in the memory of every person of mature age. how utterly insincere is all this hideous abuse may be seen in the fact that it is hushed into silence as soon as the object of it passes out of the political arena into private life. no breath of it ever lingers in the allusions that are thereafter made to him by even the bitterest of his late opponents." the negro has assuredly received his full measure of blows from the hand of america's master passion. when the negro stepped into the arena to play his part he had to encounter the feeling of caste, which insisted that he was inherently disqualified to enter, the claim being set up that nature had forever decreed against him in this respect. he was met with violence, with fraud, and vituperation, with misrepresentation, with disregard for all the forms of law. the votes which he sought to cast in his own favor were boldly appropriated to the opposition. his cupidity was tempted, his every weakness exploited. his virtues were minimized and his shortcomings exaggerated and unduly paraded. this treatment of the negro was not necessarily special. it was in keeping with the rules of american politics in which the darwinian law of the survival of the fittest everywhere obtains. in view of the galling fire which all participants in america who enter politics must encounter, our racial organization will be confronted with a serious task in the formulation of the political program for the negro. the following suggestions will afford a basis for the projecting of a policy that will enable the race to take care of itself at this, the most crucial, the really pivotal point in its battle for honorable station. the difficulties in the way must not influence the negro to regard the political tree as bearing forbidden fruit, as regards himself. such a course would be an acceptance of the 'class' system, which is contrary to the genius of american institutions. there is a development that comes from the contemplation of and the participation in the affairs of state. much of the superiority of the american civilization is due to the fact that its citizens as a body are treated as sovereigns, educated with a view to the fact that they are to pass upon most grave and intricate problems. again, as an encouragement to civic virtues the negro youth, like other youths, must be allowed to feel that the social group which he is expected to serve, is permitted to reward him if his faithfulness to the needs of the group justify such a course. thus the political door, through which a man enters to receive rewards from the state acting as a body, must never be closed to the negro. far be it from the negroes to ever yield so vital a point. instead of counselling retirement from politics, our racial organization is to arrange for a wiser participation therein. the manner of the emancipation of the negro was most unfortunate indeed. it should have come from the nation as a whole, or should have been the direct result of the negro's own efforts, if he was to begin his career as a citizen under ideal circumstances. as it is, he has been caused to feel that he owes a debt of gratitude to one party, so great as to constitute a perpetual mortgage. the negro must shake himself loose from all such feelings if he is to be a true citizen. he must put the nation above the party even if that party is accredited with having done him a personal service. nor must he be influenced by hatred of the party that in the past was associated with his humiliation. when our national government was but beginning its career in the family of nations, george washington warned it against the undue cultivation of love and hatred. said he in his farewell address: "cultivate peace and harmony with all. nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that in place of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated. the nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. it is a slave to its animosity or its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest." he could say this and desire its application to both england and france, though the former had fought against and the latter for the establishment of the republic. our racial organization must teach the negro to observe this rule with regard to all existing political parties. let an unbiased study of present and prospective policies influence party affiliations, rather than love and hatred based upon a past forever dead. it is not wise for the negroes to aspire to exercise political influence in proportion to mere numbers with a view to securing _race_ triumphs. good government, pure and simple, and not race supremacy, must be the end forever sought. the right to rule must be accorded to the intelligence, to the moral and material worth of every community as ascertained with regard to the whole body of the people, whites and negroes. no man white or black must be supported or opposed on account of his color. the ranks of the negroes must cease to be the place of refuge and the means of power for the renegade weaklings from the camps of the whites, whose only impelling motive is greed for the emoluments of office, and whose only recommendation is the color of the skin. the white face in negro ranks must cease to bring a premium with the negroes. that face, like all others, must be adjudged purely upon its merits. the negroes must convince the better element of southern whites that they will not take up and honor worthless white men rightfully cast off or denied distinction in and by their own race. again, the negroes must not center their political activities on the mere holding of offices. the office is not always the real seat of political power. in american politics it is sometimes the political boss, sometimes the party caucus, sometimes the committee of the law-making body, that is the actual determining factor in matters. the negro must make a study of the larger needs of the people and persist in making himself felt at the most effective point. though not holding office himself he may yet exert a wholesome influence on the man that does, if he but act wisely. it is said of american politics as a whole, that the best citizens are too largely holding aloof. it is urged that the law making bodies do not any longer represent the highest mental and moral development of the people. even if the good and strong of other groups of americans are adopting such a course, the better element of negroes cannot afford to follow the example. the interests of the race in matters political must not be left to those least qualified for the responsibilities. men, good and true, the ablest of the race, must be induced to make the necessary sacrifices and enter politics with a view to taking care at this point of the honor and welfare of the race. unworthy and incompetent men in the race must be given a back seat, and their influence neutralized in political affairs, the place where we are peculiarly on trial, and where so much may be won or lost. finally, knowing that our hereditary influences and environments in the past were not such as were best adapted to preparing a people temperamentally for self-government; knowing that america is infested with a strong color prejudice; knowing that the negro's own record as a voter and lawmaker is not altogether in his own favor; knowing the difficulties that naturally arise from the attempts to blend such widely divergent race types into a common political life; knowing how galling is the fire upon any one who has the temerity to enter the arena of american politics; knowing these things, the guiding star of the negro, the light from which his eye must never wander, is caution. others with less to lose may "play the game of politics" lightly, but the negro must give to the task the highest there is in him. that the policy herein set forth may be carried out; that the negro may be prepared to demean himself nobly in the maelstrom of american politics, our racial organization shall create a non-partisan bureau that shall thoroughly educate the negro as to his own history; as to the history of the anglo-saxon race; as to our form of government; as to our political parties; as to all the problems confronting our nation; as to the predominating racial instincts of the anglo-saxon race which are often in reality more of a governing force with us than mere written laws. with the hen goes her brood. with the adjustment of the political question will come an era of good feeling which will operate to ameliorate other conditions. the negro complains that the courts of the south are arrayed against him; that he does not receive there the treatment accorded to other citizens. so much of this as is true is traceable to the fact that the courts are at present sustained by the same race feeling which has for its end the suppression of the negro. when the negro again becomes a political factor and the court is made amenable to negro public sentiment in common with the rest of the community, care will then be taken that evenhanded justice is meted out to all. under such conditions the negroes and white men of the south will be in a frame of mind to meet and join hands for the protection of womanhood, for the suppression of lynching, for the extirpation of criminality in general. chief among the reforms to be inaugurated will be the improvement of the very deplorable prison systems, which being operated with a view to producing revenue, are a blot upon our civilization. when better feelings prevail, the laws regulating public utilities will be such as conform to the desires of the best citizens of all races. thus it will be seen how many of the ills that ramified the whole of southern life were generated from the strife that had its origin at the ballot box. the problem of the other man. with our racial organization thus laboring to prepare the race to meet the highest requirements of civilization, the subjective phase of the problem is provided for, and we may now direct our attention to extrinsic factors, the forces without, that must be reckoned with. in the midst of the study of _our_ problem, our racial organization must bear in mind the fact that the southern white man has _his_ problem. he is the lineal descendant of the builders of our civilization. we are heirs thereof by adoption; the southern white man by birth. it must be assumed that the instincts that make possible our civilization are more deeply written in his nature than in that of the negro. to him primarily, therefore, is committed the task of preserving in the southland characteristic americanism. thus while benefiting by the many noble traits which the negro brings, the southern white man must yet resist whatever africanizing tendencies that anywhere show themselves. such is the southern white man's problem. there are negroes that can meet every test of civilization, while there are others upon whom residence in america has wrought but feebly. the southern white man closes the door in the face of the prepared negro, holding that to do otherwise would mean the influx of an uncontrollable mass of the unprepared. he also states that coercive methods are necessary to preserve in the south the anglo-saxon flavor to our civilization. the virile elements in all communities are in duty bound to draw the weaker ones up to themselves, but indiscriminate repression and coercion are not the proper means to be employed in these modern times. the weak are to be elevated through the superior forces known to mind and morals. it is far better for the south and for the nation that the shortcomings of the negro be conquered by excellencies, than that they should be left as a constantly rising flood tide destined to over-leap all walls whatsoever, carrying devastation that many generations will be taxed to repair. the white man of the south must be aided in his work by the people of the whole land. in view of what is required of them, the white people of the south ought, perhaps, to be more highly and more generally educated than those of any other section of the country, whereas the percentage of illiteracy among them is greater than it is in any other section. our racial organization must encourage the philanthropists of the world to remember the white people of the south in the distribution of their wealth for benevolent purposes. when education is more general in the south and the white people are conscious that as an aggregation they represent a higher degree of power, they will feel the more inclined to abandon the policy of force, and proceed with the work of intellectually assimilating the negroes whom they have hitherto thrust out. when thus equipped the good and strong in the south will coalesce and rule by the sheer force of superior worth, which is the only method countenanced by truly civilized peoples. recognizing the fact that, in the interests of a composite american civilization, it is desirable that the negro be imbued with many of the qualities of the white man, care should be taken that the negro population be so diffused throughout the country, that no section of the white race shall have more work of this character than it can well perform. our racial organization shall therefore establish an emigration bureau, that shall drain off unduly congested regions and locate negroes in more desirable localities. this lightening of the burdens of some places, coupled with the program of more extended education, will aid the southern white man to do what the world expects of him, namely, preserve his own strong parts and impart strength to, not repress, the weak. thus less and less grow the essential elements of the problem as the great bulk of the negroes measure up to the standard of the ideal citizen and the southern white man is the better prepared to shoulder the responsibility that attaches to the post of seniority in the civilization under which we live. our last foe. when all essential factors in the situation have been cancelled our racial organization will find that there remains to be overthrown pride of race, prejudice and self-interest. the anglo-saxon race has so long enjoyed the thought of superiority over the negro, that there will be those to oppose the unfettering of the negro through the sheer force of race pride. there will be others who will continue in opposition, as a result of prejudice, for which they can assign absolutely no reason. there will still be others who have profited by race antagonisms, who have come into place and power by their ability to crush out negro aspirations. an era of peace would rob this class of an occupation, and self-interest will influence them to oppose the untrammeling of the negro. against pride of race, prejudice and selfishness, then, our racial organization will find itself pitted in the last instance. here, again, we are face to face with a situation that calls for somewhat of a change of front on the part of the negro. in the days of slavery the negro who sought for freedom fixed his eye upon the "north star" and journeyed thitherward. when freedom at last came to the negro in the south it came from northern climes. his mind has grown accustomed to looking to forces external to the south to bring him his desires. enlightened communities are in great measure self-governing, and too much reliance must not be placed on foreign forces. the negro must more largely seek to utilize forces present in the southland. there are broadminded men there that are able to rise above all considerations of pride, prejudice and selfishness, and deal with all men according to the mandates of the golden rule. our racial organization must form an alliance with such white neighbors--must labor with them in matters looking to the highest interests of our common country. as evidence that there is a possibility of such an alliance, we quote the following from "the washington post," a leading newspaper in the nation's capital, and a recognized champion of southern interests: "so far as we are concerned--and we believe that the best element of the south in every state will sustain our proposition--we hold that, as between the ignorant of the two races, the negroes are preferable. they are conservative; they are good citizens; they take no stock in social schisms and vagaries; they do not consort with anarchists; they cannot be made the tools and agents of incendiaries. * * * their influence in government would be infinitely more wholesome than the influence of the white sansculotte, the riffraff, the idlers, the rowdies, and the outlaws." mightier than the sword. while paying strict attention to our home influences, we must not be unmindful of the outside world. if we can bring to bear upon the local situation the moral support of other sections of our country and of other civilized lands, our travel in the direction sought will be the faster. one of the chief labors of our racial organization will be to lay the case of the negro upon the heart of the world and cause all humanity to lift a voice in our behalf. as evidence that this course is pregnant with hope, we cite the following authorities: herbert spencer designates "the control exercised by public sentiment over conduct at large" as "irresistible." he further says: "it requires only to contemplate the social code which regulates life, down even to the color of an evening necktie, and to note how those who dare not break this code have no hesitation in smuggling, to see that an unwritten law enforced by opinion, is more peremptory than a written law not so enforced. and still more on observing that men disregard the just claims of creditors, who for goods given cannot get the money, while they are anxious to discharge so-called debts of honor to those who have rendered neither goods nor services, we are shown that the control of prevailing sentiment, unenforced by law and religion, may be more potent than law and religion together, when they are backed by sentiment less strongly manifested. looking at the total activities of men, we are obliged to admit, that they are still, as they were at the outset, guided by the aggregate feeling, past and present." huxley remarks: "it is only needful to look around us to see that the greatest restrainers of the anti-social tendencies of men is fear, not of the law, but of the opinions of their fellows. the conventions of honor bind men who break legal, moral and religious bonds; and while people endure the extremity of pain rather than part with life, shame drives the weakest to suicide." moses, recognizing the influence of the crowd even when in the wrong, felt the necessity of imbedding in the jewish code this declaration: "thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." jesus christ in projecting a world-wide kingdom designates public reprobation as the highest form of punishment to be known in his realm. "let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican." the exponents in the anglo-saxon race, of justice, liberty, equality and progress, have contended most zealously for the freedom of the press and have evinced in every way a keen appreciation of the value of this instrumentality developed among them for the utilization of the force of public sentiment. in discussing the manner of effecting results in problems of the general nature of ours, benjamin kidd remarks: "* * * * in like manner the effect produced on the minds of the british people by descriptions of the wrongs and sufferings of oppressed nationalities, has been one of the most powerful influences affecting the foreign policy of england throughout the nineteenth century; and any close student of our politics during this period would have to note that this influence, so far as the will of the people found expression through the government in power, has been a far more potent factor in shaping that policy than any clear conception of those far reaching political motives so often attributed to the british nation by other countries." resolved upon the enlistment of the enlightened sentiment of the world, our racial organization must utilize the talent of the race for oratory and send able men with burning hearts to speak with flaming tongues of such wrongs as the south wittingly or unwittingly imposes upon us. negro newspapers must be supported, until their unquestioned excellence makes a way for them into homes without regard to race. daily newspapers and magazines, favorable to the highest interests of the race, must be established so that the outpourings of the souls of negro writers may have better opportunities of reaching the world. the poem, the novel, the drama must be pressed into service. the painter, the sculptor, the musical composer must plead our cause in the world of æsthetics. the bird that would live must thrill the huntsman with its song. with the sympathies of the world thus enkindled, there are none who would wish to withhold our rights. even a cain cries out against a situation in which every man's hand would be against him. our racial organization must gird itself for the stupendous task of thus winning our great battle, of thus inducing the iron hand to relax its grasp. the end draweth nigh. such is the program of endeavor to be set before our great racial organization. local organizations modeled after it, having in view similar aims will be created and put in operation. it is evident that the task before us involves the expenditure of enormous sums of money. it is true that the organization once in operation would be cheerfully and adequately supported by the negroes. but the placing of it upon such a basis as will disclose its value and secure devotion will require great sums of money. it so happens that africa has but recently bestowed upon me, dorlan warthell, untold millions. i have no qualms of conscience in thus applying to the negroes of america funds derived from africa, for i firmly believe with mr. wm. t. stead in the americanization of the globe, and believe that in due time the negroes of america are to be the immediate agents of the americanization of africa. money spent in the uplift of the american negro is, therefore, an investment in the interests of africa that will pay a glorious dividend. once established our organization shall win such a hold on the hearts of the negroes of the world that the poor and the rich will give unstintedly for its maintenance. the philanthropists within the race may be confidently relied upon to do all that may be justly expected of them in the matter. it only remains for me to state that i have, after a most careful search, selected the men whose names you find appended. they constitute a provisional congress that will superintend the formation of our permanent organization. the men chosen are noted for their intellectual acumen, broad grasp of affairs, judicial temperament, constructive ability, moral probity, and their capacity for sustained endeavor. such are the qualities that are _known_ to characterize the men who have been chosen to groom this infant race to march as one man to the drum beat of fate. as i view the matter, here lies before the negro a field of endeavor as great as the earth affords. he is provided with a sphere of possible activity wherein may be won on american soil, as glorious a crown as was ever woven for human brow. equipped with an organization that can amass the full strength of the race; blessed with the presence of great minds now furnished with facilities for the attainment of great ends; cheered by a consciousness of power; aided by the moral effect which our racial unity and our insistent attitude in the right will produce; moving forward unfalteringly in the direction of all that is true and good, decisive results must surely follow. thanks to this plan, morlene, i can now assure you that the death knell of the negro's night has been rung, the stars have shrunk bashfully out of sight, and happy fingers are even now painting the eastern sky a golden hue, a sure sign that the dawn is here. yours humbly, dorlan warthell +---------------------------------------------------------+ |transcriber's note: | | | | text transliterated from greek is enclosed by tilde | | characters (~transliterated greek~). | | | | text that was in small capitals has been converted to | | all upper case. | | | | the oe ligature has been removed from words such as | | boeotia and foetus. | | | | a list of corrections is at the end of this e-book. | +---------------------------------------------------------+ the moral and intellectual diversity of races. with particular reference to their respective influence in the civil and political history of mankind. from the french of count a. de gobineau: with an analytical introduction and copious historical notes. by h. hotz. to which is added an appendix containing a summary of the latest scientific facts bearing upon the question of unity or plurality of species. by j. c. nott, m. d., of mobile. philadelphia: j. b. lippincott & co. . entered according to act of congress, in the year , by j. b. lippincott & co., in the office of the clerk of the district court of the united states in and for the eastern district of pennsylvania. to the statesmen of america, this work, the first on the races of men contemplated from the point of view of the statesman and historian rather than the naturalist, is respectfully dedicated by the american editor. editor's preface. it has been truly observed that a good book seldom requires, and a bad one never deserves, a long preface. when a foreign book, however, is obtruded on the notice of the public, it is but just that the reasons for so doing should be explained; and, in the present case, this is the more necessary, as the title of the work might lead many to believe that it was intended to re-agitate the question of unity or plurality of the human species--a question which the majority of readers consider satisfactorily and forever settled by the words of holy writ. such, however, is not the purpose of either the author or the editor. the design of this work is, to contribute toward the knowledge of the leading mental and moral characteristics of the various races of men which have subsisted from the dawn of history to the present era, and to ascertain, if possible, the degree to which they are susceptible of improvement. the annals of the world demonstrate beyond a doubt, that the different branches of the human family, like the individual members of a community, are endowed with capacities, different not only in degree but in kind, and that, in proportion to these endowments, they have contributed, and still contribute to that great march of progress of the human race, which we term civilization. to portray the nature of these endowments, to estimate the influence of each race in the destinies of all, and to point out the effects of mixture of races in the rise and fall of great empires, has been the task to the accomplishment of which, though too extensive for one man, the author has devoted his abilities. the troubles and sufferings of his native country, from sudden political gyrations, led him to speculate upon their causes, which he believes are to be traced to the great variety of incongruous ethnical elements composing the population of france. the deductions at which he arrived in that field of observation he subjected to the test of universal history; and the result of his studies for many years, facilitated by the experiences of a diplomatic career, are now before the american public in a translation. that a work, on so comprehensive a subject, should be exempt from error, cannot be expected, and is not pretended; but the aim is certainly a noble one, and its pursuit cannot be otherwise than instructive to the statesman and historian, and no less so to the general reader. in this country, it is peculiarly interesting and important, for not only is our immense territory the abode of the three best defined varieties of the human species--the white, the negro, and the indian--to which the extensive immigration of the chinese on our pacific coast is rapidly adding a fourth, but the fusion of diverse nationalities is nowhere more rapid and complete; nowhere is the great problem of man's perfectibility being solved on a grander scale, or in a more decisive manner. while, then, nothing can be further removed from our intentions, or more repugnant to our sentiments, than to wage war on religion, or throw ridicule on the labors of the missionary and philanthropist, we thought it not a useless undertaking to lay before our countrymen the opinions of a european thinker, who, without straining or superseding texts to answer his purposes, or departing in any way from the pure spirit of christianity, has reflected upon questions which with us are of immense moment and constant recurrence. h. h. philadelphia, _nov. , _. contents. analytical introduction. the discussion of the moral and intellectual diversity of races totally independent of the question of unity or plurality of origin--leading propositions of this volume, with illustrations and comments. chapter i. political catastrophes. perishable condition of all human societies--ancient ideas concerning this phenomenon--modern theories chapter ii. alleged causes of political catastrophes examined. fanaticism--aztec empire of mexico.--luxury--modern european states as luxurious as the ancient.--corruption of morals--the standard of morality fluctuates in the various periods of a nation's history: example, france--is no higher in youthful communities than in old ones--morality of paris.--irreligion--never spreads through all ranks of a nation--greece and rome--tenacity of paganism chapter iii. influence of government upon the longevity of nations. misgovernment defined--athens, china, spain, germany, italy, etc.--is not in itself a sufficient cause for the ruin of nations. chapter iv. definition of the word degeneracy--its cause. skeleton history of a nation--origin of castes, nobility, etc.--vitality of nations not necessarily extinguished by conquest--china, hindostan--permanency of their peculiar civilizations. chapter v. the moral and intellectual diversity of races is not the result of political institutions. antipathy of races--results of their mixture--the scientific axiom of the absolute equality of men, but an extension of the political--its fallacy--universal belief in unequal endowment of races--the moral and intellectual diversity of races not attributable to institutions--indigenous institutions are the expression of popular sentiments; when foreign and imported, they never prosper--illustrations: england and france--roman empire--european colonies--sandwich islands--st. domingo--jesuit missions in paraguay chapter vi. this diversity is not the result of geographical situation. america--ancient empires--phenicians and romans--jews--greece and rome--commercial cities of europe--isthmus of darien chapter vii. influence of christianity upon moral and intellectual diversity of races. the term christian civilization examined--reasons for rejecting it--intellectual diversity no hindrance to the universal diffusion of christianity--civilizing influence of christian religion by elevating and purifying the morals, etc.; but does not remove intellectual disparities--various instances--cherokees--difference between imitation and comprehension of civilized life introductory note to chapters viii. and ix. rapid survey of the populations comprised under the appellation "teutonic"--their present ethnological area, and leading characteristics--fondness for the sea displayed by the teutonic tribes of northwestern europe, and perceptible in their descendants chapter viii. civilization. mr. guizot's and mr. w. von humboldt's definitions examined. its elements chapter ix. elements of civilization--continued. definition of the term--specific differences of civilizations--hindoo, chinese, european, greek, and roman civilizations--universality of chinese civilization--superficiality of ours--picture of the social condition of france chapter x. question of unity or plurality of races. systems of camper, blumenbach, morton, carus--investigations of owen, vrolik, weber--prolificness of hybrids, the great scientific stronghold of the advocates of unity of species chapter xi. permanency of types. the language of holy writ in favor of common origin--the permanency of their characteristics separates the races of men as effectually as if they were distinct creations--arabs, jews--prichard's argument about the influence of climate examined--ethnological history of the turks and hungarians chapter xii. classification of races. primary varieties--test for recognizing them; not always reliable--effects of intermixture--secondary varieties--tertiary varieties--amalgamation of races in large cities--relative scale of beauty in various branches of the human family--their inequality in muscular strength and powers of endurance note to the preceding chapter. the position and treatment of woman among the various races of men a proof of their moral and intellectual diversity chapter xiii. perfectibility of man. imperfect notions of the capability of savage tribes--parallel between our civilization and those that preceded it--our modern political theories no novelty--the political parties of rome--peace societies--the art of printing a means, the results of which depend on its use--what constitutes a "living" civilization--limits of the sphere of intellectual acquisitions chapter xiv. mutual relations of different modes of intellectual culture. necessary consequences of a supposed equality of all races--uniform testimony of history to the contrary--traces of extinct civilizations among barbarous tribes--laws which govern the adoption of a state of civilization by conquered populations--antagonism of different modes of culture; the hellenic and persian, european and arab, etc. chapter xv. moral and intellectual characteristics of the three great varieties. impropriety of drawing general conclusions from individual cases--recapitulatory sketch of the leading features of the negro, the yellow, and the white races--superiority of the latter--conclusion of volume the first appendix. by j. c. nott, m. d. a.--dr. morton's later tables b.--species; varieties. latest experiments upon the laws of hybridity c.--biblical connections of the question of unity or plurality of species analytical introduction. before departing on one's travels to a foreign country, it is well to cast a glance on the map, and if we expect to meet and examine many curiosities, a correct itinerary may not be an inconvenient travelling companion. in laying before the public the present work of mr. gobineau, embracing a field of inquiry so boundless and treating of subjects of such vast importance to all, it has been thought not altogether useless or inappropriate to give a rapid outline of the topics presented to the consideration of the reader--a ground-plan, as it were, of the extensive edifice he is invited to enter, so that he may afterwards examine it at leisure, and judge of the symmetry of its parts. this, though fully sensible of the inadequacy of his powers to the due execution of the task, the present writer has endeavored to do, making such comments on the way, and using such additional illustrations as the nature of the subject seemed to require. * * * * * whether we contemplate the human family from the point of view of the naturalist or of the philosopher, we are struck with the marked dissimilarity of the various groups. the obvious physical characteristics by which we distinguish what are termed different races, are not more clearly defined than the psychical diversities observable among them. "if a person," says the learned vindicator of the unity of the human species,[ ] "after surveying some brilliant ceremony or court pageant in one of the splendid cities of europe, were suddenly carried into a hamlet in negro-land, at the hour when the sable tribes recreate themselves with dancing and music; or if he were transported to the saline plains over which bald and tawny mongolians roam, differing but little in hue from the yellow soil of their steppes, brightened by the saffron flowers of the iris and tulip; if he were placed near the solitary dens of the bushman, where the lean and hungry savage crouches in silence, like a beast of prey, watching with fixed eyes the birds which enter his pitfall, or greedily devouring the insects and reptiles which chance may bring within his grasp; if he were carried into the midst of an australian forest, where the squalid companions of kangaroos may be seen crawling in procession, in imitation of quadrupeds, would the spectator of such phenomena imagine the different groups which he had surveyed to be the offspring of one family? and if he were led to adopt that opinion, how would he attempt to account for the striking diversities in their aspect and manner of existence?" these diversities, so graphically described by mr. prichard, present a problem, the solution of which has occupied the most ingenious minds, especially of our times. the question of unity or plurality of the human species has of late excited much animated discussion; great names and weighty authorities are enlisted on either side, and a unanimous decision appears not likely to be soon agreed upon. but it is not my purpose, nor that of the author to whose writings these pages are introductory, to enter into a contest which to me seems rather a dispute about words than essentials. the distinguishing physical characteristics of what we term races of man are recognized by all parties, and whether these races are _distinct species_ or _permanent varieties_[ ] only of the same, cannot affect the subject under investigation. in whatever manner the diversities among the various branches of the human family may have originated, whether they are primordial or were produced by external causes, their permanency is now generally admitted. "the ethiopian cannot change his skin." if there are, or ever have been, external agencies that could change a white man into a negro, or _vice versa_, it is obvious that such causes have either ceased to operate, or operate only in a lapse of time so incommensurable as to be imponderable to our perceptions, for the races which now exist can be traced up to the dawn of history, and no well-authenticated instance of a transformation under any circumstances is on record. in human reasoning it is certainly legitimate to judge of the future by the experiences of the past, and we are, therefore, warranted to conclude that if races have preserved their identity for the last two thousand years, they will not lose it in the next two thousand. it is somewhat singular, however, that while most writers have ceased to explain the physical diversities of races by external causes, such as climate, food, etc., yet many still persist in maintaining the absolute equality of all in other respects, referring such differences in character as are undeniable, solely to circumstances, education, mode of life, etc. these writers consider all races as merely in different stages of development, and pretend that the lowest savage, or at least his offspring, may, by judicious training, and in course of time, be rendered equal to the civilized man. before mentioning any facts in opposition to this doctrine, let us examine the reasoning upon which it is based. "man is the creature of circumstances," is an adage extended from individuals to races, and repeated by many without considering its bearing. the celebrated author of _wealth of nations_[ ] says, "that the difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, arises, not so much from nature, but from habit and education." that a mind, which, with proper nurture, might have graced a philosopher, should, under unfavorable circumstances, remain forever confined in a narrow and humble sphere, does not, indeed, seem at all improbable; but dr. smith certainly does not mean to deny the existence of natural talents, of innate peculiar capacities for the accomplishment of certain purposes. this is what they do who ascribe the mental inequality of the various branches of the human family to external circumstances only. "the intellectual qualities of man," say they, "are developed entirely by education. the mind is, at first, a perfect blank, fitted and ready to receive any kind of impressions. for these, we are dependent on the political, civil, and religious institutions under which we live, the persons with whom we are connected, and the circumstances in which we are placed in the different periods of life. wholly the creatures of association and habit, the characters of men are formed by the instruction, conversation, and example of those with whom they mix in society, or whose ideas they imbibe in the course of their reading and studies."[ ] again: "as all men, in all nations, are of the same species, are endowed with the same senses and feelings, and receive their perceptions and ideas through similar organs, the difference, whether physical or moral, that is observed in comparing different races or assemblages of men, can arise only from external and adventitious circumstances."[ ] the last position is entirely dependent on the first; if we grant the first, relating to individuals, the other follows as a necessary consequence. for, if we assume that the infinite intellectual diversities of individuals are owing solely to external influences, it is self-evident that the same diversities in nations, which are but aggregations of individuals, must result from the same causes. but are we prepared to grant this first position--to assert that man is but an automaton, whose wheelwork is entirely without--the mere buffet and plaything of accident and circumstances? is not this the first step to gross materialism, the first argument laid down by that school, of which the great locke has been stigmatized as the father, because he also asserts that the human mind is at first a blank tablet. but locke certainly could not mean that all these tablets were the same and of equal value. a tablet of wax receives an impression which one of marble will not; on the former is easily effaced what the other forever retains. we do not deny that circumstances have a great influence in moulding both moral and intellectual character, but we do insist that there is a primary basis upon which the degree of that influence depends, and which is the work of god and not of man or chance. what agriculturist could be made to believe that, with the same care, all plants would thrive equally well in all soils? to assert that the character of a man, whether good or wicked, noble or mean, is the aggregate result of influences over which he has no control, is to deny that man is a free agent; it is infinitely worse than the creed of the buddhist, who believes that all animated beings possess a detached portion of an all-embracing intelligence, which acts according to the nature and capacity of the machine of clay that it, for the time, occupies, and when the machine is worn out or destroyed, returns, like a rivulet to the sea, to the vast ocean of intelligence whence it came, and in which again it is lost. in the name of common sense, daily observation, and above all, of revelation, we protest against a doctrine which paves the road to the most absurd as well as anti-religious conclusions. in it we recognize the fountain whence flow all the varied forms and names under which atheism disguises itself. but it is useless to enter any further upon the refutation of an argument which few would be willing seriously to maintain. it is one of those plausible speculations which, once admitted, serve as the basis of so many brilliant, but airy, theories that dazzle and attract those who do not take the trouble of examining their solidity. once we admit that circumstances, though they may impede or favor the development of powers, cannot give them; in other words, that they can call into action, but cannot create, moral and intellectual resources; no argument can be drawn from the unity of species in favor of the mental equality of races. if two men, the offspring of the same parents, can be the one a dunce, the other a genius, why cannot different races, though descended of the same stock, be different also in intellectual endowments? we should laugh at, or rather, pity the man who would try to persuade us that there is no difference in color, etc., between the scandinavian and the african, and yet it is by some considered little short of heresy to affirm, that there is an imparity in their minds as well as in their bodies. we are told--and the objection seems indeed a grave one--that if we admit psychical as well as physical gradations in the scale of human races, the lowest must be so hopelessly inferior to the higher, their perceptions and intellectual capacities so dim, that even the light of the gospel cannot illumine them. were it so, we should at once abandon the argument as one above human comprehension, rather than suppose that god's mercy is confined to any particular race or races. but let us earnestly investigate the question. on so vital a point the sacred record cannot but be plain and explicit. to it let us turn. man--even the lowest of his species--has a soul. however much defaced god's image, it is vivified by his breath. to save that soul, to release it from the bondage of evil, christ descended upon earth and gave to mankind, not a complicated system of philosophy which none but the learned and intellectual could understand, but a few simple lessons and precepts, comprehensible to the meanest capacity. he did not address himself to the wise of this world, but bade them be like children if they would come unto him. the learned pharisees of judea jeered and ridiculed him, but the poor woman of canaan eagerly picked up the precious crumbs of that blessed repast which they despised. his apostles were chosen from among the lowly and simple, his first followers belonged to that class. he himself hath said:[ ] "i thank thee, o father, lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." how then shall we judge of the degree of intellect necessary to be a follower of jesus? are the most intellectual, the best informed men generally the best christians? or does the word of god anywhere lead us to suppose that at the great final judgment the learned prelate or ingenious expositor of the faith will be preferred to the humble, illiterate savage of some almost unknown coast, who eagerly drinks of the living water whereof whosoever drinketh shall never thirst again? this subject has met with the attention which its importance deserves, at the hands of mr. gobineau, and he also shows the fallacy of the idea that christianity will remove the mental inequality of races. true religion, among all nations who are blessed with it and sincerely embrace it, will purify their morals, and establish friendly relations between man and his fellow-man. but it will not make an _intellectually_ inferior race equal to a superior one, because it was not designed to bestow talents or to endow with genius those who are devoid of it. civilization is essentially the result of man's intellectual gifts, and must vary in its character and degree like them. of this we shall speak again in treating of the _specific differences of civilization_, when the term _christian civilization_ will also be examined. one great reason why so many refuse to recognize mental as well as physical differences among races, is the common and favorite belief of our time in the infinite perfectibility of man. under various forms this development-theory, so flattering to humanity, has gained an incredible number of adherents and defenders. we believe ourselves steadily marching towards some brilliant goal, to which every generation brings us nearer. we look with a pity, almost amounting to contempt, upon those who preceded us, and envy posterity, which we expect to surpass us in a ratio even greater than we believe ourselves to surpass our ancestors. it is indeed a beautiful and poetic idea that civilization is a vast and magnificent edifice of which the first generation laid the corner-stone, and to which each succeeding age contributes new materials and new embellishments. it is our tower of babel, by which we, like the first men after the flood, hope to reach heaven and escape the ills of life. some such idea has flattered all ages, but in ours it has assumed a more definite form. we point with pride to our inventions, annihilating--we say--time and distance; our labor-saving machines refining the mechanic and indirectly diffusing information among all classes, and confidently look forward to a new era close at hand, a millennium to come. let us, for a moment, divest ourselves of the conceit which belongs to every age, as well as to every country and individual; and let us ask ourselves seriously and candidly: in what are we superior to our predecessors? we have inventions that they had not, it is true, and these inventions increase in an astonishing ratio; we have clearer ideas of the laws which govern the material world, and better contrivances to apply these laws and to make the elements subservient to our comfort. but has the human mind really expanded since the days of pythagoras and plato? has the thinker of the nineteenth century faculties and perceptions which they had not? have we one virtue more or one vice less than former generations? has human nature changed, or has it even modified its failings? though we succeed in traversing the regions of air as easily and swifter than we now do broad continents and stormy seas; though we count all the worlds in the immensity of space; though we snatch from nature her most recondite secrets, shall we be aught but men? to the true philosopher these conquests over the material world will be but additional proofs of the greatness of god and man's littleness. it is the vanity and arrogance of the creature of clay that make him believe that by his own exertions he can arrive at god-like perfection. the insane research after the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life may be classed among the many other futile attempts of man to invade the immutable decree: "thus far, and no farther." to escape from the moral and intellectual imperfections of his nature, there is but one way; the creature must humbly and devoutly cast himself into the ever-open arms of the creator and seek for knowledge where none knocketh in vain. this privilege he has enjoyed in all ages, and it is a question which i would hesitate to answer whether the progress of physical science has not, in many cases at least, rather the effect of making him self-sufficient and too confident in his own powers, than of bringing him nearer to the knowledge of the true god. it is one of the fatal errors of our age in particular, to confound the progress of physical science with a supposed moral progress of man. were it so, the bible would have been a revelation of science as well as of religion, and that it is not is now beginning to be conceded, though by no means so generally as true theology would require; for the law of god was intended for every age, for every country, for every individual, independent of the state of science or a peculiar stage of civilization, and not to be modified by any change which man might make in his material existence. with due deference, then, to those philosophers who assert that the moral nature of the human species has undergone a change at various periods of the world's history; and those enthusiasts who dream of an approaching millennium, we hold, that human nature has always been the same and always will be the same, and that no inventions or discoveries, however promotive of his material well-being, can effect a moral change or bring him any nearer to the divine essence than he was in the beginning of his mundane existence. science and knowledge may indeed illumine his earthly career, but they can shed no light upon the path he is to tread to reach a better world. christ himself has recognized the diversity of intellectual gifts in his parable of the talents, from which we borrow the very term to designate those gifts; and if, in a community of pure and faithful christians, there still are many degrees and kinds of talents, is it reasonable to suppose that in that millennium--the only one i can imagine--when all nations shall call on his name with hope and praise, all mental imparities of races will be obliterated? there are, at the present time, nations upon whom we look down as being inferior in civilization to ourselves, yet they are as good--if, indeed, not better--christians than we are as a people. the progress of physical science, by facilitating the intercourse between distant parts of the world, tends, indeed, to diffuse true religion, and in this manner--and this manner only--promotes the moral good of mankind. but here it is only an instrument, and not an agent, as the machines which the architect uses to raise his building materials do not erect the structure. one more reason why the unity of the human species cannot be considered a proof of equal intellectual capability of races. it is a favorite method of naturalists to draw an analogy between man and the brute creation; and, so far as he belongs to the animal kingdom, this method is undoubtedly correct and legitimate. but, with regard to man's higher attributes, there is an impassable barrier between him and the brute, which, in the heat of argument, contending parties have not always sufficiently respected. the great prichard himself seems sometimes to have lost sight of it.[ ] thus, he speaks of "psychological" diversities in varieties of the same undoubted species of animal, though it is obvious that animals can have no psychological attributes. but i am willing to concede to mr. prichard all the conclusions he derives from this analogy in favor of unity of the human species. all dogs, he believes, are derived from one pair; yet, there are a number of varieties of dogs, and these varieties are different not only in external appearance, but in what mr. prichard would call psychological qualities. no shepherd expects to train a common cur to be the intelligent guardian of a flock; no sportsman to teach his hounds, or their unmixed progeny, to perform the office of setters. that the characteristics of every variety of dogs are permanent so long as the breed remains pure, every one knows, and that their distinctive type remains the same in all countries and through all time, is proved by the mural paintings of egypt, which show that, , years b. c., they were as well known as in our day.[ ] if, then, this permanency of "psychological" (to take mr. prichard's ground) diversity is compatible with unity of origin in the dog, why not in the case of man? i am far from desiring to call into question the unity of our species, but i contend that the rule must work both ways, and if "psychological" diversities can be permanent in the branches of the same species of animals, they can be permanent also in the branches of the human family. in the preceding pages, i have endeavored to show that the unity of species is no proof of equal intellectual capability of races, that mental imparities do not conflict with the universality of the gospel tidings, and that the permanency of these imparities is consistent with the reasoning of the greatest expounder of the unity theory. i shall now proceed to state the facts which prove the intellectual diversities among the races of man. in doing so, it is important to guard against an error into which so many able writers have fallen, that of comparing individuals rather than masses. what we term national character, is the aggregate of the qualities preponderating in a community. it is obvious that when we speak of the artistic genius of the greeks, we do not mean that every native of hellas and ionia was an artist; and when we call a nation unwarlike or valorous, we do not thereby either stigmatize every individual as a coward, or extol him as a hero. the same is the case with races. when, for example, we assert that the black race is intellectually inferior to the white, it is not implied that the most intelligent negro should still be more obtuse than the most stupid white man. the maximum intellect and capacity of one race may greatly exceed the minimum of another, without placing them on an equality. the testimony of history, and the results of philanthropic experiment, are the data upon which the ethnologist must institute his inquiries, if he would arrive at conclusions instructive to humanity. let us take for illustration the white and the black races, supposed by many to represent the two extremes of the scale of gradation. the whole history of the former shows an uninterrupted progress; that of the latter, monotonous stagnation. to the one, mankind owes the most valuable discoveries in the domain of thought, and their practical application; to the other, it owes nothing. for ages plunged in the darkest gloom of barbarism, there is not one ray of even temporary or borrowed improvement to cheer the dismal picture of its history, or inspire with hope the disheartened philanthropist. at the boundary of its territory, the ever-encroaching spirit of conquest of the european stops powerless.[ ] never, in the history of the world, has a grander or more conclusive experiment been tried than in the case of the negro race. we behold them placed in immediate possession of the richest island in the richest part of the globe, with every advantage that climate, soil, geographical situation, can afford; removed from every injurious contact, yet with every facility for constant intercourse with the most polished nations of the earth; inheriting all that the white race had gained by the toil of centuries in science, politics, and morals; and what is the result? as if to afford a still more irrefragable proof of the mental inequality of races, we find separate divisions of the same island inhabited, one by the pure, the other by a half-breed race; and the infusion of the white blood in the latter case forms a population incontestably and avowedly superior. in opposition to such facts, some special pleader, bent upon establishing a preconceived notion, ransacks the records of history to find a few isolated instances where an individual of the inferior race has displayed average ability, and from such exceptional cases he deduces conclusions applicable to the whole mass! he points with exultation to a negro who calculates, a negro who is an officer of artillery in russia, a few others who are employed in a counting-house. and yet he does not even tell us whether these _raræ aves_ are of pure blood or not, as is often the case.[ ] moreover, these instances are proclaimed to the world with an air of triumph, as if they were drawn at random from an inexhaustible arsenal of facts, when in reality they are all that the most anxious research could discover, and form the stock in trade of every declaimer on the absolute equality of races. had it pleased the creator to endow all branches of the human family equally, all would then have pursued the same career, though, perhaps, not all with equal rapidity. some, favored by circumstances, might have distanced others in the race; a few, peculiarly unfortunately situated, would have lagged behind. still, the progress of all would have been in the same direction, all would have had the same stages to traverse. now is this the case? there are not a few who assert it. from our earliest infancy we are told of the savage, barbarous, semi-civilized, civilized, and enlightened states. these we are taught to consider as the steps of the ladder by which man climbs up to infinite perfection, we ourselves being near the top, while others are either a little below us, or have scarcely yet firmly established themselves upon the first rounds. in the beautiful language of schiller, these latter are to us a mirror in which we behold our own ancestors, as an adult in the children around him re-witnesses his own infancy. this is, in a measure, true of nations of the same race, but is it true with regard to different races? it is little short of presumption to venture to combat an idea perhaps more extensively spread than any of our time, yet this we shall endeavor to do. were the differences in civilization which we observe in various nations of the world, differences of degree only, and not of kind, it is obvious that the most advanced individual in one degree must closely approach the confines of a higher. but this is not the case. the highest degree of culture known to hindoo or chinese civilization, approaches not the possessor one step nearer to the ideas and views of the european. the chinese civilization is as perfect, in its own way, as ours, nay more so.[ ] it is not a mere child, or even an adult not yet arrived at maturity; it is rather a decrepit old man. it too has its degrees; it too has had its periods of infancy, of adult age, of maturity. and when we contemplate its fruits, the immense works which have been undertaken and completed under its ægis, the systems of morals and politics to which it gave rise, the inventions which signalized its more vigorous periods, we cannot but admit that it is entitled in a high degree to our veneration and esteem.[ ] moreover it has excellencies which our civilization as yet has not; it pervades all classes, ours not. in the whole chinese empire, comprising, as it does, one-third of the human race, we find few individuals unable to read and write; in china proper, none. how many european countries can pretend to this? and yet, because chinese civilization has a different tendency from ours, because its course lies in another direction, we call it a semi-civilization. at what time of the world's history then have we--the _civilized_ nations--passed through this stage of semi-civilization? the monuments of sanscrit literature, the magnificent remains of palaces and temples, the great number of ingenious arts, the elaborate systems of metaphysics, attest a state of intellectual culture, far from contemptible, among the hindoos. yet their civilization, too, we term a semi-civilization, albeit it is as little like the chinese as it is like anything ever seen in europe. few who will carefully investigate and reflect upon these facts, will doubt that the terms hindoo, chinese, european civilization, are not indicative of degrees only, but mean the respective development of powers essentially different in their nature. we may consider our civilization the best, but it is both arrogant and unphilosophical to consider it as the only one, or as the standard by which to measure all others. this idea, moreover, is neither peculiar to ourselves nor to our age. the chinese even yet look upon us as barbarians; the hindoos probably do the same. the greeks considered all extra-hellenic peoples as barbarians. the romans ascribed the same pre-excellency to themselves, and the predilections for these nations, which we imbibe already in our academic years from our classical studies, cause us to share the same opinion, and to view with their prejudices nations less akin to us than they. the persians, for instance, whom the greeks self-complacently styled outside-barbarians, were, in reality, a highly cultivated people, as no one can deny who will examine the facts which modern research has brought to light. their arts, if not hellenic, still attained a high degree of perfection. their architecture, though not of grecian style, was not inferior in magnificence and splendor. nay, i for one am willing to render myself obnoxious to the charge of classical heresy, by regarding the pure persians as a people, in some respects at least, superior to the greeks. their religious system seems to me a much purer, nobler one than the inconsistent, immoral mythology of our favorites. their ideas of a good and an evil power in perpetual conflict, and of a mediator who loves and protects the human race; their utter detestation of every species of idolatry, have to me something that prepossesses me in their favor. i have now alleged, in a cursory manner, my principal reasons for considering civilizations as specifically distinct. to further dilate upon the subject, though i greatly desire to do so, would carry me too far; not, indeed, beyond the scope of the inquiries proposed in this volume, but beyond the limited space assigned for my introduction. i shall add only, that--assuming the intellectual equality of all branches of the human family--we can assign no causes for the differences of _degree only_ of their development. geographical position cannot explain them, because the people who have made the greatest advance, have not always been the most favorably situated. the greatest geographical advantages have been in possession of others that made no use of them, and became of importance only by changing owners. to cite one of a thousand similar instances. the glorious mississippi valley, with its innumerable tributary streams, its unparalleled fertility and mineral wealth, seems especially adapted by nature for the abode of a great agricultural and commercial nation. yet, the indians roamed over it, and plied their canoes on its rivers, without ever being aware of the advantages they possessed. the anglo-saxon, on the contrary, no sooner perceived them than he dreamed of the conquest of the world. we may therefore compare such and other advantages to a precious instrument which it requires the skill of the workman to use. to ascribe differences of civilizations to the differences of laws and political institutions, is absolutely begging the question, for such institutions are themselves an effect and an inherent portion of the civilization, and when transplanted into foreign soils, never prosper. that the moral and physical well-being of a nation will be better promoted when liberty presides over her councils than when stern despotism sits at the helm, no one can deny; but it is obvious that the nation must first be prepared to receive the blessings of liberty, lest they prove a curse. here is the place for a few remarks upon the epithet christian, applied to our civilization. mr. gobineau justly observes, that he knows of no social or political order of things to which this term may fitly be said to belong. we may justly speak of a brahminic, buddhistic, pagan, judaic civilization, because the social or political systems designated by these appellations were intimately connected with a more or less exclusive theocratical formula. religion there prescribed everything: social and political laws, government, manners, nay, in many instances, dress and food. but one of the distinguishing characteristics of christianity is its universality. right at the beginning it disclaimed all interference in temporal affairs. its precepts may be followed under every system of government, in every path of life, every variety of modes of existence. such is, in substance, mr. gobineau's view of the subject. to this i would add a few comments of my own. the error is not one of recent date. its baneful effects have been felt from almost the first centuries of the establishment of the church down to our times. human legislation ought, indeed, to be in strict accordance with the law of god, but to commend one system as christian, and proscribe another as unchristian, is opening the door to an endless train of frightful evils. this is what, virtually, they do who would call a civilization christian, for civilization is the aggregate social and political development of a nation, or a race, and the political is always in direct proportion to the social progress; both mutually influence each other. by speaking of a christian civilization, therefore, we assert that some particular political as well as social system, is most conformable to the spirit of our religion. hence the union of church and state, and the influence of the former in temporal affairs--an influence which few enlightened churchmen, at least of our age, would wish to claim. not to speak of the danger of placing into the hands of any class of men, however excellent, the power of declaring what legislation is christian or not, and thus investing them with supreme political as well as spiritual authority; it is sufficient to point out the disastrous effects of such a system to the interests of the church itself. the opponents of a particular political organization become also the opponents of the religion which advocates and defends it. the indifferentism of germany, once so zealous in the cause of religion, is traceable to this source. the people are dissatisfied with their political machinery, and hate the church which vindicates it, and stigmatizes as impious every attempt at change. indeed, one has but to read the religious journals of prussia, to understand the lukewarmness of that people. mr. brace, in his _home life in germany_, says that many intelligent natives of that country had told him: why should we go to church to hear a sermon that extols an order of things which we know to be wicked, and in the highest degree detestable? how can a religion be true which makes adherence to such an order a fundamental article of its creed? one of the features of our constitution which mr. de tocqueville most admires, is the utter separation of church and state. mere religious toleration practically prevails in most european countries, but this total disconnection of the religious from the civil institutions, is peculiar to the united states, and a lesson which it has given to the rest of the world. i do not mean that every one who makes use of the word christian civilization thereby implies a union of church and state, but i wish to point out the principle upon which this expression is based, viz: that a certain social and political order of things is more according to the spirit of the christian religion than another; and the consequences which must, or at least may, follow from the practical acceptation of this principle. taking my view of the subject, few, i think, will dispute that the term christian civilization is a misnomer. of the civilizing influence of christianity, i have spoken before, but this influence would be as great in the chinese or hindoo civilizations, without, in the least, obliterating their characteristic features. few terms of equal importance are so vaguely defined as the term civilization; few definitions are so difficult. in common parlance, the word civilization is used to designate that moral, intellectual, and material condition at which the so-called european race, whether occupying the eastern or the western continent, has arrived in the nineteenth century. but the nations comprised in this race differ from one another so extensively, that it has been found necessary to invent a new term: _enlightenment_. thus, great britain, france, the united states, switzerland, several of the states of the german confederacy, sweden, and denmark, are called enlightened; while russia, spain, portugal, italy, brazil, and the south american republics are merely civilized. now, i ask, in what does the difference consist? is the diffusion of knowledge by popular education to be the test? then great britain and france would fall far below some countries now placed in the second, or even third rank. denmark and china would be the most civilized countries in the world; nay, even thibet, and the rest of central asia, would take precedence before the present champions of civilization. the whole of germany and switzerland would come next, then the eastern and middle sections of the united states, then the southern and western; and, after them, great britain and france. still retaining the same scale, russia would actually be ranked above italy, the native clime of the arts. in great britain itself, scotland would far surpass england in civilization[ ]. is the perfection to which the arts are carried, the test of civilization? then bavaria and italy are the most civilized countries. then are we far behind the greeks in civilization. or, are the useful arts to carry the prize? then the people showing the greatest mechanical genius is the most civilized. are political institutions to be the test? then the question, "which is the best government?" must first be decided. but the philosophic answer would be: "that which is best adapted to the genius of the people, and therefore best answers the purposes for which all government is instituted." those who believe in the abstract superiority of any governmental theory, may be compared to the tailor who would finish some beau-ideal of a coat, without taking his customer's measure. we could afford to laugh at such theorists, were not their schemes so often recorded in blood in the annals of the world. besides, if this test be admitted, no two could agree upon what was a civilized community. the panegyrist of constitutional monarchy would call england the only civilized country; the admirer of municipal liberty would point to the hanse towns of the middle ages, and their miserable relics, the present free cities of germany; the friend of sober republicanism would exclude from the pale of civilization all but the united states and switzerland; the lover of pure democracy would contend that mankind had retrograded since the time of athens, and deplore that civilization was now confined to some few rude mountain or nomadic tribes with few and simple wants; finally, the defender of a paternal autocracy would sigh for the days of trajan or marcus aurelius, and hesitate whether, in our age, austria or russia deserved the crown. neither pre-eminence in arts and sciences, nor in popular instruction, nor in government, can singly be taken as the test of civilization. pre-eminence in all, no country enjoys. yet all these are signs of civilization--the only ones by which we distinguish and recognize it. how, then, shall we define this term? i would suggest a simple and, i think, sufficiently explicit definition: civilization is the continuous development of man's moral and intellectual powers. as the aggregate of these differs in different nations, so differs the character of their civilization. in one, civilization manifests itself in the perfection of the arts, either useful or polite; in another, in the cultivation of the sciences; in a third; in the care bestowed upon politics, or, in the diffusion of knowledge among the masses. each has its own merits, each its own defects; none combines the excellencies of all, but whichever combines the most with fewest defects, may be considered the best, or most perfect. it is because not keeping this obvious truth in view that john bull laughs (or used to laugh) self-complacently at monsieur crapaud, and that we ourselves sometimes laugh at his political capers, forgetting that the thinkers of his nation have, for the last century at least, led the van in science and politics--yes, even in politics.[ ] it is, for the same reason, that the frenchman laughs at the german, or the dutchman; that the foreigner cannot understand that there is an _american civilization_ as well, and, bringing his own country's standard along with him, finds everything either too little or too great; or, that the american, going to the native soil of the ripest scholars in the world, and seeing brick and mortar carried up by hand to the fourth story of a building in process of erection,[ ] or seeing five men painfully perform a job which his youngest son would have accomplished without trouble by the simplest, perhaps self-invented, contrivance, revolves in his own mind how it is possible that these people--when the schoolmaster is abroad, too--are still so many centuries "behind the time." thus each nation has its own standard by which it judges its neighbors; but when extra-european nations, such as the chinese or hindoos, are to be judged, all unite in voting them _outside barbarians_. here, then, we have indubitable proofs of moral and intellectual diversities, not only in what are generally termed different races, but even in nations apparently belonging to the same race. nor do i see in this diversity ought that can militate against our ideas of universal brotherhood. among individuals, diversity of talent does not preclude friendly intercourse; on the contrary, it promotes it, for rivals seldom are friends. neither does superior ability exempt us from the duties which we owe to our fellow-man. i have repeatedly made use of the analogy between societies and the individuals that compose them. i cannot more clearly express my idea of civilization than by recurring to it again. civilization, then, is to nations what the development of his physical and intellectual powers is to an individual; indeed, it is nothing but the aggregate result of all these individual powers; a common reservoir to which each contributes a share, whether large or small. the analogy may be extended further. nations may be considered as themselves members of societies, bearing the same relations to each other and to the whole, as individuals. thus, all the nations of europe contribute, each in its own manner and degree, to what has been called the _european_ civilization. and, in the same manner, the nations of asia form distinct systems of civilizations. but all these systems ultimately tend to one great aim--the general welfare of mankind. i would therefore carefully distinguish between the civilizations of particular nations, of clusters of nations, and of the whole of our species. to borrow a metaphor from the mechanism of the universe, the first are like the planets of a solar system, revolving--though in different orbits, and with different velocities--around the same common centre; but the solar systems again--with all their planets--revolve round another, more distant point. let us take two individuals of undoubted intellect. one may be a great mathematician, the other a great statesman. place the first at the head of a cabinet, the second in an observatory, and the mathematician will as signally fail in correctly observing the changes in the political firmament, as the other in noting those in the heavenly. yet, who would decide which had the superior intellect? this diversity of gifts is not the result of education. no training, however ingenious, could have changed an arago into a pitt, or _vice versa_. raphael could under no circumstances have become a handel, or either of them a milton. nay, men differ in following the same career. can any one conceive that michael angelo could ever have painted vandyke's pictures, shakspeare written milton's verses, mozart composed rossini's music, or jefferson followed hamilton's policy? here, then, we have excellencies, perhaps of equal degree, but of very different kinds. nature, from her inexhaustible store, has not only unequally, but variously, bestowed her favors, and this infinite variety of gifts, as infinite as the variety of faces, god has doubtless designed for the happiness of men, and for their more intimate union, in making them dependent one on another. as each creature sings his maker's praise in his own voice and cadence, the sparrow in his twitter, the nightingale in her warble, so each human being proclaims the almighty's glory by the rightful use of his talents, whether great or small, for the promotion of his fellow-creatures' happiness; one may raise pious emotion in the breast by the tuneful melody of his song; another by the beauty and vividness of his images on canvas or in verse; a third discovers new worlds--additional evidences of his omnipotence who made them--and, by his calculations, demonstrates, even to the sceptic, the wonderful mechanism of the universe; to another, again, it is given to guide a nation's councils, and, by his assistance, to avert danger, or correct evils. fie upon those who would raise man's powers above those of god, and ascribe diversity of talents to education and accident, rather than to his wisdom and design. can we not admire the almighty as well in the variety as in a fancied uniformity of his works? harmony consists in the union of different sounds; the harmony of the universe, in the diversity of its parts. what is true of a society composed of individuals, is true of that vast political assemblage composed of nations. that each has a career to run through, a destiny to fulfil, is my firm and unwavering belief. that each must be gifted with peculiar qualities for that purpose, is a mere corollary of the proposition. this has been the opinion of all ages: "the men of boeotia are noted for their stolidity, those of attica for their wit." common parlance proves that it is now, to-day, the opinion of all mankind, whatever theorists may say. many affect to deride the idea of "manifest destiny" that possesses us anglo-americans, but who in the main doubts it? who, that will but cast one glance on the map, or look back upon our history of yesterday only, can think of seriously denying that great purposes have been accomplished, will still be accomplished, and that these purposes were designed and guided by something more than blind chance? unroll the page of history--of the great chain of human events, it is true, we perceive but few links; like eternity, its beginning is wrapt in darkness, its end a mystery above human comprehension--but, in the vast drama presented to us, in which nations form the cast, we see each play its part, then disappear. some, as mr. gobineau has it, act the kings and rulers, others are content with inferior roles. as it is incompatible with the wisdom of the creator, to suppose that each nation was not specially fitted[ ] for the part assigned to it, we may judge of what they were capable of by what they have accomplished. history, then, must be our guide; and never was epoch more propitious, for never has her lamp shone brighter. the study of this important science, which niebuhr truly calls the _magistra vitæ_, has received within our days an impulse such as it never had before. the invaluable archæological treasures which the linguists and antiquarians of europe have rescued from the literature and monuments of the great nations of former ages, bring--as it were--back to life again the mouldered generations of the dim past. we no longer content ourselves with chronological outlines, mere names, and unimportant accounts of kings and their quarrels; we seek to penetrate into the inner life of those multitudes who acted their part on the stage of history, and then disappeared, to understand the modes of thought, the feelings, ideas, _instincts_, which actuated them, and made them what they were. the hoary pyramids of the nile valley are forced to divulge their age, the date of a former civilization; the temples and sepulchres, to furnish a minute account of even the private life of their builders;[ ] the arrow-headed characters on the disinterred bricks of the sites of babylon and nineveh, are no longer a secret to the indefatigable orientalists; the classic writers of hindostan and china find their most zealous scholiasts, and profoundest critics, in the capitals of western europe. the dross of childish fables, which age after age has transmitted to its successor under the name of history, is exposed to the powerful furnace of reason and criticism, and the pure ore extracted, by such men as niebuhr, heeren, ranke, gibbon, grote. the enthusiastic lover of ancient rome now sees her early history in clearer, truer colors than did her own historians. but, if history is indispensable to ethnology, the latter is no less so to a true understanding of history. the two sciences mutually shed light on one another's path, and though one of them is as yet in its infancy, its wonderful progress in so short a time, and the almost unparalleled attention which it has excited at all hands, are bright omens for the future. it will be obvious that, by _ethnology_, we do not mean _ethnography_, with which it has long been synonymous. their meaning differs in the same manner, they bear almost the same relation to one another as _geology_ and _geography_. while ethnography contents herself with the mere description and classification of the races of man, ethnology, to borrow the expressive language of the editor of the _london ethnological journal_, "investigates the mental and physical differences of mankind, and the organic laws upon which they depend; seeks to deduce from these investigations principles of human guidance, in all the important relations of social and national existence."[ ] the importance of this study cannot be better expressed than in the words of a writer in the _north british review_ for august, : "no one that has not worked much in the element of history, can be aware of the immense importance of clearly keeping in view the differences of race that are discernible among the nations that inhabit different parts of the world.... in speculative history, in questions relating to the past career and the future destinies of nations, _it is only by a firm and efficient handling of this conception of our species, as broken up into so many groups or masses, physiologically different to a certain extent, that any progress can be made, or any available conclusions accurately arrived at_."[ ] but in attempting to divide mankind into such groups, an ethnologist is met by a serious and apparently insurmountable difficulty. the gradation of color is so imperceptible from the clearest white to the jettest black; and even anatomical peculiarities, normal in one branch, are found to exist, albeit in exceptional cases, in many others; so that the ethnographers scarce know where to stop in their classification, and while some recognize but three grand varieties, others contend for five, for eleven, or even for a much greater number. this difficulty arises, in my estimation, mainly from the attempt to class mankind into different species, that is, groups who have a separate origin; and also, from the proneness to draw deductions from individual instances, by which almost any absurdity can be sustained, or truth refuted. as we have already inveighed against the latter error, and shall therefore try to avoid falling into it; and as we have no desire to enter the field of discussion about unity or plurality of species, we hope, in a great measure, to obviate the difficulties that beset the path of so many inquirers. by the word _race_[ ] we mean, both here and in the body of the work, such branches of the human family as are distinguished in the aggregate by certain well-defined physical or mental peculiarities, independent of the question whether they be of identical or diverse origin. for the sake of simplicity, these races are arranged in several principal classes, according to their relative affinities and resemblances. the most popular system of arrangement is that of blumenbach, who recognizes five grand divisions, distinguished by appellations descriptive either of color or geographical position, viz: the white, circassian, or european; the yellow, altaic, asiatic, or mongolian; the red, american, or indian; the brown, or malay; and, lastly, the black, african, or negro. this division, though the most commonly adopted, has no superior claims above any other. not only are its designations liable to very serious objections, but it is, in itself, entirely arbitrary. the hottentot differs as much from the negro as the latter does from the malay; and the polynesian from the malay more than the american from the mongolian. upon the same principle, then, the number of classes might be indefinitely extended. mr. gobineau thought three classes sufficient to answer every purpose, and these he calls respectively the white, yellow, and black. mr. latham,[ ] the great ethnographer, adopts a system almost precisely similar to our author's, and upon grounds entirely different. though, for my own part, i should prefer a greater number of primary divisions, i confess that this coincidence of opinion in two men, pursuing, independent of, and unknown to each other, different paths of investigation, is a strong evidence of the correctness of their system, which, moreover, has the merit of great simplicity and clearness. it must be borne in mind that the races comprised under these divisions, are by no means to be considered equal among themselves. we should lay it down as a general truth, that while the entire groups differ principally in _degree_ of intellectual capacity, the races comprised in each differ among themselves rather in kind. thus, we assert upon the testimony of history, that the white races are superior to the yellow; and these, in turn, to the black. but the lithuanian and the anglo-saxon both belong to the same group of races, and yet, history shows that they differ; so do the samoyede and the chinese, the negro of lower guinea, and the fellah. these differences, observable among nations classed under the same head, as, for instance, the difference between the russians and italians (both white), we express in every day's language by the word "genius." thus, we constantly hear persons speak of the artistic, administrative, nautical genius of the greeks, romans, and phenicians, respectively; or, such phrases as these, which i borrow from mr. gobineau: "napoleon rightly understood the _genius_ of his nation when he reinstated the church, and placed the supreme authority on a secure basis; charles i. and his adviser did not, when they attempted to bend the neck of englishmen under the yoke of absolutism." but, as the word _genius_ applied to the capacities or tendencies of a nation, in general implies either too much or too little, it has been found convenient, in this work, to substitute for it another term--_instinct_. by the use of this word, it was not intended to assimilate man to the brute, to express aught differing from intellect or the reasoning capacity; but only to designate the peculiar manner in which that intellect or reasoning capacity manifests itself; in other words, the special adaptation of a nation for the part assigned to it in the world's history; and, as this part is performed involuntarily and, for the most part, unconsciously, the term was deemed neither improper nor inappropriate. i do not, however, contend for its correctness, though i could cite the authority of high names for its use in this sense; i contend merely for its convenience, for we thereby gain an easy method of making distinctions of _kind_ in the mental endowments of races, in cases where we would hesitate to make distinctions of _degree_. in fact, it is saying of multitudes only what we say of an individual by speaking of his _talent_; with this difference, however, that by talent we understand excellency of a certain order, while instinct applies to every grade. two persons of equal intellectual calibre may have, one a talent for mathematics, the other for literature; that is, one can exhibit his intellect to advantage only in calculation, the other only in writing. thus, of two nations standing equally high in the intellectual scale, one shall be distinguished for the high perfection attained in the fine arts, the other for the same perfection in the useful. at the risk of wearying the reader with my definitions, i must yet inflict on him another which is essential to the right understanding of the following pages. in common parlance, the terms _nation_ and _people_ have become strictly synonymous. we speak indifferently of the french people, or the french nation; the english people, or the english nation. if we make any distinction at all, we perhaps designate by the first expression the masses; by the second, rather the sovereignty. thus, we say the french people are versatile, the french nation is at war with russia. but even this distinction is not always made. my purpose is to restore the word nation to its original signification, in which it expresses the same as the word race, including, besides, the idea of some sort of political organization. it is, in fact, nothing but the latin equivalent of that word, and was applied, like tribe, to a collection of individuals not only living under the same government, but also claiming a closer consanguinity to one another than to their neighbors. it differs from tribe only in this respect, that it is applied to greater multitudes, as for instance to a coalescence of several closely-allied tribes, which gives rise to more complicated political forms. it might therefore be defined by an ethnologist as _a population consisting of homogeneous ethnical elements_. the word _people_, on the contrary, when applied to an aggregation of individuals living under the same government, implies no immediate consanguineous ties among them. _nation_ does not necessarily imply political unity; _people_, always. thus, we speak of the greek _nation_, though the greeks were divided into a number of independent and very dissimilar sovereignties; but, we say the roman _people_, though the whole population of the empire obeyed the same supreme head. the russian empire contains within its limits, besides the russians proper, an almost equal number of cossacks, calmucks, tartars, fins, and a number of other races, all very different from one another and still more so from the russians, not only in language and external appearance, but in manners, modes of thinking: in one word, in instincts. by the expression russian people i should therefore understand the whole population of that empire; by russian nation, only the dominant race to which the czar belongs. it is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of keeping in view this distinction, as i shall prove by another instance. the hungarian people are very nearly equally divided (exclusive of about one million germans) into two nations, the magyars and the sclaves. not only have these two, though for centuries occupying the same soil, remained unmixed and distinct, but the most intense antipathy exists between them, which only requires an occasion to display itself in acts of bloodshed and relentless cruelty, that would make the tenants of hell shudder. such an occasion was the recent revolution, in which, while the magyars fought like lions for their independence, the sclaves, knowing that they would not participate in any advantage the others might gain, proved more formidable opponents than the austrians.[ ] if i have been successful in my discrimination between the two words, it follows plainly that a member of one nation, strictly speaking, can no more become a member of another by process of law, than a man, by adopting a child, can make it the fruit of his loins. this rule, though correct in the abstract, does not always apply to individual cases; but these, as has already been remarked, cannot be made the groundwork of general deductions. in conclusion of this somewhat digressional definition, i would observe that, owing to the great intermixture of the european populations, produced by their various and intimate mutual relations, it does not apply with the same force to them as to others, and this i regard as the reason why the signification of the word has become modified. if we will carefully examine the history of great empires, we shall be able, in almost every instance, to trace their beginning to the activity of what, in the strictest sense of the word, may be called a nation. gradually, as the sphere of that nation expands, it incorporates, and in course of time amalgamates with foreign elements. nimrod, we learn from sacred history, established the assyrian empire. at first, this consisted of but little more than the city of babylon, and must necessarily have contained a very homogeneous population, if from no other cause than its narrow geographical limits. at the dawn of profane history, however, we find this empire extending over boundless tracts, and uniting under one rule tribes and nations of the most dissimilar manners and tongues. the assyrian empire fell, and that of the medes rose on its ruins. the median monarchy had an humble beginning. dejoces, says tradition, united the independent tribes of the medes. later, we find them ruling nations whose language they did not understand, whose manners they despised. the persian empire exceeded in grandeur its mighty predecessors. originating in a rebellion of a few liberty-loving tribes, concerted and successfully executed by a popular leader (cyrus), two generations of rulers extended its boundaries to the banks of the nile. in alexander's time, it was a conglomeration of a countless number of nations, many of whom remained under their hereditary rulers while rendering allegiance, and paying tribute to the great king. i pass over the macedonian empire, as of too short a duration to be a fair illustration. the germ of the roman empire consisted of a coalescence of very closely allied tribes: romulus's band of adventurers (who must have come from neighboring communities), the sabines, albans, and latins. at the period of its downfall, it ruled, at least nominally, over every then known race. in all these instances, the number of which might be further increased, we find homogeneousness of population at first, ethnical mixture and confusion at the end. "but what does this prove? will be asked. that too great an extension of territory is the cause of weakness? the idea is old, and out of date in our times, when steam and electricity bring the outskirts of the largest empire in closer proximity than formerly were the frontiers of the humblest sovereignty." extension of territory does not itself prove a cause of weakness and ruin. the largest empire in the world is that of china, and, without steam or electricity, it has maintained itself for , years, and bids fair, spite of the present revolution, to last a good long while yet. but, when extension of territory is attended with the incorporation of heterogeneous masses, having different interests, different instincts, from the conqueror, then indeed the extension must be an element of weakness, and not of strength. the armies which xerxes led into greece were not persians; but a small fragment of that motley congregation, the _élite_, the leaven of the whole mass, was composed of the king's countrymen. upon this small body he placed his principal reliance, and when, at the fatal battle of salamis, he beheld the slaughter of that valiant and noble band, though he had hundreds of thousands yet at his command, he rent his garments and fled a country which he had well-nigh conquered. here is the difference between the armies of cyrus and those of xerxes and darius. the rabbles which obeyed the latter, perhaps contained as much valor as the ranks of the enthusiastic followers of the first, though the fact of their fighting under persian standards might be considered as a proof of their inferiority. but what interest had they in the success of the great king? to forge still firmer their own fetters? could the name of cyrus, the remembrance of the storming of sardis, the siege of babylon, the conquest of egypt, fire them with enthusiasm? perhaps, in some of those glorious events, their forefathers became slaves to the tyrants they now serve, tyrants whose very language they do not understand. the last armies of tottering rome were drafted from every part of her boundless dominions, and of the men who were sent to oppose the threatening barbarians of the north, some, it might be, felt the blood of humbled greece in their veins; some had been torn from a distant home in egypt, or libya; others, perhaps, remembered with pride how their ancestors had fought the romans in the times of juba, or mithridates; others, again, boiled with indignation at the oppression of their gallic brethren;--could those men respect the glorious traditions of rome, could they be supposed to emulate the former legions of the proud city? it is not, then, an extensive territory that ruins nations; it is a diversity of instincts, a clashing of interests among the various parts of the population. when each province is isolated in feelings and interests from every other, no external foe is wanted to complete the ruin. ambitious and adroit men will soon arise who know how to play upon these interests, and employ them for the promotion of their own schemes. nations, in the various stages of their career, have often been compared to individuals. they have, it is said, their period of infancy, of youth, of manhood, of old age. but the similitude, however striking, is not extended further, and, while individuals die a natural death, nations are supposed always to come to a violent end. probably, we do not like to concede that all nations, like all individuals, must ultimately die a natural death, even though no disease anticipates it; because we dislike to recognize a rule which must apply to us as well. each nation fancies its own vitality imperishable. when we are young, we seldom seriously think of death; in the same manner, societies in the period of their youthful vigor and energy, cannot conceive the possibility of their dissolution. in old age and decrepitude, they are like the consumptive patient, who, while fell disease is severing the last thread that binds him to the earth, is still forming plans for years to come. falling rome dreamed herself eternal. yet, the mortality of nations admits of precisely the same proof as that of individuals--universal experience. the great empires that overshadowed the world, where are they? the memory of some is perpetuated in the hearts of mankind by imperishable monuments; of others, the slightest trace is obliterated, the vaguest remembrance vanished. as the great individual intelligences, whose appearance marks an era in the history of human thought, live in the minds of posterity, even though no gorgeous tombstone points out the resting-place of their hull of clay; while the mausoleum of him whose grandeur was but temporary, whose influence transient only, carries no meaning on its sculptured surface to after ages; even so the ancient civilizations which adorned the globe, if their monuments be not in the domain of thought, their gigantic vestiges serve but to excite the wonder of the traveller and antiquary, and perplex the historian. their sepulchres, however grand, are mute.[ ] many have been the attempts to detect the causes why nations die, in order to prevent that catastrophe; as the physicians of the middle ages, who thought death was always the consequence of disease, sought for the panacea that was to cure all ills and thus prolong life forever. but nations, like individuals, often survive the severest attacks of the most formidable disease, and die without sickness. in ancient times, those great catastrophes which annihilated the political existence of millions, were regarded as direct interpositions of providence, visiting in its wrath the sins of a nation, and erecting a warning example for others; just as the remarkable destruction of a noted individual, or the occurrence of an unusual phenomenon was, and by many is even now, ascribed to the same immediate agency. but when philosophy discovered that the universe is governed by pre-established, immutable laws, and refused to credit miracles not sanctioned by religion; then the dogma gained ground that punishment follows the commission of sin, as effect does the cause; and national calamities had to be explained by other reasons. it was then said, nations die of luxury, immorality, bad government, irreligion, etc. in other words, success was made the test of excellency and failure of crime. if, in individual life, we were to lay it down as an infallible rule, that he who commits no excesses lives forever, or at least very long; and he who does, will immediately die; that he who is honest in his dealings, will always prosper more than he who is not; we should have a very fluctuating standard of morality, since it has pleased god to sometimes try the good by severe afflictions, and let the wicked prosper. we should therefore be often called upon to admire what is deserving of contempt or punishment, and to seek for guilt in the innocent. this is what we do in nations. wicked institutions have been called good, because they were attended with success; good ones have been pronounced bad, because they failed. a more critical study of history has demonstrated the fallibility of this theory, which is now in a great measure discarded, and another adopted in its stead. it is argued that, at a certain period in its existence, a nation infallibly becomes degenerated, and thus falls. but, asks mr. gobineau, what is degeneracy? a nation is said to be degenerated when the virtues of its ancestry are lost. but why are they lost? because the nation is degenerated. is not this like the reasoning in the child's story-book: why is jack a bad boy? because he disobeys his parents. why does he disobey his parents? because he is a bad boy. it is necessary, then, to show what degeneracy is. this step in advance, mr. gobineau attempts to make. he shows that each race is distinguished by certain capabilities, which, if its civilizing genius is sufficiently strong to enable it to assume a rank among the nations of the world, determine the character of its social and political development. like the phenicians, it may become the merchant and barterer of the world; or, like the greeks, the teacher of future generations; or, like the romans, the model-giver of laws and forms. its part in the drama of history may be an humble one or a proud, but it is always proportionate to its powers. these powers, and the instincts or aspirations which spring from them, never change as long as the race remains pure. they progress and develop themselves, but never alter their nature. the purposes of the race are always the same. it may arrive at great perfection in the useful arts, but, without infiltration of a different element, will never be distinguished for poetry, painting, sculpture, etc.; and _vice versa_. its nature may be belligerent, and it will always find causes for quarrel; or it may be pacific, and then it will manage to live at peace, or fall a prey to a neighbor. in the same manner, the government of a race will be in accordance with its instincts, and here i have the weighty authority of the author of _democracy in america_, in my favor, and the author's whom i am illustrating. "a government," says de tocqueville,[ ] "retains its sway over a great number of citizens, far less by the voluntary and rational consent of the multitude, than by that _instinctive_, and, to a certain extent, involuntary agreement, which results from similarity of feelings, and resemblances of opinions. i will never admit that men constitute a social body, simply because they obey the same head and the same laws. a society can exist only when a great number of men consider a great number of things in the same point of view; when they hold the same opinions upon many subjects, and when the same occurrences suggest the same thoughts and impressions to their minds." the laws and government of a nation are always an accurate reflex of its manners and modes of thinking. "if, at first, it would appear," says mr. gobineau, "as if, in some cases, they were the production of some superior individual intellect, like the great law-givers of antiquity; let the facts be more carefully examined, and it will be found that the law-giver--if wise and judicious--has contented himself with consulting the genius of his nation, and giving a voice to the common sentiment. if, on the contrary, he be a theorist like draco, his system remains a dead letter, soon to be superseded by the more judicious institutions of a solon who aims to give to his countrymen, not the best laws possible, but the best he thinks them capable of receiving." it is a great and a very general error to suppose that the sense of a nation will always decide in favor of what we term "popular" institutions, that is to say, such in which each individual shares more or less immediately in the government. its genius may tend to the establishment of absolute authority, and in that case the autocrat is but an impersonation of the _vox populi_, by which he must be guided in his policy. if he be too deaf or rash to listen to it, his own ruin will be the inevitable consequence, but the nation persists in the same career. the meaning of the word degeneracy is now obvious. this inevitable evil is concealed in the very successes to which a nation owes its splendor. whether, like the persians, romans, &c., it is swallowed up and absorbed by the multitudes its arms have subjected, or whether the ethnical mixture proceeds in a peaceful manner, the result is the same. even where no foreign conquests add suddenly hundreds of thousands of a foreign population to the original mass, the fertility of uncultivated fields, the opulence of great commercial cities, and all the advantages to be found in the bosom of a rising nation, accomplish it, if in a less perceptible, in a no less certain manner. the two young nations of the world are now the united states and russia. see the crowds which are thronging over the frontiers of both. both already count their foreign population by millions. as the original population--the initiatory element of the whole mass--has no additions to its numbers but its natural increase, it follows that the influent elements must, in course of time, be of equal strength, and the influx still continuing, finally absorb it altogether. sometimes a nation establishes itself upon the basis of a much more numerous conquered population, as in the case of the frankish conquerors of gaul; then the amalgamation of ranks and classes produces the same results as foreign immigration. it is clear that each new ethnical element brings with it its own characteristics or instincts, and according to the relative strength of these will be the modifications in government, social relations, and the whole tendencies of the race. the modifications may be for the better, they may be for the worse; they may be very gradual, or very sudden, according to the merit and power of the foreign influence; but in course of time they will amount to radical, positive changes, and then the original nation has ceased to exist. this is the natural death of human societies. sometimes they expire gently and almost imperceptibly; oftener with a convulsion and a crash. i shall attempt to explain my meaning by a familiar simile. a mansion is built which in all respects suits the taste and wants of the owner. succeeding generations find it too small, too dark, or otherwise ill adapted to their purposes. respect for their progenitor, and family association, prevent, at first, very extensive changes, still each one makes some; and as these associations grow fainter, the changes become more radical, until at last nothing of the old house remains. but if it had previously passed into the hands of a stranger, who had none of these associations to venerate and respect, he would probably have pulled it down at once and built another. an empire, then, falls, when the vitalizing principle which gave it birth is exhausted; when its parts are connected by none but artificial ties, and artificial ties are all those which unite races possessed of different instincts. this idea is expressed in the beautiful image of the inspired prophet, when he tells the mighty king that great truth, which so many refuse to believe, that all earthly kingdoms must perish until "the god of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed."[ ] "thou, o king, sawest, and behold a great image. this great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee, and the form thereof was terrible. this image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. thou sawest till that a stone was cut without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them."[ ] i have now illustrated, to the best of my abilities, several of the most important propositions of mr. gobineau, and attempted to sustain them by arguments and examples different from those used by the author. for a more perfect exposition i must refer the reader to the body of the work. my purpose was humbly to clear away such obstacles as the author has left in the path, and remove difficulties that escaped his notice. the task which i have set myself, would, however, be far from accomplished, were i to pass over what i consider a serious error on his part, in silence and without an effort at emendation. civilization, says mr. gobineau, arises from the combined action and mutual reaction of man's moral aspirations, and the pressure of his material wants. this, in a general sense, is obviously true. but let us see the practical application. i shall endeavor to give a concise abstract of his views, and then to point out where and why he errs. in some races, says he, the spiritual aspirations predominate over their physical desires, in others it is the reverse. in none are either entirely wanting. according to the relative proportion and intensity of either of these influences, which counteract and yet assist each other, the tendency of the civilization varies. if either is possessed in but a feeble degree, or if one of them so greatly outweighs the other as to completely neutralize its effects, there is no civilization, and never can be one until the race is modified by intermixture with one of higher endowments. but if both prevail to a sufficient extent, the preponderance of either one determines the character of the civilization. in the chinese, it is the material tendency that prevails, in the hindoo the other. consequently we find that in china, civilization is principally directed towards the gratification of physical wants, the perfection of material well-being. in other words, it is of an eminently utilitarian character, which discourages all speculation not susceptible of immediate practical application. this well describes the chinese, and is precisely the picture which m. huc, who has lived among them for many years, and has enjoyed better opportunities for studying their genius than any other writer, gives of them in his late publication.[ ] hindoo culture, on the contrary, displays a very opposite tendency. among that nation, everything is speculative, nothing practical. the toils of human intellect are in the regions of the abstract where the mind often loses itself in depths beyond its sounding. the material wants are few and easily supplied. if great works are undertaken, it is in honor of the gods, so that even their physical labor bears homage to the invisible rather than the visible world. this also is a tolerably correct picture. he therefore divides all races into these two categories, taking the chinese as the type of the one and the hindoos as that of the other. according to him, the yellow races belong pre-eminently to the former, the black to the latter, while the white are distinguished by a greater intensity and better proportion of the qualities of both. but this division, and no other is consistent with the author's proposition, by assuming that in the black races the moral preponderates over the physical tendency, comes in direct conflict not only with the plain teachings of anatomy, but with all we know of the history of those races. i shall attempt to show wherein mr. gobineau's error lies, an error from the consequences of which i see no possibility for him to escape, and suggest an emendation which, so far from invalidating his general position, tends rather to confirm and strengthen it. in doing so, i am actuated by the belief that even if i err, i may be useful by inviting others more capable to the task of investigation. suggestions on important subjects, if they serve no other purpose than to provoke inquiry, are never useless. the alchemists of the middle ages, in their frivolous pursuit of impossibilities, discovered many invaluable secrets of nature and laid the foundation of that science which, by explaining the intimate mutual action of all natural bodies, has become the indispensable handmaiden of almost every other. the error, it seems to me, lies in the same confusion of distinct ideas, to which i had already occasion to advert. in ordinary language, we speak of the physical and moral nature of man, terming physical whatever relates to his material, and moral what relates to his immaterial being. again, we speak of _mind_, and though in theory we consider it as a synonyme of soul, in practical application it has a very different signification. a person may cultivate his mind without benefiting his soul, and the term _a superior mind_, does not necessarily imply moral excellency. that mental qualifications or acquisitions are in no way connected with sound morality or true piety, i have pointed out before. should any further illustrations be necessary, i might remark that the greatest monsters that blot the page of history, have been, for the most part, men of what are called superior minds, of great intellectual attainments. indeed, wickedness is seldom very dangerous, unless joined to intellect, as the common sense of mankind has expressed in the adage that a fool is seldom a knave. we daily see men perverting the highest mental gifts to the basest purposes, a fact which ought to be carefully weighed by those who believe that education consists in the cultivation of the intellect only. i therefore consider the moral endowments of man as practically different from the mental or intellectual, at least in their manifestations, if not in their essence. to define my idea more clearly, let me attempt to explain the difference between what i term the moral and the intellectual nature of man. i am aware of the dangerous nature of the ground i am treading, but shall nevertheless make the attempt to show that it is in accordance with the spirit of religion to consider what in common parlance is called the moral attributes of man, and which would be better expressed by the word _psychical_, as divisible into two, the strictly moral, and the intellectual. the former is what leads man to look beyond his earthly existence, and gives even the most brutish savage some vague idea of a deity. i am making no rash or unfounded assertion when i declare, mr. locke's weighty opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, that no tribe has ever been discovered in which some notion of this kind, however rude, was wanting, and i consider it innate--a yearning, as it were, of the soul towards the regions to which it belongs. the feeling of religion is implanted in our breast; it is not a production of the intellect, and this the christian church confirms when it declares that _faith_ we owe to the grace of god. intellect is that faculty of soul by which it takes cognizance of, classes and compares the facts of the _material_ world. as all perceptions are derived through the senses, it follows that upon the nicety of these its powers must in a great measure depend. the vigor and delicacy of the nerves, and the size and texture of the brain in which they all centre, form what we call native intellectual gifts. hence, when the body is impaired, the mind suffers; "mens sana in corpore sano;" hence, a fever prostrates, and may forever destroy, the most powerful intellect; a glass of wine may dim and distort it. here, then, is the grand distinction between soul and mind. the latter, human wickedness may annihilate; the former, man killeth not. i should wish to enter more fully upon this investigation, not new, indeed, in speculative science, yet new in the application i purpose to make of it, were it not for fear of wearying my reader, to whom my only apology can be, that the discussion is indispensable to the proper investigation of the moral and intellectual diversities of races. when i say moral diversities, i do not mean that man's moral endowments, strictly speaking, are unequal. this assertion i am not prepared to make, because--as religion is accessible and comprehensible to them all--it may be supposed that these are in all cases equal. but i mean that the manifestation of these moral endowments varies, owing to causes which i am now about to consider. i have said that the moral nature of man leads him to look beyond the confines of the material world. this, when not assisted by revelation, he attempts to do by means of his intellect. the intellect is, as it were, the visual organ by which the soul scans the abyss between the present and the future existence. according to the dimness or brightness of this mental eye, are his perceptions. if the intellectual capacity is weak, he is content with a grovelling conception of the deity; if powerful, he erects an elaborate fabric of philosophical speculations. but, as the almighty has decreed that human intellect, even in its sublimest flight, cannot soar to his presence; it follows that the most elaborate fabric of the philosopher is still a _human_ fabric, that the most perfect human theology is still _human_, and hence--the necessity of revelation. this divine light, which his mercy has vouchsafed us, dispenses with, and eclipses, the feeble glimmerings of human intellect. it illumines as well the soul of the rude savage as of the learned theologian; of the illiterate as of the erudite. nay, very often the former has the advantage, for the erudite philosopher is prone to think his own lamp all-sufficient. if it be objected that a highly cultivated mind, if directed to rightful purposes, will assist in gaining a _nobler_ conception of the deity, i shall not contradict, for in the study of his works, we learn still more to admire the maker. but i insist that true piety can, and does exist without it, and let those who trust so much in their own powers beware lest they lean upon a broken staff. the strictly moral attributes of man, therefore, those attributes which enable him to communicate with his maker, are common--probably in equal degree--to all men, and to all races of men. but his communications with the external world depend on his physical conformation. the body is the connecting link between the spirit and the material world, and, by its intimate relations to both, specially adapted to be the means of communication between them. there seems to me nothing irrational or irreligious in the doctrine that, according to the perfectness of this means of communication, must be the intercourse between the two. a person with dull auditory organs can never appreciate music, and whatever his talents otherwise may be, can never become a meyerbeer or a mozart. upon quickness of perception, power of analysis and combination, perseverance and endurance, depend our intellectual faculties, both in their degree and their kind; and are not they blunted or otherwise modified in a morbid state of the body? i consider it therefore established beyond dispute, that a certain general physical conformation is productive of corresponding mental characteristics. a human being, whom god has created with a negro's skull and general _physique_, can never equal one with a newton's or a humboldt's cranial development, though the soul of both is equally precious in the eyes of the lord, and should be in the eyes of all his followers. there is no tendency to materialism in this idea; i have no sympathy with those who deny the existence of the soul, because they cannot find it under the scalpel, and i consider the body not the mental agent, but the servant, the tool. it is true that science has not discovered, and perhaps never will discover, what physical differences correspond to the differences in individual minds. phrenology, starting with brilliant promises, and bringing to the task powers of no mean order, has failed. but there is a vast difference between the characteristics by which we distinguish individuals of the same race, and those by which we distinguish races themselves. the former are not strictly--at least not immediately--hereditary, for the child most often differs from both parents in body and mind, because no two individuals, as no two leaves of one tree, are precisely alike. but, although every oak-leaf differs from its fellow, we know the leaf of the oak-tree from that of the beech, or every other; and, in the same manner, races are distinguished by peculiarities which are hereditary and permanent. thus, every negro differs from every other negro, else we could not tell them apart; yet all, if pure blood, have the same characteristics in common that distinguish them from the white. i have been prolix, but intentionally so, in my discrimination between individual distinction and those of race, because of the latter, comparative anatomy takes cognizance; the former are left to phrenology, and i wished to remove any suspicion that in the investigation of moral and intellectual diversities of races, recourse must be had to the ill-authenticated speculations of a dubious science. but, from the data of comparative anatomy, attained by a slow and cautious progress, we deduce that races are distinguished by certain permanent physical characteristics; and, if these physical characteristics correspond to the mental, it follows as an obvious conclusion that the latter are permanent also. history ratifies the conclusion, and the common sense of mankind practically acquiesces in it. to return, then, to our author. i would add to his two elements of civilization a third--intellect _per se_; or rather, to speak more correctly, i would subdivide one of his elements into two, of which one is probably dependent on physical conformation. the combinations will then be more complex, but will remove every difficulty. i remarked that although we may consider all races as possessed of equal moral endowments, we yet may speak of moral diversities; because, without the light of revelation, man has nothing but his intellect whereby to compass the immaterial world, and the manifestation of his moral faculties must therefore be in proportion to the clearness of his intellectual, and their preponderance over the animal tendencies. the three i consider as existing about in the following relative proportions in the three great groups under which mr. gobineau and mr. latham[ ] have arranged the various races--a classification, however, which, as i already observed, i cannot entirely approve. black races, or yellow races, or white races, or atlantid�.[ ] mongolid�.[ ] japetid�.[ ] intellect feeble mediocre vigorous. animal } propensities } very strong moderate strong. moral } partially comparatively highly manifestations } latent developed cultivated. but the races comprised in each group vary among themselves, if not with regard to the relative proportion in which they possess the elements of civilization, at least in their intensity. the following formulas will, i think, apply to the majority of cases, and, at the same time, bring out my idea in a clearer light:-- if the animal propensities are strongly developed, and not tempered by the intellectual faculties, the moral conceptions must be exceedingly low, because they necessarily depend on the clearness, refinement, and comprehensiveness of the ideas derived from the material world through the senses. the religious cravings will, therefore, be contented with a gross worship of material objects, and the moral sense degenerate into a grovelling superstition. the utmost elevation which a population, so constituted, can reach, will be an unconscious impersonation of the good aspirations and the evil tendencies of their nature under the form of a good and an evil spirit, to the latter of which absurd and often bloody homage is paid. government there can be no other than the right which force gives to the strong, and its forms will be slavery among themselves, and submissiveness of all to a tyrannical absolutism. when the same animal propensities are combined with intellect of a higher order, the moral faculties have more room for action. the penetration of intellect will not be long in discovering that the gratification of physical desires is easiest and safest in a state of order and stability. hence a more complex system of legislation both social and political. the conceptions of the deity will be more elevated and refined, though the idea of a future state will probably be connected with visions of material enjoyment, as in the paradise of the mohammedans. where the animal propensities are weak and the intellect feeble, a vegetating national life results. no political organization, or of the very simplest kind. few laws, for what need of restraining passions which do not exist. the moral sense content with the vague recognition of a superior being, to whom few or no rites are rendered. but when the animal propensities are so moderate as to be subordinate to an intellect more or less vigorous, the moral aspirations will yearn towards the regions of the abstract. religion becomes a system of metaphysics, and often loses itself in the mazes of its own subtlety. the political organization and civil legislation will be simple, for there are few passions to restrain; but the laws which regulate social intercourse will be many and various, and supposed to emanate directly from the deity. strong animal passions, joined to an intellect equally strong, allow the greatest expanse for the moral sense. political organizations the most complex and varied, social and civil laws the most studied, will be the outward character of a society composed of such elements. internally we shall perceive the greatest contrasts of individual goodness and wickedness. religion will be a symbolism of human passions and the natural elements for the many, an ingenious fabric of moral speculations for the few. i have here rapidly sketched a series of pictures from nature, which the historian and ethnographer will not fail to recognize. whether the features thus cursorily delineated are owing to the causes to which i ascribe them, i must leave for the reader to decide. my space is too limited to allow of my entering into an elaborate argumentation. but i would observe that, by taking this view of the subject, we can understand why all human--and therefore false--religions are so intimately connected with the social and political organization of the peoples which profess them, and why they are so plainly mapped out on the globe as belonging to certain races, to whom alone they are applicable, and beyond whose area they cannot extend: while christianity knows no political or social forms, no geographical or ethnological limits. the former, being the productions of human intellect, must vary with its variation, and perish in its decay, while revelation is universal and immutable, like the intelligence of which it is the emanation. it is time now to conclude the task, the accomplishment of which has carried me far beyond the limits i had at first proposed to myself. if i have so long detained the reader on the threshold of the edifice, it was to facilitate his after progress, and to give him a chart, that he may not lose himself in the vast field it covers. there he may often meet me again, and if i be sometimes deemed officious with my proffered explanations, he will at least give me credit for good intentions, and he may, if he chooses, pass me without recognition. both this introduction and notes in the body of the work were thought necessary for several reasons. first, the subject is in some measure a new one, and it was important to guard against misconception, and show, right at the beginning, what was attempted to be proved, and in what manner. secondly, the author wrote for a european public, and many allusions are made, or positions taken, upon an assumed knowledge of facts, of which the general reader on this side of the ocean can be supposed to have but a slight and vague apprehension. thirdly, the author has, in many cases, contented himself with abstract reasoning, and therefore is sometimes chargeable with obscureness, on which account familiar illustrations have been supplied. fourthly, the volume now presented to the reader is one of a series of four, the remainder of which, if this meets the public approbation, may in time appear in an english garb. but it was important to make this, as much as possible, independent of the others and complete in itself. the discussion of the moral and intellectual diversities of the various groups of the human family, is, as i have before shown, totally independent of the question of unity or diversity of species; yet, as it increases the interest attached to the solution of that question, which has been but imperfectly discussed by the author, my esteemed friend, dr. j. c. nott, who has so often and so ably treated the subject, has promised to furnish, in notes and an appendix, such additional facts pertaining to his province as a naturalist, as may assist the reader in arriving at a correct opinion. with regard to the translation, it must be observed that it is not a _literal_ rendering of the original. the translator has aimed rather at giving the meaning, than the exact words or phraseology of the author, at no time, however, departing from the former. he has, in some instances, condensed or omitted what seemed irrelevant, or useless to the discussion of the question in this country, and in a few cases, he has transposed a sentence to a different part of the paragraph, where it seemed more in its place, and more effective. to explain and justify these alterations, we must remind our readers that the author wrote for a public essentially different from that of the translator; that continental writers on grave subjects are in general more intent upon vindicating their opinions than the form in which they express them, and seldom devote that attention to style which english or american readers expect; to which may be added that count gobineau wrote in the midst of a multiplicity of diplomatic affairs, and had no time, even if he had thought it worth his while, to give his work that literary finish which would satisfy the fastidious. had circumstances permitted, this translation would have been submitted to his approbation, but at the time of its going to press he is engaged in the service of his country at the court of persia. * * * * * for obtruding the present work on the notice of the american public, no apology will be required. the subject is one of immense importance, and especially in this country, where it can seldom be discussed without adventitious circumstances biassing the inquirers. to the philanthropist, the leading idea of the book, "that different races, like different individuals, are specially fitted for special purposes, for the fulfilment of which they are accountable in the measure laid down in holy writ: 'to whom much is given, from him much will be asked,' and that they are _equal_ only when they truly and faithfully perform the duties of their station"--to the philanthropist, this idea must be fraught with many valuable suggestions. so far from loosening the ties of brotherhood, it binds them closer, because it teaches us not to despise those who are endowed differently from us; and shows us that they, too, may have excellencies which we have not. to the statesman, the student of history, and the general reader, it is hoped that this volume will not be altogether useless, and may assist to a better understanding of many of the problems that have so long puzzled the philosopher. the greatest revolutions in national relations have been accomplished by the migrations of races, the most calamitous wars that have desolated the globe have been the result of the hostility of races. even now, a cloud is lowering in the horizon. the friend of peace and order watches it with silent anxiety, lest he hasten its coming. the spirit of mischief exults in its approach, but fears to betray his plans. thus, western and central europe now present the spectacle of a lull before the storm. monarchs sit trembling on their thrones, while nations mutter curses. nor have premonitory symptoms been wanting. three times, within little more than half a century, have the eruptions of that ever-burning political volcano--france--shaken the social and political system of the civilized world, and shown the amount of combustible materials, which all the efforts of a ruling class cannot always protect from ignition. the grand catastrophe may come within our times. and, is it the result of any particular social condition, the action of any particular class in the social scale, the diffusion of any particular political principles? no, because the revolutionary tendencies are various, and even opposite; if republican in one place, monarchical in another; if democratic in france, aristocratic in poland. nor is it a particular social class wherein the revolutionary principle flourishes, for the classes which, in one country, wish subversion, in another, are firmly attached to the established order of things. the poor in germany are proletarians and revolutionists; in spain, portugal, and italy, the enthusiastic lovers of their king. the better classes in the former country are mostly conservative; in the latter, they are the makers, or rather attempters, of revolutions. nor is it any particular social condition, for no class is so degraded as it has been; never was poverty less, and prosperity greater in europe than in the present century; and everywhere the political institutions are more liberal than ever before. whence, then, this gathering storm? does it exist only in the minds of the visionary, or is it a mere bugbear of the timorous? ask the prudent statesman, the traveller who pierces the different strata of the population; look behind the grates of the state-prisons; count--if this be possible--the number of victims of military executions in germany and austria, in and ; read the fearful accounts of the taking of vienna, of rome, of ancona, of venice, during the same short space of time. everywhere the same cry: nationality. it is not the temporary ravings of a mob rendered frantic by hunger and misery. it is a question of nationality, a war of races. happy we who are removed from the immediate scene of the struggle, and can be but remotely affected by it. yet, while i write, it seems as though the gales of the atlantic had blown to our peaceful shores some taints of the epidemic that rages in the old world. may it soon pass over, and a healthy atmosphere again prevail! h. h. mobile, aug. , . footnotes: [ ] _researches into the physical history of mankind_. by james cowles prichard, m. d., london, . vol. i. p. . [ ] "mr. prichard's _permanent variety_, from his own definition, is to all intents and purposes _a species_."--_kneeland's introduction to hamilton smith's natural history of the human species_, p. . [ ] smith's wealth of nations, amer. ed., vol. i. p. . [ ] _vide_ bigland's effects of physical and moral causes on the character and circumstances of nations. london, , p. . [ ] _op. cit._, p. . [ ] st. matthew, ch. xi. v. . [ ] _vide_ prichard's _natural history of man_, p. , _et passim_. "his theory," says van amringe, "required that animals should be analogous to man. it was therefore highly important that, as he was then laying the foundation for all his future arguments and conclusions, he should elevate animals to the proper eminence, to be analogous; rather than, as mr. lawrence did, sink man to the level of brutes. it was an ingenious contrivance by which he could gain all the advantages, and escape the censures of the learned lecturer. it is so simple a contrivance, too--merely substituting the word 'psychological' for 'instinctive characteristics,' and the whole animal kingdom would instantly rise to the proper platform, to be the types of the human family. to get the psychology of men and animals thus related, without the trouble of philosophically accomplishing so impossible a thing, by the mere use of a word, was an ingenious, though not an ingenuous achievement. it gave him a specious right to use bees and wasps, rats and dogs, sheep, goats, and rabbits--in short, the whole animal kingdom--as human psychical analogues, which would be amazingly convenient when conclusions were to be made."--_natural history of man_, by w. f. van amringe. , p. . [ ] this fact is considered by dr. nott as a proof of _specific_ difference among dogs.--_types of mankind._ phila., . [ ] in , vasco di gama sailed around cape good hope; even previous to that, portuguese vessels had coasted along the western shores of africa. since that time the europeans have subjected the whole of the american continents, southern asia and the island world of the pacific, while africa is almost as unknown as it ever was. the cape colony is not in the original territory of the negro. liberia and sierra leone contain a half-breed population, and present experiments by no means tested. it may be fairly asserted that nowhere has the power and intelligence of the white race made less impression, produced fewer results, than in the domain of the negro. [ ] roberts, the president of the liberian republic, boasts of but a small portion of african blood in his veins. sequoyah, the often-cited inventor of the cherokee alphabet, so far from being a pure indian, was the son of a white man. [ ] for the great perfection to which the chinese have carried the luxuries and amenities of life, see particularly m. huc's _travels in china_. he lived among them for years, and, what few travellers do, spoke their language so fluently and perfectly that he was enabled, during a considerable number of years, to discharge the duties of a missionary, disguised as a native. [ ] it would be useless to remind our readers of the famous great wall, the imperial canals, that largest of the cities of the world--pekin. the various treatises of the chinese on morals and politics, especially that of confucius, have been admired by all european thinkers. _consult pauthier's elaborate work on china._ it is equally well known that the chinese knew the art of printing, gunpowder and its uses, the mariner's compass, etc., centuries before we did. for the general diffusion of elementary knowledge among the chinese, see _davis's sketches_, and other authors. those who may think me a biassed panegyrist of the chinese, i refer to the following works as among the most reliable of the vast number written on the subject:-- _description historique, géographique, et littéraire de la chine._ par m. g. pauthier. paris, . _china opened._ by rev. chs. gutzlaff. london, . _china, political, commercial, and social._ by r. montgomery martin. london, . _sketches of china._ by john f. davis. london, . and above all, for amusing and instructive reading, _journey through the chinese empire._ by m. huc. new york, ; and _mélanges asiatiques._ par abel remusat. paris, . [ ] unwilling to introduce statistic pedantry into a composition of so humble pretensions as an introduction, i have refrained to give the figures--not always very accurate, i admit--upon which the preceding gradation is based, viz: the number of persons able to read and write in each of the above-named countries. how far england and france are behindhand in this respect, compared either with ourselves, or with other european nations, is tolerably well known; but the fact that not only in china proper, but in thibet, japan, anam, tonquin, etc., few can be found devoid of that acquirement, will probably meet with many incredulous readers, though it is mentioned by almost every traveller. (see _j. mohl's annual report to the asiatic society_, .) but, it may be safely asserted that, in the whole of that portion of asia lying south of the altai mountains, including japan, altogether the most populous region of the globe, the percentage of males unable to read and write is by far smaller than in the entire population of europe. be it well understood, that i do not, therefore, claim any superiority for the inhabitants of the former region over those of the latter. "in china," says m. huc, "there are not, as in europe, public libraries and reading-rooms; but those who have a taste for reading, and a desire to instruct themselves, can satisfy their inclinations very easily, as books are sold here at a lower price than in any other country. besides, the chinese find everywhere something to read; they can scarcely take a step without seeing some of the characters of which they are so proud. one may say, in fact, that all china is an immense library; for inscriptions, sentences, moral precepts, are found in every corner, written in letters of all colors and all sizes. the façades of the tribunals, the pagodas, the public monuments, the signs of the shops, the doors of the houses, the interior of the apartments, the corridors, all are full of fine quotations from the best authors. teacups, plates, vases, fans, are so many selections of poems, often chosen with much taste, and prettily printed. a chinese has no need to give himself much trouble in order to enjoy the finest productions of his country's literature. he need only take his pipe, and walk out, with his nose in the air, through the principal streets of the first town he comes to. let him enter the poorest house in the most wretched village; the destitution may be complete, things the most necessary will be wanting; but he is sure of finding some fine maxims written out on strips of red paper. thus, if those grand large characters, which look so terrific in our eyes, though they delight the chinese, are really so difficult to learn, at least the people have the most ample opportunities of studying them, almost in play, and of impressing them ineffaceably on their memories."--_a journey through the chinese empire_, vol. i. pp. - . [ ] is it necessary to call to the mind of the reader, that the most prominent physicians, the greatest chemists, the best mathematicians, were french, and that to the same nation belong the comptes, the de maistres, the guizots, the de tocquevilles; or that, notwithstanding its political extravaganzas, every liberal theory was first fostered in its bosom? the father of our democratic party was the pupil of french governmental philosophy, by the lessons of which even his political opponents profited quite as much as by its errors. [ ] brace, in his _home life in germany_, mentions an instance of this kind, but not having the volume at hand, i cannot cite the page. to every one, however, that has travelled in europe, or has not, such facts are familiar. it is well known, for instance, that in some of the most polished european countries, the wooden ploughshare is still used; and that, in paris, that metropolis of arts and fashion, every drop of water must be carried, in buckets, from the public fountains to the dutchess' _boudoir_ in the first, and to the grisette's garret in the seventh story. compare this with the united states, where--not to mention fairmount and croton--the smallest town, almost, has her water-works, if required by her topography. are we, then, so infinitely more civilized than france? [ ] since writing the above, i lit upon the following striking confirmation of my idea by dr. pickering, whose analogism here so closely resembles mine, as almost to make me suspect myself of unconscious plagiarism. "while admitting the general truth, that mankind are essentially alike, no one doubts the existence of character, distinguishing not only individuals, but communities and nations. i am persuaded that there is, besides, a character of race. it would not be difficult to select epithets; such as 'amphibious, enduring, insititious;' or to point out as accomplished by one race of men, that which seemed beyond the powers of another. each race possessing its peculiar points of excellence, and, at the same time, counterbalancing defects, it may be that union was required to attain the full measure of civilization. in the organic world, each field requires a new creation; each change in circumstances going beyond the constitution of a plant or animal, is met by a new adaptation, until the whole universe is full; while, among the immense variety of created beings, two kinds are hardly found fulfilling the same precise purpose. some analogy may possibly exist in the human family; and it may even be questioned, whether any one of the races existing singly would, up to the present day, have extended itself over the whole surface of the globe."--_the races of man, and their geographical distribution._ by charles pickering, m. d. boston, . (_u. s. exploring expedition_, vol. ix. p. .) [ ] since champollion's fortunate discovery of the rosetta stone, which furnished the key to the hieroglyphics, the deciphering of these once so mysterious characters has made such progress, that lepsius, the great modern egyptologist, declares it possible to write a minute court gazette of the reign of ramses ii., the sesostris of the greeks, and even of monarchs as far back as the ivth dynasty. to understand that this is no vain boast, the reader must remember that these hieroglyphics mostly contain records of private or royal lives, and that the mural paintings in the temples and sepulchral chambers, generally represent scenes illustrative of trades, or other occupations, games, etc., practised among the people of that early day. [ ] _ethnological journal_, edited by luke burke, london, ; june , no. , from _types of mankind_. by nott and gliddon, p. . [ ] from _types of mankind_. by nott and gliddon, p. . [ ] the term "race" is of relative meaning, and, though often erroneously used synonymously with _species_, by no means signifies the same. the most strenuous advocates of sameness of species, use it to designate well-defined groups, as the white and black. if we consider ourselves warranted by the language of the bible, to believe in separate origins of the human family, then, indeed, it may be considered as similar in meaning to species; otherwise, it must signify but subdivisions of one. we may therefore speak of ten or a hundred races of man, without impugning their being descended from the same stock. all that is here contended for is, that the distinctive features of such races, in whatever manner they may have originated, are now persistent. two men may, the one arrive at the highest honors of the state, the other, with every facility at his command, forever remain in mediocrity. yet, these two men may be brothers. that the question of species, when disconnected from any theological bearing, is one belonging exclusively to the province of the naturalist, and in which the metaphysician can have but a subordinate part, may be illustrated by a homely simile. diversity of talent in the same family involves no doubt of parentage; but, if one child be born with a black skin and woolly hair, questions about the paternity might indeed arise. [ ] _natural history of the varieties of man._ by robert gordon latham. london, . [ ] the collision between these two nationalities, only a few years ago, was attended by scenes so revolting--transcending even the horrors of the corcyrian sedition, the sack of magdeburg, or the bloodiest page in the french revolution--that, for the honor of human nature, i would gladly disbelieve the accounts given of them. but the testimony comes from neutral sources, the friends of either party being interested in keeping silence. i shall have occasion to allude to this subject again, and therefore reserve further details for a note in the body of the work. [ ] even the historians of ancient greece wondered at those gigantic ruins, of which many are still extant. of these cyclopean remains, as they were often called, no one knew the builders or the history, and they were considered as the labors of the fabulous heroes of a traditional epoch. for an account of these memorials of an _ante-hellenic civilization in greece, of which we have no record_, particularly the ruins of orchomonos, tirgus, mycene, and the tunnels of lake copais, see _niebuhr's ancient history_, vol. i. p. , _et passim_. [ ] democracy in america, vol. ii. ch. xviii. p. . [ ] daniel ii. . [ ] daniel ii. to . [ ] among many passages illustrative of the ultra utilitarianism of the chinese, i can find space but for one, and that selected almost at random. after speaking of the exemplary diffusion of primary instruction among the masses, he says that, though they all read, and frequently, yet even their reading is of a strictly utilitarian character, and never answers any but practical purposes or temporary amusement. the name of the author is seldom known, and never inquired after. "that class are, in their eyes, only idle persons, who pass their time in making prose or verse. they have no objection to such a pursuit. a man may, they say, 'amuse himself with his pen as with his kite, if he likes it as well--it is all a matter of taste.' the inhabitants of the celestial empire would never recover from their astonishment if they knew to what extent intellectual labor may be in europe a source of honor and often wealth. if they were told that a person among us may obtain great glory by composing a drama or a novel, they would either not believe it, or set it down as an additional proof of our well-known want of common sense. how would it be if they should be told of the renown of a dancer or a violin player, and that one cannot make a bound, nor the other draw a bow anywhere without thousands of newspapers hastening to spread the important news over all the kingdoms of europe! "the chinese are too decided utilitarians to enter into our views of the arts. in their opinion, a man is only worthy of the admiration of his fellow-creatures when he has well fulfilled the social duties, and especially if he knows better than any one else how to get out of a scrape. you are regarded as a man of genius if you know how to regulate your family, make your lands fruitful, traffic with ability, and realize great profits. this, at least, is the only kind of genius that is of any value in the eyes of these eminently practical men."--_voyages en chine_, par m. huc, amer. trans., vol. i. pp. and . [ ] nat. hist. of the varieties of man. london. [ ] according to latham's classification, _op. cit._ diversity of races. chapter i. political catastrophes. perishable condition of all human societies--ancient ideas concerning this phenomenon--modern theories. the downfall of civilizations is the most striking, and, at the same time, the most obscure of all the phenomena of history. if the sublime grandeur of this spectacle impresses the mind with awe, the mystery in which it is wrapped presents a boundless field for inquiry and meditation to a reflecting mind. the study of the birth and growth of nations is, indeed, fraught with many valuable observations: the gradual development of human societies, their successes, conquests, and triumphs, strike the imagination in a lively manner, and excite an ever increasing interest. but these phenomena, however grand and interesting, seem susceptible of an easy explanation. we consider them as the necessary consequences of the intellectual and moral endowments of man. once we admit the existence of these endowments, their results will no longer surprise us. but we perceive that, after a period of glory and strength, all societies formed by man begin to totter and fall; all, i said, because there is no exception. scattered over the surface of our globe, we see the vestiges of preceding civilizations, many of which are known to us only by name, or have not left behind them even that faint memorial, and are recorded only by the mute stones in the depths of primeval forests.[ ] if we glance at our modern states, we are forced to the conclusion that, though their date is but of yesterday, some of them already exhibit signs of old age. the awful truth of prophetic language about the instability of all things human, applies with equal force to political bodies and to individuals, to nations and their civilizations. every association of men for social and political purposes, though protected by the most ingenious social and political ties and contrivances, conceals among the very elements of its life, the germ of inevitable destruction, contracted the day it was formed. this terrible fact is proved by the history of all ages as well as of our own. it is owing to a natural law of death which seems to govern societies as well as individuals; but, does this law operate alike in all cases? is it uniform like the result it brings about, and do all civilizations perish from the same pre-existing cause? a superficial glance at the page of history would tempt us to answer in the negative, for the apparent causes of the downfall of the great empires of antiquity were very different in each case. yet, if we pierce below the surface, we find in this very necessity of decay, which weighs so imperiously upon all societies without exception, the evidence of the existence of some general, though concealed, cause, producing a natural death, even where no external causes anticipate it by violent destruction. we also discover that all civilizations, after a short duration, exhibit, to the acute observer, certain intimate disturbances, difficult to define, but whose existence is undeniable; and that these present in all cases an analogous character. finally, if we distinguish the ruin of civilizations from that of states (for we sometimes see the same culture subsist in a country under foreign domination, and survive the destruction of the political body which gave it birth; while, again, comparatively slight misfortunes cause it to be transformed, or to disappear altogether), we become more and more confirmed in the idea that this principle of death in all societies is not only a necessary condition of their life, independent, in a great measure, of external causes, but is also uniform in all. to fix and determine this principle, and to trace its effects in the lives of those nations, of whom history has left us records, has been my object and endeavor in the studies, the results of which i now lay before the reader. the fact that every human agglomeration, and the peculiar culture resulting from it, is doomed to perish, was not known to the ancients. even in the epochs immediately preceding ours, it was not believed. the religious spirit of asiatic antiquity looked upon the great political catastrophes in the same light that they did upon the sudden destruction of an individual: as a demonstration of divine wrath, visiting a nation or an individual whose sins had marked them out for signal punishment, which would serve as an example to those criminals whom the rod had as yet spared. the jews, misunderstanding the meaning of the promise, believed their empire imperishable. rome, at the very moment when the threatening clouds lowered in the horizon of her grandeur, entertained no doubt as to the eternity of hers.[ ] but our generation has profited by experience; and, as no one presumes to doubt that all men must die, because all who came before us have died; so we are firmly convinced, that the days of nations, as of individuals, however many they be, are numbered. the wisdom of the ancients, therefore, will afford us but little assistance in the unravelling of our subject, if we except one fundamental maxim: that the finger of divine providence is always visible in the conduct of the affairs of this world. from this solid basis we shall not depart, accepting it in the full extent that it is recognized by the church. it cannot be contested that no civilization will perish without the will of god, and to apply to the mortal condition of all societies, the sacred axiom by which the ancients explained certain remarkable, and, in their opinion, isolated cases of destruction, is but proclaiming a truth of the first order, of which we must never lose sight in our researches after truths of secondary importance. if it be further added that societies perish by their sins, i willingly accede to it; it is but drawing a parallel between them and individuals who also find their death, or accelerate it, by disobedience to the laws of the creator. so far, there is nothing contradictory to reason, even when unassisted by divine light; but these two truths once admitted and duly weighed, the wisdom of the ancients, i repeat, affords no further assistance. they did not search into the ways by which the divine will effected the ruin of nations; on the contrary, they were rather inclined to consider these ways as essentially mysterious, and above comprehension. seized with pious terror at the aspect of the wrecks, they easily imagined that providence had specially interfered thus to strike and completely destroy once powerful states. where a miracle is recorded by the sacred scriptures, i willingly submit; but where that high testimony is wanting, as it is in the great number of cases, we may justly consider the ancient theory as defective, and not sufficiently enlightened. we may even conclude, that as divine justice watches over nations unremittingly, and its decrees were pronounced ere the first human society was formed, they are also enforced in a predeterminate manner, and according to the unalterable laws of the universe, which govern both animated nature and the inorganic world. if we have cause to reproach the philosophers of the earlier ages, for having contented themselves, in attempting to fathom the mystery, with the vindication of an incontestable theological truth, but which itself is another mystery; at least, they have not increased the difficulties of the question by making it a theme for a maze of errors. in this respect, they rank highly above the rationalist schools of various epochs. the thinkers of athens and rome established the doctrine, which has retained its ground to our days, that states, nations, civilizations, perished only through luxury, enervation, bad government, corruption of morals, fanaticism. all these causes, either singly or combined, were supposed to account for the downfall of civilizations. it is a necessary consequence of this doctrine, that where neither of these causes are in operation, no destructive agency is at work. societies would therefore possess this advantage over individuals, that they could die no other but a violent death; and, to establish a body politic as durable as the globe itself, nothing further would be necessary than to elude the dangers which i enumerated above. the inventors of this thesis did not perceive its bearing. they considered it as an excellent means for illustrating the doctrine of morality, which, as is well known, was the sole aim of their historical writings. in their narratives of events, they were so strongly preoccupied with showing the happy rewards of virtue, and the disastrous results of crime and vice, that they cared little for what seemed to furnish no illustration. this erroneous and narrow-minded system often operated contrary to the intention of the authors, for it applied, according to occasion, the name of virtue and vice in a very arbitrary manner; still, to a great extent, the severe and laudable sentiment upon which it was based, excuses it. if the genius of a plutarch or a tacitus could draw from history, studied in this manner, nothing but romances and satires, yet the romances were sublime, and the satires generous. i wish i could be equally indulgent to the writers of the eighteenth century, who made their own application of the same theory; but there is, between them and their teachers, too great a difference. while the ancients were attached to the established social system, even to a fault, our moderns were anxious for destruction, and greedy of untried novelties. the former exerted themselves to deduce useful lessons from their theory; the latter have perverted it into a fearful weapon against all rational principles of government, which they stigmatized by every term that mankind holds in horror. to save societies from ruin, the disciples of voltaire would destroy religion, law, industry, commerce; because, if we believe them, religion is fanaticism; laws, despotism; industry and commerce, luxury and corruption. i have not the slightest intention of entering the field of polemics; i wished merely to direct attention to the widely diverging results of this principle, when applied by thucydides, or the abbé raynal. conservative in the one, cynically aggressive in the other, it is erroneous in both. the causes to which the downfall of nations is generally ascribed are not the true ones, and whilst i admit that these evils may be rifest in the last stages of dissolution of a people, i deny that they possess in themselves sufficient strength, and so destructive an energy, as to produce the final, irremediable catastrophe. footnotes: [ ] a. de humboldt, examen critique de l'histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent. paris. [ ] amadée thierry, _la gaule sous l'administration romaine_, vol. i. p. . chapter ii. alleged causes of political catastrophes examined. fanaticism--aztec empire of mexico.--luxury--modern european states as luxurious as the ancient.--corruption of morals--the standard of morality fluctuates in the various periods of a nation's history: example, france--is no higher in youthful communities than in old ones--morality of paris.--irreligion--never spreads through all ranks of a nation--greece and rome--tenacity of paganism. before entering upon my reasons for the opinion expressed at the end of the preceding chapter, it will be necessary to explain and define what i understand by the term society. i do not apply this term to the more or less extended circle belonging to a distinct sovereignty. the republic of athens is not, in my sense of the word, a society; neither is the kingdom of magadha, the empire of pontus, or the caliphat of egypt in the time of the fatimites. these are fragments of societies, which are transformed, united, or subdivided, by the operation of those primordial laws into which i am inquiring, but whose existence or annihilation does not constitute the existence or annihilation of a society. their formation is, for the most part, a transient phenomenon, which exerts but a limited, or even indirect influence upon the civilization that gave it birth. by the term society, i understand an association of men, actuated by similar ideas, and possessed of the same general instincts. this association need by no means be perfect in a political sense, but must be complete from a social point of view. thus, egypt, assyria, greece, india, china, have been, or are still, the theatres upon which distinct societies have worked out their destinies, to which the perturbations in their political relations were merely secondary. i shall, therefore, speak of the fractions of these societies only when my reasoning applies equally to the whole. i am now prepared to proceed to the examination of the question before us, and i hope to prove that fanaticism, luxury, corruption of morals, and irreligion, do not _necessarily_ occasion the ruin of nations. all these maladies, either singly or combined, have attacked, and sometimes with great virulence, nations which nevertheless recovered from them, and were, perhaps, all the more vigorous afterward. the aztec empire, in mexico, seemed to flourish for the especial glory and exaltation of fanaticism. what can there be more fanatical than a social and political system, based on a religion which requires the incessant and profuse shedding of the blood of fellow-beings?[ ] our remote ancestors, the barbarous nations of northern europe, did indeed practise this unholy rite, but they never chose for their sacrifices innocent victims,[ ] or, at least, such as they considered so: the shipwrecked and prisoners of war, were not considered innocent. but, for the mexicans, all victims were alike; with that ferocity, which a modern physiologist[ ] recognizes as a characteristic of the races of the new world, they butchered their own fellow-citizens indiscriminately, and without remorse or pity. and yet, this did not prevent them from being a powerful, industrious, and wealthy nation, who might long have continued to blaspheme the deity by their dark creed, but for cortez's genius and the bravery of his companions. in this instance, then, fanaticism was not the cause of the downfall.[ ] nor are luxury or enervation more powerful in their effects. these vices are almost always peculiar to the higher classes, and seldom penetrate the whole mass of the population. but i doubt whether among the greeks, the persians, or the romans, whose downfall they are said to have caused, luxury and enervation, albeit in a different form, had risen to a higher pitch than we see them to-day in some of our modern states, in france, germany, england, and russia, for instance. the two last countries are especially distinguished for the luxury prevalent among the higher classes, and yet, these two countries seem to be endued with a vitality much more vigorous and promising than most other european states. in the middle ages, the venetians, genoese, pisanese, accumulated in their magazines the treasures and luxuries of the world; yet, the gorgeous magnificence of their palaces, and the splendid decorations of their vessels, did certainly not diminish their power, or subvert their dominion.[ ] even the corruption of morals, this most terrible of all scourges, is not necessarily a cause of national ruin. if it were, the prosperity of a nation, its power and preponderance, would be in a direct ratio to the purity of its manners; and it is hardly necessary to say that this is not the case. the odd fashion of ascribing all sorts of imaginary virtues to the first romans, is now pretty much out of date.[ ] few would now dare to hold up as models of morality those sturdy patricians of the old school, who treated their women as slaves, their children as cattle, and their creditors like wild beasts. if there should still be some who would defend so bad a cause, their reasoning could easily be refuted, and its want of solidity shown. abuse of power, in all epochs, has created equal indignation; there were deeper reasons for the abolition of royalty than the rape of lucretia, for the expulsion of the decemvirs than the outrage of appius; but these pretexts for two important revolutions, sufficiently demonstrate the public sentiment with regard to morals. it is a great mistake to ascribe the vigor of a young nation to its superior virtues; since the beginning of historical times, there has not been a community, however small, among which all the reprehensible tendencies of human nature were not visible, notwithstanding which, it has increased and prospered. there are even instances where the splendor of a state was owing to the most abominable institutions. the spartans are indebted for their renown, and place in history, to a legislation fit only for a community of bandits.[ ] so far from being willing to accord to youthful communities any superiority in regard to morals, i have no doubt that, as nations advance in age and consequently approach their period of decay, they present to the eyes of the moralist a far more satisfactory spectacle.[ ] manners become milder; men accommodate themselves more readily to one another; the means of subsistence become, if not easier, at least more varied; reciprocal obligations are better defined and understood; more refined theories of right and wrong gain ground. it would be difficult to show that at the time when the greek arms conquered darius, or when greek liberty itself fled forever from the battle-field of chæronæa, or when the goths entered rome as victors; that the persian monarchy, athens, or the imperial city, in those times of their downfall, contained a smaller proportion of honest and virtuous people than in the most glorious epochs of their national existence. but we need not go so far back for illustrations. if any one were required to name the place where the spirit of our age displayed itself in the most complete contrast with the virtuous ages of the world (if such there were), he would most certainly point out paris. yet, many learned and pious persons have assured me, that nowhere, and in no epoch, could more practical virtue, solid piety, greater delicacy of conscience, be found than within the precincts of this great and corrupt city. the ideal of goodness is as exalted, the duties of a christian as well understood, as by the most brilliant luminaries of the church in the seventeenth century. i might add, that these virtues are divested of the bitterness and severity from which, in those times, they were not always exempt; and that they are more united with feelings of toleration and universal philanthropy.[ ] thus we find, as if to counterbalance the fearful aberrations of our own epoch, in the principal theatre of these aberrations, contrasts more numerous and more striking, than probably blessed the sight of the faithful in preceding ages. i cannot even perceive that great men are wanting in those periods of corruption and decay; on the contrary, these periods are often signalized by the appearance of men remarkable for energy of character and stern virtue.[ ] if we look at the catalogue of roman emperors, we find a great number of them as exalted in merit as in rank; we meet with names like those of trajan, antoninus pius, septimius severus, alexander severus, jovian; and if we glance beneath the throne, we see a glorious constellation of great doctors of our faith, of martyrs, and apostles of the primitive church; not to consider the number of virtuous pagans. active, firm, and valorous minds filled the camps and the forums, so that it may reasonably be doubted whether rome, in the times of cincinnatus, possessed so great a number of eminent men in every department of human activity. many other examples might be alleged, to prove that senile and tottering communities, so far from being deficient in men of virtue, talent, and action, possess them probably in greater number than young and rising states; and that their general standard of morals is often higher. public morality, indeed, varies greatly at different periods of a nation's history. the history of the french nation, better than any other, illustrates this fact. few will deny that the gallo-romans of the fifth and sixth centuries, though a subject race, were greatly superior in point of morals to their heroic conquerors.[ ] individually taken, they were often not inferior to the latter in courage and military virtue.[ ] the intermixture of the two races, during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, reduced the standard of morals among the whole nation to a disgraceful level. in the three succeeding centuries, the picture brightens again. yet, this period of comparative light was succeeded by the dark scenes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when tyranny and debauchery ran riot over the land, and infected all classes of society, not excepting the clergy; when the nobles robbed their vassals, and the commonalty sold their country to a foreign foe. this period, so distinguished for the total absence of patriotism, and every honest sentiment, was emphatically one of decay; the state was shaken to its very foundation, and seemed ready to bury under its ruins so much shame and dishonor. but the crisis passed; foreign and intestine foes were vanquished; the machinery of government reconstructed on a firmer basis; the state of society improved. notwithstanding its bloody follies, the sixteenth century dishonors less the annals of the nation than its predecessors, and it formed the transition period to the age of those pure and ever-brilliant lights, fenelon, bossuet, montausier, and others. this period, again, was succeeded by the vices of the regency, and the horrors of the revolution. since that time, we have witnessed almost incredible fluctuations of public morality every decade of years. i have sketched rapidly, and merely pointed out the most prominent changes. to do even this properly, much more to descend to details, would require greater space than the limits and designs of this work permit. but i think what i have said is sufficient to show that the corruption of public morals, though always a great, is often a transient evil, a malady which may be corrected or which corrects itself, and cannot, therefore, be the sole cause of national ruin, though it may hasten the catastrophe. the corruption of public morals is nearly allied to another evil, which has been assigned as one of the causes of the downfall of empires. it is observed of athens and rome, that the glory of these two commonwealths faded about the same time that they abandoned their national creeds. these, however, are the only examples of such a coincidence that can be cited. the religion of zoroaster was never more flourishing in the persian empire, than at the time of its downfall. tyre, carthage, judea, the mexican and peruvian empires expired at the moment when they embraced their altars with the greatest zeal and devotion. nay, i do not believe that even at athens and rome, the ancient creed was abandoned until the day when it was replaced in every conscience, by the complete triumph of christianity. i am firmly convinced that, politically speaking, irreligion never existed among any people, and that none ever abandoned the faith of their forefathers, except in exchange for another. in other words, there never was such a thing as a religious interregnum. the gallic teutates gave way to the jupiter of the romans; the worship of jupiter, in its turn, was replaced by christianity. it is true that, in athens, not long before the time of pericles, and in rome, towards the age of the scipios, it became the fashion among the higher classes, first to reason upon religious subjects, next to doubt them, and finally to disbelieve them altogether, and to pride themselves upon scepticism. but though there were many who joined in the sentiment of the ancient "freethinker" who dared the augurs to look at one another without laughing, yet this scepticism never gained ground among the mass of the people. aspasia at her evening parties, and lelius among his intimates, might ridicule the religious dogmas of their country, and amuse themselves at the expense of those that believed them. but at both these epochs, the most brilliant in the history of greece and rome, it would have been highly dangerous to express such sentiments publicly. the imprudence of his mistress came near costing pericles himself dearly, and the tears which he shed before the tribunal, were not in themselves sufficiently powerful to save the fair sceptic. the poets of the times, aristophanes, sophocles, and afterwards �schylus, found it necessary, whatever were their private sentiments, to flatter the religious notions of the masses. the whole nation regarded socrates as an impious innovator, and would have put to death anaxagoras, but for the strenuous intercession of pericles. nor did the philosophical and sceptical theories penetrate the masses at a later period. never, at any time, did they extend beyond the sphere of the elegant and refined. it may be objected that the opinion of the rest, the mechanics, traders, the rural population, the slaves, etc., was of little moment, as they had no influence in the policy of the state. if this were the case, why was it necessary, until the last expiring throb of paganism, to preserve its temples and pay the hierophants? why did men, the most eminent and enlightened, the most sceptical in their religious notions, not only don the sacerdotal robe, but even descend to the most repugnant offices of the popular worship? the daily reader of lucretius[ ] had to snatch moments of leisure from the all-absorbing game of politics, to compose a treatise on haruspicy. i allude to the first cæsar.[ ] and all his successors, down to constantine, were compelled to unite the pontificial with the imperial dignity. even constantine himself, though as a christian prince he had far better reasons for repugnance to such an office than any of his predecessors, was compelled to compromise with the still powerful ancient religion of the nation.[ ] this is a clear proof of the prevalence of the popular sentiment over the opinion of the higher and more enlightened classes. they might appeal to reason and common sense, against the absurdities of the masses, but the latter would not, could not, renounce one faith until they had adopted another, confirming the old truth, that in the affairs of this world, the positive ever takes precedent over the negative. the popular sentiment was so strong that, in the third century, it infected even the higher classes to some extent, and created among them a serious religious reaction, which did not entirely subside until after the final triumph of christianity. the revolution of ideas which gradually diffused true religion among all classes, is highly interesting, and it may not be altogether irrelevant to my subject, to point out the principal causes which occasioned it. in the latter stages of the roman empire, the armies had acquired such undue political preponderance, that from the emperor, who inevitably was chosen by them, down to the pettiest governor of a district, all the functionaries of the government issued from the ranks. they had sprung from those popular masses, of whose passionate attachment to their faith i have already spoken, and upon attaining their elevated stations, came in contact with the former rulers of the country, the old distinguished families, the municipal dignitaries of cities, in fact those classes who took pride and delight in sceptical literature. at first there was hostility between these latter and the real rulers of the state, whom they would willingly have treated as upstarts, if they had dared. but as the court gave the tone, and all the minor military chiefs were, for the most part, devout and fanatic, the sceptics were compelled to disguise their real sentiments, and the philosophers set about inventing systems to reconcile the rationalistic theories with the state religion. this revival of pagan piety caused the greater number of the persecutions. the rural populations, who had suffered their faith to be outraged by the atheists so long as the higher classes domineered over them, now, that the imperial democracy had reduced all to the same level, were panting for revenge; but, mistaking their victims, they directed their fury against the christians. the real sceptics were such men as king agrippa, who wishes to hear st. paul[ ] from mere curiosity; who hears him, debates with him, considers him a fool, but never thinks of persecuting him because he differs in opinion; or tacitus, the historian, who, though full of contempt for the believers in the new religion, blames nero for his cruelties towards them. agrippa and tacitus were pagan sceptics. diocletian was a politician, who gave way to the clamors of an incensed populace. decius and aurelian were fanatics, like the masses they governed, and from whom they had sprung. even after the christian religion had become the religion of the state, what immense difficulties were experienced in attempting to bring the masses within its pale! so hopeless was in some places the contest with the local divinities, that in many instances conversion was rather the result of address, than the effect of persuasion. the genius of the holy propagators of our religion was reduced to the invention of pious frauds. the divinities of the groves, fields, and fountains, were still worshipped, but under the name of the saints, the martyrs, and the virgin. after being for a time misdirected, these homages would finally find the right way. yet such is the obstinacy with which the masses cling to a faith once received, that there are traces of it remaining in our day. there are still parishes in france, where some heathenish superstition alarms the piety, and defies the efforts of the minister. in catholic brittany, even in the last centuries, the bishop in vain attempted to dehort his flock from the worship of an idol of stone. the rude image was thrown into the water, but rescued by its obstinate adorers; and the assistance of the military was required to break it to pieces. such was, and such is the longevity of paganism. i conclude, therefore, that no nation, either in ancient or modern times, ever abandoned its religion without having duly and earnestly embraced another, and that, consequently, none ever found itself, for a moment, in a state of irreligion, which could have been the cause of its ruin. having denied the destructive effects of fanaticism, luxury, and immorality, and the political possibility of irreligion, i shall now speak of the effects of bad government. this subject is well worthy of an entire chapter. footnotes: [ ] see prescott's _history of the conquest of mexico_. [ ] c. f. weber, _m. a. lucani pharsalia_. leipzig, , vol. i. pp. - , _note_. [ ] prichard, _natural history of man_.--dr. martius is still more explicit. (see _martius and spix_, _reise in brasilien_. munich, vol. i. pp. - .) mr. gobineau quotes from m. roulin's french translation of prichard's great work, and as i could not always find the corresponding pages in the original, i have sometimes been obliged to omit the citation of the page, that in the french translation being useless to english readers.--_transl._ [ ] i greatly doubt whether the fanaticism of even the ancient mexicans could exceed that displayed by some of our not very remote ancestors. who, that reads the trials for witchcraft in the judicial records of scotland, and, after smiling at the frivolous, inconsistent testimony against the accused, comes to the cool, uncommented marginal note of the reporter: "convicta et combusta," does not feel his heart leap for horror? but, if he comes to an entry like the following, he feels as though lightning from heaven could but inflict too mild a punishment on the perpetrators of such unnatural crimes. " , dec. .--the earl of mar declared to the council, that some women were taken in broughton as witches, and being put to an assize, and convicted, albeit they persevered constant in their denial to the end, they were burnt quick (alive), after such a cruel manner, that some of them died in despair, renouncing and blaspheming god; and _others, half-burned, brak out of the fire, and were cast in it again, till they were burned to death_." entry in sir thomas hamilton's _minutes of proceedings in the privy council_. (from w. scott's _letters on demonology and witchcraft_, p. .) really, i do not believe that the peruvians ever carried fanaticism so far. yet, a counterpart to this horrible picture is found in the history of new england. a man, named cory, being accused of witchcraft, and refusing to plead, was accordingly pressed to death. and when, in the agony of death, the unfortunate man thrust out his tongue, the sheriff, without the least emotion, crammed it back into the mouth with his cane. (see cotton mather's _magnalia christi americana_, hardford. _thau. pneu_, c. vii. p. , _et passim_.) did the ferocity of the most brutish savages ever invent any torture more excruciating than that in use in the british isles, not much more than two centuries ago, for bringing poor, decrepit old women to the confession of a crime which never existed but in the crazed brain of bigots. "the nails were torn from the fingers with smith's pincers; pins driven into the places which the nails defended; the knees were crushed in the _boots_, the finger-bones splintered in the _pilniewinks_," etc. (scott, _op. cit._, p. .) but then, it is true, they had a more _gentle_ torture, which an english lord (eglington) had the honor and humanity to invent! this consisted in placing the legs of a poor woman in the stocks, and then _loading the bare shins with bars of iron_. above thirty stones of iron were placed upon the limbs of an unfortunate woman before she could be brought to the confession which led her to the stake. (scott, _op. cit._, pp. , , , etc. etc.) as late as , not yet years ago, three women were hanged, in england, for witchcraft; and the fatal statute against it was not abolished until , when the rabble put to death, in the most horrible manner, an old pauper woman, and very nearly killed another. and, in the middle of last century, eighty-five persons were burnt, or otherwise executed, for witchcraft, at mohra, in sweden. among them were fifteen young children. if god had ordained that fanaticism should be punished by national ruin, were not these crimes, in which, in most cases, the whole nation participated, were not they horrible enough to draw upon the perpetrators the fate of sodom and gomorrah? surely, if fanaticism were the cause of national decay, most european nations had long since been swept from the face of the globe, "so that their places could nowhere be found."--h. [ ] there seem, at first sight, to be exceptions to the truth of the assertion, that luxury, in itself, is not productive of national ruin. venice, genoa, pisa, etc., were _aristocratic_ republics, in which, as in monarchies, a high degree of luxury is not only compatible with, but may even be greatly conducive to the prosperity of the state. but the basis of a _democratic_ republic is a more or less perfect equality among its citizens, which is often impaired, and, in the end, subverted by too great a disparity of wealth. yet, even in them, glaring contrasts between extravagant luxury and abject poverty are rather the sign than the cause, of the disappearance of democratic principles. examples might be adduced from history, of democracies in which great wealth did not destroy democratic ideas and a consequent simplicity of manners. these ideas must first be forgotten, before wealth can produce luxury, and luxury its attendant train of evils. though accelerating the downfall of a democratic republic, it is therefore not the primary cause of that downfall.--h. [ ] balzac, _lettre à madame la duchesse de montausier_. [ ] that this stricture is not too severe will be obvious to any one who reflects on the principles upon which this legislation was based. inculcating that war was the great business of life, and to be terrible to one's enemies the only object of manly ambition, the spartan laws sacrificed the noblest private virtues and domestic affections. they deprived the female character of the charms that most adorn it--modesty, tenderness, and sensibility; they made men brutal, coarse, and cruel. they stunted individual talents; sparta has produced but few great men, and these, says macaulay, only became great when they ceased to be lacedemonians. much unsound sentimentality has been expended in eulogizing sparta, from xenophon down to mitford, yet the verdict of the unbiassed historian cannot differ very widely from that of macaulay: "the spartans purchased for their government a prolongation of its existence by the sacrifice of happiness at home, and dignity abroad. they cringed to the powerful, they trampled on the weak, they massacred their helots, they betrayed their allies, they contrived to be a day too late for the battle of marathon, they attempted to avoid the battle of salamis, they suffered the athenians, to whom they owed their lives and liberties, to be a second time driven from their country by the persians, that they might finish their own fortifications on the isthmus; they attempted to take advantage of the distress to which exertions in their cause had reduced their preservers, in order to make them their slaves; they strove to prevent those who had abandoned their walls to defend them, from rebuilding them to defend themselves; they commenced the peloponnesian war in violation of their engagements with their allies; they gave up to the sword whole cities which had placed themselves under their protection; they bartered for advantages confined to themselves the interests, the freedom, and the lives of those who had served them most faithfully; they took, with equal complacency, and equal infamy, the stripes of elis and the bribes of persia; they never showed either resentment or gratitude; they abstained from no injury, and they revenged none. above all, they looked on a citizen who served them well as their deadliest enemy."--_essays_, iii. .--h. [ ] the horrid scenes of california life, its lynch laws, murders, and list of all possible crimes, are still ringing in our ears, and have not entirely ceased, though their number is lessened, and they are rapidly disappearing before lawful order. australia offered, and still offers, the same spectacle. texas, but a few years ago, and all newly settled countries in our day, afford another striking illustration of the author's remark. young communities ever attract a great number of lawless and desperate men; and this has been the case in all ages. rome was founded by a band of fugitives from justice, and if her early history be critically examined, it will be found to reveal a state of society, with which the rome described by the satirists, and upbraided by the censors, compares favorably. any one who will cast a glance into bishop potter's _antiquities_, can convince himself that the state of morals, in athens, was no better in her most flourishing periods than at the time of her downfall, if, indeed, as good; notwithstanding the glowing colors in which isocrates and his followers describe the virtues of her youthful period, and the degeneracy of the age. who can doubt that public morality has attained a higher standard in england, at the present day when her strength seems to have departed from her, than it had at any previous era in her history. where are the brutal fox-hunting country squires of former centuries? the good old customs, when hospitality consisted in drinking one's guest underneath the table? what audience could now endure, or what police permit, the plays of congreve and of otway? even shakspeare has to be pruned by the moral censor, before he can charm our ears. addison himself, than whom none contributed more to purify the morals of his age, bears unmistakable traces of the coarseness of the time in which he wrote. it will be objected that we are only more prudish, no better at the bottom. but, even supposing that the same vices still exist, is it not a great step in advance, that they dare no longer parade themselves with unblushing impudence? many who derive their ideas of the middle ages, of chivalry, etc., from the accounts of romance writers, have very erroneous notions about the manners of that period. "it so happens," says byron, "that the good old times when '_l'amour du bon vieux temps, l'amour antique_' flourished, were the most profligate of all possible centuries. those who have any doubts on the subject may consult st. palay, particularly vol. ii. p. . the vows of chivalry were no better kept than any other vows whatever, and the songs of the troubadour were not more decent, and certainly much less refined, than those of ovid. the 'cours d'amour, parlements d'amour, ou de courtoisie et de gentilesse,' had much more of love than of courtesy and gentleness. (see roland on the same subject with st. palay.)" _preface to childe harold._ i should not have quoted the authority of a poet on historical matters, were i not convinced, from my own investigations, that his pungent remarks are perfectly correct. as a further confirmation, i may mention that a few years ago, in rummaging over the volumes of a large european library, i casually lit upon a record of judicial proceedings during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in a little commonwealth, whose simplicity of manners, and purity of public morals, especially in that period, has been greatly extolled by historians. there, i found a list of crimes, to which the most corrupt of modern great cities can furnish no parallel. in horror and hellish ingenuity, they can be faintly approached only by the punishment which followed them. of many, our generation ignores even the name, and, of others, dares not utter them.--h. [ ] this assertion may surprise those who, in the words of a piquant writer on parisian life, "have thought of paris only under two aspects--one, as the emporium of fashion, fun, and refinement; the abode of good fellows somewhat dissipated, of fascinating ladies somewhat over-kind; of succulent dinners, somewhat indigestible; of pleasures, somewhat illicit;--the other, as the place _par excellence_, of revolutions, _émeutes_, and barricades." yet, all who have pierced below the brilliant surface, and penetrated into the recesses of destitution and crime, have seen the ministering angel of charity on his errand, and can bear witness to the truth of the author's remark. no city can show a greater number of benevolent institutions, none more active and practical _private_ charity, which inquires not after the country or creed of its object.--h. [ ] tottering, falling greece, gave birth to a demosthenes, a phocian; the period of the downfall of the roman republic was the age of cicero, brutus, and cato.--h. [ ] the subjoined picture of the manners of the frankish conquerors of gaul, is selected on account of the weighty authority from which it comes, from among a number of even darker ones. "the history of gregory of tours shows us on the one hand, a fierce and barbarous nation; and on the other, kings of as bad a character. these princes were bloody, unjust, and cruel, because all the nation was so. if christianity seemed sometimes to soften them, it was only by the terror which this religion imprints in the guilty; the church supported herself against them by the miracles and prodigies of her saints. the kings were not sacrilegious, because they dreaded the punishments inflicted on sacrilegious people: but this excepted, they committed, either in their passion or cold blood, all manner of crimes and injustice, because in these the avenging hand of the deity did not appear so visible. the franks, as i have already observed, bore with bloody kings, because they were fond of blood themselves; they were not affected with the wickedness and extortion of their princes, because this was their own character. there had been a great many laws established, but the kings rendered them all useless by the practice of issuing _preceptions_, a kind of decrees, after the manner of the rescripts of the roman emperors. these preceptions were orders to the judges to do, or to tolerate, things contrary to law. they were given for illicit marriages, and even those with consecrated virgins; for transferring successions, and depriving relations of their rights; for putting to death persons who had not been convicted of any crime, and not been heard in their defence, etc."--montesquieu, _esprit des lois_, b. , c. .--h. [ ] augustin thierry, _récit des temps mérovingiens_. (see particularly the _history of mummolus_.) [ ] lucretius was the author of _de rerum natura_, and one of the most distinguished of pagan "free-thinkers." he labored to combine the philosophy of epicurus, evhenius, and others, into a sort of moral religion, much after the fashion of some of the german mystics and platonists of our times.--h. [ ] cæsar, whose private opinions were both democratical and sceptical, found it convenient to speak very differently in public, as the funeral oration in honor of his aunt proves. "on the maternal side, said he, my aunt julia is descended from the kings; on the paternal, from the immortal gods. for my aunt's mother was of the family of the martii, who are descended from king ancus martius; and the julii, to which stock our family belongs, trace their origin to venus. thus, in her blood was blended the majesty of kings, the most powerful of men, and the sanctity of the gods, who have even the kings in their power."--_suetonius_, _julius_, . are not these sentiments very monarchical for a democrat; very religious for an atheist? [ ] it is well known that constantine did not receive the rite of baptism until within the last hours of his life, although he professed to be a sincere believer. the coins, also, struck during his reign, all bore pagan emblems.--h. [ ] acts xxvi. , , . chapter iii. influence of government upon the longevity of nations. misgovernment defined--athens, china, spain, germany, italy, etc.--is not in itself a sufficient cause for the ruin of nations. i am aware of the difficulty of the task i have undertaken in attempting to establish a truth, which by many of my readers will be regarded as a mere paradox. that good laws and good government exert a direct and powerful influence upon the well-being and prosperity of a nation, is an indisputable fact, of which i am fully convinced; but i think that history proves that they are not absolute conditions of the existence of a community; or, in other words, that their absence is not necessarily productive of ruin. nations, like individuals, are often preyed upon by fearful diseases, which show no outward traces of the ravages within, and which, though dangerous, are not always fatal. indeed, if they were, few communities would survive the first few years of their formation, for it is precisely during that period that the government is worst, the laws most imperfect, and least observed. but here the comparison between the body political and the human organization ceases, for while the latter dreads most the attack of disease during infancy, the former easily overcomes it at that period. history furnishes innumerable examples of successful contest on the part of young communities with the most formidable and most devastating political evils, of which none can be worse than ill-conceived laws, administered in an oppressive or negligent manner.[ ] let us first define what we understand by bad government. the varieties of this evil are as various as nations, countries, and epochs. it were impossible to enumerate them all. yet, by classing them under four principal categories, few varieties will be omitted. a government is bad, when imposed by foreign influence. athens experienced this evil under the thirty tyrants. yet she shook off the odious yoke, and patriotism, far from expiring, gained renewed vigor by the oppression. a government is bad, when based upon absolute and unconditional conquest. almost the whole extent of france in the fourteenth century, groaned under the dominion of england. the ordeal was passed, and the nation rose from it more powerful and brilliant than before. china was overrun and conquered by the mongol hordes. they were ejected from its territories, after having previously undergone a singular transformation. it next fell into the hands of the mantchoo conquerors, but though they already count the years of their reign by centuries, they are now at the eve of experiencing the same fate as their mongol predecessors. a government is especially bad, when the principles upon which it was based are disregarded or forgotten. this was the fate of the spanish monarchy. it was based upon the military spirit of the nation, and upon its municipal freedom, and declined soon after these principles came to be forgotten. it is impossible to imagine greater political disorganization than this country represented. nowhere was the authority of the sovereign more nominal and despised; nowhere did the clergy lay themselves more open to censure. agriculture and industry, following the same downward impulse, were also involved in the national marasmus. yet spain, of whom so many despaired, at a moment when her star seemed setting forever, gave the glorious example of heroic and successful resistance to the arms of one who had hitherto experienced no check in his career of conquest. since that, the better spirit of the nation has been roused, and there is, probably, at this time, no european state with more promising prospects, and stronger vitality.[ ] a government is also very bad, when, by its institutions, it authorizes an antagonism either between the supreme power and the nation, or among the different classes of which it is composed. this was the case in the middle ages, when the kings of france and england were at war with their great vassals, and the peasants in perpetual feud with the lords. in germany, the first effects of the liberty of thought, were the civil wars of the hussites, anabaptists, and other sectaries. italy, at a more remote period, was so distracted by the division of the supreme authority for which emperor, pope, nobles, and municipalities contended, that the masses, not knowing whom to obey, in many instances finished by obeying neither. yet in the midst of all these troubles, italian nationality did not perish. on the contrary, its civilization was at no time more brilliant, its industry never more productive, its foreign influence never greater. if communities have survived such fearful political tempests, it cannot well be said that national ruin is a necessary cause of misgovernment. besides, wise and happy reigns are few and far between, in the history of every nation; and these few are not considered such by all. historians are not unanimous in their praise of elizabeth, nor do they all consider the reign of william and mary as an epoch of prosperity for england. truly this science of statesmanship, the highest and most complicated of all, is so disproportionate to the capacity of man,[ ] and so various are the opinions concerning it, that nations have early and frequent opportunities of learning to accommodate themselves to misgovernment, which, in its worst forms, is still preferable to anarchy. it is a well-proved fact, which even a superficial study of history will clearly demonstrate, that communities often perish under the best government of a long series that came before.[ ] footnotes: [ ] it will be understood that i speak here, not of the political existence of a centre of sovereignty, but of the life of an entire nation, the prosperity of a civilization. here is the place to apply the definition given above, page . [ ] this assertion will appear paradoxical to those who are in the habit of looking upon spain as the type of hopeless national degradation. but whoever studies the history of the last thirty years, which is but a series of struggles to rise from this position, will probably arrive at the same conclusions as the author. the revolution of redeems the character of the nation. "the spanish constitution" became the watchword of the friends of constitutional liberty in the south of europe, and ere thirteen months had fully passed, it had become the fundamental law of three other countries--portugal, naples, and sardinia. at the mere sound of those words, two kings had resigned their crowns. these revolutions were not characterized by excesses. they were, for the most part, accomplished peacefully, quietly, and orderly. they were not the result of the temporary passions of an excited mob. the most singular feature of these countries is that the lowest dregs of the population are the most zealous adherents of absolutism. no, these revolutions were the work of the best elements in the population, the most intelligent classes, of people who knew what they wanted, and how to get it. and then, when spain had set that ever glorious example to her neighbors, the great powers, with england at the head, concluded to re-establish the former state of things. in those memorable congresses of plenipotentiaries, the most influential was the representative of england, the duke of wellington. and by his advice, or, at least, with his sanction, an austrian army entered sardinia, and abolished the new constitution; an austrian army entered naples and abolished the new constitution; english vessels of war threatened lisbon, and portugal abolished her new constitution; and finally a french army entered spain, and abolished the new constitution. so naples and portugal regained their tyrants, and spain her imbecile dynasty. for years the spaniards have tried to shake it off, and english influence alone has maintained on a great nation's throne, a wretch that would have disgraced the lowest walks of private life. but the day of spanish liberty and spanish _independence_ will dawn, and perhaps already has dawned. the efforts of the last cortes were wisely directed, and their proceedings marked with a manliness, a moderation, and a firmness that augur well for the future weal of spain.--h. [ ] who is not reminded of oxenstierna's famous saying to his son: "cum parva sapientiâ mundus gubernatur."--h. [ ] it is obvious that so long as the vitality of a nation remains unimpaired, misgovernment can be but a temporary ill. the regenerative principle will be at work to remove the evil and heal the wounds it has inflicted; and though the remedy be sometimes violent, and throw the state into fearful convulsions, it will seldom be found ineffectual. so long as the spirit of liberty prevailed among the romans, the tarquiniuses and appiuses were as a straw before the storm of popular indignation; but the death of cæsar could but substitute a despot in the stead of a mild and generous usurper. the first brutus might save the nation, because he was the expression of the national sentiment; the second could not, because he was one man opposed to millions. it is a common error to ascribe too much to individual exertions, and whimsical philosophers have amused themselves to trace great events to petty causes; but a deeper inquiry will demonstrate that the great catastrophes which arrest our attention and form the landmarks of history, are but the inevitable result of all the whole chain of antecedent events. julius cæsar and napoleon bonaparte were, indeed, especially gifted for their great destinies, but the same gifts could not have raised them to their exalted positions at any other epoch than the one in which each lived. those petty causes are but the drop which causes the measure to overflow, the pretext of the moment; or as the small fissure in the dyke which produces the _crevasse_: the wall of waters stood behind. no man can usurp supreme power, unless the prevailing tendency of the nation favors it; no man can long persist in hurrying a nation along in a course repulsive to it; and in this sense, therefore, not with regard to its abstract justness, it is undoubtedly true, that the voice of the nation is the voice of god. it is the expression of what shall and must be.--h. chapter iv. definition of the word degeneracy--its cause. skeleton history of a nation--origin of castes, nobility, etc.--vitality of nations not necessarily extinguished by conquest--china, hindostan--permanency of their peculiar civilizations. if the spirit of the preceding pages has been at all understood, it will be seen that i am far from considering these great national maladies, misgovernment, fanaticism, irreligion, and immorality, as mere trifling accidents, without influence or importance. on the contrary, i sincerely pity the community which is afflicted by such scourges, and think that no efforts can be misdirected which tend to mitigate or remove them. but i repeat, that unless these disorganizing elements are grafted upon another more destructive principle, unless they are the consequences of a greater, though concealed, evil; we may rest assured that their ravages are not fatal, and that society, after a shorter or longer period of suffering, will escape their toils, perhaps with renewed vigor and youth. the examples i have alleged seem to me conclusive; their number, if necessary, might be increased to any extent. but the conviction has already gained ground, that these are but secondary evils, to which an undue importance has hitherto been attached, and that the law which governs the life and death of societies must be sought for elsewhere, and deeper. it is admitted that the germ of destruction is inherent in the constitution of communities; that so long as it remains latent, exterior dangers are little to be dreaded; but when it has once attained full growth and maturity, the nation must die, even though surrounded by the most favorable circumstances, precisely as a jaded steed breaks down, be the track ever so smooth. degeneracy was the name given to this cause of dissolution. this view of the question was a great step towards the truth, but, unfortunately, it went no further; the first difficulty proved insurmountable. the term was certainly correct, etymologically and in every other respect, but how is it with the definition. a people is said to be degenerated, when it is badly governed, abuses its riches, is fanatical, or irreligious; in short, when it has lost the characteristic virtues of its forefathers. this is begging the question. thus, communities succumb under the burden of social and political evils only when they are degenerate, and they are degenerate only when such evils prevail. this circular argument proves nothing but the small progress hitherto made in the science of national biology. i readily admit that nations perish from degeneracy, and from no other cause; it is when in that wretched condition, that foreign attacks are fatal to them, for then they no longer possess the strength to protect themselves against adverse fortune, or to recover from its blows. they die, because, though exposed to the same perils as their ancestors, they have not the same powers of overcoming them. i repeat it, the term _degeneracy_ is correct; but it is necessary to define it, to give it a real and tangible meaning. it is necessary to say how and why this vigor, this capacity of overcoming surrounding dangers, are lost. hitherto, we have been satisfied with a mere word, but the thing itself is as little known as ever.[ ] the step beyond, i shall attempt to make. in my opinion, a nation is degenerate, when the blood of its founders no longer flows in its veins, but has been gradually deteriorated by successive foreign admixtures; so that the nation, while retaining its original name, is no longer composed of the same elements. the attenuation of the original blood is attended by a modification of the original instincts, or modes of thinking; the new elements assert their influence, and when they have once gained perfect and entire preponderance, the degeneration may be considered as complete. with the last remnant of the original ethnical principle, expires the life of the society and its civilization. the masses, which composed it, have thenceforth no separate, independent, social and political existence; they are attracted to different centres of civilization, and swell the ranks of new societies having new instincts and new purposes. in attempting to establish this theorem, i am met by a question which involves the solution of a far more difficult problem than any i have yet approached. this question, so momentous in its bearings, is the following:-- is there, in reality, a serious and palpable difference in the capacity and intrinsic worth of different branches of the human family? for the sake of clearness, i shall advance, _à priori_, that this difference exists. it then remains to show how the ethnical character of a nation can undergo such a total change as i designate by the term _degeneracy_. physiologists assert that the human frame is subject to a constant wear and tear, which would soon destroy the whole machine, but for new particles which are continually taking the form and place of the old ones. so rapid is this change said to be, that, in a few years, the whole framework is renovated, and the material identity of the individual changed. the same, to a great extent, may be said of nations, only that, while the individual always preserves a certain similarity of form and features, those of a nation are subject to innumerable and ever-varying changes. let us take a nation at the moment when it assumes a political existence, and commences to play a part in the great drama of the world's stage. in its embryo, we call it a tribe. the simplest and most natural political institution is that of tribes. it is the only form of government known to rude and savage nations. civilization is the result of a great concentration of powerful physical and intellectual forces,[ ] which, in small and scattered fragments, is impossible. the first step towards it is, therefore, undoubtedly, the union of several tribes by alliance or conquest. such a coalescence is what we call a nation or empire. i think it admits of an easy demonstration, that in proportion as a human family is endowed with the capacity for intellectual progress, it exhibits a tendency to enlarge the circle of its influence and dominion. on the contrary, where that capacity is weak, or wanting, we find the population subdivided into innumerable small fragments, which, though in perpetual collision, remain forever detached and isolated. the stronger may massacre the weaker, but permanent conquest is never attempted; depredatory incursions are the sole object and whole extent of warfare. this is the case with the natives of polynesia, many parts of africa, and the arctic regions. nor can their stagnant condition be ascribed to local or climatical causes. we have seen such wretched hordes inhabiting, indifferently, temperate as well as torrid or frigid zones; fertile prairies and barren deserts; river-shores and coasts as well as inland regions. it must therefore be founded upon an inherent incapacity of progress. the more civilizable a race is, the stronger is the tendency for aggregation of masses. complex political organizations are not so much the effect as the cause of civilization.[ ] a tribe with superior intellectual and physical endowments, soon perceives that, to increase its power and prosperity, it must compel its neighbors to enter into the sphere of its influence. where peaceful means fail, war is resorted to. territories are conquered, a division into classes established between the victorious and the subjugated race; in one word, a nation has made its appearance upon the theatre of history. the impulse being once given, it will not stop short in the career of conquest. if wisdom and moderation preside in its councils, the tracks of its armies will not be marked by wanton destruction and bloodshed; the monuments, institutions, and manners of the conquered will be respected; superior creations will take the place of the old, where changes are necessary and useful;--a great empire will be formed.[ ] at first, and perhaps for a long time, victors and vanquished will remain separated and distinct. but gradually, as the pride of the conqueror becomes less obtrusive, and the bitterness of defeat is forgotten by the conquered; as the ties of common interest become stronger, the boundary line between them is obliterated. policy, fear, or natural justice, prompts the masters to concessions; intermarriages take place, and, in the course of time, the various ethnical elements are blended, and the different nations composing the state begin to consider themselves as one. this is the general history of the rise of all empires whose records have been transmitted to us.[ ] an inferior race, by falling into the hands of vigorous masters, is thus called to share a destiny, of which, alone, it would have been incapable. witness the saxons by the norman conquest.[ ] but, if there is a decided disparity in the capacity of the two races, their mixture, while it ennobles the baser, deteriorates the nobler; a new race springs up, inferior to the one, though superior to the other, and, perhaps, possessed of peculiar qualities unknown to either. the modification of the ethnical character of the nation, however, does not terminate here. every new acquisition of territory, by conquest or treaty, brings an addition of foreign blood. the wealth and splendor of a great empire attract crowds of strangers to its capital, great inland cities, or seaports. apart from the fact that the conquering race--that which founds the empire, and supports and animates it--is, in most cases, inferior in numbers to the masses which it subdued and assimilated; the conspicuous part which it takes in the affairs of the state, renders it more directly exposed to the fatal results of battles, proscriptions, and revolts.[ ] in some instances, also, it happens that the substratum of native populations are singularly prolific--witness the celts and sclaves. sooner or later, therefore, the conquering race is absorbed by the masses which its vigor and superiority have aggregated. the very materials of which it erected its splendor, and upon which it based its strength, are ultimately the means of its weakness and destruction. but the civilization which it has developed, may survive for a limited period. the forward impulse, once imparted to the mass, will still propel it for a while, but its force is continually decreasing. manners, laws, and institutions remain, but the spirit which animated them has fled; the lifeless body still exhibits the apparent symptoms of life, and, perhaps, even increases, but the real strength has departed; the edifice soon begins to totter, at the slightest collision it will crumble, and bury beneath its ruins the civilization which it had developed. if this definition of degeneracy be accepted, and its consequences admitted, the problem of the rise and fall of empires no longer presents any difficulty. a nation lives so long as it preserves the ethnical principle to which it owes its existence; with this principle, it loses the _primum mobile_ of its successes, its glory, and its civilization: it must therefore disappear from the stage of history. who can doubt that if alexander had been opposed by real persians, the men of the arian stock, whom cyrus led to victory, the issue of the battle of arbela would have been very different. or if rome, in her decadence, had possessed soldiers and senators like those of the time of fabius, scipio, and cato, would she have fallen so easy a prey to the barbarians of the north? it will be objected that, even had the integrity of the original blood remained intact, a time must have come when they would find their masters. they would have succumbed under a series of well-combined attacks, a long-continued overwhelming pressure, or simply by the chances of a lost battle. the political edifice might have been destroyed in this manner, not the civilization, not the social organization. invasion and defeat would have been reverses, sad ones, indeed, but not irremediable. there is no want of facts to confirm this assertion. in modern times, the chinese have suffered two complete conquests. in each case they have imposed their manners and their institutions upon the conquerors; they have given them much, and received but little in return. the first invaders, after having undergone this change, were expelled; the same fate is now threatening the second.[ ] in this case the vanquished were intellectually and numerically superior to their victors. i shall mention another case where the victors, though intellectually superior, are not possessed of sufficient numerical strength to transform the intellectual and moral character of the vanquished. the political supremacy of the british in hindostan is perfect, yet they exert little or no moral influence over the masses they govern. all that the utmost exertion of their power can effect upon the fears of their subjects, is an outward compliance. the notions of the hindoo cannot be replaced by european ideas--the spirit of hindoo civilization cannot be conquered by any power, however great, of the law. political forms may change, and do change, without materially affecting the basis upon which they rest; hyderabad, lahore, and delhi may cease to be capitals: hindoo society will subsist, nevertheless. a time must come, sooner or later, when india will regain a separate political existence, and publicly proclaim those laws of her own, which she now secretly obeys, or of which she is tacitly left in possession. the mere accident of conquest cannot destroy the principle of vitality in a people. at most, it may suspend for a time the exterior manifestations of that vitality, and strip it of its outward honors. but so long as the blood, and consequently the culture of a nation, exhibit sufficiently strong traces of the initiatory race, that nation exists; and whether it has to deal, like the chinese, with conquerors who are superior only materially; or whether, like the hindoos, it maintains a struggle of patience against a race much superior in every respect; that nation may rest assured of its future--independence will dawn for it one day. on the contrary, when a nation has completely exhausted the initiatory ethnical element, defeat is certain death; it has consumed the term of existence which heaven had granted it--its destiny is fulfilled.[ ] i, therefore, consider the question as settled, which has been so often discussed, as to what would have been the result, if the carthaginians, instead of succumbing to the fortune of rome, had conquered italy. as they belonged to the phenician family, a stock greatly inferior to the italian in political capacity, they would have been absorbed by the superior race after the victory, precisely as they were after the defeat. the final result, therefore, would have been the same in either case. the destiny of civilizations is not ruled by accident; it depends not on the issue of a battle, a thrust of a sword, the favors or frowns of fickle fortune. the most warlike, formidable, and triumphant nations, when they were distinguished for nothing but bravery, strategical science, and military successes, have never had a nobler fate than that of learning from their subjects, perhaps too late, the art of living in peace. the celts, the nomad hordes of central asia, are memorable illustrations of this truth. the whole of my demonstration now rests upon one hypothesis, the proof of which i have reserved for the succeeding chapters: the moral and intellectual diversities of the various branches of the human family. footnotes: [ ] the author has neglected to advert to one very clear explanation of this word, which, from its extensive popularity, seems to me to deserve some notice. it is said, and very commonly believed, that there is a physical degeneracy in mankind; that a nation cultivating for a long time the arts of peace, and enjoying the fruits of well-directed industry, loses the capacity for warfare; in other words becomes effeminate, and, consequently, less capable of defending itself against ruder, and, therefore, more warlike invaders. it is further said, though with less plausibility, that there is a general degeneracy of the human race--that we are inferior in physical strength to our ancestors, etc. if this theory could be supported by incontestable facts--and there are many who think it possible--it would give to the term degeneracy that real and tangible meaning which the author alleges to be wanting. but a slight investigation will demonstrate that it is more specious than correct. in the first place, to prove that an advance in civilization does not lessen the material puissance of a nation, but rather increases it, we may point to the well-known fact that the most civilized nations are the most formidable opponents in warfare, because they have brought the means of attack and defence to the greatest perfection. but that for this strength they are not solely indebted to artificial means, is proved by the history of modern civilized states. the french now fight with as much martial ardor and intrepidity, and with more success than they did in the times of francis i. or louis xiv., albeit they have since both these epochs made considerable progress in civilization, and this progress has been most perceptible in those classes which form the bulk and body of armies. england, though, perhaps, she could not muster an army as large as in former times, has hearts as stout, and arms as strong as those that gained for her imperishable glory at agincourt and poitiers. the charge at balaklava, rash and useless as it may be termed, was worthy of the followers of the black prince. a theory to be correct, must admit of mathematical demonstration. the most civilized nations, then, would be the most effeminate; the most barbarous, the most warlike. and, descending from nations to individuals, the most cultivated and refined mind would be accompanied by a deficiency in many of the manly virtues. such an assertion is ridiculous. the most refined and fastidious gentleman has never, as a class, displayed less courage and fortitude than the rowdy and fighter by profession. men sprung from the bosom of the most polished circles in the most civilized communities, have surpassed the most warlike barbarians in deeds of hardihood and heroic valor. civilization, therefore, produces no degeneracy; the cultivation of the arts of peace, no diminution of manly virtues. we have seen the peaceful burghers of free cities successfully resist the trained bands of a superior foe; we have seen the artisans and merchants of holland invincible to the veteran armies of the then most powerful prince of christendom, backed as he was by the inexhaustible treasures of a newly discovered hemisphere; we have seen, in our times, troops composed of volunteers who left their hearthstones to fight for their country, rout incredible odds of the standing armies of a foe, who, for the last thirty years, has known no peace. i believe that an advanced state of civilization, accompanied by long peace, gives rise to a certain _domestication_ of man, that is to say, it lays on a polish over the more ferocious or pugnacious tendencies of his nature; because it, in some measure deprives him of the opportunities of exercising them, but it cannot deprive him of the power, should the opportunity present itself. let us suppose two brothers born in some of our great commercial cities, one to enter a counting-house, the other to settle in the western wilderness. the former might become a polished, elegant, perhaps even dandified young gentleman; the other might evince a supreme contempt for all the amenities of life, be ever ready to draw his bowie-knife or revolver, however slight the provocation. the country requires the services of both; a great principle is at stake, and in some battle of matamoras or buena vista, the two brothers fight side by side; who will be the braver? i believe that both individual and national character admit of a certain degree of pressure by surrounding circumstances; the pressure removed, the character at once regains its original form. see with what kindliness the civilized descendant of the wild teuton hunter takes to the hunter's life in new countries, and how soon he learns to despise the comforts of civilized life and fix his abode in the solitary wilderness. the normans had been settled over six centuries in the beautiful province of france, to which they gave their name; their nobles had frequented the most polished court in europe, adapted themselves to the fashions and requirements of life in a luxurious metropolis; they themselves had learned to plough the soil instead of the wave; yet in another hemisphere they at once regained their ancient habits, and--as six hundred years before--became the most dreaded pirates of the seas they infested; the savage buccaneers of the spanish main. i can see no difference between lolonnois and his followers, and the terrible men of the north (his lineal ancestors) that ravaged the shores of the seine and the rhine, and whose name is even yet mentioned with horror every evening, in the other hemisphere, by thousands of praying children: "god preserve us from the northmen." morgan, the welch buccaneer, who, with a thousand men, vanquished five times as many well-equipped spaniards, took their principal cities, porto bello and panama; who tortured his captives to make them reveal the hiding-place of their treasure; morgan might have been--sixteen centuries notwithstanding--a tributary chief to caractacus, or one of those who opposed cæsar's landing in britain. to make the resemblance still more complete, the laws and regulations of these lawless bands were a precise copy of those to which their not more savage ancestors bound themselves. i regret that my limited space precludes me from entering into a more elaborate exposition of the futility of the theory that civilization, or a long continued state of peace, can produce physical degeneracy or inaptitude for the ruder duties of the battle-field; but i believe that what i have said will suffice to suggest to the thoughtful reader numerous confirmations of my position; and i may, therefore, now refer him to mr. gobineau's explanation of the term degeneracy.--h. [ ] "nothing but the great number of citizens in a state can occasion the flourishing of the arts and sciences. accordingly, we see that, in all ages, it was great empires only which enjoyed this advantage. in these great states, the arts, especially that of agriculture, were soon brought to great perfection, and thus that leisure afforded to a considerable number of men, which is so necessary to study and speculation. the babylonians, assyrians, and egyptians, had the advantage of being formed into regular, well-constituted states."--_origin of laws and sciences, and their progress among the most ancient nations._ by president de goguet. edinburgh, , vol. i. pp. - .--h. [ ] "conquests, by uniting many nations under one sovereign, have formed great and powerful empires, out of the ruins of many petty states. in these great empires, men began insensibly to form clearer views of politics, juster and more salutary notions of government. experience taught them to avoid the errors which had occasioned the ruin of the nations whom they had subdued, and put them upon taking measures to prevent surprises, invasions, and the like misfortunes. with these views they fortified cities, secured such passes as might have admitted an enemy into their country, and kept a certain number of troops constantly on foot. by these precautions, several states rendered themselves formidable to their neighbors, and none durst lightly attack powers which were every way so respectable. the interior parts of such mighty monarchies were no longer exposed to ravages and devastations. war was driven far from the centre, and only infected the frontiers. the inhabitants of the country, and of the cities, began to breathe in safety. the calamities which conquests and revolutions had occasioned, disappeared; but the blessings which had grown out of them, remained. ingenious and active spirits, encouraged by the repose which they enjoyed, devoted themselves to study. _it was in the bosom of great empires the arts were invented, and the sciences had their birth._"--_op. cit._, vol. i. book , p. .--h. [ ] the history of every great empire proves the correctness of this remark. the conqueror never attempted to change the manners or local institutions of the peoples subdued, but contented himself with an acknowledgment of his supremacy, the payment of tribute, and the rendering of assistance in war. those who have pursued a contrary course, may be likened to an overflowing river, which, though it leaves temporary marks of its destructive course behind, must, sooner or later, return to its bed, and, in a short time, its invasions are forgotten, and their traces obliterated.--h. [ ] the most striking illustration of the correctness of this reasoning, is found in roman history, the earlier portion of which is--thanks to niebuhr's genius--just beginning to be understood. the lawless followers of romulus first coalesced with the sabines; the two nations united, then compelled the albans to raze their city to the ground, and settle in rome. next came the latins, to whom, also, a portion of the city was allotted for settlement. these two conquered nations were, of course, not permitted the same civil and political privileges as the conquerors, and, with the exception of a few noble families among them (which probably had been, from the beginning, in the interests of the conquerors), these tribes formed the _plebs_. the distinction by nations was forgotten, and had become a distinction of _classes_. then began the progress which mr. gobineau describes. the plebeians first gained their _tribunes_, who could protect their interests against the one-sided legislation of the dominant class; then, the right of discussing and deciding certain public questions in the _comitia_, or public assembly. next, the law prohibiting intermarriage between the patricians and plebeians was repealed; and thus, in course of time, the government changed from an oligarchical to a democratic form. i might go into details, or, i might mention other nations in which the same process is equally manifest, but i think the above well-known facts sufficient to bring the author's idea into a clear light, and illustrate its correctness. the history of the middle ages, the establishment of serfdom and its gradual abolition, also furnish an analogue. wherever we see an hereditary aristocracy (whether called class or caste), it will be found to originate in a race, which, if no longer _dominant_, was once conqueror. before the norman conquest, the english aristocracy was _saxon_, there were no nobles of the ancient british blood, east of wales; after the conquest, the aristocracy was _norman_, and nine-tenths of the noble families of england to this day trace, or pretend to trace, their origin to that stock. the noble french families, anterior to the revolution, were almost all of _frankish_ or _burgundian_ origin. the same observation applies everywhere else. in support of my opinion, i have niebuhr's great authority: "wherever there are castes, they are the consequence of foreign conquest and subjugation; it is impossible for a nation to submit to such a system, unless it be compelled by the calamities of a conquest. by this means only it is, that, contrary to the will of a people, circumstances arise which afterwards assume the character of a division into classes or castes."--_lect. on anc. hist._ (in the english translation, this passage occurs in vol. i. p. .) in conclusion, i would observe that, whenever it becomes politic to flatter the mass of the people, the fact of conquest is denied. thus, english writers labored hard to prove that william the norman did not, in reality, conquer the saxons. some time before the french revolution, the same was attempted to be proved in the case of the germanic tribes in france. l'abbé du bos, and other writers, taxed their ingenuity to disguise an obvious fact, and to hide the truth under a pile of ponderous volumes.--h. [ ] "it has been a favorite thesis with many writers, to pretend that the saxon government was, at the time of the conquest, by no means subverted; that william of normandy legally acceded to the throne, and, consequently, to the engagements of the saxon kings.... but, if we consider that the manner in which the public power is formed in a state, is so very essential a part of its government, and that a thorough change in this respect was introduced into england by the conquest, we shall not scruple to allow that a _new government_ was established. nay, as almost the whole landed property in the kingdom was, at that time, transferred to other hands, a new system of criminal justice introduced, and the language of the law moreover altered, the revolution may be said to have been such as is not, perhaps, to be paralleled in the history of any other country."--de lolme's _english constitution_, c. i., _note_ c.--"the battle of hastings, and the events which followed it, not only placed a duke of normandy on the english throne, but gave up the whole population of england to the tyranny of the norman race. the subjugation of a nation has seldom, even in asia, been more complete."--macaulay's _history of england_, vol. i. p. .--h. [ ] this assertion seems self-evident; it may, however, be not altogether irrelevant to the subject, to direct attention to a few facts in illustration of it. great national calamities like wars, proscriptions, and revolutions, are like thunderbolts, striking mostly the objects of greatest elevation. we have seen that a conquering race generally, for a long time even after the conquest has been forgotten, forms an aristocracy, which generally monopolizes the prominent positions. in great political convulsions, this aristocracy suffers most, often in numbers, and always in proportion. thus, at the battle of cannæ, from , to , roman knights are said to have been slain, and, at all times, the officer's dress has furnished the most conspicuous, and at the same time the most important target for the death-dealing stroke. in those fearful proscriptions, in which sylla and marius vied with each other in wholesale slaughter, the number of victims included two hundred senators and thirty-three ex-consuls. that the major part of the rest were prominent men, and therefore patricians, is obvious from the nature of this persecution. revolutions are most often, though not always, produced by a fermentation among the mass of the population, who have a heavy score to settle against a class that has domineered and tyrannized over them. their fury, therefore, is directed against this aristocracy. i have now before me a curious document (first published in the _prussian state-gazette_, in , and for which i am indebted to a little german volume, _das menschengeschlecht auf seinem gegenwärtigen standpuncte_, by smidt-phiseldeck), giving a list of the victims that fell under the guillotine by sentence of the revolutionary tribunal, from august, , to the th of july, , in a little less than two years. the number of victims there given is , . of these, are of rank unknown. the remaining , may be divided in the following proportions:-- , highest nobility (princes, dukes, marshals of france, generals, and other officers, etc. etc.) of the gentry (members of parliament, judges, etc. etc.) of the bourgeoisie (including non-commissioned officers and soldiers.) ----- , such facts require no comments.--h. [ ] the recent insurrection in china has given rise to a great deal of speculation, and various are the opinions that have been formed respecting it. but it is now pretty generally conceded that it is a great national movement, and, therefore, must ultimately be successful. the history of this insurrection, by mr. callery and dr. ivan (one the interpreter, and the other the physician of the french embassy in china, and both well known and reliable authorities) leaves no doubt upon the subject. one of the most significant signs in this movement is the cutting off the tails, and letting the hair grow, which is being practised, says dr. ivan, in all the great cities, and in the very teeth of the mandarins. (_ins. in china_, p. .) let not the reader smile at this seemingly puerile demonstration, or underrate its importance. apparently trivial occurrences are often the harbingers of the most important events. were i to see in the streets of berlin or vienna, men with long beards or hats of a certain shape, i should know that serious troubles are to be expected; and in proportion to the number of such men, i should consider the catastrophe more or less near at hand, and the monarch's crown in danger. when the lombard stops smoking in the streets, he meditates a revolution; and france is comparatively safe, even though every street in paris is barricaded, and blood flows in torrents; but when bands march through the streets singing the _ça ira_, we know that to-morrow the _red republic_ will be proclaimed. all these are silent, but expressive demonstrations of the prevalence of a certain principle among the masses. such a one is the cutting off of the tail among the chinese. nor is this a mere emblem. the shaved crown and the tail are the brands of conquest, a mark of degradation imposed by the mantchoos on the subjugated race. the chinese have never abandoned the hope of one day expelling their conquerors, as they did already once before. "ever since the fall of the mings," says dr. ivan, "and the accession of the mantchoo dynasty, clandestine associations--these intellectual laboratories of declining states--have been incessantly in operation. the most celebrated of these secret societies, that of the triad, or the _three principles_, commands so extensive and powerful an organization, that its members may be found throughout china, and wherever the chinese emigrate; so that there is no great exaggeration in the chinese saying: 'when three of us are together, the triad is among us.'" (_hist. of the insur. in ch._, p. .) again, the writer says: "the revolutionary impetus is now so strong, the affairs of the pretender or chief of the insurrection in so prosperous a condition, that the success of his cause has nothing to fear from the loss of a battle. it would require a series of unprecedented reverses to ruin his hopes" (p. and ). i have written this somewhat lengthy note to show that mr. gobineau makes no rash assertion, when he says that the mantchoos are about to experience the same fate as their tartar predecessors.--h. [ ] the author might have mentioned russia in illustration of his position. the star of no nation that we are acquainted with has suffered an eclipse so total and so protracted, nor re-appeared with so much brilliancy. russia, whose history so many believe to date from the time of peter the great only, was one of the earliest actors on the stage of modern history. its people had adopted christianity when our forefathers were yet heathens; its princes formed matrimonial alliances with the monarchs of byzantine rome, while charlemagne was driving the reluctant saxon barbarians by thousands into rivers to be baptized _en masse_. russia had magnificent cities before paris was more than a collection of hovels on a small island of the seine. its monarchs actually contemplated, and not without well-founded hopes, the conquest of constantinople, while the norman barges were devastating the coasts and river-shores of western europe. nay, to that far-off, almost polar region, the enterprise of the inhabitants had attracted the genius of commerce and its attendants, prosperity and abundance. one of the greatest commercial cities of the first centuries after christ, one of the first of the hanse-towns, was the great city of novogorod, the capital of a republic that furnished three hundred thousand fighting men. but the east of europe was not destined to outstrip the west in the great race of progress. the millions of tartars, that, locust-like--but more formidable--marked their progress by hopeless devastation, had converted the greater portion of asia into a desert, and now sought a new field for their savage exploits. russia stood the first brunt, and its conquest exhausted the strength of the ruthless foe, and saved western europe from overwhelming ruin. in the beginning of the thirteenth century, five hundred thousand tartar horsemen crossed the ural mountains. slow, but gradual, was their progress. the russian armies were trampled down by this countless cavalry. but the resistance must have been a brave and vigorous one, for few of the invaders lived long enough to see the conquest. not until after a desperate struggle of fifty years, did russia acknowledge a tartar master. nor were the conquerors even then allowed to enjoy their prize in peace. for two centuries more, the russians never remitted their efforts to regain their independence. each generation transmitted to its posterity the remembrance of that precious treasure, and the care of reconquering it. nor were their efforts unsuccessful. year after year the tartars saw the prize gliding from their grasp, and towards the end of the fifteenth century, we find them driven to the banks of the volga, and the coasts of the black sea. russia now began to breathe again. but, lo! during the long struggle, pole and swede had vied with the tartar in stripping her of her fairest domains. her territory extended scarce two hundred miles, in any direction from moscow. her very name was unknown. western europe had forgotten her. the same causes that established the feudal system there, had, in the course of two centuries and a half, changed a nation of freemen into a nation of serfs. the arts of peace were lost, the military element had gained an undue preponderance, and a band of soldiers, like the pretorian guards of rome, made and deposed sovereigns, and shook the state to its very foundations. yet here and there a vigorous monarch appeared, who controlled the fierce element, and directed it to the weal of the state. smolensk, the fairest portion of the ancient russian domain, was re-conquered from the pole. the swede, also, was forced to disgorge a portion of his spoils. but it was reserved for peter the great and his successors to restore to russia the rank she had once held, and to which she was entitled. i will not further trespass on the patience of the reader, now that we have arrived at that portion of russian history which many think the first. i would merely observe that not only did peter add to his empire no territory that had not formerly belonged to it, but even catharine, at the first partition of poland (i speak not of the subsequent ones), merely re-united to her dominion what once were integral portions. the rapid growth of russia, since she has reassumed her station among the nations of the earth, is well known. cities have sprung up in places where once the nomad had pitched his tent. a great capital, the handsomest in the world, has risen from the marsh, within one hundred and fifty years after the founder, whose name it perpetuates, had laid the first stone. another has risen from the ashes, within less than a decade of years from the time when--a holocaust on the altar of patriotism--its flames announced to the world the vengeance of a nation on an intemperate aggressor. truly, it seems to me, that mr. gobineau could not have chosen a better illustration of his position, that the mere accident of conquest can not annihilate a nation, than this great empire, in whose history conquest forms so terrible and so long an episode, that the portion anterior to it is almost forgotten to this day.--h. chapter v. the moral and intellectual diversity of races is not the result of political institutions. antipathy of races--results of their mixture--the scientific axiom of the absolute equality of men, but an extension of the political--its fallacy--universal belief in unequal endowment of races--the moral and intellectual diversity of races not attributable to institutions--indigenous institutions are the expression of popular sentiments; when foreign and imported, they never prosper--illustrations: england and france--roman empire--european colonies--sandwich islands--st. domingo--jesuit missions in paraguay. the idea of an innate and permanent difference in the moral and mental endowments of the various groups of the human species, is one of the most ancient, as well as universally adopted, opinions. with few exceptions, and these mostly in our own times, it has formed the basis of almost all political theories, and has been the fundamental maxim of government of every nation, great or small. the prejudices of country have no other cause; each nation believes in its own superiority over its neighbors, and very often different parts of the same nation regard each other with contempt. there seems to exist an instinctive antipathy among the different races, and even among the subdivisions of the same race, of which none is entirely exempt, but which acts with the greatest force in the least civilized or least civilizable. we behold it in the characteristic suspiciousness and hostility of the savage; in the isolation from foreign influence and intercourse of the chinese and japanese; in the various distinctions founded upon birth in more civilized communities, such as castes, orders of nobility and aristocratic privileges.[ ] not even a common religion can extinguish the hereditary aversion of the arab[ ] to the turk, of the kurd to the nestorian of syria; or the bitter hostility of the magyar and sclave, who, without intermingling, have inhabited the same country for centuries. but as the different types lose their purity and become blended, this hostility of race abates; the maxim of absolute and permanent inequality is first discussed, then doubted. a man of mixed race or caste will not be apt to admit disparity in his double ancestry. the superiority of particular types, and their consequent claims to dominion, find fewer advocates. this dominion is stigmatized as a tyrannical usurpation of power.[ ] the mixture of castes gives rise to the political axiom that all men are equal, and, therefore, entitled to the same rights. indeed, since there are no longer any distinct hereditary classes, none can justly claim superior merit and privileges. but this assertion, which is true only where a complete fusion has taken place, is applied to the whole human race--to all present, past, and future generations. the political axiom of equality which, like the bag of �olus, contains so many tempests, is soon followed by the scientific. it is said--and the more heterogeneous the ethnical elements of a nation are, the more extensively the theory gains ground--that, "all branches of the human family are endowed with intellectual capacities of the same nature, which, though in different stages of development, are all equally susceptible of improvement." this is not, perhaps, the precise language, but certainly the meaning. thus, the huron, by proper culture, might become the equal of the englishman and frenchman. why, then, i would ask, did he never, in the course of centuries, invent the art of printing or apply the power of steam; why, among the warriors of his tribe, has there never arisen a cæsar or a charlemagne, among his bards and medicine-men, a homer or a hippocrates? these questions are generally met by advancing the influence of climate, local circumstances, etc. an island, it is said, can never be the theatre of great social and political developments in the same measure as a continent; the natives of a southern clime will not display the energy of those of the north; seacoasts and large navigable rivers will promote a civilization which could never have flourished in an inland region;--and a great deal more to the same purpose. but all these ingenious and plausible hypotheses are contradicted by facts. the same soil and the same climate have been visited, alternately, by barbarism and civilization. the degraded fellah is charred by the same sun which once burnt the powerful priest of memphis; the learned professor of berlin lectures under the same inclement sky that witnessed the miseries of the savage finn. what is most curious is, that while the belief of equality may influence institutions and manners, there is not a nation, nor an individual but renders homage to the contrary sentiment. who has not heard of the distinctive traits of the frenchman, the german, the spaniard, the english, the russ. one is called sprightly and volatile, but brave; the other is sober and meditative; a third is noted for his gravity; a fourth is known by his coldness and reserve, and his eagerness of gain; a fifth, on the contrary, is notorious for reckless expense. i shall not express any opinion upon the accuracy of these distinctions, i merely point out that they are made daily and adopted by common consent. the same has been done in all ages. the roman of italy distinguished the roman of greece by the epithet _græculus_, and attributed to him, as characteristic peculiarities, want of courage and boastful loquacity. he laughed at the colonist of carthage, whom he pretended to recognize among thousands by his litigious spirit and bad faith. the alexandrians passed for wily, insolent, and seditious. yet the doctrine of equality was as universally received among the romans of that period as it is among ourselves. if, then, various nations display qualities so different; if some are eager for war and glory; others, lovers of their ease and comfort, it follows that their destinies must be very diverse. the strongest will act in the great tragedy of history the roles of kings and heroes, the weaker will be content with the humbler parts. i do not believe that the ingenuity of our times has succeeded in reconciling the universally adopted belief in the special character of each nation with the no less general conviction that they are all equal. yet this contradiction is very flagrant, the more so as its partisans are not behindhand in extolling the superiority of the anglo-saxons of north america over all the other nations of the same continent. it is true that they ascribe that superiority to the influence of political institutions. but they will hardly contest the characteristic aptitude of the countrymen of penn and washington, to establish wherever they go liberal forms of government, and their still more valuable ability to preserve them, when once established. is not this a very high prerogative allotted to that branch of the human family? the more precious, since so few of the groups that have ever inhabited the globe possessed it. i know that my opponents will not allow me an easy victory. they will object to me the immense potency of manners and institutions; they will show me how much the spirit of the government, by its inherent and irresistible force, influences the development of a nation; how vastly different will be its progress when fostered by liberty or crushed by despotism. this argument, however, by no means invalidates my position. political institutions can have but two origins: either they emanate from the people which is to be governed by them, or they are the invention of a foreign nation, by whom they are imposed, or from whom they are copied. in the former case, the institutions are necessarily moulded upon the instincts and wants of the people; and if, through carelessness or ignorance, they are in aught incompatible with either, such defects will soon be removed or remedied. in every independent community the law may be said to emanate from the people; for though they have not apparently the power of promulgating it, it cannot be applicable to them unless it is consonant with their views and sentiments: it must be the reflex of the national character.[ ] the wise law-giver, to whose superior genius his countrymen seem solely indebted, has but given a voice to the wants and desires of all. the mere theorist, like draco, finds his code a dead letter, and destined soon to give place to the institutions of the more judicious philosopher who would give to his compatriots "not the best laws possible, but such only as they were capable of receiving." when charles i., guided by the fatal counsels of the earl of strafford, attempted to curb the english nation under the yoke of absolutism, king and minister were treading the bloody quagmire of theories. but when ferdinand the catholic ordered those terrible, but, in the then condition of the nation, politically necessary persecutions of the spanish moors, or when napoleon re-established religion and authority in france, and flattered the military spirit of the nation--both these potentates had rightly understood the genius of their subjects, and were building upon a solid and practical foundation. false institutions, often beautiful on paper, are those which are not conformed to the national virtues _or failings_, and consequently unsuitable to the country, though perhaps perfectly practicable and highly useful in a neighboring state. such institutions, were they borrowed from the legislation of the angels, will produce nothing but discord and anarchy. others, on the contrary, which the theorist will eschew, and the moralist blame in many points, or perhaps throughout, may be the best adapted to the community. lycurgus was no theorist; his laws were in strict accordance with the spirit and manners of his countrymen.[ ] the dorians of sparta were few in number, valiant, and rapacious; false institutions would have made them but petty villains--lycurgus changed them into heroic brigands.[ ] the influence of laws and political institutions is certainly very great; they preserve and invigorate the genius of a nation, define its objects, and help to attain them; but though they may develop powers, they cannot create them where they do not already exist. they first receive their imprint from the nation, and then return and confirm it. in other words, it is the nation that fashions the laws, before the laws, in turn, can fashion the nation. another proof of this fact are the changes and modifications which they undergo in the course of time. i have already said above, that in proportion as nations advance in civilization, and extend their territory and power, their ethnical character, and, with it, their instincts, undergo a gradual alteration. new manners and new tendencies prevail, and soon give rise to a series of modifications, the more frequent and radical as the influx of blood becomes greater and the fusion more complete. england, where the ethnical changes have been slower and less considerable than in any other european country, preserves to this day the basis of the social system of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. the municipal organization of the times of the plantagenets and the tudors flourishes in almost all its ancient vigor. there is the same participation of the nobility in the government, and the same manner of composing that nobility; the same respect for ancient families, united to an appreciation of those whose merits raise them above their class. since the accession of james i., and still more since the union, in queen anne's reign, there has indeed been an influx of scotch and irish blood; foreign nations have also, though imperceptibly, furnished their contingent to the mixture; alterations have consequently become more frequent of late, but without, as yet, touching the original spirit of the constitution. in france, the ethnical elements are much more numerous, and their mixtures more varied; and there it has repeatedly happened that the principal power of the state passed suddenly from the hands of one race to those of another. changes, rather than modifications, have therefore taken place in the social and political system; and the changes were abrupt or radical, in proportion as these races were more or less dissimilar. so long as the north of france, where the germanic element prevailed, preponderated in the policy of the country, the fabric of feudalism, or rather its inform remains, maintained their ground. after the expulsion of the english in the fifteenth century, the provinces of the centre took the lead. their efforts, under the guidance of charles vii., had recently restored the national independence, and the gallo-roman blood naturally predominated in camp and council. from this time dates the introduction of the taste for military life and foreign conquests, peculiar to the celtic race, and the tendency to concentrate and consolidate the sovereign authority, which characterized the roman. the road being thus prepared, the next step towards the establishment of absolute power was made at the end of the sixteenth century, by the aquitanian followers of henry iv., who had still more of the roman than of the celtic blood in their veins. the centralization of power, resulting from the ascendency of the southern populations, soon gave paris an overweening preponderance, and finally made it, what it now is, the sovereign of the state. this great capital, this modern babel, whose population is a motley compound of all the most varied ethnical elements, no longer had any motive to love or respect any tradition or peculiar tendency, and, coming to a complete rupture with the past, hurried france into a series of political and social experiments of doctrines the most remote from, and repulsive to, the ancient customs and traditional tendencies of the realm. these examples seem to me sufficient to prove that political institutions, when not imposed by foreign influence, take their mould from the national character, not only in the first place, but throughout all subsequent changes. let us now examine the second case, when a foreign code is, _nolens volens_, forced upon a nation by a superior power. there are few instances of such attempts. indeed, they were never made on a grand scale, by any truly sagacious governments of either ancient or modern times. the romans were too politic to indulge in such hazardous experiments. alexander, before them, had never ventured it, and his successors, convinced, either by reason or instinct, of the futility of such efforts, had been contented to reign, like the conqueror of darius, over a vast mosaic of nations, each of which retained its own habits, manners, laws, and administrative forms, and, at least so long as it preserved its ethnical identity, resembled its fellow-subjects in nothing but submission to the same fiscal and military regulations. there were, it is true, among the nations subdued by the romans, some whose codes contained practices so utterly repugnant to their masters, that the latter could not possibly have tolerated them. such were the human sacrifices of the druids, which were, indeed, visited with the severest penalties. but the romans, with all their power, never succeeded in completely extirpating this barbarous rite. in the narbonnese, the victory was easy, for the gallic population had been almost completely replaced by roman colonists; but the more intact tribes of the interior provinces made an obstinate resistance; and, in the peninsula of brittany, where, in the fourth century, a british colony re-imported the ancient instincts with the ancient blood, the population, in spite of the romans, continued, either from patriotism or veneration for their ancient traditions, to butcher fellow-beings on their altars, as often as they could elude the vigilance of their masters. all revolts began with the restoration of this fearful feature of the national creed, and even christianity could not entirely efface its traces, until after protracted and strenuous efforts. as late as the seventeenth century, the shipwrecked were murdered, and wrecks plundered in all the maritime provinces where the kimric blood had preserved itself unmixed. these barbarous customs were in accordance with the manners of a race which, not being yet sufficiently admixed, still remained true to its irrepressible instincts. one characteristic of european civilization is its intolerance. conscious of its pre-eminence, we are prone to deny the existence of any other, or, at least, to consider it as the standard of all. we look with supreme contempt upon all nations that are not within its pale, and when they fall under our influence, we attempt to convert them to our views and modes of thinking. institutions which we know to be good and useful, but which persuasion fails to propagate among nations to whose instincts they are foreign, we force upon them by the power of our arms. where are the results? since the sixteenth century, when the european spirit of discovery and conquest penetrated to the east, it does not seem to have operated the slightest change in the manners and mode of existence of the populations which it subjected. i have already adduced the example of british india. all the other european possessions present the same spectacle. the aborigines of java, though completely subjugated by the dutch, have not yet made the first step towards embracing the manners of their conquerors. java, at this day, preserves the social regulations of the time of its independence. in south america, where spain ruled with unrestrained power for centuries, what effect has it produced? the ancient empires, it is true, are no longer; their traces, even, are almost obliterated. but while the native has not risen to the level of his conqueror, the latter has been degraded by the mixture of blood.[ ] in the north, a different method has been pursued, but with results equally negative; nay, in the eyes of philanthropy, more deplorable; for, while the spanish indians have at least increased in numbers,[ ] and even mixed with their masters, to the red-man of the north, the contact with the anglo-saxon race has been death. the feeble remnants of these wretched tribes are fast disappearing, and disappearing as uncivilized, as uncivilizable, as their ancestors. in oceanica, the same observation holds good. the number of aborigines is daily diminishing. the european may disarm them, and prevent them from doing him injury, but change them he cannot. where-ever he is master, they no longer eat one another, but they fill themselves with firewater, and this novel species of brutishness is all they learn of european civilization. there are, indeed, two governments framed by nations of a different race, after our models: that of the sandwich islands, and that of st. domingo. a glance at these two countries will complete the proof of the futility of any attempts to give to a nation institutions not suggested by its own genius. in the sandwich islands, the representative system shines with full lustre. we there find an upper house, a lower house, a ministry who govern, and a king who reigns; nothing is wanted. yet all this is mere decoration; the wheel-work that moves the whole machine, the indispensable motive power, is the corps of missionaries. to them alone belongs the honor of finding the ideas, of presenting them, and carrying them through, either by their personal influence over their neophytes, or, if need be, by threats. it may be doubted, however, whether the missionaries, if they had no other instruments but the king and chambers, would not, after struggling for a while against the inaptitude of their pupils, find themselves compelled to take a more direct, and, consequently, more apparent part in the management of affairs. this difficulty is obviated by the establishment of a ministry composed of europeans, or half-bloods. between them and the missionaries, all public affairs are prearranged; the rest is only for show. king kamehameha iii. is, it seems, a man of ability. for his own account, he has abandoned tattooing, and although he has not yet succeeded in dissuading all his courtiers from this agreeable practice, he enjoys the satisfaction of seeing their countenances adorned with comparatively slight designs. the mass of the nation, the country nobility and common people, persist upon this as all other points, in the ancient ideas and customs.[ ] still, a variety of causes tend to daily increase the european population of the isles. the proximity of california makes them a point of great interest to the far-seeing energy of our nations. runaway sailors, and mutineers, are no longer the only white colonists; merchants, speculators, adventurers of all sorts, collect there in considerable numbers, build houses, and become permanent settlers. the native population is gradually becoming absorbed in the mixture with the whites. it is highly probable that, ere long, the present representative form of government will be superseded by an administration composed of delegates from one or all of the great maritime powers. of one thing i feel firmly convinced, that these imported institutions will take firm root in the country, but the day of their final triumph, by a necessary synchronism, will be that of the extinction of the native race. in st. domingo, national independence is intact. there are no missionaries exercising absolute, though concealed, control, no foreign ministry governing in the european spirit; everything is left to the genius and inspiration of the population. in the spanish part of the island, this population consists of mulattoes. i shall not speak of them. they seem to imitate, in some fashion, the simplest and easiest features of our civilization. like all half-breeds, they have a tendency to assimilate with that branch of their genealogy which does them most honor. they are, therefore, capable of practising, in some degree, our usages. the absolute question of the capacity of races cannot be studied among them. let us cross the mountain ridge which separates the republic of dominica from the empire of hayti. there we find institutions not only similar to ours, but founded upon the most recent maxims of our political wisdom. all that, since sixty years, the voice of the most refined liberalism has proclaimed in the deliberative assemblies of europe, all that the most zealous friends of the freedom and dignity of man have written, all the declarations of rights and principles, have found an echo on the banks of artibonite. no trace of africa remains in the _written_ laws, or the _official_ language; the recollections of the land of ham are _officially_ expunged from every mind; once more, the institutions are completely european. let us now examine how they harmonize with the manners. what a contrast! the manners are as depraved, as beastly, as ferocious as in dahomey[ ] or the country of the fellatahs. the same barbarous love of ornament, combined with the same indifference to form; beauty consists in color, and provided a garment is of gaudy red, and adorned with imitation gold, taste is little concerned with useless attention to materials or fitness; and as for cleanliness, this is a superfluity for which no one cares. you desire an audience with some high functionary: you are ushered into the presence of an athletic negro, stretched on a wooden bench, his head wrapped in a dirty, tattered handkerchief, and surmounted by a three-cornered hat, profusely decorated with gold. the general apparel consists of an embroidered coat (without suitable nether-garments), a huge sword, and slippers. you converse with this mass of flesh, and are anxious to discover what ideas can occupy a mind under so unpromising an exterior. you find an intellect of the lowest order combined with the most savage pride, which can be equalled only by as profound and incurable a laziness. if the individual before you opens his mouth, he will retail all the hackneyed common-places that the papers have wearied you with for the last half century. this barbarian knows them by heart; he has very different interests, different instincts; he has no ideas of his own. he will talk like baron holbach, reason like grimm, and at the bottom has no serious care except chewing tobacco, drinking spirits, butchering his enemies, and propitiating his sorcerers. the rest of the time he sleeps. the state is divided into two factions, not separated by incompatibility of politics, but of color--the negroes and the mulattoes. the latter, doubtless, are superior in intelligence, as i have already remarked with regard to the dominicans. the european blood has modified the nature of the african, and in a community of whites, with good models constantly before their eyes, these men might be converted into useful members of society. but, unfortunately, the superiority of numbers belongs at present to the negroes, and these, though removed from africa by several generations, are the same as in their native clime. their supreme felicity is idleness; their supreme reason, murder. among the two divisions of the island the most intense hatred has always prevailed. the history of independent hayti is nothing but a long series of massacres: massacres of mulattoes by the negroes, when the latter were strongest; of the negroes by the mulattoes, when the power was in their hands. the institutions, with all their boasted liberality and philanthropy, are of no use whatever. they sleep undisturbedly and impotently upon the paper on which they were written, and the savage instincts of the population reign supreme. conformably to the law of nature which i pointed out before, the negro, who belongs to a race exhibiting little aptitude for civilization, entertains the most profound horror for all other races. thus we see the haytien negroes energetically repel the white man from their territory, and forbid him even to enter it; they would also drive out the mulattoes, and contemplate their ultimate extermination. hostility to the foreigner is the _primum mobile_ of their local policy. owing to the innate laziness of the race, agriculture is abandoned, industry not known even by name, commerce drivelling; misery prevents the increase of the population, while continual wars, insurrections, and military executions diminish it continually. the inevitable and not very remote consequence of such a condition of things is to convert into a desert a country whose fertility and natural resources enriched generations of planters, which in exports and commercial activity surpassed even cuba.[ ] these examples of st. domingo and the sandwich islands seem to me conclusive. i cannot, however, forbear, before definitely leaving the subject, from mentioning another analogous fact, the peculiar character of which greatly confirms my position. i allude to the attempts of the jesuit missionaries to civilize the natives of paraguay.[ ] these missionaries, by their exalted intelligence and self-sacrificing courage, have excited universal admiration; and the most decided enemies of their order have never refused them an unstinted tribute of praise. if foreign institutions have ever had the slightest chance of success with a nation, these assuredly had it, based as they were upon the power of religious feelings, and supported and applied with a tact as correct as it was refined. the fathers were of the pretty general opinion that barbarism was to nations what childhood is to the individual, and that the more savage and untutored we find a people, the younger we may conclude them to be. to educate their neophytes to adolescence, they therefore treated them like children. their government was as firm in its views and commands as it was mild and affectionate in its forms. the aborigines of the american continent have generally a tendency to republicanism; a monarchy or aristocracy is rarely found among them, and then in a very restricted form. the guaranis of paraguay did not differ, in this respect, from their congeners. by a happy circumstance, however, these tribes displayed rather more intelligence and less ferocity than their neighbors, and seemed capable, to some extent, of conceiving new wants and adopting new ideas. about one hundred and twenty thousand souls were collected in the villages of the missions, under the guidance of the fathers. all that experience, daily study, and active charity could teach the jesuits, was employed for the benefit of their pupils; incessant efforts were made to hasten success, without hazarding it by rashness. in spite of all these cares, however, it was soon felt that the most absolute authority over the neophytes could hardly constrain them to persist in the right path, and occasions were not wanting that revealed the little real solidity of the edifice.[ ] when the measures of count aranda deprived paraguay of its pious and skilful civilizers, the sad truth appeared in complete light. the guaranis, deprived of their spiritual guides, refused all confidence in the lay directors sent them by the spanish crown. they showed no attachment to their new institutions. their taste for savage life revived, and at present there are but thirty-seven little villages still vegetating on the banks of the parana, the paraguay, and uraguay, and these contain a considerable nucleus of half-breed population. the rest have returned to the forest, and live there in as savage a state as the western tribes of the same stock, the guaranis and cirionos. i will not say that the deserters have readopted their ancient manners completely, but there is little trace left of the pious missionaries' labors, and this because it is given to no human race to be oblivious of its instincts, nor to abandon the path in which the creator has placed them. it may be supposed, had the jesuits continued to direct their missions in paraguay, that their efforts, assisted by time, would have been crowned with better success. i am willing to concede this, but on one condition only, always the same: that a group of europeans would gradually have settled in the country under the protection of the jesuit directors. these would have modified, and finally completely transformed the native blood, and a state would have been formed, bearing probably an aboriginal name, whose inhabitants might have prided themselves upon descending from autochthonic ancestors, though as completely belonging to europe as the institutions by which they might be governed. footnotes: [ ] the author of _democracy in america_ (vol. ii. book , ch. ), speculating upon the total want of sympathy among the various classes of an aristocratic community, says: "each caste has its own opinions, feelings, rights, manners, and mode of living. the members of each caste do not resemble the rest of their fellow-citizens; they do not think and feel in the same manner, and believe themselves a distinct race.... when the chroniclers of the middle ages, who all belonged to the aristocracy by birth and education, relate the tragical end of a noble, their grief flows apace; while they tell, with the utmost indifference, of massacres and tortures inflicted on the common people. in this they were actuated by an _instinct_ rather than by a passion, for they felt no habitual hatred or systematic disdain for the people: war between the several classes of the community was not yet declared." the writer gives extracts from mme. de sevigné's letters, displaying, to use his own words, "a cruel jocularity which, in our day, the harshest man writing to the most insensible person of his acquaintance would not venture to indulge in; and yet madame de sevigné was not selfish or cruel; she was passionately attached to her children, and ever ready to sympathize with her friends, and she treated her servants and vassals with kindness and indulgence." "whence does this arise?" asks m. de tocqueville; "have we really more sensibility than our forefathers?" when it is recollected, as has been pointed out in a previous note, that the nobility of france were of germanic, and the peasantry of celtic origin, we will find in this an additional proof of the correctness of our author's theory. thanks to the revolution, the barriers that separated the various ranks have been torn down, and continual intermixture has blended the blood of the frankish noble and of the gallic boor. wherever this fusion has not yet taken place, or but imperfectly, m. de tocqueville's remarks still apply.--h. [ ] the spirit of clanship is so strong in the arab tribes, and their instinct of ethnical isolation so powerful, that it often displays itself in a rather odd manner. a traveller (mr. fulgence fresnel, if i am not mistaken) relates that at djidda, where morality is at a rather low ebb, the same bedouine who cannot resist the slightest pecuniary temptation, would think herself forever dishonored, if she were joined in lawful wedlock to the turk or european, to whose embrace she willingly yields while she despises him. [ ] the man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. power, like a desolating pestilence, pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, makes slaves of man, and of the human frame a mechanized automaton. shelley, _queen mab_. [ ] montesquieu expresses a similar idea, in his usual epigrammatic style. "the customs of an enslaved people," says he, "are a part of their servitude; those of a free people, a part of their liberty."--_esprit des lois_, b. xix. c. .--h. [ ] "a great portion of the peculiarities of the spartan constitution and their institutions was assuredly of ancient doric origin, and must have been rather given up by the other dorians, than newly invented and instituted by the spartans."--_niebuhr's ancient history_, vol. i. p. .--h. [ ] see note on page . [ ] the amalgamation of races in south america must indeed be inconceivable. "i find," says alex. von humboldt, in , "by several statements, that if we estimate the population of the whole of the spanish colonies at fourteen or fifteen millions of souls, there are, in that number, at most, _three_ millions of pure whites, including about , europeans." (_pers. nar._, vol. i. p. .) of the progress which this mongrel population have made in civilization, i cannot give a better idea than by an extract from dr. tschudi's work, describing the mode of ploughing in some parts of chili. "if a field is to be tilled, it is done by two natives, who are furnished with long poles, pointed at one end. the one thrusts his pole, pretty deeply, and in an oblique direction, into the earth, so that it forms an angle with the surface of the ground. the other indian sticks his pole in, at a little distance, and also obliquely, and he forces it beneath that of his fellow-laborer, so that the first pole lies, as it were, upon the second. the first indian then presses on his pole, and makes it work on the other, as a lever on its fulcrum, and the earth is thrown up by the point of the pole. thus they gradually advance, until the whole field is furrowed by this laborious process." (_dr. tschudi, travels in peru, during the years - ._ london, , p. .) i really do not think that a counterpart to this could be found, except, perhaps, in the manner of working the mines all over south america. both darwin and tschudi speak of it with surprise. every pound of ore is brought out of the shafts on men's shoulders. the mines are drained of the water accumulating in them, in the same manner, by means of water-tight bags. dr. tschudi describes the process employed for the amalgamation of the quicksilver with the silver ore. it is done by causing them to be trodden together by horses', or human feet. not only is this method attended with incredible waste of material, and therefore very expensive, but it soon kills the horses employed in it, while the men contract the most fearful, and, generally, incurable diseases! (_op. cit._, p. - .)--h. [ ] a. von humboldt, _examen critique de l'histoire et de la géographie du n. c._, vol. ii. p. - . the same opinion is expressed by mr. humboldt in his _personal narrative_. london, , vol. i. p. .--h. [ ] speaking of the habit of tattooing among the south sea islanders, mr. darwin says that even girls who had been brought up in missionaries' houses, could not be dissuaded from this practice, though in everything else, they seemed to have forgotten the savage instincts of their race. "the wives of the missionaries tried to prevent them, but a famous operator having arrived from the south, they said: 'we really must have just a few lines on our lips, else, when we grow old, we shall be so ugly.'"--_journal of a naturalist_, vol. ii. p. .--h. [ ] for the latest details, see mr. gustave d'alaux's articles in the _revue des deux mondes_, . [ ] the subjoined comparison of the exports of haytien staple products may not be uninteresting to many of our readers, while it serves to confirm the author's assertion. i extract it from a statistical table in mackenzie's report to the british government, upon the condition of the then republic (now empire). mr. mackenzie resided there as special _envoyé_ several years, for the purpose of collecting authentic information for his government, and his statements may therefore be relied upon. (_notes on hayti_, vol. ii. note ff. london, .) sugar. cotton. coffee. lbs. lbs. lbs. , , , , , , , , , , it will be perceived, from these figures, that the decrease is greatest in that staple which requires the most laborious cultivation. thus, sugar requires almost unremitting toil; coffee, comparatively little. all branches of industry have fearfully decreased; some of them have ceased entirely; and the small and continually dwindling commerce of that wretched country consists now mainly of articles of spontaneous growth. the statistics of imports are in perfect keeping with those of exports. (_op. cit._, vol. ii. p. .) as might be expected from such a state of things, the annual expenditure in was estimated at a little more than _double_ the amount of the annual revenue! (_ibid._, "finance.") that matters have not improved under the administration of that most gracious, most christian monarch, the emperor faustin i., will be seen by reference to last year's _annuaire de la revue del deux mondes_, "haiti," p. , _et seq._, where some curious details about his majesty and his majesty's sable subjects will be found. [ ] upon this subject, consult prichard, d'orbigny, and a. de humboldt. [ ] i recollect having read, several years ago, in a jesuit missionary journal (i forget its name and date, but am confident that the authority is a reliable one), a rather ludicrous account of an instance of this kind. one of the fathers, who had a little isolated village under his charge, had occasion to leave his flock for a time, and his place, unfortunately, could not be replaced by another. he therefore called the most promising of his neophytes, and committed to their care the domestic animals and agricultural implements with which the society had provided the newly-converted savages, then left them with many exhortations and instructions. his absence being prolonged beyond the period anticipated, the indians thought him dead, and instituted a grand funeral feast in his honor, at which they slaughtered all the oxen, and roasted them by fires made of the ploughs, hoe-handles, etc.; and he arrived just in time to witness the closing scenes of this mourning ceremony.--h. chapter vi. this diversity is not the result of geographical situation. america--ancient empires--phenicians and romans--jews--greece and rome--commercial cities of europe--isthmus of darien. it is impossible to leave entirely out of the question the influence which climate, the nature of the soil, and topographical circumstances, exert upon the development of nations. this influence, so much overrated by many of the learned, i shall investigate more fully, although i have rapidly glanced at it already, in another place. it is a very common opinion that a nation living under a temperate sky, not too warm to enervate the man, nor too cold to render the soil unproductive; on the shores of large rivers, affording extensive and commodious means of communication; in plains and valleys adapted to varied cultivation; at the foot of mountains pregnant with the useful and precious ores--that a nation thus favored by nature, would soon be prompted to cast off barbarism, and progress rapidly in civilization.[ ] on the other hand, and by the same reasoning, it is easily admitted that tribes, charred by an ardent sun, or benumbed by unceasing cold, and having no territory save sterile rocks, would be much more liable to remain in a state of barbarism. according to this hypothesis, the intellectual powers of man could be developed only by the aid of external nature, and all his worth and greatness are not implanted in him, but in the objects without and around. specious as is this opinion at first sight, it has against it all the numerous facts which observation furnishes. nowhere, certainly, is there a greater variety of soil and climate than in the extensive western continent. nowhere are there more fertile regions, milder skies, larger and more numerous rivers. the coasts are indented with gulfs and bays; deep and magnificent harbors abound; the most valuable riches of the mineral kingdom crop out of the ground; nature has lavished on the soil her choicest and most variegated vegetable productions, and the woods and prairies swarm with alimentary species of animals, presenting still more substantial resources. and yet, the greater part of these happy countries is inhabited, and has been for a series of centuries, by tribes who ignore the most mediocre exploration of all these treasures. several of them seem to have been in the way of doing better. a meagre culture, a rude knowledge of the art of working metals, may be observed in more than one place. several useful arts, practised with some ingenuity, still surprise the traveller. but all this is really on a very humble scale, and never formed what might be termed a civilization. there certainly has existed at some very remote period, a nation which inhabited the vast region extending from lake erie to the mexican gulf. there can be no doubt that the country lying between the alleghany and the rocky mountains, and extending from lake erie to the gulf of mexico, was, at some very remote epoch, inhabited by a nation that has left remarkable traces of its existence behind.[ ] the remains of buildings, inscriptions on rocks, the tumuli,[ ] and mummies which they inclose, indicate a high degree of intellectual culture. but there is no evidence that between this mysterious people and the tribes now wandering over its tombs, there is any very near affinity. however this may be, if by inheritance or slavish imitation the now existing aborigines derive their first knowledge of the arts which they now rudely practise, from the former masters of the soil, we cannot but be struck by their incapacity of perfecting what they had been taught; and i see in this a new motive for adhering to my opinion, that a nation placed amid the most favorable geographical circumstances, is not, therefore, destined to arrive at civilization. on the contrary, there is between the propitiousness of soil and climate and the establishment of civilization, a complete independence. india was a country which required fertilization; so was egypt.[ ] here we have two very celebrated centres of human culture and development. china, though very productive in some parts, presented in others difficulties of a very serious character. the first events recorded in its history are struggles with rivers that had burst their bonds; its heroes are victors over the ruthless flood; the ancient emperors distinguished themselves by excavating canals and draining marshes. the country of the tigris and euphrates, the theatre of assyrian splendor and hallowed by our most sacred traditions, those regions where, syncellus says, wheat grew spontaneously, possess a soil so little productive, when unassisted by art, that only a vast and laborious system of irrigation can render it capable of giving the means of subsistence to its inhabitants. now that the canals are filled up or obstructed, sterility has reassumed its former dominion. i am, therefore, inclined to think that nature had not so greatly favored these countries as is usually supposed. yet, i shall not discuss this point. i am willing to admit that china, egypt, india, and mesopotamia were regions perfectly adapted in every respect to the establishment of great empires, and the consequent development of brilliant civilizations. but it cannot be disputed that these nations, to profit by these superior advantages, must have previously brought their social system to a high degree of perfection. before the great watercourses became the highways of commerce, industry, or at least agriculture, must have flourished to some extent. the great advantages accorded to these countries presuppose, therefore, in the nations that have profited by them, a peculiar intellectual vocation, and even a certain anterior degree of civilization. but from these specially favored regions let us glance elsewhere. when the phenicians migrated from the southeast, they fixed their abode on an arid, rocky coast, inclosed by steep and ragged mountains. such a geographical situation would appear to preclude a people from any expansion, and force them to remain forever dependent on the produce of their fisheries for sustenance. the utmost that could be expected of them was to see them petty pirates. they were pirates, indeed, but on a magnificent scale; and, what is more, they were bold and successful merchants and speculators. they planted colonies everywhere, while the barren rocks of the mother country were covered with the palaces and temples of a wealthy and luxurious community. some will say, that "the very unpropitiousness of external circumstances forced the founders of tyre and sidon to become what they were. necessity is the mother of invention; their misery spurred them on to exertion; had they inhabited the plains of damascus, they would have been content with the peaceful products of agriculture, and would probably never have become an illustrious nation."[ ] and why does not misery spur on other nations placed under similar circumstances? the kabyles of morocco are an ancient race; they have had sufficient time for reflection, and, moreover, every possible inducement for mere imitation; yet they have never imagined any other method for alleviating their wretched lot except petty piracy. the unparalleled facilities for commerce afforded by the indian archipelago and the island clusters of the pacific, have never been improved by the natives; all the peaceful and profitable relations were left in the hands of foreign races--the chinese, malays, and arabs; where commerce has fallen into the hands of a semi-indigenous or half-breed population, it has instantly commenced to languish. what conclusions can we deduce from these observations than that pressing wants are not sufficient for inciting a nation to profit by the natural facilities of its coasts and islands, and that some special aptitude is needed for establishing a commercial state even in localities best adapted for that purpose. but i shall not content myself with proving that the social and political aptitudes of races are not dependent on geographical situations, whether these be favorable or unfavorable; i shall, moreover, endeavor to show that these aptitudes have no sort of relation with any exterior circumstances. the armenians, in their almost inaccessible mountains, where so many other nations have vegetated in a state of barbarism from generation to generation, and without any access to the sea, attained, already at a remote period, a high state of civilization. the jews found themselves in an analogous position; they were surrounded by tribes who spoke kindred dialects, and who, for the most part, were nearly related to them in blood. yet, they excelled all these groups. they were warriors, agriculturists, and merchants. under a government in which theocracy, monarchy, patriarchal authority, and popular will, were singularly complicated and balanced, they traversed centuries of prosperity and glory. the difficulties which the narrow limits of their patrimonial domain opposed to their expansion, were overcome by an intelligent system of emigration. what was this famous canaan? modern travellers bear witness to the laborious and well-directed efforts by which the jewish agriculturists maintained the factitious fertility of their soil. since the chosen race no longer inhabits these mountains and plains, the wells where jacob's flocks drank are dried up; naboth's vineyard is invaded by the desert, achab's palace-gardens filled with thistles. in this miserable corner of the world, what were the jews? a people dextrous in all they undertook, a free, powerful, intelligent people, who, before losing bravely, and against a much superior foe, the title of independent nation, had furnished to the world almost as many doctors as merchants.[ ] let us look at greece. arcadia was the paradise of the shepherd, and boeotia, the favored land of ceres and triptolemus: yet, arcadia and boeotia play but a very inferior part in history. the wealthy corinth, the favorite of plutus and venus, also appears in the second rank. to whom pertains the glory of grecian history? to attica, whose whitish, sandy soil afforded a scanty sustenance to puny olive-trees; to athens, whose principal commerce consisted in books and statues. then to sparta, shut up in a narrow valley between masses of rocks, where victory went in search of it. who would dare to assert that rome owed her universal empire to her geographical position? in the poor district of latium, on the banks of a tiny stream emptying its waters on an almost unknown coast, where neither greek nor phenician vessel ever landed, except by accident, the future mistress of the world was born. so soon as the nations of the earth obeyed the roman standard, politicians found the metropolis ill-placed, and the eternal city was neglected: even abandoned. the first emperors, being chiefly occupied with the east, resided in greece almost continually. tiberius chose caprea, in the centre of his empire. his successors went to antioch. several lived at trebia. finally, a decree deprived rome of the very name of capital, and gave it to milan. if the romans have conquered the world, it is certainly in spite of the locality whence issued forth their first armies, and not on account of its advantages. in modern history, the proofs of the correctness of my position are so abundant, that i hardly know how to select. i see prosperity abandoning the coasts of the mediterranean, evidence that it was not dependent on them. the great commercial cities of the middle ages rise where no theorist of a preceding age could have predicted them. novogorod flourishes in an almost arctic region, bremen on a coast nearly as cold. the hanse-towns of germany rise in a country where civilization has scarcely dawned; venice appears at the head of a long, narrow gulf. political preponderance belongs to places before unknown. lyons, toulouse, narbonne, marseilles, bordeaux, lose the importance assigned them by the romans, and paris becomes the metropolis--paris, then a third-rate town, too far from the sea for commerce, too near it for the norman barges. in italy, cities formerly obscure, surpass the capital of the popes. ravenna rises in the midst of marshes; amalfi, for a long time, enjoys extensive dominion. it must be observed, that in all these changes accident has no part: they all are the result of the presence of a victorious and preponderating race. it is not the place which determines the importance of a nation, it is the nation which gives to the place its political and economical importance. i do not, however, deny the importance of certain situations for commercial depots, or for capitals. the observations made with regard to alexandria and constantinople, are incontestable.[ ] there are, upon our globe, various points which may be called the keys of the world. thus, it is obvious that a city, built on the proposed canal which is to pierce the isthmus of darien, would act an important part in the affairs of the world. but, such a part a nation may act well or badly, or even not at all, according to its merits. aggrandize chagres, and let the two oceans unite under her walls, the destiny of the city would depend entirely on the race by which it was peopled. if this race be worthy of their good fortune, they will soon discover whether chagres be the point whence the greatest benefits can be derived from the union of the two oceans; and, if it is not, they will leave it, and then, untrammelled, develop elsewhere their brilliant destinies.[ ] footnotes: [ ] consult, among others, carus: _uber ungleiche befähigung der vershiedenen menschen-stämme für höhere geistige entwickelung._ leipzig, , p. _et passim_. [ ] prichard, _natural history of man_, vol. ii. see particularly the recent researches of e. g. squier, published in , under the title: _observations on the aboriginal monuments of the mississippi valley_, and also in various late reviews and other periodicals. [ ] the very singular construction of these tumuli, and the numerous utensils found in them, occupy at this moment the penetration and talent of american antiquaries. i shall have occasion, in a subsequent volume, to express an opinion as to their value in the inquiries about a former civilization; at present, i shall only say that their almost incredible antiquity cannot be called in question. mr. squier is right in considering this proved by the fact merely, that the skeletons exhumed from these tumuli crumble into dust as soon as exposed to the atmosphere, although the condition of the soil in which they lie, is the most favorable possible; while the human remains under the british cromlichs, and which have been interred for at least eighteen centuries, are perfectly solid. it is easily conceived, therefore, that between the first possessors of the american soil and the lenni-lenape and other tribes, there is no connection. before concluding this note, i cannot refrain from praising the industry and skill manifested by american scholars in the study of the antiquities of their immense continent. to obviate the difficulties arising from the excessive fragility of the exhumed skulls, many futile attempts were made, but the object was finally accomplished by pouring into them a bituminous preparation which instantly solidifies and thus preserves the osseous parts. this process, which requires many precautions, and as much skill as promptitude, is said to be generally successful. [ ] ancient india required, on the part of its first white colonists, immense labor of cultivation and improvement. (see lassen, _indische alterthumskunde_, vol. i.) as to egypt, see what chevalier bunsen, _�gypten's stelle in der weltgeschichte_, says of the fertilization of the fayoum, that gigantic work of the earliest sovereigns. [ ] "why have accidental circumstances always prevented some from rising, while they have only stimulated others to higher attainments?"--_dr. kneeland's introd. to hamilton smith's nat. hist. of man_, p. .--h. [ ] salvador, _histoire des juifs_. [ ] m. saint-marc girardin, _revue des deux mondes_. [ ] see, upon this often-debated subject, the opinion--somewhat acerbly expressed--of a learned historian and philologist:-- "a great number of writers have suffered themselves to be persuaded that the country made the nation; that the bavarians and saxons were predestined, by the nature of their soil, to become what they are to-day; that protestantism belonged not to the regions of the south; and that catholicism could not penetrate to those of the north; and many similar things. men who interpret history according to their own slender knowledge, their narrow hearts, and near-sighted minds, would, by the same reasoning, make us believe that the jews had possessed such and such qualities--more or less clearly understood--because they inhabited palestine, and not india or greece. but, if these philosophers, so dextrous in proving whatever flatters their notions, were to reflect that the holy land contained, in its limited compass, peoples of the most dissimilar religions and modes of thinking, that between them, again, and their present successors, there is the utmost difference conceivable, although the country is still the same; they would understand how little influence, upon the character and civilization of a nation has the country they inhabit."--ewald, _geschichte des volkes israel_, vol. i. p. . chapter vii. influence of christianity upon moral and intellectual diversity of races. the term christian civilization examined--reasons for rejecting it--intellectual diversity no hindrance to the universal diffusion of christianity--civilizing influence of christian religion by elevating and purifying the morals, etc.; but does not remove intellectual disparities--various instances--cherokees--difference between imitation and comprehension of civilized life. by the foregoing observations, two facts seem to me clearly established: first, that there are branches of the human family incapable of spontaneous civilization, so long as they remain unmixed; and, secondly, that this innate incapacity cannot be overcome by external agencies, however powerful in their nature. it now remains to speak of the civilizing influence of christianity, a subject which, on account of its extensive bearing, i have reserved for the last, in my consideration of the instruments of civilization. the first question that suggests itself to the thinking mind, is a startling one. if some races are so vastly inferior in all respects, can they comprehend the truths of the gospel, or are they forever to be debarred from the blessing of salvation? in answer, i unhesitatingly declare my firm conviction, that the pale of salvation is open to them all, and that all are endowed with equal capacity to enter it. writers are not wanting who have asserted a contrary opinion. they dare to contradict the sacred promise of the gospel, and deny the peculiar characteristic of our faith, which consists in its accessibility to all men. according to them, religions are confined within geographical limits which they cannot transgress. but the christian religion knows no degrees of latitude or longitude. there is scarcely a nation, or a tribe, among whom it has not made converts. statistics--imperfect, no doubt, but, as far as they go, reliable--show them in great numbers in the remotest parts of the globe: nomad mongols, in the steppes of asia, savage hunters in the table-lands of the andes; dark-hued natives of an african clime; persecuted in china;[ ] tortured in madagascar; perishing under the lash in japan. but this universal capacity of receiving the light of the gospel must not be confounded, as is so often done, with a faculty of entirely different character, that of social improvement. this latter consists in being able to conceive new wants, which, being supplied, give rise to others, and gradually produce that perfection of the social and political system which we call civilization. while the former belongs equally to all races, whatever may be their disparity in other respects, the latter is of a purely intellectual character, and the prerogative of certain privileged groups, to the partial or even total exclusion of others. with regard to christianity, intellectual deficiencies cannot be a hindrance to a race. our religion addresses itself to the lowly and simple, even in preference to the great and wise of this earth. intellect and learning are not necessary to salvation. the most brilliant lights of our church were not always found among the body of the learned. the glorious martyrs, whom we venerate even above the skilful and erudite defender of the dogma, or the eloquent panegyrist of the faith, were men who sprang from the masses of the people; men, distinguished neither for worldly learning, nor brilliant talents, but for the simple virtues of their lives, their unwavering faith, their self-devotion. it is exactly in this that consists one great superiority of our religion over the most elaborate and ingenious systems devised by philosophers, that it is intelligible to the humblest capacity as well as to the highest. the poor esquimaux of labrador may be as good and as pure a christian as the most learned prelate in europe. but we now come to an error which, in its various phases, has led to serious consequences. the utilitarian tendency of our age renders us prone to seek, even in things sacred, a character of material usefulness. we ascribe to the influence of christianity a certain order of things, which we call _christian civilization_. to what political or social condition this term can be fitly applied, i confess myself unable to conceive. there certainly is a pagan, a brahmin, and buddhistic, a judaic civilization. there have been, and still are, societies so intimately connected with a more or less exclusive theological formula, that the civilizations peculiar to them, can only be designated by the name of their creed. in such societies, religion is the sole source of all political forms, all civil and social legislation; the groundwork of the whole civilization. this union of religious and temporal institutions, we find in the history of every nation of antiquity. each country had its own peculiar divinity, which exercised a more or less direct influence in the government,[ ] and from which laws and civilization were said to be immediately derived. it was only when paganism began to wane, that the politicians of rome imagined a separation of temporal and religious power, by attempting a fusion of the different forms of worship, and proclaiming the dogma of legal toleration. when paganism was in its youth and vigor, each city had its jupiter, mercury, or venus, and the local deity recognized neither in this world nor the next any but compatriots. but, with christianity, it is otherwise. it chooses no particular people, prescribes no form of government, no social system. it interferes not in temporal matters, has naught to do with the material world, "its kingdom is of another." provided it succeeds in changing the interior man, external circumstances are of no import. if the convert fervently embraces the faith, and in all his actions tries to observe its prescriptions, it inquires not about the built of his dwelling, the cut of his garments, or the materials of which they are composed, his daily occupations, the regulations of his government, the degree of despotism, or of freedom, which pervades his political institutions. it leaves the chinese in his robes, the esquimaux in his seal-skins; the former to his rice, the latter to his fish-oil; and who would dare to assert that the prayers of both may not breathe as pure a faith as those of the _civilized_ european? no mode of existence can attract its preference, none, however humble, its disdain. it attacks no form of government, no social institution; prescribes none, because it has adopted none. it teaches not the art of promoting worldly comforts, it teaches to despise them. what, then, can we call a christian civilization? had christ, or his disciples, prescribed, or even recommended any particular political or social forms,[ ] the term would then be applicable. but his law may be observed under all--of whatever nature--and is therefore superior to them all. it is justly and truly called the _catholic_, or universal. and has christianity, then, no civilizing influence? i shall be asked. undoubtedly; and a very great one. its precepts elevate and purify the soul, and, by their purely spiritual nature, disengage the mind from worldly things, and expand its powers. in a merely human point of view, the material benefits it confers on its followers are inestimable. it softens the manners, and facilitates the intercourse between man and his fellow-man; it mitigates violence, and weans him from corrosive vices. it is, therefore, a powerful promoter of his worldly interests. but it only expands the mind in proportion to the susceptibility of the mind for being expanded. it does not give intellect, or confer talents, though it may exalt both, and render them more useful. it does not create new capacities, though it fosters and develops those it finds. where the capacities of an individual, or a race, are such as to admit an improvement in the mode of existence, it tends to produce it; where such capacities are not already, it does not give them. as it belongs to no particular civilization, it does not compel a nation to change its own. in fine, as it does not level all individuals to the same intellectual standard, so it does not raise all races to the same rank in the political assemblage of the nations of the earth. it is wrong, therefore, to consider the equal aptitude of all races for the true religion, as a proof of their intellectual equality. though having embraced it, they will still display the same characteristic differences, and divergent or even opposite tendencies. a few examples will suffice to set my idea in a clearer light. the major portion of the indian tribes of south america have, for centuries, been received within the pale of the church, yet the european civilization, with which they are in constant contact, has never become their own.[ ] the cherokees, in the northern part of the same continent, have nearly all been converted by the methodist missionaries. at this i am not surprised, but i should be greatly so, if these tribes, without mixing with the whites, were ever to form one of the states, and exercise any influence in congress. the moravians and danish lutheran missionaries in labrador and greenland, have opened the eyes of the esquimaux to the light of religion; but their neophytes have remained in the same social condition in which they vegetated before. a still more forcible illustration is afforded by the laplanders of sweden, who have not emerged from the state of barbarism of their ancestors, though the doctrine of salvation was preached to them, and believed by them, centuries ago. i sincerely believe that all these peoples may produce, and, perhaps, already have produced, persons remarkable for piety and pure morals; but i do not expect ever to see among them learned theologians, great statesmen, able military leaders, profound mathematicians, or distinguished artists;--any of those superior minds, whose number and perpetual succession are the cause of power in a preponderating race; much less those rare geniuses whose meteor-like appearance is productive of permanent good only when their countrymen are so constituted as to be able to understand them, and to advance under their direction. we cannot, therefore, call christianity a promoter of civilization in the narrow and purely material sense of some writers. many of my readers, while admitting my observations in the main to be correct, will object that the modifying influence of religion upon the manners must produce a corresponding modification of the institutions, and finally in the whole social system. the propagators of the gospel, they will say, are almost always--though not necessarily--from a nation superior in civilization to the one they visit. in their personal intercourse, therefore, with their neophytes, the latter cannot but acquire new notions of material well-being. even the political system may be greatly influenced by the relations between instructor and pupil. the missionary, while he provides for the spiritual welfare of his flock, will not either neglect their material wants. by his teaching and example, the savage will learn how to provide against famine, by tilling the soil. this improvement in his condition once effected, he will soon be led to build himself a better dwelling, and to practise some of the simpler useful arts. gradually, and by careful training, he may acquire sufficient taste for things purely intellectual, to learn the alphabet, or even, as in the case of the cherokees, to invent one himself. in course of time, if the missionaries' labors are crowned with success, they may, perhaps, so firmly implant their manners and mode of living among this formerly savage tribe, that the traveller will find among them well-cultivated fields, numerous flocks, and, like these same cherokees, and the creeks on the southern banks of the arkansas, black slaves to work on their plantations. let us see how far facts correspond with this plausible argument. i shall select the two nations which are cited as being the furthest advanced in european civilization, and their example will, it seems to me, demonstrate beyond a doubt, how impossible it is for any race to pursue a career in which their own nature has not placed them. the cherokees and creeks are said to be the remnants or descendants of the alleghanian race, the supposed builders of those great monuments of which we still find traces in the mississippi valley. if this be the case, these two nations may lay claim to a natural superiority over the other tribes of north america. deprived of their hereditary dominions by the american government, they were forced--under a treaty of transplantation--to emigrate to regions selected for them by the latter. there they were placed under the superintendence of the minister of war, and of protestant missionaries, who finally succeeded in persuading them to embrace the mode of life they now lead. mr. prichard,[ ] my authority for these facts, and who derives them himself from the great work of mr. gallatin,[ ] asserts that, while all the other indian tribes are continually diminishing, these are steadily increasing in numbers. as a proof of this, he alleges that when adair visited the cherokee tribes, in , the number of their warriors was estimated at , ; at present, their total population amounts to , souls, including about , negroes in their possession. when we consider that their schools, as well as churches, are directed by white missionaries; that the greater number of these missionaries--being protestants--are probably married and have children and servants also white, besides, very likely, a sort of retinue of clerks and other european employees;--the increase of the aboriginal population becomes extremely doubtful,[ ] while it is easy to conceive the pressure of the white race upon its pupils. surrounded on all sides by the power of the united states, incommensurable to their imagination; converted to the religion of their masters, which they have, i think, sincerely embraced; treated kindly and judiciously by their spiritual guides; and exposed to the alternation of working or of starving in their contracted territory;--i can understand that it was possible to make them tillers of the earth. it would be underrating the intelligence of the humblest, meanest specimen of our kind, to express surprise at such a result, when we see that, by dexterously and patiently acting upon the passions and wants of animals, we succeed in teaching them what their own instincts would never have taught them. every village fair is filled with animals which are trained to perform the oddest tricks, and is it to be wondered at that men submitted to a rigorous system of training, and deprived of the means of escaping from it, should, in the end, be made to perform certain mechanical functions of civilized life; functions which, even in the savage state, they are capable of understanding, though they have not the will to practise them? this were placing human beings lower in the scale of creation than the learned pig, or mr. leonard's domino-playing dogs.[ ] such exultation on the part of the believers in the equality of races is little flattering to those who excite it. i am aware that this exaggeration of the intellectual capacity of certain races is in a great measure provoked by the notions of some very learned and distinguished men, who pretend that between the lowest races of men, and the highest of apes there was but a shade of distinction. so gross an insult to the dignity of man, i indignantly reject. certainly, in my estimation, the different races are very unequally endowed, both physically and mentally; but i should be loath to think that in any, even in the most degraded, the unmistakable line of demarcation between man and brute were effaced. i recognize no link of gradation which would connect man mentally with the brute creation. but does it follow, that because the lowest of the human species is still unmistakably human, that all of that species are capable of the same development? take a bushman, the most hideous and stupid of human families, and by careful training you may teach him, or if he is already adult, his son, to learn and practise a handicraft, even one that requires a certain degree of intelligence. but are we warranted thence to conclude that the nation to which this individual belongs, is susceptible of adopting our civilization? there is a vast difference between mechanically practising handicrafts and arts, the products of an advanced civilization, and that civilization itself. let us suppose that the cherokee tribes were suddenly cut off from all connection with the american government, the traveller, a few years hence, would find among them very unexpected and singular institutions, resulting from their mixture with the whites, but partaking only feebly of the character of european civilization. we often hear of negroes proficient in music, negroes who are clerks in counting-rooms, who can read, write, talk like the whites. we admire, and conclude that the negroes are capable of everything that whites are. notwithstanding this admiration and these hasty conclusions, we express surprise at the contrast of sclavonian civilization with ours. we aver that the russian, polish, servish nations, are civilized only at the surface, that none but the higher classes are in possession of our ideas, and this, thanks to their intermixture with the english, french, and german stock; that the masses, on the contrary, evince a hopeless inaptitude for participating in the forward movement of western europe, although these masses have been christians for centuries, many of them while our ancestors were heathens. are the negroes, then, more closely allied to our race than the sclavonic nations? on the one hand, we assert the intellectual equality of the white and black races; on the other, a disparity among subdivisions of our own race. there is a vast difference between imitation and comprehension. the imitation of a civilization does not necessarily imply an eradication of the hereditary instincts. a _nation_ can be said to have adopted a civilization, only when it has the power to progress in it unprompted, and without guidance. instead of extolling the intelligence of savages in handling a plough, after being shown; in spelling and reading, after they have been taught; let a single example be alleged of a tribe in any of the numerous countries in contact with europeans, which, with our religion, has also made the ideas, institutions, and manners of a european nation so completely its own, that the whole social and political machinery moves forward as easily and naturally as in our states. let an example be alleged of an extra-european nation, among whom the art of printing produces effects analogous to those it produces among us; where new applications of our discoveries are attempted; where our systems of philosophy give birth to new systems; where our arts and sciences flourish. but, no; i will be more moderate in my demands. i shall not ask of that nation to adopt, together with our faith, all in which consists our individuality. i shall suppose that it rejects it totally, and chooses one entirely different, adapted to its peculiar genius and circumstances. when the eyes of that nation open to the truths of the gospel, it perceives that its earthly course is as encumbered and wretched as its spiritual life had hitherto been. it now begins the work of improvement, collects its ideas, which had hitherto remained fruitless, examines the notions of others, transforms them, and adapts them to its peculiar circumstances; in fact, erects, by its own power, a social and political system, a civilization, however humble. where is there such a nation? the entire records of all history may be searched in vain for a single instance of a nation which, together with christianity, adopted european civilization, or which--by the same grand change in its religious ideas--was led to form a civilization of its own, if it did not possess one already before. on the contrary, i will show, in every part of the world, ethnical characteristics not in the least effaced by the adoption of christianity. the christian mongol and tartar tribes lead the same erratic life as their unconverted brethren, and are as distinct from the russian of the same religion, who tills the soil, or plies his trade in their midst, as they were centuries ago. nay, the very hostilities of race survive the adoption of a common religion, as we have already pointed out in a preceding chapter. the christian religion, then, does not equalize the intellectual disparities of races. footnotes: [ ] although the success of the chinese missions has not been proportionate to the self-devoting zeal of its laborers, there yet are, in china, a vast number of believers in the true faith. m. huc tells us, in the relation of his journey, that, in almost every place where he and his fellow-traveller stopped, they could perceive, among the crowds that came to stare at the two "western devils" (as the celestials courteously call us europeans), men making furtively, and sometimes quite openly, the sign of the cross. among the nomadic hordes of the table-lands of central asia, the number of christians is much greater than among the chinese, and much greater than is generally supposed. (see _annals of the propagation of the faith_, no. , et seq.)--h. [ ] the tutelary divinity was generally a typification of the national character. a commercial or maritime nation, would worship mercury or neptune; an aggressive and warlike one, hercules or mars; a pastoral one, pan; an agricultural one, ceres or triptolemus; one sunk in luxury, as corinth, would render almost exclusive homage to venus. as the author observes, all ancient governments were more or less theocratical. the regulations of castes among the hindoos and egyptians were ascribed to the gods, and even the most absolute monarch dared not, and could not, transgress the limits which the immortals had set to his power. this so-called divine legislation often answered the same purpose as the charters of modern constitutional monarchies. the authority of the persian kings was confined by religious regulations, and this has always been the case with the sultans of turkey. even in rome, whose population had a greater tendency for the positive and practical, than for the things of another world, we find the traces of theocratical government. the sibylline books, the augurs, etc., were something more than a vulgar superstition; and the latter, who could stop or postpone the most important proceedings, by declaring the omens unpropitious, must have possessed very considerable political influence, especially in the earlier periods. the rude, liberty-loving tribes of scandinavia, germany, gaul, and britain, were likewise subjected to their druids, or other priests, without whose permission they never undertook any important enterprise, whether public or private. truly does our author observe, that christianity came to deliver mankind from such trammels, though the mistaken or interested zeal of some of its servants, has so often attempted, and successfully, to fasten them again. how ill adapted christianity would be, even in a political point of view, for a theocratical formula, is well shown by mr. guizot, in his _hist. of civilization_, vol. i. p. .--h. [ ] i have already pointed out, in my introduction (p. - ), some of the fatal consequences that spring from that doctrine. it may not, however, be out of place here to mention another. the communists, socialists, fourrierites, or whatever names such enemies to our social system assume, have often seduced the unwary and weak-minded, by the plausible assertion that they wished to restore the social system of the first christians, who held all goods in common, etc. many religious sectaries have created serious disturbances under the same pretence. it seems, indeed, reasonable to suppose, that if christianity had given its exclusive sanction to any particular social and political system, it must have been that which the first christian communities adopted.--h. [ ] see note on page .--h. [ ] _natural history of man_, p. . london, . [ ] _synopsis of the indian tribes of north america._ [ ] had i desired to contest the accuracy of the assertions upon which mr. prichard bases his arguments in this case, i should have had in my favor the weighty authority of mr. de tocqueville, who, in speaking of the cherokees, says: "what has greatly promoted the introduction of european habits among these indians, is the presence of so great a number of half-breeds. the man of mixed race--participating as he does, to a certain extent, in the enlightenment of the father, without, however, entirely abandoning the savage manner of the mother--forms the natural link between civilization and barbarism. as the half-breeds increase among them, we find savages modify their social condition, and change their manners." (_dem. in am._, vol. i. p. .) mr. de tocqueville ends by predicting that the cherokees and creeks, albeit they are half-breeds, and not, as mr. prichard affirms, pure aborigines, will, nevertheless, disappear before the encroachments of the whites. [ ] "when four pieces of cards were laid before them, each having a number pronounced _once_ in connection with it, they will, after a re-arrangement of the pieces, select any one named by its number. they also play at domino, and with so much skill as to triumph over biped opponents, whining if the adversary plays a wrong piece, or if they themselves are deficient in the right one."--_vest. of cr._, p. .--h. introductory note to chapters viii. and ix. rapid survey of the populations comprised under the appellation "teutonic"--their present ethnological area, and leading characteristics--fondness for the sea displayed by the teutonic tribes of northwestern europe, and perceptible in their descendants. several of the ideas expressed by the author in the course of the two next following chapters, seemed to the annotator of this volume to call for a few remarks on his part, which could not conveniently be condensed within the limited space of foot-notes. besides, the text is already sufficiently encumbered with them, and any increase in their length or number could not but be displeasing to the eye, while it would divert attention from the main subject. he has, therefore, taken the liberty--an unwarranted one, perhaps--of introducing his remarks in this form and place. * * * * * the leading proposition in this volume is, that the civilization originated and developed by a race, is the clearest index of its character--the mirror in which its principal features are truthfully reflected. in other words, that every race, capable of developing a civilization, will develop one peculiar to itself, and impossible to every other. this the author illustrates by the actual state of our civilization, which he asserts to be originated by the teutonic race, but modified in proportion to the admixture of that race with a different blood. to clearly comprehend his idea, and to appreciate the value of his arguments, it is, therefore, necessary for the reader to take a rapid survey of the populations comprised under the appellation _teutonic_, and to examine into the present geographical extension of that race. this i shall endeavor to do, not, indeed, by entering into an elaborate ethnological disquisition--a task greatly beyond my powers, and the due performance of which would require a space much larger than the whole of this volume--but by merely grouping together well-known facts, in such a manner as to set the author's idea in a clearer light. the words _teutonic_ and _germanic_ are generally used synonymously, and we shall not depart from this custom. strict accuracy, however, would probably require that the term teutonic should be used as the general appellation of all those swarms of northern warriors, who, under various names, harassed and finally subverted the overgrown dominion of ancient rome, while the term germanic would apply to a portion of them only. the northern barbarians, as the romans contemptuously styled them, all claimed to belong to the "_thiudu_," or the nation _par excellence_, and from that word the term teutonic is supposed to be derived. many of their descendants still retain the name: _teutsch_ or _deutsch_ (german). the romans called them _germanes_, from the boastful title of "the warlike," or "the men of war," which the first invading tribes had given themselves. these _germanes_ of the romans were again divided into two classes, the saxon tribes, and the suevic; terms expressive of their mode of life, the former having fixed habitations and inclosed farms, the latter cultivating the fields by turn, and being prone to change their abodes. the first class comprised many other tribes besides those who figure in history, under the name of saxons, as the invaders and conquerors of britain. but as i desire to avoid all not well-authorized distinctions, i shall use the terms teutonic and germanic indiscriminately. the germans appear to have been at all times an eminently warlike and courageous race. history first speaks of them as warriors alarming, nay, terrifying, the arrogant romans, and that not in the infancy of rome's power, when the samnites and volscians were formidable antagonists, but in the very fulness of its strength, in the first vigor of youthful manhood, when italy, spain, part of gaul, the northern coasts of africa, greece, syria, and asia minor, were subdued to the republican yoke. then it was that the cimbri and teutones invaded and harassed italy, chilling the mistress of the world with fear. the germans next meet us in cæsar's commentaries. the principal resistance which the future usurper experienced in subduing gaul, appears to have been offered, not by the gallic population, but either by german tribes, settled in that country, or german armies from the right banks of the rhine, who longed to dispute the tempting prize with the romans. the great general twice crossed the rhine, but probably more for the _éclat_ of such an exploit, than with the hope of making permanent conquests. the temporary successes gained by his imperial successors were amply counterbalanced by the massacre of the flower of the roman armies. at the end of the first five centuries after christ, nothing was left of the great roman empire but ruins. every country in northern, western, and southern europe acknowledged german masters. the tribes of the extreme north had entered russia, and there established a powerful republic; the tribes of the northwest (the angles and saxons) had conquered britain; a confederation of the southern tribes, under the name of franks, had conquered gaul; the various gothic tribes of the east, the heruli, the longobardi, ostrogoths, etc., had subjected italy to their arms, and disputed its possession among themselves. other gothic tribes (the visigoths, burgundians, and vandals) had shared with the franks the beautiful tracts of gaul, or had carried their victorious arms to spain, and the northern coasts of africa. the three most beautiful and most fertile countries of europe, to this day, retain the name of their conquerors--england, france, lombardy. it is impossible now to determine with accuracy the amount of german blood in the populations of the various states founded by the teutonic tribes. yet certain general results are easily arrived at in this interesting investigation. thus, we know that germany, notwithstanding its name, contains by no means a pure germanic population. the fierce scythian hordes, whom attila led on to the work of devastation, after the death of their leader, incorporated themselves with various of the teutonic tribes. they form one of the ethnical elements of the population of italy, but especially of the south and southeast of germany. while, therefore, the population of northern germany is comparatively pure teutonic, that of the southern and eastern portion is a mixture of teutonic and sclavonian elements. the danes, swedes, and norwegians, are probably the most germanic nations of continental europe. in spain, the visigoths were, in a great measure, absorbed by the native population, consisting of the aboriginal celtiberians and the numerous roman colonists. in the tenth century, an amalgamation began with the eastern blood brought by the arab conquerors. italy, already at the time of the downfall of rome, contained an extremely mixed population, drawn thither by the all-absorbing vortex of the eternal city. in the north, the germanic element had time to engraft itself in some measure; but the south, passing into the hands of the byzantine emperors, received an addition of the already mixed greek blood of the east. gaul, at the time of the frankish conquest, was an extremely populous country. beside the aboriginal gauls, the population consisted of numerous roman colonists. the mediterranean coast of gaul had, from the earliest times, received phenician, carthaginian, and greek settlers, who founded there large and prosperous cities. the original differences in the population of gaul are to this day perceptible. the germanic element preponderates in the north, where already, in cæsar's time, the germans had succeeded in making permanent settlements, and in the northeast, where the burgundians had well-nigh extirpated and completely supplanted the gallic natives.[ ] but everywhere else,[ ] the germanic element forms but a small portion of the population, and this is well illustrated by the striking resemblance of the character of the modern french to that of the ancient gauls. but though vastly inferior in numbers, the descendants of the german conquerors, for one thousand years, were the dominant race in france. until the fifteenth century, all the higher nobility were of frankish or burgundian origin. but, after the celtic and celto-roman provinces south of the loire had rallied around a youthful king, to reconquer their capital and best territories from the english foe, the frankish blood ruled with less exclusive sway in all the higher offices of the state; and the distinction was almost entirely lost by the accession of the first southern dynasty, that of the bourbons, towards the end of the sixteenth century. the corresponding variations in the national policy and the exterior manifestations of the national character, mr. gobineau has rapidly pointed out elsewhere.[ ] while the population of france presents so great a mixture of various different races, and but a slight infusion of german blood, that of england, on the contrary, is almost purely teutonic. the original inhabitants of the country were, for the most part, driven into the mountain fastnesses of wales by the german invaders, where they preserve, to this day, their original language. every subsequent great addition to the population of england was by the german race. the danes, and, after them, the normans, were tribes of the same stock as the saxons, and all came from very nearly the same portion of europe. it is obvious, therefore, that england, even after the norman conquest, when, for a time, the upper and the lower classes spoke different languages, contained a more homogeneous population than france did at the same, or any subsequent epoch. in england, from the saxon yeoman up to the proudest norman lord, all belonged to the great german race; in france, only the nobility, while the peasants were gauls. the wars between the two countries afford a striking proof of the difference of these two races. the battles of cressy, of poitiers, and of agincourt, which will never be forgotten so long as english poetry can find an echo in an english breast, were won by the english against greatly superior numbers. "victories, indeed, they were," says macaulay, "of which a nation may justly be proud; for they are to be attributed to the moral superiority of the victors, _a superiority which was most striking in the lowest ranks_. the knights of england found worthy rivals in the knights of france. chandos encountered an equal foe in du guesclin. but france had no infantry that dared to face the english bows and bills." the celt has probably, at no time, been inferior to the teuton in valor; in martial enthusiasm, he exceeds him. but, at a time when bodily strength decided the combat, the difference between the sturdy saxon and the small, slight--though active--gaul, must have been great. in this rapid and necessarily imperfect sketch, i have endeavored to show the relative proportion of the teutonic blood in the population of the various countries of europe. i have endeavored to direct the reader's attention to the fact, that though it forms an element in the population of all, it exists in perfect purity in but few, and that england presents a happy fusion of some of the most distinguished branches of the german family. if we now glance at the united states, we shall there find--at least in the first years of her national existence--a pendant to what has been asserted of england. the elements of the population of the original thirteen states, were almost exclusively of english, lowland scotch, dutch, and swedish blood; that is to say, decidedly germanic. ireland was as yet slightly represented. france had made but inconsiderable contributions to the population. since we have assumed a rank among the great powers of the earth, every portion of the inhabited globe has sent us its contingent of blood, yet even now, the great body of the nation belongs to the teutonic race. much has been said of the effects of ethnical mixture. many consider it as decidedly beneficial, others as decidedly deleterious. it seems to me susceptible of mathematical demonstration, that when a very inferior race amalgamates with one of higher order, the compound--though superior to the one, must be inferior to the other. in that case, therefore, mixture is injurious. but when various branches of the same race, or nearly cognate races mix, as in the case of the saxons, angles, danes, and normans, the mixture cannot but be beneficial. for, while none of the higher qualities are lost, the compound presents a felicitous combination of some of the virtues peculiar to each. if our civilization received its tone and character from the teutonic race, as mr. gobineau asserts, this character must be most strikingly displayed wherever that race forms the preponderating element of the population. before investigating this question, we must cast a glance on the manners and modes of thinking that characterized this race in the earliest times. unfortunately, but few records are left to assist us in forming a judgment. tacitus's celebrated treatise was, probably, more an imaginary sketch, which he wished to hold up to a people sunk in luxury and vice, as were his countrymen. in our times, the north american indian has often been held up as a model of uncorrupted simplicity, and many touching romances have been written on the theme, now rather hackneyed and out of fashion. but though the noble roman may have highly colored the picture, the incorruptible love of truth, which shines so brilliantly in all his works, assures us of the truth of its outlines. of one thing we can entertain no doubt, viz: that history nowhere shows us our germanic forefathers in the same state of barbarism that we find other races--many of the american indians, the south-sea islanders, and others. in the earliest times they practised agriculture, they cultivated rye, barley, oats and wheat. many of the tribes had regular farms, which were inclosed. they knew how to work iron, an art which even the most civilized of the american indians had never learned. they had extensive and complicated political relations, often forming themselves in vast confederacies. but, above all, they were an eminently chaste people; they respected woman,[ ] and assigned to her her legitimate place in the social circle. marriage with them was a sacred institution. the greatest point of superiority of our civilization, over all preceding and contemporaneous ones--a point which mr. gobineau has omitted to mention--is the high rank which woman occupies in the modern structure of society. the boasted civilizations of greece and rome, if superior in others, are vastly inferior to us in this respect. and this glorious superiority we owe to the pure and chaste manners of our forefathers. representative government, trial by jury, and all the discoveries in political science upon which we pride ourselves most, are the necessary development of their simple institutions, to which, indeed, they can be distinctly traced. i have purposely selected these two characteristics of the german races--respect for woman, and love of liberty, or, what is more, a capacity for establishing and preserving liberal institutions. the question now resolves itself into this: does woman occupy the highest rank, do liberal institutions best flourish where the germanic race is most pure? i will not answer the question, but beg the reader to compare the more germanic countries with those that are less so--england, holland, denmark, sweden, norway, and northern germany, with france, spain, italy, greece, and russia; the united states and canada, with mexico and the south american republics. mr. gobineau speaks of the utilitarian character of the germanic races, but furnishes no proofs of his assertion. i shall therefore endeavor to supply the deficiency. those countries which ethnology tells us contain the most germanic populations, viz: england, the northern states of europe, including holland, and the united states, have the entire commerce, and nearly all the manufacture of the whole world in their hands. they have given to mankind all the great inventions which shed an everlasting lustre over our era. they, together, possess nine-tenths of all the railroads built in the world, and the greater part of the remaining tenth was built by _their_ enterprise and capital. whatever perfection in the useful arts one of these countries attains, is readily adopted by all; slowly only, and sometimes never by any of the others. on the other hand, we find that the polite arts do not meet, in these countries, with a very congenial soil. artists may flock thither, and, perhaps, reap a harvest of gold; but they seldom stay. the admiration which they receive is oftenest the mere dictate of fashion. it is true that england, denmark, holland, sweden, and the united states, have produced some eminent artists, but the mass of the population do not exhibit that innate taste, that passionate fondness for the arts, which we find among all classes in italy, spain, and to some extent in france and southern germany. * * * * * before i conclude this hasty sketch, for which i crave the reader's indulgence, i wish to draw attention to a striking instance of the permanency of ethnical characteristics. the nations that most fondly and most successfully plough the briny main, are the english, the americans, the swedes, danes, dutch. notwithstanding the littleness of these latter, they have successfully competed in maritime discovery with larger nations; and even now, own considerable and far distant colonial possessions. the dutch, for a time, were the greatest maritime power in the world, and to this day carry on an extensive and profitable commerce. history tells us that the forefathers of these nations were distinguished by the same nautical genius. the real saxons--the invaders of england--are mentioned already in the middle of the second century, by ptolemy, as skilful sailors. in the fourth and fifth century, they became dreaded from their piracies. they and their confederates, the angles, originally inhabited the present holstein, and the islands in the vicinity of the baltic coast. their neighbors, the danes, were equally famous for maritime exploits. their celebrated vykings still live in song and tale. their piratical incursions and settlements in england, are known to every schoolboy. how familiar the normans were with the watery element, is abundantly proved by history. they ascended the rhine, and other rivers, for hundreds of miles, marking their landing-place by devastation. of the angle, the saxon, the dane, and the norman, the present englishman and his adventurous brother of massachusetts, are lineal descendants. the best sailors in our commercial navy, next to the native sailors, are the danes and the swedes. normandy, to this day, furnishes the best for the french service.--h. footnotes: [ ] in those portions of the present france, over one million and a half of the inhabitants speak german. the pure gauls in the landes have not yet learned the french language, and speak a peculiar--probably their original--_patois_. [ ] with the exception of normandy. [ ] see p. . [ ] i am not aware that any writer has ever presumed to doubt this fact except mr. guizot, who dismisses it with a sneer. fortunately, a sneer is not an argument, though it often has more weight. chapter viii. civilization. mr. guizot's and mr. w. von humboldt's definitions examined. its elements. the reader will here pardon me an indispensable digression. i make use at almost every moment of a term comprising in its extensive signification a collection of ideas which it is important to define accurately: _civilization_. the greater or less degree in which this term is applicable to the social condition of various nations, is my only standard for the comparative merit of races. i also speak of a _european_ civilization, in contradistinction to others of a different character. it is the more necessary to avoid the least vagueness, as i am under the disagreeable necessity of differing from a celebrated writer, who has assumed the special task of determining the meaning and comprehensiveness of this expression. mr. guizot, in his _history of civilization in modern europe_, makes use of a term which seems to me to give rise to a serious confusion of ideas, and lead to positive errors. he says that civilization is a _fact_. now, either the word fact must here be understood in a sense much less strict and precise than common usage requires, a sense so indistinct--i might almost say elastic--as has never pertained to it, or what we comprehend under the term civilization cannot be expressed by the word fact. civilization is not _a fact_; it is a _series_, a _concatenation of facts_, more or less logically united, and resulting from ideas often sufficiently diverse: ideas and facts continually reproduce each other. civilization is a term applied to a certain state or condition in which a society exists--a condition which is of its own creation, bears its character, and, in turn, reacts upon it. this condition is of so variable a nature, that it cannot be called a fact; for a fact cannot be variable without ceasing to be a fact. in other words, there is more than one civilization: there are various kinds. thus, a civilization may flourish under every form of government, and it does not cease to exist when civil commotions destroy or alter that form. let it not be understood that i esteem governmental forms of little importance. their choice is intimately connected with the prosperity of the society: if judicious, promoting and developing it; if unpractical, endangering its destruction. but i speak not here of the temporary prosperity or misery of a society. i speak of its civilization; and this is a phenomenon whose causes must be sought elsewhere, and deeper than in transient political forms. its character, its growth, fecundity, or barrenness, depends upon elementary principles of far greater importance. but, in mr. guizot's opinion, civilization is a fact, a unity; and it is of an essentially political character. let us see how he defines it. he has chosen a series of hypotheses, describing society in various conditions, and then asks if the state so described is, in the general opinion of mankind, the state of a people advancing in civilization--if it answers to the signification which mankind generally attaches to this word.[ ] "first imagine a people whose outward circumstances are easy and agreeable; few taxes; few hardships; justice is fairly administered; in a word, physical existence, taken altogether, is satisfactorily and happily regulated. but, with all this, the moral and intellectual energies of this people are studiously kept in a state of torpor and inertness. it can hardly be called oppression; its tendency is not of that character--it is rather compression. we are not without examples of this state of society. there have been a great number of little aristocratic republics, in which the people have been thus treated like a flock of sheep, carefully tended, physically happy, but without the least intellectual and moral activity. is this civilization? do we recognize here a people in a state of moral and social advancement?" i know not whether such a people is in a state of advancement, but it certainly may be in a very advanced state of civilization, else we should find ourselves compelled to class among the savages or barbarians all those aristocratic republics of ancient and modern times, which answer mr. guizot's description. but the common sense of mankind would never ratify a method which ejected from within the pale of civilization not only the phenicians, carthaginians, and lacedæmonians, but even venice, genoa, pisa, the free cities of germany--in fact, all the powerful municipalities of the last centuries. but, besides this mode of proceeding being too paradoxical and restrictive, it seems to me to encounter another difficulty. those little aristocratic states, to whom, on account of their form of government, mr. guizot denies the aptitude for civilization, have, for the most part, never been in possession of a special culture peculiar to themselves. powerful as many of them have been, they assimilated, in this respect, with nations differently governed, but of consanguineous affinity; they formed a fragment only of a greater and more general civilization. thus, the carthaginians and phenicians, though at a great distance from one another, had a similar mode of culture, the type of which must be sought in assyria. the italian republics participated in the same ideas and opinions which developed themselves in the bosom of neighboring monarchies. the imperial cities of thuringia and suabia, although perfectly independent in a political point of view, were nevertheless intimately united with the general progressive or retrogressive movement of the whole german race. mr. guizot, therefore, by assigning to the people of different countries degrees of merit proportionate to the degree and form of their liberty, creates unjustifiable subdivisions in the same race, and makes distinctions without a difference. a lengthy discussion is not in its place here, and i shall therefore proceed rapidly. if, however, it were necessary to enter into a controversy, might we not justly protest against recognizing any inferiority in the case of genoa, pisa, venice, and others, when compared with countries like milan, naples, or rome? mr. guizot has himself foreseen this difficulty, and removed the objection. if he does not recognize a state of civilization among a people "mildly governed, but in a state of compression," neither does he accord this prerogative to another, "whose outward circumstances are less favorable and agreeable, although supportable, but whose intellectual and moral cravings have not been entirely neglected; among whom pure and elevated sentiments have been cultivated, and religious and moral notions reached a certain degree of improvement, but among whom the desire of liberty has been stifled; where a certain portion of truth is doled out to each, but no one permitted to seek for it himself. this is the condition to which most of the populations of asia are sunk, because theocratical governments there restrain the progress of mankind; such, for instance, is the state of the hindoos." thus, besides the aristocratic nations of the earth, we must moreover exclude from the pale of civilization the hindoos, egyptians, etruscans, peruvians, thibetans, japanese--nay, even modern rome and her territories. i omit the last two hypotheses, because, thanks to the first two, the state of civilization is already restricted within boundaries so contracted that scarce any people on the globe is justified in pretending to it. a nation, then, can be called civilized only when it enjoys institutions happily blending popular liberty and the requisite strength of authority for maintaining order; when its progress in material well-being and its moral development are co-ordinate in a certain manner, and no other; where religion, as well as government, is confined within limits accurately defined, which neither ever transgresses; where each individual possesses clearly determinate and inalienable rights. according to this formula, no nation can be civilized unless its political institutions are of the constitutional and representative form, and consequently it is impossible to save many european nations from the reproach of barbarism. then, measuring the _degree_ of civilization by the perfection of this same and only political form, we are compelled to place in a second rank all those constitutional states which have ill employed the engine of parliament, to reserve the crown exclusively for those who know how to make good use of it. by this reasoning, i am forced to consider as truly civilized, in the past as well as the present, none but the single english nation.[ ] i sincerely respect and admire that great people, whose victories, industry, and universal commerce have left no portion of our globe ignorant of its puissance and the prodigies it has performed. but still, i do not feel disposed to respect and admire in the world no other: it would seem to me too humiliating and cruel to humanity to confess that, since the beginning of time, it has never succeeded in producing a civilization anywhere but upon a small island of the western ocean, has never discovered the laws and forms which produce this state until the reign of william and mary. such a conception of civilization might seem to many rather a little too narrow and restrictive. but there is another objection. if we attach the idea of civilization to a political form, reason, observation, and science will soon lose their vote in the decision of the question, which must thenceforth be left to the passions and prejudices of parties. there will be some whose preferences will lead them stoutly to deny that the institutions of the british isles are the "perfection of human reason:" their enthusiasm, perchance, will be expended in praising the order established in st. petersburg or in vienna. many, again, and perhaps the greater number of all living between the rhine and the pyrenees, will sustain to the last that, notwithstanding a few blemishes, the most polished, the most civilized country of the world is _la belle france_. the moment that the decision of the degree of intellectual culture becomes a matter of preference, a question of sentiment, to come to an understanding is impossible. each one will think him the man most advanced in civilization who shall coincide with his views about the respective duties of the governing and the governed; while those who are unfortunate enough to differ, will be set down as men behind the age, little better than barbarians, mere "old fogies," whose visual organs are too weak for the dazzling lights of the epoch; or else as daring, incendiary innovators, who wish to destroy all established order, and sap the very foundation of civilization. i think few will differ from me in considering mr. guizot's definition as defective, and the source from which he derives civilization as not the real one. let us now examine baron w. von humboldt's definition. "civilization," says that celebrated statesman, "is the humanization of nations in their outward institutions, in their manners, and in the inward feelings upon which these depend."[ ] here we meet with a defect of the very opposite kind to that which i took the liberty to point out in mr. guizot's definition. the formula is too vague, the boundary lines too indistinct. if civilization consists in a softening of manners, more than one untutored tribe, some extremely low in the scale of races, might take precedence over several european nations whose character contains more acerbity. there are in the south sea islands, and elsewhere, very inoffensive populations, of exceedingly gentle manners, and kind, accommodating dispositions; yet, though we may praise them, no one would think of placing them, in the scale of civilization, above the rough norwegians, or even above the ferocious malays, who, dressed in brilliant garments of their own fabric, and upon skilfully constructed vessels of their own making, traverse the indian seas, at the same time the terror and scourge of maritime commerce, and its most successful votaries. this observation could not escape so great a mind as william von humboldt's; and he therefore imagines, besides civilization, a higher degree of development, which he calls _culture_, and by which he declares that nations gain, above their gentle manners, "_science and the arts_."[ ] when the world shall have arrived at this higher state, it will be peopled by _affectionate_ and _sympathetic_ beings, very erudite, poetic, and artistic, but, by reason of this same reunion of qualities, ignoring the grosser wants of existence: strangers to the necessity of war, as well as those of rude mechanical toil. when we reflect upon the limited leisure that the mass of even those can enjoy whose lot is cast in the happiest epoch, to abandon themselves to purely intellectual occupations--when we consider how incessant and arduous must ever be the strife of man with nature and the elements to insure the mere means of subsistence, it will soon be perceived that the philosopher of berlin aimed less at depicting realities than at drawing from the domain of abstraction certain entities which appeared to him beautiful and sublime, and which are so, indeed, and at causing them to act and move in a sphere as ideal as themselves. if any doubts should still remain in this respect, they are soon dispelled when we arrive at the culminating point of the system, consisting of a third and last degree superior to the two others. this greatest point of perfection is that upon which stands the _finished_ man (_der gebildete_); that is to say, the man who, in his nature, possesses "something higher and more inward or essential; a clear and comprehensive faculty of seeing all things in their true light; a recognition and appreciation of the ultimate goal of man's moral and intellectual aspirations, which diffuses itself harmoniously over all his feelings and his character."[ ] we here have a regular gradation from man in a civilized or "humanized" state, to the man of cultivation--the philosopher, the poet, the artist; and thence still higher to the _finished_, the _perfect_ man, who has attained the greatest elevation possible to our species; a man who, if i seize rightly mr. humboldt's idea, had his living counterpart in goethe, as that towering mind is described to us in its olympic serenity. this theory rests upon no other basis than mr. von humboldt's perception of the immense difference between the civilization of a nation and the comparative height of perfection attained by great, isolated individualities. this difference is so great that civilizations different from ours, and perhaps inferior to it, have produced men in some respects superior to those we admire most. upon this point i fully coincide with the great philosopher whose theory i am unfolding. it is perfectly correct, that our state of development--what we call the european civilization--produces neither the profoundest nor the sublimest thinkers, nor the greatest poets, nor the most skilful artists. yet i venture to differ from the illustrious philologist in believing that to give a practical meaning to the word civilization, it is necessary to divest one's self, if but for a moment, from the prejudices or prepossessions resulting from the examination of mere details in any particular civilization. we must take the aggregate result of the whole, and not make the requisites too few, as in the case of the man of the first degree, whom i persist in not acknowledging as civilized merely because his manners are gentle; nor too many, as in the case of the sage of the third, for then the development of human faculties would be limited to a few individuals, and would produce results purely isolated and typical. the baron von humboldt's system, however, does honor to that exquisite and generous sensibility, that grand sublimity which was the dominant characteristic of this great mind; and in its purely abstract nature may be compared to the fragile worlds of brahmin philosophy. born from the brain of a slumbering god, they rise in the air like the irised bubbles that the child blows from the suds, bursting and succeeding one another as the dreams that amuse the celestial sleeper. but the character of my researches permits me not to indulge in mere abstractions, however brilliant and attractive; i must arrive at results tangible to practical sense and common experience. i do not wish, like mr. guizot, to investigate the conditions more or less favorable to the prosperity of societies, nor, like mr. william von humboldt, to speculate upon the isolated elevation of individual intelligences; my purpose is to encompass, if possible, the aggregate power, moral as well as material, which is developed in great masses of men. it is not without trepidation that i engage in a path in which two of the most admired men of our century have lost themselves; and to avoid the errors into which they have fallen, i shall descend to first principles, and define civilization by first investigating from what causes it results. if the reader, then, will follow me patiently and attentively through the mazes into which i am forced to enter, i shall endeavor to throw as much light as i am capable of, upon this inherently obscure and abstruse subject. there is no human being so degraded, so brutish, in whom a twofold instinct, if i may be permitted so to call it, is not manifest; the instinct which incites to the gratification of material wants, and that which leads to higher aspirations. the degree of intensity of either of these two is the first and principal measure of the differences among races. in none, not even in the lowest tribes, are the two instincts precisely balanced. among some, the physical wants or animal propensities preponderate; in others, these are subordinate to the speculative tendencies--the cravings for the abstract, the supernatural. thus, the lowest of the yellow races seem to me to be dominated rather by the first, the physical instinct, without, however, being absolutely deprived of all capacity for abstractions. on the contrary, among the majority of the black races of corresponding rank, the habits are less active than pensive; imagination there attaches greater value to the things of the invisible than to those of the visible world. i do not thence deduce any conclusion of superior capacity for civilization on the part of those latter races over the former, for history demonstrates that both are equally insusceptible to attain it. centuries, thousands of years, have passed by without either of them doing aught to ameliorate their condition, because they have never been able to associate a sufficient number of ideas with the same number of facts, to begin the march of progress. i wish merely to draw attention to the fact, that even among the lowest races we find this double current differently constituted. i shall now follow the ascending scale. above the samoyedes on the one hand, and the fidas and pelagian negroes on the other, we must place those tribes who are not content with a mere hut of branches, and a social condition based upon force only, but who are capable of comprehending and aspiring to a better condition. these are one degree above the most barbarous. if they belong to the first category of races--those who act more than they think, among whom the material tendency predominates over that for the abstract--their development will display itself in a greater perfection of their instruments of labor, and of war, in a greater care and skill in their ornaments, etc. in government, the warriors will take precedence over the priests; in their intercourse with others, they will show a certain aptitude and readiness for trafficking. their wars, though still characterized by cruelty, will originate rather in a love of gain, than in the mere gratification of vindictive passions. in one word, material well-being, physical enjoyments, will be the main pursuit of each individual. i find this picture realized among several of the mongol races, and also, to some extent, among the quichuas and azmaras of peru. on the other hand, if they belong to the second category--to those who have a predominating tendency for the speculative, the abstract--less care will be bestowed upon the material interests; the influence of the priests will preponderate in the government; in fact, we perceive a complete antithesis to the condition above described. the dahomees, of western africa, and the caffres of the south, are examples of this state. leaving those races whose progressive tendency is not sufficiently vigorous to enable them to extend their influence over great multitudes,[ ] we come to those of a higher order, in whom this tendency is so vigorous that they are capable of incorporating, and bringing within their sphere of action, all those they come in contact with. they soon ingraft their own social and political system upon immense multitudes, and impose upon vast countries the dominion of that combination of facts and ideas--more or less co-ordinate--which we call a _civilization_. among these races, again, we find the same difference, the same division, that i already pointed out in those of inferior merit--in some the speculative, in others the more materially active tendency predominates. it is, indeed, among these races only, that this difference has important consequences, and is clearly perceptible. when a tribe, by incorporating with it great multitudes, has become a people, has founded a vast dominion, we find that these two currents or tendencies have augmented in strength, according to the character of the populations which enter into the combination, and there become blended. whatever tendency prevails among these populations, they will proportionably modify the character of the whole. it will be remarked, moreover, that at different periods of the life of a people, and in strict accordance with the mixture of blood and the fusion of different elements, the oscillation between the two tendencies becomes more violent, and it may happen that their relative proportion changes altogether; that one, at first subordinate, in time becomes predominant. the results of this mobility are important, as they influence, in a sensible manner, the character of a civilization, and its stability.[ ] for the sake of simplicity, i shall distinguish the two categories of races by designations expressive of the tendency which predominates in them, and shall call them accordingly, either _speculative_ or _utilitarian_.[ ] as i have before observed, these terms imply neither praise nor blame. i use them merely for convenience, to designate the leading characteristic, without thereby expressing a total absence of the other. thus, the most utilitarian of the speculative races would closely approximate to the most speculative of the utilitarian. at the head of the utilitarian category, as its type, i place the chinese; at the head, and as the type of the other, the hindoos. next to the chinese i would put the majority of the populations of ancient italy, the first romans of the time of the republic, and the germanic tribes. on the opposite side, among the speculative races, i would range next to the hindoos, the egyptians, and the nations of the assyrian empire. i have said already that the oscillations of the two principles or tendencies sometimes result in the preponderance of one, which before was subordinate, and thus the character of the civilization is changed. minor modifications, the history of almost every people presents. thus, even the materialistic utilitarian tendency of the chinese has been somewhat modified by their amalgamation with tribes of another blood, and a different tendency. in the south, the yunnan particularly, where this population prevailed, the inhabitants are much less exclusively utilitarian than in the north, where the chinese element is more pure. if this admixture of blood operated so slight a change in the genius of that immense nation, that its effects have ceased, or make themselves perceptible only in an exceedingly slow manner, it is because its quantity was so extremely small, compared to the utilitarian population by which it was absorbed. into the actual populations of europe, the germanic tribes infused a strong utilitarian tendency, and in the north, this has been continually recruited by new accessions of the same ethnical element; but in the south (with some exceptions, piedmont, and the north of spain, for example), the germanic element forms not so great a portion of the whole mass, and the utilitarian tendency has there been overweighed by the opposite genius of the native populations. among the speculative races we have signalized the hindoos. they are endowed in a high degree with the tendency for the supernatural, the abstract. their character is more meditative than active and practical. as their ancient conquests incorporated with them races of a similar disposition, the utilitarian element has never prevailed sufficiently to produce decided results. while, therefore, their civilization has arrived at a high degree of perfection in other respects, it has lagged far behind in all that promotes material comfort, in all that is strictly useful and practical. rome, at first strictly utilitarian, changed its character gradually as the fusion with greek, asiatic, and african elements proceeded, and when once the ancient utilitarian population was absorbed in this ethnical inundation, the practical character of rome was lost. * * * * * from the consideration of these and similar facts, i arrive at the conclusion, that all intellectual or moral activity results from the combined action and mutual reaction of these two tendencies, and that the social system can arrive at that development which entitles it to the name of civilization, only in races which possess, in a high degree, either of the two, without being too much deficient in the other. i now proceed to the examination of other points also deserving of notice. footnotes: [ ] hazlitt's translation, vol. i. p . new york, .--h. [ ] a careful comparison of mr. guizot's views with those expressed by count gobineau upon this interesting subject convinced me that the differences of opinion between these two investigators required a more careful and minute examination than the author has thought necessary. with this view, i subjoin further extracts from the celebrated "_history of civilization in europe_," from which, i think, it will appear that few of the great truths comprised in the definition of _civilization_ have escaped the penetration and research of the illustrious writer, but that, being unable to divest himself of the idea of _unity_ of civilization, he has necessarily fallen into an error, with which a great metaphysician justly charges so many reasoners. "it is hard," says locke, speaking of the abuse of words, "to find a discourse written on any subject, especially of controversy, wherein one shall not observe, if he read with attention, the same words (and those commonly the most material in the discourse, and upon which the argument turns) used sometimes for one collection of simple ideas, and sometimes for another.... a man, in his accompts with another, might with as much fairness, make the characters of numbers stand sometimes for one, and sometimes for another collection of units (_e. g._, this character, , stand sometimes for three, sometimes for four, and sometimes for eight), as, in his discourse or reasoning, make the same words stand for different collections of simple ideas." * * * * * mr. guizot opens his first lecture by declaring his intention of giving a "general survey of the history of _european civilization_, of its _origin_, its _progress_, its _end_, its _character_. i say european civilization, because there is evidently so striking a uniformity in the civilization of the different states of europe, as fully to warrant this appellation. civilization has flowed to them all from sources so much alike, it is so connected in them all--notwithstanding the great differences of time, of place, and circumstances--by the same principles, and it tends in them all to bring about the same results, that no one will doubt of there being _a civilization essentially european_." here, then, mr. guizot acknowledges one great truth contended for in this volume; he virtually recognizes the fact that there may be other civilizations, having different origins, a different progress, different characters, different ends. "at the same time, it must be observed, that this civilization cannot be found in--its history cannot be collected from--the history of any single state of europe. however similar in its general appearance throughout the whole, its variety is not less remarkable, nor has it ever yet developed itself completely in any particular country. its characteristic features are widely spread, and we shall be obliged to seek, as occasion may require, in england, in france, in germany, in spain, for the elements of its history." this is precisely the idea expressed in my introduction, that according to the character of a nation, its civilization manifests itself in various ways; in some, by perfection in the arts, useful or polite; in others, by development of political forms, and their practical application, etc. if i had then wished to support my opinion by a great authority, i should, assuredly, have quoted mr. guizot, who, a few pages further on, says:-- "wherever the exterior condition of man becomes enlarged, quickened, and improved; wherever the intellectual nature of man distinguishes itself by its energy, brilliancy, and its grandeur; wherever these signs occur, notwithstanding the gravest imperfections in the social system, there man proclaims and applauds a civilization." "_notwithstanding the gravest imperfections in the social system_," says mr. guizot, yet in the series of hypotheses, quoted in the text, in which he attempts a negative definition of civilization, by showing what civilization is _not_, he virtually makes a political form the test of civilization. in another passage, again, he says that civilization "is a course for humanity to run--a destiny for it to accomplish. nations have transmitted, from age to age, something to their successors which is never lost, but which grows, and continues as a common stock, and will thus be carried on to the end of all things. for my part (he continues), i feel assured that human nature has such a destiny; that a general civilization pervades the human race; that at every epoch it augments; and that there, consequently, is a universal history of civilization to be written." it must be obvious to the reader who compares these extracts, that mr. guizot expresses a totally distinct idea or collection of ideas in each. first, the civilization of a particular nation, which exists "wherever the intellectual nature of man distinguishes itself by its energy, brilliancy, and grandeur." such a civilization may flourish, "notwithstanding the greatest imperfections in the social system." secondly, mr. guizot's _beau-idéal_ of the best, most perfect civilization, where the political forms insure the greatest happiness, promote the most rapid--yet well-regulated--progress. thirdly, a great system of particular civilizations, as that of europe, the various elements of which "are connected by the same principles, and tend all to bring about the same general results." fourthly, a supposed general progress of the whole human race toward a higher state of perfection. to all these ideas, provided they are not confounded one with another, i have already given my assent. (see _introduction_, p. .) with regard to the latter, however, i would observe that it by no means militates against a belief in the intellectual imparity of races, and the permanency of this imparity. as in a society composed of individuals, all enjoy the fruits of the general progress, though all have not contributed to it in equal measure, and some not at all: so, in that society, of which we may suppose the various branches of the human family to be the members, even the inferior participate more or less in the benefits of intellectual labor, of which they would have been incapable. because i can transport myself with almost the swiftness of a bird from one place to another, it does not follow that--though i profit by watt's genius--i could have invented the steam-engine, or even that i understand the principles upon which that invention is based.--h. [ ] w. von humboldt, _ueber die kawi-sprache auf der insel java; einleitung_, vol. i. p. . berlin. "die _civilization_ ist die vermenschlichung der völker in ihren äusseren einrichtungen und gebräuchen, und der darauf bezug habenden inneren gesinnung." [ ] william von humboldt. "die kultur fügt dieser veredlung des gesellschaftlichen zustandes wissenschaft und kunst hinzu." [ ] w. von humboldt, _op. cit._, p. : "wenn wir in unserer sprache _bildung_ sagen, so meinen wir damit etwas zugleich höheres und mehr innerlicheres, nämlich die sinnesart, die sich aus der erkenntniss und dem gefühle des gesammten geistigen und sittlichen streben harmonish auf die empfindung und den charakter ergiesst." as nothing can exceed the difficulty of rendering an abstract idea from the french into english, except to transmit the same from german into french, and as if _all_ these processes must be undergone, the identity of the idea is greatly endangered, i have thought proper to translate at once from the original german, and therefore differ somewhat from mr. gobineau, who gives it thus: "l'homme formé, c'est-à-dire, l'homme qui, dans sa nature, possède quelque chose de plus haut, de plus intime à la fois, c'est-à-dire, une façon de comprendre qui répand harmonieusement sur la sensibilité et le charactère les impressions qu'elle reçoit de l'activité intellectuelle et morale dans son ensemble." i have taken great pains to express clearly mr. von humboldt's idea, and have therefore amplified the word _sinnesart_, which has not its precise equivalent in english.--trans. [ ] see page . [ ] mr. klemm (_allgemeine culturgeschichte der menschheit_, leipzig, ) adopts, also, a division of all races into two categories, which he calls respectively the _active_ and the _passive_. i have not had the advantage of perusing his book, and cannot, therefore, say whether his idea is similar to mine. it would not be surprising that, in pursuing the same road, we should both have stumbled over the same truth. [ ] the translator has here permitted himself a deviation from the original. mr. gobineau, to express his idea, borrows from the symbolism of the hindoos, where the feminine principle is represented by prakriti, and the masculine by purucha, and calls the two categories of races respectively feminine and masculine. but as he "thereby wishes to express nothing but a mutual fecundation, without ascribing any superiority to either," and as the idea seems fully rendered by the words used in the translation, the latter have been thought preferable, as not so liable to misrepresentation and misconception.--h. chapter ix. elements of civilization--continued. definition of the term--specific differences of civilizations--hindoo, chinese, european, greek, and roman civilizations--universality of chinese civilization--superficiality of ours--picture of the social condition of france. when a tribe, impelled by more vigorous instincts than its neighbors, succeeds in collecting the hitherto scattered and isolated fragments into a compact whole, the first impetus of progress is thus given, the corner-stone of a civilization laid. but, to produce great and lasting results, a mere political preponderance is not sufficient. the dominant race must know how to lay hold of the feelings of the masses it has aggregated, to assimilate their individual interests, and to concentrate their energies to the same purposes. when the different elements composing the nation are thus blended into a more or less homogeneous mass, certain principles and modes of thinking become general, and form the standard around which all rally. these principles and modes of thinking, however, cannot be arbitrarily imposed, and must be resulting from, and in the main consonant with, pre-existing sentiments and desires.[ ] they will be characterized by a utilitarian or a speculative tendency, according to the degree in which either instinct predominates in the constituent elements of the nation. this harmony of views and interests is the first essential to civilization; the second is stability, and is a natural consequence of the first. the general principles upon which the political and social system rests, being based upon instincts common to all, are by all regarded with the most affectionate veneration, and firmly believed to be perpetual. the purer a race remains, the more conservative will it be in its institutions, for its instincts never change. but the admixture of foreign blood produces proportionate modifications in the national ideas. the new-comers introduce instincts and notions which were not calculated upon in the social edifice. alterations therefore become necessary, and these are often wholesome, especially in the youthful period of the society, when the new ethnical elements have not as yet acquired an undue preponderance. but, as the empire increases, and comprises elements more and more heterogeneous, the changes become more radical, and are not always for the better. finally, as the initiatory and conservative element disappears, the different parts of the nation are no longer united by common instincts and interests; the original institutions are not adapted to their wants; sudden and total transformations become common, and a vain phantom of stability is pursued through endless experiments. but, while thus vacillating betwixt conflicting interests, and changing its purpose every hour, the nation imagines itself advancing to some imaginary goal of perfection. firmly convinced of its own perpetuity, it holds fast to the doctrine which its daily acts disprove, that one of the principal features of a civilization is god-like immutability. and though each day brings forth new discontents and new changes equally futile, the apprehensions of the day are quieted with the expectations of to-morrow. i have said that the conditions necessary for the development of a civilization are--the aggregation of large masses, and stable institutions resulting from common views and interests. the sociable inclinations of man, and the less noble attributes of his nature, perform the rest. while the former bring him in intimate and varied connections with his fellow-men, the latter give rise to continual contests and emulation. in a large community, a strong fist is no longer sufficient to insure protection and give distinction, and the resources of the mind are applied and developed. intellect continually seeks and finds new fields for exertion, either in the regions of the abstract, or in the material world. by its productions in either, we recognize an advanced state of society. the most common source of error in judging foreign nations, is that we are apt to look merely at the exterior demonstrations of their civilization, and because, in this respect, their civilization does not resemble ours, we hastily conclude that they are barbarous, or, at least, greatly inferior to us. a conclusion, drawn from such premises, must needs be very superficial, and therefore ought to be received with caution. i believe myself now prepared to express my idea of a civilization, by defining it as _a state of comparative stability, in which a large collection of individuals strive, by peaceful means, to satisfy their wants, and refine their intelligence and manners._ this definition includes, without exception, all the nations which i have mentioned as being civilized. but, as these nations have few points of resemblance, the question suggests itself: do not, then, all civilizations tend to the same results? i think not; for, as the nations called to the noble task of accomplishing a civilization, are endowed with the utilitarian and speculative tendencies in various degrees and proportions, their paths must necessarily lie in very divergent directions. what are the material wants of the hindoo? rice and butter for his nourishment, and a piece of cotton cloth for his garment. nor can this abstemiousness be accounted for by climate, for the native of thibet, under a much more rigorous sky, displays the same quality. in these peoples, the imaginative faculty greatly predominates, their intellectual efforts are directed to abstractions, and the fruits of their civilization are therefore seldom of a practical or utilitarian character. magnificent temples are hewn out of mountains of solid rock at an expense of labor and time that terrifies the imagination; gigantic constructions are erected;--all this in honor of the gods, while nothing is done for man's benefit, unless it be tombs. by the side of the miracles wrought by the sculptor's chisel, we admire the finished masterpieces of a literature full of vigor, and as ingenious and subtle in theology and metaphysics, as beautiful in its variety: in speculative efforts, human thought descends without trepidation to immeasurable depths; its lyric poetry challenges the admiration of all mankind. but if we leave the domain of idealistic reveries, and seek for inventions of practical utility, and for the sciences that are their theoretical basis, we find a deplorable deficiency. from a dazzling height, we suddenly find ourselves descended to a profound and darksome abyss. useful inventions are scarce, of a petty character, and, being neglected, remain barren of results. while the chinese observed and invented a great deal, the hindoos invented but little, and of that little took no care; the greeks, also, have left us much information, but little worthy of their genius; and the romans, once arrived at the culminating point of their history, could no longer make any real progress, for the asiatic admixture in which they were absorbed with surprising rapidity, produced a population incapable of the patient and toilsome investigation of stern realities. their administrative genius, however, their legislation, and the useful monuments with which they provided the soil of their territories, attest sufficiently the practical character which, at one time, so eminently characterized that people; and prove that if the south of europe had not been so rapidly submerged with colonists from asia and the north of africa, positive science would have been the gainer, and less would have been left to be accomplished by the germanic races, which afterward gave it a renewed impulse. the germanic conquerors of the fifth century were characterized by instincts of a similar kind to those of the chinese, but of a higher order. while they possessed the utilitarian tendency as strongly, if not stronger, they had, at the same time, a much greater endowment of the speculative. their disposition presented a happy blending of these two mainsprings of activity. where-ever the teutonic blood predominates, the utilitarian tendency, ennobled and refined by the speculative, is unmistakable. in england, north america, and holland, this tendency governs and preponderates over all the other national instincts. it is so, in a lesser degree, in belgium, and even in the north of france, where everything susceptible of practical application is understood with marvellous facility. but as we advance further south, this predisposition is less apparent, and, finally, disappears altogether. we cannot attribute this to the action of the sun, for the piedmontese live in a much warmer climate than the provençals and the inhabitants of the languedoc; it is the effect of blood. the series of speculative races, or those rendered so by admixture, occupies the greater portion of the globe, and this observation is particularly applicable to europe. with the exception of the teutonic family, and a portion of the sclavonic, all other groups of our part of the world are but slightly endowed with the faculty for the useful and practical; or, having already acted their part in the world's history, will not be able to recommence it. all these races, from the gaul to the celtiberian, and thence to the variegated compounds of the italian populations, present a descending scale from a utilitarian point of view. not that they are devoid of all the aptitudes of that tendency, but they are wanting in some of the most essential. the union of the germanic tribes with the races of the ancient world, this engrafting of a vigorous utilitarian principle upon the ideas of that variegated compound, produced our civilization; the richness, diversity, and fecundity of our state of culture is the natural result of that combination of so many different elements, which each contributed their part, and which the practical vigor of our germanic ancestors, succeeded in blending into a more or less harmonious whole. wherever our state of civilization extends, it is characterized by two traits; the first, that the population contains a greater or less admixture of teutonic blood; the other, that it is christian. this last feature, however, as i said before, though the most obvious and striking, is by no means essential, because many nations are christian, and many more may become so, without participating in our civilization. but the first feature is positive, decisive. wherever the germanic element has not penetrated, our civilization cannot flourish.[ ] this leads me to the investigation of a serious and important question: "can it be asserted that all the european nations are really and thoroughly civilized?" do the ideas and facts which rise upon the surface of our civilization, strike root in the basis of our social and political structure, and derive their vitality from that source? are the results of these ideas and facts such as are conformable to the instincts, the tendencies, of the masses? or, in other words, have the lowest strata of our populations the same direction of thought and action as the highest--that direction which we may call the spirit or genius of our progressive movement? to arrive at a true and unbiassed solution of this question, let us examine other civilizations, different from ours, and then institute a comparison. the similarity of views and ideas, the unity of purpose, which characterized the whole body of citizens in the grecian states, during the brilliant period of their history, has been justly admired. upon every essential point, the opinions of every individual, though often conflicting, were, nevertheless, derived from the same source, emanated from the same general views and sentiments; individuals might differ in politics, one wishing a more oligarchical, another a more democratic government; or they might differ in religion, one worshipping, by preference, the eleusinian ceres, another the minerva of the parthenon; or in matters of taste, one might prefer �schylus to sophocles, alceus to pindar. at the bottom, the disputants all participated in the same views and ideas, ideas which might well be called national. the question was one of degree, not of kind.[ ] rome, previous to the punic wars, presented the same spectacle; the civilization of the country was uniform, and embraced all, from the master to the slave.[ ] all might not participate in it to the same extent, but all participated in it and in no other. but in rome, after the punic wars, and in greece, soon after pericles, and especially after philip of macedon, this character of homogeneity began to disappear. the greater mixture of nations produced a corresponding mixture of civilizations, and the compound thus formed exceeded in variety, elegance, refinement, and learning, the ancient mode of culture. but it had this capital inconvenience, both in hellas and in italy, that it belonged exclusively to the higher classes. its nature, its merits, its tendencies, were ignored by the sub-strata of the population. let us take the civilization of rome after the asiatic wars. it was a grand, magnificent monument of human genius. it had a cosmopolitan character: the rhetoricians of greece contributed to it the transcendental spirit, the jurists and publicists of syria and alexandria gave it a code of atheistic, levelling, and monarchical laws--each part of the empire furnished to the common store some portion of its ideas, its sciences, and its character. but whom did this civilization embrace? the men engaged in the public administration or in great monetary enterprises, the people of wealth and of leisure. it was merely submitted to, not adopted by the masses. the populations of europe understood nothing of those asiatic and african contributions to the civilization; the inhabitants of egypt, numidia, or asia, were equally uninterested in what came from gaul and spain, countries with which they had nothing in common. but a small minority of the roman people stood on the pinnacle, and being in possession of the secret, valued it. the rest, those not included in the aristocracy of wealth and position, preserved the civilization peculiar to the land of their birth, or, perhaps, had none at all. here, then, we have an example of a great and highly perfected civilization, dominating over untold millions, but founding its reign not in their desires or convictions, but in their exhaustion, their weakness, their listlessness. a very different spectacle is presented in china. the boundless extent of that empire includes, indeed, several races markedly distinct, but i shall speak at present only of the national race, the chinese proper. one spirit animates the whole of this immense multitude, which is counted by hundreds of millions. whatever we think of their civilization, whether we admire or censure the principles upon which it is based, the results which it has produced, and the direction which it takes; we cannot deny that it pervades all ranks, that every individual takes in it a definite and intelligent part. and this is not because the country is free, in our sense of the word: there is no democratic principle which secures, by law, to every one the position which his efforts may attain, and thus spurs him on to exertions. no; i discard all utopian pictures. the peasant and the man of the middle classes, in the celestial empire, are no better assured of rising by their own merit only, than they are elsewhere. it is true that, in theory, public honors are solely the reward of merit, and every one is permitted to offer himself as a candidate;[ ] but it is well known that, in reality, the families of great functionaries monopolize all lucrative offices, and that the scholastic diplomas often cost more money than efforts of study. but disappointed or hopeless ambition never leads the possessor to imagine a different system; the aim of the reformer is to remedy the abuses of the established organization, not to substitute another. the masses may groan under ills and abuses, but the fault is charged, not to the social and political system, which to them is an object of unqualified admiration, but to the persons to whose care the performance of its duties is committed. the head of the government, or his functionaries, may become unpopular, but the form itself, the government, never. a very remarkable feature of the chinese is that among them primary instruction is so universal; it reaches classes whom we hardly imagine to have any need of it. the cheapness of books, the immense number and low price of the schools, enable even the poorest to acquire the elements of knowledge, reading and writing.[ ] the laws, their spirit and tendency, are well known and understood by all classes, and the government prides itself upon facilitating the study of this useful science.[ ] the instinct of the masses is decidedly averse to all political convulsions. mr. davis, who was commissioner of h. b. majesty in china, and who studied its affairs with the assiduity of a man who is interested in understanding them well, says that the character of the people cannot be better expressed than by calling them "a nation of steady conservatives."[ ] here, then, we have a most striking contrast to the civilization of rome in her latter days, when governmental changes occurred in fearfully rapid succession, until the arrival of the nations of the north. in every portion of that vast empire, there were whole populations that had no interest in the preservation of established order, and were ever ready to second the maddest schemes, to embark in any enterprise that seemed to promise advantage, or that was represented in seductive colors by some ambitious demagogue. during that long period of several centuries, no scheme was left untried: property, religion, the sanctity of family relations, were all called in question, and innovators in every portion of the empire, found multitudes ever disposed to carry their theories into practice by force. nothing in the greco-roman world rested on a solid basis, not even the imperial unity, so indispensable, it would seem, to the mere self-preservation of such a state of society. it was not only the armies, with their swarm of _improvisto_ cæsars, that undertook the task of shaking this palladium of national safety; the emperors themselves, beginning with diocletian, had so little faith in monarchy, that they willingly made the experiment of dualism in the government, and finally found four at a time not too many for governing the empire.[ ] i repeat it, not one institution, not one principle, was stable in that wretched state of society, which continued to preserve some outward form, merely from the physical impossibility of assuming any others, until the men of the north came to assist in its demolition. between these two great societies, then, the roman empire, and that of china, we perceive the most complete contrast. by the side of the civilization of eastern asia, i may mention that of india, thibet, and other portions of central asia, which is equally universal, and diffused among all ranks and classes. as in china there is a certain level of information to which all attain, so in hindostan, every one is animated by the same spirit; each individual knows precisely what his caste requires him to learn, to think, to believe. among the buddhists of thibet, and the table-lands of asia, nothing is rarer than to find a peasant who cannot read, and there everybody has the same convictions upon important subjects. do we find this homogeneity in european nations? it is scarce worth while to put the question. not even the greco-roman empire presents incongruities so strange, or contrasts so striking, as are to be found among us; not only among the various nationalities of europe, but in the bosom of the same sovereignty. i shall not speak of russia, and the states that form the austrian empire; the demonstration of my position would there be too facile. let us turn to germany; to italy, southern italy in particular; to spain, which, though in a less degree, presents a similar picture; or to france. i select france. the difference of manners, in various parts of this country, has struck even the most superficial observer, and it has long since been observed that paris is separated from the rest of france by a line of demarcation so decided and accurately defined, that at the very gates of the capital, a nation is found, utterly different from that within the walls. nothing can be more true: those who attach to our political unity the idea of similarity of thoughts, of character--in fine, of nationality, are laboring under a great delusion. there is not one principle that governs society and is connected with our civilization, which is understood in the same manner in all our departments. i do not speak here merely of the peculiarities that characterize the native of normandy, of brittany, angevin, limousin, gascony, provence. every one knows how little alike these various populations are,[ ] and how they differ in their tendencies and modes of thinking. i wish to draw attention to the fact, that while in china, thibet, india, the most essential ideas upon which the civilization is based, are common to all classes, participated in by all, it is by no means so among us. the very rudiments of our knowledge, the most elementary and most generally accessible portion of it, remain an impenetrable mystery to our rural populations, among whom but few individuals are found acquainted with reading and writing. this is not for want of opportunities--it is because no value is attached to these acquisitions, because their utility is not perceived. i speak from my own observation, and that of persons who had ample facilities, and brought extensive information and great judgment to the task of investigation. government has made the most praiseworthy efforts to remedy the evil, to raise the peasantry from the sink of ignorance in which they vegetate. but the wisest laws, and the most carefully calculated institutions have proved abortive. the smallest village affords ample opportunities for common education; even the adult, when conscription forces him into the army, finds in the regimental schools every facility for acquiring the most necessary branches of knowledge. compulsion is resorted to--every one who has lived in the provinces knows with what success. parents send their children to school with undisguised repugnance, for they regret the time thus spent as wasted, and, therefore, eagerly seize the most trifling pretext for withdrawing them, and never suffer them to exceed the legal term of attendance. so soon as the young man leaves school, or the soldier has served his time, they hasten to forget what they were compelled to learn, and what they are heartily ashamed of. they return forever after to the local _patois_[ ] of their birthplace, and pretend to have forgotten the french language, which, indeed, is but too often true. it is a painful conclusion, but one which many and careful observations have forced upon me, that all the generous private and public endeavors to instruct our rural population, are absolutely futile, and can tend no further than to enforce an outward compliance. they care not for the knowledge we wish to give them--they will not have it, and this not from mere negligence or apathy, but from a feeling of positive hostility to our civilization. this is a startling assertion, but i have not yet adduced all the proofs in support of it. in those parts of the country where the laboring classes are employed in manufactures principally, and in the great cities, the workmen are easily induced to learn to read and write. the circumstances with which they are surrounded, leave them no doubt as to the practical advantages accruing to them from these acquisitions. but so soon as these men have sufficiently mastered the first elements of knowledge, to what use do they, for the most part, apply them? to imbibe or give vent to ideas and sentiments the most subversive of all social order. the instinctive, but passive hostility to our civilization, is superseded by a bitter and active enmity, often productive of the most fearful calamities. it is among these classes that the projectors of the wildest, most incendiary schemes readily recruit their partisans; that the advocates of socialism, community of goods and wives, all, in fact, who, under the pretext of removing the ills and abuses that afflict the social system, propose to tear it down, find ready listeners and zealous believers. there are, however, portions of the country to which this picture does not apply; and these exceptions furnish me with another proof in favor of my proposition. among the agricultural and manufacturing populations of the north and northeast, information is general; it is readily received, and, once received, retained and productive of good fruits. these people are intelligent, well-informed, and orderly, like their neighbors in belgium and the whole of the netherlands. and these, also, are the populations most closely akin to the teutonic race, the race which, as i said in another place, gave the initiative to our civilization. the aversion to our civilization, of which i spoke, is not the only singular feature in the character of our rural populations. if we penetrate into the privacy of their thoughts and beliefs, we make discoveries equally striking and startling. the bishops and parish clergy have to this day, as they had one, five, or fifteen centuries ago, to battle with mysterious superstitions, or hereditary tendencies, some of which are the more formidable as they are seldom openly avowed, and can, therefore, be neither attacked nor conquered. there is no enlightened priest, that has the care of his flock at heart, but knows from experience with what deep cunning the peasant, however devout, knows how to conceal in his own bosom some fondly cherished traditional idea or belief, which reveals itself only at long intervals, and without his knowledge. if he is spoken to about it, he denies or evades the discussion, but remains unshaken in his convictions. he has unbounded confidence in his pastor, unbounded except upon this one subject, that might not inappropriately be called his secret religion. hence that taciturnity and reserve which, in all our provinces, is the most marked characteristic of the peasant, and which he never for a moment lays aside towards the class he calls _bourgeois_; that impassable barrier between him and even the most popular and well-intentioned landed proprietor of his district. it must not be supposed that this results merely from rudeness and ignorance. were it so, we might console ourselves with the hope that they will gradually improve and assimilate with the more enlightened classes. but these people are precisely like certain savages; at a superficial glance they appear unreflecting and brutish, because their exterior is humble, and their character requires to be studied. but so soon as we penetrate, however little, into their own circle of ideas, the feelings that govern their private life, we discover that in their obstinate isolation from our civilization, they are not actuated by a feeling of degradation. their affections and antipathies do not arise from mere accidental circumstances, but, on the contrary, are in accordance with logical reasoning based upon well-defined and clearly conceived ideas.[ ] in speaking of their religious notions awhile ago, i should have remarked what an immense distance there is between our doctrines of morals and those of the peasantry, how widely different are their ideas from those which we attach to the same word.[ ] with what pertinacious obstinacy they continue to look upon every one not peasant like themselves, as the people of remote antiquity looked upon a foreigner. it is true they do not kill him, thanks to the singular and mysterious terror which the laws, in the making of which they have no part, inspire them; but they hate him cordially, distrust him, and if they can do so without too great a risk, fleece him without scruple and with immense satisfaction. yet they are not wicked or ill-disposed. among themselves they are kind-hearted, charitable, and obliging. but then they regard themselves as a distinct race--a race, they tell you--that is weak, oppressed, and that must resort to cunning and stratagem to gain their due, but which, nevertheless, preserves its pride and contempt for all others. in many of our provinces, the laborer believes himself of much better stock than his former lord or present employer. the family pride of many of our peasants is, to say the least, as great as that of the nobility during the middle ages.[ ] it cannot be doubted that the lower strata of the population of france have few features in common with the higher. our civilization penetrates but little below the surface. the great mass is indifferent--nay, positively hostile to it. the most tragic events have stained the country with torrents of blood, unparalleled convulsions have destroyed every ancient fabric, both social and political. yet the agricultural populations have never been roused from their apathetic indifference,[ ] have never taken any other part but that to which they were forced. when their own personal and immediate interests were not at stake, they allowed the tempests to blow by without concern, without even passive sympathy on one side or the other. many persons, frightened and scandalized at this spectacle, have declared the peasantry as irreclaimably perverse. this is at the same time an injustice, and a very false appreciation of their character. the peasants regard us almost as their enemies. they comprehend nothing of our civilization, contribute nothing to it of their own accord, and they think themselves authorized to profit by its disasters, whenever they can. apart from this antagonism, which sometimes displays itself in an active, but oftener in a passive manner, it cannot be doubted that they possess moral qualities of a high order, though often singularly applied. such is the state of civilization in france. it may be asserted that of a population of thirty-six millions, ten participate in the ideas and mode of thinking upon which our civilization is based, while the remaining twenty-six altogether ignore them, are indifferent and even hostile to them, and this computation would, i think, be even more flattering than the real truth. nor is france an exception in this respect. the picture i have given applies to the greater part of europe. our civilization is suspended, as it were, over an unfathomable gulf, at the bottom of which there slumber elements which may, one day, be roused and prove fearfully, irresistibly destructive. this is an awful, an ominous truth. upon its ultimate consequences it is painful to reflect. wisdom may, perhaps, foresee the storm, but can do little to avert it. but ignored, despised, or hated as it is by the greater number of those over whom it extends its dominion, our civilization is, nevertheless, one of the grandest, most glorious monuments of the human mind. in the inventive, initiatory quality it does not surpass, or even equal some of its predecessors, but in comprehensiveness it surpasses all. from this comprehensiveness arise its powers of appropriation, of conquest; for, to comprehend is to seize, to possess. it has appropriated all their acquisitions, and has remodelled, reconstructed them. it did not create the exact sciences, but it has given them their exactitude, and has disembarrassed them from the divagations from which, by a singular paradox, they were anciently less free than any other branch of knowledge. thanks to its discoveries, the material world is better known than at any other epoch. the laws by which nature is governed, it has, in a great measure, succeeded in unveiling, and it has applied them so as to produce results truly wonderful. gradually, and by the clearness and correctness of its induction, it has reconstructed immense fragments of history, of which the ancients had no knowledge; and as it recedes from the primitive ages of the world, it penetrates further into the mist that obscures them. these are great points of superiority, and which cannot be contested. but these being admitted, are we authorized to conclude--as is so generally assumed as a matter of course--that the characteristics of our civilization are such as to entitle it to the pre-eminence among all others? let us examine what are its peculiar excellencies. thanks to the prodigious number of various elements that contributed to its formation, it has an eclectic character which none of its predecessors or contemporaries possess. it unites and combines so many various qualities and faculties, that its progress is equally facile in all directions; and it has powers of analysis and generalization so great, that it can embrace and appropriate all things, and, what is more, apply them to practical purposes. in other words, it advances at once in a number of different directions, and makes valuable conquests in all, but it cannot be said that it advances at the same time _furthest_ in all. variety, perhaps, rather than great intensity, is its characteristic. if we compare its progress in any one direction with what has been done by others in the same, we shall find that in few, indeed, can our civilization claim pre-eminence. i shall select three of the most striking features of every civilization; the art of government, the state of the fine arts, and refinement of manners. in the art of government, the civilization of europe has arrived at no positive result. in this respect, it has been unable to assume a definite character. it has laid down no principles. in every country over which its dominion extends, it is subservient to the exigencies of the various races which it has aggregated, but not united. in england, holland, naples, and russia, political forms are still in a state of comparative stability, because either the whole population, or the dominant portion of it, is composed of the same or homogeneous elements. but everywhere else, especially in france, central italy, and germany, where the ethnical diversity is boundless, governmental theories have never risen to the dignity of recognized truth; political science consisted in an endless series of experiments. our civilization, therefore, being unable to assume a definite political feature, is devoid, in this respect, of that stability which i comprised as an essential feature in my definition of a civilization. this impotency is not found in many other civilizations which we deem inferior. in the celestial empire, in the buddhistic and brahminical societies, the political feature of the civilization is clearly enounced, and clearly understood by each individual member. in matters of politics all think alike; under a wise administration, when the secular institutions produce beneficent fruits, all rejoice; when in unskilled or malignant hands, they endanger the public welfare, it is a misfortune to be regretted as we regret our own faults; but no circumstance can abate the respect and admiration with which they are regarded. it may be desirable to correct abuses that have crept into them, but never to replace them by others. it cannot be denied that these civilizations, therefore, whatever we may think of them in other respects, enjoy a guarantee of durability, of longevity, in which ours is sadly wanting. with regard to the arts, our civilization is decidedly inferior to others. whether we aim at the grand or the beautiful, we cannot rival either the imposing grandeur of the civilization of egypt, of india, or even of the ancient american empires, nor the elegant beauty of that of greece. centuries hence--when the span of time allotted to us shall have been consumed, when our civilization, like all that preceded it, shall have sunk in the dim shades of the past, and have become a matter of inquiry only to the historical student--some future traveller may wander among the forests and marshes on the banks of the thames, the seine, or the rhine, but he will find no glorious monuments of our grandeur; no sumptuous or gigantic ruins like those of philæ, of nineveh, of athens, of salsetta, or of tenochtitlan. a remote posterity may venerate our memory as their preceptors in exact sciences. they may admire our ingenuity, our patience, the perfection to which we have carried inductive reasoning--not so our conquests in the regions of the abstract. in poesy we can bequeath them nothing. the boundless admiration which we bestow upon the productions of foreign civilizations both past and present, is a positive proof of our own inferiority in this respect.[ ] perhaps the most striking features of a civilization, though not a true standard of its merit, is the degree of refinement which it has attained. by refinement i mean all the luxuries and amenities of life, the regulations of social intercourse, delicacy of habits and tastes. it cannot be denied that in all these we do not surpass, nor even equal, many former as well as contemporaneous civilizations. we cannot rival the magnificence of the latter days of rome, or of the byzantine empire; we can but imagine the gorgeous luxury of eastern civilizations; and in our own past history we find periods when the modes of living were more sumptuous, polished intercourse regulated by a higher and more exacting standard, when taste was more cultivated, and habits more refined. it is true, that we are amply compensated by a greater and more general diffusion of the comforts of life; but in its exterior manifestations, our civilization compares unfavorably with many others, and might almost be called shabby. * * * * * before concluding this digression upon civilization, which has already extended perhaps too far, it may not be unnecessary to reiterate the principal ideas which i wished to present to the mind of the reader. i have endeavored to show that every civilization derives its peculiar character from the race which gave the initiatory impulse. the alteration of this initiatory principle produces corresponding modifications, and even total changes, in the character of the civilization. thus our civilization owes its origin to the teutonic race, whose leading characteristic was an elevated utilitarianism. but as these races ingrafted their mode of culture upon stocks essentially different, the character of the civilization has been variously modified according to the elements which it combined and amalgamated. the civilization of a nation, therefore, exhibits the kind and degree of their capabilities. it is the mirror in which they reflect their individuality. i shall now return to the natural order of my deductions, the series of which is yet far from being complete. i commenced by enouncing the truth that the existence and annihilation of human societies depended upon immutable and uniform laws. i have proved the insufficiency of adventitious circumstances to produce these phenomena, and have traced their causes to the various capabilities of different human groups; in other words, to the moral and intellectual diversity of races. logic, then, demands that i should determine the meaning and bearing of the word race, and this will be the object of the next chapter. footnotes: [ ] see a quotation from de tocqueville to the same effect, p. . [ ] one striking observation, in connection with this fact, mr. gobineau has omitted to make, probably not because it escaped his sagacity, but because he is himself a roman catholic. wherever the teutonic element in the population is predominant, as in denmark, sweden, holland, england, scotland, northern germany, and the united states, protestantism prevails; wherever, on the contrary, the germanic element is subordinate, as in portions of ireland, in south america, and the south of europe, roman catholicism finds an impregnable fortress in the hearts of the people. an ethnographical chart, carefully made out, would indicate the boundaries of each in christendom. i do not here mean to assert that the christian religion is accessible only to certain races, having already emphatically expressed my opinion to the contrary. i feel firmly convinced that a roman catholic may be as good and pious a christian as a member of any other christian church whatever, but i see in this fact the demonstration of that leading characteristic of the germanic races--independence of thought, which incites them to seek for truth, even in religion, for themselves; to investigate everything, and take nothing upon trust. i have, moreover, in favor of my position, the high authority of mr. macaulay: "the reformation," says that distinguished essayist and historian, "was a national as well as a moral revolt. it had been not only an insurrection of the laity against the clergy, but _also an insurrection of the great german race against an alien domination_. it is a most significant circumstance, that no large society of which the tongue is not teutonic, has ever turned protestant, and that, wherever a language derived from ancient rome is spoken, the religion of modern rome to this day prevails." (_hist. of england_, vol. i. p. .)--h. [ ] thus sparta and athens, respectively, stood at the head of the oligarchic and democratic parties, and the alternate preponderance of either of the two often inundated each state with blood. yet sparta and athens, and the partisans of each in every state, possessed the spirit of liberty and independence in an equal degree. themistocles and aristides, the two great party leaders of athens, vied with each other in patriotism. this uniformity of general views and purpose, mr. de tocqueville found in the united states, and he correctly deduces from it the conclusion that "though the citizens are divided into ( ) distinct sovereignties, they, nevertheless, constitute a single nation, and form more truly a state of society, than many peoples of europe, living under the same legislation, and the same prince." (vol. i. p. .) this is an observation which europeans make last, because they do not find it at home; and in return, it prevents the american from acquiring a clear conception of the state of europe, because he thinks the disputes there involve no deeper questions than the disputes around him. in certain fundamental principles, all americans agree, to whatever party they may belong; certain general characteristics belong to them all, whatever be the differences of taste, and individual preferences; it is not so in europe--england, perhaps, excepted, and sweden and denmark. but i will not anticipate the author.--h. [ ] it is well known that, in both greece and rome, the education of the children of wealthy families was very generally intrusted to slaves. some of the greatest philosophers of ancient greece were bondsmen.--h. [ ] china has no hereditary nobility. the class of mandarins is composed of those who have received diplomas in the great colleges with which the country abounds. a decree of the emperor jin-tsoung, who reigned from to , regulated the modes of examination, to which all, indiscriminately, are admitted. the candidates are examined more than once, and every precaution is taken to prevent frauds. thus, the son of the poorest peasant may become a mandarin, but, as he afterwards is dependent on the emperor for office or employment, this dignity is often of but little practical value. still, there are numerous instances on record, in the history of china, of men who have risen from the lowest ranks to the first offices of the state, and even to the imperial dignity. (see _pauthier's histoire de la chine_.)--h. [ ] john f. davis, _the chinese_. london, , p. . "three or four volumes of any ordinary work of the octavo size and shape, may be had for a sum equivalent to two shillings. a canton bookseller's manuscript catalogue marked the price of the four books of confucius, including the commentary, at a price rather under half a crown. the cheapness of their common literature is occasioned partly by the mode of printing, but partly also by the low price of paper." these are canton prices; in the interior of the empire, books are still cheaper, even in proportion to the value of money in china. their classic works are sold at a proportionably lower price than the very refuse of our literature. a pamphlet, or small tale, may be bought for a sapeck, about the seventeenth part of a cent; an ordinary novel, for a little more or less than one cent.--h. [ ] there are certain offences for which the punishment is remitted, if the culprit is able to explain lucidly the nature and object of the law respecting them. (see _huc's trav. in china_, vol. ii. p. .) in the same place, mr. huc bears witness to the correctness of our author's assertion. "measures are taken," says he, "not only to enable the magistrates to understand perfectly the laws they are called upon to apply, but also to diffuse a knowledge of them among the people at large. all persons in the employment of the government, are ordered to make the code their particular study; and a special enactment provides, that at certain periods, all officers, in all localities, shall be examined upon their knowledge of the laws by their respective superiors; and if their answers are not satisfactory, they are punished, the high officials by the retention of a month's pay; the inferior ones by forty strokes of the bamboo." it must not be imagined that mr. huc speaks of the chinese in the spirit of a panegyrist. any one who reads this highly instructive and amusing book (now accessible to english readers by a translation), will soon be convinced of the contrary. he seldom speaks of them to praise them.--h. [ ] op. cit., p. . [ ] the reader will remember that diocletian, who, the son of a slave, rose from the rank of a common soldier, to the throne of the empire of the world, associated with himself in the government, his friend maximian, a. d. . after six years of this joint reign, they took two other partners, galerius and constantius. thus, the empire, though nominally one sovereignty, had in reality four supreme heads. under constantine the great, the imperial unity was restored; but at his decease, the purple was again parcelled out among his sons and nephews. a permanent division of the empire, however, was not effected until the death of theodosius the great, who for sixteen years had enjoyed undivided power. [ ] it is not universally known that the various populations of france differ, not only in character, but in physical appearance. the native of the southern departments is easily known from the native of the central and northern. the average stature in the north is said to be an inch and a half more than in the south. this difference is easily perceptible in the regiments drawn from either.--h. [ ] many of these patois bear but little resemblance to the french language: the inhabitants of the landes, for example, speak a tongue of their own, which, i believe, has roots entirely different. for the most part, they are unintelligible to those who have not studied them. over a million and a half of the population of france speak german or german dialects.--h. [ ] mr. gobineau's remarks apply with equal, and, in some cases, with greater force, to other portions of europe, as i had myself ample means for observing. i have always considered the character of the european peasantry as the most difficult problem in the social system of those countries. institutions cannot in all cases account for it. in germany, for instance, education is general and even compulsory: i have never met a man under thirty that could not read and write. yet, each place has its local _patois_, which no rustic abandons, for it would be deemed by his companions a most insufferable affectation. i have heard ministers in the pulpit use local dialects, of which there are over five hundred in germany alone, and most of them widely different. together with their _patois_, the rustics preserve their local costumes, which mostly date from the middle ages. but the peculiarity of their manners, customs, and modes of thinking, is still more striking. their superstitions are often of the darkest, and, at best, of the most pitiable nature. i have seen hundreds of poor creatures, males and females, on their pilgrimage to some far distant shrine in expiation of their own sins or those of others who pay them to go in their place. on these expeditions they start in great numbers, chanting _aves_ on the way the whole day long, so that you can hear a large band of them for miles. each carries a bag on the back or head, containing their whole stock of provisions for a journey of generally from one to two weeks. at night, they sleep in barns, or on stacks of hay in the fields. if you converse with them, you will find them imbued with superstitions absolutely idolatrous. yet they all know how to read and write. the perfect isolation in which these creatures live from the world, despite that knowledge, is altogether inconceivable to an american. as mr. gobineau says of the french peasants, they believe themselves a distinct race. there is little or no discontent among them; the revolutionary fire finds but scanty fuel among these rural populations. but they look upon those who govern and make the laws as upon different beings, created especially for that purpose; the principles which regulate their private conduct, the whole sphere of their ideas, are peculiar to themselves. in one word, they form, not a class, but a caste, with lines of demarcation as clearly defined as the castes of india. i have said before that this is not from want of education; nor can any other explanation of the mystery be found. it is not poverty, for among these rustics there are many wealthy people, and, in general, they are not so poor as the lower classes in cities. nor do the laws restrain them within the limits of a caste. in germany, hereditary aristocracy is almost obsolete. the ranks of the actual aristocracy are daily recruited from the burgher classes. the highest offices of the various states are often found in possession of untitled men, or men with newly created titles. the colleges and universities are open to all, and great facilities are afforded even to the poorest. yet these differences between various parts of the population remain, and this generally in those localities which the ethnographer describes as strongly tinctured with non-teutonic elements.--h. [ ] a nurse from tours had put a bird into the hands of her little ward, and was teaching him to pull out the feathers and wings of the poor creature. when the parents reproached her for giving him this lesson of wickedness, she answered: "c'est pour le rendre _fier_."--(it is to make him fierce or high-spirited.) this answer of is in strict accordance with the most approved maxims of education of the nurse's ancestors in the times of vercingetorix. [ ] a few years ago, a church-warden was to be elected in a very small and very obscure parish of french brittany, that part of the former province which the real britons used to call the _pays gallais_, or gallic land. the electors, who were all peasants, deliberated two days without being able to agree upon a selection, because the candidate, a very honest, wealthy, and highly respected man and a good christian, was a _foreigner_. now, this _foreigner_ was born in the locality, and his father had resided there before him, and had also been born there, but it was recollected that his grandfather, who had been dead many years, and whom no one in the assembly had known, came from somewhere else. [ ] this is no exaggeration, as every one acquainted with french history knows. in the great revolution of the last century, the peasantry of france took no interest and no part. in the vendée, indeed, they fought, and fought bravely, for the ancient forms, their king, and their feudatory lords. everywhere else, the rural districts remained in perfect apathy. the revolutions since then have been decided in paris. the _émeutes_ seldom extended beyond the walls of the great cities. it is a well-known fact, that in many of the rural districts, the peasants did not hear of the expulsion of the bourbon dynasty, until years afterwards, and even then had no conception of the nature of the change. bourbon, orleans, republic, are words, to them, of no definite meaning. the only name that can rouse them from their apathy, is "napoleon." at that sound, the gallic heart thrills with enthusiasm and thirst for glory. hence the unparalleled success with which the present emperor has appealed to universal suffrage.--h. [ ] it is not generally appreciated how much we are indebted to oriental civilizations for our lighter and more graceful literature. our first works of fiction were translations or paraphrases of eastern tales introduced into western europe by the returning crusaders. the songs of the troubadour, the many-tomed romances of the middle ages--those ponderous sires of modern novels--all emanated from that source. the works of dante, tasso, ariosto, boccacio, and nearer home, of chaucer and spenser, are incontestable proofs of this fact. even milton himself drew from the inexhaustible stores of eastern legends and romances. our fairy tales, and almost all of our most graceful lyric poesy, that is not borrowed from greece, is of persian origin. almost every popular poet of england and the continent has invoked the oriental muse, none more successfully than southey and moore. it would be useless to allude to the immense popularity of acknowledged versions of oriental literature, such as the _thousand and one nights_, the apologues, allegories, &c. what we do not owe to the east, we have taken from the greeks. even to this day, grecian mythology is the never-failing resource of the lyric poet, and so familiar has that graceful imagery become to us, that we introduce it, often _mal-à-propos_, even in our colloquial language. in metaphysics, also, we have confessedly done little more than revive the labors of the greeks.--h. chapter x. question of unity or plurality of species. systems of camper, blumenbach, morton, carus--investigations of owen, vrolik, weber--prolificness of hybrids, the great scientific stronghold of the advocates of unity of species. it will be necessary to determine first the physiological bearing of the word _race_. in the opinion of many scientific observers, who judge from the first impression, and take extremes[ ] as the basis of their reasoning, the groups of the human family are distinguished by differences so radical and essential, that it is impossible to believe them all derived from the same stock. they, therefore, suppose several other genealogies besides that of adam and eve. according to this doctrine, instead of but one species in the genus _homo_, there would be three, four, or even more, entirely distinct ones, whose commingling would produce what the naturalists call _hybrids_. general conviction is easily secured in favor of this theory, by placing before the eyes of the observer instances of obvious and striking dissimilarities among the various groups. the critic who has before him a human subject with a skin of olive-yellow; black, straight, and thin hair; little, if any beard, eyebrows, and eyelashes; a broad and flattened face, with features not very distinct; the space between the eyes broad and flat; the orbits large and open; the nose flattened; the cheeks high and prominent; the opening of the eyelids narrow, linear, and oblique, the inner angle the lowest; the ears and lips large; the forehead low and slanting, allowing a considerable portion of the face to be seen when viewed from above; the head of somewhat a pyramidal form; the limbs clumsy; the stature humble; the whole conformation betraying a marked tendency to obesity:[ ] the critic who examines this specimen of humanity, at once recognizes a well characterized and clearly defined type, the principal features of which will readily be imprinted in his memory. let us suppose him now to examine another individual: a negro, from the western coast of africa. this specimen is of large size, and vigorous appearance. the color is a jetty black, the hair crisp, generally called _woolly_; the eyes are prominent, and the orbits large; the nose thick, flat, and confounded with the prominent cheeks; the lips very thick and everted; the jaws projecting, and the chin receding; the skull assuming the form called prognathous. the low forehead and muzzle-like elongation of the jaws, give to the whole being an almost animal appearance, which is heightened by the large and powerful lower-jaw, the ample provision for muscular insertions, the greater size of cavities destined for the reception of the organs of smell and sight, the length of the forearm compared with the arm, the narrow and tapering fingers, etc. "in the negro, the bones of the leg are bent outwards; the tibia and fibula are more convex in front than in the european; the calves of the legs are very high, so as to encroach upon the hams; the feet and hand, but particularly the former, are flat; the os calcis, instead of being arched, is continued nearly in a straight line with the other bones of the foot, which is remarkably broad."[ ] in contemplating a human being so formed, we are involuntarily reminded of the structure of the ape, and we feel almost inclined to admit that the tribes of western africa are descended from a stock which bears but a slight and general resemblance to that of the mongolian family. but there are some groups, whose aspect is even less flattering to the self-love of humanity than that of the congo. it is the peculiar distinction of oceanica to furnish about the most degraded and repulsive of those wretched beings, who seem to occupy a sort of intermediate station between man and the mere brute. many of the groups of that latest-discovered world, by the excessive leanness and starveling development of their limbs;[ ] the disproportionate size of their heads; the excessive, hopeless stupidity stamped upon their countenances; present an aspect so hideous and disgusting, that--contrasted with them--even the negro of western africa gains in our estimation, and seems to claim a less ignoble descent than they. we are still more tempted to adopt the conclusions of the advocates for the plurality of species, when, after having examined types taken from every quarter of the globe, we return to the inhabitants of europe and southern and western asia. how vast a superiority these exhibit in beauty, correctness of proportion, and regularity of features! it is they who enjoy the honor of having furnished the living models for the unrivalled masterpieces of ancient sculpture. but even among these races there has existed, since the remotest times, a gradation of beauty, at the head of which the european may justly be placed, as well for symmetry of limbs as for vigorous muscular development. nothing, then, would appear more reasonable than to pronounce the different types of mankind as foreign to each other as are animals of different species. such, indeed, was the conclusion arrived at by those who first systematized their observations, and attempted to establish a classification; and so far as this classification depended upon general facts, it seemed incontestable. _camper_ took the lead. he was not content with deciding upon merely superficial appearances, but wished to rest his demonstrations upon a mathematical basis, by defining, anatomically, the distinguishing characteristics of different types. if he succeeded in this, he would thereby establish a strict and logical method of treating the subject, preclude all doubt, and give to his opinions that rigorous precision without which there is no true science. i borrow from mr. prichard,[ ] camper's own account of his method. "the basis on which the distinction of nations[ ] is founded, says he, may be displayed by two straight lines; one of which is to be drawn through the _meatus auditorius_ (the external entrance of the ear) to the base of the nose; and the other touching the prominent centre of the forehead, and falling thence on the most prominent part of the upper jaw-bone, the head being viewed in profile. in the angle produced by these two lines, may be said to consist, not only the distinctions between the skulls of the several species of animals, but also those which are found to exist between different nations; and it might be concluded that nature has availed herself of this angle to mark out the diversities of the animal kingdom, and at the same time to establish a scale from the inferior tribes up to the most beautiful forms which are found in the human species. thus it will be found that the heads of birds display the smallest angle, and that it always becomes of greater extent as the animal approaches more nearly to the human figure. thus, there is one species of the ape tribe, in which the head has a facial angle of forty-two degrees; in another animal of the same family, which is one of those simiæ most approximating in figure to mankind, the facial angle contains exactly fifty degrees. next to this is the head of an african negro, which, as well as that of the kalmuc, forms an angle of seventy degrees; while the angle discovered in the heads of europeans contains eighty degrees. on this difference of ten degrees in the facial angle, the superior beauty of the european depends; while that high character of sublime beauty, which is so striking in some works of ancient statuary, as in the head of apollo, and in the medusa of sisocles, is given by an angle which amounts to one hundred degrees." this method was seductive from its exceeding simplicity. unfortunately, facts were against it, as happens to a good many theories. the curious and interesting discoveries of prof. owen have proved beyond dispute, that camper, as well as other anatomists since him, founded all their observations on orangs of immature age, and that, while the jaws become enlarged, and lengthened with the increase of the maxillary apparatus, and the zygomatic arch is extended, no corresponding increase of the brain takes place. the importance of this difference of age, with respect to the facial angle, is very great in the simiæ. thus, while camper, measuring the skull of young apes, has found the facial angle even as much as sixty-four degrees; in reality, it never exceeds, in the most favored specimen, from thirty to thirty-five. between this figure and the seventy degrees of the negro and kalmuc, there is too wide a gap to admit of the possibility of camper's ascending series. the advocates of phrenological science eagerly espoused the theory of the dutch _savant_. they imagined that they could detect a development of instincts corresponding to the rank which the animal occupied in his scale. but even here facts were against them. it was objected that the elephant--not to mention numerous other instances--whose intelligence is incontestably superior to that of the orang, presents a much more acute facial angle than the latter. even among the ape tribes, the most intelligent, those most susceptible of education, are by no means the highest in camper's scale. besides these great defects, the theory possessed another very weak point. it did not apply to all the varieties of the human species. the races with pyramidal skulls found no place in it. yet this is a sufficiently striking characteristic. camper's theory being refuted, _blumenbach_ proposed another system. he called his invention _norma verticalis_, the vertical method. according to him,[ ] the comparison of the breadth of the head, particularly of the vertex, points out the principal and most strongly marked differences in the general configuration of the cranium. he adds that the whole cranium is susceptible of so many varieties in its form, the parts which contribute more or less to determine the national character displaying such different proportions and directions, that it is impossible to subject all these diversities to the measurement of any lines and angles. in comparing and arranging skulls according to the varieties in their shape, it is preferable to survey them in that method which presents at one view the greatest number of characteristic peculiarities. "the best way of obtaining this end is to place a series of skulls, with the cheek-bones on the same horizontal line, resting on the lower jaws, and then, viewing them from behind, and fixing the eye on the vertex of each, to mark all the varieties in the shape of parts that contribute most to the national character, whether they consist in the direction of the maxillary and malar bones, in the breadth or narrowness of the oval figure presented by the vertex, or in the flattened or vaulted form of the frontal bone." the results which blumenbach deduced from this method, were a division of mankind into five grand categories, each of which was again subdivided into a variety of families and types. this classification, also, is liable to many objections. like camper's, it left out several important characteristics. _owen_ supposed that these objections might be obviated by measuring the basis of the skull instead of the summit. "the relative proportions and extent," says prichard, "and the peculiarities of formation of the different parts of the cranium, are more fully discovered by this mode of comparison, than by any other." one of the most important results of this method was the discovery of a line of demarcation between man and the anthropoid apes, so distinct, and clearly drawn, that it becomes thenceforward impossible to find between the two genera the connecting link which camper supposed to exist. it is, indeed, sufficient to cast one glance at the bases of two skulls, one human, and the other that of an orang, to perceive essential and decisive differences. the antero-posterior diameter of the basis of the skull is, in the orang, very much longer than in man. the zygoma is situated in the middle region of the skull, instead of being included, as in all races of men, and even human idiots, in the anterior half of the basis cranii; and it occupies in the basis just one-third part of the entire length of its diameter. moreover, the position of the great occipital foramen is very different in the two skulls; and this feature is very important, on account of its relations to the general character of structure, and its influence on the habits of the whole being. this foramen, in the human head, is very near the middle of the basis of the skull, or, rather, it is situated immediately behind the middle transverse diameter; while, in the adult chimpantsi, it is placed in the middle of the posterior third part of the basis cranii.[ ] owen certainly deserves great credit for his observations, but i should prefer the most recent, as well as ingenious, of cranioscopic systems, that of the learned american, dr. morton, which has been adopted by mr. carus.[ ] the substance of this theory is, that individuals are superior in intellect in proportion as their skulls are larger.[ ] taking this as the general rule, dr. morton and mr. carus proceed thereby to demonstrate the difference of races. the question to be decided is, whether all types of the human race have the same craniological development. to elucidate this fact, dr. morton took a certain number of skulls, belonging to the four principal human families--whites, mongolians, negroes, and north american indians--and, after carefully closing every aperture, except the _foramen magnum_, he measured their capacity by filling them with well dried grains of pepper. the results of this measurement are exhibited in the subjoined table.[ ] -------------------------+-----------+----------+----------+---------- | number | | | | of skulls | average | maximum. | minimum. | measured. | capacity.| | -------------------------|-----------|----------|----------|---------- white races | | | | yellow races {mongolians| | | | {malays | | | | copper-colored races | | | | negroes | | | | -------------------------+-----------+----------+----------+---------- the results given in the first two columns are certainly very curious, but to those in the last two i attach little value. these two columns, giving the maximum and minimum capacities, differ so greatly from the second, which shows the average, that they could be of weight only if mr. morton had experimented upon a much greater number of skulls, and if he had specified the social position of the individuals to whom they belonged. thus, for his specimens of the white and copper-colored races, he might select skulls that had belonged to individuals rather above the common herd.[ ] but the blacks and mongolians were not represented by the skulls of their great chiefs and mandarins. this explains why dr. morton could ascribe the figure to an aboriginal of america, while the most intelligent mongolian that he examined did not exceed , and is surpassed even by the negro, who reaches . such results are entirely incomplete, fortuitous, and of no scientific value. in questions of this kind, too much care cannot be taken to reject conclusions which are based upon the examination of individualities. i am, therefore, unable to accept the second half of dr. morton's calculations. i am also disposed to doubt one of the details in the other half. the figures , , and , respectively indicating the average capacity of the skull of the white, mongolian, and negro, follow a clear and evident gradation. but the figures , , and , given for the mongol, the malay, and the red-skin, are conflicting; the more so, as mr. carus does not hesitate to comprise the mongols and malays into one and the same race, and thus unites the figures and --by which he receives, as the average capacity of the yellow race, , or the same as that of the red-skins. wherefore, then, take the figure as the characteristic of a distinct race, and thus create, quite arbitrarily, a fourth great subdivision of our species. this anomaly supports the weak side of mr. carus's system. the learned saxon amuses himself by supposing that, just as we see our planet pass through the four stages of day, night, morning twilight, and evening twilight, so there _must_ be four subdivisions of the human species, corresponding to these variations of light. he perceives in this a symbol,[ ] which is always a dangerous temptation to a mind of refined susceptibilities. the white races are to him the nations of day; the black, those of night; the yellow, those of morning; the red, those of evening. it will be perceived how many ingenious analogies may be brought forward in support of this fanciful invention. thus, the european nations, by the brilliancy of their scientific discoveries and their superior civilization, are in an enlightened state, while the blacks are plunged in the gloomy darkness of ignorance. the eastern nations live in a sort of twilight, which affords them an incomplete, though powerful, social existence. and as for the indians of the western world, who are rapidly disappearing, what more beautiful image of their destiny can be found than the setting sun? unfortunately, parables are no arguments, and mr. carus has somewhat injured his beautiful theory by unduly abandoning himself to this poetical current. moreover, what i have said with regard to all other ethnological theories--those of camper, blumenbach, and owen--holds good of this: mr. carus does not succeed in systematizing regularly the whole of the physiological diversities observable in races.[ ] the advocates for unity of species have not failed to take advantage of this inability on the part of their opponents to find a system which will include the many varieties of the human family; and they pretend that, as the observations upon the conformation of the skull cannot be reduced to a system which demonstrates the original separation of types, the different varieties must be regarded as simple divergencies occasioned by adventitious and secondary causes, and which do not prove a difference of origin. this is crying victory too soon. the difficulty of finding a method does not always prove that none can be found. but the believers in the unity of species did not admit this reserve. to set off their theory, they point to the fact that certain tribes, belonging to the same race, instead of presenting the same physical type, diverge from it very considerably. they cite the different groups of the mixed malay-polynesian family; and, without paying attention to the proportion of the elements which compose the mixtures, they say that if groups of the same origin can assume such totally different craniological and facial forms, the greatest diversities of that kind do not prove the primary plurality of origins.[ ] strange as it may be to european eyes, the distinct types of the negro and the mongolian are not then demonstrative of difference of species; and the differences among the human family must be ascribed simply to certain local causes operating during a greater or less lapse of time.[ ] the advocates for the plurality of races, being met with so many objections, good as well as bad, have attempted to enlarge the circle of their arguments, and, ceasing to make the skull their only study, have proceeded to the examination of the entire individual. they have rightly shown that the differences do not exist merely in the aspect of the face and formation of the skull, but, what is no less important, they exist also in the shape of the pelvis, the relative proportion of the limbs, and the nature of the pilous system. camper and other naturalists had long since perceived that the pelvis of the negro presented certain peculiarities. dr. vrolik extended his researches further, and observed that in the european race the differences between the male and female pelvis are much less distinctly marked, while the pelvis of the negro, of either sex, partakes in a very striking degree of the animal character. the amsterdam _savant_, starting from the idea that the formation of the pelvis necessarily influences that of the foetus, concludes that there must be difference of origin.[ ] mr. weber has attacked this theory with but little success. he was obliged to allow that certain formations of the pelvis occur more frequently in one race than in another; and all he could do, was to show that the rule is not without exceptions, and that some individuals of the american, african, or mongol race presented the forms common among the european. this is not proving a great deal, especially as it never seems to have occurred to mr. weber that these exceptions might be owing to a mixture of blood. the adversaries of the unity doctrine pretend that the european is better proportioned. they are answered that the excessive leanness of the extremities among those nations which subsist principally on vegetable diet, or whose alimentation is imperfect, is not at all surprising; and this reply is certainly valid. but a much less conclusive reply is made to the argument drawn from the excessive development of bust among the mountaineers of peru (quichuas) by those who are unwilling to recognize it as a specific characteristic; for to pretend, as they do, that it can be explained by the elevation of the andes, is not advancing a very serious reason.[ ] there are in the world many mountain populations who are constituted very differently from the quichuas.[ ] the color of the skin is another argument for diversity of origin. but the opposite party refuse to accept this as a specific characteristic, for two reasons: first, because, they say, this coloration depends upon climatic circumstances, and is not permanent--which is, to say the least of it, a very bold assertion; secondly, because color is liable to indefinite gradations, by which white insensibly passes into yellow, yellow into black, so that it is impossible to find a line of demarcation sufficiently decided. this fact simply proves the existence of innumerable hybrids; an observation to which the advocates for unity are constantly inattentive. with regard to the specific differences in the formation of the pile, mr. flourens brings his great authority in favor of the original unity of race.[ ] i have now passed rapidly in review the more or less inconsistent arguments of the advocates of unity; but their strongest one still remains. it is of great force, and i therefore reserved it for the last--the facility with which the different branches of the human family produce hybrids, and the fecundity of these hybrids themselves. the observations of naturalists seem to have well established the fact that half-breeds can spring only from nearly related species, and that even in that case they are condemned to sterility. it has been further observed that, even among closely allied species, where fecundation is possible, copulation is repugnant, and obtained, generally, either by force or ruse, which would lead us to suppose that, in a state of nature, the number of hybrids is even more limited than that obtained by the intervention of man. it has, therefore, been concluded that, among the number of specific characteristics, we must place the faculty of producing prolific offspring. as nothing authorizes us to believe that the human race are exempt from this law, so nothing has hitherto been able to shake the strength of this objection,[ ] which, more than all the others, holds the advocates for plurality in check. it is, indeed, affirmed that, in certain portions of oceanica, indigenous women, after having brought forth a half-breed european child, can no longer be fecundated by compatriots. if this assertion be admitted as correct, it might serve as a starting point for further investigations; but at present it could not be used to invalidate the admitted principles of science upon the generation of hybrids--against the deductions drawn from these it proves nothing. footnotes: [ ] m. flourens, _eloge de blumenbach, mémoires de l'académie des sciences_. paris, , p. xiii. this _savant_ justly protests against such a method. [ ] for the description of types in this and other portions of this chapter, i am indebted to m. william lawrence, _lect. on the nat. hist. of man_. london, . but especially to the learned james cowles prichard, _nat. hist. of man_. london, . [ ] prichard, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] it is impossible to conceive an idea of the scarce human form of these creatures, without the aid of pictorial representations. in prichard's _natural history of man_ will be found a plate (no. , p. ) from m. d'urville's atlas, which may assist the reader in gaining an idea of the utmost hideousness that the human form is capable of. i cannot but believe that the picture there given is considerably exaggerated, but with all due allowance in this respect, enough ugliness will be left to make us almost ashamed to recognize these beings as belonging to our kind.--h. [ ] _op. cit._, p. . [ ] it will be observed that prichard and camper, and further on blumenbach, here use the word _nation_ as synonymous to _race_. see my introduction, p. .--h. [ ] prichard, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] _op. cit._, p. . [ ] carus, _ueber ungleiche befähigung_, etc., p. . [ ] _op. cit._, p. . [ ] as mr. gobineau has taken the facts presented by dr. morton at second hand, and, moreover, had not before him dr. morton's later tables and more matured deductions, dr. nott has given an abstract of the result arrived at by the learned craniologist, as published by himself in . this abstract, and the valuable comments of dr. nott himself, will be found in the appendix, under a.--h. [ ] i fear that our author has here fallen into an error which his own facts disprove, and which is still everywhere received without examination, viz: that cultivation can change the form or size of the head, either of individuals or races; an opinion, in support of which, no facts whatever can be adduced. the heads of the barbarous races of europe were precisely the same as those of civilized europe in our day; this is proven by the disinterred crania of ancient races, and by other facts. nor do we see around us among the uneducated, heads inferior in form and size to those of the more privileged classes. does any one pretend that the nobility of england, which has been an educated class for centuries, have larger heads, or more intelligence than the ignoble? on the contrary, does not most of the talent of england spring up from plebeian ranks? wherever civilization has been brought to a population of the white race, they have accepted it at once--their heads required no development. where, on the contrary, it has been carried to negroes, mongols, and indians, they have rejected it. egyptians and hindoos have small heads, but we know little of the early history of their civilization. egyptian monuments prove that the early people and language of egypt were strongly impregnated with semitic elements. latham has shown that the sanscrit language was carried _from_ europe to india, and probably civilization with it. i have looked in vain for twenty years for evidence to prove that cultivation could enlarge a _brain_, while it expands the mind. the head of a boy at twelve is as large as it ever is.--n. [ ] carus, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] there are some very slight ones, which nevertheless are very characteristic. among this number i would class a certain enlargement on each side of the lower lip, which is found among the english and germans. i find this indication of germanic origin in several paintings of the flemish school, in the _madonna_ of rubens, in the museum of dresden, in the _satyrs_ and _nymphs_ of the same collection, in a _lute-player_ of miéris, etc. no cranioscopic method whatever could embrace such details, which, however, are not without value in the great mixture of races which europe presents. [ ] prichard, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] job ludolf, whose facilities of observation must necessarily have been very defective when compared with those we enjoy at the present day, nevertheless combats in very forcible language, and with arguments--so far as concerns the negro--invincible, the opinion here adopted by mr. prichard. i cannot refrain from quoting him in this place, not for any novelty contained in his arguments, but to show their very antiquity: "de nigredine �thiopum hic agere nostri non est instituti, plerique ardoribus solis atquæ zonæ torridæ id tribuant. verum etiam intra solis orbitam populi dantur, si non plane albi, saltem non prorsus nigri. multi extra utrumque tropicum a media mundi linea longius absunt quam persæ aut syri, veluti pramontorii bonæ spei habitantes, et tamen iste sunt nigerrimi. si africæ tantum et chami posteris id inspectari velis, malabares et ceilonii aliique remotiores asiæ populi æque nigri excipiendi erunt. quod si causam ad coeli solique naturam referas, non homines albi in illis regionibus renascentes non nigrescunt? aut qui ad occultas qualitates confugiunt, melius fecerint si sese nescire fateantur."--jobus ludolfus, _commentarium ad historiam �thiopicam_, fol. norimb. p. . [ ] prichard, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] prichard, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] neither the swiss, nor the tyrolese, nor the highlanders of scotland, nor the sclaves of the balkan, nor the tribes of the himaleh, nor any other mountaineers whatever, present the monstrous appearance of the quichuas. [ ] the distinguished microscopist, dr. peter a. browne, of philadelphia, has published the most elaborate observations on hair, of any author i have met with; and he asserts that the pile of the negro is _wool_, and not hair. he has gone so far as to distinguish the leading races of men by the direction, shape, and structure of the hair. the reader is referred to his works for much very curious, new, and valuable matter.--n. to those of our readers who may not have the inclination or opportunity of consulting mr. browne's work, the following concise and excellent synopsis of his views, which i borrow from dr. kneeland's _introduction to hamilton smith's natural history of man_, may not be unacceptable: "there are, on microscopical examination, three prevailing forms of the transverse section of the filament, viz: the cylindrical, the oval, and the eccentrically elliptical. there are also three directions in which it pierces the epidermis. the straight and lank, the flowing or curled, and the crisped or frizzled, differ respectively as to the angle which the filament makes with the skin on leaving it. the cylindrical and oval pile has an oblique angle of inclination. the eccentrically elliptical pierces the epidermis at right angles, and lies perpendicularly in the dermis. the hair of the white man is oval; that of the choctaw, and some other american indians, is cylindrical; that of the negro is eccentrically elliptical or flat. the hair of the white man has, beside its cortex and intermediate fibres, a central canal, which contains the coloring matter when present. the pile of the negro has no central canal, and the coloring matter is diffused, when present, either throughout the cortex or the intermediate fibres. hair, according to these observations, is more complex in its structure than wool. in hair, the enveloping scales are comparatively few, with smooth surfaces, rounded at their points, and closely embracing the shaft. in wool, they are numerous, rough, sharp-pointed, and project from the shaft. _hence, the hair of the white man will not felt, that of the negro will._ in this respect, therefore, it comes near to true wool"--pp. , .--h. [ ] a full answer to this objection will be found in our appendix, under _b_.--n. chapter xi. permanency of types. the language of holy writ in favor of common origin--the permanency of their characteristics separates the races of men as effectually as if they were distinct creations--arabs, jews--prichard's argument about the influence of climate examined--ethnological history of the turks and hungarians. the believers in unity of race affirm that types are different in appearance only; that, in fact, the differences existing among them are owing to local circumstances still in operation, or to an accidental peculiarity of conformation in the progenitor of a branch, and that, though they all, more or less, diverge from the original prototype, they all are capable of again returning to it. according to this, then, the negro, the north american savage, the tungoose of north siberia, might, under favorable circumstances, gain all the physical and mental attributes which now distinguish the european. such a theory is inadmissible. we have shown above that the only solid scientific stronghold of the believers in unity of species is the prolificness of human hybrids. this fact, which seems at present so difficult to refute, may not always present the same difficulties, and would not, by itself, suffice to arrest my conclusions, were it not supported by another argument which, i confess, appears to me of greater moment: scripture is said to declare against difference of origin. if the text is clear, peremptory, and indisputable, we must submit; the most serious doubts must disappear; human reason, in its imperfection, must bow to faith. better to let the veil of obscurity cover a point of erudition, than to call in question so high and incontestable an authority. if the bible declares that mankind are descended from the same common stock, all that goes to prove the contrary is mere semblance, unworthy of consideration. but is the bible really explicit on this point? the sacred writings have a much higher purpose than the elucidation of ethnological problems; and if it be admitted that they may have been misunderstood in this particular, and that without straining the text, it may be interpreted otherwise, i return to my first impression. the bible evidently speaks of adam as the progenitor of the white race, because from him are descended generations which--it cannot be doubted--were white. but nothing proves that at the first redaction of the adamite genealogies the colored races were considered as forming part of the species. there is not a word said about the yellow nations, and i hope to prove, in my second volume, that the pretended black color of the patriarch ham rests upon no other basis than an arbitrary interpretation. at a later period, doubtless, translators and commentators, who affirmed that adam was the father of all beings called men, were obliged to bring in as descendants of the sons of noah all the different varieties with whom they were acquainted. in this manner, japheth was considered the progenitor of the european nations, while the inhabitants of the greater portion of asia were looked upon as the descendants of shem; and those of africa, of ham. this arrangement answers admirably for one portion of the globe. but what becomes of the population of the rest of the world, who are not included in this classification? i will not, at present, particularly insist upon this idea. i dislike the mere appearance of impugning even simple interpretations if they have the sanction of the church, and wish merely to intimate that their authority might, perhaps, be questioned without transgressing the limits established by the church.[ ] if this is not the case, and we must accept, in the main, the opinions of the believers in unity, i still do not despair that the facts may be explained in a manner different from theirs, and that the principal physical and moral differences among the branches of the human family may exist, with all their necessary consequences, independently of unity or plurality of origin. the specific identity of all canines is acknowledged,[ ] but who would undertake the difficult task of proving that all these animals, to whatever variety they may belong, were possessed of the same shapes, instincts, habits, qualities? the same is the case with many other species, the equine, bovine, ursine, etc. here we find perfect identity of origin, and yet diversity in every other respect, and a diversity so radical, that even intermixture can not produce a real identity of character in the several types. on the contrary, so long as each type remains pure, their distinctive features are permanent, and reproduced, without any sensible deviation, in each successive generation.[ ] this incontestable fact has led to the inquiry whether in those species which, by domestication, have lost their original habits, and contracted others, the forms and instincts of the primitive stock were still discernible. i think this highly improbable, and can hardly believe that we shall ever be able to determine the shape and characteristics of the prototype of each species, and how much or how little it is approached by the deviations now before our eyes. a very great number of vegetables present the same problem, and with regard to man, whose origin it is most interesting and important for us to know, the inquiry seems to be attended with the greatest and most insurmountable difficulties. each race is convinced that its progenitor had precisely the characteristics which now distinguish it. this is the only point upon which their traditions perfectly agree. the white races represent to themselves an adam and eve, whom blumenbach would at once have pronounced caucasians; the mohammedan negroes, on the contrary, believe the first pair to have been black; these being created in god's own image, it follows that the supreme being, and also the angels, are of the same color, and the prophet himself was certainly too greatly favored by his sender to display a pale skin to his disciples.[ ] unfortunately, modern science has as yet found no clue to this maze of opinions. no admissible theory has been advanced which affords the least light upon the subject, and, in all probability, the various types differ as much from their common progenitor--if they possess one--as they do among themselves. the causes of these deviations are exceedingly difficult to ascertain. the believers in the unity of origin pretend to find them, as i remarked before, in various local circumstances, such as climate, habits, &c. it is impossible to coincide with such an opinion, for, although these circumstances have always existed, they have not, within historical times, produced such alterations in the races which were exposed to their influence as to make it even probable that they were the causes of so vast and radical a dissimilarity as we now see before us. suppose two tribes, not yet departed from the primitive type, to inhabit, one an alpine region in the interior of a continent, the other some isolated isle in the immensity of the ocean. their atmospheric and alimentary conditions would, of course, be totally different. if we further suppose one of these tribes to be abundantly provided with nourishment, and the other possessing but precarious means of subsistence; one to inhabit a cold latitude, and the other to be exposed to the action of a tropical sun; it seems to me that we have accumulated the most essential local contrasts. allowing these physical causes to operate a sufficient lapse of time, the two groups would, no doubt, ultimately assume certain peculiar characteristics, by which they might be distinguished from each other. but no imaginable length of time could bring about any essential, organic change of conformation; and as a proof of this assertion, i would point to the populations of opposite portions of the globe, living under physical conditions the most widely different, who, nevertheless, present a perfect resemblance of type. the hottentots so strongly resemble the inhabitants of the celestial empire, that it has even been supposed, though without good reasons, that they were originally a chinese colony. a great similarity exists between the ancient etruscans, whose portraits have come down to us, and the araucanians of south america. the features and outlines of the cherokees seem to be perfectly identical with those of several italian populations, the calabrians, for instance. the inhabitants of auvergne, especially the female portion, much more nearly resemble in physiognomy several indian tribes of north america than any european nation. thus we see that in very different climes, and under conditions of life so very dissimilar, nature can reproduce the same forms. the peculiar characteristics which now distinguish the different types cannot, therefore, be the effects of local circumstances such as now exist.[ ] though it is impossible to ascertain what physical changes different branches of the human family may have undergone anterior to the historic epoch, yet we have the best proofs that since then, no race has changed its peculiar characteristics. the historic epoch comprises about one half of the time during which our earth is supposed to have been inhabited, and there are several nations whom we can trace up to the verge of ante-historic ages; yet we find that the races then known have remained the same to our days, even though they ceased to inhabit the same localities, and consequently were no longer exposed to the influence of the same external conditions. witness the arabs. as they are represented on the monuments of egypt, so we find them at present, not only in the arid deserts of their native land, but in the fertile regions and moist climate of malabar, coromandel, and the islands of the indian ocean. we find them again, though more mixed, on the northern coasts of africa, and, although many centuries have elapsed since their invasion, traces of arab blood are still discernible in some portions of roussillon, languedoc, and spain. next to the arabs i would instance the jews. they have emigrated to countries in every respect the most dissimilar to palestine, and have not even preserved their ancient habits of life. yet their type has always remained peculiar and the same in every latitude and under every physical condition. the warlike rechabites in the deserts of arabia present to us the same features as our own peaceable jews. i had occasion not long since to examine a polish jew. the cut of his face, and especially his eyes, perfectly betrayed his origin. this inhabitant of a northern zone, whose direct ancestors for several generations had lived among the snows and ice of an inhospitable clime, seemed to have been tanned but the day before, by the ardent rays of a syrian sun. the same shemitic face which the egyptian artist represented some four thousand or more years ago, we recognize daily around us; and its principal and really characteristic features are equally strikingly preserved under the most diverse climatic circumstances. but the resemblance is not confined to the face only, it extends to the conformation of the limbs and the nature of the temperament. german jews are generally smaller and more slender in stature than the european nations among whom they have lived for centuries; and the age of puberty arrives earlier with them than with their compatriots of another race.[ ] this is, i am aware, an assertion diametrically opposed to mr. prichard's opinions. this celebrated physiologist, in his zeal to prove the unity of species, attempts to prove that the age of puberty in both sexes is the same everywhere and among all races. his arguments are based upon the precepts of the old testament and the koran, by which the marriageable age of women is fixed at fifteen, and even eighteen, according to abou-hanifah.[ ] i hardly think that biblical testimony is admissible in matters of this kind, because the scriptures often narrate facts which cannot be accounted for by the ordinary laws of nature. thus, the pregnancy of sarah at an extreme old age, and when abraham himself was a centenarian, is an event upon which no ordinary course of reasoning could be based. as for the precepts of the mohammedan law, i would observe that they were intended to insure not merely the physical aptitude for marriage, but also that degree of mental maturity and education which befit a woman about to enter on the duties of so serious a station. the prophet makes it a special injunction that the religious education of young women should be continued to the time of their marriage. taking this view, the law-giver would naturally incline to delay the period of marriage as long as possible, in order to afford time for the development of the reasoning faculties, and he would therefore be less precipitate in his authorizations than nature in hers. but there are some other proofs which i would adduce against mr. prichard's grave arguments, which, though of less weighty character, are not the less conclusive, and will settle the question, i think, in my favor. poets, in their tales of love, are mainly solicitous of exhibiting their heroines in the first bloom of beauty, without caring much about their moral and mental development. accordingly, we find that oriental poets have always made their lovers much younger than the age prescribed by the koran. zelika and leila are not, surely, fourteen years old. in india, this difference is still more striking. sacontala, in europe, would be quite a small girl, a mere child. the spring-time of life for a hindoo female is from the age of nine to that of twelve. in the chinese romance, _yu-kiao-li_, the heroine is sixteen; and her father is in great distress, and laments pathetically that at so advanced an age she should still be unmarried. the roman writers, following in the footsteps of their greek preceptors, took fifteen as the period of bloom of a woman's life; our own authors for a long time adhered to these models, but since the ideas of the north have begun to exert their influence upon our literature, the heroines of our novels are full-grown young ladies of eighteen, and very often more.[ ] but arguments of a more serious character are by no means wanting. besides what i said of the precocity of the jews in germany, i may point out the reverse as a peculiarity of the population of many portions of switzerland. among them the physical development is so slow, that the age of puberty is not always attained at twenty. the zingaris, or gypsies, display the same physical precocity as their hindoo ancestry, and, under the austere sky of russia and moldavia, they preserve, together with their ancient notions and habits, the general aspect of face and form of the pariahs.[ ] i do not, however, wish to attack mr. prichard upon all points. there is one of his conclusions which i readily adopt, viz.: "_that the difference of climate occasions very little, if any, important diversity as to the periods of life and the physical changes to which the human constitution is subject_."[ ] this conclusion is very well founded, and i shall not seek to invalidate it; but it appears to me that it contradicts a little the principles so ably advocated by the learned physiologist and antiquary. the reader must have perceived that the discussion turns solely upon permanency of type. if it can be proved that the different branches of the human family are each possessed of a certain individuality which is independent of climate and the lapse of ages, and can be effaced only by intermixture, the question of origin is reduced to little importance; for, in that case, the different types are no less completely and irrevocably separated than if their specific differences arose from diversity of origin. that such is the case, we have already proved by the testimony of egyptian sculptures with regard to the arabs, and by our observations upon the jews and gypsies. should any further proofs be needed, we would mention that the paintings in the temples and subterraneous buildings of the nile valley as indubitably attest the permanence of the negro type. there we see the same crisped hair, prognathous skull, and thick lips. the recent discovery of the bas-reliefs of khorsabad[ ] has removed beyond doubt the conclusions previously formed from the figured monuments of persepolis, viz.: that the present assyrian nations are physiologically identical with those who formerly inhabited the same regions. if similar investigations could be made upon a greater number of existing races, the results would be the same. we have established the fact of permanence of types in all cases where investigation is possible, and the burden of proof, therefore, falls upon the dissenting party. their arguments, indeed, are in direct contradiction to the most obvious facts. thus they allege, although the most ordinary observation shows the contrary, that climate _has_ produced alterations in the jewish type, inasmuch as many light-haired, blue-eyed jews are found in germany. for this argument to be of any weight in their position, the advocates for unity of race must recognize climate to be the sole, or at least principal, cause of this phenomenon. but the adherents of that doctrine elsewhere assert that the color of the eyes, hair, and skin, no ways depends upon geographical situation or the action of heat and cold.[ ] as an evidence of this, they justly cite the cinghalese, who have blue eyes and light hair;[ ] they even observe among them a very considerable difference of complexion, varying from a light brown to black. again, they admit that the samoiedes and tungusians, though living on the borders of the frozen ocean,[ ] have an exceedingly swarthy complexion. if, therefore, climate exerts no influence upon the complexion and color of hair and eyes, these marks must be considered as of no importance, or as pertaining to race. we know that red hair is not at all uncommon in the east, and at no time has been so; it cannot, therefore, create much surprise if we occasionally find it among the jews of germany. this fact cannot be adduced as evidence either in favor of, or against, the permanence of types. the advocates for unity are no less unfortunate in their historical arguments. they furnish but two; the turks and the magyars. the asiatic origin of the former is supposed to be established beyond doubt, as well as of their intimate relationship with the finnic branches of the laplanders and ostiacs. it follows from this that they must originally have displayed the yellow skin, projecting cheek bones, and low stature of the mongolian races. this point being settled, we are told to look at the turks of our day, who exhibit all the characteristics of the european type. types, then, are not permanent, it is victoriously concluded, because the turks have undergone such a transformation. "it is true," say the adherents of the unity school, "that some pretend there had been an admixture of greek, georgian, and circassian blood. but this admixture can have taken place only to a very limited extent; all turks are not rich enough to buy their wives in the caucasus, or to have seraglios filled with white slaves; on the other hand, the hatred which the greeks cherish for their conquerors, and the religious antipathies of both nations, were not favorable to alliances between them, and consequently we see them--though inhabiting the same country--as distinct at this day as at the time of the conquest."[ ] these arguments are more specious than solid. in the first place, i am greatly disposed to doubt the finnic origin of the turkish race, because the only evidence that has hitherto been produced in favor of this supposition is affinity of language, and i shall hereafter give my reasons for believing this argument--when unsupported by any other--as extremely unreliable, and open to doubt. but even if we suppose the ancestors of the turkish nation to belong to the yellow race, it is easy to show why their descendants have so widely departed from that type. centuries elapsed from the time of the first appearance of the turanian hordes to the day which saw them the masters of the city of constantine, and during that period, multifarious events took place; the fortune of the western turks has been a checkered one. alternately conquerors or conquered, masters or slaves, they have become incorporated with various nationalities. according to the annalists,[ ] their orghuse ancestors, who descended from the altai mountains, inhabited in abraham's time the immense steppes of upper asia which extend from katai to the sea of aral, from siberia to thibet, and which, as has recently been proved--were then the abode of numerous germanic tribes.[ ] it is a singular circumstance, that the first mentioning by oriental writers of the tribes of turkestan is in celebrating them for their beauty of face and form.[ ] the most extravagant hyperboles are lavished on them without reserve, and as these writers had before their eyes the handsomest types of the old world with which to compare them, it is not probable that they should have wasted their enthusiasm on creatures so ugly and repulsive as are generally the races of pure mongolian blood. thus, notwithstanding the dicta of philology, i think serious doubts might be raised on that point.[ ] but i am willing to admit that the turcomannic tribes were, indeed, as is supposed, of finnic origin. let us come down to a later period--the mohammedan era. we then find these tribes under various denominations and in equally various situations, dispersed over persia and asia minor. the osmanli were not yet existing at that time, and their predecessors, the seldjuks, were already greatly mixed with the races that had embraced islamism. we see from the example of ghaïased-din-keikosrew, who lived in , that the seljuk princes were in the habit of frequently intermarrying with arab women. they must have gone still further, for we find that aseddin, the mother of one of the seljuk dynasties, was a christian. it is reasonable to suppose, that if the chiefs of the nation, who everywhere are the most anxious to preserve the purity of their genealogy, showed themselves so devoid of prejudice, their subjects were still less scrupulous on that point. their constant inroads in which they ranged over vast districts, gave them ample opportunities for capturing slaves, and there is every reason to believe that already in the th century, the ancient orghuse branch was strongly tinctured with shemitic blood. to this branch belonged osman, the son of ortoghrul, and father of the osmanli. but few families were collected around his tent. his army was, at first, little better than a band of adventurers, and the same expedient which swelled the ranks of the first builders of rome, increased the number of adherents of this new romulus of the steppes. every desperate adventurer or fugitive, of whatever nation, was welcome among them, and assured of protection. i shall suppose that the downfall of the seljuk empire brought to their standards a great number of their own race. but we have already said that this race was very much mixed; and besides, this addition was insufficient, as is proved by the fact that, from that time, the turks began to capture slaves for the avowed purpose of repairing, by this means, the waste which constant warfare made in their own ranks. in the beginning of the th century, the sultan orkhan, following the advice of his vizier, khalil tjendereli, surnamed the black, instituted the famous military body called janissaries.[ ] they were composed entirely of christian children captured in poland, germany, italy, or the bizantine empire, who were educated in the mohammedan religion and the practice of arms. under mohammed iv., their number had increased to , men. here, then, we find an influx of at least half a million male individuals of european blood in the course of four centuries. but the infusion of european blood was not limited to this. the piracy which was carried on, on so large a scale, in the whole basin of the mediterranean, had for one of its principal objects the replenishment of the harems. every victory gained increased the number of believers in the prophet. a great number of the prisoners of war abjured christianity, and were henceforth counted among the true believers. the localities adjacent to the field of battle supplied as many females as the marauding victors could lay hold of. in some cases, this sort of booty was so plentiful that it became inconvenient to dispose of. hammer relates[ ] that, on one occasion, the handsomest female captive was bartered for _one boot_. when we consider that the turkish population of the whole ottoman empire never exceeded twelve millions, it becomes apparent that the history of so amalgamated a nation affords no arguments, either for or against, the permanency of type. we will now proceed to the second historic argument advanced by the believers in unity. "the magyars," they say, "are of finnic origin, nearly related to the laplanders, samoiedes, and esquimaux, all of which are people of low stature, with big faces, projecting cheek-bones, and yellowish or dirty brown complexion. yet the magyars are tall, well formed, and have handsome features. the finns have always been feeble, unintelligent, and oppressed; the magyars, on the contrary, occupy a distinguished rank among the conquerors of the earth, and are noted for their love of liberty and independence. as they are so immensely superior, both physically and morally, to all the collateral branches of the finnic stock, it follows that they have undergone an enormous transformation."[ ] if such a transformation had ever taken place, it would, indeed, be astonishing and inexplicable even to those who ascribe the least stability to types, for it must have occurred within the last years, during which we know that the compatriots of st. stephen[ ] mixed but little with surrounding nations. but the whole course of reasoning is based upon false premises, for the hungarians are most assuredly not of finnic origin. mr. a. de gérando[ ] has placed this fact beyond doubt. he has proved, by the authority of greek and arab historians, as well as hungarian annalists and by indisputable philological arguments, that the magyars are a fragment of that great inundation of nations which swept over europe under the denomination of huns. it will be objected that this is merely giving the hungarians another parentage, but which connects them no less intimately with the yellow race. such is not the case. the designation of huns applies not only to a nation, but is also a collective appellation of a very heterogeneous mass. among the tribes which rallied around the standards of attila and his ancestors, there were some which have at all times been distinguished from the rest by the term _white huns_. among them the germanic blood predominated.[ ] it is true, that the close contact with the yellow race somewhat adulterated the breed; but this very fact is singularly exhibited in the somewhat angular and bony facial conformation of the hungarians. i conclude, therefore, that the magyars were _white huns_, and of germanic origin, though slightly mixed with the mongolian stock. the philological difficulty of their speaking a non-germanic dialect is not insurmountable. i have already alluded to the mongolian scyths who yet spoke an arian tongue;[ ] i might, moreover, cite the norman settlers in france who, not many years after their conquest, exchanged their scandinavian dialect, in a great measure, for the celto-latin of their subjects,[ ] whence sprang that singular compound called norman-french, which the followers of william the conqueror imported into england, and which now forms an element of the english language. there is, therefore, no reason to suppose that the agency of climate and change of habits have transformed a laplander, or an ostiak, or a tunguse, or a permian, into a st. stephen or a kossuth. having thus, i think, refuted the only two historical instances which the believers in unity of species adduce, of a pretended alteration of type by local circumstances and change of habits, and having, moreover, instanced several cases where these causes could produce no alteration; the fact of permanency of type seems to me to be incontestably established.[ ] thus, whichever side we take, whether we believe in original unity, or original diversity, is immaterial; the several groups of the human species are, at present, so perfectly separated from each other, that no exterior influence can efface their distinctive peculiarities. the permanency of these differences, so long as there is no intermixture, produces precisely the same physical and moral results as if the groups were so many distinct and separate creations. in conclusion, i shall repeat what i have said above, that i have very serious doubts as to the unity of origin. these doubts, however, i am compelled to repress, because they are in contradiction to a scientific fact which i cannot refute--the prolificness of half-breeds; and secondly, what is of much greater weight with me, they impugn a religious interpretation sanctioned by the church. footnotes: [ ] for the arguments which may be deduced from the language of holy writ, in favor of plurality of origins, see appendix _c_.--h. [ ] among others, fr�d�ric cuvier, _annales du muséum_, vol. xi. p. . [ ] the reader will be struck by the remarkable illustration of the truth of this remark, which the equine species affords. the vast difference between the swift courser, who excites the enthusiasm of admiring multitudes, and the common hack, need not be pointed out, and it is as well known that either, if the breed be preserved unmixed, will perpetuate their distinctive qualities to a countless progeny.--h. [ ] a free mulatto, who had received a very good education in france, once seriously undertook to prove to me that the saviour's earthly form partook, at the same time, of the characteristics of the white and the black races; in other words, was that of a half-breed. the arguments by which he supported this singular hypothesis were drawn from theology, as well as scriptural ethnology, and were remarkably plausible and ingenious. i am convinced that if the real opinion of colored christians on this subject could be collected, a vast majority would be found to agree with my informant.--h. [ ] our author here gives evidence of a want of critical study of races--the resemblances he has traced do not exist. there is no type in africa south of the equator, or among the aborigines of america, that bears any resemblance to any race in europe or asia.--n. [ ] müller, _handbuch der physiologie des menschen_, vol. ii. p. . [ ] prichard, _op. cit._, pp. , . [ ] an exception, however, must be made in the case of shakspeare, while painting on an italian canvas. in _romeo and juliet_, capulet says:-- "my child is yet a stranger in the world, she hath not seen the change of fourteen years; let two more summers wither in their pride, ere we may think her ripe to be a bride." to which paris answers:-- "younger than she are happy mothers made." [ ] according to m. krapff, a protestant minister in eastern africa, among the wanikos both sexes marry at the age of twelve. (_zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen gesellschaft_, vol. iii. p. .) in paraguay, the jesuits had established the custom, which subsists to this day, of marrying their neophytes, the girls at the age of ten, the boys at that of thirteen. it is not rare to find, in that country, widowers and widows eleven and twelve years old. (a. d'orbigny, _l'homme américain_, vol. i. p. .) in southern brazil, females marry at the age of ten and eleven. menstruation there begins also at a very early age, and ceases equally early. (martius and spix, _reise in brasilien_, vol. i. p. .) i might increase the number of similar quotations indefinitely. [ ] prichard, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] botta, _monumens de ninive_. paris, . [ ] _edinburgh review_, "ethnology, or the science of races," oct. , p. , _et passim_. "there is probably no evidence of original diversity of race which is so generally and unhesitatingly relied upon as that derived from the _color of the skin_ and the _character of the hair_; ... but it will not, we think, stand the test of serious examination.... among the kabyles of algiers and tunis, the tuarites of sahara, the shelahs or mountaineers of southern morocco, and other people of the same race, there are very considerable differences of complexion." (p. .) [ ] _ibid._, _loc. cit._, p. . "the cinghalese are described by dr. davy as varying in color from light brown to black, the prevalent hue of their hair and eyes is black, but hazel eyes and brown hair are not very uncommon; gray eyes and red hair are occasionally seen, though rarely, and sometimes the light-blue or red eye and flaxen hair of the albino." [ ] _ibid._, _loc. cit._ "the samoiedes, tungusians, and others living on the borders of the icy sea, have a dirty-brown or swarthy complexion." [ ] edinburgh review, p. . [ ] hammer, _geschichte des osmanischen reiches_, vol. i. p. . (_history of the ottoman empire._) [ ] ritter, _erdkunde asien_, vol. i. p. , et passim, p. , etc. lassen, _zeitschrift für die kunde des morgenlandes_, vol. ii. p. . benfey, _encyclopædie_, by ersch and gruber, _indien_, p. . alexander von humboldt, speaking of this fact, styles it one of the most important discoveries of our times. (_asie centrale_, vol. ii. p. .) with regard to its bearings upon historical science, nothing can be more true. [ ] nouschirwan, whose reign falls in the first half of the sixth century of our era, married scharouz, the daughter of the khakan of the turks. she was the most beautiful woman of her time. (haneberg, _zeitschr. f. d. k. des morgenl._, vol. i. p. .) this is by no means an isolated instance; schahnameh furnishes a number of similar ones. [ ] the scythes, though having adopted a language of the arian classes, were, nevertheless, a mongolian nation; there would, therefore, be nothing very surprising if the orghuses had been an arian nation, though speaking a finnic dialect. this hypothesis is singularly corroborated by a passage in the relations of the traveller rubruquis, who was sent by st. louis as ambassador to the sovereign of the mongols. "i was struck," says the worthy monk, "with the prince's resemblance to the deceased _m. john de beaumont_, whose complexion was equally fresh and colored." alexander von humboldt, justly interested by this remark, adds: "this physiognomical observation acquires importance, when we recollect that the monarch here spoken of belonged to the family of tchinguiz, who were really of turkish, not of mogul origin." and pursuing this trace, the great _savant_ finds another corroborating fact: "the absence of mongolian features," says he, "strikes us also in the portraits which we possess of the baburides, the conquerors of india." (_asie centrale_, vol. i. p. , and note.) [ ] it will be seen that mr. gobineau differs, in the date he gives of the institution of the janissaries, from all other european writers, who unanimously ascribe the establishment of this corps to mourad i., the third prince of the line of othman. this error, into which gibbon himself has fallen, originated with cantemir: but the concurrent testimony of every turkish historian fixes the epoch of their formation and consecration by the dervish hadji-becktash, to the reign of orkhan, the father of mourad, who, in , enrolled a body of christian youths as soldiers under this name (which signifies, "new regulars"), by the advice of his cousin tchenderli, to whose councils the wise and simple regulations of the infant empire are chiefly attributed. their number was at first only a thousand; but it was greatly augmented when mourad, in , appropriated to this service, by an edict, the _imperial fifth_ of the european captives taken in the war--a measure which has been generally confounded with the first enrolment of the corps. at the accession of soliman the magnificent, their effective strength had reached , ; and under mohammed iv., in the middle of the seventeenth century, that number was more than doubled. but though the original composition of the janissaries is related by every writer who has treated of them, it has not been so generally noticed that for more than two centuries and a half not a single native turk was admitted into their ranks, which were recruited, like those of the mamelukes, solely by the continual supply of christian slaves, at first captives of tender age taken in war, and afterwards, when this source proved inadequate to the increased demand, by an annual levy among the children of the lower orders of christians throughout the empire--a dreadful tax, frequently alluded to by busbequius, and which did not finally cease till the reign of mohammed iv. at a later period, when the krim tartars became vassals of the porte, the yearly inroads of the fierce cavalry of that nation into the southern provinces of russia, were principally instrumental in replenishing this nursery of soldiers; and fletcher, who was ambassador from queen elizabeth to ivan the terrible, describes, in his quaint language, the method pursued in these depredations: "the chief bootie the tartars seeke for in all their warres, is to get store of captives, specially young boyes and girles, whom they sell to the turkes, or other, their neighbours. to this purpose, they take with them great baskets, made like bakers' panniers, _to carrie them tenderly_; and if any of them happens to tyre, or bee sicke on the way, they dash him against the ground, or some tree, and so leave him dead." (_purchas's pilgrims_, vol. iii. p. .) the boys, thus procured from various quarters, were assembled at constantinople, where, after a general inspection, those whose personal advantages or indications of superior talent distinguished them from the crowd, were set aside as pages of the seraglio or mamelukes in the households of the pashas and other officers, whence in due time they were promoted to military commands or other appointments: but the remaining multitude were given severally in charge to peasants or artisans of turkish race, principally in anatolia, by whom they were trained up, till they approached the age of manhood, in the tenets of the moslem faith, and inured to all the privations and toils of a hardy and laborious life. after this severe probation, they were again transferred to the capital, and enrolled in the different _odas_ or regiments; and here their military education commenced.--h. [ ] _erdkunde, asien_, vol. i. p. . [ ] _ethnology_, etc., p. : "the hungarian nobility ... is proved by historical and philological evidence to have been a branch of the great northern asiatic stock, closely allied in blood to the stupid and feeble ostiaks, and the untamable laplander." [ ] st. stephen reigned about the year , nearly one century and a half after the first invasion of the magyars, under their leaders, arpad and zulta. he introduced christianity among his people, on which account he was canonized, and is now the tutelary saint of his nation. it may not be known to the generality of our readers, that the magyars, though they have now resided nearly one thousand years in hungary, have, with few exceptions, never applied themselves to the tillage of the soil. agriculture, to this day, remains almost exclusively in the hands of the original (the slowack or sclavonian) population. the magyar's wealth consists in his herds, or, if he owns land, it is the slowacks that cultivate it for him. it is a singular phenomenon that these two races, though professing the same religion, have remained almost entirely unmixed, and each still preserves its own language.--h. [ ] _essai historique sur l'origine des hongrois._ paris, . [ ] it appears that we shall be compelled henceforward to considerably modify our usually received opinions with regard to the nations of central asia. it cannot now be any longer doubted that many of these populations contain a very considerable admixture of white blood, a fact of which our predecessors in the study of history had not the slightest apprehension. alexander von humboldt makes a very important remark upon this subject, in speaking of the kirghis-kazakes, mentioned by menander of byzant, and constantine porphyrogenetus; and he shows conclusively that the kirghis (~cherchis~) concubine spoken of by the former writer as a present of the turkish chief dithubùl to zemarch, the ambassador of justinian ii., in a. d. , was a girl of mixed blood--partly white. she is the precise counterpart of those beautiful turkish girls, whose charms are so much extolled by persian writers, and who did not belong, any more than she, to the mongolian race. (vide _asie centrale_, vol. i. p. , _et passim_, and vol. ii. pp. , .) [ ] schaffarick, _slawische alterthümer_, vol. i. p. , _et passim_. [ ] aug. thierry, _histoire de la conquite de l'angleterre_. paris, , vol. i. p. . [ ] in my introductory note to chapters viii. and ix. (see p. ), i have mentioned a remarkable instance of the permanency of characteristics, even in branches of the same race. an equally, if not more striking illustration of this fact is given by alex. von humboldt. it is well known that spain contains a population composed of very dissimilar ethnical elements, and that the inhabitants of its various provinces differ essentially, not only in physical appearance, but still more in mental characteristics. as in all newly-settled countries, immigrants from the same locality are apt to select the same spot, the extensive spanish possessions on this continent were colonized, each respectively, by some particular province in the mother country. thus the biscayans settled mexico; the andalusians and natives of the canary islands, venezuela; the catalonians, buenos ayres; the castillians, peru, etc. although centuries have elapsed since these original settlements, and although the character of the spanish americans must have been variously modified by the physical nature of their new homes, whether situated in the vicinity of coasts, or of mining districts, or in isolated table-lands, or in fertile valleys; notwithstanding all this, the great traveller and experienced observer still clearly recognizes in the character of the various populations of south america, the distinctive peculiarities of the original settlers. says he: "the andalusians and canarians of venezuela, the mountaineers and the biscayans of mexico, the catalonians of buenos ayres, evince considerable differences in their aptitude for agriculture, for the mechanical arts, for commerce, and for all objects connected with intellectual development. _each of these races has preserved, in the new, as in the old world, the shades that constitute its national physiognomy_; its asperity or mildness of character; its freedom from sordid feelings, or its excessive love of gain; its social hospitality, or its taste of solitude.... in the inhabitants of caracas, santa fé, quito, and buenos ayres, we still recognize the features that belong to the race of the first settlers."--_personal narrative_, eng. trans., vol. i. p. .--h. chapter xii. classification of races. primary varieties--test for recognizing them; not always reliable--effects of intermixture--secondary varieties--tertiary varieties--amalgamation of races in large cities--relative scale of beauty in various branches of the human family--their inequality in muscular strength and powers of endurance. [in supervising the publication of this work, i have thought proper to omit, in this place, a portion of the translation, because containing ideas and suggestions which--though they might be novel to a french public--have often been laid before english readers, and as often proven untenable. this omission, however, embraces no essential feature of the book, no link of the chain of argumentation. it extends no further than a digressional attempt of the author to account for the diversities observable in the various branches of the human family, by imagining the existence of cosmogonal causes, long since effete, but operating for a time soon after the creation of man, when the globe was still in a nascent and chaotic state. it must be obvious that all such speculations can never bridge over the wide abyss which separates _hypotheses_ from _facts_. they afford a boundless field for play to a fertile imagination, but will never stand the test of criticism. even if we were to suppose that such causes had effected diversities in the human family in primeval times, the types thus produced must all have perished in the flood, save that to which noah and his family belonged. if these writers, however, should be disposed to deny the universality of the deluge, they would evidently do greater violence to the language of holy writ, than by at once supposing a plurality of origins for mankind. the legitimate field of human science is the investigation of the laws _now_ governing the material world. beyond this it may not go. whatever is recognized as not coming within the scope of action of these laws, belongs not to its province. we have proved, and i think it is generally admitted, that the actual varieties of the human family are _permanent_; that there are no causes _now in operation_, which can transform them. the investigation of those causes, therefore, cannot properly be said to belong to the province of human science. in regard to their various systems of classification, naturalists may be permitted to dispute about unity or plurality of species, because the use of the word species is more or less arbitrary; it is an expedient to secure a convenient arrangement. but none, i hope, presume ever to be able to fathom the mysteries of creative power--to challenge the fiat of the almighty, and inquire into his _means_.--h.] in the investigation of the moral and intellectual diversities of races, there is no difficulty so great as an accurate classification. i am disposed to think a separation into three great groups sufficient for all practical purposes. these groups i shall call primary varieties, not in the sense of distinct creations, but as offering obvious and well-defined distinguishing characteristics. i would designate them respectively by the terms white, yellow, and black. i am aware of the inaccuracy of these appellations, because the complexion is not always the distinctive feature of these groups: other and more important physiological traits must be taken into consideration. but as i have not the right to invent new names, and am, therefore, compelled to select among those already in use, i have chosen these because, though by no means correct, they seemed preferable to others borrowed from geography or history, and not so apt as the latter to add to the confusion which already sufficiently perplexes the investigator of this subject. to obviate any misconception here and hereafter, i wish it to be distinctly understood that by "white" races i mean those usually comprised under the name of caucasian, shemitic, japhetic; by "black," the hamitic, african, etc.; by "yellow," the altaic, mongolian, finnic, and tartar. these i consider to be the three categories under which all races of the human family can be placed. i shall hereafter explain my reasons for not recognizing the american indians as a separate variety, and for classing them among the yellow races.[ ] it is obvious that each of these groups comprises races very dissimilar among themselves, each of which, besides the general characteristics belonging to the whole group, possesses others peculiar to itself. thus, in the group of black races we find marked distinctions: the tribes with prognathous skull and woolly hair, the low-caste hindoos of kamaoun and of dekhan, the pelagian negroes of polynesia, etc. in the yellow group, the tungusians, mongols, chinese, etc. there is every reason to believe that these sub-varieties are coeval; that is, the same causes which produced one, produced at the same time all the others. it is, moreover, extremely difficult to determine the typical character of each variety. in the white, and also in the yellow group, the mixture of the sub-varieties is so great, that it is impossible to fix upon the type. in the black group, the type is perhaps discernible; at least, it is preserved in its greatest purity. to ascertain the relative purity or mixture of a race, a criterion has been adopted by many, who consider it infallible: this is resemblance of face, form, constitution, etc. it is supposed that the purer a race has preserved itself, the greater must be the exterior resemblances of all the individuals composing it. on the contrary, considerable and varied intermixtures would produce an infinite diversity of appearance among individuals. this fact is incontestable, and of great value in ethnological science, but i do not think it quite so reliable as some suppose. intermixture of races does, indeed, produce at first individual dissemblances, for few individuals belong in precisely the same degree to either of the races composing the mixture. but suppose that, in course of time, the fusion has become complete--that every individual member of the mixed race had precisely the same proportion of mixed blood as every other--he could not then differ greatly from his neighbor. the whole mass, in that case, must present the same general homogeneity as a pure race. the perfect amalgamation of two races of the same group would, therefore, produce a new type, presenting a fictitious appearance of purity, and reproducing itself in succeeding generations. i imagine it possible, therefore, that a "secondary" type may in time assume all the characteristics of a "primary" one, viz: resemblance of the individuals composing it. the lapse of time to produce this complete fusion would necessarily be commensurate to the original diversity of the constituent elements. where two races belonging to different groups combine, such a complete fusion would probably never be possible. i can illustrate this by reference to individuals. parents of widely different nations generally have children but little resembling each other--some apparently partaking more of the father's type, some more of the mother's. but if the parents are both of the same, or at least of homogeneous stocks, their offspring exhibits little or no variety; and though the children might resemble neither of the parents, they would be apt to resemble one another. to distinguish the varieties produced by a fusion of proximate races from those which are the effect of intermixture between races belonging to different groups, i shall call the latter _tertiary_ varieties. thus the woolly-headed negro and the pelagian are both "primary" varieties belonging to the same group; their offspring i would call a "secondary" variety; but the hymen of either of them with a race belonging to the white or yellow groups, would produce a "tertiary" variety. to this last, then, belong the mulatto, or cross between white and black, and the polynesian, who is a cross between the black and the yellow.[ ] half-breeds of this kind display, in various proportions and degrees, the special characteristics of both the ancestral races. but a complete fusion, as in the case of branches of the same group, probably never results from the union of two widely dissimilar races, or, at least, would require an incommensurable lapse of time. if a tertiary type is again modified by intermixture with another, as is the case in a cross between a mulatto and a mongolian, or between a polynesian and a european, the ethnical mixture is too great to permit us, in the present state of the science, to arrive at any general conclusions. it appears that every additional intermixture increases the difficulty of complete fusion. in a population composed of a great number of dissimilar ethnical elements, it would require countless ages for a thorough amalgamation; that is to say, so complete a mixture that each individual would have precisely the kind and relative proportion of mixed blood as every other. it follows, therefore, that, in a population so constituted, there is an infinite diversity of form and features among individuals, some pertaining more to one type than another. in other words, there being no equilibrium between the various types, they crop out here and there without any apparent reason. we find this spectacle among the great civilized nations of europe, especially in their capitals and seaports. in these great vortexes of humanity, every possible variety of our species has been absorbed. negro, chinese, tartar, hottentot, indian, malay, and all the minor varieties produced by their mixture, have contributed their contingent to the population of our large cities. since the roman domination, this amalgamation has continually increased, and is still increasing in proportion as our inventions bring in closer proximity the various portions of the globe. it affects all classes to some extent, but more especially the lowest. among them you may see every type of the human family more or less represented. in london, paris, cadiz, constantinople, in any of the greater marts and thoroughfares of the world, the lower strata of the _native_ population exhibit every possible variety, from the prognathous skull to the pyramidal: you shall find one man with hair as crisp as a negro's; another, with the eyes of an ancient german, or the oblique ones of a chinese; a third, with a thoroughly shemitic countenance; yet all three may be close relations, and would be greatly surprised were they told that any but the purest white blood flows in their veins. in these vast gathering places of humanity, if you could take the first comer--a native of the place--and ascend his genealogical tree to any height, you would probably be amazed at the strange ancestry at the top. it may now be asked whether, for all the various races of which i have spoken, there is but one standard of beauty, or whether each has one of its own. helvetius, in his _de l'esprit_, maintains that the idea of beauty is purely conventional and variable. this assertion found many advocates in its time, but it is at present superseded by the more philosophical theory that the conception of the beautiful is an absolute and invariable idea, and can never have a merely optional application. believing the latter view to be correct, i do not hesitate to compare the various races of man in point of beauty, and to establish a regular scale of gradation. thus, if we compare the various races, from the ungainly appearance of the pelagian or pecherai up to the noble proportions of a charlemagne, the expressive regularity of features of a napoleon, or the majestic countenance of a louis xiv., we shall find in the lowest on the scale a sort of rudimentary development of the beauty which attracts us in the highest; and in proportion to the perfectness of that development, the races rise in the scale of beauty.[ ] taking the white race as the standard of beauty, we perceive all the others more or less receding from that model. there is, then, an inequality in point of beauty among the various races of men, and this inequality is permanent and indelible.[ ] the next question to be decided is, whether there is also an inequality in point of physical strength. it cannot be denied that the american indians and the hindoos are greatly inferior to us in this respect. of the australians, the same may safely be asserted. even the negroes possess less muscular vigor.[ ] it is necessary, however, to distinguish between purely muscular force--that which exerts itself suddenly at a given moment--and the force of resistance or capacity for endurance. the degree of the former is measured by its intensity, that of the other by its duration. of the two, the latter is the typical--the standard by which to judge of the capabilities of races. great muscular strength is found among races notoriously weak. among the lowest of the negro tribes, for instance, it would not be difficult to find individuals that could match an experienced european wrestler or english boxer. this is equally true of the lascars and malays. but we must take the masses, and judge according to the amount of long-continued, persevering toil and fatigue they are capable of. in this respect, the white races are undoubtedly entitled to pre-eminence. but there are differences, again, among the white races, both in beauty and in strength, which even the extensive ethnical mixture, that european nations present, has not entirely obliterated. the italians are handsomer than the french and the spaniards, and still more so than the swiss and germans. the english also present a high degree of corporeal beauty; the sclavonian nations a comparatively humble one. in muscular power, the english rank far above all other european nations; but the french and spaniards are greatly superior in power of endurance: they suffer less from fatigue, from privations, and the rigors and changes of climate. this question has been settled beyond dispute by the fatal campaign in russia. while the germans, and other troops from the north, who yet were accustomed to severe cold, were almost totally annihilated, the french regiments, though paying fearfully dear for their retreat, nevertheless saved the greatest number of men. some have attempted to explain this by a supposed superiority on the part of the french in martial education and military spirit. but the german officers had certainly as high a conception of a soldier's duty, as elevated a sentiment of honor, as our soldiers; yet they perished in incredibly greater numbers. i think it can hardly be disputed that the masses of the population of france possess a superiority in certain physical qualities, which enables them to defy with greater impunity than most other nations the freezing snows of russia and the burning sands of egypt. footnotes: [ ] i have already alluded to the classification adopted by mr. latham, the great ethnographer, which, though different in the designations, is precisely similar to that of mr. gobineau. hamilton smith also comes to the conclusion that, "as there are only three varieties who attain the typical standard, we have in them the foundation of that number being exclusively aboriginal." he therefore divides the races of men into three classes, which he calls "typical forms," and which nearly correspond to mr. gobineau's and mr. latham's "primary varieties." but, notwithstanding this weight of authorities against me, i cannot entirely agree as to the correctness of this classification. fewer objections seem to me to lie against that proposed by van amringe, which i recommend to the consideration of the reader, and, though perhaps out of place in a mere foot-note, subjoin at full length. it must be remembered that the author of this system, though he uses the word species to distinguish the various groups, is one of the advocates for _unity of origin_. (the words _japhetic_ and _shemitic_ are also employed in a sense somewhat different from that which common usage has assigned them.) the shemitic species. _psychical or spiritual character_, viz:-- all the physical attributes developed harmoniously.--warlike, but not cruel, or destructive. _temperament._--strenuous. _physical character_, viz:-- a high degree of sensibility; fair complexion; copious, soft, flowing hair, often curled, or waving; ample beard; small, oval, perpendicular face, with features very distinct; expanded forehead; large and elevated cranium; narrow elevated nose, distinct from the other features; small mouth, and thin lips; chin, round, full, and somewhat prominent, generally equal with the lips. varieties. the israelites, greeks, romans, teutones, sclavons, celts, &c., and many sub-varieties. the japhetic species. _psychical or spiritual character_, viz: attributes unequally developed. moderately mental--originative, inventive, but not speculative. not warlike, but destructive. _temperament._--passive. _physical character_, viz:-- medium sensibility; olive yellow complexion; hair thin, coarse, and black; little or no beard; broad, flattened, and triangular face; high, pyramidal, and square-shaped skull; forehead small and low; wide and small nose, particularly broad at the root; linear and highly arched eyebrows; very oblique eyes, broad, irregular, and half-closed, the upper eyelid extending a little beyond the lower; thick lips. varieties. the chinese, mongolians, japanese, chin indians, &c., and probably the esquimaux, toltecs, aztecs, peruvians. the ishmaelitic species. _psychical or spiritual character_, viz:-- attributes generally equally developed. moderately mental; not originative, or inventive, but speculative; roving, predatory, revengeful, and sensual. warlike and highly destructive. _temperament._--callous. _physical character._--sub-medium sensibility; dark skin, more or less red, or of a copper-color tinge; hair black, straight, and strong; face broad, immediately under the eyes; high cheek-bones; nose prominent and distinct, particularly in profile; mouth and chin, european. varieties. most of the tartar and arabian tribes, and the whole of the american indians, unless those mentioned in the second species should be excepted. the canaanitic species. _psychical or spiritual character_, viz:-- attributes equally undeveloped. inferiorly mental; not originative, inventive, or speculative; roving, revengeful, predatory, and highly sensual; warlike and destructive. _temperament._--sluggish. _physical character._--sluggish sensibility, approaching to torpor; dark or black skin; hair black, generally woolly; skull compressed on the sides, narrow at the forehead, which slants backwards; cheek-bones very prominent; jaws projecting; teeth oblique, and chin retreating, forming a muzzle-shaped profile; nose broad, flat, and confused with the face; eyes prominent; lips thick. varieties. the negroes of central africa, hottentots, cafirs, australasian negroes, &c.; and probably the malays, &c. _nat. hist. of man_, p. _et passim_. if the reader will carefully examine the psychical characteristics of these groups, as given in the above extract, he will find them to accord better with the whole of mr. gobineau's theories, than mr. gobineau's own classification.--h. [ ] it is probably a typographical error, that makes mr. flourens (_eloge de blumenbach_, p. ) say that the polynesian race was "a mixture of two others, the _caucasian_ and the mongolian." the black and the mongolian is undoubtedly what the learned academician wished to say. [ ] this may be so in our eyes. it is natural for us to think those the most pleasing in appearance, that closest resemble our own type. but were an african to institute a comparative scale of beauty, would he not place his own race highest, and declare that "all races rose in the scale of beauty in proportion to the perfectness of the development" of african features? i think it extremely probable--nay, positively certain. mr. hamilton smith takes the same side as the author. "it is a mistaken notion," says he, "to believe that the standard contour of beauty and form differs materially in any country. fashion may have the influence of setting up certain deformities for perfections, both at pekin and at paris, but they are invariably apologies which national pride offers for its own defects. the youthful beauty of canton would be handsome (?) in london," etc. mr. van amringe, on the contrary, after a careful examination of the facts brought to light by travellers and other investigators, comes to the conclusion that "the standard of beauty in the different species (see p. , _note_) of man is wholly different, physically, morally, and intellectually. consequently, that taste for personal beauty in each species is incompatible with the perception of sexual beauty out of the species." (_op. cit._, p. .) "a difference of taste for sexual beauty in the several races of men is the great natural law which has been instrumental in separating them, and keeping them distinct, more effectually than mountains, deserts, or oceans. this separation has been perfect for the whole historic period, and continues to be now as wide as it is or has been in any distinct species of animals. why has this been so? did prejudice operate four thousand years ago exactly as it does now? if it did not, how came the races to separate into distinct masses at the very earliest known period, and, either voluntarily or by force, take up distinct geographical abodes?" (_ibid._, pp. and .)--h. [ ] this inequality is not the less great, nor the less permanent, if we suppose each type to have its own standard. nay, if the latter be true, it is a sign of a more _radical_ difference among races.--h. [ ] upon the aborigines of america, consult martius and spix, _reise in brasilien_, vol. i. p. ; upon the negroes, pruner, _der neger, eine aphoristische skizze aus der medicinischen topographie von cairo_. in regard to the superiority in muscular vigor over all other races, see carus, _ueber ungl. bef._, p. . note to the preceding chapter. the position and treatment of woman among the various races of men a proof of their moral and intellectual diversity. the reader will pardon me if to mr. gobineau's scale of gradation in point of beauty and physical strength, i add another as accurate, i think, if not more so, and certainly as interesting. i allude to the manner in which the weaker sex is regarded and treated among the various races of men. in the words of van amringe, "from the brutal new hollander, who secures his wife by knocking her down with a club and dragging the prize to his cave, to the polished european, who, fearfully, but respectfully and assiduously, spends a probation of months or years for his better half, the ascent may be traced with unfailing precision and accuracy." the same writer correctly argues that if any principle could be inferred from analogy to animals, it would certainly be a uniform treatment of the female sex among all races of man; for animals are remarkably uniform in the relations of the male and female in the same species. yet among some races of men _polygamy has always prevailed, among others never_. would not any naturalist consider as distinct species any animals of the same genus so distinguished? this subject has not yet met with due attention at the hands of ethnologists. "when we hear of a race of men," says the same author, "being subjected to the tyranny of another race, either by personal bondage or the more easy condition of tribute, our sympathies are enlisted in their favor, and our constant good wishes, if not our efforts, accompany them. but when we hear of hundreds of millions of the truest and most tender-hearted of human creatures being trodden down and trampled upon in everything that is dear to the human heart, our sympathies, which are so freely expended on slighter occasions or imaginary evils, are scarcely awakened to their crushing woes." with the writer from whom i have already made copious extracts, i believe that the _moral and intellectual diversity_ of the races of men cannot be thoroughly and accurately investigated without taking into consideration the relations which most influence individual as well as national progress and development, and which result from the position occupied by woman towards man. this truth has not escaped former investigators--it would be singular if it had--but they have contented themselves with asserting that the condition of the female sex was indicative of the degree of civilization. had they said, of the intrinsic worth of various races, i should cheerfully assent. but the elevation or degradation of woman in the social scale is generally regarded as a _result_, not a _cause_. it is said that all barbarians treat their women as slaves; but, as they progress in civilization, woman gradually rises to her legitimate rank. for the sake of the argument, i shall assume that all now civilized nations at first treated their women as the actual barbarians treat theirs. that this is not so, i hope to place beyond doubt; but, assuming it to be the case, might not the fact that some left off that treatment, while others did not, be adduced as a proof of the inequality of races? "the law of the relation of the sexes," says van amringe, "is more deeply engraven upon human nature than any other; because, whatever theories may be adopted in regard to the origin of society, languages, etc., no doubt can be entertained that the _influence of woman must have been anterior to any improvements of the original condition of man_. consequently it was antecedent and superior to education and government. that these relations were powerfully instrumental in the origin of development, to give it a direction and character according to the natures operating and operated upon, cannot be doubted by any one who has paid the slightest attention to domestic influences, from and under which education, customs, and government commenced." but i totally deny that all races, in their first state of development, treated their women equally. there is not only no historical testimony to prove that _any_ of the white races were ever in such a state of barbarity and in such moral debasement as most of the dark races are to this day, and have always been, but there is positive evidence to show that our barbarous ancestors assigned to woman the same position we assign her now: she was the companion, and not the slave, of man. i have already alluded to this in a previous note on the teutonic races; i cannot, however, but revert to it again. as i have not space for a lengthy discussion, i shall mention but one fact, which i think conclusive, and which rests upon incontrovertible historical testimony. "to a german mind," says tacitus (murphy's transl., vol. vii. ), "the idea of a woman led into captivity is insupportable. in consequence of this prevailing sentiment, the states which deliver as hostages the daughters of illustrious families are bound by the most effectual obligations." did this assertion rest on the authority of tacitus only, it might perhaps be called in question. it might be said that the illustrious roman had drawn an ideal picture, etc. but cæsar dealt with realities, not idealities; he was a shrewd, practical statesman, and an able general; yet cæsar _did_ take females as hostages from the german tribes, in preference to men. suppose cæsar had made war against the king of ashantee, and taken away some of his three thousand three hundred and thirty-three wives, the mystical number being thus forcibly disturbed, might have alarmed the nation, whose welfare is supposed to depend on it; but the misfortune would soon have been remedied. but it is possible to demonstrate not only that all races did not treat their women equally in their first stage of development, but also that no race which assigned to woman in the beginning an inferior position ever raised her from it in any subsequent stage of development. i select the chinese for illustration, because they furnish us with an example of a long-continued and regular intellectual progress,[ ] which yet never resulted in an alteration of woman's position in the social structure. the decadent chinese of our day look upon the female half of their nation as did the rapidly advancing chinese of the seventh and eighth centuries; and the latter in precisely the same manner as their barbarous ancestors, the subjects of the emperor _fou_, more than twenty centuries before. i repeat it, the relations of the sexes, in various races, are equally dissimilar in every stage of development. the state of society may change, the tendency of a race never. faculties may be developed, but never lost. as the mothers and wives of our teutonic ancestors were near the battle-field, to administer refreshments to the wearied combatants, to stanch the bleeding of their wounds, and to inspire with renewed courage the despairing, so, in modern times, matrons and maidens of the highest rank--worthy daughters of a heroic ancestry--have been found by thousands ready to sacrifice the comforts and quiet of home for the horrors of a hospital.[ ] as the rude warrior of a former age won his beloved by deeds of valor, so, to his civilized descendant, the hand of his mistress is the prize and reward of exertion. the wives and mothers of the ancient germans and celts were the counsellors of their sons and husbands in the most important affairs; our wives and mothers are our advisers in our more peaceful pursuits. but the arab, when he had arrived at the culminating point of his civilization, and when he had become the teacher of our forefathers of the middle ages in science and the arts, looked upon his many wives in the same light as his roaming brother in the desert had done before, and does now. i do not ask of all these races that they should assign to their women the same rank that we do. if intellectual progress and social development among them showed the slightest tendency to produce ultimately an alteration in woman's position towards her lord, i might be content to submit to the opinion of those who regard that position as the effect of such a progress and such a development. but i cannot, in the history of those races, perceive the slightest indication of such a result, and all my observations lead me to the conclusion that the relations between the sexes are a cause, and not an effect. the character of the women of different races differs in essential points. what a vast difference, for instance, between the females of the rude crusaders who took possession of constantinople, and the more civilized byzantine greeks whom they so easily conquered; between the heroic matron of barbarous germany and the highly civilized chinese lady! these differences cannot be entirely the effect of education, else we are forced to consider the female sex as mere automatons. they must be the result of diversity of character. and why not, in the investigation of the moral and intellectual diversity of races and the natural history of man, take into consideration the peculiarities that characterize the female portion of each race, a portion--i am forced to make this trite observation, because so many investigators seem to forget it--which comprises at least one-half of the individuals to be described?--h. footnotes: [ ] because we now find the chinese apparently stationary, many persons unreflectingly conclude that they were always so; which would presuppose that the chinese were placed upon earth with the faculty of making porcelain, gunpowder, paper, etc., somewhat after the manner in which bees make their cells. but in the annals of the chinese empire, the date of many of their principal inventions is distinctly recorded. there was a long period of vigorous intellectual activity among that singular people, a period during which good books were written, and ingenious inventions made in rapid succession. this period has ceased, but the chinese are not therefore stationary. they are _retrograding_. no chinese workman can now make porcelain equal to that of former ages, which consequently bears an exorbitant price as an object of _virtû_. the secret of many of their arts has been lost, the practice of all is gradually deteriorating. no book of any note has been written these hundreds of years in that great empire. hence their passionate attachment to everything old, which is not, as is so generally presumed, the _cause_ of their stagnation: it is the _sign_ of intellectual decadence, and the brake which prevents a still more rapid descent. whenever a nation begins to extravagantly prize the productions of preceding ages, it is a confession that it can no longer equal them: it has begun to retrograde. but the very retrogression is a proof that there once was an opposite movement. [ ] the fearful scenes of blood which the beginning of our century witnessed, had crowded the hospitals with wounded and dying. professional nurses could afford little help after battles like those of jena, of eylau, of feldbach, or of leipsic. it was then that, in northern germany, thousands of ladies of the first families sacrificed their health, and, in too many instances, their lives, to the christian duty of charity. many of the noble houses still mourn the loss of some fair matron or maiden, who fell a victim to her self-devotion. in the late war between denmark and prussia, the danish ladies displayed an equal zeal. scutari also will be remembered in after ages as a monument of what the women of our race can do. but why revert to the past, and to distant scenes? have we not daily proofs around us that the heroic virtues of by-gone ages still live in ours? chapter xiii. perfectibility of man. imperfect notions of the capability of savage tribes--parallel between our civilization and those that preceded it--our modern political theories no novelty--the political parties of rome--peace societies--the art of printing a means, the results of which depend on its use--what constitutes a "living" civilization--limits of the sphere of intellectual acquisitions. to understand perfectly the differences existing among races, in regard to their intellectual capacity, it is necessary to ascertain the lowest degree of stupidity that humanity is capable of. the inferior branches of the human family have hitherto been represented, by a majority of scientific observers, as considerably more abased than they are in reality. the first accounts of a tribe of savages almost always depict them in exaggerated colors of the darkest cast, and impute to them such utter intellectual and reasoning incapacity, that they seem to sink to the level of the monkey, and below that of the elephant. there are, indeed, some contrasts. let a navigator be well received in some island--let him succeed in persuading a few of the natives to work, however little, with the sailors, and praises are lavished upon the fortunate tribe: they are declared susceptible of every improvement; and perhaps the eulogist will go so far as to assert that he has found among them minds of a very superior order. to both these judgments we must object--the one being too favorable, the other too severe. because some natives of tahiti assisted in repairing a whaler, or some inhabitant of tonga tabou exhibited good feelings towards the white strangers who landed on his isle, it does not follow that either are capable of receiving our civilization, or of being raised to a level with us. nor are we warranted in classing among brutes the poor naturals of a newly-discovered coast, who greet their first visitors with a shower of stones and arrows, or who are found making a dainty repast on raw lizards and clods of clay. such a meal does not, indeed, indicate a very superior intelligence, or very refined manners. but even in the most repulsive cannibal there lies latent a spark of the divine flame, and reason may be awakened to a certain extent. there are no tribes so very degraded that they do not reason in some degree, whether correctly or otherwise, upon the things which surround them. this ray of human intelligence, however faint it may be, is what distinguishes the most degraded savage from the most intelligent brute, and capacitates him for receiving the teachings of religion. but are these mental faculties, which every individual of our species possesses, susceptible of indefinite development? have all men the same capacity for intellectual progress? in other words, can cultivation raise all the different races to the same intellectual standard? and are no limits imposed to the perfectibility of our species? my answer to these questions is, that all races are capable of improvement, but all cannot attain the same degree of perfection, and even the most favored cannot exceed a certain limit. the idea of infinite perfection has gained many partisans in our times, because we, like all who came before us, pride ourselves upon possessing advantages and points of superiority unknown to our predecessors. i have already spoken of the distinguishing features of our civilization, but willingly revert to this subject again. it may be said, that in all the departments of science we possess clearer and more correct notions; that, upon the whole, our manners are more polished, and our code of morals is preferable to that of the ancients. it is further asserted, as the principal proof of our superiority, that we have better defined, juster and more tolerant ideas with regard to political liberty. sanguine theorists are not wanting, who pretend that our discoveries in political science and our enlightened views of the rights of man will ultimately lead us to that universal happiness and harmony which the ancients in vain sought in the fabled garden of hesperides. these lofty pretensions will hardly bear the test of severe historical criticism. if we surpass preceding generations in scientific knowledge, it is because we have added our share to the discoveries which they bequeathed to us. we are their heirs, their pupils, their continuators, just as future generations will be ours. we achieve great results by the application of the power of steam; we have solved many great problems in mechanics, and pressed the elements as submissive slaves into our service. but do these successes bring us any nearer to omniscience. at most, they may enable us ultimately to fathom all the secrets of the material world. and when we shall have achieved that grand conquest, for which so much requires still to be done that is not yet commenced, nor even anticipated; have we advanced a single step beyond the simple exposition of the laws which govern the material world? we may have learned to direct our course through the air, to approach the limits of the respirable atmosphere; we may discover and elucidate several interesting astronomical problems; we may have greater powers for controlling nature and compelling her to minister to our wants, but can all this knowledge make us better, happier beings? suppose we had counted all the planetary systems and measured the immense regions of space, would we know more of the grand mystery of existence than those that came before us? would this add one new faculty to the human mind, or ennoble human nature by the eradication of one bad passion? admitting that we are more enlightened upon some subjects, in how many other respects are we inferior to our more remote ancestors? can it be doubted, for instance, that in abraham's times much more was known of primordial traditions than the dubious beams which have come down to us? how many discoveries which we owe to mere accident, or which are the fruits of painful efforts, were the lost possessions of remote ages? how many more are not yet restored? what is there in the most splendid of our works that can compare with those wonders by which egypt, india, greece, and america still attest the grandeur and magnificence of so many edifices which the weight of centuries, much more than the impotent ravages of man, has caused to disappear? what are our works of art by the side of those of athens; our thinkers by the side of those of alexandria or india; our poets by the side of a valmiki, kalidasa, homer, pindar? the truth is, we pursue a different direction from that of the human societies whose civilization preceded ours. we apply our mind to different purposes and different investigations; but while we clear and cultivate new lands, we are compelled to neglect and abandon to sterility those to which they devoted their attention. what we gain in one direction we lose in another. we cannot call ourselves superior to the ancients, unless we had preserved at least the principal acquisitions of preceding ages in all their integrity, and had succeeded in establishing by the side of these, the great results which they as well as we sought after. our sciences and arts superadded to theirs have not enabled us to advance one step nearer the solution of the great problems of existence, the mysteries of life and death. "i seek, but find not," has always been, will ever be, the humiliating confession of science when endeavoring to penetrate into the secrets concealed by the veil that it is not given to mortal to lift. in criticism[ ] we are, undoubtedly, much in advance of our predecessors; but criticism implies classification, not acquisition. nor can we justly pride ourselves upon any superiority in regard to political ideas. political and social theories were as rife in athens after the age of pericles as they are in our days. to be convinced of this, it is necessary only to study aristophanes, whose comedies plato recommends to the perusal of whoever wishes to become acquainted with the public morals of the city of minerva. it has been pretended that our present structure of society, and that of the ancients, admit of no comparison, owing to the institution of slavery which formed an element of the latter. but the only real difference is that demagogism had then an even more fertile soil in which to strike root. the slaves of those days find their precise counterpart in our working classes and proletarians.[ ] the athenian people propitiating their servile class after the battle of arginuses, might be taken for a picture of the nineteenth century. look at rome. open cicero's letters. what a specimen of the moderate tory that great roman orator was; what a similarity between his republic and our constitutional bodies politic, with regard to the language of parties and parliamentary debates! there, too, the background of the picture was occupied by degraded masses of a servile and prædial population, always eager for change, and ready to rise in actual rebellion. let us leave those dregs of the population, whose civil existence the law ignored, and who counted in politics but as the formidable tool of designing individuals of free birth. but does not the free population of rome afford a perfect analogue to a modern body politic? there is the mob crying for bread, greedy of shows, flattery, gratuitous distributions, and amusements; the middle classes (_bourgeoisie_) monopolizing and dividing among themselves the public offices; the hereditary aristocracy, continually assailed at all points, continually losing ground, until driven in mere self-defence to abjure all superior claims and stipulate for equal rights to all. are not these perfect resemblances? among the boundless variety of opinions that make themselves heard in our day, there is not one that had not advocates in rome. i alluded a while ago to the letters written from the villa of tusculum; they express the sentiments of the roman conservative _progressist_ party. by the side of sylla, pompey and cicero were radicals.[ ] their notions were not sufficiently radical for cæsar; too much so for cato. at a later period we find in pliny the younger a mild royalist, a friend of quiet, even at some cost. apprehensive of too much liberty, yet jealous of power too absolute; very practical in his views, caring but little for the poetical splendor of the age of the fabii, he preferred the more prosaic administration of trajan. there were others not of his opinion, good people who feared an insurrection headed by some new spartacus, and who, therefore, thought that the emperor could not hold the reins too tight. then there were others, from the provinces, who obstreperously demanded and obtained what would now be called "constitutional guaranties." again, there were the socialists, and their views found no less an expounder than the gallic cæsar, c. junius posthumus, who exclaims: "dives et pauper, inimici," the rich and the poor are enemies born. every man who had any pretensions to participate in the lights of the day, declaimed on the absolute equality of all men, their "inalienable rights," the manifest necessity and ultimate universality of the greco-latin civilization, its superiority, its mildness, its future progress, much greater even than that actually made, and above all its perpetuity. nor were those ideas merely the pride and consolation of the pagans; they were the firm hopes and expectations of the earliest and most illustrious fathers of the church, whose sentiments found so eloquent an interpreter in tertullian. * * * * * and as a last touch, to complete the picture, let us not forget those people who, then as now, formed the most numerous of all parties: those that belonged to none--people who are too weak-minded, or indifferent, or apprehensive, or disgusted, to lay hold of a truth, from among the midst of contradictory theories that float around them--people who are content with order when it exists, submit passively in times of disorder and confusion; who admire the increase of conveniences and comforts of life unknown to their ancestors, and who, without thinking further, centre their hope in the future and pride in the present, in the reflection: "what wonderful facilities we enjoy now-a-days." there would be some reason for believing in an improvement in political science, if we had invented some governmental machinery which had hitherto been unknown, or at least never carried into practice. this glory we cannot arrogate to ourselves. limited monarchies were known in every age. there are even some very curious examples of this form of government found among certain indian tribes who, nevertheless, have remained savages. democratic and aristocratic republics of every form, and balanced in the most varied manner, flourished in the new world as well as the old. tlascala is as complete a model of this kind as athens, sparta, or mecca before mohammed's times. and even supposing that we have applied to governmental science some secondary principle of our own invention, does this justify us in our exaggerated pretension to unlimited perfectibility? let us rather be modest, and say with the wisest of kings: "_nil novi sub sole._"[ ] it is said that our manners are milder than those of the other great human societies; this assertion also is very open to criticism. there are some philanthropists who would induce nations no longer to resort to armies in settling their quarrels. the idea is borrowed from seneca. some of the eastern sages professed the same principles in this respect as the moravian brethren. but assuming that the members of the peace congress succeed in disgusting europe with the turmoil and miseries of warfare, they would still have the difficult task left of forever transforming the human passions. neither seneca nor the eastern sages have been able to accomplish this, and it may reasonably be doubted whether this grand achievement is reserved for our generation. we possess pure and exalted principles, i admit, but are they carried into practice? look at our fields, the streets of our cities--the bloody traces of contests as fierce as any recorded in history are scarcely yet effaced. never since the beginning of our civilization has there been an interval of peace of fifty years, and we are, in this respect, far behind ancient italy, which, under the romans, once enjoyed two centuries of perfect tranquillity. but even so long a repose would not warrant us in concluding that the temple of janus was thenceforth to be forever closed. the state of our civilization does not, therefore, prove the unlimited perfectibility of man. if he have learned many things, he has forgotten others. he has not added another to his senses; his soul is not enriched by one new faculty. i cannot too much insist upon the great though sad truth, that whatever we gain in one direction is counterbalanced by some loss in another; that, limited as is our intellectual domain, we are doomed never to possess its whole extent at once. were it not for this fatal law, we might imagine that at some period, however distant, man, finding himself in possession of the experience of successive ages, and having acquired all that it is in his power to acquire, would have learned at last to apply his acquisitions to his welfare--to live without battling against his kind, and against misery; to enjoy a state, if not of unalloyed happiness, at least of abundance and peace. but even so limited a felicity is not promised us here below, for in proportion as man learns he unlearns; whatever he acquires, is at the cost of some previous acquisition; whatever he possesses he is always in danger of losing. we flatter ourselves with the belief that our civilization is imperishable, because we possess the art of printing, gunpowder, the steam engine, &c. these are valuable means to accomplish great results, but the accomplishment depends on their use. the art of printing is known to many other nations beside ourselves, and is as extensively used by them as by us.[ ] let us see its fruits. in tonquin, anam, japan, books are plentiful, much cheaper than with us--so cheap that they are within the reach of even the poorest--and even the poorest read them. how is it, then, that these people are so enervated, so degraded, so sunk in sloth and vice[ ]--so near that stage in which even civilized man, having frittered away his physical and mental powers, may sink infinitely below the rude barbarian, who, at the first convenient opportunity, becomes his master? whence this result? precisely because the art of printing is a means, and not an agent. so long as it is used to diffuse sound, sterling ideas, to afford wholesome and refreshing nutriment to vigorous minds, a civilization never decays. but when it becomes the vile caterer to a depraved taste, when it serves only to multiply the morbid productions of enervated or vitiated minds, the senseless quibbles of a sectarian theology instead of religion, the venomous scurrility of libellists instead of politics, the foul obscenities of licentious rhymers instead of poesy--how and why should the art of printing save a civilization from ruin? it is objected that the art of printing contributes to the preservation of a civilization by the facility with which it multiplies and diffuses the masterpieces of the human mind, so that, even in times of intellectual sterility, when they can no longer be emulated, they still form the standard of taste, and by their clear and steady light prevent the possibility of utter darkness. but it should be remembered that to delve in the hoarded treasures of thought, and to appropriate them for purposes of mental improvement, presupposes the possession of that greatest of earthly goods--an enlightened mind. and in epochs of intellectual degeneracy, few care about those monuments of lost virtues and powers; they are left undisturbed on their dusty shelves in libraries whose silence is but seldom broken by the tread of the anxious, painstaking student. the longevity which guttenberg's invention assures to the productions of genius is much exaggerated. there are a few works that enjoy the honor of being reproduced occasionally; with this exception, books die now precisely as formerly did the manuscripts. works of science, especially, disappear with singular rapidity from the realms of literature. a few hundred copies are struck off at first, and they are seldom, and, after a while, never heard of more. with considerable trouble you can find them in some large collection. look what has become of the thousands of excellent works that have appeared since the first printed page came from the press. the greater portion are forgotten. many that are still spoken of, are never read; the titles even of others, that were carefully sought after fifty years ago, are gradually disappearing from every memory. so long as a civilization is vigorous and flourishing, this disappearance of old books is but a slight misfortune. they are superseded; their valuable portions are embodied in new ones; the seed exists no longer, but the fruit is developing. in times of intellectual degeneracy it is otherwise. the weakened powers cannot grapple with the solid thought of more vigorous eras; it is split up into more convenient fragments--rendered more portable, as it were; the strong beverage that once was the pabulum of minds as strong, must be diluted to suit the present taste; and innumerable dilutions, each weaker than the other, immediately claim public favor; the task of learning must be lightened in proportion to the decreasing capacity for acquiring; everything becomes superficial; what costs the least effort gains the greatest esteem; play upon words is accounted wit; shallowness, learning; the surface is preferred to the depth. thus it has ever been in periods of decay; thus it will be with us when we have once reached that point whence every movement is retrogressive. who knows but we are near it already?--and the art of printing will not save us from it. to enhance the advantages which we derive from that art, the number and diffusion of manuscripts have been too much underrated. it is true that they were scarce in the epoch immediately preceding; but in the latter periods of the roman empire they were much more numerous and much more widely diffused than is generally imagined. in those times, the facilities for instruction were by no means of difficult access; books, indeed, were quite common. we may judge so from the extraordinary number of threadbare grammarians with which even the smallest villages swarmed; a sort of people very much like the petty novelists, lawyers, and editors of modern times, and whose loose morals, shabbiness, and passionate love for enjoyments, are described in pretronius's satyricon. even when the decadence was complete, those who wished for books could easily procure them. virgil was read everywhere; so much so, that the illiterate peasantry, hearing so much of him, imagined him to be some dangerous and powerful sorcerer. the monks copied him; they copied pliny, dioscorides, plato, and aristotle; they copied catullus and martial. these books, then, cannot have been very rare. again, when we consider how great a number has come down to us notwithstanding centuries of war and devastation--notwithstanding so many conflagrations of monasteries, castles, libraries, &c.--we cannot but admit that, in spite of the laborious process of transcription, literary productions must have been multiplied to a very great extent. it is possible, therefore, to greatly exaggerate the obligations under which science, poetry, morality, and true civilization lie to the typographic art; and i repeat it, that art is a marvellous instrument, but if the arm that wields it, and the head that directs the arm, are not, the instrument cannot be, of much service. some people believe that the possession of gunpowder exempts modern societies from many of the dangers that proved fatal to the ancient. they assert that it abates the horrors of warfare, and diminishes its frequency, bidding fair, therefore, to establish, in time, a state of universal peace. if such be the beneficial results attendant on this accidental invention, they have not as yet manifested themselves. of the various applications of steam, and other industrial inventions, i would say, as of the art of printing, that they are great means, but their results depend upon the agent. such arts might be practised by rote long after the intellectual activity that produced them had ceased. there are innumerable instances of processes which continue in use, though the theoretical secret is lost. it is therefore not unreasonable to suppose, that the practice of our inventions might survive our civilization; that is, it might continue when these inventions were no longer possible, when no further improvements were to be hoped for. material well-being is but an external appendage of a civilization; intellectual activity, and a consequent progress, are its life. a state of intellectual torpor, therefore, cannot be a state of civilization, even though the people thus stagnating, have the means of transporting themselves rapidly from place to place, or of adorning themselves and their dwellings. this would only prove that they were the _heirs_ of a former civilization, but not that they actually possessed one. i have said, in another place, that a civilization may thus preserve, for a time, every appearance of life: the effect may continue after the cause has ceased. but, as a continuous change seems to be the order of nature in all things material and immaterial, a downward tendency is soon manifest. i have before compared a civilization to the human body. while alive, it undergoes a perpetual modification: every hour has wrought a change; when dead, it preserves, for a time, the appearance of life, perhaps even its beauty; but gradually, symptoms of decay become manifest, and every stage of dissolution is more precipitate than the one before, as a stone thrown up in the air, poises itself there for an inappreciable fraction of time, then falls with continually increasing velocity, more and more swiftly as it approaches the ground. every civilization has produced in those who enjoyed its fruits, a firm conviction of its stability, its perpetuity. when the palanquins of the incas travelled rapidly on the smooth, magnificent causeways which still unite cuzco and quito, a distance of fifteen hundred miles, with what feelings of exultation must they have contemplated the conquests of the present, what magnificent prospects of the future must have presented themselves to their imaginations! stern time, with one blow of his gigantic wings, hurled their empire into the deepest depths of the abyss of oblivion. these proud sovereigns of peru--they, too, had their sciences, their mechanical inventions, their powerful machines: the works they accomplished we contemplate with amazement, and a vain effort to divine the means employed. how were those blocks of stone, thirty-five feet long and eighteen thick, raised one upon another? how were they transported the vast distance from the quarries where they were hewn? by what contrivance did the engineers of that people hoist those enormous masses to a dizzy height? it is indeed a problem--a problem, too, which we will never solve. nor are the ruins of tihuanaco unparalleled by the remains of european civilizations of ante-historic times. the cyclopean walls with which southern europe abounds, and which have withstood the all-destroying tooth of time for thousands upon thousands of years--who built them? who piled these monstrous masses, which modern art could scarcely move? let us not mistake the results of a civilization for its causes. the causes cease, the results subsist for a while, then are lost. if they again bear fruit, it is because a new spirit has appropriated them, and converted them to purposes often very different from those they had at first. human intelligence is finite, nor can it ever reign at once in the whole of its domain:[ ] it can turn to account one portion of it only by leaving the other bare; it exalts what it possesses, esteems lightly what it has lost. thus, every generation is at the same time superior and inferior to its predecessors. man cannot, then, surpass himself: man's perfectibility is not infinite. footnotes: [ ] the word _criticism_ has here been used by the translator in a sense somewhat unusual in the english language, where it is generally made to signify "the art of judging of literary or artistic productions." in a more comprehensive sense, it means _the art of discriminating between truth and error_, or rather, perhaps, between _the probable and the improbable_. in this sense, the word is often used by continental metaphysicians, and also, though less frequently, by english writers. as the definition is perfectly conformable to etymology, i have concluded to let the above passage stand as it is.--h. [ ] it will be remembered that mr. gobineau speaks of europe.--h. [ ] the term "radical" is used on the european continent to designate that party who desire thorough, uncompromising reform: the plucking out of evils by the _root_.--h. [ ] the principles of government applied to practice at the formation of our constitution, mr. gobineau considers as identical with those laid down at the beginning of every society founded by the germanic race. in his succeeding volumes he mentions several analogues.--h. [ ] m. j. mohl, _rapport annuel à la société asiatique_, , p. : "the indian book trade of indigenous productions is extremely lively, and consists of a number of works which are never heard of in europe, nor ever enter a european's library even in india. mr. springer asserts in a letter, that in the single town of luknau there are thirteen lithographical establishments exclusively occupied with multiplying books for the schools, and he gives a list of considerable length of books, none of which have probably ever reached europe. the same is the case in delhi, agra, cawnpour, allahabad, and other cities." [ ] the siamese are probably the most debased in morals of any people on earth. they belong to the remotest outskirts of the indo-chinese civilization; yet among them every one knows how to read and write. (ritter, _erdkunde, asien_, vol. iii. p. .) [ ] no individual can encompass the whole circle of human knowledge: no civilization comprise at once all the improvements possible to humanity.--h. chapter xiv. mutual relations of different modes of intellectual culture. necessary consequences of a supposed equality of all races--uniform testimony of history to the contrary--traces of extinct civilizations among barbarous tribes--laws which govern the adoption of a state of civilization by conquered populations--antagonism of different modes of culture; the hellenic and persian, european and arab, etc. had it been the will of the creator to endow all the branches of the human family with equal intellectual capacities, what a glorious tableau would history not unfold before us. all being equally intelligent, equally aware of their true interests, equally capable of triumphing over obstacles, a number of simultaneous and flourishing civilizations would have gladdened every portion of the inhabited globe. while the most ancient sanscrit nations covered northern india with harvests, cities, palaces, and temples; and the plains of the tigris and euphrates shook under the trampling of nimrod's cavalry and chariots, the prognathous tribes of africa would have formed and developed a social system, sagaciously constructed, and productive of brilliant results. some luckless tribes, whose lot fortune had cast in inhospitable climes, burning sands, or glacial regions, mountain gorges, or cheerless steppes swept by the piercing winds of the north, would have been compelled to a longer and severer struggle against such unpropitious circumstances, than more fortunate nations. but being not inferior in intelligence and sagacity, they would not have been long in discovering the means of bettering their condition. like the icelanders, the danes, and norwegians, they would have forced the reluctant soil to afford them sustenance; if inhabitants of mountainous regions, they would, like the swiss, have enjoyed the advantages of a pastoral life, or like the cashmerians, resorted to manufacturing industry. but if their geographical situation had been so unfavorable as to admit of no resource, they would have reflected that the world was large, contained many a pleasant valley and fertile plain, where they might seek the fruits of intelligent activity, which their stepmotherly native land refused them. thus all the nations of the earth would have been equally enlightened, equally prosperous; some by the commerce of maritime cities, others by productive agriculture in inland regions, or successful industry in barren and alpine districts. though they might not exempt themselves from the misfortunes to which the imperfections of human nature give rise--transitory dissensions, civil wars, seditions, etc.--their individual interests would soon have led them to invent some system of relative equiponderance. as the differences in their civilizations resulted merely from fortuitous circumstances, and not from innate inequalities, a mutual interchange would soon have assimilated them in all essential points. nothing could then prevent a universal confederation, that dream of so many centuries; and the inhabitants of the most distant parts of the globe would have been as members of one great cosmopolite people. let us contrast this fantastic picture with the reality. the first nations worthy of the name, owed their formation to an instinct of aggregation, which the barbarous tribes near them not only did not feel then, but never afterward. these nations spread beyond their original boundaries, and forced others to submit to their power. but the conquered neither adopted nor understood the principles of the civilization imposed upon them. nor has the force of example been of avail to those in whom innate capacity was wanting. the native populations of the spanish peninsula, and of transalpine and ligurian gaul, saw phenicians, greeks, and carthaginians, successively establish flourishing cities on their coasts, without feeling the least incitement to imitate the manners or forms of government of these prosperous merchants. what a glorious spectacle do not the indians of north america witness at this moment. they have before their eyes a great and prosperous nation, eminent for the successful practical application of modern theories and sciences to political and social forms, as well as to industrial art. the superiority of this foreign race, which has so firmly established itself upon his former patrimony, is evident to the red man. he sees their magnificent cities, their thousands of vessels upon the once silent rivers, their successful agriculture; he knows that even his own rude wants, the blanket with which he covers himself, the weapon with which he slays his game, the ardent spirits he has learned to love so well, can be supplied only by the stranger. the last feeble hope to see his native soil delivered from the presence of the conqueror's race, has long since vanished from his breast; he feels that the land of his fathers is not his own. yet he stubbornly refuses to enter the pale of this civilization which invites him, solicits him, tries to entice him with superior advantages and comforts. he prefers to retreat from solitude to solitude, deeper and deeper into the primitive forest. he is doomed to perish, and he knows it; but a mysterious power retains him under the yoke of his invincible repugnances, and while he admires the strength and superiority of the whites, his conscience, his whole nature, revolts at the idea of assimilating to them. he cannot forget or smother the instincts of his race. the aborigines of spanish america are supposed to evince a less unconquerable aversion. it is because the spanish metropolitan government had never attempted to civilize them. provided they were christians, at least in name, they were left to their own usages and habits, and, in many instances, under the administration of their caziques. the spaniards colonized but little, and when the conquest was completed and their sanguinary appetites glutted by those unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible disgrace, they indulged in a lazy toleration, and directed their tyranny rather against individuals than against modes of thinking and living. the indians have, in a great measure, mixed with their conquerors, and will continue to live while their brethren in the vicinity of the anglo-saxon race are inevitably doomed to perish. but not only savages, even nations of a higher rank in the intellectual scale are incapable of adopting a foreign civilization. we have already alluded to the failure of the english in india and of the dutch in java, in trying to import their own ideas into their foreign dependencies. french philanthropy is at this moment gaining the same experience in the new french possession of algeria. there can be no stronger or more conclusive proof of the various endowments of different races. if we had no other argument in proof of the innate imparity of races than the actual condition of certain barbarous tribes, and the supposition that they had always been in that condition, and, consequently, always would be, we should expose ourselves to serious objections. for many barbarous nations preserve traces of former cultivation and refinement. there are some tribes, very degraded in every other respect, who yet possess traditional regulations respecting the marriage celebration, the forms of justice and the division of inheritances, which evidently are remnants of a higher state of society, though the rites have long since lost all meaning. many of the indian tribes who wander over the tracts once occupied by the alleghanian race, may be cited as instances of this kind. the natives of the marian islands, and many other savages, practise mechanically certain processes of manufacture, the invention of which presupposes a degree of ingenuity and knowledge utterly at variance with their present stupidity and ignorance. to avoid hasty and erroneous conclusions concerning this seeming decadence, there are several circumstances to be taken into consideration. let us suppose a savage population to fall within the sphere of activity of a proximate, but superior race. in that case they may gradually learn to conform externally to the civilization of their masters, and acquire the technicalities of their arts and inventions. should the dominant race disappear either by expulsion or absorption, the civilization would expire, but some of its outward forms might be retained and perpetuated. a certain degree of mechanical skill might survive the scientific principles upon which it was based. in other words, practice might long continue after the theory was lost. history furnishes us a number of examples in support of this assertion. such, for instance, was the attitude of the assyrians toward the civilization of the chaldeans; of the iberians, celts, and illyrians towards that of the romans. if, then, the cherokees, the catawbas, muskogees, seminoles, natchez and other tribes, still preserve a feeble impress of the alleghanian civilization, i should not thence conclude that they are the pure and direct descendants of the initiatory element of that people, which would imply that a race may once have been civilized, and be no longer so. i should say, on the contrary, that the cherokees, if at all ethnically connected with the ancient dominant type, are so by only a collateral tie of consanguinity, else they could never have relapsed into a state of barbarism. the other tribes which exhibit little or no vestiges of the former civilization are probably the descendants of a different conquered population which formed no constituent element of the society, but served rather as the substratum upon which the edifice was erected. it is no matter of surprise, if this be the case, that they should preserve--without understanding them and with a sort of superstitious veneration--customs, laws, and rites invented by others far more intelligent than themselves. the same may be said of the mechanical arts. the aborigines of the carolines are about the most interesting of the south sea islanders. their looms, sculptured canoes, their taste for navigation and commerce show them vastly superior to the pelagian negroes, their neighbors. it is easy to account for this superiority by the well-authenticated admixture of malay blood. but as this element is greatly attenuated, the inventions which it introduced have not borne indigenous fruits, but, on the contrary, are gradually, but surely, disappearing. the preceding observations will, i think, suffice to show that the traces of civilization among a barbarous tribe are not a necessary proof that this tribe itself has ever been really civilized. it may either have lived under the domination of a superior but consanguineous race, or living in its vicinity, have, in an humble and feeble degree, profited by its lessons. this result, however, is possible only when there exists between the superior and the inferior race a certain ethnical affinity; that is to say, when the former is either a noble branch of the same stock, or ennobled by intermixture with another. when the disparity between races is too great and too decided, and there is no intermediate link to connect them, the contact is always fatal to the inferior race, as is abundantly proved by the disappearance of the aborigines of north america and polynesia. i shall now speak of the relations arising from the contact of different civilizations. the persian civilization came in contact with the grecian; the egyptian with the grecian and roman; the roman with the grecian; and finally the modern civilization of europe with all those at present subsisting on the globe, and especially with the arabian. the contact of greek intelligence with the culture of the persians was as frequent as it was compulsory. the greater portion of the hellenic population, and the wealthiest, though not the most independent, was concentrated in the cities of the syrian coast, the greek colonies of asia minor, and on the shores of the euxine, all of which formed a part of the persian dominions. though these colonies preserved their own local laws and politics, they were under the authority of the satraps of the great king. intimate relations, moreover, were maintained between european greece and asia. that the persians were then possessed of a high degree of civilization is proved by their political organization and financial administration, by the magnificent ruins which still attest the splendor and grandeur of their cities. but the principles of government and religion, the modes and habits of life, the genius of the arts, were very differently understood by the two nations; and, therefore, notwithstanding their constant intercourse, neither made the slightest approach toward assimilation with the other. the greeks called their puissant neighbors barbarians, and the latter, no doubt, amply returned the compliment. in ecbatana no other form of government could be conceived than an undivided hereditary authority, limited only by certain religious prescriptions and a court ceremonial. the genius of the greeks tended to an endless variety of governmental forms; subdivided into a number of petty sovereignties. greek society presented a singular mosaic of political structures; oligarchical in sparta, democratical in athens, tyrannical in sicyon, monarchical in macedonia, the forms of government were the same in scarcely two cities or districts. the state religion of the persians evinced the same tendency to unity as their politics, and was more of a metaphysical and moral than a material character. the greeks, on the contrary, had a symbolical system of religion, consisting in the worship of natural objects and influences, which gradually changed into a perfect prosopopoeia, representing the gods as sentient beings, subject to the same passions, and engaged in the same pursuits and occupations as the inhabitants of the earth. the worship consisted principally in the performance of rites and demonstrations of respect to the deities; the conscience was left to the direction of the civil laws. besides, the rites, as well as the divinities and heroes in whose honor they were practised, were different in every place. as for the manners and habits of life, it is unnecessary to point out how vastly different they were from those of persia. public contempt punished the young, wealthy, pleasure-loving cosmopolitan, who attempted to live in persian style. thus, until the time of alexander, when the power of greece had arrived at its culminating point, persia, with all her preponderance, could not convert hellas to her civilization. in the time of alexander, this incompatibility of dissimilar modes of culture was singularly demonstrated. when the empire of darius succumbed to the macedonian phalanxes, it was expected, for a time, that a hellenic civilization would spread over asia. there seemed the more reason for this belief when the conqueror, in a moment of aberrancy, treated the monuments of the land with such aggressive violence as seemed to evince equal hatred and contempt. but the wanton incendiary of persepolis soon changed his mind, and so completely, that his design became apparent to simply substitute himself in the room of the dynasty of achæmenes, and rule over persia like a persian king, with greece added to his estates. great as was alexander's power, it was insufficient for the execution of such a project. his generals and soldiers could not brook to see their commander assume the long flowing robes of the eastern kings, surround himself with eunuchs, and renounce the habits and manners of his native land. though after his death some of his successors persisted in the same system, they were compelled greatly to mitigate it. where the population consisted of a motley compound of greeks, syrians, and arabs, as in egypt and the coast of asia minor, a sort of compromise between the two civilizations became thenceforth the normal state of the country; but where the races remained unmixed, the national manners were preserved. in the latter periods of the roman empire, the two civilizations had become completely blended in the whole east, including continental greece; but it was tinged more with the asiatic than the greek tendencies, because the masses belonged much more to the former element than to the latter. hellenic forms, it is true, still subsisted, but it is not difficult to discover in the ideas of those periods and countries the oriental stock upon which the scions of the alexandrian school had been engrafted. the respective influence of the various elements was in strict proportion to the quantity of blood; the intellectual preponderance belonged to that which had contributed the greatest share. the same antagonism which i pointed out between the intellectual culture of the greeks and that of the persians, will be found to result from the contact of all other widely different civilizations. i shall mention but one more instance: the relations between the arab civilization[ ] and our own. there was a time when the arts and sciences, the muses and their train, seemed to have forsaken their former abodes, to rally around the standard of mohammed. that our forefathers were not blind to the excellencies of the arab civilization is proved by their sending their sons to the schools of cordova. but not a trace of the spirit of that civilization has remained in europe, save in those countries which still retain a portion of ishmaelitic blood. nor has the arab civilization found a more congenial soil in india over which, also, its dominion extended. like those portions of europe which were subjected to moslem masters, that country has preserved its own modes of thinking intact. but if the pressure of the arab civilization, at the time of its greatest splendor and our greatest ignorance, could not affect the modes of thinking of the races of western europe, neither can we, at present, when the positions are reversed, affect in the slightest degree the feeble remnants of that once so flourishing civilization. our action upon these remnants is continuous--the pressure of our intellectual activity upon them immense; we succeed only in destroying, not in transforming or remodelling.[ ] yet this civilization was not even original, and might, therefore, be supposed to have a less obstinate vitality. the arab nation, it is well known, based its empire and its intellectual culture upon fragments of races which it had aggregated by the weight of the sword. a variegated compound like the islamitic populations, could not but develop a civilization of an equally variegated character, to which each ethnical element contributed its share. these elements it is not difficult to determine and point out. the nucleus, around which aggregated those countless multitudes, was a small band of valiant warriors who unfurled in their native deserts the standard of a new creed. they were not, before mohammed's time, a new or unknown people. they had frequently come in contact with the jews and phenicians, and had in their veins the blood of both these nations. taking advantage of their favorable situation for commerce, they had performed the carrier trade of the red sea, and the eastern coast of africa and india, for the most celebrated nations of ancient times, the jews and the phenicians, later still, for the romans and persians. they had the same traditions in common with the shemitic and hamitic families from which they sprung.[ ] they had even taken an active part in the political life of neighboring nations. under the arsacides and the sons of sassan, some of their tribes exerted great influence in the politics of the persian empire. one of their adventurers[ ] had become emperor of rome; one of their princes protected the majesty of rome against a conqueror before whom the whole east trembled, and shared the imperial purple with the roman sovereign;[ ] one of their cities had become, under zenobia, the centre and capital of a vast empire that rivalled and even threatened rome.[ ] it is evident, therefore, that the arab nation had never ceased, from the remotest antiquity, to entertain intimate relations with the most powerful and celebrated ancient societies. it had taken part in their political and intellectual[ ] activity; and it might not inappropriately be compared to a body half-plunged into the water, and half exposed to the sun, as it partook at the same time of an advanced state of civilization and of complete barbarism. mohammed invented the religion most conformable to the ideas of a people, among whom idolatry had still many zealous adherents, but where christianity, though having made numerous converts, was losing favor on account of the endless schisms and contentions of its followers.[ ] the religious dogma of the koreishite prophet was a skilful compromise between the various contending opinions. it reconciled the jewish dispensation with the new law better than could the church at that time, and thus solved a problem which had disquieted the consciences of many of the earlier christians, and which, especially in the east, had given rise to many heretical sects. this was in itself a very tempting bait, and, besides, any theological novelty had decided chances of success among the syrians and egyptians.[ ] moreover, the new religion appeared with sword in hand, which in those times of schismatical propagandism seemed a warrant of success more relied upon by the masses to whom it addressed itself, than peaceful persuasion. thus arrayed, islamism issued from its native deserts. arrogant, and possessed but in a very slight degree of the inventive faculty, it developed no civilization peculiar to itself, but it had adopted, as far as it was capable of doing, the bastard greco-asiatic civilization already extant. as its triumphant banners progressed on the east and south of the mediterranean, it incorporated masses imbued with the same tendencies and spirit. from each of these it borrowed something. as its religious dogmas were a patchwork of the tenets of the church, those of the synagogue, and of the disfigured traditions of hedjaz and yemen, so its code of laws was a compound of the persian and the roman, its science was greco-syrian[ ] and egyptian, its administration from the beginning tolerant like that of every body politic that embraces many heterogeneous elements. it has caused much useless surprise, that moslem society should have made such rapid strides to refinement of manners. but the mass of the people over whom its dominion extended, had merely changed the name of their creed; they were old and well-known actors on the stage of history, and have simply been mistaken for a new nation when they undertook to play the part of apostles before the world. these people gave to the common store their previous refinement and luxury; each new addition to the standard of islamism, contributed some portion of its acquisitions. the vitalizing principle of the society, the motive power of this cumbrous mass, was the small nucleus of arab tribes that had come forth from the heart of the peninsula. they furnished, not artists and learned men, but fanatics, soldiers, victors, and masters. the arab civilization, then, is nothing but the greco-syrian civilization, rejuvenated and quickened, for a time, with a new and energetic, but short-lived, genius. it was, besides, a little renovated and a little modified, by a slight dash of persian civilization. yet, motley and incongruous as are the elements of which it is composed, and capable of stretching and accommodating itself as such a compound must be, it cannot adapt itself to any social structure erected by other elements than its own. in other words, many as are the races that contributed to its formation, it is suited to none that have _not_ contributed to it. this is what the whole course of history teaches us. every race has its own modes of thinking; every race, capable of developing a civilization, develops one peculiar to itself, and which it cannot engraft upon any other, except by amalgamation of blood, and then in but a modified degree. the european cannot win the asiatic to his modes of thinking; he cannot civilize the australian, or the negro; he can transmit but a portion of his intelligence to his half-breed offspring of the inferior race; the progeny of that half-breed and the nobler branch of his ancestry, is but one degree nearer, but not equal to that branch in capacity: the proportions of blood are strictly preserved. i have adduced illustrations of this truth from the history of various branches of the human family, of the lowest as well as of the higher in the scale of intellectual progress. are we not, then, authorized to conclude that the diversity observable among them is constitutional, innate, and not the result of accident or circumstances--that there is an absolute inequality in their intellectual endowments? footnotes: [ ] the word _arab_ is here used instead of the more common, but less correct, term _saracen_, which was the general appellation bestowed on the first propagators of the islam by the greeks and latins. the arab civilization reached its culminating point about the reign of harun al rashid. at that time, it comprised nearly all that remained of the arts and sciences of former ages. the splendor and magnificence for which it was distinguished, is even yet the theme of romancers and poets; and may be discerned to this day in the voluptuous and gorgeous modes of life among the higher classes in those countries where it still survives, as well as in the remains of arab architecture in spain, the best preserved and most beautiful of which is the well-known alhambra. though the arab civilization had a decidedly sensual tendency and character, it was not without great benefits to mankind. from it our forefathers learned some valuable secrets of agriculture, and the first lessons in horticulture. the peach, the pear, the apricot, the finer varieties of apples and plums, and nearly all of our most valued fruits were brought into western and central europe by the returning crusaders from the land of the saracens. many valuable processes of manufacture, and especially of the art of working metals, are derived from the same source. in the science of medicine, the arabs laid the foundation of that noble structure we now admire. though they were prevented by religious scruples from dissecting the human body, and, therefore, remained in ignorance of the most important facts of anatomy, they brought to light innumerable secrets of the healing powers in the vegetable kingdom; they first practised the art of distillation and of chemical analysis. they were the beginners of the science of chemistry, to which they gave its name, and in which many of the commonest technical terms (such as alkali, alembic, alcohol, and many others), still attest their labors. in mathematical science they were no less industrious. to them we owe that simple and useful method which so greatly facilitates the more complex processes of calculation, without which, indeed, some of them would be impossible, and which still retains its arabic name--algebra. but what is more, to them we owe our system of notation, so vastly superior to that of the greeks and romans, so admirable in its efficacy and simplicity, that it has made arithmetic accessible to the humblest understanding; at the present time, the whole christian world uses arabic numerals.--h. [ ] it is supposed by many that turkey will ultimately be won to our civilization, and, as a proof of this, great stress is laid upon the efforts of the present sultan, as well as his predecessor, to "europeanize" the turks. whoever has carefully and unbiassedly studied the present condition of that nation, knows how unsuccessful these efforts, backed, though they were, by absolute authority, and by the immense influence of the whole of western europe, have hitherto been and always will be. it is a notorious fact, that the turks fight less well in their semi-european dress and with their european tactics, of which so much was anticipated, than they did with their own. the moslem now regards the christian with the same feelings that he did in the zenith of his power, and these feelings are not the less bitter, because they can no longer be so ostentatiously displayed.--h. [ ] the arabs believed themselves the descendants of ishmael, the son of hagar. this belief, even before mohammed's time, had been curiously blended with the idolatrous doctrines of some of their tribes.--h. [ ] _philip_, an arabian adventurer who was prefect of the prætorian guards under the third gordian, and who, through his boldness and ability, succeeded that sovereign on the throne in a. d. .--h. [ ] _odenathus_, senator of palmyra, after sapor, the king of persia, had taken prisoner the emperor of rome, and was devastating the empire, met the ruthless conqueror with a body of palmyrians, and several times routed his much more numerous armies. being the only one who could protect the eastern possessions of the roman empire against the aggressions of the persians, he was appointed _cæsar_, or coadjutor to the emperor by gallienus, the son of valerian, the captive sovereign.--h. [ ] the history of _zenobia_, the queen of the east, as she styled herself, and one of the most interesting characters in history, is well known. as in the preceding notes, i shall, therefore, merely draw attention to familiar facts, with a view to refresh the reader's memory, not to instruct him. the famous arabian queen was the widow of odenathus, of palmyra, who bequeathed to her his dignity as _cæsar_, or protector of the eastern dominions of rome. it soon, however, became apparent that she disdained to owe allegiance to the roman emperors, and aimed at establishing a new great empire for herself and her descendants. though the most accomplished, as well as the most beautiful woman of her time, she led her armies in person, and was so eminently successful in her military enterprises that she soon extended her dominion from the euphrates to the nile. palmyra thus became the centre and capital of a vast empire, which, as mr. gobineau observes, rivalled and even threatened rome itself. she was, however, defeated by aurelian, and, in a. d. , graced the triumph of her conqueror on his return to rome. the former splendor of the now deserted palmyra is attested by the magnificent ruins which still form an inexhaustible theme for the admiration of the traveller and antiquarian.--h. [ ] though the mass of the nation were ignorant of letters, the arabs had already before mohammed's times some famous writers. they had even made voyages of discovery, in which they went as far as china. the earliest, and, as modern researches have proved, the most truthful, account of the manners and customs of that country is by arab writers.--h. [ ] at the time of the appearance of the false prophet, arabia contained within its bosom every then known religious sect. this was owing not only to the central position of that country, but also to the liberty which was then as now a prerogative of the arab. among them every one was free to select or compose for himself his own private religion. while the adjacent countries were shaken by the storms of conquest and tyranny, the persecuted sects fled to the happy land where they might profess what they thought, and practice what they professed. a religious persecution had driven from persia many who professed the religion of the ancient magi. the jews also were early settlers in arabia. seven centuries before the death of mohammed they had firmly established themselves there. the destruction of jerusalem brought still greater numbers of these industrious exiles, who at once erected synagogues, and to protect the wealth they rapidly acquired, built and garrisoned strongly fortified towns in various portions of the wilderness. the bible had at an early day been translated into the arabic tongue. christian missionaries were not wanting, and their active zeal was eminently successful. several of the arab tribes had become converts. there were christian churches in yemen; the states of hira and gassan were under the jurisdiction of jacobite and nestorian bishops. the various heretical sects found shelter and safety among the hospitable arabs. but this very fact proved detrimental to the progress of the christian religion, and opened the path for the creed of mohammed. so many and various were the christian sects that crowded together in that country, and so widely departed from the true spirit of christianity were some of them, that bitter hostilities sprung up among them, and their religion fell into contempt. the eastern christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of paganism, one of the sects (the collyridian heretics) had even gone so far as to invest the virgin mary with the name and honors of a goddess. this is what the author alludes to in saying that christianity was losing favor in arabia at the time of the appearance of mohammed.--h. [ ] the student of ecclesiastical history knows what a number of sects had sprung up about that time to distress and harass the church. it is not so generally appreciated, however, that for the first hundred years, the progress of islamism was almost exclusively at the expense of christianity. the whole of the present ottoman empire, and almost the whole northern coast of africa were previously christian countries. whether the loss is greatly to be regretted, i know not, for the syrians and egyptians, from being very indifferent christians, became good mohammedans. these populations were to the christian church like a cankered limb, the lopping off of which may have been ordained by an all-wise providence for the salvation of what was yet sound in the body.--h. [ ] w. von humboldt. _ueber die karo-sprache, einleitung_, p. . "durch die richtung auf diese bildung und durch innere stammes-verwandschaft wurden sie wirklich für griechischen geist und griechische sprache empfänglich, da die araber vorzugsweise nur an den wissenschaftlichen resultaten griechischer forschung hiengen." chapter xv. moral and intellectual characteristics of the three great varieties. impropriety of drawing general conclusions from individual cases--recapitulatory sketch of the leading features of the negro, the yellow, and the white races--superiority of the latter--conclusion of volume the first. in the preceding pages, i have endeavored to show that, though there are both scientific and religious reasons for not believing in a plurality of origins of our species, the various branches of the human family are distinguished by permanent and irradicable differences, both mentally and physically. they are unequal in intellectual capacity,[ ] in personal beauty, and in physical strength. again i repeat, that in coming to this conclusion, i have totally eschewed the method which is, unfortunately for the cause of science, too often resorted to by ethnologists, and which, to say the least of it, is simply ridiculous. the discussion has not rested upon the moral and intellectual worth of isolated individuals. with regard to moral worth, i have proved that all men, to whatever race they may belong, are capable of receiving the lights of true religion, and of sufficiently appreciating that blessing to work out their own salvation. with regard to intellectual capacity, i emphatically protest against that mode of arguing which consists in saying, "every negro is a dunce;" because, by the same logic, i should be compelled to admit that "every white man is intelligent;" and i shall take good care to commit no such absurdity. i shall not even wait for the vindicators of the absolute equality of all races, to adduce to me such and such a passage in some missionary's or navigator's journal, wherefrom it appears that some yolof has become a skilful carpenter, that some hottentot has made an excellent domestic, that some caffre plays well on the violin, or that some bambarra has made very respectable progress in arithmetic. i am prepared to admit--and to admit without proof--anything of that sort, however remarkable, that may be related of the most degraded savages. i have already denied the excessive stupidity, the incurable idiotcy of even the lowest on the scale of humanity. nay, i go further than my opponents, and am not in the least disposed to doubt that, among the chiefs of the rude negroes of africa, there could be found a considerable number of active and vigorous minds, greatly surpassing in fertility of ideas and mental resources, the average of our peasantry, and even of some of our middle classes. but the unfairness of deductions based upon a comparison of the most intelligent blacks and the least intelligent whites, must be obvious to every candid mind. once for all, such arguments seem to me unworthy of real science, and i do not wish to place myself upon so narrow and unsafe a ground. if mungo park, or the brothers lander, have given to some negro a certificate of superior intelligence, who will assure us that another traveller, meeting the same individual, would not have arrived at a diametrically opposite conclusion concerning him? let us leave such puerilities, and compare, not the individuals, but the masses. when we shall have clearly established of what the latter are capable, by what tendencies they are characterized, and by what limits their intellectual activity and development are circumscribed, whether, since the beginning of the historic epoch, they have acted upon, or been acted upon by other groups--when we shall have clearly established these points, we may then descend to details, and, perhaps, one day be able to decide why the greatest minds of one group are inferior to the most brilliant geniuses of another, in what respects the vulgar herds of all types assimilate, and in what others they differ, and why. but this difficult and delicate task cannot be accomplished until the relative position of the whole mass of each race shall have been nicely, and, so to say, mathematically defined. i do not know whether we may hope ever to arrive at results of such incontestable clearness and precision, as to be able to no longer trust solely to general facts, but to embrace the various shades of intelligence in each group, to define and class the inferior strata of every population and their influence on the activity of the whole. were it possible thus to divide each group into certain strata, and compare these with the corresponding strata of every other: the most gifted of the dominant with the most gifted of the dominated races, and so on downwards, the superiority of some in capacity, energy, and activity would be self-demonstrated. after having mentioned the facts which prove the inequality of various branches of the human family, and having laid down the method by which that proof should be established, i arrived at the conclusion that the whole of our species is divisible into three great groups, which i call primary varieties, in order to distinguish them from others formed by intermixture. it now remains for me to assign to each of these groups the principal characteristics by which it is distinguished from the others. the dark races are the lowest on the scale. the shape of the pelvis has a character of animalism, which is imprinted on the individuals of that race ere their birth, and seems to portend their destiny. the circle of intellectual development of that group is more contracted than that of either of the two others. if the negro's narrow and receding forehead seems to mark him as inferior in reasoning capacity, other portions of his cranium as decidedly point to faculties of an humbler, but not the less powerful character. he has energies of a not despicable order, and which sometimes display themselves with an intensity truly formidable. he is capable of violent passions, and passionate attachments. some of his senses have an acuteness unknown to the other races: the sense of taste, and that of smell, for instance. but it is precisely this development of the animal faculties that stamps the negro with the mark of inferiority to other races. i said that his sense of taste was acute; it is by no means fastidious. every sort of food is welcome to his palate; none disgusts[ ] him; there is no flesh nor fowl too vile to find a place in his stomach. so it is with regard to odor. his sense of smell might rather be called greedy than acute. he easily accommodates himself to the most repulsive. to these traits he joins a childish instability of humor. his feelings are intense, but not enduring. his grief is as transitory as it is poignant, and he rapidly passes from it to extreme gayety. he is seldom vindictive--his anger is violent, but soon appeased. it might almost be said that this variability of sentiments annihilates for him the existence of both virtue and vice. the very ardency to which his sensibilities are aroused, implies a speedy subsidence; the intensity of his desire, a prompt gratification, easily forgotten. he does not cling to life with the tenacity of the whites. but moderately careful of his own, he easily sacrifices that of others, and kills, though not absolutely bloodthirsty, without much provocation or subsequent remorse.[ ] under intense suffering, he exhibits a moral cowardice which readily seeks refuge in death, or in a sort of monstrous impassivity.[ ] with regard to his moral capacities, it may be stated that he is susceptible, in an eminent degree, of religious emotions; but unless assisted by the light of the gospel, his religious sentiments are of a decidedly sensual character. having demonstrated the little intellectual and strongly sensual[ ] character of the black variety, as the type of which i have taken the negro of western africa, i shall now proceed to examine the moral and intellectual characteristics of the second in the scale--the yellow. this seems to form a complete antithesis to the former. in them, the skull, instead of being thrown backward, projects. the forehead is large, often jutting out, and of respectable height. the facial conformation is somewhat triangular, but neither chin nor nose has the rude, animalish development that characterizes the negro. a tendency to obesity is not precisely a specific feature, but it is more often met with among the yellow races than among any others. in muscular vigor, in intensity of feelings and desires, they are greatly inferior to the black. they are supple and agile, but not strong. they have a decided taste for sensual pleasures, but their sensuality is less violent, and, if i may so call it, more vicious than the negro's, and less quickly appeased. they place a somewhat greater value upon human life than the negro does, but they are more cruel for the sake of cruelty. they are as gluttonous as the negro, but more fastidious in their choice of viands, as is proved by the immoderate attention bestowed on the culinary art among the more civilized of these races. in other words, the yellow races are less impulsive than the black. their will is characterized by obstinacy rather than energetic violence; their anger is vindictive rather than clamorous; their cruelty more studied than passionate; their sensuality more refinedly vicious than absorbing. they are, therefore, seldom prone to extremes. in morals, as in intellect, they display a mediocrity: they are given to grovelling vices rather than to dark crimes; when virtuous, they are so oftener from a sense of practical usefulness than from exalted sentiments. in regard to intellectual capacity, they easily understand whatever is not very profound, nor very sublime; they have a keen appreciation of the useful and practical, a great love of quiet and order, and even a certain conception of a slight modicum of personal or municipal liberty. the yellow races are practical people in the narrowest sense of the word. they have little scope of imagination, and therefore invent but little: for great inventions, even the most exclusively utilitarian, require a high degree of the imaginative faculty. but they easily understand and adopt whatever is of practical utility. the _summum bonum_ of their desires and aspirations is to pass smoothly and quietly through life. it is apparent from this sketch, that they are superior to the blacks in aptitude and intellectual capacity. a theorist who would form some model society, might wish such a population to form the substratum upon which to erect his structure; but a society, composed entirely of such elements, would display neither great stamina nor capacity for anything great and exalted. we are now arrived at the third and last of the "primary" varieties--the white. among them we find great physical vigor and capacity of endurance; an intensity of will and desire, but which is balanced and governed by the intellectual faculties. great things are undertaken, but not blindly, not without a full appreciation of the obstacles to be overcome, and with a systematic effort to overcome them. the utilitarian tendency is strong, but is united with a powerful imaginative faculty, which elevates, ennobles, idealizes it. hence, the power of invention; while the negro can merely imitate, the chinese only utilize, to a certain extent, the practical results attained by the white, the latter is continually adding new ones to those already gained. his capacity for combination of ideas leads him perpetually to construct new facts from the fragments of the old; hurries him along through a series of unceasing modifications and changes. he has as keen a sense of order as the man of the yellow race, but not, like him, from love of repose and inertia, but from a desire to protect and preserve his acquisitions. at the same time, he has an ardent love of liberty, which is often carried to an extreme; an instinctive aversion to the trammels of that rigidly formalistic organization under which the chinese vegetates with luxurious ease; and he as indignantly rejects the haughty despotism which alone proves a sufficient restraint for the black races. the white man is also characterized by a singular love of life. perhaps it is because he knows better how to make use of it than other races, that he attaches to it a greater value and spares it more both in himself and in others. in the extreme of his cruelty, he is conscious of his excesses; a sentiment which it may well be doubted whether it exist among the blacks. yet though he loves life better than other races, he has discovered a number of reasons for sacrificing it or laying it down without murmur. his valor, his bravery, are not brute, unthinking passions, not the result of callousness or impassivity: they spring from exalted, though often erroneous, sentiments, the principal of which is expressed by the word "honor." this feeling, under a variety of names and applications, has formed the mainspring of action of most of the white races since the beginning of historical times. it accommodates itself to every mode of existence, to every walk of life. it is as puissant in the pulpit and at the martyr's stake, as on the field of battle; in the most peaceful and humble pursuits of life as in the highest and most stirring. it were impossible to define all the ideas which this word comprises; they are better felt than expressed. but this feeling--we might call it instinctive--is unknown to the yellow, and unknown to the black races: while in the white it quickens every noble sentiment--the sense of justice, liberty, patriotism, love, religion--it has no name in the language, no place in the hearts, of other races. this i consider as the principal reason of the superiority of our branch of the human family over all others; because even in the lowest, the most debased of our race, we generally find some spark of this redeeming trait, and however misapplied it may often be, and certainly is, it prevents us, even in our deepest errors, from falling so fearfully low as the others. the extent of moral abasement in which we find so many of the yellow and black races is absolutely impossible even to the very refuse of our society. the latter may equal, nay, surpass them in crime; but even they would shudder at that hideous abyss of corrosive vices, which opens before the friend of humanity on a closer study of these races.[ ] before concluding this picture, i would add that the immense superiority of the white races in all that regards the intellectual faculties, is joined to an inferiority as strikingly marked, in the intensity of sensations. though his whole structure is more vigorous, the white man is less gifted in regard to the perfection of the senses than either the black or the yellow, and therefore less solicited and less absorbed by animal gratifications. * * * * * i have now arrived at the historical portion of my subject. there i shall place the truths enounced in this volume in a clearer light, and furnish irrefragable proofs of the fact, which forms the basis of my theory, that nations degenerate only in consequence and in proportion to their admixture with an inferior race--that a society receives its death-blow when, from the number of diverse ethnical elements which it comprises, a number of diverse modes of thinking and interests contend for predominance; when these modes of thinking, and these interests have arisen in such multiplicity that every effort to harmonize them, to make them subservient to some great purpose, is in vain; when, therefore, the only natural ties that can bind large masses of men, homogeneity of thoughts and feelings, are severed, the only solid foundation of a social structure sapped and rotten. to furnish the necessary details for this assertion, to remove the possibility of even the slightest doubt, i shall take up separately, every great and independent civilization that the world has seen flourish. i shall trace its first beginnings, its subsequent stages of development, its decadence and final decay. here, then, is the proper test of my theory; here we can see the laws that govern ethnical relations in full force on a magnificent scale; we can verify their inexorably uniform and rigorous application. the subject is immense, the panorama spread before us the grandest and most imposing that the philosopher can contemplate, for its tableaux comprise the scene of action of every instance where man has really worked out his mission "to have dominion over the earth." the task is great--too great, perhaps, for any one's undertaking. yet, on a more careful investigation, many of the apparently insuperable difficulties which discouraged the inquirer will vanish; in the gorgeous succession of scenes that meet his glance, he will perceive a uniformity, an intimate relation and connection which, like ariadne's thread, will enable the undaunted and persevering student to find his way through the mazes of the labyrinth: we shall find that every civilization owes its origin, its development, its splendors, to the agency of the white races. in china and in india, in the vast continent of the west, centuries ere columbus found it--it was one of the group of white races that gave the impetus, and, so long as it lasted, sustained it. startling as this assertion may appear to a great number of readers, i hope to demonstrate its correctness by incontrovertible historical testimony. everywhere the white races have taken the initiative, everywhere they have _brought_ civilization to the others--everywhere they have sown the seed: the vigor and beauty of the plant depended on whether the soil it found was congenial or not. the migrations of the white race, therefore, afford us at once a guide for our historical researches, and a clue to many apparently inexplicable mysteries: we shall learn to understand why, in a vast country, the development of civilization has come to a stand, and been superseded by a retrogressive movement; why, in another, all but feeble traces of a high state of culture has vanished without apparent cause; why people, the lowest in the scale of intellect, are yet found in possession of arts and mechanical processes that would do honor to a highly intellectual race. among the group of white races, the noblest, the most highly gifted in intellect and personal beauty, the most active in the cause of civilization, is the arian[ ] race. its history is intimately associated with almost every effort on the part of man to develop his moral and intellectual powers. it now remains for me to trace out the field of inquiry into which i propose to enter in the succeeding volumes. the list of great, independent civilizations is not long. among all the innumerable nations that "strutted their brief hour on the stage" of the world, ten only have arrived at the state of complete societies, giving birth to distinct modes of intellectual culture. all the others were imitators or dependents; like planets they revolved around, and derived their light from the suns of the systems to which they belonged. at the head of my list i would place:-- . the indian civilization. it spread among the islands of the indian ocean, towards the north, beyond the himalaya mountains, and towards the east, beyond the brahmapootra. it was originated by a white race of the arian stock. . the egyptian civilization comes next. as its satellites may be mentioned the less perfect civilizations of the ethiopians, nubians, and several other small peoples west of the oasis of ammon. an arian colony from india, settled in the upper part of the nile valley, had established this society. . the assyrians, around whom rallied the jews, phenicians, lydians, carthaginians, and hymiarites, were indebted for their social intelligence to the repeated invasions of white populations. the zoroastrian iranians, who flourished in further asia, under the names of medes, persians, and bactrians, were all branches of the arian family. . the greeks belonged to the same stock, but were modified by shemitic elements, which, in course of time, totally transformed their character. . china presents the precise counterpart of egypt. the light of civilization was carried thither by arian colonies. the substratum of the social structure was composed of elements of the yellow race, but the white civilizers received reinforcements of their blood at various times. . the ancient civilization of the italian peninsula (the etruscan civilization), was developed by a mosaic of populations of the celtic, iberian, and shemitic stock, but cemented by arian elements. from it emerged the civilization of rome. . our civilization is indebted for its tone and character to the germanic conquerors of the fifth century. they were a branch of the arian family. , , . under these heads i class the three civilizations of the western continent, the alleghanian, the mexican, and the peruvians. this is the field i have marked out for my investigations, the results of which will be laid before the reader in the succeeding volumes. the first part of my work is here at an end--the vestibule of the structure i wish to erect is completed. footnotes: [ ] i do not hesitate to consider as an unmistakable mark of intellectual inferiority, the exaggerated development of instincts that characterizes certain savages. the perfection which some of their senses acquire, cannot but be at the expense of the reasoning faculties. see, upon this subject, the opinions of mr. lesson des papous, in a memoir inserted in the tenth volume of the _annales des sciences naturelles_. [ ] "the negro's sense of smell and of taste is as powerful as it is unselecting. he eats everything, and i have good reasons for asserting, that odors the most disagreeable to us, are positively pleasant to him." (pruner, _op. cit._, vol. i. p. .) mr. pruner's assertions would, i think, be corroborated by every one who has lived much among the negroes. it is a notorious fact that the blacks on our southern plantations eat every animal they can lay hold of. i have seen them discuss a piece of fox, or the still more strongly flavored pole-cat, with evident relish. nay, on one occasion, i have known a party of negroes feast on an alligator for a whole week, during which time they bartered their allowance of meat for trinkets. upon my expressing surprise at so strange a repast, i was assured that it was by no means uncommon; that it was a favorite viand of the negroes in their native country, and that even here they often killed them with the prospect of a savory roast or stew. i am aware that some persons north of the mason's & dixon's line might be disposed to explain this by asserting that _hunger_ drove them to such extremities; but i can testify, from my own observation, that this is not the case. in the instances i have mentioned, and in many others which are too repulsive to be committed to paper, the banqueters were well fed, and evidently made such a feast from choice. there are, in the southern states, many of the poor white population who are neither so well clothed nor so well fed as these negroes were, and yet i never heard of their resorting to such dishes. in regard to the negro's fondness for odors, i am less qualified to speak from my own observations, but nearly every description of the manners of his native climes that i have read, mentioned the fact of their besmearing themselves with the strong musky fluid secreted by many animals--the alligator, for instance. and i remember having heard woodsmen in the south say, that while the white man shuns the polecat more than he does the rattlesnake, and will make a considerable circuit to get out of its way, the negro is but little afraid of this formidable animal and its nauseous weapon.--h. [ ] this is illustrated by many of their practices in their natural state. for instance, the well-known custom of putting to death, at the demise of some prince or great man, a number--corresponding with the rank of the deceased--of his slaves, in order that they may wait upon him in the other world. hundreds of poor creatures are often thus massacred at the funeral celebrations in honor of some king or ruler. yet it would be unjust to call the negro ferocious or cruel. it merely proves the slight estimation in which he holds human life.--h. [ ] there is a callousness in the negro, which strikingly distinguishes him from the whites, though it is possessed in perhaps an equal degree by other races. i borrow from mr. van amringe's _nat. hist. of man_, a few remarks on this subject by dr. mosely, in his _treatise on tropical diseases_: "negroes," says the doctor, "whatever the cause may be, are devoid of sensibility (physical) to a surprising degree. they are not subject to nervous diseases. they sleep sound in every disease, nor does any mental disturbance ever keep them awake. they bear chirurgical operations much better than white people, and what would be the cause of insupportable pain to a white man, a negro would almost disregard. i have amputated the legs of many negroes, who have held the upper part of the limb themselves." every southern planter, and every physician of experience in the south, could bear witness to these facts.--h. [ ] thinking that it might not be uninteresting to some of our readers to see the views concerning the negro of another european writer besides mr. gobineau, i subjoin the following extract from mr. tschudi's _travels in south america_. mr. tschudi is a swiss naturalist of undoubted reputation, an experienced philosophic observer, and a candid seeker for truth. his opinion is somewhat harsher than would be that of a man who had resided among that class all his life, but it nevertheless contains some valuable truths, and is, at least, curious on account of the source whence it comes. "in lima, and, indeed, throughout the whole of peru, the free negroes are a plague to society. too indolent to support themselves by laborious industry, they readily fall into any dishonest means of getting money. almost all the robbers that infest the roads on the coast of peru are free negroes. dishonesty seems to be a part of their very nature; and, moreover, all their tastes and inclinations are coarse and sensual. many warm defenders excuse these qualities by ascribing them to the want of education, the recollection of slavery, the spirit of revenge, etc. but i here speak of free-born negroes, who are admitted into the houses of wealthy families, who, from their early childhood, have received as good an education as falls to the share of many of the white creoles--who are treated with kindness and liberally remunerated, and yet they do not differ from their half-savage brethren who are shut out from these advantages. if the negro has learned to read and write, and has thereby made some little advance in education, he is transformed into a conceited coxcomb, who, instead of plundering travellers on the highway, finds in city life a sphere for the indulgence of his evil propensities.... my opinion is, that the negroes, in respect to capability for mental improvement, are far behind the europeans; and that, considered in the aggregate, they will not, even with the advantages of careful education, attain a very high degree of cultivation. this is apparent from the structure of the skull, on which depends the development of the brain, and which, in the negro, approximates closely to the animal form. the imitative faculty of the monkey is highly developed in the negro, who readily seizes anything merely mechanical, whilst things demanding intelligence are beyond his reach. sensuality is the impulse which controls the thoughts, the acts, the whole existence of the negroes. to them, freedom can be only nominal, for if they conduct themselves well, it is because they are compelled, not because they are inclined to do so. herein lie at once the cause of, and the apology for, their bad character." (_travels in peru_, london, , p. , _et passim_.)--h. [ ] the sickening moral degradation of some of the branches of our species is well known to the student of anthropology, though, for obvious reasons, details of this kind cannot find a place in books destined for the general reader.--h. [ ] as many of the terms of modern ethnography have not yet found their way into the dictionaries, i shall offer a short explanation of the meaning of this word, for the benefit of those readers who have not paid particular attention to that science. the word "arian" is derived from _aryas_ or ~arioi~, respectively the indigenous and the greek designation of the ancient medes, and is applied to a race, or rather a family of races, whose original ethnological area is not as yet accurately defined, but who have gradually spread from the centre of asia to the mouth of the ganges, to the british isles, and the northern extremities of scandinavia. to this family of races belong, among others, the ancient medes and persians, the white conquerors of india (now forming the caste of the brahmins), _and the germanic races_. the whole group is often called indo-european. the affinities between the greek and the german languages had long been an interesting question to philologists; but schlegel, i believe, was the first to discover the intimate relations between these two and the sanscrit, and he applied to the whole three, and their collateral branches, the name of _indo-germanic_ languages. the discovery attracted the attention both of philologists and ethnographers, and it is now indubitably proved that the civilizers of india, and the subverters of the roman empire are descended from the same ethnical stock. it is known that the sanscrit is as unlike all other indian languages, as the high-caste brahmins are unlike the pariahs and all the other aboriginal races of that country; and latham has lately come to the conclusion that it has actually been _carried to india from europe_. it will be seen from this that mr. gobineau, in his view of the origin of various civilizations, is supported in at least several of the most important instances. it is a familiar saying that _civilization travels westward_: if we believe ethnologists, the arian races have _always migrated in that direction_--from central asia to india, to asia minor, to egypt, to greece, to western europe, to the western coasts of the atlantic, and the same impulse of migration is now carrying them to the pacific.--h. appendix. by j. c. nott, m. d., mobile, alabama. appendix. i have seldom perused a work which has afforded me so much pleasure and instruction as the one of count gobineau, "_sur l'inégalité des races humaines_," and regard most of his conclusions as incontrovertible. there are, however, a few points in his argument which should not be passed without comment, and others not sufficiently elaborated. my original intention was to say much, but, fortunately for me, my colleague, mr. hotz, has so fully and ably anticipated me, in his introduction and notes, as to leave me little of importance to add. the essay of count gobineau is eminently practical and useful in its design. he views the various races of men rather as a historian than a naturalist, and while he leaves open the long mooted question of _unity_ of origin, he so fully establishes the _permanency_ of the actual moral, intellectual, and physical diversities of races as to leave no ground for antagonists to stand upon. whatever _remote causes_ may be assigned, there is no appeal from the conclusion that white, black, mongol, and other races were fully developed in nations some years before christ, and that no physical causes, during this long course of time, have been in operation, to change one type of man into another. count gobineau, therefore, accepts the _existing_ diversity of races as at least an _accomplished fact_, and draws lessons of wisdom from the plain teachings of history. man with him ceases to be an abstraction; each race, each nation, is made a separate study, and a fertile but unexplored field is opened to our view. our author leans strongly towards a belief in the _original diversity_ of races, but has evidently been much embarrassed in arriving at conclusions by religious scruples and by the want of accurate knowledge in that part of natural history which treats of the designation of _species_, and the laws of _hybridity_; he has been taught to believe that two distinct species cannot produce perfectly prolific offspring, and therefore concludes that all races of men _must_ be of one origin, because they are prolific _inter se_. my appendix will therefore be devoted mainly to this question of species. a. our author has taken the facts of dr. morton at second hand, and, moreover, had not before him dr. morton's later tables and more matured deductions; i shall therefore give an abstract of his results as published by himself in , with some comments of my own. the figures represent the internal capacity of the skull in cubic inches, and were obtained by filling the cavity with shot and afterwards pouring them into an accurately graduated measure. it must be admitted that the collection of morton is not sufficiently full in all its departments to enable us to arrive at the absolute capacity of crania in the different races; but it is sufficiently complete to establish beyond cavil, the fact that the crania of the white are much larger than those of the dark races. his table is very incomplete in mongol, malays, and some others; but in the white races of europe, the black races, and the american, the results are substantially correct. i have myself had ample opportunities for examining the heads of living negroes and indians of america, as well as a considerable number of crania, and can fully indorse dr. morton's results. it will be seen that his skulls of american aborigines amount to . _table, showing the size of the brain in cubic inches, as obtained by the measurement of crania of various races and families of man._ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | no. of | largest | smallest | | races and families. | skulls.| internal | internal | mean.| mean. | | capacity.| capacity.| | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- modern caucasian group. | | | | | teutonic family | | | | | germans | | | | } english | | | | } anglo-americans | | | | } pelasgic family | | | | | persians } | | | | armenians } | | | | circassians } | | | | celtic family | | | | | native irish | | | | | indostanic family | | | | | bengalees, &c. | | | | | shemitic family | | | | | arabs | | | | | nilotic family | | | | | fellahs | | | | | | | | | | ancient caucasian group.| | | | | pelasgic family | | | | | greco-egyptians | | | | | (from catacombs) | | | | | nilotic family | | | | | egyptians | | | | | (from catacombs) | | | | | | | | | | mongolian group. | | | | | chinese family | | | | | | | | | | malay group. | | | | | malayan family | | | | } polynesian family | | | | } | | | | | american group. | | | | | toltecan family | | | | | peruvians | | | | } mexicans | | | | } barbarous tribes | | | | } iroquois } | | | } lenapè } | | | } cherokee } | | | } shoshonè, &c. } | | | | | | | | | negro group. | | | | | native african family | | | | } american-born negroes | | | | } hottentot family | | | | | alforean family | | | | | australians | | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- dr. morton's mind, it will be seen by this table, had not yet freed itself from the incubus of artificial and unnatural classifications. like tiedemann and others, he has grouped together races which have not the slightest affinity in physical, moral, or linguistic characters. in the _caucasian_ group, for example, are placed the teutonic, indostanic, shemitic, and nilotic families, each of which, it can be shown, has existed utterly distinct for years, not to mention many subdivisions. the table of dr. morton affords some curious results. his ancient pelasgic heads and those of the modern white races, give the same size of brain, viz: cubic inches; and his ancient egyptians and their modern representatives, the fellahs, yield the same mean, cubic inches; the difference between the two groups being cubic inches. these facts have a strong bearing on the question of _permanence_ of types. the small-headed hindoos present the same cranial capacity as the egyptians, and though these races have each been the repository of early civilization, it is a question whether either was the originator of civilization. the egyptian race, from the earliest monumental dawn, exhibits shemitic adulteration; and latham proves that the sanscrit language was not indigenous to india, but was carried there from northern europe in early ages by conquerors. again, in the negro group, while it is absolutely shown that certain african races, whether born in africa, or of the tenth descent in america, give a cranial capacity almost identical, cubic inches; we see, on the contrary, the hottentot and australian yielding a mean of but inches, thereby showing a like difference of eight cubic inches. in the american group, also, the same parallel holds good. the toltecan family, the most civilized race, exhibit a mean of but inches, while the barbarous tribes give , that is, a difference of inches in favor of the savage. while, however, the toltecans have the smaller heads, they are, according to combe, much more developed in the anterior or _intellectual_ lobes, which may serve to explain this apparent paradox. when we compare the highest and lowest races with each other, the contrast becomes still more striking, viz: the teutonic with the hottentot and australian. the former family gives a mean capacity of inches, while the latter two yield but , or a difference of _ cubic inches_ between the skulls of these types! now, as far back as history and monuments carry us, as well as crania and other testimonies, these various types have been _permanent_; and most of them we can trace back several thousand years. if such permanence of type through thousands of years, and in defiance of all climatic influences, does not establish _specific_ characters, then is the naturalist at sea without a compass to guide him. these facts determine clearly the arbitrary nature of all classifications heretofore adopted; the teuton, the jew, the hindoo, the egyptian, &c., have all been included under the term _caucasian_; and yet they have, as far as we know, been through all time as distinct in physical and moral characters from each other, as they have from the negro races of africa and oceanica. the same diversity of types is found among all the other groups, or arbitrary divisions of the human family. rich and rare as is the collection of dr. morton, it is very defective in many of its divisions, and it occurred to me that this deficiency might to some degree be supplied by the hat manufacturers of various nations; notwithstanding that the information derived from this source could give but one measurement, viz: the _horizontal periphery_. yet this one measurement alone, on an extended scale, would go far towards determining the general size of the brain. i accordingly applied to three hat dealers in mobile, and a large manufacturer in new jersey, for statements of the relative number of hats of each size sold to adult males; their tables agree so perfectly as to leave no doubt as to the circumference of the heads of the white population of the united states. the three houses together dispose of about , hats annually. the following table was obligingly sent me by messrs. vail & yates, of newark; and they accompanied it with the remark, that their hats were sent principally to our western states, where there is a large proportion of german population; also that the sizes of these hats were a little larger (about one fourth of an inch) than those sold in the southern states. this remark was confirmed by the three dealers in mobile. our table gives, st. the number or size of the hat. d. the circumference of the head corresponding. d. the circumference of the hat; and lastly, the relative proportion of each no. sold out of hats. size--inches. circum. circum. relative of head. of hat. prop. in . - / - / - / - / - / - / - / - / - / - / - / - / - / - / - / - / all hats larger than these are called "extra sizes." the average size, then, of the crania of white races in the united states, is about - / inches circumference, including the hair and scalp, for which about - / inches should be deducted, leaving a mean horizontal periphery, for adult males, of inches. the measurements of the purest teutonic races in germany and other countries, would give a larger mean; and i have reason to believe that the population of france, which is principally celtic, would yield a smaller mean. i hope that others will extend these observations. dr. morton's measurements of aboriginal american races, give a mean of but - / inches; and this statement is greatly strengthened by the fact that the mexicans and other indian races wear much smaller hats than our white races. (see _types of mankind_, p. and .) prof. tiedemann, of heidelberg, asserts that the head of the negro is as large as that of the white man, but this we have shown to be an error. (_types of mankind_, p. .) tiedemann adopted the vulgar error of grouping together under the term _caucasian_, all the indo-germanic, shemitic, and nilotic races; also all the black and dark races of africa under the term _negro_. now i have shown that the hindoo and egyptian races possess about cubic inches less of brain than the teutonic; and the hottentots about inches less than the negro proper. i affirm that no valid reason has ever been assigned why the teuton and hindoo, or hottentot and negro, should be classed together in their cranial measurements. i can discover no facts which can assign a greater age to one of these races than another; and unless professor tiedemann can overcome these difficulties, he has no right to assume identity for the various races he is pleased to group under each of his arbitrary divisions. mummies from the catacombs, and portraits on the monuments, show that the heads of races on both sides of the red sea have remained unchanged years. as dr. morton tabulated his skulls on the same arbitrary basis, i abandon his arrangement and present his facts as they stand in nature, allowing the reader to compare and judge for himself. the following table gives the _internal capacity_ in cubic inches, and it will be seen that the measurements arrange themselves in a sliding scale of cubic inches from the teuton down to the hottentot and australian. _internal capacity of brain in cubic inches._ races. internal internal capacity. capacity. mean. mean. modern white races-- teutonic group pelasgic " } celtic " } shemitic " } ancient pelasgic malays } - / chinese } negroes (african) indostanese } fellahs (modern egyptians) } egyptians (ancient) } american group-- toltecan family } barbarous tribes } hottentots } australians } such has been, through several thousand years, the incessant commingling of races, that we are free to admit that absolute accuracy in measurements of crania cannot now be attained. yet so constant are the results in contrasting groups, that no unprejudiced mind can deny that there is a wide and well-marked disparity in the cranial developments of races. b. as the discussion stands at the present day, we may assume that the scientific world is pretty equally divided on the question of unity of the human family, and the point is to be settled by facts, and not by names. natural history is a comparatively new and still rapidly progressing science, and the study of man has been one of the last departments to attract serious attention. blumenbach and prichard, who may be regarded among the early explorers in this vast field, have but recently been numbered with the dead; and we may safely assert that the last ten years have brought forth materials which have shed an entirely new light on this subject. mr. agassiz, dr. morton, prof. leidy, and many other naturalists of the united states, contend for an original diversity in the races of men, and we shall proceed to give some of the reasons why we have adopted similar views. two of the latest writers of any note on the opposite side are the rev. dr. bachman, of charleston, and m. flourens, of paris; and as these gentlemen have very fully travelled over the argument opposed to us, we shall take the liberty, in the course of our remarks, to offer some objections to their views. the great difficulty in this discussion is, to define clearly what meaning should be attached to the term _species_; and to the illustration of this point, mainly, will our labors be confined. _genera_ are, for the most part, well defined by _anatomical_ characters, and little dispute exists respecting them; but no successful attempt has yet been made to designate _species_ in this way, and it is by their _permanency of type alone_, as ascertained from written or monumental records, that our decision can be guided. species. the following definitions of species have been selected by dr. bachman, and may be received as unexceptionable as any others; but we shall show that they fall far short of the true difficulties of the case. "we are under the necessity of admitting the existence of certain forms, which have perpetuated themselves, from the beginning of the world, without exceeding the limits prescribed: all the individuals belonging to one of these forms constitute a _species_."--cuvier. "we unite under the designation species all those individuals who mutually bear to each other so close a resemblance as to allow of our supposing that they may have proceeded originally from a single being, or a single pair."--de candolle. "the name species is applied to an assemblage of individuals which bear a strong resemblance to each other, and which are perpetuated with the same essential qualities. thus man, the dog, the horse, constitute to the zoologist so many distinct species."--milne edwards and achille compte. we have no objection to this definition, but the examples cited are points in dispute, and not received by many of the leading naturalists of the day. "species are fixed and permanent forms of being, exhibiting indeed certain modes of variation, of which they may be more or less susceptible, but maintaining throughout those modifications a sameness of structural essentials, transmitted from generation to generation, and never lost by the influence of causes which otherwise produce obvious effects. _varieties_ are either accidental or the result of the care and culture of man."[ ]--martin. dr. bachman gives another, substantially the same, from agassiz; and also one of his own, to which he appends, as an additional test of species, the production of "_fertile offspring by association_." in this definition the doctor _assumes_ one of the main points in dispute. "_varieties_," says dr. bachman, "are those that are produced within the limits of particular species, and have not existed from its origin. they sometimes originate in wild species, especially those that have a wide geographical range, and are thus exposed to change of climate and temperature," &c. * * * "_permanent varieties_ are such as, having once taken place, are propagated in perpetuity, and do not change their characteristics unless they breed with other varieties." we may remark that the existence of such _permanent varieties_ as here described is also in dispute. the same author continues:-- "on comparing these definitions, as given by various naturalists, each in his own language, it will be perceived that there is no essential difference in the various views expressed in regard to the characters by which a species is designated. they all regard it as 'the lowest term to which we descend, with the exception of _varieties_, such as are seen in domestic animals.' they are, to examine the external and internal organization of the animal or plant--they are, to compare it with kindred species, and if by this examination they are found to possess _permanent characters differing from those of other species, it proves itself to be a distinct species_. when this fact is satisfactorily ascertained, and the specimen is not found a domestic species, in which varieties always occur, presumptive evidence is afforded of its having had a primordial existence. we infer this from the fact that no species is the production of blind chance, and that within the _knowledge of history_ no true species, but _varieties_ only, whose origin can be _distinctly traced to existing and well-known species_, have made their appearance in the world. this, then, is the only means within the knowledge of man by which any species of plant or animal _can be shown_ to be primordial. the peculiar form and characters designated the species, and its origin was a necessary inference derived from the characters stamped on it by the hand of the creator." to all the positions thus far taken by dr. bachman, we most cheerfully subscribe; they are strictly scientific, and by such criteria alone do we desire to test the unity of the human family; but we must enter a decided demurrer to the assertion which follows, viz: that, "according to the universally received definition of species, all the individuals of the human race are proved to be of one species." when it shall be shown that all the races of men, dogs, horses, cattle, wolves, foxes, &c., are "varieties only, _whose origin can be distinctly traced to existing and well-known species_," we may then yield the point; but we must be permitted to say that dr. bachman is the only naturalist, as far as we know, who has assumed to know these original types. now, if the reader will turn back and review carefully all the definitions of species cited, he will perceive that they are not based upon _anatomical characters_, but simply on the _permanency_ of certain organic forms, and that this permanence of form is determined by its _history_ alone. professor owen, of london, has thrown the weight of his great name into the scale, and tells us that "man is the sole species of his genus, the sole representative of his order." but proving that man is not a monkey, as the professor has done in the lecture alluded to, does not prove that men are all of _one_ species, according to any definition yet received: he has made the assertion, but has assigned no scientific reasons to sustain it. no one would be more rejoiced than ourselves, to see the great talent and learning of professor owen brought fully to bear on this point; but, like most naturalists, he has overlooked one of the most important points in this discussion--_the monumental history of man_. will professor owen or dr. bachman tell us wherein the lion and tiger--the dog, wolf, fox, and jackal--the fossil horse, and living species--the siberian mammoth and the indian elephant, differ more from each other than the white man and the negro? are not all these regarded by naturalists as distinct species, and yet who pretends to be able to distinguish the skeleton of one from the other by specific characters? the examples just cited, of living species, have been decided upon simply from their permanency of type, as derived from their history; and we say that, by the same process of reasoning, the races of men depicted on the monuments of egypt, five thousand years ago, and which have maintained their types through all time and all climates since, are _distinct species_. dr. morton defines species--"a primordial organic form," and determines these forms by their permanence through all human records; and mr. agassiz, who adopts this definition, adds: "species are thus distinct forms of organic life, the origin of which is lost in the primitive establishment of the state of things now existing; and varieties are such modification of the species as may return to the typical form under temporary influences." dr. bachman objects very strongly to this definition, and declares it a "cunning device, and, to all intents, an _ex post facto_ law," suddenly conjured up during a controversy, to avoid the difficulties of the case; but we have serious doubts whether these gentlemen are capable of such subterfuge in matters of science, and confess that we cannot see any substantial difference between their definition and those given by dr. bachman. morton and agassiz determine a form to be "_primordial_" by its permanency, as proved by history, and the other definitions assign no other test. professor leidy, who has not only studied the "lower departments of zoology," like mr. agassiz, but also the "higher forms of animal life," says that "too much importance has been attached to the term species," and gives the following definition: "a species of plant or animal may be defined to be an immutable organic form, whose characteristic distinctions may always be recognized by _a study of its history_."[ ] m. jourdain, under the head "espèce," in his _dictionnaire des termes des sciences naturelles_, after citing a long list of definitions from leading authors, concludes with the following remarks, which, as the question now stands before the world, places the term species just where it should be:-- "it is evident that we can, among organized bodies, regard as a _species_ only such a collection of beings as resemble each other more than they resemble others, and which, by a consent more or less unanimous, it is agreed to designate by a common name; for a _species_ is but a simple _abstraction of the mind_, and not a group, exactly determined by nature herself, as ancient as she is, and of which she has irrevocably traced the limits. it is in the definition of species that we recognize how far the influence of ideas adopted without examination in youth is powerful in obscuring the most simple ideas of general physics." although not written with the expectation of publication, i will take the liberty of publishing the following private letter just received from prof. leidy. he has not appeared at all in this controversy before the public, and we may safely say that no one can be better qualified than he is to express an opinion on this question of species. "with all the contention about the question of what constitutes a _species_, there appears to be almost no difficulty, comparatively, in its practical recognition. species of plants and animals are daily determined, and the characters which are given to distinguish them are viewed by the great body of naturalists as sufficient. all the definitions, however, which have been given for a species, are objectionable. morton says: 'a species is a primordial organic form.' but how shall we distinguish the latter? how can it be proved that any existing forms primordially were distinct? in my attempted definition, i think, i fail, for i only direct how species are discovered. "according to the practical determination of a species by naturalists, in a late number of the _proceedings_ of our academy (vol. vii. p. ), i observe: 'a species is a mere convenient word with which naturalists empirically designate groups of organized beings possessing characters of comparative constancy, as far as historic experience has guided them in giving due weight to such constancy.' "according to this definition, the races of men are evidently distinct species. but it may be said that the definition is given to suit the circumstances. so it is, and so it should be; or, if not, then all characterized species should conform to an arbitrary definition. the species of gypætus, haliætus, tanagra, and of many other genera of birds, are no more distinguishable than the species of men; and, i repeat, the anatomy of one species of haliætus, or of any other genus, will answer for that of all the other species of the same genus. the same is the case with mammals. one species of felis, ursus, or equus will give the exact anatomy of all the other species in each genus, just as you may study the anatomy of the white man upon the black man. while prof. richard owen will compare the orang with man, and therefore deduce all races of the latter to be of one species, he divides the genus cervus into several other genera, and yet there is no difference in their internal anatomy; while he considers the horse and the ass as two distinct genera, and says that a certain fossil horse-tooth, carefully compared with the corresponding tooth of the recent horse, showed no differences, excepting in being a little more curved, he considers it a distinct species, under the name of equus curvidens; and yet, with differences of greater value in the jaws of the negro and white man, he considers them the same. "in the restricted genera of vertebrata of modern naturalists, the specific characters are founded on the external appendages, for the most part--differences in the scales, horns, antlers, feathers, hairs, or bills. just as you separate the black and white man by the difference in the color of the skin and the character of the hair, so do we separate the species of bears, or cats, &c. "philadelphia, _april , _." we might thus go on and multiply, to the extent of an octavo volume, evidence to show how vague and unsettled is the term species among naturalists, and that, when we abandon historical records, we have no reliable guide left. moreover, were we able to establish perfectly reliable landmarks between species, we still have no means of determining whether they were originally created in one pair, or many pairs. the latter is certainly the most rational supposition: there is every reason to believe that the earth and the sea brought forth "_abundantly_" of each species. it must be clear to the reader, from the evidence above adduced, that dr. bachman claims far too much when he asserts that-- "naturalists can be found, in europe and america, who, without any _vain boast_, can distinguish every species of bird and quadruped on their separate continents; and the characters which distinguish and separate the several species are as distinct and infallible as are those which form the genera."[ ] and, again, when he says:-- "from the opportunities we have enjoyed in the examination of the varieties and species of domesticated quadrupeds and birds, we have never found any difficulty in deciding on the species to which these varieties belong." those of us who are still groping in darkness certainly have a right to ask who are the authorities alluded to, and what are those "characters which distinguish and separate species" as distinctly and infallibly as "genera?" they are certainly not in print. the doctor must pardon us for reminding him that there is printed evidence that his own mind is not always free from doubts. in the introduction of audubon and bachman's _quadrupeds of america_, p. vii., it is said:-- "although _genera_ may be easily ascertained by the forms and dental arrangements peculiar to each, many _species_ so nearly approach each other in size, while they are so variable in color, that it is exceedingly difficult to separate them with positive certainty." again, in speaking of the genus _vulpes_ (foxes), the same work says:-- "the characters of this genus differ so slightly from those of the genus _canis_, that we are induced to pause before removing it from the sub-genus in which it had so long remained. as a general rule, we are obliged to _admit that a large fox is a wolf, and a small wolf may be termed a fox_. so inconveniently large, however, is the list of species in the old genus _canis_, that it is, we think, advisable to separate into distinct groups such species as possess any characters different from true wolves." speaking of the origin of the domestic dog, dr. bachman, in his work on _unity of races_, p. , says:-- "notwithstanding all these difficulties--and we confess we are not free from some doubts in regard to their identity (dog and wolf)--if we were called upon to decide on any wild species as the progenitor of our dogs, we would sooner fix upon the large wolf than on any other dog, hyena, or jackal," &c. the doctor is unable, here at least (and we can point out many other cases), to "designate species;" and the recent investigations of flourens, at the _jardin des plantes_, prove him wrong as regards the origin of the dog. the dog is not derived from the "large wolf," but, with it, produces hybrids, sterile after the third generation. the dog forms a genus apart. we repeat, then, that in a large number of _genera_, the species cannot be separated by any anatomical characters, and that it is from their history alone naturalists have arrived at those minute divisions now generally received. we may, without the fear of contradiction, go a step further, and assert that several of the races of men are as widely separated in physical organization, physiological and psychological characters, as are the canidæ, equidæ, felines, elephants, bears and others. when the white races of europe, the mongols of asia, the aborigines of america, the black races of africa and oceanica are placed beside each other, they are marked by stronger differences than are the species of the genera above named. it has been objected that these gaps are filled by intermediate links which make the chain complete from one extremity to the other. the admission of the fact does not invalidate our position, for we have shown elsewhere (see _types of mankind_) _gradation_ is the law of nature. the extreme types, we have proven, have been distinct for more than years, and no existing causes during that time have transformed one type into another. the well-marked negro type, for example, stands face to face with the white type on the monuments of egypt; and they differ more from each other than the dog and wolf, ass and _equis hemionus_, lion and tiger, &c. the hair and skin, the size and shape of head, the pelvis, the extremities, and other points, separate certain african and oceanican negroes more widely than the above species. this will not be questioned, whatever difference of opinion may exist with regard to the permanency of these forms. in the language of prof. leidy, "the question to be determined is, whether the differences in the races of men are as permanent and of as much value as those which characterize species in the lower genera of animals." these races of men too are governed by the same laws of geographical distribution, as the species of the lower genera; they are found, as far back as history can trace them, as widely separated as possible, and surrounded by local floræ and faunæ. varieties. this term is very conveniently introduced to explain all the difficulties which embarrass this discussion. dr. bachman insists that all the races of men are mere _varieties_, and sustains the opinion by a repetition of those analogies which have been so often drawn from the animal kingdom by prichard and his school. it is well known that those animals which have been domesticated undergo, in a few generations, very remarkable changes in color, form, size, habits, &c. for example, all the hogs, black, white, brown, gray, spotted, &c., now found scattered over the earth, have, it is said, their parentage in one pair of wild hogs. "this being admitted," says dr. b. "we invite the advocates of plurality in the human species to show wherein these varieties are less striking than their eight (alluding to agassiz) originally created nations." again-- "and how has the discovery been made that all the permanent races are mere varieties, and not 'originally created' species, or 'primitive varieties?' simply because the naturalists of germany, finding that the original wild hog still exists in their forests, have, in a thousand instances, reclaimed them from the woods. by this means they have discovered that their descendants, _after a few generations_, lose their ferocity, assume all colors," &c. the same reasoning is applied to horses, cattle, goats, sheep, &c., while many, if not most of the best naturalists of the day deny that we know anything of the origin of our domestic animals. geoffroy st. hilaire, in his work, just out, denies it in toto. we are, however, for the sake of argument, willing to admit all the examples, and all he claims with regard to the origin of endless varieties in domesticated animals.[ ] let us, on the other hand, "invite the advocates of _unity_ of the human species" to say when and where such varieties have sprung up in the human family. we not only have the written history of man for years, but his monumental history for more; and yet, while the naturalists of germany are catching wild hogs, and recording in a thousand instances "after a few generations" these wonderful changes, no one has yet pointed out anything analogous in the human family; the porcupine family in england, a few spotted mexicans, &c., do not meet the case; history records the origin of no permanent variety. no race of men has in the same country turned black, brown, gray, white, and spotted. the negroes in america have not in ten generations turned to all colors, though fully _domesticated_, like pigs and turkeys. the jews in all countries for years are still jews. the gypsies are everywhere still gypsies. in india, the different castes, of different colors, have been living together several thousand years, and are still distinct, &c. &c. nor does domestication affect all animals and fowls equally; compare the camel, ass, and deer, with the hog and dog; the guinea fowl, pea fowl, and goose, with pigeons, turkeys, and common fowls. in fact, no one animal can be taken as an analogue for another: each has its own physiological laws; each is influenced differently and in different degrees by the same external influences. how, then, can an animal be taken as an analogue for man? we have also abundant authority to show that all wild species do not present the same uniformity in external characters. "all packs of american wolves usually consist of various shades of color, and varieties nearly black have been occasionally found in every part of the united states.... in a gang of wolves which existed in colleton district, south carolina, a few years ago (sixteen of which were killed by hunters in eighteen months), we were informed that about one-fifth were black, and the others of every shade of color, from black to dusky gray and yellowish white."--audubon & bachman, d amer. ed., vol. ii. pp. - . speaking of the white american wolf, the same authors say:-- "their gait and movements are precisely the same as those of the common dog, and their mode of copulating and number of young brought forth at a litter, are about the same." (it might have been added that their number of bones, teeth, whole anatomical structure are the same.) "the diversity of their size and color is remarkable, no two being quite alike."... "the wolves of the prairies ... produce from six to eleven at a birth, of which there are very seldom two alike in color."--_op. cit._, p. . "the common american wolf, richardson observes, sometimes shows remarkable diversity of color. on the banks of the mackenzie river i saw five young wolves leaping and tumbling over each other with all the playfulness of the puppies of the domestic dog, and it is not improbable they were all of one litter. one of them was pied, another black, and the rest showed the colors of the common gray wolves." the same diversity is seen in the prairie wolf, and naturalists have been much embarrassed in classifying the various wolves on account of colors, size, &c. all this is independent of _domestication_, and shows the uncertainty of analogues; and still it is remarkable that though considerable variety exists in the native dogs of america in color and size, they do not run into the thousand grotesque forms seen on the old continent, where a much greater mixture exists. the dogs of america, like the aboriginal races of men, are comparatively uniform. in the east, where various races have come together, the men, like the dogs, present endless varieties, egypt, assyria, india, &c. let us suppose that one variety of hog had been discovered in africa, one in asia, one in europe, one in australia, another in america, as well marked as those dr. b. describes; that these varieties had been transferred to other climates as have been jews, gypsies, negroes, &c., and had remained for ages without change of form or color, would they be considered as distinct species or not?--can any one doubt? the rule must work both ways, or the argument falls to the ground. in fact the dr. himself makes admissions which fully refute his whole theory. "whilst," says he, "we are willing to allow some weight to the argument advanced by president smyth, who endeavors to account for the varieties in man from the combined influences of three causes, 'climate, the state of society, and manner of living,' we are free to admit that it is impossible to account for the varieties in the human family from the causes which he has assigned."[ ] the dr. further admits, in the same work, that the races have been _permanent_ since the time of the old egyptian empire, and _supposes_ that at some extremely remote time, of which we have no record, that "they were more susceptible of producing varieties than at a later period." these suppositions answer a very good purpose in theology, but do not meet the requirements of science. hybridity. having shown the insufficiency of all the other arguments in establishing the landmarks of _species_, let us now turn to those based on _hybridity_, which seems to be the last stronghold of the unity party. on this point hang all the difficulties of m. gobineau, and had he been posted up to date here, his doubts would all have vanished. the last twelve months have added some very important facts to those previously published, and we shall, with as little detail as possible, present the subject in its newest light. it is contended that when two animals of distinct species, or, in other words, of distinct origin, are bred together, they produce a hybrid which is _infertile_, or which at least becomes sterile in a few generations if preserved free from admixture with the parent stocks. it is assumed that unlimited prolificness is a certain test of community of origin. we, on the contrary, contend that there is no abrupt line of demarcation; that no complete laws of hybridity have yet been established; that there is a _regular gradation_ in the prolificness of the species, and that, according to the best lights we now possess, there is a continued series from perfect sterility to perfect prolificacy. the degrees may be expressed in the following language:-- . that in which hybrids never reproduce; in other words, where the mixed progeny begins and ends with the first cross. . that in which the hybrids are incapable of producing _inter se_, but multiply by union with the parent stock. . that in which animals of unquestionably distinct species produce a progeny which are prolific _inter se_, but have a tendency to run out. . that which takes place between closely proximate species; among mankind, for example, and among those domestic animals most essential to human wants and happiness; here the prolificacy is unlimited. it seems to be a law that in those genera where several or many species exist, there is a certain gradation which is shown in degrees of hybridity; some having greater affinity than others. experiments are still wanting to make our knowledge perfect, but we know enough to establish our points. there are many points we have not space to dwell on, as the relative influence of the male and female on the offspring; the tendency of one species to predominate over another; the tendency of types to "crop out" after lying dormant for many generations; the fact that in certain species some of the progeny take after one parent and some after the other, while in other cases the offspring presents a medium type, &c. the genus _equus_ (horse) comprises six species, of which three belong to asia, and three to africa. the asiatic species are the _equus caballus_ (horse), _equus hemionus_ (dzigguetai), and _equus asinus_ (ass). those of africa are the _equus zebra_ (zebra), _equus montanus_ (daw), and the _equus quaccha_ (quagga). the horse and ass alone have been submitted to domestication from time immemorial; the others have remained wild. it is well known that the horse and ass produce together an unprolific mule, and as these two species are the furthest removed from each other in their physical structure, dr. morton long since suggested that intermediate species bred together would show a higher degree of prolificness, and this prediction has been vindicated by experiments recently made in the garden of plants at paris, where the ass and dzigguetai have been bred together for the last ten years. "what is very remarkable, these hybrids differ considerably from each other; some resemble much more closely the dzigguetai, others the ass." in regard to the product of the male dzigguetai and the jenny, mr. geoffroy st. hilaire says:[ ]-- "another fact, not less worthy of interest, is the fecundity, if not of all the mules, at least the firstborn among them; with regard to this, the fact is certain; he has produced several times with jennies, and once with the female dzigguetai, the only one he has covered."[ ] at a meeting of the "société zoologique d'acclimation," m. richard (du cantal) "parle des essais de croisements de l'hémione avec l'anesse, et dit qu'ils ont donnè un mulet beaucoup _plus ardent_ que l'âne. il asserte que les produits de l'hémione avec l'âne, sont féconds, et que le métis, nommé polka, à déja produit." to what extent the prolificness of these two species will go is yet to be determined, and there is an unexplored field still open among the other species of this genus; it is highly probable that a gradation may be established from sterility, up to perfect prolificacy. not only do the female ass and the male onager breed together, but a male offspring of this cross, with a mare, produces an animal more docile than either parent, and combining the best physical qualities, such as strength, speed, &c.; whence the ancients preferred the onager to the ass, for the production of mules.[ ] mr. gliddon, who lived upwards of twenty years in egypt and other eastern countries, informs me this opinion is still prevalent in egypt, and is acted upon more particularly in arabia, persia, &c., where the _gour_, or wild ass, still roams the desert. the zebra has also been several times crossed with the horse. the genus _canis_ contains a great many species, as domestic dogs, wolves, foxes, jackals, &c., and much discussion exists as to which are really species and which mere varieties. in this genus experiments in crossing have been carried a step further than in the _equidæ_, but there is much yet to be done. all the species produce prolific offspring, but how far the prolificness might extend in each instance is not known; there is reason to believe that every grade would be found except that of absolute sterility which is seen in the offspring of the horse and ass. the following facts are given by m. flourens, and are the result of his own observations at the _jardin des plantes_. "the hybrids of the dog and wolf are sterile after the _third_ generation; those of the jackal and dog, are so after the _fourth_. "moreover, if one of these hybrids is bred with one of the primitive species, they soon return, completely and totally, to this species. "my experiments on the crossing of species have given me opportunities of making a great many observations of this kind. "the union of the dog and jackal produces a hybrid--a mixed animal, an animal partaking almost equally of the two, but in which, however, the type of the _jackal_ predominates over that of the _dog_. "i have remarked, in fact, in my experiments, that all types are not equally dominant and persistent. the type of the dog is more persistent than that of the wolf--that of the jackal more than that of the dog; that of the horse is less than that of the ass, &c. the hybrid of the dog and the wolf partakes more of the dog than the wolf; the hybrid of the jackal and dog, takes more after the jackal than dog; the hybrid of the horse and the ass partakes less of the horse than the ass; it has the ears, back, rump, voice of the ass; the horse neighs, the ass brays, and the mule brays like the ass, &c. "the hybrid of the dog and jackal, then, partakes more of the jackal than dog--it has straight ears, hanging tail, does not bark, and is wild--it is more jackal than dog. "so much for the first cross product of the dog with the jackal. i continue to unite, from generation to generation, the successive products with one of the two primitive stocks--with that of the dog, for example. the hybrid of the _second generation_ does not yet bark, but has already the ears pendent at the ends, and is less savage. the hybrid of the third generation barks, has the ears pendent, the tail turned up, and is no longer wild. the hybrid of the _fourth generation_ is entirely a dog. "four generations, then, have sufficed to re-establish one of the two primitive types--the type of the dog; and four generations suffice, also, to bring back the other type."[ ] from the foregoing facts, m. flourens deduces, without assigning a reason, the following _non sequitur_:-- "thus, then, either hybrids, born of the union of two distinct species, unite and soon become sterile, or they unite with one of the parent stocks, and soon return to this type--they in no case give what may be called a new species, that is to say, an intermediate durable species."[ ] the dog also produces hybrids with the fox and hyena, but to what extent has not yet been determined. the hybrid fox is certainly prolific for several generations. there are also bovine, camelline, caprine, ovine, feline, deer with the ram, and endless other hybrids, running through the animal kingdom, but they are but repetitions of the above facts, and experiments are still far from being complete in establishing the _degrees_ which attach to each two species. we have abundant proofs, however, of the three first degrees of hybridity. st. where the hybrid is infertile. d. where it produces with the parent stock. d. where it is prolific for one, two, three, or four generations, and then becomes sterile. up to this point there is no diversity of opinion. let us now inquire what evidence there is of the existence of the th degree, in which hybrids may form a new and permanent race. to show how slow has been our progress in this question, and what difficulties beset our path, we need only state that the facts respecting the dog, wolf, and jackal, quoted above from flourens, have only been published within the last twelve months. the identity of the dog and wolf has heretofore been undetermined, and the _degrees_ of hybridity of the dog with the wolf and jackal were before unknown. these experiments do not extend beyond one species of wolf. m. flourens says:-- "_les espèces ne s'altèrent point, ne changent point, ne passent point de l'une à l'autre; les espèces sont_ fix�s." "if species have a tendency to transformation, to pass one into another, why has not time, which, in everything, effects all that can happen, ended by disclosing, by betraying, by implying this tendency. "but time, they may tell me, is wanting. it is not wanting. it is years since aristotle wrote, and we recognize in our day all the animals which he describes; and we recognize them by the characters which he assigns.... cuvier states that the history of the elephant is more exact in aristotle than in buffon. they bring us every day from egypt, the remains of animals which lived there two or three thousand years ago--the ox, crocodiles, ibis, &c. &c., which are the same as those of the present day. we have under our eyes _human mummies_--the skeleton of that day is identical with that of the egyptian of our day." (m. flourens might have added that the mummies of the white and black races show them to have been as distinct then as now, and that the monumental drawings represent the different races more than a thousand years further back.) "thus, then, through three thousand years, no species has changed. an experiment which continues through three thousand years, is not an experiment to be made--it is an experiment _made_. species do not change."[ ] _permanence of type_, then, is the only test which he can adduce for the designation of species, and he here comes back plainly to the position we have taken. let us now test the races of men by this rule. the white asiatic races, the jew, the arab, the egyptian, the negro, at least, are distinctly figured on the monuments of egypt and assyria, as distinct as they are now, and _time_ and change of climate have not transformed any one type into another. in whatever unexplored regions of the earth the earliest voyagers have gone, they have found races equally well marked. these races are all prolific _inter se_, and there is every reason to believe that we here find the fourth and last degree of hybridity. whether the prolificacy is _unlimited_ between all the races or species of men is still an unsettled point, and experiments have not yet been fully and fairly made to determine the question. the dog and wolf become sterile at the _third_. the dog and jackal at the fourth generation, and who can tell whether the law of hybridity might not show itself in man, after a longer succession of generations. there are no observations yet of this kind in the human family. it is a common belief in our southern states, that mulattoes are less prolific, and attain a less longevity than the parent stocks. i am convinced of the truth of this remark, when applied to the mulatto from the strictly white and black races, and i am equally convinced, from long personal observation, that the _dark_-skinned european races, as spaniards, portuguese, italians, basques, &c., mingle much more perfectly with the negroes than do fair races, thus carrying out the law of gradation in hybridity. if the mulattoes of new orleans and mobile be compared with those of the atlantic states, the fact will become apparent. the argument in favor of unlimited prolificacy between species may be strongly corroborated by an appeal to the history of our domestic animals, whose history is involved in the same impenetrable mystery as that of man. m. geoffroy st. hilaire very justly remarks that we know nothing of the origin of our domestic animals; because we find wild hogs, goats, sheep, &c., in certain parts of europe, several thousand years subsequent to the early migrations of man, this does not prove that the domestic come from these wild ones. the reverse may be the case.[ ] we have already made some general observations on the _genus canis_, whose natural history is most closely allied to that of man. let us now inquire whether the domestic dog is but one species, or whether under this head have been included many proximate species of unlimited prolificacy. if we try the question by _permanency of type_, like the races of men, and all well-marked species, the doubt must be yielded. there are strong reasons given by dr. morton and other naturalists, for supposing that our common dogs, independent of mixtures of _their_ various races, may also have an infusion of the blood of foxes, wolves, jackals, and even the hyena; thus forming, as we see every day around us, _curs_ of every possible grade; but setting aside all this, we have abundant evidence to show that each zoological province has its original dog, and, perhaps, not unfrequently several. in one chapter on hybridity in the "_types of mankind_," it is shown that our indian dogs in america present several well-marked types, unlike any in the old world, and which are indigenous to the soil. for example, the esquimaux dog, the hare indian dog, the north american dog, and several others. we have not space here to enter fully into the facts, but they will be found at length in the work above mentioned. these dogs, too, are clearly traced to wild species of this continent. in other parts of the world we find other species equally well marked, but we shall content ourselves with the facts drawn from the ancient monuments of egypt. it is no longer a matter of dispute that as far back, at least, as the twelfth dynasty, about years before christ, we find the common small dog of egypt, the greyhound, the staghound, the turnspit, and several other types which do not correspond with any dogs that can now be identified.[ ] we find, also, the mastiff admirably portrayed on the monuments of babylon, which dog was first brought from the east to greece by alexander the great, years b. c. the museums of natural history, also, everywhere abound in the remains of _fossil_ dogs, which long antedate all living species. the wolf, jackal, and hyena are also found distinctly drawn on the early monuments of egypt, and a greyhound, exactly like the english greyhound, with semi-pendent ears, is seen on a statue in the vatican, at rome. it is clear, then, that the leading types of dogs of the present day (and probably all) existed more than four thousand years ago, and it is equally certain that the type of a dog, when kept pure, will endure in opposite climates for ages. our staghounds, greyhounds, mastiffs, turnspits, pointers, terriers, &c., are bred for centuries, not only in egypt and europe without losing their types, but in any climate which does not destroy them. no one denies that climate influences these animals greatly, but the greyhound, staghound, or bulldog can never be transformed into each other. the facts above stated cannot be questioned, and it is admitted that these species are all prolific without limit _inter se_. the llama affords another strong argument in favor of the fourth degree of hybridity. cuvier admits but two species--the llama (_camelus llacma_), of which he regards the _alpaca_ as a variety, and the vigogne (_camelus vicunna_). more recent naturalists regard the alpaca as a distinct species, among whom is m. geoffroy st. hilaire.[ ] at all events, it seems settled that they _all_ breed together without limit. "a son tour, après la vigogne, viendra bientôt l'alpavigogne, fruit du croisement de l'alpaca avec la vigogne. don francisco de theran, il ya quarante ans, et m. de castelnau, avaient annoncé déjà que ce métis est fécond, et qu'il porte une laine presque aussi longue que celle de l'alpaca, presque aussi fine que celle de la vigogne.... m. weddell a mis tout récemment l'académie des sciences à même de voir et d'admirer cette admirable toison. il a confirmé en même temps un fait que n'avait trouvé que des incrédules parmi les naturalists--la fécondité de l'alpaca-vigogne: l'abbé cabrera, curé de la petite ville de macusani, a obtenu une race qui se perpétue et dont il possède déjà tout un troupeau. c'est, donc, pour ainsi dire, une nouvelle espèce créée par l'homme; et si paradoxal qu' ait pu sembler ce résultat, il est, fort heureusement pour l'industrie, _définitivement acquis à la science_. "ce résultat n'aurait rien de paradoxal, si l'alpaca n'était, comme l'ont pensé plusieurs auteurs, qu'une race domestique et três modifiée de la vigogne. cette objection contre le pretendu principe de l'infécondite des mulets ne serait d'ailleurs levée que pour faire place à une autre; _l'alpa-llama_ serait alors un mulet, issu de deux espèces distincts, et l'alpa-llama est fécond comme l'alpa-vigogne."[ ] we have recently seen exhibited in mobile a beautiful hybrid of the alpaca and common sheep, and the owner informed us that he had a flock at home, which breed perfectly. dr. bachman confesses that he has not examined the drawings given in the works of lepsius, champollion, rossellini, and other egyptologists, of various animals represented on the monuments, and ridicules the idea of their being received as authority in matters of natural history. although many of the drawings are rudely done, most of them, in outline, are beautifully executed, and dr. b. is the first, so far as we know, to call the fact in question. dr. chas. pickering is received by dr. b. as high authority in scientific matters--he has not only examined these drawings, but their originals. lepsius, champollion, rossellini, wilkinson, and all the egyptologists, have borne witness to the reliability of these drawings, and have enumerated hundreds of animals and plants which are perfectly identified. martin, the author of the work on "_man and monkeys_," is certainly good authority. he says:-- "now we have in modern egypt and arabia, and also in persia, varieties of greyhound closely resembling those of the ancient remains of art, and it would appear that two or three varieties exist--one smooth, another long haired, and another smooth with long-haired ears, resembling those of the spaniel. in persia, the greyhound, to judge from specimens we have seen, is silk-haired, with a fringed tail. they are of a black color; but a fine breed, we are informed, is of a slate or ash color, as are some of the smooth-haired greyhounds depicted in the egyptian paintings. in arabia, a large, rough, powerful race exists; and about akaba, according to laborde, a breed of slender form, fleet, with a long tail, very hairy, in the form of a brush, with the ears erect and pointed, closely resembling, in fact, many of those figured by the ancient egyptians."[ ] he goes on to quote col. sykes, and others, for other varieties of greyhound in the east, unlike any in europe. dr. pickering, after enumerating various objects identified on the monuments of the third and fourth dynasties, as nubians, white races, the ostrich, ibis, jackal, antelope, hedgehog, goose, fowls, ducks, bullock, donkey, goats, dog-faced ape, hyena, porcupine, wolves, foxes, &c. &c., when he comes down to the twelfth dynasty, says:-- "the paintings on the walls represent a vast variety of subjects; including, most unexpectedly, the greater part of the _arts_ and _trades_ practised among civilized nations at the present day; also birds, quadrupeds, fishes, and insects, amounting to an _extended treatise on zoology_, well deserving the attention of naturalists. the date accompanying these representations has been astronomically determined by biot, at about b. c. (champollion-figeac, _egyp. arc._); and lepsius's chronological computation corresponds."[ ] dr. p. gives us a fauna and flora of egypt, running further back than usher's date for the creation, and it cannot be doubted that the drawings are as reliable as those in any modern work on natural history. footnotes: [ ] natural history of man and monkeys. [ ] fauna and flora within living animals, p. . [ ] doctrine of the unity of the human race, p. . [ ] we are told that the pigs in one department of france are all black, in another, all white, and local causes are assigned! when i was a boy, my father introduced what was then called the china hog into the union district, south carolina; they were black, with white faces. on a visit to that district about twelve years ago, i found the whole country for miles covered with them. on a visit one year ago, i found they had been supplanted entirely by other breeds of different colors: the old familiar type had disappeared. [ ] _op. cit._, p. . [ ] _domestication et naturalization des animaux utiles_, par m. isadore geoffroy st. hilaire, p. , paris, . [ ] ibid. [ ] columbia, p. . [ ] _de la longevité humaine_, &c., par p. flourens, paris, . [ ] m. flourens here, perhaps, speaks too positively. the blood of the apparently lost species will show itself from time to time for many, if not endless generations. [ ] _op. cit._ [ ] _op. cit._, p. . [ ] it has been objected, that the drawings cannot be relied on, as some of these types are no longer to be found. but there are several well-marked types of domestic animals on the old monuments that no longer exist, because they have been supplanted by better breeds. in this country several varieties of the indian dogs are rapidly disappearing for the same reason. the llama must give place, in the same way, to the cow and the horse. many other instances may be cited. [ ] _op. cit._, p. . . [ ] _op. cit._, p. . [ ] _op. cit._, p. . [ ] _geographical dist._, p. . this work, i believe, is not yet issued, but dr. pickering has kindly sent me the first pages, as printed. c. mr. gobineau remarks (p. ), that he has very serious doubts as to the unity of origin. "these doubts, however," he continues, "i am compelled to repress, because they are in contradiction to a scientific fact, which i cannot refute--the prolificness of half-breeds; and secondly, what is of much greater weight with me, they impugn a religious interpretation sanctioned by the church." with regard to the prolificness of half-breeds, i have already mentioned such facts as might have served to dispel the learned writer's doubts, had he been acquainted with them. in reference to the other, more serious, obstacle to his admission of the plurality of origins, he himself intimates (p. ) that the authority of this interpretation might, perhaps, be questioned without transgressing the limits imposed by the church. believing this view to be correct, i shall venture on a few remarks upon this last scruple of the author, which is shared by many investigators of this interesting subject. "the strict rule of scientific scrutiny," says the most learned and formidable opponent in the adversary's camp,[ ] "exacts, according to modern philosophers, in matters of inductive reasoning, an exclusive homage. it requires that we should close our eyes against all presumptive and exterior evidence, and _abstract our minds from all considerations not derived from the matters of fact which bear immediately on the question_. the maxim we have to follow in such controversies is 'fiat justitia, ruat coelum.' _in fact, what is actually true, it is always desirous to know, whatever consequences may arise from its admission._" to this sentiment i cheerfully subscribe: it has always been my maxim. yet i find it necessary, in treating of this subject, to touch on its _biblical_ connections, for although we have great reason to rejoice at the improved tone of toleration, or even liberality which prevails in this country, the day has not come when science can be severed from theology, and the student of nature can calmly follow her truths, no matter whither they may lead. what a mortifying picture do we behold in the histories of astronomy, geology, chronology, cosmogony, geographical distribution of animals, &c.; they have been compelled to fight their way, step by step, through human passion and prejudice, from their supposed contradiction to holy writ. but science has been vindicated--their great truths have been established, and the bible stands as firmly as it did before. the last great struggle between science and theology is the one we are now engaged in--the _natural history of man_--it has now, for the first time, a fair hearing before christendom, and all any question should ask is "_daylight and fair play_." the bible should not be regarded as a text-book of natural history. on the contrary, it must be admitted that none of the writers of the old or new testament give the slightest evidence of knowledge in any department of science beyond that of their profane contemporaries; and we hold that the natural history of man is a department of science which should be placed upon the same footing with others, and its facts dispassionately investigated. what we require for our guidance in this world is truth, and the history of science shows how long it has been stifled by bigotry and error. it was taught for ages that the sun moved around the earth; that there had been but one creation of organized beings; that our earth was created but six thousand years ago, and that the stars were made to shed light upon it; that the earth was a plane, with sides and ends; that all the animals on earth were derived from noah's ark, &c. but what a different revelation does science give us? we now know that the earth revolves around the sun, that the earth is a globe which turns on its own axis, that there has been a succession of destructions and creations of living beings, that the earth has existed countless ages, and that there are stars so distant as to require millions of years for their light to reach us; that instead of one, there are many centres of creation for existing animals and plants, &c. if so many false readings of the bible have been admitted among theologians, who has authority or wisdom to say to science--"thus far shalt thou go, and no further?" the doctrine of _unity_ for the human family may be another great error, and certainly a denial of its truth does no more, nay, less violence to the language of the bible, than do the examples above cited. it is a popular error, and one difficult to eradicate, that all the species of animals now dwelling on the earth are descendants of pairs and septuples preserved in noah's ark, and certainly the language of genesis on this point is too plain to admit of any quibble; it does teach that every living being perished by the flood, except those alone which were saved in the ark. yet no living naturalist, in or out of the church, believes this statement to be correct. the centres of creation are so numerous, and the number of animals so great that it is impossible it should be so. on the other hand, the first chapter of genesis gives an account entirely in accordance with the teachings of science. "and god said, let the earth bring forth _grass_, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit, after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth; and it was so." _gen._ i. . "and god said, let the waters bring forth _abundantly_, the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven." v. . "and god created great _whales_, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth _abundantly_," &c. v. . "and god said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so." v. . "god created _man_ in his own image; _male_ and _female_ created he _them_." in the language above quoted, nothing is said about one seed or one blade of grass; about one fruit tree, or about _single pairs_ of animals or human beings. on the contrary, this chapter closes with the distinct impression on the mind that everything was created _abundantly_. the only difficulty arises with regard to the human family, and we are here confused by the contradictory statements of the first and second chapters. in the first chapter, man was created _male and female_, on the sixth day--in the second chapter, woman was not created until after adam was placed in the garden of eden. commentators explain this discrepancy by the difference in style of the two chapters, and the inference that genesis is a compilation made up by moses from two or three different writers; but it is not our purpose here to open these theological discussions. both sides are sustained by innumerable authorities. from what we have before shown, it is clear that the inspired writers possessed no knowledge of physical sciences, and as little respecting the natural history of man, as of any other department. their _moral_ mission does not concern our subject, and we leave that to theologians, to whom it more properly belongs. on the other hand, we ask to be let alone in our study of the physical laws of the universe. the theologian and the naturalist have each an ample field without the necessity of interfering with each other. the bible is here viewed only in its relations with physical science. we have already alluded to the fact that in astronomy, geology, &c., the authors of the bible possessed no knowledge beyond that of their profane contemporaries, and a dispassionate examination of the text from genesis to revelation will show that the writers had but an imperfect knowledge of contemporary races, and did not design to teach the doctrine of unity of mankind, or rather origin from a single pair. the writer of the _pentateuch_ could attach little importance to such an idea, as he nowhere alludes to a future existence, or rewards and punishments--all good and evil, as far as the human race is concerned, with him, were merely temporal. this idea of a future state does not distinctly appear in the jewish writings until after their return from the babylonish captivity. the extent of the surface of the globe, known even to the writers of the new testament, formed but a small fraction of it--little beyond the confines of the roman empire. no allusion is even made to southern and eastern asia; africa, south of the desert; australia, america, &c.; all of which were inhabited long before the time of moses; and of the races of men inhabiting these countries, and their languages, they certainly knew nothing. the chinese and indian empires, at least, are beyond dispute. the early hebrews were a pastoral people; had little commercial or other intercourse with the rest of the world, and were far from being "learned in all the wisdom of the egyptians." the egyptian empire was fully developed--arts and science as flourishing--pyramids and gorgeous temples built, not only before the time of moses, but long prior to that of the patriarch abraham, who, with sarah, went to egypt to buy corn of the reigning pharaoh. what is remarkable, too, the egyptians had their ethnographers, and had already classified the human family into four races, and depicted them on the monuments, viz: the black, white, yellow, and red.[ ] in fact, nothing can be more incomplete, contradictory, and unsatisfactory than the ethnography of genesis. we see cain going into a foreign land and taking a wife before there were any women born of his parent stock. cities are seen springing up in the second and third generations, in every direction, &c. all this shows that we have in genesis no satisfactory history of the human family, and that we can rely no more upon its ethnography than upon its geography, astronomy, cosmogony, geology, zoology, &c. we have already alluded to the fact that the writers of the new testament give no evidence of additional knowledge in such matters. the sermon from the mount comes like a light from heaven, but this volume is mute on all that pertains to the physical laws of the universe. if the common origin of man were such an important point in the eyes of the almighty as we have been taught to believe, is it reasonable to suppose it would have been left by the inspired writers in such utter confusion and doubt? the coming of christ changed the whole question, and we should expect, at least in the four gospels, for some authority that would settle this vital point; but strange as the assertion may seem, there is not a single passage here to be found, which, by any distortion, can be made to sustain this _unity_; and on searching diligently the new testament, from one end to the other, we were not a little surprised to find but a single text that seemed to bear directly upon it, viz: the oft quoted one in acts xvii. : "and hath made of _one blood_ all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth," &c. being astonished at the fact that this great question of common origin of man should thus be made to hang so much upon a single verse, it occurred to me that there might be some error, some interpolation in the text, and having no material at hand for such an investigation in mobile, i wrote to a competent friend in philadelphia, to examine for me all the greek texts and old versions, and his reply confirmed fully my suspicions. the word _blood_ is an interpolation, and not to be found in the original texts. the word _blood_ has been rejected by the catholic church, from the time of st. jerome to the present hour. the text of tischendorf is regarded, i believe, generally as the most accurate greek text known, and in this the word blood does not appear. i have at hand a long list of authorities to the same effect, but as it is presumed no competent authority will call our assertion in question, it is needless to cite them. the verse above alluded to in acts should, therefore, read:-- "and hath made of _one_ all races (genus) of men," &c. the word _blood_ is a gloss, and we have just as much right to interpolate _one form_, _one substance_, _one nature_, _one responsibility_, or anything else, as _blood_. these remarks on the ethnography of the bible might be greatly extended, but my object here is simply to show that the bible, to say the least, leaves the field open, and that i have entered it soberly, discreetly, and advisedly. footnotes: [ ] prichard, _nat. hist. of man_, p. . london, . [ ] see "_types of mankind_," by nott and gliddon. +-------------------------------------------------------------+ |transcriber's note: | | | | inconsistent use of law-giver vs. lawgiver was made | | consistent as "law-giver". | | | | page : corrected typographical error "criterea". | | | | footnote : placement of quotation marks has been | | made consistent. | | | | footnote : added missing closing quotation mark "...'when| | three of us are together, the triad is among us.'" | | | | footnote : i believe the editor meant "page ". | | | | footnote : added dash to sign-off "--h." to conform to | | other footnotes. | | | | all other inconsistencies, variant spellings, and a large | | number of mis-quoted references have been preserved. | +-------------------------------------------------------------+ http://www.freeliterature.org (images made available by the google books project) ourika. by claire de duras this is to be alone, this, this is solitude. byron. london: printed for longman, hurst, rees, orme, brown, and green, paternoster-row. . introduction. a few months had elapsed since i quitted montpellier to follow my profession as physician in paris, when i was sent for one morning to attend a sick nun at a convent in the faubourg st. jacques. napoleon had a short time since permitted several of these convents to be re-established: the one i was going to belonged to the order of the ursuline sisters, and was opened for the education of young females. part of the edifice had been destroyed during the revolution. the cloister was laid bare on one side by the demolition of an antique chapel, of which but a few arches remained. one of the nuns led me through this cloister. as we traversed it i perceived that the broad flat stones that paved it were tombs: they all bore inscriptions half effaced; some were broken, others quite torn up. i had never yet seen the interior of a convent, and felt curious to witness a scene so new to me. my conductress led the way into the garden, where she said we should find our sick patient. i beheld her seated at a distance at one end of a bower, almost entirely enveloped in a long black veil. "here is the physician," said her companion, and immediately left us. i approached timidly, for my heart had sickened at the sight of the tombs; and i fancied that i should now contemplate another victim of the cloister. the prejudices of my youth had just been awakened, and a considerable interest excited in my mind from the kind of malady i had imagined for her. she turned towards me, and i was singularly surprised on beholding a black woman. her polite address and choice of words increased my astonishment, "you are come, sir, to visit a very sick person," said she, "and one who greatly wishes to get better, though she has not always wished it, and that perhaps has been the cause of her long sufferings." i questioned her as to the nature of them. "i feel," replied she, "continual oppression and fever, and sleep has quite forsaken me." her emaciated appearance confirmed this account of herself. her figure was tall, but indescribably, meagre. her large brilliant eyes and very white teeth lit up the rest of her features. it was plain that violent and lengthened grief had worn her frame, though her soul still retained its powers. her melancholy aspect moved me. i resolved to exert every means of saving her, and mentioned the necessity of subduing her evidently heightened imagination, and diverting her mind from what might give it pain. "i am perfectly happy!" cried she; "i have never felt so happy and so calm as i do at present." the sweet and sincere tone in which this was uttered persuaded me, though it again surprised me. "that you have not always thought yourself happy is evident," said i; "you bear the marks of heavy sufferings."--"true; but my mind is tranquil now, though it has been long in finding repose."--"since it is so, then, let us try to cure the past; but can i hope for success when i know not the disease?"--"alas! must i own my folly?" cried she, her eyes filling with tears. "you are not happy!" exclaimed i. "i am," replied she, gathering more firmness; nor would i change my present happiness for the state i once envied. i have no secret; my misfortune is the history of my whole life. my sufferings were so continual until i entered this abode that they have gradually undermined, my health. with joy did i feel myself wasting away, for i had no prospect of happiness in life. this guilty joy has been punished, for now that i desire to live, i have scarcely a hope of it left." i soothed her apprehensions with the promise of speedy recovery; but whilst uttering the consolatory words a sad presentiment came over me, warning me that death had marked its victim. * * * * * i continued to attend the young nun, and she appeared not insensible to the interest i took in her fate. one day she returned of her own accord to the subject i longed to be enlightened upon. "my sorrow," said she, "would appear of so strange a nature, that i have always felt reluctant to confide it. no one can be a perfect judge of the feelings of another, and our confidants soon become accusers."--"fear not," cried i, "can i doubt the reality of your grief, when i behold its effects upon your person?"--"ah! real it has been, but not the less unreasonable."--"let us even suppose it so. does that prevent sympathy?"--"i have feared so; but if to cure the effect of my sorrows it is necessary you should know their cause, some time hence, when we are a little better acquainted, i will confide it to you." * * * * * i renewed my visits still oftener at the convent, and the remedies i prescribed appeared to do my patient some good. in short, one morning, finding her seated alone in the same bower where i had first seen her, i renewed the subject, and she related to me the following history. ourika. i was brought over from senegal by the governor, the chevalier de b., when about two years old. he took compassion on me one day as he stood witnessing the embarkation of some slaves on board a negro transport ship then going to sail. i had lost my mother, and i was carried on board the vessel, in spite of my violent screams and resistance. he bought me, and on his return to france shortly after gave me to his aunt, the wife of the marshal de b. she was the most amiable woman of her time, and united an elevated and highly refined mind to the most exemplary virtue. to save me from slavery, and choose for me such a benefactress as madame de b., was twice bestowing life upon me. such was my ingratitude towards providence, that i was not made happy by it. but is happiness always the result of the development of our faculties? i think not. how often does the knowledge we acquire teach us to regret our days of ignorance! nor does the fable tell us that galatea received the gift of happiness with that of life. * * * * * i was not told the early circumstances of my life until long after they happened. my first recollections always bring madame de b.'s drawing-room to my mind. i used to pass my life there, doted on by herself, praised and caressed by her friends, who loaded me with presents, and exalted to the skies my wit and graces. * * * * * the tone of her society was animated gaiety; but gaiety from which good taste had excluded all exaggeration. what deserved praise always met with it, and what deserved blame was generally excused; nay, from excessive leniency erroneous notions were often suffered to pass for right ones. success gives courage, and every one was sure of being estimated a little above their real worth, by madame de b.; for, without knowing it, she lent them a part of her own, and after seeing or listening to her people, fancied themselves like her. * * * * * dressed in the eastern fashion, and seated on a little stool at madame de b.'s feet, i used to listen to the conversation of the first wits of the day long before i could understand it. i had no childish petulance. i was pensive ere i began to think. i was perfectly happy at being by the side of madame de b. to love her, to listen to her, to obey her, and above all, to look at her, was all that i desired. neither a life of luxury, nor accomplished society, could astonish me; i knew no other, but i insensibly acquired a great contempt for every other sphere than the one i lived in. even when a child, the want of taste would shock me. i felt it ere i could define it, for habit had made it necessary. * * * * * thus did i grow up to the age of twelve years without an idea of any other kind of happiness than that i possessed. i felt no pain at being a negress. i was continually praised and admired, and nothing ever suggested its being to my disadvantage. i seldom saw any other children; and the only one who was my friend, did not love me the less on account of my colour. madame de b. had two grandsons; the children of her daughter who had died young. charles, the youngest, was about my own age. we spent our infancy together. he was my protector and my adviser in all my little faults, but he went to school when he was eight years old. i wept at parting. this was my first sorrow. he seldom came home, yet i often thought of him. whilst he pursued his studies, i was ardently engaged in acquiring the accomplishments necessary to complete my education. madame de b. resolved to make me perfect in every talent. my voice was thought worthy of the instruction of the first masters; a celebrated painter, one of my benefactress's friends, undertook to guide me in his art; english and italian were familiar to me, and madame de b. herself presided over my reading. she formed both my mind and judgment. by conversing with her, and discovering the beauties of her soul, my own grew elevated, and admiration was the first source of my own intelligence. alas! how little i then foresaw that these delightful studies would be followed by so many bitter hours! my sole thought was how to please madame de b., and a smile of approbation on her lips the only recompense i wished for. * * * * * however, constant reading, and, above all, the study of the poets, began to inflame my young imagination. my thoughts sometimes wandered upon my own future life; but with the confidence natural in youth, i felt assured that i should always be happy with my benefactress. her tenderness towards me, and the bewitching life i led, contributed to confirm my error. a single instance will show the pride she took in me. you will perhaps scarcely believe that my shape was once remarkable for its beauty and elegance. madame de b. often boasted of my grace, and had been anxious to have me dance well. under pretext of giving a ball for her grandchildren, she resolved to show off my talent in a quadrille, representing the four parts of the world, in which i was to perform africa. travellers were consulted, books of costume resorted to, and works read upon african music and dancing: at last the comba, a national dance of my own country, was fixed upon. my partner put a crape over his face. alas! i had no need of any to blacken mine; but this was far from my thoughts, they were wholly engrossed by the pleasures of the ball. i danced the comba with the greatest success, as might be expected, from the novelty of the spectacle, and the choice of spectators, who were all friends of my protectress, and to please her, gave way to the most enthusiastic applause. the dance was in itself sufficiently attractive, being composed of graceful attitudes and measured steps, expressing love, grief, triumph, and despair. i was totally ignorant of these violent passions; yet from instinct i guessed them, and my imitation succeeded. i was surrounded by an applauding assembly, and overwhelmed with praise. this was a pleasure that i enjoyed in the most perfect security. it was my last. * * * * * a few days after this ball had taken place, i overheard by chance a conversation, which awakened me to the truth, and at once put an end to my youth. * * * * * madame de b. had a lacker screen in her drawing-room, which hid one of the doors, and extended beyond the window. between the door and this window there was a table where i used frequently to draw. i sat down one morning, to work at a miniature there; my attention became so completely absorbed that i remained for some time motionless, and no doubt madame de b. concluded that i had left the room when the marchioness de c. was announced. this lady possessed a penetrating judgment, but her manners were trenchant, positive, and dry. she was capable of great devotion to her friends, but at the same time was inquisitive, and hard to please: in short she was the least amiable of madame de b.'s friends. i feared her, though she had always shown a regard for me; that is, in her own way. severity and investigation were its signs. i was too much accustomed to indulgence, not to fear her justice. "now that we are alone, my dear," said this lady to madame de b., "let me speak to you of ourika. she is a charming girl; her mind is nearly formed; she possesses wit, infinite natural grace, and very superior talents; but what is to become of her? what do you intend to do with her?" "that is the very thought that distresses me," cried madame de b. "i love her as my child: i should think no sacrifice too great to make her happy, but the longer i reflect upon her situation, the less remedy i find for it. alas, poor ourika! i see thee doomed to be alone--eternally alone in the world!" * * * * * it would be impossible for me to describe the effect these few words produced upon me; lightning could not have been more prompt. i discovered the extent of my misery. i saw what i was--a black girl, a dependant, without fortune, without a being of my own kind to whom i could unite my destiny; belonging to nobody; till now, the plaything of my benefactress, but soon an outcast from a world that i was not made for. i shuddered, and my heart beat so violently, that, for a moment, i could not attend to this conversation, but i strove to master my feeling. * * * * * "i fear," continued the marchioness, "that you will make her very miserable. what will satisfy her, now that she has passed her life with you in the intimacy of your society?" "but will she not remain with me?" said madame de b. "aye, as long as her childhood lasts, but she is now nearly fifteen; and who can you marry her to, with the education you have given her? who will ever marry a negro girl? and if you should find any man who, for the sake of money, would perhaps consent to have negro children, must it not be some one of inferior condition, with whom she would be unhappy? will a man whom she would choose ever choose her?" "alas! this is true," cried madame de b. "but she fortunately does not suspect it, and her attachment for me will, i hope, prevent her perceiving her situation for some time. to have made her happy, i should have made an ordinary being of her; and frankly i believe that impossible. besides, as she has not remained in the station she was first intended for, may not her mind rise superior to the restraints of her present one?" "never; you are forging chimeras," replied the marchioness; "philosophy may raise our minds above the vicissitudes of fortune, but can never prevail against the evils which arise from having disturbed the laws of nature. ourika has not fulfilled her destiny, she has usurped a place in society to which she had no right, and society will punish her for it." "but surely it is no fault of her's? poor child! with what severity you decide upon her happiness." "i judge it more rationally than you have done.--i consider how it may best be secured, whilst you will be the cause of its ruin." madame de b. answered this accusation with some warmth, and i was just becoming the cause of a quarrel between the two friends, when the arrival of a third person put an end to their discussion. i slid out at the door behind the screen, and flew to my own room, there to solace my poor heart for a moment by a flood of tears. * * * * * oh, how i felt my whole existence changed! how lost i was when the illusions i had so constantly dwelt in vanished! they resembled the light of day, and when they fled, utter darkness succeeded. so great was the confusion of my mind under the new thoughts that assailed it, that not one of my usual ideas ever occurred to me. i was struck with terror. to be an object of pity to the world! not to be fit for the rank i lived in! perhaps to meet with a man who for the sake of money would consent to have negro children! these thoughts kept rising successively over my mind, pursuing me like phantoms. but the bitterest of all was the certainty of belonging to no one in the world. to be alone! ever, and for ever alone! madame de b. had owned it, and i repeated the words over and over. what cared i to be alone, but a few minutes before. i knew it not, i felt it not; i had need of the beings that i loved, but i was unconscious of their not wanting me. now my eyes were opened, and with misfortune came mistrust into my soul. when i returned to madame de b.'s apartment, every body was struck with the change in my appearance. i pretended to be ill, and was believed. madame de b. sent for her physician, barthez, who felt my pulse, questioned me carefully, and then abruptly declared that nothing ailed me. this quieted the uneasiness of my benefactress about my health; but she sought every means of diverting my mind. i dare not own how little gratitude i felt for her care. my heart seemed withered in itself. as long as it had received favours with pleasure, it gladly acknowledged the benefit; but now filled with the bitterest feelings, it had no power to expand. my days were spent in the same thoughts, differently combined and under various forms, but still the blackest my imagination could invent. often were my nights passed in weeping. i exhausted my whole pity upon myself.--my face was become odious to me;--i no longer dared to look in a glass;--and my black hands struck me with horror;--they appeared to me like a monkey's. i dwelt upon the idea of my ugliness, and my colour appeared to me the sign of my reprobation: it was that alone which separated me from the rest of my fellow creatures, and condemned me to live alone, and never to be loved.--that a man should perhaps consent for the sake of money to have negro children! my blood rose with indignation at the idea. i thought for a moment of entreating madame de b. to send me back to my own country;--but even there i should have felt isolated.--who would have understood me? who would have sympathised with my feelings? alas! i belonged to no one--i was estranged from the whole world! it was not until long after that i understood the possibility of being reconciled to such a fate. madame de b. was no devotee; she had had me instructed in the duties of my religion by a respectable priest, from whom i imbibed my only notions on the subject. they were as sincere as my own character; but i was not aware that piety is of no succour, unless mingled with the daily actions of life. i had devoted a few moments of each day to its practice, but left it a stranger to the rest. my confessor was an indulgent, unsuspicious old man, whom i saw twice or thrice a year; but as i did not imagine that my grief could be a fault i never mentioned it to him; meanwhile it continued to undermine mine my health, though, strange to say, it perfected my understanding. "what doth the man know who hath not suffered?" says an eastern sage; and i soon perceived how true this was. what i had taken for ideas were impressions. i did not judge--i liked. i was either pleased or displeased with the words or actions of the persons i lived with, but stopped not to consider why. since i had found out that the world would reject me, i began to examine and criticise almost every thing that had hitherto enchanted me. * * * * * such a tendency could not escape madame de b.'s penetration; though i never knew whether she guessed the cause. possibly she was afraid of letting me confide my chagrin to her, for fear of increasing it; but she was even kinder to me than usual; she entrusted all her thoughts to me, and tried to dissipate my own troubles by busying me with her's. she judged my heart rightly, for nothing could attach me to life but the idea of being necessary or even useful to my benefactress. to be alone, to die, and leave no regret in the soul of any being, was the dread that haunted me: but there i was unjust towards her, for she sincerely loved me; still she had other and superior interests to mine. i did not envy her tenderness for her grandchildren; but, oh! how i longed like them to call her mother! family ties, above all, brought distressing recollections over me. i! who was doomed never to be the sister, wife, or mother of any human being! perhaps i fancied these ties more endearing than they really were; and because they were out of my reach, i foolishly neglected those that were not. but i had no friend, no confidant. my feeling for madame de b. was that of worship rather than of affection; but i believe that i felt the utmost love of a sister for charles. his studies were nearly finished, and he was setting out on his travels with his eldest brother and their governor. they were to be two years absent, and were to visit italy, germany, and england. charles was delighted to travel, and i was too well accustomed to rejoice at what gave him pleasure, to feel any grief until the moment of our parting. i never told him the distress that preyed upon me. we did not see each other alone, and it would have taken me some time to explain my grief to him. he would then have understood me, i am sure. his manners were mild and grave, but he had a propensity to ridicule that intimidated me; not that he ever gratified it but at the expense of affectation. sincerity completely disarmed him. however, i kept my secret; besides, the chagrin of our parting was a relief to my mind, to which any grief was more welcome than its accustomed one. a short time after charles' departure, the revolution began to assume a serious turn: the great moral and political interests that were agitated by it to their very source were daily discussed in madame de b.'s drawing-room. these were debates that superior minds delighted in; and what could better form my own, than the contemplation of an arena where men of distinguished talents were struggling against opinions long since received, and investigating every subject, examining the origin of every institution, unfortunately, to destroy and shake them from their very foundation. * * * * * will you believe that, young as i was, without any share in the interests of society, and nourishing my own wound in secret, the revolution brought some change in my ideas, created a glimmering ray of hope in them, and for a while, suspended their bitterness. it appeared to me that, in the general confusion, my situation might change; and that, when all ranks were levelled, fortunes upset, and prejudices done away with, i might find myself less isolated in this new order of things; and that, if i did possess any hidden qualities or superiority of mind, my colour would no longer single me out, and prevent their being appreciated: but it happened that these very qualities quickly opposed my illusion. i could not desire my own happiness at the expense of the misfortune of thousands; besides, i daily witnessed the folly of persons who were struggling against events that they could not control. i saw through the weakness of such characters, and guessed their secret views. their false philanthropy did not long deceive me, and i quite gave up my hopes when i found that they would still feel contempt for me, even in the midst of the severest adversity. the days were gone when each sought to please, and remembered that the only means of doing so in society is the very unconsciousness of one's own success. no sooner did the revolution cease to be a grand theory,--no sooner did it menace the interests of every high individual, than conversation degenerated into dispute, and reasoning was exchanged for bitter personality. sometimes, in spite of my dejection, i could not help being amused by the sudden violence of opinions which were excited by ambition, affectation, or fear; but gaiety that is occasioned by the observation of folly in others is too malignant to do good: the heart delights in innocent joys, and the mirth of ridicule, far from dispelling misfortune, is more likely to proceed from it, as it feeds upon the same bitterness of soul. * * * * * my hopes in the revolution having quickly vanished, i remained dissatisfied as before with my situation. madame de b.'s friendship and confidence were my only solace. often, in the midst of an acrimonious political discussion, after vainly trying to restore good humour, she would cast a sad look at me:--this look was a balm to my heart; it seemed to say, "ourika, you alone can sympathise with me." * * * * * the negroes' right to liberty next began to be debated; and i, of course, felt deeply interested in the question. one of my remaining illusions was, that at least i had countrymen in another land, and knowing them to be unhappy, i believed them virtuous, and pitied their fate. alas! here again i was undeceived. the massacre of st. domingo added fresh grief to my soul; and to my despair at belonging to a proscribed race was added shame at their being likewise a race of barbarians. * * * * * the revolution having soon made rapid progress, and the most violent men getting into power, inspired the greatest terror by their utter disregard of the laws of justice. the horrid days of the twentieth of june and tenth of august prepared for every other event. the greater number of madame de b.'s friends fled at this epoch; some sought shelter abroad, others in the provinces or in secret retreats; but she remained. the constant occupation of her heart fixed her to home. * * * * * we had been living for some months in solitude, when towards the latter end of the year , the decree for the confiscation of the emigrants' estates was issued. in the midst of such great disasters, madame de b. would have cared little for the loss of her fortune, had it not belonged to her grandchildren; for by a family arrangement, she had only the enjoyment of it during her lifetime. this made her decide upon sending for charles home, whilst his eldest brother, then nearly one and twenty, went to join the army of the prince of condé. their travels were just completed, which two years before had been undertaken under such different auspices. charles arrived in paris, in the beginning of february, , a short time after the king's death. madame de b. had given herself up to the most poignant grief, at the perpetration of this deed. her feeling mind proportioned its horror to the immensity of the crime. affliction in old age is a most moving spectacle, it carries with it the authority of reason. madame de b. suffered with such energy, that it affected her health, and i did not conceive it possible to console her, but i mingled my tears with hers, and sought by elevating my own sentiments, to ally my soul more nearly to hers, so that i might at least share her sufferings. my own distress scarcely occurred to me while the reign of terror lasted. i should have felt ashamed to think of it during such dreadful calamities. besides, i no longer felt so isolated, since every person round me was unhappy. opinion is like the link of country, it is the property of all, and men are brothers to defend its cause. sometimes i thought, that poor negress as i was, still i was allied to noble minds, by the same need of justice that i experienced in common with them. the return of truth and justice to their country, would be a day of triumph for me as well as for them; but, alas! it was far distant. on charles's return, madame de b. went into the country. all her friends had fled. the only society she had left, was that of an old abbé, who for ten years had turned religion into ridicule, but was now highly irritated at the riches of the clergy being confiscated, because he lost twenty thousand francs a year by it. he accompanied us to st. germain. his company was rather quiet than agreeable, and was more the result of his disposition than of his heart. * * * * * madame de b. had had it in her power all her life to do good. she was intimately, acquainted with the count de choiseul, and during his long ministry, was useful to a number of persons. two of the most popular men during the terror, owed obligations to her, and remembered it in those dreadful times. they watched over her preservation, and risqued their own lives to save hers from the fury of the revolutionary assassins; and it may here be remarked, that at this fatal epoch even the chiefs of the most violent factions ran great danger in doing a little good. it seemed as if our desolate land was only to be governed by evil, for that alone took away or gave power. madame de b. was not sent to prison. she was guarded at home under pretext of bad health. charles, the abbé, and myself remained with her, and attended her with care. * * * * * nothing can equal the state of anxiety and terror in which we passed our days: continually reading in the papers accounts of the sentences of death passed against madame de b.'s friends, and trembling lest her protector should be deprived of the power of preserving her from a similar fate. we discovered, indeed, that she was on the eve of perishing, when the death of robespierre put an end to so much horror. we breathed again. the guards left our house, and we all remained in the same solitude, like people who have escaped some great calamity together. misfortune seemed to have linked us closer to each other. i felt in those moments that i was not a stranger. if i ever passed a few happy moments since the fairy days of my childhood, it was during the times that followed this disastrous epoch. madame de b. possessed to a supreme degree those qualities which constitute the charm of domestic life; her temper was easy and indulgent; she always put the most favourable construction upon what was said before her: no harsh or captious judgment of hers ever cooled the confidence of her friends. thoughts were free, and might be uttered without responsibility before her, merely passing for what they were worth. such gifts, had they been her only ones, would have made madame de b's friends adore her; but how many others she possessed! it was impossible to feel ennui in her company. there was a charm in her wit and manner, that made even trifles interesting the moment they engrossed her attention. charles bore some resemblance to his mother. his mind like her's was liberal and just, but firm, and without modification, for youth allows of none; it finds every thing either quite right or quite wrong, while the failing of old age is to believe that nothing is ever quite right or quite wrong. charles was endowed with the two first qualities of his age,--truth and justice. i have already said, that he hated the very shadow of affectation; nay, he sometimes fancied it where it did not exist. reserve was habitual to him, and this made his confidence the more flattering, as it was evidently the result of his esteem, and not of his natural propensity; whatever portion of it he granted, was of value, for he never acted inconsiderately, and yet was always natural and sincere. he placed such full reliance in me, that his thoughts were communicated to me as quickly as they came. when we were all seated round our table of an evening, how interesting were our conversations. our old abbé took his share in them; he had made out to himself such a completely false set of ideas, and maintained them with so much good faith, that he was an inexhaustible source of amusement to madame de b.; her clear and penetrating judgment drew out the poor man's absurdities (he never taking it amiss), and she would throw in keen traits of good sense over his orderly system, which we used to compare to the heavy strokes of charlemagne's or roland's sword. * * * * * madame de b. was fond of exercise; we used to walk in the forest of st. germain every morning; she leaning on the abbé, and i following with charles at a distance. it was then he would unburthen his mind to me, and tell me his thoughts, his projects, his future hopes, and above all, his opinion upon men and passing events. he had not a secret feeling hidden from me, and was unconscious of disclosing one. the habit of relying upon my friendship had made it like his own life to him. he enjoyed it without knowing that he did. he demanded neither attention nor expressions of interest from me; he knew that, in speaking to me of his own concerns, it was as though he spoke to me of mine, and that i felt more deeply for him than he did for himself. friendship like this was a charm that equalled the sensations of happiness itself! * * * * * i never thought of telling charles what had so long oppressed me. i listened to him, and, by i know not what magical effect, his conversation banished from my mind the recollection of my sorrows. had he questioned me, i should have confessed them all, but he did not imagine that i had any secret. every body was accustomed to my weak state of health, and madame de b. had striven so much to make me happy, that she had a right to think me so. so i ought to have been, i felt it, and often accused myself of ingratitude and folly. i doubt whether i should have ever dared to own how miserable the irreparable misfortune of my colour made me. there is a sort of degradation in not being able to submit to necessity, and when hopeless grief masters the soul, it bears the character of despair. there was a rigidity in charles's notions, which likewise increased my timidity. one evening our conversation turned upon pity, and it was asked, whether misfortune inspires most compassion from its cause or from its effects. charles decided for the former; this was declaring that all grief should be actuated by some powerful motive. but who can judge the motives of another? all hearts have not the same wants; and does not real misfortune consist in the heart's being deprived of its desires? it was seldom, however, that our conversations thus led me to reflect upon my own case, which i so earnestly sought to forget. i would have no looking-glasses in my room. i constantly wore gloves, and dresses that covered my throat and arms. i had a large hat and veil to walk out in, which i often continued to wear in doors: in short, i would fain have deceived myself, and, like a child, shut my own eyes, and thought that no one saw me. * * * * * towards the end of the year , the reign of terror being at an end, friends began to seek each other out, and the scattered remains of madame de b.'s society rallied round her. with chagrin i beheld the circle of her friends increase, for the station i held in the world was so equivocal, that the more society returned to its natural order, the more i felt myself excluded from it. every time that strangers came to visit us i underwent fresh misery. the expression of surprise, mingled with disdain, that i observed upon their countenances when they first beheld, me, put me to confusion. i was sure to become the subject of an _aparté_ in the window-seat, or of a whisper in a corner, that it might be explained how a negress came to be admitted as an inmate in madame de b.'s society. i used to suffer martyrdom during these explanations. i longed to be transported back to my barbarous country and its savage inhabitants, whom i should fear less than this cruel world that made me responsible for its own evils. the recollection of a disdainful look would remain upon me for whole days, appear to me in my dreams, flit before me under the likeness of my own image. alas! such were the chimeras that i suffered to disturb me. thou, my god! hadst not yet taught me to dispel these phantoms; i knew not that repose was to be found in thee. i then sought for shelter in the heart of charles. i was proud of his virtues, and still prouder of his friendship. i admired him as the most perfect being that i knew upon earth. i once thought that i felt for him the most tender love of a sister; but now, worn by grief, it seemed as if i had grown old, and my tenderness was become that of a mother. indeed, a mother only could feel the same passionate desire for his success, and anxiety for his welfare through life. i would willingly have given up my existence to save him from a moment's pain. i saw the impression he made upon others long before he did. he was happy enough neither to think nor care about it. this was natural, for he had nothing to fear; nothing to give him that habitual uneasiness i felt about the opinion of others. his fate was all harmony, mine was all discord. * * * * * one morning an old friend called upon madame de b., confidentially entrusted with a proposal of marriage for charles. mademoiselle de thémines had suddenly become a rich heiress in the most distressing manner. her whole family, excepting her great aunt, had perished on the scaffold in one day. this lady (having reached her eightieth year) as sole guardian of her niece, was exceedingly anxious to have her married, lest her own death should leave her without a single protector. anais de thémines, besides possessing the advantages of birth, wealth, and education, was beautiful as an angel. it was impossible that madame de b, should hesitate; she spoke to her son, who (though he at first showed some reluctance at marrying so early) expressed a desire to see mademoiselle de thémines. the interview took place, and his reluctance vanished. anais was formed to please him. she appeared so unconscious of her charms, and possessed modesty so unassuming and quiet, that she could not fail endearing herself to him; he was allowed to visit at her aunt's, and soon became passionately in love with her. i knew the progress of his feelings, and longed to behold this lovely creature to whom his happiness was soon to be entrusted. she came one morning to st. germains. charles had spoken of me to her, and i had no contemptuous scrutiny to undergo. she appeared to me an angel of goodness; i assured her that charles would make her happy, and that his discretion was so much above his years, that she need have no apprehensions on account of his youth. she questioned me much about him, for she knew that we had been friends from infancy, and i was so delighted at having an opportunity of extolling his many virtues, that i could have talked for ever. * * * * * some weeks passed before the marriage took place for the settlement of business, and charles spent most part of that time at madame de thémines, sometimes remaining two or three days at a time in paris. his absence pained me; i felt vexed at losing him, and vexed with myself for preferring my own happiness to his. i had never done so before. the days that he returned home were holidays for me. then he would tell me how he had passed his time, what progress he had made in the affections of his mistress, and rejoice with me at the success he had met with, once, he began (describing to me the manner he intended to live with her)--"i will obtain her conscience," said he, "and give her mine. all my thoughts shall be open to her, every secret impulse of heart will i tell her; in short, i wish the same mutual trust and confidence to be between us as between you and me, ourika." the same confidence! how this pained me. i recollected that he knew not the only secret i ever had, and determined never to let him know it. by degrees his absences became longer and more frequent, until at last he used merely to come to st. germains for a few minutes at a time (generally on horseback, to save time on the road), and always returning to paris the same afternoon, so that we completely lost his company of an evening. madame de b. used to joke him for having deserted us, would i could have done so too! one morning, as we were walking in the forest, i perceived him coming full gallop at a distance. he had been absent nearly the whole week; as he approached us, he jumped from his horse, and began walking with us. after a few minutes general conversation, we remained behind, and began conversing as in former times. i remarked it. "in former times!" cried he, "had i ever any thing to say in former times? i have only begun to exist since i have known my anais! ah, ourika, i never can express to you what i feel for her. sometimes it seems to me as if my whole soul were passing into her's. when she looks at me i can no longer breathe;--if she blushes, i long to throw myself in adoration at her feet;--and when i think that i am to become the protector of this angel, and that she trusts her happiness, her life, her fate to me, ah! how proud am i of my own! i shall replace the parents she has lost, but i shall likewise be her husband! her lover! her first affections will be mine,--our hearts will flow into each other, and our lives mingle into one; nor during their whole current, shall she have to say that i have given her an hour's pain. "how rapturous are my feelings, ourika, when i reflect that she will be the mother of my children, and that they will owe their life to my anais! ah! they will be beautiful and good as she is! tell me, merciful heaven, what have i done to deserve such happiness?" oh! what a different question was i then addressing there! i had listened to his passionate discourse with the most unaccountable sensations. thou knowest, o lord, that i envied not his happiness, but why gavest thou life to poor ourika? why did she not perish on board the slave ship she was snatched from, or on the bosom of her mother. a little african sand would have covered her infant body, and light would have been the burthen. why was ourika condemned to live? to live alone? ever and for ever alone? never to be loved! o my god! do not permit it! take thy poor ourika from hence! no creature wants her; must she linger desolate through life! * * * * * this heart-rending thought seized me with more violence than it ever had. i felt my knees sinking under me. my eyes closed, and i thought that i was dying. * * * * * at these words the poor nun's agitation increased. her voice faultered, and a few tears ran down her withered cheeks. i besought her to suspend her narration, but she refused. "do not heed me," said she, "grief has no hold over my heart now: it has been rooted out of it. god has taken pity on me, and has saved me from the abyss i had fallen into, for want of knowing and of loving him. remember that i am happy now, but alas! how miserable i was then!" until the moment i have just been speaking of, i had borne with my grief; it had undermined my health, but i still preserved a kind of power over my reason. like a worm in fruit, it ate through my very heart, while all seemed full of life without. i liked conversation; discussion animated me; i had even the gaiety of repartee. in short, until then my strength had surpassed my sorrow, but i felt that my sorrow would now surpass my strength. charles carried me home in his arms. succour was promptly administered to me, and i returned to my senses. i found madame de b. by my bed-side, and charles holding one of my hands. they had both attended me, and the sight of their anxious, sorrowful countenances penetrated my very soul. i felt life flow again. my tears began to flow, madame de b. gently wiped them away. she said not a word, did not ask a question, while charles overwhelmed me with a thousand. i know not what i answered. i attributed my indisposition to the heat and fatigue. he believed it, and all my bitter feelings returned on perceiving that he did; i immediately ceased weeping. how easy is it, thought i, to deceive those whose interest lies not with you! i withdrew my hand, which he was holding, and strove to assume a tranquil air. * * * * * charles left us as usual at five o'clock. i felt hurt at his doing so. i would have wished him to be uneasy about me. indeed i was suffering greatly! he would still have gone to his anais, for i should have insisted on it, but he would have owed the pleasure of his evening to me, and that might have consoled me. i carefully hid this sensation from him. delicate feelings have a sort of chastity about them. they should be guessed, or they are thrown away. there must be sympathy on both sides. * * * * * scarcely had charles left us, than i was seized with a violent fever, which augmented the two following days. madame de b. watched me with her usual tenderness. she was distracted at the state i was in, and at the impossibility of removing me to paris, whither the celebration of her son's marriage obliged her to go the next day. my physician answered for my life, if i remained at st. germain, and she at last consented to leave me. the excessive tenderness she showed on parting with me, calmed me for an instant; but after her departure, the real and complete loneliness i was left in for the first time, threw me into despair. the vision was realized that my imagination had so long dwelt upon; i was dying far away from those i loved; the sound of my lamentations reached not their ear. alas! it would but have disturbed their joy. i fancied them given up to the most ecstatic bliss, whilst i lay pining on my sickbed. they were all i cared for in the world, but they wanted not my care. i had but them through life, yet i was not wanted by them. the frightful conviction of the uselessness of my existence made me sick of it. it was a pang not to be endured, and sincerely i prayed that i might die of my illness. i neither spoke or gave any sign of life. the only distinct idea i could express in my mind was, _i wish i could die_. then at other times i became excessively agitated. all that had passed in my last conversation with charles rushed into my mind. i saw him lost in the ocean of delight he had pictured to me, whilst i was abandoned to a death as solitary as my life. this produced a kind of irritation, more painful to endure than grief; i increased it by filling my brain with chimeras; i fancied charles coming to st germain, being told that i was dead, and being made miserable by my death. can it be believed? the idea, of grieving him rejoiced me. it would be a revenge. revenge! for what? for his goodness, for his having been the protecting angel of my life? such guilty thoughts were soon replaced by horror, at having conceived them. my grief i thought no crime, but thus giving way to it, might lead to one: then i tried to collect my inward strength, that it might fight against this irritation; but even that i sought not where i should have found it. i was ashamed of my ingratitude. oh! let me die, i exclaimed, but let no wicked passions enter my heart. ourika is a portionless orphan, but innocence is yet her's. let her not tarnish it by ingratitude. she will pass away like a shadow upon earth, but in her grave she will at least rest in peace. her friends are all happy, then let ourika be so, and die as the leaves fall in autumn? i fell into a state of languor when this dangerous fever left me. madame de b. continued to reside at st. germain, after charles's marriage. he often visited her, accompanied by his anais, never without her. i always suffered more when they were present. i know not whether the image of their happiness made me feel my misfortune more acutely, or that the sight of charles renewed my remembrance of our old friendship, which i sought to find what it once was, but could not. yet he always spoke to me just as before: it resembled the friendship he used to show me, as the artificial flower does the natural one. it was the same, except that it had neither life nor perfume. charles attributed the change in my temper to the weakness of my constitution. i believe that madame de b. knew more of its real cause: she guessed my secret, and was sensibly affected by it. anais gave hopes of increasing her family, and we returned to paris. my languor increased daily. the spectacle of domestic happiness so peaceful--of family bonds so endearing--of love so passionate and yet so tender--was misery to a poor wretch who was doomed to live in no other bonds but those of dependence and pity. days and months passed on thus. i took no share in conversation: my talents were neglected: the only books i could endure were those in which a feeble picture of my own sufferings was traced. i fed upon these poisons,--i feasted on my tears,--and remained shut up in my room whole hours giving way to them. the birth of a son completed the measure of charles's happiness. he came, his heart overflowing with joy, to give me the news; and i recognised in the expressions of his delight, some of the accents of his former confidence. it was the voice of the friend that i had lost, and brought painful remembrances back with it. the child of anais was as beautiful as herself. every body felt moved at the sight of this tender young mother and her sweet infant. i alone beheld them with bitter envy. "what had i done that i should have been brought to this land of exile? why was i not left to follow my destiny?--well, if i had been the negro slave of some rich planter, sold to cultivate his land, exposed all day to the burning heat of the sun; still when evening came and my toils were over, i should have found repose in my humble cottage. i should have a sharer in them, a companion through life, and children of my own colour to call me mother! they would have pressed their infant lips upon my cheek without disgust, and lain their little heads to sleep upon my bosom.--why am i never to experience the only affection my heart was made for? oh my god! take me i beseech thee from this world,--i cannot, cannot endure life any longer!" i was addressing this impious prayer to my creator in agony, upon my knees, when my door opened, and the marchioness de c----, who was just returned from england, entered the room. i beheld her approach with terror, for i too well remembered that she had first revealed my fate to me,--she had first caused my misery. * * * * * "my dear ourika," said she, "i want to speak with you. you know that i have loved and admired you from your infancy, and i grieve to see you giving way to such deep melancholy. how comes it that you make not a better use of the ample resources of your mind?" "the resources of the mind, madam," answered i; "only serve to increase misfortunes by showing them under a thousand different forms." "but if those misfortunes are without remedy, is it not a folly to struggle against them, instead of submitting to necessity, which can compel even the strongest to yield?"--"true, madam; but that only makes necessity a hardship the more."--"still, you must own, ourika, that reason commands us to resign ourselves, and divert our attention."--"we must have a glimpse of happiness elsewhere to be able to do so."--"then cannot you try what occupation and forcing your mind to a little pleasure will do?"--"ah! madam, pleasures that are forced upon us are more tedious than melancholy."--"but why neglect your talents?"--"talents must have some object (when they charm not their possessor,) ere they can become a resource. mine would be like the flower of the english poet-- born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness in the desert air." "are your friends then no object?" "i have no friends, madam; i have patrons." "ourika, you make yourself very needlessly unhappy." "every thing in my life is needless, madam, even my grief." "how can you nourish such bitter thoughts. you, ourika, who were so devoted to madame de b. during her distress, when every other friend had left her." "alas! madam, i am like an evil genius, whose power lasts in calamity, but who dies on the return of happiness." "let me be your confidant, my dear; open your heart to me. tell me your secret. no one can take a greater interest in you than i do, and i shall perhaps be able to do you good." "i have no secret," replied i; "my colour and my situation are my sole misfortunes, as you know, madam." "nay, do you deny that you have a secret sorrow? it is impossible to behold you for a moment without being certain of it." i persisted in what i had first said. she grew impatient, and i saw the storm rising that was to burst upon me. "is this your good faith?" cried she. "is this your vaunted sincerity? ourika, take care. reserve sometimes leads to deceit." "what, madam, can i have to reveal to you? you, who foresaw my misery so long ago, i can tell you nothing that you do not know already." "i will not believe you," answered she; "and since you refuse to trust your secret to me, and pretend that you have none, i will convince you that i know it. yes, ourika; a senseless passion is the cause of all your grief, and your regret; and were you not so desperately in love with charles, you would care very little about being a negress. adieu. i leave you, i must own, with much less regard than i felt in coming here." so saying she quitted the room. i remained thunderstruck. what had she revealed to me? what horrid interpretation had she put upon my grief? who? i nourish a criminal passion? i let it canker my heart! was my wish to hold a link in the chain of my fellow-creatures, my longing after natural affections, and my grief at being desolate, was that the despair of guilty love? and when i thought that i was only envying the _picture_ of his bliss, did my impious wishes aspire to the object itself? what cause had i given to be suspected of so hopeless a passion? might i not love him more than my own life, and yet with innocence? did the mother, when she threw herself into the lion's jaw to save her son, or the brothers and sisters, who intreated that they might die upon the same scaffold, and united their prayers to heaven as they went up to it, did they feel influenced by guilty love? is not humanity alone the cause of the sublimest devotion of every kind? and why might i not have the same feelings for charles, my friend from infancy, and the protector of my youth? and yet a secret voice unheard before warns me that i am guilty! oh, heaven! remorse must then become a fresh torment to my wasted heart! poor ourika! every species of misery must then oppress her! poor ourika! and are even her tears become a crime? is she forbidden to think of him? must she no longer dare even to be unhappy! * * * * * these thoughts threw me into a death-like stupor. before night came i was taken violently ill, and in three days my life was despaired of. my physician declared that the sacrament should be promptly administered to me, for there was not a moment to lose. my confessor had died a short time since. madame de b. sent for the parish priest, who could only bestow extreme unction upon me, for i was perfectly insensible to what was passing round me. but then when my death was hourly expected, when all hopes were over, then it was that god took pity on my soul, by preserving my life. contrary to all expectation i continued to struggle against my illness; at the end of which time my senses returned to me. madame de b. had never left me, and charles's affection for me seemed returned. the priest had visited me every day, anxious to find an interval of reason to confess me; i desired it likewise as soon as i had thought again; i seemed led by an involuntary impulse to seek for repose in the bosom of religion. i made an avowal of my errors to the priest. the state of my soul did not frighten him. like an old experienced mariner, he was accustomed to the tempest. he quieted my fears as to the passion i was accused of. "your heart is pure," said he; "you have injured no one but yourself, and in that you were guilty. you will have to account for your happiness to god, for he entrusted it to you. it depended on yourself, since it lies in the performance of your duty. have you ever considered in what that duty consisted? god should be the aim of man, but has your's been? let not, however, let not thy courage fail thee, ourika; but pray to god. he hears you, and will receive you in his arms. he knows no difference of men or colour. all are of equal value in his eye, and do thou strive to render thyself worthy of his favour." * * * * * thus did this venerable man open the path of consolation to me. his simple words carried peace with them to my heart. i meditated on them, and drew from them, as a fertile mine, a store of new thoughts. i saw only that i had not known my duty; for there are duties for the lonely as well as for those connected in the world to perform. though they are deprived of the ties of blood, heaven has granted them the whole world for their family. the charity sister, thought i, is not isolated on earth, though she has renounced its enjoyments. she has a family of her own choosing. she is the orphan's mother, the daughter of the aged, and a sister to the unhappy. how often have men of the world sought for retirement, there to adore in solitude the author of all that is great and good, privately seeking to render their souls worthy of appearing before the lord. * * * * * sweet it is, oh god! to seek to please thee by purifying the heart for the great day of thy appearance.--but i had not done so! a senseless victim of each uncurbed impulse of my soul, i had pursued the enjoyments of the world, and had thrown away my happiness. still i lost not all hope.--god was willing, perhaps, in throwing me on this foreign land, to take me to himself. he snatched me from my savage state of ignorance. he saved me from the vices of slavery, and permitted me to learn his laws. they point out my duty to me, and i will pursue it. never more, oh lord! will i offend thee for the favours thou hast granted me, or accuse thee of my faults. the new light in which i viewed my situation, brought peace to my heart. i was astonished at the calm that it enjoyed after so many storms. an outlet had been opened for the torrent, and it now floated in peaceful tides, instead of carrying devastation with its current. * * * * * i soon determined upon taking the veil, and intreated madame de b.'s permission to do so. "i shall be truly grieved, my dearest ourika," said she, "to part with you, but i have done you so much harm by wanting to do you good, that i have no right to oppose your determination." charles pleaded against it with great earnestness: he entreated, he conjured me to renounce it. "hinder me not, charles," cried i; "let me seek the only asylum where my prayers for you will be equally pure with the friendship i have ever entertained for you." * * * * * here the young nun abruptly ended her narrative. i continued to attend her, but all my endeavours to preserve her life were vain. she fell with the last leaves of autumn. the end. pretty quadroon by charles fontenay _once a man has chosen a path to follow, there's no turning back. but what if the die could be recast and we could retrace our steps when we chose the wrong one ... and choose another?_ [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, june . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] general beauregard courtney sat in his staff car atop a slight rise and watched the slow, meshing movement of his troops on the plains south of tullahoma, tennessee. clouds of dust drifted westward in the lazy summer air, and the dull boom of enemy artillery sounded from the north. "you damn black coon," he said without rancor, "you know you're costing me a night's sleep?" the negro courier stood beside his motorcycle and his teeth flashed white in his good-natured face. the dust of the road filmed his uniform of southern grey. "miss piquette told me to bring you the message, suh," he answered. "a wife couldn't be more demanding," grumbled beauregard. "why couldn't she wait until this push is over?" "i don't know, suh," said the courier. "well, get back to headquarters and get some supper," commanded beauregard. "you can fly back to chattanooga with me." the man saluted and climbed aboard his motorcycle. it kicked to life with a sputtering roar, and he turned it southward on what was left of the highway. the sun was low in the west, and its reddening beams glinted from the weapons and vehicles of the men who moved through the fields below beauregard. that would be the th, moving into the trenches at the edge of what had been camp forrest during the last war. on the morrow this was to be the frontal attack on what was left of the northern wind tunnel installations, while the armor moved in like a powerful pincers from pelham to the east and lynchburg to the west. if the union strongpoint at tullahoma could be enveloped, the way lay open to shelbyville and the north. no natural barrier lay north of tullahoma until the duck river was reached. this was the kind of warfare beauregard courtney relished, this wheeling and maneuvering of tanks across country, this artillery barrage followed by infantry assault, the planes used in tactical support. it was more a soldier's warfare than the cold, calculated, long-range bombardment by guided missiles, the lofty, aloof flight of strategic bombers. he would have been happy to live in the days when wars were fought with sword and spear. when the second war for southern independence (the northerners called it "the second rebellion") had broken out, beauregard had feared it would be a swift holocaust of hydrogen bombs, followed by a cruel scourge of guerilla fighting. but not one nuclear weapon had exploded, except the atomic artillery of the two opposing forces. a powerful deterrent spelled caution to both north and south. sitting afar, watching the divided country with glee, was soviet russia. her armies and navies were mobilized. she waited only for the two halves of the united states to ruin and weaken each other, before her troops would crush the flimsy barriers of western europe and move into a disorganized america. so the second rebellion (beauregard found himself using the term because it was shorter) remained a classic war of fighting on the ground and bombing of only industrial and military targets. both sides, by tacit agreement, left the great superhighways intact, both held their h-bombers under leash, ready to reunite if need be against a greater threat. just now the war was going well for the south. at the start, the new confederacy had held nothing of tennessee except chattanooga south of the mountains and the southwestern plains around memphis. that had been on beauregard's advice, for he was high in the councils of the southern military. he had felt it too dangerous to try to hold the lines as far north as nashville, knoxville and paducah until the south mobilized its strength. he had proved right. the northern bulge down into tennessee had been a weak point, and the southern sympathies of many tennesseans had hampered their defense. the army of west tennessee had driven up along the mississippi river plains to the kentucky line and the army of east tennessee now stood at the gates of knoxville. outflanked by these two threats, the union forces were pulling back toward nashville before beauregard courtney's army of middle tennessee, and he did not intend to stop his offensive short of the ohio river. "head back for winchester, sergeant," he commanded his driver. the man started the staff car and swung it around on the highway. he should not go to chattanooga, beauregard thought as the car bumped southward over the rutted road. his executive officer was perfectly capable of taking care of things for the few hours he would be gone, but it ran against his military training to be away from his command so soon before an attack. had the summons come from his wife, beauregard would have sent her a stern refusal, even had she been in chattanooga instead of new orleans. she had been a soldier's wife long enough to know that duty's demands took precedence over conjugal matters. but there was a weakness in him where piquette was concerned. nor was that all. she knew, as well as lucy did, the stern requirements of military existence; and she was even less likely than lucy to ask him to come to her unless the matter was of such overwhelming import as to overshadow what he gained by staying. beauregard sighed. he would eat a light supper on the plane and be back in winchester by midnight. the pre-attack artillery barrage was not scheduled to open before four o'clock in the morning. * * * * * the plane put down at the chattanooga airport at dusk, and a swift military car took him down riverside drive, past the old confederate cemetery, and downtown. chattanooga was a military city. grey-uniformed military police stood at the intersections, and soldiers on rest leave from both east and middle armies trooped in laughing gangs along darkened market street. few civilians were abroad. the siren and circled stars on beauregard's car cleared a path for him through the sparse downtown traffic. the car roared out broad street, swung under the viaduct and sped up the curving drives of lookout mountain. at a darkened house on the brow of the mountain, overlooking georgia and alabama, the car pulled up. beauregard spoke a word to the driver, got out and went to the front door. behind him the car's lights went out, and it crunched quietly into the shadowed driveway. there was light in the house when piquette opened the door to him. she held out her hands in welcome, and her smile was as sweet as sunshine on dew-sparkling fields. piquette's skin was golden, like autumn leaves, with an undertone of rich bronze. her dark eyes were liquid and warm, and her hair tumbled to her shoulders, a jet cascade. she was clad in a simple white dress that, in the daring new fashion, bared the full, firm swell of her breasts. beauregard took her in his arms, and as her lips clung to his he felt a grey old man, as grey as his braid-hung uniform. he held her away from him. in the mirror behind her he saw his face, stern, weather-beaten, light-mustached, with startling blue eyes. "piquette, what on earth is this folly?" he demanded, kicking the door shut behind him. "don't you know i'm moving on tullahoma in the morning?" "you know i wouldn't call you unless it was important, gard, as much as i long for you." when she talked, her delicately molded face was as mobile as quicksilver. "i've found something that may end the war and save my people." "dammit, quette, how many times have i told you they are not your people? you're a quadroon. you're three-fourths white, and a lot whiter in your heart than some white women i've seen." "but i'm one-fourth negro, and you wouldn't have married me, for that, even if you'd known me before you met your lucy. isn't that right, gard?" "look, quette, just because things are the way they are...." she hushed him with a finger on his lips. "the negroes are my people, and the white people are my people," she said. "if the world were right. i'd be a woman instead of a thing in between, scorned by both. can't you see that, gard? you're not like most southerners." "i am a southerner," he answered proudly. "that i love you above my own blood makes no difference. no, i don't hate the black man, as so many southerners do--and northerners too, if the truth were known. but, by god, he's not my equal, and i won't have him ruling over whites." "this is an old argument," she said wearily, "and it isn't why i called you here. i've found a man--or, rather, a man has found me--who can end this war and give my people the place in the world they deserve." beauregard raised his bushy eyebrows, but he said nothing. piquette took him by the hand and led him from the hall into the spacious living room. a negro man sat there on the sofa, behind the antique coffee table. he was well-dressed in a civilian suit. his woolly hair was grey and his eyes shone like black diamonds in his wizened face. "general courtney, this is mr. adjaha," said piquette. "from where?" demanded beauregard warily. surely piquette would not have led him into a trap set by northern spies? adjaha arose and inclined his head gravely. he was a short man, rather squarely built. neither he nor beauregard offered to shake hands. "originally from the ivory coast of africa, sir," said adjaha in a low, mellow voice. "i have lived in the united states ... in the confederacy ... since several years before the unfortunate outbreak of war." beauregard turned to piquette. "i don't see the point of this," he said. "is this man some relative of yours? what does his being here have to do with this crazy talk of ending the war?" "if you will excuse me, general," said adjaha, "i overheard your conversation in the hall and, indeed, piquette already had informed me of the dissension in your heart. you would be fair to my race in the south, yet you fear that if they had equality under the law they would misuse their superiority in numbers." beauregard laughed scornfully. "see here, old man, if you think i'm ripe to lead a peace and surrender movement in the south, you're wasting your time," he said. "the south is committed to this war, and so be it." "i ask only that you listen for a brief time to words that may be more fruitful than a few hours in a quadroon's bedroom," said adjaha patiently. "as i said, i am from the ivory coast. when the white man set foot in that part of africa, he found a great but savage kingdom called dahomey: the ancestral home of most of the slaves who were brought to the south. "before dahomey there was a civilization whose roots struck back to the age when the sahara bloomed and was fertile. before the great civilizations of egypt, of sumer and of crete was the greater civilization of the african black man. "that civilization had a science that was greater than anything that has arisen since. it was not a science of steel and steam and atoms, but a science of men's minds and men's motives. its decadent recollections would have been called witchcraft in medieval europe; they have been known in the west as voodoo and superstition." "i think you're crazy," said beauregard candidly. "quette, have you hired a voodoo man to hex me?" "be tolerant, general," admonished adjaha in his mellow voice. "many of you in the west are not aware of it, but africa has been struggling back to civilization in the twentieth century. and, while most of its people have been content to strive toward the young ways of the west, a few of us have sought in our ancestral traditions a path to the old knowledge. not entirely in vain. look." like a conjuror, he produced from somewhere in his clothing a small carved figure. about six inches high, it was cut from some gleaming black stone in the attenuated form so common to african sculpture. it dangled from adjaha's fingers on a string and turned slowly, then more swiftly. as it spun, the light from the chandelier flashed from its planes and curves in a silvery, bewildering pattern. beauregard felt his eyes drawn to it, into it, his very brain drawn into it. beauregard stood there, staring at the twirling image. his eyes were wide open and slightly glazed. piquette gave a little, frightened cry. "it's all right, my dear," said adjaha. "he's just under hypnosis. your general beauregard is the key that can unlock the past and the future for us." * * * * * there was an insistent command beating against beauregard's brain: "go back ... go back ... go back...." it was a sunny summer morning in memphis. beauregard courtney, nashville attorney and adjutant general of tennessee, stepped out of the elevator of the peabody hotel and walked across the wide, columned lobby to the newsstand. he did not go by the desk; beauregard preferred to keep his room key in his pocket when he stayed in a hotel. he bought a copy of _the commercial appeal_ and dropped onto one of the sofas nearby to read the headlines. as he had suspected, the story in which he was involved took top play. southern governors gather here today to discuss 'revolt.' it was a three-column head at the right of the page. _the commercial_ wasn't as conservative as it had been when he was a boy, but it still didn't go in for the bold black streamers, he thought approvingly. he glanced at the other front page headlines: meridian quiet under federal regime ... nehru blasts race unrest in mississippi ... president urges south: 'abide by law'.... beauregard sighed. he was caught up in the vortex of great events. he arose, folding his paper, and walked toward the stairs leading down to the grill. the governors' meeting was not until eleven o'clock. after breakfast, he would talk with some of the memphis political leaders and telephone governor gentry. he was in a delicate position here, representing a state that did not think exactly as he did. as he reached the steps, a dark-haired woman, dressed in misty blue for the morning, approached from the elevators. he stepped aside to let her precede him. then they recognized each other. "piquette!" he exclaimed. "i didn't know you were in memphis." the quadroon flashed a smile and a sparkle of black eyes at him. "i knew you were here," she said, gesturing at his newspaper. he hesitated, uncertain whether she was just countering his own remark or telling him that he was her reason for being here. "will you have breakfast with me?" he invited. "yes," she answered, and gave him a sidelong glance, "if it's in my room." he laughed, rich and full-throated. she took his arm and they went back to the elevators together. his heart was lighter now that piquette was in memphis with him.... there were eleven southern governors at the meeting. governor leblanc of louisiana, like governor gentry of tennessee, had sent a representative in his stead. as representative of the host state, beauregard opened the meeting, welcomed the visitors and turned over the chairmanship to governor dortch of georgia. "gentlemen, there is no point in delaying our principal discussion," said dortch. "within the past week, federal troops have moved into a mississippi city to enforce the supreme court's infamous integration decree. for the first time since reconstruction days, hostile soldiers are on the soil of a sovereign southern state. the question before us is, shall we bow to this invasion of states' rights and continue our hopeless fight in the courts, or shall we join hands in resisting force with force?" chubby governor marsh of alabama rose to his feet. "there wouldn't have been any federal troops if it hadn't been for this extremist segregation organization, the konfederate klan," he said heavily. "i belong to a segregationist organization myself: i suppose most of you do, because you got elected. but lynching and rioting and burning homes and schools is no way to resist integration. mississippi's national guard should have been in meridian." "if i'd mobilized the guard, i'd have had a revolt on my hands," said governor ahlgren of mississippi mildly. "two-thirds of the guardsmen belong to the klan." "i'll go along with the majority, of course," said marsh, "but i think this proposed pact of resistance can lead only to full-fledged military occupation of the south." almost without willing it, beauregard arose. governor gentry had counselled caution, listening instead of talking, but a fire burned deep in beauregard. somehow the laughing face of piquette as he had last seen her misted his eyes. a powerful urging was on him to beat his breast and cry: "the white man must rule...!" * * * * * beauregard opened his eyes and looked around him dazedly. he was sitting in the parlor of piquette's house on lookout mountain. piquette leaned against his shoulder, patting his hand, and adjaha stood before him with hands clasped behind his back. adjaha looked like a worried dwarf. "you remember that you relived your participation in the governors' conference in memphis?" asked adjaha. "yes," said beauregard, rubbing his forehead. "you black scoundrel! you hypnotized me with that pagan doll!" "yes, sir," admitted adjaha. "it took me a long time to trace the key to this war, and when i found you were that key i knew i could reach you only through piquette. it was your impassioned speech before the governors that turned the south to war instead of peace." "nonsense!" said beauregard, sitting up straighter. "i just expressed what the majority was thinking. they'd have agreed on the pact of resistance even if i had objected." "the man of destiny sometimes doesn't realize his own influence," said adjaha drily. "many factors were concentrated in you that day besides your own native persuasiveness. no, general, your stand swung the governors to the pact of resistance. announcement of that pact spurred the konfederate klansmen to massacre the federal troops at meridian. that brought the federal proclamation placing mississippi under martial law and the subsequent mobilization and revolt of the south." "perhaps so," conceded beauregard wearily. "perhaps i did wrong in not following governor gentry's instructions and keeping my mouth shut. but i spoke my convictions, and it's too late now." "that is not necessarily true, general," said adjaha. "time is a dimension, and it is as easy to move east as it is to move west. a better simile: one can move upward as well as downward, but the presence of gravitation makes special skills necessary." beauregard shook his head. "a good theory, but good only as a theory," he said. "if it were more than that, the law of cause and effect would be abrogated." "no, it works both ways. the present can influence the past as much as it influences the future, or as much as the past influenced it. thus, through the past, the present can influence itself. "in my native land, the ivory coast of africa, we believe in fan-shaped destiny, general. at every instant where a choice is made, a man may take one of many paths. and those who had the old knowledge of my people could retrace their steps when the wrong path was taken, and choose another path." "but i can't," said beauregard. "if i could, i don't know anything that could have changed what i said and did that day in memphis." "tell me, general, how long had piquette been your mistress before the memphis conference?" asked adjaha. "about three years," answered beauregard, too puzzled at this change of tack to be offended. "even if you were a psychologist instead of a general, it would be difficult for you to probe the motivation of your own heart," said the negro. "piquette was your reason for voting for war, instead of peace!" beauregard sprang to his feet angrily. "look, damn you, don't feed me your voodoo doubletalk!" he thundered. "if it were piquette alone i had to consider, don't you think i'd have advocated equality for the black race?" it was piquette's voice that sobered him, like a dash of cold water. "and yet you try to tell me i'm not a negro, gard," she said quietly. the anger drained from him. he slumped back to the sofa. "ah, yes, the perversity of a man whose mind and heart are at odds!" exclaimed adjaha softly. "you love piquette, yet your pride tells you that you should not love a woman with negro blood in her veins. for that you must be aggressive, you must prove the moral code taught you as a child was not wrong. "you went to the memphis conference with piquette's kisses still sweet on your lips, and because of that your conscience demanded that you stand forth as a champion of the white man's superiority." "so be it, then, you black freudian," retorted beauregard cynically, an angry gleam in his blue eyes. "the die was cast two years ago." "the die shall be recast," said adjaha firmly. "piquette must not have gone to memphis. she must not have been your mistress before you went to memphis." with this, he walked swiftly from the room. beauregard looked at piquette, his eyes half amused, half doubtful. she smiled at him. "what he does is out of our hands," she said. "it's still early, gard." he took her in his arms. * * * * * governor beauregard courtney of tennessee sat in the tall chair behind the governor's desk and twiddled a paperweight given him, if his recollection was accurate, by the nashville rotary club. his wife, lucy, a handsome woman whose dark brown hair was just beginning to grey, stood by the door with an armload of packages. "beauregard, the people moving into that vacant house down on franklin road are negroes," she said indignantly. "i want you to do something about it. the very idea! that close to the mansion!" "they aren't negroes," he said patiently. "they're my secretary and her mother. my secretary is a quadroon and her mother's a mulatto. it's convenient to have them live so close, in case i need to do some weekend work at home." "a quadroon!" lucy's eyes widened. "which of your secretaries is a quadroon?" "piquette. and don't tell me i shouldn't have employed her. the negro vote is important in this state, and if i'd hired a full-blooded negro a lot of the white vote would turn against me." "well, i never! you've become more and more of an integrationist ever since you got into politics, beauregard." "maybe i've gained some wisdom and understanding," he replied. "that is not to say i'm an 'integrationist.' i'm still doing my best to get it done slowly and cautiously. but the only way the south could have resisted it was by open revolt, which would have been suicide. and i must say the southern fears have not been realized, so far." lucy sniffed. "i have to speak at a woman's club meeting tonight," she said, opening the door. "are you going home now?" "no, sergeant parker will drive you home and come back for me. i'm going to eat downtown and clean up some work in the office tonight." she left, and beauregard leaned back in his chair thoughtfully, having just told his wife a lie. they had no children to be affected by it, but lucy would never become reconciled to integration. she blamed him for his part in turning the memphis governors conference away from the proposed pact of resistance five years ago. beauregard had had his doubts about speaking out against resisting the federal government with the threat of force. now he thought he had done right: war would have been terrible, and the south could not have won such a war. and it was his statesmanship at that conference, and governor gentry's lavish praise of it, that had set him up to succeed gentry as governor. beauregard sighed peacefully. he had done right and the world was better for it. the door opened, and piquette's golden, black-eyed face peeked around it. "it's four-thirty, governor," she said. "will you want me for anything else?" "not just now," he said, smiling. she smiled back. "room ," she said in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. then she was gone. beauregard's blood quickened, but he was disturbed. this that he was going to do was not right. but what other course would a normal man take, when his wife was so estranged that she had become nothing more than a front for the married happiness the people demanded of their governor, a figure-head who lived in another wing of the mansion? he had met piquette eight years before, briefly, when he was a staid, climbing nashville lawyer. not knowing she was of mixed blood then, he had been drawn to her strongly. he had thought her drawn also to him, but for some reason their paths parted and he had not seen her again until after his election to the governorship. she had been among a group of applicants for state jobs, and beauregard had happened to be visiting the personnel office the day she came in. he employed her in the governor's office at once. she was a good secretary. nothing untoward had passed between them in that year she had worked as his secretary. in nothing either of them said or did could any members of his staff have detected an incorrect attitude. but there were invitations of the eyes, caresses of the voice ... and a week ago their hands had touched, and clung, and he had found she was willing.... beauregard heaved himself to his feet with a sigh. briefly, he felt sorry for lucy. he would eat supper downtown tonight, but it would be in room . * * * * * beauregard awoke slowly, with a hand shaking his shoulder. reluctantly he abandoned a dream in which the south had remained at peace and he was governor of his state. piquette's flower-like face hovered over him in the dimness. she rested on one elbow in the big bed beside him and shook his shoulder. "gard!" she said urgently. "wake up! it's after midnight." "oh, damn!" he groaned, rolling out of the warm covers. "and the northerners will attack today if my intelligence service hasn't gone completely haywire." "get dressed," she said, dropping her bare feet to the floor and smoothing her nightgown over her knees. "i'll fix you some coffee." he pulled on his uniform, the confederate grey with the stars glittering on the shoulders, while she plugged in the hotplate and started the coffee. outside, the eastern sky was streaked with dim light, against which the sleeping houses of winchester thrust up stark silhouettes. she sat across the little table from him, a flowered robe drawn around her, while he sipped his coffee and thrust the last wisps of dreams from his head. "quette," he said, "i want you to pack and get out of here. before daylight, if you can get ready. head south, for birmingham. i'll send a staff car around for you as soon as i get to headquarters." "i don't want to leave you, gard," she objected. "you've got to, quette. we can't hold these federals. we're in a bulge here, and the only reason they haven't cracked us out yet is chattanooga holding our right flank." he kissed her goodbye, a long kiss, and strode down the street to the franklin county courthouse, where he had set up headquarters for the army of middle tennessee when the union troops had forced them out of nashville. the place was a beehive of activity. the eastern sky glowed red over the cumberlands and the artillery was thundering in the north when general beauregard courtney rode out toward the front. he had his driver park the staff car on a slight rise overlooking his troop formations. the war was going badly for the south, and beauregard unhappily took much of the responsibility on himself. perhaps he had been wrong in making that impassioned speech at the governors conference in memphis which, he was sure, had swung the weight of opinion in favor of the pact of resistance. certainly he had been wrong in recommending a farflung northern battle line, at the start of the war, which stretched from paducah, kentucky, north of nashville to knoxville, with its eastern anchor on the cumberlands. it had been his idea that a defensive line so far north would give the south more time to mobilize behind it, would hold the rich industries of tennessee for the south, and would give the south a jumping off place for a strike across the ohio river. but the north had mobilized faster, and northern armies had crunched down through the southern defenses like paper. now all west tennessee and a segment of mississippi was in federal hands. the southern defense in east tennessee had been forced back to the mountains around chattanooga. and his own troops had fallen back from stand after stand after the battle of nashville. even now, federal armour was reported to have crossed the tennessee river and be heading south-eastward toward columbia and lewisburg. he hoped piquette had left winchester by now. perhaps he should not have kept his quadroon mistress with him through the constant danger of defeat, but with lucy way down in new orleans.... as the morning wore on, the guns thundered below him and the tanks rumbled across the tullahoma plain, spouting fire. several times his sergeant urged him to withdraw, out of danger, and return to headquarters, but he stayed. he wanted to direct this battle personally, giving his orders over the car radio. a great pall of smoke hung over the battlefield. then the attack came, wave after wave of blue-clad infantry, pouring down from the north. tanks and planes supported them, and atomic artillery shells burst in the southern trenches. the grey lines began to crumble. "colonel, throw in the th and the armored reserve, and let's try to get an orderly withdrawal to the alabama line," beauregard ordered into his microphone. he turned to his driver. "sergeant, i think you're right. we'd better get out of here." the staff car swung around and headed back toward winchester over the bumpy highway. as it left the rise, beauregard swore fervently and reached for the microphone. from the west came a great cloud of dust and a mass of rumbling tanks. the federals had broken through the left flank at lynchburg. jet planes streaked overhead from the north, flying low. the flash of exploding bombs and rockets was visible in winchester, ahead of them. speaking swiftly into the microphone, beauregard glanced out of the car's back window. "sergeant!" he yelled. "strafers!" the driver twisted the wheel so quickly beauregard was thrown against the door. the speeding car leaped a ditch and bounced into the fields. out the window, beauregard saw the jet swooping down at them like a hawk. it was a speck in the sky, and almost instantly it was on them in a terrifying rush. he saw the flare of the rockets leaving the plane's wings, he felt the shock of a thunderous explosion, and the blackness engulfed him. * * * * * beauregard opened his eyes painfully. his head ached, and his left arm hurt horribly. he was lying on a rumpled bed in his torn uniform. piquette and a wizened, very black negro man were standing beside the bed, looking down at him anxiously. he recognized that he was in the house in winchester, in the room where he had spent last night ... or was it last night? "quette!" he croaked, trying to sit up. he couldn't make it, and he gasped at the pain in his arm. "i thought i told you to leave winchester." "i didn't want to leave you, gard," she answered softly. "and it's lucky i didn't. some men on an ammunition truck found your car. your driver was killed and your arm blown half off. they brought you here." "dammit," he complained, "why didn't they take me to the base hospital?" "because the base hospital took a direct hit from a bomb." that startled beauregard into the realization that there was no sound of firing, no crash of bombs, outside. there were men's shouts and the normal sounds of a town occupied by the military. had the union forces been repulsed by some miracle? "well, for pete's sake, call the medics and get me to a field hospital," he ordered. "and you head south for birmingham, like i told you to." "gard," she said soberly, "i thought it ought to be your decision, and not mine. if we call the medics, they'll be federal troops. winchester was captured hours ago, and it's just chance that they haven't entered this house and found you before now." beauregard lay silent, stunned. the strange man beside the bed spoke for the first time. "it is not his decision," he said. "there is work that i must do which may be delayed forever if he is captured." "this is adjaha, a friend of mine," said piquette. "he came to winchester to see you. he thinks he knows a way to end the war." "poppycock!" snorted beauregard weakly. "general courtney," said adjaha intensely, "you spent last night with piquette. where did you spend the night? here or in chattanooga?" beauregard opened his mouth to say, "here, of course." then he stopped. suddenly a vision, almost a memory, rose up before him and he could not be sure. there was a chandelier, and a black voodoo charm.... "you do remember some of it!" exclaimed adjaha delightedly. "it seems that i dreamed the south was winning, and i was going to drive on tullahoma, and i went to chattanooga to see piquette," said beauregard slowly. "but it's mixed up in my mind with another dream, in which there was no war at all, and i was elected governor...." "those were not dreams," said adjaha. "they happened and yet they did not happen." "i remember you in a dream," said beauregard faintly, "and words about 'fan-shaped destiny'...." "you have to understand this or i can do nothing," said adjaha hurriedly. "the south was doing well, although it could not have won in the end. you were preparing to advance on tullahoma, and you did go to chattanooga last night to see piquette. this happened. "but it didn't happen, because i utilized the ancient knowledge of my people, involving dimensions beyond time, to change the factors that led to it. decisions of different people were influenced differently at a dozen points in the past so that piquette did not become your mistress before you went to memphis, and your own emotional attitude was changed just enough to steer you on a different course. "then the other things you call a dream happened instead. there was peace instead of war." "then how is it that we actually have war and defeat?" demanded beauregard, his voice a little stronger. "piquette," said adjaha gravely. "you found her again, and she became your mistress after you were governor." "but i remember that now!" exclaimed beauregard. "that's three years in the future ... and there was no war." "it is difficult to understand, but the future can change the present," said adjaha. "general courtney, even more than i realized at first you are the 'man of destiny,' the key to war or peace in the south, and piquette is the key to your own emotions. "try to comprehend this: _you cannot love piquette in a south that is at peace!_ the whole social fabric in which you were nurtured demands of you that a woman of negro blood cannot be your paramour unless she is socially recognized as an inferior and, in a very real sense, not your co-equal lover but the servant of your pleasure. when piquette became your mistress, even five years after the decisive moment of the memphis conference, the entire framework of time and events was distorted and thrown back into a sequence in which the south was at war. this time, unfortunately for you, a slightly different time-path was taken and the south does not fare so well." "then you've failed, and things are worse than they were if you hadn't interfered," said beauregard. "no, i must try again," said adjaha. "piquette's mother must never have brought her to nashville as a child, so there will be no chance of your ever meeting her at all." there was a thunderous knocking at the front door. federal troops who were investing the town at last had reached this house. adjaha gave beauregard one sympathetic look from his dark eyes, and slipped quietly from the room, toward the rear of the house. the knocking sounded again. beauregard lay in a semi-daze, his blood-encrusted left arm an agony to him. through the haze over his mind intruded a premonition that bit more deeply than the physical pain: never to know piquette? he clutched her hand to his breast. "quette," he whimpered. "be still, darling. i won't leave you," she soothed him as a mother soothes her child. her cool hand caressed his cheek. * * * * * united states senator beauregard courtney of tennessee crossed canal street cautiously and plunged into the french quarter of new orleans with a swift, military stride. he had always urged lucy that they take a trip to new orleans, but she always had demurred; she said the city reminded her of war and trouble, somehow. now he had been invited to be the principal speaker at the annual banquet of the louisiana bar association tonight. he had welcomed the opportunity to make the trip, without lucy. it had been ten years since his voice at the memphis conference had swung the south away from war and onto the path of peace. his statesmanship on that occasion had brought him great honour. he had served a four-year term as governor of his state and, on leaving that office, had been advanced to the u. s. senate. his light-coloured hair and mustache were beginning to grey slightly. lucy had been a good wife to him, even though there had been that near-estrangement when he was so busy as governor. perhaps she still did not agree with him entirely on his acceptance of the fact of racial integration without bitter resistance, but she was more tolerant now of his sincerity than she had been once. he was sorry she was not here: she would have enjoyed the old world atmosphere through which he walked. beauregard moved up fabled bourbon street, past galatoire's and the absinthe house. he stared with interest at the intricate ironwork of the balconies that overhung the narrow sidewalk, at the bright flowers that peered over the stone walls of gardens, at the blank wooden doors flush with the sidewalk. how far, he wondered, was he from rampart street, where the creoles had kept their beautiful quadroon mistresses in one-story white houses in days long gone? he knew nothing of the _vieux carre_, and had no map. as he penetrated more deeply into the french quarter, he began to pass the barred gates that stopped the dim corridors leading back to ancient courtyards. these fascinated him, and he tried several of the gates, only to find them locked. he never knew later, studying the map, whether the street he had just crossed was toulouse, st. peter or orleans, when he came upon one of those gates that stood ajar. beauregard did not hesitate. he pushed it open and paced eagerly down the shadowed corridor until he emerged into the sunlit courtyard. there was a stone statue, grey and cracked with age, in the midst of a circular pool in the center of the courtyard. flower-lined walks surrounded it. the doors that opened into the courtyard were shadowed by balconies, on which there were other doors, and to which steep flights of stairs climbed. on a bench beside the pool sat a woman in a simple print dress. her skin was tawny gold and her hair was black and tumbled about her shoulders. her eyes were black and deep, too, when she raised them in surprise to the intruder. she was beautiful, with a poignant, wistful beauty. "i'm sorry," said beauregard. "the gate was open, and i was curious." "mrs. mills forgot to lock the gate," she said, smiling at him. "all of us who live here have our keys and are supposed to lock the gate when we go out. but mrs. mills forgets." "i'll leave," he said, not moving. "no, stay," she said. "you're a visitor to town, aren't you? there's no reason why you can't see a french quarter courtyard, if you wish." beauregard moved closer to her. "i'm beauregard courtney," he said. for some reason, he omitted the "senator." "gard," she said in a low voice, her big eyes fixed on his face. "gard courtney." somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, faint memory stirred. was it the memory of a dream? "have i dreamed that we met before?" he asked slowly. "piquette?" "you know!" she exclaimed, her face lighting gloriously. "i didn't dream alone!" "no," he said. "no. you didn't dream alone. your name is piquette, isn't it? i don't know why i said that. it seemed right." "it is right." "and you live here?" "up there," she said, and pointed to one of the doors that looked out on the balcony. beauregard looked up at the balcony and the door, and he knew, as though he had prevision, that before he left the courtyard he would go through that door with piquette. he took her hands in his. "i'll never let you leave me," he murmured. * * * * * general beauregard courtney sat under the open-sided tent that was his field headquarters and stretched long legs under the flimsy table. he gazed morosely out toward tullahoma in the north, where the trenches stretched endlessly from east to west and only an occasional artillery shell broke the quiet of the battlefield. stalemate. "i thought trench warfare went out with world war i," he growled to his executive officer. "no, sir. apparently not, sir," replied colonel smithson correctly, not interrupting his preparation of tomorrow's orders. stalemate. the northern armies and the southern armies had collided with great carnage on that battlefield. fighting had swayed back and forth for weeks, and at last had settled down to a stubborn holding action by both sides. that had been months ago. now trenches and fortifications and tank traps extended across southern tennessee from the cumberlands to the mississippi. occasional offensives came to naught. only the planes of both sides swept daily over the lines, bombarding the rear areas, reducing the cities of tennessee to rubble. beauregard toyed with a pencil and listened idly to the news over the little radio at his elbow. it was a nashville station, and nashville was held by the north, but he had learned how to discount the news from the battlefront. "... and our planes destroyed thirteen rebel tanks and an ammunition depot in a mission near lexington," the announcer was saying. "a gunboat duel in the mississippi river near dyersburg was broken off after severe casualties were inflicted on the rebel crew. our armored troops have advanced farther into the texas panhandle. "wait. there's a flash coming in...." there was a momentary pause. beauregard bent his ear to the radio. colonel smithson looked up, listening. "my god!" cried the announcer in a shaky voice. "this flash ... a hydrogen bomb has exploded in new york city!" beauregard surged to his feet, upsetting the table. the radio crashed to the ground. the other men in the tent were standing, aghast. "it isn't ours!" cried beauregard, his face grey. "it's a russian bomb! it must be...!" the voice on the fallen radio was shouting, excited, almost hysterical. "... the heart of the city wiped out.... number of dead not estimated yet, but known to be high.... great fires raging.... radioactive fallout spreading over new jersey and eastern pennsylvania.... "here's a bulletin: the president accuses the rebel government of violating the pact not to use large nuclear weapons. retaliatory action has already been initiated.... "here's another flash: detroit and chicago have been h-bombed! my god, has the world gone mad? there's a report, unconfirmed, that the detroit bombers came from the _north_...." "they can't believe we did it!" muttered beauregard. all the men in the tent, irrespective of rank, were clustered around the radio. no one thought to pick it up from the ground. a staff car drove in from the south and rocked to a stop in front of the headquarters tent. beauregard hardly noticed it until piquette got out, followed by a slight, grey-haired negro man in civilian clothes. beauregard strode out of the tent. the car radio was on loud, and the same announcer was babbling over it. "quette, what are you doing out here?" he demanded. "gard, this is adjaha, a friend of mine," she said hurriedly. "i couldn't wait for you to come back to town tonight. i had to get him out to see you before it was too late." "dammit, it is too late," he growled. "it's too late for anything. haven't you been listening to that damn radio?" "this is extremely important, general," said adjaha in a mellow voice. "if i may impose on you, i'd like to talk with you for a short while." beauregard frowned and glanced at piquette. she nodded slightly, and her face was anxious. "i suppose i have plenty of time to talk," he said heavily. "we can do nothing but sit here with useless armies while the country tears itself apart. sergeant, turn that damn car radio off and go bring some chairs out here. you can listen to the radio in the tent." they sat, the three of them, and adjaha talked. beauregard listened skeptically, almost incredulously, but something within him--not quite a memory, but an insistent familiarity--caused him to listen. he did not believe, but he suspended disbelief. "so you see, general," concluded adjaha, "there is some drive within you and piquette--call it fate, if you wish--that draws you together. when it was arranged that she did not become your mistress before the memphis conference, she did after you became governor. when it was arranged that her parents did not move to nashville with her, you were drawn to new orleans to meet her. apparently you must meet if there is any possibility that you meet, and when you meet you love each other. "and, though you can't remember it, general--for it didn't happen, even though it did--i explained to you once, on this very day, that you cannot love piquette in an unrebellious and peaceful south." "if we were fated to meet, i'm happy," said beauregard, taking piquette's hand. "if these fantastic things you say were true, i still would never consent to not having met piquette." "but you must see that it's right, gard!" exclaimed piquette, surprisingly. "quette! how can you say that? would you be happy if we were never to know each other?" she looked at him, and there were tears in her eyes. "yes, gard," she said in a low voice, "because ... well, adjaha can see a little of the future, too. and on every alternate path he sees.... gard, if the south is at war, you'll be killed before the war ends!" "we can't take any chances this time, general," said adjaha. "should events be thrown back into a path that leads to war again, this time you might be killed before i could reach you. piquette's parents must never have met. _she must never have been born!_" suddenly, beauregard believed. this quiet little black man could do what he said. "i won't permit it!" he roared, starting to his feet. "damn the south! damn the world! piquette is mine!" but adjaha, moving like lightning, was in the staff car. its motor roared, it swung in a cloud of dust and accelerated toward the south. "sergeant! colonel! get that stolen staff car!" beauregard bellowed. he whipped out his service pistol and fired two futile shots after the diminishing vehicle. the general's staff boiled out of the tent. they milled around a minute, shouting questions, before piling into two command cars and giving chase to the disappearing staff car. beauregard glowered after them. then he took piquette's hand and they walked together into the empty tent. "... here's a late flash," said the radio on the ground. "birmingham has been h-bombed. our planes are in the air against the rebels...." beauregard imagined the ground trembled. instinctively he looked toward the south for the radioactive mushroom cloud. then he swung back to piquette. "quette, he can't do it," said beauregard. "he's a voodoo fraud." she looked at him with great, dark eyes. her lips trembled. "gard," she whispered like a frightened child. "gard, aren't there other worlds than this one...?" she crept into his arms. * * * * * colonel beauregard courtney sat on the terrace of his home in the suburbs of nashville and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his grey head. the steady hum of automobiles on the superhighway half a mile away was a droning background to the songs of birds in the trees of his big back yard. the "colonel" was an honorary title bestowed on him by the governor, for beauregard never had worn a uniform. he had been governor gentry's representative at the fateful memphis conference forty years ago, he had been governor of his state, he had been united states senator from tennessee, he had been chief justice of the state supreme court. now he preferred to think of himself as beauregard courtney, attorney, retired. where was lucy? probably sitting in front of the television screen, nodding, not seeing a bit of the program. she should be out here in this glorious sunshine. beauregard's gardener, a wizened little negro man, came around the corner of the house. "adjaha, you black scoundrel, why don't you die?" demanded beauregard affectionately. "you must be twenty years older than i am." "fully that, colonel," agreed adjaha with a smile that wrinkled his entire face. "but i'm waiting for you to die first. i'm here to keep watch over you, you know." he picked up the hoe and went around the house. curious thing about adjaha. beauregard never had understood why an able, well-educated man like adjaha, in a free and successfully integrated society, would be content to spend his whole life as gardener for beauregard courtney. beauregard leaned back comfortably in his lawn chair and thrummed his thin fingers on its wooden arm. absently he whistled a tune, and presently became aware that he was whistling it. it was a haunting little melody, from long ago. he didn't know the words, only one phrase; and he didn't know whether that was the title or some words from the song itself, that song of old new orleans: "... _my pretty quadroon_...." "piquette," he thought, and wondered why that name came to mind. piquette. a pretty name. perhaps a name for a pretty quadroon. but why had that particular name come to mind? he never had known a woman named piquette. told in the hills a novel by marah ellis ryan author of that girl montana, the bondwoman, a flower of france, etc. new york grosset & dunlap publishers copyright, by rand mcnally & co. chicago. copyright, by rand mcnally & co. chicago. all rights reserved (told in the hills) in all reverence--in all gratitude to the friends granted me by the west fayette springs, penn. kopa mesika-- nika sikhs klaksta kumtucks-- klaksta yakwa mamook elahan, nika mahsie--mahsie kwanesum. m. e. r. thou shalt not see thy brother's ox, or his sheep, go astray. ... thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again.... ... and with all lost things of thy brother's which he hath lost, and thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise.... in any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth down.--deuteronomy. [illustration: mowitza forged ahead, her sturdy persistence suggesting a realization of her own importance] list of illustrations mowitza forged ahead, her sturdy persistence suggesting a realization of her own importance at a sharp cut of the whip, betty sprang forward cooling it to suit baby's lips, she knelt beside the squaw told in the hills part first the pledge "the only one of the name who is not a gentleman"; those words were repeated over and over by a young fellow who walked, one autumn morning, under the shade of old trees and along a street of aristocratic houses in old new orleans. he would have been handsome had it not been for the absolutely wicked expression of his face as he muttered to himself while he walked. he looked about twenty-five--dark and tall--so tall as to be a noticeable man among many men, and so well proportioned, and so confidently careless in movement as not to be ungainly--the confidence of strength. some negroes whom he passed turned to look after him, even the whites he met eyed him seriously. he looked like a man off a sleepless journey, his eyes were bloodshot, his face haggard, and over all was a malignant expression as of lurking devilishness. he stopped at a house set back from the street, and half-smothered in the shade of the trees and great creeping vines that flung out long arms from the stone walls. there was a stately magnificence about its grand entrance, and its massive proportions--it showed so plainly the habitation of wealth. evidently the ill-natured looking individual was not a frequent visitor there, for he examined the house, and the numbers about, with some indecision; then his eyes fell on the horse-block, in the stone of which a name was carved. a muttered something, which was not a blessing, issued from his lips as he read it, but with indecision at an end he strode up the walk to the house. a question was answered by the dubious-looking darky at the door, and a message was sent somewhere to the upper regions; then the darky, looking no less puzzled, requested the gentleman to follow him to the "young massa's" study. the gentleman did so, noting with those wicked side glances of his the magnificence of the surroundings, and stopping short before a picture of a brunette, willowy girl that rested on an easel. the face was lovely enough to win praise from any man, but an expression, strangely akin to that bestowed on the carven name outside, escaped him. through the lattice of the window the laughter of woman came to him--as fresh and cheery as the light of the young sun, and bits of broken sentences also--words of banter and retort. "ah, but he is beautiful--your husband!" sighed a girlish voice with the accent of france; "so impressibly charming! and so young. you two children!" some gay remonstrance against childishness was returned, and then the first voice went on: "and the love all of one quick meeting, and one quick, grand passion that only the priest could bring cure for? and how shy you were, and how secret--was it not delightful? another juliet and her romeo. only it is well your papa is not so ill-pleased." "why should he be? my family is no better than my husband's--only some richer; but we never thought of that--we two. i thought of his beautiful changeable eyes, and he thought of my black ones, and--well, i came home to papa a wife, and my husband said only, 'i love her,' when we were blamed for the haste and the secrecy, and papa was won--as i think every one is, by his charming boyishness; but," with a little laugh, "he is not a boy." "though he is younger than yourself?" "well, what then? i am twenty-three. you see we are quite an old couple, for he is almost within a year of being as old. come; my lord has not yet come down. i have time to show you the roses. i am sure they are the kind you want." their chatter and gaiety grew fainter as they walked away from the window, and their playful chat added no light to the visitor's face. he paced up and down the room with the eager restlessness of some caged thing. a step sounded outside that brought him to a halt--a step and a mellow voice with the sweetness of youth in it. then the door opened and a tall form entered swiftly, and quick words of welcome and of surprise came from him as he held out his hand heartily. but it was not taken. the visitor stuck his hands in the pockets of his coat, and surveyed his host with a good deal of contempt. yet he was a fine, manly-looking fellow, almost as tall as his visitor, and fairer in coloring. his hair was a warmer brown, while the other man's was black. his eyes were frank and open, while the other's were scowling and contracted. they looked like allegorical types of light and darkness as they stood there, yet something in the breadth of forehead and form of the nose gave a suggestion of likeness to their faces. the younger one clouded indignantly as he drew back his offered hand. "why, look here, old fellow, what's up?" he asked hastily, and then the indignation fled before some warmer feeling, and he went forward impulsively, laying his hand on the other's arm. "just drop that," growled his visitor, "i didn't come here for that sort of thing, but for business--yes--you can bet your money on that!" his host laughed and dropped into a chair. "well, you don't look as if you come on a pleasure trip," he agreed, "and i think you might look a little more pleasant, considering the occasion and--and--everything. i thought father would come down sure, when i wrote i was married, but i didn't expect to see anyone come in this sort of a temper. what is it? has your three-year-old come in last in the fall race, or have you lost money on some other fellow's stock, and what the mischief do you mean by sulking at me?" "it isn't the three-year-old, and it isn't money lost," and the dark eyes were watching every feature of the frank young face; "the business i've come on is--you." "look here," and the young fellow straightened up with the conviction that he had struck the question, "is it because of my--marriage?" "rather." still those watchful eyes never changed. "well," and the fair face flushed a little, "i suppose it wasn't just the correct thing; but you're not exactly the preacher for correct deportment, are you?" and the words, though ironical, were accompanied by such a bright smile that no offense could be taken from them. "but i'll tell you how it happened. sit down. i would have sent word before, if i'd suspected it myself, but i didn't. now don't look so glum, old fellow. i never imagined you would care. you see we were invited to make up a yachting party and go to key west. we never had seen each other until the trip, and--well, we made up for the time we had lost in the rest of our lives; though i honestly did not think of getting married--any more than you would. and then, all at once, what little brains i had were upset. it began in jest, one evening in key west, and the finale of it was that before we went to sleep that night we were married. no one knew it until we got back to new orleans, and then i wrote home at once. now, i'm ready for objections." "when you left home you were to be back in two months--it is four now. why didn't you come?" "well, you know i was offered the position of assistant here to doctor grenier; that was too good to let go." "exactly; but you could have got off, i reckon, to have spent your devoted father's birthday at home--if you had wanted to." "he was your father first," was the good-humored retort. "why didn't you come home?" there was a hesitation in the younger face. for the first time he looked ill at ease. "i don't know why i should give you any reason except that i did not want to," he returned, and then he arose, walking back and forth a couple of times across the room and stopping at a window, with his back to his visitor. "but i will," he added, impulsively. "i stayed away on account of--annie." the dark eyes fairly blazed at the name. "yes?" "i--i was a fool when i was home last spring," continued the young fellow, still with his face to the window. "i had never realized before that she had grown up or that she was prettier than anyone i knew, until you warned me about it--you remember?" "i reckon i do," was the grim reply. "well, i tried to be sensible. i did try," he protested, though no contradiction was made. "and after i left i concluded i had better stay away until--well, until we were both a little older and more level-headed." "it's a pity you didn't reach that idea before you left," said the other significantly. "what!" "and before you turned back for that picture you had forgotten." "what do you mean" and for the first time a sort of terror shone in his face--a dread of the dark eyes that were watching him so cruelly. "tell me what it is you mean, brother." "you can just drop that word," was the cold remark. "i haven't any relatives to my knowledge. your father told me this morning i was the only one of the name who was not a gentleman. i reckon i'll get along without either father or brother for the rest of my life. the thing i came here to see about is the homestead. it is yours and mine--or will be some day. what do you intend doing with your share?" "well, i'm not ready to make my will yet," said the other, still looking uneasy as he waited further explanations. "i rather think you'll change your mind about that, and fix it right here, and now. to-day i want you to transfer every acre of your share to annie." "what?" "to insure her the home you promised your mother she should always have." "but look here--" "to insure it for her and--her child." the face at the window was no longer merely startled, it was white as death. "good god! you don't mean that!" he gasped. "it is not true. it can't be true!" "you contemptible cur! you damnable liar!" muttered the other through his teeth. "you sit there like the whelp that you are, telling me of this woman you have married, with not a thought of that girl up in kentucky that you had a right to marry. shooting you wouldn't do her any good, or i wouldn't leave the work undone. now i reckon you'll make the transfer." the other had sat down helplessly, with his head in his hands. "i can't believe it--i can't believe it," he repeated heavily. "why--why did she not write to me?" "it wasn't an easy thing to write, i reckon," said the other bitterly, "and she waited for you to come back. she did send one letter, but you were out on the water with your fine friends, and it was returned. the next we heard was the marriage. word got there two days ago, and then--she told me." "you!" and he really looked unsympathetic enough to exempt him from being chosen as confidant of heart secrets. "yes; and she shan't be sorry for it if i can help it. what about that transfer?" "i'll make it;" and the younger man rose to his feet again with eyes in which tears shone. "i'll do anything under god's heaven for her! i've never got rid of the sight of her face. it--it hoodooed me. i couldn't get rid of it!--or of remorse. i thought it best to stay away, we were so young to marry, and there was my profession to work for yet; and then on top of all my sensible plans there came that invitation on the yacht--and so you know the whole story; and now--what will become of her?" "you fix that transfer, and i'll look after her." "you! i don't deserve this of you, and--" "no; i don't reckon you do," returned the other, tersely; "and when you--damn your conceit!--catch me doing that or anything else on your account, just let me know. it isn't for either one of you, for that matter. it's because i promised." the younger dropped his arms and head on the table. "you promised!" he groaned. "i--i promised as well as you, and mother believed me--trusted me, and, now--oh, mother! mother!" his remorseful emotion did not stir the least sympathy in his listener, only a chilly unconcern as to his feelings in the matter. "you, you cried just about that way when you made the promise," he remarked indifferently. "it was wasted time and breath then, and i reckon it's the same thing now. you can put in the rest of your life in the wailing and gnashing of teeth business if you want to--you might get the woman you married to help you, if you tell her what she has for a husband. but just now there are other things to attend to. i am leaving this part of the country in less than six hours, and this thing must be settled first. i want your promise to transfer to annie all interest you have in the homestead during your life-time, and leave it to her by will in case the world is lucky enough to get rid of you." "i promise." his head was still on the table; he did not look up or resent in any way the taunts thrown at him. he seemed utterly crushed by the revelations he had listened to. "and another thing i want settled is, that you are never again to put foot on that place or in that house, or allow the woman you married to go there, that you will neither write to annie nor try to see her." "but there might be circumstances--" "there are no circumstances that will keep me from shooting you like the dog you are, if you don't make that promise, and keep it," said the other deliberately. "i don't intend to trust to your word. but you'll never find me too far out of the world to get back here if you make it necessary for me to come. and the promise i expect is that you'll never set foot on the old place again without my consent--" and the phrase was too ironical to leave much room for hope. "i promise. i tell you i'll do anything to make amends," he moaned miserably. "your whole worthless life wouldn't do that!" was the bitter retort. "now, there is one thing more i want understood," and his face became more set and hardened; "annie and her child are to live in the house that should be theirs by right, and they are to live there respected--do you hear? that man you call father has about as much heart in him as a sponge. he would turn her out of the house if he knew the truth, and in this transfer of yours he is to know nothing of the reason--understand that. he is quite ready to think it prompted by your generous, affectionate heart, and the more he thinks that, the better it will be for annie. you will have a chance to pose for the rest of your life as one of the most honorable of men, and the most loyal to a dead mother's trust," and a sound that would have been a laugh but for its bitterness broke from him as he walked to the door; "that will suit you, i reckon. one more lie doesn't matter, and the thing i expect you to do is to make that transfer to-day and send it to annie with a letter that anyone could read, and be none the wiser--the only letter you're ever to write her. you have betrayed that trust; it's mine now." "and you'll be worth it," burst out the other heart-brokenly; "worth a dozen times over more than i ever could be if i tried my best. you'll take good care of her, and--and--good god! if i could only speak to her once!" "if you do, i'll know it, and i'll kill you!" said the man at the door. he was about to walk out when the other arose bewilderedly. "wait," he said, and his livid face was convulsed pitifully. he was so little more than a boy. "this that you have told me has muddled my head. i can't think. i know the promises, and i'll keep them. if shooting myself would help her, i'd do that; but you say you are leaving the country, and annie is to live on at the old place, and--and yet be respected? i can't understand how, with--under the--the circumstances. i--" "no, i don't reckon you can," scowled the other, altogether unmoved by the despairing eyes and broken, remorseful words. "it isn't natural that you should understand a man, or how a man feels; but annie's name shall be one you had a right to give her four months ago--" "what are you saying?" broke in the other with feverish intensity; "tell me! tell me what it is you mean!" "i mean that she shan't be cheated out of a name for herself and child by your damned rascality! her name for the rest of her life will be the same as yours--just remember that when you forward that transfer. she is my wife. we were married an hour before i started." then the door closed, and the dark, malignant looking fellow stalked out into the morning sunlight, and through the scented walk where late lillies nodded as he passed. he seemed little in keeping with their fragrant whiteness, for he looked not a whit less scowlingly wicked than on his entrance; and of some men working on the lawn, one said to another: "looks like he got de berry debbel in dem snappin' eyes--see how dey shine. mighty rakish young genelman to walk out o' dat doah--look like he been on a big spree." and when the bride and her friend came chattering in, with their hands full of roses, they found a strange, unheard-of thing had happened. the tall young husband, so strong, so long acclimated, had succumbed to the heat of the morning, or the fragrance of the tuberose beside him, and had fallen in a fainting fit by the door. part second "a cultus corrie" chapter i. on scot's mountain. "the de'il tak' them wi' their weeman folk, whose nerves are too delicate for a squaw man, or an injun guide. i'd tak' no heed o' them if i was well, an' i'll do less now i'm plagued wi' this reminder o' that grizzly's hug. it gives me many's the twinge whilst out lookin' to the traps." "where's your gallantry, macdougall?" asked a deep, rather musical voice from the cabin door; "and your national love for the 'winsome sex,' as i've heard you call it? if ladies are with them you can't refuse." "can i not? well, i can that same now," said the first speaker, emphasizing his speech by the vim with which he pitched a broken-handled skillet into the cupboard--a cupboard made of a wooden box. "mayhaps you think i haven't seen a white woman these six months, i'll be a breakin' my neck to get to their camp across there. well, i will not; they may be all very fine, no doubt--folk from the east; but ye well know a lot o' tenderfeet in the bush are a sight worse to tak' the care of than the wild things they'll be tryin' to hunt. 'a man's a fool who stumbles over the same stone twice,' is an old, true sayin', an' i know what i'm talkin' of. it's four years this autumn since i was down in the walla walla country, an' there was a fine party from the east, just as these are; an' they would go up into the blue mountains, an' they would have me for a guide; an' if the lord'll forgive me for associatin' with sich a pack o' lunatics for that trip, i'll never be caught wi' the same bait again." "what did they do to you?" asked the voice, with a tinge of amusement in it. "to me? they did naught to me but pester me wi' questions of insane devisin'. scarce a man o' them could tether a beast or lasso one that was astray. they had a man servant, a sort o' flunky, to wait on them and he just sat around like a bump on a log, and looked fearsomely for injuns an' grizzlies. they would palaver until all hours in the night, about the scientific causes of all things we came across. many a good laugh i might have had, if i had na been disgusted wi' the pretenses o' the poor bodies. why, they knew not a thing but the learnin' o' books. they were from the east--down east, they said; that is, the southeast, i suppose they meant to say; and their flunky said they were well-to-do at home, and very learned, the poor fools! well, i'll weary myself wi' none others o' the same ilk." "you're getting cranky, mac, from being too much alone;" and the owner of the voice lounged lazily up from the seat of the cabin door, and stood looking in at the disgusted scotchman, bending ever so slightly a dark, well-shaped head that was taller than the cross-piece above the door. "am i, now?" asked the old man, getting up stiffly from filling a pan of milk for the cat. "well, then, i have a neighbor across on the maple range that is subject o' late to the same complaint, but from a wide difference o' reason;" and he nodded his head significantly at the man in the door, adding: "an' there's a subject for a debate, jack genesee, whether loneliness is worse on the disposition than the influence o' wrong company." jack genesee straightened out of his lounging attitude, and stepped back from the door-way with a decision that would impress a man as meaning business. "none o' that, macdougall," he said curtly, dropping his hand with a hillman's instinct to the belt where his revolvers rested. "i reckon you and i will be better friends through minding our own business and keeping to our own territory in future;" and whistling to a beautiful brown mare that was browsing close to the cabin, he turned to mount her, when the old man crossed the floor quickly and laid a sinewy, brown hand on his arm. "bide a bit, genesee," he said, his native accent always creeping upward in any emotion. "friends are rare and scarce in this chinook land. you're a bit hasty in your way, and mayhaps i'm a bit curious in mine; but i'll no let ye leave davy macdougall's like that just for the want o' sayin' i'm regretful at havin' said more than i should o' you and yours. i canna lose a friend o' four years for a trifle like that." the frankness of the old man's words made the other man drop the bridle and turn back with outstretched hand. "that's all right, mac," he said, heartily; "say no more about it. i am uglier than the devil to get along with sometimes, and you're about straight when you say i'm a crank; only--well, it's nobody's fault but my own." "no, o' course not," said macdougall in a conciliatory tone as he went back to his dish-washing at the table--the dishes were tin pans and cups, and the dish-pan was an iron pot--"to be sure not; but the half-breeds are pizen in a man's cabin, an' that talapa, wi' the name that's got from a prairie wolf an' the injun de'il, is well called--a full-blood injun is easier to manage, my lad; an' then," he added, quizzically, "i'm but givin' ye the lay o' the land where i've fought myself, an' mayhaps got wounded." the "lad," who was about thirty-five, laughed heartily at this characteristic confession. there was evidently some decided incongruity between the old scotchman's statement and his quaint housewifery, as he wrapped a cloth reduced to strings around a fork and washed out a coffee-pot with the improvised mop. something there was in it that this man genesee appreciated, and his continued laughter drew the beautiful mare again to his side, slipping her velvety nose close to his ear, and muzzling there like a familiar spirit that had a right to share her master's emotions. "all right, mowitza," he said in a promising tone; "we'll hit the bush by and by. but old sulky here is slinging poisoned arrows at our kloocheman. we can't stand that, you know. we don't like cooking our own grub, do we, mowitza? shake your head and tell him 'halo'--that's right. skookum kiutan! skookum, mowitza!" and the man caressed the silky brown head, and murmured to her the indian jargon of endearment and praise, and the mare muzzled closer and whinnied an understanding of her master. macdougall put away the last pan, threw a few knots of cedar on the bit of fire in the stone fire-place, and came to the door just as the sun, falling back of the western mountains, threw a flood of glory about the old cabin of the mountaineer. the hill-grass back of it changed from uncertain green to spears of amber as the soft september winds stole through it. away below in the valley, the purple gloom of dark spruces was burying itself in night's shadows. here and there a poison-vine flashed back defiance under its crimson banners, and again a white-limbed aspen shone like a shapely ghost from between lichen-covered bowlders. but slowly the gloaming crept upward until the shadow-line fell at the cabin door, and then up, up, past spruce and cedar, past the scrub of the dwarf growths, past the invisible line that the snakes will not cross, on up to the splintered crest, where the snows glimmer in the sunshine, and about which the last rays of the sun linger and kiss and fondle, long after a good-bye has been given to the world beneath. such was but one of the many recurring vistas of beauty which the dwellers of the northern hills are given to delight in--if they care to open their eyes and see the glorious smile with which the earth ever responds to the kiss of god. macdougall had seen many of the grand panoramas which day and night on scot's mountain give one, and he stood in the door unheeding this one. his keen eyes, under their shaggy brows, were directed to the younger man's bronzed face. "there ye go!" he said, half peevishly; "ye jabber chinook to that talapa and to the mare until it's a wonder ye know any english at all; an' when ye be goin' back where ye belong, it'll be fine, queer times ye'll have with your ways of speech." genesee only laughed shortly--an indian laugh, in which there is no melody. "i don't reckon i belong anywhere, by this time, except in this chinook region; consequently," he added, looking up in the old man's interested face, "i'm not likely to be moving anywhere, if that's what you're trying to find out." macdougall made a half-dissenting murmur against trying to find out anything, but genesee cut him short without ceremony. "the fact is, mac," he continued; "you are a precious old galoot--a regular nervous old numbskull. you've been as restless as a newly-caught grizzly ever since i went down to coeur d'alene, two weeks ago--afraid i was going to cut loose from tamahnous peak and pack my traps and go back to the diggin's; is that it? don't lie about it. the whole trip wasn't worth a good lie, and all it panned out for me was empty pockets." "lord! lad, ye canna mean to say ye lost--' "every damned red," finished mr. genesee complacently. "an' how--" "cards and mixed drinks," he said, laconically. "angels in the wine-rooms, and a slick individual at the table who had a better poker hand than i had. how's that as a trade for six months' work? how does it pan out in the balance with half-breeds?" evidently it staggered macdougall. "it is no much like ye to dissipate, genesee," he said, doubtfully. "o' course a man likes to try his chance on the chips once in a way, and to the kelpies o' the drinkin' places one must leave a few dollars, but the mixin' o' drinks or the muddlin' o' the brains is no natural to ye; it may be a divarsion after the hill life, but there's many a kind that's healthier." "you're a confounded old humbug," said genesee coolly; "you preach temperance to me, and get drunk as a fiddler all alone here by yourself--not much scotch in that way of drinking, i can tell you. hello! who's that?" macdougall leaned forward and peered down the path where the sound of a horse's feet were heard coming around the bend. "it's that man o' hardy's comin' again about a guide, i have na doubt. i'll send him across seven-mile creek to tyee-kamooks. they can get a siwash guide from him, or they can lose themsel's for all me," he said, grumpily, incited thereto, no doubt, by genesee's criticism of his habits. he often grumbled that his friend from the maple range was mighty "tetchy" about his own faults, and mighty cool in his opinions of others. a dark, well-built horse came at an easy, swinging pace out of the gloom of the spruce boughs and over the green sward toward the cabin; his rider, a fair, fine-looking fellow, in a ranchman's buckskin suit, touched his hat ever so lightly in salute, a courtesy the others returned, genesee adding the chinook word that is either salutation or farewell, "klahowya, stranger," and the old man giving the more english speech of "good evening; won't ye light, stranger?" "no; obliged to you, but haven't time. i suppose i'm speaking to mr. macdougall," and he took his eyes from the tall, dark form of genesee to address his speech to the old trapper. "yes, i'm davy macdougall, an' i give a guess you're from the new sheep ranch that's located down kootenai park; you're one of hardy's men." "no; i'm hardy." "are ye, now?" queried the old fellow in surprise. "i expected to see an older man--only by the cause of hearin' you were married, i suppose. well, now, i'm right glad to meet wi' a new neighbor--to think of a ranch but a bit of ten miles from scot's mountain, an' a white family on it, too! will ye no' light an' have a crack at a pipe an' a glass?" hardy himself was evidently making a much better impression on macdougall than the messenger who had come to the cabin in the morning. "no, partner, not any for me," answered the young ranchman, but with so pleasant a negative that even a westerner could not but accept graciously such a refusal. "i just rode up from camp myself to see you about a guide for a small party over into the west branch of the rockies. ivans, who came to see you this morning, tells me that you are disabled yourself--" "yes; that is, i had a hug of a grizzly two weeks back that left the ribs o' my right side a bit sore; but--" the old man hesitated; evidently his reluctance to act as guide to the poor fools was weakening. this specimen of an eastern man was not at all the style of the tourists who had disgusted him so. "an' so i told your man i thought i could na guide you," he continued in a debatable way, at which hardy's blonde mustache twitched suspiciously, and genesee stooped to fasten a spur that had not needed attention before; for the fact was mac had felt "ower cranky" that morning, and the messenger had been a stupid fellow who irritated him until he swore by all the carpenter's outfit of a certain workman in nazareth that he would be no guide for "weemen folk and tenderfeet" in the hills. his vehemence had caused the refusal of ivans to make a return trip, and hardy, remembering ivans' account, was amused, and had an idea that the dark, quiet fellow with the musical voice was amused as well. "yes," agreed the stranger; "i understood you could not come, but i wanted to ask if you could recommend an indian guide. i had jim kale engaged--he's the only white man i know in this region; the men on my place are all from south of the flathead country. he sent me word yesterday he couldn't come for a week--confound these squaw men! he's gone to hunt caribou with his squaw's people, so i brought my party so far myself, but am doubtful of the trail ahead. one of the ladies is rather nervous about indians, and that prevented me from getting a guide from them at first; but if we continue, she must accustom herself to montana surroundings." "that's the worst o' the weemen folk when it comes to the hills," broke in macdougall, "they've over easy to be frightened at shadows; a roof an' four walls is the best stoppin' place for a' o' them." the young ranchman laughed easily. "i don't believe you have known many of our kentucky women, mr. macdougall; they are not hot-house plants, by any means." genesee pushed a wide-brimmed light hat back from his face a little, and for the first time joined the conversation. "a kentucky party, did you say, sir?" he queried, with half-careless interest. "yes," said hardy, turning toward him; "relatives of mine from back east, and i wanted to give them a taste of montana hill life, and a little hunting. but i can't go any farther into the hills alone, especially as there are three ladies in the party; and a man can't take many risks when he has them to consider." "that's so," said genesee, with brief sympathy; "big gang?" "no--only six of us. my sister and her husband, and a cousin, a young lady, are the strangers. then one of the men off my ranch who came to look after the pack-mules, and my wife and self. i have an extra horse for a guide if i can pick one up." "i shouldn't be surprised if you could," said genesee reflectively; "the woods are full of them, if you want indian guides, and if you don't--well, it doesn't seem the right thing to let visitors leave the country disappointed, especially ladies, and i reckon i might take charge of your outfit for a week or so." macdougall nearly dropped his pipe in his surprise at the offer. "well, i'll be--" he began; but genesee turned on him. "what's the matter with that?" he asked, looking at mac levelly, with a glance that said: "keep your mouth shut." "if i want to turn guide and drop digging in that hill back there, why shouldn't i? it'll be the 'divarsion' you were suggesting a little while back; and if mr. hardy wants a guide, give me a recommend, can't you?" "do you know the country northwest of here?" asked hardy eagerly. it was plain to be seen he was pleased at his "find." "do you live here in the chinook country? you may be a neighbor of mine, but i haven't the pleasure of knowing your name." "that's mac's fault," said the other fellow coolly; "he's master of ceremonies in these diggin's, and has forgotten his business. they call me genesee jack mostly, and i know the kootenai hills a little." "indeed, then, he does mr. hardy," said macdougall, finding his voice. "ye'll find no siwash born on the hills who knows them better than does genesee, only he's been bewitched like, by picks and shovels an' a gulch in the maple range, for so long it's a bit strange to see him actin' as guide; but you're a lucky man to be gettin' him, mr. hardy, i'll tell ye that much." "i am willing to believe it," said hardy frankly. "could you start at once with us, in the morning?" "i reckon so." "i will furnish you a good horse," began the ranchman; but genesee interrupted, shaking his head with a gesture of dissent. "no, i think not," he said in the careless, musical voice that yet could be so decided in its softness; and he whistled softly, as a cricket chirrups, and the brown mare came to him with long, cat-like movements of the slender limbs, dropping her head to his shoulder. "this bit of horse-flesh is good enough for me," he said, slipping a long, well-shaped hand over the silky cheek; "an' where i go, mowitza goes--eh, pet?" the mare whinnied softly as acknowledgment of the address, and hardy noticed with admiration the fine points in her sinewy, supple frame. "mowitza," he repeated. "that in chinook means the deer, does it not--or the elk; which is it? i haven't been here long enough to pick up much of the jargon." "well, then, ye'll be hearin' enough of it from genesee," broke in macdougall. "he'll be forgettin' his native language in it if he lives here five years longer; an'--" "there, you've said enough," suggested genesee. "after giving a fellow a recommend for solid work, don't spoil it by an account of his fancy accomplishments. you're likely to overdo it. yes, mowitza means a deer, and this one has earned her name. we'll both be down at your camp by sun-up to-morrow; will that do?" "it certainly will," answered hardy in a tone of satisfaction. "and the folks below will be mighty glad to know a white man is to go with us. jim kale rather made them doubtful of squaw men, and my sister is timid about indians as steady company through the hills. i must get back and give them the good news. at sun-up to-morrow, mr. genesee?" "at sun-up to-morrow." chapter ii. as the sun rose. do you know the region of the kootenai that lies in the northwest corner of a most northwestern state--where the "bunch-grass" of the grazing levels bends even now under a chance wild stallion and his harem of silken-coated mates; where fair upland "parks" spread back from the cool rush of the rivers; where the glittering peaks of the mountains glow at the rise and fall of night like the lances of a guard invincible, that lift their grand silence as a barrier against the puny strife of the outside world? do you know what it is to absorb the elastic breath of the mountains at the awakening of day? to stand far above the levels and watch the faint amethystine peaks catch one by one their cap of gold flung to them from an invisible sun? to feel the blood thrill with the fever of an infinite possession as the eyes look out alone over a seemingly creatureless scene of vastness, of indefiniteness of all vague promise, in the growing light of day? to feel the cool crispness of the heights, tempered by the soft "chinook" winds? to feel the fresh wet dews of the morning on your hands and on your face, and to know them in a dim way odorous--odorous with the virginity of the hills--of the day dawn, with all the sweet things of form or feeling that the new day brings into new life? a girl on scot's mountain seemed to breathe in all that intoxication of the hill country, as she stood on a little level, far above the smoke of the camp-fire, and watched the glowing, growing lights on the far peaks. a long time she had stood there, her riding-dress gathered up above the damp grass, her cap in her hand, and her brown hair tossing in a bath of the winds. twice a shrill whistle had called her to the camp hidden by the spruce boughs, but she had only glanced down toward the valley, shook her head mutinously, and returned to the study of her panorama; for it seemed so entirely her own--displaying its beauties for her sole surprisal--that it seemed discourteous to ignore it or descend to lower levels during that changing carnival of color. so she just nodded a negative to her unseen whistler below, determined not to leave, even at the risk of getting the leavings of the breakfast--not a small item to a young woman with a healthy, twenty-year-old appetite. something at last distracted that wrapt attention. what was it? she heard no sound, had noticed no movement but the stir of the wind in the leaves and the grasses, yet she shrugged her shoulders with a twitchy movement of being disturbed and not knowing by what. then she gathered her skirts a little closer in her hand and took a step or so backward in an uncertain way, and a moment later clapped the cap on her tumbled hair, and turned around, looking squarely into the face of a stranger not a dozen steps from her, who was watching her with rather sombre, curious eyes. their steady gaze accounted for the mesmeric disturbance, but her quick turn gave her revenge, for he flushed to the roots of his dark hair as she caught him watching her like that, and he did not speak just at first. he lifted his wide-brimmed hat, evidently with the intention of greeting her, but his tongue was a little unruly, and he only looked at her, and she at him. they stood so in reality only a flash of seconds, though it seemed a continuous stare of minutes to both; then the humorous side of the situation appealed to the girl, and her lips twitched ever so slightly as she recovered her speech first and said demurely: "good morning, sir." "how are you?" he returned; and having regained the use of his tongue, he added, in an easier way: "you'll excuse me, lady, if i sort of scared you?" "oh, no, i was not at all startled," she answered hastily, "only a little surprised." "yes," he agreed, "so was i. that's why i stood there a-staring at you--couldn't just make out if you were real or a ghost, though i never before saw even the ghost of a white woman in this region." "and you were watching to see if i would vanish into thin air like a macbeth witch, were you?" she asked quizzically. he might be on his native heath and she an interloper, but she was much the most at her ease--evidently a young lady of adaptability and considerable self-possession. his eyes had grown wavering and uncertain in their glances, and that flush made him still look awkward, and she wondered if macbeth's witches were not unheard-of individuals to him, and she noticed with those direct, comprehensive eyes that a suit of buckskin can be wonderfully becoming to tall, lazy-looking men, and that wide, light sombreros have quite an artistic effect as a frame for dark hair and eyes; and through that decision she heard him say: "no. i wasn't watching you for anything special, only if you were a real woman, i reckoned you were prospecting around looking for the trail, and--and so i just waited to see, knowing you were a stranger." "and is that all you know about me?" she asked mischievously. "i know much more than that about you." "how much?" "oh, i know you're just coming from davy macdougall's, and you are going to hardy's camp to act as commander-in-chief of the eastern tramps in it, and your name is mr. jack genesee--and--and--that is all." "yes, i reckon it is," he agreed, looking at her in astonishment. "it's a good deal, considering you never saw me before, and i don't know--" "and you don't know who i am," she rejoined easily. "well, i can tell you that, too. i'm a wanderer from kentucky, prospecting, as you would call it, for something new in this kootenai country of yours, and my name is rachel hardy." "that's a good, square statement," he smiled, put at his ease by the girl's frankness. "so you're one of the party i'm to look after on this cultus corrie?" "yes, i'm one of them--cousin hardy says the most troublesome of the lot, because i always want to be doing just the things i've no business to"; then she looked at him and laughed a little. "i tell you this at once," she added, "so you will know what a task you have undertaken, and if you're timid, you might back out before it's too late--are you timid?" "do i look it?" "n--no"; but she didn't give him the scrutiny she had at first--only a swift glance and a little hurry to her next question: "what was that queer term you used when speaking of our trip--cul--cultus?" "oh, cultus corrie! that's chinook for pleasure ride." "is it? what queer words they have. cousin harry was telling me it was a mongrel language, made up of indian, french, english, and any stray words from other tongues that were adjustable to it. is it hard to learn?" "i think not--i learned it." "what becoming modesty in that statement!" she laughed quizzically. "come, mr. jack genesee, suppose we begin our cultus corrie by eating breakfast together; they've been calling me for the past half-hour." he whistled for mowitza, and miss rachel hardy recognized at once the excellence of this silken-coated favorite. "mowitza; what a musical name!" she remarked as she followed the new guide to the trail leading down the mountain. "it sounds russian--is it?" "no; another chinook word--look out there; these stones are bad ones to balance on, they're too round, and that gully is too deep below to make it safe." "i'm all right," she announced in answer to the warning as she amused herself by hopping bird-like from one round, insecure bowlder to another, and sending several bounding and crashing into the gully that cut deep into the heart of the mountain. "i can manage to keep my feet on your hills, even if i can't speak their language. by the way, i suppose you don't care to add professor of languages to your other titles, do you, mr. jack genesee?" "i reckon i'm in the dark now, miss, sort of blind-fold--can't catch onto what you mean." "oh, i was just thinking i might take up the study of chinook while out here, and go back home overwhelming the natives by my novel accomplishment." and she laughed so merrily at the idea, and looked so quizzically at genesee jack's dark, serious face, that he smiled in sympathy. they had only covered half the trail leading down to the camp, but already, through the slightly strange and altogether unconventional meeting, she found herself making remarks to him with the freedom of a long-known chum, and rather enjoying the curious, puzzled look with which he regarded her when she was quick enough to catch him looking at her at all. "stop a moment," she said, just as the trail plunged from the open face of the mountain into the shadow of spruce and cedar. "you see this every morning, i suppose, but it is a grand treat to me. see how the light has crept clear down to the level land now. i came up here long before there was a sign of the sun, for i knew the picture would be worth it. isn't it beautiful?" her eyes, alight with youth and enthusiasm, were turned for a last look at the sun-kissed country below, to which she directed his attention with one bare, outstretched hand. "yes, it is," he agreed; but his eyes were not on the valley of the kootenai, but on the girl's face. chapter iii. what is a squaw man? "rache, i want you to stop it." the voice had an insinuating tone, as if it would express "will you stop it?" the speaker was a chubby, matronly figure, enthroned on a hassock of spruce boughs, while the girl stretched beside her was drawing the fragrant spikes of green, bit by bit, over closed eyes and smiling; only the mouth and chin could be seen under the green veil, but the corners of the mouth were widening ever so little. smiles should engender content; they are supposed to be a voucher of sweet thoughts, but at times they have a tendency to bring out all that is irritable in human nature, and the chubby little woman noted that growing smile with rising impatience. "i am not jesting," she continued, as if there might be a doubt on that question; "and i wish you would stop it." "you haven't given it a name yet. say, clara, that sounds like an invitation to drink, doesn't it?--a western invitation." but her fault-finder was not going to let her escape the subject like that. "i am not sure it has a name," she said curtly. "no one seems to know whether it is genesee jack or jack genesee, or whether both are not aliases--in fact, the most equivocal sort of companion for a young girl over these hills." "what a tempest you raise about nothing, clara," said the girl good-humoredly; "one would think that i was in hourly danger of being kidnaped by mr. genesee jack--the name is picturesque in sound, and suits him, don't you think so? but i am sure the poor man is quite harmless, and stands much more in awe of me than i do of him." "i believe you," assented her cousin tartly. "i never knew you to stand in awe of anything masculine, from your babyhood. you are a born flirt, for all your straightforward, independent ways. oh, i know you." "so i hear you say," answered miss hardy, peering through the screen of cedar sprays, her eyes shining a little wickedly from their shadows. "you have a hard time of it with me, haven't you, dear? by the way, clara, who prompted you to this lecture--hen?" "no, hen did not; neither he nor alec seem to have eyes or ears for anything but deer and caribou; they are constantly airing their new-found knowledge of the country. i had to beg alec to come to sleep last night, or i believe they would have gossiped until morning. the one redeeming point in your genesee jack is that he doesn't talk." "he isn't my genesee jack," returned the girl; "but he does talk, and talk well, i think. you do not know him, that is all, and you never will, with those starchy manners of yours. not talk!--why, he has taught me a lot of chinook, and told me all about a miner's life and a hunter's. not talk!--i've only known him a little over a week, and he has told me his life for ten years back." "yes, with no little encouragement from you, i'll wager." "well, my bump of curiosity was enlarged somewhat as to his life," acknowledged the girl. "you see he has such an unusual personality, unusually interesting, i mean. i never knew any man like him in the east. why, he only needs a helmet instead of the sombrero, and armor instead of the hunting suit, and he would make an ideal launcelot." "good gracious, rache! do stop raving over the man, or i shall certainly have hen discharge him and take you back to civilization at once." "but perhaps i won't go back--what then; and perhaps hen could not be able to see your reason for getting rid of a good guide," said the girl coolly, knowing she had the upper hand of the controversy; "and as to the raving, you know i never said a word about him until you began to find fault with everything, from the cut of his clothes to the name he gives, and then--well, a fellow must stand up for his friends, you know." "of course a fellow must," agreed someone back of them, and the young ranchman from the east came down under the branches from the camp-fire just kindled; "that is a manly decision, rache, and does you credit. but what's the argument?" "oh, clara thinks i am taking root too quickly in the soil of loose customs out here," explained the girl, covering the question, yet telling nothing. "she doesn't approve of our savage mode of life, does she?" he queried, sympathetically; "and she hasn't seen but a suggestion of its horrors yet. too bad jim kale did not come; she could have made the acquaintance of a specimen that would no doubt be of interest to her--a squaw man with all his native charms intact." "hen," said the girl, rising on her elbow, "i wish you would tell me just what you mean by a 'squaw man'; is it a man who buys squaws, or sells them, or eats them, or--well, what does he do?" "he marries them--sometimes," was the laconic reply, as if willing to drop the question. but miss rache, when interested, was not to be thrust aside until satisfied. "is that all?" she persisted; "is he a sort of mormon, then--an indian mormon? and how many do they marry?" "i never knew them to marry more than one," hazarded mr. hardy. "but, to tell the truth, i know very little about their customs; i understand they are generally a worthless class of men, and the term 'squaw man' is a stigma, in a way--the most of them are rather ashamed of it, i believe." "i don't see why," began rache. "no, i don't suppose you do," broke in her cousin hardy with a relative's freedom, "and it is not necessary that you should; just confine your curiosity to other phases of missoula county that are open for inspection, and drop the squaw men." "i haven't picked up any of them yet," returned the girl, rising to her feet, "but i will the first chance i get; and i give you fair warning, you might as well tell me all i want to know, for i will find out." "i'll wager she will," sighed clara, as the girl walked away to where their traps and sachels were stacked under a birch tree, and while she turned things topsy-turvy looking for something, she nodded her head sagaciously over her shoulder at the two left behind; "to be sure she will--she is one of the girls who are always stumbling on just the sort of knowledge that should be kept from them; and this question of your horrid social system out here--well, she will know all about it if she has to interview ivans or your guide to find out; and i suppose it is an altogether objectionable topic?" the intonation of the last words showed quite as much curiosity as the girl had declared, only it was more carefully veiled. "oh, i don't know as it is," returned her brother; "except under--well--circumstances. but, some way, a white man is mightily ashamed to have it known that he has a squaw wife. ivans told me that many of them would as soon be shot as to have it known back east where they came from." "yes," remarked a gentleman who joined them during this speech, and whose brand-new hunting suit bespoke the "got-up-regardless" tourist; "it is strange, don't you think so? why, back east we would hear of such a marriage and think it most romantic; but out here--well, it seems hard to convince a westerner that there is any romance about an indian." "and i don't wonder, alec, do you?" asked mrs. houghton, turning to her husband as if sure of sympathy from him; "all the squaws we have seen are horribly slouchy, dirty creatures. i have yet to see the indian maiden of romance." "in their original state they may have possessed all the picturesque dignities and chivalrous character ascribed to them," answered mr. houghton, doubtfully; "but if so, their contact with the white race has caused a vast degeneration." "which it undoubtedly has," returned hardy, decidedly. "mixing of races always has that effect, and in the indian country it takes a most decided turn. the siwash or indian men of this territory may be a thieving, whisky-drinking lot, but the chances are that nine-tenths of the white men who marry among them become more worthless and degraded than the indian." "there are, i suppose, exceptions," remarked houghton. "well, there may be," answered hardy, "but they are not taken into consideration, and that is why a man dislikes to be classed among them. there is something of the same feeling about it that there is back home about a white man marrying a negro." "then why do they do it, if they are ashamed of it?" queried mrs. houghton with logical directness. "well, i suppose because there are no white women here for them to marry," answered her brother, "and indians or half-breeds are always to be found." "if ministers are not," added houghton. "exactly!" "oh, good gracious!" ejaculated the little matron in a tone of disgust; "no wonder they are ashamed--even the would-be honest ones are likely to incur suspicion, because, as you say, the exceptions are too few for consideration. a truly delightful spot you have chosen; the moral atmosphere would be a good field for a missionary, i should say--yet you would come here." "yes, and i am going to stay, too," said hardy, in answer to this sisterly tirade. "we see or know but little of those poor devils or their useless lives--only we know by hearing that such a state of things exists. but as for quitting the country because of that--well, no, i could not be bought back to the east after knowing this glorious climate. why, tillie and i have picked out a tree to be buried under--a magnificent fellow that grows on the plateau above our house--just high enough to view the four-mile park from. she is as much in love with the freedom of these hills as i am." "poor child!" said his sister, commiseratingly; "to think of her being exiled in that park, twenty miles from a white woman!--didn't you say it was twenty?" "yes," and her brother leaned his back against the tree and smiled down at her; "it's twenty and a half, and the white woman whom you see at the end of the trip keeps a tavern--runs it herself, and sells the whisky that crosses the bar with an insinuating manner that is all her own. i've heard that she can sling an ugly fist in a scrimmage. she is a great favorite with the boys; the pet name they have for her is holland jin." "ugh! horrible! and she--she allows them to call her so?" "certainly; you see it is a trade-mark for the house; her real name is jane holland." "holland jin!" repeated his sister with a shudder. "tillie, come here! have you heard this? hen has been telling me of your neighbor, holland jin. how do you expect to live always in this out-of-the-way place?" out from under the branches where their camp had just been located came tillie, a charmingly plain little wife of less than a year--just her childishly curved red lips and her soft dark eyes to give attractiveness to her tanned face. "yes, i have heard of her," she said in a slow, half-shy way; "she can't be very--very--nice; but one of the stockmen said she was good-hearted if anyone was sick or needed help, so she can't be quite bad." "you dear little soul," said her sister-in-law fondly; "you would have a good word to say for anyone; but you must allow it will be awfully dismal out here without any lady friends." "you are here, and rache." "yes, but when rache and i have gone back to civilization?" the dark eyes glanced at the speaker and then at the tall young ranchman. "hen will be here always." "oh, you insinuating little quaker!" laughed the older woman; "one would think you were married yesterday and the honeymoon only begun, would you not, alec? i wonder if these chinook winds have a tendency to softening of the brain--have they, hen? if so, you and tillie are in a dangerous country. what was it you shot this time, alec--a pole-cat or a flying-squirrel? yes, i'll go and see for myself." and she followed her husband across the open space of the plateau to where ivans was cutting slices of venison from the latest addition to their larder; while hardy stood smiling down, half amusedly, at the flushed face of the little wife. "are you afraid of softening of the brain?" he asked in a tone of concern. she shook her head, but did not look up. she was easily teased, as much so about her husband as if he was still a wooer. and to have shown her fondness in his sister's eyes! what sister could ever yet see the reason for a sister-in-law's blind adoration? "are you going to look on yourself as a martyr after the rest have left you here in solitary confinement with me as a jailer?" another shake of the head, and the drooped eyes were raised for one swift glance. "because i was thinking," continued her tormentor--"i was thinking that if the exile, as clara calls it, would be too severe on you, i might, if it was for your own good--i might send you back with the rest to kentucky." then there was a raising of the head quick enough and a tempestuous flight across the space that separated them, and a flood of remonstrances that ended in happy laughter, a close clasp of arms, and--yes, in spite of the girl who was standing not very far away--a kiss; and hardy circled his wife's shoulders with his long arms, and, with a glance of laughing defiance at his cousin, drew her closer and followed in the wake of the houghtons. the girl had deliberately stood watching that little scene with a curious smile in her eyes, a semi-cynical gaze at the lingering fondness of voice and touch. there was no envy in her face, only a sort of good-natured disbelief. her cousin clara always averred that rachel was too masculine in spirit to ever understand the little tendernesses that burnish other women's lives. chapter iv. banked fires. she did not look masculine, however, as she stood there, slender, and brown from the tan of the winds; the unruly, fluffy hair clustering around a face and caressing a neck that was essentially womanly in every curve; only, slight as the form seemed, one could find strong points in the depth of chest and solid look of the shoulders; a veteran of the roads would say those same points in a bit of horse-flesh would denote capacity for endurance, and, added to the strong-looking hand and the mockery latent in the level eyes, they completed a personality that she had all her life heard called queer. and with a smile that reflected that term, she watched those two married lovers stroll arm in arm to where the freshly-killed deer lay. glancing at the group, she missed the face of their guide, a face she had seen much of since that sunrise in the kootenai. across the sward a little way the horses were picketed, and mowitza's graceful head was bent in search for the most luscious clusters of the bunch-grass; but mowitza's master was not to be seen. she had heard him speak, the night before, of signs of grizzlies around the shank of the mountain, and wondered if he had started on a lone hunt for them. she was conscious of a half-resentful feeling that he had not given her a chance of going along, when he knew she wanted to see everything possible in this out-of-door life in the hills. so, in some ill-humor, she walked aimlessly across the grass where clara's lecture on the conventionalities had been delivered; and pushing ahead under the close-knit boughs, she was walking away from the rest, led by that spirit of exploration that comes naturally to one in a wilderness, and parting a wide-spreading clump of laurel, was about to wedge her way through it, when directly on the other side of that green wall she saw genesee, whom she had supposed was alone after a grizzly. was he asleep? he was lying face downward under the woven green roof that makes twilight in the cedars. the girl stopped, about to retrace her steps quietly, when a sudden thought made her look at him more closely, with a devout prayer in her heart that he was asleep, and asleep soundly; for her quick eyes had measured the short distance between that resting-place and the scene of the conversation of a few minutes ago. she tried wildly to remember what clara had said about him, and, most of all, what answers clara had received. she had no doubt said things altogether idiotic, just from a spirit of controversy, and here the man had been within a few feet of them all the time! she felt like saying something desperately, expressively masculine; but instead of easing her feelings in that manner, she was forced to complete silence and a stealthy retreat. was he asleep, or only resting? the uncertainty was aggravating. and a veritable psyche, she could not resist the temptation of taking a last, sharp look. she leaned forward ever so little to ascertain, and thus lost her chance of retreating unseen; for among the low-hanging branches was one on which there were no needles of green--a bare, straggling limb with twigs like the fingers of black skeletons. in bending forward, she felt one of them fasten itself in her hair; tugging blindly and wildly, at last she loosened their impish clutches, and left as trophy to the tree some erratic, light-brown hair and--she gave up in despair as she saw it--her cap, that swung backward and forward, just out of reach. if it only staid there for the present, she would not care so much; but it was so tantalizingly insecure, hanging by a mere thread, and almost directly above the man. fascinated by the uncertainty, she stood still. would it stay where it was? would it fall? the silent query was soon answered--it fell, dropped lightly down on the man's shoulder, and he, raising his head from the folded arms, showed a face from which the girl took a step back in astonishment. he had not been asleep, then; but to the girl's eyes he looked like a man who had been either fighting or weeping. she had never seen a face so changed, telling so surely of some war of the emotions. he lay in the shadow, one hand involuntarily lifting itself as a shade for his eyes while he looked up at her. "well!" the tone was gruff, almost hoarse; it was as unlike him as his face at that moment, and rachel hardy wondered, blankly, if he was drunk--it was about the only reasonable explanation she could give herself. but even with that she could not be satisfied; there was too much quick anger at the thought--not anger alone, but a decided feeling of disappointment in the man. to be sure, she had been influenced by no one to have faith in him; still--someway-- "are you--are you ill, mr. genesee?" she asked at last. "not that i know of." what a bear the man was! she thought; what need was there to answer a civil question in that tone. it made her just antagonistic enough not to care so much if his feelings had been hurt by clara's remarks, and she asked bluntly: "have you been here long?" "some time." "awake?" "well, yes," and he made a queer sound in his throat, half grunt, half laugh; "i reckon i--was--awake." the slow, half-bitter words impelled her to continue: "then you--you heard the--the conversation over there?" he looked at her, and she thought his eyes were pretty steady for a drunken man's. "well, yes," he repeated, "i reckon--i--heard it." all her temper blazed up at the deliberate confession. if he had seemed embarrassed or wounded, she would have felt sorry; but this stoicism angered her, as the idea of drunkenness had done--perhaps because each set herself and her feelings aside--i do not know, but that may have been the reason; she was a woman. "and you deliberately lay there and listened," she burst out wrathfully, "and let us say all sorts of things, no doubt, when it was your place as a gentleman to let us know you were here? i--i would not have taken you for an eavesdropper, mr. jack genesee!" and with this tirade she turned to make her way back through the laurel. "here!" she obeyed the command in his voice, thinking, as she did so, how quick the man was to get on his feet. in a stride he was beside her, his hand outstretched to stop her; but it was not necessary, his tone had done that, and he thrust both hands into the pockets of his hunting coat. "stop just where you are for a minute, miss," he said, looking down at her; "and don't be so infernally quick about making a judge and jury of yourself--and you look just now as if you'd like to be sheriff, too. i make no pretense of being a gentleman of culture, so you can save yourself the trouble of telling me the duty of one. what little polish i ever had has been knocked off in ten years of hill life out here. i'm not used to talking to ladies, and my ways may seem mighty rough to you; but i want you to know i wasn't listening--i would have got away if i could, but i--was paralyzed." "what?" her tone was coldly unbelieving. his manner was collected enough now. he was talking soberly, if rather brusquely; but--that strange look in his face at first? and the eyes that burned as if for the lack of tears?--those were things not yet understood. "yes," he continued, "that's what i was, i reckon. i heard what she said; she is right, too, when she says i'm no fit company for a lady. i hadn't thought of it before, and it started me to thinking--thinking fast--and i just lay still there and forgot everything only those words; and then i heard the things you said--mighty kind they were, too, but i wasn't thinking of them much--only trying to see myself as people of your sort would see me if they knew me as i do, and i concluded i would pan out pretty small; then i heard something else that was good for me, but bitter to take. and then--" his voice grew uncertain; he was not looking at the girl, but straight ahead of him, his features softened, his eyes half closed at some memory. "and then what, genesee?" she felt a little sorry for him as he was speaking--a little kinder since he had owned his own unworthiness. a touch of remorse even led her to lay a couple of fingers on the sleeve of his coat, to remind him of her presence as she repeated: "and then?" he glanced down at the fingers--the glance made the hand drop to her side very quickly--and then he coolly brushed his sleeve carefully with the other hand. "then for a little bit i was let get a glimpse of what heaven on earth might mean to a man, if he hadn't locked the door against himself and dropped into hell instead. this is a blind trail i'm leading on, is it, miss?--all tsolo. well, it doesn't matter; you would have to drop into a pretty deep gulch yourself before you could understand, and you'll never do that--the almighty forbid!" he added, energetically. "you belong to the mountains and the high places, and you're too sure-footed not to stay there. you can go now. i only stopped you to say that my listening mightn't have been in as mean a spirit as you judged. judging things you don't understand is bad business anyway--let it alone." with that admonition he turned away, striding through the laurel growth and spruce, and on down the mountain, leaving miss hardy feeling more lectured and astonished than she had often been in her life. "well, upon my word!" it is not an original exclamation--she was not equal to any original thought just then; but for some time after his disappearance that was all she could find to say, and she said it standing still there, bare-headed and puzzled; then, gathering up her faculties and her skirts, she made her way back through the low growth, and sat down where clara and herself had sat only a little while before. "and clara says he doesn't talk!" she soliloquized, with a faint smile about her lips. "not talk!--he did not give me a chance to say a word, even if i had wanted to. i feel decidedly 'sat upon,' as hen would say, and i suppose i deserved it." then she missed her cap, and went to look for it; but it was gone. she remembered seeing it in his hand; he must have forgotten and taken it with him. then she sat down again, and all the time his words, and the way he had said them, kept ringing in her head--"judging things you don't understand is bad business." of course he was right; but it seemed strange for her to be taken to task by a man like that on such a subject--an uncouth miner and hunter in the indian hills. but was he quite uncouth? while he made her stop and listen, his earnestness had overleaped that slurred manner of speech that belongs to the ignorant of culture. his words had been clearer cut. there had been the ring of finished steel in his voice, not the thud of iron in the ore, and it had cut clear a path of revelations. the man, then, could do more than ride magnificently, and look a launcelot in buckskin--he could think--how deeply and wildly had been shown by the haggard face she had seen. but the cause of it? even his disjointed explanation had given her no clue. "tsolo," she thought, repeating the chinook word he had used; "that means to lose one's way--to wander in the dark. well, he was right. that is what i am doing"; and then she laughed half mockingly at herself as she added: "and mr. jack genesee has started me on the path--and started me bare-headed. oh, dear, what a muddle! i wonder where my cap is, and i wonder where the man went to, and i wonder--i wonder what he meant by a glimpse of heaven. i haven't seen any signs of it." but she had seen it--seen it and laughed mockingly, unbelievingly, while the man had by the sight been touched into a great heart-ache of desolation. and yet it was a commonplace thing they had seen; only two lives bound together by the wish of their hearts and a wedding ring--an affection so honest that its fondness could be frankly shown to the world. * * * * * that evening genesee came back to camp looking tired, and told ivans there was a grizzly waiting to be skinned in a gully not far off. he had had a hard tussle after it and was too tired to see to the pelt; and then he turned to miss hardy and drew her cap from his pocket. "i picked it up back there in the brush, and forgot to give it to you before going out," he said. that was all--no look or manner that showed any remembrance of their conversation. and for the next two days the girl saw very little of their guide; no more long gallops ahead of the party. mr. genesee had taken a sedate turn, and remained close to the rest, and if any of the ladies received more of his attention than another it was mrs. hardy. he had for her something approaching veneration. in her tender, half-shy love of her husband she seemed to him as the madonna to those of the roman church--a symbol of something holy--of a purity of affection unknown to the rough man of the hills. unpretentious little tillie would have been amazed if she had suspected the pedestal she occupied in the imagination of this dark-faced fellow, whose only affection seemed to be lavished on mowitza. clara always looked at him somewhat askance; and in passing a party of the indians who were berry-hunting in the mountains, she noted suspiciously his ready speech in their own language, and the decided deference paid him by them; the stolid stare of the squaws filled her with forebodings of covetousness for her raiment--of which several of them rather stood in need, though the weather was warm--and that night was passed by her in waking dreams of an indian massacre, with their guide as a leader of the enemy. "do you know them very well?" asked miss hardy, riding up to genesee. "is it entirely chinook they are talking? let me try my knowledge of it. i should like to speak to them in their jargon. can i?" "you can try. here's a siwash, a friend of mine, who is as near a boston (american) man as any of them--try him." and, under genesee's tuition, she asked several questions about the berry yield in the hills, and the distance to markets where pelts could be sold; and the indian answered briefly, expressing distance as much by the sweep of his hand toward the west as by the adjective "siah-si-ah;" and miss hardy, well satisfied with her knowledge, would have liked to add to her possessions the necklace of bear's claws that adorned the bronze throat of the gentleman who answered her questions. the squaws slouched around the camp, curious and dirty, here and there a half-breed showing the paler blood through olive skin. the younger women or girls were a shade less repulsive than their mothers, but none showed material for a romance of indian life. they were as spiritless as ill-kept cattle. back of some tethered ponies miss hardy noticed a dark form dodging as if to avoid being seen. a squaw possessed of shyness was such a direct contradiction of those she had seen, that the white girl found herself watching the indian one with a sort of curiosity--in fact, she rode her horse over in the direction of the ponies, thinking the form she had a glimpse of was only a child; but it was not, for back of the ponies it lay flat to the ground as a snake, only the head raised, the eyes meeting those of miss hardy with a half scowl, and the bright-beaded dress outlining the form of a girl perhaps twenty years old, and dressed much neater than any she had seen in the camp. by the light tinge of color she was evidently a half-breed, and the white girl was about to turn her horse's head, when, with a low exclamation, the other seized a blanket that had slipped from a pony, and quick as a flash had rolled her plump form in it, head and heels, and dropped like one asleep, face downward, in the trampled grass. wondering at the sudden hiding and its cause, miss hardy turned away and met genesee, who was riding toward her. "shaky-looking stock," he commented, supposing she was looking at the ponies. "the rest are going on, miss; we have to do some traveling to reach our last camp by night-fall." as they rode away, miss hardy turned for a last look at that mummy-looking form by the ponies. it apparently had not moved. she wondered if it was genesee the girl was hiding from, and if so, why? was their guide one of those heroes of the border whose face is a thing of terror to indian foe? and was the half-breed girl one of the few timid ones? she could not answer her own questions, and something kept her from speaking to genesee of it; in fact, she did not speak to him of anything with the same freedom since that conversation by the laurel bushes. sometimes she would laugh a little to herself as she thought of how he had brushed off that coat-sleeve; it had angered her, amused her, and puzzled her. that entire scene seemed a perplexing, unreal sort of an affair to her sometimes, especially when looking at their guide as he went about the commonplace duties in the camp or on the trail. an undemonstrative, prosaic individual she knew he appeared to the rest; laconic and decided when he did speak, but not a cheery companion. to her always, after that day, he was a suggestion of a crater in which the fires were banked. chapter v. at last camp. after their stop at the indian camp, which genesee explained was a berrying crowd from the kootenai tribe, there was, of course, comment among the visitors as to the mixed specimens of humanity they had seen there. "i don't wonder a white man is ashamed of an indian wife," said mrs. houghton. "what slouchy creatures!" "all the more reason for a white man to act the part of missionary, and marry them," remarked rachel hardy, "and teach them what the domestic life of a woman should be." genesee turned square around to look at the speaker--perhaps she did not strike him as being a domestic woman herself. whatever the cause of that quick attention, she noticed it, and added: "well, mr. genesee, don't you think so? you must have seen considerable of that sort of life." "i have--some," he answered concisely, but showing no disposition to discuss it, while mrs. houghton was making vain efforts to engage miss hardy's attention by the splendid spread of the country below them; but it was ineffectual. "yes, clara, i see the levels along that river--i've been seeing them for the past two hours--but just now i am studying the social system of those hills"; and then she turned again to their guide. "you did not answer my question, mr. genesee," she said, ignoring mrs. houghton's admonishing glances. "do you not agree with my idea of marriages between whites and indians?" "no!" he said bluntly; "most of the white men i know among the indians need themselves to be taught how people should live; they need white women to teach them. it's uphill work showing an indian how to live decently when a man has forgotten how himself. missionary work! squaw men are about as fit for that as--as hell's fit for a powder-house." and under this emphatic statement and the shocked expression of clara's face, miss hardy collapsed, with the conviction that there must be lights and shades of life in the indian country that were not apparent to the casual visitor. she wondered sometimes that genesee had lived there so long with no family ties, and she seldom heard him speak of any white friend in montana--only of old davy macdougall sometimes. most of his friends had indian names. altogether, it seemed a purposeless sort of existence. "do you expect to live your life out here, like this?" she asked him once. "don't you ever expect to go back home?" "hardly! there is nothing to take me back now." "and only a horse and a gun to keep you here?" she smiled. "n--no; something besides, miss. i've got a right smart of a ranch on the other side of the maple range. it's running wild--no stock on it; but in tamahnous hill there's a hole i've been digging at for the past four years. macdougall reckons i'm 'witched' by it, but it may pan out all right some of these days." "gold hunting?" "no, miss, silver; and it's there. i've got tired more than once and given it the klatawa (the go-by); but i'd always come back, and i reckon i always will until i strike it." "and then?" "well, i haven't got that far yet." and thus any curiosity about the man's life or future was generally silenced. he had told her many things of the past; his life in the mines of colorado and idaho, with now and then the diversion of a government scout's work along the border. all of that he would speak of without reserve, but of the actual present or of the future he would say nothing. "i have read somewhere in a book of a man without a past," remarked the girl to mrs. hardy; "but our guide seems a man utterly without a future." "perhaps he does not like to think of it here alone," suggested tillie thoughtfully; "he must be very lonely sometimes. just see how he loves that horse!" "not a horse, tillie--a klootchman kiuatan," corrected the student of chinook; "if you are going to live out here, you must learn the language of the hills." "you are likely to know it first;" and then, after a little, she added: "but noticing that man's love for his mowitza, i have often thought how kind he would be to a wife. i think he has a naturally affectionate nature, though he does swear--i heard him; and to grow old and wild here among the indians and squaw men seems too bad. he is intelligent--a man who might accomplish a great deal yet. you know he is comparatively young--thirty-five, i heard hen say." "yes," said mrs. houghton sarcastically; "a good age at which to adopt a child. you had better take him back as one of the fixtures on the ranch, tillie; of course he may need some training in the little courtesies of life, but no doubt rachel would postpone her return east and offer her services as tutor;" and with this statement mistress houghton showed her disgust of the entire subject. "she is 'riled,'" said the girl, looking quizzically after the plump retreating form. "why, what in the world--" "nothing in the world, tillie, and that's what's the matter with clara. her ideas of the world are, and always will be, bounded by the rules and regulations of willow centre, kentucky. of course it isn't to be found on a map of the united states, but it's a big place to clara; and she doesn't approve of mr. genesee because he lives outside its knowledge. she intimated yesterday that he might be a horse-thief for any actual acquaintance we had with his resources or manner of living." "ridiculous!" laughed tillie. "that man!" the girl slipped her arm around the little wife's waist and gave her a hug like a young bear. she had been in a way lectured and snubbed by that man, but she bore no malice. the end of their cultus corrie was reached as they went into camp for a two-days' stay, on the shoulder of a mountain from which one could look over into the idaho hills, north into british columbia, and through the fair kootenai valleys to the east, where the home-ranch lay. houghton and hardy each had killed enough big game to become inoculated with the taste for wild life, and the ladies were delighted with the idea of having the spoils of the hunt for the adornment of their homes; and altogether the trip was voted a big success. is there anything more appetizing, after a long ride through the mountains, than to rest under the cedars at sunset and hear the sizzle of broiled meat on the red coals, and have the aroma of coffee borne to you on the breeze that would lull you to sleep if you were not so hungry? "i could have eaten five meals during every twenty-four hours since we started," acknowledged rachel, as she watched with flattering attention the crisping slices of venison that were accumulating on a platter by the fire. and she looked as if both the appetite and the wild living had agreed with her. clara complained that rachel really seemed to pride herself on the amount of tan she had been able to gather from the wind and the sun, while hardy decided that only her light hair would keep her from being taken for an indian. but for all the looks that were gaining a tinge of wildness, and the appetites that would persist in growing ravenous, it was none the less a jolly, pleasant circle that gathered about the evening meal, sometimes eaten on a large flat stone, if any were handy, and again on the grass, where the knives and small articles of table-ware would lose themselves in the tall spears; but, whatever was used as a table, the meal in the evening was the domestic event of the day. at midday there was often but a hasty lunch; breakfast was simply a preparation for travel; but in the evening all were prepared for rest and the enjoyment of either eatables or society. and until the darkness fell there was the review of the day's hunt by the men--hardy and houghton vying with each other in their recitals--or, as ivans expressed it, "swappin' lies"--around the fire. sometimes there would be singing, and blended with the notes of night-birds in the forest would sound the call of human throats echoing upward in old hymns that all had known sometime, in the east. and again tillie would sing them a ballad or a love-song in a sweet, fresh voice; or, with clara, hardy, and houghton, a quartette would add volume to some favorite, their scout a silent listener. rachel never sang with the rest; she preferred whistling, herself. and many a time when out of sight of her on the trail, she was located by that boyish habit she had of echoing the songs of many of the birds that were new to her, learning their notes, and imitating them so well as to bring many a decoyed answer from the woods. between herself and the guide there was no more their former comaraderie. they had never regained their old easy, friendly manner. still, she asked him that night at "last camp" of the music of the indians. had they any? could he sing? had there ever been any of their music published? etc. and he told them of the airs that were more like chants, like the echoes of whispering or moaning forests, set to human words; of the dusky throats that, without training, yet sang together with never a discord; of the love-songs that had in them the minor cadences of sadness. only their war-songs seemed to carry brightness, and they only when echoes of victory. in the low, glowing light of the fire, when the group around it faded in the darkness, he seemed to forget his many listeners, and talked on as if to only one. to the rest it was as if they had met a stranger there that evening for the first time, and found him entertaining. even mrs. houghton dropped her slightly supercilious manner toward him, a change to which he was as indifferent as to her coolness. it may have been tillie's home-songs in the evening that unlocked his lips; or it may have been the realization that the pleasure-trip was ended--that in a short time he would know these people no more, who had brought him home-memories in their talk of home-lives. it may have been a dash of recklessness that urged him to enjoy it for a little only--this association that suggested so much to which he had long been a stranger. whatever the impulse was, it showed a side of his nature that only rachel had gained any knowledge of through those first bright, eager days of their cultus corrie. at tillie's request he repeated some remembered fragments of indian songs that had been translated into the red's language, and of which he gave them the english version or meaning as well as he could. a couple of them he knew entire, and to tillie's delight he hummed the plaintive airs until she caught the notes. and even after the rest had quietly withdrawn and rolled themselves in blankets for the night's rest, hardy and his wife and genesee still sat there with old legends of tsiatko, the demon of the night, for company, and with strange songs in which the music would yet sound familiar to any ears used to the shrilling of the winds through the timber, or the muffled moans of the wood-dove. and in the sweet dusk of the night, rachel, the first to leave the fire, lay among the odorous, spicy branches of the cedar and watched the picture of the group about the fire. all was in darkness, save when a bit of reflected red would outline form or feature, and they looked rather uncanny in the red-and-black coloring. an indian council or the grouping of witches and warlocks it might have been, had one judged the scene only from sight. but the voices of the final three, dropped low though they were for the sake of the supposed sleepers, yet had a tone of pleasant converse that belied their impish appearance. those voices came to rachel dreamily, merging their music with the drowsy odors of a spruce pillow. and through them all she heard tillie and genesee singing a song of some unlettered indian poet: "lemolo mika tsolo siah polaklie, towagh tsee chil-chil siah saghallie. mika na chakko?--me sika chil-chil, opitsah! mika winapia, tsolo--tsolo!" "wild do i wander, far in the darkness, shines bright a sweet star far up above. will you not come to me? you are the star, sweetheart! i wait, lost!--in the dark!" and the white girl's mouth curled dubiously in that smile that always vanquished the tender curves of her lips, and then dropped asleep whispering the refrain, "tsolo--tsolo!" chapter vi. tsolo--tsolo! the retracing of steps, either figuratively or literally, is always provocative of thought to the individual who walks again over the old paths; the waning of a moon never finds the same state of feelings in the heart that had throbbed through it under the gold sickle. back over how many a road do we walk with a sigh, remembering the laughter that had once echoed along it! something has been gained, something has been lost, since; and a human sigh is as likely to be called forth by one cause as the other. miss rachel hardy, who usually laughed at sighs of sentiment, did not indulge in them as one by one the landmarks of the past three weeks rose in sight. but different natures find different vents for feeling, and she may have got rid of hers by the long gallops she took alone over the now known trail, priding herself on her ability to find her way miles ahead of the slower-moving party; and resting herself and horse in some remembered retreat, would await their coming. through these solitary rides she began to understand the fascination such a free, untrammeled existence would have for a man. one must feel a very adam in the midst of this virginity of soil and life of the hills. she had not tillie's domestic ideas of life, else the thought of an eve might also have occurred to her. but though she wasted no breath in sighs over the retraced cultus corrie, neither did she in the mockery that had tantalized clara in the beginning. that lady did not find her self-imposed duty of chaperon nearly so arduous as at first, since, from the time the other ladies awakened to the fact that their guide had a good baritone voice and could be interesting, the girl forgot her role of champion, also her study of mongrel languages; for she dropped that ready use of chinook of which she had been proud, especially in her conversation with him, and only used it if chance threw her in the way of indians hunting or gathering olallie (berries) in the hills. genesee never noticed by word or action the changed manner that dropped him out of her knowledge. once or twice, in crossing a bit of country that was in any way dangerous to a stranger, he had said no one must leave the party or go out of hearing distance; and though the order was a general one, they all knew he meant rachel, and the ladies wondered a little if that generally headstrong damsel would heed it, or if she would want willfully to take the bit in her teeth and go as she pleased--a habit of hers; but she did not; she rode demurely with the rest, showing the respect of a soldier to the orders of a commander. along the last bit of bad country he spoke to her of the enforced care through the jungle of underbrush, where the chetwoot (black bear) was likely to be met and prove a dangerous enemy, at places where the trail led along the edge of ravines, and where a fright to a horse was a risky thing. "it's hard on you, miss, to be kept back here with the rest of us," he said, half apologetically; "you're too used to riding free for this to be any pleasure, but--" "don't distress yourself about me," she answered easily, but without looking at him. "i have felt a little lazy to-day, so has betty, and have been satisfied to loaf; but now we are at the edge of this bad strip, and just down over this bend ahead is a long stretch of level, and i think--yes, i am quite sure--i am ready now for a run." and without waiting to hear either assent or dissent to her intention, she touched betty with the whip, and mowitza and her master were left behind, much to mowitza's dissatisfaction. she gave one plunge ahead as if to follow, but genesee's hand on the bridle had a quick, cruel grip for a moment, and in slow silence they made their way down the timbered slope to the lower levels. the girl, free from companionship save her own thoughts, galloped through the odorous, shadowy table-lands, catching here and there a glimpse of glistening water in a river ahead, as it trailed its length far below the plateaus, and shone like linked diamonds away toward the east. she remembered the river; it was a branch of the kootenai. to be near it meant but a short journey home; two days more, perhaps, and then--well, their outing would be over. she would go back east, and say good-bye to betty; and then she began to think of that man who belonged to these hills and who never need leave them--never need go a mile without his horse, if he did not choose; and she envied him as she could not have thought it possible to do six months before--to envy a man such a primitive existence, such simple possessions! but most human wants are so much a matter of association, and rachel hardy, though all unconscious of it, was most impressionable to surroundings. back of her coolness and carelessness was a sensitive temperament in which the pulses were never stilled. it thrilled her with quick sympathies for which she was vexed with herself, and which she hid as well as she could. she had more than likely never tried to analyze her emotions; they were seldom satisfactory enough for her to grant them so much patience; but had she done so, she would have found her desires molded as much by association and sentiment as most other human nature of her age. once or twice she looked back as she left the timber, but could see nothing of the others, and betty seemed to scent the trail home, and long for the ranch and the white-coated flocks of the pastures, for she struck out over the table-lands, where her hoofs fell so softly in the grass that the wild things of the ground-homes and the birds that rest on the warm earth scampered and flew from under the enemy's feet that were shod with iron. a small herd of elk with uncouth heads and monstrous antlers were startled from the shelter of a knoll around which she cantered; for a moment the natives and the stranger gazed at each other with equal interest, and then a great buck plunged away over the rolling land to the south, and the others followed as if they had been given a word of command. the girl watched them out of sight, finding them, like the most of montana natives, strange and interesting--not only the natives, but the very atmosphere of existence, with its tinges of wildness and coloring of the earth; even the rising and setting of the sun had a distinct character of its own, in the rarefied air of this land that seemed so far off from all else in the world. for in the valley of the kootenai, where the light breaks over the mountains of the east and vanishes again over the mountains of the west, it is hard at times to realize that its glory is for any land but the mellow, sun-kissed "park" whose only gates open to the south. the late afternoon was coming on; only an hour or so of sun, and then the long flush twilight. remembering the camping-spot they were making for, she gave betty rein, thinking to reach it and have a fire built on their arrival, and her hard ride gave her a longing for the sight of the pack-mules with the eatables. another of those ugly, jolting bits of scrub-timber had to be crossed before the haven of rest was reached. betty had almost picked her way through it, when a huge black something came scrambling down through the brush almost in front of them. the little mare shied in terror, and the girl tried to make a circuit of the animal, which she could see was an enormous black bear. it did not seem to notice her, but was rolling and pitching downward as if on a trail--no doubt that of honey in a tree. managing betty was not an easy matter, and it took all of the girl's strength to do so until the black stranger passed, and then, on loosening the bridle, the terrified beast gave a leap forward. there was a crash, a growl from under her feet, and an answering one from the huge beast that had just gone by them; she had been followed by two cubs that had escaped rachel's notice in the thick brush, as all her attention had been given to the mother; but betty's feet coming down on one of the cubs had brought forth a call that the girl knew might mean a war of extermination. with a sharp cut of the whip, betty, wild from the clawing thing at her feet, sprang forward over it with a snort of terror, just as the mother with fierce growls broke through the brush. [illustration: at a sharp cut of the whip, betty sprang forward] once clear of them, the little mare ran like mad through the rough trail over which she had picked her way so carefully but a little before. stones and loose earth clattered down the gully, loosened by her flying feet, and dashed ominously in the mountain stream far below. the girl was almost torn from the saddle by the low branches of the trees under which she was borne. in vain she tried to check or moderate the mare's gait. she could do little but drop low on the saddle and hang there, wondering if she should be able to keep her seat until they got clear of the timber. the swish of some twigs across her eyes half blinded her, and it seemed like an hour went by with betty crashing through the brush, guiding herself, and seeming to lose none of her fright. her ears were deaf to the girl's voice, and at last, stumbling in her headlong run, her rider was thrown against a tree, knowing nothing after the sickening jar, and seeing nothing of betty, who, freed from her burden, recovered her footing, and, triumphant, dashed away on a cultus "coolie" (run) of her own. when rachel recovered her powers of reasoning, she felt too lazy, too tired to use them. she ached all over from the force of the fall, and though realizing that the sun was almost down, and that she was alone there in the timber, all she felt like doing was to drag herself into a more comfortable position and go to sleep; but real sleep did not come easily--only a drowsy stupor, through which she realized she was hungry, and wondered if the rest were eating supper by that time, and if they had found betty, and if--no, rather, when would they find her? she had no doubt just yet that they would find her; she could half imagine how carefully and quickly mowitza would cover the ground after they missed her. of course there were other horses in the party, but mowitza was the only one she happened to think of. she did not know where she was; the mare had struck into a new trail for herself, and had dropped her rider on a timbered slope of one of the foot-hills, where there were no remembered landmarks, and the closeness of night would prevent her from seeking them. twice she roused herself and tried to walk, but she was dizzily sick from the wild ride and the fall that had stunned her, and both times she was compelled to drop back on her couch of grass. the stars began to creep out in the clear, warm sky, and up through the timber the shadows grew black, and it all seemed very peaceful and very lovely. she thought she would not mind sleeping there if she only had a blanket, and--yes, some hot coffee--for through the shadows of the lower hills the dew falls quickly, and already the coolness made itself felt with a little shiver. she searched her pocket for some matches--not a match, therefore no fire. a sound in the distance diverted her thoughts from disappointment, and she strained her ears for a repetition of it. surely it was a shot, but too far off for any call of hers to answer it. she could do nothing but listen and wait, and the waiting grew long, so long that she concluded it could be no one on her trail--perhaps some of the indians in the hills. she would be glad to see even them, she thought, for all she met had seemed kindly disposed. then she fell to wondering about that half-breed girl who had hid back of the ponies; was it genesee she was afraid of, and if so, why? suddenly a light gleamed through the woods above her; a bent figure was coming down the hill carrying a torch, and back of it a horse was following slowly. "genesee!" called a glad voice through the dusk. "genesee!" there was no word in answer; only the form straightened, and with the torch held high above his head he plunged down through the trees, straight as an arrow, in answer to her voice. she had risen to her feet, but swayed unsteadily as she went to meet him. "i am so glad--it--is--you," she said, her hands outstretched as he came close. and then that returning dizziness sent her staggering forward, half on her knees and half in his arms, as he threw the torch from him and caught her. she did not faint, though the only thing she was still conscious of was that she was held in strong arms, and held very closely, and the beat of a heart that was not her own throbbed against her rather nerveless form. he had not yet spoken a word, but his breath coming quickly, brokenly, told of great exhaustion, or it may be excitement. opening her eyes, she looked up into the face that had a strange expression in the red light from the torch--his eyes seemed searching her own so curiously. "i--i'm all right," she half smiled in answer to what she thought an unspoken query, "only"--and a wave of forgetfulness crept over the estrangement of the late days--and she added--"only--hyas till nika" (i am very tired). her eyes were half closed in the content of being found, and the safety of his presence. she had not changed her position or noticed that he had not spoken. his hat had fallen to the ground, and something almost boyish was in the bend of his bared head and the softness of his features as his face drooped low over her own. death brings back the curves of youth to aged faces sometimes--is it the only change that does so? she felt the hand on her shoulder trembling; was it with her weight--and he so strong? a muttered sentence came to her ears, through which she could only distinguish a word that in its suppressed force might belong to either a curse or a prayer--an intense "christ!" that aroused her to a realization of what she had been too contented to remember. she opened her eyes and raised her head from his arm, brushing his lips with her hair as she did so. "were you so much alarmed?" she asked in a clearer, more matter-of-fact way, as she propped herself up on his outstretched arm; "and did you come alone to find me?" he drew back from her with a long, indrawn breath, and reached for his hat. "yes," he said. it was the first time he had spoken to her, and he did so with his eyes still on her face and that curious expression in them. he was half kneeling, his body drawn back and away from her, but his eyes unchanging in their steadiness. as the girl lay there full length on the mountain grass, only her head raised and turned toward him, she might have been a lamia from their attitudes and his expression. "it seemed long to wait," she continued, turning her eyes toward mowitza, who had quietly come near them; "but i was not afraid. i knew you would find me. i would have walked back to meet you if the fall had not made me so dizzy. i am decidedly wake kloshe" (no good); and she smiled as she reached out her hand to him, and he helped her rise to her feet. "i feel all jolted to pieces," she said, taking a few steps toward a tree against which she leaned. "and even now that you have come, i don't know how i am to get to camp." "i will get you there," he answered briefly. "did the mare throw you?" "i am not sure what she did," answered the girl. "she fell, i think, and i fell with her, and when i could see trees instead of stars she had recovered and disappeared. oh! did you see the bear?" "yes, and shot her. she might have killed you when her temper was up over that cub. how did it happen?" each of them was a little easier in speech than at first, and she told him as well as she could of the episode, and her own inability to check betty. and he told her of the fright of the others, and their anxiety, and that he had sent them straight ahead to camp, while he struck into the timber where betty had left the old trail. "i promised them to have word of you soon," he added; "and i reckon they'll be mighty glad you can take the word yourself--it's more than they expected. she might have killed you." his tone and repetition of the words showed the fear that had been uppermost in his thoughts. "yes--she might," agreed the girl. "that is a lesson to me for my willfulness;" and then she smiled mockingly with a gleam of her old humor, adding: "and so in the future, for the sake of my neck and the safety of my bones, i will be most obedient to orders, mr. genesee jack." he only looked at her across the flickering circle of light from the torch. it must have dazzled his eyes, for in putting on his hat he pulled it rather low over his forehead, and turning his back abruptly on her he walked over for mowitza. but he did not bring her at once. he stood with his elbows on her shoulders and his head bent over his clasped hands, like a man who is thinking--or else very tired. rachel had again slipped down beside the tree; her head still seemed to spin around a little if she stood long; and from that point of vantage she could easily distinguish the immovable form in the shifting lights and shadows. "what is the matter with the man?" she asked herself as he stood there. "he was glad to find me--i know it; and why he should deliberately turn his back and walk away like that, i can't see. but he shan't be cool or sulky with me ever again; i won't let him." and with this determination she said: "genesee!" "yes," he answered, but did not move. "now that you have found me, are you going to leave me here all night?" she asked demurely. "no, miss," he answered, and laid his hand on the bridle. "come, mowitza, we must take her to camp;" and striding back with quick, decided movements that were rather foreign to his manner, he said: "here she is, miss; can you ride on that saddle?" "i don't know, i'm sure. i--i--suppose so; but how are you to get there?" "walk," he answered concisely. "why, how far is it?" "about five miles--straight across." "can we go straight across?" "no." she looked up at him and laughed, half vexed. "mr. genesee jack," she remarked, "you can be one of the most aggravatingly non-committal men i ever met. it has grown as dark as a stack of black cats, and i know we must have an ugly trip to make with only one horse between us. do you suppose i have no natural curiosity as to how we are to get there, and when? don't be such a lock-and-key individual. i can't believe it is natural to you. it is an acquired habit, and hides your real self often." "and a good thing it does, i reckon," he returned; "locks and keys are good things to have, miss; don't quarrel with mine or my ways to-night; wait till i leave you safe with your folks, then you can find fault or laugh, whichever you please. it won't matter then." his queer tone kept her from answering at once, and she sat still, watching him adjust the stirrup, and then make a new torch of pine splits and knots. "what do you call a torch in chinook?" she asked after a little, venturing on the supposed safe ground of jargon. "la gome towagh," he answered, splitting a withe to bind them together, and using a murderous looking hunting-knife on which the light glimmered and fretted. "and a knife?" she added. "opitsah." she looked up at him quickly. "opitsah means sweetheart," she returned; "i know that much myself. are you not getting a little mixed, professor?" "i think not," he said, glancing across at her; "the same word is used for both; and," he added, thrusting the knife in its sheath and rising to his feet, "i reckon the men who started the jargon knew what they were talking about, too. come, are you ready?" assuredly, though he had hunted for her, and been glad to find her alive, yet now that he had found her he had no fancy for conversation, and he showed a decided inclination to put a damper on her attempts at it. he lifted her to the saddle, and walking at mowitza's head, they started on their home journey through the night. "the moon will be up soon," he remarked, glancing up at the sky. "we only need a torch for the gulch down below there." she did not answer; the movement of the saddle brought back the dizziness to her head--all the glare of the torch was a blur before her. she closed her eyes, thinking it would pass away, but it did not, and she wondered why he stalked on like that, just as if he did not care, never once looking toward her or noticing how she was dropping forward almost on mowitza's neck. then, as they descended a steep bit of hill, she became too much lost to her surroundings for even that speculation, and could only say slowly: "tsolo, genesee?" "no," he answered grimly, "not now." but she knew or heard nothing of the tone that implied more than it expressed. she could only reach gropingly toward him with one hand, as if to save herself from falling from the saddle. only her finger-tips touched his shoulder--it might have been a drooping branch out of the many under which they went, for all the weight of it; but grim and unresponsive as he was in some ways, he turned, through some quick sympathy at the touch of her hand, and caught her arm as she was about to fall forward. in an instant she was lifted from the saddle to her feet, and his face was as white as hers as he looked at her. "dead!" he said, in a quiet sort of way, as her hand dropped nerveless from his own, and he lifted her in his arms, watching for some show of life in the closed lids and parted lips. and then with a great shivering breath, he drew the still face to his own, and in a half-motherly way smoothed back the fair hair as if she had been a child, whispering over and over: "not dead, my pretty! not you, my girl! here, open your eyes; listen to me; don't leave me like this until i tell you--tell you--god! i wish i was dead beside you! ah, my girl! my girl!" chapter vii. under the chinook moon. ikt polaklie konaway moxt. over the crowns of the far hills the moon wheeled slowly up into the sky, giving the shadows a cloak of blue mist, and vying with the forgotten torch in lighting up the group in the gulch. the night winds rustled through the leaves and sighed through the cedars; and the girl's voice, scarcely louder than the whispers of the wood, said: "genesee! tillie!" "yes, miss," the man answered, as he lowered her head from his shoulder to the sward, making a pillow for her of his hat. with returning life and consciousness she again slipped out of his reach or possession, and himself and his emotions were put aside, to be hidden from her eyes. through the blessing of death, infinite possession comes to so many souls that life leaves beggared; and in those hurried moments of uncertainty, she belonged to him more fully than he could hope for while she lived. "is it you, genesee?" she said, after looking at him drowsily for a little. "i--i thought tillie was here, crying, and kissing me." "no, miss, you fainted, i reckon, and just dreamed that part of it," he answered, but avoiding the eyes that, though drowsy, looked so directly at him. "i suppose so," she agreed. "i tried to reach you when i felt myself going; but you wouldn't look around. did you catch me?" "yes; and i don't think you were quite square with me back there; you told me you were all right; but you must have got hurt more than you owned up to. why didn't you tell me?" "but i am not--indeed i am not!" she persisted. "i was not at all injured except for the jar of the fall; it leaves me dizzy and sick when i sit upright in the saddle--that is all." "and it is enough," he returned decidedly; "do you 'spose, if you'd told me just how you felt, i should have set you there to ride through these hills and hollows?" "what else could you do?" she asked; "you couldn't bring a carriage for me." "may be not, but i could have ridden mowitza myself and carried you." "that would be funny," she smiled. "poor mowitza! could she carry double?" "yes," he answered curtly; perhaps the situation did not strike him in a humorous light. "yes, she can, and that's what she will have to do. let me know when you feel able to start." "i think i do now," she said, raising herself from the ground; "i am a little shaky, but if i do not have to sit upright i can keep my wits about me, i believe. will you help me, please?" he lifted her into the saddle without a word, and then mounting himself, he took her in front of him, circling her with one arm and guiding mowitza with the other, with as much unconcern as if he had carried damsels in like cavalier fashion all his life. they rode on in silence for a little through the shadows of the valley, where the moon's light only fell in patches. his eyes were straight ahead, on the alert for gullies and pitfalls along the blind trail. he seemed to have no glances for the girl whose head was on his shoulder, but whom he held most carefully. once he asked how she felt, and if she was comfortable; and she said "yes, thank you," very demurely, with that mocking smile about her lips. she felt like laughing at the whole situation--all the more so because he looked so solemn, almost grim. she always had an insane desire to laugh when in circumstances where any conventional woman would be gathering up her dignity. it had got her into scrapes often, and she felt as if it was likely to do so now. the movement of the horse no longer made her ill, since she did not have to sit upright; she was only a little dizzy at times, as if from the rocking of a swing, and lazily comfortable with that strong arm and shoulder for support. "i am afraid i am getting heavy," she remarked after a while; "if i could get my arm around back of you and hold either the saddle or reach up to your shoulder, i might not be such a dead weight on your arm." "just as you like," was the brief reply that again aroused her desire to laugh. it did seem ridiculous to be forced into a man's arms like that, and the humorous part of it was heightened, in her eyes, by his apparent sulkiness over the turn affairs had taken. she slipped her arm across his back, however, and up to his shoulder, thus lightening her weight on the arm that circled her, an attempt to which he appeared indifferent. and so they rode on out of the valley into the level land at the foot of the hills, and then into the old trail where the route was more familiar and not so much care needed. the girl raised her head drowsily as she noted some old landmarks in the misty light. "poor mowitza!" she said; "she did not have such a load when she came over this road before; it was the day after you joined us, do you remember?" "yes." remember! it had been the gateway through which he had gained a glimpse into a new world--those days that were tinged with the delightful suggestions of dawn. he smiled rather grimly at the question, but she could not see his face very well, under the shadow of his wide hat. "has mowitza ever before had to carry double?" there was a little wait after her question--perhaps he was trying to remember; then he said: "yes." she wanted to ask who, and under what circumstances, but someway was deterred by his lock-and-key manner, as she called it. she rather commended herself for her good humor under its influence, and wondered that she only felt like laughing at his gruffness. with any other person she would have felt like retaliating, and she lay there looking up into the shadowy face with a mocking self-query as to why he was made an exception of. "genesee!" she began, after one of those long spells of silence; and then the utterance of the name suggested a new train of thought--"by the way, is your name genesee?" he did not answer at once--was he trying to remember that also? "i wish you would tell me," she continued, more gently than was usual with her. "i am going away soon; i should like to know by what real name i am to remember you when i am back in kentucky. is your name jack genesee?" "no," he said at last; "genesee is a name that stuck to me from some mines where i worked, south of this. if i went back to them i would be called kootenai jack, perhaps, because i came from here. plenty of men are known by names out here that would not be recognized at home, if they have a home. "but your name is jack" she persisted. "yes, my name is jack." but he did not seem inclined to give any further information on the subject that just then was of interest to her, and she did not like to question further, but contented herself with observing: "i shan't call you genesee any more." "just as you like, miss." again came that crazy desire of hers to laugh, and although she kept silent, it was a convulsive silence--one of heaving bosom and quivering shoulders. to hide it, she moved restlessly, changing her position somewhat, and glancing about her. "not much farther to go," she remarked; "won't they be surprised to find you carrying me into camp like this? i wonder if betty came this way, or if they found her--the little vixen! there is only one more hill to cross until we reach camp--is there not?" "only one more." "and both mowitza and yourself will need a good rest when we get there," she remarked. "your arm must feel paralyzed. do you know i was just thinking if you had found me dead in that gulch, you would have had to carry me back over this trail, just like this. ugh! what a dismal ride, carrying a dead woman!" his arm closed around her quickly, and he drew a deep breath as he looked at her. "i don't know," he said in a terse way, as if through shut teeth; "perhaps it wouldn't have been so dismal, for i might never have come back. i might have staid there--with you." she could see his eyes plainly enough when he looked at her like that; even the shadows could not cover their warmth; they left little to be expressed in words, and neither attempted any. her face turned away from him a little, but her hand slipped into the clasp of his fingers, and so they rode on in silence. the brow of the last hill was reached. down below them could be seen the faint light from the camp-fire, and for an instant mowitza was halted for a breathing-spell ere she began the descent. the girl glanced down toward the fire-light, and then up to his face. "you can rest now," she said, with the old quizzical smile about her lips, even while her fingers closed on his own. "there is the camp; alta nika wake tsolo" (now you no longer wander in the dark). but there was no answering smile on his face--not even at the pleasure of the language that at times had seemed a tacit bond between them. he only looked at her in the curious way she had grown accustomed to in him, and said: "the light down there is for you; i don't belong to it. just try and remember that after--after you are safe with your folks." "i shall remember a great deal," returned the girl in her independent tone; "among other things, the man who brought me back to them. now, why don't you say, 'just as you like, miss?' you ought to--to be natural." but her raillery brought no more words from him. his face had again its sombre, serious look, and in silence he guided mowitza's feet down toward the glow-light. once a puff of wind sent the girl's hair blowing across her face, and he smoothed it back carefully that he might see her eyes in the moonlight; but the half-caress in the movement was as if given to a child. all the quick warmth was gone from his eyes and speech after that one comprehensive outbreak, and the girl was puzzled at the change that had come in its stead. he was so gentle, but so guarded--the touch even of his fingers on her shoulder was tremulous, as if with the weight of resistance forced into them. she did not feel like laughing any longer, after they began the descent of the hill. his manner had impressed her too strongly with the feeling of some change to come with the end of that ride and the eventful moonlight night, but no words came to her; but her hand remained in his of its own accord, not because it was held there, and she lay very quiet, wondering if he would not speak--would say nothing more to her ere they joined the others, to whom they were moving nearer at every step. he did not. once his fingers closed convulsively over her own. his eyes straight ahead caused her to glance in that direction, and she saw tillie and hardy clearly, in the moonlight, walking together hand-in-hand down toward the glow of the camp-fire. on a ledge of rock that jutted out clear from the shadowy brush, they lingered for an instant. the soft blue light and the silence made them look a little ghostly--a tryst of spirits--as the tall shoulders drooped forward with circling arms into which tillie crept, reaching upward until their faces met. the eyes of those two on horseback turned involuntarily toward each other at the sight of those married lovers, but there was no echo of a caress in their own movements, unless it was the caress of a glance; and in a few moments more they were within speaking distance of the camp. "we are here," he said slowly, as hardy and his wife, hearing the steps of the horse, hurried toward them. "yes, i know," she whispered. it was their good-bye to the night. a neigh from the renegade betty was answered by mowitza, and in an instant all the group about the camp was alive to the fact of the return. but the eager questions received few answers, for genesee handed rachel into the arms of hardy, and said to tillie: "don't let them pester her with questions to-night, mrs. hardy. she has no injuries, i guess, only she's used up and needs rest badly. i found her ready to faint in a gulch back from the trail about three miles. she'll be all right to-morrow, i reckon; only see that she gets a good rest and isn't bothered to-night." no need to tell them that. their gladness at her safe return made them all consideration. genesee and mowitza also came in for a share of their solicitude, and the former for a quantity of thanks that met with rather brusque response. "that's nothing to thank a man for," he said a little impatiently, as the houghtons were contributing their share. "i reckon you don't know much about the duties of a scout or guide in this country, or you would know it was my business to go for the lady--just as it would be to hunt up lost stock, if any had strayed off. there wasn't much of a trick in finding her--betty left too clear a trail; and i reckon it's time we all turned in to sleep instead of talking about it." in the morning rachel awoke refreshed and expectant in a vague way. the incidents of the night before came crowding to her memory, sending the blood tingling through her veins as she thought of their meeting; of the ride; of those few significant words of his, and his face as he had spoken. she wondered at herself accepting it all so dreamily--as if in a lethargy. she was far from a stupor at the thought of it in the light of the early day, as she watched the blue mists rising up, up, from the valleys. was he watching them, too? was he thinking as she was of that ride and its revelations? would he meet her again with that queer, distant manner of his? would he-- her ruminations were cut short by tillie, who thought to awaken her with the proffer of a cup of hot coffee, and who was surprised to find her awake. "yes, i am awake, and hungry, too," she said briskly; "you did not give me nearly enough to eat last night. is breakfast all ready? i wonder how poor mowitza is this morning after her heavy load. say, tillie, did we look altogether ridiculous?" "no, you did not," said tillie stoutly. "it was wonderfully kind of him to bring you so carefully. i always said he had a great deal of heart in him; but he is gone, already." "gone!--where?" and the cup of coffee was set on the grass as if the hunger and thirst were forgotten. "where?" "we don't know," said tillie helplessly. "clara says back to his tribe; but she always has something like that to say of him. it's the queerest thing; even hen is puzzled. he was wakened this morning about dawn by genesee, who told him his time was up with the party; that we could follow the trail alone well enough now; and that he had to join some indian hunters away north of this to-night, so had to make an early start. i guess he forgot to speak of it last night, or else was too tired. he left a good-bye for hen to deliver for him to the rest of us, and a klahowya to you." "did he?" asked the girl with a queer little laugh. "that was thoughtful of him. may his hunting be prosperous and his findings be great." "dear me!" said tillie weakly, "you are just as careless about it as clara, and i did think you would be sorry to lose him. i am, and so is hen; but evidently persuasions were of no avail. he said he could not even wait for breakfast; that he should have gone last night. and the queerest thing about it is that he utterly refused any money from hen, on the plea that the whole affair had been a pleasure ride, not work at all; and so--he is gone." "and so--he is gone," said the girl, mimicking her tone; "what a tragical manner over a very prosaic circumstance! tillie, my child, don't be so impressible, or i shall have to tell hen that our guide has taken your affections in lieu of greenbacks." "rachel!" "matilda!" said the other mildly, looking teasingly over the rim of the coffee-cup she was slowly emptying. "don't startle me with that tone before breakfast, and don't grieve over the exodus of mr. genesee jack. i shall take on my own shoulders the duties of guide in his stead, so you need not worry about getting home safely; and in the meantime i am woefully hungry." she was still a little dizzy as she rose to her feet, and very stiff and sore from her ride; but, joking over her rheumatic joints, she limped over to where the breakfast was spread on a flat rock. "there is one way in which i may not be able to take mr. genesee jack's place, in your estimation," she said lowly to tillie as they were about to join the others. "i shall not be able to tell you stories of indian conjurors or sing you indian love-songs. i can't do anything but whistle." "hen, she wasn't the least bit interested about him leaving like that!" said tillie confidentially to her husband a few hours later. "she never does seem to have much feeling for anything; but after he brought her back so carefully, and after the chumminess there was between them for a while, one would naturally think--" "of course one would," agreed her husband laughingly, "especially if one was an affectionate, match-making little person like yourself, and altogether a woman. but rache--" and his glance wandered ahead to where the slim figure of the girl was seen stubbornly upright on betty--"well, rache never was like the rest of the girls at home, and i fancy she will never understand much of the sentimental side of life. she is too level-headed and practical." chapter viii. the storm--and after. olapitski yahka ships. two weeks later storm-clouds were flying low over the kootenai hills and chasing shadows over the faces of two equestrians who looked at each other in comic dismay. "jim, we are lost!" stated the one briefly. "i allow we are, miss hardy," answered the other, a boy of about fifteen, who gazed rather dubiously back over the way they had come and ahead where a half-blind trail led up along the mountain. "suppose we pitch pennies to see what direction to take," suggested the girl; but the boy only laughed. "haven't much time for that, miss," he answered. "look how them clouds is crowdin' us; we've got to hunt cover or get soaked. this trail goes somewhere; may be to an injun village. i allow we'd better freeze to it." "all right. we'll allow that we had," agreed miss hardy. "betty, get around here, and get up this hill! i know every step is taking us farther from the ranch, but this seems the only direction in which a trail leads. jim, how far do you suppose we are from home?" "'bout fifteen miles, i guess," said the boy, looking blue. "and we haven't found the lost sheep?" "no, we haven't." "and we have got lost?" "yes." "jim, i don't believe we are a howling success as sheep farmers." "i don't care a darn about the sheep just now," declared jim. "what i want to know is where we are to sleep to-night." "oh, you want too much," she answered briskly; "i am content to sit up all night, if i only can find a dry place to stay in--do you hear that?" as the thunder that had grumbled in the distance now sounded its threats close above them. "yes, i hear it, and it means business, too. i wish we were at the end of this trail," he said, urging his horse up through the scrubby growth of laurel. the darkness was falling so quickly that it was not an easy matter to keep the trail; and the wind hissing through the trees made an open space a thing to wish for. jim, who was ahead, gave a shout as he reached the summit of the hill where the trail crossed it. "we're right!" he yelled that she might hear his voice above the thunder and the wind; "there's some sort of a shanty across there by a big pond; it's half a mile away, an' the rain's a-comin'--come on!" and on they went in a wild run to keep ahead of the rain-cloud that was pelting its load at them with the force of hail. the girl had caught a glimpse of the white sheen of a lake or pond ahead of them; the shanty she did not wait to pick out from the gloom, but followed blindly after jim, at a breakneck gait, until they both brought up short, in the shadow of a cabin in the edge of the timber above the lake. "jump off quick and in with you" called jim; and without the ceremony of knocking, she pushed open the door and dived into the interior. it was almost as dark as night. she stumbled around until she found a sort of bed in one corner, and sat down on it, breathless and wet. the rain was coming down in torrents, and directly jim, with the saddles in his arms, came plunging in, shaking himself like a water-spaniel. "great guns! but it's comin' down solid," he gasped; "where are you?" "here--i've found a bed, so somebody lives here. have you any matches?" "i allow i have," answered jim, "if they only ain't wet--no, by george, they're all right." the brief blaze of the match showed him the fire-place and a pile of wood beside it, and a great osier basket of broken bark. "say, miss hardy, we've struck great luck," he announced while on his knees, quickly starting a fire and fanning it into a blaze with his hat; "i wonder who lives here and where they are. stickin' to that old trail was a pay streak--hey?" in the blaze of the fire the room assumed quite a respectable appearance. it was not a shanty, as jim had at first supposed, but a substantial log-cabin, furnished in a way to show constant and recent occupation. a table made like a wide shelf jutted from the wall under the one square window; a bed and two chairs that bespoke home manufacture were covered by bear-skins; on the floor beside the bed was a buffalo-robe; and a large locked chest stood against the wall. beside the fire-place was a cupboard with cooking and table utensils, and around the walls hung trophies of the hunt. a bow and quiver of arrows and a knotted silken sash hung on one wooden peg, and added to a pair of moccasins in the corner, gave an indian suggestion to the occupancy of the cabin, but the furnishing in general was decidedly that of a white person; to the rafters were fastened some beaver-paws and bear-claws, and the skins of three rattlesnakes were pendent against the wall. "well, this is a queer go! ain't it?" remarked jim as he walked around taking a survey of the room. "i'd like to know who it all belongs to. did you ever hear folks about here speak of old davy macdougall?" "yes, i have," answered the girl, sitting down on the buffalo-robe before the fire, to dry her shoulders at the blaze. "well, i believe this is his cabin, and we are about ten mile from home," decided the boy. "i didn't think we'd strayed as far north as scot's mountain, but i allow this is it." "well, i wish he would come home and get supper," said the girl, easily adapting herself to any groove into which she happened to fall; "but perhaps we should have sent him word of our visit. what did you do with the horses, jim?" "put 'em in a shed at the end o' the house--a bang-up place, right on the other side o' this fire-place. whoever lives here keeps either a horse or a cow." "i hope it's a cow, and that there's some milk to be had. jimmy, i wonder if there is anything to eat in that cupboard." "i've been thinkin' o' that myself," said jim in answer to that insinuating speech. "suppose you do something besides think--suppose you look," suggested the more unscrupulous of the foragers; "i'm hungry." "so am i," acknowledged her confederate; "you an' me is most alike about our eatin', ain't we? mrs. houghton said yesterday i had a terrible appetite." the boy at once began making an examination of the larder, wondering, as he did so, what the girl was laughing at. the rain was coming down in torrents through the blackness of the night; now and then the lightning would vie with the fire in lighting up the room, while the thunder seemed at home in that valley of the mountain, for its volleys of sound and their echoes never ceased. small wonder that anyone's house would seem a home to the two, or that they would have no compunction in taking possession of it. "there's coffee here somewhere, i can smell it," announced jim; "an' here's rice an' crackers, an' corn-meal, an' dried raspberries, an' potatoes, an'--yes, here's the coffee! say, miss hardy, we'll have a regular feast!" "i should say so!" remarked that lady, eyeing jim's "find" approvingly; "i think there is a bed of coals here at this side of the fire-place that will just fit about six of those potatoes--can you eat three, jim?" "three will do if they're big enough," said jim, looking dubiously at the potatoes; "but these ain't as good-sized as some i've seen." "then give me two more; that makes five for you and three for me." "hadn't you better shove in a couple more?" asked jim with a dash of liberality. "you know macdougall may come back hungry, an' then we can spare him two--that makes ten to roast." "ten it is!" said the girl, burying two more in the ashes as the share of their host. "jim, see if there is any water in here to make coffee with." "yes, a big jar full," reported the steward; "an' here is a little crock half full of eggs--prairie-chicken, i guess--say, can you make a pone?" "i think i can;" and the cook at once rolled up the sleeves of her riding-dress, and jimmy brought out the eggs and some bits of salt meat--evidently bear-meat--that was hung from the ceiling of the cupboard; at once there began a great beating of eggs and stirring up of a corn pone; some berries were set on the coals to stew in a tin-cup, the water put to boil for the coffee, and an iron skillet with a lid utilized as an oven; and the fragrance of the preparing eatables filled the little room and prompted the hungry lifting of lids many times ere the fire had time to do its work. "that pone's a 'dandy!'" said jim, taking a peep at it; "it's gettin' as brown as--as your hair; an' them berries is done, an' ain't it time to put in the coffee?" acting on this hint, the coffee, beaten into a froth with an egg, had the boiling water poured over it, and set bubbling and aromatic on the red coals. "you mayn't be much use to find strayed-off stock," said jim deliberately, with his head on one side, as he watched the apparent ease with which the girl managed her primitive cooking apparatus; "but i tell you--you ain't no slouch when it comes to gettin' grub ready, and gettin' it quick." "better keep your compliments until you have tried to eat some of the cooking," suggested miss hardy, on her knees before the fire. "i believe the pone is done." "then we'll dish-up in double-quick," said jim, handing her two tin pans for the pone and potatoes. "we'll have to set the berries on in the tin--by george! what's that?" "that" was the neigh of betty in the shed by the chimney, and an answering one from somewhere out in the darkness. through the thunder and the rain they had heard no steps, but jim's eyes were big with suspense as he listened. "my horse has broke loose from the shed," he said angrily, reaching for his hat; "and how the dickens i'm to find him in this storm i don't know." "don't be so quick to give yourself a shower-bath," suggested the girl on the floor; "he won't stray far off, and may be glad to come back to the shed; and then again," she added, laughing, "it may be macdougall." jim looked rather blankly at the supper on the hearth and the girl who seemed so much at home on the buffalo-robe. "by george! it might be," he said slowly; and for the first time the responsibility of their confiscations loomed up before him. "say," he added uneasily, "have you any money?" "money?" she repeated inquiringly; and then seeing the drift of his thoughts, "oh, no, i haven't a cent." "they say macdougall is an old crank," he insinuated, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, to see what effect the statement would have on her. but she only smiled in an indifferent way. "an'--an' ef he wants the money cash down for this lay-out"--and he glanced comprehensively over the hearth--"well, i don't know what to say." "that's easily managed," said the girl coolly; "you can leave your horse in pawn." "an' foot it home ten miles?--not if i know it!" burst out jim; "an' besides it's hardy's horse." "well, then, leave the saddle, and ride home bareback." "i guess not!" protested jim, with the same aggressive tone; "that's my own saddle." after this unanswerable reason, there was an expectant silence in the room for a little while, that was finally broken by jim saying ruefully: "if that is macdougall, he'll have to have them two potatoes." rachel's risible tendencies were not proof against this final fear of jim's, and her laughter drowned his grumblings, and also footsteps without, of which neither heard a sound until the door was flung open and a man walked into the room. jim looked at him with surprised eyes, and managed to stammer, "how are you?" for the man was so far from his idea of old davy macdougall that he was staggered. but miss hardy only looked up, laughing, from her position by the fire, and drew the coffee-pot from the coals with one hand, while she reached the other to the new-comer. "klahowya! mr. jack," she said easily; "got wet, didn't you? you are just in time for supper." "you!" was all he said; and jim thought they were both crazy, from the way the man crossed the room to her and took her one hand in both his as if he never intended letting it go or saying another word, content only to hold her hand and look at her. and miss rachel hardy's eyes were not idle either. "yes, of course it's i," she said, slipping her hand away after a little, and dropping her face that had flushed pink in the fire-light; "i don't look like a ghost, do i? you would not find a ghost at such prosaic work as getting supper." "getting supper?" he said, stepping back a bit and glancing around. for the first time he seemed to notice jim, or have any remembrance of anything but the girl herself. "you mean that you two have been getting supper alone?" "yes, jim and i. mr. jack, this is my friend jim, from the ranch. we tried to guide each other after sheep, and both got lost; and as you did not get here in time to cook supper, of course we had to do it alone." "but i mean was there no one else here?"--he still looked a little dazed and perplexed, his eyes roving uneasily about the room--"i--a--a young indian--" "no!" interrupted the girl eagerly. "do you mean the indian boy who brought me that black bear's skin? i knew you had sent it, though he would not say a word--looked at me as if he did not understand chinook when i spoke." "may be he didn't understand yours," remarked jimmy, edging past her to rake the potatoes out of the ashes. "but he wasn't here when we came," continued miss hardy. "the house was deserted and in darkness when we found it, just as the storm came on in earnest." "and the fire?" said genesee. "there was none," answered the boy. "the ashes were stone-cold. i noticed it; so your injun hadn't had any fire all day." "all day!" repeated the man, going to the door and looking out. "that means a long tramp, and to-night--" "and to-night is a bad one for a tramp back," added jim. "yes," agreed genesee, "that's what i was thinking." if there was a breath of relief in the words, both were too occupied with the potatoes in the ashes to notice it. he shut the door directly as the wind sent a gust of rain inside, and then turned again to the pirates at the fire-place. "what did you find to cook?" he asked, glancing at the "lay-out," as jim called it. "i haven't been here since yesterday, and am afraid you didn't find much--any fresh meat?" miss hardy shook her head. "salt meat and eggs, that's all," she said. "not by a long shot it ain't, mr.--mr jack," said jim, contradicting her flatly. "she's got a first-class supper; an' by george! she can make more out o' nothin' than any woman i ever seen." in his enthusiasm over rachel he was unconscious of the slur on their host's larder. "i never knowed she was such a rattlin' cook!" "i know i have never been given credit for my everyday, wearing qualities," said the girl, without looking up from the eggs she was scrambling in the bake-oven of a few minutes before. the words may have been to jim, but by the man's eyes he evidently thought they were at genesee--such a curious, pained look as that with which he watched her every movement, every curve of form and feature, that shone in the light of the fire. once she saw the look, and her own eyes dropped under it for a moment, but that independence of hers would not let it be for long. "do you want a share of our supper?" she asked, looking up at him quizzically. "yes," he answered, but his steady, curious gaze at her showed that his thoughts were not of the question or answer. not so jim. that young gentleman eyed dubiously first the lay-out and then genesee's physique, trying to arrive at a mental estimate of his capacity and the probable division of the pone and potatoes. "how about that saddle, now, jim?" asked the girl. whereupon jim began a pantomime enjoining silence, back of the chair of the man, who appeared more like a guest than host--perhaps because it was so hard to realize that it was really his hearth where that girl sat as if at home. she noticed his preoccupation, and remarked dryly: "you really don't deserve a share of our cooking after the way you deserted us before!--not even a klahowya when you took the trail." "you're right, i reckon; but don't you be the one to blame me for that," he answered, in a tone that made the command a sort of plea; and miss hardy industriously gave her attention to the supper. "it's all ready," announced jim, as he juggled a pan of hot pone from one hand to another on the way to the table. "ouch! but it's hot! say, wouldn't some fresh butter go great with this!" "didn't you find any?" asked genesee, waking to the practical things of life at jim's remark. "find any? no! is there any?" asked that little gourmand, with hope and doubt chasing each other over his rather thin face. "i don't know--there ought to be;" and lifting a loose board in the floor by the cupboard, he drew forth a closely-woven reed basket, and on a smooth stone in the bottom lay a large piece of yellow butter, around which jim performed a sort of dance of adoration. what a supper that was, in the light of the pitch-pine and the fierce accompaniment of the outside tempest! jim vowed that never were there potatoes so near perfection, in their brown jackets and their steaming, powdery flakes; and the yellow pone, and the amber coffee, and the cool slices of butter that genesee told them was from an indian village thirty miles north. and to the table were brought such tremendous appetites! at least by the cook and steward of the party. and above all, what a delicious atmosphere of unreality pervaded the whole thing! again and again genesee's eyes seemed to say, "can it be you?" and grew warm as her quizzical glances told him it could be no one else. as the night wore on, and the storm continued, he brought in armfuls of wood from the shed without, and in the talk round the fire his manner grew more assured--more at home with the surroundings that were yet his own. long they talked, until jim, unable to think of any more questions to ask of silver-mining and bear-hunting, slipped down in the corner, with his head on a saddle, and went fast asleep. "i'll sit up and keep the fire going," said genesee, at this sign of the late hour; "but you had better get what rest you can on that bunk there--you'll need it for your ride in the morning." "in the morning!" repeated the girl coolly; "that sounds as if you are determined our visit shall end as soon as possible, mr. genesee jack." "don't talk like that!" he said, looking across at her; "you don't know anything about it." and getting up hastily, he walked back and forward across the room; once stopping suddenly, as if with some determination to speak, and then, as she looked up at him, his courage seemed to vanish, and he turned his face away from her and walked to the door. the storm had stilled its shrieks, and was dying away in misty moans down the dip in the hills, taking the rain with it. the darkness was intense as he held the door open and looked into the black vault, where not a glimmer of a star or even a gray cloud could be seen. "it's much nicer in-doors," decided miss hardy, moving her chair against the chimney-piece, and propping herself there to rest. "jim had better lie on the bed, he is so sleepy, and i am not at all so; this chair is good enough for me, if you don't mind." he picked the sleeping boy up without a word, and laid him on the couch of bear-skins without waking him. "there isn't much i do mind," he said, as he came back to the fire-place; "that is, if you are only comfortable." "i am--very much so," she answered, "and would be entirely so if you only seemed a little more at home. as it is, i have felt all evening as if we are upsetting your peace of mind in some way--not as if we are unwelcome, mind you, but just as if you are worried about us." "that so?" he queried, not looking at her; "that's curious. i didn't know i was looking so, and i'm sure you and the boy are mighty welcome to my cabin or anything in the world i can do for you." there was no mistaking the heartiness of the man's words, and she smiled her gratitude from the niche in the corner, where, with her back toward the blaze, only one side of her face was outlined by the light. "very well," she said amicably; "you can do something for me just now--open the door for a little while; the room seems close with being shut up so tight from the rain--and then make yourself comfortable there on that buffalo-robe before the fire. i remember your lounging habits in the camp, and a chair doesn't seem to quite suit you. yes, that looks much better, as if you were at home again." stretched on the robe, with her saddle on which to prop up his shoulders, he lay, looking in the red coals, as if forgetful of her speech or herself. but at last he repeated her words: "at home again! do you know there's a big lot of meaning in those words, miss, especially to a man who hasn't known what home meant for years? and to-night, with white people in my cabin and a white woman to make things look natural, i tell you it makes me remember what home used to be, in a way i have not experienced for many a day." "then i'm glad i strayed off into the storm and your cabin," said the girl promptly; "because a man shouldn't forget his home and home-folks, especially if the memories would be good ones. people need all the good memories they can keep with them in this world; they're a sort of steering apparatus in a life-boat, and help a man make a straight journey toward his future." "that's so," he said, and put his hand up over his eyes as if to shield them from the heat of the fire. he was lying full in the light, while she was in the shadow. he could scarcely see her features, with her head drawn back against the wall like that. and the very fact of knowing herself almost unseen--a voice, only, speaking to him--gave her courage to say things as she could not have said them at another time. "do you know," she said, as she sat there watching him with his eyes covered by his hand--"do you know that once or twice when we have been together i have wished i was a man, that i could say some things to you that a woman or a girl--that is, most girls--can't say very well? one of the things is that i should be glad to hear of you getting out of this life here; there is something wrong about it to you--something that doesn't suit you; i don't know what it is, but i can see you are not the man you might be--and ought to be. i've thought of it often since i saw you last, and sometimes--yes--i've been sorry for my ugly manner toward you. white people, when they meet in these out-of-the-way places in the world, ought to be as so many brothers and sisters to each other; and there were times, often, when i might have helped you to feel at home among us--when i might have been more kind." "more kind? good god!" whispered the man. "and i made up my mind," continued the girl courageously, "that if i ever saw you again, i was going to speak plainly to you about yourself and the dissatisfaction with yourself that you spoke of that day in the laurel thicket. i don't know what the cause of it is, and i don't want to, but if it is any wrong that you've done in--in the past, a bad way to atone is by burying oneself alive, along with all energy and ambition. now, you may think me presuming to say these things to you like this; but i've been wishing somebody would say them to you, and there seems no one here to do it but me, and so--" she stopped, not so much because she had finished as because she felt herself failing utterly in saying the things she had really intended to say. it all sounded very flat and commonplace in her own ears--not at all the words to carry any influence to anyone, and so she stopped helplessly and looked at him. "i'm glad it is you that says them," he answered, still without looking at her, "because you've got the stuff in you for such a good, square friend to a man--the sort of woman a person could go to in trouble, even if they hadn't the passport of a saint to take with them; and i wish--i wish i could tell you to-night something of the things that you've started on. if i could--" he stopped a moment. "i suppose any other girl--" she began in a deprecating tone; but he dropped his hand from his eyes and looked at her. "you're not like other girls," he said with a great fondness in his eyes, "and that's just the reason i feel like telling you all. you're not like any girl i've ever known. i've often felt like speaking to you as if you were a boy--an almighty aggravatin' slip of a boy sometimes; and yet--" he lay silent for a little while, so long that the girl wondered if he had forgotten what he was to try to tell her. the warmth after the rain had made them neglect the fire, and its blaze had dropped low and lower, until she was entirely in the shadow--only across the hearth and his form did the light fall. "and yet," he continued, as if there had been no break in his speech, "there's been many a night i've dreamed of seeing you sit here by this fire-place just as i've seen you to-night; just as bright like and contented, as if all the roughness and poorness of it was nothing to you, or else a big joke for you to make fun of; and then--well, at such times you didn't seem like a boy, but--" again he stopped. "never mind what i'm like," suggested the girl; "that doesn't matter. i guess everyone seems a different person with different people; but you wanted to tell me something of yourself, didn't you?" "that's what i'm trying to get at," he answered, "but it isn't easy. i've got to go back so far to start at the beginning--back ten years, to reckon up mistakes. that's a big job, my girl--my girl." the lingering repetition of those words opened the girl's eyes wide with a sudden memory of that moonlit night in the gulch. then she had not fancied those whispered words! they had been uttered, and by his voice; and those fancied tears of tillie's, and--the kisses! so thick came those thronging memories, that she did not notice his long, dreamy silence. she was thinking of that night, and all the sweet, vague suggestion in it that had vanished with the new day. she was comparing its brief charm with this meeting of to-night that was ignoring it so effectually; that was as the beginning of a new knowledge of each other, with the commonplace and practical as a basis. her reverie was broken sharply by the sight of a form that suddenly, silently, appeared in the door-way. her first impulse of movement or speech was checked as the faint, flickering light shifted across the visage of the new-comer, and she recognized the indian girl who had hidden behind the ponies. a smile was on the dark face as she saw genesee lying there, asleep he must have looked from the door, and utterly oblivious of her entrance. her soft moccasins left no sound as she crossed the floor and dropped down beside him, laying one arm about his throat. he clasped the hand quickly and opened his half-shut eyes. did he, for an instant, mistake it for another hand that had slipped into his that one night? whatever he thought, his face was like that of death as he met the eyes of the indian girl. "talapa!" he muttered, and his fingers closing on her wrist must have twisted it painfully, by the quick change in her half-indian, half-french face. he seemed hardly conscious of it. just then he looked at her as if she was in reality that indian deity of the inferno from whom her name was derived. "hyak nika kelapie!" (i returned quickly), she whined, as if puzzled at her reception, and darting furious sidelong glances from the black eyes that had the width between them that is given to serpents. "nah!" she ejaculated angrily, as no answer was made to her; and freeing her hand, she rose to her feet. she had not once seen the white girl in the shadow. coming from the darkness into the light, her eyes were blinded to all but the one plainly seen figure. but as she rose to her feet, and genesee with her, rachel stooped to the pile of wood beside her, and throwing some bits of pine on the fire, sent the sparks flying upward, and a second later a blaze of light flooded the room. the action was a natural, self-possessed one--it took a great deal to upset miss hardy's equanimity--and she coolly sat down again facing the astonished indian girl and genesee; but her face was very white, though she said not a word. "there is no need for me to try to remember the beginning, is there," said genesee bitterly, looking at her with sombre, moody eyes, "since the end has told its own story? this is--my--my--" did he say wife? she never could be quite sure of the word, but she knew he tried to say it. his voice sounded smothered, unnatural, as it had that day in the laurel thicket when he had spoken of locking himself out from a heaven. she understood what he meant now. "no, there is no need," she said, as quietly as she could, though her heart seemed choking her and her hands trembled. "i hope all will come right for you sometime, and--i understand, now." did she really understand, even then, or know the moral lie the man had told, the lie that, in his abasement, he felt was easier to have her believe than the truth? talapa stood drying her moccasins at the fire, as if not understanding their words; but the slow, cunning smile crept back to her lips as she recognized the white girl, and no doubt remembered that she and genesee had ridden together that day at the camp. he picked up his hat and walked to the door, after her kindly words, putting his hand out ahead of him in a blind sort of way, and then stopped, saying to her gently: "get what rest you can--try to, anyway; you will need it." and then, with some words in indian to talapa, he went out into the night. his words to talapa were in regard to their guests' comfort, for that silent individual at once began preparations for bed-making on her behalf, until rachel told her in chinook that she would sleep in her chair where she was. and there she sat through the night, feeling that the eyes of the indian girl were never taken from her as the motionless form lay rolled in a blanket on the floor, much as it had rolled itself up on the grass that other day. jim was throned in royal state, for he had the bed all to himself, and in the morning opened his eyes in amazement as he smelled the coffee and saw the indian girl moving about as if at home. "yes, we've got a new cook, jim," said miss hardy, from the window; "so we are out of work, you and i. sleep well?" "great!" said jim, yawning widely. "where's mr. jack?" "out, somewhere," returned the girl comprehensively. she did not add that he had been out all night, and jim was too much interested with the prospect of breakfast to be very curious. he had it, as he had the bed--all to himself. miss hardy was not hungry, for a wonder, and talapa disappeared after it was placed on the table. the girl asked jim if that was indian etiquette, but jim didn't know what etiquette was, so he couldn't tell. through that long vigil of the night there had returned to the girl much of her light, ironical manner; but the mockery was more of herself and her own emotions than aught else, for when genesee brought the horses to the door and she looked in his face, any thought of jesting with him was impossible; the signs of a storm were on him as they were on the mountains in the morning light. "i will guide you back to the home trail," he said as he held betty at the door for her to mount. "go in and get some breakfast," was all the answer she made him. but he shook his head, and reached his hand to help her. "what's the matter with everyone this morning?" asked jim. "there hasn't been a bite of breakfast eaten only what i got away with myself." genesee glanced in at the table. "would you eat nothing because it was mine?" he asked in a low tone. "i did not because i could not," she said in the same tone; and then added, good-humoredly: "despite jim's belief in my appetite, it does go back on me sometimes--and this is one of the times. it's too early in the morning for breakfast. are you going with us on foot?" as she noticed mowitza, unsaddled, grazing about the green turf at the edge of the timber. "yes," he answered, "i have not far to go." she slipped past him, and gathering her dress up from the wet grass walked over to where mowitza browsed. the beautiful mare raised her head and came over the grass with long, light steps, as if recognizing the low call of her visitor; and resting her head on the girl's shoulder, there seemed to be a conversation between them perfectly satisfactory to each; while mowitza's owner stood looking at them with a world of conflicting emotions in his face. "i have been saying good-bye to mowitza," she remarked, as she joined them and mounted betty, "and we are both disconsolate. she carried me out of danger once, and i am slow to forget a favor." it was a very matter-of-fact statement; she was a matter-of-fact young woman that morning. genesee felt that she was trying to let him know her memory would keep only the best of her knowledge of him. it was an added debt to that which he already owed her, and he walked in silence at her horse's head, finding no words to express his thoughts, and not daring to use them if he had. the valleys were wrapped in the whitest of mists as they got a glimpse of them from the heights. the sun was struggling through one veil only to be plunged into another, and all the cedar wood was in the drip, drip of tears that follow tempests. where was all that glory of the east at sunrise which those two had once watched from a mountain not far from this? in the east, as they looked now, there were only faint streaks of lavender across the sky--of lavender the color of mourning. he directed jim the way of the trail, and then turned to her. "i don't know what to say to you--or just how low you will think me," he said in a miserable sort of way. "when i think of--of some things, i wonder that you even speak to me this morning--god! i'm ashamed to look you in the face!" and he looked it. all the cool assurance that had been a prominent phase of his personality that evening when hardy met him first, was gone. his handsome, careless face and the independent head were drooped before hers as his broad-brimmed hat was pulled a little lower over his eyes. some women are curious, and this one, whom he had thought unlike all others, rather justified his belief, as she bent over in the saddle and lifted the cover from his dark hair. "don't be!" she said gently--and as he looked up at her she held out her hand--"nika tillikum" (my friend); and the sweetness possible in the words had never been known by him until she uttered them so. "my friend, don't feel like that, and don't think me quite a fool. i've seen enough of life to know that few men under the same circumstances would try as hard to be honest as you did, and if you failed in some ways, the fault was as much mine as yours." "rachel!" it was the first time he had ever called her that. "yes, i had some time to think about it last night," she said, with a little ironical smile about her lips; "and the conclusion i've come to is that we should afford to be honest this morning, and not--not so very much ashamed;" and then she hurried on in her speech, stumbling a little as the clasp of his hand made her unsteady through all her determination. "i will not see you again, perhaps ever. but i want you to know that i have faith in your making a great deal of your life if you try; you have the right foundations--strong will and a good principle. mentally, you have been asleep here in the hills--don't find fault with your awakening. and don't feel so--so remorseful about--that night. there are some things people do and think that they can't help--we couldn't help that night; and so--good-bye--jack." "god bless you, girl!" were the heart-felt, earnest words that answered her good-bye; and with a last firm clasp of hands, she turned betty's head toward the trail jim had taken, and rode away under the cedar boughs. genesee stood bare-headed, with a new light in his eyes as he watched her--the dawn of some growing determination. once she looked back, and seeing him still there, touched her cap in military fashion, and with a smile disappeared in the wet woods. as he turned away there crept from the shrubbery at the junction of the trails talapa, who, with that slow, knowing smile about her full lips, stole after him--in her dusky silence a very shadow of a man's past that grows heavy and wide after the noon is dead, and bars out lives from sunny doors where happiness might be found. his head was bent low, thinking--thinking as he walked back to the cabin that had once held at least a sort of content--a content based on one side of his nature. had the other died, or was it only asleep? and she had told him not to find fault with his awakening--she! he had never before realized the wealth or loss one woman could make to the world. "ashamed to look her in the face!" his own words echoed in his ears as he walked under the wet leaves, with the shadow of the shame skulking unseen after him; and then, little by little, the sense of her farewell came back to him, and running through it, that strong thread of faith in him yet, making his life more worth living. "damned little in my present outfit for her to build any foundation for hope on," he muttered grimly, as he saddled and bridled mowitza, as if in hot haste to be gone somewhere, and then sat down on the door-step as if forgetful of the intention. talapa slipped past him with an armful of bark for the fire. not a word had passed between them since the night before, and the girl watched him covertly from under drooped lids. was she trying to fathom his meditations, or determine how far they were to affect her own future? for as the birds foretell by the signs in the air the change of the summer, so talapa, through the atmosphere of the cabin that morning, felt approach the end of a season that had been to her luxurious with comforts new to her; and though the indian blood in her veins may have disdained the adjuncts of civilization, yet the french tide that crossed it carried to her the gallic yearning for the dainties and delicacies of life. to be sure, one would not find many of those in a backwoodsman's cabin; but all content is comparative, and talapa's basis of comparison was the earthen floor of a thronged "tepee," or wigwam, where blows had been more frequent than square meals; and being a thing feminine, her affections turned to this white man of the woods who could give her a floor of boards and a dinner-pot never empty, and moreover, being of the sex feminine, those bonds of affection were no doubt securely fastened--bonds welded in a circle--endless. at least those attributes, vaguely remembered, are usually conceded to the more gentle half of humanity, and i give talapa the benefit of the belief, as her portrait has been of necessity set in the shadows, and has need of all the high lights that can be found for it. whatever she may have lacked from a high-church point of view, she had at least enviable self-possession. whatever tumult of wounded feeling there may have been in this daughter of the forest, she moved around sedately, with an air that in a white woman would be called martyr-like, and said nothing. it was as well, perhaps, that she had the rare gift of silence, for the man at the door, with his chin resting grimly on his fists, did not seem at all sympathetic, or in the humor to fit himself to anyone's moods. the tones of that girl's voice were still vibrating over chords in his nature that disturbed him. he did not even notice talapa's movements until she ceased them by squatting down with native grace by the fire-place, and then-- "get up off that!" he roared, in a voice that hastened talapa's rising considerably. "that" was the buffalo-robe on which the other girl had throned herself the night before; and what a picture she had made in the fire-light! genesee in two strides crossed the floor, and grabbing the robe, flung it over his shoulder. no, it was not courteous to unseat a lady with so little ceremony--it may not even have been natural to him, so many things are not natural to us human things that are yet so true. "and why so?" asked talapa sullenly, her back against the wall as if in a position to show fight; that is, she said "pe-kah-ta?" but, for the benefit of the civilized reader, the ordinary english is given--"and why so?" genesee looked at her a moment from head to foot, but the scrutiny resulted in silence--no remark. at length he walked back to the chest against the wall, and unlocking it, drew out an account-book, between the leaves of which were some money orders; two of them he took out, putting the rest in his pocket. then, writing a signature on those two--not the name of jack genesee, by the way--he turned to mistress talapa, who had slid from the wall down on the floor minus the buffalo-robe. "here!" he said tersely. "i am going away. klat-awah si-ah--do you understand?" and then, fishing some silver out of his pocket, he handed it to her with the notes. "take these to the settlement--to the bank-store. they'll give you money--money to live all winter. live in the cabin if you want; only get out in the spring--do you hear? i will want it myself then--and i want it alone." without comment, talapa reached up and took the money, looking curiously at the notes, as if to decipher the meaning in the pictured paper, and then: "nika wake tikegh talapa?" she queried, but with nothing in her tone to tell if she cared whether he wanted her or not. "not by a--" he began energetically, and then, "you are your own boss now," he added, more quietly. "go where you please, only you'd better keep clear of the old gang, for i won't buy you from them again--kumtuks?" talapa nodded that she understood, her eyes roving about the cabin, possibly taking note of the wealth that she had until spring to revel in or filch from. genesee noticed that mental reckoning. "leave these things alone," he said shortly. "use them, but leave them here. if any of them are gone when i get back--well, i'll go after them." and throwing the robe over his arm again, he strode out through the door, mounted mowitza, and rode away. it was not a sentimental finale to an idyl of the wood, but by the time the finale is reached, the average human specimen has no sentiment to waste. had they possessed any to begin with? it was hard to tell whether talapa was crushed by the cold cruelty of that leave-taking, or whether she was indifferent; that very uncertainty is a charm exerted over us by those conservative natures that lock within themselves wrath or joy where we ordinary mortals give expression to ours with all the language possessed by us, and occasionally borrow some adjectives that would puzzle us to give a translation of. talapa sat where he left her, not moving except once to shy a pine knot at a rat by the cupboard--and hit it, too, though she did belong to the sex divine. so she sat, pensively dribbling the silver coin from hand to hand, until the morning crept away and the sun shone through the mists. what was it that at last awakened her from an apparent dreamland--the note of that bird whistling in the forest in very gladness that the sun shone again? evidently so, and the indian blood in her veins had taught her the secret of sympathy with the wild things, for she gave an answering call, half voice, half whistle. silence for a little, and then again from the timber came that quavering note, with the rising inflection at the finish that was so near an interrogation. it brought talapa to her feet, and going to the door, she sent a short, impatient call that a little later was answered by the appearance of a comely buck--one of the order of red men--who lounged down the little incline with his head thrust forward as if to scent danger if any was about; but a few words from the girl assuring him that the coast was clear--the fort unguarded--gave him more an air of assurance, as he stepped across the threshhold and squatted down on the side of the bed. "genesee gone?" he queried in the musical medley of consonants. talapa grunted an assent, with love in her eyes for the noble specimen on the bed. "gone far--gone all time--till spring," she communicated, as if sure of being the giver of welcome news. "house all mine--everything mine--all winter." "ugh!" was all the sound given in answer to the information; but the wide mouth curved upward ever so slightly at the corners, and coupled with the interrogative grunt, expressed, no doubt, as much content as generally falls to the lot of individual humanity. one of his boots hurt him, or rather the moccasins which he wore with leggings, and above them old blue pantaloons and a red shirt; the moccasin was ripped, and without ceremony he loosened it and kicked it toward talapa. "mamook tipshin," he remarked briefly; and by that laconic order to sew his moccasin, skulking brave virtually took possession of genesee's cabin and genesee's squaw. through the gray shadows of that morning rachel and jim rode almost in silence down the mountain trail. the memory of the girl was too busy for speech, and the frequent yawns of jim showed that a longer sleep would have been appreciated by him. "say," he remarked at last, as the trail grew wide enough for them to ride abreast, "everything was jolly back here at mr. jack's last night, but i'm blest if it was this morning. the breakfast wasn't anything to brag of, an' the fire was no good, an' the fog made the cabin as damp as rain when the door was open, an' he was glum an' quiet, an' you wasn't much better. say, was it that injun cook o' his you was afeared to eat after?" "not exactly," she answered with a little laugh; "what an observer you are, jim! i suppose the atmosphere of the cabin was the effect of the storm last night." "what? well, the storm wasn't much worse to plow through last night than the wet timber this morning," he answered morosely; "but say, here's the sun coming out at last--by george! how the wind lifts the fog when it gets started. look at it!" and then, as the sunlight really crept in a great shimmer through the pines, he added: "it might just as well have come earlier, or else kept away altogether, for we're as wet now as we can get." "be thankful that it shines at all, jim." "oh, the shine's all right, but it shines too late." "yes," agreed the girl, with a memory of shamed, despairing eyes flitting through her brain. "yes, it always shines too late--for someone." "it's for two of us this time," replied grumbling jim, taking her speech literally. "we've had a nick of a time anyway this trip. why that storm had to wait until just the day we got lost, so as we'd get wet, an' straggle home dead beat--an' without the sheep--i can't see." "no, we can't see," said rachel, with a queer little smile. "perhaps--perhaps it's all because this is the end instead of the beginning of a cultus corrie." part third "prince charlie" chapter i. in the kootenai spring-time. in the spring that followed, what a spirit of promise and enterprise was abroad on the hardy ranch! what multitudes of white lambs, uncertain in the legs, staggered and tottered about the pasture lands! and what musical rills of joy in the mountain streams escaping through the sunshine from their prisons of ice! the flowers rose from the dead once more--such a fragrant resurrection! slipping from out their damp coffins and russet winding-sheets with dauntless heads erect, and eager lips open to the breath of promise. some herald must bear to their earth-homes the tidings of how sweet the sun of may is--perhaps the snow sprites who are melted into tears at his glances and slip out of sight to send him a carpet of many colors instead of the spotless white his looks had banished. it may be so, though only the theory of an alien. and then the winged choruses of the air! what matinees they held in the sylvan places among the white blossoms of the dogwood and the feathery tassels of the river willow, all nodding, swaying in the soft kisses sent by the pacific from the southwest--soft relays of warmth and moisture that moderate those western valleys until they are affronted by the rocky wall that of old was called by the indians the chippewyan mountains, but which in our own day, in the more poetical language of the usurper, has been improved upon and dubbed the "rockies." but all the commonplaces of those aliens can not deprive the inaccessible, conservative solitudes of their wild charms. and after those long months of repression, how warmly their smile bursts forth--and how contagious it is! laugh though the world may at the vibrations of poet hearts echoing the songs of the youngest of seasons, how can they help it? it is never the empty vessel that brims over, and with the spring a sort of inspiration is wakened in the most prosaic of us. the same spirit of change that thrills the saplings with fresh vitality sends through human veins a creeping ecstasy of new life. and all its insidious, penetrating charm seemed abroad there in the northern-land escaped from under the white cloak of winter. the young grass, fresh from the valley rains, warmed into emerald velvet in the sunshine, bordered and braced with yellow buttons of dandelion; while the soil was turned over with the plows, and field and garden stocked with seed for the harvest. energetic, busy days those were after the long months of semi-inaction; even the horses were too mettlesome for farm drudgery--intoxicated, no doubt, by the bracing, free winds that whispered of the few scattered droves away off to the north that bore no harness and owned no master. all things were rebellious at the long restraint, and were breaking into new paths of life for the new season. even a hulking siwash, with his squaw and children, came dragging down the valley in the wake of the freshets, going to the reservation south, content to go any place where they could get regular meals, with but the proviso to be "good injun." they loafed about the ranch two days, resting, and coming in for a share of rations from the hardy table; and the little barefooted "hostiles" would stand about the gate and peer in around the posts of the porch, saying in insinuating tones: "pale papoose?" yes, the spirit of the hills and grazing lands had crept under the rafters and between the walls, and a new life had been given to the world, just as the first violets crept sunward. and of course no other life was ever quite so sweet, so altogether priceless, as this little mite, who was already mistress of all she surveyed; and aunty luce--their one female servant--declared: "them eyes o' hers certainly do see everything in reach of 'em. she's a mighty peart chile, i'm tellin' ye." even jim had taken to loafing around the house more than of old, and showing a good deal of nervous irritation if by any chance "she" was allowed to test her lungs in the slightest degree. the setter pups paled into insignificance, and a dozen times a day he would remark to ivans that it was "the darndest, cutest, little customer he ever saw." "even you have become somewhat civilized, rachel, since baby's arrival," remarked tillie in commendation. yes, rachel was still there. at the last moment, a few appealing glances from tillie and some persuasive words from hen had settled the question, and a rebellion was declared against taking the home trail, and all the words of the houghtons fell on barren soil, for she would not--and she would not. "they will never miss me back there in kentucky," she argued; "there are so many girls there. but out here, femininity is at a premium. let me alone, clara; i may take the prize." "and when am i to tell the folks you will come back?" asked mrs. houghton, with the purpose of settling on a fixed time and then holding her to it. "just tell them the truth, dear--say you don't know," answered the girl sweetly. "i may locate a claim out here yet and develop into a stock-grower. do not look so sulky. i may be of use here; no one needs me in kentucky." "what of nard stevens?" was a final query; at which rachel no longer smiled--she laughed. "oh, you silly clara!" she burst out derisively. "you think yourself so wise, and you never see an inch beyond that little nose of yours. nard needs me no more than i need him--bless the boy! he's a good fellow; but you can not use him as a trump card in this game, my dear. yes, i know that speech is slangy. give my love to nard when you see him--well, then, my kind regards and best wishes if the other term conflicts with your proper spirit, and tell him i have located out here to grow up with the country." and through the months that followed she assuredly grew to the country at all events; the comparative mildness of the winters proving a complete surprise to her, as, hearing of the severe weather of the north, she had not known that its greatest intensity extends only to the eastern wall of the great mountain range, and once crossing the divide, the chinook winds or currents from the pacific give the valleys much the temperature of our middle states, or even more mild, since the snow-fall in the mountains is generally rain in the lowlands. sometimes, of course, with the quick changes that only the wind knows, there would come a swoop downward of cold from the direct north, cutting through the basins, and driving the pacific air back coastward in a fury, and those fitful gusts were to be guarded against by man and beast; and wise were growing those eastern prophets in their quickness to judge from the heavens whether storm or calm was to be with them. but despite clara's many predictions, the days did not grow dull to rachel, and the ranch was not a prison in winter-time. she had too clearly developed the faculty of always making the best of her surroundings and generally drawing out the best points in the people about her. it was that trait of hers that first awakened her interest in that splendid animal, their guide from the maple range. he had disappeared--gone from the kootenai country, so they told her. but where? or for what? that none could answer. her memory sometimes brought her swift flushes of mortification when she thought of him--of their association so pregnant with some sympathy or subtle influence that had set the world so far beyond them at times. now that he was gone, and their knowledge of each other perhaps all over, she tried to coolly reason it all out for herself, but found so much that contained no reason--that had existed only through impulses--impulses not easy to realize once outside the circle of their attending circumstances. those memories puzzled her--her own weakness when she lay in his arms, and her own gift of second-sight that gave her an understanding of him that morning when she turned champion for him against himself. was it really an understanding of him? or was it only that old habit of hers of discovering fine traits in characters voted worthless?--discoveries laughed at by her friends, until her "spectacles of imagination" were sometimes requested if some specimen of the genus homo without any redeeming points was under discussion. was it so in this case? she had asked herself the question more than once during the winter. and if she had been at all pliable in her opinions, she would long ere spring have dropped back to the original impression that the man was a magnificent animal with an intellect, and with spirituality and morality sleeping. but she was not. a certain stubbornness in her nature kept her from being influenced, as the others were, by the knowledge that after all they had had a veritable "squaw man" as a guide. hardy was surprised, and tillie was inconsolable. "i never will believe in an honest face again!" she protested. "nonsense!" laughed rachel. "pocahontas was an indian and rolfe was not hustled out of society in consequence." "n--no," assented tillie, eyeing rachel doubtfully "but then, you see rolfe married pocahontas." "yes?" "and--and ivans told hen he heard that the squaw you saw at genesee's was only a sort of slave. did he tell you and jim that she was his wife?" "i--i don't know;" and rachel suddenly sat down on a chair near the window and looked rather hopelessly at the questioner. "no, i don't believe he said so, but the circumstances and all--well, i took it for granted; he looked so ashamed." "and you thought it was because of a marriage ceremony, not for the lack of one?" "yes," acknowledged the girl, inwardly wondering why that view of the question had not presented itself to her. had she after all imagined herself sighting an eagle, and was it on nearer acquaintance to develop into a vulture--or, worse still, a buzzard--a thing reveling only in carrion, and knowing itself too unclean to breathe the same air with the untainted! so it seemed; so tillie was convinced; so she knew clara would have thought. in fact, in all the range of her female acquaintances she could think of none whose opinion would not have been the same, and she had an impatient sort of wonder with herself for not agreeing with them. but the memory of the man's face that morning, and the echo of that "god bless you, girl!" always drifted her away from utter unbelief in him. she heard considerable about him that winter; that he was thought rather eccentric, and belonged more to the indians than the whites, sometimes living with a tribe of kootenais for weeks, sometimes disappearing, no one knew where, for months, and then settling down in the cabin again and placidly digging away at that hole in the hill by the little lake--the hill itself called by the indians "tamahnous," meaning bewitched, or haunted. and his persistence in that work was one of the eccentric things that made some people say significantly: "they allowed genesee was a good man, but a little 'touched' on the silver question." and for tillie's benefit hen had to explain that the term "good" had nothing whatever to do with the man's moral or spiritual worth; its use was in a purely physical sense. after the snows fell in the mountains there were but few strangers found their way to the new ranch. half locked in as it was by surrounding hills, the passes were likely to be dangerous except to the initiated, and there were not many who had business urgent enough to push them through the drifts, or run their chances with land-slides. but if a stray hunter did come their way, his call was not allowed to be a short one. they had already become too thoroughly western in their hospitality to allow the quick departure of a guest, a trait of which they had carried the germs from old kentucky. what cheery evenings there were in the great sitting-room, with the logs heaped high in the stone fire-place! an uncarpeted room, with long, cushioned settees along two sides of it--and mighty restful they were voted by the loungers after the day's work; a few pictures on the wall, mostly engravings; the only color given the furnishing was in the pink and maroon chintz curtains at the windows, or cushions to the oak chairs. there in the fire-light of the long evenings were cards played, or stories told, or magazines read aloud, rachel and hen generally taking turn about as reader. and tillie in the depths of the cushioned rocker, knitting soft wool stuffs, was a chatelaine, the picture of serene content, with close beside her a foil in the form of black aunty luce, whom only devotion to her young miss would ever have tempted into those wilds; and after the work was over for the night, it was a usual thing to see her slipping in and snuggling down quietly to listen to the stories told or read, her big eyes glancing fearfully toward windows or doors if the indian question was ever touched on; though occasionally, if approached with due ceremony and full faith shown in her knowledge, she would herself add her share to the stories told, her donation consisting principally of sure "hoodoos," and the doings of black witches and warlocks in the land of bayous; for aunty luce had originally come from the swamps of louisiana, where the native religion and superstitions have still a good following. and old aunty's reminiscences added to the variety of their evening's bill of entertainment. a mail-carrier unexpectedly sprang up for them in the winter in the person of a young half-breed called kalitan, or the arrow. he had another name, his father, an englishman, and agent for a fur company, had happened to be around when his swarthy offspring was ushered into the world, and he promptly bestowed on him his own name of thomas alexander. but it was all he did bestow on him--and that only by courtesy, not legality; and alexander junior had not even the pleasure of remembering his father's face, as his mother was soon deserted. she went back to her tribe and reared her son as an indian, even his name in time was forgotten, as by common consent the more characteristic one of kalitan was given him because of the swiftness of foot that had placed him among the best "runners" or messengers in the indian country--and the average speed of a runner will on a long march out-distance that of cavalry. at the military post at fort missoula, kalitan's lines had first fallen among those of genesee, and for some unexplained reason his adherence to that individual became as devoted as mowitza's own. for a long time they had not ranged far apart, genesee seldom leaving the kootenai country that kalitan did not disappear as well. this last trip his occupation was gone, for word had been left with macdougall that the trail was not clear ahead, but if kalitan was wanted he would be sent for, and that sinewy, bronze personage did not seem to think of doing other than wait--and the waiting promised to be long. he took to hanging around scot's mountain more than of old, with the query, "maybe genesee send lettah--s'pose? i go see." and go he would, over and over again, always with a philosophic "s'pose next time," when he returned empty-handed. sometimes he stopped at the ranch, and rachel at once recognized him as the youth who had brought her the black bear skin months before, and pretended at the time utter ignorance of chinook. he would speak chinook fast enough to her now if there was any occasion, his white blood, and the idea that she was genesee's friend, inclining him to sociability seldom known to the aristocratic conservatives of the indian race. the nearest mail station was twenty miles south, and it was quite an item to find a messenger as willing as was kalitan; storm or calm, he would make the trip just the same, carrying his slip of paper on which all the names were written and which he presented as an order to the postmaster. a big mail was a cause of pride to him, especially magazines or packages. letters he did not think of much account, because of their size. to aunty luce he was a thing of dread, as were all of his race. she was firmly convinced that the dusky well-featured face belonged to an imp of the evil one, and that he simply slid over the hills on the cold winds, without even the aid of a broom-stick. the nights that he spent at the ranch found aunty's ebony face closer than ever to the side of mistress tillie's chair. another member had been added to the visiting list at hardy's, and that was the sovereign of scot's mountain. along in midwinter, kalitan brought a scrawled note from "ole man mac," asking for some drugs of which he stood in need. the request brought to light the fact that kalitan one day while paying visits had found "ole man mac" sick in bed--"heap sick--crank--no swallow medicine but white man's." the required white man's medicine was sent, and with it a basket with white bread, fresh butter, and various condiments of home manufacture that tillie's kindly heart prompted her to send to the old trapper--one of their nearest neighbors. the following day rachel and her henchman jim started on kalitan's trail, with the idea of learning personally if any further aid that the ranch could give was needed at the cabin. a snow three days old covered the ground, in which kalitan's trail was easily followed; and then rachel had been over the same route before, starting light-hearted and eager, on that cultus corrie. they reached scot's mountain a little after noon, and found its grizzled, unshaven owner much better than he had been the day before, and close beside him on the pillow lay his one companion, the cat. "well, well! to think o' this!" said the old man, reaching a brawny hand to her from the bunk. "you're the first white woman as ever passed that door-post, and it's rare and glad i am that it's your own self." "why myself more than another?" she asked, rather surprised at his words. "i would have come long ago if i had known i was wanted, or that you even knew of me." "have i not, then?" he queried, looking at her sharply from under his wrinkled, half-closed lids. "but sit ye down, lady. kalitan, bring the chair. and is that a brother--the lad there? i thought i had na heard of one. sit you down close that i can see ye--a sight good for sore een; an' i have no heard o' ye? ah, but i have, though. many's the hour the lad has lain lazy like on the cot here, an' told me o' the gay folk frae the east. ye know i'd be a bit curious o' my new neighbors, an' would be askin' many's the question, an' all the tales would end wi' something about the lass that was ay the blithe rider, an' ever the giver o' good judgment." the girl felt her face grow hot under those sharp old eyes. she scarcely knew what to say, and yet could give no sensible reason for such embarrassment; and then-- "the lad--what lad?" she asked at last. "oh--ay. i clean forgot he is no lad to you. kalitan, will ye be building up that fire a bit? when we have quality to visit we must give them a warm welcome, if no more. an' the lad, as i was sayin'," he continued, "was but genesee--no other; though he looked more the lad when i called him so first." "you are such old friends, then?" "no so old as so close, ye might say. it's a matter o' five year now since he come up in these hills wi' some men who were prospectin', an' one an' another got tired and dropped down the country again till only genesee was left. he struck that haunted hill in the maple range that they all said was of no good, an' he would na leave it. there he stuck in very stubbornness, bewitched like by it; an' the day before his flittin' in the fall found him clear through the hill, helped a bit by striking into an old mine that nobody knew aught of. think o' that!--dug into a mine that had been abandoned by the indians generations ago, most like." "i did not know that the indians ever paid attention to mining. they seem to know no use for gold or silver until the white men teach them it." "true enough; but there the old mine stands, as a clear showin' that some o' the heathen, at some time, did mine in that range; an' the stone mallets an' such like that he stumbled on there shows that the cave was not the result o' accident." "and has he at last given it up as hopeless?" "that's as time may happen to tell," answered the old man sagely; "an' old daddy time his own self could na keep his teeth shut more tight than can genesee if there's a bit secret to hold. but o' the old mine he said little when he was takin' the trail, only, 'it has kept these thousand o' years, davy--it will most like keep until i get back.'" from that speech rachel gathered the first intimation that genesee's absence from the kootenai country was only a transient one. was he then to come back and again drop his life into its old lines? she did not like to think of it--or to question. but that winter visit to "ole man mac," as kalitan called him, was the beginning of an avowed friendship between the old hermit of the northern hills and the young girl from the southern ones. her independent, curious spirit and youthful vitality were a sort of tonic to him, and as he grew better he accepted her invitation to visit the ranch, and from that time on the grizzled head and still athletic frame of the old fellow were not strange to the hardy household. he was there as often as was consistent with the weather in the hills and almost seventy years of braving their hardships; for of late years macdougall did not range widely. his traps could find too many nooks near home for mink, lynx, and the black bear, and from the kootenai tribes on the north he bought pelts, acting the trader as well as trapper; and twice a year making a trip to a settlement to dispose of his wares, with horses from his indian neighbors to transport them with. rachel learned that for forty years he had followed that isolated life--moving steadily farther west or farther north as the grip of civilization made itself felt behind him; and he felt himself crowded if a settler's prairie schooner was sighted within twenty-five miles of him. the girl wondered, often, the cause of that self-exile, but no word or sign gave her any clew. he had come from the eastern highlands of scotland when less than thirty years old, and had struck out at once for the extreme borders of civilization in america; and there he had remained--always on the borders--never quite overtaken. "it will be but a few more stands i can make," he would say to her sometimes. "time is little content to be a laggard, and he is running me close in a race he has na' a doubt of winning." with advancing years, the barrier, whatever the foundation, that he had raised between himself and the world was evidently weakening somewhat; and first through genesee, and now through this girl, had come a growing desire for intercourse with his own race once more. and much teasing did the girl get in consequence of the visits that by the family in general were conceded to belong to rachel in particular, teasing, however, which she bore with indifference, openly claiming that the stronger interest was on her side, and if he forgot his visits she would certainly go herself to scot's mountain to learn the why and wherefore. this she did more than once, through the season, when indoor life grew at all monotonous; sometimes with jim as a companion, and sometimes with kalitan trotting at her mare's head, and guiding very carefully betty's feet over the dangerous places--aunty luce always watching such a departure with prophecies of "miss rache's sea'p a-hangin' round the neck o' that red nigger some o' these days, i'm a-tellin' yeh!" despite prophecies, kalitan proved a most eager and careful guardian, seeming to feel rather proud when he was allowed to be her sole companion. sometimes he would say: "s'pose you hear where genesee is--may be?" and at her negative he, like a philosopher of unlimited patience, would content himself with: "sometime he sure come; s'pose waum illihie"--waum illihie meaning the summer-time; and rachel, noting his faithfulness to that one idea, wondered how many seasons his patience would endure. at last, about the middle of april, he stalked into the ranch door one morning early, scaring aunty luce out of her seven senses, or as many extra ones as she laid claim to. "rashell hardy?" was all he deigned to address to that personage, so inborn in the indian is the scorn of a slave or those of slavish origin. and kalitan, who had lived almost entirely with his tribe, had many of the aristocratic ideas of race that so soon degenerate in the indian of the settlements or haunts of the white man. once aunty luce, not understanding his ideas of caste, thought to propitiate him with some kindly social inquiry as to the state of his health and well-being, and had beat an ignominious retreat to the floor above at the black look of indignation on his face at being questioned by a slave. when rachel took him to task for such a ferocious manner, he answered, with a sullen sort of pride: "i, kalitan, am of a race of chiefs--not a dog to be bidden by black blood;" and she had noticed then, and at other times, that any strong emotion, especially anger, gave an elevated tone and manner of speech to him and his race, lifting it out of the slurred commonplaces of the mongrel jargon--a direct contradiction of their white brother, on whom anger generally has an effect exactly contrary. after that one venture of aunty's at timorous friendliness, she might have been a dumb woman so far as kalitan ever had further knowledge; for her conversations in his presence were from that date carried on entirely in pantomime, often to the annoyance, though always to the amusement, of the family. kalitan's abrupt entrance and query that april morning was answered by a comprehensive nod and wave of pudgy black hands toward the sitting-room, into which he walked without knocking--that, also perhaps, being deemed a prerogative of his lordly race. "why, kalitan, so early!" said rachel in surprise. "are you trying to outrun the sun? what is it?" for her eyes, accustomed to the usual calm of his countenance, recognized at once that some new current of emotion was struggling for supremacy in him that morning. he did not answer at once, but seated himself in impressive silence on the edge of one of the settees, and after a dramatic pause that he considered a fitting prelude to the importance of his communication, he addressed himself to rachel--the only woman, by the way, whom he was ever known to meet or converse with on terms of equality, as indian chivalry does not extend to their exaltation of the gentler sex. "rashell hardy," he said, in a mingling of english and chinook, "i, kalitan, the arrow, shoot to the south. genesee has sent in the talking-paper to ole man mac that the reservation indians south have dug up the hatchet. genesee is taking the trail from the fort, with rifle and many men, and he wants an arrow that can shoot out of sight of any other; so he wants kalitan." and having delivered himself of this modest encomium on his own worth, there was a stage-wait of about a minute, that might have been relieved by some words conceding his superiority, but wasn't. rachel was looking out of the window as if in momentary forgetfulness of the honor done her in this statement of facts. kalitan rose to his feet. "ole man mac come town valley, may be, in two days. i stop to tell you, and say like white man, klahowya." and with the indian word of farewell, he turned to the door, when rachel stopped him. "wait, kalitan," she said, holding out her hand to stop him. "you are going south into the hostile country. will the arrow carry a message as it flies?" "let rashell hardy speak. kalitan is swift. a message is not heavy from a friend." "that is it, kalitan; it is to your friend--genesee." "rachel!" ejaculated tillie, who had been a silent auditor of this queer little scene, with its ceremony and its ludicrous features--ludicrous to any not knowing the red man's weakness for forms and a certain pomposity that seems a childish love of display and praise. but rachel never ridiculed it; instead, she simply let herself drop into his tone, and thus enhanced very much his opinion of her. and at tillie's voice she turned impatiently. "well, why not?" she asked; and her combative air at once reduced tillie to withdrawing as easily as she could from the discussion. "but, dear, the man's reputation! and really you know he is nothing we thought he was. he is scarcely fit for any lady to speak to. it is better to leave such characters alone. one never can tell how far they may presume on even recognition." "yes? after all, tillie, i believe you are very much of the world worldly. did he stop to ask if i was entirely a proper sort of person before he started to hunt for me that time in the kootenai hills?" "nonsense! of course not. but the cases are totally unlike." "naturally. he is a man; i am a woman. but if the cases were reversed, though i might preserve a better reputation, i doubt much if, in some respects, i should equal the stubborn strength of character i have seen that man show at times." "oh, i might have known better than to advise you, rachel, if i wanted to influence you," remarked tillie helplessly. "you are like an irishman, always spoiling for a fight, and hunt up the most ridiculous, impossible theories to substantiate your views; but i am so disappointed in that man--he seemed such a fine fellow. but when we are assured of our mistake, it is time, especially, rachel, for a girl to drop all acquaintance with him." "i wish i was not a girl. then i would not have to be hedged in forever. you would not think it so terrible if hen or ivans, or any of the men, were to meet him as usual or send word to him if they chose." "but that is different." "and i am sick of the differences. the more i see the narrowness of social views, the less i wonder at old macdougall and genesee taking to the mountains, where at least the life, even the life's immoralities, are primitive." "primitive! oh, good lord!" ejaculated tillie in serio-comic despair. "what would you suggest as an improvement on their simplicity?" and then, both being rather good-natured women, the absurdity of their vehemence seemed to strike them, and looking at each other for a second, they both burst out laughing. all this time kalitan stood, showing his silent disdain of this squaw "wau-wau" with the impassive gaze that went straight over their heads at the opposite wall, not seeing the debaters, as if it were beneath his dignity to open his ears to their words. in fact, his dignity had been enhanced several degrees since his visit to the ranch, some ten days before--all because of that "talking-paper," no doubt, that had come from the fort, and his full indian dress--for he would scorn to wear the garb of his father--was decked with several additional trinkets, borrowed or stolen from the tribe, that were likely to render his appearance more impressive. and rachel, glancing at him, was reminded by that manner of dignified toleration that she had kept him waiting no doubt five minutes--and five minutes in the flight of an arrow is a life-time. "tell jack genesee," she said, turning to him in complete negligence of arguments just used, "that rachel hardy sends to him greetings--you understand? that she is glad to hear where he is; a soldier's life is a good one for him, and she will always have faith in his fighting well, and trying to fight on the right side. is that message much to remember?" kalitan poetically answered in chinook to the effect that his heart was in his ears when she spoke, and would be in his tongue when he met genesee, and with that startling statement he made his exit, watched by aunty luce from the stairs on which she had taken refuge. "you are a queer girl, rache," said tillie as rachel stood watching the gaily-decked, sinewy form as it broke into a sort of steady trot, once outside the gate, and was so quickly out of sight down the valley. "am i? try and say something more original," she suggested. "i believe you would make a good missionary," continued tillie debatably. "your theory of civilizing people seems to be all right; but while it may work capitally with those savages born in heathendom, i fear its results when applied to enlightened mortals who have preferred dropping into degraded lives. your laudable energy is likely to be wasted on that sort of material." "what a learned diagnosis for you to make, my child," said miss hardy approvingly. "aunty luce confided to me she was going to make a 'batch' of sugar cookies this morning, and you shall have the very first one as a reward for delivering your little speech so nicely." chapter ii. a recruit from the world. "oh, cam' ye here the fight to shun, or herd the sheep wi' me, man?" spring, with its showers and promises, drifted into the dim perspective, as summer, with flaunting assumption, took possession of the foreground. all through the changing weeks rumors came from the south and east, telling of disaffection among the hereditary lords of the soil, and petty troubles in different localities, that, like low mutterings of far-off thunder, promised storms that might be remembered. some rust on the wheels of the slow-moving machinery of government had caused a delay in the dealings with the people on the reservations. treaties ignored through generations, in both letter and spirit, are not calculated to beget faith in the hearts of the red nations, or teach them belief in the straightness of our tongues. was it the fault of the department of the interior at washington, or the dishonesty of their local agents?--the chicanery of the party in office or the scheme of some political ring that wanted to get in by bringing forward a cause for condemnation of the existing regime? whatever one of the multitudinous excuses was finally given for neglect of duty--treaties, promises of government--mr. lo had now--as he has ever had--to bear the suffering in question, whether just or unjust. small wonder if, now and then, a spark of that old fire in the blood ignites, and even the most tamed spirits rise up ready to write pages of history in blood. the only wonder is that they ever pass by the house or the offspring of the white race without that call of the red heart for vengeance being too strong for the hand to resist. through the late winter, whether through storms or floods or the schemes of men, on one of the reservations to the south the rations had not been forthcoming; and from week to week excuses were given that were no longer listened to with credence by the indians. in vain were visits made, first to the agency, next to the nearest fort, supplicating for their rights. one delegation after another turned back from those visits unsatisfied, told by the first that the rations would be distributed when they arrived, not before; told by the second that the war department was not in any way responsible for deficiencies of the department of the interior, and could not interfere--at the same time advising them to be patient, as eventually their wants would be satisfied. eventually! and in the meantime they could go back to their tribes and eat their horses, their dogs, and see their people grow weak as the children for the want of food. small wonder if one group after another of the younger braves, and even the older warriors, broke loose from the promise of peace and joined the hostile bands that thieved along the border, sweeping the outlying ranches of horses and cattle, and beating a retreat back into the hills with their booty. of course, the rations arrived eventually, and were distributed by those fair-minded personages whose honest dealing with the red man is proverbial along the border; but the provisions came too late to stem the tide of secession that had set in, and the war department had found that, after all, it would be influenced by the actions of the department of the interior, and that its interference was demanded for the protection of the homes on the frontier. as the homes were the homes of white citizens, its action was, of course, one of promptness. white men's votes decide who shall continue to sit in the high places of the land, or who shall step down and out to make way for the new man of new promises. but they found ordinary methods of war were of little avail against the scattered bands, who, like bees in the summer-time, divided their swarms, and honey-combed the hills, knowing every retreat, and posted as to every movement by indian runners and kindred left behind. it was simply a war of skirmishing, and one not likely soon to cease. reinforcements came to the hostile tribes from all the worthless outlaws of the border--some of white, others of mixed blood; and from those mongrels resulted the more atrocious features of the outbreak. they fought and schemed with the indian because they wanted his protection, and any proposed treaty for peace was argued against by them most vehemently. and while an indian makes a good thief, a half-breed makes a better; but the white man, if his taste runs in that direction, is an artist, and to him his red brother is indebted for much teaching in the subtle art through many generations. that, and like accomplishments, made them comrades to be desired by the tribes who depended for their subsistence on the country guarded by troops; and scientific methods of thievery were resorted to, methods that required the superior brain and the white face of the caucasian. thus was the trouble fostered, and the contagion spread, until far-off tribes, hearing of it, missed now one, now another, of their more restless spirits; and the white authorities found it would not do to trust to the peace of any of the nations--the only surety was to guard it. this they tried to do, locating posts and stationing troops near even the most peaceable tribes--their presence suggesting the advisability of remaining so. and, now through one, now another, and generally by macdougall, the people at the ranch heard at times of the arrow and of genesee. they were with the troops, and were together; and the latter's knowledge of indian tactics was counting much in his favor evidently, as his opinions were cited in the reports and prophecies of results, and his influence had decided more than one movement of the campaign that had won him the commendation of his superior officers--circumstances that were, of course, discussed pro and con by the people of the kootenai. there was little of local news in so isolated a place, and rachel declared they were all developing into gossips because of the avidity with which the slightest of events in their own region was talked over; and of course the indian question was an all-absorbing topic, and to aunty luce was attended by a sort of paralysis of terror. in vain to point out the friendly listlessness of the kootenais, their nearest neighbors of the red race, for the kootenais were simple hunters or fishers, making war on none, unless now and then a detachment of thieving blackfeet from east of the mountains would file through the old flathead pass and run off portions of their stock; in the time of the fishing, the greater part of the village would move for the season away from their pasture-lands, in search of the fish that they smoke, dry, and pack in osier baskets for the winter. it was generally during that temporary flitting that a visit from those neighboring tribes would be made, and an assessment levied, to the extent of all loose cattle in reach, and an occasional squaw now and then. and so, though the kootenais were on the most friendly terms with the few whites about them, their relations with their red brethren on the east, and across the line in the northwest territories were decidedly strained. but it was useless to talk "good indian" to aunty who was afraid to stay in the house or out of it; afraid to start back to kentucky, yet sure that delay meant death. and all through the summer, let the rest have faith if they chose, yet the baby's wardrobe and her own were always packed ready for flight at the first sign of danger. with this one exception, the indian question troubled the people at the ranch but little. they found too many duties in the new country to take up their time and attention. the sheep-raising experiment showed signs of such thorough success that it would require more than the skirmishing of the races a couple of hundred miles away to disenchant hardy with the country; and where he was content, tillie was, of course; and rachel--well, rachel was deemed a sort of vagabond in regard to a settlement anywhere. she was satisfied with any place where the fences were not too high, or the limits of her range too narrow. she often wondered that the world in general knew so little of that beautiful corner of the earth. she knew that people flocked to "resorts" that possessed not at all the wealth of beauties that whimsical nature had scattered on those indian hills. in the fall, about a year after the cultus corrie, she began to think that, after all, they might meet with deserved appreciation some day, for one man rode up to them, not for stock, or to locate land, or for any of the few reasons that brought people to the kootenai country, but simply and only for pleasure and rest--so he said. it was in late september, and as he rode leisurely through the dusky shadows of the pines, and along the passionate, restless path of some mountain stream, his expressive face showed a more than casual interest in the prodigality of delightful vistas and the impressive grandeur of the mountains, as they loomed about him or slowly drifted beneath him. all the beauty of autumn was around him, yet he himself looked like one of the people who belong only to summer, judging from his eager eyes and the boyish laugh that broke on the still air as he watched the pranks of some squirrels making holiday in their own domain. not that the stranger was so young. he was not a boy in years; but the spirit of youth, that remains so long with some natures, shone in his glance, and loitered about the sensitive mouth. in seeing him smile, one would forget the thread of premature silver that shone through the bronze of his hair. he was almost beautiful in face; yet his stature, which was much above the average, and his exceptionally complete proportions, saved him from the beauty that is effeminate; but whatever beauty he possessed, however, was in every way refined. it was noon when stragglers of sheep met his gaze, dotting with white the green and amber grasses of the great park, and showing, as he forded missoula creek, a picture before him, framed in the high wall of the hills, and restful with pastoral peace that was a striking contrast to the untamable wilds through which he had passed. "almost there," he whispered eagerly, as he rode along the corrals and was greeted by a tumbling lot of sheep-dogs. "will it be of use?" before he reached the gate he was met by hardy, who, bare-headed, had left the dinner-table to welcome a visitor whom, from the porch, all had decided was a stranger. the host scattered the dogs. there were a few words, a shake of hands, and they could hear hardy's hearty invitation to dismount. meanwhile, aunty luce was bustling about as fast as her stout, short form would allow her, arranging a place at the table for the late guest, and thanking her stars that a real gentleman was to be company for them once more--her opinion that he was a gentleman having foundation in the fact that he wore "store-clothes" instead of the trappings of buckskin affected by the natives of the kootenai. they found he was possessed of more decided points due the idea of a gentleman, both in breeding and education, and before many remarks were exchanged, the rest of the family, as well as aunty, were congratulating themselves on this acquisition from the world. "yes, i am altogether a stranger up here," he said pleasantly, in answer to a query; "and at holland's they told me there was one of my statesmen up in this park; so i asked the way and started west, instead of north, as i had thought of doing." "doing a bit o' prospectin', then?" was macdougall's query. it was a visiting-day of his, and he had been watching the new-comer's face with scrutinizing eyes ever since the first words of self-introduction, in which the visitor's name had been overlooked. "well--yes," answered the other slowly, as if he was not decided, or had not anticipated the question. "i thought as much, since ye carry no hunting gear," remarked the trapper; "and in this country a man is likely to be the one thing or the other." "and in this case it is the other," smiled the stranger, "as i have not as yet found any vocation; i have come out here to forget i ever had one--prospecting for a rest." "well, there is plenty of room here to rest in," said hardy hospitably. "yes, or work in," added rachel; "and a new country needs the workers." tillie threw an admonishing glance as payment for the uncivil speech, and the stranger turned his attention to the speaker. the contour of her face must have been pleasing, since he looked at it interestedly, as if forgetting in its contemplation the words uttered; and then-- "indeed?" he said at last. "well, who knows but that i may develop into a worker; is industry contagious here?" and rachel, whose tone had been more uncivil than her intention, felt herself put at a disadvantage by the suavity that was not a feature of kootenai character. "indeed, then," said macdougall, "it's gettin' to be a brisk, busy country these late days, an' ye canna go a matter o' twenty mile without trippin' up on a settlement. an' ye come from holland's without a guide? that's pretty good for a stranger in the parts, as i doubt na ye be, mr.--" and he stopped suggestively. the stranger laughed, and drew a card from his pocket. "i told mr. hardy my name at the gate," he observed, "but evidently it escaped his memory; he introduced me only as a stranger." "it does not matter, however, what a man is called out here," returned hardy. "it is the man that is valued in the west--not the name given him; now, back home they weighed about equal." "and in my country," said macdougall, looking up from the card, "here's a name that would carry ye many a mile, an' bespeak ye good-will from many an old heart--charles stuart. it's a name to take unco' good care of, my man." "i try to take good care of the owner of it, at all events," answered the stranger; "but it is not an uncommon name in america; there are few parts of the country in which i am not able to find a namesake." "indeed, then, an' i have run across none o' the name these seven odd year," said macdougall; "an' then it was a man in the bitter root mountains, who spelt it with the 'e-w' instead of the 'u,' an' had never e'en heard tell o' prince charlie." "and you have known no one in this country by the name of stuart?" asked the stranger, his eyes seeming to watch at the same time both hardy and the old man. ivans and jim had left the table and lounged out to the stables to smoke. "no," answered hardy; "we are comparatively new-comers here, but all the settlers within a radius of fifty miles are already known to us by name--it is not so difficult where white men are so scarce; and i have never heard of any stuarts among them." "then i have dropped literally into a strange country," said stuart, rising and walking to the end of the porch; "and from what i have seen of it, a decidedly interesting one. hunting good?" "excellent," returned hardy. "we've been too busy to get to the hills so far this year, but now we have a little breathing-spell, and if you would care to try your luck with game, i should take pleasure in showing you our hunting grounds." "that is certainly kind of you," said mr. stuart heartily, "and i will accept the offer most gratefully. the fact is, i've been rather used up with a professional life, and was in hopes a trip up through this country would set me on my feet again. over there at holland's they told me about you and your family, and--" "yes," completed hardy, "a man with his family and household goods up in these hills is a marked individual; but my wife and cousin do not rebel at the exile; they are both philosophers, in their way." "yes?" and stuart's agreement had the intonation of a man who hears, but ceases to grasp the sense of words. some closer thought seemed present with him. he glanced at hardy, a swift, quickly withdrawn scrutiny, and then said: "do you know, mr. hardy, i should like to propose myself for membership in your household for a few weeks; would it be deemed an impertinence? i can't stay at holland centre with any comfort, and this place of yours seems to be a haven of rest. could you give me space to live in for a while, without my being a nuisance to the establishment?" "yes, and welcome," answered hardy. "you don't seem to appreciate what a treat it is to have a visitor from civilization ride our way; and one from our old state is especially in demand. i was going to propose that you move your outfit up here and make the ranch your headquarters while in the country. a nuisance! no, sir." and thus was the simple ceremony concluded that introduced this stranger to the hardys, to the general satisfaction of all concerned. rachel was the only member who did not seem especially delighted. "oh, yes, he is clever and entertaining," she agreed to tillie, "and his manner is so charmingly insinuating that i may end by falling in love with him; but i am beginning with an unreasonable desire to say snappy things to him." "i should say it was unreasonable--a thorough gentleman, of fine family connections. he mentioned several kentucky families that hen might know what his standing was back home, and his profession is that of medicine--i noticed the m. d. on his card; and altogether i can not see what ground you have for objecting." "i am not objecting--bless the man! no," returned rachel; "only, because a man has acquired a charming manner and possesses a handsome face is no reason for me devoting myself to admiration of him, like aunty luce. she is jubilant over having so fine a gentleman to wait on. you are discreetly elated over having so charming a person to entertain; even miss margaret (miss margaret was the baby)--everything feminine about the place has succumbed. and i suppose my reason for keeping on my own side of the fence is that i'm jealous. i am no longer first in the affections of anyone about the place. macdougall is likely to swear allegiance at any time because his name is stuart--and, above all, charlie stuart; even jim is wavering in the balance, and shows a wonderful alacrity in anticipating the wishes of this tenderfoot. is it any wonder i rebel?" "well, for the comfort of the rest of us, do not begin a civil war," admonished tillie, and was only reassured by a promise that there should be no active hostilities. "if you are more comfortable in war than in peace, go south and fight with the skirmishing indians," suggested the little woman. "i will," said rachel. "if you get any more civilized recruits up here to make the place tame and commonplace, i will seek service under the standard of the arrow, or genesee." and at the mention of the last name tillie discreetly subsided. the girl found the raw recruit rapidly making himself a power in the social world of the ranch. there was something of charming grace in the man's personality; and that rare gift of a sympathetic nature that had also the faculty of expression, at once accorded him the trust of women and children. it may be that a degree of physical beauty influenced them also, for his fine, well-shaped head was very good to look at; the poise of the erect, tall figure bespoke serene self-confidence; the curves of his lips, slightly hidden by a mustache, gave a sweetness of expression to the lower part of his face; while the wide brows and fine eyes gave an intellectual cast to a personality that did not lack attractive points. "the lad has the old grace o' the stuarts," macdougall affirmed, sticking to his fancy of connecting the old blood-royal with the slip of the name grown on alien ground. "and it is much the same free-handed manner o' the old stock--free o' their smiles, an' winning o' hearts by the clasp o' the hand; but there's a bit about this one that is a rare puzzle to me. i think like enough it's the eyes, they're main handsome ones; but i'm always a-rackin' o' my brains to tell where i've seen them before." rachel, to whom this speech was made, only laughed. "he has never been west until now, so you can not have seen them," she argued; but her tone made the old man regard her with attention. "what do ye mean by that, lass?" "oh, nothing, only he says so;" and then she went into the house, leaving her guest sitting on the bench of the porch. "the stuart," as the others had already dropped into calling him, after macdougall, had been at the ranch about a week. the proposed hunt was yet to be; and in the meantime he rode through the parks, and saw all that was near-about the ranch. he talked stock raising with hardy, medicinal herbs with aunty luce, babies with tillie, and with rachel numerous worldly topics of interest, that, however, never seemed to change the nature of their acquaintance; which remained much as it was the first day--on her side, arms burnished and ready for action; on his, the serene gentleness of manner, almost a caress, a changeless good-humor that spoke volumes for his disposition, and at times forced even her into a sort of admiration of him. the health-recruiting trip he had come on, he was evidently taking advantage of, for he almost lived out-of-doors, and looked wonderfully healthy and athletic for an invalid. in the house, he wrote a great deal. but the morning rachel left macdougall on the porch, the stuart came sauntering up the path, the picture of careless content with himself and the world. "where has mr. hardy gone?" he inquired, seating himself on the porch. "i've been looking for him out at the pens but the men have all disappeared." "gone up the range for the yearlin's that strayed off the last week; but they'll no go far." "i wanted to ask mr. hardy about mail out here. how often is it brought to the ranch?" "well," said the old man, between the puffs of his pipe, "that depends a bit on how often it is sent for; just whene'er they're a bit slack o' work, or if anybody o' them wants the trip made special; but hardy will be sendin' jimmy across for it, if it's any favor to you--be sure o' that." "oh, for that matter--i seem to be the most useless commodity about the ranch--i could make the trip myself. is jim the usual mail-carrier?" "well, i canna say; andrews, a new man here, goes sometimes, but it's no rare thing for him to come home carrying more weight in whisky than in the letters, an' hardy got a bit tired o' that." "but haven't you a regular mail-carrier for this part of the country?" persisted stuart. macdougall laughed shortly at the idea. "who'd be paying the post?" he asked, "with but the hardys an' myself, ye might say, barring the kootenais; an' i have na heard that they know the use of a postage stamp." "but someone of their tribe does come to the centre for mail," continued stuart in half argument--"an indian youth; have you never seen him?" "from the kootenais? well, i have not, then. it may be, of late, there are white men among them, but canna say; i see little o' any o' them this long time." "and know no other white people in this region?" "no, lad, not for a long time," said the old man, with a half sigh. the listener rose to his feet. "i think," he said, as if a prospect of new interest had suddenly been awakened in his mind--"i think i should like to make a trip up into the country of the kootenais. it is not very far, i believe, and would be a new experience. yes, if i could get a guide, i would go." "well," said macdougall drily, "seeing i've lived next door to the kootenais for some time, i might be able to take ye a trip that way myself." rachel, writing inside the window, heard the conversation, and smiled to herself. "strange that kalitan should have slipped macdougall's memory," she thought; "but then he may have been thinking only of the present, and the stuart, of months back. so he does know some things of people in the kootenai, for all his blind ignorance. and he would have learned more, if he had not been so clever and waited until the rest were gone, to question. i wonder what he is hunting for in this country; i don't believe it is four-footed game." chapter iii. at cross-purposes. "their tricks and craft ha' put me daft, they've taen me in, and a' that." "and so you got back unharmed from the midst of the hostiles?" asked rachel in mock surprise, when, a week later, hardy, stuart, and macdougall returned from their pilgrimage, bringing with them specimens of deer they had sighted on their return. "hostiles is about the last name to apply to them, i should imagine," remarked stuart; "they are as peaceable as sheep." "but they can fight, too," said macdougall, "an' used to be reckoned hard customers to meet; but the blackfeet ha' well-nigh been the finish o' them. the last o' their war-chiefs is an old, old man now, an' there's small chance that any other will ever walk in his moccasins." "i've been told something of the man's character," said rachel, "but have forgotten his name--bald eagle?" "grey eagle. an' there's more character in him worth the tellin' of than you'll find in any siwash in these parts. i doubt na genesee told you tales o' him. he took a rare, strange liking to genesee from the first--made him some presents, an' went through a bit o' ceremony by which they adopt a warrior." "was this genesee of another tribe?" asked stuart, who was always attentive to any information of the natives. "yes," said rachel quickly, anticipating the others, "of a totally different tribe--one of the most extensive in america at present." "a youth? a half-breed?" "no," she replied; "an older man than you, and of pure blood. hen, there is miss margaret pummeling the window for you to notice her. davy macdougall, did you bring me nothing at all as a relic of your trip? well, i must say times are changing when you forget me for an entire week." both the men looked a little amused at rachel's truthful yet misleading replies, and thinking it just one of her freaks, did not interfere, though it was curious to them both that stuart, living among them so many days, had not heard genesee mentioned before. but no late news coming from the southern posts, had made the conversations of their troops flag somewhat; while stuart, coming into their circle, brought new interests, new topics, that had for the while superseded the old, and genesee's absence of a year had made them count him no longer as a neighbor. then it may be that, ere this, rachel had warded off attention from the subject. she scarcely could explain to herself why she did it--it was an instinctive impulse in the beginning; and sometimes she laughed at herself for the folly of it. "never mind," she would reassure herself by saying, "even if i am wrong, i harm no one with the fancy; and i have just enough curiosity to make me wonder what that man's real business is in these wilds, for he is not nearly so careless as his manner, and not nearly so light-hearted as his laugh." "well, did you find any white men among the kootenais?" she asked him abruptly, the day of his return. his head, bent that miss margaret could amuse herself with it, as a toy of immense interest, raised suddenly. much in the girl's tone and manner to him was at times suggestive; this was one of the times. his usually pale face was flushed from his position, and his rumpled hair gave him a totally different appearance as he turned on her a look half-compelling in its direct regard. "what made you ask that?" he demanded, in a tone that matched the eyes. she laughed; to see him throw off his guard of gracious suavity was victory enough for one day. "my feminine curiosity prompted the question," she replied easily. "did you?" "no," he returned, after a rather steady look at her; "none that you could call men." "a specimen, then?" "heaven help the race, if the one i saw was accepted as a specimen," he answered fervently; "a filthy, unkempt individual, living on the outskirts of the village, and much more degraded than any indian i met; but he had a squaw wife." "yes, the most of them have--wives or slaves." "slaves?" he asked incredulously. "actually slaves, though they do not bring the high prices we used to ask for those of darker skin in the south. emancipation has not made much progress up here. it is too much an unknown corner as yet." "is it those of inferior tribes that are bartered, or prisoners taken in battle?" "no, i believe not, necessarily," she replied, "though i suppose such a windfall would be welcomed; but if there happens to be any superfluous members in a family, it is a profitable way to dispose of them, among some of the columbia basin indians, anyway. davy macdougall can give you more information than i, as most of my knowledge is second-hand. but i believe this tribe of the kootenais is a grade above that sort of traffic--i mean bartering their own kindred." "how long have you been out here, miss rachel?" he asked, as abruptly as she had questioned him of the white men. "about a year--a little over." "and you like it?" "yes; i like it." in response to several demands, he had enthroned miss margaret on his lap by this time; and even there she was not contented. his head seemed to have a special fascination for her babyship; and she had such an insinuating way of snuggling upward that she was soon close in his arms, her hands in easy reach of his hair, which she did not pull in infantile fashion, but dallied with, and patted caressingly. there was no mistaking the fact that stuart was prime favorite here at all events; and the affection was not one-sided by any means--unless the man was a thorough actor. his touch, his voice even, acquired a caressing way when miss margaret was to be pleased or appeased. rachel, speaking to tillie of it, wondered if his attraction was to children in general or to this one in particular; and holding the baby so that her soft, pink cheek was against his own, he seemed ruminating over the girl's replies, and after a little-- "yes, you must, of course," he said thoughtfully; "else you could never make yourself seem so much a part of it as you do." during the interval of silence the girl's thoughts had been wandering. she had lost the slight thread of their former topic, and looked a little at sea. "a part of what?" she asked. "why, the life here. you seem as if you had always belonged to it--a bit of local color in harmony with the scenes about us." "how flattering!--charmingly expressed!" murmered miss hardy derisively. "a bit of local color? then, according to mr. stuart's impressions i may look forward to finding myself catalogued among greasy squaws and picturesque squaw men." "you seem to take a great deal of delight in turning all i say or do into ridicule," he observed. "you do it on the principle of the country that guys a 'tenderfoot'; and that is just one of the things that stamp you as belonging to the life here. i try to think of you as a kentucky girl transplanted, but even the fancy eludes me. you impress one as belonging to this soil, and more than that, showing a disposition to freeze out new-comers." "i haven't frozen you out." "no--thanks to my temperament that refuses to congeal. i did not leave all my warmth in the south." "meaning that i did?" "meaning that you, for some reason, appear to have done so." "dear me, what a subtle personage you make of me! come here, margaret; this analyst is likely to prejudice you against your only auntie." "let her be with me," he said softly, as the baby's big blue eyes turned toward rachel, and then were screened by heavy, white lids; "she is almost asleep--little darling. is she not a picture? see how she clings to my finger--so tightly;" and then he dropped his face until his lips touched the soft cheek. "it is a child to thank god for," he said lovingly. the girl looked at him, surprised at the thrill of feeling in his tones. "you spoke like a woman just then," she said, her own voice changed slightly; "like a--a mother--a parent." "did i?" he asked, and arose with the child in his arms to deliver it to aunty luce. "perhaps i felt so; is that weakness an added cause for trying to bar me out from the kootenai hills?" but he walked away without giving her a chance to reply. she saw nothing more of him until evening, and then he was rather quiet, sitting beside tillie and miss margaret, with occasional low-toned remarks to them, but not joining in the general conversation. "what a queer remark that was for a man to make!" thought rachel, looking at him across the room;--"a young man especially"; and that started her to thinking of his age, about which people would have widely different opinions. to see him sometimes, laughing and joking with the rest, he looked a boy of twenty. to hear him talking of scientific researches in his own profession and others, of the politics of the day, or literature of the age, one would imagine him at least forty. but sitting quietly, his face in repose, yet looking tired, his eyes so full of life, yet steeped in reveries, the rare mouth relaxed, unsmiling, then he looked what he probably was, thought the girl--about thirty; but it was seldom that he looked like that. "therefore," reasoned this feminine watcher, "it is seldom that we see him as he really is; query--why?" "perhaps i felt as a parent feels!" how frank his words had been, and how unlike most men he was, to give utterance to that thought with so much feeling, and how caressing to the child! rachel had to acknowledge that he was original in many ways, and the ways were generally charming. his affections were so warm, so frankly bestowed; yet that gracious, tender manner of his, even when compared with the bluntness of the men around him, never made him seem effeminate. rachel, thinking of his words, wondered if he had a sweetheart somewhere, that made him think of a possible wife or children longingly--and if so, how that girl must love him! so, despite her semi-warlike attitude, and her delight in thwarting him, she had appreciation enough of his personality to understand how possible it was for him to be loved deeply. jim, under miss hardy's tuition, had been making an attempt to "rope in" an education, and that night was reading doubtfully the history of our glorious republic in its early days; garnishing the statements now and then with opinions of his own, especially the part relating to the character of the original lords of the soil. "say, miss rache, yer given' me a straight tip on this lay-out?" he said at last, shutting the book and eyeing her closely. the question aroused her from the contemplation of the hermes-like head opposite, though she had, like hardy, been pretending to read. "do you mean, is it true?" she asked. "naw!" answered jim, with the intonation of supreme disgust; "i hain't no call to ask that; but what i'm curious about is whether the galoot as wrote the truck lied by accident--someone sort o' playin' it on him, ye see--er whether he thought the rest o' creation was chumps from away back, an' he just naturally laid himself out to sell them cheap--now say, which is it?" in vain his monitor tried to impress on his mind the truth of the chronicles, and the fact that generations ago the indian could be truly called a noble man, until his child-like faith in the straight tongue of the interloper had made a net for his feet, to escape which they had recourse only to treachery and the tomahawk, thus carving in history a character that in the beginning was not his, but one into which he was educated by the godly people who came with their churches and guns, their religion and whisky, to civilize the credulous people of the forests. jim listened, but in the supercilious disbelief in his eyes rachel read the truth. in trying to establish historical facts for his benefit, she was simply losing ground in his estimation at every statement made. "an' you," he finally remarked, after listening in wonderful silence for him--"an' you've read it all, then?" "yes, most of it." "an' swallowed it as gospel?" "well, not exactly such literal belief as that; but i have read not only this history, but others in support of those facts." "ye have, have yeh?" remarked her pupil, with a sarcastic contempt for her book-learning. "well, i allow this one will do me a life-time, fer i've seen flatheads, an' diggers, an' snakes!" thus ended the first lesson in history. "don't you think," said tillie softly to stuart, "that rachel would win more glory as a missionary to the indians than among her own race? she is always running against stumbling-blocks of past knowledge with the progressive white man." rachel cast one silencing glance at the speaker; tillie laughed. "never mind," she said reassuringly; "i will say nothing about your other attempt, and i only hope you will be willing to confine yourself to the indians near home, and not start out to see some flatheads, and diggers, and snakes for yourself." "lawd bress yeh, honey!" spoke up aunty luce, whose ears were always open to anything concerning their red neighbors; "don' yo' go to puttin' no sech thoughts in her haid. miss rache needs tamin' down, she do, 'stead o' 'couragement." "well, it's precious little encouragement i get here, except to grow rusty in everything," complained rachel. "a crusade against even the diggers would be a break in the monotony. i wish i had gone with you to the kootenai village, mr. stuart; that would have been a diversion." "but rather rough riding," he added; "and much of the life, and--well, there is a great deal one would not care to take a lady to see." "you don't know how rachel rides," said tillie, with a note of praise in her voice; "she rides as hard as the men on the ranch. you must go together for a ride, some day. she knows the country very well already." rachel was thinking of the other part of his speech. "i should not have asked to be taken," she said, "but would have gone on my own independence, as one of the party." "then your independence would have led you to several sights revolting to a refined nature," he said seriously, "and you would have wished yourself well out of it." "well, the kootenais are several degrees superior to other tribes of the columbia basin; so you had better fight shy of jim's knowledge. why," she added, with a little burst of indignation that their good points were so neglected, "the kootenais are a self-supporting people, asking nothing of the government. they are independent traders." "say, miss rachel," broke in jim, "was kalitan a kootenai injun?" "no, though he lived with them often. he was of the gros ventres, a race that belongs to the plains rather than the hills." "you are already pretty well posted about the different tribes," observed stuart. "yes, the lawd knows--humph!" grunted aunty luce, evidently thinking the knowledge not a thing to be proud of. "oh, yes," smiled tillie, "rachel takes easily to everything in these hills. you should hear her talking chinook to a blanket brave, or exchanging compliments with her special friend, the arrow." "the arrow? that is a much more suggestive title than the wahoosh, kah-kwa, sipah, and some other equally meaningless names i jotted down as i heard them up there." "they are only meaningless to strangers," answered the girl. "they all have their own significance." "why, this same arrow is called kalitan," broke in jim; "an' what'd you make out of that? both names mean just the same thing. he was called that even when he was a little fellow, he said, 'cause he could run like a streak. why, he used to make the trip down to the settlement an' be back here with the mail afore supper, makin' his forty miles afoot after breakfast; how's that for movin' over rough country?" the swiftness did not seem to make the desired impression, his listener catching, instead, at the fact of their having had an indian mail-carrier. "and where is your indian messenger of late?" he asked. "he has not visited you since my arrival, has he?" "no; he left this country months ago," said rachel. "kalitan is a bit of a wanderer--never long in one place." "davy macdougall says he'd allus loaf around here if genesee would, but he's sure to go trottin' after genesee soon as he takes a trail." "that is the indian you spoke of this morning, is it not?" asked stuart, looking at rachel. "what!" roared jim; and hardy, who was taking a nap behind a paper, awoke with a start. "genesee an injun! well, that's good!" and he broke into shrill, boyish laughter. "well, you ought to just say it to his face, that's all!" "is he not?" he asked, still looking at the girl, who did not answer. "oh, no," said tillie; "he is a white man, a--a--well, he has lived with the indians, i believe." "i understood you to say he himself was an indian." and rachel felt the steady regard of those warm eyes, while she tried to look unconscious, and knew she was failing. hardy laughed, and shook himself rightly awake. "beg your pardon," he said, coming to the rescue, "but she didn't say so; she only gave you the information that he was pure-blooded; and i should say he is--as much of a white man as you or i." "mine was the mistake," acknowledged stuart, with his old easy manner once more; "but miss rachel's love of a joke did not let me fall into it without a leader. and may i ask who he is, this white man with the indian name--what is he?" rachel answered him then brusquely: "you saw a white man with the kootenais, did you not--one who lives as they do, with a squaw wife, or slave? you described the specimen as more degraded than the indians about him. well, genesee is one of the class to which that man belongs--a squaw man; and he is also an indian by adoption. do you think you would care for a closer acquaintance?" tillie opened her eyes wide at this sweeping denunciation of genesee and his life, while even hardy looked surprised; rachel had always, before, something to say in his favor. but the man she questioned so curtly was the only one who did not change even expression. he evidently forgot to answer, but sat there looking at her, with a little smile in his eyes. once in bed, it did not keep her awake; and the gray morning crept in ere she opened her eyes, earlier than usual, and from a cause not usual--the sound in the yard of a man's voice singing snatches of song, ignoring the words sometimes, but continuing the air in low carols of music, such as speak so plainly of a glad heart. it was not yet sun-up, and she rebelled, drowsily, at the racket as she rolled over toward the window and looked out. there he was, tinkering at something about his saddle, now and then whistling in mimicry of a bird swaying on a leafless reed in the garden. she could see the other men, out across the open space by the barn, moving around as usual, looking after the domestic stock; but until one has had a breakfast, no well-regulated individual is hilarious or demonstrative, and their movements, as she could see, were not marvels of fast locomotion. they looked as she felt, she thought, yawningly, and groped around for her shoes, and finding them, sat down on the side of the bed again and looked out at that musical worker in the yard. she could hear aunty luce tinkling the dishes in the kitchen, and tillie and miss margaret, in the next room, cooing over some love-story of dawn they were telling each other. all seemed drowsy and far off, except that penetrating, cheery voice outside. "the de'il tak' him!" she growled, quoting macdougall; "what does the fellow mean by shouting like that this time of the night? he is as much of a boy as jim." "here awa', there awa', wandering willie. here awa', there awa', haud awa', hame!" warbled the stuart, with an accent that suited his name; and the girl wakened up a bit to the remembrance of the old song, thinking, as she dressed, that, social and cheery as he often was, this was the first time she had ever heard him sing; and what a resonant, yet boyish, timbre thrilled through his voice. she threw up the window. "look here!" she said, with mock asperity, "we are willing to make some allowance for national enthusiasm, mr. charles, prince of the stuarts, but we rebel at scotch love-songs shouted under our windows before daybreak." "all right," he smiled, amiably. "i know one or two irish ones, if you prefer them. "oh, acushla mavourneen! won't you marry me? gramachree, mavourneen; oh, won't you marry me?" click! went the window shut again, and from the inside she saw him looking up at the casement with eyes full of triumph and mischief. he was metamorphosed in some way. yesterday he had been serious and earnest, returning from his hill trip with something like despondency, and now-- she remembered her last sight of him the night before, as he smiled at her from the stairway. ah, yes, yes! all just because he had felt jubilant over outwitting her, or rather over seeing a chance do the work for another. was it for that he was still singing? had her instincts then told her truly when she had connected his presence with the memory of that older man's sombre eyes and dogged exile? well, the exile was his own business, not that of anyone else--least of all that of this debonair individual, with his varying emotions. and she went down the stairs with a resentful feeling against the light-hearted melody of "acushla mavourneen." "be my champion, mrs. hardy," he begged at the breakfast-table, "or i am tabooed forever by miss rachel." "how so?" "by what i intended as an act of homage, giving her a serenade at sunrise in the love-songs of my forefathers." "nonsense!" laughed rachel. "he never knew what his forefathers were until davy macdougall brushed up his history; and you have not thought much of the songs you were trying to sing, else you would know they belong to the people of the present and future as well as the past. "trying to sing!" was all the comment mr. stuart made, turning with an injured air to tillie. "learn some indian songs," advised that little conspirator impressively; "in the kootenai country you must sing chinook if you want to be appreciated." "there speaks one who knows," chimed in hardy lugubriously. "a year ago i had a wife and an undivided affection; but i couldn't sing chinook, and the other fellow could, and for many consecutive days i had to take a back seat." "hen! how dare you?" "in fact," he continued, unrestrained by the little woman's tones or scolding eyes, "i believe i have to thank jealousy for ever reinstating me to the head of the family." "indeed," remarked stuart, with attention impressively flattering; "may i ask how it was effected?" "oh, very simply--very simply. chance brought her the knowledge that there was another girl up the country to whom her hero sang chinook songs, and, presto! she has ever since found english sufficient for all her needs." and tillie, finding she had enough to do to defend herself without teasing rachel, gave her attention to her husband, and the girl turned to stuart. "all this gives no reason for your spasms of scotch expression this morning," she reminded him. "no? well, my father confessor in the feminine, i was musical--beg pardon, tried to be--because i awoke this morning with an unusually light heart; and i sang scotch songs--or tried to sing them--because i was thinking of a scotchman, and contemplating a visit to him to-day." "davy macdougall?" "the same." "and you were with him only yesterday." "and may say good-bye to him to-morrow for a long time." "so you are going?" she asked, in a more subdued tone. "i believe so!" and for the moment the question and answer made the two seem entirely alone, though surrounded by the others. then she laughed in the old quizzical, careless way. "i see now the inspiration to song and jubilance that prevented you from sleeping," she said, nodding her head sagaciously. "it was the thought of escaping from us and our isolated life. is that it?" "no, it is not," he answered earnestly. "my stay here has been a pleasure, and out of it i hope will grow something deeper--a happiness." the feeling in the words made her look at him quickly. his eyes met her own, with some meaning back of their warmth that she did not understand. nine girls out of ten would have thought the words and manner suggestive of a love declaration and would at once have dropped their eyes in the prettiest air of confusion and been becomingly fluttered; but rachel was the tenth, and her eyes were remarkably steady as she returned his glance with one of inquiry, reached for another biscuit, and said: "yes?" but the low tones and his earnestness had not escaped two pairs of eyes at the table--those of mistress tillie and master jim--both of them coming to about the same conclusion in the matter, the one that rachel was flirting, and the other that stuart "had a bad case of spoons." many were the expostulations when, after breakfast, hardy's guest informed him that his exit from their circle was likely to be almost as abrupt as his entrance had been. in vain was there held out to him the sport of their proposed hunt--every persuasive argument was met with a regretful refusal. "i am sorry to put aside that pleasure," he answered; "but, to tell the truth, i scarcely realized how far the season has advanced. the snow will soon be deep in the mountains, they tell me, and before that time i must get across the country to fort owens. it is away from a railroad far enough to make awkward travel in bad weather, and i realize that the time is almost past when i can hope for dry days and sunshine; so, thinking it over last night, i felt i had better start as early as possible." "you know nothing of the country in that direction?" asked hardy. "no more than i did of this; but an old school-fellow of mine is one of the officers there--captain sneath. i have not seen him for years, but can not consider my trip up here complete without visiting him; so, you see--" "better fight shy o' that territory," advised andrews, chipping in with a cowboy's brief say-so. "injun faction fights all through thar, an' it's risky, unless ye go with a squad--a big chance to pack bullets." "then i shall have an opportunity of seeing life there under the most stirring circumstances," replied stuart in smiling unconcern, "for in time of peace a military post is about the dullest place one can find." "to be sure," agreed his adviser, eyeing him dubiously; "an' if ye find yerself sort o' pinin' for the pomp o' war, as i heard an actor spoutin' about once, in a theatre at helena--well, down around bitter root river, an' up the nez perce fork, i reckon you'll find a plenty o' it jest about this time o' year." "and concluding as i have to leave at once," resumed stuart, turning to hardy, "i felt like taking a ride up to macdougall's for a good-bye. i find myself interested in the old man, and would not like to leave without seeing him again." "i rather think i've got to stay home to-day," said his host ruefully, "else i would go with you, but--" "not a word of your going," broke in stuart; "do you think i've located here for the purpose of breaking up your routine of stock and agricultural schemes? not a bit of it! i'm afraid, as it is, your hospitality has caused them to suffer; so not a word of an escort. i wouldn't take a man from the place, so--" "what about a woman?" asked rachel, with a challenging glance that was full of mischief. for a moment he looked at a loss for a reply, and she continued: "because i don't mind taking a ride to davy macdougall's my own self. as you say, the sunny days will be few now, and i may not have another chance for weeks; so here i am, ready to guide you, escort you, and guard you with my life." what was there left for the man to say? "what possessed you to go to-day, rachel?" asked tillie dubiously. "do you think it is quite--" "oh, yes, dear--quite," returned that young lady confidently; "and you need not assume that anxious air regarding either the proprieties or my youthful affections, for, to tell the truth, i am impelled to go through sheer perversity; not because your latest favorite wants me, but simply because he does not." twenty minutes after her offer they were mounted and clattering away over the crisp bronze turf. to stuart the task of entertaining a lady whose remarks to him seldom verged from the ironical was anything but a sinecure--more, it was easy to see that he was unused to it; and an ungallant query to himself was: "why did she come, anyway?" he had not heard her reply to tillie. the air was crisp and cold enough to make their heavy wraps a comfort, especially when they reached the higher land; the sun was showing fitfully, low-flying, skurrying clouds often throwing it in eclipse. "snow is coming," prophesied the girl, with a weather-eye to the north, where the sky was banking up in pale-gray masses; "perhaps not heavy enough to impede your trip south, to owens, but that bit over there looks like a visiting-card of winter." "how weather-wise you are!" he observed. "now i had noticed not the slightest significance in all that; in fact, you seem possessed of several indian accomplishments--their wood-lore, their language, their habit of going to nature instead of an almanac; and did not mrs. hardy say you knew some indian songs? who taught you them?" "songs came near getting us into a civil war at breakfast," she observed, "and i am not sure that the ground is any more safe around indian than scotch ones." "there is something more substantial of the former race" he said, pointing ahead. it was the hulking figure of a siwash, who had seen them first and tried to dodge out of sight, and failing, halted at the edge of a little stream. "hostile?" queried stuart, relying more on his companion's knowledge than his own; but she shook her head. "no; from the reservation, i suppose. he doesn't look like a blanket brave. we will see." coming within speaking distance, she hailed him across the divide of the little stream, and got in reply what seemed to stuart an inextricable mass of staccatos and gutturals. "he is a kootenai," she explained, "and wants to impress on our minds that is a good indian." "he does not look good for much," was the natural remark of the white man, eyeing mr. kootenai critically; "even on his native heath he is not picturesque." "no--poor imp!" agreed the girl, "with winter so close, their concern is more how they are to live than how they appear to people who have no care for them." she learned he was on his way south to the flathead reservation; so he had evidently solved the question of how he intended living for the winter, at all events. he was, however, short of ammunition. when rachel explained his want, stuart at once agreed to give him some. "don't be in a hurry!" advised his commander-in-chief; "wait until we know how it is that he has no ammunition, and so short a distance from his tribe. an indian can always get that much if he is not too lazy to hunt or trap, or is not too much of a thief." but she found the noble red man too proud to answer many questions of a squaw. the fear however, of hostilities from the ever-combative blackfeet seemed to be the chief moving cause. "rather a weak-backed reason," commented rachel; "and i guess you can dig roots from here to the reservation. no powder, no shot." "squaw--papoose--sick," he added, as a last appeal to sympathy. "where?" he waved a dirty hand up the creek. "go on ahead; show us where they are." his hesitation was too slight to be a protest, but still there was a hesitation, and the two glanced at each other as they noticed it. "i don't believe there is either squaw or papoose," decided stuart. "lo is a romancer." but there was, huddled over a bit of fire, and holding in her arms a little bundle of bronze flesh and blood. it was, as the indian had said, sick--paroxysms of shivers assailing it from time to time. "give me your whisky-flask!" rachel said promptly; and dismounting, she poured some in the tin cup at her saddle and set it on the fire--the blue, sputtering flame sending the odor of civilization into the crisp air. cooling it to suit baby's lips, she knelt beside the squaw, who had sat stolidly, taking no notice of the new-comers; but as the girl's hand was reached to help the child she raised her head, and then rachel knew who she was. [illustration: cooling it to suit baby's lips, she knelt beside the squaw] they did not speak, but after a little of the warm liquor had forced itself down the slight throat, rachel left the cup in the mother's hands, and reached again for the whisky. "you can get more from davy macdougall," she said, in a half-conciliatory tone at this wholesale confiscation; "and--and you might give him some ammunition--not much." "what a vanishing of resolves!" he remarked, measuring out an allowance of shot; "and all because of a copper-colored papoose. so you have a bit of natural, womanly weakness?" the girl did not answer; there was a certain air of elation about her as she undid a scarf from her throat and wrapped it about the little morsel of humanity. "go past the sheep ranch," she directed the passive warrior, who stood gazing at the wealth in whisky and powder. "do you know where it is--hardy's? tell them i sent you--show them that," and she pointed to the scarf; "tell them what you need for squaw and papoose; they will find it." skulking brave signified that he understood, and then led betty toward her. "he is not very hospitable," she confided to stuart, in the white man's tongue, "else he would not be in such haste to get rid of us." and although their host did not impress one as having a highly strung nervous organization, yet his manner during their halt gave them the idea that he was ill at ease. they did not tarry long, but having given what help they could, rode away, lighter of whisky and ammunition, and the girl, strange enough, seemed lighter of heart. after they had reached a point high above the little creek, they turned for a look over the country passed. it lay in brown and blue-gray patches, with dashes of dark-green on the highlands, where the pines grew. "what is the white thing moving along that line of timber?" asked the girl, pointing in the direction they had come. it was too far off to see clearly, but with the aid of stuart's field-glass, it was decided to be the interesting family they had stopped with a little ways back. and the white thing noticed was a horse they were riding. it was getting over the ground at the fastest rate possible with its triple weight, for the squaw was honored with a seat back of her lord. "i imagined they were traveling on foot, didn't you?" asked stuart. "what a fool he was to steal a white horse!" remarked the girl contemptuously; "he might know it would be spotted for miles." chapter iv. a trio in witchland. the noon was passed when they reached the cabin on scot's mountain, and found its owner on the point of leaving for the maple range. but quickly replacing his gun on its pegs, he uncovered the fire, set on the coffee-pot, and, with rachel's help, in a very short time had a steaming-hot dinner of broiled bear steaks and "corn-dodgers," with the additional delicacy of a bowl of honey from the wild bees' store. "i have some laid by as a bit of a gift to mr. hardy's lady," he confided to rachel. "i found this fellow," tapping the steak, "in one o' the traps as i was a-comin' my way home; an' the fresh honey on his paws helped me smell out where he had spied it, and a good lot o' it there was that mr. grizzly had na reached." "see here," said stuart, noting that, because of their visit, the old man had relinquished all idea of going to the woods, "we must not interfere with your plans, for at best we have but a short time to stay." and then he explained the reason. when the question of snow was taken into account, davy agreed that stuart's decision was perhaps wise; but "he was main sorry o' the necessity." "an' it's to owens ye be taken' the trail?" he asked. "eh, but that's curious now. i have a rare an' good friend thereabouts that i would be right glad to send a word to; an' i was just about to take a look at his tunnel an' the cabin, when ye come the day, just to see it was all as it should be ere the snows set in." "i should be delighted to be of any service to you," said stuart warmly; "and to carry a message is a very slight one. who is your friend?" "it's just the man genesee, who used to be my neighbor. but he's left me alone now these many months--about a year;" and he turned to rachel for corroboration. "more than a year," she answered briefly. "well, it is now. i'm losin' track o' dates these late days; but you're right, lass, an' the winter would ha' been ower lonely if it had na been for yourself. think o' that, charlie stuart: this slim bit o' womankind substituting herself for a rugged build o' a man taller than you by a half-head, an' wi' no little success, either. but," he added teasingly, "ye owed me the debt o' your company for the sending o' him away; so ye were only honest after all, rachel hardy." rachel laughed, thinking it easier, perhaps, to dispose of the question thus than by any disclaimer--especially with the eyes of stuart on her as they were. "you are growing to be a tease," she answered. "you will be saying i sent kalitan and talapa, next." "but talapa has na gone from the hills?" "hasn't she? well, i saw her on the trail, going direct south, this morning, as fast as she could get over the ground, with a warrior and a papoose as companions." "did ye now? well, good riddance to them. they ha' been loafing around the kootenai village ever since i sent them from the cabin in the summer. that talapa was a sleepy-eyed bit o' old nick. i told genesee that same from the first, when he was wasting his stock o' pity on her. ye see," he said, turning his speech to stuart, "a full-blooded siwash has some redeeming points, and a character o' their own; but the half-breeds are a part white an' a part red, with a good wheen o' the devil's temper thrown in." "she didn't appear to have much of the last this morning," observed rachel. "she looked pretty miserable." "ah, well, tak' the best o' them, an' they look that to the whites. an' so they're flittin' to the reservation to live off the government? skulking bob'll be too lazy to be even takin' the chance o' fightin' with his people against the blackfeet, if trouble should come; and there's been many a straggler from the rebels makin' their way north to the blackfeet, an' that is like to breed mischief." "and your friend is at owens?" "yes--or thereabouts. one o' the foremost o' their scouts, they tell me, an' a rare good one he is, with no prejudice on either side o' the question." "i should think, being a white man, his sympathies would lean toward his own race," observed stuart. "well, that's as may chance. there's many the man who finds his best friends in strange blood. genesee is thought no little of among the kootenais--more, most like, than he would be where he was born and bred. folk o' the towns know but little how to weigh a man." "and is he from the cities?" for the first time davy macdougall looked up quickly. "i know not," he answered briefly, "an', not giving to you a short answer, i care not. few questions make long friends in the hills." stuart was somewhat nonplussed at the bluntness of the hint, and rachel was delighted. "you see," she reminded him wickedly, "one can be an m. d., an l. s. d., or any of the annexations, without kootenai people considering his education finished. but look here, davy macdougall, we only ran up to say 'klahowya,' and have got to get back to-night; so, if you are going over to tamahnous cabin, don't stop on our account; we can go part of the way with you." "but ye can go all the way, instead o' but a part, an' then no be out o' your road either," he said, with eagerness that showed how loath he was to part from his young companions. "ye know," he added, turning to rachel, "it is but three miles by the cross-cut to genesee's, while by the valley ye would cover eight on the way. now, the path o'er the hills is no fit for the feet o' a horse, except it be at the best o' seasons; but this is an ower good one, with neither the rain nor the ice; an' if ye will risk it--" of course they would risk it; and with a draught apiece from an odorous, dark-brown jug, and the gift of a flask that found its way to stuart's pocket, they started. they needed that swallow of brandy as a brace against the cold wind of the hills. it hustled through the pines like winged fiends let loose from the north. dried berries from the bushes and cones from the trees were sent pattering to sleep for the winter, and the sighs through the green roofing, and the moans from twisted limbs, told of the hardihood needed for life up there. the idea impressed stuart so much that he gave voice to it, and was laughed at grimly by the old mountaineer. "oh, well, it just takes man to be man, an' that's all when all's said," he answered "to be sure, there be times when one canna stir for the snow wreaths, but that's to be allowed for; an' then ye may ha' took note that my cabin is in shelter o' all but the south wind, an' that's a great matter. men who live in the mountain maun get used to its frolics; but it's an ugly bit," he acknowledged, as they stopped to rest and look up over the seemingly pathless way they had come; "but i've been thankful for it many's the time, when, unlooked for, genesee and mowitza would show their faces at my door, an' she got so she could make that climb in the dark--think o' that! ah, but she was the wise one!" stuart glanced at rachel, who was more likely than himself to understand what was meant by the "wise one;" but he did not again venture a question. mowitza was another squaw, he supposed, and one of the companions of the man genesee. and the other one they had passed in the morning?--her name also was connected with the scout whom the white girl seemed to champion or condemn as the fancy pleased her. and stuart, as a stranger to the social system of the wilderness, had his curiosity widely awakened. a good deal of it was directed to rachel herself. hearing macdougall speak of the man to her, he could understand that she had no lack of knowledge in that direction--and the direction was one of which the right sort of a girl was supposed to be ignorant; or, if not ignorant, at least to conceal her wisdom in the wise way of her sisters. this one did nothing of the sort; and the series of new impressions received made him observe the girl with a scrutiny not so admiring as he had always, until now, given her. he was irritated with himself that it was so, yet his ideas of what a woman should be were getting some hard knocks at her hands. suddenly the glisten of the little lake came to them through the gray trunks of the trees, and a little later they had descended the series of small circular ridges that terraced the cove from the timber to the waters, that was really not much more than an immense spring that happened to bubble up where there was a little depression to spread itself in and show to advantage. "but a mill would be turned easily by that same bit o' water," observed macdougall; "an' there's where genesee showed the level head in locating his claim where he did." "it looks like wasted power, placed up here," observed stuart, "for it seems about the last place in christendom for a mill." "well, so it may look to many a pair o' eyes," returned the old man, with a wink and a shrug that was indescribable, but suggested a vast deal of unuttered knowledge; "but the lad who set store by it because o' the water-power was a long ways from a fool, i can tell ye." again stuart found himself trying to count the spokes of some shadowy wheels within wheels that had a trick of eluding him; and he felt irritatingly confident that the girl looking at him with quizzical, non-committal eyes could have enlightened him much as to the absent ruler of this domain, who, according to her own words, was utterly degraded, yet had a trick of keeping his personality such a living thing after a year's absence. the cabin was cold with the chill dreariness of any house that is left long without the warmth of an embodied human soul. only the wandering, homeless spirits of the air had passed in and out, in and out of its chinks, sighing through them for months, until, on entrance, one felt an intuitive, sympathetic shiver for their loneliness. a fire was soon crackling on the hearth; but the red gleams did not dance so merrily on the rafters as they had the first time she had been warmed at the fire-place--the daylight was too merciless a rival. it penetrated the corners and showed up the rude bunk and some mining implements; from a rafter hung a roll of skins done up in bands of some pliable withes. evidently genesee's injunction had been obeyed, for even the pottery, and reed baskets, and bowls still shone from the box of shelves. "it's a mystery to me those things are not stolen by the indians," observed stuart, noticing the lack of any fastening on the door, except a bar on the inside. "there's no much danger o' that," said the old man grimly, "unless it be by a siwash who knows naught o' the country. the kootenai people would do no ill to genesee, nor would any injun when he lives in the tamahnous ground." "what territory is that?" "just the territory o' witchcraft--no less. the old mine and the spring, with the circle o' steps down to it, they let well alone, i can tell ye; and as for stealin', they'd no take the worth o' a tenpenny nail from between the two hills that face each other, an' the rocks o' them 'gives queer echoes that they canna explain. oh, yes, they have their witches, an' their warlocks, an' enchanted places, an' will no go against their belief, either." "but," said rachel, with a slight hesitation, "talapa was not afraid to live here." "an' did ye not know, then, that she was not o' kootenai stock?" asked the old man. "well, she was not a bit o' it; genesee bought her of a beast of a blackfoot." "bought her?" asked stuart, and even rachel opened her eyes in attention--perhaps, after all, not knowing so much as the younger man had angrily given her credit for. "just that; an' dear she would ha' been at most any price. but she was a braw thing to look at, an' young enough to be sorry o'er. an' so when he come across her takin' a beating like a mule he could na stand it; an' the only way he could be sure o' putting an end to it was by maken' a bargain; an' that's just what he did, an' a'most afore he had time to take thought, the girl was his, an' he had to tek her with him. well," and the old man laughed comically at the remembrance, "you should ha' seen him at the comin' home!--tried to get her off his hands by leavin' her an' a quitclaim at my cabin; but i'd have none o' that--no half-breed woman could stay under a roof o' mine; an' the finish o' it was he hed to bring her here to keep house for him, an' a rueful commencement it was. then it was but a short while 'til he got hurt one day in the tunnel, an' took a deal o' care before he was on his feet again. well, ye know womankind make natural nurses, an' by the time she had him on the right trail again he had got o' the mind that talapa was a necessity o' the cabin; an' so ye may know she stayed." "in what tunnel was he injured?" asked stuart. "why, just--" "there's your horse ranging calmly up toward the timber," observed rachel, turning from the window to stuart. "do you want to walk to the ranch?" "well, not to-day;" and a moment later he was out of the door and running across the terraced meadow. "don't tell him too much about the tunnel," suggested the girl, when she and the old man were alone. "why, lass,"--he began; but she cut him short brusquely, keeping her eye on the form on the hill-side. "oh, he may be all right; but it isn't like you, davy macdougall, to tell all you know to strangers, even if they do happen to have scotch names--you clannish old goose!" "but the lad's all right." "may be he is; but you've told him enough of the hills now to send him away thinking we are all a rather mixed and objectionable lot. oh, yes, he does too!" as davy tried to remonstrate. "i don't care how much you tell him about the indians; but that tunnel may have something in it that genesee wouldn't want eastern speculators spying into while he's away--do you see?" evidently he did, and the view was not one flattering to his judgment, for, in order to see more clearly, he took off his fur cap, scratched his head, and then replacing the covering with a great deal of energy, he burst out: "well, damn a fool, say i." rachel paid not the slightest attention to this profane plea. "i suppose he's all right," she continued; "only when somebody's interest is at stake, especially a friend's, we oughtn't to take things for granted, and keeping quiet hurts no one, unless it be a stranger's curiosity." the old man looked at her sharply. "ye dinna like him, then?" she hesitated, her eyes on the tall form leading back the horse. just then there seemed a strange likeness to mowitza and genesee in their manner, for the beast was tossing its head impatiently, and he was laughing, evidently teasing it with the fact of its capture. "yes, i do like him," she said at last; "there is much about him to like. but we must not give away other people's affairs because of that." "right you are, my lass," answered davy; "an' it's rare good sense ye show in remindin' me o' the same. it escapes me many's the time that he's a bit of a stranger when all's said; an' do ye know, e'en at the first he had no the ways of a stranger to me. i used to fancy that something in his build, or it may ha' been but the voice, was like to--" "you are either too old or not old enough to have fancies, davy macdougall," interrupted the girl briskly, as stuart re-entered. "well, is it time to be moving?" he looked at his watch. "almost; but come to the fire and get well warmed before we start. i believe it grows colder; here, take this seat." "well, i will not," she answered, looking about her; "don't let your gallantry interfere with your comfort, for i've a chair of my own when i visit this witchy quarter of the earth--yes, there it is." and from the corner by the bunk she drew forward the identical chair on which she had sat through the night at her only other visit. but from her speech stuart inferred that this time was but one of the many. "what are you going to do here, davy macdougall?" she asked, drawing her chair close beside him and glancing comprehensively about the cabin; "weather-board it up for winter?" "naw, scarcely that," he answered good-humoredly; "but just to gather up the blankets or skins or aught that the weather or the rats would lay hold of, and carry them across the hills to my own camp till the spring comes; mayhaps he may come with it." the hope in his voice was not very strong, and the plaintiveness in it was stronger than he knew. the other two felt it, and were silent. "an' will ye be tellin' him for me," he continued, after a little, to stuart, "that all is snug an' safe, an' that i'll keep them so, an' a welcome with them, against his return? an' just mention, too, that his father, grey eagle, thinks the time is long since he left, an' that the enemy--time--is close on his trail. an'--an' that the day he comes back will be holiday in the hills." "the last from grey eagle or yourself?" asked stuart teasingly. but the girl spoke up, covering the old man's momentary hesitation. "from me," she said coolly; "if any name is needed to give color to so general a desire, you can use mine." his face flushed; he looked as if about to speak to her, but, instead, his words were to macdougall. "i will be very glad to carry the word to your friend," he said; "it is but a light weight." "yes, i doubt na it seems so to the carrier, but i would no think it so light a thing to ha' word o' the lad. we ha' been neighbors, ye see, this five year, with but little else that was civilized to come near us. an' there's a wide difference atween neighbors o' stone pavements an' neighbors o' the hills--a fine difference." "yes, there is," agreed the girl; and from their tones one would gather the impression that all the splendors of a metropolis were as nothing when compared with the luxuries of "shack" life in the "bush." "can ye hit the trail down at the forks without me along?" asked macdougall, with a sudden remembrance of the fact that rachel did not know the way so well from the "place of the tamahnous" as she did from scot's mountain. she nodded her head independently. "i can, davy macdougall. and you are paying me a poor compliment when you ask me so doubtfully. i've been prowling through the bush enough for this past year to know it for fifty miles around, instead of twenty. and now if your highness thinks we've had our share of this fire, let us 'move our freight,' 'hit the breeze,' or any other term of the woolly west that means action, and get up and git." "i am at your service," answered stuart, with a graciousness of manner that made her own bravado more glaring by contrast. he could see she assumed much for the sake of mischief and irritation to himself; and his tone in reply took an added intonation of refinement; but the hint was lost on her--she only laughed. "i tell you what it is, davy macdougall," she remarked to that gentleman, "this slip of your nation has been planted in the wrong century. he belongs to the age of lily-like damsels in sad-colored frocks, and knights of high degree on bended knee and their armor hung to the rafters. i get a little mixed in my dates sometimes, but believe it was the age when caps and bells were also in fashion." "dinna mind her at all," advised the old man; "she'd be doin' ye a good turn wi' just as ready a will as she would mak' sport o' ye. do i not know her?--ah, but i do!" "so does the stuart," said rachel; "and as for doing him a good turn, i proved my devotion in that line this morning, when i saved him from a lonely, monotonous ride--didn't i?" she added, glancing up at him. "you look positively impish," was the only reply he made; and returning her gaze with one that was half amusement, half vexation, he went out for the horses. "you see, he didn't want me at all, davy macdougall," confided the girl, and if she felt any chagrin she concealed it admirably. "but they've been talking some about genesee down at the ranch, and--and stuart's interest was aroused. i didn't know how curious he might be--eastern folks are powerful so"--and in the statement and adoption of vernacular she seemed to forget how lately she was of the east herself; "and i concluded he might ask questions, or encourage you to talk about--well, about the tunnel, you know; so i just came along to keep the trail free of snags--see?" the old man nodded, and watched her in a queer, dubious way; as she turned, a moment later, to speak to stuart at the door, she noticed it, and laughed. "you think i'm a bit loony, don't you, davy macdougall? well, i forgive you. may be, some day, you'll see i'm not on a blind trail. come and see us soon, and give me a chance to prove my sanity." "strange that any mind could doubt it," murmured stuart. "come, we haven't time for proofs of the question now. good-bye, macdougall; take care of yourself for the winter. perhaps i'll get back in the summer to see how well you have done so." a hearty promise of welcome, a hand-clasp, a few more words of admonition and farewell, and then the two young people rode away across the ground deemed uncanny by the natives; and the old man went back to his lonely task. on reaching the ranch at dusk, it was rachel who was mildly hilarious, seeming to have changed places with the gay chanter of the dawn. he was not sulky, but something pretty near it was in his manner, and rather intensified under miss hardy's badinage. she told the rest how he divided his whisky with the squaw; hinted at a fear that he intended adopting the papoose; gave them an account of the conversation between himself and skulking brave; and otherwise made their trip a subject for ridicule. "did you meet with indians?" asked tillie, trying to get the girl down to authentic statements. "yes, my dear, we did, and i sent them home to you--or told them to come; but they evidently had not time for morning calls." "were they friendly?" "pretty much--enough so to ask for powder and shot. none of the men sighted them?" "no." "and no other indians?" "no--why?" "only that i would not like talapa to be roughly unhorsed." "talapa! why, rachel, that's--" "yes, of course it is--with a very promising family in tow. say, suppose you hustle aunty up about that supper, won't you? and have her give the stuart something extra nice; he has had a hard day of it." chapter v. a visit in the night-time. yahka kelapie. the snows had dropped a soft cloak over the kootenai hills, and buried the valleys in great beds of crystallized down. rachel's prophecy had proven a true one, for the clouds that day had been a visiting-card from winter. that day was two weeks gone now; so was stuart's leave-taking, and at the ranch life had dropped into the old lines, but with an impression of brightness lost. miss margaret had not yet got over the habit of turning quickly if anyone entered the room, and showing her disappointment in a frown when it was not the one looked for. aunty luce declared she "nevah did see a chile so petted on one who wasn't no kin." all of them discovered they had been somewhat "petted" on the genial nature. again the evenings were passed with magazines or cards; during his stay they had revived the primitive custom of taking turns telling stories, and in that art stuart had proven himself a master, sometimes recounting actual experiences of self or friends, again giving voice to some remembered gem of literature; but, whatever the theme, it was given life, through the sympathetic tendencies of the man who had so much the timber of an actor--or rather an artist--the spirit that tends to reproduce or create. if rachel missed him, she kept quiet about it, and ridiculed the rest if any regrets came to her ears. no one minded that much; rachel ridiculed everyone--even herself. sometimes she thought fate seemed more than willing to help her. one night, two weeks after that ride from the "place of the tamahnous," she was struck with a new conviction of the fact. andrews had gone to holland's for the mail and domestic miscellany. a little after sun-up he had started, and the darkness was three hours old, and yet no sign or sound. the rest had finally given up the idea of getting any letters that night, and had gone to bed. as usual, rachel--the night-owl of the family--was left the last guard at the warm hearth. upstairs she could hear jim's voice in the "boys'" room, telling ivans some exploit whose character was denoted by one speech that made its way through the ceiling of pine boards: "yes, sir; my horse left his'n half a length behind every time it hit the ground." ivans grunted. evidently he had listened to recitals from the same source before, and was too tired for close attention; anyway, the remarks of this truthful james drifted into a monologue, and finally into silence, and no sound of life was left in the house. she had been reading a book stuart had sent back to her by hardy, the day he left. she wondered a little why, for he had never spoken of it to her. it was a novel, a late publication, and by an author whose name she had seen affixed to magazine work; and the charm in it was undeniable--the charm of quiet hearts and restful pictures, that proved the writer a lover of the tender, sympathetic tones of life, rather than the storms and battles of human emotions. it held the girl with a puzzling, unusual interest--one that in spite of her would revert from the expressed thoughts on the paper to the personality of the man who had sent it to her, and she found in many instances, a mystifying likeness. she sat there thinking drowsily over it, and filled with the conviction that it was really time to go to bed; but the big chair was so comfortable, and the little simmer of the burning wood was like a lullaby, and she felt herself succumbing, without the slightest rebellion, to the restful influence. she was aroused by the banging of a door somewhere, and decided that andrews had at last returned; and remembering the number of things he had to bring in, concluded to go out and help him. her impulse was founded as much on economy as generosity, for the late hour was pretty good proof that andrews was comfortably drunk--also that breakages were likely to be in order. it was cloudy--only the snow gave light; the air was not cold, but had in it the softness of rain. over it she walked quickly, fully awakened by the thought of the coffee getting a bath of vinegar, or the mail mucilaged together with molasses. "oh, here you are at last!" she remarked, in that inane way people have when they care not whether you are here or in the other place. "you took your own time." "well, i didn't take any other fellow's!" returned the man from the dark corner where he was unsaddling the horse. andrews was usually very obsequious to miss rachel, and she concluded he must be pretty drunk. "i came out to help you with the things," she remarked from her post in the door-way; "where are they?" "i've got 'em myself," came the gruff tones again from the corner. "i reckon i'll manage without help. you'd better skip for the house--you'll catch cold likely." "why, it isn't cold--are you? i guess aunty left a lunch for you. i'll go and warm the coffee." she started, and then stopped. "say, did you get any letters for me?" "no." with a grumble about her ill-luck, she started back toward the house, the late arrival following a little ways behind with something over his shoulder. once she looked back. "i rather think andrews gets on dignified drunks," she soliloquized; "he is walking pretty straight, anyway." she set the coffee-pot on the coals and glanced at the bundle he had dropped just inside the door--it was nothing but a blanket and a saddle. "well, upon my word!" she began, and rose to her feet; but she did not say any more, for, in turning to vent her displeasure on andrews, she was tongue-tied by the discovery that it was not he who had followed her from the stable. "genesee!" she breathed, in a tone a little above a whisper. "alah mika chahko!" she was too utterly astonished either to move toward him or offer her hand; but the welcome in her indian words was surely plain enough for him to understand. it was just like him, however, not to credit it, and he smiled a grim understanding of his own, and walked over to a chair. "yes, that's who it is," he remarked. "i am sorry, for the sake of your hopes, that it isn't the other fellow; but--here i am." he had thrown his hat beside him and leaned back in the big chair, shutting his eyes sleepily. she had never seen him look so tired. "tillikum, i am glad to see you again," she said, going to him and holding out her hand. he smiled, but did not open his eyes. "it took you a long time to strike that trail," he observed. "what brought you out to the stable?" "i thought you were andrews, and that you were drunk and would break things." "oh!" "and i am glad to see you, jack." he opened his eyes then. "thank you, little girl. that is a good thing for a man to hear, and i believe you. come here. it was a good thing for me to get that word from kalitan, too. i reckon you know all that, though, or you wouldn't have sent it." she did not answer, but stooped to lift the pot of coffee back from the blaze. the action recalled him to the immediate practical things, and he said: "think i can stay all night here?" "i don't know of any reason to prevent it." "mowitza was used up, and i wanted a roof for her; but i didn't allow to come to the house myself." "where would you have slept?" "in my blanket, on the hay." "just as if we would let you do that on our place!" "no one would have known it if you had kept away from the stable, and in your bed, where you ought to be." "shall i go there at once, or pour your coffee first?" "a cup of coffee would be a treat; i'm dead tired." the coffee was drank, and the lunch for andrews was appropriated for genesee. "have you come back to the kootenai country for good?" she asked, after furnishing him with whatever she could find in the pantry without awakening the rest. "i don't know--it may be for bad," he replied doubtfully. "i've taken the trail north to sound any tribes that are hostile, and if troops are needed they are to follow me." "up into this country?" "i reckon so. are you afraid of fighting?" she did not answer. a new idea, a sudden remembrance, had superseded that of indian warfare. "how long since you left fort owens?" she asked. "fifteen days. why?" "a friend of macdougall's started in that direction about two weeks ago. davy sent a kind message by him; but you must have passed it on the way." "likely; i've been in the flathead country, and that's wide of the trail to owens. who was the man?" "his name is stuart." he set the empty cup down, and looked in the fire for a moment with a steadiness that made the girl doubt if he had either heard or noticed; but after a little he spoke. "what was that you said?" "that the man's name was stuart." "young or old?" "younger than you." "and he has gone to fort owens?" "started for there, i said." "oh! then you haven't much faith in a tenderfoot getting through the hostiles or snow-banks?" "how do you know he is a tenderfoot?" he glanced up; she was looking at him with as much of a question in her eyes as her words. "well, i reckon i don't," he answered, picking up his hat as if to end the conversation. "i knew a man called stuart once, but i don't know this one. now, have you any pressing reason for loafing down here any longer? if not, i'll take my blanket and that lounge and get some sleep. i've been thirty-six hours in the saddle." in vain she tried to prevail on him to go upstairs and go to bed "right." "this is right enough for me," he answered, laying his hat and gloves on a table and unfastening his spurs. "no, i won't go up to the men's room. good-night." "but, jack--look here--" "i can't--too sleepy to look anywhere, or see if i did look;" and his revolvers and belt were laid beside the growing collection on the table. "but hen will scold me for not giving you better lodging." "then he and another man will have a shooting-match before breakfast to-morrow. are you going?" he was beginning to deliberately unfasten his neck-gear of scarlet and bronze. she hesitated, as if to make a final protest, but failed and fled; and as the door closed behind her, she heard another half-laughing "klahowya!" early in the morning she was down-stairs, to find aunty luce half wild with terror at the presence of a stranger who had taken possession of the sitting-room during the night. "cain't see his face for the blanket, honey," she whispered shrilly, "but he's powerful big; an'--an' just peep through the door at the guns and things--it's wah times right ovah again, shueh as i'm tellen' yo', chile." "be quiet, aunty, and get breakfast; it's a friend of ours." "hi-yi! i know all 'bout them kind o' friends, honey; same kind as comes south in wah times, a trampen' into houses o' quality folks an sleepen' whah they liked, an' callen' theyselves friends. he's a moven' now!--less call the folks!" the attempted yell was silenced by rachel clapping her hand over the full lips and holding her tightly. "don't be a fool!" she admonished the old woman impatiently. "i let the man in last night; it's all right. go and get him a good breakfast." aunty luce eyed the girl as if she thought her a conspirator against the safety of the house, and despite precautions, managed to slip upstairs to tillie with a much-garbled account of thieves in the night, and wartimes, and tramps, and miss rache. much mystified, the little woman dressed quickly, and came down the stairs to find her husband shaking hands quite heartily with genesee. instantly she forgot the multitudinous reasons there were for banning him from the bosom of one's family, and found herself telling him he was very welcome. "i reckon in your country a man would wait to hear someone say that before stowing his horse in their stables, or himself in their beds," he observed. his manner was rather quiet, but one could see that the heartiness of their greeting was a great pleasure, and, it may be, a relief. "do you call that a bed?" asked tillie, with contemptuous warmth. "i do think, mr. genesee, you might have wakened some of us, and given us a chance to treat a guest to something better." "i suppose, then, i am not counted in with the family," observed rachel, meekly, from the background. "i was on hand to do the honors, but wasn't allowed to do them. i even went to the stable to receive the late-comer, and was told to skip into the house, and given a general understanding that i interfered with his making himself comfortable in the hay-mow." "did she go out there at night, and alone, after we were all in bed?" and tillie's tone indicated volumes of severity. "yes," answered genesee; for rachel, with a martyr-like manner, said nothing, and awaited her lecture; "she thought it was your man andrews." "yes, and she would have gone just as quickly if it had been indians--or--or--anybody. she keeps me nervous half the time with her erratic ways." "i rather think she's finding fault with me for giving you that coffee and letting you sleep on the lounge," said rachel; and through tillie's quick disclaimer her own short-comings were forgotten, at least for the time. the little matron's caution, that always lagged woefully behind her impulse, obtruded itself on her memory several times before the breakfast was over; and thinking of the reasons why a man of such character should not be received as a friend by ladies, especially girls, she was rather glad when she heard him say he was to push on into the hills as soon as possible. "i only stopped last night because i had to; mowitza and i were both used up. i was trying to make macdougall's, but when i crossed the trail to your place, i reckoned we would fasten to it--working through the snow was telling on her; but she is all right this morning." rachel told him of her visit to the old man, and his care of the cabin on the tamahnous ground; of rumors picked up from the kootenai tribe as to the chance of trouble with the blackfeet, and many notes that were of interest to this hunter of feeling on the indian question. he commented on her chinook, of which she had gained considerable knowledge in the past year, and looked rather pleased when told it had been gained from kalitan. "you may see him again if i have to send for troops up here, and it looks that way now," he remarked, much to the terror and satisfaction of aunty luce, who was a house divided against itself in her terror of indian trouble and her desire to prove herself a prophetess. jim was all anticipation. after a circus or a variety show, nothing had for him the charm that was exerted by the prospect of a fight; but his hopes in that direction were cooled by the scout's statement that the troops were not coming with the expectation of war, but simply to show the northern tribes its futility, and that the government was strengthening its guard for protection all along the line. "then yer only ringin' in a bluff on the hostiles!" ventured the sanguinary hopeful disgustedly. "i counted on business if the 'yaller' turned out," meaning by the "yaller" the cavalry, upon whose accoutrements the yellow glints show. "never mind, sonny," said genesee; "if we make a bluff, it won't be on an empty hand. but i must take the trail again, and make up for time lost in sleep here." "when may we look for you back?" it was hardy who spoke, but something had taken the free-heartiness out of his tones; he looked just a trifle uncomfortable. evidently tillie had been giving him a hint of second thoughts, and while trying to adopt them they fitted his nature too clumsily not to be apparent. his guest, however, had self-possession enough for both. "don't look for me," he advised, taking in the group with a comprehensive glance; "that is, don't hurt the sight of your eyes in the business; the times are uncertain, and i reckon i'm more uncertain than the times. i'm obliged to you for the sleep last night, and the cover for mowitza. if i can ever do you as good a turn, just sing out." hardy held out his hand impulsively. "you did a heap more for us a year ago, for which we never had a chance to make return," he said in his natural, hearty manner. "oh, yes, you have had," contradicted rachel's cool tones from the porch; "you have the chance now." genesee darted one quick glance at her face. something in it was evidently a compensation, and blotted out the bitterness that had crept into his last speech, for with a freer manner he took the proffered hand. "that's all right," he said easily. "i was right glad of the trip myself, so it wasn't any work; but at the present speaking the days are not picnic days, and i must 'git.' good-bye, mrs. hardy, good-bye; boys." then he turned in his saddle and looked at rachel. "klahowya--tillikum," he said, lifting his hat in a final farewell to all. but in the glance toward her she felt he had said "thank you" as plainly as he had in the indian language called her "friend." "oh, dear!" said tillie, turning into the house as he rode away. "i wish the man had staid away, or else that we had known more about him when we first met him. it is very awkward to change one's manner to him, and--and yet it seems the only thing to do." "certainly," agreed rachel, with an altogether unnecessary degree of contempt, "it is the only thing for you to do." tillie sat down miserably under this stroke, the emphasis denoting very plainly the temper of the speaker. "oh, don't be ugly, rache," she begged. "i really feel wretched about it. i thought at first all the freedom of social laws out here was so nice but it isn't. it has a terrible side to it, when the greatest scamp is of as much account as the finest gentleman, and expects to be received on the same footing. he--he had no right to come imposing on us at the first;" and with this addition to her defense, tillie tried to ensconce herself behind the barricade of injured faith, but feeling that her protests were only weakening her argument. "to the best of my recollection," said the girl, with a good deal of the supercilious in her manner, "he neither came near us nor advanced any desire for friendship on his own account. we hunted him up, and insisted on talking natural history and singing songs with him, and pressing on him many invitations to visit us, invitations which he avoided accepting. he was treated, not as an equal of the other gentlemen, but as a superior; and i believe it is the only time we ever did him justice." "yes, he did seem very nice in those days; but you see it was all false pretense. think of the life that he had come from, and that he went back to! it's no use talking, rachel--there is only a right way and a wrong way in this world. he has shown his choice, and self-respecting people can only keep rid of him as much as possible. i don't like to hurt his feelings, but it makes it very awkward for us that we have accepted any favors from him." "the obligation rests rather lightly on your shoulders to cause you much fretting," said the girl bitterly; "and he thought so much of you, too--so much." her voice, that began so calmly, ended a little uncertainly, and she walked out of the door. hardy, coming in a moment later, found tillie divided between penitence and pettishness, and fighting her way to comfort through tears. "i know i'm right, hen, about the whole question," she whimpered, when safely perched on the stronghold of his knee, "and that is what makes it so aggravating." "to know you're right?" "no; but to have rachel, who knows she is in the wrong, take that high-handed way about the affair, and end up by making me feel ashamed. yes, she did, hen--just that. i felt so ashamed i cried, and yet i knew i was right all the time--now what are you laughing at?" chapter vi. neighbors of the north park. reveille! boots and saddles! taps! about the hardy ranch the changes were rung on all those notes of camp, from early morn till dewy eve, by the melodious imitations of jim. stories of grizzlies and black bear had grown passé; even the more rare accounts of wild horses spotted in some secluded valley failed to stir his old-time interest. all else had drifted into nothingness to him, for the "yaller" had come. it had been stationed in the north park for ten days--days of wild commotion at the ranch, for north park was only two miles away, following the little branch of missoula creek that flowed north to the kootenai river. the necessary errands to and fro between the two points of residence were multitudinous, for jim could never remember but one thing at a time of late; and the retraced steps he took would have tired out anyone less curious. he was disappointed, at first, to find that only one company had been sent up to guard the gate into the kootenai country. it did not look as if they feared any outbreak or active service, and if it had not been in the most miserable of seasons, they would have had much the appearance of a pleasure party; but the rains were in the valleys and the snows were on the hills, and camp life under those circumstances is a breeder of rayless monotony. "and your ranch up here has proved the oasis in our desert," declared fred dreyer in a burst of gratitude to rachel, just as if the locating of the sheep farm in that particular part of the world was due to the sagacity and far-sightedness of miss hardy; "and when mr. stuart told us at the fort that we should have so charming a neighbor, i wanted to throw up my plate and give three cheers. we were at mess--at dinner, i mean. but i restrained my enthusiasm, because my leave to come along was only provisional at that time, and depended on my good behavior; but once here, my first impulse was to give you a big hug instead of the conventional hand-shake, for there are no girls at the fort, and i was hungry for the sight of one." it was not, as one may suppose, one of the uniformed warriors of the camp who expressed himself with this enthusiasm, though several looked as if they would like to, but it was the most petite little creature in petticoats--to her own disgust; and to mitigate the femininity of them as much as possible, they were of regular army blue, their only trimming belt and bands of the "yaller," an adornment jim openly envied her, and considered senseless when wasted on a girl. she was miss frederick dreyer, the daughter of major dreyer, of the fort, and the sweetheart of most of the men in it, from the veterans down. "they all think they own me," she confided plaintively to rachel, "just because i'm little. it's only a year and a half since they quit calling me 'baby fred'--think of that! when you're owned by a whole regiment, it's so hard to gather up any dignity, or keep it if you do get hold of it; don't you think so?" "i have had no experience in that line," answered rachel. "you see i have never been owned by a regiment, nor by anybody else." "how delightfully independent you are!" and miss fred, encircled by comrades, seemed really to envy the other her loneness in the world. "no orderly forever on duty at your heels, and--" "and no lieutenant," put in rachel; and then they both laughed, and the younger told the elder she was ridiculous, for the lieutenants were not a bit worse than the rest. "worse? not at all. i could even imagine circumstances under which they might be preferable, and i'm not gifted with much imagination, either." "i know someone who thinks you are, and an enviable imagination at that," laughed miss fred. rachel opened her eyes a little in questioning, but did not speak. "why, it was mr. stuart. he talked about you a good deal at the fort. you know there are several officers who have their wives with them, and he was asking them lots of questions about typical western girls, but they didn't seem to know any, for at a military fort girls don't remain girls long--unless they're half boys, like me. someone always snaps them up and tacks 'mrs.' to their name, and that settles them." "poor girls!" "oh, bless you! they would say that same thing of anyone who visited a fort and did not become married, or engaged--well, i should think so!" "do you come in for your share of commiseration?" asked tillie, who was listening with interest to this gossip of military life that seemed strange for a woman to share. "me? not a bit of it. i am not worth their notice in that respect. they haven't begun to treat me as if i was grown up, yet; that's the disadvantage of being little--you never can impress people with a belief in your own importance. yesterday, lieutenant murray had the impudence to tell me that, when all was said and done, i was only a 'camp follower' hanging onto the coat-tails of the army, and likely to be mustered out of the regiment at the discretion of the superior officers--my lords and masters! what do you think of that?" "that you must have made things rather warm for the poor lieutenant to provoke a speech so unnatural to his usual courtesy," answered rachel. "whatever mr. stuart may credit me with, i have not imagination enough to conceive that speech being unprovoked." "well, if you're going to champion his high-mightiness, i'll tell you nothing more. mr. stuart said you were so sympathetic, too." "i should say it was the stuart who was imaginative," laughed rachel; "ask tillie." "but, he did say that--seriously," insisted miss fred, turning to tillie. "when mrs. captain sneath was curious about you, he said you had a delicate imagination that would find beauty in things that to many natures would be commonplace, and topped off a long list of virtues by saying you were the most loyal of friends." tillie sat looking at rachel in astonishment. "what have you been doing with the man?" she asked; "giving him some potion brewed by an indian witch? a sure 'hoodoo' it must be, to warp a man's judgment like that! and you were not so very nice to him, either." "wasn't she?" asked fred in amazement. "well i think it would be hard to be anything else to so charming and so clever a man. do you know he is very rich?" "no," answered tillie. "we only knew that he was a physician out here for a change of air. he is splendid company." "well, i should think so! we were all in love with him at the fort. mrs. sneath says he has given up medicine, and--i believe it's something of a secret, but it doesn't matter in this far-out corner of the world--he is something of a writer--a writer of fiction. the way i heard it was through the captain, who used to know him at college. he says that the stuart, as you call him, is most likely out here studying up material for some work--a novel, may be. wouldn't you love to read it?" "i can't say unless i have some idea of the class of work. what has he done?" it was rachel who was the questioner, and who, in the light of a reasonable cause for his presence in the kootenai, felt herself all in a moment a bit of a fool for some of her old fancies. "i don't know--wish i did," said miss fred promptly. "he writes under an assumed name. mrs. sneath wouldn't tell me, for fear i'd bother him about it, i suppose; but if he comes up here to camp, i'll find out before he leaves--see if i don't." "he is not likely to pay a visit up here in this season of the year," remarked rachel. "i thought he was going east from owens." "he did talk like that when he first went down there, and that's what made captain sneath decide he was studying up the country; for all at once he said he might stay out west all winter, and seemed to take quite an interest in the indian question--made friends with all the scouts down there, and talked probabilities with even the few 'good' indians about the place. he told me he might see me again, if i was coming up with the company. so he is studying up something out here--sure." nobody answering this speculation, she was silent a bit, looking at rachel, who had picked up a book off the table; and then she began to laugh. "well--" and rachel glanced over at her, noting that she looked both amused and hesitating--"well, what is it?" "i was only thinking how--how funny it would be if you happened to be that 'something.'" but rachel's answering laugh, as she pushed the book away, signified that it was the least probable of all fancies. "it is you who should write romances, instead of the stuart," she replied--"you and tillie here. she has a good deal of the same material in her--that of a match-maker. she has spied out life-partners for me in all sorts of characters out here, from davy macdougall down to jim. they are wonderfully anxious to get rid of me." just outside the gate, the blue of military garb showed the coming of the usual afternoon callers from camp kootenai, among them the major, commander of the company, the only occasional rebel being his petite non-commissioned officer in petticoats. a tall young fellow in lieutenant's uniform halted on his way out to exchange greeting; and if the daughter complained of the young soldier's lack of deference, the father had no reason to, for in his eyes, as he saluted, shone something nearer affection than mere duty--a feeling that he shared with every man in the command, for major dreyer was a universal favorite. "no later news of that scout, genesee?" asked the younger as they separated. "no; but we can expect him soon now for that red shadow of his, kalitan, just loped into camp. and, by the way," added the older officer, "he mentioned that he passed our friend stuart back at the settlement. he is coming up this way again." "tell miss fred that, major. when i saw her, an hour ago, she needed something to put her in a good humor." "ah! good-evening, lieutenant." "good-evening, major." the minute the subordinate's back was turned, miss fred, with a running jump that would have done jim credit, landed almost on the major's shoulder. he gave her a ferocious hug, and dropped her plump on her feet with a stern-- "attention!" quick as light the little hand was raised in salute, and the little figure gathered together its scattered dignity to make a soldierly appearance. "private dreyer, i have been met on the outposts with a message telling me of a disorganized temper that should belong to your command. what have you to say for yourself?" instantly the role of the soldier was dropped, and that of the girl with a temper took its place. "oh, he told you, did he?" she asked, with a wrathful glance at the figure retreating toward camp. "well, just wait until i go riding with him again! he's called me a camp follower, and--and everything else that was uncivil." "ah! and what did you do?" "i? why nothing, of course." "nothing?" "well, i did threaten to go over and turn them out of the cabin that was built for me, but--" "but that was a mere trifle in this tropical climate. i've no doubt it would do them good to sleep under the stars instead of a roof; and then it would give you an opportunity to do some wholesale nursing, if they caught colds all around." "just as if i would!" "just as if you would not! and lieutenant murray would come in for the worse medicine and the biggest doses." "if his constitution is equal to his impudence, it would take stupendous doses to have any effect. i wish he could be sent back to the fort." "won't sending him up among the indians do just as well?" "y-yes. are you going to, papa?" "ah! now you grow inquisitive." "i do think," said tillie, "you all plague her a great deal." "they just treat me as if i was a joke instead of a girl," complained fred. "they began it before i was born by giving me a boy's name, and it's been kept up ever-since." "never mind, baby," he said soothingly; "if i had not made a boy of you i could not have had you with me, so the cause was vital." they both laughed, but it was easy to see that the cause was vital to them, and their companionship very much of a necessity. its interruptions since her babyhood had been few and short, and her education, picked up on the frontier, had taught her that in the world there was just one place for her--in the saddle, and beside her father, just as her mother had ridden beside him before fred was born. chapter vii. "a woman who was lost--long ago!" the next morning, bright and early, kalitan called at the ranch; and miss fred, accustomed as she was to the red men, grew rather enthusiastic over this haughty, graceful specimen, who gave her one glance at the door and walked past her into the house--as she afterward described it, "just as if she had been one of the wooden door-posts." "rashell hardy?" was all he said; and without more ado miss fred betook herself up the stairs to do his implied bidding and hunt miss hardy. "i rather think it's the grand mogul of all the kootenais," she said, in announcing him. "no, he didn't give any card; but his personality is too striking to be mistaken, if one has ever seen him or heard him speak. he looked right over my head, and made me feel as if i was about two feet high." "young indian?" "yes, but he looks like a young faun. that one never came from a scrub race." "i'll ask him to stay to dinner," laughed rachel; "if anything will cure one of a tendency to idealize an indian, it is to see him satisfying the inner man. come down and talk to him. it is kalitan." "oh, it is kalitan, is it? and pray what it is that--a chief rich in lineage and blooded stock? his assurance speaks of wealth and power, i should say, and his manner shows one a fenimore cooper spirit come to life. how am i as a guesser?" "one of the worst in the world. kalitan is really a handsome humbug in some ways. that superb manner of his is the only stock in trade he possesses beyond his swift feet; but the idea of importance he manages to convey speaks wonders for his strength of will. come along!" "klahowya, rashell hardy?" he said; and stepping solemnly forward, shook her hand in a grave, ceremonious fashion. rachel told him the other lady was her friend, by way of introduction, and he widened his mouth ever so little in a smile, but that was the only sign of acknowledgement he gave; and when rachel spoke to him in english he would not answer, but sat stolidly looking into the fire until she saw what was wrong and addressed him in chinook. "rashell hardy need not so soon forget," he reminded her briefly; and then went on with his speech to her of where he had been; the wonders he had done in the way of a runner, and all else of self-glorification that had occurred in the past months. many times the name of his chief was uttered in a way that impressed on a listener the idea that among the troops along the frontier there were two men who were really worthy of praise--a scout and a runner. "kalitan tired now--pretty much," he wound up, as a finale; "come up kootenai country to rest, may be, while spring comes. genesee he rest, too, may be--may be not." "where, kalitan?" "s'pose camp--s'pose may be tamahnous cabin; not here yet." "coming back?" kalitan nodded, and arose. "come see you, may be, sometime, often," he said as if conferring a special honor by promised visits; and then he stalked out as he had stalked in, only checking his gait at sight of aunty luce coming in from the kitchen with a dish of cold meat. she nearly dropped it in her fright, and closed her eyes in silent prayer and terror; when she opened them the enemy had left the porch. "good lawd, miss rache!" she gasped. "he's skeered me before bad enough, but this the fust time he evah stopped stock an' glare at me! i's gwine to complain to the milantary--i is, shuah." "you are a great old goose!" said rachel brusquely. "he wasn't looking at you, but at that cold meat." there seemed a general gathering of the clans along the kootenai valley that winter. with the coming north of genesee had come the troops, then kalitan, then their mercurial friend of the autumn--the stuart; and down from scot's mountain came davy macdougall, one fair day, to join the circle that was a sort of reunion. and among the troops were found many good fellows who were so glad of an evening spent at the ranch that never a night went by without a party gathered there. "the heft o' them does everything but sleep here," complained aunty luce; "an' all the other ones look jealous 'cause mr. stuart does that." for hardy and his wife had insisted on his stopping with them, as before, though much of his time was spent at the camp. there was something about him that made him a companion much desired by men; rachel had more opportunity to observe this now than when their circle was so much smaller. that gay good-humor, with its touches of serious feeling, and the delicate sympathy that was always alive to earnest emotion--she found that those traits were keys to the hearts of men as well as women; and a smile here, a kind word there, or a clasp of the hand, were the only arts needed to insure him the unsought friendship of almost every man in the company. "it's the gift that goes wi' the name," said macdougall one day when someone spoke of the natural charm of the man's manner. "it's just that--no less. no, o' course he does na strive for it; it's but a bit o' nature. a blessin', say you, miss? well, mayhaps; but to the old stock it proved but a curse." "it seems a rather fair life to connect the idea of a curse with," remarked the major; "but i rather think he has seen trouble, too. captain sneath said something to that effect, i believe--some sudden death of wife and children in an epidemic down in mexico." "married! that settles the romance," said fred; "but he is interesting, anyway, and i am going immediately to find out what he has written and save up my money to buy copies." "i may save you that expense in one instance," and rachel handed her the book stuart had sent her. tillie looked at her in astonishment, and fred seized it eagerly. "oh, but you are sly!" she said, with an accusing pout; "you've heard me puzzling about his work for days and never gave me a hint." "i only guessed it was his, he never told me; but this morning i charged him with it, and he did not deny. i do not think there is any secret about it, only down at the fort there were several ladies, i believe, and--and some of them curious--" "you're right," laughed the major; "they would have hounded him to death. camp life is monotonous to most women, and a novelist, especially a young, handsome fellow, would have been a bonanza to them. as it was, they tried to spoil him; and look here!" he said suddenly, "see that you say nothing of his marriage to him, babe. as he does not mention it himself, it may be that the trouble, or--well, just remember not to broach the subject." "just as if i would!" said his daughter after he had left. "papa never realizes that i have at all neared the age of discretion. but doesn't it seem strange to think of mr. stuart being married? he doesn't look a bit like it." "does that state of existence impress itself so indelibly on one's physical self?" laughed rachel. "it does--mostly," affirmed fred. "they get settled down and prosy, or else--well, dissipated." "good gracious! is that the effect we are supposed to have on the character of our lords and masters?" asked mrs. hardy unbelievingly. "fred's experience is confined to barrack life and its attendant evils. i don't think she makes allowance for the semi-artistic temper of the stuart. he strikes me as having just enough of it to keep his heart always young, and his affections too--on tap, as it were." "what queer ideas you have about that man!" said fred suddenly. "don't you like him?" "i would not dare say no with so many opposing me." "oh, you don't know rachel. she is always attributing the highest of virtues or the worst of vices to the most unexpected people," said tillie. "i don't believe she has any feeling in the question at all, except to get on the opposite side of the question from everyone else. if she would own up, i'll wager she likes him as well as the rest of us." "do you, rachel?" but her only answer was a laugh. "if you do, i can't see why you disparage him." "i did not." "well, you said his affections were always on tap." "that was because i envy him the exhaustless youth such a temperament gives one. such people defy time and circumstances in a way we prosaic folks can never do. it is a gift imparted to an artist, to supply the lack of practical ingredients that are the prime ones to the rest of creation." "how you talk! why, mr. stuart is not an artist!" "isn't he? there are people who are artists though they never draw a line or mix a color; but don't you think we are devoting a great deal of time to this pill-peddler of literary leanings?" "you are prejudiced," decided fred. "leanings indeed! he has done more than lean in that direction--witness that book." "i like to hear him tell a story, if he is in the humor," remarked tillie, with a memory of the cozy autumn evenings. "we used to enjoy that so much before we ever guessed he was a story-teller by profession." "well, you must have had a nice sort of a time up here," concluded fred; "a sort of tom moore episode. he would do all right for the poet-prince--or was it a king? but you--well, rachel, you are not just one's idea of a lalla." "you slangy little mortal! go and read your book." which she did obediently and thoroughly, to the author's discomfiture, as he was besieged with questions that taxed his memory and ingenuity pretty thoroughly at times. he found himself on a much better footing with rachel than during his first visit. it may have been that her old fancy regarding his mission up there was disappearing; the fancy itself had always been a rather intangible affair--a fabrication wrought by the shuttle of a woman's instinct. or, having warned genesee--she had felt it was a warning--there might have fallen from her shoulders some of the responsibility she had so gratuitously assumed. whatever it was, she was meeting him on freer ground, and found the association one of pleasure. "i think miss fred or your enlarged social circle has had a most excellent influence on your temper," he said to her one day after a ride from camp together, and a long, pleasant chat. "you are now more like the girl i used to think you might be--the girl you debarred me from knowing." "but think what an amount of time you had for work in those days that are forfeited now to dancing attendance on us women folk!" "i do not dance." "well, you ride, and you walk, and you sing, and tell stories, and manage at least to waste lots of time when you should be working." "you have a great deal of impatience with anyone who is not a worker, haven't you?" "yes," she said, looking up at him. "i grow very impatient myself often from the same cause." "you always seem to me to be very busy," he answered half-vexedly; "too busy. you take on yourself responsibilities in all directions that do not belong to you; and you have such a way of doing as you please that no one about the place seems to realize how much of a general manager you are here, or how likely you are to overburden yourself." "nonsense!" she spoke brusquely, but could not but feel the kindness in the penetration that had given her appreciation where the others, through habit, had grown to take her accomplishments as a matter of course. in the beginning they had taken them as a joke. "pardon me," he said finally. "i do not mean to be rude, but do you mind telling me if work is a necessity to you?" "certainly not. i have none of that sort of pride to contend with, i hope, and i have a little money--not much, but enough to live on; so, you see, i am provided for in a way." "then why do you always seem to be skirmishing around for work?" he asked, in a sort of impatience. "women should be home-makers, not--" "not prospectors or adventurers," she finished up amiably. "but as i have excellent health, average strength and understanding, i feel they should be put to use in some direction. i have not found the direction yet, and am a prospector meanwhile; but a contented, empty life is a contemptible thing to me. i think there is some work intended for us all in the world; and," she added, with one of those quick changes that kept folks from taking rachel's most serious meanings seriously--"and i think it's playing it pretty low down on providence to bluff him on an empty hand." he laughed. "do you expect, then, to live your life out here helping to manage other people's ranches and accumulating that sort of western logic in extenuation?" she did not answer for a little; then she said: "i might do worse." she said it so deliberately that he could not but feel some special thing was meant, and asked quickly: "what?" "well, i might be given talents of benefit to people, and fritter them away for the people's pastime. the people would never know they had lost anything, or come so near a great gain; but i, the cheat, would know it. after the lights were turned out and the curtain down on the farce, i would realize that it was too late to begin anew, but that the same lights and the same theater would have served as well for the truths of christ as the pranks of pantaloon--the choice lay only in the will of the worker." her eyes were turned away from him, as if she was seeking for metaphors in the white stretch of the snow-fall. he reached over and laid his hand on hers. "rachel!" it was the only time he had called her that, and the caress of the name gave voice to the touch of his fingers. "rachel! what is it you are talking about? look around here! i want to see you! do you mean that you think of--of me like that--tell me?" if miss fred could have seen them at that moment it would have done her heart good, for they really looked rather lover-like; each was unconscious of it, though their faces did not lack feeling. she drew her hand slowly away, and said, in that halting yet persistent way in which she spoke when very earnest yet not very sure of herself: "you think me egotistical, i suppose, to criticise work that is beyond my own capabilities, but--it was you i meant." "well?" his fingers closed over the arm of the chair instead of her hand. all his face was alight with feeling. perhaps it was as well that her stubbornness kept her eyes from his; to most women they would not have been an aid to cool judgment. "well, there isn't anything more to say, is there?" she asked, smiling a little out at the snow. "it was the book that did it--made me feel like that about you; that your work is--well, surface work--skimmed over for pastime. but here and there are touches that show how much deeper and stronger the work you might produce if you were not either lazy or careless." "you give one heroic treatment, and can be merciless. the story was written some time ago, and written under circumstances that--well, you see i do not sign my name to it, so i can't be very proud of it." "ah! that is it? your judgment, i believe, is too good to be satisfied with it; i shouldn't waste breath speaking, if i was not sure of that. but you have the right to do work you can be proud of; and that is what you must do." rachel's way was such a decided way, that people generally accepted her "musts" as a matter of course. stuart did the same, though evidently unused to the term; and her cool practicalities that were so surely noting his work, not himself, had the effect of checking that first impulse of his to touch her--to make her look at him. he felt more than ever that the girl was strange and changeable--not only in herself, but in her influence. he arose and walked across the floor a couple of times, but came back and stood beside her. "you think i am not ambitious enough; and you are right, i suppose. i have never yet made up my mind whether it was worth my while to write, or whether it might not be more wise to spare the public." "but you have the desire--you must feel confidence at times." "how do you know or imagine so much of what i feel?" "i read it in that book," and she nodded toward the table. "in it you seem so often just on the point of saying or doing, through the people, things that would lift that piece of work into a strong moral lesson; but just when you reach that point you drop it undeveloped." "you have read and measured it, haven't you?" and he sat down again beside her. "i never thought of--of what you mention in it. a high moral lesson," he repeated; "but to preach those a man should feel himself fit; i am not." "i don't believe you!" "what do you know about it?" he demanded so sharply that she smiled; it was so unlike him. but the sharpness was evidently not irritation, for his face had in it more of sadness than any other feeling; she saw it, and did not speak. after a little he turned to her with that rare impetuosity that was so expressive. "you are very helpful to me in what you have said; i think you are that to everyone--it seems so. perhaps you are without work of your own in the world, that you may have thought for others who need help; that is the highest of duties, and it needs strong, good hearts. but do you understand that it is as hard sometimes to be thought too highly of as to be accused wrong-fully? it makes one feel such a cheat--such a cursed liar!" "i rather think we are all cheats, more or less, in that respect," she answered. "i am quite sure the inner workings of my most sacred thought could not be advertised without causing my exile from the bosom of my family; yet i refuse to think myself more wicked than the rest of humanity." "don't jest!" "really, i am not jesting," she answered. "and i believe you are over-sensitive as to your own short-comings, whatever they happen to be. because i have faith in your ability to do strong work, don't think i am going to skirmish around for a pedestal, or think i've found a piece of perfection in human nature, because they're not to be found, my friend." "how old are you?" he asked her suddenly. she laughed, feeling so clearly the tenor of his thought. "twenty-two by my birthdays, but old enough to know that the strongest workers in the world have not been always the most immaculate. what matter the sort of person one has been, or the life one has lived if he come out of it with knowledge and the wish to use it well? you have a certain power that is yours, to use for good or bad, and from a fancy that you should not teach or preach, you let it go to waste. don't magnify peccadillos!" "you seem to take for granted the fact that all my acts have been trifling--that only the promises are worthy," he said impatiently. "i do believe," she answered smiling brightly, "that you would rather i thought you an altogether wicked person than an average trifler. but i will not--i do not believe it possible for you deliberately to do any wicked thing; you have too tender a heart, and--" "you don't know anything about it!" he repeated vehemently. "what difference whether an act is deliberate or careless, so long as the effect is evil? i tell you the greater part of the suffering in the world is caused not by wicked intents and hard hearts, but by the careless desire to shirk unpleasant facts, and the soft-heartedness that will assuage momentary pain at the price of making a life-long cripple, either mentally, morally, or physically. nine times out of ten the man whom we call soft-hearted is only a moral coward. ah, don't help me to think of that; i think of it enough--enough!" he brought his clenched hand down on the arm of the chair with an emphasis that was heightened by the knitted brow and compressed lips. he did not look at her. the latter part of the rapid speech seemed more to himself than to her. at least it admitted of no answer; the manner as much as the words kept her silent. "come! come!" he added, after a little, as if to arouse himself as well as her. "you began by giving me some good words of advice and suggestion; i must not repay you by dropping into the blues. for a long time i've been a piece of drift-wood, with nothing to anchor ambition to; but a change is coming, i think, and--and if it brings me fair weather, i may have something then to work for; then i may be worth your belief in me--i am not now. my intentions to be so are all right, but they are not always to be trusted. i said, before, that you had the faculty of making people speak the truth to you, if they spoke at all, and i rather think i am proving my words." he arose and stood looking down at her. since he had found so many words, she had seemed to lose hers; anyway, she was silent. "it can't be very pleasant for you," he said at last, "to be bored by the affairs of every renegade to whom you are kind, because of some fancied good you may see in him; but you are turning out just the sort of woman i used to fancy you might be--and--i am grateful to you." "that's all right," she answered in the old brusque way. to tell the truth, a part of his speech was scarcely heard. something in the whole affair--the confidence and personal interest, and all--had taken her memory back to the days of that cultus corrie, when another man had shared with her scenes somewhat similar to this. was there a sort of fate that had set her apart for this sort of thing? she smiled a little grimly at the fancy, and scarcely heard him. he saw the ghost of a smile, and it made him check himself in something he was about to say, and walk toward the door. she neither spoke nor moved; her face was still toward the window. turning to look at her, his indecision disappeared, and in three steps he was beside her. "rachel, i want to speak to you of something else," he said rapidly, almost eagerly, as if anxious to have it said and done with; "i--i want to tell you what that anchor is i've been looking for, and without which i never will be able to do the higher class of work, and--and--" "yes?" he had stopped, making a rather awkward pause after his eager beginning. with the one encouraging word, she looked up at him and waited. "it is a woman." "not an unusual anchor for mankind," she remarked with a little laugh. but there was no answering smile in his eyes; they were very serious. "i never will be much good to myself, or the rest of the world, until i find her again," he said, "though no one's words are likely to help me more than yours. you would make one ambitious if he dared be and--" "never mind about that," she said kindly. "i am glad if it has happened so. and this girl--it is someone you--love?" "i can't talk to anyone of her--yet," he answered, avoiding her eyes; "only i wanted you to understand--it is at least a little step toward that level where you fancy i may belong. don't speak of it again; i can hardly say what impelled me to tell you now. yes, it is a woman i cared for, and who was--lost--whom i lost--long ago." a moment later she was alone, and could hear his step in the outer room, then on the porch. fred called after him, but he made no halt--did not even answer, much to the surprise of that young lady and miss margaret. the other girl sat watching him until he disappeared in the stables, and a little later saw him emerge and ride at no slow gait out over the trail toward camp. "it only needed that finale," she soliloquized, "to complete the picture. woman! woman! what a disturbing element you are in the universe--man's universe!" after this bit of trite philosophy, the smile developed into a noiseless laugh that had something of irony in it. "i rather think talapa's entrance was more dramatic," was one of the reflections that kept her company; "anyway, she was more picturesque, if less elegant, than mrs. stuart is likely to be. mrs. stuart! by the way, i wonder if it is mrs. stuart? yes, i suppose so--yet, 'a woman whom i cared for, and who was lost--long ago!'--lost? lost?" chapter viii. "i'll kill him this time!" rumors were beginning to drift into camp of hostile intents of the blackfeet; and a general feeling of uneasiness became apparent as no word came from the chief of their scouts, who had not shown up since locating the troops. the major's interest was decidedly alive in regard to him, since not a messenger entered camp from any direction who was not questioned on the subject. but from none of them came any word of genesee. other scouts were there--good men, too, and in the southern country of much value; but the kootenai corner of the state was almost an unknown region to them. they were all right to work under orders; but in those hills, where everything was in favor of the native, a man was needed who knew every gully and every point of vantage, as well as the probable hostile. while major dreyer fretted and fumed over the absentee, there was more than one of the men in camp to remember that their chief scout was said to be a squaw man; and as most of them shared his own expressed idea of that class, conjectures were set afloat as to the probability of his not coming back at all, or if it came to a question of fighting with the northern indians, whether he might not be found on the other side. "you can't bet any money on a squaw man," was the decision of one of the scouts from over in idaho--one who did not happen to be a squaw man himself, because the wife of his nearest neighbor at home objected. "no, gentlemen, they're a risky lot. this one is a good man; i allow that--a damned good man, i may say, and a fighter from away back; but the thing we have to consider is that up this way he's with his own people, as you may say, having taken a squaw wife and been adopted into the tribe; an' i tell you, sirs, it's jest as reasonable that he will go with them as against them--i'm a tellin' you!" few of these rumors were heard at the ranch. it was an understood thing among the men that the young ladies at hardy's were to hear nothing of camp affairs that was likely to beget alarm; but stuart heard them, as did the rest of the men; and like them, he tried to question the only one in camp who shared suspicion--kalitan. but kalitan was unapproachable in english, and even in chinook would condescend no information. he doubtless had none to give, but the impression of suppressed knowledge that he managed to convey made him an object of close attention, and any attempt to leave camp would have been hailed as proof positive of many intangible suspicions. he made no such attempt. on the contrary, after his arrival there from the gros ventres, he seemed blissfully content to live all winter on government rations and do nothing. but he was not blind by any means and understanding english, though he would not speak it, the chances were that he knew more of the thought of the camp than it guessed of his; and his stubborn resentment showed itself when three kootenai braves slouched into camp one day, and kalitan was not allowed to speak to them save in the presence of an interpreter, and when one offered in the person of a white scout, kalitan looked at him with unutterable disdain, and turning his back, said not a word. the major was not at camp. he had just left to pay his daily visit to hardy's; for, despite all persuasions, he refused to live anywhere but with his men, and if fred did not come to see him in the morning, he was in duty bound to ride over to her quarters in the afternoon. the officer in command during his absence was a captain holt, a man who had no use for an indian in any capacity, and whose only idea of settling the vexed question of their rights was by total extermination and grave-room--an opinion that is expressed by many a white man who has had to deal with them. but he was divided between his impulse to send the trio on a double-quick about their business and the doubt as to what effect it would have on the tribe if they were sent back to it in the sulks. ordinarily he would not have given their state of mind a moment's consideration; but the situation was not exactly ordinary, and he hesitated. after stowing away enough provender in their stomachs to last an ordinary individual two days, and stowing the remainder in convenient receptacles about their draperies, intercourse was resumed with their white hosts by the suggestive kalitan. just then stuart and rachel rode into camp. they had taken to riding together into camp, and out of camp, and in a good many directions of late; and in the coffee-colored trio she at once recognized the brave of the bear-claws whom she had spoken with during that "olallie" season in the western hills, and who she had learned since was a great friend of genesee's. she spoke to him at once--a great deal more intelligibly than her first attempt--and upon questioning, learned that she was well remembered. she heard herself called "the squaw who rides" by him, probably from the fact that she was the only white woman met by their hunters in the hills, though she had not imagined herself so well known by them as his words implied. he of the bear-claws--their spokesman--mentioned kalitan, giving her for the first time an idea of what had occurred. she turned at once to captain holt--not protesting, but interested--and learned all she wanted to. "kalitan does not like your southern scouts, for some reason," she said, "and i rather think it was his dignity rather than his loyalty that would suffer from having one of them a listener. let them speak in my presence; i can understand them, and not arouse kalitan's pride, either." the captain, nothing loath, accepted her guidance out of the dilemma, though it was only by a good deal of flattery on her part that kalitan could at all forget his anger enough to speak to anyone. the conversation was, after all, commonplace enough, as it was mostly a recital of his--kalitan's--glories; for in the eyes of these provincials he posed as a warrior of travel and accumulated knowledge. the impassive faces of his listeners gave no sign as to whether they took him at his own valuation or not. rachel now and then added a word, to keep from having too entirely the appearance of a listener, and she asked about genesee. the answer gave her to understand that weeks ago--five weeks--genesee had been in their village; asked for a runner to go south to the fort with talking-paper. had bought pack-horse and provisions, and started alone to the northeast--may be blackfoot agency, they could not say; had seen him no more. kalitan made some rapid estimate of probabilities that found voice in-- "blackfoot--one hundred and twenty miles; go slow--mowitza tired; long wau-wau (talk); come slow--snows high; come soon now, may be." that was really the only bit of information in the entire "wau-wau" that was of interest to the camp--information that kalitan would have disdained to satisfy them with willingly; and even to rachel, whom he knew was genesee's friend, and his, he did not hint the distrust that had grown among the troops through that suspicious absence. he would talk long and boastfully of his own affairs, but it was a habit that contrasted strangely with the stubborn silence by which he guarded the affairs of others. "what is the matter back there?" asked rachel, as she and stuart started back to the ranch. "ill-feeling?" "oh, i guess not much," he answered; "only they are growing careful of the indians of late--afraid of them imposing on good nature, i suppose." "a little good nature in captain holt would do him no harm with the indians," she rejoined; "and he should know better than to treat kalitan in that suspicious way. major dreyer would not do it, i feel sure, and genesee won't like it." "will that matter much to the company or the command?" he spoke thus only to arouse that combative spirit of hers; but she did not retort as usual--only said quietly: "yes, i think it would--they will find no man like him." they never again referred to that conversation that had been in a way a confession on his part--the question of the woman at least was never renewed, though he told her much of vague plans that he hoped to develop, "when the time comes." three days after the visit of bear-claws and his brethren, stuart and rachel were again at the camp; this time accompanying miss fred, who thought it was a good-enough day to go and see the "boys." surely it was a good-enough day for any use--clear and fresh overhead, white and sparkling underfoot, and just cold enough to make them think with desire of the cheery wood fires in the camp they were making for. from above, a certain exhilaration was borne to them on the air, sifted through the cedars of the guardian hills; even the horses seemed enthused with the spirit of it, and joyously entered into a sort of a go-as-you-please race that brought them all laughing and breathless down the length of "the avenue," a strip of beaten path about twenty feet wide, along which the tents were pitched in two rows facing each other--and not very imposing looking rows, either. there were greetings and calls right and left, as they went helter-skelter down the line; but there was no check of speed until they stopped, short, at the major's domicile, that was only a little more distinguished on the outside than the rest, by having the colors whipping themselves into shreds from the flagstaff at the door. it was too cold for ceremony; and throwing the bridles to an orderly, they made a dash for the door--miss fred leading. "engaged, is he?" she said good-humoredly to the man who stepped in her path. "i don't care if he is married. i don't intend to freeze on the place where his door-step ought to be. you tell him so." the man on duty touched his cap and disappeared, and from the sound of the major's laughter within, must have repeated the message verbatim, and a moment later returned. "major dreyer says you may enter;" and then, laughing and shivering, the major's daughter seized rachel with one hand, stuart with the other, and making a quick charge, darted into the ruling presence. "oh, you bear!" she said, breaking from her comrades and into the bear's embrace; "to keep us out there--and it so cold! and i came over specially for--" and then she stopped. the glitter of the sun on the sun had made a glimmer of everything under a roof, and on her entrance she had not noticed a figure opposite her father, until a man rose to his feet and took a step forward as if to go. "let me know when you want me, major," he said; and the voice startled those two muffled figures in the background, for both, by a common impulse, started forward--rachel throwing back the hood of her jacket and holding out her hand. "i am glad you have come," she said heartily, and he gripped the offered member with a sort of fierceness as he replied: "thank you, miss." but his eyes were not on her. the man who had come with her--who still held her gloves in his hand--was the person who seemed to draw all his attention. "you two are old neighbors, are you not?" remarked the major. "fred, my dear, you have met mr. genesee, our scout? no? mr. genesee, this is my daughter; and this, a friend of ours--mr. stuart." an ugly devil seemed alive in genesee's eyes, as the younger man came closer, and with an intense, expressive gesture, put out his hand. then, with a bow that might have been an acknowledgment of the introduction, and might have been only one of adieu to the rest of the group, the scout walked to the door without a word, and stuart's hand dropped to his side. "come back in an hour, genesee," said the major; "i will think over the trip to the fort in the meantime." "i hear. good-morning, ladies;" and then the door closed behind him, and the quartette could not but feel the situation awkward. "come closer to the fire--sit down," said the major hospitably, intent on effacing the rudeness of his scout. "take off your coat, stuart; you'll appreciate it more when outside. and i'm going to tell you right now, that, pleased as i am to have you all come this morning, i intend to turn you out in twenty minutes--that's all the time i can give to pleasure this morning." "well, you are very uncivil, i must say," remarked fred. "but we will find some of the other boys not so unapproachable. i guess," she added, "that we have to thank mr. man-with-the-voice for being sent to the right-about in such short order." "you did not hear him use it much," rejoined her father, and then turned to the others, neither of whom had spoken. "he is quite a character, and of great value to us in the indian troubles, but i believe is averse to meeting strangers; anyway, the men down at the fort did not take to him much--not enough to make him a social success." "i don't think he would care," said fred. "he impressed me very much as kalitan did when i first met him. does living in the woods make people feel like monarchs of all they survey? does your neighbor ever have any better manners, rachel?" "i have seen him with better--and with worse." "worse? what possibilities there must be in that man! what do you think, mr. stuart?" "perhaps he lacks none of the metal of a soldier because he does not happen to possess that of a courtier," hazarded stuart, showing no sign that the scout's rudeness had aroused the slightest feeling of resentment; and rachel scored an opinion in his favor for that generosity, for she, more than either of the others, had noted the meeting, and genesee's entire disregard of the stuart's feelings. major dreyer quickly seconded stuart's statement. "you are right, sir. he may be as sulky as satan--and i hear he is at times--but his work makes amends for it when he gets where work is needed. he got in here last night, dead-beat, from a trip that i don't believe any other man but an indian could have made and get back alive. he has his good points--and they happen to be points that are in decided demand up here." "i don't care about his good points, if we have to be turned out for him," said fred. "send him word he can sleep the rest of the day, if he is tired out; may be he would wake up more agreeable." "and you would not be ousted from my attention," added her father, pinching her ear. "are you jealous of squaw-man-with-a-voice?" "is he that?" asked the girl, with a great deal of contempt in her tone. "well, that is enough to hear of him. i should think he would avoid white people. the specimens we have seen of that class would make you ashamed you were human," she said, turning to rachel and stuart. "i know papa says there are exceptions, but papa is imaginative. this one looks rather prosperous, and several degrees cleaner than i've seen them, but--" "don't say anything against him until you know you have reason, fred," suggested rachel. "he did me a favor once, and i can't allow people to talk about him on hearsay. i think he is worse than few and better than many, and i have known him over a year." "mum is the word," said fred promptly, proceeding to gag herself with two little fists; but the experiment was a failure. "if she takes him under her wing, papa, his social success is an assured fact, even if he refuses to open his mouth. may i expect to be presented to his interesting family to-morrow, rachel?" rachel only laughed, and asked the major some questions about the reports from the northeast; the attitude of the blackfeet, and the snow-fall in the mountains. "the blackfeet are all right now," he replied, "and the snows in the hills to the east are very heavy--that was what caused our scout's delay. but south of us i hear they are not nearly so bad, for a wonder, and am glad to hear it, as i myself may need to make a trip down to fort owens." "why, papa," broke in his commanding officer, "you are not going to turn scout or runner, are you, and leave me behind? i won't stay!" "you will obey orders, as a soldier should," answered her father. "if i go instead of sending, it will be because it is necessary, and you will have to bow to necessity, and wait until i can get back." "and we've got to thank mr. squaw-man for that, too!" burst out fred wrathfully. "you never thought of going until he came; oh, i know it--i hate him!" "he would be heart-broken if he knew it," observed her father dryly. "by the way, miss rachel, do you know if there is room in the ranch stables for another horse?" "they can make room, if it is necessary. why?" "genesee's mare is used up even worse than her master by the long, hard journey he has made. our stock that is in good condition can stand our accommodations all right, but that fellow seemed miserable to think the poor beast had not quarters equal to his own. he is such a queer fellow about asking a favor that i thought--" "and the thought does you credit," said the girl with a suspicious moisture in her eyes. "poor, brave mowitza! i could not sleep very soundly myself if i knew she was not cared for, and i know just how he feels. don't say anything about it to him, but i will have my cousin come over and get her, before evening." "you are a trump, miss rachel!" said the major emphatically; "and if you can arrange it, i know you will lift a load off genesee's mind. i'll wager he is out there in the shed with her at this moment, instead of beside a comfortable fire; and this camp owes him too much, if it only knew it, to keep from him any comforts for either himself or that plucky bit of horse-flesh." then the trio, under guard of the lieutenant, paid some other calls along the avenue--were offered more dinners, if they would remain, than they could have eaten in a week; but in all their visits they saw nothing more of the scout. rachel spoke of his return to one of the men, and received the answer that they reckoned he was putting in most of his time out in the shed tying the blankets off his bunk around that mare of his. "poor mowitza! she was so beautiful," said the girl, with a memory of the silken coat and wise eyes. "i should not like to see her looking badly." "do you know," said stuart to her, "that when i heard you speak of mowitza and her beauty and bravery, i never imagined you meant a four-footed animal?" "what, then?" "well, i am afraid it was a nymph of the dusky tribe--a woman." "naturally!" was the one ironical and impatient word he received as answer, and scarcely noted. he was talking with the others on multitudinous subjects, laughing, and trying to appear interested in jests that he scarcely heard, and all the while the hand he had offered to genesee clenched and opened nervously in his seal glove. rachel watched him closely, for her instincts had anticipated something unusual from that meeting; the actual had altered all her preconceived fancies. more strong than ever was her conviction that those two were not strangers; but from stuart's face or manner she could learn nothing. he was a much better actor than genesee. they did not see any more of him, yet he saw them; for from the shed, off several rods from the avenue, the trail to hardy's ranch was in plain sight half its length. and the party, augmented by lieutenant murray, galloped past in all ignorance of moody eyes watching them from the side of a blanketed horse. out a half-mile, two of the riders halted a moment, while the others dashed on. the horses of those two moved close--close together. the arms of the man reached over to the woman, who leaned toward him. at that distance it looked like an embrace, though he was really but tying a loose scarf, and then they moved apart and went on over the snow after their comrades. a brutal oath burst from the lips of the man she had said was worse than few. "if it is--i'll kill him this time! by god!--i'll kill him!" chapter ix. after ten years. major dreyer left the next day, with a scout and small detachment, with the idea of making the journey to fort owens and back in two weeks, as matters were to be discussed requiring prompt action and personal influence. jack genessee was left behind--an independent, unenlisted adjunct to the camp, and holding a more anomalous position there than major dreyer dreamed of; for none of the suspicious current of the scout ever penetrated to his tent--the only one in the company who was ignorant of them. "captain holt commands, genesee," he had said before taking leave; "but on you i depend chiefly in negotiations with the reds, should there be any before i get back, for i believe you would rather save lives on both sides than win a victory through extermination of the hostiles. we need more men with those opinions; so, remember, i trust you." the words had been uttered in the presence of others, and strengthened the suspicions of the camp that genesee had been playing some crooked game. none knew the reason for that hastily decided trip of the major's, though they all agreed that that "damned skunk of a squaw man" was posted. prophecies were rife to the effect that more than likely he was playing into the hands of the hostiles by sending away the major and as many men as possible on some wild-goose chase; and the decision arrived at was that observation of his movements was a matter of policy, and readiness to meet an attack from the hills a probable necessity. he saw it--had seen it from the day of his arrival--and he kept pretty much out of the way of all except kalitan; for in watching genesee they found they would have to include his runner, who was never willingly far away. during the first few days their watching was an easy matter, for the suspected individual appeared well content to hug the camp, only making daily visits to hardy's stable, generally in the evening; but to enter the house was something he avoided. "no," he said, in answer to hardy's invitation; "i reckon i'm more at home with the horses than with your new company. i'll drop in sometime after the kootenai valley is clear of uniforms." "my wife told me to ask you," said hardy; "and when you feel like coming, you'll find the door open." "thank you, hardy; but i reckon not--not for awhile yet." "i'd like you to get acquainted with stuart," added the unsuspicious ranchman. "he is a splendid fellow, and has become interested in this part of the country." "oh, he has?" "yes," and hardy settled himself, mexican fashion, to a seat on his heels. "you see he's a writer, a novelist, and i guess he's going to write up this territory. anyway, this is the second trip he has made. you could give him more points than any man i know." "yes--i might." "rachel has given him all the knowledge she has about the country--the indians, and all that--but she owns that all she learned she got from you; so, if you had a mind to be more sociable, genesee--" the other arose to his feet. "obliged to you, hardy," he said; and only the addition of the name saved it from curtness. "some day, perhaps, when things are slack; i have no time now." "well, he doesn't seem to me to be rushed to death with work," soliloquized hardy, who was abruptly left alone. "he used to seem like such an all-round good fellow, but he's getting surlier than the devil. may be tillie was right to hope he wouldn't accept the invitation. hello, stuart! where are you bound for?" "nowhere in particular. i thought that indian, kalitan, was over here." "no; jack genesee came over himself this morning. that mare of his is coming up in great shape, and you'd better believe he's proud over it. i reckon he saw you coming that he took himself away in such a hurry. he's a queer one." "i should judge so. then kalitan won't be over?" "well, he's likely to be before night. want him?" "yes. if you see him, will you send him to the house?" hardy promised; and kalitan presented himself, with the usual interrogation: "rashell hardy?" but she, the head of the house in his eyes, was in the dark about his visit, and was not enlightened much when stuart entered, stating that it was he who had wanted kalitan. that personage was at once deaf and dumb. only by rachel saying, "he is my friend; will you not listen?" did he unbend at all; and the girl left them on the porch alone, and a little later stuart went upstairs, where she heard him walking up and down the room. she had heard a good deal of that since that day the three had called upon the major, and a change had come over the spirit of their social world; for where stuart had been the gayest, they could never depend on him now. even rachel found their old pleasant companionship ended suddenly, and she felt, despite his silence he was unhappy. "well, when he finds his tongue he will tell me what's the matter," she decided, and so dismissed that question. she rode to camp alone if it was needful, and sometimes caught a glimpse of genesee if he did not happen to see her first; but he no longer came forward to speak, as the rest did--only, perhaps, a touch of his hat and a step aside into some tent, and she knew she was avoided. a conventional young lady of orthodox tendencies would have held her head a little higher next time they met, and not have seen him at all; but this one was woefully deficient in those self-respecting bulwarks; so, the next time she happened to be at the end of the avenue, she turned her steed directly across his path, and called a halt. "good-morning, miss rachel." "klahowya, tillikum," she answered, bringing him back to a remembrance of his chinook. "jack genesee, do you intend ever to come to see us--i mean to walk in like your old self, instead of looking through the window at night?" "looking--" "don't lie," she said coolly, "for i saw you, though no one else did. now tell me what's wrong. why won't you come in the house?" "society is more select in the kootenai hills than it was a year ago;" he answered with a sort of defiance. "do you reckon there is any woman in the house who would speak to me if she could get out of it--anyone except you?" "oh, i don't count." "i had an 'invite' this morning," he added grimly--"not because they wanted me, but because your new friend over there wanted someone to give him points about the country; so i've got him to thank for being wanted at all. now don't look like that--or think i'm kicking. it's a square enough deal so far as i'm concerned, and it stands to reason a man of my stamp hasn't many people pining for him in a respectable house. for the matter of that, it won't do you any good to be seen talking to me this long. i'm going." "all right; so am i. you can go along." "with you?" "certainly." "i reckon not." "don't be so stubborn. if you didn't feel like coming, you would not have been at that window last night." his face flushed at this thrust which he could not parry. "well, i reckon i won't go there again." "no; come inside next time. come, ride half way to the ranch, and tell me about that trip of yours to the blackfeet. major dreyer gave you great praise for your work there." "he should have praised you;" and her own color deepened at the significance of his words. "i met kalitan on his way to the ranch, as i came," she said in the most irrelevant way. he looked at her very sharply, but didn't speak. "well, are you going to escort me home, or must i go alone?" "it is daylight; you know every foot of the way, and you don't need me," he said, summing up the case briefly. "when you do, let me know." "and you won't come?" she added good-naturedly. "all right. klahowya!" she moved out of his way, touched betty with the whip, and started homeward. she rather expected to meet kalitan again, but there was no sign of him on the road; arriving at the house, she found that youth ensconced among the pillows of the largest settee with the air of a king on a throne, and watching with long, unblinking stares miss fred, who was stumbling over the stitches of some crochet-work for the adornment of miss margaret. "i'm so glad you've come!" she breathed gratefully. "he has me so nervous i can't count six; and mrs. hardy is taking a nap, and aunty luce has locked herself upstairs, and i never was stared so out of countenance in my life." "i rather think that's a phase of indian courtship," rachel comforted her by saying; "so you have won a new admirer. what is it kalitan?" he signified that his business was with the "man-who-laughs," the term by which he designated stuart. "mr. stuart left the house just after you did," said fred; "i thought, perhaps, to catch you." "no, he didn't go my way. well, you look comfortable, kalitan; and if you had the addition of another crazy-patch cushion for your left elbow, you might stand a little longer wait--think so?" kalitan thought he could; and there he remained until stuart arrived, flushed and rather breathless from his ride from somewhere. "i was out on the road, but did not see you," said rachel, on his entrance. "this is likely enough," he answered. "i didn't want you to--or anyone else. i'm not good company of late. i was trying to ride away from myself." then he saw kalitan, propped among the cushions. "well," he said sharply; "what have you brought me?" kalitan answered by no word, but thrust his hand inside his hunting-shirt and brought forth an envelope, which he gave into the eager hands reaching for it. stuart gave it one quick glance, turning it in his hand to examine both sides, and then dropped it in his pocket and sat down by the window. rachel could see it was a thick, well-filled envelope, and that the shape was the same used by stuart himself, very large and perfectly square--a style difficult to duplicate in the kootenai hills. "you can go now, if you choose, kalitan," she said, fearing his ease would induce him to stay all night, and filled with a late alarm at the idea of tillie getting her eyes on the peaceful "hostile" and her gorgeous cushions; and without any further notice of stuart, kalitan took his leave. when rachel re-entered the room, a moment later, a letter was crisping into black curls in the fire-place, and the man sat watching it moodily. all that evening there was scarcely question or answer to be had from stuart. he sat by the fire, with miss margaret in his arms--her usual place of an evening; and through the story-telling and jollity he sat silent, looking, jim said, as if he was "workin' hard at thinkin'." "to-morrow night you must tell us a story," said miss fred, turning to him. "you have escaped now for--oh, ever so many nights." "i am afraid my stock is about exhausted." "out of the question! the flimsiest of excuses," she decided. "just imagine a new one, and tell it us instead of writing it; or tell us the one you are writing at now." "well, we will see when to-morrow comes;" and with that vague proposal miss fred had to be content. when the morrow came stuart looked as if there had been no night for him--at least no sleep; and rachel, or even macdougall himself, would not think of calling him prince charlie, as of old. she was no longer so curious about him and that other man who was antagonistic to him. she had been fearful, but whatever knowledge they had of each other she had decided would not mean harm; the quiet days that had passed were a sort of guarantee of that. yet they seemed to have nerved stuart up to some purpose, for the morning after the burning of the letter he appeared suddenly at the door of genesee's shack, or the one major dreyer had turned over to him during his own absence. from the inside kalitan appeared, as if by enchantment, at the sound of a hand on the latch. stuart, with a gesture, motioned him aside, and evidently to kalitan's own surprise, he found himself stepping out while the stranger stepped in. for perhaps a minute the indian stood still, listening, and then, no sounds of hostilities coming to his ears, an expressive gutteral testified to his final acquiescence, and he moved away. his hesitation showed that rachel had not been the only one to note the bearing of those two toward each other. had he listened a minute longer, he might have heard the peace within broken by the voices that, at first suppressed and intense, rose with growing earnestness. the serious tones of stuart sounded through the thin board walls in expostulation, and again as if urging some point that was granted little patience; for above it the voice of genesee broke in, all the mellowness gone from it, killed by the brutal harshness, the contemptuous derision, with which he answered some plea or proposition. "oh, you come to me now, do you?" he said, walking back and forth across the room like some animal fighting to keep back rage with motion, if one can imagine an animal trying to put restraint on itself; and at every turn his smoldering, sullen gaze flashed over the still figure inside the door, and its manner, with a certain calm steadfastness of purpose, not to be upset by anger, seemed to irritate him all the more. "so you come this time to lay out proposals to me, eh? and think, after all these years, that i'm to be talked over to what you want by a few soft words? well, i'll see you damned first; so you can strike the back trail as soon as you've a mind to." "i shan't go back," said stuart deliberately, "until i get what i came for." the other answered with a short, mirthless laugh. "then you're located till doomsday," he retorted, "and doomsday in the afternoon; though i reckon that won't be much punishment, considering the attractions you manage to find up here, and the advantages you carry with you--a handsome face, a gentleman's manners and an honest name. why, you are begging on a full hand, mister; and what are you begging to? a man that's been about as good as dead for years--a man without any claim to a name, or to recognition by decent people--an outlaw from civilization." "not so bad as that, jack," broke in stuart, who was watching in a sort of misery the harsh self-condemnation in the restless face and eyes of genesee. "don't be so bitter as that on yourself. you are unjust--don't i know?" "the hell you say!" was the withering response to this appeal, as if with the aid of profanity to destroy the implied compliment to himself. "your opinion may go for a big pile among your fine friends, but it doesn't amount to much right here. and you'd better beat a retreat, sir. the reputation of the highly respected charles stuart, the talented writer, the honorable gentleman, might get some dirty marks across it if folks knew he paid strictly private visits to genesee jack, a renegade squaw man; and more still if they guessed that he came for a favor--that's what you called it when you struck the shack, i believe. a favor! it has taken you a good while to find that name for it." "no, it has not, jack," and the younger man's earnestness of purpose seemed to rise superior to the taunts and sarcasm of the other. "it was so from the first, when i realized--after i knew--i didn't seem to have thoughts for anything else. it was a sort of justice, i suppose, that made me want them when i had put it out of my power to reach them. you don't seem to know what it means, jack, but i--i am homesick for them; i have been for years, and now that things have changed so for me, i--jack, for god's sake, have some feeling! and realize that other men can have!" jack turned on him like a flash. "you--you say that to me!" he muttered fiercely. "you, who took no count of anybody's feelings but your own, and thought god almighty had put the best things on this earth for you to use and destroy! killing lives as sure as if they'd never drawn another breath, and forgetting all about it with the next pretty face you saw! if that is what having a stock of feeling leads a man to, i reckon we're as well off without any such extras." stuart had sat down on a camp-stool, his face buried in his hands, and there was a long silence after genesee's bitter words, as he stood looking at the bent head with an inexplicable look in his stormy eyes. then his visitor arose. "jack," he said with the same patience--not a word of retort had come from him--"jack, i've been punished every day since. i have tried to forget it--to kill all memory by every indulgence and distraction in my reach--pursued forgetfulness so eagerly that people have thought me still chasing pleasure. i turned to work, and worked hard, but the practice brought to my knowledge so many lives made wretched as--as--well, i could not stand it. the heart-sickness it brought me almost drove me melancholy mad. the only bright thing in life was--the children--" an oath broke from genesee's lips. "and then," continued stuart, without any notice save a quick closing of the eyes as if from a blow, "and then they died--both of them. that was justice, too, no doubt, for they stayed just long enough to make themselves a necessity to me--a solace--and to make me want what i have lost. i am telling you this because i want you to know that i have had things to try me since i saw you last, and that i've come through them with the conviction that there is to be no content in life to me until i make what amends i can for the folly of the boy you knew. the thought has become a monomania with me. i hunted for months for you, and never found a trace. then i wrote--there." "you did!" "yes, i did--say what you please, do what you please. it was my only hope, and i took it. i told her i was hunting for you--and my purpose. in return i got only this," and he handed toward genesee a sheet of paper with one line written across it. "you see--your address, nothing more. but, jack, can't you see it would not have been sent if she had not wished--" "that's enough!" broke in the other. "i reckon i've given you all the time i have to spare this morning, mister. you're likely to strike better luck in some different direction than talking sentiment and the state of your feelings to me. i've been acquainted with them before--pretty much--and don't recollect that the effect was healthy." "jack, you will do what i ask?" "not this morning, sonny," answered the other, still with that altogether aggressive taunt in his tone. "i would go back to the ranch if i was you, and by this time to-morrow some of them may make you forget the favor you want this morning. so long!" and with this suggestion to his guest to vacate, he turned his back, sat down by the fire, and began filling a pipe. "all right; i'll go, and in spite of your stubbornness, with a lighter heart than i carried here, for i've made you understand that i want to make amends, and that i have not been all a liar; that i want to win back the old faith you all had in me; and, jack, if my head has gone wrong, something in my heart forbade me to have content, and that has been my only hope for myself. for i have a hope, and a determination, jack, and as for anyone helping me to forget--well, you are wrong there; one woman might do it--for a while--i acknowledge that, but i am safe in knowing she would rather help me to remember." genesee wheeled about quickly. "have you dared--" "no, i have not told her, if that is what you mean; why--why should i?" his denial weakened a little as he remembered how closely his impulse had led him to it, and how strong, though reasonless, that impulse had been. the stem of the pipe snapped in genesee's fingers as he arose, pushing the camp-stool aside with his foot, as if clearing space for action. "since you own up that there's someone about here that you--you've taken a fancy to--damn you!--i'm going to tell you right now that you've got to stop that! you're no more fit than i am to speak to her, or ask for a kind word from her, and i give you a pointer that if you try playing fast and loose with her, there'll be a committee of one to straighten out the case, and do it more completely than that man did who was a fool ten years ago. now, hearken to that--will you?" and then, without waiting for an answer, he strode out of the shack, slamming the door after him, and leaving his visitor in possession. "i've got to show him, by staying right in these hills, that i am in earnest," stuart decided, taking the seat his host had kicked aside, and stretching his feet out to the fire. "no use in arguing or pleading with him--there never was. but give him his own lead, and he will come around to the right point of view, though he may curse me up hill and down dale while he is doing it; a queer, queer fellow--god bless him! and how furious he was about that girl! those two are a sort of david and jonathan in their defense of each other, and yet never exchange words if they can help it--that's queer, too--it would be hard telling which of them is the more so. little need to warn any man away from her, however; she is capable of taking very good care of herself." there was certainly more than one woman at the ranch; but to hear the speech of those two men, one would have doubted it; for neither had thought it necessary even to mention her name. chapter x. the telling of a story. "but you promised! yes, you did, mr. stuart--didn't he, mrs. hardy? there, that settles it; so you see this is your evening to tell a story." the protracted twilight, with its cool grays and purples, had finally faded away over the snow, long after the stars took up their watch for the night. the air was so still and so chill that the bugle-call at sunset had sounded clearly along the little valley from camp, and fred thought the nearness of sound made a house seem so much more home-like. after the bugle notes and the long northern twilight, had come the grouping of the young folks about the fire, and fred's reminder that this was to be a "story" night. "but," declared stuart, "i can think of none, except a very wonderful one of an old lady who lived in a shoe, and another of a house marvelously constructed by a gentleman called jack--" here a clamor arose from the rebels in the audience, and from fred the proposal that he should read or tell them of what he was working on at present, and gaining at last his consent. "but i must bring down some notes in manuscript," he added, "as part of it is only mapped out, and my memory is treacherous." "i will go and get them," offered fred. "no, don't you go! i'm afraid to let you out of the room, lest you may remember some late business at camp and take french leave. is the manuscript on the table in your room? i'll bring it." and scarcely waiting either assent or remonstrance, she ran up the stairs, returning immediately with hands full of loose sheets and two rolls of manuscript. "i confiscated all there was in reach," she laughed. "here they are; you pay no money, and you take your choice." she was such a petite, pretty little creature, her witchy face alight with the confidence of pleasure to come; and looking down at her, he remarked: "you look so much a spirit of inspiration, miss fred, that you had better not make such a sweeping offer, lest i might be tempted to choose you." "and have a civil war on your hands," warned rachel, "with the whole camp in rebellion." "not much; they don't value me so highly," confessed fred. "they would all be willing to give me away." "a willingness only seconded by your own." this from the gallant lieutenant on the settee. "my child, this is not leap-year, and in the absence of your parent i--" "yes, i know. but as captain holt commands in papa's absence, i don't see what extra responsibility rests on your shoulders. now, mr. stuart, all quiet along the kootenai; go ahead." "not an easy thing to do," he answered ruefully, trying to sort the jumbled lot of papers she had brought him, and beginning by laying the rolls of manuscript on the table back of him, as if disposing of them. "you have seized on several things that we could not possibly wade through in one evening, but here is the sketch i spoke of. it is of camp-life, by the way, and so open to criticism from you two veterans. it was suggested by a story i heard told at the fort." just then a wild screech of terror sounded from the yard, and then an equally wild scramble across the porch. everyone jumped to their feet, but rachel reached the door first, just as aunty luce, almost gray from terror, floundered in. "they's come!" she panted, in a sort of paralysis of fright and triumph of prophecy. "i done tole all you chillen! injuns! right here--i seed 'em!" hardy reached for his gun, the others doing the same; but the girl at the door had darted out into the darkness. "rachel!" screamed tillie, but no rachel answered. even hardy's call was not heeded; and he followed her with something like an oath on his lips, and stuart at his elbow. outside, it seemed very dark after the brightness within, and they stopped on the porch an instant to guide themselves by sound, if there was any movement. there was--the least ominous of sounds--a laugh. the warlike attitude of all relaxed somewhat, for it was so high and clear that it reached even those within doors; and then, outlined against the background of snow, stuart and hardy could see two forms near the gate--a tall and a short one, and the shorter one was holding to the sleeve of the other and laughing. "you and aunty luce are a fine pair of soldiers," she was saying; "both beat a retreat at the first glimpse of each other. and you can't leave after upsetting everyone like this; you must come in the house and reassure them. come on!" some remonstrance was heard, and at the sound of the voice hardy stepped out. "hello, genesee!" he said, with a good deal of relief in his manner; "were you the scarecrow? come in to the light, till we make sure we're not to be scalped." after a few words with the girl that the others could not hear, he walked beside her to the porch. "i'm mighty sorry, hardy," he said as they met. "i was a little shaky about mowitza to-day, and reckoned i'd better make an extra trip over; but i didn't count on kicking up a racket like this--didn't even spot the woman till she screeched and run." "that's all right," said hardy reassuringly. "i'm glad you came, whether intentionally or by accident. you know i told you the other day--" "yes--i know." rachel and stuart had entered the house ahead of them, and all had dropped back into their chosen points of vantage for the evening when assurance was given that the indians belonged to aunty's imagination; but for those short seconds of indecision tillie had realized, as never before, that they were really within the lines of the indian country. aunty luce settled herself sulkily in the corner, a grotesque figure, with an injured air, eyeing genesee with a suspicion not a whit allayed when she recognized the man who had brought the first customs of war to them--taking nocturnal possession of the best room. "no need tell me he's a friend o' you all!" she grunted. "nice sort o' friend you's comin' to, i say--lives with injuns; reckon i heard--umph!" this was an aside to tillie, who was trying to keep her quiet, and not succeeding very well, much to the amusement of the others within hearing, especially fred. genesee had stopped in the outer room, speaking with hardy; and, standing together on the hearth, in the light of the fire, it occurred to the group in the other room what a fine pair they made--each a piece of physical perfection in his way. "a pair of typical frontiersmen," said murray, and miss fred was pleased to agree, and add some praise on her own account. "why, that man genesee is really handsome," she whispered; "he isn't scowling like sin, as he was when i saw him before. ask him in here, mrs. tillie; i like to look at him." mrs. tillie had already made a movement toward him. perhaps the steady, questioning gaze of rachel had impelled her to follow what was really her desire, only--why need the man be so flagrantly improper? tillie had a great deal of charity for black sheep, but she believed in their having a corral to themselves, and not allowing them the chance of smutching the spotless flocks that have had good luck and escaped the mire. she was a good little woman, a warm-hearted one; and despite her cool condemnation of his wickedness when he was absent, she always found herself, in his presence, forgetting all but their comradeship of that autumn, and greeting him with the cordiality that belonged to it. "i shall pinch myself for this in the morning," she prophesied, even while she held out her hand and reminded him that he had been a long time deciding about making them a visit. her greeting was much warmer than her farewell had been the morning he left--possibly because of the relief in finding it was not a "hostile" at their gate. and he seemed more at ease, less as if he need to put himself on the defensive--an attitude that had grown habitual to him, as it does to many who live against the rulings of the world. she walked ahead of him into the other room, thus giving him no chance to object had he wanted to; and after a moment's hesitation he followed her, and noticed, without seeming to look at any of them, that rachel stood back of stuart's chair, and that stuart was looking at him intently, as if for recognition. on the other side, he saw the lieutenant quietly lay his hand on miss fred's wrist that was in shadow, just as she arose impulsively to offer her hand to the man whom she found was handsome when he had the aid of a razor. a beard of several weeks' growth had covered his face at their first meeting; now there was only a heavy mustache left. but she heeded that silent pressure of the wrist more than she would a spoken word, and instead of the proffered hand there was a little constrained smile of recognition, and a hope given that aunty luce had not upset his nerves with her war-cries. he saw it all the moment he was inside the door--the refined face of stuart, with the graciousness of manner so evidently acceptable to all, the sheets of manuscript still in his fingers, looking as he stood there like the ruling spirit of the cheery circle; and just outside that circle, though inside the door, he--genesee--stood alone, the fact sharply accented by miss fred's significant movement; and with the remembrance of the fact came the quick, ever-ready spirit of bravado, and his head was held a trifle higher as he smiled down at her in apparent unconcern. "if it is going to make aunty luce feel more comfortable to have company, i'm ready to own up that my hair raised the hat off my head at first sight of her--isn't quite settled into place yet;" and he ran his fingers through the mass of thick, dark hair. "how's that, aunty?" "umph!" she grunted, crouching closer to the wall, and watching him distrustfully from the extreme corner of her eye. "have you ever been scared so badly you couldn't yell, aunty?" he asked, with a bland disregard of the fact that she was just then in danger of roasting herself on the hearth for the purpose of evading him. "no? that's the way you fixed me a little while back, sure enough. i was scared too badly to run, or they never would have caught me." the only intelligible answer heard from her was: "go 'long, you!" he did not "go 'long." on the contrary, he wheeled about in tillie's chair, and settled himself as if that corner was especially attractive, and he intended spending the evening in it--a suggestion that was a decided surprise to all, even to rachel, remembering his late conservatism. stuart was the only one who realized that it was perhaps a method of proving by practical demonstration the truth of his statement that he was a pariah among the class who received the more refined character with every welcome. it was a queer thing for a man to court slights, but once inside the door, his total unconcern of that which had been a galling mortification to him was a pretty fair proof of stuart's theory. he talked indian wars to hardy, and indian love-songs to hardy's wife. he coolly turned his attention to lieutenant murray, with whom his acquaintance was the slightest, and from the lieutenant to miss fred, who was amused and interested in what was, to her, a new phase of a "squaw man;" and her delight was none the less keen because of the ineffectual attempts in any way to suppress this very irregular specimen, whose easy familiarity was as silencing as his gruff curtness had been the day they met him first. beyond an occasional remark, his notice was in no way directed to rachel--in fact, he seemed to avoid looking at her. he was much more interested in the other two ladies, who by degrees dropped into a cordiality on a par with that of aunty luce; and he promptly took advantage of it by inviting miss fred to go riding with him in the morning. the man's impudence and really handsome face gave fred a wicked desire to accept, and horrify the lieutenant and tillie; but one glance at that little matron told her it would not do. "i have an engagement to ride to-morrow," she said rather hurriedly, "else--" "else i should be your cavalier," he laughed. "ah, well, there are more days coming. i can wait." a dead silence followed, in which rachel caught the glance genesee turned on stuart--a smile so mirthless and with so much of bitter irony in it that it told her plainly as words that the farce they had sat through was understood by those two men, if no others; and, puzzled and eager to break the awkward silence, she tried to end it by stepping into the breach. "you have totally forgotten the story you were to tell us," she said, pointing to the sheets of manuscript in stuart's hand; "if we are to have it to-night, why not begin?" "certainly; the story, by all means," echoed fred. "we had it scared out of our heads, i guess, but our nerves are equal to it now. are you fond of stories, mr.--mr. genesee?" "uncommonly." "well, mr. stuart was about to read us one just as you came in: one he wrote since he came up in these wilds--at the fort, didn't you say, mr. stuart? you know," she added, turning again to genesee--"you know mr. stuart is a writer--a romancer." "yes," he answered slowly, looking at the subject of their discourse as if examining something rare and curious; "i should reckon--he--might be." the contempt in the tone sent the hot blood to stuart's face, his eyes glittering as ominously as genesee's own would in anger. an instant their gaze met in challenge and retort, and then the sheets of paper were laid deliberately aside. "i believe, after all, i will read you something else," he said, reaching for one of the rolls of manuscript on the table; "that is, with your permission. it is not a finished story, only the prologue. i wrote it in the south, and thought i might find material for the completion of it up here; perhaps i may." "let us have that, by all means," urged tillie. "what do you call it?" "i had not thought of a title, as the story was scarcely written with the idea of publication. the theme, however, which is pretty fairly expressed in the quotation at the beginning, may suggest a title. i will leave that to my audience." "and we will all put on our thinking-caps and study up a title while you tell the story, and when it is ended, see which has the best one to offer. it will be a new sort of game with which to test our imaginations. go on. what is the quotation, to begin with?" to the surprise of the listeners, he read that old command from deuteronomy, written of brother to brother: "thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray; thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy brother. "and with all lost things of thy brother's, which he hath lost and thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise. "in any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth down." stuart ceased after those lines, and looked for comment. he saw enough in the man's face opposite him. "oh, go on," said rachel. "never mind about the suggestions in that heading--it is full of them; give us the story." "it is only the prologue to a story," he reminded her; and with no further comment began the manuscript. its opening was that saddest of all things to the living--a death-bed--and that most binding of all vows--a promise given to the dying. there was drawn the picture of a fragile, fair little lady, holding in her chilling fingers the destiny of the lives she was about to leave behind--young lives--one a sobbing, wondering girl of ten, and two boys; the older perhaps eighteen, an uncouth, strong-faced youth, who clasped hands with another boy several years younger, but so fair that few would think them brothers, and only the more youthful would ever have been credited as the child of the little woman who looked so like a white lily. the other was the elder son--an esau, however, who was favorite with neither father nor mother; with no one, in fact, who had ever known the sunny face and nature of the more youthful--an impulsive, loving disposition that only shone the brighter by contrast with the darker-faced, undemonstrative one whom even his mother never understood. and the shadow of that misunderstanding was with them even at the death-bed, where the jacob sobbed out his grief in passionate protests against the power that would rob him, and the esau stood like a statue to receive her commands. back of them was the father, smothering his own grief and consoling his favorite, when he could, and the one witness to the seal that was set on the three young lives. her words were not many--she was so weak--but she motioned to the girl beside the bed. "i leave her to you," she said, looking at them both, but the eyes, true to the feeling back of them, wandered to the fairer face and rested there. "the old place will belong to you two ere many years--your father will perhaps come after me;" and she glanced lovingly toward the man whom all the world but herself had found cold and hard in nature. "i promised long ago--when her mother died--that she should always have a home, and now i have to leave the trust to you, my sons." "we will keep it," said the steady voice of esau, as he sat like an automaton watching her slowly drifting from them; while jacob, on his knees, with his arms about her, was murmuring tenderly, as to a child, that all should be as she wished--her trust was to be theirs always. "and if either of you should fail or forget, the other must take the care on his own shoulders. promise me that too, because--" the words died away in a whisper, but her eyes turned toward the esau. he knew too bitterly what it meant. though only a boy, he was a wild one--people said a bad one. his father had pronounced him the only one of their name who was not a gentleman. he gambled and he drank; his home seemed the stables, his companions, fast horses and their fast masters; and in the eyes of his mother he read, as never before, the effect that life had produced. his own mother did not dare trust the black sheep of the family, even though he promised at her death-bed. a wild, half-murderous hate arose in him at the knowledge--a hate against his elegant, correctly mannered father, whose cold condemnation had long ago barred him out from his mother's sympathy, until even at her death-bed he felt himself a stranger--his little mother--and he had worshiped her as the faithful do their saints, and like them, afar off. but even the hate for his father was driven back at the sight of the wistful face, and the look that comes to eyes but once. "we promise--i promise that, so help me god!" he said earnestly, and then bent forward for the first time, his voice breaking as he spoke. "mother! mother! say just once that you trust--that you believe in me!" her gaze was still on his face; it was growing difficult to move the eyes at will, and the very intensity of his own feelings may have held her there. her eyes widened ever so little, as if at some revelation born to her by that magnetism, and then--"my boy, i trust--" the words again died in a whisper; and raising his head with a long breath of relief, he saw his father drop on his knees by the younger son. their arms were about each other and about her. a few broken, disjointed whispers; a last smile upward, beyond them, a soft, sighing little breath, after which there was no other, and then the voice of the boy, irrepressible in his grief, as his love, broke forth in passionate despair, and was soothed by his father, who led him sobbing and rebellious from the bedside--both in their sorrow forgetting that third member of the family who sat so stoically through it all, until the little girl, their joint trust, half-blind with her own tears, saw him there so still and as pathetically alone as the chilling clay beside him. trying to say some comforting words, she spoke to him, but received no answer. she had always been rather afraid of this black sheep--he was so morose about the house, and made no one love him except the horses; but the scene just past drew her to him for once without dread. "brother," she whispered, calling him by the name his mother had left her; "dear brother, don't you sit there like that;" and a vague terror came to her as he made no sign. "you--you frighten me." she slipped her hand about his neck with a child's caressing sympathy, and then a wild scream brought the people hurrying into the room. "he is dead!" she cried, as she dropped beside him; "sitting there cold as stone, and we thought he didn't care! and he is dead--dead!" but he was not dead--the physician soon assured them of that. it was only a cataleptic fit. the emotion that had melted the one brother to tears had frozen the other into the closest semblance to stone that life can reach, and still be life. the silence was thrilling as stuart's voice ceased, and he stooped for the other pages laid by his chair. a feeling that the story on paper could never convey was brought to every listener by the something in his voice that was not tears, but suggested the emotion back of tears. they had always acknowledged the magnetism of the man, but felt that he was excelling himself in this instance. tillie and fred were silently crying. rachel was staring very steadily ahead of her, too steadily to notice that the hand laid on genesee's revolver at the commencement of the story had gradually relaxed and dropped listless beside him. all the strength in his body seemed to creep into his eyes as he watched stuart, trusting as much to his eyes as his ears for the complete comprehension of the object in or back of that story. in the short pause the author, with one sweeping glance, read his advantage--that he was holding in the bonds of sympathy this man whom he could never conquer through an impersonal influence. the knowledge was a ten-fold inspiration--the point to be gained was so great to him; and with his voice thrilling them all with its intensity, he read on and on. the story? its finish was the beginning of this one; but it was told with a spirit that can not be transmitted by ink and paper, for the teller depended little on his written copy. he knew it by heart--knew all the tenderness of a love-story in it that was careless of the future as the butterflies that coquette on a summer's day, passing and repassing with a mere touch of wings, a challenge to a kiss, and then darting hither and yon in the chase that grows laughing and eager, until each flash of white wings in the sun bears them high above the heads of their comrades, as the divine passion raises all its votaries above the commonplace. close and closer they are drawn by the spirit that lifts them into a new life; high and higher, until against the blue sky there is a final flash of white wings. it is the wedding by a kiss, and the coquettings are over--the sky closes in. they are a world of their own. such a love story of summer was told by him in the allegory of the butterflies; but the young heart throbbing through it was that of the woman-child who had wept while the two brothers had clasped hands and accepted her as the trust of the dying; and her joyous teacher of love had been the fair-haired, fine-faced boy whose grief had been so great and whose promises so fervent. it is a very old story, but an ever-pathetic one--that tragedy of life; and likewise this one, without thought of sin, with only a fatal fondness on her part, a fatal desire for being loved on his, and a season's farewell to be uttered, of which they could speak no word--the emotions that have led to more than one tragedy of soul. and one of the butterflies in this one flitted for many days through the flowers of her garden, shy, yet happy, whispering over and over, "his wife, his wife!" while traveling southward, the other felt a passion of remorse in his heart, and resolved on multitudinous plans for the following of a perfection of life in the future. all this he told--too delicately to give offense, yet too unsparingly not to show that the evil wrought in a moment of idle pastime, of joyous carelessness, is as fatal in its results as the most deliberate act of preconceived wickedness. and back of the lives and loves of those two, with their emotional impulses and joyous union of untutored hearts, there arose, unloved and seemingly unloving, the quiet, watchful figure of the esau. looking at his life from a distance, and perhaps through eyes of remorse, the writer had idealized that one character, while he had only photographed the others; had studied out the deeds back of every decided action, and discovered, or thought he had, that it was the lack of sympathy in his home-life had made a sort of human porcupine of him, and none had guessed that, back of the keen darts, there beat a pulse hungry for words such as he begged from his mother at the last--and receiving, was ready to sacrifice every hope of his, present or future, that he might prove himself worthy of the trust she had granted him, though so late. something in the final ignoring of self and the taking on his own shoulders the responsibilities of those two whom his mother had loved--something in all that, made him appear a character of heroic proportions, viewed from stuart's point of view. he walked through those pages as a live thing, the feeling in the author's voice testifying to his own earnestness in the portrayal--an earnestness that seemed to gain strength as he went along, and held his listeners with convincing power until the abrupt close of the scene between those two men in the old new orleans house. everyone felt vaguely surprised and disturbed when he finished--it was all so totally unlike stuart's stories with which he had entertained them before. they were unprepared for the emotions provoked; and there was in it, and in the reading, a suggestion of something beyond all that was told. the silence was so long that stuart himself was the first to lift his eyes to those opposite, and tried to say carelessly: "well?" his face was pale, but not more so than that of genesee, who, surprised in that intent gaze, tried to meet his eyes steadily, but failed, faltered, wavered, and finally turned to rachel, as if seeking in some way his former assurance. and what he saw there was the reaching out of her hand until it touched stuart's shoulder with a gesture of approving comradeship. "good!" she said tersely; "don't ever again talk of writing for pastime--the character of that one man is enough to be proud of." "but there are two men," said fred, finding her voice again, with a sense of relief; "which one do you mean?" "no," contradicted rachel, with sharp decision; "i can see only one--the esau." stuart shrank a little under her hand, not even thanking her for the words of praise; and, to her surprise, it was genesee who answered her, his eyes steady enough, except when looking at the author of the story. "don't be too quick about playing judge," he suggested; and the words took her back like a flash to that other time when he had given her the same curt advice. "may be that boy had some good points that are not put down there. maybe he might have had plans about doing the square thing, and something upset them; or--or he might have got tangled up in a lariat he wasn't looking for. it's just natural bad luck some men have of getting tangled up like that; and may be he--this fellow--" fred broke out laughing at his reasoning for the defense. "why, mr. genesee," she said gleefully, "an audience of you would be an inspiration to an author or actor; you are talking about the man as if he was a flesh and blood specimen, instead of belonging to mr. stuart's imagination." "yes, i reckon you're right, miss," he said, rising to his feet, with a queer, half-apologetic smile; "you see, i'm not used to hearing folks read--romances." but the insolent sarcasm with which he had spoken of the word at first was gone. the others had all regained their tongues, or the use of them, and comment and praise were given the author--not much notice taken of genesee's opinion and protest. his theories of the character might be natural ones; but his own likelihood for entanglements, to judge by his reputation, was apt to prejudice him, rendering him unduly charitable toward any other fellow who was unlucky. "my only objection to it," said tillie, "is that there is not enough of it. it seems unfinished." "well, he warned us in the beginning that it was only a prologue," reminded her husband; "but there is a good deal in it, too, for only a prologue--a good deal." "for my part," remarked the lieutenant, "i don't think i should want anything added to it. just as it stands, it proves the characters of the two men. if it was carried further, it might gain nothing, and leave nothing for one's imagination." "i had not thought of that," said stuart; "in fact, it was only written to help myself in analyzing two characters i had in my head, and could not get rid of until i put them on paper. authors are haunted by such ghosts sometimes. it is miss fred's fault that i resurrected this one to-night--she thrust on me the accidental remembrance." "there are mighty few accidents in the world," was genesee's concise statement, as he pulled on his heavy buckskin gloves. "i'm about to cut for camp. going?" this to the lieutenant. after that laconic remark on accidents, no further word or notice was exchanged between stuart and genesee; but it was easily seen that the story read had smoothed out several wrinkles of threatened discord and discontent. it had at least tamed the spirit of the scout, and left him more the man rachel knew in him. her impatience at his manner early in the evening disappeared as he showed improvement; and just before they left, she crossed over to him, asking something of the snows on the scot mountain trail, his eyes warming at the directness of her speech and movement, showing to any who cared to notice that she spoke to him as to a friend; but his glance turned instinctively from her to stuart. he remembered watching them that day as they rode from camp. "but what of davy?" she repeated; "have you heard any word of him?" "no, and i'm ashamed to say it," he acknowledged; "i haven't been to see him at all since i got back. i've had a lot of things in my head to keep track of, and didn't even send. i'll do it, though, in a day or so--or else go myself." "i'm afraid he may be sick. if the snow is not bad, it's a wonder he has not been down. i believe i will go." "i don't like you to go over those trails alone," he said in a lower tone; "not just now, at any rate." "why not now?" "well, you know these indian troubles may bring queer cattle into the country. the kootenai tribe would rather take care of you than do you harm; but--well, i reckon you had better keep to the ranch." "and you don't reckon you can trust me to tell me why?" she said in a challenging way. "it mightn't do any good. i don't know, you see, that it is really dangerous, only i'd rather you'd keep on the safe side; and--and--don't say i can't trust you. i'd trust you with my life--yes, more than that, if i had it!" his voice was not heard by the others, who were laughing and chatting, it was so low; but its intensity made her step back, looking up at him. "don't look as if i frighten you," he said quickly; "i didn't come in here for that. you shouldn't have made me come, anyway--i belong to the outside; coming in only helps me remember it." "so that was what put you in such a humor. i thought it was stuart." "you did?" "yes; i know you don't like him--but, i think you are prejudiced." "oh, you do?" and she saw the same inscrutable smile on his face that she had noticed when he looked at stuart. "there--there," she laughed, throwing up her hand as if to check him, "don't tell me again that i am too anxious to judge people; but he is a good fellow." "and you are a good girl," he said warmly, looking down at her with so much feeling in his face that stuart, glancing toward them, was startled into strange conjectures at the revelation in it. it was the first time he had ever seen them talking together. "and you're a plucky girl, too," added genesee, "else you wouldn't stand here talking to me before everyone. i'll remember it always of you. tillikum, good-night." part fourth one squaw man chapter i. lamonti. the next morning awoke with the balmy air of spring following the sunrise over the snow--a fair, soft day, with treachery back of its smiles; for along in the afternoon the sky gathered in gray drifts, and the weather-wise prophesied a big snow-fall. all the morning genesee wrote. one page after another was torn up, and it was the middle of the afternoon before he finally finished the work to his satisfaction, did it up in a flat, square package, and having sealed it securely, called kalitan. "you take this to the express office at the station," he said; "get a paper for it--receipt; then go to holland's--to the bank store; give them this," and he handed a slip of written paper. "if they give you letter, keep it carefully--so," and he took from his shirt-pocket a rubber case the size of an ordinary envelope. evidently kalitan had carried it before, for he opened a rather intricate clasp and slipped the bit of paper into it. "all good--not get wet," he said, picking up the larger package. "the arrow fly down; come back how soon?" "send this," pointing to the package, "the first thing in the morning; then wait until night for the stage from pacific that brings the mail--may be if road is bad it will not come till next morning." "kalitan wait?" "yes, wait till the stage comes, then ask for letter, and keep your eyes open; watch for bad whites. klahowya!" watching kalitan start off with that package, he drew a long breath of relief, like a man who had laid down some burden; and leaving the avenue and the camp behind, he struck out over the trail toward hardy's, not even stopping to saddle a horse. he was going to have a "wau-wau" with mowitza. he had barely entered the stable door when tillie came across the yard, with a shawl thrown over her head and looking disturbed. "oh, is it you, mr. genesee?" she said, with a little sigh of disappointment; "i thought it was hen or one of the others come back. did you meet them?" "yes; going up the west valley after stock." "the west valley! then they won't get back before dark, and i--i don't know what to do!" and the worried look reached utter despair as she spoke. "what's up? i can ride after them if you say so." "i don't know what to say. i should have told hen at noon; but i knew it would put him out of patience with rachel, and i trusted to her getting back all right; but now, if the snow sets in quickly, and it threatens to, she may get lost, and i--" "where is she?" "gone to scot's mountain." an energetic expletive broke from his lips, unchecked even by the presence of the little woman who had seemed a sort of madonna to him in the days a year old. the madonna did not look much shocked. she had an idea that the occasion was a warrant for condemnation, and she felt rather guilty herself. "one of the kootenai tribe came here this morning, and after jabbering chinook with him, she told me davy macdougall was sick, and she was going to ride up there. hen was out, and she wouldn't listen to miss fred and me--just told us to keep quiet and not tell him where she was, and that she would get back for supper; so we haven't said a word; and now the snow is coming, she may get lost." tillie was almost in tears; it was easy to see she was terribly frightened, and very remorseful for keeping rachel's command to say nothing to hardy. "did that indian go with her?" "no; and she started him back first, up over that hill, to be sure he would not go over to the camp. i can't see what her idea was for that." genesee could--it was to prevent him from knowing she was going up into the hills despite his caution. "there is not a man left on the place, except jim," continued tillie, "or i would send them after her. but jim does not know the short-cut trail that i've heard rachel speak of, and he might miss her in the hills; and--oh, dear! oh, dear!" genesee reached to the wooden peg where his saddle hung, and threw it across mowitza's back. in a moment tillie understood what it meant, and felt that, capable as he might be, he was not the person she should send as guardian for a young girl. to be sure, he had once before filled that position, and brought her in safety; but that was before his real character was known. tillie thought of what the rest would say, of what stuart would think for she had already bracketed rachel and stuart in her match-making calendar. she was between several fires of anxiety and indecision, as she noted the quick buckling of straps and the appropriation of two blankets from the hanging shelf above them. "are you--can you get someone to go for me--from the camp?" she asked hurriedly. he turned and looked at her with a smile in his eyes. "i reckon so," he answered briefly; and then, seeing her face flushed and embarrassed, the smile died out as he felt what her thoughts were. "who do you want?" he added, leading mowitza out and standing beside her, ready to mount. she did not even look up. she felt exactly as she had when she told hen that she knew she was right, and yet felt ashamed of herself. "i thought if you could spare kalitan--" she hesitated. "she knows him, and he has been with her so often up there, no one else would know so well where to look for her--that is, if you could spare him," she added helplessly. "the chances are that i can," he said in a business-like way; "and if i was you i'd just keep quiet about the trip, or else tell them she has an indian guide--and she will have. can you give me a bottle of brandy and some biscuits?" she ran into the house, and came back with them at once. he was mounted and a-waiting her. "kalitan has left the camp--gone over that hill;" and he motioned rather vaguely toward the ridge across the valley. "i'll just ride over and start him from there, so he won't need to go back to camp for rations. don't you worry; just keep quiet, and she'll come back all right with kalitan." he turned without further words, and rode away through the soft flakes of snow that were already beginning to fall. he did not even say a good-bye; and tillie, hedged in by her convictions and her anxiety, let him go without even a word of thanks. "i simply did not dare to say 'thank you' to him," she thought, as he disappeared. and then she went into the house and eased fred's heart and her own conscience with the statement that kalitan, the best guide rachel could have, had gone to meet her. she made no mention of the objectionable character who had sent kalitan. by the time of sunset, scot's mountain was smothered in the white cloud that had closed over it so suddenly, and the snow was still falling straight down, and so steadily that one could not retrace steps and find tracks ten minutes after they were made. through the banked-up masses a white-coated unrecognizable individual plowed his way to macdougall's door, and without ceremony opened it and floundered in, carrying with him what looked enough snow to smother a man; but his eyes were clear of it, and a glance told him the cabin had but one occupant. "when did she leave?" was the salutation macdougall received, after a separation of six weeks. "why, jack, my lad!" "yes, that's who it is, and little time to talk. has she been here?" "the lass--rachel? she has that--a sight for sore eyes--and set all things neat and tidy for me in no time;" and he waved his hand toward the clean-swept hearth, and the table with clean dishes, and a basket with a loaf of new bread showing through. "but she did na stay long wi' me. the clouds were comin' up heavy, she said, and she must get home before the snow fell; an' it snows now?" "well, rather. can't you see out?" "i doubt na i've had a nap since she left;" and the old man raised himself stiffly from the bunk. "i got none the night, for the sore pain o' my back, but the lass helped me. she's a rare helpful one." "which trail did she take?" asked genesee impatiently. he saw the old man was not able to help him look for her, and did not want to alarm him; but to stand listening to comments when every minute was deepening the snow, and the darkness--well, it was a test to the man waiting. "i canna say for sure, but she spoke o' the trail through the maples being the quickest way home; likely she took it." genesee turned to the door with a gesture of despair. he had come that way and seen no sign of her; but the trail wound above gulches where a misstep was fatal, and where a horse and rider could be buried in the depths that day and leave no trace. at the door he stopped and glanced at davy macdougall, and then about the cabin. "are you fixed all right here in case of being snowed in?" he asked. "i am that--for four weeks, if need be; but does it look like that out?" "pretty much. good-bye, davy;" and he walked back and held out his hand to the old man, who looked at him wonderingly. though their friendship was earnest, they were never demonstrative, and genesee usually left with a careless klahowya! "why, lad--" "i'm going to look for her, davy. if i find her, you'll hear of it; if i don't, tell the cursed fools at the ranch that i--that i sent a guide who would give his life for her. good-bye, old fellow--good-bye." down over the mountain he went, leading mowitza, and breaking the path ahead of her--slow, slow work. at that rate of travel, it would be morning before he could reach the ranch; and he must find her first. he found he could have made more speed with snow-shoes and without mowitza--the snow was banking up so terribly. the valley was almost reached when a queer sound came to him through the thick veil of white that had turned gray with coming night. mowitza heard it, too, for she threw up her head and answered it with a long whinny, even before her master had decided what the noise was; but it came again, and then he had no doubt it was the call of a horse, and it was somewhere on the hill above him. he fastened mowitza to a tree, and started up over the way he had come, stopping now and then to call, but hearing no answer--not even from the horse, that suggested some phantom-like steed that had passed in the white storm. suddenly, close to him, he heard a sound much more human--a whistle; and in a moment he plunged in that direction, and almost stumbled over a form huddled against a fallen tree. he could not see her face. he did not need to. she was in his arms, and she was alive. that was enough. but she lay strangely still for a live woman, and he felt in his pocket for that whisky-flask; a little of the fiery liquor strangled her, but aroused her entirely. "jack?" "yes." "i knew if i called long enough you would come; but i can only whisper now. you came just in time." "how long have you been here?" "oh, hours, i think. i started for the gulch trail, and couldn't make it with snow on the ground. then i tried for the other trail, but got lost in the snow--couldn't even find the cabin. help me up, will you? i guess i'm all right now." she was not, quite, for she staggered woefully; and he caught her quickly to him and held her with one arm, while he fumbled for some matches with the other. "you're a healthy-looking specimen," was the rather depreciating verdict he gave at sight of the white, tired face. she smiled from the pillow of his shoulder, but did not open her eyes; then the match flickered and went out, and he could see her no more. "why didn't you stay at home, as i told you to?" "didn't want to." "don't you know i'm likely to catch my death of cold tramping here after you?" "no," with an intonation that sounded rather heartless; "you never catch cold." the fact that she had not lost her old spirit, if she had her voice, was a great point in her favor, and he had a full appreciation of it. she was tired out, and hoarse, but still had pluck enough to attempt the trip to the ranch. "we've got to make it," she decided, when the subject was broached; "we can make it to-night as well as to-morrow, if you know the trail. did you say you had some biscuits? well, i'm hungry." "you generally are," he remarked, with a dryness in no way related to the delight with which he got the biscuits for her and insisted on her swallowing some more of the whisky. "are you cold?" "no--not a bit; and that seems funny, too. if it hadn't been such a soft, warm snow, i should have been frozen." he left her and went to find the mare, which he did without much trouble; and in leading her back over the little plateau he was struck with a sense of being on familiar ground. it was such a tiny little shelf jutting out from the mountain. swathed in snow as it was, and with the darkness above it, he felt so confident that he walked straight out to where the edge should be if he was right. yes, there was the sudden shelving that left the little plot inaccessible from one side. "do you know where we are, my girl?" he asked as he rejoined her. "somewhere on scot's mountain," she hazarded; the possessive term used by him had a way of depriving her of decided opinions. "you're just about the same place where you watched the sun come up once--may be you remember?" "yes." he had helped her up. they stood there silent what seemed a long time; then he spoke: "i've come here often since that time. it's been a sort of a church--one that no one likely ever set foot in but you and me." he paused as if in hesitation; then continued: "i've wished often i could see you here again in the same place, just because i got so fond of it; and i don't know what you think of it, but this little bit of the mountain has something witched in it for me. i felt in the dark when my feet touched it, and i have a fancy, after it's all over, to be brought up here and laid where we stood that morning." "jack," and her other hand was reached impulsively to his, "what's the matter--what makes you speak like that now?" "i don't know. the idea came strong to me back there, and i felt as if you--you--were the only one i could tell it to, for you know nearly all now--all the bad in me, too; yet you've never been the girl to draw away or keep back your hand if you felt i needed it. ah, my girl, you are one in a thousand!" he was speaking in the calmest, most dispassionate way, as if it was quite a usual thing to indulge in dissertations of this sort, with the snow slowly covering them. perhaps he was right in thinking the place witched. "you've been a good friend to me," he continued, "whether i was near or far--macdougall told me things that proved it; and if my time should come quick, as many a man's has in the indian country, i believe you would see i was brought here, where i want to be." "you may be sure of it," she said earnestly; "but i don't like to hear you talk like that--it isn't like you. you give me a queer, uncanny feeling. i can't see you, and i am not sure it is jack--nika tillikum--i am talking to at all. if you keep it up, you will have me nervous." he held her hand and drew it up to his throat, pressing his chin against the fingers with a movement that was as caressive as a kiss. "don't you be afraid," he said gently; "you are afraid of nothing else, and you must never be of me. come, come, my girl, if we're to go, we'd better be getting a move on." the prosaic suggestion seemed an interruption of his own tendencies, which were not prosaic. the girl slipped her fingers gently but decidedly from their resting-place so near his lips, and laid her one hand on his arm. "yes, we must be going, or"--and he knew she was smiling, though the darkness hid her--"or it will look as if there are two witched folks in our chapel--our white chapel--to-night. i'm glad we happened here, since the thought is any comfort to you; but i hope it will be many a day before you are brought here, instead of bringing yourself." he took her hand, and through the white masses turned their faces down the mountain. the mare followed meekly after. the stimulant of bread and whisky--and more, the coming of this man, of whom she was so stubbornly confident--had acted as a tonic to rachel, and she struggled through bravely, accepting little of help, and had not once asked how he came to be there instead of the ranchmen. perhaps it was because of their past association, and that one night together when he had carried her in his arms; but whatever he was to the other people, he had always seemed to her a sort of guardian of the hills and all lost things. she did not think of his presence there nearly so much as she did of those ideas of his that seemed "uncanny." he, such a bulwark of physical strength, to speak like that of a grave-site! it added one more to the contradictions she had seen in him. several things were in her mind to say to him, and not all of them pleasant. she had heard a little of the ideas current as to his indian sympathies, and the doubt with which he was regarded in camp; and, while she defended him, she many times felt vexed that he cared so little about defending himself. and with the memory of the night before, and feminine comments at the ranch after he had gone, she made an attempt to storm his stubbornness during a short breathing-spell when they rested against the great bole of a tree. "genesee, why don't you let the other folks at the ranch, or the camp, know you as i do?" was the first break, at which he laughed shortly. "they may know me the best of the two." "but they don't; i know they don't; you know they don't." "speak for yourself," he suggested; "i'm not sure either way, and when a man can't bet on himself, it isn't fair to expect his friends to. you've been the only one of them all to pin faith to me, with not a thing to prove that you had reason for it; it's just out-and-out faith, nothing else. what they think doesn't count, nor what i've been; but if ever i get where i can talk to you, you'll know, may be, how much a woman's faith can help a man when he's down. but don't you bother your head over what they think. if i'm any good, they'll know it sometime; if i'm not, you'll know that, too. that's enough said, isn't it? and we'd better break away from here; we're about the foot of the mountain, i reckon." then he took possession of her hand again, and led her on in the night; and she felt that her attempt had been a failure, except that it showed how closely he held her regard, and she was too human not to be moved by the knowledge. yes, he was very improper, as much so as most men, only it had happened to be in a way that was shocking to tenderfeet lucky enough to have families and homes as safeguards against evil. he was very disreputable, and, socially, a great gulf would be marked between them by their friends. but in the hills, where the universe dwindled to earth, sky, and two souls, they were but man and woman; and all the puzzling things about him that were blameful things melted away, as the snow that fell on their faces. she felt his strong presence as a guard about her, and without doubt or hesitation she kept pace beside him. once in the valley, she mounted betty, and letting mowitza follow, he walked ahead himself, to break the trail--a slow, slavish task, and the journey seemed endless. hour after hour went by in that slow march--scarcely a word spoken, save when rest was necessary; and the snow never ceased falling--a widely different journey from that other time when he had hunted and found her. "you have your own time finding the trail for me when i get lost," she said once, as he lifted her to the saddle after a short rest. "you did the same thing for me one day, a good while ago," he answered simply. the night had reached its greatest darkness, in the hours that presage the dawn, when they crossed the last ridge, and knew that rest was at last within comparatively easy reach. then for the first time, genesee spoke of his self-imposed search. "i reckon you know i'm an indian?" he said by way of preface. "i don't know anything of the sort." "but i am--a regular adopted son in the kootenai tribe, four years old; so if they ask you if an indian guide brought you home, you can tell them yes. do you see?" "yes, i see, but not the necessity. why should i not tell them you brought me?" "may be you know, and may be you don't, that i'm not supposed to range far from camp. kalitan was to go for you. kalitan had some other work, and sent a kootenai friend of his. the friend's name is lamonti. can you mind that? it means 'the mountain.' i come by it honest--it's a present grey eagle made me. if they ask questions about your guide, just put them off some way--tell them you don't know where he's gone to; and you won't. now, can you do that?" "i can, of course; but i don't like to have you leave like this. you must be half-dead, and i--jack, jack, what would i have done without you!" he was so close, in the darkness, that in throwing out her hand it touched his face, one of the trivial accidents that turn lives sometimes. he caught it, pressing it to his lips, his eyes, his cheek. "don't speak like that, unless you want to make a crazy man of me," he muttered. "i can't stand everything. god! girl, you'll never know, and i--can't tell you! for christ sake, don't act as if you were afraid--the only one who has ever had faith in me! i think that would wake up all the devil you helped put asleep once. here! give me your hand again, just once--just to show you trust me. i'll be worth it--i swear i will! i'll never come near you again!" the bonds under which he had held himself so long had broken at the touch of her hand and the impulsive tenderness of her appeal. through the half sob in his wild words had burst all the repressed emotions of desolate days and lonely nights, and the force of them thrilled the girl, half-stunned her, for she could not speak. a sort of terror of his broken, passionate speech had drawn her quickly back from him, and she seemed to live hours in that second of indecision. all her audacity and self-possession vanished as a bulwark of straws before a flood. her hands trembled, and a great compassion filled her for this alien by whose side she would have to stand against the world. that certainty it must have been that decided her, as it has decided many another woman, and ennobled many a love that otherwise would have been commonplace. and though her hands trembled, they trembled out toward him, and fell softly as a benediction on his upturned face. "i think you will come to me again," she said tremulously, as she leaned low from the saddle and felt tears as well as kisses on her hands, "and you are worth it now, i believe; worth more than i can give you." a half-hour later rachel entered the door of the ranch, and found several of its occupants sleepless and awaiting some tidings of her. in the soft snow they had not heard her arrival until she stepped on the porch. "i've been all night getting here," she said, glancing at the clock that told an hour near dawn, "and i'm too tired to talk; so don't bother me. see how hoarse i am. no; kalitan did not bring me. it was a kootenai called lamonti. i don't know where he has gone--wouldn't come in. just keep quiet and let me get to bed, will you?" chapter ii. a philosophical horse-thief. an hour before dawn the wind came, hurtling down through the mountains and moaning along the valleys; before it drove the flying snow in great chilly sheets, as it was lifted from the high places and spread in every nook that would warrant its safe-keeping. through its fitful gusts genesee walked into camp, his tracks filled by the eager flakes as he left them. there seemed a strange alertness about the place, for so early an hour--even through the commotion, blissful and despairing, in his own breast, he noticed it as the guard hailed him, and when he replied, he heard from that individual an excited exclamation of astonishment. "by jolly, if it ain't genesee!" "i reckon it is," he answered, and passed on, too tired, yet elated by his night's work, to care whether or not his absence had been commented on. the door of the shack had barely closed on him when one of the several lanterns that he had noticed floating like stars along the snow stopped at his door, then a knock, and the entrance of a very wide-awake looking corporal. "you are to report to captain holt at once," was the message he brought. "what's up?" and the boot that was half-way off was yanked on again. "that's all the message i was given." "the hell you say! well, trot along." his own frowning perplexity was no more decided than that of captain holt, as he looked up to notice the entrance of the scout--and there was little of friendliness in the look. "you sent a man to say you wanted me." "yes, i sent a man about two hours ago to say i wanted you," was the ironical reply. "you were not to be found. have you any report to make?" "not that i know of," he said curtly. a sort of quiet antagonism had always been felt between the chief of scouts and the new commander, but this was the first time any expression had been given it, and genesee's intolerance quickly responded to the manner of the officer that had in it both dislike and distrust. "then you refuse to tell me where you spent the night?" the light in genesee's eyes flashed sudden defiance. "yes; if it comes to that, and that's the way you put it, i do." "you had better think twice before you give that answer," advised captain holt, his face paling with anger at the insubordination; "and another question to be put to you is, where is the half-breed, your runner?" "i don't know as that concerns you, either," answered genesee coolly. "he is my indian, and neither of us belonging to the united states army, we can leave camp when it suits us. but i don't mind telling you i sent him to holland's yesterday." "for what purpose?" "my own business." "the same thing that took you from camp at three yesterday and kept you out all night?" "just so." "then, since you refuse to answer a very necessary question, you may--until i have an opportunity of investigating an absence that is, to say the least, suspicious--you may consider yourself under arrest." "what in--" "for horse-stealing," finished the captain calmly. genesee's hand dropped to his belt in a suggestive manner, and from the door two guards stepped forward. he turned to look at them, and the ridiculous idea of his arrest quelled the quick rage that had flashed up in his face. "you needn't have troubled yourself with these protectors," he remarked, "for i reckon there isn't much i'd want to do that they would stop me from; and as for you--this is a piece of dirty work for some end. i'm ready to be put under arrest, just to see some fun when your commander gets back. and now may be you'll just tell me whose horse i stole?" "it is not one horse, but one-half the stock belonging to the company, that was run off by your kootenai friends last night," replied captain holt grimly; "and as your disappearance was likely helpful to them, and a matter of mystery to the command, you will be debarred from visiting them again until the matter is investigated. even the explanation is more than your insolence deserves. you can go back to your quarters." "it's an infernal lie!" burst out genesee wrathfully. "no kootenai touched your stock. it's been some thieving blackfeet and their white friends; and if you interfere with the kootenais, and try to put it on their shoulders, you'll get yourself in trouble--big trouble." "when i want your advice, i will ask for it," was the natural reply to the contradiction and half threat. genesee walked to the door with the guards, and turning, came back. "captain holt," with more of appeal in manner than one would look for in him, "i'm ready to take my chances in this business, and i'm not trying to give advice, but i'm going to ask you, on the reputation you know i have in indian matters, to be mighty careful what you do or what you let the men do toward the kootenai people. they're only waiting the major's return to send word to camp that their arms and fighting braves are willing to help the troops against the blackfeet if they're needed. i know it. their messenger is likely to come any day; and it will be a bad thing for our cause if their friendliness is broken by this suspicion." "your cause?" "no, i haven't got any," he retorted. "i'm not talking for myself--i'm out of it; but i mean the cause of lives here in the valley--the lives on both sides--that would be lost in a useless fight. it's all useless." "and you acknowledge, then, that you don't consider the cause of the whites as your own cause?" asked the captain quietly. "yes!" he burst out emphatically, "i'll own up to you or anyone else; so make me a horse-thief on that, if you can! i'd work for the reds quicker than for you, if there was anything to be gained by fighting for them; but there isn't. they'd only kill, and be killed off in the end. if i've worked on your side, it's been to save lives, not to take them; and if i've got any sympathies in the matter, it's with the reds. they've been dogged to death by your damned 'cause.' now you've got my ideas in a nut-shell." "yes," agreed the captain sarcastically, "very plainly expressed. to establish entirely your sympathy with your red friends, it only remains for you to be equally frank and report your movements of last night." "go to hell and find out;" and with this climax of insubordination, the scout left the presence of the commanding officer and marched back to his shack, where he took possession of the bunk and was sound asleep in five minutes, and altogether undisturbed by the fact that a guard was stationed at the door of the impromptu prison with orders to shoot him if an attempt to escape was made. captain holt's leniency with the scout, who simply ignored military rule and obedience in a place where it was the only law, was, for him, phenomenal. the one thing in genesee's favor was his voluntary return to camp; and until he learned what scheme was back of that, the captain was obliged, with the thought of his superior officer in mind and the scout's importance, to grant him some amenities, ignore his insolence, and content himself with keeping him under guard. the guard outside was not nearly so strong in its control of genesee as the bonds of sleep that held him through the morning and well-nigh high noon. he had quickly summed up the case after his interview with holt, and decided that in two days, at most, the major would be back, and that the present commander would defer any decided movement toward the kootenais until then. as for the horses, that was a bad business; but if they chose to put him under arrest, they plainly took from him the responsibility of hunting for stock. so he decided, and in the freedom from any further care, dropped asleep. once a guard came in with some breakfast, which he ate drowsily, and turned again to his pillow. "when that fool, the commanding officer, concludes to let up on this arrest, there's likely to be some work to do--i'll fortify myself while i have the chance;" and that determination, added to his exhaustion, served to make his rest a very deliberate affair, not to be disturbed by trifles. several things occurred during that winter's morning that were far from trifling; yet no sound of them came to him, not even when a shot on the ridge echoed across the valley, and ten minutes later was followed by several more, accompanied by yells, heard faintly, but clearly enough to tell that a skirmishing party was having a shooting-match with someone across the hills. in three minutes every horse left in camp was mounted and scurrying fast as their feet could carry them through the drifts, while the horseless ones, whose stock had been run off in the muffled silence of the snow-storm, remained unwillingly behind. at the end of the avenue lieutenant murray caught sight of stuart and hardy, riding toward camp. there was a hallooed invitation to join, another of acceptance, and the civilians joined the irregular cavalcade and swept with them over the hill, where the sounds of shots were growing fainter--evidently a retreat and a chase--toward which they rode blindly. through all of it their chief of scouts slept unconcernedly; a solid ten hours of rest was taken possession of before he aroused himself to care whether it was daylight or darkness. "major come yet?" was the first query. "no." "am i still under arrest?" "yes." "then bring me something to eat. past chuck?" on being informed that the midday meal had been ended two hours before, his next query was whether anyone from the ranch had been to camp; but the guard thought not--a reply most grateful to the prisoner. "suppose you tell me something about the horses being run off," he suggested. "oh, yes, i reckon i'm supposed to know all about it," he added; "but, just to pass the time, suppose you tell me your side of it." there was not much to tell. hardy's men had been riding around after stray stock until late; had passed camp after ten o'clock. about one in the morning the snow was falling thick; a little racket was heard in the long shed where the horses were tied, and the sentry, thinking some of hardy's stray stock had wandered in there, tramped around with a light to see what was wrong. he had barely reached the end of the corral when someone from behind struck him over the head. in falling, his gun was discharged; and when investigations were made, it was found that nearly half the horses, about forty head, had been quietly run off through the snow, and the exploded gun was all that saved the rest. the trail was hot, and pursuit began, but the thieves evidently knew the country, while the troops did not; and every moment lost in consultation and conjecture was gained by the people ahead, until the wind rose and the trail was buried in the snow. the followers had only returned to camp a few minutes before genesee was reported back; but the man surmised that if the troops did not get the horses, they were taking their pay out of the hides of the red-skins. "how's that?" demanded genesee, with the quick, perplexed frown that was as much anxiety as displeasure. "well, a young cub of a siwash came a-riding along to camp about noon, as large as life and independent as a hog on ice, and denny claflin--you know him, his horse was roped in by them last night--well, he called the buck to halt, as he'd a perfect right to do, and got no more notice than if the wind had whistled. denny hates an injun as the devil does holy water, and being naturally riled over last night, he called to halt, or he'd fire. well, mr. siwash never turned his head, and denny let him have it." "killed him?" "dead as a door-nail. right over the ridge north. our boys were just coming in, after skirmishing for signs from last night. they heard the shot, and rode up; and then, almost before they saw them, some ambushed injuns burst out on them like all-possessed. they'd come with the young one, who was sent ahead, you see. well, there was a go-as-you-please fight, i guess, till our men got out from camp, and chased them so far they haven't showed up since. some of us went out afoot to the ridge, and found the dead buck. we buried him up there, and have been keeping an eye open for the boys ever since." "did captain holt go?" "you bet! and every other man that had a horse to go on; even that mr. stuart and hardy from the ranch went." "and they haven't showed up?" "naw." no more questions were asked, and the guard betook himself to his pipe and enjoyment of the warm room, for intense cold had followed in the wake of the snow. and the prisoner? the man on watch eyed dubiously the dark face as it lounged on the bunk. aroused and refreshed by rest, he drifted away from the remembrance of his prison by living over with tender eyes the victory of the night before. once he had seen it was possible for her to care for him--that once of a year ago, before she knew what he was; but lately--well, he thought her a plucky, cool-headed girl, who wouldn't go back on a friend, and her stanchness had shown that; but the very frank and outspoken showing had taken from him any hope of the warmer feeling that had existed in the old days, when she had likened him to a launcelot in buckskin. the hope? his teeth set viciously as he thought of it as a hope. what right had he for such a wish? what right had he to let go of himself as he had done, and show her how his life was bound up in hers? what a hopeless tangle it was; and if she cared for him, it meant plainly enough that he was to repay her by communicating its hopelessness to her. if she cared! in the prosaic light of day he even attempted to tell himself that the victory of the night might have been in part a delusion; that she had pitied him and the passion she had raised, and so had stooped from the saddle. might it not have been only that? his reason told him--perhaps; and then all the wild unreason in the man turned rebel, and the force of a tumultuous instinct arose and took possession of him--of her, for it gave her again into his arms, and the laws of people were as nothing. she was his by her own gift; the rest of the world was blotted out. chapter iii. "the squaw who rides." at the ranch a strange cloak of silence hung around the household in regard to the horse-stealing. the men, hearing of the night raid, had endeavored to keep it from the women for fear of giving them uneasiness, but had not altogether succeeded. jim had frustrated that attempt by forgetting, and blurting out at the dinner table something about genesee's arrest. "it isn't true; it can't be true!" and rachel turned with such an appeal in her tired eyes that andrews dropped his own. "it's true, miss; he's accused of knowin' all about it, even if he didn't help. it's supposed to be his kootenai friends that did it, and they say he's mighty close-mouthed over it; that tells against him. i hope to god it ain't true, for he seemed a mighty good man; but he's under guard at the camp; won't allow folks to see him, i hear--leastwise, no injuns." rachel glanced at the others, but found in their faces no strong partisanship for genesee. tillie and fred were regretful, but not hopeful. "it seems a shame that such a fine-looking fellow should be a squaw man," said the major's daughter; "but since he is one, there is not much to be hoped of him, though papa did have a wonderful lot of faith in this one." rachel's eyes lightened at the words. "what day do they look for your father back?" she asked quickly. "to-day or to-morrow, though this snow may hinder them some." "well, he can't get here any too soon," chipped in the loquacious jim. "i reckon they--" then his discourse was cut short by the toe of andrews' boot under the table. although the horse-stealing was known at the ranch, and now the suspicion of genesee, yet there was one thing that andrews and ivans had maneuvered to keep quiet, and that was the absence of hardy and stuart, and the fact that hostile indians had descended from the hills. apocryphal stories had been told tillie of an early supper her husband and guest had eaten at camp, and a ride they had taken after stock overlooked the night before; and the hours dragged on, the night came, and the two conspirators were gaining themselves the serious anxiety they had endeavored to shield the women from, and jim, once outside the door, was threatened with instant annihilation if he let his tongue run so far ahead of his wit again. the ladies had decided not to tell rachel about genesee--tillie had so clear a remembrance of her stubborn friendliness for that outlaw; but jim had settled the question of silence, and all the weariness dropped from her at thought of what that accusation meant to him--death. once she got up with the strong light of hope in her eyes, and running across the snow in the dark, opened the door of the stable where jim was bedding the horses. "jim!" she called sharply; "when was it the stock was run off from camp--what time?" "early this mornin'," answered that youth sulkily. he had just received the emphatic warning against "tattling." "this morning? what time this morning?" "oh, early; afore daylight." before daylight! she had gained a wild hope that it was during the time they were together; but from jim's vague suggestion they had returned just about the time it had occurred--in time for it. she turned hopelessly toward the house, then hesitated and came back. "jim." "well?" "is mowitza here?" "yes, can't you see?" but she could not see very clearly. something in her eyes blinded her as she thought of mowitza and the glad days when they knew each other first; and of mowitza's master, and his voice as she had heard it last--and the words! oh, the despairing, exultant, compelling words! and then, after he had gone from her, could it be so? "take good care of the mare, jim, until--until he needs her." when the girl re-entered the house, tillie turned with a lecture to deliver on the idiocy of going out without a wrap; it was not spoken, for a glance into rachel's eyes told she had been crying--something so unusual as to awe the little woman into silence, and perplex her mightily. headstrong as the girl had been in her championship of genesee, tillie had always been very sure that the cause was mainly rachel's contrariness; and to associate him with the tears never entered her mind. the evening wore on, and about the fire there were conjectures about the protracted stay of hardy and stuart, and wonderment from fred that not a man had called from the camp all day and evening. rachel sat silent, thinking--thinking, and finding a glimmer of hope in the thought that major dreyer would soon be back; there, she felt, would be no prejudiced mind come to judgment. at last they were startled by the sound of a step on the porch, and all looked around, glad of the return of the two wanderers, when the door opened, and there entered kalitan--a very tired-looking arrow, and with something in his face that was more than fatigue--anxiety. "rashell hardy?" he said, and deliberately walked into the other room, intimating that she was to follow and the interview to be private--an interview conducted in low tones and in chinook, after which rachel asked aunty luce to give him some supper; for he was very tired, and would not go on to camp until morning. the night before had been one of wakefulness, because of rachel's absence, and all were sleepy enough to hunt beds early; and leaving a lunch on the table for the absent ones, the hearth was soon deserted--ivans and andrews, however, agreeing to sleep with one eye open. both must have closed unawares, or else the moccasined feet that stole out in the darkness must have been very, very light, and the other figure beside him very stealthy; for no alarm was given, no ear took note. it was late, past eleven o'clock, when the sentry challenged a horse and rider coming as briskly and nonchalantly into camp as if it had been eleven in the morning, and occasioning as much astonishment as had genesee, when it was seen to be miss hardy. "rather late to be out alone, miss, ain't it?" asked the sentry, as she stopped to chat with him of the continued absence of the men. "is it?" she laughed. "i don't know what you call late over here; but i suppose we of the ranch would be considered night-owls. i rode over with some mail that came late, and thought i'd hear if there was any news before we went to bed. who's in command?" "lieutenant kennedy; but he turned in an hour ago." "good gracious! do you folks go to bed with the sun? i have a magazine for him, but he can wait for it, then, until to-morrow. tell him i will expect him over." "yes, miss." just then from along the avenue sauntered a soldierly figure, who drew near at the sound of voices. "there comes sergeant kelp," remarked the sentry. "he's on night duty in kennedy's place." instantly the girl turned to the officer in charge. "well, i'm glad to find someone up and awake," she said, leaning over to shake hands with him. "it helps to keep me from seeming altogether a night-prowler. i came over to get the returns, if there were any. the folks are getting anxious at the ranch." "naturally," answered the young fellow. "i would have called this evening, but am on duty. don't let the ladies worry if you can help it. we are likely to hear from the men before morning. every scout we had went with them, and without horses we can't do much but just stay here and wait; all the boys find it mighty hard work, too." "you remind me of half my mission, sergeant, when you speak of your scouts. i brought over some mail, and everyone i wanted to see is either away or asleep. how about your chief of scouts--is he asleep, too?" it seemed to her that her heart ceased beating, the wind ceased blowing, and the stars ceased twinkling above the snow, as she waited for his disgusted reply. "no; not by a good deal. i never saw such a crank as that fellow! when everything was smooth sailing, that man would skulk around camp without a word to speak to anyone, the surliest white man i want to see; but now that he's jailed for horse-stealing, tied up and watched in the shack, i'm blest if he doesn't put in the time singing. yes, he does; been at it ever since taps. i threatened to have him gagged if he disturbed the boys; but they say he don't. roberts is the only one who has to listen to it; says he never heard so many indian songs in his life. but it's a mighty queer streak of luck for a man to be musical over." rachel laughed, and agreed. "i have a letter for him, too," she added. "look, here; i'd like to take it to him myself, and get to hear some of those songs. can i? i know it's rather late, but if he is awake, it doesn't matter, i suppose; or is no one allowed to see him?" "indians only are tabooed, but none of them have shown up, not even his runner, and i guess you can speak to him if you want to; it isn't a thing most ladies would like to do, though," he added. "i suppose not," she said good-humoredly, "but then, i've known the man for something over a year, and am not at all afraid--in fact, i'd rather like to do it and have something to horrify the ladies at the ranch with. think of it! an interview with a horse-thief--perhaps a duet with him all alone in the middle of the night. oh, yes, that's too good to miss. but i must hurry up, or they will be sending someone after me." at the door of the shack, however, she paused a moment in what might be trepidation, her hand laid hesitatingly on the saddle, as if in doubt whether to remount or enter the shanty, from which she could hear the low refrain of a song of their cultus corrie--"tsolo, tsolo!" "the guard will not leave the door?" she whispered; and sergeant kelp concluded that, after all, she was pretending to greater nerve than she possessed. "never fear," he returned; "i will call him out to hold your horse, and he won't stir from the door. by the way, i'll have someone to see you home when you're ready to go. good-night." then the guard was called out, and a moment later the visitor slipped in, the prisoner never turning his head or noticing the exchange until she spoke. "jack!" he turned quickly enough. "god a'mighty, girl! what are you doing here?" she thought of the ears, possibly listening ears, on the other side of the door, and her tone was guarded and careless, as it had been with the sergeant, as she laughed and answered in chinook: "to pay a visit; what else?" she noticed with exultation that it was only rope he was tied with--his hands and his feet, as he sat on the bunk--a plaited rope of rawhide; strong enough when strengthened by a guard opposite and a loaded gun; but without the guard and with a keen knife! she checked him in the midst of a passionate protest against her coming. "i am here, so that fact is settled," she said quietly. "i didn't come for fun, and we haven't any time to lose. i brought you a letter; it is in this," she said. "you have seen kalitan?" he took from her the rubber case and extracted the letter from it, but scarcely noticed it, his eyes were turned so anxiously to her face. "yes; and you had better read it," she advised, walking back to the door. "rachel--" "read it; let them see you!" and she opened the door wide and stepped out as if to make sure of the guard's presence. "it's all right, miss, i'm here," he whispered, looking past her to the prisoner opening the letter and throwing the envelope in the fire. "i'll not stir from here with the beast. don't be uneasy;" and then she turned back and closed the door. she had seen he was not close enough to listen. "jack," she said, coming back to him, "you must get out of this. mowitza is at the door; i have brought the things you will need. can you make a dash for it and get away?" he looked at her in utter amazement. "i didn't know it until to-night," she continued; "this is your chance, before the others get back--if they ever do get back! god help them!" "what do you mean? where are they?" and his hand, tied as it was, caught her own quickly. "they are in a death-trap, in that gully back of the tamahnous ground. you know where--right over the peak from the old mine. they've been there since dark, hedged in by the kootenais, who are only waiting for daylight to come. heaven help our men when it does come!" "the kootenais? it can't be them. they are not hostile." "not yesterday," she agreed bitterly, "but they are to-day. they sent a messenger of good-will to camp this morning, the grandson of grey eagle. he was shot down, almost in sight of camp, by one of the soldiers, and the braves he had brought, the best in the tribe, attempted a rescue. our cavalry pursued them, and were led into that ravine. the indians knew the ground, and our men didn't. at the end of the narrow pass, the reds rolled boulders down the mountain and closed it up, and then cut off retreat; and there they are, waiting for daylight or starvation--god knows what!" "who told you this?" "kalitan; he met an indian trapper who had passed the gulch but a little while before. he came directly to me. the whites here blame you for helping the trouble--the beginning it, the--" "you mean the horse stealing?" he said, looking at her curiously. "yes." her eyes were on the floor; she did not see that scrutiny. "and you must get out of here before word comes of those men penned up there. there would be no waiting for trial then; they would shoot you." "and that is what you came for?" "yes;" and she drew a sharp knife--an indian knife--from her belt under the shawl. "with a quick stroke, the severed the knotted cords and they fell from his wrists; then she dropped on her knees, a flash, once, twice, of the blade in the light, and he stooped and raised her. "you are doing this for me," he said, drawing her to him, "without knowing whether i deserve shooting or not?" "don't speak of that part of it!" she burst out. "when i let myself think, i feel as if i am going crazy!"--then she stopped short. "and a crazy woman just now would handicap you some. no, jack, we need all of our wits for to-night--here," and unfastening the belt from under her shawl, she buckled it about him. it contained two loaded revolvers. "it's the first time i've armed you as i've seen sweethearts or wives do," she said, looking up at him. "it may be the last. i only ask one thing--you will not, unless it is the last means of saving your own life, turn one of these against my friends?" even then, the weakness of the man in him came uppermost. "but if it is to save my own life?" her hands went quickly over her eyes, as if to shut out sight or thought. "don't ask me--only go--and--take care of yourself!" he caught the hands from her eyes, kissing her fiercely--exultantly. "then i am first to you--nearer than all the rest! my girl, you've proved it to-night, and i'll show you! if you know how to pray, pray for me to-night--for me and the men in that death-trap. do you hear? i am going now. here is this letter; it will tell you all. if i never come back, tell prince charlie he is right at last--that i believe him. he will understand. my girl--mine--it is not an eternal good-bye. i will come back if i live, and i will have to live long enough for that! here, just once, kiss me, my girl--my girl!" the next instant she was flung from that embrace and fell with a faint scream to the floor. the guard dashed in, and was dextrously tripped by an unlooked-for figure close to the wall, his gun wrenched from him, and a staggering blow dealt that sent him to his knees. clouds had swept over the cold stars, and the sentry could see but dimly the equestrian figure that came clattering down the avenue. "hadn't you better wait for company, miss?" he called, but no answer was given; and in much wonder, he was about to call again, when pistol-shots from the shack aroused the camp. he called a halt; that was heeded no more than his question, and he sent a random shot after the flying figure--not for the purpose of hitting the girl, but to impress on her the duty of a sentry and some idea of military rule. before the last dull thud of hoofs in the snow had ceased to be heard, roberts had staggered to the door, firing wildly, and calling to stop the prisoner--to stop the horse-thief. there was nothing in the camp to do it with. he was gone--everyone was blaming everybody else for it; but no one thought of blaming the girl who lay in a dead faint on the floor, where he had flung her, that none might think she had let him go willingly. and miss rachel was cared for very tenderly, and a man was sent to the ranch to assure mrs. hardy of her safe-keeping, waking mrs. hardy out of a delicious sleep, and mystifying her completely by the information. the only one about the house who might have helped elucidate happened to be remarkably sound asleep at the time the messenger arrived--an arrow encased in the quiver of rest. chapter iv. through the lost mine. an hour before day in the kootenais! not the musical dawn of that early autumn, when all the woods were a-quiver with the fullness of color and sound; when the birds called to each other of the coming sun, and the little rills of the shady places moistened the sweet fern and spread its fragrance around and about, until one could find no couch so seductive as one on the amber grasses with the rare, all-pervading scents of the virgin soil. not any of those seductions solaced or made more bitter the watch of the men who stood hopeless in the snow of that treacherous ravine. not even a fire dared be lit all the night long, because of those suddenly murderous natives, who, through knowing the secrets of the cleft earth, held their fates at the mercy of eager bronze hands. "and one man who knew the country could have prevented this!" groaned hardy, with a thought of the little wife and miss margaret. how would they listen to this story? "if we had genesee with us, we should not have been penned up in any such fashion as this," decided murray, stamping back and forward, as many others were doing, to keep their blood in circulation--for what? "hard to tell," chimed in the scout from idaho. "don't know as it's any better to be tricked by one's own gang than the hostiles. genesee, more'n likely, was gettin' ready for this when he run off the stock." just then something struck him. the snow made a soft bed, but the assailant had not stopped to consider that, and quick as light his knee was on the fallen man's chest. "take it back!" he commanded, with the icy muzzle of a revolver persuading his meaning into the brain of the surprised scout. "that man is no horse-thief. take it back, or i'll save the indians the trouble of wasting lead on you." "well," reasoned the philosopher in the snow, "this ain't the damnedest best place i've ever been in for arguin' a point, an' as you have fightin' ideas on the question, an' i haven't any ideas, an' don't care a hell of a sight, i'll eat my words for the time bein', and we'll settle the question o' that knock on the head, if the chance is ever given us to settle anything, out o' this gully." "what's this?" and though only outlines of figures could be distinguished, the voice was the authoritative one of captain holt. "mr. stuart, i am surprised to find you in this sort of thing, and about that squaw man back in camp. find something better to waste your strength for. there is no doubt in my mind now of the man's complicity--" "stop it!" broke in stuart curtly; "you can hold what opinion you please of him, but you can't tell me he's a horse-thief. a squaw man and adopted indian he may be and altogether an outlaw in your eyes; but i doubt much your fitness to judge him, and advise you not to call him a thief until you are able to prove your words, or willing to back them with all we've got left here." all they had left was their lives, and stuart's unexpected recklessness and sharp words told them his was ready as a pledge to his speech. none cared, at that stage of the game, to question why. it was no time for quarrels among themselves when each felt that with the daylight might come death. afterward, when the tale was told, no man could remember which of them first discovered a form in their midst that had not been with them on their entrance--a breathless, panting figure, that leaned against one of their horses. "who is it?" someone asked. "what is it?" no one answered--only pressed closer, with fingers on triggers, fearing treachery. and then the panting figure raised itself from its rest on the horse's neck, rose to a stature not easily mistaken, even in that light, and a familiar, surly voice spoke: "i don't reckon any of you need be puzzled much to find out; hasn't been such a long time since you saw me." "by god, it's genesee!" and despite the wholesale condemnation of the man, there was not a heart that did not grow lighter with the knowledge. they knew, or believed, that here was the one man who had the power to save them, if he cared to use it; but would he? "jack!" someone, at sound of his voice, pushed through the crowd with outstretched hand. it was not refused this time. "i've come for you," was all genesee said; then he turned to the others. "are you willing to follow me?" he asked, raising his voice a little. "the horses can't go through where i've got to take you; you'll have to leave them." a voice close to his elbow put in a word of expostulation against the desertion of the horses. genesee turned on the speaker with an oath. "you may command in a quiet camp, but we're outside of it now, and i put just a little less value on your opinion than on any man's in the gulch. this is a question for every man to answer for himself. you've lost their lives for them if they're kept here till daylight. i'll take them out if they're ready to come." there was no dissenting voice. compared with the inglorious death awaiting them in the gulch, the deliverance was a god-send. they did not just see how it was to be effected; but the strange certainty of hope with which they turned to the man they had left behind as a horse-thief was a thing surprising to them all, when they had time to think of it--in the dusk of the morning, they had not. he appeared among them as if a deliverer had materialized from the snow-laden branches of cedar, or from the close-creeping clouds of the mountain. they had felt themselves touched by a superstitious thrill when he was found in their midst; but they knew that, come as he might, be what he would, they had in him one to whom the mountains were as an open book, as the indians knew when they tendered him the significant name of lamonti. captain holt was the only rebel on the horse question; to add those to the spoils of the indians was a bitter thing for him to do. "it looks as if we were not content with them taking half our stock, but rode up here to leave them the rest," he said, aggressively, to nobody in particular. "i've a notion to leave only the carcasses." "not this morning," broke in the scout. "we've no time to wait for work of that sort. serves you right to lose them, too, for your damned blunders. come along if you want to get out of this--single file, and keep quiet." it was no time for argument or military measures for insubordination; and bitter as the statement of inefficiency was, captain holt knew there were some grounds for it, and knew that, in the eyes of the men, he was judged from the same standpoint. the blind raid with green scouts did seem, looking back at it, like a headlong piece of folly. how much of folly the whole attack was, they did not as yet realize. it was not far that genesee led them through the stunted, gnarled growth up the steep sides of the gulch. half-way to the top there were, in the summer-time, green grass and low brush in which the small game could hide; but above that rose a sheer wall of rock clear up to where the soil had gathered and the pines taken root. in the dusk they could see no way of surmounting it; yet there was no word of demur, not even a question. he was simply their hope, and they followed him. and their guide felt it. he knew few of them liked him personally, and it made his victory the greater; but even above that was the thought that his freedom was due to the girl who never guessed how he should use it. he felt, some way, as if he must account to her for every act she had given him the power to perform, as if his life itself belonged to her, and the sweetness of the thought was with him in every step of the night ride, in every plan for the delivery of the men. at the very foot of the rock wall he stopped and turned to the man next him. it was hardy. "it's a case of 'crawl' here for a few lengths; pass the word along, and look out for your heads." the next instant he had vanished under the rock wall--hardy following him; then a flicker of light shone like a star as a guide for the others, and in five minutes every man of them had wriggled through what seemed but a slit in the solid front. "a regular cave, by hooky!" said the moral guide from idaho, as he stood upright at last. his voice echoed strangely. "hooky! hooky! hooky!" sounded from different points where the shadows deepened, suggesting endless additions to the room where they stood. genesee had halted and was splitting up some pine for a torch, using the knife rachel had cut his bonds with, and showing that the handle was stained with blood, as were the sticks of pine he was handling. "look for some more sticks around here, and lend a hand," he said. "we need more than one torch. i burnt up what i had in working through that hole. i've been at it for three hours, i reckon, without knowing, till i got the last stone away, whether i'd be in time or find daylight on the other side." "and is that what cut your hands?" asked lieutenant murray. "why, they're a sight! for heaven's sake, what have you been doing?" "i found a 'cave-in' of rock and gravel right at the end of that tunnel," answered genesee, nodding the way they had just come, and drawing their notice to fresh earth and broken stone thrown to the side. "i had no tools here, nothing but that," and he motioned toward a mallet-like thing of stone. "my tools were moved from the mine over to scot's mountain awhile back, and as that truck had to be hoisted away, and i hadn't time to invite help, it had to be done with these;" and he held out his hands that were bleeding--a telling witness of his endeavors to reach there in time. and every man of them felt it. there was an impulsive move forward, and hardy was the first to hold out his hand. but genesee stepped back, and leaned against the wall. "that's all right, hardy," he said, with something of his old careless smile. "i'm glad you're the first, for the sake of old times; but i reckon it would be playing it pretty low down on a friend to let him take me in on false pretenses. you see i haven't been acquitted of horse-stealing yet--about the most low-lived trade a man can turn to, unless it is sheep-stealing." "oh, hell!" broke in one of the men, "this clears the horse business so far as i'm concerned, and i can bet on the other boys, too!" "can you?" asked genesee, with a sort of elated, yet conservative, air; "but this isn't your game or the boys' game. i'm playing a lone hand, and not begging either. that torch ready?" the rebuff kept the others from any advance, if they had thought of making it. lieutenant murray had picked up the stone mallet and was examining it by the flickering light; one side was flattened a little, like a tomahawk. "that's a queer affair," he remarked. "what did you have it made for?" "have it made! the chances are that thing was made before columbus ever managed a sail-boat," returned genesee. "i found a lot of them in here; wedges, too, and such." "in here?" and the men looked with a new interest at the rocky walls. "what is it?" "an extension i tumbled into, over a year back, when i was tunneling at a drift the other side of the hill. one day i found that hole there, and minded it this morning, so it came in handy. i reckon this is the original tamahnous mine of the old tribe. it's been lost over a hundred years. the kootenais only have a tradition of it." "a mine--gold?" "well, i was digging for a silver show when i struck it," answered genesee; "and, so far as i see, that's what was here, but it's worked out. didn't do much prospecting in it, as i left the kootenai hills less than a week after. i just filled up the entry, and allowed it would keep till i got back." "does it belong to you?" asked one man, with speculation in his voice. genesee laughed. "i reckon so. tamahnous peak is mine, and a few feet of grazing land on the east. nobody grudges it to me up this way. indians think it's haunted, 'cause all the rocks around it give echoes; and i--" he ceased speaking abruptly, his eyes on the pile of debris in the corner. then he lit a fresh torch from the dying one, and gave the word to strike for the outside, following single file, as the hill was pretty well honey-combed, and it was wise to be cautious. "because," said their leader, "if any should stray off, we might not have time this day of our lord to come back and hunt him up." before leaving what seemed like the back entrance, he walked over to the corner and picked up the thing that had arrested his attention a minute before, and slipping it in his pocket, walked to the head of the long line of men, several of whom were wounded, but only one less than the number who had left camp. and the one lacking was the man who had fired the first shot and killed the messenger from grey eagle--he himself dying from a wound, after the ride into the gulch. as the scout passed the men, a hand and a pair of gloves were thrust out to him from a group; and turning his torch so that the light would show the giver, he saw it was stuart. "thank you, sir," he said, with more graciousness than most of the men had ever seen in him; "i'll take them from you, as my own are damaged some." they were torn to shreds, and the fingers under them worn to the quick. the echoing steps of the forty men were as if forty hundred were making their way through the mine of the tamahnous; for no living tribe ever claimed it, even by descent. the hill that contained it had for generations been given by tradition to the witches of evil, who spoke through the rock--a clever scheme of those vanished workers to guard their wealth, or the wealth they hoped to find; but for what use? neither silver in coin nor vessel can be traced as ever belonging to tribes of the northern indians. yet that honey-combed peak, with its wide galleries, its many entries, and well-planned rooms, bespoke trained skill in underground quarrying. from some unseen source fresh air sifted through the darkness to them, and the tinkle of dripping water in pools came to their ears, though the pools were shrouded in the darkness that, just beyond the range of the few torches, was intense; and after the long tramp through echoing winds and turns, the misty dawn that was still early seemed dazzling to the eyes, red and haggard from the vigil of the night. "you will have to get away from here on a double-quick," said genesee sharply, after a glance at the sky and up the sides of the hill from which they had come. "once down there in the valley, the fog may hide you till sun-up, and then, again, it mightn't. just mind that they have horses." "we are not likely to forget it," was captain holt's answer; and then hesitated a moment, looking at genesee. "are you not coming with us?" asked lieutenant murray, giving voice to the question in his commander's mind as well as the others. "yes, part of the way," said the scout quietly, but with a challenge to detention in the slight pause with which he glanced at the group; "but i have a beast to carry me back, and i'm just tired enough to use it." and disappearing for a minute in the brush, he led out mowitza, and, mounting her, turned her head toward the terraces of the lower valley. they passed the isolated cabin that brought back to stuart a remembrance of where they were; then down the steps of the tamahnous and along the little lake, all swathed alike in the snow and the mist leaving null all character in the landscape. the cabin was commented on by the men, to whom it was a surprise, looming up so close to them through the cloud curtain. "that's mine," their guide remarked, and one of them, puzzled, stated it as his belief that genesee claimed the whole kootenai territory. the scout gave up his saddle to a man with a leg-wound, but he did not let go the bridle of mowitza; and so they went on with their guide stalking grimly ahead, ready, they all knew, to turn as fiercely against them at a sign of restraint as he had worked for them, if a movement was made to interfere with his further liberty. the sun rolled up over the purple horizon--a great body of blushes suffusing the mountains; but its chaste entrance had brazened into a very steady stare before it could pierce the veil of the valleys, and pick out the dots of moving blue against the snow on the home trail. it had been a wonderfully quiet tramp. most of the thoughts of the party were of the man walking ahead of them, and his nearness made the discussion of his actions awkward. they did not know what to expect of him, and a general curiosity prevailed as to what he would do next. they learned, when at last the ridge above camp was reached, about the middle of the forenoon. he had been talking some to the man on mowitza, and when they reached that point he stopped. "whereabouts?" he asked; and the man pointed to a place where the snow was colored by soil. "over there! i guess the boys buried him." "well, you can get down from that saddle now. i reckon you can walk down to camp; if not, they can carry you." then he turned to the rest. "there's a body under that snow that i want," he said sententiously. "i'm not in condition for any more digging," and he glanced at his hands. "are there any men among you that will get it out for me?" "you bet!" was the unhesitating reply; and without question, hands and knives were turned to the task, the man on horseback watching them attentively. "may i ask what that is for?" asked captain holt; at last, as amiably as he could, in the face of being ignored and affronted at every chance that was given genesee. he had saved the commander's life; that was an easy thing to do compared with the possibility of hiding his contempt. he was openly and even unreasonably aggressive--one of the spots in his nature that to a careless eye would appear the natural color of his whole character. he did not answer at once, and captain holt spoke again: "what is the object of digging up that indian?" then genesee turned in the saddle. "just to give you all a little proof of how big a fool a man can be without being a 'permanent' in a lunatic asylum." and then he turned his attention again to the men digging up the loose earth. they had not far to go; small care had been taken to make the grave deep. "take care there with your knives," said genesee as one shoulder was bared to sight. "lift him out. here--give him to me." "what in----" "give him to me!" he repeated. "i've given your damned fool lives back to forty of you, and all i'm asking for it is that kootenai's dead body." stuart stooped and lifted the chill, dark thing, and other hands were quick to help. the frozen soil was brushed like dust from the frozen face, and then, heavy--heavy, it was laid in the arms of the man waiting for it. he scanned from the young face to the moccasined feet swiftly, and then turned his eyes to the others. "where's his blanket?" he demanded; and a man who wore it pushed forward and threw it over the figure. "denny took it," he said in extenuation, "and when denny went under, i took it." "yes!" and again his eyes swept the crowd. "now i want his rifle, his knife, a snake-skin belt, and a necklace of bear's teeth--who's got them?" "well, i'll be damned!" "how's that for second sight?" "beats the devil out of hell!" were some of the sotto-voce remarks exchanged at the enumeration of the things wanted. "i've no time to waste in waiting," he added. "if they're in this crowd and ain't given up, i'll straighten the account some day, if i have to hunt five years for the trail to them. i'm a-waiting." his hand was laid on the breast of the dead indian as he spoke, and something in the touch brought a change to his face. the hand was slipped quickly inside the fringed shirt, and withdrawn, clasping a roll of parchment cured in indian fashion. a bitter oath broke from him as he untied the white sinews of the deer, and glanced at the contents. "what is it? what is it?" was the question from all sides. genesee, in a sort of fury, seemed to hear most clearly that of the, for the hour, displaced commander. "i'll tell you what it is!" he burst out wrathfully. "it's a message of peace from the kootenai tribe--an offer of their help against the blackfeet any time the troops of the united states need them. it is sent by grey eagle, the oldest of their war chiefs, and the messenger sent was grey eagle's grandson, snowcap--the future chief of their people. and you have had him shot down like a dog while carrying that message. by god! i wouldn't have blamed them if they had scalped every mother's son of you." to say that the revelation was impressive, would express the emotions of the men but mildly. captain holt was not the only one of them who turned white at the realization of what a provoked uprising of those joint tribes would mean, in the crippled condition of the camp. it would mean a sweeping annihilation of all white blood in their path; the troops would have enough to do to defend themselves, without being able to help the settlers. "in god's name, genesee, is this true?" and forgetting all animosity in the overwhelming news, holt pressed forward, laying his hand on the shoulder of the dead messenger. "take it off!" yelled genesee, looking at the unconscious hand that involuntarily had moved toward him. "take it off, or, by heaven, i'll cut it off!" and his fingers closing nervously on the hunting-knife emphasized his meaning, and showed how stubborn and sleepless were the man's prejudices. the hand dropped, and genesee reached out the document to one of the crestfallen scouts. "just read that out loud for the benefit of anyone that can't understand my way of talking," he suggested with ironical bitterness; "and while you are about it, the fellows that stripped this boy will be good enough to ante up with everything they've got of his--and no time to waste about it either." and captain holt, with a new idea of the seriousness of the demand, seconded it, receiving with his own hands the arms and decorations that had been seized by the victorious denny, and afterward divided among his comrades. genesee noted that rendering up of trifling spoils with sullen eyes, in which the fury had not abated a particle. "a healthy crew you are!" he remarked contemptuously; "a nice, clean-handed lot, without grit enough to steal a horse, but plenty of it for robbing a dead boy. i reckon no one of you ever had a boy that age of your own." several of them--looking in the dark, dead face--felt uneasy, and forgot for the moment that they were lectured by a horse-thief; forgot even how light a thing the life of an indian was anyway. "don't blame the whole squad," said the man who took the articles from the captain and handed them up to genesee. "denny captured them when he made the shot, just as anyone would do, and it's no use cussin' about denny; he's buried up in that gulch--the kootenais finished him." "and saved me the trouble," added the scout significantly. he was wrapping as well as he could the gay blanket over the rigid form. the necklace was clasped about the throat, but the belt was more awkward to manage, and was thrust into the bosom of genesee's buckskin shirt, the knife in his belt, the rifle swung at his back. there was something impressively ghastly in those two figures--the live one with the stubborness of fate, and the stolidity, sitting there, with across his thighs the blanketed, shapeless thing that had held a life; and even the husk seemed a little more horrible with its face hidden than when revealed more frankly; there was something so weirdly suggestive in the motionless outlines. "no, i don't want that," he said, as the man who read the message was about to hand it back to him; "it belongs to the command, and i may get a dose of cold lead before i could deliver it." then he glanced about, signaling stuart by a motion of his head. "there's a lady across in the valley there that i treated pretty badly last night," he said, in a tone so natural that all near could hear him, and more than one head was raised in angry question. "she was just good enough to ride over from the ranch to bring a letter to me--hearing i was locked up for a horse-thief, and couldn't go after it. well, as i tell you, i was just mean enough to treat her pretty bad--flung her on the floor when she tried to stop me, and then nabbed the beast she rode to camp on--happened to be my own; but may be she won't feel so bad if you just tell her what the nag was used for; and may be that will show her i didn't take the trail for fun." "that" was one of the gloves he had worn from his hands with his night's work, and there were stains on it darker than those made with earth. "i'll tell her;" and then an impulsive honesty of feeling made him add: "you need never fear her judgment of you, jack." the two looked a moment in each other's eyes, and the older man spoke. "i've been hard on you," he said deliberately, "damned hard; all at once i've seen it, and all the time you've been thinking a heap better of me than i deserved. i know it now, but it's about over. i won't stand in your way much longer; wait till i come back--" "you are coming back? and where are you going?" the questions, a tone louder than they had used, were heard by the others around. genesee noted the listening look on the faces, and his words were answers to them as much as to the questioner. "i'm going to take the trail for the kootenai village; if any white man is let reach it, or patch up the infernal blunder that's been made, i can do it with him," and his hand lay on the breast of the shrouded thing before him. "if i get out of it alive, i'll be back to meet the major; if i don't"--and this time his significant glance was turned unmistakably to the blue coats and their leader--"and if i don't, you'd better pack your carcasses out of this kootenai valley, and hell go with you." so, with a curse for them on his lips, and the dogged determination to save them in his heart, he nodded to hardy, clasped the hand of stuart, and turning mowitza's head, started with that horrible burden back over the trail that would take a day and a night to cover. the men were grateful for the bravery that had saved their lives, but burned under the brutal taunts that had spared nothing of their feelings. his execrable temper had belittled his own generosity. he was a squaw man, but they had listened in silence and ashamed, when he had presumed to censure them. he was a horse-thief, yet the men who believed it watched, with few words, the figure disappear slowly along the trail, with no thought of checking him. chapter v. his wife's letter. in the bosom of rachel's family strange thoughts had been aroused by that story of genesee's escape. they were wonderfully sparing of their comments in her presence; for, when the story came to her of what he had done when he left her, she laughed. "yet he is a horse-thief," she said, in that tone of depreciation that expresses praise, "and he sent me his glove? well, i am glad he had the grace to be sorry for scattering me over the floor like that. and we owe it to him that we see you here alive again? we can appreciate his bravery, even say prayers for him, if the man would only keep out of sight, but we couldn't ask him to a dinner party, supposing we gave dinner parties, could we, tillie?" and tillie, who had impulsively said "god bless him!" from the shelter of her husband's arms, collapsed, conscience-stricken and tearful. "you have a horrid way, rachel, of making people feel badly," she said, in the midst of her thankfulness and remorse; "but wait until i see him again--i will let him know how much we can appreciate such courage as that. just wait until he comes back!" "yes," said the girl, with all the irony gone from her voice, only the dreariness remaining, "i'm waiting." the words started tillie to crying afresh; for, in the recesses of her own bosom, another secret of genesee's generosity was hidden for prudential motives--the fact that it was he who had sent the guide for rachel that terrible night of the snow. and tillie was not a good keeper of secrets--even this thoroughly wise one was hard to retain, in her gladness at having her husband back! "the man seems a sort of shepherd of everything that gets astray in these hills," said lieutenant murray, who was kindly disposed toward all creation because of an emotional, unsoldier-like welcome that had been given him by the little non-commissioned officer in petticoats. "he first led us out of that corral in the hills and brought us back where we belonged, and then dug up that dead indian and started to take him where he belonged. i tell you there was a sort of--of sublimity in the man as he sat there with that horrible load he was to carry, that is, there would have been if he hadn't 'cussed' so much." "does he swear?" queried fred. "does he? my child, you would have a finely-trained imagination if you could conceive the variety of expressions by which he can consign a citizen to the winter resort from which all good citizens keep free. his profanity, they say, is only equaled by his immorality. but, ah--what a soldier he would make! he is the sort of a man that men would walk right up to cannon with--even if they detested him personally." "and a man needs no fine attributes or high morality to wield that sort of influence, does he?" asked rachel, and walked deliberately away before any reply could be made. but she was no more confident than they of his unimpeachable worth. there was the horse-thieving still unexplained; he had not even denied it to her. and she came to the conclusion that she herself was sadly lacking in the material for orthodox womanhood, since the more proof she had of his faults, the more solidly she took her position for his defense. it had in it something of the same blind stubbornness that governed his likes and dislikes, and that very similarity might have accounted for the sort of understanding that had so long existed between them. and she had more than the horse-stealing to puzzle over. she had that letter he had thrust in her hand and told her to read; such a pleading letter, filled with the heart-sickness of a lonely woman. she took it out and re-read it that time when she walked away from their comments; and reading over the lines, and trying to read between them, she was sorely puzzled: "dear jack: i wrote you of my illness weeks ago, but the letter must have been lost, or else your answer, for i have not heard a word from you, and i have wanted it more than i can tell you. i am better, and our little jack has taken such good care of me. he is so helpful, so gentle; and do you know, dear, he grows to look more like you every day. does that seem strange? he does not resemble me in the least. you will think me very exacting, i suppose, when i tell you that such a child, and such a home as you have given me, does not suffice for my content. i know you will think me ungrateful, but i must speak of it to you. i wrote you before, but no answer has come. if i get none to this, i will go to find you--if i am strong enough. if i am not, i shall send jack. he is so manly and strong, i know he could go. i will know then, at least, if you are living. i feel as if i am confessing a fault to you when i tell you i have heard from him at last--and more, that i was so glad to hear! "jack--dear jack--he has never forgotten. he is free now; would marry me yet if it were possible. write to me--tell me if it can ever be. i know how weak you will think me. perhaps my late ill-health has made me more so; but i am hungry for the sound of the dear voice, and i am so alone since your father died. you will never come back; and you know, jack, how loneliness always was so dreadful to me--even our boy is not enough. he does not understand. come back, or write to me. let my boy know his father, or else show me how to be patient; this silence is so terrible to your wife. "jack, what a mockery that word looks--yet i am grateful." this was the letter he had told her to read and give to stuart, if he never returned; but she gave it to no one. she mentioned it to no one, only waited to see if he ever came back, and with each reading of that other woman's longings, there grew stronger in her the determination that his life belonged to the writer of that letter and her child--her boy, who looked like him. surely there was a home and an affection that should cure him of this wild, semi-civilized life he was leading. she was slipping away that almighty need he had shown of herself. she grimly determined that all remembrance of it must be put aside; it was such an unheard-of, reasonless sort of an attraction anyway, and if she really had any influence over him, it should be used to make him answer that letter as it should be answered, and straighten out the strange puzzles in it. all this she determined she would tell him--when he got back. chapter vi. on the heights. while they commented, and wondered, and praised, and found fault with him, the day drifted into darkness, the darkness into a dreary dawn; and through all changes of the hours the outlaw stalked, with sometimes his ghastly companion bound to the saddle, and then again he would remount, holding snowcap in his arms--but seldom halting, never wavering; and mowitza, who seemed more than ever a familiar spirit, forged ahead as if ignoring the fact of hunger and scanty herbage to be found, her sturdy persistence suggesting a realization of her own importance. a broad trail was left for them, one showing that the detachment of braves and the horses of the troops had returned under forced march to bear the news to their village--and such news! the man's dark face hardened and more than one of those expressive maledictions broke from him as he thought over it. all his sympathies were with them. for five years they had been as brethren to him; never had any act of treachery touched him through them. to their people he was not genesee the outcast, the immoral, the suspected. he was lamonti--of the mountains--like their own blood. he was held wise in their councils, and his advice had weight. he could have ruled their chief, and so their nation, had he been ambitious for such control. he was their adopted son, and had never presumed on their liking, though he knew there was little in their slender power that would not have been his had he desired it. now he knew he would be held their enemy. his influence had encouraged the sending of that message and the offered braves to the commander of the troops. would they grant him a hearing now? or would they shoot him down, as the soldier had shot snowcap, with his message undelivered? those questions, and the retrospection back of them, were with him as he went upward into the mountains to the north. another night was falling slowly, and the jewels of the far skies one by one slipped from their ether casket, and shone with impressive serenity on the crusted snow. along the last ridge mowitza bore for the last time her double burden. there was but a slope to descend, a sheltered cove to reach, and snowcap would be given back to his kindred. the glittering surface of the white carpet warmed into reflected lights as the moon, a soft-footed, immature virgin, stole after the stars and let her gleams be wooed and enmeshed in the receptive arms of the whispering pine. not a sound broke through the peace of the heights. in their sublime isolation, they lift souls as well as bodies above the commonplace, and the rider, the stubborn keeper of so many of their secrets, threw back his head with a strange smile in his eyes as the last summit was reached--and reached in the light of peace. was it an omen of good? he thought of that girl back in the valley who was willing to share this life of the hills with him. all things beautiful made him think of her, and the moon-kissed night was grand, up there above where men lived. he thought of her superb faith, not in what he was, but in what her woman's instinct told her it was possible for him to be. what a universe of loves in human hearts revolves about those unseen, unproven substances! he thought of the time when she had lain in his arms as snowcap was lying, and he had carried her over the hills in the moonlight. he was bitterly cold, but through the icy air there came the thrill and flush of that long-past temptation. he wondered what she would say when they told her how he had used his freedom. the conviction of her approval again gave that strange smile of elation to his eyes; and the cold and hunger were ignored, and his fatigue fell from him. and with the tenderness that one gives to a sleeping child, he adjusted with his wounded hands the blanket that slipped from the dead boy, raising one of the rigid arms the better to shroud it in the gay colors. then the peace of the heights was broken by a sharp report; the whiteness of the moonlight was crossed by the quick, red flash of death and mowitza stopped still in her tracks, while her master, with that dead thing clasped close in his arms, lunged forward on her neck. chapter vii. a rebel. within the confines of camp kootenai there was a ripple of rejoicing. at last, after four days lost because of the snow, major dreyer had arrived, pushing on with all possible haste after meeting the runner--and, to the bewilderment of all, he rode into camp on one of the horses stolen almost a week ago. "no mystery about it--only a little luck," he said in explanation. "i found him at holland's as i came up. a white man belonging to the blackfeet rode him in there several nights ago. the white man got drunk, picked a row, and got his pay for it. they gave him grave-room down there, and in the morning discovered that the beast had our brand, so gave him up to us as we came through." needless to say that this account was listened to with unusual interest. a man belonging to the blackfeet! that proved genesee's theory of which he had spoken to captain holt--the theory that was so thoroughly discredited. when word was brought that the major's party had been sighted from the south, fred and rachel could hardly wait for the saddles to be thrown on the horses. tillie caught the fever of impatience, and rode down beside hardy. stuart was not about. the days since genesee's departure he had put in almost entirely with the scouts stationed to note any approach from the north; he was waiting for that coming back. kalitan, for the first time since genesee's flight, came into camp. the man who had seemed the friend of his friend was again in command; and he showed his appreciation of the difference by presenting himself in person beside rachel, to whom he had allied himself in a way that was curious to the rest, and was so devotionally serious to himself. "then, perhaps it was not that genesee who stole the horses, after all," broke in fred, as her father told the story. "genesee!--nonsense!" said the major brusquely. "we must look into that affair at once," and he glanced at the captain; "but if that man's a horse-thief, i've made a big mistake--and i won't believe it until i have proof." as yet there had been no attempt at any investigation of affairs, only an informal welcoming group, and fred, anxious to tell a story that she thought astonishing, recounted breathlessly the saving of the men by way of the mine, and of the gloves and the hands worn in that night's work, and last, of the digging up of that body and carrying it away to the mountains. her father, at first inclined to check her voluble recital that would come to him in a more official form, refrained, as the practical array of facts showing through her admiration summed themselves up in a mass that echoed his convictions. "and that is the man suspected of stealing a few horses? good god! what proof have you that will weigh against courage like that?" "major, he scarcely denied it," said the captain, in extenuation of their suspicions. "he swore the kootenais did not do it, and that's all he would say. he was absent all the afternoon and all the night of the thievery, and refused to give any account whatever of his absence, even when i tried to impress him with the seriousness of the situation. the man's reputation, added to his suspicious absence, left me but one thing to do--i put him under guard." "that does look strange," agreed the major, with, a troubled face; "refused--" he was interrupted by a sound from rachel, who had not spoken after the conversation turned to genesee. she came forward with a low cry, trembling and passionate, doubt and hope blending in her face. "did you say the night the horses were stolen?" she demanded. all looked at her wonderingly, and kalitan instinctively slid a little nearer. "yes, it was in the night," answered the captain, "about two o'clock; but you surely knew about it?" "i? i knew nothing," she burst out furiously; "they lied to me--all of you. you told me it was in the morning. how dared you--how dared you do it?" the major laid a restraining hand on her arm; he could feel that she was trembling violently. she had kept so contemptuously cool through all those days of doubt, but she was cool no longer; her face was white, but it looked a white fury. "what matter about the hour, miss rachel?" asked the commander; and she shook off his hand and stepped back beside kalitan, as if putting herself where genesee had put himself--with the indians. "because i could have told where jack genesee was that night, if they had not deceived me. he was with me." tillie gave a little cry of wonder and contrition. she saw it all now. "but--but you said it was a kootenai who brought you home," she protested feebly; "you told us lamonti." "he is a kootenai by adoption, and he is called lamonti," said the girl defiantly; "and the night those horses were run off, he was with me from an hour after sundown until four o'clock in the morning." that bold statement had a damaging ring to it--unnecessarily so; and the group about her, and the officers and men back of them, looked at her curiously. "then, since you can tell this much in his favor, can you tell why he himself refused to answer so simple a question?" asked major dreyer kindly. that staggered her for a moment, as she put her hand up in a helpless way over her eyes, thinking--thinking fast. she realized now what it meant, the silence that was for her sake--the silence that was not broken even to her. and a mighty remorse arose for her doubt--the doubt she had let him see; yet he had not spoken! she raised her eyes and met the curious glances of the men, and that decided her. they were the men who had from the first condemned him--been jealous of the commander's trust. "yes, i think i can tell you that, too," she said frankly. "the man is my friend. i was lost in the snow that night; he found me, and it took us all night to get home. he knows how these people think of him;" and her eyes spared none. "they have made him feel that he is an outcast among them. they have made him feel that a friendship or companionship with him is a discredit to any woman--oh, i know! they think so now, in spite of what he has done for them. he knows that. he is very generous, and wanted, i suppose, to spare me; and i--i was vile enough to doubt him," she burst out. "even when i brought him his horse, i half believed the lies about him, and he knew it, and never said a word--not one word." "when you brought him his horse?" asked the major, looking at her keenly, though not unkindly. her remorse found a new vent in the bravado with which she looked at them all and laughed. "yes," she said defiantly, as if there was a certain comfort in braving their displeasure, and proving her rebellion to their laws; "yes, i brought him his horse--not by accident either! i brought him brandy and provisions; i brought him revolvers and ammunition. i helped him to escape, and i cut the bonds your guards had fastened him with. now, what are you going to do about it?" tillie gasped with horror. she did not quite know whether they would shoot her as a traitor, or only imprison her; but she knew military law could be a very dreadful thing, and her fears were extravagant. as for miss fred, her eyes were sparkling. with the quick deductions of her kind, she reasoned that, without the escape that night, the men would have died in that trap in the hills, and a certain delicious meeting and its consequences--of which she was waiting to tell the major,--would never have been hers. her feelings were very frankly expressed, as she stepped across to the self-isolated rebel and kissed her. "you're a darling--and a plucky girl," she said warmly; "and you never looked so pretty in your life." the defiant face did not relax, even at that intelligence. her eyes were on the commander, her judge. and he was looking with decided interest at her. "yours is a very grave offense, miss rachel," he said, with deliberation that struck added terrors to tillie's heart. "the penalty of contriving the escape of prisoners is one i do not like to mention to you; but since the man in this case was innocent, and i take your evidence in proof--well, that might be some extenuation of the act." "i didn't know he was innocent when i helped him," she broke in; "i thought the horses were stolen after he left me." "that makes it more serious, certainly;" but his eyes were not at all serious. "and since you seem determined to allow nothing in extenuation of your own actions, i can only say that--that i value very highly the forty men whose lives were saved to us by that escape; and when i see mr. genesee, i will thank him in the warmest way at my command;" and he held out his hand to the very erect, very defiant rebel. she could scarcely believe it when she heard the words of praise about her; when one man after another of that rescued crowd came forward to shake hands with her--and hardy almost lifted her off her feet to kiss her. "by george! i'm proud of you, rachel," he said impulsively. "you are plucky enough to--to be genesee himself." the praise seemed a very little thing to her. her bravado was over; she felt as if she must cry if they did not leave her alone. of what use were words, if he should never come back--never know that he was cleared of suspicion? if they had so many kind words now, why had they not found some for him when he needed them? she did not know the uncompromising surliness that made him so difficult of approach to many people, especially any who showed their own feeling of superiority, as most of them did, to a squaw man. she heard that term from the major, a moment after he had shaken hands with her. he had asked what were the other suspicions mentioned against genesee; she could not hear the answer--they had moved a little apart from her--but she could hear the impatience with which he broke in on their speech. "a squaw man!--well, what if he is?" he asked, with a serene indifference to the social side of the question. "what difference does it make whether the man's wife has been red, or white, or black, so long as she suited him? there are two classes of squaw men, as there are of other men on the frontier--the renegades and the usual percentage of honest and dishonest citizens. you've all apparently been willing to understand only the renegades. i've been along the border for thirty years, and some of the bravest white men i've ever seen had indian wives. some of the men whose assistance in indian wars has been invaluable to us are ranchmen whose children are half-breeds, and who have taught their squaws housework and english at the same time, and made them a credit to any nation. there's a heap of uncalled-for prejudice against a certain class of those men; and, so far as i've noticed, the sneak who abandons his wife and children back in the states, or borrows the wife of someone else to make the trip out here with, is the specimen that is first to curl his lip at the squaw man. that girl over there strikes me as showing more common sense than the whole community; she gave him the valuation of a man." the major's blood was up. it was seldom that he made so long a speech; but the question was one against which he had clashed often, and to find the old prejudice was so strong a factor in the disorganizing of an outpost was enraging. "and do you realize what that man did when he took that trail north?" he demanded impressively. "he knew that he carried his life in his hand as surely as he carried that body. and he went up there to play it against big odds for the sake of a lot of people who had a contemptible contempt for him." "and cursed us soundly while he did it," added one of the men, in an aside; but the major overheard it. "yes, that's like him, too," he agreed. "but, if any of you can show me so great a courage and conscientiousness in a more refined citizen, i'm waiting to see it." then there was the quick fall of hoofs outside the shack, hurried questions and brief answers. one of the scouts from the north ridge rushed in and reported to major dreyer. "a gang o' hostiles are in sight--not many; they've got our horses. think they carry a flag o' truce, but couldn't spot it for sure. they're not a fighten' gang, any way, fur they're comen' slow and carryen' somethen'." "a flag of truce? that means peace. thank god!" said tillie, fervently. "and genesee," added the major. as for rachel, her heart seemed in her throat. she tried to speak, to rush out and learn their message, but she could not move. an awful presentiment bound her. "carrying something!" chapter viii. "when the sun goeth down." "opitsah!--klahowya." they brought him--his dark, sad-faced brothers--bearing him on a bed of elastic poles and the skins of beasts; and walking through the lines of blue-coats as if not seeing them, they laid him on the floor of the shack, and grouped themselves clannishly in one corner, near his head. stuart knelt with trembling hands to examine the cruel wound in the throat, and turned away, shaking his head. he could not speak. there was a slow, inward hemorrhage. he was bleeding to death. "determination has kept him alive," decided the major, when the spokesman of the kootenais told of the shot on the mountain, and how they had to carry him, with snowcap in his arms, to the wigwam of grey eagle; of the council through which he kept up, and then told them he would live until he reached camp--he was so sure of it! for the body of snowcap he had asked the horses left in the gulch, and was given them--and much more, because of the sorrow of their nation. he did not try to speak at first, only looked about, drinking in the strange kindness in all the faces; then he reached out his hand toward rachel. "opitsah!" he whispered, with that smile of triumph in his eyes. "i told you i'd live--till i got back to you;" and then his eyes turned to the major. "i got a stand-off on the hostilities--till your return--inside my coat--i wrote it." he ceased, gasping, while they drew out the "talking-paper" with the mark of grey eagle at the foot, and on it also were their murderous stains. "you--treat with them now," he continued, "but--be careful. don't shirk promises. they're easy managed now--like a lot of children, just because they shot me--when i was carrying snowcap home. but they'll get over--that, and then--be careful. they were ready for the war-path--when i got there." he saw captain holt not far from him, and through the pallor of his face a faint flush crept. "well, i've come back for my trial," he scowled, with something of his old defiance; and the major knelt down and took his hand. "that's all over, genesee," he said gently. "it was a big mistake. there is not a soul here with anything but gratitude and admiration for you. it was your own fault you were suspected; miss rachel has explained. why did you not?" he did not answer--only looked at her, and seemed gathering his strength for some final effort. "i want someone--to write." he was still holding rachel's hand. she had not said a word; only her eyes seemed to tell him enough. stuart came forward. "will i do, jack?" jack nodded, and more than one was astonished at the signs of grief in stuart's face. rachel was past speculation. "this lady, here," said genesee, motioning to her, "has done a heap for me--more than she knows--i reckon--and i want--to square things." rachel attempted to speak; but he raised his hand. "don't," he whispered. "let me say it--tillikum." then he turned to stuart. "there's a bit of ground up in the hills; it's mine, and i want her to have it--it's tamahnous hill--and the old mine--write it." she thought of that other woman, and tried to protest. again he saw it, and pressed her hand for silence. "i want her to have it--for she likes these hills, and--she's been mighty good to me. no one will interfere--with her claim--i reckon." "no one shall interfere," said stuart, toward whom he looked. genesee smiled. "that's right--that's all right. she won't be afraid of the--witches. and she'll tell you where i want to go--she knows." his voice was growing fainter; they could see he was almost done with the kootenai valley. "in my pocket is something--from the mine," he said, looking at rachel; "it will show you--and there's another will in the bank--at holland's--it is--for annie." stuart guided his hand for the signature to the paper. stuart wrote his own, and hardy followed, his eyes opening in wonder at something written there. a slight rustle in the group at the door drew the major's attention, and a young face coming forward made him turn to stuart. "i had altogether forgotten that i brought someone from holland's for you--a boy sent there to find j. s. stuart. i knew it must be c. s. stuart, though, and brought him along." a dark-faced little fellow, with a sturdy, bright look, walked forward at the commander's motion; but his wondering gaze was on the man lying there with such an eager look in his eyes. "this is mr. stuart," said the major, and then turned to genesee. the stuart's face was white as the wounded man's as the boy looked up at him, frankly. "i'm--i'm jack," he said; "and mamma sent a letter." the letter was held out, and the boy's plucky mouth trembled a little at the lack of welcome; not even a hand-shake, and he was such a little fellow--about ten. but stuart looked like a man who sees a ghost. he took the letter, after a pause that seemed very long to the people who watched his strange manner. then he looked at the envelope, took the boy by the arm, and thrusting the major blindly aside, he knelt by genesee. "this is for you, jack," he said, motioning the others back by a gesture--all but rachel--that hand-clasp was so strong! "and your namesake has brought it." "read it," and he motioned rachel to take it; "read me annie's letter." she read it in a low tone--a repetition of that other plea that jack had left with her, and its finale the same longing request that her boy should at last be let know his father. stuart was in tears when she finished. "jack," he said, "ten years is a long time; i've suffered every hour of them. give me the boy; let me know you are agreed at last. give annie back to me!" jack raised his hand to the bewildered boy, who took it reverently. "you are annie's boy?" he whispered; "kiss me for her--tell her--" and then his eyes sought stuart's--"i held them in pawn for you. i reckon you're earnest enough now--to redeem them. what was that verse about--giving back the pledge when--the sun goes down? you read it. mother used to read it--little mother! she will be glad, i reckon--she--" stuart was sobbing outright, with his arms about the boy. rachel, with the letter in her hand, was as puzzled as those who had drawn out of hearing. only the indians stood close and impassive. jack, meeting her eyes, smiled. "you know now--all about--them--and annie. that was why i tried--to keep away from you--you know now." but she did not know. "you took his wife from him?" she said, in a maze of conflicting revelations; and jack looked at stuart, as she added, "and who were you?" "he is my brother!" said stuart, in answer to that look of jack's. "he would not let me say it before--not for years. but he is my brother!" the words were loud enough for all to hear, and there was a low chorus of surprise among the group. all concealment was about over for genesee--even the concealment of death. then stuart looked across at rachel. he heard that speech, "you took his wife from him;" and he asked no leave of jack to speak now. "don't think that of him," he said, steadily. "you have been the only one who has, blindfolded, judged him aright. don't fail him now. he is worth all the belief you had in him. the story i read you that night was true. his was the manhood you admired in it; mine, the one you condemned. as i look back on our lives now, his seems to me one immense sacrifice--and no compensations--one terrible isolation; and now--now everything comes to him too late!" "he is--sorry," whispered genesee, "and talks wild--but--you know now?" "yes," and the girl's face had something of the solemn elation of his own. "yes, i know now." "and you--will live in the hills--may be?--not so very far away from--me. in my pocket--is something--from the mine--davy will tell you. be good to--my kootenais; they think--a heap of you. kalitan!" the arrow came forward, and shook reverently the hand of the man who had been master to him. the eyes roved about the room, as if in search of others unseen. rachel guessed what was wanted, and motioned to the indians. "come; your brother wants you," she said. and as they grouped about him and her, they barred out the soldiers and civilians--the white brother and child--barred out all from him save his friends of the mountains and the wild places--the haunts of exiles. and the girl, as one by one they touched her hand at his request, and circled her with their dark forms, seemed to belong to them too. "when the--snow melts--the flowers are on that ledge," he whispered with his eyes closed, "and the birds--not echoes--the echoes are in the mine--don't be--afraid. i'll go long--and mowitza." he was silent for so long that she stooped and whispered to him of prayer. he opened his eyes and smiled at her. "give me--your good wishes--and kiss me, and i'll--risk hell," was the characteristic answer given so low that she had to watch closely the lips she kissed. "and you've kissed me--again! who said--no compensation?--they--don't know; we know--and the moonlight, and--yes--mother knows; she thought, at last--i was not--all bad; not all--little mother! and now--don't be afraid; i won't go--far--klahowya, my girl--my girl!" then one indian from the circle unslung his rifle from his shoulder and shattered it with one blow of an axe that lay by the fire. the useless thing was laid beside what had been genesee. and the owner, shrouding his head in his blanket, sat apart from the rest. it was he of the bear claws; the sworn friend of lamonti, and the man who had shot him. * * * * * at sunset he was laid to rest in the little plateau on scot's mountain that faces the west. he was borne there by the indians, who buried in his grave the tomahawk they had resurrected for the whites of camp kootenai. mowitza, rebelliously impatient, was led riderless by kalitan. all military honors were paid him who had received no honors in life, the rites ending by that volley of sound that seals the grave of a soldier. then the pale-faces turned again to the south, the dark-faces took the trail to the north, and the sun with a last flickering blaze flooded the snow with crimson, and died behind the western peaks they had watched light up one morning. chapter ix. "rashell of lamonti." the echoes are no longer silent in tamahnous peak. the witchcraft of silver has killed the old superstition. the "something" in genesee's pocket had been a specimen that warranted investigation. the lost tribe had left enough ore there through the darkness of generations to make mining a thing profitable. above those terraces of unknown origin there is a dwelling-house now, built of that same bewitched stone in which the echoes sleep; and often there is gathered under its roof a strange household. the words of genesee, "be good to my kootenais!" have so far been remembered by the girl who during the last year of his life filled his thoughts so greatly. his friends are her friends, and medley as the lot would appear to others, they are welcome to her. they have helped her solve the problem of what use she could make of her life. her relatives have given up in despair trying to alter her unheard-of manner of living. the idea is prevalent among them that rachel's mind, on some subjects, is really queer--she was always so erratic! they speak to her of the loneliness of those heights, and she laughs at them. she is never lonely. she had his word that he would not go far. with her lives old davy macdougall, who helps her much in the mining matters, and kalitan is never far off. he is her shadow now, as he once was genesee's. indian women do the work of her home. a school is there for any who care to learn, and in the lodges of the kootenais she is never forgotten. it seemed strange that he who had so few friends in his life should win her so many by his death. the indians speak of him now with a sort of awe, as their white brother whose counsels were so wise, whose courage was so great; he who forced from the spirits the secret of the lost mine. he has drifted into tradition as some wonderful creature who was among them for a while, disappearing at times, but always coming back at a time of their need. to rachel they turn as to something which they must guard--for he said so. she is to them always "rashell of lamonti"--of the mountains. from the east and south come friends sometimes--letters and faces of people who knew him; miss fred, and her husband, and the major, who is a stanch friend and admirer of the eccentric girl who was once a rebel in his camp; and in reminiscences the roughness of his kootenai chief of scouts is swathed in the gray veil of the past--only the lightning-flashes of courage are photographed in the veteran's memory. the stuart and his wife and boy come there sometimes in the summer; and the girl and little jack, who are very fond of each other, ride over the places where the other jack stuart rode--nameless for so long. as for prince charlie, his natural affection for children amounts to adoration of the boy. rachel wonders sometimes if the ideal his remorse had fostered for so long was filled at last by the girl whom he had left a delicately tinted apple-blossom and found a delicate type of the invalid, whose ill-health never exceeds fashionable indisposition. if not, no word or sign from him shows it. the pretty, ideal phases of domestic love and life that he used to write of, are not so ready to his pen as they once were through his dreams and remorse. much changed for him are those northern hills, but they still have a fascination for him and he writes of them a good deal. "it is the witchcraft of the place, or else it is you, rachel," he said, once. "both help me. when life grows old and stale in civilization, i come up here and straightway am young again. i can understand now how you helped jack." his wife--a pretty little woman with a gently appealing air--never really understands rachel, though she and tillie are great friends; but, despite tillie's praise, annie never can discover what there is in the girl for "charlie and all the other men to like so much--and even poor, dear jack, who must have been in love with her to leave her a silver mine." to annie she seems rather clever, but with so little affection! and not even sympathetic, as most girls are. she heard of rachel's pluck and bravery; but that is so near to boldness!--as heroes are to adventurers; and annie is a very prim little woman herself. she quotes "my husband" a good deal, and rates his work with the first writers of the age. the work has grown earnest; the lessons of rachel's prophecy have crept into it. he has in so many ways justified them--achieved more than he hoped; but he never will write anything more fascinating than the changeless youth in his own eyes, or the serious tenderness of his own mouth when he smiles. "prince charlie is a rare, fine lad," old davy remarked at the end of an autumn, as he and rachel watched their visitors out of sight down the valley; "a man fine enough to be brother to genesee, an' i ne'er was wearied o' him till i hearkened to that timorous fine lady o' his lilting him into the chorus o' every song she sung. by her tellin' she's the first o' the wives that's ever had a husband." "but she is not a fine lady at all," contradicted rachel; "and she's a very affectionate, very good little woman. you are set against her because of that story of long ago--and that is hardly fair, davy macdougall." "well, then, i am not, lass. it's little call i have to judge children, but i own i'm ower cranky when i think o' the waste o' a man's life for a bit pigeon like that--an' a man like my lad was! the prize was no' worth the candle that give light to it. a man's life is a big thing to throw away, lass, an' i see nothing in that bit o' daintiness to warrant it. to me it's a woeful waste." the girl walked on beside him through the fresh, sweet air of the morning that was filled with crisp kisses--the kisses that warn the wild things of the frost-king's coming. she was separated so slightly from the wild things herself that she was growing to understand them in a new spirit--through a sympathy touched less by curiosity than of old. she thought of that man, who slept across on scot's mountian, in sight of tamahnous peak; how he had understood them!--not through the head, but the heart. through some reflected light of feeling she had lived those last days of his life at a height above her former level. she had seen in the social outlaw who loved her a soul that, woman-like, she placed above where she knelt. perhaps it had been the uncivilized heroism, perhaps the unselfish, deliberate sacrifice, appealing to a hero-worshiper. something finer in nature than she had ever been touched by in a more civilized life had come to her through him in those last days--not through the man as men knew him, and not through the love he had borne her--but through the spirit she thought she saw there. it may have been in part an illusion--women have so many--but it was strong in her. it raised up her life to touch the thing she had placed on the heights, and something of the elation that had come to him through that last sacrifice filled her, and forbade her return into the narrowed valleys of existence. his wasted life! it had been given at last to the wild places he loved. it had left its mark on the humanity of them, and the mark had not been a mean one. the girl, thinking of what it had done for her, wondered often if the other lives of the valley that winter could live on without carrying indelible coloring from grateful, remorseful emotions born there. she did not realize how transient emotions are in some people; and then she had grown to idealize him so greatly. she fancied herself surely one of many, while really she was one alone. "yes, lass--a woeful waste," repeated the old man; and her thoughts wandered back to their starting-place. "no!" she answered with the sturdy certainty of faith. "the prodigality there was not wastefulness, and was not without a method--not a method of his own, but that something beyond us we call god or fate. the lives he lived or died for may seem of mighty little consequence individually, but what is, is more than likely to be right, davy macdougall, even if we can't see it from our point of view." then, after a little, she added, "he is not the first lion that has died to feed dogs--there was that man of nazareth." davy macdougall stopped, looking at her with fond, aged eyes that shone perplexedly from under his shaggy brows. "you're a rare, strange lass, rachel hardy," he said at last, "an' long as i've known ye, i'm not ower certain that i know ye at all. the lad used to be a bit like that at times, but when i see ye last at the night, i'm ne'er right certain what i'll find ye in the mornin'." "you'll never find me far from that, at any rate," and she motioned up the "hill of the witches," and on a sunny level a little above them mowitza and kalitan were waiting. "then, lass, ye'll ne'er tak' leave o' the kootenai hills?" "i think not. i should smother now in the life those people are going to," and she nodded after the departing guests who were going back to the world. then her eyes turned from the mists of the valleys to the whispering peace of cedars that guard scot's mountain. "no, davy, i'll never leave the hills." kloshe kah-kwa. john fox, jr's. stories of the kentucky mountains the trail of the lonesome pine. illustrated by f. c. yohn. the "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. the fame of the pine lured a young engineer through kentucky to catch the trail, and when he finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the foot-prints of a girl. and the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chase than "the trail of the lonesome pine." the little shepherd of kingdom come illustrated by f. c. yohn. this is a story of kentucky, in a settlement known as "kingdom come." it is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest from which often springs the flower of civilization. "chad," the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he came--he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery--a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in the mountains. a knight of the cumberland. illustrated by f. c. yohn. the scenes are laid along the waters of the cumberland, the lair of moonshiner and feudsman. the knight is a moonshiner's son, and the heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "the blight." two impetuous young southerners' fall under the spell of "the blight's" charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making of the mountaineers. included in this volume is "hell fer-sartain" and other stories, some of mr. fox's most entertaining cumberland valley narratives. novels of frontier life by william macleod raine mavericks. a tale of the western frontier, where the "rustler," whose depredations are so keenly resented by the early settlers of the range, abounds. one of the sweetest love stories ever told. a texas ranger. how a member of the most dauntless border police force carried law into the mesquit, saved the life of an innocent man after a series of thrilling adventures, followed a fugitive to wyoming, and then passed through deadly peril to ultimate happiness. wyoming. in this vivid story of the outdoor west the author has captured the breezy charm of "cattleland," and brings out the turbid life of the frontier with all its engaging dash and vigor. ridgway of montana. the scene is laid in the mining centers of montana, where politics and mining industries are the religion of the country. the political contest, the love scene, and the fine character drawing give this story great strength and charm. bucky o'connor. every chapter teems with wholesome, stirring adventures, replete with the dashing spirit of the border, told with dramatic dash and absorbing fascination of style and plot. crooked trails and straight. a story of arizona; of swift-riding men and daring outlaws; of a bitter feud between cattle-men and sheep-herders. the heroine is a most unusual woman and her love story reaches a culmination that is fittingly characteristic of the great free west. brand blotters. a story of the cattle range. this story brings out the turbid life of the frontier, with all its engaging dash and vigor, with a charming love interest running through its pages. jack london's novels john barleycorn. illustrated by h. t. dunn. this remarkable book is a record of the author's own amazing experiences. this big, brawny world rover, who has been acquainted with alcohol from boyhood, comes out boldly against john barleycorn. it is a string of exciting adventures, yet it forcefully conveys an unforgettable idea and makes a typical jack london book. the valley of the moon. frontispiece by george harper. the story opens in the city slums where billy roberts, teamster and ex-prize fighter, and saxon brown, laundry worker, meet and love and marry. they tramp from one end of california to the other, and in the valley of the moon find the farm paradise that is to be their salvation. burning daylight. four illustrations. the story of an adventurer who went to alaska and laid the foundations of his fortune before the gold hunters arrived. bringing his fortunes to the states he is cheated out of it by a crowd of money kings, and recovers it only at the muzzle of his gun. he then starts out as a merciless exploiter on his own account. finally he takes to drinking and becomes a picture of degeneration. about this time he falls in love with his stenographer and wins her heart but not her hand and then--but read the story! a son of the sun. illustrated by a. o. fischer and c. w. ashley. david grief was once a light-haired, blue-eyed youth who came from england to the south seas in search of adventure. tanned like a native and as lithe as a tiger, he became a real son of the sun. the life appealed to him and he remained and became very wealthy. the call of the wild. illustrations by philip r. goodwin and charles livingston bull. decorations by charles e. hooper. a book of dog adventures as exciting as any man's exploits could be. here is excitement to stir the blood and here is picturesque color to transport the reader to primitive scenes. the sea wolf. illustrated by w. j. aylward. told by a man whom fate suddenly swings from his fastidious life into the power of the brutal captain of a sealing schooner. a novel of adventure warmed by a beautiful love episode that every reader will hail with delight. white fang. illustrated by charles livingston bull. "white fang" is part dog, part wolf and all brute, living in the frozen north; he gradually comes under the spell of man's companionship, and surrenders all at the last in a fight with a bull dog. thereafter he is man's loving slave. zane grey's novels the light of western stars colored frontispiece by w. herbert dunton. most of the action of this story takes place near the turbulent mexican border of the present day. a new york society girl buys a ranch which becomes the center of frontier warfare. her loyal cowboys defend her property from bandits, and her superintendent rescues her when she is captured by them. a surprising climax brings the story to a delightful close. desert gold illustrated by douglas duer. another fascinating story of the mexican border. two men, lost in the desert, discover gold when, overcome by weakness, they can go no farther. the rest of the story describes the recent uprising along the border, and ends with the finding of the gold which the two prospectors had willed to the girl who is the story's heroine. riders of the purple sage illustrated by douglas duer. a picturesque romance of utah of some forty years ago when mormon authority ruled. in the persecution of jane withersteen, a rich ranch owner, we are permitted to see the methods employed by the invisible hand of the mormon church to break her will. the last of the plainsmen illustrated with photograph reproductions. this is the record of a trip which the author took with buffalo jones, known as the preserver of the american bison, across the arizona desert and of a hunt in "that wonderful country of yellow crags, deep canons and giant pines." it is a fascinating story. the heritage of the desert jacket in color. frontispiece. this big human drama is played in the painted desert. a lovely girl, who has been reared among mormons, learns to love a young new englander. the mormon religion, however, demands that the girl shall become the second wife of one of the mormons-- well, that's the problem of this sensational, big selling story. betty zane illustrated by louis f. grant. this story tells of the bravery and heroism of betty, the beautiful young sister of old colonel zane, one of the bravest pioneers. life along the frontier, attacks by indians, betty's heroic defense of the beleaguered garrison at wheeling, the burning of the fort, and betty's final race for life, make up this never-to-be-forgotten story. the novels of winston churchill the inside of the cup. illustrated by howard giles. the reverend john hodder is called to a fashionable church in a middle-western city. he knows little of modern problems and in his theology is as orthodox as the rich men who control his church could desire. but the facts of modern life are thrust upon him; an awakening follows and in the end he works out a solution. a far country. illustrated by herman pfeifer. this novel is concerned with big problems of the day. as the inside of the cup gets down to the essentials in its discussion of religion, so a far country deals in a story that is intense and dramatic, with other vital issues confronting the twentieth century. a modern chronicle. illustrated by j. h. gardner soper. this, mr. churchill's first great presentation of the eternal feminine, is throughout a profound study of a fascinating young american woman. it is frankly a modern love story. mr. crewe's career. illustrated by a. i. keller and kinneys. a new england state is under the political domination of a railway and mr. crewe, a millionaire, seizes a moment when the cause of the people is being espoused by an ardent young attorney, to further his own interest in a political way. the daughter of the railway president plays no small part in the situation. the crossing. illustrated by s. adamson and l. baylis. describing the battle of fort moultrie, the blazing of the kentucky wilderness, the expedition of clark and his handful of followers in illinois, the beginning of civilization along the ohio and mississippi, and the treasonable schemes against washington. coniston. illustrated by florence scovel shinn. a deft blending of love and politics. a new englander is the hero, a crude man who rose to political prominence by his own powers, and then surrendered all for the love of a woman. the celebrity. an episode. an inimitable bit of comedy describing an interchange of personalities between a celebrated author and a bicycle salesman. it is the purest, keenest fun--and is american to the core. the crisis. illustrated with scenes from the photo-play. a book that presents the great crisis in our national life with splendid power and with a sympathy, a sincerity, and a patriotism that are inspiring. richard carvel. illustrated by malcolm frazer. an historical novel which gives a real and vivid picture of colonial times, and is good, clean, spirited reading in all its phases and interesting throughout. stories of rare charm by gene stratton-porter laddie. illustrated by herman pfeifer. this is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in indiana. the story is told by little sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs of older members of the family. chief among them is that of laddie, the older brother whom little sister adores, and the princess, an english girl who has come to live in the neighborhood and about whose family there hangs a mystery. there is a wedding midway in the book and a double wedding at the close. the harvester. illustrated by w. l. jacobs. "the harvester," david langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who draws his living from the prodigal hand of mother nature herself. if the book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man it would be notable. but when the girl comes to his "medicine woods," and the harvester's whole being realizes that this is the highest point of life which has come to him--there begins a romance of the rarest idyllic quality. freckles. decorations by e. stetson crawford. freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great limberlost swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "the angel" are full of real sentiment. a girl of the limberlost. illustrated by wladyslaw t. brenda. the story of a girl of the michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of the self-reliant american. her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. and by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage. at the foot of the rainbow. illustrations in colors by oliver kemp. the scene of this charming love story is laid in central indiana. the story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love. the novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it to all. transcriber's note: this etext was produced from if worlds of science fiction september . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed. marley's chain by alan e. nourse _tam's problem was simple. he lived in a world that belonged to someone else._ * * * * * they saw tam's shabby clothing and the small, weather-beaten bag he carried, and they ordered him aside from the flow of passengers, and checked his packet of passports and visas with extreme care. then they ordered him to wait. tam waited, a chilly apprehension rising in his throat. for fifteen minutes he watched them, helplessly. finally, the spaceport was empty, and the huge liner from the outer asteroid rings was being lifted and rolled by the giant hooks and cranes back into its berth for drydock and repair, her curved, meteor-dented hull gleaming dully in the harsh arc lights. tam watched the creaking cranes, and shivered in the cold night air, feeling hunger and dread gnawing at his stomach. there was none of the elation left, none of the great, expansive, soothing joy at returning to earth after eight long years of hard work and bitterness. only the cold, corroding uncertainty, the growing apprehension. times had changed since that night back in ' --just how much he hardly dared to guess. all he knew was the rumors he had heard, the whispered tales, the frightened eyes and the scarred backs and faces. tam hadn't believed them then, so remote from earth. he had just laughed and told himself that the stories weren't true. and now they all welled back into his mind, tightening his throat and making him tremble-- "hey, sharkie. come here." tam turned and walked slowly over to the customs official who held his papers. "everything's in order," he said, half defiantly, looking up at the officer's impassive face. "there isn't any mistake." "what were you doing in the rings, sharkie?" the officer's voice was sharp. "indenture. working off my fare back home." the officer peered into tam's face, incredulously. "and you come back here?" he shook his head and turned to the other officer. "i knew these sharkies were dumb, but i didn't think they were that dumb." he turned back to tam, his eyes suspicious. "what do you think you're going to do now?" tam shrugged, uneasily. "get a job," he said. "a man's got to eat." the officers exchanged glances. "how long you been on the rings?" "eight years." tam looked up at him, anxiously. "can i have my papers now?" a cruel grin played over the officer's lips. "sure," he said, handing back the packet of papers. "happy job-hunting," he added sardonically. "but remember--the ship's going back to the rings in a week. you can always sign yourself over for fare--" "i know," said tam, turning away sharply. "i know all about how that works." he tucked the papers carefully into a tattered breast pocket, hefted the bag wearily, and began trudging slowly across the cold concrete of the port toward the street and the underground. a wave of loneliness, almost overpowering in intensity, swept over him, a feeling of emptiness, bleak and hopeless. a chilly night wind swept through his unkempt blond hair as the automatics let him out into the street, and he saw the large dirty "new denver underground" sign with the arrow at the far side of the road. off to the right, several miles across the high mountain plateau, the great capitol city loomed up, shining like a thousand twinkling stars in the clear cold air. tam jingled his last few coins listlessly, and started for the downward ramp. somewhere, down there, he could find a darkened corner, maybe even a bench, where the police wouldn't bother him for a couple of hours. maybe after a little sleep, he'd find some courage, hidden away somewhere. just enough to walk into an office and ask for a job. that, he reflected wearily as he shuffled into the tunnel, would take a lot of courage-- * * * * * the girl at the desk glanced up at him, indifferent, and turned her eyes back to the letter she was typing. tam peters continued to stand, awkwardly, his blond hair rumpled, little crow's-feet of weariness creeping from the corners of his eyes. slowly he looked around the neat office, feeling a pang of shame at his shabby clothes. he should at least have found some way to shave, he thought, some way to take some of the rumple from his trouser legs. he looked back at the receptionist, and coughed, lightly. she finished her letter at a leisurely pace, and finally looked up at him, her eyes cold. "well?" "i read your ad. i'm looking for a job. i'd like to speak to mr. randall." the girl's eyes narrowed, and she took him in in a rapid, sweeping glance, his high, pale forehead, the shock of mud-blond hair, the thin, sensitive face with the exaggerated lines of approaching middle age, the slightly misty blue eyes. it seemed to tam that she stared for a full minute, and he shifted uneasily, trying to meet the cold inspection, and failing, finally settling his eyes on her prim, neatly manicured fingers. her lip curled very slightly. "mr. randall can't see you today. he's busy. try again tomorrow." she turned back to typing. a flat wave of defeat sprang up in his chest. "the ad said to apply today. the earlier the better." she sniffed indifferently, and pulled a long white sheet from the desk. "have you filled out an application?" "no." "you can't see mr. randall without filling out an application." she pointed to a small table across the room, and he felt her eyes on his back as he shuffled over and sat down. he began filling out the application with great care, making the printing as neat as he could with the old-style vacuum pen provided. name, age, sex, race, nationality, planet where born, pre-revolt experience, post-revolt experience, preference--try as he would, tam couldn't keep the ancient pen from leaking, making an unsightly blot near the center of the form. finally he finished, and handed the paper back to the girl at the desk. then he sat back and waited. another man came in, filled out a form, and waited, too, shooting tam a black look across the room. in a few moments the girl turned to the man. "robert stover?" "yuh," said the man, lumbering to his feet. "that's me." "mr. randall will see you now." the man walked heavily across the room, disappeared into the back office. tam eyed the clock uneasily, still waiting. a garish picture on the wall caught his eyes, a large, very poor oil portrait of a very stout, graying man dressed in a ridiculous green suit with a little white turban-like affair on the top of his head. underneath was a little brass plaque with words tam could barely make out: abraham l. ferrel ( - ) founder and first president marsport mines, incorporated "unto such men as these, we look to leadership." tam stared at the picture, his lip curling slightly. he glanced anxiously at the clock as another man was admitted to the small back office. then another man. anger began creeping into tam's face, and he fought to keep the scowl away, to keep from showing his concern. the hands of the clock crept around, then around again. it was almost noon. not a very new dodge, tam thought coldly. not very new at all. finally the small cold flame of anger got the better of him, and he rose and walked over to the desk. "i'm still here," he said patiently. "i'd like to see mr. randall." the girl stared at him indignantly, and flipped an intercom switch. "that peters application is still out here," she said brittlely. "do you want to see him, or not?" there was a moment of silence. then the voice on the intercom grated, "yes, i guess so. send him in." the office was smaller, immaculately neat. two visiphone units hung on a switchboard at the man's elbow. tam's eyes caught the familiar equipment, recognized the interplanetary power coils on one. then he turned his eyes to the man behind the desk. "now, then, what are you after?" asked the man, settling his bulk down behind the desk, his eyes guarded, revealing a trace of boredom. * * * * * tam was suddenly bitterly ashamed of his shabby appearance, the two-day stubble on his chin. he felt a dampness on his forehead, and tried to muster some of the old power and determination into his voice. "i need a job," he said. "i've had plenty of experience with radio-electronics and remote control power operations. i'd make a good mine-operator--" "i can read," the man cut in sharply, gesturing toward the application form with the ink blot in the middle. "i read all about your experience. but i can't use you. there aren't any more openings." tam's ears went red. "but you're always advertising," he countered. "you don't have to worry about me working on mars, either--i've worked on mars before, and i can work six, seven hours, even, without a mask or equipment--" the man's eyebrows raised slightly. "how very interesting," he said flatly. "the fact remains that there aren't any jobs open for you." the cold, angry flame flared up in tam's throat suddenly, forcing out the sense of futility and defeat. "those other men," he said sharply. "i was here before them. that girl wouldn't let me in--" randall's eyes narrowed amusedly. "what a pity," he said sadly. "and just think, i hired every one of them--" his face suddenly hardened, and he sat forward, his eyes glinting coldly. "get smart, peters. i think marsport mines can somehow manage without you. you or any other sharkie. the men just don't like to work with sharkies." rage swelled up in tam's chest, bitter futile rage, beating at his temples and driving away all thought of caution. "look," he grated, bending over the desk threateningly. "i know the law of this system. there's a fair-employment act on the books. it says that men are to be hired by any company in order of application when they qualify equally in experience. i can prove my experience--" randall stood up, his face twisted contemptuously. "get out of here," he snarled. "you've got nerve, you have, come crawling in here with your law! where do you think you are?" his voice grated in the still air of the office. "we don't hire sharkies, law or no law, get that? now get out of here!" tam turned, his ears burning, and strode through the office, blindly, kicking open the door and almost running to the quiet air of the street outside. the girl at the desk yawned, and snickered, and went back to her typing with an unpleasant grin. tam walked the street, block after block, seething, futile rage swelling up and bubbling over, curses rising to his lips, clipped off with some last vestige of self-control. at last he turned into a small downtown bar and sank wearily onto a stool near the door. the anger was wearing down now to a sort of empty, hopeless weariness, dulling his senses, exaggerating the hunger in his stomach. he had expected it, he told himself, he had known what the answer would be--but he knew that he had hoped, against hope, against what he had known to be the facts; hoped desperately that maybe someone would listen. oh, he knew the laws, all right, but he'd had plenty of time to see the courts in action. unfair employment was almost impossible to make stick under any circumstances, but with the courts rigged the way they were these days--he sighed, and drew out one of his last credit-coins. "beer," he muttered as the barkeep looked up. the bartender scowled, his heavy-set face a picture of fashionable distaste. carefully he filled every other order at the bar. then he grudgingly set up a small beer, mostly foam, and flung some small-coin change down on the bar before tam. tam stared at the glass, the little proud flame of anger flaring slowly. a fat man, sitting nearby, stared at him for a long moment, then took a long swill of beer from his glass. "'smatter, sharkie? whyncha drink y'r beer 'n get t' hell out o' here?" tam stared fixedly at his glass, giving no indication of having heard a word. the fat man stiffened a trifle, swung around to face him. "god-dam sharkie's too good to talk to a guy," he snarled loudly. "whassa-matter, sharkie, ya deaf?" tarn's hand trembled as he reached for the beer, took a short swallow. shrugging, he set the glass on the bar and got up from his stool. he walked out, feeling many eyes on his back. he walked. time became a blur to a mind beaten down by constant rebuff. he became conscious of great weariness of both mind and body. instinct screamed for rest.... * * * * * tam sat up, shaking his head to clear it. he shivered from the chill of the park--the cruel pressure of the bench. he pulled up his collar and moved out into the street again. there was one last chance. cautiously his mind skirted the idea, picked it up, regarded it warily, then threw it down again. he had promised himself never to consider it, years before, in the hot, angry days of the revolt. even then he had had some inkling of the shape of things, and he had promised himself, bitterly, never to consider that last possibility. still-- another night in the cold out-of-doors could kill him. suddenly he didn't care any more, didn't care about promises, or pride, or anything else. he turned into a public telephone booth, checked an address in the thick new denver book-- he knew he looked frightful as he stepped onto the elevator, felt the cold eyes turn away from him in distaste. once he might have been mortified, felt the deep shame creeping up his face, but he didn't care any longer. he just stared ahead at the moving panel, avoiding the cold eyes, until the fifth floor was called. the office was halfway down the dark hallway. he saw the sign on the door, dimly: "united continents bureau of employment", and down in small letters below, "planetary division, david g. hawke." tarn felt the sinking feeling in his stomach, and opened the door apprehensively. it had been years since he had seen dave, long years filled with violence and change. those years could change men, too. tam thought, fearfully; they could make even the greatest men change. he remembered, briefly, his promise to himself, made just after the revolt, never to trade on past friendships, never to ask favors of those men he had known before, and befriended. with a wave of warmth, the memory of those old days broke through, those days when he had roomed with dave hawke, the long, probing talks, the confidences, the deep, rich knowledge that they had shared each others dreams and ideals, that they had stood side by side for a common cause, though they were such different men, from such very different worlds. ideals had been cheap in those days, talk easy, but still, tam knew that dave had been sincere, a firm, stout friend. he had known, then, the sincerity in the big lad's quiet voice, felt the rebellious fire in his eyes. they had understood each other, then, deeply, sympathetically, in spite of the powerful barrier they sought to tear down-- the girl at the desk caught his eye, looked up from her work without smiling. "yes?" "my name is tam peters. i'd like to see mr. hawke." his voice was thin, reluctant, reflecting overtones of the icy chill in his chest. so much had happened since those long-dead days, so many things to make men change-- the girl was grinning, her face like a harsh mask. "you're wasting your time," she said, her voice brittle. anger flooded tarn's face. "listen," he hissed. "i didn't ask for your advice. i asked to see dave hawke. if you choose to announce me now, that's fine. if you don't see fit, then i'll go in without it. and you won't stop me--" the girl stiffened, her eyes angry. "you'd better not get smart," she snapped, watching him warily. "there are police in the building. you'd better not try anything, or i'll call them!" "that's enough miss jackson." the girl turned to the man in the office door, her eyes disdainful. the man stood in the doorway, a giant, with curly black hair above a high, intelligent forehead, dark brooding eyes gleaming like live coals in the sensitive face. tam looked at him, and suddenly his knees would hardly support him, and his voice was a tight whisper-- "dave!" and then the huge man was gripping his hand, a strong arm around his thin shoulders, the dark, brooding eyes soft and smiling. "tam, tam--it's been so damned long, man--oh, it's good to see you, tam. why, the last i heard, you'd taken passage to the rings--years ago--" weakly, tam stumbled into the inner office, sank into a chair, his eyes overflowing, his mind a turmoil of joy and relief. the huge man slammed the door to the outer office and settled down behind the desk, sticking his feet over the edge, beaming. "where have you _been_, tam? you promised you'd look me up any time you came to new denver, and i haven't seen you in a dozen years--" he fished in a lower drawer. "drink?" "no, no--thanks. i don't think i could handle a drink--" tam sat back, gazing at the huge man, his throat tight. "you look bigger and better than ever, dave." * * * * * dave hawke laughed, a deep bass laugh that seemed to start at the soles of his feet. "couldn't very well look thin and wan," he said. he pushed a cigar box across the desk. "here, light up. i'm on these exclusively these days--remember how you tried to get me to smoke them, back at the university? how you couldn't stand cigarettes? said they were for women, a man should smoke a good cigar. you finally converted me." tam grinned, suddenly feeling the warmth of the old friendship swelling back. "yes, i remember. you were smoking that rotten corncob, then, because old prof tenley smoked one that you could smell in the back of the room, and in those days the prof could do no wrong--" dave hawke grinned broadly, settled back in his chair as he lit the cigar. "yes, i remember. still got that corncob around somewhere--" he shook his head, his eyes dreamy. "good old prof tenley! one in a million--there was an honest man, tam. they don't have them like that in the colleges these days. wonder what happened to the old goat?" "he was killed," said tam, softly. "just after the war. got caught in a revolt riot, and he was shot down." dave looked at him, his eyes suddenly sad. "a lot of honest men went down in those riots, didn't they? that was the worst part of the revolt. there wasn't any provision made for the honest men, the really good men." he stopped, and regarded tam closely. "what's the trouble, tam? if you'd been going to make a friendly call, you'd have done it years ago. you know this office has always been open to you--" tam stared at his shoe, carefully choosing his words, lining them up in his mind, a frown creasing his forehead. "i'll lay it on the line," he said in a low voice. "i'm in a spot. that passage to the rings wasn't voluntary. i was shanghaied onto a freighter, and had to work for eight years without pay to get passage back. i'm broke, and i'm hungry, and i need to see a doctor--" "well, hell!" the big man exploded. "why didn't you holler sooner? look, tam--we've been friends for a long time. you know better than to hesitate." he fished for his wallet. "here, i can let you have as much as you need--couple hundred?" "no, no--that's not what i'm getting at." tam felt his face flush with embarrassment. "i need a job, dave. i need one bad." dave sat back, and his feet came off the desk abruptly. he didn't look at tam. "i see," he said softly. "a job--" he stared at the ceiling for a moment. "tell you what," he said. "the government's opening a new uranium mine in a month or so--going to be a big project, they'll need lots of men--on mercury--" tam's eyes fell, a lump growing in his throat. "mercury," he repeated dully. "why, sure, tam--good pay, chance for promotion." "i'd be dead in six months on mercury." tam's eyes met dave's, trying to conceal the pain. "you know that as well as i do, dave--" dave looked away. "oh, the docs don't know what they're talking about--" "you know perfectly well that they do. i couldn't even stand venus very long. i need a job on mars, dave--or on earth." "yes," said dave hawke sadly, "i guess you're right." he looked straight at tam, his eyes sorrowful. "the truth is, i can't help you. i'd like to, but i can't. there's nothing i can do." tam stared, the pain of disillusionment sweeping through him. "nothing you can do!" he exploded. "but you're the _director_ of this bureau! you know every job open on every one of the planets--" "i know. and i have to help get them filled. but i can't make anyone hire, tam. i can send applicants, and recommendations, until i'm blue in the face, but i can't make a company hire--" he paused, staring at tam. "oh, hell," he snarled, suddenly, his face darkening. "let's face it, tam. they won't hire you. nobody will hire you. you're a sharkie, and that's all there is to it, they aren't hiring sharkies. and there's nothing i can do to make them." tam sat as if he had been struck, the color draining from his face. "but the law--dave, you know there's a law. they _have_ to hire us, if we apply first, and have the necessary qualifications." the big man shrugged, uneasily. "sure, there's a law, but who's going to enforce it?" tam looked at him, a desperate tightness in his throat. "_you_ could enforce it. you could if you wanted to." * * * * * the big man stared at him for a moment, then dropped his eyes, looked down at the desk. somehow this big body seemed smaller, less impressive. "i can't do it, tam. i just can't." "they'd have to listen to you!" tam's face was eager. "you've got enough power to put it across--the court would _have_ to stick to the law--" "i can't do it." dave drew nervously on his cigar, and the light in his eyes seemed duller, now. "if it were just me, i wouldn't hesitate a minute. but i've got a wife, a family. i can't jeopardize them--" "dave, you know it would be the right thing." "oh, the right thing be damned! i can't go out on a limb, i tell you. there's nothing i can do. i can let you have money, tam, as much as you need--i could help you set up in business, maybe, or anything--but i can't stick my neck out like that." tam sat stiffly, coldness seeping down into his legs. deep in his heart he had known that this was what he had dreaded, not the fear of rebuff, not the fear of being snubbed, unrecognized, turned out. that would have been nothing, compared to this change in the honest, forthright, fearless dave hawke he had once known. "what's happened, dave? back in the old days you would have leaped at such a chance. i would have--the shoe was on the other foot then. we talked, dave, don't you remember how we talked? we were friends, you can't forget that. i _know_ you, i _know_ what you believe, what you think. how can you let yourself down?" dave hawke's eyes avoided tam's. "times have changed. those were the good old days, back when everybody was happy, almost. everybody but me and a few others--at least, it looked that way to you. but those days are gone. they'll never come back. this is a reaction period, and the reaction is bitter. there isn't any place for fighters now, the world is just the way people want it, and nobody can change it. what do you expect me to do?" he stopped, his heavy face contorted, a line of perspiration on his forehead. "i hate it," he said finally, "but my hands are tied. i can't do anything. that's the way things are--" "but _why_?" tam peters was standing, eyes blazing, staring down at the big man behind the desk, the bitterness of long, weary years tearing into his voice, almost blinding him. "_why is that the way things are?_ what have i done? why do we have this mess, where a man isn't worth any more than the color of his skin--" dave hawke slammed his fist on the desk, and his voice roared out in the close air of the office. "because it was coming!" he bellowed. "it's been coming and now it's here--and there's nothing on god's earth can be done about it!" tam's jaw sagged, and he stared at the man behind the desk. "dave--think what you're saying, dave--" "i know right well what i'm saying," dave hawke roared, his eyes burning bitterly. "oh, you have no idea how long i've thought, the fight i've had with myself, the sacrifices i've had to make. you weren't born like i was, you weren't raised on the wrong side of the fence--well, there was an old, old christmas story that i used to read. years ago, before they burned the sharkie books. it was about an evil man who went through life cheating people, hating and hurting people, and when he died, he found that every evil deed he had ever done had become a link in a heavy iron chain, tied and shackled to his waist. and he wore that chain he had built up, and he had to drag it, and drag it, from one eternity to the next--his name was marley, remember?" "dave, you're not making sense--" "oh, yes, all kinds of sense. because you sharkies have a chain, too. you started forging it around your ankles back in the classical middle ages of earth. year by year you built it up, link by link, built it stronger, heavier. you could have stopped it any time you chose, but you didn't ever think of that. you spread over the world, building up your chain, assuming that things would always be just the way they were, just the way you wanted them to be." the big man stopped, breathing heavily, a sudden sadness creeping into his eyes, his voice taking on a softer tone. "you were such fools," he said softly. "you waxed and grew strong, and clever, and confident, and the more power you had, the more you wanted. you fought wars, and then bigger and better wars, until you couldn't be satisfied with gunpowder and tnt any longer. and finally you divided your world into two armed camps, and brought fury out of her box, fought with the power of the atoms themselves, you clever sharkies--and when the dust settled, and cooled off, there weren't very many of you left. lots of us--it was your war, remember--but not very many of you. of course there was a revolt then, and all the boxed up, driven in hatred and bloodshed boiled up and over, and you sharkies at long last got your chain tied right around your waists. you were a long, long time building it, and now you can wear it--" * * * * * tam's face was chalky. "dave--there were some of us--you know there were many of us that hated it as much as you did, before the revolt. some of us fought, some of us at least tried--" the big man nodded his head, bitterly. "you thought you tried, sure. it was the noble thing to do, the romantic thing, the _good_ thing to do. but you didn't really believe it. i know--i thought there was some hope, back then, some chance to straighten things out without a revolt. for a long time i thought that you, and those like you, really meant all you were saying, i thought somehow we could find an equal footing, an end to the hatred and bitterness. but there wasn't any end, and you never really thought there ever would be. that made it so safe--it would never succeed, so when things were quiet it was a nice idea to toy around with, this equality for all, a noble project that couldn't possibly succeed. but when things got hot, it was a different matter." he stared at tam, his dark eyes brooding. "oh, it wasn't just you, tam. you were my best friend, even though it was a hopeless, futile friendship. you tried, you did the best you could, i know. but it _just wasn't true_, tam. when it came to the pinch, to a real jam, you would have been just like the rest, basically. it was built up in you, drummed into you, until no amount of fighting could ever scour it out--" dave hawke stood up, walked over to the window, staring out across the great city. tam watched him, the blood roaring in his ears, hardly able to believe what he had heard from the big man, fighting to keep his mind from sinking into total confusion. somewhere a voice deep within him seemed to be struggling through with confirmation, telling him that dave hawke was right, that he never really _had_ believed. suddenly dave turned to him, his dark eyes intense. "look, tam," he said, quickly, urgently. "there are jobs you can get. go to mercury for a while, work the mines--not long, just for a while, out there in the sun--then you can come back--" tam's ears burned, fierce anger suddenly bursting in his mind, a feeling of loathing. "never," he snapped. "i know what you mean. i don't do things that way. that's a coward's way, and by god, i'm no coward!" "but it would be so easy, tam--" dave's eyes were pleading now. "please--" tam's eyes glinted. "no dice. i've got a better idea. there's one thing i can do. it's not very nice, but at least it's honest, and square. i'm hungry. there's one place where i can get food. even sharkies get food there. and a bed to sleep in, and books to read--maybe even some sharkie books, and maybe some paper to write on--" he stared at the big man, oddly, his pale eyes feverish. "yes, yes, there's one place i can go, and get plenty to eat, and get away from this eternal rottenness--" dave looked up at him, his eyes suspicious. "where do you mean?" "prison," said tam peters. "oh, now see here--let's not be ridiculous--" "not so ridiculous," snapped tam, his eyes brighter. "i figured it all out, before i came up here. i knew what you were going to say. sure, go to mercury, tam, work in the mines a while--well, i can't do it that way. and there's only one other answer." "but, tam--" "oh, it wouldn't take much. you know how the courts handle sharkies. just a small offense, to get me a few years, then a couple of attempts to break out, and i'd be in for life. i'm a sharkie, remember. people don't waste time with us." "tam, you're talking nonsense. good lord, man, you'd have no freedom, no life--" "what freedom do i have now?" tam snarled, his voice growing wild. "freedom to starve? freedom to crawl on my hands and knees for a little bit of food? i don't want that kind of freedom." his eyes grew shrewd, shifted slyly to dave hawke's broad face. "just a simple charge," he said slowly. "like assault, for instance. criminal assault--it has an ugly sound, doesn't it, dave? that should give me ten years--" his fist clenched at his side. "yes, criminal assault is just what ought to do the trick--" the big man tried to dodge, but tam was too quick. his fist caught dave in the chest, and tam was on him like a fury, kicking, scratching, snarling, pounding. dave choked and cried out, "tam, for god's sake stop--" a blow caught him in the mouth, choking off his words as tam fought, all the hate and bitterness of long weary years translated into scratching, swearing desperation. dave pushed him off, like a bear trying to disentangle a maddened dog from his fur, but tam was back at him, fighting harder. the door opened, and miss jackson's frightened face appeared briefly, then vanished. finally dave lifted a heavy fist, drove it hard into tam's stomach, then sadly lifted the choking, gasping man to the floor. the police came in, seconds later, clubs drawn, eyes wide. they dragged tam out, one on each arm. dave sank back, his eyes filling, a sickness growing in the pit of his stomach. in court, a sharkie would draw the maximum sentence, without leniency. ten years in prison--dave leaned forward, his face in his hands, tears running down his black cheeks, sobs shaking his broad, heavy shoulders. "why wouldn't he listen? why couldn't he have gone to mercury? only a few months, not long enough to hurt him. why couldn't he have gone, and worked out in the sun, got that hot sun down on his hands and face--not for long, just for a little while. two or three months, and he'd have been dark enough to pass--" the end * * * * * produced from images generously made available by the internet archive.) the brothers' war the brothers' war by john c. reed of georgia author of "american law studies," "conduct of lawsuits" "the old and new south" boston little, brown, and company _copyright, _, by little, brown, and company. _all rights reserved_ published october, the university press, cambridge, u. s. a. preface i would explain the real causes and greater consequences of the bloody brothers' war. i pray that all of us be delivered, as far as may be, from bias and prejudice. the return of old affection between the sections showed gracious beginning in the centennial year. in the war with spain southerners rallied to the stars and stripes as enthusiastically as northerners. reconcilement has accelerated its pace every hour since. but it is not yet complete. the south has these things to learn: . a providence, protecting the american union, hallucinated garrison, wendell phillips, mrs. stowe, sumner, and other radical abolitionists, as to the negro and the effect of southern slavery upon him, its purpose being to destroy slavery because it was the _sine qua non_ of southern nationalization, the only serious menace ever made to that union. this nationalization was stirring strongly before the federal constitution was adopted. the abolitionists, as is the case with all forerunners of great occurrences, were trained and educated by the powers directing evolution, and they were constrained to do not their own will but that of these mighty powers. . the cruel cotton tax; the constitution amended to prevent repentance of uncompensated emancipation, which is the greatest confiscation on record; the resolute effort to put the southern whites under the negroes; and other such measures; were but natural outcome of the frenzied intersectional struggle of twenty-five years and the resulting terrible war. had there been another event, who can be sure that the south would not have committed misdeeds of vengeance against citizens of the north? . we of the south ought to tolerate the freest discussion of every phase of the race question. we should ungrudgingly recognize that the difference of the northern masses from us in opinion is natural and honest. let us hear their expressions with civility, and then without warmth and show of disrespect give the reasons for our contrary faith. this is the only way for us to get what we need so much, that is, audience from our brothers across the line. consider some great southerners who have handled most exciting sectional themes without giving offence. there is no invective in calhoun's speech, of march , , though he clearly discerned that abolition was forcing the south into revolution. stephens, who had been vice-president of the confederate states, reviewed in detail soon after the brothers' war the conflict of opinion which caused it, and yet in his two large volumes he spoke not a word of rancor. when congress was doing memorial honor to charles sumner, it was lamar, a southerner of southerners, that made the most touching panegyric of the dead. and the other day was dixon's masterly effort to prove that the real, even if unconscious, purpose of the training at tuskegee is ultimately to promote fusion, which the southern whites deem the greatest of evils. his language is entirely free from passion or asperity. he wonders in admiration at the marvellous rise of booker washington from lowest estate to unique greatness. and he gives genuine sympathy to professor dubois, in whose book, "the souls of black folk," as he says, "for the first time we see the naked soul of a negro beating itself to death against the bars in which aryan society has caged him." these examples of calhoun, stephens, lamar, and dixon should be the emulation of every southerner speaking to the nation upon any subject that divides north and south. this done, we will get the audience we seek. it was this which not long ago gave clark howell's strong paper opposing negro appointments to office in the south prominent place in _collier's_, and which last month obtained for dixon's article just mentioned the first pages of the _saturday evening post_. when we get full audience, other such discussions as those of howell and dixon, and that in which tom watson, in the june number of his magazine, showed dr. booker washington a thing or two, will be digested by the northern public, to the great advantage of the whole country. the last i have to say here is as to differing opinions upon social recognition of prominent negroes. we of the south give them great honor and respect. could not mr. roosevelt have said to us of georgia protesting against his entertainment of booker washington, "have i done worse than you did when you had him to make that address at the opening of your exposition in , and applauded it to the echo?" suppose, as is true, that hardly a man in the south would eat at the same table with dr. washington or professor dubois, how can that justify us in heaping opprobrium upon a northern man who does otherwise because he has been taught to believe it right? what has been said in denunciation of the president and mr. wanamaker for their conduct towards booker washington seems to me rather a hullabaloo of antediluvian moss-backs than the voice of the best and wisest southerners. amid all her gettings let the south get complete calmness upon everything connected with the race question--complete deliverance from morbid sensitiveness and intemperate speech in its discussion. now here is what the north should learn: . slavery in america was the greatest benefit that any large part of the negro race ever received; and sudden and unqualified emancipation was woe inexpressible to nearly all the freedmen. the counter doctrine of the abolitionists who taught that the negro is equal to the caucasian worked beneficently to save the union, but it ought now to be rejected by all who would understand him well enough to give him the best possible development. the fifteenth amendment was a stupendous blunder. it took for granted that the southern negroes were as ready for the ballot as the whites. the fact is that they were as a race in a far lower stage of evolution. consider the collective achievement of this race, not in savage west africa, but where it has been long in contact with civilization, in hayti, and the south. hayti has been independent for more than a hundred years. "sir spencer st. john ... formerly british minister resident in hayti, after personally knowing the country for over twenty years, claims that it is ... in rapid decadence, and regards the political future of the haytians as utterly hopeless. at the termination of his service on the island, he said: 'i now quite agree with those who deny that the negro can ever originate a civilization, and who assert that with the best of educations he remains an inferior type of man.' "according to sir spencer, hayti is sunk in misery, bloodshed, cannibalism, and superstition of the most sensual and degrading character. ever since the republic has been established haytians have been opposed to progress, but of recent years retrogression has been particularly rapid."[ ] in the south, where reversion to west african society has been checked by white government, this is a full catalogue of the main institutions evolved by the freedmen. they have provided themselves with cheaply built churches, in which their frequent and long worship is mainly sound and fury. in the pinch of crop cultivation or gathering they flock away from the fields to excursion trains and "protracted meetings." perhaps their most noticeable institutions are "societies," some prohibiting hiring as domestic servants, except where subsistence cannot otherwise be had, and others providing the means of decent burial. compare these feeble negro race performances with such white institutions, made in the same territory and at the same time, as memorial day, which the north has adopted; the ku klux klan; enactment of stock laws when the freedmen's refusal to split rails made much fencing impossible; and the white primary. institutions--what i have just called the collective achievement of a race--mark in their character its capacity for improvement, and also its plane of development. when the negro, with his self-evolved institutions, is compared with the race which has furnished itself with fit organs of self-government all the way up from town-meeting to federal constitution, and is now about to crown its grand work with direct legislation, it is like comparing the camel dressed to counterfeit an elephant, of which dear old peter parley told us in his school history, with a real elephant, or trying to make a confederate dollar in an administrator's return of count as a gold one. and yet the negro, professor kelly miller, replying to tom watson, assumes that franks, britons, germans, russians, and aztecs have severally been in historical times as incapable as west africans of rising from savagery and crossing barbarism into civilization. he outdoes even this--he would have it believed that hayti is now a close second behind japan in striding progress. surely the good people of the north ought to learn the difference between the negro race and the white. there is a small class of exceptional negroes which is assumed by a great many at the north to be most fair samples of the average negro of the south. dr. washington and professor dubois severally lead the opposing sections of this class. it consists of authors, editors, preachers, speakers, some who with small capital in banking, farming, and other business, have each by booker washington's blazon been exalted into a national celebrity, and others. its never-sleeping resolve, fondly cherished by the greater part, is to "break into" white society and some day fuse with it. its members are nearly all at least half white, and many are more than half white. but when a bourbon snub to one of them is received, as it often is, with dignity and proper behavior, mr. louis f. post, and a few more, exclaim to the country, "see how this coal-black and pure negro excels his would-be superiors!" this man, almost white, is to them a coal-black, genuine, unmixed negro. ought not attention to facts incontrovertibly cardinal to rule here as everywhere else? to what is due the great accomplishment of dumas, douglass, and booker washington--to their negro blood or to their white blood? if half negro blood can do so well, why is it that pure negro blood does not do far better? i have seen it asserted that professor kelly miller is pure negro. his head has the shape of a white man's. the greyhound crossed once with the bull-dog, as youatt tells, and each succeeding generation of offspring recrossed with pure greyhound until not a suggestion of bull-dog was visible, occurs to me. thus there was bred a greyhound, possessing the desired trait of the bull-dog. who can say that there is not among the professor's american ancestors one of half white blood? if there is in fact no such, he is, in his high attainment, almost a _lusus naturae_. the north, by due attention, will discern that the small number constituting what i provisionally name the upper class of negroes, is hardly involved in the race question. the negroes in the south outside of the upper class--the latter not amounting to more than five percent of the entire black population--are slowly falling away from the benign elevation above west africa wrought by slavery. that they are here, is felt every year to be more injurious. they greatly retard the evolution of a white-labor class, which has become the head-spring of all social amelioration in enlightened communities. there appears to be but one salvation for them if they stay, which is fusion with the whites. though herbert foster, and a few others, confidently assume that our weakening caucasian strain would be bettered by infusion of african blood, we see that while amalgamation would bless the negro it would incalculably injure us. it would be stagnation and blight for centuries, not only to the south but to the north also. northerners are more and more attracted to the south by climate and other advantages, and intermarriage between the natives of each section increases all the while. the powers, protecting america, inscrutably to contemporaries kept busy certain agencies that saved the union. it seems to me that these same powers are now in both sections increasing white hostility to the blacks, of purpose to prevent their getting firm foothold and becoming desirable in marriage to poorer whites. one will think at once of the frequent lynchings in the south. but let him also think of how the strikers in chicago were moved to far greater passion by the few black than the many white strike-breakers, the late inexplicable anti-negro riot in new york city, and the negro church dynamited the other day in carlisle, indiana. these powers, who have protected our country from the first settlement of the english upon the atlantic coast down to the present time, appear to speak more plainly every day the fiat, "if black and white are not separated, black shall perish utterly." i am convinced that at the close of the century, if this separation has not been made long before, professor willcox's apparently conservative estimate of what will then be their numbers will prove to be gross exaggeration. in my judgment he comes far short of allowing the anti-fusion forces their full destructiveness. let the north purge itself from all delusion as to the negro, and help the south do him justice and loving kindness, by transplanting him into favorable environment. . it is high time that the ku klux be understood. when in it was strenuously attempted to give rule to scalawags and negroes, the very best of the south led the unanimous revolt. their first taste of political power incited the negroes to license and riot imperilling every condition of decent life. in the twinkling of an eye the ku klux organized. it mustered, not assassins, thugs, and cutthroats, as has been often alleged, but the choicest southern manhood. every good woman knew that the order was now the solitary defence of her purity, and she consecrated it with all-availing prayers. in georgia we won the election of december, , in the teeth of gigantic odds. this decisive deliverance from the most monstrous and horrible misrule recorded among anglo-saxons was the achievement of the ku klux. its high mission performed, the klan, burning its disguises, ritual, and other belongings, disbanded two or three months later. its reputation is not to be sullied by what masked men--bogus ku klux, as we, the genuine, called them--did afterwards. the exalted glorification of dixon is not all of the klan's desert. it becomes dearer in memory every year. i shall always remember with pride my service in the famous th georgia volunteers. i was with it in the bloody pine thicket at first manassas, where it outfought four times its own number; at gettysburg, where, although thirty-two out of its thirty-six officers were killed or wounded, there was no wavering; and in many other perilous places, the last being farmville, two days before appomattox, where this regiment and its sworn brother, the th georgia, of anderson's brigade, coming up on the run, grappled hand-to-hand with a superior force pushing back mahone, and won the field. but i am prouder of my career in the ku klux klan. the part of it under my command rescued oglethorpe county, in which the negroes had some thousand majority, at the presidential election of ,--the very first opportunity,--and held what had been the home of william h. crawford, george r. gilmer, and joseph h. lumpkin, until permanent victory perched upon the banners of the white race in georgia. . i observe that the north begins in some sort the learning of the two lessons above mentioned. but now comes one which seems hard indeed. calhoun, toombs, davis, and the other pro-slavery leaders, ought to be thoroughly studied and impartially estimated. they were not agitators, nor factionists, nor conspirators. they were the extreme of conservatism. their conscientious faithfulness to country has never been surpassed. their country was the south, whose meat and bread depended upon slavery. the man whose sight can pierce the heavy mists of the slavery struggle still so dense cannot find in the world record of glorious stands for countries doomed by fate superiors in moral worth and great exploit. in their careers are all the comfort, dignity, and beauty of life, supreme virtue, and happiness of that old south, inexpressibly fair, sweet and dear to us who lived in it; and in these careers are also all the varied details of its inexpressibly pathetic ruin. what is higher humanity than to grieve with those who grieve? brothers and sisters of the north, you will never find your higher selves until you fitly admire the titanic fight which these champions made for their sacred cause, and drop genuine tears over their heart-breaking failure. the foregoing summarizes the larger obstacles which bar true sight of the south and the north. the devastation attending sherman's march beyond atlanta, the alleged inhumanity at andersonville, and many other things that were bitterly complained of during the brothers' war, and afterwards, by one side or the other, seem to me almost forgotten and forgiven. brothers who wore the gray with me, brothers who wore the blue against me, i would have all of you freed from the delusions which still keep you from that perfect love which webster, lincoln, and stephens gave south and north alike. i am sure that you must make the corrections indicated above before you can rightly begin the all-important subject of this book. with this admonition i commit you to the opening chapter, which i hope you will find to be a fit introduction. john c. reed. atlanta, ga., september, . contents chapter page i. introductory ii. a beginning made with slavery iii. unappeasable antagonism of free and slave labor iv. genesis, course, and goal of southern nationalization v. american nationalization, and how it made the bond of union stronger and stronger vi. root-and-branch abolitionists and fire-eaters vii. calhoun viii. webster ix. "uncle tom's cabin" x. slavery impelled into a defensive aggressive xi. toombs xii. help to the union cause by powers in the unseen xiii. jefferson davis xiv. the curse and blessing of slavery xv. the brothers on each side were true patriots and morally right--both those who fought for the union and those who fought for the confederacy xvi. the race question: general and introductory xvii. the race question: the situation in detail appendix index the brothers' war chapter i introductory the inhabitants of the english colonies in canada, australia, and new zealand are all of the same race, language, religion, and institutions of government. such homogeneousness, as has long been recognized, works powerfully for the political coalescence of separate communities. with the adjacent ones of the colonies just mentioned there has always been trend to such coalescence, as is impressively illustrated by the recent establishment of the australian federation. the thirteen colonies out of which the united states developed were likewise english, and there was the same homogeneousness in their population, which made in due time, and also maintained for a few generations, a union of them all--a continental union. but there had crept in a heterogeneity, overlooked for many years, during which time it acquired such force that it at last overcame the homogeneousness just emphasized and carried a part of the inhabitants of the united states out of the continental union. african slavery dying out in the north, but prospering in the south, was this heterogeneity. by a most natural course the south grew into a nation--the confederate states--whose end and purpose was to protect slavery, which had become its fundamental economical interest, against the north standing by the original union, and which having gained control of the federal government was about to use its powers to extirpate slavery. the continental or pan-american nation--the american union, as we most generally think of it--could not brook dismemberment, nor tolerate a continental rival, and consequently it warred upon and denationalized the confederate states. the last two sentences tell how the brothers' war was caused, what was its stake on each side, and the true result. this compendious summary is to serve as a proposition, the proof of which we now purpose to outline. our first step is to emphasize how the free-labor system which prevailed in the north, and the slave-labor system which prevailed in the south, were utterly incompatible. free labor is far cheaper and more efficient than slave labor. it had consequently superseded slavery in the entire enlightened world. but certain exceptional peculiarities of climate, soil, and products planted made slavery profitable in the south. to maintain the market value of the slaves two things were needed: ( ) the competition of free labor and the import of cheap slaves must be rigorously prevented; ( ) a vast reserve of virgin soil, both to replace the plantations rapidly wearing out and to afford more land for the multiplying slaves. the fact last mentioned made it vital to the south to appropriate such parts of the soil of the territories as suited her cotton and other staples. therefore whenever she made such an appropriation she turned it into a slave state; for thus the competition of free labor would be effectually excluded therefrom. the much more rapid increase of her population made appropriation of lands in the territories likewise vital to the north. hers were all free-labor interests, as the south's were all slave-labor interests; and whenever the former appropriated any of the territories, she made a state prohibiting slavery in order to protect her free-labor interests. the north was not excluded by nature from any part of the public domain as the other section was. her free labor could be made productive everywhere in it, and she really needed the whole. thus the brothers of the north and the brothers of the south commenced to strive with one another over dividing their great inheritance. the former wanted lands for themselves, their sons, and daughters in all the territories possible made into states protecting their free-labor system; the latter wanted all of the territories suiting them made into states protecting their slave-labor system. what ought especially to be recognized by us now is that this contention was between good, honest, industrious, plain, free-labor people on one side, and good, honest, industrious, plain, slave-labor people on the other, those on each side doing their best, as is the most common thing in the world, to gain and keep the advantage of those of the other. it was natural, it was right, it was most laudable that every householder, whether northerner or southerner, should do his utmost to get free land for himself and family. this fact--which is really the central, foundation, and cardinal one of all the facts which brought the brothers' war--must be thoroughly understood, otherwise the longer one contemplates this exciting theme the further astray from fact and reasonableness he gets. the foregoing shows in brief how there came an eager contention for the public lands between parents, capitalists, workers, employers, manufacturers, and so forth, bred to free labor and hostile to slavery on the one side--that is, in the northern states; and the same classes bred to slavery and hostile to free labor on the other side--that is, in the southern states. the contention grew to a grapple. as this waxed hotter the combating brothers became more and more angry, called one another names more and more opprobrious; and at last each side, in the height of righteous indignation, denounced their opponents as enemies of country, morality, and religion. here the root-and-branch abolitionist and the fire-eater begin their several careers, and get more and more excited audience, the former in the north and the other in the south. both were emissaries of the fates who had decreed that there must be a brothers' war, to the end that slavery, the only peril to the american union, be cast out. under the necessity of defending slavery against free labor there came early an involuntary concretion of the southern states. this was very plainly discernible when the epoch-making convention was in session. it was the beginning of a process which has been well-named nation-making. after a while--say just before toombs takes the southern lead from calhoun--it had developed, as we can now see, from concretion into nationalization--not nationality, yet--of the south. it was bound, if slavery was denied expansion over the suitable soil of the territories and the restoration of its runaways, to cause in the ripeness of time secession and the founding of the confederate states. but there was another nationalization, older, of much deeper root and wider scope--what we have already mentioned as the continental or pan-american. its origin was in an involuntary concretion of all the colonies--both the northern and the southern--antedating the commencement of the southern concretion mentioned a moment ago. while southern nationalization was the guardian of the social fabric, the property, the occupations, the means of subsistence of the southern people, the greater nationalization was not only the guardian of the same interests of the northern people, but it had a higher office. this was in due time to give the whole continent everlasting immunity from war and all its prospective, direct, and consequential evils, by federating its different states under one democratic government--this higher office was to perpetuate the american union. this continental nationalization had probably ripened into at least the inchoate american nation by . it was this nation, as i am confident the historical evidence rightly read shows, that made the declaration of independence and the articles of confederation, carried the revolutionary war on to the grandest success ever achieved for real democracy, and then drafted and adopted the federal constitution. the constitution was not the creator of this nation, as lawyers and lawyer-bred statesmen hold, but the union and the constitution are both its creatures. this nation is constantly evolving, and as it does it modifies and unmakes the constitution and system of government of the united states, and the same of each state, as best suits itself. why do we not trace our history from the first colonial settlements down to the present, and learn that the nation develops in both substance and form, in territory, in aims and purposes, not under the leading hand of conventions, congress, president, state authority, of even the fully decisive conquest of seceding states by the armies of the rest, but by the guidance of powers in the unseen, which we generally think of as the laws of evolution? to illustrate: for some time after i had got home from appomattox i was disheartened, as many others were, at the menace of centralization. a vision of caleb cushing's man on horseback--the coming american cæsar--seared my eyeballs for a few years. but after the south had been actually reconstructed i was cheered to note that the evolutionary forces maintaining and developing local self-government were holding their own with those maintaining and developing union. to-day, you see the people of different localities all over the north--in many cities, in a few states--driven forward by a power which they do not understand, in a struggle which will never end till they have rescued their liberties from the party machine wielded everywhere by the public-service corporations. to resume what we were saying just before this short excursion. of course when the drifting of the south toward secession became decided and strong, pan-american nationalization set all of its forces in opposing array. as soon as the southern confederacy was a fact, the brothers' war began. i emphasize it specially here that this war was mortal rencounter between two different nations. the successive stages by which her nationalization impelled the south to secession are roughly these: . the concretion mentioned above probably passes into the beginning of nationalization when the south was aroused by the resistance of the free-labor states to the admission of missouri as a slave state. with a most rude shock of surprise she was made to contemplate secession. although there was much angry discussion and the crisis was grave, you ought to note that the root-and-branch abolitionist and fire-eater had not come. that crisis over, which ended the first stage, there was apparently profound peace between the free-labor communities and the slave-labor communities for some while. . the south rises against the tariff which taxes, as she believes, her slave-grown staples for the profit of free-labor manufacturers. here the next stage begins. perhaps the advent of nullification, proposed and advocated by calhoun as a union weapon with which a state might defend itself against federal aggression, signalizes this stage more than anything else. . the second gives place to the third stage, when the congressional debate over anti-slavery petitions opens. it is in this stage that the root-and-branch abolitionist and the fire-eater begin their really effective careers. opposition to the restoration of fugitive slaves was spreading through the north and steadily strengthening. it ought to be realized by one who would understand these times that this actual encouragement of the slaves to escape was a direct attack upon slavery in the southern states, becoming stronger and more formidable as the root-and-branch abolitionists became more zealous and influential, and increased in numbers, and the slaveholder was bound to recognize what it all portended to him. it was natural that when he had these root-and-branch abolitionists before himself in mind, he should say of them: "the lands of the territories suiting slave labor are much less in area than the due of the south therein. she will soon need all these lands, as the slaves are multiplying rapidly, and the virgin soil of her older states is going fast. with an excess of slaves and a lack of fit land soon to come, if we are barred from the territories our property must depreciate until it is utterly worthless. but these abolitionists attempt a further injury. they instigate our slaves to fly into the north, and then encourage the north not to give them up when we reclaim them. they deny our property the expansion into what is really our part of the territories which it ought to have in order to maintain its value; and further they try to steal as many of our slaves from us in the states as they can." this was the double peril, as it were, which gathered in full view against the south. i cannot emphasize it enough that the hot indignation of such as garrison against slavery as a hideous wrong was not excited before the competition between north and south over the public lands had become eager and all-absorbing. it is nearly always the case that such excitement does not appear until long after an actual menace by a rival to the personal or selfish interest of another has shown itself. it is not until the menace becomes serious that the latter wakes up to discover that the former is violating some capital article of the decalogue. this was true of the root-and-branch abolitionist. and his high-flown morality was made still more quixotic by his conscientiously assuming that the negro slave was in all respects just such a human being as his white master. this third stage extends from about january, , until the country was alarmed as never before by the controversy of - over the admission of california, in southern latitude, with an anti-slavery constitution. at its end the southern leadership of calhoun standing upon nullification, a remedy that contemplated remaining in the union, is displaced by that of toombs, who begins to feel strongly, if not to see clearly, that the south cannot preserve slavery in the union. . the fourth stage begins with the compromise of . afterwards during the same year was an occurrence which cannot be overrated in importance by the student of these times. that was the consideration of the pending question in georgia, and action upon it by a convention of delegates elected for that special purpose. the georgia platform, promulgated by that convention, is as follows: "to the end that the position of this state may be clearly apprehended by her confederates of the south and of the north, and that she may be blameless of all future consequences, _be it resolved by the people of georgia in convention assembled_, _first_, that we hold the american union secondary in importance only to the rights and principles it was designed to perpetuate. that past associations, present fruition, and future prospects, will bind us to it so long as it continues to be the safeguard of these rights and principles. _second._ that if the thirteen original parties to the compact, bordering the atlantic in a narrow belt, while their separate interests were in embryo, their peculiar tendencies scarcely developed, their revolutionary trials and triumphs still green in memory, found union impossible without compromise, the thirty-one of this day may well yield somewhat in the conflict of opinion and policy, to preserve that union which has extended the sway of republican government over a vast wilderness to another ocean, and proportionally advanced their civilization and national greatness. _third._ that in this spirit the state of georgia has considered the action of congress, embracing a series of measures for the admission of california into the union, the organization of territorial governments for utah and new mexico, the establishment of a boundary between the latter and the state of texas, the suppression of the slave-trade in the district of columbia, and the extradition of fugitive slaves, and (connected with them) the rejection of propositions to exclude slavery from the mexican territories, and to abolish it in the district of columbia; and, whilst she does not wholly approve, will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy. _fourth._ that the state of georgia, in the judgment of this convention, will and ought to resist, even--as a last resort--to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the union, any future act of congress abolishing slavery in the district of columbia, without the consent and petition of the slaveholders thereof, or any act abolishing slavery in places within the slaveholding states, purchased by the united states for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other like purposes; or any act suppressing the slave-trade between slaveholding states; or any refusal to admit as a state any territory applying, because of the existence of slavery therein; or any act prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the territories of utah and new mexico; or any act repealing or materially modifying the laws now in force for the recovery of fugitive slaves. _fifth._ that it is the deliberate opinion of this convention, that upon the faithful execution of the fugitive slave bill by the proper authorities depends the preservation of our much loved union." this platform was the work of statesmen who had added to the wisdom of the fathers, making the declaration of independence, articles of confederation, and the great constitution, worthy wisdom of their own from a far more varied experience and better training in government. these statesmen came indiscriminately from all parties. the people in the state, from the highest in authority through every intermediate circle down to the humblest citizen, deliberately, without excitement or passion, endorsed this platform with practical unanimity. and all parties stood upon it to the end. this was not an ignorant, debased, corrupt, unrighteous people; but it was even better in everything that makes a people great and good than the former generation which had given the country washington and jefferson. especially should the student meditate what this solemn declaration shows was the sentiment of the people of the state at that time towards the american union. every one of the five planks contains its own most convincing proof of deepest devotion. think of the child who at last resolves to fly from the home which had been inexpressibly sweet until the stepmother came; of the father whose conscience commands him to save the mother's life by killing the assailing son; of what the true othello felt when he had to execute the precious desdemona for what he believed to be her falseness--think of these examples, if you would realize the agony of the better classes of the southern people when they at last discovered that the union had changed from being their best friend into their most fell enemy. the georgia platform was actually drafted, i believe, by a. h. stephens, then a whig. it was probably moulded in its substance--especially in the fourth and fifth planks--more by toombs, also a whig, than any other. howell cobb, a democrat, approved, and was elected governor upon it the next year, receiving the ardent support of toombs and stephens. toombs was just forty, stephens a year or two, and cobb some six or seven years, less than forty. these three were the leading authors. note how much younger they were than calhoun, who had a few months before died in his sixty-ninth year. the platform indicates the new sentiment, not only of georgia but of the entire south. when its contents are compared with the doctrine of nullification, it clearly shows as the production of a new era in the history of southern nationalization; for it marks what we may somewhat metaphorically distinguish as the close of the pro-union and opening of the anti-union defence of slavery. the proclivity to secession uninterruptedly increases from this point on. i would have it noted that the tactics of this fourth stage are unaggressive. the georgia platform was no more than most grave and serious warning against being driven to the wall. it did not bully nor hector. the threat of what must be done in case certain menaced blows to slavery were struck was so calmly, deprecatingly, and decorously made, that one wonders it was not heeded. he ceases to wonder only when history reveals to him that fate had become adverse to the good cause of this noble people. . a change of tactics characterizes the fifth stage. the faster growing population of the north, furnishing settlers in far greater number than that of the south, was sweeping away all chance of new slave states. the situation commanded that the defence of the south change to the aggressive, just as stoessel was constrained the other day to take the offensive against meter hill. in the first sortie the south got the missouri compromise repealed. then she tried to make a slave state of kansas. she failed. when she had lost kansas--like california in southern latitude--she could not help recognizing that the outlook for slavery in the union had become desperate. my northern countrymen, if you were as free from the surviving influence of the old intersectional quarrel as we all ought to be, you would applaud the ability and valor with which the south had fought this losing fight for the welfare and comfort of her people; and especially would you admire her supreme effort in behalf both of that people, and also of the union which she loved next to the cause of her people. not quailing before odds incalculable, she was as brave and self-sustained as miltiades, coming forth with his little ten thousand to fight the host of mardonius hand-to-hand. the only thing for her now was new aggression, to make a demand never seriously urged before. that was that congress protect the master's property in every territory until it became a state. if this were done, she could, perhaps, keep slavery in some of the territories long enough for it to strike root permanently. if it could not be done she must choose between her own cause and the union. her persistence in the demand mentioned--and she was obliged to persist--split the democratic party, which had until this time been her main upholder in the union. the north refused her demand by electing lincoln. this was the end of the fifth stage. her nationality had become fully ripe. she seceded into the confederate states, her only opportunity of conserving the property and occupation interests of her people. of course she expected to get her part of the public domain, and to enforce extradition of her fugitive slaves. the foregoing is the barest outline of the rise and conflict between the two nationalizations. the subject has been neglected too long. there begins to be some faint understanding of the greater nationalization, but that understanding is far short of completeness. there is hardly a suspicion of the other. and yet as to our own special subject it is really the more important, for in it is the initiative of the brothers' war. there has been made by nobody any investigation at all of the main parts of that train of events which i designate as southern nationalization. not wilson's "the rise and fall of the slave power in the united states," nor any book by a partisan of either side in the struggle, gives any help towards this investigation. the historical sources have never been studied at all; such as the colonial records now publishing, the records and papers of the probate court in some of the older and more important counties of the south--especially the returns of administrators, executors, and guardians, and files of newspapers advertising their citations. here can be found the prevailing prices of slaves, their rate of multiplication, all details of their management, from the very beginning. the trial and equity courts contain records of litigation about slaves; of advice of chancellors to trustees seeking to make or change investment; of wills manumitting slaves; and a thousand other relevant matters. the course of legislation as to slaves from the first to the end is also important. from these, from local literature such as "georgia scenes," "simon suggs," biography, and various pamphlets, and other original sources,--far better historical evidence than any which is now generally invoked,--can be learned the real facts as to the growth of slavery; and especially how in its economic potency consequent upon the invention of the gin it supplanted or made dependent upon itself all other property, and became the solitary foundation of every kind of production and mode of making a living; so that even by to abolish slavery would have been almost to beggar the southern people for two or three generations. it is to be hoped that professor brown, finding the opportunity which he desires, may yet exhaust not only the sources i have mentioned, but also important ones that i have not even thought of, and give the true ante-bellum history of the lower south. some such work is necessary to explain the active principle, the _raison d'etre_ of southern nationalization. how north and south were sundered by the different nationalizations is yet to be told in full detail without any censure of the people of either. practically every american was born into an occupation or way of life connected with or founded upon either slave or free labor interests, and so was born into one or the other of these two nationalizations, and his conscience coerced him to stay with it. these nationalizations made two different publics and two different countries in the united states. after the slavery agitation had become active the masses in either public knew but little of the other, and cared for it less; and when war broke out between the two countries every man, woman, and child was ready to die, if there was need, for his own. when the history of the times has been impartially and adequately written the world will recognize that the patriotism and moral worth of neither side excels that of the other, and it will crown both. the evolution indicated above produced not only the two hostile peoples, but also their leaders and representatives of every class. i have taken pains in a relevant chapter to show how the fire-eaters and the root-and-branch abolitionists were at last brought upon the stage. every fierce controversy in history has had their like on each side. their coming is late. the antagonists have become excited. the intelligence guiding evolution deceives them as to the parts they must play. they believe that their mission is to arouse the public conscience in order to right some alleged moral wrong. their real mission is to excite to angry action. cicero condemns the peripatetics for asserting that proneness to anger has been usefully given by nature.[ ] he overlooked the fact that the outbreak of the passion is intended to spur us into doing something important for our own protection; and that it is therefore an indispensable weapon in our self-defensive armory. these fanatics, as we often call them, instigated north and south to quarrel more and more fiercely, and finally to fight. the purpose of the powers in the unseen in causing the fight has already been stated. what especially concerns us here is that we avoid adhering to the mistakes of these partisans which still have injurious effect upon opinion. thus the fire-eater could see no good whatever in the yankees, as he called them, denying them honesty, trustworthiness, and other elementary virtues; accusing them of robbing us by the tariff and other measures, and hating us for the prosperity and comfort which the slavery system had blessed us with. other of his false charges are still lodged in the memory of some influential southerners. but the fire-eater's predictions were all completely falsified by the result of the war; and he has become so much discredited as an authority, there is no very great need for consuming much time and effort in correcting his misstatements. on the other hand the decisive success of their side has kept thousands at the north fully believing the wildest fabrications of the root-and-branch abolitionists. the latter believed that the african slave of the south was just such a human being, ready for liberty and self-government in all particulars, as civilized and enlightened whites. they believed that the condition of his immediate ancestors in west africa was one of high physical, mental, moral, and social development, and that if there was in him now any inferiority to his master it was entirely due to the sinister influence of american slavery. they also believed that the system was fraught with such cruelties as frequent separation of man and wife and of mother and young children, under- feeding and clothing, and grinding overwork,--that, in short, the average slave was daily exposed to something like the torture of the inquisition. all this was invention. american slavery found the negro gabbling inarticulately and gave him english; it found him a cannibal and fetishist and gave him the christian religion; it found him a slave to whom his savage master allowed no rights at all, and it gave him an enlightened master bound by law to accord him the most precious human rights; it found him an inveterate idler and gave him the work habit; it found him promiscuous in the horde and gave him the benign beginning of the monogamic family,--in short, as now appears very strongly probable, american slavery gave him his sole opportunity to rise above the barbarism of west africa. these tremendous mistakes of fact, after knitting the north in solid phalanx against dividing the territories with the south and restoring fugitive slaves and thus hasting forward the war, prompted that folly of follies the fifteenth amendment, and have ever since kept the north from understanding the race question. i am sure that it is high time that we of each section should school ourselves into impartially appreciating the civil leaders of the other side. the south has made more progress towards this than the north. certain causes have operated to help her onward. one of these is that practically all of us recognize it is far better for the section that the union side won. another is that the great mass have learned that slavery both effeminated and paralyzed the whites and was a smothering incubus upon our due social and material development. it is natural that although we give our pro-slavery political leaders and the confederate soldiers increasing love, we should more and more commend the pro-union and anti-slavery activity of the northern statesmen. nothing like this has led the north to revise the reprobation which in the heat and passion of the conflict it bestowed upon the public men of the south. if i ever read a good word from a northern writer as to them, it is for something in their careers disconnected with the southern cause. even mr. rhodes, the ablest and most impartial of northern historians of the times, finds in calhoun only a closet spinner of utterly impractical theories. further, i could hardly believe it when i read it--and it is hard for me to believe it yet--that, citing some flippant words of parton in which a slander of contemporary politics is toothsomely repeated as his voucher, he flatly charges the lion-hearted knight of the south with playing the coward in the most heroic episode of his grand career. my faith is strong that this mode of treating the good and great southern leaders will soon go out of fashion. i am greatly in earnest to vindicate these leaders--especially calhoun, toombs, and davis. much of the public life of each one was concerned with matters of national interest. to this i give special attention, for i want my northern readers to know what true americans they all were. without this they cannot have their full glory. and their justification is that of their people. such effective leaders are always representative. it is a misnomer to call them leaders. they were really followers of their constituents who were struggling for the subsistence of themselves and their dear ones. during this time calhoun, toombs, and davis, had they not labored in every way to protect this great cause--the cause of their own country--as they did, would have been as recreant as the confederate soldier, skulking away from the line defending home and fireside. when our country is in peril the unseen lords of its destiny do not take any one of us, from the greatest to the humblest, into their confidence as to the event. every man of us must support in politics and on the field the cause of our people. if that must go down it will make defeat glorious to go down with it, as contentedly and bravely as did demosthenes, cicero, and davis. whoever diligently studies the facts will be convinced that southern nationalization, with a power superior to human resistance, carried the southern people into secession, and that their so-called leaders were carried with them. he will discern that the parts of the latter were merely to serve as floats to mark the course of the current beneath. therefore be just to these leaders for justice' sake. further, you brothers and sisters of the north ought to bethink yourselves and keep in mind how we regard them. the reputation of these our civil champions and their graves are as dear to us as those of our mothers. if you adopted an orphan, you would feel it to be unpardonable to speak slightingly to him of his parents. cleopatra, her conqueror sending her word to study on what fair demands she would have, answered: "that majesty to keep decorum, must no less beg than a kingdom." let those who wore the blue and their descendants think over it long enough to realize how unspeakably low and treacherous it would be in us to abet any condemnation whatever of these men for their anti-union acts--these men whom we or our fathers voted for and supported because of these acts. if you deny justification to them, how can we keep decorum in accepting it ourselves? i would say one more word, where perhaps i am a little over-earnest. these southern leaders have contributed richly to the treasures of american history. their moral worth,--nay, moral grandeur,--their great natural parts, their statesmanly ability, their eloquence, their heroic fidelity to their people,--by these each has won indefeasible title to the best of renown. whenever the north has made real study of them, she will give them as generous admiration as she now does to the charge of pickett. i have done my utmost to present calhoun, toombs, and davis faithfully, using, as i believe, all the main facts which are relevant and incontrovertible. i am sure that every northerner who reads them, after he has laid aside all prejudice, will admit that i did not claim too much when i was recounting their merits a moment ago. i invite close consideration of all that i say of webster. the purpose of providence, bestowing birthplace, early environment, training, and career as preparation for a paramount mission, shows more conspicuously in him than in any other of america's great, with the solitary exception of washington. how the names of detracting agitators and mere politicians written over his in the temple of fame are now fading off, and how the invincible and lovable champion of the brother's union looms larger upon us every year! i am painfully conscious of how certain omissions, unavoidable in my limited space, mar the symmetry of my ground-plan. the average reader will probably think that i ought to have sketched lincoln, grant, and lee. i was convinced that the public had already become reasonably instructed as to them. john q. adams is one of the most conspicuous men of his day. standing aloof from parties, completely self-reliant, opulently endowed with every high power of moderation, insight, and effective presentation, his good genius gave him the championship in congress of the free-labor cause during the critical years that it was preparing for the decisive meeting with the slave-labor cause. in this time it seems to me that single-handed he achieved more for the latter than all its other champions. a pleasant parallel between him and lee occurs to me. each had filled the proudest place in the chosen avocation of his life. adams had been the chief magistrate of the great republic, elected by the votes of a continent. lee had been the foremost general of the bravest and most puissant nation that ever lost its existence by war. each one of the two passed from power down into what is usually a condition of inaction and accumulating rust till the end of life, and to each was most kindly granted the achievement of new fame and glory. in the national house of representatives, adams, during the last twelve years of his life,-- - ,--did the great deeds which we have just lauded. in the last years of his life lee, as the head of an humble institution of learning, showed not only the youth in his charge, but all of his stricken people, how to conquer direst adversity with such grand success in an example of unmurmuring endurance that every future generation of men will give it more loving appreciation. john q. adams, as i have tried to explain, is almost an american epoch of himself; but i could not give him the chapter that is his due. i felt that it would have been well to pair stephen a. douglas of the north with alexander h. stephens of the south. they are in nearly exact antithetical contrast. the former clung to the south, the other to the union, until the clock struck the dread hour of separation. how they loved each other and each other's people! they most strikingly exemplify the adamantine grip which each one of the two nationalizations kept upon its greatest and best. wendell phillips and william l. yancey should be contrasted. each one was the very prince of sectional agitators, helping with great efficiency to make the public opinion that carried forward seward and lincoln, the actual leaders of the north, and toombs, the actual leader of the south. it is my strong conviction that phillips and yancey were the most gifted, eloquent, and influential stump speakers in america since patrick henry. chase steadily rises in my estimate. his solid parts, his consistent, conscientious, and able anti-slavery career, and especially that decisive speech in the peace congress,--these, and other relevancies that can be mentioned, drew me powerfully. the firm candor with which he avowed in that memorable speech that the north had decided against the expansion of slavery, demonstrates the clearness of his vision. the part of it which recurs to me most frequently is that in which he impressively recounts the intersectional dissension over the fugitive slave law,--the south believing slavery right, the north believing it wrong,--and proposes that in place of the remedy given by that law the master be paid the value of his slave. "instead of judgment for rendition," he said, "let there be judgment for compensation determined by the true value of the services, and let the same judgment assure freedom to the fugitive. the cost to the national treasury would be as nothing in comparison with the evils of discord and strife. all parties would be gainers." calhoun devised to restrain the sections from mutual aggression by endowing each with an absolute veto against the other. webster fondly believed that if he could be president he would bring back the wrangling brothers to love one another again as much as he loved them all. chase also had his pet impracticable project. each one of the three recoiled and racked all of his invention to save his country from the huge fraternal slaughter that his divining soul whispered to him was near. the south will cherish the memory of chase more and more fondly as she learns better how he firmly stood for civil law against military rule, and that he was heart and soul for universal amnesty. it was all i could do to deny a chapter to william h. seward. he seems to me to have been the only northern man whose foresight of the coming convulsion equalled that of calhoun. he did not become a jeremiah as the other did, for his section was not, after it had just emerged from a gulf of blood, to be plunged and held for years in a gulf of poverty and disorder. he was far less serious and much more optimistic in his nature than calhoun. affectionate, sympathetic, rarely agreeable in his manners--how well mrs. davis depicts him in what is to me one of the pleasantest passages of her book.[ ] he was spoils politician, able popular leader, and great statesman in rare combination. while his heart was extremely warm, his head was never turned by his feelings. lincoln ardently believed in his soul what choate calls "the glittering generalities" of the declaration of independence. but to seward current illusions were the same as they were to napoleon bonaparte--he was to lead the masses with them just as far as possible, but not to deceive himself. read in your closet his two epochal speeches, the "higher law" one of march , , and that proclaiming the irrepressible conflict at rochester, october , , then read that of chase at the peace congress, and you cannot avoid feeling that while chase opposes slavery mainly because he conceives it to be a gross moral wrong, the other opposes because it is the belonging of an inferior civilization. in my opinion no man of that time had such a clear conception as seward of the utter economical incompatibility of the free-labor system and the slave-labor system, and of the doom of the latter in their conflict then on. while he had this superior insight and wisdom it was the better way for him to follow the tide of morbid moral sentiment and unreasoning zeal carrying the country on to his goal. following thus he proved a leader unsurpassed. the longer i contemplate seward the stronger becomes my conviction that he is the most entertaining subject and the most delightful in variety of parts and traits of all american statesmen for the essayist portrait painter. to give a picture true to life demands the very best and highest art. in my last two chapters i do all i can to clear up the race question, which is now densely beclouded with northern misunderstanding and southern prejudice. the negro has a nature that in some material particulars differs so widely from that of the caucasian that it ought to be duly allowed for; and yet as people are so prone to think all others just like themselves, this is hardly ever done. now, forty years after emancipation, we see that the promptings and consequences of his nature just emphasized in combination with the social forces operating upon him have caused changes in the situation, of the gravest import to him. his native idleness, coming back stronger and stronger the further he gets in time from the steady work of slavery, his lack of forecast, his vice, inveterate pauperism, increasing disease and insanity, on one side; the hostility excited against him by the inexpressibly unwise grant to him of equal political rights, and the rapid invasion by white labor since the early nineties of the province which he appropriated during the years when the whites had not recovered from the paralyzing shock and surprise of emancipation, on the other side, example these changes. there has evolved a division of the southern negroes into two classes. one class, which i most roughly distinguish as the upper, contains all those who are not compelled by their circumstances to be unskilled laborers in country and town. it hardly amounts to one-twentieth of the whole. the millions are all in the other class, which i again most roughly distinguish as the lower. ponder what i tell you of them, their helplessness, their accelerating degradation, their mounting death rate, their gloomy prospects. i try hard also to have the upper class well understood. to a southerner it is amazing how many outside people of education, intelligence, and fair-mindedness assume that the multitude in the lower class are the same in every material detail of character and ability as those few who by various favors of fortune have found place in the upper class. to stress here, in the beginning, a fact as its very great importance demands, nearly all the negroes who get high station are part white. dumas, the father, was at least half white. the son dumas was probably three-quarters white. samuel taylor coleridge, the anglo-african composer, is half white. such as these are the samples by which nearly all the continent and england, and many northerners, estimate the capacity of the pure negroes of the south, grovelling in depths out of which one climbs only now and then by a miracle. the men just mentioned are not real negroes. it is the same with nearly all the so-called negroes of america, from douglass to dr. washington, who have become famous. they are but examples of what whites can do against adversity. the coal-black equalling these in achievement would be as rare among his fellows as hans, the berlin thinker, is among horses. this palpable distinction between men who are largely, if not nearly all, caucasian, and men who are purely west african in descent, is utterly overlooked by many most conscientious and earnest ones of the north, like mr. louis f. post, who is always telling us of the south what the negro is--not, and how we should treat him, magisterially reading us lessons in a b c democracy. there will be fewer and fewer part-white negroes in the south by reason of the steadily increasing hostility of each race to mixed procreation. this upper class has long shown a drift northward. under the expulsion of many of its members from certain occupations by white competition, lately commenced and fast increasing, this drift now gathers strength. from what i see every day it seems to me that the destiny of much the greater part of this upper class is disappearance partly by absorption and partly by euthanasy. it is the millions of the lower class that should be our deepest concern. if they be left where their utopian emancipators and enfranchisers have placed them, it is almost certain that nearly the whole will go into the jaws of destruction, now opening wide before them and sucking them in. such a result of the three amendments--that is, to have annihilated hosts upon hosts of pure negroes in order to make just a few part-whites all-white--would be a fit monument to the statesmanship of the maddest visionaries in all history. we must come resolutely and lovingly to the help of these wretched creatures. i tell you at large how it is our duty to give the black man his own state in our union, and supervise him in it even better than we are now doing for the philippine. i believe that the foregoing, re-enforced by a glance over the chapter-titles, will give a reader the preconception which he ought to get from an introduction to a book which he is about to begin. in dealing with the causes and some of the more important consequences of the brothers' war my method is rationale rather than narrative. my first purpose is to indicate how everything happened according to laws that with cosmic force reared two great economic powers, divided the whole land into a vast host standing up for one of the two in the south, and a still larger host standing up for the other in the north, and how these same laws were most faithfully served by all the actors on each side. i try to set out and explain what are the principles of evolution and the ways of human action, and especially the commanding view-points, which must be rightly attended to in their supreme importance before the greater one of the two critical american eras can have its fit history. the man who writes it will be entirely free from the monomania and orgiastic fury of both fire-eater and root-and-branch abolitionist, from their excessively emotional assumptions, their explosive and exclamatory argumentation; he will have the industry, the undisturbed vision, and the perfect fairness of the foremost sociologists of our time; he will show how each side was right from first to last in upholding its own separate country,--all belonging to it, statesmen, agitators, demagogues, fanatical fire-eaters and abolitionists, generals and soldiers. he will show that such things which in expedience ought not to have been done were unavoidable, and therefore to be excused. he will show what erroneous judgments of each section should now be challenged and kept from working injury. especially do i emphasize it, he will convince every average reader that north and south were equally conscientious, honest, heroic, and lovable from beginning to end. such a history will be even greater than that by which thucydides realized his soaring ambition to give the world an everlasting possession; and it will become the bible of america, treasured and loved alike by the people both north and south. this bible is coming, as many signs show. i will illustrate by examples from three northern authors, given not exactly in the order of time, but in that of their approximation to full attainment. after a circumstantial description of each one of the three days' fighting at gettysburg, fair and impartial in the extreme, mr. vanderslice eulogizes both sides, without invidious distinction, for "their fidelity and gallantry, their fortitude and valor," and because there was nothing done by either "to tarnish their record as soldiers," and most becomingly emphasizes the "martial fame and glory" thereby won "for the american soldier." but just here he sounds a most unpleasantly discordant note by saying, "one was right and the other wrong."[ ] he forgot that brothers who fight as those did at gettysburg are all right, and that whenever one falls on either side flights of angels sing him to his rest. in june, , mr. charles f. adams, making an academic address at chicago, startled many of his auditors with this outspoken vindication of the south: "legally and technically,--_not morally_,-- ... and wholly irrespective of humanitarian considerations,--to which side did the weight of argument incline during the great debate which culminated in our civil war?... if we accept the judgment of some of the more modern students and investigators of history,--either wholly unprejudiced or with a distinct union bias,--it would seem as if the weight of argument falls into what i will term the confederate scale."[ ] mr. adams, having made further inquiry of his own, december of the same year, announced a still more advanced conclusion. he had said at chicago that the confederate scale preponderated; but now his vision having become more certain he said the scales hung even.[ ] note that in the passage just quoted from him i have italicized the two words "not morally." i do not understand that in the charleston speech he meant to revoke the italicized words, and to say anything more than that each side was right in its own view of the nature of the government. even with this reservation, the utterances of mr. adams evince a grateful improvement upon the dogmatism which characterizes nearly every other northerner or southerner who has treated the subject. professor wendell sees clearly that both sides were morally right, and he is impartially just and equally loving to both. i feel that the quotations from a late work of his which i now make are the chief merits of this chapter. considering the controversy between the sections, he says, with the truest insight, "the constitution of the united states was presenting itself more and more in the light of an agreement between two incompatible sets of economic institutions, assuming to each the right freely to exist within its own limits."[ ] in this next passage as to the same subject, rising above mr. adams to the high frankness which the facts demand, he says, "the truth is that an irrepressible social conflict was at hand, and that both sides were as honorable as were both sides during the american revolution, or during the civil wars of england."[ ] how just to north and south each, and how fraternally compassionate towards the south is this: "solemn enough to the uninvaded north, the war meant more than northern imagination has yet realized to those southern states into whose heart its horrors were slowly, surely carried. such a time was too intense for much expression; it was a moment rather for heroic action; and in south and north alike it found armies of heroes. of these there are few more stirring records than a simple ballad made by dr. ticknor, of georgia, concerning a confederate soldier."[ ] and then he quotes "little giffen" in full. professor wendell reaches a still greater height when he decorates the tyrtæus of the confederate states and the supereminent anti-slavery lyricist of the north with equal homage and admiration. he says: "the civil war brought forth no lines more fervent [than the concluding thirty-six of timrod's 'the cotton boll,' which are set out], and few whose fervor rises to such lyric height. in the days of conflict, north regarded south, and south north, as the incarnation of evil. time, however, has begun its healing work; at last our country begins to understand itself better than ever before; and as our new patriotism strengthens, we cannot prize too highly such verses as whittier's, honestly phrasing noble northern sentiment, or as timrod's, who with equal honesty phrased the noble sentiment of the south. a literature which in the same years could produce work so utterly antagonistic in superficial sentiment, and yet so harmonious in their common sincerity and loftiness of feeling, is a literature from which riches may come."[ ] these words are more golden than i can tell. they parallel the elevation of webster, showing the same love for south carolina and massachusetts, in the pertinent parts of the reply to hayne, which since my boyhood i have cherished as a nonpareil. it is cheering to a faithful southerner to receive such sure proof that the day must soon come when all obloquy will be lifted from the fame of calhoun, toombs, and davis. what a grand triumph of contrast, almost surpassing the best achievement of shakspeare, it will be when some honest griffith, having shown webster, lincoln, and grant in all the worth which merited their unspeakably happy lot, each radiant with the victor's glory, places opposite the great civic heroes of the southern nation, their due renown at last fitly blazoned. that renown will be that they devoted the very greatest human powers and virtues all their lives, with never remitted effort and spotless fidelity, to save a doomed country,--the imperishable renown of grand failure in a cause which adverse fate cannot keep from being ever dear to all humanity. my last word as to what i have just quoted from the three northern authors is that all of us--and especially the fast widening public of readers--ought to be forever in earnest to applaud such sentiments and chide every manifestation of excessive sectional bias or prejudice from either northerner or southerner. this has been my incessantly kept faith for years. as proof i refer to my article, "the old and new south," nearly all of it written in the early part of --thirty years ago--and which i published the next year. i give an exact copy of it in the appendix. as you go through it remember these things of the author: the election of lincoln made me believe, as it did thousands of other southerners, that secession was the only patriotic course. i therefore voted for secession delegates to the state convention. i served in the confederate army all the war, taking part in the first manassas and many other battles; and when i had been surrendered and paroled at appomattox i walked back to my home in georgia. ten years after this i had found full solace and comfort for the direful event to the south of the brothers' war; and i had learned that the brothers on each side had complete justification in conscience for their contrary parts as statesmen, public leaders, voters, and at the end as soldiers. i want my readers of each section to see that i have long practised what i am now preaching. i beg attention to the article on another score. it shows that the opinions expressed in this book have not been formed in haste. nearly all of the more important will be found therein, in embryo, at least; and the present book will show, i hope, that they have prosperously grown. there are passages in the article, such as those touching the relations of the races, the future of the negro, the maintenance by the decentralizing forces of the union of their balance with the counter ones, and also others, which i might now justly claim to have proved prophetic; and i do not believe that a serious misprediction can be found in the entire article. this is, i hope, such corroboration by after occurrences as indicates that even my early studies of the transcendently important theme were not unfruitful. further, the article serves in some sort to mark a definite stage in evolution. to give but one illustration: although my close attention to planting interests at the time and for the seven or eight preceding years had kept me closely watching the negro, i had not then discovered even the beginning of that division of the race into two classes which is now so plain to me. possibly some readers may shy away from my book, deeming that its subject is hackneyed and worn out. they will exclaim, what can this author say that has not been said in the vast library of books already written upon the civil war? this will be asked, i am sure, only by the unobservant and unreflecting. if one but turn away from the assumptions, dogmas, and philippics, with which north and south cannonaded each other's morality with increasing fury from to , to the _rerum causæ_, the play of resistless social forces, and the other actualities and great things indicated above, their huge stores of varied novelty, interest, romance, and wisdom will greatly embarass him--as has been my painful experience--both in making the best selection and in his felt inability to give what he does at last select its fit presentation. as illustration i will say that every thoroughly impartial northern reader who meditates what i narrate as to toombs will, i believe, be astonished to learn that one so prodigally gifted with supreme virtue and supreme genius, and who was of unexampled success in doing all the common and all the extraordinary duties of high place, has become worse than forgotten in almost his own day; and such a reader will suspect, as i do myself, that there is much more of value in his career that i have overlooked. perhaps this chapter is too long already. but i pray my reader to allow me to say a little more. we are upon the threshold of a new american era. evidently because of our western coast we are to dominate the pacific ocean commerce and to develop it into proportions so enormous as to be now almost inconceivable. that coast will soon outstrip the atlantic in population and great cities. our people, safe against wars on the continent, maintaining armies only of workers, taught better methods every year by practice and science, will soon be far in advance of their present enviable prosperity and comfort. cheering as is the promise of their material progress, that of their progress in virtue and good government is still more cheering. everywhere in the north--which was not impoverished, deprived of familiar modes of production, and paralyzed with a race question by the event of the brothers' war--the state electorates are rebelling successfully against the party machine, cashiering the boss, and subverting the corporation oligarchy. that in the last election the voters most intelligently split their tickets assures the early expulsion of spoilsmen, grafters, and public-service franchise-grabbers from the control of our politics, legislation, and administration of government, and the real and permanent elevation of the people to being their own absolute governors. in several states--one of these a southern--the vote was for the most democratic and anti-plutocratic president since lincoln, while at the same time the anti-plutocratic state candidates, either of the other party or independent, were elected. our population will soon outstrip all the world in average riches, comfort, virtue, and education. the special note to be made of this new american era now beginning is that we are to lead the nations into a war-abolishing united states of the world, which in the end will make and keep them our equals in solid welfare and happiness. with this prospect in view, the brighter and more enrapturing as i cannot keep from contrasting it with the black and hopeless future which settled around me at appomattox, i would do all that i can to bring about that better understanding between north and south which befits the good time near at hand. chapter ii a beginning made with slavery as a distinguished southerner, familiar with the subject, says, slavery in the united states was "a stupendous anachronism."[ ] it is almost incredible to the average northerner of to-day that the enlightened people of the south sank backwards in social development a thousand years or more, and hugged to their bosoms for several generations such a monstrous evil and peril. the co-operation of two facts fully explains the wonder just noted. now let us try to understand this. the first fact is the part played by tobacco and cotton before the anti-slavery sentiment became influential. at a time when there was practically no industry but agriculture these two staples became the most lucrative of all common american crops. tobacco found its true soil in virginia, and cotton farther south. it developed in time that both could be made far more profitably with african slaves than by free white labor, the only other labor to be had. of course you are to remember that slave cultivation of tobacco did not become general in virginia until near the end of the seventeenth century, and that it was the invention of the gin soon after the adoption of the federal constitution in that started cotton production on a large scale. what you are especially to grasp here is the economic conditions which naturally spread slavery from its beginning at jamestown, first over virginia, and then throughout the entire south, either settled in large measure from virginia, or looking thither for example. the virginian who could not replace his exhausted fields with virgin soil at home went with his slaves either west or south, and hacked down enough of the primeval forest to give his working force its quantum of arable land. we need not stop here to tell of rice and cane, nor of other crops and industries which for a while engaged slave labor in northern regions of the south where the soil did not suit tobacco. the foregoing suggests adequately for this place how slavery became general in the south. the second fact is that the prevalent opinion of that time was far different from that of to-day, for certain reasons, to which i would now have you attend. long before the discovery of america personal slavery had fallen under the ban of the christian church and become in europe a thing of the past. the divine comedy catalogues in detail the religious, political, moral, and social events of its age. it is utterly silent throughout as to slavery. dante died in , soon after he had finished the divine comedy. that was nearly three hundred years before the appearance of african slavery in virginia. now for something of very great importance to us here, which occurred soon afterwards, and before the introduction of african slavery into america. it is that by the renascence the literature of slaveholding greece and rome suddenly acquired and long held commanding influence upon almost every educator of the public in the enlightened world. it was in the last quarter of the fourteenth century--some fifty years after dante had died--that the classics revived in italy. spreading thence over europe, they are found dominating the great elizabethan divines, philosophers, poets, and other opinion-forming writers at the end of the fifteenth century. and during all of the time from the landing of the twenty africans at jamestown by the dutch man-of-war in until slavery had become the solitary prop of southern industry and property, the greek and latin ancient writers were in our mother country almost the sole subjects of school or university education, and the main reading of all those that read at all. and every page of this literature, studied with enthusiastic worship and resorted to day in and day out for instruction and inspiration, disclosed that in greece and rome the average family was dependent for its maintenance upon slaves; and that so far from slavery being a relic of barbarism, as the american root-and-branch abolitionists afterwards fulminated in a platform, it was the very foundation of the state in those two great nations whose philosophy, learning, science, jurisprudence, poetry, art, and eloquence are still the models in every enlightened land. naturally the educated classes, now that it had been several hundred years since slavery was a burning question, had forgotten or had never heard of the old disinclination of the church, and could not see any evil in that which their most admired and dearest ones had all practised. the classics did not stop with giving slavery the negative support just mentioned. although such authors as quintilian and seneca, and the later jurists--all of the discredited silver, and not of the glorified ciceronian and augustan ages--do express, theatrically and academically, anti-slavery opinions, yet what they say was merely dust in the balance when weighed against the commendations of the institution to be found in the writings of aristotle, plato, and cicero, who had now become the great idols of intellectual society.[ ] the church would not stay out in the cold and dark, whither it had been suddenly and rudely cast by the renascence. it woke up to discover that as the african was a heathen barbarian it was god's mercy to kidnap him for a christian master, and thus give him his only opportunity of saving his soul. and although it is not right to enslave other races, the descendants of ham are an exception, who by reason of noah's curse are to be the servants of servants to the end of time--that is what holy church taught by precept and example. "sir john hawkins has the unenviable distinction of being the first english captain of a slave-ship, about the year ."[ ] his venture proved a great success. good queen bess reproached him for his mistreatment of human beings. he answered that it was far better for the african thus to become a slave in a christian community, than to live the rest of his life in his native home of idolatry; and this was so convincing that "in the subsequent expeditions of this most heartless man-stealer, she was a partner and protector."[ ] until the end of the seventeenth century the masses regarded the negro as being rather wild beast than man, showing no more scruples in catching and making a drudge of him than later generations did in lassoing wild horses and working them under curb-bit, spur, and whip. and the more understanding ones, who recognized that the negro belonged to humanity, re-enforced aristotle[ ] and pliny[ ] with much that they found both in the old and new testaments.[ ] the many who preached liberty or the true religion posed as humanitarians, pharisaically comparing themselves with the best characters of greece and rome. the citizens of those great republics, they said, in spite of their advanced democracy, tore men and women of their own race and blood away from home and country and forced them with the scourge to toil in chains, while we do that only with savages and heathens, who cannot be civilized or christianized in any other way. we eschew slavery in the abstract. we tolerate it only in the concrete, which is the slavery of those destined for it by god and nature. slave-catcher, slaveholder, and the public seriously and conscientiously held this creed. you must now add to the list of influences planting and stimulating slavery in america the protection it got in the constitution under which the federal government started in . as mr. blaine says: "the compromises on the slavery question, inserted in the constitution, were among the essential conditions upon which the federal government was organized. if the african slave-trade had not been permitted to continue for twenty years, if it had not been conceded that three-fifths of the slaves should be counted in the apportionment of representatives in congress, if it had not been agreed that fugitives from service should be returned to their owners, the thirteen states would not have been able in 'to form a more perfect union.'"[ ] think over it until you can fully take in the prodigious favor to slavery which this countenance of it by the american bible of bibles naturally created in the north and south. the forces rapidly sketched in the foregoing were so powerful in their co-operation to bring in slavery that its establishment and a long era of vigorous growth were inevitable. note the years during which they met no sensible or only a fitful opposition. the first anti-slavery agitation that shook the entire country was that over the missouri question, which having lasted a little more than two years ended in , thirty-two years after the adoption of the constitution. this agitation was only against the extension of slavery. it was not until that the presentation to congress of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the district of columbia disclosed to the far-seeing calhoun alone that serious and mighty aggression upon slavery in the states was commencing. here we may date the beginning of the abolition movement. but that movement did not become respectable with the great mass of northern people until the application of california in for admission into the union as a free state widened the chasm between the sections so that it commenced to show to the dullest eye, and "uncle tom's cabin," which came out in , stirred the north to its depths. the growth of slavery was then and had been for a quarter of a century complete. the soil, climate, and best agricultural interests of the south, at a time when she was to be wholly agricultural or economically nothing at all, the practice and precepts of the sages of greece and rome, of the patriarchs of israel, of jesus and his disciples and apostles, of the great and good of modern times,--all these had, with oracular consensus, led her understanding and conscience into adopting, nurturing, and on into extending slavery over her territory. thus when abolition first emerged into open day, slavery had become the very economical life of the south. it had so permeated and informed the combined property, social, and political structure, that abolition would subvert the community fabric and beggar the population of the southern states now living in content and comfort. i trust that the foregoing shows you that it is not so strange after all that slavery ran the career just described. but some one says, how could the southerners as americans, the especial champions of liberty, stultify themselves by slaveholding? how could they forget the world-arousing words of the declaration of independence that all men are created equal, and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness? this has already been answered. the slaveholding republics of greece and rome had advanced in democracy so far beyond anything to be found in europe at the revival of learning, that from that time on for many years the political doctrine in the recovered classics was the very greatest of all the intellectual influences that made for mere democracy. the celebrated passage in which burke eulogizes the stubborn maintenance of their freedom by free slaveholders has been the text of speakers from pinkney, addressing the united states senate on the missouri question, to toombs, lecturing in tremont temple, boston, and it has never been confuted. history shows no instance where such men ever reproached themselves for slaveholding, and while it was profitable put it aside because it is undemocratic. as to the words which you quote from the declaration of independence, jefferson, the draftsman, doubtless, meant them to include the african; but the majority of the congress making it, and the american people actually ratifying it, almost unanimously held that the african was not enough of man to come within the words. a roman law parallel aptly illustrates. in the institutes it is said that slavery is contrary to the law of nature, for under this every one is born free;[ ] and again, that slavery was established by the _jus gentium_ under which a man is made subject to the dominion of another _contra naturam_, that is, against nature, against _jus naturale_, or the law of nature.[ ] and in the pandects this is weakly echoed.[ ] but the actual enactment of the _corpus juris civilis_ fortifies slavery as it had been established all over the world by the _jus gentium_ with these plain words: "the master has power of life and death over his slave; and whatever property the slave acquires, he acquires for the master."[ ] our forefathers making the declaration of independence, and the romans of justinian's time, sentimentalized in the same words over the natural right to equality and liberty of all human beings, and also resolutely held on to their slaves. the solemn assertion that all men are created equal and of inalienable liberty made by american slaveholders was but a repetition of what roman slaveholders had already said; and it is curious that the fact has not attracted due attention. i fancy that my objector now shoots his last bolt. he exclaims that southerners were incredibly dull and obtuse not to discern that resistlessly puissant economical, political, moral, and intellectual forces, not of america only but of the entire world, were leaguing together against slavery, and therefore they ought to have fled in time from the coming wrath and evil day. a satisfactory reply need not postulate any other than ordinary intelligence and alertness for the south. note how people dwell near overflowing rivers, or a sea of tidal waves, or live volcanoes, or in earthquake districts, or near a tribe of scalping redskins, where they, their wives and children, keep merry as the day is long until calamity comes. the warning of the abolitionists was too late. suppose we had given the inhabitants of herculaneum or pompeii or st. pierre timely counsel to abandon their homes and settle beyond the reach of eruption. how many would have done it? i knew hundreds of people, and among all of them there was but one who showed by his actions that he foresaw the early fall of slavery. that was mr. frank l. upson of lexington, georgia, a highly accomplished and well-informed man. in , i think it was, he sold all of his slaves, declaring as his reason that he believed if he kept them he would see them freed without compensation. he was so serious that he declared this even to his purchasers. they merely laughed, and everybody else laughed too, to think how green he was to give them the good bargain that he did. but after the war he enjoyed comfort from the money those slaves had brought him, when all his neighbors had been plunged into hard times by emancipation. there may have been others that did like him. there could not have been many such, for i have never been able to hear of a single one. we did like the rest of mankind do or would have done. we stuck to our homes and business until the tidal wave washed them away. yet there are wise ones who are positive that had we not been far more dull and unforeseeing than the average we would have understood many years before the final convulsion that the forces arrayed against slavery were irresistible, and surrendered it in time to get compensated emancipation. look at the monopolists now preying upon the public in every corner of the land. they are confident that their holdings are impregnable against democracy coming invincibly against them. look at the great mass of our population, shutting the fresh air out of their houses in order to be comfortably warm, and thereby rearing parents--especially mothers--who unawares are incessantly developing tuberculosis to destroy themselves and their children. some years hence when resumption by government of its functions now granted to private persons has dispossessed all the monopolists, and when every dwelling-house is kept perfectly ventilated and free from infected air, there will be other wise ones to believe that hindsight is just the same as foresight, and to inveigh against the monopolists and parents just mentioned for their unwonted stupidity and improvidence. chapter iii unappeasable antagonism of free labor and slave labor, and their mortal combat over the public lands now a brief explanation of the antagonism between free and slave labor. the expense of his slaves to the farmer is the same whether they are resting or at work. sundays, days and even seasons of unfavorable weather, in long do-nothing intervals succeeding the making and also the gathering of the crop, they cost him just as much as when he can work them from sun to sun. but this is not all of his load. the year round he must subsist the numerous non-workers in the families of his laborers, whether young, superannuated, or afflicted. suppose another farmer to be on adjoining land who can employ laborers just as he wants them, and discharge them as soon as he has no further use for them. do you not perceive that this free-labor farmer can produce far more cheaply than the slave farmer? and do you not also perceive that if there is a supply of free labor to be had in a slave country, and it can be got by every farmer _ad libitum_, slaves must lose their value as property and be driven to the wall? free labor was kept out of the south by the repugnance of the white laborer to the negro. note also that when the number of slaves had become considerable their owners would naturally combine to protect the market value of their property by preventing the coming in of cheaper labor. this was the real reason why virginia and delaware opposed the extension of the african slave-trade from to , and the confederate states' constitution refused to reopen it. slavery made some headway in the north. but not finding there the stimulus of such products as tobacco and cotton, it could not become so widespread and deep-seated as to sweep out free labor. the latter under favorable conditions commenced the competition in which it could not fail to win; and in due time slavery died out in the north. we especially desire to emphasize the attitude towards extension of slavery that free labor was bound to take. that it had already ejected slavery from every other enlightened community will occur to the reader at once as weighty proof that the two cannot live together.[ ] think of the free worker's suffrage, and you cannot believe that he could long be induced to vote for the protection and further spread of a system taking the bread out of his own mouth, and degrading him by engendering profound disrespect for his class; and then think of the vast and rapidly growing numbers of the free laborers of the north, receiving every day great accessions of foreign immigrants avoiding the south as they would the plague; think of all these, and you begin to discern what a mighty power was rising against slavery. this has brought us to the place where we can properly treat the contention for the territories. consider their vast area. remember that our people have settled thereon in such numbers that thirty-two new states have been added to the old thirteen, and others still are to be added. here for some generations was land for the landless; the full meaning of which henry george has made us plainly see. the adventurous and enterprising of the old states of each section set their faces thitherward in a constantly swelling stream. attend to the only material difference for us between the northerner and the southerner going west. each settler wanted a community like his native one. the northerner had not been trained to manage slave labor and property; he did not like it; he thought it out of date and vastly inferior to free labor; and he could not endure to have himself and family live among negroes, repulsive to him because of unfamiliarity. he had learned from its history in the south that wherever slavery established itself it superseded all other labor. therefore he would none of it in his new home; and he settled in a non-slave community. of course the southerner, knowing nothing of free labor and bred into a love of the slave system, settled among slaveholders. and so for a generation or two free and slave states were steadily added to the union in pairs. but the unsettled lands were diminishing in area. its population multiplying so marvellously, the north felt urgent need for the whole of these lands. the great majority of settlers going thence into the territories were farmers. note some of the more influential classes left behind them. the parents, relatives, and friends who wanted them suited in the west--this was the largest class of all, and it was of prodigious intellectual, political, and moral potency. then the manufacturers of agricultural implements, and of many articles, all of which the southerners either had their mechanic slaves to make by hand, and of oldtime fashion, or did without; the millers, and many sorts of wholesale merchants who had found slave owners poor and the employers of free labor good customers; and these manufacturers and merchants were greedy for the new markets which they could get only in free states. these are but the merest hints, but they serve somewhat to suggest the all-powerful motives which at last united the great majority of northern people, east and west, in intelligent and inveterate opposition to the further spread of slavery. now look at the southern situation. at the outset, note that his slaves were the southerner's only laborers, and practically his only property. and note especially that this property was not only self-supporting, but it was also the most rapidly self-reproducing that tom, dick, and harry ever had in all history. a reliable witness tells this: "on my father's plantation an aged negro woman could call together more than one hundred of her lineal descendants. i saw this old negro dance at the wedding of her great-granddaughter."[ ] let me repeat that slaves were not only money-making laborers, but also things of valuable property, which of themselves multiplied as dollars do at compound interest. let the northern man unfamiliar with slavery try to understand this one of its phases by supposing that he has orchards abundantly yielding a fruit which is in good demand, and that the trees plant and tend themselves, gather and store the fruit, set out other orchards, and do all things else necessary to care for the property and keep it steadily growing. such trees with their yearly produce and prodigious increase--each by an easy organic or natural, and not by a difficult artificial, process, relieving the owner from all but the slightest attention and labor of superintendence--would soon be the only ones in their entire zone of production; bringing it about that all other occupations and property therein would be dependent upon this main and really only industry. such orchards would be somewhat like the slaves in their automatic production and accumulation, but they would be much inferior as marketable property in many particulars. although the profits of slave-planting were considerable, the greatest profit of all was what the master thought of and talked of all the day long,--the natural increase of his slaves, as he called it. his negroes were far more to him than his land. his planting was the furthest removed of all from a proper restorative agriculture. quickly exhausting his new cleared fields, he looked elsewhere for other virgin soil to wear out. the number of the slaves in the south was growing fast, and the new lands in the older slave states were nearly gone. to keep the hens laying the golden eggs of natural increase, nests must be found for them on the cotton, sugar, and rice lands of the territories. in other words, the area of slave culture must be extended; for whenever there is no land for a considerable number of our workers, it is evident that we have a surplus of slaves; and the effect of that will be at the first to lower the market value of our only property, and then gradually to destroy it. so the instincts of the southerners whispered in their ears. we hope that we now have helped you to an understanding of the active principles each of free labor and of slave labor; how by reason of them the interests of north and south in dividing the public domain were in irreconcilable conflict; and how it was natural that the free states should band together against, and the slave states band together for, slavery. thus the country split into two geographical though not political sections, the political division which ripened later being as yet only imminent and inchoate. that these sections had been made by deadly war between free labor and slave labor is all that we have to say here. the development went further, as we shall explain in the next chapter--all of it under the propulsion of the two active principles. they were always the ultimate and supreme motors. often they are not to be seen at all. still more often what they did was disguised. to read the facts of that time aright you must always and everywhere look for their work. do that patiently, and you will detect every one of the many controversies over matters affecting an interest of either section as such--whether questions apparently of national politics, of morals, or religion, in newspapers, pamphlets, reviews, books, and all the vast contemporary literature, in the pulpit, on the platform, and in every place and corner of the entire land where policy and impolicy or right and wrong were mooted--to be but a part of one or the other of two great complexes of machinery, each geared to its particular motor and kept going by its mighty push. chapter iv genesis, course, and goal of southern nationalization nationalization is the process by which a nation makes itself. the process may be active for a long while without completion, as we see in the case of ireland; it may form a nation, but to be overturned and wiped out, as the southern confederacy was; or it may find its consummation in such a powerful one as the united states. the most conspicuous effect of the process we now have in hand is to make one of many communities. but sometimes a part breaks off from a nation and sets up and maintains its independence as a country. thus a portion of the territory of mexico was settled over from our states, and after a while these settlers tore themselves loose from mexico and became the nation of texas. we shall tell you more fully in another chapter how the separate colonies became nationalized into the united states, and what we say here of southern nationalization will illustrate to the reader that important transformation, to understand which is of especial moment to us in examining the brothers' war. but we must emphasize the characteristic feature of the nationalization of the south. i have searched the pages of history in vain for an example like it. the idiosyncrasy is that the south was homogeneous in origin, race, language, religion, institutions, and customs with the north, and yet she developed away from the north into a separate nation. i have long been accustomed to parallel the case of ireland's repulsion from great britain, but i always had to admit that there was dissimilarity in everything except the strong drift towards independence and the struggle to win it;[ ] for the irish are largely different from the english in origin, race, language, religion, institutions, and customs. the more you consider it the more striking becomes this uniqueness of southern nationalization. think of it for a moment. thirteen adjacent colonies; each a dependency of the same nation; all settled promiscuously from every part and parcel of one mother country, and therefore the settlers rapidly becoming in time more like one another everywhere than the english were who at home were clinging to their several localities and dialects; governed alike; standing together against indians, french, and spanish, and after a while against the mother country;--where can you find another instance of so many common ties and tendencies, all prompting incessantly and mightily to union in a political whole, which is ever the goal of the nationalizing process. that the colonies did grow into a political whole is not at all wonderful to the historical student. the wonder is that after they had done this a number of them just like the others in the particulars above pointed out, which fuse adjacent communities into a nation, turn away from the old union and seek to form one of their own. the southern states all did the same thing with such practical unanimity that even the foreigner may know that the same cause was at work in every one of them. manifestly there was a nationalizing element in them which was not in the others, and which made the former homogeneous with one another and heterogeneous to the rest. and that element which differenced the south from the rest of the union so greatly that it was, from a time long before either she or the north had become conscious of it, impelling her irresistibly towards an independent nationality of her own, all of us natives know was the constructive and plastic principle of her slave industrial and property system. it is not the purpose of the foregoing expatiation to prove to you such a familiar and well-known fact as that slavery parted north and south and caused the brothers' war. its purpose is to arouse you to consider nationalization, and have you see how it acts according to a will of its own and not of man, and now and then works out most stupendous results contrary to all that mortals deem probabilities. you ought to recognize that the forces which produced the confederate states were just as all-powerful and opposeless as those which produced the united states; that in fact they were exactly the same in kind, that is, the forces of nationalization. to have you see that even at the time of making the federal constitution the south had grown into a pro-slavery section and was far on the road towards independence, it is necessary to correct the prevalent opinion that there was then below mason and dixon's line a very widespread and influential hostility to slavery. the manumission of his slaves by washington, the fearless and outspoken opposition to the institution by jefferson and some other prominent persons, and certain facts indicating unfavorable sentiment, have been too hastily accepted by even historians as demonstrations that the opinion is true. here are the facts which prove it to be utterly untrue. in , three years before our epochal convention assembled, jefferson, as chairman of an appropriate committee consisting besides himself of chase of maryland and howell of rhode island, reported to congress a plan for the temporary government of the west territory. this region contained not only all the territory that was subsequently covered by the famous ordinance of , but such a vast deal more that it was proposed to make seventeen states out of the whole. consider this provision of the report, the suggestion and work of jefferson: "that after the year of the christian era there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of said states, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been convicted to have been personally guilty." when the report was taken up by congress, spaight of north carolina made a motion to strike out the provision just quoted, and it was seconded by reed of south carolina. on the vote north carolina was divided; but all the other southern states represented, to wit, maryland, virginia, and south carolina, voted for the motion, the colleagues of jefferson of virginia and those of chase of maryland out-voting these two southerners standing by the provision. all the northern states represented, which were the then four new england states, new york, and pennsylvania, voted for the provision. but as it failed to get the necessary seven states it was not retained. thus it appears that at the close of the revolutionary war the interest of the south in and her attachment to slavery were so great that by her representatives in congress she appears to be almost unanimous against the proposal to keep the institution from extending. this action of the south shows that both virginia in ceding that part of the west territory which was three years afterwards by the ordinance of put under jefferson's provision which had been rejected when it had been proposed for all the territory, and the south in voting unanimously for the ordinance, were not actuated by hostility to slavery. the soil of the territory north of the ohio and east of the mississippi to which the ordinance applied probably may have been thought by virginians unsuited to tobacco, the then sole crop upon which slave labor could be lucratively used. be that as it may, that the southern states in subsequent cessions made not long afterwards guarded against slavery prohibition must be kept in mind. when they are, it is proved that always from the time that jefferson's provision failed to carry in , as has been told above, the prevalent sentiment of the southern people overwhelmingly favored slavery. let us illustrate from later times. writers who claim that the south, meditating secession, purposed to reopen the african slave-trade, adduce some relevant evidence which at first flush appears to be very weighty, if not convincing. they show that a. h. stephens of georgia, who afterwards became vice-president of the confederacy, in used language indicating that he thought it vital to the south, in her struggle to extend the area of slavery, to get more africans; and they further show similar utterances made at the time by certain papers and other prominent men of the south. but the constitution of the confederate states, adopted in , contains this provision: "the importation of negroes of the african race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding states or territories of the united states of america is hereby forbidden, and congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same." of course this solemn act unanimously voted for by the members of the congress, stephens being one of them, counts incalculably more in weight to prove that predominant southern sentiment was against reopening the african slave-trade, than the counter evidence just stated. likewise all that washington, jefferson, and other of their contemporaries may have done or said against slavery is outweighed by the contemporary pro-slavery legislation and measures dictated by the south. it is very probable that during the time we are now contemplating anti-slavery men were really as few in the south as union men were after the first blood spilled in the brothers' war. recall the three compromises between north and south, mentioned above, by which the union was formed, and you will understand that the fathers were preaching but to stones when they impugned slavery. and at this point meditate the language of madison in the historic convention, which shows that he saw accurately even then the permanence of slavery, and the unequivocal geographical division it had made. he was discussing the apprehension of the small states, new jersey, delaware, and rhode island, that under the union proposed they would be absorbed by the larger adjacent states. he affirmed there was no such danger; and that the only danger arose from the antagonism between the slave and the non-slave sections. to avert this danger he proposed to arm north and south each with defensive power against the other by conceding to the former the superiority it would get in one branch of the federal legislature by reason of its greater population if the members thereof came in equal numbers from every state, large or small, and at the same time giving the south superiority in the other branch by allowing it increased representation therein for all its slaves counted as free inhabitants. this prepares you for the language which we now give from the report, and which we would have you meditate: "he [madison] admitted that every peculiar interest, whether in any class of citizens, or any description of states, ought to be secured as far as possible. wherever there is danger of attack, there ought to be given a constitutional power of defence. but he contended that the states were divided into different interests, not by their difference of size, but by other circumstances; the most material of which resulted partly from climate, but principally from the effects of their having or not having slaves. these causes concurred in forming the great division of interests in the united states. it did not lie between the large and small states. it lay between the northern and southern; and if any defensive power were necessary, it ought to be mutually given to these two interests. he was so strongly impressed with this important truth, that he had been casting about in his mind for some expedient that would answer the purpose. the one which had occurred was that, instead of proportioning the votes of the states in both branches to their respective number of inhabitants, computing the slaves in the ratio of to , they should be represented in one branch according to the number of free inhabitants only; and in the other according to their whole number, counting the slaves as free. by this arrangement the southern scale would have the advantage in one house and the northern in the other." madison meant to say that the great danger of disunion was that--we emphasize his statement by repeating and italicizing the essential part--"_the states were divided into different interests ... principally from the effects of their having or not having slaves. these causes concurred in forming the great division of interests in the united states_." how truly he expresses the economical antagonism of the southern and northern states, although he hints nothing of the nationalizing tendency of the former which was bound in time to show itself as one of "the effects of their having slaves." it seems to me that mr. adams overeulogizes the political instinct and prophecy evinced by madison at this tune. i cannot see that the latter does anything more than merely recognize the fact then plain to all. note as proof this other passage quoted by mr. adams from madison in the convention, in which the material words are given by me in italics: "_it seems now well understood_ that the real difference of interests lies, not between the large and small, but between the northern and southern states." if the historical expert but duly consider the important facts marshalled in the foregoing he must find them to be incontrovertible proofs that in , when our fathers were making the federal constitution, and for some years before, southern nationalization was not simply inchoate, but that it was growing so rapidly its course could be stopped in but one way; that is, by the extirpation of slavery, which was both its germ and active principle. this was before the invention of the gin. after that the lower south and west quickly added a vast territory to the empire of slavery, and southern nationalization received throughout its whole domain a new, a lasting, and a far more powerful impetus. and when the cotton states, as we call them, had really developed their industry, the southern confederacy was inevitable. the fact of this nationalization is indisputable. when the confederates organized their government at montgomery, everybody looking on felt and said that a new nation was born. why ignore what is so plain and so important? thus mr. adams most graphically contrasts the two widely different northern and southern civilizations which were flourishing side by side,[ ] and with a momentary inadvertence he ascribes national development only to the civilization north of the potomac and ohio, and treats state sovereignty as anti-national. the fact is that a nationalization, the end of which was southern independence, had been long active, as we have perhaps too copiously shown, and the doctrine of state sovereignty was really nothing but its instrument, nurse, and organ. every southern state that invoked state sovereignty and seceded was shortly afterwards found in the new southern nation. had that nation prospered, the doctrine would soon have died a natural death even in the confederacy. nationalization is the cardinal fact, the _vis major_, on each side. the free-labor nationalization of the north, purposing to appropriate and hold the continent, fashioned a self-preserving weapon of the assumption that the fathers made by the constitution an indissoluble union; the slave nationalization of the south, purposing to appropriate and hold that part of the continent suiting its special staples, assumed that the fathers preserved state sovereignty intact in the federal union. the closer you look the plainer you will see that the united states held within itself two nationalities so inveterately hostile to each other that gemination was long imminent before it actually occurred. the hostility between the statesmen of virginia and her daughter states and those of the north, and especially new england,--jefferson on one side and hamilton and adams on the other,--the party following the former calling itself republican and that following the latter calling itself federalist, was really rooted in the hostility of the two nationalities; and a survival of this hostility is now unpleasantly vigorous between many northern and southern writers and lecturers, each class claiming too much of the good in our past history for its own section and ascribing too much of the bad to the other. as a lady friend, a native of michigan who has lived in the south some years, remarked to me not long since, as soon as one going north crosses the ohio he feels that he has entered another country; behind him is a land of corn-pone, biscuit, three cooked meals a day, and houses tended untidily by darkey servants; before him is a land of bakers' bread of wheat, where there is hardly more than one warm meal a day, and the houses are kept as neat as a pin by the mothers and daughters of the family. greater public activity of the county while there is hardly any at all of its subdivisions, the representative system almost everywhere in the municipalities, no government by town-meeting and no direct legislation except occasionally, a most crude and feeble rural common school system, distinguish and characterize the south; buoyant energy of the township in public affairs, government by town-meeting instead of by representatives, a common-school system energetically improving, distinguish and characterize the north. the manners and customs of southerners are peculiar. to use an expressive cant word, they "gush" more than northeners. in cars and public meetings they give their seats to ladies, while northerners do not. southerners are quick to return a blow for insulting words, and in the consequent rencounter they are prone to use deadly weapons; while northerners are generally as averse to personal violence as were the greeks and romans in their palmiest time. the battle-cry of the confederates was a wild cheering--a fox-hunt yell, as we called it; that of the union soldiers was huzza! huzza! huzza! from the beginning to the end, even at franklin and bentonville, and at farmville, just two days before i was surrendered at appomattox, the confederates always, if possible, took the offensive; the union soldiers were like the sturdy englishmen, whose tactics from hastings to waterloo have generally been defensive. this battle yell, this impetuous charge after charge until the field is won, marks the fighting of the americans at king's mountain--all of them southerners; and it is another weighty proof of the early coalescence of the south as a community on its way to independence. many other contrasts could be suggested. think over the foregoing. they are the respective effects of two different causes,--a free-labor nationalization above, and a slave-labor nationalization below, mason and dixon's line. the latter--its origin and course--is the especial subject of this chapter. i believe that the proofs marshalled above demonstrate to the fair and unprejudiced reader that southern nationalization commenced before the making of the federal constitution, and afterwards went directly on, gathering force and power all the while, until it culminated in "a storm-cradled nation that fell." chapter v american nationalization, and how it made the bond of union stronger and stronger greece was going down in her contest with macedon when she gave the world to come the achæan league, the first historical example of full-grown federation. as freeman says of such a federal government: "its perfect form is a late growth of a very high state of political culture."[ ] this historian thus summarizes its essentials: "two requisites seem necessary to constitute federal government in this its most perfect form. on the one hand, each of the members of the union must be wholly independent in those matters which concern each member only. on the other hand, all must be subject to a common power in those matters which concern the whole body of members collectively."[ ] no author has yet shown a better-considered and more accurate appreciation of the benefits to different communities of federal union. but the islander could not conceive--even at the centre of the british empire spread over the world--the advanced phase of anglo-saxon federation in america and australia, which for want of a better name we may call, using a grand word of our fathers, continental federation. and americans of every generation have misunderstood the true nature of our union, and especially how it was made and how it could be unmade. the fathers were as much mistaken as to the real authorship of the declaration of independence, the articles of confederation, and the federal constitution, as burke and many people of his time were as to the true causes of the french revolution, or as the brothers were as to those of their war. in all that the fathers did they were sure that they acted as agents solely of their respective colonies or states, which they believed to be independent and sovereign. therefore they maintained that the authorship of the three great documents just mentioned was that of the separate states, when in truth it was that of the union. when the latter, which had been long forming its rudiments, came into something like consciousness, it at once spurred our fathers to make the declaration of independence. the declaration corresponds to the later ordinances of secession. and this union, gathering strength, led our fathers to make the old confederation; and its articles and the belonging government are closely paralleled by the constitution of the confederate states and its belonging government. as southern nationalization brought forth the southern confederacy, so it was american nationalization that caused secession from england, the declaration of independence, and the confederation which won the revolutionary war. to summarize the foregoing: southern nationalization evolved the southern union, and american nationalization evolved the american union. the fathers, with the usual undiscernment of contemporaries, by a most natural _hysteron proteron_ conceived the latter union to be the work, product, and result of the constitution. in the intersectional contention, the south accepted the mistakes of the fathers and rested her cause upon them, and the north, instead of correcting them, substituted a huge and glaring mistake of her own. advocating the maintenance of the constitution over all the states, she sought to refute the doctrine of state sovereignty urged by the south with the arguments of those who had opposed the adoption of the federal constitution. patrick henry and nathan dane--we omit the others--argued that the constitution, if ratified, would really wipe out state lines and make the central government supreme in authority over the states, and actually sovereign. could the people of the thirteen states have been made to believe this, they would have unanimously rejected the instrument. washington, hamilton, madison, and many others competent to advise, stood in solid phalanx on the other side, and the people were convinced by them that adoption would have no such effect. they decided that the arguments were not good, and the constitution was ratified. but the discredited arguments were afterwards, by a very queer psychological process, taken up by story, webster, and a great host, and paraded as unanswerable refutation of the doctrine of state sovereignty, and demonstration that by the constitution the united states had acquired absolute supremacy over the different states.[ ] at a later place we will try to show you how webster's glory outshines that of every other actor, except lincoln, in the great struggle between north and south. but here we must emphasize how, when supporting the fallacies of patrick henry and nathan dane, he met the one real and signal defeat of his life, to which the drubbing he received from binney in the girard college case was a small affair--a defeat none the less signal because at the time, and long afterwards, it was and still is crowned as a glorious victory by thousands upon thousands. the force-bill had just been introduced into the senate of the united states. it provided for the collection of the revenue in defiance of the nullification ordinance of south carolina. the next day, january , , calhoun offered in that body his famous resolutions, embodying his doctrine of nullification, under which he justified the ordinance just mentioned. the th of the next month, webster discussed the two cardinal ones of these resolutions at length. as he summarized them, they affirmed: " . that the political system under which we live, and under which congress is now assembled, is a compact, to which the people of the several states, as separate and sovereign communities, are the parties. . that these sovereign parties have a right to judge, each for itself, of any alleged violation of the constitution by congress; and in case of such violation, to choose, each for itself, its own mode and measure of redress." he had not long before contemplated making an address to the public in answer to calhoun's pro-nullification letter to governor hamilton in the form of a letter from himself to kent; and it cannot be doubted that he had got himself ready for this; nor can it be doubted that in the twenty-five days' interim he had not only worked over and adapted the unused materials of the address mentioned, but he had most diligently made special preparation for his speech--in short, it may be assumed that he had bestowed upon the subject of the resolutions the most searching examination and profound meditation of which, with his superhuman powers, he was capable. in spite of all his conscientious labors, as i am now especially concerned to impress upon you, he injured and set back the cause of the union by defending it with answerable arguments--nay, rather, with arguments helping the other side. at the outset he severely and sternly rebukes two terms of calhoun's, one being the use of _constitutional compact_ for _constitution_, and the other being _the accession of a state to the constitution_. these terms are utterly impermissible, and are to be scouted. if we accept them, _we must acquiesce in the monstrous conclusions which the author of the resolutions draws from them_. that is really what webster says. note the confident positiveness of his pertinent language, some of which we subjoin: "it is easy, quite easy, to see why the honorable gentleman has used it [constitutional compact] in these resolutions. he cannot open the book, and look upon our written frame of government, without seeing that it is called a _constitution_. this may well be appalling to him. it threatens his whole doctrine of compact, and its darling derivatives, nullification and secession, with instant confutation. because, if he admits our instrument of government to be a _constitution_, then, for that very reason, it is not a compact between sovereigns; a constitution of government and a compact between sovereign powers being things essentially unlike in their very natures, and incapable of ever being the same. we know no more of a constitutional compact between sovereign powers than we know of a _constitutional_ indenture of copartnership, a _constitutional_ bill of exchange. but we know what the _constitution_ is; we know what the bond of our union and the security of our liberties is; and we mean to maintain and to defend it, in its plain sense and unsophisticated meaning." this is enough of the exorcism of that malignant spirit, constitutional compact. now as to the other malignant spirit. webster says: "the first resolution declares that the people of the several states '_acceded_' to the constitution, or to the constitutional compact, as it is called. this word 'accede,' not found either in the constitution itself, or in the ratification of it by any one of the states, has been chosen for use here, doubtless, not without a well-considered purpose. the natural converse of _accession_ is _secession_; and, therefore, when it is stated that the people of the states acceded to the union, it may be more plausibly argued that they may secede from it. _if in adopting the constitution, nothing was done but acceding to a compact, nothing would seem necessary to break it up, but to secede from the same compact._ but the term is wholly out of place.... the people of the united states have used no such form of expression in establishing the present government. they do not say that they _accede_ to a league, but they declare that they _ordain and establish_ a constitution. such are the very words of the instrument itself; and in all the states, without exception, the language used by their conventions was, that they '_ratified_ the constitution;' some of them employing the additional words 'assented to' and 'adopted,' but all of them 'ratifying.'" note that i have italicized in the quotation certain admissions of webster, which, in case his premises should be disproved, concede the cause to his adversary. and we will now tell you how calhoun did disprove those premises. he showed that webster himself had in a senate speech called the constitution a _constitutional compact_; and that president washington, in his official announcement to congress, described north carolina as _acceding_ to the union by the ratification she had at last made of the constitution. as to these two points calhoun further sustained himself with unquestionable authority and also argument inconfutable by one who, like webster, did not find the true _ratio decidendi_, that is, the effect of evolution to bring forth the nation. the rest of calhoun's answer will be considered a little later. but what of it has already been given covers the essentials of the controversy. in supporting his proposition that the states were sovereign when they made the constitution, and kept their entire sovereignty intact afterwards, he was too strong for his antagonist. and yet had his knowledge of the facts been fuller, how much better he could have done. he could have quoted from all the great men who made the constitution and secured its ratification language, in which _accede_ is used again and again in the same sense as it is in his resolutions. likewise, he could have quoted language in which they designated the constitution as a compact or something synonymous. madison--to mention only one of many instances--advocating ratification in the virginia convention, called the constitution "a government of _a federal nature_, consisting of _many coequal sovereignties_." what an effective _argumentum ad hominem_ could calhoun have found in the provision of the constitution of the state of webster, to wit: that massachusetts is free, sovereign, and independent, retaining every power which she has not expressly delegated to the united states.[ ] webster also made blunders in construing the context of the constitution, as well as the clauses specially involved, in contrasting the constitution with the articles of confederation, and in his reading of our constitutional history. these blunders were exhaustively, ably, relentlessly exposed. we who are trained either in forensic or parliamentary debate well know the conquering and demolishing reply. although, as we have just shown, calhoun's reply could have been far more effective than it really was, still its success and triumph were so evident that when he closed, john randolph, who had heard it, wanted a hat obstructing his sight removed, so that, as he said, he might see "webster die, muscle by muscle." master the question at issue, and read the two speeches as impartially as you strive to read the discussion of �schines and demosthenes, and if you are qualified to judge of debate between intellectual giants you must admit that webster was driven from every inch of ground chosen by him as his very strongest, and which he confidently believed that he could hold against the world. yet the union men, who were hosts in the north and numerous even in the south at that time, accepted webster's speech as the bible of their political faith, and as its reward ennobled him with the pre-eminent title of expounder of the constitution. they ignored, or they never learned of, the pulverizing refutation. but the state-rights men and the south generally understood. webster also understood. he did not make any real rejoinder. and his subsequent utterances are in harmony with the state-rights doctrine to which calhoun seems to have converted him.[ ] i fancy that with that rare humor which was one of his shining gifts, he dubbed himself in his secret meditations, "expounder because not expounding." later i shall tell you how webster builded better than he knew, and that there was, after all, in the speech that which fully justifies the worship it received from the union men. but there is something else pertinent to be learned here. that the north generally found out only what webster said in the debate for his side, and never even heard of what was said on the other, and that the south became at once familiar with both speeches, proves that each section had already formed its own belonging and independent public, and that the southern public kept attentive watch upon all affairs of fact or opinion interesting the other, while the northern public knew hardly anything at all of the south. a large percentage of the southern leaders had studied in northern schools and colleges. in this and many other ways they had been instructed as to the north. such instruction contributed very greatly to southern supremacy in the federal government until the election of lincoln. we can now see that the powers in charge, as a part of their work, made the great northern public, which, as lincoln observed, was to be the savior of the union, stop its ears to all anti-union sentiments or arguments. how else can you understand it that the ante-bellum notices of webster, the memoir by everett, the different utterances of choate, and many, many other sketches, are so utterly dumb as to calhoun's great reply? and is not the same dumbness of curtis, von holst, and mcmaster, writing after the war, due to the survival in the north of the old constraint? a constraint so powerful that, while mr. henry cabot lodge, in , did concede just a little to calhoun, he stopped far short of the full justice that i believe he would now render were he to traverse the ground again. we must now go beyond what we have already hinted, and show you plainly how both the union men and the state-rights men assumed untenable premises, and how the south, maintaining a cause foredoomed, vanquished in the forum of discussion her adversary, maintaining the side which fate had decreed must win. in no other way can the reader be better made to understand the incalculable potency of the forces which preserved the american union after its orators and advocates had all been discomfited; and in no other way can he better learn what principles are to be invoked if he would grasp the real essence of the union. we emphasize the material and cardinal mistake of the union men, thus phrased by webster in the speech we have discussed: "whether the constitution be a compact between states in their sovereign capacities, is a question which must be mainly argued from what is contained in the instrument itself." this was to abandon inexpugnable ground. that ground was the great body of pertinent facts, known to all, which begun the making of the union before the declaration of independence, and which, from that time on to the very hour that webster was speaking, had been making the union stronger and more perfect. he ought to have contended that a nation grows; that it cannot be made, or be at all modified, even by a constitution. any constitution is its creature, not its creator. how weak he was when he invoked construction of the federal constitution as the main umpire. that constitution had been always construed against him. the three departments of the federal government had each uniformly treated it as a compact between sovereign states; and they kept this up until the brothers' war broke out. mr. stephens, in his great compilation,[ ] demonstrates this unanswerably. but the state-rights men had a still greater strength than even this, if the question be conceded to be one of construction. as the author of the republic of republics shows by a mountain of proofs, the illustrious draftsmen of the constitution and their contemporaries who finally got the constitution adopted--all the people, high and low, who favored the cause--declared at the time that the sovereignty of the states would remain unimpaired after adoption.[ ] to sum up, the generation that drafted and adopted the constitution, and all the succeeding ones who had lived under it, agreed that the states were sovereign. how could even webster talk these facts out of existence? at every stage of the intersectional debate the cause of the south supporting state sovereignty became stronger. and there were great hosts at the north who understood the record as the south did; and, while they hoped and prayed that separation would never come, they conscientiously conceded state sovereignty to the full. it seems to me to be the fact that, although the federal soldiers cherished deep love for the union, a very great majority of the more intelligent among them did not long keep at its height the emotion excited by the attack on fort sumter, and soon settled back into their former creed, holding, because of the reasons summarized above, the states to be sovereign; and while they thought it supreme folly in the south to set up the confederacy, they still believed that to do so was but the exercise of an indubitable right of the states creating it. from what i saw at the time, and the many proofs that appeared to accumulate upon me afterwards, this explains the unprecedented panic with which the federal army abandoned the field at the first manassas. consider just a moment. the federal army, giving the confederates a complete surprise, turns their position and drives them back in rout. the confederates make an unexpected stand, fight for some hours, and at last, assuming the offensive, win the field. the troops on each side practically all raw volunteers, very much alike in race and character. but the federals had much more than two to one engaged, as is demonstrated by the fact that the confederates had only twenty-five regiments of infantry in action, and they took prisoners from fifty-five. the more one who, like me, observed much of the war, thinks it over, the more clearly he sees that the flight from manassas is not to be explained because of the superior courage and stamina of the southern soldiers. i believe that the union men, observing how brave and death-defying their brothers on the other side were in facing disaster that seemed irretrievable and odds irresistible, at last became convinced that these brothers, defending home and firesides, were right, and that they themselves, invading an inviolably sovereign state, were heinously wrong; and thus awakened conscience made cowards of all these gallant men. and it is thoroughly established, i believe, that everywhere in the first engagements of the war, the southern volunteers, if they were commanded by a fighter, showed far more spirit and stomach than their adversaries. in the amicable meetings, often occurring upon the picket line, when we confederates would with good humor ask the union men how it was that we won so many fights, it was a stereotyped reply of the latter, "why, you are fighting for your country and we only for $ a month." it was but natural that, by reason of what has been told in the foregoing, the south unanimously, and a very large number at the north, should believe any state could under its reserved powers rightfully secede from the union whenever and for whatever cause it pleased. we see now what the angry brothers did not see. the absolute sovereignty of the states, and the right of secession both _de facto_ and _de jure_ could have been conceded, and at the same time the war for the union justified. the unionists could well have said to the south: "your independence is too great a menace to our interests to be tolerated, and the high duty of self-defence commands that we resist to the death. the _status quo_ is better for us all. now that you have set up for yourself, we must tell you, sadly but firmly, that if you do not come back voluntarily, we must resort to coercion,--not under the constitution, for you have thrown that off, but under the law of nations to which you have just subjected yourself." the man who of all southerners has given state sovereignty its most learned and able defence--sage, the author of "the republic of republics"--says: "to coerce a state is unconstitutional; but it is equally true that the precedent of coercing states is established, and that it is defensible under the law of nations."[ ] to have received the confederate commissioners as representing an independent nation, and made demand that the seceding states return to the union, would have been a far stronger theory than that on which the war was avowedly waged; for it would have taken from the south that superiority in the argument which had given her great prestige in europe, and even in the north. and lastly, under the law of nations, the federal government, after coercing the seceding states back, would have had--even according to the theory of state rights as maintained in the south--perfectly legitimate power to abolish slavery. the statement that emancipation was "sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the constitution, upon military necessity," protests so much that one sees that the highly conscientious man hesitated and doubted. and well may he have doubted; for what warrant can be found in the constitution for destroying that property which it solemnly engaged to defend and protect as a condition precedent of its adoption?--that is, if the southern states were still in the union and under the constitution, as was claimed by all who justified the proclamation? but if the southern states had gone out of the union, they had revoked their ratification and had thrown away all the protection of slavery given by the constitution; and while the constitution did not direct how the federal government should act in the matter, the law of nations gave full and ample directions. its authority was not stinted nor hampered by any rights recognized in the constitution as reserved to the states under it. the subsequent amendment, imposed as a condition of reconstruction, shows that the people of the north seriously questioned if slavery had been abolished by the proclamation and its enforcement by the union armies. but this, strong as it was, would not have been the true theory. the true theory--the real fact--is that at the outbreak of the brothers' war, and long before, the states had become more closely connected than the siamese twins,--indissolubly united as integral parts of the same organism, like the different trunks of the banyan tree; and while the southern nationalization was opposing the union forces with might and main, it was really but an excrescence, with roots far more shallow than those of the american union--a parasite like the mistletoe, growing upon the american body politic, fated to die of itself if not destroyed by its fell foe. for, as we have explained, the sole motor of this southern nationalization--slavery--could no more maintain itself permanently against free labor than the handloom could stand against the steam-loom, or the draft-horse can much longer compete with artificial traction power. now let us rapidly set in array the stronger supports of this true theory. we should start with the impulse to combine which adjacency always gives to communities of the same origin; and external compression and joint interest to those of diverse origin, as we see in the case of the swiss. how clearly does our great american sociologist trace the effect of this impulse in ancient society. first a body of consanguinei grows into a gens; after a while, neighboring gentes of the same stock-language form a tribe; then neighboring tribes, as some of the iroquois and aztecs, form a confederacy. at this point the development of the american indians was arrested by the coming of the whites. "a coalescence of tribes into a nation had not occurred in any case in any part of america," says the great authority.[ ] but we can easily understand what would have occurred had the indians been left to themselves. they would have passed out of the nomadic state into settlements of fixed abodes, local and geographical political divisions evolving from the old gentes and tribes, the contiguous ones often uniting. history furnishes many examples of neighboring communities coalescing into nations. one of the most remarkable of all is the environment which has constrained peoples of four different languages to coalesce into the little swiss nation. turning away from prehistoric times and also ancient history, let the student re-enforce the case of the swiss, just alluded to, with the modern nation-making in italy and germany. these few of the many instances which can be given show how and what sorts of adjacent communities are prone to co-operate or combine for a common purpose, and how such combination develops at last an irresistible proneness to national union. drops of liquid in proximity to one another on a plane may long maintain each their independent forms; but bring them into actual contact, and presto! all the globules have coalesced into a single mass. after the belonging part of the evolutionary science of sociology has been fully developed--which time does not seem very far off--the subject will receive adequate illustration. then all of us will understand that, many years before alamance and lexington, the colonies, in their defence of themselves against the indians and the french, in their intercommunication over innumerable matters of joint interest, in the beneficent example of the iroquois confederacy and the advice of our fathers by the iroquois, as early as , to form one of the colonies similar to their own,[ ] and in many other things that can be suggested, were steadily becoming one people, and more and more predisposed to political union. we shall also see, much more clearly than we do yet, that the revolutionary war, by keeping them some years under a general government, imparted new and powerful impetus to the nationalizing forces, which were working none the less surely because unobserved. our lesson will be completely learned when we recognize that about the time the war with the mother country commenced the globules, that is, the separate colonies, had become actually a quasi-political whole,--a stage of evolution so near to that of full nationality that it is hard to distinguish the two. it seems to me that the nation had come at least into rudimentary existence when the declaration of independence was made. surely from that time on something wondrously like a _de facto_ national union of the old colonies grew rapidly, and became stronger and stronger; and this to me is the sufficient and only explanation of the seismic popular upheaval that displaced the weaker government under the articles of confederation with one endowed by the federal constitution with ample powers to administer the affairs of the nation now beginning to stir with consciousness. and yet so blind was everybody that in the delegates and their constituents all believed the convention to be the organ of the states, when in truth it was the organ of the new american nation. prompted by a self-preserving instinct, this nationality deftly kept itself hid. had it been disclosed, the federal constitution could not have been adopted; and had a suspicion of it come a few years later, there would have been successful secession. and so each state dreamed on its sweet dream of dominion until the call to the stars and stripes rang through the north. then its people began darkly and dimly to discern the nationalization which had united the states and become a hoop of adamant to hold the union forever stanch. of course to the south nothing appeared but the state sovereignty of the fathers. her illuded sight was far clearer and more confident than the true vision of the north, and she magnified state sovereignty which she thought she saw, and damned the american nationality preached by the north as anti-state-rights, when at that very time a nationality of her own had really put all the southern states at its feet. it mattered not for the thick perception of the north and the optical illusion of the south, the american nation was now full grown; and by the result of the brothers' war it made good its claim to sovereignty. the historian must accurately gauge the effect wrought by the wonderfully successful career of the united states under the federal constitution in its first years. war with france imminent, pinckney's winged word, "millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute," the sword buckled on again by the father of his country--and peace; the extension of our domain from the mississippi to the pacific by the louisiana purchase; the victories won against the men who used to say scornfully that our fathers could not stand the bayonet, and the still more surprising victories won with an improvised navy against the mistress of the seas, in the war of ; the brilliant operations of decatur against algiers; the military power of the indians decisively and permanently outclassed, until soon our women and children on the border were practically secure against the tomahawk and scalping knife; and perhaps above all the world-wide spaciousness, as it were, and the inexpressibly greater dignity and splendor of the public arena, as compared with that of any single colony or state, which was opened at once to every ambitious spirit--these are some, only, of the feats and achievements which gave the united states unquestioned authority at home and incomparable prestige around the world. and on and on the american nation rushed, from one stage of growth into and through another, until the result was that for some years before secession state sovereignty, for all of the high airs it gave itself and the imposing show of respect it extorted, had become merely a survival. thus did the american nation form, from a number of different neighboring, cognate, and very closely-akin communities, under that complex of the forces of growth and those of combination which imperceptibly and resistlessly steers the social organism along the entire track of its evolution. the nationalizing leaven was hidden by the powers in charge of our national destiny in the colonial meal, and it had in time so completely leavened the whole lump that rhode island, and north carolina, trying hard to stay out, and texas desporting joyfully and proudly under the lone star in her golden independence, could not break the invisible leading strings, which pulled all three into the united states. note how oregon and california, though largely settled from the south yet being without slavery, in their extreme remoteness from the brothers' war adhered to the union cause. and had the southern confederacy triumphed in the war, the states in it would have staid out of the federal union only the few years necessary for slavery to run its course. when there was no more virgin soil for cotton, the southern nation, which was merely a growth upon the american nation, would have collapsed of itself, as did the state of frankland; and that continental brotherhood which brought in rhode island, north carolina, and texas, would have commandingly reasserted itself. the more you contemplate the facts, the more it is seen that this continental brotherhood was and is the most vigorous tap-root and stock of nationality in all history. the providence which at first gradually and surely mixed the colonies into one people, then into a feeble and infirm political whole, rapidly hardening in consistency, and lastly into an indissoluble union, and which was from the beginning more and more developing us into a nation--this overruling evolution, and not constitution or lawmaking organs, has been, is, and always will be the ultimate and supreme authority, the opposeless lawgiver, the resistlessly self-executing higher law in america, creating, altering, modifying or abolishing man-made constitutions, laws, ordinances, and statutes, as suits its own true democratic purpose, often inscrutable to contemporaries. the foregoing is the substance of the argument that must now take the place of that made by webster and the unionists after him, which was convincingly confuted by the south. it proves the complete and immaculate justice of the war for the union. this view differs from the other, which we admitted above to be very strong, mainly in refusing to concede that a state is sovereign and can legitimately secede at will. but under it, it ought to be conceded that the states in the southern confederacy were for the time actually out of the american union by revolution. it is not possible to say they were in rebellion; that is an offence of individuals standing by an authority hastily improvised and manifestly sham. it was not by the action of individuals, but it was by the action of states, veritable political entities and quasi sovereigns, that the confederacy was organized. when these states were coerced back, they could not invoke the protection to their slaves given in a constitution which they had solemnly repudiated. the united states could therefore deal with them as it had with the territories from which it excluded slavery. while of course adequate protection of the freedmen against their former masters ought to have been provided, it should at the same time have been made clear to the world that slavery was abolished solely because events had demonstrated it to be the only root and cause of dismemberment of the union. such a familiar example as the often-exercised power of a municipality to blow up a house, without compensation therefor, to stop the progress of conflagration, and many other seemingly arbitrary acts done by society in its self-preservation, would have occurred to conscientious people contemplating. and it would have been a long flight in morals above the proclamation, merely to have justified emancipation on the ground that the existence of slavery was a serious menace to the life of the nation. one's logic may be often wrong, and yet his proposition has been rightly given him by an instinct, as we so often see in the case of good women. o this subliminal self of ours, how it bends us hither and thither, as the solid hemisphere does the little human figure upon it, posing with a seeming will of his own! hence, and not from our argument-making faculty, come not only our own most important principles of action, but also our very strongest persuasive influence. and it is the subconscious mental forces moving great masses of men and women all the same way--that is, the national instincts--which are the all-conquering powers that the apostle of a good cause arouses and sets in array. and while it is true that the mere logic of webster's anti-nullification speech is puerile, the after world will more and more couple that speech with the reply to hayne, and keep the two at the top--above every effort of all other orators. in the reply to hayne, in , he had magnified the union in a passage which ever since has deservedly led all selections for american speech books. and now, in , when dismemberment actually makes menace of its ugly self, the great wizard of speech that takes consciences and hearts captive,[ ] proclaimed to his countrymen that there could be no such thing as lawful secession or nullification. the earnestness and the emphasis with which he said this were supreme merits of the speech. and thenceforth it was enough to the hosts of the north to remember that the american, towering like a mountain above them all, had in his high place solemnly declared that secession is necessarily revolution. and, to one who is familiar with the hypnotizing effect of subconscious national suggestion it is not strange that they scouted calhoun's demolishing reply, and treasured webster's false logic as supreme and perfect exposition of the constitution. chapter vi root-and-branch abolitionists and fire-eaters for a long while opposition to slavery was moderate and not unreasoning. the first actual quarrel over it between the sections was when missouri applied for admission to the union in . that was settled by the famous compromise of . the most of the anti-slavery men of that day stood only against the extension of slavery. while many a one of them believed his conviction was dictated, independently and entirely, by his conscience, it was in fact given him because of his relation to the free-labor nationalization claiming the public lands for itself. that was also true of the great mass of northerners opposed to slavery down to the very beginning of the war. they wanted the territories for themselves. the contest between the united states and england for oregon is a parallel case. the american felt, if this territory falls to the united states, i and my children and children's children can get cheap land somewhere in it; but if it falls to england, i and they are forever shut out. in the intersectional contest over the public lands northerners felt that they would be practically excluded from any part of them into which slavery was carried; for infinitely preferring, as they did, the free-labor system, to which they had been bred, to the slavery system, of which they had no experience, and against which they were prejudiced, they would never voluntarily settle where it obtained. this, the prevalent view, brought about the compromise of , by which all the territory north of ° ' was guaranteed to free labor, that is, to the north, not because its inhabitants were burning with zeal to repress the spread of what they thought to be an unspeakable moral wrong, but because they purposed thereby to insure a fair inheritance to their own children. so much for what we have called the first quarrel between the sections over slavery. let us now glance at the stages following until the root-and-branch abolitionist shows himself. for some twenty years after the missouri compromise was made there was hardly any public agitation at all as to slavery. in an abolition ticket for the presidency was nominated, but it received a support much smaller than had been currently predicted. it is not until january, , when, upon calhoun's motion in the senate of the united states to reject two petitions for the abolition of slavery in the district of columbia, there ensued a prolonged and passionate discussion, that we can say that the old free-soil practically begins to pass into an abolition movement. here moral attack upon slavery seriously begins. if we think but a moment we will understand it too well to explain it as an arousal of conscience, which ought to have been aroused many years before if slavery was indeed the terrible sin the abolitionists now commenced to say it was. the agitation of , the year that webster replied to hayne, and that of , when he and calhoun crossed swords over nullification, mark a great advance of intersectional antagonism beyond that of the time of the missouri compromise. we can see now as we look back what contemporaries could not see, that is, that the two were _avant couriers_ of the southern confederacy. but some of the contemporaries did discern the fact--not consciously, but instinctively. with these there was, in subliminal ratiocination, a process somewhat as follows: the southern confederacy, if it does come, will disrupt the union, which assures, while it lasts, immunity of our country from frequent wars upon its own soil, and from the heavy load of great armies kept up even in the intervals of peace. this disruption will establish in america all the evil conditions of europe from which our fathers fled hither. slavery is the _vis matrix_, the sole developing force, the life of this menaced confederacy. let us abolish slavery, and preserve the union. how accurately the common instincts--especially those protecting our private interests--discern both the favorable and unfavorable, becomes more of a marvel to me every year. to them the favorable is morally right, the unfavorable morally wrong. if the latter threatens great injury, they excite against it deep-seated indignation as if it were a crime. how else can you explain it that all the churches, accepting the same christ and worshipping the same god, were at last divided, the northern churches impugning and the southern churches defending slavery. dwell upon this fact until you interpret it aright. on one side the most conscientious and the best of the north unanimous that slavery is morally wrong; on the other the most conscientious and best of the south unanimous that it is morally right. then think of the northern and southern statesmen, jurists, and the great public leaders; and at the last consider that the entire people of one section prayed for, fought and died for, slavery, while that of the other did the same things against it. when you do this, you must admit that our community, our country, the society of which we are members, fashions our consciences and makes our opinions. the economic interest of the north was against slavery. it was her interest to get all the territory possible for opportunity to her free workers. it was also a transcendent economic interest of hers that there be no great foreign power near her to require of her that she put thousands of bread-winners and wealth-makers to idle in a standing army. on the other side the economic interest of the south in slavery was so great it commanded her to sacrifice all the advantages of union to preserve slavery, if that should be necessary. each side feels deeply and more and more angrily that the other is seeking to rob it of the means of production and subsistence--the property to which of all it believes its title most indefeasible. it required some years to bring affairs to this point; but it was accomplished at last; and the north was ready for the root-and-branch abolitionist and the south for the fire-eater. of course all this effect of oppugnant economical interests is under the guidance of the directors of evolution, who generally have their human servants to masquerade as characters widely different from the true. when these servants put on high airs as if they were doing their own will and not that of their masters, how the directors must smile. they have guaranteed animal reproduction from one generation to another by the impulsion of a supreme momentary pleasure, as lucretius most philosophically recognizes in his _dux vitæ dia voluptas_. the passion of anger is the converse of that of love. when consent cannot settle some great controversy that must be settled, the passion of anger is so greatly excited by the instigation of the directors that the disputants leave arguments and come to blows. in the ripeness of time the ransy sniffleses[ ] come forth. they say and do everything possible to bring on the impending mortal combat. they never grasp the essence of the contention, for it is their mission to arouse feeling, passion, anger. they are resistlessly--most conscientiously and honestly--impelled to make the other side appear detestable and insultingly offensive in heinous wrong-doing. the most zealous and the most influential of the root-and-branch abolitionists were young when they vaulted into the arena. garrison was twenty-six when he started the "liberator" in , wendell phillips was some six years younger than garrison, and he was about twenty-six when he made his début with a powerful impromptu in boston, in . whittier was two years younger than garrison, and he was early a co-worker in the "liberator." it is demonstrated by everything they said that they were entirely ignorant of the south and its people, of the average condition of the slave in the south, and especially of the negro's grade of humanity. they never studied and investigated facts diligently and impartially, desiring only to ascertain the truth. they assumed the facts to be as it suited their purposes, given them by the directors, of exciting hatred of their opponents,--and it added greatly to their efficiency that they fully believed their assumptions. knowing really nothing of the negro except that he was a man, it was natural for them to believe, as they did, that the typical, average negro slave of the south was in all the essentials of good citizenship just such a human being as the typical, average white. if they did not go quite so far, they surely claimed for him something so near to it that it is practically the same. we shall, as suggested above, treat this pernicious error more fully in later chapters. the root-and-branch abolitionists have claimed ever since the emancipation proclamation became effective that the overthrow of slavery was brought about by them; and thousands upon thousands believing it sing them hosannas. but it is an undeniable fact that the superior power of free labor in its irreconcilable conflict with slavery was bound to do in america what it had done everywhere else. and without the abolitionist at all the days of slavery were numbered, and they were few even if there had been no secession, and very few if secession had triumphed. for free labor--its fell and implacable foe--was on the outside steadily and surely encircling it with a wall that hemmed it from the extension that was a condition of its life; and within its ring fence necessarily it was rapidly exhausting all of its resources. it was the mighty counteraction of free labor that crushed slavery. the root-and-branch abolitionist thrown up by this movement which had set forward irresistibly, long before he was ever heard of, and who believed that he started it and was guiding it, strikingly examples the proverb "er denkt zu schieben und ist geschoben." i believe that future history will give him credit only for having a little hastened forward the inevitable. another abolition misstatement ought to be corrected. sumner fulminated against what he called the oligarchs of slavery. and it was common at the north to speak of southern aristocracy and southern aristocratic institutions. of course the slaves had no political privileges, no more than they had in athens, which has always been deemed the most genuine republic ever known. there was in the old south no oligarch, or anything like him, unless you choose to call such a man as calhoun an oligarch, whose influence over his state was entirely from the good opinion and unexampled confidence of the free citizens of all classes, which he had won. there was no aristocracy, except such a natural one as can be found in every one of our states, as is illustrated by the adamses in massachusetts, the lees in virginia, and the cobbs in georgia. in those days property was much more equally distributed than now; and it was easy for the energetic and saving poor young man, of the humblest origin, to make his way up. in all my day there was universal suffrage, and it was political death to propose any modification. i explained nearly thirty years ago how southern conditions prevented the development of anything like the beneficent new england town-meeting system.[ ] but for all of that the entire spirit of southern society was democratic in the extreme, far more so than it is now with the nominating machinery everywhere in the south except south carolina, controlled by corporation oligarchs. when the root-and-branch abolitionist inveighed against oligarchy and aristocracy, and aristocratic institutions in the south, he was just as mistaken as he was in denouncing what he asserted to be the guilt in morals of slaveholding. the more i study the abolitionists whom i distinguish as root-and-branch, the more completely self-deceived as to facts, the wilder and more emotional i find them to be. i have just mentioned some of their misrepresentations; and in later chapters i shall dwell upon their cardinal mistake as to the place of the negro in the human scale. i have not sufficient space for more of these things. i will give just one example of their wildness. they put in circulation that toombs had said he expected some day to call the roll of his slaves at the foot of bunker hill monument,--a slander which they persisted in renewing after he had solemnly and publicly denied it.[ ] in their excited imaginations they were sure that the south was cherishing a scheme by which, under the help of the court that made the dred scott decision, slavery was to be established and protected by law everywhere in the north. the only parallel i can think of to this utterly groundless panic is that of some poor souls in the confederate ranks in front of richmond in , who, when they learned that jackson had got in the enemy's rear, expressed lively fears that he was going to drive mcclellan's army over them. and the fire-eaters,--how they got important facts wrong! they habitually said that the northern masses were too untruthful and dishonest for us of the south to stay in the partnership without disgrace and loss of self-respect. i heard of one who was wont gravely to assert that prostitutes and ice were all that the south was dependent upon the north for; and these were only luxuries which it was better to do without. perhaps the height of falsification by the hotspurs was the assertion, made everywhere again and again, that northerners were such cowards that, even if they were spurred into a war in defence of the union, any one average southerner would prove an overmatch for any five of them. it is now high time that each section turn resolutely away from these fanatics, and the literature which they have made or informed, to seek right instruction as to slavery, the struggle over it, the characters of the masses on each side and of their leaders, and all other belonging details, in the real facts. especially must we understand the internecine duel between free labor and slavery, and what was the purpose of the directors of evolution placing the fanatical abolitionist and the fire-eater upon the stage. when we grasp that purpose clearly, how pretentious do we understand their claims and self-laudation to be, and how clearly we see that they are like the fly on the cart-wheel that became so vain of the great dust it was raising, and also like the little fice egging on the big dogs to do their fighting. i have still vivid recollections of hearing in amicable interviews of hostile pickets these characters denounced for keeping out of the war which, as was then said, they had caused,--the fanatical abolitionists denounced by the federals, the fire-eaters, original secessionists, the blue cockade wearers, by the confederates. chapter vii calhoun after john caldwell calhoun, who was born march , , the birth-year of webster, had become large enough to go to the field, the most of his time until he was eighteen was spent in work on the plantation. his father had never had but six months' schooling. there were no schools in that region except a few "old field" ones, where the three r's only were taught. to one of these john went for a few months. the boy learned to read, and manifestly he had acquired some habit of reading. in his thirteenth year he was sent to school to his brother-in-law, moses waddell, who was an unusually good teacher. he found a circulating library in the house. this was his first access to books. he read old rollin, and he probably moused about in robertson's history of america and life of charles v, and voltaire's charles xii. having laid rollin aside, he assailed locke's famous essay; but when he got to the chapter on infinity his health had become bad, doubtless due to his change from active to sedentary habits and from physical to mental activity. so he was taken back to his work at home. his father had died in the meanwhile, and his mother, who had great business talent, taught him, as we are told, "how to administer the affairs of a plantation."[ ] it will appear in the sequel that he was superbly trained.[ ] when he attained the age of eighteen the family had become convinced that he ought to be got ready for a profession. john, knowing himself to be the mainstay of his mother, and having resolved to be a planter, at first would not hear to this. but the family persisted. this doubtless influenced him to turn the subject carefully over in his mind; and the decision which he made showed an understanding of his own peculiar talents and needs, and also a prescience of his future which, when his youth, small opportunity of observation, and want of schooling are remembered, are very wonderful. he gave this family, who were not well-to-do, to understand he would not accept a limited and makeshift education. naturally they asked what sort did he mean, and he answered, "the best school, college, and legal education to be had in the united states."[ ] then they asked, how long did he think all this would take, and he promptly answered seven years. to the average reader it seems that the time necessary to carry this unschooled lad through the course he proposed had been egregiously underestimated by him; but to the family, as they thought of the appertaining annual expenses, it must have looked very long. they had to give in. that irrefragable influence over his people which showed itself as soon as he came upon the public stage begins here. some one long afterwards said of him, that if he could but talk with every man he would always have the whole united states on his side. it is more than probable that in the five years after he had left waddell's school he had, in plantation management and other interests of the family, convinced them that he always acted or advised wisely. another comment is in place here. study of the record of his early life convinces you that very soon after, if not before, the commencement of his legal studies, he decided to make law only a stepping-stone by which to enter public life and also acquire the means to plant. i cannot help inferring that this was--somewhat vaguely it may be--his intention already formed when he dictated terms to the family as just told. it is not at all impossible that to him who afterwards astonished the world by the sureness of his prophecy there had even then been revealed the career awaiting; and so he resolved to get ready for college in two years, and pass the rest of the seven where, besides competent instructors, he would have cultivated society, libraries, and the best of opportunities to qualify himself for public life. be our conjecture true or not, in two years after he had opened his latin grammar he entered the junior class at yale, and two years later he graduated with credit. after reading law in an office he took a year's course at the litchfield law school in connecticut, and then he went into an office again for a while. some time in june, , he hung out his shingle at abbeville court-house, as it was called up to the time of reconstruction. a few days afterwards in that month occurred the attack on the chesapeake, and when the news came it caused a public meeting in the town. some good report of him must have been bruited about in the community in advance of his coming. it is almost certain that his education had greatly developed those powers of conversation mentioned above, and that many listeners had greatly approved his views of the outrage, and the patriotic indignation he uttered over it. it is not stretching probability too far to assert that, young as he was, he was by far the ablest man that could be found in the locality to advise upon the burning question which had arisen so suddenly. he was selected to draft appropriate resolutions and present them. there is no record of these or of his speech. but as we know that the resolutions carried, and that tradition still reports admiringly of the speech, we may be sure that his performance in both was extraordinarily good. although there had been a strong popular prejudice in the county--or district, as it was then called--against lawyer representatives, october , , less than four months after the meeting just described, he was elected to the legislature at the head of the ticket. in that day presidential electors were appointed by the state legislatures. shortly after the session of this legislature to which calhoun had been elected opened, there was an informal meeting of the republican members to make nominations for president and vice-president. the first was unanimously given to madison. when the other was up, calhoun declared his conviction that there was soon to be war with england. at such a time there should be no dissension in the party. he gave strong reasons why george clinton should not be nominated, as had been proposed; and he suggested john langdon of new hampshire as the proper man. the thorough acquaintance with the grave situation which he manifested, the due respect he showed clinton while opposing his nomination, and the ability with which he discussed the question, advanced him at once to a place among the most distinguished members of the legislature. "several important measures were originated by mr. calhoun while in the legislature which have become a permanent portion of the legislation of the state, and he soon acquired an extensive practice at the bar."[ ] he kept in the very midst of the political swim. his reputation as an honest, true, and able adviser had become so great and influential that the people, in their warm approval of the strong measures he advocated as preparation for the threatened war, pushed him out as their candidate for congress and elected him most triumphantly in october, . the first session of this, the twelfth congress, commenced november , . clay, then speaker of the house, evidently expecting much of him, gave him the second place in the committee on foreign relations. there came before the house a measure contemplating an increase of the army in view of the war which appeared to many to be nearer than ever. john randolph was against it. in march, , a year before calhoun started to school, randolph, then not twenty-six years old, had fearlessly met the great patrick henry in stump discussion, and had, in the opinion of his auditors, got the better of it. he was elected to congress in this year. steadily since then he had developed, until he was now one of the most prominent figures upon the national stage. while his powers of discussion of a subject were great, the power that especially characterized him was that of nonplussing his antagonist with a snub or a sarcasm. randolph made an earnest speech. calhoun replied. it is not enough to say of this speech that it evinces full mastery of the subject. it presents every important view most effectively, satisfactorily answering everything which had been said on the other side. and it is especially happy in the wise use made at each proper place of the commands of morality and patriotism. mr. pinkney has instructively and entertainingly illustrated this speech by his excerpts.[ ] to them i here add another, which i would have you consider,--randolph had strenuously insisted that the cause of this war, said by the other side to be impending, should first be defined; and until this plain duty was done there should be no preparation. to this calhoun said: "the single instance alluded to, the endeavor of mr. fox to compel mr. pitt to define the object of the war against france, will not support the gentleman from virginia in his position. that was an extraordinary war for an extraordinary purpose. it was not for conquest, or for redress of injury, but to impose a government on france which she refused to receive--an object so detestable that an avowal dared not be made." this is a thrust which randolph especially could appreciate. the more i examine this first speech of a very young member of congress upon a question of such transcendent importance to the people of the united states, the more sound, able, complete,--to sum up in one word,--the more statesmanly it appears. i am confident that whoever will weigh it carefully will agree with me. he will not be surprised to learn that it carried the house decisively. even in randolph's own state it drew great praise. but its fame went abroad everywhere, and it was revealed to america that she had found among her public men another giant. in the year calhoun was a lad of eighteen, without even a complete common school education. represent to yourself clearly what he had accomplished in the interval from the year last mentioned to december , , when, not yet thirty, he made the speech we have just considered. if any public man of america, burdened with such disadvantages, has surpassed, or even equalled, this meteoric stride, i do not now recall him. i am not emphasizing especially that he got to congress in such a short while. what i do especially emphasize is that he so early won place as an eminent statesman. in these eleven years he lost no time at all in idleness, or probation, or waiting. january , , some three months after his election to congress, he married his cousin, floride calhoun--not a first cousin, but a daughter of a first cousin. his letters of courtship, not to her, but, in the old style, to her mother; his only letter to her, written shortly before the marriage; and other letters from and to him afterwards, all of which you can read in the correspondence,--show him to be such a lover, father, brother, son-in-law, brother-in-law, grandfather, etc., as everybody wants. some south carolinian, adequately gifted, ought to tell befittingly the tale of calhoun's beautiful domestic life. i must now mention some other facts which will further enlighten you as to the man. i was fourteen when calhoun died. for four or five years before, and afterwards until i went to the brothers' war, i heard much of calhoun from relatives in abbeville county and the court house. i still recall most vividly what a paternal uncle habitually said of the brightness and unexampled impressiveness of calhoun's eyes, and the charm and instructiveness of his conversation. in georgia there was not a public man whose course in politics commended itself to all of my acquaintances. i had become accustomed to hearing much disparagement of toombs and of stephens, with whom i was most familiar. but my south carolina relatives, and every man or woman of that state whose talk i listened to; every boy or girl with whom i talked myself, yea, all of the negroes,--always warmly maintained the rightfulness of calhoun's politics, national or state. i thought it a good hit when a georgia aunt of mine dubbed the palmetto state "the kingdom of calhoun," and abbeville court house "its capital." this universal political worship was a great surprise to me. but there was a still greater one to come. that was, that according to all accounts, and without any contradiction, in spite of his living away from home the most of his time, he yet gave his planting interests and all else appertaining the very best management, and with such unvarying financial success it would be unkind to compare webster's money-wasting and amateur farming at marshfield. in this community, where he seemed to be known as well as he was before he removed to fort hill, some sixty miles distant, in , he had become a far greater authority in business than he had even attained in politics. his acquaintances all sought his advice, which they followed when they got it; thus making this busiest of public servants their agricultural oracle. the reader will find in starke's memoir and the correspondence ample proofs of that diligent attention of calhoun to his home affairs which made him the exceptionally successful planter that he was. starke happily calls him "the great farmer-statesman of our country."[ ] now let us see where he made his mark as an able business man in another place. he was monroe's secretary of war from to . when he entered the office he found something like $ , , of unsettled accounts outstanding, and jumble in every branch of the service. he soon brought down the accounts to a few millions. and he reduced the annual expenditure of four to two and a half millions, "without subtracting a single comfort from either officer or soldier," as he says with becoming pride. he established it, that the head of every subordinate department be responsible for its disbursements. his economy was not parsimonious. he was especially popular at west point, for which he did great things, and with the officers and men of the army. and if one chose to look through the belonging parts of the correspondence and the other accessible pertinent records, he will find ample proofs that he was ever alert to all the duties of his office, performing each one, whether important or trivial, with the height of skill and diligence. consider, as to his career in the war department, this language of one of the most inveterate of his disparagers: "many of his friends and admirers had with regret seen him abandon his seat in the legislative hall for a place in the president's council. they apprehended that he would, to a great extent, lose the renown which he had gained as a member of congress, for they thought that the didactic turn of his mind rendered him unfit to become a successful administrator. he undeceived them in a manner which astonished even those who had not shared these apprehensions. the department of war was in a state of really astounding confusion when he assumed charge of it. into this chaos he soon brought order, and the whole service of the department received an organization so simple and at the same time so efficient that it has, in the main, been adhered to by all his successors, and proved itself capable of standing even the test of the civil war."[ ] now let us glance at his magnificent success in winning for the united states the vast territory of texas and oregon. the latter had long been in dispute between us and england. ever since it had been jointly occupied under agreement. we wanted all of it; and of course as our settlements in the west approached nearer and nearer, our desire for it mounted. and england wanted all of it too. soon after texas achieved her independence she applied for admission into our union, but as the settlers had carried slavery with them free-soil opposition kept her out. texas got in debt, and the only thing for her to do was to tie to some great power willing to receive her. england, seeing her opportunity, was trying to propitiate mexico in order, with the favor of the latter, to get texas for herself. of course the south wanted texas to come in, but the free-soilers did not. and the north wanted oregon; and although its soil and climate did not admit of slavery, the south was against its acquisition unless the concession be made that it be permitted to slavery to occupy all the suitable soil of the territories. as early as calhoun, with his piercing vision, saw the situation clearly. if the dispute as to oregon provoked war, england could throw troops thither from china by a much shorter route than ours, the latter going as it did from the states on the atlantic coast around cape horn. that would be bad enough for us. but suppose england gets texas. a hostile power, with a vast empire of land, will spring up under the very nose of the states, where our adversary will acquire a base of operations in the highest degree unfavorable to us. then england will rise in her demands as to oregon, and perhaps win all of it from us. in an affair of inter-dependent contingencies it is of the first importance to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing first. texas was ripe, oregon was not. calhoun saw the first thing to do was to annex texas. for when england cannot secure that base of operations in texas she will shrink from making oregon a cause of war, and while she is hesitating, oregon--which is near to us and far from her--is steadily filling with population in which settlers from the united states more and more preponderate; and at the same time the populous states are fast approaching. after a while the inhabitants will all practically be on our side, and they will have hosts of allies to the eastward in supporting distance, which would give us an invincible advantage in case war for oregon does come. this is what calhoun styled "masterly inactivity" on our part, and which, had it been fully carried out as he advised, oregon would now extend much further north than it does. to sum up in a line, he saw that activity as to texas and inactivity as to oregon was each masterly. but the hotheads of the south and the fanatical wing of the anti-slavery men at the north rose up, obstructing his way like mountains. at the same time there was lack of vision in even the leaders of each section who could rise to patriotism above prejudice. polk blundered in not continuing calhoun as secretary of state, in which place he had made so good a beginning that it soon accomplished the annexation of texas. in his inaugural polk asserted that our title to oregon was good, and to be maintained by arms if need be; and he went further away from "masterly inactivity" in his first annual message. he evoked great popular excitement, and "fifty-four forty or fight!" and "all of oregon or none!" came forth in passionate ejaculations in every corner of the land. calhoun had been called from retirement to take texas and oregon in hand, and when polk made a new secretary he went back into the retirement for which he greatly longed. the record shows that the best men of all parties, north and south, felt that as tyler's secretary he was the man of all to manage the two matters so vitally important to the united states, and they deeply regretted that the place was not continued to him by polk. and now instead of the happy settlement they had been sure the master would effect, the country was face to face with a war that portended direful disaster to each section. the eyes of patriots turned to calhoun again; and as he cannot be secretary, he must be in the senate. and a way being made, he was seated in due time. it needs not to go into much detail. the situation had changed greatly. the especial thing to do now was to avoid war. and as a resolution to terminate the joint occupation had been passed by congress, and as the ire of great britain had been greatly aroused, there must at once be a settlement of the oregon controversy. and so the controversy was compromised and averted, this good result being mainly due to the efforts of calhoun. even von holst calls his speech of march , , great. it will live forever. it is paying it gross disrespect to treat it as mere oratory, even if one concede to it the highest eloquence. it voices the ripest wisdom of the ablest practical statesman dealing with a most momentous public affair, in a crisis delicate and perilous in the extreme. the vindication of the true course of action is majestic. but to my mind the great achievement of the speech is his sublime philanthropic deprecation of war between england and america. when the papers told us at the outbreak of our war with spain that all the british subjects on the warships of the latter had thrown up their places, it seemed to me that nothing else could so fairly omen co-operation of england and america in the near future to democratize and make happy the world. and i believe that that inexpressibly sweet token of anglo-american brotherhood would have been postponed at least a half-century, if not much longer, had it not been for that speech. this speech likewise discomfited pro-slavery and anti-slavery fanatics alike, and won the hearty approval of the wisest and best of every part of the country. calhoun's self-education merits the closest attention. railroaded through school and college, as he was, his tuition was necessarily defective in some important particulars. in the main he spelled accurately, but the correspondence shows that he wrote "sylable," "indisoluably," "weat" for wet, "merical" for miracle, "sperit," "disappinted," "abeated," etc. it is doubtless to be regretted that he did not have larger familiarity with polite literature. admitting these faults, still we must know he had been uncommonly studious and thoughtful to win his degree in four years after his start to school; but his systematic study, careful observation, and hard thinking really commenced with his entrance of public life, and were kept up to his very death. note this pertinent excerpt from webster's memorial speech, in which i italicize a passage happily describing his studies: "i have not, in public nor private life, known a more assiduous person in the discharge of his appropriate duties. i have known no man who wasted less of life in what is called recreation, or employed less of it in any pursuits not connected with the immediate discharge of his duty. he seemed to have no recreation but the pleasure of conversation with his friends. _out of the chambers of congress, he was either devoting himself to the acquisition of knowledge pertaining to the immediate subject of the duty before him_, or else he was indulging in those social interviews in which he so much delighted." from his first speech in congress to the end of his life you note that he has always mastered the pertinent facts, literature, and guiding principles of whatever he has to do with, whether in speech or action. this indicates continuous, most industrious, and most wise self-instruction. i believe it was mr. parton who said that jefferson was the best educated man of his time. his full equipment from all belonging learning and science was surpassed only by the versatility with which he instantly solved all new questions. but calhoun's was more of a special training than jefferson's. having for some years learned by doing,--doing after the best study and reflection, consistent with due promptness, that he could give each thing he had to do,--his capital of knowledge and developed faculty had become all-sufficient. stephens, a profound student of both jefferson and calhoun, makes this comparison: "amongst the many great men with whom he associated, mr. calhoun was by far the most philosophical statesman of them all. indeed, with the exception of mr. jefferson, it may be questioned if in this respect the united states has ever produced his superior."[ ] government--that is, good democratic government--he studied all his life with rare devotion. his two special works,[ ] and the parallel parts of his speeches, warmly commended by such a thinker and friend of democracy as john stuart mill, are sufficing proof. in all the long tract from plato and aristotle down to the popularization of direct legislation, which commences with the publication of mr. sullivan's pamphlet a few years ago, there is to be found nobody who has penetrated so deeply into the secrets of those principles by which alone true democracy must be maintained. with what clear vision does he read us lessons from the unanimous veto of the roman tribunes; the political history of the twelve tribes of israel; the balance of interests in the english constitution and our own, intended to guarantee what he calls government of the concurrent majority. his illustration from the confederacy of indian tribes is to be especially emphasized as demonstration of his industry in collecting his materials and of his great insight.[ ] i must give still another example, which i am sure will yet benignly enlighten america. ever since adam smith fell into my hands in early manhood i have had a strong predilection for political economy. my conviction during the brothers' war that proper management of the currency of the confederacy was indispensable to the success of our cause initiated me into an earnest study of the science of money. and later intense interest in the greenback question, and afterwards the silver question, added to the impetus. the longer i observed the more plainly i saw a few private persons controlling the coinage, the greenbacks, and the national bank currency of purpose to monopolize government credit, and also fix the interest rate and the price level, at any particular time, as suited their selfish interests. the remedy became clear,--government must retake and fulfil all its money functions. especially must it keep the country supplied with a volume of money which never becomes either redundant or contracted. how to do this properly brought up the question, what is money? what is it that makes a sheep, or cow, or coin, or piece of paper, money? for the true answer to this question is the very beginning and foundation of all monetary science. i took up ricardo again, who, with a solitary exception mentioned a little farther on, had, from the time i turned into him during my study of the confederate currency, of all the economists by profession, showed to me the best understanding of the real nature of money; and of course john stuart mill, jevons, carl marx, and others of less note, were examined. the result confirmed ricardo in his primacy; although i felt that the true nature of money was assumed--rather vaguely--by him, and not clearly expressed as it ought to be. i believed myself familiar with all the important work of calhoun. somehow i had overlooked his contributions to this subject. a few brief quotations from the more unimportant of these i found in certain american books, which made me read the pertinent speeches.[ ] it was a most inexpressible surprise to me to find that he had perfected ricardo. briefly stated, this is the true doctrine according to calhoun. it is not legal-tender laws, nor is it intrinsic value, which makes even gold go as money. well, what is it? calhoun was not the first to answer it, for others had given the true answer; but they ran away from it as soon as they made it. he divined the full satisfactoriness of the true answer, which he demonstrated to be true by a method as nearly mathematical as the case admits of. and he lightens up what was dark before by showing that that is money, and good money, whatever it may be,--gold, silver, paper, property, what not,--which the government receives in payment of its dues. the practice of the government,--not laws, nor the market value of different materials of money,--this is the great thing. if the united states should refuse to receive gold for its dues, that would so greatly lessen the demand for gold as money that the coin would depreciate and drop out of circulation. nothing--not the precious metals, not diamonds of the first water, not radium, not the bills of the best bank, not greenbacks, not treasury notes can maintain themselves as money if the government will not receive it. this is the first half of the subject. calhoun adds the other by showing that whatever the government makes money, its volume can always be kept of the proper quantity,--which proper quantity varies with the needs of commerce,--so as to avoid the too much or too little. his illustration from the treasury notes of north carolina, which could not be a legal tender under the federal constitution, but which circulated briskly and buoyantly and stayed at par for many years, because they were received without discount by the state, and also because their volume was kept within bounds, will yet greatly help the cause of honest money. in the achievement just told calhoun not only excelled the economists of his day, but he is yet in advance of all of the present except del mar,[ ]--the only economist who has excelled ricardo in divining the essence of money. these two alone explain clearly and fully why it is that bankers keep such tenacious grip upon the money function of government--they thereby so shape its practice that their wares shall be money, with all the incidents of profit therefrom, and no others shall. del mar never quotes him; and i almost know he has never studied his views upon this subject. america will yet have a "rational money," a term which prof. frank parsons has happily chosen as the name of his invaluable book.[ ] to win it she must fight many battles with the money power. when this war of the people is waging by the people for the people, the doctrine of calhoun will be the banner of the right. after the sordid money oligarchy is overthrown and the united states is blessed with a people's money, that benign deliverance will add prodigiously to the fame of calhoun. my space does not admit of telling you how deeply calhoun loathed the spoils system. that must be borne in mind, and taken into account in any true estimate of him as a statesman. i deem it especially important to have you consider his standing with the people of his state. literally his word was law in south carolina. hayne in , and huger in , resigned their seats in the national senate to give place to him. everybody in his state always wanted him to lead, and everybody always wanted him to lead according to his own will. this unwonted influence, utterly without precedent, was due to the accurate measure which the masses had taken of him. as he lived and aged among them they knew him better and better to be irreproachable in private and public life, the ablest of the able, the most diligent of the diligent, and the truest of the true as a representative or official, and of that severe and lofty virtue which scorns all popularity that is not the reward of righteousness. and so he became example, model, worship, to all classes. the forty years political ascendency of pericles in the athenian democracy is the only befitting historical parallel which i can think of. familiar with the state from boyhood, i have long thought its people the most advanced of the south. in spite of the revenge wreaked upon her in war, and in spite of the direr devastation of the twelve years of negro rule following the fall of the confederate states, that little community, with her dispensary and her system of really direct nomination,[ ] to say nothing of her wise management of all her material resources, is teaching the nation lessons of the highest wisdom. these are the people from whom calhoun won a crown more resplendent than any other of our states has ever bestowed upon a loved son. how eloquent were her last offices. read mr. pinkney's extracts from the "carolina tribute," narrating the reception of his mortal remains in charleston:[ ] the novel procession of vessels, displaying emblems of mourning, the solemn landing at noon, an imposing train moving amid houses hung with black, "a sabbath-like stillness" resting on the city, "the solemn minute gun, the wail of the distant bell, the far-off spires shrouded in the display of grief, the hearse and its attendant mourners waiting on the spot, alone bore witness that the pulse of life still beat within the city, that a whole people in voiceless woe were about to receive and consign to earth all that was mortal of a great and good citizen." appropriately and impressively mr. pinkney closes his description of this forever memorable demonstration by quoting carlyle's "how touching is the loyalty of men to their sovereign man."[ ] some men reserve out of the pillage of their fellows a great fund to signalize their graves. stronger cars must be made, bridges strengthened, and too narrow passages avoided by long circuits in order that their huge piles be transported to the conspicuous spot selected in a fashionable cemetery. how the funerals which a weeping people give a calhoun, liebknecht, pingree, altgeld, and other true ones dwindle such monuments into smallness and contempt! i must add something here to what has been said in the foregoing of calhoun's speeches. somebody must after a while do for him what the compilation called "the great speeches and orations" has done so well for webster. his very greatest effort is that against the force bill, delivered in the united states senate february and , . as an appeal in behalf of the rights of the minority against the oppressive majority it is unequalled. all through it, from its most befitting exordium to the righteous indignation of the closing sentence, there are passages which "the world will not willingly let die." no one who has ever given it attention can forget the paragraph defending carolina against the charge of passion and delusion; that demolishing as by a tornado the assertion of a senator that the bill was a measure of peace; the far-famed one as to metaphysical reasoning; what is said as to the nature of the contest between persia and greece; the rupture in the tribes of israel graphically expounded; the first mention of the government of "the concurring majority" as distinct from and far better than that of the absolute majority; the lesson to us of the roman tribunes. to read this speech becomingly, purge yourself of all prejudice; by an adequate effort of the historical imagination see all the main things of the then situation, and put yourself fully in calhoun's place; so that you cannot fail to feel all of his deep earnestness. you will have succeeded when you can rightly appreciate this outburst: "will you collect money when it is acknowledged that it is not wanted? he who earns the money, who digs it from the earth with the sweat of his brow, has a just title to it against the universe. no one has a right to touch it without his consent except his government, and this only to the extent of its legitimate wants. to take more is robbery; and you propose by this bill to enforce robbery by murder." when i pronounced that against the force bill, the greatest of his speeches, i was not unmindful of his last, that of march , , not four weeks before his death. i can hardly class it as a speech. it was a revelation of the woe in store for america if the abolition movement was not checked. its analysis and demonstration of the preponderant power of the north, and its retrospection over the progressive stages by which the former equilibrium of the sections had been destroyed, are as clear-sighted as its prediction. never in all history has an actor in a revolution described its course behind him so understandingly, nor its future course with such true prophecy. let us give you the fewest possible selected brief passages that will do something towards possessing you of the core of calhoun's valedictory to the united states and the south. this is first in order: "how can the union be saved? there is but one way by which it can with any certainty; and that is by a full and final settlement, on the principles of justice, of all the questions at issue between the two sections. the south asks for justice, simple justice, and less she ought not to take. she has no compromise to offer but the constitution, and no concession or surrender to make." the vital concern of his section against abolition, and what it must do to avoid it, he tells in these passages: "[the south] regards the relation [of master and slave] as one which cannot be destroyed without subjecting the two races to the greatest calamity, and the section to poverty, desolation, and wretchedness, and accordingly she feels bound, by every consideration of interest and safety, to defend it." "is it not certain that if something is not done to arrest it [the abolition movement], the south will be forced to choose between abolition and secession?" if the south must choose secession, he justifies her by the example of washington, with a calm and repose that prove his deepest conviction of its rightfulness, and with a power that cannot be confuted. he says: ["the union cannot] be saved by invoking the name of the illustrious southerner whose mortal remains repose on the western bank of the potomac. he was one of us--a slaveholder and a planter. we have studied his history, and find nothing in it to justify submission to wrong. on the contrary, his great fame rests on the solid foundation that, while he was careful to avoid doing wrong to others, he was prompt and decided in repelling wrong. i trust that, in this respect, we have profited by his example. nor can we find anything in his history to deter us from seceding from the union should it fail to fulfil the objects for which it was instituted, by being permanently and hopelessly converted into a means of oppressing instead of protecting us. on the contrary, we find much in his example to encourage us should we be forced to the extremity of deciding between submission and disunion. there existed then as well as now a union,--that between the parent country and her then colonies. it was a union that had much to endear it to the people of the colonies. under its protecting and superintending care the colonies were planted, and grew up and prospered, through a long course of years, until they became populous and wealthy. its benefits were not limited to them. their extensive agricultural and other productions gave birth to a flourishing commerce which richly rewarded the parent country for the trouble and expense of establishing and protecting them. washington was born and grew up to manhood under that union. he acquired his early distinction in its service; and there is every reason to believe that he was devotedly attached to it. but his devotion was a rational one. he was attached to it, not as an end, but as a means to an end. when it failed to fulfil its end, and, instead of affording protection, was converted into the means of oppressing the colonies, he did not hesitate to draw his sword and head the great movement by which that union was forever severed, and the independence of these states established. this was the great and crowning glory of his life, which has spread his fame over the whole globe, and will transmit it to the latest posterity." with what moving entreaty does he thus adjure the victorious north: the north "has only to wish it to accomplish it--to do justice by conceding to the south an equal right in the acquired territory, and to do her duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves to be faithfully fulfilled, to cease the agitation of the slavery question, and to provide for the insertion of a provision in the constitution, by an amendment, which will restore to the south, in substance, the power she possessed of protecting herself before the equilibrium between the sections was destroyed by the action of the government. there will be no difficulty in devising such a provision--one that will protect the south and which at the same time will improve and strengthen the government instead of impairing and weakening it." "the responsibility of saving the union rests on the north, and not on the south. the south cannot save it by any act of hers, and the north may save it without any sacrifice whatever, unless to do justice and to perform her duties under the constitution should be regarded by her as a sacrifice." this sleepless watchman since had again and again blown the trumpet as the sword of disunion was coming upon the land. now, the grave yawning before him, he sees that sword nearer and sharper, and conscious that it is his last public duty he sends forth to all his country a blast of warning more earnest and more solemn than ever. warning that the bloodiest of all wars is coming, and that between brothers. warning--it is the whole of this dread deliverance. here is the first paragraph: "i have, senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion. entertaining this opinion, i have on all proper occasions endeavored to call the attention of both the two great parties which divide the country to adopt some measure to prevent so great a disaster, but without success. the agitation has been permitted to proceed, with almost no attempt to resist it, until it has reached a point where it can no longer be disguised or denied that the union is in danger. you have thus had forced upon you the greatest and the gravest question that can ever come under your consideration,--how can the union be preserved?" and this is the last paragraph: "i have now, senators, done my duty in expressing my opinions fully and candidly on this solemn occasion. in doing so, i have been governed by the motives which have governed me in all stages of the agitation of the slavery question since its commencement. i have exerted myself during the whole period to arrest it with the intention of saving the union, if it could be done, and if it could not, to save the section where it has pleased providence to cast my lot, and which i sincerely believe has justice and the constitution on its side. having faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability both to the union and my section, throughout this agitation, i shall have the consolation, let what will come, that i am free from all responsibility." had abolition been in charge of men, calhoun, claiming, as appeared to them, the most palpable rights under current views of justice, under the constitution, under the law, and under patriotic duty, would have prevailed. he never understood, no more than the abolitionists themselves did, that providence was making an instrument of abolition to remove the only danger to the american union, and that providence was not under human constitutions, laws, and convictions of duty. as you meditate this superhuman achievement of the true citizen in his last stand for his doomed section, does it not help you to appreciate better the high saying of the greeks, that the struggle of a good man against fate is the most elevating of all spectacles? the speeches that will find place in the selection suggested above will not enrapture the reader with the proud diction, learning, ornateness, and exquisite finish of webster, but he will find them everywhere to be proofs of the dictum of faust: "es trägt verstand and rechter sinn mit wenig kunst sich selber vor; und wenn's euch ernst ist, was zu sagen, ist's nöthig, worten nachzujagen?"[ ] he will also note that many of the wisest and most eloquent passages are almost the extreme of choice, but chaste and severe, expression. here read aloud the passage as to washington quoted above from the speech of march , , and you will hardly dissent. america owes it to calhoun to publish a cheap edition of his best speeches, and also of his "dissertation on government." a word as to the "dissertation" and the "discourse on the constitution of the united states." the project of these two books lay close to his heart for many years. he intended them as his last admonitions to the people of the great republic. doubtless the special object of his retirement was to finish them, but he had to return to the senate. what we have of the books was written in the little leisure which he snatched from the pressure of public duties, domestic affairs, and ill-health. the resoluteness with which, in the midst of these difficulties, he worked at the self-imposed task proves a lofty and unselfish love. he did not finish them to his satisfaction. darwin did not do that with his epoch-making "origin of species," for he found there was no need to do so. i believe that, as the essentials of the belonging part of evolution are all to be found in the "origin of species," so all the essentials of calhoun's great doctrine of government are fully set forth in his two books. to me the "dissertation" seems complete. i note with pleasure that, though slowly, it is steadily climbing to the lofty height which is its due place in the world's estimation. and the "discourse"--of which he did not live to finish the final draft--surely leads all the productions of the state sovereignty school. the providence which opposed his wishes was kind to his country, to the world, and to himself in calling him from his desk; for it allowed him to get texas and oregon for us, to give mankind his oregon speech, and his last, and thus to finish his good work and make his fame full. the foregoing is intended to influence my readers to turn away from von holst, who wrote calhoun's life, with the smoke and dust of the brothers' war still in his eyes, and from trent, who merely says ditto to mr. burke, to stephens, to the great webster, to the touching "carolina tribute," to the happy and appreciative sketch of pinkney, to the man himself and his grand career, in order to find the facts and principles by which one of america's very greatest ought to be judged. and i do hope that they now begin to discern that calhoun was nothing at all of a doctrinaire, nor chop-logic, nor fanatic, nor professional politician, nor ignorant and over-zealous partisan, but was the very height of practical talent and an extraordinarily successful man of affairs, of more than roman integrity, conscientious and diligent beyond almost all others in the duties of his place, and a foremost statesman of wide and profound culture. whether i have accomplished my design or not, let me beg you to read for yourself with careful attention what webster said of him in the united states senate just after his death. remember two things as you read: ( ) the speaker and the dead had been opposed to one another in politics for more than twenty years, the former being the great exponent of free-labor nationalization and the other the great exponent of slave-labor nationalization; ( ) nobody ever weighed his public utterances more carefully than did webster, and that he would not say anything which he did not believe, even as a politeness. let us now try to follow with proper discernment this man whom we hope we have proved to be good and wise through his titanic defence of the cause which fate had decreed must fail. as our explanation of how evolution, and not the north on one side nor the south on the other, brought forward the crisis in which slavery, the sole menace of american dismemberment, was to perish, is so nearly complete, we can be much briefer in the rest of the chapter. the true beginning here is with the proposition that everything which calhoun did as the southern leader was prompted by a righteous conscience and the highest and most unselfish patriotism. he was the very first to discern the full menace of abolition to the welfare of the people he represented. and when years afterwards the situation became darker and more serious, and more and more importunately put to him the question, if abolition can be avoided only by leaving the union, what ought the south to do? he answered to himself, with the fullest approval of his conscience, she must go out; for manifestly it is her paramount duty to protect her citizens against any such invasion of their rights as abolition. but he had no illusion as to peaceable secession; and he likewise worshipped the union, believing with deepest conviction that it is far better for neighboring communities to be federated than independent. and the memories of the great american history were as sweet to him as they were to webster. to sum up, only one thing in his opinion could justify secession. that was control of the federal government by the abolitionists. if that comes, the south must seek her independence, even if it is beyond a sea of blood. abolition was on its way then to overturn the supports of comfort and domestic peace in the south, as it afterwards did. suppose webster had seen the imminence of such a dreadful evil to new england, would he not have felt that his duty to his section was now the great thing? my brother who wore the blue, ought he not to have so felt? if the union had been turned into a course which would not only impoverish and beggar the people of new england, but would for long years actually deprive the masses of those modes of business and labor by which they were subsisting themselves and their families, can it be thought that webster, with his exalted admiration of the fathers, who endured all privations to win liberty from their oppressors, would not have been heart and soul for secession? the only actual difference between the two great patriots was that to calhoun the dread alternative of looking outside the union for defence and protection of home and fireside was commended by a cruel fate, while a kind fate withheld it from webster. i shall corroborate the foregoing by some pertinent excerpts from calhoun's speeches in the united states senate. and as my purpose is to build everywhere in this book, as far as possible, upon only the most obvious facts and to vouch therefor the most accessible authorities, i take the excerpts from quotations made by von holst: "it is to us a vital question. it involves not only our liberty, but, what is greater (if to freeman anything can be), existence itself. the relation which now exists between the two races in the slaveholding states has existed for two centuries. it has grown with our growth, and strengthened with our strength. it has entered into and modified all our institutions, civil and political. none other can be substituted. we will not, cannot, permit it to be destroyed.... come what will, should it cost every drop of blood and every cent of property, we must defend ourselves; and if compelled, we should stand justified by all laws, human and divine; ... we would act under an imperious necessity. there would be to us but one alternative,--to triumph or perish as a people."[ ] * * * * * "to destroy the existing relations would be to destroy this prosperity [of the southern states] and to place the two races in a state of conflict, which must end in the expulsion or extirpation of one or the other. no other can be substituted compatible with their peace or security. the difficulty is in the diversity of the races.... social and political equality between them is impossible. the causes lie too deep in the principles of our nature to be surmounted. but, without such equality, to change the present condition of the african race, were it possible, would be but to change the form of slavery."[ ] "he must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive that the subversion of a relation which must be followed with such disastrous consequences can be effected only by convulsions that would devastate the country, burst asunder the bonds of union, and engulf in a sea of blood the institutions of the country. it is madness to suppose that the slaveholding states would quietly submit to be sacrificed. every consideration--interest, duty, and humanity, the love of country, the sense of wrong, hatred of oppressors and treacherous and faithless confederates, and, finally, despair--would impel them to the most daring and desperate resistance in defence of property, family, country, liberty, and existence."[ ] the student unfamiliar with the confederate side of the brothers' war can find the whole of it clearly stated in these short passages re-enforced by the cognate ones quoted above from the speech of march , . the maintenance of the then existing relations between white and black was vital both to liberty and existence. because of the world-wide diversity of the two races they cannot be socially or politically equal (a subject which we will deal with specially after a while). and it was the duty of the south to fight to the bitter end "in defence of property, family, country, liberty, and existence." this is the marrow of the quotations. they convincingly show not only the grasp of the statesman, but the prescience of the prophet, as has been plainly proved by the brothers' war and what followed in its track. opposition to the tariff, which in his judgment favored the manufacturing at the expense of the staple states, seems to have been the first thing that led calhoun to take a pro-southern stand in politics.[ ] it finally produced the famous nullification episode, which we have already somewhat discussed. in this his platform was simply anti-tariff. but the current, without his being aware of it, was carrying him resistlessly and rapidly on into the anti-abolition career in which his life ended. it was the petition presented in to congress against slavery in the district of columbia which, it seems, was the first thing that opened his eyes to the menace of abolition. note his wonderful foresight. compare him with cicero just before the outbreak of the war between pompey and cæsar; or with demosthenes before philip discloses his purpose towards greece; or with carl marx, predicting the future of co-operative enterprise. cicero almost foresees nothing--he mostly fears; marx is utterly mistaken. the divination of demosthenes is far superior, and it is clear; yet it is belated when it comes. but calhoun sees with "appalling clearness," as von holst says, all the storm-cloud from which tempest and tornado will ravage the entire land, just as its first speck shows on the horizon; and nobody else will see that. if this abolition movement is not stopped in its incipiency, it will soon get beyond all control. this he says over and over in his public place. what a horrible spectre of the future haunted him for the rest of his life! the south in her self-defence forced out of the union, and then perhaps overcome in war. after her braves have perished, and their dear ones at home have been plunged in the depths of want, the triumphant abolitionists will have the former slaves to lord it over them. his conscience commanded him to stand by slavery as the fundamental condition of his people's well-being; it also at the same time commanded him to strain all his energies to save the union by making it the protector instead of the assailant of slavery. this was the insuperable task which the powers in the unseen put him in the treadmill to do. from the time he commenced the discussion of the anti-slavery petitions until his exclamation over the "poor south," on his death-bed, life was to him but a deepening agony of solicitude and utmost effort,--solicitude for his country and section, effort to avert the danger that became greater and more awful to him every day. he strove after remedies under the constitution. the more he recalled the success of the single stand of south carolina against the tariff, the prouder he became of being the author of nullification. its dearness to him was that it was peaceable as well as efficient. the better opinion of the state-rights school is that nullification is an absurdity, and that south carolina's only true remedy against the tariff was to secede if it were not repealed. but he knew better than everybody else that secession meant internecine war between the sections, and this influenced him to exalt peaceable nullification above bloody secession. it needs not to consider each barrier, whether party combinations, admission of new slave states, legislation, etc., that he tried to erect against the incoming oceanic wave. but we must briefly consider the amendment of the constitution which he proposed. he wanted the north and the south each to have a president, as he said, "to be so elected, as that the two should be constituted the special organs and representatives of the respective sections in the executive department of the government; and requiring each to approve all the acts of congress before they shall become laws."[ ] do this, he urged, and neither section can use the powers of government to injure the other, for whatever proposed law menaces a section will be vetoed by its president. it profits the student of the science of government to consider the historical examples which calhoun adduced here. they are indeed so apt that the hearing which has ever been denied him should be granted him at least academically. he says: "the two most distinguished constitutional governments of antiquity both in respect to permanence and power had a dual executive. i refer to those of sparta and rome."[ ] it is interesting to be informed that those same wise iroquois from whom our fathers probably got the precedent of the old confederation, put in practice something very like what calhoun advises. we append both the account and instructive comment of morgan: "when the iroquois confederacy was formed, or soon after that event, two permanent war-chiefships were created and named.... as general commanders they had charge of the military affairs of the confederacy, and the command of its joint forces when united in a general expedition.... the creation of two principal war-chiefs instead of one, and with equal power, argues a subtle and calculating policy to prevent the domination of a single man even in their military affairs. they did without experience precisely as the romans did in creating two consuls instead of one, after they had abolished the office of _rex_. two consuls would balance the military power between them, and prevent either from becoming supreme. among the iroquois this office never became influential."[ ] but calhoun lays much more stress upon another example,--that of the protection which the roman plebeians got in tribunes elected from their own order alone, which tribunes could veto any act of the lawmaking organs, all of which were then actually in the hands of their oppressors, that is, the order of patricians; the result being that in course of time the plebeians achieved equality.[ ] of course the inevitable could not be put off. and yet ought we not to admire the inventive genius of the statesman who of all proposed the remedy that promised the best? and ought we not also to cherish in affectionate memory this last and high effort of calhoun to avert a dreadful brothers' war at hand, the end and consequences of which nobody could then forecast? the situation of rome granting tribunes to the plebs was widely different from ours. that was a case of giving a veto to one class only, and to a class which belonged to the entire body politic. calhoun proposed not a single veto, but two; neither one to be given such a class as we have just mentioned, but a veto to each one of two geographical divisions, in one of which there was a developed, and in the other a nascent and almost complete, nationality, these two nationalities already closed with each other in a life and death grapple. his hope must have been to confine the combatants to an arena which could be effectually policed by the civil power, and in which all fighting except with buttoned foils be prevented. we may be almost sure that his heart broke when that presentiment which often comes to the dying as clear as sunlight revealed the bloody war that was quickening its approach. o the unutterable pathos of his life from to ! during this time he was like the mother of a boy whom consumption has marked for its own. in advance of all others she reads the first symptom, nay, she anticipates it. all those who believe that they know him as well as she does, laugh at her fears with unsympathetic incredulity. but her eyes never fail to see grim death at the door, although bravely she hopes against hope, and fights, fights, fights. inexorably, relentlessly the end, which others now begin to discern, comes on, but until the last breath of her darling she has ever some suggestion of change of place or climate, of a new remedy, of something else to be done. it is the supreme tragedy of her trial that while outwardly she is all self-gratifying love, inwardly she is all self-consuming misery. we say the love of a mother is greater than all other. but we know that she loves her country better than she does her child. patriotism is as yet the strongest love of all. realize that our exalted patriot was tending and nursing the cause of his country. think of the noble lee, his career of victory over, wearing away the winter at petersburg, hourly expecting his line, so tensely stretched in order to face overwhelming odds, to break; think of him after it does break, on the retreat, when he has discovered that his supplies have gone wrong; and think of him when he must yield the sword as ever memorable as hannibal's. the world has given lee, and will long give him, rains of gracious tears. but he was never plagued with calhoun's sharpened eyes to future disaster, and he was confident that he would reach the mountains almost until the very moment of surrender. think rather of the great sufferers for high causes,--bonnivard, wearing a pathway over the stone floor of his prison; lear, of all of shakspeare's heroes, in the deepest gulf of misfortune; and especially of calvary and the crucifixion, for jesus travailed for his brothers and sisters. it is here you must look for the like of calhoun. for fifteen years that "mass of moan" which was coming to his dear ones pierced his ears plainer and plainer and made his heart sicker and sicker, and during this long bloody sweat he gave the rarest devotion and self-sacrifice to his country which he feared more and more was to plunge over the precipice. as we recall the scene of his death it makes us rejoice to know that the cross he had borne so long has at last been cast off and he has entered into the rest of the martyr-patriot. then it occurs to us that he carried with him his affections,--too lofty not to be immortal,--and we cannot believe that the sad spirit ever smiled until wade hampton, twenty-six years afterwards, re-erected white domination in south carolina. dixie will never forget that one who of all her sons loved her best and suffered for her the most. and it is my conviction that each noblest soul of the north will after a while revere in calhoun the american parallel to the moral grandeur of dante, of whom michaelangelo said he would cheerfully endure his exile and all his misfortunes for his glory. chapter viii webster calhoun was the pre-eminent champion of the southern cause in the union, while toombs was that of southern nationalization seeking independence. webster was the pre-eminent champion of american nationalization seeking continental union. toombs and webster are therefore in antithesis; and it will be well for me to begin the chapter by anticipating some of the characteristics of the former, who will be treated at large later on, and briefly contrasting the two. by nature toombs was so prone to action that even in his daily recreation--talk with the nearest to him was by far the most of it--his immense and tireless outpouring of fine phrase, wisdom, and wit was the increasing wonder of all who knew him. webster's proneness was to repose, almost indolence. he often seemed lethargic. his activity could be excited only by the pressure of necessity. this difference between the two showed itself very markedly in their several careers. toombs, coming to the bar in the last year of his nonage, took the profession at once to his heart, settled in his native county, in a lucrative field of practice, overcame all hindrances of natural defects and insufficient training seemingly by a mere act of will, and in four or five years his collecting a thousand-dollar fee in an adjoining county was no very uncommon thing. when he was twenty-eight he was a fully developed lawyer and advocate on every side--law, equity, and criminal--of the courts of that prosperous planting community, then overrunning with cases of importance, and his annual income from practice was $ , . webster went up much more slowly. he read long and industriously; was not called until he was twenty-three; for the next two and a half years was content with an income of $ or $ ; and then for nine years at portsmouth his average income was $ , yearly. even when webster at thirty-four removed to boston he was hardly as a lawyer the equal of toombs at twenty-eight; and i believe that the latter was always the superior lawyer. the greater reputation of webster is due to the greater reputation of his cases, and of the tribunal wherein he long held the lead. we see a like difference between the two in congress. webster shirks the routine duties of his place to gain opportunity for practice in the united states supreme court. toombs stays away from all courts during the session, and gives every measure before the body to which he belongs its proper attention, study, and labor. but the performance by him of all the many duties of representative or senator, whether little or great, with unparalleled diligence, ability, and splendor, has been so completely obscured by the few of webster's great congressional exploits, that it is not now cared for by anybody. the greater lawyer and the greater congressman has been accorded the lesser renown. this is because of the relation which each one bore to the two publics which i have tried to make you understand,--the southern public and the northern public. toombs's legal career was mainly in the courts of his own state. it was not much heard of outside, in even the southern public, until his extraordinarily meritorious discharge of congressional duties involving a mastery of law was observed. although some of webster's cases in state courts were celebrated, his greatest ones, to be considered in a moment, were won in the united states supreme court, in the eyes of both publics watching intently. the highest accomplishments of toombs in the non-sectional parts of his congressional career were almost matters of indifference at the time to both publics, becoming steadily more absorbed in pro- and anti-slavery politics; and what he did in the other part of it excited the hostility of the northern public, and brought him obloquy instead of good name. the few memorable deeds of webster in congress were victorious vindications of the cause clearest of all to the northern, that is, the free-labor, public. that public has at last not only conquered, but it has annexed the other as a part of itself. and so toombs's fame as a lawyer and statesman has been left so far behind that it can hardly hope ever to have impartial and fair comparison with that of webster. just one more parallel, and i shall proceed with my sketch. each one of the two, in order to accept his mission of leadership, was plainly made by his destiny to abandon a previously cherished doctrine for a new and contrary one. toombs was once an ardent union man, webster was once almost a secessionist. in his taylor speech, made in the united states house of representatives july , , speaking of the then expected acquisition of territory, toombs said: "all the rest of this continent is not worth our glorious union, much less these contemptible provinces which now threaten us with such evils. it were better that we should throw back the worthless boon, and let the inhabitants work out their own destiny, than that we should endanger our peace, our safety, and our nationality by their incorporation in our union." the silly embargo measures, making war upon our own citizens instead of our enemies, had deeply injured new england interests. on their heel came the second war with england, into which the government of france had, as mr. lodge says, "tricked us ... by most profligate lying."[ ] this war paralyzed the production and occupations of webster's people. a speech made by him july , , is "a strong, calm statement of the grounds of opposition to the war."[ ] mr. lodge quotes and emphasizes a passage as proof that webster, although a federalist, and the majority of his party in new england were--to use the words of the same author--"prepared to go to the very edge of the narrow legal line which divides constitutional opposition from treasonable resistance,"[ ] was then standing by the union with might and main. this quotation, separated from its circumstances and the immediate sequel, strongly supports the contention. the speech being printed, circulated widely among those federalists who were gravitating so strongly towards "treasonable resistance." by reason of it webster was chosen as a delegate to a convention, held the next month. this man, whom mr. lodge would have us believe to be so fixedly counter to the then uppermost revolutionary sentiment of his party, was chosen to be their mouthpiece. he wrote their report--the "rockingham memorial" in the form of a letter to president madison. mr. lodge thus contrasts the report and the speech. "in one point the memorial differed curiously from the oration of the month before. the latter pointed to the suffrage as the mode of redress; the former distinctly hinted at and almost threatened secession, even while it deplored a dissolution of the union as a possible result of the administration's policy."[ ] then the biographer most confidently states that in the speech webster was declaring his own views, but in the other document he was declaring those of members of his party. but the average american will be sure that those familiar with the speech at the time did not strain its counsels as far away from their own as mr. lodge does, otherwise they would not have elected him as delegate; and further, he never would have made their report for them unless he had been known to entertain their own sentiments.[ ] the popular wave that he had thus mounted carried the draftsman of the "rockingham memorial" into congress, where, while british armies were actually treading our soil, he voted against the taxes proposed for national defence. mr. lodge does not go the full length of sustaining this conduct.[ ] the severe comment of another biographer will be cordially approved by average readers, northern and southern.[ ] the facts properly considered show that from the speech of july , , on, webster, although he stood aloof from the hartford convention movement, was in full sympathy with the federalists of new england, whom the national government by its unrighteous oppressions had driven to contemplate disunion as a possible measure of self-protection. this attitude of webster towards the union was entirely contrary to that which afterwards became his power and glory among his countrymen. we wish it noted that as he changed with the people of new england from anti-tariff to pro-tariff politics, he likewise changed with them in their principles as to the union; and that toombs went with the south, in an opposite direction, that is, from embrace to rejection of the union. having in the foregoing brought out the prominent characteristics of webster's nature and career, and having also impressed you that he, like all other great statesmen, could lead only by following his people, i will cursorily trace him from stage to stage through his development. he was selected in infancy, if not before by providence, to be made not the expounder of the constitution, but the invincible defender of the union. when his activity begins, he is at first to consolidate the union by the management of some great law cases, and delivery of occasional addresses to popular assemblies; and afterwards in his high place as united states senator he is to demonstrate to the northern public its complete guaranty of their highest material interests, and set it in their hearts above all things else. thus did providence assign to him the preservation of the greatest of all democracies, to the end that there be no break in the future course of human improvement. before his activity begins the powers train him. they gave him a long education, and a slow growth as a statesman. he could never remember when he had been unable to read. his feeble physique while a child shielded him from the labor required of the other children, and permitted him to enjoy books. early he soaked his mind in the king james version of the bible and other good english standards. as he grew apace his opportunities of reading were far better than those of calhoun, who never saw even a circulating library until he was in his thirteenth year, and soon was taken away from that. these opportunities he used in his leisurely way. his mind was strong and his memory good, and he digested and kept under command what he read. his schooling and college course were in the main continuous. he got to dartmouth at fifteen, where he spent four years. here he made the reputation of being the best speaker and writer of all the students. in his study for the law he took ample time. and in his first years of practice he had much leisure. besides revelling in the latin classics, shakspeare, milton, pope, and cowper, and much history, he was keenly observant of what was going on about him. we know how jeremiah mason gave him lessons both in law, rhetoric, and elocution to his great advancement. we know too that his interest in current political questions was vigilant. he took his seat in congress may, , being then a little over thirty-one. his speech against a bill to encourage enlistments made january , the next year, shows, as mr. lodge says, that "he was now master of the style at which he aimed."[ ] of this peculiar style i shall say something after a while. mention of his greatest exploits in consolidating the union is now in order. the first of these is his conduct of the dartmouth college case in the united states supreme court. it is entirely out of place for me to give even the briefest notice of the details which fill mr. shirley's unique book.[ ] little more than emphasis of the effect of the decision to knit more closely the bonds of union between the states is required. this effect will be considered more carefully when we comment on gibbons _v._ ogden, which finishes the important work commenced in the other. it needs only to remind the reader now that the protection of contracts against impairing state legislation has contributed probably more than anything else to the prosperous development of american internal trade and commerce,--a most potent factor in consolidating the union,--and that this protection originates in the dartmouth college decision. but there is something special to be said of webster as to the case. he did not stress the constitutional point--that upon which the judgment was finally placed--either in his law-brief or argument. the victory is all due to his consummate management of the court, especially of the chief-justice. the latter really found the true ground of the decision. but the powers had webster in hand, and it suited their purposes to crown their _liebling_ with the credit of the decision. when he found out the reasons given for the ruling he had won, i fancy that a good angel of his destiny whispered in his ear he ought to have discerned that the weal of all classes of his entire country, and not merely that of its colleges, was at stake in his case, and he must never in the future overlook such an opportunity again. in his hanover fourth of july speech, made when he was only eighteen years old, to quote from the authority we make so much use of, "the boy webster preached love of country, the grandeur of american nationality, fidelity to the constitution as the bulwark of nationality, and the necessity and the nobility of the union of the states."[ ] mr. lodge impressively adds, "and that was the message which the man webster delivered to his fellow men."[ ] his fryeburg fourth of july speech, made not long afterwards, was in the same strain. after the powers had thus started him in the way they wanted him to go, we have noted above how he was carried by the federalists of new england into a movement hostile to the union. this brief wandering from his destiny, as it were, is to be compared with his neglect to grasp the point in the dartmouth college case which was in the exact line of that high destiny. this shows how even the greatest genius must stumble and grope before it has found the right road. i think the venus and adonis, lucrece, first part of henry vi, and the sonnets of shakspeare are like examples. the plymouth oration, delivered in , begins a new and very important stage of webster's career. as virginia was the mother of the southern states, so new england was in large measure the mother of the northern. the latter was the very fountain of the free-labor nationalization. and as she was known to be exceptionally advanced in intellectual as well as material development, she was to all the free states both their great example and highest authority. hardly anybody has even yet fully taken in all the permanent good which new england has done for herself at home and for her children and scholars outside. of course still less of it was understood in . but in the plymouth oration webster set forth so much of it, the effect upon new england was magical. it was as if he had raised a curtain concealing great riches and treasures of her merit and glory, the existence of which had not been suspected. new englanders all fell in love with him, and accorded him the foremost place among their counsellors. the anti-slavery spirit of the speech deserves special notice. i do not mean to emphasize the oft-quoted passage denouncing the african slave-trade; for everybody in the south--even the smuggler and the few purchasers who encouraged him--had been against legalizing it, for reasons mentioned above, from a time long before the southern states showed a desire in the constitutional convention to stop the trade at once. i mean his mention of slavery in the west indies. i do not think that he had the south in mind, stressing as he does the absenteeism of the masters and the mortgages of their lands for capital borrowed in england. but much else that he says of the evil effects of slavery could be easily applied, at least in some measure, to the system as it then existed in the south, such as, for instance, the backwardness to make permanent improvements or endow colleges. his contrast of new england with the west indies is intended to show that a free-labor community is far superior to a slave-labor community in the most important elements of a good and progressive civilization. his conviction of this truth is serious and undoubting. and those few words, "the unmitigated toil of slavery," which show that he erroneously believed that the slave toiled as hard as the wage-earning laborer, evince a strong moral revulsion on his part. we summarize as to the plymouth oration. it made webster really the political leader of new england, which--the animosity excited by the embargo and the late war having become a forgotten thing of the past--is now both in command of and also in the van of the free-labor and anti-slavery nationalization, destined by the powers to perpetuate the union. we have told you how webster--being at the time the very antipodes of what he was afterwards when he talked with bosworth as to the rhode island case--missed the true and cardinal point in the dartmouth college case, and how the powers, after having marshall to establish it, gave all the glory of the great accomplishment to webster. we come now to gibbons _v._ ogden, argued in , in which the latter made far more than ample amends for his shortcoming, and taught even the great marshall how to decide. new york state had given fulton and livingston for a term exclusive steam navigation of all its waters, and webster was to maintain that the grant impugned the federal constitution and was therefore invalid. the question was _res integra_, without analogies which often help us forlorn advocates who cannot find a precedent and are utterly without any literature suggesting the _ratio decidendi_. i know i cannot explain to a layman how such cases as these bewilder and paralyze the typical anglo-american judge, who has walked all his life by precedent and not by sight. further, webster's side antagonized prevailing sentiment and, it would be hardly too much to say, the public conscience; either one of which generally sways courts more powerfully than the law-brief, argument, and appeal of complete advocates. the only thing which webster could oppose to these formidable odds was just a clause of a sentence of the constitution, this clause being only of twelve words when even the belonging context is read into it,[ ] and appearing to be, we cannot say surplusage, but neither well-considered nor of any particular force. out of this he constructed such a perfect and wise doctrine of the immunity of our interstate commerce from local attack and restraint that every succeeding generation has admired its wisdom more, and subsequent additions and extensions of importance are all manifest conclusions from the promises which he made good. reading and reflecting for writing my "american law studies" familiarized me with a few instances in which a man has left a lasting impress upon the development of the law (some of which instances will be mentioned in a moment). thus i was led to meditate webster's work in this case; and it becomes an increasing wonder to me. read what his biographer tells of the unfavorable circumstances of the preparation for the argument and how he overcame them by superhuman effort. read also his own account as given by harvey, how wirt, his associate, older and of much more experience in that court, disparaged the ground upon which he said he should stand, and proposed another; and how marshall drank in every word of webster's argument, and afterwards virtually reproduced it in the opinion. but the great thing is what he did for the law. the current distribution of the common law under its larger heads was made by hale and blackstone after that of the contemporary civilians, which is founded upon that of the institutes of justinian. this book is but a reproduction of that of gaius. so we may assert of this last mentioned author that it is his systematization which still obtains both in the english and roman law, that is to say, the entire law of the enlightened world.[ ] a few english chancellors perceptibly moulded equity; mansfield almost created english commercial law; in our country, hamilton, in one argument overturned the doctrine of tacking securities, and in another remade the essentials of libel; our great text-author bishop, with his treatise often worked over in new editions, is really the enacter of the american law of divorce; and marshall's additions to our federal law will never be forgotten. by what he did in gibbons _v._ ogden, webster has won a proud place in the small company of great law-givers. and he is entitled to a liberal share of the glory which the dartmouth college decision has won, for without him marshall would have had no opportunity. to estimate the prodigious effect of the rulings in these two cases, try to realize to yourself what would be the consequences to american trade and commerce if the states were not effectually kept from infringing contracts or granting monopolies of transportation. try to realize the loss, the inconvenience, the trouble, the vexation, all the evil that would have unavoidably befallen us if these two companion decisions and the subsequent ones following them as precedents or extending them as analogies, had not made practically the whole of american inland business a unit--to use webster's word--under the protection everywhere of the same impartial law. the longer you think it over the more confirmed will be your opinion that from no other cause has the evolution away from the old independence of states towards a permanent union and a single organism of perpetually federated communities been more furthered. the unification of production and distribution thus given resistless impulse has almost of itself alone worked the unification of all our states. so looking back from the standpoint of to-day we may be sure that the powers had webster by his accomplishment in the cases now in mind, to build for perpetual union far better than he knew. it needs not to dwell upon the bunker hill oration, made june , . it is, as i believe, the most familiar as a whole of all speeches to americans. it did not stop with adding greatly to the influence he had won over new england by the plymouth oration; it revealed him to the whole country as its supreme orator. bear in mind its theme, remembering how large a part the battle of bunker hill was in founding our union. the plainest manifestation that providence ever made of its favoritism to webster was its having adams and jefferson both to die on the same day of all the year the most commemorative of each. by the eulogy of the two patriots which webster made the next month he attained the height of his popular celebrity. his subject was no longer one that principally concerned new england and the north, but it was the co-operation of both sections in making the united states. slowly, but surely, he has climbed to the top of authority, whence he ever draws audience and attention from north and south, both in the present and for ages after the brothers' war. these three popular speeches just noticed are unique in oratory, not in their general character, but in the nobility of the subjects, the ripeness of the occasion, the profound wisdom of treatment, and the extraordinary elevation and perfection of style. another stage begins in with the reply to hayne. what webster says therein, recommending brotherly love between the sections, and commending the union, he reproduced with grateful variation in many memorable passages of later speeches. the original and reproductions are the most precious gems of our literature, ranking in excellence even above poe's poetry, america's best. the speech of against calhoun's nullification resolutions, that which won for webster the cognomen, the expounder of the constitution, belongs to the next succeeding stage, wherein he rose from supreme panegyric to invincible defence of the union. as we have already given in a former chapter this performance its due praise, we need not say more of it. this chapter would not be complete if we failed to glance at the essentials of webster's greatness as an orator, and to point out the means used by the powers to give him his extraordinary excellence. he did not stale himself by discussing trivial matters. when he rose, people knew that he had an important message, and they ought to attend. in harmony with this was his uniform seriousness, gravity, and becoming dignity of manner; and even in his merry-making humor, as instanced in describing hayne leading the south carolina militia, he never stooped. he spoke to the sound common sense and the regnant conscience of the masses. his propositions, his illustrations, his argument went home without effort to every one who thought at all and who cared for moral virtue. the entire country has heard with great acceptance that davy crockett said to him, "mr. webster, you are not the great orator people say you are; for i heard your speech, and i understood every word of it." whether this be an invention or not, it well characterizes his easy intelligibility. herbert spencer could have exampled the main proposition of his able essay on style by webster's best efforts, and every part and parcel of them--statement of proposition, necessary explanation and narrative, distinctions, illustrations, reasoning, invocation of feeling--appeal to the sense of justice. i often feel that he is not more majestic in any particular than the always manifest meaning of what he says. in this he reminds of bacon. he chose only the most important subjects; he befittingly addressed always the higher nature of his hearers; and he always spoke with a transparent clearness. but all this does not indicate more than the mere beginning of true eloquence. the greatest teachers--those who win and keep the admiration of the world--have, as their worshippers teach us, gifts of expression commensurate with the desert of their communications. remember homer, plato, demosthenes, vergil, cicero, dante, bacon, goethe, and above all shakspeare. as the reader hangs over them he becomes more and more unconscious of what we call, rather vaguely, their style. their diction, in unhackneyed use of hackneyed words, in metaphors that flash like electric sparks, in appropriateness of varied rhythm, and all appertaining jewels, becomes to him but a belonging of the much more precious sense. as it must impart that without impediment it is unconsciously made as like it as the protecting coloring of animals is made like that of the objects amidst which they lurk. there has been but one other which admits of comparison in world-wide secular importance with webster's theme--that which inspired "tu regere imperio populos, romane, memento." we have learned how the �neid was prized above all other poetry, not only by the romans themselves, but, long after they had become a mere name and memory, by the different nations of europe. plainly it was because vergil, in that "stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man," had fitly celebrated the greatest factor delivering from barbarism, and spreading civilization abroad, that had yet appeared in history,--the roman empire. the american union, immeasurably exceeding that empire in immediate good to millions at home, and in fair promise to all the earth, was webster's subject. it got from him an appropriate style. the variety of ornament in his language reaches all the way from the modest violets of the anglo-saxon common to bunyan and king james's version, up to the most gorgeous trappings which are part and parcel of the sense in the best passages of paradise lost. there is also a variety of idiom. he uses that of the field or street, or of the gentleman or of the scholar, as best suits. he affected short sentences, and also pure english words. he told davis to weed the latin words out of his speech on adams and jefferson. but when occasion calls he can revel in that latinity of our tongue which, as de quincey has noted, becomes intense with shakspeare, when he is soaring his strongest. if you are inclined to dispute this, look over the last two sentences of the reply to hayne. how you would lower this sublime peroration into the dust, if you replaced the latin with native derivatives, or changed the long for short sentences in what is now above all example in english or american oratory, and can be paralleled in structure, "ocean-roll of rhythm," and exquisite words only by the most famous paragraphs of cicero and livy. as our last word here, webster always imparts the wisest counsel as to the american union in phrase all-golden, and his eloquence is entitled to praise beyond all other, because it is always what his high subject demands. as i have to do mainly with the permanent and lasting in webster, i can merely allude to his physical endowments, described with such rapture by march, choate, and many others of his time, and well summarized by mr. lodge. i must remind the reader how it accorded with the purpose of the powers to bestow upon their favorite majesty of form, mien, and look, a voice that suggested the music of the spheres, action that would have been a model to demosthenes; in short, a physique for the orator superior to any on record. these things helped him mightily in his day. apparently i finished with webster's education some pages back of this. but the more important part of it has not as yet been touched upon; and it is incumbent upon me to tell it, because of the lesson we ought to learn from it. the largest and most characterizing part of our education--perhaps it would more accurately express my meaning to say our culture--each one of us gets from his associations, from his contact with the people of all sorts around him in his infancy, boyhood, and manhood often as far on as middle age, if not sometimes farther. we get it by imitation, unconscious and conscious, and by absorption from what we see, hear, and read, etc., which absorption is often most active when we are least aware of it. now let us consider the community of which webster was the product. in the plymouth oration, as we have already suggested, he exhibits the exceptional progress and acquisitions of new england. what other community ever showed greater courage against danger or greater energy against obstacles, and such wise building-up of a new country in a strange land? the pilgrim fathers could not have liberty and their own religion at home, and for these they went into the wilderness. there they kept the savage at bay. with soil and climate both unfavorable they wrought out general plenty and comfort. they prospered in industry. they equalized as far as they could all in property rights. and these liberty-lovers gave the regulation of local affairs to the town meeting, of which webster says: "nothing can exceed the utility of these little bodies. they are so many councils or parliaments, in which common interests are discussed, and useful knowledge acquired and communicated." jefferson, the great apostle of popular self-government, most earnestly longed to see all america outside of new england divided into such townships as hers. but to return to the pilgrims. they established schools and churches everywhere. free education was maintained by taxation of all property. let us sum up. here was a country in which everybody had been well trained in the available ways of self-support and also of saving and accumulating,--the very first essential to make good citizens. such citizens were required to administer their public affairs themselves; and thus they received the very best political education and training in a school of genuine democracy,--which is the next essential. the children of each generation were schooled better than those of the former, the colleges and universities constantly did better with the students, and libraries open to the public both multiplied and enlarged,--the third essential. and education and business were rationally mixed, until in webster's time it might be said with truth that the average new englander worked with a will, and wisely, every day to maintain himself and family, and also found leisure to add something of value to his store of knowledge. here is another essential. the moral and religious atmosphere became purer and purer, and more and more on all sides good intention was conspicuous in the light, and evil intention hid itself deep in the dark. this is the last essential. the foregoing is made up from the plymouth oration. webster was too near to discern all the intellectual and moral advancement and the opulent future promise of his own community, the proper fruit of the conditions just summarized.[ ] let us indicate by only such a paucity of examples as we have room for. able and fully furnished lawyers everywhere. think of story, a most diligently attending judge and one of the best; also finding time both to be the first law professor and most fertile and eminent author of the age, exhausting english and american sources and authority in his books, and crowding them with a civil law learning to be surpassed only by that of the roman jurists of germany; let ticknor, whom we may call the founder of the post classical school of literature in our country, suggest the students of modern languages who followed in an illustrious line,--let him suggest also the famous historians, such as prescott, bancroft, hildreth, motley, parkman, really representatives of the school just mentioned, using methods that got into the american air first from ticknor; let channing suggest the pulpit,--channing, who raised religion from the gloom of dogma and orthodoxy into a life of angelic joy; what can one say to describe emerson in a breath,--the teacher to us all of fit aspiration, right thinking, noble expression, the highest virtue and truest religion, and who lived, as dr. heber newton has lately told, the most perfect of lives as a man; hawthorne, showing the world sick with its yearning for moral redemption that even a disgraced, lone, and friendless woman can by a subsequent life of unreserved confession, purity, and love to her neighbors turn a horrible brand of guilt into a jewel more precious and brilliant than diamond,--how his consummate achievement rebukes the sixty years' dilatoriness of goethe over his unfinished faust; and divine poets, whittier, longfellow, lowell, and holmes,--the last two conspicuous in letters, lowell being in my judgment the greatest american man of letters; i have said nothing of the statesmen and orators, beginning with fisher ames and john adams,--and there are others in every high round of the intellectual life known all over the land whose names i must omit. in this enumeration i have intentionally looked somewhat forward; for what is in one particular generation you cannot find out until its effects are plain in the next. i want to accentuate it that webster belonged to a society which had made some of the extraordinary figures whose names are given, and was making the rest of them. when the view just suggested has been taken, and if in comparing new england with any other community--even with athens, florence, england, or germany, in their best eras--periods of time be equalized and differences of population be properly allowed for, it will appear that the conditions moulding webster were more energetic in productivity than can be found elsewhere. and if, in this comparison, the relative general condition of the masses in each community be duly taken into the account, the result will be far more favorable to new england; for a high level of the masses is a much better proof of a fecund culture than merely many striking individual instances. thus we bring out the point that webster was born, grew up, and lived in a nursery prolific in men and women of extraordinary powers and virtues. how insignificant is the muster-roll of any other part of our country! i compare that of the south because i am familiar with it, and one can with better manners disparage his own section than another. the ante-bellum southern treasures of art and literature except speeches, political and forensic, can be counted on the fingers of one hand without taking them all. the poetry of poe, a few essays of legaré, especially that on demosthenes, calhoun's dissertation on government, and toombs's tremont temple lecture, are all that are pre-eminent; and some of the historians of our literature insist that poe was southern only in his prejudices, and not in his making. to turn away from authors, how few can be found to compare in education, polish, and literary or scientific accomplishments with average new englanders of their several professions or occupations. toombs, in the diamond-like brilliance of his extempore effusion in talks or speeches, is as solitary in the south as catullus, the greatest of the spontaneous poets of his nation, was in the rome of his day. webster absorbed and absorbed, assimilated and assimilated, all the better elements of this marvellous new england culture, which i am painfully conscious of having most insufficiently described above, until at last he mounted its eminences in his profession, in the politics of democracy, æsthetic taste, and especially statesmanly eloquence. so assured was his stand upon these eminences that all the wisest and most refined of the section spontaneously and involuntarily did him obeisance, recognizing in him their ideal of wisdom and counsel befittingly expressed. we can stop to give only two examples. edward everett is the one american master of grand rhetoric. he heard the reply to hayne, and, as he says, he could not but be reminded throughout of demosthenes' making the unrivalled crown oration. choate, profoundly versed in the law, the incomparable forensic advocate and popular speaker, daily flying higher with inspiration drawn from demosthenes and cicero--he poured out his admiration in many utterances that have already become classic. webster was made in and by new england, and not for herself alone. the toast, "daniel webster,--the gift of new england to his country, his whole country, and nothing but his country," to which he responded december , , tells but the truth. no american other than a new englander ever had what one may term such a greatness breeding environment as he. and passing in review all the famous children of those famous six states, whether they spent their lives at home as choate, or developed elsewhere as henry ward beecher, it is my decided opinion that daniel webster as fruit and example of her culture is new england's greatest glory. there remain now but a few prominences of webster for me to touch upon. his speech of march , , was fiercely denounced by the root-and-branch abolitionists. horace mann called him a fallen lucifer. sumner charged him with apostasy. giddings said he had struck "a blow against freedom and the constitutional rights of the free states which no southern arm could have given." theodore parker could think of no comparable deed of any other new englander except the treachery of benedict arnold. wittier condemned him to everlasting obloquy in a lofty lyric, which from its very title of one word throughout was reprobation more stinging than the world-known lampoon of catullus against julius cæsar. the effect of this tempest has not yet all died out; and in many quarters of the north webster is still regarded as a renegade. his defenders, however, multiply and become more earnest and strong. let us consider this speech with the serenity and riper judgment which should mark the historical writer of to-day. first and foremost let us grasp the wide difference of the situation from that at the beginning of . then, the question was only remotely a pro-slavery or southern one. a southern president, the most popular american, of great firmness of purpose and extraordinary courage, had taken a decided stand against the movement of one southern state hostile to the general government,--a stand the more decided because he cordially hated calhoun, who was leading the movement. the southern leaders outside of that state did not approve of nullification; most of them believing it was an absurdity for a state to contend she could stay in the union and at the same time rightfully refuse to perform a condition of that union. it seemed that no southern state except virginia would stand by south carolina in the event of a collision between her and the united states. we can well understand that webster could then see no danger to the cause he loved above all others, that is, the union, in uncompromisingly demanding that the revenue be collected, and with force if necessary. nullification was palpably unjustifiable, even under the doctrine prevalent in the south. we have explained how calhoun's extreme desire for peaceable remedies only, led him to champion this illogical measure. the theory of state sovereignty demanded that, instead of the nullification ordinance, south carolina pass an ordinance of secession, conditioned to commence its operation at a stated time if the objectionable duties had not been repealed. the situation in was that all the north and nearly all of the south were arrayed under a southern leader against only one southern state, making a demand which was plainly untenable in either one of the two differing schools of constitutional construction. but the situation, in , was a south solidly united, not upon such an obvious heresy as nullification, but aroused as one man to protect the very underpinning of its social structure. it was standing confidently upon the doctrine of state sovereignty, which, as the historical records all showed, was the creed of the generation, both north and south, that made the constitution. as we have already told, calhoun in probably convinced webster that the states were sovereign. that did not mean that the force-bill was wrong; it meant only that if south carolina chose, she could rightfully secede. and we may say that this great argument of calhoun, demolishing as it does the premises of webster, was really irrelevant, for it did not support his own proposition. now in , as webster saw it, the south was justified by the constitution, however foolish might be her policy, and he was too conscientious to oppose what he believed right and just. in addition to this claim by the south of state sovereignty as abstractly right, his conscience told him that some of her practical demands were just. it had been provided not only that all of texas south of ° ' be admitted with slavery, but further that four other states be made out of the same territory. although webster was a free-soiler from first to last, his conscience told him peremptorily that the only honest course of congress as to the provision mentioned, which was really a solemn contract with texas, was to perform the contract in good faith. this advice, of course, aroused the ire of the abolitionists, who had united upon the position that no other slave state should ever be admitted into the union. and he boldly said that the south was right in her complaint that there was disinclination both among individuals and public authorities at the north to execute the fugitive slave law. meditate these serious words: "i desire to call the attention of all sober-minded men at the north, of all conscientious men, of all men who are not carried away by some fanatical idea or some false impression, to their constitutional obligations. i put it to all the sober and sound minds at the north as a question of morals and a question of conscience, what right have they, in their legislative capacity or any other capacity, to endeavor to get round this constitution, or to embarrass the free exercise of the rights secured by the constitution to the persons whose slaves escape from them? none at all; none at all. neither in the forum of conscience, nor before the face of the constitution, are they, in my opinion, justified in such an attempt." i must believe that as time rolls on the outcry against this position of webster's, so unshakably founded in conscience and reason as the position is, must not only cease, but turn to words of praise and commendation. the northern fanatics who tried to abolish slavery by repudiating such solemn contracts as the resolution of march , , respecting the admission of texas, and the fugitive slave restoration clause of the federal constitution, _while purposing to stay in the union_, were just as morally wrong as were the southern fanatics who proposed to stay in the union and enjoy its benefits and not pay the taxes necessary for its maintenance. one other passage of this speech has been strongly attacked. webster opposed applying the wilmot proviso to california and new mexico, where, as he said, "the law of nature, of physical geography, the law of the formation of the earth ... settles forever with a strength beyond all terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist." to apply the proviso would be, as he added, to "take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of nature," and "to re-enact the will of god;" and its insertion in a territorial government bill would be "for the mere purpose of a taunt or reproach." mr. lodge, reprehending most severely, confidently asserts that though these territories were not suited to slave agriculture, yet that their many and rich mines could have been profitably worked by slaves.[ ] he stresses the fact that certain slave owners declared that they would, if they could, so work these mines. this distinguished author is to be reminded of how cheaply seius could replace any one of his slaves that he worked to death in ilva's mines. let him re-read the captivi of plautus,--not to mention many other ancient records just as instructive,--and realize that in that time it was not only one race that furnished slaves, but that every free human being was in lifelong danger of falling to a master. the prisoners taken in the incessant wars kept the slave markets glutted. a few months' work of one of his slaves would bring the master enough to pay the purchase money and leave a considerable sum to his credit with the banker. the spaniards worked their mines with indians to be had for the catching in near-by places. and mr. lodge mentions mining with the labor of criminals and serfs. in all the instances that he has in mind the worker can be had for his keep or a little more than that. but to have mined with the slaves of the south,--that was widely different. there was no way to get such a slave except to rear or hire or buy him in a protected market. does mr. lodge really believe that seius would have permitted his eight hundred slaves to sicken in the mines of ilva if each one had been worth at least $ , in the market? really the leading industry of the south was slave rearing. the profit was in keeping the slaves healthy and rapidly multiplying. this could be done at little expense in agriculture, where even the light workers were made to support themselves. but had a planter gone into a mining section, where he could get no land, for corn to feed his slaves and stock, and for cotton to bring him money, he would have found no margin of profit whatever in mining. i was reared in the gold-bearing district of georgia. i can remember old mr. john wynne, a wealthy cotton planter living in oglethorpe county, some six or seven miles from my father's, who, when--to use plantation parlance--he had laid by his crop at the middle or end of july, would work his gold mine until cotton-picking became brisk about the middle of september. he made money out of his gold mine, without injuring his other far more valuable mine, that is, the natural increase of his negroes. and i heard of other such mine workers. but you could not have tempted one of these shrewd business men to settle with his slaves outside of a cotton-making district in order to mine. had either mr. clingman or mr. mason--mentioned by mr. lodge--made the trial, he would have soon returned to his old neighborhood a sadder and wiser man. the negro's work as a slave in the coal and iron mines of the south never commenced until after the thirteenth amendment freed him. since then he has done much cruelly hard work as _servus poenae_--a slave of punishment--in these mines, for convict lessees, having no other interest in him than to get all the labor possible during his term. so it is clear that webster, in contending that the conditions in these territories were prohibitive of slavery was as statesmanly and perspicacious as he was generally in other matters. his detractors charged that the entire speech was a bid for the support of the south in his eager struggle for the presidency. that he passionately longed for the chair was manifest. but his was not the sordid ambition of the professional place-hunter. he had a heaven-reaching aspiration to show america what a president should be in those angry times. he must have been conscious that he was the only man of gifts to do the great deed. what an appropriate climax that would have been for the invincible defender of the union, who, when replying to hayne twenty years before, had outsoared pindar in eulogizing south carolina leading the south, and massachusetts leading the north, in the same breath; and who, neither from prepossession in favor of his native community or resentment because of attack upon it by those of the other section, had ever been removed out of brotherly love for all his countrymen alike. if you can do an all-important thing for your fellows which you believe no one else can do, and are without ambition for opportunity, are you not a poor grovelling creature? webster, knowing that secession could not be peaceable, and seeing it become more and more probable, racked with fears for the union, and aghast at the menace of fraternal bloodshed, like calhoun, he cheated himself with a futile remedy. we have told you of calhoun's proposal to disarm the combatants. in his amiability webster believed with his whole soul that he could as president make his countrymen love one another as he himself loved them, and that he could pour upon the waters now beginning to rage oil enough to safe the ship of union through the tempest soon to be at its height. it was an aspiration high and holy, deserving of eternal honor from all america. you cannot read this great speech of march aright if you do not discern that webster was seriously alarmed. when you see that a dear one's malady is fatal, you will not confess it to others,--not even to yourself. his excited exclamations, "no, sir! no, sir! there will be no secession! gentlemen are not serious when they talk of secession," cannot deceive a reader whose wont it has been to look into his own heart. webster did not see the future with the superhuman prevision of calhoun; but he had observed the course of things in that stormy session. is it to be believed that he had overlooked the tremendous significance of toombs's speech of december , and of the wild plaudits it brought from the southern members? and try to conceive what must have been the effect upon him of that most solemn and the saddest great speech in all oratory of calhoun just three days before. read the th of march speech by its circumstances and it is revealed to you, as by a flashlight, that webster had peeped behind the curtain which he had prayed should never rise in his lifetime. horror-struck as he was, he would not despair of his country,--he would not believe that the brothers' union was about to turn into a brothers' war. oh, let nobody dishonor his better self by seeing in this glorious speech, which our best and most lovable have placed in their hearts beside washington's farewell address, the bid of a turncoat. rather let us learn to understand its supreme statesmanly reach; its impartiality towards and just rebuke of the orator's own section and its merited castigation of the other courageously given, while affection for both is kept uppermost; its grand dignity, moral height, and pre-eminent patriotism. let us also learn properly to estimate the disfavor with which he regarded ever afterwards during the rest of his life the active anti-slavery men of the north, whom he could not understand to be other than bringers of the unspeakable calamity he would avert. and let us give him his due commiseration for missing the nomination, and realizing that the hopes of saving his country which he had cherished so fondly were all, all shattered. when we do our full duty to him we will, northerners and southerners alike, agree that whittier's palinode ought to have gone full circle before it paused. what is webster's highest and best fame? in answer we think at once of the reply to hayne, its loftiness throughout, its eagle ascensions here and there, and most of all the organ melodies at the grand close, beside which the famous apostrophe of longfellow is harsh overstrain. the next moment we feel he is higher in his profound love for his whole country than in his unequalled eloquence. he and lincoln were the supereminent americans who could never, never forget that the people of the other section were their own full-blood brothers and sisters. they are the supreme exponents of that american brotherhood, more deeply founded and more lasting than either one of the nationalizations which we have explained, out of which a continental is first, and then a world-union to come. to save our union was also to do the better deed of saving that brotherhood. for this each strove in his own way. i believe that the people of the world-union will pair them in walhalla, and set them above all other heroes, crowning webster as the monarch of speech which prepared millions with faith and fortitude for the crisis, and crowning lincoln the monarch of counsels and acts in the crisis. it will be understood that neither was called away before his mission was finished. the greatest work of each was example of the love with which we should all love one another; and that was complete. chapter ix "uncle tom's cabin" the misrepresentations in "uncle tom's cabin" of the character of the negro and his usual treatment in southern slavery have been taken as true by the best-informed and most unprejudiced everywhere outside of the south. the quotations which i make above from prof. barrett wendell's _bahnbrechend_ work on american literature[ ] show a rare and exemplary freedom from sectional bias. but he is a most convincing witness to the statement with which i begin this chapter, as i shall now show by two other excerpts from the same book, making it appear that even professor wendell has accepted without question the misrepresentations mentioned. in these excerpts i italicize the important statements, and i follow each with a contradictory one of my own. i invite close attention to what professor wendell says on one side and i on the other, for they make up issues of fact that must be rightly settled before the historical merit of the work which is the subject of this chapter can be accurately judged. this is the first excerpt: "written carelessly, and full of crudities, 'uncle tom's cabin,' even after forty-eight years, remains a remarkable piece of fiction. the truth is that almost unawares mrs. stowe had in her the stuff of which good novelists are made. her plot, to be sure, is conventional and rambling; but her characters, even though little studied in detail, have a pervasive vitality which no study can achieve; _you unhesitatingly accept them as real. her descriptive power, meanwhile, was such as to make equally convincing the backgrounds in which her action and her characters move. what is more, these backgrounds, most of which she knew from personal experience, are probably so faithful to actual nature that the local sentiment aroused as you read them may generally be accepted as true._"[ ] i say as to the characters in the novel that the negroes are monstrous distortions, being drawn in the main with the leading peculiarities of whites and without those of negroes; and that as to her most representative southern whites mrs. stowe is utterly untrue to fact by making them all anti-slavery. i say as to the "backgrounds," that she knew as little of them as she did of the negroes. i expect to demonstrate that the "personal experience" claimed for her by professor wendell was scanty and inadequate in the extreme. i now give the second and last excerpt: "she [mrs. stowe] differed from most abolitionists _in having observed on the spot all the tragic evils of slavery_."[ ] i do not dispute that her opportunity of learning southern slavery, small as it was, was very far superior to that of the other prominent abolitionists except seward, who had taught school in the black belt of georgia.[ ] i maintain that she knew but little of southern slavery, and they less; that what both they and she conscientiously and most confidently believed to be their knowledge of this slavery, the slave, and of the slaveholder, was but a prodigious mass of delusion and prejudice. i shall show, i think, that, instead of observing, she merely fancied and imagined, and that, to say the least, it is very misleading to allege that this fancying and imagining of hers was done "on the spot." by the words, "all the tragic evils of slavery," professor wendell evidently means that the evils of southern slavery to the slave were both very many and very great. i shall show, i believe, that the condition of the average negro in southern slavery was far better than it was in africa whence he came, and far better than it is now since he has been freed. there are occasionally incident to every human condition--even to the relation of parent and child--some tragic evils of its own. in the native home of the negro in west africa all the women and nearly all the men are slaves of brutally cruel savages, without any protection of law whatever. the social organism is in the very lowest stage; and there is complete inability to evolve into a better one as the stationariness of ages proves. in the new south, certain causes which i have described at length in the last two chapters of this book have, ever since emancipation, been steadily and with acceleration depressing the average negro; and the rise of the few who have managed to acquire some property, or to get a good industrial education, only brings out more conspicuously the misery and wretchedness of the mass. it is correct to say that there was a vast multitude of tragic evils to the negroes in west africa; and it is also correct to say that there is now the same to them in the south; but it is not correct to say that the tragic evils of southern slavery to the slave were frequent or general. the truth as to southern slavery ought to be known everywhere, which is, that it raised the negro very greatly in condition, and, now that he has been taken out of it, his progress has been arrested, and he is relapsing. the great proposition of mrs. stowe and of the root-and-branch abolitionists was that slavery in the south was such a flagrant and atrocious wrong to the negro, that every human being was commanded by conscience to do everything possible to help him if he should try to escape from his master. combating this proposition, without any concession whatever, i think it well that we try at the outset to ascertain how southern slavery affected the negro, whether cruelly or beneficially. to do this, his condition in his native land, his condition while a slave in america, and, lastly, his condition after his emancipation, must be compared. i beg my reader to follow me attentively as i now review and contrast these three conditions. first, as to his condition in africa. here is what toombs said of him to a boston audience, january , : "the monuments of the ancient egyptians carry him back to the morning of time--older than the pyramids; they furnish the evidence both of his national identity and his social degradation before history began. we first behold him a slave in foreign lands; we then find the great body of his race slaves in their native land; and after thirty centuries, illuminated by both ancient and modern civilization, have passed over him, we still find him a slave of savage masters, as incapable as himself of even attempting a single step in civilization--we find him there still, without government or laws of protection, without letters or arts of industry, without religion, or even the aspirations which would raise him to the rank of an idolater; and in his lowest type, his almost only mark of humanity is, that he walks erect in the image of the creator. annihilate his race to-day, and you will find no trace of his existence within half a score of years; and he would not leave behind him a single discovery, invention, or thought worthy of remembrance by the human family."[ ] if my reader deems toombs's picture overdrawn let him consult those parts of the recent work of a most diligent and conscientious investigator describing the negroes of west africa, and note what is there told of heathen practices still surviving,--slavery of women to their polygamic husbands, pitiless destruction of useless members of the family, robbery, murder, cannibalism, the utter want of chastity.[ ] we quote this as to slavery, which is especially important here: "slavery, having existed from time immemorial, is bound up with the whole social and economic organization of west african society. there are, broadly speaking, three kinds of slaves: those captured in war, those purchased from outside the tribe,--usually from the interior,--and the native-born slaves. _all alike_ are mere chattels, and _by law are absolutely subject to the master's will without redress_. but in practice a difference is made, for obvious reasons, between native-born slaves and captives taken from hostile tribes. _the latter are numerous, and the severest forms of labor fall to their lot. they are treated with constant neglect, and cruelly punished on the slightest provocation. their lives are at no time secure; they serve as victims for the sacrifice; when sick they are driven into the jungle; in times of scarcity they starve._"[ ] the master has the power of life and death over all slaves.[ ] the same author adds: "_the pawning of persons for debt is exceedingly common. if the debt is never paid in full, the pawn_ and his descendants become slaves in perpetuity."[ ] surely the reader who has attended to these details which i have given from mr. tillinghast will admit that the southern master transferred the african into a condition far better than any he could find at home. in the south two agencies gave him beneficent favor to which he and his fathers had always been strangers. the law of the land protected his life and shielded him from cruelty; and his high market value made it the interest of his american master not to overwork or under- feed and clothe him. and he was introduced into the first stage of monogamic life, which he developed steadily and rapidly until he was freed. in this he was travelling the only true road up from barbarism. if he could have but stayed in it until, after some generations--perhaps centuries--chaste wives and mothers had been evolved, he would have stood firmly on the threshold of permanent civilization and improvement. whatever evil of southern slavery to the negro my readers, prompted by the root-and-branch abolitionists, may suggest, they will find on reflection that it would have been far greater to him and more frequent had he remained in africa. separation of members of the family has been repeatedly emphasized as a most horrible evil of slavery in the south. such separation was incalculably more cruel and frequent in west africa than it ever was among the negro slaves in america. and how have the root-and-branch abolitionists mended matters? what do we see in the new south, now that slavery, the great rupturer of family circles, is no more, and a master no longer can part parent and child, or husband and wife? before the end of the brothers' war there had not been a single separation of a family among my father's slaves. at much expense and inconvenience he had bought the husband of one and the wife of another in order to keep each one of these two pairs united. in , bob, a boy of sixteen, who, because of his obedience and merry-making gifts, had always been a greatly indulged pet, signalized his new-found freedom by stealing from the house of one of our neighbors some articles of considerable value. he fled from justice, and, never seeing his parents or his brothers and sisters again, died among strangers. in , lewis abandoned his wife esther and their young child, and went to a distant town. some ten years afterwards, bill, a brother of bob, and several years younger, convicted of an unmentionable crime, received a ten years' chain-gang sentence. not long before this the body of one of his two wives who was at the time out of his favor was found in a well. reputable whites living near were convinced that he had murdered her. if that be true, it should count as a separation. while he was serving out his sentence his remaining wife married again, and this should be set down also as a separation. bob, lewis, esther, and bill were slaves of my father. he did not own twenty in all. this example shows how, as to the same negroes, southern slavery operated to prevent separation of families, and how freedom has operated to encourage and stimulate it. it is not an exceptional example. my maternal grandfather and a maternal aunt owned each many more slaves than my father did. some of my father's near neighbors had slaves in considerable number. in all of these slaves, while i knew them, there never was a separation of a family except by death or the voluntary act of parties to a marriage? but when they were freed in separation at once became rife, and it has always been active. what i have just told is fairly representative of the new south throughout the cotton states. there were now and then sales made of slaves which sundered man and wife, and parent and child; but such were extremely few, and their proportion was steadily decreasing under two potent influences. restraint of them by the law had commenced and was growing. but the stronger influence was custom and public opinion. before approaching sales at public outcry by sheriffs or representatives of a deceased, and also before private sales, the slaves to be sold were given opportunity to find their new masters. there was generally a neighbor who owned husband, wife, parents, or children, or wanted a cook, washerwoman, seamstress, boy to make a carpenter, striker, or blacksmith of, somebody careful with stock, etc., and the upshot would be that the man selected by the slave had got him. the seller had natural feelings. his wife and all of his children would do their utmost to get such new masters as the negroes preferred. i shall always cherish in memory the affectionate regard which the mother of the household and all the family habitually showed to their slaves. as i write, a sweet reminiscence comes of how the children would always clamor and mutiny against the most merited punishment of their nurse by father or overseer. there is no doubt that the slave steadily won larger place in the domestic affections, and that his treatment by each generation of masters was more kind and humane. and as a part of this amelioration the percentage of forced separation of slave families was all the while becoming less. let us devote a moment to the negro trader, as he was called, and his slave-pens, which were the subjects of much and heated invective. the first suggestion in order here is that there were such in west africa, far more frequent and far exceeding in cruelty any ever known in the south. to take the african away from the latter and turn him over to the former was great kindness to him. i remind my readers, in the next place, that the factors constantly minimizing separation of slaves from other members of the family--law, public opinion becoming more sensitive, custom becoming more merciful, and the sway of the domestic affections stronger--were _pari passu_ humanizing every incident of the commerce in slaves as property. lastly, the negro trader and the pen, by reason of the small number of the slaves to whom they caused real suffering, were mercy and prosperous condition itself beside the convict gangs and pens which emancipation has put in their place, as will come out more clearly in a short while. his use of the lash was a dire accusation of the master. the reader thinks at once of the relevant words in a famous passage so often quoted from one of president lincoln's messages: "if this struggle is to be prolonged till ... every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword." this was said march , , a month and five days only before general lee's surrender, and when all the great battles of the brothers' war had been fought,--a war by far the most sanguinary in the world's history. blood did sometimes follow the blow of the lash, but not often. the overseer who could not correct without breaking the skin always lost his place. when the statement of mr. lincoln just commented on is compared with the actual fact, it appears to be one of the most extravagant hyperboles ever uttered. before i have my readers to look at the actual facts i want to say a preliminary word. the parent was enjoined by solomon not to spare the rod. the rod was permitted to the master of the apprentice, the school-teacher, the drill officer, and others. it was often used with great severity. as we see from the decameron husbands were wont to correct their wives by beating them with sticks. whipping on the bare back was a common execution of the judgment of a criminal court. our insubordinate convicts are strapped. the usual punishment of a slave's disobedience was to whip him. a switch was not generally used, because by reason of his thick and tough skin and lower nervous development--to use a common expression--it would not hurt him. it was a familiar thing to me in my childhood to hear some negro tell of the use of a switch on him by women or feeble men, how the blows could scarcely be felt, and yet with what outcry and clamor he pretended that each one gave him great pain. the cowhide, but far more frequently the whip, took the place of the switch. the former was more and more discredited, because it could seldom be laid on hard enough without cutting the skin. the whip had a flat lash at the end, with which, as the strap or paddle now used on our convicts, a stinging blow could be hit that would not draw blood. an ordinary correction of a negro did not cause him as much pain as your child, with his far superior sensitiveness, receives when you give him the rod. large and heavy as the overseer's whip looked, the negro, with his high degree of insensibility to physical pain inherited from his african ancestors, who for a hundred generations or more had bestowed upon one another all kinds of corporal torture, cared far less for it than the abolitionist who insisted on making him merely a black white man, could ever understand. how little of both mental and corporal suffering the lash causes the average negro is strikingly shown by the fact that ever since his emancipation, when he is detected in a serious offence, he is prone to propose that he be whipped instead of being carried to court. if his offer is accepted he strips off his clothes with alacrity, exclaims the conventional "o, lordy!" under every fall of the whip; and when the contract number of lashes has been given he goes away with the look and air of one who has just learned that he has drawn a lottery prize of thousands; and his nearest and dearest, his wife and children, all his sweethearts, congratulate him cordially, and the entire negro community rate him as rarely fortunate. this is enough here of the lash; but a word or two more will be appropriate when we give the chain-gang attention. "run, nigger, run, patroller get you." the riotous merriment of this air can be fully appreciated only by one who has heard cuffee sing it at the quarters while picking his banjo. it completely confutes the charge often made that the patrol law was a cruel one. to the negro, the execution of that law was more of fun and frolic than punishment. let this air, and all the others to which the slaves used to dance, be meditated by those, if there are such, who incline to believe that professor dubois has really detected, as he seriously contends, in the negro melodies of the old south deep sorrow over slavery. if miserable conditions give character to musical expression, the songs, if any, that now come forth spontaneously from the mass of southern negroes--that is, from those of the lower class, which class will be described later herein--ought to be sadder than the tears of simonides. my reader who has his memory stored with the raw-head and bloody bones fiction of abolitionists who had never set foot on an inch of slave territory, probably thinks of bloodhounds, and wonders if i will be frank enough to mention them. he has been made to believe that runaway slaves often had the flesh torn from their bones by these dogs. i witnessed several chases of runaways, and in every one, when the negro was overtaken by the dogs, he was in a tree far above their reach. think about it, and bring it home to yourself. put yourself in the runaway's place, you would surely understand as well as a common house cat does how to avoid pursuing dogs. negro dogs, as they were called, were bred to be far more slow than fox dogs. the tricks of the runaway would put the latter at fault so often that they could hardly ever catch him. further, the packs of negro dogs were usually too small to overpower a stout negro. he was often armed with a scythe-blade for use if overtaken where he could not find a tree. when he could keep ahead no longer he preferred taking refuge to fighting with the dogs. he knew he could kill or disable only the few that would rush in recklessly, and that the others would stay too far from him to be hurt and yet keep him at bay. he was now going to be caught, and he would think it better not to provoke the ire of the owners by killing or injuring their dogs. the negro hunted the 'possum and 'coon by night and the hare--the rabbit, as everybody called it--on sundays, half-holidays, and christmas, either with his young master or without him, and always with the dogs; which he thus learned to control. a negro woman cooked the corn-bread and pot-liquor, with which they were fed by her or some other slave. they were always waiting near when the slaves ate by day in the fields or at all hours of night in their cabins, and many a bit was thrown to them. usually there was the greatest friendship between the dogs on the plantation, those intended for chasing runaways included, and the negroes. it was great entertainment for a negro, at the command of his master, to give the young negro dogs a race, as it was called. these races were frequent, and they were the entire training of the dogs for their business. a hunting dog when lost will track his master. and many a runaway was caught by dogs which he was in the habit of feeding and hunting with. the average negro of those days, prowling so much at night as he did, necessarily became a most expert dog-tamer. how often i have been diverted with this sight! a strange negro, coming on some errand, intrepidly opens the front gate and enters the yard of a dwelling. a savage dog dashes forward. just as the dog couches near for his spring, the negro, by a very quick movement, takes off his hat and extends it to the dog. the latter turns his eyes away from the negro, looks at the old, soiled wool hat, smells it, and then retires, nonplussed. as a general rule a negro was safe from the bite of dogs. running away was not frequent. the almost insuperable difficulty of final escape from the dogs prevented it. and it was in practice a most mild means of prevention. i suppose that i knew and heard of the catching of some twenty odd slaves in the contiguous parts of oglethorpe, wilkes, taliaferro, and greene counties, which constituted the locality with which i was familiar, and in not a single case was one injured by the bloodhounds. the dogs that are now turned loose after our convicts are of far more savage temper than were the negro dogs of the old south; and consequently the human game, when come up with, is more prompt to go up a tree than was the old slave. there was much less lack of food and raiment among the slaves than among the class known as the white trash. it was considered a business blunder not to keep them supplied always with more food than they wanted. they were in better physical condition than the average white laborer now shows. and they were not worked hard. even in the longest days of the year, when the battle with the grass was fiercest, at night the quarters were resonant with mirth, song, and dancing as soon as the mules had been watered, stabled, and fed. the foregoing is a report, from my observation on the spot, of "all the tragic evils of slavery" to the negro in the south. i have been at pains to make it as true as can be. i purpose to follow it now with a like report of all the gladsome blessings to him of his freedom. his true and fast friends, the abolitionists, equalized him _per saltum_ to his master as a voter and office-holder. this single measure was sure to make deadly enemies of white and black in the south, and to bring a war of races in which the superior one was bound to conquer and become absolute. this war did come, and was fought out. profound peace has reigned for some years, and the negroes now contentedly stay away from the polls, and manifest no aspiration whatever for office and place. his same friends gave the ex-slave equality with his old master under the criminal law. he had this in slavery only when charged with a capital offence; and if he was charged with a graver one of the non-capital offences, such as breaking and entering a dwelling, stealing something of considerable value, he was brought before a statutory court of justices of the peace, and if upon his summary trial he was convicted, his punishment was usually a short term in jail, the sheriff to give him so many lashes each day until he had received the full number adjudged in his sentence. i never heard of one that was seriously injured by this kind of punishment. it never gave him any permanent mental anguish. his conscience approved whipping as the most fit punishment for every offence. the crimes of negroes mentioned above in this paragraph were very infrequent. their many peccadillos were in practice wholly ignored by the law, and given over to private and domestic jurisdiction. cuffee would sometimes indulge a sudden craving for fresh meat by appropriating a shoat or grown lamb, or he would gratify a watering mouth by stealthy invasion of melon patches or sweet potato patches and banks. and he was prone to other small larcenies. if caught,--which was very far from always happening,--he was whipped; and that was the last of it. now he must replace the bounty of his master which sheltered, clothed, and fed him comfortably all his life by living from hand to mouth. his forecast utterly undeveloped, and more and more losing the work habit, there is often but one way for him to avoid starving or freezing, and that is to get the necessaries of life by various acts which are crimes in the law. it is but a scanty supply that he thus manages to get. his year is nearly always, from beginning to end, but an alternation of short feasts upon the cheapest fare, and prolonged fasts. yet in the eye of the stern and severe law how many gross offences does he commit by doing only the things which, if he did not do, he could not keep soul and body together. and so he is brought before every court of any criminal jurisdiction, and when convicted, as he generally is, for he is nearly always guilty,--not in conscience, but guilty under the law which his emancipators have put him under,--often he cannot find a friend to pay his fine, and he must work it out in the chain-gang. the city has its chain-gang, the county has its chain-gang, and the state works or farms out its convicts. the percentage of whites among these convicts is very small. often when you encounter a gang at work you cannot find a single white person in it. these negro convicts are many, many. as fast as one's time expires his place is filled by another. disease, decay of energy from irregular food supply, growing habits of idleness, and other things in the train, bring forth tramps more plentifully, and from these the chain-gangs are more and more largely recruited. these slaves of punishment work under the eyes of guards furnished with the best of small-arms loaded to kill. the most of them work in shackles. if they do not work as their superintendents think they ought, they are strapped. i have seen them working in the rain, as i never saw required of slaves. at night they are put to sleep in a crowded log-pen, all of them chained together, the chain being made fast to each bunk. the guards are practised marksmen, known to be men who will promptly and resolutely "do their duty." this hell-like life constantly keeps each convict watching for opportunity to make a dash for liberty. if the guards have anything like fair shots when he starts, one more unmarked and soon forgotten grave is dug and filled in the paupers' burial ground, and that is the earthly end of this poor derelict of the human race. suppose he gets safely away from the guard. in a few minutes the unleashed dogs are yelping on his track. in the old days even the negro dogs were fed and tended by slaves, and almost every dog in the land seemed to love negroes. but these bloodhounds in the convict camps have been bred into a deadly hatred of every negro. escaping cuffee is usually caught. then more of the paddle, heavier shackles, chains at night stronger and more taut, and the bosses harder to satisfy as he works under greater hindrances--these make his lot more hell-like than it was before. it is a melancholy proof of the insufficient dietary and bad hygiene of the common negroes that these convicts fatten in spite of their cruel hardships. the long-term convicts, farmed out to coal and other mine owners and various manufacturers, and private employers, i know but little of from observation. but what i hear makes me believe that their condition is worse than that of those just described. this is to be expected, for two reasons. first, they are worked for profit by persons whose only interest is to get the largest possible product out of their labor. the labor exacted by the owner, bear in mind, would not be severe enough either to impair the market value or check vigorous reproduction of his slaves. second, the places where these convicts are worked are more or less retired, and thus the employer escapes scrutiny nearly all the year. think of a negro who, receiving a twenty years' sentence for burglariously stealing a ham when he was hungry, is put to work in the coal mine! who ever hears of him afterwards? he is soon forgotten by his wife, who takes another husband, and by his children either skulking here and there to shun the officer, or toiling in a chain-gang. here is indeed a bitter slavery--bitterer by far than any west africa ever knew. there the slave does not labor underground and out of the sun so dear to him. his manumission comes mercifully in many ways, long before the expiration of twenty years--the sacrifice may need a victim; he may starve; he may fall sick and be cast out in the bush. but the mine slave--the mine boss will not whip him hard enough to give him even short rest from his work, work, work; he shall always have enough of raiment, food, and sleep to keep him able to work, work, work; when he gets very sick the mine doctor will patch him up and send him back to his work, work, work; he will work, work, work out his twenty years in this hell hole. miss landon in her immortal invective against child labor exclaims: "good god! to think upon a child that has no childish days, no careless play, no frolics wild, no words of prayer and praise!" this factory child that never knew any of the proper joys of a child is without either sweet memory or unavailing wish. but the mine slave, the most of whose former life was passed in the open air, how he pines for the splendor of his loved sun by day; how in his bunk he recalls his rounds by night when the seven stars, the ell and yard and job's coffin were his clock and the north star his compass. each part of the revolving year whispers to him when he is at work or dreaming. christmas suggests the jug with the corn-cob stopper, the 'possum cooked brown, the yams exuding their sugary juice, the banjo picker and his song, the fiddle playing a dancing tune, and the floor shaking under the thumping footfalls; the cold weather following suggests the 'possum and 'coon hunt; the early spring brings what he used to call the corn-planting birds and their lively calls; and on and on his thoughts go over mocking-bird, woodpecker, early peaches and apples, full orchards spared by frost, the watermelon, solitary and incomparable among all things for a negro to eat, his sunday fishings and rabbit hunts, his church and society meetings, this and that dusky love who fooled him into believing that he was dearer to her than husband or any other man, especially some yellow girl, his nonesuch, exceeding all other women as the watermelon excels all other produce of tree or vine,--on and on his thoughts go over what he can never have again. i need not say a word for the white victims of child labor, for their race is rousing for their rescue, and i know its power to achieve. but i do feel that it is my duty to put that friendless, forgotten, long-term negro convict in the minds of my southern readers. if he must be a convict, do not farm him out to mine operators or where he will be worked behind any screen. put all our convicts, both felony and misdemeanor, upon the public roads until they need only a little working now and then, say i. there the convicts will not be worked for profit, nor in secret. the total of the negroes suffering in southern slavery from all causes falls in amount far below that alone which has come upon him because he was stupidly subjected to the white man's criminal law, and not given reformatories and other belongings of the system which we are perfecting for juvenile offenders. the suffering in slavery was occasional only, and soon over. the present suffering of the negroes under the criminal law is constant, and is to be found rife in every locality. the aggregate of the felony and misdemeanor convicts of georgia now at hard labor is about , . the convicts sentenced by city and town police courts for short terms of days i cannot give with any approximate accuracy. i think it probable that the number of those convicted each year in the municipal courts is somewhat larger than that of those convicted in the state courts. by reason of a late wholesale reduction of felonies the number of long-term convicts does not increase,--it is at a standstill,--but the number of the misdemeanor and municipal convicts steadily increases. more than nine-tenths of those in each one of the three classes are negroes. the stench, filth, and discomfort of their nights and the hardship of their days, who can describe? how it moves my pity to see, as i often do, the convict toiling incessantly for long hours, impeded and tortured by his iron shackles, the paddle at hand, and a double-barrel or winchester frowning over him, each to be used on occasion by somebody who cares nothing for and has no interest in him. weary as the worker may be, a word from the boss gives new impetus to his pick or shovel. here is the only place i have ever known on american soil where one can find "poor, oppressed, bleeding africa." how different it was with the slave offender! it mattered not what was the charge against him, he had persons related to him both in interest and affection who would intercede powerfully at his call. wherever he might be,--in the sheriff's hands, or locked up by the overseer in the gin-house,--a messenger-service as secret and more sure than wireless telegraphy even if not as quick, was at his command; and some child, white or colored, or favorite servant would carry his entreaties to the big house. and the justices, or ole master or the overseer, would be influenced by a word from ole miss, or the tears of young miss, or the importunity of young master. in the end cuffee's punishment would be made tolerable; and after it was over he would the next night at the cabin brag joyfully of the many friends he had and what great things they had done for him--the children of his master present and showing more gladness than himself. which of the two was the more humane and christian punitive system for the negro? which of the two was the better for him? that of slavery, or that produced by the conditions which his professed friends put in place of slavery? i assert it most solemnly that i never saw a negro slave worked in shackles and under a loaded firearm, neither by his master nor an overseer, nor by their command, nor by an officer of the law; and, further, that i never had information or report that such had been done. when their emancipators led the negroes out of their cabins into their new life it was something like throwing our domestic animals into the forest and desert, where they, without formed habits of self-maintenance and without knowledge of the new environment, must live, if they can live, only in competition with their wild brothers and sisters knowing the environment and who are self-maintaining experts therein. that comparison serves somewhat. but this comes nearer: suppose children between the ages of eight and twelve, who have never been taught to do anything for themselves, to be taken away from their parents, and settled among a people lately made bitterly hostile to the children, as the whites were made to the negroes by the effort of the emancipators to give political equality--nay, supremacy--to the latter. those emancipated children must subsist themselves. how little they could earn by begging or work. they would have to steal to live. those that did not steal, and for whom no companion would steal, would perish. the philanthropists who founded this infantile colony would have outdone but by a very little those who thrust the reluctant negroes into freedom. i ask my reader to add here mentally the full description which in my last two chapters i have given of the lower class of the negroes in the south--this description showing them to be ninety-five per cent of the whole, far below their average condition in american slavery, and steadily becoming worse. i believe that in due time the people of the north will make these admissions: . any and every evil of southern slavery to the negro was accidental, and not a necessary incident of the system, just as the occasional evils of marriage to the parties are not necessarily incidental to that institution. . as this slavery had improved and was still improving the negroes so prodigiously in every particular, and as their condition during the forty years following emancipation has been going uninterruptedly from bad to worse, until now the extinction of the great body is frightfully probable, as i shall show in my last two chapters, the sudden and sweeping abolition of was an unutterable misfortune to these dependent creatures. emancipation ought to have been gradual. especially ought there to have been established something like the roman patronate, under which the freedman would have been sure of wise advice, beneficial overlooking, and efficient protection from his former master. . the grant at once of right to vote and hold place and office to the southern negroes indiscriminately exceeds all blunders of democracy in madness and stupidity. . southern slavery, so far from being wrong morally, was righteousness, justice, and mercy to the slave. the federal constitution was simply obeying the commands of good conscience in recognizing the slave as the property of his owner, and protecting that property. therefore, when the federal government emancipated the slaves it ought to have given the masters just compensation. * * * * * so much for what american slavery was to the negro, and what its abolition has done for him in the south. this can be told now. but for years the powers watching over our union kept the subject in the dark. it did not suit their purpose that the people of the union-preserving section should see and understand. they had decreed that northern resistance to slavery, as the solitary root of disunion, should go beyond refusing it extension into the territories. they chose to add another provocation of the secession which they had planned as the means of abolishing slavery. this new provocation was that the north be induced to make the fugitive slave law a dead letter. to drive the south into early secession, perhaps it would not be enough merely to deny her new territory. but unite the north against the law mentioned, and encourage both running away and the underground railroad by an active public opinion, then soon all along the southern border slavery will lose its hold, some of the slaves escaping and the rest going south. this zone will, after a while, be settled by the friends and employers of free labor, who from year to year will push the southern non-slave district further in. the menace of this hostile occupation will steadily become greater to the slaveholders, and finally it will convince them that they cannot protect slavery in the union. many northerners who declared it was wrong to interfere with slavery in the states, at the same time sympathized with the public opposition to restoring the fugitive to his master. it is clear that they did not regard this opposition to be what it really was; that is, actual war upon slavery where it existed. to oppose execution of the law was both to invite and help runaways. and if such invitation and help was persisted in, from one end of mason and dixon's line to the other, the risk of escape of slaves and their consequent depreciation in market value would both steadily increase. the refusal to enforce the fugitive slave law was therefore a deadly attack upon slavery in the states; and this was so plain that the union-loving people of georgia declared in the famous georgia platform of that the union could not be preserved if that law was not faithfully executed. the faithful guardians of the american union had "uncle tom's cabin" written of purpose to prevent the execution of the fugitive slave law. they hypnotized the root-and-branch abolitionists and mrs. stowe into believing that to abet in any way the restoration of a flying slave was an unpardonable crime; and that the obligation of conscience to refrain from committing such a crime imperatively commanded disregard of all counter provisions of the constitution and the law of the land. one cannot at all understand the mighty abolition movement if he stop with the professed motives of phillips, whittier, garrison, mrs. stowe, and the rest. they believed in their hearts, and declared, its purpose was to wipe out the great national disgrace of slavery, to lift the slave out of an abyss of unspeakable outrage and injustice, and to better his condition. as we have shown you, they were, in their very extreme of conscientiousness, as wide from the facts and right as wide can be. they were not doing their own wills, as they thought they were. they but did the will of the fates. the latter ruthlessly--so it seems to us now--sacrificed both the prosperity and comfort of the southern people for several generations, and the very existence, it may be, of nearly all the negroes in america, besides also making a laughing-stock of the abolitionists--all to the end to kill that nationalization which threatened the integrity of the american union. i believe that i can now take my reader on with me in what i have to say of mrs. stowe's book. let him bear in mind that the object of the fates was to have in it not a representation true to fact, but such an untrue and probable one as would unite the people of the north in moral and conscientious resolve against any and every attempt to restore a fugitive slave. what the fates wanted was an author who appeared to have extensive and accurate acquaintance with slavery, and who, while believing it most conscientiously to be the extreme of evil to the black, was endowed with the power to make the north see with _her_ eyes. they found their author in mrs. stowe, whom they had educated and trained from infancy. in view of the mighty influence which "uncle tom's cabin" exercised upon public opinion, it is important to examine what were mrs. stowe's qualifications to speak as an authority on southern slavery. and in this investigation the same qualifications of all others who arraigned the system for what they alleged were its heinous moral wrongs to the slave are likewise involved. the statement of professor wendell, quoted above, that she was the only one of the abolitionists who had observed slavery "on the spot," can be corroborated by overwhelming proofs. if it be made to appear, as i think will be the case, that she was from first to last under a delusion which metamorphosed the negro into a caucasian, and further that she had no real opportunities of learning the facts of slavery, then the case of the root-and-branch abolitionists must fall with the testimony of the only eye-witness whom they have called. whether she was biased or not we will let her own words decide. here they are: "i was a child in [she was then nine years old] when the missouri question was agitated; and one of the strongest and deepest impressions on my mind was that made by my father's sermons and prayers, and the anguish of his soul for the poor slave at that time. i remember his preaching drawing tears down the hardest faces of the old farmers in his congregation. i well remember his prayers morning and evening in the family for 'poor, oppressed, bleeding africa,' that the time of her deliverance might come; prayers offered with strong crying and tears, and which indelibly impressed my heart, and made me what i am from my very soul, the enemy of all slavery. every brother that i have has been in his sphere a leading anti-slavery man. as for myself and husband, we have for the last seventeen years lived on the border of a slave state, and we have never shrunk from the fugitives, and we have helped them with all we had to give. i have received the children of liberated slaves into a family school, and taught them with my own children, and it has been the influence that we found in the church and by the altar that has made us do all this."[ ] no comment is needed. the passage shows that her strongly excited feelings unavoidably shaped all her perceptions and formed all her judgments as to everything in slavery. now as to the means she had of acquiring the facts. although she had seen a little of kentucky, a border slave state, she had never lived in it, nor anywhere else in the south. especially is it to be emphasized that she had had no experience of the cotton region, the real seat of slavery, and the only place where it could be fully studied and learned. she passed some eighteen years in lower ohio, just across the river from kentucky, where she saw much of escaping slaves. of course, being aflame with zeal as she was for her subject, she had observed closely the native negroes of the north. such of these as she met were widely different from the mass in slavery; for, born and bred in the north, they had had the beneficent training of the free-labor system, and also opportunity to absorb considerable of a higher culture. these negroes were exceptional, even of the northern natives. and the fugitives were also exceptional; for they far excelled the companions left behind them in intelligence, spirit, and every essential of good character. an ordinary cuffee had liberty the least of all things in his thoughts. a negro like hector or garrison, the former escaping from calhoun and the other from toombs, was as much above the average as the shepherd dog is above common sheep-worriers and egg-suckers. mrs. stowe, as her book shows, had no conception whatever of the ordinary plantation negro. and while she had seen much of some kentuckians, these were not representative southerners. they lived upon the border, where slave labor found but little lucrative opportunity, and they were also affected more or less with the sentiments of their nearby northern neighbors. naturally only those kentuckians of the border who really were of her opinion would consort with this decided anti-slavery partisan; the others would stand aloof. mrs. stowe never knew either real negroes or real slaveholders. and she also knew nothing whatever of cotton plantation management. some authors show an amazingly full and accurate knowledge of countries and communities which they never saw. burke's knowledge of every detail touching india occurs to me. lieber had visited greece while niebuhr had not. when the former had minutely described to the other some famous landscape,--say the battlefield of marathon,--niebuhr would make copious inquiries about remains of old roads and belongings which the other had forgotten, although he had seen them. tom moore had never been in persia, but there is so much of that country drawn to the life in lalla rookh that somebody applied to him the saying that reading d'herbelot was as good as riding on the back of a camel. mrs. stowe could not collect, sift, and read facts, and see through the most cunningly devised masks, as henry d. lloyd showed his marvellous power to do in "wealth against commonwealth." that was not her gift. her gift was to tell the best of stories--to vary it prodigally and artistically throughout with wonders, with things to make you shudder and also thrill with pleasure, with things to make you cry and laugh. her emotional invention was the great factor. here is her own account: "the first part of the book ever committed to writing was the death of uncle tom. this scene presented itself almost as a tangible vision to her mind while sitting at the communion-table in the little church in brunswick. she was perfectly overcome by it, and could scarcely restrain the convulsion of tears and sobbings that shook her frame. she hastened home and wrote it, and her husband being away she read it to her two sons of ten and twelve years of age. the little fellows broke out into convulsions of weeping, one of them saying through his sobs, 'oh, mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the world!'" the description of uncle tom's death is the goal and climax of the novel. its scene is laid far down in the south, hundreds of miles below any place which she or the children had ever seen or studied. it would have been more in order for her to submit the draft to observant residents of that locality; but the fates did not intend that her convictions should be weakened by real information. evidently she considered that her truth to fact was fully vindicated by the effect of the narrative upon her children, who, like herself, were entirely without knowledge of the subject. they wept and exclaimed over it. why, of course, like all children they loved horrible tales, which their weeping and lamentation proved that they thought were true. doubtless these same children had made respectable demonstrations over bluebeard or little red ridinghood. and now over uncle tom's death, which is more dreadful than anything in dante's inferno, and as pure figment, their feelings were shaken with storm and tempest as never before. the statement just quoted proceeds thus: "from that time the story can less be said to have been composed by her than imposed upon her. scenes, incidents, conversations rushed upon her with a vividness and importunity that would not be denied. the book insisted upon getting itself into being, and would take no denial." i often fancy, as i think over it, that the last quotation describes suggestions from the fates. but we must let mrs. stowe finish what we have had her tell in part. informing us that, after writing "two or three first chapters," she made an arrangement for weekly serial publication in the _national era_, she says: "she was then in the midst of heavy domestic cares, with a young infant, with a party of pupils in her family to whom she was imparting daily lessons with her own children, and with untrained servants requiring constant supervision, but the story was so much more intense a reality to her than any other earthly thing that the weekly instalment never failed. it was there in her mind day and night waiting to be written, and requiring but a few moments to bring it into veritable characters. _the weekly number was always read to the family circle before it was sent away, and all the household kept up an intense interest in the progress of the story._"[ ] this household had been indoctrinated by the zeal of dr. lyman beecher into believing unreservedly all the inventions of ignorant assailants of slavery instead of the widely different facts. before i begin a detailed statement of the material errors and perversions of fact in "uncle tom's cabin" i want to emphasize it that every one of them appeared to northern readers, unfamiliar with the negro and the south, to be true, and most efficiently helped to form and strengthen sentiment against enforcement of the fugitive slave law. many things that she writes show that mrs. stowe was completely ignorant of the ways of the cotton plantation. i have space to mention but one. tom was bred in kentucky, where no cotton was grown. and cassy, by reason of her indulgent rearing, had had as little experience as tom in cotton-picking. yet these two show such expertness that tom can add to the sack of a slower picker, and cassy give tom some of her cotton, and each have enough to satisfy the weigher at night. the good cotton-picker is surely a most skilled laborer. he must be trained from childhood to use both hands so well that he becomes almost ambidexterous. the training that the typewriter is now urged to take is a parallel. mrs. stowe shows that she had no accurate knowledge of the sentiments of the whites of the south as to slavery. as we have already suggested, there may have been among the kentuckians of the border some outspoken opponents of slavery; but it is very probable that in her womanly ardor for her great cause she lavishly magnified their numbers. in her novel she has nearly all of her white southerners--i may add all of the attractive ones--to declare themselves as abolitionists at heart. misrepresentation of fact could not be grosser than this. i was twenty-five years old when the brothers' war commenced. i had mingled intimately with the people, high and low, of my part of the south. during all of this time i never found out there was a single one of my acquaintances, man, woman, boy, or girl, who did not believe slavery right. the charge implied by mrs. stowe that we southerners were doing violence to our consciences in holding on to our slaves is utterly without evidence; nay, it is unanimously contradicted by all the evidence. as we and our parents read the bible, it told us to hold on to them, but to treat them always with considerate kindness. mrs. stowe emphasizes the frequent cruelty of the master to the slave; and she emphasizes more strongly still that under the law he was helpless. the slave was not helpless. he was protected by law. note this example, given by toombs: "the most authentic statistics of england show that the wages of agricultural and unskilled labor in that kingdom not only fail to furnish the laborer with the comforts of our slave, but even with the necessaries of life, and no slaveholder could escape _a conviction for cruelty to his slaves_ who gave his slave no more of the necessaries of life for his labor than the wages paid to their agricultural laborers by the noblemen and gentlemen of england would buy."[ ] the witness just called has full knowledge, and is the extreme of frank honesty and truthfulness. the statute-book demonstrates that the law was steadily bettering the condition of the slave. i have not space to state the progression which can be found in the different georgia enactments. but i must mention two instances. in the procedure of trying a white person charged with a capital offence was extended to the slave. the code which came of force january , , and which had been adopted some while before, prevented any confession made by a slave to his master--it mattered not how voluntary or free from suspicion it might be--from ever being received in evidence against him. i commenced law practice in . from that time until i went to the front i observed that public opinion was becoming more decided against mistreatment of the blacks. the masters of _ashcats_,--as ill-fed negroes were called in derision of their lean and dingy faces by the great multitude of sleek and shining ones,--those who punished with unreasonable severity, those who exacted overwork,--they were few and far between,--they were all more and more detested; and grand juries became more and more prone to deal properly with them. i would support this by cases, if their citation would not be unpleasant to descendants of parties. mrs. stowe has his master to brand george harris in the hand with the initial letter of the former's surname. she has legree's slaves to pick cotton on sunday. i never heard of any cases of branding human beings except as a punishment for crime in execution of a judgment of conviction, and very few of them. tidying up the house, cooking, serving meals, caring for the animals on the place, and such other things as are done everywhere on sunday, were of course required of the domestic slaves. leaving these out, no slave was ever put to work on sunday except to "fight fire," or at something commanded by a real emergency. their employers now exact from thousands of white persons of both sexes all over the country a great amount of such hard and grinding sunday work as was never exacted of the slaves in the south. peep into stores, offices of large corporations, and elsewhere, while others are at sunday-school or church, and count those weary ones you find finishing up the work of the last week. but all of the mistakes of mrs. stowe noticed in the foregoing are mere matters of bagatelle as compared with the character and nature which she gives the average negro of the south. she represents the women as chaste as white women, and the husbands faithful to their wives even when separated from them. i shall now tell the truth as i know it to be--the truth that all observant people who have had experience with negroes know. the moment almost that a married pair of slaves were separated for any cause, each one secretly, or more often openly, took another partner. even when not separated, infidelity of both was the rule. mrs. stowe has the girls and their parents to shrink with horror from the desires of the master. to the simple-hearted african the master was always great, and there was among them not a woman to be found who would not dedicate herself or her daughter to greatness, finding it so inclined,--husband, father, brothers, and sisters all in their desire for a friend at court heartily approving. the white whose concubine gave favors behind his back to her slave friends was the stalest joke of every neighborhood. the mass of the negroes are more unchaste now than they were in slavery, a subject of which i shall say something further in another chapter. but even where the master's steady requirement from one generation to another of a stricter observance of family ties, and the natural imitation of the ways of the dominant race, had lifted the slaves, in appearance at least, far above their west african ancestors, not even mothers had become chaste. boys, girls, men, and women, both married and unmarried, were as promiscuous by night as houseflies are by day. the horror of horrors in this abyss of moral impurity to one of a superior race was their utter unconsciousness of incest.[ ] mrs. stowe has their philoprogenitiveness--as phrenologists call it--as fully developed as the whites. one bred in the cotton districts well remembers that it required all the vigilance of master and mistress, overseer, and the deputies selected from the older slave women, to secure from the mothers proper attention to their children, and especially to keep them from punishing too cruelly. but i do not mean to say that this parental misbehavior was as general as the unchastity mentioned. when the mothers aged beyond forty-five or fifty, they would begin to think somewhat less of beaux and somewhat more of their children. george harris and eliza are next of the slave characters in prominence and importance to uncle tom. with their large admixture of white blood, their comparatively good education and superb moral training, a southerner would think that you were merely mocking him if you named these as fairly representative negroes. as they are drawn, they are really whites--whites of high refinement--with only a physical negro exterior, and that softened down to the minimum. but uncle tom--i pray my northern readers to take counsel of their common sense and consider what i shall now say of him. rightly to estimate him, i must begin with some contrasts. the first that occurs to me is tyndarus, the slave hero of the captivi of plautus, pronounced by the great critic lessing to be the most beautiful play ever brought upon the stage. tyndarus and philocrates, his young master, taken prisoners, are sold to hegio. the two captives personate each other, and induce hegio to send home philocrates, who was a wealthy noble, and keep only the born slave. hegio was scheming to recover his own son, now a slave in the land of the captives, by a bargain for philocrates, this bargain to be negotiated by the counterfeit tyndarus. discovering how he had been duped, the anguished father tells the real tyndarus that he shall die a cruel death. this is the reply of the slave: "as i shall not die because of evil deeds, that is a small matter. my death will keep it ever in remembrance that i delivered my master from slavery and the enemy, restored him to his country and father, and chose that i myself should perish rather than he." that is exalted. but tyndarus has not the complete goodness of uncle tom. as soon as he is at last rescued from the horrible mines, to find philocrates true and himself a free man, he threatens woe to a slave who had injured him, and looks approvingly upon the execution of his threat. compare uncle tom with the good men of the bible, such as moses, peter, and paul, to mention no more. not one of these was able always to keep his feelings and tongue in that complete subjection that never fail uncle tom. uncle tom, in whom love alone prompts all thoughts and deeds, surpasses every saint in dante's paradise--he surpasses even the incomparably sweet beatrice, who now and then chides unpleasantly. the climax of my comparison is reached when i suggest that uncle tom is made from first to last a more perfect christ than the jesus of the gospels. the latter, as matthew arnold and other reverent christians remark, was sometimes unamiable. remember his expulsion of the money changers and traders from the temple, and the many opprobrious words he used of and to the pharisees. growing recognition of the all-human jesus is benignly replacing a religion of superstition, intolerance, and dogma with one of universal love and brotherhood. i cannot fully express my appreciation of the liberal divines, from charming to savage, who are preparing us so well for the millennium. but i am sure a new study of uncle tom would give each one of them firmer grasp of christlikeness and far more power to present it. think over such instances in that holiest and most altruistic of lives as these: he has just learned that he has been sold; that he is to be carried down the river. his wife suggests that as he has a pass from his master permitting him to go and return as he pleases, he take advantage of it and run away to the free states. as firmly as socrates, unjustly condemned to death, refused to escape from prison when his friends had provided full opportunity, tom declared he would stay, that he would keep faith with his master. he said that, according to eliza's report of the conversation she had overheard, his master was forced to sell him, or sell all the other slaves, and it was better for himself to suffer in their place. and as he goes away he has nothing but prayers and blessings for the man who sends him into dread exile from his wife and children. he falls to a new master, whom, and his family, he watches over with the fidelity and love of a most kind father, doing every duty, but above all things trying to save that master's soul. then his cruel fortune delivers him to the monster legree. for the first time in his life he is treated with disrespect, distrust, and harshness. yet he forgets his own misery, and finds pleasure in helping and comforting his fellow sufferers, striving his utmost to bring them into eternal life. he will not do wrong even at the command of his cruel master, who has him in a dungeon, as it were, into which no ray of justice can ever shine. and here he dies from the cruel lash--almost under it. he falters some, it is true; but there was no sweat of blood as in gethsemane, nor exclamation upon the cross, "my god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me!" he went more triumphantly through his more fell crucifixion. i believe that the character of uncle tom is the only part of the book which future generations will cherish; not for the lesson against slavery it was intended to teach, but because it excels in ideal and realization all imitation of christ in actual life or the loftiest religious fiction. consider its marvellous effect upon heine, as told by a quotation from the latter in the author's introduction to the book.[ ] the detailed comparison which i have just made puts uncle tom upon a pinnacle, where he is above all the saints in lofty, self-abnegating, and lovingly religious manhood; and the reader notes how fruitlessly i have tried to find another like him. but mrs. stowe was confident that she had not exaggerated or overdrawn him, and further that such were common among the southern slaves. here is what she deliberately says in her key: "the character of uncle tom has been objected to as improbable; and yet the writer has received more confirmations of that character, and from a greater variety of sources, than of any other in the book. many people have said to her, 'i knew an uncle tom in such and such a southern state.' all the histories of this kind which have thus been related to her would of themselves, if collected, make a small volume."[ ] toombs once said to me, "it would have been a matchless eulogy of slavery if it had produced an uncle tom." but, as we see from the last quotation, she claims far more. she really claims that it was fruitful of uncle toms in every southern state. shall we attribute this firm belief, that there were among the southern slaves many who were better christians than christ himself is represented to have been, to a mere hallucination? that word is not strong enough. to explain the belief, we must think of visions suggested by the hypnotizing powers, or something like the spell on titania, when bottom with his ass's head inspired her with the fondest admiration and love. although the foregoing is far from being exhaustive, it is enough; it shows incontrovertibly that mrs. stowe builded throughout upon the exceptional and imaginary. my father, a presbyterian clergyman, with the strictest notions as to the sabbath, as he generally called sunday, made me read, when a boy, a book called, if i recollect aright, "edwards's sabbath manual." be the title whatever it may, the entire book was but a collection of instances of secular work done on sunday, and always followed closely by disaster, which appeared to be divine punishment of sabbath-breaking. the author was confident he had proved his case. he believed with his whole soul that if one should do on sunday any week-day work not permitted in the catechism, it was more than probable that god would at once deal severely with him for not keeping his day holy. this is a somewhat overstrained example of mrs. stowe's method. i will therefore give one which is as close as close can be. suppose a diligent worker to cull from newspaper files, law reports, and what he hears in talk, the cases in which one party to a marriage has cruelly mistreated the other. if he digested his collection with a view to effect, it would prove a far more formidable attack upon the most civilizing and improving of all human institutions than mrs. stowe's key is upon slavery; and if he had her rare artistic gift he could found upon it a wonderful anti-marriage romance. the author of such a key and romance would be confuted at once by the exclamation, "if these horrors are general, people would flee marriage as they do the plague." let it be inquired, "if 'uncle tom's cabin' and mrs. stowe's key truly represent, why did not more of the blacks escape into the free states? and why did they not revolt in large bodies during the war in the many communities whence all the able-bodied whites had gone to the front far away?" and there can be but one answer, which is, there was no general or common oppression of the african in slavery--there were no horrors to him in the condition--but on the contrary he was contented and happy, merry as the day is long. how was it that a book so full of untrue statement and gross exaggeration as to an american theme found such wide acceptance at the north and elsewhere out of the south? for years i could not explain. when i read it at princeton, i talked it over with the southern students. we pooh-poohed the negroes, but we admired the principal white characters except mrs. st. claire, whom we all regarded as a libellous caricature. the representation of slavery was incorrect, and the portrayal of the negro as only a black and kinky-haired white was so absurd that one of us dreamed that either would be taken seriously by the north. it was some ten years after the brothers' war that the true explanation commenced to dawn upon me, and it has at last become clear. it is an important fact that the great body of the people of the north knew almost next to nothing of the south, and especially of the average negro. as one calmly looks back now he sees that in the agitation over the admission of california, the cleavage between the two nationalizations treated in foregoing chapters was becoming decided, and that the people belonging to each were losing their tempers and getting ready to fight. when even a political campaign in which the only question is, who shall be ins and who outs, is on, each party is prone to believe the hardest things of the other. but when such a fell resort to force as that of and the years immediately following is impending, all history shows that those on one side will believe any charge reflecting upon the good character of those on the other side which is not grossly improbable. such quarrels are so fierce that we never weigh accusations against our adversaries--we just embrace and circulate. thus had the northern public become ripe for an arraignment of the morality of slavery, which--as was with purblind instinct felt, not discerned--was the sole active principle of the southern nationalization. even without the provocation just mentioned, a northern man would liken the african in everything but his skin and hair to a white. we always classify a new under some old and well-known object. when the romans first saw the elephant they thought of him as the lucanian ox. the automobile which propels itself around our streets is made as much like the corresponding horse-drawn vehicle familiar to the public for ages as can be. the northerner knew no man well but the caucasian, and he had long been led by a common psychological process to give his characteristic essentials to the negro. and now when anti-slavery partisans positively maintained that the latter was a white in all but his outside, adducing seeming proofs, and the free-labor nationalization was with its leading strings pulling all the northern people into line, even the calmest and most dispassionate among them were influenced to believe that the negroes were so much like our anglo-saxon selves it was an unspeakable crime to keep them in slavery. and all tales of cruelty and horror found easy credence. thus had the northern public been made ready for "uncle tom's cabin." and although the book wholly ignored and obscured the really live and burning issue, and it was packed from beginning to end with the most gigantic errors of fact, it took the section by storm. it is a great book. when something has been as persistently demanded as long as "uncle tom's cabin" has been by the northern public and the "conquered banner" by the southern public; when thousands upon thousands of plain people weep over them and lay them away to weep over them again, you may know--it matters not what the unruffled and sarcastic critic may say--that each is a work of the very highest and the very rarest genius. tears of sympathy for tales of distress and misery, whoever can set their fountain flowing is always a nature's king or queen. i have read "uncle tom's cabin" four times: first at princeton in ; the second time amid the gloom of reconstruction, more accurately to ascertain northern opinion of the negro and forecast therefrom, if i could, what was in store for the south; the third time as i was meditating the old and new south; and just the other day the last time. the more familiar i become with it the greater seems to me the power with which the attention is taken and held captive. the very titles to the first twelve chapters are, in their contents and sequence, gems of genius, and draw resistlessly. i become more and more impatient with ruskin's reprehending the escape of eliza, when, with her child hugged to her bosom, she leaps from block to block of floating ice in the ohio until she is safe on the other side--a marvel like the ghost's appearance in the first scene of hamlet, exciting a high and breathless interest at the outset, which is never allowed to flag afterwards. whenever i begin to read the book, i fall at once into that illusion which coleridge has so well explained. i accept all her blunders and mistakes as real facts, and although it is hard to tolerate her negro travesties and the anti-slavery sentiments of her southern whites, somehow they do not then offend me, and there is chapter after chapter in which i follow the action with breathless interest. "gulliver's travels" and "pilgrim's progress" are examples to show how little of reality either entertaining or moving fiction needs. from a mass of false assumptions, seasoned with the merest sprinkling of fact; and especially from her taking for granted that the negro is really on a par of development with the white, she has constructed the iliad of our time. the nursery tale out of which shakspeare fashioned the drama of lear did not furnish him with smaller resources. what a wonderful action he puts in the place of the nursery tale! how natural and probable it all appears to us as it unfolds! how we hate, or pity, or admire, or love as we cannot keep from following it! likewise every reader in the north accepted mrs. stowe's novel as the very height of verity, and afterwards saw in every fugitive slave a george harris, or eliza, or an uncle tom. and the book evoked the same effect out of america. the most curious proof of this that i can think of is the statue of the freed slave, which i saw on exhibition at the centennial. it has nearly all the peculiar physical characteristics of the caucasian; and it represents not a typical man of african descent, but a negro albino, that is, a white negro, not a black one. there are albino negroes, but there are also albino whites. that statue shows what was european conception of the negroes whose chains were broken by the emancipation proclamation. its reception in america shows also that the same conception prevailed here. day after day i saw crowds of northern people contemplating that counterfeit with deep emotion, many of the women unable to restrain their tears. surely "uncle tom's cabin" in its propagandic potency is unrivalled. it did more than the anti-slavery statesmen, politicians, preachers, talkers, and orators combined. to it more than to all other agencies is due that the people of the north took such a stubborn stand in opposition that the south at last saw that the fugitive slave law had been practically nullified. thus the fates worked to bring about secession. for secession was to bring the brothers' war; and this war was to do what could not be done by law or consent,--that is, to get rid of slavery as the informing principle of southern nationalization. the post-bellum propagandic effect of "uncle tom's cabin" has been very malign. with the companion literature and theories, it formed the opinion that devised and executed the reconstruction of the southern states. the cardinal principle of that reconstruction was to treat the blacks just emancipated as political equals of the whites. those who did this are to be forgiven. they had been made to believe that the negroes of the south were as well qualified for full citizenship as the whites, and it was but meet retributive punishment of the great crime of slavery and waging war to hold on to it, that the masters be put under their former slaves. "uncle tom's cabin" had made them believe it. the only parallel of mass of pernicious error engendered by a book, so far as i know, is "burke's reflections." constitutional england ought to have followed charles fox as one man, and given countenance to the rise in france for liberty. but burke's piece of magnificent rhetoric effectually turned the nation out of her course, and had her in league with absolutists to put back the clock of european democracy a hundred years or more. even yet intelligent englishmen magnify that most unenglish achievement. the bad effects of "uncle tom's cabin" have not been so lasting in our country. we americans get out of ruts much more easily than the english. the north is now rapidly learning the real truth as to the utter incapacity of the mass of southern negroes to vote intelligently, and complacently acquiesces in their practical disfranchisement by the only class which can give good government. we must utterly reject and discard everything that mrs. stowe and those whom i distinguish as the root-and-branch abolitionists have taught, in their unutterable ideology, as to the nature and character of the negro, and in its place we must learn to know him as he really is--to tolerate him, nay, to love him as such. this is the only way in which we can prepare ourselves for giving the negroes their due from us. further, we owe it to our proud american history, now that the brothers' war is forty years past, to ascertain the real cause of that mighty struggle, maintained most laudably and gloriously by each side. those whom i am here criticising made many believe that the real stake was whether the slave should remain the property of his master or not. note the emphasized adjuration in the "battle hymn of the republic:" "as he [christ] died to make men holy, let us die to make men free." a most beautiful sentiment, fitly expressed; but how it humiliates the grand issue, which was whether federal government should live or perish! and that greatest of american odes, whittier's "laus deo," how wide of the true mark is its sublime rejoicing! celebrating the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment, the occasion demanded that he extol the really benign achievement. that achievement was that all cause of diverse nationalization in the states had been forever removed, and thus it was assured that brotherhood of the nations was to grow without check. but the rapt bard was blinded, as his utterances show, by what now almost appears to have been a fit of delusional insanity. he says: "ring! o bells! every stroke exulting tells of the burial hour of crime." what does he mean is the crime? why, the delivering of certain africans and their descendants from lowest human degradation and misery, and blessing them with opportunity and help to rise far upward? had he seen, as we do now, forty years later, instead of pouring out this wild and mad delight, he would have dropped scalding tears over the "burial hour" of all that promised anything of welfare to those for whom he had labored so long and faithfully. and in the last stanza his command that "with a sound of broken chains" the nations be told "that he reigns, who alone is lord and god!" the poet misunderstood the "broken chains" as greatly as he did the "burial hour." chains were broken, but their breaking was no blessing to the negro. golden chains of domestic ties, drawing him gently, kindly, surely up to higher morality and complete manhood--these were broken; and far other were forged for him, with which fear he has been made fast to destruction. his only friends able to help alienated; what a clog! given back to african improgressiveness; what a fetter! how he is held to the body of death by unbreakable chains of want, misery, vice, disease, and utter helplessness! and how his shackles gall him and his convict chains clank in every corner of the land which was once an earthly paradise to him! let us not sully with whittier the glory of the federal arms by ascribing to them as their chief triumph the gift of illusory freedom to a few negroes. rather let us inform ourselves with the spirit of webster, and give praise and thanks without end for the actual blessings and the richer promise of the restored union to myriads of that race whose mission it is to spread an inexpressibly fair socialism over all the earth. and let me say at the last, the people of the north should learn that all the tragic evils which professor wendell and others outside of the south have in mind belong only to the slave-ships, and by a strange psychological metastasis--no stranger, however, than that by which the fourth commandment, in popular conception, has been abrogated as to the seventh day, and applied to the first day of the week--they have firmly attached themselves to the reputation of southern slavery. for long years we of the south, our mothers and our mothers' mothers, our fathers and our fathers' fathers, have been charged with cruelties and outrages purely fancied. these fabrications are the stock comparisons with which almost every invective against the wrongs of any lower class is sharpened. the writer or speaker whenever he is taken short says something of the dreadful condition of the southern slave under the sway of an entirely absolute master. variety of the misdeeds invoked as illustration is limited only by the promptness with which the utterer can think of what he has read in abolition literature or its sequel. it is all mere parrot gabble. to hear so much of it as we do is "a little wearing," as reginald wilfer said. surely if our brothers and sisters of the north but think, they will acknowledge that these so-called horrors of slavery were all nothing but the inventions of the angry passions provoked by the powers in the unseen after they had decided that slavery must be sacrificed in the interests of the union. and these dear brothers and sisters will no longer persist in asserting that southern slavery was but robbery and oppression of and cruelty to the slave; that the system was evil to him of itself. they will talk no more of the pro-slavery infamy, of the unscrupulousness and perfidy of the slave power, and all such false twaddle, that can now serve no purpose whatever except to offend good men and women and their children without cause. chapter x slavery at last impelled into a defensive aggressive until the crisis of , slavery had never changed from purely defensive tactics. this year made it seem that the north had fully resolved that slavery should never be allowed another inch of new territory; and also was very near, and was rapidly coming nearer to, the point of practically preventing the enforcement of the fugitive slave law. we have explained how slave property could not live unless it found new virgin soil in the territories; and we have also explained what a deadly blow it would receive, in the refusal to restore fugitives. this refusal would be really indirect abolition. read the masterly sketch by calhoun, in his speech march , , of the conquering advance of the anti-slavery party, until now--to use his language--"the equilibrium between the two sections ... had been destroyed;" and he demonstrates that the actual exercise of the entire national political power must soon be in the hands of the free-labor section. the south instinctively felt that the time for her old tactics was over, and that she must do more than merely fend off the blows of abolition. and, as we will tell in the next chapter, she found her new leader in toombs. nullification as advocated by calhoun was the extreme energy of the pure defensive of the south. his proposed dual executive amendment was merely that nullification be made a right granted to the federal government instead of remaining one reserved to the states. toombs had grown up in the school of william h. crawford. george r. gilmer, a follower of crawford, tells of the latter: "he was violently opposed to the nullification movement, considering it but an ebullition excited by mr. calhoun's overleaping, ambition."[ ] toombs scouted nullification. under his lead his state, in , adopted the georgia platform quoted above. this platform was considerate and resolute preparation for the southern offensive. next the south assumes initiative. extension of slave-territory is so great an economical _sine qua non_ that she attacks its barriers. using her control of the then dominant democratic party she got the missouri compromise repealed. her main purpose in this was to wrench from the anti-slavery men the weapon of congressional restriction, then deemed by them the most powerful of all in their armory. she also contemplated extorting a concession of all lands in the territories which could be profitably cultivated by slaves from the north, alarmed into apprehending that otherwise slavery might be carried above . '. this repeal did more than anything else--more even than "uncle tom's cabin"--to arouse the north into mortal combat with slavery. the historian cannot understand why the south procured it, if he ignores that energy of southern nationalization which we have done our utmost to explain. this nationalization had got into what we may call the last rapids, and was bound to go over the precipice into the gulf of secession. the bootless struggle by the south against overwhelming odds of northern settlers to make kansas a slave state was the sequel to the repeal of the missouri compromise. when the south understood that kansas was really gone, she advanced her forlorn hope in her endeavor to secure slavery in the union. the essence of the compromise measures of was that the demand of congressional non-interference with slavery in the states and territories, made by the south, was declared adopted as future policy. as the forlorn hope just mentioned she now made the demand that the owner's property in his slaves, if he should carry them into a territory, should be protected by congress until its people had made the constitution under which the territory would be admitted into the union. her adherence to this demand split the democratic party; and the election of lincoln ensued. this election meant that slavery--the property supporting more than nine-tenths of the southern people, and which was virtually their entire economic system--was put under a ban. there was nothing for it but depreciation in the near future; soon more and more depreciation; until after prolonged stagnation and paralysis the value of all her property would collapse as did that of the continental currency. that was the way it looked to her. we believe that the facts show that her conviction was right. she felt with her whole soul that the time had come to invoke state sovereignty. so she seceded, with intent to save the property of her people and maintain their domestic peace. of course she purposed an equitable apportionment of the public domain between herself and the north under which she would get the small part that suited slave agriculture. the circumstances constrained the south throughout every part and parcel of her offensive as powerfully as exhaustion of his supplies constrains the commander of a garrison to a sortie upon what he has reason to believe is the weakest point of the circumvallation. she was hypnotized by the powers. they made her believe that she was always doing the right thing to protect slavery when they were having her to do that only which assured its destruction. she was all the while as conscientious as the mother who, afraid of drafts, keeps the needed fresh air from her consumptive child and thereby kills him. we recognize the resistless play of the cosmic forces upon the sun, moon, and stars; upon our earth; in the yearly round of the seasons; in the ocean tides; in storms and heated terms; in vegetation; and in things innumerable taken note of by the senses. but this is not all of their empire. they sway individuals, communities, peoples, nations, making the latter even believe that they are having their own way when in fact they are most servilely doing the will of the powers. chapter xi toombs calhoun solidified the south in resolve to leave the union if the abolition party got control of the federal government. just before his death there commenced such serious contemplation of an aggressive defence of slavery that we may call it an actual aggressive. although by reason of his unquestioned primacy he could have assumed the conduct of this aggressive, he did not. toombs was its real, though not always apparent, leader, from its actual commencement until it resulted in secession. thus he played an independent part of his own, and deserves a chapter to himself. while calhoun was the forerunner, toombs was both apostle and the moses of secession. as nearly all of my readers have never thought of any one else than calhoun in this capacity, the statement of toombs's prominence just made will probably startle them. but i know if they will follow me through the record they will all at last agree with me. in view of calhoun's conspicuousness in the southern agitation from until his death in , this misapprehension of my readers is very natural. contemporaries following sulla, named pompey, not julius cæsar, the great. similarly toombs, as an actor in the intersectional arena, is as yet dwarfed from comparison with the really great but not greater calhoun. it is much more necessary than i saw such a method was with calhoun to deal first with what we may call the non-sectional parts of toombs's career. and i wish to assure my readers at the outset that these parts are exceptionally important and valuable not only to every american, but to all those anywhere who prize shining examples of private virtue and exalted teachers of good and honest government. i was nearly ten years old when toombs's congressional career commenced in december, . living only eighteen miles from him i heard him often mentioned. it was the delight of many people to report his phrases and repartees. by reason of their wisdom or wit and fineness of expression, the whole of each one lodged in the dullest memory. i never knew another whose sayings circulated so widely and far without alteration. as they serve to introduce you to his rare originality, i will tell here a few of them that i heard admired and laughed at in my boyhood. he had not then left off tobacco, but he chewed it incessantly, and a spray of the juice fell around him when he was speaking. once while he was haranguing at the hustings, a drunken man beneath the edge of the platform on which he was standing, rudely told him in a loud voice not to let his pot boil over. toombs, looking down, saw that his interrupter had flaming red hair: "take your fire from under it, then," he answered. in another stump speech he was earnestly denying that he had ever used certain words now charged against him. a stalwart, rough fellow--one of choate's bulldogs with confused ideas--rose, and asserted he had heard him say them. when and where was asked. the man gave time and place, and added tauntingly, "what do you say to that?" toombs rejoined, "well, i must have told a d--d lie." a rival candidate, really conspicuous and celebrated for his little ability, in a stump debate pledged the people that if they would send him to congress he would never leave his post during a session to attend the courts, as he unjustifiably charged toombs with habitually doing. the latter disposed of this by merely saying, "you should consider which will hurt the district the more, his constant presence in, or my occasional absence from, the house." in another discussion this same opponent charged him with having voted so and so. replying, toombs denied it. the other interrupted him, and sustained his charge by producing the _globe_; and he expressively exclaimed, "what do you think of that vote?" toombs answered without any hesitation--nothing ever confused him--"i think it a d--d bad vote. there are more than a hundred votes of mine reported in that big book. he has evidently studied them all, and this is the only bad one he can find. send _him_ to congress in my place, the record will be exactly inverted; it will be as hard to find a good one in his votes as it is now to find a bad one in mine." in the congressional session of - toombs had made his hamilcar speech, to be told of fully after a while. in this he avowed his preference of disunion to exclusion of the south from the territories so positively and strongly that the ultra southern rights men hailed him as their champion. but soon afterwards, with the great majority of the people of the state, he took his stand upon the compromise of and the georgia platform quoted above. this was really on his part a recession from the extreme ground he had taken in the speech. in , a coalition of the whigs and democrats of georgia nominated howell cobb, a democrat, for governor, and toombs, then a whig, canvassed for him with great zeal. he had an appointment to speak, in oglethorpe county, at lexington, the county seat. there were quite a number of ardent southern rights men in the county, who held that the admission of california, really in southern latitude, with its anti-slavery constitution, called for far more decided action on the part of the south than was counselled in the compromise and georgia platform. hating toombs, whom they regarded as a renegade, they plotted to humiliate him when he came to lexington. as he never shrank from discussion they easily got his consent to divide time with--as the phrase goes--a canvasser for mcdonald, their candidate for governor. toombs was to consume a stated time in opening the stump debate; then the other was to be allowed a stated time; after which toombs had a reply of twenty minutes--these were the terms. in opening, toombs, as was natural, stressed the compromise measures and set forth the advantages of preserving the union; and he fiercely inveighed against the men who could not be satisfied with the georgia platform, embraced as it had been by a great majority of all parties, denouncing them as disunionists. the other disputant took the hamilcar speech of toombs, made just the year before, as his text. deliberately, accurately, systematically he unfolded the doctrine of that speech, and he did the same for the speech just made, and contrasting the two, he put them into glaring inconsistency. southern rights stock rose and union stock sunk rapidly as the comparison went on. in his peroration the speaker commented upon toombs's tergiversation with such effective severity it elicited wild applause from the men of his side. they had pushed themselves to the front. toombs rose to reply. in their riotous rejoicing over the great hit of their speaker, they forgot the proprieties of the occasion; forgot that it was toombs's meeting, as was said in common parlance; and they rapped on the floor with canes, and even clubs provided for the nonce, howled, and made all kinds of noises to drown his voice. unabashed he looked upon them, smiling that grandest and blandest of smiles. as the foremost of these roysterers told me long afterwards, his self-possession excited their curiosity. they wanted to hear if he could say anything to get out of the trap in which they had so cleverly caught him; and they became still. "it seems to me," he commenced, "that men like you meditating a great revolution ought first to learn good manners." at this condign rebuke of behavior which, according to stump usage, was as uncivil and impolite as if it had been shown toombs in his own house by guests accepting his hospitality, spontaneous cheers from the union men, who were in very large majority, appeared to raise the roof. in his highest and readiest style--for mob opposition always lifted him at once into that--he reminded his hearers that their whole duty was to decide whether they would approve the compromise and the georgia platform or not; and that to discuss whether what he had spoken last year before these measures were even thought of, was right or wrong, was to substitute for a transcendently important public question a little personal one of no concern to them whatever. "if there is anything in my hamilcar speech that cannot be reconciled with the measures which i have supported here to-day with reasons which my opponent confesses by his silence he cannot answer, i repudiate it. if the gentleman takes up my abandoned errors, let him defend them." how the union men cheered as he broke out of the trap, and caught the setters in it! i heard much of this day, still famous in all the locality, when six years afterwards i settled in lexington, to begin law practice. over and over again the union men told how their spirits fell, fell, fell as the southern rights speaker kept on, until it looked black and dark around; and then how the sun broke out in full splendor at the first sentence of toombs's reply, and the brightness mounted steadily to the end. that sentence last quoted is a proverb in that region yet. if in a dispute with anybody there you try to put him down by quoting his former contradictory utterances, he tells you that if you take up his abandoned errors you must defend them. the interest excited in me by what is told in the foregoing was the beginning of my study of toombs, which never at any time entirely ceased, and which will doubtless continue as long as i live. he has impressed me far more than any other man whom i ever knew. soon after his return, in , from his exile i resolved i would try to write his life under the title, "robert toombs, as a lawyer, statesman, and talker;" and for ten or fifteen years i had been systematically collecting the data. these had accumulated under each head--especially reports of his epigrams and winged phrases--far more considerably than was my expectation at first. i added to them very largely by copious notes of the record of his congressional life which i read attentively in course, commencing immediately after his death. in a few years i had finished my task. as yet i have not found the times favorable for publication, and the ms. may perplex my literary executor. of course my object in the too egotistic narrative just made is to inform you that i have bestowed very great labor and study upon the subject, hoping thus to draw your attention. robert toombs was born july , , on his father's plantation in wilkes county, georgia. he went to school at washington, the county seat; then to the state university; which having left, he finished his collegiate course at union. next he spent a year at the law school of virginia university. he never was a bookworm. his habitual quotations during the last fifteen years of his life--when i was much with him--betrayed a smattering of the roman authors commonly read at school, a much greater knowledge of the latin quoted by blackstone and that of the current law maxims, and considerable familiarity with "paradise lost," "macbeth," and the falstaff parts of "king henry iv.," and "merry wives," don quixote, burns, and the bible. but this man, whose diction and phrases were the worship of the street and the despair of the cultured, had no deep acquaintance with any literature. erskine got the staple of his english from a long and fond study of shakspeare and milton; but toombs must have drawn his only from the fountains whence tom, dick, harry, and mariah get theirs, and then purified and refined it by a secret process that nobody else knew of,--not even himself, as i believe. if he had only corrected after utterance as assiduously as erskine did, of the two his diction would be much the finer. the year before he came of age he was admitted to the bar by legislative act. in the same year he married his true mate and settled at washington. for four years the famous william h. crawford was the judge of the circuit. toombs was born into the crawford faction, and the judge who, as there was no supreme court then, was law autocrat of his circuit, gave him favor from the first. the courts were full of lucrative business. the old dockets show that in five years toombs was getting his full share in his own county and the adjoining ones. the diligent attention that he gave every detail of preparation of his cases, had, in a year or two after his call, made him first choice of every eminent lawyer for junior. one of these was cone, a native of connecticut, who had received a good education both literary and professional, before he came south. toombs, who had known the great american lawyers of his time, always said after his death in that cone was the best of all. lumpkin used to tell that during a visit to england he haunted the courts, but he never found a single counsel who spoke to a law point as luminously and convincingly as cone. another one of these was lumpkin. he is, i believe, the most eloquent man that georgia ever produced. he had some tincture of letters; but he was without choate's pre-eminent self-culture and daily drafts of inspiration from the immortal fountains. a. h. stephens admired choate greatly. he heard the latter's reply to buchanan. often, at liberty hall--as stephens called his residence--he would repeat with gusto the passage in which choate roasts buchanan for his inculcation of hate to england. stephens contended that if all that education and art had done for each--choate and lumpkin--could have been removed, a comparison would, as he believed, show lumpkin to be the stronger advocate by nature. these three--cone, lumpkin, and toombs--were often on the same side. but whether toombs had them as associates or as adversaries, they were always in these early years of his at the bar, in his eye. with the unremitted attentiveness of what we may call his subconscious observation, and a receptivity always active and greedy, he seems to have soon appropriated all of cone's law and all of lumpkin's advocacy--that is, he had, as he did with the speech and language heard by him every day, transmuted them into the rare and precious staple peculiar to his own _sui generis_ self. in his first forensic arguments his rapid utterance was as indistinct as if he had mush in his mouth, old men have told me. but after a year or two of practice he developed both power and attractiveness. in due time when cone or lumpkin were with him, he would be pushed forward, young as he was, into some important place in court conduct. i myself heard lumpkin tell that the greatest forensic eloquence he had ever heard was a rebuke by toombs--then some twenty-seven years old--of the zeal with which the public urged on the prosecution of one of their clients on trial for murder. the junior--the evidence closed--was making the first speech for the defence. as he went on in a strong argument, the positiveness with which he denied all merit to the case for the state, angered the spectators outside of the bar, and a palpable demonstration of dissent came from some of them, which the presiding judge did not check as he ought to have done. toombs strode at once to the edge of the bar, only a railing some four feet high separating him from these angry men, and chastised them as they merited. his invective culminated in denouncing them as bloodhounds eager to slake their accursed thirst in innocent blood. these misguided ones were brought back to proper behavior, and with them admiration of the fearless and eloquent advocate displaced their hostility, and carried upon an invisible wave an influence in favor of the accused over the entire community, and even into the jury box. and the narrator, who was one of toombs's greatest admirers, told with fond recollection how the popular billows were laid by the speech of his junior, and how he himself took heart and found the way to an acquittal which he feared he had lost. this affair is illustrative of toombs in two respects. in the first place it shows his extempore faculty and presence of mind. i have seen him so often in sudden emergencies do exactly the thing that subsequent reflection pronounced the best, that i believe had he been in napoleon's place when the red sea tide suddenly spread around, he would have escaped in the same way, or in a better one. i do not believe that this can be said of any one else of the past or present. in the second place it is one of the many proofs extant that he could always vanquish the mob. he divined what offered cases are unmaintainable more quickly, and declined them more resolutely than any one i ever knew. so free was he from illusion that he could not contend against plain infeasibility. it was impossible for clients, witnesses, or juniors to blind him to the actual chances. for ten years or more, commencing with , i observed him in many _nisi prius_ trials, and i noted how unfrequently, as compared with others, he had either got wrong as to his own side or misanticipated the other. but now and then it would develop that the merits were decidedly against him. he would at once, according to circumstances, propose a compromise, frankly surrender, or, if it appeared very weak, toss the case away as if it was something unclean. when he had thus failed, his air of unconcern and majesty reminded of how the lion is said to stalk back to his place of hiding when the prey has eluded his spring. stephens came to the bar some four years after toombs did, and settled in an adjoining county. i need merely allude to their long and beautiful friendship, full details of which are to be found in the biographies of the former. i merely emphasize the importance of stephens's help to toombs's development in his early politics. the former got to congress two years before he did. toombs evidently relied greatly upon the sagacity with which the other divined how a new question would take with the masses. on his return from a brief and bloodless service in the creek war as captain of a company of volunteers, toombs commenced a state legislative career, which mr. stovall has creditably told.[ ] i can stop only to say it was honorable, and contributed greatly to his political education. when toombs was at the virginia law school, he heard some of randolph's stump speeches; and for a few years afterwards he often vouched passages from them as authority. stephens would tell this; and then with affectionate mischief tell further that his friend, before he had finished in the georgia legislature, had ceased entirely to support his contentions with anything else than his own reasons. before he got to congress, he had made reputation at the hustings. in he crossed the savannah, and meeting the veteran mcduffie in stump debate is reported to have come off with the high opinion of all hearers, including his adversary. let us now take an inventory of him as he is about to enter congress. he is the best lawyer in the state, except cone, and fully his equal; while as a speaker he did not have lumpkin's marvellous suasion of common men, yet with them he was almost the next, and he was far greater than lumpkin in quelling the mob, convincing the honest judge that his law was right, and convincing also the better men of the jury and citizens present that the principles of justice involved in the issue of facts were to be applied as he claimed; he had acquired enough of property to be considered rich in that day, although he had always lived liberally; his legislative and political career had convinced the people that he was incomparably the best and ablest man of the district for their representative. it is to be especially emphasized that he had practical talent of the highest order. his plantation was a model of good management. his investments were always prudent and lucrative. practical men of extraordinary ability were bred by the conditions about him. in the raytown district of taliaferro county--about ten miles distant--my maternal grandfather, joshua morgan, lived on his plantation of more than a thousand acres, which he managed without an overseer. his father had been killed by the tories. his education had been so scant that he found reading the simplest english difficult, and to sign his name was the only writing i ever knew him to do. but his plantation management was the admiration of all his neighbors. his land was sandy and thin, but he made it yield more than ample support for his numerous family, his rapidly increasing force of negroes, his blooded horses, his unusually large number of hogs, cows, sheep, and goats; and a fair quantity of cotton besides. the slaves loved sweet potatoes more than any other food, and they were a favorite food in the big house. his supplies never failed, there being some unopened "banks or hills" when the new potatoes came. his hogs were his special attention. his fine horses required so much corn, and so much more of it was needed for bread, that he could not feed it lavishly to his hogs. so he developed a succession of peach orchards, with which he commenced their fattening in the summer. these were four in all; the first ripened in july and the last the fourth week in october. the fruit in any particular one ripened at the same time, and he cared not how many different varieties there were. whenever he tasted peaches away from home that he liked, if they were not from grafted trees, he would carry away the seed, and there was a particular drawer labelled with the date, into which they were put. whenever he had need to plant a tree whose fruit was desired at that particular time of the year, the seed was planted where he wanted the tree. many of his neighbors planted the seeds in a nursery, whence after a year or two they transplanted the young trees; but my grandfather, as he told me, saved a year by his method. he was always replanting in place of injured trees and those he had found to be inferior. the "fattening" hogs--that is, those to be next killed for meat--were turned into the july orchard just as soon as the peaches commenced to fall; and they went on through the rest of the series. there was running water in each orchard. after peach-time, these hogs ran upon the peas which were now ripe in the corn fields, the corn having been gathered. and for some two weeks before they were to be killed they were penned and given all the corn they would eat. what pride the good planter of that time took in keeping independent of the tennessee hog drover, who was the main resource of his rural neighbors who did not save their own meat, as the phrase then was! observing that his hogs were not safe against roving negroes when away from the house on sunday, on that day they were kept up. one of my earliest recollections is that of old lige driving them to the spring branch twice every sunday. for a long while he tried in various ways to protect his sheep against worrying dogs. at last he had them "got up" every night in some enclosure he wished to enrich near enough to the big house for his own dogs to be aware of any invasion by strangers, and he never had a sheep worried afterwards. the foregoing is enough to suggest the whole of the system. the management of its different trains and many separate departments upon an up-to-date railroad was not superior in punctuality and due discharge of every duty. he lived well, entertained hospitably, and kept out of debt. mr. thomas e. watson has lately given a graphic description of good plantation conduct,[ ] which ought to be considered by all those who now believe that every planter was necessarily slipshod and slovenly in his vocation. it was a good training school for the born business man. let me give an example to show how extensive planting bred experts in affairs. the southern mutual fire insurance company--its principal office being at athens, some forty miles distant from toombs's home--at the beginning of the brothers' war had for some years almost driven all other insurers out of its territory. it is still such a favorite therein that it is hardly exaggeration to state that its competitors must content themselves with its leavings. the plan of this great company is a novel form of co-operative insurance--indeed, i may say, it is unique. it was invented, developed, and most skilfully worked forward into a success which is one of the wonders of the insurance world. the men who did this were never any of them reputed to be of exceptional talents. they had merely grown up in the best rural business circles of the old south. a similar fact explains the mastery of money, banking, and related matters which calhoun acquired in a locality of south carolina, not forty miles distant from washington, georgia. it also explains why toombs, bred in the interior and far away from large cities, had perfectly acquired the commercial law; had complete knowledge of the principles and practice of banking, and those of all corporate business, and also a familiarity with the fluctuating values of current securities equalling that of experts. he was also, as i know, almost a lightning calculator, and fully indoctrinated in the science of accounts. surely this man, now thirty-five, is ripe for congress. january , , the united states house of representatives having under consideration a resolution of notice to great britain to abrogate the convention between her and the united states, of august , , relative to the region commonly called oregon, toombs made his congressional debut. it is an able speech for a new member--especially for one grappling with a question peculiar to a part of the country so far away from his own. convinced that the adoption of the resolution could give no just cause of offence, he will not yield anything to those who merely cry up the blessings of peace. the warlike note is deep and earnest. then comes the most original part of the speech. showing great familiarity with the facts and the applicable international law, he does his utmost to prove that the title of each country is bad; and it seems to me that he succeeds. he urges that the time has arrived when american settlers are ready to pour into oregon. "terminate this convention and our settlements will give us good title." of course i believe that calhoun's policy, as i have explained it above, was the true one, and that we should have continued the convention as to joint occupancy as long as possible. toombs was bred among the followers of crawford, who regarded calhoun as his rival for the presidency, and i doubt if he ever did neutralize this early influence enough to enable himself to do full justice to calhoun. and as a further palliation, his combative temperament must be remembered, and also that he had inherited from a gallant revolutionary father an extreme readiness to fight england. july , , he discusses a proposal to reduce import duties in a long speech, carefully premeditated as is evident. he shows great familiarity with adam smith, economical principles, fluctuations in prices of leading commodities, and the consequences of affecting legislation. its main interest here is the detailed argument in its concluding passages against the expediency of free trade, of which he afterwards became an advocate. january , , a speech on the proposed increase of the army is his next considerable effort. he denounces the mexican war as unjust in its origin, but he reprehends its feeble conduct. he is very strong, from the southern standpoint, in what he says of the wilmot proviso. here is a passage characteristic of toombs later on: "the gentleman from new york [grover] asked how the south could complain of the proposed proviso accompanying the admission of new territory, when the arrangement was so very fair and put the north and south on a footing of perfect equality. the north could go there without slaves, and so could the south. well, i will try it the other way. suppose the territory to be open to all; then southerners could go and carry slaves with them, and so could northerners. would not this be just as equal? [much laughter.] i will not answer for the strength of the argument, but it is as good as what we of the south get. [laughter.]" winthrop, who followed, commences by deprecating the necessity that exposed him to the disadvantage of contrast with a speech which had attracted so much attention and admiration. and stephens praised the effort greatly.[ ] december , , toombs offered a resolution in the house, that neither the honor nor interest of the republic demand the dismemberment of mexico, nor the annexation of any of her territory as an indispensable condition to the restoration of peace. his taylor speech of july , , evinces warm whig partisanship. in his first years at the bar he loitered a while as a speaker. and one who studies his record in congress discerns that it is some two years before he commences to feel easy as a member of the house. the speeches which i have mentioned above, with the solitary exception of that of january , , are labored communication of cram rather than the peculiar language of the speaker who, when i commenced to observe him a few years later on the stump, had become a marvel both of strong thinking and fit expression extempore. i detect a gleam of the coming man, when august , , and february , , he exhibits his inveterate hostility to maintaining and increasing an army in time of peace. next he begins his lifelong war upon high salaries, and the extravagance and waste of congressional printing. note what he says february , , advocating reduction of salaries of patent examiners; and his denouncing the evil of congress's publishing agricultural works, in two speeches, the one made march , , the other january , . these are short, but strong, and their forcible style gives sure promise that the true toombs is at hand. he suddenly found his real self in december, , when his lead towards secession commenced, as i shall detail later. after that date he soon becomes one of the strongest and most influential members; and especially one whose speech greatly attracts audience. i must support this assertion by the record. with my limited space i must be very brief. my trouble is that the many examples which i could use are all so good it is hard to decide what must be left out. while i shall always give dates, so that my statements can be checked by reference to the _globe_, i need not confine myself strictly to the order of time. his mastery of parliamentary law is a good subject to begin with. january , , it was moved that the sergeant-at-arms act as doorkeeper until one be elected. the chair decided that the question affected the organization of the house and was therefore one of privilege. on an appeal there was much discussion. here is the part played by toombs: "_mr. toombs._ i apprehend that the speaker has committed error. this is not an office known to the law; it was created only by the rules of the house. the office of speaker and clerk alone are known to the law.... it is not every officer whom by their rules they may choose to appoint, that is necessary to the organization of the house. suppose that by a rule they provided for the appointment of a bootblack; could a resolution for his appointment be made a question of privilege to arrest and override all other business? mr. bayley inquired of the gentleman from georgia if a rule was not as clearly obligatory upon the house as a law. _mr. toombs._ it is; but its execution is not a question of organization." a reversal was the result. the following took place february , , and is a good illustration of his forcible way of putting things: "_mr. toombs._ (interrupting mr. stanton) called the gentleman to order. the committee ought not to tolerate this custom of speaking to matters not immediately before it. _the chairman._ does the gentleman from georgia raise the point of order that the remarks of the gentleman from tennessee are not in order because they have no reference to the bill before the committee. _mr. toombs._ my point is that debate upon steamboats is not in order upon a pension bill. _the chairman._ i decide the gentleman is in order. it has been invariable practice to permit such debate in committee of the whole on the state of the union. _mr. toombs._ the practice may have been permitted; but it was wrong." on appeal by toombs the chairman was reversed. though toombs--a whig--had stubbornly opposed the candidacy of howell cobb--a democrat--he soon became to the latter, after his election as speaker, the leading parliamentary authority. often there would be confused clamor and wild disorder, nearly every member proposing something. at a loss himself, cobb would look at toombs and see him intently conning his jefferson. soon he would rise, and being recognized by the speaker at once, would forthwith suggest the right thing. the foregoing was often told by cobb, as his friends have informed me. february , , he shows up the bad consequences of overpaid offices, the duties of which the holders can hire others to do for half of its compensation; and march , the same year, he thus speaks of a cognate evil: "the gentleman seems to go upon the principle that as many clerks with high salaries should be attached to one office as to any other--the principle of equalizing the patronage of these different offices without regard to the species of labor required by each." i append here a collection of short extracts from toombs's speeches in the lower house, which illustrate his power to tickle the ear by striking presentation, epigram, and novel expression: _debate always harmless._ "a little more experience will show the gentleman that he is mistaken, and that the absence of discussion here does not accelerate adjournment. the most harmless time which is spent by the house, he will find, is that spent in discussion." february , . _nominees of national conventions._ "what are the fruits of your national conventions?... they have brought you a van buren, a harrison, a polk, and a general taylor.... i mean no disparagement to any one of these. all of them but one [van buren] have paid the last debt of nature, and the one who survives, unfortunately for himself, has survived his reputation." july , . _two classes of economists._ "there is a class of economists who will favor any measure by which they can cut off wrong or extravagant expenditures. but there is another class who are always preaching economy--who are always ready to apply the rule of economy and get economical in every case except that before the house." february , . _principles of banking._ "if we intend to regulate the business of banking in this district, the bill does too little; if we do not, it does too much, as it does not seek to control generally the business of banking, but permits the issue of notes greater than five dollars, it violates the principles of unrestrained banking, but does not go to the extent of regulation by law. i think the public are more likely to suffer, and to a greater extent, from bank issues above five dollars than those under that amount." january , . _the dahlonega mint, in his own state._ "i believe the mints at dahlonega, charlotte, and new york are each unnecessary.... i do not desire to continue abuses in georgia any more than in new york. i am willing to pull up all abuses by the root.... i think the existing mint is adequate to the wants of the country." february , . _personal explanations in debate of appropriations._ "i believe that with all the abuses we have had in the discussion of appropriation bills, we have never had personal explanations." february , . toombs is now about to leave the lower for the upper house. he has grown in all directions in the qualifications and powers marking the good representative. there is no other man in the house, from either section, whose ability is superior or whose promise greater. three days before his career in the united states senate begins, he made the following appeal, protesting against hasty and reckless expenditure, which seems to me a model of matter and extemporaneous expression: "in this bill the fortification bill is introduced; and provision made for private wagon ways for oregon and california. there is in it an appropriation of $ , to pay somebody for the discovery of ether. you have a provision for a pacific railroad; and you have job upon job to plunder the government in the military bill;--and the representatives of the people are called upon to vote on all these grave questions under five minutes' speeches. you do gross injustice to yourselves; you betray great interests of the people when you act upon such important measures in this manner. let the house reject the amendments; let the senate devote its time to maturing bills, and send them to us to be acted upon deliberately; and then whichever way congress determines for itself, it will have a right so to do. but to act upon them in this way, is not only to abdicate our powers, but to abdicate our duties. put your hands upon these amendments and strike them out." march , . manifestly all that he had learned of the pending bill was from having heard it read. the instant apprehension and accurate statement, and the exhaustion of the subject in far shorter time than his small allowance--these recall what i often heard stephens say, "no one else has ever made such perfect and telling impromptus as toombs." his famous hamilcar outburst did not consume all of his five minutes. toombs was united states senator from march , , until the spring of . his peculiarities must be suggested. although he was perhaps the ablest lawyer in the senate, loved the profession with all the ardor of first love, and had great cases with large fees offered him every day, he resolutely subordinated law practice to his congressional duties. he did much practice, but it was all in the vacations of congress. he did not seek office. there is not to be found, so far as i know, a trace of any aspiration of his during his congressional career for other than the place of senator. if on a special committee, he worked energetically; but he avoided the standing committees. he says: "it is only occasionally that i go to the committee meetings to make a quorum to act on important business. i do not attend them one day more than i am obliged to, for i am quite sure it is not my duty unless charged with a certain subject. this whole machinery is a means of transferring the legislation of the country from those to whose hands the constitution commits it to irresponsible juntas.... i say general standing committees, without any exception, are great nuisances, and they ought to be abolished.... they are not proper bodies to exercise legislative powers. they are not known in the country from which we derive our institutions. the english have no standing committees. they raise special committees on special objects."[ ] february , . "the general business of the country," as he expressed it, january , , that was his concern. each subject requiring the action of the senate, whether important or trivial, received his industrious attention, as his course and language on the floor always show; and he evidently feels it his duty to furnish the body on all questions the utmost instruction and aid that he can possibly give. he had no ambition to be the author of novel measures--he was strenuous only to bestow upon every subject of current legislation the proper consideration. his premeditated efforts are but few. he never shows any distrust of his offhand faculty. he takes part in nearly all the discussions, often being up several times the same day on the same subject. he is seldom lengthy, hardly ever away from the point needing explanation, and never, never dull. generally he comes with correcting fact or enlightening principle, and it is seldom that his matter and words are not both impressive. i found it well in writing the life mentioned above to present the most of his senatorial course by assorting his utterances under their proper heads, with the briefest possible comment, rather than to narrate chronologically in the common way of biographers. in his speeches it is only now and then that he is steadily progressive as he was in the iowa contested election case. his advocacy or opposition is generally founded upon a principle, and from this principle--usually central and self-evident--the different passages radiate in aphorisms, self-supporting paragraphs, and detached arguments,--this common radiation being their only connection. accordingly if you know what is the particular subject that is under discussion, a part taken at random anywhere from any of his extempore speeches is nearly always complete in itself and fully intelligible. therefore we can have him to give in his own words, in a comparatively small space, an approximately full collection of the rich and varied teachings of his senatorial career, although our chrestomathy would appear to one putting it beside the unmutilated report of the _globe_ as a beggarly and jejune abstract. i know of no other public man with whom this can be as satisfactorily done. of course the compilation made by me, as just told, cannot be given here. he challenged every bad and defended every good measure. he is on record both by speech, nearly always hitting the nail on the head, and by vote, nearly always right, upon every one. what he did in the house deserves close attention; but his actings and doings in the senate, to which he belonged from march , , until shortly after his famous speech of january , , when he left to go with his seceding state, are such that i challenge all students of history to produce a single example of such earnest grappling with and able handling of so many matters of importance in so short a time--not eight full years--by any member of ancient or modern parliaments. having now, i hope, aroused my readers to some faint conception of toombs's greatness as a senator in non-sectional matters, i must bring that greatness into fuller view, if i can. i therefore add to the foregoing catalogue the rough character sketch next following. we begin with his devotion to his duties. one examining the _globe_ will hardly find any other member who calls as often for the reading of the reports accompanying bills to pay private claims, and such other small matters; and he will always observe that his immediate comment shows that he has fully taken in what has been read. he said once, "i have been reproached half a dozen times within the last two days as being rather fractious because i desired to understand the business on which i was called to vote." august , . the alert and intelligent vigilance which he gives every measure proposed seems superior to that of all his colleagues. they acknowledge this by the many inquiries they make of him for information as to pending bills. thus june , , green asks him where is the amendment? when was it adopted? has the house disagreed to it? has it been before a committee? etc., and every query is answered without hesitation. this but examples how the other senators very often made a convenience of toombs's accurate note of what was passing. he shows a like readiness upon facts of history--especially english and american--on clauses of the constitution, or statutes, or treaties, provisions of the law of nations, principles of political economy, institutions, commercial systems, customs of particular nations, and all such topics as may illustrate the pending question, however suddenly it may have risen. and so he discusses every matter, grave or trivial, with perfect grasp of the proposition submitted, and with fullness of knowledge and understanding. he avoids strained and over-ingenious reasoning. plain and safe men never disparaged his arguments by calling them hair-splitting or metaphysical. but though he took his stand upon the palpable meaning of undisputed facts and the most plainly applicable doctrines of reason and justice, he displayed an unparalleled power of formulating in intelligible and striking words the key principles of common affairs. this gift always found instant appreciation with practical men, and they admired it as genius. though he has his eye ever open to principle, he is the very opposite of the mere doctrinaire. he is practical, and always pushing business on, except when the bills depleting the treasury--to use his favorite name for them--are up and likely to pass because of the coalition between the opposition and the fishy democrats which he is always exposing with exhaustless variety of language. only then he prefers to do nothing. as to his own measures, he changes words, accepts amendments--in short makes every concession which will gain him the substance of his desire. we will here say a little of him as a speaker. he thus describes himself: "i speak rapidly; but the idea which i intend to utter generally comes out, sometimes perhaps with too much plainness of speech. what i say, i mean; and the whole of what i mean generally gets out." july , . he shows in the following a contemptuous opinion of written speeches: "as a general rule a speech that is fit to be spoken is not fit to be printed, and one fit to be printed is not fit to be spoken.... the senator from new york [seward] comes in with his already in type; other gentlemen around me, on both sides of the house, from all sections of the union, who think proper to write essays, bring them here and read them to the senate.... i am not objecting to their character, but i would rather read them in my room. of course nobody pays any attention to them here." april , . he did not habitually correct the report of his speeches, as he says may , ; at the same time entering a general disclaimer as to all that he does not report himself. this disclaimer must not be pressed too far. if you are familiar with the man you need not fear being led astray by the inaccuracies, the number of which he greatly exaggerates. his stamp is so unmistakable that you always know what is his. extempore discussion was his forte. therefore nearly all the quotations i use in the life which i have written i intentionally take from his shorter, impromptu, and evidently unrevised speeches. these unlabored effusions, it matters not how dry or small the particular theme may be, have generally the double merit of showing the true solution and refreshing with figure, apt illustration, or wit.[ ] in important debate he is conspicuously the strongest man in the senate. we will run over the leading ones: july , , a bill containing appropriations for places in nearly every one of the states came up. through the long debate he evinces uncommon power and readiness. he is too tart in rejoinder, and too much gives the rein to invective. in the two days' debate of the mail steamer appropriation--february , , ,--he distinguishes himself. february , , toombs, with hunter and toucey, supports a resolution proposing the origination of appropriation bills in the senate. sumner and seward take the other side. the argument of seward is very elaborate, notwithstanding his declaration at the outset that he is wholly unprepared. it is demolished by toombs in his most crushing style. note, too, how accurate the latter is as to the proceedings of the constitutional convention, how familiar he is with the abuses of wild appropriations which he is trying to correct, and how graphically he depicts them. july , , the black lake harbor appropriation is the subject. all that he says is noticeable for power; especially his replies to interruptions by pugh, wade, and cass. though the bill was passed over his head, as you read the report you feel that his was the actual triumph. july , , another debate of river and harbor improvements. it is begun by hunter. benjamin takes the lead in support of the bill; toombs joins discussion with the latter, who by his coolness and adroitness for a while foils his adversary; but soon toombs gets his feet firmly on the constitution, and still more firmly upon the injustice of extorting the support of commerce from other interests, and he is resistless. the disputants often put questions to one another. toombs's promptness to answer every adverse position is a taking exhibition. it is to be noted that many sparkling sentences are struck out of him by the incessant hammering of the others. at the close, he seems either to have wearied or silenced his opponents. one cannot but feel that this is no arena for a man who can make only written speeches. august , , the subject being the improvement of the mississippi, toombs urges that the valley is prosperous, and it should improve its river. the examination he gives the question is profoundly searching. towards the conclusion of the debate, cass reads the counter doctrine of calhoun, in the report of latter to the memphis convention, his reason being, as he says: "i will confess frankly my object in reading it. the senator from georgia has treated the question with great ability; and i want the same vehicle that carries his remarks to the public to carry also the opinions and views of mr. calhoun, whose authority is vastly better than mine." through the whole of this debate the faculty and force exhibited by toombs are wonderful even for him. consider all that he says of the proper management of the post-office, february , . january , , there was an animated debate, which occupied the morning and was renewed in the evening. the vigorous blows which he deals the coalition passing the appropriations--ever the theme of his severest reprehension--and the review he makes of each item in the appropriation bill, taken all in all, are high feats. his conduct, january , , in the iowa contested election manifests such rare courage against party and section for the right that it must be told at some length. we think it belongs with the more important matters just noticed rather than to its chronological place. harlan, a republican, had been sitting for some time as a senator from iowa. there was no contestant. the adverse report was grounded upon a protest of the iowa senate, stating that that body did not participate in the so-called joint convention which had affected to elect harlan. it appeared that both houses of the iowa legislature had met in joint convention, had balloted without result, and the convention had adjourned to meet at a. m. the next day. on this day the senate--the majority of its members manifestly being democrats and opposed to the sense of the joint majority--met in their own chamber and adjourned before the hour appointed for the assembling of the convention. but a majority of the senate were present in the convention when it made the election--several of them having been brought in by the sergeant-at-arms, and who protested that they did not act in the proceedings. in the united states senate the democrats were in a majority, but toombs, who was always above mere party considerations, supported the cause of harlan, saying afterwards, "i maintained his title, black republican though he was, because i believed it stood on right." february , . the decision was against harlan; but i do not think that an unbiased man who regards mere technical rules as no more than the instruments of justice, will fail to concur with toombs. his treatment of the subject is extremely good and entertaining. every material fact is given prominence; every important distinction taken, as, for instance, that the convention, as it could do no legislative act and did not require the concurrence of the executive, was not really the legislature, but only the persons constituting the legislature acting in a body of their own as electors; and further, his position that after the convention had organized it could proceed with the election as long as it had a quorum. having completed a most lawyer-like and concatenated argument, which is a wonderful exhibition of concise and exhaustive extemporaneous reasoning, he rises to the higher plane of statesmanship and justice, in which he shows in a vivid light what a monstrous evil it would be to approve the factious withdrawal of the majority of the iowa senate from the convention. note especially the many questions asked him by different members, and the readiness and satisfactoriness of his answers.[ ] it is all in all one of the best samples of toombs's dispassionate debate to which i can refer. very probably the democrats would have done right by harlan had it not been for bayard's argument, the special effectiveness of which was the use he made of the case of his own election, in , to the united states senate by the delaware legislature. as he stated it, it was this: there being a majority of one in the delaware house of representatives in favor of the opposite party, a majority of that house refused to go into the joint balloting. bayard was elected, and it was maintained by his party, the democrats, that a majority of the members of the two houses had authority to proceed; but he hesitated, and at last consulted silas wright, of new york. the latter gave a decided opinion that such an election was invalid. whereupon bayard succumbed, and his state was without a senator for two years. i cannot help feeling that if wright had considered the subject and bottomed it on true principle, as toombs afterwards did, bayard would have settled down in the opposite conclusion, and he and toombs in concert would have forced their fellow-democrats of the united states senate into doing justice to an opponent. many have been superior to toombs in making perfect orations, but it is hard to find in any deliberative body a match for him as a debater. charles fox was a giant; but he did not have the strength, the grip, the never remitted activity, the infinite thrust, the parry, illustration, wit, epigram, and invincible appeal to conscience, feeling, and reason--in short, the complete supply and command of all resources that marked toombs as foremost in the pancratium of parliamentary discussion. it ought to add inexpressible brightness to his fame that he sought for no triumphs except those of justice and good policy. he was far more than a mere logician in debate. his brilliant snatches, his sudden uprisings, his thawing humor, and flashing wit--all these did their part as effectively in winning favor and working suasion as his array of facts and his ratiocination did theirs in convincing. he was too prone to use harsh language towards the other side. there are many places in his speeches where i wish he had used soft instead of bitter words. that he could observe perfect parliamentary propriety there are proofs in the _globe_. especially would i refer to his behavior in the harlan debate, spoken of a moment ago, and his discussion of the indiana senatorial election, june , . note the last especially (belonging volume, - ) for his moderation, courtesy, and invitation of question while he is most ably supporting the central proposition he had before urged in the iowa case. yet, in spite of his occasional vehemence and acrimonious language, he seems to have the respect and regard of even his most decided political opponents. wade and he recognize each the great merit of the other. once after applauding his honesty and frankness, toombs says of him: "he and i can agree about everything on earth until we get to our sable population, i do believe." march , . wade had already said this of toombs: "i commend the bold and direct manner in which the senator from georgia always attacks his opponents." february , . february , , fessenden said, "i am very happy to get that admission from the senator from georgia. it is made with his customary frankness and clearness." hale also respects him. january , , he says that toombs ought to have been on the bench, complimenting his desire for justice and fairness as well as his legal ability. the northern democrat simmons loves to praise him, as is evidenced by what he says june , , february , , and june , . such unsought and spontaneous commendations of the great southern partisan by northern men during the heat of sectional agitation are extraordinarily strong proofs of his high character as well as great genius. of course the southern members showed their appreciation. especially note what bayard says march , , and what butler says january , . i could give many more such; but i shall only add here how, february , , by reason of the importunate urgency of some of these, evidently regarding him as the special southern champion, he is pushed into making an able rejoinder to hale, who had just concluded a reply to toombs's speech on the invasion of states. toombs's inflexible keeping to what he deemed the right course parallels the absolute fearlessness with which julius cæsar, when a young man, clung to the wife whom the all-powerful and bloody-minded sulla commanded him to put away. the sulla of america are the people in their unconscientious moments, and unpopularity the proscription threatened which disquiets almost all public men with torturing apprehension. and so there is in nearly every one some admixture of the trimmer. but toombs never showed fear either of the people at large or of those of his own state and locality. he thus scourges juries assessing the value of land condemned for the government: "it has come to such a pass that in getting places for the army, it seems to be considered better to be cheated by the owners of a site out of a few hundred thousand for $ , worth of property rather than trust a jury." june , . when he uttered the following he knew it was extremely unpalatable to his section: "the southern states from their sparseness of population do not pay all their postal expenses. the whole mail service of the south ought to pay its whole expenses, and i am ready to put it on that ground.... i say the point to retrench is in the south." february , . the following distasteful lesson he read his own state: "i know that some of the mail routes in my own neighborhood were taken away, and i never was consulted about them, and i never thought it was the duty or business of the postmaster-general to consult me. i have not been to his office during this winter in regard to a single one; and i have been very much complained of, even in my own county and town, on account of it.... i have a word to say about the _isabel_. she touches at savannah; and i have received memorials from people, letters from interested people, from the savannah chamber of commerce, and others, saying, 'by all means keep up the _isabel_; we want it.' it is a very popular thing; it is a good ship, and has done its duty well. what have i to do but follow my uniform line of policy, and give them the same rules as everybody else? sixteen years' experience here--and i was here in , when this steamship system commenced--have satisfied me that congressional contracts are always unwise, and are the fruitful sources of boundless legislative corruption. therefore, i will never sustain one under any necessity whatever." may , . february , , though iverson, his companion from georgia, was the other way, he advocated abolishing the mint at dahlonega in that state, and the mint also in north carolina. the last instance we cite is his declaration, april , , that he had always voted against a claim of the daughter of governor irvin of georgia. and to this proud independence he was without spot of corruption. this was never questioned but once. may , , he was taunted for having supported the galphin claim. when at last he sees that the charge is seriously urged, in a becoming glow he demands an explanation. a disclaimer of reflection upon his character being made, he gives a detailed account of the claim, his steady support of it, and a complete justification of george w. crawford in the affair. at its close, hammond of south carolina, who was familiar with all the details, bestowed upon it his unqualified voucher. the lofty spirit and just indignation informing this statement of toombs from beginning to end distinguish it as that of one who has kept out of dark places and walked so purely in the light that accusation is far more of a surprise than insult.[ ] he never showed any symptom of the presidential fever, which, to say nothing of its many other victims, enfeebled each one of the great trio,--clay, calhoun, and webster. fully content with his place in the senate, he did not look elsewhere. taking popularity at its exact worth; candid and frank to the extreme; contented in the course dictated by his judgment and conscience though opposed by his people or party and his own private interest; in no bargains with men nor smirching connections with women, doing nothing in secret which, if published, would bring a blush; elevated above the amiable weaknesses of unwise benevolence, ever championing with all his powers the righteous cause of the weak and unpopular,--as exampled in his maintaining the claims of certain persons in louisiana to the houmas land against the formidable opposition of the two senators from that state, in his extraordinarily eloquent appeal for the naval officers retired without a hearing, in his heroic endeavor to have his party seat the republican harlan; incorruptible and really consistent forever and always,--when he is scrutinized as a public man his character rises into a grandeur of unselfishness, firmness of high purpose, honesty, and power to show and do the right almost superhuman. it stands by itself awe-striking and imposing. but let us particularize the special lesson of his senatorial career. we must begin by suggesting his peculiar bent. it is clear that he chose as his province commerce and industry, with the related themes of political economy, finance, the currency, taxation, the tariff, the principles of exchange and distribution, and so on.[ ] he probably had the best business insight of all our prominent statesmen, calhoun even not excepted. though hamilton and webster--the former especially--evince titanic comprehension of financial theory, yet we see from their lives and poor money-saving success that commercial and business affairs were not to them both practice and theory as they were to toombs. of all his peers he was most at home in the ways and principles which dictate proper legislation as to trade and business. to judge by his words, uttered year in and year out, nobody else ever saw more clearly that there ought to be no tariff, improvement, job, or any other pets of government. the latter should not foster such a class, yearly increasing in number, as it always will, living idly and luxuriously upon the public income, that is, upon the labor and property of others. this class supplants the vigorous products of natural selection by pampered fatlings of bounty, always raising their demands for support, and ever more and more clamorously calling for the suppression of all self-supporting competition at home and abroad. with the moral hardihood of shakspeare, who shrinks not from rudely shocking our feelings by making henry v discard his old boon companion falstaff, toombs never wearied of proclaiming the unpopular truth that the government ought not to be the helper, guardian, patron, protector, guarantor, surety, almoner, of any of its citizens. ponder these stout-hearted and golden words of his, although the evil represented therein is now established and magnified into dimensions far beyond what he could conceive when they were said--an evil, to suppress which let us hope all patriots will soon unite: "whenever the system shall be firmly established that the states are to enter into a miserable scramble for the most money for their local appropriations, and that senator is to be regarded the ablest representative of his state who can get for it the largest slice of the treasury, from that day public honor and property are gone, and all the states are disgraced and degraded." february , . he is always preaching against the heinous abuse of diverting government from impartially guarding the whole community and making it profit only a few. his text is never far-fetched. he finds it in the proposed legislation of the day, which it is his duty to consider in his place. he cares not that he makes no present effect. just before bell's bill for improving the cumberland river was passed, he said of it and its companions: "these bills are passing _sub silentio_, and i suppose attempt to resist is wholly useless. i wish it understood that i do not assent to their passage. i am opposed to all of them." february , . he sees that the appropriations for harbors and rivers, lighthouses, private claims, pensions, etc., are almost as baneful as was the distribution of corn to the roman populace, and yet the people everywhere are eager for the corrupting gifts. against his party, against many of his section, he fights alone and single-handed, reminding of horatius keeping the bridge against the etruscan host. though always outvoted, he behaves with spirit and dignity. either he, or some one of the faithful few who act with him in the slim minority, always have the yeas and nays recorded. his grand purpose was to appeal to the american people upon an issue involving the article of his creed which he had held up with so much puissance and fidelity in days of evil report. these words contain the motto of the long contest which occupied all of his non-sectional career in the senate: "i think every one of these bills should be considered. i do not wish to have them considered in such a manner as improperly to occupy the time of the senate. i desire to spread before the country reasonable information. that is the only purpose we can have now; because the combination is sufficient to carry everything that the committee report. but there is a day of reckoning to come; and i trust that those who support this system will be called to judgment." "i desire the truth to go to the honest people all over the country. let the taxpayers look at this matter; let the jobbers beware. 'to your tents, o israel!'" july , . the sectional agitation, mounting higher and higher, as toombs said often, blinded the people to this great subject. secession came, and his state--to him the only sovereign--called the solitary combatant away from the ground that ought to be kept forever in loving memory for his long, desperate, thrice-valiant stand. and the world should also remember that the clauses of the constitution of the confederate states, "prohibiting bounties, extra allowances, and internal improvements," came from him.[ ] the struggle that wins our deliverance from the monopolists now causing us to go hungry, cold, and unshod is yet to be. i cannot say when; but i know it will come soon, and that the people will conquer. as in that day calhoun's monetary doctrine will be brought out of its obscurity to add new lustre to his fame, as i believe, so i believe also that the name of robert toombs will become an object of affectionate reverence to all his countrymen, and the weighty and eloquent sentences in which he sought to shield general industry from drones and rivals favored by government, and in which he advocated that the public burdens be reduced to the minimum, and then apportioned justly,--these stirring words will be quoted everywhere to receive at last their due audience and favor. and when no branch of our government either robs or gives to its citizens, toombs's never-remitted, brave, unselfish, and gigantic endeavor to bring on this millennium ought to be put by americans in their sunday-school books. when we who fought the brothers' war completely forget and forgive, as we soon will, it will then be understood how much the sectional agitation impeded him, and that when he was caught away from the senate by the whirlwind of secession he was only fifty years old, and of such constitutional vigor that he had the guaranty of at least a quarter of a century more of undiminished activity. a fond imagination will inquire: suppose the energy spent upon the kansas discussion; the protection of slavery in the territories; in the great speech of january , , on the invasion of states, and in that of january , , justifying secession, his supreme effort, as most of his admirers claim, could have been saved for themes of pan-american concern; and suppose him remaining in the senate, eschewing all other place, with increasing years loved the more by his people for his courageous fidelity to the right, age assuaging his vehemence and softening his invective, ripening his judgment and bringing him charity and wisdom to the full,--to what a height and glory he would have grown! if there had been no slavery, i verily believe that the south would have been the leading and most prosperous part of the union, and that toombs would have been the greatest american. stephens knew webster, calhoun, and clay. the longer he lived the more positive he became in believing that toombs was superior in ability to each one of the three. i have heard him say often that he had never found anything to which he could compare the power of toombs, discussing a great theme extempore, except niagara. turning back from these unavailing conjectures, i must say a last word as to that part of toombs's career in the senate which i have been discussing. its exemplariness is not so much in single great achievements. it is his uniform attention to the current duties of his place. whether the particular duty impending was important or trivial, whether it was popular or not, it received from him at the proper time whatever effort was needed for doing it rightly. his performance averages so high in merit that i cannot find a like. no plodder ever kept more closely to the safe and beaten path. but he did far more than plod. almost every day for eight years he showed how genius can manifest itself fully and fitly and find its true activity in the common round of affairs; how it can better, exalt, ennoble, and beautify daily routine. i believe that if you will reflect over this, you will at last see that such are the greatest of men, and those that the world most needs. * * * * * i now take up toombs's sectional career. the aggressive defence of slavery, looming in sight as calhoun is within a few months of death, called for a leader who did not hug the union, and whose eyes were shut to everything but the justice and sanctity of the southern cause. calhoun's last speech, that of march , , was throughout an appeal to the north. in that same session, and some while before that speech was delivered, the true apostle of secession begins the proclamation of his mission, and some time after calhoun's death and before the end of the session that portentous proclamation was complete. robert toombs--then in his fortieth year, and having as yet attained but little conspicuousness in congress--is the man i mean. his appeal was really to the south. just after the new congress assembled in december, , a caucus of the whigs, to which party toombs then belonged, having met to nominate a candidate for speaker of the house, he introduced a resolution to the effect that congress ought not to put any restriction upon any state institution in the territories, nor abolish slavery in the district of columbia, and, the resolution being rejected, toombs, stephens, and a small number of others retired from the caucus, and they did not act any further with their party in the organization of the house. toombs and his following declared their purpose to disregard former connections and side with whatever party accorded the south the guaranty demanded by the resolution above mentioned. as these southern whigs, and also fourteen northern democrats and whigs, would not support for speaker either cobb, the democratic nominee, or winthrop, the whig, neither one of the two nominees could muster the majority necessary under the rules for election. toombs's tactics were like those of the commons who would not vote the supplies until the king granted their wishes in other matters. at this time all the southern democrats and a majority of the southern whigs were opposed to his action. he was leading what appeared to be a hopeless advance. this is the beginning. the next stage is when, after nine days of balloting for speaker without result, a resolution was introduced declaring cobb, who had received a plurality, speaker, when duer of new york opposing, said he was willing for the sake of organizing to elect a whig, democrat, or free-soiler--only that he could not support a disunionist. this manifest reflection upon the whigs who had held themselves aloof made toombs break the silence he had theretofore kept. he surprised everybody--perhaps himself--with an impromptu of powerful argument and burning eloquence. note, in order to compare it with whatever utterance of calhoun you please, these passages: "sir, i have as much attachment to the union of these states, under the constitution of our fathers, as any freeman ought to have. i am ready to concede and sacrifice for it whatever a just and honorable man ought to sacrifice. i will do no more. i have not heeded the aspersions of those who did not understand or desired to misrepresent my conduct or opinions. the time has come when i shall not only utter them, but make them the basis of my political action here. i do not, then, hesitate to avow before this house and the country, and in the presence of the living god, that if by your legislation you seek to drive us from the territories of california and new mexico, purchased by the blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery in the district, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon half of the states of this confederacy, _i am for disunion_; and if my physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my convictions of right and duty, i will devote all i am and all i have on earth to its consummation." "the territories are the common property of the united states.... you are their common agents; it is your duty while they are in the territorial state to remove all impediments to their free enjoyment by both sections ... the slaveholder and the non-slaveholder. you have made the strongest declarations that you will not perform this trust; that you will appropriate to yourselves all the territories.... yet with these declarations on your lips, when southern men refuse to act with you in party caucuses in which you have a controlling majority--when we ask the simplest guaranty for the future--we are denounced out of doors as recusants and factionists, and indoors we are met with the cry of 'union, union!'" "give me securities that the power of the organization which you seek will not be used to the injury of my constituents, then you have my co-operation; but not till then.... refuse them, and, as far as i am concerned, 'let discord reign forever.'" i must emphasize the effect of this speech made december , ,--nearly three months before that of calhoun last mentioned,--and which goes great lengths beyond anything ever said by calhoun. the _globe_ mentions that the speaker was loudly applauded several times. stephens, who was present, says "it received rounds of applause from the floors and the galleries," and we can well believe his assertion that it "produced a profound sensation in the house and in the country."[ ] another eye-witness, hilliard of alabama, a southern whig who was not in sympathy with his refusal to act with his party, relates with rapturous reminiscence the full-orbed splendor with which toombs unexpectedly rose upon the house at this time. he tells: "a storm of applause greeted this speech. mr. toombs had left his desk and taken his stand in the main aisle and the southern members crowded about him."[ ] for completeness and height, and for sudden surprise, this speech exceeds all impromptus on record. to appreciate it you must recognize it as surely forerunning the future uprising of southerners as one man in what they deemed the holiest of causes. when you do this you can adapt to it webster's words: "true eloquence ... does not consist in speech.... it must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.... it comes ... like ... the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous original, native force.... then patriotism is eloquent, then self-devotion is eloquent.... this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence--it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action." the remaining facts of this remarkable session, which show that toombs and not calhoun was the apostle of secession, can now be told very briefly. december , , debate in the house was prohibited by resolution. on the d the whigs and democrats, in order to organize without agreeing to the demands of toombs, joined in a resolution that the person receiving the largest vote on a certain ballot, if it should be a majority of a quorum, should be speaker. this was a palpable violation of the rules, but perhaps authorized by the great emergency. when the resolution was presented, toombs, having resolved to prevent any organization until he had secured the guaranty he was standing for, in defiance of the prohibition of debate, made a demonstration of his surpassing endowment, as compared with all other orators, to outmob a hostile mob and scourge them into respectful audience. he adroitly led staunton, introducing the resolution, to yield the floor. why should he want the floor? the house had forbidden any discussion, and especially were nine-tenths of them deaf to him, deeming him the cause of their failure to organize. announcing his purpose of discussion, he was called to order. then a point of order was raised, which the clerk tried to put. the yeas and nays being demanded, the clerk began to call the roll. there was turmoil and din, but toombs held on, denying the right of anybody to interrupt him, supporting his attack on the resolution by the constitution, the act of , and the high authority of john q. adams, challenging the right of the clerk calling the names, and indignantly inquiring of the house how they could so permit an intruder and an interloper in nowise connected with them to interrupt their proceedings. at the last he forced the house into quiet, and completed the argument he had risen to make. you will not understand this marvellous achievement if you deem it, as many do, to have been prompted by the pride of ostentation and the rage of turbulence. toombs was thinking only of securing the rights of his people. he was as earnest in this cause as ever webster was for the union. and destiny, providence,--not himself nor other men,--was in this juncture revealing him to the south as her leader. he now begins to be conscious of his coming leadership, and to feel that he is an authority and entitled to pronounce _ex cathedra_ upon the question of southern equality in the disposition of the territories. consequently, february , , he made a long speech on the subject of the admission of california--one far more elaborate and finished than his average efforts. especially to be noted is its ending with the famous words of troup, "when the argument is exhausted, we will stand by our arms." one other exploit of toombs during this session must be told. it crowned him as the leader of the south. excitement had become intense. the extreme northern partisans for bringing in california were challenged to answer if they ever would vote to admit a slave state, and they declined to say that they would. thereupon came from toombs an outburst which is perhaps the finest example of his miraculous extempore declamation which has survived. he did not consume the five minutes to which he was limited. we append the conclusion, which is a little more than a third of the whole: "we do not oppose california on account of the anti-slavery clause in her constitution. it was her right to exclude slavery, and i am not even prepared to say she acted unwisely in its exercise--that is her business; but i stand upon the principle that the south has the right to an equal participation in the territories of the united states. i claim for her the right to enter them all with her property and securely to enjoy it. she will divide with you, if you wish it; but the right to enter all, or divide, i shall never surrender. in my judgment, this right, involving as it does political equality, is worth a thousand such unions as we have, even if they each were a thousand times more valuable than this. i speak not for others, but for myself. deprive us of this right and appropriate this common property to yourselves, it is then your government, not mine. then i am its enemy, and i will, if i can, bring my children and my constituents to the altar of liberty, and, like hamilcar, swear them to eternal hostility to your foul domination. give us our just rights, and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the union, every part of it, and its every interest. refuse it, and for one i shall strike for independence." stephens, ever a most accurate and trustworthy witness, says that of all speeches which he heard during his congressional course, which covered the years - , this produced the greatest sensation in the house.[ ] its effect outside--that is, in the southern public--was widespread, deep, and permanent. the comparison with which it closed had been, i believe, used before; but what of that? it exactly voiced the revolutionary sentiment which, as his deliverances on the th of december before showed, was beginning to come into consciousness in his section. it gave new impetus to the circulation of the other speeches. the young men of georgia, as i know, and perhaps those of other southern states, read them over and over, reciting with passionate emphasis the most stirring passages. especially did they delight to declaim the peroration of the hamilcar speech, as that of june , , has always been called in georgia. to the stump orators, the last mentioned and that of december became examples which they emulated only to find in their despairing admiration that parallel was impossible. and even the retiring, quiet, and elderly people who care for nothing but their daily business caught the fire. not long ago, one who is now old, who was entering middle age in , and who has been a stanch union man all his life, told me that he could not keep from reading these speeches over and over, and whenever he read one of them, it made him for the time a disunionist. the part played by toombs in the congressional session of - seems to me one of the most wonderful exploits in all parliamentary annals. since slavery is gone, and i can at last understand that it was all blessing to the african and all curse to us, my joy is inexpressible. but i must ever hold that its defence was one of the noblest efforts of the best of people. it will soon be understood by the whole world, and especially by our brothers of the north. they will acknowledge that neither greek nor scot nor swiss were more manly or heroic than southerners, and the supporters of the lost cause will be crowned with such lustre and glory as magnify hannibal succumbing to rome, or demosthenes unvailingly stirring up his country against macedon. it will forever bring me ecstatic emotion to recall the many, many places where my fellows suffered or fell at my side without a murmur. our victories at the opening of the brothers' war; then the drawn battles; then the defeats; and the round of sickening disasters at the end,--all these come thronging back, and i can never be other than proud of the prowess and endurance of our out-numbered armies, the energy and untamable spirit of our people, and the devotion of our blessed women to the weal of our soldiers. i often look back over the track of what i have called the aggressive defence of slavery. though it was disguised under various names, such as the threat of disunion in certain contingencies by the georgia platform, just division of the public domain between the sections called for by all parties in the south, and finally the demand for full protection of slavery in the territories; and though it was now and then seemingly at rest, that movement from the day it set in was in reality one directly towards secession, and it kept on as steadily as the propontic. and as i look back at the further edge of this retrospect, marking the beginning, towering above all who took high place later,--even above lee and jackson,--ever comes more plainly into view the majestic figure of robert toombs, revealing his unsuspected power like a thunderclap from the sunny sky, december , , when he extorts wild acclamations of applause from the majority of southern whigs and all of the southern democrats, both unanimous against his stand for a guaranty of congressional non-restriction; a few days later coercing an infuriated house trying to cry him down into wondering silence; and through the whole session upholding his cause with such might that the single champion proves an overmatch for the two parties striking hands against him, and he finally conquers preaudience and dictation upon the main southern theme. i become more and more confident that future history will find the achievement of toombs in the session of - to be the exact point where the drift towards secession, which had before that been only latent and potential, becomes actual, and that here is the dawn of the confederate states. the more i gaze at it the plainer and redder that dawn becomes. we need not tell the rest of toombs's sectional career with much detail. the all-important part of it historically is its beginning, and how he vaulted into the lead of the aggressive defence of the south, which i hope i have adequately told. from this time he showed in all that he did the quality which mommsen glorifies in julius cæsar,--ready insight into the possible and impossible. much discontent manifested itself in georgia, and also in mississippi, alabama, and south carolina, against the compromise measures, and especially against the admission of california with its constitution prohibiting slavery. a convention being called in georgia to consider what should be done, there was thorough discussion. an overwhelming majority of delegates opposing any resistance was elected. to this result toombs contributed more than any one else, and he really shaped the platform finally promulgated by the convention. this--the georgia platform of , as we always called it--is a most important document to the historian; for it was the weighed and solemn declaration of some nine-tenths of the people of a pivotal southern state. the southern-rights men, as a small but noisy part of the southern people then called themselves, had mistaken toombs's last-mentioned speeches in congress as declarations for immediate disunion in case california was admitted under her free constitution; and when he supported the compromise measures, and also the georgia platform, they hotly denounced him as a turncoat. in their blind fury they could not see, as everybody else did, that vehement and fervent language, proper to awaken one's people from perilous apathy, may really be at the time understatement, and that, after the people have awakened, to seek in that same language the counsel of right action would be the extreme of immoderate folly. the more you meditate it the more plainly you discern that his leadership was masterly. from the first to the last his appeal was to the middle class of property owners--then so numerous that it was practically the whole of southern society. his object at the first, as he declared, was to make with this class the protection of their fundamental property interest the prominent question of national politics. and the end showed that he not only took, but that he kept, the right road. the georgia platform became the bible of every political following in the state. the next year, , toombs, still a whig, supported howell cobb, a democrat, for governor against mcdonald, one of the most popular men of the state, the southern-rights candidate. toombs's side, which won by a large majority, was called the union party. you will not be deceived by this if you keep in mind that cobb was elected on the georgia platform, which had pledged the people of the state to resist, even to disunion, certain named encroachments upon slavery which providence had already ordered to be made. in yancey had aroused the people of alabama into demanding that the united states protect slavery in the territories, and he advocated secession in . but in both these things he was premature. as compared with toombs he uncompromisingly stood for every tittle of what he believed were the rights of the south. toombs was a far more practical and able opportunist. his falling back upon the georgia platform from a much more advanced position, as i have just told, is an instance. i want to give others. he always declared in private conversation after the war that the democratic party was ripened and committed by douglas and his co-workers to the repeal of the missouri compromise while he was kept away from washington by necessary attention to the interests of a widowed sister, otherwise, with his commanding position at the time, he would have crushed the scheme at its first proposal. when he returned to his public duties, to his amazement he found that every prominent member of the party was irrevocably for the repeal, and he could do nothing but embrace the inevitable. then he would say substantially, "had it not been for that administratorship which i could not avoid taking, we would all still be working our slaves in peace and comfort. that missouri settlement was not right, but we had agreed to it; and with me a wrong settlement, when i agree to it, is just as binding as a righteous one." when others are urging that the united states ought to protect slavery in the territories, the record does not show that he is interested at first; although when at last the question is forced into debate he makes by far the strongest speech of all in championship of the davis resolutions. i believe the current sucked him in. just after lincoln's election--an event which influenced nearly all of even the most moderate elderly people of my acquaintance to declare at once for a southern confederacy--he proposed that stephens join with him in an address to the people of georgia, counselling that no immediate secessionist nor non-resistance man be elected to the convention;[ ] and later he professed willingness to accept the crittenden compromise. the truth is that the ablest leaders, as we call them, do not lead--they are led. if they should become non-representative, their followers would go elsewhere. and those of these leaders whose influence is the most potent and permanent are the conservative and moderate. toombs was never really ahead in the southern movement except when for a brief while in the session of - he planted the standard far to the front and called his people forward. afterwards there were always others who appeared to be fighting much in advance of him. he companioned his people as they steadily developed their readiness for the dread action commanded by the georgia platform if the north should say not another inch of extension for slavery, and no extradition of fugitive slaves. of course he matured in feeling for secession far beyond what appeared to be his ripeness in . with all his conservatism, he was of that stuff out of which the most earnest and biased partisans are made. there are many who can admit nothing against those they love, and a still larger number who hug their country with a religious acceptance of everything in it as the best in the world. to him and his people, the south, under the mighty influence of the nationalization we have explained, had long been unconsciously displacing the union in their hearts. as one may learn from his tremont temple lecture, he saw and magnified all of the good in the society to which he belonged, and was as blind to the bad as a mother is to the faults of her children. he was often heard to run through an enumeration of southern superiorities. the courage and valor of the men, the virtue and loveliness of the women, the purity of the administration of justice and of the performance of all public duties; especially did he love to say that the honesty of his section was so well established that its few venal congressmen were like a woman of easy virtue in a good family, whom the reputation of the latter keeps from solicitation; and he would fall to praising the kingliness of cotton, the beneficence of slavery both to master and slave, the delicacy of our yam, the excelling flavor given by crab grass to beef and butter, the juice of the peach of middle georgia, sweeter than nectar, the incomparable melon, and cap the climax by asserting persimmon beer to be more acceptable to the palate of a connoisseur than any champagne. and in the days just preceding the great outbreak he had become more intense in his deep love for his state and section. the raid of john brown into virginia was, i think, the event which turned the scale with him, and made him feel that secession was near. taking the occasion offered by douglas's resolution, directing the judiciary committee to report a bill for the protection of each state against invasion by the authorities and inhabitants of other states, january , , he delivered in the senate a speech which we must notice. it is common in georgia to adopt the eulogy of stephens and pronounce the speech of january , , justifying secession, as toombs's greatest effort. but i hesitate, unable to decide which is superior. he states his propositions thus: "i charge, first, that this organization of the abolitionists has annulled and made of no effect a fundamental principle of the federal constitution in many states, and has endeavored and is endeavoring to accomplish the same result in all non-slaveholding states. secondly, i charge them with openly attempting to deprive the people of the slaveholding states of their equal enjoyment of, and equal rights in, the common territories of the united states, as expounded by the supreme court, and of seeking to get the control of the federal government, with the intent to enable themselves to accomplish this result by the overthrow of the federal judiciary. thirdly, i charge that large numbers of persons belonging to this organization are daily committing offences against the people and property of the southern states which, by the law of nations, are good and sufficient causes of war even among independent states; and governors and legislatures of states, elected by them, have repeatedly committed similar acts." the facts are reviewed closely and summed up with extraordinary force; the subject is treated as carefully under the law of nations as under the constitution; the quotation from mill's "moral sentiments," and that from thucydides, narrating the successful effort of pericles in persuading the athenians to resort to war rather than concede the right of the megareans to receive their revolted slaves, are appositely used; the conviction that there is no longer safety for the south in the union speaks out in every line; and, with the exception of a few overheated passages, the entire speech is from the loftiest height of the statesman who bids his people arm for self-preservation. just preceding the peroration there are paragraphs describing nervously and graphically the great resources of the south and her rapid development from feeble beginnings, one of which especially emphasizes the past and present of virginia, adding at the last "one blast upon her bugle horn were worth a million men." next before this are words which invoke the northern democracy, but they seem out of place and foreign. he abruptly ends his appeal to the national classes who have his respect by saying, "the union of all these elements may yet secure to our country peace and safety. but if this cannot be done, peace and safety are incompatible with this union. yet there is safety and a glorious future for the south. she knows that liberty in its last analysis is but the blood of the brave. she is able to pay the price and win the blessing. is she ready?" the last three sentences are the southern correlative of webster's soaring when he magnified the union in his reply to hayne. they were repeated over and over by everybody with a wild acceptance utterly without parallel in my knowledge, and after the election of lincoln became the war cry of georgia. the position taken in the very conclusion of this truly periclean speech is especially to be attended to here. it is that in the event of the success of the republican party in the next presidential election the people of his state must redeem their pledge made nine years before in the georgia platform. from this time on he is _facile primus_ of southern champions. note his long and elaborate reply to doolittle, february , ; the discussion with wade, march , ,--both relating to his speech last noticed above; and his very able argument, may , , on the duty of protecting slavery in the territories. during the presidential campaign of the douglas men and the americans in georgia charged the supporters of breckinridge with plotting disunion that would bring on war. the charge was generally denied. the truth is, hardly anybody was aware that the awful crisis was near. those who really expected secession believed with howell cobb and his brother thomas, and with thomas w. thomas, that it would be peaceable, and perhaps they were about a tenth; the rest followed stephens, believing that the american people on each side of mason and dixon's line would, when it was demanded, rise up in resistless co-operation and make safe both southern institutions and the union. generally stephens was far superior to toombs in forecast and discernment of the sentiment of the masses. but while the former was too wise to consider even for one moment the probabilities of peaceable secession, he had a most un-american conviction that nothing good was ever gained by war, and he so loved peace and the union that he could not believe his people would secede. in his great sympathies toombs was here far more clear-sighted. while he was the only speaker in this presidential campaign that was disrespectful to the union, often calling it in derision "the gullorious," and he gave no promise that withdrawal from the union would be peaceful, and so appeared to be to himself and alone, he was really the only one riding the waves of the undercurrent rising every day nearer the surface, and soon to sweep all of us onward upon its raging waters. the other speakers discussed the rival platforms, but the nearer election day approached the more potently he was preparing the people and himself for secession, though unawares to both. and when lincoln was elected,--the man who had solemnly published his belief that this government could not endure permanently part slave and part free,--an occurrence which aroused the south throughout as the firing upon fort sumter afterwards aroused the north, toombs drank in every accession to the emotion of his people, and towered more largely before them every day as the soul of the revolution now palpable in its coming to all. when secession was debated before the georgia legislature, after enumerating what he declared to be the wrongs of the south, he said, "i ask you to give me the sword; for if you do not give it to me, as god lives, i will take it myself." in his immortal eulogy of the union the next night, stephens quoted these words, and toombs, who was present, answered in a voice of thunder, "i will." the house rocked to and fro with frenzied applause. long afterwards stephens told me that this outburst was the first revealing sign to him that his people were rushing to war. he lost his breath while gasping out the awful word, and there was terror in his looks as if the direful ghost had risen again. some ardent secessionists professed themselves ready to drink all the blood that would be spilled, but toombs, in his warlike nature, was already revelling in the joy of fighting for his people in this most sacred of causes. in one of his speeches he eulogized beforehand those who were to fall in defence of the south, giving them the requiem of sleeping forever where "honor guards with solemn round the silent bivouac of the dead." i did not hear this, but a friend told me that the speaker's electric recitative made the hackneyed words forever new and fresh to him. i must go faster. january , , toombs made in the united states senate his famous defence of secession. he presented in behalf of the south these demands expressed in writing: . any person to be permitted to settle in any territory, with any of his property, including slaves, and be protected in his property till such territory is admitted as a state on an equality with the other states, with or without slavery as its people may determine. . property in slaves to receive everywhere from the united states government the same protection which under the constitution it can give any other property, it being reserved to each state to deal with slavery within its limits as it pleases. . extradition of persons committing crimes against slave property, as commanded by the constitution. . extradition of fugitive slaves as commanded by the same constitution. . congress to pass efficient laws punishing all persons aiding or abetting invasion of a state or insurrection therein, or committing any other act against the law of nations that tends to disturb the tranquillity of the people or government of the state. it is plainly evident to the unprejudiced that he had the warrant of the constitution, the law of nations, of the practice and professions of the great body of even northern citizens ever since the adoption of the constitution, for every one of these demands. it is also as plainly evident that every one was vital to each southern community, founded as it was from basement to roof, upon property in slaves. the justice of his demands could not be denied without repudiating the constitution, the law of nations, and the solemn compacts of the fathers, their children and children's children. and providence had really made each one of these astounding repudiations, in her purpose to extirpate slavery as the only menace to the american union, even if the people so dear to toombs must be all cast out of their prosperity and comfort into beggary. but when a man is fighting for his loved ones,--especially if he is fighting for his country,--and he has the valor of toombs, his not-to-be-shaken conviction is that providence is on his side, and the nearer great disaster approaches, the stouter becomes his heart. toombs's support of his demands, and his defence of what he knew the south would do if they were refused, are the most earnest words he ever spoke. note these paragraphs: "you cannot intimidate my constituents by talking to them about treason. they are ready to fight for the right with the rope around their necks." "you not only want to break down our constitutional rights; you not only want to upturn our social system; your people not only steal our slaves and make them freemen to vote against us; but you seek to bring an inferior race into a condition of equality, socially and politically, with our own people. the question of slavery moves not the people of georgia one half as much as the fact that you insult their rights as a community. you abolitionists are right when you say that there are thousands and ten thousands of men in georgia, and all over the south, who do not own slaves. a very large portion of the people of georgia own none of them. in the mountains there are comparatively few of them; but no part of our people are more loyal to their race and country than our brave mountain population; and every flash of the electric wires brings me cheering news from our mountain tops and our valleys that these sons of georgia are excelled by none of their countrymen in loyalty to the rights, the honor, and the glory of the commonwealth. they say, and well say, this is our question; we want no negro equality, no negro citizenship; we want no mongrel race to degrade our own; and as one man they would meet you upon the border, with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. we will tell you when we choose to abolish this thing; it must be done under our direction, and according to our will; our own, our native land shall determine this question, and not the abolitionists of the north. that is the spirit of our freemen." here is the grand conclusion: "this man, brown, and his accomplices, had sympathizers. who were they? one who was, according to his public speeches, his defender and laudator, is governor of massachusetts. other officials of that state applauded brown's heroism, magnified his courage, and no doubt lamented his ill success. throughout the whole north, public meetings, immense gatherings, triumphal processions, the honors of the hero and conqueror, were awarded to this incendiary and assassin. they did not condemn the traitor; think you they abhorred the treason? yet ... when a distinguished senator from a non-slaveholding state proposed to punish such attempts at invasion and insurrection, lincoln and his party say before the world, 'here is a sedition law.' to carry out the constitution, to protect states from invasion and suppress insurrection therein, to comply with the laws of the united states is a 'sedition law,' and the chief of this party treats it with contempt; yet, under the very same clause of the constitution which warranted this bill, you derive your power to punish offences against the law of nations. under this warrant you have tried and punished our citizens for meditating the invasion of foreign states; you have stopped illegal expeditions; you have denounced our citizens engaged therein as pirates and commended them to the bloody vengeance of a merciless enemy. under this principle alone you protect our weaker neighbors of cuba, honduras, and nicaragua. by this alone are we empowered and bound to prevent our people from conspiring together, giving aid, money, or arms to fit out expeditions against a foreign nation. foreign nations get the benefit of this protection; but we are worse off in the union than if we were out of it. out of it we should have the protection of the neutrality laws. now you can come among us; raids may be made; you may put the incendiary torch to our dwellings, as you did last summer for hundreds of miles on the frontier of texas; you may do what john brown did, and when the miscreants escape to your states you will not punish them, you will not deliver them up. therefore, we stand defenceless. we must cut loose from the accursed 'body of this death,' even to get the benefit of the law of nations. you will not regard confederate obligations; you will not regard constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. what, then, am i to do? am i a freeman? is my state a free state? we are freemen. we have rights; i have stated them. we have wrongs; i have recounted them. i have demonstrated that the party now coming into power has declared us outlaws, and is determined to exclude thousands of millions of our property from the common territories, that it has declared us under the ban of the union, and out of the protection of the law of the united states everywhere. they have refused to protect us by the federal power from invasion and insurrection, and the constitution denies to us in the union the right either to raise fleets or armies for our defence. all these charges i have proved by the record; and i put them before the civilized world and demand the judgment of to-day, of to-morrow, of distant ages and of heaven itself, upon the justice of these causes. i am content, whatever may be the event, to peril all in so noble, so holy a cause. we have appealed time and time again for these constitutional rights. you have refused them. we appeal again. restore us these rights as we had them, as your court adjudges them to be just as our people have said they are; redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it will restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us. refuse them, and what, then? we shall ask you, 'let us depart in peace.' refuse that, and you present us war. we accept it; and inscribing upon our banners the glorious words 'liberty and equality,' we will trust to the blood of the brave and the god of battles for security and tranquillity." no new nation about to be launched upon a sea of blood was ever heralded with words that were above these in appeal to the conscience and strongest affections of humanity. they are not outvied by those of patrick henry reported by wirt, or those of john adams reported by webster, which the world will ever treasure as all gold. o that he had corrected them! he could not use the file, as we have already said. soon after making the speech he went away from the senate without taking leave. march , , that body passed a resolution reciting that the seats before occupied by brown, davis, mallory, clay, toombs, and benjamin had become vacant, and directing that the secretary omit their names from the roll. it was clear from his incomparable and faultless leadership of the active defence of the south, and his unique ability in affairs, that he was the choice of the directors of southern nationalization for president of the confederate states; but these were overcome by stronger spirits, and davis was made president. i have always believed that toombs regarded this as the great miscarriage of his life. he could not continue his connection with the unbusinesslike conduct of the administration, and he retired from his secretaryship of state. read what his superiors say of him at sharpsburg, and what dick taylor with admiration tells of the help he afterwards got from him in a dark hour, as specimens of his gallantry and efficiency in the service. but his was not the nature of epaminondas, to doff his natural supereminence and sweep the streets. pegasus did not show more unsuited to the plow than he did to his inferior station in this stage of the great conflict which was his meat and drink. the collapse came, flight from america, return at last to his stricken people, and disability for the rest of his life. though he had something of even a great career at the bar, and in state politics, his longing for the old south and discontent with the new increased, slowly at first, then faster and faster. as infirmity from age came on apace, and his wife whom he had always made his good angel went to heaven, every day he became more lonely. he had survived _his_ country. such love as his for that loves but once and always. the sacrifices that he had made for it became his treasures. he hugged his disability as his most precious jewel. our gallant gordon was not more proud of the scars on his face. not long before his mind and memory were failing, speaking of the past, he said with the utmost firmness: "i regret nothing but the dead and the failure. 'better to have struck and lost, than never to have struck at all.'" what a fall! greater by far than lucifer's. lucifer was rightfully cast out because of heinous offence. but toombs was cashiered because he had been the best, ablest, and most faithful servant of his people, whose dearest rights were in jeopardy. according to our merely human view it is the way of fiends to reward such supremacy in virtue and achievement with hell pains. if we cannot hope confidently, may not we survivors at least send up sincere prayers that the lord will yet give this job of the old south twice as much of fair fame as he had before. if the defeated in the wars between england and scotland and in the english civil wars; and if cromwell and the regicides who set up a government that had to fall,--if all these have found respectful and fully appreciative mention at last, why shall not calhoun and toombs look to have the same after some years be passed? trusting that such will come, i close this sketch by suggesting where toombs will, i think, be niched in american history. he is often spoken of as the southern correspondence to wendell phillips. there was nothing whatever in common between the two except extraordinary fluency of zealous speech. early in life, phillips, almost a mere boy, broke with mrs. grundy by advocating abolition before his neighbors were ripe for it. while toombs cared nothing for mrs. grundy, he always so comported himself that he was her great authority. he was a very able lawyer, who had made a considerable fortune by practice, and a thorough statesman, when fate confided the southern lead to him; and while phillips was reckless and rash, toombs never, never essayed the impossible with his people. the more you balance him and phillips against each other, the more unlike you will find them. prof. william garrott brown is quite correct in pairing phillips and yancey. there is a northern character to whom toombs as a southern opposite corresponds in so many important particulars that it surprises me it has not been proclaimed. as webster was the special apostle of the preservation of the union, toombs was the same of secession. their missions were parallel in that each one was the foremost champion of his nationality, webster of the pan-american, as we may call it; and toombs of the southern. all through the brothers' war their phrases were on the lips and fired the hearts of each host, those of webster impelling to fight for the union, those of toombs for the southern confederacy. each was probably the ablest lawyer of his day. each was surely the ablest debater to be found. each was of sublime courage in defying what he thought to be unjust commands of his constituents. and the last point which i think of is that each was of most complete and perfect physical development, and was the most majestic presence of his day. the busiest men in the streets of all sorts and ranks always found time to look upon either webster or toombs as he passed, and admire. i never saw webster. but i believe that from his pictures, from long study of his best speeches, and from what i have greedily read and heard of him in a fond lifelong contemplation, i have an almost perfect figure of him before my mind's eye. toombs from my boyhood i saw often. i will describe him as i observed him at the hustings just before the war. his face, almost as large as a shield, but yet not out of proportion, was in continual play from the sweetest smile of approval to the scowl of condemnation, darkening all around like a rising thundercloud. his flowing locks tossed to and fro over his massive brow like a lion's mane, as was universally said. in every attitude and gesture there was a spontaneous and lofty grace--not the grace of the dancing-master, but the ease and repose of native nobility. his face was not greek, but in his total he looked the extreme of classic symmetry and the utmost of power of mind, will, and act. princely, royal, kingly, even godlike, were the words spontaneously uttered with which men tried in vain to tell what they saw in him. he and just one other were the only men of my observation whose greatness, without their saying a word, spoke plainly even to strangers. that other man was lee. i noted, when we were near chambersburg in pennsylvania those three or four days before the great battle, that, while the natives would curiously inquire the names of others of our generals as they rode by, every one instantaneously recognized lee as soon as he came near. this publication of her chosen in their mere outside which destiny makes is not to be slighted nor underprized. and so remember that webster looked the greatest of all men of the north, and toombs the greatest of all men of the south. to my mind i give each unsurpassable praise and glory when i call webster the northern toombs and toombs the southern webster. * * * * * i add a note by way of epilogue. i observe with pain that the obloquy against toombs in the north seems to increase, while that against him in the rising generation of the south--who do not know him at all--is surely increasing. it is, however, a growing consolation to me to note that every charge, currently made against him north or south, is founded either upon complete mistake of fact or the grossest misunderstanding of his character and career. it is a duty of mine not only to him as my dead and revered friend, but a high duty to my country, to set him in his right place in the galaxy of america's best and greatest. i never knew a man of kinder or more benevolent heart; nor one who had more horror of fraud, unfairness, and trick; nor one whiter in all money transactions; nor one whose longing and zeal for the welfare of neighbors and country were greater; nor one who showed in his whole life more regard for the rights and also the innocent wishes of everybody. the model men of the church, such as dr. mell and bishop george pierce, loved him with a fond and cherishing love. the humblest and plainest men were attracted to him, and they gave him sincere adulation. many of my contemporaries remember rough old tom alexander, the railroad contractor. i saw him one day in a lively talk with toombs. as he passed my seat while leaving the car he whispered to me: "bob toombs! his brain is as big as a barrel and his heart is as big as a hogshead." from until i was often engaged in the same cases with toombs, either as associate or opposing counsel, and i saw a great deal of him. it falls far short to say that he was the most entertaining man i ever knew. he was just as wise in judgment as he was original and striking in speech. i am sure that his superiority as a lawyer towered higher in the consultation room just before the trial than even in his able court conduct. and he led just as wisely and preeminently in the politics of that day, when it was vital to the civilization of the south to nullify the fifteenth amendment. georgia would indeed be an ungrateful republic should she forget his part in the constitution of . that was deliverance from the unspeakable disgrace of nine years--a constitution made by ignorant negroes, also criminals who, to use the words of ben hill, sprang at one bound from state prisons into the constitutional convention, and some native deserters of the white race--the constitution so made kept riveted around our necks by the bayonet. the good work would have remained undone for many years had not toombs advanced $ , to keep the convention, which had exhausted its appropriation, in session long enough to finish our own constitution. the railroad commission established by that instrument is really his doing. this post-bellum political career of his, in which he restored his stricken state to her autonomy and self-respect, has not yet won its full appreciation. if toombs could but be delineated to the life in his extempore action, advice, and phrase he would soon attain a lofty station in world literature. it mattered not what he was talking about,--an affair of business or of other importance, communicating information, telling an experience, complimenting a girl, disporting himself in the maddest merriment, as he often did after some great accomplishment,--his language flashed all the while with a planet-like brilliancy, and the matter was of a piece. those of us who hang over martial, how we learn to admire his perpetual freshness and variety! but when we compare him with catullus, his master, we note that while his epigram is always splendid, the language is commonplace beside that of the other.[ ] toombs was even more than martial in exhaustless productivity and unhackneyed point, and his words always reflected, like those of catullus, the hues of paradise. perhaps a reader exclaims, "as i do not know martial and catullus your comparison is nothing to me." well, i tell him that i have read shakspeare from lid to lid more times than i can say, and that i have long been close friends with every one of his characters, all the way from lear, othello, hamlet, and macbeth at the top, down to his immortal clowns at the bottom. surely with this experience it can be said of me, "the man has seen some majesty." i have often tried, and that with the help of a few intimates almost as deeply read in shakspeare as myself, to find in the dainty plays an equal to toombs throwing away everywhere around him with infinite prodigality gems of unpremeditated wisdom and phrase. samuel barnett, linton stephens, henry andrews and my cousin, his wife, samuel lumpkin, and s. h. hardeman, all of whom knew him well, were among these. the end of every effort would be our agreement that shakspeare himself could hardly have made an adequately faithful representation of toombs. the mental torture of the last three or four years of his life i must touch upon again. the most active anti-slavery partisan and most scarred soldier of the union will compassionate if he but contemplate. i met him only now and then. as i read his feelings--one eye quenched by cataract and the other failing fast; his contemporaries of the bar and political arena dead; the wife whom he loved better than he did himself sinking under a disease gradually destroying her mind; ever harrowed with the thought that his country was no more, and that he was a foreigner and exile in the spot which he had always called home,--though i was full of increasing joy over the benefit of emancipation to my people and gladness at the promise of reunited america, my tranquillity would take flight whenever he came into my mind. he was that spectacle of a good man in a hopeless struggle against fate that moves enemies to pity. to me his last state was more tragic and pathetic than that of oedipus. of course his powers were declining. i know that he would never have drank too much if there had been no sectional agitation, secession, war, nor reconstruction. his appetite was never that insane thirst, as i have heard him call it, which impels one into delirium tremens. he always disappointed his adversaries at the bar calculating that drink would disable him at an important part of the conduct. others as well as myself can testify to this. near the end he deliberately chose to drain full cups of purpose to sweeten bitter memories. with moderation he had more assurance of longevity than any other of his generation; and he would, i verily believe, have been green and flourishing in his hundredth year. he lost his rare faculty of managing money. it was a shock of surprise to me when the fire in august, , disclosed that he had let the insurance of his interest in the kimball house run out shortly before. it was a pitiable sight to see him in his growing blindness and wasting frame armed by his negro servant along the streets of atlanta in his last visits to the place. during all this time he was dying by inches. but the sun going down behind heavy clouds would now and then send forth rays of the old glory. it was in may, , during the session of the superior court of wilkes, where i had some of my old business to wind up, that i was last in his house. he had made invitations to dinner without keeping account. at the hour his sitting-room was densely packed. a few of us were late. when we arrived many were compounding their drinks. he hospitably suggested to us new-comers that there was still some standing room around the sideboard. in a little while the throng was treading the well-known way to the dining-hall, which we overflowed so suddenly that his niece, whom mrs. toombs, then keeping her room, had charged with seeing the table laid, was astounded to find she could not seat all of the bidden guests. just as her flurry was beginning to make us uncomfortable our host entered. in spite of his infirmity and purblindness he took in the situation with his wonted quickness. he said in a tone of tender remonstrance to his niece, "o, i do not object to having more friends than room; it is usually the other way in this world." and with despatch and order he had the surplus given seats at side tables. my eyes moistened. i had an unhappy presentiment that this was my last observation of the only man i ever knew whose fine acts and words never waited when occasion called. i was aroused by the whisper of a neighbor, "can any one else in the world do such a beautiful thing on the spur of the moment?" the admiring looks that followed inspired him, and his talk seemed to have more than its old lustre and gleam. in his final illness, when paralysis was slowly creeping up his frame, and he had lost the sense of place and time, he would now and then start from his stupor and send across the state a bolt from the bow which no other could bend. somebody spoke of a late meeting of "prohibition fanatics." "do you know what is a fanatic?" he asked unexpectedly. "no," was replied. "he is one of strong feelings and weak points," toombs explained. and overhearing another say that an unusually prolonged session of the state legislature had not yet come to an end, he exclaimed with urgency, "send for cromwell!" he died december , , in his seventy-sixth year. if i have told the truth in this chapter,--and god knows i have tried my utmost to tell it,--ought not my brothers and sisters of each section to lay aside their angry prejudices and bestow at last upon the only and peerless toombs the love and admiration which are the due reward of his virtues, his towering example, his wonder-striking achievements, and his incomparable genius? may that power which incessantly makes for righteousness, and which always in the end has charity to conquer hate, soon bring to us who really knew him our dearest wish! chapter xii help to the union cause by powers in the unseen if you are not balked by adherence, either to the rapidly waning overpositiveness of materialism, or to the ferocious orthodoxy which denies that there has been any providential interference in human affairs since that told of in the bible; and if you are exempt from the fear of being regarded as superstitious which keeps a great number of even the most cultivated people forever in a fever of incredulity as to every example of what they call the supernatural, you have long since become convinced that evolution is intelligently guided by some power or powers in the unseen. i seem to myself to discern plainly in many important crises of history the palpable influence of what are to me the directors of evolution. washington, to found our great federation, and lincoln to perpetuate it--these come at once as examples. now follow me while i try to show you what the directors did in preparation for and in conduct of the brothers' war, of purpose that the north should triumph and save the union. of course i am precluded from all attempt to be exhaustive. i shall only glance at a few of the facts that appear to me cardinal and most important. in the first place, they deferred the war until under the effect of foreign immigration the population of the north greatly outnumbered that of the south and had become almost unanimous against slavery; and until the south was almost entirely dependent upon her railroads and her river and ocean commerce. had secession occurred because of the excitement over the application of missouri for admission into the union with a slave constitution, there might have been a war, but it would have been short, the end being that every foot of the public domain admitting of profitable slave culture would have fallen to the south. suppose a serious effort had been made in to collect the revenue in south carolina, how long would the south have endured invasion of the little state and slaughter of its citizens? even president jackson would have soon forgotten his enmity to calhoun and recognized that blood is thicker than water. the time was not then ripe, as the directors saw; and so they effected an adjustment of the controversy. it did not suit the directors to have the war commence in , for there was at the time no general use of ironclads, and the railroad system was far from completion. consider for a moment the advantage to the north of having gunboats and the disadvantage to the south of not having them. fort donelson really fell because of gunboats. grant got re-enforcements in time to save him from disastrous defeat at shiloh because of the command of the river by gunboats. the gunboats caused the fall of vicksburg. and it was the holding of the james from its mouth to fort darling by gunboats which gave grant such secure grip at petersburg that richmond had to fall at last, and with it the confederacy. now a word as to the southern railroads. next to the navigable rivers they were the lines of easiest penetration to invaders. remember how the british in advanced in africa only as they completed their railroad behind them. of course had the railroad been already made their advance would have been along it. how could sherman have ever crossed the devastated tract from dalton to atlanta had he been without the railroad behind him? during his retreat johnston kept the invading army between himself and the railroad without which it could not have been subsisted, and staid so close that sherman had him constantly in view; conduct which is still lauded by some people in the south as masterly beyond compare. to conceive more vividly the river and railroad situation which i am striving to explain, suppose that during the revolutionary war the states had been as dependent as the south afterwards became upon rivers and railroads, and the british had and the americans did not have iron-clad gunboats; as matters now look, our forefathers would have been beaten back to the foot of the throne. i believe that the railroads alone would have rendered their subjugation certain. so much for the matchless judgment shown by the directors in deciding as to the time of the war. i shall now tell what i have long thought is most unmistakably their work in conducting that war. as soon as secession was an accomplished fact, they deprived the better southern statesmanship of all guidance of the brothers' war now inevitable and about to begin. in such a war a proper executive is of far more importance than good legislators and even good generals. toombs was the man who stood forth head and shoulders above all others as the logical president of the southern confederacy. but the wily directors hypnotized the electors into believing that davis, because of his military education, service in mexico, and four years' secretaryship of war, was the right man. it is generally believed in the south that the considerations just mentioned turned the scale in favor of davis. but sometimes i think that the true explanation is different. stephens has told how toombs was got out of the way. when this narrative[ ] was published, both toombs and davis, with many of the partisans of each were alive, and regard for them may have kept him silent as to a reported mischance to toombs, which provoking opposition--as was whispered--from some of those who had been among his most earnest supporters, decided him to retire. a biographer writes: "there was a story, credited in some quarters, that mr. toombs's convivial conduct at a dinner party in montgomery estranged from him some of the more conservative delegates, who did not realize that a man like toombs had versatile and reserved powers, and that toombs at the banquet board was another sort of a man from toombs in a deliberative body."[ ] something like that stated in the quotation just made did happen, as stephens was wont to relate at liberty hall--the name which he gave his hospitable home at crawfordville, georgia. i was present more than once at such times. such could have been the work of the directors. georgia, being the pivotal state of the new federation, was by many conceded the presidency. besides toombs she had two other men, far abler statesmen than davis and then as conspicuous in the public eye--a. h. stephens and howell cobb. the election of either one of these would really have been the same almost as the election of toombs, for the three were in complete accord, and toombs was the natural and actual leader. so great was their fealty to him that neither one could have been induced to stand for the place after he had missed it. the directors saw to it that neither one of the three should be president of the confederate states. suppose that toombs--or that either stephens or cobb--had been made president, what a different conduct there would have been of the war. besides being the foremost statesman of the south, toombs was its very ablest man of affairs, and as far superior to davis in practical and business talent as a trained and experienced man is to an untrained and inexperienced woman. not intending to disparage the other great qualifications of toombs, i must emphasize it that of all his contemporaries he alone evinced a clear understanding of the principles according to which the confederate currency could have been better managed than were the greenbacks by the other side. a letter of his during the war to mr. james gardner, of augusta, georgia, published at the time in the paper of which the latter was then editor, shows insight and grasp of the subject equal to ricardo's. toombs as president of the confederacy would have had congress enact proper currency measures. when he was in place to advise and lead, his influence exceeded by far that of any other man that i ever knew. but this, important as it is, is far from being the most important. he and stephens were fully convinced at the very first of the overruling importance to the confederacy of these two things: ( ) to make full use of cotton as a resource; ( ) to prevent a blockade of the southern ports. i make these extracts following from a speech of stephens's at crawfordville, georgia, november , : "what i said at sparta, georgia, upon the subject of cotton, many of you have often heard me say in private conversation, and most of you in the public speech last year to which i have alluded. cotton, i have maintained, and do maintain, is one of the greatest elements of power, if not the greatest at our command, if it were but properly and efficiently used, as it might have been, and still might be. samson's strength was in his locks. our strength is in our locks of cotton. i believed from the beginning that the enemy would inflict upon us more serious injury by the blockade than by all other means combined. it was ... a matter of the utmost ... importance to have it raised. how was it to be done?... i thought it ... could be done through the agency of cotton.... i was in favor, as you know, of the government's taking all the cotton that would be subscribed for eight per cent bonds at a rate or price as high as ten cents a pound. two millions of the last year's crop might have been counted upon as certain on this plan. this, at ten cents, with bags of the average commercial weight, would have cost the government one hundred millions of bonds. with this amount of cotton in hand and pledged, any number, short of fifty, of the best ironclad steamers could have been contracted for and built in europe--steamers at the cost of two millions each, could have been procured, equal in every way to the 'monitor.' thirty millions would have got fifteen of these, which might have been enough for our purpose. five might have been ready by the first of january last to open some one of the ports blockaded on our coast. three of these could have been left to keep the port open, and two could have conveyed the cotton across the water if necessary. thus, the debt could have been promptly paid with cotton at a much higher price than it cost, and a channel of trade kept open till other ironclads, and as many as were necessary, might have been built and paid for in the same way. at a cost of less than one month's present expenditure on our army, our coast might have been cleared. besides this, at least two more millions of bales of the old crop on hand might have been counted upon--this with the other making a debt in round numbers to the planters of $ , , . but this cotton, held in europe until its price became fifty cents a pound, would constitute a fund of at least $ , , , which would not only have kept our finances in sound condition, but the clear profit of $ , , would have met the entire expenses of the war for years to come."[ ] the reader who carefully reflects over the passage just quoted may well think that the extravagant profit pictured savors more of mulberry sellers than of a cool-headed statesman; but if the war price of cotton be recalled he readily agrees that under the plan proposed the south could easily have got a fleet of the best ironclads. such a fleet would have kept the southern ports open. the advantage of which would have been very great. it would have held the mississippi from the first, or have recovered it after the capture of new orleans. it would have cleared the gunboats out of all the navigable rivers in the south. and we must not forget how it might have ravaged the northern coast, perhaps capturing new york, and forcing an early peace. i must make you see the greatness of cotton as a resource. there has been from soon after the invention of the gin a steadily increasing world demand for it, and the south has practically monopolized its production. i can think of no other product of the soil except wine and liquor that is as imperishable. but wine and liquor spill, leak, and evaporate, while cotton does neither. if you but safe it against fire it will not deteriorate by age. in i was told of a sale just made of some cotton for which the owner had refused the famine price in . it brought the market price of the day, and experts said it sampled as well as new cotton. it was at least years old. wine and liquor cannot be compressed, but the same weight of raw cotton becomes less and less bulky every year. by reason of the foregoing, cotton is always the equivalent of cash in hand. now add the effect of the steadily growing war scarcity, and remember how easy it was during the first two years of the war to carry out cotton in spite of the blockade. the european purchasing agent of the confederate states government says "it possessed a latent purchasing power such as probably no other ... in history ever had."[ ] he means cotton. there were several million bales of it in the confederacy, all of which could be had for the taking--much of it for merely the asking. and there were a legion of carriers eager to run the blockade. i cannot understand how professor brown could have ever written, "the government had not the means either to buy the cotton or to transport it."[ ] surely the government could have seized the cotton as easily as it did all the men of military age, and collected the tithes in kind. if toombs had been president of the southern confederacy, the very best possible use of its cotton as a resource would have been made. at the time, if but managed with the financial skill which he always showed, that cotton would have been a great war chest in a secure place, always full and appreciating. it is very probable that almost at the beginning of the war the confederacy would have struck terror into its adversaries with some warships far superior to any with which the united states could have then supplied itself. in this case there never would have been any monitor. and the south would have had all the benefits of wise husbandry and conduct. during his short premiership of the confederacy toombs showed marked ability. note his extraordinary insight when instructing the commissioners, that "so long as the united states neither declares war nor establishes peace, the confederate states have the advantage of both conditions;" and consider how accurately he foresaw that the north would be rallied as one man to the stars and stripes by attack upon fort sumter, and how earnestly he opposed the proposed attack.[ ] stephens was thoroughly against the policy of many pitched battles. he counselled from the very first that we should draw the invaders within our territory, where, having them far from their base and taking advantage of our shorter interior lines, we could when the right moment came, by attacking with superior numbers, virtually destroy their entire army. the more i think over it, the more clearly i see that this was the true way for us to have fought. stephens's influence would have been so great with toombs or cobb as president that he would have shaped the conduct of the war. there would have been no keeping of inefficient men in high command; and no efficient one would have been kept out. mr. lincoln would have had an executive rival worthy of his steel. as the former searched diligently and with rare judgment for his commander-in-chief and at last found him in grant, so toombs would in all probability have found the proper southern general in the west. it would have been forrest. the marvellous military genius of this illiterate man, who at the beginning of the war could not have put a recruit through the manual of arms, showed him far superior to his superiors who sacrificed the southern army at fort donelson. the lieutenant-colonel would not surrender, and his escape with his entire command proved that he could have executed the offer he had made to the commander to pilot the whole army out. from this moment forrest moves on and upward with the stride of a demigod. the night after johnston has fallen at shiloh he alone in the southern army discovers that grant is receiving by the river thousands as re-enforcement, and he gives beauregard wise counsel which the latter is not wise enough to heed. read his letter of august , , to cooper, adjutant-general of the confederate states,[ ] in which he proposes to do what will virtually wrest the mississippi from the federals, and the sane comment thereon of his biographer.[ ] think of him just after the battle of chickamauga; how, had bragg listened to him, he would have reaped the fruits of a great victory which he was too stupid to know he had won. meditate the capture of fort pillow, in spite of its strong defences and the succoring gunboat, by dispositions of his troops and a plan of attack which, though made and executed on the spur of the moment, are the most superb and brilliant tactics of all the engagements of the brothers' war. and his incomparable conduct by which the army of sturgis was almost annihilated at brice's cross-roads. the conception of forrest is as yet, even in the south, very untrue. he is thought of only as always meeting charge with countercharge, in the very front crying "mix!" sabring an antagonist, and having his horse killed under him. when he is rightly studied he is found to be a happy compound of the characterizing elements of such fighters as mad anthony wayne and paul jones, of such swoopers and sure retirers as marion and stonewall jackson, of such as hannibal, whose action both before, during, and after the engagement, is the very best possible. of all the northern generals grant showed by far the best grasp of the military problem. i think forrest's grasp was equal. toombs would have divined the genius of forrest. the confederate army under him would probably have equalled--possibly surpassed--the achievements and glory of that under lee. it was one of toombs's epigrams that the southern confederacy died of too much west point. of course one must not unjustly disparage the military school. yet there were plainly graduates on both sides who had in them too much of it. this was true of halleck and mcclellan; also of davis and bragg. mr. davis, by reason of his exaggerated west point spirit, was not nearly so well qualified as mr. lincoln for finding the few real generals in the south. toombs, with the help of stephens and all the real statesmen of the section, would have kept the best generals in command. let us briefly summarize. had toombs been president these things would have followed: . the cotton of the south, fully realized as a resource, would have given her an adequate gold supply, a stable currency, and an unimpaired public credit. it would have also kept our ports open and the hostile gunboats out of our rivers. . there would have been no unwise waste of our precious soldiers. as it was, their very gallantry in our contest with a foe so greatly outnumbering, was made a guaranty of defeat. . these magnificent soldiers would have been led always by the best commanders. these were resources enough, and more than enough, to have won for the south. i often paralleled her neglect to use them with the supineness of the french commune in . lassigaray tells us how there were piles of money and money's worth in the bank deposits and reserves, which could have all been had by mere taking.[ ] but the commune made no use of this great treasure. it surprises one as he reads of it. then it occurs to him that the new french government was in the hands of men who generally had had no experience in government whatever. it was widely different with the southern confederacy. no other revolutionary government ever started with so little jolt and difficulty. the grooves along which it was to run were all ready. "confederate states" was instantaneously substituted for "united states" in the constitution, organic federal statutes, and the thoughts of the people, and the administration of the new government seemed to everybody in the south but a continuation of that of the united states. and this new federation was inaugurated by the best-trained statesmen in america. that these men should have overlooked the great resources we have pointed out is a far more strange and wonderful blunder than was that of the raw and inexperienced managers of the commune. you can explain it only by recognizing it as the accomplishment of fate. fate put in charge of the fortunes of the confederacy an executive as just as ever was aristides, and as much respected and confided in by his people. that executive most conscientiously drove out of the public counsels the only men who could have saved the southern cause. to the foregoing i shall add but a few other instances briefly told. grant was at the opening of his career put in a place which taught him the importance of gunboats, and held there until his skill in using them had given him resistless prestige. beauregard's failure to make use of the daylight remaining after the fall of albert s. johnston seems to have been prompted by the powers who had the future conqueror in charge. had he been sent against lee in or he would hardly have done better than mcclellan, burnside, or hooker. compare how the powers in charge of the roman empire prevented a too early encounter of scipio with hannibal. ordinary conduct ought to have captured mcclellan instead of driving him to the james. the tone of mcclellan's boasting over the flank movement by which he successfully marched across the entire front of lee's army within cannon shot is really that of a man who feels that he has miraculously escaped an unshunnable peril. the directors sent stuart astray and hypnotized lee into believing that gettysburg was to be another chancellorsville. they blinded davis to the merits of forrest. especially to be thought of here is the rejected proposal of the latter to recover the mississippi shortly after the fall of vicksburg. i need not go further. the student of the brothers' war can add to the foregoing many other favors shown the union cause by the powers in the unseen. of course we of the south stood by our side, fighting to the last against increasing odds with the resoluteness of hereditary freemen. in spite of all their potency the powers were often hard pressed by lee, jackson, forrest, and the incomparable valor of the confederate soldiers. these should have some such eternizing epitaph as this: "for four years they kept the fates banded against them uneasy." the parallelism of the fall of the confederacy to that of troy has incalculably deepened the interest i take in vergil's great description. especially of late years do i realize more vividly how his goddess mother removed the cloud darkening his vision, and gave �neas to see neptune, juno, and pallas busy in the destruction of the burning city; and a lurid illumination falls upon the statement, "apparent diræ facies inimicaque troiæ numina magna deum."[ ] chapter xiii jefferson davis for some time after the brothers' war it was very generally believed that davis had been one of the mississippi repudiators; that through all his ante-bellum public career he had been an unconditional secessionist--what we in the south mean by a fire-eater; that cherishing an accursed ambition for the presidency of the southern confederacy he organized a secret conspiracy which consummated secession; that as the chief executive of the confederate states he aided and abetted the perpetration of inhuman cruelties upon federal prisoners of war; that he was accessory to the murder of president lincoln; and that when captured he was disguised as a woman. i suppose that these accusations--all of which are utterly untrue--are still in the mouths of many at the north. they have attained some currency abroad. i note that the leading german encyclopedia--that of brockhaus--repeats those as to the conspiracy and disguise. but "the real jefferson davis," as landon knight has of late presented him,[ ]--without hostile bias and with something like an approach to completeness--is at least beginning to be recognized outside of the south. it is about as certain as anything in the future can be that all detraction from the moral character and patriotism of davis will after some while wear itself out. i believe far greater favor than mere vindication from false accusation will at last be awarded him in every part of his own country and also abroad. later in the chapter i shall try to bring out fully the praise and appreciation which world history will, as seems probable to me, shower upon his career. here i can take time to mention only the beginning of that great fame which we of this day have looked upon. we saw him fall from one of the highest and proudest places in which for four years he had been the talk and envy of the earth. we saw him in sheer helplessness, accused of murder and treason, his feeble health and personal comfort made a jest of, disrespect and insult heaped upon him--we saw him endure all the most refined tortures of imprisonment. then we saw him set free--his innocence confessed by the acts of his accusers. then for over twenty years he lived with the people who under his lead had been conquered and despoiled; and we saw them always eager to pay him demonstrations of the warmest love; we saw them bury him with inconsolable grief; and we see them keeping his memory green by reinterring him in the old capital of the confederate states, giving him there a conspicuous monument, and making the anniversary of his birth a legal holiday in different states. this--which we impressively mark now as only a beginning of glory--must develop into something far larger. whenever davis comes into your mind, of course, you first think of that with which his name is most closely connected--his elevation and his great fall. therefore it is quite right that we make our start from this point, which is, that he was the head of a subverted revolutionary government. he is one of a few who, like richard cromwell, napoleon, and kruger, were suffered to survive deposition. nothing in nature hates a rival more than sovereignty--which, be it remembered, is the representative of a distinct nationality. note how inevitably a young queen bee is killed by her own mother when found in the hive by the latter. humanity has not in this particular evolved as yet very far above bee nature; and the fate of maximilian, emperor of mexico, usually befalls the sovereign head of a defeated revolution. to the student of history it is a surprise that the life of davis was spared when american frenzy was at its height. think of some of the things which then occurred. mrs. surratt and wirz were hanged; the cruel cotton tax; the negroes were made rulers of the southern whites; it was provided _ex post facto_ that the high moral duty of paying for the emancipated slaves should never be done. while good men and women both of the north and the south will always censure with extreme severity the treatment which davis as a prisoner received, they ought to note it as a most significant sign of american progress that he was at last allowed to go forth and live without molestation the rest of his life among his old followers. before we begin the sketch which we contemplate let us bring out more vividly the novelty of his example by contrasting him with the failing leaders of revolutions mentioned above. richard cromwell could be tolerated as a private man by the restored royal government, because his protectorate had been, so far as he himself is considered, a mere accident. it was the mighty oliver, his father, that overthrew and beheaded charles i, and then took the reins of rule. these, when he died, came to his son, who in ability and ambition was a cipher. they who set him aside would have been ashamed to confess the slightest fear of him. his captors exiled napoleon, and kruger exiled himself. richard cromwell, having been cast out of the protectorate, living forgotten in england, is no parallel to davis spending his last years in mississippi honored by the entire south with mounting demonstration to his death. had napoleon lived in france and kruger in the transvaal, each after his overthrow, they would be parallels. as it is, the subsequent life of davis is without any parallel. having thus shown you what it is that davis especially examples, let us now give you briefly such a biography as suits the purpose of this book. the fairies bestowed upon him treasures of mind and heart, of form, mien, and face, of speech and manners. he was not of the very first rank, as webster, toombs, and lee, who suggest comparison with the pheidian zeus, nor was he in the next with poseidon and ares. when president pierce and the members of his cabinet were passing by princeton, a throng of citizens and students called them out during the stop of the train at the basin. as we went away it seemed to me that no speech but that of davis was remembered. compliments were rained upon him. at last a student from new york state cried, "he's an apollo!" and all the hearers assented with enthusiasm. this placed him right,--at the head of the olympians in the third circle. though he became a very prominent political leader, the choice of a profession made by him was that of a soldier. and that profession was always his first love. his early education, though very deficient and limited, was far superior to that with which calhoun had to be content until he was eighteen. but davis had when a boy something which supplies educational defects--a taste for study and a fondness of and access to books. when at the age of thirty-five he made his début in politics he had become really a well-schooled and highly cultured man. he completed his west point course, graduating in july, . his wife says: "he did not pass very high in his class; but he attached no significance to class standing, and considered the favorable verdict of his classmates of much more importance."[ ] he served in the army until june , , when he resigned. i will cull from the entertaining narrative of mrs. davis certain occurrences of his army life which are characteristic. reaching a ferry on rock river in illinois, in , with his scouts, he found the boat stopped by ice, and the mail coach with certain wagons going to the lead mines waiting on the bank. all the crowd put themselves at his direction. he had the men to cut blocks from the ice for a bridge. water was poured upon each block as soon as it was laid, and this freezing, the block was kept firmly in its place. whenever a cutter would fall overboard, he was sent to turn himself round and round before the fire until he was dry and ready to resume work. the bridge was soon finished, and the entire party crossed the river. this incident shows that there was something in davis's appearance that invited full trust, and that he was unwontedly quick and ingenious in expedient. how he disabled a disobedient soldier of ferocious temper and great size by an unexpected blow, and then beat him into complete submission; and how he captivated the other soldiers by announcing that he would not notice the affair officially, illustrates his talent for command. men desperate and well armed had taken possession of the lead mines, and they were to be removed. he tried to induce their consent by making them a speech. some weeks later he sought another conference. finding a number of them in a drinking booth, he was begged by his orderly not to go in. "they will be certain to kill you," the orderly said; "i heard one of them say they would." "lieutenant davis entered the cabin at once, and, as they expressed it, 'gave them the time of day' [that is, he said "good-morning" or what the hour demanded]. he immediately added, after saluting them, 'my friends, i am sure you have thought over my proposition and are going to drink to my success. so i shall treat you all.' they gave him a cheer."[ ] how much more heroic is such cæsar-like courage and tact in quelling the mob than to butcher misguided men with musketry. i have reserved for emphasis here, as illustrating davis's presence of mind and readiness in emergency, two incidents which are earlier in time than what i have just been telling. the first is this. one of the professors disliked and was inclined to disparage davis while he was a cadet at west point. lecturing on presence of mind, this professor fixed his eye on davis "and said he doubted not there were many who, in an emergency, would be confused and unstrung, not from cowardice, but from the mediocre nature of their minds. the insult was intended, and the recipient of it was powerless to resent it. a few days afterwards, while the building was full of cadets, the class were being taught the process of making fireballs, when one took fire. the room was a magazine of explosives. cadet davis saw it first, and calmly asked of the doughty instructor, 'what shall i do, sir? this fireball is ignited.' the professor said, 'run for your lives!' and ran for his. cadet davis threw it out of the window, and saved the building and a large number of lives thereby."[ ] in the affair last told, davis showed a freedom from confusion and an alertness that is very rare. but the second thing which i have to tell is still more remarkable. while stationed at fort crawford in , he had set out in a boat with some men to cut timber, accompanied by two _voyageurs_. "at one point they were hailed by a party of indians who demanded a trade of tobacco. as the indians appeared to have no hostile intentions, the little party rowed to the bank and began to parley. however, the voyageurs ... soon saw that their peaceful tones were only a cloak. they warned lieutenant davis of the danger, and he ordered his men to push out into the stream and make the best time they could up the river. with yells of fury the indians leaped into their canoes and gave chase. there was little, if any, chance for the white men to escape such experienced rowers.... if taken ... death by torture was inevitable. they would have been captured had not lieutenant davis thought of rigging up a sail with one of their blankets. fortunately the wind was in their favor, but it was very boisterous. as it was a choice between certain death by the hands of the indians, or possible death by drowning, they availed themselves of the slender chance left and escaped."[ ] these things which we have selected to tell of him prove that he had in large measure some of the endowments which are indispensable to the excellent soldier. they will be recalled by you when we tell his feats in mexico. i must say here that i do not mean to claim first-rate ability for him; but i do believe that he was equal or almost equal to the best in that great department of the military requiring the powers of the gifted officer and not those of the few born generals of the world. it is a most amiable touch that he left the army to marry a woman the choice of his heart, and give her a happy home. he cordially sacrificed for her an occupation which he loved only less than herself. he had had as brilliant a career as could be won by a lieutenant in garrison duty and service against the indians. it must be remembered he had been promoted to first lieutenant for gallantry. it is proper to mention here one other fact of his army life. he had resolved that if the regiment to which he belonged should be sent to help execute the force bill in south carolina, he would resign. though he never was a nullifier, his conscience could not permit him to abet in any way the coercion of a sovereign state, as he always believed each one of the united states to be. his wife lived only a few months. her death was a fell blow. her husband mourned her for nearly ten years. then he made a most happy marriage with the lady who survives him. in --the next year after the death of his first wife--he settled on a plantation. mr. knight is especially happy in telling how, with his elder brother joseph, who had been a successful lawyer, but was now a rich planter, as instructor and guide, he studied diligently for some while. to quote: "during the period of their residence together, the time not required by business the brothers devoted to reading and discussion. political economy and law, the science of government in general and that of the united states in particular, were the favorite themes. locke and justinian, mill, adam smith, and vattel divided honors with the federalist, the resolutions of ninety-eight, and the debates of the constitutional convention. it was said they knew every word of the last three by memory; and it is certain that year after year, almost without interruption, they sat far into the night debating almost every conceivable question that could arise under the constitution of the united states." jefferson davis, as his congressional speeches and his book show, became deeply versed in the subjects of the joint study just described. i must note, however, that the discussion which engaged him for such a considerable period of his ante-public life was had only with one who was of the same state-rights creed as he himself was, and that it was all in the closet, as it were. you can only begin the making of a great lawyer by feigned cases and moot courts. likewise the true political leader must early be plunged into real contentions over questions of actual interest, and thus almost from the very first mix practice with theory. compare webster and toombs, each at his outset combating with the ablest lawyers of his state as adversaries, and also publicly discussing varied questions of policy. i suspect that this prolonged closet training, with its abundance of academic debate, had much to do in developing davis into that supra-logical consistency, stiffness, and unmodifiability of opinion which is one of his special differences as a practical statesman from the two great men last mentioned. this, and the mental habitude given by his military education and experience, mark him as _sui generis_ among our political leaders. his public career shows more of the doctrinaire and precisian than can be found in any other one of these. in the long post-graduate course which he took in private under his brother, he was preparing for public life without being aware of it, as it seems to me. he had now but one acquisition to make--to think on his legs and tell his thoughts at the same time. extempore speakers are generally made. but davis was a born one. he did not have that experience at the bar and in the state legislature which has been the beginning of so many famous american orators. the democrats of his county nominated him for the legislature in , and his first experience in public speaking was in a stump-debate immediately afterwards with the redoubtable s. s. prentiss, davis then being thirty-five years old. the debate consumed most of the day. the disputants had each fifteen minutes at a time. the result of the campaign was in favor of prentiss. as davis, a democrat, was merely leading a forlorn hope in a county overwhelmingly whig, that was to be expected. but the pluck, readiness, and power which he exhibited in this, his maiden effort, pitted as he was against the ablest speaker of the state, astounded the auditors, and it seemed even to the whigs that the raw debater while nominally losing had really triumphed. the next experience he had is thus narrated by mr. knight: "mr. davis took a conspicuous part in the presidential campaign of , and was chosen as one of the polk electors. before this campaign he was but slightly known beyond his own county, but at its conclusion his popularity had become so great that there was a general demand in the ranks of his party that he should become a candidate for congress in the following year." he had to receive just one more lesson as a speaker. in calhoun was coming to natchez. davis was selected to welcome him with a speech. he made careful preparation, which his wife, whom he had lately married, took down at his dictation. but when calhoun had come, after a moment or two of slowness in the exordium, davis gave up trying to recite from memory, and delivered with grace and effect an unpremeditated speech of taking appropriateness.[ ] what mrs. davis says of him as a speaker is so just and in such good taste, that i quote it: "from that day forth no speech was ever written for delivery. dates and names were jotted down on two or three inches of paper, and these sufficed. mr. davis's speeches never read as they were delivered; he spoke fast, and thoughts crowded each other closely; a certain magnetism of manner and the exceeding beauty and charm of his voice moved the multitude, and there were apparently no inattentive or indifferent listeners. he had one power that i have never seen excelled; while speaking he took in the individuality of the crowd, and seeing doubt or a lack of coincidence with him in their faces, he answered ... with arguments addressed to the case in their minds. he was never tiresome, because, as he said, he gave close attention to the necessity of stopping when he was done. only so much of his eloquence has survived as was indifferently reported. the spirit of the graceful periods was lost. he was a parenthetical speaker, which was a defect in a written oration, but it did not, when uttered, impair the quality of his speeches, but rather added a charm when accentuated by his voice and commended by his gracious manner. at first his style was ornate, and poetry and fiction were pressed from his crowded memory into service; but it was soon changed into a plain and stronger cast of what he considered to be, and doubtless was, the higher kind of oratory. his extempore addresses are models of grace and ready command of language."[ ] he took his seat in the united states house of representatives in december, , he and toombs, who was two years younger, beginning their congressional careers together. davis made a very creditable speech on the oregon question early in february, . he was a modest member, but he did all the duties of his place with praiseworthy diligence. although he was a thoroughgoing anti-tariff democrat and webster a pro-tariff whig leader, he could not be induced to join in the effort to make political capital for his own party by blackening the name of webster. the minority report of the committee which investigated the conduct of webster, as secretary of state, was really made by davis, who was one of the committee. the stand taken by the latter, and the true presentation which he made, at last got the whole committee to adopt his report substantially. webster was greatly pleased with it. early in may, , taylor had won his first victories. on the th davis, supporting joint resolutions of thanks to the general and his army, made reply to what he deemed were unwarranted reflections upon west point. he emphasized taylor's operations as proving the high value of military education. he asked sawyer of ohio, who had disparaged the academy, if the latter believed that a blacksmith or tailor could have done such good work. thus, without knowing it, he trod upon the toes of two members of the house; for sawyer had been a blacksmith, and andrew johnson, of tennessee, a tailor. sawyer took it good-humoredly, but johnson, the next day, passionately defended tailors, and used language very offensive to davis, implying that the latter belonged to "an illegitimate, swaggering, bastard, scrub aristocracy." to this the latter, justly indignant, rejoined with cutting severity. there was never any love lost between the two afterwards. when president lincoln was murdered johnson, succeeding him, committed the unspeakable folly of offering by proclamation $ , reward for the arrest of davis as accessory. when davis, having been captured, was told of the proclamation he said to general wilson--hoping his words would be reported to johnson--that there was one man in the united states who knew the charge was false; this was the man who had signed the proclamation; "for," said davis, "he at least knew that i preferred lincoln to himself." of course had davis possessed the chief qualifications of popular leadership he would have made a fast friend instead of a bitter enemy of this man, whose rise from low estate to greatness proves that he had in him elements of manhood and virtue that ought to have homage from the highest and proudest. it was by his course in the mexican war that davis commenced life in the eye of the nation. without canvassing for the place--he never did canvass for a place--he was elected colonel of the first mississippi volunteers, and "he eagerly and gladly accepted." the president, authorized by a new law, offered to make him a brigadier general. mrs. davis says: "my husband expressed his preference for an elective office; when pressed, he said that he thought volunteer troops raised in a state should be officered by men of their own selection, and that after the elective right of the volunteers ceased, the appointing power should be the governor of the state whose troops were to be commanded by the general. this was his first sacrifice to state rights, and it was a great effort to him."[ ] general scott doubted if the percussion lock was as well suited to field use as the flint lock, but davis knew better. he had his men furnished with the percussion-lock rifle, a very superior arm to the old smooth-bore. he drilled his regiment well. and he kept its members from pillaging. as the storming of monterey opened, the head of the column recoiled in confusion from a deadly cross-fire, "producing the utmost confusion among the front of the assaulting brigade. the strong fort, taneira, which had contributed most to the repulse, now ran up a new flag, and amid the wild cheering of its defenders redoubled its fire of grape and canister and musketry, under which the american lines wavered and were about to break. colonel davis, seeing the crisis, without waiting for orders, placed himself at the head of his mississippians, and gave the order to charge. with prolonged cheers his regiment swept forward through a storm of bullets and bursting shells. colonel davis, sword in hand, cleared the ditch at one bound, and cheering his soldiers on, they mounted the works with the impetuosity of a whirlwind, capturing artillery and driving the mexicans pell-mell back into the stone fort in the rear. in vain they sought to barricade the gate; davis and mcclung [the lieutenant-colonel] burst it open, and leading their men into the fort, compelled its surrender at discretion. taneira was the key of the situation, and its capture insured victory. on the morning of the d of september, the following day, henderson's texas rangers, campbell's tennesseeans, and davis's mississippians, the latter again leading the assault, stormed and captured el diabolo, and the next day general ampudia surrendered the city."[ ] davis's quickness, coolness, and dash--and especially his promptness to take such wise initiative as is permissible to a colonel in action--shone forth conspicuously in this affair. he was the very soul of the glorious stand of the americans at buena vista against odds of more than to . at the opening of the battle a ball drove a part of his spur into the right foot just below the instep, making a very painful wound. he kept his seat as though nothing had happened. later in the day, his bleeding foot thrown over the pommel, he spurred his horse into leaping a ravine, in which he saw a horse and cart beneath him as he flew over. but his great exploit was the re-entering line of his regiment and bowles's indianians, with which he received the charge of a host of heavy cavalry. his rifles being without bayonets, the hollow square, then the approved mode of defence, was not to be thought of. so necessity, the mother of invention, suggested to him a formation which poured something like two crossing enfilades into the head of the cavalry column. the brilliant conception was brilliantly executed. the carnage that befel the cavalry drove it from the field. did not the spirit of napoleon looking on regret that he had not given the pesky mamelukes like punishment? the world has noted how sir colin campbell learned from davis the right way of opposing infantry to the onset of heavy cavalry. the great distinction won most deservedly by davis, as the colonel of a raw regiment in these important engagements, is, so far as i know, without any parallel. it was but natural that he should always afterwards believe himself to be a great military genius. of course he had become famous throughout the whole country. there was a vacancy in one of the united states senatorships from mississippi, and davis was appointed to fill it. i need not go into much detail at this point. he was warmly greeted at his entrance into the upper house. he maintained himself with growing ability. while he was independent and self-reliant enough now and then to differ with calhoun, in the main he followed the latter as his leader. there was a dignity and poise in his nature that suited the senate better than the house of representatives. and he was doubtless frank when he asserted later that he preferred the senate to any other place. as i contemplate his record at this part of his life he impresses me as that one of all the more prominent southern public men who was most fixed in the opinion that the very surest preservative of the union was for the south to be always unflinching and utterly uncompromising in demanding exact enforcement of every constitutional protection of slavery. he loved the union most fondly. it was only the south that he loved more. conscientious doctrinaire as he was, he believed that the rights of the south were so plain and palpable that if they were but stated they would be conceded by the great mass of the northern people. he thought it was to encourage disunion to surrender even a jot of our claim to equality in the territories and that the fugitive slave law should be fully enforced. his anticipation was that the more we yielded to the anti-slavery men the more we would be asked to yield, until at last we would be driven into the ditch, when we could save the south only by secession. so he counselled with all his might that the south should resolve to surrender nothing whatever--to go out of the union rather than so to do. let the north understand this and the abolition party will disappear. that is the only way to save the union. this explains why he refused to support the compromise measures of . he was beaten for governor of mississippi on that issue. he was classed with the fire-eaters. but that was utterly untrue. remember that in he actually contemplated being the democratic presidential candidate, and that massachusetts sent a delegation to the charleston convention instructed for him. a word or two as to his secretaryship of war. he was as up to date in adopting every new thing of merit as he had been in insisting upon percussion-lock rifles for his regiment in the mexican war. the diligence and prolonged labor which he conscientiously gave his official duties were truly exemplary. i wish especially to have my reader reflect upon two things belonging here. in selecting men to fill offices, from the highest to the lowest, he was utterly regardless of their politics. when remonstrated with by democratic partisans for not giving democrats the preference in competition for appointments, he declared positively that he should always make fitness and qualification the only conditions of such selection. and his actions as long as he held the important office spoke even louder than his words. surely here is an example for these times to profit by. the second thing really belongs to the same class as the first. it is that when civil war actually prevailed in kansas between the anti-slavery men on one side and the pro-slavery men on the other, and the commander of the federal troops in the territory would virtually be absolute in power, though davis was the very extreme of pro-slavery he gave the place to colonel sumner, an outspoken abolitionist, "whose honor, ability, and judgment recommended him as the best man for the difficult duty."[ ] the secretaryship must be noted as deepening the regular-army grooves in which davis's thoughts and tastes had long been moving. he became united states senator again in , which position he held until the secession of his state. i need touch upon nothing but the prominent part he took. without knowing it he became the guide that conducted the south in the aggressive defensive which the closing in around her of the hostile lines imperatively dictated. all that he did of importance but led up to or supported his famous resolutions of february , . their gist was that if the judiciary and executive could not and the territorial legislature would not protect slave property in any of the territories, congress was bound to pass efficiently protecting laws, to remain of force until the territory was admitted as a state, with a constitution that authorized or prohibited slavery. compare the speech he made for these resolutions with that made for them by toombs, and the wide difference of the two men comes out plainly. the former is the height of commonplace morality and patriotism, expressed with manly strength and eloquence, while the speaker does not see clearly into the gulf of the brothers' war into which his measure has been made by the fates the lever to plunge america. that of toombs shows titanic mastery of law and statesmanship, and almost full discernment of the national catastrophe at the door. it is destined, i believe, to stand in the highest class of great speeches. compare the last speeches of each in the senate. toombs's justification of secession is with argument and appeal to conscience that the greatest men cannot, and only cosmic forces, the fates, the directors of evolution, can answer. davis's does satisfy the conscience of the typical southerner, and in the tone preserved from beginning to end is a marvel of propriety. the pathos of his leave-taking melted the sternest hearts on the other side. it was especially in his freedom from offensive words and the gentlemanly self-restraint of his manner that davis showed as decidedly superior to the other. in the speech of toombs last noticed there are some harsh and heated words that i would blot into complete oblivion if i could. there is not a single line in the other that i can find fault with. i will here parallel them in another place that is strikingly illustrative. some years after the war the people of mississippi wanted to send davis back to the united states senate. to this end the legislature memorialized him to apply for the removal of his disability. he replied that repentance ought always to precede asking for pardon, and that he had not yet repented. one day about the same time a sympathizing southerner asked toombs if the yankees had pardoned him yet. he scowled his darkest, and thundered, "no. and god damn 'em, i haven't pardoned them." of course the average man or woman will cordially approve the decorum of davis's reply, and on reflection will censure the other. davis was completely representative of the real chivalry of the south; and from the mexican war on, this was more and more recognized in the section. when he was made president of the confederacy the great majority of the people approved. he is such a gentleman; so conscientious; so attentive to his public duties; and then his military education and experience make him far superior to lincoln--this was said by the general. thus were his disqualifications for the place concealed from the people of the south. his chief defect was that not being a successful business man, he was not a practical statesman. on this point we have already said enough. his own judgment upon himself was that he ought to command the armies of the confederacy. to the very last he believed he had the extreme of military ability. during the gloomy days that set in after gettysburg he often exclaimed, "if i could take one wing and lee the other, i think we could between us wrest a victory from those people."[ ] but he did not have extraordinary military capacity, as appears from the facts which i will now tell. he was on the field at first manassas when that unprecedented panic seized the federal army. it was instantaneously understood by the latest recruit looking on from our side. the men and line officers around me ejaculated, "we ought to press forward and go into washington with 'em." davis with his training should have seen better even than these raw volunteers, and recognized it was his part by pursuit to accelerate the flight and raise that panic to its top. there were remaining several hours of daylight, during which five of his men could chase a hundred and a hundred put ten thousand to flight, and when night came the excited imagination of the fliers would re-enforce the confederates with a vast host of destroying monsters behind and before. the federals losing all organization, were racing to escape over the bridge at washington which was a little more than twenty miles away. they were choking the roads with abandoned vehicles and artillery. as it was, they seriously choked the bridge. had there been rapid advance by us, and firing in the rear, it is more than probable we should have got the bridge unharmed. we should have added thousands to our prisoners. but far more important than this, would have been the arms, ammunition, wagons, horses, quartermaster and commissary supplies of all sorts--in short, the entire baggage of the enemy--that would have been ours for the taking. and if the federals had destroyed the bridge before we reached it, we should have had mcdowell's pontoons, or captured material out of which to make a bridge of our own. we should have crossed somehow, and at the place which circumstances and the insight of genius suggested. the capital would have fallen, really without a blow; and what an immense addition to our booty would have been here. and the prestige! in a day or two our flag would have waved over baltimore, the consequence being that maryland, with a throng of most true and valiant fighters, would have been won for the confederate states, and its northern line instead of the potomac would have become the frontier. all this would have happened if davis had been a cæsar and had cæsar-like used the one great opportunity of the war. it must be set down to his credit that he did far more than johnston and beauregard insist upon pursuit. but he does not seem to have thought of it until night; and at last he permitted himself to be reasoned out of it. there have been earnest efforts to justify the fateful supineness of our army after this victory. we were without transportation means, and a retreating army always outruns its pursuers, said johnston. mr. knight says northrop had left us without commissary supplies, and of course men without anything to eat had to wait until they could be fed. beauregard says we ought to have made for the upper potomac, which was fordable. all such reasons come from those who ignore the situation. a real general would have said to his soldiers, in the first moment of the panic, "you are weary; it will rest you to chase your flying foe; you can catch him because of the obstructing bridge. you are hungry; there are full haversacks and commissary wagons of your enemy just beyond centerville without defenders. forward, and escort the grand army into washington city!" and such a general with just what infantry he could find to hand, all the while being re-enforced by eager men catching up, pressing forward as persistently as blucher spurred with his cavalry after the french flying from waterloo, would have been in sight of washington when the sun rose. mr. knight sets forth very truly the incapacity of davis as the military chieftain of the confederate states.[ ] i would abridge what can be said here under these heads: . each particular army ought to have operated as a part of the whole force of the confederacy, and that whole force ought to have been wielded as one machine. instead of trying to effect this end, the president decided that all exposed points must be defended. the result was that these were taken one after another by superior armies. a military man will understand me when i say his strategy was below mediocrity. true strategy dictated the abandonment of many places in order to assemble by using our shorter interior lines a resistless power on a really decisive occasion. mcclellan, in virginia, and grant, in mississippi, ought each to have been captured as burgoyne and cornwallis were. . he selected his generals and important officers according to his likes and dislikes, and not according to their true qualifications. . he was without practical administrative talent in any high degree. such a man as joseph e. brown, of georgia, would have shown far superior to him. it will doubtless be the decision of future history that he was neither statesman nor military man of sufficient ability for the presidency. he did not want it. compare him as secession was dawning, with toombs, who was the man of all to be president. the latter scenting battle in the air, was really eager for the inevitable fighting to begin; davis was cast down and dejected. he loved the union, and it was inexpressibly bitter to him to part with it. and then he was sure that there would be a long and bloody brothers' war. what he wanted was to fight for the south so dear to him. the news of his election as president was perhaps the greatest surprise of his life. says mrs. davis: "when reading the telegram he looked so grieved that i feared some evil had befallen our family. after a few minutes' painful silence he told me, as a man might speak of a sentence of death."[ ] writing of his inauguration at montgomery, he says to his wife: "the audience was large and brilliant. upon my weary heart were showered smiles, plaudits, and flowers; but, beyond them, i saw troubles and thorns innumerable."[ ] and she tells this of his inauguration as president of the permanent government: "mr. davis came in from an early visit to his office and went into his room, where i found him an hour afterwards on his knees in earnest prayer 'for the divine support i need so sorely' [as he said].... 'the inauguration took place at twelve o'clock.' [the anterior proceedings having been described, the contemporary account she quotes goes on thus:] "the president-elect then delivered his inaugural address. it was characterized by great dignity, united with much feeling and grace, especially the closing sentence. throwing up his eyes and hands to heaven he said, 'with humble gratitude and adoration, acknowledging the providence which has so visibly protected the confederacy during its brief but eventful career, to thee, o god, i trustingly commit myself, and prayerfully invoke thy blessing on my country and its cause.'" then she adds: "thus mr. davis entered on his martyrdom. as he stood pale and emaciated, dedicating himself to the service of the confederacy, evidently forgetful of everything but his sacred oath, he seemed to me a willing victim going to his funeral pyre; and the idea so affected me that, making some excuse, i regained my carriage and went home."[ ] so did this thrice-noble man sacrifice his dearest wishes and with superhuman resolution step into the arena at the command of the fates, to be the target of their wrath against his people. he was like hamlet upon whom destiny had imposed a high task far beyond his powers. we can believe that to the end of his presidency davis sorely sighed more and more often: "the time is out of joint: o cursed spite that ever i was born to set it right." his official career from beginning to end was full of fatal mistakes. but in every one of these he did the right--to use lincoln's grand word--as god gave him to see it. this will more and more through all the future turn his failure to glory. he will be like hector, who draws the admiration of the world a thousand-fold more than achilles, his vanquisher.[ ] at the last, when the sword of grant had beaten down the sword of lee, and all of us, it seemed to me, knew that it was the highest duty of patriotism to yield our arms, he was for fighting on. casabianca would not go with those who were leaving the burning ship until his dead father bade him go. davis would not abandon the cause of his nation without its command; and it could give none; for it was dead and he did not know it. he was trying his hardest to reach the west, intent upon prosecuting the war from a new base, when he was taken. his capture was accepted by the southern people as the fall of the blue cross. every man, woman, and child old enough to think, in the late confederacy became sick and faint. sorrow after sorrow, and grief after grief tore their hearts. the first was the thought, for all the blood we have poured out during four years of such effort on the battlefield as the world never knew before we have lost; we have been beaten, and we are subjugated. the next thought that pierced was, the property that made our homes the sweetest and most comfortable on earth has all been destroyed, and for the rest of their lives our dear ones must pine in hardship and misery. o how this pang actually killed many old men and women! it seems to me that heart failure commenced in the south with the great harvest it gathered in the first five years succeeding the war. but the agony of agonies was that the negroes were put over us. those five years--particularly the last three of them--are the one ugly dream of my life. to pay his debts, which would have been a small thing to him had he kept his slaves, but which were now monsters, my father overworked himself, while trying to make a cotton crop with freedmen. i did not learn of his imprudence until i had been summoned to see him die. there was something like this in every family. a night of impoverishment, misery, contumely, and insult descended upon us, and the sun would not rise. i kept the stoutest heart that i could. now and then it was a comforting day dream to imagine how well it would have been for me if i had fallen in the front of my men on the second day of gettysburg, when i was trying my utmost to make them do the impossibility of charging across the narrow bog staying us, and mixing with the men in blue lining the other side. had that happened to me i should never have known, in the flesh, of our decisive defeats, nor of the trials of my people after they laid down arms; and even if my grave could not have been found, there would have been at a place here and there for some years honorable mention of me with tears on memorial day, to gladden my spirit taking note. this would sometimes be my thought, and thousands of others had like thoughts. early in this time of sorrow and suffering the women of the south instituted memorial day. each year when it comes they do rites of remembrance to the fallen soldiers of the confederacy. these soldiers lie in every graveyard from the ohio and potomac to the rio grande. when the day comes these women in their unforgetting love assemble the people, have praises and lamentations of their dead darlings fitly spoken; and then they deck their graves with the fairest flowers of spring. it is an annual holiday, sacred to grief for our heroes who died in vain. it is the fairest, tenderest, and sweetest testimonial of love ever given--love from those who have nothing else to bestow, lavished upon those who can make no return; and it is further the most splendid and glorious, being the co-operative demonstration of a whole people of "true lovers."[ ] i cannot say where and when the observance of memorial day began. perhaps miss davidson correctly asserts that it was in petersburg, virginia, in .[ ] it had reached its height at charleston, south carolina, in the spring of , when as prelude to decorating the graves in magnolia cemetery, timrod's hymn, containing this oft-quoted passage, was sung: "behold! your sisters bring their tears, and these memorial blooms. "small tributes! but your shades shall smile more proudly on these wreaths to-day, than when some cannon-moulded pile shall overlook this bay. "stoop, angels, hither from the skies! there is no holier spot of ground than where defeated valor lies, by mourning beauty crowned." the "true lovers" could no more forget their living leader in prison than they could forget their soldiers in the grave. "out of sight, out of mind" could not be said of davis during his two years' confinement. the concern of his people mounted steadily. they made all his sufferings their own, lamenting and praying for him as a loved father. when he was about to be released on bond the news gave the south a wilder joy than did the unexpected victory of first manassas. he was brought in custody to richmond by a james river steamboat. mrs. davis thus describes how he was received: "a great concourse of people had assembled. from the wharf to the spottswood hotel there was a sea of heads--room had to be made by the mounted police for the carriages. the windows were crowded, and even on to the roofs people had climbed. every head was bared. the ladies were shedding tears.... when mr. davis reached the spottswood hotel, where rooms had been provided for us, the crowd opened and the beloved prisoner walked through; the people stood uncovered for at least a mile up and down main street. as he passed, one and another put out a hand and lightly touched his coat. as i left the carriage a low voice said: 'hats off, virginians,' and again every head was bared. this noble sympathy and clinging affection repaid us for many moments of bitter anguish. when mr. davis was released, one gentleman jumped upon the box and drove the carriage which brought him back to the hotel, and other gentlemen ran after him and shouted themselves hoarse. our people poured into the hotel in a steady stream to congratulate, and many embraced him." bear in mind the people, and where it was, and when it was, from whom this show of respect so great, so earnest and unfeigned, spontaneously came. they were of that part of the south which had lost more in blood, property, and devastation than any other, and who, one might think, were too embittered against their defeated leader to show him anything but disapproval. they were also of a state which had not been readmitted into the union. the axe was suspended over their necks by a party seeking excuses for letting it fall; by a party to whom davis was the most hated of men. surely these virginians who thus risked their fortunes were the truest of lovers. no reader of mine, though he search history and encyclopedias through and through for years, can find anything like the southern memorial day and the honors given davis in richmond as we have just told. they unmistakably mark an ascent of humanity. but it is not my purpose to emphasize them as specially signalizing the south. their great lesson is not learned if it is not understood that they are glories of federal government. under any other form of government such demonstrations would be suppressed as disloyal and treasonable. for more than twenty-two years after this auspicious day the ex-president of the southern confederacy lived most of his time among his people. their love for him steadily grew. he proved worthy of it. he would not accept the bounty they stood ready to shower upon him, and he was poor and without money-making faculty. when mississippi wanted to make him united states senator again, he felt that he was too old and broken to serve the state efficiently, and he declined. it occurred to all of us that he sorely needed the salary of the place. he struggled on under the load of poverty and ill-health. all of us knew that the latter came from that cruel and inhuman imprisonment, and the more he suffered the closer our hearts drew to him. the cause of his section he justified to the last, and with all his energy. his book defending that cause was written under difficulty almost insurmountable by man. his character as one tried in every way and found true came out clearer and clearer. he showed more and more of spotless virtue, becoming all the while to us a stronger justification of the fight we had made under him for the lost cause. we thought to ourselves with pride that the world will some day learn what a good man he was, and that will be our complete vindication from the slanders now current. let me tell of some of the other demonstrations made over him. i witnessed that in atlanta, in . april , all the state of georgia was there, as it seemed. old and young, white and colored, waited impatiently for the railroad train bringing him from montgomery. my wife, divining the rare sight thus to be gained, secured a station out of town where she could see the train pass without obstruction. as long as she lived afterwards, his car, prodigally and appropriately bedecked with the fairest may flowers of the sunny south, was her proverb for that which pleases too greatly for description. when he had come out of his bower of flowers and we knew he was resting, we felt as if the angel of the lord was here with tidings of great joy for all our people. who can describe the rejoicing of the next day that came forth everywhere as mr. davis showed himself to his people! i have seen popular outbursts of gladness, but nothing like this. it surpassed in profundity of feeling and sustained energy and flow that which seemed to come straight out of the ground when, in , we knew at last that cleveland was elected, and the south was convulsed with an ecstasy of happy surprise. the women and men who had tasted the war all crying; all pouring benedictions upon his gray hairs as they came in sight; "god bless him" displayed on every corner. i am utterly unable adequately to report this grand occasion. i will tell only a few things that i saw or heard of. he passed by a long line of school-children in peachtree street. they made the sincere and decided demonstrations of children whose pleasure is at its height. but what was especially noticeable to me here was the behavior in the section of colored children. their delight seemed, if that were possible, to be somewhat wilder and more unrestrained than that of the white children. the occurrence has come back to me a thousand times. is it to be explained by mr. davis's character as a master, to whom, as to all really typical masters, his slaves were but a little lower in his affections than his children? or was it unconscious approval of the resistance by the south with all her might against the emancipation proclamation, the end of which may be the wholesale destruction of the black race in america, such approval being suggested by a cosmic influence as yet inexplicable? when he was going through mrs. hill's yard to enter her house, little girls on each side of the walk threw bouquets before him, every one begging, "mr. davis, please step on my flowers." the feeble man tried to gratify all of them. the flowers that he did step on were eagerly caught up by the owners, to be treasured as the dearest of relics and keepsakes. i was told that some old grayhead who met him during the day, gently raised mr. davis's hands to his lips, saying, "let me kiss the hands that were manacled for me," and as he kissed his tears fell in a flood. what we have just described occurred in georgia--a state in which of all during the brothers' war the most formidable opposition to his administration was developed. this opposition was lead or upheld by toombs, both the stephenses, and brown--the most influential of all the georgians at that time. that for all this the state gave him this wonderful ovation shows how deep and strong is the southern sentiment that glorifies the lost cause. it was henry grady, a georgian revering and treasuring the men i have just mentioned, who when mr. davis was in atlanta, in , called him the uncrowned king of our hearts, the words evoking plaudits from the entire south. and remember that georgia voted for greeley in , although toombs and the stephenses opposed him. i think i was representative of the dominant public feeling at the time. while my companions and i avowed the fullest confidence in greeley's integrity and statesmanship, we each said we were in haste to honor with our votes the northern man who got mr. davis bailed and became one of his sureties. and georgia is among the states which has made june a legal holiday, because it is the anniversary of mr. davis's birth. some northern paper sympathetically described the reception given mr. davis in atlanta, in , as the swan song of the southern confederacy. and to me it has always been the funeral of the old south. but there were other obsequies and swan songs. when he died december , , the south sorrowed as it never sorrowed before. we are pleased to quote from the memoir, the noblest monument a true wife has ever given a dead husband--far nobler, more splendid and immortal than that which artemisia gave mausolus. mrs. davis tells: "floral offerings came from all quarters of our country. the orphan asylum, the colleges, the societies, drew upon their little stores to deck his quiet resting-place. many thousands passed weeping by the bier where he lay in state, in his suit of confederate gray, guarded by the men who had fought for the cause he loved, and who revered his honest, self-denying, devoted life. his old comrades in arms came by thousands to mingle their tears with ours. the governors of nine states came to bear him to his rest. the clergy of all denominations came to pray that his rest be peaceful, and to testify their respect for and faith in him. fifty thousand people lined the streets as the catafalque passed. few, if any, dry eyes looked their last upon him who had given them his life's service. the noble army of the west and that of northern virginia escorted him for the last time, and the washington artillery, now gray-haired men, were the guard of honor to his bier. the eloquent bishops of louisiana and mississippi, and the clergy of all denominations, delivered short eulogies upon him to weeping thousands, and the strains of 'rock of ages,' once more bore up a great spirit in its flight to him who gave, sustained, and took it again to himself." these aptly chosen words come short of describing the general grief. nobody can yet tell all of it. one but feebly expresses it by saying that when jefferson davis died, broken-hearted men, women, and children gathered in funeral assemblies everywhere in that vast area from mason and dixon's line on the north to the mexican border on the south, wept over his bier, and hung the air and heavens with black. in his remains were carried to richmond, the dead capital of the dead confederate states, and there reinterred. the ceremonies were impressive, and thoroughly in keeping with those i have narrated in the foregoing. and in the corner-stone of a monument to him was laid in monroe park. on this occasion general stephen d. lee delivered an oration which, as a monument itself, will long outlast the stone one. thus has the overthrown and most evilly entreated president of the confederate states become, by some marvel of fortune, far more than the proudest conqueror. the honors which every one who "can above himself erect himself" estimates as the very richest, mr. davis has had given him more prodigally than any other man. these honors that make everything else shabby in appearance and cheap, are the spontaneous offerings of sincere love from those who know us. smiles, tender words, prayers for blessing, tears of joy, admiration, pity, and sympathy, flowers--how dear are any of these from a friend, brother, sister, father, mother, sweetheart, wife, child. for almost a generation all these tokens were given the ex-president by everybody in the south, and each year to his death they were given in greater profusion. and really the whole south mourned at his burial. our wives, mothers, and other dear ones give us up, and we give, them up, to fight and perhaps die for the country. we are so made that we love the great brotherhood better than we do ourselves. and so an offering of regard from that brotherhood--to be made to feel that throughout the whole of it one is recognized as most worthy of love--the true man would prize this above every other. before this time this great honor has been given only by happy ones to their victors--to such as washington, lincoln, grant. but the south has begun a new era. in the misery and ruin of her subjugation she magnifies her deposed chief. much of the applause heaped upon the victor is selfish and feigned, but the whole of that given the conquered hero comes direct and straight from the hearts of his countrymen. it seems, therefore, to me that this decoration of the conquered hero is the crown of crowns of this world. it is davis's historical uniqueness that he has won this lone crown. the achievement is so counter to common-sense that it is not yet credited nor understood. i cannot help believing that when all the fog raised by the brothers' war has cleared away, and our historians tell what brought and what followed that war with unclouded vision of cosmic agency, that jefferson davis will be permanently placed high in the american temple of fame. there he will be the world's contemplation, showing something like hester prynne. as what was at first to her the branding placard of guilt turned to a badge of the greatest righteousness, so has that which was unutterable obloquy and disgrace to him become unparalleled fortune and glory. chapter xiv the curse of slavery to the white, and its blessing to the negro the master got the curse and the negro the blessing of slavery. we set out by mentioning how certain ants have been injured by becoming masters. before this they were doubtless the equals of any non-slaveholding tribe in self-maintenance. now they "are waited upon and fed by their slaves, and when the slaves are taken away the masters perish miserably."[ ] it did not become so bad as this with human slaveholders; but the consequent disadvantage was very great, as we shall now exemplify with some detail. we shall throughout keep to the average and typical man and woman. and for brevity's sake, we shall not look beyond the domestic and agricultural spheres, because when the reader has learned what slavery did in these, he can of himself easily add the little required to make complete statement of its entire effect. in non-slave communities baby is tended only by mother and near relatives. though petted and indulged, it is steadily constrained into more obedience to those who tend it. in due time the child is taking care of itself in many things, and is also doing light chores. until the parental roof has been left he or she has every day something to do. what we may call the open-air home-work is done by the boys, and the inside by the girls. but in the old south baby commenced its life as a slaveholder with a nurse that it learned to command by inarticulate cries and signs before it could talk. and to the end, as grandfather or grandmother, self-service in many common things, as is usual with all other people, was never learned, but great expertness in getting these things done by slaves was learned instead. i was only fifteen years old in , when i entered the sophomore class in princeton college, never having been out of the south before. of course much of my time at first was consumed in observing and thinking over many sights very novel and strange to me. i came in august. soon afterwards i saw them saving their indian corn. in the south we "pulled" the fodder, and some weeks later we "pulled" the corn, leaving the stripped stalks standing. but the new jersey farmers, without removing the blades or the ears, cut the stalks down, put them up in stacks, and after a while hauled them to the barn. this was such a wonder that i described it minutely in a letter to my mother. the next great surprise that i had was to note the lady of the family and her daughters doing everything in and about the house, which i used to see at home only the negroes do. they were marvellously more expert and neat in despatch than the negroes. their easy and, as it seemed, effortless way of getting through their daily employment grew upon me steadily. what i intently observed in those times and reflected over much subsequently, i have had a recent experience to refresh and enforce. in the summer of two ladies from pennsylvania took a house in atlanta next to mine. they had never before been in the south. i found out these lonely strangers at once, and was soon seeing much of them. they kept no servant. the two did all the household tasks. the younger washed the clothes. this is something which but few city southern ladies, except those whose ancestors were not slaveholders, have ever consented to do. the laundry of even the poorest families in our towns is nearly always the care of a negro washerwoman. although their work was every day punctually done by my two new-found friends, and their house always the tidiest, like the new jersey ladies of my boyhood at princeton, they were never flustered nor worried, but were always pleasant and agreeable. plainly they lived in far more ease and comfort than the native housekeepers. there are two classes of the latter. in one is the woman who is greatly plagued by the waste, dishonesty, and eye-service of her negro cook and housemaid, and always in craven fear that she will wake up some morning to know that they have taken french leave. in the other class is the woman who often must, with the help only of her children, do everything at home. what a laborious, fatiguing botch they make of it! their day-dream all the year round is to find that needle in a haystack, a servant who will take no more than the established holidays and always come in time to get breakfast. i sorrow for these present housekeepers of the south. they all know by heart and often retell to their children the tales of their mothers and grandmothers,--how, early in the morning, the affectionate and faithful nurses stole the children out of the room, without waking papa and mamma; how the cook and the waiters, not superintended, had the best of breakfasts ready at the right time; how at this meal there was happy reunion of the family beginning a new day, the children bathed and in their clean clothes, each one pretty as a picture and sweet as a pink; and how all the affairs of the household under the magic touch of angel servants were fitly despatched without trouble or worry to mamma, until the day ended by the nurses' bathing the little tots again, putting them to bed, and mammy's getting them to sleep by telling "the tar baby" or some other adventure of brer rabbit over and over as often as sleepily called for, or by singing sweet lullabies. with this vision of a real fairyland in which their ancestors lived not so very long ago, how can any one of these mothers of the new south contentedly make herself the only nurse, cook, and house servant of her family? for many a year yet, to do every day the drudgery of all three will be the extreme of discomfort and sore trial to her. we must give her loving words and sympathy without ceasing, and trust her to the slow but sure healing of inevitable necessity. this lamentable condition of our southern woman is due, as plainly appears, to the miseducation given their ancestors by slavery. slavery went forty years ago; but it left the negro, and the dependence of these women upon her as their only servant. it is indispensable that they cut loose completely from this dependence. their resolve should be firm and unwavering that they will learn to minister to themselves and their dear ones, and teach the blessed art to their children; as their northern sisters have always done. i would have them here receptively contemplate, as a part of the new lesson which they must learn, this true and enchanting picture of a new england home: "there are no servants in the house, but the lady in the snowy cap, with the spectacles, who sits sewing every afternoon among her daughters, as if nothing had ever been done, or were to be done,--she and her girls, in some long-forgotten forepart of the day _did up the work_, and for the rest of the time, probably, at all hours when you would see them, it is _done up_. the old kitchen floor never seems stained or spotted; the tables, the chairs, and the various cooking utensils never seem deranged or disordered; though three and sometimes four meals a day are got there, though the family washing and ironing is there performed, and though pounds of butter and cheese are in some silent and mysterious manner there brought into existence."[ ] of course it is not to be demanded that the southern woman exactly reproduce the new england system of fifty years ago just described by mrs. stowe. but she must learn to be entirely independent of servants in the era of co-operation, electric dish-washers, and other helping machines, about to begin. let us see how it has been with the fathers and boys. the planting of the old south required proportionally less cash outlay annually than any common business that i now call to mind. the owner of acres of land--an ordinary plantation--worth $ , , thirty slaves worth $ , , and mules and live-stock worth $ , , had usually but five considerable items of expense: the overseer with his family was "found"--to use the then current vogue--and paid not more than $ yearly wages; a few sacks of salt to save the pork--a little to be given the live animals occasionally; a few bars of iron for the plantation blacksmith shop--the latter being furnished with bellows, anvil, tongs, screwplate, vise, and a few other tools, all hardly amounting to $ investment; sometimes coarse cotton and woollen cloth for the clothes of the negroes, made by the slave-women tailors (even in my day this cloth was, on many plantations, spun and wove at home from the cotton and wool grown by the owner); and the fifth item was a moderate bill of the family physician for attendance upon the sick slaves. the whole would seldom amount to $ ; and remember the income yielding capital was $ , . this planter paid no wages for his labor; he bred his slaves, and all animals serving for work, food, or pleasure;--in short, the establishment was self-supporting. the good manager sold every year more than enough of meat, grain, and other produce to pay the expense itemed a moment ago, and so the $ , from the sale of his crop of thirty bales of cotton was often net income. the natural increase of slaves which i have explained above operated in many cases to encourage wastefulness and idleness. but even in the majority of these cases the estates more than held their own. let us illustrate the change wrought by emancipation by having you to contemplate a small middle georgia farmer of to-day. if he employ but four hands to his two plows, he will, in wages, fertilizers that have come into general use since the war, purchase of meat, corn, and other supplies that the slaves used to produce, necessarily lay out annually more than did the planter making thirty bales as we mentioned above. if this small farmer makes twenty bales--which is far above the average--worth, if the price be, say, eight cents, $ --more than half of it will be needed to cover his outlay. it is to be emphasized that as a general rule this farmer and his boys have not yet been trained to work as steadily and diligently as their circumstances demand of them. as the women slight in the house what they regard as fit employment only of negroes, so the men do the same in the farm. the whites of both sexes cling to the negro instead of making good workers of themselves. in the old south money grew of itself. now constant alertness is needed to see that every dollar laid out comes back, if not with addition, at least without loss. to keep from falling behind, the farmer must have a very much higher degree of mercantile capacity than he could ever acquire under the old system. and he and his boys ought to supplant much of the negro labor he now employs by their own systematic and steady work. all these necessary lessons are very hard to learn, because to do that we must first unlearn widely different ones. this examination shows that the men of the new south are almost as inadequate to the demands of the day as we found the women to be. i do not mean to say that our women and men have not improved at all in their respective spheres in the last forty years. i believe that when due allowance is made for the unavoidable effect upon them of the system into which they were all born it must be conceded that the little improvement which they have made is greater than what could have been reasonably expected. but i see clearly that the habits of thought and the modes of house and farm economy, bred first from our contact with the negro slave and then with the negro freedman, are yet an oppressively heavy load upon our section. i have now to do with a still greater evil as part of the curse of slavery to the southern whites; which is, that it prevented the normal rise in the section of a white labor class. if one but look steadily at developments, either now in progress or surely impending, in germany, france, england, the english colonies, and the united states he sees that the workers most of all are influencing the other classes to pursue the best policy in all departments of government. the truth is that in every stage of society there is the leading energy of some particular class. let me make you reflect over a few well-known examples. in their unremitted struggle with the patricians, the plebeians of rome gradually climbed out of their low estate into complete political, civil, and social equality with the former who had long been the constituency of the so-called republic. some centuries later a tacit combination of those belonging to each division of the middle class dried all the fountains of civil disorder and made domestic peace sure and permanent by establishing the roman empire. much later employers of the free labor which had displaced slavery made european towns democratic, and set them in such strong array against the feudal barons that the latter were at last restrained from plundering the new industry. the american revolution and the french revolution were each mainly middle-class movements. by them the middle class cleared out of its way, as far as it could, distinctions of birth, title, rank, and all other special personal privileges. but, unawares, it put in the place of the old hereditary lords and monopolists, known as such by everybody, a nobility in disguise. the members of this nobility make no claim to our labor or substance by reason of their having had such and such fathers or having received such and such grants or patents to themselves as natural persons. they pose as government agents in such functions as the transportation and monetary, of which efficient, cheap, and impartial performance is vital to the general welfare. clandestinely they have had the law of the land made or interpreted and the practice of government shaped each as they want it; and sitting in their masks wherever these sovereign powers must be invoked by producer or worker, it is these usurpers and not the legitimate public authorities who must be applied to and given, not the just cost of the service, but the supreme extortion possible. these masked rulers toll our wages, profits, and property as insidiously and deeply as does indirect compared with direct taxation. in fact they are government licensees, levying upon us for their own benefit all the indirect taxation that we can bear. some--i may say, a large number--of middle-class property owners and producers are heart and soul in strong and strengthening resistance now forming against the tyrants they have unwittingly set up. but the initiative and most effective elements of this benign uprising do not come from the middle class. it was the workers who excited and kept at its height the righteous indignation of the country that shamed the coal-trust into decency. it is the workers who are the most influential of all that strive to arm us with those plutocracy-destroying weapons, direct nomination and direct legislation; and of all who demand that the railroads pay just taxes; of all who would lay the axe at the root of public corruption by having government resume its powers and do every one of its duties without favor or prejudice to a single human being. it is clear that the laborers are gathering all the anti-monopoly interests and classes of society to their banner, and that from the steady and increasing impulsion of these laborers, in unions and political campaigns, industrial democracy will at last come in, to open the millennium by keeping every man, woman, and child, except the wilfully idle and criminal, permanently supplied with necessaries and comforts. who are the laborers that are both to spur and lead us forward in this great course? why, the white laborers, whose interests and whose qualifications to share in governments are the same as those of the rest of us; who are really part and parcel of the body politic and whose sons and daughters can be married by our sons and daughters without social degradation to themselves or degeneration of the proud caucasian stock in their children. the negroes cannot do the great work we are contemplating. they are strangers in blood. they are as yet far too low in development. it is idle to think of making these aliens, whose highest interests are irreconcilably antagonistic to ours and our children's, allies of the white laborers--a point which will be treated at large in later chapters. to bring out the situation more clearly, suppose that instead of the eight millions of negroes now in the south we had eight millions of native white workers and no negroes at all. would it not be far better for us of the section? would it not be far better for the anti-monopoly cause in the north? ought there not to be a real labor party in the south instead of what we now see? the so-called labor party of the south has a large percentage of leaders whose chief activity is to win positions in the unions, in agitation, in the city and state government wherein they can serve themselves by delivering the labor vote to corporate interests, or doing the latter legislative or official favor--a sure symptom that the movement is as yet merely incipient. in no northern state have the railroads and allied corporations such complete command of nominative, appointive, and legislative machinery as in georgia; and it seems to me that georgia is but fairly representative of all the south except south carolina, which has advanced further in direct nomination than any other one of the united states. in many places the people of the north are successfully rising against the corporation oligarchs. in new york and michigan the latter have been made to pay some of the taxes which they had always been dodging. in a recent boston referendum the street railroad, which for years had ridden roughshod over the public at will, was snowed under, although it had the machine, all the five daily papers but one, and the outside of that, fighting for it with might and main. los angeles, followed by three or four other towns, has just made a beginning with the _recall_. oregon has direct legislation. illinois has pushed ahead with both direct nomination and direct legislation. cities here and there, in very grateful contrast with the apathy prevalent in this section, have awakened to the importance of rightly guarding the common property in public-service franchises. i could cite many other examples which show that the anti-plutocratic tide gathers force all over the north. why is it that there is this blessed insurgence against corporation misrule there, and hardly a trace of it here? simply because the north has and the south has not the motor of insurgence--a real labor class, growing steadily in zeal and organization, and rapidly increasing in numbers. that a southern state has no real labor class with potent influence upon the public, puts it as far behind the most enlightened communities in political and governmental condition, as it was with its slaves behind them in productive condition. such a state lacks a most essential organ of the highest types of democracy.[ ] to sum up: slavery disqualified the white men and women of the south for the domestic and business management proper to this era; and ever since emancipation the presence of a large number of negroes available for labor in house and on the farm, and preventing the coming in of any other labor, has powerfully helped both races in their efforts naturally made to retain the familiar ways of the old system. thus the south has been sadly retarded in her due economical rehabilitation. in the second place, it has kept the political influence of labor at the minimum, and consequently sent her backwards in true democracy, while england, the english colonies, and the northern states, are slowly but surely going forward. these are the main things. let me in briefest mention suggest some of their results, which, at first blush, seem to be independent. slavery engendered among the whites a disrespect for labor, which, although now at last dying out, is still of hurtful influence. as negroes were always and everywhere in number sufficient to do every task of labor, there was but little demand for labor-saving machines and methods--a fact which prevented the southern whites from developing the inventive faculty equally with their northern brothers. we all are beginning to see that, except in much of agriculture and other activities in which the process is that of nature and not of art, the future of industry belongs more and more to the constantly improving machine. think of such things as these in the brood of evils brought forth by slavery;--agriculture primitive or superannuated in many particulars; our entire structure of investment, production, and occupation bottomed upon slaves, property in which could be, and was, totally destroyed by a stroke of the pen; immigration both from europe and the north repelled; slowness in exploiting our water power and mines; inferior common schools, and lack of town-meeting government due to the sparseness of the population and their roving habits which were incident to the plantation system. i have given some consideration to these in the "old and new south," and i refer you to that.[ ] of course had there never been any negro slavery in america we should have escaped the brothers' war, its spilling of blood, its waste of wealth, and the long sickness of the section unto death which has ensued. and to-day in solid prosperity, institutions, government, and progressiveness in everything good, the section would be abreast of the other. nay, her better climate, her agricultural products--especially her cotton, which she would have learned to make with white labor--these and other resources would, i fully believe, have by this time pushed her far into the lead. as it actually is, she is far, far behind. she has been sorely scourged, not for any moral guilt. "some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt." it was because she did that which the wisest and best had done--the greeks who gave the world culture and democracy, the jews who gave it religion, the romans who gave it law and civil institutions. she really did far better than they did. she did not enslave the free. she merely took some of the only inveterate slaves upon earth out of lawless slavery, in which they would have otherwise remained indefinitely without recognition of the dearest human rights, and placed them in a far other slavery which was for them an unparalleled rise in liberty and well-being; which was, as becomes more and more probable with time, the only opportunity by which any considerable portion of the negro race can ever evolve upward into the capability of enlightened self-government. in doing this she unconsciously antagonized the purposes of the iron-hearted powers guarding the american union, and when the critical moment of that union came, they dashed her to pieces. it will be many a year before the pathos of southern history can be fully told. i must satisfy myself here by saying only that the curse of african slavery to her has been of magnitude and weight incredible, and that one cannot yet be sure when it will end. the title of the chapter demands that i now tell you of the blessing of african slavery in the united states to the negro. of course there are many who have been born into the unequalified condemnation of every form of slavery, which was resolutely preached for years all over the north by conscientious men and women of great ability and influence. such will exclaim against me, and perhaps some of them will not even read the rest of the chapter. but it is my note, which becomes surer and more confident every year, that the great body of men and women shrink from every over-positively urged dogma. i have already mentioned those who are trying to curb the evils of drink. all the while an increasing majority of them recognize that to assert that any use of liquor, wine, or beer is a moral wrong, as do a noisy few in season and out of season, is too extreme to be true or even politic. the ultra democrat will zealously justify the assassination of julius cæsar, while the wisest friends of the people become more firmly convinced every century that the empire which cæsar founded was, by reason of the circumstances, the best possible government for the romans of that and the succeeding times;--the surest guaranty that the main benefits of ancient civilization should be preserved for the human race. and as there has now and then been something of substantial good in even absolute government, there has also been good to the slave in his slavery. surely it was an improvement of the captor and a bettering of the condition of the prisoner of war, not to barbecue the latter, as was the custom for ages, but to have him work for a master. perhaps the fabulist �sop had been a slave. terence, a great roman dramatist, surely had been. horace's father had been one. it may well be true that it was slavery that gave each one of these three immortals his opportunity. the more familiar you become with ancient history the larger you estimate the number of those to have been who as slaves got many of the benefits of greek and roman civilization, which benefits they afterwards transmitted to free descendants. i need not repeat what i have already told--how the negroes in the mass were advantaged by transfer from slavery in africa to slavery in america. but do let me inquire, would professor dubois have ever outstripped all the white children in a new england school, graduated creditably from two american universities, studied at the university of berlin, acquired the degree of master of arts and then that of doctor of philosophy, been made in sociology fellow of harvard and assistant of the university of pennsylvania, become president of the american negro academy, got the professorship of economics and history in atlanta university, and pushed forward as an author into prominent and most respectable place; all before he was thirty-six years old--would professor dubois have surpassed this brilliant career, if an "evil, dutch trader" had not seized his "grandfather's grandmother--two centuries ago"?[ ] if the transfer just mentioned had not been made what would now be fred douglass, booker washington, richard r. wright, professor dubois, bishop turner, and other great negroes, their good works and glory? would hayti have arranged for some of its young men to be trained in farming at tuskegee? more especially do i ask, would negroes educated at tuskegee be now teaching the missionaries how to christianize the africans of togoland? who would now be arousing people north and south in behalf of the race? and where could nine millions of blacks be found--or even half a million--as far above the african level of to-day as ours? my conclusion is that the whites and the negroes of the south ought to learn wisdom and interchange their holidays and great annual rejoicings. the former ought to keep the anniversary of the emancipation proclamation as the southern th of july, and the blacks ought to observe that day by wearing mourning and eating bitter herbs. further, the negroes of america ought to celebrate the day when the dutch ship landed the first africans at jamestown as the dawn of their hopes as a people. chapter xv the brothers on each side were true patriots and morally right--both those who fought for the union, and those who fought for the confederacy the proposition of the heading has really been demonstrated in the foregoing chapters. i feel that the demonstration should have impressive enforcement. it will surely be for the great good of our country if the brothers of each section be truly convinced that those of the other were morally right in the slavery struggle from beginning to end. let us begin by noting the ambiguity of the word "right." something may be right in expediency, policy, or reason, and yet wrong ethically. likewise something may be a mistake and wrong in policy while it is right in morals. general sherman was a conspicuous example of the almost universal proneness to confound right in the sense first mentioned above with it in the other. the two are widely different--not merely in degree, but in kind. that which is right or wrong in expediency is decided by the understanding--by the head; that which is right or wrong ethically is decided for every human being by his own conscience--by his heart. to try with all my might to do a particular thing may be my highest moral duty; to try with all your might to keep me from doing it may be yours. the brothers who set up the southern confederacy and defended it, the brothers who warred upon it and overturned it--they were on each side sublimely conscientious; for every one--to use the high word of lincoln--was doing the right as god gave him to see it. no people ever waged a war with deeper and more solemn conviction of duty than did our northern brothers. rome, rising unvanquished from every great victory of hannibal, much as she has been most justly lauded by foremost historians, fell behind them in supreme effort--in undaunted perseverance in spite of disaster after disaster until the difficulty insuperable was overcome. we of the south should be proud of this unparalleled achievement of our brothers. most of all should we be proud of the complete self-abnegation and unwavering obedience to conscience with which they waded a sea of blood, for the welfare of future generations rather than their own. i am glad to observe that many who most affectionately remember the lost cause have come at last to concede without qualification that the restoration of the union by force of arms was morally right. but i note that as yet only a few at the north--men like dr. lyman abbott, mr. charles f. adams, and professor wendell--have learned that the south, in all that she did in "the great war,"[ ] was likewise morally right. to show that the confederates were exemplary champions of a legitimate government, i need not repeat what i have said above when i told how southern nationalization had given them a country of their own as dear to them and as much mistress of their consciences as the union was to the northern people. if there are those who cannot bring themselves to allow the all-potent coercion of the nationalization mentioned as justification, and who still think of us as traitors and rebels, i beg them to give due consideration to the feelings with which the southerner now looks back upon his life in the confederate army. i call a most convincing witness to testify. i do not know a man who ever followed what his conscience pronounced right more faithfully, who was truer to the better traditions of the old south, and who was a more devoted soldier in the brothers' war, nor do i know another who now draws from every class in his community more respect for real manhood and honesty. all who know him will believe his word against an oracle or an angel. here is what he said thirty-seven years after the close of the war: "that period of my life is the one with which i am the most nearly satisfied. a persistent, steady effort to do my duty--an effort persevered in in the midst of privation, hardship, and danger. if ever i was unselfish, it was then. if ever i was capable of self-denial, it was then. if ever i was able to trample on self-indulgence, it was then. if ever i was strong to make sacrifices, even unto death, it was in those days; and if i were called upon to say on the peril of my soul, when it lived its highest life, when it was least faithless to true manhood, when it was most loyal to the best part of man's nature, i would answer, 'it was when i followed a battle-torn flag through its shifting fortune of victory and defeat.' my comrades, how easy it is to name the word that characterizes and strikes the keynote of that time and should explain our pride to all the world--self sacrifice--that spirit and that conduct which raise poor mortals nearest to divinity. oh, god in heaven, what sacrifices did we not make! how our very heart strings were torn as we turned from our home, our parents, our children!... how poor we were! how ragged! how hungry! when i recall the light-heartedness, the courage, the cheerfulness, the fidelity to duty which lived and flourished under such circumstances, from the bottom of my heart i thank god that for four long years i wore, if not brilliantly, at least faithfully and steadfastly, in camp and bivouac, in advance and retreat, on the march and on the battlefield, the uniform of a confederate soldier."[ ] the passage just quoted most truly expresses the feelings with which the southern people stood by their cause and now look back upon the support which they gave it. in this matter their word will be taken by everybody. their actions before, during, and ever since the war speak louder than their word. there can be no doubt that in founding the confederate states and waging the resulting war everything they did was counselled by the most tender and enlightened conscience. bear in mind how they clung to davis and how they still remember him, winning the precious eulogy "--he that can endure to follow with allegiance a fallen lord does conquer him that did his master conquer, and earns a place i' the story." bear in mind how truly they keep memorial day. the love which the south gives davis and her dead soldiers protests to all the earth and heaven the righteousness of her lost cause. calmly, serenely, confidently she awaits future judgment upon her love. it needs that all the north appreciate this fealty as the height of heaven-climbing virtue. the real soldiers of each section--those who--to use a confederate saying--were "in the bullet department," and fighting every day, learned great regard for their foes; and when the war ended they became at once advocates of speedy reconciliation. and the non-combatants on each side felt far less resentment towards the actual fighters of the other than they did towards its political leaders. it is a common error to overrate the accomplishment of potent and ambitious men in tumultuous times. as the world long ascribed meteorological phenomena to the mutations of the moon, conspicuous above all things else as the apparent cause, so most people now believe that revolutions are caused by the men who appear to be leading. we have explained above that the only effective leaders--even of revolutions--are those who are the most completely led by the people. to lead, the leader must keep on the tide and let it lead him. if he makes serious effort to balk it, he is at once stranded as a piece of drift thrown out of the current. all of us--both those north and those south of mason and dixon's line--ought to learn this truth thoroughly. the former should correct their false judgments as to calhoun, toombs, yancey, and davis; the latter as to sumner, garrison, and phillips. it was but to be expected that these false judgments would be cherished all through what we may call the era of civil fury. that begins with the excitement over the admission of california and extends to the time after the war when the project of giving a negro constituency the balance of political power in each southern state was abandoned. but now as the brothers can look back upon those evil days with at least the beginning of dispassionate calmness, the task of convincing the whole people of each section that the more prominent figures of the other in the era mentioned were all true men and patriots, should be pushed forward with his whole might by every one who loves his country. it is not demanded that we claim too much for them. to begin illustrating: toombs's tremont temple lecture on slavery is such an able and powerful defence of the south that its reputation must forever increase. yet as we consider it now we see that what he believed with all his heart to be the perpetual pillar and weal of his community was in fact its woe and ruin. we see, as to calhoun, that if he had but given the resources of southern slavery against the implacable oppugnancy of free labor, roused for decisive combat, the sure and marvellous vision with which he searched the innermost nature of money, he would have had to acknowledge that the proud structure of southern society was wholly builded upon sands. the rains descended and the floods beat, and we saw the great fall. of course we must admit that had our leaders been endowed with unerring prescience they ought to have warned us, and striven heart and soul for compensated emancipation. i need merely allude to state sovereignty, treated fully above. we of the south now see that though in advocating it we showed that the fathers were with us, and thus got the better of the argument, yet that the north was right in historical fact, and right also as to the true interest and welfare of america. thus i have indicated some important acknowledgments which we of the south must make to our brothers of the north. now i must state some that they must make to us. the root-and-branch abolitionists and many following their lead interpreted the statement in the declaration of independence that all men are created equal and with inalienable liberty as both intentional and actual condemnation of the slavery then existing in our country. they shut their eyes to the significant fact that the same document published to the world, as one of the causes justifying the solemn act therein proclaimed, that the king had "excited domestic insurrections amongst us"; which means he had instigated the slaves to rise against their masters. many of the signers owned slaves then and to the end of their lives afterwards. palpably the declaration did not mean to say that the negroes in america were unjustly held in slavery, but did mean to say that inciting them--as john brown with the approval of phillips, garrison, and such, afterwards sought to do--to gain their liberty by insurrection was inhuman and atrocious. these root-and-branch abolitionists confidently alleged that slavery in america was proscribed by the christian religion. yet jesus, the founder, who definitely reprehended every particular sin, never once denounced slavery. paul, or some one else, whom the canon accepts as speaking with the authority of jesus, says: "all who are in the position of slaves should regard their masters as deserving of the greatest respect, so that the name of god, and our teaching may not be maligned. those who have christian masters should not think less of them because they are brothers, but on the contrary they should serve them all the better, because those who are to benefit by their good work are dear to them as their fellow-christians. those are the things to insist upon in your teaching. any one who teaches otherwise, and refuses his assent to sound instruction--_the instruction of our lord jesus christ_--and to the teaching of religion, is puffed up with conceit, not really knowing anything, but having a morbid craving for discussions and arguments."[ ] the passage last quoted--to which several others from the new testament, almost as strong, can be added--demonstrates that christianity did not disapprove of slavery. further, as i have already suggested, the slavery not rebuked by jesus and his apostles was mainly that of kin in blood and race, of those who had been in a measure free themselves or descendants of the free. the slaves of the south were far remote in blood, and their native condition so bad that american slavery was for them elevation and great improvement. the new testament, the declaration of independence, and the federal constitution--surely three very respectable authorities, in america at least--stand together in solid phalanx. they clearly demonstrate that the charge that southern slavery was heinously wrong in itself, and that the masters were wicked man-stealers and kidnappers, made for a long while in every corner of the north, was mere opprobrium and abuse. both sections ought to learn that there was nothing in negro slavery to shock the moral sense, but that on the contrary it was in its general effect of the utmost beneficence to the slave. both ought to learn also that the white-hot zeal with which the institution was fought was due mainly to these things: . free labor had long been in an uncompromising hand-to-hand struggle with slave labor. years before this commenced the employing class had subconsciously divined it was far more profitable to hire the laborer only when his work was needed, and then let him go until he was needed again. the worker with the advance of democracy had become more and more hostile to a system coercing his labor and denying him all political and civil rights. the co-operation of employer and laborer had expelled slavery of white men from europe. the feeling towards slavery had become one of decided opposition. . in america the opposition to slavery was powerfully re-enforced, first, by the new cause the latter gave in competing with free labor for the unsettled public domain, and then in its operation to nationalize the south into a separate federation. with this combined the growing conception among the northern people of the negro as a man who had reached the stage of development characterizing the typical white. this huge mistake, hugged to their bosoms and championed with unflagging zeal by the ablest and most influential root-and-branch abolitionists, had a prodigious propagandic effect. it identified the cause of the negro slave, whom evolution had not yet made ready for liberty, with that of the oppressed european who had been long ready for it; and consequently that cause was continuously advocated with the passion which the french revolution had started against human inequality. the root-and-branch abolitionists at last excited a pseudo-moral paroxysm among thousands at the north and kept it increasing for a long while. facts which cannot now be gainsaid plainly justify me in denying that conscientious conviction was the real primary motive. the northern and southern churches split, all the wisest and best of the former standing against, all those of the latter for slavery. you must see that their moral convictions were secondary, not primary motives; that some superior power had given to one side to regard slavery as wrong and to the other to regard it as right; that it really had given the two sides differing consciences. if you but invoke the universal history of mankind this fact now under consideration will cease to appear marvellous. you will find it to be the rule that the struggle for existence develops in every community an instinct which resistlessly prompts to the maintenance of its great economic interest. this instinct is the special preserver of the family, of the neighborhood, of the country. it is not strange that that which gives sustenance and comfort to one's family, and what he sees all the best of his neighbors using as he does, will seem unquestionably right to him. it is not strange that, in such a serious conflict of interest as the intersectional one of dividing a vast empire between such fell competitors as free labor and slave labor, each side will differ diametrically in conscience as to right and wrong. also it is not strange that they should lose temper, shower abuse upon their opponents, and fill the land with mutual accusations of heinous moral offences. it is just as far wrong to regard the controversy between anti- and pro-slavery men--which was at bottom but a quarrel between north and south at first over the division of the territories between the free labor system and the slave labor system, and later over the other question whether a slave republic should divide the continent with the united states--as a contest over a moral question, as it would be to make either the american or the french revolution such a contest. all three--the intersectional struggle as to slavery and the two revolutions--were mainly impelled by a desire of each side in every one to better or hold on to its material resources--that is, the leading impulsion was economic. of course the combatants on each side claimed that they themselves were right and their adversaries wrong in morals. the rencounter between free labor and slave labor was very much like that now on between capitalists and labor organizations. note how each side denounces the conduct of the other, alleging it to be against moral justice. the most superficial observer discerns that the real cause of difference between them is not one of conscience, but one of interest. we ought to understand that the crimination of the root-and-branch abolitionist and the recrimination of the fire-eater were each but stage thunder. the southern master must be wholly exonerated from the charge that in working his slave he committed moral offence against the dearest american rights; the claim for the african, who was in a far lower circle of development, of equal civil and political privileges with the white must be disallowed; and it be fully conceded that the southern people, leaders and all, were but doing their conscience-commanded duty throughout. also we of the south must learn that the root-and-branch abolitionist, even in his wildest moments--sumner refusing in the united states senate to show respect to butler's gray hairs, wendell phillips degrading washington below toussaint, garrison denouncing the slavery-protecting constitution as a covenant with death and an agreement with hell, john brown's raid into virginia--was just as conscientious as robert lee was when he was defending the soil of his native state. they were each irresistibly constrained by the powers working to save the union to think his particular action right and the highest patriotism. when the quarrel is over, when the broil and the feud have been fought out and the survivors have shaken hands, when the lawsuit has become a thing of the past and the litigants have renewed their old relations, no wise and good man keeps repeating the accusations of bad faith and of unrighteous conduct which he passionately hurled against his adversary during the variance. rather he confesses to himself, "i wronged him when i said those hot words;" and his repentance does not bring complete peace until he has found his brother and taken all of them back. if it only could be, the nation ought to have a great reunion, a feast of reconcilement, where, with proper solemnities, the people of each section, with their forefathers and leaders, should be fully and finally exculpated as to everything done for or against slavery by the people of the other section. it is plain that both ought to forget and forgive. they ought to do still more. they ought to compete each in utmost effort to vindicate the favorites and loved ones of the other the more intelligently, and to admire and praise them the more enthusiastically. this would be to bring the millennium nearer, and give our country "a nobleness in record upon" all others. it only needs for this consummation to cast aside the remnant of greatly diminished prejudice, and make a brief study of a small volume of material evidence and of the ordinary principles which guide the conduct of the good citizen. such study will show that southerner and northerner throughout their fell encounter have each the very highest claims to the respect and love of the entire nation. what a golden deed it was of president mckinley when, december , , fully using a rare opportunity, he spake in his high place to the members of the georgia legislature this message of reunion: "sectional lines no longer mar the map of the united states. sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we bear each other. fraternity is the national anthem, sung by a chorus of forty-five states and our territories at home and beyond the seas. the union is once more the common altar of our love and loyalty, our devotion and sacrifice. the old flag again waves over us in peace with new glories, which your sons and ours have this year added to its sacred folds. what cause we have for rejoicing, saddened only because so many of our brave men fell on the field or sickened and died from hardship and exposure, and others returning bring wounds and disease from which they will long suffer. the memory of the dead will be a precious legacy, and the disabled will be the nation's care. every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to american valor. and while when those graves were made we differed widely about the nature of this government, these differences have been settled by the arbitrament of arms. the time has now come, in the evolution of sentiment and feeling, under the providence of god, when in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you the care of the graves of the confederate soldiers. the cordial feeling now happily existing between the north and south prompts this gracious act. if it needs further justification, it is found in the gallant loyalty to the union and the flag so conspicuously shown in the year just passed by the sons and grandsons of these heroic dead." by the favor given fitzhugh lee, joe wheeler, and other old confederates, and his earnest and successful efforts for universal amnesty to all who had helped our cause, mr. mckinley had already won the hearts of the southern people. this speech increased our love a hundred fold. we repeated the "soft words" over and over, companioning them with "o they banish our anger forever when they laurel the graves of our dead." on each one of our three subsequent memorial days during his life he was thought of as tenderly as the precious dead. and since the death of jefferson davis there has been no sorrow of the south equal to that over his assassination. this is the age of funerals that crown with supreme popular honor the doers of high deeds for country and race. the imposing obsequies given the president, the demonstrations in his own section, and those in foreign lands, have rarely been outdone. but he had a greater glory. it was the genuine lamentation over him that day by reconciled brothers and sisters in every southern household. you that know history better, tell me when and where a whiter and sweeter flower was ever laid upon a coffin. let all of us on each side of the old dividing line strive without ceasing to give the good work which the great peacemaker begun so well its fit consummation. and replacing hate and anger with love, fiction with fact, and false doctrine with true, let the people of the north and the people of the south join heads, consciences, and hearts to ascertain what is our duty both to negro and white, and then join hands and do that duty. chapter xvi the race question--general and introductory . dense fogs from various sources have settled over this subject. the root-and-branch abolitionists have made many believe that emancipation of the slaves was the great object of the north in the brothers' war. the authors and defenders of the three amendments--especially of the fifteenth--have made many others believe that the inferiority of the southern negro is the effect of american slavery; that the cause having been removed by emancipation he became at once ready and well prepared for the exercise of political privileges; and that the practical denial to him of this exercise is a heinous crime of the southern whites. politicians want southern negro ballots in national conventions and the northern negro vote in elections. the bounty, both public and private, founding, sustaining, and multiplying colleges, schools, and other negro educational institutions, finds a growing host of beneficiaries--such as site-owners, who scheme to sell for two prices, those who want to be presidents, principals, professors, teachers, even janitors and floor-scrubbers, schoolbook publishers, and still others--who would keep it copiously flowing; and so they all magnify the ability of the typical negro and the benefit to him of the institutions mentioned. respectable and influential magazines and newspapers, with an increasing number of negro readers, really believe that very many more can be added by a little effort, and so they champion what these readers favor. persuasive speakers and writers like mr. edgar gardner murphy, unconsciously influenced either by employers who would always have a wage-depressing lever at command, or by those who would have cuffee do what they ought themselves to do, overrate the importance of negro labor as a southern resource. and the last fog makers whom i shall mention are the inveterate optimists--amiable beyond expression--who will not admit that there is now any serious menace to either race in the south. the several fogs enumerated overlay one another in an aggregate too opaque for the uncleared eye to pierce. as examples of their obscuring effect, consider anything said in the census as to the negro, and the articles "negro education," "negro in america," and especially "hayti" in the encyclopedia americana lately published. the authors of the fifteenth amendment, in making voters and rulers of late negro slaves, repeated what had been done in hayti. it seems therefore that the encyclopedia must tell nothing of the island but what is good. so we read in the relevant article that it abolished slavery in , being "the first country to rid humanity of such a sad practice;" that there education "is compulsory and gratuitous," a sixth of the revenues being devoted to it, and the most pleasant things concerning religion, liberal naturalization practice, natural and artificial products, railroads, telegraph, and telephone. one without other information would surely think the community greatly advanced and blessed. its true condition is thus told in brockhaus by somebody who does not swear by the fifteenth amendment: "it may be said in general that the country is sparsely populated, partly because of incessant civil wars, partly because of a high infant death rate."[ ] these fogs must be lifted. great harm to each race will follow if we persist in keeping the facts concealed. . do not confound the feeling that you are different from jew, european, protestant, catholic, absolutist, socialist, anarchist, or any other white, with the feeling that you are different from negroes; for to do this is to keep you from all clear thinking upon our present subject. the former are all of our own race, and we can and do intermarry with them to the improvement of our population. if the per cent of negroes was no greater in the south than in the north, fusion could not be a very grave matter; for should it become complete, our lily-white would not be diminished by the fraction of a shade. but to absorb the eight millions of them now in our section would make us chocolate, if not mulatto. their color is the smallest racial objection. although their schooling for two centuries and more in american slavery has elevated them--as mr. tillinghast proves--far above what they were in native slavery, still their cranial capacity, brain convolutions, and moral, intellectual, and social development--inherited without fault of theirs--from west african ancestors, are still greatly inferior to ours. remote generations of our forefathers were much lower than the present american negroes, as darwin admits in the oft quoted passage, describing his first sight of the fuegians. we should never forget that the caucasian was once on a level with those fuegians. the negroes when they came to america were little better. and yet they have gone up so much higher, it is plain that evolution, if only permitted to work in a proper environment, will do for them what it has done for us. but the whites cannot consent to intermarriage. that would greatly benefit the negroes. while some who have never had good opportunity of actual observation confidently contend that there are no backward or lower races, we southerners have noted all our lives that a very great majority of the negroes who climb above the level and prosper in occupation, have a large admixture of white blood. it would be an enormous rise for the mass if fusion were assured. but for us--why, we should disinherit our children of their share in the grand destiny of the caucasian race if we made average negroes their fathers or mothers. southern dread of amalgamation is not to be scouted as a mere bugbear. think of the half-breeds that lined all the border between the states and the indians; of how the whites have mixed with native races in mexico, central and south america; of white and negro intermingling in cuba, hayti, jamaica, in the united states, and especially in the south. think of whites and negroes now legally married and marrying in the neighboring states of the union. in , eight white women were living with negro husbands in xenia, ohio;[ ] and there were children of all these mixed marriages except one.[ ] consider also that prominent negroes advocate these marriages. douglass had a white wife. he preached that the american negro must set before himself assimilation as his true goal. professor dubois is really a disciple of douglass, as appears from some of his utterances. we give in a footnote what another prominent negro has recently said in public.[ ] the moment that the negro became an influential factor in southern politics, a real agitation against the anti-intermarriage laws would begin. there would come a small number of negroes, controlling votes, of so much property and respectability that their children would be regarded as eligible matches by some of the poorer and more destitute whites. marriages between such, solemnized on a visit to a state permitting, would occur. and our laws last mentioned would be more and more evaded and their repeal become gradually more probable. when they had won political equality with the patricians, the roman plebeians repealed the prohibition of intermarriage which the former had stubbornly maintained. these two orders were of the same race. therefore intermarriage could not be the boon to the plebeians that it would now be to the southern negro, lifting him up as it would do. if he has opportunity, he will struggle for it more resolutely than the plebeians did. a small number of negroes have already been assimilated in america, and a few more are still to be assimilated, as i shall explain later on. this sure deliverance from the destruction which now threatens is more and more sought after by the intelligent few. and if the vote of the negroes was allowed to count, it would not be long until, under the example and appeal of their leaders, all of them would be making for that haven of refuge. mongrelism beats upon the border all around the south; it threatens to burst forth from an exhaustless source within. we know we must keep it out as holland does the ocean. subconsciously discerning that fusion would probably follow the entrance of the negro into government, the whites have made of the race primary and other measures _de facto_ disfranchising him, dikes against the filthy waters of mongrelism which they would not have to wash over themselves. this is not because we hate the negro. we love and cherish him. it is not to be demanded of us that we sacrifice ourselves, our children, and our children's children for his sake. we will gladly do all that friends--nay, that near relatives--can with justice ask of one another, to better his condition and rescue him. we cannot give him political power at the cost of our degeneration. i would enforce the foregoing contents of this section with these profoundly true and very forcible words of a northern man, now residing in columbia, south carolina: "a word about race hatred, race revulsion, or race antipathy. many people in the north believe the devil is the author of it, and some people in the south are more devoted to it than to religion. race antipathy is really a race instinct, a moral anti-toxin developed by nature in the individual whose environment involves constant and close contact with an inferior race in large numbers. it works for the salvation of the purity of the superior race."[ ] professor dubois says that "legal marriage is infinitely better than systematic concubinage and prostitution."[ ] and some writers seem to think it would be well to coerce miscegenators to legitimate their relations by intermarrying. an innocent girl--a maid--undone; all good men and women are agreed that her seducer should be made to marry her.[ ] but that is only where the marriage would be tolerated by society. thus it would not make man and wife of parties to an incestuous liaison. no moralist contends that one who has received a favor from a public woman is under obligation to become her husband. the miscegenation common is that between white men and promiscuous black women. how idle is the attempt to put these cases on a par with that of the ruin of a virtuous woman. and professor dubois could not have rightly weighed the words in which he represents them to be as criminal as those horrible offences which especially provoke lynching; that is, that the negro woman who consented most willingly to the embraces of her master was as foully wronged by him as her mistress would be by a slave who outraged her against her will.[ ] no. intermarriage of these mixed lovers is not demanded by any principle of justice. but the public weal does demand that such a tremendous evil as amalgamation be kept off by the surest and most decisive measures. it is playing with plague and curse unspeakable for us of the south to permit the existence of any condition which tends even in the slightest degree to legalize intermarriage.[ ] . writers still under the spell of the root-and-branch abolitionists who were wont to exalt toussaint, the haytian general, above our washington, strain hard to conceal the real cause of the lamentable conditions now prevailing in hayti and san domingo. one tells us that because of the many mountains, there being no railroad system, separate communities are defended by almost impregnable natural barriers, and as neighboring peoples are hereditary enemies, there is always war somewhere. the remedy recommended is to build railroads in the island as the english have done in jamaica. another writer tells us that we must not jump to the conclusion that all the inhabitants of san domingo are degraded negroes; that while the population of the interior are sunk in ignorance, superstition, and barbarism, yet in the capital and the coast towns there are some people of apparently lily-white strain, well educated, speaking two or three languages, who supply the mulatto republic with generals and political leaders. the masses of these dominicans are very patriotic, and would indeed do finely if they were not divided into hostile parties by self-seeking agitators. and you may consult many others who keep back the real explanation. there is one cardinal fact which stands forth in the history of hayti as prominently as slavery does in the train of american events which brought on the brothers' war. it is this: soon after the outbreak of the french revolution the mulattoes were accorded political privileges, and then a little later--it was in --france equalized the negroes of her colonies just freed with the whites in political and civil rights. this made the negroes of hayti, who were in intelligence and development somewhat below those of the south when the latter were emancipated, full-fledged self-governing republicans. the whites were but few. what of them were not massacred at once by the blacks fled for their lives. the history of both the haytian and the dominican republic (the latter achieving its independence in ) is the same. their people make a hell on earth of the most beautiful and fertile of islands. as slavery was plainly the cause of the southern confederacy, the grant of political power to the mulattoes and negroes not at all qualified to use it is just as plainly the cause and sole author of chronic civil war and anarchy in hayti and san domingo. this enfranchisement of semi-barbarians was from the 'prentice hand of a new republic, without any experience in free institutions. the english did far better when they emancipated the jamaica negro by the act of . they gave him full protection of his liberty, person, and contract and property rights. five sixths of the , of its present population are colored people or blacks. these--to quote the encyclopedia americana--"have no share in the government whatever." it further says: "the jamaica negroes are fairly good laborers when well fed; the menial work of the island is performed by them, and they are regarded as cheerful, honest, and respectful servants." this happy condition of quiet and content is not due to the fact that the railroads prevent settlement of the negroes in separate neighboring communities to quarrel and fight with one another; but it is because the english never allowed them to get the taste of blood as the french permitted to their brothers in hayti; they have not been incited by unseasonable political power to license and riot. the negroes of jamaica are evidently bettering in condition slowly. they need only enough of booker washingtons to rise much faster. i beg attention to this comparison of jamaica and hayti, made by a well-informed negro, a native of the former, who lived there until some nine years ago, and who has lately lived several years in hayti:[ ] "they [the negroes of jamaica] aim at rising, but many make the mistake of not rising, _in_ but _out_ of labor: the most intelligent flock to the professions, civil service, &c. few turn their steps to what is for the real upbuilding of the country, agriculture, that for which it is best adapted. "the people of hayti and san domingo are of a political turn of mind, and sacrifice everything for politics, or are made to do so. that island produces as fine coffee and cocoa as can be found anywhere, but the most intelligent keep out and deprive these crops of scientific cultivation." the negroes of hayti and san domingo spurred by their politics into perpetual fighting and bloodshed; the negroes of jamaica peaceful and ripe for industrial training, which it seems the english have resolved to give them--if booker washington had to choose one of the two islands for his future activity, do you not know that he would decide he could do great things in jamaica and nothing in the other? the thirteenth amendment emancipated the slaves instantly and not gradually, the fourteenth made them complete citizens of the united states and of the particular state wherein they reside, and the fifteenth practically conferred unlimited suffrage upon them. the hayti, and not the jamaica, precedent was followed. the brothers that had conquered were blind from civil fury: and they had been brought by the root-and-branch abolitionists into full persuasion that the southern negroes were ready for and entitled to these high privileges. by the amendments they confidently tried to railroad the african slave in one instant of time up the long steep to the topmost caucasian who had established liberty and self-government over a continent, and made it perpetual. we pray that they be forgiven, for they knew not what they were doing. had the white population of the south been at the time as disproportionate to the black as it was in hayti in , it would also have been massacred. but the section was full of late confederate soldiers. when the fates had decided against the dear cause for which they had fought for four years they accepted peace in good faith. now their conquerors turned loose a horde of black plunderers to despoil the little that war had left. when i read professor brown's inability to say whether the work of the ku-klux was justifiable or not,[ ] i thought of christ's asking if it was right to do good on the sabbath day. the lesson to be learned here is that while it is now too late to make the thirteenth amendment what it ought to have been, and there is perhaps no need to alter the fourteenth, yet there must be abrogation of the fifteenth as to the great mass of southern negroes. in fact this has really come already through the white primary. booker washington is a great, a decisive authority on this question. he counsels the negroes to eschew politics. this is wise. it is the solid interest of the negro masses that they accept the inevitable; just as the south gave up slavery when we could hold on to it no longer. . the southern negroes have split into what i shall roughly distinguish as an upper and a lower class. the former includes property owners and such as are in higher occupations, trades, and professions. i do not believe that the entire class contains three per cent, but i shall take it to be five per cent of the whole negroes in the section. exact accuracy here is not important. it needs only to be remembered that the lower class outnumbers the other many times over. they are moving in different directions. the dominant inclination of the upper class is towards incorporation as citizens, exercising all the rights of the white. the dominant inclination of the lower class is towards segregation in their own circles. a true representative of the former would always travel in a white railroad car, while a true representative of the other is perfectly content with the shabbiest jim crow, if the whites be kept out of it. thousands in the south never think of any negroes but those of the lower, thousands in the north never think of any but those in the upper class. the lower class subsists mainly upon agricultural, domestic, and day labor. there is a rural and urban section of each one of the two. the rural section of the upper class has little promise of permanence and growth, but its urban section seems to have securer foothold. for a while this urban section will probably increase and rise in condition--both slowly. this upper class is now steadily sending some of its members from country and town, to settle in the north. as i read the signs its destiny is ultimate dispersion over the entire country and gradual disappearance. the lower class settles downwards steadily. the outlook for it is gloomy in the extreme. . somewhere about --which year we may regard as approximately beginning the manufacturing era of the south--many whites in the section had broken with the old ways and methods and resolved to substitute their own for negro labor as far as possible. these awakened men and women multiply. they are pushing the lower class out of all rural labor, and both classes out of agriculture; and they are also pushing some of the upper class out of the trades and more important occupations in both town and country. evidently the powers have decreed that the labor class of the south shall be white and homogeneous with that of the north. these powers who delivered the white laborers of the west from the chinese will also deliver the white laborers of the south from the negroes. . there is soon to be a new industrial south, in which the most advanced machinery and laborers of the very highest skill are to be chief factors. a little later there is to be a still more important new agricultural south. in this, the empirical restorative methods of the chinese, which liebig, in his day, showed to be ahead of the world, must be far surpassed. economy of the enormous mass of fertile elements now washing into the sea; adequate exploitation of the nitrogen of the air and of all accessible mineral elements needed; scientific dairy industry, stock rearing, fruit culture, and all related branches; farmers of the most efficient training, and laborers whose deft hands are the proper instruments of the strongest brains--all these must combine to give the south that perfect intensive culture which she will add to her blessings of climate and soil in order to supply the fast growing demand of all the world outside for her especial products. further, as everything now seems to indicate, the southern yield of the more important minerals and metals will lead that of the entire country. further again, the bulk of transcontinental railroad traffic must be across the south on snow-free routes, and the upbuilding which in time will follow from this is as yet incalculable. and when the inter-ocean canal connects us with the pacific trade--what new impetus will this give to our development! what needs and opportunities there will then be for skilled labor, for inventive talent, for managerial ability, for every element of a most highly organized community of unwontedly many diversified prospecting interests. the demand will be for a vast population of the very best strain and breed, knowing the best methods of physical, moral, and self-subsisting education of their children, out of whom will come the best of all workers and producers. to attempt to do the required tasks of the new south of the near future and hold our own against the competition of the world--to try to do these with negro laborers, negro farmers, negro producers, negro employers, would be like substituting the ox-wagon for the present railroad freight train. nay, it would be more like one with a wooden leg, and a millstone around his neck, offering to run against a trained racer. the negro laborer, farmer, manufacturer, and contractor show more clearly every day that they are hopelessly outclassed in the struggle with white competitors. as a body where they now are they are becoming useless and an incubus. they will soon be still more in the way, and a more serious hindrance to southern development. they keep back the immigration which is especially called for. that is the immigration of northern and european farmers, producers, and manufacturers of all kinds to teach us their advanced methods, and the most skilled labor in every department to stimulate with example our native white labor to its highest accomplishment. the northern people would come south very largely if there were no negroes here. their desire to come increases steadily, and so does our desire to have them come. the whites of both sections naturally co-operate more and more earnestly to effect their joint wishes. the disinclination of the united states supreme court to overturn the recent anti-negro amendments of the constitutions of southern states, and the palpably growing favor showed these amendments at the north are very significant signs that the south is to be made more to the liking of northern settlers. since the last sentence was written that court has ruled it to be a crime, punishable severely, to hold one to the performance of a contract to pay his debt by laboring for you.[ ] the average negro has no resource but credit on the faith of such a contract. so soon as it becomes generally known that he cannot be lawfully held to its performance, the credit will be denied. as has been suggested to me by an observant and far-seeing man, the decision overturns the main pillar of the negro's subsistence. it will powerfully favor northern immigration, as well as the substitution of white for black labor--that is, if it is vigorously enforced. . i believe that the two races together, in the same community as they are now in the south, are oil and water. meditate the course and portent of these facts. immediately upon emancipation the negroes set up their own churches and schools; they manifested approval of the separate passenger car for themselves, politely hinting in season that the whites ought to be kept out of it; and they influenced the planter to remove their cabins out of sight and hearing of the big house. they showed a great disinclination, the men to do agricultural work by the year for standing wages, the women to hire as house servants. it was some while before the whites really recognized this drift of the negro towards segregation, when many of them--especially the wives and mothers--gave the rein to much unreasonable resentment. now, if you but know how to look, you will find everywhere the proofs of deepening antagonism. the black driver will not see even a white lady--not to mention a man--on the crossing, but he will always see a negro of either sex. the face of the white inconveniently stepping aside flushes with momentary anger. if your colored servant tells you there is a lady at the door you may know it is a negro woman; he never calls a "white 'oman" a lady. a negro woman is prone to make the most prominent white lady give the street. in atlanta, a negro man or a white boy cannot safely go at night the former through the factory white settlement, the latter through summer hill, a negro residence quarter. i have been informed that where the mill operatives of anderson, south carolina, have their cottages, there is conspicuously posted, "nigger, don't let the sun go down on you here." i hear that the same is true of certain places in the texas panhandle; also that a negro settlement in the indian territory displays a similar warning to the white man.[ ] parties of black and white children meeting on unfrequented streets of atlanta nearly always exchange opprobrious language, often throw stones at one another, and sometimes fight--a proof so significant that, whenever i see it, it always makes me serious. the most decided change from old times that i note is that white society everywhere proscribes mixed sexual intercourse and the procreation of mulattoes with rapidly increasing severity. the advocate of mixed marriages is more and more regarded as a fiend. the white woman seized by a negro man--how gladly would she change place with the victim of the torturing savage or of the tiger that would mangle and eat her alive! this menace is everywhere, and naturally it is magnified by excited imagination. it increases in fact. the trial of negroes for capital offences was given the superior court of georgia in . from then until the end of the brothers' war but two cases of rape of white women by negroes are in the supreme court reports;[ ] and i never heard of but two other cases occurring in that time. but there have been many since. it steadily becomes more frequent. women more and more dread to be left alone. and now there is hardly a man in the black belt who, when he is to be a night away from wife, daughters, mother, and sisters, without help at call, does not have uncomfortable thoughts of the sooty desecrator. the increasing effect of these multiplying outrages and the increasing horror which they cause is proved by a fact which ought to receive more intelligent recognition from everybody. this fact is that lynching of a negro for rape, and lately for other crimes of violence against whites, whether in the south or in the north, seems to be every time marked with a greater outburst of popular fury. the public grows more decidedly anti-negro. they give as little heed to the appeals of the papers in these matters as they do to the editorials always advocating the projects of the machine and corporations. the mob sweeps aside the military. the military will not load its rifles. if they were loaded it would probably refuse to fire, or would fire into the air. a few exclaim against lawlessness, while it is plain that the great mass of the whites do not really condemn in their hearts. let us try to understand the real cause of these things. the plainest parallel that occurs to me is the riots and violence excited by attempts to execute the fugitive slave law. the greatest of our southern statesmen misunderstood. what they thought to be lawlessness was in fact the struggle of nature by which the social organism of the united states expelled all cause of dissolution. these hostile demonstrations of the day against negroes are, as they seem to me, far other than acts of unenlightened and ignorant race prejudice, to which some writers ascribe them. they indicate, i think, another struggle of nature to expel a foreign and death-breeding substance out of the american body politic; they are each the protest of the self-preserving instincts against keeping the negro with us to counteract our progress, to debase our politics, to corrupt our blood, to injure us more than even successful secession could have done. how aptly has matthew arnold said, "o man, how true are thine instincts, how overhasty thine interpretation of them!" . plainly the disparity of the negro in the deadly struggle with the white over every resource of subsistence fast becomes greater; plainly does his stay in the south more and more injure both sections; plainly under the effects of hard life, growing idleness and growing crime, increasing ravages of disease, and the naturally engendered feeling of helplessness, the average negro in the lower class gravitates downwards; plainly this negro ought to have, in a sphere of his own, opportunity and stimulus for self-recovery and progress. plainly whites and negroes ought to be separated. the latter seriously clog the evolution of the desired southern labor class, and the southern whites completely exclude the negroes from public life. the two are really each different communities in juxtaposition, but not united. you may think of them as plants, one of which has a diseased root, and the other has its top kept in the dark and out of the sun. both these evils result unavoidably from keeping the two races together. so let us give the negro his own state in our union. that will allow the root of the one plant to get well, and it will give the top of the other permanently to the sun. we are rich enough and have land enough to give the negro this state, which is his due from us. his especial need is to exercise political and civil privileges, in his own community, all the way up from town meeting to congress. if something like this is not done it is extremely probable that the great mass of the lower class of the negroes will die out. let not this crime be committed by the american nation. . we should be extremely liberal to the negro in education--in primary, in industrial, and also in the higher. especially ought we to combine the second with the first, and give it the lead for both races. . all the southern states should at once by proper constitutional and legal provisions substitute judicial for mob lynching. chapter xvii the race question--the situation in detail the distinction between the two classes of southern negroes, glanced at in the last chapter, is to be always kept in mind--at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end, of our discussion. its importance commands that we say something of it here. consider how enormously the two differ in numbers. five per cent of these negroes, that is, some four hundred thousand, in the upper; ninety-five per cent, that is, seven million and four hundred thousand, in the lower class. the latter, being nineteen times as large as the other, first demands attention. in the country many of the men are croppers. a group of negroes--generally parents and children--do the labor of preparation, cultivation, and gathering, while the owner contributes the land, necessary animals, and feed for the latter. the croppers get half the crop, and the land owner half. the latter retains out of their half whatever he has advanced the croppers. the advances must be limited with firmness, otherwise they will cause loss. these croppers are the great bulk of the agricultural laborers. so few of the men work for standing wages that they need not be noticed. in the towns the men subsist upon day labor, the pay of which ranges from cents to $ . . it hardly averages cents. some of the women, both in country and town, take places as house servants and nurses at weekly wages that vary from $ to $ with board. the growing disinclination of the women to these places is much stronger in the country than in town. in country and town the women do laundry for the whites at an average price per family of a dollar a week; and they get jobs of sewing, cleaning kitchen utensils, scrubbing, etc. in the country these women do some field labor, sometimes plowing, often hoeing. if trained in childhood they make expert cotton-pickers. but the women agricultural workers steadily decrease in number. the negro has inherited from a thousand generations of forefathers, bred in the humid and enervating tropical west african climate, a laziness which is the extreme contrary of caucasian energy and enterprise.[ ] thus we are told of him in jamaica, "in many cases a field negro will not work for his employer more than four days a week. he may till his own plot of ground on one of the other days or not as the spirit moves him."[ ] the first saturday in june, , i saw the thriving little town of abbeville, south carolina, thronged with idle negroes from the surrounding plantations. a merchant, who was kept busy in his store, offered to pay several of them cents to cut up a load of firewood--something more than the market price. they do not work on saturday unless compelled by something unusual; and so each one replied at once, without any inquiry if the logs were large or small, seasoned or not, and thus finding whether the job was hard or easy, that the weather was too hot. and yet these negroes all exhibited in their clothes and hungry looks unmistakable signs of want. those that superintend the gangs working for contractors in atlanta and the vicinity, all--except now and then one who has managed to form a small party of picked laborers--tell me that it is very seldom that a negro can be induced to work saturday; if that does happen he will make up his lost holiday by not returning to work before tuesday. your cook, nurse, maid, or black servant of any kind will every now and then suddenly inconvenience you by taking an utterly unnecessary rest. when booker washington was starting his system of industrial training, as he tells us, "not a few of the fathers and mothers urged that because the race had worked for years or more, it ought to have a chance to rest."[ ] the negro has likewise inherited lack of forecast and providence. if at the end of the year he finds himself with a small purse from his part of the crop, standing wages, or profits from a tenancy, he will often squander much of it for a top buggy, a piano which none of his family can play, or expensive furniture. those in the gangs just mentioned always want to fool away their money before it is made. if one has been advanced $ , and his wages amount to $ , he will hardly ever abridge his holiday by turning up to get the dollar balance when the others who have not been advanced are paid saturday night. he will waste his cash on watermelons and fish that an average white will not even smell. when forced down to it he can live contentedly upon almost nothing. a very large proportion of both sexes are happy upon a real meal every two or three days, and a sly change of mate every two or three weeks. toombs, who was always looking at cuffee, pronounced him "rich in the fewness of his wants." bring him out more clearly to yourselves by comparison with an irishman struggling up from starvation wages of hard daily work into comfort and ease. reflect over the only success a cotton mill has had with black labor, which was due to whipping the operatives for breach of duty.[ ] in atlanta--which of course is but like other southern cities in the particular now to be mentioned--many of the men live upon their women. it is a common saying that you cannot keep a colored cook if you do not allow her to carry the keys. there is great complaint that the colored washerwomen help their dependents out of the clothes. the criminal class of negro men, women, and children is large and growing much faster than that of the whites. two very striking developments are the negro burglar and the negro footpad. there are many breakings and entries every year in atlanta, many holdups of pedestrians, and nearly all of them are by negroes. now and then a negro snatches a lady's purse from her on the street. the prisoners sent to the atlanta stockade during the twelve months beginning december , , were colored. whites. men women boys ---- ---- according to the twelfth census, the negro population of atlanta was , , and the white , . so, while there are in every thousand of the whites of these criminals, there are in every thousand of the blacks . but the case is worse still. about an equal number of convicts escaped the stockade by paying fines. allowance for this will much increase the per cent of negro criminals. i wish i could get the approximate number whose fines are paid by their employers, white friends, mothers, wives, and other relatives. i have observed facts which make me confident that it is large. the number of boys that in one year were sent to the stockade-- --is a most important fact, showing as it does that a large per cent of negroes become criminals in childhood. nearly all of these boys have been abandoned by their fathers. there are just as many abandoned girls in the city. of course under the prevailing conditions the proportion of criminals in each generation must increase portentously. the depth of the negroes' debasement is shown in the impurity of the women. this is another inheritance from their ancestors. the "ancient african chastity" alleged by professor dubois,[ ] if it ever existed, was entirely prehistoric. a white who has not been bred in close contact with the race is quite unable to understand the degree and universality of this impurity. i will illustrate by a case which occurred in a prosperous town of middle georgia not very long before i settled in atlanta. a prominent negro preacher had been caught in adultery. the woman, who was the mother of several children, and her husband, were both members of the same church as the preacher, and of unctuous piety. the detection was so complete and certain, and it had immediately become so notorious that church notice was unavoidable. the problem was how to whitewash the affair. the office of a lawyer friend of mine in the town last mentioned was waited on by a member of the church--a say-nothing sort of negro, who always applied for leave to attend the meetings at which the preacher was being tried. this office boy had returned several times with the news, when inquired of, that nothing had been done. at last, one day he answered that they had cleared the preacher. my friend commanded that this be explained. the darkie said, in his laconic way, "well, he 'fessed de act, but he 'scused de act." "how in the world did he excuse it?" was asked. "he said his heart wasn't in it." "were you fools enough to believe that?" was ejaculated. the negro, with an air as superior as was compatible with the great politeness of his race, replied, "he said it was de debble dat had his body dar; but all de time his soul was at de throne, praying for god's people. in course we couldn't blame him for what de debble done." this defence, suggesting the make-believe loan of his body by the friar in the decameron to the angel gabriel, which, of course, had never been heard of by the accused, convinced the church, willing to be convinced. it appeased the injured husband, willing to be appeased. it fully vindicated the gay clergyman and the erring sister, who were in effect told to go and sin no more with such little discretion. had this case, or another like it, occurred at that time or since in any other negro church of that region, there would have been acquittal and justification of the accused, although perhaps the good plea and the right psychological moment to make it might not have been so aptly found.[ ] the habits and customs of the race mix men and women always and everywhere; and in those opportunities each one of the young and the old, married and unmarried of both sexes--of even children just arrived at puberty--chases a short-lived amour with ever eager zest.[ ] the blacker the lothario the more show of white blood he seeks in his fancies. now and then furious desire for real white overmasters him. surprising some unattended angel of a girl or matron, he chooses to see rome and then die. her avengers pour kerosene on him and burn him to a crisp. his lusty fellows think to themselves what hermes, in the song of demodocus, says to apollo of the mishap to ares and golden aphrodite--that is, that for the same brief pleasure they would each gladly endure thrice the penalty. professor dubois says that the chastity of the negro women has improved so greatly "that even in the back country districts not above nine per cent of the population may be classed as distinctly lewd."[ ] inquire of honest witnesses who have good opportunities of observing--the farmers, small and large, and the storekeepers, in the country, those who do contract work and the police in the cities--of all who have close access to negroes at all times, and especially at night; and the concurring report will be that right correction of professor dubois' statement just given cannot stop with mere inversion of his percentages; that the fact is, no negroes in this lower class which we are now dealing with are chaste except those whose physical condition has made a virtue of necessity.[ ] it is sadly true that men of all races are too prone to unchastity. it is chaste women that give human amelioration its main propulsion; for they make every husband to know that the children around his fireside are his own. if i were asked in what one particular had my life-long comparison convinced me that the two races are farthest apart, i would unhesitatingly answer, in the character of the women of each--the average white woman, from her marriage on, forgetting all other men but her husband, the black wife always with a paramour, if to be had. the tie which holds the family stanch is wanting. the men often cast aside their domestic burdens, and begin their lives over in a distant region with a new woman. the wife and mother left behind does not mope. she has generally prearranged satisfactorily with another man. disease is making great ravages in this lower class of negroes. i never knew of a case of consumption among the slaves, and i can recall but one serious case of pneumonia. now these two diseases slay the negroes by hundreds. before the war the negro was regarded as immune from yellow fever, and almost immune from dangerous malarial affections. he has lost his charm against these also. there has been a dreadful increase of insanity among them. the only ante-bellum case that i can recall was due to an accidental injury of the head. it is but natural that the death rate among the negroes mounts fearfully. their great multiplication has far outrun their reasonable means of subsistence. we note what a heavy burden a large family is to a man in hard times. i must believe that the thirteenth census will show a still greater negro death-rate. we shall sum up as to this lower class after we have described the displacement of black by white labor. now we must consider the upper class. we need look only at its main divisions, to wit, the negro farmers, and the well-to-do urban negroes. the rose-colored statements of professor dubois as to the former cannot impose upon residents of the south.[ ] i shall begin with the negro farm owners of georgia. in what he says of them in the second bulletin mentioned in the last footnote he hardly ever looks away from the report of the comptroller-general of the state. i shall deal with relevant facts about which the comptroller-general is not required to concern himself--and of which the census takes but little note. where agricultural land commands only a few dollars per acre a large part of it will get into possession of purchasers under title-bond who expect to work it and pay for it in annual instalments out of its produce. of course the vendor sees to it that he himself escapes taxation on this land, and so the purchasers, although they may have paid him but a trifle or nothing at all, are assessed as if they were the real owners, while the vendors are retaining the title as security. soon after the war many a white planter, in order to get out of a failing business and procure capital for something else, sold his land in whole or part. he could find no purchaser but some exceptional negro; and the latter could buy only on credit. much of the lands so sold had to be retaken because the purchasers failed to meet their payments. it was my observation when i left greene county twenty-three years ago that in that and the adjoining counties the number of negro owners of agricultural land was decreasing, and it is my information that such is now the case. this indicates an important fact not shown in the reports of the comptroller-general, to wit, that a large number of the negroes appearing therein as owners are really not owners, and are losing their holdings. the next fact to be mentioned is that, as i learn from residents, many farms of which a negro had acquired the fee are heavily encumbered, and often fall to the local merchants. further, as professor dubois states, "the land owned by negroes is usually the less fertile, worn-out tracts."[ ] according to the comptroller's report for the acres of white ownership are , , , returned at a value of $ , , ; which is $ , per acre. the per cent of the total value owned by the blacks is . . this result--that the negroes own a fraction over four per cent of the improved lands of georgia--must be corrected by proper deduction for purchase money debts, and also for encumbrances. it must be further corrected by another deduction. the negroes land is considerably below the average of the rest in quality and market value. yet while the white returns at $ . an acre, the other returns at $ . . this higher valuation is not because of conscientious avoidance of tax-dodging. it comes from that optimistic exaggeration characterizing the race, which is vividly illustrated in booker washington's gravely stating that the love of knowledge by the average negroes of the south has become the "marvel of mankind,"[ ] and in the extravagant assertion of professor dubois as to their chastity commented on a few pages back. there are a few negro owners of farming lands that are prospering, but i am credibly informed that as a class they are falling behind. the tenants--the renters, as they are commonly called--are the more prosperous negro farmers. the whites hold on to their lands more firmly than they did some years ago, and the tenantry class both of whites and blacks is becoming larger. the whites in the black belt all believe that the negroes generally belong to societies, in which they have bound themselves not to hire to the former as house servants or for standing wages except when they cannot otherwise subsist. so most of the cotton is made by tenants and croppers. they grade as many bad and mediocre, and a few good. the latter work with a will, and make fair crops. they send their children off to expensive schools. when they die the property they have accumulated is distributed and squandered, and a new tenant--generally, of late years, a white--succeeds. it is to be observed everywhere that some reliable white man is generally backing or superintending a negro farmer that can get credit. the negro farmers, in almost any large county in the black belt that you may select, that are an exception can usually be counted on the fingers of one hand. their implements and methods are primitive;[ ] and they employ hardly any labor except that of their own families.[ ] as soon as the negro farmer's children have grown up they leave him; the negro laborers in his neighborhood become more idle every year, and they become also more scarce. it is not to be thought of that he employ white labor. this class will give no help to the new agriculture, which i have glanced at in the last chapter. twenty-odd years ago when i left the planting section, the white landowners all preferred negro tenants. but white tenants are now preferred. they do not send their children to school as much as the negroes do, but keep them at work while the hoeing, which is the first main thing to the cotton farmer, and the gathering, which is the second and last and greatest by far, are unfinished. the negroes' hoeing and other cultivation are bad; and after the crop is laid by until christmas, during which time comes the all-important laborious cotton-picking, they spend so much of their nights at church they are incapacitated from doing good work. they lose much time by going to camp-meetings in the late summer and early autumn, and riding on railroad excursion trains at every opportunity. the white tenants and their families, by careful "chopping out" and hoeing, get the proper "stand" and they pick clean; the negroes fall behind in both respects. the bettering credit of the white steadily hits the negro harder. the only tenants who are good for the rent are the class a few of whom have cash of their own and the rest can get credit with the local merchant for necessary supplies. such tenants the landowners seek after, and find every year more and more among the whites, and less and less among the blacks. every year a larger part of the staple crops of the south is made by whites. the negroes have lately decreased in kentucky. mr. tillinghast brings forward, from hoffman, weighty proofs that in the state just mentioned, which has just become the principal seat of tobacco growing, and also in the largest yielding counties of virginia, that black labor constantly grows less of the crop.[ ] he uses hoffman, too, to show that white labor is slowly expelling black from rice production.[ ] the old south believed that rice culture was sure death to the white, mr. tillinghast quotes, as to the greatest agricultural product of the south, this from professor wilcox: "it would probably be a conservative statement to say that at least four-fifths of the cotton was ... in grown by negroes; at the present time [i.e. in ] probably not one-half is thus grown."[ ] compare this further: "he [hoffman] finds that 'with less than one-half as large a colored population as mississippi,... texas produced in almost three times the cotton crop of the former state.' even more significant is the fact that with almost twice the colored population of , mississippi, in , produced less cotton than thirty-four years ago.'"[ ] very significant are the facts lately published by the agricultural department which show that in an area of some sixty-three per cent of the production, the white outpicks the negro. "one hundred and fifty-two counties, with a negro population amounting to seventy-five per cent of the whole, averaged one hundred and eleven pounds per day, whereas one hundred and ninety-two counties, with a white population constituting seventy-five per cent or more of the whole, averaged one hundred and forty-eight pounds per day,"[ ] that is, the white picked one-third more than the black. there are other statements in this bulletin of importance here. i can give this one only: "in the indian territory and oklahoma, where the whites represent about eighty per cent of the population (including indians) the average number of pounds picked is greater than in any of the states except arkansas and texas. the highest number of pounds picked in any state is one hundred and seventy-two in texas, the counties represented having a white population of eighty per cent."[ ] in arkansas the population of the counties mentioned was fifty-nine per cent white, the rest negro. it is almost certain that the foregoing estimates do great injustice to the whites. they assume that there is no inferiority of the negro to the white except the per diem quantity of cotton picked. ponder the statement as to a county of georgia which i now give. "according to the ginners' report, madison county made sixteen thousand bales of cotton in . its negro population is about three thousand, its white, twelve thousand. the negroes are one-fifth and the whites four-fifths, and out of every five bales the negroes ought to have made at least one and the whites four. but the former do not average as well as the others. the white who runs one plow, whose wife and children do the hoeing and picking, probably makes ten bales. the negro who runs one plow, whose wife and children hoe and pick, hardly makes more than five or six bales. the greater part of the cotton credited to negro labor is made by negroes who are superintended by white men."[ ] weighing all that i have just told, i am as sure as i can be of anything in the near future, that the negro will soon be of greatly diminished importance as laborer, cropper, renter, or farming landowner in the staples of southern agriculture. there are other kinds of property than improved lands set out in the report of the comptroller-general, such as $ , , of horses, cattle, and stock of all kinds, $ , of plantation and mechanical tools. such needs no separate consideration. these holdings do not in view of what we have told, give the negro farmer any strong foothold. nearly all that remains of the rural upper class--the negroes in trades, professions, mercantile business, etc.--is so evidently dependent upon the masses of the lower class, now gravitating away from the country that the most of it can be incidentally disposed of at certain places later on in the chapter and the rest be treated as negligible. the "city or town property" of the negroes of georgia, according to the report of the comptroller-general for , amounts in value to $ , , . from all that i can learn, while it is largely, it is considerably less, encumbered than the real and personal property of the negro farmers. a large admixture of caucasian blood marks nearly every member of the upper class both in country and town. i note that occasionally a coalblack acquires property, on which his miser grip is tighter than that of an accumulating irishman; but such are very few. there is hardly a well-to-do negro in work, occupation, profession, or property, who is not several shades at least removed from coalblack. mr. tillinghast observes "that the porters, cooks, and waiters on a pullman train are usually mulattoes, while the laborers in the gang on the roadbed are nearly all black."[ ] in this day when the pictures of prominent men and women are in many illustrated magazines and papers, it is to be observed that hardly one of a negro shows unmixed blood. thus a recent monthly contains pictures of judson w. lyons, r. h. terrell, kelly miller, archibald h. grinke, t. thomas fortune, daniel murray, and booker washington.[ ] of these the third only, to my eye, seems all negro; and i cannot be confident that he is wholly without appreciable white blood. his head has the shape of a white man's. it is my observation that a negro entirely pure in blood hardly ever gets out of the lower class; and that if he does he is much more unprogressive than an average member of the upper class. note what bishop holsey says of how amalgamation with the white improves the descendants of the blacks, in a passage quoted later herein. this upper class contains only persons of exceptional blood, talent, or some other rare fortune. the higher education, and the education which is now best of all for the negro--industrial education--is for this little circle only. hampton and tuskegee do not open to all comers. mr. tillinghast convincingly proves that those who have got really good training at the two institutions just named are far above the average negro in physical stamina, education, and other important particulars.[ ] the graduates go forth, not to benefit their brothers in the lower class, but to win for themselves surer and higher standing in the upper class. some of the resources which this urban section of the upper class have enjoyed for a while they are losing, as i shall tell when i hereinafter summarize the details of white encroachment. but other resources open to them. such are professions like dentists, eye, ear, and throat surgeons, doctors, barbers, and others who must content themselves with only colored patronage; such the growing retail trade, multiplying boarding-houses, restaurants, and saloons, finding their custom exclusively in the increasing negro town population. the number of negroes who become teachers, lecturers, preachers, authors, etc., steadily augments. other resources of this upper class can be pointed out, but it needs not here. although nearly always when the father who has struggled up dies, his property, as we saw to be the case with the negro farmer, goes, and no child succeeds to his occupation, there is perhaps generally compensation for his loss by the accession of some other who has got up out of the lower class by an extraordinarily lucky jump. it is clear that the class is without the wholesome influence of uninterrupted inheritance, from generation to generation, of faculty and character progressively improving. take this inheritance away from the men and women of any enlightened nation and it would be to lower them very near to the level of barbarism. it is also nearly certain that there will be no further infusion of white blood into this class, by reason of the hostility to inter-mixture which becomes stronger--yea, intenser--every year. the probable consequence will be the dilution of much of the white blood now in the upper class through the lower class to such an extent that it will practically disappear. but some of it, i think, will persist, perhaps increase in degree--preserved by the aversion of many to intermarriage with persons less white than themselves, and occasional intermarriage with white persons in northern states. exceptional ones of this class enjoy privileges of the higher education, afforded by schools and colleges opulently endowed by private persons, which education is bringing forth fruit in teachers, clergymen, and representatives of the learned class. there are already some good books, as well as sermons, speeches, poems, essays, and short articles, by negroes which have won favorable opinion in our literature; and there is evidently to be steady increase. there is among some of this urban upper class the beginning at least of better things under the lead of better mothers. we must not be unreasonable in our demands that these women who carry in their veins a very appreciable proportion of polyandrous blood shall become immaculately chaste at once. leave them to the influence of the improving society in which they move; to the noble and faithful efforts of such as mrs. booker washington; their persistent imitation of white mothers; the teachings of the really christian pastors whom the negro universities are beginning to send abroad in numbers far too few; but especially of all to devoted conjugal, maternal, and domestic duty. this last has made the pigeon mother unconquerably true to her life mate. it will do the same for the negro woman.--let us consider the class further for a moment. the longer you look at it with unbefogged eyes the more plainly you see it is really a natural aristocracy hugging its special privileges more jealously every year, and that cleavage in interest, affection, and destiny between it and the other class goes on so steadily that it must after some little while yawn in the sight of the entire nation. here in atlanta, as seems to be the case in all the southern cities, there are respectable negro districts and also negro slums. the latter are the more numerous and far more populous. the inhabitants of these several districts are almost as wide apart as are the whites in the fashionable circle and the million of poor folk without. i must postpone my final contrast of these two classes until i have completed what remains to be said of the displacement of black by white labor. for a few years after the war it was so slow moving that i was not confidently aware of it. now it has proceeded so far, and so much accelerated its pace, that i can indicate it with something like accuracy. in the thirteenth chapter i noted its beginning. this was when the mother and her girls took upon themselves the daily indoor work, and the father and sons took upon themselves the outdoor work, morning, noon, and night, around the house and the horse-lot,--the word which in the south corresponds to the barnyard of the northern farmer. especially significant is it that a large per cent of the white matrons in the country have at last discarded the negro laundry-woman and habitually themselves use the washtub for their families. the impulse to supplant negro labor showed its greatest energy where the black population had been sparse. i have heard my friend, f. c. foster, a resident of morgan county, often mention that what were before the war the rich and poor sides of that county have become interchanged; where most of the large slave-owners lived was the rich, but now is the poor side; and the other, where there were but few slaves, is now the rich side. i see many proofs in every quarter that the whites of the black belt have commenced to learn good lessons from their neighbors outside, and show every year a greater self-reliance. many more causes than i have space to set down conspire to increase this self-reliance. the small farmer must, by himself or his wife and children or white help, do such things as these: work his brood mare; care for his blooded stock, fine poultry, and bees; handle his reaper, mower, and more expensive tools and implements; give all necessary attention to his orchards and larger and smaller fruits,--industries which, with that of the dairy, are now pushing forward with mounting energy; for he has learned that the average negro cannot be trusted in these and many other things which can be suggested. i must not overstate the advance of white production and labor upon black in the country. in the regions of densest negro populations the whites show a backwardness in taking to work that is discouraging. a very observant man familiar with jackson and madison counties of georgia, both of which are out of the black belt, and who now lives where negroes outnumber the whites, not long ago made this comparison, while answering my inquiries: "in jackson and madison the whites work. a farmer who runs but one plow does all the plowing. he hires but one negro. in my present county the one-horse farmer always hires two negroes, one to plow and the other to hoe, and the only work he does is to boss them." but the negroes are going away from many parts, in fact from nearly all, of the black belt. wherever they have become scarce, the whites go to work; and, as is now occurring in that part of greene county called "the fork," and in places in adjoining counties, the lands rise greatly in market value. in many parts of oglethorpe, wilkes, taliaferro, and greene counties, where negroes were doing practically all the agricultural labor when i came to atlanta, i learn that many white boys are becoming good all-around workers. it surprised me greatly to be told that in this region in different places the white women and children, as soon as the dew is off in the morning, go to cotton picking, and they become so efficient that often no extra labor need be hired to finish that greatest task of all to the farmer. before the war, all of us white boys picked just enough of cotton to learn that our backs could never be made to stand picking all day. the whites now beating the negro in what we once thought he only could do, and white women in the old slave regions doing the family laundry,--these begin a marvellous economic revolution. the cotton mills and other manufactories rapidly springing up in many southern localities are developing a class of white operatives. mining of various kinds is on the increase. stone, slate, and marble cutting, cabinet making, and other trades attract greater numbers to follow them. white railroad employees, printers, engravers, stenographers, typewriters, and those in numerous other gainful occupations, grow in numbers. white women and girls stream to work for employers every morning. in all places, if you but look long enough, you catch sight of swelling crowds of the race who once lived almost entirely from slave labor now doing their own labor. i will close what i have to say of this part of the subject by observations of atlanta. when i settled here, the barbers, shoe repairers, blacksmiths, band-musicians, sick-nurses, seamstresses, ostlers, and carriage-drivers were, so far as i noted, black almost without exception. now the first five are nearly all white, and whites steadily multiply in the rest, although they are far from being in a majority. the only expulsion of white by negro labor that i have noted is the substitution by the bicycle messenger service and the telegraph of negro for white messengers, made not long ago. these messenger services thrive by exploiting child labor. by the change mentioned they got much larger and stronger boys--often grown-up ones--for the same price which they used to pay white children a year or two older than mere tots. against the recent loss just told i have these two recent gains of the whites to tell. there had always been only negro waiters in the restaurants. in some of them the eaters at the lunch counters are now served by a white man standing behind it; and what he needs, if it is not kept in store so near that he can reach it, is brought to him, at his command, by a negro, whom you may call his waiter. this negro also wipes off the counter. after we became used to white barbers we generally preferred them to the black ones. and i note that a growing majority of those who frequent the counters like the white waiters, although i now and then hear a growler say that he would rather have a waiter that he can reprimand and speak to as he pleases. some of the restaurants begin to advertise that their help is all white. with the superior alertness and quickness of his race, a white behind the counter accomplishes more than twice as much as the former black. to use a common saying, the white waiters keep at active work all their twelve hours as if they were fighting fire, while the negroes commanded by them take things easy. every one of the whites is constantly on the lookout for a better place; and generally he manages somehow, after a short while, to get it. one who now serves me studies bookkeeping two hours every night, and will doubtless soon be giving satisfaction in his chosen occupation to some business house. the negroes look out only for tips, are interested in nothing but amusements, and never get any higher. bear in mind, they are considerably above the average negro in qualifications and station. the other instance is that some co-operating greek boys have recently captured a very considerable proportion of the shoe-shining. they provide more convenient and comfortable seats and give a better shine than the negro does, in a much shorter time, and for the same price. it looks now as if they are bound to make full conquest of the business. with my experience it is more of a surprise to me to see clothes laundered, tables waited on, and shoes shined by the whites, than even to see cotton picked by them. but to go on with atlanta. occupations requiring the management of machinery or peculiar skill are nearly always filled by whites. the street railroad conductors and motormen are all white. the only negroes connected with the road that i, as a passenger, generally see is the curve-greaser, and now and then a helper on the construction car. the steam railroads will employ a negro fireman because of his ability to stand heat, but they do not trust him to oil and wipe. in the smaller buildings negro elevator-runners some time ago were frequent, but now it is clear that the whites will soon have the occupation exclusively. there is, i believe, more building, in this year of , in atlanta than ever before. the preparation of all the material is done by white labor in the planing-mills and machine-shops, while the more unskilled work of putting it in place is done by the negro carpenter. the lathers and plasterers are all negroes, there are more negro brick and stone masons than white, and the carpenters are nearly all negroes, there being but few young white ones. the painters are about equally divided. the negro's standard of living is so much lower than that of the white, that where there is competition he proves victor by accepting a price upon which the white man cannot live. but the latter does not throw up the sponge. at the point where race competition begins he induces the negroes, whenever he can, to join his union, and soon to have one of their own. just now (august, ) there are not enough of brickmasons to supply the demand, and there is both a white and black union of that trade. but so far there has been no success in the efforts made for a black carpenters' union. the negroes have of late years kept such firm hold of the trade, that it seems no young whites come into it, there being but few white carpenters in atlanta under forty years of age. the negroes understand that their grip is due to their ability to work for lower pay than the whites, and when the union is proposed they say to themselves, that means only more places for white carpenters and less for us. but the trend to form unions seems to strengthen. there is a mixed union of tailors, separate unions of blacksmiths' helpers, moulders' helpers, painters, and also of brickmasons, as just mentioned. there is a black union of plasterers and no white one. it is to be remembered that the initiative to unionize the negro workman comes from the other race, the purpose being to balk the exertions of employers to depress wages by encouraging the cheaper worker. consider the dilemma of the negro workman invited into the union by whites. he foresees that if he accepts, his race will after a while be swamped in the trade by white competition. at the same time he foresees that if he does not accept, he cannot increase his income, which in its smallness becomes more and more inadequate to sustain himself and family under the constant demands of the day for larger and larger expenditure. the immediate needs of those dependent upon him will generally decide his course. i cannot say how long the negro carpenters of atlanta will refuse the proposal to federate themselves in a union with the whites; but this i can say, that all attempts of the negroes to keep the whites out of any well-paid vocation must fail, even with the most resolute and stubbornly maintained effort. as i view it on the spot the white forward movement palpably strengthens and the defence weakens. bear in mind that the whites receive constant re-enforcement from all other white american and european communities, and the blacks are confined to their own resources of supply, all the while declining. what i have just told as happening in atlanta intelligent and observant negroes detect to be but a part of the general recession before white competition. the national negro business league had its last meeting at indianapolis. in one of the resolutions adopted, mainly because of the influence of dr. booker t. washington, its president, occurs this allegation, "during our discussions it has been clearly developed that the race has been steadily losing many avenues of valuable employment." the resolution ascribes this to lack of proper training, and recommends that the lack be supplied. a negro makes this acute and true comment, which i would have attended to here, and considered again when further on i discuss what the industrial schools can do: "that the colored man has of late years been losing many avenues of employment is quite true, but the conclusion that this is due to a lack of training is not to be hastily accepted. nobody believes that our people are now less capable of work than they were when recognized in these avenues of labor. as a matter of fact they are far better equipped now than they were then, or tuskegee and hampton and the other industrial schools that are crowded from year to year are making a signal failure. in those days men were picked up here and there and started in as apprentices as green as they could be. now thousands of them are prepared before they go out to work. the two chief reasons our folks are not employed so universally now is, first, the fact, that _the white south has gone to work with its own hands_, and second, the negro refuses longer to work for nothing. _the continued assertion by some of our leaders that a man who can labor will not be discriminated against, is untrue. the preference is given to the white man in almost every case, and the negro is allowed to do the work he refuses._ it is well enough to ask our people to secure industrial education, but it is wrong to place all our ills upon a lack of such training or to recommend industrial education as a panacea. though it was quite inevitable that the league should adopt such a resolution as an endorsement of its president's policy."[ ] i have italicized in the quotation the statements specially pertinent here. they are very weighty proofs supporting my proposition of fact, to wit, that there is now waging between the whites and negroes an internecine war for every opportunity of labor above the very lowest and unskilled. i ask also that it be noted that the writer is utterly unconscious of any negroes than those of the upper class. not a thing that he says can be applied to the ninety-five per cent. the death rate of the negro is coming close to, while that of the white keeps far below, the birth rate. rapid native increase and vigorous immigration for the whites, nothing but slow and decreasing propagation for the negroes; and larger and larger hosts of the former giving their champions active sympathy and help--the event of this inter-race struggle over the trades and occupations may be delayed, but it cannot be doubtful. the reader must not forget that the negroes now in mind belong all to what i have called the upper class. their number is so small and its promise of increase so slight that i should hardly have done more than allude to them, if the subject did not emphasize so impressively as it does the inevitable expulsion of negro by white labor. let me explain this fully. professor wilcox, summarizing the pertinent information of the twelfth census as to ten leading occupations competed for by the two races in the south, states that in the year the per cent of negroes was larger in seven and smaller in nine of them than ten years before.[ ] that alone shows white gain. but i want you to add to professor wilcox's statement something of which the census gives no hint, that is, the bound forward of the negroes on one side, and the inaction of the whites on the other, during many years beginning with emancipation in . when that has been done, the encroachment of white labor upon black effected in the comparatively short time since its beginning appears almost prodigious. it is somewhat like the race-horse, who, falling far behind in the first stages of a long heat, at last wakes up and gains so fast that nobody will bet against him. it means that the whites are now as ruthlessly taking all opportunities of labor away from the blacks, as their fathers took his lands away from the american indian. we can now say our last word in contrasting the two classes. many fail to see clearly the difference between them. thus ernest hamlin abbott[ ] and edgar gardner murphy,[ ] in their pleasant discussions, only here and there, and as if casually, say something which momentarily implies existence of the lower class, and then relapse into claiming for all of the southern negroes, if not the actual condition of the upper class, at least hopeful possibility of soon achieving it. these two kind-hearted men represent a large number who firmly believe that education and the church are now rapidly elevating the negro masses, when the fact is far otherwise. many from the north see nothing but the upper class. in what he writes of the negroes whom he knew in public life, the late senator hoar was utterly unconscious of the average negro whom all of us in the south know.[ ] dr. lyman abbott, a most benign example of broad and almost perfect tolerance to both sections, taking all southern hearts by his loving sympathy with and full justice to the better sentiment of our section in every matter of importance except the appointment of negroes to office, he never seems to have in mind any negroes but the prominent ones who are giving their fellows industrial or the higher education, and those who have been blessed with either. do but consider how pathetically he lately lamented the case of the "white negro" lady shut out from the circle of cultivation and kept confined in one of ignorance and lowness. this last circle--its magnitude, its bad and desperate state--he really knows nothing about. he can no more study its deplorable and heartrending conditions than the mother can endure to have the expectoration of her child threatened with tuberculosis examined under the microscope. chicago has been for some while "farthest to the front" in the struggle against corporation rule. her battles for direct nomination, direct legislation, and municipal ownership have been chronicled more accurately and intelligently in the _public_ than i can find elsewhere. therefore i read it with diligence; and i relish more and more mr. post's sound and able anti-machine and anti-plutocratic advocacy. but in everything that the paper says or quotes on the race question i am pained to note that its shortcoming is greater than its very high merit in preaching democratic democracy. mr. ernest hamlin abbott does now and then call the negroes a child race, but mr. post repudiates all backwardness and inferiority of race. he seems to maintain the equality of the average negro to the average white in all essentials of good citizenship with the zeal of wendell phillips, when the providence of the american union frenzied and deputed him to infuriate its defenders against the disunion slave-owners. mr. post, as appears to me, believes with all his heart in the doctrine of mrs. stowe and whittier, to mention no others, as to the negro. every pertinent utterance in his paper indicates that he has no thought whatever of the lower class. a most striking illustration of this is how he treats the story of the negro richard r. wright.[ ] when the latter was ten years old he won great fame by the answer he made general howard, who had inquired of the negro children at the storrs school in atlanta, just after the close of the war, "tell me what message i shall take back from you to the people of the north?" his face ablaze with enthusiasm, the boy richard said, "tell 'em we're risin'." whittier went as far astray over this as we saw that he did in his "laus deo." in his poem celebrating he sang-- "o black boy of atlanta! but half was spoken: the slave's chain and the master's alike are broken. the one curse of the races held both in tether: they are rising--all are rising, the black and white together." i never read the last two lines without in mind admonishing the author, "praise in departing." when mr. post published the story, he ought to have mentioned that while the boy who sent forth the winged words did rise and has become president of the georgia industrial college, yet that such negroes are far more rare than millionaires, and the main host of their people in the south were sinking at the time, and have been sinking ever since. it is not true that "all are rising." the whites have recently begun to rise; five per cent only of the negroes, most of whom are largely white, are rising, while the rest of them are doomed, if the nation does not interpose. and the colored dentist of chicago, slighted by some of the white dentists--mr. post sees in him, just as he sees in richard r. wright, a representative of the negro millions. these conscientious and amiable gentlemen are wasting much effort uselessly. there is no very urgent problem as to the upper class of negroes. it has two strings to its bow. if the lower class should perish, a large part of it--perhaps the greater part--will be assimilated. every day i detect a larger movement toward the north among our better-to-do negroes. i hear of girls that get places as chambermaids and cooks, of boys that find places as ostlers or other domestic service; and i have heard of a few families who have gone in a body, also of some men who have left wife and children here. they believe the north will allow their votes to be counted, will not proscribe them in society as the south does, and they will probably get for themselves or their descendants intermarriage with whites. the determination of these southern negroes towards the north will probably gain in volume and energy. it is plain that those who go do much increase their chances of final absorption into the body of whites. this assimilation is one of the two strings. and if the american negroes shall one day be conceded their own state, as i hope and pray for, their leaders must come from the upper class. that is the other of the two strings. this upper class of southern negroes has demonstrated full ability to take care of itself. it has its schools and colleges, newspapers, magazines, and augmenting literature, its widening circle of students and readers, and its good shepherds and able leaders. it rapidly wins favor in the south. a few of our residents see no other negroes but those in this upper class, a most striking instance of which is joel chandler harris's sweeping assertion "that the overwhelming majority of the negroes in all parts of the south, _especially in the agricultural regions, are leading_ sober and _industrious lives_."[ ] when one who fully understands the situation studies the assertion just quoted he sees from the context that the writer was led to make it because he had at the time in his eyes only a few of the better negroes in the atlanta upper class. this is powerful testimony to their prosperity and self-maintaining faculty. similarly the chicago _public_ rates the four hundred inhabitants of boley in the creek nation as common or average negroes. according to a news dispatch mentioned in that paper the town is only a year old, has "two churches, a school-house, several large stores, and a $ , cotton gin, owned and controlled exclusively by negroes." it is without a system of law and without municipal government, and "yet no serious crime or offence of any kind has been committed in the place." these four hundred negroes do not permit any white man to settle in the town. commenting in conclusion upon the news, the _public_ says, "if that dispatch is not a canard, anglo-saxon civilization has something to learn of one race which it has outraged and abused and despised."[ ] any such place as boley, if a reality, is peopled only by negroes of the upper class, and, further, only by those who have been sifted out from the rest of that class by a peculiarly drastic selection. had they not each had remarkable good fortune, extraordinary capacity, and exceptional experience and training, boley would never have been heard of. i ask that the fair-minded make two comparisons. . suppose four hundred negroes--not naturally selected, but taken in a body, just as each one comes, from the masses of the lower class described herein--given opportunity to found a town of their own amid what we may call boley conditions, what would be the result? you may be sure that what occurred in hayti when the reins of government were suddenly given to the negroes at large would in some sort be repeated. . compare boley in all its bloom and happy condition as described in the _public_ with certain communities of select whites, which have flourished now and then for years, without formal government; say the amana community. if this be rightly done, social organism of select whites will at once appear to be incomparably superior to that of select negroes. i have tried my hardest to make my readers see as clearly as one bred in the south ought to see what a world-wide difference there is between the small upper class and the numerous lower class of negroes. if i have succeeded they will agree with me that it is the better policy to leave the upper class, for the present, just where it is. if this advice be followed, that class will flourish, and some day either be assimilated, or be giving benign salvation to the lower class in the negro state. especially should this upper class eschew politics. booker washington in preaching this is the only real american prophet of the day. with all of his zeal for his race, he is far better appreciated in the south than in the north, and perhaps just as popular. what a lamentable arrest of its benign development it would be to this upper class to turn it away from industrial betterment of its condition to lead the mass of the negroes at the polls in a struggle for rule and office! that would be something like renewing the conditions that developed the ku-klux klan. it is the great body of the southern negroes--those in the lower class, who have no string at all, nor even a bow--that demands the profoundest attention. i wish i could make every white man, woman, and child of america see them just as they are. as i compare them with what they were in i note they have advanced somewhat in mental arithmetic, because of practice in computing small sums of money involved in their wages and purchases; that they have learned somewhat of self-providence, and very much endurance of want (which last is really a reversion to a trait of their west african ancestors); and that the per cent of illiteracy among them has been greatly lessened. on the other hand, each generation becomes more disinclined to work, and its vagrants multiply; each generation more prone to live by crime, more unchaste, and more quick to desert their conjugal partners and children. especially are they far more unhealthy and prone to insanity, and their death rate rapidly rising. they have no resource but unskilled labor of the lowest and cheapest grade; white competition in agriculture and domestic service, machinery in other fields, such as the scrape which has superseded the dump-cart, the improved steam-shovel and method of handling construction trains, and the steam laundry, steadily curtailing that resource; a slothful, improvident, and wasteful disposition curtailing it still further. the resurrecting hand of the trades union cannot reach down to them. steadily they are more useless to every upbuilder of the coming south except the wage-depresser. more and more they get in the way of real progress in every direction. and as their supplies of necessaries diminish they get in one another's way. nearly all of the whites who were bound to them in the domestic love of the old south times are dead. most naturally and unavoidably as the new generation discerns the growing incompatibility of their stay in the section with its true welfare, unfriendliness comes and grows. listless, lethargic, careless, without initiative, without opportunity and coercion to make use of it, these multitudes of inveterate have-nothings are in a bottomless gulf of want, immorality, crime, and disease. a true philanthropist has familiarized the world with the "submerged tenth." mr. ernest hamlin abbott, mr. murphy, mr. joel chandler harris, dr. abbott, mr. post, stand beside me on the strand, and fix your eyes, minds, and hearts upon the slowly drowning ninety-five per cent of the southern negroes. lay aside the excess of your devotion to the upper class. it does not need it. the chicago dentist, as the _public_ itself reports, was really more than indemnified for the insult given him because of his color by the sympathetic resentment of white members of his profession. why will you keep agitating the nation in behalf of a few thousands, who are well able to maintain themselves, and neglect millions who require, as mr. tillinghast says, some heroic remedy for their salvation? i shall now tell you the utter inadequacy of hampton, tuskegee, and the like, after which i shall consider what, in my judgment, is the only remedy. the annual output, as we may call it, of all the negro educational institutions in the south is a mere drop in the bucket when compared with the enormous need. the latest reliable figures accessible to me are those of booker washington for . they are as follows: , receiving industrial training, , collegiate education, , classical instruction, and , "taking the professional course,"[ ]--the last three aggregating , . suppose the entire , were following industrial courses, and that every one graduated with credit; and suppose there be added the work of the land companies providing homes and every other enterprise helping the negro in any way--suppose this output to be trebled annually from this time on (which is far above possibility for many years yet, to say nothing of probability), what would be its accomplishment? why, no more than a slight shower in a few townships during the drought a few years ago would have done in preventing injury to the kansas corn crop. when you attend, you understand that the great advantages of these excellent institutions are only for a few lucky negroes,--picked ones of the upper class,--and not for the millions whose crying need is for opportunity to earn honest daily bread and a really benevolent coercion to use the opportunity. the problem, what to do for this mass, cannot be solved by philippics against such things as _de facto_ or constitutional disfranchisement of the blacks, lynching them, showing them disrespect in military parades, giving them jim crow cars, and not dividing the educational fund more liberally with them; nor would it contribute one jot or tittle towards its solution if every lady in america cordially received in her drawing-room the few negroes who have most deservedly won the respect of the nation. to solve this problem, something must be found which will train and elevate the average negro, while the exceptional one is at the industrial school or college, or studying for a profession; something which will check the prevalent reversion away from monogamic family life, and stimulate that life to develop steadily; something also which will impart to this entire mass permanent and strengthening impulse to better its condition. the only thing that can do this is to separate the negro as far as may be from the whites, give him his own state in our union, and constrain him there with vigilant kindness to subsist and govern himself in such ways as suit him. i have long thought that our negroes had far stronger claim upon the nation for land than the uncivilizable redskins on whom we have lavished so much expense in vain. righteousness demands that we give the former full opportunity to develop normally in self-government. put him in a state of his own on our continent; provide irrepealably in the organic law that all land and public service franchises be common property; give no political rights therein to those of any other race than the african; compel nobody to settle in this state, but let every black reside in whatever part of the nation that pleases him; let this community while in a territorial condition, and also for a reasonable time after it has been admitted as a state, be faithfully superintended by the nation in order that republican government be there preserved,--do these things, and there need be no fear that the examples of hayti and san domingo, which were not so superintended, will be repeated. nearly all of the american indians, because of rigid adherence to their old customs and ways, were crushed by caucasian rule. but the negro, wherever he comes in contact with a superior, shows a pliancy, a self-adaptability to new circumstances, to which no parallel has ever been suggested, so far as i know. if civilized self-government will but kindly keep him a while at its labor school where he is to learn by doing, i am profoundly convinced that he will develop into the very best of citizens. and i am also just as profoundly convinced that if something like what i recommend is not done at a comparatively early day, after some while, as there are now in america a few prosperous indians and in new zealand a few prosperous maoris, we will have here and there a few prosperous negroes; but the rest of them will either be confirmed degenerates, or have gone no one will know whither. and booker washington, the moral exemplar of the day, rivalling horace's "iustum et tenacem propositi virum," as he resists the pernicious counsels of the overwhelming majority of negroes and keeps to the wise and right course which they passionately condemn; who is far more able and who has accomplished infinitely more of good than toussaint or douglass--he will be a great hero statesman of a great cause lost. the historian of the future that has something like shakspeare's genius for contrast will make his glory and that of calhoun magnify each other by comparison. the foregoing as to a negro state, which is the result of years of observation and reflection, had all been written for some time when i fell in with the address of bishop holsey, mentioned above. it is the proposition of the address that a part of the united states should be assigned to the negroes. i add an abstract from the synopsis of his views given in the address: . negroes and whites "are so distinct and dissimilar in racial traits, instincts, and character, it is impossible for them to live together on equal terms of social and political relation, or on terms of equal citizenship." . the general government only has power to settle the problem, and it ought to settle it. . separation of the negroes and whites "is the most practicable, logical, and equitable solution of the problem." . "segregation and separation should be gradual ... and non-compulsory, so as not to injure ... labor, capital, and commerce ... where the negro is an important factor of production and consumption." . the southern negroes should petition the president and congress "for suitable territory ... as ... equal citizens ... and not go out of their country to be exposed to doubtful experiment and foreign complications. afro-americans should remain in their own country, in the zone of greatness, and in the latitude of progress." . the government should, in effecting segregation, maintain "civil order, peace, progress, and prosperity." . the place for the negroes may be in the western public domain, such as a part of the indian territory, new mexico, or elsewhere in the west. . no white person unless married to a negro, or a resident federal official, to be allowed citizenship in the negro state or territory, but all citizens of the united states to be protected therein as in the other states.[ ] . only those of reputable character and some degree of education, and perhaps those possessed of a year's support, to become citizens. criminals and undesirable persons to be kept out. it was gratification extreme to me to find a prominent negro so much in accord with my long-cherished project. i hope there is a determination of the mass of southern negroes thitherward, as seems to be indicated by the activity both of bishop holsey and also by that of bishop turner. with nearly all of the negro writers and speakers now in the public eye upper-class sympathies are dominant. but holsey, demanding a state in the union, and turner, putting his whole soul into immigration to liberia, are actuated by lower-class sympathies. the others just mentioned really advocate assimilation,--and at bottom, only the assimilation of the upper class,--but these two are of far different and higher ambition. they are patriotic, and as true to their race as that famous heathen who rejected christianity when told that it consigned his forefathers to perdition. he declared he would go to hell with his people and not to heaven without them. the others are representative of only some five per cent, these two represent the ninety-five per cent--the real negroes. i never took to bishop turner's proposal, for all of the ability with which he advocates it, because i want the negroes where our nation can foster and protect their state, it matters not what may be the resulting pains and expense. i highly approve the earnestness of bishop holsey in objecting to expatriation by the afro-americans. let our negroes have their own state. that will be the fit culmination which was foreshadowed in their deserting the galleries assigned them in our churches and flocking to their own churches, immediately upon emancipation, and their effecting soon afterwards the removal of their cabins from the old site. their masses have ever since been inclining towards a community of their own by an internal impulsion in harmony with the external white expulsion. the impulsion and the expulsion are each, as it seems to me, manifestations of the same all-powerful cosmic force. further, i would say a negro state makes a precedent for the world federation. each race that ought not to intermarry with others can flourish under its separate autonomy. then loving brotherhood between white, yellow, red, and black people will bless all the earth. whether the proneness of opposites to fancy each other, progressively going from the smaller to the greater differences, will ultimately compound a universal color, no man can now tell. of course some reader has exclaimed, "your proposal is absurdly chimerical." is it indeed chimerical to demand of the great republic that it do its very highest duty? suppose an ignorant, neglected child taken home by a rich man, taught to work, the world of industry, with all of its prizes, kept in his sight, until he begins to cherish the hope that some day he can have a happy fireside of his own; suppose further that just as he reaches the age of discretion the adopting father sets him where he may see the fair world plainer and long for it more than ever, but so completely strips him of all means and opportunity that there is nothing for the outcast but ignoble life and uncared-for death. how you would pity the outcast! how you would curse the false father! i cannot believe that the nation will prove such an unnatural parent to these its helpless and lovable children. it may be that some thousands of them, nay, some millions, may be left to perish in their dire constraint. but when the people fully understand, their consciences will awaken, and they will give the american negro a bright house-warming. suppose we do not give him his state, or suppose it will be long years before we give it to him, what do you say we are to do for him? we must help booker washington and his co-laborers to the utmost. grant that they can snatch only a few brands from the burning. is it not most praiseworthy to save even one? further, i can never abandon the hope that the nation will yet allot the negroes their state, even if to do it land must be condemned on a large scale. when that fair day does dawn on america, out of the scholars of these worthy teachers will come many a good shepherd for the blacks in their new land. this may now be but a glimmering of hope. all the good must join in effort to enlarge and brighten it. we should not begrudge the higher education to the few in the upper class who can get it. the negroes need teachers, preachers, writers, and others of the learned occupations. we should impartially equalize the negro population to the white in common school privileges. both ought to have rational industrial training. the right primary education is just beginning to show itself. it will more and more recognize what a prominent factor the hand has been in evolution. think of the superiority of animals with, to those without, hands. what a high brain the elephant has made for himself by exercising his single hand; the polar bear kills the seal by throwing a block of ice; the 'coon goes through his master's pockets for sweetmeats; the greater intelligence of the house-cat as compared with the average dog is due to long use of the forepaws as rudimentary hands. think of how we note humanity dawning in the monkey ever busy with his hands. think of the importance of his hands to beginning man. with them he could gather fruits, rub fire-sticks together, make war-clubs, spears, fish-hooks, bow and arrows, bar up his cave door against beasts of prey, elevate his roosting place in a tree too high for night prowlers, and do all other vital things up the whole ascent to civilization. the steady enlargement of man's brain has been mainly because of his progressive use of his hands; for whenever a new thing was to be done his brain had first to acquire faculty of telling hands how to do it. to train the hands is the true way to develop brain power. the negroes in american slavery had risen far above the level of west african hand ability, and at emancipation they were prepared to go higher by leaps and bounds. had they from that time steadily on been drafted off into their state, gradually, as bishop holsey suggests, and a tithe of the millions which have since been lavished in giving them premature literacy and smattering of learning been applied in teaching their children handicraft faculty and the best methods of labor, the promise for them now would be satisfactory to their dearest friends. somebody wisely advises, never do the second thing first. those who took charge of the negro when he was freed tried to make him do the hundredth or thousandth thing first. instead of patiently schooling him in handicraft and self-support until he was really ready to take part in his own self-government, they made the ignorant and inexperienced slave of yesterday a complete citizen, and plunged him up to his neck into politics and letters. what a baleful _hysteron proteron_ was this. the looming greatness of booker washington is that he teaches by his actions that the seeming advance was in fact prodigious retrogression, and he strives with all his might to draw the negro backwards to his right beginning. let us further his good work by incorporating the utmost practicable of his industrial training in our common school system for both whites and blacks. america has learned important military lessons from the redskin; and, as i am almost sure, she acted on his suggestion when she confederated the separate colonies. let her now show similar good sense in permitting a negro to teach her the true system of education for the new times.[ ] now as to lynching. it is entirely wrong to conceive of a popular outbreak against one who has outraged a sacred woman as lawless. it is the furthest possible from that, being prompted by the most righteous indignation. the wretch has outlawed himself. society can no more tolerate such an insult to its peace than it can permit a tiger to go at large. it is under no obligation to him whatever. it is the people dealing with him that should concern us. we ought to keep them from brutalizing themselves and their children. we must put down lynching with gentle firmness. the first thing to do is to shorten the "law's delay" as much as possible. after the state has made the enabling constitutional amendment, if such be necessary, let an act provide that whenever an alleged crime likely to excite popular violence has been committed the governor select a judge to try and finally dispose of the case, three days only, say, being allowed for motion for new trial or taking direct bill of exceptions; both the supreme court and the court below to proceed as fast as may be through all stages until acquittal or execution. let the governor earnestly ask for some such measure, and let him also, after he gets it, impressively appeal to the people to assist in enforcing the law. with this preparation, more than ninety per cent of the whites will approve the most decided action of the military protecting prisoners, if that be necessary. just at this time (september , ) there is a very decided manifestation of anti-lynching public opinion in the south. we should strike while the iron is hot, and bring it about that the law itself make quick riddance of the ravisher. it should be a spur to us that the party opposed in politics to the great majority of southerners finds much support and help from every lynching in this section. why should we play into its hands? the last thing that i have to say is that the south ought to invite immigrants only of white blood. we want no settlers from whose intermarriage mongrels would spring. all europeans should receive welcome--the germans perhaps the warmest. but in my judgment those that will most advantage us are the truckmen, growers of the smaller and larger fruits, grass, grain, and stock farmers, manufacturers, miners, builders, contractors, business men, and skilled laborers, of the north. it looks now as if the cotton mills of england as well as of the north would be profited by coming to us; and it also seems probable that there will be for many years so great a demand for our cotton that the worn-out soil of the older parts of the lower south must be restored to more than virgin richness by the method which dr. moore has patented and made a gift of to the nation, or some other intensive culture; and that there must be consequently great multiplication of southern mill-operatives and agricultural workers in the near future. recall what we have said in the last chapter as to the future promise of the section. every day the south by disclosing some new opportunity cogently makes new invitation to immigrants. it is the interest as well as the duty of the nation to remove the great clog upon development of the south. that clog is the presence of some millions of unassimilable negroes in the section. it is also the best interest and the highest duty of the nation to segregate these negroes into a territory of their own. as bishop holsey says, and what i believe with my whole soul, "the union of the states will never be fully and perfectly recemented with tenacious integrity until black ham and white japheth dwell together in separate tents."[ ] * * * * * i must add an epilogue to these chapters on the race question as i did to that on toombs. brothers and sisters of the north, you should learn why there is a solid south. there is but one cause. it is the menace to the whites from the political power given the negroes by the fifteenth amendment. there is nothing in your section--in its past or its present--from which i can illustrate to you the gravity of this menace to us. in not one of your states are there ignorant negroes in so great a number that, by combining with the debased whites, they can make for it such a constitution and laws and set up such authorities as they please. we, your brothers and sisters of the south, have lived under the rule of this foulest of coalitions. we know from actual experience how it plunders and preys upon honest workers, producers, and property owners; how it licenses and fosters crime. in my own state, from the first day that a governor, elected by fiat voters and ex-whites, as we called the latter, was inaugurated, until we virtually restored the supremacy of our race by carrying the three days' election in december, , fifty dollars would get a pardon for the greatest offence, and robberies, burglaries, horse-stealing, and the like each went free for a much smaller sum. is it forgotten that the negro speaker was voted one thousand dollars by a south carolina legislature, ostensibly as extra compensation for unusual services, but really of purpose to reimburse him for a bet lost upon a horse race? why, the foremost of our people in virtue, wisdom, and patriotism were agreed that these sordid tyrannies should be subverted at once and at any cost to ourselves. the emergency justified any practice, device, or stratagem at the polls by which we could defend our homes, families, and subsistence against assassins of the public peace, wholesale robbers of the people, and instigators and protectors of every crime. it justified the shotgun and six-shooter in politics just as legitimate war justifies the musket in the hands of the soldier. it called forth most righteously the ku-klux. that spontaneous resistance finds a close parallel in the battles of lexington and bunker hill, fought before american independence was declared. but the ku-klux fought for something still dearer than the dear cause for which our forefathers bled in the two battles just mentioned. had the latter failed in the war they had thus begun, their children and people would nevertheless have had such good government as england is now giving the defeated boers; but had the southern whites failed in their defence, their land would have for long years been befouled like hayti, and those who had not been slaughtered unspeakably degraded. i think that all our countrymen who so rightfully eulogize the heroes of lexington and bunker hill should also learn to give the greater praise to the southern heroes whose indomitable spirit routed the madmen that, with all the power of the federal government in their hands, tried their best to give the section over to negro rulers. brothers and sisters, "picture it, think of it," until you can fully understand that hour of our trial. all my northern acquaintances who have resided in the south for several years--they are many--come to look at the subject just as the natives do. a candid and honest settler from vermont has told me how he was made to change his mind. conversing with a southerner, he had reprehended the different ways in which the negro's ballot had been rendered nugatory. the other replied, "suppose that there was an incursion of indians given suffrage into your state in such a mass as to make them seventy-five per cent of all the voters, wouldn't you whites in some way manage either to outvote or outcount them!" the vermonter answered in the affirmative. we had to deliver ourselves. we used the only means at our command. it was not to be thought of that these negro governments be endured, even if tempered by the ku-klux, for government is in its nature lasting and permanent while the other was only temporary. they would have gradually gathered strength. then there would have been rapid enrichment of a few exceptional negroes and rapid expulsion of the whites impoverished by emancipation, from all their little that was left. and then, the leading negroes desiring nothing else so much, there would have come many white men and women, each one willing to climb out of the depths of want by intermarriage with a prosperous negro. who can predict what would have been the future of mongrelism thus beginning? we of the south are most conscientiously solid against what we know from actual trial to be the worst and most corrupting of all government; and we are still more solid against everything that tends to promote amalgamation. can you blame us for standing in serried phalanx by white domination and against the misrule exampled in the early years of reconstruction, and for our own uncontaminated white blood and against fusion with the negro? we must be solid in the face of these dangers, and as long as they are threatened by the presence of millions of negroes in our midst. there is no other solidity in the south. in all matters of the locality republicans and democrats count alike. when one offers to vote in the primary, if his name is on the registry list, and he appears on inspection to be white, his vote is accepted; and he generally casts that vote, not for the interest of a political party, but for that of the public. the triumphant election in november, , of independents or democrats, in four northern states which at the same time went for mr. roosevelt, indicates solidity for the true local welfare of the people as against the behests of party. so what the white primary has produced in the south, has commenced in the north. and the result in missouri, voting for roosevelt, republican, and folk, democrat, shows that what we may call federal independentism has commenced in the south. this will spread as the people learn it does not hurt them to split their tickets while voting upon national questions, if they but maintain their solidity while voting upon state or municipal. now may i be allowed some decided words, most kindly and inoffensively spoken, as to appointing negroes to federal offices in the south. it is no sound argument for it that now and then some negro may have been appointed in a northern community which manifested no opposition. consider the case of mr. william h. lewis, a negro lately made assistant district attorney in boston by mr. roosevelt. he is a harvard graduate, was captain of the harvard eleven while in college, had represented cambridge in the massachusetts legislature, and the community was not at all averse to his appointment.[ ] therefore when it was made there was no disregard of the wishes and feelings of boston and the regions adjoining. but when a negro is given office in the south, it is felt by all the community to be an insult. would president roosevelt cram the appointment of a white down the throats of a northern community in which all the best citizens protested against it? would he not confess to himself that the wishes and feelings of these good people ought to be respected, even if he considered them foolish and unreasonable? it seems to me that he would, and that he would find for the place somebody else in his party acceptable to the locality. why should he not do the like when his southern brothers and sisters who have such convincing reasons against the encouragement of negroes in their politics, protest unanimously against his filling an office in their midst with a negro? will he snub them because a negro has more sacred right than a white? is that what he means by keeping open the door of hope and opportunity? or will he snub them because enough of punishment has not yet been given them, and because the south is still a province or dependency on which he is justified in quartering his partisans and pets without regard to the feelings and wishes of all the better inhabitants? brothers and sisters of the north, i cannot believe that any one of you who impartially considers the subject, would ever approve appointing even the most competent and deserving negro to a southern office in the teeth of universal objection by the whites of the community. my last word is to implore every honest one in the country to lay aside all prejudice and master the southern situation before judging. whoever does this, whoever will accurately place himself in the shoes of a good southern citizen, will, i most firmly believe, approve the attitude of the south, with his whole heart and soul. appendix the old and new south, a centennial article for the international review, afterwards corrected and published separately. new york: a. s. barnes & co. . the approach of the centennial celebration is not hailed in the south with the demonstrative joy of the north. it would be out of taste to expect that the former should appear to triumph greatly over the life of the nation preserved at the cost of her recent overthrow. her late antagonist can rejoice in a vast and happy population, great material prosperity, and the fresh fame of a world-renowned success. it is meet, while remembering she has so lately saved the union by her stupendous armipotence, that the north should exult as a people never did before. the south has been made to feel the pangs of a sudden impoverishment and the incalculable discomfort of complete economical unsettlement; and she has not learned the new lessons which she must learn to become self-sustaining and progressive. but her earnest spirits, doing painfully the slow task of repairing lost fortunes; seeking after the system proper to succeed planting; striving to make their homes pleasant again and to give their children a fair hope in the land,--these intent workers, who are most of them scarred confederate veterans, even if they will not say it loudly, have come around to hold in steadfast faith that it is far better the blue cross fell, and the american union stands forever unchallengeable hereafter. and they have brought with them the great mass of their people. they cannot joy so happily as the north, but they have a warm welcome for the great commemoration. for they see that the evils which followed as the scourge of defeat are soon to pass away, while the fall of slavery and the failure of secession are to prove greater and greater blessings as years roll on. and so the time has come for a southerner calmly to discuss the past, present, and future of the south. he has no use for the methods of popular and unscientific politics, wherein everything is blamed or applauded as being the result of party measures. the intentions and motives of the actors, on both sides of the late strife, will give but proximate explanations. how the two sections became, to use the fine phrase of von holst, economically contrasted; how the southern people and their representative politicians were bred, under their circumstances, into opposition to the union; and how the northern people and their representative politicians were bred, under widely different circumstances, into love of the union; how the long clashing in politics culminated in civil war; how the south was utterly crushed and her whole industrial system destroyed; how she slowly re-erects herself into a new condition better than the old,--the ultimate solution of these questions can only be found by discussing them in the light of those laws of development which give every community a policy suited to what it discerns to be its best interest. these laws are of far more importance than the politician, who is but their creature. leaving to others to fight over the old struggles of the political arena and bandy hard words with one another, we will try to discuss our subject in the manner we have indicated to be appropriate. to understand the present and future, we must first understand the past. to understand the new south, we must first understand the old south, the distinguishing feature of which was negro slavery. mr. stephens, then vice-president of the southern confederacy, in an address to a large assembly in savannah, in march, , said of the new government: "its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery--subordination to the superior race--is his natural and normal condition." there is no doubt slavery was the corner-stone of southern society; and when it was removed, four years later, a thorough disintegration of the whole fabric was the logical result. when our country was first settled, the southern regions were far more attractive in soil and climate; and their other natural resources--minerals, good harbors, navigable streams, water-power idling everywhere, to mention no more--were equal to those of the other section. the subsequent advancement of the north has been so rapid as to excite the wonder of the world; while it is said by us of the south, jesting upon our worn-out and exhausted land, that we have done worse for the country than the indians before us, who stayed here many centuries and yet left the soil as good as they found it. the plantation system was the great barrier to southern progress. from its first historical appearance, among the carthaginians, from whom the romans seem to have derived it, this rude and wholesale method of farming has rested on slaveholding. its workings have been similar everywhere. in italy, under the roman republic, absorbing the petty holdings, it drove out the small farmer; it destroyed the former respect for trades and handicrafts, and brought them into disfavor; it prevented the development of the industrial arts; it created a non-reciprocal commerce. centuries later, it did the same things in our southern states. a sketch of the leading features and results of the plantation system, as it existed in america, is our proper beginning. the driver, as the negro foreman was called, was not very common in the south, and was generally under the superintendence of the overseer. could the planters have made a good overseer of the driver, of course they would have consulted their interest, and reproduced the ancient slave-steward of rome. slaveholders keep their slaves under careful surveillance, but they do not usually overlook them in person. it is not often that a master engages in an employment which brings him into daily and intimate contact with the lowest orders, and which he instinctively feels to be degrading. the planter could have neither his first choice, which would have been a slave overseer, nor his second choice, a superintendent from his own rank in society; and so, as the next best thing, he took as overseer a white hireling from the non-slaveholding class. the tillage of the fields was thus intrusted to the overseers, who were, for the most part, men of little education and business skill, and who had no interest in their employment except to draw its wages. thus the foremost, if not the only, southern industry was managed by incompetent and careless agents. the roman master, in the later days of the republic, having always vast markets open to him, shunned the expense of providing for women and children, and bought new slaves instead of breeding them; but the closing of the african slave-trade, and the softer hearts and manners of modern times, led our planters, at last, to rely on propagation as their only source of supply. the negroes were, therefore, well cared for, and, in a genial clime, increased rapidly. this increase, however, did not keep pace with the increasing demand for southern products, and so the market value of the slave rose rapidly. to the roman slaveholder, land was almost everything, and his rustic slaves nothing; to the southerner, the slaves were almost everything, and the land nothing. there was no careful cultivation of the soil, no judicious rotation of crops, and no adequate system of fertilization. southern husbandry was, for the most part, a reckless pillage of the bounty of nature. the planter became possessed with a roving spirit, and was continually seeking "fresh land," as virgin soil was termed. in the older sections, where there was most stability, the best farming consisted in judiciously eking out the natural fertility of the fields, and when that was exhausted, in leaving them to recuperate by years of rest. thus a given working force required, year by year, a greater and greater allowance of land, and the plantations became steadily larger, the small farmer retiring, and the white population becoming continually less. many of these older sections turned, from being agricultural communities, into nurseries, rearing slaves for the younger states where virgin soil was abundant. the fertile lands of the new settlements, by yielding bountiful crops, gave fresh impulse to the plantation system, and here the small holdings were absorbed more rapidly than they had been in the older states. the southern slaves, regarded as property, were the most desirable investment open to the generality of people that has ever been known. they were patient, tractable, and submissive, and never revolted in combined insurrections, as did the slaves of antiquity. their labor was richly remunerative; their market value was constantly rising; they were everywhere more easily convertible into money than the best securities; and their natural increase was so rapid that a part of it could be squandered by a shiftless owner every year to make both ends meet, and he still be left enough of accumulation to enrich him steadily. and so the plantation, or rather the slave, system swallowed up everything else. there were no distinct industrial classes. there were negro blacksmiths, negro carpenters, negro shoemakers, etc., all over the land, but they were mere appendages to the plantations, and far inferior in capacity and skill to the artisan slaves of antiquity. the commerce of the south was non-reciprocal. she traded raw produce for manufactures which she should have made herself, or which she should have got in exchange for manufactures of her own. the over-mastering energy of slave property, dissolving, as it were, all things into itself, kept her from that development of trades, manufactories, and industrial arts which is the solid and unprecedented progress, and far more durable wealth, of the north. there were a few exceptions in the way of restorative agriculture, and of diversified investments of capital in railways, manufactories, inland navigation, and mercantile enterprises. all along the northern border there were efforts to let go slavery, and non-slave industry was slowly emerging in a few places; but these things were as dust in the balances. the slave system was rooted in the best portions of the land, and nearly all of the productive wealth of the south was in, or dependent upon, planting. implacable enemies of slavery were rapidly increasing in numbers and power, but she continued blindly sacrificing everything to rear negroes. when actual emancipation came--that nipping may frost--the south showed, on a gigantic scale, in her poverty and one solitary and portentously dried-up source of wealth, a parallel to ireland, smitten with famine by the sudden failure of her only supply of food. when the charity of the world and the returning bounty of nature had again fed the green isle, everything fell back into the old track, and she could go on smoothly as before. but not so with the south: her wealth has fled; her occupation, the plantation system, is gone; and she must, for a generation, grope painfully in the dark, trying novel ways of subsisting, enduring want and many failures, before finding again the light of plenty and comfort. the duties of the planter have changed. the management of a farm is not like that of a plantation, and one skilled in the management of slaves is not necessarily efficient in the directing of freedmen. many other countries have been impoverished by wars; but is not this instantaneous and almost complete taking away of a great people's mode of living unique in history? the most resolute secessionist would have lost heart and put up his sword, could he have seen, before the war commenced, how easily the solitary prop of southern wealth and comfort could be overturned, to be set up no more. but in none of the ablest of the anti-secession arguments of were the consequences of defeat predicted. some portions of our country have been built up into a high degree of prosperity by a steady influx of foreign settlers. how much has been added to the power and wealth of the northern states by the immigration from the old lands of those who, when first they come, can do no more than subsist themselves by their own industry, almost defies computation. how the force of the preponderant population of the north pressed upon the south during the war, and at last crushed her down! slavery repelled the free immigrant from the south, and he went elsewhere with his power to enrich and defend. the uniform and rapid advancement of civilization is mainly due to the struggle of the poor to better their condition. these efforts result in complex division of labor, accumulation of wealth, and better than these, in the production of a great population engaged in diversified industries. in such a population, improving year by year in business habits, consists the strength of a nation. the slave had no hope of rising, and the system of which he was a part repelled free workingmen, and thus the south lost the benign emulation and energy of a lower class. the ancient slaves were not alone rural laborers and domestic servants, as were those of the south. the former, being of kindred blood with their masters and near their level in natural capacity, were initiated in the various industries, some of which flourished greatly under their management. though the slaves of old were very degraded, they were not as low and grovelling as those of our day. enfranchisement was common; and, in a few generations afterwards, the descendants of the freedman were indistinguishable amid the body of free citizens. the ancient states were not, therefore, prevented by slavery from having advanced and diversified industries, nor were they denied the impulse of a possible rising from the lower to the higher classes. but the american slave was of the remotest race, far below his master in development, and the horror of receiving him into the body of free citizens grew continually stronger. the law discouraged manumission, and frowned upon the increase of freedmen. thus, the african slavery of the south was the most hopeless form of servitude the civilized world has ever seen; and, by preventing the formation of a great class of freemen, engaged in respectable industry, it killed the very roots of social progress. these influences of slavery, so repugnant to american ideas, will be more vividly seen and understood in the answer to the question, what would have been the present condition of the south had it not been for slavery? undoubtedly her land would have smiled with a fertility richer than the endowment of nature; her industrial arts would, ere this time, have branched out into multifarious activity; her own ships would have been carrying her produce and manufactures abroad; and, as the crown of all, she would have had a teeming population of workers, whose education in the methods of self-support would have been the assurance of unlimited future advancement. in brief, in all the elements of the greatness of a community, the south might now have equalled, if not excelled, the north. but there are some other effects of slavery to be noted before the outline of the old south can be clearly and fully drawn. among the planters, costly and liberal instruction was given to a few of those who were to adorn places of leisured ease, or to fill the necessary professions and public positions; but, in the midst of the sparse and shifting rural population, there could not be that devotion to the education of all, which is one of the most conspicuous glories of the northern states. in consequence of the sparseness of the planters and their roving habits, there was not that subdivision of different portions of the counties into small self-governing wards, which jefferson so fondly desired. he said of the new england townships, that they had "proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation." he also said that he considered the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on two hooks, to wit, "the public education, and the subdivision into wards." this government of every vicinage in its home affairs by itself, as originated in new england, and is now spread far and wide throughout the northern states, is the most beneficent achievement of american democracy. by this coercion of the citizen to participate in the constant administration of public matters directly concerning his interests, self-government becomes, as it should be, the business of everybody, and everybody is compulsorily educated in the best of all learning for the race. the finale of slavery remains to be told. as opposition to it increased from without, the south became more and more closely united. she honestly believed that wanton intermeddlers were attacking her dearest rights. the steady and continually strengthening warfare against slavery, and her continuous and earnest defence of it, began--it is impossible to determine precisely when--to knit her into a nationality of her own. he who understands what mr. bagehot calls "nation-making" will discover, in the past history of the south, if he looks attentively, many signs of this tendency, which steadily progressed unperceived on her part, and still more so on the part of the north, until the south began to coalesce into a nation as compact as her scattered and random elements would permit. the long advocacy and support of slavery in the political arena had fevered her whole people, and finally, under these promptings to a national life, politics absorbed nearly all of her intellectual powers. there is a striking parallel between this sustained effort of the south and the struggle of ireland, when the latter, for the fifty years ending with the advent of the present century, was arrayed against the british, in their encroachments upon her independent government. during this half-century, ireland maintained that she was an independent integral part of the british empire, just as virginia contended that she was a sovereign in the federation of states. ireland, like a southern state, challenged every seeming interference, by the general government, in her local affairs; and the claims put forth, in each instance, were inexorably contested by an adverse government, claiming supremacy and supported by superiority of power. both were on the eve of revolutionary secession without knowing it. the results in ireland and the south were similar: there was but one intellectual activity, namely, politics. the memory of all irishmen of that time not forgotten--and many of their names are familiar words--is nothing but resistance to english aggression. even curran, ireland's great forensic advocate, made his world-wide fame in defending irishmen against the prosecutions of the british ministry. it was much the same at the south in the period antecedent to the civil war. she had neither literature nor science; but she had statesmen and advocates, who will be remembered as long as her soldiers and generals. the national germ had long been growing below the surface, in darkness, and at last it burst into view, and shot up into a body of amazing proportions. there was not the birth of a new nation at montgomery in ; only the majority of this vigorous young member of the family of nations was there proclaimed. but, for all of the eloquence of its orators and the virtue and bravery of its people, it was, as compared with its adversary, in raw and untutored nonage, and the great disaster that befell four years afterwards was then preordained. it was her unshunnable fate that she should be denationalized on the battle-field. the late war was a conflict between implacable enemies. each belligerent, standing up for national life, was resistlessly coerced to fight to the last. neither can be blamed. the past may be taxed with lack of wisdom. it may be that as scotland and, more lately, ireland have been peacefully denationalized, a preventive, anticipating the dreadful event of war, might years before have been devised by statesmanly forecast. the actual combatants--the southerner fighting for the confederacy, and the northern soldier bearing up the flag of the union--were equals in manhood and virtue. the survivors, federal and confederate, at last see this, and therefore they go in company to decorate alike the graves of the dead of both armies. the cause of all these evils--the backwardness and stationariness of the south; a wasteful husbandry, without other industries; the instability of her wealth; her want of a great class of freemen engaged in the different arts; her barbarically simple social structure; her neglect of common schools; the absorption of all her intellectual energies in feverish and revolutionary politics; and, finally, secession and the reddened ground of a thousand battle-fields--was slavery. it is gone. the malignant cancer, involving, as it seemed, every vital and menacing hideous and loathsome death, was plucked out by the roots; and after a ten years' struggle of nature, we see the body politic slowly but surely reviving to a health and soundness never known before. here we find the dividing line between the old and the new south. the former ended, and the latter began, with the giving of freedom to the negroes--an event which will prove in the future to have been an emancipation even more beneficial to master than to slave. immunity from all the evils of slavery which we have catalogued will distinguish the new south from the old.[ ] the sudden impoverishment of the southern people, and the unlooked-for change in their ways of living and thinking, had they occurred in the most peaceful times, and been followed with the best of government, would have produced a profound shock and a long paralysis. but the bitterness of subjugation, and the mistake of needlessly offensive and goading government, with harsh reconstructive measures, have prolonged the lethargy. and yet the american union shows benignly in the present condition and promised future of the section. the ten years since emancipation are instructive. slowly has the new south been disentangling herself from the débris of the old, and she has emerged far enough to enable us to perceive that a better era has commenced. much has been lost, but more has been saved. all the germs of true wealth and power and the solid well-being of a community have survived; and solace for the past and earnest of a great future may be found in the fact that she has reached at last, and for the first time, a position in which she can develop these elements, free from the suffocating hindrances of former days. we may now properly inquire, what of the past does the south retain, and in what will consist her future progress? she retains her genial climate, her kindly soil, and her many natural resources. if the peace of the american union is assured, as everything now graciously promises, these natural advantages will, in a few generations, far more than compensate for all her losses, and ultimately place her in the very van of progress. the best inheritance of the new from the old south is the southern people. we have seen how slavery checked industrial development, and how many of its other effects were hurtful. after allowing fully for all these, there will be found a great residuum of progressive energy, of intellectual strength, and of moral worth in the people of the southern states. they need not fear a comparison, in these respects, with the most enlightened communities. great men, like washington, jefferson, calhoun, jackson, and lee; political and military heroes, judges, lawyers, and orators, such as the south has given birth to, in unbroken succession,--are the unmistakable signs of a great people. the rank and file of the confederate armies have given proof that the men of the south must be classed, in all the elements of complete character, with the best that the world has ever seen. crime was so infrequent that a single morning of the term of a rural court, before the war, nearly always sufficed to dispose of every indictment; there was little want or pauperism; virtue was everywhere the rule in private life, and there was seldom even the suspicion of corruption in government or the administration of justice. the history of this people since the war shows that they are possessed of the best anglo-saxon mettle. they are slowly beginning to thrive wherever they have been left to govern themselves, in spite of the complete industrial revolution, the loss of property, and change of occupation, of which we have written. and in many places, where reconstruction has been harshest, and negro misrule yet prevails, the whites have developed an unlooked-for self-maintaining capacity, and have demonstrated that even there must be the eventual predominance of intelligence and virtue, should "natural selection" alone work to secure it. the southern people have learned much wisdom in the last ten years. their heavy vote in for horace greeley--a man to whom a foreigner would have supposed them unappeasably hostile--if there was nothing else, would alone suffice to show that they are rapidly laying aside all hindrances to progress. and now that slavery is gone and she has so quickly conquered the animosities of the war, the south may be likened to a capable and energetic young man, who, having failed, as the result of inevitable misfortune, in a wrongly-chosen business, has been relieved of all embarrassments and has entered upon his proper calling. more may reasonably be expected of such a man than of one more prosperous who has not had the like discipline. as her nationalizing tendency has been destroyed by the removal of slavery, and as her future must necessarily be shaped by union influences, she will heartily embrace the political creed of the union. the doctrine of the sovereignty of the states, which was advocated with very great ability by many of the southern statesmen--notably by calhoun, in his speeches in congress, and in his "discourse on the constitution of the united states," and with still more taking effect by mr. stephens in his "constitutional view of the war between the states,"--has now no disciples at the south. general logan gave expression to the prevailing creed of the present, when he said, at a recent reunion of former confederate companions: "in considering, then, the future of the south, there is one fact suggested at the outset which has been demonstrated to us by the logic of events. it is, that under the operation of causes, which, although unseen at the time, appear now to have been inevitable in their results, a vast _social organism_ has been developed, and is now so far advanced in its growth as a _national body politic_, and no longer a mere aggregation of states, that _unity_ is a necessity of its further development. in reviewing the past, we can now clearly see that this national organism has been _gradually developed_; and, while many seek by various theories to account for the failure of the confederacy, the result may be regarded as the necessary consequence of those laws of development under which this social organism--the united states--was being evolved." and the south is pleased to observe that there are no genuine signs of too much centralization. on the contrary, the town system is destined to spread fast and far; and the increase of local option laws; the splitting of larger into smaller counties; the strengthening tendency to submit constitutions and many legislative acts to voters; the greater disposition often to amend the state constitutions in the interests of progress; the vigorous growth in each state of its own body of laws; the rapid multiplication of towns and cities, with governments peculiar to each, are some of the many convincing proofs that local self-government is increasing and flourishing. of the last particular judge dillon says: "we have popularized and made use of municipal institutions to such an extent as to constitute one of the most striking features of our government. it owes to them, indeed, in a great degree, its decentralized character. when the english municipal corporations reform act of , was passed, there were, in england and wales, excluding london, only two hundred and forty-six places exercising municipal functions; and their aggregate population did not exceed two millions of people. in this country, our municipal corporations are numbered by thousands, and the inhabitants subjected to their rule, by millions." reflecting southerners see, in the present condition of the southern states, the very strongest possible guaranty that the true balance between national cohesion and local freedom is to be preserved. they see that the happy equilibrium is of a character so permanent and stable as to have survived the convulsion of civil war. the southern states are not held as conquered provinces. on the contrary, aside from the abolition of slavery and the fundamental legislation securing to the old slaves the full fruition of their freedom, there has been no perceptible change in the relations of these states to the united states. surely, to the student of history, wherein _vae victis!_ is written on every page, this fact has wonderful significance. it recommends the american form of government to the rest of the world as the incoming of the new stage of civilization, wherein oppression and war shall become unknown. however long contending armies may devour populations and paralyze industry elsewhere, we are assured that war-sick america will fight with herself no more. this assurance repays the south a thousand fold for all that she has lost and endured. the great economical interest of the south is her agriculture; and in this industry, as well as among those who conduct it, a constant transition has been taking place during the ten years since emancipation. there is a melancholy change in the homes of landholders from the case and comfort of _ante bellum_ days. the neat inclosures have fallen; the pleasant grounds and the flower-gardens, once so trim and flourishing, are a waste; all the old smiles and adornments are gone. change at home is accompanied by still greater change without. the negroes--and they constitute the great bulk of the laboring population--tend to become a tenantry, cultivating the land, in some instances, for a part of the produce, but oftener for a fixed sum of money. many of these realize from their labors little more than enough to pay a moderate rent. others work for wages, either in money or in some portion of the crop made by their labor. as the negroes are scarce, and their labor so important, they have often, directly or indirectly, a voice in the area of land cultivated, the mode of cultivation, and the kind of crop raised. the result, in many places, is retrogression. the face of the country is much altered. only a small part of the land, as compared with that tilled before the war, is under cultivation, the remainder becomes wild. could the fallen confederates return they would not in many places recognize their old homes. nearly every man of average business ability could control his slaves, before the war, with little trouble; but it now requires far more than ordinary capacity to find and keep good tenants, to employ laborers amid the present scarcity, and to retain and make them remunerative when employed. the freedman is a different character from his former slave self, and is to be governed by different methods; and the true art of managing him is cabalism to many who were prosperous planters before the war. multitudes of these show great despondency, for there have been thousands of failures among them. but when we examine into this depression, we find that it is but the result of the transition from the former _régime_, and not a deep-seated and fatal decay of the vitals. these are some of the symptoms of assured recovery, noted within the last three or four years: a steady contraction of credit, and widening prevalency of the cash system; growing conviction that the whites must depend upon their own labor more, and less on that of the negroes; augmenting number of land-owners who decline to secure the merchants advancing supplies to their tenants and laborers; a greater acreage devoted to food crops; general advocacy of diversified planting; spreading dissatisfaction with the laws giving large exemptions to debtors. southern economical affairs, in their sinking, "touched bottom" (to use the forcible expression now in vogue) about the end of .[ ] there has been a probable increase since of the mass of distress, as the heat of a summer day increases, by accumulation, for a while after noon, though the sun is imparting less and less. steady amelioration will soon be general. a new system is slowly developing, and can be plainly discerned among the rubbish of the old. the change from former days most noticeable now is the multiplication, increased energy, and continually, growing trade of the smaller towns. this is due to the decay of planting, which was a wholesale system, and the coming-in of farming, which is a small trading system using much less concentrated capital. the large moneyed man, for evident economical reasons, buys in commercial centres--in cities--but the small purchaser must needs buy in the nearest market. allowing for the great increase of farmers, and the control by the negroes of their earnings, there are many thousands more of small buyers in the south than there were before the war, and towns build up to sell to them. there is another fact, not so noticeable as the rapidly growing local trade, but still more important. a class of new planters, consisting mainly of men too young to have become fixed in the methods and habits of former days, is springing up. they are new yet; but there is, in many parts of the south, at least one who is teaching many watching idlers by deeds and silence. they have remodelled their domestic economy, accommodating it to their smaller incomes and to the uncertainty of household help. they have discarded the outside kitchen, have substituted the cooking stove for the old voracious fireplace, and have brought the well with a pump in it, instead of the old windlass and bucket, under the roof of the dwelling, so that the household duties may be more easily despatched by their wives and children. and they have also remodelled their planting. they diversify their crops and products, raising more grain, and introducing clover and new forage plants. some abandon entirely the cultivation of the old slave crops, and supply the nearest towns with feed and provisions. these planters of the new south till less land, and strive to improve it; they study the superiority and economy of machinery; they provide themselves with better cotton-gins, often using steam to work them; they have presses which require fewer hands than the old packing-screw; better plows are used; and harrows, reapers, and mowers, which, in many parts of the south, were seldom known before the war, are now common. this little band keeps pace with agricultural progress, as recorded in the journals; they seek for and find many new sources of profit; they prepare the people for laws fostering the interest of the planter in many particulars; they mold the opinion of their neighborhood; and their ability, skill, and wealth slowly increase. they struggle with a new order of things, having to think for themselves at every turn, and often misstep and fall in the dark, but they pick themselves up, and find the way again. the light of the new experience which they are kindling grows brighter each year, and is beginning to draw some of their neighbors to travel in it. it is not our object to give a false impression of the influence of the class of farmers last referred to. they are but few, and their efforts are but the beginnings of the happy coming change. their courage, power, and numbers are manifestly on the increase; and, as there is no other progressive activity in agriculture, and they meet no opposition save the passive resistance of despondency and inaction, it is almost certain that they will lay deep and sure the foundations of the needed renovation of the south. it is their belief that, to make agriculture generally prosperous, and to school the people to habits of thrift and saving, are the first steps, and that manufactories and trades and heterogeneous industries will naturally follow. they desire northern settlers, to add useful features to agricultural economy, and diversify planting. a few have come, and they are prospering. it seems rational to expect a steady influx of these for many years, bringing capital and methods better suited to the needs of the changed times, raising the value of landed property out of its impeding prostration, and strengthening the industrial force. the climate; the abundance of cheap, cleared land; the long settlement having demonstrated the country to be healthy; the fact that plowing and other important outdoor work can be done on the farms all the winter round; the many railways, the multiplying towns and growing cities; the variety of products, and easy access to market--now that slavery and the animosity of war are gone, and the misrule of the carpetbagger has ended nearly everywhere--these, and many other advantages daily disclosing themselves, excel most of the new states and the territories in offering inducements to immigrants; and, in due course of time, a vast number of settlers, both american and foreign, will be added to the population. there are many indications that the immigration of stock-raisers, wool-growers, market-gardeners, orchardists, beekeepers, in fine, small farmers of every kind, adapted to the soil and climate, will soon begin in earnest. when it does, the rebuilding of the south will be rapid. the coming-in of northern capitalists, to invest in railways, mines, manufactories, and other large moneyed enterprises--most especially to develop the great resources of water-power--may be expected to begin at once, and considerably, upon the close of the centennial year. it seems now that this is the most powerful agency that may be expected to begin immediate work, in introducing the much-needed higher type of industrial organization. the feelings of the two races toward each other were, for a few years after the war, bitterly hostile. the whites had, all their lives, seen the negroes in slavery, and from their infancy they had heard their preachers defend slavery, not in the abstract, as their phrase was, but in the concrete. the "concrete" meant african slavery, which was justified on the ground that the african was divinely intended in his nature for slavery, which was to him christianization and civilization, so long as he remained a slave; while, the moment he was set free, he would revert to his primitive barbarism. when these god-given slaves were suddenly cut loose from mastership, and the wealth of the capitalist, the portion of the orphan, and the mite of the widow were swept away at once by emancipation, either directly or as a necessary consequence, there was a great shock given to the whites. but when, three years afterwards, a new constituency was created, in which the slaves, just emancipated, outnumbered the whites, in many counties, the storm of passion that burst forth can hardly be described. the whites feared that the old relation was about to be inverted, and that they would be made slaves to the negroes. there was many a deed of violence, and many a poor negro paid his life for a few offensive words. but a wonderful change has taken place. when the southern states were "reconstructed," as it is termed, in , a negro school-keeper or preacher, if known to be a republican in politics--as he generally was--was hardly safe anywhere beyond the limits of a city. the negro schools were often broken up by mobs, and sometimes black congregations were attacked at night in their churches and dispersed by armed whites in disguise. now, the colored children troop securely to school, and the colored churches and their congregations are sternly protected by law everywhere. seven years ago a colored person could hardly get justice, in even the plainest case, from a jury of the other race. now, in all of the courts, he has the influence of white men to aid him, and rarely is an unjust verdict rendered against him. he makes better friends of the whites. there is no need for him to legislate or hold office over them; he cannot yet do these things right for himself. he rises, however, and his importance is felt more and more. his labor is a necessity. learning to use it aright, he will surely win all that he deserves. the healthful sentiment prevails everywhere, at the north as at the south, and with the late slave also, that to force his growth is as unfortunate to him as is misjudged parental assistance, which often keeps adult children from ever becoming self-reliant. the colored race in the south must be educated by the struggle for existence into self-maintenance. this training, like the material recuperation of the south, will require time, with patience and hopefulness. the negro tends resistlessly to a fixed position in his own class. he does not wish to ride in the same railway-car with fine ladies and gentlemen, nor could you persuade him to send his children to a mixed school to be teased by white scholars. he will not be legislated out of his natural circle, where he feels comfortable, into one where he will be ill at case. he seeks for himself a separate home, school, church, and occupation, in all of which he can, at a distance, imitate the white, to whom he is ever looking up. the statute books may be covered with laws having a different purpose, but they will be as powerless to check the current of separation as prescribed rates of interest are impotent to keep down usury when money is dear. in a domestic world, a company and circle of his own, the negro will make a start for himself. but the negro is grossly misunderstood. it is too generally forgotten that he is many centuries below the white in evolution. slavery has elevated him far above the savagery of africa, and introduced him to perhaps his only chance of civilization. his future in the south is a mystery. many of his best friends do not believe that he can hold all the great advantages that he has gained in the last ten years. the whites have been muzzled by hostile government. they were stunned, while the negro was stimulated, by emancipation. their natural effort to hold on to the _ante bellum_ system has also helped the old slave. but, when small and diversified farming is fully developed, and accumulating capital brings in the higher industries, there may be a general need for more efficient and skilled labor than the average negro can supply. while he is forever safe politically against the white, he may not be economically safe. in noticing the leading features of the new south, we have merely hinted at her rich natural endowments. we have deemed of more importance the character of her people, the new views and principles beginning to assert themselves, the great economical changes following and to follow the abolition of slavery, and the potent effects soon to be wrought by copious immigration. for upon these the future mainly depends. the south is in a thorough and long transition. her fields are to be made fertile and to smile beautifully with an infinite variety of products; her provisional labor is to be gradually supplanted by a permanent system; industries, trades, and manufactories are to be founded and everywhere multiplied; she is to have local organizations which will foster more of self-government; her common schools are to be reconstituted and rendered truly serviceable to all; and she has also her part to do in literature, science, and art, as well as in domestic and national politics. we must not be oversanguine in hope of her immediate progress; but we can certainly take courage, when we find that every one who perceptibly influences society by precept or by example--whether he be prominent like gordon or lamar, or only a humble planter leading the fore-row in his fields--is seeking for and finding the right path. these leaders must, in the nature of things, have a larger following every year. in due time, their children and their children's children will make the south of a piece with the more prosperous portions of our country. * * * * * [i intended to incorporate in the foregoing these two passages, but by some inadvertence they were not printed in their several places: i said of von holst: "though he does not equal mommsen's vivid delineation of the effects of roman slavery, his work is in grateful contrast with most of the anti- and pro-slavery literature of america, by reason of his freedom from ethical declamation, and his presentation of the real evils of slavery, in the light of social, and especially economical, laws." i also said of the negro: "his flexibility; his receptivity to civilization, so different from the inveterate repugnance of the indian; his satisfaction and almost complete freedom from discontent, insuring him against any violent change; the probably long necessity for his labor; are all great things in his favor."] index [to decide what is the right handle to a passage not pointed to by a chapter title, and place it in an index where an average reader will expect it, is often very hard. an alphabetical list of proper names and rememberable words that are in or near passages which one may wish to look for is much more easy to make than a minute subject-index, and it supplies much surer clews. what an _index nominum_ does for the latin or greek scholar suggests the serviceableness of this index.] a. abbott, ernest hamlin, . abbott, dr. lyman, , . abolitionists, root-and-branch, , , _sq._ achæan league, . adams, charles f., , , , . adams, john, , . adams, john q., , . Ã�schines, . Ã�sop, . africa, "poor, oppressed, bleeding," , . alamance, . alexander, tom, . altgeld, . amana community, . aristides, . aristocracies, natural, . aristotle, , , . arnold, matthew, , . athens, . atlanta stockade, . b. bacon, . bagehot, . barnett, samuel, . "battle hymn of the republic," . bayard, , . beatrice, . beauregard, , . beecher, henry ward, . beecher, dr. lyman, . benjamin, . benton, . bentonville, . bible, the, . binney, . bishop, j. p., . blaine, . boley, , . bonnivard, . breckinridge, . brockhaus, , . brooks, preston s., . brown, john, , , . brown, joseph e., . brown, prof. william garrot, , , . buena vista, . bunyan, . burgoyne, . burke, , , . butler, . c. cæsar, , . california, , . calhoun correspondence, , , . calhoun, floride, . calhoun, john c., , , , , , , _sq._, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . casabianca, . cass, . catullus, , . centralizing and decentralizing forces in america, . channing, . chase (of maryland), . chase, salmon p., . choate, , . cicero, , , , , , . classics, ancient, . clay, , , . cleopatra, . cleveland, grover, . clingman, . clinton, george, . cobb, howell, , , , , , . cobb, t. r. r., , , , , . coleridge, . coleridge, samuel taylor, the anglo-african composer, . comings, s. h., , . cone, , . confederate states, its evolution similar to that of the united states, ; african slave-trade prohibited by its constitution, ; its commissioners, . cornwallis, . cosmic force and law, , . cotton, . cowper, . crawford, george w., . crawford, william h., . crittenden compromise, . crocket, . cromwell, oliver, , . cromwell, richard, , . cumming, major joseph b., , , , . curran, . curtis, . d. dahlonega mint, , . dane, nathan, . dante, , , . darwin, . davidson, miss, . davis, jefferson, , , , , , , . davis, mrs. jefferson, , , , , , , , , , , , . decameron, , . decatur, . declaration of independence, , . delaware, , . del mar, . demodocus, . demosthenes, , , , , . de quincey, . dillon, . dispensary, south carolina, . dixon, . doolittle, . douglas, stephen a., , , , . douglass, frederick, , , . dred scott decision, . dubois, professor, , , , , , , , , . duer, . dumas, father and son, . e. "edwards's sabbath manual," . elizabeth, queen, . epaminondas, . erichsen, hugo, . erskine, , . everett, edward, . f. falstaff, . farmville, . faust, . fessenden, . fire-eaters, . first manassas, , . force-bill of , _sq._ forrest, - , . fort darling, . fort donelson, . foster, f. c., . frankland, . franklin, battle of, . freed slave, the statue, . free-labor and slave-labor systems, their antagonism, _sq._, . freeman, . fuegians, . g. gaius, . galphin claim, _sq._ gardner, james, . garrison, , . georgia platform, - , , , , , , , , . germany, . gethsemane, . giddings, . goethe, . gordon, , . grady, . grant, u. s., , , . greeley, , . green, . grinke, archibald h., . grover, . grundy, mrs., . "gulliver's travels," . h. hale, , . ham, descendants of, . hamilton, alexander, , , , . hamilton, governor, . hamlet, . hammond, . hampton, , . hampton, wade, . hannibal, , . hans, the berlin horse, . hardeman, s. h., . harlan, _sq._ harris, joel chandler, . harvey, . hastings, . hawkins, sir john, . hayne, robert y., , , . hayti, , _sq._ heine, . henry, patrick, , , , . herculaneum, . hill, ben, . hill, mrs. ben, . hilliard, . hoar, senator, . holsey, bishop, , . homer, . horace, . horatius, . houmas land, . howard, general, . howell, . hunter, . huschke, . huse, caleb, . i. iowa contested election, _sq._ ireland, , , . iroquois, , . _isabel_ (steamer), . italy, . j. jackson, president, . jackson, stonewall, , . jamaica, negroes of, _sq._, . jamestown, , , . jefferson, , , , , , , , , . jesus, , , . jevons, . johnson, andrew, . johnston, joseph e., , . k. kansas, . kent, chancellor, . kentucky, . kimball house fire, . king's mountain, . knight, landon, , , , , , , . ku-klux, , . l. "lana rookh," . lamar, . landon, miss, . langdon, john, . lassigeray, . "laus deo," . lear, , . lee, r. e., , , , , , , . lee, stephen d., . legaré, . lewis, william h., . lexington, . lieber, . liebknecht, . lincoln, abraham, , , , , , , , , , , . "little giffen," . livy, . lloyd, h. d., . lodge, henry cabot, , , , , , , , . logan, general, . lower class of negroes, - , _sq._ lucanian ox, . lucifer, . lucretius, . lumpkin, , , . m. madison, - , , , , . mallory, . mann, horace, . mansfield, . maoris, . march, . marshall, c. j., . martial, . marx carl, , . maryland, . mason, jeremiah, . maximilian, . mcclellan, mcclung, . mcdonald, . mcduffie, . mckinley, president, . mcmaster, , . megareans, . mell, dr., . memorial day, . mexico, . michaelangelo, . mill, john stuart, , , . miller, kelley, . milton, . missouri question, , , . mitchell, john, . mommsen, , . monitor, . monterey, . morgan, joshua, . morgan, lewis h., , . murphy, edgar gardner, , . n. napoleon, _sq._, . nationalization, american, , , - . nationalization, southern, , - , - , - . national negro business league, . nations, law of, . natural increase of slave property, , . new england, , ; environment of webster therein, - . new jersey, . new york, . niagara, . noah's curse, . north carolina, , . o. oedipus, . oregon, , , , . p. pace, j. m., . page, thomas nelson, , . parker, theodore, . parsons, prof. frank, . pennsylvania, . pennsylvania ladies, two, . peonage decision, . pericles, , . philippine, the, . phillips, wendell, , , , . pickett, . pierce, bishop, . pierce, president, . _pilgrim, the_, . "pilgrim's progress," . pingree, . pinkney, gustavus m., , , . pinkney, william, , . plato, , , . plautus, , . pliny, . poe, , . polk, president, . pompeii, . pompey, . pope, . post, louis f., , , . prentiss, s. s., . primary, georgia, . primary, south carolina, . princeton, . propontic, . prynne, hester, . pugh, . q. quintilian, . r. race question, - . randolph, john, , , . ransy sniffles, . rebellion, . reed, of south carolina, . renascence, , . "republic of republics," , , , , , . rhode island, , . rhodes, james ford, . ricardo, , , . roman law as to slavery, . roosevelt, president, , . ruskin, . s. saint pierre, . savage, . sawyer, . schurz, carl, . scipio, . scott, general, . scribner, anne, . sellers, mulberry, . seneca, . seward, william h., , , . shakspeare, , , , , . sharpsburg, . sherman, general, . shiloh, . shirley, . simmons, . simonides, . slavery. (see chaps. ii., iii., x., xiv.) slavery, ancient contrasted with southern, _sq._, . slave-trade, african, . smith, adam, . smith, james m., . smith, w. b., . socrates, . south carolina, , , . southerners and northerners contrasted, - . southern mutual fire insurance co., . spaight, . spencer, herbert, . starke, w. pinkney, , , , . state, for the negroes, _sq._ staunton, . stephens, a. h., , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , _sq._, , , . story, . stovall, , . stowe, mrs., , , , , . stuart, j. e. b., . sulla, . sullivan, . summer, charles, , , . summer, colonel, . surratt, mrs., . switzerland, . t. taylor, dick, . taylor, edward b., , . territories, intersectional strife over, , - . texas, , , . "the fork," . thomas, thomas w., . thomas, william hannibal, . thucydides, . thurston, . ticknor, dr., . tillinghast, , , , , , , , , , . timrod, , . titania, . tobacco, , . togoland, . toombs, , , , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , . toucey, . toussaint, . town-meeting, , . trent, . troup, . troy, . turner, bishop, . tuskegee, , . tyrtæus, . u. "uncle tom's cabin," , _sq._ upper class of negroes, , , . upson, frank l., . v. van buren, . vanderslice, . vergil, . vicksburg, . virginia, , , , , , . von holst, , , , , , , , , . w. waddell, james, . waddell, moses, , . wade, , , . walker, j. b. a., . washington, booker, , , , , , , , , , , . washington, mrs. booker, . washington, george, , , , , , , , . waterloo, . watson, tom, . webster, daniel, , , , _sq._, , , , , , , , , , , , , _sq._, , . wendell, prof. barrett, - , , , , . west territory, . white labor class, _sq._ whittier, , , . wilfer, reginald, . willcox, professor, , . wilmot proviso, , . wilson, general, . winthrop, . wirt, . wirz, . wright, richard r., , . wright, silas, . wyeth, . wynne, john, . footnotes: [ ] "where black rules white," article by hugo erichsen, in _the pilgrim_ for july, . [ ] de officiis, , § . [ ] memoir of jefferson davis, vol. i. - . [ ] gettysburg, , . [ ] quoted by himself in his charleston speech, mentioned later on. [ ] speech at the banquet of the new england society of charleston, s. c. [ ] a literary history of america, . [ ] _id._ . [ ] _id._ . [ ] a literary history of america, , . [ ] major joseph b. cumming, speaking to the toast, "new ideas, new departures, new south," at fourteenth annual dinner of new england society of charleston, s. c., december , . [ ] see cobb, slavery, xcvii, xcviii, for relevant citations. chaps. v. and vi. of the historical sketch, the former entitled "slavery in greece," and the latter, "slavery among the romans" (pp. lix-xcviii), are very readable, learned, and adequate treatments of their respective subjects. [ ] cobb, slavery, cxii. [ ] _id._ [ ] aristotle maintained the justice of wars undertaken to procure slaves. see cobb, slavery, xii, foot-note , for references. [ ] "pliny compares them to the drones among the bees, to be forced to labor, even as the drones are compelled." _id._ xcviii. [ ] in his chapter entitled "slavery among the jews" mr. cobb cites most of the important passages. _id._ xxxviii _sq._ [ ] twenty years in congress, vol. i. i. [ ] , , . [ ] _id._ , , - . [ ] dig. , , , where, in an excerpt from ulpian, it is said that all human beings are _jure naturali_ (that is, by the law of nature) born free. we of to-day must not regard the last three passages cited from the corpus juris civilis as particularly reprehending the property of the master in his slave. cicero asserts that there is no private property whatever according to the law of nature; that according to that law all things are common property. he details some of the ways by which private appropriation is made, such as long holding, entry into vacant lands, capture in war, acquisition by contract, etc. according to this, a prisoner of war stood on the same footing as a horse captured from the enemy. by the law of nature there could be private property in neither. but this law of nature was really repealed by the _jus gentium_, under which both horse and prisoner alike became private property. if another took either the horse or slave away from the owner, he would--to use cicero's language--violate the law of human society. de officiis lib. . cap. , §§ , . [ ] inst. , , . when mr. cobb says that there is "but one voice in the digest and code," book cited, xcviii, meaning that they give no countenance to slavery, the statement is misleading. [ ] in the first chapter of his history of england macaulay ascribes this result to moral causes, and to religion as chief agent. he is only one of many acute historians who overlook the play of economical forces. [ ] cobb, slavery, ccxviii (foot-note). [ ] see p. _infra_, where i have compared the struggle of ireland for autonomy during the last half of the eighteenth century with that of the south narrated in this book. [ ] charleston address mentioned above, . [ ] hist. of fed. gov., d ed., . [ ] _id._ . [ ] see the republic of republics, th ed. the references in the copious index, under the names dane, henry, story, webster (daniel, not noah), will suffice to put the student in the way to finding ample support of the statements in the text. [ ] see republic of republics, - (chap. viii. of part iii.) entitled "daniel webster's masterpiece of criticism," for copious proofs of the statements made in the text. hamilton, madison, john jay, and franklin are cited, and some eight or nine quotations from washington are made. the chapter is also instructive in showing state-rights utterances of webster made before and after the speech. [ ] see stephens, war between the states, vol. i. , - , - ; and republic of republics, th ed., - . [ ] war between the states, two volumes. [ ] the republic of republics; or, american federal liberty. by p. c. centz, barrister, th ed., boston, . see what i said of it in , am. law studies, §§ , . subsequent examination and comparison have given me a still higher opinion of this book; which in its well-digested presentation of evidence exhaustively collected, and complete demonstration of its main proposition, to wit, that in the opinion of the draftsmen, also of all the advocates of the constitution, and of the people ratifying, the states were sovereign before adoption and would so remain afterwards, is unique, and far foremost, in the literature of the subject. compare this strong statement of henry cabot lodge, uttered in : "when the constitution was adopted by the votes of states at philadelphia, and accepted by the votes of states in popular conventions, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from washington and hamilton on the one side, to george clinton and george mason on the other, who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment by the states and from which each and every state had the right peaceably to withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised." daniel webster, . [ ] republic of republics, th ed., . the entire chapter entitled "secession and coercion," _id._ - , will repay consideration, setting forth as it does what according to the author the brothers on each side ought to have done under the law of nations. [ ] lewis h. morgan, ancient society, . [ ] morgan, ancient society, . [ ] "it used to be a remark often made by chief justice lumpkin, who was a man himself of wonderful genius, profound learning, and the first of his state, that webster was always foremost amongst those with whom he acted on any question, and that even in books of selected pieces, whenever selections were made from webster, these were the best in the book." a. h. stephens, war between the states, vol. i. . [ ] ransy sniffles is a character in georgia scenes, who has long been a proverb in the south for one who habitually provokes personal encounters among his neighbors. [ ] see _infra_, p. . [ ] see what he said february , , in the united states senate, to clark, repeating the charge, as reported in the "globe." [ ] w. pinkney starke, account of calhoun's early life, calhoun correspondence, . [ ] the inscription on her tombstone states--so i have been informed--that she died in may, . in a short while afterwards he put the mother of his future wife in her place and bestowed on her the highest filial love. [ ] w. pinkney starke, account of calhoun's early life, calhoun correspondence, . [ ] starke's account of calhoun's early life, calhoun correspondence, . [ ] life of john c. calhoun. by gutasvus m. pinkney, of the charleston, s. c., bar, charleston, s. c., . [ ] calhoun correspondence, . [ ] von holst, john c. calhoun, . [ ] war between the states, vol. i. . [ ] a disquisition on government, and a discourse on the constitution and government of the united states, works, vol. i. [ ] works, vol. i. (a disquisition on government) . [ ] they were made in the united states senate, one, september , , on the bill authorizing issue of treasury notes; the other, october , , on his amendment of the bill just mentioned. [ ] his "barbara villiers" and his "history of money in america" are very important. but his most valuable addition to the few books which have taught true monetary doctrine is his "science of money." while in this he does not state the fundamental principle of good money as clearly as calhoun does, yet he assumes it most accurately and builds upon it everywhere. [ ] "rational money," published by c. f. taylor, chestnut street, philadelphia. the author does not show the deep insight and genial originality of calhoun and del mar; but he has presented the entire subject with a judgment so sane in accepting the true and rejecting the false in the belonging theory, that the book is the very best of existing compilations. [ ] to be nominated in the south carolina primary, a candidate for governor or any other state place must receive a majority in the whole state, one for congress a majority in the district, one for a county place a majority in the county. where no candidate receives a majority a new primary is held only to decide between the two who got the largest vote. the primary first mentioned is a state primary, held on the last tuesday of august. at this date, the crop--to use planting parlance--having been laid by for some six weeks, the voters have had ample opportunity from reading the papers, talks with one another, and hearing speeches to inform themselves fully. just across the savannah in georgia, the state democratic executive committee, so called, being the faithful organ of the railroads, has since put the primary in the early days of june, in busiest crop-time. this precludes any real canvass. it also keeps thousands from voting; and so the always full turnout of railroad regulars and workers--which is but a relatively small portion of the body of electors--wins a plurality. the committee allows a plurality to nominate, as of course a plurality can be had more easily than a majority. to be sure of the state senate, nominations to it are made by a convention instead of a primary. and conventions in the congressional districts nominate candidates for the lower house. contrasting the results--in south carolina nomination is really the voice of the people; in georgia the people seem to get, while the railroads really get, the governor, and, as everybody now expects, the railroads and liquor men always have at least twenty-three of the forty-four senators. i believe that the swiss-like grip of the people of south carolina upon their liberties, shaming georgia so greatly as it does, is mainly due to the influence of calhoun. that influence is still benignly powerful, even where unrecognized. i think that if the dispensary law were so altered as to give each county the purchase of its liquor by, say, its supervisor, nominated by this primary, the opportunity of graft, now discrediting the administration of the law with many, would be effectually closed. there would then be everywhere a trustworthy official, of their own election, to keep the people advised as to proper prices and cost. it would be to lose all chance of re-election for the official to cheat the public by colluding with the liquor sellers. [ ] life of john c. calhoun, - . [ ] _id._ [ ] heyward thus translates: "reason and good sense express themselves with little art. and when you are seriously intent on saying something, is it necessary to hunt for words?" [ ] von holst, john c. calhoun, . [ ] _id._ . [ ] von holst, john c. calhoun, . [ ] as illustrating his anti-tariff progress, see what he says in his letter of july, , to james monroe, correspondence, ; what in that to his relative, noble, of january, , _id._ , ; in that to samuel l. gouvernour, of february, , _id._ , ; and what as to benefit from having concentrated opinions in south, in that to his brother-in-law, _id._ , . [ ] discourse on the constitution and government of the united states, works, vol. i. . [ ] discourse on the constitution and government of the united states, works, vol. i. . [ ] ancient society, , . [ ] a disquisition on government, works, vol. i. - . compare for calhoun's treatment benton's report of his conversations, and the pertinent excerpts he gives from calhoun's speech in the united states senate of february and , , thirty years' view, vol. i. _sq._ [ ] daniel webster, . [ ] _id._ , . [ ] _id._ . [ ] _id._ . [ ] in his _encyclopedia americana_ article mr. carl schurz strains as hard as mr. lodge does in his biography to conceal the real position of webster. i commend the homespun reasoning of this paragraph to all such. [ ] daniel webster, . [ ] mcmaster, daniel webster, . [ ] daniel webster, . [ ] dartmouth college causes.--mr. lodge's narrative, daniel webster, - --is a very helpful introduction to the book just mentioned. [ ] lodge, daniel webster, . [ ] _id._ . [ ] the twelve words meant are, "the congress shall have power to regulate commerce among the several states." [ ] huschke ought to have stated this fact at page of his edition of gaius, in order to give the latter his full posthumous glory. [ ] we support our statement in this sentence by quoting below in this footnote two passages which stand a page or two apart in the plymouth oration, italicizing one word in the former, and one word and a clause in the other, which, if webster had taken accurate note of the intellectual ferment then active throughout all new england, he would have made much stronger: "we may flatter ourselves that the means of education at present enjoyed in new england are not only adequate to the diffusion of the elements of knowledge among all classes, but sufficient also for _respectable_ attainments in literature and the sciences." "with nothing in our past history to discourage us, and with _something_ in our present condition and prospects to animate us, let us hope, that, as it is our fortune to live in an age when we may behold a wonderful advancement of the country in all its other great interests, _we may see also equal progress and success attend the cause of letters_." [ ] daniel webster, - . [ ] _ante_, - . [ ] literary history of america, . [ ] _id._ [ ] consider his virtual confession when mrs. davis good humoredly taxes him with saying in his speeches hard things of slavery which he knew from actual observation to be fictions. memoir of jefferson davis, vol. i. . [ ] lecture in tremont temple, stephens, war between the states, vol. i. , (appendix g). [ ] the negro in africa and america, by alexander tillinghast, m. a., n. y., . this really scientific work, very complete though very brief, is as indispensable to whomsoever would enlighten the country upon the race question, as is the latest and best text-book to the lawyer considering a case under the law treated therein. mr. page's "the negro: the southerner's problem," n. y., , has not the scientific merit of the last. but it most ably advocates the side generally taken by the south. both books are free from blinding passion and prejudice. [ ] book cited, . the italics are mine. [ ] _id._ . [ ] the negro in africa and america, , . italics mine, again. [ ] uncle tom's cabin and key, riverside ed., vol. i. p. xviii. [ ] these quotations from the author's introduction, riverside ed., lviii, lix. the last sentence italicized by me. [ ] tremont temple lecture, stephens, war between the states, vol. i. . the italics are mine. [ ] professor dubois, born in , in new england, whose writings show that his mind has been soaked to saturation in abolition misstatement and bitterness, and that consequently he is utterly unfamiliar with either the average negro slave of the south and the conditions and effects of slavery in the section, attributes the present unchastity of the negroes to the frequent separation of man and wife by the master. here is what he says: "the plague-spot in sexual relations is easy marriage and easy separation. this is no sudden development, nor the fruit of emancipation. it is the plain heritage from slavery. in those days sam, with his master's consent, took up with mary. no ceremony was necessary, and in the busy life of the great plantations of the black belt it was usually dispensed with. if now the master needed sam's work in another part of the same plantation, or if he took a notion to sell the slave, sam's married life with mary was usually unceremoniously broken, and then it was clearly to the master's interest to have both of them take new mates. this widespread custom of two centuries has not been eradicated in thirty years." the souls of black folk, . this statement is utterly untrue, as professor dubois can easily find out from thousands of most credible witnesses. i never knew of a single such separation. of course, i will not say that there were none at all. but i do say, in contradiction of his assertion, as flat as contradiction can be, that the separations which he describes were not common. every impartial investigator who has formed his opinion from the actual evidence knows that the unchastity of the negro slave of america was an inheritance from africa. i do not dispute the assertion often made that there were and are still chaste negro tribes of that continent. but our negroes did not come from them. they came from the west africans, accurately described above in citations from mr. tillinghast. [ ] uncle tom's cabin and key, riverside ed., vol. i. p. lxxxix _sq._ [ ] uncle tom's cabin and key, riverside ed., vol. ii. . [ ] georgians, . [ ] the life of robert toombs, - (new york, cassell pub. co.). [ ] bethany, a story of the old south, _sq._ [ ] johnston and browne's life of a. h. stephens, . [ ] toombs thus anticipates the trenchant but kindly criticism by woodrow wilson of congressional ways of governing. congressional gov. - , and in other places. [ ] what he says july , , on death of preston s. brooks is a good example of the forced and labored style of his set speeches. stephens often said that his set speeches were failures. and unless they were made, as that on the invasion of states, that on the duty of congress to protect slavery in the territories, and his justification of secession, january , , under the excitement of a great cause, working the same effect upon him as the ardor of extemporaneous effort, his set speeches are below the mark. and i wish he had more carefully revised the three just mentioned, following the example of cicero, erskine and webster, who habitually corrected and improved their words after they had been spoken. he does not seem to have given his good speeches--the extemporaneous ones--any systematic correction. of all speakers and orators i ever knew or heard of, he has used the file the least. it is my belief that he did not know how to use it. had he but polished just some of his best unpremeditated efforts; as for instances his first speech for the retired naval officers; his most important utterances under various heads of internal improvements; his humorous anti-pension harangues; and his titanic struggle in vain with his own party to keep harlan seated--what a find they would be for the school speech books of the future! his lecture on slavery, delivered in tremont temple, boston, january , ,--a good copy of which is given by stephens (the war between the states, vol. i. - )--is the best specimen extant, within my knowledge, of his deliberate style. if i may make such a distinction, it was carefully revised, but never corrected. the reader will find it, i believe, the very ablest of all the many defences of slavery in the south. mrs. davis states that during the times of excitement concerning the compromise of , "he [toombs] would sit with one hand full of the reporter's notes of his speeches, for correction," with a french play in the other, over which he was roaring with laughter. (memoir of jefferson davis, vol. i. .) as his speech of december , , and the hamilcar speech of june next following, need very little correction, i incline to believe that he did at least try to revise them. naturally leading such a novel movement as he then was--it will be fully explained a little later on--he would desire to send forth his views in only carefully considered words, and probably he corrected the proofs of the two speeches just mentioned with something like diligence. in his pleadings, law-briefs, sketches of proposed statutes, letters, etc., of which i saw much in his last years, he was so palpably indifferent towards improving his first draft that one might know it came from lifelong habit. [ ] third session, - . [ ] _globe_, th cong., st sess., appendix, (i am thus particular in giving this reference, from a sense of justice to the memory of george w. crawford, which is now and then ignorantly aspersed because of the galphin claim). [ ] see his argument, may , , for putting duties on the home valuation of imports; note also how familiar he is with trade, the motive of smuggling, the relation of exchange; also what he says of the tariff of , _globe_, th cong., st sess., , , . for his mastery of trade and commerce, see what he says june , , especially pp. - . [ ] stephens, war between the states, vol. ii. . [ ] war between the states, vol. ii. . [ ] address in the supreme court of georgia, march , . [ ] war between the states, vol. ii. . [ ] waddell, life of linton stephens, . [ ] the rare perfection of catullus's spontaneous poetic expression is something like adequately represented in two quotations made by baehrens, one from niebuhr, and the other from macaulay, especially in the former. catulli veronensis, liber ii. . [ ] war between the states, vol. ii. - . [ ] pleasant a. stovall, the life of robert toombs, . [ ] the war between the states, vol. ii. (appendix). [ ] the supplies for the confederate army, how they were obtained in europe and how paid for.--personal reminiscences and unpublished history. by caleb huse, major and purchasing agent, c. s. a. boston, press of t. r. marvin & son, . i commend this narrative to professor brown. should he study it he will have cause to retract what he has written (the lower south in american history, ) in disparagement of this resource. had toombs, or stephens, or cobb been president and represented by such an extraordinarily able agent, the confederate states would have got ironclads, broken the blockade, kept out invaders, and had a money that would have held its own much better than the greenbacks unsustained by cotton or anything like it. from what i know of these men i am sure the right agent would have been found. [ ] book cited, , . [ ] stovall, life of robert toombs, . [ ] wyeth, life of general nathan bedford forrest, , . [ ] _id._ . [ ] see his th chapter. [ ] "i see a vision of awful shapes--mighty presences of gods arrayed against troy." _Ã�neid_, ii. - , transl. by john conington, _writings_, ii., longmans, green & co. ( ). [ ] in six consecutive numbers of the _pilgrim_, beginning with that of october, . this is a monthly, edited by willis j. abbot, and published by the pilgrim magazine co., _ltd._, battle creek, mich. [ ] memoir of jefferson davis, vol. i. . [ ] memoir, vol. i. . [ ] _id._ , . [ ] memoir, _id._ vol. i. , . [ ] mrs. davis tells all the details most delightfully; memoir, vol. i. - . [ ] memoir, vol. i. , . compare what stephens says of the speech made by president davis at the african church in richmond in february, , just after the return of our commissioners who had sought in vain for terms of peace which the south could consider. we give the part of the passage pertinent here. "the newspaper sketches of that speech were meagre, as well as inaccurate ... and ... came far short of so presenting its substance even, as to give those who did not hear it anything like an adequate conception of its full force and power. it was not only bold, undaunted, and confident in tone, but had that loftiness of sentiment and rare form of expression, as well as magnetic influence in its delivery, by which the passions of the people are moved to their profoundest depths, and roused to the highest pitch of excitement. many who had heard this master of oratory in his most brilliant displays in the senate and on the hustings, said they never before saw him so really majestic. the occasion, and the effects of the speech, as well as all the circumstances under which it was made, caused the minds of not a few to revert to like appeals by rienzi and demosthenes." war between the states, vol. ii. , . [ ] memoir, vol. i. , . [ ] landon knight, "the real jefferson davis," already cited. [ ] landon knight, "the real jefferson davis." [ ] mrs. davis's memoir, vol. i. . [ ] in his fourth chapter. [ ] memoir, vol. ii. . [ ] _id._ , . [ ] memoir, vol. ii. - . [ ] mr. landon knight is happy in showing the fidelity, diligence, courage, and unsurpassed conscientiousness, of mr. davis in his presidency, and especially how he bore himself amid the multiplying disasters of the last two years. [ ] "we embraced the cause [i. e., of the confederate states] in the spirit of lovers. true lovers all were we--and what true lover ever loved less because the grave had closed over the dear and radiant form?--and so we--we, at least, who as men and women inhaled the true spirit of that momentous time--come together on these occasions not only with the fresh new flowers in our hands, but with the old memories in our thoughts and the old, but ever fresh, lover spirit in our hearts, and seek to make these occasions not unworthy of the cause we loved unselfishly and of these its sleeping defenders." major joseph b. cumming, in introducing general butler, orator of the day, when the confederate soldiers' graves were decorated at the augusta (ga.) cemetery in . [ ] the celebration at covington, georgia, april , , was complete. my friend hon. j. m. pace has just shown me a copy of the local newspaper issued the next day, containing an account of the ceremony and the rarely appropriate address which he made as part thereof. the fact is that the observance of memorial day commenced everywhere in the south at the time just mentioned. [ ] encyc. americana, article "ant." [ ] uncle tom's cabin and key, vol. i. (riverside ed.). [ ] says john mitchell: "the southern states, which have made rapid progress, especially in cotton manufacturing, have, as a general rule, not responded to the demand for a shorter working-day--the south lacking effective labor organizations to compel such legislation." (organized labor, .) he might have said the same as to the desired prohibition of child labor. [ ] _infra_, pp. - . [ ] the souls of black folk, . [ ] in an address mentioned in the next footnote major joseph b. cumming rightly insists that this is the proper name for what is called "the american civil war" with some show of justification, and "the war of rebellion" without any justification whatever. [ ] address of major joseph b. cumming, entitled "the great war," before camp of united confederate veterans, augusta, ga., memorial day, . [ ] i timothy vi. - . i have quoted the twentieth century testament because of its extremely faithful version. of course the italics are mine. [ ] "where black rules white," by hugo erichsen, in the _pilgrim_ for july, , deserves the title "hayti as it is." the americana article ought to be conspicuously labelled "hayti whitewashed." [ ] bureau of labor bulletin, no. , september, , pp. , , . [ ] _id._ . [ ] bishop lucius h. holsey, d.d., of the colored m. e. church, is much more in touch and sympathy with the negro masses than professor dubois. here is something recently said by him: "_as long as the two races live in the same territory in immediate contact, their relations will be such as to intermingle in that degree that half-bloods, quarter-bloods and a mongrel progeny will result._ this is not only going on now, but is destined to annihilate the true typical ante-bellum negro type, and put in his place a stronger, a longer lived, and a more anglo-saxon-like homogeneous race. in other words, the negro to come will not be the negro of the emancipation proclamation, but he will be the anglo-saxonized afro-american. it seems true, as has been said, 'no race can look the anglo-saxon in the face and live.' certainly no other race can hold its own in his immediate presence. being in immediate contact and underrating the mental and moral virtues of others and exercising a sovereignty over them, his opportunities are enlarged to make other races his own in consanguinity. this he never fails to do." address before the national sociological society at the lincoln temple congregational church, the possibilities of the negro in symposium, (atlanta, ga.). in the same address, just a little above the quotation just made, this occurs: "legal intermarriage in the south, although not wrong in its consummation, is a matter as yet undebatable, and belongs only to the future." _id._ . these words of bishop holsey are weighty proof that the negroes strongly desire and expect amalgamation. [ ] edward b. taylor, _the outlook_, july , , p. . [ ] the souls of black folk, . [ ] see exodus xxii. . [ ] the souls of black folk, . [ ] may , . having finished my work i read two days ago, "the color line. a brief in behalf of the unborn." by william benjamin smith, n. y., . it ably and vividly explains the transcendent importance of keeping the blood of caucasians in america uncontaminated with that of the african, and demonstrates that to do this the color line must be rigidly maintained between negroid as well as coal-black, on one side, and white on the other. the utter impossibility of making the man of a particular race like the man of another extremely remote one by even the most careful education is shown with startling effect. the inability of the black to hold his own against white competition, and his gradual and sure expulsion is proved by overwhelming evidence. the book is useful as an introduction to all the literature of the subject. the only fault that i note is its excessive warmth and combativeness--especially in the first half. with the dispassionate serenity of mr. tillinghast, it would have been perfect. [ ] the quotations which immediately follow are from a letter of j. b. a. walker, dated tuskegee, ala., july , , written to s. h. comings, who has kindly permitted me to make use of it. [ ] lower south in am. hist. . when professor brown read "the clansman" doubtless his hesitation ended. [ ] clyatt _v._ united states, march , . [ ] possibly this is the village of boley, mentioned in the next chapter. [ ] they are stephen, a slave, _v._ state, ga. ; jesse, a slave, _v._ state, ga. . [ ] see tillinghast, the negro in africa and america, - . [ ] new encyc. britan., article, "jamaica." [ ] working with the hands, . [ ] tillinghast, book cited above, , . consider the quotation there made from thurston, the negro manager, in which he asserts that it is only by this means that negro operatives can be made to do good work. [ ] souls of black folk, . [ ] during the years after the war until the end of , when i came to atlanta, i kept my eye upon the negro preachers in the country. whenever i could closely observe one and had opportunity of sifting members of his congregation, i generally found him to be _vir gregis_. my acquaintances tell me that there has been no perceptible change. compare what mr. edward b. taylor, a northern man, now residing in columbia, s. c., says of "the immoral negro preacher" in _the outlook_ of july , . [ ] william hannibal thomas, a negro of massachusetts, says the same as to the early corruption of children and "marital immoralities" both of the poor, the ignorant, and the degraded among the freed people, and also of those who assume to be educated and refined. quoted by mr. page, the negro; the southerner's problem, - . [ ] encyc. am. article, "negro in america." [ ] noticing mr. page's book just mentioned, professor dubois treats william hannibal thomas as utterly unworthy of credit. all of us in the south familiar with negroes know that thomas's statement quoted by mr. page is unqualifiedly true. [ ] that part of department of commerce and labor bureau census, bulletin , called "the negro farmer," is by him. consider the extravagant claims made therein for the magnitude of negro farming in the united states in the comment on table xxxv. p. . professor dubois is also author of the "negro landholder of georgia," bulletin of department of labor, no. , july, . [ ] bulletin , before cited, . [ ] article, "negro education," encyclopedia americana. [ ] professor dubois, bulletin , cited above, . [ ] _id._ . [ ] book cited, - . [ ] _id._ . [ ] book cited, . [ ] _id._ . [ ] bureau of statistics--bulletin no. , p. . [ ] _id._ . [ ] extract from a letter of hon. james m. smith to the author. he is, i believe, the largest planter in georgia. his lands lie in the adjoining edges of oglethorpe county, which is in the black belt, and of madison county, which is outside. from his experience, and because of the great accuracy of his observation, which i have noted for nearly forty years, i regard him as better qualified than any one else who can be suggested, to give a correct opinion on the subjects he deals with in the quotation. especially do i emphasize his exceptional advantages for comparing whites and negroes as farmers, tenants, croppers, and laborers for standing wages, in making cotton. [ ] book cited above, , . [ ] the voice of the negro, september, (atlanta, ga.)--consider picture of "board of directors of the true reformers' bank, richmond, va.," in number of same magazine for november, . these directors are nine in all, and there is but one who is decidedly black. six of them look to be more than three-quarters white. the number for march, , contains a sketch of william edward burghardt du bois, ph.d., stating that the professor's ancestry is largely white and his color a rich brown. the picture of his mother shows her hair to be straight and her complexion bright. [ ] book cited above, - . [ ] the voice of the negro, october, , p. . [ ] department of commerce and labor bureau of the census, bulletin , negroes in the united states, p. . [ ] i have in mind his late articles in the _outlook_. [ ] see his "problems of the present south." [ ] autobiography of seventy years, vol. ii. - . [ ] by anne scribner, and copied in the _public_ of september , , from the chicago _evening post_. [ ] the passage with the context quoted by dr. booker washington, "working with the hands," . [ ] issue of october , . [ ] encyclopedia americana, article "negro education." [ ] but the most drastic provisions to keep the greedy whites from preying upon the negroes as they did upon the indians most be adopted, such as permitting the negro state to tax without limit whites owning property or doing business therein. this will prevent the result anticipated by booker washington. [ ] the best thing upon the joint education of hand and brain known to me is "pagan _vs._ christian civilization," by s. h. comings (charles h. kerr & co., chicago). the title does not indicate, as it ought to do, the special purpose of the book to show that to give the scholar expertness with his hands at the first and thus develop his self-supporting ability is far better than to cram his memory. what the author says in maintenance of his proposition, that our industrial schools should be operated upon a plan that will make the scholar pay as he goes, out of his own work, for his subsistence and expense of education during the entire course, deserves respectful and thoughtful consideration. in its brevity, and at the same time variety and fulness, coming as it does at the beginning of a new era, it reminds me of sullivan's tract which some years ago started the american agitation for direct legislation, with store of examples and exposition almost sufficient for its entire needs. the above had been written when booker washington's "working with the hands" came along. the well-chosen title informs accurately as to the subject of the book. its scope covers working with the hands from its beginning in childhood to the close of life. as illustration of his principles dr. washington circumstantially tells of the beneficent industrial and moral training given at tuskegee, in all its many departments, to children, youth, and adults, in everything which it is important that a negro of either sex should know how to do. besides its wisdom, its attention-commanding and interest-exciting style deserves high commendation. any reader longing for the day of real education to dawn who opens the book will go to the end, without skipping, in a delightful gallop. it is my conviction that it will be of far more advantage to the white industrial and technological schools than to those for which it is specially intended by the author. [ ] book cited, . [ ] see collier's weekly for november , . [ ] the english translation of the first volume of von holst's "constitutional and political history of the united states" has just been published. the titles of the ninth and tenth chapters, to wit, "the economic contrast between the free and slave states," and "development of the economic contrast between the free and slave states," are very apt and striking, and the contents of the chapters are profoundly original and instructive. having ample space, the author has, among other merits, well handled the following incidents and consequences of slavery: . implacable hostility of slave and non-slave labor. . self-protecting necessity to slavery of continuous expansion, and, to insure this expansion, necessity that the south keep political mastery of the country. . economic importance to south of invention of cotton-gin in . . exclusive possession by north of wholesale trade. . greater immigration to north. . missouri compromise, and rise therefrom of geographical parties. . internal improvements and tariff passing inter-geographical question. . economic decay of south due to slavery, and not to tariff. . opposition of slavery to the spirit of the age. the following is a brief statement of the chief demerits of the two chapters: . misstatement that there were different circles of slaveholders; overstatement of inhumanity of masters; and unjust disparagement of character of smaller slaveholders. . failure to note the great absorbing energy of slave property. . failure to note the lack of a population of free workers. but the work, considering the short time the clouds of battle have had to clear away, recollecting, too, that the author is a foreigner, is, excepting a little heated partisanship here and there, a most valuable contribution to the history of our country. [ ] i see now--in --that the statement in the text was a great mistake; and that nadir was not reached until some fifteen or twenty years later. the indian dispossessed by seth k. humphrey with sixteen full-page illustrations from photographs pages. mo. cloth, $ . net. postpaid, $ . . a plain, connected, carefully prepared narrative of the actual and proved dealings of the united states government with the subdued indian--the reservation indian. the author's account of governmental oppression and ill-faith, and of successive removals of the indians from their homes to regions unattractive to white settlers, and of the confiscation of indian property, are supported by extracts from official records. after chapters describing the experience of the umatillas (with whom the government held to its treaty), the flathead indians of the bitter root, the nez perces, the poncas, and the mission indians, comes an important chapter on "dividing the spoils," with a graphic and moving description of the scenes at the opening of the cherokee strip, drawn from the author's personal experiences. a chapter is devoted to an exposure of the rosebud reservation bill,--the latest example of governmental confiscation,--while the final chapter gives an original and convincing explanation of the remarkable persistence of vicious influences in our indian system, in the face of the equally persistent desire of the american people to grant the indian fair play. helen jackson's "a century of dishonor" has received a valuable companion work in the present book. little, brown, & co., _publishers_ washington street, boston proofreaders a social history of the american negro being a history of the negro problem in the united states including a history and study of the republic of liberia by benjamin brawley to the memory of norwood penrose hallowell patriot - * * * * * _these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off_. norwood penrose hallowell was born in philadelphia april , . he inherited the tradition of the quakers and grew to manhood in a strong anti-slavery atmosphere. the home of his father, morris l. hallowell--the "house called beautiful," in the phrase of oliver wendell holmes--was a haven of rest and refreshment for wounded soldiers of the union army, and hither also, after the assault upon him in the senate, charles sumner had come for succor and peace. three brothers in one way or another served the cause of the union, one of them, edward n. hallowell, succeeding robert gould shaw in the command of the fifty-fourth regiment of massachusetts volunteers. norwood penrose hallowell himself, a natural leader of men, was harvard class orator in ; twenty-five years later he was the marshal of his class; and in he delivered the memorial day address in sanders theater. entering the union army with promptness in april, , he served first in the new england guards, then as first lieutenant in the twentieth massachusetts, won a captain's commission in november, and within the next year took part in numerous engagements, being wounded at glendale and even more severely at antietam. on april , , he became lieutenant-colonel of the fifty-fourth massachusetts, and on may colonel of the newly organized fifty-fifth. serving in the investment of fort wagner, he was one of the first to enter the fort after its evacuation. his wounds ultimately forced him to resign his commission, and in november, , he retired from the service. he engaged in business in new york, but after a few years removed to boston, where he became eminent for his public spirit. he was one of god's noblemen, and to the last he preserved his faith in the negro whom he had been among the first to lead toward the full heritage of american citizenship. he died april , . contents chapter i the coming of negroes to america . african origins . the negro in spanish exploration . development of the slave-trade . planting of slavery in the colonies . the wake of the slave-ship chapter ii the negro in the colonies . servitude and slavery . the indian, the mulatto, and the free negro . first effort toward social betterment . early insurrections chapter iii the revolutionary era . sentiment in england and america . the negro in the war . the northwest territory and the constitution . early steps toward abolition . beginning of racial consciousness chapter iv the new west, the south, and the west indies . the cotton-gin, the new southwest, and the first fugitive slave law . toussaint l'ouverture, louisiana, and the formal closing of the slave-trade . gabriel's insurrection and the rise of the negro problem chapter v indian and negro . creek, seminole, and negro to : the war of . first seminole war and the treaties of indian spring and fort moultrie . from the treaty of fort moultrie to the treaty of payne's landing . osceola and the second seminole war chapter vi early approach to the negro problem . the ultimate problem and the missouri compromise . colonization . slavery chapter vii the negro reply--i: revolt . denmark vesey's insurrection . nat turner's insurrection . the _amistad_ and _creole_ cases chapter viii the negro reply--ii: organization and agitation . walker's "appeal" . the convention movement . sojourner truth and woman suffrage chapter ix liberia . the place and the people . history (a) colonization and settlement (b) the commonwealth of liberia (c) the republic of liberia . international relations . economic and social conditions chapter x the negro a national issue . current tendencies . the challenge of the abolitionists . the contest chapter xi social progress, - chapter xii the civil war and emancipation chapter xiii the era of enfranchisement . the problem . meeting the problem . reaction: the ku-klux klan . counter-reaction: the negro exodus . a postscript on the war and reconstruction chapter xiv the negro in the new south . political life: disfranchisement . economic life: peonage . social life: proscription, lynching chapter xv "the vale of tears," - . current opinion and tendencies . industrial education: booker t. washington . individual achievement: the spanish-american war . mob violence; election troubles; the atlanta massacre . the question of labor . defamation; brownsville . the dawn of a to-morrow chapter xvi the negro in the new age . character of the period . migration; east st. louis . the great war . high tension: washington, chicago, elaine . the widening problem chapter xvii the negro problem . world aspect . the negro in american life . face to face preface in the following pages an effort is made to give fresh treatment to the history of the negro people in the united states, and to present this from a distinct point of view, the social. it is now forty years since george w. williams completed his _history of the negro race in america_, and while there have been many brilliant studies of periods or episodes since that important work appeared, no one book has again attempted to treat the subject comprehensively, and meanwhile the race has passed through some of its most critical years in america. the more outstanding political phases of the subject, especially in the period before the civil war, have been frequently considered; and in any account of the negro people themselves the emphasis has almost always been upon political and military features. williams emphasizes this point of view, and his study of legal aspects is not likely soon to be superseded. a noteworthy point about the history of the negro, however, is that laws on the statute-books have not necessarily been regarded, public opinion and sentiment almost always insisting on being considered. it is necessary accordingly to study the actual life of the negro people in itself and in connection with that of the nation, and something like this the present work endeavors to do. it thus becomes not only a social history of the race, but also the first formal effort toward a history of the negro problem in america. with this aim in mind, in view of the enormous amount of material, we have found it necessary to confine ourselves within very definite limits. a thorough study of all the questions relating to the negro in the united states would fill volumes, for sooner or later it would touch upon all the great problems of american life. no attempt is made to perform such a task; rather is it intended to fix attention upon the race itself as definitely as possible. even with this limitation there are some topics that might be treated at length, but that have already been studied so thoroughly that no very great modification is now likely to be made of the results obtained. such are many of the questions revolving around the general subject of slavery. wars are studied not so much to take note of the achievement of negro soldiers, vital as that is, as to record the effect of these events on the life of the great body of people. both wars and slavery thus become not more than incidents in the history of the ultimate problem. in view of what has been said, it is natural that the method of treatment should vary with the different chapters. sometimes it is general, as when we touch upon the highways of american history. sometimes it is intensive, as in the consideration of insurrections and early effort for social progress; and liberia, as a distinct and much criticized experiment in government by american negroes, receives very special attention. for the first time also an effort is now made to treat consecutively the life of the negro people in america for the last fifty years. this work is the result of studies on which i have been engaged for a number of years and which have already seen some light in _a short history of the american negro_ and _the negro in literature and art_; and acquaintance with the elementary facts contained in such books as these is in the present work very largely taken for granted. i feel under a special debt of gratitude to the new york state colonization society, which, coöperating with the american colonization society and the board of trustees of donations for education in liberia, in gave me opportunity for some study at first hand of educational and social conditions on the west coast of africa; and most of all do i remember the courtesy and helpfulness of dr. e.c. sage and dr. j.h. dillard in this connection. in general i have worked independently of williams, but any student of the subject must be grateful to that pioneer, as well as to dr. w.e.b. dubois, who has made contributions in so many ways. my obligations to such scholarly dissertations as those by turner and russell are manifest, while to mary stoughton locke's _anti-slavery in america_--a model monograph--i feel indebted more than to any other thesis. within the last few years, of course, the _crisis_, the _journal of negro history_, and the _negro year-book_ have in their special fields become indispensable, and to dr. carter g. woodson and professor m.n. work much credit is due for the faith which has prompted their respective ventures. i take this occasion also to thank professor w.e. dodd, of the university of chicago, who from the time of my entrance upon this field has generously placed at my disposal his unrivaled knowledge of the history of the south; and as always i must be grateful to my father, rev. e.m. brawley, for that stimulation and criticism which all my life have been most valuable to me. finally, the work has been dedicated to the memory of a distinguished soldier, who, in his youth, in the nation's darkest hour, helped to lead a struggling people to freedom and his country to victory. it is now submitted to the consideration of all who are interested in the nation's problems, and indeed in any effort that tries to keep in mind the highest welfare of the country itself. benjamin brawley. cambridge, january , . social history of the american negro chapter i the coming of negroes to america . _african origins_ an outstanding characteristic of recent years has been an increasing recognition of the cultural importance of africa to the world. from all that has been written three facts are prominent: ( ) that at some time early in the middle ages, perhaps about the seventh century, there was a considerable infiltration of arabian culture into the tribes living below the sahara, something of which may to-day most easily be seen among such people as the haussas in the soudan and the mandingoes along the west coast; ( ) that, whatever influences came in from the outside, there developed in africa an independent culture which must not be underestimated; and ( ) that, perhaps vastly more than has been supposed, this african culture had to do with early exploration and colonization in america. the first of these three facts is very important, but is now generally accepted and need not here detain us. for the present purpose the second and third demand more attention. the development of native african art is a theme of never-ending fascination for the ethnologist. especially have striking resemblances between negro and oceanian culture been pointed out. in political organization as well as certain forms of artistic endeavor the negro people have achieved creditable results, and especially have they been honored as the originators of the iron technique.[ ] it has further been shown that fetichism, which is especially well developed along the west coast and its hinterland, is at heart not very different from the manitou beliefs of the american indians; and it is this connection that furnishes the key to some of the most striking results of the researches of the latest and most profound student of this and related problems.[ ] [footnote : note article "africa" in _new international encyclopedia_, referring especially to the studies of von luschan.] [footnote : leo wiener: _africa and the discovery of america_, vol. i, innes & sons, philadelphia, .] from the soudan radiated a culture that was destined to affect europe and in course of time to extend its influence even beyond the atlantic ocean. it is important to remember that throughout the early history of europe and up to the close of the fifteenth century the approach to the home of the negro was by land. the soudan was thought to be the edge of the then known world; homer speaks of the ethiopians as "the farthest removed of men, and separated into two divisions." later greek writers carry the description still further and speak of the two divisions as eastern and western--the eastern occupying the countries eastward of the nile, and the western stretching from the western shores of that river to the atlantic coast. "one of these divisions," says lady lugard, "we have to acknowledge, was perhaps itself the original source of the civilization which has through egypt permeated the western world.... when the history of negroland comes to be written in detail, it may be found that the kingdoms lying toward the eastern end of the soudan were the home of races who inspired, rather than of races who received, the traditions of civilization associated for us with the name of ancient egypt."[ ] [footnote : _a tropical dependency_, james nisbet & co., ltd., london, , p. .] if now we come to america, we find the negro influence upon the indian to be so strong as to call in question all current conceptions of american archæology and so early as to suggest the coming of men from the guinea coast perhaps even before the coming of columbus.[ ] the first natives of africa to come were mandingoes; many of the words used by the indians in their daily life appear to be not more than corruptions or adaptations of words used by the tribes of africa; and the more we study the remains of those who lived in america before , and the far-reaching influence of african products and habits, the more must we acknowledge the strength of the position of the latest thesis. this whole subject will doubtless receive much more attention from scholars, but in any case it is evident that the demands of negro culture can no longer be lightly regarded or brushed aside, and that as a scholarly contribution to the subject wiener's work is of the very highest importance. [footnote : see wiener, i, .] . _the negro in spanish exploration_ when we come to columbus himself, the accuracy of whose accounts has so recently been questioned, we find a negro, pedro alonso niño, as the pilot of one of the famous three vessels. in niño sailed to santo domingo and he was also with columbus on his third voyage. with two men, cristóbal de la guerra, who served as pilot, and luís de la guerra, a spanish merchant, in he planned what proved to be the first successful commercial voyage to the new world. the revival of slavery at the close of the middle ages and the beginning of the system of negro slavery were due to the commercial expansion of portugal in the fifteenth century. the very word _negro_ is the modern spanish and portuguese form of the latin _niger_. in prince henry sent out one gonzales, who captured three moors on the african coast. these men offered as ransom ten negroes whom they had taken. the negroes were taken to lisbon in , and in prince henry regularly began the european trade from the guinea coast. for fifty years his country enjoyed a monopoly of the traffic. by negroes were numerous in spain, and special interest attaches to juan de valladolid, probably the first of many negroes who in time came to have influence and power over their people under the authority of a greater state. he was addressed as "judge of all the negroes and mulattoes, free or slaves, which are in the very loyal and noble city of seville, and throughout the whole archbishopric thereof." after there are frequent references to negroes, especially in the spanish west indies. instructions to ovando, governor of hispaniola, in , prohibited the passage to the indies of jews, moors, or recent converts, but authorized him to take over negro slaves who had been born in the power of christians. these orders were actually put in force the next year. even the restricted importation ovando found inadvisable, and he very soon requested that negroes be not sent, as they ran away to the indians, with whom they soon made friends. isabella accordingly withdrew her permission, but after her death ferdinand reverted to the old plan and in sent to ovando seventeen negro slaves for work in the copper-mines, where the severity of the labor was rapidly destroying the indians. in ferdinand directed that fifty negroes be sent immediately, and that more be sent later; and in april of this year over a hundred were bought in the lisbon market. this, says bourne,[ ] was the real beginning of the african slave-trade to america. already, however, as early as , a considerable number of negroes had been introduced from guinea because, as we are informed, "the work of one negro was worth more than that of four indians." in thirty negroes assisted balboa in building the first ships made on the pacific coast of america. in spain formally entered upon the traffic, charles v on his accession to the throne granting "license for the introduction of negroes to the number of four hundred," and thereafter importation to the west indies became a thriving industry. those who came in these early years were sometimes men of considerable intelligence, having been trained as mohammedans or catholics. by negroes were at work in the sugar-mills in hispaniola, where they seem to have suffered from indulgence in drinks made from sugarcane. in it was ordered that negro slaves should not be employed on errands as in general these tended to cultivate too close acquaintance with the indians. in there was a rebellion on the sugar plantations in hispaniola, primarily because the services of certain indians were discontinued. twenty negroes from the admiral's mill, uniting with twenty others who spoke the same language, killed a number of christians. they fled and nine leagues away they killed another spaniard and sacked a house. one negro, assisted by twelve indian slaves, also killed nine other christians. after much trouble the negroes were apprehended and several of them hanged. it was about that negroes were first introduced within the present limits of the united states, being brought to a colony near what later became jamestown, va. here the negroes were harshly treated and in course of time they rose against their oppressors and fired their houses. the settlement was broken up, and the negroes and their spanish companions returned to hispaniola, whence they had come. in , in quivira, in mexico, there was a negro who had taken holy orders; and in there were established at guamanga three brotherhoods of the true cross of spaniards, one being for indians and one for negroes. [footnote : _spain in america_, vol. in american nation series, p. .] the outstanding instance of a negro's heading in exploration is that of estévanico (or estévanillo, or estévan, that is, stephen), one of the four survivors of the ill-fated expedition of de narvaez, who sailed from spain, june , . having returned to spain after many years of service in the new world, pamfilo de narvaez petitioned for a grant, and accordingly the right to conquer and colonize the country between the rio de las palmas, in eastern mexico, and florida was accorded him.[ ] his force originally consisted of six hundred soldiers and colonists. the whole conduct of the expedition--incompetent in the extreme--furnished one of the most appalling tragedies of early exploration in america. the original number of men was reduced by half by storms and hurricanes and desertions in santo domingo and cuba, and those who were left landed in april, , near the entrance to tampa bay, on the west coast of florida. one disaster followed another in the vicinity of pensacola bay and the mouth of the mississippi until at length only four men survived. these were alvar nuñez cabeza de vaca; andrés dorantes de carranza, a captain of infantry; alonzo del castillo maldonado; and estévanico, who had originally come from the west coast of morocco and who was a slave of dorantes. these men had most remarkable adventures in the years between and , and as a narrative of suffering and privation cabeza de vaca's _journal_ has hardly an equal in the annals of the continent. both dorantes and estévanico were captured, and indeed for a season or two all four men were forced to sojourn among the indians. they treated the sick, and with such success did they work that their fame spread far and wide among the tribes. crowds followed them from place to place, showering presents upon them. with alonzo de castillo, estévanico sojourned for a while with the yguazes, a very savage tribe that killed its own male children and bought those of strangers. he at length escaped from these people and spent several months with the avavares. he afterwards went with de vaca to the maliacones, only a short distance from the avavares, and still later he accompanied alonzo de castillo in exploring the country toward the rio grande. he was unexcelled as a guide who could make his way through new territory. in he went with fray marcos of nice, the father provincial of the franciscan order in new spain, as a guide to the seven cities of cibola, the villages of the ancestors of the present zuñi indians in western new mexico. preceding fray marcos by a few days and accompanied by natives who joined him on the way, he reached háwikuh, the southern-most of the seven towns. here he and all but three of his indian followers were killed. [footnote : frederick w. hodge, , in _spanish explorers in the southern united states_, - , in "original narratives of early american history," scribner's, new york, . both the narrative of alvar nuñez cabeza de vaca and the narrative of the expedition of coronado, by pedro de casteñada, are edited by hodge, with illuminating introductions.] . _development of the slave-trade_ portugal and spain having demonstrated that the slave-trade was profitable, england also determined to engage in the traffic; and as early as william hawkins, a merchant of plymouth, visited the guinea coast and took away a few slaves. england really entered the field, however, with the voyage in of captain john hawkins, son of william, who in october of this year also went to the coast of guinea. he had a fleet of three ships and one hundred men, and partly by the sword and partly by other means he took three hundred or more negroes, whom he took to santo domingo and sold profitably.[ ] he was richly laden going homeward and some of his stores were seized by spanish vessels. hawkins made two other voyages, one in , and another, with drake, in . on his second voyage he had four armed ships, the largest being the _jesus_, a vessel of seven hundred tons, and a force of one hundred and seventy men. december and january ( - ) he spent in picking up freight, and by sickness and fights with the negroes he lost many of his men. then at the end of january he set out for the west indies. he was becalmed for twenty-one days, but he arrived at the island of dominica march . he traded along the spanish coasts and on his return to england he touched at various points in the west indies and sailed along the coast of florida. on his third voyage he had five ships. he himself was again in command of the _jesus_, while drake was in charge of the _judith_, a little vessel of fifty tons. he got together between four and five hundred negroes and again went to dominica. he had various adventures and at last was thrown by a storm on the coast of mexico. here after three days he was attacked by a spanish fleet of twelve vessels, and all of his ships were destroyed except the _judith_ and another small vessel, the _minion_, which was so crowded that one hundred men risked the dangers on land rather than go to sea with her. on this last voyage hawkins and drake had among their companions the earls of pembroke and leicester, who were then, like other young elizabethans, seeking fame and fortune. it is noteworthy that in all that he did hawkins seems to have had no sense of cruelty or wrong. he held religious services morning and evening, and in the spirit of the later cromwell he enjoined upon his men to "serve god daily, love one another, preserve their victuals, beware of fire, and keep good company." queen elizabeth evidently regarded the opening of the slave-trade as a worthy achievement, for after his second voyage she made hawkins a knight, giving him for a crest the device of a negro's head and bust with the arms securely bound. [footnote : edward e. hale in justin winsor's _narrative and critical history of america_, iii, .] france joined in the traffic in , and then holland and denmark, and the rivalry soon became intense. england, with her usual aggressiveness, assumed a commanding position, and, much more than has commonly been supposed, the navigation ordinance of and the two wars with the dutch in the seventeenth century had as their basis the struggle for supremacy in the slave-trade. the english trade proper began with the granting of rights to special companies, to one in , to another in , and in to the "company of royal adventurers," rechartered in as the "royal african company," to which in was given the exclusive right to trade between the gold coast and the british colonies in america. james, duke of york, was interested in this last company, and it agreed to supply the west indies with three thousand slaves annually. in , on account of the incessant clamor of english merchants, the trade was opened generally, and any vessel carrying the british flag was by act of parliament permitted to engage in it on payment of a duty of per cent on english goods exported to africa. new england immediately engaged in the traffic, and vessels from boston and newport went forth to the gold coast laden with hogsheads of rum. in course of time there developed a three-cornered trade by which molasses was brought from the west indies to new england, made into rum to be taken to africa and exchanged for slaves, the slaves in turn being brought to the west indies or the southern colonies.[ ] a slave purchased for one hundred gallons of rum worth £ brought from £ to £ when offered for sale in america.[ ] newport soon had twenty-two still houses, and even these could not satisfy the demand. england regarded the slave-trade as of such importance that when in she accepted the peace of utrecht she insisted on having awarded to her for thirty years the exclusive right to transport slaves to the spanish colonies in america. when in the course of the eighteenth century the trade became fully developed, scores of vessels went forth each year to engage in it; but just how many slaves were brought to the present united states and how many were taken to the west indies or south america, it is impossible to say. in the three cities of london, bristol, and liverpool alone had ships engaged in the traffic, and the profits were said to warrant a thousand more, though such a number was probably never reached so far as england alone was concerned.[ ] [footnote : bogart: _economic history_, .] [footnote : coman: _industrial history_, .] [footnote : ballagh: _slavery in virginia, _.] . _planting of slavery in the colonies_ it is only for virginia that we can state with definiteness the year in which negro slaves were first brought to an english colony on the mainland. when legislation on the subject of slavery first appears elsewhere, slaves are already present. "about the last of august ( )," says john rolfe in john smith's _generall historie_, "came in a dutch man of warre, that sold us twenty negars." these negroes were sold into servitude, and virginia did not give statutory recognition to slavery as a system until , the importations being too small to make the matter one of importance. in this year, however, an act of assembly stated that negroes were "incapable of making satisfaction for the time lost in running away by addition of time"; [ ] and thus slavery gained a firm place in the oldest of the colonies. [footnote : hening: _statutes_, ii, _ _.] negroes were first imported into massachusetts from barbadoes a year or two before , but in john winthrop's _journal_, under date february of this year, we have positive evidence on the subject as follows: "mr. pierce in the salem ship, the _desire_, returned from the west indies after seven months. he had been at providence, and brought some cotton, and tobacco, and negroes, etc., from thence, and salt from tertugos. dry fish and strong liquors are the only commodities for those parts. he met there two men-of-war, sent forth by the lords, etc., of providence with letters of mart, who had taken divers prizes from the spaniard and many negroes." it was in that there was passed in massachusetts the first act on the subject of slavery, and this was the first positive statement in any of the colonies with reference to the matter. said this act: "there shall never be any bond slavery, villeinage, nor captivity among us, unless it be lawful captives, taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us, and these shall have all the liberties and christian usages which the law of god established in israel requires." this article clearly sanctioned slavery. of the three classes of persons referred to, the first was made up of indians, the second of white people under the system of indenture, and the third of negroes. in this whole matter, as in many others, massachusetts moved in advance of the other colonies. the first definitely to legalize slavery, in course of time she became also the foremost representative of sentiment against the system. in one john smith brought home two negroes from the guinea coast, where we are told he "had been the means of killing near a hundred more." the general court, "conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing," ordered that the negroes be sent at public expense to their native country.[ ] in later cases, however, massachusetts did not find herself able to follow this precedent. in general in these early years new england was more concerned about indians than about negroes, as the presence of the former in large numbers was a constant menace, while negro slavery had not yet assumed its most serious aspects. [footnote : coffin: _slave insurrections_, .] in new york slavery began under the dutch rule and continued under the english. before or about the dutch west india company brought some negroes to new netherland. most of these continued to belong to the company, though after a period of labor (under the common system of indenture) some of the more trusty were permitted to have small farms, from the produce of which they made return to the company. their children, however, continued to be slaves. in new netherland became new york. the next year, in the code of english laws that was drawn up, it was enacted that "no christian shall be kept in bond slavery, villeinage, or captivity, except who shall be judged thereunto by authority, or such as willingly have sold or shall sell themselves." as at first there was some hesitancy about making negroes christians, this act, like the one in massachusetts, by implication permitted slavery. it was in that the grant including what is now the states of maryland and delaware was made to george calvert, first lord baltimore. though slaves are mentioned earlier, it was in - that the maryland legislature passed its first enactment on the subject of slavery. it was declared that "all negroes and other slaves within this province, and all negroes and other slaves to be hereinafter imported into this province, shall serve during life; and all children born of any negro or other slave, shall be slaves as their fathers were, for the term of their lives." in delaware and new jersey the real beginnings of slavery are unusually hazy. the dutch introduced the system in both of these colonies. in the laws of new jersey the word _slaves_ occurs as early as , and acts for the regulation of the conduct of those in bondage began with the practical union of the colony with new york in . the lot of the slave was somewhat better here than in most of the colonies. although the system was in existence in delaware almost from the beginning of the colony, it did not receive legal recognition until , when there was passed an act providing for the trial of slaves in a special court with two justices and six freeholders. as early as there are incidental reference to negroes in pennsylvania, and there are frequent references after this date.[ ] in this colony there were strong objections to the importing of negroes in spite of the demand for them. penn in his charter to the free society of traders in enjoined upon the members of this company that if they held black slaves these should be free at the end of fourteen years, the negroes then to become the company's tenants.[ ] in there originated in germantown a protest against negro slavery that was "the first formal action ever taken against the barter in human flesh within the boundaries of the united states." [ ] here a small company of germans was assembled april , , and there was drawn up a document signed by garret hendericks, franz daniel pastorius, dirck op den graeff, and abraham op den graeff. the protest was addressed to the monthly meeting of the quakers about to take place in lower dublin. the monthly meeting on april felt that it could not pretend to take action on such an important matter and referred it to the quarterly meeting in june. this in turn passed it on to the yearly meeting, the highest tribunal of the quakers. here it was laid on the table, and for the next few years nothing resulted from it. about , however, opposition to slavery on the part of the quakers began to be active. in the colony at large before the lot of the negro was regularly one of servitude. laws were made for servants, white or black, and regulations and restrictions were largely identical. in , however, legislation began more definitely to fix the status of the slave. in this year an act of the legislature forbade the selling of negroes out of the province without their consent, but in other ways it denied the personality of the slave. this act met further formal approval in , when special courts were ordained for the trial and punishment of slaves, and when importation from carolina was forbidden on the ground that it made trouble with the indians nearer home. in a maximum duty of s. was placed on each negro imported, and in this was doubled, there being already some competition with white labor. in the assembly sought to prevent importation altogether by a duty of £ a head. this act was repealed in england, and a duty of £ in was also repealed. in , however, the duty was fixed at £ , at which figure it remained for a generation. [footnote : turner: _the negro in pennsylvania_, .] [footnote : _ibid_., .] [footnote : faust: _the german element in the united states_, boston, , i, .] it was almost by accident that slavery was officially recognized in connecticut in . the code of laws compiled for the colony in this year was especially harsh on the indians. it was enacted that certain of them who incurred the displeasure of the colony might be made to serve the person injured or "be shipped out and exchanged for negroes." in the governor of the colony informed the board of trade that "as for blacks there came sometimes three or four in a year from barbadoes, and they are usually sold at the rate of £ apiece." these people were regarded rather as servants than as slaves, and early legislation was mainly in the line of police regulations designed to prevent their running away. in it was enacted in rhode island that all slaves brought into the colony should be set free after ten years of service. this law was not designed, as might be supposed, to restrict slavery. it was really a step in the evolution of the system, and the limit of ten years was by no means observed. "the only legal recognition of the law was in the series of acts beginning january , , to control the wandering of african slaves and servants, and another beginning in april, , in which the slave-trade was indirectly legalized by being taxed."[ ] "in course of time rhode island became the greatest slave-trader in the country, becoming a sort of clearing-house for the other colonies."[ ] [footnote : william t. alexander: history of the colored race in america, new orleans, , p. .] [footnote : dubois: suppression of the slave-trade, .] new hampshire, profiting by the experience of the neighboring colony of massachusetts, deemed it best from the beginning to discourage slavery. there were so few negroes in the colony as to form a quantity practically negligible. the system was recognized, however, an act being passed in to regulate the conduct of slaves, and another four years later to regulate that of masters. in north carolina, even more than in most of the colonies, the system of negro slavery was long controlled by custom rather than by legal enactment. it was recognized by law in , however, and police regulations to govern the slaves were enacted. in south carolina the history of slavery is particularly noteworthy. the natural resources of this colony offered a ready home for the system, and the laws here formulated were as explicit as any ever enacted. slaves were first imported from barbadoes, and their status received official confirmation in . by the number had increased to , , the white people numbering only , . by such was the fear from the preponderance of the negro population that a special act was passed to encourage white immigration. legislation "for the better ordering of slaves" was passed in , and in the first regular slave law was enacted. once before , the year of the assiento contract of the peace of utrecht, and several times after this date, prohibitive duties were placed on negroes to guard against their too rapid increase. by , however, importation had again reached large proportions; and in , in consequence of recent insurrectionary efforts, a prohibitive duty several times larger than the previous one was placed upon negroes brought into the province. the colony of georgia was chartered in and actually founded the next year. oglethorpe's idea was that the colony should be a refuge for persecuted christians and the debtor classes of england. slavery was forbidden on the ground that georgia was to defend the other english colonies from the spaniards on the south, and that it would not be able to do this if like south carolina it dissipated its energies in guarding negro slaves. for years the development of georgia was slow, and the prosperous condition of south carolina constantly suggested to the planters that "the one thing needful" for their highest welfare was slavery. again and again were petitions addressed to the trustees, george whitefield being among those who most urgently advocated the innovation. moreover, negroes from south carolina were sometimes hired for life, and purchases were openly made in savannah. it was not until , however, that the trustees yielded to the request. in the legislature passed an act that regulated the conduct of the slaves, and in a more regular code was adopted. thus did slavery finally gain a foothold in what was destined to become one of the most important of the southern states. for the first fifty or sixty years of the life of the colonies the introduction of negroes was slow; the system of white servitude furnished most of the labor needed, and england had not yet won supremacy in the slave-trade. it was in the last quarter of the seventeenth century that importations began to be large, and in the course of the eighteenth century the numbers grew by leaps and bounds. in , six years after the first negroes were brought to the colony, there were in virginia only negroes, male, female. [ ] in there were ; but in there were , and in , , . in governor simon bradstreet reported to england with reference to massachusetts that "no company of blacks or slaves" had been brought into the province since its beginning, for the space of fifty years, with the exception of a small vessel that two years previously, after a twenty months' voyage to madagascar, had brought hither between forty and fifty negroes, mainly women and children, who were sold for £ , £ , and £ apiece; occasionally two or three negroes were brought from barbadoes or other islands, and altogether there were in massachusetts at the time not more than or . [footnote : _virginia magazine of history_, vii, .] the colonists were at first largely opposed to the introduction of slavery, and numerous acts were passed prohibiting it in virginia, massachusetts, and elsewhere; and in georgia, as we have seen, it had at first been expressly forbidden. english business men, however, had no scruples about the matter. about a british committee on foreign plantations declared that "black slaves are the most useful appurtenances of a plantation," [ ] and twenty years later the lords commissioners of trade stated that "the colonists could not possibly subsist" without an adequate supply of slaves. laws passed in the colonies were regularly disallowed by the crown, and royal governors were warned that the colonists would not be permitted to "discourage a traffic so beneficial to the nation." before virginia passed not less than thirty-three acts looking toward the prohibition of the importation of slaves, but in every instance the act was annulled by england. in the far south, especially in south carolina, we have seen that there were increasingly heavy duties. in spite of all such efforts for restriction, however, the system of negro slavery, once well started, developed apace. [footnote : bogart: _economic history_, .] in two colonies not among the original thirteen but important in the later history of the united states, negroes were present at a very early date, in the spanish colony of florida from the very first, and in the french colony of louisiana as soon as new orleans really began to grow. negroes accompanied the spaniards in their voyages along the south atlantic coast early in the sixteenth century, and specially trained spanish slaves assisted in the founding of st. augustine in . the ambitious schemes in france of the great adventurer, john law, and especially the design of the mississippi company (chartered ) included an agreement for the importation into louisiana of six thousand white persons and three thousand negroes, the company having secured among other privileges the exclusive right to trade with the colony for twenty-five years and the absolute ownership of all mines in it. the sufferings of some of the white emigrants from france--the kidnapping, the revenge, and the chicanery that played so large a part--all make a story complete in itself. as for the negroes, it was definitely stipulated that these should not come from another french colony without the consent of the governor of that colony. the contract had only begun to be carried out when law's bubble burst. however, in june, , there were negroes in louisiana; in the number had increased to . the stories connected with these people are as tragic and wildly romantic as are most of the stories in the history of louisiana. in fact, this colony from the very first owed not a little of its abandon and its fascination to the mysticism that the negroes themselves brought from africa. in the midst of much that is apocryphal one or two events or episodes stand out with distinctness. in , perier, governor at the time, testified with reference to a small company of negroes who had been sent against the indians as follows: "fifteen negroes in whose hands we had put weapons, performed prodigies of valor. if the blacks did not cost so much, and if their labors were not so necessary to the colony, it would be better to turn them into soldiers, and to dismiss those we have, who are so bad and so cowardly that they seem to have been manufactured purposely for this colony[ ]." not always, however, did the negroes fight against the indians. in some representatives of the powerful banbaras had an understanding with the chickasaws by which the latter were to help them in exterminating all the white people and in setting up an independent republic[ ]. they were led by a strong and desperate negro named samba. as a result of this effort for freedom samba and seven of his companions were broken on the wheel and a woman was hanged. already, however, there had been given the suggestion of the possible alliance in the future of the indian and the negro. from the very first also, because of the freedom from restraint of all the elements of population that entered into the life of the colony, there was the beginning of that mixture of the races which was later to tell so vitally on the social life of louisiana and whose effects are so readily apparent even to-day. [footnote : gayarré: _history of louisiana_, i, .] [footnote : _ibid_., i, .] . the wake of the slave-ship thus it was that negroes came to america. thus it was also, we might say, that the negro problem came, though it was not for decades, not until the budding years of american nationality, that the ultimate reaches of the problem were realized. those who came were by no means all of exactly the same race stock and language. plantations frequently exhibited a variety of customs, and sometimes traditional enemies became brothers in servitude. the center of the colonial slave-trade was the african coast for about two hundred miles east of the great niger river. from this comparatively small region came as many slaves as from all the rest of africa together. a number of those who came were of entirely different race stock from the negroes; some were moors, and a very few were malays from madagascar. the actual procuring of the slaves was by no means as easy a process as is sometimes supposed. in general the slave mart brought out the most vicious passions of all who were in any way connected with the traffic. the captain of a vessel had to resort to various expedients to get his cargo. his commonest method was to bring with him a variety of gay cloth, cheap ornaments, and whiskey, which he would give in exchange for slaves brought to him. his task was most simple when a chieftain of one tribe brought to him several hundred prisoners of war. ordinarily, however, the work was more toilsome, and kidnapping a favorite method, though individuals were sometimes enticed on vessels. the work was always dangerous, for the natives along the slave-coast soon became suspicious. after they had seen some of their tribesmen taken away, they learned not to go unarmed while a slave-vessel was on the coast, and very often there were hand-to-hand encounters. it was not long before it began to be impressed upon those interested in the trade that it was not good business to place upon the captain of a vessel the responsibility of getting together three or four hundred slaves, and that it would be better if he could find his cargo waiting for him when he came. thus arose the so-called factories, which were nothing more than warehouses. along the coast were placed small settlements of europeans, whose business it was to stimulate slave-hunting expeditions, negotiate for slaves brought in, and see that they were kept until the arrival of the ships. practically every nation engaged in the traffic planted factories of this kind along the west coast from cape verde to the equator; and thus it was that this part of africa began to be the most flagrantly exploited region in the world; thus whiskey and all the other vices of civilization began to come to a simple and home-loving people. once on board the slaves were put in chains two by two. when the ship was ready to start, the hold of the vessel was crowded with moody and unhappy wretches who most often were made to crouch so that their knees touched their chins, but who also were frequently made to lie on their sides "spoon-fashion." sometimes the space between floor and ceiling was still further diminished by the water-barrels; on the top of these barrels boards were placed, on the boards the slaves had to lie, and in the little space that remained they had to subsist as well as they could. there was generally only one entrance to the hold, and provision for only the smallest amount of air through the gratings on the sides. the clothing of a captive, if there was any at all, consisted of only a rag about the loins. the food was half-rotten rice, yams, beans, or soup, and sometimes bread and meat; the cooking was not good, nor was any care taken to see that all were fed. water was always limited, a pint a day being a generous allowance; frequently no more than a gill could be had. the rule was to bring the slaves from the hold twice a day for an airing, about eight o'clock in the morning and four in the afternoon; but this plan was not always followed. on deck they were made to dance by the lash, and they were also forced to sing. thus were born the sorrow-songs, the last cry of those who saw their homeland vanish behind them--forever. sometimes there were stern fights on board. sometimes food was refused in order that death might be hastened. when opportunity served, some leaped overboard in the hope of being taken back to africa. throughout the night the hold resounded with the moans of those who awoke from dreams of home to find themselves in bonds. women became hysterical, and both men and women became insane. fearful and contagious diseases broke out. smallpox was one of these. more common was ophthalmia, a frightful inflammation of the eyes. a blind, and hence a worthless, slave was thrown to the sharks. the putrid atmosphere, the melancholy, and the sudden transition from heat to cold greatly increased the mortality, and frequently when morning came a dead and a living slave were found shackled together. a captain always counted on losing one-fourth of his cargo. sometimes he lost a great deal more. back on the shore a gray figure with strained gaze watched the ship fade away--an old woman sadly typical of the great african mother. with her vision she better than any one else perceived the meaning of it all. the men with hard faces who came to buy and sell might deceive others, but not her. in a great vague way she felt that something wrong had attacked the very heart of her people. she saw men wild with the whiskey of the christian nations commit crimes undreamed of before. she did not like the coast towns; the girl who went thither came not home again, and a young man was lost to all that africa held dear. in course of time she saw every native craft despised, and instead of the fabric that her own fingers wove her children yearned for the tinsel and the gewgaws of the trader. she cursed this man, and she called upon all her spirits to banish the evil. but when at last all was of no avail--when the strongest youth or the dearest maiden had gone--she went back to her hut and ate her heart out in the darkness. she wept for her children and would not be comforted because they were not. then slowly to the untutored mind somehow came the promise: "these are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb.... they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. for the lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; and god shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." chapter ii the negro in the colonies the negroes who were brought from africa to america were brought hither to work, and to work under compulsion; hence any study of their social life in the colonial era must be primarily a study of their life under the system of slavery, and of the efforts of individuals to break away from the same. . _servitude and slavery_ for the antecedents of negro slavery in america one must go back to the system of indentured labor known as servitude. this has been defined as "a legalized status of indian, white, and negro servants preceding slavery in most, if not all, of the english mainland colonies."[ ] a study of servitude will explain many of the acts with reference to negroes, especially those about intermarriage with white people. for the origins of the system one must go back to social conditions in england in the seventeenth century. while villeinage had been formally abolished in england at the middle of the fourteenth century, it still lingered in remote places, and even if men were not technically villeins they might be subjected to long periods of service. by the middle of the fifteenth century the demand for wool had led to the enclosure of many farms for sheep-raising, and accordingly to distress on the part of many agricultural laborers. conditions were not improved early in the sixteenth century, and they were in fact made more acute, the abolition of the monasteries doing away with many of the sources of relief. men out of work were thrown upon the highways and thus became a menace to society. in the price of wheat was s. a quarter and wages were d. a day. the situation steadily grew worse, and in , while wages were still the same, wheat was s. a quarter. rents were constantly rising, moreover, and many persons died from starvation. in the course of the seventeenth century paupers and dissolute persons more and more filled the jails and workhouses. [footnote : _new international encyclopædia_, article "slavery."] meanwhile in the young colonies across the sea labor was scarce, and it seemed to many an act of benevolence to bring from england persons who could not possibly make a living at home and give them some chance in the new world. from the very first, children, and especially young people between the ages of twelve and twenty, were the most desired. the london company undertook to meet half of the cost of the transportation and maintenance of children sent out by parish authorities, the understanding being that it would have the service of the same until they were of age.[ ] the company was to teach each boy a trade and when his freedom year arrived was to give to each one fifty acres, a cow, some seed corn, tools, and firearms. he then became the company's tenant, for seven years more giving to it one-half of his produce, at the end of which time he came into full possession of twenty-five acres. after the company collapsed individuals took up the idea. children under twelve years of age might be bound for seven years, and persons over twenty-one for no more than four; but the common term was five years. [footnote : coman: _industrial history_, .] under this system fell servants voluntary and involuntary. hundreds of people, too poor to pay for their transportation, sold themselves for a number of years to pay for the transfer. some who were known as "freewillers" had some days in which to dispose of themselves to the best advantage in america; if they could not make satisfactory terms, they too were sold to pay for the passage. more important from the standpoint of the system itself, however, was the number of involuntary servants brought hither. political offenders, vagrants, and other criminals were thus sent to the colonies, and many persons, especially boys and girls, were kidnapped in the streets of london and "spirited" away. thus came irishmen or scotchmen who had incurred the ire of the crown, cavaliers or roundheads according as one party or the other was out of power, and farmers who had engaged in monmouth's rebellion; and in the year alone it was estimated that not less than ten thousand persons were "spirited" away from england. it is easy to see how such a system became a highly profitable one for shipmasters and those in connivance with them. virginia objected to the criminals, and in the house of burgesses passed a law against the importing of such persons, and the same was approved by the governor. seven years later, however, it was set aside for the transportation of political offenders. as having the status of an apprentice the servant could sue in court and he was regularly allowed "freedom dues" at the expiration of his term. he could not vote, however, could not bear weapons, and of course could not hold office. in some cases, especially where the system was voluntary, servants sustained kindly relations with their masters, a few even becoming secretaries or tutors. more commonly, however, the lot of the indentured laborer was a hard one, his food often being only coarse indian meal, and water mixed with molasses. the moral effect of the system was bad in the fate to which it subjected woman and in the evils resulting from the sale of the labor of children. in this whole connection, however, it is to be remembered that the standards of the day were very different from those of our own. the modern humanitarian impulse had not yet moved the heart of england, and flogging was still common for soldiers and sailors, criminals and children alike. the first negroes brought to the colonies were technically servants, and generally as negro slavery advanced white servitude declined. james ii, in fact, did whatever he could to hasten the end of servitude in order that slavery might become more profitable. economic forces were with him, for while a slave varied in price from £ to £ , the mere cost of transporting a servant was from £ to £ . "servitude became slavery when to such incidents as alienation, disfranchisement, whipping, and limited marriage were added those of perpetual service and a denial of civil, juridical, marital and property rights as well as the denial of the possession of children."[ ] even after slavery was well established, however, white men and women were frequently retained as domestic servants, and the system of servitude did not finally pass in all of its phases before the beginning of the revolutionary war. [footnote : _new international encyclopædia_, article "slavery."] negro slavery was thus distinctively an evolution. as the first negroes were taken by pirates, the rights of ownership could not legally be given to those who purchased them; hence slavery by custom preceded slavery by statute. little by little the colonies drifted into the sterner system. the transition was marked by such an act as that in rhode island, which in permitted a negro to be bound for ten years. we have already referred to the act of assembly in virginia in to the effect that negroes were incapable of making satisfaction for time lost in running away by addition of time. even before it had become generally enacted or understood in the colonies, however, that a child born of slave parents should serve for life, a new question had arisen, that of the issue of a free person and a slave. this led virginia in to lead the way with an act declaring that the status of a child should be determined by that of the mother,[ ] which act both gave to slavery the sanction of law and made it hereditary. from this time forth virginia took a commanding lead in legislation; and it is to be remembered that when we refer to this province we by no means have reference to the comparatively small state of to-day, but to the richest and most populous of the colonies. this position virginia maintained until after the revolutionary war, and not only the present west virginia but the great northwest territory were included in her domain. [footnote : hening: _statutes_, ii, .] the slave had none of the ordinary rights of citizenship; in a criminal case he could be arrested, tried, and condemned with but one witness against him, and he could be sentenced without a jury. in virginia in one hugh davis was ordered to be "soundly whipped before an assembly of negroes and others, for abusing himself to the dishonor of god and the shame of christians, by defiling his body in lying with a negro."[ ] just ten years afterwards, in , one robert sweet was ordered "to do penance in church, according to the laws of england, for getting a negro woman with child, and the woman to be whipped."[ ] thus from the very beginning the intermixture of the races was frowned upon and went on all the same. by the time, moreover, that the important acts of and had formally sanctioned slavery, doubt had arisen in the minds of some virginians as to whether one christian could legitimately hold another in bondage; and in it was definitely stated that the conferring of baptism did not alter the condition of a person as to his bondage or freedom, so that masters, freed from this doubt, could now "more carefully endeavor the propagation of christianity." in an "act about the casual killing of slaves" provided that if any slave resisted his master and under the extremity of punishment chanced to die, his death was not to be considered a felony and the master was to be acquitted. in it was made clear that none but freeholders and housekeepers should vote in the election of burgesses, and in the same year provision was taken against the possible ownership of a white servant by a free negro, who nevertheless "was not debarred from buying any of his own nation." in there was legislation "for the more speedy prosecution of slaves committing capital crimes"; and this was reënacted in , when some provision was made for the compensation of owners and when it was further declared that negro, mulatto, and indian slaves within the dominion were "real estate" and "incapable in law to be witnesses in any cases whatsoever"; and in there was an elaborate and detailed act "directing the trial of slaves committing capital crimes, and for the more effectual punishing conspiracies and insurrections of them, and for the better government of negroes, mulattoes, and indians, bond or free." this last act specifically stated that no slave should be set free upon any pretense whatsoever "except for some meritorious services, to be adjudged and allowed by the governor and council." all this legislation was soon found to be too drastic and too difficult to enforce, and modification was inevitable. this came in , when it was made possible for a slave to be a witness when another slave was on trial for a capital offense, and in this provision was extended to civil cases as well. in there was a general revision of all existing legislation, with special provision against attempted insurrections. [footnote : hening: _statutes_, i, .] [footnote : _ibid_., i, .] thus did virginia pave the way, and more and more slave codes took on some degree of definiteness and uniformity. very important was the act of , which provided that a slave might be inventoried as real estate. as property henceforth there was nothing to prevent his being separated from his family. before the law he was no longer a person but a thing. . _the indian, the mulatto, and the free negro_ all along, it is to be observed, the problem of the negro was complicated by that of the indian. at first there was a feeling that indians were to be treated not as negroes but as on the same basis as englishmen. an act in virginia of - summed up this feeling in the provision that they were not to be sold as servants for any longer time than english people of the same age, and injuries done to them were to be duly remedied by the laws of england. about the same time a powhatan indian sold for life was ordered to be set free. an interesting enactment of attempted to give the indian an intermediate status between that of the englishman and the negro slave, as "servants not being christians, imported into the colony by shipping" (i.e., negroes) were to be slaves for their lives, but those that came by land were to serve "if boys or girls until thirty years of age; if men or women, twelve years and no longer." all such legislation, however, was radically changed as a result of nathaniel bacon's rebellion of , in which the aid of the natives was invoked against the english governor. henceforth indians taken in war became the slaves for life of their captors. an elaborate act of summed up the new status, and indians sold by other indians were to be "adjudged, deemed, and taken to be slaves, to all intents and purposes, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding." indian women were to be "tithables,"[ ] and they were required to pay levies just as negro women. from this time forth enactments generally included indians along with negroes, but of course the laws placed on the statute books did not always bear close relation to what was actually enforced, and in general the indian was destined to be a vanishing rather than a growing problem. very early in the eighteenth century, in connection with the wars between the english and the spanish in florida, hundreds of indians were shipped to the west indies and some to new england. massachusetts in prohibited such importation, as the indians were "malicious, surly, and very ungovernable," and she was followed to similar effect by pennsylvania in , by new hampshire in , and by connecticut and rhode island in . [footnote : hurd, commenting on an act of declaring all imported male servants to be tithables, speaks as follows ( ): "_tithables_ were persons assessed for a poll-tax, otherwise called the 'county levies.' at first, only free white persons were tithable. the law of provided for a tax on property and tithable persons. by property was released and taxes levied only on the tithables, at a specified poll-tax. therefore by classing servants or slaves as tithables, the law attributes to them legal personality, or a membership in the social state inconsistent with the condition of a chattel or property."] if the indian was destined to be a vanishing factor, the mulatto and the free negro most certainly were not. in spite of all the laws to prevent it, the intermixture of the races increased, and manumission somehow also increased. sometimes a master in his will provided that several of his slaves should be given their freedom. occasionally a slave became free by reason of what was regarded as an act of service to the commonwealth, as in the case of one will, slave belonging to robert ruffin, of the county of surry in virginia, who in divulged a conspiracy.[ ] there is, moreover, on record a case of an indentured negro servant, john geaween, who by his unusual thrift in the matter of some hogs which he raised on the share system with his master, was able as early as to purchase his own son from another master, to the perfect satisfaction of all concerned.[ ] of special importance for some years were those persons who were descendants of negro fathers and indentured white mothers, and who at first were of course legally free. by the problem had become acute in virginia. in this year "for prevention of that abominable mixture and spurious issue, which hereafter may increase in this dominion, as well by negroes, mulattoes and indians intermarrying with english or other white women, as by their unlawful accompanying with one another," it was enacted that "for the time to come whatsoever english or other white man or woman being free shall intermarry with a negro, mulatto, or indian man or woman, bond or free, shall within three months after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever, and that the justices of each respective county within this dominion make it their particular care that this act be put in effectual execution."[ ] a white woman who became the mother of a child by a negro or mulatto was to be fined £ sterling, in default of payment was to be sold for five years, while the child was to be bound in servitude to the church wardens until thirty years of age. it was further provided that if any negro or mulatto was set free, he was to be transported from the country within six months of his manumission (which enactment is typical of those that it was difficult to enforce and that after a while were only irregularly observed). in it was enacted that no "negro, mulatto, or indian shall from and after the publication of this act bear any office ecclesiastical, civil or military, or be in any place of public trust or power, within this her majesty's colony and dominion of virginia"; and to clear any doubt that might arise as to who should be accounted a mulatto, it was provided that "the child of an indian, and the child, grandchild, or great-grandchild of a negro shall be deemed, accounted, held, and taken to be a mulatto." it will be observed that while the act of said that "none but freeholders and housekeepers" could vote, this act of did not specifically legislate against voting by a mulatto or a free negro, and that some such privilege was exercised for a while appears from the definite provision in that "no free negro, mulatto, or indian, whatsoever, shall hereafter have any vote at the election of burgesses, or any other election whatsoever." in the same year it was provided that free negroes and mulattoes might be employed as drummers or trumpeters in servile labor, but that they were not to bear arms; and all free negroes above sixteen years of age were declared tithable. in , however, all free negro and mulatto women were exempted from levies as tithables, such levies having proved to be burdensome and "derogatory to the rights of freeborn subjects." [footnote : hening: _statutes_, iii, .] [footnote : _virginia magazine of history_, x, .] [footnote : the penalty was so ineffective that in it was changed simply to imprisonment for six months "without bail or mainprise."] more than other colonies maryland seems to have been troubled about the intermixture of the races; certainly no other phase of slavery here received so much attention. this was due to the unusual emphasis on white servitude in the colony. in it was enacted that any freeborn woman intermarrying with a slave should serve the master of the slave during the life of her husband and that any children resulting from the union were also to be slaves. this act was evidently intended to frighten the indentured woman from such a marriage. it had a very different effect. many masters, in order to prolong the indenture of their white female servants, encouraged them to marry negro slaves. accordingly a new law in threw the responsibility not on the indentured woman but on the master or mistress; in case a marriage took place between a white woman-servant and a slave, the woman was to be free at once, any possible issue was to be free, and the minister performing the ceremony and the master or mistress were to be fined ten thousand pounds of tobacco. this did not finally dispose of the problem, however, and in , in response to a slightly different situation, it was enacted that a white woman who became the mother of a child by a free negro father should become a servant for seven years, the father also a servant for seven years, and the child a servant until thirty-one years of age. any white man who begot a negro woman with child, whether a free woman or a slave, was to undergo the same penalty as a white woman--a provision that in course of time was notoriously disregarded. in the problem was still unsettled, and in this year it was enacted that negroes or mulattoes of either sex intermarrying with white people were to be slaves for life, except mulattoes born of white women, who were to serve for seven years, and the white person so intermarrying also for seven years. it is needless to say that with all these changing and contradictory provisions many servants and negroes did not even know what the law was. in , however, free mulatto women having illegitimate children by negroes and other slaves, and free negro women having illegitimate children by white men, and their issue, were subjected to the same penalties as in the former act were provided against white women. thus vainly did the colony of maryland struggle with the problem of race intermixture. generally throughout the south the rule in the matter of the child of the negro father and the indentured white mother was that the child should be bound in servitude for thirty or thirty-one years. in the north as well as in the south the intermingling of the blood of the races was discountenanced. in pennsylvania as early as a white servant was indicted for cohabiting with a negro. in the chester county court laid it down as a principle that the mingling of the races was not to be allowed. in a woman was punished for promoting a secret marriage between a white woman and a negro; a little later the assembly received from the inhabitants of the province a petition inveighing against cohabiting; and in - a law was passed positively forbidding the mixture of the races.[ ] in massachusetts as early as and restraining acts to prevent a "spurious and mixt issue" ordered the sale of offending negroes and mulattoes out of the colony's jurisdiction, and punished christians who intermarried with them by a fine of £ . after the revolutionary war such marriages were declared void and the penalty of £ was still exacted, and not until was this act repealed. thus was the color-line, with its social and legal distinctions, extended beyond the conditions of servitude and slavery, and thus early was an important phase of the ultimate negro problem foreshadowed. [footnote : turner: _the negro in pennsylvania_, - .] generally then, in the south, in the colonial period, the free negro could not vote, could not hold civil office, could not give testimony in cases involving white men, and could be employed only for fatigue duty in the militia. he could not purchase white servants, could not intermarry with white people, and had to be very circumspect in his relations with slaves. no deprivation of privilege, however, relieved him of the obligation to pay taxes. such advantages as he possessed were mainly economic. the money gained from his labor was his own; he might become skilled at a trade; he might buy land; he might buy slaves;[ ] he might even buy his wife and child if, as most frequently happened, they were slaves; and he might have one gun with which to protect his home.[ ] once in a long while he might even find some opportunity for education, as when the church became the legal warden of negro apprentices. frequently he found a place in such a trade as that of the barber or in other personal service, and such work accounted very largely for the fact that he was generally permitted to remain in communities where technically he had no right to be. in the north his situation was little better than in the south, and along economic lines even harder. everywhere his position was a difficult one. he was most frequently regarded as idle and shiftless, and as a breeder of mischief; but if he showed unusual thrift he might even be forced to leave his home and go elsewhere. liberty, the boon of every citizen, the free negro did not possess. for all the finer things of life--the things that make life worth living--the lot that was his was only less hard than that of the slave. [footnote : russell: _the free negro in virginia_, - , cites from the court records of northampton county, - and - , the noteworthy case of a free negro, anthony johnson, who had come to virginia not later than and who by owned a large tract of land on the eastern shore. to him belonged a negro, john casor. after several years of labor casor demanded his freedom on the ground that from the first he had been an indentured servant and not a slave. when the case came up in court, however, not only did johnson win the verdict that casor was his slave, but he also won his suit against robert parker, a white man, who he asserted had illegally detained casor.] [footnote : hening: _statutes_, iv, .] . _first effort for social betterment_ if now we turn aside from laws and statutes and consider the ordinary life and social intercourse of the negro, we shall find more than one contradiction, for in the colonial era codes affecting slaves and free negroes had to grope their way to uniformity. especially is it necessary to distinguish between the earlier and the later years of the period, for as early as the liberalism of the revolutionary era began to be felt. if we consider what was strictly the colonial epoch, we may find it necessary to make a division about the year . before this date the status of the negro was complicated by the incidents of the system of servitude; after it, however, in virginia, pennsylvania, and massachusetts alike, special discrimination against him on account of race was given formal recognition. by there were in virginia , negroes, and in all the colonies , , or per cent of the total population.[ ] by , however, the negroes in virginia numbered , and the white people but , .[ ] thirty-eight of the forty-nine counties had more negro than white tithables, and eleven of the counties had a negro population varying from one-fourth to one-half more than the white. a great many of the negroes had only recently been imported from africa, and they were especially baffling to their masters of course when they conversed in their native tongues. at first only men were brought, but soon women came also, and the treatment accorded these people varied all the way from occasional indulgence to the utmost cruelty. the hours of work regularly extended from sunrise to sunset, though corn-husking and rice-beating were sometimes continued after dark, and overseers were almost invariably ruthless, often having a share in the crops. those who were house-servants would go about only partially clad, and the slave might be marked or branded like one of the lower animals; he was not thought to have a soul, and the law sought to deprive him of all human attributes. holiday amusement consisted largely of the dances that the negroes had brought with them, these being accompanied by the beating of drums and the blowing of horns; and funeral ceremonies featured african mummeries. for those who were criminal offenders simple execution was not always considered severe enough; the right hand might first be amputated, the criminal then hanged and his head cut off, and his body quartered and the parts suspended in public places. sometimes the hanging was in chains, and several instances of burning are on record. a master was regularly reimbursed by the government for a slave legally executed, and in there was a complaint in south carolina that the treasury had become almost exhausted by such reimbursements. in massachusetts hanging was the worst legal penalty, but the obsolete common-law punishment was revived in to burn alive a slave-woman who had killed her master in cambridge.[ ] [footnote : blake: _history of slavery and the slave-trade_, .] [footnote : ballagh: _slavery in virginia_, .] [footnote : edward eggleston: "social conditions in the colonies," in _century magazine_, october, , p. .] the relations between the free negro and the slave might well have given cause for concern. above what was after all only an artificial barrier spoke the call of race and frequently of kindred. sometimes at a later date jealousy arose when a master employed a free negro to work with his slaves, the one receiving pay and the others laboring without compensation. in general, however, the two groups worked like brothers, each giving the other the benefit of any temporary advantage that it possessed. sometimes the free negro could serve by reason of the greater freedom of movement that he had, and if no one would employ him, or if, as frequently happened, he was browbeaten and cheated out of the reward of his labor, the slave might somehow see that he got something to eat. in a state of society in which the relation of master and slave was the rule, there was of course little place for either the free negro or the poor white man. when the pressure became too great the white man moved away; the negro, finding himself everywhere buffeted, in the colonial era at least had little choice but to work out his salvation at home as well as he could. more and more character told, and if a man had made himself known for his industry and usefulness, a legislative act might even be passed permitting him to remain in the face of a hostile law. even before there were in virginia families in which both parents were free colored persons and in which every effort was made to bring up the children in honesty and morality. when some prosperous negroes found themselves able to do so, they occasionally purchased negroes, who might be their own children or brothers, in order to give them that protection without which on account of recent manumission they might be required to leave the colony in which they were born. thus, whatever the motive, the tie that bound the free negro and the slave was a strong one; and in spite of the fact that negroes who owned slaves were generally known as hard masters, as soon as any men of the race began to be really prominent their best endeavor was devoted to the advancement of their people. it was not until immediately after the revolutionary war, however, that leaders of vision and statesmanship began to be developed. it was only the materialism of the eighteenth century that accounted for the amazing development of the system of negro slavery, and only this that defeated the benevolence of oglethorpe's scheme for the founding of georgia. as yet there was no united protest--no general movement for freedom; and as von holst said long afterwards, "if the agitation had been wholly left to the churches, it would have been long before men could have rightly spoken of 'a slavery question.'" the puritans, however, were not wholly unmindful of the evil, and the quakers were untiring in their opposition, though it was roger williams who in made the first protest that appears in the colonies.[ ] both john eliot and cotton mather were somewhat generally concerned about the harsh treatment of the negro and the neglect of his spiritual welfare. somewhat more to the point was richard baxter, the eminent english nonconformist, who was a contemporary of both of these men. "remember," said he, in speaking of negroes and other slaves, "that they are of as good a kind as you; that is, they are reasonable creatures as well as you, and born to as much natural liberty. if their sin have enslaved them to you, yet nature made them your equals." on the subject of man-stealing he is even stronger: "to go as pirates and catch up poor negroes or people of another land, that never forfeited life or liberty, and to make them slaves, and sell them, is one of the worst kinds of thievery in the world." such statements, however, were not more than the voice of individual opinion. the principles of the quakers carried them far beyond the puritans, and their history shows what might have been accomplished if other denominations had been as sincere and as unselfish as the society of friends. the germantown protest of has already been remarked. in george keith, in speaking of fugitives, quoted with telling effect the text, "thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee" (deut. . ). in the yearly meeting in pennsylvania first took definite action in giving as its advice "that friends be careful not to encourage the bringing in of any more negroes; and that such that have negroes, be careful of them, bring them to meetings, have meetings with them in their families, and restrain them from loose and lewd living as much as in them lies, and from rambling abroad on first-days or other times."[ ] as early as the quakers had in mind a scheme for freeing the negroes and returning them to africa, and by their efforts against importation had seriously impaired the market for slaves in philadelphia. within a century after the germantown protest the abolition of slavery among the quakers was practically accomplished. [footnote : for this and the references immediately following note locke: _anti-slavery in america_, - .] [footnote : _brief statement of the rise and progress of the testimony of the religious society of friends against slavery and the slave-trade_, .] in the very early period there seems to have been little objection to giving a free negro not only religious but also secular instruction; indeed he might be entitled to this, as in virginia, where in the church became the agency through which the laws of negro apprenticeship were carried out; thus in it was ordered that david james, a free negro boy, be bound to mr. james isdel, who was to "teach him to read the bible distinctly, also the trade of a gunsmith" and "carry him to the clerk's office and take indenture to that purpose."[ ] in general the english church did a good deal to provide for the religious instruction of the free negro; "the reports made in to the english bishop by the virginia parish ministers are evidence that the few free negroes in the parishes were permitted to be baptized, and were received into the church when they had been taught the catechism."[ ] among negroes, moreover, as well as others in the colonies the society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts was active. as early as , in goose creek parish in south carolina, among a population largely recently imported from africa, a missionary had among his communicants twenty blacks who well understood the english tongue.[ ] the most effective work of the society, however, was in new york, where as early as a school was opened by elias neau, a frenchman who after several years of imprisonment because of his protestant faith had come to new york to try his fortune as a trader. in he had called the attention of the society to the negroes who were "without god in the world, and of whose souls there was no manner of care taken," and had suggested the appointment of a catechist. he himself was prevailed upon to take up the work and he accordingly resigned his position as an elder in the french church and conformed to the church of england. he worked with success for a number of years, but in was embarrassed by the charge that his school fomented the insurrection that was planned in that year. he finally showed, however, that only one of his students was in any way connected with the uprising. [footnote : russell: _the free negro in virginia_, - .] [footnote : _ibid_., .] [footnote : c.e. pierre, in _journal of negro history_, october, , p. .] from slave advertisements of the eighteenth century[ ] we may gain many sidelights not only on the education of negroes in the colonial era, but on their environment and suffering as well. one slave "can write a pretty good hand; plays on the fife extremely well." another "can both read and write and is a good fiddler." still others speak "dutch and good english," "good english and high dutch," or "swede and english well." charles thomas of delaware bore the following remarkable characterization: "very black, has white teeth ... has had his left leg broke ... speaks both french and english, and is a very great rogue." one man who came from the west indies "was born in dominica and speaks french, but very little english; he is a very ill-natured fellow and has been much cut in his back by often whipping." a negro named simon who in ran away in pennsylvania "could bleed and draw teeth pretending to be a great doctor." worst of all the incidents of slavery, however, was the lack of regard for home ties, and this situation of course obtained in the north as well as the south. in the early part of the eighteenth century marriages in new york were by mutual consent only, without the blessing of the church, and burial was in a common field without any christian office. in massachusetts in rev. samuel phillips drew up a marriage formulary especially designed for slaves and concluding as follows: "for you must both of you bear in mind that you remain still, as really and truly as ever, your master's property, and therefore it will be justly expected, both by god and man, that you behave and conduct yourselves as obedient and faithful servants."[ ] in massachusetts, however, as in new york, marriage was most often by common consent simply, without the office of ministers. [footnote : see documents, "eighteenth century slave advertisements," _journal of negro history_, april, , - .] [footnote : quoted from williams: centennial oration, "the american negro from to ," .] as yet there was no racial consciousness, no church, no business organization, and the chief coöperative effort was in insurrection. until the great chain of slavery was thrown off, little independent effort could be put forth. even in the state of servitude or slavery, however, the social spirit of the race yearned to assert itself, and such an event as a funeral was attractive primarily because of the social features that it developed. as early as there is record of the formation of a distinct society by negroes. in one of his manuscript diaries, preserved in the library of the massachusetts historical society,[ ] cotton mather in october of this year wrote as follows: "besides the other praying and pious meetings which i have been continually serving in our neighborhood, a little after this period a company of poor negroes, of their own accord, addressed me, for my countenance to a design which they had, of erecting such a meeting for the welfare of their miserable nation, that were servants among us. i allowed their design and went one evening and prayed and preached (on ps. . ) with them; and gave them the following orders, which i insert duly for the curiosity of the occasion." the rules to which mather here refers are noteworthy as containing not one suggestion of anti-slavery sentiment, and as portraying the altogether abject situation of the negro at the time he wrote; nevertheless the text used was an inspiring one, and in any case the document must have historical importance as the earliest thing that has come down to us in the nature of the constitution or by-laws for a distinctively negro organization. it is herewith given entire: rules for the society of negroes. . we the miserable children of adam, and of noah, thankfully admiring and accepting the free-grace of god, that offers to save us from our miseries, by the lord jesus christ, freely resolve, with his help, to become the servants of that glorious lord. and that we may be assisted in the service of our heavenly master, we now join together in a society, wherein the following rules are to be observed. i. it shall be our endeavor, to meet in the _evening_ after the _sabbath_; and pray together by turns, one to begin, and another to conclude the meeting; and between the two _prayers_, a _psalm_ shall be sung, and a _sermon_ repeated. ii. our coming to the meeting, shall never be without the _leave_ of such as have power over us: and we will be careful, that our meeting may begin and conclude between the hours of _seven_ and _nine_; and that we may not be _unseasonably absent_ from the families whereto we pertain. iii. as we will, with the help of god, at all times avoid all _wicked company_, so we will receive none into our meeting, but such as have sensibly _reformed_ their lives from all manner of wickedness. and, therefore, none shall be admitted, without the knowledge and consent of the _minister_ of god in this place; unto whom we will also carry every person, that seeks for _admission_ among us; to be by him examined, instructed and exhorted. iv. we will, as often as may be, obtain some wise and good man, of the english in the neighborhood, and especially the officers of the church, to look in upon us, and by their presence and counsel, do what they think fitting for us. v. if any of our number fall into the sin of _drunkenness_, or _swearing_, or _cursing_, or _lying_, or _stealing_, or notorious _disobedience_ or _unfaithfulness_ unto their masters, we will admonish him of his miscarriage, and forbid his coming to the meeting, for at least _one fortnight_; and except he then come with great signs and hopes of his _repentance_, we will utterly exclude him, with blotting his _name_ out of our list. vi. if any of our society defile himself with _fornication_, we will give him our _admonition_; and so, debar him from the meeting, at least half a year: nor shall he return to it, ever any more, without exemplary testimonies of his becoming a _new creature_. vii. we will, as we have opportunity, set ourselves to do all the good we can, to the other _negro-servants_ in the town; and if any of them should, at unfit hours, be _abroad_, much more, if any of them should _run away_ from their masters, we will afford them _no shelter_: but we will do what in us lies, that they may be discovered, and punished. and if any of _us_ are found faulty in this matter, they shall be no longer of _us_. viii. none of our society shall be _absent_ from our meeting, without giving a reason of the absence; and if it be found, that any have pretended unto their _owners_, that they came unto the meeting, when they were otherwise and elsewhere employed, we will faithfully _inform_ their owners, and also do what we can to reclaim such person from all such evil courses for the future: ix. it shall be expected from every one in the society, that he learn the catechism; and therefore, it shall be one of our usual exercises, for one of us, to ask the _questions_, and for all the rest in their order, to say the _answers_ in the catechism; either, the _new english_ catechism, or the _assemblies_ catechism, or the catechism in the _negro christianised_. [footnote : see _rules for the society of negroes_, , by cotton mather, reprinted, new york, , by george h. moore.] . early insurrections the negroes who came to america directly from africa in the eighteenth century were strikingly different from those whom generations of servitude later made comparatively docile. they were wild and turbulent in disposition and were likely at any moment to take revenge for the great wrong that had been inflicted upon them. the planters in the south knew this and lived in constant fear of uprisings. when the situation became too threatening, they placed prohibitive duties on importations, and they also sought to keep their slaves in subjection by barbarous and cruel modes of punishment, both crucifixion and burning being legalized in some early codes. on sea as well as on land negroes frequently rose upon those who held them in bondage, and sometimes they actually won their freedom. more and more, however, in any study of negro insurrections it becomes difficult to distinguish between a clearly organized revolt and what might be regarded as simply a personal crime, so that those uprisings considered in the following discussion can only be construed as the more representative of the many attempts for freedom made by negro slaves in the colonial era. in there was in virginia a conspiracy among the negroes in the northern neck that was detected just in time to prevent slaughter, and in surry county in there was a similar plot, betrayed by one of the conspirators. in , in south carolina, several negroes ran away from their masters and "kept out, armed, robbing and plundering houses and plantations, and putting the inhabitants of the province in great fear and terror";[ ] and governor gibbes more than once wrote to the legislature about amending the negro act, as the one already in force did "not reach up to some of the crimes" that were daily being committed. for one sebastian, "a spanish negro," alive or dead, a reward of £ was offered, and he was at length brought in by the indians and taken in triumph to charleston. in in new york occurred an outbreak that occasioned greater excitement than any uprising that had preceded it in the colonies. early in the morning of april some slaves of the carmantee and pappa tribes who had suffered ill-usage, set on fire the house of peter van tilburgh, and, armed with guns and knives, killed and wounded several persons who came to extinguish the flames. they fled, however, when the governor ordered the cannon to be fired to alarm the town, and they got away to the woods as well as they could, but not before they had killed several more of the citizens. some shot themselves in the woods and others were captured. altogether eight or ten white persons were killed, and, aside from those negroes who had committed suicide, eighteen or more were executed, several others being transported. of those executed one was hanged alive in chains, some were burned at the stake, and one was left to die a lingering death before the gaze of the town. [footnote : holland: _a refutation of calumnies_, .] in may, , some negroes in south carolina were fairly well organized and killed a man named benjamin cattle, one white woman, and a little negro boy. they were pursued and twenty-three taken and six convicted. three of the latter were executed, the other three escaping. in october, , the negroes near the mouth of the rappahannock in virginia undertook to kill the white people while the latter were assembled in church, but were discovered and put to flight. on this occasion, as on most others, sunday was the day chosen for the outbreak, the negroes then being best able to get together. in april, , it was thought that some fires in boston had been started by negroes, and the selectmen recommended that if more than two negroes were found "lurking together" on the streets they should be put in the house of correction. in there was a well organized attempt in savannah, then a place of three thousand white people and two thousand seven hundred negroes. the plan to kill all the white people failed because of disagreement as to the exact method; but the body of negroes had to be, fired on more than once before it dispersed. in there was in williamsburg, va., an insurrection that grew out of a report that colonel spotswood had orders from the king to free all baptized persons on his arrival; men from all the surrounding counties had to be called in before it could be put down. the first open rebellion in south carolina in which negroes were "actually armed and embodied"[ ] took place in . the plan was for each negro to kill his master in the dead of night, then for all to assemble supposedly for a dancing-bout, rush upon the heart of the city, take possession of the arms, and kill any white man they saw. the plot was discovered and the leaders executed. in this same colony three formidable insurrections broke out within the one year --one in st. paul's parish, one in st. john's, and one in charleston. to some extent these seem to have been fomented by the spaniards in the south, and in one of them six houses were burned and as many as twenty-five white people killed. the negroes were pursued and fourteen killed. within two days "twenty more were killed, and forty were taken, some of whom were shot, some hanged, and some gibbeted alive."[ ] this "examplary punishment," as governor gibbes called it, was by no means effective, for in the very next year, , there broke out what might be considered the most formidable insurrection in the south in the whole colonial period. a number of negroes, having assembled at stono, first surprised, and killed two young men in a warehouse, from which they then took guns and ammunition.[ ] they then elected as captain one of their own number named cato, whom they agreed to follow, and they marched towards the southwest, with drums beating and colors flying, like a disciplined company. they entered the home of a man named godfrey, and having murdered him and his wife and children, they took all the arms he had, set fire to the house, and proceeded towards jonesboro. on their way they plundered and burned every house to which they came, killing every white person they found and compelling the negroes to join them. governor bull, who happened to be returning to charleston from the southward, met them, and observing them armed, spread the alarm, which soon reached the presbyterian church at wilton, where a number of planters was assembled. the women were left in the church trembling with fear, while the militia formed and marched in quest of the negroes, who by this time had become formidable from the number that had joined them. they had marched twelve miles and spread desolation through all the plantations on their way. they had then halted in an open field and too soon had begun to sing and drink and dance by way of triumph. during these rejoicings the militia discovered them and stationed themselves in different places around them to prevent their escape. one party then advanced into the open field and attacked the negroes. some were killed and the others were forced to the woods. many ran back to the plantations, hoping thus to avoid suspicion, but most of them were taken and tried. such as had been forced to join the uprising against their will were pardoned, but all of the chosen leaders and the first insurgents were put to death. all carolina, we are told, was struck with terror and consternation by this insurrection, in which more than twenty white persons were killed. it was followed immediately by the famous and severe negro act of , which among other provisions imposed a duty of £ on africans and £ on colonial negroes. this remained technically in force until , and yet as soon as security and confidence were restored, there was a relaxation in the execution of the provisions of the act and the negroes little by little regained confidence in themselves and again began to plan and act in concert. [footnote : holland: _a refutation of calumnies_, .] [footnote : coffin.] [footnote : the following account follows mainly holland, quoting hewitt.] about the time of cato's insurrection there were also several uprisings at sea. in , on a ship returning to rhode island from guinea with a cargo of slaves, the negroes rose and killed three of the crew, all the members of which died soon afterwards with the exception of the captain and his boy. the next year captain john major of portsmouth, n.h., was murdered with all his crew, his schooner and cargo being seized by the slaves. in the captives on the _dolphin_ of london, while still on the coast of africa, overpowered the crew, broke into the powder room, and finally in the course of their effort for freedom blew up both themselves and the crew. a most remarkable design--as an insurrection perhaps not as formidable as that of cato, but in some ways the most important single event in the history of the negro in the colonial period--was the plot in the city of new york in . new york was at the time a thriving town of twelve thousand inhabitants, and the calamity that now befell it was unfortunate in every way. it was not only a negro insurrection, though the negro finally suffered most bitterly. it was also a strange compound of the effects of whiskey and gambling, of the designs of abandoned white people, and of prejudice against the catholics. prominent in the remarkable drama were john hughson, a shoemaker and alehouse keeper; sarah hughson, his wife; john romme, also a shoemaker and alehouse keeper; margaret kerry, alias salinburgh, commonly known as peggy; john ury, a priest; and a number of negroes, chief among whom were cæsar, prince, cuffee, and quack.[ ] prominent among those who helped to work out the plot were mary burton, a white servant of hughson's, sixteen years of age; arthur price, a young white man who at the time of the proceedings happened to be in prison on a charge of stealing; a young seaman named wilson; and two white women, mrs. earle and mrs. hogg, the latter of whom assisted in the store kept by her husband, robert hogg. hughson's house on the outskirts of the town was a resort for negroes, and hughson himself aided and abetted the negro men in any crime that they might commit. romme was of similar quality. peggy was a prostitute, and it was cæsar who paid for her board with the hughsons. in the previous summer she had found lodging with these people, a little later she had removed to romme's, and just before christmas she had come back to hughson's, and a few weeks thereafter she became a mother. at both the public houses the negroes would engage in drinking and gambling; and importance also attaches to an organization of theirs known as the geneva society, which had angered some of the white citizens by its imitation of the rites and forms of freemasonry. [footnote : the sole authority on the plot is "a journal of the proceedings in the detection of the conspiracy formed by some white people, in conjunction with negro and other slaves, for burning the city of new york in america, and murdering the inhabitants (by judge daniel horsemanden). new york, ."] events really began on the night of saturday, february , , with a robbery in the house of hogg, the merchant, from which were taken various pieces of linen and other goods, several silver coins, chiefly spanish, and medals, to the value of about £ . on the day before, in the course of a simple purchase by wilson, mrs. hogg had revealed to the young seaman her treasure. he soon spoke of the same to cæsar, prince, and cuffee, with whom he was acquainted; he gave them the plan of the house, and they in turn spoke of the matter to hughson. wilson, however, when later told of the robbery by mrs. hogg, at once turned suspicion upon the negroes, especially cæsar; and mary burton testified that she saw some of the speckled linen in question in peggy's room after cæsar had gone thither. on wednesday, march , a fire broke out on the roof of his majesty's house at fort george. one week later, on march , there was a fire at the home of captain warren in the southwest end of the city, and the circumstances pointed to incendiary origin. one week later, on april , there was a fire in the storehouse of a man named van zant; on the following saturday evening there was another fire, and while the people were returning from this there was still another; and on the next day, sunday, there was another alarm, and by this time the whole town had been worked up to the highest pitch of excitement. as yet there was nothing to point to any connection between the stealing and the fires. on the day of the last one, however, mrs. earle happened to overhear remarks by three negroes that caused suspicion to light upon them; mary burton was insisting that stolen goods had been brought by prince and cæsar to the house of her master; and although a search of the home of hughson failed to produce a great deal, arrests were made right and left. the case was finally taken to the supreme court, and because of the white persons implicated, the summary methods ordinarily used in dealing with negroes were waived for the time being. peggy at first withstood all questioning, denying any knowledge of the events that had taken place. one day in prison, however, she remarked to arthur price that she was afraid the negroes would tell but that she would not forswear herself unless they brought her into the matter. "how forswear?" asked price. "there are fourteen sworn," she said. "what, is it about mr. hogg's goods?" he asked. "no," she replied, "about the fire." "what, peggy," asked price, "were you going to set the town on fire?" "no," she replied, "but since i knew of it they made me swear." she also remarked that she had faith in prince, cuff, and cæsar. all the while she used the vilest possible language, and at last, thinking suddenly that she had revealed too much, she turned upon price and with an oath warned him that he had better keep his counsel. that afternoon she said further to him that she could not eat because mary had brought her into the case. a little later peggy, much afraid, voluntarily confessed that early in may she was at the home of john romme, where in the course of december the negroes had had several meetings; among other things they had conspired to burn the fort first of all, then the city, then to get all the goods they could and kill anybody who had money. one evening just about christmas, she said, romme and his wife and ten or eleven negroes had been together in a room. romme had talked about how rich some people were, gradually working on the feelings of the negroes and promising them that if they did not succeed in their designs he would take them to a strange country and set them free, meanwhile giving them the impression that he bore a charmed life. a little later, it appeared, cæsar gave to hughson £ ; hughson was then absent for three days, and when he came again he brought with him seven or eight guns, some pistols, and some swords. as a result of these and other disclosures it was seen that not only hughson and romme but also ury, who was not so much a priest as an adventurer, had instigated the plots of the negroes; and quack testified that hughson was the first contriver of the plot to burn the houses of the town and kill the people, though he himself, he confessed, did fire the fort with a lighted stick. the punishment was terrible. quack and cuffee, the first to be executed, were burned at the stake on may . all through the summer the trials and the executions continued, harassing new york and indeed the whole country. altogether twenty white persons were arrested; four--hughson, his wife, peggy, and ury--were executed, and some of their acquaintances were forced to leave the province. one hundred and fifty-four negroes were arrested. thirteen were burned, eighteen were hanged, and seventy-one transported. * * * * * it is evident from these events and from the legislation of the era that, except for the earnest work of such a sect as the quakers, there was little genuine effort for the improvement of the social condition of the negro people in the colonies. they were not even regarded as potential citizens, and both in and out of the system of slavery were subjected to the harshest regulations. towards amicable relations with the other racial elements that were coming to build up a new country only the slightest measure of progress was made. instead, insurrection after insurrection revealed the sharpest antagonism, and any outbreak promptly called forth the severest and frequently the most cruel punishment. chapter iii the revolutionary era . _sentiment in england and america_ the materialism of the eighteenth century, with all of its evils, at length produced a liberalism of thought that was to shake to their very foundations old systems of life in both europe and america. the progress of the cause of the negro in this period is to be explained by the general diffusion of ideas that made for the rights of man everywhere. cowper wrote his humanitarian poems; in close association with the romanticism of the day the missionary movement in religion began to gather force; and the same impulse which in england began the agitation for a free press and for parliamentary reform, and which in france accounted for the french revolution, in america led to the revolt from great britain. no patriot could come under the influence of any one of these movements without having his heart and his sense of justice stirred to some degree in behalf of the slave. at the same time it must be remembered that the contest of the americans was primarily for the definite legal rights of englishmen rather than for the more abstract rights of mankind which formed the platform of the french revolution; hence arose the great inconsistency in the position of men who were engaged in a stern struggle for liberty at the same time that they themselves were holding human beings in bondage. in england the new era was formally signalized by an epoch-making decision. in november, , charles stewart, once a merchant in norfolk and later receiver general of the customs of north america, took to england his negro slave, james somerset, who, being sick, was turned adrift by his master. later somerset recovered and stewart seized him, intending to have him borne out of the country and sold in jamaica. somerset objected to this and in so doing raised the important legal question, did a slave by being brought to england become free? the case received an extraordinary amount of attention, for everybody realized that the decision would be far-reaching in its consequences. after it was argued at three different sittings, lord mansfield, chief justice of england, in handed down from the court of king's bench the judgment that as soon as ever any slave set his foot upon the soil of england he became free. this decision may be taken as fairly representative of the general advance that the cause of the negro was making in england at the time. early in the century sentiment against the slave-trade had begun to develop, many pamphlets on the evils of slavery were circulated, and as early as a motion for the abolition of the trade was made in the house of commons. john wesley preached against the system, adam smith showed its ultimate expensiveness, and burke declared that the slavery endured by the negroes in the english settlements was worse than that ever suffered by any other people. foremost in the work of protest were thomas clarkson and william wilberforce, the one being the leader in investigation and in the organization of the movement against slavery while the other was the parliamentary champion of the cause. for years, assisted by such debaters as burke, fox, and the younger pitt, wilberforce worked until on march , , the bill for the abolition of the slave-trade received the royal assent, and still later until slavery itself was abolished in the english dominions ( ). this high thought in england necessarily found some reflection in america, where the logic of the position of the patriots frequently forced them to take up the cause of the slave. as early as benjamin franklin, in his _observations concerning the increase of mankind_, pointed out the evil effects of slavery upon population and the production of wealth; and in james otis, in his argument against the writs of assistance, spoke so vigorously of the rights of black men as to leave no doubt as to his own position. to patrick henry slavery was a practice "totally repugnant to the first impressions of right and wrong," and in he was interested in a plan for gradual emancipation received from his friend, robert pleasants. washington desired nothing more than "to see some plan adopted by which slavery might be abolished by law"; while joel barlow in his _columbiad_ gave significant warning to columbia of the ills that she was heaping up for herself. two of the expressions of sentiment of the day, by reason of their deep yearning and philosophic calm, somehow stand apart from others. thomas jefferson in his _notes on virginia_ wrote: "the whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other.... the man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.... i tremble for my country when i reflect that god is just; that his justice can not sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! the almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."[ ] henry laurens, that fine patriot whose business sense was excelled only by his idealism, was harassed by the problem and wrote to his son, colonel john laurens, as follows: "you know, my dear son, i abhor slavery. i was born in a country where slavery had been established by british kings and parliaments, as well as by the laws of that country ages before my existence. i found the christian religion and slavery growing under the same authority and cultivation. i nevertheless disliked it. in former days there was no combating the prejudices of men supported by interest; the day i hope is approaching when, from principles of gratitude as well as justice, every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the golden rule. not less than twenty thousand pounds sterling would all my negroes produce if sold at public auction to-morrow. i am not the man who enslaved them; they are indebted to englishmen for that favor; nevertheless i am devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail of slavery. great powers oppose me--the laws and customs of my country, my own and the avarice of my countrymen. what will my children say if i deprive them of so much estate? these are difficulties, but not insuperable. i will do as much as i can in my time, and leave the rest to a better hand."[ ] stronger than all else, however, were the immortal words of the declaration of independence: "we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." within the years to come these words were to be denied and assailed as perhaps no others in the language; but in spite of all they were to stand firm and justify the faith of before jefferson himself and others had become submerged in a gilded opportunism. [footnote : "the writings of thomas jefferson, issued under the auspices of the thomas jefferson memorial association," vols., washington, , ii, - .] [footnote : "a south carolina protest against slavery (being a letter written from henry laurens, second president of the continental congress, to his son, colonel john laurens; dated charleston, s.c., august th, )." reprinted by g.p. putnam, new york, .] it is not to be supposed that such sentiments were by any means general; nevertheless these instances alone show that some men at least in the colonies were willing to carry their principles to their logical conclusion. naturally opinion crystallized in formal resolutions or enactments. unfortunately most of these were in one way or another rendered ineffectual after the war; nevertheless the main impulse that they represented continued to live. in virginia declared that the discriminatory tax levied on free negroes and mulattoes since was "derogatory to the rights of freeborn subjects" and accordingly should be repealed. in october, , the first continental congress declared in its articles of association that the united colonies would "neither import nor purchase any slave imported after the first day of december next" and that they would "wholly discontinue the trade." on april , , the congress further resolved that "no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen colonies"; and the first draft of the declaration of independence contained a strong passage censuring the king of england for bringing slaves into the country and then inciting them to rise against their masters. on april , , the first abolition society in the country was organized in pennsylvania; in virginia once more passed an act prohibiting the slave-trade; and the methodist conference in baltimore in strongly expressed its disapproval of slavery. . _the negro in the war_ as in all the greater wars in which the country has engaged, the position of the negro was generally improved by the american revolution. it was not by reason of any definite plan that this was so, for in general the disposition of the government was to keep him out of the conflict. nevertheless between the hesitating policy of america and the overtures of england the negro made considerable advance. the american cause in truth presented a strange and embarrassing dilemma, as we have remarked. in the war itself, moreover, began the stern cleavage between the north and the south. at the moment the rift was not clearly discerned, but afterwards it was to widen into a chasm. massachusetts bore more than her share of the struggle, and in the south the combination of tory sentiment and the aristocratic social system made enlistment especially difficult. in this latter section, moreover, there was always the lurking fear of an uprising of the slaves, and before the end of the war came south carolina and georgia were very nearly demoralized. in the course of the conflict south carolina lost not less than , slaves,[ ] about one-fifth of all she had. georgia did not lose so many, but proportionally suffered even more. some of the negroes went into the british army, some went away with the loyalists, and some took advantage of the confusion and escaped to the indians. in virginia, until they were stopped at least, some slaves entered the continental army as free negroes. [footnote : historical notes on the employment of negroes in the american army of the revolution, by g.h. moore, new york, , p. .] three or four facts are outstanding. the formal policy of congress and of washington and his officers was against the enlistment of negroes and especially of slaves; nevertheless, while things were still uncertain, some negroes entered the regular units. the inducements offered by the english, moreover, forced a modification of the american policy in actual operation; and before the war was over the colonists were so hard pressed that in more ways than one they were willing to receive the assistance of negroes. throughout the north negroes served in the regular units; but while in the south especially there was much thought given to the training of slaves, in only one of all the colonies was there a distinctively negro military organization, and that one was rhode island. in general it was understood that if a slave served in the war he was to be given his freedom, and it is worthy of note that many slaves served in the field instead of their masters. in massachusetts on may , , the committee of safety passed an act against the enlistment of slaves as "inconsistent with the principles that are to be supported." another resolution of june dealing with the same matter was laid on the table. washington took command of the forces in and about boston july , , and on july issued instructions to the recruiting officers in massachusetts against the enlisting of negroes. toward the end of september there was a spirited debate in congress over a letter to go to washington, the southern delegates, led by rutledge of south carolina, endeavoring to force instructions to the commander-in-chief to discharge all slaves and free negroes in the army. a motion to this effect failed to win a majority; nevertheless, a council of washington and his generals on october "agreed unanimously to reject all slaves, and, by a great majority, to reject negroes altogether," and in his general orders of november washington acted on this understanding. meanwhile, however, lord dunmore issued his proclamation declaring free those indentured servants and negroes who would join the english army, and in great numbers the slaves in virginia flocked to the british standard. then on december --somewhat to the amusement of both the negroes and the english--the virginia convention issued a proclamation offering pardon to those slaves who returned to their duty within ten days. on december washington gave instructions for the enlistment of free negroes, promising later to lay the matter before congress; and a congressional committee on january , , reported that those free negroes who had already served faithfully in the army at cambridge might reënlist but no others, the debate in this connection having drawn very sharply the line between the north and the south. henceforth for all practical purposes the matter was left in the hands of the individual colonies. massachusetts on january , , passed a resolution drafting every seventh man to complete her quota "without any exception, save the people called quakers," and this was as near as she came at any time in the war to the formal recognition of the negro. the rhode island assembly in resolved to raise a regiment of slaves, who were to be freed at enlistment, their owners in no case being paid more than £ . in the battle of rhode island august , , the negro regiment under colonel greene distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor, repelling three times the assaults of an overwhelming force of hessian troops. a little later, when greene was about to be murdered, some of these same soldiers had to be cut to pieces before he could be secured. maryland employed negroes as soldiers and sent them into regiments along with white men, and it is to be remembered that at the time the negro population of maryland was exceeded only by that of virginia and south carolina. for the far south there was the famous laurens plan for the raising of negro regiments. in a letter to washington of march , , henry laurens suggested the raising and training of three thousand negroes in south carolina. washington was rather conservative about the plan, having in mind the ever-present fear of the arming of negroes and wondering about the effect on those slaves who were not given a chance for freedom. on june , , however, sir henry clinton issued a proclamation only less far-reaching than dunmore's, threatening negroes if they joined the "rebel" army and offering them security if they came within the british lines. this was effective; assistance of any kind that the continental army could now get was acceptable; and the plan for the raising of several battalions of negroes in the south was entrusted to colonel john laurens, a member of washington's staff. in his own way colonel laurens was a man of parts quite as well as his father; he was thoroughly devoted to the american cause and washington said of him that his only fault was a courage that bordered on rashness. he eagerly pursued his favorite project; able-bodied slaves were to be paid for by congress at the rate of $ , each, and one who served to the end of the war was to receive his freedom and $ in addition. in south carolina, however, laurens received little encouragement, and in he was called upon to go to france on a patriotic mission. he had not forgotten the matter when he returned in ; but by that time cornwallis had surrendered and the country had entered upon the critical period of adjustment to the new conditions. washington now wrote to laurens: "i must confess that i am not at all astonished at the failure of your plan. that spirit of freedom which, at the commencement of this contest, would have gladly sacrificed everything to the attainment of its object, has long since subsided, and every selfish passion has taken its place. it is not the public but private interest which influences the generality of mankind; nor can the americans any longer boast an exception. under these circumstances, it would rather have been surprising if you had succeeded; nor will you, i fear, have better success in georgia."[ ] [footnote : sparks's _washington_, viii, - .] from this brief survey we may at least see something of the anomalous position occupied by the negro in the american revolution. altogether not less than three thousand, and probably more, members of the race served in the continental army. at the close of the conflict new york, rhode island, and virginia freed their slave soldiers. in general, however, the system of slavery was not affected, and the english were bound by the treaty of peace not to carry away any negroes. as late as , it is nevertheless interesting to note, a band of negroes calling themselves "the king of england's soldiers" harassed and alarmed the people on both sides of the savannah river. slavery remained; but people could not forget the valor of the negro regiment in rhode island, or the courage of individual soldiers. they could not forget that it was a negro, crispus attucks, who had been the patriot leader in the boston massacre, or the scene when he and one of his companions, jonas caldwell, lay in faneuil hall. those who were at bunker hill could not fail to remember peter salem, who, when major pitcairn of the british army was exulting in his expected triumph, rushed forward, shot him in the breast, and killed him; or samuel poor, whose officers testified that he performed so many brave deeds that "to set forth particulars of his conduct would be tedious." these and many more, some with very humble names, in a dark day worked for a better country. they died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off. . _the northwest territory and the constitution_ the materialism and selfishness which rose in the course of the war to oppose the liberal tendencies of the period, and which washington felt did so much to embarrass the government, became pronounced in the debates on the northwest territory and the constitution. at the outbreak of the revolutionary war the region west of pennsylvania, east of the mississippi river, north of the ohio river, and south of canada, was claimed by virginia, new york, connecticut, and massachusetts. this territory afforded to these states a source of revenue not possessed by the others for the payment of debts incurred in the war, and maryland and other seaboard states insisted that in order to equalize matters these claimants should cede their rights to the general government. the formal cessions were made and accepted in the years - . in april, , after virginia had made her cession, the most important, congress adopted a temporary form of government drawn up by thomas jefferson for the territory south as well as north of the ohio river. jefferson's most significant provision, however, was rejected. this declared that "after the year there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states other than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been personally guilty." this early ordinance, although it did not go into effect, is interesting as an attempt to exclude slavery from the great west that was beginning to be opened up. on march , , moreover, the ohio company was formed in boston by a group of new england business men for the purpose of purchasing land in the west and promoting settlement; and early in june, , dr. manasseh cutler, one of the chief promoters of the company, appeared in new york, where the last continental congress was sitting, for the concrete purpose of buying land. he doubtless did much to hasten action by congress, and on july was passed "an ordinance for the government of the territory of the united states, northwest of the ohio," the southern states not having ceded the area south of the river. it was declared that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the parties shall be duly convicted." to this was added the stipulation (soon afterwards embodied in the federal constitution) for the return of any person escaping into the territory from whom labor or service was "lawfully claimed in any one of the original states." in this shape the ordinance was adopted, even south carolina and georgia concurring; and thus was paved the way for the first fugitive slave law. slavery, already looming up as a dominating issue, was the cause of two of the three great compromises that entered into the making of the constitution of the united states (the third, which was the first made, being the concession to the smaller states of equal representation in the senate). these were the first but not the last of the compromises that were to mark the history of the subject; and, as some clear-headed men of the time perceived, it would have been better and cheaper to settle the question at once on the high plane of right rather than to leave it indefinitely to the future. south carolina, however, with able representation, largely controlled the thought of the convention, and she and georgia made the most extreme demands, threatening not to accept the constitution if there was not compliance with them. an important question was that of representation, the southern states advocating representation according to numbers, slave and free, while the northern states were in favor of the representation of free persons only. williamson of north carolina advocated the counting of three-fifths of the slaves, but this motion was at first defeated, and there was little real progress until gouverneur morris suggested that representation be according to the principle of wealth. mason of virginia pointed out practical difficulties which caused the resolution to be made to apply to direct taxation only, and in this form it began to be generally acceptable. by this time, however, the deeper feelings of the delegates on the subject of slavery had been stirred, and they began to speak plainly. davie of north carolina declared that his state would never enter the union on any terms that did not provide for counting at least three-fifths of the slaves and that "if the eastern states meant to exclude them altogether the business was at an end." it was finally agreed to reckon three-fifths of the slaves in estimating taxes and to make taxation the basis of representation. the whole discussion was renewed, however, in connection with the question of importation. there were more threats from the far south, and some of the men from new england, prompted by commercial interest, even if they did not favor the sentiments expressed, were at least disposed to give them passive acquiescence. from maryland and virginia, however, came earnest protest. luther martin declared unqualifiedly that to have a clause in the constitution permitting the importation of slaves was inconsistent with the principles of the revolution and dishonorable to the american character, and george mason could foresee only a future in which a just providence would punish such a national sin as slavery by national calamities. such utterances were not to dominate the convention, however; it was a day of expediency, not of morality. a bargain was made between the commercial interests of the north and the slave-holding interests of the south, the granting to congress of unrestricted power to enact navigation laws being conceded in exchange for twenty years' continuance of the slave-trade. the main agreements on the subject of slavery were thus finally expressed in the constitution: "representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to servitude for a term of years, and excluding indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons" (art. i, sec. ); "the migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the congress prior to the year ; but a tax or duty may be imposed, not exceeding ten dollars on each person" (art. i, sec. ); "no person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due" (art. iv, sec. ). with such provisions, though without the use of the question-begging word _slaves_, the institution of human bondage received formal recognition in the organic law of the new republic of the united states. "just what is the light in which we are to regard the slaves?" wondered james wilson in the course of the debate. "are they admitted as citizens?" he asked; "then why are they not admitted on an equality with white citizens? are they admitted as property? then why is not other property admitted into the computation?" such questions and others to which they gave rise were to trouble more heads than his in the course of the coming years, and all because a great nation did not have the courage to do the right thing at the right time. . early steps toward abolition in spite, however, of the power crystallized in the constitution, the moral movement that had set in against slavery still held its ground, and it was destined never wholly to languish until slavery ceased altogether to exist in the united states. throughout the century the quakers continued their good work; in the generation before the war john woolman of new jersey traveled in the southern colonies preaching that "the practice of continuing slavery is not right"; and anthony benezet opened in philadelphia a school for negroes which he himself taught without remuneration, and otherwise influenced pennsylvania to begin the work of emancipation. in general the quakers conducted their campaign along the lines on which they were most likely to succeed, attacking the slave-trade first of all but more and more making an appeal to the central government; and the first abolition society, organized in pennsylvania in and consisting mainly of quakers, had for its original object merely the relief of free negroes unlawfully held in bondage.[ ] the organization was forced to suspend its work in the course of the war, but in it renewed its meetings, and men of other denominations than the quakers now joined in greater numbers. in the society was formally reorganized as "the pennsylvania society for promoting the abolition of slavery, the relief of free negroes unlawfully held in bondage, and for improving the condition of the african race." benjamin franklin was elected president and there was adopted a constitution which was more and more to serve as a model for similar societies in the neighboring states. [footnote : locke: _anti-slavery in america_, .] four years later, by , there were in the country as many as twelve abolition societies, and these represented all the states from massachusetts to virginia, with the exception of new jersey, where a society was formed the following year. that of new york, formed in with john jay as president, took the name of the manumission society, limiting its aims at first to promoting manumission and protecting those negroes who had already been set free. all of the societies had very clear ideas as to their mission. the prevalence of kidnaping made them emphasize "the relief of free negroes unlawfully held in bondage," and in general each one in addition to its executive committee had committees for inspection, advice, and protection; for the guardianship of children; for the superintending of education, and for employment. while the societies were originally formed to attend to local matters, their efforts naturally extended in course of time to national affairs, and on december , , nine of them prepared petitions to congress for the limitation of the slave-trade. these petitions were referred to a special committee and nothing more was heard of them at the time. after two years accordingly the organizations decided that a more vigorous plan of action was necessary, and on january , , delegates from nine societies organized in philadelphia the american convention of abolition societies. the object of the convention was twofold, "to increase the zeal and efficiency of the individual societies by its advice and encouragement ... and to take upon itself the chief responsibility in regard to national affairs." it prepared an address to the country and presented to congress a memorial against the fitting out of vessels in the united states to engage in the slave-trade, and it had the satisfaction of seeing congress in the same year pass a bill to this effect. some of the organizations were very active and one as far south as that in maryland was at first very powerful. always were they interested in suits in courts of law. in the new york society reported complaints, persons freed, cases still in suit, and under consideration. the pennsylvania society reported simply that it had been instrumental in the liberation of "many hundreds" of persons. the different branches, however, did not rest with mere liberation; they endeavored generally to improve the condition of the negroes in their respective communities, each one being expected to report to the convention on the number of freedmen in its state and on their property, employment, and conduct. from time to time also the convention prepared addresses to these people, and something of the spirit of its work and also of the social condition of the negro at the time may be seen from the following address of : to the free africans and other free people of color in the united states. the convention of deputies from the abolition societies in the united states, assembled at philadelphia, have undertaken to address you upon subjects highly interesting to your prosperity. they wish to see you act worthily of the rank you have acquired as freemen, and thereby to do credit to yourselves, and to justify the friends and advocates of your color in the eyes of the world. as the result of our united reflections, we have concluded to call your attention to the following articles of advice. we trust they are dictated by the purest regard for your welfare, for we view you as friends and brethren. _in the first place_, we earnestly recommend to you, a regular attention to the important duty of public worship; by which means you will evince gratitude to your creator, and, at the same time, promote knowledge, union, friendship, and proper conduct among yourselves. _secondly_, we advise such of you, as have not been taught reading, writing, and the first principles of arithmetic, to acquire them as early as possible. carefully attend to the instruction of your children in the same simple and useful branches of education. cause them, likewise, early and frequently to read the holy scriptures; these contain, amongst other great discoveries, the precious record of the original equality of mankind, and of the obligations of universal justice and benevolence, which are derived from the relation of the human race to each other in a common father. _thirdly_, teach your children useful trades, or to labor with their hands in cultivating the earth. these employments are favorable to health and virtue. in the choice of masters, who are to instruct them in the above branches of business, prefer those who will work with them; by this means they will acquire habits of industry, and be better preserved from vice than if they worked alone, or under the eye of persons less interested in their welfare. in forming contracts, for yourselves or children, with masters, it may be useful to consult such persons as are capable of giving you the best advice, and who are known to be your friends, in order to prevent advantages being taken of your ignorance of the laws and customs of our country. _fourthly_, be diligent in your respective callings, and faithful in all the relations you bear in society, whether as husbands, wives, fathers, children or hired servants. be just in all your dealings. be simple in your dress and furniture, and frugal in your family expenses. thus you will act like christians as well as freemen, and, by these means, you will provide for the distresses and wants of sickness and old age. _fifthly_, refrain from the use of spirituous liquors; the experience of many thousands of the citizens of the united states has proved that these liquors are not necessary to lessen the fatigue of labor, nor to obviate the effects of heat or cold; nor can they, in any degree, add to the innocent pleasures of society. _sixthly_, avoid frolicking, and amusements which lead to expense and idleness; they beget habits of dissipation and vice, and thus expose you to deserved reproach amongst your white neighbors. _seventhly_, we wish to impress upon your minds the moral and religious necessity of having your marriages legally performed; also to have exact registers preserved of all the births and deaths which occur in your respective families. _eighthly_, endeavor to lay up as much as possible of your earnings for the benefit of your children, in case you should die before they are able to maintain themselves--your money will be safest and most beneficial when laid out in lots, houses, or small farms. _ninthly_, we recommend to you, at all times and upon all occasions, to behave yourselves to all persons in a civil and respectful manner, by which you may prevent contention and remove every just occasion of complaint. we beseech you to reflect, that it is by your good conduct alone that you can refute the objections which have been made against you as rational and moral creatures, and remove many of the difficulties which have occurred in the general emancipation of such of your brethren as are yet in bondage. with hearts anxious for your welfare, we commend you to the guidance and protection of that _being_ who is able to keep you from all evil, and who is the common father and friend of the whole family of mankind. theodore foster, president. philadelphia, january th, . thomas p. cope, secretary. the general impulse for liberty which prompted the revolution and the early abolition societies naturally found some reflection in formal legislation. the declarations of the central government under the confederation were not very effective, and for more definite enactments we have to turn to the individual states. the honor of being the first actually to prohibit and abolish slavery really belongs to vermont, whose constitution, adopted in , even before she had come into the union, declared very positively against the system. in the old virginia statute forbidding emancipation except for meritorious services was repealed. the repeal was in force ten years, and in this time manumissions were numerous. maryland soon afterwards passed acts similar to those in virginia prohibiting the further introduction of slaves and removing restraints on emancipation, and new york and new jersey also prohibited the further introduction of slaves from africa or from other states. in , in spite of considerable opposition because of the course of the war, the pennsylvania assembly passed an act forbidding the further introduction of slaves and giving freedom to all persons thereafter born in the state. similar provisions were enacted in connecticut and rhode island in . meanwhile massachusetts was much agitated, and beginning in there were before the courts several cases in which negroes sued for their freedom.[ ] their general argument was that the royal charter declared that all persons residing in the province were to be as free as the king's subjects in great britain, that by magna carta no subject could be deprived of liberty except by the judgment of his peers, and that any laws that may have been passed in the province to mitigate or regulate the evil of slavery did not authorize it. sometimes the decisions were favorable, but at the beginning of the revolution massachusetts still recognized the system by the decision that no slave could be enlisted in the army. in , however, some slaves brought from jamaica were ordered to be set at liberty, and it was finally decided in that the declaration in the massachusetts bill of rights to the effect that "all men are born free and equal" prohibited slavery. in this same year new hampshire incorporated in her constitution a prohibitive article. by the time the convention for the framing of the constitution of the united states met in philadelphia in , two of the original thirteen states (massachusetts and new hampshire) had positively prohibited slavery, and in three others (pennsylvania, connecticut, and rhode island) gradual abolition was in progress. [footnote : see williams: _history of the negro race in america_, i, - .] the next decade was largely one of the settlement of new territory, and by its close the pendulum seemed to have swung decidedly backward. in , however, after much effort and debating, new york at last declared for gradual abolition, and new jersey did likewise in . in general, gradual emancipation was the result of the work of people who were humane but also conservative and who questioned the wisdom of thrusting upon the social organism a large number of negroes suddenly emancipated. sometimes, however, a gradual emancipation act was later followed by one for immediate manumission, as in new york in . at first those who favored gradual emancipation were numerous in the south as well as in the north, but in general after gabriel's insurrection in , though some individuals were still outstanding, the south was quiescent. the character of the acts that were really put in force can hardly be better stated than has already been done by the specialist in the subject.[ ] we read: [footnote : locke, - .] gradual emancipation is defined as the extinction of slavery by depriving it of its hereditary quality. in distinction from the clauses in the constitutions of vermont, massachusetts, and new hampshire, which directly or indirectly affected the condition of slavery as already existing, the gradual emancipation acts left this condition unchanged and affected only the children born after the passage of the act or after a fixed date. most of these acts followed that of pennsylvania in providing that the children of a slave mother should remain with her owner as servants until they reached a certain age, of from twenty-one to twenty-eight years, as stated in the various enactments. in pennsylvania, however, they were to be regarded as free. in connecticut, on the other hand, they were to be "held in servitude" until twenty-five years of age and after that to be free. the most liberal policy was that of rhode island, where the children were pronounced free but were to be supported by the town and educated in reading, writing, and arithmetic, morality and religion. the latter clauses, however, were repealed the following year, leaving the children to be supported by the owner of the mother until twenty-one years of age, and only if he abandoned his claims to the mother to become a charge to the town. in new york and new jersey they were to remain as servants until a certain age, but were regarded as free, and liberal opportunities were given the master for the abandonment of his claims, the children in such cases to be supported at the common charge.... the manumission and emancipation acts were naturally followed, as in the case of the constitutional provision in vermont, by the attempts of some of the slave-owners to dispose of their property outside the state. amendments to the laws were found necessary, and the abolition societies found plenty of occasion for their exertions in protecting free blacks from seizure and illegal sale and in looking after the execution and amendment of the laws. the process of gradual emancipation was also unsatisfactory on account of the length of time it would require, and in pennsylvania and connecticut attempts were made to obtain acts for immediate emancipation. . _beginning of racial consciousness_ of supreme importance in this momentous period, more important perhaps in its ultimate effect than even the work of the abolition societies, was what the negro was doing for himself. in the era of the revolution began that racial consciousness on which almost all later effort for social betterment has been based. by the only coöperative effort on the part of the negro was such as that in the isolated society to which cotton mather gave rules, or in a spasmodic insurrection, or a rather crude development of native african worship. as yet there was no genuine basis of racial self-respect. in one way or another, however, in the eighteenth century the idea of association developed, and especially in boston about the time of the revolution negroes began definitely to work together; thus they assisted individuals in test cases in the courts, and when james swan in his _dissuasion from the slave trade_ made such a statement as that "no country can be called free where there is one slave," it was "at the earnest desire of the negroes in boston" that the revised edition of the pamphlet was published. from the very beginning the christian church was the race's foremost form of social organization. it was but natural that the first distinctively negro churches should belong to the democratic baptist denomination. there has been much discussion as to which was the very first negro baptist church, and good claims have been put forth by the harrison street baptist church of petersburg, va., and for a church in williamsburg, va., organization in each case going back to . a student of the subject, however, has shown that there was a negro baptist church at silver bluff, "on the south carolina side of the savannah river, in aiken county, just twelve miles from augusta, ga.," founded not earlier than , not later than .[ ] in any case special interest attaches to the first bryan baptist church, of savannah, founded in january, . the origin of this body goes back to george liele, a negro born in virginia, who might justly lay claim to being america's first foreign missionary. converted by a georgia baptist minister, he was licensed as a probationer and was known to preach soon afterwards at a white quarterly meeting.[ ] in he preached in the vicinity of savannah, and one of those who came to hear him was andrew bryan, a slave of jonathan bryan. liele then went to jamaica and in began to preach in kingston, where with four brethren from america he formed a church. at first he was subjected to persecution; nevertheless by he had baptized over four hundred persons. eight or nine months after he left for jamaica, andrew bryan began to preach, and at first he was permitted to use a building at yamacraw, in the suburbs of savannah. of this, however, he was in course of time dispossessed, the place being a rendezvous for those negroes who had been taken away from their homes by the british. many of these men were taken before the magistrates from time to time, and some were whipped and others imprisoned. bryan himself, having incurred the ire of the authorities, was twice imprisoned and once publicly whipped, being so cut that he "bled abundantly"; but he told his persecutors that he "would freely suffer death for the cause of jesus christ," and after a while he was permitted to go on with his work. for some time he used a barn, being assisted by his brother sampson; then for £ he purchased his freedom, and afterwards he began to use for worship a house that sampson had been permitted to erect. by his church had two hundred members, but over a hundred more had been received as converted members though they had not won their masters' permission to be baptized. an interesting sidelight on these people is furnished by the statement that probably fifty of them could read though only three could write. years afterwards, in , when the church had grown to great numbers, a large part of the congregation left the bryan church and formed what is now the first african baptist church of savannah. both congregations, however, remembered their early leader as one "clear in the grand doctrines of the gospel, truly pious, and the instrument of doing more good among the poor slaves than all the learned doctors in america." [footnote : walter h. brooks: _the silver bluff church_.] [footnote : see letters in journal of negro history, january, , - .] while bryan was working in savannah, in richmond, va., rose lott cary, a man of massive and erect frame and of great personality. born a slave in , cary worked for a number of years in a tobacco factory, leading a wicked life. converted in , he made rapid advance in education and he was licensed as a baptist preacher. he purchased his own freedom and that of his children (his first wife having died), organized a missionary society, and then in himself went as a missionary to the new colony of liberia, in whose interest he worked heroically until his death in . more clearly defined than the origin of negro baptist churches are the beginnings of african methodism. almost from the time of its introduction in the country methodism made converts among the negroes and in there were nearly two thousand negroes in the regular churches of the denomination, which, like the baptist denomination, it must be remembered, was before the revolution largely overshadowed in official circles by the protestant episcopal church. the general embarrassment of the episcopal church in america in connection with the war, and the departure of many loyalist ministers, gave opportunity to other denominations as well as to certain bodies of negroes. the white members of st. george's methodist episcopal church in philadelphia, however, determined to set apart its negro membership and to segregate it in the gallery. then in came a day when the negroes, choosing not to be insulted, and led by richard allen and absalom jones, left the edifice, and with these two men as overseers on april organized the free african society. this was intended to be "without regard to religious tenets," the members being banded together "to support one another in sickness and for the benefit of their widows and fatherless children." the society was in the strictest sense fraternal, there being only eight charter members: absalom jones, richard allen, samuel boston, joseph johnson, cato freeman, cæsar cranchell, james potter, and william white. by the society had on deposit in the bank of north america £ s. id., and that it generally stood for racial enterprise may be seen from the fact that in an organization in newport known as the negro union, in which paul cuffe was prominent, wrote proposing a general exodus of the negroes to africa. nothing came of the suggestion at the time, but at least it shows that representative negroes of the day were beginning to think together about matters of general policy. in course of time the free african society of philadelphia resolved into an "african church," and this became affiliated with the protestant episcopal church, whose bishop had exercised an interest in it. out of this organization developed st. thomas's episcopal church, organized in and formally opened for service july , . allen was at first selected for ordination, but he decided to remain a methodist and jones was chosen in his stead and thus became the first negro rector in the united states. meanwhile, however, in , allen himself had purchased a lot at the corner of sixth and lombard streets; he at once set about arranging for the building that became bethel church; and in he formally sold the lot to the church and the new house of worship was dedicated by bishop asbury of the methodist episcopal church. with this general body allen and his people for a number of years remained affiliated, but difficulties arose and separate churches having come into being in other places, a convention of negro methodists was at length called to meet in philadelphia april , . to this came sixteen delegates--richard allen, jacob tapsico, clayton durham, james champion, thomas webster, of philadelphia; daniel coker, richard williams, henry harden, stephen hill, edward williamson, nicholas gailliard, of baltimore: jacob marsh, edward jackson, william andrew, of attleborough, penn.; peter spencer, of wilmington, del., and peter cuffe, of salem, n.j.--and these were the men who founded the african methodist episcopal church. coker, of whom we shall hear more in connection with liberia, was elected bishop, but resigned in favor of allen, who served until his death in . in a congregation in new york consisting of james varick and others also withdrew from the main body of the methodist episcopal church, and in dedicated a house of worship. for a number of years it had the oversight of the older organization, but after preliminary steps in , on june , , the african methodist episcopal zion church was formally organized. to the first conference came preachers representing churches and , members. varick was elected district chairman, but soon afterwards was made bishop. the polity of this church from the first differed somewhat from that of the a.m.e. denomination in that representation of the laity was a prominent feature and there was no bar to the ordination of women. of denominations other than the baptist and the methodist, the most prominent in the earlier years was the presbyterian, whose first negro ministers were john gloucester and john chavis. gloucester owed his training to the liberal tendencies that about were still strong in eastern tennessee and kentucky, and in took charge of the african presbyterian church which in had been established in philadelphia. he was distinguished by a rich musical voice and the general dignity of his life, and he himself became the father of four presbyterian ministers. chavis had a very unusual career. after passing "through a regular course of academic studies" at washington academy, now washington and lee university, in he was commissioned by the general assembly of the presbyterians as a missionary to the negroes. he worked with increasing reputation until nat turner's insurrection caused the north carolina legislature in to pass an act silencing all negro preachers. then in wake county and elsewhere he conducted schools for white boys until his death in . in these early years distinction also attaches to lemuel haynes, a revolutionary patriot and the first negro preacher of the congregational denomination. in he became the pastor of a white congregation in torrington, conn., and in began to serve another in manchester, n.h. after the church the strongest organization among negroes has undoubtedly been that of secret societies commonly known as "lodges." the benefit societies were not necessarily secret and call for separate consideration. on march , , an army lodge attached to one of the regiments stationed under general gage in or near boston initiated prince hall and fourteen other colored men into the mysteries of freemasonry.[ ] these fifteen men on march , , applied to the grand lodge of england for a warrant. this was issued to "african lodge, no. ," with prince hall as master, september , . various delays and misadventures befell the warrant, however, so that it was not actually received before april , . the lodge was then duly organized may . from this beginning developed the idea of masonry among the negroes of america. as early as hall was formally styled grand master, and in he issued a license to thirteen negroes to "assemble and work" as a lodge in philadelphia; and there was also at this time a lodge in providence. thus developed in the "african grand lodge" of boston, afterwards known as "prince hall lodge of massachusetts"; the second grand lodge, called the "first independent african grand lodge of north america in and for the commonwealth of pennsylvania," organized in ; and the "hiram grand lodge of pennsylvania." [footnote : william h. upton: negro masonry, cambridge, , .] something of the interest of the masons in their people, and the calm judgment that characterized their procedure, may be seen from the words of their leader, prince hall.[ ] speaking in , and having in mind the revolution in hayti and recent indignities inflicted upon the race in boston, he said: [footnote : "a charge delivered to the african lodge, june , , at menotomy. by the right worshipful prince hall." (boston?) .] when we hear of the bloody wars which are now in the world, and thousands of our fellowmen slain; fathers and mothers bewailing the loss of their sons; wives for the loss of their husbands; towns and cities burnt and destroyed; what must be the heartfelt sorrow and distress of these poor and unhappy people! though we can not help them, the distance being so great, yet we may sympathize with them in their troubles, and mingle a tear of sorrow with them, and do as we are exhorted to--weep with those that weep.... now, my brethren, as we see and experience that all things here are frail and changeable and nothing here to be depended upon: let us seek those things which are above, which are sure and steadfast, and unchangeable, and at the same time let us pray to almighty god, while we remain in the tabernacle, that he would give us the grace and patience and strength to bear up under all our troubles, which at this day god knows we have our share. patience i say, for were we not possessed of a great measure of it you could not bear up under the daily insults you meet with in the streets of boston; much more on public days of recreation, how are you shamefully abused, and that at such a degree, that you may truly be said to carry your lives in your hands; and the arrows of death are flying about your heads; helpless old women have their clothes torn off their backs, even to the exposing of their nakedness; and by whom are these disgraceful and abusive actions committed? not by the men born and bred in boston, for they are better bred; but by a mob or horde of shameless, low-lived, envious, spiteful persons, some of them not long since, servants in gentlemen's kitchens, scouring knives, tending horses, and driving chaise. 'twas said by a gentleman who saw that filthy behavior in the common, that in all the places he had been in he never saw so cruel behavior in all his life, and that a slave in the west indies, on sundays or holidays, enjoys himself and friends without molestation. not only this man, but many in town who have seen their behavior to you, and that without any provocations twenty or thirty cowards fall upon one man, have wondered at the patience of the blacks; 'tis not for want of courage in you, for they know that they dare not face you man for man, but in a mob, which we despise, and had rather suffer wrong than do wrong, to the disturbance of the community and the disgrace of our reputation; for every good citizen does honor to the laws of the state where he resides.... my brethren, let us not be cast down under these and many other abuses we at present labor under: for the darkest is before the break of day. my brethren, let us remember what a dark day it was with our african brethren six years ago, in the french west indies. nothing but the snap of the whip was heard from morning to evening; hanging, breaking on the wheel, burning, and all manner of tortures inflicted on those unhappy people, for nothing else but to gratify their masters' pride, wantonness, and cruelty: but blessed be god, the scene is changed; they now confess that god hath no respect of persons, and therefore receive them as their friends, and treat them as brothers. thus doth ethiopia begin to stretch forth her hand, from a sink of slavery to freedom and equality. an african society was organized in new york in and chartered in , and out of it grew in course of time three or four other organizations. generally close to the social aim of the church and sometimes directly fathered by the secret societies were the benefit organizations, which even in the days of slavery existed for aid in sickness or at death; in fact, it was the hopelessness of the general situation coupled with the yearning for care when helpless that largely called these societies into being. their origin has been explained somewhat as follows: although it was unlawful for negroes to assemble without the presence of a white man, and so unlawful to allow a congregation of slaves on a plantation without the consent of the master, these organizations existed and held these meetings on the "lots" of some of the law-makers themselves. the general plan seems to have been to select some one who could read and write and make him the secretary. the meeting-place having been selected, the members would come by ones and twos, make their payments to the secretary, and quietly withdraw. the book of the secretary was often kept covered up on the bed. in many of the societies each member was known by number and in paying simply announced his number. the president of such a society was usually a privileged slave who had the confidence of his or her master and could go and come at will. thus a form of communication could be kept up between all members. in event of death of a member, provision was made for decent burial, and all the members as far as possible obtained permits to attend the funeral. here and again their plan of getting together was brought into play. in richmond they would go to the church by ones and twos and there sit as near together as convenient. at the close of the service a line of march would be formed when sufficiently far from the church to make it safe to do so. it is reported that the members were faithful to each other and that every obligation was faithfully carried out. this was the first form of insurance known to the negro from which his family received a benefit.[ ] [footnote : hampton conference report, no. ] all along of course a determining factor in the negro's social progress was the service that he was able to render to any community in which he found himself as well as to his own people. sometimes he was called upon to do very hard work, sometimes very unpleasant or dangerous work; but if he answered the call of duty and met an actual human need, his service had to receive recognition. an example of such work was found in his conduct in the course of the yellow fever epidemic in philadelphia in . knowing that fever in general was not quite as severe in its ravages upon negroes as upon white people, the daily papers of philadelphia called upon the colored people in the town to come forward and assist with the sick. the negroes consented, and absalom jones and william gray were appointed to superintend the operations, though as usual it was upon richard allen that much of the real responsibility fell. in september the fever increased and upon the negroes devolved also the duty of removing corpses. in the course of their work they encountered much opposition; thus jones said that a white man threatened to shoot him if he passed his house with a corpse. this man himself the negroes had to bury three days afterwards. when the epidemic was over, under date january , , matthew clarkson, the mayor, wrote the following testimonial: "having, during the prevalence of the late malignant disorder, had almost daily opportunities of seeing the conduct of absalom jones and richard allen, and the people employed by them to bury the dead, i with cheerfulness give this testimony of my approbation of their proceedings, as far as the same came under my notice. their diligence, attention, and decency of deportment, afforded me, at the time, much satisfaction." after the lapse of years it is with something of the pathos of martyrdom that we are impressed by the service of these struggling people, who by their self-abnegation and patriotism endeavored to win and deserve the privileges of american citizenship. all the while, in one way or another, the negro was making advance in education. as early as we have seen that neau opened a school in new york; there was benezet's school in philadelphia before the revolutionary war, and in one for negroes was established in boston. in the first part of the century, we remember also, some negroes were apprenticed in virginia under the oversight of the church. in the editor of a paper in williamsburg, va., established a school for negroes, and we have seen that as many as one-sixth of the members of andrew bryan's congregation in the far southern city of savannah could read by . exceptional men, like gloucester and chavis, of course availed themselves of such opportunities as came their way. all told, by the negro had received much more education than is commonly supposed. two persons--one in science and one in literature--because of their unusual attainments attracted much attention. the first was benjamin banneker of maryland, and the second phillis wheatley of boston. banneker in constructed the first clock striking the hours that was made in america, and from to published an almanac adapted to maryland and the neighboring states. he was thoroughly scholarly in mathematics and astronomy, and by his achievements won a reputation for himself in europe as well as in america. phillis wheatley, after a romantic girlhood of transition from africa to a favorable environment in boston, in published her _poems on various subjects_, which volume she followed with several interesting occasional poems.[ ] for the summer of this year she was the guest in england of the countess of huntingdon, whose patronage she had won by an elegiac poem on george whitefield; in conversation even more than in verse-making she exhibited her refined taste and accomplishment, and presents were showered upon her, one of them being a copy of the magnificent glasgow folio edition of _paradise lost_, which was given by brook watson, lord mayor of london, and which is now preserved in the library of harvard university. in the earlier years of the next century her poems found their way into the common school readers. one of those in her representative volume was addressed to scipio moorhead, a young negro of boston who had shown some talent for painting. thus even in a dark day there were those who were trying to struggle upward to the light. [footnote : for a full study see chapter ii of _the negro in literature and art_.] chapter iv the new west, the south, and the west indies the twenty years of the administrations of the first three presidents of the united states--or, we might say, the three decades between and --constitute what might be considered the "dark ages" of negro history; and yet, as with most "dark ages," at even a glance below the surface these years will be found to be throbbing with life, and we have already seen that in them the negro was doing what he could on his own account to move forward. after the high moral stand of the revolution, however, the period seems quiescent, and it was indeed a time of definite reaction. this was attributable to three great events: the opening of the southwest with the consequent demand for slaves, the haytian revolution beginning in , and gabriel's insurrection in . in no way was the reaction to be seen more clearly than in the decline of the work of the american convention of delegates from the abolition societies. after neither connecticut nor rhode island sent delegates; the southern states all fell away by ; and while from new england came the excuse that local conditions hardly made aggressive effort any longer necessary, the lack of zeal in this section was also due to some extent to a growing question as to the wisdom of interfering with slavery in the south. in virginia, that just a few years before had been so active, a statute was now passed imposing a penalty of one hundred dollars on any person who assisted a slave in asserting his freedom, provided he failed to establish the claim; and another provision enjoined that no member of an abolition society should serve as a juror in a freedom suit. even the pennsylvania society showed signs of faintheartedness, and in the convention decided upon triennial rather than annual meetings. it did not again become really vigorous until after the war of . . _the cotton-gin, the new southwest, and the first fugitive slave law_ of incalculable significance in the history of the negro in america was the series of inventions in england by arkwright, hargreaves, and crompton in the years - . in the same period came the discovery of the power of steam by james watt of glasgow and its application to cotton manufacture, and improvements followed quickly in printing and bleaching. there yet remained one final invention of importance for the cultivation of cotton on a large scale. eli whitney, a graduate of yale, went to georgia and was employed as a teacher by the widow of general greene on her plantation. seeing the need of some machine for the more rapid separating of cotton-seed from the fiber, he labored until in he succeeded in making his cotton-gin of practical value. the tradition is persistent, however, that the real credit of the invention belongs to a negro on the plantation. the cotton-gin created great excitement throughout the south and began to be utilized everywhere. the cultivation and exporting of the staple grew by leaps and bounds. in only thirty-eight bales of standard size were exported from the united states; in , however, the cotton sent out of the country was worth $ , , and was by far the most valuable article of export. the current price was cents a pound. thus at the very time that the northern states were abolishing slavery, an industry that had slumbered became supreme, and the fate of hundreds of thousands of negroes was sealed. meanwhile the opening of the west went forward, and from maine and massachusetts, carolina and georgia journeyed the pioneers to lay the foundations of ohio, indiana, and illinois, and alabama and mississippi. it was an eager, restless caravan that moved, and sometimes more than a hundred persons in a score of wagons were to be seen going from a single town in the east--"baptists and methodists and democrats." the careers of boone and sevier and those who went with them, and the story of their fights with the indians, are now a part of the romance of american history. in a cluster of log huts on the ohio river was named in honor of the society of the cincinnati. in kentucky was admitted to the union, the article on slavery in her constitution encouraging the system and discouraging emancipation, and tennessee also entered as a slave state in . of tremendous import to the negro were the questions relating to the mississippi territory. after the revolution georgia laid claim to great tracts of land now comprising the states of alabama and mississippi, with the exception of the strip along the coast claimed by spain in connection with florida. this territory became a rich field for speculation, and its history in its entirety makes a complicated story. a series of sales to what were known as the yazoo companies, especially in that part of the present states whose northern boundary would be a line drawn from the mouth of the yazoo to the chattahoochee, resulted in conflicting claims, the last grant sale being made in by a corrupt legislature at the price of a cent and a half an acre. james jackson now raised the cry of bribery and corruption, resigned from the united states senate, secured a seat in the state legislature, and on february , , carried through a bill rescinding the action of the previous year,[ ] and the legislature burned the documents concerned with the yazoo sale in token of its complete repudiation of them. the purchasers to whom the companies had sold lands now began to bombard congress with petitions and president adams helped to arrive at a settlement by which georgia transferred the lands in question to the federal government, which undertook to form of them the mississippi territory and to pay any damages involved. in georgia threw the whole burden upon the central government by transferring to it _all_ of her land beyond her present boundaries, though for this she exacted an article favorable to slavery. all was now made into the mississippi territory, to which congress held out the promise that it would be admitted as a state as soon as its population numbered , ; but alabama was separated from mississippi in . the old matter of claims was not finally disposed of until an act of appropriated $ , , for the purpose. in the same year andrew jackson's decisive victories over the creeks at talladega and horseshoe bend--of which more must be said--resulted in the cession of a vast tract of the land of that unhappy nation and thus finally opened for settlement three-fourths of the present state of alabama. [footnote : phillips in _the south in the building of the nation_, ii, .] it was in line with the advance that slavery was making in new territory that there was passed the first fugitive slave act ( ). this grew out of the discussion incident to the seizure in at washington, penn., of a negro named john, who was taken to virginia, and the correspondence between the governor of pennsylvania and the governor of virginia with reference to the case. the important third section of the act read as follows: _and be it also enacted_, that when a person held to labor in any of the united states, or in either of the territories on the northwest or south of the river ohio, under the laws thereof, shall escape into any other of the said states or territory, the person to whom such labor or service may be due, his agent or attorney, is hereby empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor, and to take him or her before any judge of the circuit or district courts of the united states, residing or being within the state, or before any magistrate of a county, city or town corporate, wherein such seizure or arrest shall be made, and upon proof to the satisfaction of such judge or magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit taken before and certified by a magistrate of any such state or territory, that the person so seized or arrested, doth, under the laws of the state or territory from which he or she fled, owe service or labor to the person claiming him or her, it shall be the duty of such judge or magistrate to give a certificate thereof to such claimant, his agent or attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant for removing the said fugitive from labor, to the state or territory from which he or she fled. it will be observed that by the terms of this enactment a master had the right to recover a fugitive slave by proving his ownership before a magistrate without a jury or any other of the ordinary forms of law. a human being was thus placed at the disposal of the lowest of courts and subjected to such procedure as was not allowed even in petty property suits. a great field for the bribery of magistrates was opened up, and opportunity was given for committing to slavery negro men about whose freedom there should have been no question. by the close of the decade - the fear occasioned by the haytian revolution had led to a general movement against the importation of negroes, especially of those from the west indies. even georgia in prohibited the importation of all slaves, and this provision, although very loosely enforced, was never repealed. in south carolina, however, to the utter chagrin and dismay of the other states, importation, prohibited in , was again legalized in ; and in the four years immediately following , negroes were brought to charleston, most of these going to the territories.[ ] when in ohio was carved out of the northwest territory as a free state, an attempt was made to claim the rest of the territory for slavery, but this failed. in the congressional session of - the matter of slavery in the newly acquired territory of louisiana was brought up, and slaves were allowed to be imported if they had come to the united states before , the purpose of this provision being to guard against the consequences of south carolina's recent act, although such a clause never received rigid enforcement. the mention of louisiana, however, brings us concretely to toussaint l'ouverture, the greatest negro in the new world in the period and one of the greatest of all time. [footnote : dubois: _suppression of the slave-trade_, .] _ . toussaint l'ouverture, louisiana, and the formal closing of the slave-trade_ when the french revolution broke out in , it was not long before its general effects were felt in the west indies. of special importance was santo domingo because of the commercial interests centered there. the eastern end of the island was spanish, but the western portion was french, and in this latter part was a population of , , of which number , were french creoles, , mulattoes, and , pure negroes. all political and social privileges were monopolized by the creoles, while the negroes were agricultural laborers and slaves; and between the two groups floated the restless element of the free people of color. when the general assembly in france decreed equality of rights to all citizens, the mulattoes of santo domingo made a petition for the enjoyment of the same political privileges as the white people--to the unbounded consternation of the latter. they were rewarded with a decree which was so ambiguously worded that it was open to different interpretations and which simply heightened the animosity that for years had been smoldering. a new petition to the assembly in primarily for an interpretation brought forth on may the explicit decree that the people of color were to have all the rights and privileges of citizens, provided they had been born of free parents on both sides. the white people were enraged by the decision, turned royalist, and trampled the national cockade underfoot; and throughout the summer armed strife and conflagration were the rule. to add to the confusion the black slaves struck for freedom and on the night of august , , drenched the island in blood. in the face of these events the conventional assembly rescinded its order, then announced that the original decree must be obeyed, and it sent three commissioners with troops to santo domingo, real authority being invested in santhonax and polverel. on june , , at cape françois trouble was renewed by a quarrel between a mulatto and a white officer in the marines. the seamen came ashore and loaned their assistance to the white people, and the negroes now joined forces with the mulattoes. in the battle of two days that followed the arsenal was taken and plundered, thousands were killed in the streets, and more than half of the town was burned. the french commissioners were the unhappy witnesses of the scene, but they were practically helpless, having only about a thousand troops. santhonax, however, issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves who were willing to range themselves under the banner of the republic. this was the first proclamation for the freeing of slaves in santo domingo, and as a result of it many of the negroes came in and were enfranchised. soon after this proclamation polverel left his colleague at the cape and went to port au prince, the capital of the west. here things were quiet and the cultivation of the crops was going forward as usual. the slaves were soon unsettled, however, by the news of what was being done elsewhere, and polverel was convinced that emancipation could not be delayed and that for the safety of the planters themselves it was necessary to extend it to the whole island. in september ( ) he set in circulation from aux cayes a proclamation to this effect, and at the same time he exhorted all the planters in the vicinity who concurred in his work to register their names. this almost all of them did, as they were convinced of the need of measures for their personal safety; and on february , , the conventional assembly in paris formally approved all that had been done by decreeing the abolition of slavery in all the colonies of france. all the while the spanish and the english had been looking on with interest and had even come to the french part of the island as if to aid in the restoration of order. among the former, at first in charge of a little royalist band, was the negro, toussaint, later called l'ouverture. he was then a man in the prime of life, forty-eight years old, and already his experience had given him the wisdom that was needed to bring peace in santo domingo. in april, , impressed by the decree of the assembly, he returned to the jurisdiction of france and took service under the republic. in he became a general of brigade; in general-in-chief, with the military command of the whole colony. he at once compelled the surrender of the english who had invaded his country. with the aid of a commercial agreement with the united states, he next starved out the garrison of his rival, the mulatto rigaud, whom he forced to consent to leave the country. he then imprisoned roume, the agent of the directory, and assumed civil as well as military authority. he also seized the spanish part of the island, which had been ceded to france some years before but had not been actually surrendered. he then, in may, , gave to santo domingo a constitution by which he not only assumed power for life but gave to himself the right of naming his successor; and all the while he was awakening the admiration of the world by his bravery, his moderation, and his genuine instinct for government. across the ocean, however, a jealous man was watching with interest the career of the "gilded african." none knew better than napoleon that it was because he did not trust france that toussaint had sought the friendship of the united states, and none read better than he the logic of events. as adams says, "bonaparte's acts as well as his professions showed that he was bent on crushing democratic ideas, and that he regarded st. domingo as an outpost of american republicanism, although toussaint had made a rule as arbitrary as that of bonaparte himself.... by a strange confusion of events, toussaint l'ouverture, because he was a negro, became the champion of republican principles, with which he had nothing but the instinct of personal freedom in common. toussaint's government was less republican than that of bonaparte; he was doing by necessity in st. domingo what bonaparte was doing by choice in france."[ ] [footnote : _history of the united states_, i, - .] this was the man to whom the united states ultimately owes the purchase of louisiana. on october , , bonaparte gave orders to general le clerc for a great expedition against santo domingo. in january, , le clerc appeared and war followed. in the course of this, toussaint--who was ordinarily so wise and who certainly knew that from napoleon he had most to fear--made the great mistake of his life and permitted himself to be led into a conference on a french vessel. he was betrayed and taken to france, where within the year he died of pneumonia in the dungeon of joux. immediately there was a proclamation annulling the decree of giving freedom to the slaves. bonaparte, however, had not estimated the force of toussaint's work, and to assist the negroes in their struggle now came a stalwart ally, yellow fever. by the end of the summer only one-seventh of le clerc's army remained, and he himself died in november. at once bonaparte planned a new expedition. while he was arranging for the leadership of this, however, the european war broke out again. meanwhile the treaty for the retrocession of the territory of louisiana had not yet received the signature of the spanish king, because godoy, the spanish representative, would not permit the signature to be affixed until all the conditions were fulfilled; and toward the end of the civil officer at new orleans closed the mississippi to the united states. jefferson, at length moved by the plea of the south, sent a special envoy, no less a man than james monroe, to france to negotiate the purchase; bonaparte, disgusted by the failure of his egyptian expedition and his project for reaching india, and especially by his failure in santo domingo, in need also of ready money, listened to the offer; and the people of the united states--who within the last few years have witnessed the spoliation of hayti--have not yet realized how much they owe to the courage of , haytian negroes who refused to be slaves. the slavery question in the new territory was a critical one. it was on account of it that the federalists had opposed the acquisition; the american convention endeavored to secure a provision like that of the northwest ordinance; and the yearly meeting of the society of friends in philadelphia in prayed "that effectual measures may be adopted by congress to prevent the introduction of slavery into any of the territories of the united states." nevertheless the whole territory without regard to latitude was thrown open to the system march , . in spite of this victory for slavery, however, the general force of the events in hayti was such as to make more certain the formal closing of the slave-trade at the end of the twenty-year period for which the constitution had permitted it to run. the conscience of the north had been profoundly stirred, and in the far south was the ever-present fear of a reproduction of the events in hayti. the agitation in england moreover was at last about to bear fruit in the act of forbidding the slave-trade. in america it seems from the first to have been an understood thing, especially by the southern representatives, that even if such an act passed it would be only irregularly enforced, and the debates were concerned rather with the disposal of illegally imported africans and with the punishment of those concerned in the importation than with the proper limitation of the traffic by water.[ ] on march , , the act was passed forbidding the slave-trade after the close of the year. in course of time it came very near to being a dead letter, as may be seen from presidential messages, reports of cabinet officers, letters of collectors of revenue, letters of district attorneys, reports of committees of congress, reports of naval commanders, statements on the floor of congress, the testimony of eye-witnesses, and the complaints of home and foreign anti-slavery societies. fernandina and galveston were only two of the most notorious ports for smuggling. a regular chain of posts was established from the head of st. mary's river to the upper country, and through the indian nation, by means of which the negroes were transferred to every part of the country.[ ] if dealers wished to form a caravan they would give an indian alarm, so that the woods might be less frequented, and if pursued in georgia they would escape into florida. one small schooner contained one hundred and thirty souls. "they were almost packed into a small space, between a floor laid over the water-casks and the deck--not near three feet--insufficient for them to sit upright--and so close that chafing against each other their bones pierced the skin and became galled and ulcerated by the motion of the vessel." many american vessels were engaged in the trade under spanish colors, and the traffic to africa was pursued with uncommon vigor at havana, the crews of vessels being made up of men of all nations, who were tempted by the high wages to be earned. evidently officials were negligent in the discharge of their duty, but even if offenders were apprehended it did not necessarily follow that they would receive effective punishment. president madison in his message of december , , said, "it appears that american citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity, and in defiance of those of their own country"; and on january , , the register of the treasury made to the house the amazing report that "it doth not appear, from an examination of the records of this office, and particularly of the accounts (to the date of their last settlement) of the collectors of the customs, and of the several marshals of the united states, that any forfeitures had been incurred under the said act." a supplementary and compromising and ineffective act of sought to concentrate efforts against smuggling by encouraging informers; and one of the following year that authorized the president to "make such regulations and arrangements as he may deem expedient for the safe keeping, support, and removal beyond the limits of the united states" of recaptured africans, and that bore somewhat more fruit, was in large measure due to the colonization movement and of importance in connection with the founding of liberia. [footnote : see dubois, , ff.] [footnote : niles's _register_, xiv, (may , ).] thus, while the formal closing of the slave-trade might seem to be a great step forward, the laxness with which the decree was enforced places it definitely in the period of reaction. . _gabriel's insurrection and the rise of the negro problem_ gabriel's insurrection of was by no means the most formidable revolt that the southern states witnessed. in design it certainly did not surpass the scope of the plot of denmark vesey twenty-two years later, and in actual achievement it was insignificant when compared not only with nat turner's insurrection but even with the uprisings sixty years before. at the last moment in fact a great storm that came up made the attempt to execute the plan a miserable failure. nevertheless coming as it did so soon after the revolution in hayti, and giving evidence of young and unselfish leadership, the plot was regarded as of extraordinary significance. gabriel himself[ ] was an intelligent slave only twenty-four years old, and his chief assistant was jack bowler, aged twenty-eight. throughout the summer of he matured his plan, holding meetings at which a brother named martin interpreted various texts from scripture as bearing on the situation of the negroes. his insurrection was finally set for the first day of september. it was well planned. the rendezvous was to be a brook six miles from richmond. under cover of night the force of , was to march in three columns on the city, then a town of , inhabitants, the right wing to seize the penitentiary building which had just been converted into an arsenal, while the left took possession of the powder-house. these two columns were to be armed with clubs, and while they were doing their work the central force, armed with muskets, knives, and pikes, was to begin the carnage, none being spared except the french, whom it is significant that the negroes favored. in richmond at the time there were not more than four or five hundred men with about thirty muskets; but in the arsenal were several thousand guns, and the powder-house was well stocked. seizure of the mills was to guarantee the insurrectionists a food supply; and meanwhile in the country districts were the new harvests of corn, and flocks and herds were fat in the fields. [footnote : his full name was gabriel prosser.] on the day appointed for the uprising virginia witnessed such a storm as she had not seen in years. bridges were carried away, and roads and plantations completely submerged. brook swamp, the strategic point for the negroes, was inundated; and the country negroes could not get into the city, nor could those in the city get out to the place of rendezvous. the force of more than a thousand dwindled to three hundred, and these, almost paralyzed by fear and superstition, were dismissed. meanwhile a slave who did not wish to see his master killed divulged the plot, and all richmond was soon in arms. a troop of united states cavalry was ordered to the city and arrests followed quickly. three hundred dollars was offered by governor monroe for the arrest of gabriel, and as much more for jack bowler. bowler surrendered, but it took weeks to find gabriel. six men were convicted and condemned to be executed on september , and five more on september . gabriel was finally captured on september at norfolk on a vessel that had come from richmond; he was convicted on october and executed on october . he showed no disposition to dissemble as to his own plan; at the same time he said not one word that incriminated anybody else. after him twenty-four more men were executed; then it began to appear that some "mistakes" had been made and the killing ceased. about the time of this uprising some negroes were also assembled for an outbreak in suffolk county; there were alarms in petersburg and in the country near edenton, n.c.; and as far away as charleston the excitement was intense. there were at least three other negro insurrections of importance in the period - . when news came of the uprising of the slaves in santo domingo in , the negroes in louisiana planned a similar effort.[ ] they might have succeeded better if they had not disagreed as to the hour of the outbreak, when one of them informed the commandant. as a punishment twenty-three of the slaves were hanged along the banks of the river and their corpses left dangling for days; but three white men who assisted them and who were really the most guilty of all, were simply sent out of the colony. in camden, s. c, on july , , some other negroes risked all for independence.[ ] on various pretexts men from the country districts were invited to the town on the appointed night, and different commands were assigned, all except that of commander-in-chief, which position was to be given to him who first forced the gates of the arsenal. again the plot was divulged by "a favorite and confidential slave," of whom we are told that the state legislature purchased the freedom, settling upon him a pension for life. about six of the leaders were executed. on or about may , , there was a plot to destroy the city of augusta, ga.[ ] the insurrectionists were to assemble at beach island, proceed to augusta, set fire to the place, and then destroy the inhabitants. guards were posted, and a white man who did not answer when hailed was shot and fatally wounded. a negro named coot was tried as being at the head of the conspiracy and sentenced to be executed a few days later. other trials followed his. not a muscle moved when the verdict was pronounced upon him. [footnote : gayarré: _history of louisiana_, iii, .] [footnote : holland: _refutation of calumnies_.] [footnote : niles's _register_, xvi, (may , ).] the deeper meaning of such events as these could not escape the discerning. more than one patriot had to wonder just whither the country was drifting. already it was evident that the ultimate problem transcended the mere question of slavery, and many knew that human beings could not always be confined to an artificial status. throughout the period the slave-trade seemed to flourish without any real check, and it was even accentuated by the return to power of the old royalist houses of europe after the fall of napoleon. meanwhile it was observed that slave labor was driving out of the south the white man of small means, and antagonism between the men of the "up-country" and the seaboard capitalists was brewing. the ordinary social life of the negro in the south left much to be desired, and conditions were not improved by the rapid increase. as for slavery itself, no one could tell when or where or how the system would end; all only knew that it was developing apace: and meanwhile there was the sinister possibility of the alliance of the negro and the indian. sincere plans of gradual abolition were advanced in the south as well as the north, but in the lower section they seldom got more than a respectful hearing. in his "dissertation on slavery, with a proposal for the gradual abolition of it in the state of virginia," st. george tucker, a professor of law in the university of william and mary, and one of the judges of the general court of virginia, in advanced a plan by which he figured that after sixty years there would be only one-third as many slaves as at first. at this distance his proposal seems extremely conservative; at the time, however, it was laid on the table by the virginia house of delegates, and from the senate the author received merely "a civil acknowledgment." two men of the period--widely different in temper and tone, but both earnest seekers after truth--looked forward to the future with foreboding, one with the eye of the scientist, the other with the vision of the seer. hezekiah niles had full sympathy with the groping and striving of the south; but he insisted that slavery must ultimately be abolished throughout the country, that the minds of the slaves should be exalted, and that reasonable encouragement should be given free negroes.[ ] said he: "_we are ashamed of the thing we practice_;... there is no attribute of heaven that takes part with us, and _we know it_. and in the contest that must come and _will come_, there will be a heap of sorrows such as the world has rarely seen."[ ] [footnote : _register_, xvi, (may , ).] [footnote : _ibid_., xvi, (may , ).] on the other hand rose lorenzo dow, the foremost itinerant preacher of the time, the first protestant who expounded the gospel in alabama and mississippi, and a reformer who at the very moment that cotton was beginning to be supreme, presumed to tell the south that slavery was wrong.[ ] everywhere he arrested attention--with his long hair, his harsh voice, and his wild gesticulation startling all conservative hearers. but he was made in the mold of heroes. in his lifetime he traveled not less than two hundred thousand miles, preaching to more people than any other man of his time. several times he went to canada, once to the west indies, and three times to england, everywhere drawing great crowds about him. in _a cry from the wilderness_ he more than once clothed his thought in enigmatic garb, but the meaning was always ultimately clear. at this distance, when slavery and the civil war are alike viewed in the perspective, the words of the oracle are almost uncanny: "in the rest of the southern states the influence of these foreigners will be known and felt in its time, and the seeds from the hory alliance and the decapigandi, who have a hand in those grades of generals, from the inquisitor to the vicar general and down...!!! the struggle will be dreadful! the cup will be bitter! and when the agony is over, those who survive may see better days! farewell!" [footnote : for full study see article "lorenzo dow," in _methodist review_ and _journal of negro history_, july, , the same being included in _africa and the war_, new york, .] chapter v indian and negro it is not the purpose of the present chapter to give a history of the seminole wars, or even to trace fully the connection of the negro with these contests. we do hope to show at least, however, that the negro was more important than anything else as an immediate cause of controversy, though the general pressure of the white man upon the indian would in time of course have made trouble in any case. strange parallels constantly present themselves, and incidentally it may be seen that the policy of the government in force in other and even later years with reference to the negro was at this time also very largely applied in the case of the indian. . _creek, seminole, and negro to : the war of _ on august , , the continental congress by a definite and far-reaching ordinance sought to regulate for the future the whole conduct of indian affairs. two great districts were formed, one including the territory north of the ohio and west of the hudson, and the other including that south of the ohio and east of the mississippi; and for anything pertaining to the indian in each of these two great tracts a superintendent was appointed. as affecting the negro the southern district was naturally of vastly more importance than the northern. in the eastern portion of this, mainly in what are now georgia, eastern tennessee, and eastern alabama, were the cherokees and the great confederacy of the creeks, while toward the west, in the present mississippi and western alabama, were the chickasaws and the choctaws. of muskhogean stock, and originally a part of the creeks, were the seminoles ("runaways"), who about , under the leadership of a great chieftain, secoffee, separated from the main confederacy, which had its center in southwest georgia just a little south of columbus, and overran the peninsula of florida. in came another band under micco hadjo to the present site of tallahassee. the mickasukie tribe was already on the ground in the vicinity of this town, and at first its members objected to the newcomers, who threatened to take their lands from them; but at length all abode peaceably together under the general name of seminoles. about these people had twenty towns, the chief ones being mikasuki and tallahassee. from the very first they had received occasional additions from the yemassee, who had been driven out of south carolina, and of fugitive negroes. by the close of the eighteenth century all along the frontier the indian had begun to feel keenly the pressure of the white man, and in his struggle with the invader he recognized in the oppressed negro a natural ally. those negroes who by any chance became free were welcomed by the indians, fugitives from bondage found refuge with them, and while indian chiefs commonly owned slaves, the variety of servitude was very different from that under the white man. the negroes were comparatively free, and intermarriage was frequent; thus a mulatto woman who fled from bondage married a chief and became the mother of a daughter who in course of time became the wife of the famous osceola. this very close connection of the negro with the family life of the indian was the determining factor in the resistance of the seminoles to the demands of the agents of the united states, and a reason, stronger even than his love for his old hunting-ground, for his objection to removal to new lands beyond the mississippi. very frequently the indian could not give up his negroes without seeing his own wife and children led away into bondage; and thus to native courage and pride was added the instinct of a father for the preservation of his own. in the two wars between the americans and the english it was but natural that the indian should side with the english, and it was in some measure but a part of the game that he should receive little consideration at the hands of the victor. in the politics played by the english and the french, the english and the spaniards, and finally between the americans and all europeans, the indian was ever the loser. in the very early years of the carolina colonies, some effort was made to enslave the indians; but such servants soon made their way to the indian country, and it was not long before they taught the negroes to do likewise. this constant escape of slaves, with its attendant difficulties, largely accounted for the establishing of the free colony of georgia between south carolina and the spanish possession, florida. it was soon evident, however, that the problem had been aggravated rather than settled. when congress met in it received from georgia a communication setting forth the need of "preventing slaves from deserting their masters"; and as soon as the federal government was organized in it received also from georgia an urgent request for protection from the creeks, who were charged with various ravages, and among other documents presented was a list of one hundred and ten negroes who were said to have left their masters during the revolution and to have found refuge among the creeks. meanwhile by various treaties, written and unwritten, the creeks were being forced toward the western line of the state, and in any agreement the outstanding stipulation was always for the return of fugitive slaves. for a number of years the creeks retreated without definitely organized resistance. in the course of the war of , however, moved by the english and by a visit from tecumseh, they suddenly rose, and on august , , under the leadership of weathersford, they attacked fort mims, a stockade thirty-five miles north of mobile. the five hundred and fifty-three men, women, and children in this place were almost completely massacred. only fifteen white persons escaped by hiding in the woods, a number of negroes being taken prisoner. this occurrence spurred the whole southwest to action. volunteers were called for, and the tennessee legislature resolved to exterminate the whole tribe. andrew jackson with colonel coffee administered decisive defeats at talladega and tohopeka or horseshoe bend on the tallapoosa river, and the creeks were forced to sue for peace. by the treaty of fort jackson (august , ) the future president, now a major general in the regular army and in command at mobile, demanded that the unhappy nation give up more than half of its land as indemnity for the cost of the war, that it hold no communication with a spanish garrison or town, that it permit the necessary roads to be made or forts to be built in any part of the territory, and that it surrender the prophets who had instigated the war. this last demand was ridiculous, or only for moral effect, for the so-called prophets had already been left dead on the field of battle. the creeks were quite broken, however, and jackson passed on to fame and destiny at the battle of new orleans, january , . in april of this year he was made commander-in-chief of the southern division.[ ] it soon developed that his chief task in this capacity was to reckon with the seminoles. [footnote : in his official capacity jackson issued two addresses which have an important place in the history of the negro soldier. from his headquarters at mobile, september , , he issued an appeal "to the free colored inhabitants of louisiana," offering them an honorable part in the war, and this was later followed by a "proclamation to the free people of color" congratulating them on their achievement. both addresses are accessible in many books.] on the appalachicola river the british had rebuilt an old fort, calling it the british post on the appalachicola. early in the summer of the commander, nicholls, had occasion to go to london, and he took with him his troops, the chief francis, and several creeks, leaving in the fort seven hundred and sixty-three barrels of cannon powder, twenty-five hundred muskets, and numerous pistols and other weapons of war. the negroes from georgia who had come to the vicinity, who numbered not less than a thousand, and who had some well kept farms up and down the banks of the river, now took charge of the fort and made it their headquarters. they were joined by some creeks, and the so-called negro fort soon caused itself to be greatly feared by any white people who happened to live near. demands on the spanish governor for its suppression were followed by threats of the use of the soldiery of the united states; and general gaines, under orders in the section, wrote to jackson asking authority to build near the boundary another post that might be used as the base for any movement that had as its aim to overawe the negroes. jackson readily complied with the request, saying, "i have no doubt that this fort has been established by some villains for the purpose of murder, rapine, and plunder, and that it ought to be blown up regardless of the ground it stands on. if you have come to the same conclusion, destroy it, and restore the stolen negroes and property to their rightful owners." gaines accordingly built fort scott not far from where the flint and the chattahoochee join to form the appalachicola. it was necessary for gaines to pass the negro fort in bringing supplies to his own men; and on july , , the boats of the americans were within range of the fort and opened fire. there was some preliminary shooting, and then, since the walls were too stubborn to be battered down by a light fire, "a ball made red-hot in the cook's galley was put in the gun and sent screaming over the wall and into the magazine. the roar, the shock, the scene that followed, may be imagined, but not described. seven hundred barrels of gunpowder tore the earth, the fort, and all the wretched creatures in it to fragments. two hundred and seventy men, women, and children died on the spot. of sixty-four taken out alive, the greater number died soon after."[ ] [footnote : mcmaster, iv, .] the seminoles--in the west more and more identified with the creeks--were angered by their failure to recover the lands lost by the treaty of fort jackson and also by the building of fort scott. one settlement, fowltown, fifteen miles east of fort scott, was especially excited and in the fall of sent a warning to the americans "not to cross or cut a stick of timber on the east side of the flint." the warning was regarded as a challenge; fowltown was taken on a morning in november, and the seminole wars had begun. . _first seminole war and the treaties of indian spring and fort moultrie_ in the course of the first seminole war ( - ) jackson ruthlessly laid waste the towns of the indians; he also took pensacola, and he awakened international difficulties by his rather summary execution of two british subjects, arbuthnot and ambrister, who were traders to the indians and sustained generally pleasant relations with them. for his conduct, especially in this last instance, he was severely criticized in congress, but it is significant of his rising popularity that no formal vote of censure could pass against him. on the cession of florida to the united states he was appointed territorial governor; but he served for a brief term only. as early as he was nominated for the presidency by the legislature of tennessee, and in he was sent to the united states senate. of special importance in the history of the creeks about this time was the treaty of indian spring, of january , , an iniquitous agreement in the signing of which bribery and firewater were more than usually present. by this the creeks ceded to the united states, for the benefit of georgia, five million acres of their most valuable land. in cash they were to receive $ , , in payments extending over fourteen years. the united states government moreover was to hold $ , as a fund from which the citizens of georgia were to be reimbursed for any "claims" (for runaway slaves of course) that the citizens of the state had against the creeks prior to the year .[ ] in the actual execution of this agreement a slave was frequently estimated at two or three times his real value, and the creeks were expected to pay whether the fugitive was with them or not. all possible claims, however, amounted to $ , . this left $ , of the money in the hands of the government. this sum was not turned over to the indians, as one might have expected, but retained until , when the georgia citizens interested petitioned for a division. the request was referred to the commission on indian affairs, and the chairman, gilmer of georgia, was in favor of dividing the money among the petitioners as compensation for "the offspring which the slaves would have borne had they remained in bondage." this suggestion was rejected at the time, but afterwards the division was made nevertheless; and history records few more flagrant violations of all principles of honor and justice. [footnote : see j.r. giddings: _the exiles of florida_, - ; also speech in house of representatives february , .] the first seminole war, while in some ways disastrous to the indians, was in fact not much more than the preliminary skirmish of a conflict that was not to cease until . in general the indians, mindful of the ravages of the war of , did not fully commit themselves and bided their time. they were in fact so much under cover that they led the americans to underestimate their real numbers. when the cession of florida was formally completed, however (july , ), they were found to be on the very best spots of land in the territory. on may , , colonel gad humphreys was appointed agent to them, william p. duval as governor of the territory being ex-officio superintendent of indian affairs. altogether the indians at this time, according to the official count, numbered , men, , women, and children, a total of , , with negro men and negro women and children.[ ] in the interest of these people humphreys labored faithfully for eight years, and not a little of the comparative quiet in his period of service is to be credited to his own sympathy, good sense, and patience. [footnote : sprague, .] in the spring of the indians were surprised by the suggestion of a treaty that would definitely limit their boundaries and outline their future relations with the white man. the representative chiefs had no desire for a conference, were exceedingly reluctant to meet the commissioners, and finally came to the meeting prompted only by the hope that such terms might be arrived at as would permanently guarantee them in the peaceable possession of their homes. over the very strong protest of some of them a treaty was signed at fort moultrie, on the coast five miles below st. augustine, september , , william p. duval, james gadsden, and bernard segui being the representatives of the united states. by this treaty we learn that the indians, in view of the fact that they have "thrown themselves on, and have promised to continue under, the protection of the united states, and of no other nation, power, or sovereignty; and in consideration of the promises and stipulations hereinafter made, do cede and relinquish all claim or title which they have to the whole territory of florida, with the exception of such district of country as shall herein be allotted to them." they are to have restricted boundaries, the extreme point of which is nowhere to be nearer than fifteen miles to the gulf of mexico. the united states promises to distribute, as soon as the indians are settled on their new land, under the direction of their agent, "implements of husbandry, and stock of cattle and hogs to the amount of six thousand dollars, and an annual sum of five thousand dollars a year for twenty successive years"; and "to restrain and prevent all white persons from hunting, settling, or otherwise intruding" upon the land set apart for the indians, though any american citizen, lawfully authorized, is to pass and repass within the said district and navigate the waters thereof "without any hindrance, toll or exactions from said tribes." for facilitating removal and as compensation for any losses or inconvenience sustained, the united states is to furnish rations of corn, meat, and salt for twelve months, with a special appropriation of $ , for those who have made improvements, and $ , more for the facilitating of transportation. the agent, sub-agent, and interpreter are to reside within the indian boundary "to watch over the interests of said tribes"; and the united states further undertake "as an evidence of their humane policy towards said tribes" to allow $ , a year for twenty years for the establishment of a school and $ , a year for the same period for the support of a gun- and blacksmith. of supreme importance is article : "the chiefs and warriors aforesaid, for themselves and tribes, stipulate to be active and vigilant in the preventing the retreating to, or passing through, the district of country assigned them, of any absconding slaves, or fugitives from justice; and further agree to use all necessary exertions to apprehend and deliver the same to the agent, who shall receive orders to compensate them agreeably to the trouble and expense incurred." we have dwelt at length upon the provisions of this treaty because it contained all the seeds of future trouble between the white man and the indian. six prominent chiefs--nea mathla, john blunt, tuski hajo, mulatto king, emathlochee, and econchattimico--refused absolutely to sign, and their marks were not won until each was given a special reservation of from two to four square miles outside the seminole boundaries. old nea mathla in fact never did accept the treaty in good faith, and when the time came for the execution of the agreement he summoned his warriors to resistance. governor duval broke in upon his war council, deposed the war leaders, and elevated those who favored peaceful removal. the seminoles now retired to their new lands, but nea mathla was driven into practical exile. he retired to the creeks, by whom he was raised to the dignity of a chief. it was soon realized by the seminoles that they had been restricted to some pine woods by no means as fertile as their old lands, nor were matters made better by one or two seasons of drought. to allay their discontent twenty square miles more, to the north, was given them, but to offset this new cession their rations were immediately reduced. . _from the treaty of fort moultrie to the treaty of payne's landing_ now succeeded ten years of trespassing, of insult, and of increasing enmity. kidnapers constantly lurked near the indian possessions, and instances of injury unredressed increased the bitterness and rancor. under date may , , humphreys[ ] wrote to the indian bureau that the white settlers were already thronging to the vicinity of the indian reservation and were likely to become troublesome. as to some recent disturbances, writing from st. augustine february , , he said: "from all i can learn here there is little doubt that the disturbances near tallahassee, which have of late occasioned so much clamor, were brought about by a course of unjustifiable conduct on the part of the whites, similar to that which it appears to be the object of the territorial legislature to legalize. in fact, it is stated that one indian had been so severely whipped by the head of the family which was destroyed in these disturbances, as to cause his death; if such be the fact, the subsequent act of the indians, however lamentable, must be considered as one of retaliation, and i can not but think it is to be deplored that they were afterwards 'hunted' with so unrelenting a revenge." the word _hunted_ was used advisedly by humphreys, for, as we shall see later, when war was renewed one of the common means of fighting employed by the american officers was the use of bloodhounds. sometimes guns were taken from the indians so that they had nothing with which to pursue the chase. on one occasion, when some indians were being marched to headquarters, a woman far advanced in pregnancy was forced onward with such precipitancy as to produce a premature delivery, which almost terminated her life. more far-reaching than anything else, however, was the constant denial of the rights of the indian in court in cases involving white men. as humphreys said, the great disadvantage under which the seminoles labored as witnesses "destroyed everything like equality of rights." some of the negroes that they had, had been born among them, and some others had been purchased from white men and duly paid for. no receipts were given, however, and efforts were frequently made to recapture the negroes by force. the indian, conscious of his rights, protested earnestly against such attempts and naturally determined to resist all efforts to wrest from him his rightfully acquired property. [footnote : the correspondence is readily accessible in sprague, - .] by , however, the territorial legislature had begun to memorialize congress and to ask for the complete removal of the indians. meanwhile the negro question was becoming more prominent, and orders from the department of war, increasingly peremptory, were made on humphreys for the return of definite negroes. for duval and humphreys, however, who had actually to execute the commissions, the task was not always so easy. under date march , , the former wrote to the latter: "many of the slaves belonging to the whites are now in the possession of the white people; these slaves can not be obtained for their indian owners without a lawsuit, and i see no reason why the indians shall be compelled to surrender all slaves claimed by our citizens when this surrender is not mutual." meanwhile the annuity began to be withheld from the indians in order to force them to return negroes, and a friendly chief, hicks, constantly waited upon humphreys only to find the agent little more powerful than himself. thus matters continued through and . in violation of all legal procedure, the indians were constantly _required to relinquish beforehand property in their possession to settle a question of claim_. on march , , humphreys was informed that he was no longer agent for the indians. he had been honestly devoted to the interest of these people, but his efforts were not in harmony with the policy of the new administration. just what that policy was may be seen from jackson's special message on indian affairs of february , . the senate had asked for information as to the conduct of the government in connection with the act of march , , "to regulate trade and intercourse with the indian tribes and to preserve peace on the frontiers." the nullification controversy was in everybody's mind, and already friction had arisen between the new president and the abolitionists. in spite of jackson's attitude toward south carolina, his message in the present instance was a careful defense of the whole theory of state rights. nothing in the conduct of the federal government toward the indian tribes, he insisted, had ever been intended to attack or even to call in question the rights of a sovereign state. in one way the southern states had seemed to be an exception. "as early as the settlements within the limits of north carolina were advanced farther to the west than the authority of the state to enforce an obedience of its laws." after the revolution the tribes desolated the frontiers. "under these circumstances the first treaties, in and , with the cherokees, were concluded by the government of the united states." nothing of all this, said jackson, had in any way affected the relation of any indians to the state in which they happened to reside, and he concluded as follows: "toward this race of people i entertain the kindest feelings, and am not sensible that the views which i have taken of their true interests are less favorable to them than those which oppose their emigration to the west. years since i stated to them my belief that if the states chose to extend their laws over them it would not be in the power of the federal government to prevent it. my opinion remains the same, and i can see no alternative for them but that of their removal to the west or a quiet submission to the state laws. if they prefer to remove, the united states agree to defray their expenses, to supply them the means of transportation and a year's support after they reach their new homes--a provision too liberal and kind to bear the stamp of injustice. either course promises them peace and happiness, whilst an obstinate perseverance in the effort to maintain their possessions independent of the state authority can not fail to render their condition still more helpless and miserable. such an effort ought, therefore, to be discountenanced by all who sincerely sympathize in the fortunes of this peculiar people, and especially by the political bodies of the union, as calculated to disturb the harmony of the two governments and to endanger the safety of the many blessings which they enable us to enjoy." the policy thus formally enunciated was already in practical operation. in the closing days of the administration of john quincy adams a delegation came to washington to present to the administration the grievances of the cherokee nation. the formal reception of the delegation fell to the lot of eaton, the new secretary of war. the cherokees asserted that not only did they have no rights in the georgia courts in cases involving white men, but that they had been notified by georgia that all laws, usages, and agreements in force in the indian country would be null and void after june , ; and naturally they wanted the interposition of the federal government. eaton replied at great length, reminding the cherokees that they had taken sides with england in the war of , that they were now on american soil only by sufferance, and that the central government could not violate the rights of the state of georgia; and he strongly advised immediate removal to the west. the cherokees, quite broken, acted in accord with this advice; and so in did the creeks, to whom jackson had sent a special talk urging removal as the only basis of federal protection. to the seminoles as early as overtures for removal had been made; but before the treaty of fort moultrie had really become effective they had been intruded upon and they in turn had become more slow about returning runaway slaves. from some of the clauses in the treaty of fort moultrie, as some of the chiefs were quick to point out, the understanding was that the same was to be in force for twenty years; and they felt that any slowness on their part about the return of negroes was fully nullified by the efforts of the professional negro stealers with whom they had to deal. early in , however, colonel james gadsden of florida was directed by lewis cass, the secretary of war, to enter into negotiation for the removal of the indians of florida. there was great opposition to a conference, but the indians were finally brought together at payne's landing on the ocklawaha river just seventeen miles from fort king. here on may , , was wrested from them a treaty which is of supreme importance in the history of the seminoles. the full text was as follows: treaty of payne's landing, may , whereas, a treaty between the united states and the seminole nation of indians was made and concluded at payne's landing, on the ocklawaha river, on the th of may, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, by james gadsden, commissioner on the part of the united states, and the chiefs and headmen of said seminole nation of indians, on the part of said nation; which treaty is in the words following, to wit: the seminole indians, regarding with just respect the solicitude manifested by the president of the united states for the improvement of their condition, by recommending a removal to the country more suitable to their habits and wants than the one they at present occupy in the territory of florida, are willing that their confidential chiefs, jumper, fuch-a-lus-to-had-jo, charley emathla, coi-had-jo, holati-emathla, ya-ha-had-jo, sam jones, accompanied by their agent, major john phagan, and their faithful interpreter, abraham, should be sent, at the expense of the united states, as early as convenient, to examine the country assigned to the creeks, west of the mississippi river, and should they be satisfied with the character of the country, and of the favorable disposition of the creeks to re-unite with the seminoles as one people; the articles of the compact and agreement herein stipulated, at payne's landing, on the ocklawaha river, this ninth day of may, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, between james gadsden, for and in behalf of the government of the united states, and the undersigned chiefs and headmen, for and in behalf of the seminole indians, shall be binding on the respective parties. article i. the seminole indians relinquish to the united states all claim to the land they at present occupy in the territory of florida, and agree to emigrate to the country assigned to the creeks, west of the mississippi river, it being understood that an additional extent of country, proportioned to their numbers, will be added to the creek territory, and that the seminoles will be received as a constituent part of the creek nation, and be re-admitted to all the privileges as a member of the same. article ii. for and in consideration of the relinquishment of claim in the first article of this agreement, and in full compensation for all the improvements which may have been made on the lands thereby ceded, the united states stipulate to pay to the seminole indians fifteen thousand four hundred ($ , ) dollars, to be divided among the chiefs and warriors of the several towns, in a ratio proportioned to their population, the respective proportions of each to be paid on their arrival in the country they consent to remove to; it being understood that their faithful interpreters, abraham and cudjo, shall receive two hundred dollars each, of the above sum, in full remuneration of the improvements to be abandoned on the lands now cultivated by them. article iii. the united states agree to distribute, as they arrive at their new homes in the creek territory, west of the mississippi river, a blanket and a homespun frock to each of the warriors, women and children, of the seminole tribe of indians. article iv. the united states agree to extend the annuity for the support of a blacksmith, provided for in the sixth article of the treaty at camp moultrie, for ten ( ) years beyond the period therein stipulated, and in addition to the other annuities secured under that treaty, the united states agree to pay the sum of three thousand ($ , ) dollars a year for fifteen ( ) years, commencing after the removal of the whole tribe; these sums to be added to the creek annuities, and the whole amount to be so divided that the chiefs and warriors of the seminole indians may receive their equitable proportion of the same, as members of the creek confederation. article v. the united states will take the cattle belonging to the seminoles, at the valuation of some discreet person, to be appointed by the president, and the same shall be paid for in money to the respective owners, after their arrival at their new homes; or other cattle, such as may be desired, will be furnished them; notice being given through their agent, of their wishes upon this subject, before their removal, that time may be afforded to supply the demand. article vi. the seminoles being anxious to be relieved from the repeated vexatious demands for slaves, and other property, alleged to have been stolen and destroyed by them, so that they may remove unembarrassed to their new homes, the united states stipulate to have the same property (properly) investigated, and to liquidate such as may be satisfactorily established, provided the amount does not exceed seven thousand ($ , ) dollars. article vii. the seminole indians will remove within three ( ) years after the ratification of this agreement, and the expenses of their removal shall be defrayed by the united states, and such subsistence shall also be furnished them, for a term not exceeding twelve ( ) months after their arrival at their new residence, as in the opinion of the president their numbers and circumstances may require; the emigration to commence as early as practicable in the year eighteen hundred and thirty-three ( ), and with those indians at present occupying the big swamp, and other parts of the country beyond the limits, as defined in the second article of the treaty concluded at camp moultrie creek, so that the whole of that proportion of the seminoles may be removed within the year aforesaid, and the remainder of the tribe, in about equal proportions, during the subsequent years of eighteen hundred and thirty-four and five ( and ). in testimony whereof, the commissioner, james gadsden, and the undersigned chiefs and head-men of the seminole indians, have hereunto subscribed their names and affixed their seals. done at camp, at payne's landing, on the ocklawaha river, in the territory of florida, on this ninth day of may, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, and of the independence of the united states of america, the fifty-sixth. (signed) james gadsden. l.s. holati emathlar, his x mark. jumper, his x mark. cudjo, interpreter, his x mark. erastus rodgers. b. joscan. holati emathlar, his x mark. jumper, his x mark. fuch-ta-lus-ta-hadjo, his x mark. charley emathla, his x mark. coi hadjo, his x mark. ar-pi-uck-i, or sam jones, his x mark. ya-ha-hadjo, his x mark. mico-noha, his x mark. tokose emathla, or john hicks, his x mark. cat-sha-tustenuggee, his x mark. holat-a-micco, his x mark. hitch-it-i-micco, his x mark. e-na-hah, his x mark. ya-ha-emathla-chopco, his x mark. moki-his-she-lar-ni, his x mark. now, therefore, be it known that i, andrew jackson, president of the united states of america, having seen and considered said treaty, do, by and with the advice and consent of the senate, as expressed by their resolution of the eighth day of april, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof. in witness whereof, i have caused the seal of the united states to be hereunto affixed, having signed the same with my hand. done at the city of washington, this twelfth day of april, in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four, and of the independence of the united states of america, the fifty-eighth. (signed) andrew jackson. by the president, louis mclane, secretary of state. it will be seen that by the terms of this document seven chiefs were to go and examine the country assigned to the creeks, and that they were to be accompanied by major john phagan, the successor of humphreys, and the negro interpreter abraham. the character of phagan may be seen from the facts that he was soon in debt to different ones of the indians and to abraham, and that he was found to be short in his accounts. while the indian chiefs were in the west, three united states commissioners conferred with them as to the suitability of the country for a future home, and at fort gibson, arkansas, march , , they were beguiled into signing an additional treaty in which occurred the following sentence: "and the undersigned seminole chiefs, delegated as aforesaid, on behalf of their nation, hereby declare themselves well satisfied with the location provided for them by the commissioners, and agree that their nation shall commence the removal to their new home as soon as the government will make arrangements for their emigration, satisfactory to the seminole nation." they of course had no authority to act on their own initiative, and when all returned in april, , and phagan explained what had happened, the seminoles expressed themselves in no uncertain terms. the chiefs who had gone west denied strenuously that they had signed away any rights to land, but they were nevertheless upbraided as the agents of deception. some of the old chiefs, of whom micanopy was the highest authority, resolved to resist the efforts to dispossess them; and john hicks, who seems to have been substituted for sam jones on the commission, was killed because he argued too strongly for migration. meanwhile the treaty of payne's landing was ratified by the senate of the united states and proclaimed as in force by president jackson april , , and in connection with it the supplementary treaty of fort gibson was also ratified. the seminoles, however, were not showing any haste about removing, and ninety of the white citizens of alachua county sent a protest to the president alleging that the indians were not returning their fugitive slaves. jackson was made angry, and without even waiting for the formal ratification of the treaties, he sent the document to the secretary of war, with an endorsement on the back directing him "to inquire into the alleged facts, and if found to be true, to direct the seminoles to prepare to remove west and join the creeks." general wiley thompson was appointed to succeed phagan as agent, and general duncan l. clinch was placed in command of the troops whose services it was thought might be needed. it was at this juncture that osceola stepped forward as the leading spirit of his people. . _osceola and the second seminole war_ osceola (asseola, or as-se-he-ho-lar, sometimes called powell because after his father's death his mother married a white man of that name[ ]) was not more than thirty years of age. he was slender, of only average height, and slightly round-shouldered; but he was also well proportioned, muscular, and capable of enduring great fatigue. he had light, deep, restless eyes, and a shrill voice, and he was a great admirer of order and technique. he excelled in athletic contests and in his earlier years had taken delight in engaging in military practice with the white men. as he was neither by descent nor formal election a chief, he was not expected to have a voice in important deliberations; but he was a natural leader and he did more than any other man to organize the seminoles to resistance. it is hardly too much to say that to his single influence was due a contest that ultimately cost $ , , and the loss of thousands of lives. never did a patriot fight more valiantly for his own, and it stands to the eternal disgrace of the american arms that he was captured under a flag of truce. [footnote : hodge's _handbook of american indians_, ii, .] it is well to pause for a moment and reflect upon some of the deeper motives that entered into the impending contest. a distinguished congressman,[ ] speaking in the house of representatives a few years later, touched eloquently upon some of the events of these troublous years. let us remember that this was the time of the formation of anti-slavery societies, of pronounced activity on the part of the abolitionists, and recall also that nat turner's insurrection was still fresh in the public mind. giddings stated clearly the issue as it appeared to the people of the north when he said, "i hold that if the slaves of georgia or any other state leave their masters, the federal government has no constitutional authority to employ our army or navy for their recapture, or to apply the national treasure to repurchase them." there could be no question of the fact that the war was very largely one over fugitive slaves. under date october , , general thompson wrote to the commissioner of indian affairs: "there are many very likely negroes in this nation [the seminole]. some of the whites in the adjacent settlements manifest a restless desire to obtain them, and i have no doubt that indian raised negroes are now in the possession of the whites." in a letter dated january , , governor duval had already said to the same official: "the slaves belonging to the indians have a controlling influence over the minds of their masters, and are entirely opposed to any change of residence." six days later he wrote: "the slaves belonging to the indians must be made to fear for themselves before they will cease to influence the minds of their masters.... the first step towards the emigration of these indians must be the breaking up of the runaway slaves and the outlaw indians." and the new orleans _courier_ of july , , revealed all the fears of the period when it said, "every day's delay in subduing the seminoles increases the danger of a rising among the serviles." [footnote : joshua r. giddings, of ohio. his exhaustive speech on the florida war was made february , .] all the while injustice and injury to the indians continued. econchattimico, well known as one of those chiefs to whom special reservations had been given by the treaty of fort moultrie, was the owner of twenty slaves valued at $ , . observing negro stealers hovering around his estate, he armed himself and his men. the kidnapers then furthered their designs by circulating the report that the indians were arming themselves for union with the main body of seminoles for the general purpose of massacring the white people. face to face with this charge econchattimico gave up his arms and threw himself on the protection of the government; and his negroes were at once taken and sold into bondage. a similar case was that of john walker, an appalachicola chief, who wrote to thompson under date july , : "i am induced to write you in consequence of the depredations making and attempted to be made upon my property, by a company of negro stealers, some of whom are from columbus, ga., and have connected themselves with brown and douglass.... i should like your advice how i am to act. i dislike to make or to have any difficulty with the white people. but if they trespass upon my premises and my rights, i must defend myself the best way i can. if they do make this attempt, and i have no doubt they will, they must bear the consequences. _but is there no civil law to protect me_? are the free negroes and the negroes belonging to this town to be stolen away publicly, and in the face of law and justice, carried off and sold to fill the pockets of these worse than land pirates? douglass and his company hired a man who has two large trained dogs for the purpose to come down and take billy. he is from mobile and follows for a livelihood catching runaway negroes." such were the motives, fears and incidents in the years immediately after the treaty of payne's landing. beginning at the close of and continuing through april, , thompson had a series of conferences with the seminole chiefs. at these meetings micanopy, influenced by osceola and other young seminoles, took a more definite stand than he might otherwise have assumed. especially did he insist with reference to the treaty that he understood that the chiefs who went west were to _examine_ the country, and for his part he knew that when they returned they would report unfavorably. thompson then, becoming angry, delivered an ultimatum to the effect that if the treaty was not observed the annuity from the great father in washington would cease. to this, osceola, stepping forward, replied that he and his warriors did not care if they never received another dollar from the great father, and drawing his knife, he plunged it in the table and said, "the only treaty i will execute is with this." henceforward there was deadly enmity between the young seminole and thompson. more and more osceola made his personality felt, constantly asserting to the men of his nation that whoever recommended emigration was an enemy of the seminoles, and he finally arrived at an understanding with many of them that the treaty would be resisted with their very lives. thompson, however, on april , , had a sort of secret conference with sixteen of the chiefs who seemed favorably disposed toward migration, and he persuaded them to sign a document "freely and fully" assenting to the treaties of payne's landing and fort gibson. the next day there was a formal meeting at which the agent, backed up by clinch and his soldiers, upbraided the indians in a very harsh manner. his words were met by groans, angry gesticulations, and only half-muffled imprecations. clinch endeavored to appeal to the indians and to advise them that resistance was both unwise and useless. thompson, however, with his usual lack of tact, rushed onward in his course, and learning that five chiefs were unalterably opposed to the treaty, he arbitrarily struck their names off the roll of chiefs, an action the highhandedness of which was not lost on the seminoles. immediately after the conference moreover he forbade the sale of any more arms and powder to the indians. to the friendly chiefs the understanding had been given that the nation might have until january , , to make preparation for removal, by which time all were to assemble at fort brooke, tampa bay, for emigration. about the first of june osceola was one day on a quiet errand of trading at fort king. with him was his wife, the daughter of a mulatto slave woman who had run away years before and married an indian chief. by southern law this woman followed the condition of her mother, and when the mother's former owner appeared on the scene and claimed the daughter, thompson, who desired to teach occeola a lesson, readily agreed that she should be remanded into captivity.[ ] osceola was highly enraged, and this time it was his turn to upbraid the agent. thompson now had him overpowered and put in irons, in which situation he remained for the better part of two days. in this period of captivity his soul plotted revenge and at length he too planned a "_ruse de guerre_." feigning assent to the treaty he told thompson that if he was released not only would he sign himself but he would also bring his people to sign. the agent was completely deceived by osceola's tactics. "true to his professions," wrote thompson on june , "he this day appeared with seventy-nine of his people, men, women, and children, including some who had joined him since his conversion, and redeemed his promise. he told me many of his friends were out hunting, whom he could and would bring over on their return. i have now no doubt of his sincerity, and as little, that the greatest difficulty is surmounted." [footnote : this highly important incident, which was really the spark that started the war, is absolutely ignored even by such well informed writers as drake and sprague. drake simply gives the impression that the quarrel between osceola and thompson was over the old matter of emigration, saying ( ), "remonstrance soon grew into altercation, which ended in a _ruse de guerre_, by which osceola was made prisoner by the agent, and put in irons, in which situation he was kept one night and part of two days." the story is told by mcmaster, however. also note m.m. cohen as quoted in _quarterly anti-slavery magazine_, vol. ii, p. (july, ).] osceola now rapidly urged forward preparations for war, which, however, he did not wish actually started until after the crops were gathered. by the fall he was ready, and one day in october when he and some other warriors met charley emathla, who had upon him the gold and silver that he had received from the sale of his cattle preparatory to migration, they killed this chief, and osceola threw the money in every direction, saying that no one was to touch it, as it was the price of the red man's blood. the true drift of events became even more apparent to thompson and clinch in november, when five chiefs friendly to migration with five hundred of their people suddenly appeared at fort brooke to ask for protection. when in december thompson sent final word to the seminoles that they must bring in their horses and cattle, the indians did not come on the appointed day; on the contrary they sent their women and children to the interior and girded themselves for battle. to osceola late in the month a runner brought word that some troops under the command of major dade were to leave fort brooke on the th and on the night of the th were to be attacked by some seminoles in the wahoo swamp. osceola himself, with some of his men, was meanwhile lying in the woods near fort king, waiting for an opportunity to kill thompson. on the afternoon of the th the agent dined not far from the fort at the home of the sutler, a man named rogers, and after dinner he walked with lieutenant smith to the crest of a neighboring hill. here he was surprised by the indians, and both he and smith fell pierced by numerous bullets. the indians then pressed on to the home of the sutler and killed rogers, his two clerks, and a little boy. on the same day the command of major dade, including seven officers and one hundred and ten men, was almost completely annihilated, only three men escaping. dade and his horse were killed at the first onset. these two attacks began the actual fighting of the second seminole war. that the negroes were working shoulder to shoulder with the indians in these encounters may be seen from the report of captain belton,[ ] who said, "lieut. keays, third artillery, had both arms broken from the first shot; was unable to act, and was tomahawked the latter part of the second attack, by a negro"; and further: "a negro named harry controls the pea band of about a hundred warriors, forty miles southeast of us, who have done most of the mischief, and keep this post constantly observed." osceola now joined forces with those indians who had attacked dade, and in the early morning of the last day of the year occurred the battle of ouithlecoochee, a desperate encounter in which both osceola and clinch gave good accounts of themselves. clinch had two hundred regulars and five or six hundred volunteers. the latter fled early in the contest and looked on from a distance; and clinch had to work desperately to keep from duplicating the experience of dade. osceola himself was conspicuous in a red belt and three long feathers, but although twice wounded he seemed to bear a charmed life. he posted himself behind a tree, from which station he constantly sallied forth to kill or wound an enemy with almost infallible aim. [footnote : accessible in drake, - .] after these early encounters the fighting became more and more bitter and the contest more prolonged. early in the war the disbursing agent reported that there were only three thousand indians, including negroes, to be considered; but this was clearly an understatement. within the next year and a half the indians were hard pressed, and before the end of this period the notorious thomas s. jessup had appeared on the scene as commanding major general. this man seems to have determined never to use honorable means of warfare if some ignoble instrument could serve his purpose. in a letter sent to colonel harvey from tampa bay under date may , , he said: "if you see powell (osceola), tell him i shall send out and take all the negroes who belong to the white people. and he must not allow the indian negroes to mix with them. tell him i am sending to cuba for bloodhounds to trail them; and i intend to hang every one of them who does not come in." and it might be remarked that for his bloodhounds jessup spent--or said he spent--as much as $ , , a fact which thoroughly aroused giddings and other persons from the north, who by no means cared to see such an investment of public funds. by order no. , dated august , , jessup invited his soldiers to plunder and rapine, saying, "all indian property captured from this date will belong to the corps or detachment making it." from st. augustine, under date october , , in a "confidential" communication he said to one of his lieutenants: "should powell and his warriors come within the fort, seize him and the whole party. it is important that he, wild cat, john cowagee, and tustenuggee, be secured. hold them until you have my orders in relation to them."[ ] two days later he was able to write to the secretary of war that osceola was actually taken. said he: "that chief came into the vicinity of fort peyton on the th, and sent a messenger to general hernandez, desiring to see and converse with him. the sickly season being over, and there being no further necessity to temporize, i sent a party of mounted men, and seized the entire body, and now have them securely lodged in the fort." osceola, wild cat, and others thus captured were marched to st. augustine; but wild cat escaped. osceola was ultimately taken to fort moultrie, in the harbor of charleston, where in january ( ) he died. [footnote : this correspondence, and much more bearing on the point, may be found in house document of the second session of the twenty-fifth congress.] important in this general connection was the fate of the deputation that the influential john ross, chief of the cherokees, was persuaded to send from his nation to induce the seminoles to think more favorably of migration. micanopy, twelve other chieftains, and a number of warriors accompanied the cherokee deputation to the headquarters of the united states army at fort mellon, where they were to discuss the matter. these warriors also jessup seized, and ross wrote to the secretary of war a dignified but bitter letter protesting against this "unprecedented violation of that sacred rule which has ever been recognized by every nation, civilized and uncivilized, of treating with all due respect those who had ever presented themselves under a flag of truce before the enemy, for the purpose of proposing the termination of warfare." he had indeed been most basely used as the agent of deception. this chapter, we trust, has shown something of the real nature of the points at issue in the seminole wars. in the course of these contests the rights of indian and negro alike were ruthlessly disregarded. there was redress for neither before the courts, and at the end in dealing with them every honorable principle of men and nations was violated. it is interesting that the three representatives of colored peoples who in the course of the nineteenth century it was most difficult to capture--toussaint l'ouverture, the negro, osceola, the indian, and aguinaldo, the filipino--were all taken through treachery; and on two of the three occasions this treachery was practiced by responsible officers of the united states army. chapter vi early approach to the negro problem . the ultimate problem and the missouri compromise in a previous chapter[ ] we have already indicated the rise of the negro problem in the last decade of the eighteenth and the first two decades of the nineteenth century. and what was the negro problem? it was certainly not merely a question of slavery; in the last analysis this institution was hardly more than an incident. slavery has ceased to exist, but even to-day the problem is with us. the question was rather what was to be the final place in the american body politic of the negro population that was so rapidly increasing in the country. in the answering of this question supreme importance attached to the negro himself; but the problem soon transcended the race. ultimately it was the destiny of the united states rather than of the negro that was to be considered, and all the ideals on which the country was based came to the testing. if one studied those ideals he soon realized that they were based on teutonic or at least english foundations. by , however, the young american republic was already beginning to be the hope of all of the oppressed people of europe, and greeks and italians as well as germans and swedes were turning their faces toward the promised land. the whole background of latin culture was different from the teutonic, and yet the people of southern as well as of northern europe somehow became a part of the life of the united states. in this life was it also possible for the children of africa to have a permanent and an honorable place? with their special tradition and gifts, with their shortcomings, above all with their distinctive color, could they, too, become genuine american citizens? some said no, but in taking this position they denied not only the ideals on which the country was founded but also the possibilities of human nature itself. in any case the answer to the first question at once suggested another, what shall we do with the negro? about this there was very great difference of opinion, it not always being supposed that the negro himself had anything whatever to say about the matter. some said send the negro away, get rid of him by any means whatsoever; others said if he must stay, keep him in slavery; still others said not to keep him permanently in slavery, but emancipate him only gradually; and already there were beginning to be persons who felt that the negro should be emancipated everywhere immediately, and that after this great event had taken place he and the nation together should work out his salvation on the broadest possible plane. [footnote : iv, section .] into the agitation was suddenly thrust the application of missouri for entrance into the union as a slave state. the struggle that followed for two years was primarily a political one, but in the course of the discussion the evils of slavery were fully considered. meanwhile, in , alabama and maine also applied for admission. alabama was allowed to enter without much discussion, as she made equal the number of slave and free states. maine, however, brought forth more talk. the southern congressmen would have been perfectly willing to admit this as a free state if missouri had been admitted as a slave state; but the north felt that this would have been to concede altogether too much, as missouri from the first gave promise of being unusually important. at length, largely through the influence of henry clay, there was adopted a compromise whose main provisions were ( ) that maine was to be admitted as a free state; ( ) that in missouri there was to be no prohibition of slavery; but ( ) that slavery was to be prohibited in any other states that might be formed out of the louisiana purchase north of the line of ° '. by this agreement the strife was allayed for some years; but it is now evident that the missouri compromise was only a postponement of the ultimate contest and that the social questions involved were hardly touched. certainly the significance of the first clear drawing of the line between the sections was not lost upon thoughtful men. jefferson wrote from monticello in : "this momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. i considered it at once as the knell of the union. it is hushed, indeed, for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.... i can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than i would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any _practicable_ way. the cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle that would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and _expatriation_ could be effected; and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, i think it might be."[ ] for the time being, however, the south was concerned mainly about immediate dangers; nor was this section placed more at ease by denmark vesey's attempted insurrection in .[ ] a representative south carolinian,[ ] writing after this event, said, "we regard our negroes as the _jacobins_ of the country, against whom we should always be upon our guard, and who, although we fear no permanent effects from any insurrectionary movements on their part, should be watched with an eye of steady and unremitted observation." meanwhile from a ratio of . to . in the total negro population in south carolina had by come to outnumber the white . to . , and the tendency was increasingly in favor of the negro. the south, the whole country in fact, was more and more being forced to consider not only slavery but the ultimate reaches of the problem. [footnote : _writings_, xv, .] [footnote : see chapter vii, section .] [footnote : holland: _a refutation of calumnies_, .] whatever one might think of the conclusion--and in this case the speaker was pleading for colonization--no statement of the problem as it impressed men about or was clearer than that of rev. dr. nott, president of union college, at albany in .[ ] the question, said he, was by no means local. slavery was once legalized in new england; and new england built slave-ships and manned these with new england seamen. in the slave population in the country amounted to , , . the number doubled every twenty years, and it was easy to see how it would progress from , , to , , ; to , , ; to , , ; to , , . "twenty-four millions of slaves! what a drawback from our strength; what a tax on our resources; what a hindrance to our growth; what a stain on our character; and what an impediment to the fulfillment of our destiny! could our worst enemies or the worst enemies of republics, wish us a severer judgment?" how could one know that wakeful and sagacious enemies without would not discover the vulnerable point and use it for the country's overthrow? or was there not danger that among a people goaded from age to age there might at length arise some second toussaint l'ouverture, who, reckless of consequences, would array a force and cause a movement throughout the zone of bondage, leaving behind him plantations waste and mansions desolate? who could believe that such a tremendous physical force would remain forever spell-bound and quiescent? after all, however, slavery was doomed; public opinion had already pronounced upon it, and the moral energy of the nation would sooner or later effect its overthrow. "but," continued nott, "the solemn question here arises--in what condition will this momentous change place us? the freed men of other countries have long since disappeared, having been amalgamated in the general mass. here there can be no amalgamation. our manumitted bondmen have remained already to the third and fourth, as they will to the thousandth generation--a distinct, a degraded, and a wretched race." after this sweeping statement, which has certainly not been justified by time, nott proceeded to argue the expediency of his organization. gerrit smith, who later drifted away from colonization, said frankly on the same occasion that the ultimate solution was either amalgamation or colonization, and that of the two courses he preferred to choose the latter. others felt as he did. we shall now accordingly proceed to consider at somewhat greater length the two solutions that about had the clearest advocates--colonization and slavery. [footnote : see "african colonization. proceedings of the formation of the new york state colonization society." albany, .] . _colonization_ early in , rev. samuel hopkins, of newport, called on his friend, rev. ezra stiles, afterwards president of yale college, and suggested the possibility of educating negro students, perhaps two at first, who would later go as missionaries to africa. stiles thought that for the plan to be worth while there should be a colony on the coast of africa, that at least thirty or forty persons should go, and that the enterprise should not be private but should have the formal backing of a society organized for the purpose. in harmony with the original plan two young negro men sailed from new york for africa, november , ; but the revolutionary war followed and nothing more was done at the time. in , however, and again in , hopkins tried to induce different merchants to fit out a vessel to convey a few emigrants, and in the latter year he talked with a young man from the west indies, dr. william thornton, who expressed a willingness to take charge of the company. the enterprise failed for lack of funds, though thornton kept up his interest and afterwards became a member of the first board of managers of the american colonization society. hopkins in spoke before the connecticut emancipation society, which he wished to see incorporated as a colonization society, and in a sermon before the providence society in he reverted to his favorite theme. meanwhile, as a result of the efforts of wilberforce, clarkson, and granville sharp in england, in may, , some four hundred negroes and sixty white persons were landed at sierra leone. some of the negroes in england had gained their freedom in consequence of lord mansfield's decision in , others had been discharged from the british army after the american revolution, and all were leading in england a more or less precarious existence. the sixty white persons sent along were abandoned women, and why sierra leone should have had this weight placed upon it at the start history has not yet told. it is not surprising to learn that "disease and disorder were rife, and by a mere handful survived."[ ] as early as in his _notes on virginia_, privately printed in , thomas jefferson had suggested a colony for negroes, perhaps in the new territory of ohio. the suggestion was not acted upon, but it is evident that by several persons had thought of the possibility of removing the negroes in the south to some other place either within or without the country. [footnote : mcpherson, . (see bibliography on liberia.)] gabriel's insurrection in again forced the idea concretely forward. virginia was visibly disturbed by this outbreak, and _in secret session_, on december , the house of delegates passed the following resolution: "that the governor[ ] be requested to correspond with the president of the united states,[ ] on the subject of purchasing land without the limits of this state, whither persons obnoxious to the laws, or dangerous to the peace of society may be removed." the real purpose of this resolution was to get rid of those negroes who had had some part in the insurrection and had not been executed; but not in , or in or , was the general assembly thus able to banish those whom it was afraid to hang. monroe, however, acted in accordance with his instructions, and jefferson replied to him under date november , . he was not now favorable to deportation to some place within the united states, and thought that the west indies, probably santo domingo, might be better. there was little real danger that the exiles would stimulate vindictive or predatory descents on the american coasts, and in any case such a possibility was "overweighed by the humanity of the measures proposed." "africa would offer a last and undoubted resort," thought jefferson, "if all others more desirable should fail."[ ] six months later, on july , , the president wrote about the matter to rufus king, then minister in london. the course of events in the west indies, he said, had given an impulse to the minds of negroes in the united states; there was a disposition to insurgency, and it now seemed that if there was to be colonization, africa was by all means the best place. an african company might also engage in commercial operations, and if there was coöperation with sierra leone, there was the possibility of "one strong, rather than two weak colonies." would king accordingly enter into conference with the english officials with reference to disposing of any negroes who might be sent? "it is material to observe," remarked jefferson, "that they are not felons, or common malefactors, but persons guilty of what the safety of society, under actual circumstances, obliges us to treat as a crime, but which their feelings may represent in a far different shape. they are such as will be a valuable acquisition to the settlement already existing there, and well calculated to coöperate in the plan of civilization."[ ] king accordingly opened correspondence with thornton and wedderbourne, the secretaries of the company having charge of sierra leone, but was informed that the colony was in a languishing condition and that funds were likely to fail, and that in no event would they be willing to receive more people from the united states, as these were the very ones who had already made most trouble in the settlement.[ ] on january , , the general assembly of virginia passed a resolution that embodied a request to the united states government to set aside a portion of territory in the new louisiana purchase "to be appropriated to the residence of such people of color as have been, or shall be, emancipated, or may hereafter become dangerous to the public safety." nothing came of this. by the close then of jefferson's second administration the northwest, the southwest, the west indies, and sierra leone had all been thought of as possible fields for colonization, but from the consideration nothing visible had resulted. [footnote : monroe.] [footnote : jefferson.] [footnote : _writings_, x, .] [footnote : _writings_, x, - .] [footnote : _ibid_., xiii, .] now followed the period of southern expansion and of increasing materialism, and before long came the war of . by a note of doubt had crept into jefferson's dealing with the subject. said he: "nothing is more to be wished than that the united states would themselves undertake to make such an establishment on the coast of africa ... but for this the national mind is not yet prepared. it may perhaps be doubted whether many of these people would voluntarily consent to such an exchange of situation, and very certain that few of those advanced to a certain age in habits of slavery, would be capable of self-government. this should not, however, discourage the experiment, nor the early trial of it; and the proposition should be made with all the prudent cautions and attentions requisite to reconcile it to the interests, the safety, and the prejudices of all parties."[ ] [footnote : _writings_, xiii, .] from an entirely different source, however, and prompted not by expediency but the purest altruism, came an impulse that finally told in the founding of liberia. the heart of a young man reached out across the sea. samuel j. mills, an undergraduate of williams college, in formed among his fellow-students a missionary society whose work later told in the formation of the american bible society and the board of foreign missions. mills continued his theological studies at andover and then at princeton; and while at the latter place he established a school for negroes at parsippany, thirty miles away. he also interested in his work and hopes rev. robert finley, of basking ridge, n.j., who "succeeded in assembling at princeton the first meeting ever called to consider the project of sending negro colonists to africa,"[ ] and who in a letter to john p. mumford, of new york, under date february , , expressed his interest by saying, "we should send to africa a population partly civilized and christianized for its benefit; and our blacks themselves would be put in a better condition." [footnote : mcpherson, .] in this same year, , the country was startled by the unselfish enterprise of a negro who had long thought of the unfortunate situation of his people in america and who himself shouldered the obligation to do something definite in their behalf. paul cuffe had been born in may, , on one of the elizabeth islands near new bedford, mass., the son of a father who was once a slave from africa and of an indian mother.[ ] interested in navigation, he made voyages to russia, england, africa, the west indies, and the south; and in time he commanded his own vessel, became generally respected, and by his wisdom rose to a fair degree of opulence. for twenty years he had thought especially about africa, and in he took to sierra leone a total of nine families and thirty-eight persons at an expense to himself of nearly $ . the people that he brought were well received at sierra leone, and cuffe himself had greater and more far-reaching plans when he died september , . he left an estate valued at $ , . [footnote : first annual report of american colonization society.] dr. finley's meeting at princeton was not very well attended and hence not a great success. nevertheless he felt sufficiently encouraged to go to washington in december, , to use his effort for the formation of a national colonization society. it happened that in february of this same year, , general charles fenton mercer, member of the house of delegates, came upon the secret journals of the legislature for the period - and saw the correspondence between monroe and jefferson. interested in the colonization project, on december (monroe then being president-elect) he presented in the house of delegates resolutions embodying the previous enactments; and these passed to . finley was generally helped by the effort of mercer, and on december , , there was held in washington a meeting of public men and interested citizens, henry clay, then speaker of the house of representatives, presiding. a constitution was adopted at an adjourned meeting on december ; and on january , , were formally chosen the officers of "the american society for colonizing the free people of color of the united states." at this last meeting henry clay, again presiding, spoke in glowing terms of the possibilities of the movement; elias b. caldwell, a brother-in-law of finley, made the leading argument; and john randolph, of roanoke, va., and robert wright, of maryland, spoke of the advantages to accrue from the removal of the free negroes from the country (which remarks were very soon to awaken much discussion and criticism, especially on the part of the negroes themselves). it is interesting to note that mercer had no part at all in the meeting of january , not even being present; he did not feel that any but southern men should be enrolled in the organization. however, bushrod washington, the president, was a southern man; twelve of the seventeen vice-presidents were southern men, among them being andrew jackson and william crawford; and all of the twelve managers were slaveholders. membership in the american colonization society originally consisted, first, of such as sincerely desired to afford the free negroes an asylum from oppression and who hoped through them to extend to africa the blessings of civilization and christianity; second, of such as sought to enhance the value of their own slaves by removing the free negroes; and third, of such as desired to be relieved of any responsibility whatever for free negroes. the movement was widely advertised as "an effort for the benefit of the blacks in which all parts of the country could unite," it being understood that it was "not to have the abolition of slavery for its immediate object," nor was it to "aim directly at the instruction of the great body of the blacks." such points as the last were to prove in course of time hardly less than a direct challenge to the different abolitionist organizations in the north, and more and more the society was denounced as a movement on the part of slaveholders for perpetuating their institutions by doing away with the free people of color. it is not to be supposed, however, that the south, with its usual religious fervor, did not put much genuine feeling into the colonization scheme. one man in georgia named tubman freed his slaves, thirty in all, and placed them in charge of the society with a gift of $ , ; thomas hunt, a young virginian, afterwards a chaplain in the union army, sent to liberia the slaves he had inherited, paying the entire cost of the journey; and others acted in a similar spirit of benevolence. it was but natural, however, for the public to be somewhat uncertain as to the tendencies of the organization when the utterances of representative men were sometimes directly contradictory. on january , , for instance, henry clay, then secretary of state, speaking in the hall of the house of representatives at the annual meeting of the society, said: "of all classes of our population, the most vicious is that of the free colored. it is the inevitable result of their moral, political, and civil degradation. contaminated themselves, they extend their vices to all around them, to the slaves and to the whites." just a moment later he said: "every emigrant to africa is a missionary carrying with him credentials in the holy cause of civilization, religion, and free institutions." how persons contaminated and vicious could be missionaries of civilization and religion was something possible only in the logic of henry clay. in the course of the next month robert y. hayne gave a southern criticism in two addresses on a memorial presented in the united states senate by the colonization society.[ ] the first of these speeches was a clever one characterized by much wit and good-humored raillery; the second was a sober arraignment. hayne emphasized the tremendous cost involved and the physical impossibility of the whole undertaking, estimating that at least sixty thousand persons a year would have to be transported to accomplish anything like the desired result. at the close of his brilliant attack, still making a veiled plea for the continuance of slavery, he nevertheless rose to genuine statesmanship in dealing with the problem of the negro, saying, "while this process is going on the colored classes are gradually diffusing themselves throughout the country and are making steady advances in intelligence and refinement, and if half the zeal were displayed in bettering their condition that is now wasted in the vain and fruitless effort of sending them abroad, their intellectual and moral improvement would be steady and rapid." william lloyd garrison was untiring and merciless in flaying the inconsistencies and selfishness of the colonization organization. in an editorial in the _liberator_, july , , he charged the society, first, with persecution in compelling free people to emigrate against their will and in discouraging their education at home; second, with falsehood in saying that the negroes were natives of africa when they were no more so than white americans were natives of great britain; third, with cowardice in asserting that the continuance of the negro population in the country involved dangers; and finally, with infidelity in denying that the gospel has full power to reach the hatred in the hearts of men. in _thoughts on african colonisation_ ( ) he developed exhaustively ten points as follows: that the american colonization society was pledged not to oppose the system of slavery, that it apologized for slavery and slaveholders, that it recognized slaves as property, that by deporting negroes it increased the value of slaves, that it was the enemy of immediate abolition, that it was nourished by fear and selfishness, that it aimed at the utter expulsion of the blacks, that it was the disparager of free negroes, that it denied the possibility of elevating the black people of the country, and that it deceived and misled the nation. other criticisms were numerous. a broadside, "the shields of american slavery" ("broad enough to hide the wrongs of two millions of stolen men") placed side by side conflicting utterances of members of the society; and in august, , kendall, fourth auditor, in his report to the secretary of the navy, wondered why the resources of the government should be used "to colonize recaptured africans, to build homes for them, to furnish them with farming utensils, to pay instructors to teach them, to purchase ships for their convenience, to build forts for their protection, to supply them with arms and munitions of war, to enlist troops to guard them, and to employ the army and navy in their defense."[ ] criticism of the american colonization society was prompted by a variety of motives; but the organization made itself vulnerable at many points. the movement attracted extraordinary attention, but has had practically no effect whatever on the position of the negro in the united states. its work in connection with the founding of liberia, however, is of the highest importance, and must later receive detailed attention. [footnote : see jervey: _robert y. hayne and his times_, - .] [footnote : cited by mcpherson, .] . _slavery_ we have seen that from the beginning there were liberal-minded men in the south who opposed the system of slavery, and if we actually take note of all the utterances of different men and of the proposals for doing away with the system, we shall find that about the turn of the century there was in this section considerable anti-slavery sentiment. between and , however, the opening of new lands in the southwest, the increasing emphasis on cotton, and the rapidly growing negro population, gave force to the argument of expediency; and the missouri compromise drew sharply the lines of the contest. the south now came to regard slavery as its peculiar heritage; public men were forced to defend the institution; and in general the best thought of the section began to be obsessed and dominated by the negro, just as it is to-day in large measure. in taking this position the south deliberately committed intellectual suicide. in such matters as freedom of speech and literary achievement, and in genuine statesmanship if not for the time being in political influence, this part of the country declined, and before long the difference between it and new england was appalling. calhoun and hayne were strong; but between and the south had no names to compare with longfellow and emerson in literature, or with morse and hoe in invention. the foremost college professor, dew, of william and mary, and even the outstanding divines, furman, the baptist, of south carolina, in the twenties, and palmer, the presbyterian of new orleans, in the fifties, are all now remembered mainly because they defended their section in keeping the negro in bonds. william and mary college, and even the university of virginia, as compared with harvard and yale, became provincial institutions; and instead of the washington or jefferson of an earlier day now began to be nourished such a leader as "bob" toombs, who for all of his fire and eloquence was a demagogue. in making its choice the south could not and did not blame the negro per se, for it was freely recognized that upon slave labor rested such economic stability as the section possessed. the tragedy was simply that thousands of intelligent americans deliberately turned their faces to the past, and preferred to read the novels of walter scott and live in the middle ages rather than study the french revolution and live in the nineteenth century. one hundred years after we find that the chains are still forged, that thought is not yet free. thus the negro problem began to be, and still is, very largely the problem of the white man of the south. the era of capitalism had not yet dawned, and still far in the future was the day when the poor white man and the negro were slowly to realize that their interests were largely identical. the argument with which the south came to support its position and to defend slavery need not here detain us at length. it was formally stated by dew and others[ ] and it was to be heard on every hand. one could hardly go to church, to say nothing of going to a public meeting, without hearing echoes of it. in general it was maintained that slavery had made for the civilization of the world in that it had mitigated the evils of war, had made labor profitable, had changed the nature of savages, and elevated woman. the slave-trade was of course horrible and unjust, but the great advantages of the system more than outweighed a few attendant evils. emancipation and deportation were alike impossible. even if practicable, they would not be expedient measures, for they meant the loss to virginia of one-third of her property. as for morality, it was not to be expected that the negro should have the sensibilities of the white man. moreover the system had the advantage of cultivating a republican spirit among the white people. in short, said dew, the slaves, in both the economic and the moral point of view, were "entirely unfit for a state of freedom among the whites." holland, already cited, in maintained five points, as follows: . that the united states are one for national purposes, but separate for their internal regulation and government; . that the people of the north and east "always exhibited an unfriendly feeling on subjects affecting the interests of the south and west"; . that the institution of slavery was not an institution of the south's voluntary choosing; . that the southern sections of the union, both before and after the declaration of independence, "had uniformly exhibited a disposition to restrict the extension of the evil--and had always manifested as cordial a disposition to ameliorate it as those of the north and east"; and . that the actual state and condition of the slave population "reflected no disgrace whatever on the character of the country--as the slaves were infinitely better provided for than the laboring poor of other countries of the world, and were generally happier than millions of white people in the world." such arguments the clergy supported and endeavored to reconcile with christian precept. rev. dr. richard furman, president of the baptist convention of south carolina,[ ] after much inquiry and reasoning, arrived at the conclusion that "the holding of slaves is justifiable by the doctrine and example contained in holy writ; and is, therefore, consistent with christian uprightness both in sentiment and conduct." said he further: "the christian golden rule, of doing to others as we would they should do to us, has been urged as an unanswerable argument against holding slaves. but surely this rule is never to be urged against that order of things which the divine government has established; nor do our desires become a standard to us, under this rule, unless they have a due regard to justice, propriety, and the general good.... a father may very naturally desire that his son should be obedient to his orders: is he therefore to obey the orders of his son? a man might be pleased to be exonerated from his debts by the generosity of his creditors; or that his rich neighbor should equally divide his property with him; and in certain circumstances might desire these to be done: would the mere existence of this desire oblige him to exonerate his debtors, and to make such division of his property?" calhoun in formally accepted slavery, saying that the south should no longer apologize for it; and the whole argument from the standpoint of expediency received eloquent expression in the senate of the united states from no less a man than henry clay, who more and more appears in the perspective as a pro-southern advocate. said he: "i am no friend of slavery. but i prefer the liberty of my own country to that of any other people; and the liberty of my own race to that of any other race. the liberty of the descendants of africa in the united states is incompatible with the safety and liberty of the european descendants. their slavery forms an exception--an exception resulting from a stern and inexorable necessity--to the general liberty in the united states."[ ] after the lapse of years the pro-slavery argument is pitiful in its numerous fallacies. it was in line with much of the discussion of the day that questioned whether the negro was actually a human being, and but serves to show to what extremes economic interest will sometimes drive men otherwise of high intelligence and honor. [footnote : _the pro-slavery argument_ (as maintained by the most distinguished writers of the southern states). charleston, .] [footnote : "rev. dr. richard furman's exposition of the views of the baptists relative to the coloured population in the united states, in a communication to the governor of south carolina." second edition, charleston, (letter bears original date, december , ).] [footnote : address "on abolition," february , .] chapter vii the negro reply, i: revolt we have already seen that on several occasions in colonial times the negroes in bondage made a bid for freedom, many men risking their all and losing their lives in consequence. in general these early attempts failed completely to realize their aim, organization being feeble and the leadership untrained and exerting only an emotional hold over adherents. in charleston, s.c., in , however, there was planned an insurrection about whose scope there could be no question. the leader, denmark vesey, is interesting as an intellectual insurrectionist just as the more famous nat turner is typical of the more fervent sort. it is the purpose of the present chapter to study the attempts for freedom made by these two men, and also those of two daring groups of captives who revolted at sea. . _denmark vesey's insurrection_ denmark vesey is first seen as one of the three hundred and ninety slaves on the ship of captain vesey, who commanded a vessel trading between st. thomas and cape françois (santo domingo), and who was engaged in supplying the french of the latter place with slaves. at the time, the boy was fourteen years old, and of unusual personal beauty, alertness, and magnetism. he was shown considerable favoritism, and was called télémaque (afterwards corrupted to _telmak_, and then to _denmark_). on his arrival at cape françois, denmark was sold with others of the slaves to a planter who owned a considerable estate. on his next trip, however, captain vesey learned that the boy was to be returned to him as unsound and subject to epileptic fits. the laws of the place permitted the return of a slave in such a case, and while it has been thought that denmark's fits may have been feigned in order that he might have some change of estate, there was quite enough proof in the matter to impress the king's physician. captain vesey never had reason to regret having to take the boy back. they made several voyages together, and denmark served until as his faithful personal attendant. in this year the young man, now thirty-three years of age and living in charleston, won $ , in an east bay street lottery, $ of which he devoted immediately to the purchase of his freedom. the sum was much less than he was really worth, but captain vesey liked him and had no reason to drive a hard bargain with him. in the early years of his full manhood accordingly denmark vesey found himself a free man in his own right and possessed of the means for a little real start in life. he improved his time and proceeded to win greater standing and recognition by regular and industrious work at his trade, that of a carpenter. over the slaves he came to have unbounded influence. among them, in accordance with the standards of the day, he had several wives and children (none of whom could he call his own), and he understood perfectly the fervor and faith and superstition of the negroes with whom he had to deal. to his remarkable personal magnetism moreover he added just the strong passion and the domineering temper that were needed to make his conquest complete. thus for twenty years he worked on. he already knew french as well as english, but he now studied and reflected upon as wide a range of subjects as possible. it was not expected at the time that there would be religious classes or congregations of negroes apart from the white people; but the law was not strictly observed, and for a number of years a negro congregation had a church in hampstead in the suburbs of charleston. at the meetings here and elsewhere vesey found his opportunity, and he drew interesting parallels between the experiences of the jews and the negroes. he would rebuke a companion on the street for bowing to a white person; and if such a man replied, "we are slaves," he would say, "you deserve to be." if the man then asked what he could do to better his condition, he would say, "go and buy a spelling-book and read the fable of hercules and the wagoner."[ ] at the same time if he happened to engage in conversation with white people in the presence of negroes, he would often take occasion to introduce some striking remark on slavery. he regularly held up to emulation the work of the negroes of santo domingo; and either he or one of his chief lieutenants clandestinely sent a letter to the president of santo domingo to ask if the people there would help the negroes of charleston if the latter made an effort to free themselves.[ ] about moreover, when he heard of the african colonization scheme and the opportunity came to him to go, he put this by, waiting for something better. this was the period of the missouri compromise. reports of the agitation and of the debates in congress were eagerly scanned by those negroes in charleston who could read; rumor exaggerated them; and some of the more credulous of the slaves came to believe that the efforts of northern friends had actually emancipated them and that they were being illegally held in bondage. nor was the situation improved when the city marshal, john j. lafar, on january , , reminded those ministers or other persons who kept night and sunday schools for negroes that the law forbade the education of such persons and would have to be enforced. meanwhile vesey was very patient. after a few months, however, he ceased to work at his trade in order that all the more he might devote himself to the mission of his life. this was, as he conceived it, an insurrection that would do nothing less than totally annihilate the white population of charleston. [footnote : official report, .] [footnote : official report, - , and higginson, - .] in the prosecution of such a plan the greatest secrecy and faithfulness were of course necessary, and vesey waited until about christmas, , to begin active recruiting. he first sounded ned and rolla bennett, slaves of governor thomas bennett, and then peter poyas and jack purcell. after christmas he spoke to gullah jack and monday gell; and lot forrester and frank ferguson became his chief agents for the plantations outside of charleston.[ ] in the whole matter of the choice of his chief assistants he showed remarkable judgment of character. his penetration was almost uncanny. "rolla was plausible, and possessed uncommon self-possession; bold and ardent, he was not to be deterred from his purpose by danger. ned's appearance indicated that he was a man of firm nerves and desperate courage. peter was intrepid and resolute, true to his engagements, and cautious in observing secrecy when it was necessary; he was not to be daunted or impeded by difficulties, and though confident of success, was careful in providing against any obstacles or casualties which might arise, and intent upon discovering every means which might be in their power if thought of beforehand. gullah jack was regarded as a sorcerer, and as such feared by the natives of africa, who believe in witchcraft. he was not only considered invulnerable, but that he could make others so by his charms; and that he could and certainly would provide all his followers with arms.... his influence amongst the africans was inconceivable. monday was firm, resolute, discreet, and intelligent."[ ] he was also daring and active, a harness-maker in the prime of life, and he could read and write with facility; but he was also the only man of prominence in the conspiracy whose courage failed him in court and who turned traitor. to these names must be added that of batteau bennett, who was only eighteen years old and who brought to the plan all the ardor and devotion of youth. in general vesey sought to bring into the plan those negroes, such as stevedores and mechanics, who worked away from home and who had some free time. he would not use men who were known to become intoxicated, and one talkative man named george he excluded from his meetings. nor did he use women, not because he did not trust them, but because in case of mishap he wanted the children to be properly cared for. "take care," said peter poyas, in speaking about the plan to one of the recruits, "and don't mention it to those waiting men who receive presents of old coats, etc., from their masters, or they'll betray us; i will speak to them." [footnote : official report, . note that higginson, who was so untiring in his research, strangely confuses jack purcell and gullah jack (p. ). the men were quite distinct, as appears throughout the report and from the list of those executed. the name of gullah jack's owner was pritchard.] [footnote : official report, . note that this remarkable characterization was given by the judges, kennedy and parker, who afterwards condemned the men to death.] with his lieutenants vesey finally brought into the plan the negroes for seventy or eighty miles around charleston. the second monday in july, , or sunday, july , was the time originally set for the attack. july was chosen because in midsummer many of the white people were away at different resorts; and sunday received favorable consideration because on that day the slaves from the outlying plantations were frequently permitted to come to the city. lists of the recruits were kept. peter poyas is said to have gathered as many as six hundred names, chiefly from that part of charleston known as south bay in which he lived; and it is a mark of his care and discretion that of all of those afterwards arrested and tried, not one belonged to his company. monday gell, who joined late and was very prudent, had forty-two names. all such lists, however, were in course of time destroyed. "during the period that these enlistments were carrying on, vesey held frequent meetings of the conspirators at his house; and as arms were necessary to their success, each night a hat was handed round, and collections made, for the purpose of purchasing them, and also to defray other necessary expenses. a negro who was a blacksmith and had been accustomed to make edged tools, was employed to make pike-heads and bayonets with sockets, to be fixed at the ends of long poles and used as pikes. of these pike-heads and bayonets, one hundred were said to have been made at an early day, and by the th june as many as two or three hundred, and between three and four hundred daggers."[ ] a bundle containing some of the poles, neatly trimmed and smoothed off, and nine or ten feet long, was afterwards found concealed on a farm on charleston neck, where several of the meetings were held, having been carried there to have the pike-heads and bayonets fixed in place. governor bennett stated that the number of poles thus found was thirteen, but so wary were the negroes that he and other prominent men underestimated the means of attack. it was thought that the negroes in charleston might use their masters' arms, while those from the country were to bring hoes, hatchets, and axes. for their main supply of arms, however, vesey and peter poyas depended upon the magazines and storehouses in the city. they planned to seize the arsenal in meeting street opposite st. michael's church; it was the key to the city, held the arms of the state, and had for some time been neglected. poyas at a given signal at midnight was to move upon this point, killing the sentinel. two large gun and powder stores were by arrangement to be at the disposal of the insurrectionists; and other leaders, coming from six different directions, were to seize strategic points and thus aid the central work of poyas. meanwhile a body of horse was to keep the streets clear. "eat only dry food," said gullah jack as the day approached, "parched corn and ground nuts, and when you join us as we pass put this crab claw in your mouth and you can't be wounded." [footnote : official report, - .] on may [ ] a slave of colonel prioleau, while on an errand at the wharf, was accosted by another slave, william paul, who remarked: "i have often seen a flag with the number , but never one with the number upon it before." as this man showed no knowledge of what was going on, paul spoke to him further and quite frankly about the plot. the slave afterwards spoke to a free man about what he had heard; this man advised him to tell his master about it; and so he did on prioleau's return on may . prioleau immediately informed the intendant, or mayor, and by five o'clock in the afternoon both the slave and paul were being examined. paul was placed in confinement, but not before his testimony had implicated peter poyas and mingo harth, a man who had been appointed to lead one of the companies of horse. harth and poyas were cool and collected, however, they ridiculed the whole idea, and the wardens, completely deceived, discharged them. in general at this time the authorities were careful and endeavored not to act hastily. about june , however, paul, greatly excited and fearing execution, confessed that the plan was very extensive and said that it was led by an individual who bore a charmed life. ned bennett, hearing that his name had been mentioned, voluntarily went before the intendant and asked to be examined, thus again completely baffling the officials. all the while, in the face of the greatest danger, vesey continued to hold his meetings. by friday, june , however, another informant had spoken to his master, and all too fully were peter poyas's fears about "waiting-men" justified. this man said that the original plan had been changed, for the night of sunday, june , was now the time set for the insurrection, and otherwise he was able to give all essential information.[ ] on saturday night, june , jesse blackwood, an aid sent into the country to prepare the slaves to enter the following day, while he penetrated two lines of guards, was at the third line halted and sent back into the city. vesey now realized in a moment that all his plans were disclosed, and immediately he destroyed any papers that might prove to be incriminating. "on sunday, june , at ten o'clock at night, captain cattle's corps of hussars, captain miller's light infantry, captain martindale's neck rangers, the charleston riflemen and the city guard were ordered to rendezvous for guard, the whole organized as a detachment under command of colonel r.y. hayne."[ ] it was his work on this occasion that gave hayne that appeal to the public which was later to help him to pass on to the governorship and then to the united states senate. on the fateful night twenty or thirty men from the outlying districts who had not been able to get word of the progress of events, came to the city in a small boat, but vesey sent word to them to go back as quickly as possible. [footnote : higginson, .] [footnote : for reasons of policy the names of these informers were withheld from publication, but they were well known, of course, to the negroes of charleston. the published documents said of the chief informer, "it would be a libel on the liberality and gratitude of this community to suppose that this man can be overlooked among those who are to be rewarded for their fidelity and principle." the author has been informed that his reward for betraying his people was to be officially and legally declared "a white man."] [footnote : jervey: _robert y. hayne and his times_, - .] two courts were formed for the trial of the conspirators. the first, after a long session of five weeks, was dissolved july ; a second was convened, but after three days closed its investigation and adjourned august .[ ] all the while the public mind was greatly excited. the first court, which speedily condemned thirty-four men to death, was severely criticized. the new york _daily advertiser_ termed the execution "a bloody sacrifice"; but charleston replied with the reminder of the negroes who had been burned in new york in .[ ] some of the negroes blamed the leaders for the trouble into which they had been brought, but vesey himself made no confession. he was by no means alone. "do not open your lips," said poyas; "die silent as you shall see me do." something of the solicitude of owners for their slaves may be seen from the request of governor bennett himself in behalf of batteau bennett. he asked for a special review of the case of this young man, who was among those condemned to death, "with a view to the mitigation of his punishment." the court did review the case, but it did not change its sentence. throughout the proceedings the white people of charleston were impressed by the character of those who had taken part in the insurrection; "many of them possessed the highest confidence of their owners, and not one was of bad character."[ ] [footnote : bennett letter.] [footnote : see _city gazette_, august , , cited by jervey.] [footnote : official report, .] as a result of this effort for freedom one hundred and thirty-one negroes were arrested; thirty-five were executed and forty-three banished.[ ] of those executed, denmark vesey, peter poyas, ned bennett, rolla bennett, batteau bennett, and jesse blackwood were hanged july ; gullah jack and one more on july ; twenty-two were hanged on a huge gallows friday, july ; four more were hanged july , and one on august . of those banished, twelve had been sentenced for execution, but were afterwards given banishment instead; twenty-one were to be transported by their masters beyond the limits of the united states; one, a free man, required to leave the state, satisfied the court by offering to leave the united states, while nine others who were not definitely sentenced were strongly recommended to their owners for banishment. the others of the one hundred and thirty-one were acquitted. the authorities at length felt that they had executed enough to teach the negroes a lesson, and the hanging ceased; but within the next year or two governor bennett and others gave to the world most gloomy reflections upon the whole proceeding and upon the grave problem at their door. thus closed the insurrection that for the ambitiousness of its plan, the care with which it was matured, and the faithfulness of the leaders to one another, was never equalled by a similar attempt for freedom in the united states. [footnote : the figure is sometimes given as , but the lists total .] _ . nat turner's insurrection_ about noon on sunday, august , , on the plantation of joseph travis at cross keys, in southampton county, in southeastern virginia, were gathered four negroes, henry porter, hark travis, nelson williams, and sam francis, evidently preparing for a barbecue. they were soon joined by a gigantic and athletic negro named will francis, and by another named jack reese. two hours later came a short, strong-looking man who had a face of great resolution and at whom one would not have needed to glance a second time to know that he was to be the master-spirit of the company. seeing will and his companion he raised a question as to their being present, to which will replied that life was worth no more to him than the others and that liberty was as dear to him. this answer satisfied the latest comer, and nat turner now went into conference with his most trusted friends. one can only imagine the purpose, the eagerness, and the firmness on those dark faces throughout that long summer afternoon and evening. when at last in the night the low whispering ceased, the doom of nearly three-score white persons--and it might be added, of twice as many negroes--was sealed. cross keys was seventy miles from norfolk, just about as far from richmond, twenty-five miles from the dismal swamp, fifteen miles from murfreesboro in north carolina, and also fifteen miles from jerusalem, the county seat of southampton county. the community was settled primarily by white people of modest means. joseph travis, the owner of nat turner, had recently married the widow of one putnam moore. nat turner, who originally belonged to one benjamin turner, was born october , . he was mentally precocious and had marks on his head and breast which were interpreted by the negroes who knew him as marking him for some high calling. in his mature years he also had on his right arm a knot which was the result of a blow which he had received. he experimented in paper, gunpowder, and pottery, and it is recorded of him that he was never known to swear an oath, to drink a drop of spirits, or to commit a theft. instead he cultivated fasting and prayer and the reading of the bible. more and more nat gave himself up to a life of the spirit and to communion with the voices that he said he heard. he once ran away for a month, but felt commanded by the spirit to return. about a consciousness of his great mission came to him, and daily he labored to make himself more worthy. as he worked in the field he saw drops of blood on the corn, and he also saw white spirits and black spirits contending in the skies. while he thus so largely lived in a religious or mystical world and was immersed, he was not a professional baptist preacher. on may , , he was left no longer in doubt. a great voice said unto him that the serpent was loosed, that christ had laid down the yoke, that he, nat, was to take it up again, and that the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first. an eclipse of the sun in february, , was interpreted as the sign for him to go forward. yet he waited a little longer, until he had made sure of his most important associates. it is worthy of note that when he began his work, while he wanted the killing to be as effective and widespread as possible, he commanded that no outrage be committed, and he was obeyed. when on the sunday in august nat and his companions finished their conference, they went to find austin, a brother-spirit; and then all went to the cider-press and drank except nat. it was understood that he as the leader was to spill the first blood, and that he was to begin with his own master, joseph travis. going to the house, hark placed a ladder against the chimney. on this nat ascended; then he went downstairs, unbarred the doors, and removed the guns from their places. he and will together entered travis's chamber, and the first blow was given to the master of the house. the hatchet glanced off and travis called to his wife; but this was with his last breath, for will at once despatched him with his ax. the wife and the three children of the house were also killed immediately. then followed a drill of the company, after which all went to the home of salathiel francis six hundred yards away. sam and will knocked, and francis asked who was there. sam replied that he had a letter, for him. the man came to the door, where he was seized and killed by repeated blows over the head. he was the only white person in the house. in silence all passed on to the home of mrs. reese, who was killed while asleep in bed. her son awoke, but was also immediately killed. a mile away the insurrectionists came to the home of mrs. turner, which they reached about sunrise on monday morning. henry, austin, and sam went to the still, where they found and killed the overseer, peebles, austin shooting him. then all went to the house. the family saw them coming and shut the door--to no avail, however, as will with one stroke of his ax opened it and entered to find mrs. turner and mrs. newsome in the middle of the room almost frightened to death. will killed mrs. turner with one blow of his ax, and after nat had struck mrs. newsome over the head with his sword, will turned and killed her also. by this time the company amounted to fifteen. nine went mounted to the home of mrs. whitehead and six others went along a byway to the home of henry bryant. as they neared the first house richard whitehead, the son of the family, was standing in the cotton-patch near the fence. will killed him with his ax immediately. in the house he killed mrs. whitehead, almost severing her head from her body with one blow. margaret, a daughter, tried to conceal herself and ran, but was killed by turner with a fence-rail. the men in this first company were now joined by those in the second, the six who had gone to the bryant home, who informed them that they had done the work assigned, which was to kill henry bryant himself, his wife and child, and his wife's mother. by this time the killing had become fast and furious. the company divided again; some would go ahead, and nat would come up to find work already accomplished. generally fifteen or twenty of the best mounted were put in front to strike terror and prevent escape, and nat himself frequently did not get to the houses where killing was done. more and more the negroes, now about forty in number, were getting drunken and noisy. the alarm was given, and by nine or ten o'clock on monday morning one captain harris and his family had escaped. prominent among the events of the morning, however, was the killing at the home of mrs. waller of ten children who were gathering for school.[ ] [footnote : in "horrid massacre," or, to use the more formal title, "authentic and impartial narrative of the tragical scene which was witnessed in southampton county (virginia) on monday the d of august last," the list below of the victims of nat turner's insurrection is given. it must be said about this work, however, that it is not altogether impeccable; it seems to have been prepared very hastily after the event, its spelling of names is often arbitrary, and instead of the fifty-five victims noted it appears that at least fifty-seven white persons were killed: joseph travis, wife and three children mrs. elizabeth turner, hartwell peebles, and sarah newsum mrs. piety reese and son, william trajan doyal henry briant, wife and child, and wife's mother mrs. catherine whitehead, her son richard, four daughters and a grandchild salathael francis nathaniel francis's overseer and two children john t. barrow and george vaughan mrs. levi waller and ten children mr. william williams, wife and two boys mrs. caswell worrell and child mrs. rebacca vaughan, ann eliza vaughan, and son arthur mrs. jacob williams and three children and edwin drewry __ ] as the men neared the home of james parker, it was suggested that they call there; but turner objected, as this man had already gone to jerusalem and he himself wished to reach the county seat as soon as possible. however, he and some of the men remained at the gate while others went to the house half a mile away. this exploit proved to be the turning-point of the events of the day. uneasy at the delay of those who went to the house, turner went thither also. on his return he was met by a company of white men who had fired on those negroes left at the gate and dispersed them. on discovering these men, turner ordered his own men to halt and form, as now they were beginning to be alarmed. the white men, eighteen in number, approached and fired, but were forced to retreat. reënforcements for them from jerusalem were already at hand, however, and now the great pursuit of the negro insurrectionists began. hark's horse was shot under him and five or six of the men were wounded. turner's force was largely dispersed, but on monday night he stopped at the home of major ridley, and his company again increased to forty. he tried to sleep a little, but a sentinel gave the alarm; all were soon up and the number was again reduced to twenty. final resistance was offered at the home of dr. blunt, but here still more of the men were put to flight and were never again seen by turner. a little later, however, the leader found two of his men named jacob and nat. these he sent with word to henry, hark, nelson, and sam to meet him at the place where on sunday they had taken dinner together. with what thoughts nat turner returned alone to this place on tuesday evening can only be imagined. throughout the night he remained, but no one joined him and he presumed that his followers had all either been taken or had deserted him. nor did any one come on wednesday, or on thursday. on thursday night, having supplied himself with provisions from the travis home, he scratched a hole under a pile of fence-rails, and here he remained for six weeks, leaving only at night to get water. all the while of course he had no means of learning of the fate of his companions or of anything else. meanwhile not only the vicinity but the whole south was being wrought up to an hysterical state of mind. a reward of $ for the capture of the man was offered by the governor, and other rewards were also offered. on september a false account of his capture appeared in the newspapers; on october another; on october still another. by this time turner had begun to move about a little at night, not speaking to any human being and returning always to his hole before daybreak. early on october a dog smelt his provisions and led thither two negroes. nat appealed to these men for protection, but they at once began to run and excitedly spread the news. turner fled in another direction and for ten days more hid among the wheat-stacks on the francis plantation. all the while not less than five hundred men were on the watch for him, and they found the stick that he had notched from day to day. once he thought of surrendering, and walked within two miles of jerusalem. three times he tried to get away, and failed. on october he was discovered by francis, who discharged at him a load of buckshot, twelve of which passed through his hat, and he was at large for five days more. on october benjamin phipps, a member of the patrol, passing a clearing in the woods noticed a motion among the boughs. he paused, and gradually he saw nat's head emerging from a hole beneath. the fugitive now gave up as he knew that the woods were full of men. he was taken to the nearest house, and the crowd was so great and the excitement so intense that it was with difficulty that he was taken to jerusalem. for more than two months, from august to october , he had eluded his pursuers, remaining all the while in the vicinity of his insurrection. while nat turner was in prison, thomas c. gray, his counsel, received from him what are known as his "confessions." this pamphlet is now almost inaccessible,[ ] but it was in great demand at the time it was printed and it is now the chief source for information about the progress of the insurrection. turner was tried november and sentenced to be hanged six days later. asked in court by gray if he still believed in the providential nature of his mission, he asked, "was not christ crucified?" of his execution itself we read: "nat turner was executed according to sentence, on friday, the th of november, , at jerusalem, between the hours of a.m. and p.m. he exhibited the utmost composure throughout the whole ceremony; and, although assured that he might, if he thought proper, address the immense crowd assembled on the occasion, declined availing himself of the privilege; and, being asked if he had any further confessions to make, replied that he had nothing more than he had communicated; and told the sheriff in a firm voice that he was ready. not a limb or muscle was observed to move. his body, after death, was given over to the surgeons for dissection." [footnote : the only copy that the author has seen is that in the library of harvard university.] of fifty-three negroes arraigned in connection with the insurrection "seventeen were executed and twelve transported. the rest were discharged, except ... four free negroes sent on to the superior court. three of the four were executed." [ ] such figures as these, however, give no conception of the number of those who lost their lives in connection with the insurrection. in general, if slaves were convicted by legal process and executed or transported, or if they escaped before trial, they were paid for by the commonwealth; if killed, they were not paid for, and a man like phipps might naturally desire to protect his prisoner in order to get his reward. in spite of this, the negroes were slaughtered without trial and sometimes under circumstances of the greatest barbarity. one man proudly boasted that he had killed between ten and fifteen. a party went from richmond with the intention of killing every negro in southampton county. approaching the cabin of a free negro they asked, "is this southampton county?" "yes, sir," came the reply, "you have just crossed the line by yonder tree." they shot him dead and rode on. in general the period was one of terror, with voluntary patrols, frequently drunk, going in all directions. these men tortured, burned, or maimed the negroes practically at will. said one old woman [ ] of them: "the patrols were low drunken whites, and in nat's time, if they heard any of the colored folks prayin' or singin' a hymn, they would fall upon 'em and abuse 'em, and sometimes kill 'em.... the brightest and best was killed in nat's time. the whites always suspect such ones. they killed a great many at a place called duplon. they killed antonio, a slave of mr. j. stanley, whom they shot; then they pointed their guns at him and told him to confess about the insurrection. he told 'em he didn't know anything about any insurrection. they shot several balls through him, quartered him, and put his head on a pole at the fork of the road leading to the court.... it was there but a short time. he had no trial. they never do. in nat's time, the patrols would tie up the free colored people, flog 'em, and try to make 'em lie against one another, and often killed them before anybody could interfere. mr. james cole, high sheriff, said if any of the patrols came on his plantation, he would lose his life in defense of his people. one day he heard a patroller boasting how many negroes he had killed. mr. cole said, 'if you don't pack up, as quick as god almighty will let you, and get out of this town, and never be seen in it again, i'll put you where dogs won't bark at you.' he went off, and wasn't seen in them parts again." [footnote : drewry, .] [footnote : charity bowery, who gave testimony to l.m. child, quoted by higginson.] the immediate panic created by the nat turner insurrection in virginia and the other states of the south it would be impossible to exaggerate. when the news of what was happening at cross keys spread, two companies, on horse and foot, came from murfreesboro as quickly as possible. on the wednesday after the memorable sunday night there came from fortress monroe three companies and a piece of artillery. these commands were reënforced from various sources until not less than eight hundred men were in arms. many of the negroes fled to the dismal swamp, and the wildest rumors were afloat. one was that wilmington had been burned, and in raleigh and fayetteville the wildest excitement prevailed. in the latter place scores of white women and children fled to the swamps, coming out two days afterwards muddy, chilled, and half-starved. slaves were imprisoned wholesale. in wilmington four men were shot without trial and their heads placed on poles at the four corners of the town. in macon, ga., a report was circulated that an armed band of negroes was only five miles away, and within an hour the women and children were assembled in the largest building in the town, with a military force in front for protection. the effects on legislation were immediate. throughout the south the slave codes became more harsh; and while it was clear that the uprising had been one of slaves rather than of free negroes, as usual special disabilities fell upon the free people of color. delaware, that only recently had limited the franchise to white men, now forbade the use of firearms by free negroes and would not suffer any more to come within the state. tennessee also forbade such immigration, while maryland passed a law to the effect that all free negroes must leave the state and be colonized in africa--a monstrous piece of legislation that it was impossible to put into effect and that showed once for all the futility of attempts at forcible emigration as a solution of the problem. in general, however, the insurrection assisted the colonization scheme and also made more certain the carrying out of the policy of the jackson administration to remove the indians of the south to the west. it also focussed the attention of the nation upon the status of the negro, crystallized opinion in the north, and thus helped with the formation of anti-slavery organizations. by it for the time being the negro lost; in the long run he gained. . _the "amistad" and "creole" cases_ on june , , a schooner, the _amistad_, sailed from havana bound for guanaja in the vicinity of puerto principe. she was under the command of her owner, don ramon ferrer, was laden with merchandise, and had on board fifty-three negroes, forty-nine of whom supposedly belonged to a spaniard, don jose ruiz, the other four belonging to don pedro montes. during the night of june the slaves, under the lead of one of their number named cinque, rose upon the crew, killed the captain, a slave of his, and two sailors, and while they permitted most of the crew to escape, they took into close custody the two owners, ruiz and montes. montes, who had some knowledge of nautical affairs, was ordered to steer the vessel back to africa. so he did by day, when the negroes would watch him, but at night he tried to make his way to some land nearer at hand. other vessels passed from time to time, and from these the negroes bought provisions, but montes and ruiz were so closely watched that they could not make known their plight. at length, on august , the schooner reached long island sound, where it was detained by the american brig-of-war _washington_, in command of captain gedney, who secured the negroes and took them to new london, conn. it took a year and a half to dispose of the issue thus raised. the case attracted the greatest amount of attention, led to international complications, and was not really disposed of until a former president had exhaustively argued the case for the negroes before the supreme court of the united states. in a letter of september , , to john forsyth, the american secretary of state, calderon, the spanish minister, formally made four demands: . that the _amistad_ be immediately delivered up to her owner, together with every article on board at the time of her capture; . that it be declared that no tribunal in the united states had the right to institute proceedings against, or to impose penalties upon, the subjects of spain, for crimes committed on board a spanish vessel, and in the waters of spanish territory; . that the negroes be conveyed to havana or otherwise placed at the disposal of the representatives of spain; and . that if, in consequence of the intervention of the authorities in connecticut, there should be any delay in the desired delivery of the vessel and the slaves, the owners both of the latter and of the former be indemnified for the injury that might accrue to them. in support of his demands calderon invoked "the law of nations, the stipulations of existing treaties, and those good feelings so necessary in the maintenance of the friendly relations that subsist between the two countries, and are so interesting to both." forsyth asked for any papers bearing on the question, and calderon replied that he had none except "the declaration on oath of montes and ruiz." meanwhile the abolitionists were insisting that protection had _not_ been afforded the african strangers cast on american soil and that in no case did the executive arm of the government have any authority to interfere with the regular administration of justice. "these africans," it was said, "are detained in jail, under process of the united states courts, in a free state, after it has been decided by the district judge, on sufficient proof, that they are recently from africa, were never the lawful slaves of ruiz and montes," and "when it is clear as noonday that there is no law or treaty stipulation that requires the further detention of these africans or their delivery to spain or its subjects." writing on october to the spanish representative with reference to the arrest of ruiz and montes, forsyth informed him that the two spanish subjects had been arrested on process issuing from the superior court of the city of new york upon affidavits of certain men, natives of africa, "for the purpose of securing their appearance before the proper tribunal, to answer for wrongs alleged to have been inflicted by them upon the persons of said africans," that, consequently, the occurrence constituted simply a "case of resort by individuals against others to the judicial courts of the country, which are equally open to all without distinction," and that the agency of the government to obtain the release of messrs. ruiz and montes could not be afforded in the manner requested. further pressure was brought to bear by the spanish representative, however, and there was cited the case of abraham wendell, captain of the brig _franklin_, who was prosecuted at first by spanish officials for maltreatment of his mate, but with reference to whom documents were afterwards sent from havana to america. much more correspondence followed, and felix grundy, of tennessee, attorney general of the united states, at length muddled everything by the following opinion: "these negroes deny that they are slaves; if they should be delivered to the claimants, no opportunity may be afforded for the assertion of their right to freedom. for these reasons, it seems to me that a delivery to the spanish minister is the only safe course for this government to pursue." the fallacy of all this was shown in a letter dated november , , from b.f. butler, united states district attorney in new york, to aaron vail, acting secretary of state. said butler: "it does not appear to me that any question has yet arisen under the treaty with spain; because, although it is an admitted principle, that neither the courts of this state, nor those of the united states, can take jurisdiction of criminal offenses committed by foreigners within the territory of a foreign state, yet it is equally settled in this country, that our courts will take cognizance of _civil_ actions between foreigners transiently within our jurisdiction, founded upon contracts or other transactions made or had in a foreign state." southern influence was strong, however, and a few weeks afterwards an order was given from the department of state to have a vessel anchor off new haven, conn., january , , to receive the negroes from the united states marshal and take them to cuba; and on january the president, van buren, issued the necessary warrant. the rights of humanity, however, were not to be handled in this summary fashion. the executive order was stayed, and the case went further on its progress to the highest tribunal in the land. meanwhile the anti-slavery people were teaching the africans the rudiments of english in order that they might be better able to tell their own story. from the first a committee had been appointed to look out for their interests and while they were awaiting the final decision in their case they cultivated a garden of fifteen acres. the appearance of john quincy adams in behalf of these negroes before the supreme court of the united states february and march , , is in every way one of the most beautiful acts in american history. in the fullness of years, with his own administration as president twelve years behind him, the "old man eloquent" came once more to the tribunal that he knew so well to make a last plea for the needy and oppressed. to the task he brought all his talents--his profound knowledge of law, his unrivaled experience, and his impressive personality; and his argument covers octavo pages. he gave an extended analysis of the demand of the spanish minister, who asked the president to do what he simply had no constitutional right to do. "the president," said adams, "has no power to arrest either citizens or foreigners. but even that power is almost insignificant compared with that of sending men beyond seas to deliver them up to a foreign government." the secretary of state had "degraded the country, in the face of the whole civilized world, not only by allowing these demands to remain unanswered, but by proceeding, throughout the whole transaction, as if the executive were earnestly desirous to comply with every one of the demands." the spanish minister had naturally insisted in his demands because he had not been properly met at first. the slave-trade was illegal by international agreement, and the only thing to do under the circumstances was to release the negroes. adams closed his plea with a magnificent review of his career and of the labors of the distinguished jurists he had known in the court for nearly forty years, and be it recorded wherever the name of justice is spoken, he won his case. lewis tappan now accompanied the africans on a tour through the states to raise money for their passage home. the first meeting was in boston. several members of the company interested the audience by their readings from the new testament or by their descriptions of their own country and of the horrors of the voyage. cinque gave the impression of great dignity and of extraordinary ability; and kali, a boy only eleven years of age, also attracted unusual attention. near the close of , accompanied by five missionaries and teachers, the africans set sail from new york, to make their way first to sierra leone and then to their own homes as well as they could. while this whole incident of the _amistad_ was still engaging the interest of the public, there occurred another that also occasioned international friction and even more prolonged debate between the slavery and anti-slavery forces. on october , , the brig _creole_, captain ensor, of richmond, va., sailed from richmond and on october from hampton roads, with a cargo of tobacco and one hundred and thirty slaves bound for new orleans. on the vessel also, aside from the crew, were the captain's wife and child, and three or four passengers, who were chiefly in charge of the slaves, one man, john r. hewell, being directly in charge of those belonging to an owner named mccargo. about . on the night of sunday, november , while out at sea, nineteen of the slaves rose, cowed the others, wounded the captain, and generally took command of the vessel. madison washington began the uprising by an attack on gifford, the first mate, and ben blacksmith, one of the most aggressive of his assistants, killed hewell. the insurgents seized the arms of the vessel, permitted no conversation between members of the crew except in their hearing, demanded and obtained the manifests of slaves, and threatened that if they were not taken to abaco or some other british port they would throw the officers and crew overboard. the _creole_ reached nassau, new providence, on tuesday, november , and the arrival of the vessel at once occasioned intense excitement. gifford went ashore and reported the matter, and the american consul, john f. bacon, contended to the english authorities that the slaves on board the brig were as much a part of the cargo as the tobacco and entitled to the same protection from loss to the owners. the governor, sir francis cockburn, however, was uncertain whether to interfere in the business at all. he liberated those slaves who were not concerned in the uprising, spoke of all of the slaves as "passengers," and guaranteed to the nineteen who were shown by an investigation to have been connected with the uprising all the rights of prisoners called before an english court. he told them further that the british government would be communicated with before their case was finally passed upon, that if they wished copies of the informations these would be furnished them, and that they were privileged to have witnesses examined in refutation of the charges against them. from time to time negroes who were natives of the island crowded about the brig in small boats and intimidated the american crew, but when on the morning of november the attorney general questioned them as to their intentions they replied with transparent good humor that they intended no violence and had assembled only for the purpose of conveying to shore such of the persons on the _creole_ as might be permitted to leave and might need their assistance. the attorney general required, however, that they throw overboard a dozen stout cudgels that they had. here the whole case really rested. daniel webster as secretary of state aroused the anti-slavery element by making a strong demand for the return of the slaves, basing his argument on the sacredness of vessels flying the american flag; but the english authorities at nassau never returned any of them. on march , , joshua r. giddings, untiring defender of the rights of the negro, offered in the house of representatives resolutions to the effect that slavery could exist only by positive law of the different states; that the states had delegated no control over slavery to the federal government, which alone had jurisdiction on the high seas, and that, therefore, slaves on the high seas became free and the coastwise trade was unconstitutional. the house, strongly pro-southern, replied with a vote of censure and giddings resigned, but he was immediately reëlected by his ohio constituency. chapter viii the negro reply, ii: organization and agitation it is not the purpose of the present chapter primarily to consider social progress on the part of the negro. a little later we shall endeavor to treat this interesting subject for the period between the missouri compromise and the civil war. just now we are concerned with the attitude of the negro himself toward the problem that seemed to present itself to america and for which such different solutions were proposed. so far as slavery was concerned, we have seen that the remedy suggested by denmark vesey and nat turner was insurrection. it is only to state an historical fact, however, to say that the great heart of the negro people in the south did not believe in violence, but rather hoped and prayed for a better day to come by some other means. but what was the attitude of those people, progressive citizens and thinking leaders, who were not satisfied with the condition of the race and who had to take a stand on the issues that confronted them? if we study the matter from this point of view, we shall find an amount of ferment and unrest and honest difference of opinion that is sometimes overlooked or completely forgotten in the questions of a later day. . _walker's "appeal_" the most widely discussed book written by a negro in the period was one that appeared in boston in . david walker, the author, had been born in north carolina in , of a free mother and a slave father, and he was therefore free.[ ] he received a fair education, traveled widely over the united states, and by was living in boston as the proprietor of a second-hand clothing store on brattle street. he felt very strongly on the subject of slavery and actually seems to have contemplated leading an insurrection. in he addressed various audiences of negroes in boston and elsewhere, and in he published his _appeal, in four articles; together with a preamble to the coloured citizens of the world, but in particular, and very expressly, to those of the united states of america_. the book was remarkably successful. appearing in september, by march of the following year it had reached its third edition; and in each successive edition the language was more bold and vigorous. walker's projected insurrection did not take place, and he himself died in . while there was no real proof of the fact, among the negro people there was a strong belief that he met with foul play. [footnote : adams: _neglected period of anti-slavery_, .] article i walker headed "our wretchedness in consequence of slavery." a trip over the united states had convinced him that the negroes of the country were "the most degraded, wretched and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began." he quoted a south carolina paper as saying, "the turks are the most barbarous people in the world--they treat the greeks more like brutes than human beings"; and then from the same paper cited an advertisement of the sale of eight negro men and four women. "are we men?" he exclaimed. "i ask you, o! my brothers, are we men?... have we any other master but jesus christ alone? is he not their master as well as ours? what right, then, have we to obey and call any man master but himself? how we could be so submissive to a gang of men, whom we can not tell whether they are as good as ourselves, or not, i never could conceive." "the whites," he asserted, "have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and bloodthirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority." as heathen the white people had been cruel enough, but as christians they were ten times more so. as heathen "they were not quite so audacious as to go and take vessel loads of men, women and children, and in cold blood, through devilishness, throw them into the sea, and murder them in all kind of ways. but being christians, enlightened and sensible, they are completely prepared for such hellish cruelties." next was considered "our wretchedness in consequence of ignorance." in general the writer maintained that his people as a whole did not have intelligence enough to realize their own degradation; even if boys studied books they did not master their texts, nor did their information go sufficiently far to enable them actually to meet the problems of life. if one would but go to the south or west, he would see there a son take his mother, who bore almost the pains of death to give him birth, and by the command of a tyrant, strip her as naked as she came into the world and apply the cowhide to her until she fell a victim to death in the road. he would see a husband take his dear wife, not unfrequently in a pregnant state and perhaps far advanced, and beat her for an unmerciful wretch, until her infant fell a lifeless lump at her feet. moreover, "there have been, and are this day, in boston, new york, philadelphia, and baltimore, colored men who are in league with tyrants and who receive a great portion of their daily bread of the moneys which they acquire from the blood and tears of their more miserable brethren, whom they scandalously deliver into the hands of our natural enemies." in article iii walker considered "our wretchedness in consequence of the preachers of the religion of jesus christ." here was a fertile field, which was only partially developed. walker evidently did not have at hand the utterances of furman and others to serve as a definite point of attack. he did point out, however, the general failure of christian ministers to live up to the teachings of christ. "even here in boston," we are informed, "pride and prejudice have got to such a pitch, that in the very houses erected to the lord they have built little places for the reception of colored people, where they must sit during meeting, or keep away from the house of god." hypocrisy could hardly go further than that of preachers who could not see the evils at their door but could "send out missionaries to convert the heathen, notwithstanding." article iv was headed "our wretchedness in consequence of the colonizing plan." this was a bitter arraignment, especially directed against henry clay. "i appeal and ask every citizen of these united states," said walker, "and of the world, both white and black, who has any knowledge of mr. clay's public labors for these states--i want you candidly to answer the lord, who sees the secrets of your hearts, do you believe that mr. henry clay, late secretary of state, and now in kentucky, is a friend to the blacks further than his personal interest extends?... does he care a pinch of snuff about africa--whether it remains a land of pagans and of blood, or of christians, so long as he gets enough of her sons and daughters to dig up gold and silver for him?... was he not made by the creator to sit in the shade, and make the blacks work without remuneration for their services, to support him and his family? i have been for some time taking notice of this man's speeches and public writings, but never to my knowledge have i seen anything in his writings which insisted on the emancipation of slavery, which has almost ruined his country." walker then paid his compliments to elias b. caldwell and john randolph, the former of whom had said, "the more you improve the condition of these people, the more you cultivate their minds, the more miserable you make them in their present state." "here," the work continues, "is a demonstrative proof of a plan got up, by a gang of slaveholders, to select the free people of color from among the slaves, that our more miserable brethren may be the better secured in ignorance and wretchedness, to work their farms and dig their mines, and thus go on enriching the christians with their blood and groans. what our brethren could have been thinking about, who have left their native land and gone away to africa, i am unable to say.... the americans may say or do as they please, but they have to raise us from the condition of brutes to that of respectable men, and to make a national acknowledgment to us for the wrongs they have inflicted on us.... you may doubt it, if you please. i know that thousands will doubt--they think they have us so well secured in wretchedness, to them and their children, that it is impossible for such things to occur. so did the antediluvians doubt noah, until the day in which the flood came and swept them away. so did the sodomites doubt, until lot had got out of the city, and god rained down fire and brimstone from heaven upon them and burnt them up. so did the king of egypt doubt the very existence of god, saying, 'who is the lord, that i should let israel go?' ... so did the romans doubt.... but they got dreadfully deceived." this document created the greatest consternation in the south. the mayor of savannah wrote to mayor otis of boston, demanding that walker be punished. otis, in a widely published letter, replied expressing his disapproval of the pamphlet, but saying that the author had done nothing that made him "amenable" to the laws. in virginia the legislature considered passing an "extraordinary bill," not only forbidding the circulation of such seditious publications but forbidding the education of free negroes. the bill passed the house of delegates, but failed in the senate. the _appeal_ even found its way to louisiana, where there were already rumors of an insurrection, and immediately a law was passed expelling all free negroes who had come to the state since . _ . the convention movement_ as may be inferred from walker's attitude, the representative men of the race were almost a unit in their opposition to colonization. they were not always opposed to colonization itself, for some looked favorably upon settlement in canada, and a few hundred made their way to the west indies. they did object, however, to the plan offered by the american colonization society, which more and more impressed them as a device on the part of slaveholders to get free negroes out of the country in order that slave labor might be more valuable. richard allen, bishop of the african methodist episcopal church, and the foremost negro of the period, said: "we were stolen from our mother country and brought here. we have tilled the ground and made fortunes for thousands, and still they are not weary of our services. _but they who stay to till the ground must be slaves_. is there not land enough in america, or 'corn enough in egypt'? why should they send us into a far country to die? see the thousands of foreigners emigrating to america every year: and if there be ground sufficient for them to cultivate, and bread for them to eat, why would they wish to send the _first tillers_ of the land away? africans have made fortunes for thousands, who are yet unwilling to part with their services; but the free must be sent away, and those who remain must be slaves. i have no doubt that there are many good men who do not see as i do, and who are sending us to liberia; but they have not duly considered the subject--they are not men of color. this land which we have watered with our tears and our blood is now our _mother country_, and we are well satisfied to stay where wisdom abounds and the gospel is free."[ ] this point of view received popular expression in a song which bore the cumbersome title, "the colored man's opinion of colonization," and which was sung to the tune of "home, sweet home." the first stanza was as follows: [footnote : _freedom's journal_, november , , quoted by walker.] great god, if the humble and weak are as dear to thy love as the proud, to thy children give ear! our brethren would drive us in deserts to roam; forgive them, o father, and keep us at home. home, sweet home! we have no other; this, this is our home.[ ] [footnote : _anti-slavery picknick_, - .] to this sentiment formal expression was given in the measures adopted at various negro meetings in the north. in the greatest excitement was occasioned by a report that through the efforts of the newly-formed colonization society all free negroes were forcibly to be deported from the country. resolutions of protest were adopted, and these were widely circulated.[ ] of special importance was the meeting in philadelphia in january, presided over by james forten. of this the full report is as follows: [footnote : they are fully recorded in _garrison's thoughts on african colonization_.] at a numerous meeting of the people of color, convened at bethel church, to take into consideration the propriety of remonstrating against the contemplated measure that is to exile us from the land of our nativity, james forten was called to the chair, and russell parrott appointed secretary. the intent of the meeting having been stated by the chairman, the following resolutions were adopted without one dissenting voice: whereas, our ancestors (not of choice) were the first successful cultivators of the wilds of america, we their descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings of her luxuriant soil, which their blood and sweat manured; and that any measure or system of measures, having a tendency to banish us from her bosom, would not only be cruel, but in direct violation of those principles which have been the boast of this republic, _resolved_, that we view with deep abhorrence the unmerited stigma attempted to be cast upon the reputation of the free people of color, by the promoters of this measure, "that they are a dangerous and useless part of the community," when in the state of disfranchisement in which they live, in the hour of danger they ceased to remember their wrongs, and rallied around the standard of their country. _resolved_, that we never will separate ourselves voluntarily from the slave population of this country; they are our brethren by the ties of consanguinity, of suffering, and of wrong; and we feel that there is more virtue in suffering privations with them, than fancied advantages for a season. _resolved_, that without arts, without science, without a proper knowledge of government to cast upon the savage wilds of africa the free people of color, seems to us the circuitous route through which they must return to perpetual bondage. _resolved_, that having the strongest confidence in the justice of god, and philanthropy of the free states, we cheerfully submit our destinies to the guidance of him who suffers not a sparrow to fall without his special providence. _resolved_, that a committee of eleven persons be appointed to open a correspondence with the honorable joseph hopkinson, member of congress from this city, and likewise to inform him of the sentiments of this meeting, and that the following named persons constitute the committee, and that they have power to call a general meeting, when they, in their judgment, may deem it proper: rev. absalom jones, rev. richard allen, james forten, robert douglass, francis perkins, rev. john gloucester, robert gorden, james johnson, quamoney clarkson, john summersett, randall shepherd. james forten, chairman. russell parrott, secretary. in , in new york, was begun the publication of _freedom's journal_, the first negro newspaper in the united states. the editors were john b. russwurm and samuel e. cornish. russwurm was a recent graduate of bowdoin college and was later to become better known as the governor of maryland in africa. by feeling was acute throughout the country, especially in ohio and kentucky, and on the part of negro men had developed the conviction that the time had come for national organization and protest. in the spring of hezekiah grice of baltimore, who had become personally acquainted with the work of lundy and garrison, sent a letter to prominent negroes in the free states bringing in question the general policy of emigration.[ ] received no immediate response, but in august he received from richard allen an urgent request to come at once to philadelphia. arriving there he found in session a meeting discussing the wisdom of emigration to canada, and allen "showed him a printed circular signed by peter williams, rector of st. philip's church, new york, peter vogelsang and thomas l. jennings of the same place, approving the plan of convention."[ ] the philadelphians now issued a call for a convention of the negroes of the united states to be held in their city september , . [footnote : john w. cromwell: _the early negro convention movement_.] [footnote : _ibid_., .] this september meeting was held in bethel a.m.e. church. bishop richard allen was chosen president, dr. belfast burton of philadelphia and austin steward of rochester vice-presidents, junius c. morell of pennsylvania secretary, and robert cowley of maryland assistant secretary. there were accredited delegates from seven states. while this meeting might really be considered the first national convention of negroes in the united states (aside of course from the gathering of denominational bodies), it seems to have been regarded merely as preliminary to a still more formal assembling, for the minutes of the next year were printed as the "minutes and proceedings of the first annual convention of the people of color, held by adjournments in the city of philadelphia, from the sixth to the eleventh of june, inclusive, . philadelphia, ." the meetings of this convention were held in the wesleyan church on lombard street. richard allen had died earlier in the year and grice was not present; not long afterwards he emigrated to hayti, where he became prominent as a contractor. rev. james w.c. pennington of new york, however, now for the first time appeared on the larger horizon of race affairs; and john bowers of philadelphia served as president, abraham d. shadd of delaware and william duncan of virginia as vice-presidents, william whipper of philadelphia as secretary, and thomas l. jennings of new york as assistant secretary. delegates from five states were present. the gathering was not large, but it brought together some able men; moreover, the meeting had some distinguished visitors, among them benjamin lundy, william lloyd garrison, rev. s.s. jocelyn of new haven, and arthur tappan of new york. the very first motion of the convention resolved "that a committee be appointed to institute an inquiry into the condition of the free people of color throughout the united states, and report their views upon the subject at a subsequent meeting." as a result of its work this committee recommended that the work of organizations interested in settlement in canada be continued; that the free people of color be annually called to assemble by delegation; and it submitted "the necessity of deliberate reflection on the dissolute, intemperate, and ignorant condition of a large portion of the colored population of the united states." "and, lastly, your committee view with unfeigned regret, and respectfully submit to the wisdom of this convention, the operations and misrepresentations of the american colonization society in these united states.... we feel sorrowful to see such an immense and wanton waste of lives and property, not doubting the benevolent feelings of some individuals engaged in that cause. but we can not for a moment doubt but that the cause of many of our unconstitutional, unchristian, and unheard-of sufferings emanate from that unhallowed source; and we would call on christians of every denomination firmly to resist it." the report was unanimously received and adopted. jocelyn, tappan, and garrison addressed the convention with reference to a proposed industrial college in new haven, toward the $ , expense of which one individual (tappan himself) had subscribed $ with the understanding that the remaining $ , be raised within a year; and the convention approved the project, _provided_ the negroes had a majority of at least one on the board of trustees. an illuminating address to the public called attention to the progress of emancipation abroad, to the fact that it was american persecution that led to the calling of the convention, and that it was this also that first induced some members of the race to seek an asylum in canada, where already there were two hundred log houses, and five hundred acres under cultivation. in eight states were represented by a total of thirty delegates. by this time we learn that a total of eight hundred acres had been secured in canada, that two thousand negroes had gone thither, but that considerable hostility had been manifested on the part of the canadians. hesitant, the convention appointed an agent to investigate the situation. it expressed itself as strongly opposed to any national aid to the american colonization society and urged the abolition of slavery in the district of columbia--all of which activity, it is well to remember, was a year before the american anti-slavery society was organized. in there were fifty-eight delegates, and abraham shadd, now of washington, was chosen president. the convention again gave prominence to the questions of canada and colonization, and expressed itself with reference to the new law in connecticut prohibiting negroes from other states from attending schools within the state. the meeting was held in new york. prudence crandall[ ] was commended for her stand in behalf of the race, and july was set apart as a day for prayer and addresses on the condition of the negro throughout the country. by this time we hear much of societies for temperance and moral reform, especially of the so-called phoenix societies "for improvement in general culture--literature, mechanic arts, and morals." of these organizations rev. christopher rush, of the a.m.e. zion church, was general president, and among the directors were rev. peter williams, boston crummell, the father of alexander crummell, and rev. william paul quinn, afterwards a well-known bishop of the a.m.e. church. the and meetings were held in philadelphia, and especially were the students of lane seminary in cincinnati commended for their zeal in the cause of abolition. a committee was appointed to look into the dissatisfaction of some emigrants to liberia and generally to review the work of the colonization society. [footnote : see chapter x, section .] in the decade - frederick douglass was outstanding as a leader, and other men who were now prominent were dr. james mccune smith, rev. james w.c. pennington, alexander crummell, william c. nell, and martin r. delany. these are important names in the history of the period. these were the men who bore the brunt of the contest in the furious days of texas annexation and the compromise of . about and there was renewed interest in the idea of an industrial college; steps were taken for the registry of negro mechanics and artisans who were in search of employment, and of the names of persons who were willing to give them work; and there was also a committee on historical records and statistics that was not only to compile studies in negro biography but also to reply to any assaults of note.[ ] [footnote : we can not too much emphasize the fact that the leaders of this period were by no means impractical theorists but men who were scientifically approaching the social problem of their people. they not only anticipated such ideas as those of industrial education and of the national urban league of the present day, but they also endeavored to lay firmly the foundations of racial self-respect.] immediately after the last of the conventions just mentioned, those who were interested in emigration and had not been able to get a hearing in the regular convention issued a call for a national emigration convention of colored men to take place in cleveland, ohio, august - , . the preliminary announcement said: "no person will be admitted to a seat in the convention who would introduce the subject of emigration to the eastern hemisphere--either to asia, africa, or europe--as our object and determination are to consider our claims to the west indies, central and south america, and the canadas. this restriction has no reference to personal preference, or individual enterprise, but to the great question of national claims to come before the convention."[ ] douglass pronounced the call "uncalled for, unwise, unfortunate and premature," and his position led him into a wordy discussion in the press with james m. whitfield, of buffalo, prominent at the time as a writer. delany explained the call as follows: "it was a mere policy on the part of the authors of these documents, to confine their scheme to america (including the west indies), whilst they were the leading advocates of the regeneration of africa, lest they compromised themselves and their people to the avowed enemies of their race."[ ] at the secret sessions, he informs us, africa was the topic of greatest interest. in order to account for this position it is important to take note of the changes that had taken place between and . when james forten and others in philadelphia in protested against the american colonization society as the plan of a "gang of slaveholders" to drive free people from their homes, they had abundant ground for the feeling. by , however, not only had the personnel of the organization changed, but, largely through the influence of garrison, the purpose and aim had also changed, and not virginia and maryland, but new york and pennsylvania were now dominant in influence. colonization had at first been regarded as a possible solution of the race problem; money was now given, however, "rather as an aid to the establishment of a model negro republic in africa, whose effort would be to discourage the slave-trade, and encourage energy and thrift among those free negroes from the united states who chose to emigrate, and to give native africans a demonstration of the advantages of civilization."[ ] in view of the changed conditions, delany and others who disagreed with douglass felt that for the good of the race in the united states the whole matter of emigration might receive further consideration; at the same time, remembering old discussions, they did not wish to be put in the light of betrayers of their people. the pittsburgh _daily morning post_ of october , , sneered at the new plan as follows: "if dr. delany drafted this report it certainly does him much credit for learning and ability; and can not fail to establish for him a reputation for vigor and brilliancy of imagination never yet surpassed. it is a vast conception of impossible birth. the committee seem to have entirely overlooked the strength of the 'powers on earth' that would oppose the africanization of more than half the western hemisphere. we have no motive in noticing this gorgeous dream of 'the committee' except to show its fallacy--its impracticability, in fact, its absurdity. no sensible man, whatever his color, should be for a moment deceived by such impracticable theories." however, in spite of all opposition, the emigration convention met. upon delany fell the real brunt of the work of the organization. in bishop james theodore holly was commissioned to faustin soulouque, emperor of hayti; and he received in his visit of a month much official attention with some inducement to emigrate. delany himself planned to go to africa as the head of a "niger valley exploring party." of the misrepresentation and difficulties that he encountered he himself has best told. he did get to africa, however, and he had some interesting and satisfactory interviews with representative chiefs. the civil war put an end to his project, he himself accepting a major's commission from president lincoln. through the influence of holly about two thousand persons went to hayti, but not more than a third of these remained. a plan fostered by whitfield for a colony in central america came to naught when this leading spirit died in san francisco on his way thither.[ ] [footnote : official report of the niger valley exploring party, by m.r. delany, chief commissioner to africa, new york, .] [footnote : delany, .] [footnote : fox: _the american colonisation society_, ; also note pp. , - .] [footnote : for the progress of all the plans offered to the convention note important letter written by holly and given by cromwell, - .] . _sojourner truth and woman suffrage_ with its challenge to the moral consciousness it was but natural that anti-slavery should soon become allied with temperance, woman suffrage, and other reform movements that were beginning to appeal to the heart of america. especially were representative women quick to see that the arguments used for their cause were very largely identical with those used for the negro. when the woman suffrage movement was launched at seneca falls, n.y., in , lucretia mott, elizabeth cady stanton, and their co-workers issued a declaration of sentiments which like many similar documents copied the phrasing of the declaration of independence. this said in part: "the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man towards woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.... he has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.... he has made her, if married, in the eye of the law civilly dead.... he has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed to her." it mattered not at the time that male suffrage was by no means universal, or that amelioration of the condition of woman had already begun; the movement stated its case clearly and strongly in order that it might fully be brought to the attention of the american people. in the first formal national woman's rights convention assembled in worcester, mass. to this meeting came a young quaker woman who was already listed in the cause of temperance. in fact, wherever she went susan b. anthony entered into "causes." she possessed great virtues and abilities, and at the same time was capable of very great devotion. "she not only sympathized with the negro; when an opportunity offered she drank tea with him, to her own 'unspeakable satisfaction.'"[ ] lucy stone, an oberlin graduate, was representative of those who came into the agitation by the anti-slavery path. beginning in to speak as an agent of the anti-slavery society, almost from the first she began to introduce the matter of woman's rights in her speeches. [footnote : ida m. tarbell: "the american woman: her first declaration of independence," _american magazine_, february, .] to the second national woman's suffrage convention, held in akron, ohio, in , and presided over by mrs. frances d. gage, came sojourner truth. the "libyan sibyl" was then in the fullness of her powers. she had been born of slave parents about in ulster county, new york. in her later years she remembered vividly the cold, damp cellar-room in which slept the slaves of the family to which she belonged, and where she was taught by her mother to repeat the lord's prayer and to trust in god. when in the course of gradual emancipation she became legally free in , her master refused to comply with the law and kept her in bondage. she left, but was pursued and found. rather than have her go back, a friend paid for her services for the rest of the year. then came an evening when, searching for one of her children who had been stolen and sold, she found herself a homeless wanderer. a quaker family gave her lodging for the night. subsequently she went to new york city, joined a methodist church, and worked hard to improve her condition. later, having decided to leave new york for a lecture tour through the east, she made a small bundle of her belongings and informed a friend that her name was no longer _isabella_ but _sojourner_. she went on her way, speaking to people wherever she found them assembled and being entertained in many aristocratic homes. she was entirely untaught in the schools, but was witty, original, and always suggestive. by her tact and her gift of song she kept down ridicule, and by her fervor and faith she won many friends for the anti-slavery cause. as to her name she said: "and the lord gave me _sojourner_ because i was to travel up an' down the land showin' the people their sins an' bein' a sign unto them. afterwards i told the lord i wanted another name, 'cause everybody else had two names, an' the lord gave me _truth_, because i was to declare the truth to the people." on the second day of the convention in akron, in a corner, crouched against the wall, sat this woman of care, her elbows resting on her knees, and her chin resting upon her broad, hard palms.[ ] in the intermission she was employed in selling "the life of sojourner truth." from time to time came to the presiding officer the request, "don't let her speak; it will ruin us. every newspaper in the land will have our cause mixed with abolition and niggers, and we shall be utterly denounced." gradually, however, the meeting waxed warm. baptist, methodist, episcopalian, presbyterian, and universalist preachers had come to hear and discuss the resolutions presented. one argued the superiority of the male intellect, another the sin of eve, and the women, most of whom did not "speak in meeting," were becoming filled with dismay. then slowly from her seat in the corner rose sojourner truth, who till now had scarcely lifted her head. slowly and solemnly to the front she moved, laid her old bonnet at her feet, and turned her great, speaking eyes upon the chair. mrs. gage, quite equal to the occasion, stepped forward and announced "sojourner truth," and begged the audience to be silent a few minutes. "the tumult subsided at once, and every eye was fixed on this almost amazon form, which stood nearly six feet high, head erect, and eye piercing the upper air, like one in a dream." at her first word there was a profound hush. she spoke in deep tones, which, though not loud, reached every ear in the house, and even the throng at the doors and windows. to one man who had ridiculed the general helplessness of woman, her needing to be assisted into carriages and to be given the best place everywhere, she said, "nobody eber helped me into carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gibs me any best place"; and raising herself to her full height, with a voice pitched like rolling thunder, she asked, "and a'n't i a woman? look at me. look at my arm." and she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her tremendous muscular power. "i have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me--and a'n't i a woman? i could work as much and eat as much as a man, when i could get it, and bear de lash as well--and a'n't i a woman? i have borne five chilern and seen 'em mos' all sold off into slavery, and when i cried out with a mother's grief, none but jesus heard--and a'n't i a woman?... dey talks 'bout dis ting in de head--what dis dey call it?" "intellect," said some one near. "dat's it, honey. what's dat got to do with women's rights or niggers' rights? if my cup won't hold but a pint and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?" and she pointed her significant finger and sent a keen glance at the minister who had made the argument. the cheering was long and loud. "den dat little man in black dar, he say women can't have as much rights as man, 'cause christ wa'n't a woman. but whar did christ come from?" rolling thunder could not have stilled that crowd as did those deep, wonderful tones as the woman stood there with her outstretched arms and her eyes of fire. raising her voice she repeated, "whar did christ come from? from god and a woman. man had nothing to do with him." turning to another objector, she took up the defense of eve. she was pointed and witty, solemn and serious at will, and at almost every sentence awoke deafening applause; and she ended by asserting, "if de fust woman god made was strong enough to turn the world upside down, all alone, dese togedder,"--and she glanced over the audience--"ought to be able to turn it back and get it right side up again, and now dey is askin' to do it, de men better let 'em." [footnote : reminiscences of the president, mrs. frances d. gage, cited by tarbell.] "amid roars of applause," wrote mrs. gage, "she returned to her corner, leaving more than one of us with streaming eyes and hearts beating with gratitude." thus, as so frequently happened, sojourner truth turned a difficult situation into splendid victory. she not only made an eloquent plea for the slave, but placing herself upon the broadest principles of humanity, she saved the day for woman suffrage as well. chapter ix liberia in a former chapter we have traced the early development of the american colonization society, whose efforts culminated in the founding of the colony of liberia. the recent world war, with africa as its prize, fixed attention anew upon the little republic. this comparatively small tract of land, just slightly more than one-three hundredth part of the surface of africa, is now of interest and strategic importance not only because (if we except abyssinia, which claims slightly different race origin, and hayti, which is now really under the government of the united states) it represents the one distinctively negro government in the world, but also because it is the only tract of land on the great west coast of the continent that has survived, even through the war, the aggression of great european powers. it is just at the bend of the shoulder of africa, and its history is as romantic as its situation is unique. liberia has frequently been referred to as an outstanding example of the incapacity of the negro for self-government. such a judgment is not necessarily correct. it is indeed an open question if, in view of the nature of its beginning, the history of the country proves anything one way or the other with reference to the capacity of the race. the early settlers were frequently only recently out of bondage, but upon them were thrust all the problems of maintenance and government, and they brought with them, moreover, the false ideas of life and work that obtained in the old south. sometimes they suffered from neglect, sometimes from excessive solicitude; never were they really left alone. in spite of all, however, more than a score of native tribes have been subdued by only a few thousand civilized men, the republic has preserved its integrity, and there has been handed down through the years a tradition of constitutional government. . _the place and the people_ the resources of liberia are as yet imperfectly known. there is no question, however, about the fertility of the interior, or of its capacity when properly developed. there are no rivers of the first rank, but the longest streams are about three hundred miles in length, and at convenient distances apart flow down to a coastline somewhat more than three hundred miles long. here in a tract of land only slightly larger than our own state of ohio are a civilized population between , and , in number, and a native population estimated at , , . of the civilized population the smaller figure, , , is the more nearly correct if we consider only those persons who are fully civilized, and this number would be about evenly divided between americo-liberians and natives. especially in the towns along the coast, however, there are many people who have received only some degree of civilization, and most of the households in the larger towns have several native children living in them. if all such elements are considered, the total might approach , . the natives in their different tribes fall into three or four large divisions. in general they follow their native customs, and the foremost tribes exhibit remarkable intelligence and skill in industry. outstanding are the dignified mandingo, with a mohammedan tradition, and the vai, distinguished for skill in the arts and with a culture similar to that of the mandingo. also easily recognized are the kpwessi, skillful in weaving and ironwork; the kru, intelligent, sea-faring, and eager for learning; the grebo, ambitious and aggressive, and in language connection close to the kru; the bassa, with characteristics somewhat similar to those of the kru, but in general not quite so ambitious; the buzi, wild and highly tattooed; and the cannibalistic mano. by reason of numbers if nothing else, liberia's chief asset for the future consists in her native population. . _history_ (a) _colonization and settlement_ in pursuance of its plans for the founding of a permanent colony on the coast of africa, the american colonization society in november, , sent out two men, samuel j. mills and ebenezer burgess, who were authorized to find a suitable place for a settlement. going by way of england, these men were cordially received by the officers of the african institution and given letters to responsible persons in sierra leone. arriving at the latter place in march, , they met john kizell, a native and a man of influence, who had received some training in america and had returned to his people, built a house of worship, and become a preacher. kizell undertook to accompany them on their journey down the coast and led the way to sherbro island, a place long in disputed territory but since included within the limits of sierra leone. here the agents were hospitably received; they fixed upon the island as a permanent site, and in may turned their faces homeward. mills died on the voyage in june and was buried at sea; but burgess made a favorable report, though the island was afterwards to prove by no means healthy. the society was impressed, but efforts might have languished at this important stage if monroe, now president, had not found it possible to bring the resources of the united states government to assist in the project. smuggling, with the accompanying evil of the sale of "recaptured africans," had by become a national disgrace, and on march , , a bill designed to do away with the practice became a law. this said in part: "the president of the united states is hereby authorized to make such regulations and arrangements as he may deem expedient for the safe-keeping, support, and removal beyond the limits of the united states, of all such negroes, mulattoes, or persons of color as may be so delivered and brought within their jurisdiction; and to appoint a proper person or persons residing upon the coast of africa as agent or agents for receiving the negroes, mulattoes, or persons of color, delivered from on board vessels seized in the prosecution of the slave-trade by commanders of the united states armed vessels." for the carrying out of the purpose of this act $ , was appropriated, and monroe was disposed to construe as broadly as necessary the powers given him under it. in his message of december , he informed congress that he had appointed rev. samuel bacon, of the american colonization society, with john bankson as assistant, to charter a vessel and take the first group of emigrants to africa, the understanding being that he was to go to the place fixed upon by mills and burgess. thus the national government and the colonization society, while technically separate, began to work in practical coöperation. the ship _elizabeth_ was made ready for the voyage; the government informed the society that it would "receive on board such free blacks recommended by the society as might be required for the purpose of the agency"; $ , was placed in the hands of mr. bacon; rev. samuel a. crozer was appointed as the society's official representative; emigrants were brought together ( men and women, the rest being children); and on february , , convoyed by the war-sloop _cyane_, the expedition set forth. an interesting record of the voyage--important for the sidelights it gives--was left by daniel coker, the respected minister of a large methodist congregation in baltimore who was persuaded to accompany the expedition for the sake of the moral influence that he might be able to exert.[ ] there was much bad weather at the start, and it was the icy sea that on february made it impossible to get under way until the next day. on board, moreover, there was much distrust of the agents in charge, with much questioning of their motives; nor were matters made better by a fight between one of the emigrants and the captain of the vessel. it was a restless company, uncertain as to the future, and dissatisfied and peevish from day to day. kizell afterwards remarked that "some would not be governed by white men, and some would not be governed by black men, and some would not be governed by mulattoes; but the truth was they did not want to be governed by anybody." on march , however, the ship sighted the cape verde islands and six days afterwards was anchored at sierra leone; and coker rejoiced that at last he had seen africa. kizell, however, whom the agents had counted on seeing, was found to be away at sherbro; accordingly, six days after their arrival[ ] they too were making efforts to go on to sherbro, for they were allowed at anchor only fifteen days and time was passing rapidly. meanwhile bankson went to find kizell. captain sebor was at first decidedly unwilling to go further; but his reluctance was at length overcome; bacon purchased for $ , a british schooner that had formerly been engaged in the slave-trade; and on march both ship and schooner got under way for sherbro. the next day they met bankson, who informed them that he had seen kizell. this man, although he had not heard from america since the departure of mills and burgess, had already erected some temporary houses against the rainy season. he permitted the newcomers to stay in his little town until land could be obtained; sent them twelve fowls and a bushel of rice; but he also, with both dignity and pathos, warned bankson that if he and his companions came with christ in their hearts, it was well that they had come; if not, it would have been better if they had stayed in america. [footnote : "journal of daniel coker, a descendant of africa, from the time of leaving new york, in the ship _elizabeth_, capt. sebor, on a voyage for sherbro, in africa. baltimore, ."] [footnote : march . the narrative, page , says february , but this is obviously a typographical error.] now followed much fruitless bargaining with the native chiefs, in all of which coker regretted that the slave-traders had so ruined the people that it seemed impossible to make any progress in a "palaver" without the offering of rum. meanwhile a report was circulated through the country that a number of americans had come and turned kizell out of his own town and put some of his people in the hold of their ship. disaster followed disaster. the marsh, the bad water, and the malaria played havoc with the colonists, and all three of the responsible agents died. the few persons who remained alive made their way back to sierra leone. thus the first expedition failed. one year later, in march, , a new company of twenty-one emigrants, in charge of j.b. winn and ephraim bacon, arrived at freetown in the brig _nautilus_. it had been the understanding that in return for their passage the members of the first expedition would clear the way for others; but when the agents of the new company saw the plight of those who remained alive, they brought all of the colonists together at fourah bay, and bacon went farther down the coast to seek a more favorable site. a few persons who did not wish to go to fourah bay remained in sierra leone and became british subjects. bacon found a promising tract about two hundred and fifty miles down the coast at cape montserado; but the natives were not especially eager to sell, as they did not wish to break up the slave traffic. meanwhile winn and several more of the colonists died; and bacon now returned to the united states. the second expedition had thus proved to be little more successful than the first; but the future site of monrovia had at least been suggested. in november came dr. eli ayres as agent of the society, and in december captain robert f. stockton of the _alligator_ with instructions to coöperate. these two men explored the coast and on december arrived at mesurado bay. through the jungle they made their way to a village and engaged in a palaver with king peter and five of his associates. the negotiations were conducted in the presence of an excited crowd and with imminent danger; but stockton had great tact and at length, for the equivalent of $ , he and ayres purchased the mouth of the mesurado river, cape montserado, and the land for some distance in the interior. there was also an understanding (for half a dozen gallons of rum and some trade-cloth and tobacco) with king george, who "resided on the cape and claimed a sort of jurisdiction over the northern district of the peninsula of montserado, by virtue of which the settlers were permitted to pass across the river and commence the laborious task of clearing away the heavy forest which covered the site of their intended town."[ ] then the agent returned to effect the removal of the colonists from fourah bay, leaving a very small company as a sort of guard on perseverance (or providence) island at the mouth of the river. some of the colonists refused to leave, remained, and thus became british subjects. for those who had remained on the island there was trouble at once. a small vessel, the prize of an english cruiser, bound to sierra leone with thirty liberated africans, put into the roads for water, and had the misfortune to part her cable and come ashore. "the natives claim to a prescriptive right, which interest never fails to enforce to its fullest extent, to seize and appropriate the wrecks and cargoes of vessels stranded, under whatever circumstances, on their coast."[ ] the vessel in question drifted to the mainland one mile from the cape, a small distance below george's town, and the natives proceeded to act in accordance with tradition. they were fired on by the prize master and forced to desist, and the captain appealed to the few colonists on the island for assistance. they brought into play a brass field piece, and two of the natives were killed and several more wounded. the english officer, his crew, and the captured africans escaped, though the small vessel was lost; but the next day the deys (the natives), feeling outraged, made another attack, in the course of which some of them and one of the colonists were killed. in the course of the operations moreover, through the carelessness of some of the settlers themselves, fire was communicated to the storehouse and $ worth of property destroyed, though the powder and some of the provisions were saved. thus at the very beginning, by accident though it happened, the shadow of england fell across the young colony, involving it in difficulties with the natives. when then ayres returned with the main crowd of settlers on january , --which arrival was the first real landing of settlers on what is now liberian soil--he found that the deys wished to annul the agreement previously made and to give back the articles paid. he himself was seized in the course of a palaver, and he was able to arrive at no better understanding than that the colonists might remain only until they could make a new purchase elsewhere. now appeared on the scene boatswain, a prominent chief from the interior who sometimes exercised jurisdiction over the coast tribes and who, hearing that there was trouble in the bay, had come hither, bringing with him a sufficient following to enforce his decrees. through this man shone something of the high moral principle so often to be observed in responsible african chiefs, and to him ayres appealed. hearing the story he decided in favor of the colonists, saying to peter, "having sold your country and accepted payment, you must take the consequences. let the americans have their land immediately." to the agent he said, "i promise you protection. if these people give you further disturbance, send for me; and i swear, if they oblige me to come again to quiet them, i will do it to purpose, by taking their heads from their shoulders, as i did old king george's on my last visit to the coast to settle disputes." thus on the word of a native chief was the foundation of liberia assured. [footnote : ashmun: _history of the american colony in liberia, from to _, .] [footnote : ashmun, .] by the end of april all of the colonists who were willing to move had been brought from sierra leone to their new home. it was now decided to remove from the low and unhealthy island to the higher land of cape montserado only a few hundred feet away; on april there was a ceremony of possession and the american flag was raised. the advantages of the new position were obvious, to the natives as well as the colonists, and the removal was attended with great excitement. by july the island was completely abandoned. meanwhile, however, things had not been going well. the deys had been rendered very hostile, and from them there was constant danger of attack. the rainy season moreover had set in, shelter was inadequate, supplies were low, and the fever continually claimed its victims. ayres at length became discouraged. he proposed that the enterprise be abandoned and that the settlers return to sierra leone, and on june he did actually leave with a few of them. it was at this juncture that elijah johnson, one of the most heroic of the colonists, stepped forth to fame. the early life of the man is a blank. in he was taken to new jersey. he received some instruction and studied for the methodist ministry, took part in the war of , and eagerly embraced the opportunity to be among the first to come to the new colony. to the suggestion that the enterprise be abandoned he replied, "two years long have i sought a home; here i have found it; here i remain." to him the great heart of the colonists responded. among the natives he was known and respected as a valiant fighter. he lived until march , . closely associated with johnson, his colleague in many an effort and the pioneer in mission work, was the baptist minister, lott cary, from richmond, va., who also had become one of the first permanent settlers.[ ] he was a man of most unusual versatility and force of character. he died november , , as the result of a powder explosion that occurred while he was acting in defense of the colony against the deys. [footnote : see chapter iii, section .] july ( ) was a hard month for the settlers. not only were their supplies almost exhausted, but they were on a rocky cape and the natives would not permit any food to be brought to them. on august , however, arrived jehudi ashmun, a young man from vermont who had worked as a teacher and as the editor of a religious publication for some years before coming on this mission. he brought with him a company of liberated africans and emigrants to the number of fifty-five, and as he did not intend to remain permanently he had yielded to the entreaty of his wife and permitted her to accompany him on the voyage. he held no formal commission from the american colonization society, but seeing the situation he felt that it was his duty to do what he could to relieve the distress; and he faced difficulties from the very first. on the day after his arrival his own brig, the _strong_, was in danger of being lost; the vessel parted its cable, and on the following morning broke it again and drifted until it was landlocked between cape montserado and cape mount. a small anchor was found, however, and the brig was again moored, but five miles from the settlement. the rainy season was now on in full force; there was no proper place for the storing of provisions; and even with the newcomers it soon developed that there were in the colony only thirty-five men capable of bearing arms, so great had been the number of deaths from the fever. sometimes almost all of these were sick; on september only two were in condition for any kind of service. ashmun tried to make terms with the native chiefs, but their malignity was only partially concealed. his wife languished before his eyes and died september , just five weeks after her arrival. he himself was incapacitated for several months, nor at the height of his illness was he made better by the ministrations of a french charlatan. he never really recovered from the great inroads made upon his strength at this time. as a protection from sudden attack a clearing around the settlement was made. defenses had to be erected without tools, and so great was the anxiety that throughout the months of september and october a nightly watch of twenty men was kept. on sunday, november , the report was circulated that the deys were crossing the mesurado river, and at night it became known that seven or eight hundred were on the peninsula only half a mile to the west. the attack came at early dawn on the th and the colonists might have been annihilated if they had not brought a field-piece into play. when this was turned against the natives advancing in compact array, it literally tore through masses of living flesh until scores of men were killed. even so the deys might have won the engagement if they had not stopped too soon to gather plunder. as it was, they were forced to retreat. of the settlers three men and one woman were killed, two men and two women injured, and several children taken captive, though these were afterwards returned. at this time the colonists suffered greatly from the lack of any supplies for the treatment of wounds. only medicines for the fever were on hand, and in the hot climate those whose flesh had been torn by bullets suffered terribly. in this first encounter, as often in these early years, the real burden of conflict fell upon cary and johnson. after the battle these men found that they had on hand ammunition sufficient for only one hour's defense. all were placed on a special allowance of provisions and november was observed as a day of prayer. a passing vessel furnished additional supplies and happily delayed for some days the inevitable attack. this came from two sides very early in the morning of december . there was a desperate battle. three bullets passed through ashmun's clothes, one of the gunners was killed, and repeated attacks were resisted only with the most dogged determination. an accident, or, as the colonists regarded it, a miracle, saved them from destruction. a guard, hearing a noise, discharged a large gun and several muskets. the schooner _prince regent_ was passing, with major laing, midshipman gordon, and eleven specially trained men on board. the officers, hearing the sound of guns, came ashore to see what was the trouble. major laing offered assistance if ground was given for the erection of a british flag, and generally attempted to bring about an adjustment of difficulties on the basis of submitting these to the governor of sierra leone. to these propositions elijah johnson replied, "we want no flagstaff put up here that it will cost more to get down than it will to whip the natives." however, gordon and the men under him were left behind for the protection of the colony until further help could arrive. within one month he and seven of the eleven were dead. he himself had found a ready place in the hearts of the settlers, and to him and his men liberia owes much. they came in a needy hour and gave their lives for the cause of freedom. an american steamer passing in december, , gave some temporary relief. on march , , the _cyane_, with capt. r.t. spence in charge, arrived from america with supplies. as many members of his crew became ill after only a few days, spence soon deemed it advisable to leave. his chief clerk, however, richard seaton, heroically volunteered to help with the work, remained behind, and died after only three months. on may came the _oswego_ with sixty-one new colonists and dr. ayres, who, already the society's agent, now returned with the additional authority of government agent and surgeon. he made a survey and attempted a new allotment of land, only to find that the colony was soon in ferment, because some of those who possessed the best holdings or who had already made the beginnings of homes, were now required to give these up. there was so much rebellion that in december ayres again deemed it advisable to leave. the year was in fact chiefly noteworthy for the misunderstandings that arose between the colonists and ashmun. this man had been placed in a most embarrassing situation by the arrival of dr. ayres.[ ] he not only found himself superseded in the government, but had the additional misfortune to learn that his drafts had been dishonored and that no provision had been made to remunerate him for his past services or provide for his present needs. finding his services undervalued, and even the confidence of the society withheld, he was naturally indignant, though his attachment to the cause remained steadfast. seeing the authorized agent leaving the colony, and the settlers themselves in a state of insubordination, with no formal authority behind him he yet resolved to forget his own wrongs and to do what he could to save from destruction that for which he had already suffered so much. he was young and perhaps not always as tactful as he might have been. on the other hand, the colonists had not yet learned fully to appreciate the real greatness of the man with whom they were dealing. as for the society at home, not even so much can be said. the real reason for the withholding of confidence from ashmun was that many of the members objected to his persistent attacks on the slave-trade. [footnote : stockwell, .] by the regulations that governed the colony at the time, each man who received rations was required to contribute to the general welfare two days of labor a week. early in december twelve men cast off all restraint, and on the th ashmun published a notice in which he said: "there are in the colony more than a dozen healthy persons who will receive no more provisions out of the public store until they earn them." on the th, in accordance with this notice, the provisions of the recalcitrants were stopped. the next morning, however, the men went to the storehouse, and while provisions were being issued, each seized a portion and went to his home. ashmun now issued a circular, reminding the colonists of all of their struggles together and generally pointing out to them how such a breach of discipline struck at the very heart of the settlement. the colonists rallied to his support and the twelve men returned to duty. the trouble, however, was not yet over. on march , , ashmun found it necessary to order a cut in provisions. he had previously declared to the board that in his opinion the evil was "incurable by any of the remedies which fall within the existing provisions"; and counter remonstrances had been sent by the colonists, who charged him with oppression, neglect of duty, and the seizure of public property. he now, seeing that his latest order was especially unpopular, prepared new despatches, on march reviewed the whole course of his conduct in a strong and lengthy address, and by the last of the month had left the colony. meanwhile the society, having learned that things were not going well with the colony, had appointed its secretary, rev. r.r. gurley, to investigate conditions. gurley met ashmun at the cape verde islands and urgently requested that he return to monrovia.[ ] this ashmun was not unwilling to do, as he desired the fullest possible investigation into his conduct. gurley was in liberia from august to august , , only; but from the time of his visit conditions improved. ashmun was fully vindicated and remained for four years more until his strength was all but spent. there was adopted what was known as the gurley constitution. according to this the agent in charge was to have supreme charge and preside at all public meetings. he was to be assisted, however, by eleven officers annually chosen, the most important of whom he was to appoint on nomination by the colonists. among these were a vice-agent, two councilors, two justices of the peace, and two constables. there was to be a guard of twelve privates, two corporals, and one sergeant. [footnote : this name, in honor of president monroe, had recently been adopted by the society at the suggestion of robert goodloe harper, of maryland, who also suggested the name _liberia_ for the country. harper himself was afterwards honored by having the chief town in maryland in africa named after him.] for a long time it was the custom of the american colonization society to send out two main shipments of settlers a year, one in the spring and one in the fall. on february , , arrived a little more than a hundred emigrants, mainly from petersburg, va. these people were unusually intelligent and industrious and received a hearty welcome. within a month practically all of them were sick with the fever. on this occasion, as on many others, lott cary served as physician, and so successful was he that only three of the sufferers died. another company of unusual interest was that which arrived early in . it brought along a printer, a press with the necessary supplies, and books sent by friends in boston. unfortunately the printer was soon disabled by the fever. sickness, however, and wars with the natives were not the only handicaps that engaged the attention of the colony in these years. "at this period the slave-trade was carried on extensively within sight of monrovia. fifteen vessels were engaged in it at the same time, almost under the guns of the settlement; and in july of this year a contract was existing for eight hundred slaves to be furnished, in the short space of four months, within eight miles of the cape. four hundred of these were to be purchased for two american traders."[ ] ashmun attacked the spaniards engaged in the traffic, and labored generally to break up slave factories. on one occasion he received as many as one hundred and sixteen slaves into the colony as freemen. he also adopted an attitude of justice toward the native krus. of special importance was the attack on trade town, a stronghold of french and spanish traders about one hundred miles below monrovia. here there were not less than three large factories. on the day of the battle, april , there were three hundred and fifty natives on shore under the direction of the traders, but the colonists had the assistance of some american vessels, and a liberian officer, captain barbour, was of outstanding courage and ability. the town was fired after eighty slaves had been surrendered. the flames reached the ammunition of the enemy and over two hundred and fifty casks of gunpowder exploded. by july, however, the traders had built a battery at trade town and were prepared to give more trouble. all the same a severe blow had been dealt to their work. [footnote : stockwell, .] in his report rendered at the close of ashmun showed that the settlers were living in neatness and comfort; two chapels had been built, and the militia was well organized, equipped, and disciplined. the need of some place for the temporary housing of immigrants having more and more impressed itself upon the colony, before the end of a "receptacle" capable of holding one hundred and fifty persons was erected. ashmun himself served on until , by which time his strength was completely spent. he sailed for america early in the summer and succeeded in reaching new haven, only to die after a few weeks. no man had given more for the founding of liberia. the principal street in monrovia is named after him. aside from wars with the natives, the most noteworthy being the dey-gola war of , the most important feature of liberian history in the decade - was the development along the coast of other settlements than monrovia. these were largely the outgrowth of the activity of local branch organizations of the american colonization society, and they were originally supposed to have the oversight of the central organization and of the colony of monrovia. the circumstances under which they were founded, however, gave them something of a feeling of independence which did much to influence their history. thus arose, about seventy-five miles farther down the coast, under the auspices especially of the new york and pennsylvania societies, the grand bassa settlements at the mouth of the st. john's river, the town edina being outstanding. nearly a hundred miles farther south, at the mouth of the sino river, another colony developed as its most important town greenville; and as most of the settlers in this vicinity came from mississippi, their province became known as mississippi in africa. a hundred miles farther, on cape palmas, just about twenty miles from the cavalla river marking the boundary of the french possessions, developed the town of harper in what became known as maryland in africa. this colony was even more aloof than others from the parent settlement of the american colonization society. when the first colonists arrived at monrovia in , they were not very cordially received, there being trouble about the allotment of land. they waited for some months for reënforcements and then sailed down the coast to the vicinity of the cavalla river, where they secured land for their future home and where their distance from the other colonists from america made it all the more easy for them to cultivate their tradition of independence.[ ] these four ports are now popularly known as monrovia, grand bassa, sino, and cape palmas; and to them for general prominence might now be added cape mount, about fifty miles from monrovia higher up the coast and just a few miles from the mano river, which now marks the boundary between sierra leone and liberia. in , on a constitution drawn up by professor greenleaf, of harvard college, was organized the "commonwealth of liberia," the government of which was vested in a board of directors composed of delegates from the state societies, and which included all the settlements except maryland. this remote colony, whose seaport is cape palmas, did not join with the others until , ten years after liberia had become an independent republic. when a special company of settlers arrived from baltimore and formally occupied cape palmas ( ), dr. james hall was governor and he served in this capacity until , when failing health forced him to return to america. he was succeeded by john b. russwurm, a young negro who had come to liberia in for the purpose of superintending the system of education. the country, however, was not yet ready for the kind of work he wanted to do, and in course of time he went into politics. he served very efficiently as governor of maryland from to , especially exerting himself to standardize the currency and to stabilize the revenues. five years after his death maryland suffered greatly from an attack by the greboes, twenty-six colonists being killed. an appeal to monrovia for help led to the sending of a company of men and later to the incorporation of the colony in the republic. [footnote : mcpherson is especially valuable for his study of the maryland colony.] of the events of the period special interest attaches to the murder of i.f.c. finley, governor of mississippi in africa, to whose father, rev. robert finley, the organization of the american colonization society had been very largely due. in september, , governor finley left his colony to go to monrovia on business, and making a landing at bassa cove, he was robbed and killed by the krus. this unfortunate murder led to a bitter conflict between the settlers in the vicinity and the natives. this is sometimes known as the fish war (from being waged around fishpoint) and did not really cease for a year. (b) the commonwealth of liberia the first governor of the newly formed commonwealth was thomas h. buchanan, a man of singular energy who represented the new york and pennsylvania societies and who had come in especially to take charge of the grand bassa settlements. becoming governor in , he found it necessary to proceed vigorously against the slave dealers at trade town. he was also victorious in in a contest with the gola tribe led by chief gatumba. the golas had defeated the dey tribe so severely that a mere remnant of the latter had taken refuge with the colonists at millsburg, a station a few miles up the st. paul's river. thus, as happened more than once, a tribal war in time involved the very existence of the new american colonies. governor buchanan's victory greatly increased his prestige and made it possible for him to negotiate more and more favorable treaties with the natives. a contest of different sort was that with a methodist missionary, john seyes, who held that all goods used by missionaries, including those sold to the natives, should be admitted free of duty. the governor contended that such privilege should be extended only to goods intended for the personal use of missionaries; and the colonization society stood behind him in this opinion. as early as moreover some shadow of future events was cast by trouble made by english traders on the mano river, the sierra leone boundary. buchanan sent an agent to england to represent him in an inquiry into the matter; but in the midst of his vigorous work he died in . he was the last white man formally under any auspices at the head of liberian affairs. happily his period of service had given opportunity and training to an efficient helper, upon whom now the burden fell and of whom it is hardly too much to say that he is the foremost figure in liberian history. joseph jenkin roberts was a mulatto born in virginia in . at the age of twenty, with his widowed mother and younger brothers, he went to liberia and engaged in trade. in course of time he proved to be a man of unusual tact and graciousness of manner, moving with ease among people of widely different rank. his abilities soon demanded recognition, and he was at the head of the force that defeated gatumba. as governor he realized the need of cultivating more far-reaching diplomacy than the commonwealth had yet known. he had the coöperation of the maryland governor, russwurm, in such a matter as that of uniform customs duties; and he visited the united states, where he made a very good impression. he soon understood that he had to reckon primarily with the english and the french. england had indeed assumed an attitude of opposition to the slave-trade; but her traders did not scruple to sell rum to slave dealers, and especially were they interested in the palm oil of liberia. when the commonwealth sought to impose customs duties, england took the position that as liberia was not an independent government, she had no right to do so; and the english attitude had some show of strength from the fact that the american colonization society, an outside organization, had a veto power over whatever liberia might do. when in the liberian government seized the _little ben_, an english trading vessel whose captain acted in defiance of the revenue laws, the british in turn seized the _john seyes_, belonging to a liberian named benson, and sold the vessel for £ . liberia appealed to the united states; but the oregon boundary question as well as slavery had given the american government problems enough at home; and the secretary of state, edward everett, finally replied to lord aberdeen ( ) that america was not "presuming to settle differences arising between liberian and british subjects, the liberians being responsible for their own acts." the colonization society, powerless to act except through its own government, in january, , resolved that "the time had arrived when it was expedient for the people of the commonwealth of liberia to take into their own hands the whole work of self-government including the management of all their foreign relations." forced to act for herself liberia called a constitutional convention and on july , , issued a declaration of independence and adopted the constitution of the liberian republic. in october, joseph jenkin roberts, governor of the commonwealth, was elected the first president of the republic. it may well be questioned if by liberia had developed sufficiently internally to be able to assume the duties and responsibilities of an independent power. there were at the time not more than , civilized people of american origin in the country; these were largely illiterate and scattered along a coastline more than three hundred miles in length. it is not to be supposed, however, that this consummation had been attained without much yearning and heart-beat and high spiritual fervor. there was something pathetic in the effort of this small company, most of whose members had never seen africa but for the sake of their race had made their way back to the fatherland. the new seal of the republic bore the motto: the love of liberty brought us here. the flag, modeled on that of the united states, had six red and five white stripes for the eleven signers of the declaration of independence, and in the upper corner next to the staff a lone white star in a field of blue. the declaration itself said in part: we, the people of the republic of liberia, were originally inhabitants of the united states of north america. in some parts of that country we were debarred by law from all the rights and privileges of men; in other parts public sentiment, more powerful than law, frowned us down. we were everywhere shut out from all civil office. we were excluded from all participation in the government. we were taxed without our consent. we were compelled to contribute to the resources of a country which gave us no protection. we were made a separate and distinct class, and against us every avenue of improvement was effectually closed. strangers from all lands of a color different from ours were preferred before us. we uttered our complaints, but they were unattended to, or met only by alleging the peculiar institution of the country. all hope of a favorable change in our country was thus wholly extinguished in our bosom, and we looked with anxiety abroad for some asylum from the deep degradation. the western coast of africa was the place selected by american benevolence and philanthropy for our future home. removed beyond those influences which depressed us in our native land, it was hoped we would be enabled to enjoy those rights and privileges, and exercise and improve those faculties, which the god of nature had given us in common with the rest of mankind. (c) _the republic of liberia_ with the adoption of its constitution the republic of liberia formally asked to be considered in the family of nations; and since the history of the country has naturally been very largely that of international relations. in fact, preoccupation with the questions raised by powerful neighbors has been at least one strong reason for the comparatively slow internal development of the country. the republic was officially recognized by england in , by france in , but on account of slavery not by the united states until . continuously there has been an observance of the forms of order, and only one president has been deposed. for a long time the presidential term was two years in length; but by an act of it was lengthened to four years. from time to time there have been two political parties, but not always has such a division been emphasized. it is well to pause and note exactly what was the task set before the little country. a company of american negroes suddenly found themselves placed on an unhealthy and uncultivated coast which was thenceforth to be their home. if we compare them with the pilgrim fathers, we find that as the pilgrims had to subdue the indians, so they had to hold their own against a score of aggressive tribes. the pilgrims had the advantage of a thousand years of culture and experience in government; the negroes, only recently out of bondage, had been deprived of any opportunity for improvement whatsoever. not only, however, did they have to contend against native tribes and labor to improve their own shortcomings; on every hand they had to meet the designs of nations supposedly more enlightened and christian. on the coast spanish traders defied international law; on one side the english, and on the other the french, from the beginning showed a tendency toward arrogance and encroachment. to crown the difficulty, the american government, under whose auspices the colony had largely been founded, became more and more halfhearted in its efforts for protection and at length abandoned the enterprise altogether. it did not cease, however, to regard the colony as the dumping-ground of its own troubles, and whenever a vessel with slaves from the congo was captured on the high seas, it did not hesitate to take these people to the liberian coast and leave them there, nearly dead though they might be from exposure or cramping. it is well for one to remember such facts as these before he is quick to belittle or criticize. to the credit of the "congo men" be it said that from the first they labored to make themselves a quiet and industrious element in the body politic. the early administrations of president roberts (four terms, - ) were mainly devoted to the quelling of the native tribes that continued to give trouble and to the cultivating of friendly relations with foreign powers. soon after his inauguration roberts made a visit to england, the power from which there was most to fear; and on this occasion as on several others england varied her arrogance with a rather excessive friendliness toward the little republic. she presented to roberts the _lark_, a ship with four guns, and sent the president home on a war-vessel. some years afteryards, when the _lark_ was out of repair, england sent instead a schooner, the _quail_. roberts made a second visit to england in to adjust disputes with traders on the western boundary. he also visited france, and louis napoleon, not to be outdone by england, presented to him a vessel, the _hirondelle_, and also guns and uniforms for his soldiers. in general the administrations of roberts (we might better say his first series of administrations, for he was later to be called again to office) made a period of constructive statesmanship and solid development, and not a little of the respect that the young republic won was due to the personal influence of its first president. roberts, however, happened to be very fair, and generally successful though his administrations were, the desire on the part of the people that the highest office in the country be held by a black man seems to have been a determining factor in the choice of his successor. there was an interesting campaign toward the close of his last term. "there were about this time two political parties in the country--the old republicans and the 'true liberians,' a party which had been formed in opposition to roberts's foreign policies. but during the canvass the platform of this new party lost ground; the result was in favor of the republican candidate."[ ] [footnote : karnga, .] stephen allen benson (four terms, - ) was forced to meet in one way or another almost all of the difficulties that have since played a part in the life of the liberian people. he had come to the country in at the age of six and had developed into a practical and efficient merchant. to his high office he brought the same principles of sobriety and good sense that had characterized him in business. on february , , the independent colony of maryland formally became a part of the republic. this action followed immediately upon the struggle with the greboes in the vicinity of cape palmas in which assistance was rendered by the liberians under ex-president roberts. in an incident that threatened complications with france but that was soon happily closed arose from the fact that a french vessel which sought to carry away some kru laborers to the west indies was attacked by these men when they had reason to fear that they might be sold into slavery and not have to work simply along the coast, as they at first supposed. the ship was seized and all but one of the crew, the physician, were killed. trouble meanwhile continued with british smugglers in the west, and to this whole matter we shall have to give further and special attention. in and a year or two thereafter the numerous arrivals from america, especially of congo men captured on the high seas, were such as to present a serious social problem. flagrant violation by the south of the laws against the slave-trade led to the seizure by the united states government of many africans. hundreds of these people were detained at a time at such a port as key west. the government then adopted the policy of ordering commanders who seized slave-ships at sea to land the africans directly upon the coast of liberia without first bringing them to america, and appropriated $ , for the removal and care of those at key west. the suffering of many of these people is one of the most tragic stories in the history of slavery. to liberia came at one time , at another , and within two months as many as . there was very naturally consternation on the part of the people at this sudden immigration, especially as many of the africans arrived cramped or paralyzed or otherwise ill from the conditions under which they had been forced to travel. president benson stated the problem to the american government; the united states sent some money to liberia, the people of the republic helped in every way they could, and the whole situation was finally adjusted without any permanently bad effects, though it is well for students to remember just what liberia had to face at this time. important toward the close of benson's terms was the completion of the building of the liberia college, of which joseph jenkin roberts became the first president. the administrations of daniel bashiel warner (two terms, - ) and the earlier one of james spriggs payne ( - ) were comparatively uneventful. both of these men were republicans, but warner represented something of the shifting of political parties at the time. at first a republican, he went over to the whig party devoted to the policy of preserving liberia from white invasion. moved to distrust of english merchants, who delighted in defrauding the little republic, he established an important ports-of-entry law in , which it is hardly necessary to say was very unpopular with the foreigners. commerce was restricted to six ports and a circle six miles in diameter around each port. on account of the civil war and the hopes that emancipation held out to the negroes in the united states, immigration from america ceased rapidly; but a company of came from barbadoes at this time. the liberian government assisted these people with $ , set apart for each man an allotment of twenty-five rather than the customary ten acres; the colonization society appropriated $ , , and after a pleasant voyage of thirty-three days they arrived without the loss of a single life. in the company was a little boy, arthur barclay, who was later to be known as the president of the republic. at the semi-centennial of the american colonization society held in washington in january, , it was shown that the society and its auxiliaries had been directly responsible for the sending of more than , persons to africa. of these had been born free, had purchased their freedom, had been emancipated to go to africa, and had been settled by the maryland society. in addition, captured africans had been sent to liberia. the need of adequate study of the interior having more and more impressed itself, benjamin anderson, an adventurous explorer, assisted with funds by a citizen of new york, in studied the country for two hundred miles from the coast. he found the land constantly rising, and made his way to musardu, the chief city of the western mandingoes. he summed up his work in his _narrative of a journey to musardo_ and made another journey of exploration in . edward james roye ( -october , ), a whig whose party was formed out of the elements of the old true liberian party, attracts attention by reason of a notorious british loan to which further reference must be made. of the whole amount of £ , sums were wasted or misappropriated until it has been estimated that the country really reaped the benefit of little more than a quarter of the whole amount. president roye added to other difficulties by his seizure of a bank building belonging to an industrial society of the st. paul's river settlements, and by attempting by proclamation to lengthen his term of office. twice a constitutional amendment for lengthening the presidential term from two years to four had been considered and voted down. roye contested the last vote, insisted that his term ran to january, , and issued a proclamation forbidding the coming biennial election. he was deposed, his house sacked, some of his cabinet officers tried before a court of impeachment,[ ] and he himself was drowned as he was pursued while attempting to escape to a british ship in the harbor. a committee of three was appointed to govern the country until a new election could be held; and in this hour of storm and stress the people turned once more to the guidance of their old leader, joseph j. roberts (two terms, - ). his efforts were mainly devoted to restoring order and confidence, though there was a new war with the greboes to be waged.[ ] he was succeeded by another trusted leader, james s. payne ( - ), whose second administration was as devoid as the first of striking incident. in fact, the whole generation succeeding the loan of was a period of depression. the country not only suffered financially, but faith in it was shaken both at home and abroad. coffee grown in liberia fell as that produced at brazil grew in favor, the farmer witnessing a drop in value from to cents a pound. farms were abandoned, immigration from the united states ceased, and the country entered upon a period of stagnation from which it has not yet fully recovered. [footnote : but not hilary r.w. johnson, the efficient secretary of state, later president.] [footnote : president roberts died february , , barely two months after giving up office. he was caught in the rain while attending a funeral, took a severe chill, and was not able to recover.] within just a few years after , however, conditions in the united states led to an interesting revival of the whole idea of colonization, and to noteworthy effort on the part of the negroes themselves to better their condition. the withdrawal of federal troops from the south, and all the evils of the aftermath of reconstruction, led to such a terrorizing of the negroes and such a denial of civil rights that there set in the movement that culminated in the great exodus from the south in . the movement extended all the way from north carolina to louisiana and arkansas. insofar as it led to migration to kansas and other states in the west, it belongs to american history. however, there was also interest in going to africa. applications by the thousands poured in upon the american colonization society, and one organization in arkansas sent hundreds of its members to seek the help of the new york state colonization society. in all such endeavor negro baptists and methodists joined hands, and especially prominent was bishop h.m. turner, of the african methodist episcopal church. by there was organized in south carolina the liberian exodus and joint stock company; in north carolina there was the freedmen's emigration aid society; and there were similar organizations in other states. the south carolina organization had the threefold purpose of emigration, missionary activity, and commercial enterprise, and to these ends it purchased a vessel, the _azor_, at a cost of $ . the white people of charleston unfortunately embarrassed the enterprise in every possible way, among other things insisting when the _azor_ was ready to sail that it was not seaworthy and needed a new copper bottom (to cost $ ). the vessel at length made one or two trips, however, on one voyage carrying as many as emigrants. it was then stolen and sold in liverpool, and one gets an interesting sidelight on southern conditions in the period when he knows that even the united states circuit court in south carolina refused to entertain the suit brought by the negroes. in the administration of anthony w. gardiner (three terms, - ) difficulties with england and germany reached a crisis. territory in the northwest was seized; the british made a formal show of force at monrovia; and the looting of a german vessel along the kru coast and personal indignities inflicted by the natives upon the shipwrecked germans, led to the bombardment of nana kru by a german warship and the presentation at monrovia of a claim for damages, payment of which was forced by the threat of the bombardment of the capital. to the liberian people the outlook was seldom darker than in this period of calamities. president gardiner, very ill, resigned office in january of his last year of service, being succeeded by the vice-president, alfred f. russell. more and more was pressure brought to bear upon liberian officials for the granting of monopolies and concessions, especially to englishmen; and in his message of president russell said, "recent events admonish us as to the serious responsibility of claims held against us by foreigners, and we cannot tell what complications may arise." in the midst of all this, however, russell did not forget the natives and the need of guarding them against liquor and exploitation. hilary richard wright johnson (four terms, - ), the next president, was a son of the distinguished elijah johnson and the first man born in liberia who had risen to the highest place in the republic. whigs and republicans united in his election. much of his time had necessarily to be given to complications arising from the loan of ; but the western boundary was adjusted (with great loss) with great britain at the mano river, though new difficulties arose with the french, who were pressing their claim to territory as far as the cavalla river. in the course of the last term of president johnson there was an interesting grant (by act approved january , ) to f.f. whittekin, of pennsylvania, of the right to "construct, maintain, and operate a system of railroads, telegraph and telephone lines." whittekin bought up in england stock to the value of half a million dollars, but died on the way to liberia to fulfil his contract. his nephew, f.f. whittekin, asked for an extension of time, which was granted, but after a while the whole project languished.[ ] [footnote : see _liberia_, bulletin no. , november, .] joseph james cheeseman ( -november , ) was a whig. he conducted what was known as the third grebo war and labored especially for a sound currency. he was a man of unusual ability and his devotion to his task undoubtedly contributed toward his death in office near the middle of his third term. as up to this time there had been no internal improvement and little agricultural or industrial development in the country, o.f. cook, the agent of the new york state colonization society, in signified to the legislature a desire to establish a station where experiments could be made as to the best means of introducing, receiving, and propagating beasts of burden, commercial plants, etc. his request was approved and one thousand acres of land granted for the purpose by act of january , . results, however, were neither permanent nor far-reaching. in fact, by the close of the century immigration had practically ceased and the activities of the american colonization society had also ceased, many of the state organizations having gone out of existence. in julius c. stevens, of goldsboro, n.c., went to liberia and served for a nominal salary as agent of the american colonization society, becoming also a teacher in the liberia college and in time commissioner of education, in connection with which post he edited his _liberian school reader_; but he died in .[ ] [footnote : interest in liberia by no means completely died. contributions for education were sometimes made by the representative organizations, and individual students came to america from time to time. when, however, the important commission representing the government came to america in , the public was slightly startled as having heard from something half-forgotten.] william d. coleman as vice-president finished the incomplete term of president cheeseman (to the end of ) and later was elected for two terms in his own right. in the course of his last administration, however, his interior policy became very unpopular, as he was thought to be harsh in his dealing with the natives, and he resigned in december, . as there was at the time no vice-president, he was succeeded by the secretary of state, garretson w. gibson, a man of scholarly attainments, who was afterwards elected for a whole term ( - ). the feature of this term was the discussion that arose over the proposal to grant a concession to an english concern known as the west african gold concessions, ltd. this offered to the legislators a bonus of £ , and for this bribe it asked for the sole right to prospect for and obtain gold, precious stones, and all other minerals over more than half of liberia. specifically it asked for the right to acquire freehold land and to take up leases for eighty years, in blocks of from ten to a thousand acres; to import all mining machinery and all other things necessary free of duty; to establish banks in connection with the mining enterprises, these to have the power to issue notes; to construct telegraphs and telephones; to organize auxiliary syndicates; and to establish its own police. it would seem that english impudence could hardly go further, though time was to prove that there were still other things to be borne. the proposal was indignantly rejected. arthur barclay ( - ) had already served in three cabinet positions before coming to the presidency; he had also been a professor in the liberia college and for some years had been known as the leader of the bar in monrovia. it was near the close of his second term that the president's term of office was lengthened from two to four years, and he was the first incumbent to serve for the longer period. in his first inaugural address president barclay emphasized the need of developing the resources of the hinterland and of attaching the native tribes to the interests of the state. in his foreign policy he was generally enlightened and broad-minded, but he had to deal with the arrogance of england. in a new british loan was negotiated. this also was for £ , , more than two-thirds of which amount was to be turned over to the liberian development company, an english scheme for the development of the interior. the company was to work in coöperation with the liberian government, and as security for the loan british officials were to have charge of the customs revenue, the chief inspector acting as financial adviser to the republic. it afterwards developed that the company never had any resources except those it had raised on the credit of the republic, and the country was forced to realize that it had been cheated a second time. meanwhile the english officials who, on various pretexts of reform, had taken charge of the barracks and the customs in monrovia, were carrying things with a high hand. the liberian force appeared with english insignia on the uniforms, and in various other ways the commander sought to overawe the populace. at the climax of the difficulties, on february , , a british warship _happened_ to appear in the waters of monrovia, and a calamity was averted only by the skillful diplomacy of the liberians. already, however, in , liberia had sent a special commission to ask the aid of the united states. this consisted of garretson w. gibson, former president; j.j. dossen, vice-president at the time, and charles b. dunbar. the commission was received by president roosevelt and by secretary taft just before the latter was nominated for the presidency. on may , , a return commission consisting of roland p. falkner, george sale, and emmett j. scott, arrived in monrovia. the work of this commission must receive further and special attention. president barclay was succeeded by daniel edward howard (two long terms, - ), who at his inauguration began the policy of giving prominence to the native chiefs. the feature of president howard's administrations was of course liberia's connection with the great war in europe. war against germany having been declared, on the morning of april , , a submarine came to monrovia and demanded that the french wireless station be torn down. the request being refused, the town was bombarded. the excitement of the day was such as has never been duplicated in the history of liberia. in one house two young girls were instantly killed and an elderly woman and a little boy fatally wounded; but except in this one home the actual damage was comparatively slight, though there might have been more if a passing british steamer had not put the submarine to flight. suffering of another and more far-reaching sort was that due to the economic situation. the comparative scarcity of food in the world and the profiteering of foreign merchants in liberia by the summer of brought about a condition that threatened starvation; nor was the situation better early in , when butter retailed at $ . a pound, sugar at cents a pound, and oil at $ . a gallon. president howard was succeeded by charles dunbar burgess king, who as president-elect had visited europe and america, and who was inaugurated january , . his address on this occasion was a comprehensive presentation of the needs of liberia, especially along the lines of agriculture and education. he made a plea also for an enlightened native policy. said he: "we cannot afford to destroy the native institutions of the country. our true mission lies not in the building here in africa of a negro state based solely on western ideas, but rather a negro nationality indigenous to the soil, having its foundation rooted in the institutions of africa and purified by western thought and development." . _international relations_ our study of the history of liberia has suggested two or three matters that call for special attention. of prime importance is the country's connection with world politics. any consideration of liberia's international relations falls into three divisions: first, that of titles to land; second, that of foreign loans; and third, that of so-called internal reform. in the very early years of the colony the raids of slave-traders gave some excuse for the first aggression on the part of a european power. "driven from the pongo regions northwest of sierra leone, pedro blanco settled in the gallinhas territory northwest of the liberian frontier, and established elaborate headquarters for his mammoth slave-trading operations in west africa, with slave-trading sub-stations at cape mount, st. paul river, bassa, and at other points of the liberian coast, employing numerous police, watchers, spies, and servants. to obtain jurisdiction the colony of liberia began to purchase from the lords of the soil as early as the lands of the st. paul basin and the grain coast from the mafa river on the west to the grand sesters river on the east; so that by , twenty-four years after the establishment of the colony, liberia with the aid of great britain had destroyed throughout these regions the baneful traffic in slaves and the slave barracoons, and had driven the slave-trading leaders from the liberian coast."[ ] the trade continued to flourish, however, in the gallinhas territory, and in course of time, as we have seen, the colony had also to reckon with british merchants in this section, the declaration of independence in being very largely a result of the defiance of liberian revenue-laws by englishmen. while president roberts was in england not long after his inauguration, lord ashley, moved by motives of philanthropy, undertook to raise £ with which he (roberts) might purchase the gallinhas territory; and by roberts had secured the title and deeds to all of this territory from the mafa river to sherbro island. the whole transaction was thoroughly honorable, roberts informed england of his acquisition, and his right to the territory was not then called in question. trouble, however, developed out of the attitude of john m. harris, a british merchant, and in , while president benson was in england, he was officially informed that the right of liberia was recognized _only_ to the land "east of turner's peninsula to the river san pedro." harris now worked up a native war against the vais; the liberians defended themselves; and in the end the british government demanded £ . . as damages for losses sustained by harris, and arbitrarily extended its territory from sherbro island to cape mount. in the course of the discussion claims mounted up to £ , . great britain promised to submit this boundary question to the arbitration of the united states, but when the time arrived at the meeting of one of the commissions in sierra leone she firmly declined to do so. after this, whenever she was ready to take more land she made a plausible pretext and was ready to back up her demands with force. on march , , four british men-of-war came to monrovia and sir a.e. havelock, governor of sierra leone, came ashore; and president gardiner was forced to submit to an agreement by which, in exchange for £ and the abandonment of all further claims, the liberian government gave up all right to the gallinhas territory from sherbro island to the mafa river. this agreement was repudiated by the liberian senate, but when havelock was so informed he replied, "her majesty's government can not in any case recognize any rights on the part of liberia to any portions of the territories in dispute." liberia now issued a protest to other great powers; but this was without avail, even the united states counseling acquiescence, though through the offices of america the agreement was slightly modified and the boundary fixed at the mano river. trouble next arose on the east. in the maryland colonization society purchased the lands of the ivory coast east of cape palmas as far as the san pedro river. these lands were formally transferred to liberia in , and remained in the undisputed possession of the republic for forty years. france now, not to be outdone by england, on the pretext of title deeds obtained by french naval commanders who visited the coast in , in put forth a claim not only to the ivory coast, but to land as far away as grand bassa and cape mount. the next year, under threat of force, she compelled liberia to accept a treaty which, for , francs and the relinquishment of all other claims, permitted her to take all the territory east of the cavalla river. in great britain asked permission to advance her troops into liberian territory to suppress a native war threatening her interests. she occupied at this time what is known as the kaure-lahun section, which is very fertile and of easy access to the sierra leone railway. this land she never gave up; instead she offered liberia £ or some poorer land for it. france after made no endeavor to delimit her boundary, and, roused by the action of great britain, she made great advances in the hinterland, claiming tracts of maryland and sino; and now france and england each threatened to take more land if the other was not stopped. president barclay visited both countries; but by a treaty of his commission was forced to permit france to occupy all the territory seized by force; and as soon as this agreement was reached france began to move on to other land in the basin of the st. paul's and st. john's rivers. this is all then simply one more story of the oppression of the weak by the strong. for eighty years england has not ceased to intermeddle in liberian affairs, cajoling or browbeating as at the moment seemed advisable; and france has been only less bad. certainly no country on earth now has better reason than liberia to know that "they should get who have the power, and they should keep who can." [footnote : ellis in _journal of race development_, january, .] the international loans and the attempts at reform must be considered together. in , at the rate of per cent, there was authorized a british loan of £ , . _for their services_ the british negotiators retained £ , , and £ , more was deducted as the interest for three years. president roye ordered mr. chinery, a british subject and the liberian consul general in london, to supply the liberian secretary of treasury with goods and merchandise to the value of £ , ; and other sums were misappropriated until the country itself actually received the benefit of not more than £ , , if so much. this whole unfortunate matter was an embarrassment to liberia for years; but in the republic assumed responsibility for £ , , the interest being made a first charge on the customs revenue. in , not yet having learned the lesson of "cavete graecos dona ferentes," and moved by the representations of sir harry h. johnston, the country negotiated a new loan of £ , . £ , of this amount was to satisfy pressing obligations; but the greater portion was to be turned over to the liberian development company, a great scheme by which the government and the company were to work hand in hand for the development of the country. as security for the loan, british officials were to have charge of the customs revenue, the chief inspector acting as financial adviser to the republic. when the company had made a road of fifteen miles in one district and made one or two other slight improvements, it represented to the liberian government that its funds were exhausted. when president barclay asked for an accounting the managing director expressed surprise that such a demand should be made upon him. the liberian people were chagrined, and at length they realized that they had been cheated a second time, with all the bitter experiences of the past to guide them. meanwhile the english representatives in the country were demanding that the judiciary be reformed, that the frontier force be under british officers, and that inspector lamont as financial adviser have a seat in the liberian cabinet and a veto power over all expenditures; and the independence of the country was threatened if these demands were not complied with. meanwhile also the construction of barracks went forward under major cadell, a british officer, and the organization of the frontier force was begun. not less than a third of this force was brought from sierra leone, and the whole cadell fitted out with suits and caps stamped with the emblems of his britannic majesty's service. he also persuaded the monrovia city government to let him act without compensation as chief of police, and he likewise became street commissioner, tax collector, and city treasurer. the liberian people naturally objected to the usurping of all these prerogatives, but cadell refused to resign and presented a large bill for his services. he also threatened violence to the president if his demands were not met within twenty-four hours. then it was that the british warship, the _mutiny_, suddenly appeared at monrovia (february , ). happily the liberians rose to the emergency. they requested that any british soldiers at the barracks be withdrawn in order that they might be free to deal with the insurrectionary movement said to be there on the part of liberian soldiers; and thus tactfully they brought about the withdrawal of major cadell. by this time, however, the liberian commission to the united states had done its work, and just three months after cadell's retirement the return american commission came. after studying the situation it made the following recommendations: that the united states extend its aid to liberia in the prompt settlement of pending boundary disputes; that the united states enable liberia to refund its debt by assuming as a guarantee for the payment of obligations under such arrangement the control and collection of the liberian customs; that the united states lend its assistance to the liberian government in the reform of its internal finances; that the united states lend its aid to liberia in organizing and drilling an adequate constabulary or frontier police force; that the united states establish and maintain a research station at liberia; and that the united states reopen the question of establishing a coaling-station in liberia. under the fourth of these recommendations major (now colonel) charles young went to liberia, where from time to time since he has rendered most efficient service. arrangements were also made for a new loan, one of $ , , , which was to be floated by banking institutions in the united states, germany, france, and england; and in an american general receiver of customs and financial adviser to the republic of liberia (with an assistant from each of the other three countries mentioned) opened his office in monrovia. it will be observed that a complicated and expensive receivership was imposed on the liberian people when an arrangement much more simple would have served. the loan of $ , , soon proving inadequate for any large development of the country, negotiations were begun in for a new loan, one of $ , , . among the things proposed were improvements on the harbor of monrovia, some good roads through the country, a hospital, and the broadening of the work of education. about the loan two facts were outstanding: first, any money to be spent would be spent wholly under american and not under liberian auspices; and, second, to the liberians acceptance of the terms suggested meant practically a surrender of their sovereignty, as american appointees were to be in most of the important positions in the country, at the same time that upon themselves would fall the ultimate burden of the interest of the loan. by the spring of (in liberia, the commencement of the rainy season) it was interesting to note that although the necessary measures of approval had not yet been passed by the liberian congress, perhaps as many as fifteen american officials had come out to the country to begin work in education, engineering, and sanitation. just a little later in the year president king called an extra session of the legislature to consider amendments. while it was in session a cablegram from the united states was received saying that no amendments to the plan would be accepted and that it must be accepted as submitted, "or the friendly interest which has heretofore existed would become lessened." the liberians were not frightened, however, and stood firm. meanwhile a new presidential election took place in the united states; there was to be a radical change in the government; and the liberians were disposed to try further to see if some changes could not be made in the proposed arrangements. most watchfully from month to month, let it be remembered, england and france were waiting; and in any case it could easily be seen that as the republic approached its centennial it was face to face with political problems of the very first magnitude.[ ] [footnote : early in president king headed a new commission to the united states to take up the whole matter of liberia with the incoming republican administration.] . _economic and social conditions_ from what has been said, it is evident that there is still much to be done in liberia along economic lines. there has been some beginning in coöperative effort; thus the bassa trading association is an organization for mutual betterment of perhaps as many as fifty responsible merchants and farmers. the country has as yet ( ), however, no railroads, no street cars, no public schools, and no genuine newspapers; nor are there any manufacturing or other enterprises for the employment of young men on a large scale. the most promising youth accordingly look too largely to an outlet in politics; some come to america to be educated and not always do they return. a few become clerks in the stores, and a very few assistants in the customs offices. there is some excellent agriculture in the interior, but as yet no means of getting produce to market on a large scale. in the total customs revenue at monrovia, the largest port, amounted to $ , . . for the whole country the figure has recently been just about half a million dollars a year. much of this amount goes to the maintenance of the frontier force. within the last few years also the annual income for the city of monrovia--for the payment of the mayor, the police, and all other city officers--has averaged $ . in any consideration of social conditions the first question of all of course is that of the character of the people themselves. unfortunately liberia was begun with faulty ideals of life and work. the early settlers, frequently only recently out of bondage, too often felt that in a state of freedom they did not have to work, and accordingly they imitated the habits of the old master class of the south. the real burden of life then fell upon the native. there is still considerable feeling between the native and the americo-liberian; but more and more the wisest men of the country realize that the good of one is the good of all, and they are endeavoring to make the native chiefs work for the common welfare. from time to time the people of liberia have given to visitors an impression of arrogance, and perhaps no one thing had led to more unfriendly criticism of this country than this. the fact is that the liberians, knowing that their country has various shortcomings according to western standards, are quick to assume the defensive, and one method of protecting themselves is by erecting a barrier of dignity and reserve. one has only to go beyond this, however, to find the real heartbeat of the people. the comparative isolation of the republic moreover, and the general stress of living conditions have together given to the everyday life an undue seriousness of tone, with a rather excessive emphasis on the church, on politics, and on secret societies. in such an atmosphere boys and girls too soon became mature, and for them especially one might wish to see a little more wholesome outdoor amusement. in school or college catalogues one still sees much of jurisprudence and moral philosophy, but little of physics or biology. interestingly enough, this whole system of education and life has not been without some elements of very genuine culture. literature has been mainly in the diction of shakespeare and milton; but shakespeare and milton, though not of the twentieth century, are still good models, and because the officials have had to compose many state documents and deliver many formal addresses, there has been developed in the country a tradition of good english speech. a service in any one of the representative churches is dignified and impressive. the churches and schools of liberia have been most largely in the hands of the methodists and the episcopalians, though the baptists, the presbyterians, and the lutherans are well represented. the lutherans have penetrated to a point in the interior beyond that attained by any other denomination. the episcopalians have excelled others, even the methodists, by having more constant and efficient oversight of their work. the episcopalians have in liberia a little more than schools, nearly half of these being boarding-schools, with a total attendance of . the methodists have slightly more than schools, with pupils. the lutherans in their five mission stations have american workers and pupils. while it seems from these figures that the number of those reached is small in proportion to the outlay, it must be remembered that a mission school becomes a center from which influence radiates in all directions. while the enterprise of the denominational institutions can not be doubted, it may well be asked if, in so largely relieving the people of the burden of the education of their children, they are not unduly cultivating a spirit of dependence rather than of self-help. something of this point of view was emphasized by the secretary of public instruction, mr. walter f. walker, in an address, "liberia and her educational problems," delivered in chicago in . said he of the day schools maintained by the churches: "these day schools did invaluable service in the days of the colony and commonwealth, and, indeed, in the early days of the republic; but to their continuation must undoubtedly be ascribed the tardy recognition of the government and people of the fact that no agency for the education of the masses is as effective as the public school.... there is not one public school building owned by the government or by any city or township." it might further be said that just now in liberia there is no institution that is primarily doing college work. two schools in monrovia, however, call for special remark. the college of west africa, formerly monrovia seminary, was founded by the methodist church in . the institution does elementary and lower high school work, though some years ago it placed a little more emphasis on college work than it has been able to do within recent years. it was of this college that the late bishop a.p. camphor served so ably as president for twelve years. within recent years it has recognized the importance of industrial work and has had in all departments an average annual enrollment of . not quite so prominent within the last few years, but with more tradition and theoretically at the head of the educational system of the republic is the liberia college. in simon greenleaf of boston, received from john payne, a missionary at cape palmas, a request for his assistance in building a theological school. out of this suggestion grew the board of trustees of donations for education in liberia incorporated in massachusetts in march, . the next year the liberia legislature incorporated the liberia college, it being understood that the institution would emphasize academic as well as theological subjects. in ex-president j.j. roberts was elected president; he superintended the erection of a large building; and in the college was opened for work. since then it has had a very uneven existence, sometimes enrolling, aside from its preparatory department, twenty or thirty college students, then again having no college students at all. within the last few years, as the old building was completely out of repair, the school has had to seek temporary quarters. it is too vital to the country to be allowed to languish, however, and it is to be hoped that it may soon be well started upon a new career of usefulness. in the course of its history the liberia college has had connected with it some very distinguished men. famous as teacher and lecturer, and president from to , was edward wilmot blyden, generally regarded as the foremost scholar that western africa has given to the world. closely associated with him in the early years, and well known in america as in africa, was alexander crummell, who brought to his teaching the richness of english university training. a trustee for a number of years was samuel david ferguson, of the protestant episcopal church, who served with great dignity and resource as missionary bishop of the country from until his death in . a new president of the college, rev. nathaniel h.b. cassell, was elected in , and it is expected that under his efficient direction the school will go forward to still greater years of service. important in connection with the study of the social conditions in liberia is that of health and living conditions. one who lives in america and knows that africa is a land of unbounded riches can hardly understand the extent to which the west coast has been exploited, or the suffering that is there just now. the distress is most acute in the english colonies, and as liberia is so close to sierra leone and the gold coast, much of the same situation prevails there. in monrovia the only bank is the branch of the bank of british west africa. in the branches of this great institution all along the coast, as a result of the war, gold disappeared, silver became very scarce, and the common form of currency became paper notes, issued in denominations as low as one and two shillings. these the natives have refused to accept. they go even further: rather than bring their produce to the towns and receive paper for it they will not come at all. in monrovia an effort was made to introduce the british west african paper currency, and while this failed, more and more the merchants insisted on being paid in silver, nor in an ordinary purchase would silver be given in change on an english ten-shilling note. prices accordingly became exorbitant; children were not properly nourished and the infant mortality grew to astonishing proportions. nor were conditions made better by the lack of sanitation and by the prevalence of disease. happily relief for these conditions--for some of them at least--seems to be in sight, and it is expected that before very long a hospital will be erected in monrovia. one or two reflections suggest themselves. it has been said that the circumstances under which liberia was founded led to a despising of industrial effort. the country is now quite awake, however, to the advantages of industrial and agricultural enterprise. a matter of supreme importance is that of the relation of the americo-liberian to the native; this will work itself out, for the native is the country's chief asset for the future. in general the republic needs a few visible evidences of twentieth century standards of progress; two or three high schools and hospitals built on the american plan would work wonders. finally let it not be forgotten that upon the american negro rests the obligation to do whatever he can to help to develop the country. if he will but firmly clasp hands with his brother across the sea, a new day will dawn for american negro and liberian alike. chapter x the negro a national issue . _current tendencies_ it is evident from what has been said already that the idea of the negro current about in the united states was not very exalted. it was seriously questioned if he was really a human being, and doctors of divinity learnedly expounded the "cursed be canaan" passage as applying to him. a prominent physician of mobile[ ] gave it as his opinion that "the brain of the negro, when compared with the caucasian, is smaller by a tenth ... and the intellect is wanting in the same proportion," and finally asserted that negroes could not live in the north because "a cold climate so freezes their brains as to make them insane." about mulattoes, like many others, he stretched his imagination marvelously. they were incapable of undergoing fatigue; the women were very delicate and subject to all sorts of diseases, and they did not beget children as readily as either black women or white women. in fact, said nott, between the ages of twenty-five and forty mulattoes died ten times as fast as either white or black people; between forty and fifty-five fifty times as fast, and between fifty-five and seventy one hundred times as fast. [footnote : see "two lectures on the natural history of the caucasian and negro races. by josiah c. nott, m.d., mobile, ."] to such opinions was now added one of the greatest misfortunes that have befallen the negro race in its entire history in america--burlesque on the stage. when in thomas southerne adapted _oroonoko_ from the novel of mrs. aphra behn and presented in london the story of the african prince who was stolen from his native angola, no one saw any reason why the negro should not be a subject for serious treatment on the stage, and the play was a great success, lasting for decades. in , however, was presented at drury lane a comic opera, _the padlock_, and a very prominent character was mungo, the slave of a west indian planter, who got drunk in the second act and was profane throughout the performance. in the course of the evening mungo entertained the audience with such lines as the following: dear heart, what a terrible life i am led! a dog has a better, that's sheltered and fed. night and day 'tis the same; my pain is deir game: me wish to de lord me was dead! whate'er's to be done, poor black must run. mungo here, mungo dere, mungo everywhere: above and below, sirrah, come; sirrah, go; do so, and do so, oh! oh! me wish to de lord me was dead! the depreciation of the race that mungo started continued, and when in _robinson crusoe_ was given as a pantomime at drury lane, friday was represented as a negro. the exact origins of negro minstrelsy are not altogether clear; there have been many claimants, and it is interesting to note in passing that there was an "african company" playing in new york in the early twenties, though this was probably nothing more than a small group of amateurs. whatever may have been the beginning, it was thomas d. rice who brought the form to genuine popularity. in louisville in the summer of , looking from one of the back windows of a theater, he was attracted by an old and decrepit slave who did odd jobs about a livery stable. the slave's master was named crow and he called himself jim crow. his right shoulder was drawn up high and his left leg was stiff at the knee, but he took his deformity lightly, singing as he worked. he had one favorite tune to which he had fitted words of his own, and at the end of each verse he made a ludicrous step which in time came to be known as "rocking the heel." his refrain consisted of the words: wheel about, turn about, do jis so, an' ebery time i wheel about i jump jim crow. rice, who was a clever and versatile performer, caught the air, made up like the negro, and in the course of the next season introduced jim crow and his step to the stage, and so successful was he in his performance that on his first night in the part he was encored twenty times.[ ] rice had many imitators among the white comedians of the country, some of whom indeed claimed priority in opening up the new field, and along with their burlesque these men actually touched upon the possibilities of plaintive negro melodies, which they of course capitalized. in new york late in four men--"dan" emmett, frank brower, "billy" whitlock, and "dick" pelham--practiced together with fiddle and banjo, "bones" and tambourine, and thus was born the first company, the "virginia minstrels," which made its formal debut in new york february , . its members produced in connection with their work all sorts of popular songs, one of emmett's being "dixie," which, introduced by mrs. john wood in a burlesque in new orleans at the outbreak of the civil war, leaped into popularity and became the war-song of the confederacy. companies multipled apace. "christy's minstrels" claimed priority to the company already mentioned, but did not actually enter upon its new york career until . "bryant's minstrels" and buckley's "new orleans serenaders" were only two others of the most popular aggregations featuring and burlesquing the negro. in a social history of the negro in america, however, it is important to observe in passing that already, even in burlesque, the negro element was beginning to enthrall the popular mind. about the same time as minstrelsy also developed the habit of belittling the race by making the name of some prominent and worthy negro a term of contempt; thus "cuffy" (corrupted from paul cuffe) now came into widespread use. [footnote : see laurence hutton: "the negro on the stage," in _harper's magazine_, : (june, ), referring to article by edmon s. conner in _new york times_, june , .] this was not all. it was now that the sinister crime of lynching raised its head in defiance of all law. at first used as a form of punishment for outlaws and gamblers, it soon came to be applied especially to negroes. one was burned alive near greenville, s.c., in ; in may, , two were burned near mobile for the murder of two children; and for the years between and not less than fifty-six cases of the lynching of negroes have been ascertained, though no one will ever know how many lost their lives without leaving any record. certainly more men were executed illegally than legally; thus of forty-six recorded murders by negroes of owners or overseers between and twenty resulted in legal execution and twenty-six in lynching. violent crimes against white women were not relatively any more numerous than now; but those that occurred or were attempted received swift punishment; thus of seventeen cases of rape in the ten years last mentioned negroes were legally executed in five and lynched in twelve.[ ] [footnote : see hart: _slavery and abolition_, and , citing cutler: _lynch law_, - and - .] extraordinary attention was attracted by the burning in st. louis in of a man named mcintosh, who had killed an officer who was trying to arrest him.[ ] this event came in the midst of a period of great agitation, and it was for denouncing this lynching that elijah p. lovejoy had his printing-office destroyed in st. louis and was forced to remove to alton, ill., where his press was three times destroyed and where he finally met death at the hands of a mob while trying to protect his property november , . judge lawless defended the lynching and even william ellery channing took a compromising view. abraham lincoln, however, then a very young man, in an address on "the perpetuation of our political institutions" at springfield, january , , said: "accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the everyday news of the times. they have pervaded the country from new england to louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns of the latter; they are not the creatures of climate, neither are they confined to the slaveholding or the nonslaveholding states.... turn to that horror-striking scene at st. louis. a single victim only was sacrificed there. this story is very short, and is perhaps the most highly tragic of anything that has ever been witnessed in real life. a mulatto man by the name of mcintosh was seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from the time he had been a free man attending to his own business and at peace with the world.... such are the effects of mob law, and such are the scenes becoming more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order, and the stories of which have even now grown too familiar to attract anything more than an idle remark." [footnote : cutler: _lynch law_, , citing niles's _register_, june , .] all the while flagrant crimes were committed against negro women and girls, and free men in the border states were constantly being dragged into slavery by kidnapers. two typical cases will serve for illustration. george jones, a respectable man of new york, was in arrested on broadway on the pretext that he had committed assault and battery. he refused to go with his captors, for he knew that he had done nothing to warrant such a charge; but he finally yielded on the assurance of his employer that everything possible would be done for him. he was placed in the bridewell and a few minutes afterwards taken before a magistrate, to whose satisfaction he was proved to be a slave. thus, in less than two hours after his arrest he was hurried away by the kidnapers, whose word had been accepted as sufficient evidence, and he had not been permitted to secure a single friendly witness. solomon northrup, who afterwards wrote an account of his experiences, was a free man who lived in saratoga and made his living by working about the hotels, where in the evenings he often played the violin at parties. one day two men, supposedly managers of a traveling circus company, met him and offered him good pay if he would go with them as a violinist to washington. he consented, and some mornings afterwards awoke to find himself in a slave pen in the capital. how he got there was ever a mystery to him, but evidently he had been drugged. he was taken south and sold to a hard master, with whom he remained twelve years before he was able to effect his release.[ ] in the south any free negro who entertained a runaway might himself become a slave; thus in south carolina in a free woman with her three children suffered this penalty because she gave succor to two homeless and fugitive children six and nine years old. [footnote : mcdougall: fugitive slaves, - .] day by day, moreover, from the capital of the nation went on the internal slave-trade. "when by one means and another a dealer had gathered twenty or more likely young negro men and girls, he would bring them forth from their cells; would huddle the women and young children into a cart or wagon; would handcuff the men in pairs, the right hand of one to the left hand of another; make the handcuffs fast to a long chain which passed between each pair of slaves, and would start his procession southward."[ ] it is not strange that several of the unfortunate people committed suicide. one distracted mother, about to be separated from her loved ones, dumbfounded the nation by hurling herself from the window of a prison in the capital on the sabbath day and dying in the street below. [footnote : mcmaster, v, - .] meanwhile even in the free states the disabilities of the negro continued. in general he was denied the elective franchise, the right of petition, the right to enter public conveyances or places of amusement, and he was driven into a status of contempt by being shut out from the army and the militia. he had to face all sorts of impediments in getting education or in pursuing honest industry; he had nothing whatever to do with the administration of justice; and generally he was subject to insult and outrage. one might have supposed that on all this proscription and denial of the ordinary rights of human beings the christian church would have taken a positive stand. unfortunately, as so often happens, it was on the side of property and vested interest rather than on that of the oppressed. we have already seen that southern divines held slaves and countenanced the system; and by james g. birney had abundant material for his indictment, "the american churches the bulwarks of american slavery." he showed among other things that while in the methodist episcopal church had opposed slavery and in had given a slaveholder one month to repent or withdraw from its conferences, by it had so drifted away from its original position as to disclaim "any right, wish, or intention to interfere in the civil and political relation between master and slave, as it existed in the slaveholding states of the union." meanwhile in the churches of the north there was the most insulting discrimination; in the baptist church in hartford the pews for negroes were boarded up in front, and in stonington, conn., the floor was cut out of a negro's pew by order of the church authorities. in boston, in a church that did not welcome and that made little provision for negroes, a consecrated deacon invited into his own pew some negro people, whereupon he lost the right to hold a pew in his church. he decided that there should be some place where there might be more freedom of thought and genuine christianity, he brought others into the plan, and the effort that he put forth resulted in what has since become the tremont temple baptist church. into all this proscription, burlesque, and crime, and denial of the fundamental principles of christianity, suddenly came the program of the abolitionists; and it spoke with tongues of fire, and had all the vigor and force of a crusade. . _the challenge of the abolitionists_ the great difference between the early abolition societies which resulted in the american convention and the later anti-slavery movement of which garrison was the representative figure was the difference between a humanitarian impulse tempered by expediency and one that had all the power of a direct challenge. before "in the south the societies were more numerous, the members no less earnest, and the hatred of slavery no less bitter,... yet the conciliation and persuasion so noticeable in the earlier period in twenty years accomplished practically nothing either in legislation or in the education of public sentiment; while gradual changes in economic conditions at the south caused the question to grow more difficult."[ ] moreover, "the evidence of open-mindedness can not stand against the many instances of absolute refusal to permit argument against slavery. in the colonial congress, in the confederation, in the constitutional convention, in the state ratifying conventions, in the early congresses, there were many vehement denunciations of anything which seemed to have an anti-slavery tendency, and wholesale suspicion of the north at all times when the subject was opened."[ ] one can not forget the effort of james g. birney, or that benjamin lundy's work was most largely done in what we should now call the south, or that between and at least four journals which avowed the extinction of slavery as one, if not the chief one, of their objects were published in the southern states.[ ] only gradual emancipation, however, found any real support in the south; and, as compared with the work of garrison, even that of lundy appears in the distance with something of the mildness of "sweetness and light." even before the rise of garrison, robert james turnbull of south carolina, under the name of "brutus," wrote a virulent attack on anti-slavery; and representative drayton of the same state, speaking in congress in , said, "much as we love our country, we would rather see our cities in flames, our plains drenched in blood--rather endure all the calamities of civil war, than parley for an instant upon the right of any power, than our own to interfere with the regulation of our slaves."[ ] more and more this was to be the real sentiment of the south, and in the face of this kind of eloquence and passion mere academic discussion was powerless. [footnote : adams: _the neglected period of anti-slavery, - _, - .] [footnote : _ibid_., .] [footnote : william birney: _james g. birney and his times_, - .] [footnote : register of debates, _ , _, cited by adams, - .] the _liberator_ was begun january , . the next year garrison was the leading spirit in the formation of the new england anti-slavery society; and in december, , in philadelphia, the american anti-slavery society was organized. in large measure these organizations were an outgrowth of the great liberal and humanitarian spirit that by had become manifest in both europe and america. hugo and mazzini, byron and macaulay had all now appeared upon the scene, and romanticism was regnant. james montgomery and william faber wrote their hymns, and reginald heber went as a missionary bishop to india. forty years afterwards the french revolution was bearing fruit. france herself had a new revolution in , and in this same year the kingdom of belgium was born. in england there was the remarkable reign of william iv, which within the short space of seven years summed up in legislation reforms that had been agitated for decades. in came the great reform bill, in the abolition of slavery in english dominions, and in a revision of factory legislation and the poor law. charles dickens and elizabeth barrett browning began to be heard, and in came to america george thompson, a powerful and refined speaker who had had much to do with the english agitation against slavery. the young republic of the united states, lusty and self-confident, was seething with new thought. in new england the humanitarian movement that so largely began with the unitarianism of channing "ran through its later phase in transcendentalism, and spent its last strength in the anti-slavery agitation and the enthusiasms of the civil war."[ ] the movement was contemporary with the preaching of many novel gospels in religion, in sociology, in science, education, and medicine. new sects were formed, like the universalists, the spiritualists, the second adventists, the mormons, and the shakers, some of which believed in trances and miracles, others in the quick coming of christ, and still others in the reorganization of society; and the pseudo-sciences, like mesmerism and phrenology, had numerous followers. the ferment has long since subsided, and much that was then seething has since gone off in vapor; but when all that was spurious has been rejected, we find that the general impulse was but a new baptism of the old puritan spirit. transcendentalism appealed to the private consciousness as the sole standard of truth and right. with kindred movements it served to quicken the ethical sense of a nation that was fast becoming materialistic and to nerve it for the conflict that sooner or later had to come. [footnote : henry a. beers: _initial studies in american letters_, - passim.] in his salutatory editorial garrison said with reference to his position: "in park street church, on the fourth of july, , in an address on slavery, i unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. i seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my god, of my country, and of my brethren, the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice, and absurdity.... i am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? i will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. on this subject, i do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. no! no! tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present! i am in earnest. i will not equivocate--i will not excuse--i will not retreat a single inch--and i will be heard." with something of the egotism that comes of courage in a holy cause, he said: "on this question my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years--not perniciously, but beneficially--not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will bear testimony that i was right." all the while, in speaking to the negro people themselves, garrison endeavored to beckon them to the highest possible ground of personal and racial self-respect. especially did he advise them to seek the virtues of education and coöperation. said he to them:[ ] "support each other.... when i say 'support each other,' i mean, sell to each other, and buy of each other, in preference to the whites. this is a duty: the whites do not trade with you; why should you give them your patronage? if one of your number opens a little shop, do not pass it by to give your money to a white shopkeeper. if any has a trade, employ him as often as possible. if any is a good teacher, send your children to him, and be proud that he is one of your color.... maintain your rights, in all cases, and at whatever expense.... wherever you are allowed to vote, see that your names are put on the lists of voters, and go to the polls. if you are not strong enough to choose a man of your own color, give your votes to those who are friendly to your cause; but, if possible, elect intelligent and respectable colored men. i do not despair of seeing the time when our state and national assemblies will contain a fair proportion of colored representatives--especially if the proposed college at new haven goes into successful operation. will you despair now so many champions are coming to your help, and the trump of jubilee is sounding long and loud; when is heard a voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the north, a voice from the south, crying, _liberty and equality now, liberty and equality forever_! will you despair, seeing truth, and justice, and mercy, and god, and christ, and the holy ghost, are on your side? oh, no--never, never despair of the complete attainment of your rights!" [footnote : "an address delivered before the free people of color in philadelphia, new york, and other cities, during the month of june, , by wm. lloyd garrison. boston, ," pp. - .] to second such sentiments rose a remarkable group of men and women, among them elijah p. lovejoy, wendell phillips, theodore parker, john greenleaf whittier, lydia maria child, samuel j. may, william jay, charles sumner, henry ward beecher, harriet beecher stowe, and john brown. phillips, the "plumed knight" of the cause, closed his law office because he was not willing to swear that he would support the constitution; he relinquished the franchise because he did not wish to have any responsibility for a government that countenanced slavery; and he lost sympathy with the christian church because of its compromising attitude. garrison himself termed the constitution "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell." lydia maria child in published an _appeal in favor of that class of americans called africans_, and wrote or edited numerous other books for the cause, while the anti-slavery poems of whittier are now a part of the main stream of american literature. the abolitionists repelled many conservative men by their refusal to countenance any laws that recognized slavery; but they gained force when congress denied them the right of petition and when president jackson refused them the use of the mails. there could be no question as to the directness of their attack. they held up the slaveholder to scorn. they gave thousands of examples of the inhumanity of the system of slavery, publishing scores and even hundreds of tracts and pamphlets. they called the attention of america to the slave who for running away was for five days buried in the ground up to his chin with his arms tied behind him; to women who were whipped because they did not breed fast enough or would not yield to the lust of planters or overseers; to men who were tied to be whipped and then left bleeding, or who were branded with hot irons, or forced to wear iron yokes and clogs and bells; to the presbyterian preacher in georgia who tortured a slave until he died; to a woman in new jersey who was "bound to a log, and scored with a knife, in a shocking manner, across her back, and the gashes stuffed with salt, after which she was tied to a post in a cellar, where, after suffering three days, death kindly terminated her misery"; and finally to the fact that even when slaves were dead they were not left in peace, as the south carolina medical college in charleston advertised that the bodies were used for dissection.[ ] in the face of such an indictment the south appeared more injured and innocent than ever, and said that evils had been greatly exaggerated. perhaps in some instances they were; but the south and everybody also knew that no pen could nearly do justice to some of the things that were possible under the iniquitous and abominable system of american slavery. [footnote : see "american slavery as it is: testimony of a thousand witnesses. by theodore dwight weld. published by the american anti-slavery society, new york, "; but the account of the new jersey woman is from "a portraiture of domestic slavery in the united states, by jesse torrey, ballston spa, penn., ," p. .] the abolitionists, however, did not stop with a mere attack on slavery. not satisfied with the mere enumeration of examples of negro achievement, they made even higher claims in behalf of the people now oppressed. said alexander h. everett:[ ] "we are sometimes told that all these efforts will be unavailing--that the african is a degraded member of the human family--that a man with a dark skin and curled hair is necessarily, as such, incapable of improvement and civilization, and condemned by the vice of his physical conformation to vegetate forever in a state of hopeless barbarism. i reject with contempt and indignation this miserable heresy. in replying to it the friends of truth and humanity have not hitherto done justice to the argument. in order to prove that the blacks were capable of intellectual efforts, they have painfully collected a few specimens of what some of them have done in this way, even in the degraded condition which they occupy at present in christendom. this is not the way to treat the subject. go back to an earlier period in the history of our race. see what the blacks were and what they did three thousand years ago, in the period of their greatness and glory, when they occupied the forefront in the march of civilization--when they constituted in fact the whole civilized world of their time. trace this very civilization, of which we are so proud, to its origin, and see where you will find it. we received it from our european ancestors: they had it from the greeks and romans, and the jews. but, sir, where did the greeks and the romans and the jews get it? they derived it from ethiopia and egypt--in one word, from africa.[ ] ... the ruins of the egyptian temples laugh to scorn the architectural monuments of any other part of the world. they will be what they are now, the delight and admiration of travelers from all quarters, when the grass is growing on the sites of st. peter's and st. paul's, the present pride of rome and london.... it seems, therefore, that for this very civilization of which we are so proud, and which is the only ground of our present claim of superiority, we are indebted to the ancestors of these very blacks, whom we are pleased to consider as naturally incapable of civilization." [footnote : see "the anti-slavery picknick: a collection of speeches, poems, dialogues, and songs, intended for use in schools and anti-slavery meetings. by john a. collins, boston, ," - .] [footnote : it is worthy of note that this argument, which was long thought to be fallacious, is more and more coming to be substantiated by the researches of scholars, and that not only as affecting northern but also negro africa. note lady lugard (flora l. shaw): _a tropical dependency_, london, , pp. - .] in adherence to their convictions the abolitionists were now to give a demonstration of faith in humanity such as has never been surpassed except by jesus christ himself. they believed in the negro even before the negro had learned to believe in himself. acting on their doctrine of equal rights, they traveled with their negro friends, "sat upon the same platforms with them, ate with them, and one enthusiastic abolitionist white couple adopted a negro child."[ ] [footnote : hart: _slavery and abolition_, - .] garrison appealed to posterity. he has most certainly been justified by time. compared with his high stand for the right, the opportunism of such a man as clay shrivels into nothingness. within recent years a distinguished american scholar,[ ] writing of the principles for which he and his co-workers stood, has said: "the race question transcends any academic inquiry as to what ought to have been done in . it affects the north as well as the south; it touches the daily life of all of our citizens, individually, politically, humanly. it molds the child's conception of democracy. it tests the faith of the adult. it is by no means an american problem only. what is going on in our states, north and south, is only a local phase of a world-problem.... now, whittier's opinions upon that world-problem are unmistakable. he believed, quite literally, that all men are brothers; that oppression of one man or one race degrades the whole human family; and that there should be the fullest equality of opportunity. that a mere difference in color should close the door of civil, industrial, and political hope upon any individual was a hateful thing to the quaker poet. the whole body of his verse is a protest against the assertion of race pride, against the emphasis upon racial differences. to whittier there was no such thing as a 'white man's civilization.' the only distinction was between civilization and barbarism. he had faith in education, in equality before the law, in freedom of opportunity, and in the ultimate triumph of brotherhood. 'they are rising,-- all are rising, the black and white together.' this faith is at once too sentimental and too dogmatic to suit those persons who have exalted economic efficiency into a fetish and who have talked loudly at times--though rather less loudly since the russo-japanese war--about the white man's task of governing the backward races. _but whatever progress has been made by the american negro since the civil war, in self-respect, in moral and intellectual development, and--for that matter--in economic efficiency, has been due to fidelity to those principles which whittier and other like-minded men and women long ago enunciated_.[ ] the immense tasks which still remain, alike for 'higher' as for 'lower' races, can be worked out by following whittier's program, if they can be worked out at all." [footnote : bliss perry: "whittier for to-day," _atlantic monthly_, vol. , - (december, ).] [footnote : the italics are our own.] . the contest even before the abolitionists became aggressive a test law had been passed, the discussion of which did much to prepare for their coming. immediately after the denmark vesey insurrection the south carolina legislature voted that the moment that a vessel entered a port in the state with a free negro or person of color on board he should be seized, even if he was the cook, the steward, or a mariner, or if he was a citizen of another state or country.[ ] the sheriff was to board the vessel, take the negro to jail and detain him there until the vessel was actually ready to leave. the master of the ship was then to pay for the detention of the negro and take him away, or pay a fine of $ , and see the negro sold as a slave. within a short time after this enactment was passed, as many as forty-one vessels were deprived of one or more hands, from one british trading vessel almost the entire crew being taken. the captains appealed to the judge of the united states district court, who with alacrity turned the matter over to the state courts. now followed much legal proceeding, with an appeal to higher authorities, in the course of which both canning and adams were forced to consider the question, and it was generally recognized that the act violated both the treaty with great britain and the power of congress to regulate trade. to all of this south carolina replied that as a sovereign state she had the right to interdict the entry of foreigners, that in fact she had been a sovereign state at the time of her entrance into the union and that she never had surrendered the right to exclude free negroes. finally she asserted that if a dissolution of the union must be the alternative she was quite prepared to abide by the result. unusual excitement arose soon afterwards when four free negroes on a british ship were seized by the sheriff and dragged from the deck. the captain had to go to heavy expense to have these men released, and on reaching liverpool he appealed to the board of trade. the british minister now sent a more vigorous protest, adams referred the same to wirt, the attorney general, and wirt was forced to declare south carolina's act unconstitutional and void. his opinion with a copy of the british protest adams sent to the governor of the state, who immediately transmitted the same to the legislature. each branch of the legislature passed resolutions which the other would not accept, but neither voted to repeal the law. in fact, it remained technically in force until the civil war. in massachusetts sent samuel hoar as a commissioner to charleston to make a test case of a negro who had been deprived of his rights. hoar cited article ii, section , of the national constitution ("the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states"), intending ultimately to bring a case before the united states supreme court. when he appeared, however, the south carolina legislature voted that "this agent comes here not as a citizen of the united states, but as an emissary of a foreign government hostile to our domestic institutions and with the sole purpose of subverting our internal police." hoar was at length notified that his life was in danger and he was forced to leave the state. meanwhile southern sentiment against the american colonization society had crystallized, and the excitement raised by david walker's _appeal_ was exceeded only by that occasioned by nat turner's insurrection. [footnote : note mcmaster, v, - .] when, then, the abolitionists began their campaign the country was already ripe for a struggle, and in the north as well as the south there was plenty of sentiment unfavorable to the negro. in july, , when an attempt was made to start a manual training school for negro youth in new haven, the citizens at a public meeting declared that "the founding of colleges for educating colored people is an unwarrantable and dangerous interference with the internal concerns of other states, and ought to be discouraged"; and they ultimately forced the project to be abandoned. at canterbury in the same state prudence crandall, a young quaker woman twenty-nine years of age, was brought face to face with the problem when she admitted a negro girl, sarah harris, to her school.[ ] when she was boycotted she announced that she would receive negro girls only if no others would attend, and she advertised accordingly in the liberator. she was subjected to various indignities and efforts were made to arrest her pupils as vagrants. as she was still undaunted, her opponents, on may , , procured a special act of the legislature forbidding, under severe penalties, the instruction of any negro from outside the state without the consent of the town authorities. under this act miss crandall was arrested and imprisoned, being confined to a cell which had just been vacated by a murderer. the abolitionists came to her defense, but she was convicted, and though the higher courts quashed the proceedings on technicalities, the village shopkeepers refused to sell her food, manure was thrown into her well, her house was pelted with rotten eggs and at last demolished, and even the meeting-house in the town was closed to her. the attempt to continue the school was then abandoned. in an academy was built by subscription in canaan, n.h.; it was granted a charter by the legislature, and the proprietors determined to admit all applicants having "suitable moral and intellectual recommendations, without other distinctions." the town-meeting "viewed with abhorrence" the attempt to establish the school, but when it was opened twenty-eight white and fourteen negro scholars attended. the town-meeting then ordered that the academy be forcibly removed and appointed a committee to execute the mandate. accordingly on august three hundred men with two hundred oxen assembled, took the edifice from its place, dragged it for some distance and left it a ruin. from to , in fact, throughout the country, from east to west, swept a wave of violence. not less than twenty-five attempts were made to break up anti-slavery meetings. in new york in october, , there was a riot in clinton hall, and from july to of the next year a succession of riots led to the sacking of the house of lewis tappan and the destruction of other houses and churches. when george thompson arrived from england in september, , his meetings were constantly disturbed, and garrison himself was mobbed in boston in , being dragged through the streets with a rope around his body. [footnote : note especially "connecticut's canterbury tale; its heroine, prudence crandall, and its moral for to-day, by john c. kimball," hartford ( ).] in general the abolitionists were charged by the south with promoting both insurrection and the amalgamation of the races. there was no clear proof of these charges; nevertheless, may said, "if we do not emancipate our slaves by our own moral energy, they will emancipate themselves and that by a process too horrible to contemplate";[ ] and channing said, "allowing that amalgamation is to be anticipated, then, i maintain, we have no right to resist it. then it is not unnatural."[ ] while the south grew hysterical at the thought, it was, as hart remarks, a fair inquiry, which the abolitionists did not hesitate to put--who was responsible for the only amalgamation that had so far taken place? after a few years there was a cleavage among the abolitionists. some of the more practical men, like birney, gerrit smith, and the tappans, who believed in fighting through governmental machinery, in broke away from the others and prepared to take a part in federal politics. this was the beginning of the liberty party, which nominated birney for the presidency in and again in . in it became merged in the free soil party and ultimately in the republican party. [footnote : hart, , citing _liberator_, v, .] [footnote : hart, , citing channing, _works_, v. .] with the forties came division in the church--a sort of prelude to the great events that were to thunder through the country within the next two decades. could the church really countenance slavery? could a bishop hold a slave? these were to become burning questions. in - the baptists of the north and east refused to approve the sending out of missionaries who owned slaves, and the southern baptist convention resulted. in , when james o. andrew came into the possession of slaves by his marriage to a widow who had these as a legacy from her former husband, the northern methodists refused to grant that one of their bishops might hold a slave, and the methodist episcopal church, south, was formally organized in louisville the following year. the presbyterians and the episcopalians, more aristocratic in tone, did not divide. the great events of the annexation of texas, with the mexican war that resulted, the compromise of , with the fugitive slave law, the kansas-nebraska bill of , and the dred scott decision of were all regarded in the north as successive steps in the campaign of slavery, though now in the perspective they appear as vain efforts to beat back a resistless tide. in the mexican war it was freely urged by the mexicans that, should the american line break, their host would soon find itself among the rich cities of the south, where perhaps it could not only exact money, but free two million slaves as well, call to its assistance the indians, and even draw aid from the abolitionists in the north.[ ] nothing of all this was to be. out of the academic shades of harvard, however, at last came a tongue of flame. in "the present crisis" james russell lowell produced lines whose tremendous beat was like a stern call of the whole country to duty: [footnote : justin h. smith: _the war with mexico_, i, .] once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side; some great cause, god's new messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, and the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. * * * * * then to side with truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, ere her cause bring fame and profit and 'tis prosperous to be just; then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, doubting in his abject spirit, till his lord is crucified, and the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. * * * * * new occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth; they must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth; lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must pilgrims be, launch our _mayflower_, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, nor attempt the future's portal with the past's blood-rusted key. as "the present crisis" came after the mexican war, so after the new fugitive slave law appeared _uncle tom's cabin_ ( ). "when despairing hungarian fugitives make their way, against all the search-warrants and authorities of their lawful governments, to america, press and political cabinet ring with applause and welcome. when despairing african fugitives do the same thing--it is--what _is_ it?" asked harriet beecher stowe; and in her remarkable book she proceeded to show the injustice of the national position. _uncle tom's cabin_ has frequently been termed a piece of propaganda that gave an overdrawn picture of southern conditions. the author, however, had abundant proof for her incidents, and she was quite aware of the fact that the problem of the negro, north as well as south, transcended the question of slavery. said st. clair to ophelia: "if we emancipate, are you willing to educate? how many families of your town would take in a negro man or woman, teach them, bear with them, and seek to make them christians? how many merchants would take adolph, if i wanted to make him a clerk; or mechanics, if i wanted to teach him a trade? if i wanted to put jane and rosa to school, how many schools are there in the northern states that would take them in?... we are in a bad position. we are the more _obvious_ oppressors of the negro; but the unchristian prejudice of the north is an oppressor almost equally severe." meanwhile the thrilling work of the underground railroad was answered by a practical reopening of the slave-trade. from to , as the result of the repressive measure of , the traffic had declined; between and , however, it was greatly revived, and southern conventions resolved that all laws, state or federal, prohibiting the slave-trade, should be repealed. the traffic became more and more open and defiant until, as stephen a. douglas computed, as many as , slaves were brought into the country in . it was not until the lincoln government in hanged the first trader who ever suffered the extreme penalty of the law, and made with great britain a treaty embodying the principle of international right of search, that the trade was effectually checked. by the end of the war it was entirely suppressed, though as late as a squadron of ships patrolled the slave coast. the kansas-nebraska bill, repealing the missouri compromise and providing for "squatter sovereignty" in the territories in question, outraged the north and led immediately to the forming of the republican party. it was not long before public sentiment began to make itself felt, and the first demonstration took place in boston. anthony burns was a slave who escaped from virginia and made his way to boston, where he was at work in the winter of - . he was discovered by a united states marshal who presented a writ for his arrest just at the time of the repeal of the missouri compromise in may, . public feeling became greatly aroused. wendell phillips and theodore parker delivered strong addresses at a meeting in faneuil hall while an unsuccessful attempt to rescue burns from the court house was made under the leadership of thomas wentworth higginson, who with others of the attacking party was wounded. it was finally decided in court that burns must be returned to his master. the law was obeyed; but boston had been made very angry, and generally her feeling had counted for something in the history of the country. the people draped their houses in mourning, hissed the procession that took burns to his ship and at the wharf a riot was averted only by a minister's call to prayer. this incident did more to crystallize northern sentiment against slavery than any other except the exploit of john brown, and this was the last time that a fugitive slave was taken out of boston. burns himself was afterwards bought by popular subscription, and ultimately became a baptist minister in canada. in dr. emerson, an army officer stationed in missouri, removed to illinois, taking with him his slave, dred scott. two years later, again accompanied by scott, he went to minnesota. in illinois slavery was prohibited by state law and minnesota was a free territory. in emerson returned with scott to missouri. after a while the slave raised the important question: had not his residence outside of a slave state made him a free man? beaten by his master in , with the aid of anti-slavery lawyers scott brought a suit against him for assault and battery, the circuit court of st. louis rendering a decision in his favor. emerson appealed and in the supreme court of the state reversed the decision of the lower court. not long after this emerson sold scott to a citizen of new york named sandford. scott now brought suit against sandford, on the ground that they were citizens of different states. the case finally reached the supreme court of the united states, which in handed down the decision that scott was not a citizen of missouri and had no standing in the federal courts, that a slave was only a piece of property, and that a master might take his property with impunity to any place within the jurisdiction of the united states. the ownership of scott and his family soon passed to a massachusetts family by whom they were liberated; but the important decision that the case had called forth aroused the most intense excitement throughout the country, and somehow out of it all people remembered more than anything else the amazing declaration of chief justice taney that "the negroes were so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." the extra-legal character and the general fallacy of his position were exposed by justice curtis in a masterly dissenting opinion. no one incident of the period showed more clearly the tension under which the country was laboring than the assault on charles sumner by preston s. brooks, a congressional representative from south carolina. as a result of this regrettable occurrence splendid canes with such inscriptions as "hit him again" and "use knock-down arguments" were sent to brooks from different parts of the south and he was triumphantly reëlected by his constituency, while on the other hand resolutions denouncing him were passed all over the north, in canada, and even in europe. more than ever the south was thrown on the defensive, and in impassioned speeches robert toombs now glorified his state and his section. speaking at emory college in he had already made an extended apology for slavery;[ ] speaking in the georgia legislature on the eve of secession he contended that the south had been driven to bay by the abolitionists and must now "expand or perish." a writer in the _southern literary messenger_,[ ] in an article "the black race in north america," made the astonishing statement that "the slavery of the black race on this continent is the price america has paid for her liberty, civil and religious, and, humanly speaking, these blessings would have been unattainable without their aid." benjamin m. palmer, a distinguished minister of new orleans, in a widely quoted sermon in spoke of the peculiar trust that had been given to the south--to be the guardians of the slaves, the conservers of the world's industry, and the defenders of the cause of religion.[ ] "the blooms upon southern fields gathered by black hands have fed the spindles and looms of manchester and birmingham not less than of lawrence and lowell. strike now a blow at this system of labor and the world itself totters at the stroke. shall we permit that blow to fall? do we not owe it to civilized man to stand in the breach and stay the uplifted arm?... this trust we will discharge in the face of the worst possible peril. though war be the aggregation of all evils, yet, should the madness of the hour appeal to the arbitration of the sword, we will not shrink even from the baptism of fire.... the position of the south is at this moment sublime. if she has grace given her to know her hour, she will save herself, the country, and the world." [footnote : see "an oration delivered before the few and phi gamma societies of emory college: slavery in the united states; its consistency with republican institutions, and its effects upon the slave and society. augusta, ga., ."] [footnote : november, .] [footnote : "the rights of the south defended in the pulpits, by b.m. palmer, d.d., and w.t. leacock, d.d., mobile, ."] all of this was very earnest and very eloquent, but also very mistaken, and the general fallacy of the south's position was shown by no less a man than he who afterwards became vice-president of the confederacy. speaking in the georgia legislature in opposition to the motion for secession, stephens said that the south had no reason to feel aggrieved, for all along she had received more than her share of the nation's privileges, and had almost always won in the main that which was demanded. she had had sixty years of presidents to the north's twenty-four; two-thirds of the clerkships and other appointments although the white population in the section was only one-third that of the country; fourteen attorneys general to the north's five; and eighteen supreme court judges to the north's eleven, although four-fifths of the business of the court originated in the free states. "this," said stephens in an astonishing declaration, "we have required so as to guard against any interpretation of the constitution unfavorable to us." still another voice from the south, in a slightly different key, attacked the tendencies in the section. _the impending crisis_ ( ), by hinton rowan helper, of north carolina, was surpassed in sensational interest by no other book of the period except _uncle tom's cabin_. the author did not place himself upon the broadest principles of humanity and statesmanship; he had no concern for the negro, and the great planters of the south were to him simply the "whelps" and "curs" of slavery. he spoke merely as the voice of the non-slaveholding white men in the south. he set forth such unpleasant truths as that the personal and real property, including slaves, of virginia, north carolina, tennessee, missouri, arkansas, florida, and texas, taken all together, was less than the real and personal estate in the single state of new york; that representation in southern legislatures was unfair; that in congress a southern planter was twice as powerful as a northern man; that slavery was to blame for the migration from the south to the west; and that in short the system was in every way harmful to the man of limited means. all of this was decidedly unpleasant to the ears of the property owners of the south; helper's book was proscribed, and the author himself found it more advisable to live in new york than in his native state. _the impending crisis_ was eagerly read, however, and it succeeded as a book because it attempted to attack with some degree of honesty a great economic problem. the time for speeches and books, however, was over, and the time for action had come. for years the slave had chanted, "i've been listenin' all the night long"; and his prayer had reached the throne. on october , , john brown made his raid on harper's ferry and took his place with the immortals. in the long and bitter contest on american slavery the abolitionists had won. chapter xi social progress, - [ ] [footnote : this chapter follows closely upon chapter iii, section , and is largely complementary to chapter viii.] so far in our study we have seen the negro as the object of interest on the part of the american people. some were disposed to give him a helping hand, some to keep him in bondage, and some thought that it might be possible to dispose of any problem by sending him out of the country. in all this period of agitation and ferment, aside from the efforts of friends in his behalf, just what was the negro doing to work out his own salvation? if for the time being we can look primarily at constructive effort rather than disabilities, just what do we find that on his own account he was doing to rise to the full stature of manhood? naturally in the answer to such a question we shall have to be concerned with those people who had already attained unto nominal freedom. we shall indeed find many examples of industrious slaves who, working in agreement with their owners, managed sometimes to purchase themselves and even to secure ownership of their families. such cases, while considerable in the aggregate, were after all exceptional, and for the ordinary slave on the plantation the outlook was hopeless enough. in the free persons formed just one-ninth of the total negro population in the country, there being , of them to , , slaves. it is a commonplace to remark the progress that the race has made since emancipation. a study of the facts, however, will show that with all their disadvantages less than half a million people had before not only made such progress as amasses a surprising total, but that they had already entered every large field of endeavor in which the race is engaged to-day. when in course of time the status of the negro in the american body politic became a live issue, the possibility and the danger of an _imperium in imperio_ were perceived; and rev. james w.c. pennington, undoubtedly a leader, said in his lectures in london and glasgow: "the colored population of the united states have no destiny separate from that of the nation in which they form an integral part. our destiny is bound up with that of america. her ship is ours; her pilot is ours; her storms are ours; her calms are ours. if she breaks upon any rock, we break with her. if we, born in america, can not live upon the same soil upon terms of equality with the descendants of scotchmen, englishmen, irishmen, frenchmen, germans, hungarians, greeks, and poles, then the fundamental theory of america fails and falls to the ground."[ ] while everybody was practically agreed upon this fundamental matter of the relation of the race to the federal government, more and more there developed two lines of thought, equally honest, as to the means by which the race itself was to attain unto the highest things that american civilization had to offer. the leader of one school of thought was richard allen, founder of the african methodist episcopal church. when this man and his friends found that in white churches they were not treated with courtesy, they said, we shall have our own church; we shall have our own bishop; we shall build up our own enterprises in any line whatsoever; and even to-day the church that allen founded remains as the greatest single effort of the race in organization. the foremost representative of the opposing line of thought was undoubtedly frederick douglass, who in a speech in rochester in said: "i am well aware of the anti-christian prejudices which have excluded many colored persons from white churches, and the consequent necessity for erecting their own places of worship. this evil i would charge upon its originators, and not the colored people. but such a necessity does not now exist to the extent of former years. there are societies where color is not regarded as a test of membership, and such places i deem more appropriate for colored persons than exclusive or isolated organizations." there is much more difference between these two positions than can be accounted for by the mere lapse of forty years between the height of the work of allen and that of douglass. allen certainly did not sanction segregation under the law, and no man worked harder than he to relieve his people from proscription. douglass moreover, who did not formally approve of organizations that represented any such distinction as that of race, again and again presided over gatherings of negro men. in the last analysis, however, it was allen who was foremost in laying the basis of distinctively negro enterprise, and douglass who felt that the real solution of any difficulty was for the race to lose itself as quickly as possible in the general body politic. [footnote : nell: _colored patriots of the american revolution_, .] we have seen that the church was from the first the race's foremost form of social organization, and that sometimes in very close touch with it developed the early lodges of such a body as the masons. by emancipation was well under way; then began emigration from the south to the central west; emigration brought into being the underground railroad; and finally all forces worked together for the development of negro business, the press, conventions, and other forms of activity. it was natural that states so close to the border as pennsylvania and ohio should be important in this early development. the church continued the growth that it had begun several decades before. the a.m.e. denomination advanced rapidly from churches and members in to churches and , members by the close of the civil war. naturally such a distinctively negro organization could make little progress in the south before the war, but there were small congregations in charleston and new orleans, and william paul quinn blazed a path in the west, going from pittsburgh to st. louis. in the prince hall lodge of the masons in massachusetts, the first independent african grand lodge in pennsylvania, and the hiram grand lodge of pennsylvania formed a national grand lodge, and from one or another of these all other grand lodges among negroes have descended. in the members of the philomathean institute of new york and of the philadelphia library company and debating society applied for admission to the international order of odd fellows. they were refused on account of their race. thereupon peter ogden, a negro, who had already joined the grand united order of odd fellows of england, secured a charter for the first negro american lodge, philomathean, no. , of new york, which was set up march , . it was followed within the next two years by lodges in new york, philadelphia, albany, and poughkeepsie. the knights of pythias were not organized until in washington; but the grand order of galilean fishermen started on its career in baltimore in . the benefit societies developed apace. at first they were small and confined to a group of persons well known to each other, thus being genuinely fraternal. simple in form, they imposed an initiation fee of hardly less than $ . or more than $ . , a monthly fee of about cents, and gave sick dues ranging from $ . to $ . a month, with guarantee of payment of one's funeral expenses and subsequent help to the widow. by there were in philadelphia alone such groups with , members. as bringing together spirits supposedly congenial, these organizations largely took the place of clubs, and the meetings were relished accordingly. some drifted into secret societies, and after the civil war some that had not cultivated the idea of insurance were forced to add this feature to their work. in the sphere of civil rights the negroes, in spite of circumstances, were making progress, and that by their own efforts as well as those of their friends the abolitionists. their papers helped decidedly. the _journal of freedom_ (commonly known as _freedom's journal_), begun march , , ran for three years. it had numerous successors, but no one of outstanding strength before the _north star_ (later known as _frederick douglass' paper_) began publication in , continuing until the civil war. largely through the effort of paul cuffe for the franchise, new bedford, mass., was generally prominent in all that made for racial prosperity. here even by the negro voters held the balance of power and accordingly exerted a potent influence on election day.[ ] under date march , , there was brought up for repeal so much of the massachusetts statutes as forbade intermarriage between white persons and negroes, mulattoes, or indians, as "contrary to the principles of christianity and republicanism." the committee said that it did not recommend a repeal in the expectation that the number of connections, legal or illegal, between the races would be thereupon increased; but its object rather was that wherever such connections were found the usual civil liabilities and obligations should not fail to attach to the contracting parties. the enactment was repealed. in the same state, by january, , an act forbidding discrimination on railroads was passed. this grew out of separate petitions or remonstrances from francis jackson and joseph nunn, each man being supported by friends, and the petitioners based their request "not on the supposition that the colored man is not as well treated as his white fellow-citizen, but on the broad principle that the constitution allows no distinction in public privileges among the different classes of citizens in this commonwealth."[ ] in new york city an interesting case arose over the question of public conveyances. when about horse-cars began to supersede omnibuses on the streets, the negro was excluded from the use of them, and he continued to be excluded until , when a decision of judge rockwell gave him the right to enter them. the decision was ignored and the negro continued to be excluded as before. one sunday in may, however, rev. james w.c. pennington, after service, reminded his hearers of judge rockwell's decision, urged them to stand up for their rights, and especially to inform any friends who might visit the city during the coming anniversary week that negroes were no longer excluded from the street cars. he himself then boarded a car on sixth avenue, refused to leave when requested to do so, and was forcibly ejected. he brought suit against the company and won his case; and thus the negro made further advance toward full citizenship in new york.[ ] [footnote : nell, iii.] [footnote : senate document of .] [footnote : mcmaster, viii, .] thus was the negro developing in religious organization, in his benefit societies, and toward his rights as a citizen. when we look at the economic life upon which so much depended, we find that rather amazing progress had been made. doors were so often closed to the negro, competing white artisans were so often openly hostile, and he himself labored under so many disadvantages generally that it has often been thought that his economic advance before was negligible; but nothing could be farther from the truth. it must not be forgotten that for decades the south had depended upon negro men for whatever was to be done in all ordinary trades; some brick-masons, carpenters, and shoemakers had served a long apprenticeship and were thoroughly accomplished; and when some of the more enterprising of these men removed to the north or west they took their training with them. very few persons became paupers. certainly many were destitute, especially those who had most recently made their way from slavery; and in general the colored people cared for their own poor. in , of negroes in cincinnati, were holders of property who paid taxes on their real estate.[ ] in the negro per capita ownership of property compared most favorably with that of the white people. altogether the negroes owned $ , worth of property in the city and $ , , worth in the state. in the city there were among other workers three bank tellers, a landscape artist who had visited rome to complete his education, and nine daguerreotypists, one of whom was the best in the entire west.[ ] of negroes at work in philadelphia in , some of the more important occupations numbered workers as follows: tailors, dressmakers, and shirtmakers, ; barbers, ; shoemakers, ; brickmakers, ; carpenters, ; milliners, ; tanners, ; cake-bakers, pastry-cooks, or confectioners, ; blacksmiths, . there were also musicians or music-teachers, physicians, and school-teachers.[ ] the foremost and the most wealthy man of business of the race in the country about was stephen smith, of the firm of smith and whipper, of columbia, pa.[ ] he and his partner were lumber merchants. smith was a man of wide interests. he invested his capital judiciously, engaging in real estate and spending much of his time in philadelphia, where he owned more than fifty brick houses, while whipper, a relative, attended to the business of the firm. together these men gave employment to a large number of persons. of similar quality was samuel t. wilcox, of cincinnati, the owner of a large grocery business who also engaged in real estate. henry boyd, of cincinnati, was the proprietor of a bedstead manufactory that filled numerous orders from the south and west and that sometimes employed as many as twenty-five men, half of whom were white. sometimes through an humble occupation a negro rose to competence; thus one of the eighteen hucksters in cincinnati became the owner of $ , worth of property. here and there several caterers and tailors became known as having the best places in their line of business in their respective towns. john julius, of pittsburgh, was the proprietor of a brilliant place known as concert hall. when president-elect william henry harrison in visited the city it was here that his chief reception was held. cordovell became widely known as the name of the leading tailor and originator of fashions in new orleans. after several years of success in business this merchant removed to france, where he enjoyed the fortune that he had accumulated. [footnote : clarke: _condition of the free colored people of the united states_.] [footnote : nell, .] [footnote : bacon: _statistics_, .] [footnote : delany.] cordovell was representative of the advance of the people of mixed blood in the south. the general status of these people was better in louisiana than anywhere else in the country, north or south; at the same time their situation was such as to call for special consideration. in louisiana the "f.m.c." (free man of color) formed a distinct and anomalous class in society.[ ] as a free man he had certain rights, and sometimes his property holdings were very large.[ ] in fact, in new orleans a few years before the civil war not less than one-fifth of the taxable property was in the hands of free people of color. at the same time the lot of these people was one of endless humiliation. among some of them irregular household establishments were regularly maintained by white men, and there were held the "quadroon balls" which in course of time gave the city a distinct notoriety. above the people of this group, however, was a genuine aristocracy of free people of color who had a long tradition of freedom, being descended from the early colonists, and whose family life was most exemplary. in general they lived to themselves. in fact, it was difficult for them to do otherwise. they were often compelled to have papers filled out by white guardians, and they were not allowed to be visited by slaves or to have companionship with them, even when attending church or walking along the roads. sometimes free colored men owned their women and children in order that the latter might escape the invidious law against negroes recently emancipated; or the situation was sometimes turned around, as in norfolk, va., where several women owned their husbands. when the name of a free man of color had to appear on any formal document--a deed of conveyance, a marriage-license, a certificate of birth or death, or even in a newspaper report--the initials f.m.c. had to be appended. in louisiana these people petitioned in vain for the suffrage, and at the outbreak of the civil war organized and splendidly equipped for the confederacy two battalions of five hundred men. for these they chose two distinguished white commanders, and the governor accepted their services, only to have to inform them later that the confederacy objected to the enrolling of negro soldiers. in charleston thirty-seven men in a remarkable petition also formally offered their services to the confederacy.[ ] what most readily found illustration in new orleans or charleston was also true to some extent of other centers of free people of color such as mobile and baltimore. in general the f.m.c.'s were industrious and they almost monopolized one or two avenues of employment; but as a group they had not yet learned to place themselves upon the broad basis of racial aspiration. [footnote : see "the f.m.c.'s of louisiana," by p.f. de gournay, _lippincott's magazine_, april, ; and "black masters," by calvin dill wilson, _north american review_, november, .] [footnote : see stone: "the negro in the south," in _the south in the building of the nation_, x, .] [footnote : note broadside (charleston, ) accessible in special library of boston public library as document no. in th cab. . .] whatever may have been the situation of special groups, however, it can readily be seen that there were at least some negroes in the country--a good many in the aggregate--who by were maintaining a high standard in their ordinary social life. it must not be forgotten that we are dealing with a period when the general standard of american culture was by no means what it is to-day. "four-fifths of the people of the united states of lived in the country, and it is perhaps fair to say that half of these dwelt in log houses of one or two rooms. comforts such as most of us enjoy daily were as good as unknown.... for the workaday world shirtsleeves, heavy brogan boots and shoes, and rough wool hats were the rule."[ ] in philadelphia, a fairly representative city, there were at this time a considerable number of negroes of means or professional standing. these people were regularly hospitable; they visited frequently; and they entertained in well furnished parlors with music and refreshments. in a day when many of their people had not yet learned to get beyond showiness in dress, they were temperate and self-restrained, they lived within their incomes, and they retired at a seasonable hour.[ ] [footnote : w.e. dodd: _expansion and conflict_, volume of "riverside history of the united states," houghton mifflin co., boston, , p. .] [footnote : turner: _the negro in pennsylvania_, .] in spite moreover of all the laws and disadvantages that they had to meet the negroes also made general advance in education. in the south efforts were of course sporadic, but negroes received some teaching through private or clandestine sources.[ ] more than one slave learned the alphabet while entertaining the son of his master. in charleston for a long time before the civil war free negroes could attend schools especially designed for their benefit and kept by white people or other negroes. the course of study not infrequently embraced such subjects as physiology, physics, and plane geometry. after john brown's raid the order went forth that no longer should any colored person teach negroes. this resulted in a white person's being brought to sit in the classroom, though at the outbreak of the war schools were closed altogether. in the north, in spite of all proscription, conditions were somewhat better. as early as there were in the public schools in new york , negro children, these sustaining about the same proportion to the negro population that white children sustained to the total white population. two institutions for the higher education of the negro were established before the civil war, lincoln university in pennsylvania ( ) and wilberforce university in ohio ( ). oberlin moreover was founded in . in professor asa mahan, of lane seminary, was offered the presidency. as he was an abolitionist he said that he would accept only if negroes were admitted on equal terms with other students. after a warm session of the trustees the vote was in his favor. though, before this, individual negroes had found their way into northern institutions, it was here at oberlin that they first received a real welcome. by the outbreak of the war nearly one-third of the students were of the negro race, and one of the graduates, john m. langston, was soon to be generally prominent in the affairs of the country. [footnote : for interesting examples see c.g. woodson: _the education of the negro prior to _.] it has been maintained that in their emphasis on education and on the highest culture possible for the negro the abolitionists were mere visionaries who had no practical knowledge whatever of the race's real needs. this was neither true nor just. it was absolutely necessary first of all to establish the negro's right to enter any field occupied by any other man, and time has vindicated this position. even in , however, the needs of the majority of the negro people for advance in their economic life were not overlooked either by the abolitionists or the negroes themselves. said martin v. delany: "our elevation must be the result of _self-efforts_, and work of our _own hands_. no other human power can accomplish it.... let our young men and young women prepare themselves for usefulness and business; that the men may enter into merchandise, trading, and other things of importance; the young women may become teachers of various kinds, and otherwise fill places of usefulness. parents must turn their attention more to the education of their children. we mean, to educate them for useful practical business purposes. educate them for the store and counting-house--to do everyday practical business. consult the children's propensities, and direct their education according to their inclinations. it may be that there is too great a desire on the part of parents to give their children a professional education, before the body of the people are ready for it. a people must be a business people and have more to depend upon than mere help in people's houses and hotels, before they are either able to support or capable of properly appreciating the services of professional men among them. this has been one of our great mistakes--we have gone in advance of ourselves. we have commenced at the superstructure of the building, instead of the foundation--at the top instead of the bottom. we should first be mechanics and common tradesmen, and professions as a matter of course would grow out of the wealth made thereby."[ ] [footnote : _the condition, elevation, emigration, and destiny of the colored people of the united states, politically considered_, philadelphia, , p. .] in professional life the negro had by made a noteworthy beginning. already he had been forced to give attention to the law, though as yet little by way of actual practice had been done. in this field robert morris, jr., of boston, was probably foremost. william c. nell, of rochester and boston, at the time prominent in newspaper work and politics, is now best remembered for his study of the negro in the early wars of the country. about the middle of the century samuel ringgold ward, author of the _autobiography of a fugitive negro_, and one of the most eloquent men of the time, was for several years pastor of a white congregational church in courtlandville, n.y.; and henry highland garnett was the pastor of a white congregation in troy, and well known as a public-spirited citizen as well. upon james w.c. pennington the degree of doctor of divinity was conferred by heidelberg, and generally this man had a reputation in england and on the continent of europe as well as in america. about the same time bishops daniel a. payne and william paul quinn were adding to the dignity of the african methodist episcopal church. special interest attaches to the negro physician. even in colonial times, though there was much emphasis on the control of diseases by roots or charms, there was at least a beginning in work genuinely scientific. as early as a negro named cæsar had gained such distinction by his knowledge of curative herbs that the assembly of south carolina purchased his freedom and gave him an annuity. in the earlier years of the last century james derham, of new orleans, became the first regularly recognized negro physician of whom there is a complete record. born in philadelphia in , as a boy he was transferred to a physician for whom he learned to perform minor duties. afterwards he was sold to a physician in new orleans who used him as an assistant. two or three years later he won his freedom, he became familiar with french and spanish as well as english, and he soon commanded general respect by his learning and skill. about the middle of the century, in new york, james mccune smith, a graduate of the university of glasgow, was prominent. he was the author of several scientific papers, a man of wide interests, and universally held in high esteem. "the first real impetus to bring negroes in considerable numbers into the professional world came from the american colonization society, which in the early years flourished in the south as well as the north ... and undertook to prepare professional leaders of their race for the liberian colony. 'to execute this scheme, leaders of the colonization movement endeavored to educate negroes in mechanic arts, agriculture, science, and biblical literature. especially bright or promising youths were to be given special training as catechists, teachers, preachers, and physicians. not much was said about what they were doing, but now and then appeared notices of negroes who had been prepared privately in the south or publicly in the north for service in liberia. dr. william taylor and dr. fleet were thus educated in the district of columbia. in the same way john v. de grasse, of new york, and thomas j. white, of brooklyn, were allowed to complete the medical course at bowdoin in . in dr. de grasse was admitted as a member of the massachusetts medical society.'"[ ] martin v. delany, more than once referred to in these pages, after being refused admission at a number of institutions, was admitted to the medical school at harvard. he became distinguished for his work in a cholera epidemic in pittsburgh in . it was of course not until after the civil war that medical departments were established in connection with some of the new higher institutions of learning for negro students. [footnote : kelly miller: "the background of the negro physician," _journal of negro history_, april, , quoting in part woodson: _the education of the negro prior to _.] before a situation that arose more than once took from negroes the real credit for inventions. if a slave made an invention he was not permitted to take out a patent, for no slave could make a contract. at the same time the slave's master could not take out a patent for him, for the government would not recognize the slave as having the legal right to make the assignment to his master. it is certain that negroes, who did most of the mechanical work in the south before the civil war, made more than one suggestion for the improvement of machinery. we have already referred to the strong claim put forth by a member of the race for the real credit of the cotton-gin. the honor of being the first negro to be granted a patent belongs to henry blair, of maryland, who in received official protection for a corn harvester. throughout the century there were numerous attempts at poetical composition, and several booklets were published. perhaps the most promising was george horton's _the hope of liberty_, which appeared in . unfortunately, horton could not get the encouragement that he needed and in course of time settled down to the life of a janitor at the university of north carolina.[ ] six years before the war frances ellen watkins (later mrs. harper) struck the popular note by readings from her _miscellaneous poems_, which ran through several editions. about the same time william wells brown was prominent, though he also worked for several years after the war. he was a man of decided talent and had traveled considerably. he wrote several books dealing with negro history and biography; and he also treated racial subjects in a novel, _clotel_, and in a drama, _the escape_. the latter suffers from an excess of moralizing, but several times it flashes out with the quality of genuine drama, especially when it deals with the jealousy of a mistress for a favorite slave and the escape of the latter with her husband. in the first negro magazine began to appear, this being issued by the a.m.e. church. there were numerous autobiographies, that of frederick douglass, first appearing in , running through edition after edition. on the stage there was the astonishing success of ira aldridge, a tragedian who in his earlier years went to europe, where he had the advantage of association with edmund kean. about he was commonly regarded as one of the two or three greatest actors in the world. he became a member of several of the continental academies of arts and science, and received many decorations of crosses and medals, the emperors of russia and austria and the king of prussia being among those who honored him. in the great field of music there was much excellent work both in composition and in the performance on different instruments. among the free people of color in louisiana there were several distinguished musicians, some of whom removed to europe for the sake of greater freedom.[ ] the highest individual achievement was that of elizabeth taylor greenfield, of philadelphia. this singer was of the very first rank. her voice was of remarkable sweetness and had a compass of twenty-seven notes. she sang before many distinguished audiences in both europe and america and was frequently compared with jenny lind, then at the height of her fame. [footnote : see "george moses horton: slave poet," by stephen b. weeks, _southern workman_, october, .] [footnote : see washington: _the story of the negro_, ii, - .] it is thus evident that honorable achievement on the part of negroes and general advance in social welfare by no means began with the emancipation proclamation. in eight-ninths of the members of the race were still slaves, but in the face of every possible handicap the one-ninth that was free had entered practically every great field of human endeavor. many were respected citizens in their communities, and a few had even laid the foundations of wealth. while there was as yet no book of unquestioned genius or scholarship, there was considerable intellectual activity, and only time and a little more freedom from economic pressure were needed for the production of works of the first order of merit. chapter xii the civil war and emancipation at the outbreak of the civil war two great questions affecting the negro overshadowed all others--his freedom and his employment as a soldier. the north as a whole had no special enthusiasm about the negro and responded only to lincoln's call to the duty of saving the union. among both officers and men moreover there was great prejudice against the use of the negro as a soldier, the feeling being that he was disqualified by slavery and ignorance. privates objected to meeting black men on the same footing as themselves and also felt that the arming of slaves to fight for their former masters would increase the bitterness of the conflict. if many men in the north felt thus, the south was furious at the thought of the negro as a possible opponent in arms. the human problem, however, was not long in presenting itself and forcing attention. as soon as the northern soldiers appeared in the south, thousands of negroes--men, women, and children--flocked to their camps, feeling only that they were going to their friends. in may, , while in command at fortress monroe, major-general benjamin f. butler came into national prominence by his policy of putting to work the men who came within his lines and justifying their retention on the ground that, being of service to the enemy for purposes of war, they were like guns, powder, etc., "contraband of war," and could not be reclaimed. on august th of this same year major-general john c. fremont, in command in missouri, placed the state under martial law and declared the slaves there emancipated. the administration was embarrassed, fremont's order was annulled, and he was relieved of his command. on may , , major-general david hunter, in charge of the department of the south (south carolina, georgia, and florida) issued his famous order freeing the slaves in his department, and thus brought to general attention the matter of the employment of negro soldiers in the union armies. the confederate government outlawed hunter, lincoln annulled his order, and the grace of the nation was again saved; but in the meantime a new situation had arisen. while brigadier-general john w. phelps was taking part in the expedition against new orleans, a large sugar-planter near the city, disgusted with federal interference with affairs on his plantation, drove all his slaves away, telling them to go to their friends, the yankees. the negroes came to phelps in great numbers, and for the sake of discipline he attempted to organize them into troops. accordingly he, too, was outlawed by the confederates, and his act was disavowed by the union, that was not ready to take this step. meanwhile president lincoln was debating the emancipation proclamation. pressure from radical anti-slavery sources was constantly being brought to bear upon him, and horace greeley in his famous editorial, "the prayer of twenty millions," was only one of those who criticized what seemed to be his lack of strength in handling the situation. after mcclellan's unsuccessful campaign against richmond, however, he felt that the freedom of the slaves was a military and moral necessity for its effects upon both the north and the south; and lee's defeat at antietam, september , , furnished the opportunity for which he had been waiting. accordingly on september nd he issued a preliminary declaration giving notice that on january , , he would free all slaves in the states still in rebellion, and asserting as before that the object of the war was the preservation of the union. the proclamation as finally issued january st is one of the most important public documents in the history of the united states, ranking only below the declaration of independence and the constitution itself. it full text is as follows: whereas, on the twenty-second day of september, in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the president of the united states containing among other things the following, to-wit: that on the first day of january, in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the united states, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the united states, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. that the executive will, on the first day of january aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the states and parts of states, if any, in which the people thereof shall then be in rebellion against the united states; and the fact that any state, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the congress of the united states, by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such state shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such state, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the united states. now, therefore, i, abraham lincoln, president of the united states, by virtue of the power in me vested as commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the united states, in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the united states, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do on this first day of january, in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the date first above mentioned, order and designate as the states and parts of states wherein the people thereof respectively are this day in rebellion against the united states, the following to-wit: arkansas, texas, louisiana (except the parishes of st. bernard, plaquemine, jefferson, st. john, st. charles, st. james, ascension, assumption, terre bonne, lafourche, ste. marie, st. martin, and orleans, including the city of new orleans), mississippi, alabama, florida, georgia, south carolina, north carolina, and virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as west virginia, and also the counties of berkeley, accomac, northampton, elizabeth city, york, princess anne, and norfolk, including the cities of norfolk and portsmouth), and which excepted parts are, for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued. and by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, i do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts of states are and henceforward shall be free, and that the executive government of the united states, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. and i hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and i recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. and i further declare and make known that such persons, of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the united states to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. and upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the constitution upon military necessity, i invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of almighty god. in testimony whereof, i have hereunto set my name, and caused the seal of the united states to be affixed. done at the city of washington, this first day of january, in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the united states the eighty-seventh. by the president, abraham lincoln. william h. seward, secretary of state. it will be observed that the proclamation was merely a war measure resting on the constitutional power of the president. its effects on the legal status of the slaves gave rise to much discussion; and it is to be noted that it did not apply to what is now west virginia, to seven counties in virginia, and to thirteen parishes in louisiana, which districts had already come under federal jurisdiction. all questions raised by the measure, however, were finally settled by the thirteenth amendment to the constitution, and as a matter of fact freedom actually followed the progress of the union arms from to . meanwhile from the very beginning of the war negroes were used by the confederates in making redoubts and in doing other rough work, and even before the emancipation proclamation there were many northern officers who said that definite enlistment was advisable. they felt that such a course would help to destroy slavery and that as the negroes had so much at stake they should have some share in the overthrow of the rebellion. they said also that the men would be proud to wear the national uniform. individuals moreover as officers' servants saw much of fighting and won confidence in their ability; and as the war advanced and more and more men were killed the conviction grew that a negro could stop a bullet as well as a white man and that in any case the use of negroes for fatigue work would release numbers of other men for the actual fighting. at last--after a great many men had been killed and the emancipation proclamation had changed the status of the negro--enlistment was decided on. the policy was that negroes might be non-commissioned men while white men who had seen service would be field and line officers. in general it was expected that only those who had kindly feeling toward the negro would be used as officers, but in the pressure of military routine this distinction was not always observed. opinion for the race gained force after the draft riot in new york (july, ), when negroes in the city were persecuted by the opponents of conscription. soon a distinct bureau was established in washington for the recording of all matters pertaining to negro troops, a board was organized for the examination of candidates, and recruiting stations were set up in maryland, missouri, and tennessee. the confederates were indignant at the thought of having to meet black men on equal footing, and refused to exchange negro soldiers for white men. how such action was met by stanton, secretary of war, may be seen from the fact that when he learned that three negro prisoners had been placed in close confinement, he ordered three south carolina men to be treated likewise, and the confederate leaders to be informed of his policy. the economic advantage of enlistment was apparent. it gave work to , men who had been cast adrift by the war and who had found no place of independent labor. it gave them food, clothing, wages, and protection, but most of all the feeling of self-respect that comes from profitable employment. to the men themselves the year of jubilee had come. at one great step they had crossed the gulf that separates chattels from men and they now had a chance to vindicate their manhood. a common poster of the day represented a negro soldier bearing the flag, the shackles of a slave being broken, a young negro boy reading a newspaper, and several children going into a public school. over all were the words: "all slaves were made freemen by abraham lincoln, president of the united states, january st, . come, then, able-bodied colored men, to the nearest united states camp, and fight for the stars and stripes." to the credit of the men be it said that in their new position they acted with dignity and sobriety. when they picketed lines through which southern citizens passed, they acted with courtesy at the same time that they did their duty. they captured southern men without insulting them, and by their own self-respect won the respect of others. meanwhile their brothers in the south went about the day's work, caring for the widow and the orphan; and a nation that still lynches the negro has to remember that in all these troublous years deeds of violence against white women and girls were absolutely unknown. throughout the country the behavior of the black men under fire was watched with the most intense interest. more and more in the baptism of blood they justified the faith for which their friends had fought for years. at port hudson, fort wagner, fort pillow, and petersburg their courage was most distinguished. said the new york _times_ of the battle at port hudson ( ): "general dwight, at least, must have had the idea not only that they (the negro troops) were men, but something more than men, from the terrific test to which he put their valor.... their colors are torn to pieces by shot, and literally bespattered by blood and brains." this was the occasion on which color-sergeant anselmas planciancois said before a shell blew off his head, "colonel, i will bring back these colors to you on honor, or report to god the reason why." on june the negroes again distinguished themselves and won friends by their bravery at milliken's bend. the fifty-fourth massachusetts, commanded by robert gould shaw, was conspicuous in the attempt to take fort wagner, on morris island near charleston, july , . the regiment had marched two days and two nights through swamps and drenching rains in order to be in time for the assault. in the engagement nearly all the officers of the regiment were killed, among them colonel shaw. the picturesque deed was that of sergeant william h. carney, who seized the regiment's colors from the hands of a falling comrade, planted the flag on the works, and said when borne bleeding and mangled from the field, "boys, the old flag never touched the ground." fort pillow, a position on the mississippi, about fifty miles above memphis, was garrisoned by men, of whom were negroes, when it was attacked april , . the fort was finally taken by the confederates, but the feature of the engagement was the stubborn resistance offered by the union troops in the face of great odds. in the mississippi valley, and in the department of the south, the negro had now done excellent work as a soldier. in the spring of he made his appearance in the army of the potomac. in july there was around richmond and petersburg considerable skirmishing between the federal and the confederate forces. burnside, commanding a corps composed partly of negroes, dug under a confederate fort a trench a hundred and fifty yards long. this was filled with explosives, and on july the match was applied and the famous crater formed. just before the explosion the negroes had figured in a gallant charge on the confederates. the plan was to follow the eruption by a still more formidable assault, in which burnside wanted to give his negro troops the lead. a dispute about this and a settlement by lot resulted in the awarding of precedence to a new hampshire regiment. said general grant later of the whole unfortunate episode: "general burnside wanted to put his colored division in front; i believe if he had done so it would have been a success." after the men of a negro regiment had charged and taken a battery at decatur, ala., in october, , and shown exceptional gallantry under fire, they received an ovation from their white comrades "who by thousands sprang upon the parapets and cheered the regiment as it reëntered the lines."[ ] [footnote : general thomas j. morgan: "the negroes in the civil war," in the _baptist home mission monthly_, quoted in _liberia_, bulletin , february, . general morgan in october, , became a major in the fourteenth united states colored infantry. he organized the regiment and became its colonel. he also organized the forty-second and forty-fourth regiments of colored infantry.] when all was over there was in the north a spontaneous recognition of the right of such men to honorable and generous treatment at the hands of the nation, and in congress there was the feeling that if the south could come back to the union with its autonomy unimpaired, certainly the negro soldier should have the rights of citizenship. before the war closed, however, there was held in syracuse, n.y., a convention of negro men that threw interesting light on the problems and the feeling of the period.[ ] at this gathering john mercer langston was temporary chairman, frederick douglass, president, and henry highland garnett, of washington; james w.c. pennington, of new york; george l. ruffin, of boston, and ebenezer d. bassett, of philadelphia, were among the more prominent delegates. there was at the meeting a fear that some of the things that seemed to have been gained by the war might not actually be realized; and as congress had not yet altered the constitution so as to abolish slavery, grave question was raised by a recent speech in which no less a man than seward, secretary of state, had said: "when the insurgents shall have abandoned their armies and laid down their arms, the war will instantly cease; and all the war measures then existing, including those which affect slavery, will cease also." the convention thanked the president and the thirty-seventh congress for revoking a prohibitory law in regard to the carrying of mails by negroes, for abolishing slavery in the district of columbia, for recognizing hayti and liberia, and for the military order retaliating for the unmilitary treatment accorded negro soldiers by the confederate officers; and especially it thanked senator sumner "for his noble efforts to cleanse the statute-books of the nation from every stain of inequality against colored men," and general butler for the stand he had taken early in the war. at the same time it resolved to send a petition to congress to ask that the rights of the country's negro patriots in the field be respected, and that the government cease to set an example to those in arms against it by making invidious distinctions, based upon color, as to pay, labor, and promotion. it begged especially to be saved from supposed friends: "when the _anti-slavery standard_, representing the american anti-slavery society, denies that the society asks for the enfranchisement of colored men, and the _liberator_ apologizes for excluding the colored men of louisiana from the ballot-box, they injure us more vitally than all the ribald jests of the whole pro-slavery press." finally the convention insisted that any such things as the right to own real estate, to testify in courts of law, and to sue and be sued, were mere privileges so long as general political liberty was withheld, and asked frankly not only for the formal and complete abolition of slavery in the united states, but also for the elective franchise in all the states then in the union and in all that might come into the union thereafter. on the whole this representative gathering showed a very clear conception of the problems facing the negro and the country in . its reference to well-known anti-slavery publications shows not only the increasing race consciousness that came through this as through all other wars in which the country has engaged, but also the great drift toward conservatism that had taken place in the north within thirty years. [footnote : see proceedings of the national convention of colored men, held in the city of syracuse, n.y., october , , , and , , with the bill of wrongs and rights, and the address to the american people. boston, .] whatever might be the questions of the moment, however, about the supreme blessing of freedom there could at last be no doubt. it had been long delayed and had finally come merely as an incident to the war; nevertheless a whole race of people had passed from death unto life. then, as before and since, they found a parallel for their experiences in the story of the jews in the old testament. they, too, had sojourned in egypt and crossed the red sea. what they could not then see, or only dimly realize, was that they needed faith--faith in god and faith in themselves--for the forty years in the wilderness. they did not yet fully know that he who guided the children of israel and drove out before them the amorite and the hittite, would bring them also to the promised land. * * * * * to those who led the negro in these wonderful years--to robert gould shaw, the young colonel of the fifty-fourth massachusetts, who died leading his men at fort wagner; to norwood penrose hallowell, lieutenant-colonel of the fifty-fourth and then colonel of the fifty-fifth; to his brother, edward n. hallowell, who succeeded shaw when he fell; and to thomas wentworth higginson, who commanded the first regiment of freed slaves--no ordinary eulogy can apply. their names are written in letters of flame and their deeds live after them. on the shaw monument in boston are written these words: the white officers taking life and honor in their hands--cast their lot with men of a despised race unproved in war--and risked death as inciters of a servile insurrection if taken prisoners, besides encountering all the common perils of camp, march, and battle. the black rank and file volunteered when disaster clouded the union cause--served without pay for eighteen months till given that of white troops--faced threatened enslavement if captured--were brave in action--patient under dangerous and heavy labors and cheerful amid hardships and privations. together they gave to the nation undying proof that americans of african descent possess the pride, courage, and devotion of the patriot soldier--one hundred and eighty thousand such americans enlisted under the union flag in mdccclxiii-mdccclxv. chapter xiii the era of enfranchisement . _the problem_ at the close of the civil war the united states found itself face to face with one of the gravest social problems of modern times. more and more it became apparent that it was not only the technical question of the restoration of the states to the union that had to be considered, but the whole adjustment for the future of the lives of three and a half million negroes and five and a half million white people in the south. in its final analysis the question was one of race, and to add to the difficulties of this problem it is to be regretted that there should have been actually upon the scene politicians and speculators who sought to capitalize for their own gain the public distress. the south was thoroughly demoralized, and the women who had borne the burden of the war at home were especially bitter. slave property to the amount of two billions of dollars had been swept away; several of the chief cities had suffered bombardment; the railroads had largely run down; and the confiscation of property was such as to lead to the indemnification of thousands of claimants afterwards. the negro was not yet settled in new places of abode, and his death rate was appalling. throughout the first winter after the war the whole south was on the verge of starvation. here undoubtedly was a difficult situation--one calling for the highest quality of statesmanship, and of sportsmanship on the part of the vanquished. many negroes, freed from the tradition of two hundred and fifty years of slavery, took a holiday; some resolved not to work any more as long as they lived, and some even appropriated to their own use the produce of their neighbors. if they remained on the old plantations, they feared that they might still be considered slaves; on the other hand, if they took to the high road, they might be considered vagrants. if one returned from a federal camp to claim his wife and children, he might be driven away. "freedom cried out," and undoubtedly some individuals did foolish things; but serious crime was noticeably absent. on the whole the race bore the blessing of emancipation with remarkable good sense and temper. returning soldiers paraded, there were some meetings and processions, sometimes a little regalia--and even a little noise; then everybody went home. unfortunately even so much the white south regarded as insolence. the example of how the south _might_ have met the situation was afforded by no less a man than robert e. lee, about whose unselfishness and standard of conduct as a gentleman there could be no question. one day in richmond a negro from the street, intent on asserting his rights, entered a representative church, pushed his way to the communion altar and knelt. the congregation paused, and all fully realized the factors that entered into the situation. then general lee rose and knelt beside the negro; the congregation did likewise, and the tension was over. furthermore, every one went home spiritually uplifted. could the handling of this incident have been multipled a thousand times--could men have realized that mere accidents are fleeting but that principles are eternal--both races would have been spared years of agony, and our southland would be a far different place to-day. the negro was at the heart of the problem, but to that problem the south undoubtedly held the key. of course the cry of "social equality" might have been raised; _anything_ might have been said to keep the right thing from being done. in this instance, as in many others, the final question was not what somebody else did, but how one himself could act most nobly. unfortunately lee's method of approach was not to prevail. passion and prejudice and demagoguery were to have their day, and conservative and broadly patriotic men were to be made to follow leaders whom they could not possibly approve. sixty years afterwards we still suffer from the kuklux solution of the problem. . _meeting the problem_ the story of reconstruction has been many times told, and it is not our intention to tell that story again. we must content ourselves by touching upon some of the salient points in the discussion. even before the close of the war the national government had undertaken to handle officially the thousands of negroes who had crowded to the federal lines and not less than a million of whom were in the spring of dependent upon the national government for support. the bureau of refugee freedmen and abandoned lands, created in connection with the war department by an act of march , , was to remain in existence throughout the war and for one year thereafter. its powers were enlarged july , , and its chief work did not end until january , , its educational work continuing for a year and a half longer. the freedmen's bureau was to have "the supervision and management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen." of special importance was the provision in the creating act that gave the freedmen to understand that each male refugee was to be given forty acres with the guarantee of possession for three years. throughout the existence of the bureau its chief commissioner was general o.o. howard. while the principal officers were undoubtedly men of noble purpose, many of the minor officials were just as undoubtedly corrupt and self-seeking. in the winter of - one-third of its aid was given to the white people of the south. for negro pupils the bureau established altogether , schools, and these had , teachers and , students. its real achievement has been thus ably summed up: "the greatest success of the freedmen's bureau lay in the planting of the free school among negroes, and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the south.... for some fifteen million dollars, beside the sum spent before , and the dole of benevolent societies, this bureau set going a system of free labor, established a beginning of peasant proprietorship, secured the recognition of black freedmen before courts of law, and founded the free common school in the south. on the other hand, it failed to begin the establishment of good will between ex-masters and freedmen, to guard its work wholly from paternalistic methods, which discouraged self-reliance, and to carry out to any considerable extent its implied promises to furnish the freedmen with land."[ ] to this tale of its shortcomings must be added also the management of the freedmen's bank, which "was morally and practically part of the freedmen's bureau, although it had no legal connection with it." this institution made a really remarkable start in the development of thrift among the negroes, and its failure, involving the loss of the first savings of hundreds of ex-slaves, was as disastrous in its moral as in its immediate financial consequences. [footnote : dubois: _the souls of black folk_, - .] when the freedmen's bureau came to an end, it turned its educational interests and some money over to the religious and benevolent societies which had coöperated with it, especially to the american missionary association. this society had been organized before the civil war on an interdenominational and strong anti-slavery basis; but with the withdrawal of general interest the body passed in into the hands of the congregational church. other prominent agencies were the american baptist home mission society (also the american baptist publication society), the freedmen's aid society (representing the northern methodists), and the presbyterian board of missions. actual work was begun by the american missionary association. in lewis tappan, treasurer of the organization, wrote to general butler to ask just what aid could be given. the result of the correspondence was that on september of this year rev. l.c. lockwood reached hampton and on september opened the first day school among the freedmen. this school was taught by mrs. mary s. peake, a woman of the race who had had the advantage of a free mother, and whose devotion to the work was such that she soon died. however, she had helped to lay the foundations of hampton institute. soon there was a school at norfolk, there were two at newport news, and by january schools at hilton head and beaufort, s.c. then came the emancipation proclamation, throwing wide open the door of the great need. rev. john eaton, army chaplain from ohio, afterwards united states commissioner of education, was placed in charge of the instruction of the negroes, and in one way or another by the close of the war probably as many as one million in the south had learned to read and write. the missionaries and teachers of the association in increased to in . at the first day session of the school in norfolk after the proclamation there were scholars, with others in the evening. on the third day there were in the day school and others in the evening. the school had to be divided, a part going to another church; the assistants increased in number, and soon the day attendance was , . for such schools the houses on abandoned plantations were used, and even public buildings were called into commission. afterwards arose the higher institutions, atlanta, berea, fisk, talladega, straight, with numerous secondary schools. similarly the baptists founded the colleges which, with some changes of name, have become virginia union, hartshorn, shaw, benedict, morehouse, spelman, jackson, and bishop, with numerous affiliated institutions. the methodists began to operate clark (in south atlanta), claflin, rust, wiley, and others; and the presbyterians, having already founded lincoln in , now founded biddle and several seminaries for young women; while the united presbyterians founded knoxville. in course of time the distinctively negro denominations--the a.m.e., the a.m.e.z., and the c.m.e. (which last represented a withdrawal from the southern methodists in )--also helped in the work, and thus, in addition to wilberforce in ohio, arose such institutions as morris brown university, livingstone college, and lane college. in , moreover, the federal government crowned its work for the education of the negro by the establishment at washington of howard university. as these institutions have grown they have naturally developed some differences or special emphasis. hampton and atlanta university are now independent; and berea has had a peculiar history, legislation in kentucky in restricting the privileges of the institution to white students. hampton, in the hands of general armstrong, placed emphasis on the idea of industrial and practical education which has since become world-famous. in the fisk jubilee singers began their memorable progress through america and europe, meeting at first with scorn and sneers, but before long touching the heart of the world with their strange music. their later success was as remarkable as their mission was unique. meanwhile spelman seminary, in the record of her graduates who have gone as missionaries to africa, has also developed a glorious tradition. to those heroic men and women who represented this idea of education at its best, too much credit can not be given. cravath at fisk, ware at atlanta, armstrong at hampton, graves at morehouse, tupper at shaw, and packard and giles at spelman, are names that should ever be recalled with thanksgiving. these people had no enviable task. they were ostracized and persecuted, and some of their co-workers even killed. it is true that their idea of education founded on the new england college was not very elastic; but their theory was that the young men and women whom they taught, before they were negroes, were human beings. they had the key to the eternal verities, and time will more and more justify their position. to the freedmen's bureau the south objected because of the political activity of some of its officials. to the schools founded by missionary endeavor it objected primarily on the score of social equality. to both the provisional southern governments of replied with the so-called black codes. the theory of these remarkable ordinances--most harsh in mississippi, south carolina, and louisiana--was that even if the negro was nominally free he was by no means able to take care of himself and needed the tutelage and oversight of the white man. hence developed what was to be known as a system of "apprenticeship." south carolina in her act of december , , said, "a child, over the age of two years, born of a colored parent, may be bound by the father if he be living in the district, or in case of his death or absence from the district, by the mother, as an apprentice to any respectable white or colored person who is competent to make a contract; a male until he shall attain the age of twenty-one years, and a female until she shall attain the age of eighteen.... males of the age of twelve years, and females of the age of ten years, shall sign the indenture of apprenticeship, and be bound thereby.... the master shall receive to his own use the profits of the labor of his apprentice." to this mississippi added: "if any apprentice shall leave the employment of his or her master or mistress, said master or mistress may pursue and recapture said apprentice, and bring him or her before any justice of peace of the county, whose duty it shall be to remand said apprentice to the service of his or her master or mistress; and in the event of a refusal on the part of said apprentice so to return, then said justice shall commit said apprentice to the jail of said county," etc., etc. in general by such legislation the negro was given the right to sue and be sued, to testify in court concerning negroes, and to have marriage and the responsibility for children recognized. on the other hand, he could not serve on juries, could not serve in the militia, and could not vote or hold office. he was virtually forbidden to assemble, and his freedom of movement was restricted. within recent years the black codes have been more than once defended as an honest effort to meet a difficult situation, but the old slavery attitude peered through them and gave the impression that those who framed them did not yet know that the old order had passed away. meanwhile the south was in a state of panic, and the provisional governor of mississippi asked of president johnson permission to organize the local militia. the request was granted and the patrols immediately began to show their hostility to northern people and the freedmen. in the spring of there was a serious race riot in memphis. on july , while some negroes were marching to a political convention in new orleans, they became engaged in brawls with the white spectators. shots were exchanged; the police, assisted by the spectators, undertook to arrest the negroes; the negroes took refuge in the convention hall; and their pursuers stormed the building and shot down without mercy the negroes and their white supporters. altogether not less than forty were killed and not less than one hundred wounded; but not more than a dozen men were killed on the side of the police and the white citizens. general sheridan, who was in command at new orleans, characterized the affair as "an absolute massacre ... a murder which the mayor and police of the city perpetrated without the shadow of a necessity." in the face of such events and tendencies, and influenced to some extent by a careful and illuminating but much criticized report of carl schurz, congress, led by charles sumner and thaddeus stevens, proceeded to pass legislation designed to protect the freedmen and to guarantee to the country the fruits of the war. the thirteenth amendment to the constitution formally abolishing slavery was passed december , . in the following march congress passed over the president's veto the first civil rights bill, guaranteeing to the freedmen all the ordinary rights of citizenship, and it was about the same time that it enlarged the powers of the freedmen's bureau. the fourteenth amendment (july , ) denied to the states the power to abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the united states; and the fifteenth amendment (march , ) sought to protect the negro by giving to him the right of suffrage instead of military protection. in was passed the second civil rights act, designed to give negroes equality of treatment in theaters, railway cars, hotels, etc.; but this the supreme court declared unconstitutional in . as a result of this legislation the negro was placed in positions of responsibility; within the next few years the race sent two senators and thirteen representatives to congress, and in some of the state legislatures, as in south carolina, negroes were decidedly in the majority. the attainments of some of these men were undoubtedly remarkable; the two united states senators, hiram r. revels and blanche k. bruce, both from mississippi, were of unquestioned intelligence and ability, and robert b. elliott, one of the representatives from south carolina, attracted unusual attention by his speech in reply to alexander stephens on the constitutionality of the civil rights bill. at the same time among the negro legislators there was also considerable ignorance, and there set in an era of extravagance and corruption from which the "carpet-baggers" and the "scalawags" rather than the negroes themselves reaped the benefit. accordingly within recent years it has become more and more the fashion to lament the ills of the period, and no representative american historian can now write of reconstruction without a tone of apology. a few points, however, are to be observed. in the first place the ignorance was by no means so vast as has been supposed. within the four years from to , thanks to the army schools and missionary agencies, not less than half a million negroes in the south had learned to read and write. furthermore, the suffrage was not immediately given to the emancipated negroes; this was the last rather than the first step in reconstruction. the provisional legislatures formed at the close of the war were composed of white men only; but the experiment failed because of the short-sighted laws that were enacted. if the fruit of the civil war was not to be lost, if all the sacrifice was not to prove in vain, it became necessary for congress to see that the overthrow of slavery was final and complete. by the fourteenth amendment the negro was invested with the ordinary rights and dignity of a citizen of the united states. he was not enfranchised, but he could no longer be made the victim of state laws designed merely to keep him in servile subjection. if the southern states had accepted this amendment, they might undoubtedly have reëntered the union without further conditions. they refused to do so; they refused to help the national government in any way whatsoever in its effort to guarantee to the negro the rights of manhood. achilles sulked in his tent, and whenever he sulks the world moves on--without him. the alternative finally presented to congress, if it was not to make an absolute surrender, was either to hold the south indefinitely under military subjection or to place the ballot in the hands of the negro. the former course was impossible; the latter was chosen, and the union was really restored--was really saved--by the force of the ballot in the hands of black men. it has been held that the negro was primarily to blame for the corruption of the day. here again it is well to recall the tendencies of the period. the decade succeeding the war was throughout the country one of unparalleled political corruption. the tweed ring, the crédit mobilier, and the "salary grab" were only some of the more outstanding signs of the times. in the south the negroes were not the real leaders in corruption; they simply followed the men who they supposed were their friends. surely in the face of such facts as these it is not just to fix upon a people groping to the light the peculiar odium of the corruption that followed in the wake of the war. and we shall have to leave it to those better informed than we to say to just what extent city and state politics in the south have been cleaned up since the negro ceased to be a factor. many of the constitutions framed by the reconstruction governments were really excellent models, and the fact that they were overthrown seems to indicate that some other spoilsmen were abroad. take north carolina, for example. in this state in the reconstruction government by its new constitution introduced the township system so favorably known in the north and west. when in the south regained control, with all the corruption it found as excellent a form of republican state government as was to be found in any state in the union. "every provision which any state enjoyed for the protection of public society from its bad members and bad impulses was either provided or easily procurable under the constitution of the state."[ ] yet within a year, in order to annul the power of their opponents in every county in the state, the new party so amended the constitution as to take away from every county the power of self-government and centralize everything in the legislature. now was realized an extent of power over elections and election returns so great that no party could wholly clear itself of the idea of corrupt intentions. [footnote : george w. cable: _the southern struggle for pure government_: an address. boston, , included in _the negro question_, new york, .] at the heart of the whole question of course was race. as a matter of fact much work of genuine statesmanship was accomplished or attempted by the reconstruction governments. for one thing the idea of common school education for all people was now for the first time fully impressed upon the south. the charleston _news and courier_ of july , , formally granted that in the administration of governor chamberlain of south carolina the abuse of the pardoning power had been corrected; the character of the officers appointed by the executive had improved; the floating indebtedness of the state had been provided for in such a way that the rejection of fraudulent claims was assured and that valid claims were scaled one-half; the tax laws had been so amended as to secure substantial equality in the assessment of property; taxes had been reduced to eleven mills on the dollar; the contingent fund of the executive department had been reduced at a saving in two years of $ , ; legislative expenses had also been reduced so as to save in two years $ , ; legislative contingent expenses had also been handled so as to save $ , ; and the public printing reduced from $ , to $ , a year. there were, undoubtedly, at first, many corrupt officials, white and black. before they were through, however, after only a few years of experimenting, the reconstruction governments began to show signs of being quite able to handle the situation; and it seems to have been primarily the fear on the part of the white south _that they might not fail_ that prompted the determination to regain power at whatever cost. just how this was done we are now to see. . _reaction: the kuklux klan_ even before the civil war a secret organization, the knights of the golden circle, had been formed to advance southern interests. after the war there were various organizations--men of justice, home guards, pale faces, white brotherhood, white boys, council of safety, etc., and, with headquarters at new orleans, the thoroughly organized knights of the white camelia. all of these had for their general aim the restoration of power to the white men of the south, which aim they endeavored to accomplish by regulating the conduct of the negroes and their leaders in the republican organization, the union league, especially by playing upon the fears and superstitions of the negroes. in general, especially in the southeast, everything else was surpassed or superseded by the kuklux klan, which originated in tennessee in the fall of as an association of young men for amusement, but which soon developed into a union for the purpose of whipping, banishing, terrorizing, and murdering negroes and northern white men who encouraged them in the exercise of their political rights. no republican, no member of the union league, and no g.a.r. man could become a member. the costume of the klan was especially designed to strike terror in the uneducated negroes. loose-flowing sleeves, hoods in which were apertures for the eyes, nose, and mouth trimmed with red material, horns made of cotton-stuff standing out on the front and sides, high cardboard hats covered with white cloth decorated with stars or pictures of animals, long tongues of red flannel, were all used as occasion demanded. the kuklux klan finally extended over the whole south and greatly increased its operations on the cessation of martial law in . as it worked generally at night, with its members in disguise, it was difficult for a grand jury to get evidence on which to frame a bill, and almost impossible to get a jury that would return a verdict for the state. repeated measures against the order were of little effect until an act of extended the jurisdiction of the united states courts to all kuklux cases. even then for some time the organization continued active. naturally there were serious clashes before government was restored to the white south, especially as the kuklux klan grew bolder. at colfax, grant parish, louisiana, in april, , there was a pitched battle in which several white men and more than fifty negroes were killed; and violence increased as the "red shirt" campaign of approached. in connection with the events of this fateful year, and with reference to south carolina, where the negro seemed most solidly in power, we recall one episode, that of the hamburg massacre. we desire to give this as fully as possible in all its incidents, because we know of nothing that better illustrates the temper of the times, and because a most important matter is regularly ignored or minimized by historians.[ ] [footnote : fleming, in his latest and most mature account of reconstruction, _the sequel of appomattox_, has not one word to say about the matter. dunning, in _reconstruction political and economic_ ( ), speaks as follows: "july , , an armed collision between whites and blacks at hamburg, aiken county, resulted in the usual slaughter of the blacks. whether the original cause of the trouble was the insolence and threats of a negro militia company, or the aggressiveness and violence of some young white men, was much discussed throughout the state, and, indeed, the country at large. chamberlain took frankly and strongly the ground that the whites were at fault." such a statement we believe simply does not do justice to the facts. the account given herewith is based upon the report of the matter in a letter published in a washington paper and submitted in connection with the debate in the united states house of representatives, july th and th, , on the massacre of six colored citizens at hamburg, s.c., july , ; and on "an address to the people of the united states, adopted at a conference of colored citizens, held at columbia, s.c., july th and st, " (republican printing co., columbia, s.c., ). the address, a document most important for the negro's side of the story, was signed by no less than sixty representative men, among them r.b. elliott, r.h. gleaves, f.l. cardozo, d.a. straker, t. mcc. stewart, and h.n. bouey.] in south carolina an act providing for the enrollment of the male citizens of the state, who were by the terms of the said act made subject to the performance of militia duty, was passed by the general assembly and approved by the governor march , . by virtue of this act negro citizens were regularly enrolled as a part of the national guard of the state of south carolina, and as the white men, with very few exceptions, failed or refused to become a part of the said force, the active militia was composed almost wholly of negro men. the county of edgefield, of which hamburg was a part, was one of the military districts of the state under the apportionment of the adjutant-general, one regiment being allotted to the district. one company of this regiment was in hamburg. in it had recently been reorganized with doc adams as captain, lewis cartledge as first lieutenant, and a.t. attaway as second lieutenant. the ranks were recruited to the requisite number of men, to whom arms and equipment were duly issued. on tuesday, july , the militia company assembled for drill and while thus engaged paraded through one of the least frequented streets of the town. this street was unusually wide, but while marching four abreast the men were interrupted by a horse and buggy driven _into their ranks_ by thomas butler and henry getzen, white men who resided about two miles from the town. at the time of this interference the company was occupying a space covering a width of not more than eight feet, so that on either side there was abundant room for vehicles. at the interruption captain adams commanded a halt and, stepping to the head of his column, said, "mr. getzen, i did not think that you would treat me this way; i would not so act towards you." to this getzen replied with curses, and after a few more remarks on either side, adams, in order to avoid further trouble, commanded his men to break ranks and permit the buggy to pass through. the company was then marched to the drill rooms and dismissed. on wednesday, july , robert j. butler, father of thomas butler and father-in-law of getzen, appeared before p.r. rivers, colored trial justice, and made complaint that the militia company had on the previous day obstructed one of the public streets of hamburg and prevented his son and son-in-law from passing through. rivers accordingly issued a summons for the officers to appear the next day, july . when adams and his two lieutenants appeared on thursday, they found present robert j. butler and several other white men heavily armed with revolvers. on the calling of the case it was announced that the defendants were present and that henry sparnick, a member of the circuit bar of the county, had been retained to represent them. butler angrily protested against such representation and demanded that the hearing be postponed until he could procure counsel from the city of augusta; whereupon adams and his lieutenants, after consultation with their attorney, who informed them that there were no legal grounds on which the case could be decided against them, waived their constitutional right to be represented by counsel and consented to go to trial. on this basis the case was opened and proceeded with for some time, when on account of some disturbance its progress was arrested, and it was adjourned for further hearing on the following saturday, july , at four o'clock in the afternoon. on saturday, between two and three o'clock, general m.c. butler, of edgefield, formerly an officer in the confederate army, arrived in hamburg, and he was followed by mounted men in squads of ten or fifteen until the number was more than two hundred, the last to arrive being colonel a.p. butler at the head of threescore men. immediately after his arrival general butler sent for attorney sparnick, who was charged with the request to rivers and the officers of the militia company to confer with him at once. there was more passing of messengers back and forth, and it was at length deemed best for the men to confer with butler. to this two of the officers objected on the ground that the whole plan was nothing more than a plot for their assassination. they sent to ask if general butler would meet them without the presence of his armed force. he replied yes, but before arrangements could be made for the interview another messenger came to say that the hour for the trial had arrived, that general butler was at the court, and that he requested the presence of the trial justice, rivers. rivers proceeded to court alone and found butler there waiting for him. he was about to proceed with the case when butler asked for more time, which request was granted. he went away and never returned to the court. instead he went to the council chamber, being surrounded now by greater and greater numbers of armed men, and he sent a committee to the officers asking that they come to the council chamber to see him. the men again declined for the same reason as before. butler now sent an ultimatum demanding that the officers apologize for what took place on july and that they surrender to him their arms, threatening that if the surrender was not made at once he would take their guns and officers by force. adams and his men now awoke to a full sense of their danger, and they asked rivers, who was not only trial justice but also major general of the division of the militia to which they belonged, if he demanded their arms of them. rivers replied that he did not. thereupon the officers refused the request of butler on the ground that he had no legal right to demand their arms or to receive them if surrendered. at this point butler let it be known that he demanded the surrender of the arms within half an hour and that if he did not receive them he would "lay the d---- town in ashes." asked in an interview whether, if his terms were complied with, he would guarantee protection to the people of the town he answered that he did not know and that that would depend altogether upon how they behaved themselves. butler now went with a companion to augusta, returning in about thirty minutes. a committee called upon him as soon as he got back. he had only to say that he demanded the arms immediately. asked if he would accept the boxing up of the arms and the sending of them to the governor, he said, "d---- the governor. i am not here to consult him, but am here as colonel butler, and this won't stop until after november." asked again if he would guarantee general protection if the arms were surrendered, he said, "i guarantee nothing." all the while scores of mounted men were about the streets. such members of the militia company as were in town and their friends to the number of thirty-eight repaired to their armory--a large brick building about two hundred yards from the river--and barricaded themselves for protection. firing upon the armory was begun by the mounted men, and after half an hour there were occasional shots from within. after a while the men in the building heard an order to bring cannon from augusta, and they began to leave the building from the rear, concealing themselves as well as they could in a cornfield. the cannon was brought and discharged three or four times, those firing it not knowing that the building had been evacuated. when they realized their mistake they made a general search through lots and yards for the members of the company and finally captured twenty-seven of them, after two had been killed. the men, none of whom now had arms, were marched to a place near the railroad station, where the sergeant of the company was ordered to call the roll. allan t. attaway, whose name was first, was called out and shot in cold blood. twelve men fired upon him and he was killed instantly. the men whose names were second, third, and fourth on the list were called out and treated likewise. the fifth man made a dash for liberty and escaped with a slight wound in the leg. all the others were then required to hold up their right hands and swear that they would never bear arms against the white people or give in court any testimony whatsoever regarding the occurrence. they were then marched off two by two and dispersed, but stray shots were fired after them as they went away. in another portion of the town the chief of police, james cook, was taken from his home and brutally murdered. a marshal of the town was shot through the body and mortally wounded. one of the men killed was found with his tongue cut out. the members of butler's party finally entered the homes of most of the prominent negroes in the town, smashed the furniture, tore books to pieces, and cut pictures from their frames, all amid the most heartrending distress on the part of the women and children. that night the town was desolate, for all who could do so fled to aiken or columbia. upon all of which our only comment is that while such a process might seem for a time to give the white man power, it makes no progress whatever toward the ultimate solution of the problem. . _counter-reaction: the negro exodus_ the negro exodus of was partially considered in connection with our study of liberia; but a few facts are in place here. after the withdrawal of federal troops conditions in the south were changed so much that, especially in south carolina, mississippi, louisiana, and texas, the state of affairs was no longer tolerable. between and more than three thousand negroes were summarily killed.[ ] the race began to feel that a new slavery in the horrible form of peonage was approaching, and that the disposition of the men in power was to reduce the laborer to the minimum of advantages as a free man and to none at all as a citizen. the fear, which soon developed into a panic, rose especially in consequence of the work of political mobs in and , and it soon developed organization. about this the outstanding fact was that the political leaders of the last few years were regularly distrusted and ignored, the movement being secret in its origin and committed either to the plantation laborers themselves or their direct representatives. in north carolina circulars about nebraska were distributed. in tennessee benjamin ("pap") singleton began about to induce negroes to go to kansas, and he really founded two colonies with a total of negroes from his state, paying of his own money over $ for circulars. in louisiana alone , names were taken of those who wished to better their condition by removal; and by , persons in louisiana, mississippi, alabama, and texas were ready to go elsewhere. a convention to consider the whole matter of migration was held in nashville in . at this the politician managed to put in an appearance and there was much wordy discussion. at the same time much of the difference of opinion was honest; the meeting was on the whole constructive; and it expressed itself as favorable to "reasonable migration." already, however, thousands of negroes were leaving their homes in the south and going in greatest numbers to kansas, missouri, and indiana. within twenty months kansas alone received in this way an addition to her population of , persons. many of these people arrived at their destination practically penniless and without prospect of immediate employment; but help was afforded by relief agencies in the north, and they themselves showed remarkable sturdiness in adapting themselves to the new conditions. [footnote : emmett j. scott: negro migration during the war (in preliminary economic studies of the war--carnegie endowment for international peace: division of economics and history). oxford university press, american branch, new york, .] many of the stories that the negroes told were pathetic.[ ] sometimes boats would not take them on, and they suffered from long exposure on the river banks. sometimes, while they were thus waiting, agents of their own people employed by the planters tried to induce them to remain. frequently they were clubbed or whipped. said one: "i saw nine put in one pile, that had been killed, and the colored people had to bury them; eight others were found killed in the woods.... it is done this way: they arrest them for breach of contract and carry them to jail. their money is taken from them by the jailer and it is not returned when they are let go." said another: "if a colored man stays away from the polls and does not vote, they spot him and make him vote. if he votes their way, they treat him no better in business. they hire the colored people to vote, and then take their pay away. i know a man to whom they gave a cow and a calf for voting their ticket. after election they came and told him that if he kept the cow he must pay for it; and they took the cow and calf away." another: "one man shook his fist in my face and said, 'd---- you, sir, you are my property.' he said that i owed him. he could not show it and then said, 'you sha'n't go anyhow.' all we want is a living chance." another: "there is a general talk among the whites and colored people that jeff davis will run for president of the southern states, and the colored people are afraid they will be made slaves again. they are already trying to prevent them from going from one plantation to another without a pass." another: "the deputy sheriff came and took away from me a pair of mules. he had a constable and twenty-five men with guns to back him." another: "last year, after settling with my landlord, my share was four bales of cotton. i shipped it to richardson and may, and perdido street, new orleans, through w.e. ringo & co., merchants, at mound landing, miss. i lived four miles back of this landing. i received from ringo a ticket showing that my cotton was sold at nine and three-eighths cents, but i could never get a settlement. he kept putting me off by saying that the bill of lading had not come. those bales averaged over four hundred pounds. i did not owe him over twenty-five dollars. a man may work there from monday morning to saturday night, and be as economical as he pleases, and he will come out in debt. i am a close man, and i work hard. i want to be honest in getting through the world. i came away and left a crop of corn and cotton growing up. i left it because i did not want to work twelve months for nothing. i have been trying it for fifteen years, thinking every year that it would get better, and it gets worse." said still another: "i learned about kansas from the newspapers that i got hold of. they were southern papers. i got a map, and found out where kansas was; and i got a history of the united states, and read about it." [footnote : see _negro exodus_ (report of colonel frank h. fletcher).] query: was it genuine statesmanship that permitted these people to feel that they must leave the south? * * * * * . _a postscript on the war and reconstruction_ of all of the stories of these epoch-making years we have chosen one--an idyl of a woman with an alabaster box, of one who had a clear conception of the human problem presented and who gave her life in the endeavor to meet it. in the fall of a young woman who was destined to be a great missionary entered the seminary at rockford, illinois. there was little to distinguish her from the other students except that she was very plainly dressed and seemed forced to spend most of her spare time at work. yes, there was one other difference. she was older than most of the girls--already thirty, and rich in experience. when not yet fifteen she had taught a country school in pennsylvania. at twenty she was considered capable of managing an unusually turbulent crowd of boys and girls. when she was twenty-seven her father died, leaving upon her very largely the care of her mother. at twenty-eight she already looked back upon fourteen years as a teacher, upon some work for christ incidentally accomplished, but also upon a fading youth of wasted hopes and unfulfilled desires. then came a great decision--not the first, not the last, but one of the most important that marked her long career. her education was by no means complete, and, at whatever cost, she would go to school. that she had no money, that her clothes were shabby, that her mother needed her, made no difference; now or never she would realize her ambition. she would do anything, however menial, if it was honest and would give her food while she continued her studies. for one long day she walked the streets of belvidere looking for a home. could any one use a young woman who wanted to work for her board? always the same reply. nightfall brought her to a farmhouse in the suburbs of the town. she timidly knocked on the door. "no, we do not need any one," said the woman who greeted her, "but wait until i see my husband." the man of the house was very unwilling, but decided to give shelter for the night. the next morning he thought differently about the matter, and a few days afterwards the young woman entered school. the work was hard; fires had to be made, breakfasts on cold mornings had to be prepared, and sometimes the washing was heavy. naturally the time for lessons was frequently cut short or extended far into the night. but the woman of the house was kind, and her daughter a helpful fellow-student. the next summer came another season at school-teaching, and then the term at rockford. ! a great year that in american history, one more famous for the defeat of the union arms than for their success. but in september came antietam, and the heart of the north took courage. then with the new year came the emancipation proclamation. the girls at rockford, like the people everywhere, were interested in the tremendous events that were shaking the nation. a new note of seriousness crept into their work. embroidery was laid aside; instead, socks were knit and bandages prepared. on the night of january a jubilee meeting was held in the town. to joanna p. moore, however, the news of freedom brought a strange undertone of sadness. she could not help thinking of the spiritual and intellectual condition of the millions now emancipated. strange that she should be possessed by this problem! she had thought of work in china, or india, or even in africa--but of this, never! in february a man who had been on island no. came to the seminary and told the girls of the distress of the women and children there. cabins and tents were everywhere. as many as three families, with eight or ten children each, cooked their food in the same pot on the same fire. sometimes the women were peevish or quarrelsome; always the children were dirty. "what can a man do to help such a suffering mass of humanity?" asked the speaker. "nothing. a woman is needed; nobody else will do." for the student listening so intently the cheery schoolrooms with their sweet associations faded; the vision of foreign missions also vanished; and in their stead stood only a pitiful black woman with a baby in her arms. she reached island no. in november. the outlook was dismal enough. the sunday school at belvidere had pledged four dollars a month toward her support, and this was all the money in sight, though the government provided transportation and soldiers' rations. that was in , sixty years ago; but every year since then, until , in summer and winter, in sunshine and rain, in the home and the church, with teaching and praying, feeding and clothing, nursing and hoping and loving, joanna p. moore in one way or another ministered to the negro people of the south. in april, , her whole colony was removed to helena, arkansas. the home farm was three miles from helena. here was gathered a great crowd of women and children and helpless old men, all under the guard of a company of soldiers in a fort nearby. thither went the missionary alone, except for her faith in god. she made an arbor with some rude seats, nailed a blackboard to a tree, divided the people into four groups, and began to teach school. in the twilight every evening a great crowd gathered around her cabin for prayers. a verse of the bible was read and explained, petitions were offered, one of the sorrow-songs was chanted, and then the service was over. some quaker workers were her friends in helena, and in she went to lauderdale, mississippi, to help the friends in an orphan asylum. six weeks after her arrival the superintendent's daughter died, and the parents left to take their child back to their indiana home to rest. the lone woman was left in charge of the asylum. cholera broke out. eleven children died within one week. still she stood by her post. often, she said, those who were well and happy when they retired, ere daylight came were in the grave, for they were buried the same hour they died. night after night she prayed to god in the dark, and at length the fury of the plague was abated. from time to time the failing health of her mother called her home, and from to she once more taught school near belvidere. the first winter the school was in the country. "you can never have a sunday school in the winter," they told her. but she did; in spite of the snow, the house was crowded every sunday, whole families coming in sleighs. even at that the real work of the teacher was with the negroes of the south. in her prayers and public addresses they were always with her, and in friends in chicago made it possible for her to return to the work of her choice. in the woman's baptist home mission society honored itself by giving to her its first commission. nine years she spent in the vicinity of new orleans. near leland university she found a small, one-room house. after buying a bed, a table, two chairs, and a few cooking utensils, she began housekeeping. often she started out at six in the morning, not to return until dark. most frequently she read the bible to those who could not read. sometimes she gave cheer to mothers busy over the washtub. sometimes she would teach the children to read or to sew. often she would write letters for those who had been separated from friends or kindred in the dark days. she wrote hundreds and hundreds of such letters; and once in a while, a very long while, came a response. most pitiful of all the objects she found in new orleans were the old women worn out with years of slavery. they were usually rag-pickers who ate at night the scraps for which they had begged during the day. there was in the city an old ladies' home; but this was not for negroes. a house was secured and the women taken in, joanna moore and her associates moving into the second story. sometimes, very often, there was real need; but sometimes, too, provisions came when it was not known who sent them; money or boxes came from northern friends who had never seen the workers; and the little negro children in the sunday schools in the city gave their pennies. in the laborer in the southwest started on a journey of exploration. in atlanta dr. robert at atlanta baptist seminary (now morehouse college) gave her cheer; so did president ware at atlanta university. at benedict in columbia she saw dr. goodspeed, president tupper at shaw in raleigh, and dr. corey in richmond. in may she appeared at the baptist anniversaries, with fifteen years of missionary achievement already behind her. but each year brought its own sorrows and disappointments. she wanted the society to establish a training school for women; but to this objection was raised. in louisiana also it was not without danger that a white woman attended a negro association in ; and there were always sneers and jeers. at length, however, a training school for mothers was opened in baton rouge. all went well for two years; and then a notice with skull and crossbones was placed on the gate. the woman who had worked through the cholera still stood firm; but the students had gone. sick at heart and worn out with waiting, she at last left baton rouge and the state in which so many of her best years had been spent. "bible band" work was started in , and _hope_ in . the little paper, beginning with a circulation of five hundred, has now reached a monthly issue of twenty thousand copies, and daily it brings its lesson of cheer to thousands of mothers and children in the south. in connection with it all has developed the fireside school, than which few agencies have been more potent in the salvation and uplift of the humble negro home. what wisdom was gathered from the passing of fourscore years! on almost every page of her tracts, her letters, her account of her life, one finds quotations of proverbial pith: the love of god gave me courage for myself and the rest of mankind; therefore i concluded to invest in human souls. they surely are worth more than anything else in the world. beloved friends, be hopeful, be courageous. god can not use discouraged people. the good news spread, not by telling what we were going to do but by praising god for what had been done. so much singing in all our churches leaves too little time for the bible lesson. do not misunderstand me. i do love music that impresses the meaning of words. but no one climbs to heaven on musical scales. i thoroughly believe that the only way to succeed with any vocation is to make it a part of your very self and weave it into your every thought and prayer. you must love before you can comfort and help. there is no place too lowly or dark for our feet to enter, and no place so high and bright but it needs the touch of the light that we carry from the cross. how shall we measure such a life? who can weigh love and hope and service, and the joy of answered prayer? "an annual report of what?" she once asked the secretary of her organization. "report of tears shed, prayers offered, smiles scattered, lessons taught, steps taken, cheering words, warning words--tender, patient words for the little ones, stern but loving tones for the wayward--songs of hope and songs of sorrow, wounded hearts healed, light and love poured into dark sad homes? oh, miss burdette, you might as well ask me to gather up the raindrops of last year or the petals that fall from the flowers that bloomed. it is true that i can send you a little stagnant water from the cistern, and a few dried flowers; but if you want to know the freshness, the sweetness, the glory, the grandeur, of our god-given work, then you must come and keep step with us from early morn to night for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year." until the very last she was on the roll of the active workers of the woman's american baptist home mission society. in the fall of she decided that she must once more see the schools in the south that meant so much to her. in december she came again to her beloved spelman. while in atlanta she met with an accident that still further weakened her. after a few weeks, however, she went on to jacksonville, and then to selma. there she passed. * * * * * when the son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory.... then shall the righteous answer him, saying, lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? and the king shall answer and say unto them, verily i say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me. chapter xiv the negro in the new south . _political life: disfranchisement_ by the reconstruction governments had all but passed. a few days after his inauguration in president hayes sent to louisiana a commission to investigate the claims of rival governments there. the decision was in favor of the democrats. on april the president ordered the removal of federal troops from public buildings in the south; and in columbia, s.c., within a few days the democratic administration of governor wade hampton was formally recognized. the new governments at once set about the abrogation of the election laws that had protected the negro in the exercise of suffrage, and, having by obtained a majority in the national house of representatives, the democrats resorted to the practice of attaching their repeal measures to appropriation bills in the hope of compelling the president to sign them. men who had been prominently connected with the confederacy were being returned to congress in increasing numbers, but in general the democrats were not able to carry their measures over the president's veto. from the supreme court, however, they received practical assistance, for while this body did not formally grant that the states had full powers over elections, it nevertheless nullified many of the most objectionable sections of the laws. before the close of the decade, by intimidation, the theft, suppression or exchange of the ballot boxes, the removal of the polls to unknown places, false certifications, and illegal arrests on the day before an election, the negro vote had been rendered ineffectual in every state of the south. when cleveland was elected in the negroes of the south naturally felt that the darkest hour of their political fortunes had come. it had, for among many other things this election said that after twenty years of discussion and tumult the negro question was to be relegated to the rear, and that the country was now to give main attention to other problems. for the negro the new era was signalized by one of the most effective speeches ever delivered in this or any other country, all the more forceful because the orator was a man of unusual nobility of spirit. in henry w. grady, of georgia, addressed the new england club in new york on "the new south." he spoke to practical men and he knew his ground. he asked his hearers to bring their "full faith in american fairness and frankness" to judgment upon what he had to say. he pictured in brilliant language the confederate soldier, "ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, who wended his way homeward to find his house in ruins and his farm devastated." he also spoke kindly of the negro: "whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that the shackles might be struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless charges." but grady also implied that the negro had received too much attention and sympathy from the north. said he: "to liberty and enfranchisement is as far as law can carry the negro. the rest must be left to conscience and common sense." hence on this occasion and others he asked that the south be left alone in the handling of her grave problem. the north, a little tired of the negro question, a little uncertain also as to the wisdom of the reconstruction policy that it had forced on the south, and if concerned with this section at all, interested primarily in such investments as it had there, assented to this request; and in general the south now felt that it might order its political life in its own way. as yet, however, the negro was not technically disfranchised, and at any moment a sudden turn of events might call him into prominence. formal legislation really followed the rise of the populist party, which about in many places in the south waged an even contest with the democrats. it was evident that in such a struggle the negro might still hold the balance of power, and within the next few years a fusion of the republicans and the populists in north carolina sent a negro, george h. white, to congress. this event finally served only to strengthen the movement for disfranchisement which had already begun. in the constitution of mississippi was so amended as to exclude from the suffrage any person who had not paid his poll-tax or who was unable to read any section of the constitution, or understand it when read to him, or to give a reasonable interpretation of it. the effect of the administration of this provision was that in only negroes out of , of voting age became registered. south carolina amended her constitution with similar effect in . in this state the population was almost three-fifths negro and two-fifths white. the franchise of the negro was already in practical abeyance; but the problem now was to devise a means for the perpetuity of a government of white men. education was not popular as a test, for by it many white illiterates would be disfranchised and in any case it would only postpone the race issue. for some years the dominant party had been engaged in factional controversies, with the populist wing led by benjamin r. tillman prevailing over the conservatives. it was understood, however, that each side would be given half of the membership of the convention, which would exclude all negro and republican representation, and that the constitution would go into effect without being submitted to the people. said the most important provision: "any person who shall apply for registration after january , , if otherwise qualified, shall be registered; provided that he can both read and write any section of this constitution submitted to him by the registration officer or can show that he owns and has paid all taxes collectible during the previous year on property in this state assessed at three hundred dollars or more"--clauses which it is hardly necessary to say the registrars regularly interpreted in favor of white men and against the negro. in louisiana passed an amendment inventing the so-called "grandfather clause." this excused from the operation of her disfranchising act all descendants of men who had voted before the civil war, thus admitting to the suffrage all white men who were illiterate and without property. north carolina in , virginia and alabama in , georgia in , and oklahoma in in one way or another practically disfranchised the negro, care being taken in every instance to avoid any definite clash with the fifteenth amendment. in maryland there have been several attempts to disfranchise the negro by constitutional amendments, one in , another in , and still another in , but all have failed. about the intention of its disfranchising legislation the south, as represented by more than one spokesman, was very frank. unfortunately the new order called forth a group of leaders--represented by tillman in south carolina, hoke smith in georgia, and james k. vardaman in mississippi--who made a direct appeal to prejudice and thus capitalized the racial feeling that already had been brought to too high tension. naturally all such legislation as that suggested had ultimately to be brought before the highest tribunal in the country. the test came over the following section from the oklahoma law: "no person shall be registered as an elector of this state or be allowed to vote in any election herein unless he shall be able to read and write any section of the constitution of the state of oklahoma; but no person who was on january , , or at any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any form of government, or who at any time resided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant of such person shall be denied the right to register and vote because of his inability to so read and write sections of such constitution." this enactment the supreme court declared unconstitutional in . the decision exerted no great and immediate effect on political conditions in the south; nevertheless as the official recognition by the nation of the fact that the negro was not accorded his full political rights, it was destined to have far-reaching effect on the whole political fabric of the section. when the era of disfranchisement began it was in large measure expected by the south that with the practical elimination of the negro from politics this section would become wider in its outlook and divide on national issues. such has not proved to be the case. except for the noteworthy deflection of tennessee in the presidential election of , and republican gains in some counties in other states, this section remains just as "solid" as it was forty years ago, largely of course because the negro, through education and the acquisition of property, is becoming more and more a potential factor in politics. meanwhile it is to be observed that the negro is not wholly without a vote, even in the south, and sometimes his power is used with telling effect, as in the city of atlanta in the spring of , when he decided in the negative the question of a bond issue. in the north moreover--especially in indiana, ohio, new jersey, illinois, pennsylvania, and new york--he has on more than one occasion proved the deciding factor in political affairs. even when not voting, however, he involuntarily wields tremendous influence on the destinies of the nation, for even though men may be disfranchised, all are nevertheless counted in the allotment of congressmen to southern states. this anomalous situation means that in actual practice the vote of one white man in the south is four or six or even eight times as strong as that of a man in the north;[ ] and it directly accounted for the victory of president wilson and the democrats over the republicans led by charles e. hughes in . for remedying it by the enforcement of the fourteenth amendment bills have been frequently presented in congress, but on these no action has been taken. [footnote : in kansas and mississippi each elected eight members of the house of representatives, but kansas cast , votes for her members, while mississippi cast only , for hers, less than one-twelfth as many.] . _economic life: peonage_ within fifteen years after the close of the war it was clear that the emancipation proclamation was a blessing to the poor white man of the south as well as to the negro. the break-up of the great plantation system was ultimately to prove good for all men whose slender means had given them little chance before the war. at the same time came also the development of cotton-mills throughout the south, in which as early as not less than , white people were employed. with the decay of the old system the average acreage of holdings in the south atlantic states decreased from . in to . in . it was still not easy for an independent negro to own land on his own account; nevertheless by as early a year as the negro farmers had acquired , acres. after the war the planters first tried the wage system for the negroes. this was not satisfactory--from the planter's standpoint because the negro had not yet developed stability as a laborer; from the negro's standpoint because while the planter might advance rations, he frequently postponed the payment of wages and sometimes did not pay at all. then land came to be rented; but frequently the rental was from to pounds of lint cotton an acre for land that produced only to pounds. in course of time the share system came to be most widely used. under this the tenant frequently took his whole family into the cotton-field, and when the crop was gathered and he and the landlord rode together to the nearest town to sell it, he received one-third, one-half, or two-thirds of the money according as he had or had not furnished his own food, implements, and horses or mules. this system might have proved successful if he had not had to pay exorbitant prices for his rations. as it was, if the landlord did not directly furnish foodstuffs he might have an understanding with the keeper of the country store, who frequently charged for a commodity twice what it was worth in the open market. at the close of the summer there was regularly a huge bill waiting for the negro at the store; this had to be disposed of first, _and he always came out just a few dollars behind_. however, the landlord did not mind such a small matter and in the joy of the harvest might even advance a few dollars; but the understanding was always that the tenant was to remain on the land the next year. thus were the chains of peonage forged about him. at the same time there developed a still more vicious system. immediately after the war legislation enacted in the south made severe provision with reference to vagrancy. negroes were arrested on the slightest pretexts and their labor as that of convicts leased to landowners or other business men. when, a few years later, negroes, dissatisfied with the returns from their labor on the farms, began a movement to the cities, there arose a tendency to make the vagrancy legislation still more harsh, so that at last a man could not stop work without technically committing a crime. thus in all its hideousness developed the convict lease system. this institution and the accompanying chain-gang were at variance with all the humanitarian impulses of the nineteenth century. sometimes prisoners were worked in remote parts of a state altogether away from the oversight of responsible officials; if they stayed in a prison the department for women was frequently in plain view and hearing of the male convicts, and the number of cubic feet in a cell was only one-fourth of what a scientific test would have required. sometimes there was no place for the dressing of the dead except in the presence of the living. the system was worst when the lessee was given the entire charge of the custody and discipline of the convicts, and even of their medical or surgical care. of real attention there frequently was none, and reports had numerous blank spaces to indicate deaths from unknown causes. the sturdiest man could hardly survive such conditions for more than ten years. in alabama in only three of the convicts had been in confinement for eight years, and only one for nine. in texas, from to , the total number of prisoners discharged was , while the number of deaths and escapes for the same period totalled . in north carolina the mortality was eight times as great as in sing sing. at last the conscience of the nation began to be heard, and after there were remedial measures. however, the care of the prisoner still left much to be desired; and as the negro is greatly in the majority among prisoners in the south, and as he is still sometimes arrested illegally or on flimsy pretexts, the whole matter of judicial and penal procedure becomes one of the first points of consideration in any final settlement of the negro problem.[ ] [footnote : within recent years it has been thought that the convict lease system and peonage had practically passed in the south. that this was by no means the case was shown by the astonishing revelations from jasper county, georgia, early in , it being demonstrated in court that a white farmer, john s. williams, who had "bought out" negroes from the prisons of atlanta and macon, had not only held these people in peonage, but had been directly responsible for the killing of not less than eleven of them. however, as the present work passes through the press, word comes of the remarkable efforts of governor hugh m. dorsey for a more enlightened public conscience in his state. in addition to special endeavor for justice in the williams case, he has issued a booklet citing with detail one hundred and thirty-five cases in which negroes have suffered grave wrong. he divides his cases into four divisions: ( ) the negro lynched, ( ) the negro held in peonage, ( ) the negro driven out by organized lawlessness, and ( ) the negro subject to individual acts of cruelty. "in some counties," he says, "the negro is being driven out as though he were a wild beast. in others he is being held as a slave. in others no negroes remain.... in only two of the cases cited is crime against white women involved." for the more recent history of peonage see pp. , , , - .] . _social life: proscription, lynching_ meanwhile proscription went forward. separate and inferior traveling accommodations, meager provision for the education of negro children, inadequate street, lighting and water facilities in most cities and towns, and the general lack of protection of life and property, made living increasingly harder for a struggling people. for the negro of aspiration or culture every day became a long train of indignities and insults. on street cars he was crowded into a few seats, generally in the rear; he entered a railway station by a side door; in a theater he might occupy only a side, or more commonly the extreme rear, of the second balcony; a house of ill fame might flourish next to his own little home; and from public libraries he was shut out altogether, except where a little branch was sometimes provided. every opportunity for such self-improvement as a city might be expected to afford him was either denied him, or given on such terms as his self-respect forced him to refuse. meanwhile--and worst of all--he failed to get justice in the courts. formally called before the bar he knew beforehand that the case was probably already decided against him. a white boy might insult and pick a quarrel with his son, but if the case reached the court room the white boy would be freed and the negro boy fined $ or sent to jail for three months. some trivial incident involving no moral responsibility whatever on the negro's part might yet cost him his life. lynching grew apace. generally this was said to be for the protection of white womanhood; but statistics certainly did not give rape the prominence that it held in the popular mind. any cause of controversy, however slight, that forced a negro to defend himself against a white man might result in a lynching, and possibly in a burning. in the period of - the number of negroes lynched in the south is said to have been not more than a year. between and , however, the number of persons lynched in the country amounted to , the great majority being negroes in the south. for the year alone the figure was . one fact was outstanding: astonishing progress was being made by the negro people, but in the face of increasing education and culture on their part, there was no diminution of race feeling. most southerners preferred still to deal with a negro of the old type rather than with one who was neatly dressed, simple and unaffected in manner, and ambitious to have a good home. in any case, however, it was clear that since the white man held the power, upon him rested primarily the responsibility of any adjustment. old schemes for deportation or colonization in a separate state having proved ineffective or chimerical, it was necessary to find a new platform on which both races could stand. the negro was still the outstanding factor in agriculture and industry; in large numbers he had to live, and will live, in georgia and south carolina, mississippi and texas; and there should have been some plane on which he could reside in the south not only serviceably but with justice to his self-respect. the wealth of the new south, it is to be remembered, was won not only by the labor of black hands but also that of little white boys and girls. as laborers and citizens, real or potential, both of these groups deserved the most earnest solicitude of the state, for it is not upon the riches of the few but the happiness of the many that a nation's greatness depends. moreover no state can build permanently or surely by denying to a half or a third of those governed any voice whatever in the government. if the negro was ignorant, he was also economically defenseless; and it is neither just nor wise to deny to any man, however humble, any real power for his legal protection. if these principles hold--and we think they are in line with enlightened conceptions of society--the prosperity of the new south was by no means as genuine as it appeared to be, and the disfranchisement of the negro, morally and politically, was nothing less than a crime. chapter xv "the vale of tears," - . _current opinion and tendencies_ in the two decades that we are now to consider we find the working out of all the large forces mentioned in our last chapter. after a generation of striving the white south was once more thoroughly in control, and the new program well under way. predictions for both a broader outlook for the section as a whole and greater care for the negro's moral and intellectual advancement were destined not to be fulfilled; and the period became one of bitter social and economic antagonism. all of this was primarily due to the one great fallacy on which the prosperity of the new south was built, and that was that the labor of the negro existed only for the good of the white man. to this one source may be traced most of the ills borne by both white man and negro during the period. if the negro's labor was to be exploited, it was necessary that he be without the protection of political power and that he be denied justice in court. if he was to be reduced to a peon, certainly socially he must be given a peon's place. accordingly there developed everywhere--in schools, in places of public accommodation, in the facilities of city life--the idea of inferior service for negroes; and an unenlightened prison system flourished in all its hideousness. furthermore, as a result of the vicious economic system, arose the sinister form of the negro criminal. here again the south begged the question, representative writers lamenting the passing of the dear dead days of slavery, and pointing cynically to the effects of freedom on the negro. they failed to remember in the case of the negro criminal that from childhood to manhood--in education, in economic chance, in legal power--they had by their own system deprived a human being of every privilege that was due him, ruining him body and soul; and then they stood aghast at the thing their hands had made. more than that, they blamed the race itself for the character that now sometimes appeared, and called upon thrifty, aspiring negroes to find the criminal and give him up to the law. thrifty, aspiring negroes wondered what was the business of the police. it was this pitiful failure to get down to fundamentals that characterized the period and that made life all the more hard for those negroes who strove to advance. every effort was made to brutalize a man, and then he was blamed for not being a st. bernard. fortunately before the period was over there arose not only clear-thinking men of the race but also a few white men who realized that such a social order could not last forever. early in the nineties, however, the pendulum had swung fully backward, and the years from to were in some ways the darkest that the race has experienced since emancipation. when in cleveland was elected for a second term and the democrats were once more in power, it seemed to the southern rural negro that the conditions of slavery had all but come again. more and more the south formulated its creed; it glorified the old aristocracy that had flourished and departed, and definitely it began to ask the north if it had not been right after all. it followed of course that if the old south had the real key to the problem, the proper place of the negro was that of a slave. within two or three years there were so many important articles on the negro in prominent magazines and these were by such representative men that taken together they formed a symposium. in december, , james bryce wrote in the _north american review_, pointing out that the situation in the south was a standing breach of the constitution, that it suspended the growth of political parties and accustomed the section to fraudulent evasions, and he emphasized education as a possible remedy; he had quite made up his mind that the negro had little or no place in politics. in january, , a distinguished classical scholar, basil l. gildersleeve, turned aside from linguistics to write in the _atlantic_ "the creed of the old south," which article he afterwards published as a special brochure, saying that it had been more widely read than anything else he had ever written. in april, thomas nelson page in the _north american_ contended that in spite of the $ , , spent on the education of the negro in virginia between and the race had retrograded or not greatly improved, and in fact that the negro "did not possess the qualities to raise himself above slavery." later in the same year he published _the old south_. in the same month frederick l. hoffman, writing in the _arena_, contended that in view of its mortality statistics the negro race would soon die out.[ ] also in april, , henry watterson wrote of the negro in the _chautauquan_, recalling the facts that the era of political turmoil had been succeeded by one of reaction and violence, and that by one of exhaustion and peace; but with all his insight he ventured no constructive suggestion, thinking it best for everybody "simply to be quiet for a time." early in john c. wycliffe, a prominent lawyer of new orleans, writing in the _forum_, voiced the desires of many in asking for a repeal of the fifteenth amendment; and in october, bishop atticus g. haygood, writing in the same periodical of a recent and notorious lynching, said, "it was horrible to torture the guilty wretch; the burning was an act of insanity. but had the dismembered form of his victim been the dishonored body of my baby, i might also have gone into an insanity that might have ended never." again and again was there the lament that the negroes of forty years after were both morally and intellectually inferior to their antebellum ancestors; and if college professors and lawyers and ministers of the gospel wrote in this fashion one could not wonder that the politician made capital of choice propaganda. [footnote : in this paper entered into an elaborate study, _race traits and tendencies of the american negro_, a publication of the american economic association. in this hoffman contended at length that the race was not only not holding its own in population, but that it was also astonishingly criminal and was steadily losing economically. his work was critically studied and its fallacies exposed in the _nation_, april , .] in this chorus of dispraise truth struggled for a hearing, but then as now traveled more slowly than error. in the _north american_ for july, , frederick douglass wrote vigorously of "lynch law in the south." in the same month george w. cable answered affirmatively and with emphasis the question, "does the negro pay for his education?" he showed that in georgia in - the colored schools did not really cost the white citizens a cent, and that in the other southern states the negro was also contributing his full share to the maintenance of the schools. in june of the same year william t. harris, commissioner of education, wrote in truly statesmanlike fashion in the _atlantic_ of "the education of the negro." said he: "with the colored people all educated in schools and become a reading people interested in the daily newspaper; with all forms of industrial training accessible to them, and the opportunity so improved that every form of mechanical and manufacturing skill has its quota of colored working men and women; with a colored ministry educated in a christian theology interpreted in a missionary spirit, and finding its auxiliaries in modern science and modern literature; with these educational essentials the negro problem for the south will be solved without recourse to violent measures of any kind, whether migration, or disfranchisement, or ostracism." in december, , walter h. page, writing in the _forum_ of lynching under the title, "the last hold of the southern bully," said that "the great danger is not in the first violation of law, nor in the crime itself, but in the danger that southern public sentiment under the stress of this phase of the race problem will lose the true perspective of civilization"; and l.e. bleckley, chief justice of georgia, spoke in similar vein. on the whole, however, the country, while occasionally indignant at some atrocity, had quite decided not to touch the negro question for a while; and when in the spring of some representative negroes protested without avail to president harrison against the work of mobs, the _review of reviews_ but voiced the drift of current opinion when it said: "as for the colored men themselves, their wisest course would be to cultivate the best possible relations with the most upright and intelligent of their white neighbors, and for some time to come to forget all about politics and to strive mightily for industrial and educational progress."[ ] [footnote : june, , p. .] it is not strange that under the circumstances we have now to record such discrimination, crime, and mob violence as can hardly be paralleled in the whole of american history. the negro was already down; he was now to be trampled upon. when in the spring of some members of the race in the lowlands of mississippi lost all they had by the floods and the federal government was disposed to send relief, the state government protested against such action on the ground that it would keep the negroes from accepting the terms offered by the white planters. in louisiana in a negro presiding elder reported to the _southwestern christian advocate_ that he had lost a membership of a hundred souls, the people being compelled to leave their crops and move away within ten days. in the jail at omaha was entered and a negro taken out and hanged to a lamp-post. on february , , at jackson, la., where there was a pound party for the minister at the negro baptist church, a crowd of white men gathered, shooting revolvers and halting the negroes as they passed. most of the people were allowed to go on, but after a while the sport became furious and two men were fatally shot. about the same time, and in the same state, at rayville, a negro girl of fifteen was taken from a jail by a mob and hanged to a tree. in texarkana, ark., a negro who had outraged a farmer's wife was captured and burned alive, the injured woman herself being compelled to light the fire. just a few days later, in march, a constable in memphis in attempting to arrest a negro was killed. numerous arrests followed, and at night a mob went to the jail, gained easy access, and, having seized three well-known negroes who were thought to have been leaders in the killing, lynched them, the whole proceeding being such a flagrant violation of law that it has not yet been forgotten by the older negro citizens of this important city. on february , , at paris, texas, after one of the most brutal crimes occurred one of the most horrible lynchings on record. henry smith, the negro, who seems to have harbored a resentment against a policeman of the town because of ill-treatment that he had received, seized the officer's three-year-old child, outraged her, and then tore her body to pieces. he was tortured by the child's father, her uncles, and her fifteen-year-old brother, his eyes being put out with hot irons before he was burned. his stepson, who had refused to tell where he could be found, was hanged and his body riddled with bullets. thus the lynchings went on, the victims sometimes being guilty of the gravest crimes, but often also perfectly innocent people. in february, , the average was very nearly one a day. at the same time injuries inflicted on the negro were commonly disregarded altogether. thus at dickson, tenn., a young white man lost forty dollars. a fortune-teller told him that the money had been taken by a woman and gave a description that seemed to fit a young colored woman who had worked in the home of a relative. half a dozen men then went to the home of the young woman and outraged her, her mother, and also another woman who was in the house. at the very close of , in brooks county, ga., after a negro named pike had killed a white man with whom he had a quarrel, seven negroes were lynched after the real murderer had escaped. any relative or other negro who, questioned, refused to tell of the whereabouts of pike, whether he knew of the same or not, was shot in his tracks, one man being shot before he had chance to say anything at all. meanwhile the white caps or "regulators" took charge of the neighboring counties, terrifying the negroes everywhere; and in the trials that resulted the state courts broke down altogether, one judge in despair giving up the holding of court as useless. meanwhile discrimination of all sorts went forward. on may , , moved by the situation at the orange park academy, the state of florida approved "an act to prohibit white and colored youth from being taught in the same schools." said one section: "it shall be a penal offense for any individual body of inhabitants, corporation, or association to conduct within this state any school of any grade, public, private, or parochial, wherein white persons and negroes shall be instructed or boarded within the same building, or taught in the same class or at the same time by the same teacher." religious organizations were not to be left behind in such action; and when before the meeting of the baptist young people's union in baltimore a letter was sent to the secretary of the organization and the editor of the _baptist union_, in behalf of the negroes, who the year before had not been well treated at toronto, he sent back an evasive answer, saying that the policy of his society was to encourage local unions to affiliate with their own churches. more grave than anything else was the formal denial of the negro's political rights. as we have seen, south carolina in followed mississippi in the disfranchising program and within the next fifteen years most of the other southern states did likewise. with the negro thus deprived of any genuine political voice, all sorts of social and economic injustice found greater license. . _industrial education: booker t. washington_ such were the tendencies of life in the south as affecting the negro thirty years after emancipation. in september, , a rising educator of the race attracted national attention by a remarkable speech that he made at the cotton states exposition in atlanta. said booker t. washington: "to those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the southern white man who is their next door neighbor, i would say, 'cast down your bucket where you are'--cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.... to those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the south, were i permitted i would repeat what i say to my own race, 'cast down your bucket where you are.' cast it down among , , negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your fire-sides.... in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." the message that dr. washington thus enunciated he had already given in substance the previous spring in an address at fisk university, and even before then his work at tuskegee institute had attracted attention.[ ] the atlanta exposition simply gave him the great occasion that he needed; and he was now to proclaim the new word throughout the length and breadth of the land. among the hundreds of addresses that he afterwards delivered, especially important were those at harvard university in , at the chicago peace jubilee in , and before the national education association in st. louis in . again and again in these speeches one comes upon such striking sentences as the following: "freedom can never be given. it must be purchased."[ ] "the race, like the individual, that makes itself indispensable, has solved most of its problems."[ ] "as a race there are two things we must learn to do--one is to put brains into the common occupations of life, and the other is to dignify common labor."[ ] "ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in congress or the state legislature was worth more than real estate or industrial skill."[ ] "the opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house."[ ] "one of the most vital questions that touch our american life is how to bring the strong, wealthy, and learned into helpful contact with the poorest, most ignorant, and humblest, and at the same time make the one appreciate the vitalizing, strengthening influence of the other."[ ] "there is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all."[ ] [footnote : see article by albert shaw, "negro progress on the tuskegee plan," in _review of reviews_, april, .] [footnote , : speech before n.e.a., in st. louis, june , .] [footnote : speech at fisk university, .] [footnote , , : speech at atlanta exposition, september , .] [footnote : speech at harvard university, june , .] the time was ripe for a new leader. frederick douglass had died in february, . in his later years he had more than once lost hold on the heart of his people, as when he opposed the negro exodus or seemed not fully in sympathy with the religious convictions of those who looked to him. at his passing, however, the race remembered only his early service and his old magnificence, and to a striving people his death seemed to make still darker the gathering gloom. coming when he did, booker t. washington was thoroughly in line with the materialism of his age; he answered both an economic and an educational crisis. he also satisfied the south of the new day by what he had to say about social equality. the story of his work reads like a romance, and he himself has told it better than any one else ever can. he did not claim the credit for the original idea of industrial education; that he gave to general armstrong, and it was at hampton that he himself had been nurtured. what was needed, however, was for some one to take the hampton idea down to the cotton belt, interpret the lesson for the men and women digging in the ground, and generally to put the race in line with the country's industrial development. this was what booker t. washington undertook to do. he reached tuskegee early in june, . july was the date set for the opening of the school in the little shanty and church which had been secured for its accommodation. on the morning of this day thirty students reported for admission. the greater number were school-teachers and some were nearly forty years of age. just about three months after the opening of the school there was offered for sale an old and abandoned plantation a mile from tuskegee on which the mansion had been burned. all told the place seemed to be just the location needed to make the work effective and permanent. the price asked was five hundred dollars, the owner requiring the immediate payment of two hundred and fifty dollars, the remaining two hundred and fifty to be paid within a year. in his difficulty mr. washington wrote to general j.f.b. marshall, treasurer of hampton institute, placing the matter before him and asking for the loan of two hundred and fifty dollars. general marshall replied that he had no authority to lend money belonging to hampton institute, but that he would gladly advance the amount needed from his personal funds. toward the paying of this sum the assisting teacher, olivia a. davidson (afterwards mrs. washington), helped heroically. her first effort was made by holding festivals and suppers, but she also canvassed the families in the town of tuskegee, and the white people as well as the negroes helped her. "it was often pathetic," said the principal, "to note the gifts of the older colored people, many of whom had spent their best days in slavery. sometimes they would give five cents, sometimes twenty-five cents. sometimes the contribution was a quilt, or a quantity of sugarcane. i recall one old colored woman, who was about seventy years of age, who came to see me when we were raising money to pay for the farm. she hobbled into the room where i was, leaning on a cane. she was clad in rags, but they were clean. she said, 'mr. washington, god knows i spent de bes' days of my life in slavery. god knows i's ignorant an' poor; but i knows what you an' miss davidson is tryin' to do. i knows you is tryin' to make better men an' better women for de colored race. i ain't got no money, but i wants you to take dese six eggs, what i's been savin' up, an' i wants you to put dese six eggs into de eddication of dese boys an' gals.' since the work at tuskegee started," added the speaker, "it has been my privilege to receive many gifts for the benefit of the institution, but never any, i think, that touched me as deeply as this one." it was early in the history of the school that mr. washington conceived the idea of extension work. the tuskegee conferences began in february, . to the first meeting came five hundred men, mainly farmers, and many woman. outstanding was the discussion of the actual terms on which most of the men were living from year to year. a mortgage was given on the cotton crop before it was planted, and to the mortgage was attached a note which waived all right to exemptions under the constitution and laws of the state of alabama or of any other state to which the tenant might move. said one: "the mortgage ties you tighter than any rope and a waive note is a consuming fire." said another: "the waive note is good for twenty years and when you sign one you must either pay out or die out." another: "when you sign a waive note you just cross your hands behind you and go to the merchant and say, 'here, tie me and take all i've got.'" all agreed that the people mortgaged more than was necessary, to buy sewing machines (which sometimes were not used), expensive clocks, great family bibles, or other things easily dispensed with. said one man: "my people want all they can get on credit, not thinking of the day of settlement. we must learn to bore with a small augur first. the black man totes a heavy bundle, and when he puts it down there is a plow, a hoe, and ignorance." it was to people such as these that booker t. washington brought hope, and serving them he passed on to fame. within a few years schools on the plan of tuskegee began to spring up all over the south, at denmark, at snow hill, at utica, and elsewhere. in the national negro business league began its sessions, giving great impetus to the establishment of banks, stores, and industrial enterprises throughout the country, and especially in the south. much of this progress would certainly have been realized if the business league had never been organized; but every one granted that in all the development the genius of the leader at tuskegee was the chief force. about his greatness and his very definite contribution there could be no question. . _individual achievement: the spanish-american war_ it happened that just at the time that booker t. washington was advancing to great distinction, three or four other individuals were reflecting special credit on the race. one of these was a young scholar, w.e. burghardt dubois, who after a college career at fisk continued his studies at harvard and berlin and finally took the ph.d. degree at harvard in . there had been sound scholars in the race before dubois, but generally these had rested on attainment in the languages or mathematics, and most frequently they had expressed themselves in rather philosophical disquisition. here, however, was a thorough student of economics, and one who was able to attack the problems of his people and meet opponents on the basis of modern science. he was destined to do great good, and the race was proud of him. in also an authentic young poet who had wrestled with poverty and doubt at last gained a hearing. after completing the course at a high school in dayton, paul laurence dunbar ran an elevator for four dollars a week, and then he peddled from door to door two little volumes of verse that had been privately printed. william dean howells at length gave him a helping hand, and dodd, mead & co. published _lyrics of lowly life_. dunbar wrote both in classic english and in the dialect that voiced the humor and the pathos of the life of those for whom he spoke. what was not at the time especially observed was that in numerous poems he suggested the discontent with the age in which he lived and thus struck what later years were to prove an important keynote. after he had waited and struggled so long, his success was so great that it became a vogue, and imitators sprang up everywhere. he touched the heart of his people and the race loved him. by also word began to come of a negro american painter, henry o. tanner, who was winning laurels in paris. at the same time a beautiful singer, mme. sissieretta jones, on the concert stage was giving new proof of the possibilities of the negro as an artist in song. in the previous decade mme. marie selika, a cultured vocalist of the first rank, had delighted audiences in both america and europe, and in had appeared flora batson, a ballad singer whose work at its best was of the sort that sends an audience into the wildest enthusiasm. in , moreover, harry t. burleigh, competing against sixty candidates, became baritone soloist at st. georges's episcopal church, new york, and just a few years later he was to be employed also at temple emanu-el, the fifth avenue jewish synagogue. from abroad also came word of a brilliant musician, samuel coleridge-taylor, who by his "hiawatha's wedding-feast" in leaped into the rank of the foremost living english composers. on the more popular stage appeared light musical comedy, intermediate between the old negro minstrelsy and a genuine negro drama, the representative companies becoming within the next few years those of cole and johnson, and williams and walker. especially outstanding in the course of the decade, however, was the work of the negro soldier in the spanish-american war. there were at the time four regiments of colored regulars in the army of the united states, the twenty-fourth infantry, the twenty-fifth infantry, the ninth cavalry, and the tenth cavalry. when the war broke out president mckinley sent to congress a message recommending the enlistment of more regiments of negroes. congress failed to act; nevertheless colored troops enlisted in the volunteer service in massachusetts, indiana, illinois, kansas, ohio, north carolina, tennessee, and virginia. the eighth illinois was officered throughout by negroes, j.r. marshall commanding; and major charles e. young, a west point graduate, was in charge of the ohio battalion. the very first regiment ordered to the front when the war broke out was the twenty-fourth infantry; and negro troops were conspicuous in the fighting around santiago. they figured in a brilliant charge at las quasimas on june , and in an attack on july upon a garrison at el caney (a position of importance for securing possession of a line of hills along the san juan river, a mile and a half from santiago) the first volunteer cavalry (colonel roosevelt's "rough riders") was practically saved from annihilation by the gallant work of the men of the tenth cavalry. fully as patriotic, though in another way, was a deed of the twenty-fourth infantry. learning that general miles desired a regiment for the cleaning of a yellow fever hospital and the nursing of some victims of the disease, the twenty-fourth volunteered its services and by one day's work so cleared away the rubbish and cleaned the camp that the number of cases was greatly reduced. said the _review of reviews_ in editorial comment:[ ] "one of the most gratifying incidents of the spanish war has been the enthusiasm that the colored regiments of the regular army have aroused throughout the whole country. their fighting at santiago was magnificent. the negro soldiers showed excellent discipline, the highest qualities of personal bravery, very superior physical endurance, unfailing good temper, and the most generous disposition toward all comrades in arms, whether white or black. roosevelt's rough riders have come back singing the praises of the colored troops. there is not a dissenting voice in the chorus of praise.... men who can fight for their country as did these colored troops ought to have their full share of gratitude and honor." [footnote : october, , p. .] . _mob violence; election troubles; the atlanta massacre_ after two or three years of comparative quiet--but only _comparative_ quiet--mob violence burst forth about the turn of the century with redoubled intensity. in a large way this was simply a result of the campaigns for disfranchisement that in some of the southern states were just now getting under way; but charges of assault and questions of labor also played a part. in some places people who were innocent of any charge whatever were attacked, and so many were killed that sometimes it seemed that the law had broken down altogether. not the least interesting development of these troublous years was that in some cases as never before negroes began to fight with their backs to the wall, and thus at the very close of the century--at the end of a bitter decade and the beginning of one still more bitter--a new factor entered into the problem, one that was destined more and more to demand consideration. on one sunday toward the close of october, , the country recorded two race wars, one lynching, two murders, one of which was expected to lead to a lynching, with a total of ten negroes killed and four wounded and four white men killed and seven wounded. the most serious outbreak was in the state of mississippi, and it is worthy of note that in not one single case was there any question of rape. november was made red by election troubles in both north and south carolina. in the latter state, at phoenix, in greenwood county, on november and for some days thereafter, the tolberts, a well-known family of white republicans, were attacked by mobs and barely escaped alive. r.r. tolbert was a candidate for congress and also chairman of the republican state committee. john r. tolbert, his father, collector of the port of charleston, had come home to vote and was at one of the polling-places in the county. thomas tolbert at phoenix was taking the affidavits of the negroes who were not permitted to vote for his brother in order that later there might be ground on which to contest the election. while thus engaged he was attacked by etheridge, the democratic manager of another precinct. the negroes came to tolbert's defense, and in the fight that followed etheridge was killed and tolbert wounded. john tolbert, coming up, was filled with buckshot, and a younger member of the family was also hurt. the negroes were at length overpowered and the tolberts forced to flee. all told it appears that two white men and about twelve negroes lost their lives in connection with the trouble, six of the latter being lynched on account of the death of etheridge. in north carolina in the republicans by combining with the populists had secured control of the state legislature. in the democrats were again outvoted, governor russell being elected by a plurality of . a considerable number of local offices was in the hands of negroes, who had the backing of the governor, the legislature, and the supreme court as well. before the november elections in the democrats in wilmington announced their determination to prevent negroes from holding office in the city. especially had they been made angry by an editorial in a local negro paper, the _record_, in which, under date august , the editor, alex. l. manly, starting with a reference to a speaker from georgia, who at the agricultural society meeting at tybee had advocated lynching as an extreme measure, said that she "lost sight of the basic principle of the religion of christ in her plea for one class of people as against another," and continued: "the papers are filled with reports of rapes of white women, and the subsequent lynching of the alleged rapists. the editors pour forth volleys of aspersions against all negroes because of the few who may be guilty. if the papers and speakers of the other race would condemn the commission of crime because it is crime and not try to make it appear that the negroes were the only criminals, they would find their strongest allies in the intelligent negroes themselves, and together the whites and blacks would root the evil out of both races.... our experience among poor white people in the country teaches us that the women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than are the white men with colored women. meetings of this kind go on for some time until the woman's infatuation or the man's boldness brings attention to them and the man is lynched for rape." in reply to this the speaker quoted in a signed statement said: "when the negro manly attributed the crime of rape to intimacy between negro men and white women of the south, the slanderer should be made to fear a lyncher's rope rather than occupy a place in new york newspapers"--a method of argument that was unfortunately all too common in the south. as election day approached the democrats sought generally to intimidate the negroes, the streets and roads being patrolled by men wearing red shirts. election day, however, passed without any disturbance; but on the next day there was a mass meeting of white citizens, at which there were adopted resolutions to employ white labor instead of negro, to banish the editor of the _record_, and to send away from the city the printing-press in the office of that paper; and a committee of twenty-five was appointed to see that these resolutions were carried into effect within twenty-four hours. in the course of the terrible day that followed the printing office was destroyed, several white republicans were driven from the city, and nine negroes were killed at once, though no one could say with accuracy just how many more lost their lives or were seriously wounded before the trouble was over. charles w. chesnutt, in _the marrow of tradition_, has given a faithful portrayal of these disgraceful events, the wellington of the story being wilmington. perhaps the best commentary on those who thus sought power was afforded by their apologist, a presbyterian minister and editor, a.j. mckelway, who on this occasion and others wrote articles in the _independent_ and the _outlook_ justifying the proceedings. said he: "it is difficult to speak of the red shirts without a smile. they victimized the negroes with a huge practical joke.... a dozen men would meet at a crossroad, on horseback, clad in red shirts or calico, flannel or silk, according to the taste of the owner and the enthusiasm of his womankind. they would gallop through the country, and the negro would quietly make up his mind that his interest in political affairs was not a large one, anyhow. it would be wise not to vote, and wiser not to register to prevent being dragooned into voting on election day." it thus appears that the forcible seizure of the political rights of people, the killing and wounding of many, and the compelling of scores to leave their homes amount in the end to not more than a "practical joke." one part of the new program was the most intense opposition to federal negro appointees anywhere in the south. on the morning of february , , frazer b. baker, the colored postmaster at lake city, s.c., awoke to find his house in flames. attempting to escape, he and his baby boy were shot and killed and their bodies consumed in the burning house. his wife and the other children were wounded but escaped. the postmaster-general was quite disposed to see that justice was done in this case; but the men charged with the crime gave the most trivial alibis, and on saturday, april , , the jury in the united states circuit court at charleston reported its failure to agree on a verdict. three years later the whole problem was presented strongly to president roosevelt. when mrs. minne cox, who was serving efficiently as postmistress at indianola, miss., was forced to resign because of threats, he closed the office; and when there was protest against the appointment of dr. william d. crum as collector of the port of charleston, he said, "i do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office. so far as i legitimately can, i shall always endeavor to pay regard to the wishes and feelings of the people of each locality; but i can not consent to take the position that the door of hope--the door of opportunity--is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. such an attitude would, according to my convictions, be fundamentally wrong." these memorable words, coming in a day of compromise and expediency in high places, greatly cheered the heart of the race. just the year before, the importance of the incident of booker t. washington's taking lunch with president roosevelt was rather unnecessarily magnified by the south into all sorts of discussion of social equality. on tuesday, january , , a fire in the center of the town of palmetto, ga., destroyed a hotel, two stores, and a storehouse, on which property there was little insurance. the next saturday there was another fire and this destroyed a considerable part of the town. for some weeks there was no clue as to the origin of these fires; but about the middle of march something overheard by a white citizen led to the implicating of nine negroes. these men were arrested and confined for the night of march in a warehouse to await trial the next morning, a dummy guard of six men being placed before the door. about midnight a mob came, pushed open the door, and fired two volleys at the negroes, killing four immediately and fatally wounding four more. the circumstances of this atrocious crime oppressed the negro people of the state as few things had done since the civil war. that it did no good was evident, for in its underlying psychology it was closely associated with a double crime that was now to be committed. in april, sam hose, a negro who had brooded on the happenings at palmetto, not many miles from the scene killed a farmer, alfred cranford, who had been a leader of the mob, and outraged his wife. for two weeks he was hunted like an animal, the white people of the state meanwhile being almost unnerved and the negroes sickened by the pursuit. at last, however, he was found, and on sunday, april , at newnan, ga., he was burned, his execution being accompanied by unspeakable mutilation; and on the same day lige strickland, a negro preacher whom hose had accused of complicity in his crime, was hanged near palmetto. the nation stood aghast, for the recent events in georgia had shaken the very foundations of american civilization. said the _charleston news and courier_: "the chains which bound the citizen, sam hose, to the stake at newnan mean more for us and for his race than the chains or bonds of slavery, which they supplanted. the flames that lit the scene of his torture shed their baleful light throughout every corner of our land, and exposed a state of things, actual and potential, among us that should rouse the dullest mind to a sharp sense of our true condition, and of our unchanged and unchangeable relations to the whole race whom the tortured wretch represented." violence breeds violence, and two or three outstanding events are yet to be recorded. on august , , at darien, ga., hundreds of negroes, who for days had been aroused by rumors of a threatened lynching, assembled at the ringing of the bell of a church opposite the jail and by their presence prevented the removal of a prisoner. they were later tried for insurrection and twenty-one sent to the convict farms for a year. the general circumstances of the uprising excited great interest throughout the country. in may, , in augusta, ga., an unfortunate street car incident resulted in the death of the aggressor, a young white man named whitney, and in the lynching of the colored man, wilson, who killed him. in this instance the victim was tortured and mutilated, parts of his body and of the rope by which he was hanged being passed around as souvenirs. a negro organization at length recovered the body, and so great was the excitement at the funeral that the coffin was not allowed to be opened. two months later, in new orleans, there was a most extraordinary occurrence, the same being important because the leading figure was very frankly regarded by the negroes as a hero and his fight in his own defense a sign that the men of the race would not always be shot down without some effort to protect themselves. one night in july, an hour before midnight, two negroes robert charles and leonard pierce, who had recently come into the city from mississippi and whose movements had interested the police, were found by three officers on the front steps of a house in dryades street. being questioned they replied that they had been in the town two or three days and had secured work. in the course of the questioning the larger of the negroes, charles, rose to his feet; he was seized by one of the officers, mora, who began to use his billet; and in the struggle that resulted charles escaped and mora was wounded in each hand and the hip. charles now took refuge in a small house on fourth street, and when he was surrounded, with deadly aim he shot and instantly killed the first two officers who appeared.[ ] the other men advancing, retreated and waited until daylight for reënforcement, and charles himself withdrew to other quarters, and for some days his whereabouts were unknown. with the new day, however, the city was wild with excitement and thousands of men joined in the search, the newspapers all the while stirring the crowd to greater fury. mobs rushed up and down the streets assaulting negroes wherever they could be found, no effort to check them being made by the police. on the second night a crowd of nearly a thousand was addressed at the lee monument by a man from kenner, a town a few miles above the city. said he: "gentlemen, i am from kenner, and i have come down here to-night to assist you in teaching the blacks a lesson. i have killed a negro before and in revenge of the wrong wrought upon you and yours i am willing to kill again. the only way you can teach these niggers a lesson and put them in their place is to go out and lynch a few of them as an object lesson. string up a few of them. that is the only thing to do--kill them, string them up, lynch them. i will lead you. on to the parish prison and lynch pierce." the mob now rushed to the prison, stores and pawnshops being plundered on the way. within the next few hours a negro was taken from a street car on canal street, killed, and his body thrown into the gutter. an old man of seventy going to work in the morning was fatally shot. on rousseau street the mob fired into a little cabin; the inmates were asleep and an old woman was killed in bed. another old woman who looked out from her home was beaten into insensibility. a man sitting at his door was shot, beaten, and left for dead. such were the scenes that were enacted almost hourly from monday until friday evening. one night the excellent school building given by thomy lafon, a member of the race and a philanthropist, was burned. [footnote : from this time forth the wildest rumors were afloat and the number of men that charles had killed was greatly exaggerated. some reports said scores or even hundreds, and it is quite possible that any figures given herewith are an understatement.] about three o'clock on friday afternoon charles was found to be in a two-story house at the corner of saratoga and clio streets. two officers, porteus and lally, entered a lower room. the first fell dead at the first shot, and the second was mortally wounded by the next. a third, bloomfield, waiting with gun in hand, was wounded at the first shot and killed at the second. the crowd retreated, but bullets rained upon the house, charles all the while keeping watch in every direction from four different windows. every now and then he thrust his rifle through one of the shattered windowpanes and fired, working with incredible rapidity. he succeeded in killing two more of his assailants and wounding two. at last he realized that the house was on fire, and knowing that the end had come he rushed forth upon his foes, fired one shot more and fell dead. he had killed eight men and mortally wounded two or three more. his body was mutilated. in his room there was afterwards found a copy of a religious publication, and it was known that he had resented disfranchisement in louisiana and had distributed pamphlets to further a colonization scheme. no incriminating evidence, however, was found. in the same memorable year, , on the night of wednesday, august , there were serious riots in the city of new york. on the preceding sunday a policeman named thorpe in attempting to arrest a colored woman was stabbed by a negro, arthur harris, so fatally that he died on monday. on wednesday evening negroes were dragged from the street cars and beaten, and by midnight there were thousands of rioters between th and th streets. on the next night the trouble was resumed. these events were followed almost immediately by riots in akron, ohio. on the last sunday in october, , while some negroes were holding their usual fall camp-meeting in a grove in washington parish, louisiana, they were attacked, and a number of people, not less than ten and perhaps several more, were killed; and hundreds of men, women, and children felt forced to move away from the vicinity. in the first week of march, , there was in mississippi a lynching that exceeded even others of the period in its horror and that became notorious for its use of a corkscrew. a white planter of doddsville was murdered, and a negro, luther holbert, was charged with the crime. holbert fled, and his innocent wife went with him. further report we read in the democratic _evening post_ of vicksburg as follows: "when the two negroes were captured, they were tied to trees, and while the funeral pyres were being prepared they were forced to suffer the most fiendish tortures. the blacks were forced to hold out their hands while one finger at a time was chopped off. the fingers were distributed as souvenirs. the ears of the murderers were cut off. holbert was beaten severely, his skull was fractured, and one of his eyes, knocked out with a stick, hung by a shred from the socket.... the most excruciating form of punishment consisted in the use of a large corkscrew in the hands of some of the mob. this instrument was bored into the flesh of the man and the woman, in the arms, legs, and body, and then pulled out, the spirals tearing out big pieces of raw, quivering flesh every time it was withdrawn." in the summer of this same year georgia was once more the scene of a horrible lynching, two negroes, paul reed and will cato--because of the murder of the hodges family six miles from the town on july --being burned at the stake at statesville under unusually depressing circumstances. in august, , there were in springfield, illinois, race riots of such a serious nature that a force of six thousand soldiers was required to quell them. these riots were significant not only because of the attitude of northern laborers toward negro competition, but also because of the indiscriminate killing of negroes by people in the north, this indicating a genuine nationalization of the negro problem. the real climax of violence within the period, however, was the atlanta massacre of saturday, september , . throughout the summer the heated campaign of hoke smith for the governorship capitalized the gathering sentiment for the disfranchisement of the negro in the state and at length raised the race issue to such a high pitch that it leaped into flame. the feeling was intensified by the report of assaults and attempted assaults by negroes, particularly as these were detailed and magnified or even invented by an evening paper, the _atlanta news_, against which the fulton county grand jury afterwards brought in an indictment as largely responsible for the riot, and which was forced to suspend publication when the business men of the city withdrew their support. just how much foundation there was to the rumors may be seen from the following report of the investigator: "three, charged to white men, attracted comparatively little attention in the newspapers, although one, the offense of a man named turnadge, was shocking in its details. of twelve such charges against negroes in the six months preceding the riot, two were cases of rape, horrible in their details, three were aggravated attempts at rape, three may have been attempts, three were pure cases of fright on the part of white women, and in one the white woman, first asserting that a negro had assaulted her, finally confessed attempted suicide."[ ] on friday, september , while a negro was on trial, the father of the girl concerned asked the recorder for permission to deal with the negro with his own hand, and an outbreak was barely averted in the open court. on saturday evening, however, some elements in the city and from neighboring towns, heated by liquor and newspaper extras, became openly riotous and until midnight defied all law and authority. negroes were assaulted wherever they appeared, for the most part being found unsuspecting, as in the case of those who happened to be going home from work and were on street cars passing through the heart of the city. in one barber shop two workers were beaten to death and their bodies mangled. a lame bootblack, innocent and industrious, was dragged from his work and kicked and beaten to death. another young negro was stabbed with jack-knives. altogether very nearly a score of persons lost their lives and two or three times as many were injured. after some time governor terrell mobilized the militia, but the crowd did not take this move seriously, and the real feeling of the mayor, who turned on the hose of the fire department, was shown by his statement that just so long as the negroes committed certain crimes just so long would they be unceremoniously dealt with. sunday dawned upon a city of astounded white people and outraged and sullen negroes. throughout monday and tuesday the tension continued, the negroes endeavoring to defend themselves as well as they could. on monday night the union of some citizens with policemen who were advancing in a suburb in which most of the homes were those of negroes, resulted in the death of james heard, an officer, and in the wounding of some of those who accompanied him. more negroes were also killed, and a white woman to whose front porch two men were chased died of fright at seeing them shot to death. it was the disposition, however, on the part of the negroes to make armed resistance that really put an end to the massacre. now followed a procedure that is best described in the words of the prominent apologist for such outbreaks. said a.j. mckelway: "tuesday every house in the town (i.e., the suburb referred to above) was entered by the soldiers, and some two hundred and fifty negroes temporarily held, while the search was proceeding and inquiries being made. they were all disarmed, and those with concealed weapons, or under suspicion of having been in the party firing on the police, were sent to jail."[ ] it is thus evident that in this case, as in many others, the negroes who had suffered most, not the white men who killed a score of them, were disarmed, and that for the time being their terrified women and children were left defenseless. mckelway also says in this general connection: "any southern man would protect an innocent negro who appealed to him for help, with his own life if necessary." this sounds like chivalry, but it is really the survival of the old slavery attitude that begs the whole question. the negro does not feel that he should ask any other man to protect him. he has quite made up his mind that he will defend his own home himself. he stands as a man before the bar, and the one thing he wants to know is if the law and the courts of america are able to give him justice--simple justice, nothing more. [footnote : r.s. baker: _following the colour line_, .] [footnote : _outlook_, november , , p. .] . _the question of labor_ from time to time, in connection with cases of violence, we have referred to the matter of labor. riots such as we have described are primarily social in character, the call of race invariably being the final appeal. the economic motive has accompanied this, however, and has been found to be of increasing importance. says dubois: "the fatal campaign in georgia which culminated in the atlanta massacre was an attempt, fathered by conscienceless politicians, to arouse the prejudices of the rank and file of white laborers and farmers against the growing competition of black men, so that black men by law could be forced back to subserviency and serfdom."[ ] the question was indeed constantly recurrent, but even by the end of the period policies had not yet been definitely decided upon, and for the time being there were frequent armed clashes between the negro and the white laborer. both capital and common sense were making it clear, however, that the negro was undoubtedly a labor asset and would have to be given place accordingly. [footnote : _the negro in the south_, .] in march, , there were bloody riots in new orleans, these growing out of the fact that white laborers who were beginning to be organized objected to the employment of negro workers by the shipowners for the unloading of vessels. when the trouble was at its height volley after volley was poured upon the negroes, and in turn two white men were killed and several wounded. the commercial bodies of the city met, blamed the governor and the mayor for the series of outbreaks, and demanded that the outrages cease. said they: "forbearance has ceased to be a virtue. we can no longer treat with men who, with arms in their hands, are shooting down an inoffensive people because they will not think and act with them. for these reasons we say to these people that, cost what it may, we are determined that the commerce of this city must and shall be protected; that every man who desires to perform honest labor must and shall be permitted to do so regardless of race, color, or previous condition." about august i of this same year, , there were sharp conflicts between the white and the black miners at birmingham, a number being killed on both sides before military authority could intervene. three years later, moreover, the invasion of the north by negro labor had begun, and about november , , there was serious trouble in the mines at pana and virden, illinois. in the same month the convention of railroad brotherhoods in norfolk expressed strong hostility to negro labor, grand master frank p. sargent of the brotherhood of locomotive firemen saying that one of the chief purposes of the meeting of the brotherhoods was "to begin a campaign in advocacy of white supremacy in the railway service." this november, it will be recalled, was the fateful month of the election riots in north and south carolina. _the people_, the socialist-labor publication, commenting upon a negro indignation meeting at cooper union and upon the problem in general, said that the negro was essentially a wage-slave, that it was the capitalism of the north and not humanity that in the first place had demanded the freedom of the slave, that in the new day capital demanded the subjugation of the working class--negro or otherwise; and it blamed the negroes for not seeing the real issues at stake. it continued with emphasis: "it is not the _negro_ that was massacred in the carolinas; it was carolina _workingmen_, carolina _wage-slaves_ who happened to be colored men. not as negroes must the race rise;... it is as _workingmen_, as a branch of the _working class_, that the negro must denounce the carolina felonies. only by touching that chord can he denounce to a purpose, because only then does he place himself upon that elevation that will enable him to perceive the source of the specific wrong complained of now." this point of view was destined more and more to stimulate those interested in the problem, whether they accepted it in its entirety or not. another opinion, very different and also important, was that given in by the editor of _dixie_, a magazine published in atlanta and devoted to southern industrial interests. said he: "the manufacturing center of the united states will one day be located in the south; and this will come about, strange as it may seem, for the reason that the negro is a fixture here.... organized labor, as it exists to-day, is a menace to industry. the negro stands as a permanent and positive barrier against labor organization in the south.... so the negro, all unwittingly, is playing an important part in the drama of southern industrial development. his good nature defies the socialist." at the time this opinion seemed plausible, and yet the very next two decades were to raise the question if it was not founded on fallacious assumptions. the real climax of labor trouble as of mob violence within the period came in georgia and in atlanta, a city that now assumed outstanding importance as a battleground of the problems of the new south. in april, , it happened that ten white workers on the georgia railroad who had been placed on the "extra list" were replaced by negroes at lower wages. against this there was violent protest all along the route. a little more than a month later the white firemen's union started a strike that was intended to be the beginning of an effort to drive all negro firemen from southern roads, and it was soon apparent that the real contest was one occasioned by the progress in the south of organized labor on the one hand and the progress of the negro in efficiency on the other. the essential motives that entered into the struggle were in fact the same as those that characterized the trouble in new orleans in . said e.a. ball, second vice-president of the firemen's union, in an address to the public: "it will be up to you to determine whether the white firemen now employed on the georgia railroad shall be accorded rights and privileges over the negro, or whether he shall be placed on the same equality with the negro. also, it will be for you to determine whether or not white firemen, supporting families in and around atlanta on a pay of $ . a day, shall be compelled to vacate their positions in atlanta joint terminals for negroes, who are willing to do the same work for $ . ." some papers, like the augusta _herald_, said that it was a mistaken policy to give preference to negroes when white men would ultimately have to be put in charge of trains and engines; but others, like the baltimore _news_, said, "if the negro can be driven from one skilled employment, he can be driven from another; but a country that tries to do it is flying in the face of every economic law, and must feel the evil effects of its policy if it could be carried out." at any rate feeling ran very high; for a whole week about june i there were very few trains between atlanta and augusta, and there were some acts of violence; but in the face of the capital at stake and the fundamental issues involved it was simply impossible for the railroad to give way. the matter was at length referred to a board of arbitration which decided that the georgia railroad was still to employ negroes whenever they were found qualified and that they were to receive the same wages as white workers. some thought that this decision would ultimately tell against the negro, but such was not the immediate effect at least, and to all intents and purposes the white firemen had lost in the strike. the whole matter was in fact fundamentally one of the most pathetic that we have had to record. humble white workers, desirous of improving the economic condition of themselves and their families, instead of assuming a statesmanlike and truly patriotic attitude toward their problem, turned aside into the wilderness of racial hatred and were lost. this review naturally prompts reflection as to the whole function of the negro laborer in the south. in the first place, what is he worth, and especially what is he worth in honest southern opinion? it was said after the civil war that he would not work except under compulsion; just how had he come to be regarded in the industry of the new south? in a number of large employers were asked about this point. per cent said that in skilled labor they considered the negro inferior to the white worker, per cent said that he was fairly equal, and per cent said that, all things considered, he was superior. as to common labor per cent said that he was equal, per cent superior, and per cent inferior to the white worker. at the time it appeared that wages paid negroes averaged per cent of those paid white men. a similar investigation by the chattanooga _tradesman_ in brought forth five hundred replies. these were summarized as follows: "we find the negro more useful and skilled in the cotton-seed oil-mills, the lumber-mills, the foundries, brick kilns, mines, and blast-furnaces. he is superior to white labor and possibly superior to any other labor in these establishments, but not in the capacity of skillful and ingenious artisans." in this opinion, it is to be remembered, the negro was subjected to a severe test in which nothing whatever was given to him, and at least it appears that in many lines of labor he is not less than indispensable to the progress of the south. the question then arises: just what is the relation that he is finally to sustain to other workingmen? it would seem that white worker and black worker would long ago have realized their identity of interest and have come together. the unions, however, have been slow to admit negroes and give them the same footing and backing as white men. under the circumstances accordingly there remained nothing else for the negro to do except to work wherever his services were desired and on the best terms that he was able to obtain. . _defamation: brownsville_ crime demands justification, and it is not surprising that after such violence as that which we have described, and after several states had passed disfranchising acts, there appeared in the first years of the new century several publications especially defamatory of the race. some books unfortunately descended to a coarseness in vilification such as had not been reached since the civil war. from a bible house in st. louis in came _the negro a beast, or in the image of god_, a book that was destined to have an enormous circulation among the white people of the poorer class in the south, and that of course promoted the mob spirit.[ ] contemporary and of the same general tenor were r.w. shufeldt's _the negro_ and w.b. smith's _the color line_, while a member of the race itself, william hannibal thomas, published a book, _the american negro_, that was without either faith or ideal and as a denunciation of the negro in america unparalleled in its vindictiveness and exaggeration.[ ] [footnote : its fundamental assumptions were ably refuted by edward atkinson in the _north american review_, august, .] [footnote : it was reviewed in the _dial_, april , , by w.e.b. dubois, who said in part: "mr. thomas's book is a sinister symptom--a growth and development under american conditions of life which illustrates peculiarly the anomalous position of black men, and the terrific stress under which they struggle. and the struggle and the fight of human beings against hard conditions of life always tends to develop the criminal or the hypocrite, the cynic or the radical. wherever among a hard-pressed people these types begin to appear, it is a visible sign of a burden that is threatening to overtax their strength, and the foreshadowing of the age of revolt."] in january, , the new governor of mississippi, j.k. vardaman, in his inaugural address went to the extreme of voicing the opinion of those who were now contending that the education of the negro was only complicating the problem and intensifying its dangerous features. said he of the negro people: "as a race, they are deteriorating morally every day. time has demonstrated that they are more criminal as freemen than as slaves; that they are increasing in criminality with frightful rapidity, being one-third more criminal in than in ." a few weeks later bishop brown of arkansas in a widely quoted address contended that the southern negro was going backward both morally and intellectually and could never be expected to take a helpful part in the government; and he also justified lynching. in the same year one of the more advanced thinkers of the south, edgar gardner murphy, in _problems of the present south_ was not yet quite willing to receive the negro on the basis of citizenship; and thomas nelson page, who had belittled the negro in such a collection of stories as _in ole virginia_ and in such a novel as _red rock_[ ] formally stated his theories in _the negro: the southerner's problem_. the worst, however--if there could be a worst in such an array--was yet to appear. in thomas dixon added to a series of high-keyed novels _the clansman_, a glorification of the kuklux klan that gave a malignant portrayal of the negro and that was of such a quality as to arouse the most intense prejudice and hatred. within a few months the work was put on the stage and again and again it threw audiences into the wildest excitement. the production was to some extent held to blame for the atlanta massacre. in several cities it was proscribed. in philadelphia on october , , after the negro people had made an unavailing protest, three thousand of them made a demonstration before the walnut street theater where the performance was given, while the conduct of some within the playhouse almost precipitated a riot; and in this city the play was suppressed the next day. throughout the south, however, and sometimes elsewhere it continued to do its deadly work, and it was later to furnish the basis of "the birth of a nation," an elaborate motion picture of the same general tendency. [footnote : for a general treatment of the matter of the negro as dealt with in american literature, especially fiction, note "the negro in american fiction," in the _dial_, may , , a paper included in _the negro in literature and art_. the thesis there is that imaginative treatment of the negro is still governed by outworn antebellum types, or that in the search for burlesque some types of young and uncultured negroes of the present day are deliberately overdrawn, but that there is not an honest or a serious facing of the characters and the situations in the life of the negro people in the united states to-day. since the paper first appeared it has received much further point; witness the stories by e.k. means and octavius roy cohen.] still another line of attack was now to attempt to deprive the negro of any credit for initiative or for any independent achievement whatsoever. in may, , alfred h. stone contributed to the _atlantic_ a paper, "the mulatto in the negro problem," which contended at the same time that whatever meritorious work the race had accomplished was due to the infusion of white blood and that it was the mulatto that was constantly poisoning the mind of the negro with "radical teachings and destructive doctrines." these points found frequent iteration throughout the period, and years afterwards, in , the first found formal statement in the _american journal of sociology_ in an article by edward byron reuter, "the superiority of the mulatto," which the next year was elaborated into a volume, _the mulatto in the united states_. to argue the superiority of the mulatto of course is simply to argue once more the inferiority of the negro to the white man. all of this dispraise together presented a formidable case and one from which the race suffered immeasurably; nor was it entirely offset in the same years by the appearance even of dubois's remarkable book, _the souls of black folk_, or by the several uplift publications of booker t. washington. in passing we wish to refer to three points: ( ) the effect of education on the negro; ( ) the matter of the negro criminal (and of mortality), and ( ) the quality and function of the mulatto. education could certainly not be blamed for the difficulties of the problem in the new day until it had been properly tried. in no one of the southern states within the period did the negro child receive a fair chance. he was frequently subjected to inferior teaching, dilapidated accommodations, and short terms. in the representative city of atlanta in the white school population numbered , and the colored , . the negroes, however, while numbering per cent of the whole, received but per cent of the school funds. the average white teacher received $ a year, and the negro teacher $ . in the great reduction of the percentage of illiteracy in the race from in to . in the missionary colleges--those of the american missionary association, the american baptist home mission society, and the freedmen's aid society--played a much larger part than they are ordinarily given credit for; and it is a very, very rare occurrence that a graduate of one of the institutions sustained by these agencies, or even one who has attended them for any length of time, has to be summoned before the courts. their influence has most decidedly been on the side of law and order. undoubtedly some of those who have gone forth from these schools have not been very practical, and some have not gained a very firm sense of relative values in life--it would be a miracle if all had; but as a group the young people who have attended the colleges have most abundantly justified the expenditures made in their behalf, expenditures for which their respective states were not responsible but of which they reaped the benefit. from one standpoint, however, the so-called higher education did most undoubtedly complicate the problem. those critics of the race who felt that the only function of negroes in life was that of hewers of wood and drawers of water quite fully realized that negroes who had been to college did not care to work longer as field laborers. some were to prove scientific students of agriculture, but as a group they were out of the class of peons. in this they were just like white people and all other people. no one who has once seen the light chooses to live always on the plane of the "man with the hoe." nor need it be thought that these students are unduly crowding into professional pursuits. while, for instance, the number of negro physicians and dentists has greatly increased within recent years, the number would still have to be four or five times as great to sustain to the total negro population the same proportion as that borne by the whole number of white physicians and dentists to the total white population. the subjects of the criminality and the mortality of the race are in their ultimate reaches closely related, both being mainly due, as we have suggested, to the conditions under which negroes have been forced to live. in the country districts, until at least, there was little provision for improvements in methods of cooking or in sanitation, while in cities the effects of inferior housing, poor and unlighted streets, and of the segregation of vice in negro neighborhoods could not be otherwise than obvious. thus it happened in such a year as that in baltimore the negro death rate was somewhat more and in nashville just a little less than twice that of the white people. legal procedure, moreover, emphasized a vicious circle; living conditions sent the negroes to the courts in increasing numbers, and the courts sent them still farther down in the scale. there were undoubtedly some negro thieves, some negro murderers, and some negroes who were incontinent; no race has yet appeared on the face of the earth that did not contain members having such propensities, and all such people should be dealt with justly by law. our present contention is that throughout the period of which we are now speaking the dominant social system was not only such as to accentuate criminal elements but also such as even sought to discourage aspiring men. a few illustrations, drawn from widely different phases of life, must suffice. in the spring of , and again in , jackson w. giles, of montgomery county, alabama, contended before the supreme court of the united states that he and other negroes in his county were wrongfully excluded from the franchise by the new alabama constitution. twice was his case thrown out on technicalities, the first time it was said because he was petitioning for the right to vote under a constitution whose validity he denied, and the second time because the federal right that he claimed had not been passed on in the state court from whose decision he appealed. thus the supreme tribunal in the united states evaded at the time any formal judgment as to the real validity of the new suffrage provisions. in , moreover, in alabama, negroes charged with petty offenses and sometimes with no offense at all were still sent to convict farms or turned over to contractors. they were sometimes compelled to work as peons for a length of time; and they were flogged, starved, hunted with bloodhounds, and sold from one contractor to another in direct violation of law. one joseph patterson borrowed $ on a saturday, promising to pay the amount on the following tuesday morning. he did not get to town at the appointed time, and he was arrested and carried before a justice of the peace, who found him guilty of obtaining money under false pretenses. no time whatever was given to the negro to get witnesses or a lawyer, or to get money with which to pay his fine and the costs of court. he was sold for $ to a man named hardy, who worked him for a year and then sold him for $ to another man named pace. patterson tried to escape, but was recaptured and given a sentence of six months more. he was then required to serve for an additional year to pay a doctor's bill. when the case at last attracted attention, it appeared that for $ borrowed in he was not finally to be released before . another case of interest and importance was set in new york. in the spring of a pullman porter was arrested on the charge of stealing a card-case containing $ . the next day he was discharged as innocent. he then entered against his accuser a suit for $ , damages. the jury awarded him $ , , which amount the court reduced to $ , justice p.h. dugro saying that a negro when falsely imprisoned did not suffer the same amount of injury that a white man would suffer--an opinion which the new york _age_ very naturally characterized as "one of the basest and most offensive ever handed down by a new york judge." in the history of the question of the mulatto two facts are outstanding. one is that before the civil war, as was very natural under the circumstances, mulattoes became free much faster than pure negroes; thus the census of showed that of every free negroes were mulattoes and only of every slaves. since the civil war, moreover, the mulatto element has rapidly increased, advancing from . per cent of the negro population in to . per cent in , or from to per . on the whole question of the function of this mixed element the elaborate study, that of reuter, is immediately thrown out of court by its lack of accuracy. the fundamental facts on which it rests its case are not always true, and if premises are false conclusions are worthless. no work on the negro that calls toussaint l'ouverture and sojourner truth mulattoes and that will not give the race credit for several well-known pure negroes of the present day, can long command the attention of scholars. this whole argument on the mulatto goes back to the fallacy of degrading human beings by slavery for two hundred years and then arguing that they have not the capacity or the inclination to rise. in a country predominantly white the quadroon has frequently been given some advantage that his black friend did not have, from the time that one was a house-servant and the other a field-hand; but no scientific test has ever demonstrated that the black boy is intellectually inferior to the fair one. in america, however, it is the fashion to place upon the negro any blame or deficiency and to claim for the white race any merit that an individual may show. furthermore--and this is a point not often remarked in discussions of the problem--the element of genius that distinguishes the negro artist of mixed blood is most frequently one characteristically negro rather than anglo-saxon. much has been made of the fact that within the society of the race itself there have been lines of cleavage, a comparatively few people, very fair in color, sometimes drawing off to themselves. this is a fact, and it is simply one more heritage from slavery, most tenacious in some conservative cities along the coast. even there, however, old lines are vanishing and the fusion of different groups within the race rapidly going forward. undoubtedly there has been some snobbery, as there always is, and a few quadroons and octoroons have crossed the color line and been lost to the race; but these cases are after all comparatively few in number, and the younger generation is more and more emphasizing the ideals of racial solidarity. in the future there may continue to be lines of cleavage in society within the race, but the standards governing these will primarily be character and merit. on the whole, then, the mulatto has placed himself squarely on the side of the difficulties, aspirations, and achievements of the negro people and it is simply an accident and not inherent quality that accounts for the fact that he has been so prominent in the leadership of the race. the final refutation of defamation, however, is to be found in the actual achievement of members of the race themselves. the progress in spite of handicaps continued to be amazing. said the new york _sun_ early in (copied by the _times_) of "negroes who have made good": "junius c. groves of kansas produces , bushels of potatoes every year, the world's record. alfred smith received the blue ribbon at the world's fair and first prize in england for his oklahoma-raised cotton. some of the thirty-five patented devices of granville t. woods, the electrician, form part of the systems of the new york elevated railways and the bell telephone company. w. sidney pittman drew the design of the collis p. huntington memorial building, the largest and finest at tuskegee. daniel h. williams, m.d., of chicago, was the first surgeon to sew up and heal a wounded human heart. mary church terrell addressed in three languages at berlin recently the international association for the advancement of women. edward h. morris won his suit between cook county and the city of chicago, and has a law practice worth $ , a year." in one department of effort, that of sport, the negro was especially prominent. in pugilism, a diversion that has always been noteworthy for its popular appeal, peter jackson was well known as a contemporary of john l. sullivan. george dixon was, with the exception of one year, either bantamweight or featherweight champion for the whole of the period from to ; and joe gans was lightweight champion from to . joe walcott was welterweight champion from to , and was succeeded by dixie kid, who held his place from to . in , to the chagrin of thousands and with a victory that occasioned a score of racial conflicts throughout the south and west and that resulted in several deaths, jack johnson became the heavyweight champion of america, a position that he was destined to hold for seven years. in professional baseball the negro was proscribed, though occasionally a member of the race played on teams of the second group. of semi-professional teams the american giants and the leland giants of chicago, and the lincoln giants of new york, were popular favorites, and frequently numbered on their rolls players of the first order of ability. in intercollegiate baseball w.c. matthews of harvard was outstanding for several years about . in intercollegiate football lewis at harvard in the earlier nineties and bullock at dartmouth a decade later were unusually prominent, while marshall of minnesota in became an all-american end. pollard of brown, a half-back, in , and robeson of rutgers, an end, in , also won all-american honors. about the turn of the century major taylor was a champion bicycle rider, and john b. taylor of pennsylvania was an intercollegiate champion in track athletics. similarly fifteen years later binga dismond of howard and chicago, sol butler of dubuque, and howard p. drew of southern california were destined to win national and even international honors in track work. drew broke numerous records as a runner and butler was the winner in the broad jump at the inter-allied games in the pershing stadium in paris. in e. gourdin of harvard came prominently forward as one of the best track athletes that institution had ever had. in the face, then, of the negro's unquestionable physical ability and prowess the supreme criticism that he was called on to face within the period was all the more hard to bear. in all nations and in all ages courage under fire as a soldier has been regarded as the sterling test of manhood, and by this standard we have seen that in war the negro had more than vindicated himself. his very honor as a soldier was now to be attacked. in august, , companies b, c, and d of the twenty-fifth regiment, united states infantry, were stationed at fort brown, brownsville, texas, where they were forced to exercise very great self-restraint in the face of daily insults from the citizens. on the night of the th occurred a riot in which one citizen of the town was killed, another wounded, and the chief of police injured. the people of the town accused the soldiers of causing the riot and demanded their removal. brigadier-general e.a. garlington, inspector general, was sent to find the guilty men, and, failing in his mission, he recommended dishonorable discharge for the regiment. on this recommendation president roosevelt on november dismissed "without honor" the entire battalion, disqualifying its members for service thereafter in either the military or the civil employ of the united states. when congress met in december senator j.b. foraker of ohio placed himself at the head of the critics of the president's action, and in a ringing speech said of the discharged men that "they asked no favors because they were negroes, but only justice because they were men." on january the senate authorized a general investigation of the whole matter, a special message from the president on the th having revoked the civil disability of the discharged soldiers. the case was finally disposed of by a congressional act approved march , , which appointed a court of inquiry before which any discharged man who wished to reënlist had the burden of establishing his innocence--a procedure which clearly violated the fundamental principle in law that a man is to be accounted innocent until he is proved guilty. in connection with the dishonored soldier of brownsville, and indeed with reference to the negro throughout the period, we recall edwin markham's poem, "dreyfus,"[ ] written for a far different occasion but with fundamental principles of justice that are eternal: [footnote : it is here quoted with the permission of the author and in the form in which it originally appeared in _mcclure's magazine_, september, .] i a man stood stained; france was one alp of hate, pressing upon him with the whole world's weight; in all the circle of the ancient sun there was no voice to speak for him--not one; in all the world of men there was no sound but of a sword flung broken to the ground. hell laughed its little hour; and then behold how one by one the guarded gates unfold! swiftly a sword by unseen forces hurled, and now a man rising against the world! ii oh, import deep as life is, deep as time! there is a something sacred and sublime moving behind the worlds, beyond our ken, weighing the stars, weighing the deeds of men. take heart, o soul of sorrow, and be strong! there is one greater than the whole world's wrong. be hushed before the high benignant power that moves wool-shod through sepulcher and tower! no truth so low but he will give it crown; no wrong so high but he will hurl it down. o men that forge the fetter, it is vain; there is a still hand stronger than your chain. 'tis no avail to bargain, sneer, and nod, and shrug the shoulder for reply to god. . the dawn of a to-morrow the bitter period that we have been considering was not wholly without its bright features, and with the new century new voices began to be articulate. in may, , there was in montgomery a conference in which southern men undertook as never before to make a study of their problems. that some who came had yet no real conception of the task and its difficulties may be seen from the suggestion of one man that the negroes be deported to the west or to the islands of the sea. several men advocated the repeal of the fifteenth amendment. the position outstanding for its statesmanship was that of ex-governor william a. mccorkle of west virginia, who asserted that the right of franchise was the vital and underlying principle of the life of the people of the united states and must not be violated, that the remedy for present conditions was an "honest and inflexible educational and property basis, administered fairly for black and white," and finally that the negro problem was not a local problem but one to be settled by the hearty coöperation of all of the people of the united states. meanwhile the southern educational congress continued its sittings from year to year, and about there developed new and great interest in education, the southern education board acting in close coöperation with the general education board, the medium of the philanthropy of john d. rockefeller, and frequently also with the peabody and slater funds.[ ] in came the announcement of the jeanes fund, established by anna t. jeanes, a quaker of philadelphia, for the education of the negro in the rural districts of the south; and in that of the phelps-stokes fund, established by caroline phelps-stokes with emphasis on the education of the negro in africa and america. more and more these agencies were to work in harmony and coöperation with the officials in the different states concerned. in j.l.m. curry, a southern man of great breadth of culture, was still in charge of the peabody and slater funds, but he was soon to pass from the scene and in the work now to be done were prominent robert c. ogden, hollis b. frissell, wallace buttrick, george foster peabody, and james h. dillard. [footnote : in george peabody, an american merchant and patriot, established the peabody educational fund for the purpose of promoting "intellectual, moral, and industrial education in the most destitute portion of the southern states." the john f. slater fund was established in especially for the encouragement of the industrial education of negroes.] along with the mob violence, moreover, that disgraced the opening years of the century was an increasing number of officers who were disposed to do their duty even under trying circumstances. less than two months after his notorious inaugural governor vardaman of mississippi interested the reading public by ordering out a company of militia when a lynching was practically announced to take place, and by boarding a special train to the scene to save the negro. in this same state in , when the legislature passed a law levying a tax for the establishment of agricultural schools for white students, and levied this on the property of white people and negroes alike, though only the white people were to have schools, a jasper county negro contested the matter before the chancery court, which declared the law unconstitutional, and he was further supported by the supreme court of the state. such a decision was inspiring, but it was not the rule, and already the problems of another decade were being foreshadowed. already also under the stress of conditions in the south many negroes were seeking a haven in the north. by there were as many negroes in pennsylvania as in missouri, whereas twenty years before there had been twice as many in the latter state. there were in massachusetts more than in delaware, whereas twenty years before delaware had had per cent more than massachusetts. within twenty years virginia gained , white people and only , negroes, the latter having begun a steady movement to new york. north carolina gained , white people and only , negroes. south carolina and mississippi, however, were not yet affected in large measure by the movement. the race indeed was beginning to be possessed by a new consciousness. after booker t. washington was a very genuine leader. from the first, however, there was a distinct group of negro men who honestly questioned the ultimate wisdom of the so-called atlanta compromise, and who felt that in seeming to be willing temporarily to accept proscription and to waive political rights dr. washington had given up too much. sometimes also there was something in his illustrations of the effects of current methods of education that provoked reply. those who were of the opposition, however, were not at first united and constructive, and in their utterances they sometimes offended by harshness of tone. dr. washington himself said of the extremists in this group that they frequently understood theories but not things; that in college they gave little thought to preparing for any definite task in the world, but started out with the idea of preparing themselves to solve the race problem; and that many of them made a business of keeping the troubles, wrongs, and hardships of the negro race before the public.[ ] there was ample ground for this criticism. more and more, however, the opposition gained force; the _guardian_, a weekly paper edited in boston by monroe trotter, was particularly outspoken, and in boston the real climax came in in an endeavor to break up a meeting at which dr. washington was to speak. then, beginning in january, , the _voice of the negro_, a magazine published in atlanta for three years, definitely helped toward the cultivation of racial ideals. publication of the periodical became irregular after the atlanta massacre, and it finally expired in . some of the articles dealt with older and more philosophical themes, but there were also bright and illuminating studies in education and other social topics, as well as a strong stand on political issues. the _colored american_, published in boston just a few years before the _voice_ began to appear, also did inspiring work. various local or state organizations, moreover, from time to time showed the virtue of coöperation; thus the georgia equal rights convention, assembled in macon in february, , at the call of william j. white, the veteran editor of the _georgia baptist_, brought together representative men from all over the state and considered such topics as the unequal division of school taxes, the deprivation of the jury rights of negroes, the peonage system, and the penal system. in twenty-nine men of the race launched what was known as the niagara movement. the aims of this organization were freedom of speech and criticism, an unlettered and unsubsidized press, manhood suffrage, the abolition of all caste distinctions based simply on race and color, the recognition of the principle of human brotherhood as a practical present creed, the recognition of the highest and best training as the monopoly of no class or race, a belief in the dignity of labor, and united effort to realize these ideals under wise and courageous leadership. the time was not yet quite propitious, and the niagara movement as such died after three or four years. its principles lived on, however, and it greatly helped toward the formation of a stronger and more permanent organization. [footnote : see chapter "the intellectuals," in _my larger education_.] in a number of people who were interested in the general effect of the negro problem on democracy in america organized in new york the national association for the advancement of colored people.[ ] it was felt that the situation had become so bad that the time had come for a simple declaration of human rights. in moorfield storey, a distinguished lawyer of boston, became national president, and w.e. burghardt dubois director of publicity and research, and editor of the _crisis_, which periodical began publication in november of this year. the organization was successful from the first, and local branches were formed all over the country, some years elapsing, however, before the south was penetrated. said the director: "of two things we negroes have dreamed for many years: an organization so effective and so powerful that when discrimination and injustice touched one negro, it would touch , , . we have not got this yet, but we have taken a great step toward it. we have dreamed, too, of an organization that would work ceaselessly to make americans know that the so-called 'negro problem' is simply one phase of the vaster problem of democracy in america, and that those who wish freedom and justice for their country must wish it for every black citizen. this is the great and insistent message of the national association for the advancement of colored people." [footnote : for detailed statement of origin see pamphlet, "how the national association for the advancement of colored people began," by mary white ovington, published by the association.] this organization is outstanding as an effort in coöperation between the races for the improvement of the condition of the negro. of special interest along the line of economic betterment has been the national league on urban conditions among negroes, now known as the national urban league, which also has numerous branches with headquarters in new york and through whose offices thousands of negroes have been placed in honorable employment. the national urban league was also formally organized in ; it represented a merging of the different agencies working in new york city in behalf of the social betterment of the negro population, especially of the national league for the protection of colored women and of the committee for improving the industrial conditions among negroes in new york, both of which agencies had been organized in . as we shall see, the work of the league was to be greatly expanded within the next decade by the conditions brought about by the war; and under the direction of the executive secretary, eugene kinckle jones, with the assistance of alert and patriotic officers, its work was to prove one of genuinely national service. interesting also was a new concern on the part of the young southern college man about the problems at his door. within just a few years after the close of the period now considered, phelps-stokes fellowships for the study of problems relating to the negro were founded at the universities of virginia and georgia; it was expected that similar fellowships would be founded in other institutions; and there was interest in the annual meetings of the southern sociological congress and the university commission on southern race questions. thus from one direction and another at length broke upon a "vale of tears" a new day of effort and of hope. for the real contest the forces were gathering. the next decade was to be one of unending bitterness and violence, but also one in which the negro was to rise as never before to the dignity of self-reliant and courageous manhood. chapter xvi the negro in the new age . _character of the period_ the decade - , momentous in the history of the world, in the history of the negro race in america must finally be regarded as the period of a great spiritual uprising against the proscription, the defamation, and the violence of the preceding twenty years. as never before the negro began to realize that the ultimate burden of his salvation rested upon himself, and he learned to respect and to depend upon himself accordingly. the decade naturally divides into two parts, that before and that after the beginning of the great war in europe. even in the earlier years, however, the tendencies that later were dominant were beginning to be manifest. the greater part of the ten years was consumed by the two administrations of president woodrow wilson; and not only did the national government in the course of these administrations discriminate openly against persons of negro descent in the federal service and fail to protect those who happened to live in the capital, but its policy also gave encouragement to outrage in places technically said to be beyond its jurisdiction. a great war was to give new occasion and new opportunity for discrimination, defamatory propaganda was to be circulated on a scale undreamed of before, and the close of the war was to witness attempts for a new reign of terror in the south. even beyond the bounds of continental america the race was now to suffer by reason of the national policy, and the little republic of hayti to lift its bleeding hands to the calm judgment of the world. both a cause and a result of the struggle through which the race was now to pass was its astonishing progress. the fiftieth anniversary of the emancipation proclamation--january , --called to mind as did nothing else the proscription and the mistakes, but also the successes and the hopes of the negro people in america. throughout the south disfranchisement seemed almost complete; and yet, after many attempts, the movement finally failed in maryland in and in arkansas in . in , moreover, the disfranchising act of oklahoma was declared unconstitutional by the united states supreme court, and henceforth the negro could feel that the highest legal authority was no longer on the side of those who sought to deprive him of all political voice. eleven years before, the court had taken refuge in technicalities. the year was also marked by the appointment of the first negro policeman in new york, by the election of the first negro legislator in pennsylvania, and by the appointment of a man of the race, william h. lewis, as assistant attorney general of the united states; and several civil rights suits were won in massachusetts, new york, and new jersey. banks, insurance companies, and commercial and industrial enterprises were constantly being capitalized; churches erected more and more stately edifices; and fraternal organizations constantly increased in membership and wealth. by the odd fellows numbered very nearly half a million members and owned property worth two and a half million dollars; in the dunbar amusement corporation of philadelphia erected a theater costing $ , ; and the foremost business woman of the race in the decade, mme. c.j. walker, on the simple business of toilet articles and hair preparations built up an enterprise of national scope and conducted in accordance with the principles regularly governing great american commercial organizations. fifty years after emancipation, moreover, very nearly one-fourth of all the negroes in the southern states were living in homes that they themselves owned; thus , of , , houses occupied in these states were reported in as owned, and , were free of all encumbrance. the percentage of illiteracy decreased from in to . in , and movements were under way for the still more rapid spread of elementary knowledge. excellent high schools, such as those in st. louis, washington, kansas city (both cities of this name), louisville, baltimore, and other cities and towns in the border states and sometimes as far away as texas, were setting a standard such as was in accord with the best in the country; and in one year, , young people of the race received the degree of bachelor of arts, while throughout the decade different ones received honors and took the highest graduate degrees at the foremost institutions of learning in the country. early in the decade the general education board began actively to assist in the work of the higher educational institutions, and an outstanding gift was that of half a million dollars to fisk university in . meanwhile, through the national urban league and hundreds of local clubs and welfare organizations, social betterment went forward, much impetus being given to the work by the national association of colored women's clubs organized in . along with its progress, throughout the decade the race had to meet increasing bitterness and opposition, and this was intensified by the motion picture, "the birth of a nation," built on lines similar to those of _the clansman_. negro men standing high on civil service lists were sometimes set aside; in the white railway mail clerks of the south began an open campaign against negroes in the service in direct violation of the rules; and a little later in the same year segregation in the different departments became notorious. in the american bar association raised the question of the color-line; and efforts for the restriction of negroes to certain neighborhoods in different prominent cities sometimes resulted in violence, as in the dynamiting of the homes of negroes in kansas city, missouri, in . when the progressive party was organized in the negro was given to understand that his support was not sought, and in a strike of firemen on the queen and crescent railroad was in its main outlines similar to the trouble on the georgia railroad two years before. meanwhile in the south the race received only per cent of the total expenditures for education, although it constituted more than per cent of the population. worse than anything else, however, was the matter of lynching. in each year the total number of victims of illegal execution continued to number three- or fourscore; but no one could ever be sure that every instance had been recorded. between the opening of the decade and the time of the entrance of the united states into the war, five cases were attended by such unusual circumstances that the public could not soon forget them. at coatesville, pennsylvania, not far from philadelphia, on august , , a negro laborer, zach walker, while drunk, fatally shot a night watchman. he was pursued and attempted suicide. wounded, he was brought to town and placed in the hospital. from this place he was taken chained to his cot, dragged for some miles, and then tortured and burned to death in the presence of a great crowd of people, including many women, and his bones and the links of the chain which bound him distributed as souvenirs. at monticello, georgia, in january, , when a negro family resisted an officer who was making an arrest, the father, dan barbour, his young son, and his two daughters were all hanged to a tree and their bodies riddled with bullets. before the close of the year there was serious trouble in the southwestern portion of the state, and behind this lay all the evils of the system of peonage in the black belt. driven to desperation by the mistreatment accorded them in the raising of cotton, the negroes at last killed an overseer who had whipped a negro boy. a reign of terror was then instituted; churches, society halls, and homes were burnt, and several individuals shot. on december there was a wholesale lynching of six negroes in early county. less than three weeks afterwards a sheriff who attempted to arrest some more negroes and who was accompanied by a mob was killed. then (january , ) five negroes who had been taken from the jail in worth county were rushed in automobiles into lee county adjoining, and hanged and shot. on may , , at waco, texas, jesse washington, a sullen and overgrown boy of seventeen, who worked for a white farmer named fryar at the town of robinson, six miles away, and who one week before had criminally assaulted and killed mrs. fryar, after unspeakable mutilation was burned in the heart of the town. a part of the torture consisted in stabbing with knives and the cutting off of the boy's fingers as he grabbed the chain by which he was bound. finally, on october , , anthony crawford, a negro farmer of abbeville, south carolina, who owned four hundred and twenty-seven acres of the best cotton land in his county and who was reported to be worth $ , , was lynched. he had come to town to the store of w.d. barksdale to sell a load of cotton-seed, and the two men had quarreled about the price, although no blow was struck on either side. a little later, however, crawford was arrested by a local policeman and a crowd of idlers from the public square rushed to give him a whipping for his "impudence." he promptly knocked down the ringleader with a hammer. the mob then set upon him, nearly killed him, and at length threw him into the jail. a few hours later, fearing that the sheriff would secretly remove the prisoner, it returned, dragged the wounded man forth, and then hanged and shot him, after which proceedings warning was sent to his family to leave the county by the middle of the next month. it will be observed that in these five noteworthy occurrences, in only one case was there any question of criminal assault. on the other hand, in one case two young women were included among the victims; another was really a series of lynchings emphasizing the lot of some negroes under a vicious economic system; and the last simply grew out of the jealousy and hatred aroused by a negro of independent means who knew how to stand up for his rights. such was the progress, such also the violence that the negro witnessed during the decade. along with his problems at home he now began to have a new interest in those of his kin across the sea, and this feeling was intensified by the world war. it raises questions of such far-reaching importance, however, that it must receive separate and distinct treatment. . _migration; east st. louis_ very soon after the beginning of the great war in europe there began what will ultimately be known as the most remarkable migratory movement in the history of the negro in america. migration had indeed at no time ceased since the great movement of , but for the most part it had been merely personal and not in response to any great emergency. the sudden ceasing of the stream of immigration from europe, however, created an unprecedented demand for labor in the great industrial centers of the north, and business men were not long in realizing the possibilities of a source that had as yet been used in only the slightest degree. special agents undoubtedly worked in some measure; but the outstanding feature of the new migration was that it was primarily a mass movement and not one organized or encouraged by any special group of leaders. labor was needed in railroad construction, in the steel mills, in the tobacco farms of connecticut, and in the packing-houses, foundries, and automobile plants. in the new england tobacco growers hastily got together in new york two hundred girls; but these proved to be unsatisfactory, and it was realized that the labor supply would have to be more carefully supervised. in january, , the management of the continental tobacco corporation definitely decided on the policy of importing workers from the south, and within the next year not less than three thousand negroes came to hartford, several hundred being students from the schools and colleges who went north to work for the summer. in the same summer came also train-loads of negroes from jacksonville and other points to work for the erie and pennsylvania railroads. those who left their homes in the south to find new ones in the north thus worked first of all in response to a new economic demand. prominent in their thought to urge them on, however, were the generally unsatisfactory conditions in the south from which they had so long suffered and from which all too often there had seemed to be no escape. as it was, they were sometimes greatly embarrassed in leaving. in jacksonville the city council passed an ordinance requiring that agents who wished to recruit labor to be sent out of the state should pay $ , for a license or suffer a fine of $ and spend sixty days in jail. macon, ga., raised the license fee to $ , . in savannah the excitement was intense. when two trains did not move as it was expected that they would, three hundred negroes paid their own fares and went north. later, when the leaders of the movement could not be found, the police arrested one hundred of the negroes and sent them to the police barracks, charging them with loitering. similar scenes were enacted elsewhere, the south being then as ever unwilling to be deprived of its labor supply. meanwhile wages for some men in such an industrial center as birmingham leaped to $ and $ a day. all told, hardly less than three-fourths of a million negroes went north within the four years - . naturally such a great shifting of population did not take place without some inconvenience and hardship. among the thousands who changed their place of residence were many ignorant and improvident persons; but sometimes it was the most skilled artisans and the most substantial owners of homes in different communities who sold their property and moved away. in the north they at once met congestion in housing facilities. in philadelphia and pittsburgh this condition became so bad as to demand immediate attention. in more than one place there were outbreaks in which lives were lost. in east st. louis, ill., all of the social problems raised by the movement were seen in their baldest guise. the original population of this city had come for the most part from georgia, mississippi, kentucky, and tennessee. it had long been an important industrial center. it was also a very rough place, the scene of prize-fights and cock-fights and a haven for escaped prisoners; and there was very close connection between the saloons and politics. for years the managers of the industrial plants had recruited their labor supply from ellis island. when this failed they turned to the negroes of the south; and difficulties were aggravated by a series of strikes on the part of the white workers. by the spring of not less than ten thousand negroes had recently arrived in the city, and the housing situation was so acute that these people were more and more being forced into the white localities. sometimes negroes who had recently arrived wandered aimlessly about the streets, where they met the rougher elements of the city; there were frequent fights and also much trouble on the street cars. the negroes interested themselves in politics and even succeeded in placing in office several men of their choice. in february, , there was a strike of the white workers at the aluminum ore works. this was adjusted at the time, but the settlement was not permanent, and meanwhile there were almost daily arrivals from the south, and the east st. louis _journal_ was demanding: "make east st. louis a lily white town." there were preliminary riots on may - . on the night of july i men in automobiles rode through the negro section and began firing promiscuously. the next day the massacre broke forth in all its fury, and before it was over hundreds of thousands of dollars in property had been destroyed, six thousand negroes had been driven from their homes, and about one hundred and fifty shot, burned, hanged, or maimed for life. officers of the law failed to do their duty, and the testimony of victims as to the torture inflicted upon them was such as to send a thrill of horror through the heart of the american people. later there was a congressional investigation, but from this nothing very material resulted. in the last week of this same month, july, , there were also serious outbreaks in both chester and philadelphia, penn., the fundamental issues being the same as in east st. louis. meanwhile welfare organizations earnestly labored to adjust the negro in his new environment. in chicago the different state clubs helped nobly. greater than any other one agency, however, was the national urban league, whose work now witnessed an unprecedented expansion. representative was the work of the detroit branch, which was not content merely with finding vacant positions, but approached manufacturers of all kinds through distribution of literature and by personal visits, and within twelve months was successful in placing not less than one thousand negroes in employment other than unskilled labor. it also established a bureau of investigation and information regarding housing conditions, and generally aimed at the proper moral and social care of those who needed its service. the whole problem of the negro was of such commanding importance after the united states entered the war as to lead to the creation of a special division of negro economics in the office of the secretary of labor, to the directorship of which dr. george e. haynes was called. in january, , a conference of migration was called in new york under the auspices of the national urban league, and this placed before the american federation of labor resolutions asking that negro labor be considered on the same basis as white. the federation had long been debating the whole question of the negro, and it had not seemed to be able to arrive at a clearcut policy though its general attitude was unfavorable. in , however, it voted to take steps to recognize and admit negro unions. at last it seemed to realize the necessity of making allies of negro workers, and of course any such change of front on the part of white workmen would menace some of the foundations of racial strife in the south and indeed in the country at large. just how effective the new decision was to be in actual practice remained to be seen, especially as the whole labor movement was thrown on the defensive by the end of . however, special interest attached to the events in bogalusa, la., in november, . here were the headquarters of the great southern lumber company, whose sawmill in the place was said to be the largest in the world. for some time it had made use of unorganized negro labor as against the white labor unions. the forces of labor, however, began to organize the negroes in the employ of the company, which held political as well as capitalistic control in the community. the company then began to have negroes arrested on charges of vagrancy, taking them before the city court and having them fined and turned over to the company to work out the fines under the guard of gunmen. in the troubles that came to a head on november , three white men were shot and killed, one of them being the district president of the american federation of labor, who was helping to give protection to a colored organizer. the full significance of this incident remained also to be seen; but it is quite possible that in the final history of the negro problem the skirmish at bogalusa will mark the beginning of the end of the exploiting of negro labor and the first recognition of the identity of interest between white and black workmen in the south. . _the great war_ just on the eve of america's entrance into the war in europe occurred an incident that from the standpoint of the negro at least must finally appear simply as the prelude to the great contest to come. once more, at an unexpected moment, ten years after brownsville, the loyalty and heroism of the negro soldier impressed the american people. the expedition of the american forces into mexico in , with the political events attending this, is a long story. the outstanding incident, however, was that in which two troops of the tenth cavalry engaged. about eighty men had been sent a long distance from the main line of the american army, their errand being supposedly the pursuit of a deserter. at or near the town of carrizal the americans seem to have chosen to go through the town rather than around it, and the result was a clash in which captain boyd, who commanded the detachment, and some twenty of his men were killed, twenty-two others being captured by the mexicans. under the circumstances the whole venture was rather imprudent in the first place. as to the engagement itself, the mexicans said that the american troops made the attack, while the latter said that the mexicans themselves first opened fire. however this may have been, all other phases of the mexican problem seemed for the moment to be forgotten at washington in the demand for the release of the twenty-two men who had been taken. there was no reason for holding them, and they were brought up to el paso within a few days and sent across the line. thus, though "some one had blundered," these negro soldiers did their duty; "theirs not to make reply; theirs but to do and die." so in the face of odds they fought like heroes and twenty died beneath the mexican stars. when the united states entered the war in europe in april, , the question of overwhelming importance to the negro people was naturally that of their relation to the great conflict in which their country had become engaged. their response to the draft call set a noteworthy example of loyalty to all other elements in the country. at the very outset the race faced a terrible dilemma: if there were to be special training camps for officers, and if the national government would make no provision otherwise, did it wish to have a special camp for negroes, such as would give formal approval to a policy of segregation, or did it wish to have no camp at all on such terms and thus lose the opportunity to have any men of the race specially trained as officers? the camp was secured--camp dodge, near des moines, iowa; and throughout the summer of the work of training went forward, the heart of a harassed and burdened people responding more and more with pride to the work of their men. on october , became commissioned officers, and all told received commissions. to the fighting forces of the united states the race furnished altogether very nearly , men, of whom just a little more than half actually saw service in europe. negro men served in all branches of the military establishment and also as surveyors and draftsmen. for the handling of many of the questions relating to them emmett j. scott was on october , , appointed special assistant to the secretary of war. mr. scott had for a number of years assisted dr. booker t. washington as secretary at tuskegee institute, and in he was one of the three members of the special commission appointed by president taft for the investigation of liberian affairs. negro nurses were authorized by the war department for service in base hospitals at six army camps, and women served also as canteen workers in france and in charge of hostess houses in the united states. sixty negro men served as chaplains; as y.m.c.a. secretaries; and others in special capacities. service of exceptional value was rendered by negro women in industry, and very largely also they maintained and promoted the food supply through agriculture at the same time that they released men for service at the front. meanwhile the race invested millions of dollars in liberty bonds and war savings stamps and contributed generously to the red cross, y.m.c.a., and other relief agencies. in the summer of interest naturally centered upon the actual performance of negro soldiers in france and upon the establishment of units of the students' army training corps in twenty leading educational institutions. when these units were demobilized in december, , provision was made in a number of the schools for the formation of units of the reserve officers' training corps. the remarkable record made by the negro in the previous wars of the country was fully equaled by that in the great war. negro soldiers fought with special distinction in the argonne forest, at château-thierry, in belleau wood, in the st. mihiel district, in the champagne sector, at vosges and metz, winning often very high praise from their commanders. entire regiments of negro troops were cited for exceptional valor and decorated with the croix de guerre--the th, the st, and the nd; while groups of officers and men of the th, the th, the th, the th, and the first battalion of the th were also decorated. at the close of the war the highest negro officers in the army were lieutenant colonel otis b. duncan, commander of the third battalion of the th, formerly the eighth illinois, and the highest ranking negro officer in the american expeditionary forces; colonel charles young (retired), on special duty at camp grant, ill.; colonel franklin a. dennison, of the th infantry, and lieutenant colonel benjamin o. davis, of the ninth cavalry. the th was the first american regiment stationed in the st. mihiel sector; it was one of the three that occupied a sector at verdun when a penetration there would have been disastrous to the allied cause; and it went direct from the training camp to the firing-line. noteworthy also was the record of the th infantry, formerly the fifteenth regiment, new york national guard. this organization was under shellfire for days, and it held one trench for days without relief. it was the first unit of allied fighters to reach the rhine, going down as an advance guard of the french army of occupation. a prominent hero in this regiment was sergeant henry johnson, who returned with the croix de guerre with one star and one palm. he is credited with routing a party of germans at bois-hanzey in the argonne on may , , with singularly heavy losses to the enemy. many other men acted with similar bravery. hardly less heroic was the service of the stevedore regiments, or the thousands of men in the army who did not go to france but who did their duty as they were commanded at home. general vincenden said of the men of the th: "fired by a noble ardor, they go at times even beyond the objectives given them by the higher command; they have always wished to be in the front line"; and general coybet said of the st and nd: "the most powerful defenses, the most strongly organized machine gun nests, the heaviest artillery barrages--nothing could stop them. these crack regiments overcame every obstacle with a most complete contempt for danger.... they have shown us the way to victory." in spite of his noble record--perhaps in some measure because of it--and in the face of his loyal response to the call to duty, the negro unhappily became in the course of the war the victim of proscription and propaganda probably without parallel in the history of the country. no effort seems to have been spared to discredit him both as a man and as a soldier. in both france and america the apparent object of the forces working against him was the intention to prevent any feeling that the war would make any change in the condition of the race at home. in the south negroes were sometimes forced into peonage and restrained in their efforts to go north; and generally they had no representation on local boards, the draft was frequently operated so as to be unfair to them, and every man who registered found special provision for the indication of his race in the corner of his card. accordingly in many localities negroes contributed more than their quota, this being the result of favoritism shown to white draftees. the first report of the provost-marshal general showed that of every negroes called were certified for service, while of every white men called only were certified. of those summoned in class i negroes contributed . per cent of their registrants as against . per cent of the white. in france the work of defamation was manifest and flagrant. slanders about the negro soldiers were deliberately circulated among the french people, sometimes on very high authority, much of this propaganda growing out of a jealous fear of any acquaintance whatsoever of the negro men with the french women. especially insolent and sometimes brutal were the men of the military police, who at times shot and killed on the slightest provocation. proprietors who sold to negro soldiers were sometimes boycotted, and offenses were magnified which in the case of white men never saw publication. negro officers were discriminated against in hotel and traveling accommodations, while upon the ordinary men in the service fell unduly any specially unpleasant duty such as that of re-burying the dead. white women engaged in "y" work, especially southern women, showed a disposition not to serve negroes, though the red cross and salvation army organizations were much better in this respect; and finally the negro soldier was not given any place in the great victory parade in paris. about the close of the war moreover a great picture, or series of pictures, the "pantheon de la guerre," that was on a mammoth scale and that attracted extraordinary attention, was noteworthy as giving representation to all of the forces and divisions of the allied armies except the negroes in the forces from the united states.[ ] not unnaturally the germans endeavored--though without success--to capitalize the situation by circulating among the negroes insidious literature that sometimes made very strong points. all of these things are to be considered by those people in the united states who think that the negro suffers unduly from a grievance. [footnote : on the whole subject of the actual life of the negro soldier unusual interest attaches to the forthcoming and authoritative "sidelights on negro soldiers," by charles h. williams, who as a special and official investigator had unequaled opportunity to study the negro in camp and on the battle-line both in the united states and in france.] while the negro soldier abroad was thus facing unusual pressure in addition to the ordinary hardships of war, at home occurred an incident that was doubly depressing coming as it did just a few weeks after the massacre at east st. louis. in august, , a battalion of the twenty-fourth infantry, stationed at houston, texas, to assist in the work of concentrating soldiers for the war in europe, encountered the ill-will of the town, and between the city police and the negro military police there was constant friction. at last when one of the negroes had been beaten, word was circulated among his comrades that he had been shot, and a number of them set out for revenge. in the riot that followed (august ) two of the negroes and seventeen white people of the town were killed, the latter number including five policemen. as a result of this encounter sixty-three members of the battalion were court-martialed at fort sam houston. thirteen were hanged on december , , five more were executed on september , , fifty-one were sentenced to life imprisonment and five to briefer terms; and the negro people of the country felt very keenly the fact that the condemned men were hanged like common criminals rather than given the death of soldiers. thus for one reason or another the whole matter of the war and the incidents connected therewith simply made the negro question more bitterly than ever the real disposition toward him of the government under which he lived and which he had striven so long to serve. . _high tension: washington, chicago, elaine_ such incidents abroad and such feeling at home as we have recorded not only agitated the negro people, but gave thousands of other citizens concern, and when the armistice suddenly came on november , , not only in the south but in localities elsewhere in the country racial feeling had been raised to the highest point. about the same time there began to be spread abroad sinister rumors that the old kuklux were riding again; and within a few months parades at night in representative cities in alabama and georgia left no doubt that the rumors were well founded. the negro people fully realized the significance of the new movement, and they felt full well the pressure being brought to bear upon them in view of the shortage of domestic servants in the south. still more did they sense the situation that would face their sons and brothers when they returned from france. but they were not afraid; and in all of the riots of the period the noteworthy fact stands out that in some of the cities in which the situation was most tense--notably atlanta and birmingham--no great race trouble was permitted to start. in general, however, the violence that had characterized the year continued through and . in the one state of tennessee, within less than a year and on separate occasions, three negroes were burned at the stake. on may , , near memphis, ell t. person, nearly fifty years of age, was burned for the alleged assault and murder of a young woman; and in this case the word "alleged" is used advisedly, for the whole matter of the fixing of the blame for the crime and the fact that the man was denied a legal trial left grave doubt as to the extent of his guilt. on sunday, december , , at dyersburg, immediately after the adjournment of services in the churches of the town, lation scott, guilty of criminal assault, was burned; his eyes were put out with red-hot irons, a hot poker was rammed down his throat, and he was mutilated in unmentionable ways. two months later, on february , , at estill springs, jim mcilheron, who had shot and killed two young white men, was also burned at the stake. in estill springs it had for some time been the sport of young white men in the community to throw rocks at single negroes and make them run. late one afternoon mcilheron went into a store to buy some candy. as he passed out, a remark was made by one of three young men about his eating his candy. the rest of the story is obvious. as horrible as these burnings were, it is certain that they did not grind the iron into the negro's soul any more surely than the three stories that follow. hampton smith was known as one of the harshest employers of negro labor in brooks county, ga. as it was difficult for him to get help otherwise, he would go into the courts and whenever a negro was convicted and was unable to pay his fine or was sentenced to a term on the chain-gang, he would pay the fine and secure the man for work on his plantation. he thus secured the services of sidney johnson, fined thirty dollars for gambling. after johnson had more than worked out the thirty dollars he asked pay for the additional time he served. smith refused to give this and a quarrel resulted. a few mornings later, when johnson, sick, did not come to work, smith found him in his cabin and beat him. a few evenings later, while smith was sitting in his home, he was shot through a window and killed instantly, and his wife was wounded. as a result of this occurrence the negroes of both brooks and lowndes counties were terrorized for the week may - , , and not less than eleven of them lynched. into the bodies of two men lynched together not less than seven hundred bullets are said to have been fired. johnson himself had been shot dead when he was found; but his body was mutilated, dragged through the streets of valdosta, and burned. mary turner, the wife of one of the victims, said that her husband had been unjustly treated and that if she knew who had killed him she would have warrants sworn out against them. for saying this she too was lynched, although she was in an advanced state of pregnancy. her ankles were tied together and she was hung to a tree, head downward. gasoline and oil from the automobiles near were thrown on her clothing and a match applied. while she was yet alive her abdomen was cut open with a large knife and her unborn babe fell to the ground. it gave two feeble cries and then its head was crushed by a member of the mob with his heel. hundreds of bullets were then fired into the woman's body. as a result of these events not less than five hundred negroes left the immediate vicinity of valdosta immediately, and hundreds of others prepared to leave as soon as they could dispose of their land, and this they proceeded to do in the face of the threat that any negro who attempted to leave would be regarded as implicated in the murder of smith and dealt with accordingly. at the end of this same year--on december , --four young negroes--major clark, aged twenty; andrew clark, aged fifteen; maggie howze, aged twenty, and alma howze, aged sixteen--were taken from the little jail at shubuta, mississippi, and lynched on a bridge near the town. they were accused of the murder of e.l. johnston, a white dentist, though all protested their innocence. the situation that preceded the lynching was significant. major clark was in love with maggie howze and planned to marry her. this thought enraged johnston, who was soon to become the father of a child by the young woman, and who told clark to leave her alone. as the two sisters were about to be killed, maggie screamed and fought, crying, "i ain't guilty of killing the doctor and you oughtn't to kill me"; and to silence her cries one member of the mob struck her in the mouth with a monkey wrench, knocking her teeth out. on may , , at milan, telfair county, georgia, two young white men, jim dowdy and lewis evans, went drunk late at night to the negro section of the town and to the home of a widow who had two daughters. they were refused admittance and then fired into the house. the girls, frightened, ran to another home. they were pursued, and berry washington, a respectable negro seventy-two years of age, seized a shotgun, intending to give them protection; and in the course of the shooting that followed dowdy was killed. the next night, saturday the th, washington was taken to the place where dowdy was killed and his body shot to pieces. it remained for the capital of the nation, however, largely to show the real situation of the race in the aftermath of a great war conducted by a democratic administration. heretofore the federal government had declared itself powerless to act in the case of lawlessness in an individual state; but it was now to have an opportunity to deal with violence in washington itself. on july , , a series of lurid and exaggerated stories in the daily papers of attempted assaults of negroes on white women resulted in an outbreak that was intended to terrorize the popular northwest section, in which lived a large proportion of the negroes in the district of columbia. for three days the violence continued intermittently, and as the constituted police authority did practically nothing for the defense of the negro citizens, the loss of life might have been infinitely greater than it was if the colored men of the city had not assumed their own defense. as it was they saved the capital and earned the gratitude of the race and the nation. it appeared that negroes--educated, law-abiding negroes--would not now run when their lives and their homes were at stake, and before such determination the mob retreated ingloriously. just a week afterwards--before the country had really caught its breath after the events in washington--there burst into flame in chicago a race war of the greatest bitterness and fierceness. for a number of years the western metropolis had been known as that city offering to the negro the best industrial and political opportunity in the country. when the migration caused by the war was at its height, tens of thousands of negroes from the south passed through the city going elsewhere, but thousands also remained to work in the stockyards or other places. with all of the coming and going, the negroes in the city must at any time in or have numbered not less than , ; and banks, coöperative societies, and race newspapers flourished. there were also abundant social problems awakened by the saloons and gambling dens, and by the seamy side of politics. those who had been longest in the city, however, rallied to the needs of the newcomers, and in their homes, their churches, and their places of work endeavored to get them adjusted in their environment. the housing situation, in spite of all such effort, became more and more acute, and when some negroes were forced beyond the bounds of the old "black belt" there were attempts to dynamite their new residences. meanwhile hundreds of young men who had gone to france or to cantonments-- from the district of one draft board at state and th streets--returned to find again a place in the life of chicago; and daily from washington or from the south came the great waves of social unrest. said arnold hill, secretary of the chicago branch of the national urban league: "every time a lynching takes place in a community down south you can depend on it that colored people from that community will arrive in chicago inside of two weeks; we have seen it happen so often that whenever we read newspaper dispatches of a public hanging or burning in a texas or a mississippi town, we get ready to extend greetings to the people from the immediate vicinity of the lynching." before the armistice was signed the league was each month finding work for or men and women; in the following april the number fell to , but with the coming of summer it rapidly rose again. unskilled work was plentiful, and jobs in foundries and steel mills, in building and construction work, and in light factories and packing-houses kept up a steady demand for laborers. meanwhile trouble was brewing, and on the streets there were occasional encounters. such was the situation when on a sunday at the end of july a negro boy at a bathing beach near twenty-sixth street swam across an imaginary segregation line. white boys threw rocks at him, knocked him off a raft, and he was drowned. colored people rushed to a policeman and asked him to arrest the boys who threw the stones. he refused to do so, and as the dead body of the negro boy was being handled, more rocks were thrown on both sides. the trouble thus engendered spread through the negro district on the south side, and for a week it was impossible or dangerous for people to go to work. some employed at the stockyards could not get to their work for some days further. at the end of three days twenty negroes were reported as dead, fourteen white men were dead, scores of people were injured, and a number of houses of negroes burned. in the face of this disaster the great soul of chicago rose above its materialism. there were many conferences between representative people; out of all the effort grew the determination to work for a nobler city; and the sincerity was such as to give one hope not only for chicago but also for a new and better america. the riots in washington and chicago were followed within a few weeks by outbreaks in knoxville and omaha. in the latter place the fundamental cause of the trouble was social and political corruption, and because he strongly opposed the lynching of william brown, the negro, the mayor of the city, edward p. smith, very nearly lost his life. as it was, the county court house was burned, one man more was killed, and perhaps as many as forty injured. more important even than this, however--and indeed one of the two or three most far-reaching instances of racial trouble in the history of the negro in america--was the reign of terror in and near elaine, phillips county, arkansas, in the first week of october, . the causes of this were fundamental and reached the very heart of the race problem and of the daily life of tens of thousands of negroes. many negro tenants in eastern arkansas, as in other states, were still living under a share system by which the owner furnished the land and the negro the labor, and by which at the end of the year the two supposedly got equal parts of the crop. meanwhile throughout the year the tenant would get his food, clothing, and other supplies at exorbitant prices from a "commissary" operated by the planter or his agent; and in actual practice the landowner and the tenant did not go together to a city to dispose of the crop when it was gathered, as was sometimes done elsewhere, but the landowner alone sold the crop and settled with the tenant whenever and however he pleased; nor at the time of settlement was any itemized statement of supplies given, only the total amount owed being stated. obviously the planter could regularly pad his accounts, keep the negro in debt, and be assured of his labor supply from year to year. in the price of cotton was constantly rising and at length reached forty cents a pound. even with the cheating to which the negroes were subjected, it became difficult to keep them in debt, and they became more and more insistent in their demands for itemized statements. nevertheless some of those whose cotton was sold in october, , did not get any statement of any sort before july of the next year. seeing no other way out of their difficulty, sixty-eight of the negroes got together and decided to hire a lawyer who would help them to get statements of their accounts and settlement at the right figures. feeling that the life of any negro lawyer who took such a case would be endangered, they employed the firm of bratton and bratton, of little rock. they made contracts with this firm to handle the sixty-eight cases at fifty dollars each in cash and a percentage of the moneys collected from the white planters. some of the negroes also planned to go before the federal grand jury and charge certain planters with peonage. they had secret meetings from time to time in order to collect the money to be paid in advance and to collect the evidence which would enable them successfully to prosecute their cases. some negro cotton-pickers about the same time organized a union; and at elaine many negroes who worked in the sawmills and who desired to protect their wives and daughters from insult, refused to allow them to pick cotton or to work for a white man at any price. such was the sentiment out of which developed the progressive farmers and household union of america, which was an effort by legal means to secure protection from unscrupulous landlords, but which did use the form of a fraternal order with passwords and grips and insignia so as the more forcefully to appeal to some of its members. about the first of october the report was spread abroad in phillips county that the negroes were plotting an insurrection and that they were rapidly preparing to massacre the white people on a great scale. when the situation had become tense, one sunday john clem, a white man from helena, drunk, came to elaine and proceeded to terrorize the negro population by gun play. the colored people kept off the streets in order to avoid trouble and telephoned the sheriff at helena. this man failed to act. the next day clem was abroad again, but the negroes still avoided trouble, thinking that his acts were simply designed to start a race riot. on tuesday evening, october , however, w.d. adkins, a special agent of the missouri pacific railroad, in company with charles pratt, a deputy sheriff, was riding past a negro church near hoop spur, a small community just a few miles from elaine. according to pratt, persons in the church fired without cause on the party, killing adkins and wounding himself. according to the negroes, adkins and pratt fired into the church, evidently to frighten the people there assembled. at any rate word spread through the county that the massacre had started, and for days there was murder and rioting, in the course of which not less than five white men and twenty-five negroes were killed, though some estimates placed the number of fatalities a great deal higher. negroes were arrested and disarmed; some were shot on the highways; homes were fired into; and at one time hundreds of men and women were in a stockade under heavy guard and under the most unwholesome conditions, while hundreds of white men, armed to the teeth, rushed to the vicinity from neighboring cities and towns. governor charles h. brough telegraphed to camp pike for federal troops, and five hundred were mobilized at once "to repel the attack of the black army." worse than any other feature was the wanton slaying of the four johnston brothers, whose father had been a prominent presbyterian minister and whose mother was formerly a school-teacher. dr. d.a.e. johnston was a successful dentist and owned a three-story building in helena. dr. louis johnston was a physician who lived in oklahoma and who had come home on a visit. a third brother had served in france and been wounded and gassed at château-thierry. altogether one thousand negroes were arrested and one hundred and twenty-two indicted. a special committee of seven gathered evidence and is charged with having used electric connections on the witness chair in order to frighten the negroes. twelve men were sentenced to death (though up to the end of execution had been stayed), and fifty-four to penitentiary terms. the trials lasted from five to ten minutes each. no witnesses for the defense were called; no negroes were on the juries; no change of venue was given. meanwhile lawyers at helena were preparing to reap further harvest from negroes who would be indicted and against whom there was no evidence, but who had saved money and liberty bonds. governor brough in a statement to the press blamed the _crisis_ and the chicago _defender_ for the trouble. he had served for a number of years as a professor of economics before becoming governor and had even identified himself with the forward-looking university commission on southern race questions; and it is true that he postponed the executions in order to allow appeals to be filed in behalf of the condemned men. that he should thus attempt to shift the burden of blame and overlook the facts when in a position of grave responsibility was a keen disappointment to the lovers of progress. reference to the monthly periodical and the weekly paper just mentioned, however, brings us to still another matter--the feeling on the part of the negro that, in addition to the outrages visited on the race, the government was now, under the cloak of wartime legislation, formally to attempt to curtail its freedom of speech. for some days the issue of the _crisis_ for may, , was held up in the mail; a south carolina representative in congress quoted by way of denunciation from the editorial "returning soldiers" in the same number of the periodical; and a little later in the year the department of justice devoted twenty-seven pages of the report of the investigation against "persons advising anarchy, sedition, and the forcible overthrow of the government" to a report on "radicalism and sedition among the negroes as reflected in their publications." among other periodicals and papers mentioned were the _messenger_ and the _negro world_ of new york; and by the _messenger_ indeed, frankly radical in its attitude not only on the race question but also on fundamental economic principles, even the _crisis_ was regarded as conservative in tone. there could be no doubt that a great spiritual change had come over the negro people of the united states. at the very time that their sons and brothers were making the supreme sacrifice in france they were witnessing such events as those at east st. louis or houston, or reading of three burnings within a year in tennessee. a new determination closely akin to consecration possessed them. fully to understand the new spirit one would read not only such publications as those that have been mentioned, but also those issued in the heart of the south. "good-by, black mammy," said the _southwestern christian advocate_, taking as its theme the story of four southern white men who acted as honorary pallbearers at an old negro woman's funeral, but who under no circumstances would thus have served for a thrifty, intelligent, well-educated man of the race. said the houston _informer_, voicing the feeling of thousands, "the black man fought to make the world safe for democracy; he now demands that america be made and maintained safe for black americans." with hypocrisy in the practice of the christian religion there ceased to be any patience whatsoever, as was shown by the treatment accorded a y.m.c.a. "call on behalf of the young men and boys of the two great sister anglo-saxon nations." "read! read! read!" said the _challenge magazine_, "then when the mob comes, whether with torch or with gun, let us stand at armageddon and battle for the lord." "protect your home," said the gentle _christian recorder_, "protect your wife and children, with your life if necessary. if a man crosses your threshold after you and your family, the law allows you to protect your home even if you have to kill the intruder." perhaps nothing, however, better summed up the new spirit than the following sonnet by claude mckay: if we must die, let it not be like hogs hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, while round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, making their mock at our accursed lot. if we must die, let it not be like hogs so that our precious blood may not be shed in vain; then even the monsters we defy shall be constrained to honor us, though dead! oh, kinsman! we must meet the common foe; though far outnumbered, let us still be brave, and for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! what though before us lies the open grave? like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack pressed to the wall, dying, but--fighting back! . _the widening problem_ in view of the world war and the important part taken in it by french colonial troops, especially those from senegal, it is not surprising that the heart of the negro people in the united states broadened in a new sympathy with the problems of their brothers the world over. even early in the decade that we are now considering, however, there was some indication of this tendency, and the first universal races congress in london in attracted wide attention. in february, , largely through the personal effort of dr. dubois, a pan-african congress was held in paris, the chief aims of which were the hearing of statements on the condition of negroes throughout the world, the obtaining of authoritative statements of policy toward the negro race from the great powers, the making of strong representations to the peace conference then sitting in paris in behalf of the negroes throughout the world, and the laying down of principles on which the future development of the race must take place. meanwhile the cession of the virgin islands had fixed attention upon an interesting colored population at the very door of the united states; and the american occupation of hayti culminating in the killing of many of the people in the course of president wilson's second administration gave a new feeling of kinship for the land of toussaint l'ouverture. among other things the evidence showed that on june , , under military pressure a new constitution was forced on the haytian people, one favoring the white man and the foreigner; that by force and brutality innocent men and women, including native preachers and members of their churches, had been taken, roped together, and marched as slave-gangs to prison; and that in large numbers haytians had been taken from their homes and farms and made to work on new roads for twenty cents a week, without being properly furnished with food--all of this being done under the pretense of improving the social and political condition of the country. the whole world now realized that the negro problem was no longer local in the united states or south africa, or the west indies, but international in its scope and possibilities. very early in the course of the conflict in europe it was pointed out that africa was the real prize of the war, and it is now simply a commonplace to say that the bases of the struggle were economic. nothing did germany regret more than the forcible seizure of her african possessions. one can not fail to observe, moreover, a tendency of discussion of problems resultant from the war to shift the consideration from that of pure politics to that of racial relations, and early in the conflict students of society the world over realized that it was nothing less than suicide on the part of the white race. after the close of the war many books dealing with the issues at stake were written, and in the year alone several of these appeared in the united states. of all of these publications, because of their different points of view, four might call for special consideration--_the republic of liberia_, by r.c.f. maugham; _the rising tide of color_, by lothrop stoddard; _darkwater_, by w.e. burghardt dubois, and _empire and commerce in africa: a study in economic imperialism_, by leonard woolf. the position of each of these books is clear and all bear directly upon the central theme. the _republic of liberia_ was written by one who some years ago was the english consul at monrovia and who afterwards was appointed to dakar. the supplementary preface also gives the information that the book was really written two years before it appeared, publication being delayed on account of the difficulties of printing at the time. even up to , however, the account is incomplete, and the failure to touch upon recent developments becomes serious; but it is of course impossible to record the history of liberia from to the present and reflect credit upon england. there are some pages of value in the book, especially those in which the author speaks of the labor situation in the little african republic; but these are obviously intended primarily for consumption by business men in london. "liberians," we are informed, "tell you that, whatever may be said to the contrary, the republic's most uncomfortable neighbor has always been france." this is hardly true. france has indeed on more than one occasion tried to equal her great rival in aggrandizement, but she has never quite succeeded in so doing. as we have already shown in connection with liberia in the present work, from the very first the shadow of great britain fell across the country. in more recent years, by loans that were no more than clever plans for thievery, by the forceful occupation of large tracts of land, and by interference in the internal affairs of the country, england has again and again proved herself the arch-enemy of the republic. the book so recently written in the last analysis appears to be little more than the basis of effort toward still further exploitation. the very merit of _the rising tide of color_ depends on its bias, and it is significant that the book closes with a quotation from kipling's "the heritage." to dr. stoddard the most disquieting feature of the recent situation was not the war but the peace. says he, "the white world's inability to frame a constructive settlement, the perpetuation of intestine hatreds and the menace of fresh civil wars complicated by the specter of social revolution, evoke the dread thought that the late war may be merely the first stage in a cycle of ruin." as for the war itself, "as colored men realized the significance of it all, they looked into each other's eyes and there saw the light of undreamed-of hopes. the white world was tearing itself to pieces. white solidarity was riven and shattered. and--fear of white power and respect for white civilization together dropped away like garments outworn. through the bazaars of asia ran the sibilant whisper: 'the east will see the west to bed.'" at last comes the inevitable conclusion pleading for a better understanding between england and germany and for everything else that would make for racial solidarity. the pitiful thing about this book is that it is so thoroughly representative of the thing for which it pleads. it is the very essence of jingoism; civilization does not exist in and of itself, it is "white"; and the conclusions are directly at variance with the ideals that have been supposed to guide england and america. incidentally the work speaks of the negro and negroid population of africa as "estimated at about , , ." this low estimate has proved a common pitfall for writers. if we remember that africa is three and a half times as large as the united states, and that while there are no cities as large as new york and chicago, there are many centers of very dense population; if we omit entirely from the consideration the desert of sahara and make due allowance for some heavily wooded tracts in which live no people at all; and if we then take some fairly well-known region like nigeria or sierra leone as the basis of estimate, we shall arrive at some such figure as , , . in order to satisfy any other points that might possibly be made, let us reduce this by as much as a third, and we shall still have , , , which figure we feel justified in advancing as the lowest possible estimate for the population of africa; and yet most books tell us that there are only , , people on the whole continent. _darkwater_ may be regarded as the reply to such a position as that taken by dr. stoddard. if the white world conceives it to be its destiny to exploit the darker races of mankind, then it simply remains for the darker races to gird their loins for the contest. "what of the darker world that watches? most men belong to this world. with negro and negroid, east indian, chinese, and japanese they form two-thirds of the population of the world. a belief in humanity is a belief in colored men. if the uplift of mankind must be done by men, then the destinies of this world will rest ultimately in the hands of darker nations. what, then, is this dark world thinking? it is thinking that as wild and awful as this shameful war was, it is nothing to compare with that fight for freedom which black and brown and yellow men must and will make unless their oppression and humiliation and insult at the hands of the white world cease. the dark world is going to submit to its present treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer." both of these books are strong, and both are materialistic; and materialism, it must be granted, is a very important factor in the world just now. somewhat different in outlook, however, is the book that labors under an economic subject, _empire and commerce in africa_. in general the inquiry is concerned with the question, what do we desire to attain, particularly economically, in africa, and how far is it attainable through policy? the discussion is mainly confined to the three powers: england, france, and germany; and special merit attaches to the chapter on abyssinia, probably the best brief account of this country ever written. mr. woolf announces such fundamental principles as that the land in africa should be reserved for the natives; that there should be systematic education of the natives with a view to training them to take part in, and eventually control, the government of the country; that there should be a gradual expatriation of all europeans and their capitalistic enterprises; that all revenue raised in africa should be applied to the development of the country and the education and health of the inhabitants; that alcohol should be absolutely prohibited; and that africa should be completely neutralized, that is, in no case should any military operations between european states be allowed. the difficulties of the enforcement of such a program are of course apparent to the author; but with other such volumes as this to guide and mold opinion, the time may indeed come at no distant date when africa will cease to exist solely for exploitation and no longer be the rebuke of christendom. these four books then express fairly well the different opinions and hopes with which africa and the world problem that the continent raises have recently been regarded. it remains simply to mention a conception that after the close of the war found many adherents in the united states and elsewhere, and whose operation was on a scale that forced recognition. this was the idea of the provisional republic of africa, the universal negro improvement association and african communities league of the world, the black star line of steamships, and the negro factories corporation, all of which activities were centered in new york, had as their organ the _negro world_, and as their president and leading spirit marcus garvey, who was originally from jamaica. the central thought that appealed to great crowds of people and won their support was that of freedom for the race in every sense of the word. such freedom, it was declared, transcended the mere demand for the enforcement of certain political and social rights and could finally be realised only under a vast super-government guiding the destinies of the race in africa, the united states, the west indies, and everywhere else in the world. this was to control its people "just as the pope and the catholic church control its millions in every land." the related ideas and activities were sometimes termed grandiose and they awakened much opposition on the part of the old leaders, the clergy, while conservative business stood aloof. at the same time the conception is one that deserves to be considered on its merits. it is quite possible that if promoted on a scale vast enough such a negro super-government as that proposed could be realized. it is true that england and france seem to-day to have a firm grip on the continent of africa, but the experience of germany has shown that even the mailèd fist may lose its strength overnight. with england beset with problems in ireland and the west indies, in india and egypt, it is easy for the millions in equatorial africa to be made to know that even this great power is not invincible and in time might rest with nineveh and tyre. there are things in africa that will forever baffle all europeans, and no foreign governor will ever know all that is at the back of the black man's mind. even now, without the aid of modern science, information travels in a few hours throughout the length and breadth of the continent; and those that slept are beginning to be awake and restless. let this restlessness increase, let intelligence also increase, let the natives be aided by their fever, and all the armies of europe could be lost in africa and this ancient mother still rise bloody but unbowed. the realization of the vision, however, would call for capital on a scale as vast as that of a modern war or an international industrial enterprise. at the very outset it would engage england in nothing less than a death-grapple, especially as regards the shipping on the west coast. if ships can not go from liverpool to seccondee and lagos, then england herself is doomed. the possible contest appalls the imagination. at the same time the exploiting that now goes on in the world can not go on forever. chapter xvii the negro problem it is probably clear from our study in the preceding pages that the history of the negro people in the united states falls into well defined periods or epochs. first of all there was the colonial era, extending from the time of the first coming of negroes to the english colonies to that of the revolutionary war. this divides into two parts, with a line coming at the year . before this date the exact status of the negro was more or less undefined; the system of servitude was only gradually passing into the sterner one of slavery; and especially in the middle colonies there was considerable intermixture of the races. by the year , however, it had become generally established that the negro was to be regarded not as a person but as a thing; and the next seventy years were a time of increasing numbers, but of no racial coherence or spiritual outlook, only a spasmodic insurrection here and there indicating the yearning for a better day. with the revolution there came a change, and the second period extends from this war to the civil war. this also divides into two parts, with a line at the year . in the years immediately succeeding the revolution there was put forth the first effective effort toward racial organization, this being represented by the work of such men as richard allen and prince hall; but, in spite of a new racial consciousness, the great mass of the negro people remained in much the same situation as before, the increase in numbers incident to the invention of the cotton-gin only intensifying the ultimate problem. about the year , however, the very hatred and ignominy that began to be visited upon the negro indicated that at least he was no longer a thing but a person. lynching began to grow apace, burlesque on the stage tended to depreciate and humiliate the race, and the south became definitely united in its defense of the system of slavery. on the other hand, the abolitionists challenged the attitude that was becoming popular; the negroes themselves began to be prosperous and to hold conventions; and nat turner's insurrection thrust baldly before the american people the great moral and economic problem with which they had to deal. with such divergent opinions, in spite of feeble attempts at compromise, there could be no peace until the issue of slavery at least was definitely settled. the third great period extends from the civil war to the opening of the great war in europe. like the others it also falls into two parts, the division coming at the year . the thirty years from to may be regarded as an era in which the race, now emancipated, was mainly under the guidance of political ideals. several men went to congress and popular education began to be emphasized; but the difficulties of reconstruction and the outrages of the kuklux klan were succeeded by an enveloping system of peonage, and by - the pendulum had swung fully backward and in the south disfranchisement had been arrived at as the concrete solution of the political phase of the problem. the twenty years from to formed a period of unrest and violence, but also of solid economic and social progress, the dominant influence being the work of booker t. washington. with the world war the negro people came face to face with new and vast problems of economic adjustment and passed into an entirely different period of their racial history in america. this is not all, however. the race is not to be regarded simply as existent unto itself. the most casual glance at any such account as we have given emphasizes the importance of the negro in the general history of the united states. other races have come, sometimes with great gifts or in great numbers, but it is upon this one that the country's history has turned as on a pivot. it is true that it has been despised and rejected, but more and more it seems destined to give new proof that the stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. in the colonial era it was the economic advantage of slavery over servitude that caused it to displace this institution as a system of labor. in the preliminary draft of the declaration of independence a noteworthy passage arraigned the king of england for his insistence upon the slave-trade, but this was later suppressed for reasons of policy. the war itself revealed clearly the fallacy of the position of the patriots, who fought for their rights as englishmen but not for the fundamental rights of man; and their attitude received formal expression in the compromises that entered into the constitution. the expansion of the southwest depended on the labor of the negro, whose history became inextricably bound up with that of the cotton-gin; and the question or the excuse of fugitives was the real key to the seminole wars. the long struggle culminating in the civil war was simply to settle the status of the negro in the republic; and the legislation after the war determined for a generation the history not only of the south but very largely of the nation as well. the later disfranchising acts have had overwhelming importance, the unfair system of national representation controlling the election of and thus the attitude of america in the world war. this is an astonishing phenomenon--this vast influence of a people oppressed, proscribed, and scorned. the negro is so dominant in american history not only because he tests the real meaning of democracy, not only because he challenges the conscience of the nation, but also because he calls in question one's final attitude toward human nature itself. as we have seen, it is not necessarily the worker, not even the criminal, who makes the ultimate problem, but the simple negro of whatever quality. if this man did not have to work at all, and if his race did not include a single criminal, in american opinion he would still raise a question. it is accordingly from the social standpoint that we must finally consider the problem. before we can do this we need to study the race as an actual living factor in american life; and even before we do that it might be in order to observe the general importance of the negro to-day in any discussion of the racial problems of the world. . _world aspect_ any consideration of the negro problem in its world aspect at the present time must necessarily be very largely concerned with africa as the center of the negro population. this in turn directs attention to the great colonizing powers of europe, and especially to great britain as the chief of these; and the questions that result are of far-reaching importance for the whole fabric of modern civilization. no one can gainsay the tremendous contribution that england has made to the world; every one must respect a nation that produced wycliffe and shakespeare and darwin, and that, standing for democratic principles, has so often stayed the tide of absolutism and anarchy; and it is not without desert that for three hundred years this country has held the moral leadership of mankind. it may now not unreasonably be asked, however, if it has not lost some of its old ideals, and if further insistence upon some of its policies would not constitute a menace to all that the heart of humanity holds dear. as a preliminary to our discussion let us remark two men by way of contrast. a little more than seventy years ago a great traveler set out upon the first of three long journeys through central and southern africa. he was a renowned explorer, and yet to him "the end of the geographical feat was only the beginning of the enterprise." said henry drummond of him: "wherever david livingstone's footsteps are crossed in africa the fragrance of his memory seems to remain." on one occasion a hunter was impaled on the horn of a rhinoceros, and a messenger ran eight miles for the physician. although he himself had been wounded for life by a lion and his friends said that he should not ride at night through a wood infested with beasts, livingstone insisted on his christian duty to go, only to find that the man had died and to be obliged to retrace his footsteps. again and again his party would have been destroyed if it had not been for his own unbounded tact and courage, and after his death at chitambo's village susi and chuma journeyed for nine months and over eight hundred miles to take his body to the coast. "we work for a glorious future," said he, "which we are not destined to see--the golden age which has not been, but will yet be. we are only morning-stars shining in the dark, but the glorious morn will break, the good time coming yet. for this time we work; may god accept our imperfect service." about the time that livingstone was passing off the scene another strong man, one of england's "empire builders," began his famous career. going first to south africa as a young man in quest of health, cecil rhodes soon made a huge fortune out of kimberley diamonds and transvaal gold, and by had become the prime minister of cape colony. in the pursuit of his aims he was absolutely unscrupulous. he refused to recognize any rights of the portuguese in matabeleland and mashonaland; he drove hard bargains with the germans and the french; he defied the boers; and to him the native africans were simply so many tools for the heaping up of gold. nobody ever said of him that he left a "fragrant memory" behind him; but thousands of bruised bodies and broken hearts bore witness to his policy. according to the ideals of modern england, however, he was a great man. what the negro in the last analysis wonders is: who was right, livingstone or rhodes? and which is the world to choose, christ or mammon? there are two fundamental assumptions upon which all so-called western civilization is based--that of racial and that of religious superiority. sight has been lost of the fact that there is really no such thing as a superior race, that only individuals are superior one to another, and a popular english poet has sung of "the white man's burden" and of "lesser breeds without the law." these two assumptions have accounted for all of the misunderstanding that has arisen between the west and the east, for china and japan, india and egypt can not see by what divine right men from the west suppose that they have the only correct ancestry or by what conceit they presume to have the only true faith. let them but be accepted, however, let a nation be led by them as guiding-stars, and england becomes justified in forcing her system upon india, she finds it necessary to send missionaries to japan, and the lion's paw pounces upon the very islands of the sea. the whole world, however, is now rising as never before against any semblance of selfishness on the part of great powers, and it is more than ever clear that before there can be any genuine progress toward the brotherhood of man, or toward comity among nations, one man will have to give some consideration to the other man's point of view. one people will have to respect another people's tradition. the russo-japanese war gave men a new vision. the whole world gazed upon a new power in the east--one that could be dealt with only upon equal terms. meanwhile there was unrest in india, and in africa there were insurrections of increasing bitterness and fierceness. africa especially had been misrepresented. the people were all said to be savages and cannibals, almost hopelessly degraded. the traders and the politicians knew better. they knew that there were tribes and tribes in africa, that many of the chiefs were upright and wise and proud of their tradition, and that the land could not be seized any too quickly. hence they made haste to get into the game. it is increasingly evident also that the real leadership of the world is a matter not of race, not even of professed religion, but of principle. within the last hundred years, as science has flourished and colonization grown, we have been led astray by materialism. the worship of the dollar has become a fetish, and the man or the nation that had the money felt that it was ordained of god to rule the universe. germany was led astray by this belief, but it is england, not germany, that has most thoroughly mastered the _art of colonization_. crown colonies are to be operated in the interest of the owners. jingoism is king. it matters not that the people in india and africa, in hayti and the philippines, object to our benevolence; _we_ know what is good for them and therefore they should be satisfied. in jamaica to-day the poorer people can not get employment; and yet, rather than accept the supply at hand, the powers of privilege import "coolie" labor, a still cheaper supply. in sierra leone, where certainly there has been time to see the working of the principle, native young men crowd about the wharves and seize any chance to earn a penny, simply because there is no work at hand to do--nothing that would genuinely nourish independence and self-respect. it is not strange that the worship of industrialism, with its attendant competition, finally brought about the most disastrous war in history and such a breakdown of all principles of morality as made the whole world stand aghast. womanhood was no longer sacred; old ideas of ethics vanished; christ himself was crucified again--everything holy and lovely was given to the grasping demon of wealth. suddenly men realized that england had lost the moral leadership of the world. lured by the ideals of rhodes, the country that gave to mankind _magna charta_ seemed now bent only on its own aggrandizement and preservation. germany's colonies were seized, and anything that threatened the permanence of the dominant system, especially unrest on the part of the native african, was throttled. briton and boer began to feel an identity of interest, and especially was it made known that american negroes were not wanted. just what the situation is to-day may be illustrated by the simple matter of foreign missions, the policy of missionary organizations in both england and america being dictated by the political policy of the empire. the appointing of negroes by the great american denominations for service in africa has practically ceased, for american negroes are not to be admitted to any portion of the continent except liberia, which, after all, is a very small part of the whole. for the time being the little republic seems to receive countenance from the great powers as a sort of safety-valve through which the aspiration of the negro people might spend itself; but it is evident that the present understanding is purely artificial and can not last. even the roman empire declined, and germany lost her hold in africa overnight. of course it may be contended that the british empire to-day is not decadent but stronger than ever. at the same time there can be no doubt that englishman and boer alike regard these teeming millions of prolific black people always with concern and sometimes with dismay. natives of the congo still bear the marks of mutilation, and men in south africa chafe under unjust land acts and constant indignities in their daily life. here rises the question for our own country. to the united states at last has come that moral leadership--that obligation to do the right thing--that opportunity to exhibit the highest honor in all affairs foreign or domestic--that is the ultimate test of greatness. is america to view this great problem in africa sympathetically and find some place for the groping for freedom of millions of human beings, or is she to be simply a pawn in the game of english colonization? is she to abide by the principles that guided her in , or simply seize her share of the booty? the negro either at home or abroad is only one of many moral problems with which she has to deal. at the close of the war extravagance reigned, crime was rampant, and against any one of three or four races there was insidious propaganda. to add to the difficulties, the government was still so dominated by politics and officialdom that it was almost always impossible to get things done at the time they needed to be done. at the same time every patriot knows that america is truly the hope of the world. into her civilization and her glory have entered not one but many races. all go forth against a common enemy; all should share the duties and the privileges of citizenship. in such a country the law can know no difference of race or class or creed, provided all are devoted to the general welfare. such is the obligation resting upon the united states--such the challenge of social, economic, and moral questions such as never before faced the children of men. that she be worthy of her opportunity all would pray; to the fulfilment of her destiny all should help. the eyes of the world are upon her; the scepter of the ages is in her hand. . _the negro in american life_ if now we come to the negro in the united states, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that no other race in the american body politic, not even the anglo-saxon, has been studied more critically than this one, and treatment has varied all the way from the celebration of virtues to the bitterest hostility and malignity. it is clearly fundamentally necessary to pay some attention to racial characteristics and gifts. in recent years there has been much discussion from the standpoint of biology, and special emphasis has been placed on the emotional temperament of the race. the negro, however, submits that in the united states he has not been chiefly responsible for such miscegenation as has taken place; but he is not content to rest simply upon a _tu quoque_. he calls attention to the fact that whereas it has been charged that lynchings find their excuse in rape, it has been shown again and again that this crime is the excuse for only one-fourth or one-fifth of the cases of violence. if for the moment we suppose that there is no question about guilt in a fourth or a fifth of the cases, the overwhelming fraction that remains indicates that there are other factors of the highest importance that have to be considered in any ultimate adjustment of the situation. in every case accordingly the negro asks only for a fair trial in court--not too hurried; and he knows that in many instances a calm study of the facts will reveal nothing more than fright or hysteria on the part of a woman or even other circumstances not more incriminating. unfortunately the whole question of the negro has been beclouded by misrepresentation as has no other social question before the american people, and the race asks simply first of all that the tissue of depreciation raised by prejudice be done away with in order that it may be judged and estimated for its quality. america can make no charges against any element of her population while she denies the fundamental right of citizenships--the protection of the individual person. too often mistakes are made, and no man is so humble or so low that he should be deprived of his life without due process of law. the negro undoubtedly has faults. at the same time, in order that his gifts may receive just consideration, the tradition of burlesque must for the time being be forgotten. all stories about razors, chickens, and watermelons must be relegated to the rear; and even the revered and beloved "black mammy" must receive an affectionate but a long farewell. the fact is that the negro has such a contagious brand of humor that many people never realize that this plays only on the surface. the real background of the race is one of tragedy. it is not in current jest but in the wail of the old melodies that the soul of this people is found. there is something elemental about the heart of the race, something that finds its origin in the forest and in the falling of the stars. there is something grim about it too, something that speaks of the lash, of the child torn from its mother's bosom, of the dead body swinging at night by the roadside. the race has suffered, and in its suffering lies its destiny and its contribution to america; and hereby hangs a tale. if we study the real quality of the negro we shall find that two things are observable. one is that any distinction so far won by a member of the race in america has been almost always in some one of the arts; and the other is that any influence so far exerted by the negro on american civilization has been primarily in the field of æsthetics. the reason is not far to seek, and is to be found in the artistic striving even of untutored negroes. the instinct for beauty insists upon an outlet, and if one can find no better picture he will paste a circus poster or a flaring advertisement on the wall. very few homes have not at least a geranium on the windowsill or a rosebush in the garden. if we look at the matter conversely we shall find that those things which are most picturesque make to the negro the readiest appeal. red is his favorite color simply because it is the most pronounced of all colors. the principle holds in the sphere of religion. in some of our communities negroes are known to "get happy" in church. it is, however, seldom a sermon on the rule of faith or the plan of salvation that awakens such ecstasy, but rather a vivid portrayal of the beauties of heaven, with the walls of jasper, the feast of milk and honey, and the angels with palms in their hands. the appeal is primarily sensuous, and it is hardly too much to say that the negro is thrilled not so much by the moral as by the artistic and pictorial elements in religion. every member of the race is an incipient poet, and all are enthralled by music and oratory. illustrations are abundant. we might refer to the oratory of douglass, to the poetry of dunbar, to the picturesque style of dubois, to the mysticism of the paintings of tanner, to the tragic sculpture of meta warrick fuller, and to a long line of singers and musicians. even booker washington, most practical of americans, proves the point, the distinguishing qualities of his speeches being anecdote and vivid illustration. it is best, however, to consider members of the race who were entirely untaught in the schools. on one occasion harriet tubman, famous for her work in the underground railroad, was addressing an audience and describing a great battle in the civil war. "and then," said she, "we saw the lightning, and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder, and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling, and that was drops of blood falling; and when we came to git in the craps, it was dead men that we reaped." two decades after the war john jasper, of richmond, virginia, astonished the most intelligent hearers by the power of his imagery. he preached not only that the "sun do move," but also of "dry bones in the valley," the glories of the new jerusalem, and on many similar subjects that have been used by other preachers, sometimes with hardly less effect, throughout the south. in his own way jasper was an artist. he was eminently imaginative; and it is with this imaginative--this artistic--quality that america has yet to reckon. the importance of the influence has begun to be recognized, and on the principle that to him that hath shall be given, in increasing measure the negro is being blamed for the ills of american life, a ready excuse being found in the perversion and debasement of negro music. we have seen discussions whose reasoning, condensed, was somewhat as follows: the negro element is daily becoming more potent in american society; american society is daily becoming more immoral; therefore at the door of the negro may be laid the increase in divorce and all the other evils of society. the most serious charge brought against the negro intellectually is that he has not yet developed the great creative or organizing mind that points the way of civilization. he most certainly has not, and in this he is not very unlike all the other people in america. the whole country is still in only the earlier years of its striving. while the united states has made great advance in applied science, she has as yet produced no shakespeare or beethoven. if america has not yet reached her height after three hundred years of striving, she ought not to be impatient with the negro after only sixty years of opportunity. but all signs go to prove the assumption of limited intellectual ability fundamentally false. already some of the younger men of the race have given the highest possible promise. if all of this, however, is granted, and if the negro's exemplification of the principle of self-help is also recognized, the question still remains: just what is the race worth as a constructive factor in american civilization? is it finally to be an agency for the upbuilding of the nation, or simply one of the forces that retard? what is its real promise in american life? in reply to this it might be worth while to consider first of all the country's industrial life. the south, and very largely the whole country, depends upon negro men and women as the stable labor supply in such occupations as farming, saw-milling, mining, cooking, and washing. all of this is hard work, and necessary work. in , of , , negro men at work, , were listed as farm laborers and , as farmers. that is to say, per cent of the whole number were engaged in raising farm products either on their own account or by way of assisting somebody else, and the great staples of course were the cotton and corn of the southern states. if along with the farmers we take those engaged in the occupations employing the next greatest numbers of men--those of the building and hand trades, saw and planing mills, as well as those of railway firemen and porters, draymen, teamsters, and coal mine operatives--we shall find a total of . per cent engaged in such work as represents the very foundation of american industry. of the women at work, , , , or per cent, were either farm laborers or farmers, and per cent more were either cooks or washerwomen. in other words, a total of exactly per cent were engaged in some of the hardest and at the same time some of the most vital labor in our home and industrial life. the new emphasis on the negro as an industrial factor in the course of the recent war is well known. when immigration ceased, upon his shoulders very largely fell the task of keeping the country and the army alive. since the war closed he has been on the defensive in the north; but a country that wishes to consider all of the factors that enter into its gravest social problem could never forget his valiant service in . let any one ask, moreover, even the most prejudiced observer, if he would like to see every negro in the country out of it, and he will then decide whether economically the negro is a liability or an asset. again, consider the negro soldier. in all our history there are no pages more heroic, more pathetic, than those detailing the exploits of black men. we remember the negro, three thousand strong, fighting for the liberties of america when his own race was still held in bondage. we remember the deeds at port hudson, fort pillow, and fort wagner. we remember santiago and san juan hill, not only how negro men went gallantly to the charge, but how a black regiment faced pestilence that the ranks of their white comrades might not be decimated. and then carrizal. once more, at an unexpected moment, the heart of the nation was thrilled by the troopers of the tenth cavalry. once more, despite brownsville, the tradition of fort wagner was preserved and passed on. and then came the greatest of all wars. again was the negro summoned to the colors--summoned out of all proportion to his numbers. others might desert, but not he; others might be spies or strikers, but not he--not he in the time of peril. in peace or war, in victory or danger, he has always been loyal to the stars and stripes. not only, however, does the negro give promise by reason of his economic worth; not only does he deserve the fullest rights of citizenship on the basis of his work as a soldier; he brings nothing less than a great spiritual contribution to civilization in america. his is a race of enthusiasm, imagination, and spiritual fervor; and after all the doubt and fear through which it has passed there still rests with it an abiding faith in god. around us everywhere are commercialism, politics, graft--sordidness, selfishness, cynicism. we need hope and love, a new birth of idealism, a new faith in the unseen. already the work of some members of the race has pointed the way to great things in the realm of conscious art; but above even art soars the great world of the spirit. this it is that america most sadly needs; this it is that her most fiercely persecuted children bring to her. obviously now if the negro, if any race, is to make to america the contribution of which it is capable, it must be free; and this raises the whole question of relation to the rest of the body politic. one of the interesting phenomena of society in america is that the more foreign elements enter into the "melting pot" and advance in culture, the more do they cling to their racial identity. incorporation into american life, instead of making the greek or the pole or the irishman forget his native country, makes him all the more jealous of its traditions. the more a center of any one of these nationalities develops, the more wealthy and cultured its members become, the more do we find them proud of the source from which they sprang. the irishman is now so much an american that he controls whole wards in our large cities, and sometimes the cities themselves. all the same he clings more tenaciously than ever to the celebration of march . when an isolated greek came years ago, poor and friendless, nobody thought very much about him, and he effaced himself as much as possible, taking advantage, however, of any opportunity that offered for self-improvement or economic advance. when thousands came and the newcomers could take inspiration from those of their brothers who had preceded them and achieved success, nationality asserted itself. larger groups now talked about venizelos and a greater greece; their chests expanded at the thought of marathon and plato; and companies paraded amid applause as they went to fight in the balkans. in every case, with increasing intelligence and wealth, race pride asserted itself. at the same time no one would think of denying to the greek or the irishman or the italian his full rights as an american citizen. it is a paradox indeed, this thing of a race's holding its identity at the same time that it is supposed to lose this in the larger civilization. apply the principle to the negro. very soon after the civil war, when conditions were chaotic and ignorance was rampant, the ideals constantly held before the race were those of white people. some leaders indeed measured success primarily by the extent to which they became merged in the white man's life. at the time this was very natural. a struggling people wished to show that it could be judged by the standards of the highest civilization within sight, and it did so. to-day the tide has changed. the race now numbers a few millionaires. in almost every city there are beautiful homes owned by negroes. some men have reached high attainment in scholarship, and the promise grows greater and greater in art and science. accordingly the negro now loves his own, cherishes his own, teaches his boys about black heroes, and honors and glorifies his own black women. schools and churches and all sorts of coöperative enterprises testify to the new racial self-respect, while a genuine negro drama has begun to flourish. a whole people has been reborn; a whole race has found its soul. . _face to face_ even when all that has been said is granted, it is still sometimes maintained that the negro is the one race that can not and will not be permitted to enter into the full promise of american life. other elements, it is said, even if difficult to assimilate, may gradually be brought into the body politic, but the negro is the one element that may be tolerated but not assimilated, utilized but not welcomed to the fullness of the country's glory. however, the negro has no reason to be discouraged. if one will but remember that after all slavery was but an incident and recall the status of the negro even in the free states ten years before the civil war, he will be able to see a steady line of progress forward. after the great moral and economic awakening that gave the race its freedom, the pendulum swung backward, and finally it reached its farthest point of proscription, of lawlessness, and inhumanity. no obscuring of the vision for the time being should blind us to the reading of the great movement of history. to-day in the whole question of the negro problem there are some matters of pressing and general importance. one that is constantly thrust forward is that of the negro criminal. on this the answer is clear. if a man--negro or otherwise--is a criminal, he is an enemy of society, and society demands that he be placed where he will do the least harm. if execution is necessary, this should take place in private; and in no case should the criminal be so handled as to corrupt the morals or arouse the morbid sensibilities of the populace. at the same time simple patriotism would demand that by uplifting home surroundings, good schools, and wholesome recreation everything possible be done for negro children as for other children of the republic, so that just as few of them as possible may graduate into the criminal class. another matter, closely akin to this, is that of the astonishing lust for torture that more and more is actuating the american people. when in mcintosh was burned in st. louis for the murder of an officer, the american people stood aghast, and abraham lincoln, just coming into local prominence, spoke as if the very foundations of the young republic had been shaken. after the civil war, however, horrible lynchings became frequent; and within the last decade we have seen a negro boy stabbed in numberless places while on his way to the stake, we have seen the eyes of a negro man burned out with hot irons and pieces of his flesh cut off, and a negro woman--whose only offense was a word of protest against the lynching of her husband--while in the state of advanced pregnancy hanged head downwards, her clothing burned from her body, and herself so disemboweled that her unborn babe fell to the ground. we submit that any citizens who commit such deeds as these are deserving of the most serious concern of their country; and when they bring their little children to behold their acts--when baby fingers handle mutilated flesh and baby eyes behold such pictures as we have suggested--a crime has been committed against the very name of childhood. most frequently it will be found that the men who do these things have had only the most meager educational advantages, and that generally--but not always--they live in remote communities, away from centers of enlightenment, so that their whole course of life is such as to cultivate provincialism. with not the slightest touch of irony whatever we suggest that these men need a crusade of education in books and in the fundamental obligations of citizenship. at present their ignorance, their prejudice, and their lack of moral sense constitute a national menace. it is full time to pause. we have already gone too far. the negro problem is only an index to the ills of society in america. in our haste to get rich or to meet new conditions we are in danger of losing all of our old standards of conduct, of training, and of morality. our courts need to summon a new respect for themselves. the average citizen knows only this about them, that he wants to keep away from them. so far we have not been assured of justice. the poor man has not stood an equal chance with the rich, nor the black with the white. money has been freely used, even for the changing of laws if need be; and the sentencing of a man of means generally means only that he will have a new trial. the murders in any american city average each year fifteen or twenty times as many as in an english or french city of the same size. our churches need a new baptism; they have lost the faith. the same principle applies in our home-life, in education, in literature. the family altar is almost extinct; learning is more easy than sound; and in literature as in other forms of art any passing fad is able to gain followers and pose as worthy achievement. all along the line we need more uprightness--more strength. even when a man has committed a crime, he must receive justice in court. within recent years we have heard too much about "speedy trials," which are often nothing more than legalized lynchings. if it has been decreed that a man is to wait for a trial one week or one year, the mob has nothing to do with the matter, and, if need be, all the soldiery of the united states must be called forth to prevent the storming of a jail. fortunately the last few years have shown us several sheriffs who had this conception of their duty. in the last analysis this may mean that more responsibility and more force will have to be lodged in the federal government. within recent years the dignity of the united states has been seriously impaired. the time seems now to have come when the government must make a new assertion of its integrity and its authority. no power in the country can be stronger than that of the united states of america. for the time being, then, this is what we need--a stern adherence to law. if men will not be good, they must at least be made to behave. no one will pretend, however, that an adjustment on such a basis is finally satisfactory. above the law of the state--above all law of man--is the law of god. it was given at sinai thousands of years ago. it received new meaning at calvary. to it we must all yet come. the way may be hard, and in the strife of the present the time may seem far distant; but some day the messiah will reign and man to man the world over shall brothers be "for a' that." select bibliography unless an adequate volume is to be devoted to the work, any bibliography of the history of the negro problem in the united states must be selective. no comprehensive work is in existence. importance attaches to _select list of references on the negro question_, compiled under the direction of a.p.c. griffin, library of congress, washington, ; _a select bibliography of the negro american_, edited by w.e.b. dubois, atlanta, , and _the negro problem: a bibliography_, edited by vera sieg, free library commission, madison, wis., ; but all such lists have to be supplemented for more recent years. compilations on the abolition movement, the early education of the negro, and the literary and artistic production of the race are to be found respectively in hart's _slavery and abolition_, woodson's _the education of the negro prior to _, and brawley's _the negro in literature and art_, and the _journal of negro history_ is constantly suggestive of good material. the bibliography that follows is confined to the main question. first of all are given general references, and then follows a list of individual authors and books. finally, there are special lists on topics on which the study in the present work is most intensive. in a few instances books that are superficial in method or prejudiced in tone have been mentioned as it has seemed necessary to try to consider all shades of opinion even if the expression was not always adequate. on the other hand, not every source mentioned in the footnotes is included, for sometimes these references are merely incidental; and especially does this apply in the case of lectures or magazine articles, some of which were later included in books. nor is there any reference to works of fiction. these are frequently important, and books of unusual interest are sometimes considered in the body of the work; but in such a study as the present imaginative literature can be hardly more than a secondary and a debatable source of information. select bibliography i. general references (mainly in collections, sets, or series) statutes at large, being a collection of all the laws of virginia from the first session of the legislature, in the year , by william waller hening. richmond, - . laws of the state of north carolina, compiled by henry potter, j.l. taylor, and bart. yancey. raleigh, . the statutes at large of south carolina, edited by thomas cooper. columbia, . the pro-slavery argument (as maintained by the most distinguished writers of the southern states). charleston, . files of such publications as niles's _weekly register_, the _genius of universal emancipation_, the _liberator_, and debow's _commercial review_, in the period before the civil war; and of the _crisis_, the _journal of negro history_, the _negro year-book_, the _virginia magazine of history_, the _review of reviews_, the _literary digest_, the _independent_, the _outlook_, as well as representative newspapers north and south and weekly negro newspapers in later years. johns hopkins university studies in historical and political science (some numbers important for the present work noted below). studies in history, economics, and public law edited by the faculty of political science of columbia university (some numbers important for the present work noted below). atlanta university studies of negro problems (for unusually important numbers note dubois, editor, below, also bigham). occasional papers of the american negro academy (especially note cromwell in special list no. below and grimké in no. ). census reports of the united states; also publications of the bureau of education. annual reports of the general education board, the john f. slater fund, the jeanes fund; reports and pamphlets issued by american missionary association, american baptist home mission society, freedmen's aid society, etc.; catalogues of representative educational institutions; and a volume "from servitude to service" (the old south lectures on representative educational institutions for the negro), boston, . pamphlets and reports of national association for the advancement of colored people, the national urban league, the southern sociological congress, the university commission on southern race questions, hampton conference reports, - , and proceedings of the national negro business league, annual since . the american nation: a history from original sources by associated scholars, edited by albert bushnell hart. vols. harper & bros., new york, . (volumes important for the present work specially noted below.) the chronicles of america. a series of historical narratives edited by allen johnson. vols. yale university press, new haven, --. (volumes important for the present work specially noted below.) the south in the building of the nation. vols. the southern publication society. richmond, va., . studies in southern history and politics. columbia university press, new york, . new international and americana encyclopedias (especially on such topics as africa, the negro, and negro education). ii. individual works (note pamphlets at end of list; also special lists under iii below.) adams, alice dana: the neglected period of anti-slavery in america ( - ), radcliffe college monograph no. . boston, (now handled by harvard university press). adams, henry: history of the united states from to . vols. charles scribner's sons, new york, - . alexander, william t.: history of the colored race in america. palmetto publishing co., new orleans, . armistead, wilson: a tribute for the negro, being a vindication of the moral, intellectual, and religious capabilities of the colored portion of mankind, with particular reference to the african race, illustrated by numerous biographical sketches, facts, anecdotes, etc., and many superior portraits and engravings. manchester, . baker, ray stannard: following the color line. doubleday, page & co., new york, . ballagh, james curtis: a history of slavery in virginia. johns hopkins studies, extra volume . baltimore, . white servitude in the colony of virginia. johns hopkins studies, thirteenth series, nos. and . baltimore, . bassett, john spencer: anti-slavery leaders of north carolina. sixth series, no. . baltimore, . slavery and servitude in the colony of north carolina. johns hopkins studies, fourteenth series, nos. and . baltimore, . slavery in the state of north carolina. johns hopkins studies, xiv: ; xvii: . bigham, john alvin (editor): select discussions of race problems, no. , of atlanta university publications. atlanta, . birney, william: james g. birney and his times. d. appleton & co., new york, . blake, w.o.: the history of slavery and the slave-trade. columbus, o., . blyden, edward w.: christianity, islam, and the negro race. london, . bogart, ernest ludlow: the economic history of the united states. longmans, green & co., new york, edition. bourne, edward gaylord: spain in america, - . vol. of american nation series. brackett, jeffrey richardson: the negro in maryland: a study of the institution of slavery. johns hopkins studies, extra volume . baltimore, . bradford, sarah h.: harriet, the moses of her people. new york, . brawley, benjamin: a short history of the american negro. the macmillan co., new york, , revised . history of morehouse college. atlanta, . the negro in literature and art. duffield & co., new york, . your negro neighbor (in our national problems series). the macmillan co., new york, . africa and the war. duffield & co., new york, . women of achievement (written for the fireside schools under the auspices of the woman's american baptist home mission society). chicago and new york, . brawley, edward m.: the negro baptist pulpit. american baptist publication society, philadelphia, . bruce, philip alexander: economic history of virginia in the seventeenth century. vols. the macmillan co., new york, . cable, george washington: the negro question. charles scribner's sons, new york, . calhoun, william patrick: the caucasian and the negro in the united states. r.l. bryan co., columbia, s. c, . chamberlain, d.h.: present phases of our so-called negro problem (open letter to the rt. hon. james bryce of england), reprinted from _news and courier_, charleston, of august , . cheyney, edward potts: european background of american history. vol. i of american nation series. child, lydia maria: an appeal in favor of that class of americans called africans. boston, . the oasis (edited). boston, . clayton, v.v.: white and black under the old regimé. milwaukee, . clowes, w. laird: black america: a study of the ex-slave and his late master. cassell & co., london, . coffin, joshua: an account of some of the principal slave insurrections, and others, which have occurred, or been attempted, in the united states and elsewhere, during the last two centuries, with various remarks. american anti-slavery society, new york, . collins, winfield h.: the domestic slave trade of the southern states. broadway publishing co., new york, . coman, katherine: the industrial history of the united states. the macmillan co., new york, edition. the negro as a peasant farmer. american statistical association publications, : . commons, john r.: races and immigrants in america. the macmillan co., . coolidge, archibald cary: the united states as a world power. the macmillan co., new york, . cooper, anna julia: a voice from the south, by a black woman of the south. xenia, o., . corey, charles h.: a history of the richmond theological seminary. richmond, . cornish, samuel e., and wright, t.s.: the colonization scheme considered in its rejection by the colored people. newark, . cromwell, john w.: the negro in american history. the american negro academy, washington, . culp, daniel w. (editor): twentieth century negro literature. nichols & co., toronto, . cutler, james e.: lynch law, an investigation into the history of lynching in the united states. longmans, green & co., new york, . daniels, john: in freedom's birthplace: a study of the boston negroes. houghton mifflin co., boston and new york, . dewey, davis rich: national problems, - . vol. in american nation series. dill, augustus granville. see dubois, editor atlanta university publications. dodd, william e.: the cotton kingdom. vol. of chronicles of america. expansion and conflict. vol. of riverside history of the united states. houghton mifflin co., boston, . dow, lorenzo ("cosmopolite, a listener"): a cry from the wilderness! a voice from the east, a reply from the west--trouble in the north, exemplifying in the south. intended as a timely and solemn warning to the people of the united states. printed for the purchaser and the public. united states, . dubois, w.e. burghardt: suppression of the african slave-trade. longmans, green & co., new york, (now handled by harvard university press). dubois, w.e. burghardt: the philadelphia negro. university of pennsylvania, philadelphia, . the souls of black folk. a.c. mcclurg & co., chicago, . the negro in the south (booker t. washington, co-author). george w. jacobs & co., philadelphia, . john brown (in american crisis biographies). george w. jacobs & co., philadelphia, . the negro (in home university library series). henry holt & co., new york, . darkwater: voices from within the veil. harcourt, brace & co., new york, . (editor atlanta university publications). the negro church, no. . the health and physique of the negro american, no. ii. economic co-operation among negro americans, no. . the negro american family, no. . efforts for social betterment among negro americans, no. . the college-bred negro american, no. . (a.g. dill, co-editor.) the negro american artisan, no. . (a.g. dill, co-editor.) morals and manners among negro americans, no. . (a.g. dill, co-editor.) dunbar, alice ruth moore: masterpieces of negro eloquence. the bookery publishing co., new york, . dunbar, paul laurence: complete poems. dodd, mead & co., new york, . dunning, william archibald: reconstruction, political and economic. vol. of american nation series. earnest, joseph b., jr.: the religious development of the negro in virginia (ph.d. thesis, virginia). charlottesville, . eckenrode, hamilton james: the political history of virginia during the reconstruction. johns hopkins studies. twenty-second series, nos. , , and . baltimore, . ellis, george w.: negro culture in west africa. the neale publishing co., new york, . ellwood, charles a.: sociology and modern social problems. american book co., new york, . elwang, william w.: the negroes of columbia, mo. (a.m. thesis, missouri), . epstein, abraham: the negro migrant in pittsburgh (in publications of school of economics of the university of pittsburgh). . evans, maurice s.: black and white in the southern states: a study of the race problem in the united states from a south african point of view. longmans, green & co., london, . ferris, william henry: the african abroad. vols. new haven, . fleming, walter l.: documentary history of reconstruction. vols. arthur h. clark co., cleveland, o., . the sequel of appomattox. vol. of chronicles of america. fletcher, frank h.: negro exodus. report of agent appointed by the st. louis commission to visit kansas for the purpose of obtaining information in regard to colored emigration. no imprint. furman, richard: exposition of the views of the baptists relative to the colored population in the united states, in a communication to the governor of south carolina. second edition, charleston, . (letter bears original date december , ; furman was president of state baptist convention.) garrison, wendell phillips, and garrison, francis jackson: william lloyd garrison; story of his life told by his children. vols. houghton, mifflin & co., . garrison, william lloyd: thoughts on african colonization: or an impartial exhibition of the doctrines, principles, and purposes of the american colonization society, together with the resolutions, addresses, and remonstrances of the free people of color. boston, . gayarré, charles e.a.: history of louisiana. vols. new orleans, edition. grady, henry w.: the new south and other addresses, with biography, etc., by edna h.l. turpin. maynard, merrill & co., new york, . graham, stephen: the soul of john brown. the macmillan co., new york, . hallowell, richard p.: why the negro was enfranchised--negro suffrage justified. boston, . (reprint of two letters in the _boston herald_, march and , .) hammond, lily hardy: in black and white: an interpretation of southern life. fleming h. revell co., new york, . harris, norman dwight: intervention and colonization in africa. houghton, mifflin co., boston, . hart, albert bushnell: national ideals historically traced. vol. in american nation series. slavery and abolition. vol. in american nation series. the southern south. d. appleton & co., new york, . hartshorn, w.n., and penniman, george w.: an era of progress and promise, - . the priscilla publishing co., boston, . haworth, paul leland: america in ferment. bobbs-merrill co., indianapolis, . haynes, george e.: the negro at work in new york city vol , no. , of columbia studies, . helper, hinton rowan: the impending crisis of the south: how to meet it. new york, . hickok, charles t.: the negro in ohio, - . (western reserve thesis.) cleveland, . higginson, thomas wentworth: army life in a black regiment boston, . (latest edition, houghton, mifflin co., .) hoffman, frederick l.: race traits and tendencies of the american negro. american economics association publications, xi, nos. - , . hodge, frederick w. (editor): spanish explorers in the southern united states, - (in original narratives of early american history), esp. the narrative of alvar nuñez cabeça de vaca. charles scribner's sons, new york, . holland, edwin c.: a refutation of the calumnies circulated against the southern and western states, respecting the institution and existence of slavery among them; to which is added a minute and particular account of the actual condition and state of their negro population, together with historical notices of all the insurrections that have taken place since the settlement of the country. by a south carolinian. charleston, . horsemanden, daniel (judge): a journal of the proceedings in the detection of the conspiracy formed by some white people, in conjunction with negro and other slaves, for burning the city of new york in america, and murdering the inhabitants. new york, . hosmer, james k.: the history of the louisiana purchase. d. appleton & co., new york, . hurd, john c.: the law of freedom and bondage. vols. boston, - . jay, william: inquiry into the character and tendency of the american colonization and anti-slavery societies. new york, . jefferson, thomas: writings, issued under the auspices of the thomas jefferson memorial association. vols. washington, . jervey, theodore d.: robert y. hayne and his times. the macmillan co., new york, . johnson, allen: union and democracy. vol. of riverside history of the united states. houghton, mifflin co., boston, . johnson, james w.: autobiography of an ex-colored man (published anonymously). sherman, french & co., boston, . fifty years and other poems. the cornhill co., boston, . hayti. four articles reprinted from the _nation_, new york, . johnston, sir harry hamilton: the negro in the new world. the macmillan co., new york, . kelsey, carl: the negro farmer (ph.d. thesis, pennsylvania). jennings & pye, chicago, . kemble, frances a.: journal of residence on a georgia plantation, - . harper & bros., . kerlin, robert t. (editor): the voice of the negro, . e.p. dutton & co., new york, . kimball, john c.: connecticut's canterbury tale; its heroine prudence crandall, and its moral for to-day. hartford, conn. ( ). krehbiel, henry e.: afro-american folk-songs. g. schirmer, new york and london, . lauber, almon wheeler: indian slavery in colonial times within the present limits of the united states. vol. , no. , of columbia university studies, . livermore, george: an historical research respecting the opinions of the founders of the republic on negroes as slaves, as citizens, and as soldiers. boston, . locke, mary stoughton: anti-slavery in america from the introduction of african slaves to the prohibition of the slave-trade, - . radcliffe college monograph no. . boston, (now handled by harvard university press). lonn, ella: reconstruction in louisiana. g.p. putnam's sons, new york, . lugard, lady (flora l. shaw): a tropical dependency. james nisbet & co., ltd., london, . lynch, john r.: the facts of reconstruction: the neale publishing co., new york, . mcconnell, john preston: negroes and their treatment in virginia from to (ph.d. thesis, virginia, ). printed by b.d. smith & bros., pulaski, va., . maccorkle, william a.: some southern questions. g.p. putnam's sons, new york, . mccormac, e.i.: white servitude in maryland. johns hopkins studies, xxii, . mcdougall, marion gleason: fugitive slaves, - . fay house (radcliffe college) monograph, no. . boston, (now handled by harvard university press). mclaughlin, andrew cunningham: the confederation and the constitution, - . vol. in american nation series. mcmaster, john bach: a history of the people of the united states, from the revolution to the civil war. vols. d. appleton & co., new york, - . macy, jesse: the anti-slavery crusade. vol. in chronicles of america. marsh, j.b.t.: the story of the jubilee singers, with their songs. boston, . miller, kelly: race adjustment. the neale publishing co., new york and washington, . out of the house of bondage. the neale publishing co., new york, . appeal to conscience (in our national problems series). the macmillan co., new york, . moore, g.h.: historical notes on the employment of negroes in the american army of the revolution. new york, . morgan, thomas j.: reminiscences of service with colored troops in the army of the cumberland, - . providence, . moton, robert russa: finding a way out: an autobiography. doubleday, page & co., garden city, n.y., . murphy, edgar gardner: the basis of ascendency. longmans, green & co., london, . murray, freeman h.m.: emancipation and the freed in american sculpture. published by the author, seventh st., n.w., washington, . odum, howard w.: social and mental traits of the negro. columbia university studies, vol. , no. . new york, . olmsted, frederick law: the cotton kingdom. vols. new york, . a journey in the seaboard slave states. new york, . page, thomas nelson: the old south. charles scribner's sons, new york, . the negro: the southerner's problem. charles scribner's sons, new york, . palmer, b.m. (with w.t. leacock): the rights of the south defended in the pulpits. mobile, . penniman, george w. see hartshorn, w.n. phillips, ulrich b.: american negro slavery. d. appleton & co., new york, . plantation and frontier. vols. i and ii of documentary history of american industrial society. arthur h. clark co., cleveland, . pike, g.d.: the jubilee singers and their campaign for $ , . boston, . pike, j.s.: the prostrate state: south carolina under negro government. new york, . pipkin, james jefferson: the negro in revelation, in history, and in citizenship. n.d. thompson publishing co., st. louis, . platt, o.h.: negro governors. papers of the new haven colony historical society, vol. . new haven, . reese, david m.: a brief review of the first annual report of the american anti-slavery society. new york, . rhodes, james ford: history of the united states from the compromise of ( - and - ). vols. the macmillan co., new york, - . roman, charles victor: american civilization and the negro. f.a. davis co., philadelphia, . russell, john h.: the free negro in virginia, - . johns hopkins studies, series xxxi, no. . baltimore, . sandburg, carl: the chicago race riots, july, . harcourt, brace & howe, new york, . schurz, carl: speeches, correspondence, and political papers, selected and edited by frederic bancroft. vols. g.p. putnam's sons, new york and london, . scott, emmett j.: negro migration during the war (in preliminary economic studies of the war--carnegie endowment for international peace: division of economics and history). oxford university press, american branch. new york, . official history of the american negro in the world war. washington, . seligman, herbert j.: the negro faces america. harper bros., new york, . shaler, nathaniel southgate: the neighbor: the natural history of human contacts. houghton, mifflin co., boston, . siebert, wilbur h.: the underground railroad from slavery to freedom. the macmillan co., new york, . sinclair, william a.: the aftermath of slavery. small, maynard & co., boston, . smith, justin h.: the war with mexico. vols. the macmillan co., new york, . smith, theodore clarke: parties and slavery. vol. of american nation series. smith, t.w.: the slave in canada. vol. in collections of the nova scotia historical society. halifax, n.s., . stephenson, gilbert thomas: race distinctions in american law. d. appleton & co., new york, . steward, t.g.: the haitian revolution, - . thomas y. crowell co., new york, . stoddard, lothrop: the rising tide of color against white world-supremacy, with an introduction by madison grant. charles scribner's sons. new york, . stone, alfred h.: studies in the american race problem. doubleday, page & co., new york, . storey, moorfield: the negro question. an address delivered before the wisconsin bar association. boston, . problems of to-day. houghton, mifflin co., boston, . thompson, holland: the new south. vol. in chronicles of america. tillinghast, joseph alexander: the negro in africa and america. publications of american economics association, series vol , no. . new york, . toombs, robert: speech on the crisis, delivered before the georgia legislature, dec. , . washington, . tucker, st. george: a dissertation on slavery, with a proposal for the gradual abolition of it in the state of virginia. philadelphia, . turner, frederick jackson: the rise of the new west. vol. in american nation series. turner, edward raymond: the negro in pennsylvania, - (justin winsor prize of american historical association, ). washington, . washington, booker t.: the future of the american negro. small, maynard & co., boston, . the story of my life and work. nichols & co., naperville, ill., . up from slavery: an autobiography. doubleday, page & co., new york, . character building. doubleday, page & co., new york, . working with the hands. doubleday, page & co., new york, . putting the most into life. crowell & co., new york, . frederick douglass (in american crisis biographies). george w. jacobs & co., philadelphia, . the negro in the south (with w.e.b. dubois). george w. jacobs & co., philadelphia, . the negro in business. hertel, jenkins & co., chicago, . the story of the negro. vols. doubleday, page & co., new york, . my larger education. doubleday, page & co., garden city, n.y., . the man farthest down (with robert emory park). doubleday, page & co., garden city, n.y., . weale, b.l. putnam: the conflict of color. the macmillan co., new york, . weatherford, w.d.: present forces in negro progress. association press, new york, . weld, theodore dwight: american slavery as it is: testimony of a thousand witnesses. published by the american anti-slavery society, new york, . wiener, leo: africa and the discovery of america, vol. i. innes & sons, philadelphia, . williams, george washington: history of the negro race in america from to . vols. g.p. putnam's sons, new york, . wise, john s.: the end of an era. houghton, mifflin co., . woodson, carter g.: the education of the negro prior to . g.p. putnam's sons, new york, . a century of negro migration. association for the study of negro life and history, washington, . woolf, leonard: empire and commerce in africa: a study in economic imperialism. london, . the macmillan co., new york. wright, richard r.: negro companions of the spanish explorers. (reprinted from the _american anthropologist_, vol. , april-june, .) wright, richard r., jr.: the negro in pennsylvania: a study in economic history. (ph.d. thesis, pennsylvania.) a.m.e. book concern, philadelphia. wright, t.s. see cornish, samuel e. zabriskie, luther k.: the virgin islands of the united states of america. g.p. putnam's sons, new york, . * * * * * an address to the people of the united states, adopted at a conference of colored citizens, held at columbia, s.c., july and , . republican printing co., columbia, s.c., . paper (letter published in a washington paper) submitted in connection with the debate in the united states house of representatives, july th and th, , on the massacre of six colored citizens at hamburg, s.c., july , . proceedings of the national conference of colored men of the united states, held in the state capitol at nashville, tenn., may , , , and , . washington, d.c., . story of the riot. persecution of negroes by roughs and policemen in the city of new york, august, . statement and proofs written and compiled by frank moss and issued by the citizens' protective league. new york, . the voice of the carpet bagger. reconstruction review no. , published by the anti-lynching bureau. chicago, . iii. special lists . on chapter ii, section ; chapter iii, section ; chapter viii and chapter xi, the general topic being the social progress of the negro before . titles are mainly in the order of appearance of works. mather, cotton: rules for the society of negroes, . reprinted by george h. moore, lenox library, new york, . the negro christianized. an essay to excite and assist that good work, the instruction of negro-servants in christianity. boston, . allen, richard. the life, experience and gospel labors of the rt. rev. richard allen, written by himself. philadelphia, . hall, prince. a charge delivered to the african lodge, june , , at menotomy, by the right worshipful prince hall. (boston) . to the free africans and other free people of color in the united states. (broadside) philadelphia, . walker, david: appeal, in four articles, together with a preamble to the colored citizens of the world. boston, . garrison, william lloyd: an address delivered before the free people of color in philadelphia, new york, and other cities, during the month of june, . boston, . thoughts on african colonization (see list above). minutes and proceedings of the first annual convention of the people of color, held by adjournments in the city of philadelphia, from the sixth to the eleventh of june, inclusive, . philadelphia, . college for colored youth. an account of the new haven city meeting and resolutions with recommendations of the college, and strictures upon the doings of new haven. new york, . on the condition of the free people of color in the united states. new york, . (_the anti-slavery examiner_, no. .) condition of the people of color in the state of ohio, with interesting anecdotes. boston, . armistead, wilson: memoir of paul cuffe. london, . wilson, joseph: sketches of the higher classes of colored society in philadelphia. philadelphia, . national convention of colored men and their friends. troy, n.y., . garnet, henry highland: the past and present condition and the destiny of the colored race. troy, . delany, martin r.: the condition, elevation, emigration, and destiny of the colored people of the united states, politically considered. philadelphia, . cincinnati convention of colored freedmen of ohio. proceedings, jan. - , . cincinnati, . proceedings of the colored national convention, held in rochester, july , , and , . rochester, . cleveland national emigration convention of colored people. proceedings, aug. - , . pittsburg, . nell, william c.: the colored patriots of the american revolution, with sketches of several distinguished colored persons: to which is added a brief survey of the condition and prospects of colored americans, with an introduction by harriet beecher stowe. boston, . stevens, charles e.: anthony burns, a history. boston, . catto, william t.: a semi-centenary discourse, delivered in the first african presbyterian church, philadelphia, with a history of the church from its first organization, including a brief notice of rev. john gloucester, its first pastor. philadelphia, . bacon, benjamin c.: statistics of the colored people of philadelphia. philadelphia, . second edition, with statistics of crime, philadelphia, . condition of the free colored people of the united states, by james freeman clarke, in _christian examiner_, march, , - . reprinted as pamphlet by american anti-slavery society, new york, . brown, william wells: clotel, or the president's daughter (a narrative of slave life in the united states). london, . the escape; or a leap for freedom, a drama in five acts. boston, . the black man, his antecedents, his genius, and his achievements. new york, . the rising son; or the antecedents and advancement of the colored race. boston, . to thomas j. gantt, esq. (broadside), charleston, . douglass, william: annals of st. thomas's first african church. philadelphia, . proceedings of the national convention of colored men, held in the city of syracuse, n.y., october , , , and , , with the bill of wrongs and rights and the address to the american people. boston, . the budget, containing the annual reports of the general officers of the african m.e. church of the united states of america, edited by benjamin w. arnett. xenia, o., . same for later years. simms, james m.: the first colored baptist church in north america. printed by j.b. lippincott co., philadelphia, . upton, william h.: negro masonry, being a critical examination of objections to the legitimacy of the masonry existing among the negroes of america. cambridge, ; second edition, . brooks, charles h.: the official history and manual of the grand united order of odd fellows in america. philadelphia, . cromwell, john w.: the early convention movement. occasional paper no. of american negro academy, washington, d.c., . brooks, walter h.: the silver bluff church, washington, . crawford, george w.: prince hall and his followers. new haven, . wright, richard r., jr. (editor-in-chief): centennial encyclopædia of the african methodist episcopal church. a.m.e. book concern, philadelphia, . also note narratives or autobiographies of frederick douglass, sojourner truth, samuel ringgold ward, solomon northrup, lunsford lane, etc.; the poems of phillis wheatley (first edition, london, ), and george m. horton; williams's history for study of some more prominent characters; woodson's bibliography for the special subject of education; and periodical literature, especially the articles remarked in chapter xi in connection with the free people of color in louisiana. . on chapter v (indian and negro) a standard work on the second seminole war is the origin, progress, and conclusion of the florida war, by john t. sprague, d. appleton & co., new york, ; but also important as touching upon the topics of the chapter are the exiles of florida, by joshua r. giddings, columbus, ohio, , and a speech by giddings in the house of representatives february , . note also house document no. of the st session of the th congress, and document of the nd session of the th congress. the aboriginal races of north america, by samuel g. drake, fifteenth edition, new york, , is interesting and suggestive though formless; and mcmaster in different chapters gives careful brief accounts of the general course of the indian wars. . on chapter vii (insurrections) (for insurrections before that of denmark vesey note especially coffin, holland, and horsemanden above. on gabriel's insurrection see article by higginson (_atlantic_, x. ), afterwards included in travellers and outlaws.) denmark vesey . an official report of the trials of sundry negroes, charged with an attempt to raise an insurrection in the state of south carolina. by lionel h. kennedy and thomas parker (members of the charleston bar and the presiding magistrates of the court). charleston, . . an account of the late intended insurrection among a portion of the black of this city. published by the authority of the corporation of charleston. charleston, (reprinted boston, , and again in boston and charleston). the above accounts, now exceedingly rare, are the real sources of all later study of vesey's insurrection. the two accounts are sometimes identical; thus the list of those executed or banished is the same. the first has a good introduction. the second was written by james hamilton, intendant of charleston. . letter of governor william bennett, dated august , . (this was evidently a circular letter to the press. references are to lundy's _genius of universal emancipation_, ii, , ninth month, , and there are reviews in the following issues, pages , , and . higginson notes letter as also in _columbian sentinel_, august , ; _connecticut courant_, september , ; and _worcester spy_, september , .) three secondary accounts in later years are important: . article on denmark vesey by higginson (_atlantic_, vii. ) included in travellers and outlaws: episodes in american history. lee and shepard, boston, . . right on the scaffold, or the martyrs of , by archibald h. grimké. no. of the papers of the american negro academy, washington. . book i, chapter xii, "denmark vesey's insurrection," in robert y. hayne and his times, by theodore d. jervey, the macmillan co., new york, . various pamphlets were written immediately after the insurrection not so much to give detailed accounts as to discuss the general problem of the negro and the reaction of the white citizens of charleston to the event. of these we may note the following: . holland, edwin c.: a refutation of the calumnies circulated against the southern and western states. (see main list above.) . achates (general thomas pinckney): reflections occasioned by the late disturbances in charleston. charleston, . . rev. dr. richard furman's exposition of the views of the baptists relative to the colored population in the united states. (see main list above.) . practical considerations founded on the scriptures relative to the slave population of south carolina. by a south carolinian. charleston, . nat turner . the confessions of nat turner, leader of the late insurrection in southampton, va., as fully and voluntarily made to thos. c. gray, in the prison where he was confined--and acknowledged by him to be such, when read before the court at southampton, convened at jerusalem november , , for his trial. (this is the main source. thousands of copies of the pamphlet are said to have been circulated, but it is now exceedingly rare. neither the congressional library nor the boston public has a copy, and cromwell notes that there is not even one in the state library in richmond. the copy used by the author is in the library of harvard university.) . horrid massacre. authentic and impartial narrative of the tragical scene which was witnessed in southampton county (virginia) on monday the nd of august last. new york, . (this gives a table of victims and has the advantage of nearness to the event. this very nearness, however, has given credence to much hearsay and accounted for several instances of inaccuracy.) to the above may be added the periodicals of the day, such as the richmond _enquirer_ and the _liberator_; note _genius of universal emancipation_, september, . secondary accounts or studies would include the following: . nat turner's insurrection, exhaustive article by higginson (_atlantic_, viii. ) later included in travellers and outlaws. . drewry, william sidney: slave insurrections in virginia ( - ). a dissertation presented to the board of university studies of the johns hopkins university for the degree of doctor of philosophy. the neale company, washington, . (unfortunately marred by a partisan tone.) . the aftermath of nat turner's insurrection, by john w. cromwell, in _journal of negro history_, april, . _amistad and creole_ cases . argument of john quincy adams before the supreme court of the united states, in the case of the united states, apellants, vs. cinque, and others, africans, captured in the schooner _amistad_, by lieut. gedney, delivered on the th of february and st of march, . new york, . . africans taken in the _amistad_. document no. of the st session of the th congress, containing the correspondence in relation to the captured africans. (reprinted by anti-slavery depository, new york, .) . senate document of the nd session of the th congress. . on chapter ix (liberia) much has been written about liberia, but the books and pamphlets have been very uneven in quality. original sources include the reports of the american colonization society to ; _the african repository_, a compendium issued sometimes monthly, sometimes quarterly, by the american colonization society from to , and succeeded by the periodical known as _liberia_; the reports of the different state organizations; j. ashmun's history of the american colony in liberia from december, to , compiled from the authentic records of the colony, washington, ; ralph randolph gurley's life of jehudi ashmun, washington, , second edition, new york, ; gurley's report on liberia (a united states state paper), washington, ; and the memorial of the semi-centennial anniversary of the american colonization society, celebrated at washington, january , , with documents concerning liberia, washington, ; to all of which might be added journal of daniel coker, a descendant of africa, from the time of leaving new york, in the ship _elisabeth_, capt. sebor, on a voyage for sherbro, in africa, baltimore, . j.h.b. latrobe, a president of the american colonization society, is prominent in the memorial volume of , and after this date are credited to him liberia: its origin, rise, progress, and results, an address delivered before the american colonization society, january , , washington, , and maryland in liberia, baltimore, . an early and interesting compilation is g.s. stockwell's the republic of liberia: its geography, climate, soil, and productions, with a history of its early settlement, new york, ; a good handbook is frederick starr's liberia, chicago, ; mention might also be made of t. mccants stewart's liberia, new york, ; and george w. ellis's negro culture in west africa, neale publishing co., new york, , is outstanding in its special field. two johns hopkins theses have been written: john h.t. mcpherson's history of liberia (studies, ix, no. ), , and e.l. fox's the american colonization society - (studies, xxxvii, - ), ; the first of these is brief and clearcut and especially valuable for its study of the maryland colony. magazine articles of unusual importance are george w. ellis's dynamic factors in the liberian situation and emmett j. scott's is liberia worth saving? both in _journal of race development_, january, . of english or continental works outstanding is the monumental but not altogether unimpeachable liberia, by sir harry h. johnston, with an appendix on the flora of liberia by dr. otto stapf, vols., hutchinson & co., london, ; while with a strong english bias and incomplete and unsatisfactory as a general treatise is r.c.f. maughan's the republic of liberia, london ( ?), charles scribner's sons, new york. mention must also be made of the following publications by residents of liberia: the negro republic on west africa, by abayomi wilfrid karnga, monrovia, ; new national fourth reader, edited by julius c. stevens, monrovia, ; liberia and her educational problems, by walter f. walker, an address delivered before the chicago historical society, october , ; and catalogue of liberia college for , and historical register, printed at the riverdale press, brookline, mass., ; while edward wilmot blyden's christianity, islam, and the negro race is representative of the best of the more philosophical dissertations. abbeville, s.c. aberdeen, lord abolition, abolitionists abraham, negro interpreter abyssinia adams, doc adams, henry adams, john adams, john quincy africa african methodist episcopal church, and schools african methodist episcopal zion church, and schools _age, the new york_ aguinaldo akron, ohio alabama aldridge, ira allen, richard alton, ill. ambrister, robert amendments to constitution of united states american anti-slavery society american baptist home mission society american baptist publication society american bar association american colonization society american convention of abolition societies american federation of labor american giants american missionary association amistad case anderson, benjamin andrew, john o. andrew, william anthony, susan b. anti-slavery societies _appeal_, david walker's arbuthnot, alexander arkansas arkwright, richard armstrong, samuel c. asbury, bishop ashley, lord ashmun, jehudi assiento contract atlanta, ga. atlanta compromise atlanta massacre atlanta university attaway, a.t. attucks, crispus augusta, ga. ayres, eli bacon, ephraim bacon, john f. bacon, samuel baker, f.b. balboa baltimore banbaras bankson, john banneker, benjamin baptists, churches and schools baptist young people s union barbadoes barbour, capt. barbour, dan barclay, arthur barlow, joel bassa trading association bassa tribe bassett, ebenezer batson, flora baxter, richard beecher, henry ward behn, aphra belleau wood benedict college benefit societies benezet, anthony bennett, batteau bennett, gov., of south carolina bennett, ned bennett, rolla benson, stephen allen berea college bethel church, a.m.e., of philadelphia birmingham, ala. birney, james g. "birth of a nation" bishop college black codes black star line blacksmith, ben blackwood, jesse blair, henry blanco, pedro bleckley, l.e. blunt, john blyden, edward wilmot boatswain, african chief bogalusa, la. boston, mass. boston massacre boston, samuel bouey, h.n. bourne, e.g. bowers, john bowler, jack boyd, henry brooks, preston s. brooks county, ga. brough, charles h. brown, bishop, of arkansas brown, john brown, william brown, william wells browning, elizabeth barrett brownsville, texas bruce, blanche k. bryan, andrew bryce, james buchanan, thomas h. bull, gov., of south carolina bullock, m.w. burgess, ebenezer burleigh, harry t. burning of negroes burns, anthony burnside, gen. burton, belfast burton, mary business, negro butler, b.f., district attorney in new york butler, b.f., gen. butler, m.c. butler, sol buttrick, wallace buzi tribe byron, lord cable, george w. cadell, major cæsar, in new york calderon, spanish minister caldwell, elias b. calhoun, john c. calvert, george, lord baltimore camp dodge camp grant camphor, a.p. canaan, n.h., school at canada canning, george cape palmas cardozo, f.l. carmantee tribe carney, william h. carranza, andrés dorantes de carrizal cartledge, lewis cary, lott cass, lewis cassell, nathaniel h.b. catholics cato, insurrectionist cato, will chain-gang _challenge magazine_ chamberlain, gov., of south carolina champion, james channing, william ellery charles v charles, robert charleston, s.c. château thierry chavis, john cheeseman, joseph james cherokees chesnutt, charles w. chester, penn. chicago riot chickasaws child, lydia maria china choctaws, christianity _christian recorder_ chuma cincinnati cinque, joseph civil rights civil war claflin university _clansman, the_ clark, andrew clark, major clark university clarkson, matthew clarkson, quamoney clarkson, thomas clay, henry cleveland, grover cleveland, ohio clinch, duncan l. clinton, sir henry coatesville, penn. cockburn, sir francis coker, daniel cole and johnson company cole, james coleman, william d. coleridge-taylor, samuel college graduates college of west africa colonization colored methodist episcopal church, and schools compromise of congregationalists connecticut constitution of the united states continental congress conventions convict lease system. _see_ peonage. cook, james cook, o.f. coot, insurrectionist cope, thomas p. cordovell, of new orleans corey, c.h. "corkscrew" lynching cornish, samuel e. cotton-gin cowagee, john cowley, robert cowper, william cox, minnie coybet, gen. cranchell, cæsar crandall, prudence cravath, e.m. crawford, anthony crawford, william creeks creole case criminal, negro _crisis, the_ crompton, samuel cross keys, va. crozer, samuel a. crucifixion crum, william d. crummell, alexander cuba cuffe, paul cuffe, peter cuffee, in new york curry, j.l.m. curtis, justice cutler, manasseh dade, major darien, ga. _darkwater_ davis, benjamin o. declaration of independence declaration of independence (liberian) _defender, the_ de grasse, john v. delany, martin r. delaware democrats denmark dennison, franklin a. derham, james dew, t.r. deys, in africa dickens, charles dillard, james h. disfranchisement dismond, binga district of columbia dixie kid dixon, george dixon, thomas dorsey, hugh m. dossen, j.j. douglas, stephen a. douglass, frederick douglass, robert dow, lorenzo dowdy, jim draft riot in new york drake, francis drayton, congressman from south carolina dred scott decision drew, howard p. "dreyfus," poem by edwin markham dubois, w.e. burghardt dugro, justice p.h. dunbar, charles b. dunbar, paul l. dunbar theater, in philadelphia duncan, otis b. duncan, william dunmore, lord dunning, w.a. durham, clayton duties on importation of slaves duval, william p. dwight, gen. dyersburg, tenn. early county, ga. east st. louis eaton, john, comm. of education eaton, john h., secretary of war econchattimico education egypt elaine, ark. el caney eliot, john elizabeth, queen elliott, robert b. emancipation emathla, charley emathlochee emerson, dr. _empire and commerce in africa_ england (or great britain) episcopalians erie railroad estevanico estill springs, tenn. etheridge, at phoenix, s.c. ethiopians evans, lewis everett, alexander h. everett, edward exodus, negro. _see also_ migration. faber, f.w. factories, slave falkner, roland p. federalists ferguson, frank ferguson, samuel d. fernandina, fla. finley, i.f.c. finley, robert first african baptist church, in savannah first bryan baptist church, in savannah fish war fisk jubilee singers fisk university fleet, dr. fleming, w.l. florida f.m.c.'s foraker, j.b. forrester, lot forsyth, john fort brooke fort gibson, ark. fort jackson, treaty of fort king fort mims fort moultrie (near st. augustine), treaty of fort moultrie (near charleston) fort pillow fort sam houston fort wagner forten, james fortress monroe foster, theodore fowltown france francis, sam francis, will franklin, benjamin free african society freedmen's aid society freedmen's bank freedmen's bureau _freedom's journal_ freeman, cato free negroes free-soil party fremont, john c. friends, society of. _see_ quakers. frissell, hollis b. fugitive slave laws fuller, meta warrick furman, richard gabriel, insurrectionist gadsden, james gage, frances d. gailliard, nicholas gaines, gen. galilean fishermen galveston gans, joe gardiner, anthony w. garlington, e.a. garnett, h.h. garrison, william lloyd garvey, marcus gatumba, chief geaween, john gell, monday general education board georgia _georgia baptist_ georgia railroad labor trouble georgia, university of germans, germany germantown protest gibbes, gov., of south carolina gibson, garretson w. giddings, joshua r. gildersleeve, basil l. giles, harriet e. giles, jackson w. gilmer, congressman, of georgia gleaves, r.h. gloucester, john gola tribe gold coast gonzales goodspeed, dr., of benedict college gorden, robert gordon, midshipman gourdin, e. gradual emancipation grady, henry w. graeff, abraham op den graeff, dirck op den grand bassa "grandfather clause," grant, u.s. graves, samuel gray, thomas c. gray, william great war grebo tribe greeley, horace greene, col. greenfield, elizabeth taylor greenleaf, prof. greenville, in liberia grice, hezekiah groves, junius c. grundy, felix _guardian, the_ guerra, christóbal de la guerra, luís de la guinea coast gullah jack gurley, r.r. hadjo, micco hajo, tuski hall, james hall, prince hallowell, edward n. hallowell, n.p. hamburg massacre hampton institute hampton, wade harden, henry hargreaves, james harper, in liberia harper, f.e.w. harper's ferry harris, arthur harris, john m. harris, william t. harrison, benjamin harrison, william henry harrison st. baptist church, of petersburg, va. harry, negro in seminole wars hart, a.b. hartford, conn. harth, mingo hartshorn memorial college harvard university haussas havana havelock, a.e. hawkins, john hawkins, william hayes, r.b. haygood, atticus g. hayne, robert y. haynes, george e. haynes, lemuel hayti heber, reginald helper, hinton rowan hendericks, garret henry, prince, of portugal henry, patrick hewell, john r. hicks, john higginson, thomas wentworth hill, arnold hill, stephen hoar, samuel hodge, f.w. hoffman, frederick l. hogg, robert, and mrs. hogg holbert, luther holland holland, edwin c. holly, james theodore homer hopkins, samuel horsemanden, judge horseshoe bend horton, george m. hose, sam houston, texas howard, daniel edward howard, o.o. howard university howells, william dean howze, alma howze, maggie hughes, charles e. hughson, john hughson, sarah hugo, victor humphreys, gad hunter, david illinois _impending crisis, the_ indenture. _see_ servitude. indiana indians indian spring, treaty of _informer_, the houston insurrections intermarriage, racial intermixture jackson, andrew jackson college jackson, edward jackson, francis jackson, james jackson, peter jacksonville, fla. jamaica james, david james, duke of york jamestown japan jasper, john jay, john jay, william jeanes, anna t. jeanes fund jefferson, thomas jennings, thomas l. jessup, thomas s. "jim crow," origin of jocelyn, s.s. john, in fugitive slave case johnson, andrew johnson, elijah johnson, henry johnson, h.r.w. johnson, jack johnson, james johnson, joseph johnston brothers, of arkansas johnston, e.l. johnston, sir harry h. jones, abraham jones, eugene k. jones, george jones, sam jones, sissieretta julius, john kali, in amistad case kansas kansas city, dynamiting of homes in kansas-nebraska bill kean, edmund kentucky kerry, margaret king, c.d.b. king, mulatto king, rufus kizell, john knights of pythias knights of the golden circle knoxville college knoxville riot kpwessi tribe kru tribe kuklux klan labor lafar, john j. laing, major lake city, s.c. lane college lane seminary langston, john mercer las quasimas laurens, henry laurens, john law, john lawless, judge le clerc, gen. lee, robert e. lee county, ga. leicester, earl of leland giants lewis, william h. _liberator, the_ liberia liberia college liberian exodus and joint stock company liberty party liele, george lincoln, abraham lincoln giants lincoln university livingstone college livingstone, david lockwood, l.c. london company louisiana louis napoleon lovejoy, elijah p. lowell, james r. lugard, lady lundy, benjamin lutherans lynching macaulay, t.b. macon, ga. madagascar madison, james mahan, asa maine malays maldonado, alonzo del castillo mandingoes manly, alex. l. mano tribe mansfield, lord marcos, fray markham, edwin marriage _marrow of tradition, the_ marshall, j.f.b. marshall, j.r. marshall, of univ. of minnesota martin, luther maryland mason, george masons, negro massachusetts mather, cotton matthews, w.c. may, samuel j. mazzini, g. mccorkle, william a. mcilheron, jim mcintosh, burned mckay, claude mckelway, a.j. medicine, negro in memphis, tenn. mercer, charles f. _messenger, the_ methodists, churches and schools. _see also_ african methodist. mexican war metz micanopy mickasukie tribe migration. _see also_ exodus. milan, ga. milliken's bend mills, samuel j. minstrelsy miscegenation. _see_ intermarriage, racial intermixture. mississippi mississippi company missouri missouri compromise mobile mohammedans monroe, james monrovia montes, pedro montgomery, ala. montgomery, james monticello, ga. montserado, cape moore, joanna p. moorhead, scipio moors morehouse college morell, junius c. morgan, thomas j. morris brown university morris, edward h. morris, gouverneur morris, robert, jr. mortality mott, lucretia mulattoes mumford, john p. "mungo," in the padlock murphy, edgar g. napoleon bonaparte narvaez, pamfilo de nashville, tenn. nassau national association for the advancement of colored people national urban league navigation ordinance nea mathla neau, elias _negro_, the word negro union _negro world, the_ nell, william c. new bedford, mass. new england anti-slavery society new hampshire new jersey new orleans new mexico new york (city) new york (state) _news and courier_, of charleston, s.c. niagara movement niles, hezekiah niño, pedro alonso norfolk, va. north carolina northrup, solomon _north star_ northwest territory nott, josiah c. nott, dr., of union college nullification nunn, joseph oberlin college odd fellows ogden, peter ogden, robert c. oglethorpe, james ohio oklahoma omaha orange park academy osceola otis, james otis, mayor, of boston ouithlecoochee, battle of ovando packard, sophia b. page, thomas nelson page, walter h. palmer, b.m. palmetto, ga. pan-african congress pappa tribe parker, theodore parrott, russell pastorius, francis daniel patterson, joseph paul, william payne, daniel a. payne, james spriggs payne's landing, treaty of peabody educational fund peabody, george foster pembroke, earl of pennington, james w.c. pennsylvania pennsylvania railroad pensacola peonage perkins, francis perry, bliss person, ell t. petersburg, va. phagan, john phelps, john w. phelps-stokes fellowships philadelphia phillips, wendell phipps, benjamin phoenix societies pierce, leonard pike, in brooks county, ga. pittman, w. sydney pittsburgh, penn. plançiancois, anselmas pleasants, robert pollard, f. poor, samuel poor white man, as related to negro population, negro populist party port hudson porter, henry portugal potter, james powell. see osceola. poyas, peter presbyterians price, arthur prince princeton problem, negro. see table of contents. progressive party punishment. see also lynching, burning. purcell, jack puritans quack, in new york quakers queen and crescent railroad trouble quinn, william paul randolph, john reconstruction reed, paul reese, jack _republic of liberia, the_ republican party reuter, e.b. revels, hiram r. _review of reviews_, quoted revolutionary war revolution, french rhode island rhodes, cecil rice, thomas d. richmond, va. rigaud _rising tide of color, the_ rivers, p.r. robert, joseph t. roberts, joseph jenkin robeson, p.l. rockefeller, john d. romanticism romme, john roosevelt, theodore ross, john royal african company roye, edward james ruffin, george l. ruiz, josé rush, christopher russell, alfred f. russwurm, john b. rust university rutledge, john st. augustine, fla. st. louis, mo. st. mihiel st. philip's church, in new york st. thomas's episcopal church, in philadelphia sale, george salem, peter samba, insurrectionist sandford (in dred scott case) san juan hill santiago santo domingo sargent, frank p. savannah, ga. schurz, carl scott, emmett j. scott, lation scott, walter seaton, richard sebastian sebor, capt secoffee secret societies segui, bernard selika, mme seminole wars servitude seward, william h. seyes, john shadd, abraham sharp, granville shaw, robert gould shaw monument shaw university shepherd, randall sheridan, philip shubuta, miss. shufeldt, r.w. sierra leone silver bluff church simon singleton, benjamin sino, in liberia slater fund slavery. _see_ table of contents. slave ships smith, adam smith, alfred smith, edward p. smith, gerrit smith, hampton smith, henry smith, hoke smith, james mccune smith, stephen smith, w.b. social progress socialism society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts soldier, negro somerset, james soulouque, faustin _souls of black folk, the_ south carolina south carolina medical college southern education board southern educational congress southern sociological congress southerne, thomas _southwestern christian advocate_ spain spaniards spanish-american war spanish exploration spelman seminary spence, r.t. spencer, peter sport springfield, ill. stanton, elizabeth cady statesville, ga. stephens, alexander stevens, julius c. stevens, thaddeus steward, austin stewart, charles stewart, t. mcc. stiles, ezra stoddard, lothrop stone, lucy stockton, robert f. stone, alfred h. storey, moorfield stowe, harriet beecher straight university straker, d.a. students' army training corps summersett, john sumner, charles supreme court susi taft, w.h. talladega, ala. talladega college tallahassee, fla. taney, r.b. tanner, henry o. tappan, arthur tappan, lewis tapsico, jacob taney, chief justice taylor, john b. taylor, major taylor, william tecumseh tennessee terrell, mary church terrell, j.m. texas thomas, charles thomas, w.h. thompson, george thompson, wiley thornton, william _thoughts on african colonisation_ tillman, benjamin r. tithables, defined tolbert, john r. tolbert, r.r. tolbert, thomas toombs, robert toussaint l'ouverture travis, hark travis, joseph tremont temple baptist church trotter, monroe truth, sojourner tubman, harriet tucker, st. george tupper, pres., of shaw university turnbull, robert james turner, h.m. turner, mary turner, nat, and his insurrection tuskegee institute tustenuggee, _uncle tom's cabin_ underground railroad universal negro improvement association universal races congress university commission on southern race questions ury, john utrecht, peace of vaca, alvar nuñez cabeza de vail, aaron vai tribe valdosta, ga. valladolid, juan de van buren, martin vardaman, james k. varick, james vermont vesey, denmark, and his insurrection vincenden, gen. virginia virginia union university virginia, university of virgin islands vogelsang, peter _voice of the negro, the_ vosges waco, texas walcott, joe walker, john walker, mme. c.j. walker, david walker, walter f. walker, zach war of ward, samuel ringgold ware, asa warner, daniel bashiel washington, berry washington, booker t. washington, bushrod washington, george washington, jesse washington, madison washington, d.c. watson, brook watt, james watterson, henry weathersford webster, daniel webster, thomas wendell, abraham wesley, john west virginia wheatley, phillis whipper, of pennsylvania whipper, william white, george h. white, thomas j. white, william white, william j. whitfield, james m. whittekin, f.f. whitney, eli whittier, john g. wiener, leo wilberforce university wilberforce, william wilcox, samuel t. wild cat wiley university will william and mary college williams and walker company williams, charles h. williams, daniel h. williams, george w. williams, nelson williams, peter williams, richard williamsburg, va. williamson, edward wilmington, n.c. wilson, james wilson, woodrow winn, j.b. woman's american baptist home mission society woman suffrage woods, granville t. woodson, carter g. woolf, leonard woolman, john wright, robert wycliffe, john c. yellow fever, in philadelphia; in hayti yemassee y.m.c.a. young, charles e. zuñi indians _a bad town for spacemen_ by robert scott there was a reason why the city acted the way it did ... and we were the reason! [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, july . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] i stepped back out of the gutter and watched the tight clot of men disappear around the corner. they hadn't really been menacing, just had made it obvious they weren't going to break up. and that i had better get out of their way. i got. we were well trained. the neon of the bar across the street flickered redly on my uniform. i watched the slush trickle off my boots for a while, then made up my mind and headed into the bar. it was a mistake. new york had always been considered safe for us. of course there were many parts of the country that were absolutely forbidden "for your own good" and others that were "highly dangerous" or at least "doubtful." but new york had always been a haven. the stares there had even been admiring sometimes, especially in the beginning. but things had changed. i had realized that about half an hour after touchdown, when we were being herded through health check, baggage check, security check ... you know the lot. before, there had been friendly questions, genuine interest in the mars colony, speculations about the second expedition to venus, even a joke or two. this time the examiners' only interest seemed to be in fouling us up as much as possible. and when we finally got through the rat race, new york was bleak. i should have stayed with the rest, i guess, and of course a public bar was the last place any smart spaceboy would have gone to. but i had some nice memories of bars, memories from the early days. the whole room went silent, as though a tube had blown, when i shoved through the door. i got over to an empty table as quickly as i could and inspected the list of drinks on the dispenser. this one had a lot of big nickel handles sticking up over the drink names and the whole job was shaped like one of those beer kegs you used to see pictures of. what i mean is, this was an _authentic_ bar. phony as hell. * * * * * from the way this sounds, you can guess the kind of mood i'd gotten in. the noise had picked up again right after i sat down and some of the drunker drunks were knocking the usual words around, in loud whispers and with lots of glances at me. one of the pro-girls (her hair was green and her blouse covered her breasts--another change while i was out) gave me a big wink and then jabbed the man next to her and squawked with laughter. i fed a bill into the change machine at the table and then dribbled several coins (prices had gone up too) into the dispenser. i guess i must have had several, because after a while i began to feel cheerful. the noise that was coming out of the box in the corner started to sound like music, and i got to tapping and rocking. and smiling, i guess. and that's what triggered it. people had been coming and going, but mainly coming. and the crowd at the bar had been getting louder, and one guy there had been getting louder than the rest. all of a sudden, he slammed down his glass and headed for my table. he orbited around it for a while, staring at me, and then settled jerkily down in the chair across from me. "why all the hilarity, spaceboy? feeling proud of yourself?" he looked pretty wobbly and pretty soft and pretty old. and very angry. but i was kind of wobbly myself by that time. and anyway there are strict rules about us and violence. _very_ strict. so i just tried to make the smile bigger and said, "i'm just feeling good. we had a good run and we brought in some nice stuff." "nice stuff," he said, kind of mincing. "buddy, do you know what you can do with your sandgems and your windstones?" "we brought back some other things too. there was a good bit of uranium and--" "we don't need it!" he was getting purple. "we don't need anything from you." "and maybe _we_ don't need you." i was getting sort of fired up myself. "carversville is self-sufficient now. you can't give us anything." "well, why the hell don't you stay there? why don't all of you stay off earth? there's no place for you here." i could have pointed out that we brought things that earth really needed, that mars and venus had literally worlds of natural resources, while earth had almost finished hers. but he began to quiet down then and i began to feel the loneliness again, the sense of loss. you can't go home again ... that phrase kept poking around in my skull. suddenly he sat up and looked straight at me, and his eyes really focused for the first time. "what lousy luck. what incredibly lousy luck. and how could anyone have known?" it wasn't hard to peg what he was talking about. "it was probably _good_ luck that the first space crew was selected the way it was," i said. "otherwise you'd have had a dead ship full of dead men and no knowing why. but that one man brought the ship back." "yeah, yeah. i know. and the scientists figured everything out. about radiation in space being lethal to almost all types of man. but there was one thing that made a man immune. one thing." "the scientists tried to find a protective covering that would be practicable. they tried to synthesize slaves that would protect you. it wasn't our fault that they couldn't." "no, not your fault." his eyes had begun to dull again. "just a matter of enough melanin in the skin. that's all...." then he straightened up and slammed his fist on the table. "damn you, did you know i was a jet pilot a long time ago? did you know i was going to be one of the space pioneers? open up brave new worlds for man...." he sat there staring at me for a minute or so and the last thing he said was, "don't you come here again--nigger." i got up and left the table and walked out of the bar. i wasn't provoked. as i said before, we were well trained. * * * * * the first time i realized where i was was when i bumped into the fence around the spacefield. i must have walked all the way over there from the bar. i had a memory of crumbling buildings and littered streets. things had changed while i had been out there. they were letting the city run down. as i started to walk along the fence to the gate, i saw the ship towering against the stars. the stars and the ship. and tomorrow there would be colonists getting aboard. i stopped and looked till i knew where home was and who the real exiles were. i stopped feeling sorry for myself. and started feeling sorry for them. archive: american libraries. [illustration: photo of the author with signature "s. l. clemens"] the adventures of huckleberry finn (tom sawyer's comrade) scene: the mississippi valley time: forty to fifty years ago by mark twain illustrated _new edition from new plates_ harper & brothers publishers new york and london ====== books by mark twain st. joan of arc the innocents abroad roughing it the gilded age a tramp abroad following the equator pudd'nhead wilson sketches new and old the american claimant christian science a connecticut yankee at the court of king arthur the adventures of huckleberry finn personal recollections of joan of arc life on the mississippi the man that corrupted hadleyburg the prince and the pauper the $ , bequest the adventures of tom sawyer tom sawyer abroad what is man? the mysterious stranger adam's diary a dog's tale a double-barreled detective story editorial wild oats eve's diary in defense of harriet shelly and other essays is shakespeare dead? capt. stormfield's visit to heaven a horse's tale the jumping frog the , , pound bank-note travels at home travels in history mark twain's letters mark twain's speeches ====== harper & brothers, new york [established ] the adventures of huckleberry finn ----- copyright, . by samuel l. clemens ----- copyright. and . by harper & brothers ----- copyright. , by clara gabrilowitsch ----- printed in the united states of america contents chap. notice explanatory i. i discover moses and the bulrushers. ii. our gang's dark oath iii. we ambuscade the a-rabs iv. the hair-ball oracle v. pap starts in on a new life vi. pap struggles with the death angel vii. i fool pap and get away viii. i spare miss watson's jim ix. the house of death floats by x. what comes of handlin' snake-skin xi. they're after us! xii. "better let blame well alone" xiii. honest loot from the "walter scott" xiv. was solomon wise? xv. fooling poor old jim xvi. the rattlesnake-skin does its work xvii. the grangerfords take me in xviii. why harney rode away for his hat xix. the duke and the dauphin come aboard xx. what royalty did to parkville xxi. an arkansaw difficulty xxii. why the lynching bee failed xxiii. the orneriness of kings xxiv. the king turns parson xxv. all full of tears and flapdoodle xxvi. i steal the king's plunder xxvii. dead peter has his gold xxviii. overreaching don't pay xxix. i light out in the storm xxx. the gold saves the thieves xxxi. you can't pray a lie xxxii. i have a new name xxxiii. the pitiful ending of royalty xxxiv. we cheer up jim xxxv. dark, deep-laid plans xxxvi. trying to help jim xxxvii. jim gets his witch-pie xxxviii. "here a captive heart busted" xxxix. tom writes nonnamous letters xl. a mixed-up and splendid rescue xli. "must 'a' been sperits" xlii. why they didn't hang jim chapter the last. nothing more to write illustrations portrait of the author huckleberry finn "'gimme a chaw'" tom advises a witch pie notice persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. by order of the author, per g. g., chief of ordnance. explanatory in this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods southwestern dialect; the ordinary "pike county" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. the shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. i make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. the author. huckleberry finn chapter i you don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of _the adventures of tom sawyer;_ but that ain't no matter. that book was made by mr. mark twain, and he told the truth, mainly. there was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. that is nothing. i never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was aunt polly, or the widow, or maybe mary. aunt polly--tom's aunt polly, she is--and mary, and the widow douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as i said before. now the way that the book winds up is this: tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. we got six thousand dollars apiece--all gold. it was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. well, judge thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round--more than a body could tell what to do with. the widow douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when i couldn't stand it no longer i lit out. i got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. but tom sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and i might join if i would go back to the widow and be respectable. so i went back. the widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. she put me in them new clothes again, and i couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. well, then, the old thing commenced again. the widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. when you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them--that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. in a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better. after supper she got out her book and learned me about moses and the bulrushers, and i was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then i didn't care no more about him, because i don't take no stock in dead people. pretty soon i wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. but she wouldn't. she said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and i must try to not do it any more. that is just the way with some people. they get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. here she was a-bothering about moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. and she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself. her sister, miss watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. she worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. i couldn't stood it much longer. then for an hour it was deadly dull, and i was fidgety. miss watson would say, "don't put your feet up there, huckleberry"; and "don't scrunch up like that, huckleberry--set up straight"; and pretty soon she would say, "don't gap and stretch like that, huckleberry--why don't you try to behave?" then she told me all about the bad place, and i said i wished i was there. she got mad then, but i didn't mean no harm. all i wanted was to go somewheres; all i wanted was a change, i warn't particular. she said it was wicked to say what i said; said she wouldn't say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. well, i couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so i made up my mind i wouldn't try for it. but i never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn't do no good. now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. she said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. so i didn't think much of it. but i never said so. i asked her if she reckoned tom sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. i was glad about that, because i wanted him and me to be together. miss watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. by and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. i went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it on the table. then i set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. i felt so lonesome i most wished i was dead. the stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and i heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and i couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. then away out in the woods i heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. i got so downhearted and scared i did wish i had some company. pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and i flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before i could budge it was all shriveled up. i didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so i was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. i got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then i tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. but i hadn't no confidence. you do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but i hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you'd killed a spider. i set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't know. well, after a long time i heard the clock away off in the town go boom--boom--boom--twelve licks; and all still again--stiller than ever. pretty soon i heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees--something was a-stirring. i set still and listened. directly i could just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!" down there. that was good! says i, "me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as i could, and then i put out the light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed. then i slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was tom sawyer waiting for me. chapter ii we went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back toward the end of the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our heads. when we was passing by the kitchen i fell over a root and made a noise. we scrouched down and laid still. miss watson's big nigger, named jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. he got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. then he says: "who dah?" he listened some more; then he came tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could 'a' touched him, nearly. well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close together. there was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but i dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. seemed like i'd die if i couldn't scratch. well, i've noticed that thing plenty times since. if you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy--if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upward of a thousand places. pretty soon jim says: "say, who is you? whar is you? dog my cats ef i didn' hear sumf'n. well, i know what i's gwyne to do: i's gwyne to set down here and listen tell i hears it ag'in." so he set down on the ground betwixt me and tom. he leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. my nose begun to itch. it itched till the tears come into my eyes. but i dasn't scratch. then it begun to itch on the inside. next i got to itching underneath. i didn't know how i was going to set still. this miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. i was itching in eleven different places now. i reckoned i couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but i set my teeth hard and got ready to try. just then jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore--and then i was pretty soon comfortable again. tom he made a sign to me--kind of a little noise with his mouth--and we went creeping away on our hands and knees. when we was ten foot off tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie jim to the tree for fun. but i said no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out i warn't in. then tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. i didn't want him to try. i said jim might wake up and come. but tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and tom laid five cents on the table for pay. then we got out, and i was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do tom but he must crawl to where jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. i waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome. as soon as tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. tom said he slipped jim's hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. afterward jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the state, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. and next time jim told it he said they rode him down to new orleans; and, after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. niggers would come miles to hear jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, jim would happen in and say, "hm! what you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. niggers would come from all around there and give jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches. well, when tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. we went down the hill and found joe harper and ben rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. so we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore. we went to a clump of bushes, and tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands and knees. we went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't 'a' noticed that there was a hole. we went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. tom says: "now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it tom sawyer's gang. everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood." everybody was willing. so tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. it swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. and nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. and if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever. everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked tom if he got it out of his own head. he said some of it, but the rest was out of pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it. some thought it would be good to kill the _families_ of boys that told the secrets. tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. then ben rogers says: "here's huck finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout him?" "well, hain't he got a father?" says tom sawyer. "yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. he used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen in these parts for a year or more." they talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and square for the others. well, nobody could think of anything to do--everybody was stumped, and set still. i was most ready to cry; but all at once i thought of a way, and so i offered them miss watson--they could kill her. everybody said: "oh, she'll do. that's all right. huck can come in." then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and i made my mark on the paper. "now," says ben rogers, "what's the line of business of this gang?" "nothing only robbery and murder," tom said. "but who are we going to rob?--houses, or cattle, or--" "stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery; it's burglary," says tom sawyer. "we ain't burglars. that ain't no sort of style. we are highwaymen. we stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money." "must we always kill the people?" "oh, certainly. it's best. some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them--except some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they're ransomed." "ransomed? what's that?" "i don't know. but that's what they do. i've seen it in books; and so of course that's what we've got to do." "but how can we do it if we don't know what it is?" "why, blame it all, we've _got_ to do it. don't i tell you it's in the books? do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?" "oh, that's all very fine to _say,_ tom sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them?--that's the thing i want to get at. now, what do you reckon it is?" "well, i don't know. but per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead." "now, that's something _like._ that'll answer. why couldn't you said that before? we'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they'll be, too--eating up everything, and always trying to get loose." "how you talk, ben rogers. how can they get loose when there's a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?" "a guard! well, that _is_ good. so somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. i think that's foolishness. why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?" "because it ain't in the books so--that's why. now, ben rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don't you?--that's the idea. don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? do you reckon _you_ can learn 'em anything? not by a good deal. no, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way." "all right. i don't mind; but i say it's a fool way, anyhow. say, do we kill the women, too?" "well, ben rogers, if i was as ignorant as you i wouldn't let on. kill the women? no; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. you fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any more." "well, if that's the way i'm agreed, but i don't take no stock in it. mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers. but go ahead, i ain't got nothing to say." little tommy barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't want to be a robber any more. so they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. but tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some people. ben rogers said he couldn't get out much, only sundays, and so he wanted to begin next sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on sunday, and that settled the thing. they agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected tom sawyer first captain and joe harper second captain of the gang, and so started home. i clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking. my new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and i was dog-tired. chapter iii well, i got a good going-over in the morning from old miss watson on account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that i thought i would behave awhile if i could. then miss watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. she told me to pray every day, and whatever i asked for i would get it. but it warn't so. i tried it. once i got a fish-line, but no hooks. it warn't any good to me without hooks. i tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow i couldn't make it work. by and by, one day, i asked miss watson to try for me, but she said i was a fool. she never told me why, and i couldn't make it out no way. i set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. i says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't deacon winn get back the money he lost on pork? why can't the widow get back her silver snuff-box that was stole? why can't miss watson fat up? no, says i to myself, there ain't nothing in it. i went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was "spiritual gifts." this was too many for me, but she told me what she meant--i must help other people, and do everything i could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself. this was including miss watson, as i took it. i went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but i couldn't see no advantage about it--except for the other people; so at last i reckoned i wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go. sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about providence in a way to make a body's mouth water; but maybe next day miss watson would take hold and knock it all down again. i judged i could see that there was two providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's providence, but if miss watson's got him there warn't no help for him any more. i thought it all out, and reckoned i would belong to the widow's if he wanted me, though i couldn't make out how he was a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing i was so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery. pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; i didn't want to see him no more. he used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though i used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. well, about this time he was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so people said. they judged it was him, anyway; said this drownded man was just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all like pap; but they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all. they said he was floating on his back in the water. they took him and buried him on the bank. but i warn't comfortable long, because i happened to think of something. i knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on his back, but on his face. so i knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes. so i was uncomfortable again. i judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though i wished he wouldn't. we played robber now and then about a month, and then i resigned. all the boys did. we hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just pretended. we used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived any of them. tom sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and marked. but i couldn't see no profit in it. one time tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the gang to get together), and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of spanish merchants and rich a-rabs was going to camp in cave hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. he said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. he never could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. i didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of spaniards and a-rabs, but i wanted to see the camels and elephants, so i was on hand next day, saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. but there warn't no spaniards and a-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. it warn't anything but a sunday-school picnic, and only a primer class at that. we busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though ben rogers got a rag doll, and joe harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. i didn't see no di'monds, and i told tom sawyer so. he said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was a-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. i said, why couldn't we see them, then? he said if i warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called don quixote, i would know without asking. he said it was all done by enchantment. he said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians, and they had turned the whole thing into an infant sunday-school, just out of spite. i said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. tom sawyer said i was a numskull. "why," said he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say jack robinson. they are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church." "well," i says, "s'pose we got some genies to help _us_--can't we lick the other crowd then?" "how you going to get them?" "i don't know. how do _they_ get them?" "why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. they don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a sunday-school superintendent over the head with it--or any other man." "who makes them tear around so?" "why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. they belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. if he tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from china for you to marry, they've got to do it--and they've got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. and more: they've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand." "well," says i, "i think they are a pack of flatheads for not keeping the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. and what's more--if i was one of them i would see a man in jericho before i would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp." "how you talk, huck finn. why, you'd _have_ to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not." "what! and i as high as a tree and as big as a church? all right, then; i _would_ come; but i lay i'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country." "shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, huck finn. you don't seem to know anything, somehow--perfect saphead." i thought all this over for two or three days, and then i reckoned i would see if there was anything in it. i got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till i sweat like an injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use, none of the genies come. so then i judged that all that stuff was only just one of tom sawyer's lies. i reckoned he believed in the a-rabs and the elephants, but as for me i think different. it had all the marks of a sunday-school. chapter iv well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter now. i had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and i don't reckon i could ever get any further than that if i was to live forever. i don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. at first i hated the school, but by and by i got so i could stand it. whenever i got uncommon tired i played hookey, and the hiding i got next day done me good and cheered me up. so the longer i went to school the easier it got to be. i was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they warn't so raspy on me. living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather i used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. i liked the old ways best, but i was getting so i liked the new ones, too, a little bit. the widow said i was coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. she said she warn't ashamed of me. one morning i happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. i reached for some of it as quick as i could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but miss watson was in ahead of me, and crossed me off. she says, "take your hands away, huckleberry; what a mess you are always making!" the widow put in a good word for me, but that warn't going to keep off the bad luck, i knowed that well enough. i started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. there is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them kind; so i never tried to do anything, but just poked along low-spirited and on the watch-out. i went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go through the high board fence. there was an inch of new snow on the ground, and i seen somebody's tracks. they had come up from the quarry and stood around the stile awhile, and then went on around the garden fence. it was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so. i couldn't make it out. it was very curious, somehow. i was going to follow around, but i stooped down to look at the tracks first. i didn't notice anything at first, but next i did. there was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil. i was up in a second and shinning down the hill. i looked over my shoulder every now and then, but i didn't see nobody. i was at judge thatcher's as quick as i could get there. he said: "why, my boy, you are all out of breath. did you come for your interest?" "no, sir," i says; "is there some for me?" "oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night--over a hundred and fifty dollars. quite a fortune for you. you had better let me invest it along with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it." "no, sir," i says, "i don't want to spend it. i don't want it at all--nor the six thousand, nuther. i want you to take it; i want to give it to you--the six thousand and all." he looked surprised. he couldn't seem to make it out. he says: "why, what can you mean, my boy?" i says, "don't you ask me no questions about it, please. you'll take it--won't you?" he says: "well, i'm puzzled. is something the matter?" "please take it," says i, "and don't ask me nothing--then i won't have to tell no lies." he studied awhile, and then he says: "oho-o! i think i see. you want to _sell_ all your property to me--not give it. that's the correct idea." then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says: "there; you see it says 'for a consideration.' that means i have bought it of you and paid you for it. here's a dollar for you. now you sign it." so i signed it, and left. miss watson's nigger, jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. he said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. so i went to him that night and told him pap was here again, for i found his tracks in the snow. what i wanted to know was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. it fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened. but it warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. he said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money. i told him i had an old slick counterfeit quarter that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver a little, and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass didn't show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every time. (i reckoned i wouldn't say nothing about the dollar i got from the judge.) i said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. he said he would split open a raw irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next morning you couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. well, i knowed a potato would do that before, but i had forgot it. jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened again. this time he said the hair-ball was all right. he said it would tell my whole fortune if i wanted it to. i says, go on. so the hair-ball talked to jim, and jim told it to me. he says: "yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den ag'in he spec he'll stay. de bes' way is to res' easy en let de ole man take his own way. dey's two angels hoverin' roun' 'bout him. one uv 'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black. de white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. a body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las'. but you is all right. you gwyne to have considable trouble in yo' life, en considable joy. sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well ag'in. dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. one uv 'em's light en t'other one is dark. one is rich en t'other is po'. you's gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by. you wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung." when i lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap--his own self! chapter v i had shut the door to. then i turned around, and there he was. i used to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. i reckoned i was scared now, too; but in a minute i see i was mistaken--that is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being so unexpected; but right away after i see i warn't scared of him worth bothring about. he was most fifty, and he looked it. his hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. it was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers. there warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawl--a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. as for his clothes--just rags, that was all. he had one ankle resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. his hat was laying on the floor--an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. i stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair tilted back a little. i set the candle down. i noticed the window was up; so he had clumb in by the shed. he kept a-looking me all over. by and by he says: "starchy clothes--very. you think you're a good deal of a big-bug, _don't_ you?" "maybe i am, maybe i ain't," i says. "don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "you've put on considerable many frills since i been away. i'll take you down a peg before i get done with you. you're educated, too, they say--can read and write. you think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't? _i'll_ take it out of you. who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?--who told you you could?" "the widow. she told me." "the widow, hey?--and who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of her business?" "nobody never told her." "well, i'll learn her how to meddle. and looky here--you drop that school, you hear? i'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better'n what _he_ is. you lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? your mother couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. none of the family couldn't before _they_ died. i can't; and here you're a-swelling yourself up like this. i ain't the man to stand it--you hear? say, lemme hear you read." i took up a book and begun something about general washington and the wars. when i'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. he says: "it's so. you can do it. i had my doubts when you told me. now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. i won't have it. i'll lay for you, my smarty; and if i catch you about that school i'll tan you good. first you know you'll get religion, too. i never see such a son." he took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and says: "what's this?" "it's something they give me for learning my lessons good." he tore it up, and says: "i'll give you something better--i'll give you a cowhide." he set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says: "_ain't_ you a sweet-scented dandy, though? a bed; and bedclothes; and a look'n'-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floor--and your own father got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. i never see such a son. i bet i'll take some o' these frills out o' you before i'm done with you. why, there ain't no end to your airs--they say you're rich. hey?--how's that?" "they lie--that's how." "looky here--mind how you talk to me; i'm a-standing about all i can stand now--so don't gimme no sass. i've been in town two days, and i hain't heard nothing but about you bein' rich. i heard about it away down the river, too. that's why i come. you git me that money to-morrow--i want it." "i hain't got no money." "it's a lie. judge thatcher's got it. you git it. i want it." "i hain't got no money, i tell you. you ask judge thatcher; he'll tell you the same." "all right. i'll ask him; and i'll make him pungle, too, or i'll know the reason why. say, how much you got in your pocket? i want it." "i hain't got only a dollar, and i want that to--" "it don't make no difference what you want it for--you just shell it out." he took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going down-town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day. when he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when i reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if i didn't drop that. next day he was drunk, and he went to judge thatcher's and bullyragged him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then he swore he'd make the law force him. the judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther not take a child away from its father. so judge thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business. that pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. he said he'd cowhide me till i was black and blue if i didn't raise some money for him. i borrowed three dollars from judge thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. but he said _he_ was satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for _him._ when he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. so he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. and after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. the judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. the old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. and when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says: "look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it. there's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before he'll go back. you mark them words--don't forget i said them. it's a clean hand now; shake it--don't be afeard." so they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. the judge's wife she kissed it. then the old man he signed a pledge--made his mark. the judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and toward daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. and when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it. the judge he felt kind of sore. he said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way. chapter vi well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for judge thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he went for me, too, for not stopping school. he catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but i went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. i didn't want to go to school much before, but i reckoned i'd go now to spite pap. that law trial was a slow business--appeared like they warn't ever going to get started on it; so every now and then i'd borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised cain around town; and every time he raised cain he got jailed. he was just suited--this kind of thing was right in his line. he got to hanging around the widow's too much, and so she told him at last that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. well, _wasn't_ he mad? he said he would show who was huck finn's boss. so he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was. he kept me with him all the time, and i never got a chance to run off. we lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head nights. he had a gun which he had stole, i reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me. the widow she found out where i was by and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till i was used to being where i was, and liked it--all but the cowhide part. it was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and i didn't see how i'd ever got to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book, and have old miss watson pecking at you all the time. i didn't want to go back no more. i had stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it; but now i took to it again because pap hadn't no objections. it was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around. but by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and i couldn't stand it. i was all over welts. he got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. once he locked me in and was gone three days. it was dreadful lonesome. i judged he had got drownded, and i wasn't ever going to get out any more. i was scared. i made up my mind i would fix up some way to leave there. i had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but i couldn't find no way. there warn't a window to it big enough for a dog to get through. i couldn't get up the chimbly; it was too narrow. the door was thick, solid oak slabs. pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; i reckon i had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, i was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. but this time i found something at last; i found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. i greased it up and went to work. there was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. i got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out--big enough to let me through. well, it was a good long job, but i was getting toward the end of it when i heard pap's gun in the woods. i got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in. pap warn't in a good humor--so he was his natural self. he said he was down-town, and everything was going wrong. his lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and judge thatcher knowed how to do it. and he said people allowed there'd be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. this shook me up considerable, because i didn't want to go back to the widow's any more and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. then the old man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of, and so called them what's-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing. he said he would like to see the widow get me. he said he would watch out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn't find me. that made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute; i reckoned i wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance. the old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. there was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. i toted up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. i thought it all over, and i reckoned i would walk off with the gun and some lines, and take to the woods when i run away. i guessed i wouldn't stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night-times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor the widow couldn't ever find me any more. i judged i would saw out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and i reckoned he would. i got so full of it i didn't notice how long i was staying till the old man hollered and asked me whether i was asleep or drownded. i got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. while i was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again. he had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. a body would 'a' thought he was adam--he was just all mud. whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment. this time he says: "call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him--a man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for _him_ and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. and they call _that_ govment! that ain't all, nuther. the law backs that old judge thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. here's what the law does: the law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. they call that govment! a man can't get his rights in a govment like this. sometimes i've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. yes, and i _told_ 'em so; i told old thatcher so to his face. lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what i said. says i, for two cents i'd leave the blamed country and never come a-near it ag'in. them's the very words. i says, look at my hat--if you call it a hat--but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. look at it, says i--such a hat for me to wear--one of the wealthiest men in this town if i could git my rights. "oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. why, looky here. there was a free nigger there from ohio--a mulatter, most as white as a white man. he had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane--the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the state. and what do you think? they said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. and that ain't the wust. they said he could _vote_ when he was at home. well, that let me out. thinks i, what is the country a-coming to? it was 'lection day, and i was just about to go and vote myself if i warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, i drawed out. i says i'll never vote ag'in. them's the very words i said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me--i'll never vote ag'in as long as i live. and to see the cool way of that nigger--why, he wouldn't 'a' give me the road if i hadn't shoved him out o' the way. i says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold?--that's what i want to know. and what do you reckon they said? why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the state six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. there, now--that's a specimen. they call that a govment that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the state six months. here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a-hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and--" pap was a-going on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language--mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there. he hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. but it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. he said so his own self afterwards. he had heard old sowberry hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but i reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe. after supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens. that was always his word. i judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then i would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or t'other. he drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by and by; but luck didn't run my way. he didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy. he groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time. at last i got so sleepy i couldn't keep my eyes open all i could do, and so before i knowed what i was about i was sound asleep, and the candle burning. i don't know how long i was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and i was up. there was pap looking wild, and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. he said they was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheek--but i couldn't see no snakes. he started and run round and round the cabin, hollering "take him off! take him off! he's biting me on the neck!" i never see a man look so wild in the eyes. pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and saying there was devils a-hold of him. he wore out by and by, and laid still awhile, moaning. then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound. i could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. he was laying over by the corner. by and by he raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side. he says, very low: "tramp--tramp--tramp; that's the dead; tramp--tramp--tramp; they're coming after me; but i won't go. oh, they're here! don't touch me--don't! hands off--they're cold; let go. oh, let a poor devil alone!" then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. i could hear him through the blanket. by and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me. he chased me round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling me the angel of death, and saying he would kill me, and then i couldn't come for him no more. i begged, and told him i was only huck; but he laughed _such_ a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. once when i turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and i thought i was gone; but i slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself. pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. he put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who. so he dozed off pretty soon. by and by i got the old split-bottom chair and clumb up as easy as i could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun. i slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, and then i laid it across the turnip-barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down behind it to wait for him to stir. and how slow and still the time did drag along. chapter vii "git up! what you 'bout?" i opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where i was. it was after sun-up, and i had been sound asleep. pap was standing over me looking sour--and sick, too. he says: "what you doin' with this gun?" i judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so i says: "somebody tried to get in, so i was laying for him." "why didn't you roust me out?" "well, i tried to, but i couldn't; i couldn't budge you." "well, all right. don't stand there palavering all day, but out with you and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. i'll be along in a minute." he unlocked the door, and i cleared out up the river-bank. i noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of bark; so i knowed the river had begun to rise. i reckoned i would have great times now if i was over at the town. the june rise used to be always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comes cordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts--sometimes a dozen logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the woodyards and the sawmill. i went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t'other one out for what the rise might fetch along. well, all at once here comes a canoe; just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. i shot head-first off of the bank like a frog, clothes and all on, and struck out for the canoe. i just expected there'd be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd raise up and laugh at him. but it warn't so this time. it was a drift-canoe sure enough, and i clumb in and paddled her ashore. thinks i, the old man will be glad when he sees this--she's worth ten dollars. but when i got to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as i was running her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, i struck another idea: i judged i'd hide her good, and then, 'stead of taking to the woods when i run off, i'd go down the river about fifty mile and camp in one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot. it was pretty close to the shanty, and i thought i heard the old man coming all the time; but i got her hid; and then i out and looked around a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. so he hadn't seen anything. when he got along i was hard at it taking up a "trot" line. he abused me a little for being so slow; but i told him i fell in the river, and that was what made me so long. i knowed he would see i was wet, and then he would be asking questions. we got five catfish off the lines and went home. while we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about wore out, i got to thinking that if i could fix up some way to keep pap and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; you see, all kinds of things might happen. well, i didn't see no way for a while, but by and by pap raised up a minute to drink another barrel of water, and he says: "another time a man comes a-prowling round here you roust me out, you hear? that man warn't here for no good. i'd a shot him. next time you roust me out, you hear?" then he dropped down and went to sleep again; what he had been saying give me the very idea i wanted. i says to myself, i can fix it now so nobody won't think of following me. about twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. the river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. by and by along comes part of a log raft--nine logs fast together. we went out with the skiff and towed it ashore. then we had dinner. anybody but pap would 'a' waited and seen the day through, so as to catch more stuff; but that warn't pap's style. nine logs was enough for one time; he must shove right over to town and sell. so he locked me in and took the skiff, and started off towing the raft about half past three. i judged he wouldn't come back that night. i waited till i reckoned he had got a good start; then i out with my saw, and went to work on that log again. before he was t'other side of the river i was out of the hole; him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder. [illustration: huckleberry finn] i took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then i done the same with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. i took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition; i took the wadding; i took the bucket and gourd; took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot. i took fish-lines and matches and other things--everything that was worth a cent. i cleaned out the place. i wanted an ax, but there wasn't any, only the one out at the woodpile, and i knowed why i was going to leave that. i fetched out the gun, and now i was done. i had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging out so many things. so i fixed that as good as i could from the outside by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the sawdust. then i fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put two rocks under it and one against it to hold it there, for it was bent up at that place and didn't quite touch ground. if you stood four or five foot away and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't never notice it; and besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it warn't likely anybody would go fooling around there. it was all grass clear to the canoe, so i hadn't left a track. i followed around to see. i stood on the bank and looked out over the river. all safe. so i took the gun and went up a piece into the woods, and was hunting around for some birds when i see a wild pig; hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie-farms. i shot this fellow and took him into camp. i took the ax and smashed in the door. i beat it and hacked it considerable a-doing it. i fetched the pig in, and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the ax, and laid him down on the ground to bleed; i say ground because it was ground--hard packed, and no boards. well, next i took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it--all i could drag--and i started it from the pig, and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and down it sunk, out of sight. you could easy see that something had been dragged over the ground. i did wish tom sawyer was there; i knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches. nobody could spread himself like tom sawyer in such a thing as that. well, last i pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the ax good, and stuck it on the back side, and slung the ax in the corner. then i took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn't drip) till i got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the river. now i thought of something else. so i went and got the bag of meal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house. i took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and forks on the place--pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking. then i carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and full of rushes--and ducks too, you might say, in the season. there was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away, i don't know where, but it didn't go to the river. the meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. i dropped pap's whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. then i tied up the rip in the meal-sack with a string, so it wouldn't leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again. it was about dark now; so i dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. i made fast to a willow; then i took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. i says to myself, they'll follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me. and they'll follow that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things. they won't ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. they'll soon get tired of that, and won't bother no more about me. all right; i can stop anywhere i want to. jackson's island is good enough for me; i know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. and then i can paddle over to town nights, and slink around and pick up things i want. jackson's island's the place. i was pretty tired, and the first thing i knowed i was asleep. when i woke up i didn't know where i was for a minute. i set up and looked around, a little scared. then i remembered. the river looked miles and miles across. the moon was so bright i could 'a' counted the drift-logs that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and _smelt_ late. you know what i mean--i don't know the words to put it in. i took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start when i heard a sound away over the water. i listened. pretty soon i made it out. it was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night. i peeped out through the willow branches, and there it was--a skiff, away across the water. i couldn't tell how many was in it. it kept a-coming, and when it was abreast of me i see there warn't but one man in it. thinks i, maybe it's pap, though i warn't expecting him. he dropped below me with the current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water, and he went by so close i could 'a' reached out the gun and touched him. well, it _was_ pap, sure enough--and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars. i didn't lose no time. the next minute i was a-spinning down-stream soft, but quick, in the shade of the bank. i made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more toward the middle of the river, because pretty soon i would be passing the ferry-landing, and people might see me and hail me. i got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. i laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; not a cloud in it. the sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; i never knowed it before. and how far a body can hear on the water such nights! i heard people talking at the ferry-landing. i heard what they said, too--every word of it. one man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights now. t'other one said _this_ warn't one of the short ones, he reckoned--and then they laughed, and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped out something brisk, and said let him alone. the first fellow said he 'lowed to tell it to his old woman--she would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his time. i heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. after that the talk got further and further away, and i couldn't make out the words any more; but i could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off. i was away below the ferry now. i rose up, and there was jackson's island, about two mile and a half down-stream, heavy-timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any lights. there warn't any signs of the bar at the head--it was all under water now. it didn't take me long to get there. i shot past the head at a ripping rate, the current was so swift, and then i got into the dead water and landed on the side towards the illinois shore. i run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that i knowed about; i had to part the willow branches to get in; and when i made fast nobody could 'a' seen the canoe from the outside. i went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked out on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town, three mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. a monstrous big lumber-raft was about a mile upstream, coming along down, with a lantern in the middle of it. i watched it come creeping down, and when it was most abreast of where i stood i heard a man say, "stern oars, there! heave her head to stabboard!" i heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side. there was a little gray in the sky now; so i stepped into the woods, and laid down for a nap before breakfast. chapter viii the sun was up so high when i waked that i judged it was after eight o'clock. i laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. i could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. there was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. a couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly. i was powerful lazy and comfortable--didn't want to get up and cook breakfast. well, i was dozing off again when i thinks i hears a deep sound of "boom!" away up the river. i rouses up, and rests on my elbow and listens; pretty soon i hears it again. i hopped up, and went and looked out at a hole in the leaves, and i see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways up--about abreast the ferry. and there was the ferryboat full of people floating along down. i knowed what was the matter now. "boom!" i see the white smoke squirt out of the ferryboat's side. you see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top. i was pretty hungry, but it warn't going to do for me to start a fire, because they might see the smoke. so i set there and watched the cannon-smoke and listened to the boom. the river was a mile wide there, and it always looks pretty on a summer morning--so i was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if i only had a bite to eat. well, then i happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the drownded carcass and stop there. so, says i, i'll keep a lookout, and if any of them's floating around after me i'll give them a show. i changed to the illinois edge of the island to see what luck i could have, and i warn't disappointed. a big double loaf come along, and i most got it with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out further. of course i was where the current set in the closest to the shore--i knowed enough for that. but by and by along comes another one, and this time i won. i took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver, and set my teeth in. it was "baker's bread"--what the quality eat; none of your low-down corn-pone. i got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well satisfied. and then something struck me. i says, now i reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done it. so there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing--that is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and i reckon it don't work for only just the right kind. i lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching. the ferryboat was floating with the current, and i allowed i'd have a chance to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in close, where the bread did. when she'd got pretty well along down towards me, i put out my pipe and went to where i fished out the bread, and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place. where the log forked i could peep through. by and by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could 'a' run out a plank and walked ashore. most everybody was on the boat. pap, and judge thatcher, and bessie thatcher, and joe harper, and tom sawyer, and his old aunt polly, and sid and mary, and plenty more. everybody was talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and says: "look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he's washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge. i hope so, anyway." i didn't hope so. they all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might. i could see them first-rate, but they couldn't see me. then the captain sung out: "stand away!" and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that it made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and i judged i was gone. if they'd 'a' had some bullets in, i reckon they'd 'a' got the corpse they was after. well, i see i warn't hurt, thanks to goodness. the boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island. i could hear the booming now and then, further and further off, and by and by, after an hour, i didn't hear it no more. the island was three mile long. i judged they had got to the foot, and was giving it up. but they didn't yet awhile. they turned around the foot of the island and started up the channel on the missouri side, under steam, and booming once in a while as they went. i crossed over to that side and watched them. when they got abreast the head of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the missouri shore and went home to the town. i knowed i was all right now. nobody else would come a-hunting after me. i got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. i made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn't get at them. i catched a catfish and haggled him open with my saw, and towards sundown i started my camp-fire and had supper. then i set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. when it was dark i set by my camp-fire smoking, and feeling pretty well satisfied; but by and by it got sort of lonesome, and so i went and set on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the stars and drift-logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can't stay so, you soon get over it. and so for three days and nights. no difference--just the same thing. but the next day i went exploring around down through the island. i was boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and i wanted to know all about it; but mainly i wanted to put in the time. i found plenty strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer grapes, and green razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. they would all come handy by and by, i judged. well, i went fooling along in the deep woods till i judged i warn't far from the foot of the island. i had my gun along, but i hadn't shot nothing; it was for protection; thought i would kill some game nigh home. about this time i mighty near stepped on a good-sized snake, and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers, and i after it, trying to get a shot at it. i clipped along, and all of a sudden i bounded right on to the ashes of a camp-fire that was still smoking. my heart jumped up amongst my lungs. i never waited for to look further, but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever i could. every now and then i stopped a second amongst the thick leaves and listened, but my breath come so hard i couldn't hear nothing else. i slunk along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so on. if i see a stump, i took it for a man; if i trod on a stick and broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and i only got half, and the short half, too. when i got to camp i warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand in my craw; but i says, this ain't no time to be fooling around. so i got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and i put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last-year's camp, and then clumb a tree. i reckon i was up in the tree two hours; but i didn't see nothing, i didn't hear nothing--i only _thought_ i heard and seen as much as a thousand things. well, i couldn't stay up there forever; so at last i got down, but i kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. all i could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. by the time it was night i was pretty hungry. so when it was good and dark i slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the illinois bank--about a quarter of a mile. i went out in the woods and cooked a supper, and i had about made up my mind i would stay there all night when i hear a _plunkety-plunk_, _plunkety-plunk_, and says to myself, horses coming; and next i hear people's voices. i got everything into the canoe as quick as i could, and then went creeping through the woods to see what i could find out. i hadn't got far when i hear a man say: "we better camp here if we can find a good place; the horses is about beat out. let's look around." i didn't wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy. i tied up in the old place, and reckoned i would sleep in the canoe. i didn't sleep much. i couldn't, somehow, for thinking. and every time i waked up i thought somebody had me by the neck. so the sleep didn't do me no good. by and by i says to myself, i can't live this way; i'm a-going to find out who it is that's here on the island with me; i'll find it out or bust. well, i felt better right off. so i took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows. the moon was shining, and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day. i poked along well on to an hour, everything still as rocks and sound asleep. well, by this time i was most down to the foot of the island. a little ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying the night was about done. i give her a turn with the paddle and brung her nose to shore; then i got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the woods. i sat down there on a log, and looked out through the leaves. i see the moon go off watch, and the darkness begin to blanket the river. but in a little while i see a pale streak over the treetops, and knowed the day was coming. so i took my gun and slipped off towards where i had run across that camp-fire, stopping every minute or two to listen. but i hadn't no luck somehow; i couldn't seem to find the place. but by and by, sure enough, i catched a glimpse of fire away through the trees. i went for it, cautious and slow. by and by i was close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground. it most give me the fantods. he had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the fire. i set there behind a clump of bushes in about six foot of him, and kept my eyes on him steady. it was getting gray daylight now. pretty soon he gapped and stretched himself and hove off the blanket, and it was miss watson's jim! i bet i was glad to see him. i says: "hello, jim!" and skipped out. he bounced up and stared at me wild. then he drops down on his knees, and puts his hands together and says: "doan' hurt me--don't! i hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'. i alwuz liked dead people, en done all i could for 'em. you go en git in de river ag'in, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffn to ole jim, 'at 'uz alwuz yo' fren'." well, i warn't long making him understand i warn't dead. i was ever so glad to see jim. i warn't lonesome now. i told him i warn't afraid of _him_ telling the people where i was. i talked along, but he only set there and looked at me; never said nothing. then i says: "it's good daylight. le's get breakfast. make up your camp-fire good." "what's de use er makin' up de camp-fire to cook strawbries en sich truck? but you got a gun, hain't you? den we kin git sumfn better den strawbries." "strawberries and such truck," i says. "is that what you live on?" "i couldn' git nuffn else," he says. "why, how long you been on the island, jim?" "i come heah de night arter you's killed." "what, all that time?" "yes-indeedy." "and ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?" "no, sah--nuffn else." "well, you must be most starved, ain't you?" "i reck'n i could eat a hoss. i think i could. how long you ben on de islan'?" "since the night i got killed." "no! w'y, what has you lived on? but you got a gun. oh, yes, you got a gun. dat's good. now you kill sumfn en i'll make up de fire." so we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in a grassy open place amongst the trees, i fetched meal and bacon and coffee, and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft. i catched a good big catfish, too, and jim cleaned him with his knife, and fried him. when breakfast was ready we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot. jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved. then when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied. by and by jim says: "but looky here, huck, who wuz it dat 'uz killed in dat shanty ef it warn't you?" then i told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart. he said tom sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what i had. then i says: "how do you come to be here, jim, and how'd you get here?" he looked pretty uneasy, and didn't say nothing for a minute. then he says: "maybe i better not tell." "why, jim?" "well, dey's reasons. but you wouldn' tell on me ef i 'uz to tell you, would you, huck?" "blamed if i would, jim." "well, i b'lieve you, huck. i--i _run off_." "jim!" "but mind, you said you wouldn' tell--you know you said you wouldn' tell, huck." "well, i did. i said i wouldn't, and i'll stick to it. honest _injun_, i will. people would call me a low-down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum--but that don't make no difference. i ain't a-going to tell, and i ain't a-going back there, anyways. so, now, le's know all about it." "well, you see, it 'uz dis way. ole missus--dat's miss watson--she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she wouldn' sell me down to orleans. but i noticed dey wuz a nigger trader roun' de place considable lately, en i begin to git oneasy. well, one night i creeps to de do' pooty late, en de do' warn't quite shet, en i hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to orleans, but she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it 'uz sich a big stack o' money she couldn' resis'. de widder she try to git her to say she wouldn't do it, but i never waited to hear de res'. i lit out mighty quick, i tell you. "i tuck out en shin down de hill, en 'spec to steal a skift 'long de sho' som'ers 'bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirring yit, so i hid in de ole tumbledown cooper shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go 'way. well, i wuz dah all night. dey wuz somebody roun' all de time. 'long 'bout six in de mawnin' skifts begin to go by, en 'bout eight er nine every skift dat went 'long wuz talkin' 'bout how yo' pap come over to de town en say you's killed. dese las' skifts wuz full o' ladies en genlmen a-goin' over for to see de place. sometimes dey'd pull up at de sho' en take a res' b'fo' dey started acrost, so by de talk i got to know all 'bout de killin'. i 'uz powerful sorry you's killed, huck, but i ain't no mo' now. "i laid dah under de shavin's all day. i 'uz hungry, but i warn't afeard; bekase i knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin' to start to de camp-meet'n' right arter breakfas' en be gone all day, en dey knows i goes off wid de cattle 'bout daylight, so dey wouldn' 'spec to see me roun' de place, en so dey wouldn' miss me tell arter dark in de evenin'. de yuther servants wouldn' miss me, kase dey'd shin out en take holiday soon as de ole folks 'uz out'n de way. "well, when it come dark i tuck out up de river road, en went 'bout two mile er more to whah dey warn't no houses. i'd made up my mine 'bout what i's a-gwyne to do. you see, ef i kep' on tryin' to git away afoot, de dogs 'ud track me; ef i stole a skift to cross over, dey'd miss dat skift, you see, en dey'd know 'bout whah i'd lan' on de yuther side, en whah to pick up my track. so i says, a raff is what i's arter; it doan' _make_ no track. "i see a light a-comin' roun' de p'int bymeby, so i wade' in en shove' a log ahead o' me en swum more'n half-way acrost de river, en got in 'mongst de drift-wood, en kep' my head down low, en kinder swum agin de current tell de raff come along. den i swum to de stern uv it en tuck a-holt. it clouded up en 'uz pooty dark for a little while. so i clumb up en laid down on de planks. de men 'uz all 'way yonder in de middle, whah de lantern wuz. de river wuz a-risin', en dey wuz a good current; so i reck'n'd 'at by fo' in de mawnin' i'd be twenty-five mile down de river, en den i'd slip in jis b'fo' daylight en swim asho', en take to de woods on de illinois side. "but i didn' have no luck. when we 'uz mos' down to de head er de islan' a man begin to come aft wid de lantern. i see it warn't no use fer to wait, so i slid overboard en struck out fer de islan'. well, i had a notion i could lan' mos' anywhers, but i couldn't--bank too bluff. i uz mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' i foun' a good place. i went into de woods en jedged i wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey move de lantern roun' so. i had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg en some matches in my cap, en dey warn't wet, so i 'uz all right." "and so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time? why didn't you get mud-turkles?" "how you gwyne to git 'm? you can't slip up on um en grab um; en how's a body gwyne to hit um wid a rock? how could a body do it in de night? en i warn't gwyne to show mysef on de bank in de daytime." "well, that's so. you've had to keep in the woods all the time, of course. did you hear 'em shooting the cannon?" "oh, yes. i knowed dey was arter you. i see um go by heah--watched um thoo de bushes." some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and lighting. jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. he said it was a sign when young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was the same way when young birds done it. i was going to catch some of them, but jim wouldn't let me. he said it was death. he said his father laid mighty sick once, and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny said his father would die, and he did. and jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to cook for dinner, because that would bring bad luck. the same if you shook the tablecloth after sundown. and he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but i didn't believe that, because i had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me. i had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them. jim knowed all kinds of signs. he said he knowed most everything. i said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so i asked him if there warn't any good-luck signs. he says: "mighty few--an' _dey_ ain't no use to a body. what you want to know when good luck's a-comin' for? want to keep it off?" and he said: "ef you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's a-gwyne to be rich. well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur ahead. you see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you might git discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn' know by de sign dat you gwyne to be rich bymeby." "have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, jim?" "what's de use to ax dat question? don't you see i has?" "well, are you rich?" "no, but i ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich ag'in. wunst i had foteen dollars, but i tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out." "what did you speculate in, jim?" "well, fust i tackled stock." "what kind of stock?" "why, live stock--cattle, you know. i put ten dollars in a cow. but i ain' gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock. de cow up 'n' died on my han's." "so you lost the ten dollars." "no, i didn't lose it all. i on'y los' 'bout nine of it. i sole de hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents." "you had five dollars and ten cents left. did you speculate any more?" "yes. you know that one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old misto bradish? well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo' dollars mo' at de en' er de year. well, all de niggers went in, but dey didn't have much. i wuz de on'y one dat had much. so i stuck out for mo' dan fo' dollars, en i said 'f i didn' git it i'd start a bank mysef. well, o' course dat nigger want' to keep me out er de business, bekase he says dey warn't business 'nough for two banks, so he say i could put in my five dollars en he pay me thirty-five at de en' er de year. "so i done it. den i reck'n'd i'd inves' de thirty-five dollars right off en keep things a-movin'. dey wuz a nigger name' bob, dat had ketched a wood-flat, en his marster didn' know it; en i bought it off'n him en told him to take de thirty-five dollars when de en' er de year come; but somebody stole de wood-flat dat night, en nex' day de one-laigged nigger say de bank's busted. so dey didn' none uv us git no money." "what did you do with the ten cents, jim?" "well, i 'uz gwyne to spen' it, but i had a dream, en de dream tole me to give it to a nigger name' balum--balum's ass dey call him for short; he's one er dem chuckleheads, you know. but he's lucky, dey say, en i see i warn't lucky. de dream say let balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a raise for me. well, balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to de lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times. so balum he tuck en give de ten cents to de po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it." "well, what did come of it, jim?" "nuffn never come of it. i couldn' manage to k'leck dat money no way; en balum he couldn'. i ain' gwyne to len' no mo' money 'dout i see de security. boun' to git yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says! ef i could git de ten _cents_ back, i'd call it squah, en be glad er de chanst." "well, it's all right anyway, jim, long as you're going to be rich again some time or other." "yes; en i's rich now, come to look at it. i owns mysef, en i's wuth eight hund'd dollars. i wisht i had de money, i wouldn' want no mo'." chapter ix i wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island that i'd found when i was exploring; so we started and soon got to it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide. this place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot high. we had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and the bushes so thick. we tramped and clumb around all over it, and by and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side towards illinois. the cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together, and jim could stand up straight in it. it was cool in there. jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but i said we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time. jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island, and they would never find us without dogs. and, besides, he said them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did i want the things to get wet? so we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern, and lugged all the traps up there. then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. we took some fish off of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner. the door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a good place to build a fire on. so we built it there and cooked dinner. we spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. we put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and i never see the wind blow so. it was one of these regular summer storms. it would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest--_fst!_ it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down-stairs--where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know. "jim, this is nice," i says. "i wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here. pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread." "well, you wouldn't 'a' ben here 'f it hadn't 'a' ben for jim. you'd 'a' ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittin' mos' drownded, too; dat you would, honey. chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do de birds, chile." the river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last it was over the banks. the water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the illinois bottom. on that side it was a good many miles wide, but on the missouri side it was the same old distance across--a half a mile--because the missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs. daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe. it was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside. we went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung so thick we had to back away and go some other way. well, on every old broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things; and when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles--they would slide off in the water. the ridge our cavern was in was full of them. we could 'a' had pets enough if we'd wanted them. one night we catched a little section of a lumber-raft--nice pine planks. it was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the top stood above water six or seven inches--a solid, level floor. we could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them go; we didn't show ourselves in daylight. another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before daylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side. she was a two-story, and tilted over considerable. we paddled out and got aboard--clumb in at an up-stairs window. but it was too dark to see yet, so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight. the light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. then we looked in at the window. we could make out a bed, and a table, and two old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and there was clothes hanging against the wall. there was something laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man. so jim says: "hello, you!" but it didn't budge. so i hollered again, and then jim says: "de man ain't asleep--he's dead. you hold still--i'll go en see." he went, and bent down and looked, and says: "it's a dead man. yes, indeedy; naked, too. he's ben shot in de back. i reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. come in, huck, but doan' look at his face--it's too gashly." i didn't look at him at all. jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn't done it; i didn't want to see him. there was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky-bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. there was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women's underclothes hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too. we put the lot into the canoe--it might come good. there was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor; i took that, too. and there was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. we would 'a' took the bottle, but it was broke. there was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke. they stood open, but there warn't nothing left in them that was any account. the way things was scattered about we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and warn't fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff. we got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and a bran-new barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fish-line as thick as my little finger with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on them; and just as we was leaving i found a tolerable good currycomb, and jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. the straps was broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for jim, and we couldn't find the other one, though we hunted all around. and so, take it all around, we made a good haul. when we was ready to shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty broad day; so i made jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off. i paddled over to the illinois shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it. i crept up the dead water under the bank, and hadn't no accidents and didn't see nobody. we got home all safe. chapter x after breakfast i wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but jim didn't want to. he said it would fetch bad luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha'nt us; he said a man that warn't buried was more likely to go a-ha'nting around than one that was planted and comfortable. that sounded pretty reasonable, so i didn't say no more; but i couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing i knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for. we rummaged the clothes we'd got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat. jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat, because if they'd 'a' knowed the money was there they wouldn't 'a' left it. i said i reckoned they killed him, too; but jim didn't want to talk about that. i says: "now you think it's bad luck; but what did you say when i fetched in the snake-skin that i found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday? you said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin with my hands. well, here's your bad luck! we've raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides. i wish we could have some bad luck like this every day, jim." "never you mind, honey, never you mind. don't you git too peart. it's a-comin'. mind i tell you, it's a-comin'." it did come, too. it was a tuesday that we had that talk. well, after dinner friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the ridge, and got out of tobacco. i went to the cavern to get some, and found a rattlesnake in there. i killed him, and curled him up on the foot of jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some fun when jim found him there. well, by night i forgot all about the snake, and when jim flung himself down on the blanket while i struck a light the snake's mate was there, and bit him. he jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the varmint curled up and ready for another spring. i laid him out in a second with a stick, and jim grabbed pap's whisky-jug and begun to pour it down. he was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. that all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. jim told me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away, and then skin the body and roast a piece of it. i done it, and he eat it and said it would help cure him. he made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, too. he said that that would help. then i slid out quiet and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for i warn't going to let jim find out it was all my fault, not if i could help it. jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again. his foot swelled up pretty big, and so did his leg; but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so i judged he was all right; but i'd druther been bit with a snake than pap's whisky. jim was laid up for four days and nights. then the swelling was all gone and he was around again. i made up my mind i wouldn't ever take a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that i see what had come of it. jim said he reckoned i would believe him next time. and he said that handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to the end of it yet. he said he druther see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin in his hand. well, i was getting to feel that way myself, though i've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. old hank bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but i didn't see it. pap told me. but anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool. well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. we couldn't handle him, of course; he would 'a' flung us into illinois. we just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drownded. we found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball, and lots of rubbage. we split the ball open with the hatchet, and there was a spool in it. jim said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it over so and make a ball of it. it was as big a fish as was ever catched in the mississippi, i reckon. jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one. he would 'a' been worth a good deal over at the village. they peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market-house there; everybody buys some of him; his meat's as white as snow and makes a good fry. next morning i said it was getting slow and dull, and i wanted to get a stirring-up some way. i said i reckoned i would slip over the river and find out what was going on. jim liked that notion; but he said i must go in the dark and look sharp. then he studied it over and said, couldn't i put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? that was a good notion, too. so we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and i turned up my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it. jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit. i put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove-pipe. jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly. i practised around all day to get the hang of the things, and by and by i could do pretty well in them, only jim said i didn't walk like a girl; and he said i must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches-pocket. i took notice, and done better. i started up the illinois shore in the canoe just after dark. i started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. i tied up and started along the bank. there was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and i wondered who had took up quarters there. i slipped up and peeped in at the window. there was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by a candle that was on a pine table. i didn't know her face; she was a stranger, for you couldn't start a face in that town that i didn't know. now this was lucky, because i was weakening; i was getting afraid i had come; people might know my voice and find me out. but if this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all i wanted to know; so i knocked at the door, and made up my mind i wouldn't forget i was a girl. chapter xi "come in," says the woman, and i did. she says: "take a cheer." i done it. she looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says: "what might your name be?" "sarah williams." "where'bouts do you live? in this neighborhood?" "no'm. in hookerville, seven mile below. i've walked all the way and i'm all tired out." "hungry, too, i reckon. i'll find you something." "no'm, i ain't hungry. i was so hungry i had to stop two miles below here at a farm; so i ain't hungry no more. it's what makes me so late. my mother's down sick, and out of money and everything, and i come to tell my uncle abner moore. he lives at the upper end of the town, she says. i hain't ever been here before. do you know him?" "no; but i don't know everybody yet. i haven't lived here quite two weeks. it's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. you better stay here all night. take off your bonnet." "no," i says; "i'll rest awhile, i reckon, and go on. i ain't afeard of the dark." she said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in by and by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me. then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better off they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake coming to our town, instead of letting well alone--and so on and so on, till i was afeard i had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was going on in the town; but by and by she dropped on to pap and the murder, and then i was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. she told about me and tom sawyer finding the twelve thousand dollars (only she got it twenty) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot i was, and at last she got down to where i was murdered. i says: "who done it? we've heard considerable about these goings-on down in hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed huck finn." "well, i reckon there's a right smart chance of people _here_ that 'd like to know who killed him. some think old finn done it himself." "no--is that so?" "most everybody thought it at first. he'll never know how nigh he come to getting lynched. but before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named jim." "why _he_--" i stopped. i reckoned i better keep still. she run on, and never noticed i had put in at all: "the nigger run off the very night huck finn was killed. so there's a reward out for him--three hundred dollars. and there's a reward out for old finn, too--two hundred dollars. you see, he come to town the morning after the murder, and told about it, and was out with 'em on the ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left. before night they wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. well, next day they found out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn't ben seen sence ten o'clock the night the murder was done. so then they put it on him, you see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old finn, and went boo-hooing to judge thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over illinois with. the judge gave him some, and that evening he got drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them. well, he hain't come back sence, and they ain't looking for him back till this thing blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and fixed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he'd get huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit. people do say he warn't any too good to do it. oh, he's sly, i reckon. if he don't come back for a year he'll be all right. you can't prove anything on him, you know; everything will be quieted down then, and he'll walk in huck's money as easy as nothing." "yes, i reckon so, 'm. i don't see nothing in the way of it. has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?" "oh, no, not everybody. a good many thinks he done it. but they'll get the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him." "why, are they after him yet?" "well, you're innocent, ain't you! does three hundred dollars lay around every day for people to pick up? some folks think the nigger ain't far from here. i'm one of them--but i hain't talked it around. a few days ago i was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to that island over yonder that they call jackson's island. don't anybody live there? says i. no, nobody, says they. i didn't say any more, but i done some thinking. i was pretty near certain i'd seen smoke over there, about the head of the island, a day or two before that, so i says to myself, like as not that nigger's hiding over there; anyway, says i, it's worth the trouble to give the place a hunt. i hain't seen any smoke sence, so i reckon maybe he's gone, if it was him; but husband's going over to see--him and another man. he was gone up the river; but he got back to-day, and i told him as soon as he got here two hours ago." i had got so uneasy i couldn't set still. i had to do something with my hands; so i took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it. my hands shook, and i was making a bad job of it. when the woman stopped talking i looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious and smiling a little. i put down the needle and thread, and let on to be interested--and i was, too--and says: "three hundred dollars is a power of money. i wish my mother could get it. is your husband going over there to-night?" "oh, yes. he went up-town with the man i was telling you of, to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun. they'll go over after midnight." "couldn't they see better if they was to wait till daytime?" "yes. and couldn't the nigger see better, too? after midnight he'll likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up his campfire all the better for the dark, if he's got one." "i didn't think of that." the woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and i didn't feel a bit comfortable. pretty soon she says: "what did you say your name was, honey?" "m--mary williams." somehow it didn't seem to me that i said it was mary before, so i didn't look up--seemed to me i said it was sarah; so i felt sort of cornered, and was afeard maybe i was looking it, too. i wished the woman would say something more; the longer she set still the uneasier i was. but now she says: "honey, i thought you said it was sarah when you first come in?" "oh, yes'm, i did. sarah mary williams. sarah's my first name. some calls me sarah, some calls me mary." "oh, that's the way of it?" "yes'm." i was feeling better then, but i wished i was out of there, anyway. i couldn't look up yet. well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the place, and so forth and so on, and then i got easy again. she was right about the rats. you'd see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner every little while. she said she had to have things handy to throw at them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace. she showed me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot with it generly, but she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't know whether she could throw true now. but she watched for a chance, and directly banged away at a rat; but she missed him wide, and said, "ouch!" it hurt her arm so. then she told me to try for the next one. i wanted to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course i didn't let on. i got the thing, and the first rat that showed his nose i let drive, and if he'd 'a' stayed where he was he'd 'a' been a tolerable sick rat. she said that was first-rate, and she reckoned i would hive the next one. she went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back, and brought along a hank of yarn which she wanted me to help her with. i held up my two hands and she put the hank over them, and went on talking about her and her husband's matters. but she broke off to say: "keep your eye on the rats. you better have the lead in your lap, handy." so she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and i clapped my legs together on it and she went on talking. but only about a minute. then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face, and very pleasant, and says: "come, now, what's your real name?" "wh-hat, mum?" "what's your real name? is it bill, or tom, or bob?--or what is it?" i reckon i shook like a leaf, and i didn't know hardly what to do. but i says: "please to don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. if i'm in the way here, i'll--" "no, you won't. set down and stay where you are. i ain't going to hurt you, and i ain't going to tell on you, nuther. you just tell me your secret, and trust me. i'll keep it; and, what's more, i'll help you. so'll my old man if you want him to. you see, you're a runaway 'prentice, that's all. it ain't anything. there ain't no harm in it. you've been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut. bless you, child, i wouldn't tell on you. tell me all about it now, that's a good boy." so i said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer, and i would just make a clean breast and tell her everything, but she mustn't go back on her promise. then i told her my father and mother was dead, and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty mile back from the river, and he treated me so bad i couldn't stand it no longer; he went away to be gone a couple of days, and so i took my chance and stole some of his daughter's old clothes and cleared out, and i had been three nights coming the thirty miles. i traveled nights, and hid daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat i carried from home lasted me all the way, and i had a-plenty. i said i believed my uncle abner moore would take care of me, and so that was why i struck out for this town of goshen. "goshen, child? this ain't goshen. this is st. petersburg. goshen's ten mile further up the river. who told you this was goshen?" "why, a man i met at daybreak this morning, just as i was going to turn into the woods for my regular sleep. he told me when the roads forked i must take the right hand, and five mile would fetch me to goshen." "he was drunk, i reckon. he told you just exactly wrong." "well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain't no matter now. i got to be moving along. i'll fetch goshen before daylight." "hold on a minute. i'll put you up a snack to eat. you might want it." so she put me up a snack, and says: "say, when a cow's laying down, which end of her gets up first? answer up prompt now--don't stop to study over it. which end gets up first?" "the hind end, mum." "well, then, a horse?" "the for'rard end, mum." "which side of a tree does the moss grow on?" "north side." "if fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with their heads pointed the same direction?" "the whole fifteen, mum." "well, i reckon you _have_ lived in the country. i thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again. what's your real name, now?" "george peters, mum." "well, try to remember it, george. don't forget and tell me it's elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it's george elexander when i catch you. and don't go about women in that old calico. you do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it; that's the way a woman most always does, but a man always does t'other way. and when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a-tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. and, mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don't clap them together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead. why, i spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and i contrived the other things just to make certain. now trot along to your uncle, sarah mary williams george elexander peters, and if you get into trouble you send word to mrs. judith loftus, which is me, and i'll do what i can to get you out of it. keep the river road all the way, and next time you tramp take shoes and socks with you. the river road's a rocky one, and your feet 'll be in a condition when you get to goshen, i reckon." i went up the bank about fifty yards, and then i doubled on my tracks and slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. i jumped in, and was off in a hurry. i went up-stream far enough to make the head of the island, and then started across. i took off the sun-bonnet, for i didn't want no blinders on then. when i was about the middle i heard the clock begin to strike, so i stops and listens; the sound come faint over the water but clear--eleven. when i struck the head of the island i never waited to blow, though i was most winded, but i shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started a good fire there on a high and dry spot. then i jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place, a mile and a half below, as hard as i could go. i landed, and slopped through the timber and up the ridge and into the cavern. there jim laid, sound asleep on the ground. i roused him out and says: "git up and hump yourself, jim! there ain't a minute to lose. they're after us!" jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. by that time everything we had in the world was on our raft, and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. we put out the camp-fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show a candle outside after that. i took the canoe out from the shore a little piece, and took a look; but if there was a boat around i couldn't see it, for stars and shadows ain't good to see by. then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still--never saying a word. chapter xii it must 'a' been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. if a boat was to come along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the illinois shore; and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat. we was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. it warn't good judgment to put _everything_ on the raft. if the men went to the island i just expect they found the camp-fire i built, and watched it all night for jim to come. anyways, they stayed away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't no fault of mine. i played it as low down on them as i could. when the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a big bend on the illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. a towhead is a sand-bar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth. we had mountains on the missouri shore and heavy timber on the illinois side, and the channel was down the missouri shore at that place, so we warn't afraid of anybody running across us. we laid there all day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the missouri shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. i told jim all about the time i had jabbering with that woman; and jim said she was a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set down and watch a camp-fire--no, sir, she'd fetch a dog. well, then, i said, why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog? jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he believed they must 'a' gone up-town to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or else we wouldn't be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile below the village--no, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. so i said i didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long as they didn't. when it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in sight; so jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry. jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach of steamboat waves. right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being seen. we made an extra steering-oar, too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something. we fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern on, because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming down-stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn't have to light it for up-stream boats unless we see we was in what they call a "crossing"; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still a little under water; so up-bound boats didn't always run the channel, but hunted easy water. this second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. we catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. it was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed--only a little kind of a low chuckle. we had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all--that night, nor the next, nor the next. every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see. the fifth night we passed st. louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. in st. petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in st. louis, but i never believed it till i see that wonderful spread of lights at two o'clock that still night. there warn't a sound there; everybody was asleep. every night now i used to slip ashore toward ten o'clock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes i lifted a chicken that warn't roosting comfortable, and took him along. pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. i never see pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway. mornings before daylight i slipped into corn-fields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn't anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them any more--then he reckoned it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others. so we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. but toward daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p'simmons. we warn't feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now. i was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet. we shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening. take it all round, we lived pretty high. the fifth night below st. louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. we stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. when the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high, rocky bluffs on both sides. by and by says i, "hel-_lo_, jim, looky yonder!" it was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. we was drifting straight down for her. the lightning showed her very distinct. she was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it, when the flashes come. well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so mysterious-like, i felt just the way any other boy would 'a' felt when i seen that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. i wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there was there. so i says: "le's land on her, jim." but jim was dead against it at first. he says: "i doan' want to go fool'n' 'long er no wrack. we's doin' blame' well, en we better let blame' well alone, as de good book says. like as not dey's a watchman on dat wrack." "watchman your grandmother," i says; "there ain't nothing to watch but the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody's going to resk his life for a texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when it's likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?" jim couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn't try. "and besides," i says, "we might borrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom. seegars, i bet you--and cost five cents apiece, solid cash. steamboat captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and _they_ don't care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. stick a candle in your pocket; i can't rest, jim, till we give her a rummaging. do you reckon tom sawyer would ever go by this thing? not for pie, he wouldn't. he'd call it an adventure--that's what he'd call it; and he'd land on that wreck if it was his last act. and wouldn't he throw style into it?--wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing? why, you'd think it was christopher c'lumbus discovering kingdom come. i wish tom sawyer _was_ here." jim he grumbled a little, but give in. he said we mustn't talk any more than we could help, and then talk mighty low. the lightning showed us the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stabboard derrick, and made fast there. the deck was high out here. we went sneaking down the slope of it to labboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so dark we couldn't see no sign of them. pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight, and clumb on to it; and the next step fetched us in front of the captain's door, which was open, and by jimminy, away down through the texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we seem to hear low voices in yonder! jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come along. i says, all right, and was going to start for the raft; but just then i heard a voice wail out and say: "oh, please don't, boys; i swear i won't ever tell!" another voice said, pretty loud: "it's a lie, jim turner. you've acted this way before. you always want more'n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because you've swore 't if you didn't you'd tell. but this time you've said it jest one time too many. you're the meanest, treacherousest hound in this country." by this time jim was gone for the raft. i was just a-biling with curiosity; and i says to myself, tom sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so i won't either; i'm a-going to see what's going on here. so i dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark till there warn't but one stateroom betwixt me and the cross-hall of the texas. then in there i see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. this one kept pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor, and saying: "i'd _like_ to! and i orter, too--a mean skunk!" the man on the floor would shrivel up and say, "oh, please don't, bill; i hain't ever goin' to tell." and every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and say: "'deed you _ain't!_ you never said no truer thing 'n that, you bet you." and once he said: "hear him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the best of him and tied him he'd 'a' killed us both. and what _for_? jist for noth'n'. jist because we stood on our _rights_--that's what for. but i lay you ain't a-goin' to threaten nobody any more, jim turner. put _up_ that pistol, bill." bill says: "i don't want to, jake packard. i'm for killin' him--and didn't he kill old hatfield jist the same way--and don't he deserve it?" "but i don't _want_ him killed, and i've got my reasons for it." "bless yo' heart for them words, jake packard! i'll never forgit you long's i live!" says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering. packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail and started toward where i was, there in the dark, and motioned bill to come. i crawfished as fast as i could about two yards, but the boat slanted so that i couldn't make very good time; so to keep from getting run over and catched i crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. the man came a-pawing along in the dark, and when packard got to my stateroom, he says: "here--come in here." and in he come, and bill after him. but before they got in i was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry i come. then they stood there, with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. i couldn't see them, but i could tell where they was by the whisky they'd been having. i was glad i didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't made much difference anyway, because most of the time they couldn't 'a' treed me because i didn't breathe. i was too scared. and, besides, a body _couldn't_ breathe and hear such talk. they talked low and earnest. bill wanted to kill turner. he says: "he's said he'll tell, and he will. if we was to give both our shares to him _now_ it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way we've served him. shore's you're born, he'll turn state's evidence; now you hear _me._ i'm for putting him out of his troubles." "so'm i," says packard, very quiet. "blame it, i'd sorter begun to think you wasn't. well, then, that's all right. le's go and do it." "hold on a minute; i hain't had my say yit. you listen to me. shooting's good, but there's quieter ways if the things _got_ to be done. but what _i_ say is this: it ain't good sense to go court'n' around after a halter if you can git at what you're up to in some way that's jist as good and at the same time don't bring you into no resks. ain't that so?" "you bet it is. but how you goin' to manage it this time?" "well, my idea is this: we'll rustle around and gather up whatever pickin's we've overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide the truck. then we'll wait. now i say it ain't a-goin' to be more'n two hours befo' this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. see? he'll be drownded, and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own self. i reckon that's a considerable sight better 'n killin' of him. i'm unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git aroun' it; it ain't good sense, it ain't good morals. ain't i right?" "yes, i reck'n you are. but s'pose she _don't_ break up and wash off?" "well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can't we?" "all right, then; come along." so they started, and i lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled forward. it was dark as pitch there; but i said, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "jim!" and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a moan, and i says: "quick, jim, it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning; there's a gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and set her drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the wreck there's one of 'em going to be in a bad fix. but if we find their boat we can put _all_ of 'em in a bad fix--for the sheriff 'll get 'em. quick--hurry! i'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. you start at the raft, and--" "oh, my lordy, lordy! _raf'?_ dey ain' no raf' no mo'; she done broke loose en gone!--en here we is!" chapter xiii well, i catched my breath and most fainted. shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that! but it warn't no time to be sentimentering. we'd _got_ to find that boat now--had to have it for ourselves. so we went a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, too--seemed a week before we got to the stern. no sign of a boat. jim said he didn't believe he could go any farther--so scared he hadn't hardly any strength left, he said. but i said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we are in a fix, sure. so on we prowled again. we struck for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in the water. when we got pretty close to the cross-hall door there was the skiff, sure enough! i could just barely see her. i felt ever so thankful. in another second i would 'a' been aboard of her, but just then the door opened. one of the men stuck his head out only about a couple of foot from me, and i thought i was gone; but he jerked it in again, and says: "heave that blame lantern out o' sight, bill!" he flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and set down. it was packard. then bill _he_ come out and got in. packard says, in a low voice: "all ready--shove off!" i couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, i was so weak. but bill says: "hold on--'d you go through him?" "no. didn't you?" "no. so he's got his share o' the cash yet." "well, then, come along; no use to take truck and leave money." "say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?" "maybe he won't. but we got to have it anyway. come along." so they got out and went in. the door slammed to because it was on the careened side; and in a half second i was in the boat, and jim come tumbling after me. i out with my knife and cut the rope, and away we went! we didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly even breathe. we went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the paddle-box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it. when we was three or four hundred yards down-stream we see the lantern show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed by that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to understand that they was in just as much trouble now as jim turner was. then jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft. now was the first time that i begun to worry about the men--i reckon i hadn't had time to before. i begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix. i says to myself, there ain't no telling but i might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would i like it? so says i to jim: "the first light we see we'll land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a place where it's a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and then i'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their time comes." but that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again, and this time worse than ever. the rain poured down, and never a light showed; everybody in bed, i reckon. we boomed along down the river, watching for lights and watching for our raft. after a long time the rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering, and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we made for it. it was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. we seen a light now away down to the right, on shore. so i said i would go for it. the skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole there on the wreck. we hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and i told jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone about two mile, and keep it burning till i come; then i manned my oars and shoved for the light. as i got down towards it three or four more showed--up on a hillside. it was a village. i closed in above the shore light, and laid on my oars and floated. as i went by i see it was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferryboat. i skimmed around for the watchman, a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and by and by i found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his head down between his knees. i gave his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to cry. he stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says: "hello, what's up? don't cry, bub. what's the trouble?" i says: "pap, and mam, and sis, and--" then i broke down. he says: "oh, dang it now, _don't_ take on so; we all has to have our troubles, and this 'n 'll come out all right. what's the matter with 'em?" "they're--they're--are you the watchman of the boat?" "yes," he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like. "i'm the captain and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head deck-hand; and sometimes i'm the freight and passengers. i ain't as rich as old jim hornback, and i can't be so blame' generous and good to tom, dick, and harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he does; but i've told him a many a time 't i wouldn't trade places with him; for, says i, a sailor's life's the life for me, and i'm derned if _i'd_ live two mile out o' town, where there ain't nothing ever goin' on, not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of it. says i--" i broke in and says: "they're in an awful peck of trouble, and--" "_who_ is?" "why, pap and mam and sis and miss hooker; and if you'd take your ferryboat and go up there--" "up where? where are they?" "on the wreck." "what wreck?" "why, there ain't but one." "what, you don't mean the _walter scott?"_ "yes." "good land! what are they doin' _there_, for gracious sakes?" "well, they didn't go there a-purpose." "i bet they didn't! why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for 'em if they don't git off mighty quick! why, how in the nation did they ever git into such a scrape?" "easy enough. miss hooker was a-visiting up there to the town--" "yes, booth's landing--go on." "she was a-visiting there at booth's landing, and just in the edge of the evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry to stay all night at her friend's house, miss what-you-may-call-her--i disremember her name--and they lost their steering-oar, and swung around and went a-floating down, stern first, about two mile, and saddle-baggsed on the wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and the horses was all lost, but miss hooker she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. well, about an hour after dark we come along down in our trading-scow, and it was so dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it; and so _we_ saddle-baggsed; but all of us was saved but bill whipple--and oh, he _was_ the best cretur!--i most wish 't it had been me, i do." "my george! it's the beatenest thing i ever struck. and _then_ what did you all do?" "well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there we couldn't make nobody hear. so pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help somehow. i was the only one that could swim, so i made a dash for it, and miss hooker she said if i didn't strike help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing. i made the land about a mile below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do something, but they said, 'what, in such a night and such a current? there ain't no sense in it; go for the steam-ferry.' now if you'll go and--" "by jackson, i'd _like_ to, and, blame it, i don't know but i will; but who in the dingnation's a-going to _pay_ for it? do you reckon your pap--" "why _that's_ all right. miss hooker she tole me, _particular_, that her uncle hornback--" "great guns! is _he_ her uncle? looky here, you break for that light over yonder-way, and turn out west when you git there, and about a quarter of a mile out you'll come to the tavern; tell 'em to dart you out to jim hornback's, and he'll foot the bill. and don't you fool around any, because he'll want to know the news. tell him i'll have his niece all safe before he can get to town. hump yourself, now; i'm a-going up around the corner here to roust out my engineer." i struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner i went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out, and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among some wood-boats; for i couldn't rest easy till i could see the ferryboat start. but take it all around, i was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would 'a' done it. i wished the widow knowed about it. i judged she would be proud of me for helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead-beats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in. well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along down! a kind of cold shiver went through me, and then i struck out for her. she was very deep, and i see in a minute there warn't much chance for anybody being alive in her. i pulled all around her and hollered a little, but there wasn't any answer; all dead still. i felt a little bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for i reckoned if they could stand it i could. then here comes the ferryboat; so i shoved for the middle of the river on a long down-stream slant; and when i judged i was out of eye-reach i laid on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for miss hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her uncle hornback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferryboat give it up and went for the shore, and i laid into my work and went a-booming down the river. it did seem a powerful long time before jim's light showed up; and when it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off. by the time i got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east; so we struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in and slept like dead people. chapter xiv by and by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spy-glass, and three boxes of seegars. we hadn't ever been this rich before in neither of our lives. the seegars was prime. we laid off all the afternoon in the woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time. i told jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the ferryboat, and i said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn't want no more adventures. he said that when i went in the texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone he nearly died, because he judged it was all up with _him_ anyway it could be fixed; for if he didn't get saved he would get drownded; and if he did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and then miss watson would sell him south, sure. well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger. i read considerable to jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other and so on, 'stead of mister; and jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested. he says: "i didn' know dey was so many un um. i hain't hearn 'bout none un um, skasely, but ole king sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat's in a pack er k'yards. how much do a king git?" "get?" i says; "why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it; they can have just as much as they want; everything belongs to them." "_ain'_ dat gay? en what dey got to do, huck?" "_they_ don't do nothing! why, how you talk! they just set around." "no; is dat so?" "of course it is. they just set around--except, maybe, when there's a war; then they go to the war. but other times they just lazy around; or go hawking--just hawking and sp--sh!--d'you hear a noise?" we skipped out and looked; but it warn't nothing but the flutter of a steamboat's wheel away down, coming around the point; so we come back. "yes," says i, "and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the parlyment; and if everybody don't go just so he whacks their heads off. but mostly they hang round the harem." "roun' de which?" "harem." "what's de harem?" "the place where he keeps his wives. don't you know about the harem? solomon had one; he had about a million wives." "why, yes, dat's so; i--i'd done forgot it. a harem's a bo'd'n-house, i reck'n. mos' likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. en i reck'n de wives quarrels considable; en dat 'crease de racket. yit dey say sollermun de wises' man dat ever live'. i doan' take no stock in dat. bekase why: would a wise man want to live in de mids' er sich a blim-blammin' all de time? no--'deed he wouldn't. a wise man 'ud take en buil' a biler-factry; en den he could shet _down_ de biler-factry when he want to res'." "well, but he _was_ the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told me so, her own self." "i doan' k'yer what de widder say, he _warn't_ no wise man nuther. he had some er de dad-fetchedes' ways i ever see. does you know 'bout dat chile dat he 'uz gwyne to chop in two?" "yes, the widow told me all about it." "_well_, den! warn' dat de beatenes' notion in de worl'? you jes' take en look at it a minute. dah's de stump, dah--dat's one er de women; heah's you--dat's de yuther one; i's sollermun; en dish yer dollar bill's de chile. bofe un you claims it. what does i do? does i shin aroun' mongs' de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill _do_ b'long to, en han' it over to de right one, all safe en soun', de way dat anybody dat had any gumption would? no; i take en whack de bill in _two_, en give half un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman. dat's de way sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile. now i want to ast you: what's de use er dat half a bill?--can't buy noth'n wid it. en what use is a half a chile? i wouldn' give a dern for a million un um." "but hang it, jim, you've clean missed the point--blame it, you've missed it a thousand mile." "who? me? go 'long. doan' talk to me 'bout yo' pints. i reck'n i knows sense when i sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat. de 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole chile; en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile wid a half a chile doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain. doan' talk to me 'bout sollermun, huck, i knows him by de back." "but i tell you you don't get the point." "blame de point! i reck'n i knows what i knows. en mine you, de _real_ pint furder--it's down deeper. it lays in de way sollermun was raised. you take a man dat's got on'y one or two chillen; is dat man gwyne to be waseful o' chillen? no, he ain't; he can't 'ford it. _he_ know how to value 'em. but you take a man dat's got 'bout five million chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt. _he_ as soon chop a chile in two as a cat. dey's plenty mo'. a chile er two, mo' er less, warn't no consekens to sollermun, dad fetch him!" i never see such a nigger. if he got a notion in his head once, there warn't no getting it out again. he was the most down on solomon of any nigger i ever see. so i went to talking about other kings, and let solomon slide. i told about louis sixteenth that got his head cut off in france long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would 'a' been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there. "po' little chap." "but some says he got out and got away, and come to america." "dat's good! but he'll be pooty lonesome--dey ain' no kings here, is dey, huck?" "no." "den he cain't git no situation. what he gwyne to do?" "well, i don't know. some of them gets on the police, and some of them learns people how to talk french." "why, huck, doan' de french people talk de same way we does?" "_no_, jim; you couldn't understand a word they said--not a single word." "well, now, i be ding-busted! how do dat come?" "_i_ don't know; but it's so. i got some of their jabber out of a book. s'pose a man was to come to you and say polly-voo-franzy--what would you think?" "i wouldn' think nuffn; i'd take en bust him over de head--dat is, if he warn't white. i wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat." "shucks, it ain't calling you anything. it's only saying, do you know how to talk french?" "well, den, why couldn't he _say_ it?" "why, he _is_ a-saying it. that's a frenchman's _way_ of saying it." "well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en i doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout it. dey ain' no sense in it." "looky here, jim; does a cat talk like we do?" "no, a cat don't." "well, does a cow?" "no, a cow don't, nuther." "does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?" "no, dey don't." "it's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't it?" "course." "and ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from _us_?" "why, mos' sholy it is." "well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a _frenchman_ to talk different from us? you answer me that." "is a cat a man, huck?" "no." "well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. is a cow a man?--er is a cow a cat?" "no, she ain't either of them." "well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of 'em. is a frenchman a man?" "yes." "_well_, den! dad blame it, why doan' he _talk_ like a man? you answer me _dat!"_ i see it warn't no use wasting words--you can't learn a nigger to argue. so i quit. chapter xv we judged that three nights more would fetch us to cairo, at the bottom of illinois, where the ohio river comes in, and that was what we was after. we would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the ohio amongst the free states, and then be out of trouble. well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a towhead to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog; but when i paddled ahead in the canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't anything but little saplings to tie to. i passed the line around one of them right on the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she went. i see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared i couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to me--and then there warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards. i jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern, and grabbed the paddle and set her back a stroke. but she didn't come. i was in such a hurry i hadn't untied her. i got up and tried to untie her, but i was so excited my hands shook so i couldn't hardly do anything with them. as soon as i got started i took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right down the towhead. that was all right as far as it went, but the towhead warn't sixty yards long, and the minute i flew by the foot of it i shot out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way i was going than a dead man. thinks i, it won't do to paddle; first i know i'll run into the bank or a towhead or something; i got to set still and float, and yet it's mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. i whooped and listened. away down there somewheres i hears a small whoop, and up comes my spirits. i went tearing after it, listening sharp to hear it again. the next time it come i see i warn't heading for it, but heading away to the right of it. and the next time i was heading away to the left of it--and not gaining on it much either, for i was flying around, this way and that and t'other, but it was going straight ahead all the time. i did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops that was making the trouble for me. well, i fought along, and directly i hears the whoop _behind_ me. i was tangled good now. that was somebody else's whoop, or else i was turned around. i throwed the paddle down. i heard the whoop again; it was behind me yet, but in a different place; it kept coming, and kept changing its place, and i kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me again, and i knowed the current had swung the canoe's head down-stream, and i was all right if that was jim and not some other raftsman hollering. i couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog. the whooping went on, and in about a minute i come a-booming down on a cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared, the current was tearing by them so swift. in another second or two it was solid white and still again. i set perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump, and i reckon i didn't draw a breath while it thumped a hundred. i just give up then. i knowed what the matter was. that cut bank was an island, and jim had gone down t'other side of it. it warn't no towhead that you could float by in ten minutes. it had the big timber of a regular island; it might be five or six miles long and more than half a mile wide. i kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, i reckon. i was floating along, of course, four or five miles an hour; but you don't ever think of that. no, you _feel_ like you are laying dead still on the water; and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by you don't think to yourself how fast _you're_ going, but you catch your breath and think, my! how that snag's tearing along. if you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it once--you'll see. next, for about a half an hour, i whoops now and then; at last i hears the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but i couldn't do it, and directly i judged i'd got into a nest of towheads, for i had little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me--sometimes just a narrow channel between, and some that i couldn't see i knowed was there because i'd hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. well, i warn't long loosing the whoops down amongst the towheads; and i only tried to chase them a little while, anyway, because it was worse than chasing a jack-o'-lantern. you never knowed a sound dodge around so, and swap places so quick and so much. i had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times, to keep from knocking the islands out of the river; and so i judged the raft must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it would get further ahead and clear out of hearing--it was floating a little faster than what i was. well, i seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but i couldn't hear no sign of a whoop nowheres. i reckoned jim had fetched up on a snag, maybe, and it was all up with him. i was good and tired, so i laid down in the canoe and said i wouldn't bother no more. i didn't want to go to sleep, of course; but i was so sleepy i couldn't help it; so i thought i would take jest one little cat-nap. but i reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when i waked up the stars was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and i was spinning down a big bend stern first. first i didn't know where i was; i thought i was dreaming; and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come up dim out of last week. it was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as i could see by the stars. i looked away down-stream, and seen a black speck on the water. i took after it; but when i got to it it warn't nothing but a couple of saw-logs made fast together. then i see another speck, and chased that; then another, and this time i was right. it was the raft. when i got to it jim was setting there with his head down between his knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering-oar. the other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt. so she'd had a rough time. i made fast and laid down under jim's nose on the raft, and began to gap, and stretch my fists out against jim, and says: "hello, jim, have i been asleep? why didn't you stir me up?" "goodness gracious, is dat you, huck? en you ain' dead--you ain' drownded--you's back ag'in? it's too good for true, honey, it's too good for true. lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o' you. no, you ain' dead! you's back ag'in, 'live en soun', jis de same ole huck--de same ole huck, thanks to goodness!" "what's the matter with you, jim? you been a-drinking?" "drinkin'? has i ben a-drinkin'? has i had a chance to be a-drinkin'?" "well, then, what makes you talk so wild?" "how does i talk wild?" "_how?_ why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all that stuff, as if i'd been gone away?" "huck--huck finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye. _hain't_ you ben gone away?" "gone away? why, what in the nation do you mean? _i_ hain't been gone anywheres. where would i go to?" "well, looky here, boss, dey's sumfn wrong, dey is. is i _me_, or who _is_ i? is i heah, or whah _is_ i? now dat's what i wants to know." "well, i think you're here, plain enough, but i think you're a tangle-headed old fool, jim." "i is, is i? well, you answer me dis: didn't you tote out de line in de canoe fer to make fas' to de towhead?" "no, i didn't. what towhead? i hain't seen no towhead." "you hain't seen no towhead? looky here, didn't de line pull loose en de raf' go a-hummin' down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in de fog?" "what fog?" "why, _de_ fog!--de fog dat's been aroun' all night. en didn't you whoop, en didn't i whoop, tell we got mix' up in de islands en one un us got los' en t'other one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn' know whah he wuz? en didn't i bust up agin a lot er dem islands en have a turrible time en mos' git drownded? now ain' dat so, boss--ain't it so? you answer me dat." "well, this is too many for me, jim. i hain't seen no fog, nor no islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing. i been setting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and i reckon i done the same. you couldn't 'a' got drunk in that time, so of course you've been dreaming." "dad fetch it, how is i gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?" "well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it happen." "but, huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as--" "it don't make no difference how plain it is; there ain't nothing in it. i know, because i've been here all the time." jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying over it. then he says: "well, den, i reck'n i did dream it, huck; but dog my cats ef it ain't de powerfulest dream i ever see. en i hain't ever had no dream b'fo' dat's tired me like dis one." "oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like everything sometimes. but this one was a staving dream; tell me all about it, jim." so jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it happened, only he painted it up considerable. then he said he must start in and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. he said the first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him. the whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it. the lot of towheads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the free states, and wouldn't have no more trouble. it had clouded up pretty dark just after i got on to the raft, but it was clearing up again now. "oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, jim," i says; "but what does _these_ things stand for?" it was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. you could see them first-rate now. jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. he had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. but when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says: "what do dey stan' for? i's gwyne to tell you. when i got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en i didn' k'yer no' mo' what become er me en de raf'. en when i wake up en fine you back ag'in, all safe en soun', de tears come, en i could 'a' got down on my knees en kiss yo' foot, i's so thankful. en all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole jim wid a lie. dat truck dah is _trash_; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed." then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that. but that was enough. it made me feel so mean i could almost kissed _his_ foot to get him to take it back. it was fifteen minutes before i could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but i done it, and i warn't ever sorry for it afterward, neither. i didn't do him no more mean tricks, and i wouldn't done that one if i'd 'a' knowed it would make him feel that way. chapter xvi we slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. she had four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely. she had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp-fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end. there was a power of style about her. it _amounted_ to something being a raftsman on such a craft as that. we went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got hot. the river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on both sides; you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light. we talked about cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. i said likely we wouldn't, because i had heard say there warn't but about a dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them lit up, how was we going to know we was passing a town? jim said if the two big rivers joined together there, that would show. but i said maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again. that disturbed jim--and me too. so the question was, what to do? i said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed, and tell them pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to cairo. jim thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited. there warn't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town, and not pass it without seeing it. he said he'd be mighty sure to see it, because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it he'd be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom. every little while he jumps up and says: "dah she is?" but it warn't. it was jack-o'-lanterns, or lightning-bugs; so he set down again, and went to watching, same as before. jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. well, i can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because i begun to get it through my head that he _was_ most free--and who was to blame for it? why, _me_. i couldn't get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. it got to troubling me so i couldn't rest; i couldn't stay still in one place. it hadn't ever come home to me before, what this thing was that i was doing. but now it did; and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more. i tried to make out to myself that _i_ warn't to blame, because _i_ didn't run jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every time, "but you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could 'a' paddled ashore and told somebody." that was so--i couldn't get around that no way. that was where it pinched. conscience says to me, "what had poor miss watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? what did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean? why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. _that's_ what she done." i got to feeling so mean and so miserable i most wished i was dead. i fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and jim was fidgeting up and down past me. we neither of us could keep still. every time he danced around and says, "dah's cairo!" it went through me like a shot, and i thought if it _was_ cairo i reckoned i would die of miserableness. jim talked out loud all the time while i was talking to myself. he was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free state he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where miss watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an ab'litionist to go and steal them. it most froze me to hear such talk. he wouldn't ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. it was according to the old saying, "give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." thinks i, this is what comes of my not thinking. here was this nigger, which i had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children--children that belonged to a man i didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm. i was sorry to hear jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. my conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last i says to it, "let up on me--it ain't too late yet--i'll paddle ashore at the first light and tell." i felt easy and happy and light as a feather right off. all my troubles was gone. i went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself. by and by one showed. jim sings out: "we's safe, huck, we's safe! jump up and crack yo' heels! dat's de good ole cairo at las', i jis knows it!" i says: "i'll take the canoe and go and see, jim. it mightn't be, you know." he jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as i shoved off, he says: "pooty soon i'll be a-shout'n' for joy, en i'll say, it's all on accounts o' huck; i's a free man, en i couldn't ever ben free ef it hadn' ben for huck; huck done it. jim won't ever forgit you, huck; you's de bes' fren' jim's ever had; en you's de _only_ fren' ole jim's got now." i was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. i went along slow then, and i warn't right down certain whether i was glad i started or whether i warn't. when i was fifty yards off, jim says: "dah you goes, de ole true huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole jim." well, i just felt sick. but i says, i _got_ to do it--i can't get _out_ of it. right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and they stopped and i stopped. one of them says: "what's that yonder?" "a piece of a raft," i says. "do you belong on it?" "yes, sir." "any men on it?" "only one, sir." "well, there's five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head of the bend. is your man white or black?" i didn't answer up prompt. i tried to, but the words wouldn't come. i tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but i warn't man enough--hadn't the spunk of a rabbit. i see i was weakening; so i just give up trying, and up and says: "he's white." "i reckon we'll go and see for ourselves." "i wish you would," says i, "because it's pap that's there, and maybe you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. he's sick--and so is mam and mary ann." "oh, the devil! we're in a hurry, boy. but i s'pose we've got to. come, buckle to your paddle, and let's get along." i buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars. when we had made a stroke or two, i says: "pap 'll be mighty much obleeged to you, i can tell you. everybody goes away when i want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and i can't do it by myself." "well, that's infernal mean. odd, too. say, boy, what's the matter with your father?" "it's the--a--the--well, it ain't anything much." they stopped pulling. it warn't but a mighty little ways to the raft now. one says: "boy, that's a lie. what _is_ the matter with your pap? answer up square now, and it 'll be the better for you." "i will, sir, i will, honest--but don't leave us, please. it's the--the--gentlemen, if you'll only pull ahead, and let me heave you the headline, you won't have to come a-near the raft--please do." "set her back, john, set her back!" says one. they backed water. "keep away, boy--keep to looard. confound it, i just expect the wind has blowed it to us. your pap's got the smallpox, and you know it precious well. why didn't you come out and say so? do you want to spread it all over?" "well," says i, a-blubbering, "i've told everybody before, and they just went away and left us." "poor devil, there's something in that. we are right down sorry for you, but we--well, hang it, we don't want the smallpox, you see. look here, i'll tell you what to do. don't you try to land by yourself, or you'll smash everything to pieces. you float along down about twenty miles, and you'll come to a town on the left-hand side of the river. it will be long after sun-up then, and when you ask for help you tell them your folks are all down with chills and fever. don't be a fool again, and let people guess what is the matter. now we're trying to do you a kindness; so you just put twenty miles between us, that's a good boy. it wouldn't do any good to land yonder where the light is--it's only a wood-yard. say, i reckon your father's poor, and i'm bound to say he's in pretty hard luck. here, i'll put a twenty-dollar gold piece on this board, and you get it when it floats by. i feel mighty mean to leave you; but my kingdom! it won't do to fool with small-pox, don't you see?" "hold on, parker," says the man, "here's a twenty to put on the board for me. good-by, boy; you do as mr. parker told you, and you'll be all right." "that's so, my boy--good-by, good-bye. if you see any runaway niggers you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it." "good-by, sir," says i; "i won't let no runaway niggers get by me if i can help it." they went off and i got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because i knowed very well i had done wrong, and i see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get _started_ right when he's little ain't got no show--when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. then i thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s'pose you'd 'a' done right and give jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? no, says i, i'd feel bad--i'd feel just the same way i do now. well, then, says i, what's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? i was stuck. i couldn't answer that. so i reckoned i wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time. i went into the wigwam; jim warn't there. i looked all around; he warn't anywhere. i says: "jim!" "here i is, huck. is dey out o' sight yit? don't talk loud." he was in the river under the stern oar, with just his nose out. i told him they were out of sight, so he come aboard. he says: "i was a-listenin' to all de talk, en i slips into de river en was gwyne to shove for sho' if dey come aboard. den i was gwyne to swim to de raf' agin when dey was gone. but lawsy, how you did fool 'em, huck! dat _wuz_ de smartes' dodge! i tell you, chile, i 'spec it save' ole jim--ole jim ain't going to forgit you for dat, honey." then we talked about the money. it was a pretty good raise--twenty dollars apiece. jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat now, and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free states. he said twenty mile more warn't far for the raft to go, but he wished we was already there. towards daybreak we tied up, and jim was mighty particular about hiding the raft good. then he worked all day fixing things in bundles, and getting all ready to quit rafting. that night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away down in a left-hand bend. i went off in the canoe to ask about it. pretty soon i found a man out in the river with a skiff, setting a trot-line. i ranged up and says: "mister, is that town cairo?" "cairo? no. you must be a blame' fool." "what town is it, mister?" "if you want to know, go and find out. if you stay here botherin' around me for about a half a minute longer you'll get something you won't want." i paddled to the raft. jim was awful disappointed, but i said never mind, cairo would be the next place, i reckoned. we passed another town before daylight, and i was going out again; but it was high ground, so i didn't go. no high ground about cairo, jim said. i had forgot it. we laid up for the day on a towhead tolerable close to the left-hand bank. i begun to suspicion something. so did jim. i says: "maybe we went by cairo in the fog that night." he says: "doan' le's talk about it, huck. po' niggers can't have no luck. i awluz 'spected dat rattlesnake-skin warn't done wid its work." "i wish i'd never seen that snake-skin, jim--i do wish i'd never laid eyes on it." "it ain't yo' fault, huck; you didn't know. don't you blame yo'self 'bout it." when it was daylight, here was the clear ohio water inshore, sure enough, and outside was the old regular muddy! so it was all up with cairo. we talked it all over. it wouldn't do to take to the shore; we couldn't take the raft up the stream, of course. there warn't no way but to wait for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the chances. so we slept all day amongst the cottonwood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work, and when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone! we didn't say a word for a good while. there warn't anything to say. we both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnake-skin; so what was the use to talk about it? it would only look like we was finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more bad luck--and keep on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep still. by and by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn't no way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy a canoe to go back in. we warn't going to borrow it when there warn't anybody around, the way pap would do, for that might set people after us. so we shoved out after dark on the raft. anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle a snake-skin, after all that that snake-skin done for us, will believe it now if they read on and see what more it done for us. the place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore. but we didn't see no rafts laying up; so we went along during three hours and more. well, the night got gray and ruther thick, which is the next meanest thing to fog. you can't tell the shape of the river, and you can't see no distance. it got to be very late and still, and then along comes a steamboat up the river. we lit the lantern, and judged she would see it. up-stream boats didn't generly come close to us; they go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs; but nights like this they bull right up the channel against the whole river. we could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she was close. she aimed right for us. often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks he's mighty smart. well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try and shave us; but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit. she was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a sudden she bulged out, big and scary, with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shining like red-hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us. there was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a powwow of cussing, and whistling of steam--and as jim went overboard on one side and i on the other, she come smashing straight through the raft. i dived--and i aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel had got to go over me, and i wanted it to have plenty of room. i could always stay under water a minute; this time i reckon i stayed under a minute and a half. then i bounced for the top in a hurry, for i was nearly busting. i popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of my nose, and puffed a bit. of course there was a booming current; and of course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she stopped them, for they never cared much for raftsmen; so now she was churning along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though i could hear her. i sung out for jim about a dozen times, but i didn't get any answer; so i grabbed a plank that touched me while i was "treading water," and struck out for shore, shoving it ahead of me. but i made out to see that the drift of the current was towards the left-hand shore, which meant that i was in a crossing; so i changed off and went that way. it was one of these long, slanting, two-mile crossings; so i was a good long time in getting over. i made a safe landing, and clumb up the bank. i couldn't see but a little ways, but i went poking along over rough ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and then i run across a big old-fashioned double log house before i noticed it. i was going to rush by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling and barking at me, and i knowed better than to move another peg. chapter xvii in about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his head out, and says: "be done, boys! who's there?" i says: "it's me." "who's me?" "george jackson, sir." "what do you want?" "i don't want nothing, sir. i only want to go along by, but the dogs won't let me." "what are you prowling around here this time of night for--hey?" "i warn't prowling around, sir; i fell overboard off of the steamboat." "oh, you did, did you? strike a light there, somebody. what did you say your name was?" "george jackson, sir. i'm only a boy." "look here, if you're telling the truth you needn't be afraid--nobody 'll hurt you. but don't try to budge; stand right where you are. rouse out bob and tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. george jackson, is there anybody with you?" "no, sir, nobody." i heard the people stirring around in the house now, and see a light. the man sung out: "snatch that light away, betsy, you old fool--ain't you got any sense? put it on the floor behind the front door. bob, if you and tom are ready, take your places." "all ready." "now, george jackson, do you know the shepherdsons?" "no, sir; i never heard of them." "well, that may be so, and it mayn't. now, all ready. step forward, george jackson. and mind, don't you hurry--come mighty slow. if there's anybody with you, let him keep back--if he shows himself he'll be shot. come along now. come slow; push the door open yourself--just enough to squeeze in, d'you hear?" i didn't hurry; i couldn't if i'd a-wanted to. i took one slow step at a time and there warn't a sound, only i thought i could hear my heart. the dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind me. when i got to the three log doorsteps i heard them unlocking and unbarring and unbolting. i put my hand on the door and pushed it a little and a little more till somebody said, "there, that's enough--put your head in." i done it, but i judged they would take it off. the candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and me at them, for about a quarter of a minute: three big men with guns pointed at me, which made me wince, i tell you; the oldest, gray and about sixty, the other two thirty or more--all of them fine and handsome--and the sweetest old gray-headed lady, and back of her two young women which i couldn't see right well. the old gentleman says: "there; i reckon it's all right. come in." as soon as i was in the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and got together in a corner that was out of the range of the front windows--there warn't none on the side. they held the candle, and took a good look at me, and all said, "why, _he_ ain't a shepherdson--no, there ain't any shepherdson about him." then the old man said he hoped i wouldn't mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by it--it was only to make sure. so he didn't pry into my pockets, but only felt outside with his hands, and said it was all right. he told me to make myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself; but the old lady says: "why, bless you, saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be; and don't you reckon it may be he's hungry?" "true for you, rachel--i forgot." so the old lady says: "betsy" (this was a nigger woman), "you fly around and get him something to eat as quick as you can, poor thing; and one of you girls go and wake up buck and tell him--oh, here he is himself. buck, take this little stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some of yours that's dry." buck looked about as old as me--thirteen or fourteen or along there, though he was a little bigger than me. he hadn't on anything but a shirt, and he was very frowzy-headed. he came in gaping and digging one fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one. he says: "ain't they no shepherdsons around?" they said, no, 'twas a false alarm. "well," he says, "if they'd 'a' ben some, i reckon i'd 'a' got one." they all laughed, and bob says: "why, buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in coming." "well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right. i'm always kept down; i don't get no show." "never mind, buck, my boy," says the old man, "you'll have show enough, all in good time, don't you fret about that. go 'long with you now, and do as your mother told you." when we got up-stairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a roundabout and pants of his, and i put them on. while i was at it he asked me what my name was, but before i could tell him he started to tell me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day before yesterday, and he asked me where moses was when the candle went out. i said i didn't know; i hadn't heard about it before, no way. "well, guess," he says. "how'm i going to guess," says i, "when i never heard tell of it before?" "but you can guess, can't you? it's just as easy." "_which_ candle?" i says. "why, any candle," he says. "i don't know where he was," says i; "where was he?" "why, he was in the _dark_! that's where he was!" "well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?" "why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see? say, how long are you going to stay here? you got to stay always. we can just have booming times--they don't have no school now. do you own a dog? i've got a dog--and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in. do you like to comb up sundays, and all that kind of foolishness? you bet i don't, but ma she makes me. confound these ole britches! i reckon i'd better put 'em on, but i'd ruther not, it's so warm. are you all ready? all right. come along, old hoss." cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk--that is what they had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever i've come across yet. buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women. they all smoked and talked, and i eat and talked. the young women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. they all asked me questions, and i told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of arkansaw, and my sister mary ann run off and got married and never was heard of no more, and bill went to hunt them and he warn't heard of no more, and tom and mort died, and then there warn't nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his troubles; so when he died i took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard; and that was how i come to be here. so they said i could have a home there as long as i wanted it. then it was most daylight and everybody went to bed, and i went to bed with buck, and when i waked up in the morning, drat it all, i had forgot what my name was. so i laid there about an hour trying to think, and when buck waked up i says: "can you spell, buck?" "yes," he says. "i bet you can't spell my name," says i. "i bet you what you dare i can," says he. "all right," says i, "go ahead." "g-e-o-r-g-e j-a-x-o-n--there now," he says. "well," says i, "you done it, but i didn't think you could. it ain't no slouch of a name to spell--right off without studying." i set it down, private, because somebody might want _me_ to spell it next, and so i wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like i was used to it. it was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. i hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style. it didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in town. there warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them. there was a big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes they wash them over with red water-paint that they call spanish-brown, same as they do in town. they had big brass dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log. there was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging behind it. it was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got tuckered out. they wouldn't took any money for her. well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. by one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look different nor interested. they squeaked through underneath. there was a couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out behind those things. on the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it, which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they warn't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk, or whatever it was, underneath. this table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. it come all the way from philadelphia, they said. there was some books, too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. one was a big family bible full of pictures. one was pilgrim's progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. i read considerable in it now and then. the statements was interesting, but tough. another was friendship's offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but i didn't read the poetry. another was henry clay's speeches, and another was dr. gunn's family medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. there was a hymn-book, and a lot of other books. and there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too--not bagged down in the middle and busted, like an old basket. they had pictures hung on the walls--mainly washingtons and lafayettes, and battles, and highland marys, and one called "signing the declaration." there was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. they was different from any pictures i ever see before--blacker, mostly, than is common. one was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "shall i never see thee more alas." another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "i shall never hear thy sweet chirrup more alas." there was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing-wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "and art thou gone yes thou art gone alas." these was all nice pictures, i reckon, but i didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever i was down a little they always give me the fan-tods. everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. but i reckoned that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. she was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. it was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up toward the moon--and the idea was to see which pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as i was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it. other times it was hid with a little curtain. the young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me. this young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the presbyterian observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head. it was very good poetry. this is what she wrote about a boy by the name of stephen dowling bots that fell down a well and was drownded: ode to stephen dowling bots, dec'd and did young stephen sicken, and did young stephen die? and did the sad hearts thicken, and did the mourners cry? no; such was not the fate of young stephen dowling bots; though sad hearts round him thickened, 'twas not from sickness' shots. no whooping-cough did rack his frame, nor measles drear with spots; not these impaired the sacred name of stephen dowling bots. despised love struck not with woe that head of curly knots, nor stomach troubles laid him low, young stephen dowling bots. o no. then list with tearful eye, whilst i his fate do tell. his soul did from this cold world fly by falling down a well. they got him out and emptied him; alas it was too late; his spirit was gone for to sport aloft in the realms of the good and great. if emmeline grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could 'a' done by and by. buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. she didn't ever have to stop to think. he said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down another one, and go ahead. she warn't particular; she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful. every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. she called them tributes. the neighbors said it was the doctor first, then emmeline, then the undertaker--the undertaker never got in ahead of emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was whistler. she warn't ever the same after that; she never complained, but she kinder pined away and did not live long. poor thing, many's the time i made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrap-book and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and i had soured on her a little. i liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between us. poor emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some about her now she was gone; so i tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but i couldn't seem to make it go somehow. they kept emmeline's room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. the old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her bible there mostly. well, as i was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on the windows: white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. there was a little old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, i reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing "the last link is broken" and play "the battle of prague" on it. the walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside. it was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day, and it was a cool, comfortable place. nothing couldn't be better. and warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too! chapter xviii col. grangerford was a gentleman, you see. he was a gentleman all over; and so was his family. he was well born, as the saying is, and that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the widow douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality than a mudcat himself. col. grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean-shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. his forehead was high, and his hair was gray and straight and hung to his shoulders. his hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it. he carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it. there warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever loud. he was as kind as he could be--you could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards. he didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners--everybody was always good-mannered where he was. everybody loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine most always--i mean he made it seem like good weather. when he turned into a cloud-bank it was awful dark for half a minute, and that was enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again for a week. when him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got up out of their chairs and give them good day, and didn't set down again till they had set down. then tom and bob went to the sideboard where the decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he held it in his hand and waited till tom's and bob's was mixed, and then they bowed and said, "our duty to you, sir, and madam"; and _they_ bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank, all three, and bob and tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the mite of whisky or apple-brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give it to me and buck, and we drank to the old people too. bob was the oldest and tom next--tall, beautiful men with very broad shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. they dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and wore broad panama hats. then there was miss charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn't stirred up; but when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks, like her father. she was beautiful. so was her sister, miss sophia, but it was a different kind. she was gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty. each person had their own nigger to wait on them--buck too. my nigger had a monstrous easy time, because i warn't used to having anybody do anything for me, but buck's was on the jump most of the time. this was all there was of the family now, but there used to be more--three sons; they got killed; and emmeline that died. the old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers. sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods daytimes, and balls at the house nights. these people was mostly kinfolks of the family. the men brought their guns with them. it was a handsome lot of quality, i tell you. there was another clan of aristocracy around there--five or six families--mostly of the name of shepherdson. they was as high-toned and well born and rich and grand as the tribe of grangerfords. the shepherdsons and grangerfords used the same steamboat-landing, which was about two mile above our house; so sometimes when i went up there with a lot of our folks i used to see a lot of the shepherdsons there on their fine horses. one day buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse coming. we was crossing the road. buck says: "quick! jump for the woods!" we done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. pretty soon a splendid young man came galloping down the road, setting his horse easy and looking like a soldier. he had his gun across his pommel. i had seen him before. it was young harney shepherdson. i heard buck's gun go off at my ear, and harney's hat tumbled off from his head. he grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. but we didn't wait. we started through the woods on a run. the woods warn't thick, so i looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet, and twice i seen harney cover buck with his gun; and then he rode away the way he come--to get his hat, i reckon, but i couldn't see. we never stopped running till we got home. the old gentleman's eyes blazed a minute--'twas pleasure, mainly, i judged--then his face sort of smoothed down, and he says, kind of gentle: "i don't like that shooting from behind a bush. why didn't you step into the road, my boy?" "the shepherdsons don't, father. they always take advantage." miss charlotte she held her head up like a queen while buck was telling his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. the two young men looked dark, but never said nothing. miss sophia she turned pale, but the color come back when she found the man warn't hurt. soon as i could get buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by ourselves, i says: "did you want to kill him, buck?" "well, i bet i did." "what did he do to you?" "him? he never done nothing to me." "well, then, what did you want to kill him for?" "why, nothing--only it's on account of the feud." "what's a feud?" "why, where was you raised? don't you know what a feud is?" "never heard of it before--tell me about it." "well," says buck, "a feud is this way: a man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills _him_; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the _cousins_ chip in--and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. but it's kind of slow, and takes a long time." "has this one been going on long, buck?" "well, i should _reckon!_ it started thirty year ago, or som'ers along there. there was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suit--which he would naturally do, of course. anybody would." "what was the trouble about. buck?--land?" "i reckon maybe--i don't know." "well, who done the shooting? was it a grangerford shepherdson?" "laws, how do i know? it was so long ago." "don't anybody know?" "oh, yes, pa knows, i reckon, and some of the other old people; but they don't know now what the row was about in the first place." "has there been many killed, buck?" "yes; right smart chance of funerals. but they don't always kill. pa's got a few buckshot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh much, anyway. bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and tom's been hurt once or twice." "has anybody been killed this year, buck?" "yes; we got one and they got one. 'bout three months ago my cousin bud, fourteen year old, was riding through the woods on t'other side of the river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame' foolishness, and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind him, and sees old baldy shepherdson a-linkin' after him with his gun in his hand and his white hair a-flying in the wind; and 'stead of jumping off and taking to the brush, bud 'lowed he could outrun him; so they had it, nip and tuck, for five mile or more, the old man a-gaining all the time; so at last bud seen it warn't any use, so he stopped and faced around so as to have the bullet-holes in front, you know, and the old man he rode up and shot him down. but he didn't git much chance to enjoy his luck, for inside of a week our folks laid _him_ out." "i reckon that old man was a coward, buck." "i reckon he _warn't_ a coward. not by a blame' sight. there ain't a coward amongst them shepherdsons--not a one. and there ain't no cowards amongst the grangerfords either. why, that old man kep' up his end in a fight one day for half an hour against three grangerfords, and come out winner. they was all a-horseback; he lit off of his horse and got behind a little woodpile, and kep' his horse before him to stop the bullets; but the grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered around the old man, and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them. him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the grangerfords had to be _fetched_ home--and one of 'em was dead, and another died the next day. no, sir; if a body's out hunting for cowards he don't want to fool away any time amongst them shepherdsons, becuz they don't breed any of that _kind_." next sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horseback. the men took their guns along, so did buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. the shepherdsons done the same. it was pretty ornery preaching--all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and i don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest sundays i had run across yet. about an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. buck and a dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun sound asleep. i went up to our room, and judged i would take a nap myself. i found that sweet miss sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took me in her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if i liked her, and i said i did; and she asked me if i would do something for her and not tell anybody, and i said i would. then she said she'd forgot her testament, and left it in the seat at church between two other books, and would i slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say nothing to nobody. i said i would. so i slid out and slipped off up the road, and there warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. if you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different. says i to myself, something's up; it ain't natural for a girl to be in such a sweat about a testament. so i give it a shake, and out drops a little piece of paper with "_half past two_" wrote on it with a pencil. i ransacked it, but couldn't find anything else. i couldn't make anything out of that, so i put the paper in the book again, and when i got home and upstairs there was miss sophia in her door waiting for me. she pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the testament till she found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad; and before a body could think she grabbed me and give me a squeeze, and said i was the best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody. she was mighty red in the face for a minute, and her eyes lighted up, and it made her powerful pretty. i was a good deal astonished, but when i got my breath i asked her what the paper was about, and she asked me if i had read it, and i said no, and she asked me if i could read writing, and i told her "no, only coarse-hand," and then she said the paper warn't anything but a book-mark to keep her place, and i might go and play now. i went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon i noticed that my nigger was following along behind. when we was out of sight of the house he looked back and around a second, and then comes a-running, and says: "mars jawge, if you'll come down into de swamp i'll show you a whole stack o' water-moccasins." thinks i, that's mighty curious; he said that yesterday. he oughter know a body don't love water-moccasins enough to go around hunting for them. what is he up to, anyway? so i says: "all right; trot ahead." i followed a half a mile; then he struck out over the swamp, and waded ankle-deep as much as another half-mile. we come to a little flat piece of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines, and he says: "you shove right in dah jist a few steps, mars jawge; dah's whah dey is. i's seed 'm befo'; i don't k'yer to see 'em no mo'." then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid him. i poked into the place a-ways and come to a little open patch as big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man laying there asleep--and, by jings, it was my old jim! i waked him up, and i reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him to see me again, but it warn't. he nearly cried he was so glad, but he warn't surprised. said he swum along behind me that night, and heard me yell every time, but dasn't answer, because he didn't want nobody to pick _him_ up and take him into slavery again. says he: "i got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so i wuz a considerable ways behine you towards de las'; when you landed i reck'ned i could ketch up wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to shout at you, but when i see dat house i begin to go slow. i 'uz off too fur to hear what dey say to you--i wuz 'fraid o' de dogs; but when it 'uz all quiet ag'in i knowed you's in de house, so i struck out for de woods to wait for day. early in de mawnin' some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey tuk me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can't track me on accounts o' de water, en dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how you's a-gittin' along." "why didn't you tell my jack to fetch me here sooner, jim?" "well, 'twarn't no use to 'sturb you, huck, tell we could do sumfn--but we's all right now. i ben a-buyin' pots en pans en vittles, as i got a chanst, en a-patchin' up de raf' nights when--" "_what_ raft, jim?" "our ole raf'." "you mean to say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?" "no, she warn't. she was tore up a good deal--one en' of her was; but dey warn't no great harm done, on'y our traps was mos' all los'. ef we hadn' dive' so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn't ben so dark, en we warn't so sk'yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads, as de sayin' is, we'd a seed de raf'. but it's jis' as well we didn't, 'kase now she's all fixed up ag'in mos' as good as new, en we's got a new lot o' stuff, in de place o' what 'uz los'." "why, how did you get hold of the raft again, jim--did you catch her?" "how i gwyne to ketch her en i out in de woods? no; some er de niggers foun' her ketched on a snag along heah in de ben', en dey hid her in a crick 'mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin' 'bout which un 'um she b'long to de mos' dat i come to heah 'bout it pooty soon, so i ups en settles de trouble by tellin' 'um she don't b'long to none uv 'um, but to you en me; en i ast 'm if dey gwyne to grab a young white genlman's propaty, en git a hid'n for it? den i gin 'm ten cents apiece, en dey 'uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo' raf's 'ud come along en make 'm rich ag'in. dey's mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en whatever i wants 'm to do fur me i doan' have to ast 'm twice, honey. dat jack's a good nigger, en pooty smart." "yes, he is. he ain't ever told me you was here; told me to come, and he'd show me a lot of water-moccasins. if anything happens _he_ ain't mixed up in it. he can say he never seen us together, and it 'll be the truth." i don't want to talk much about the next day. i reckon i'll cut it pretty short. i waked up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over and go to sleep again when i noticed how still it was--didn't seem to be anybody stirring. that warn't usual. next i noticed that buck was up and gone. well, i gets up, a-wondering, and goes down-stairs--nobody around; everything as still as a mouse. just the same outside. thinks i, what does it mean? down by the woodpile i comes across my jack, and says: "what's it all about?" says he: "don't you know, mars jawge?" "no," says i, "i don't." "well, den, miss sophia's run off! 'deed she has. she run off in de night some time--nobody don't know jis' when; run off to get married to dat young harney shepherdson, you know--leastways, so dey 'spec. de fambly foun' it out 'bout half an hour ago--maybe a little mo'--en' i _tell_ you dey warn't no time los'. sich another hurryin' up guns en hosses _you_ never see! de women folks has gone for to stir up de relations, en ole mars saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him 'fo' he kin git acrost de river wid miss sophia. i reck'n dey's gwyne to be mighty rough times." "buck went off 'thout waking me up." "well, i reck'n he _did!_ dey warn't gwyne to mix you up in it. mars buck he loaded up his gun en 'lowed he's gwyne to fetch home a shepherdson or bust. well, dey'll be plenty un 'm dah, i reck'n, en you bet you he'll fetch one ef he gits a chanst." i took up the river road as hard as i could put. by and by i begin to hear guns a good ways off. when i came in sight of the log store and the woodpile where the steamboats lands i worked along under the trees and brush till i got to a good place, and then i clumb up into the forks of a cottonwood that was out of reach, and watched. there was a wood-rank four foot high a little ways in front of the tree, and first i was going to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier i didn't. there was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the steamboat-landing; but they couldn't come it. every time one of them showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at. the two boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch both ways. by and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. they started riding towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. all the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started to carry him to the store; and that minute the two boys started on the run. they got half-way to the tree i was in before the men noticed. then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after them. they gained on the boys, but it didn't do no good, the boys had too good a start; they got to the woodpile that was in front of my tree, and slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again. one of the boys was buck, and the other was a slim young chap about nineteen years old. the men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. as soon as they was out of sight i sung out to buck and told him. he didn't know what to make of my voice coming out of the tree at first. he was awful surprised. he told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men come in sight again; said they was up to some devilment or other--wouldn't be gone long. i wished i was out of that tree, but i dasn't come down. buck begun to cry and rip, and 'lowed that him and his cousin joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this day yet. he said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two or three of the enemy. said the shepherdsons laid for them in ambush. buck said his father and brothers ought to waited for their relations--the shepherdsons was too strong for them. i asked him what was become of young harney and miss sophia. he said they'd got across the river and was safe. i was glad of that; but the way buck did take on because he didn't manage to kill harney that day he shot at him--i hain't ever heard anything like it. all of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns--the men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses! the boys jumped for the river--both of them hurt--and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing out, "kill them, kill them!" it made me so sick i most fell out of the tree. i ain't a-going to tell _all_ that happened--it would make me sick again if i was to do that. i wished i hadn't ever come ashore that night to see such things. i ain't ever going to get shut of them--lots of times i dream about them. i stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down. sometimes i heard guns away off in the woods; and twice i seen little gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so i reckoned the trouble was still a-going on. i was mighty downhearted; so i made up my mind i wouldn't ever go anear that house again, because i reckoned i was to blame, somehow. i judged that that piece of paper meant that miss sophia was to meet harney somewheres at half past two and run off; and i judged i ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way she acted, and then maybe he would 'a' locked her up, and this awful mess wouldn't ever happened. when i got down out of the tree i crept along down the river-bank a piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and tugged at them till i got them ashore; then i covered up their faces, and got away as quick as i could. i cried a little when i was covering up buck's face, for he was mighty good to me. it was just dark now. i never went near the house, but struck through the woods and made for the swamp. jim warn't on his island, so i tramped off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, red-hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country. the raft was gone! my souls, but i was scared! i couldn't get my breath for most a minute. then i raised a yell. a voice not twenty-five foot from me says: "good lan'! is dat you, honey? doan' make no noise." it was jim's voice--nothing ever sounded so good before. i run along the bank a piece and got aboard, and jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was so glad to see me. he says: "laws bless you, chile, i 'uz right down sho' you's dead ag'in. jack's been heah; he say he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn' come home no mo'; so i's jes' dis minute a-startin' startin' de raf' down towards de mouf er de crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as jack comes ag'in en tells me for certain you _is_ dead. lawsy, i's mighty glad to git you back ag'in, honey." i says: "all right--that's mighty good; they won't find me, and they'll think i've been killed, and floated down the river--there's something up there that 'll help them think so--so don't you lose no time, jim, but just shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can." i never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the middle of the mississippi. then we hung up our signal lantern, and judged that we was free and safe once more. i hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday, so jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens--there ain't nothing in the world so good when it's cooked right--and whilst i eat my supper we talked and had a good time. i was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was jim to get away from the swamp. we said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. you feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. chapter xix two or three days and nights went by; i reckon i might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. here is the way we put in the time. it was a monstrous big river down there--sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up--nearly always in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft with them. then we set out the lines. next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee-deep, and watched the daylight come. not a sound anywheres--perfectly still--just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. the first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line--that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away--trading-scows, and such things; and long black streaks--rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled-up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a wood-yard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it! a little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. and afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off to sleep. wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off towards the other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was a stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor nothing to see--just solid lonesomeness. next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're most always doing it on a raft; you'd see the ax flash and come down--you don't hear nothing; you see that ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the _k'chunk!_--it had took all that time to come over the water. so we would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness. once there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them. a scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing--heard them plain; but we couldn't see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly; it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air. jim said he believed it was spirits; but i says: "no; spirits wouldn't say, 'dern the dern fog.'" soon as it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and talked about all kinds of things--we was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us--the new clothes buck's folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides i didn't go much on clothes, nohow. sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark--which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two--on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. it's lovely to live on a raft. we had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. jim he allowed they was made, but i allowed they happened; i judged it would have took too long to _make_ so many. jim said the moon could 'a' _laid_ them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so i didn't say nothing against it, because i've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. we used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest. once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something. after midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three hours the shores was black--no more sparks in the cabin windows. these sparks was our clock--the first one that showed again meant morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away. one morning about daybreak i found a canoe and crossed over a chute to the main shore--it was only two hundred yards--and paddled about a mile up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if i couldn't get some berries. just as i was passing a place where a kind of a cowpath crossed the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could foot it. i thought i was a goner, for whenever anybody was after anybody i judged it was _me_--or maybe jim. i was about to dig out from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and sung out and begged me to save their lives--said they hadn't been doing nothing, and was being chased for it--said there was men and dogs a-coming. they wanted to jump right in, but i says: "don't you do it. i don't hear the dogs and horses yet; you've got time to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways; then you take to the water and wade down to me and get in--that 'll throw the dogs off the scent." they done it, and soon as they was aboard i lit out for our towhead, and in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off, shouting. we heard them come along towards the crick, but couldn't see them; they seemed to stop and fool around awhile; then, as we got further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly hear them at all; by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the towhead and hid in the cottonwoods and was safe. one of these fellows was about seventy or upwards, and had a bald head and very gray whiskers. he had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a greasy blue woolen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses--no, he only had one. he had an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet-bags. the other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery. after breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out was that these chaps didn't know one another. "what got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap. "well, i'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth--and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it--but i stayed about one night longer than i ought to, and was just in the act of sliding out when i ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. so i told you i was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out _with_ you. that's the whole yarn--what's yourn?" "well, i'd ben a-runnin' a little temperance revival thar 'bout a week, and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for i was makin' it mighty warm for the rummies, i _tell_ you, and takin' as much as five or six dollars a night--ten cents a head, children and niggers free--and business a-growin' all the time, when somehow or another a little report got around last night that i had a way of puttin' in my time with a private jug on the sly. a nigger rousted me out this mornin', and told me the people was getherin' on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and they'd be along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start, and then run me down if they could; and if they got me they'd tar and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure. i didn't wait for no breakfast--i warn't hungry." "old man," said the young one, "i reckon we might double-team it together; what do you think?" "i ain't undisposed. what's your line--mainly?" "jour printer by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theater-actor--tragedy, you know; take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when there's a chance; teach singing-geography school for a change; sling a lecture sometimes--oh, i do lots of things--most anything that comes handy, so it ain't work. what's your lay?" "i've done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. layin' on o' hands is my best holt--for cancer and paralysis, and sich things; and i k'n tell a fortune pretty good when i've got somebody along to find out the facts for me. preachin's my line, too, and workin' camp-meetin's, and missionaryin' around." nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh and says: "alas!" "what 're you alassin' about?" says the baldhead. "to think i should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded down into such company." and he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with a rag. "dern your skin, ain't the company good enough for you?" says the baldhead, pretty pert and uppish. "yes, it _is_ good enough for me; it's as good as i deserve; for who fetched me so low when i was so high? i did myself. i don't blame _you_, gentlemen--far from it; i don't blame anybody. i deserve it all. let the cold world do its worst; one thing i know--there's a grave somewhere for me. the world may go on just as it's always done, and take everything from me--loved ones, property, everything; but it can't take that. some day i'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest." he went on a-wiping. "drot your pore broken heart," says the baldhead; "what are you heaving your pore broken heart at _us_ f'r? _we_ hain't done nothing." "no, i know you haven't. i ain't blaming you, gentlemen. i brought myself down--yes, i did it myself. it's right i should suffer--perfectly right--i don't make any moan." "brought you down from whar? whar was you brought down from?" "ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes--let it pass--'tis no matter. the secret of my birth--" "the secret of your birth! do you mean to say--" "gentlemen," says the young man, very solemn, "i will reveal it to you, for i feel i may have confidence in you. by rights i am a duke!" jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that; and i reckon mine did, too. then the baldhead says: "no! you can't mean it?" "yes. my great-grandfather, eldest son of the duke of bridgewater, fled to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time. the second son of the late duke seized the titles and estates--the infant real duke was ignored. i am the lineal descendant of that infant--i am the rightful duke of bridgewater; and here am i, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heartbroken, and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft!" jim pitied him ever so much, and so did i. we tried to comfort him, but he said it warn't much use, he couldn't be much comforted; said if we was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. he said we ought to bow when we spoke to him, and say "your grace," or "my lord," or "your lordship"--and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain "bridgewater," which, he said, was a title anyway, and not a name; and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for him he wanted done. well, that was all easy, so we done it. all through dinner jim stood around and waited on him, and says, "will yo' grace have some o' dis or some o' dat?" and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him. but the old man got pretty silent by and by--didn't have much to say, and didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on around that duke. he seemed to have something on his mind. so, along in the afternoon, he says: "looky here, bilgewater," he says, "i'm nation sorry for you, but you ain't the only person that's had troubles like that." "no?" "no, you ain't. you ain't the only person that's ben snaked down wrongfully out'n a high place." "alas!" "no, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth." and, by jings, _he_ begins to cry. "hold! what do you mean?" "bilgewater, kin i trust you?" says the old man, still sort of sobbing. "to the bitter death!" he took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, "that secret of your being: speak!" "bilgewater, i am the late dauphin!" you bet you, jim and me stared this time. then the duke says: "you are what?" "yes, my friend, it is too true--your eyes is lookin' at this very moment on the pore disappeared dauphin, looy the seventeen, son of looy the sixteen and marry antonette." "you! at your age! no! you mean you're the late charlemagne; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least." "trouble has done it, bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin', exiled, trampled-on, and sufferin' rightful king of france." well, he cried and took on so that me and jim didn't know hardly what to do, we was so sorry--and so glad and proud we'd got him with us, too. so we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort _him._ but he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him "your majesty," and waited on him first at meals, and didn't set down in his presence till he asked them. so jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this and that and t'other for him, and standing up till he told us we might set down. this done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. but the duke kind of soured on him, and didn't look a bit satisfied with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke's great-grandfather and all the other dukes of bilgewater was a good deal thought of by _his_ father, and was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but the duke stayed huffy a good while, till by and by the king says: "like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this h-yer raft, bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour? it 'll only make things oncomfortable. it ain't my fault i warn't born a duke, it ain't your fault you warn't born a king--so what's the use to worry? make the best o' things the way you find 'em, says i--that's my motto. this ain't no bad thing that we've struck here--plenty grub and an easy life--come, give us your hand, duke, and le's all be friends." the duke done it, and jim and me was pretty glad to see it. it took away all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it, because it would 'a' been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others. it didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. but i never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. if they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, i hadn't no objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell jim, so i didn't tell him. if i never learnt nothing else out of pap, i learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way. chapter xx they asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of running--was jim a runaway nigger? says i: "goodness sakes! would a runaway nigger run _south?_" no, they allowed he wouldn't. i had to account for things some way, so i says: "my folks was living in pike county, in missouri, where i was born, and they all died off but me and pa and my brother ike. pa, he 'lowed he'd break up and go down and live with uncle ben, who's got a little one-horse place on the river forty-four mile below orleans. pa was pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, jim. that warn't enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way. well, when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day; he ketched this piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to orleans on it. pa's luck didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft one night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel; jim and me come up all right, but pa was drunk, and ike was only four years old, so they never come up no more. well, for the next day or two we had considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and trying to take jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway nigger. we don't run daytimes no more now; nights they don't bother us." the duke says: "leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we want to. i'll think the thing over--i'll invent a plan that 'll fix it. we'll let it alone for to-day, because of course we don't want to go by that town yonder in daylight--it mightn't be healthy." towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat-lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the leaves was beginning to shiver--it was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see that. so the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see what the beds was like. my bed was a straw tick--better than jim's, which was a corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick, and they poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over the dry shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it makes such a rustling that you wake up. well, the duke allowed he would take my bed; but the king allowed he wouldn't. he says: "i should 'a' reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that a corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on. your grace 'll take the shuck bed yourself." jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when the duke says: "'tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression. misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; i yield, i submit; 'tis my fate. i am alone in the world--let me suffer; i can bear it." we got away as soon as it was good and dark. the king told us to stand well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we got a long ways below the town. we come in sight of the little bunch of lights by and by--that was the town, you know--and slid by, about a half a mile out, all right. when we was three-quarters of a mile below we hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten o'clock it come on to rain and blow and thunder and lighten like everything; so the king told us to both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him and the duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. it was my watch below till twelve, but i wouldn't 'a' turned in anyway if i'd had a bed, because a body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week, not by a long sight. my souls, how the wind did scream along! and every second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a _h-whack!_--bum! bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum--and the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quit--and then _rip_ comes another flash and another sock-dolager. the waves most washed me off the raft sometimes, but i hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. we didn't have no trouble about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them. i had the middle watch, you know, but i was pretty sleepy by that time, so jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always mighty good that way, jim was. i crawled into the wigwam, but the king and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warn't no show for me; so i laid outside--i didn't mind the rain, because it was warm, and the waves warn't running so high now. about two they come up again, though, and jim was going to call me; but he changed his mind, because he reckoned they warn't high enough yet to do any harm; but he was mistaken about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper and washed me overboard. it most killed jim a-laughing. he was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway. i took the watch, and jim he laid down and snored away; and by and by the storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that showed i rousted him out, and we slid the raft into hiding-quarters for the day. the king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him and the duke played seven-up awhile, five cents a game. then they got tired of it, and allowed they would "lay out a campaign," as they called it. the duke went down into his carpet-bag, and fetched up a lot of little printed bills and read them out loud. one bill said, "the celebrated dr. armand de montalban, of paris," would "lecture on the science of phrenology" at such and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten cents admission, and "furnish charts of character at twenty-five cents apiece." the duke said that was _him._ in another bill he was the "world-renowned shakespearian tragedian, garrick the younger, of drury lane, london." in other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a "divining-rod," "dissipating witch spells," and so on. by and by he says: "but the histrionic muse is the darling. have you ever trod the boards, royalty?" "no," says the king. "you shall, then, before you're three days older, fallen grandeur," says the duke. "the first good town we come to we'll hire a hall and do the swordfight in 'richard iii.' and the balcony scene in 'romeo and juliet.' how does that strike you?" "i'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, bilgewater; but, you see, i don't know nothing about play-actin', and hain't ever seen much of it. i was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace. do you reckon you can learn me?" "easy!" "all right. i'm jist a-freezin' for something fresh, anyway. le's commence right away." so the duke he told him all about who romeo was and who juliet was, and said he was used to being romeo, so the king could be juliet. "but if juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white whiskers is goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe." "no, don't you worry; these country jakes won't ever think of that. besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the difference in the world; juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed, and she's got on her nightgown and her ruffled nightcap. here are the costumes for the parts." he got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was meedyevil armor for richard iii. and t'other chap, and a long white cotton nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. the king was satisfied; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart. there was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangersome for jim; so he allowed he would go down to the town and fix that thing. the king allowed he would go, too, and see if he couldn't strike something. we was out of coffee, so jim said i better go along with them in the canoe and get some. when we got there there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and perfectly dead and still, like sunday. we found a sick nigger sunning himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or too sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the woods. the king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work that camp-meeting for all it was worth, and i might go, too. the duke said what he was after was a printing-office. we found it; a little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter-shop--carpenters and printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. it was a dirty, littered-up place, and had ink-marks, and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. the duke shed his coat and said he was all right now. so me and the king lit out for the camp-meeting. we got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most awful hot day. there was as much as a thousand people there from twenty mile around. the woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep off the flies. there was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of watermelons and green corn and such-like truck. the preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was bigger and held crowds of people. the benches was made out of outside slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs. they didn't have no backs. the preachers had high platforms to stand on at one end of the sheds. the women had on sun-bonnets; and some had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones had on calico. some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the children didn't have on any clothes but just a tow-linen shirt. some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on the sly. the first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. he lined out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out two more for them to sing--and so on. the people woke up more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to groan, and some begun to shout. then the preacher begun to preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, "it's the brazen serpent in the wilderness! look upon it and live!" and people would shout out, "glory!--a-a-_men_!" and so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen: "oh, come to the mourners' bench! come, black with sin! (_amen!_) come, sick and sore! (_amen!_) come, lame and halt and blind! (_amen!_) come, pore and needy, sunk in shame! (_a-a-men!_) come, all that's worn and soiled and suffering!--come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands open--oh, enter in and be at rest!" (_a-a-men! glory, glory hallelujah!_) and so on. you couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on account of the shouting and crying. folks got up everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners' bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild. well, the first i knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him over everybody; and next he went a-charging up onto the platform, and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. he told them he was a pirate--been a pirate for thirty years out in the indian ocean--and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to goodness he'd been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back to the indian ocean, and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him, "don't you thank me, don't you give me no credit; it all belongs to them dear people in pokeville camp-meeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!" and then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. then somebody sings out, "take up a collection for him, take up a collection!" well, a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, "let _him_ pass the hat around!" then everybody said it, the preacher too. so the king went all through the crowd with his hat, swabbing his eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times--and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get to the indian ocean right off and go to work on the pirates. when we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. and then he had fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a wagon when he was starting home through the woods. the king said, take it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the missionarying line. he said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with. the duke was thinking _he'd_ been doing pretty well till the king come to show up, but after that he didn't think so so much. he had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing-office--horse bills--and took the money, four dollars. and he had got in ten dollars' worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance--so they done it. the price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in advance; they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. he set up a little piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own head--three verses--kind of sweet and saddish--the name of it was, "yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart"--and he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper, and didn't charge nothing for it. well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty square day's work for it. then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged for, because it was for us. it had a picture of a runaway nigger with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and "$ reward" under it. the reading was all about jim and just described him to a dot. it said he run away from st. jacques's plantation, forty mile below new orleans, last winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him back he could have the reward and expenses. "now," says the duke, "after to-night we can run in the daytime if we want to. whenever we see anybody coming we can tie jim hand and foot with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward. handcuffs and chains would look still better on jim, but it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor. too much like jewelry. ropes are the correct thing--we must preserve the unities, as we say on the boards." we all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble about running daytimes. we judged we could make miles enough that night to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the duke's work in the printing-office was going to make in that little town; then we could boom right along if we wanted to. we laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten o'clock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it. when jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says: "huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis trip?" "no," i says, "i reckon not." "well," says he, "dat's all right, den. i doan' mine one er two kings, but dat's enough. dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much better." i found jim had been trying to get him to talk french, so he could hear what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and had so much trouble, he'd forgot it. chapter xxi it was after sun-up now, but we went right on and didn't tie up. the king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after they'd jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal. after breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft, and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went to getting his "romeo and juliet" by heart. when he had got it pretty good him and the duke begun to practise it together. the duke had to learn him over and over again how to say every speech; and he made him sigh, and put his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he done it pretty well; "only," he says, "you mustn't bellow out _romeo!_ that way, like a bull--you must say it soft and sick and languishy, so--r-o-o-meo! that is the idea; for juliet's a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you know, and she doesn't bray like a jackass." well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of oak laths, and begun to practise the sword-fight--the duke called himself richard iii.; and the way they laid on and pranced around the raft was grand to see. but by and by the king tripped and fell overboard, and after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures they'd had in other times along the river. after dinner the duke says: "well, capet, we'll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so i guess we'll add a little more to it. we want a little something to answer encores with, anyway." "what's onkores, bilgewater?" the duke told him, and then says: "i'll answer by doing the highland fling or the sailor's hornpipe; and you--well, let me see--oh, i've got it--you can do hamlet's soliloquy." "hamlet's which?" "hamlet's soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in shakespeare. ah, it's sublime, sublime! always fetches the house. i haven't got it in the book--i've only got one volume--but i reckon i can piece it out from memory. i'll just walk up and down a minute, and see if i can call it back from recollection's vaults." so he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a tear. it was beautiful to see him. by and by he got it. he told us to give attention. then he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through his speech, he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever _i_ see before. this is the speech--i learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king: to be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin that makes calamity of so long life; for who would fardels bear, till birnam wood do come to dunsinane, but that the fear of something after death murders the innocent sleep, great nature's second course, and makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune than fly to others that we know not of. there's the respect must give us pause: wake duncan with thy knocking! i would thou couldst; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the law's delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, in the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn in customary suits of solemn black, but that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, breathes forth contagion on the world, and thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage, is sicklied o'er with care, and all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops, with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action. 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. but soft you, the fair ophelia: ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, but get thee to a nunnery--go! well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so he could do it first rate. it seemed like he was just born for it; and when he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off. the first chance we got the duke he had some show-bills printed; and after that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a most uncommon lively place, for there warn't nothing but sword-fighting and rehearsing--as the duke called it--going on all the time. one morning, when we was pretty well down the state of arkansaw, we come in sight of a little one-horse town in a big bend; so we tied up about three-quarters of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our show. we struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that afternoon, and the country-people was already beginning to come in, in all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. the circus would leave before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. the duke he hired the court-house, and we went around and stuck up our bills. they read like this: shaksperean revival ! ! ! wonderful attraction! for one night only! the world renowned tragedians, david garrick the younger, of drury lane theatre, london, and edmund kean the elder, of the royal haymarket theatre, whitechapel, pudding lane, piccadilly, london, and the royal continental theatres, in their sublime shaksperean spectacle entitled the balcony scene in romeo and juliet ! ! ! romeo...................mr. garrick juliet..................mr. kean assisted by the whole strength of the company! new costumes, new scenery, new appointments! also: the thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling broad-sword conflict in richard iii. ! ! ! richard iii.............mr. garrick richmond................mr. kean also: (by special request) hamlet's immortal soliloquy ! ! by the illustrious kean! done by him consecutive nights in paris! for one night only, on account of imperative european engagements! admission cents; children and servants, cents. then we went loafing around town. the stores and houses was most all old, shackly, dried-up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted; they was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts, so as to be out of reach of the water when the river was overflowed. the houses had little gardens around them, but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in them but jimpson-weeds, and sunflowers, and ash-piles, and old curled-up boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and played-out tinware. the fences was made of different kinds of boards, nailed on at different times; and they leaned every which way, and had gates that didn't generly have but one hinge--a leather one. some of the fences had been whitewashed some time or another, but the duke said it was in columbus's time, like enough. there was generly hogs in the garden, and people driving them out. all the stores was along one street. they had white domestic awnings in front, and the country-people hitched their horses to the awning-posts. there was empty dry-goods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their barlow knives; and chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching--a mighty ornery lot. they generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella, but didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats; they called one another bill, and buck, and hank, and joe, and andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and used considerable many cuss-words. there was as many as one loafer leaning up against every awning-post, and he most always had his hands in his britches pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of tobacco or scratch. what a body was hearing amongst them all the time was: "gimme a chaw 'v tobacker, hank." "cain't; i hain't got but one chaw left. ask bill." maybe bill he gives him a chaw; maybe he lies and says he ain't got none. some of them kinds of loafers never has a cent in the world, nor a chaw of tobacco of their own. they get all their chawing by borrowing; they say to a fellow, "i wisht you'd len' me a chaw, jack, i jist this minute give ben thompson the last chaw i had"--which is a lie pretty much every time; it don't fool nobody but a stranger; but jack ain't no stranger, so he says: "_you_ give him a chaw, did you? so did your sister's cat's grandmother. you pay me back the chaws you've awready borry'd off'n me, lafe buckner, then i'll loan you one or two ton of it, and won't charge you no back intrust, nuther." "well, i _did_ pay you back some of it wunst." "yes, you did--'bout six chaws. you borry'd store tobacker and paid back nigger-head." store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellows mostly chaws the natural leaf twisted. when they borrow a chaw they don't generly cut it off with a knife, but set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in two; then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when it's handed back, and says, sarcastic: "here, gimme the _chaw_, and you take the _plug_." [illustration:"'gimme a chaw'"] all the streets and lanes was just mud; they warn't nothing else _but_ mud--mud as black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places, and two or three inches deep in _all_ the places. the hogs loafed and grunted around everywheres. you'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way, where folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out and shut her eyes and wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as happy as if she was on salary. and pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "hi! _so_ boy! sick him, tige!" and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more a-coming; and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. then they'd settle back again till there was a dog-fight. there couldn't anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog-fight--unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death. on the river-front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in. the people had moved out of them. the bank was caved away under one corner of some others, and that corner was hanging over. people lived in them yet, but it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house caves in at a time. sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer. such a town as that has to be always moving back, and back, and back, because the river's always gnawing at it. the nearer it got to noon that day the thicker and thicker was the wagons and horses in the streets, and more coming all the time. families fetched their dinners with them from the country, and eat them in the wagons. there was considerable whisky-drinking going on, and i seen three fights. by and by somebody sings out: "here comes old boggs!--in from the country for his little old monthly drunk; here he comes, boys!" all the loafers looked glad; i reckoned they was used to having fun out of boggs. one of them says: "wonder who he's a-gwyne to chaw up this time. if he'd a-chawed up all the men he's ben a-gwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year he'd have considerable ruputation now." another one says, "i wisht old boggs 'd threaten me, 'cuz then i'd know i warn't gwyne to die for a thousan' year." boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an injun, and singing out: "cler the track, thar. i'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a-gwyne to raise." he was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year old, and had a very red face. everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now because he'd come to town to kill old colonel sherburn, and his motto was, "meat first, and spoon vittles to top off on." he see me, and rode up and says: "whar'd you come f'm, boy? you prepared to die?" then he rode on. i was scared, but a man says: "he don't mean nothing; he's always a-carryin' on like that when he's drunk. he's the best-naturedest old fool in arkansaw--never hurt nobody, drunk nor sober." boggs rode up before the biggest store in town, and bent his head down so he could see under the curtain of the awning and yells: "come out here, sherburn! come out and meet the man you've swindled. you're the houn' i'm after, and i'm a-gwyne to have you, too!" and so he went on, calling sherburn everything he could lay his tongue to, and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and going on. by and by a proud-looking man about fifty-five--and he was a heap the best-dressed man in that town, too--steps out of the store, and the crowd drops back on each side to let him come. he says to boggs, mighty ca'm and slow--he says: "i'm tired of this, but i'll endure it till one o'clock. till one o'clock, mind--no longer. if you open your mouth against me only once after that time you can't travel so far but i will find you." then he turns and goes in. the crowd looked mighty sober; nobody stirred, and there warn't no more laughing. boggs rode off blackguarding sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street; and pretty soon back he comes and stops before the store, still keeping it up. some men crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up, but he wouldn't; they told him it would be one o'clock in about fifteen minutes, and so he _must_ go home--he must go right away. but it didn't do no good. he cussed away with all his might, and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode over it, and pretty soon away he went a-raging down the street again, with his gray hair a-flying. everybody that could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober; but it warn't no use--up the street he would tear again, and give sherburn another cussing. by and by somebody says: "go for his daughter!--quick, go for his daughter; sometimes he'll listen to her. if anybody can persuade him, she can." so somebody started on a run. i walked down street a ways and stopped. in about five or ten minutes here comes boggs again, but not on his horse. he was a-reeling across the street towards me, bareheaded, with a friend on both sides of him a-holt of his arms and hurrying him along. he was quiet, and looked uneasy; and he warn't hanging back any, but was doing some of the hurrying himself. somebody sings out: "boggs!" i looked over there to see who said it, and it was that colonel sherburn. he was standing perfectly still in the street, and had a pistol raised in his right hand--not aiming it, but holding it out with the barrel tilted up towards the sky. the same second i see a young girl coming on the run, and two men with her. boggs and the men turned round to see who called him, and when they see the pistol the men jumped to one side, and the pistol-barrel come down slow and steady to a level--both barrels cocked. boggs throws up both of his hands and says, "o lord, don't shoot!" bang! goes the first shot, and he staggers back, clawing at the air--bang! goes the second one, and he tumbles backwards onto the ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out. that young girl screamed out and comes rushing, and down she throws herself on her father, crying, and saying, "oh, he's killed him, he's killed him!" the crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, with their necks stretched, trying to see, and people on the inside trying to shove them back and shouting, "back, back! give him air, give him air!" colonel sherburn he tossed his pistol onto the ground, and turned around on his heels and walked off. they took boggs to a little drug store, the crowd pressing around just the same, and the whole town following, and i rushed and got a good place at the window, where i was close to him and could see in. they laid him on the floor and put one large bible under his head, and opened another one and spread it on his breast; but they tore open his shirt first, and i seen where one of the bullets went in. he made about a dozen long gasps, his breast lifting the bible up when he drawed in his breath, and letting it down again when he breathed it out--and after that he laid still; he was dead. then they pulled his daughter away from him, screaming and crying, and took her off. she was about sixteen, and very sweet and gentle looking, but awful pale and scared. well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and scrouging and pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look, but people that had the places wouldn't give them up, and folks behind them was saying all the time, "say, now, you've looked enough, you fellows; 'tain't right and 'tain't fair for you to stay thar all the time, and never give nobody a chance; other folks has their rights as well as you." there was considerable jawing back, so i slid out, thinking maybe there was going to be trouble. the streets was full, and everybody was excited. everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened, and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows, stretching their necks and listening. one long, lanky man, with long hair and a big white fur stovepipe hat on the back of his head, and a crooked-handled cane, marked out the places on the ground where boggs stood and where sherburn stood, and the people following him around from one place to t'other and watching everything he done, and bobbing their heads to show they understood, and stooping a little and resting their hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his cane; and then he stood up straight and stiff where sherburn had stood, frowning and having his hat-brim down over his eyes, and sung out, "boggs!" and then fetched his cane down slow to a level, and says "bang!" staggered backwards, says "bang!" again, and fell down flat on his back. the people that had seen the thing said he done it perfect; said it was just exactly the way it all happened. then as much as a dozen people got out their bottles and treated him. well, by and by somebody said sherburn ought to be lynched. in about a minute everybody was saying it; so away they went, mad and yelling, and snatching down every clothes-line they come to to do the hanging with. chapter xxii they swarmed up towards sherburn's house, a-whooping and raging like injuns, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped to mush, and it was awful to see. children was heeling it ahead of the mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every window along the road was full of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence; and as soon as the mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of reach. lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared most to death. they swarmed up in front of sherburn's palings as thick as they could jam together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise. it was a little twenty-foot yard. some sung out "tear down the fence! tear down the fence!" then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like a wave. just then sherburn steps out onto the roof of his little front porch, with a double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm and deliberate, not saying a word. the racket stopped, and the wave sucked back. sherburn never said a word--just stood there, looking down. the stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. sherburn run his eye slow along the crowd; and wherever it struck the people tried a little to outgaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. then pretty soon sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's got sand in it. then he says, slow and scornful: "the idea of _you_ lynching anybody! it's amusing. the idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a _man!_ because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a _man?_ why, a _man's_ safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind--as long as it's daytime and you're not behind him. "do i know you? i know you clear through. i was born and raised in the south, and i've lived in the north; so i know the average all around. the average man's a coward. in the north he lets anybody walk over him that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. in the south one man, all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men in the daytime, and robbed the lot. your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people--whereas you're just _as_ brave, and no braver. why don't your juries hang murderers? because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark--and it's just what they _would_ do. "so they always acquit; and then a _man_ goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back, and lynches the rascal. your mistake is, that you didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the other is that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks. you brought _part_ of a man--buck harkness, there--and if you hadn't had him to start you, you'd 'a' taken it out in blowing. "you didn't want to come. the average man don't like trouble and danger. _you_ don't like trouble and danger. but if only _half_ a man--like buck harkness, there--shouts 'lynch him! lynch him!' you're afraid to back down--afraid you'll be found out to be what you are--_cowards_--and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves onto that half-a-man's coat-tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do. the pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is--a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. but a mob without any _man_ at the head of it is _beneath_ pitifulness. now the thing for _you_ to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. if any real lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, southern fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a _man_ along. now _leave_--and take your half-a-man with you"--tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it when he says this. the crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart, and went tearing off every which way, and buck harkness he heeled it after them, looking tolerable cheap. i could 'a' stayed if i wanted to, but i didn't want to. i went to the circus and loafed around the back side till the watchman went by, and then dived in under the tent. i had my twenty-dollar gold piece and some other money, but i reckoned i better save it, because there ain't no telling how soon you are going to need it, away from home and amongst strangers that way. you can't be too careful. i ain't opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain't no other way, but there ain't no use in _wasting_ it on them. it was a real bully circus. it was the splendidest sight that ever was when they all come riding in, two and two, and gentleman and lady, side by side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs easy and comfortable--there must 'a' been twenty of them--and every lady with a lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real sure-enough queens, and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars, and just littered with diamonds. it was a powerful fine sight; i never see anything so lovely. and then one by one they got up and stood, and went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight, with their heads bobbing and skimming along, away up there under the tent-roof, and every lady's rose-leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips, and she looking like the most loveliest parasol. and then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one foot out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and more, and the ringmaster going round and round the center pole, cracking his whip and shouting "hi!--hi!" and the clown cracking jokes behind him; and by and by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her knuckles on her hips and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how the horses did lean over and hump themselves! and so one after the other they all skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow i ever see, and then scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands and went just about wild. well, all through the circus they done the most astonishing things; and all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people. the ringmaster couldn't ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said; and how he ever _could_ think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat, was what i couldn't no way understand. why, i couldn't 'a' thought of them in a year. and by and by a drunken man tried to get into the ring--said he wanted to ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. they argued and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show come to a standstill. then the people begun to holler at him and make fun of him, and that made him mad, and he begun to rip and tear; so that stirred up the people, and a lot of men begun to pile down off of the benches and swarm toward the ring, saying, "knock him down! throw him out!" and one or two women begun to scream. so, then, the ringmaster he made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble he would let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse. so everybody laughed and said all right, and the man got on. the minute he was on, the horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around, with two circus men hanging on to his bridle trying to hold him, and the drunk man hanging on to his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump, and the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing till tears rolled down. and at last, sure enough, all the circus men could do, the horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation, round and round the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging to his neck, with first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side, and then t'other one on t'other side, and the people just crazy. it warn't funny to me, though; i was all of a tremble to see his danger. but pretty soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling this way and that; and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood! and the horse a-going like a house afire, too. he just stood up there, a-sailing around as easy and comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his life--and then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. he shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. and, then, there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly hum--and finally skipped off, and made his bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling with pleasure and astonishment. then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled, and he _was_ the sickest ringmaster you ever see, i reckon. why, it was one of his own men! he had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to nobody. well, i felt sheepish enough to be took in so, but i wouldn't 'a' been in that ringmaster's place, not for a thousand dollars. i don't know; there may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but i never struck them yet. anyways, it was plenty good enough for _me_; and wherever i run across it, it can have all of _my_ custom every time. well, that night we had _our_ show; but there warn't only about twelve people there--just enough to pay expenses. and they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep. so the duke said these arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to shakespeare; what they wanted was low comedy--and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned. he said he could size their style. so next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping-paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village. the bills said: at the court house! for nights only! _the world-renowned tragedians_ david garrick the younger! and edmund kean the elder! of the london and continental theatres, in their thrilling tragedy of the king's cameleopard, or the royal nonesuch ! ! ! _admission cents._ then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said: ladies and children not admitted "there," says he, "if that line don't fetch them, i don't know arkansaw!" chapter xxiii i well, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was jam full of men in no time. when the place couldn't hold no more, the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come onto the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about edmund kean the elder, which was to play the main principal part in it; and at last when he'd got everybody's expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring-streaked-and-striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. and--but never mind the rest of his outfit; it was just wild, but it was awful funny. the people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done it over again, and after that they made him do it another time. well, it would make a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut. then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of pressing london engagements, where the seats is all sold already for it in drury lane; and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come and see it. twenty people sings out: "what, is it over? is that _all_?" the duke says yes. then there was a fine time. everybody sings out, "sold!" and rose up mad, and was a-going for that stage and them tragedians. but a big, fine-looking man jumps up on a bench and shouts: "hold on! just a word, gentlemen." they stopped to listen. "we are sold--mighty badly sold. but we don't want to be the laughing-stock of this whole town, i reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long as we live. _no_. what we want is to go out of here quiet, and talk this show up, and sell the _rest_ of the town! then we'll all be in the same boat. ain't that sensible?" ("you bet it is!--the jedge is right!" everybody sings out.) "all right, then--not a word about any sell. go along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy." next day you couldn't hear nothing around that town but how splendid that show was. house was jammed again that night, and we sold this crowd the same way. when me and the king and the duke got home to the raft we all had a supper; and by and by, about midnight, they made jim and me back her out and float her down the middle of the river, and fetch her in and hide her about two mile below town. the third night the house was crammed again--and they warn't new-comers this time, but people that was at the show the other two nights. i stood by the duke at the door, and i see that every man that went in had his pockets bulging, or something muffled up under his coat--and i see it warn't no perfumery, neither, not by a long sight. i smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if i know the signs of a dead cat being around, and i bet i do, there was sixty-four of them went in. i shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for me; i couldn't stand it. well, when the place couldn't hold no more people the duke he give a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door for him a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, i after him; but the minute we turned the corner and was in the dark he says: "walk fast now till you get away from the houses, and then shin for the raft like the dickens was after you!" i done it, and he done the same. we struck the raft at the same time, and in less than two seconds we was gliding down-stream, all dark and still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a word. i reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience, but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam, and says: "well, how'd the old thing pan out this time, duke?" he hadn't been up-town at all. we never showed a light till we was about ten mile below the village. then we lit up and had a supper, and the king and the duke fairly laughed their bones loose over the way they'd served them people. the duke says: "greenhorns, flatheads! i knew the first house would keep mum and let the rest of the town get roped in; and i knew they'd lay for us the third night, and consider it was _their_ turn now. well, it _is_ their turn, and i'd give something to know how much they'd take for it. i _would_ just like to know how they're putting in their opportunity. they can turn it into a picnic if they want to--they brought plenty provisions." them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in that three nights. i never see money hauled in by the wagon-load like that before. by and by, when they was asleep and snoring, jim says: "don't it s'prise you de way dem kings carries on, huck?" "no," i says, "it don't." "why don't it, huck?" "well, it don't, because it's in the breed. i reckon they're all alike." "but, huck, dese kings o' ourn is reglar rapscallions; dat's jist what dey is; dey's reglar rapscallions." "well, that's what i'm a-saying; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as i can make out." "is dat so?" "you read about them once--you'll see. look at henry the eight; this 'n' 's a sunday-school superintendent to _him_. and look at charles second, and louis fourteen, and louis fifteen, and james second, and edward second, and richard third, and forty more; besides all them saxon heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise cain. my, you ought to seen old henry the eight when he was in bloom. he _was_ a blossom. he used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. and he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. 'fetch up nell gwynn,' he says. they fetch her up. next morning, 'chop off her head!' and they chop it off. 'fetch up jane shore,' he says; and up she comes. next morning, 'chop off her head'--and they chop it off. 'ring up fair rosamun.' fair rosamun answers the bell. next morning, 'chop off her head.' and he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it domesday book--which was a good name and stated the case. you don't know kings, jim, but i know them; and this old rip of ourn is one of the cleanest i've struck in history. well, henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. how does he go at it--give notice?--give the country a show? no. all of a sudden he heaves all the tea in boston harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on. that was _his_ style--he never give anybody a chance. he had suspicions of his father, the duke of wellington. well, what did he do? ask him to show up? no--drownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. s'pose people left money laying around where he was--what did he do? he collared it. s'pose he contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn't set down there and see that he done it--what did he do? he always done the other thing. s'pose he opened his mouth--what then? if he didn't shut it up powerful quick he'd lose a lie every time. that's the kind of a bug henry was; and if we'd 'a' had him along 'stead of our kings he'd 'a' fooled that town a heap worse than ourn done. i don't say that ourn is lambs, because they ain't, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they ain't nothing to _that_ old ram, anyway. all i say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. it's the way they're raised." "but dis one do _smell_ so like de nation, huck." "well, they all do, jim. we can't help the way a king smells; history don't tell no way." "now de duke, he's a tolerble likely man in some ways." "yes, a duke's different. but not very different. this one's a middling hard lot for a duke. when he's drunk there ain't no near-sighted man could tell him from a king." "well, anyways, i doan' hanker for no mo' un um, huck. dese is all i kin stan'." "it's the way i feel, too, jim. but we've got them on our hands, and we got to remember what they are, and make allowances. sometimes i wish we could hear of a country that's out of kings." what was the use to tell jim these warn't real kings and dukes? it wouldn't 'a' done no good; and, besides, it was just as i said: you couldn't tell them from the real kind. i went to sleep, and jim didn't call me when it was my turn. he often done that. when i waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. i didn't take notice nor let on. i knowed what it was about. he was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his life; and i do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their'n. it don't seem natural, but i reckon it's so. he was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged i was asleep, and saying, "po' little 'lizabeth! po' little johnny! it's mighty hard; i spec' i ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo'!" he was a mighty good nigger, jim was. but this time i somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones; and by and by he says: "what makes me feel so bad dis time 'uz bekase i hear sumpn over yonder on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time i treat my little 'lizabeth so ornery. she warn't on'y 'bout fo' year ole, en she tuck de sk'yarlet fever, en had a powful rough spell; but she got well, en one day she was a-stannin' aroun', en i says to her, i says: "'shet de do'.' "she never done it; jis' stood dah, kiner smilin' up at me. it make me mad; en i says ag'in, mighty loud, i says: "'doan' you hear me? shet de do'!" "she jis stood de same way, kiner smilin' up. i was a-bilin'! i says: "'i lay i _make_ you mine!' "en wid dat i fetch' her a slap side de head dat sont her a-sprawlin'. den i went into de yuther room, en 'uz gone 'bout ten minutes; en when i come back dah was dat do' a-stannin' open _yit_, en dat chile stannin' mos' right in it, a-lookin' down and mournin', en de tears runnin' down. my, but i _wuz_ mad! i was a-gwyne for de chile, but jis' den--it was a do' dat open innerds--jis' den, 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine de chile, ker-_blam!_--en my lan', de chile never move'! my breff mos' hop outer me; en i feel so--so--i doan' know _how_ i feel. i crope out, all a-tremblin', en crope aroun' en open de do' easy en slow, en poke my head in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden i says _pow!_ jis' as loud as i could yell. she _never budge!_ oh, huck, i bust out a-cryin' en grab her up in my arms, en say, 'oh, de po' little thing! de lord god amighty fogive po' ole jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long's he live!' oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, huck, plumb deef en dumb--en i'd ben a-treat'n her so!" chapter xxiv next day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow towhead out in the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns. jim he spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few hours, because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all day in the wigwam tied with the rope. you see, when we left him all alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on to him all by himself and not tied it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger, you know. so the duke said it _was_ kind of hard to have to lay roped all day, and he'd cipher out some way to get around it. he was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it. he dressed jim up in king lear's outfit--it was a long curtain-calico gown, and a white horse-hair wig and whiskers; and then he took his theater paint and painted jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead, dull solid blue, like a man that's been drownded nine days. blamed if he warn't the horriblest-looking outrage i ever see. then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle so: _sick arab--but harmless when not out of his head._ and he nailed that shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or five foot in front of the wigwam. jim was satisfied. he said it was a sight better than lying tied a couple of years every day, and trembling all over every time there was a sound. the duke told him to make himself free and easy, and if anybody ever come meddling around, he must hop out of the wigwam, and carry on a little, and fetch a howl or two like a wild beast, and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone. which was sound enough judgment; but you take the average man, and he wouldn't wait for him to howl. why, he didn't only look like he was dead, he looked considerable more than that. these rapscallions wanted to try the nonesuch again, because there was so much money in it, but they judged it wouldn't be safe, because maybe the news might 'a' worked along down by this time. they couldn't hit no project that suited exactly; so at last the duke said he reckoned he'd lay off and work his brains an hour or two and see if he couldn't put up something on the arkansaw village; and the king he allowed he would drop over to t'other village without any plan, but just trust in providence to lead him the profitable way--meaning the devil, i reckon. we had all bought store clothes where we stopped last; and now the king put his'n on, and he told me to put mine on. i done it, of course. the king's duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy. i never knowed how clothes could change a body before. why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he'd take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old leviticus himself. jim cleaned up the canoe, and i got my paddle ready. there was a big steamboat laying at the shore away up under the point, about three mile above the town--been there a couple of hours, taking on freight. says the king: "seein' how i'm dressed, i reckon maybe i better arrive down from st. louis or cincinnati, or some other big place. go for the steamboat, huckleberry; we'll come down to the village on her." i didn't have to be ordered twice to go and take a steamboat ride. i fetched the shore a half a mile above the village, and then went scooting along the bluff bank in the easy water. pretty soon we come to a nice innocent-looking young country jake setting on a log swabbing the sweat off of his face, for it was powerful warm weather; and he had a couple of big carpet-bags by him. "run her nose inshore," says the king. i done it. "wher' you bound for, young man?" "for the steamboat; going to orleans." "git aboard," says the king. "hold on a minute, my servant 'll he'p you with them bags. jump out and he'p the gentleman, adolphus"--meaning me, i see. i done so, and then we all three started on again. the young chap was mighty thankful; said it was tough work toting his baggage such weather. he asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he'd come down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he was going up a few mile to see an old friend on a farm up there. the young fellow says: "when i first see you i says to myself, 'it's mr. wilks, sure, and he come mighty near getting here in time.' but then i says again, 'no, i reckon it ain't him, or else he wouldn't be paddling up the river.' you _ain't_ him, are you?" "no, my name's blodgett--elexander blodgett--_reverend_ elexander blodgett, i s'pose i must say, as i'm one o' the lord's poor servants. but still i'm jist as able to be sorry for mr. wilks for not arriving in time, all the same, if he's missed anything by it--which i hope he hasn't." "well, he don't miss any property by it, because he'll get that all right; but he's missed seeing his brother peter die--which he mayn't mind, nobody can tell as to that--but his brother would 'a' give anything in this world to see _him_ before he died; never talked about nothing else all these three weeks; hadn't seen him since they was boys together--and hadn't ever seen his brother william at all--that's the deef and dumb one--william ain't more than thirty or thirty-five. peter and george were the only ones that come out here; george was the married brother; him and his wife both died last year. harvey and william's the only ones that's left now; and, as i was saying, they haven't got here in time." "did anybody send 'em word?" "oh, yes; a month or two ago, when peter was first took; because peter said then that he sorter felt like he warn't going to get well this time. you see, he was pretty old, and george's g'yirls was too young to be much company for him, except mary jane, the red-headed one; and so he was kinder lonesome after george and his wife died, and didn't seem to care much to live. he most desperately wanted to see harvey--and william, too, for that matter--because he was one of them kind that can't bear to make a will. he left a letter behind for harvey, and said he'd told in it where his money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of the property divided up so george's g'yirls would be all right--for george didn't leave nothing. and that letter was all they could get him to put a pen to." "why do you reckon harvey don't come? wher' does he live?" "oh, he lives in england--sheffield--preaches there--hasn't ever been in this country. he hasn't had any too much time--and besides he mightn't 'a' got the letter at all, you know." "too bad, too bad he couldn't 'a' lived to see his brothers, poor soul. you going to orleans, you say?" "yes, but that ain't only a part of it. i'm going in a ship, next wednesday, for ryo janeero, where my uncle lives." "it's a pretty long journey. but it'll be lovely; i wisht i was a-going. is mary jane the oldest? how old is the others?" "mary jane's nineteen, susan's fifteen, and joanna's about fourteen--that's the one that gives herself to good works and has a hare-lip." "poor things! to be left alone in the cold world so." "well, they could be worse off. old peter had friends, and they ain't going to let them come to no harm. there's hobson, the babtis' preacher; and deacon lot hovey, and ben rucker, and abner shackleford, and levi bell, the lawyer; and dr. robinson, and their wives, and the widow bartley, and--well, there's a lot of them; but these are the ones that peter was thickest with, and used to write about sometimes, when he wrote home; so harvey 'll know where to look for friends when he gets here." well, the old man went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied that young fellow. blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and everything in that blessed town, and all about the wilkses; and about peter's business--which was a tanner; and about george's--which was a carpenter; and about harvey's--which was a dissentering minister; and so on, and so on. then he says: "what did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for?" "because she's a big orleans boat, and i was afeard she mightn't stop there. when they're deep they won't stop for a hail. a cincinnati boat will, but this is a st. louis one." "was peter wilks well off?" "oh, yes, pretty well off. he had houses and land, and it's reckoned he left three or four thousand in cash hid up som'ers." "when did you say he died?" "i didn't say, but it was last night." "funeral to-morrow, likely?" "yes, 'bout the middle of the day." "well, it's all terrible sad; but we've all got to go, one time or another. so what we want to do is to be prepared; then we're all right." "yes, sir, it's the best way. ma used to always say that." when we struck the boat she was about done loading, and pretty soon she got off. the king never said nothing about going aboard, so i lost my ride, after all. when the boat was gone the king made me paddle up another mile to a lonesome place, and then he got ashore and says: "now hustle back, right off, and fetch the duke up here, and the new carpet-bags. and if he's gone over to t'other side, go over there and git him. and tell him to git himself up regardless. shove along, now." i see what _he_ was up to; but i never said nothing, of course. when i got back with the duke we hid the canoe, and then they set down on a log, and the king told him everything, just like the young fellow had said it--every last word of it. and all the time he was a-doing it he tried to talk like an englishman; and he done it pretty well, too, for a slouch. i can't imitate him, and so i ain't a-going to try to; but he really done it pretty good. then he says: "how are you on the deef and dumb, bilgewater?" the duke said, leave him alone for that; said he had played a deef and dumb person on the histrionic boards. so then they waited for a steamboat. about the middle of the afternoon a couple of little boats come along, but they didn't come from high enough up the river; but at last there was a big one, and they hailed her. she sent out her yawl, and we went aboard, and she was from cincinnati; and when they found we only wanted to go four or five mile they was booming mad, and gave us a cussing, and said they wouldn't land us. but the king was ca'm. he says: "if gentlemen kin afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece to be took on and put off in a yawl, a steamboat kin afford to carry 'em, can't it?" so they softened down and said it was all right; and when we got to the village they yawled us ashore. about two dozen men flocked down when they see the yawl a-coming, and when the king says: "kin any of you gentlemen tell me wher' mr. peter wilks lives?" they give a glance at one another, and nodded their heads, as much as to say, "what 'd i tell you?" then one of them says, kind of soft and gentle: "i'm sorry, sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he _did_ live yesterday evening." sudden as winking the ornery old cretur went all to smash, and fell up against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his back, and says: "alas, alas, our poor brother--gone, and we never got to see him; oh, it's too, too hard!" then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn't drop a carpet-bag and bust out a-crying. if they warn't the beatenest lot, them two frauds, that ever i struck. well, the men gathered around and sympathized with them, and said all sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about his brother's last moments, and the king he told it all over again on his hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner like they'd lost the twelve disciples. well, if ever i struck anything like it, i'm a nigger. it was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race. chapter xxv the news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they come. pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march. the windows and dooryards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence: "is it _them?_" and somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say: "you bet it is." when we got to the house the street in front of it was packed, and the three girls was standing in the door. mary jane _was_ red-headed, but that don't make no difference, she was most awful beautiful, and her face and her eyes was all lit up like glory, she was so glad her uncles was come. the king he spread his arms, and mary jane she jumped for them, and the hare-lip jumped for the duke, and there they _had_ it! everybody most, leastways women, cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have such good times. then the king he hunched the duke private--i see him do it--and then he looked around and see the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs; so then him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and t'other hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, everybody dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping, people saying "'sh!" and all the men taking their hats off and drooping their heads, so you could 'a' heard a pin fall. and when they got there they bent over and looked in the coffin, and took one sight, and then they bust out a-crying so you could 'a' heard them to orleans, most; and then they put their arms around each other's necks, and hung their chins over each other's shoulders; and then for three minutes, or maybe four, i never see two men leak the way they done. and, mind you, everybody was doing the same; and the place was that damp i never see anything like it. then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and t'other on t'other side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and let on to pray all to themselves. well, when it come to that it worked the crowd like you never see anything like it, and everybody broke down and went to sobbing right out loud--the poor girls, too; and every woman, nearly, went up to the girls, without saying a word, and kissed them, solemn, on the forehead, and then put their hand on their head, and looked up towards the sky, with the tears running down, and then busted out and went off sobbing and swabbing, and give the next woman a show. i never see anything so disgusting. well, by and by the king he gets up and comes forward a little, and works himself up and slobbers out a speech, all full of tears and flapdoodle, about its being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the diseased, and to miss seeing diseased alive after the long journey of four thousand mile, but it's a trial that's sweetened and sanctified to us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so he thanks them out of his heart and out of his brother's heart, because out of their mouths they can't, words being too weak and cold, and all that kind of rot and slush, till it was just sickening; and then he blubbers out a pious goody-goody amen, and turns himself loose and goes to crying fit to bust. and the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the doxolojer, and everybody joined in with all their might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting out. music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash i never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully. then the king begins to work his jaw again, and says how him and his nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family would take supper here with them this evening, and help set up with the ashes of the diseased; and says if his poor brother laying yonder could speak he knows who he would name, for they was names that was very dear to him, and mentioned often in his letters; and so he will name the same, to wit, as follows, viz.:--rev. mr. hobson, and deacon lot hovey, and mr. ben rucker, and abner shackleford, and levi bell, and dr. robinson, and their wives, and the widow bartley. rev. hobson and dr. robinson was down to the end of the town a-hunting together--that is, i mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to t'other world, and the preacher was pinting him right. lawyer bell was away up to louisville on business. but the rest was on hand, and so they all come and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him; and then they shook hands with the duke and didn't say nothing, but just kept a-smiling and bobbing their heads like a passel of sapheads whilst he made all sorts of signs with his hands and said "goo-goo--goo-goo-goo" all the time, like a baby that can't talk. so the king he blattered along, and managed to inquire about pretty much everybody and dog in town, by his name, and mentioned all sorts of little things that happened one time or another in the town, or to george's family, or to peter. and he always let on that peter wrote him the things; but that was a lie: he got every blessed one of them out of that young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat. then mary jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the king he read it out loud and cried over it. it give the dwelling-house and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls; and it give the tanyard (which was doing a good business), along with some other houses and land (worth about seven thousand), and three thousand dollars in gold to harvey and william, and told where the six thousand cash was hid down cellar. so these two frauds said they'd go and fetch it up, and have everything square and above-board; and told me to come with a candle. we shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag they spilt it out on the floor, and it was a lovely sight, all them yaller-boys. my, the way the king's eyes did shine! he slaps the duke on the shoulder and says: "oh, _this_ ain't bully nor noth'n! oh, no, i reckon not! why, biljy, it beats the nonesuch, _don't_ it?" the duke allowed it did. they pawed the yaller-boys, and sifted them through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor; and the king says: "it ain't no use talkin'; bein' brothers to a rich dead man and representatives of furrin heirs that's got left is the line for you and me, bilge. thish yer comes of trust'n to providence. it's the best way, in the long run. i've tried 'em all, and ther' ain't no better way." most everybody would 'a' been satisfied with the pile, and took it on trust; but no, they must count it. so they counts it, and it comes out four hundred and fifteen dollars short. says the king: "dern him, i wonder what he done with that four hundred and fifteen dollars?" they worried over that awhile, and ransacked all around for it. then the duke says: "well, he was a pretty sick man, and likely he made a mistake--i reckon that's the way of it. the best way's to let it go, and keep still about it. we can spare it." "oh, shucks, yes, we can _spare_ it. i don't k'yer noth'n 'bout that--it's the _count_ i'm thinkin' about. we want to be awful square and open and above-board here, you know. we want to lug this h'yer money up-stairs and count it before everybody--then ther' ain't noth'n suspicious. but when the dead man says ther's six thous'n dollars, you know, we don't want to--" "hold on," says the duke. "le's make up the deffisit," and he begun to haul out yaller-boys out of his pocket. "it's a most amaz'n' good idea, duke--you _have_ got a rattlin' clever head on you," says the king. "blest if the old nonesuch ain't a heppin' us out ag'in," and _he_ begun to haul out yaller-jackets and stack them up. it most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear. "say," says the duke, "i got another idea. le's go up-stairs and count this money, and then take and _give it to the girls."_ "good land, duke, lemme hug you! it's the most dazzling idea 'at ever a man struck. you have cert'nly got the most astonishin' head i ever see. oh, this is the boss dodge, ther' ain't no mistake 'bout it. let 'em fetch along their suspicions now if they want to--this 'll lay 'em out." when we got up-stairs everybody gethered around the table, and the king he counted it and stacked it up, three hundred dollars in a pile--twenty elegant little piles. everybody looked hungry at it, and licked their chops. then they raked it into the bag again, and i see the king begin to swell himself up for another speech. he says: "friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder has done generous by them that's left behind in the vale of sorrers. he has done generous by these yer poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that's left fatherless and motherless. yes, and we that knowed him knows that he would 'a' done _more_ generous by 'em if he hadn't ben afeard o' woundin' his dear william and me. now, _wouldn't_ he? ther' ain't no question 'bout it in _my_ mind. well, then, what kind o' brothers would it be that 'd stand in his way at sech a time? and what kind o' uncles would it be that 'd rob--yes, _rob_--sech poor sweet lambs as these 'at he loved so at sech a time? if i know william--and i _think_ i do--he--well, i'll jest ask him." he turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the duke with his hands, and the duke he looks at him stupid and leather-headed awhile; then all of a sudden he seems to catch his meaning, and jumps for the king, goo-gooing with all his might for joy, and hugs him about fifteen times before he lets up. then the king says, "i knowed it; i reckon _that_ 'll convince anybody the way _he_ feels about it. here, mary jane, susan, joanner, take the money--take it _all._ it's the gift of him that lays yonder, cold but joyful." mary jane she went for him, susan and the hare-lip went for the duke, and then such another hugging and kissing i never see yet. and everybody crowded up with the tears in their eyes, and most shook the hands off of them frauds, saying all the time: "you _dear_ good souls!--how _lovely!_--how _could_ you!" well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that; and before long a big iron-jawed man worked himself in there from outside, and stood a-listening and looking, and not saying anything; and nobody saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was all busy listening. the king was saying--in the middle of something he'd started in on-- "--they bein' partickler friends o' the diseased. that's why they're invited here this evenin'; but tomorrow we want _all_ to come--everybody; for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitten that his funeral orgies sh'd be public." and so he went a-mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke he couldn't stand it no more; so he writes on a little scrap of paper, "_obsequies_, you old fool," and folds it up, and goes to goo-gooing and reaching it over people's heads to him. the king he reads it and puts it in his pocket, and says: "poor william, afflicted as he is, his _heart's_ aluz right. asks me to invite everybody to come to the funeral--wants me to make 'em all welcome. but he needn't 'a' worried--it was jest what i was at." then he weaves along again, perfectly ca'm, and goes to dropping in his funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before. and when he done it the third time he says: "i say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it ain't--obsequies bein' the common term--but because orgies is the right term. obsequies ain't used in england no more now--it's gone out. we say orgies now in england. orgies is better, because it means the thing you're after more exact. it's a word that's made up out'n the greek _orgo_, outside, open, abroad; and the hebrew _jeesum_, to plant, cover up; hence in_ter_. so, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral." he was the _worst_ i ever struck. well, the iron-jawed man he laughed right in his face. everybody was shocked. everybody says, "why, _doctor!_" and abner shackleford says: "why, robinson, hain't you heard the news? this is harvey wilks." the king he smiled eager, and shoved out his flapper, and says: "_is_ it my poor brother's dear good friend and physician? i--" "keep your hands off me!" says the doctor. "_you_ talk like an englishman, _don't_ you? it's the worst imitation i ever heard. _you_ peter wilks's brother! you're a fraud, that's what you are!" well, how they all took on! they crowded around the doctor and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how harvey's showed in forty ways that he _was_ harvey, and knowed everybody by name, and the names of the very dogs, and begged and _begged_ him not to hurt harvey's feelings and the poor girls' feelings, and all that. but it warn't no use; he stormed right along, and said any man that pretended to be an englishman and couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what he did was a fraud and a liar. the poor girls was hanging to the king and crying; and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on _them._ he says: "i was your father's friend, and i'm your friend; and i warn you as a friend, and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trouble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his idiotic greek and hebrew, as he calls it. he is the thinnest kind of an impostor--has come here with a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres; and you take them for _proofs_, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish friends here, who ought to know better. mary jane wilks, you know me for your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too. now listen to me; turn this pitiful rascal out--i _beg_ you to do it. will you?" mary jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome! she says: "_here_ is my answer." she hove up the bag of money and put it in the king's hands, and says, "take this six thousand dollars, and invest for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don't give us no receipt for it." then she put her arm around the king on one side, and susan and the hare-lip done the same on the other. everybody clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his head and smiled proud. the doctor says: "all right; i wash _my_ hands of the matter. but i warn you all that a time's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this day." and away he went. "all right, doctor," says the king, kinder mocking him; "we'll try and get 'em to send for you;" which made them all laugh, and they said it was a prime good hit. chapter xxvi well, when they was all gone the king he asks mary jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for uncle william, and she'd give her own room to uncle harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it. the king said the cubby would do for his valley--meaning me. so mary jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain but nice. she said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took out of her room if they was in uncle harvey's way, but he said they warn't. the frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. there was an old hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar-box in another, and all sorts of little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room with. the king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for these fixings, and so don't disturb them. the duke's room was pretty small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby. that night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there, and i stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them, and the niggers waited on the rest. mary jane she set at the head of the table, with susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was--and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop, and said so--said "how _do_ you get biscuits to brown so nice?" and "where, for the land's sake, _did_ you get these amaz'n pickles?" and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know. and when it was all done me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up the things. the hare-lip she got to pumping me about england, and blest if i didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes. she says: "did you ever see the king?" "who? william fourth? well, i bet i have--he goes to our church." i knowed he was dead years ago, but i never let on. so when i says he goes to our church, she says: "what--regular?" "yes--regular. his pew's right over opposite ourn--on t'other side the pulpit." "i thought he lived in london?" "well, he does. where _would_ he live?" "but i thought _you_ lived in sheffield?" i see i was up a stump. i had to let on to get choked with a chicken-bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. then i says: "i mean he goes to our church regular when he's in sheffield. that's only in the summer-time, when he comes there to take the sea baths." "why, how you talk--sheffield ain't on the sea." "well, who said it was?" "why, you did." "i _didn't_, nuther." "you did!" "i didn't." "you did." "i never said nothing of the kind." "well, what _did_ you say, then?" "said he come to take the sea _baths_--that's what i said." "well, then, how's he going to take the sea baths if it ain't on the sea?" "looky here," i says; "did you ever see any congress-water?" "yes." "well, did you have to go to congress to get it?" "why, no." "well, neither does william fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea bath." "how does he get it, then?" "gets it the way people down here gets congress-water--in barrels. there in the palace at sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water hot. they can't bile that amount of water away off there at the sea. they haven't got no conveniences for it." "oh, i see, now. you might 'a' said that in the first place and saved time." when she said that i see i was out of the woods again, and so i was comfortable and glad. next, she says: "do you go to church, too?" "yes--regular." "where do you set?" "why, in our pew." "_whose_ pew?" "why, _ourn_--your uncle harvey's." "his'n? what does _he_ want with a pew?" "wants it to set in. what did you _reckon_ he wanted with it?" "why, i thought he'd be in the pulpit." rot him, i forgot he was a preacher. i see i was up a stump again, so i played another chicken-bone and got another think. then i says: "blame it, do you suppose there ain't but one preacher to a church?" "why, what do they want with more?" "what!--to preach before a king? i never did see such a girl as you. they don't have no less than seventeen." "seventeen! my land! why, i wouldn't set out such a string as that, not if i _never_ got to glory. it must take 'em a week." "shucks, they don't _all_ of 'em preach the same day--only _one_ of 'em." "well, then, what does the rest of 'em do?" "oh, nothing much. loll around, pass the plate--and one thing or another. but mainly they don't do nothing." "well, then, what are they _for_?" "why, they're for _style_. don't you know nothing?" "well, i don't _want_ to know no such foolishness as that. how is servants treated in england? do they treat 'em better 'n we treat our niggers?" "_no!_ a servant ain't nobody there. they treat them worse than dogs." "don't they give 'em holidays, the way we do, christmas and new year's week, and fourth of july?" "oh, just listen! a body could tell _you_ hain't ever been to england by that. why, hare-l--why, joanna, they never see a holiday from year's end to year's end; never go to the circus, nor theater, nor nigger shows, nor nowheres." "nor church?" "nor church." "but _you_ always went to church." well, i was gone up again. i forgot i was the old man's servant. but next minute i whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was different from a common servant, and _had_ to go to church whether he wanted to or not, and set with the family, on account of its being the law. but i didn't do it pretty good, and when i got done i see she warn't satisfied. she says: "honest injun, now, hain't you been telling me a lot of lies?" "honest injun," says i. "none of it at all?" "none of it at all. not a lie in it," says i. "lay your hand on this book and say it." i see it warn't nothing but a dictionary, so i laid my hand on it and said it. so then she looked a little better satisfied, and says: "well, then, i'll believe some of it; but i hope to gracious if i'll believe the rest." "what is it you won't believe, jo?" says mary jane, stepping in with susan behind her. "it ain't right nor kind for you to talk so to him, and him a stranger and so far from his people. how would you like to be treated so?" "that's always your way, maim--always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. i hain't done nothing to him. he's told some stretchers, i reckon, and i said i wouldn't swallow it all; and that's every bit and grain i _did_ say. i reckon he can stand a little thing like that, can't he?" "i don't care whether 'twas little or whether 'twas big; he's here in our house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it. if you was in his place it would make you feel ashamed; and so you oughtn't to say a thing to another person that will make _them_ feel ashamed." "why, maim, he said--" "it don't make no difference what he _said_--that ain't the thing. the thing is for you to treat him _kind,_ and not be saying things to make him remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks." i says to myself, _this_ is a girl that i'm letting that old reptile rob her of her money! then susan _she_ waltzed in; and if you'll believe me, she did give hare-lip hark from the tomb! says i to myself, and this is _another_ one that i'm letting him rob her of her money! then mary jane she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely again--which was her way; but when she got done there warn't hardly anything left o' poor hare-lip. so she hollered. "all right, then," says the other girls; "you just ask his pardon." she done it, too; and she done it beautiful. she done it so beautiful it was good to hear; and i wished i could tell her a thousand lies, so she could do it again. i says to myself, this is _another_ one that i'm letting him rob her of her money. and when she got through they all jest laid theirselves out to make me feel at home and know i was amongst friends. i felt so ornery and low down and mean that i says to myself, my mind's made up; i'll hive that money for them or bust. so then i lit out--for bed, i said, meaning some time or another. when i got by myself i went to thinking the thing over. i says to myself, shall i go to that doctor, private, and blow on these frauds? no--that won't do. he might tell who told him; then the king and the duke would make it warm for me. shall i go, private, and tell mary jane? no--i dasn't do it. her face would give them a hint, sure; they've got the money, and they'd slide right out and get away with it. if she was to fetch in help i'd get mixed up in the business before it was done with, i judge. no; there ain't no good way but one. i got to steal that money, somehow; and i got to steal it some way that they won't suspicion that i done it. they've got a good thing here, and they ain't a-going to leave till they've played this family and this town for all they're worth, so i'll find a chance time enough. i'll steal it and hide it; and by and by, when i'm away down the river, i'll write a letter and tell mary jane where it's hid. but i better hive it to-night if i can, because the doctor maybe hasn't let up as much as he lets on he has; he might scare them out of here yet. so, thinks i, i'll go and search them rooms. upstairs the hall was dark, but i found the duke's room, and started to paw around it with my hands; but i recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let anybody else take care of that money but his own self; so then i went to his room and begun to paw around there. but i see i couldn't do nothing without a candle, and i dasn't light one, of course. so i judged i'd got to do the other thing--lay for them and eavesdrop. about that time i hears their footsteps coming, and was going to skip under the bed; i reached for it, but it wasn't where i thought it would be; but i touched the curtain that hid mary jane's frocks, so i jumped in behind that and snuggled in amongst the gowns, and stood there perfectly still. they come in and shut the door; and the first thing the duke done was to get down and look under the bed. then i was glad i hadn't found the bed when i wanted it. and yet, you know, it's kind of natural to hide under the bed when you are up to anything private. they sets down then, and the king says: "well, what is it? and cut it middlin' short, because it's better for us to be down there a-whoopin' up the mournin' than up here givin' 'em a chance to talk us over." "well, this is it, capet. i ain't easy; i ain't comfortable. that doctor lays on my mind. i wanted to know your plans. i've got a notion, and i think it's a sound one." "what is it, duke?" "that we better glide out of this before three in the morning, and clip it down the river with what we've got. specially, seeing we got it so easy--_given_ back to us, flung at our heads, as you may say, when of course we allowed to have to steal it back. i'm for knocking off and lighting out." that made me feel pretty bad. about an hour or two ago it would 'a' been a little different, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed. the king rips out and says: "what! and not sell out the rest o' the property? march off like a passel of fools and leave eight or nine thous'n' dollars' worth o' property layin' around jest sufferin' to be scooped in?--and all good, salable stuff, too." the duke he grumbled; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn't want to go no deeper--didn't want to rob a lot of orphans of _everything_ they had. "why, how you talk!" says the king. "we sha'n't rob 'em of nothing at all but jest this money. the people that _buys_ the property is the suff'rers; because as soon 's it's found out 'at we didn't own it--which won't be long after we've slid--the sale won't be valid, and it 'll all go back to the estate. these yer orphans 'll git their house back ag'in, and that's enough for _them;_ they're young and spry, and k'n easy earn a livin'. _they_ ain't a-goin' to suffer. why, jest think--there's thous'n's and thous'n's that ain't nigh so well off. bless you, _they_ ain't got noth'n' to complain of." well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all right, but said he believed it was blamed foolishness to stay, and that doctor hanging over them. but the king says: "cuss the doctor! what do we k'yer for _him?_ hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? and ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" so they got ready to go down-stairs again. the duke says: "i don't think we put that money in a good place." that cheered me up. i'd begun to think i warn't going to get a hint of no kind to help me. the king says: "why?" "because mary jane 'll be in mourning from this out; and first you know the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up and put 'em away; and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not borrow some of it?" "your head's level ag'in, duke," says the king; and he comes a-fumbling under the curtain two or three foot from where i was. i stuck tight to the wall and kept mighty still, though quivery; and i wondered what them fellows would say to me if they catched me; and i tried to think what i'd better do if they did catch me. but the king he got the bag before i could think more than about a half a thought, and he never suspicioned i was around. they took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw tick that was under the feather-bed, and crammed it in a foot or two amongst the straw and said it was all right now, because a nigger only makes up the feather-bed, and don't turn over the straw tick only about twice a year, and so it warn't in no danger of getting stole now. but i knowed better. i had it out of there before they was half-way down-stairs. i groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till i could get a chance to do better. i judged i better hide it outside of the house somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good ransacking: i knowed that very well. then i turned in, with my clothes all on; but i couldn't 'a' gone to sleep if i'd 'a' wanted to, i was in such a sweat to get through with the business. by and by i heard the king and the duke come up; so i rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was going to happen. but nothing did. so i held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't begun yet; and then i slipped down the ladder. chapter xxvii i crept to their doors and listened; they was snoring. so i tiptoed along, and got downstairs all right. there warn't a sound anywheres. i peeped through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. the door was open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both rooms. i passed along, and the parlor door was open; but i see there warn't nobody in there but the remainders of peter; so i shoved on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there. just then i heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. i run in the parlor and took a swift look around, and the only place i see to hide the bag was in the coffin. the lid was shoved along about a foot, showing the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his shroud on. i tucked the money-bag in under the lid, just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and then i run back across the room and in behind the door. the person coming was mary jane. she went to the coffin, very soft, and kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief, and i see she begun to cry, though i couldn't hear her, and her back was to me. i slid out, and as i passed the dining-room i thought i'd make sure them watchers hadn't seen me; so i looked through the crack, and everything was all right. they hadn't stirred. i slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing playing out that way after i had took so much trouble and run so much resk about it. says i, if it could stay where it is, all right; because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two i could write back to mary jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain't the thing that's going to happen; the thing that's going to happen is, the money'll be found when they come to screw on the lid. then the king 'll get it again, and it 'll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smouch it from him. of course i _wanted_ to slide down and get it out of there, but i dasn't try it. every minute it was getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and i might get catched--catched with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. i don't wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, i says to myself. when i got down-stairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the watchers was gone. there warn't nobody around but the family and the widow bartley and our tribe. i watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but i couldn't tell. towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full. i see the coffin lid was the way it was before, but i dasn't go to look in under it, with folks around. then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. there warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and blowing noses--because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church. when the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. he never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done it with nods, and signs with his hands. then he took his place over against the wall. he was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man i ever see; and there warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham. they had borrowed a melodeum--a sick one; and when everything was ready a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion. then the reverend hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait--you couldn't hear yourself think. it was right down awkward, and nobody didn't seem to know what to do. but pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, "don't you worry--just depend on me." then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads. so he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar. then in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off. in a minute or two here comes this undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "_he had a rat!_" then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. you could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. a little thing like that don't cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. there warn't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was. well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome; and then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the coffin with his screw-driver. i was in a sweat then, and watched him pretty keen. but he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along as soft as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. so there i was! i didn't know whether the money was in there or not. so, says i, s'pose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly?--now how do _i_ know whether to write to mary jane or not? s'pose she dug him up and didn't find nothing, what would she think of me? blame it, i says, i might get hunted up and jailed; i'd better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the thing's awful mixed now; trying to better it, i've worsened it a hundred times, and i wish to goodness i'd just let it alone, dad fetch the whole business! they buried him, and we come back home, and i went to watching faces again--i couldn't help it, and i couldn't rest easy. but nothing come of it; the faces didn't tell me nothing. the king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up, and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his congregation over in england would be in a sweat about him, so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home. he was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. and he said of course him and william would take the girls home with them; and that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls, too--tickled them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world; and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. them poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so, but i didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune. well, blamed if the king didn't bill the house and the niggers and all the property for auction straight off--sale two days after the funeral; but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to. so the next day after the funeral, along about noon-time, the girls' joy got the first jolt. a couple of nigger-traders come along, and the king sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to memphis, and their mother down the river to orleans. i thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. the girls said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. i can't ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying; and i reckon i couldn't 'a' stood it all, but would 'a' had to bust out and tell on our gang if i hadn't knowed the sale warn't no account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two. the thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way. it injured the frauds some; but the old fool he bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and i tell you the duke was powerful uneasy. next day was auction day. about broad day in the morning the king and the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and i see by their look that there was trouble. the king says: "was you in my room night before last?" "no, your majesty"--which was the way i always called him when nobody but our gang warn't around. "was you in there yisterday er last night?" "no, your majesty." "honor bright, now--no lies." "honor bright, your majesty, i'm telling you the truth. i hain't been a-near your room since miss mary jane took you and the duke and showed it to you." the duke says: "have you seen anybody else go in there?" "no, your grace, not as i remember, i believe." "stop and think." i studied awhile and see my chance; then i says: "well, i see the niggers go in there several times." both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn't ever expected it, and then like they _had_. then the duke says: "what, _all_ of them?" "no--leastways, not all at once--that is, i don't think i ever see them all come _out_ at once but just one time." "hello! when was that?" "it was the day we had the funeral. in the morning. it warn't early, because i overslept. i was just starting down the ladder, and i see them." "well, go on, _go_ on! what did they do? how'd they act?" "they didn't do nothing. and they didn't act anyway much, as fur as i see. they tiptoed away; so i seen, easy enough, that they'd shoved in there to do up your majesty's room, or something, s'posing you was up; and found you _warn't_ up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn't already waked you up." "great guns, _this_ is a go!" says the king; and both of them looked pretty sick and tolerable silly. they stood there a-thinking and scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and says: "it does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. they let on to be _sorry_ they was going out of this region! and i believed they _was_ sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. don't ever tell _me_ any more that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent. why, the way they played that thing it would fool _anybody._ in my opinion, there's a fortune in 'em. if i had capital and a theater, i wouldn't want a better lay-out than that--and here we've gone and sold 'em for a song. yes, and ain't privileged to sing the song yet. say, where _is_ that song--that draft?" "in the bank for to be collected. where _would_ it be?" "well, that's all right then, thank goodness." says i, kind of timid-like: "is something gone wrong?" the king whirls on me and rips out: "none o' your business! you keep your head shet, and mind y'r own affairs--if you got any. long as you're in this town don't you forgit _that_--you hear?" then he says to the duke, "we got to jest swaller it and say noth'n': mum's the word for _us_." as they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again, and says: "quick sales _and_ small profits! it's a good business--yes." the king snarls around on him and says: "i was trying to do for the best in sellin' 'em out so quick. if the profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considable, and none to carry, is it my fault any more'n it's yourn?" "well, _they'd_ be in this house yet and we _wouldn't_ if i could 'a' got my advice listened to." the king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around and lit into _me_ again. he give me down the banks for not coming and _telling_ him i see the niggers come out of his room acting that way--said any fool would 'a' _knowed_ something was up. and then waltzed in and cussed _himself_ awhile, and said it all come of him not laying late and taking his natural rest that morning, and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it again. so they went off a-jawing; and i felt dreadful glad i'd worked it all off onto the niggers, and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it. chapter xxviii by and by it was getting-up time. so i come down the ladder and started for down-stairs; but as i come to the girls' room the door was open, and i see mary jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she'd been packing things in it--getting ready to go to england. but she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying. i felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. i went in there and says: "miss mary jane, you can't a-bear to see people in trouble, and _i_ can't--most always. tell me about it." so she done it. and it was the niggers--i just expected it. she said the beautiful trip to england was most about spoiled for her; she didn't know _how_ she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children warn't ever going to see each other no more--and then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says: "oh, dear, dear, to think they ain't _ever_ going to see each other any more!" "but they _will_--and inside of two weeks--and i _know_ it!" says i. laws, it was out before i could think! and before i could budge she throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it _again_, say it _again_, say it _again!_ i see i had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place. i asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person that's had a tooth pulled out. so i went to studying it out. i says to myself, i reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though i ain't had no experience, and can't say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here's a case where i'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth is better and actuly _safer_ than a lie. i must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it's so kind of strange and unregular. i never see nothing like it. well, i says to myself at last, i'm a-going to chance it; i'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most _like_ setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to. then i says: "miss mary jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you could go and stay three or four days?" "yes; mr. lothrop's. why?" "never mind why yet. if i'll tell you how i know the niggers will see each other again--inside of two weeks--here in this house--and _prove_ how i know it--will you go to mr. lothrop's and stay four days?" "four days!" she says; "i'll stay a year!" "all right," i says, "i don't want nothing more out of _you_ than just your word--i druther have it than another man's kiss-the-bible." she smiled and reddened up very sweet, and i says, "if you don't mind it, i'll shut the door--and bolt it." then i come back and set down again, and says: "don't you holler. just set still and take it like a man. i got to tell the truth, and you want to brace up, miss mary, because it's a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it. these uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at all; they're a couple of frauds--regular dead-beats. there, now we're over the worst of it, you can stand the rest middling easy." it jolted her up like everything, of course; but i was over the shoal water now, so i went right along, her eyes a-blazing higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung herself onto the king's breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times--and then up she jumps, with her face afire like sunset, and says: "the brute! come, don't waste a minute--not a _second_--we'll have them tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!" says i: "cert'nly. but do you mean _before_ you go to mr. lothrop's, or--" "oh," she says, "what am i _thinking_ about!" she says, and set right down again. "don't mind what i said--please don't--you _won't_, now, _will_ you?" laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that i said i would die first. "i never thought, i was so stirred up," she says; "now go on, and i won't do so any more. you tell me what to do, and whatever you say i'll do it." "well," i says, "it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and i'm fixed so i got to travel with them a while longer, whether i want to or not--i druther not tell you why; and if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, and i'd be all right; but there'd be another person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble. well, we got to save _him_, hain't we? of course. well, then, we won't blow on them." saying them words put a good idea in my head. i see how maybe i could get me and jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave. but i didn't want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard to answer questions but me; so i didn't want the plan to begin working till pretty late to-night. i says: "miss mary jane, i'll tell you what we'll do, and you won't have to stay at mr. lothrop's so long, nuther. how fur is it?" "a little short of four miles--right out in the country, back here." "well, that 'll answer. now you go along out there, and lay low till nine or half past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again--tell them you've thought of something. if you get here before eleven put a candle in this window, and if i don't turn up wait _till_ eleven, and _then_ if i don't turn up it means i'm gone, and out of the way, and safe. then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats jailed." "good," she says, "i'll do it." "and if it just happens so that i don't get away, but get took up along with them, you must up and say i told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can." "stand by you! indeed i will. they sha'n't touch a hair of your head!" she says, and i see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too. "if i get away i sha'n't be here," i says, "to prove these rapscallions ain't your uncles, and i couldn't do it if i _was_ here. i could swear they was beats and bummers, that's all, though that's worth something. well, there's others can do that better than what i can, and they're people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as i'd be. i'll tell you how to find them. gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. there--'_royal nonesuch, bricksville._' put it away, and don't lose it. when the court wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to bricksville and say they've got the men that played the 'royal nonesuch,' and ask for some witnesses--why, you'll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, miss mary. and they'll come a-biling, too." i judged we had got everything fixed about right now. so i says: "just let the auction go right along, and don't worry. nobody don't have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till they get that money; and the way we've fixed it the sale ain't going to count, and they ain't going to get no money. it's just like the way it was with the niggers--it warn't no sale, and the niggers will be back before long. why, they can't collect the money for the _niggers_ yet--they're in the worst kind of a fix, miss mary." "well," she says, "i'll run down to breakfast now, and then i'll start straight for mr. lothrop's." "'deed, _that_ ain't the ticket, miss mary jane," i says, "by no manner of means; go _before_ breakfast." "why?" "what did you reckon i wanted you to go at all for, miss mary?" "well, i never thought--and come to think, i don't know. what was it?" "why, it's because you ain't one of these leather-face people. i don't want no better book than what your face is. a body can set down and read it off like coarse print. do you reckon you can go and face your uncles when they come to kiss you good-morning, and never--" "there, there, don't! yes, i'll go before breakfast--i'll be glad to. and leave my sisters with them?" "yes; never mind about them. they've got to stand it yet awhile. they might suspicion something if all of you was to go. i don't want you to see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town; if a neighbor was to ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something. no, you go right along, miss mary jane, and i'll fix it with all of them. i'll tell miss susan to give your love to your uncles and say you've went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or to see a friend, and you'll be back to-night or early in the morning." "gone to see a friend is all right, but i won't have my love given to them." "well, then, it sha'n't be." it was well enough to tell _her_ so--no harm in it. it was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it's the little things that smooths people's roads the most, down here below; it would make mary jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. then i says: "there's one more thing--that bag of money." "well, they've got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think _how_ they got it." "no, you're out, there. they hain't got it." "why, who's got it?" "i wish i knowed, but i don't. i _had_ it, because i stole it from them; and i stole it to give to you; and i know where i hid it, but i'm afraid it ain't there no more. i'm awful sorry, miss mary jane, i'm just as sorry as i can be; but i done the best i could; i did honest. i come nigh getting caught, and i had to shove it into the first place i come to, and run--and it warn't a good place." "oh, stop blaming yourself--it's too bad to do it, and i won't allow it--you couldn't help it; it wasn't your fault. where did you hide it?" i didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and i couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. so for a minute i didn't say nothing; then i says: "i'd ruther not _tell_ you where i put it, miss mary jane, if you don't mind letting me off; but i'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and you can read it along the road to mr. lothrop's, if you want to. do you reckon that 'll do?" "oh, yes." so i wrote: "i put it in the coffin. it was in there when you was crying there, away in the night. i was behind the door, and i was mighty sorry for you, miss mary jane." it made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when i folded it up and give it to her i see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the hand, hard, and says: "_good_-by. i'm going to do everything just as you've told me; and if i don't ever see you again, i sha'n't ever forget you, and i'll think of you a many and a many a time, and i'll _pray_ for you, too!"--and she was gone. pray for me! i reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more nearer her size. but i bet she done it, just the same--she was just that kind. she had the grit to pray for judus if she took the notion--there warn't no back-down to her, i judge. you may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl i ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. it sounds like flattery, but it ain't no flattery. and when it comes to beauty--and goodness, too--she lays over them all. i hain't ever seen her since that time that i see her go out of that door; no, i hain't ever seen her since, but i reckon i've thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever i'd 'a' thought it would do any good for me to pray for _her_, blamed if i wouldn't 'a' done it or bust. well, mary jane she lit out the back way, i reckon; because nobody see her go. when i struck susan and the hare-lip, i says: "what's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that you all goes to see sometimes?" they says: "there's several; but it's the proctors, mainly." "that's the name," i says; "i most forgot it. well, miss mary jane she told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry--one of them's sick." "which one?" "i don't know; leastways, i kinder forget; but i thinks it's--" "sakes alive, i hope it ain't _hanner?_" "i'm sorry to say it," i says, "but hanner's the very one." "my goodness, and she so well only last week! is she took bad?" "it ain't no name for it. they set up with her all night, miss mary jane said, and they don't think she'll last many hours." "only think of that, now! what's the matter with her?" i couldn't think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so i says: "mumps." "mumps your granny! they don't set up with people that's got the mumps." "they don't, don't they? you better bet they do with _these_ mumps. these mumps is different. it's a new kind, miss mary jane said." "how's it a new kind?" "because it's mixed up with other things." "what other things?" "well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and yaller janders, and brain-fever, and i don't know what all." "my land! and they call it the _mumps?_" "that's what miss mary jane said." "well, what in the nation do they call it the _mumps_ for?" "why, because it _is_ the mumps. that's what it starts with." "well, ther' ain't no sense in it. a body might stump his toe, and take pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, 'why, he stumped his _toe_.' would ther' be any sense in that? _no_. and ther' ain't no sense in _this_, nuther. is it ketching?" "is it _ketching?_ why, how you talk. is a _harrow_ catching--in the dark? if you don't hitch on to one tooth, you're bound to on another, ain't you? and you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, as you may say--and it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to get it hitched on good." "well, it's awful, i think," says the hare-lip. "i'll go to uncle harvey and--" "oh, yes," i says, "i _would._ of _course_ i would. i wouldn't lose no time." "well, why wouldn't you?" "just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. hain't your uncles obleeged to get along home to england as fast as they can? and do you reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves? _you_ know they'll wait for you. so fur, so good. your uncle harvey's a preacher, ain't he? very well, then; is a _preacher_ going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive a _ship clerk?_--so as to get them to let miss mary jane go aboard? now _you_ know he ain't. what _will_ he do, then? why, he'll say, 'it's a great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the best way they can; for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps, and so it's my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she's got it.' but never mind, if you think it's best to tell your uncle harvey--" "shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in england whilst we was waiting to find out whether mary jane's got it or not? why, you talk like a muggins." "well, anyway, maybe you'd better tell some of the neighbors." "listen at that, now. you do beat all for natural stupidness. can't you _see_ that _they'd_ go and tell? ther' ain't no way but just to not tell anybody at _all_." "well, maybe you're right--yes, i judge you _are_ right." "but i reckon we ought to tell uncle harvey she's gone out awhile, anyway, so he won't be uneasy about her?" "yes, miss mary jane she wanted you to do that. she says, 'tell them to give uncle harvey and william my love and a kiss, and say i've run over the river to see mr.'--mr.--what _is_ the name of that rich family your uncle peter used to think so much of?--i mean the one that--" "why, you must mean the apthorps, ain't it?" "of course; bother them kind of names, a body can't ever seem to remember them, half the time, somehow. yes, she said, say she has run over for to ask the apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house, because she allowed her uncle peter would ruther they had it than anybody else; and she's going to stick to them till they say they'll come, and then, if she ain't too tired, she's coming home; and if she is, she'll be home in the morning anyway. she said, don't say nothing about the proctors, but only about the apthorps--which 'll be perfectly true, because she is going there to speak about their buying the house; i know it, because she told me so herself." "all right," they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message. everything was all right now. the girls wouldn't say nothing because they wanted to go to england; and the king and the duke would ruther mary jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of doctor robinson. i felt very good; i judged i had done it pretty neat--i reckoned tom sawyer couldn't 'a' done it no neater himself. of course he would 'a' throwed more style into it, but i can't do that very handy, not being brung up to it. well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little scripture now and then, or a little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly. but by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold--everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. so they'd got to work _that_ off--i never see such a girafft as the king was for wanting to swallow _everything_. well, whilst they was at it a steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a-whooping and yelling and laughing and carrying on, and singing out: "_here's_ your opposition line! here's your two sets o' heirs to old peter wilks--and you pays your money and you takes your choice!" chapter xxix they was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. and, my souls, how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up. but i didn't see no joke about it, and i judged it would strain the duke and the king some to see any. i reckoned they'd turn pale. but no, nary a pale did _they_ turn. the duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them new-comers like it give him the stomach-ache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. oh, he done it admirable. lots of the principal people gethered around the king, to let him see they was on his side. that old gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death. pretty soon he begun to speak, and i see straight off he pronounced _like_ an englishman--not the king's way, though the king's _was_ pretty good for an imitation. i can't give the old gent's words, nor i can't imitate him; but he turned around to the crowd, and says, about like this: "this is a surprise to me which i wasn't looking for; and i'll acknowledge, candid and frank, i ain't very well fixed to meet it and answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes; he's broke his arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the night by a mistake. i am peter wilks's brother harvey, and this is his brother william, which can't hear nor speak--and can't even make signs to amount to much, now't he's only got one hand to work them with. we are who we say we are; and in a day or two, when i get the baggage, i can prove it. but up till then i won't say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait." so him and the new dummy started off; and the king he laughs, and blethers out: "broke his arm--_very_ likely, _ain't_ it?--and very convenient, too, for a fraud that's got to make signs, and ain't learnt how. lost their baggage! that's _mighty_ good!--and mighty ingenious--under the _circumstances!_" so he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. one of these was that doctor; another one was a sharp-looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made out of carpet-stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then and nodding their heads--it was levi bell, the lawyer that was gone up to louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along and listened to all the old gentlemen said, and was listening to the king now. and when the king got done this husky up and says: "say, looky here; if you are harvey wilks, when'd you come to this town?" "the day before the funeral, friend," says the king. "but what time o' day?" "in the evenin'--'bout an hour er two before sundown." "how'd you come?" "i come down on the _susan powell_ from cincinnati." "well, then, how'd you come to be up at the pint in the _mornin_'--in a canoe?" "i warn't up at the pint in the mornin'." "it's a lie." several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher. "preacher be hanged, he's a fraud and a liar. he was up at the pint that mornin'. i live up there, don't i? well, i was up there, and he was up there. i see him there. he come in a canoe, along with tim collins and a boy." the doctor he up and says: "would you know the boy again if you was to see him, hines?" "i reckon i would, but i don't know. why, yonder he is, now. i know him perfectly easy." it was me he pointed at. the doctor says: "neighbors, i don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if _these_ two ain't frauds, i am an idiot, that's all. i think it's our duty to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this thing. come along, hines; come along, the rest of you. we'll take these fellows to the tavern and affront them with t'other couple, and i reckon we'll find out _something_ before we get through." it was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends; so we all started. it was about sundown. the doctor he led me along by the hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand. we all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and fetched in the new couple. first, the doctor says: "i don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but i think they're frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. if they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold peter wilks left? it ain't unlikely. if these men ain't frauds, they won't object to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're all right--ain't that so?" everybody agreed to that. so i judged they had our gang in a pretty tight place right at the outstart. but the king he only looked sorrowful, and says: "gentlemen, i wish the money was there, for i ain't got no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation o' this misable business; but, alas, the money ain't there; you k'n send and see, if you want to." "where is it, then?" "well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her i took and hid it inside o' the straw tick o' my bed, not wishin' to bank it for the few days we'd be here, and considerin' the bed a safe place, we not bein' used to niggers, and suppos'n' 'em honest, like servants in england. the niggers stole it the very next mornin' after i had went down-stairs; and when i sold 'em i hadn't missed the money yit, so they got clean away with it. my servant here k'n tell you 'bout it, gentlemen." the doctor and several said "shucks!" and i see nobody didn't altogether believe him. one man asked me if i see the niggers steal it. i said no, but i see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and i never thought nothing, only i reckoned they was afraid they had waked up my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. that was all they asked me. then the doctor whirls on me and says: "are _you_ english, too?" i says yes; and him and some others laughed, and said, "stuff!" well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about supper, nor ever seemed to think about it--and so they kept it up, and kept it up; and it _was_ the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. they made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his'n; and anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would 'a' _seen_ that the old gentleman was spinning truth and t'other one lies. and by and by they had me up to tell what i knowed. the king he give me a left-handed look out of the corner of his eye, and so i knowed enough to talk on the right side. i begun to tell about sheffield, and how we lived there, and all about the english wilkses, and so on; but i didn't get pretty fur till the doctor begun to laugh; and levi bell, the lawyer, says: "set down, my boy; i wouldn't strain myself if i was you. i reckon you ain't used to lying, it don't seem to come handy; what you want is practice. you do it pretty awkward." i didn't care nothing for the compliment, but i was glad to be let off, anyway. the doctor he started to say something, and turns and says: "if you'd been in town at first, levi bell--" the king broke in and reached out his hand, and says: "why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often about?" the lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased, and they talked right along awhile, and then got to one side and talked low; and at last the lawyer speaks up and says: "that 'll fix it. i'll take the order and send it, along with your brother's, and then they'll know it's all right." so they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something; and then they give the pen to the duke--and then for the first time the duke looked sick. but he took the pen and wrote. so then the lawyer turns to the new old gentleman and says: "you and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names." the old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn't read it. the lawyer looked powerful astonished, and says: "well, it beats _me_--and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then _them_ again; and then says: "these old letters is from harvey wilks; and here's _these_ two handwritings, and anybody can see _they_ didn't write them" (the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, i tell you, to see how the lawyer had took them in), "and here's _this_ old gentleman's handwriting, and anybody can tell, easy enough, _he_ didn't write them--fact is, the scratches he makes ain't properly _writing_ at all. now, here's some letters from--" the new old gentleman says: "if you please, let me explain. nobody can read my hand but my brother there--so he copies for me. it's _his_ hand you've got there, not mine." "_well!_" says the lawyer, "this _is_ a state of things. i've got some of william's letters, too; so if you'll get him to write a line or so we can com--" "he _can't_ write with his left hand," says the old gentleman. "if he could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and mine too. look at both, please--they're by the same hand." the lawyer done it, and says: "i believe it's so--and if it ain't so, there's a heap stronger resemblance than i'd noticed before, anyway. well, well, well! i thought we was right on the track of a slution, but it's gone to grass, partly. but anyway, _one_ thing is proved--_these_ two ain't either of 'em wilkses"--and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke. well, what do you think? that mule-headed old fool wouldn't give in _then!_ indeed he wouldn't. said it warn't no fair test. said his brother william was the cussedest joker in the world, and hadn't _tried_ to write--_he_ see william was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the pen to paper. and so he warmed up and went warbling right along till he was actuly beginning to believe what he was saying _himself_; but pretty soon the new gentleman broke in, and says: "i've thought of something. is there anybody here that helped to lay out my br--helped to lay out the late peter wilks for burying?" "yes," says somebody, "me and ab turner done it. we're both here." then the old man turns toward the king, and says: "peraps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast?" blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick, or he'd 'a' squshed down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him so sudden; and, mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make most _anybody_ sqush to get fetched such a solid one as that without any notice, because how was _he_ going to know what was tattooed on the man? he whitened a little; he couldn't help it; and it was mighty still in there, and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him. says i to myself, _now_ he'll throw up the sponge--there ain't no more use. well, did he? a body can't hardly believe it, but he didn't. i reckon he thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out, so they'd thin out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away. anyway, he set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says: "mf! it's a _very_ tough question, _ain't_ it! _yes_, sir, i k'n tell you what's tattooed on his breast. it's jest a small, thin, blue arrow--that's what it is; and if you don't look clost, you can't see it. _now_ what do you say--hey?" well, _i_ never see anything like that old blister for clean out-and-out cheek. the new old gentleman turns brisk towards ab turner and his pard, and his eye lights up like he judged he'd got the king _this_ time, and says: "there--you've heard what he said! was there any such mark on peter wilks's breast?" both of them spoke up and says: "we didn't see no such mark." "good!" says the old gentleman. "now, what you _did_ see on his breast was a small dim p, and a b (which is an initial he dropped when he was young), and a w, and dashes between them, so: p--b--w"--and he marked them that way on a piece of paper. "come, ain't that what you saw?" both of them spoke up again, and says: "no, we _didn't_. we never seen any marks at all." well, everybody _was_ in a state of mind now, and they sings out: "the whole _bilin'_ of 'm 's frauds! le's duck 'em! le's drown 'em! le's ride 'em on a rail!" and everybody was whooping at once, and there was a rattling powwow. but the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and says: "gentlemen--gentle_men!_ hear me just a word--just a _single_ word--if you please! there's one way yet--let's go and dig up the corpse and look." that took them. "hooray!" they all shouted, and was starting right off; but the lawyer and the doctor sung out: "hold on, hold on! collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch _them_ along, too!" "we'll do it!" they all shouted; "and if we don't find them marks we'll lynch the whole gang!" i _was_ scared, now, i tell you. but there warn't no getting away, you know. they gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole town at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the evening. as we went by our house i wished i hadn't sent mary jane out of town; because now if i could tip her the wink she'd light out and save me, and blow on our dead-beats. well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like wildcats; and to make it more scary the sky was darking up, and the lightning beginning to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver amongst the leaves. this was the most awful trouble and most dangersome i ever was in; and i was kinder stunned; everything was going so different from what i had allowed for; stead of being fixed so i could take my own time if i wanted to, and see all the fun, and have mary jane at my back to save me and set me free when the close-fit come, here was nothing in the world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tattoo-marks. if they didn't find them-- i couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, i couldn't think about nothing else. it got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful time to give the crowd the slip; but that big husky had me by the wrist--hines--and a body might as well try to give goliar the slip. he dragged me right along, he was so excited, and i had to run to keep up. when they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it like an overflow. and when they got to the grave they found they had about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't thought to fetch a lantern. but they sailed into digging anyway by the flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house, a half a mile off, to borrow one. so they dug and dug like everything; and it got awful dark, and the rain started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed; but them people never took no notice of it, they was so full of this business; and one minute you could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the shovelfuls of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped it all out, and you couldn't see nothing at all. at last they got out the coffin and begun to unscrew the lid, and then such another crowding and shouldering and shoving as there was, to scrouge in and get a sight, you never see; and in the dark, that way, it was awful. hines he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so, and i reckon he clean forgot i was in the world, he was so excited and panting. all of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and somebody sings out: "by the living jingo, here's the bag of gold on his breast!" hines let out a whoop, like everybody else, and dropped my wrist and give a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way i lit out and shinned for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can tell. i had the road all to myself, and i fairly flew--leastways, i had it all to myself except the solid dark, and the now-and-then glares, and the buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of the thunder; and sure as you are born i did clip it along! when i struck the town i see there warn't nobody out in the storm, so i never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the main one; and when i begun to get towards our house i aimed my eye and set it. no light there; the house all dark--which made me feel sorry and disappointed, i didn't know why. but at last, just as i was sailing by, _flash_ comes the light in mary jane's window! and my heart swelled up sudden, like to bust; and the same second the house and all was behind me in the dark, and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this world. she _was_ the best girl i ever see, and had the most sand. the minute i was far enough above the town to see i could make the towhead, i begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow, and the first time the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained i snatched it and shoved. it was a canoe, and warn't fastened with nothing but a rope. the towhead was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the river, but i didn't lose no time; and when i struck the raft at last i was so fagged i would 'a' just laid down to blow and gasp if i could afforded it. but i didn't. as i sprung aboard i sung out: "out with you, jim, and set her loose! glory be to goodness, we're shut of them!" jim lit out, and was a-coming for me with both arms spread, he was so full of joy; but when i glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in my mouth and i went overboard backwards; for i forgot he was old king lear and a drownded a-rab all in one, and it most scared the livers and lights out of me. but jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and bless me, and so on, he was so glad i was back and we was shut of the king and the duke, but i says: "not now; have it for breakfast, have it for breakfast! cut loose and let her slide!" so in two seconds away we went a-sliding down the river, and it _did_ seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and nobody to bother us. i had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack my heels a few times--i couldn't help it; but about the third crack i noticed a sound that i knowed mighty well, and held my breath and listened and waited; and sure enough, when the next flash busted out over the water, here they come!--and just a-laying to their oars and making their skiff hum! it was the king and the duke. so i wilted right down onto the planks then, and give up; and it was all i could do to keep from crying. chapter xxx when they got aboard the king went for me, and shook me by the collar, and says: "tryin' to give us the slip, was ye, you pup! tired of our company, hey?" i says: "no, your majesty, we warn't--_please_ don't, your majesty!" "quick, then, and tell us what _was_ your idea, or i'll shake the insides out o' you!" "honest, i'll tell you everything just as it happened, your majesty. the man that had a-holt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous fix; and when they was all took by surprise by finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me and whispers, 'heel it now, or they'll hang ye, sure!' and i lit out. it didn't seem no good for _me_ to stay--i couldn't do nothing, and i didn't want to be _hung_ if i could get away. so i never stopped running till i found the canoe; and when i got here i told jim to hurry, or they'd catch me and hang me yet, and said i was afeard you and the duke wasn't alive now, and i was awful sorry, and so was jim, and was awful glad when we see you coming; you may ask jim if i didn't." jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, "oh, yes, it's _mighty_ likely!" and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he'd drownd me. but the duke says: "leggo the boy, you old idiot! would _you_ 'a' done any different? did you inquire around for _him_ when you got loose? i don't remember it." so the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in it. but the duke says: "you better a blame' sight give _yourself_ a good cussing, for you're the one that's entitled to it most. you hain't done a thing from the start that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue-arrow mark. that _was_ bright--it was right down bully; and it was the thing that saved us. for if it hadn't been for that they'd 'a' jailed us till them englishmen's baggage come--and then--the penitentiary, you bet! but that trick took 'em to the graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the excited fools hadn't let go all holts and made that rush to get a look we'd 'a' slept in our cravats to-night--cravats warranted to _wear_, too--longer than _we'd_ need 'em." they was still a minute--thinking; then the king says, kind of absent-minded like: "mf! and we reckoned the _niggers_ stole it!" that made me squirm! "yes," says the duke, kinder slow and deliberate and sarcastic, "_we_ did." after about a half a minute the king drawls out: "leastways, i did." the duke says, the same way: "on the contrary, _i_ did." the king kind of ruffles up, and says: "looky here, bilgewater, what'r you referrin' to?" the duke says, pretty brisk: "when it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask what was _you_ referring to?" "shucks!" says the king, very sarcastic; "but _i_ don't know--maybe you was asleep, and didn't know what you was about." the duke bristles up now, and says: "oh, let _up_ on this cussed nonsense; do you take me for a blame' fool? don't you reckon i know who hid that money in that coffin?" "_yes_, sir! i know you _do_ know, because you done it yourself!" "it's a lie!"--and the duke went for him. the king sings out: "take y'r hands off!--leggo my throat!--i take it all back!" the duke says: "well, you just own up, first, that you _did_ hide that money there, intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it up, and have it all to yourself." "wait jest a minute, duke--answer me this one question, honest and fair; if you didn't put the money there, say it, and i'll b'lieve you, and take back everything i said." "you old scoundrel, i didn't, and you know i didn't. there, now!" "well, then, i b'lieve you. but answer me only jest this one more--now _don't_ git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it?" the duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says: "well, i don't care if i _did_, i didn't _do_ it, anyway. but you not only had it in mind to do it, but you _done_ it." "i wisht i never die if i done it, duke, and that's honest. i won't say i warn't goin' to do it, because i _was_; but you--i mean somebody--got in ahead o' me." "it's a lie! you done it, and you got to _say_ you done it, or--" the king began to gurgle, and then he gasps out: "'nough!--i _own up!_" i was very glad to hear him say that; it made me feel much more easier than what i was feeling before. so the duke took his hands off and says: "if you ever deny it again i'll drown you. it's _well_ for you to set there and blubber like a baby--it's fitten for you, after the way you've acted. i never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything--and i a-trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. you ought to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on to a lot of poor niggers, and you never say a word for 'em. it makes me feel ridiculous to think i was soft enough to _believe_ that rubbage. cuss you, i can see now why you was so anxious to make up the deffisit--you wanted to get what money i'd got out of the 'none-such' and one thing or another, and scoop it _all!_" the king says, timid, and still a-snuffling: "why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffersit; it warn't me." "dry up! i don't want to hear no more out of you!" says the duke. "and _now_ you see what you _got_ by it. they've got all their own money back, and all of _ourn_ but a shekel or two _besides_. g'long to bed, and don't you deffersit _me_ no more deffersits, long 's _you_ live!" so the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort, and before long the duke tackled _his_ bottle; and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got the lovinger they got, and went off a-snoring in each other's arms. they both got powerful mellow, but i noticed the king didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag again. that made me feel easy and satisfied. of course when they got to snoring we had a long gabble, and i told jim everything. chapter xxxi we dasn't stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along down the river. we was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long ways from home. we begun to come to trees with spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards. it was the first i ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. so now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work the villages again. first they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on. then in another village they started a dancing-school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. another time they tried to go at yellocution; but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing, and made them skip out. they tackled missionarying, and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck. so at last they got just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she floated along, thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate. and at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. jim and me got uneasy. we didn't like the look of it. we judged they was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. we turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money business, or something. so then we was pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake and clear out and leave them behind. well, early one morning we hid the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit of a shabby village named pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told us all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind of the "royal nonesuch" there yet. ("house to rob, you _mean_," says i to myself; "and when you get through robbing it you'll come back here and wonder what has become of me and jim and the raft--and you'll have to take it out in wondering.") and he said if he warn't back by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come along. so we stayed where we was. the duke he fretted and sweated around, and was in a mighty sour way. he scolded us for everything, and we couldn't seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing. something was a-brewing, sure. i was good and glad when midday come and no king; we could have a change, anyway--and maybe a chance for _the_ chance on top of it. so me and the duke went up to the village, and hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the back room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers bullyragging him for sport, and he a-cussing and a-threatening with all his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to them. the duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun to sass back, and the minute they was fairly at it i lit out and shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer, for i see our chance; and i made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and jim again. i got down there all out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out: "set her loose, jim; we're all right now!" but there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. jim was gone! i set up a shout--and then another--and then another one; and run this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no use--old jim was gone. then i set down and cried; i couldn't help it. but i couldn't set still long. pretty soon i went out on the road, trying to think what i better do, and i run across a boy walking, and asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says: "yes." "whereabouts?" says i. "down to silas phelps's place, two mile below here. he's a runaway nigger, and they've got him. was you looking for him?" "you bet i ain't! i run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago, and he said if i hollered he'd cut my livers out--and told me to lay down and stay where i was; and i done it. been there ever since; afeard to come out." "well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him. he run off f'm down south som'ers." "it's a good job they got him." "well, i _reckon!_ there's two hundred dollars dollars' reward on him. it's like picking up money out'n the road." "yes, it is--and i could 'a' had it if i'd been big enough; i see him _first_. who nailed him?" "it was an old fellow--a stranger--and he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait. think o' that, now! you bet _i'd_ wait, if it was seven year." "that's me, every time," says i. "but maybe his chance ain't worth no more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. maybe there's something ain't straight about it." "but it _is_, though--straight as a string. i see the handbill myself. it tells all about him, to a dot--paints him like a picture, and tells the plantation he's frum, below newr_leans_. no-sirree-_bob_, they ain't no trouble 'bout _that_ speculation, you bet you. say, gimme a chaw tobacker, won't ye?" i didn't have none, so he left. i went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think. but i couldn't come to nothing. i thought till i wore my head sore, but i couldn't see no way out of the trouble. after all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars. once i said to myself it would be a thousand times better for jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd _got_ to be a slave, and so i'd better write a letter to tom sawyer and tell him to tell miss watson where he was. but i soon give up that notion for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. and then think of _me!_ it would get all around that huck finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if i was ever to see anybody from that town again i'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. that's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. thinks as long as he can hide, it ain't no disgrace. that was my fix exactly. the more i studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery i got to feeling. and at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst i was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's one that's always on the lookout, and ain't a-going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, i most dropped in my tracks i was so scared. well, i tried the best i could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying i was brung up wicked, and so i warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "there was the sunday-school, you could 'a' gone to it; and if you'd 'a' done it they'd 'a' learnt you there that people that acts as i'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire." it made me shiver. and i about made up my mind to pray, and see if i couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy i was and be better. so i kneeled down. but the words wouldn't come. why wouldn't they? it warn't no use to try and hide it from him. nor from _me_, neither. i knowed very well why they wouldn't come. it was because my heart warn't right; it was because i warn't square; it was because i was playing double. i was letting _on_ to give up sin, but away inside of me i was holding on to the biggest one of all. i was trying to make my mouth _say_ i would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me i knowed it was a lie, and he knowed it. you can't pray a lie--i found that out. so i was full of trouble, full as i could be; and didn't know what to do. at last i had an idea; and i says, i'll go and write the letter--and then see if i can pray. why, it was astonishing, the way i felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. so i got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote: miss watson, your runaway nigger jim is down here two mile below pikesville, and mr. phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. huck finn. i felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time i had ever felt so in my life, and i knowed i could pray now. but i didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near i come to being lost and going to hell. and went on thinking. and got to thinking over our trip down the river; and i see jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. but somehow i couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. i'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so i could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when i come back out of the fog; and when i come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last i struck the time i saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said i was the best friend old jim ever had in the world, and the _only_ one he's got now; and then i happened to look around and see that paper. it was a close place. i took it up, and held it in my hand. i was a-trembling, because i'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and i knowed it. i studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "all right, then, i'll _go_ to hell"--and tore it up. it was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. and i let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. i shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said i would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. and for a starter i would go to work and steal jim out of slavery again; and if i could think up anything worse, i would do that, too; because as long as i was in, and in for good, i might as well go the whole hog. then i set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over some considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that suited me. so then i took the bearings of a woody island that was down the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark i crept out with my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. i slept the night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore. i landed below where i judged was phelps's place, and hid my bundle in the woods, and then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into her and sunk her where i could find her again when i wanted her, about a quarter of a mile below a little steam-sawmill that was on the bank. then i struck up the road, and when i passed the mill i see a sign on it, "phelps's sawmill," and when i come to the farm-houses, two or three hundred yards further along, i kept my eyes peeled, but didn't see nobody around, though it was good daylight now. but i didn't mind, because i didn't want to see nobody just yet--i only wanted to get the lay of the land. according to my plan, i was going to turn up there from the village, not from below. so i just took a look, and shoved along, straight for town. well, the very first man i see when i got there was the duke. he was sticking up a bill for the "royal nonesuch--three-night performance--like that other time. they had the cheek, them frauds! i was right on him before i could shirk. he looked astonished, and says: "hel-_lo!_ where'd _you_ come from?" then he says, kind of glad and eager, "where's the raft?--got her in a good place?" i says: "why, that's just what i was going to ask your grace." then he didn't look so joyful, and says: "what was your idea for asking _me?_" he says. "well," i says, "when i see the king in that doggery yesterday i says to myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so i went a-loafing around town to put in the time and wait. a man up and offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a sheep, and so i went along; but when we was dragging him to the boat, and the man left me a-holt of the rope and went behind him to shove him along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and run, and we after him. we didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the country till we tired him out. we never got him till dark; then we fetched him over, and i started down for the raft. when i got there and see it was gone, i says to myself, 'they've got into trouble and had to leave; and they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger i've got in the world, and now i'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property no more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living'; so i set down and cried. i slept in the woods all night. but what _did_ become of the raft, then?--and jim--poor jim!" "blamed if i know--that is, what's become of the raft. that old fool had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every cent but what he'd spent for whisky; and when i got him home late last night and found the raft gone, we said, 'that little rascal has stole our raft and shook us, and run off down the river.'" "i wouldn't shake my _nigger_, would i?--the only nigger i had in the world, and the only property." "we never thought of that. fact is, i reckon we'd come to consider him _our_ nigger; yes, we did consider him so--goodness knows we had trouble enough for him. so when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke, there warn't anything for it but to try the 'royal nonesuch' another shake. and i've pegged along ever since, dry as a powder-horn. where's that ten cents? give it here." i had considerable money, so i give him ten cents, but begged him to spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the money i had, and i hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday. he never said nothing. the next minute he whirls on me and says: "do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? we'd skin him if he done that!" "how can he blow? hain't he run off?" "no! that old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money's gone." "_sold_ him?" i says, and begun to cry; "why, he was _my_ nigger, and that was my money. where is he?--i want my nigger." "well, you can't _get_ your nigger, that's all--so dry up your blubbering. looky here--do you think _you'd_ venture to blow on us? blamed if i think i'd trust you. why, if you _was_ to blow on us--" he stopped, but i never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before. i went on a-whimpering, and says: "i don't want to blow on nobody; and i ain't got no time to blow, nohow; i got to turn out and find my nigger." he looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. at last he says: "i'll tell you something. we got to be here three days. if you'll promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, i'll tell you where to find him." so i promised, and he says: "a farmer by the name of silas ph--" and then he stopped. you see, he started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped that way, and begun to study and think again, i reckoned he was changing his mind. and so he was. he wouldn't trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of the way the whole three days. so pretty soon he says: "the man that bought him is named abram foster--abram g. foster--and he lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to lafayette." "all right," i says, "i can walk it in three days. and i'll start this very afternoon." "no you won't, you'll start _now_; and don't you lose any time about it, neither, nor do any gabbling by the way. just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along, and then you won't get into trouble with _us_, d'ye hear?" that was the order i wanted, and that was the one i played for. i wanted to be left free to work my plans. "so clear out," he says; "and you can tell mr. foster whatever you want to. maybe you can get him to believe that jim _is_ your nigger--some idiots don't require documents--leastways i've heard there's such down south here. and when you tell him the handbill and the reward's bogus, maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting 'em out. go 'long now, and tell him anything you want to; but mind you don't work your jaw any _between_ here and there." so i left, and struck for the back country. i didn't look around, but i kinder felt like he was watching me. but i knowed i could tire him out at that. i went straight out in the country as much as a mile before i stopped; then i doubled back through the woods towards phelps's. i reckoned i better start in on my plan straight off without fooling around, because i wanted to stop jim's mouth till these fellows could get away. i didn't want no trouble with their kind. i'd seen all i wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them. chapter xxxii when i got there it was all still and sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny; the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering--spirits that's been dead ever so many years--and you always think they're talking about _you._ as a general thing it makes a body wish _he_ was dead, too, and done with it all. phelps's was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they all look alike. a rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out of logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are going to jump onto a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log house for the white folks--hewed logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud-stripes been whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smokehouse back of the kitchen; three little nigger cabins in a row t'other side the smokehouse; one little hut all by itself away down against the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side; ash-hopper and big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut; bench by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there in the sun; more hounds asleep round about; about three shade trees away off in a corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch; then the cotton-fields begins, and after the fields the woods. i went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and started for the kitchen. when i got a little ways i heard the dim hum of a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and then i knowed for certain i wished i was dead--for that _is_ the lonesomest sound in the whole world. i went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for i'd noticed that providence always did put the right words in my mouth if i left it alone. when i got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went for me, and of course i stopped and faced them, and kept still. and such another powwow as they made! in a quarter of a minute i was a kind of a hub of a wheel, as you may say--spokes made out of dogs--circle of fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses stretched up towards me, a-barking and howling; and more a-coming; you could see them sailing over fences and around corners from every-wheres. a nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her hand, singing out, "begone! _you_ tige! you spot! begone sah!" and she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling, and then the rest followed; and the next second half of them come back, wagging their tails around me, and making friends with me. there ain't no harm in a hound, nohow. and behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung on to their mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way they always do. and here comes the white woman running from the house, about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinning-stick in her hand; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same way the little niggers was going. she was smiling all over so she could hardly stand--and says: "it's _you_, at last!--_ain't_ it?" i out with a "yes'm" before i thought. she grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, "you don't look as much like your mother as i reckoned you would; but law sakes, i don't care for that, i'm so glad to see you! dear, dear, it does seem like i could eat you up! children, it's your cousin tom!--tell him howdy." but they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and hid behind her. so she run on: "lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away--or did you get your breakfast on the boat?" i said i had got it on the boat. so then she started for the house, leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. when we got there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says: "now i can have a _good_ look at you; and, laws-a-me, i've been hungry for it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come at last! we been expecting you a couple of days and more. what kep' you?--boat get aground?" "yes'm--she--" "don't say yes'm--say aunt sally. where'd she get aground?" i didn't rightly know what to say, because i didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down. but i go a good deal on instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming up--from down towards orleans. that didn't help me much, though; for i didn't know the names of bars down that way. i see i'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got aground on--or--now i struck an idea, and fetched it out: "it warn't the grounding--that didn't keep us back but a little. we blowed out a cylinder-head." "good gracious! anybody hurt?" "no'm. killed a nigger." "well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. two years ago last christmas your uncle silas was coming up from newrleans on the old lally rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. and i think he died afterwards. he was a baptist. your uncle silas knowed a family in baton rouge that knowed his people very well. yes, i remember now, he _did_ die. mortification set in, and they had to amputate him. but it didn't save him. yes, it was mortification--that was it. he turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection. they say he was a sight to look at. your uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you. and he's gone again, not more'n an hour ago; he'll be back any minute now. you must 'a' met him on the road, didn't you?--oldish man, with a--" "no, i didn't see nobody, aunt sally. the boat landed just at daylight, and i left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking around the town and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too soon; and so i come down the back way." "who'd you give the baggage to?" "nobody." "why, child, it 'll be stole!" "not where i hid it i reckon it won't," i says. "how'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?" it was kinder thin ice, but i says: "the captain see me standing around, and told me i better have something to eat before i went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the officers' lunch, and give me all i wanted." i was getting so uneasy i couldn't listen good. i had my mind on the children all the time; i wanted to get them out to one side and pump them a little, and find out who i was. but i couldn't get no show, mrs. phelps kept it up and run on so. pretty soon she made the cold chills streak all down my back, because she says: "but here we're a-running on this way, and you hain't told me a word about sis, nor any of them. now i'll rest my works a little, and you start up yourn; just tell me _everything_--tell me all about 'm all--every one of 'm; and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of." well, i see i was up a stump--and up it good. providence had stood by me this fur all right, but i was hard and tight aground now. i see it warn't a bit of use to try to go ahead--i'd got to throw up my hand. so i says to myself, here's another place where i got to resk the truth. i opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed, and says: "here he comes! stick your head down lower--there, that'll do; you can't be seen now. don't you let on you're here. i'll play a joke on him. children, don't you say a word." i see i was in a _fix_ now. but it warn't no use to worry; there warn't nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck. i had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in; then the bed hid him. mrs. phelps she jumps for him, and says: "has he come?" "no," says her husband. "good-_ness_ gracious!" she says, "what in the world _can_ have become of him?" "i can't imagine," says the old gentleman; "and i must say it makes me dreadful uneasy." "uneasy!" she says; "i'm ready to go distracted! he _must_ 'a' come; and you've missed him along the road. i _know_ it's so--something tells me so." "why, sally, i _couldn't_ miss him along the road--_you_ know that." "but oh, dear, dear, what _will_ sis say! he must 'a' come! you must 'a' missed him. he--" "oh, don't distress me any more'n i'm already distressed. i don't know what in the world to make of it. i'm at my wit's end, and i don't mind acknowledging 't i'm right down scared. but there's no hope that he's come; for he _couldn't_ come and me miss him. sally, it's terrible--just terrible--something's happened to the boat, sure!" "why, silas! look yonder!--up the road!--ain't that somebody coming?" he sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that give mrs. phelps the chance she wanted. she stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and give me a pull, and out i come; and when he turned back from the window there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire, and i standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. the old gentleman stared, and says: "why, who's that?" "who do you reckon 'tis?" "i hain't no idea. who _is_ it?" "it's _tom sawyer!_" by jings, i most slumped through the floor! but there warn't no time to swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on shaking; and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about sid, and mary, and the rest of the tribe. but if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what i was; for it was like being born again, i was so glad to find out who i was. well, they froze to me for two hours; and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn't hardly go any more, i had told them more about my family--i mean the sawyer family--than ever happened to any six sawyer families. and i explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the mouth of white river, and it took us three days to fix it. which was all right, and worked first-rate; because _they_ didn't know but what it would take three days to fix it. if i'd 'a' called it a bolthead it would 'a' done just as well. now i was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty uncomfortable all up the other. being tom sawyer was easy and comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by i hear a steamboat coughing along down the river. then i says to myself, s'pose tom sawyer comes down on that boat? and s'pose he steps in here any minute, and sings out my name before i can throw him a wink to keep quiet? well, i couldn't _have_ it that way; it wouldn't do at all. i must go up the road and waylay him. so i told the folks i reckoned i would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage. the old gentleman was for going along with me, but i said no, i could drive the horse myself, and i druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me. chapter xxxiii so i started for town in the wagon, and when i was half-way i see a wagon coming, and sure enough it was tom sawyer, and i stopped and waited till he come along. i says "hold on!" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says: "i hain't ever done you no harm. you know that. so, then, what you want to come back and ha'nt _me_ for?" i says: "i hain't come back--i hain't been _gone_." when he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite satisfied yet. he says: "don't you play nothing on me, because i wouldn't on you. honest injun, you ain't a ghost?" "honest injun, i ain't," i says. "well--i--i--well, that ought to settle it, of course; but i can't somehow seem to understand it no way. looky here, warn't you ever murdered _at all?_" "no. i warn't ever murdered at all--i played it on them. you come in here and feel of me if you don't believe me." so he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me again he didn't know what to do. and he wanted to know all about it right off, because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where he lived. but i said, leave it alone till by and by; and told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and i told him the kind of a fix i was in, and what did he reckon we better do? he said, let him alone a minute, and don't disturb him. so he thought and thought, and pretty soon he says: "it's all right; i've got it. take my trunk in your wagon, and let on it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the house about the time you ought to; and i'll go towards town a piece, and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you; and you needn't let on to know me at first." i says: "all right; but wait a minute. there's one more thing--a thing that _nobody_ don't know but me. and that is, there's a nigger here that i'm a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is _jim_--old miss watson's jim." he says: "what! why, jim is--" he stopped and went to studying. i says: "_i_ know what you'll say. you'll say it's dirty, low-down business; but what if it is? _i_'m low down; and i'm a-going to steal him, and i want you keep mum and not let on. will you?" his eye lit up, and he says: "i'll _help_ you steal him!" well, i let go all holts then, like i was shot. it was the most astonishing speech i ever heard--and i'm bound to say tom sawyer fell considerable in my estimation. only i couldn't believe it. tom sawyer a _nigger-stealer!_ "oh, shucks!" i says; "you're joking." "i ain't joking, either." "well, then," i says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything said about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that _you_ don't know nothing about him, and i don't know nothing about him." then he took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way and i drove mine. but of course i forgot all about driving slow on accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so i got home a heap too quick for that length of a trip. the old gentleman was at the door, and he says: "why, this is wonderful! whoever would 'a' thought it was in that mare to do it? i wish we'd 'a' timed her. and she hain't sweated a hair--not a hair. it's wonderful. why, i wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that horse now--i wouldn't, honest; and yet i'd 'a' sold her for fifteen before, and thought 'twas all she was worth." that's all he said. he was the innocentest, best old soul i ever see. but it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too. there was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and done the same way, down south. in about half an hour tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and aunt sally she see it through the window, because it was only about fifty yards, and says: "why, there's somebody come! i wonder who 'tis? why, i do believe it's a stranger. jimmy" (that's one of the children), "run and tell lize to put on another plate for dinner." everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger don't come _every_ year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever, for interest, when he does come. tom was over the stile and starting for the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all bunched in the front door. tom had his store clothes on, and an audience--and that was always nuts for tom sawyer. in them circumstances it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was suitable. he warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no, he come ca'm and important, like the ram. when he got a-front of us he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them, and says: "mr. archibald nichols, i presume?" "no, my boy," says the old gentleman, "i'm sorry to say 't your driver has deceived you; nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more. come in, come in." tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, "too late--he's out of sight." "yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with us; and then we'll hitch up and take you down to nichols's." "oh, i _can't_ make you so much trouble; i couldn't think of it. i'll walk--i don't mind the distance." "but we won't _let_ you walk--it wouldn't be southern hospitality to do it. come right in." "oh, _do_,"' says aunt sally; "it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a bit in the world. you must stay. it's a long, dusty three mile, and we can't let you walk. and, besides, i've already told 'em to put on another plate when i see you coming; so you mustn't disappoint us. come right in and make yourself at home." so tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be persuaded, and come in; and when he was in he said he was a stranger from hicksville, ohio, and his name was william thompson--and he made another bow. well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about hicksville and everybody in it he could invent, and i getting a little nervious, and wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last, still talking along, he reached over and kissed aunt sally right on the mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortable, and was going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her hand, and says: "you owdacious puppy!" he looked kind of hurt, and says: "i'm surprised at you, m'am." "you're s'rp--why, what do you reckon _i_ am? i've a good notion to take and--say, what do you mean by kissing me?" he looked kind of humble, and says: "i didn't mean nothing, m'am. i didn't mean no harm. i--i--thought you'd like it." "why, you born fool!" she took up the spinning-stick, and it looked like it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. "what made you think i'd like it?" "well, i don't know. only, they--they--told me you would." "_they_ told you i would. whoever told you's _another_ lunatic. i never heard the beat of it. who's _they?_" "why, everybody. they all said so, m'am." it was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says: "who's 'everybody'? out with their names, or ther'll be an idiot short." he got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says: "i'm sorry, and i warn't expecting it. they told me to. they all told me to. they all said, kiss her; and said she'd like it. they all said it--every one of them. but i'm sorry, m'am, and i won't do it no more--i won't, honest." "you won't, won't you? well, i sh'd _reckon_ you won't!" "no'm, i'm honest about it; i won't ever do it again--till you ask me." "till i _ask_ you! well, i never see the beat of it in my born days! i lay you'll be the methusalem-numskull of creation before ever _i_ ask you--or the likes of you." "well," he says, "it does surprise me so. i can't make it out, somehow. they said you would, and i thought you would. but--" he stopped and looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, "didn't _you_ think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?" "why, no; i--i--well, no, i b'lieve i didn't." then he looks on around the same way to me, and says: "tom, didn't _you_ think aunt sally 'd open out her arms and say, 'sid sawyer--'" "my land!" she says, breaking in and jumping for him, "you impudent young rascal, to fool a body so--" and was going to hug him, but he fended her off, and says: "no, not till you've asked me first." so she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed him over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took what was left. and after they got a little quiet again she says: "why, dear me, i never see such a surprise. we warn't looking for _you_ at all, but only tom. sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him." "it's because it warn't _intended_ for any of us to come but tom," he says; "but i begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too; so, coming down the river, me and tom thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by and by tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger. but it was a mistake, aunt sally. this ain't no healthy place for a stranger to come." "no--not impudent whelps, sid. you ought to had your jaws boxed; i hain't been so put out since i don't know when. but i don't care, i don't mind the terms--i'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here. well, to think of that performance! i don't deny it, i was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack." we had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven families--and all hot, too; none of your flabby, tough meat that's laid in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morning. uncle silas he asked a pretty long blessing over it, but it was worth it; and it didn't cool it a bit, neither, the way i've seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times. there was a considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon, and me and tom was on the lookout all the time; but it warn't no use, they didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid to try to work up to it. but at supper, at night, one of the little boys says: "pa, mayn't tom and sid and me go to the show?" "no," says the old man, "i reckon there ain't going to be any; and you couldn't go if there was; because the runaway nigger told burton and me all about that scandalous show, and burton said he would tell the people; so i reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of town before this time." so there it was!--but _i_ couldn't help it. tom and me was to sleep in the same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid good night and went up to bed right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the lightning-rod, and shoved for the town; for i didn't believe anybody was going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so if i didn't hurry up and give them one they'd get into trouble sure. on the road tom he told me all about how it was reckoned i was murdered, and how pap disappeared pretty soon, and didn't come back no more, and what a stir there was when jim run away; and i told tom all about our "royal nonesuch" rapscallions, and as much of the raft voyage as i had time to; and as we struck into the town and up through the middle of it--it was as much as half after eight then--here comes a raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by i see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a rail--that is, i knowed it _was_ the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human--just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes. well, it made me sick to see it; and i was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like i couldn't ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. it was a dreadful thing to see. human beings _can_ be awful cruel to one another. we see we was too late--couldn't do no good. we asked some stragglers about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house rose up and went for them. so we poked along back home, and i warn't feeling so brash as i was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow--though i hadn't done nothing. but that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him _anyway._ if i had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does i would pison him. it takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow. tom sawyer he says the same. chapter xxxiv we stopped talking, and got to thinking. by and by tom says: "looky here, huck, what fools we are to not think of it before! i bet i know where jim is." "no! where?" "in that hut down by the ash-hopper. why, looky here. when we was at dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?" "yes." "what did you think the vittles was for?" "for a dog." "so 'd i. well, it wasn't for a dog." "why?" "because part of it was watermelon." "so it was--i noticed it. well, it does beat all that i never thought about a dog not eating watermelon. it shows how a body can see and don't see at the same time." "well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it again when he came out. he fetched uncle a key about the time we got up from table--same key, i bet. watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner; and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation, and where the people's all so kind and good. jim's the prisoner. all right--i'm glad we found it out detective fashion; i wouldn't give shucks for any other way. now you work your mind, and study out a plan to steal jim, and i will study out one, too; and we'll take the one we like the best." what a head for just a boy to have! if i had tom sawyer's head i wouldn't trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown in a circus, nor nothing i can think of. i went to thinking out a plan, but only just to be doing something; i knowed very well where the right plan was going to come from. pretty soon tom says: "ready?" "yes," i says. "all right--bring it out." "my plan is this," i says. "we can easy find out if it's jim in there. then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the island. then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the old man's britches after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river on the raft with jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and jim used to do before. wouldn't that plan work?" "_work?_ why, cert'nly it would work, like rats a-fighting. but it's too blame' simple; there ain't nothing _to_ it. what's the good of a plan that ain't no more trouble than that? it's as mild as goose-milk. why, huck, it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory." i never said nothing, because i warn't expecting nothing different; but i knowed mighty well that whenever he got _his_ plan ready it wouldn't have none of them objections to it. and it didn't. he told me what it was, and i see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. so i was satisfied, and said we would waltz in on it. i needn't tell what it was here, because i knowed it wouldn't stay the way it was. i knowed he would be changing it around every which way as we went along, and heaving in new bullinesses wherever he got a chance. and that is what he done. well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that tom sawyer was in earnest, and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery. that was the thing that was too many for me. here was a boy that was respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody. i _couldn't_ understand it no way at all. it was outrageous, and i knowed i ought to just up and tell him so; and so be his true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself. and i _did_ start to tell him; but he shut me up, and says: "don't you reckon i know what i'm about? don't i generly know what i'm about?" "yes." "didn't i _say_ i was going to help steal the nigger?" "yes." "well, then." that's all he said, and that's all i said. it warn't no use to say any more; because when he said he'd do a thing, he always done it. but i couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing; so i just let it go, and never bothered no more about it. if he was bound to have it so, i couldn't help it. when we got home the house was all dark and still; so we went on down to the hut by the ash-hopper for to examine it. we went through the yard so as to see what the hounds would do. they knowed us, and didn't make no more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in the night. when we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and the two sides; and on the side i warn't acquainted with--which was the north side--we found a square window-hole, up tolerable high, with just one stout board nailed across it. i says: "here's the ticket. this hole's big enough for jim to get through if we wrench off the board." tom says: "it's as simple as tit-tat-toe, three-in-a-row, and as easy as playing hooky. i should _hope_ we can find a way that's a little more complicated than _that_, huck finn." "well, then," i says, "how'll it do to saw him out, the way i done before i was murdered that time?" "that's more _like_," he says. "it's real mysterious, and troublesome, and good," he says; "but i bet we can find a way that's twice as long. there ain't no hurry; le's keep on looking around." betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to that joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank. it was as long as the hut, but narrow--only about six foot wide. the door to it was at the south end, and was padlocked. tom he went to the soap-kettle and searched around, and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with; so he took it and prized out one of the staples. the chain fell down, and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck a match, and see the shed was only built against a cabin and hadn't no connection with it; and there warn't no floor to the shed, nor nothing in it but some old rusty played-out hoes and spades and picks and a crippled plow. the match went out, and so did we, and shoved in the staple again, and the door was locked as good as ever. tom was joyful. he says: "now we're all right. we'll _dig_ him out. it 'll take about a week!" then we started for the house, and i went in the back door--you only have to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don't fasten the doors--but that warn't romantical enough for tom sawyer; no way would do him but he must climb up the lightning-rod. but after he got up half-way about three times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most busted his brains out, he thought he'd got to give it up; but after he was rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this time he made the trip. in the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger cabins to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed jim--if it _was_ jim that was being fed. the niggers was just getting through breakfast and starting for the fields; and jim's nigger was piling up a tin pan with bread and meat and things; and whilst the others was leaving, the key come from the house. this nigger had a good-natured, chuckle-headed face, and his wool was all tied up in little bunches with thread. that was to keep witches off. he said the witches was pestering him awful these nights, and making him see all kinds of strange things, and hear all kinds of strange words and noises, and he didn't believe he was ever witched so long before in his life. he got so worked up, and got to running on so about his troubles, he forgot all about what he'd been a-going to do. so tom says: "what's the vittles for? going to feed the dogs?" the nigger kind of smiled around graduly over his face, like when you heave a brickbat in a mud-puddle, and he says: "yes, mars sid, _a_ dog. cur'us dog, too. does you want to go en look at 'im?" "yes." i hunched tom, and whispers: "you going, right here in the daybreak? _that_ warn't the plan." "no, it warn't; but it's the plan _now._" so, drat him, we went along, but i didn't like it much. when we got in we couldn't hardly see anything, it was so dark; but jim was there, sure enough, and could see us; and he sings out: "why, _huck!_ en good _lan'!_ ain' dat misto tom?" i just knowed how it would be; i just expected it. i didn't know nothing to do; and if i had i couldn't 'a' done it, because that nigger busted in and says: "why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genlmen?" we could see pretty well now. tom he looked at the nigger, steady and kind of wondering, and says: "does _who_ know us?" "why, dis-yer runaway nigger." "i don't reckon he does; but what put that into your head?" "what _put_ it dar? didn' he jis' dis minute sing out like he knowed you?" tom says, in a puzzled-up kind of way: "well, that's mighty curious. _who_ sung out? _when_ did he sing out? _what_ did he sing out?" and turns to me, perfectly ca'm, and says, "did _you_ hear anybody sing out?" of course there warn't nothing to be said but the one thing; so i says: "no; _i_ ain't heard nobody say nothing." then he turns to jim, and looks him over like he never see him before, and says: "did you sing out?" "no, sah," says jim; "i hain't said nothing, sah." "not a word?" "no, sah, i hain't said a word." "did you ever see us before?" "no, sah; not as i knows on." so tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed, and says, kind of severe: "what do you reckon's the matter with you, anyway? what made you think somebody sung out?" "oh, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en i wisht i was dead, i do. dey's awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey sk'yers me so. please to don't tell nobody 'bout it sah, er ole mars silas he'll scole me; 'kase he say dey _ain't_ no witches. i jis' wish to goodness he was heah now--_den_ what would he say! i jis' bet he couldn' fine no way to git aroun' it _dis_ time. but it's awluz jis' so; people dat's _sot_, stays sot; dey won't look into noth'n' en fine it out f'r deyselves, en when _you_ fine it out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you." tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell nobody; and told him to buy some more thread to tie up his wool with; and then looks at jim, and says: "i wonder if uncle silas is going to hang this nigger. if i was to catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, i wouldn't give him up, i'd hang him." and whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to jim and says: "don't ever let on to know us. and if you hear any digging going on nights, it's us; we're going to set you free." jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it; then the nigger come back, and we said we'd come again some time if the nigger wanted us to; and he said he would, more particular if it was dark, because the witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks around then. chapter xxxv it would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down into the woods; because tom said we got to have _some_ light to see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox-fire, and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place. we fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down to rest, and tom says, kind of dissatisfied: "blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be. and so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan. there ain't no watchman to be drugged--now there _ought_ to be a watchman. there ain't even a dog to give a sleeping-mixture to. and there's jim chained by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of his bed: why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. and uncle silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to the punkin-headed nigger, and don't send nobody to watch the nigger. jim could 'a' got out of that window-hole before this, only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel with a ten-foot chain on his leg. why, drat it, huck, it's the stupidest arrangement i ever see. you got to invent _all_ the difficulties. well, we can't help it; we got to do the best we can with the materials we've got. anyhow, there's one thing--there's more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers, where there warn't one of them furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all out of your own head. now look at just that one thing of the lantern. when you come down to the cold facts, we simply got to _let on_ that a lantern's resky. why, we could work with a torchlight procession if we wanted to, _i_ believe. now, whilst i think of it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we get." "what do we want of a saw?" "what do we _want_ of a saw? hain't we got to saw the leg of jim's bed off, so as to get the chain loose?" "why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off." "well, if that ain't just like you, huck finn. you _can_ get up the infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. why, hain't you ever read any books at all?--baron trenck, nor casanova, nor benvenuto chelleeny, nor henri iv., nor none of them heroes? who ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? no; the way all the best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave it just so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found, and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal can't see no sign of its being sawed, and thinks the bed-leg is perfectly sound. then, the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip off your chain, and there you are. nothing to do but hitch your rope ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moat--because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know--and there's your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle, and away you go to your native langudoc, or navarre, or wherever it is. it's gaudy, huck. i wish there was a moat to this cabin. if we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one." i says: "what do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under the cabin?" but he never heard me. he had forgot me and everything else. he had his chin in his hand, thinking. pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head; then sighs again, and says: "no, it wouldn't do--there ain't necessity enough for it." "for what?" i says. "why, to saw jim's leg off," he says. "good land!" i says; "why, there ain't _no_ necessity for it. and what would you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?" "well, some of the best authorities has done it. they couldn't get the chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved. and a leg would be better still. but we got to let that go. there ain't necessity enough in this case; and, besides, jim's a nigger, and wouldn't understand the reasons for it, and how it's the custom in europe; so we'll let it go. but there's one thing--he can have a rope ladder; we can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough. and we can send it to him in a pie; it's mostly done that way. and i've et worse pies." "why, tom sawyer, how you talk," i says; "jim ain't got no use for a rope ladder." "he _has_ got use for it. how _you_ talk, you better say; you don't know nothing about it. he's _got_ to have a rope ladder; they all do." "what in the nation can he _do_ with it?" "_do_ with it? he can hide it in his bed, can't he? that's what they all do; and _he's_ got to, too. huck, you don't ever seem to want to do anything that's regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the time. s'pose he _don't_ do nothing with it? ain't it there in his bed, for a clue, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want clues? of course they will. and you wouldn't leave them any? that would be a _pretty_ howdy-do, _wouldn't_ it! i never heard of such a thing." "well," i says, "if it's in the regulations, and he's got to have it, all right, let him have it; because i don't wish to go back on no regulations; but there's one thing, tom sawyer--if we go to tearing up our sheets to make jim a rope ladder, we're going to get into trouble with aunt sally, just as sure as you're born. now, the way i look at it, a hickry-bark ladder don't cost nothing, and don't waste nothing, and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as any rag ladder you can start; and as for jim, he ain't had no experience, and so he don't care what kind of a--" "oh, shucks, huck finn, if i was as ignorant as you i'd keep still--that's what i'd do. who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a hickry-bark ladder? why, it's perfectly ridiculous." "well, all right, tom, fix it your own way; but if you'll take my advice, you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothes-line." he said that would do. and that gave him another idea, and he says: "borrow a shirt, too." "what do we want of a shirt, tom?" "want it for jim to keep a journal on." "journal your granny--_jim_ can't write." "s'pose he _can't_ write--he can make marks on the shirt, can't he, if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel-hoop?" "why, tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one; and quicker, too." "_prisoners_ don't have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull pens out of, you muggins. they _always_ make their pens out of the hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out, too, because they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. _they_ wouldn't use a goose-quill if they had it. it ain't regular." "well, then, what 'll we make him the ink out of?" "many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that's the common sort and women; the best authorities uses their own blood. jim can do that; and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. the iron mask always done that, and it's a blame' good way, too." "jim ain't got no tin plates. they feed him in a pan." "that ain't nothing; we can get him some." "can't nobody _read_ his plates." "that ain't got anything to _do_ with it, huck finn. all _he's_ got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out. you don't _have_ to be able to read it. why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else." "well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?" "why, blame it all, it ain't the _prisoner's_ plates." "but it's _somebody's_ plates, ain't it?" "well, spos'n it is? what does the _prisoner_ care whose--" he broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. so we cleared out for the house. along during the morning i borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes-line; and i found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. i called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but tom said it warn't borrowing, it was stealing. he said we was representing prisoners; and prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody don't blame them for it, either. it ain't no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, tom said; it's his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with. he said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when he warn't a prisoner. so we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. and yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when i stole a watermelon out of the nigger patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for. tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we _needed._ well, i says, i needed the watermelon. but he said i didn't need it to get out of prison with; there's where the difference was. he said if i'd 'a' wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to jim to kill the seneskal with, it would 'a' been all right. so i let it go at that, though i couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if i got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every time i see a chance to hog a watermelon. well, as i was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then tom he carried the sack into the lean-to whilst i stood off a piece to keep watch. by and by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile to talk. he says: "everything's all right now except tools; and that's easy fixed." "tools?" i says. "yes." "tools for what?" "why, to dig with. we ain't a-going to _gnaw_ him out, are we?" "ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a nigger out with?" i says. he turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says: "huck finn, did you _ever_ hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with? now i want to ask you--if you got any reasonableness in you at all--what kind of a show would _that_ give him to be a hero? why, they might as well lend him the key and done with it. picks and shovels--why, they wouldn't furnish 'em to a king." "well, then," i says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do we want?" "a couple of case-knives." "to dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?" "yes." "confound it, it's foolish, tom." "it don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the _right_ way--and it's the regular way. and there ain't no _other_ way, that ever i heard of, and i've read all the books that gives any information about these things. they always dig out with a case-knife--and not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid rock. and it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever. why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the castle deef, in the harbor of marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was _he_ at it, you reckon?" "i don't know." "well, guess." "i don't know. a month and a half." "_thirty-seven year_--and he come out in china. _that's_ the kind. i wish the bottom of _this_ fortress was solid rock." "_jim_ don't know nobody in china." "what's _that_ got to do with it? neither did that other fellow. but you're always a-wandering off on a side issue. why can't you stick to the main point?" "all right--i don't care where he comes out, so he _comes_ out; and jim don't, either, i reckon. but there's one thing, anyway--jim's too old to be dug out with a case-knife. he won't last." "yes he will _last,_ too. you don't reckon it's going to take thirty-seven years to dig out through a _dirt_ foundation, do you?" "how long will it take, tom?" "well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't take very long for uncle silas to hear from down there by new orleans. he'll hear jim ain't from there. then his next move will be to advertise jim, or something like that. so we can't resk being as long digging him out as we ought to. by rights i reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but we can't. things being so uncertain, what i recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that, we can _let on_, to ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years. then we can snatch him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm. yes, i reckon that 'll be the best way." "now, there's _sense_ in that," i says. "letting on don't cost nothing; letting on ain't no trouble; and if it's any object, i don't mind letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. it wouldn't strain me none, after i got my hand in. so i'll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case-knives." "smouch three," he says; "we want one to make a saw out of." "tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to sejest it," i says, "there's an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the weather-boarding behind the smokehouse." he looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says: "it ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, huck. run along and smouch the knives--three of them." so i done it. chapter xxxvi as soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile of fox-fire, and went to work. we cleared everything out of the way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. tom said we was right behind jim's bed now, and we'd dig in under it, and when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there, because jim's counterpin hung down most to the ground, and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole. so we dug and dug with the case-knives till most midnight; and then we was dog-tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything hardly. at last i says: "this ain't no thirty-seven-year job; this is a thirty-eight-year job, tom sawyer." he never said nothing. but he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped digging, and then for a good little while i knowed that he was thinking. then he says: "it ain't no use, huck, it ain't a-going to work. if we was prisoners it would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no hurry; and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered, and we could keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right, and the way it ought to be done. but _we_ can't fool along; we got to rush; we ain't got no time to spare. if we was to put in another night this way we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well--couldn't touch a case-knife with them sooner." "well, then, what we going to do, tom?" "i'll tell you. it ain't right, and it ain't moral, and i wouldn't like it to get out; but there ain't only just the one way: we got to dig him out with the picks, and _let on_ it's case-knives." "_now_ you're _talking!_" i says; "your head gets leveler and leveler all the time, tom sawyer," i says. "picks is the thing, moral or no moral; and as for me, i don't care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. when i start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a sunday-school book, i ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done. what i want is my nigger; or what i want is my watermelon; or what i want is my sunday-school book; and if a pick's the handiest thing, that's the thing i'm a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that sunday-school book out with; and i don't give a dead rat what the authorities thinks about it nuther." "well," he says, "there's excuse for picks and letting on in a case like this; if it warn't so, i wouldn't approve of it, nor i wouldn't stand by and see the rules broke--because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better. it might answer for _you_ to dig jim out with a pick, _without_ any letting on, because you don't know no better; but it wouldn't for me, because i do know better. gimme a case-knife." he had his own by him, but i handed him mine. he flung it down, and says: "gimme a _case-knife._" i didn't know just what to do--but then i thought. i scratched around amongst the old tools, and got a pickax and give it to him, and he took it and went to work, and never said a word. he was always just that particular. full of principle. so then i got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and made the fur fly. we stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it. when i got up-stairs i looked out at the window and see tom doing his level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn't come it, his hands was so sore. at last he says: "it ain't no use, it can't be done. what you reckon i better do? can't you think of no way?" "yes," i says, "but i reckon it ain't regular. come up the stairs, and let on it's a lightning-rod." so he done it. next day tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house, for to make some pens for jim out of, and six tallow candles; and i hung around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin plates. tom says it wasn't enough; but i said nobody wouldn't ever see the plates that jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dog-fennel and jimpson weeds under the window-hole--then we could tote them back and he could use them over again. so tom was satisfied. then he says: "now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to jim." "take them in through the hole," i says, "when we get it done." he only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. by and by he said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to decide on any of them yet. said we'd got to post jim first. that night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him. then we whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half the job was done. we crept in under jim's bed and into the cabin, and pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over jim awhile, and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle and gradual. he was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for having us hunt up a cold-chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away, and clearing out without losing any time. but tom he showed him how unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans, and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm; and not to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, _sure_. so jim he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old times awhile, and then tom asked a lot of questions, and when jim told him uncle silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and aunt sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of them was kind as they could be, tom says: "_now_ i know how to fix it. we'll send you some things by them." i said, "don't do nothing of the kind; it's one of the most jackass ideas i ever struck"; but he never paid no attention to me; went right on. it was his way when he'd got his plans set. so he told jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and other large things by nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the lookout, and not be surprised, and not let nat see him open them; and we would put small things in uncle's coat pockets and he must steal them out; and we would tie things to aunt's apron-strings or put them in her apron pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and what they was for. and told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood, and all that. he told him everything. jim he couldn't see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just as tom said. jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed, with hands that looked like they'd been chawed. tom was in high spirits. he said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave jim to our children to get out; for he believed jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it. he said that in that way it could be strung out to as much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record. and he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it. in the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes, and tom put them and the pewter spoon in his pocket. then we went to the nigger cabins, and while i got nat's notice off, tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a corn-pone that was in jim's pan, and we went along with nat to see how it would work, and it just worked noble; when jim bit into it it most mashed all his teeth out; and there warn't ever anything could 'a' worked better. tom said so himself. jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first. and whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in from under jim's bed; and they kept on piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn't hardly room in there to get your breath. by jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to door! the nigger nat he only just hollered "witches" once, and keeled over onto the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was dying. tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of jim's meat, and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door, and i knowed he'd fixed the other door too. then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again. he raised up, and blinked his eyes around, and says: "mars sid, you'll say i's a fool, but if i didn't b'lieve i see most a million dogs, er devils, er some'n, i wisht i may die right heah in dese tracks. i did, mos' sholy. mars sid, i _felt_ um--i _felt_ um, sah; dey was all over me. dad fetch it, i jis' wisht i could git my han's on one er dem witches jis' wunst--on'y jis' wunst--it's all i'd ast. but mos'ly i wisht dey'd lemme 'lone, i does." tom says: "well, i tell you what _i_ think. what makes them come here just at this runaway nigger's breakfast-time? it's because they're hungry; that's the reason. you make them a witch pie; that's the thing for _you_ to do." "but my lan', mars sid, how's i gwyne to make 'm a witch pie? i doan' know how to make it. i hain't ever hearn er sich a thing b'fo'." "well, then, i'll have to make it myself." "will you do it, honey?--will you? i'll wusshup de groun' und' yo' foot, i will!" [illustration: tom advises a witch pie] "all right, i'll do it, seeing it's you, and you've been good to us and showed us the runaway nigger. but you got to be mighty careful. when we come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we've put in the pan, don't you let on you see it at all. and don't you look when jim unloads the pan--something might happen, i don't know what. and above all, don't you _handle_ the witch-things." "_hannel_ 'm, mars sid? what _is_ you a-talkin' 'bout? i wouldn' lay de weight er my finger on um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n billion dollars, i wouldn't." chapter xxxvii _that_ was all fixed. so then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shingle-nails that tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in aunt sally's apron pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t'other we stuck in the band of uncle silas's hat, which was on the bureau, because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and tom dropped the pewter spoon in uncle silas's coat pocket, and aunt sally wasn't come yet, so we had to wait a little while. and when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn't hardly wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other, and says: "i've hunted high and i've hunted low, and it does beat all what _has_ become of your other shirt." my heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a war-whoop, and tom he turned kinder blue around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and i would 'a' sold out for half price if there was a bidder. but after that we was all right again--it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold. uncle silas he says: "it's most uncommon curious, i can't understand it. i know perfectly well i took it _off_, because--" "because you hain't got but one _on_. just _listen_ at the man! i know you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory, too, because it was on the clo's-line yesterday--i see it there myself. but it's gone, that's the long and the short of it, and you'll just have to change to a red flann'l one till i can get time to make a new one. and it 'll be the third i've made in two years. it just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to _do_ with 'm all is more'n i can make out. a body'd think you _would_ learn to take some sort of care of 'em at your time of life." "i know it, sally, and i do try all i can. but it oughtn't to be altogether my fault, because, you know, i don't see them nor have nothing to do with them except when they're on me; and i don't believe i've ever lost one of them _off_ of me." "well, it ain't _your_ fault if you haven't, silas; you'd 'a' done it if you could, i reckon. and the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther. ther's a spoon gone; and _that_ ain't all. there was ten, and now ther' only nine. the calf got the shirt, i reckon, but the calf never took the spoon, _that's_ certain." "why, what else is gone, sally?" "ther's six _candles_ gone--that's what. the rats could 'a' got the candles, and i reckon they did; i wonder they don't walk off with the whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, silas--_you'd_ never find it out; but you can't lay the _spoon_ on the rats, and that i _know_." "well, sally, i'm in fault, and i acknowledge it; i've been remiss; but i won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes." "oh, i wouldn't hurry; next year 'll do. matilda angelina araminta _phelps!_" whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around any. just then the nigger woman steps onto the passage, and says: "missus, dey's a sheet gone." "a _sheet_ gone! well, for the land's sake!" "i'll stop up them holes to-day," says uncle silas, looking sorrowful. "oh, _do_ shet up!--s'pose the rats took the _sheet?_ _where's_ it gone, lize?" "clah to goodness i hain't no notion, miss' sally. she wuz on de clo's-line yistiddy, but she done gone: she ain' dah no mo' now." "i reckon the world _is_ coming to an end. i _never_ see the beat of it in all my born days. a shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can--" "missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a brass cannelstick miss'n." "cler out from here, you hussy, er i'll take a skillet to ye!" well, she was just a-biling. i begun to lay for a chance; i reckoned i would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. she kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last uncle silas, looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. she stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, i wished i was in jeruslem or somewheres. but not long, because she says: "it's _just_ as i expected. so you had it in your pocket all the time; and like as not you've got the other things there, too. how'd it get there?" "i reely don't know, sally," he says, kind of apologizing, "or you know i would tell. i was a-studying over my text in acts seventeen before breakfast, and i reckon i put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put my testament in, and it must be so, because my testament ain't in; but i'll go and see; and if the testament is where i had it, i'll know i didn't put it in, and that will show that i laid the testament down and took up the spoon, and--" "oh, for the land's sake! give a body a rest! go 'long now, the whole kit and biling of ye; and don't come nigh me again till i've got back my peace of mind." i'd 'a' heard her if she'd 'a' said it to herself, let alone speaking it out; and i'd 'a' got up and obeyed her if i'd 'a' been dead. as we was passing through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out. tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says: "well, it ain't no use to send things by _him_ no more, he ain't reliable." then he says: "but he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without _him_ knowing it--stop up his rat-holes." there was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape. then we heard steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t'other, looking as absent-minded as year before last. he went a-mooning around, first to one rat-hole and then another, till he'd been to them all. then he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle and thinking. then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying: "well, for the life of me i can't remember when i done it. i could show her now that i warn't to blame on account of the rats. but never mind--let it go. i reckon it wouldn't do no good." and so he went on a-mumbling up-stairs, and then we left. he was a mighty nice old man. and always is. tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said we'd got to have it; so he took a think. when he had ciphered it out he told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the spoon-basket till we see aunt sally coming, and then tom went to counting the spoons and laying them out to one side, and i slid one of them up my sleeve, and tom says: "why, aunt sally, there ain't but nine spoons _yet_." she says: "go 'long to your play, and don't bother me. i know better, i counted 'm myself." "well, i've counted them twice, aunty, and _i_ can't make but nine." she looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count--anybody would. "i declare to gracious ther' _ain't_ but nine!" she says. "why, what in the world--plague _take_ the things, i'll count 'm again." so i slipped back the one i had, and when she got done counting, she says: "hang the troublesome rubbage, ther's _ten_ now!" and she looked huffy and bothered both. but tom says: "why, aunty, i don't think there's ten." "you numskull, didn't you see me _count_ 'm?" "i know, but--" "well, i'll count 'm again." so i smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time. well, she _was_ in a tearing way--just a-trembling all over, she was so mad. but she counted and counted till she got that addled she'd start to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes; and so, three times they come out right, and three times they come out wrong. then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley-west; and she said cler out and let her have some peace, and if we come bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she'd skin us. so we had the odd spoon, and dropped it in her apron pocket whilst she was a-giving us our sailing orders, and jim got it all right, along with her shingle-nail, before noon. we was very well satisfied with this business, and tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took, because he said _now_ she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life; and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if she _did_; and said that after she'd about counted her head off for the next three days he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them any more. so we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of her closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets she had any more, and she didn't _care_, and warn't a-going to bullyrag the rest of her soul out about it, and wouldn't count them again not to save her life; she druther die first. so we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn't no consequence, it would blow over by and by. but that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie. we fixed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it done at last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we had to use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through, and we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke; because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we couldn't prop it up right, and she would always cave in. but of course we thought of the right way at last--which was to cook the ladder, too, in the pie. so then we laid in with jim the second night, and tore up the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together, and long before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could 'a' hung a person with. we let on it took nine months to make it. and in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go into the pie. being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough for forty pies if we'd 'a' wanted them, and plenty left over for soup, or sausage, or anything you choose. we could 'a' had a whole dinner. but we didn't need it. all we needed was just enough for the pie, and so we throwed the rest away. we didn't cook none of the pies in the washpan--afraid the solder would melt; but uncle silas he had a noble brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from england with william the conqueror in the _mayflower_ or one of them early ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first pies, because we didn't know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. we took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and loaded her up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a satisfaction to look at. but the person that et it would want to fetch a couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope ladder wouldn't cramp him down to business i don't know nothing what i'm talking about, and lay him in enough stomach-ache to last him till next time, too. nat didn't look when we put the witch pie in jim's pan; and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so jim got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted into the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick, and scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the window-hole. chapter xxxviii making them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. that's the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. but he had to have it; tom said he'd _got_ to; there warn't no case of a state prisoner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms. "look at lady jane grey," he says; "look at gilford dudley; look at old northumberland! why, huck, s'pose it _is_ considerble trouble?--what you going to do?--how you going to get around it? jim's _got_ to do his inscription and coat of arms. they all do." jim says: "why, mars tom, i hain't got no coat o' arm; i hain't got nuffn but dish yer ole shirt, en you knows i got to keep de journal on dat." "oh, you don't understand, jim; a coat of arms is very different." "well," i says, "jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat of arms, because he hain't." "i reckon i knowed that," tom says, "but you bet he'll have one before he goes out of this--because he's going out _right_, and there ain't going to be no flaws in his record." so whilst me and jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, jim a-making his'n out of the brass and i making mine out of the spoon, tom set to work to think out the coat of arms. by and by he said he'd struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there was one which he reckoned he'd decide on. he says: "on the scutcheon we'll have a bend _or_ in the dexter base, a saltire _murrey_ in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron _vert_ in a chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field _azure_, with the nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger, _sable_, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, _maggiore fretta, minore atto_. got it out of a book--means the more haste the less speed." "geewhillikins," i says, "but what does the rest of it mean?" "we ain't got no time to bother over that," he says; "we got to dig in like all git-out." "well, anyway," i says, "what's _some_ of it? what's a fess?" "a fess--a fess is--_you_ don't need to know what a fess is. i'll show him how to make it when he gets to it." "shucks, tom," i says, "i think you might tell a person. what's a bar sinister?" "oh, i don't know. but he's got to have it. all the nobility does." that was just his way. if it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you, he wouldn't do it. you might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make no difference. he'd got all that coat-of-arms business fixed, so now he started in to finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a mournful inscription--said jim got to have one, like they all done. he made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so: _ . here a captive heart busted. . here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world and friends, fretted his sorrowful life. . here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven years of solitary captivity. . here, homeless and friendless, after thirty-seven years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of louis xiv._ tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down. when he got done he couldn't no way make up his mind which one for jim to scrabble onto the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed he would let him scrabble them all on. jim said it would take him a year to scrabble such a lot of truck onto the logs with a nail, and he didn't know how to make letters, besides; but tom said he would block them out for him, and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the lines. then pretty soon he says: "come to think, the logs ain't a-going to do; they don't have log walls in a dungeon: we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock. we'll fetch a rock." jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him such a pison long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn't ever get out. but tom said he would let me help him do it. then he took a look to see how me and jim was getting along with the pens. it was most pesky tedious hard work and slow, and didn't give my hands no show to get well of the sores, and we didn't seem to make no headway, hardly; so tom says: "i know how to fix it. we got to have a rock for the coat of arms and mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock. there's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it, and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it, too." it warn't no slouch of an idea; and it warn't no slouch of a grindstone nuther; but we allowed we'd tackle it. it warn't quite midnight yet, so we cleared out for the mill, leaving jim at work. we smouched the grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most nation tough job. sometimes, do what we could, we couldn't keep her from falling over, and she come mighty near mashing us every time. tom said she was going to get one of us, sure, before we got through. we got her halfway; and then we was plumb played out, and most drownded with sweat. we see it warn't no use; we got to go and fetch jim. so he raised up his bed and slid the chain off of the bed-leg, and wrapt it round and round his neck, and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and jim and me laid into that grindstone and walked her along like nothing; and tom superintended. he could out-superintend any boy i ever see. he knowed how to do everything. our hole was pretty big, but it warn't big enough to get the grindstone through; but jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough. then tom marked out them things on it with the nail, and set jim to work on them, with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under his straw tick and sleep on it. then we helped him fix his chain back on the bed-leg, and was ready for bed ourselves. but tom thought of something, and says: "you got any spiders in here, jim?" "no, sah, thanks to goodness i hain't, mars tom." "all right, we'll get you some." "but bless you, honey, i doan' _want_ none. i's afeard un um. i jis' 's soon have rattlesnakes aroun'." tom thought a minute or two, and says: "it's a good idea. and i reckon it's been done. it _must_ 'a' been done; it stands to reason. yes, it's a prime good idea. where could you keep it?" "keep what, mars tom?" "why, a rattlesnake." "de goodness gracious alive, mars tom! why, if dey was a rattlesnake to come in heah i'd take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, i would, wid my head." "why, jim, you wouldn't be afraid of it after a little. you could tame it." "_tame_ it!" "yes--easy enough. every animal is grateful for kindness and petting, and they wouldn't _think_ of hurting a person that pets them. any book will tell you that. you try--that's all i ask; just try for two or three days. why, you can get him so in a little while that he'll love you; and sleep with you; and won't stay away from you a minute; and will let you wrap him round your neck and put his head in your mouth." "_please_, tom--_doan_' talk so! i can't _stan'_ it! he'd _let_ me shove his head in my mouf--fer a favor, hain't it? i lay he'd wait a pow'ful long time 'fo' i _ast_ him. en mo' en dat, i doan' _want_ him to sleep wid me." "jim, don't act so foolish. a prisoner's _got_ to have some kind of a dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain't ever been tried, why, there's more glory to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other way you could ever think of to save your life." "why, mars tom, i doan' _want_ no sich glory. snake take 'n bite jim's chin off, den _whah_ is de glory? no, sah, i doan' want no sich doin's." "blame it, can't you _try?_ i only _want_ you to try--you needn't keep it up if it don't work." "but de trouble all _done_ ef de snake bite me while i's a-tryin' him. mars tom, i's willin' to tackle mos' anything 'at ain't onreasonable, but ef you en huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, i's gwyne to _leave_, dat's _shore_." "well, then, let it go, let it go, if you're so bull-headed about it. we can get you some garter-snakes, and you can tie some buttons on their tails, and let on they're rattlesnakes, and i reckon that 'll have to do." "i k'n stan' _dem_, mars tom, but blame' 'f i couldn' get along widout um, i tell you dat. i never knowed b'fo' 'twas so much bother and trouble to be a prisoner." "well, it _always_ is when it's done right. you got any rats around here?" "no, sah, i hain't seed none." "well, we'll get you some rats." "why, mars tom, i doan' _want_ no rats. dey's de dadblamedest creturs to 'sturb a body, en rustle roun' over 'im, en bite his feet, when he's tryin' to sleep, i ever see. no, sah, gimme g'yarter-snakes, 'f i's got to have 'm, but doan' gimme no rats; i hain' got no use f'r um, skasely." "but, jim, you _got_ to have 'em--they all do. so don't make no more fuss about it. prisoners ain't ever without rats. there ain't no instance of it. and they train them, and pet them, and learn them tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies. but you got to play music to them. you got anything to play music on?" "i ain' got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o' paper, en a juice-harp; but i reck'n dey wouldn' take no stock in a juice-harp." "yes they would. _they_ don't care what kind of music 'tis. a jews-harp's plenty good enough for a rat. all animals like music--in a prison they dote on it. specially, painful music; and you can't get no other kind out of a jew's-harp. it always interests them; they come out to see what's the matter with you. yes, you're all right; you're fixed very well. you want to set on your bed nights before you go to sleep, and early in the mornings, and play your jew's-harp; play 'the last link is broken'--that's the thing that 'll scoop a rat quicker 'n anything else; and when you've played about two minutes you'll see all the rats, and the snakes, and spiders and things begin to feel worried about you, and come. and they'll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good time." "yes, _dey_ will, i reck'n, mars tom, but what kine er time is _jim_ havin'? blest if i kin see de pint. but i'll do it ef i got to. i reck'n i better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de house." tom waited to think it over, and see if there wasn't nothing else; and pretty soon he says: "oh, there's one thing i forgot. could you raise a flower here, do you reckon?" "i doan' know but maybe i could, mars tom; but it's tolable dark in heah, en i ain' got no use f'r no flower, nohow, en she'd be a pow'ful sight o' trouble." "well, you try it, anyway. some other prisoners has done it." "one er dem big cat-tail-lookin' mullen-stalks would grow in heah, mars tom, i reck'n, but she wouldn't be wuth half de trouble she'd coss." "don't you believe it. we'll fetch you a little one and you plant it in the corner over there, and raise it. and don't call it mullen, call it pitchiola--that's its right name when it's in a prison. and you want to water it with your tears." "why, i got plenty spring water, mars tom." "you don't _want_ spring water; you want to water it with your tears. it's the way they always do." "why, mars tom, i lay i kin raise one er dem mullen-stalks twyste wid spring water whiles another man's a start'n one wid tears." "that ain't the idea. you _got_ to do it with tears." "she'll die on my han's, mars tom, she sholy will; kase i doan' skasely ever cry." so tom was stumped. but he studied it over, and then said jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion. he promised he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in jim's coffee-pot, in the morning. jim said he would "jis' 's soon have tobacker in his coffee"; and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising the mullen, and jew's-harping the rats, and petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do on pens, and inscriptions, and journals, and things, which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook, that tom most lost all patience with him; and said he was just loadened down with more gaudier chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn't know enough to appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. so jim he was sorry, and said he wouldn't behave so no more, and then me and tom shoved for bed. chapter xxxix in the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under aunt sally's bed. but while we was gone for spiders little thomas franklin benjamin jefferson elexander phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and aunt sally she come in, and when we got back she was a-standing on top of the bed raising cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. so she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. i never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was. we got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we like to got a hornet's nest, but we didn't. the family was at home. we didn't give it right up, but stayed with them as long as we could; because we allowed we'd tire them out or they'd got to tire us out, and they done it. then we got allycumpain and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right again, but couldn't set down convenient. and so we went for the snakes, and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house-snakes, and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper-time, and a rattling good honest day's work: and hungry?--oh, no, i reckon not! and there warn't a blessed snake up there when we went back--we didn't half tie the sack, and they worked out somehow, and left. but it didn't matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres. so we judged we could get some of them again. no, there warn't no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. you'd see them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then; and they generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn't want them. well, they was handsome and striped, and there warn't no harm in a million of them; but that never made no difference to aunt sally; she despised snakes, be the breed what they might, and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it; and every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn't make no difference what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. i never see such a woman. and you could hear her whoop to jericho. you couldn't get her to take a-holt of one of them with the tongs. and if she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a howl that you would think the house was afire. she disturbed the old man so that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes created. why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week aunt sally warn't over it yet; she warn't near over it; when she was setting thinking about something you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her stockings. it was very curious. but tom said all women was just so. he said they was made that way for some reason or other. we got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she allowed these lickings warn't nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them. i didn't mind the lickings, because they didn't amount to nothing; but i minded the trouble we had to lay in another lot. but we got them laid in, and all the other things; and you never see a cabin as blithesome as jim's was when they'd all swarm out for music and go for him. jim didn't like the spiders, and the spiders didn't like jim; and so they'd lay for him, and make it mighty warm for him. and he said that between the rats and the snakes and the grindstone there warn't no room in bed for him, skasely; and when there was, a body couldn't sleep, it was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, because _they_ never all slept at one time, but took turn about, so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his way, and t'other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over. he said if he ever got out this time he wouldn't ever be a prisoner again, not for a salary. well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. the shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit jim he would get up and write a line in his journal whilst the ink was fresh; the pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the grindstone; the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had et up the sawdust, and it give us a most amazing stomach-ache. we reckoned we was all going to die, but didn't. it was the most undigestible sawdust i ever see; and tom said the same. but as i was saying, we'd got all the work done now, at last; and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly jim. the old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below orleans to come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because there warn't no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise jim in the st. louis and new orleans papers; and when he mentioned the st. louis ones it give me the cold shivers, and i see we hadn't no time to lose. so tom said, now for the nonnamous letters. "what's them?" i says. "warnings to the people that something is up. sometimes it's done one way, sometimes another. but there's always somebody spying around that gives notice to the governor of the castle. when louis xvi. was going to light out of the tooleries a servant-girl done it. it's a very good way, and so is the nonnamous letters. we'll use them both. and it's usual for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in, and he slides out in her clothes. we'll do that, too." "but looky here, tom, what do we want to _warn_ anybody for that something's up? let them find it out for themselves--it's their lookout." "yes, i know; but you can't depend on them. it's the way they've acted from the very start--left us to do _everything_. they're so confiding and mullet-headed they don't take notice of nothing at all. so if we don't _give_ them notice there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us, and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape 'll go off perfectly flat; won't amount to nothing--won't be nothing _to_ it." "well, as for me, tom, that's the way i'd like." "shucks!" he says, and looked disgusted. so i says: "but i ain't going to make no complaint. any way that suits you suits me. what you going to do about the servant-girl?" "you'll be her. you slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that yaller girl's frock." "why, tom, that 'll make trouble next morning; because, of course, she prob'bly hain't got any but that one." "i know; but you don't want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door." "all right, then, i'll do it; but i could carry it just as handy in my own togs." "you wouldn't look like a servant-girl _then_, would you?" "no, but there won't be nobody to see what i look like, _anyway_." "that ain't got nothing to do with it. the thing for us to do is just to do our _duty_, and not worry about whether anybody _sees_ us do it or not. hain't you got no principle at all?" "all right, i ain't saying nothing; i'm the servant-girl. who's jim's mother?" "i'm his mother. i'll hook a gown from aunt sally." "well, then, you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and jim leaves." "not much. i'll stuff jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed to represent his mother in disguise, and jim 'll take the nigger woman's gown off of me and wear it, and we'll all evade together. when a prisoner of style escapes it's called an evasion. it's always called so when a king escapes, f'rinstance. and the same with a king's son; it don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one." so tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and i smouched the yaller wench's frock that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door, the way tom told me to. it said: _beware. trouble is brewing. keep a sharp lookout. unknown friend._ next night we stuck a picture, which tom drawed in blood, of a skull and crossbones on the front door; and next night another one of a coffin on the back door. i never see a family in such a sweat. they couldn't 'a' been worse scared if the place had 'a' been full of ghosts laying for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air. if a door banged, aunt sally she jumped and said "ouch!" if anything fell, she jumped and said "ouch!" if you happened to touch her, when she warn't noticing, she done the same; she couldn't face no way and be satisfied, because she allowed there was something behind her every time--so she was always a-whirling around sudden, and saying "ouch," and before she'd got two-thirds around she'd whirl back again, and say it again; and she was afraid to go to bed, but she dasn't set up. so the thing was working very well, tom said; he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory. he said it showed it was done right. so he said, now for the grand bulge! so the very next morning at the streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what we better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going to have a nigger on watch at both doors all night. tom he went down the lightning-rod to spy around; and the nigger at the back door was asleep, and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back. this letter said: _don't betray me, i wish to be your friend. there is a desprate gang of cutthroats from over in the indian territory going to steal your runaway nigger to-night, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not bother them. i am one of the gang, but have got religgion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again, and will betray the helish design. they will sneak down from northards, along the fence, at midnight exact, with a false key, and go in the nigger's cabin to get him. i am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if i see any danger; but stead of that i will ba like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow at all; then whilst they are getting his chains loose, you slip there and lock them in, and can kill them at your leasure. don't do anything but just the way i am telling you; if you do they will suspicion something and raise whoop-jamboreehoo. i do not wish any reward but to know i have done the right thing. unknown friend._ chapter xl we was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went over the river a-fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up-stairs and her back was turned we slid for the cellar cubboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about half past eleven, and tom put on aunt sally's dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but says: "where's the butter?" "i laid out a hunk of it," i says, "on a piece of a corn-pone." "well, you _left_ it laid out, then--it ain't here." "we can get along without it," i says. "we can get along _with_ it, too," he says; "just you slide down cellar and fetch it. and then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come along. i'll go and stuff the straw into jim's clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to _ba_ like a sheep and shove soon as you get there." so out he went, and down cellar went i. the hunk of butter, big as a person's fist, was where i had left it, so i took up the slab of corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up-stairs very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes aunt sally with a candle, and i clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says: "you been down cellar?" "yes'm." "what you been doing down there?" "noth'n." "_noth'n!_" "no'm." "well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?" "i don't know 'm." "you don't _know?_ don't answer me that way. tom, i want to know what you been _doing_ down there." "i hain't been doing a single thing, aunt sally, i hope to gracious if i have." i reckoned she'd let me go now, and as a generl thing she would; but i s'pose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat about every little thing that warn't yard-stick straight; so she says, very decided: "you just march into that setting-room and stay there till i come. you been up to something you no business to, and i lay i'll find out what it is before _i'm_ done with you." so she went away as i opened the door and walked into the setting-room. my, but there was a crowd there! fifteen farmers, and every one of them had a gun. i was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair and set down. they was setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice, and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn't; but i knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats, and putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their seats, and fumbling with their buttons. i warn't easy myself, but i didn't take my hat off, all the same. i did wish aunt sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell tom how we'd overdone this thing, and what a thundering hornet's nest we'd got ourselves into, so we could stop fooling around straight off, and clear out with jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us. at last she come and begun to ask me questions, but i _couldn't_ answer them straight, i didn't know which end of me was up; because these men was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right _now_ and lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn't but a few minutes to midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep-signal; and here was aunty pegging away at the questions, and me a-shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks i was that scared; and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty soon, when one of them says, "_i'm_ for going and getting in the cabin _first_ and right _now_, and catching them when they come," i most dropped; and a streak of butter come a-trickling down my forehead, and aunt sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and says: "for the land's sake, what _is_ the matter with the child? he's got the brain-fever as shore as you're born, and they're oozing out!" and everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the bread and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, and says: "oh, what a turn you did give me! and how glad and grateful i am it ain't no worse; for luck's against us, and it never rains but it pours, and when i see that truck i thought we'd lost you, for i knowed by the color and all it was just like your brains would be if--dear, dear, whyd'nt you _tell_ me that was what you'd been down there for, _i_ wouldn't 'a' cared. now cler out to bed, and don't lemme see no more of you till morning!" i was up-stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another one, and shinning through the dark for the lean-to. i couldn't hardly get my words out, i was so anxious; but i told tom as quick as i could we must jump for it now, and not a minute to lose--the house full of men, yonder, with guns! his eyes just blazed; and he says: "no!--is that so? _ain't_ it bully! why, huck, if it was to do over again, i bet i could fetch two hundred! if we could put it off till--" "hurry! _hurry!_" i says. "where's jim?" "right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him. he's dressed, and everything's ready. now we'll slide out and give the sheep-signal." but then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them begin to fumble with the padlock, and heard a man say: "i _told_ you we'd be too soon; they haven't come--the door is locked. here, i'll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lay for 'em in the dark and kill 'em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece, and listen if you can hear 'em coming." so in they come, but couldn't see us in the dark, and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. but we got under all right, and out through the hole, swift but soft--jim first, me next, and tom last, which was according to tom's orders. now we was in the lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. so we crept to the door, and tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn't make out nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us jim must glide out first, and him last. so he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a-scraping around out there all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence in injun file, and got to it all right, and me and jim over it; but tom's britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started somebody sings out: "who's that? answer, or i'll shoot!" but we didn't answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. then there was a rush, and a _bang,_ _bang,_ _bang!_ and the bullets fairly whizzed around us! we heard them sing out: "here they are! they've broke for the river! after 'em, boys, and turn loose the dogs!" so here they come, full tilt. we could hear them because they wore boots and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots and didn't yell. we was in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close onto us we dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. they'd had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn't scare off the robbers; but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making powwow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when they see it warn't nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering; and then we up-steam again, and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn't make no more noise than we was obleeged to. then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out. and when we stepped onto the raft i says: "now, old jim, you're a free man _again_, and i bet you won't ever be a slave no more." "en a mighty good job it wuz, too, huck. it 'uz planned beautiful, en it 'uz _done_ beautiful; en dey ain't _nobody_ kin git up a plan dat's mo' mixed up en splendid den what dat one wuz." we was all glad as we could be, but tom was the gladdest of all because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg. when me and jim heard that we didn't feel as brash as what we did before. it was hurting him considerable, and bleeding; so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to bandage him, but he says: "gimme the rags; i can do it myself. don't stop now; don't fool around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set her loose! boys, we done it elegant!--'deed we did. i wish _we'd_ 'a' had the handling of louis xvi., there wouldn't 'a' been no 'son of saint louis, ascend to heaven!' wrote down in _his_ biography; no, sir, we'd 'a' whooped him over the _border_--that's what we'd 'a' done with _him_--and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. man the sweeps--man the sweeps!" but me and jim was consulting--and thinking. and after we'd thought a minute, i says: "say it, jim." so he says: "well, den, dis is de way it look to me, huck. ef it wuz _him_ dat 'uz bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'go on en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one'? is dat like mars tom sawyer? would he say dat? you _bet_ he wouldn't! _well_, den, is _jim_ gywne to say it? no, sah--i doan' budge a step out'n dis place 'dout a _doctor_; not if it's forty year!" i knowed he was white inside, and i reckoned he'd say what he did say--so it was all right now, and i told tom i was a-going for a doctor. he raised considerable row about it, but me and jim stuck to it and wouldn't budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but we wouldn't let him. then he give us a piece of his mind, but it didn't do no good. so when he sees me getting the canoe ready, he says: "well, then, if you're bound to go, i'll tell you the way to do when you get to the village. shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywheres in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don't give it back to him till you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. it's the way they all do." so i said i would, and left, and jim was to hide in the woods when he see the doctor coming till he was gone again. chapter xli the doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man when i got him up. i told him me and my brother was over on spanish island hunting yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about midnight he must 'a' kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home this evening and surprise the folks. "who is your folks?" he says. "the phelpses, down yonder." "oh," he says. and after a minute, he says: "how'd you say he got shot?" "he had a dream," i says, "and it shot him." "singular dream," he says. so he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started. but when he see the canoe he didn't like the look of her--said she was big enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two. i says: "oh, you needn't be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us easy enough." "what three?" "why, me and sid, and--and--and _the guns_; that's what i mean." "oh," he says. but he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her, and shook his head, and said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one. but they was all locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for me to wait till he come back, or i could hunt around further, or maybe i better go down home and get them ready for the surprise if i wanted to. but i said i didn't; so i told him just how to find the raft, and then he started. i struck an idea pretty soon. i says to myself, spos'n he can't fix that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is? spos'n it takes him three or four days? what are we going to do?--lay around there till he lets the cat out of the bag? no, sir; i know what _i'll_ do. i'll wait, and when he comes back if he says he's got to go any more i'll get down there, too, if i swim; and we'll take and tie him, and keep him, and shove out down the river; and when tom's done with him we'll give him what it's worth, or all we got, and then let him get ashore. so then i crept into a lumber-pile to get some sleep; and next time i waked up the sun was away up over my head! i shot out and went for the doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the night some time or other, and warn't back yet. well, thinks i, that looks powerful bad for tom, and i'll dig out for the island right off. so away i shoved, and turned the corner, and nearly rammed my head into uncle silas's stomach! he says: "why, _tom!_ where you been all this time, you rascal?" "_i_ hain't been nowheres," i says, "only just hunting for the runaway nigger--me and sid." "why, where ever did you go?" he says. "your aunt's been mighty uneasy." "she needn't," i says, "because we was all right. we followed the men and the dogs, but they outrun us, and we lost them; but we thought we heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them and crossed over, but couldn't find nothing of them; so we cruised along up-shore till we got kind of tired and beat out; and tied up the canoe and went to sleep, and never waked up till about an hour ago; then we paddled over here to hear the news, and sid's at the post-office to see what he can hear, and i'm a-branching out to get something to eat for us, and then we're going home." so then we went to the post-office to get "sid"; but just as i suspicioned, he warn't there; so the old man he got a letter out of the office, and we waited awhile longer, but sid didn't come; so the old man said, come along, let sid foot it home, or canoe it, when he got done fooling around--but we would ride. i couldn't get him to let me stay and wait for sid; and he said there warn't no use in it, and i must come along, and let aunt sally see we was all right. when we got home aunt sally was that glad to see me she laughed and cried both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of hern that don't amount to shucks, and said she'd serve sid the same when he come. and the place was plum full of farmers and farmers' wives, to dinner; and such another clack a body never heard. old mrs. hotchkiss was the worst; her tongue was a-going all the time. she says: "well, sister phelps, i've ransacked that-air cabin over, an' i b'lieve the nigger was crazy. i says to sister damrell--didn't i, sister damrell?--s'i, he's crazy, s'i--them's the very words i said. you all hearn me: he's crazy, s'i; everything shows it, s'i. look at that-air grindstone, s'i; want to tell _me't_ any cretur 't's in his right mind 's a goin' to scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone? s'i. here sich 'n' sich a person busted his heart; 'n' here so 'n' so pegged along for thirty-seven year, 'n' all that--natcherl son o' louis somebody, 'n' sich everlast'n rubbage. he's plumb crazy, s'i; it's what i says in the fust place, it's what i says in the middle, 'n' it's what i says last 'n' all the time--the nigger's crazy--crazy 's nebokoodneezer, s'i." "an' look at that-air ladder made out'n rags, sister hotchkiss," says old mrs. damrell; "what in the name o' goodness _could_ he ever want of--" "the very words i was a-sayin' no longer ago th'n this minute to sister utterback, 'n' she'll tell you so herself. sh-she, look at that-air rag ladder, sh-she; 'n' s'i, yes, look at it, s'i--what _could_ he 'a' wanted of it, s'i. sh-she, sister hotchkiss, sh-she--" "but how in the nation'd they ever _git_ that grindstone _in_ there, _anyway?_ 'n' who dug that-air _hole?_ 'n' who--" "my very _words_, brer penrod! i was a-sayin'--pass that-air sasser o' m'lasses, won't ye?--i was a-sayin' to sister dunlap, jist this minute, how _did_ they git that grindstone in there? s'i. without _help,_ mind you--'thout _help! thar's_ where 'tis. don't tell _me,_ s'i; there _wuz_ help, s'i; 'n' ther' wuz a _plenty_ help, too, s'i; ther's ben a _dozen_ a-helpin' that nigger, 'n' i lay i'd skin every last nigger on this place but _i'd_ find out who done it, s'i; moreover, s'i--" "a _dozen_ says you!--_forty_ couldn't 'a' done everything that's been done. look at them case-knife saws and things, how tedious they've been made; look at that bed-leg sawed off with 'm, a week's work for six men: look at that nigger made out'n straw on the bed; and look at--" "you may _well_ say it, brer hightower! it's jist as i was a-sayin' to brer phelps, his own self. s'e, what do _you_ think of it, sister hotchkiss? s'e. think o' what, brer phelps? s'i. think o' that bed-leg sawed off that a way? s'e? _think_ of it? s'i. i lay it never sawed _itself_ off, s'i--somebody _sawed_ it, s'i; that's my opinion, take it or leave it, it mayn't be no 'count, s'i, but sich as 't is, it's my opinion, s'i, 'n' if anybody k'n start a better one, s'i, let him _do_ it, s'i, that's all. i says to sister dunlap, s'i--" "why, dog my cats, they must 'a' ben a house-full o' niggers in there every night for four weeks to 'a' done all that work, sister phelps. look at that shirt--every last inch of it kivered over with secret african writ'n done with blood! must 'a' ben a raft uv 'm at it right along, all the time, amost. why, i'd give two dollars to have it read to me; 'n' as for the niggers that wrote it, i 'low i'd take 'n' lash 'm t'll--" "people to _help_ him, brother marples! well, i reckon you'd _think_ so if you'd 'a' been in this house for a while back. why, they've stole everything they could lay their hands on--and we a-watching all the time, mind you. they stole that shirt right off o' the line! and as for that sheet they made the rag ladder out of, ther' ain't no telling how many times they _didn't_ steal that; and flour, and candles, and candlesticks, and spoons, and the old warming-pan, and most a thousand things that i disremember now, and my new calico dress; and me and silas and my sid and tom on the constant watch day _and_ night, as i was a-telling you, and not a one of us could catch hide nor hair nor sight nor sound of them; and here at the last minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under our noses and fools us, and not only fools _us_ but the injun territory robbers too, and actuly gets _away_ with that nigger safe and sound, and that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at that very time! i tell you, it just bangs anything i ever _heard_ of. why, _sperits_ couldn't 'a' done better and been no smarter. and i reckon they must 'a' _been_ sperits--because, because, _you_ know our dogs, and ther' ain't no better; well, them dogs never even got on the _track_ of 'm once! you explain _that_ to me if you can!--_any_ of you!" "well, it does beat--" "laws alive, i never--" "so help me, i wouldn't 'a' be--" "_house_-thieves as well as--" "goodnessgracioussakes, i'd 'a' ben afeard to _live_ in sich a--" "fraid to _live!_--why, i was that scared i dasn't hardly go to bed, or get up, or lay down, or _set_ down, sister ridgeway. why, they'd steal the very--why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster i was in by the time midnight come last night. i hope to gracious if i warn't afraid they'd steal some o' the family! i was just to that pass i didn't have no reasoning faculties no more. it looks foolish enough _now_, in the daytime; but i says to myself, there's my two poor boys asleep, 'way upstairs in that lonesome room, and i declare to goodness i was that uneasy 't i crep' up there and locked 'em in! i _did_. and anybody would. because, you know, when you get scared that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits gets to addling, and you get to doing all sorts o' wild things, and by and by you think to yourself, spos'n i was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't locked, and you--" she stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on me--i got up and took a walk. says i to myself, i can explain better how we come to not be in that room this morning if i go out to one side and study over it a little. so i done it. but i dasn't go fur, or she'd 'a' sent for me. and when it was late in the day the people all went, and then i come in and told her the noise and shooting waked up me and "sid," and the door was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning-rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't never want to try _that_ no more. and then i went on and told her all what i told uncle silas before; and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty harum-scarum lot as fur as she could see; and so, as long as no harm hadn't come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well and she had us still, stead of fretting over what was past and done. so then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of a brown-study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says: "why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and sid not come yet! what _has_ become of that boy?" i see my chance; so i skips up and says: "i'll run right up to town and get him," i says. "no you won't," she says. "you'll stay right wher' you are; _one's_ enough to be lost at a time. if he ain't here to supper, your uncle 'll go." well, he warn't there to supper; so right after supper uncle went. he come back about ten a little bit uneasy; hadn't run across tom's track. aunt sally was a good _deal_ uneasy; but uncle silas he said there warn't no occasion to be--boys will be boys, he said, and you'll see this one turn up in the morning all sound and right. so she had to be satisfied. but she said she'd set up for him awhile anyway, and keep a light burning so he could see it. and then when i went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good i felt mean, and like i couldn't look her in the face; and she set down on the bed and talked with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy sid was, and didn't seem to want to ever stop talking about him; and kept asking me every now and then if i reckoned he could 'a' got lost, or hurt, or maybe drownded, and might be laying at this minute somewheres suffering or dead, and she not by him to help him, and so the tears would drip down silent, and i would tell her that sid was all right, and would be home in the morning, sure; and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say it again, and keep on saying it, because it done her good, and she was in so much trouble. and when she was going away she looked down in my eyes so steady and gentle, and says: "the door ain't going to be locked, tom, and there's the window and the rod; but you'll be good, _won't_ you? and you won't go? for _my_ sake." laws knows i _wanted_ to go bad enough to see about tom, and was all intending to go; but after that i wouldn't 'a' went, not for kingdoms. but she was on my mind and tom was on my mind, so i slept very restless. and twice i went down the rod away in the night, and slipped around front, and see her setting there by her candle in the window with her eyes towards the road and the tears in them; and i wished i could do something for her, but i couldn't, only to swear that i wouldn't never do nothing to grieve her any more. and the third time i waked up at dawn, and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle was most out, and her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep. chapter xlii the old man was uptown again before breakfast, but couldn't get no track of tom; and both of them set at the table thinking, and not saying nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not eating anything. and by and by the old man says: "did i give you the letter?" "what letter?" "the one i got yesterday out of the post-office." "no, you didn't give me no letter." "well, i must 'a' forgot it." so he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he had laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her. she says: "why, it's from st. petersburg--it's from sis." i allowed another walk would do me good; but i couldn't stir. but before she could break it open she dropped it and run--for she see something. and so did i. it was tom sawyer on a mattress; and that old doctor; and jim, in _her_ calico dress, with his hands tied behind him; and a lot of people. i hid the letter behind the first thing that come handy, and rushed. she flung herself at tom, crying, and says: "oh, he's dead, he's dead, i know he's dead!" and tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other, which showed he warn't in his right mind; then she flung up her hands, and says: "he's alive, thank god! and that's enough!" and she snatched a kiss of him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as fast as her tongue could go, every jump of the way. i followed the men to see what they was going to do with jim; and the old doctor and uncle silas followed after tom into the house. the men was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang jim for an example to all the other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away like jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family scared most to death for days and nights. but the others said, don't do it, it wouldn't answer at all; he ain't our nigger, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure. so that cooled them down a little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that hain't done just right is always the very ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of him. they cussed jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two side the head once in a while, but jim never said nothing, and he never let on to know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on him, and chained him again, and not to no bed-leg this time, but to a big staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and both legs, and said he warn't to have nothing but bread and water to eat after this till his owner come, or he was sold at auction because he didn't come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and said a couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every night, and a bulldog tied to the door in the daytime; and about this time they was through with the job and was tapering off with a kind of generl good-by cussing, and then the old doctor comes and takes a look, and says: "don't be no rougher on him than you're obleeged to, because he ain't a bad nigger. when i got to where i found the boy i see i couldn't cut the bullet out without some help, and he warn't in no condition for me to leave to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little worse, and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn't let me come a-nigh him any more, and said if i chalked his raft he'd kill me, and no end of wild foolishness like that, and i see i couldn't do anything at all with him; so i says, i got to have _help_ somehow; and the minute i says it out crawls this nigger from somewheres and says he'll help, and he done it, too, and done it very well. of course i judged he must be a runaway nigger, and there i _was!_ and there i had to stick right straight along all the rest of the day and all night. it was a fix, i tell you! i had a couple of patients with the chills, and of course i'd of liked to run up to town and see them, but i dasn't, because the nigger might get away, and then i'd be to blame; and yet never a skiff come close enough for me to hail. so there i had to stick plumb until daylight this morning; and i never see a nigger that was a better nuss or faithfuler, and yet he was risking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too, and i see plain enough he'd been worked main hard lately. i liked the nigger for that; i tell you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a thousand dollars--and kind treatment, too. i had everything i needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he would 'a' done at home--better, maybe, because it was so quiet; but there i _was_, with both of 'm on my hands, and there i had to stick till about dawn this morning; then some men in a skiff come by, and as good luck would have it the nigger was setting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees sound asleep; so i motioned them in quiet, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble. and the boy being in a kind of a flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice and quiet, and the nigger never made the least row nor said a word from the start. he ain't no bad nigger, gentlemen; that's what i think about him." somebody says: "well, it sounds very good, doctor, i'm obleeged to say." then the others softened up a little, too, and i was mighty thankful to that old doctor for doing jim that good turn; and i was glad it was according to my judgment of him, too; because i thought he had a good heart in him and was a good man the first time i see him. then they all agreed that jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some notice took of it, and reward. so every one of them promised, right out and hearty, that they wouldn't cuss him no more. then they come out and locked him up. i hoped they was going to say he could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water; but they didn't think of it, and i reckoned it warn't best for me to mix in, but i judged i'd get the doctor's yarn to aunt sally somehow or other as soon as i'd got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of me--explanations, i mean, of how i forgot to mention about sid being shot when i was telling how him and me put in that dratted night paddling around hunting the runaway nigger. but i had plenty time. aunt sally she stuck to the sick-room all day and all night, and every time i see uncle silas mooning around i dodged him. next morning i heard tom was a good deal better, and they said aunt sally was gone to get a nap. so i slips to the sick-room, and if i found him awake i reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash. but he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too; and pale, not fire-faced the way he was when he come. so i set down and laid for him to wake. in about half an hour aunt sally comes gliding in, and there i was, up a stump again! she motioned me to be still, and set down by me, and begun to whisper, and said we could all be joyful now, because all the symptoms was first-rate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so long, and looking better and peacefuler all the time, and ten to one he'd wake up in his right mind. so we set there watching, and by and by he stirs a bit, and opened his eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says: "hello!--why, i'm at _home!_ how's that? where's the raft?" "it's all right," i says. "and _jim?_" "the same," i says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. but he never noticed, but says: "good! splendid! _now_ we're all right and safe! did you tell aunty?" i was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says: "about what, sid?" "why, about the way the whole thing was done." "what whole thing?" "why, _the_ whole thing. there ain't but one; how we set the runaway nigger free--me and tom." "good land! set the run--what _is_ the child talking about! dear, dear, out of his head again!" "_no_, i ain't out of my head; i know all what i'm talking about. we _did_ set him free--me and tom. we laid out to do it, and we _done_ it. and we done it elegant, too." he'd got a start, and she never checked him up, just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and i see it warn't no use for _me_ to put in. "why, aunty, it cost us a power of work--weeks of it--hours and hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep. and we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case-knives, and the warming-pan, and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can't think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and one thing or another, and you can't think half the fun it was. and we had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning-rod, and dig the hole into the cabin, and make the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie, and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket--" "mercy sakes!" "--and load up the cabin with rats and snake's and so on, for company for jim; and then you kept tom here so long with the butter in his hat that you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive at us, and i got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and was all safe, and jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and _wasn't_ it bully. aunty!" "well, i never heard the likes of it in all my born days! so it was _you_, you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. i've as good a notion as ever i had in my life to take it out o' you this very minute. to think, here i've been, night after night, a--_you_ just get well once, you young scamp, and i lay i'll tan the old harry out o' both o' ye!" but tom, he _was_ so proud and joyful, he just _couldn't_ hold in, and his tongue just _went_ it--she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she says: "_well_, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it _now_, for mind i tell you if i catch you meddling with him again--" "meddling with _who_ tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised. "with _who?_ why, the runaway nigger, of course. who'd you reckon?" tom looks at me very grave, and says: "tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? hasn't he got away?" "_him?_" says aunt sally; "the runaway nigger? 'deed he hasn't. they've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!" tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills, and sings out to me: "they hain't no _right_ to shut him up! _shove!_--and don't you lose a minute. turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur that walks this earth!" "what _does_ the child mean?" "i mean every word i _say_, aunt sally, and if somebody don't go, _i'll_ go. i've knowed him all his life, and so has tom, there. old miss watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and _said_ so; and she set him free in her will." "then what on earth did _you_ want to set him free for, seeing he was already free?" "well, that _is_ a question, i must say; and _just_ like women! why, i wanted the _adventure_ of it; and i'd 'a' waded neck-deep in blood to--goodness alive, _aunt polly!"_ if she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, i wish i may never! aunt sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried over her, and i found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for _us_, seemed to me. and i peeped out, and in a little while tom's aunt polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at tom over her spectacles--kind of grinding him into the earth, you know. and then she says: "yes, you _better_ turn y'r head away--i would if i was you, tom." "oh, deary me!" says aunt sally; "_is_ he changed so? why, that ain't _tom_, it's sid; tom's--tom's--why, where is tom? he was here a minute ago." "you mean where's huck _finn_--that's what you mean! i reckon i hain't raised such a scamp as my tom all these years not to know him when i _see_ him. that _would_ be a pretty howdy-do. come out from under that bed, huck finn." so i done it. but not feeling brash. aunt sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons i ever see--except one, and that was uncle silas, when he come in and they told it all to him. it kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting sermon that night that gave him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn't 'a' understood it. so tom's aunt polly, she told all about who i was, and what; and i had to up and tell how i was in such a tight place that when mrs. phelps took me for tom sawyer--she chipped in and says, "oh, go on and call me aunt sally, i'm used to it now, and 'taint no need to change"--that when aunt sally took me for tom sawyer i had to stand it--there warn't no other way, and i knowed he wouldn't mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. and so it turned out, and he let on to be sid, and made things as soft as he could for me. and his aunt polly she said tom was right about old miss watson setting jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, tom sawyer had gone and took all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and i couldn't ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he _could_ help a body set a nigger free with his bringing-up. well, aunt polly she said that when aunt sally wrote to her that tom and _sid_ had come all right and safe, she says to herself: "look at that, now! i might have expected it, letting him go off that way without anybody to watch him. so now i got to go and trapse all the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creetur's up to _this_ time, as long as i couldn't seem to get any answer out of you about it." "why, i never heard nothing from you," says aunt sally. "well, i wonder! why, i wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean by sid being here." "well, i never got 'em. sis." aunt polly she turns around slow and severe, and says: "you, tom!" "well--_what?_" he says, kind of pettish. "don't you what _me_, you impudent thing--hand out them letters." "what letters?" "_them_ letters. i be bound, if i have to take a-holt of you i'll--" "they're in the trunk. there, now. and they're just the same as they was when i got them out of the office. i hain't looked into them, i hain't touched them. but i knowed they'd make trouble, and i thought if you warn't in no hurry, i'd--" "well, you _do_ need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. and i wrote another one to tell you i was coming; and i s'pose he--" "no, it come yesterday; i hain't read it yet, but _it's_ all right, i've got that one." i wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but i reckoned maybe it was just as safe to not to. so i never said nothing. chapter the last the first time i catched tom private i asked him what was his idea, time of the evasion?--what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before? and he said, what he had planned in his head from the start, if we got jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft, and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight procession and a brass-band, and then he would be a hero, and so would we. but i reckoned it was about as well the way it was. we had jim out of the chains in no time, and when aunt polly and uncle silas and aunt sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse tom, they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. and we had him up to the sick-room, and had a high talk; and tom give jim forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and jim was pleased most to death and busted out, and says: "_dah_, now, huck, what i tell you?--what i tell you up dah on jackson islan'? i tole you i got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en i _tole_ you i ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich _ag'in;_ en it's come true; en heah she _is! dah_, now! doan' talk to _me_--signs is _signs_, mine i tell you; en i knowed jis' 's well 'at i 'uz gwineter be rich ag'in as i's a-stannin' heah dis minute!" and then tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all three slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for howling adventures amongst the injuns, over in the territory, for a couple of weeks or two; and i says, all right, that suits me, but i ain't got no money for to buy the outfit, and i reckon i couldn't get none from home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and got it all away from judge thatcher and drunk it up. "no, he hain't," tom says; "it's all there yet--six thousand dollars and more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. hadn't when i come away, anyhow." jim says, kind of solemn: "he ain't a-comin' back no mo', huck." i says: "why, jim?" "nemmine why, huck--but he ain't comin' back no mo'." but i kept at him; so at last he says: "doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz a man in dah, kivered up, en i went in en unkivered him and didn' let you come in? well, den, you kin git yo' money when you wants it, kase dat wuz him." tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and i am rotten glad of it, because if i'd 'a' knowed what a trouble it was to make a book i wouldn't 'a' tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more. but i reckon i got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because aunt sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and i can't stand it. i been there before. the end following the color line by the same author our new prosperity seen in germany boys' book of inventions second boys' book of inventions and many stories [illustration: an old black "mammy" with white child] following the color line an account of negro citizenship in the american democracy by ray stannard baker _illustrated_ new york doubleday, page & company all rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the scandinavian copyright, , , by the s. s. mcclure company copyright, , , by the phillips publishing company copyright, , by doubleday, page & company published, october, "i am obliged to confess that i do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of putting off the struggle between the two races in the southern states." --_de tocqueville, "democracy in america"_ ( ) preface my purpose in writing this book has been to make a clear statement of the exact present conditions and relationships of the negro in american life. i am not vain enough to imagine that i have seen all the truth, nor that i have always placed the proper emphasis upon the facts that i here present. every investigator necessarily has his personal equation or point of view. the best he can do is to set down the truth as he sees it, without bating a jot or adding a tittle, and this i have done. i have endeavoured to see every problem, not as a northerner, nor as a southerner, but as an american. and i have looked at the negro, not merely as a menial, as he is commonly regarded in the south, nor as a curiosity, as he is often seen in the north, but as a plain human being, animated with his own hopes, depressed by his own fears, meeting his own problems with failure or success. i have accepted no statement of fact, however generally made, until i was fully persuaded from my own personal investigation that what i heard was really a fact and not a rumour. wherever i have ventured upon conclusions, i claim for them neither infallibility nor originality. they are offered frankly as my own latest and clearest thoughts upon the various subjects discussed. if any man can give me better evidence for the error of my conclusions than i have for the truth of them i am prepared to go with him, and gladly, as far as he can prove his way. and i have offered my conclusions, not in a spirit of controversy, nor in behalf of any party or section of the country, but in the hope that, by inspiring a broader outlook, they may lead, finally, to other conclusions more nearly approximating the truth than mine. while these chapters were being published in the _american magazine_ (one chapter, that on lynching, in _mcclure's magazine_) i received many hundreds of letters from all parts of the country. i acknowledge them gratefully. many of them contained friendly criticisms, suggestions, and corrections, which i have profited by in the revision of the chapters for book publication. especially have the letters from the south, describing local conditions and expressing local points of view, been valuable to me. i wish here, also, to thank the many men and women, south and north, white and coloured, who have given me personal assistance in my inquiries. contents chapter page preface vii part i the negro in the south i. a race riot and after ii. following the colour line in the south: a superficial view of conditions iii. the southern city negro iv. in the black belt: the negro farmer v. race relationships in the country districts part ii the negro in the north vi. following the colour line in the north vii. the negroes' struggle for survival in northern cities part iii the negro in the nation viii. the mulatto: the problem of race mixture ix. lynching, south and north x. an ostracised race in ferment: the conflict of negro parties and negro leaders over methods of dealing with their own problem xi. the negro in politics xii. the black man's silent power xiii. the new southern statesmanship xiv. what to do about the negro--a few conclusions index illustrations an old black "mammy" with white child _frontispiece_ facing page fac-similes of certain atlanta newspapers of september , james h. wallace r. r. wright h. o. tanner rev. h. h. proctor dr. w. f. penn george w. cable showing how the colour line was drawn by the saloons at atlanta, georgia interior of a negro working-man's home, atlanta, georgia interior of a negro home of the poorest sort in indianapolis map showing the black belt where white mill hands live in atlanta, georgia where some of the poorer negroes live in atlanta, georgia a "poor white" family a model negro school old and new cabins for negro tenants on the brown plantation cane syrup kettle chain-gang workers on the roads a type of the country chain-gang negro a negro cabin with evidences of abundance off for the cotton fields ward in a negro hospital at philadelphia studio of a negro sculptress a negro magazine editor's office in philadelphia a "broom squad" of negro boys a type of negro girl typesetter in atlanta mulatto girl student miss cecelia johnson mrs. booker t. washington mrs. robert h. terrell negroes lynched by being burned alive at statesboro, georgia negroes of the criminal type court house and bank in the public square at huntsville, alabama charles w. chesnutt dr. booker t. washington dr. w. e. b. dubois colonel james lewis w. t. vernon ralph w. tyler j. pope brown james k. vardaman senator jeff davis governor hoke smith senator b. r. tillman ex-governor w. j. northen james h. dillard edwin a. alderman a. m. soule d. f. houston george foster peabody p. p. claxton s. c. mitchell judge emory speer edgar gardner murphy dr. h. b. frissell r. c. ogden j. y. joyner _part one_ the negro in the south chapter i a race riot, and after upon the ocean, of antagonism between the white and negro races in this country, there arises occasionally a wave, stormy in its appearance, but soon subsiding into quietude. such a wave was the atlanta riot. its ominous size, greater by far than the ordinary race disturbances which express themselves in lynchings, alarmed the entire country and awakened in the south a new sense of the dangers which threatened it. a description of that spectacular though superficial disturbance, the disaster incident to its fury, and the remarkable efforts at reconstruction will lead the way naturally--as human nature is best interpreted in moments of passion--to a clearer understanding, in future chapters, of the deep and complex race feeling which exists in this country. on the twenty-second day of september, , atlanta had become a veritable social tinder-box. for months the relation of the races had been growing more strained. the entire south had been sharply annoyed by a shortage of labour accompanied by high wages and, paradoxically, by an increasing number of idle negroes. in atlanta the lower class--the "worthless negro"--had been increasing in numbers: it showed itself too evidently among the swarming saloons, dives, and "clubs" which a complaisant city administration allowed to exist in the very heart of the city. crime had increased to an alarming extent; an insufficient and ineffective police force seemed unable to cope with it. with a population of , atlanta had over , arrests in ; in the number increased to , . atlanta had many more arrests than new orleans with nearly three times the population and twice as many negroes; and almost four times as many as milwaukee, wisconsin, a city nearly three times as large. race feeling had been sharpened through a long and bitter political campaign, negro disfranchisement being one of the chief issues under discussion. an inflammatory play called "the clansman," though forbidden by public sentiment in many southern cities, had been given in atlanta and other places with the effect of increasing the prejudice of both races. certain newspapers in atlanta, taking advantage of popular feeling, kept the race issue constantly agitated, emphasising negro crimes with startling headlines. one newspaper even recommended the formation of organisations of citizens in imitation of the ku klux movement of reconstruction days. in the clamour of this growing agitation, the voice of the right-minded white people and industrious, self-respecting negroes was almost unheard. a few ministers of both races saw the impending storm and sounded a warning--to no effect; and within the week before the riot the citizens, the city administration and the courts all woke up together. there were calls for mass-meetings, the police began to investigate the conditions of the low saloons and dives, the country constabulary was increased in numbers, the grand jury was called to meet in special session on monday the th. _prosperity and lawlessness_ but the awakening of moral sentiment in the city, unfortunately, came too late. crime, made more lurid by agitation, had so kindled the fires of hatred that they could not be extinguished by ordinary methods. the best people of atlanta were like the citizens of prosperous northern cities, too busy with money-making to pay attention to public affairs. for atlanta is growing rapidly. its bank clearings jumped from ninety millions in to two hundred and twenty-two millions in , its streets are well paved and well lighted, its street-car service is good, its sky-scrapers are comparable with the best in the north. in other words, it was progressive--few cities i know of more so--but it had forgotten its public duties. within a few months before the riot there had been a number of crimes of worthless negroes against white women. leading negroes, while not one of them with whom i talked wished to protect any negro who was really guilty, asserted that the number of these crimes had been greatly exaggerated and that in special instances the details had been over-emphasised because the criminal was black; that they had been used to further inflame race hatred. i had a personal investigation made of every crime against a white woman committed in the few months before and after the riot. three, charged to white men, attracted comparatively little attention in the newspapers, although one, the offence of a white man named turnadge, was shocking in its details. of twelve such charges against negroes in the six months preceding the riot two were cases of rape, horrible in their details, three were aggravated attempts at rape, three may have been attempts, three were pure cases of fright on the part of the white woman, and in one the white woman, first asserting that a negro had assaulted her, finally confessed attempted suicide. the facts of two of these cases i will narrate--and without excuse for the horror of the details. if we are to understand the true conditions in the south, these things _must_ be told. _story of one negro's crime_ one of the cases was that of mrs. knowles etheleen kimmel, twenty-five years old, wife of a farmer living near atlanta. a mile beyond the end of the street-car line stands a small green bungalow-like house in a lonely spot near the edge of the pine woods. the kimmels who lived there were not southerners by birth but of pennsylvania dutch stock. they had been in the south four or five years, renting their lonesome farm, raising cotton and corn and hopefully getting a little ahead. on the day before the riot a strange rough-looking negro called at the back door of the kimmel home. he wore a soldier's cast-off khaki uniform. he asked a foolish question and went away. mrs. kimmel was worried and told her husband. he, too, was worried--the fear of this crime is everywhere present in the south--and when he went away in the afternoon he asked his nearest neighbour to look out for the strange negro. when he came back a few hours later, he found fifty white men in his yard. he knew what had happened without being told: his wife was under medical attendance in the house. she had been able to give a clear description of the negro: bloodhounds were brought, but the pursuing white men had so obliterated the criminal's tracks that he could not be traced. through information given by a negro a suspect was arrested and nearly lynched before he could be brought to mrs. kimmel for identification; when she saw him she said: "he is not the man." the real criminal was never apprehended. one day, weeks afterward, i found the husband working alone in his field; his wife, to whom the surroundings had become unbearable, had gone away to visit friends. he told me the story hesitatingly. his prospects, he said, were ruined: his neighbours had been sympathetic but he could not continue to live there with the feeling that they all knew. he was preparing to give up his home and lose himself where people did not know his story. i asked him if he favoured lynching, and his answer surprised me. "i've thought about that," he said. "you see, i'm a christian man, or i try to be. my wife is a christian woman. we've talked about it. what good would it do? we should make criminals of ourselves, shouldn't we? no, let the law take its course. when i came here, i tried to help the negroes as much as i could. but many of them won't work even when the wages are high: they won't come when they agree to and when they get a few dollars ahead they go down to the saloons in atlanta. everyone is troubled about getting labour and everyone is afraid of prowling idle negroes. now, the thing has come to me, and it's just about ruined my life." when i came away the poor lonesome fellow followed me half-way up the hill, asking: "now, what would you do?" one more case. one of the prominent florists in atlanta is w. c. lawrence. he is an englishman, whose home is in the outskirts of the city. on the morning of august th his daughter mabel, fourteen years old, and his sister ethel, twenty-five years old, a trained nurse who had recently come from england, went out into the nearby woods to pick ferns. being in broad daylight and within sight of houses, they had no fear. returning along an old confederate breastworks, they were met by a brutal-looking negro with a club in one hand and a stone in the other. he first knocked the little girl down, then her aunt. when the child "came to" she found herself partially bound with a rope. "honey," said the negro, "i want you to come with me." with remarkable presence of mind the child said: "i can't, my leg is broken," and she let it swing limp from the knee. deceived, the negro went back to bind the aunt. mabel, instantly untying the rope, jumped up and ran for help. when he saw the child escaping the negro ran off. [illustration: fac-similes of certain atlanta newspapers of september , showing the sensational news headings] "when i got there," said mr. lawrence, "my sister was lying against the bank, face down. the back of her head had been beaten bloody. the bridge of her nose was cut open, one eye had been gouged out of its socket. my daughter had three bad cuts on her head--thank god, nothing worse to either. but my sister, who was just beginning her life, will be totally blind in one eye, probably in both. her life is ruined." about a month later, through the information of a negro, the criminal was caught, identified by the misses lawrence, and sent to the penitentiary for forty years (two cases), the limit of punishment for attempted criminal assault. in both of these cases arrests were made on the information of negroes. _terror of both white and coloured people_ the effect of a few such crimes as these may be more easily imagined than described. they produced a feeling of alarm which no one who has not lived in such a community can in any wise appreciate. i was astonished in travelling in the south to discover how widely prevalent this dread has become. many white women in atlanta dare not leave their homes alone after dark; many white men carry arms to protect themselves and their families. and even these precautions do not always prevent attacks. but this is not the whole story. everywhere i went in atlanta i heard of the fear of the white people, but not much was said of the terror which the negroes also felt. and yet every negro i met voiced in some way that fear. it is difficult here in the north for us to understand what such a condition means: a whole community namelessly afraid! the better-class negroes have two sources of fear: one of the criminals of their own race--such attacks are rarely given much space in the newspapers--and the other the fear of the white people. my very first impression of what this fear of the negroes might be came, curiously enough, not from negroes but from a fine white woman on whom i called shortly after going south. she told this story: "i had a really terrible experience one evening a few days ago. i was walking along ---- street when i saw a rather good-looking young negro come out of a hallway to the sidewalk. he was in a great hurry, and, in turning suddenly, as a person sometimes will do, he accidentally brushed my shoulder with his arm. he had not seen me before. when he turned and found it was a white woman he had touched, such a look of abject terror and fear came into his face as i hope never again to see on a human countenance. he knew what it meant if i was frightened, called for help, and accused him of insulting or attacking me. he stood still a moment, then turned and ran down the street, dodging into the first alley he came to. it shows, doesn't it, how little it might take to bring punishment upon an innocent man!" the next view i got was through the eyes of one of the able negroes of the south, bishop gaines of the african methodist episcopal church. he is now an old man, but of imposing presence. of wide attainments, he has travelled in europe, he owns much property, and rents houses to white tenants. he told me of services he had held some time before in south georgia. approaching the church one day through the trees, he suddenly encountered a white woman carrying water from a spring. she dropped her pail instantly, screamed, and ran up the path toward her house. "if i had been some negroes," said bishop gaines, "i should have turned and fled in terror; the alarm would have been given, and it is not unlikely that i should have had a posse of white men with bloodhounds on my trail. if i had been caught what would my life have been worth? the woman would have identified me--and what could i have said? but i did not run. i stepped out in the path, held up one hand and said: "'don't worry, madam, i am bishop gaines, and i am holding services here in this church.' so she stopped running and i apologised for having startled her." the negro knows he has little chance to explain, if by accident or ignorance he insults a white woman or offends a white man. an educated negro, one of the ablest of his race, telling me of how a friend of his who by merest chance had provoked a number of half-drunken white men, had been set upon and frightfully beaten, remarked: "it might have been me!" now, i am telling these things just as they look to the negro; it is quite as important, as a problem in human nature, to know how the negro feels and what he says, as it is to know how the white man feels. _how the newspapers fomented the riot_ on the afternoon of the riot the newspapers in flaming headlines chronicled four assaults by negroes on white women. i had a personal investigation made of each of those cases. two of them may have been attempts at assaults, but two palpably were nothing more than fright on the part of both the white woman and the negro. as an instance, in one case an elderly woman, mrs. martha holcombe, going to close her blinds in the evening, saw a negro on the sidewalk. in a terrible fright she screamed. the news was telephoned to the police station, but before the officials could respond, mrs. holcombe telephoned them not to come out. and yet this was one of the "assaults" chronicled in letters five inches high in a newspaper extra. and finally on this hot saturday half-holiday, when the country people had come in by hundreds, when everyone was out of doors, when the streets were crowded, when the saloons had been filled since early morning with white men and negroes, both drinking--certain newspapers in atlanta began to print extras with big headings announcing new assaults on white women by negroes. the atlanta news published five such extras, and newsboys cried them through the city: "third assault." "fourth assault." the whole city, already deeply agitated, was thrown into a veritable state of panic. the news in the extras was taken as truthful; for the city was not in a mood then for cool investigation. calls began to come in from every direction for police protection. a loafing negro in a backyard, who in ordinary times would not have been noticed, became an object of real terror. the police force, too small at best, was thus distracted and separated. in atlanta the proportion of men who go armed continually is very large; the pawnshops of decatur and peters streets, with windows like arsenals, furnish the low class of negroes and whites with cheap revolvers and knives. every possible element was here, then, for a murderous outbreak. the good citizens, white and black, were far away in their homes; the bad men had been drinking in the dives permitted to exist by the respectable people of atlanta; and here they were gathered, by night, in the heart of the city. _the mob gathers_ and, finally, a trivial incident fired the tinder. fear and vengeance generated it: it was marked at first by a sort of rough, half-drunken horseplay, but when once blood was shed, the brute, which is none too well controlled in the best city, came out and gorged itself. once permit the shackles of law and order to be cast off, and men, white or black, christian or pagan, revert to primordial savagery. there is no such thing as an orderly mob. crime had been committed by negroes, but this mob made no attempt to find the criminals: it expressed its blind, unreasoning, uncontrolled race hatred by attacking every man, woman, or boy it saw who had a black face. a lame boot-black, an inoffensive, industrious negro boy, at that moment actually at work shining a man's shoes, was dragged out and cuffed, kicked and beaten to death in the street. another young negro was chased and stabbed to death with jack-knives in the most unspeakably horrible manner. the mob entered barber shops where respectable negro men were at work shaving white customers, pulled them away from their chairs and beat them. cars were stopped and inoffensive negroes were thrown through the windows or dragged out and beaten. they did not stop with killing and maiming; they broke into hardware stores and armed themselves, they demolished not only negro barber shops and restaurants, but they robbed stores kept by white men. [illustration: james h. wallace "the asphalt workers are nearly all coloured. in new york ... the chosen representative who sits with the central federated union of the city is james h. wallace, a coloured man."] [illustration: r. r. wright organiser of the negro state fair in georgia. of full-blooded african descent, his grandmother, who reared him, being an african negro of the mandingo tribe.] [illustration: h. o. tanner one of whose pictures hangs in the luxembourg; winner n. w. harris prize for the best american painting at chicago.] [illustration: rev. h. h. proctor pastor of the first congregational church (coloured), to which belong many of the best coloured families of atlanta.] [illustration: dr. w. f. penn this prosperous negro physician's home in atlanta was visited by the mob.] [illustration: george w. cable chairman of the coloured probation officers of the juvenile court, indianapolis. photograph by sexton & maxwell] of course the mayor came out, and the police force and the fire department, and finally the governor ordered out the militia--to apply that pound of cure which should have been an ounce of prevention. it is highly significant of southern conditions--which the north does not understand--that the first instinct of thousands of negroes in atlanta, when the riot broke out, was not to run away from the white people but to run to them. the white man who takes the most radical position in opposition to the negro race will often be found loaning money to individual negroes, feeding them and their families from his kitchen, or defending "his negroes" in court or elsewhere. all of the more prominent white citizens of atlanta, during the riot, protected and fed many coloured families who ran to them in their terror. even hoke smith, governor-elect of georgia, who is more distrusted by the negroes as a race probably than any other white man in georgia, protected many negroes in his house during the disturbance. in many cases white friends armed negroes and told them to protect themselves. one widow i know of who had a single black servant, placed a shot-gun in his hands and told him to fire on any mob that tried to get him. she trusted him absolutely. southern people possess a real liking, wholly unknown in the north, for individual negroes whom they know. so much for saturday night. sunday was quiescent but nervous--the atmosphere full of the electricity of apprehension. monday night, after a day of alarm and of prowling crowds of men, which might at any moment develop into mobs, the riot broke forth again--in a suburb of atlanta called brownsville. _story of the mob's work in a southern negro town_ when i went out to brownsville, knowing of its bloody part in the riot, i expected to find a typical negro slum. i looked for squalour, ignorance, vice. and i was surprised to find a large settlement of negroes practically every one of whom owned his own home, some of the houses being as attractive without and as well furnished within as the ordinary homes of middle-class white people. near at hand, surrounded by beautiful grounds, were two negro colleges--clark university and gammon theological seminary. the post-office was kept by a negro. there were several stores owned by negroes. the school-house, though supplied with teachers by the county, was built wholly with money personally contributed by the negroes of the neighbourhood, in order that there might be adequate educational facilities for their children. they had three churches and not a saloon. the residents were all of the industrious, property-owning sort, bearing the best reputation among white people who knew them. think, then, of the situation in brownsville during the riot in atlanta. all sorts of exaggerated rumours came from the city. _the negroes of atlanta were being slaughtered wholesale._ a condition of panic fear developed. many of the people of the little town sought refuge in gammon theological seminary, where, packed together, they sat up all one night praying. president bowen did not have his clothes off for days, expecting the mob every moment. he telephoned for police protection on sunday, but none was provided. terror also existed among the families which remained in brownsville; most of the men were armed, and they had decided, should the mob appear, to make a stand in defence of their homes. at last, on monday evening, just at dark, a squad of the county police, led by officer poole, marched into the settlement at brownsville. here, although there had been not the slightest sign of disturbance, they began arresting negroes for being armed. several armed white citizens, who were not officers, joined them. finally, looking up a little street they saw dimly in the next block a group of negro men. part of the officers were left with the prisoners and part went up the street. as they approached the group of negroes, the officers began firing: the negroes responded. officer heard was shot dead; another officer was wounded, and several negroes were killed or injured. the police went back to town with their prisoners. on the way two of the negroes in their charge were shot. a white man's wife, who saw the outrage, being with child, dropped dead of fright. the negroes (all of this is now a matter of court record) declared that they were expecting the mob; that the police--not mounted as usual, not armed as usual, and accompanied by citizens--looked to them in the darkness like a mob. in their fright the firing began. the wildest reports, of course, were circulated. one sent broadcast was that five hundred students of clark university, all armed, had decoyed the police in order to shoot them down. as a matter of fact, the university did not open its fall session until october d, over a week later--and on this night there were just two students on the grounds. the next morning the police and the troops appeared and arrested a very large proportion of the male inhabitants of the town. police officers accompanied by white citizens, entered one negro home, where lay a man named lewis, badly wounded the night before. he was in bed; they opened his shirt, placed their revolvers at his breast, and in cold blood shot him through the body several times in the presence of his relatives. they left him for dead, but he has since recovered. president bowen, of gammon theological seminary, one of the able negroes in atlanta, who had nothing whatever to do with the riot, was beaten over the head by one of the police with his rifle-butt. the negroes were all disarmed, and about sixty of them were finally taken to atlanta and locked up charged with the murder of officer heard. in the brownsville riot four negroes were killed. one was a decent, industrious, though loud-talking, citizen named fambro, who kept a small grocery store and owned two houses besides, which he rented. he had a comfortable home, a wife and one child. another was an inoffensive negro named wilder, seventy years old, a pensioner as a soldier of the civil war, who was well spoken of by all who knew him. he was found--not shot, but murdered by a knife-cut in the abdomen--lying in a woodshed back of fambro's store. mcgruder, a brick mason, who earned $ a day at his trade, and who had laid aside enough to earn his own home, was killed while under arrest by the police; and robinson, an industrious negro carpenter, was shot to death on his way to work tuesday morning after the riot. _results of the riot_ and after the riot in brownsville, what? here was a self-respecting community of hard-working negroes, disturbing no one, getting an honest living. how did the riot affect them? well, it demoralised them, set them back for years. not only were four men killed and several wounded, but sixty of their citizens were in jail. nearly every family had to go to the lawyers, who would not take their cases without money in hand. hence the little homes had to be sold or mortgaged, or money borrowed in some other way to defend those arrested, doctors' bills were to be paid, the undertaker must be settled with. a riot is not over when the shooting stops! and when the cases finally came up in court and all the evidence was brought out every negro went free; but two of the county policemen who had taken part in the shooting, were punished. george muse, one of the foremost merchants of atlanta, who was foreman of the jury which tried the brownsville negroes, said: "we think the negroes were gathered just as white people were in other parts of the town, for the purpose of defending their homes. we were shocked by the conduct which the evidence showed some of the county police had been guilty of." after the riot was over many negro families, terrified and feeling themselves unprotected, sold out for what they could get--i heard a good many pitiful stories of such sudden and costly sacrifices--and left the country, some going to california, some to northern cities. the best and most enterprising are those who go: the worst remain. not only did the negroes leave brownsville, but they left the city itself in considerable numbers. labour was thus still scarcer and wages higher in atlanta because of the riot. _report of a white committee on the riot_ it is significant that not one of the negroes killed and wounded in the riot was of the criminal class. every one was industrious, respectable and law-abiding. a white committee, composed of w. g. cooper, secretary of the chamber of commerce, and george muse, a prominent merchant, backed by the sober citizenship of the town, made an honest investigation and issued a brave and truthful report. here are a few of its conclusions: . among the victims of the mob there was not a single vagrant. . they were earning wages in useful work up to the time of the riot. . they were supporting themselves and their families or dependent relatives. . most of the dead left small children and widows, mothers or sisters with practically no means and very small earning capacity. . the wounded lost from one to eight weeks' time, at cents to $ a day each. . about seventy persons were wounded, and among these there was an immense amount of suffering. in some cases it was prolonged and excruciating pain. . many of the wounded are disfigured, and several are permanently disabled. . most of them were in humble circumstances, but they were honest, industrious and law-abiding citizens and useful members of society. . these statements are true of both white and coloured. . of the wounded, ten are white and sixty are coloured. of the dead, two are white and ten are coloured; two female, and ten male. this includes three killed at brownsville. . wild rumours of a larger number killed have no foundation that we can discover. as the city was paying the funeral expenses of victims and relief was given their families, they had every motive to make known their loss. in one case relatives of a man killed in a broil made fruitless efforts to secure relief. . two persons reported as victims of the riot had no connection with it. one, a negro man, was killed in a broil over a crap game; and another, a negro woman, was killed by her paramour. both homicides occurred at some distance from the scene of the riot. the men who made this brave report did not mince matters. they called murder, murder; and robbery, robbery. read this: . as twelve persons were killed and seventy were murderously assaulted, and as, by all accounts, a number took part in each assault, it is clear that several hundred murderers or would-be murderers are at large in this community. at first, after the riot, there was an inclination in some quarters to say: "well, at any rate, the riot cleared the atmosphere. the negroes have had their lesson. there won't be any more trouble soon." but read the sober conclusions in the committee's report. the riot did not prevent further crime. . although less than three months have passed since the riot, events have already demonstrated that the slaughter of the innocent does not deter the criminal class from committing more crimes. rapes and robbery have been committed in the city during that time. . the slaughter of the innocent does drive away good citizens. from one small neighbourhood twenty-five families have gone. a great many of them were buying homes on the instalment plan. . the crimes of the mob include robbery as well as murder. in a number of cases the property of innocent and unoffending people was taken. furniture was destroyed, small shops were looted, windows were smashed, trunks were burst open, money was taken from the small hoard, and articles of value were appropriated. in the commission of these crimes the victims, both men and women, were treated with unspeakable brutality. . as a result of four days of lawlessness there are in this glad christmas-time widows of both races mourning their husbands, and husbands of both races mourning for their wives; there are orphan children of both races who cry out in vain for faces they will see no more; there are grown men of both races disabled for life, and all this sorrow has come to people who are absolutely innocent of any wrong-doing. in trying to find out exactly the point of view and the feeling of the negroes--which is most important in any honest consideration of conditions--i was handed the following letter, written by a young coloured man, a former resident in atlanta now a student in the north. he is writing frankly to a friend. it is valuable as showing a _real_ point of view--the bitterness, the hopelessness, the distrust. "... it is possible that you have formed at least a good idea of how we feel as the result of the horrible eruption in georgia. i have not spoken to a caucasian on the subject since then. but, listen: how would you feel, if with our history, there came a time when, after speeches and papers and teachings you acquired property and were educated, and were a fairly good man, it were impossible for you to walk the street (for whose maintenance you were taxed) with your sister without being in mortal fear of death if you resented any insult offered to her? how would you feel if you saw a governor, a mayor, a sheriff, whom you could not oppose at the polls, encourage by deed or word or both, a mob of 'best' and worst citizens to slaughter your people in the streets and in their own homes and in their places of business? do you think that you could resist the same wrath that caused god to slay the philistines and the russians to throw bombs? i can resist it, but with each new outrage i am less able to resist it. and yet if i gave way to my feelings i should become just like other men ... of the mob! but i do not ... not quite, and i must hurry through the only life i shall live on earth, tortured by these experiences and these horrible impulses, with no hope of ever getting away from them. they are ever present, like the just god, the devil, and my conscience. "if there were no such thing as christianity we should be hopeless." besides this effect on the negroes the riot for a week or more practically paralysed the city of atlanta. factories were closed, railroad cars were left unloaded in the yards, the street-car system was crippled, and there was no cab-service (cab-drivers being negroes), hundreds of servants deserted their places, the bank clearings slumped by hundreds of thousands of dollars, the state fair, then just opening, was a failure. it was, indeed, weeks before confidence was fully restored and the city returned to its normal condition. _who made up the mob?_ one more point i wish to make before taking up the extraordinary reconstructive work which followed the riot. i have not spoken of the men who made up the mob. we know the dangerous negro class--after all a very small proportion of the entire negro population. there is a corresponding low class of whites quite as illiterate as the negroes. the poor white hates the negro, and the negro dislikes the poor white. it is in these lower strata of society, where the races rub together in unclean streets, that the fire is generated. decatur and peters streets, with their swarming saloons and dives, furnish the point of contact. i talked with many people who saw the mobs at different times, and the universal testimony was that it was made up largely of boys and young men, and of the low criminal and semi-criminal class. the ignorant negro and the uneducated white; there lies the trouble! this idea that , people of atlanta--respectable, law-abiding, good citizens, white and black--should be disgraced before the world by a few hundred criminals was what aroused the strong, honest citizenship of atlanta to vigorous action. the riot brought out all that was worst in human nature; the reconstruction brought out all that was best and finest. almost the first act of the authorities was to close every saloon in the city, afterward revoking all the licences--and for two weeks no liquor was sold in the city. the police, at first accused of not having done their best in dealing with the mob, arrested a good many white rioters, and judge broyles, to show that the authorities had no sympathy with such disturbers of the peace, sent every man brought before him, twenty-four in all, to the chain gang for the largest possible sentence, without the alternative of a fine. the grand jury met and boldly denounced the mob; its report said in part: "that the sensationalism of the afternoon papers in the presentation of the criminal news to the public prior to the riots of saturday night, especially in the case of the atlanta _news_, deserves our severest condemnation." but the most important and far-reaching effect of the riot was in arousing the strong men of the city. it struck at the pride of those men of the south, it struck at their sense of law and order, it struck at their business interests. on sunday following the first riot a number of prominent men gathered at the piedmont hotel, and had a brief discussion; but it was not until tuesday afternoon, when the worst of the news from brownsville had come in, that they gathered in the court-house with the serious intent of stopping the riot at all costs. most of the prominent men of atlanta were present. sam d. jones, president of the chamber of commerce, presided. one of the first speeches was made by charles t. hopkins, who had been the leading spirit in the meetings on sunday and monday. he expressed with eloquence the humiliation which atlanta felt. "saturday evening at eight o'clock," he said, "the credit of atlanta was good for any number of millions of dollars in new york or boston or any financial centre; to-day we couldn't borrow fifty cents. the reputation we have been building up so arduously for years has been swept away in two short hours. not by men who have made and make atlanta, not by men who represent the character and strength of our city, but by hoodlums, understrappers and white criminals. innocent negro men have been struck down for no crime whatever, while peacefully enjoying the life and liberty guaranteed to every american citizen. the negro race is a child race. we are a strong race, their guardians. we have boasted of our superiority and we have now sunk to this level--we have shed the blood of our helpless wards. christianity and humanity demand that we treat the negro fairly. he is here, and here to stay. he only knows how to do those things we teach him to do; it is our christian duty to protect him. i for one, and i believe i voice the best sentiment of this city, am willing to lay down my life rather than to have the scenes of the last few days repeated." _the plea of a negro physician_ in the midst of the meeting a coloured man arose rather doubtfully. he was, however, promptly recognized as dr. w. f. penn, one of the foremost coloured physicians of atlanta, a graduate of yale college--a man of much influence among his people. he said that he had come to ask the protection of the white men of atlanta. he said that on the day before a mob had come to his home; that ten white men, some of whose families he knew and had treated professionally, had been sent into his house to look for concealed arms; that his little girl had run to them, one after another, and begged them not to shoot her father; that his life and the lives of his family had afterward been threatened, so that he had had to leave his home; that he had been saved from a gathering mob by a white man in an automobile. "what shall we do?" he asked the meeting--and those who heard his speech said that the silence was profound. "we have been disarmed: how shall we protect our lives and property? if living a sober, industrious, upright life, accumulating property and educating his children as best he knows how, is not the standard by which a coloured man can live and be protected in the south, what is to become of him? if the kind of life i have lived isn't the kind you want, shall i leave and go north? "when we aspire to be decent and industrious we are told that we are bad examples to other coloured men. tell us what your standards are for coloured men. what are the requirements under which we may live and be protected? what shall we do?" when he had finished, colonel a. j. mcbride, a real estate owner and a confederate veteran, arose and said with much feeling that he knew dr. penn and that he was a good man, and that atlanta meant to protect such men. "if necessary," said colonel mcbride, "i will go out and sit on his porch with a rifle." such was the spirit of this remarkable meeting. mr. hopkins proposed that the white people of the city express their deep regret for the riot and show their sympathy for the negroes who had suffered at the hands of the mob by raising a fund of money for their assistance. then and there $ , was subscribed, to which the city afterward added $ , . but this was not all. these men, once thoroughly aroused, began looking to the future, to find some new way of preventing the recurrence of such disturbances. a committee of ten, appointed to work with the public officials in restoring order and confidence, consisted of some of the foremost citizens of atlanta: charles t. hopkins, sam d. jones, president of the chamber of commerce; l. z. rosser, president of the board of education; j. w. english, president of the fourth national bank; forrest adair, a leading real estate owner; captain w. d. ellis, a prominent lawyer; a. b. steele, a wealthy lumber merchant; m. l. collier, a railroad man; john e. murphy, capitalist; and h. y. mccord, president of a wholesale grocery house. one of the first and most unexpected things that this committee did was to send for several of the leading negro citizens of atlanta: the rev. h. h. proctor, b. j. davis, editor of the _independent_, a negro journal, the rev. e. p. johnson, the rev. e. r. carter, the rev. j. a. rush, and bishop holsey. _committees of the two races meet_ this was the first important occasion in the south upon which an attempt was made to get the two races together for any serious consideration of their differences. they held a meeting. the white men asked the negroes, "what shall we do to relieve the irritation?" the negroes said that they thought that coloured men were treated with unnecessary roughness on the street-cars and by the police. the white members of the committee admitted that this was so and promised to take the matter up immediately with the street-car company and the police department, which was done. the discussion was harmonious. after the meeting mr. hopkins said: "i believe those negroes understood the situation better than we did. i was astonished at their intelligence and diplomacy. they never referred to the riot: they were looking to the future. i didn't know that there were such negroes in atlanta." out of this beginning grew the atlanta civic league. knowing that race prejudice was strong, mr. hopkins sent out , cards, inviting the most prominent men in the city to become members. to his surprise , immediately accepted, only two refused, and those anonymously; men not formally invited were also taken as members. the league thus had the great body of the best citizens of atlanta behind it. at the same time mr. proctor and his committee of negroes had organised a coloured co-operative civic league, which secured a membership of , of the best coloured men in the city. a small committee of negroes met a small committee of the white league. fear was expressed that there would be another riotous outbreak during the christmas holidays, and the league proceeded with vigour to prevent it. new policemen were put on, and the committee worked with judge broyles and judge roan in issuing statements warning the people against lawlessness. they secured an agreement among the newspapers not to publish sensational news; the sheriff agreed, if necessary, to swear in some of the best men in town as extra deputies; they asked that saloons be closed at four o'clock on christmas eve; and through the negro committee, they brought influence to bear to keep all coloured people off the streets. when two county police got drunk at brownsville and threatened mrs. fambro, the wife of one of the negroes killed in the riot, a member of the committee, mr. seeley, publisher of the _georgian_, informed the sheriff and sent his automobile to brownsville, where the policemen were arrested and afterward discharged from the force. as a result, it was the quietest christmas atlanta had had in years. but the most important of all the work done, because of the spectacular interest it aroused, was the defence of a negro charged with an assault upon a white woman. it is an extraordinary and dramatic story. _does a riot prevent further crime?_ although many people said that the riot would prevent any more negro crime, several attacks on white women occurred within a few weeks afterward. on november th mrs. j. d. camp, living in the suburbs of atlanta, was attacked in broad daylight in her home and brutally assaulted by a negro, who afterward robbed the house and escaped. though the crime was treated with great moderation by the newspapers, public feeling was intense. a negro was arrested, charged with the crime. mr. hopkins and his associates believed that the best way to secure justice and prevent lynchings was to have a prompt trial. accordingly, they held a conference with judge roan, as a result of which three lawyers in the city, mr. hopkins, l. z. rosser, and j. e. mcclelland, were appointed to defend the accused negro, serving without pay. a trial-jury, composed of twelve citizens, among the most prominent in atlanta, was called--one of the ablest juries ever drawn in georgia. there was a determination to have immediate and complete justice. the negro arrested, one joe glenn, had been completely identified by mrs. camp as her assailant. although having no doubt of his guilt, the attorneys went at the case thoroughly. the first thing they did was to call in two members of the negro committee, mr. davis and mr. carter. these men went to the jail and talked with glenn, and afterward they all visited the scene of the crime. they found that glenn, who was a man fifty years old with grandchildren, bore an excellent reputation. he rented a small farm about two miles from mrs. camp's home and had some property; he was sober and industrious. after making a thorough examination and getting all the evidence they could, they came back to atlanta, persuaded, in spite of the fact that the negro had been positively identified by mrs. camp--which in these cases is usually considered conclusive--that glenn was not guilty. it was a most dramatic trial; at first, when mrs. camp was placed on the stand she failed to identify glenn; afterward, reversing herself she broke forth into a passionate denunciation of him. but after the evidence was all in, the jury retired, and reported two minutes later with a verdict "not guilty." remarkably enough, just before the trial was over the police informed the court that another negro, named will johnson, answering mrs. camp's description, had been arrested, charged with the crime. he was subsequently identified by mrs. camp. without this energetic defence, an innocent, industrious negro would certainly have been hanged--or if the mob had been ahead of the police, as it usually is, he would have been lynched. but what of glenn afterward? when the jury left the box mr. hopkins turned to glenn and said: "well, joe, what do you think of the case?" he replied: "boss i 'spec's they will hang me, for that lady said i was the man, but they won't hang me, will they, 'fore i sees my wife and chilluns again?" he was kept in the tower that night and the following day for protection against a possible lynching. plans were made by his attorneys to send him secretly out of the city to the home of a farmer in alabama, whom they could trust with the story. glenn's wife was brought to visit the jail and glenn was told of the plans for his safety, and instructed to change his name and keep quiet until the feeling of the community could be ascertained. a ticket was purchased by his attorneys, with a new suit of clothes, hat, and shoes. he was taken out of jail about midnight under a strong guard, and safely placed on the train. from that day to this he has never been heard of. he did not go to alabama. the poor creature, with the instinct of a hunted animal, did not dare after all to trust the white men who had befriended him. he is a fugitive, away from his family, not daring, though innocent, to return to his home. _other reconstruction movements_ another strong movement also sprung into existence. its inspiration was religious. ministers wrote a series of letters to the atlanta _constitution_. clark howell, its editor, responded with an editorial entitled "shall we blaze the trail?" w. j. northen, ex-governor of georgia, and one of the most highly respected men in the state, took up the work, asking himself, as he says: "what am i to do, who have to pray every night?" he answered that question by calling a meeting at the coloured y. m. c. a. building, where some twenty white men met an equal number of negroes, mostly preachers, and held a prayer meeting. the south still looks to its ministers for leadership--and they really lead. the sermons of men like the rev. john e. white, the rev. c. b. wilmer, the rev. w. w. landrum, who have spoken with power and ability against lawlessness and injustice to the negro, have had a large influence in the reconstruction movement. ex-governor northen travelled through the state of georgia, made a notable series of speeches, urged the establishment of law and order organisations, and met support wherever he went. he talked against mob-law and lynching in plain language. here are some of the things he said: "we shall never settle this until we give absolute justice to the negro. we are not now doing justice to the negro in georgia. "get into contact with the best negroes; there are plenty of good negroes in georgia. what we must do is to get the good white folks to leaven the bad white folks and the good negroes to leaven the bad negroes." "there must be no aristocracy of crime: a white fiend is as much to be dreaded as a black brute." these movements did not cover specifically, it will be observed, the enormously difficult problems of politics, and the political relationships of the races, nor the subject of negro education, nor the most exasperating of all the provocatives--those problems which arise from human contact in street cars, railroad trains, and in life generally. that they had to meet the greatest difficulties in their work is shown by such an editorial as the following, published december th by the atlanta _evening news_: no law of god or man can hold back the vengeance of our white men upon such a criminal [the negro who attacks a white woman]. if necessary, we will double and treble and quadruple the law of moses, and hang off-hand the criminal, or failing to find that a remedy, we will hang two, three, or four of the negroes nearest to the crime, until the crime is no longer done or feared in all this southern land that we inhabit and love. on january , , the newspaper which published this editorial went into the hands of a receiver--its failure being due largely to the strong public sentiment against its course before and during the riot. after the excitement of the riot and the evil results which followed it began to disappear it was natural that the reconstruction movements should quiet down. ex-governor northen continued his work for many months and is indeed, still continuing it: and there is no doubt that his campaigns have had a wide influence. the feeling that the saloons and dives of atlanta were partly responsible for the riot was a powerful factor in the anti-saloon campaign which took place in and resulted in closing every saloon in the state of georgia on january , . and the riot and the revulsion which followed it will combine to make a recurrence of such a disturbance next to impossible. chapter ii following the colour line in the south before entering upon a discussion of the more serious aspects of the negro question in the south, it may prove illuminating if i set down, briefly, some of the more superficial evidences of colour line distinctions in the south as they impress the investigator. the present chapter consists of a series of sketches from my note-books giving the earliest and freshest impressions of my studies in the south. when i first went south i expected to find people talking about the negro, but i was not at all prepared to find the subject occupying such an overshadowing place in southern affairs. in the north we have nothing at all like it; no question which so touches every act of life, in which everyone, white or black, is so profoundly interested. in the north we are mildly concerned in many things; the south is overwhelmingly concerned in this one thing. and this is not surprising, for the negro in the south is both the labour problem and the servant question; he is preëminently the political issue, and his place, socially, is of daily and hourly discussion. a negro minister i met told me a story of a boy who went as a sort of butler's assistant in the home of a prominent family in atlanta. his people were naturally curious about what went on in the white man's house. one day they asked him: "what do they talk about when they're eating?" the boy thought a moment; then he said: "mostly they discusses us culled folks." _what negroes talk about_ the same consuming interest exists among the negroes. a very large part of their conversation deals with the race question. i had been at the piedmont hotel only a day or two when my negro waiter began to take especially good care of me. he flecked off imaginary crumbs and gave me unnecessary spoons. finally, when no one was at hand, he leaned over and said: "i understand you're down here to study the negro problem." "yes," i said, a good deal surprised. "how did you know it?" "well, sir," he replied, "we've got ways of knowing things." he told me that the negroes had been much disturbed ever since the riot and that he knew many of them who wanted to go north. "the south," he said, "is getting to be too dangerous for coloured people." his language and pronunciation were surprisingly good. i found that he was a college student, and that he expected to study for the ministry. "do you talk much about these things among yourselves?" i asked. "we don't talk about much else," he said. "it's sort of life and death with us." another curious thing happened not long afterward. i was lunching with several fine southern men, and they talked, as usual, with the greatest freedom in the full hearing of the negro waiters. somehow, i could not help watching to see if the negroes took any notice of what was said. i wondered if they were sensitive. finally, i put the question to one of my friends: "oh," he said, "we never mind them; they don't care." one of the waiters instantly spoke up: "no, don't mind me; i'm only a block of wood." _first views of the negroes_ i set out from the hotel on the morning of my arrival to trace the colour line as it appears, outwardly, in the life of such a town. atlanta is a singularly attractive place, as bright and new as any western city. sherman left it in ashes at the close of the war; the old buildings and narrow streets were swept away and a new city was built, which is now growing in a manner not short of astonishing. it has , to , inhabitants, about a third of whom are negroes, living in more or less detached quarters in various parts of the city, and giving an individuality to the life interesting enough to the unfamiliar northerner. a great many of them are always on the streets far better dressed and better-appearing than i had expected to see--having in mind, perhaps, the tattered country specimens of the penny postal cards. crowds of negroes were at work mending the pavement, for the italian and slav have not yet appeared in atlanta, nor indeed to any extent anywhere in the south. i stopped to watch a group of them. a good deal of conversation was going on, here and there a negro would laugh with great good humour, and several times i heard a snatch of a song: much jollier workers than our grim foreigners, but evidently not working so hard. a fire had been built to heat some of the tools, and a black circle of negroes were gathered around it like flies around a drop of molasses and they were all talking while they warmed their shins--evidently having plenty of leisure. as i continued down the street, i found that all the drivers of waggons and cabs were negroes; i saw negro newsboys, negro porters, negro barbers, and it being a bright day, many of them were in the street--on the sunny side. i commented that evening to some southern people i met, on the impression, almost of jollity, given by the negro workers i had seen. one of the older ladies made what seemed to me a very significant remark. "they don't sing as they used to," she said. "you should have known the old darkeys of the plantation. every year, it seems to me, they have been losing more and more of their care-free good humour. i sometimes feel that i don't know them any more. since the riot they have grown so glum and serious that i'm free to say i'm scared of them!" one of my early errands that morning led me into several of the great new office buildings, which bear testimony to the extraordinary progress of the city. and here i found one of the first evidences of the colour line for which i was looking. in both buildings, i found a separate elevator for coloured people. in one building, signs were placed reading: for whites only in another i copied this sign: this car for coloured passengers, freight, express and packages curiously enough, as giving an interesting point of view, an intelligent negro with whom i was talking a few days later asked me: "have you seen the elevator sign in the century building?" i said i had. "how would you like to be classed with 'freight, express and packages'?" i found that no negro ever went into an elevator devoted to white people, but that white people often rode in cars set apart for coloured people. in some cases the car for negroes is operated by a white man, and in other cases, all the elevators in a building are operated by coloured men. this is one of the curious points of industrial contact in the south which somewhat surprise the northern visitor. in the north a white workman will often refuse to work with a negro; in the south, while the social prejudice is strong, negroes and whites work together side by side in many kinds of employment. i had an illustration in point not long afterward. passing the post office, i saw several mail-carriers coming out, some white, some black, talking and laughing, with no evidence, at first, of the existence of any colour line. interested to see what the real condition was, i went in and made inquiries. a most interesting and significant condition developed. i found that the postmaster, who is a wise man, sent negro carriers up peachtree and other fashionable streets, occupied by wealthy white people, while white carriers were assigned to beats in the mill districts and other parts of town inhabited by the poorer classes of white people. "you see," said my informant, "the peachtree people know how to treat negroes. they really prefer a negro carrier to a white one; it's natural for them to have a negro doing such service. but if we sent negro carriers down into the mill district they might get their heads knocked off." then he made a philosophical observation: "if we had only the best class of white folks down here and the industrious negroes, there wouldn't be any trouble." _the jim crow car_ one of the points in which i was especially interested was the "jim crow" regulations, that is, the system of separation of the races in street cars and railroad trains. next to the question of negro suffrage, i think the people of the north have heard more of the jim crow legislation than of anything else connected with the negro problem. the street car is an excellent place for observing the points of human contact between the races, betraying as it does every shade of feeling upon the part of both. in almost no other relationship do the races come together, physically, on anything like a common footing. in their homes and in ordinary employment, they meet as master and servant; but in the street cars they touch as free citizens, each paying for the right to ride, the white not in a place of command, the negro without an obligation of servitude. street-car relationships are, therefore, symbolic of the new conditions. a few years ago the negro came and went in the street cars in most cities and sat where he pleased, but gradually jim crow laws or local regulations were passed, forcing him into certain seats at the back of the car. while i was in atlanta, the newspapers reported two significant new developments in the policy of separation. in savannah jim crow ordinances have gone into effect for the first time, causing violent protestations on the part of the negroes and a refusal by many of them to use the cars at all. montgomery, ala., about the same time, went one step further and demanded, not separate seats in the same car, but entirely separate cars for whites and blacks. there could be no better visible evidence of the increasing separation of the races, and of the determination of the white man to make the negro "keep his place," than the evolution of the jim crow regulations. i was curious to see how the system worked out in atlanta. over the door of each car, i found this sign: white people will seat from front of car toward the back and colored people from rear toward front sure enough, i found the white people in front and the negroes behind. as the sign indicates, there is no definite line of division between the white seats and the black seats, as in many other southern cities. this very absence of a clear demarcation is significant of many relationships in the south. the colour line is drawn, but neither race knows just where it is. indeed, it can hardly be definitely drawn in many relationships, because it is constantly changing. this uncertainty is a fertile source of friction and bitterness. the very first time i was on a car in atlanta, i saw the conductor--all conductors are white--ask a negro woman to get up and take a seat farther back in order to make a place for a white man. i have also seen white men requested to leave the negro section of the car. at one time, when i was on a car the conductor shouted: "heh, you nigger, get back there," which the negro, who had taken a seat too far forward, proceeded hastily to do. no other one point of race contact is so much and so bitterly discussed among the negroes as the jim crow car. i don't know how many negroes replied to my question: "what is the chief cause of friction down here?" with a complaint of their treatment on street cars and in railroad trains. _why the negro objects to the jim crow car_ fundamentally, of course they object to any separation which gives them inferior accommodations. this point of view--and i am trying to set down every point of view, both coloured and white, exactly as i find it, is expressed in many ways. "we pay first-class fare," said one of the leading negroes in atlanta, "exactly as the white man does, but we don't get first-class service. i say it isn't fair." in answer to this complaint, the white man says: "the negro is inferior, he must be made to keep his place. give him a chance and he assumes social equality, and that will lead to an effort at intermarriage and amalgamation of the races. the anglo-saxon will never stand for that." one of the first complaints made by the negroes after the riot, was of rough and unfair treatment on the street cars. the committee admitted that the negroes were not always well treated on the cars, and promised to improve conditions. charles t. hopkins, a leader in the civic league and one of the prominent lawyers of the city, told me that he believed the negroes should be given their definite seats in every car; he said that he personally made it a practice to stand up rather than to take any one of the four back seats, which he considered as belonging to the negroes. two other leading men, on a different occasion, told me the same thing. one result of the friction over the jim crow regulations is that many negroes ride on the cars as little as possible. one prominent negro i met said he never entered a car, and that he had many friends who pursued the same policy; he said that negro street car excursions, familiar a few years ago, had entirely ceased. it is significant of the feeling that one of the features of the atlanta riot was an attack on the street cars in which all negroes were driven out of their seats. one negro woman was pushed through an open window, and, after falling to the pavement, she was dragged by the leg across the sidewalk and thrown through a shop window. in another case when the mob stopped a car the motorman, instead of protecting his passengers, went inside and beat down a negro with his brass control-lever. _story of an encounter on a street car_ i heard innumerable stories from both white people and negroes of encounters in the street cars. dr. w. f. penn, one of the foremost negro physicians of the city, himself partly white, a graduate of yale college, told me of one occasion in which he entered a car and found there mrs. crogman, wife of the coloured president of clark university. mrs. crogman is a mulatto so light of complexion as to be practically undistinguishable from white people. dr. penn, who knew her well, sat down beside her and began talking. a white man who occupied a seat in front with his wife turned and said: "here, you nigger, get out of that seat. what do you mean by sitting down with a white woman?" dr. penn replied somewhat angrily: "it's come to a pretty pass when a coloured man cannot sit with a woman of his own race in his own part of the car." the white man turned to his wife and said: "here, take these bundles. i'm going to thrash that nigger." in half a minute the car was in an uproar, the two men struggling. fortunately the conductor and motorman were quickly at hand, and dr. penn slipped off the car. conditions on the railroad trains, while not resulting so often in personal encounters, are also the cause of constant irritation. when i came south, i took particular pains to observe the arrangement on the trains. in some cases negroes are given entire cars at the front of the train, at other times they occupy the rear end of a combination coach and baggage car, which is used in the north as a smoking compartment. the complaint here is that, while the negro is required to pay first-class fare, he is provided with second-class accommodations. well-to-do negroes who can afford to travel, also complain that they are not permitted to engage sleeping-car berths. booker t. washington usually takes a compartment where he is entirely cut off from the white passengers. some other negroes do the same thing, although they are often refused even this expensive privilege. railroad officials with whom i talked, and it is important to hear what they say, said that it was not only a question of public opinion--which was absolutely opposed to any intermingling of the races in the cars--but that negro travel in most places was small compared with white travel, that the ordinary negro was unclean and careless, and that it was impractical to furnish them the same accommodations, even though it did come hard on a few educated negroes. they said that when there was a delegation of negroes, enough to fill an entire sleeping car, they could always get accommodations. all of which gives a glimpse of the enormous difficulties accompanying the separation of the races in the south. another interesting point significant of tendencies came early to my attention. they had recently finished at atlanta one of the finest railroad stations in this country. the ordinary depot in the south has two waiting-rooms of about the same size, one for whites and one for negroes. but when this new station was built the whole front was given up to white people, and the negroes were assigned a side entrance, and a small waiting-room. prominent coloured men regarded it as a new evidence of the crowding out of the negro, the further attempt to give him unequal accommodations, to handicap him in his struggle for survival. a delegation was sent to the railroad people to protest, but to no purpose. result: further bitterness. there are in the station two lunch-rooms, one for whites, one for negroes. a leading coloured man said to me: "no negro goes to the lunch-room in the station who can help it. we don't like the way we have been treated." _a negro boycott_ of course this was an unusually intelligent coloured man, and he spoke for his own sort; how far the same feeling of a race consciousness strong enough to carry out such a boycott as this--and it is like the boycott of a labour union--actuates the masses of ignorant negroes is a question upon which i hope to get more light as i proceed. i have already heard more than one coloured leader complain that negroes do not stand together. and a white planter, whom i met in the hotel, said a significant thing along this very line: "if once the negroes got together and saved their money, they'd soon own the country, but they can't do it, and they never will." after i had begun to trace the colour line i found evidences of it everywhere--literally in every department of life. in the theatres, negroes never sit downstairs, but the galleries are black with them. of course, white hotels and restaurants are entirely barred to negroes, with the result that coloured people have their own eating and sleeping places, many of them inexpressibly dilapidated and unclean. "sleepers wanted" is a familiar sign in atlanta, giving notice of places where for a few cents a negro can find a bed or a mattress on the floor, often in a room where there are many other sleepers, sometimes both men and women in the same room crowded together in a manner both unsanitary and immoral. no good public accommodations exist for the educated or well-to-do negro in atlanta, although other cities are developing good negro hotels. indeed one cannot long remain in the south without being impressed with extreme difficulties which beset the exceptional coloured man. [illustration: companion pictures showing how the colour line was drawn by the saloons at atlanta, georgia. many of the saloons for negroes were kept by foreigners, usually jews.] in slavery time many negroes attended white churches and negro children were often taught by white women. now, a negro is never (or very rarely) seen in a white man's church. once since i have been in the south, i saw a very old negro woman, some much-loved mammy, perhaps--sitting down in front near the pulpit, but that is the only exception to the rule that has come to my attention. negroes are not wanted in white churches. consequently the coloured people have some sixty churches of their own in atlanta. of course, the schools are separate, and have been ever since the civil war. in one of the parks of atlanta i saw this sign: no negroes allowed in this park _colour line in the public library_ a story significant of the growing separation of the races is told about the public library at atlanta, which no negro is permitted to enter. carnegie gave the money for building it, and when the question came up as to the support of it by the city, the inevitable colour question arose. leading negroes asserted that their people should be allowed admittance, that they needed such an educational advantage even more than white people, and that they were to be taxed their share--even though it was small--for buying the books and maintaining the building. they did not win their point of course, but mr. carnegie proposed a solution of the difficulty by offering more money to build a negro branch library, provided the city would give the land and provide for its support. the city said to the negroes: "you contribute the land and we will support the library." influential negroes at once arranged for buying and contributing a site for the library. then the question of control arose. the negroes thought that inasmuch as they gave the land and the building was to be used entirely for coloured people, they should have one or two members on the board of control. this the city officials, who had charge of the matter, would not hear of; result, the negroes would not give the land, and the branch library has never been built. right in this connection: while i was in atlanta, the art school, which in the past has often used negro models, decided to draw the colour line there, too, and no longer employ them. formerly negroes and white men went to the same saloons, and drank at the same bars, as they do now, i am told, in some parts of the south. in a few instances, in atlanta, there were negro saloon-keepers, and many negro bartenders. the first step toward separation was to divide the bar, the upper end for white men, the lower for negroes. after the riot, by a new ordinance no saloon was permitted to serve both white and coloured men. consequently, going along decatur street, one sees the saloons designated by conspicuous signs:[ ] "whites only" "coloured only" and when the negro suffers the ordinary consequences of a prolonged visit to decatur street, and finds himself in the city prison, he is separated there, too, from the whites. and afterward in court, if he comes to trial, two bibles are provided; he may take his oath on one; the other is for the white man. when he dies he is buried in a separate cemetery. one curious and enlightening example of the infinite ramifications of the colour line was given me by mr. logan, secretary of the atlanta associated charities, which is supported by voluntary contributions. one day, after the riot, a subscriber called mr. logan on the telephone and said: "do you help negroes in your society?" "why, yes, occasionally," said mr. logan. "what do you do that for?" "a negro gets hungry and cold like anybody else," answered mr. logan. "well, you can strike my name from your subscription list. i won't give any of my money to a society that helps negroes." _psychology of the south_ now, this sounds rather brutal, but behind it lies the peculiar psychology of the south. this very man who refused to contribute to the associated charities, may have fed several negroes from his kitchen and had a number of negro pensioners who came to him regularly for help. it was simply amazing to me, considering the bitterness of racial feeling, to see how lavish many white families are in giving food, clothing, and money to individual negroes whom they know. a negro cook often supports her whole family, including a lazy husband, on what she gets daily from the white man's kitchen. in some old families the "basket habit" of the negroes is taken for granted; in the newer ones, it is, significantly, beginning to be called stealing, showing that the old order is passing and that the negro is being held more and more strictly to account, not as a dependent vassal, but as a moral being, who must rest upon his own responsibility. and often a negro of the old sort will literally bulldoze his hereditary white protector into the loan of quarters and half dollars, which both know will never be paid back. mr. brittain, superintendent of schools in fulton county, gave me an incident in point. a big negro with whom he was wholly unacquainted came to his office one day, and demanded--he did not ask, but demanded--a job. "what's your name?" asked the superintendent. "marion luther brittain," was the reply. "that sounds familiar," said mr. brittain--it being, indeed, his own name. "yas, sah. ah'm the son of yo' ol' mammy." in short, marion luther had grown up on the old plantation; it was the spirit of the hereditary vassal demanding the protection and support of the hereditary baron, and he got it, of course. the negro who makes his appeal on the basis of this old relationship finds no more indulgent or generous friend than the southern white man, indulgent to the point of excusing thievery and other petty offences, but the moment he assumes or demands any other relationship or stands up as an independent citizen, the white men--at least some white men--turn upon him with the fiercest hostility. the incident of the associated charities may now be understood. it was not necessarily cruelty to a cold or hungry negro that inspired the demand of the irate subscriber, but the feeling that the associated charities helped negroes and whites on the same basis, as men; that, therefore, it encouraged "social equality," and that, therefore, it was to be stopped. most of the examples so far given are along the line of social contact, where, of course, the repulsion is intense. negroes and whites can go to different schools, churches, and saloons, and sit in different street cars, and still live pretty comfortably. but the longer i remain in the south, the more clearly i come to understand how wide and deep, in other, less easily discernible ways, the chasm between the races is becoming. _the new racial consciousness among negroes_ one of the natural and inevitable results of the effort of the white man to set the negro off, as a race, by himself, is to awaken in him a new consciousness--a sort of racial consciousness. it drives the negroes together for defence and offence. many able negroes, some largely of white blood, cut off from all opportunity of success in the greater life of the white man, become of necessity leaders of their own people. and one of their chief efforts consists in urging negroes to work together and to stand together. in this they are only developing the instinct of defence against the white man which has always been latent in the race. this instinct exhibits itself in the way in which the mass of negroes sometimes refuse to turn over a criminal of their colour to white justice; it is like the instinctive clannishness of the highland scotch or the peasant irish. i don't know how many southern people have told me in different ways of how extremely difficult it is to get at the real feeling of a negro, to make him tell what goes on in his clubs and churches or in his innumerable societies. a southern woman told me of a cook who had been in her service for nineteen years. the whole family really loved the old servant: her mistress made her a confidant, in the way of the old south, in the most intimate private and family matters, the daughters told her their love affairs; they all petted her and even submitted to many small tyrannies upon her part. "but do you know," said my hostess, "susie never tells us a thing about her life or her friends, and we couldn't, if we tried, make her tell what goes on in the society she belongs to." the negro has long been defensively secretive. slavery made him that. in the past, the instinct was passive and defensive; but with growing education and intelligent leadership it is rapidly becoming conscious, self-directive and offensive. and right there, it seems to me, lies the great cause of the increased strain in the south. let me illustrate. in the people's tabernacle in atlanta, where thousands of negroes meet every sunday, i saw this sign in huge letters: for photographs, go to auburn photo gallery operated by coloured men the old-fashioned negro preferred to go to the white man for everything; he didn't trust his own people; the new negro, with growing race consciousness, and feeling that the white man is against him, urges his friends to patronise negro doctors and dentists, and to trade with negro storekeepers. the extent to which this movement has gone was one of the most surprising things that i, as an unfamiliar northerner, found in atlanta. in other words, the struggle of the races is becoming more and more rapidly economic. _story of a negro shoe-store_ one day, walking in broad street, i passed a negro shoe-store. i did not know that there was such a thing in the country. i went in to make inquiries. it was neat, well kept, and evidently prosperous. i found that it was owned by a stock company, organised and controlled wholly by negroes; the manager was a brisk young mulatto named harper, a graduate of atlanta university. i found him dictating to a negro girl stenographer. there were two reasons, he said, why the store had been opened; one was because the promoters thought it a good business opportunity, and the other was because many negroes of the better class felt that they did not get fair treatment at white stores. at some places--not all, he said--when a negro woman went to buy a pair of shoes, the clerk would hand them to her without offering to help her try them on; and a negro was always kept waiting until all the white people in the store had been served. since the new business was opened, he said, it had attracted much of the negro trade; all the leaders advising their people to patronise him. i was much interested to find out how this young man looked upon the race question. his first answer struck me forcibly, for it was the universal and typical answer of the business man the world over whether white, yellow, or black: "all i want," he said, "is to be protected and let alone, so that i can build up this business." "what do you mean by protection?" i asked. "well, justice between the races. that doesn't mean social equality. we have a society of our own, and that is all we want. if he can have justice in the courts, and fair protection, we can learn to compete with the white stores and get along all right." such an enterprise as this indicates the new, economic separation between the races. "here is business," says the negro, "which i am going to do." considering the fact that only a few years ago, the negro did no business at all, and had no professional men, it is really surprising to a northerner to see what progress he has made. one of the first lines he took up was--not unnaturally--the undertaking business. some of the most prosperous negroes in every southern city are undertakers, doing work exclusively, of course, for coloured people. other early enterprises, growing naturally out of a history of personal service, were barbering and tailoring. atlanta has many small negro tailor and clothes-cleaning shops. _wealthiest negro in atlanta_ the wealthiest negro in atlanta, a. f. herndon, operates the largest barber shop in the city; he is the president of a negro insurance company (of which there are four in the city) and he owns and rents some fifty dwelling houses. he is said to be worth $ , , all made, of course, since slavery. another occupation developing naturally from the industrial training of slavery was the business of the building contractor. several such negroes, notably alexander hamilton, do a considerable business in atlanta, and have made money. they are employed by white men, and they hire for their jobs both white and negro workmen. small groceries and other stores are of later appearance; i saw at least a score of them in various parts of atlanta. for the most part they are very small, many are exceedingly dirty and ill-kept; usually much poorer than corresponding places kept by foreigners, indiscriminately called "dagoes" down here, who are in reality mostly russian jews and greeks. but there are a few negro grocery stores in atlanta which are highly creditable. other business enterprises include restaurants (for negroes), printing establishments, two newspapers, and several drug-stores. in other words, the negro is rapidly building up his own business enterprises, tending to make himself independent as a race. the appearance of negro drug-stores was the natural result of the increasing practice of negro doctors and dentists. time was when all negroes preferred to go to white practitioners, but since educated coloured doctors became common, they have taken a very large part--practically all, i am told--of the practice in atlanta. several of them have had degrees from northern universities, two from yale; and one of them, at least, has some little practice among white people. the doctors are leaders among their people. naturally they give prescriptions to be filled by druggists of their own race; hence the growth of the drug business among negroes everywhere in the south. the first store to be established in atlanta occupies an old wooden building in auburn avenue. it is operated by moses amos, a mulatto, and enjoys, i understand, a high degree of prosperity. i visited it. a post-office occupies one corner of the room; and it is a familiar gathering place for coloured men. moses amos told me his story, and i found it so interesting, and so significant of the way in which negro business men have come up, that i am setting it down briefly here. _rise of a negro druggist_ "i never shall forget," he said, "my first day in the drug business. it was in . i remember i was with a crowd of boys in peachtree street, where dr. huss, a southern white man, kept a drug-store. the old doctor was sitting out in front smoking his pipe. he called one little negro after another, and finally chose me. he said: "'i want you to live with me, work in the store, and look after my horse.' "he sent me to his house and told me to tell his wife to give me some breakfast, and i certainly delivered the first message correctly. his wife, who was a noble lady, not only fed me, but made me take a bath in a sure enough porcelain tub, the first i had ever seen. when i went back to the store, i was so regenerated that the doctor had to adjust his spectacles before he knew me. he said to me: "'you can wash bottles, put up castor oil, salts and turpentine, sell anything you _know_ and put the money in the drawer.' "he showed me how to work the keys of the cash drawer. 'i am going to trust you,' he said. 'don't steal from me; if you want anything ask for it, and you can have it. and don't lie; i hate a liar. a boy who will lie will steal, too.' "i remained with dr. huss thirteen years. he sent me to school and paid my tuition out of his own pocket; he trusted me fully, often leaving me in charge of his business for weeks at a time. when he died i formed a partnership with dr. butler, dr. slater, and others, and bought the store. our business grew and prospered, so that within a few years we had a stock worth $ , , and cash of $ . that made us ambitious. we bought land, built a new store, and went into debt to do it. we didn't know much about business--that's the negro's chief trouble--and we lost trade by changing our location, so that in spite of all we could do, we failed and lost everything, though we finally paid our creditors every cent. after many trials we started again in in our present store; to-day we are doing a good business; we can get all the credit we want from wholesale houses, we employ six clerks, and pay good interest on the capital invested." _greatest difficulties met by negro business men_ i asked him what was the greatest difficulty he had to meet. he said it was the credit system; the fact that many negroes have not learned financial responsibility. once, he said, he nearly stopped business on this account. "i remember," he said, "the last time we got into trouble. we needed $ to pay our bills. i picked out some of our best customers and gave them a heart-to-heart talk and told them what trouble we were in. they all promised to pay; but on the day set for payment, out of $ , which they owed us we collected just $ . . after that experience we came down to a cash basis. we trust no one, and since then we have been doing well." he said he thought the best opportunity for negro development was in the south where he had his whole race behind him. he said he had once been tempted to go north looking for an opening. "how did you make out?" i asked. "well, i'll tell you," he said, "when i got there i wanted a shave; i walked the streets two hours visiting barber shops, and they all turned me away with some excuse. i finally had to buy a razor and shave myself! that was just a sample. i came home disgusted and decided to fight it out down here where i understood conditions." of course only a comparatively few negroes are able to get ahead in business. they must depend almost exclusively on the trade of their own race, and they must meet the highly organised competition of white men. but it is certainly significant that even a few are able to make progress along these unfamiliar lines. many southern men i met had little or no idea of the remarkable extent of this advancement among the better class of negroes. here is a strange thing. i don't know how many southern men have prefaced their talks with me with words something like this: "you can't expect to know the negro after a short visit. you must live down here like we do. now, i know the negroes like a book. i was brought up with them. i know what they'll do and what they won't do. i have had negroes in my house all my life." but curiously enough i found that these men rarely knew anything about the better class of negroes--those who were in business, or in independent occupations, those who owned their own homes. they _did_ come into contact with the servant negro, the field hand, the common labourer, who make up, of course, the great mass of the race. on the other hand, the best class of negroes did not know the higher class of white people, and based their suspicion and hatred upon the acts of the poorer sort of whites with whom they naturally came into contact. the best elements of the two races are as far apart as though they lived in different continents; and that is one of the chief causes of the growing danger of the southern situation. it is a striking fact that one of the first--almost instinctive--efforts at reconstruction after the atlanta riot was to bring the best elements of both races together, so that they might, by becoming acquainted and gaining confidence in each other, allay suspicion and bring influence to bear upon the lawless elements of both white people and coloured. many southerners look back wistfully to the faithful, simple, ignorant, obedient, cheerful, old plantation negro and deplore his disappearance. they want the new south, but the old negro. that negro is disappearing forever along with the old feudalism and the old-time exclusively agricultural life. a new negro is not less inevitable than a new white man and a new south. and the new negro, as my clever friend says, doesn't laugh as much as the old one. it is grim business he is in, this being free, this new, fierce struggle in the open competitive field for the daily loaf. many go down to vagrancy and crime in that struggle; a few will rise. the more rapid the progress (with the trained white man setting the pace), the more frightful the mortality. chapter iii the southern city negro after my arrival in atlanta, and when i had begun to understand some of the more superficial ramifications of the colour line (as i related in the last chapter,) i asked several southern men whose acquaintance i had made where i could best see the poorer or criminal class of negroes. so much has been said of the danger arising from this element of southern population and it plays such a part in every discussion of the race question that i was anxious to learn all i could about it. "go down any morning to judge broyles's court," they said to me, "and you'll see the lowest of the low." so i went down--the first of many visits i made to police and justice courts. i chose a monday morning that i might see to the best advantage the accumulation of the arrests of saturday and sunday. the police station stands in decatur street, in the midst of the very worst section of the city, surrounded by low saloons, dives, and pawn-shops. the court occupies a great room upstairs, and it was crowded that morning to its capacity. besides the police, lawyers, court officers, and white witnesses, at least one hundred and fifty spectators filled the seats behind the rail, nearly all of them negroes. the ordinary negro loves nothing better than to sit and watch the proceedings of a court. judge broyles kindly invited me to a seat on the platform at his side where i could look into the faces of the prisoners and hear all that was said. _in a southern police court_ it was a profoundly interesting and significant spectacle. in the first place the very number of cases was staggering. the docket that morning carried over one hundred names--men, women, and children, white and black; the court worked hard, but it was nearly two o'clock in the afternoon before the room was cleared. atlanta, as i showed in a former chapter, has the largest number of arrests, considering the population, of any important city in the united states. i found that , of the total of , persons arrested in were negroes, or per cent., whereas the coloured population of the city is only per cent. of the total.[ ] a very large proportion of the arrests that monday morning were negroes, with a surprising proportion of women and of mere children. in , negro women were arrested in atlanta. it was altogether a pitiful and disheartening exhibition, a spectacle of sodden ignorance, reckless vice, dissipation. most of the cases, ravelled out, led back to the saloon. "where's your home?" the judge would ask, and in a number of cases the answer was: "ah come here fum de country." over and over again it was the story of the country negro, or the negro who had been working on the railroad, in the cotton fields or in the sawmills, who had entered upon the more complex life of the city. most of the country districts of the south prohibit the sale of liquor; and negroes, especially, have comparatively little temptation of this nature, nor are they subjected to the many other glittering pitfalls of city life. but of late years the opportunities of the city have attracted the black people, just as they have the whites, in large numbers. atlanta had many saloons and other places of vice; and the results are to be seen in judge broyles's court any morning. and not only negroes, but the "poor whites" who have come in from the mountains and the small farms to work in the mills: they, too, suffer fully as much as the negroes. _negro cocaine victims_ not a few of the cases both black and white showed evidences of cocaine or morphine poisoning--the blear eyes, the unsteady nerves. [illustration: interior of a negro workingman's home, atlanta, georgia] [illustration: interior of a negro home of the poorest sort in indianapolis] "what's the trouble here?" asked the judge. "coke," said the officer. "ten-seventy-five," said the judge, naming the amount of the fine. they buy the "coke" in the form of a powder and snuff it up the nose; a certain patent catarrh medicine which is nearly all cocaine is sometimes used; ten cents will purchase enough to make a man wholly irresponsible for his acts, and capable of any crime. the cocaine habit, which seems to be spreading, for there are always druggists who will break the law, has been a curse to the negro and has resulted, directly, as the police told me, in much crime. i was told of two cases in particular, of offences against women, in which the negro was a victim of the drug habit. so society, in pursuit of wealth, south and north, preys upon the ignorant and weak--and then wonders why crime is prevalent! one has only to visit police courts in the south to see in how many curious ways the contact of the races generates fire. "what's the trouble here?" inquires the judge. the white complainant--a boy--says: "this nigger insulted me!" and he tells the epithet the negro applied. "did you call him that?" "no sah, i never called him no such name." "three-seventy-five--you mustn't insult white people." and here is the report of the case of a six-year-old negro boy from the _georgian_: because robert lee buster, a six-year-old negro boy, insulted maggie mcdermott, a little girl, who lives at simpson street, wednesday afternoon, he was given a whipping in the police station thursday morning that will make him remember to be good. the case was heard in the juvenile court before judge broyles. it was shown that the little negro had made an insulting remark to the little girl. _story of a negro arrest_ the very suspicion and fear that exist give rise to many difficulties. one illuminating case came up that morning. a strapping negro man was brought before the judge. he showed no marks of dissipation and was respectably dressed. confronting him were two plain-clothes policemen, one with his neck wrapped up, one with a bandage around his arm. both said they had been stabbed by the negro with a jack-knife. the negro said he was a hotel porter and he had the white manager of the hotel in court to testify to his good character, sobriety, and industry. it seems that he was going home from work at nine o'clock in the evening, and it was dark. he said he was afraid and had been afraid since the riot. at the same time the two policemen were looking for a burglar. they saw the negro porter and ordered him to stop. not being in uniform the negro said he thought the officers were "jes' plain white men" who were going to attack him. when he started to run the officers tried to arrest him, and he drew his jack-knife and began to fight. and here he was in court! the judge said: "you mustn't attack officers," and bound him over to trial in the higher court. _a white man and a negro woman_ another case shows one of the strange relationships which grow out of southern conditions. an old white man, much agitated and very pale, was brought before the judge. with him came a much younger, comely appearing woman. both were well dressed and looked respectable--so much so, indeed, that there was a stir of interest and curiosity among the spectators. why had they been arrested? as they stood in front of the judge's desk, the old man hung his head, but the woman looked up with such an expression, tearless and tragic, as i hope i shall not have to see again. "what's the charge?" asked the judge. "adultery," said the officer. the woman winced, the old man did not look up. the judge glanced from one to the other in surprise. "why don't you get married?" he asked. "the woman," said the officer, "is a nigger." she was as white as i am, probably an octoroon; i could not have distinguished her from a white person, and she deceived even the experienced eye of the judge. "is that so?" asked the judge. the man continued to hang his head, the woman looked up; neither said a word. it then came out that they had lived together as man and wife for many years and that they had children nearly grown. one of the girls--and a very bright, ambitious girl--as i learned later, was a student in atlanta university, a negro college, where she was supported by her father, who made good wages as a telegraph operator. some neighbour had complained and the man and woman were arrested. "is this all true?" asked the judge. neither said a word. "you can't marry under the georgia law," said the judge; "i'll have to bind you over for trial in the county court." they were led back to the prisoners' rooms. a few minutes later the bailiff came out quickly and said to the judge: "the old man has fallen in a faint." not long afterward they half led, half carried him out across the court room. one thing impressed me especially, not only in this court but in all others i have visited: a negro brought in for drunkenness, for example, was punished much more severely than a white man arrested for the same offence. the injustice which the weak everywhere suffer--north and south--is in the south visited upon the negro. the white man sometimes escaped with a reprimand, he was sometimes fined three dollars and costs, but the negro, especially if he had no white man to intercede for him, was usually punished with a ten or fifteen dollar fine, which often meant that he must go to the chain-gang. one of the chief causes of complaint by the negroes of atlanta has been of the rough treatment of the police and of unjust arrests. after the riot, when the civic league, composed of the foremost white citizens of atlanta, was organised, one of the first subjects that came up was that of justice to the negro. mr. hopkins, the leader of the league, said to me: "we complain that the negroes will not help to bring the criminals of their race to justice. one reason for that is that the negro has too little confidence in our courts. we must give him that, above all things." in accordance with this plan, the civic league, heartily supported by judge broyles, employed a young lawyer, mr. underwood, to appear regularly in court and look after the interests of negroes. _convicts making a profit for georgia_ one reason for the very large number of arrests--in georgia particularly--lies in the fact that the state and the counties make a profit out of their prison system. no attempt is ever made to reform a criminal, either white or coloured. convicts are hired out to private contractors or worked on the public roads. last year the net profit to georgia from its chain-gangs, to which the prison commission refers with pride, reached the great sum of $ , . . of course a very large proportion of the prisoners are negroes. the demand for convicts by rich sawmill operators, owners of brick-yards, large farmers, and others is far in advance of the supply. the natural tendency is to convict as many men as possible--it furnishes steady, cheap labour to the contractors and a profit to the state. undoubtedly this explains in some degree the very large number of criminals, especially negroes, in georgia. one of the leading political forces in atlanta is a very prominent banker who is a dominant member of the city police board. he is also the owner of extensive brick-yards near atlanta, where many convicts are employed. some of the large fortunes in atlanta have come chiefly from the labour of chain-gangs of convicts leased from the state. _fate of the black boy_ as i have already suggested, one of the things that impressed me strongly in visiting judge broyles's court--and others like it--was the astonishing number of children, especially negroes, arrested. some of them were very young and often exceedingly bright-looking. from the records i find that in boy six years old, of seven years, of eight years, of nine years, of ten years, of eleven years, and of twelve years were arrested and brought into court--in other words, boys and girls, mostly negroes, under twelve years of age! "i should think," i said to a police officer, "you would have trouble in taking care of all these children in your reformatories." "reformatories!" he said, "there aren't any." "what do you do with them?" "well, if they're bad we put 'em in the stockade or the chain-gang, otherwise they're turned loose." i found, however, that a new state juvenile reformatory was just being opened at milledgeville--which may accommodate a few negro boys. an attempt is also being made in atlanta to get hold of some of the children through a new probation system. i talked with the excellent officer, mr. gloer, who works in conjunction with judge broyles. he reaches a good many white boys, but very few negroes. of , boys and girls under sixteen, arrested in , were black, but of those given the advantage of the probation system, were white and only coloured. in other words, out of arrests of negro children only enjoyed the benefit of the probation system. mr. gloer has endeavoured to secure a coloured assistant who would help look after the swarming negro children who are becoming criminals. the city refused to appropriate money for that purpose, but some of the leading coloured citizens agreed to contribute one dollar a month each, and a negro woman was employed to help with the coloured children brought into court. excellent work was done, but owing to the feeling after the riot the negro assistant discontinued her work. _care of negro orphans_ with many hundreds of negro orphans, waifs, and foundlings, the state or city does very little to help them. if it were not for the fact that the negroes, something like the jews, are wonderfully helpful to one another, adopting orphan children with the greatest willingness, there would be much suffering. several orphanages in the state are conducted by the coloured people themselves, either through their churches or by private subscription. in atlanta the carrie steele orphanage, which is managed by negroes, has received an appropriation yearly from the city, and has taken children sent by the city charities department. after the riot the appropriation was suddenly cut off without explanation, but through the activities of the new civic league, it was, i understand, restored. without proper reformatories or asylums, with small advantage of the probation system, hundreds of negro children are on the streets of atlanta every day--shooting craps, stealing, learning to drink. a few, shut up in the stockade, or in chain-gangs, without any attempt to reform them or teach them, take lessons in crime from older offenders and come out worse than they went in. they spread abroad the lawlessness they learn and finally commit some frightful crime and get back into the chain-gang for life--where they make a profit for the state! every child, white or coloured, is getting an education somewhere. if that education is not in schools, or at home, or, in cases of incorrigibility, in proper reformatories, then it is on the streets or in chain-gangs. _why negro children are not in school_ my curiosity, aroused by the very large number of young prisoners, led me next to inquire why these children were not in school. i visited a number of schools and i talked with l. m. landrum, the assistant superintendent. compulsory education is not enforced anywhere in the south, so that children may run the streets unless their parents insist upon sending them to school. i found more than this, however, that atlanta did not begin to have enough school facilities for the children who wanted to go. like many rapidly growing cities, both south and north, it has been difficult to keep up with the demand. just as in the north the tenement classes are often neglected, so in the south the lowest class--which is the negro--is neglected. several new schools have been built for white children, but there has been no new school for coloured children in fifteen or twenty years (though one negro private school has been taken over within the last few years by the city). so crowded are the coloured schools that they have two sessions a day, one squad of children coming in the forenoon, another in the afternoon. the coloured teachers, therefore, do double work, for which they receive about two-thirds as much salary as the white teachers. though many southern cities have instituted industrial training in the public schools, atlanta so far has done nothing. the president of the board of education in his last published report ( ) calls attention to this fact, and says also: while on the subject of negro schools, permit me to call your attention to their overcrowded condition. in every negro school many teachers teach two sets of pupils, each set for one-half of a school day. the last bond election was carried by a majority of only thirty-three votes. to my personal knowledge more than thirty-three negroes voted for the bonds on the solemn assurance that by the passage of the bonds the negro children would receive more school accommodations. the eagerness of the coloured people for a chance to send their children to school is something astonishing and pathetic. they will submit to all sorts of inconveniences in order that their children may get an education. one day i visited the mill neighbourhood of atlanta to see how the poorer classes of white people lived. i found one very comfortable home occupied by a family of mill employees. they hired a negro woman to cook for them, and while they sent their children to the mill to work, the cook sent her children to school! _how negroes educate themselves_ here is a curious and significant thing i found in atlanta. because there is not enough room for negro children in public schools, the coloured people maintain many private schools. the largest of these, called morris brown college, has nearly , pupils. some of them are boarders from the country, but the greater proportion are day pupils from seven years old up who come in from the neighbourhood. this "college," in reality a grammar school, is managed and largely supported by tuition and contributions from negroes, though some subscriptions are obtained in the north. besides this "college" there are many small private schools conducted by negro women and supported wholly by the tuition paid--the negroes thus voluntarily taxing themselves heavily for their educational opportunities. one afternoon in atlanta i passed a small, rather dilapidated home. just as i reached the gate i heard a great cackling of voices and much laughter. coloured children began to pour out of the house. "what's this?" i said, and i turned in to see. i found a negro woman, the teacher, standing in the doorway. she had just dismissed her pupils for recess. she was holding school in two little rooms where some fifty children must have been crowded to suffocation. everything was very primitive and inconvenient--but it was a school! she collected, she told me, a dollar a month tuition for each child. mollie mccue's school, perhaps the best known private school for negroes in the city, has pupils. many children also find educational opportunities in the negro colleges of the city--clark university, atlanta university and spellman seminary, which are supported partly by the negroes themselves but mostly by northern philanthropy. mr. landrum gave me a copy of the last statistical report of the school board ( ), from which these facts appear: school no. of with without population schools teachers seats seats white , , , coloured , , , even with a double daily session for coloured pupils nearly half of the negro children in atlanta, even in , were barred from the public schools from lack of facilities, and the number has increased largely in the last four years. some of these are accommodated in the private schools and colleges which i have mentioned, but there still remain hundreds, even thousands, who are getting no schooling of any kind, but who are nevertheless being educated--on the streets, and for criminal lives. _white instruction for black children_ i made a good many inquiries to find out what was being done outside of the public schools by the white people toward training the negro either morally, industrially or intellectually--and i was astonished to find that it was next to nothing. the negro is, of course, not welcome at the white churches or sunday schools, and the sentiment is so strong against teaching the negro that it is a brave southern man or woman, indeed, who dares attempt anything of the sort. i did find, however, that the central presbyterian church of atlanta conducted a negro sunday school. of this dr. theron h. rice, the pastor, said: "the sunday school conducted in atlanta by my church is the outcome of the effort of some of the most earnest and thoughtful of our people to give careful religious training to the negroes of this generation and thus to conserve the influence begun with the fathers and mothers and the grandfathers and grandmothers of these coloured children when they were taught personally by their devoted christian masters and mistresses. the work is small in point of the number reached, but it has been productive of sturdy character and law-abiding citizenship." a white man or woman, and especially a northern white man or woman, in atlanta who teaches negroes is rigorously ostracised by white society. i visited one of the negro colleges where there are a number of white teachers from the north. we had quite a talk. when i came to leave one of the teachers said to me: "you don't know how good it seems to talk with some one from the outside world. we work here year in and year out without a white visitor, except those who have some necessary business with the institution." explaining the attitude toward these northern teachers (and we must understand just how the southern people feel in this matter), a prominent clergyman said that a lady who made a social call upon a teacher in that institution would not feel secure against having to meet negroes socially and that when the call was returned a similar embarrassing situation might be created. _apologising for helping negroes_ just in this connection: i found a very remarkable and significant letter published in the orangeburg, s. c., _news_, signed by a well-to-do white citizen who thus apologises for a kind act to a negro school: i had left my place of business here on a business trip a few miles below, on returning i came by the above-mentioned school (the prince institute, coloured), and was held up by the teacher and begged to make a few remarks to the children. very reluctantly i did so, not thinking that publicity would be given to it or that i was doing anything that would offend anyone. i wish to say here and now that i am heartily sorry for what i did, and i hope after this humble confession and expression of regret that all whom i have offended will forgive me. the sentiment indicated by this letter, while widely prevalent, is by no means universal. i have seen southern white men address negro schools and negro gatherings many times since i have been down here. some of the foremost men in the south have accepted booker t. washington's invitations to speak at tuskegee. and concerning the very letter that i reproduce above, the _charlotte observer_, a strong southern newspaper, which copied it, said: a man would better be dead than to thus abase himself. this man did right to address the pupils of a coloured school, but has spoiled all by apologising for it. few people have conceived that race prejudice went so far, even in south carolina, as is here indicated. logically it is to be assumed that this jelly-fish was about to be put under the ban, and to secure exemption from this, published this abject card. to it was appended a certificate from certain citizens, saying they 'are as anxious to see the coloured race elevated as any people, but by all means let it be done inside the colour line.'... the narrowness and malignity betrayed in this orangeburg incident is exceedingly unworthy, and those guilty of it should be ashamed of themselves. the rev. h. s. bradley, for a long time one of the leading clergymen of atlanta, now of st. louis, said in a sermon published in the atlanta _constitution_: ... we have not been wholly lacking in our effort to help. there are a few schools and churches supported by southern whites for the negroes. here and there a man like george williams walker, of the aristocracy of south carolina, and a woman like miss belle h. bennett, of the blue blood of kentucky, goes as teacher to the negro youth, and seeks in a christly spirit of fraternity to bring them to a higher plane of civil and moral manhood, but the number like them can almost be counted on fingers of both hands. our southern churches have spent probably a hundred times as much money since the civil war in an effort to evangelise the people of china, japan, india, south america, africa, mexico, and cuba, as they have spent to give the gospel to the negroes at our doors. it is often true that opportunity is overlooked because it lies at our feet. _concerning the vagrant negro_ before i get away from observations of the low-class negro, i must speak of the subject of vagrancy. many white men have told me with impatience of the great number of idle or partly idle negroes--idle while every industry and most of the farming districts of georgia are crying for more labour. and from my observation in atlanta, i should say that there were good many idle or partly idle negroes--even after the riot, which served, i understand, to drive many of them away. five days before the riot of last september, a committee of the city council visited some forty saloons one afternoon, and by actual count found , negroes (and white men) drinking at the bars or lounging around the doorways. in some of these saloons--conducted by white men and permitted to exist by the city authorities--pictures of nude white women were displayed as an added attraction. has this anything to do with negro crimes against white women? after the riot these conditions in atlanta were much improved and in january, , all the saloons were closed. increased negro idleness is the result, in large measure, of the marvellous and rapid changes in southern conditions. the south has been and is to-day dependent on a single labour supply--the negro. now negroes, though recruited by a high birth rate, have not been increasing in any degree as rapidly as the demand for labour incident to the development of every sort of industry, railroads, lumbering, mines, to say nothing of the increased farm area and the added requirements of growing cities. with this enormous increased demand for labour the negro supply has, relatively, been decreasing. many have gone north and west, many have bought farms of their own, thousands, by education, have became professional men, teachers, preachers, and even merchants and bankers--always draining away the best and most industrious men of the race and reducing by so much the available supply of common labour. in short, those negroes who were capable have been going the same way as the unskilled irishman and german in the north--upward through the door of education--but, unlike the north, there have been no other labourers coming in to take their places. what has been the result? naturally a fierce contest between agriculture and industry for the limited and dwindling supply of the only labour they had. _negro monopoly on labour_ so they bid against one another--it was as though the negro had a monopoly on labour--and within the last few years day wages for negro workers have jumped from fifty or sixty cents to $ . and $ . , often more--a pure matter of competition. a similar advance has affected all sorts of servant labour--cooks, waiters, maids, porters. high wages, scarcity of labour, and the consequent loss of opportunity for taking advantage of the prevailing prosperity would, in any community, south or north, whether the labour was white or black, produce a spirit of impatience and annoyance on the part of the employing class. i found it evident enough last summer in kansas where the farmers were unable to get workers to save their crops; and the servant problem is not more provoking, certainly, in the south than in the north and west. indeed, it is the labour problem more than any other one cause, that has held the south back and is holding it back to-day. but the south has an added cause of annoyance. higher wages, instead of producing more and better labour, as they would naturally be expected to do, have actually served to reduce the supply. this may, at first, seem paradoxical: but it is easily explainable and it lies deep down beneath many of the perplexities which surround the race problem. most negroes, as i have said, were (and still are, of course) farm-dwellers, and farm-dwellers in the hitherto wasteful southern way. their living is easy to get and very simple. in that warm climate they need few clothes; a shack for a home. their living standards are low; they have not learned to save; there has not been time since slavery for them to attain the sense of responsibility which would encourage them to get ahead. and moreover they have been and are to-day largely under the discipline of white land owners. what was the effect, then, of a rapid advance in wages? the poorer class of negroes, naturally indolent and happy-go-lucky, found that they could make as much money in two or three days as they had formerly earned in a whole week. it was enough to live on as well as they had ever lived: why, then, work more than two days a week? it was the logic of a child, but it was the logic used. everywhere i went in the south i heard the same story: high wages coupled with the difficulty of getting anything like continuous work from this class of coloured men. on the other hand the better and more industrious negroes, who would work continuously--and there are unnumbered thousands of them, as faithful as any workers--occasionally saved their surplus, bought little farms or businesses of their own and began to live on a better scale. one of the first things they did after getting their footing was to take their wives and daughters out of the white man's kitchen, and to send their children from the cotton fields (where the white man needed them) to the school-house where the tendency (exactly as with white children) was to educate them away from farm employment. with the development of ambition and a higher standard of living, the negro follows the steps of the rising irishman or italian: he has a better home, he wants his wife to take care of it, and he insists upon the education of his children. in this way higher wages have tended to cut down the already limited supply of labour, producing annoyance, placing greater obstacles in the way of that material development of which the southerner is so justly proud. and this, not at all unnaturally, has given rise on the one hand to complaints against the lazy negro who will work only two days in the week that he may loaf the other five; and on the other hand it has found expression in blind and bitter hostility to the education which enables the better sort of negro to rise above the unskilled employment and the domestic service of which the south is so keenly in need. it is human nature to blame men, not conditions. here is unlimited work to do: here is the negro who has been for centuries and is to-day depended upon to do it; it is not done. the natural result is to throw the blame wholly upon the negro, and not upon the deep economic conditions and tendencies which have actually caused the scarcity of labour. _immigrants to take the negroes' places_ but within the last year or two thinking men in the south have begun to see this particular root of the difficulty and a great new movement looking to the encouragement of immigration from foreign countries has been started. in november, , the first shipload of immigrants ever brought from europe directly to a south carolina port were landed at charleston with great ceremony and rejoicing. if a steady stream of immigrants can be secured and if they can be employed on satisfactory terms with the negro it will go far toward relieving race tension in the south. of course idleness leads to crime, and one of the present efforts in the south is toward a more rigid enforcement of laws against vagrancy. in this the white people have the sympathy of the leading negroes. i was struck with one passage in the discussion at the last workers' conference at tuskegee. william e. holmes, president of a coloured college at macon, georgia, was speaking. some one interrupted him: "i would like to ask if you think the negro is any more disposed to become a loafer or vagrant than any other people under the same conditions?" "well," said mr. holmes, taking a deep breath, "we cannot afford to do what other races do. we haven't a single, solitary man or woman among us we can afford to support as an idler. it may be that other races have made so much progress that they can afford to support loafers. but we are not yet in that condition. some of us have the impression that the world owes us a living. that is a misfortune. i must confess that i have become convinced that at the present time we furnish a larger number of loafers than any other race of people on this continent." these frank remarks did not meet with the entire approval of the members of the conference, but the discussion seemed to indicate that there was a great deal more of truth in them than the leaders and teachers of the negro are disposed to admit. _the worthless negro_ i tried to see as much as i could of this "worthless negro," who is about the lowest stratum of humanity, it seems to me, of any in our american life. he is usually densely ignorant, often a wanderer, working to-day with a railroad gang, to-morrow on some city works, the next day picking cotton. he has lost his white friends--his "white folks," as he calls them--and he has not attained the training or self-direction to stand alone. he works only when he is hungry, and he is as much a criminal as he dares to be. many such negroes are supported by their wives or by women with whom they live--for morality and the home virtues among this class are unknown. a woman who works as a cook in a white family will often take enough from the kitchen to feed a worthless vagabond of a man and keep him in idleness--or worse. a negro song exactly expresses this state of beatitude: "i doan has to work so ha'd i's got a gal in a white man's ya'd; ebery night 'bout half pas' eight i goes 'round to the white man's gate: she brings me butter and she brings me la'd-- i doan has to work so ha'd!" this worthless negro, without training or education, grown up from the neglected children i have already spoken of, evident in his idleness around saloons and depots--this negro provokes the just wrath of the people, and gives a bad name to the entire negro race. in numbers he is, of course, small, compared with the , , negroes in the south, who perform the enormous bulk of hard manual labour upon which rests southern prosperity. _how the working negro lives_ above this low stratum of criminal or semi-criminal negroes is a middle class, comprising the great body of the race--the workers. they are crowded into straggling settlements like darktown and jackson row, a few owning their homes, but the majority renting precariously, earning good wages, harmless for the most part, but often falling into petty crime. poverty here, however, lacks the tragic note that it strikes in the crowded sections of northern cities. the temperament of the negro is irrepressibly cheerful, he overflows from his small home and sings and laughs in his streets; no matter how ragged or forlorn he may be good humour sits upon his countenance, and his squalour is not unpicturesque. a banjo, a mullet supper from time to time, an exciting revival, give him real joys. most of the families of this middle class, some of whom are deserted wives with children, have their "white folks" for whom they do washing, cooking, gardening, or other service, and all have church connections, so that they have a real place in the social fabric and a certain code of self-respect. i tried to see all i could of this phase of life. i visited many of the poorer negro homes and i was often received in squalid rooms with a dignity of politeness which would have done credit to a society woman. for the negro, naturally, is a sort of frenchman. and if i can sum up the many visits i made in a single conclusion i should say, i think, that i was chiefly impressed by the tragic punishment meted out to ignorance and weakness by our complex society. i would find a home of one or two rooms meanly furnished, but having in one corner a glittering cottage organ, or on the mantel shelf a glorified gilt clock; crayon portraits, inexpressibly crude and ugly, but framed gorgeously, are not uncommon--the first uncertain, primitive (not unpitiful) reachings out after some of the graces of a broader life. many of these things are bought from agents and the prices paid are extortionate. often a negro family will pay monthly for a year or so on some showy clock or chromo or music-box or decorated mirror--paying the value of it a dozen times over, only to have it seized when through sickness, or lack of foresight, they fail to meet a single note. installment houses prey upon them, pawnbrokers suck their blood, and they are infinitely the victims of patent medicines. it is rare, indeed, that i entered a negro cabin, even the poorest, without seeing one or more bottles of some abominable cure-all. the amount yearly expended by negroes for patent medicines, which are glaringly advertised in all southern newspapers, must be enormous--millions of dollars. i had an interesting side light on conditions one day while walking in one of the most fashionable residence districts of atlanta. i saw a magnificent gray-stone residence standing somewhat back from the street. i said to my companion, who was a resident of the city: "that's a fine home." "yes; stop a minute," he said, "i want to tell you about that. the anti-kink man lives there." "anti-kink?" i asked in surprise. "yes; the man who occupies that house is one of the wealthiest men here. he made his money by selling to negroes a preparation to smooth the kinks out of their wool. they're simply crazy on that subject." "does it work?" "you haven't seen any straight-haired negroes, have you?" he asked. ignorance carries a big burden and climbs a rocky road! _old mammies and nurses_ the mass of coloured people still maintain, as i have said, a more or less intimate connection with white families--frequently a very beautiful and sympathetic relationship like that of the old mammies or nurses. to one who has heard so much of racial hatred as i have since i have been down here, a little incident that i observed the other day comes with a charm hardly describable. i saw a carriage stop in front of a home. the expected daughter had arrived--a very pretty girl indeed. she stepped out eagerly. her father was halfway down to the gate; but ahead of him was a very old negro woman in the cleanest of clean starched dresses. "honey," she said eagerly. "mammy!" exclaimed the girl, and the two rushed into each other's arms, clasping and kissing--the white girl and the old black woman. i thought to myself: "there's no negro problem there: that's just plain human love!" _"master" superseded by "boss"_ often i have heard negroes refer to "my white folks" and similarly the white man still speaks of "my negroes." the old term of slavery, the use of the word "master," has wholly disappeared, and in its place has arisen, not without significance, the round term "boss," or sometimes "cap," or "cap'n." to this the white man responds with the first name of the negro, "jim" or "susie"--or if the negro is old or especially respected: "uncle jim" or "aunt susan." to an unfamiliar northerner one of the very interesting and somewhat amusing phases of conditions down here is the panic fear displayed over the use of the word "mr." or "mrs." no negro is ever called mr. or mrs. by a white man; that would indicate social equality. a southern white man told me with humour of his difficulties: "now i admire booker washington. i regard him as a great man, and yet i couldn't call him mr. washington. we were all in a quandary until a doctor's degree was given him. that saved our lives! we all call him 'dr.' washington now." sure enough! i don't think i have heard him called mr. washington since i came down here. it is always "dr." or just "booker." they are ready to call a negro "professor" or "bishop" or "the reverend"--but not "mr." in the same way a negro may call miss mary smith by the familiar "miss mary," but if he called her miss smith she would be deeply incensed. the formal "miss smith" would imply social equality. i digress: but i have wanted to impress these relationships. there are all gradations of negroes between the wholly dependent old family servant and the new, educated negro professional or business man, and, correspondingly, every degree of treatment from indulgence to intense hostility. i must tell, in spite of lack of room, one beautiful story i heard at atlanta, which so well illustrates the old relationship. there is in the family of dr. j. s. todd, a well-known citizen of atlanta, an old, old servant called, affectionately, uncle billy. he has been so long in the family that in reality he is served as much as he serves. during the riot last september he was terrified: he did not dare to go home at night. so miss louise, the doctor's daughter, took uncle billy home through the dark streets. when she was returning one of her friends met her and was much alarmed that she should venture out in a time of so much danger. "what are you doing out here this time of night?" he asked. "why," she replied, as if it were the most natural answer in the world, "i had to take uncle billy safely home." over against this story i want to reproduce a report from a kentucky newspaper which will show quite the other extreme: _tennessee farmer has negro bishop and his wife ejected from a sleeping car_ irvine mcgraw, a tennessee farmer, brought kentucky's jim crow law into prominent notice yesterday on an illinois central pullman car. when mcgraw entered the car he saw the coloured divine, rev. dr. c. h. phillips, bishop of the coloured methodist episcopal churches in tennessee, north carolina, texas and a portion of arizona and new mexico, and his wife preparing to retire for the night. he demanded that the conductor order them out of the car, but the conductor refused. after he entered kentucky he hunted for an officer at every station and finally at hopkinsville policeman bryant baker agreed to undertake the task of ejecting the negroes from the car. the train was held nine minutes while they dressed and repaired to the coloured compartment. i have now described two of the three great classes of negroes: first, the worthless and idle negro, often a criminal, comparatively small in numbers but perniciously evident. second, the great middle class of negroes who do the manual work of the south. above these, a third class, few in numbers, but most influential in their race, are the progressive, property-owning negroes, who have wholly severed their old intimate ties with the white people--and who have been getting further and further away from them. _a white man's problem_ it keeps coming to me that this is more a white man's problem than it is a negro problem. the white man as well as the black is being tried by fire. the white man is in full control of the south, politically, socially, industrially: the negro, as ex-governor northen points out, is his helpless ward. what will he do with him? speaking of the education of the negro, and in direct reference to the conditions in atlanta which i have already described, many men have said to me: "think of the large sums that the south has spent and is spending on the education of the negro. the negro does not begin to pay for his education in taxes." neither do the swarming slavs, italians, and poles in our northern cities. they pay little in taxes and yet enormous sums are expended in their improvement. for their benefit? of course, but chiefly for ours. it is better to educate men in school than to let them so educate themselves as to become a menace to society. the present _kind_ of education in the south may possibly be wrong; but for the protection of society it is as necessary to train every negro as it is every white man. when i saw the crowds of young negroes being made criminal--through lack of proper training--i could not help thinking how pitilessly ignorance finally revenges itself upon that society which neglects or exploits it. chapter iv in the black belt: the negro farmer the cotton picking season was drawing to its close when i left for the black belt of georgia. so many friends in atlanta had said: "the city negro isn't the real negro. you must go out on the cotton plantations in the country; there you'll see the genuine black african in all his primitive glory." it is quite true that the typical negro is a farmer. the great mass of the race in the south dwells in the country. according to the last census, out of , , negroes in the southern states , , , or per cent., lived on the farms or in rural villages. the crowded city life which i have already described represents not the common condition of the masses of the negro race but the newer development which accompanies the growth of industrial and urban life. in the city the races are forced more violently together, socially and economically, than in the country, producing acute crises, but it is in the old agricultural regions where the negro is in such masses, where ideas change slowly, and old institutions persist, that the problem really presents the greatest difficulties. there is no better time of year to see the south than november; for then it wears the smile of abundance. the country i went through--rolling red hills, or black bottoms, pine-clad in places, with pleasant farm openings dotted with cabins, often dilapidated but picturesque, and the busy little towns--wore somehow an air of brisk comfort. the fields were lively with negro cotton pickers; i saw bursting loads of the new lint drawn by mules or oxen, trailing along the country roads; all the gins were puffing busily; at each station platform cotton bales by scores or hundreds stood ready for shipment and the towns were cheerful with farmers white and black, who now had money to spend. the heat of the summer had gone, the air bore the tang of a brisk autumn coolness. it was a good time of the year--and everybody seemed to feel it. many negroes got on or off at every station with laughter and snouted good-byes. _what is the black belt?_ [illustration: the black belt in the region shaded more than half of the inhabitants are negroes.] and so, just at evening, after a really interesting journey, i reached hawkinsville, a thriving town of some , people just south of the centre of georgia. pulaski county, of which hawkinsville is the seat, with an ambitious new court-house, is a typical county of the black belt. a census map which is here reproduced well shows the region of largest proportionate negro population, extending from south carolina through central georgia and alabama to mississippi. more than half the inhabitants of all this broad belt, including also the atlantic coastal counties and the lower mississippi valley (as shaded on the map), are negroes, chiefly farm negroes. there the race question, though perhaps not so immediately difficult as in cities like atlanta, is with both white and coloured people the imminent problem of daily existence. several times while in the black belt i was amused at the ardent response of people to whom i mentioned the fact that i had already seen something of conditions in kentucky, maryland, and virginia: "why, they haven't any negro problem. they're _north_." in maryland, kentucky, and texas the problem is a sharp irritant--as it is, for that matter, in ohio, in indianapolis, and on the west side of new york city--but it is not the life and death question that it is in the black belt or in the yazoo delta. all the country of central georgia has been long settled. pulaski county was laid out in ; and yet the population to-day may be considered sparse. the entire county has only , white people, a large proportion of whom live in the towns of hawkinsville and cochran, and , negroes, leaving not inconsiderable areas of forest and uncultivated land which will some day become immensely valuable. _a southern country gentleman_ at hawkinsville i met j. pope brown, the leading citizen of the county. in many ways he is an example of the best type of the new southerner. in every way open to him, and with energy, he is devoting himself to the improvement of his community. for five years he was president of the state agricultural society; he has been a member of the legislature and chairman of the georgia railroad commission, and he represents all that is best in the new progressive movement in the south. one of the unpleasant features of the villages in the south are the poor hotels. in accounting for this condition i heard a story illustrating the attitude of the old south toward public accommodations. a number of years ago, before the death of robert toombs, who, as a member of jefferson davis's cabinet was called the "backbone of the confederacy," the spirit of progress reached the town where toombs lived. the thing most needed was a new hotel. the business men got together and subscribed money with enthusiasm, counting upon toombs, who was their richest man, for the largest subscription. but when they finally went to him, he said: "what do we want of a hotel? when a gentleman comes to town i will entertain him myself; those who are not gentlemen we don't want!" that was the old spirit of aristocratic individualism; the town did not get its hotel. one of the public enterprises of mr. brown at hawkinsville is a good hotel; and what is rarer still, north and south, he has made his hotel building really worthy architecturally. mr. brown took me out to his plantation--a drive of some eight miles. in common with most of the larger plantation owners, as i found not only in georgia, but in other southern states which i afterward visited, mr. brown makes his home in the city. after a while i came to feel a reasonable confidence in assuming that almost any prominent merchant, banker, lawyer, or politician whom i met in the towns owned a plantation in the country. from a great many stories of the fortunes of families that i heard i concluded that the movement of white owners from the land to nearby towns was increasing every year. high prices for cotton and consequent prosperity seem to have accelerated rather than retarded the movement. white planters can now afford to live in town where they can have the comforts and conveniences, where the servant question is not impossibly difficult, and where there are good schools for the children. another potent reason for the movement is the growing fear of the whites, and especially the women and children, at living alone on great farms where white neighbours are distant. statistics show that less crime is committed in the black belt than in other parts of the south. i found that the fear was not absent even among these people. i have a letter from a white man, p. s. george, of greenwood, mississippi, which expresses the country white point of view with singular earnestness: i live in a country of large plantations; if there are , people in that country, at least , are negroes, and we never have any friction between the races. i have been here as a man for twenty years and i never heard of but one case of attempted assault by a negro on a white woman. that negro was taken out and hanged. i said that we never had any trouble with negroes, but it's because we never take our eyes off the gun. you may wager that i never leave my wife and daughter at home without a man in the house after ten o'clock at night--because i am afraid. as a result of these various influences a traveller in the black belt sees many plantation houses, even those built in recent years, standing vacant and forlorn or else occupied by white overseers, who are in many parts of the south almost as difficult to keep as the negro tenants. thousands of small white farmers, both owners and renters, of course, remain, but when the leading planters leave the country, these men, too, grow discontented and get away at the first opportunity. going to town, they find ready employment for the whole family in the cotton mill or in other industries where they make more money and live with a degree of comfort that they never before imagined possible. _story of the mill people_ many cotton mills, indeed, employ agents whose business it is to go out through the country urging the white farmers to come to town and painting glowing pictures of the possibilities of life there. i have visited a number of mill neighbourhoods and talked with the operatives. i found the older men sometimes homesick for free life of the farm. one lanky old fellow said rather pathetically: "when it comes to cotton picking time and i know that they are grinding cane and hunting possums, i jest naturally get lonesome for the country." but nothing would persuade the women and children to go back to the old hard life. hawkinsville has a small cotton mill and just such a community of white workers around it. owing to the scarcity of labour, wages in the mills have been going up rapidly all over the south, during the last two or three years, furnishing a still more potent attraction for country people. all these various tendencies are uniting to produce some very remarkable conditions in the south. a natural segregation of the races is apparently taking place. i saw it everywhere i went in the black belt. the white people were gravitating toward the towns or into white neighbourhoods and leaving the land, even though still owned by white men, more and more to the exclusive occupation of negroes. many black counties are growing blacker while not a few white counties are growing whiter. [illustration: where white mill hands live in atlanta, georgia] [illustration: where some of the poorer negroes live in atlanta, georgia companion pictures to show that there is comparatively little difference in the material comfort of the two classes] take, for example, pulaski county, through which i drove that november morning with mr. brown. in the coloured and white population were almost exactly equal--about , for each. in the negroes had increased to , while the whites showed a loss. by the towns had begun to improve and the white population grew by about , but the negroes increased nearly , . and, finally, here are the figures for : negroes , ; whites , . i have not wished to darken our observations with too many statistics, but this tendency is so remarkable that i wish to set down for comparison the figures of a "white county" in northern georgia--polk county--which is growing whiter every year. negroes whites , , , , , , _driving out negroes_ one of the most active causes of this movement is downright fear--or race repulsion expressing itself in fear. white people dislike and fear to live in dense coloured neighbourhoods, while negroes are often terrorised in white neighbourhoods--and not in the south only but in parts of ohio, indiana, illinois, as i shall show when i come to treat of northern race conditions. i have accumulated many instances showing how negroes are expelled from white neighbourhoods. there is a significant report from little rock, arkansas: (_special to the georgian._) little rock, ark., jan. .--practically every negro in evening shade, sharp county, in this state, has left town as the result of threats which have been made against the negroes. for several years a small colony of negroes has lived just on the outskirts of the town. a short time ago notices were posted warning the negroes to leave the town at once. about the same time joe brooks, a negro who lived with his family two miles north of town, was called to his door and fired upon by unknown persons. a load of shot struck the house close by his side and some of the shot entered his arm. brooks and his family have left the country, and practically every member of the negro colony has gone. they have abandoned their property or disposed of it for whatever they could get. from the new orleans _times democrat_ of march , , i cut the following dispatch showing one method pursued by the whites of oklahoma: blacks ordered out lawton, okla., march .--"negroes, beware the cappers. we, the sixty sons of waurika, demand the negroes to leave here at once. we mean go! leave in twenty-four hours, or after that your life is uncertain." these were the words on placards which the eighty negroes of the town of waurika, forty miles south of lawton, saw posted conspicuously in a number of public places this morning. dispatches from here to-night stated that the whites are in earnest, and that the negroes will be killed if they do not leave town. not a few students of southern conditions like john temple graves among the whites and bishop turner among the coloured people have argued that actual physical separation of the races (either by deportation of the negroes to africa or elsewhere, or by giving them certain reservation-like parts of the south to live in) is the only solution. but here is, in actuality, a natural segregation going forward in certain parts of the south, though in a very different way from that recommended by mr. graves and bishop turner; for even in the blackest counties the white people own most of the land, occupy the towns, and dominate everywhere politically, socially, and industrially. mr. brown's plantation contains about , acres, of which some , acres are in cultivation, a beautiful rolling country, well watered, with here and there clumps of pines, and dotted with the small homes of the tenantry. as we drove along the country road we met or passed many negroes who bowed with the greatest deference. some were walking, but many drove horses or mules and rode not infrequently in top buggies, looking most prosperous, as indeed, mr. brown informed me that they were. he knew them all, and sometimes stopped to ask them how they were getting along. the outward relationships between the races in the country seem to me to be smoother than it is in the city. cotton, as in all this country, is almost the exclusive crop. in spite of the constant preaching of agricultural reformers, like mr. brown himself, hardly enough corn is raised to supply the people with food, and i was surprised here and elsewhere at seeing so few cattle and hogs. sheep are non-existent. in hawkinsville, though the country round about raises excellent grass, i saw in front of a supply store bales of hay which had been shipped in miles--from tennessee. enough sugar cane is raised, mostly in small patches, to supply syrup for domestic uses. at the time of my visit the negroes were in the cane-fields with their long knives, getting in the crop. we saw several little one-horse grinding mills pressing the juice from the cane, while near at hand, sheltered by a shanty-like roof, was the great simmering syrup kettle, with an expert negro at work stirring and skimming. and always there were negroes round about, all the boys and girls with jolly smeared faces--and the older ones peeling and sucking the fresh cane. it was a great time of year! how does the landlord--and a lord he is in a very true sense--manage his great estate? the same system is in use with slight variations everywhere in the cotton country and a description of mr. brown's methods, with references here and there to what i have seen or heard elsewhere, will give an excellent idea of the common procedure. _a country of great plantations_ the black belt is a country of great plantations, some owners having as high as , acres, interspersed with smaller farms owned by the poorer white families or negroes. in one way the conditions are similar to those prevailing in ireland; great landlords and a poor tenantry or peasantry, the tenants here being very largely black. it requires about families, or people, to operate mr. brown's plantation. of these, per cent. are coloured and per cent. white. i was much interested in what mr. brown said about his negro tenants, which varies somewhat from the impression i had in the city of the younger negro generation. "i would much rather have young negroes for tenants," he said, "because they work better and seem more disposed to take care of their farms. the old negroes ordinarily will shirk--a habit of slavery." besides the residence of the overseer and the homes of the tenants there is on the plantation a supply store owned by mr. brown, a blacksmith shop and a negro church, which is also used as a school-house. this is, i found all through the black belt, a common equipment. three different methods are pursued by the landlord in getting his land cultivated. first, the better class of tenants rent the land for cash, a "standing rent" of some $ an acre, though in many places in mississippi it ranges as high as $ and $ an acre. second, a share-crop rental, in which the landlord and the tenant divide the cotton and corn produced. third, the ordinary wage system; that is, the landlord hires workers at so much a month and puts in his own crop. all three of these methods are usually employed on the larger plantations. mr. brown rents , acres for cash, on shares, and farms himself with wage workers. all the methods of land measurement are very different here from what they are in the north. the plantation is irregularly divided up into what are called one-mule or one-plough farms--just that amount of land which a family can cultivate with one mule--usually about thirty acres. some ambitious tenants will take a two-mule or even a four-mule farm. _the negro tenant_ most of the tenants, especially the negroes, are very poor, and wholly dependent upon the landlord. many negro families possess practically nothing of their own, save their ragged clothing, and a few dollars' worth of household furniture, cooking utensils and a gun. the landlord must therefore supply them not only with enough to live on while they are making their crop, but with the entire farming outfit. let us say that a negro comes in november to rent a one-mule farm from the landlord for the coming year. "what have you got?" asks the landlord. "noting', boss," he is quite likely to say. the "boss" furnishes him with a cabin to live in--which goes with the land rented--a mule, a plough, possibly a one-horse waggon and a few tools. he is often given a few dollars in cash near christmas time which (ordinarily) he immediately spends--wastes. he is then allowed to draw upon the plantation supply store a regular amount of corn to feed his mule, and meat, bread, and tobacco, and some clothing for his family. the cost of the entire outfit and supplies for a year is in the neighbourhood of $ , upon which the tenant pays interest at from to per cent. from the time of signing the contract in november, although most of the supplies are not taken out until the next summer. besides this interest the planter also makes a large profit on all the groceries and other necessaries furnished by his supply store. having made his contract the negro goes to work with his whole family and keeps at it until the next fall when the cotton is all picked and ginned. then he comes in for his "settlement"--a great time of year. the settlements were going forward while i was in the black belt. the negro is credited with the amount of cotton he brings in and he is charged with all the supplies he has had, and interest, together with the rent of his thirty acres of land. if the season has been good and he has been industrious, he will often have a nice profit in cash, but sometimes he not only does not come out even, but closes his year of work actually in deeper debt to the landlord. [illustration: a "poor white" family "among them is a spirit of pride and independence which, rightly directed, would uplift and make them prosperous, but which, misguided and blind, as it sometimes is, keeps them in poverty."] [illustration: a model negro school inspired by tuskegee; different, indeed, from the ordinary country negro school in the south] some negroes, nowadays usually of the poorer sort, work for wages. they get from $ to $ a month (against $ to $ a few years ago) with a cabin to live in. they are allowed a garden patch, where they can, if they are industrious and their families help, raise enough vegetables to feed them comfortably, or part of a bale of cotton, which is their own. but it is sadly to be commented upon that few negro tenants, or whites either, as far as i could see, do anything with their gardens save perhaps to raise a few collards, peanuts, and peppers--and possibly a few sweet potatoes. this is due in part to indolence and lack of ambition, and in part to the steady work required by the planter. the wife and children of an industrious wage-working negro nearly always help in the fields, earning an additional income from chopping cotton in spring and picking the lint in the fall. this is the system as it is in theory; but the interest for us lies not in the plan, but in the actual practice. how does it all work out for good or for evil, for landlord and for tenant? tenantry in the south is a very different thing from what it is in the north. in the north, a man who rents a farm is nearly as free to do as he pleases as if he were the owner. but in the south, the present tenant system is much nearer the condition that prevailed in slavery times than it is to the present northern tenant system. this grows naturally out of slavery; the white man had learned to operate big plantations with ignorant help; and the negro on his part had no training for any other system. the white man was the natural master and the negro the natural dependent and a mere emancipation proclamation did not at once change the _spirit_ of the relationship. to-day a white overseer resides on every large plantation and he or the owner himself looks after and disciplines the tenants. the tenant is in debt to him (in some cases reaching a veritable condition of debt slavery or peonage) and he _must_ see that the crop is made. hence he watches the work of every negro (and indeed that of the white tenants as well) sees that the land is properly fertilised, and that the dikes (to prevent washing) are kept up, that the cotton is properly chopped (thinned) and regularly cultivated. some of the greater landowners employ assistant overseers or "riders" who are constantly travelling from farm to farm. on one plantation i saw four such riders start out one day, each with a rifle on his saddle. and on a south carolina plantation i had a glimpse of one method of discipline. a planter was telling me of his difficulties--how a spirit of unruliness sometimes swept abroad through a plantation, inspired by some "bigoty nigger." "do you know what i do with such cases?" he said. "come with me, i'll show you." he took me back through his house to the broad porch and reaching up to a shelf over the door he took down a hickory waggon spoke, as long as my arm. "when there's trouble," he said, "i just go down with that and lay one or two of 'em out. that ends the trouble. we've got to do it; they're like children and once in a while they simply have to be punished. it's far better for them to take it this way, from a white man who is their friend, than to be arrested and taken to court and sent to the chain-gang." _troubles of the landlord_ planters told me of all sorts of difficulties they had to meet with their tenants. one of them, after he had spent a whole evening telling me of the troubles which confronted any man who tried to work negroes, summed it all up with the remark: "you've just got to make up your mind that you are dealing with children, and handle them as firmly and kindly as you know how." he told me how hard it was to get a negro tenant even in the busy season to work a full week--and it was often only by withholding the weekly food allowance that it could be done. saturday afternoon (or "evening," as they say in the south) the negro goes to town or visits his friends. often he spends all day sunday driving about the country and his mule comes back so worn out that it cannot be used on monday. there are often furious religious revivals which break into the work, to say nothing of "frolics" and fish suppers at which the negroes often remain all night long. many of them are careless with their tools, wasteful of supplies, irresponsible in their promises. one planter told me how he had built neat fences around the homes of his negroes, and fixed up their houses to encourage them in thrift and give them more comfort, only to have the fences and even parts of the houses used for firewood. toward fall, if the season has been bad, and the crop of cotton is short, so short that a negro knows that he will not be able to "pay out" and have anything left for himself, he will sometimes desert the plantation entirely, leaving the cotton unpicked and a large debt to the landlord. if he attempts that, however, he must get entirely away, else the planter will chase him down and bring him back to his work. illiterate, without discipline or training, with little ambition and much indolence, a large proportion of negro tenants are looked after and driven like children or slaves. i say "a large proportion"--but there are thousands of industrious negro landowners and tenants who are rapidly getting ahead--as i shall show in my next chapter. in this connection it is a noteworthy fact that a considerable number of the white tenants require almost as much attention as the negroes, though they are, of course, treated in an entirely different way. one planter in alabama said to me: "give me negroes every time. i wouldn't have a low-down white tenant on my place. you can get work out of any negro if you know how to handle him; but there are some white men who won't work and can't be driven, because they are white." _race troubles in the country_ in short, when slavery was abolished it gave place to a sort of feudal tenantry system which continues widely to-day. and it has worked with comparative satisfaction, at least to the landlords, until within the last few years, when the next step in the usual evolution of human society--industrial and urban development--began seriously to disturb the feudal equilibrium of the cotton country. it was a curious idea--human enough--that men should attempt to legislate slaves immediately into freedom. but nature takes her own methods of freeing slaves; they are slower than men's ways, but more certain. the change now going on in the south from the feudal agricultural life to sharpened modern conditions has brought difficulties for the planter compared with which all others pale into insignificance. i mean the scarcity of labour. industry is competing with agriculture for the limited supply of negro workers. negroes, responding to exactly the same natural laws that control the white farmers, have been moving cityward, entering other occupations, migrating west or north--where more money is to be made. agricultural wages have therefore gone up and rents, relatively, have gone down, and had the south not been blessed for several years with wonderful returns from its monopoly crop, there might have been a more serious crisis. _cry of the south: "more labour"_ if the south to-day could articulate its chief need, we should hear a single great shout: "more labour!" out of this struggle for tenants, servants, and workers has grown the chief complications of the negro problem--and i am not forgetting race prejudice, or the crimes against women. indeed, it has seemed to me that the chief difficulty in understanding the negro problem lies in showing how much of the complication in the south is due to economic readjustments and how much to instinctive race repulsion or race prejudice. _a tenant stealer_ in one town i visited--not hawkinsville--i was standing talking with some gentlemen in the street when i saw a man drive by in a buggy. "do you see that man?" they asked me. i nodded. "well, he is the greatest tenant-stealer in this country." i heard a good deal about these "tenant stealers." a whole neighbourhood will execrate one planter who, to keep his land cultivated, will lure away his neighbours' negroes. sometimes he will offer more wages, sometimes he will give the tenants better houses to live in, and sometimes he succeeds by that sheer force of a masterful personality which easily controls an ignorant tenantry. i found, moreover, that there was not only a struggle between individual planters for negro tenants, but between states and sections. many of the old farms in south carolina and alabama have been used so long that they require a steady and heavy annual treatment of fertiliser, with the result that cotton growing costs more than it does in the rich alluvial lands of mississippi, or the newer regions of arkansas and texas. the result is that the planters of the west, being able to pay more wages and give the tenants better terms, lure away the negroes of the east. georgia and other states have met this competitive disadvantage in the usual way in which such disadvantages, when first felt but not fully understood, are met, by counteracting legislation. georgia has made the most stringent laws to keep her negroes on the land. the georgian code (section ) says: any person who shall solicit or procure emigrants, or shall attempt to do so, without first procuring a licence as required by law, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour. ex-congressman william h. fleming, one of the ablest statesmen of georgia, said: "land and other forms of capital cannot spare the negro and will not give him up until a substitute is found. his labour is worth millions upon millions. in georgia we now make it a crime for anyone to solicit emigrants without taking out a licence, and then we make the licence as nearly prohibitive as possible. one of the most dangerous occupations for any one to follow in this state would be that of an emigrant agent--as some have found by experience." in this connection i have an account published in april, , in an augusta newspaper of just such a case: the heaviest fine given in the city court of richmond county within the last two years was imposed upon e. f. arnett yesterday morning. he was sentenced to pay a fine of one thousand dollars or serve six months in the county jail. arnett was convicted of violating the state emigration laws regarding the carrying of labour out of the state. he was alleged to have employed thirteen negroes to work on the georgia and atlantic railroad, which operates in this state and alabama. the jury on the case returned a verdict of guilty when court convened yesterday, although it had been reported that a mistrial was probable. _"peg leg" williams_ a famous railroad emigration agent called "peg leg" williams, who promoted negro emigration from georgia to mississippi and texas a few years ago, was repeatedly prosecuted and finally driven out of business. in a letter which he wrote some time ago to the atlanta _constitution_ he said: i know of several counties not a hundred miles from atlanta where it's more than a man's life is worth to go in to get negroes to move to some other state. there are farmers that would not hesitate to shoot their brother were he to come from mississippi to get "his niggers," as he calls them, even though he had no contract with them. i know personally numbers of negro men who have moved west and after accumulating a little, return to get a brother, sister, or an old father or mother, and they were compelled to return without them, their lives being imperilled; they had to leave and leave quick. in view of such a feeling it may be imagined how futile is the talk of the deportation of the negro race. what the southern planter wants to-day is not fewer negroes but more negroes--negroes who will "keep their place." _laws to make the negro work_ many other laws have been passed in the southern states which are designed to keep the negro on the land, and having him there, to make him work. the contract law, the abuses of which lead to peonage and debt slavery, is an excellent example--which i shall discuss more fully in the next chapter. the criminal laws, the chain-gang system, and the hiring of negro convicts to private individuals are all, in one way or another, devices to keep the negro at work on farms, in brick-yards and in mines. the vagrancy laws, not unlike those of the north and excellent in their purpose, are here sometimes executed with great severity. in alabama the last legislature passed a law under which a negro arrested for vagrancy must prove that he is not a vagrant. in short, the old rule of law that a man is innocent until proved guilty is here reversed for the negro so that the burden of proving that he is not guilty of vagrancy rests upon him, not upon the state. the last alabama legislature also passed a stringent game law, one argument in its favour being that by preventing the negro from pot-hunting it would force him to work more steadily in the cotton fields. _race hatred versus economic necessity_ one of the most significant things i saw in the south--and i saw it everywhere--was the way in which the white people were torn between their feeling of race prejudice and their downright economic needs. hating and fearing the negro as a race (though often loving individual negroes), they yet want him to work for them; they can't get along without him. in one impulse a community will rise to mob negroes or to drive them out of the country because of negro crime or negro vagrancy, or because the negro is becoming educated, acquiring property and "getting out of his place"; and in the next impulse laws are passed or other remarkable measures taken to keep him at work--because the south can't get along without him. from the atlanta _georgian_ i cut recently a letter which well illustrates the way in which racial hatred clashes with economic necessity. troubles of country folk but aren't there two sides to every question? here we are out here in the country, right in the midst of hundreds of negroes, and do you know, sir, that all this talk about lynching and ku-kluxing is frightening the farm hands to such an extent we begin to fear that soon the farmers will sustain a great loss of labour, by their running away? already it is beginning to have its effect. after night the negroes are afraid to leave their farm to go anywhere on errands of business. why, sir, two miles from this town, the negroes are afraid to come here to trade at night. the country merchants are feeling the force of it very sorely, and if this foolishness isn't stopped their losses in fall trade will be very heavy. even some of the ladies of our community are complaining of this rashness. that it is demoralising the labour in the home department. so in conclusion, in behalf of my community and other country communities, i feel it my duty to raise a warning voice against all such new foolish ku-kluxism. mableton, ga. t. j. lowe. while i was in georgia a case came up which threw a flood of light upon the inner complexities of this problem. in the county of habersham in north georgia the population is largely of the type known as "poor white"--the famous mountain folk who were never slave-owners and many of whom fought in the union army during the civil war. habersham is one of the "white counties" which is growing whiter. it has about , negroes and , whites--many of the latter having come in from the north to grow peaches and raise sheep. one of the negroes of habersham county was frank grant, described by a white neighbour as "a negro of good character, a property owner, setting an example of thrift and honesty that ought to have made his example a benefit to any community." grant had saved money from his labour and bought a home. he was such a good worker that people were willing sometimes to pay him twice the wages of the average labourer, white or black. on the night of december , , the negro's house was fired into by a party of white men who then went to the house of his tenant, henry scism, also a negro, and shot promiscuously around scism's house, and warned him to leave the country in one week, threatening him with severe penalties if he did not go. as a result grant had to sell out his little home, won after such hard work, and he and his tenant scism with their families both fled the county. "in grant," said his white neighbour, "the county lost a capable labourer--in its present situation, a most valuable asset--and a good citizen." here, then, we have race hatred versus economic necessity. the important citizens and employers of habersham county came to atlanta and presented a petition to governor terrell, january , , as follows: to his excellency, j. m. terrell, governor of georgia, atlanta: whereas, on the night of december , , parties unknown came to the quiet home of one frank grant, coloured, a citizen of this county, and shot into his residence, and then went to the home of henry scism, coloured, a tenant of said frank grant, and shot promiscuously around his (the said scism's) house, and demanded of him to leave the county under severe penalty. this has caused the tenant, henry scism, to leave, and frank grant to sell his little house at a sacrifice and leave. it comes to us that frank grant is a quiet, innocent, hard-working citizen. therefore, we, the undersigned officers and citizens of habersham county, georgia, pray you to offer a liberal reward for the arrest and conviction or these unknown parties--say $ for the first and $ for each succeeding one. (signed) c. w. grant, _county school commissioner_. j. a. erwin clerk, s. c., m. franklin, ordinary j. d. hill, t. c. h. c. but, of course, nothing could be done that would keep the negroes on the land under such conditions. _why negroes are driven out_ what does it all mean? listen to the explanation given by a prominent white man of habersham county--not to me--but to the atlanta _georgian_, where it was published: "it is not a problem of negro labour, because there is little of that kind there. the white labour will not work for the fruit growers at prices they can afford, even when it is a good fruit year. often they decline to work at any price. they have many admirable qualities; among them is a spirit of pride and independence, which, rightly directed, would uplift and make them prosperous, but which misguided and blind, as it sometimes is, keeps them in poverty and puts the region in which they live at great disadvantage. "landowners and employers, native, and new, are indignant but helpless. they are in the power of the shiftless element of the whites, who say, 'i will work or not, as i please, and when i please, and at my own price; and i will not have negroes taking my work away from me.' this is not a race question, pure and simple; it is an industrial question, a labour issue, not confined to one part of the country." here, it will be observed, the same complaint is made against the "poor white" as against the negro--that he is shiftless and that he won't work even for high wages. generally speaking, the race hatred in the south comes chiefly from the poorer class of whites who either own land which they work themselves or are tenant farmers in competition with negroes and from politicians who seek to win the votes of this class of white men. the larger landowners and employers of labour, while they do not love the negro, want him to work and work steadily, and will do almost anything to keep him on the land--so long as he is a faithful, obedient, unambitious worker. when he becomes prosperous, or educated, or owns land, many white people no longer "have any use for him" and turn upon him with hostility, but the best type of the southern white men is not only glad to see the negro become a prosperous and independent farmer but will do much to help him. _vivid illustration of race feeling_ i have had innumerable illustrations of the extremes to which race feeling reaches among a certain class of southerners. in a letter to the atlanta _constitution_, november , , a writer who signs himself mark johnson, says: the only use we have for the negro is as a labourer. it is only as such that we need him; it is only as such that we can use him. if the north wants to take him and educate him we will bid him godspeed and contribute to his education if schools are located on the other side of the line. and here are extracts from a remarkable letter from a southern white working man signing himself forrest pope and published in the atlanta _georgian_, october , : when the skilled negro appears and begins to elbow the white man in the struggle for existence, don't you know the white man rebels and won't have it so? if you don't it won't take you long to find it out; just go out and ask a few of them, those who tell you the whole truth, and see what you will find out about it. _what is the negro's place?_ all the genuine southern people like the negro as a servant, and so long as he remains the hewer of wood and carrier of water, and remains strictly in what we choose to call his place, everything is all right, but when ambition, prompted by real education, causes the negro to grow restless and he bestir himself to get out of that servile condition, then there is, or at least there will be, trouble, sure enough trouble, that all the great editors, parsons and philosophers can no more check than they can now state the whole truth and nothing but the truth, about this all-absorbing, far-reaching miserable race question. there are those among southern editors and other public men who have been shouting into the ears of the north for twenty-five years that education would solve the negro question; there is not an honest, fearless, thinking man in the south but who knows that to be a bare-faced lie. take a young negro of little more than ordinary intelligence, even, get hold of him in time, train him thoroughly as to books, and finish him up with a good industrial education, send him out into the south with ever so good intentions both on the part of his benefactor and himself, send him to take my work away from me and i will kill him. [illustration: companion pictures old and new cabins for negro tenants on the brown plantation] the writer says in another part of this remarkable letter, giving as it does a glimpse of the bare bones of the economic struggle for existence: i am, i believe, a typical southern white workingman of the skilled variety, and i'll tell the whole world, including drs. abbott and eliot, that i don't want any educated property-owning negro around me. the negro would be desirable to me for what i could get out of him in the way of labour that i don't want to have to perform myself, and i have no other uses for him. _who will do the dirty work?_ one illustration more and i am through. i met at montgomery, alabama, a lawyer named gustav frederick mertins. we were discussing the "problem," and mr. mertins finally made a striking remark, not at all expressing the view that i heard from some of the strongest citizens of montgomery, but excellently voicing the position of many southerners. "it's a question," he said, "who will do the dirty work. in this country the white man won't: the negro must. there's got to be a mudsill somewhere. if you educate the negroes they won't stay where they belong; and you must consider them as a race, because if you let a few rise it makes the others discontented." mr. mertins presented me with a copy of his novel called "the storm signal," in which he further develops the idea (p. ): the negro is the mudsill of the social and industrial south to-day. upon his labour in the field, in the forest, and in the mine, the whole structure rests. slip the mudsill out and the system must be reorganised.... educate him and he quits the field. instruct him in the trades and sciences and he enters into active competition with the white man in what are called the higher planes of life. that competition brings on friction, and that friction in the end means the negroe's undoing. is not this mudsill stirring to-day, and is not that the deep reason for many of the troubles in the south--and in the north as well, where the negro has appeared in large numbers? the friction of competition has arrived, and despite the demand for justice by many of the best class of the southern whites, the struggle is certainly of growing intensity. and out of this economic struggle of whites and blacks grows an ethical struggle far more significant. it is the struggle of the white man with himself. how shall he, who is supreme in the south as in the north, treat the negro? that is the _real_ struggle! chapter v race relationships in the south i generally speaking, the sharpest race prejudice in the south is exhibited by the poorer class of white people, whether farmers, artisans, or unskilled workers, who come into active competition with the negroes, or from politicians who are seeking the votes of this class of people. it is this element which has driven the negroes out of more than one community in the south and it commonly forms the lynching mobs. a similar antagonism of the working classes exists in the north wherever the negro has appeared in large numbers--as i shall show when i come to write of the treatment of the northern negro. on the other hand, the larger landowners and employers of the south, and all professional and business men who hire servants, while they dislike and fear the negro as a race (though often loving and protecting individual negroes), want the black man to work for them. more than that, they _must have him_: for he has a practical monopoly on labour in the south. white men of the employing class will do almost anything to keep the negro on the land and his wife in the kitchen--so long as they are obedient and unambitious workers. _"good" and "bad" landlords_ but i had not been very long in the black belt before i began to see that the large planters--the big employers of labour--often pursued very different methods in dealing with the negro. in the feudal middle ages there were good and bad barons; so in the south to-day there are "good" and "bad" landlords (for lack of a better designation) and every gradation between them. the good landlord, generally speaking, is the one who knows by inheritance how a feudal system should be operated. in other words, he is the old slave-owner or his descendant, who not only feels the ancient responsibility of slavery times, but believes that the good treatment of tenants, as a policy, will produce better results than harshness and force. the bad landlord represents the degeneration of the feudal system: he is in farming to make all he can out of it this year and next, without reference to human life. i have already told something of j. pope brown's plantation near hawkinsville. on the november day, when we drove out through it, i was impressed with the fact that nearly all the houses used by the negro tenants were new, and much superior to the old log cabins built either before or after the war, some of which i saw still standing, vacant and dilapidated, in various parts of the plantation. i asked the reason why he had built new houses: "well," he answered, "i find i can keep a better class of tenants, if the accommodations are good." _liquor and "the resulting trouble"_ mr. brown has other methods for keeping the tenantry on his plantation satisfied. every year he gives a barbecue and "frolic" for his negroes, with music and speaking and plenty to eat. a big watermelon patch is also a feature of the plantation, and during all the year the tenants are looked after, not only to see that the work is properly done, but in more intimate and sympathetic ways. on one trip through the plantation we stopped in front of a negro cabin. inside lay a negro boy close to death from a bullet wound in the head. he had been at a negro party a few nights before where there was liquor. someone had overturned the lamp: shooting began, and the young fellow was taken out for dead. such accidents or crimes are all too familiar in the plantation country. although pulaski county, georgia, prohibits the sale or purchase of liquor (most of the south, indeed, is prohibition in its sentiment), the negroes are able from time to time to get jugs of liquor--and, as one southerner put it to me, "enjoy the resulting trouble." the boy's father came out of the field and told us with real eloquence of sorrow of the patient's condition. "las' night," he said, "we done thought he was a-crossin' de ribbah." mr. brown had already sent the doctor out from the city; he now made arrangements to transport the boy to a hospital in macon where he could be properly treated. _use of cocaine among negroes_ as i have said before, the white landlord who really tries to treat his negroes well, often has a hard time of it. many of those (not all) he deals with are densely ignorant, irresponsible, indolent--and often rendered more careless from knowing that the white man must have labour. many of them will not keep up the fences, or take care of their tools, or pick the cotton even after it is ready, without steady attention. a prominent mississippi planter gave me an illustration of one of the troubles he just then had to meet. an eighteen-year-old negro left his plantation to work in a railroad camp. there he learned to use cocaine, and when he came back to the plantation he taught the habit to a dozen of the best negroes there, to their complete ruin. the planter had the entire crowd arrested, searched for cocaine and kept in jail until the habit was broken. then he prosecuted the white druggist who sold the cocaine. some southern planters, to prevent the negroes from leaving, have built churches for them, and in one instance i heard of a school-house as well. another point of the utmost importance--for it strikes at the selfish interest of the landlord--lies in the treatment of the negro, who, by industry or ability, can "get ahead." a good landlord not only places no obstacles in the way of such tenants, but takes a real pride in their successes. mr. brown said: "if a tenant sees that other negroes on the same plantation have been able to save money and get land of their own, it tends to make them more industrious. it pays the planter to treat his tenants well." _negro with $ , in the bank_ the result is that a number of mr. brown's tenants have bought and own good farms near the greater plantation. the plantation, indeed, becomes a sort of central sun around which revolves like planets the lesser life of the negro landowner. mr. brown told me with no little pride of the successes of several negroes. we met one farmer driving to town in a top buggy with a negro school-teacher. his name was robert polhill--a good type of the self-respecting, vigorous, industrious negro. afterward we visited his farm. he had an excellent house with four rooms. in front there were vines and decorative "chicken-corn"; a fence surrounded the place and it was really in good repair. inside the house everything was scrupulously neat, from the clean rag rugs to the huge post beds with their gay coverlets. the wife evidently had some indian blood in her veins; she could read and write, but polhill himself was a full black negro, intelligent, but illiterate. the children, and there were a lot of them, are growing up practically without opportunity for education because the school held in the negro church is not only very poor, but it is in session only a short time every year. near the house was a one-horse syrup-mill then in operation, grinding cane brought in by neighbouring farmers--white as well as black--the whites thus patronising the enterprise of their energetic negro neighbour. "i first noticed polhill when he began work on the plantation," said mr. brown, "because he was the only negro on the place whom i could depend upon to stop hog-cracks in the fences." his history is the common history of the negro farmer who "gets ahead." starting as a wages' hand, he worked hard and steadily, saving enough finally to buy a mule--the negro's first purchase; then he rented land, and by hard work and close calculating made money steadily. with his first $ he started out to see the world, travelling by railroad to florida, and finally back home again. the "moving about" instinct is strong in all negroes--sometimes to their destruction. then he bought acres of land on credit and having good crops, paid for it in six or seven years. now he has a comfortable home, he is out of debt, and has money in the bank, a painted house, a top buggy and a cabinet organ! these are the values of his property: his farm is worth $ , two mules horse other equipment money in the bank , ------ $ , _negro who owns , acres of land_ all of this shows what a negro who is industrious, and who comes up on a plantation where the landlord is not oppressive, can do. and despite the fact that much is heard on the one hand of the lazy and worthless negro, and on the other of the landlord who holds his negroes in practical slavery--it is significant that many negroes are able to get ahead. in pulaski county there are negroes who own as high as , acres of land. ben gordon is one of them, his brother charles has acres, john nelson has acres worth $ an acre, the miller family has , acres, january lawson, another of mr. brown's former tenants, has acres; jack daniel acres, tom whelan acres. a mulatto merchant in hawkinsville, whose creditable store i visited, also owns his plantation in the country and rents it to negro tenants on the same system employed by the white landowners. indeed, a few negroes in the south are coming to be not inconsiderable landlords, and have many tenants. hawkinsville also has a negro blacksmith, negro barbers and negro builders--and like the white man, the negro also develops his own financial sharks. one educated coloured man in hawkinsville is a "note shaver"; he "stands for" other negroes and signs their notes--at a frightful commission. statistics will give some idea of how the industrious negro in a black belt county like pulaski has been succeeding. total assessed acres of value of land owned property , $ , , , , , , , , , , , it is surprising to an unfamiliar visitor to find out that the negroes in the south have acquired so much land. in georgia alone in coloured people owned , , acres and were assessed for over $ , , worth of property, practically all of which, of course, has been acquired in the forty years since slavery. negro farmers in some instances have made a genuine reputation for ability. john roberts, a richmond county negro, won first prize over many white exhibitors in the fall of at the georgia-carolina fair at augusta for the best bale of cotton raised. _little coloured boy's famous speech_ i was at macon while the first state fair ever held by negroes in georgia was in progress. in spite of the fact that racial relationships, owing to the recent riot at atlanta, were acute, the fair was largely attended, and not only by negroes, but by many white visitors. the brunt of the work of organisation fell upon r. r. wright, president of the georgia state industrial college (coloured) of savannah. president wright is of full-blooded african descent, his grandmother, who reared him, being an african negro of the mandingo tribe. just at the close of the war he was a boy in a freedman's school at atlanta. one sunday general o. o. howard came to address the pupils. when he had finished, he expressed a desire to take a message back to the people of the north. "what shall i tell them for you?" he asked. a little black boy in front stood up quickly, and said: "tell 'em, massa, we is rising." upon this incident john greenleaf whittier wrote a famous poem: and at the negro fair, crowning the charts which had been prepared to show the progress of the negroes of georgia, i saw this motto: "we are rising" the little black boy grew up, was graduated at atlanta university, studied at harvard, travelled in europe, served in the spanish-american war, and is now seeking to help his race to get an industrial training in the college which he organised in . the attendance at the fair in macon was between , and , , the negroes raised $ , and spent $ , , and planned for a greater fair the next year. in this enterprise they had the sympathy and approval of the best white people. a vivid glimpse of what the fair meant is given by the _daily news_ of macon--a white newspaper: the fair shows what progress can be accomplished by the industrious and thrifty negro, who casts aside the belief that he is a dependent, and sails right in to make a living and a home for himself. some of the agricultural exhibits of black farmers have never been surpassed in macon. on the whole, the exposition just simply astounded folks who did not know what the negro is doing for himself. another significant feature about the fair was the excellent behaviour of the great throngs of coloured people who poured into the city during its progress. there was not an arrest on the fair grounds and very few in the city. [illustration: cane syrup kettle. expert negro stirring and skimming] [illustration: chain-gang workers on the roads] the better class of negro farmers, indeed, have shown not only a capacity for getting ahead individually, but for organising for self-advancement, and even for working with corresponding associations of white farmers. the great cotton and tobacco associations of the south, which aim to direct the marketing of the product of the farms, have found it not only wise, but necessary to enlist the cöoperation of negro farmers. at the annual rally of the dark-tobacco growers at guthrie, kentucky, last september, many negro planters were in the line of parade with the whites. the farmers' conferences held at hampton, tuskegee, calhoun, and at similar schools, illustrate in other ways the possibilities of advancement which grow out of landownership by the negroes. _the penalties of being free_ so much for the sunny side of the picture: the broad-gauge landlord and the prosperous tenantry. conditions in the black belt are in one respect much as they were in slavery times, or as they would be under any feudal system: if the master or lord is "good," the negro prospers; if he is harsh, grasping, unkind, the negro suffers bitterly. it gets back finally to the white man. in assuming supreme rights in the south--political, social, and industrial, the white man also assumes heavy duties and responsibilities; he cannot have the one without the other: and he takes to himself the pain and suffering which goes with power and responsibility. of course, scarcity of labour and high wages have given the really ambitious and industrious negro his opportunity, and many thousands of them are becoming more and more independent of the favour or the ill-will of the whites. and therein lies a profound danger, not only to the negro, but to the south. gradually losing the support and advice of the best type of white man, the independent negro finds himself in competition with the poorer type of white man, whose jealousy he must meet. he takes the penalties of being really free. escaping the exactions of a feudal life, he finds he must meet the sharper difficulties of a free industrial system. and being without the political rights of his poor white competitor and wholly without social recognition, discredited by the bestial crimes of the lower class of his own race, he has, indeed, a hard struggle before him. in many neighbourhoods he is peculiarly at the mercy of this lower class white electorate, and the self-seeking politicians whose stock in trade consists in playing upon the passions of race-hatred. ii i come now to the reverse of the picture. when the negro tenant takes up land or hires out to the landlord, he ordinarily signs a contract, or if he cannot sign (about half the negro tenants of the black belt are wholly illiterate) he makes his mark. he often has no way of knowing certainly what is in the contract, though the arrangement is usually clearly understood, and he must depend on the landlord to keep both the rent and the supply-store accounts. in other words, he is wholly at the planter's mercy--a temptation as dangerous for the landlord as the possibilities which it presents are for the tenant. it is so easy to make large profits by charging immense interest percentages or outrageous prices for supplies to tenants who are too ignorant or too weak to protect themselves, that the stories of the oppressive landlord in the south are scarcely surprising. it is easy, when the tenant brings in his cotton in the fall not only to underweigh it, but to credit it at the lowest prices of the week; and this dealing of the strong with the weak is not southern, it is human. such a system has encouraged dishonesty, and wastefulness; it has made many landlords cruel and greedy, it has increased the helplessness, hopelessness and shiftlessness of the negro. in many cases it has meant downright degeneration, not only to the negro, but to the white man. these are strong words, but no one can travel in the black belt without seeing enough to convince him of the terrible consequences growing out of these relationships. _the story of a negro tenant_ a case which came to my attention at montgomery, alabama, throws a vivid light on one method of dealing with the negro tenant. some nine miles from montgomery lives a planter named t. l. mccullough. in december, , he made a contract with a negro named jim thomas to work for him. according to this contract, a copy of which i have, the landlord agreed to furnish jim the negro with a ration of lbs. of meat and one bushel of meal a month, and to pay him besides $ for an entire year's labour. on his part jim agreed to "do good and faithful labour for the said t. l. mccullough." "good and faithful labour" means from sunrise to sunset every day but sunday, and excepting saturday afternoon. a payment of five dollars was made to bind the bargain--just before christmas. jim probably spent it the next day. it is customary to furnish a cabin for the worker to live in; no such place was furnished, and jim had to walk three or four miles morning and evening to a house on another plantation. he worked faithfully until may th. then he ran away, but when he heard that the landlord was after him, threatening punishment, he came back and agreed to work twenty days for the ten he had been away. jim stayed some time, but he was not only given no cabin and paid no money, but his food ration was cut off! so he ran away again, claiming that he could not work unless he had a place to live. the landlord went after him and had him arrested, and although the negro had worked nearly half a year, mccullough prosecuted him for fraud because he had got $ in cash at the signing of the contract. in such a case the alabama law gives the landlord every advantage; it says that when a person receives money under a contract and stops work, the presumption is that he intended to defraud the landowner and that therefore he is criminally punishable. the practical effect of the law is to permit imprisonment for debt, for it places a burden of proof on the negro that he can hardly overturn. the law is defended on the ground that negroes will get money any way they can, sign any sort of paper for it, and then run off--if there is not a stringent law to punish them. but it may be imagined how this law could be used, and is used, in the hands of unscrupulous men to keep the negro in a sort of debt-slavery. when the case came up before judge william h. thomas of montgomery, the constitutionality of the law was brought into question, and the negro was finally discharged. often an unscrupulous landlord will deliberately give a negro a little money before christmas, knowing that he will promptly waste it in a "celebration" thus getting him into debt so that he dare not leave the plantation for fear of arrest and criminal prosecution. if he attempts to leave he is arrested and taken before a friendly justice of the peace, and fined or threatened with imprisonment. if he is not in debt, it sometimes happens that the landlord will have him arrested on the charge of stealing a bridle or a few potatoes (for it is easy to find something against almost any negro), and he is brought into court. in several cases i know of the escaping negro has even been chased down with bloodhounds. on appearing in court the negro is naturally badly frightened. the white man is there and offers as a special favour to take him back and let him work out the fine--which sometimes requires six months, often a whole year. in this way negroes are kept in debt--so-called debt-slavery or peonage--year after year, they and their whole family. one of the things that i couldn't at first understand in some of the courts i visited was the presence of so many white men to stand sponsor for negroes who had committed various offences. often this grows out of the feudal protective instinct which the landlord feels for the tenant or servant of whom he is fond; but often it is merely the desire of the white man to get another negro worker. in one case in particular, i saw a negro brought into court charged with stealing cotton. "does anybody know this negro?" asked the judge. two white men stepped up and both said they did. the judge fined the negro $ and costs, and there was a real contest between the two white men as to who should pay it--and get the negro. they argued for some minutes, but finally the judge said to the prisoner: "who do you want to work for, george?" the negro chose his employer, and agreed to work four months to pay off his $ fine and costs. sometimes a man who has a debt against a negro will sell the claim--which is practically selling the negro--to some farmer who wants more labour. a case of this sort came up in the winter of in rankin county, mississippi--the facts of which are all in testimony. a negro named dan january was in debt to a white farmer named levi carter. carter agreed to sell the negro and his entire family to another white farmer named patrick. january refused to be sold. according to the testimony carter and some of his companions seized january, bound him hand and foot and beat him most brutally, taking turns in doing the whipping until they were exhausted and the victim unconscious. january's children removed him to his home, but the white men returned the next day, produced a rope and threatened to hang him unless he consented to go to the purchaser of the debt. the case came into court but the white men were never punished. january was in jackson, miss., when i was there; he still showed the awful effects of his beating. _keeping negroes poor_ this system has many bad results. it encourages the negro in crime. he knows that unless he does something pretty bad, he will not be prosecuted because the landlord doesn't want to lose the work of a single hand; he knows that if he _is_ prosecuted, the white man will, if possible, "pay him out." it disorganises justice and confuses the ignorant negro mind as to what is a crime and what is not. a negro will often do things that he would not do if he thought he were really to be punished. he comes to the belief that if the white man wants him arrested, he will be arrested, and if he protects him, he won't suffer, no matter what he does. thousands of negroes, ignorant, weak, indolent, to-day work under this system. there are even landlords and employers who will trade upon the negro's worst instincts--his love for liquor, for example--in order to keep him at work. an instance of this sort came to my attention at hawkinsville while i was there. the white people of the town were making a strong fight for prohibition; the women held meetings, and on the day of the election marched in the streets singing and speaking. but the largest employer of negro labor in the county had registered several hundred of his negroes and declared his intention of voting them against prohibition. he said bluntly: "if my niggers can't get whisky they won't stay with me; you've got to keep a nigger poor or he won't work." this employer actually voted sixty of his negroes against prohibition, but the excitement was so great that he dared vote no more--and prohibition carried. a step further brings the negro to the chain-gang. if there is no white man to pay him out, or if his crime is too serious to be paid out, he goes to the chain-gang--and in several states he is then hired out to private contractors. the private employer thus gets him sooner or later. some of the largest farms in the south are operated by chain-gang labour. the demand for more convicts by white employers is exceedingly strong. in the montgomery _advertiser_ for april , , i find an account of the sentencing of fifty-four prisoners in the city court, fifty-two of whom were negroes. the _advertiser_ says: the demand for their labour is probably greater now than it ever has been before. numerous labour agents of companies employing convict labour reached montgomery yesterday, and were busily engaged in manoeuvring to secure part or even all of the convicts for their respective companies. the competition for labour of all kinds, it seems, is keener than ever before known. the natural tendency of this demand, and from the further fact that the convict system makes yearly a huge profit for the state, is to convict as many negroes as possible, and to punish the offences charged as severely as possible. from the atlanta _constitution_ of october , , i have this clipping: six months for potato theft columbus, ga., october (special) in the city court yesterday charley carter, a negro, was sentenced to six months on the chain-gang or to pay a fine of $ for stealing a potato valued at cents. serious crimes are sometimes compromised. in a newspaper dispatch, october , , from eaton ga., i find a report of the trial of six negroes charged with assault with the intent to kill. all were found guilty, but upon a recommendation of mercy they were sentenced as having committed misdemeanours rather than felonies. they could therefore have their fines paid, and five were immediately released by farmers who wanted their labour. the report says that of thirty-one misdemeanours during the month it is expected that "none will reach the chain-gang," since there are "three farmers to every convict ready to pay the fine." [illustration: a type of the country chain-gang negro] still other methods are pursued by certain landlords to keep their tenants on the land. in one extreme case a negro tenant, after years of work, decided to leave the planter. he had had a place offered him where he could make more money. there was nothing against him; he simply wanted to move. but the landlord informed him that no waggon would be permitted to cross his (the planter's) land to get his household belongings. the negro, being ignorant, supposed he could thus be prevented from moving, and although the friend who was trying to help him assured him that the landlord could not prevent his moving, he dared not go. in another instance--also extreme--a planter refused to let his tenants raise hogs, because he wanted them to buy salt pork at his store. it is, indeed, through the plantation store (which corresponds to the company or "truck" store of northern mining regions) that the unscrupulous planter reaps his most exorbitant profits. negroes on some plantations, whether they work hard or not, come out at the end of the year with nothing. part of this is due, of course, to their own improvidence; but part, in too many cases, is due to exploitation by the landlord. _one biscuit to eat and no place to sleep_ booker t. washington, in a letter to the montgomery _advertiser_ on the negro labour problem, tells this story: i recall that some years ago a certain white farmer asked me to secure for him a young coloured man to work about the house and to work in the field. the young man was secured, a bargain was entered into to the effect that he was to be paid a certain sum monthly and his board and lodging furnished as well. at the end of the coloured boy's first day on the farm he returned. i asked the reason, and he said that after working all the afternoon he was handed a buttered biscuit for his supper, and no place was provided for him to sleep. at night he was told he could find a place to sleep in the fodder loft. this white farmer, whom i know well, is not a cruel man and seeks generally to do the right thing; but in this case he simply overlooked the fact that it would have paid him in dollars and cents to give some thought and attention to the comfort of his helper. this case is more or less typical. had this boy been well cared for, he would have advertised the place that others would have sought work there. such methods mean, of course, the lowest possible efficiency of labour--ignorant, hopeless, shiftless. the harsh planter naturally opposes negro education in the bitterest terms and prevents it wherever possible; for education means the doom of the system by which he thrives. _negro with nineteen children_ life for the tenants is often not a pleasant thing to contemplate. i spent much time driving about on the great plantations and went into many of the cabins. usually they were very poor, of logs or shacks, sometimes only one room, sometimes a room and a sort of lean-to. at one side there was a fireplace, often two beds opposite, with a few broken chairs or boxes, and a table. sometimes the cabin was set up on posts and had a floor, sometimes it was on the ground and had no floor at all. the people are usually densely ignorant and superstitious; the preachers they follow are often the worst sort of characters, dishonest and immoral; the schools, if there are any, are practically worthless. the whole family works from sunrise to sunset in the fields. even children of six and seven years old will drop seed or carry water. dr. w. e. b. dubois, himself a negro, who has made many valuable and scholarly studies of negro life, gives this vivid glimpse into a home where the negro and his wife had nineteen children. he says: this family of twenty-one is a poverty stricken, reckless, dirty set. the children are stupid and repulsive, and fight for their food at the table. they are poorly dressed, sickly and cross. the table dishes stand from one meal to another unwashed, and the house is in perpetual disorder. now and then the father and mother engage in a hand-to-hand fight. _never heard the name of roosevelt_ it would be impossible to over-emphasise the ignorance of many negro farmers. it seems almost unbelievable, but after some good-humoured talk with a group of old negroes i tried to find out how much they knew of the outside world. i finally asked them if they knew theodore roosevelt. they looked puzzled, and finally one old fellow scratched his head and said: "whah you say dis yere man libes?" "in washington," i said; "you've heard of the president of the united states?" "i reckon i dunno," he said. and yet this old man gave me a first-class religious exhortation; and one in the group had heard of booker t. washington, whom he described as a "pow'ful big nigger." _why negroes go to cities_ i made inquiries among the negroes as to why they wanted to leave the farms and go to cities. the answer i got from all sorts of sources was first, the lack of schooling in the country, and second, the lack of protection. and i heard also many stories of ill-treatment of various sorts, the distrust of the tenant of the landlord in keeping his accounts--all of which, dimly recognised, tends to make many negroes escape the country, if they can. indeed, it is growing harder and harder on the great plantations, especially where the management is by overseers, to keep a sufficient labour supply. in some places the white landlords have begun to break up their plantations, selling small farms to ambitious negroes--a significant sign, indeed, of the passing of the feudal system. an instance of this is found near thomaston, ga., where dr. c. b. thomas has long been selling land to negroes, and encouraging them to buy by offering easy terms. near dayton, messrs. price and allen have broken up their "lockhart plantation" and are selling it out to negroes. i found similar instances in many places i visited. commenting on this tendency, the thomaston _post_ says: this is, in part, a solution of the so-called negro problem, for those of the race who have property interests at stake cannot afford to antagonise their white neighbours or transgress the laws. the ownership of land tends to make them better citizens in every way, more thoughtful of the right of others, and more ambitious for their own advancement. at this place a number of neat and comfortable homes, a commodious high school, and a large lodge building, besides a number of churches, testify to the enterprise and thrift the best class of our coloured population.... the tendency towards cutting up the large plantations is beginning to show itself, and when all of them are so divided, there will be no agricultural labour problem, except, perhaps, in the gathering of an especially large crop. iii i have endeavoured thus to give a picture of both sides of conditions in the black belt exactly as i saw them. i can now do no better in further illumination of the conditions i have described than by looking at them through the eyes and experiences of two exceptionally able white men of the south, both leaders in their respective walks of life, neither of them politicians and both, incidentally, planters. at jackson, miss., i met major r. w. millsaps, a leading citizen of the state. he comes of a family with the best southern traditions behind it; he was born in mississippi, graduated before the war at harvard college, and although his father, a slave owner, had opposed secession, the son fought four years in the confederate army, rising to the rank of major. he came out of the war, as he says, "with no earthly possessions but a jacket and a pair of pants, with a hole in them." but he was young and energetic; he began hauling cotton from jackson to natchez when cotton was worth almost its weight in gold. he received $ a bale for doing it and made $ , in three months. he is now the president of one of the leading banks in mississippi, interested in many important southern enterprises, and the founder of millsaps college at jackson: a modest, useful, christian gentleman. _an experiment in trusting negroes_ near greenville, miss., major millsaps owns a plantation of acres, occupied by tenants, some people in all. it is in one of the richest agricultural sections--the mississippi bottoms--in the united states. up to he had a white overseer and he was constantly in trouble of one kind or another with his tenants. when the price of cotton dropped, he decided to dispense with the overseer entirely and try a rather daring experiment. in short, he planned to trust the negroes. he got them together and said: "i am going to try you. i'm going to give you every possible opportunity; if you don't make out, i will go back to the overseer system." in the sixteen years since then no white man has been on that plantation except as a visitor. the land was rented direct to the negroes on terms that would give both landlord and tenant a reasonable profit. "did it work?" i asked. "i have never lost one cent," said major millsaps, "no negro has ever failed to pay up and you couldn't drive them off the place. when other farmers complain of shortage of labour and tenants, i never have had any trouble." every negro on the place owns his own mules and waggons and is out of debt. nearly every family has bought or is buying a home in the little town of leland, nearby, some of which are comfortably furnished. they are all prosperous and contented. "how do you do it?" i asked. "the secret," he said, "is to treat the negro well and give him a chance. i have found that a negro, like a white man, is most responsive to good treatment. even a dog responds to kindness! the trouble is that most planters want to make too much money out of the negro; they charge him too much rent; they make too large profits on the supplies they furnish. i know merchants who expect a return of per cent. on supplies alone. the best negroes i have known are those who are educated; negroes need more education of the right kind--not less--and it will repay us well if we give it to them. it makes better, not worse, workers." i asked him about the servant problem. "we never have any trouble," he said. "i apply the same rule to servants as to the farmers. treat them well, don't talk insultingly of their people before them, don't expect them to do too much work. i believe in treating a negro with respect. that doesn't mean to make equals of them. you people in the north don't make social equals of your white servants." _jefferson davis's way with negroes_ then he told a striking story of jefferson davis. "i got a lesson in the treatment of negroes when i was a young man returning south from harvard. i stopped in washington and called on jefferson davis, then united states senator from mississippi. we walked down pennsylvania avenue. many negroes bowed to mr. davis and he returned the bow. he was a very polite man. i finally said to him that i thought he must have a good many friends among the negroes. he replied: "'i can't allow any negro to outdo me in courtesy.'" _plain words from a white man_ a few days later on my way north i met at clarksdale, miss., walter clark, one of the well-known citizens of the state and president of the mississippi cotton association. in the interests of his organisation he has been speaking in different parts of the state on court-days and at fairs. and the burden of his talks has been, not only organisation by the farmers, but a more intelligent and progressive treatment of negro labour. recognising the instability of the ordinary negro, the crime he commits, the great difficulties which the best-intentioned southern planters have to meet, mr. clark yet tells his southern audiences some vigorous truths. he said in a recent speech: "every dollar i own those negroes made for me. our ancestors chased them down and brought them here. they are just what we make them. by our own greed and extravagance we have spoiled a good many of them. it has been popular here--now happily growing less so--to exploit the negro by high store-prices and by encouraging him to get into debt. it has often made him hopeless. we have a low element of white people who are largely responsible for the negro's condition. they sell him whiskey and cocaine; they corrupt negro women. a white man who shoots craps with negroes or who consorts with negro women is worse than the meanest negro that ever lived." at coffeeville, where mr. clark talked somewhat to this effect, an old man who sat in front suddenly jumped up and said: "that's the truth! bully for you; bully for you!" in his talk with me, mr. clark said other significant things: "our people have treated the negroes as helpless children all their days. the negro has not been encouraged to develop even the capacities he has. he must be made to use his own brains, not ours; put him on his responsibility and he will become more efficient. a negro came to me not long ago complaining that the farmer for whom he worked would not give him an itemised account of his charges at the store. i met the planter and asked him about it. he said to me: "'the black nigger! what does he know about it? he can't read it.' "'but he is entitled to it, isn't he?' i asked him--and the negro got it. "the credit system has been the ruin of many negroes. it keeps them in hopeless debt and it encourages the planter to exploit them. that's the truth. my plan is to put the negro on a strict cash basis; give him an idea of what money is by letting him use it. three years ago i started it on my plantation. a negro would come to me and say: 'boss, i want a pair of shoes.' 'all right,' i'd say. 'i'll pay you spot cash every night and you can buy your own shoes.' in the same way i made up my mind that we must stop paying negroes' fines when they got into trouble. i know planters who expect regularly every monday to come into court and pay out about so many negroes. it encourages the negroes to do things they would not think of doing if they knew they would be regularly punished. i've quit paying fines; my negroes, if they get into trouble, have got to recognise their own responsibility for it and take what follows. that's the only way to make men of them. "what we need in the south is intelligent labour, more efficient labour. i believe in the education of the negro. industrial training is needed, not only for the negro, but for the whites as well. the white people down here have simply got to take the negro and make a man of him; in the long run it will make him more valuable to us." _part two_ the negro in the north chapter vi following the colour line in the north having followed the colour line in the south, it is of extraordinary interest and significance to learn how the negro fares in the north. is he treated better or worse? is boston a more favourable location for him than atlanta or new orleans? a comparison of the "southern attitude" and the "northern attitude" throws a flood of light upon the negro as a national problem in this country. most of the perplexing questions in the north pertain to the city, but in the south the great problems are still agricultural. in the south the masses of negroes live on the land; they are a part of the cotton, sugar, lumber and turpentine industries; but in the north the negro is essentially a problem of the great cities. he has taken his place in the babel of the tenements; already he occupies extensive neighbourhoods like the san juan hill district in new york and bucktown in indianapolis, and, by virtue of an increasing volume of immigration from the south, he is overflowing his boundaries in all directions, expanding more rapidly, perhaps, than any other single element of urban population. in every important northern city, a distinct race-problem already exists, which must, in a few years, assume serious proportions. country districts and the smaller cities in the north for the most part have no negro question. a few negroes are found in almost all localities, but an examination of the statistics of rural counties and of the lesser cities shows that the negro population is diminishing in some localities, increasing slightly in others. in distinctly agricultural districts in the north the census exhibits an actual falling off of negro population of per cent. between and . cass county in michigan, which has a famous negro agricultural colony--one of the few in the north--shows a distinct loss in population. from , inhabitants in it dropped to , in . a few negro farmers have done well in the north (at wilberforce, ohio, i met two or three who had fine large farms and were prosperous), but the rural population is so small as to be negligible. _negroes of small northern towns_ most of the negroes in the smaller towns and cities of the north are of the stock which came by way of the underground railroad just before the civil war or during the period of philanthropic enthusiasm which followed it. they have come to fit naturally into the life of the communities where they live, and no one thinks especially of their colour. there is, indeed, no more a problem with the negro than with the greek or italian. in one community (lansing, mich.) with which i have been long familiar, the negroes are mostly mulattoes and their numbers have remained practically stationary for thirty years, while the white population has increased rapidly. at present there are only about negroes in a city of , people. as a whole the coloured people of lansing are peaceful and industrious, a natural part of the wage-working population. individuals have become highly prosperous and are much respected. a few of the younger generation are idle and worthless. so far as comfortable conditions of life are concerned, where there is little friction or discrimination and a good opportunity for earning a respectable livelihood, i have found no places anywhere which seemed so favourable to negroes as these smaller towns and cities in the north and west where the coloured population is not increasing. but the moment there is new immigration from the south the conditions cease to be utopian--as i shall show. the great cities of the north present a wholly different aspect; the increases of population there are not short of extraordinary. in chicago had only , coloured people; at present ( ) it has about , , an increase of some per cent. the census of gives the negro population of new york as , . it is now ( ) probably not less than , . between and the negroes of philadelphia increased by per cent., while the caucasians added only per cent., and the growth since has been even more rapid, the coloured population now exceeding , . [illustration: a negro cabin with evidences of abundance] [illustration: off for the cotton fields] it is difficult to realise the significance of these masses of coloured population. the city of washington to-day has a greater community of negroes (some , ) than were ever before gathered together in one community in any part of the world, so far as we know. new york and philadelphia both now probably have as many negroes as any southern city (except washington, if that be called a southern city). nor must it be forgotten that about a ninth of the negro population of the united states is in the north and west. crowded communities of negroes in northern latitudes have never before existed anywhere. northern city conditions therefore present unique and interesting problems. i went first to indianapolis because i had heard so much of the political power of the negroes there; afterward i visited cincinnati, philadelphia, new york, boston, chicago and several smaller cities and country neighbourhoods. in every large city both white and coloured people told me that race feeling and discrimination were rapidly increasing: that new and more difficult problems were constantly arising. generally speaking, the more negroes the sharper the expression of prejudice. while the negroes were an inconsequential part of the population, they passed unnoticed, but with increasing numbers (especially of the lower sort of negroes and black negroes), accompanied by competition for the work of the city and active political power, they are inevitably kindling the fires of race-feeling. prejudice has been incited also by echoes of the constant agitation in the south, the hatred-breeding speeches of tillman and vardaman, the incendiary and cruel books and plays of dixon, and by the increased immigration of southern white people with their strong southern point of view. _pathetic expectations of the negro_ one finds something unspeakably pathetic in the spectacle of these untold thousands of negroes who are coming north. to many of them, oppressed within the limitations set up by the south, it is indeed the promised land. i shall never forget the wistful eagerness of a negro i met in mississippi. he told me he was planning to move to indianapolis. i asked him why he wanted to leave the south. "they're jim crowin' us down here too much," he said; "there's no chance for a coloured man who has any self-respect." "but," i said, "do you know that you will be better off when you get to indianapolis?" "i hear they don't make no difference up there between white folks and coloured, and that a hard-working man can get two dollars a day. is that all so?" "yes, that's pretty nearly so," i said--but as i looked at the fairly comfortable home he lived in, among his own people, i felt somehow that he would not find the promised land all that he anticipated. and after that i visited indianapolis and other cities and saw hundreds of just such eager negroes after they had reached the promised land. two classes of coloured people came north: the worthless, ignorant, semi-criminal sort who find in the intermittent, high-paid day labour in the north, accompanied by the glittering excitements of city life, just the conditions they love best. two or three years ago the governor of arkansas, jeff davis, pardoned a negro criminal on condition that he would go to boston and stay there! the other class is composed of self-respecting, hard-working people who are really seeking better conditions of life, a better chance for their children. and what do negroes find when they reach the promised land? in the first place the poorer sort find in indianapolis the alley home, in new york the deadly tenement. landowners in indianapolis have been building long rows of cheap one-story frame tenements in back streets and alleys. the apartments have two or three rooms each. when new they are brightly painted and papered and to many negroes from the south, accustomed to the primitive cabin, they are beautiful indeed. even the older buildings are more pretentious if not really better than anything they have known in the rural south; and how the city life, nearly as free to the coloured man as to the white, stirs their pulses! no people, either black or white, are really free until they feel free. and to many negroes the first few weeks in a northern city give them the first glimpses they have ever had of what they consider to be liberty. a striking illustration of this feeling came to my notice at columbia, south carolina. one of the most respected negro men there--respected by both races--was a prosperous tailor who owned a building on the main street of the city. he was well to do, had a family, and his trade came from both races. i heard that he was planning to leave the south and i went to see him. "yes," he said, "i am going away. it's getting to be too dangerous for a coloured man down here." it was just after the atlanta riot. "where are you going?" i asked. "i think i shall go to washington," he said. "why washington?" "well, you see, i want to be as near the flag as i can." _what the negro really finds in the promised land_ but they soon begin to learn things! it is true that the workingman can get high wages, and the domestic servant is paid an amount which astonishes her, but on the other hand--a fact that somehow never occurs to many of these people, or indeed to the foreigners who come flocking to our shores--the living cost is higher. for his gaudy tenements the landlord extorts exorbitant rentals. ignorance is ever roundly and mercilessly taxed! i saw a double house built for white people just on the edge of a negro neighbourhood and held at a rental of $ a month, but not being able to secure white tenants the landlord rented to negroes for $ a month. when he came north the negro (even though he had lived in cities in the south, as many of the immigrants have) never dreamed that it would require such an amount of fuel to keep him through the long northern winter, or that his bill for lights, water, and everything else would be so high. and in the south many negro families of the poorer sort are greatly assisted by baskets of food brought from the white man's kitchen and the gift of cast-off clothes and shoes, to say nothing of tobacco, and even money--a lingering loose survival of the relationships of slavery. but in the north the negro finds himself in an intense industrial atmosphere where relationships are more strictly impersonal and businesslike. what he gets he must pay for. charity exists on a large scale, as i shall show later, but it is the sharp, inquiring, organised charity of the north. in short, coming north to find a place where he will be treated more like a man and less like a serf, the negro discovers that he must meet the competitive struggle to which men of the working class are subjected in the highly developed industrial system of the north. _sufferings of the northern negro_ in the south the great mass of negroes have lived with their doors open, fireplaces have kept their homes ventilated, they could leave the matter of sanitation to fresh air and sunshine. and the negro's very lack of training for such an environment as that of the north causes him untold suffering. to save fuel, and because he loves to be warm and sociable, he and his family and friends crowd into one close room, which is kept at fever temperature, not by a healthful fireplace, but by a tight stove. this, with the lack of proper sanitary conveniences, often becomes a hotbed of disease. even in mild weather i have been in negro houses in the north where the air was almost unendurably warm and impure. i know of nothing more tragic than the condition of the swarming newer negro populations of northern cities--the more tragic because the negro is so cheerful and patient about it all. i looked into the statistics closely in several of them, and in no instance does the birth-rate keep pace with the death-rate. even allowing for the fact that birth statistics are not very accurately kept in most cities it is probable that if it were not for the immigration constantly rolling upward from the south the negro population in northern cities would show a falling off. consumption and the diseases of vice ravage their numbers. one of the ablest negro physicians i have met, dr. s. a. furniss, who has practised among his people in indianapolis for many years, has made a careful study of conditions. in a paper read before a medical association dr. furniss says: "the reports of the indianapolis board of health show that for no month in the last ten years has the birth-rate among negroes equalled the death-rate." here are the statistics from to : deaths births _"race suicide" among negroes_ from inquiries that i have made everywhere in the north there would seem, indeed, to be a tendency to "race suicide" among negroes as among the old american white stock. especially is this true among the better class negroes. the ignorant negro in southern agricultural districts is exceedingly prolific, but his northern city brother has comparatively few children. i have saved the record from personal inquiry of perhaps two hundred northern negro families of the better class. many have no children at all, many have one or two, and the largest family i found (in boston) was seven children. i found one negro family in the south with twenty-one children! industrialism, of course, is not favourable to a large birth-rate. all northern cities show a notable surplus, according to the statistics, of negro women over negro men. many of these are house servants and, like the large class of roving single men who do day labour on the streets and railroads, they are without family ties and have no children. dr. furniss finds that the deaths of negroes from tuberculosis constitute over half the total deaths from that cause in the city of indianapolis, whereas, in proportion to negro population, they should constitute only one-eighth. his observations upon these startling facts are of great interest: "i believe the reason for these conditions is plain. first of all it is due to negroes leaving the country and crowding into the larger cities, especially in the north, where they live in a climate totally different from that with which they have been familiar. they occupy unsanitary homes; they are frequently compelled to labour with insufficient food and clothing and without proper rest. of necessity they follow the hardest and most exposed occupations in order to make a livelihood. i regret to say that intemperance and immorality play a part in making these figures what they are. they easily fall victim to the unusual vices of the city. "another reason for increased mortality is improper medical attention. not only among the ignorant but among the intelligent we find too much trust put in patent medicines; the belief, latent it is true in many cases, but still existing among the ignorant, in the hoodoo militates against the close following of the doctor's orders. "what shall we do about it?" asks dr. furniss. "we must urge those around us to more personal cleanliness, insist on a pure home life, and less dissipation and intemperance: to have fewer picnics and save more money for a rainy day. tell the young people in the south not to come to northern cities, but to go to the smaller towns of the west, where they can have a fair chance. unless something is done to change existing conditions, to stop this movement to our northern cities, to provide proper habitations and surroundings for those who are already here, it will be only a question of time until the problem of the american negro will reach a solution not at all desirable from our point of view." of course a doctor always sees the pathological side of life and his view is likely to be pessimistic. i saw much of the tragedy of the slum negroes in the cities of the north, and yet many negroes have been able to survive, many have learned how to live in towns and are making a success of their lives--as i shall show more particularly in the next chapter. it must not be forgotten that negro families in boston and philadelphia (mostly mulattoes, it is true) as well as in charleston, savannah, and new orleans, have lived and thrived under city conditions for many generations. not a few negroes in indianapolis whose homes i visited are housed better than the average of white families. _sickness among northern negroes_ not only is the death-rate high in the north, but the negro is hampered by sickness to a much greater degree than white people. hospital records in philadelphia show an excess of negro patients over whites, according to population, of per cent. about , negroes passed through the hospitals of philadelphia last year, averaging a confinement of three weeks each. mr. warner, in _american charities_, makes sickness the chief cause of poverty among coloured people in new york, boston, new haven, and baltimore. the percentage of sickness was twice or more as high as that of germans, irish, or white americans. such are the pains of readjustment which the negroes are having to bear in the north. a question arises whether they can ever become a large factor of the population in northern latitudes. they are certainly not holding their own in the country or in the smaller cities, and in the large cities they are increasing at present, not by the birth-rate, but by constant immigration. hostile physical conditions of life in the north are not the only difficulties that the negro has to meet. he thought he left prejudice behind in the south, but he finds it also showing its teeth here in the north. and, as in the south, a wide difference is apparent between the attitude of the best class of white men and the lower class. _how northerners regard the negro_ one of the first things that struck me when i began studying race conditions in the north was the position of the better class of white people with regard to the negro. in the south every white man and woman has a vigorous and vital opinion on the race question. you have only to apply the match, the explosion is sure to follow. it is not so in the north. a few of the older people still preserve something of the war-time sentiment for the negro; but the people one ordinarily meets don't know anything about the negro, don't discuss him, and don't care about him. in indianapolis, and indeed in other cities, the only white people i could find who were much interested in the negroes were a few politicians, mostly of the lower sort, the charity workers and the police. but that, of course, is equally true of the russian jews or the italians. one of the first white men with whom i talked (at indianapolis) said to me with some impatience: "there are too many negroes up here; they hurt the city." another told me of the increasing presence of negroes in the parks, on the streets, and in the street cars. he said: "i suppose sooner or later we shall have to adopt some of the restrictions of the south." he said it without heat, but as a sort of tentative conclusion, he hadn't fully made up his mind. _race prejudice in boston_ in boston, of all places, i expected to find much of the old sentiment. it does exist among some of the older men and women, but i was surprised at the general attitude which i encountered. it was one of hesitation and withdrawal. summed up, i think the feeling of the better class of people in boston (and elsewhere in northern cities) might be thus stated: we have helped the negro to liberty; we have helped to educate him; we have encouraged him to stand on his own feet. now let's see what he can do for himself. after all, he must survive or perish by his own efforts. in short, they have "cast the bantling on the rocks." though they still preserve the form of encouraging the negro, the spirit seems to have fled. not long ago the negroes of boston organised a concert at which theodore drury, a coloured musician of really notable accomplishments, was to appear. aristocratic white people were appealed to and bought a considerable number of tickets; but on the evening of the concert the large block of seats purchased by white people was conspicuously vacant. northern white people would seem to be more interested in the distant southern negro than in the negro at their doors. before i take up the cruder and more violent expressions of prejudice on the part of the lower class of white men in the north i want to show the beginnings of cold-shouldering as it exists in varying degrees in northern cities, and especially in boston, the old centre of abolitionism. superficially, at least, the negro in boston still enjoys the widest freedom; but after one gets down to real conditions he finds much complaint and alarm on the part of negroes over growing restrictions. boston exercises no discrimination on the street cars, on railroads, or in theatres or other places of public gathering. the schools are absolutely free. a coloured woman, miss maria baldwin, is the principal of the agassiz school, of cambridge, attended by white children. i heard her spoken of in the highest terms by the white people. eight negro teachers, chosen through the ordinary channels of competitive examination, teach in the public schools. there are negro policemen, negro firemen, negro officeholders--fully as many of them as the proportion of negro population in boston would warrant. a negro has served as commander of a white post of the grand army. _prosperous negroes in boston_ several prosperous negro business men have won a large white patronage. one of the chief merchant-tailoring stores of boston, with a location on washington street which rents for $ , a year, is owned by j. h. lewis. he has been in business many years. he employs both white and negro workmen and clerks and he has some of the best white trade in boston. not long ago he went to north carolina and bought the old plantation where his father was a slave, and he even talks of going there to spend his old age. another negro, gilbert h. harris, conducts the largest wig-making establishment in new england. i visited his place. he employs coloured girls and his trade is exclusively white. another negro has a school of pharmacy in which all the students are white; another, george hamm, has a prosperous news and stationery store. a dentist, dr. grant, who has a reputation in his profession for a cement which he invented, was formerly in the faculty of the harvard dentistry school and now enjoys a good practice among white people. the real estate dealer who has the most extensive business in cambridge, t. h. raymond, is a negro. he employs white clerks and his business is chiefly with white people. two or three negro lawyers, butler wilson in particular, have many white clients. dr. courtney, a coloured physician from the harvard medical school, was for a time house physician of the boston lying-in-hospital, in which the patients were practically all white, and has now a practice which includes both white and coloured patients. dr. courtney has also served on the school board of boston, an important elective office. the negro poet, william stanley braithwaite, whose father took a degree at oxford (england), is a member of the authors' club of boston. his poems have appeared in various magazines, he has written a volume of poems, a standard anthology of elizabethan verse, and he is about to publish a critical study of the works of william dean howells. several of these men meet white people socially more or less. i give these examples to show the place occupied by the better and older class of boston negroes. most of those i have mentioned are mulattoes, some very light. it shows what intelligent negroes can do for themselves in a community where there has been little or no prejudice against them. but with crowding new immigration, and incited by all the other causes i have mentioned, these conditions are rapidly changing. a few years ago no hotel or restaurant in boston refused negro guests; now several hotels, restaurants, and especially confectionery stores, will not serve negroes, even the best of them. the discrimination is not made openly, but a negro who goes to such places is informed that there are no accommodations, or he is overlooked and otherwise slighted, so that he does not come again. a strong prejudice exists against renting flats and houses in many white neighbourhoods to coloured people. the negro in boston, as in other cities, is building up "quarters," which he occupies to the increasing exclusion of other classes of people. the great negro centre is now in the south end, a locality once occupied by some of the most aristocratic families of boston. and yet, as elsewhere, they struggle for the right to live where they please. a case in point is that of mrs. mattie a. mcadoo, an educated coloured woman, almost white, who has travelled abroad, and is a woman of refinement. she had a flat in an apartment house among white friends. one of the renters, a southern woman, finding out that mrs. mcadoo had coloured blood, objected. the landlord refused to cancel mrs. mcadoo's lease and the white woman left, but the next year mrs. mcadoo found that she could not re-rent her apartment. the landlord in this instance was the son of an abolitionist. he said to her: "you know i have no prejudice against coloured people. i will rent you an apartment in the building where i myself live if you want it, but i can't let you into my other buildings, because the tenants object." an attempt was even made a year or so ago by white women to force miss baldwin, the coloured school principal to whom i have referred, and who is almost one of the institutions of boston, to leave franklin house, where she was living. no one incident, perhaps, awakened boston to the existence of race prejudice more sharply than this. _churches draw the colour line_ one would think that the last harbour of prejudice would be the churches, and yet i found strange things in boston. there are, and have been for a long time, numerous coloured churches in boston, but many negroes, especially those of the old families, have belonged to the white churches. in the last two years increased negro attendance, especially at the episcopal churches, has become a serious problem. a quarter of the congregation of the church of the ascension is coloured and the vicar has had to refuse any further coloured attendance at the sunday school. st. peter's and st. philip's churches in cambridge have also been confronted with the colour problem. a proposition is now afoot to establish a negro mission which shall gradually grow into a separate coloured episcopal church, a movement which causes much bitterness among the coloured people. i shall not soon forget the expression of hopelessness in the face of a prominent white church leader as he exclaimed: "what _shall_ we do with these negroes! i for one would like to have them stay. i believe it is in accordance with the doctrine of christ, but the proportion is growing so large that white people are drifting away from us. strangers avoid us. our organisation is expensive to keep up and the negroes are able to contribute very little in proportion to their numbers. think about it yourself: what shall we do? if we allow the negroes to attend freely it means that eventually all the white people will leave and we shall have a negro church whether we want it or not." in no other city are there any considerable number of negroes who attend white churches--except a few catholic churches. at new orleans, i have seen white and coloured people worshipping together at the cathedrals. white ministers sometimes have spasms of conscience that they are not doing all they should for the negro. let me tell two significant incidents from philadelphia. the worst negro slum in that city is completely surrounded by business houses and the homes of wealthy white people. within a few blocks of it stand several of the most aristocratic churches of philadelphia. miss bartholomew conducts a neighbourhood settlement in the very centre of this social bog. twice during the many years she has been there white ministers have ventured down from their churches. one of them said he had been troubled by the growing masses of ignorant coloured people. "can't i do something to help?" miss bartholomew was greatly pleased and cheered. "of course you can," she said heartily. "we're trying to keep some of the negro children off the streets. there is plenty of opportunity for helping with our boys' and girls' clubs and classes." "oh, i didn't mean that," said the minister; "i thought, in cases of death in their families, we might offer to read the burial service." and he went away and did not see the humour of it! another minister made a similar proposition: he wanted to establish a sunday school for coloured people. he asked miss bartholomew anxiously where he could hold it. "why not in your church in the afternoon?" "why, we couldn't do that!" he exclaimed; "we should have to air all the cushions afterward!" but to return to boston. a proposition was recently made to organise for coloured people a separate y. m. c. a., but the white members voted against any such discrimination. yet a coloured man said to me hopelessly: "it's only delayed. next time we shall be put off with a separate institution." _colour line at harvard_ even at harvard where the negro has always enjoyed exceptional opportunities, conditions are undergoing a marked change. a few years ago a large class of white students voluntarily chose a brilliant negro student, r. c. bruce, as valedictorian. but last year a negro baseball player was the cause of so much discussion and embarrassment to the athletic association that there will probably never be another coloured boy on the university teams. the line has already been drawn, indeed, in the medical department. although a coloured doctor only a few years ago was house physician at the boston lying-in-hospital, coloured students are no longer admitted to that institution. one of them, dr. welker (an iowa coloured man), cannot secure his degree because he hasn't had six obstetrical cases, and he can't get the six cases because he isn't admitted with his white classmates to the lying-in-hospital. it is a curious fact that not only the white patients but some negro patients object to the coloured doctors. in a recent address which has awakened much sharp comment among boston negroes, president eliot of harvard indicated his sympathy with the general policy of separate education in the south by remarking that if negro students were in the majority at harvard, or formed a large proportion of the total number, some separation of the races might follow. and this feeling is growing, notwithstanding the fact that no negro student has ever disgraced harvard and that no students are more orderly or law-abiding than the negroes. on the other hand, negro students have frequently made distinguished records for scholarship: last year one of them, alain leroy locke, who took the course in three years, won the first of the three bowdoin prizes (the most important bestowed at harvard) for a literary essay, and passed for his degree with a _magna cum laude_. since then he has been accepted, after a brilliant competitive examination, for the rhodes scholarship from the state of pennsylvania. such feeling as that which is developing in the north comes hard, indeed, upon the intelligent, educated, ambitious negro--especially if he happens to have, as a large proportion of these negroes do have, no little white blood. many coloured people in boston are so white that they cannot be told from white people, yet they are classed as negroes. accompanying this change of attitude, this hesitation and withdrawal of the better class of white men, one finds crude sporadic outbreaks on the part of the rougher element of white men--who have merely a different way of expressing themselves. _white gangs attack negroes_ in indianapolis the negro comes in contact with the "bungaloo gangs," crowds of rough and lawless white boys who set upon negroes and beat them frightfully, often wholly without provocation. although no law prevents negroes from entering any park in indianapolis, they are practically excluded from at least one of them by the danger of being assaulted by these gangs. the street cars are free in all northern cities, but the negro nevertheless sometimes finds it dangerous to ride with white people. professor r. r. wright, jr., himself a negro, and an acute observer of negro conditions, tells this personal experience: "i came out on the car from the university of pennsylvania one evening in may about eight o'clock. just as the car turned off twenty-seventh to lombard street, a crowd of about one hundred little white boys from six to about fourteen years of age attacked it. the car was crowded, but there were only about a dozen negroes on it, about half of them women. the mob of boys got control of the car by pulling off the trolley. they threw stones into the car, and finally some of them boarded the car and began to beat the negroes with sticks, shouting as they did so, 'kill the nigger!' 'lynch 'em!' 'hit that nigger!' etc. this all happened in philadelphia. doubtless these urchins had been reading in the daily papers the cry 'kill the negro!' and they were trying to carry out the injunction." while i was in indianapolis a clash of enough importance to be reported in the newspapers occurred between the races on a street car; and in new york, in the san juan hill district, one sunday evening i saw an incident which illustrates the almost instinctive race antagonism which exists in northern cities. the street was crowded. several negro boys were playing on the pavement. stones were thrown. instantly several white boys sided together and began to advance on the negroes. in less time than it takes to tell it thirty or forty white boys and young men were chasing the negroes down the street. at the next corner the negroes were joined by dozens of their own race. stones and sticks began to fly everywhere, and if it hadn't been for the prompt action of two policemen there would have been a riot similar to those which have occurred not once but many times in new york city during the past two years. of course these instances are exceptional, but none the less significant. _bumptiousness as a cause of hatred_ some of the disturbances grow out of a characteristic of a certain sort of negro, the expression of which seems to stir the deepest animosity in the city white boy. and that is the bumptiousness, the airiness, of the half-ignorant young negro, who, feeling that he has rights, wants to be occupied constantly in using them. he mistakes liberty for licence. although few in numbers among thousands of quiet coloured people, he makes a large showing. in the south they call him the "smart negro," and an almost irresistible instinct exists among white boys of a certain class to take him down. i remember walking in indianapolis with an educated northern white man. we met a young negro immaculately dressed; his hat-band was blue and white; his shoes were patent leather with white tops; he wore a flowered waistcoat, and his tread as he walked was something to see. "do you know," said my companion, "i never see that young fellow without wanting to step up and knock his head off. i know something about him. he is absolutely worthless: he does no work, but lives on the wages of a hard-working coloured woman and spends all he can get on his clothes. i know the instinct is childish, but i am just telling you how i feel. i'm not sure it is racial prejudice; i presume i should feel much the same way toward a frenchman if he did the same thing. and somehow i can't help believing that a good thrashing would improve that boy's character." i'm telling this incident just as it happened, to throw a side-light on one of the manifestations of the growing prejudice. one more illustration: miss eaton conducts a social settlement for negroes in boston. one day a teacher said to one of the little negro boys in her class: "please pick up my handkerchief." the boy did not stir; she again requested him to pick up the handkerchief; then she asked him why he refused. "the days of slavery are over," he said. now, this spirit is not common, but it exists, and it injures the negro people out of all proportion to its real seriousness. in certain towns in ohio, indiana, and illinois, on the borders of the old south, the feeling has reached a stage still more acute. at springfield, o., two race riots have occurred, in the first of which a negro was lynched and in the second many negroes were driven out of town and a row of coloured tenements was burned. there are counties and towns where no negro is permitted to stop over night. at syracuse, o., lawrenceburg, ellwood, and salem, ind., for example, negroes have not been permitted to live for years. if a negro appears he is warned of conditions, and if he does not leave immediately, he is visited by a crowd of boys and men and forced to leave. a farmer who lives within a few miles of indianapolis told me of a meeting, held only a short time ago by thirty-five farmers in his neighbourhood, in which an agreement was passed to hire no negroes, nor to permit negroes to live anywhere in the region. _story of a northern race riot_ i stopped at greensburg, ind., on my way east and found there a remarkable illustration showing just how feeling arises in the north. greensburg is a comfortable, well-to-do, conservative, church-going old town in eastern indiana. many of the residents are retired farmers. the population of , is mostly of pure american stock, largely of northern origin. and yet last april this quiet old town was shaken by a race riot. i made careful inquiries as to conditions there and i was amazed to discover how closely this small disturbance paralleled the greater riot at atlanta which i have already written about. negroes had lived in greensburg for many years, a group of self-respecting, decent, prosperous men and women. they were known to and highly regarded by their white neighbours. one of them, named brooks, owned a barber shop and was janitor for the presbyterian church and for one of the banks. another, george w. edwards, whom i met, has been for years an employee in the garland mills. "there isn't a better citizen in town than edwards," a white lawyer told me; and i heard the same thing from other white men. another negro, george guess, is an engineer in the electric light plant. of the local negro boys, robert lewis, the first coloured graduate of the local schools, is now teaching engineering at hampton institute. oscar langston, another negro boy, is a dentist in indianapolis. these and other negroes live in good homes, support a church and have a respectable society of their own. i found just such a body of good coloured people in atlanta. well, progress brought an electric railroad to greensburg. to work on this and on improvements made by the railroad hundreds of labourers were required. and they were negroes of the ignorant, wandering, unlooked-after sort so common in similar occupations in the south. when the work was finished a considerable number of them remained in greensburg. now greensburg, like other american cities, was governed by a mayor who was a "good fellow," and who depended on two influences to elect him: party loyalty and the saloon vote. he allowed a negro dive to exist in one part of the town, where the idle and worthless negroes congregated, where a murder was committed about a year before the riot. exactly like decatur street in atlanta! a rotten spot always causes trouble sooner or later. good citizens protested and objected--to no purpose. they even organised a good citizenship league, the purpose of which was to secure a better enforcement of law. but the saloon interests were strong and wanted to sell whiskey and beer to the negroes, and the city authorities were complaisant. "who cares," one of them asked, "about a few worthless negroes?" but in a democracy people _must_ care for one another. _a negro crime in the north_ one day last april a negro labourer who had been working for mrs. sefton, a highly respected widow who lived alone, appeared in the house in broad daylight and criminally assaulted her. his name was john green, a kentucky negro; he was not only ignorant, but half-witted; he had already committed a burglary and had not been punished. he was easily caught, convicted, and sentenced. but the town was angry. on april th a crowd of men and boys gathered, beat two or three negroes, and drove many out of town. they never thought of mobbing the city officials who had allowed the negro dives to exist. and, as in atlanta, the decent negroes suffered with the criminals: a crowd broke windows in the home of george edwards, and threatened other respectable coloured men. as in atlanta, the better white people were horrified and scandalised; but, as in atlanta, the white men who made up the mob went unpunished (though atlanta did mildly discipline a few rioters). as in atlanta, the newspaper reports that were sent out made no distinction between the different sorts of negroes. the entire negro population of greensburg was blamed for the crime of a single ignorant and neglected man. i have several different newspaper reports of the affair from outside papers, and nearly all indicate in the headlines that all the negroes in greensburg were concerned in the riot and were driven out of town, which was not, of course, true. as a matter of fact the respectable negroes are still living in greensburg on friendly terms with the white people. _human nature north and south_ in fact, the more i see of conditions north and south, the more i see that human nature north of mason and dixon's line is not different from human nature south of the line. different degrees of prejudice, it is true, are apparent in the two sections. in the south the social and political prejudice the natural result of the memories of slavery and reconstruction, of the greater mass of negro population and of the backward economic development, is stronger. in the north, on the other hand, comparatively little social and political prejudice is apparent; but the negro has a hard fight to get anything but the most subservient place in the economic machine. over and over again, while i was in the south, i heard remarks like this: "down here we make the negro keep his place socially, but in the north you won't let him work." this leads me to one of the most important phases of race-relationship in the north--that is, the economic struggle of the negro, suddenly thrown, as he has been, into the swift-moving, competitive conditions of northern cities. does he, or can he, survive? do the masses of negroes now coming north realise their ambitions? is it true that the north will not let the negro work? these questions must, perforce, be discussed in another chapter. chapter vii the negroes' struggle for survival in northern cities one of the questions i asked of negroes whom i met both north and south was this: "what is your chief cause of complaint?" in the south the first answer nearly always referred to the jim crow cars or the jim crow railroad stations; after that, the complaint was of political disfranchisement, the difficulty of getting justice in the courts, the lack of good school facilities, and in some localities, of the danger of actual physical violence. but in the north the first answer invariably referred to working conditions. "the negro isn't given a fair opportunity to get employment. he is discriminated against because he is coloured." professor kelly miller, one of the acutest of negro writers, has said: "the negro (in the north) is compelled to loiter around the edges of industry." southern white men are fond of meeting northern criticism of southern treatment of the negro with the response: "but the north closes the doors of industrial opportunity to the negro." and yet, in spite of this complaint of conditions in the north, one who looks southward can almost see the army of negroes gathering from out of the cities, villages and farms, bringing nothing with them but a buoyant hope in a distant freedom, but tramping always northward. and they come not alone from the old south, but from the west indies, where the coloured population looks wistfully toward the heralded opportunities of america. a few are even coming from south africa and south america. in new york, boston, and philadelphia, thousands of such foreign negroes know nothing of america traditions; some of them do not even speak the english language. and why do they come if their difficulties are so great? is it true that there is no chance for them in industry? are they better or worse off in the north than in the south? in the first place, in most of the smaller northern cities where the negro population is not increasing rapidly, discrimination is hardly noticeable. negroes enter the trades, find places in the shops, or even follow competitive business callings and still maintain friendly relationships with the white people. but the small towns are not typical of the new race conditions in the north; the situation in the greater centres of population where negro immigration is increasing largely, is decidedly different. as i travelled in the north, i heard many stories of the difficulties which the coloured man had to meet in getting employment. of course, as a negro said to me, "there are always places for the coloured man at the bottom." he can always get work at unskilled manual labour, or personal or domestic service--in other words, at menial employment. he has had that in plenty in the south. but what he seeks as he becomes educated is an opportunity for better grades of employment. he wants to rise. it is not, then, his complaint that he cannot get work in the north, but that he is limited in his opportunities to rise, to get positions which his capabilities (if it were not for his colour) would entitle him to. he is looking for a place where he will be judged at his worth as a man, not as a negro: this he came to the north to find, and he meets difficulties of which he had not dreamed in the south. at indianapolis i found a great discussion going on over what to do with the large number of idle young coloured people, some of whom had been through the public schools, but who could not, apparently, find any work to do. as an able coloured man said to me: "what shall we do? here are our young people educated in the schools, capable of doing good work in many occupations where skill and intelligence are required--and yet with few opportunities opening for them. they don't want to dig ditches or become porters or valets any more than intelligent white boys: they are human. the result is that some of them drop back into idle discouragement--or worse." in new york i had a talk with william l. bulkley, the coloured principal of public school no. , attended chiefly by coloured children, who told me of the great difficulties and discouragements which confronted the negro boy who wanted to earn his living. he relates this story: "i received a communication the other day from an electric company stating that they could use some bright, clean, industrious boys in their business, starting them at so much a week and aiding them to learn the business. i suspected that they did not comprehend coloured boys under the generic term 'boys,' but thought to try. so i wrote asking if they would give employment to a coloured boy who could answer to the qualifications stated. the next mail brought the expected reply that no coloured boy, however promising, was wanted. i heaved a sigh and went on. "the saddest thing that faces me in my work is the small opportunity for a coloured boy or girl to find proper employment. a boy comes to my office and asks for his working papers. he may be well up in the school, possibly with graduation only a few months off. i question him somewhat as follows: 'well, my boy, you want to go to work, do you? what are you going to do?' 'i am going to be a door-boy, sir.' 'well, you will get $ . or $ a week, but after a while that will not be enough; what then?' after a moment's pause he will reply: 'i should like to be an office boy.' 'well, what next?' a moment's silence, and, 'i should try to get a position as bell-boy.' 'well, then, what next?' a rather contemplative mood, and then, 'i should like to climb to the position of head bell-boy.' he has now arrived at the top; further than this he sees no hope. he must face the bald fact that he must enter business as a boy and wind up as a boy." and yet in spite of these difficulties, negroes come north every year in increasing numbers, they find living expensive, they suffer an unusual amount of sickness and death, they meet more prejudice than they expected to meet, and yet they keep coming. much as negroes complain of the hardship of northern conditions, and though they are sometimes pitifully homesick for the old life in the south, i have yet to find one who wanted to go back--unless he had accumulated enough money to buy land. "why do they come?" i asked a negro minister in philadelphia. "well, they're treated more like men up here in the north," he said, "that's the secret of it. there's prejudice here, too, but the colour line isn't drawn in their faces at every turn as it is in the south. it all gets back to a question of manhood." in the north prejudice is more purely economic than it is in the south--an incident of industrial competition. in the south the negro still has the field of manual labour largely to himself, he is unsharpened by competition; but when he reaches the northern city, he not only finds the work different and more highly organised and specialised, but he finds that he must meet the fierce competition of half a dozen eager, struggling, ambitious groups of foreigners, who are willing and able to work long hours at low pay in order to get a foothold. he has to meet often for the first time the italian, the russian jew, the slav, to say nothing of the white american labourer. he finds the pace set by competitive industry immensely harder than in most parts of the south. no life in the world, perhaps, requires as much in brain and muscle of all classes of men as that of the vast northern cities in the united states. i have talked with many coloured workmen and i am convinced that not a few of them fail, not because of their colour, nor because they are lazy (negroes in the north are of the most part hard workers--they _must_ be, else they starve or freeze), but for simple lack of speed and skill; they haven't learned to keep the pace set by the white man. a contractor in new york who employs large numbers of men, said to me: "it isn't colour so much as plain efficiency. i haven't any sentiment in the matter at all. it's business. as a general rule the ordinary coloured man can't do as much work nor do it as well as the ordinary white man. the result, is, i don't take coloured men when i can get white men. yet i have several coloured men who have been with me for years, and i wouldn't part with them for any white man i know. in the same way i would rather employ italians than russian jews: they're stronger workers." not unnaturally the negro charges these competitive difficulties which he has to meet in the north (as he has been accustomed to do in the south) to the white man; he calls it colour prejudice, when as a matter of fact, it is often only the cold businesslike requirement of an industrial life which demands tremendous efficiency, which in many lines of activity has little more feeling than a machine, that is willing to use italians, or japanese, or chinese, or negroes, or hindus, or any other people on the face of the earth. on the other hand, no doubt exists that many labour unions, especially in the skilled trades, are hostile to negroes, even though they may have no rules against their admission. i heard the experiences of an expert negro locomotive engineer named burns who had a run out of indianapolis to the south. though he was much in favour with the company, and indeed with many trainmen who knew him personally, the general feeling was so strong that by soaping the tracks, injuring his engine, and in other ways making his work difficult and dangerous, he was finally forced to abandon his run. if there were space i could give many accounts of strikes against the employment of negroes. the feeling among union labour men has undoubtedly been growing more intense in the last few years owing to the common use of negroes as strike breakers. with a few thousand negroes the employers broke the great stockyards strike in chicago in , and the teamsters' strike in the following year. colour prejudice is used like any other weapon for strengthening the monopoly of the labour union. i know several unions which are practically monopolistic corporations into which any outsider, white, yellow, or black, penetrates with the greatest difficulty. such closely organised unions keep the negroes out in the south exactly as they do in the north. a negro tile-setter, steam-fitter or plumber can no more get into a union in atlanta than in new york. of course these unions, like any other closely organised group of men, employ every weapon to further their cause. they use prejudice as a competitive fighting weapon, they seize upon the colour of the negro, or the pig-tail and curious habits of the chinaman, or the low-living standard of the hindu, to fight competition and protect them in their labour monopoly. [illustration: ward in a negro hospital at philadelphia] [illustration: studio of a negro sculptress] and yet, although i expected to find the negro wholly ostracised by union labour, i discovered that where the negro becomes numerous or skilful enough, he, like the italian or the russian jew, begins to force his way into the unions. the very first negro carpenter i chanced to meet in the north (from whom i had expected a complaint of discrimination) said to me: "i'm all right. i'm a member of the union and get union wages." and i found after inquiry that there are a few negroes in most of the unions of skilled workers, carpenters, masons, iron-workers, even in the exclusive typographical union and in the railroad organisations--a few here and there, mostly mulattoes. they have got in just as the italians get in, not because they are wanted, or because they are liked, but because by being prepared, skilled, and energetic, the unions have had to take them in as a matter of self-protection. in the south the negro is more readily accepted as a carpenter, blacksmith, or bricklayer than in the north not because he is more highly regarded but because (unlike the north) the south has almost no other labour supply. in several great industries north and south, indeed, the negro is as much a part of labour unionism as the white man. thousands of negroes are members of the united mine-workers, john mitchell's great organisation, and they stand on an exact industrial equality with the whites. other thousands are in the cigar-makers' union, where, by virtue of economic pressure, they have forced recognition. indeed, in the north, in spite of the complaint of discrimination, i found negroes working and making a good living in all sorts of industries--union or no union. a considerable number of negro firemen have good positions in new york, a contracting negro plumber in indianapolis who uses coloured help has been able to maintain himself, not only against white competition, but against the opposition of organised white labour. i know of negro paper-hangers and painters, not union men, but making a living at their trade and gradually getting hold. a good many negro printers, pressmen, and the like are now found in negro offices (over newspapers and magazines are published by negroes in this country) who are getting their training. i know of several girls (all mulattoes) who occupy responsible positions in offices in new york and chicago. not a few coloured nurses, seamstresses and milliners have found places in the life of the north which they seem capable of holding. it is not easy for them to make progress: each coloured man who takes a step ahead must prove, for his race, that a coloured man can after all, do his special work as well as a white man. the presumption is always against him. here is a little newspaper account of a successful skilled pattern maker in chicago: a few days ago a large box containing twenty-one large and small patterns was shipped to the jamestown exhibition by the mcguire car company of paris, illinois, one of the largest car companies in the west. before the box was shipped scores of newspaper men, engineers and business men were permitted to inspect what is said to be the most complete and most valuable exhibit of the kind ever sent to an exhibition in this country. the contents of this precious box is entirely the work of a coloured man named george a. harrison. mr. harrison is one of the highest salaried men on the pay-roll of the company. he makes all the patterns for all of the steel, brass, and iron castings for every kind of car made by this company. he graduated at the head of his class of sixty members in a pattern making establishment in chicago. cases of this sort are exceptional among the vast masses of untrained negro population in the cities, and yet it shows what can be done--and the very possibility of such advancement encourages negroes to come north. _trades which negroes dominate_ so much for the higher branches of industry. in some of the less skilled occupations, on the other hand, the negro is not only getting hold, but actually becoming dominant. the asphalt workers are nearly all coloured. in new york they have a strong union and although part of the membership is white (chiefly italian), the chosen representative who sits with the central federated union of the city is james h. wallace, a coloured man. in indianapolis i found that the hod-carriers' industry was almost wholly in the hands of negroes who have a strong union, with a large strike fund put aside. so successful have they been that they now propose erecting a building of their own as a club house. although there are white men in the union the officers are all coloured. not long ago some of the coloured members began to "rush" a white man at his work. it was reported to the union and hotly discussed. the coloured members finally decided that there should be no discrimination against white men, and fined one of the negro offenders for his conduct. he couldn't pay and had to leave town. where the negro workman gets a foothold in the north, he often does very well indeed. r. r. wright, jr., calls attention to conditions in the midvale steel company, which is one of the largest, if not the largest employer of negro labour in philadelphia. charles j. harrah, the president of this company, said before the united states industrial commission in : "we have fully or , coloured men. the balance are americans, irish and germans. the coloured labour we have is excellent.... they are lusty fellows; we have some with shoulders twice as broad as mine, and with chests twice as deep as mine. the men come up here ignorant and untutored. we teach them the benefit of discipline. we teach the coloured man the benefit of thrift, and coax him to open a bank account; and he generally does it, and in a short time has money in it, and nothing can stop him from adding money to that bank account. we have no coloured men who drink." asked as to the friction between the white and black workmen, mr. harrah replied: "not a bit of it. they work cheek by jowl with irish, and when the irishman has a festivity at home he has coloured men invited. we did it with trepidation. we introduced one man at first to sweep up the yard, and we noticed the irish and germans looked at him askance. then we put in another. then we put them in the boiler-room, and then we got them in the open hearth and in the forge, and gradually we got them everywhere. they are intelligent and docile, and when they come in as labourers, unskilled, they gradually become skilled, and in the course of time we will make excellent foremen out of them." mr. harrah added that there was absolutely no difference in wages of negroes and whites in the same grade of work. i have pointed out especially in my last article how and where prejudice was growing in northern cities, as it certainly is. on the other hand, where one gets down under the surface there are to be found many counteracting influences--those quiet constructive forces, which, not being sensational or threatening, attract too little attention. northern people are able to help negroes where southern people are deterred by the intensity of social prejudice: for in most places in the south the teaching of negroes still means social ostracism. _help for negroes in the north_ settlement work, in one form or another, has been instituted in most northern cities, centres of enlightenment and hope. i have visited a number of these settlements and have seen their work. they are doing much, especially in giving a moral tone to a slum community: they help to keep the children off the streets by means of clubs and classes; they open the avenues of sympathy between the busy upper world and the struggling lower world. such is the work of miss bartholomew, miss hancock, miss wharton in philadelphia, miss eaton in boston, mrs. celia parker woolley in chicago, miss ovington in new york. miss hancock, a busy, hopeful quaker woman, has a "broom squad" of negro boys which makes a regular business of sweeping several of the streets in the very worst slum district in philadelphia; it gives them employment and it teaches them civic responsibility and pride. but perhaps i can give the best idea of these movements by telling of the different forms of work in a single city--indianapolis. in the first place, the flanner guild, projected by mr. flanner, a white man, is maintained largely by white contributions, but it is controlled wholly by coloured people. millinery classes were opened for girls (of which there are now many practising graduates, eight of whom are giving lessons in indianapolis and in other cities), and there are clubs and social gatherings of all sorts: it has been, indeed, a helpful social centre of influence. [illustration: a negro magazine editor's office in philadelphia] [illustration: a "broom squad" of negro boys which makes a regular business of sweeping several of the streets in the very worst slum district in philadelphia; it gives them employment and it teaches them civic responsibility and pride. miss hancock at the right.] in the south, as i have shown, negroes receive much off-hand individual charity--food from the kitchen, gifts of old clothes and money; but it is largely personal and unorganised. in the north there is comparatively little indiscriminate giving, but an effort to reach and help negro families by making them help themselves. one of the difficulties of the negro is improvidence; but once given a start on the road to money saving, it is often astonishing to see him try to live up to cash in the bank. the charity organisation society of indianapolis has long maintained a dime savings and loan association which employs six women collectors, one coloured, who visit hundreds of homes every week. these form indeed a corps of friendly visitors, the work of collecting the savings furnishing them an opportunity of getting into the homes and so winning the confidence of the people that they can help them in many ways. last year over , depositors were registered in the association, two-thirds of whom were negroes, and over $ , was on deposit. not less than twenty-five cents a week is accepted, but many negroes save much more. as soon as they get into the habit of saving they usually transfer their accounts to the savings bank--and once with a bank book, they are on the road to genuine improvement. another work of great value which mr. grout of the charity organisation society has organised is vacant lot cultivation. by securing the use of vacant land in and around the city many negro families have been encouraged to make gardens, thus furnishing healthful and self-respecting occupation for the old or very young members of many negro families, who otherwise might become public charges. the plots are ploughed and seeds are provided: the negroes do their own work and take the crop. the work is supported by voluntary contributions from white people. a number of negro women have raised enough vegetables not only to supply themselves but have had some to sell. negro children are closely looked after in indianapolis. compulsory education applies equally to both races. every family thus comes also under the more or less active attention of the school authorities. an officer, miss sarah colton smith, is employed exclusively to visit and keep watch of the negro children. her work also is largely that of the friendly visitor, helping the various overworked mothers with suggestions, taking an interest in negro organisations. for example, the coloured woman's club, working with miss smith, has organised a day nursery which cares for some of the very young children of working negro women, thereby allowing the older ones to go to school. indianapolis (which has one of the most progressive and intelligent school systems, wholly non-political, in the country) is also thoroughly alive to the necessity of industrial education--for both races. significantly enough, the negro schools were first fitted with industrial departments, so that for a time the cost of education per capita in indianapolis was higher for coloured children than for white. when i expressed my surprise at this unusual condition i was told: "of course, the immediate need of the negro was greater." night schools are also held in the public school buildings from november to april--two schools for negroes especially, where coloured people of all ages are at liberty to attend. it is a remarkable sight: negroes fifty and sixty years old mingle there with mere children. the girls are taught sewing and cooking, the men carpentry--besides the ordinary branches. one old man from the south was found crying with joy over his ability to write his name. for the very young children, negro equally with white, there is mrs. eliza blaker's kindergarten. for the aged coloured women a home is now supported principally by the coloured people themselves. _the morals of negro women_ i saw a good deal of these various lines of activity and talked with the people who come close in touch with the struggling masses of the negro poor. i wish i had room to tell some of the stories i heard: the black masses of poverty, disease, hopeless ignorance, and yet everywhere shot through with hopeful tendencies and individual uplift and success. in indianapolis, as in other northern cities, i heard much to the credit of the negro women. "if the negro is saved here in the north," miss smith told me, "it will be due to the women." they gave me many illustrations showing how hard the negro women worked--taking in washing or going out every day to work, raising their families, keeping the home, sometimes supporting worthless husbands. "a negro woman of the lower class," one visitor said to me, "rarely expects her husband to support her. she takes the whole burden herself." and the women, so the loan association visitors told me, are the chief savers: they are the ones who get and keep the bank accounts. i have heard a great deal south and north about the immorality of negro women. much immorality no doubt exists, but no honest observer can go into any of the crowded coloured communities of northern cities and study the life without coming away with a new respect for the negro women. another hopeful work in indianapolis is the juvenile court. a boy who commits a crime is not immediately cast off to become a more desperate criminal and ultimately to take his revenge upon the society which neglected him. he comes into a specially organised court, where he meets not violence, but friendliness and encouragement. mrs. helen w. rogers is at the head of the probation work in indianapolis, and she has under her supervision a large corps of voluntary probation officers, thirty of whom are coloured men and women--the best in town. these coloured probation officers have an organisation of which george w. cable, who is the foreman of the distributing department of the indianapolis post-office, is the chairman. a negro boy charged with an offence is turned over to one of these leading negro men or women, required to report regularly, and helped until he gets on his feet again. thus far the system has worked with great success. boys whose offences are too serious for probation are sent, not to a jail or chain-gang, where they become habitual criminals, but to a reform school, where they are taught regular habits of work. _why the negro often fails_ as i continued my inquiries i found that the leading coloured men in most cities, though they might be ever so discouraged over the condition of the ignorant, reckless masses of their people, were awakening to the fact that the negro's difficulty in the north was not all racial, not all due to mere colour prejudice, but also in large measure to lack of training, lack of aggressiveness and efficiency, lack of organisation. in new york a "committee for improving the industrial condition of negroes" has been formed. it is composed of both white and coloured men, and the secretary is s. r. scottron, an able coloured man. the object of the committee is to study the condition of the negroes in new york city, find out the causes of idleness, and try to help the negro to better employment. this committee has experienced difficulty not so much in finding openings for negroes, as in getting reliable negroes to fill them. boys and girls, though educated in the public schools, come out without knowing how to do anything that will earn them a living. although the advantages of cooper institute and other industrial training schools are open to negroes, they have been little used, either from lack of knowledge of the opportunity, or because the negroes preferred the regular literary courses of the schools. so many unskilled and untrained negroes, both old and young, have discouraged many employers from trying any sort of negro help. i shall not forget the significant remark of a white employer i met in indianapolis: a broad-gauge man, known for his philanthropies. "i've tried negro help over and over again, hoping to help out the condition of negro idleness we have here. i have had two or three good negro workers, but so many of them have been wholly undisciplined, irresponsible, and sometimes actually dishonest, that i've given up trying. when i hear that an applicant is coloured, i don't employ him." upon this very point professor bulkley said to me: "the great need of the young coloured people is practical training in industry. a negro boy can't expect to get hold in a trade unless he has had training." r. r. wright, jr., who has made a study of conditions in philadelphia, says: "it is in the skilled trades that the negroes are at the greatest disadvantage. negroes have been largely shut out of mechanical trades partly because of indifference and occasional active hostility of labour unions, partly because it has been difficult to overcome the traditional notion that a 'negro's place' is in domestic service, but chiefly because there have been practically no opportunities for negroes to learn trades. those negroes who know skilled trades and follow them are principally men from the south, who learned their trades there. the poorest of them fall into domestic service; the best have found places at their trades. for the negro boy who is born in this city it is difficult to acquire a trade, and here, i say, the system has been weakest." with the idea of giving more practical training school no. in new york, of which professor bulkley is principal, is now opened in the evenings for industrial instruction. last year , coloured people, young and old, were registered. in short, there is a recognition in the north as in the south of the need of training the negro to work. and not only the negro, but the white boy and girl as well--as germany and other european countries have learned. _the road from slavery to freedom_ at indianapolis i found an organisation of negro women, called the woman's improvement club. the president, mrs. lillian t. fox, told me what the club was doing to solve the problem of the coloured girl and boy who could not get work. she found that, after all, white prejudice was not so much a bugaboo as she had imagined. the newspapers gave publicity to the work; the commercial club, the foremost business men's organisation of the city, offered to lend its assistance; several white employers agreed to try coloured help, and one, the van camp packing company, one of the great concerns of its kind in the country, even fitted up a new plant to be operated wholly by coloured people. last fall, after the season's work was over, one of the officers of the company told me that the negro plant had been a great success, that the girls had done their work faithfully and with great intelligence. just recently a meeting of coloured carpenters was held in new york to organise for self-help, and they found that, by bringing pressure to bear, the brotherhood of carpenters was perfectly willing to accept them as members of the union, on exactly the same basis as any other carpenters. in short, the negro is beginning to awaken to the fact that if he is to survive and succeed in northern cities, it must be by his own skill, energy, and organisation. for, like any individual or any race, striving for a place in industry or in modern commercial life, the negro must, in order to succeed, not only equal his competitor, but become more efficient. a negro contractor said to me: "yes, i can get any amount of work, but they expect me to do it a little better and a little cheaper than my white competitors." then he added: "and i can do it, too!" those are the only terms on which success can be won. for so long a time the negro has been driven or forced to work, as in the south, that he learns only slowly, in an intense, impersonal, competitive life like that of the north, where work is at a premium, that he himself, not the white man, must do the driving. it is the lesson that raises any man from slavery into freedom. _pullman porters_ so much for industry. the negro in the north has also been going into business and into other and varied employment. the very difficulty of getting hold in the trades and in salaried employment has driven many coloured people into small business enterprises: grocery stores, tailor shops, real estate or renting agencies. if they are being driven out by white men as waiters and barbers, they enjoy, on the other hand, growing opportunities as railroad and pullman porters and waiters--places which are often highly profitable, and lead, if the negro saves his money, to better openings. a negro banker whom i met in the south told me that he got his start as a pullman porter. he had a good run, and by being active and accommodating, often made from $ to $ a month from his wages and tips. but the same change is going on in the north that i found everywhere in the south. i mean a growing race consciousness among negroes--the building up of a more or less independent negro community life within the greater white civilisation. every force seems to be working in that direction. _business among boston and philadelphia negroes_ as i have showed many negroes in boston (and indeed in other cities) have made a success in business enterprises which are patronised by white people--or rather by both races. coloured doctors and lawyers in boston have more or less white practice. of course, coloured men who can succeed without reference to their colour and do business with both races, wish to continue to do so--but the tendency in the north, as in the south, is all against such development and toward negro enterprises for the negro population. even in boston numerous enterprises are conducted by negroes for negroes. i visited several small but prosperous grocery stores. a negro named basil f. hutchins has built up a thriving undertaking and livery establishment for negro trade. charles w. alexander has a print-shop with coloured workmen and publishes _alexander's magazine_. a new hotel called the astor house, conducted by negroes for negroes, has rooms with telephone service in each room, a large restaurant and many of the other attractions of a good hotel. but in this growth the north is far behind the south. scores of negro banks are to be found in the south, not one in the north. cities like richmond, va., jackson, miss., nashville, tenn., have a really remarkable development of negro business enterprises. perhaps i can convey a clearer idea of the great variety of employment of negroes in northern cities by outlining the condition in a single city, philadelphia--information for which i am indebted to r. r. wright, jr. the census of shows that out of , negro males (boys and men), , were at work, and out of , girls and women, , were wage-earners. here are some of the more numerous occupations of negro men: common labourers , servants and waiters , teamsters and hackmen , porters and helpers in stores barbers and hairdressers messengers and errand boys brick and stone masons most of these are, of course, low-class occupations--the hard wage-work of the city in which the men often sink below the poverty line. on the other hand the census gives these figures: negro professional men ( ) and women ( ) including doctors, clergymen, dentists, teachers, electricians, architects, artists, musicians, lawyers, journalists, civil engineers, actors, literary and scientific persons, etc. retail merchants, men ( ), women ( ). hotel keepers one negro runs a men's furnishing store; another, a drug store; others, groceries, meats, etc. the beneficial society has grown to a regular insurance company, the renting agent has become a real estate dealer. within the past twelve months negroes have incorporated two realty companies, one land investment company, four building and loan associations, one manufacturing company, one insurance company, besides a number of other smaller concerns. the civil service has proved of advantage to the negro of philadelphia, as of every other large northern city. in the post-office there are about clerks, carriers and other employees, on the police force about patrolmen, and school-teachers and about persons in other municipal offices. _wherein lies success for negroes_ i have thus endeavoured to present the conditions of the negro in the north and show his relationship with white people. i have tried to exhibit every factor, good or bad, which plays a part in racial conditions. many sinister influences exist: the large increase of ignorant and unskilled negroes from the south; the growing prejudice in the north, both social and industrial, against the negro; the high death-rate and low birth-rate among the negro population, which is due to poverty, ignorance, crime, and an unfriendly climate. on the other hand, many encouraging and hopeful tendencies are perceptible. individual negroes are forcing recognition in nearly all branches of human activity, entering business life and the professions. a new racial consciousness is growing up leading to organisations for self-help; and while white prejudice is increasing, so is white helpfulness as manifested in social settlements, industrial schools, and other useful philanthropies. all these forces and counter forces--economic, social, religious, political--are at work. we can all see them plainly, but we cannot judge of their respective strength. it is a tremendous struggle that is going on--the struggle of a backward race for survival within the swift-moving civilisation of an advanced race. no one can look upon it without the most profound fascination for its interests as a human spectacle, nor without the deepest sympathy for the efforts of , , human beings to surmount the obstacles which beset them on every hand. and what a struggle it is! as i look out upon it and see this dark horde of men and women coming up, coming up, a few white men here and there cheering them on, a few bitterly holding them back, i feel that port arthur and the battles of manchuria, bloody as they were, are not to be compared with such a conflict as this, for this is the silent, dogged, sanguinary, modern struggle in which the combatants never rest upon their arms. but the object is much the same: the effort of a backward race for a foothold upon this earth, for civilised respect and an opportunity to expand. and the negro is not fighting russians, but americans, germans, irish, english, italians, jews, slavs--all those mingling white races (each, indeed, engaged in the same sort of a struggle) which make up the nation we call america. the more i see of the conflict the more i seem to see that victory or defeat lies with the negro himself. as a wise negro put it to me: "forty years ago the white man emancipated us: but we are only just now discovering that we must emancipate ourselves." whether the negro can survive the conflict, how it will all come out, no man knows. for this is the making of life itself. _part three_ the negro in the nation chapter viii the mulatto: the problem of race mixture i had not been long engaged in the study of the race problem when i found myself face to face with a curious and seemingly absurd question: "what is a negro?" i saw plenty of men and women who were unquestionably negroes, negroes in every physical characteristic, black of countenance with thick lips and kinky hair, but i also met men and women as white as i am, whose assertion that they were really negroes i accepted in defiance of the evidence of my own senses. i have seen blue-eyed negroes and golden-haired negroes; one negro girl i met had an abundance of soft straight red hair. i have seen negroes i could not easily distinguish from the jewish or french types; i once talked with a man i took at first to be a chinaman but who told me he was a negro. and i have met several people, passing everywhere for white, who, i knew, had negro blood. nothing, indeed, is more difficult to define than this curious physical colour line in the individual human being. legislatures have repeatedly attempted to define where black leaves off and white begins, especially in connection with laws prohibiting marriage between the races. some of the statutes define a negro as a "person with one-eighth or more of negro blood." southern people, who take pride in their ability to distinguish the drop of dark blood in the white face, are themselves frequently deceived. several times i have heard police judges in the south ask concerning a man brought before them: "is this man coloured or white?" just recently a case has arisen at norfolk, va., in which a mrs. rosa stone sued the norfolk & western railroad company for being compelled by the white conductor, who thought her a negro, to ride in a "jim crow" car. having been forced into the negro compartment, it remained for a real coloured woman, who knew her personally, to draw the line against her. this coloured woman is reported as saying: "lor, miss rosa, this ain't no place for you; you b'long in the cars back yonder." it appears that mrs. stone was tanned. _curious story of a white man who was expelled as a negro_ here is a story well illustrating the difficulties sometimes encountered by southerners in deciding who is white and who is coloured. on march , , the atlanta _georgian_ published this account of how a man who, it was said, was a negro passing for a white man, was expelled by a crowd of white men from the town of albany, ga.: peter zeigler, a negro, was last night escorted out of town by a crowd of white men. zeigler had been here for a month and palmed himself off as a white man. he has been boarding with one of the best white families in the city and has been associating with some of albany's best people. a visiting lady recognised him as being a negro who formerly lived in her city, and her assertion was investigated and found to be correct. last night he was carried to forester's station, a few miles north of here, and ordered to board an outgoing train. zeigler has a fair education and polished manners, and his colour was such that he could easily pass for a white man where he was not known. immediately after suffering the indignity of being expelled from albany, mr. zeigler communicated with his friends and relatives, a delegation of whom came from charleston, orangeburg, and summerville, s. c. and proved to the satisfaction of everyone that mr. zeigler was, in reality, a white man connected with several old families of south carolina. of this return of mr. zeigler the albany _herald_ says: the _herald_ yesterday contained the account of the return to albany of peter b. zeigler, the young man who was forced to leave albany between suns on the night of march th. the young man upon his return was accompanied by a party composed of relatives and influential friends from his native state of south carolina. nothing surely could throw a more vivid light on colour line confusions in the south than this story. another extraordinary case is that of mrs. elsie massey, decided in tipton county, tenn., after years of litigation, in which one side tried to prove that mrs. massey was a negro, the daughter of a cotton planter named "ed" barrow, and a quadroon slave, and the other side tried to prove that she was of pure caucasian blood. on june , , a jury of white men finally declared that mrs. massey was white and that she and her children might inherit $ , worth of property. such instances as these, a few among almost innumerable cases, will indicate how difficult it often is to decide who is and who is not a negro--the definition of negro here being that used in the south, a person having any negro blood, no matter how little. _how many mulattoes there are_ few people realise how large a proportion of the so-called negro race in this country is not really negro at all, but mulatto or mixed blood, either half white, or quadroon, or octoroon, or some other combination. in the last census ( ) the government gave up the attempt in discouragement of trying to enumerate the mulattoes at all, and counted all persons as negroes who were so classed in the communities where they resided. the census of showed that one-eighth (roughly) of the negro population was mulatto, that of showed that the proportion had increased to more than one-seventh. but these statistics are confessedly inaccurate: the census report itself says: "these figures are of little value. indeed, as an indication of the extent to which the races have mingled, they are misleading." from my own observation, and from talking and corresponding with many men who have had superior opportunities for investigation, i think it safe to say that between one-fourth and one-third of the negroes in this country at the present time have a _visible_ admixture of white blood. at least the proportion is greater than the census figures of and would indicate. it is probable that , , persons out of the , , population are visibly mulattoes. it will be seen, then, how very important a matter it is, in any careful survey of the race problem, to consider the influence of the mixed blood. in the north, indeed, the race problem may almost be called a mulatto problem rather than a negro problem, for in not a few places the mixed bloods are in excess of the darker types. many mulattoes have a mixed ancestry reaching back to the beginning of civilisation in north america; for the negro slave appeared practically as soon as the white colonist. many negroes mixed (and are still mixing in oklahoma) with the indians, and one is to-day often astonished to see distinct indian types among them. i shall never forget a woman i saw in georgia--as perfect of line as any greek statue--erect, lithe, strong, with sleek straight hair, the high cheekbones of the indian, but the lips of the negro. she was plainly an indian type--but had no memory of anything but negro ancestry. a strain of arab blood from africa runs in the veins of many negroes, in others flows the blood of the portuguese slave-traders or of the early spanish adventurers or of the french who settled in new orleans, to say nothing of every sort of american white blood. in my classification i have estimated , , persons who are "visibly" mulattoes: the actual number who have some strain of blood--arab, portuguese, spanish, french, indian--other than negro, must be considerably larger. it is a curious problem, this of colour. several times, in different parts of the country, i have been told by both white and coloured observers that negroes, even without the admixture of white blood, were gradually growing lighter--the effect of a cold climate, clothing and other causes. a tendency toward such a change, an adaptation to new environment, is certainly in accord with the best scientific beliefs, but whether a mere century or two in america has really operated to whiten the blackness of thousands of years of jungle life, must be left for the careful scientist to decide. it is certain that the darkest american negro is far superior to the native african negro. _story of a real african woman_ at montgomery, ala., mr. craik took me to see a real african woman, one of the very few left who were captured in africa and brought to this country as slaves. she came in the _wanderer_, long after the slave trade was forbidden by law, and was secretly landed at mobile about . she is a stocky, vigorous old woman. she speaks very little english, and i could not understand even that little. she asserts, i am told, that she is the daughter of a king in africa, and she tells yet of the hardships and alarms of the ocean voyage. her daughter is married to a respectable-looking negro farmer. mr. craik succeeded, in spite of her superstitious terrors, in getting her to submit to having a picture taken. and yet all these strange-blooded people are classed roughly together as negroes. i remember sitting once on the platform at a great meeting at the people's tabernacle in atlanta. an audience of some , coloured people was present. a prominent white man gave a brief address in which he urged the negroes present to accept with humility the limitations imposed upon them by their heredity, that they were negroes and that therefore they should accept with grace the place of inferiority. now as i looked out over that audience, which included the best class of coloured people in atlanta, i could not help asking myself: "what is this blood he is appealing to, anyway?" for i saw comparatively few men and women who could really be called negroes at all. some were so light as to be indistinguishable from caucasians. a bishop of the african methodist episcopal church who sat near me on the platform was a nephew of robert toombs, one of the great men of the south, a leader of the confederacy. another man present was a grandson of a famous senator of south carolina. several others that i knew of were half-brothers or sisters or cousins of more or less well-known white men. and i could not hear this appeal to heredity without thinking of the not at all humble southern blood which flowed in the veins of some of these men and women. how futile such advice really was, and how little it got into the hearts of the audience, was forcibly impressed on me afterward by the remark of a mulatto i met. "they've given us their blood, whether we wanted it or not," he said, "and now they ask us not to respond to the same ambitions and hopes that they have. they have given us fighting blood and expect us not to struggle." _attitude of the mixed blood toward the black negroes_ in the cities of the south no inconsiderable communities of mulattoes have long existed, many of them highly prosperous. even before the war thousands of "free persons of colour" resided in charleston, richmond, and new orleans. in places like charleston they had (and still have to some extent) an exclusive society of their own which looked down on the black negro with a prejudice equal to that of the white man. the census of shows a population of , "free persons of colour" in charleston alone, of whom , were mulattoes. in new orleans in the same year lived , free negroes, of whom , were mulattoes; and they were so far distant in sympathy from the slave population that they even tendered their support to the confederacy at the beginning of the war. but with the emancipation proclamation the aristocratic "free person of colour" who had formed a sort of third class as between the white above and the black below, lost his unique position: the line was drawn against him. when i went south i expected to find a good deal of aloofness between the mulatto and the black man. it does exist, but really less to-day in the south than in boston! the very first mulatto, a preacher in atlanta, with whom i raised the question, surprised me by denying that the mulatto was in any degree potentially superior to the real negro: that if the black man were given the same advantages and environment as the mulatto, he would do as well, that the prominence of the mulatto is the result of the superior advantages he has long enjoyed, being the house servant in slavery times, with opportunities for education and discipline that the black man never possessed. this was his argument, and to support it he gave me a long list of black negroes who had achieved success or leadership. i found booker t. washington and professor du bois (themselves both mulattoes) arguing along the same lines. in other words, the prejudice of white people has forced all coloured people, light or dark, together, and has awakened in many ostracised men and women who are nearly white a spirit which expresses itself in the passionate defence of everything that is negro. and yet, with what pathos! what is this race? the spirit and the ideals are not negro: for the people are not negro, even the darkest of them, in the sense that the inhabitants of the jungles of africa are negroes. the blackest of black american negroes is far ahead of his naked cousin in africa. but neither are they white! one evening last summer i attended a performance at philadelphia of a negro play called the "shoo-fly regiment." it was written, both words and music, by two clever mulattoes, cole and johnson; and it was wholly presented by negroes. the audience was large, mostly composed of coloured people, and the laughter was unstinted. the point that impressed me was this, that the writers had chosen a distinct negro subject. the play dealt with two questions of much interest among coloured people: the matter of industrial education, and the negro soldier. that, it seemed to me, was significant: it was an effort to appeal to the class consciousness of the negro. and yet as i sat and watched the play i could not help being impressed with the essential tragedy of the so-called negro people. the players of the company were of every colour, from the black african type to the mulatto with fair hair and blue eyes. in spite of this valiant effort to emphasise certain racial interests, one who saw the play could not help asking: "what, after all, is this negro race? what is the negro spirit? is it in this black african or in this white american with the drop of dark blood?" in a recent address a coloured minister of san francisco, j. hugh kelley, said: "my father's father was a black hawk indian, seven feet tall. my father's mother was an irishwoman. my mother's father was an american white man. her mother was a full-blooded african woman. what am i?" _pathetic desire of negroes to be like white men_ even among those negroes who are most emphatic in defence of the race there is, deep down, the pathetic desire to be like the dominant white man. it is not unreasonable, nor unnatural, for all outward opportunity of development lies open to the white man. to be coloured is to be handicapped in the race for those things in life which men call desirable. i remember discussing the race question one evening with a group of intelligent coloured men. they had made a strong case for the negro spirit, and the need of the race to stand for itself, but one of them said in a passing remark (what the investigator overhears is often of greater significance than what he hears), speaking of a mulatto friend of his: "his hair is _better_ than mine." he meant _straighter_, more like that of the white man. the same evening, another negro, referring to a light-complexioned coloured man, said: "thank god, he is passing now for white." at philadelphia a dark negro made this comment on one of the coloured churches where mulattoes are in the ascendancy: "you can't have a good time when you go there unless you have straight hair." this remark indicated not only the ideal held by the speaker, but showed the line drawn by the light-coloured man against his darker brother. in the same way it is almost a universal desire of negroes to "marry whiter;" that is, a dark man will, if possible, marry a mulatto woman, the lighter the better. the ideal is whiteness: for whiteness stands for opportunity, power, progress. give a coloured man or woman white blood, educate him until he has glimpses of the greater possibilities of life and then lock him forever within the bars of colour, and you have all the elements of tragedy. dr. dubois in his remarkable book, "the souls of black folk," has expressed more vividly than any other writer the essential significance of this tragedy. i read the book before i went south and i thought it certainly overdrawn, the expression of a highly cultivated and exceptional mulatto, but after meeting many negroes i have been surprised to find how truly it voices a wide experience. _experience of a highly educated mulatto_ dubois tells in this book how he first came to realise that he was really a negro. he was a boy in school near his home in massachusetts. "something," he writes, "put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting cards--ten cents a package--and exchange. the exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card--refused it peremptorily, with a glance. then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that i was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. i had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; i held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. that sky was bluest when i could beat my mates at examination time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the worlds i longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs not mine.... with other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny; their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, why did god make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? the shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half-hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above." if space permitted i could tell many stories illustrative of the daily tragedy which many mulattoes are meeting in this country, struggles that are none the less tragic for being inarticulate. here is a letter which i received not long ago from a mulatto professor in a western negro college: "i wonder how you will treat that point to which you have thus far only referred in your studies, 'where does the colour line really begin?' what is to become of that large class of which i am a part, that class which is neither white nor black and yet both? there are millions of us who have the blood of both races, and, if heredity means anything, who have the traditions, feelings, and passions of both. yet we are black in name, in law, in station, in everything save face and figure, despite the overwhelming white blood. and why? certainly not because we have to be. america is a big country: it is easy to get lost, even in a neighbouring state. some of us do, and the process has been going on so long in certain large cities of the north until we cease to think about it. but the majority of us stay and live and work out our destiny among the people into whom we were born, living ofttimes side by side with our white brothers and sisters. when i go back to atlanta after an absence of two years, i can, if i wish, go back in a pullman, go out of the main entrance of the station, get my dinner at the piedmont hotel, and when i am tired of being mr. hyde, i can stroll down auburn avenue with my friends in the full glory of dr. jekyll. as a matter of fact i shall doubtless avail myself of the privilege of a sleeper, sneak out the side entrance, get on the last seat of the car, despite the conductor's remonstrance, go on to my friends at once and be myself all the time i am there. i wouldn't be a white man if i had to. i want to be black. i want to love those who love me. i want to help those who need my help. and i know hundreds just like me: i know others who are not. "i wonder if you can decide: 'where does the colour line really--end?'" _a negro who lived first as a white man, then as a negro_ when i was in philadelphia i met an intelligent negro named a. l. manley, who is at present the janitor of a large apartment house. he has been connected with the good-government movement in philadelphia, being the leader of a club of coloured men who have supported the reform party. when i first met him i should not have known him for a negro, he is so white. his white grandfather was a famous governor of north carolina--charles manley. he was educated at wilmington, n. c., and at hampton institute. for a time he published a negro newspaper at wilmington, but during the race riot in that city a number of years ago he was driven out and his property was destroyed, his office being burned to the ground. after a year or two in washington he came to philadelphia, where he endeavoured to get work at his trade as a painter and decorator, but the moment he informed employers that he was a coloured man they refused to hire him--usually excusing themselves on the ground that union labour would refuse to work with him. "so i tried being white," he said: "that is, i did not reveal the fact that i had coloured blood, and i immediately got work in some of the best shops in philadelphia. i joined the union and had no trouble at all." but during all this time he had to live, as he says, "the life of a sneak." he had to sneak out of his home in the morning and return to it only after nightfall, lest someone discover that his family (he has a wife and two children) was coloured. "the thing finally became unbearable," he said; "no decent man could stand it. i preferred to be a negro and hold up my head rather than to be a sneak." so he dropped his trade and became a janitor. in other words, he stepped back, as so many negroes in the north are forced to do, into a form of domestic service, although in his case the position is one of responsibility and good pay. such stories of the problem of the mulatto are innumerable; and yet i do not wish to imply that the life is all shadow, for it isn't. the negro blood, wherever it is, supplies an element of light-heartedness which will not be wholly crushed. it is this element, indeed, that accounts in no small degree for the survival of the negro in this country. where the indian perished for want of adaptability, the negro has survived by sheer elasticity of temperament: it is perhaps the highest natural gift of the negro race. one hears much of the unfavourable traits of the negro, but certainly, judging from any point of view, the power of adaptability displayed by the negro in a wholly foreign environment, under the harshest conditions, and his ability to thrive and increase in numbers, even meeting the competition of the dominant race, and to keep on laughing at his work, is a power which in any race would be regarded as notable. _why some light mulattoes do not "cross over to white"_ i once asked a very light mulatto why he did not "cross the line," as they call it (or "go over to white") and quit his people. his answer surprised me; it was so distinctly an unexpected point of view. "why," he said, "white people don't begin to have the good times that negroes do. they're stiff and cold. they aren't sociable. they don't laugh." here certainly was a criticism of the white man! and it was corroborated by a curious story i heard at memphis, of a mulatto well known among the coloured people of tennessee. a number of years ago it came to him suddenly one day that he was white enough to pass anywhere for white, and he acted instantly on the inspiration. he went to memphis and bought a first-class ticket on a mississippi river boat to cincinnati. no one suspected that he was coloured; he sat at the table with white people and even occupied a state-room with a white man. at first he said he could hardly restrain his exultation, but after a time, although he said he talked and smoked with the white men, he began to be lonesome. "it grew colder and colder," he said. in the evening he sat on the upper deck and as he looked over the railing he could see, down below, the negro passengers and deck hands talking and laughing. after a time, when it grew darker, they began to sing--the inimitable negro songs. "that finished me," he said, "i got up and went downstairs and took my place among them. i've been a negro ever since." an ordinary community of middle or working class white people is often singularly barren of any social or intellectual interest: it is often sombre, sodden, uninteresting. not so the negro community. in several cities i have tried to trace out the social life of various cliques, especially among the mulattoes, and i have been astonished to find how many societies there are, often with high-sounding names, how many church affairs must be attended to, how many suppers and picnics are constantly under way, how many clubs and secret societies are supported. forced upon themselves, every point of contact with the white race becomes to the negro a story of peculiar human interest. the view they get from the outside or underneath of white civilisation is not, to say the least, altogether our view. once, in a gathering of mulattoes i heard the discussion turn to the stories of those who had "gone over to white"--friends or acquaintances of those who were present. few such cases are known to white people, but the negroes know many of them. it developed from this conversation (and afterward i got the same impression many times) that there is a sort of conspiracy of silence to protect the negro who "crosses the line" and takes his place as a white man. such cases even awaken glee among them, as though the negro, thus, in some way, was getting even with the dominant white man. _stories of negroes who have crossed the colour line_ i don't know how many times i have heard mulattoes speak of the french novelist dumas as having negro blood, and they also claim robert browning and alexander hamilton (how truly i do not know). but the cases which interest them most are those in this country; and there must be far more of them than white people imagine. i know of scores of them. a well-known white actress, whose name, of course, i cannot give, when she goes to boston, secretly visits her coloured relatives. a new york man who holds a prominent political appointment under the state government and who has become an authority in his line, is a negro. not long ago he entered a hotel in baltimore and the negro porter who ran to take his bag said discreetly: "hello, bob." as boys they had gone to the same negro school. "let me carry your bag," said the porter, "i won't give you away." in philadelphia there lives a coloured woman who married a rich white man. of course, no white people know she is coloured, but the negroes do, and do not tell. occasionally she drives down to a certain store, dismisses her carriage and walks on foot to the home of her mother and sisters. only a few years ago the newspapers were filled for a day or two with the story of a girl who had been at vassar college, and upon graduation by merest accident it was discovered that she was a negro. a similar case arose last year at chicago university, that of miss cecelia johnson, who had been a leader in her class, a member of the pi delta phi sorority and president of englewood house, an exclusive girls' club. she was the sister of a well-known negro politician of chicago. the chicago _tribune_, after publishing a story to the effect that miss johnson had kept her parentage secret apologised for the publicity in these words: the tribune makes this reparation spontaneously and as a simple act of justice. there is not the slightest mystery about miss johnson. her life has been an open book. she has won distinction at high school, and university, and her career appears to have been free from any blemish that should lessen the love of her intimate friends or the respect in which she is held by her acquaintances. some mulattoes i know of, one a prominent wall street broker, have "crossed the line" by declaring that they are mexicans, brazilians, spanish or french; one says he is an armenian. under a foreign name they are readily accepted among white people where, as negroes, they would be instantly rejected. no one, of course, can estimate the number of men and women with negro blood who have thus "gone over to white"; but it must be large. _does race amalgamation still continue?_ one of the first questions that always arises concerning the mulatto is whether or not the mixture of blood still continues and whether it is increasing or decreasing. in other words, is the amalgamation of the races still going on and to what extent? intermarriage between the races is forbidden by law in all the southern states and also in the following northern and western states: arizona, california, colorado, delaware, idaho, indiana, missouri, nebraska, nevada, oklahoma, oregon, and utah. in all other northern and western states marriage between the races is lawful. and yet, the marriage laws, so far as they affect the actual problem of amalgamation, mean next to nothing at all. no legal marriage existed between the races in slavery times and yet there was a widespread mixture of blood. concubinage was a common practice: a mulatto was worth more in cash than a black man. the great body of mulattoes now in the country trace their origin to such relationships. and such practice of slavery days no more ceased instantly with a paper emancipation proclamation than many other customs and habits which had grown up out of centuries of slave relationships. it is a slow process, working out of slavery, both for white men and black. i made inquiries widely in every part of the south among both white and coloured people and i found a strong and rapidly growing sentiment against what the south calls "miscegenation." for years white men in many communities, often prominent judges, governors, wealthy planters, made little or no secret of the fact that they had a negro family as well as a white family. [illustration: a type of negro girl typesetter in atlanta. many negro girls are entering stenography, bookkeeping, dressmaking, millinery and other occupations.] [illustration: mulatto girl student at clark university, atlanta. at the completion of her studies this young woman will take up missionary work in africa.] [illustration: miss cecelia johnson a mulatto who could be easily taken for a white person. she was a leader in her class in chicago university.] and the practice is far from dead yet. every southern town knows of such cases, often many of them: and a large number of mulatto children to-day are the sons and daughters of southern white men, often men of decided importance in their communities. in one town i visited i heard a white man expressing with great bitterness his feeling against the negro race, arguing that the negro must be kept down, else it would lead to the mongrelisation of the white race. the next morning as chance would have it, another white man with whom i was walking pointed out to me a neat cottage, the home of the negro family of the white man who had talked with me on the previous evening. and i saw this man's coloured children in the yard! the better class of southern people know perfectly well of these conditions and are beginning to attack them boldly. at a meeting in the court street methodist church in montgomery, ala., in , dr. j. a. rice, the pastor, made this statement, significant in its very fearlessness, of changing sentiment: "i hesitate before i make another statement which is all too true. i hesitate, because i fear that in saying it i shall be charged with sensationalism. but even at the risk of such a charge i will say, for it must be said, that there are in the city of montgomery, four hundred negro women supported by white men." the next morning this statement was reported in the montgomery _advertiser_. it may be said also, that these cases in a city of , people do not represent a condition of mere vice. many of the women are comfortably provided for and have families of children. vice is wholly distinct from this system of concubinage; for there are in montgomery thirty-two negro dives operated for white patronage--also the statement of dr. rice, quoted in the montgomery _advertiser_. the proportion of such cases in some of the less progressive southern towns even to-day, is almost appalling: and at the same time that speakers and writers are railing at the mulatto for his disturbing race leadership and his restless desire for political and other rights, and while they are declaiming against amalgamation and mongrelisation, the mulatto population is increasing. striving to keep the negro in his place as a negro, the south is making him more and more a white man. _attempt to stop miscegenation_ among southern women, not unnaturally, the feeling aroused by these practices has been especially bitter. here is a remarkable plea, published in the _times-democrat_ on june , , signed "a woman." will you kindly publish the following without attaching my signature or divulging it in any way? i have several brothers who are old-maidish enough to have nervous prostration if they should see my name signed to such an unmaidenly, immodest letter, but i do my thinking without any assistance from them, and hope for the sake of peace in my family that they will not recognise me in print. i am a resident of a large town in the yazoo-mississippi delta, where miscegenation is common--where, if a man isolates himself from feminine society, the first and only conclusion reached is, "he has a woman of his own" in saddle, of duskier shade. this conclusion is almost without exception true. if some daring woman, not afraid of being dubbed a carrie nation, were to canvass the delta counties of mississippi taking the census, she would find so many cases of miscegenation, and their resultant mongrel families, that she would bow her head in shame for the "flower of southern chivalry"--gone to seed. awakened by a sense of the fearfulness of these conditions, such a strong paper as the new orleans _times-democrat_ has been conducting a campaign for laws which shall punish the white man who maintains illicit relations with negroes. for years attempts have been made in the legislatures of several states (in part successfully) to enact such legislation, but the practice has been so firmly entrenched that many of the efforts have failed. on february , , the _times-democrat_ put the case in stronger language than i would dare to do: it is a public scandal that there should be no law of this kind (against miscegenation) on the statute book of louisiana, and that it should be left to mobs to break up the miscegenatious couples. the failure to pass a law of this kind is attributed to white degenerates, men who denounce social equality yet practice it, men who are more dangerous to their own race than the most inflammatory negro orator and social equality preacher, and who have succeeded by some sort of legislative trickery in pigeon-holing or killing the bills intended to protect louisiana from a possible danger. such men should be exposed before the people of the state in their true colours. it will thus be seen how deep-seated the difficulty is. and yet, as i have followed the editorial expression of many southern newspapers, i have been astonished to see how people are beginning to talk out. here is an editorial from the _star_ of monroe, la.: destructive crime of miscegenation there can be no greater wrong done the people of any community than for public sentiment to permit and tolerate this growing and destructive crime of miscegenation, yet in many towns and cities of louisiana, especially, there are to-day white men cohabiting with negro women, who have sweet and lovable families. this is a crime that becomes almost unbearable, and should bring the blush of shame to every man's cheek who dares to flaunt his debased and degrading conceptions of morality in the eyes of self-respecting men and women. in january, , district attorney j. h. currie, in judge cochran's court at meridian, miss., addressed a jury on what he called "the curse of miscegenation." in the course of his speech he said: "the accursed shadow of miscegenation hangs over the south to-day like a pall of hell. we talk much of the negro question and all of its possible ramifications and consequences, but, gentlemen, the trouble is not far afield. our own people, our white men with their black concubines, are destroying the integrity of the negro race, raising up a menace to the white race, lowering the standard of both races and preparing the way for riot, mob, criminal assaults, and, finally, a death struggle for racial supremacy. the trouble is at our own door. we have tolerated this crime long enough, and if our country is not run by policy rather than by law, then it is time to rise up and denounce this sin of the earth." _anti-miscegenation league is formed_ strong men and women, indeed, in several states have begun to organise against the evil. at francisville, la., in may ( ), a meeting was called to organise against what one of the speakers, mr. wickliffe, called the "yellow peril" of the south. he said that "every man familiar with conditions in our midst knows that the enormous increase in persons of mixed blood is due to men of the white race openly keeping negro women as concubines." out of this meeting grew an organisation to help stamp out the evil. about the same time, a mass meeting was held in vicksburg, miss., and an anti-miscegenation league was formed. the hatred and fear of such relationships have grown most rapidly, of course, among the better classes of white people. the class of white men who consort with negro women at the present time is of a much lower sort than it was five or ten years ago, or than it was in slavery times. and the negroes on their part are also awakening to the seriousness of this problem. i found in several negro communities women's clubs and other organisations which are trying, feebly enough, but significantly trying, to stem the evil from their side. it is a terrible slough to get out of. negro women, and especially the more comely and intelligent of them, are surrounded by temptations difficult indeed to meet. it has been and is a struggle in negro communities, especially village communities, to get a moral standard established which will make such relationships with white men unpopular. in some places to-day, the negro concubines of white men are received in the negro churches and among the negroes generally, and honoured rather than ostracised. they are often among the most intelligent of the negro women, they often have the best homes and the most money to contribute to their churches. they are proud of their light-coloured children. and yet, as the negroes begin to be educated, they develop an intense hatred of these conditions: and the utter withdrawal of the best sort of negro families from any white associations is due in part to the dread of such temptations. i shall never forget the bitterness in the reply of a coloured blacksmith who had a number of good-looking girls. i said to him jokingly: "i suppose you are going to send them to college." "why should i?" he asked. "what good will it do? educate them to live with some white man!" _the tragedy of the negro girl_ a friend of mine, southern by birth, told me a story of an experience he had at nashville, where he went to deliver an address at fisk university, a negro college. on his way home in the dark, he chanced to walk close behind two mulatto girls who had been at the lecture. they were discussing it. one of them said: "well, it's no use. there is no chance down here for a yellow girl. it's either get away from the south--or the usual thing." in that remark lay a world of bitter knowledge of conditions. it is remarkable, indeed, that the negroes should have begun to develop moral standards as rapidly as they have. for in the south few people _expect_ the coloured girl to be moral: everything is against her morality. in the first place, the home life of the great mass of negroes is still primitive. they are crowded together in one or two rooms, they get no ideas of privacy, or of decency. the girls are the prey not only of white men but of men of their own race. the highest ideal before their eyes in many cases is the finely dressed, prosperous concubine of a white man. moreover, in nearly all southern towns, houses of prostitution are relegated to the negro quarter. at montgomery, ala., i saw such places in respectable negro neighbourhoods, against which the negro people had repeatedly and bitterly objected to the city authorities, to no purpose. the example of such places of vice on negro children is exactly what it would be on white children. in the same way, although it seems unbelievable, negro schools in several cities have been built in vice districts. i saw a fine new brick school for coloured children at louisville placed in one of the very nastiest streets of the city. the same conditions surround at least one coloured school which i saw at new orleans. and yet the south, permitting such training in vice, wonders at negro immorality and is convulsed over the crime of rape. demanding that the negro be self-restrained, white men set the example in every way from concubinage down, of immorality and lack of restraint. they sow the whirlwind and look for no crop! when the coloured girl grows up, she goes to service in a white family, where she either sleeps in an outbuilding (the survival of the old system of negro "quarters") or goes home at night. in either event the mistress rarely pays the slightest attention to her conduct in this particular. i talked with a woman, a fine type of the old gentlefolk, who expressed with frankness a common conviction in the south. "we don't consider," she said, "that the negroes have any morals. up north where i was visiting this summer i was amazed to find women with coloured servants looking after them, trying to keep them in at night and prevent mischief. we never do that; we know it isn't any use." it may be imagined how difficult it is in such an atmosphere for negroes to build up moral standards, or to live decently. if there ever was a human tragedy in this world it is the tragedy of the negro girl. _relations between white men and negro women_ illicit relationships between the races have not gone on without causing many a troubled conscience. nor has a difference in colour always deadened the deeper feelings of the human heart. in spite of laws and colour lines, human nature, wherever found, is profoundly alike. in making my inquiries among coloured colleges i found to my astonishment that in nearly all of them mulatto boys and girls are being educated, and well educated, by their white fathers. a number of them are at atlanta university, tuskegee, hampton, fisk--indeed, at all of the colleges. and wilberforce college, next after lincoln university of chester county, pa., the oldest negro institution of learning in the country, founded in , was largely supported in slavery times by southern white men who felt a moral obligation to educate their coloured sons and daughters. large farms around wilberforce (near xenia) which i have visited were originally bought by southern slave-owners for their mulatto children, where they could get away from the south and grow up in a free state. some of these mulatto children, educated in latin and greek, with too much money and little to do, went straight to the devil, while others conserved their property, and it is to-day in the hands of their descendants. thus the relations between white men and negro women even to-day, though marriage is forbidden by law, are sometimes remarkable in their expression of the deepest emotions of the human heart. i shall never forget the story of one such case among many that i heard in the south. i withhold the names in this case although the story is widely known among the people in that part of alabama. at ---- lives a planter of prominence who was formerly on the staff of the governor of the state. he had no white family, but everyone knew that he lived with a mulatto woman and was raising a coloured family. when the boys and girls were old enough, he sent them to atlanta university, to tuskegee, and to spellman seminary, providing them plentifully with money. he also paid for his wife's sister's schooling. a year or so ago his mulatto "wife" died; and he was heart-broken. he sent for his boys to come from college and let it be known that he would have something to say at the funeral. many white and coloured people, therefore, attended and followed the body of the negro woman to the cemetery. at the grave, general ---- stepped forward and raised his hand. "i have just one word to say here to-day. these children who are here have always gone by their mother's name. i want to acknowledge them now in front of all these people as my children; and henceforth they will bear my name. i wish also to say that this woman who lies here was my wife, not by law, but in the sight of god. i here acknowledge her. this is a duty i have to do not only to this woman but to god. when i leave my property i shall leave it to those children, and shall see that they get it." _intermarriage of the races in the north_ so much for southern conditions. how is it in the north where intermarriage is not forbidden by law? in , during a heated political campaign in mississippi, united states senator money repeatedly made the assertion that in massachusetts in the previous year, because there were no laws to separate the negro and prevent intermarriage, , white women had married negro men. i heard echoes of senator money's statistics in several places in the south. i have made a careful investigation of the facts in several northern cities, and i have been surprised to discover how little intermarriage there really is. if intermarriage in the north were increasing largely, boston, being the city where the least race prejudice exists and where the proportion of mulattoes is largest, would show it most plainly. as a matter of fact, in the year , when according to senator money, , white women married coloured men, there were in boston, which contains the great bulk of the negro population of massachusetts, just twenty-nine inter-racial marriages. although the negro population of boston has been steadily increasing, the number of marriages between the races, which remained about stationary from to , has since been rapidly decreasing. here are the exact figures as given by the registry department: racial intermarriages in boston groom groom coloured white total bride bride mixed white coloured marriages at boston and in other northern towns i made inquiries in regard to the actual specific instances of intermarriage. there are two classes of cases, first, what may be called the intellectuals; highly educated mulattoes who marry educated white women. i have the history of a number of such intermarriages, but there is not space here to relate the really interesting life stories which have grown out of them. one of the best-known negro professors in the country has a white wife. i saw the home where they live under almost ideal surroundings. a mulatto doctor of a southern town married a white girl who was a graduate of wellesley college; they had trouble in the south and have "gone over to white" and are now living in the north. they have two children. a negro business man of boston has a white wife; they celebrated recently the twenty-fifth anniversary of their marriage. [illustration: mrs. booker t. washington mrs. robert h. terrell photograph by clinedinst two of the leading women of the negro race] but such cases as these are rare. in the great majority of intermarriages the white women belong to the lower walks of life. they are german, irish, or other foreign women, respectable, but ignorant. as far as i can see from investigating a number of such cases, the home life is as happy as that of other people in the same stratum of life. but the white woman who thus marries a negro is speedily declassed: she is ostracised by the white people, and while she finds a certain place among the negroes, she is not even readily accepted as a negro. in short, she is cut off from both races. when i was at xenia, o., i was told of a case of a white man who was arrested for living with a negro woman. the magistrate compelled him to marry the negro woman as the worst punishment he could invent! for this reason, although there are no laws in most northern states against mixed marriages, and although the negro population has been increasing, the number of intermarriages is not only not increasing, but in many cities, as in boston, it is decreasing. it is an unpopular institution! no one phase of the race question has aroused more acrimonious discussion than that of the mulatto, especially as to the comparative physical strength and intelligence of the black negro and the mulatto, a subject which cannot be here entered into. _most leaders of the negro race are mulattoes_ this much i know from my own observation: most of the leading men of the race to-day in every line of activity are mulattoes. both booker t. washington and dr. dubois are mulattoes. frederick douglass was a mulatto. the foremost literary men, charles w. chesnutt and william stanley braithwaite, are mulattoes; the foremost painter of the race, h. o. tanner, whose pictures have been in the luxembourg, and who has been an honour to american art, is a mulatto. both judge terrell and his wife, mary church terrell, who is a member of the school board of washington, are mulattoes. on the other hand, there are notable exceptions to the rule. w. t. vernon, register of the united states treasury, and professor kelly miller of washington, d. c., one of the ablest men of his race, both have the appearance of being full-blooded negroes. paul lawrence dunbar, the poet, was an undoubted negro; so was j. c. price, a brilliant orator; so is m. c. b. mason, secretary of the southern aid society of the methodist church. full-blooded negroes often make brilliant school and college records, even in comparison with white boys. it is the judgment of hampton institute, after years of careful observation, that there is no difference in ability between light and dark negroes. i quote from the _southern workman_, published at hampton: the question as to the comparative intelligence of light and dark negroes is one that is not easily settled. after long years of observation hampton's records show that about an equal number of mulattoes and pure blacks have made advancement in their studies and at their work. while it is probable that the lighter students are possessed of a certain quickness which does not belong to the darker, there is a power of endurance among the blacks that does not belong to their lighter brethren. as to the comparative accomplishment of light and dark negroes after leaving school, the evidence is so confusing that i would not dare to enter upon a generalisation: that question must be left to the great scientific sociologist who will devote a lifetime to this most interesting problem in human life. chapter ix lynchings, south and north most of the studies for this book were made in , , and , but i investigated the subject of lynching, south and north, in the fall of . since that time the feeling against mob-vengeance has been gaining strength throughout the country and the number of lynchings has been steadily decreasing. but the number is still appalling and many recent cases, especially in the black belt, have been accompanied by brutal excesses. my studies made four years ago are typical of present conditions; i have, indeed, confirmed them by a somewhat careful examination made last year ( ) of two or three recent cases. lynch-law reached its height in the late eighties and early nineties. in the sixteen years from to the number of persons lynched in the united states was , . of these , were in the southern states and in the north; , were negroes and were white men; , were men and were women. i am here using the accepted (indeed the only) statistics--those collected by the chicago _tribune_. as showing the gradual growth of the sentiment against mob-law i can do no better than to give the record of lynchings for a number of successive years: before i take up the account of specific cases an analysis of the lynchings for the years and will help to show in what states mob rule is most often invoked and for what offences lynchings are most common. mississippi, alabama, louisiana and georgia--the black belt states--are thus seen to have the worst records, and the figures here given do not include the men killed in the atlanta riot which would add twelve to the georgia record for : following is the comparative number of lynchings for the two years. state alabama arkansas colorado -- florida -- georgia indian territory iowa -- kentucky louisiana maryland mississippi missouri -- nebraska -- north carolina -- oklahoma -- south carolina tennessee texas -- -- totals of those lynched in , were negro men, three negro women and four white men. by methods: hanging shot to death hanged and shot shot and burned beaten to death kicked to death the offences for which these men and woman were lynched range from stealing seventy-five cents and talking with white girls over the telephone, to rape and murder. here is the list: for being father of boy who jostled white women for being victor over white man in fight attempted murder murder of wife murder of husband and wife murder of wife and stepson murder of mistress manslaughter accessory to murder rape attempted rape raping own stepdaughter for being wife and son of a raper protecting fugitive from posse talking to white girls over telephone expressing sympathy for mob's victim three-dollar debt stealing seventy-five cents insulting white man store burglary in making my study i visited four towns where lynchings had taken place, two in the south, statesboro in ga. and huntsville in ala.; and two in the north, springfield, o., and danville, ill. i.--lynching in the south statesboro, ga., where two negroes were burned alive under the most shocking circumstances, on august , , is a thrifty county seat located about seventy miles from savannah. for a hundred years a settlement has existed there, but it was not until the people discovered the wealth of the turpentine forests and of the sea-island cotton industry that the town became highly prosperous. since it has doubled in population every five years, having in some , people. most of the town is newly built. a fine, new court-house stands in the city square, and there are new churches, a large, new academy, a new water-works system and telephones, electric lights, rural free delivery--everywhere the signs of improvement and progress. it is distinctly a town of the new south, developed almost exclusively by the energy of southerners and with southern money. its population is pure american, mostly of old carolina, georgia, and virginia stock. fully per cent. of the inhabitants are church members--baptists, presbyterians, and methodists--and the town has not had a saloon in twenty-five years and rarely has a case of drunkenness. there are no beggars and practically no tramps. a poorhouse, built several years ago, had to be sold because no one would go to it. the farms are small, for the most part, and owned by the farmers themselves; only per cent. of them are mortgaged. there are schools for both white and coloured children, though the school year is short and education not compulsory. in short, this is a healthy, temperate, progressive american town--a country city, self-respecting, ambitious, with a good future before it--the future of the new south. _character of the negro population_ about per cent. of the population of the county consists of negroes. here as elsewhere there are to be found two very distinct kinds of negroes--as distinct as the classes of white men. the first of these is the self-respecting, resident negro. sometimes he is a land-owner, more often a renter; he is known to the white people, employed by them, and trusted by them. in statesboro, as in most of the south, a large proportion of the negroes are of this better class. on the other hand, one finds everywhere many of the so-called "worthless negroes," perhaps a growing class, who float from town to town, doing rough work, having no permanent place of abode, not known to the white population generally. the turpentine industry has brought many such negroes to the neighbourhood of statesboro. living in the forest near the turpentine-stills, and usually ignorant and lazy, they and all their kind, both in the country districts and in the city, are doubly unfortunate in coming into contact chiefly with the poorer class of white people, whom they often meet as industrial competitors. _danger from the floating negro_ in all the towns i visited, south as well as north, i found that this floating, worthless negro caused most of the trouble. he prowls the roads by day and by night; he steals; he makes it unsafe for women to travel alone. sometimes he has gone to school long enough to enable him to read a little and to write his name, enough education to make him hate the hard work of the fields and aspire to better things, without giving him the determination to earn them. he has little or no regard for the family relations or home life, and when he commits a crime or is tired of one locality, he sets out, unencumbered, to seek new fields, leaving his wife and children without the slightest compunction. [illustration: paul reed will cato negroes lynched by being burned alive at statesboro, georgia] [illustration: negroes of the criminal type pictures taken in the atlanta jail will johnson, arrested, charged with the camp assault. lucius frazier, who entered a home in the residence district of atlanta.] about six miles from the city of statesboro lived henry hodges, a well-to-do planter. he had a good farm, he ran three ploughs, as they say in the cotton country, and rumour reported that he had money laid by. coming of an old family, he was widely related in bullock county, and his friendliness and kindness had given him and his family a large circle of acquaintances. family ties and friendships, in old-settled communities like those in the south, are influences of much greater importance in fixing public opinion and deciding political and social questions than they are in the new and heterogeneous communities of the north. the south is still, so far as the white population is concerned, a sparsely settled country. the farmers often live far apart; the roads are none too good. the hodges home was in a lonely place, the nearest neighbours being negroes, nearly half a mile distant. no white people lived within three-quarters of a mile. hodges had been brought up among negroes, he employed them, he was kind to them. to one of the negroes suspected of complicity in the subsequent murder, he had loaned his shot-gun; another, afterward lynched, called at his home the very night before the murder, intending then to rob him, and hodges gave him a bottle of turpentine to cure a "snake-graze." _story of the murder_ on the afternoon of july , , mr. hodges drove to a neighbour's house to bring his nine-year-old girl home from school. no southern white farmer, especially in thinly settled regions like bulloch county, dares permit any woman or girl of his family to go out anywhere alone, for fear of the criminal negro. "you don't know and you can't know," a georgian said to me, "what it means down here to live in constant fear lest your wife or daughter be attacked on the road, or even in her home. many women in the city of statesboro dare not go into their backyards after dark. every white planter knows that there is always danger for his daughters to visit even the nearest neighbour, or for his wife to go to church without a man to protect her." it is absolutely necessary to understand this point of view before one can form a true judgment upon conditions in the south. when hodges arrived at his home that night, it was already dark. the little girl ran to join her mother; the father drove to the barn. two negroes--perhaps more--met him there and beat his brains out with a stone and a buggy brace. hearing the noise, mrs. hodges ran out with a lamp and set it on the gate-post. the negroes crept up--as nearly as can be gathered from the contradictory stories and confessions--and murdered her there in her doorway with peculiar brutality. many of the crimes committed by negroes are marked with almost animal-like ferocity. once aroused to murderous rage, the negro does not stop with mere killing; he bruises and batters his victim out of all semblance to humanity. for the moment, under stress of passion, he seems to revert wholly to savagery. the negroes went into the house and ransacked it for money. the little girl, who must have been terror-stricken beyond belief, hid behind a trunk; the two younger children, one a child of two years, the other a mere baby, lay on the bed. finding no money, the negroes returned to their homes. here they evidently began to dread the consequences of their deed, for toward midnight they returned to the hodges home. during all this time the little girl had been hiding there in darkness, with the bodies of her father and mother in the doorway. when the negroes appeared, she either came out voluntarily, hoping that friends had arrived, or she was dragged out. "where's the money?" demanded the negroes. the child got out all she had, a precious five-cent piece, and offered it to them on condition that they would not hurt her. one of them seized her and beat her to death. i make no excuse for telling these details; they _must be told_, else we shall not see the depths or the lengths of this problem. _burning of the hodges home_ the negroes then dragged the bodies of mr. and mrs. hodges into their home and set the house afire. as nearly as can be made out from the subsequent confessions, the two younger children were burned alive. when the neighbours reached the scene of the crime, the house was wholly consumed, only the great end chimney left standing, and the lamp still burning on the gate-post. well, these southerners are warm-hearted, home-loving people. everybody knew and respected the hodges--their friends in the church, their many relatives in the county--and the effect of this frightful crime described in all its details, may possibly be imagined by northern people living quietly and peacefully in their homes. when two of the prominent citizens of the town told me, weeks afterward, of the death of the little girl, they could not keep back their tears. the murder took place on friday night; on saturday the negroes, paul reed and will cato, were arrested with several other suspects, including two negro preachers. both reed and cato were of the illiterate class; both had been turpentine workers, living in the forest, far from contact with white people. cato was a floater from south carolina. reed was born in the county, but he was a good type of the worthless and densely ignorant negro. it is a somewhat common impression that a whole town loses itself in a passion of anarchy, and is not satisfied until the criminals are killed. but in spite of the terrible provocation and the intense feeling, there yet existed in statesboro exactly such a feeling for the sacredness of law, such intelligent americanism, as exists in your town or mine. not within the present generation had a lynching taken place in the town, and the people were deeply concerned to preserve the honour and good name of their community. in the midst of intense excitement a meeting of good citizens, both white and black, was called in the court-house. it was presided over by j. a. brannan, one of the foremost citizens. speeches were made by mayor johnstone, by the ministers of the town, and by other citizens, including a negro, all calling for good order and the calm and proper enforcement of the law. _attempts to prevent the lynching_ and the regular machinery of justice was put in motion with commendable rapidity. fearing a lynching, the negroes who had been arrested were sent to savannah and there lodged in jail. a grand jury was immediately called, indictments were found, and in two weeks--the shortest possible time under the law--the negroes were brought back from savannah for trial. to protect them, two military companies, one from statesboro, one from savannah, were called out. the proof of guilt was absolutely conclusive, and, although the negroes were given every advantage to which they were entitled under the law, several prominent attorneys having been appointed to defend them, they were promptly convicted and sentenced to be hanged. in the meantime great excitement prevailed. the town was crowded for days with farmers who came flocking in from every direction. the crime was discussed and magnified; it was common talk that the "niggers of madison county are getting too bigoty"--that they wouldn't "keep their places." fuel was added to the flame by the common report that the murderers of the hodges family were members of a negro society known as the "before day club," and wild stories were told of other murders that had been planned, the names of intended victims even being reported. on the sunday night before the trial, two negro women, walking down the street are said to have crowded two respectable white girls off the sidewalk. a crowd dragged the women from a church where they had gone, took them to the outskirts of the town, whipped them both violently, and ordered them to leave the county. "let the law take its course," urged the good citizen. "the negroes have been sentenced to be hanged, let them be hanged legally; we want no disgrace to fall on the town." _how the lynchers themselves defend a lynching_ but as the trial progressed and the crowd increased, there were louder and louder expressions of the belief that hanging was too good for such a crime. i heard intelligent citizens argue that a negro criminal, in order to be a hero in the eyes of his people, does not mind being hanged! another distinct feeling developed--a feeling that i found in other lynching towns: that somehow the courts and the law were not to be trusted to punish the criminals properly. although reed and cato were sentenced to be hanged, the crowd argued that "the lawyers would get them off," that "the case would be appealed, and they would go free." members of the mob tried to get sheriff kendrick to promise not to remove the negroes to savannah, fearing that in some way they would be taken beyond the reach of justice. in other words, there existed a deep-seated conviction that justice too often miscarried in bulloch county and that murderers commonly escaped punishment through the delays and technicalities of the law. _a habit of man-killing_ and there is, unfortunately, a foundation for this belief. in every lynching town i visited i made especial inquiry as to the prevalence of crime, particularly as to the degree of certainty of punishment for crime. in all of them property is safe; laws looking to the protection of goods and chattels are executed with a fair degree of precision; for we are a business-worshipping people. but i was astounded by the extraordinary prevalence in all these lynching counties, north as well as south, of crimes of violence, especially homicide, accompanied in every case by a poor enforcement of the law. bulloch county, with barely twenty-five thousand inhabitants, had thirty-two homicides in a little more than five years before the lynching--an annual average of one to every four thousand five hundred people (the average in the entire united states being one to nine thousand). within eight months prior to the hodges lynching, no fewer than ten persons (including the hodges family) were murdered in bulloch county. in twenty-eight years, notwithstanding the high rate of homicides, only three men, all negroes, have been legally hanged, while four men--three negroes and one white man--have been lynched. it is well understood that if the murderer has friends or a little money to hire lawyers, he can, especially if he happens to be white, nearly always escape with a nominal punishment. these facts are widely known and generally commented upon. in his subsequent charge to the grand jury, judge daley said that the mob was due in part to "delays in the execution of law and to the people becoming impatient." i am not telling these things with any idea of excusing or palliating the crime of lynching, but with the earnest intent of setting forth all the facts, so that we may understand just what the feelings and impulses of a lynching town really are, good as well as bad. unless we diagnose the case accurately, we cannot hope to discover effective remedies. _psychology of the mob_ in the intense, excited crowd gathered around the court-house on this tuesday, the th of august, other influences were also at work, influences operating in a greater or less degree in every lynching mob. we are accustomed to look upon a mob as an entity, the expression of a single concrete feeling; it is not; it is itself torn with dissensions and compunctions, swayed by conflicting emotions. similarly, we look upon a militia company as a sort of machine, which, set in operation, automatically performs a certain definite service. but it is not. it is made up of young men, each with his own intense feelings, prejudices, ideals; and it requires unusual discipline to inculcate such a sense of duty that the individual soldier will rise superior to the emotions of the hour. most of these young men of statesboro and savannah really sympathised with the mob; among the crowd the statesboro men saw their relatives and friends. some of the officers were ambitious men, hoping to stand for political office. what would happen if they ordered the troops to fire on their neighbours? and "the nigger deserved hanging," and "why should good white blood be shed for nigger brutes?" at a moment of this sort the clear perception of solemn abstract principles and great civic duties fades away in tumultuous excitement. yet these soldier boys were not cowards; they have a fighting history; their fathers made good soldiers; they themselves would serve bravely against a foreign enemy, but when called upon for mob service they failed utterly, as they have failed repeatedly, both north and south. up to the last moment, although the crowd believed in lynching and wanted to lynch, there seemed to be no real and general determination to forestall the law. the mob had no centre, no fixed purpose, no real plan of action. one determined man, knowing his duty (as i shall show in another story), and doing it with common sense, could have prevented trouble, but there was no such man. captain hitch, of the savannah company, a vacillating commander, allowed the crowd to pack the court-house, to stream in and out among his soldiers; he laid the responsibility (afterward) on the sheriff, and the sheriff shouldered it back upon him. in nearly all the cases i investigated, i found the same attempt to shift responsibility, the same lack of a responsible head. our system too often fails when mob stress is laid upon it--unless it happens that some strong man stands out, assumes responsibility, and becomes a momentary despot. _how the soldiers were overpowered_ a mob, no matter how deeply inflamed, is always cowardly. this mob was no exception. it crowded up, crowded up, testing authority. it joked with the soldiers, and when it found that the jokes were appreciated, it took further liberties; it jostled the soldiers--good-humouredly. "you don't dare fire," it said, and the soldiers made no reply. "your guns aren't loaded," it said, and some soldier confessed that they were not. in tender consideration for the feelings of the mob, the officers had ordered the men not to load their rifles. the next step was easy enough; the mob playfully wrenched away a few of the guns, those behind pushed forward--those behind always do push forward, knowing they will not be hurt--and in a moment the whole mob was swarming up the stairs, yelling and cheering. in the court-room, sentence had been passed on reed and cato, and the judge had just congratulated the people on "their splendid regard for the law under very trying conditions." then the mob broke in. a brother of the murdered hodges, a minister from texas, rose magnificently to the occasion. with tears streaming down his face, he begged the mob to let the law take its course. "we don't want religion, we want blood," yelled a voice. the mob was now thoroughly stirred; it ceased to hesitate; it was controlled wholly by its emotions. the leaders plunged down the court-room and into the witness chamber, where the negroes sat with their wives, reed's wife with a young baby. the officers of the law accommodatingly indicated the right negroes, and the mob dragged them out. hanging was at first proposed, and a man even climbed a telegraph-pole just outside the court-house, but the mob, growing more ferocious as it gathered volume and excitement, yelled its determination: "burn them! burn them!" they rushed up the road, intending to take the negroes to the scene of the crime. but it was midday in august, with a broiling hot sun overhead and a dusty road underfoot. a mile from town the mob swerved into a turpentine forest, pausing first to let the negroes kneel and confess. calmer spirits again counselled hanging, but some one began to recite in a high-keyed voice the awful details of the crime, dwelling especially on the death of the little girl. it worked the mob into a frenzy of ferocity. "they burned the hodges and gave them no choice; burn the niggers!" "please don't burn me," pleaded cato. and again: "hang me or shoot me; please don't burn me!" _burning of the negroes_ some one referred the question to the father-in-law of hodges. he said hodges's mother wished the men burned. that settled it. men were sent into town for kerosene oil and chains, and finally the negroes were bound to an old stump, fagots were heaped around them, and each was drenched with oil. then the crowd stood back accommodatingly, while a photographer, standing there in the bright sunshine, took pictures of the chained negroes. citizens crowded up behind the stump and got their faces into the photograph. when the fagots were lighted, the crowd yelled wildly. cato, the less stolid of the two negroes, partly of white blood, screamed with agony; but reed, black and stolid, bore it like a block of wood. they threw knots and sticks at the writhing creatures, but always left room for the photographer to take more pictures. and when it was all over, they began, in common with all mobs, to fight for souvenirs. they scrambled for the chains before they were cold, and the precious links were divided among the populace. pieces of the stump were hacked off, and finally one young man--it must be told--gathered up a few charred remnants of bone, carried them uptown, and actually tried to give them to the judge who presided at the trial of the negroes, to the utter disgust of that official. _after effects of mob-law_ this is the law of the mob, that it never stops with the thing it sets out to do. it is exactly like any other manifestation of uncontrolled human passion--given licence it takes more licence, it releases that which is ugly, violent, revengeful in the community as in the individual human heart. i have heard often of a "quiet mob," an "orderly mob," which "went about its business and hanged the nigger," but in all the cases i have known about, and i made special inquiries upon this particular point, not one single mob stopped when the immediate work was done, unless under compulsion. even good citizens of statesboro will tell you that "the niggers got only what they deserved," and "it was all right if the mob had only stopped there." but it did not stop there; it never does. all the stored-up racial animosity came seething to the surface; all the personal grudges and spite. as i have already related, two negro women were whipped on the sunday night before the lynching. on the day following the lynching the father of the women was found seeking legal punishment for the men who whipped his daughters, and he himself was taken out and frightfully beaten. on the same day two other young negroes, of the especially hated "smart nigger" type, were caught and whipped--one for riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, the other, as several citizens told me, "on general principles." but this was not the worst. on wednesday night an old negro man and his son--negroes of the better class--were sitting in their cabin some miles from statesboro, when they were both shot at through the window and badly wounded. another respectable negro, named mcbride, was visited in his home by a white mob, which first whipped his wife, who was confined with a baby three days old, and then beat, kicked, and shot mcbride himself so horribly that he died the next day. the better class of citizens, the same men who would, perhaps, condone the burning of reed and cato, had no sympathy with this sort of thing. some of them took mcbride's dying statement, and four white men were arrested and charged with the murder; but never punished. indeed, the mob led directly to a general increase of crime in bulloch county. as judge daley said in his charge to a subsequent grand jury: "mob violence begets crime. crime has been more prevalent since this lynching than ever before. in the middle circuit the courts have been so badly crowded with murder trials that it has been almost impossible to attend to civil business." another evil result of the lynching was that it destroyed valuable evidence. the prosecutors had hoped to learn from the convicted reed and cato whether or not they had any companions and thereby bring to justice all the other negroes suspected of complicity in the murder of the hodges. if the before day club ever existed and had a criminal purpose (which is doubtful) most of the members who composed it were left at large, awaiting the next opportunity to rob and murder. _mob justice and the cotton crop_ mob-law has not only represented a moral collapse in this community, but it struck, also, at the sensitive pocket of the business interests of the county. frightened by the threatening attitude of the whites, the negroes began to leave the county. it was just at the beginning of the cotton-picking season, when labour of every sort was much needed, negro labour especially. it would not do to frighten away all the negroes. on thursday some of the officials and citizens of statesboro got together, appointed extra marshals, and gave notice that there were to be no more whippings, and the mob spirit disappeared--until next time. but what of the large negro population of statesboro during all this excitement? the citizens told the "decent negroes": "we don't want to hurt you; we know you; you are all right; go home and you won't be hurt." go home they did, and there was not a negro to be seen during all the time of the lynching. from inquiry among the negroes themselves, i found that many of them had no voice to raise against the burning of reed and cato. this was the grim, primitive eye-for-an-eye logic that they used, in common with many white men: "reed and cato burned the hodges; they ought to be burned." even cato's wife used this logic. but all the negroes were bitter over the indiscriminate whippings which followed the lynching. these whippings widened the breach between the races, led to deeper suspicion and hatred, fertilised the soil for future outbreaks. in the same week that i visited statesboro, no fewer than three cotton-gins in various parts of bulloch county were mysteriously burned at night, and while no one knew the exact origin of the fires, it was openly charged that they were caused by revengeful negroes. none of these terrible after-effects would have taken place if the law had been allowed to follow its course. _a fighting parson_ the overwhelming majority of the people of bulloch county undoubtedly condoned the lynching, even believed in it heartily and completely. and yet, as i have said, there was a strong dissenting opposition among the really thoughtful, better-class citizens. all the churches of statesboro came out strongly for law and order. the methodist church, led by a fighting parson, the rev. whitely langston, expelled two members who had been in the mob--an act so unpopular that the church lost twenty-five members of its congregation. of course, the members of the mob were known, but none of them was ever punished. the judge especially charged the grand jury to investigate the lynching, and this was its report: "we deplore the recent lawlessness in our city and community, specially referred to by his honour, judge a. f. daley, in his able charge. we have investigated the matter in the light of information coming under our personal knowledge and obtained by the examination of a number of witnesses, but we have been unable to find sufficient evidence to warrant indictments. we tender thanks to his honour, judge daley, for his able and comprehensive charge." a feeble attempt was made to discipline the military officers who allowed the populace to walk over them and take away their guns. a court-martial sat for days in savannah and finally recommended the dismissal of captain hitch from the service of the state; but the governor let him off with half the penalty suggested. two lieutenants were also disciplined. in the state election which followed the lynching, numerous voters in bulloch county actually scratched the name of governor terrell, of georgia, because he ordered the troops to statesboro, and substituted the name of captain hitch. sheriff kendrick, who failed to protect reed and cato, was re-elected without opposition. it was in a tone of deep discouragement that mayor g. s. johnstone, of statesboro, said to me: "if our grand jury won't indict these lynchers, if our petit juries won't convict, and if our soldiers won't shoot, what are we coming to?" _revolution of opinion in the south on lynching_ conditions at statesboro are, perhaps, typical of those in most southern towns. in most southern towns a lynching would be conducted much as it was in statesboro; there would be the same objecting but ineffective minority of good citizens, the troops would refuse their duty, and the lynchers would escape in much the same way. and yet, if we were to stop with the account of the statesboro affair, we should overlook some of the greatest influences now affecting the lynching problem in the south. no one who visits the south can escape the conviction that, with its intensified industrial life, and the marvelous development and enrichment of the whole country, other equally momentous, if less tangible, changes are taking place. public opinion is developing along new lines, old, set prejudices are breaking up, and there is, among other evident influences, a marked revolution in the attitude of the southern people and the southern newspapers on the lynching question. i turn now to the lynching at huntsville, ala., which reveals in a striking manner some of the features of the new revolt in the south against mob-law. [illustration: court house and bank in the public square at huntsville, alabama the negro, maples, was lynched by being hung to the elm tree at the corner of the court house, near the extreme right of the picture. photographed by collins & son] _a negro crime at huntsville, ala._ one evening in september, , a negro of huntsville, ala., asked an old peddler named waldrop for a ride. waldrop was a kindly old man, well known and respected throughout madison county; he drove into the city two or three times a week with vegetables and chickens to sell, and returned with the small product of his trade in his pocket. waldrop knew the negro, maples, and, although maples was of the worthless sort, and even then under indictment for thieving, the peddler made room for him in his waggon, and they rode out of the town together. they drove into a lonely road. they crossed a little bridge. tall trees shaded and darkened the place. night was falling. the negro picked up a stone and beat out the brains of the inoffensive old man, robbed him, and left him lying there at the roadside, while the horse wandered homeward. how a murder cries out! the murderer fled in the darkness but it was as if he left great footprints. the next day, in huntsville, the law laid its hand on his shoulder. now, huntsville is one of the best cities in alabama. no other city, perhaps, preserves more of the aristocratic habiliments of the older south. it was the first capital of the state. seven governors lie buried in its cemetery; its county house, its bank, some of its residences are noble examples of the architecture of the ante-bellum south. and while preserving these evidences of the wealth and refinement of an older civilisation, few cities in the south have responded more vigorously to the new impulses of progress and development. its growth during the last few years has been little short of amazing. northern capital has come in; nine cotton-mills have been built, drawing a large increase of population, and stimulating the development of the country in every direction. it is a fine, orderly, progressive city--intensely american, ambitious, self-respecting. _relation of lynching to business success_ huntsville has had its share of lynchings in the past. within twenty years seven negroes and one white man had been the victims of mobs in madison county. the best citizens knew what a lynching meant; they knew how the mob began, and what invariably followed its excesses, and they wanted no more such horrors. but this revolt was not wholly moral. with awakening industrial ambition the people realised that disorder had a tendency to frighten away capital, stop immigration, and retard development generally. good business demands good order. this feeling has been expressed in various forms and through many channels. it existed in statesboro, but it was by no means as vigorous as in this manufacturing city of huntsville. we find, for instance, congressman richardson of alabama, a citizen of huntsville, saying in a speech on the floor of the house of representatives: "why, mr. chairman, we have more reason in the south to observe the law and do what is right than any other section of this union." the atlanta _constitution_ presents the same view in vigorous language: aside entirely from the consideration of the evil effects of the mob spirit in breeding general disrespect for the law, and aside from the question of the inevitable brutalising effect of lynching upon those who are spectators--and the effect goes even further--the practical question arises: can we at the south afford it? is there any use blinding ourselves to the fact, patent to everybody, that it is this sort of thing that has kept hundreds of thousands of desirable immigrants from coming to the southern states? _story of a bold judge_ when the murderer of the peddler waldrop was arrested, therefore, the thoughtful and progressive people of the city--the kind who are creating the new south--took immediate steps to prevent mob disturbance. the city was fortunate in having an able, energetic young man as its circuit judge--a judge, the son of a judge, who saw his duty clearly, and who was not afraid to act, even though it might ruin his immediate political future, as, indeed, it did. rare qualities in these days! the murder was committed tuesday, september th, the negro was arrested wednesday, judge speake impanelled a special grand jury without waiting a moment, and that very afternoon, within six hours after the negro's arrest and within twenty hours after the crime was committed, the negro was formally indicted. arrangements were then made to call a special trial jury within a week, in the hope that the prospect of immediate punishment would prevent the gathering of a mob. _a record of homicide as a cause of lynching_ but, unfortunately, we find here in madison county not only a history of lynching--a habit, it may be called--but there existed the same disregard for the sacredness of human life which is the common characteristic of most lynching communities, south or north. i made a careful examination of the records of the county. in the five years preceding this lynching, no fewer than thirty-three murder and homicide cases were tried in the courts, besides eight murderers indicted, but not arrested. this is the record of a single county of about forty thousand people. notwithstanding this record of crime, there had not been a legal hanging in the county, even of a negro, for nineteen years. it was a fact--well known to everybody in the county--that it was next to impossible to convict a white man for killing. murderers employed good lawyers, they appealed their cases, they brought political friendships to bear, and the relationships between the old families were so far extended that they reached even into the jury room. as a consequence, nearly every white murderer went free. only a short time before the lynching, fred stevens a white man, who shot a white man in a quarrel over a bucket of water, was let out with a fine of $ , costs, and thirty days in jail. this for a _killing_. and the attorney for stevens actually went into court afterward and asked to have the costs cut down. negroes who committed homicide, though more vigorously punished than white murderers, yet frequently escaped with five or ten years in the penitentiary--especially if they had money or a few white friends. all this had induced a contempt of the courts of justice--a fear that, after all, through the delays and technicalities of the law and the compassion of the jury, the murderer of waldrop would not be punished as he deserved. this was the substance of the reasoning i heard repeatedly: "that negro, maples, ought to have been hanged; we were not sure the jury would hang him; we hanged him to protect ourselves." i met an intelligent farmer during a drive through madison county. here are some of the things he said, and they voiced closely what i heard in one form or another from many people in all walks of life: "life is cheap in madison county. if you have a grudge against a man, kill him; don't wound him. if you wound him, you'll likely be sent up; if you kill him, you can go free. they often punish more severely for carrying concealed weapons or even for chicken stealing in madison county than they do for murder." so strong was the evidence in one murder case in an adjoining circuit that judge kyle instructed the jury to find the murderer guilty; the jury deliberately returned a verdict, "not guilty." the alabama system of justice is cursed by the professional juror chosen by politicians, and often open to political influences. this, with the unlimited right of appeal and the great number of peremptory challenges allowed to the defence in accepting jurymen, gives such power to the lawyers for the defendant that convictions are exceedingly difficult. oftentimes, also, the prosecuting attorney is a young, inexperienced lawyer, ill-paid, who is no match for the able attorneys employed by the defendant. no, it is not all race prejudice that causes lynchings, even in the south. one man in every six lynched in this country in --the year before the lynching i am describing--was a white man. it is true that a negro is often the victim of mob-law where a white man would not be, but the chief cause certainly seems to lie deeper, in the widespread contempt of the courts, and the unpunished subversion of the law in this country, both south and north. this, indeed, would probably be the sole cause of lynching, were it not for the crime of rape, of which i wish to speak again a little later. _composition of the mob at huntsville_ well, a mob began gathering in huntsville before the grand jury had ceased its labours. it was chiefly composed of the workmen from the cotton-mills. these are of a peculiar class--pure american stock, naturally of high intelligence, but almost wholly illiterate--men from the hills, the descendants of the "poor white trash," who never owned slaves, and who have always hated the negroes. the poor whites are and have been for a long time in certain lines the industrial competitors of the negroes, and the jealousy thus engendered accounts in no small degree for the intensity of the race feeling. anticipating trouble, judge speake ordered the closing of all the saloons--there were then only fifteen to a population of some twenty-one thousand--and called out the local military company. but the mob ran over the militiamen as though they were not there, broke into the jail, built a fire in the hallway, and added sulphur and cayenne pepper. fearing that the jail would be burned and all the prisoners suffocated, the sheriff released the negro, maples, and he jumped out of a second-story window into the mob. they dragged him up the street to the square in the heart of the city. here, on the pleasant lawn, the daughters of america were holding a festival, and the place was brilliant with japanese lanterns. scattering the women and children, the mob jostled the negro under the glare of an electric light, just in front of the stately old court-house. here impassioned addresses were made by several prominent young lawyers--j. h. wallace, jr., w. b. bankhead, and solicitor pettus--urging the observance of law and order. a showing of hands afterward revealed the fact that a large proportion of those present favoured a legal administration of justice. but it was too late now. a peculiarly dramatic incident fired the mob anew. the negro was suddenly confronted by the son of the murdered peddler. "horace," he demanded, "did you kill my old dad?" quivering with fright, the negro is said to have confessed the crime. he was instantly dragged around the corner, where they hanged him to an elm-tree, and while he dangled there in the light of the gala lanterns, they shot him full of holes. then they cut off one of his little fingers and parts of his trousers for souvenirs. so he hung until daylight, and crowds of people came out to see. _effort to punish the lynchers_ but the forces of law and order here had vigour and energy. judge speake, communicating with the governor, had troops sent from birmingham, and then, without shilly-shallying or delaying or endeavouring to shift responsibility, he ordered a special grand jury to indict the lynchers the very next day and he saw to it that it was composed of the best citizens in town. when it met, so deep and solemn was its feeling of responsibility that it was opened with prayer, an extraordinary evidence of the awakened conscience of the people. more than this, the citizens generally were so aroused that they held a mass meeting, and denounced the lynching as a "blot upon our civilisation," and declared that "each and every man taking part" with the mob was "guilty of murder." bold words, but no bolder than the editorials of the newspapers of the town or of the state. every force of decency and good order was at work. such strong newspapers as the birmingham _age-herald_, the _ledger_, and the _news_, the montgomery _advertiser_, the chattanooga _news_, and, indeed, prominent newspapers all over the south united strongly in their condemnation of the lynchers and in their support of the efforts to bring the mob to justice. _southern newspapers on lynching_ the huntsville _mercury_ spoke of the "deep sense of shame felt by our good citizens in being run over by a few lawless spirits." "there is no justification," said the birmingham _news_, "for the mob who, in punishing one murderer, made many more." "this lynching," said the birmingham _ledger_, "is a disgrace to our state. the _ledger_ doesn't put its ear to the ground to hear from the north, nor does it care what northern papers say. the crime is our own, and the disgrace falls on us." "where, in fact," said the _age-herald_, "does such business lead to? the answer is summed up in a word--anarchy!" it would be well if every community in this country could read the full report of judge speake's grand jury. it is a work of the sort struck off only by men stirred to high things by what they feel to be a great crisis; it is of the same metal as the declaration of independence. here is a single paragraph: realising that this is a supreme moment in our history; that we must either take a stand for the law to-day or surrender to the mob and to the anarchists for all time; that our actions shall make for good or evil in future generations; forgetting our personal friendships and affiliations, and with malice toward none, but acting only as sworn officers of the state of alabama, we, the grand jury of madison county, state of alabama, find---- ten members of the mob were indicted--and not for mere rioting or for breaking into the jail, but for _murder_. the jury also charged sheriff rodgers, mayor smith, and chief of police overton with wilful neglect and incompetence, and advised their impeachment. no one not understanding the far-reaching family and political relationships in these old-settled southern communities, and the deep-seated feeling against punishment for the crime of lynching, can form any adequate idea of what a sensation was caused by the charges of the grand jury against the foremost officials of the city. it came like a bolt from a clear sky; it was altogether an astonishing procedure, at first not fully credited. when the utter seriousness of judge speake came to be fully recognised, a good many men hurriedly left town. the birmingham soldiers, led by a captain with backbone, arrested a number of those who remained. judge speake ordered a special trial jury, and appointed an able lawyer to assist prosecutor pettus in bringing the lynchers to justice. the very next week the trials were begun. _difficulty of breaking the lynching habit_ by this time, however, the usual influences had begun to work; the moral revulsion had carried far, and the rebound had come. the energetic judge and his solicitors found themselves face to face with the bad old jury system, with the deep-seated distrust of the courts, with the rooted habit of non-punishment for lynchers. moreover, it was found that certain wild young men, with good family connections, had been mixed up in the mob--and all the strong family and political machinery of the country began to array itself against conviction. a community has exactly as hard a road to travel in breaking a bad habit as an individual. the new south is having a struggle to break the habits of the old south. it was found, also, that the great mass of people in the country, as well as the millworkers in the city, were still strongly in favour of punishment by lynching. one hundred and ten veniremen examined for jurors to try the lynchers were asked this question; "if you were satisfied from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant took part with or abetted the mob in murdering a negro, would you favour his conviction?" and seventy-six of them answered, "no." in other words, a large majority believed that a white man should not be punished for lynching a negro. and when the juries were finally obtained, although the evidence was conclusive, they acquitted the lynchers, one after another. only one man in one jury stood out for conviction--a young clerk named s. m. blair, a pretty good type of the modern hero. he hung the jury, and so bitter was the feeling against him among the millworkers that they threatened to boycott his employer. _relation of lynching to the "usual crime"_ this is the reasoning of many of the men chosen as jurors; i heard it over and over again, not only in huntsville but, in substance, everywhere that i stopped in the south: "if we convict these men for lynching the negro, maples, we shall establish a precedent that will prevent us from lynching for the crime of rape." every argument on lynching in the south gets back sooner or later to this question of rape. ask any high-class citizen--the very highest--if he believes in lynching, and he will tell you roundly, "no." ask him about lynching for rape, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he will instantly weaken. "if my sister or my daughter--look here, if your sister or your daughter----" lynching, he says, is absolutely necessary to keep down this crime. you ask him why the law cannot be depended upon, and he replies: "it is too great an ordeal for the self-respecting white woman to go into court and accuse the negro ravisher and withstand a public cross-examination. it is intolerable. no woman will do it. and, besides, the courts are uncertain. lynching is the only remedy." yet the south is deeply stirred over the prevalence of lynching. the mob spirit, invoked to punish such a crime as rape, is defended by some people in the north as well as in the south; but once invoked, it spreads and spreads, until to-day lynching for rape forms only a very small proportion of the total number of mob hangings. it spreads until a negro is lynched for chicken stealing, or for mere "obnoxiousness." in the year , out of lynchings, only were for rape and for attempted rape, while were for murder, for complicity in murderous assault, for arson, for mere "race prejudice," for insults to whites, for making threats, for unknown offenses, for refusing to give information, and were wholly innocent negroes, lynched because their identity was mistaken. it is probable that lynching in the south would immediately be wiped out, if it were not for the question of rape. you will hear the problem put by thinking southerners very much in this fashion: "we must stop mob-law; every month we recognise that fact more clearly. but can we stop mob-law unless we go to the heart of the matter and stop lynching for rape? is there not a way of changing our methods of legal procedure so that the offender in this crime can be punished without subjecting the victim to the horrible publicity of the courts?" _governor cunningham--a real leader_ but i have wandered from my story. in acting-governor cunningham, the people of alabama had a leader who was not afraid to handle a dangerous subject like lynching. he sent a court of inquiry to huntsville, which found the local military company "worthless and inefficient," because it had failed to protect the jail. immediately, upon the receipt of this report, the governor dismissed the huntsville company from the service, every man in it. quite a contrast from the action at statesboro! the governor then went a step further: he ordered the impeachment of the sheriff. a little later federal judge jones took up the case, charged his jury vigorously, and some of the mob rioters were indicted in the federal courts. governor cunningham took a bold stand against mob-law everywhere and anywhere in the state: "i am opposed to mob-law," he said, "of whatsoever kind, for any and all causes. if lynching is to be justified or extenuated for any crime, be it ever so serious, it will lead to the same method of punishment for other crimes of a less degree of depravity, and through the operation of the process of evolution, will enlarge more and more the field of operation for this form of lawlessness." it means something also when citizens, in support of their institutions and out of love of their city, rise above politics. judge speake had been nominated by the democrats to succeed himself. a democratic nomination in alabama means election. after his vigorous campaign against the lynchers, he became exceedingly unpopular among the majority of the people. they resolved to defeat him. a committee waited on shelby pleasants, a prominent republican lawyer, and asked him to run against judge speake, assuring him a certain election. "i will not be a mob's candidate," he said. "i indorse every action of judge speake." the committee approached several other lawyers, but not one of them would run against the judge, and the republican newspaper of the town came out strongly in support of judge speake, even publishing his name at the head of its editorial columns. before he could be elected, however, a decision of the state supreme court, unconnected in any way with the lynching, followed like fate, and deprived madison county of his services. he was now a private citizen, and even if he had come up for nomination to any political office, he would undoubtedly have been defeated. the new south is not yet strong enough to defy the old south politically. _influences tending to prevent future lynchings in the south_ the influences against lynching in the south are constantly growing stronger. with most (not all) of the newspapers, the preachers and the best citizens united against it, the outlook is full of hope. and rural free delivery and country telephones, spreading in every direction, are inestimable influences in the quickening of public opinion. better roads are being built, the country is settling up with white people, schools are improving and the population generally, after a series of profitable cotton crops, is highly prosperous--all influences working toward the solution of this problem. when i went south i shared the impression of many northerners that the south was lawless and did not care--an impression that arises from the wide publication of the horrible details of every lynching that occurs, and the utter silence regarding those deep, quiet, and yet powerful moral and industrial forces which are at the work of rejuvenation beneath the surface--an account of which i have given. i came away from the south deeply impressed with two things: that the south is making fully as good progress in overcoming its peculiar forms of lawlessness as the north is making in overcoming _its_ peculiar forms. ii.--lynching in the north having looked, into two southern lynching towns, let us now see what a northern lynching is like. the comparison is highly interesting and illuminating. springfield, o., is one of the most prosperous of the smaller cities of the state. it is a beautiful town having, in , some , people. it has fine streets, fine buildings, busy factories, churches, an imposing library. some of the older families have resided there for nearly a century. it is the seat of government of one of the most fertile and attractive counties in the state: an altogether progressive, enlightened city. of its population in over , were negroes (about one-seventh), a considerable proportion of whom are recent settlers. large numbers of negroes, as i have shown in former chapters, have been migrating from the south, and crowding into northern towns located along the ohio or in those portions of indiana, illinois, ohio, pennsylvania, kansas, and other states, which border on the old south. many of the negroes in springfield came from kentucky. we discover in these northern towns exactly as in the south, the two classes of negroes: the steady, resident class, more or less known to the whites, and a restless, unstable, ignorant class, coming to one neighbourhood to-day to help build a bridge, and going elsewhere to-morrow to dig a canal. for years no such thing as race prejudice existed in springfield; but with the growth of negro population it increased with rapidity. for instance, a druggist in springfield refused to sell soda-water to a negro college professor, the typesetters in a publishing house compelled the discharge of negro workmen, a negro physician visited the high-school, found the half-dozen negro pupils sitting by themselves and, angrily charging discrimination, ordered his child to sit among the white children. this feeling of race repulsion was especially noticeable between the working class of white men and the negroes who come more or less into industrial competition with them. the use of negroes for breaking strikes in the coalfields and elsewhere has been a fertile source of discord, kindling the fire of race prejudice in places where it never before existed. _how the negroes sold their votes_ in springfield there were about , negro voters, many of whom were bought at every election. the democrats and the republicans were so evenly divided that the city administration was democratic and the county administration republican. the venal negro vote went to the highest bidder, carried the elections, and, with the whiskey influence, governed the town. springfield, enlightened, educated, progressive, highly american, had saloons--or one to every people. before the lynching, nine of these were negro saloons--some of them indescribably vile. a row of houses along the railroad tracks, not three blocks from the heart of the city, was known as the levee. it was a negro row composed of saloons and disorderly houses, where the lowest of the low, negro men and both negro and white women, made a general rendezvous. just back of it was one of the foremost catholic churches in town; hardly a block away were the post-office, the public library, and the foremost club of the city, and within three or four hundred yards were the back doors of some of the city's most aristocratic residences. for years, the ineffective good citizen had protested against these abominable resorts, but when the republicans wanted to win they needed the votes from these places, and when the democrats wanted to win _they_ needed them. burnett, the democratic boss, said in a tone of real injury to a gentleman--a democrat--who protested against the protection of the levee: "don't you want the party to win? we've got to have those sixty or eighty votes from hurley"--hurley being the notorious negro proprietor of a dive called the honky tonk. _corrupt politics and the negro question_ so these vile places remained open, protected by the police, breeding crime, and encouraging arrogance, idleness, and vice among the negroes. and yet one will hear good citizens of springfield complaining that the negroes make themselves conspicuous and obnoxious at primaries and elections, standing around, waiting, and refusing to vote until they receive money in hand. "to my mind," one of these citizens said to me, "the conspicuousness of the negro at elections is one of the chief causes of race prejudice." but who is to blame? the negro who accepts the bribe, or the white politician who is eager to give it, or the white business man who, desiring special privileges, stands behind the white politician, or the ordinary citizen who doesn't care? talk with these politicians on the one hand, and the impractical reformers on the other, and they will tell you in all seriousness of the sins of the south in disfranchising the negro. "every negro in springfield," i was told, "exercises his right to vote." if you were to tell these men that the negroes of springfield are disfranchised as absolutely as they are anywhere in the south, they would stare at you in amazement. but a purchased voter is a disfranchised voter. the negroes have no more real voice in the government of springfield than they have in the government of savannah or new orleans. in the south the negro has been disfranchised by law or by intimidation: in the north by cash. which is worse? _story of the crime that led to the lynching_ a few months before the lynching a negro named dixon arrived in springfield from kentucky. he was one of the illiterate, idle, floating sort. he had with him a woman not his wife, with whom he quarrelled. he was arrested and brought into court. i am profoundly conscious of the seriousness of any charge which touches upon our courts, the last resort of justice, and yet it was a matter of common report that "justice was easy" in clark county, that laws were not enforced, that criminals were allowed to escape on suspended sentence. i heard this talk everywhere, often coupled with personal accusations against the judges, but i could not discover that the judges were more remiss than other officials. they were afflicted with no other disease. even in a serious sociological study of clark county by professor e. s. tood, i find this statement: in springfield, one of the chief faults of the municipal system has been and is the laxity and discrimination in the enforcement of the law. many of the municipal ordinances have been shelved for years. the saloon closing ordinances are enforced intermittently, as are those concerning gambling. when the negro dixon was brought into court he was convicted and let out on suspended sentence. he got drunk immediately and was again arrested, this time serving several weeks in jail. the moment he was free he began quarrelling with his "wife," in a house directly across the street from police headquarters. an officer named collis tried to make peace and dixon deliberately shot him through the stomach, also wounding the woman. this was on sunday. dixon was immediately placed in the county jail. collis died the next morning. _human life cheap in clark county_ i have called attention to the fact that the lynching town nearly always has a previous bad record of homicide. disregard for the sacredness of human life seems to be in the air of these places. springfield was no exception. between january , , and march , , the day of the lynching, a little more than two years, no fewer than ten homicides were committed in the city of springfield. white men committed five of these crimes and negroes five. three of the cases were decided within a short time before the lynching and the punishment administered was widely criticised. bishop, a coloured man who had killed a coloured man, was fined $ and sentenced to six months in the workhouse. this was for _killing a man_. o'brien, a white man, who killed a white man, got one year in the penitentiary. and only a week before the lynching, schocknessy, a white man who killed a white man, but who had influential political friends, went scott-free! on the morning after the collis murder, the _daily sun_ published a list of the recent homicides in springfield in big type on its first page and asked editorially: "what are you going to do about it?" it then answered its own question: "nothing." the following morning, after the lynching, the same paper printed in its headlines: awful rebuke to the courts _they have temporised with the criminal classes until patience was exhausted_ i cite these facts to show the underlying conditions in springfield; a soil richly prepared for an outbreak of mob law--with corrupt politics, vile saloons, the law paralysed by non-enforcement against vice, a large venal negro vote, lax courts of justice. _gathering of the lynching mob_ well, on monday afternoon the mob began to gather. at first it was an absurd, ineffectual crowd, made up largely of lawless boys of sixteen to twenty--a pronounced feature of every mob--with a wide fringe of more respectable citizens, their hands in their pockets and no convictions in their souls, looking on curiously, helplessly. they gathered hooting around the jail, cowardly, at first, as all mobs are, but growing bolder as darkness came on and no move was made to check them. the murder of collis was not a horrible, soul-rending crime like that at statesboro, ga.; these men in the mob were not personal friends of the murdered man; it was a mob from the back rooms of the swarming saloons of springfield; and it included also the sort of idle boys "who hang around cigar stores," as one observer told me. the newspaper reports are fond of describing lynching mobs as "made up of the foremost citizens of the town." in few cases that i know of, either south or north, except in back country neighbourhoods, has a mob been made up of what may be called the best citizens; but the best citizens have often stood afar off "decrying the mob"--as a springfield man told me--and letting it go on. a mob is the method by which good citizens turn over the law and the government to the criminal or irresponsible classes. and no official in direct authority in springfield that evening, apparently, had so much as an ounce of grit within him. the sheriff came out and made a weak speech in which he said he "didn't want to hurt anybody." they threw stones at him and broke his windows. the chief of police sent eighteen men to the jail but did not go near himself. all of these policemen undoubtedly sympathised with the mob in its efforts to get at the slayer of their brother officer; at least, they did nothing effective to prevent the lynching. an appeal was made to the mayor to order out the engine companies that water might be turned on the mob. he said he didn't like to; _the hose might be cut_. the local militia company was called to its barracks, but the officer in charge hesitated, vacillated, doubted his authority, and objected finally because he had no ammunition _except_ krag-jorgenson cartridges, which, if fired into a mob, would kill too many people! the soldiers did not stir that night from the safe and comfortable precincts of their armoury. a sort of dry rot, a moral paralysis, seems to strike the administrators of law in a town like springfield. what can be expected of officers who are not accustomed to enforce the law, or of a people not accustomed to obey it--or who make reservations and exceptions when they do enforce it or obey it? _threats to lynch the judges_ when the sheriff made his speech to the mob, urging them to let the law take its course they jeered him. the law! when, in the past, had the law taken its proper course in clark county? some one shouted, referring to dixon: "he'll only get fined for shooting in the city limits." "he'll get ten days in jail and suspended sentence." then there were voices: "let's go hang mower and miller"--the two judges. this threat indeed, was frequently repeated both on the night of the lynching and on the day following. so the mob came finally, and cracked the door of the jail with a railroad rail. this jail is said to be the strongest in ohio, and having seen it, i can well believe that the report is true. but steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right. they murdered the negro in cold blood in the jail doorway; then they dragged him to the principal business street and hung him to a telegraph-pole, afterward riddling his lifeless body with revolver shots. _lesson of a hanging negro_ that was the end of that! mob justice administered! and there the negro hung until daylight the next morning--an unspeakably grizzly, dangling horror, advertising the shame of the town. his head was shockingly crooked to one side, his ragged clothing, cut for souvenirs, exposed in places his bare body: he dripped blood. and, with the crowds of men both here and at the morgue where the body was publicly exhibited, came young boys in knickerbockers, and little girls and women by scores, horrified but curious. they came even with baby carriages! men made jokes: "a dead nigger is a good nigger." and the purblind, dollars-and-cents man, most despicable of all, was congratulating the public: "it'll save the county a lot of money!" significant lessons, these, for the young! but the mob wasn't through with its work. easy people imagine that, having hanged a negro, the mob goes quietly about its business; but that is never the way of the mob. once released, the spirit of anarchy spreads and spreads, not subsiding until it has accomplished its full measure of evil. _mob burning of negro saloons_ all the following day a rumbling, angry crowd filled the streets of springfield, threatening to burn out the notorious levee, threatening judges mower and miller, threatening the "niggers." the local troops--to say nothing of the police force--which might easily have broken up the mob, remained sedulously in their armouries, vacillating, doubtful of authority, knowing that there were threats to burn and destroy, and making not one move toward the protection of the public. one of the captains was even permitted to go to a neighbouring city to a dance! at the very same time the panic-stricken officials were summoning troops from other towns. so night came on, the mob gathered around the notorious dives, some one touched a match, and the places of crime suddenly disgorged their foul inhabitants. black and white, they came pouring out and vanished into the darkness where they belonged--from whence they did not return. eight buildings went up in smoke, the fire department deliberating--intentionally, it is said--until the flames could not be controlled. the troops, almost driven out by the county prosecutor, mcgrew, appeared after the mob had completed its work. good work, badly done, a living demonstration of the inevitability of law--if not orderly, decent law, then of mob-law. for days following the troops filled springfield, costing the state large sums of money, costing the county large sums of money. they chiefly guarded the public fountain; the mob had gone home--until next time. _efforts to punish the mob_ what happened after that? a perfunctory court-martial, that did absolutely nothing. a grand jury of really good citizens that sat for weeks, off and on; and like the mountain that was in travail and brought forth a mouse, they indicted two boys and two men out of all that mob, not for murder, but for "breaking into jail." and, curiously enough, it developed--how do such things develop?--that every man on the grand jury was a republican, chosen by republican county officers, and in their report they severely censured the police force (democratic), and the mayor (democratic), and had not one word of disapproval for the sheriff (republican). curiously enough, also, the public did not become enthusiastic over the report of that grand jury. but the worst feature of all in this springfield lynching was the apathy of the public. no one really seemed to care. a "nigger" had been hanged: what of it? but the law itself had been lynched. what of that? i had just come from the south, where i had found the people of several lynching towns in a state of deep excitement--moral excitement if you like, thinking about this problem, quarrelling about it, expelling men from the church, impeaching sheriffs, dishonourably discharging whole militia companies. here in springfield, i found cold apathy, except for a few fine citizens, one of whom, city solicitor stewart l. tatum, promptly offered his services to the sheriff and assisted in a vain effort to remove the negro in a closed carriage and afterward at the risk of personal assault earnestly attempted to defeat the purposes of the mob. another of these citizens, the rev. father cogan, pleaded with the mob on the second night of the rioting at risk to himself; another withdrew from the militia company because it had not done its duty. and afterward the city officials were stirred by the faintest of faint spasms of righteousness: some of the negro saloons were closed up, but within a month, the most notorious of all the dive-keepers, hurley, the negro political boss, was permitted to open an establishment--through the medium of a brother-in-law! if there ever was an example of good citizenship lying flat on its back with political corruption squatting on its neck, springfield furnished an example of that condition. there was no reconstructive movement, no rising and organisation of the better sort of citizens. negro dives gradually reopened, the same corrupt politics continued: and the result was logical and inevitable. about two years later, in february, , another race riot broke out in springfield--worse in some ways than the first. on february th, martin m. davis, a white brakeman, was shot in the railroad yards near a row of notorious negro houses, by edward dean, a coloured man. the negro was at once removed from the city and a mob which had gathered in anticipation of another lynching, when it was cheated of its victim, set fire to a number of houses in the negro settlement. the militia was at once called out, but the following night the mob gathered as before and visiting the negro settlement, tried to set fire to other buildings. it is significant that on the very night that this riot occurred the city council had under consideration an ordinance prohibiting the use of screens or other obstructions to the view of the interior of saloons after closing hours on week days or during sundays. a committee of the council, favourable to the saloon interests, had recommended that the ordinance be not acted upon by council but referred to the people at a distant election, a proposition wholly illegal. while stewart l. tatum the city solicitor to whom i have already referred, argued to the council the illegality of the proposal made by the committee the noise of the mob reached the council chamber and the friends of the ordinance seized the opportunity to adjourn and delay action that would evidently result in the defeat of the ordinance. finally, as a result of both these riots, the city was mildly stirred; a civic league was formed by prominent citizens and the _attack on property_ vigorously deprecated; the passage of the screen ordinance was recommended and at the next meeting of the council this ordinance, which had been vetoed by the mayor of the previous administration and had excited considerable public interest during a period of two years, was passed and has proved of great assistance to the police department in controlling the low saloons where the riot spirit is bred. i turn with pleasure from the story of this lynching to another northern town, where i found as satisfying an example of how to deal with a mob as this country has known. in springfield we had an exhibition of nearly complete supineness and apathy before the mob; in statesboro, ga., we discovered a decided law-and-order element, not strong enough, however, to do much; in huntsville, ala., we had a tremendous moral awakening. in danville, ill., we find an example of law vindicated, magnificently and completely, through the heroism of a single man, backed up later by wholesome public opinion. _character of danville, ill._ danville presented many of the characteristics of springfield, o. it had a growing negro population and there had been an awakening race prejudice between the white workingmen and the negroes, especially in the neighbouring coal mines. as in other places where lynchings have occurred, i found that vermilion county, of which danville is the seat, had also a heavy record of homicide and other crime. they counted there on a homicide every sixty days; at the term of court preceding the lynching seven murder trials were on the docket; and in all its history the county never had had a legal hanging, though it had suffered two lynchings. the criminal record of vermilion county was exceeded at that time only by cook county (chicago), and st. clair county (east st. louis), where the horrible lynching of a negro schoolmaster took place (at belleville) in the preceding summer. _story of a starved negro_ the crime which caused the rioting was committed by the familiar vagrant negro from the south--in this case a kentucky negro named wilson--a miserable, illiterate, half-starved creature who had been following a circus. he had begged along the road in indiana and no one would feed him. he came across the line into illinois, found a farmhouse door open, saw food on the table, and darted in to steal it. as he was leaving, the woman of the house appeared. in an animal-like panic, the negro darted for the door, knocking the woman down as he escaped. immediately the cry went up that there had been an attempted criminal assault, but the sheriff told me that the woman never made any such charge and the negro bore all the evidence of the truthfulness of the assertion that he was starving; he was so emaciated with hunger that even after his arrest the sheriff dared not allow him a full meal. _hot weather and mobs_ but it was enough to stir up the mob spirit. it was saturday night, july th, and the usual crowd from all over the county had gathered in the town. among the crowd were many coal miners, who had just been paid off and were drinking. as in springfield, the town had a very large number of saloons, ninety-one within a radius of five miles, to a population of some , . most northern towns are far worse in this respect than the average southern town. it was a hot night; mobs work best in hot weather. statistics, indeed, show that the great majority of lynchings take place in the summer, particularly in july and august. it was known that the sheriff had brought his negro prisoner to the jail, and the crime was widely discussed. the whole city was a sort of human tinder-box, ready to flare up at a spark of violence. well, the spark came--in a saloon. metcalf, a negro, had words with a well-known white butcher named henry gatterman. both had been drinking. the negro drew a revolver and shot gatterman dead. instantly the city was in a furor of excitement. the police appeared and arrested metcalf, and got him finally with great difficulty to the police station, where he was locked up. a mob formed instantly. it was led, at first, by a crowd of lawless boys from sixteen to eighteen years old. rapidly gathering strength, it rushed into the city hall, and although the mayor, the chief of police, and nearly the entire police force were present, they got the negro out and hanged him to a telegraph-pole in the main street of the town, afterward shooting his body full of holes. intoxicated by their swift success and, mob-like, growing in recklessness and bloodthirstiness, they now turned upon the jail determined to lynch the negro wilson. it was a much uglier mob than any i have hitherto described; it was a drunken mob, and it had already tasted blood. it swarmed around the jail, yelling, shooting, and breaking the windows with stones. _a "strict" sheriff_ sheriff hardy h. whitlock of vermilion county had never been looked upon as an especially remarkable man--except, as i was told everywhere, he had a record as _a strict sheriff_, as a man who did his best to enforce the law in times of peace. he and the state's attorney were so industrious that they caught and punished four times as many criminals in proportion to population as were convicted in chicago. the sheriff was a big, solid, deliberate man with gray eyes. he was born in tennessee. his father was an itinerant presbyterian preacher, always poor, doing good for everybody but himself, and stern in his conceptions of right and wrong. his mother, as the sheriff related, made him obey the law with peach-tree switches. his history was the commonest of the common; not much education, had to make his living, worked in a livery stable. he was faithful at that, temperate, friendly. they elected him constable, an office that he held for seven years. he was faithful at that. they elected him sheriff of the county. he went at the new task as he had at all his other work, with no especial brilliancy, but steadily doing his duty, catching criminals. he found a great deal to learn and he learned. the extradition laws of the states troubled him when he wanted to bring prisoners home. there was no compilation of the laws on the subject. here was work to be done. although no lawyer, he went at it laboriously and compiled a book of five hundred pages, containing all the extradition laws of the country, and had it published at his own expense. _defending a jail with a riot-gun_ and when the crisis came that night with the mob howling around his jail, hardy whitlock had become so accustomed to doing his duty that he didn't know how to do anything else. here was the jail to be protected: he intended to protect it. he sent for no troops--there was no time anyhow--nor for the police. he had a couple of deputies and his wife. though the mob was breaking the windows of the house and the children were there, his wife said: "give me a gun, hardy, and i'll stay by you." the sheriff went out on the porch, unarmed, in his shirt-sleeves, and made them a little speech. they yelled at him, threw stones, fired revolvers. they brought a railroad rail to break in the door. he went out among them, called them bill, and jim, and dick, and persuaded them to put it down; but others took it up willingly. "are you going to open the door?" they yelled. "no!" said the sheriff. then he went in and got his riot-gun, well loaded with duck-shot. he was one man against two thousand. they began battering on the iron door, yelling and shooting. it was not an especially strong door, and it began to give at the bottom, and finally bent inward enough to admit a man's body. the crucial moment had come: and the sheriff was there to meet it. he stuck his riot-gun out of the opening and began firing. the mob fell back but came charging forward again, wild with passion. the sheriff fired again, seven times in all, and one of his deputies opened with a revolver. for a time pandemonium reigned; they attempted the house entrance of the jail; the sheriff was there also with his riot-gun; they threatened dynamite and fire. they cut down the negro, metcalf, brought him in front of the jail, piled straw on the body and attempted to burn it. part of the time they were incited to greater violence by a woman who stood in a waggon-box across the street. so they raged all night, firing at the jail, but not daring to come too near the man with the riot-gun. "on sunday," the sheriff told me, "i realised i was up against it. i knew the tough element in town had it in for me." _how a real sheriff punished a mob_ they even threatened him on the street. a large number of men had been wounded by the firing, some dangerously, though no one, fortunately, was killed. the sheriff stood alone in the town. a lesser man might still have failed ignominiously. but whitlock went about the nearest duty: punishing the rioters. he had warrants issued and arrested every man he could find who was streaked or speckled with shot--indubitable evidence of his presence in the mob at the jail door. many fled the city, but he got twenty or thirty. vermilion county also had a prosecuting attorney who knew his duty--j. w. keeslar. judge thompson called a grand jury, attorney keeslar pushed the cases with great vigour, and this was the result: thirteen men and one woman (the disorderly woman of the waggon-box) were sent to the penitentiary, eight others were heavily fined. at the same time the negro, wilson, came up for trial, pleaded guilty, and was legally punished by a term in the penitentiary. [illustration: charles w. chesnutt the well-known novelist, author of "the colonel's dream," "the house behind the cedars," "the conjure woman," etc. mr. chesnutt is a lawyer in cleveland, ohio. photograph by edmondson] and the people came strongly to the support of their officers. hardy whitlock became one of the most popular men in the county. keeslar, coming up for reëlection the following fall, with mob-law for the essential issue, was returned to his office with an overwhelming majority. the sheriff told me that, in his opinion, the success of the officers in convicting the lynchers was due largely to a thoroughly awakened public opinion, the strong attitude of the newspapers, especially those of chicago, the help of the governor, and the feeling, somehow, that the best sentiment of the county was behind them. _conclusions regarding lynching in this country_ and finally, we may, perhaps venture upon a few general conclusions. lynching in this country is peculiarly the white man's burden. the white man has taken all the responsibility of government; he really governs in the north as well as in the south, in the north disfranchising the negro with cash, in the south by law or by intimidation. all the machinery of justice is in his hands. how keen is the need, then, of calmness and strict justice in dealing with the negro! nothing more surely tends to bring the white man down to the lowest level of the criminal negro than yielding to those blind instincts of savagery which find expression in the mob. the man who joins a mob, by his very acts, puts himself on a level with the negro criminal: both have given way wholly to brute passion. for, if civilisation means anything, it means self-restraint; casting away self-restraint the white man becomes as savage as the criminal negro. if the white man sets an example of non-obedience to law, of non-enforcement of law, and of unequal justice, what can be expected of the negro? a criminal father is a poor preacher of homilies to a wayward son. the negro sees a man, white or black, commit murder and go free, over and over again in all these lynching counties. why should he fear to murder? every passion of the white man is reflected and emphasised in the criminal negro. chapter x an ostracised race in ferment the conflict of negro parties and negro leaders over methods of dealing with their own problem one of the things that has interested me most of all in studying negro communities, especially in the north, has been to find them so torn by cliques and divided by such wide differences of opinion. no other element of our population presents a similar condition; the italians, the jews, the germans and especially the chinese and japanese are held together not only by a different language, but by ingrained and ancient national habits. they group themselves naturally. but the negro is an american in language and customs; he knows no other traditions and he has no other conscious history; a large proportion, indeed, possess varying degrees of white american blood (restless blood!) and yet the negro is not accepted as an american. instead of losing himself gradually in the dominant race, as the germans, irish, and italians are doing, adding those traits or qualities with which time fashions and modifies this human mosaic called the american nation, the negro is set apart as a peculiar people. with every negro, then, an essential question is: "how shall i meet this attempt to put me off by myself?" that question in one form or another--politically, industrially, socially--is being met daily, almost hourly, by every negro in this country. it colours his very life. "you don't know, and you can't know," a negro said to me, "what it is to be a problem, to understand that everyone is watching you and studying you, to have your mind constantly on your own actions. it has made us think and talk about ourselves more than other people do. it has made us self-conscious and sensitive." it is scarcely surprising, then, that upon such a vital question there should be wide differences of opinion among negroes. as a matter of fact, there are almost innumerable points of view and suggested modes of conduct, but they all group themselves into two great parties which are growing more distinct in outline and purpose every day. both parties exist in every part of the country, but it is in the north that the struggle between them is most evident. i have found a sharper feeling and a bitterer discussion of race relationships among the negroes of the north than among those of the south. if you want to hear the race question discussed with fire and fervour, go to boston! for two hundred and fifty years the negro had no thought, no leadership, no parties; then suddenly he was set free, and became, so far as law could make him, an integral and indistinguishable part of the american people. but it was only in a few places in the north and among comparatively few individuals that he ever approximately reached the position of a free citizen, that he ever really enjoyed the rights granted to him under the law. in the south he was never free politically, socially, and industrially, in the sense that the white man is free, and is not so to-day. but in boston, and in other northern cities in lesser degree, a group of negroes reached essentially equal citizenship. a few families trace their lineage back to the very beginnings of civilisation in this country, others were freemen long before the war, a few had revolutionary war records of which their descendants are intensely and justly proud. some of the families have far more white blood than black; though the census shows that only about per cent. of the negroes of boston are mulattoes, the real proportion is undoubtedly very much higher. in abolition times these negroes were much regarded. many of them attained and kept a certain real position among the whites; they were even accorded unusual opportunities and favours. they found such a place as an educated negro might find to-day (or at least as he found a few years ago) in germany. in some instances they became wealthy. at a time when the north was passionately concerned in the abolition of slavery the colour of his skin sometimes gave the negro special advantages, even honours. for years after the war this condition continued; then a stream of immigration of southern negroes began to appear, at first a mere rivulet, but latterly increasing in volume, until to-day all of our northern cities have swarming coloured colonies. owing to the increase of the negro population and for other causes which i have already mentioned, sentiment in the north toward the negro has been undergoing a swift change. _how colour lines are drawn_ now the tragedy of the negro is the colour of his skin: he is easily recognisable. the human tendency is to class people together by outward appearances. when the line began to be drawn it was drawn not alone against the unworthy negro, but against the negro. it was not so much drawn by the highly intelligent white man as by the white man. and the white man alone has not drawn it, but the negroes themselves are drawing it--and more and more every day. so we draw the line in this country against the chinese, the japanese, and in some measure against the jews (and they help to draw it). so we speak with disparagement of "dagoes" and "square heads." right or wrong, these lines, in our present state of civilisation, are drawn. they are here; they must be noted and dealt with. what was the result? the northern negro who has been enjoying the free life of boston and philadelphia has protested passionately against the drawing of a colour line: he wishes to be looked upon, and not at all unnaturally, for he possesses human ambitions and desires, solely for his worth as a man, not as a negro. in philadelphia i heard of the old philadelphia negroes, in indianapolis of the old indianapolis families, in boston a sharp distinction was drawn between the "boston negroes" and the recent southern importation. even in chicago, where there is nothing old, i found the same spirit. in short, it is the protest against separation, against being deprived of the advantages and opportunities of a free life. in the south the most intelligent and best educated negroes are, generally speaking, the leaders of their race, but in northern cities some of the ablest negroes will have nothing to do with the masses of their own people or with racial movements; they hold themselves aloof, asserting that there is no colour line, and if there is, there should not be. their associations and their business are largely with white people and they cling passionately to the fuller life. [illustration: dr. booker t. washington photograph by dimock] "when i am sick," one of them said to me, "i don't go to a negro doctor, but to a doctor. colour has nothing to do with it." in the south the same general setting apart of negroes as negroes is going on, of course, on an immeasurably wider scale. by disfranchisement they are being separated politically, the jim crow laws set them apart socially and physically, the hostility of white labour in some callings pushes them aside in the industrial activities. but the south presents no such striking contrasts as the north, because no southern negroes were ever really accorded a high degree of citizenship. _two great negro parties_ now, the negroes of the country are meeting the growing discrimination against them in two ways, out of which have grown the two great parties to which i have referred. one party has sprung, naturally, from the thought of the northern negro and is a product of the freedom which the northern negro has enjoyed; although, of course, it finds many followers in the south. the other is the natural product of the far different conditions in the south, where the negro cannot speak his mind, where he has never realised any large degree of free citizenship. both are led by able men, and both are backed by newspapers and magazines. it has come, indeed, to the point where most negroes of any intelligence at all have taken their place on one side or the other. the second-named party, which may best, perhaps, be considered first, is made up of the great mass of the coloured people both south and north; its undisputed leader is booker t. washington. _the rise of booker t. washington_ nothing has been more remarkable in the recent history of the negro than washington's rise to influence as a leader, and the spread of his ideals of education and progress. it is noteworthy that he was born in the south, a slave, that he knew intimately the common struggling life of his people and the attitude of the white race toward them. he worked his way to education in southern schools and was graduated at hampton--a story which he tells best himself in his book, "up from slavery." he was and is southern in feeling and point of view. when he began to think how he could best help his people the same question came to him that comes to every negro: "what shall we do about this discrimination and separation?" and his was the type of character which answered, "make the best of it; overcome it with self-development." the very essence of his doctrine is this: "get yourself right, and the world will be all right." his whole work and his life have said to the white man: "you've set us apart. you don't want us. all right; we'll be apart. we can succeed as negroes." it is the doctrine of the opportunist and optimist: peculiarly, indeed, the doctrine of the man of the soil, who has come up fighting, dealing with the world, not as he would like to have it, but as it overtakes him. many great leaders have been like that: lincoln was one. they have the simplicity and patience of the soil, and the immense courage and faith. to prevent being crushed by circumstances they develop humour; they laugh off their troubles. washington has all of these qualities of the common life: he possesses in high degree what some one has called "great commonness." and finally he has a simple faith in humanity, and in the just purposes of the creator of humanity. being a hopeful opportunist washington takes the negro as he finds him, often ignorant, weak, timid, surrounded by hostile forces, and tells him to go to work at anything, anywhere, but go to work, learn how to work better, save money, have a better home, raise a better family. _what washington teaches the negro_ the central idea of his doctrine, indeed, is work. he teaches that if the negro wins by real worth a strong economic position in the country, other rights and privileges will come to him naturally. he should get his rights, not by gift of the white man, but by earning them himself. "i noticed," he says, "when i first went to tuskegee to start the tuskegee normal and industrial institute, that some of the white people about there looked rather doubtfully at me. i thought i could get their influence by telling them how much algebra and history and science and all those things i had in my head, but they treated me about the same as they did before. they didn't seem to care about the algebra, history, and science that were in my head only. those people never even began to have confidence in me until we commenced to build a large three-story brick building; and then another and another, until now we have eighty-six buildings which have been erected largely by the labour of our students, and to-day we have the respect and confidence of all the white people in that section. "there is an unmistakable influence that comes over a white man when he sees a black man living in a two-story brick house that has been paid for." in another place he has given his ideas of what education should be: "how i wish that, from the most cultured and highly endowed university in the great north to the humblest log cabin schoolhouse in alabama, we could burn, as it were, into the hearts and heads of all that usefulness, that service to our brother is the supreme end of education." it is, indeed, to the teaching of service in the highest sense that washington's life has been devoted. while he urges every negro to reach as high a place as he can, he believes that the great masses of the negroes are best fitted to-day for manual labour; his doctrine is that they should be taught to do that labour better: that when the foundations have been laid in sound industry and in business enterprise, the higher callings and honours will come of themselves. his emphasis is rather upon duties than upon rights. he does not advise the negro to surrender a single right: on the other hand, he urges his people to use fully every right they have or can get--for example, to vote wherever possible, and vote thoughtfully. but he believes that some of the rights given the negro have been lost because the negro had neither the wisdom nor the strength to use them properly. _washington's influence on his people_ i have not said much thus far in these articles about booker t. washington, but as i have been travelling over this country, south and north, studying negro communities, i have found the mark of him everywhere in happier human lives. wherever i found a prosperous negro enterprise, a thriving business place, a good home, there i was almost sure to find booker t. washington's picture over the fireplace or a little framed motto expressing his gospel of work and service. i have heard bitter things said about mr. washington by both coloured people and white. i have waited and investigated many of these stories, and i am telling here what i have seen and known of his influence among thousands of common, struggling human beings. many highly educated negroes, especially, in the north, dislike him and oppose him, but he has brought new hope and given new courage to the masses of his race. he has given them a working plan of life. and is there a higher test of usefulness? measured by any standard, white or black, washington must be regarded to-day as one of the great men of this country: and in the future he will be so honoured. _dr. du bois and the negro_ the party led by washington is made up of the masses of the common people; the radical party, on the other hand, represents what may be called the intellectuals. the leading exponent of its point of view is unquestionably professor w. e. b. du bois of atlanta university--though, like all minority parties, it is torn with dissension and discontent. dr. du bois was born in massachusetts of a family that had no history of southern slavery. he has a large intermixture of white blood. broadly educated at harvard and in the universities of germany, he is to-day one of the able sociologists of this country. his economic studies of the negro made for the united states government and for the atlanta university conference (which he organised) are works of sound scholarship and furnish the student with the best single source of accurate information regarding the negro at present obtainable in this country. and no book gives a deeper insight into the inner life of the negro, his struggles and his aspirations, than "the souls of black folk." dr. du bois has the temperament of the scholar and idealist--critical, sensitive, unhumorous, impatient, often covering its deep feeling with sarcasm and cynicism. when the question came to him: "what shall the negro do about discrimination?" his answer was the exact reverse of washington's: it was the voice of massachusetts: "do not submit! agitate, object, fight." where washington reaches the hearts of his people, du bois appeals to their heads. du bois is not a leader of men, as washington is: he is rather a promulgator of ideas. while washington is building a great educational institution and organising the practical activities of the race, du bois is the lonely critic holding up distant ideals. where washington cultivates friendly human relationships with the white people among whom the lot of the negro is cast, du bois, sensitive to rebuffs, draws more and more away from white people. _a negro declaration of independence_ several years ago du bois organised the niagara movement for the purpose of protesting against the drawing of the colour line. it is important, not so much for the extent of its membership, which is small, but because it represents, genuinely, a more or less prevalent point of view among many coloured people. its declaration of principles says: we refuse to allow the impression to remain that the negro-american assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults. through helplessness we may submit, but the voice of protest of ten million americans must never cease to assail the ears of their fellows, so long as america is unjust. any discrimination based simply on race or colour is barbarous, we care not how hallowed it be by custom, expediency, or prejudice. differences made on account of ignorance, immorality, or disease are legitimate methods of fighting evil, and against them we have no word of protest, but discriminations based simply and solely on physical peculiarities, place of birth, colour of skin, are relics of that unreasoning human savagery of which the world is, and ought to be, thoroughly ashamed. the object of the movement is to protest against disfranchisement and jim crow laws and to demand equal rights of education, equal civil rights, equal economic opportunities, and justice in the courts. taking the ballot from the negro they declare to be only a step to economic slavery; that it leaves the negro defenceless before his competitor--that the disfranchisement laws in the south are being followed by all manner of other discriminations which interfere with the progress of the negro. "persistent manly agitation is the way to liberty," says the declaration, "and toward this goal the niagara movement has started." the annual meeting of the movement was held last august in boston, the chief gathering being in faneuil hall. every reference in the speeches to garrison, phillips, and sumner was cheered to the echo. "it seemed," said one newspaper report, "like a revival of the old spirit of abolitionism--with the white man left out." several organisations in the country, like the new england suffrage league, the equal rights league of georgia, and others, take much the same position as the niagara movement. the party led by dr. du bois is, in short, a party of protest which endeavours to prevent negro separation and discrimination against negroes by agitation and political influence. _two negro parties compared_ these two points of view, of course, are not peculiar to negroes; they divide all human thought. the opportunist and optimist on the one hand does his great work with the world as he finds it: he is resourceful, constructive, familiar. on the other hand, the idealist, the agitator, who is also a pessimist, performs the function of the critic, he sees the world as it should be and cries out to have it instantly changed. thus with these two great negro parties. each is working for essentially the same end--better conditions of life for the negro--each contains brave and honest men, and each is sure, humanly enough, that the other side is not only wrong, but venally wrong, whereas both parties are needed and both perform a useful function. [illustration: dr. w. e. b. du bois of atlanta university photograph by purdy] the chief, and at present almost the only, newspaper exponent of the radical negro point of view is the boston _guardian_, published by william monroe trotter. mr. trotter is a mulatto who was graduated a few years ago with high honours from harvard. his wife, who is active with him in his work, has so little negro blood that she would ordinarily pass for white. mr. trotter's father fought in the civil war and rose to be a lieutenant in colonel hallowell's massachusetts regiment. he was one of the leaders of the negro soldiers who refused to accept $ a month as servants when white soldiers received $ . he argued that if a negro soldier stood up and stopped a bullet, he was as valuable to the country as the white soldier. though his family suffered, he served without pay rather than accept the money. it was the uncompromising spirit of garrison and phillips. _a negro newspaper of agitation_ the _guardian_ is as violent and bitter in some of its denunciations as the most reactionary white paper in the south. it would have the north take up arms again and punish the south for its position on the negro question! it breathes the spirit of prejudice. reading it sometimes, i am reminded of senator tillman's speeches. it answers the white publicity given in the south to black crime against white women by long accounts of similar crimes of white men. one of its chief points of conflict is the position of president roosevelt regarding the brownsville riot and the discharge of negro soldiers; the attack on roosevelt is unceasing, and in this viewpoint, at least, it is supported undoubtedly by no small proportion of the negroes of the country. another leading activity is its fight on booker t. washington and his work. denouncing washington as a "notorious and incorrigible jim crowist," it says that he "dares to assert that the best way to get rights is not to oppose their being taken away, but to get money." two or three years ago, when mr. washington went to boston to address a coloured audience in zion church, mr. trotter and his friends scattered cayenne pepper on the rostrum and created a disturbance which broke up the meeting. mr. trotter went to jail for the offence. from the _guardian_ of september d i cut part of the leading editorial which will show its attitude: prophet of slavery and traitor to race as another mark of the treacherous character of booker washington in matters concerning the race, come his discordant notes in support of secretary taft for president of the united states in spite of the fact that every negro organisation of any note devoted to the cause of equal rights and justice have condemned president roosevelt for his unpardonable treatment of the soldiers of the th infantry, u. s. a., and secretary taft for his duplicity, and declared their determination to seek the defeat of either if nominated for the office of president of these united states, or anyone named by them for said office. booker washington, ever concerned for his own selfish ambitions, indifferent to the cries of the race so long as he wins the approval of white men who do not believe in the negro, defies the absolutely unanimous call of all factions of the race for foraker. leader of the self-seekers, he has persistently, but thank heaven unsuccessfully, sought to entangle the whole race in the meshes of subordination. knowing the race could only be saved by fighting cowardice, we have just as persistently resisted every attempt he has made to plant his white flag on the domains of equal manhood rights and our efforts have been rewarded by the universal denunciation of his doctrines of submission and his utter elimination as a possible leader of his race. generally speaking, the radical party has fought every movement of any sort that tends to draw a colour line. _boston hotel for coloured people_ one of the enterprises of boston which interested me deeply was a negro hotel, the astor house, which is operated by negroes for negro guests. it has rooms, with a telephone in each room, a restaurant, and other accommodations. it struck me that it was a good example of negro self-help that negroes should be proud of. but upon mentioning it to a coloured man i met i found that he was violently opposed to it. "why hotels for coloured men?" he asked. "i believe in hotels for men. the coloured man must not draw the line himself if he doesn't want the white man to do it. he must demand and insist constantly upon his rights as an american citizen." i found in boston and in other northern cities many negroes who took this position. a white woman, who sought to establish a help and rescue mission for coloured girls similar to those conducted for the jews, italians, and other nationalities in other cities, was violently opposed, on the ground that it set up a precedent for discrimination. in the same way separate settlement work (though there is a separate settlement for jews in boston) and the proposed separate y. m. c. a. have met with strong protests. everything that tends to set the negro off as a negro, whether the white man does it or the negro does it, is bitterly opposed by this party of coloured people. they fought the jamestown exposition because it had a negro building, which they called the "jim crow annex," and they fought the national christian endeavour convention because the leaders could not assure negro delegates exactly equal facilities in the hotels and restaurants. of course the denunciation of the white south is continuous and bitter. it is noteworthy, however, that even the leaders of the movement not only recognise and conduct separate newspapers and ask negroes to support them, but that they urge negroes to stand together politically. _boston negroes seen by a new york negro newspaper_ but the large proportion of coloured newspapers in the country, the strongest and ablest of which is perhaps the new york _age_, are supporters of washington and his ideals. the boston correspondent of the _age_ said recently: it is unfortunate in boston that we have a hall which we can get free of charge: we refer to faneuil hall. they work faneuil hall for all it is worth. scarcely a month ever passes by that does not see a crowd of afro-americans in faneuil hall throwing up their hats, yelling and going into hysterics over some subject usually relating to somebody a thousand miles away, never in relation to conditions right at home. the better element of negroes and the majority of our white friends in this city have become disgusted over the policy that is being pursued and has been pursued for several months in boston. your correspondent can give you no better evidence of the disgust than to state that a few days ago there was one of these hysterical meetings held in faneuil hall and our people yelled and cried and agitated for two hours and more. the next day not one of the leading papers, such as the _herald_ and the _transcript_, had a single line concerning this meeting. a few years ago had a meeting been held in faneuil hall under the leadership of safe and conservative afro-americans, both of these newspapers and papers of similar character would have devoted from two to three columns to a discussion of it. now, in boston, they let such meetings completely alone. if there ever was a place where the negro seems to have more freedom than he seems to know what to do with, it is in this city. in spite of the agitation against drawing the colour line by the radical party, however, the separation is still going on. and it is not merely the demand of the white man that the negro step aside by himself, for the negro himself is drawing the colour line, and drawing it with as much enthusiasm as the white man. a genuine race-spirit or race-consciousness is developing. negroes are meeting prejudice with self-development. it is a significant thing to find that many negroes who a few years ago called themselves "afro-americans," or "coloured americans," and who winced at the name negro, now use negro as the race name with pride. while in indianapolis i went to a negro church to hear a speech by w. t. vernon, one of the leading coloured men of the country, who was appointed register of the united states treasury by president roosevelt. on the walls of the church hung the pictures of coloured men who had accomplished something for their race, and the essence of the speaker's address was an appeal to racial pride and the demand that the race stand up for itself, encourage negro business and patronise negro industry. all of which, surely, is significant. _how negroes themselves draw the colour line_ the pressure for separation among the negroes themselves is growing rapidly stronger. where there are mixed schools in the north there is often pressure by negroes for separate schools. the philadelphia _courant_, a negro newspaper, in objecting to this new feeling, says: public sentiment, so far as the white people are concerned, does not object to the mixed school system in vogue in our city half as much as the afro-american people seem to be doing themselves. we find them the chief objectors. one reason why the south to-day has a better development of negro enterprise, one reason why booker t. washington believes that the south is a better place for the negro than the north, and advises him to remain there, is this more advanced racial spirit. prejudice there, being sharper, has forced the negro back upon his own resources. dr. frissell of hampton is always talking to his students of the "advantages of disadvantages." i was much struck with the remark of a negro business man i met in indianapolis: "the trouble here is," he said, "that there is not enough prejudice against us." "how is that?" i inquired. "well, you see we are still clinging too much to the skirts of the white man. when you hate us more it will drive us together and make us support coloured enterprises." when in chicago i heard of an interesting illustration of this idea. with the increasing number of negro students prejudice has increased in the chicago medical schools, until recently some of them have, by agreement, been closed to coloured graduate students. concerning this condition, the chicago _conservator_, a negro newspaper, says: "the cause of this extraordinary announcement is that the southern students object to the presence of negroes in the classes. now it is up to the negro doctors of the country to meet this insult by establishing a post-graduate school of their own. they can do it if they have the manhood, self-respect, and push. let doctors hall, williams, boyd and others get busy." to this the new york _age_ adds: "yes; let us have a school of that sort of our own." and this is no idle suggestion. few people have any conception of the growing progress of negroes in the medical profession. in august, , the coloured national medical association held its ninth annual session at baltimore. over three hundred delegates and members were in attendance from thirty different states. graduates were there not only from harvard, yale, and other white colleges, but from coloured medical schools like meharry and howard university. negro hospitals have been opened and are well supported in several cities. _national negro business league_ all over the country the negro is organised in business leagues and these leagues have formed a national business league which met last august in topeka, kansas. i can do no better in interpreting the spirit of this work, which is indeed the practical spirit of the southern party, than in quoting briefly from the address of booker t. washington, who is the president of the league: despite much talk, the negro is not discouraged, but is going forward. the race owns to-day an acreage equal to the combined acreage of holland and belgium. the negro owns more land, more houses, more stores, more banks, than has ever been true in his history. we are learning that no race can occupy a soil unless it gets as much out of it as any other race gets out of it. soil, sunshine, rain, and the laws of trade have no regard for race or colour. we are learning that we must be builders if we would succeed. as we learn this lesson we shall find help at the south and at the north. we must not be content to be tolerated in communities, we must make ourselves needed. the law that governs the universe knows no race or colour. the force of nature will respond as readily to the hand of the chinaman, the italian, or the negro as to any other race. man may discriminate, but nature and the laws that control the affairs of men will not and cannot. nature does not hide her wealth from a black hand. all along the line one finds this spirit of hopeful progress. a vivid picture of conditions, showing frankly both the weakness and strength of the negro, is given by a coloured correspondent of the indianapolis _freeman_. he begins by telling of the organisation at carbondale, ill., of a joint stock company composed of thirty-nine coloured men to operate a dry goods store. the correspondent writes: the question is, "will the coloured people support this enterprise with their patronage?" it is a general cry all over the country that coloured people pass by the doors of our merchants and trade with any other concerns--jews, dagoes, polacks, and what not. this is a very unfortunate fact which stands before us as a living shame. the very people who preach "race union, race support, race enterprise," are often the first to pass our own mercantile establishments by. the only places where coloured men can prosper in business are where our people are driven out of other people's places of business and actually forced to patronise our own. a certain cigar manufacturer in st. louis, a first-class business man, putting out the very best classes of cigars, said, a few days ago, that some of the hardest work he ever did was to get a few of our own dealers to handle his goods. if but one-third of the stores and stands that sell cigars and tobacco in st. louis alone would buy their goods of him he could in a few more years employ one or two dozen more men and women in his factory. a dry goods company in the same city is suffering from the same trouble. our people will condescend to look in, but more often their purchases are made at a neighbouring jew store. there are also in that neighbourhood several first-class, up-to-date, clean and tasty-looking coloured restaurants: but twice as many negroes take their meals at the cheap-john, filthy, fourth-class chop counters run by other people near by. but, after all, my people are doing better in these matters than they did some time past. it was a most pleasant surprise to learn, the other day, that the coloured undertakers in st. louis do every dollar's worth of business for our people in that line. this information was given by a reliable white undertaker and substantiated by the coloured undertakers. the white man was asked what he thought of it. he said he thought it was a remarkable illustration of the loyalty of the negro to his own people and that they should be commended for it. and then there are two sides to every question. it is too often true that our people run their business on a low order--noisy, uncleanly, questionable, dive-like concerns--therefore do not deserve the patronage of decent people. too many of our men do not know anything about business. they don't believe in investing their money in advertising their business in good first-class periodicals. we must not expect everybody to know where we are or what we have to sell unless we advertise. many of our nickels would find their way to the cash drawer of a coloured man if we just knew where to find the store, restaurant or hotel. _remarkable development of negroes_ it is not short of astonishing, indeed, to discover how far the negro has been able to develop in the forty-odd years since slavery a distinct race spirit and position. it is pretty well known that he has been going into business, that he is acquiring much land, that he has many professional men, that he worships in his own churches and has many schools which he conducts--but in other lines of activity he is also getting a foothold. just as an illustration: i was surprised at finding so many negro theatres in the country--theatres not only owned or operated by negroes, but presenting plays written and acted by negroes. i saw a fine new negro theatre in new orleans; i visited a smaller coloured theatre in jackson, miss., and in chicago the pekin theatre is an enterprise wholly conducted by negroes. williams and walker, negro comedians, have long amused large audiences, both white and coloured. their latest production, "bandanna land," written and produced wholly by negroes, is not only funny, but clean. many other illustrations could be given to show how the negro is developing in one way or another--but especially along racial lines. the extensive organisation of negro lodges of elks and masons and other secret orders, many of them with clubhouses, might be mentioned. attention might be called to the almost innumerable insurance societies and companies maintained by negroes, the largest of which, the true reformers, of richmond, has over , members, and to the growth of negro newspapers and magazines (there are now over two hundred in the country), but enough has been said, perhaps, to make the point that there has been a real development of a negro spirit and self-consciousness. of course these signal successes loom large among the ten million of the country and yet they show the possibilities: there is this hopeful side of negro conditions in this country as well as the dark and evil aspects of which we hear all too much. out of this ferment of racial self-consciousness and readjustment has grown, as i have shown, the two great negro parties. between them and within them lie the destinies of the race in this country, and to no small extent also the destiny of the dominant white race. it is, therefore, of the highest importance for white men to understand the real tendencies of thought and organisation among these ten million americans. for here is vigour and ability, and whatever may be the white man's attitude toward the negro, the contempt of mere ignorance of what the negro is doing is not only short-sighted but positively foolish. only by a complete understanding can the white man who has assumed the entire responsibility of government in this country meet the crises, like that of the atlanta riot, which are constantly arising between the races. chapter xi the negro in politics the discussion of the negro in politics will of necessity deal chiefly with conditions in the south; for it is there, and there only, that the negro is, at the present time, a great political problem. negroes in the north are indeed beginning to play a conscious part in politics; but they are only one element among many. they take their place with the "irish vote," the "german vote," the "polish vote," the "labour vote," each of which must be courted or placated by the politicians. i have looked into negro political conditions in several cities, notably indianapolis and philadelphia, and i cannot see that they are in any marked way different from the condition of any other class of our population which through ignorance, or fear, or ambition, votes more or less _en masse_. many negroes do not vote at all; some are as conscientious and incorruptible as any white citizen; but a large proportion, ignorant and short-sighted, are disfranchised by the use of money in one form or another at every election. one of the broadest observers in indianapolis said to me: "the negro voters are no worse and no better than our foreign voting population." mayor tom johnson, himself southern by birth, writes me regarding the negro vote of cleveland: "i do not believe there is any larger percentage of unintelligent or dishonest votes among the coloured voters than among the white voters in the same walks of life." _negro a national problem_ i wish here to emphasise again the fact that the negro is not a sectional but a _national_ problem. anything that affects the south favourably or unfavourably reacts upon the whole country. and the same latent race feeling exists in the north that exists in the south (for it is human, not southern). the north, indeed, as i have shown in previous chapters, confronted with a large influx of negroes, is coming more and more to understand and sympathise with the heart-breaking problems which beset the south. nothing short of the patient coöperation of the entire country, north and south, white and black, will ever solve the race question. in this country, as elsewhere, political thought divides itself into two opposing forces, two great parties or points of view. whatever their momentary names have been, whether federalist, democratic, whig, republican, populist, or socialist, one of these parties has been an aristocratic or conservative party, the other a democratic or progressive party. the political struggle in this country (and the world over) has been between the aristocratic idea that a few men (or one man) should control the country and supervise the division of labour and the products of labour and the democratic idea that more people should have a hand in it. the abolition of slavery in the south was an incident in this struggle. slavery was not abolished because the north agitated, or because john brown raided or mrs. stowe wrote a book, or for any other sentimental or superficial reason, but because it was undemocratic. _what slavery did_ this is what slavery did: it enabled a comparatively few men (only about one in ten of the white men of the south was a slave-owner or slave-renter) to control eleven states of the union, to monopolise learning, to hold all the political offices, to own most of the good land and nearly all of the wealth. not only did it keep the negro in slavery, but nine-tenths of the white people (the so-called "poor whites," whom even the negroes despised) were hardly more than peasants or serfs. it was in many ways a charming aristocracy, but it was doomed from the beginning. if there had been no north, slavery in the south would have disappeared just as inevitably. it was the restless yeast of democracy, spreading abroad upon the earth (in europe as well as america) that killed slavery and liberated both negro and poor white men. revolutions such as the civil war change names: they do not at once change human relationships. mankind is reconstructed not by proclamations or legislation or military occupation, but by time, growth, education, religion, thought. when the south got on its feet again after reconstruction and took account of itself, what did it find? it found , , ignorant negroes changed in name from "slave" to "freeman," but not changed in nature. it found the poor whites still poor whites; and the aristocrats, although they had lost both property and position, were still aristocrats. for values, after all, are not outward, but inward: not material, but spiritual. it was as impossible for the negro at that time to be less than a slave as it was for the aristocrat to be less than an aristocrat. and this is what so many legal-minded men will not or cannot see. what happened? exactly what might have been predicted. southern society had been turned wrong side up by force, and it righted itself again by force. the ku klux klan, the patrollers, the bloody shirt movement, were the agencies (violent and cruel indeed, but inevitable) which readjusted the relationships, put the aristocrats on top, the poor whites in the middle, and the negroes at the bottom. in short, society instinctively reverted to its old human relationships. i once saw a man shot through the body in a street riot. mortally wounded, he stumbled and rolled over in the dust, but sprung up again as though uninjured and ran a hundred yards before he finally fell dead. thus the old south, though mortally wounded, sprung up and ran again. _the struggle in south carolina_ the political reactions after reconstruction varied, of course, in the different states, being most violent in states like south carolina, where the old aristocratic régime was most firmly entrenched, and least violent in north carolina, which has always been the most democratic of southern states. in south carolina then, for example, the aristocrats in returned to political supremacy. general wade hampton, who represented all that was highest in the old régime, became governor of the state. a similar tendency developed, of course, in the other southern states, and a notable group of statesmen (and they _were_ statesmen) appeared in politics--hill and gordon of georgia, lamar and george of mississippi, butler of south carolina, morgan of alabama, all aristocrats of the old school. apparently the ancient order was restored; apparently the wounded man ran as well as ever. but the old south, after all, had received its mortal wound. there _had_ been a revolution; society _had_ been overturned. the institution on which it had reared its ancient splendour was gone: for the aristocrat no longer enjoyed the special privilege, the enormous economic advantage of _owning_ his labourers. he was reduced to an economic equality with other white men, and even with the negro, either of whom could _hire_ labour as easily and cheaply as he could. and the baronial plantation which had been the mark of his grandeur before the war was now the millstone of his doom. special privilege, always the bulwark of aristocracy, being thus removed, the germ of democracy began to work among the poor whites. the disappearance of competitive slave labour made them unexpectedly prosperous; it secured a more equable division of wealth. with prosperity came more book-reading, more schooling, a greater _feeling_ of independence. and this feeling animated the poor white with a new sense of freedom and power. enter now, when the time was fully ripe for a leader, the rude man of the people. how often he appears in the pages of history, the sure product of revolutions, bursting upward like some devastating force, not at all silken-handed or subtle-minded, but crude, virile, direct, truthful. _tillman, the prophet_ so tillman came in south carolina. i can see him as he rode to the farmers' fairs and court days in the middle eighties, a sallow-faced, shaggy-haired man with one gleaming, restless, angry eye. he had been long preparing in silence for his task--struggling upward in the poverty-stricken days of the war and through the reconstruction, without schooling, or chance of schooling, but endowed with a virile-mindedness which fed eagerly upon certain fermentative books of an inherited library. lying on his back in the evening on the porch of his farmhouse, he read carlyle's "french revolution" and gibbon's "rome." he had in him, indeed, the veritable spirit of the revolutionist: in the days of the patrollers, he, too, had ridden and hunted negroes. he had seen the aristocracy come again into power; he had heard the whisperings of discontent among the poor whites. and at fairs and on court days in the eighties i hear him screaming his speeches of defiance, raucous, immoderate, denouncing all gentlemen, denouncing government by gentlemen, demanding that government be restored to the "plain people!" on one of the transparencies of those days he himself had printed the words (strange reminder of the commune!): "awake! arise! or be forever fallen." he spoke not only to the farmers, but he flung defiance at the aristocrats in the heart of the aristocracy. at charleston, one of the proudest of southern cities, he said: "men of charleston, i have always heard that you were the most self-idolatrous people that ever lived; but i want to say to you that the sun does not rise in the cooper and set in the ashley. it shines all over the state.... if the tales that have been told me or the reports which have come to me are one-tenth true, you are the most arrant set of cowards god ever made." and everywhere he went he closed his speeches with this appeal: "organise, organise, organise. with organisation you will become free once more. without it, you will remain slaves." once, upon an historic occasion on the floor of the united states senate, tillman paused in the heat of a debate to explain (not to excuse) his fiery utterances. "i am a rude man," he said, "and don't care." that is tillman. they tried to keep him and his followers out of the political conventions; but he would not be kept out, nor kept down. years later he himself expressed the spirit of revolt in the united states senate. zach mcghee tells how he had been making one of his fierce attacks, an ebullition in general against things as they are. a senator arose to snuff him out in the genial senatorial way. "i would like to ask, mr. president, what is before the senate?" "_i_ am before the senate," screamed tillman. in tillman was elected governor of south carolina: the poor white, at last, was in power. the same change was going on all over the south. in mississippi the rise of the people (no longer poor) was represented by vardaman, in arkansas by jeff davis, and georgia and alabama have experienced the same overturn in a more complicated form. it has become a matter of pride to many of the new leaders of the "plain people" that they do not belong to the "old families" or to the "aristocracy." governor comer told me that he was a "doodle-blower"--a name applied to the poor white dwellers on the sand hills of alabama. governor swanson of virginia is proud of the fact that he is the first governor of the state wholly educated in the public schools and colleges. call these men demagogues if you will, and some of them certainly are open to the charge of appealing to the prejudices and passions of the people, they yet represent a genuine movement for a more democratic government in the south. the old aristocrats gibe at the new leaders even to the point of bitter hatred (in south carolina at least one murder has grown out of the hostility of the factions); they see (how acutely!) the blunders of untrained administrators, their pride in their states is rubbed blood-raw by the unblushing crudities of the tillmans, the vardamans, the jeff davises. go south and talk with any of these men of the ancient order and you will come away feeling that conditions in the south are without hope. _"high men" of the old south_ and those old aristocrats had their virtues. one loves to hear the names still applied at richmond, montgomery, macon, and charleston to the men of the old type, by other men of the old type. how often i have heard the terms a "high man," an "incorruptible man." beautiful names! for there was a personal honour, a personal devotion to public duties among many of these ante-bellum slave-owners that made them indeed "high men." when they were in power their reign was usually skilful and honest: the reign of a beneficent oligarchy. but it was selfish: it reigned for itself--with nine-tenths of the people serfs or slaves. its luxuries, its culture, its gentleness, like that of all aristocracies, was enjoyed at the fearful cost of poverty, ignorance, and slavery of millions of human beings. it had no sympathy, therefore it perished from off the earth. the new men of the tillman type made glaring, even violent mistakes, but for the most part honest mistakes; they saw clearly what they wanted: they wanted more power in the hands of the people, more democracy, and they went crudely at the work of getting it. in spite of the bitterness against vardaman among some of the best people of mississippi i heard no one accuse him of corruption in any department of his administration. on the whole, they said he had directed the business of the state with judgment. and tillman, in spite of the dire predictions of the aristocrats, did not ruin the state. quite to the contrary, he performed a notable service in extending popular education, establishing an agricultural college, regulating the liquor traffic (even though the system he established has since degenerated). never before, indeed, has south carolina, and the south generally, been more prosperous than it has since these men went into power, never has wealth increased so rapidly, never has education been so general nor the percentage of illiteracy so low. the "highest citizen" may not be so high (if it can be called high) in luxury and culture as he was before the war, but the average citizen is decidedly higher. having thus acquired a proper historical perspective, we may now consider the part which the negro has played in the politics of the south. where does _he_ come in? _where the negro comes in_ though it may seem a sweeping generalisation, it is none the less literally true that up to the present time the negro's real influence in politics in the south has been almost negligible. he has been an _issue_, but not an _actor_ in politics. in the ante-bellum slavery agitation no negroes appeared; they were an inert lump of humanity possessing no power of inner direction; the leaders on both sides were white men. the negroes did not even follow poor old john brown. and since the war, as i have shown, the struggle has been between the aristocrats and the poor whites. they have talked _about_ the negro, but they have not let _him_ talk. even in reconstruction times, and i am not forgetting exceptional negroes like bruce, revels, pinchback, and others, the negro was in politics by virtue of the power of the north. as a class, the negroes were not self-directed but used by northern carpetbaggers and political southerners who took most of the offices and nearly all of the stealings. in short, the negro in times past has never been in politics in the south in any positive sense. and that is not in the least surprising. coming out of slavery, the negro had no power of intelligent self-direction, practically no leaders who knew anything. he was still a slave in everything except name, and slaves have never yet ruled, or helped rule. the xv amendment to the constitution could not really enfranchise the negro slaves. men must enfranchise themselves. and this political equality by decree, not by growth and development, caused many of the woes of reconstruction. two distinct impulses mark the effort of the south to disfranchise the negro. the first was the blind revolt of reconstruction times, in which force and fraud were frankly and openly applied. the effort to eliminate the negro brought the white people together in one dominant party and the "solid south" was born. for years this method sufficed; but in the meantime the negro was getting a little education, acquiring self-consciousness, and developing leaders of more or less ability. it became necessary, therefore, both because the negro was becoming more restive, less easily controlled by force, and because the awakening white man disliked and feared the basis of fraud on which his elections rested, to establish legal sanction for disfranchisement, to define the political status of the negro by law. now, the truth is that the mass of southerners have _never believed that the negro has or should have any political rights_. the south as a whole does not now approve and never has approved of the voting negro. a few negroes vote everywhere, "but not enough," as a southerner said to me, "to do any hurt." the south, then, has been placed in the position of _providing by law for something that it did not really believe in_. [illustration: colonel james lewis united states receiver at new orleans] [illustration: w. t. vernon register of the united states treasury photograph by g. v. buck] [illustration: ralph w. tyler an auditor of the government at washington] it was prophesied that when the negro was disfranchised by law and "eliminated from politics" the south would immediately stop discussing the negro question and divide politically along new lines. but this has not happened. though disfranchisement laws have been in force in mississippi for years there is less division in the white party of that state than ever before. why is this so? because the negro, through gradual education and the acquisition of property, is becoming more and more a real as well as a potential factor in politics. for he is just beginning to be _really_ free. and the south has not yet decided how to deal with a negro who owns property and is self-respecting and intelligent and who demands rights. the south is suspicious of this new negro: it dreads him; and the politicians in power are quick to play upon this sentiment in order that the south may remain solid and the present political leadership remain undisturbed. for the south, however much it may talk of the ignorant masses of negroes, does not really fear them; it wants to keep them, and keep them ignorant. it loves the ignorant, submissive old negroes, the "mammies" and "uncles"; it wants negroes who, as one southerner put it to me, "will do the dirty work and not fuss about it." it wants negroes who are really inferior and who _feel_ inferior. the negro that the south fears and dislikes is the educated, property-owning negro who is beginning to demand rights, to take his place among men as a citizen. this is not an unsupported statement of mine, but has been expressed over and over again by speakers and writers in every part of the south. i have before me a letter from charles p. lane, editor of the huntsville (alabama) _daily tribune_, written to governor comer. it was published in the atlanta _constitution_. the writer is arguing that the negro disfranchisement laws in alabama are too lenient, that they permit too many negroes to vote. he says: we thought then (in , when the new alabama constitution disfranchising the negro was under discussion), as we do now, that the menace to peace, the danger to society and white supremacy was not in the illiterate negro, but in the upper branches of negro society, the educated, the man who, after ascertaining his political rights, forced the way to assert them. he continues: we, the southern people, entertain no prejudice toward the ignorant per se inoffensive negro. it is because we know him and for him we entertain a compassion. but our blood boils when the educated negro asserts himself politically. we regard each assertion as an unfriendly encroachment upon our native superior rights, and a dare-devil menace to our control of the affairs of the state. in this are we not speaking the truth? does not every southern caucasian "to the manor born" bear witness to this version? hence we present that the way to dampen racial prejudice, avert the impending horrors, is to emasculate the negro politically by repealing the xv amendment of the constitution of the united states. i use this statement of mr. lane's not because it represents the broadest and freest thought in the south, for it does not, but because it undoubtedly states frankly and clearly the point of view of the _majority_ of southern people. it is the point of view which, talked all over georgia last year, helped to elect hoke smith governor of the state, as it has elected other governors. hoke smith's argument was essentially this: _hoke smith's views_ the uneducated negro is a good negro; "he is contented to occupy the natural status of his race, the position of inferiority." the educated and intelligent negro, who wants to vote, is a disturbing and threatening influence. we don't want him down here; let him go north. this feeling regarding the educated negro, who, as mr. lane says, "ascertains his rights and forces his way to assert them," is the basic fact in southern politics. it is what keeps the white people welded together in a single party; it is what sternly checks revolts and discourages independence. keeping this fact in mind, let us look more intimately into southern conditions. following ordinary usage i have spoken of the solid south. as a matter of fact the south is not solid, nor is there a single party. the very existence of one strong party presupposes another, potentially as strong. in the south to-day there are, as inevitably as human nature, two parties and two political points of view. and one is aristocratic and the other is democratic. it is noteworthy in the pages of history that parties which were once democratic become in time aristocratic. we are accustomed for example, to look back upon magna charta as a mighty instrument of democracy; which it was; but it was not democracy according to our understanding of the word. it merely substituted a baronial oligarchy for the divine-right rule of one man, king john. it did not touch the downtrodden slaves, serfs and peasants of england. and yet that struggle of the barons was of profound moment in history, for it started the spirit of democracy on its way downward, it was the seed from which sprung english constitutionalism, which finally flowered in the american republic. tillman, as i have shown, wrung democracy from the old slave-owning oligarchy. he conquered: he established a democracy in south carolina which included poor whites as well as aristocrats. but tillman in his fiery pleas for the rights of men no more considered the negro than the old barons considered the serfs of their day in the struggle against king john. it was and is incomprehensible to him that the negro "has any rights which the white man is bound to respect." in short we have in the south the familiar and ancient division of social forces, but instead of two white parties, we now see a white aristocratic party, which seeks to control the government, monopolise learning, and supervise the division of labour and the products of labour, struggling with a democratic party consisting of a few white and many coloured people, which clamours for a part in the government. that, in plain words, is the true situation in the south to-day. _has the spirit of democracy crossed the colour line?_ for democracy is like this: once its ferment begins to work in a nation it does not stop until it reaches and animates the uttermost man. though tillman's hatred and contempt of the negro who has aspirations is without bounds, the spirit which he voiced in his wild campaigns does not stop at the colour line. movements are so much greater than men, often going so much further than men intend. a prophet who stands out for truth as tillman did cannot, having uttered it, thereafter limit it nor recall it. as i have been travelling about the country, how often i have heard the same animating whisper from the negroes that tillman heard in older days among the poor whites: "we are free; we are free." yes, tillman and vardaman are right; education, newspapers, books, commercial prosperity, are working in the negro too; he, too, has the world-old disease of restlessness, ambition, hope. and many a negro leader and many a negro organisation--and that is what is causing the turmoil in the south, the fear of the white aristocracy--are voicing the equivalent of tillman's bold words: "awake! arise! or be forever fallen." now we may talk all we like about the situation, we may say that the negro is wrong in entertaining such ambitions, that his hopes can never be gratified, that he is doomed forever to menial and inferior occupations--the plain fact remains (as tillman himself testifies), that the democratic spirit _has_ crossed the colour line irrespective of laws and conventions, that the negro is restless with the ambition to rise, to enjoy all that is best, finest, most complete in this world. how humanly the ancient struggle between aristocracy seeking to maintain its "superiority" and democracy fighting for "equality" is repeating itself! and this struggle in the south is complicated, deeply and variously, by the fact that the lower people are black and of a different race. they wear on their faces the badge of their position. what is being done about it? as every student of history is well aware, no aristocracy ever lets go until it is compelled to. how bitterly king john fought his barons; how bitterly the south carolina gentlemen fought the rude tillman! having control of the government, the newspapers, the political parties, the schools, an aristocracy surrounds and fortifies itself with every possible safeguard. it maintains itself at any cost. and that is both human and natural; that is what is happening in the south to-day. exactly the same conflict occurred before the war when the old slave-owning aristocracy (which everyone now acknowledges to have been wrong) was defending itself and the institution upon which its existence depended. the old slave-owning aristocrats believed that they were made of finer clay than the "poor whites," that their rule was peculiarly beneficent, that if anything should happen to depose them the country would go to ruin and destruction. it was the old, old conviction, common to kings and oligarchies, that they were possessed of a divine right, a special and perpetual franchise from god. _the white south defends itself_ the present white aristocratic party in the south is defending itself exactly after the manner of all aristocracies. in the first place, having control of the government it has entrenched itself with laws. the moment, for example, that the negro began to develop any real intelligence and leadership, the disfranchisement process was instituted. laws were so worded that every possible white man be admitted to the franchise and every possible negro (regardless of his intelligence) be excluded. these laws now exist in nearly all the southern states. although the xv amendment to the federal constitution declares that the right to vote shall not be "denied or abridged ... on account of race or colour or previous condition of servitude," the south, in defence of its white aristocracy, has practically nullified this amendment. governor hoke smith of georgia, for example, said (june , ): legislation can be passed which will ... not interfere with the right of any white man to vote, and get rid of per cent. of the negro voters. not only do the enacted laws disfranchise all possible negroes, but many other negroes who have enough property or education to qualify, are further disfranchised by the dishonest administration of those laws. for the machinery of government, being wholly in white hands, the registers and judges of election have power to keep out any negro, however fit he may be. i know personally of many instances in which educated and well-to-do negroes have been refused the right to register where ignorant white men were readily admitted. the law, after all, in this matter, plays very little figure. the white majority has determined to control the government utterly and to give the negro, whether educated or not, no political influence. that is the plain truth of the matter. listen to hoke smith in his campaign pledge of last year: "i favour, and if elected will urge with all my power, the elimination of the negro from politics." let us also quote the plain-speaking vardaman in his address of april, , at poplarville, miss.: how is the white man going to control the government? the way we do it is to pass laws to fit the white man and make the other people (negroes) come to them.... if it is necessary every negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy.... the xv amendment ought to be wiped out. we all agree on that. then why don't we do it? it may be argued that this violent expression does not represent the best sentiment of the south. it does not; and yet vardaman, tillman, jeff davis, hoke smith, and others of the type are _elected_, the _majority_ in their states support them. and i am talking here of politics, which deals with majorities. in a following chapter i shall hope to deal with the reconstructive and progressive minority in the south as it expresses itself especially in the more democratic border states like north carolina. thus the spirit of democracy has really escaped among the coloured people and it is running abroad like a prairie fire. tillman, the prophet, sees it: "every man," he says, "who can look before his nose can see that with negroes constantly going to school, the increasing number of people who can read and write among the coloured race ... will in time encroach upon our white men." _demand repeal of xv amendment_ in order, then, to prevent the negro getting into politics, the tillmans, vardamans, and others declare that the south must strike at the foundation of his political liberty: the xv amendment must be repealed. in short, the moment the negro meets one test of citizenship, these political leaders advance a more difficult one: now proposing to take away entirely every hope of ultimate citizenship. in the recent campaign for the united states senatorship in mississippi, vardaman and john sharp williams were quite in accord on this point, though they disagreed on methods of accomplishing the purpose. when the political liberty of the negro has thus been finally removed, the south, say these men, will again have two parties, and will be able to take the place it should occupy in the counsels of the nation. take the next point in the logic of the political leaders. it is a fact of common knowledge in history that aristocracies cannot long survive when free education is permitted among all classes of people. education is more potent against oligarchies and aristocracies than dynamite bombs. every aristocracy that has survived has had to monopolise learning more or less completely--else it went to the wall. it is not surprising that there should have been no effective public-school system in the south before the war where the poor whites could get an education, or that the teaching of negroes was in many states a crime punishable by law. education enables the negro, as mr. lane says, to "ascertain his rights and force his way to assert them." therefore to prevent his ascertaining his rights he must not be educated. the undivided supremacy of the white party, it is clearly discerned, is bound up with negro ignorance. therefore we have seen and are now seeing in certain parts of the south continuous agitation against the education of negroes. that is one reason for the feeling in the south against "northern philanthropy" which is contributing money to support negro schools and colleges. "what the north is sending south is not money," says vardaman, "but dynamite; this education is ruining our negroes. they're demanding equality." _a southern view of negro education_ when i was in montgomery, ala., a letter was published in one of the newspapers from alexander troy, a well-known lawyer. it did not express the view of the most thoughtful men of that city, but i am convinced that it represented with directness and force the belief of a large proportion of the white people of alabama. the letter says: all the millions which have been spent by the state since the war in negro education ... have been worse than wasted. should anyone ask "has not booker washington's school been of benefit to the negro?" the so-called philanthropists of the north would say "yes," but a hundred thousand white people of alabama would say "no."... ask any gentleman from the country what he thinks of the matter, and a very large majority of them will tell you that they never saw a negro benefited by education, but hundreds ruined. he ceases to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water.... exclude the air and a man will die, keep away the moisture and the flower will wither. stop the appropriations for negro education, by amendment to the constitution if necessary, and the school-house in which it is taught will decay. not only that, but the negro will take the place the creator intended he should take in the economy of the world--a dutiful, faithful, and law-abiding servant. these are mr. troy's words and they found reflection in the discussions of the alabama legislature then in session. a compulsory education bill had been introduced; the problem was to pass a law that would apply to white people, not to negroes. in this connection i heard a significant discussion in the state senate. i use the report of it, for accuracy, as given the next morning in the _advertiser_: senator thomas said ... he would oppose any bills that would compel negroes to educate their children, for it had come to his knowledge that negroes would give the clothing off their backs to send their children to school, while too often the white man, secure in his supremacy, would be indifferent to his duty. at this point senator lusk arose excitedly to his feet and said: "does the senator from barbour mean to say that the negro race is more ambitious and has more aspirations than the white race?" "the question of the gentleman ... is an insult to the senate of alabama," replied senator thomas deliberately. "it is an insult to the great caucasian race, the father of all the arts and sciences, to compare it to that black and kinky race which lived in a state of black and ignorant savagery until the white race seized it and lifted it to its present position." the result of this feeling against negro education has shown itself in an actual reduction of negro schooling in many localities, especially in louisiana, and little recent progress anywhere else, compared with the rapid educational development among the whites, except through the work of the negroes themselves, or by northern initiative. in cutting off an $ , appropriation for alcorn college (coloured) governor vardaman, as a member of the board of trustees, said: "i am not anxious even to see the negro turned into a skilled mechanic. god almighty intended him to till the soil under the direction of the white man and that is what we are going to teach him down there at alcorn college." without arguing the rights or wrongs or necessities of their position, i have thus endeavoured to set down the purposes of the present political leadership in the south. _economic cause for white supremacy_ now the chief object of any aristocracy, the reason why it wishes to monopolise government and learning, is because it wishes to supervise the division of labour and the products of labour. that is the bottom fact. in slavery times, of course, the white man supervised labour absolutely and took _all_ the profits. in some cases to-day, by a system of peonage, he still controls the labourer and takes all the profits. but as the negro has grown in education and property he not only wishes to supervise his own labour, but demands a larger share in the returns of labour. he is no longer willing to be an abject "hewer of wood and a drawer of water" as he was in slavery times; he has an ambition to own his own farm, do his own business, employ his own professional men, and so on. he will not "keep his place" as a servant. and that is the basis of all the trouble. many of the utterances of white political leaders resolve themselves into a statement of this position. at the american bankers' association last fall governor swanson of virginia said: "at last the offices, the business houses, and the financial institutions are all in the hands of intelligent anglo-saxons, and with god's help and our own good right hand we will hold him (the negro) where he is." in other words, the white man will by force hold all political, business and financial positions; he will be boss, and the negro must do the menial work; he must be a servant. hoke smith says in his speech (the italics are mine): "those negroes who are contented to occupy the natural status of their race, the position of inferiority, _all competition being eliminated between the whites and the blacks_, will be treated with greater kindness." in other words, if the negro will be contented to keep himself inferior and not compete with the white man, everything will be all right. and thus, curiously enough, while hoke smith in his campaign was thundering against railroad corporations for destroying competition, while he was glorifying the principle of "free and unrestricted trade," he was advocating the formation of a monopoly of all white men by the elimination of the competition of all coloured men. indeed, we find sporadic attempts to pass laws to compel the negro to engage only in certain sorts of menial work. in texas not long ago a bill was introduced in the legislature "to confine coloured labour to the farm whenever it was found in city and town communities to be competing with white labour." in the last session of the arkansas legislature senator mcknight introduced a bill providing that negroes be forbidden "from waiting on white persons in hotels, restaurants, or becoming barbers, or porters on trains, and to prevent any white man from working for any negro." in a number of towns respectable, educated, and prosperous negro doctors, grocers, and others have been forcibly driven out. i visited monroe, la., where two negro doctors had been forced to leave town because they were taking the practice of white physicians. in the same town a negro grocer was burned out, because he was encroaching on the trade of white grocers. neither of the laws above referred to, of course, was passed; and the instances of violence i have given are sporadic and unusual. for the south has not followed the dominant political leaders to the extremes of their logic. human nature never, finally, goes to extremes: it is forever compromising, never wholly logical. while perhaps a large proportion of southerners would agree perfectly with hoke smith or tillman in his _theory_ of a complete supremacy of all white men in all respects, as a matter of fact nearly every white southerner is encouraging some practical exception which quite overturns the theory. tens of thousands of white southerners swear by booker t. washington, and though doubtful about negro education, the south is expending millions of dollars every year on coloured schools. vardaman, declaiming violently against negro colleges, has actually, in specific instances, given them help and encouragement. i told how he had cut off an $ , appropriation from alcorn college because he did not believe in negro education: but he turned around and gave alcorn college $ , for a new lighting system, _because he had come in personal contact with the negro president of alcorn college, and liked him_. and though the politicians may talk about complete negro disfranchisement, the negro has nowhere been completely disfranchised: a few negroes vote in every part of the south. i once heard a southerner argue for an hour against the participation of the negro in politics, and then ten minutes later tell me with pride of a certain negro banker in his city whom we both knew. "dr. ----'s all right," he said. "he's a sensible negro. i went with him myself when he registered. he ought to vote." so personal relationships, the solving touch of human nature, play havoc with political theories and generalities. mankind develops not by rules but by exceptions to rules. while the white aristocracy has indeed succeeded in controlling local government in the south almost completely, it has not been able to dominate the federal political organisations, which include many negroes. and though often opposing education for the negro, the aristocracy has not, after all, monopolised education; and the negro, in spite of jim crow laws and occasional violence, has actually been pushing ahead, getting a foothold in landownership, entering the professions, even competing in some lines of business with white men. so democracy, though black, is encroaching in the world-old way on aristocracy; how far negroes can go toward real democratic citizenship in the various lines--industrial, political, social--no man knows. we can see the fight; we do not know how the spoils of war will finally be divided. chapter xii the black man's silent power how the dominance of the idea of the negro stifles freedom of thought and speech in southern politics at present the point of view of a large proportion of southern white people on the negro question is adequately expressed by such men as tillman, jeff davis, and hoke smith. they are the political leaders. their policies are, in general, the policies adopted; they are the men elected to office. even in the border states, where the coloured population is not so dense as in the black belt, the attitude of the politicians is much the same as it is in the black belt. so far as the negro question is concerned, governor swanson of virginia stands on practically the same platform as tillman and hoke smith--though he has not found it necessary to express his views as vigorously. and the position of the black-belt states in regard to the disfranchisement of the negro and the extension of "jim crow" laws is being accepted by the border state of maryland and the western state of oklahoma. but there also exists, and particularly in virginia, north carolina, tennessee, and georgia, a vigorous minority point of view, which i have referred to in a former chapter as the "broadest and freest thought of the south." although it has not yet attained political position, it is a party of ideas, force, convictions, with a definite constructive programme. to this constructive point of view i have been able, thus far, to refer only incidentally. in the present chapter i wish to consider some of the effects upon southern life of the domination of the negro as a political issue, and the result of the continued supremacy of leaders like tillman. [illustration: j. pope brown of pulaski county, georgia] [illustration: ex-governor james k. vardaman of mississippi] [illustration: senator jeff davis of arkansas photograph by harris-ewing] [illustration: governor hoke smith of georgia copyright, , by hallen studios] [illustration: senator b. r. tillman of south carolina photograph by f. b. johnston] [illustration: ex-governor w. j. northen of georgia] in the next chapter, under the title "the new southern statesmanship," i shall outline the programme and recount the activities of the new southern leaders. _the most sinister form of negro domination_ travelling in the south one hears much of the "threat of negro domination," by which is generally meant political control by negro voters or the election of negro officeholders. but there already exists a far more real and sinister form of negro domination. for the negro still dominates the _thought_ of the south. for over eighty years, until quite recently, few great or serious issues have occupied the attention of the south save those growing out of slavery and the negro problem. though the very existence of our nation is due largely to the courage, wisdom, and political genius of southern statesmanship--to washington, jefferson, marshall, patrick henry, and their compatriots--the south, since the enunciation of the monroe doctrine in , has played practically no constructive part in national affairs. as professor mitchell of richmond well points out, the great, vitalising influences which swept over the entire civilised world during the first half of the nineteenth century, the liberalising, nationalising, industrialising influences, left the south untouched. for it was chained in common slavery with the negro. instead of expanding with the new thought, it clung to slavery in opposition to the liberal tendency of the age, it insisted upon states' rights in opposition to nationality, it contented itself with agriculture alone, instead of embracing the rising industrialism. "it was an instance," as professor mitchell says, "of arrested development." dr. john e. white of atlanta has ably expressed the ethical result upon a people of confining their thought to a single selfish interest: "as long as we struggled for that which was good for everybody everywhere," he says, "we moved with providence and the south led the van. there were great human concerns in the building up of the republic. the whole world was interested in it. it was a work ennobling to a people--the inspiration of a great national usefulness. the disaster began when the south began to think only for and of itself--began to have only one problem." thus the south, owing to the presence of the negro, dropped behind in the progress of the world. and while the new and vitalising world influences are now spreading abroad throughout the south, manifesting themselves in factories, mines, mills, better schools, and more railroads, the old, ugly negro problem still shackles political thought and cripples freedom of action. in other words, the south is being rapidly industrialised, but not so rapidly liberalised and nationalised, though these developments are certainly following. _exploiting negro prejudice_ the cause of this dominance of thought by the negro lies chiefly with a certain group of politicians whose interest it is to maintain their party control and to keep the south solid. and they do this by harping perpetually on the negro problem. i observed, wherever i went in the south and found busy and prosperous industries, that the negro problem was little discussed. one manufacturer in new orleans said to me, when i asked him about the negro question: "why, i'm so busy i never think about it." and that is the attitude of the progressive, constructive southerner: he is impatient with the talk about the negro and the negro problem. he wants to forget it. but there remains a body of men in the south who, not prosperous in other industries, still make the negro a sort of industry: they live by exploiting negro prejudice. they prevent the expression of new ideas and force a great people to confine its political genius to a worn-out issue. _roosevelt democrats down south_ talking with all classes of white men in the south, i was amazed to discover how many of them had ceased to be democrats (in the party sense) at all, and were followers in their beliefs of roosevelt and the republican party. many of them told me that they wished they could break away and express themselves openly and freely, but they did not dare. a considerable number have ventured to vote the republican ticket in national elections (especially on the free-silver issue), but few indeed have had the courage to declare their independence in state or local affairs. for the instant a rift appears in the harmony of the white party (and that is a better name for it than democratic) the leaders talk negro, and the would-be independents are driven back into the fold. over and over again leaders with new issues have endeavoured to get a hearing. a number of years ago the populist movement spread widely throughout the south. tom watson of georgia, kolb of alabama, butler of north carolina, led revolts against the old democratic party. by fusion with the republicans the populists carried north carolina. but the old political leaders immediately raised the negro issue, declared that the populists were encouraging the negro vote, and defeated the insurgents, driving most of their leaders into political obscurity. now, i am not arguing that populism was an ideal movement, nor that its leaders were ideal men; i am merely trying to show the cost of independence in the south. a number of years ago emory speer, of georgia, now federal judge, ran for congress on an independent ticket. his platform was "the union and the constitution, a free ballot and a fair count." the inevitable negro issue was raised against him, it was insisted that there must be no division among white people lest the negro secure the balance of political power, and speer was finally defeated. he became a republican and has since had no influence in state politics. upon this point an able southern writer, professor edwin mims of trinity college, n. c., has said: "the independents in the south have to face the same state of affairs that the independents of the north did in the ' 's--all the better traditions connected with one party, and most of the respectable people belonging to the same party. just as george william curtis and his followers were accused of being democrats in disguise and of being traitors to the 'grand old party' that had saved the union and freed the slaves, and deserters to a party of copperheads, so the southern independent is said to be a republican in disguise, and is told of the awful crimes of the reconstruction era. when all other arguments have failed, there is the inevitable appeal to the threatened domination of an inferior race which is not now even a remote possibility." as a result of this domination of a worn-out issue, political contests in the south have ordinarily concerned themselves not with stimulating public questions, but with the personal qualifications of the candidates. the south has not dared to face real problems lest the white party be split and the negro voter somehow slip into influence. a campaign was fought last year in mississippi. of course the candidates all belonged to the white party; all therefore subscribed to identically the same platform--which had been prepared by the party leaders--so that the only issue was the personality of the candidates. let me quote from the mississippi correspondent of the new orleans _times-democrat_, april , : the only "issue" ... is the personality of the candidate himself. the voter may take the speeches of each candidate and analyse them from start to finish, and he will fail to find where there is any difference of opinion between the candidates on any of the live questions of the day which are likely to affect mississippi. he must, therefore, turn from the speeches to the candidate himself for an "issue" and must take his choice of the several candidates as men, and decide which of them will do most good to the state and be the safest man to entrust with the helm. _negro holds democratic party together_ i am speaking here, of course, of the negro as a dominant issue, the essential element which holds the democratic party together and without which other policies could not be carried or candidates elected. vigorous divisions on other issues have taken place locally within the lines of the democratic party, especially during the last two or three years. the railroad and trust questions have been prominently before the people in most of the southern states. during his long campaign for governor hoke smith talked railroads and railroad influence in politics constantly, but in order to be elected he raised the negro question and talked it vigorously, especially in all of his country addresses. it is also highly significant that the south should have taken so strong a lead in the prohibition movement, although even this question has been more or less connected with the negro problem, the argument being that the south must forbid the liquor traffic because of its influence on the negro. no states in the union, indeed, have been more radical in dealing with the trust question than texas and arkansas; and alabama, georgia, and north carolina have been the scenes of some of the hottest fights in the country on the railroad question. all this goes to show that, once freed from the incubus of the negro on southern thought, the south would instantly become a great factor in national questions. and being almost exclusively american in its population, with few rich men and ideals of life not yet so subservient to the dollar as those of the north, it would become a powerful factor in the progressive and constructive movements of the country. the influence of a single bold man like tillman in the senate has been notable. in the future the country has much to look for from the idealism of southern statesmanship. _stifling free speech_ but the unfortunate result of the dominance of the single idea of the negro upon politics has been to benumb the south intellectually; to stifle free thought and free speech. let a man advance a new issue and if the party leaders do not favour it they have only to cry out "negro," twisting the issue so as to emphasise its negro side (and every question in the south has a negro side), and the independent thinker is crushed. i once talked with the editor of a newspaper in the south who said to me, "such and such is my belief." "but," i said, "you take just the opposite position in your paper." "yes--but i can't talk out; it would kill my business." this timorousness has touched not only politics, but has reached the schools and the churches--and still shackles the freest speech. george w. cable, the novelist, was practically forced to leave the south because he advocated the "continual and diligent elevation of that lower man which human society is constantly precipitating," because he advocated justice for the negro. professor andrew slade was compelled to resign from emory college in georgia because he published an article in the _atlantic monthly_ taking a point of view not supported by the majority in southern sentiment! professor john spencer bassett was saved from a forced resignation from trinity college in north carolina for a similar offence after a lively fight in the board of trustees which left trinity with the reputation of being one of the freest institutions in the south. the situation in the south has made people afraid of the truth. political oratory, particularly, often gets away entirely from the wholesome and regenerative world of actual facts. i quoted in the last chapter from a speech of governor swanson of virginia, in which he said: "the business houses and financial institutions are in the hands of intelligent anglo-saxons, and with god's help and our own good right hand we will hold him (the negro) where he is." _negro's progress in richmond_ what a curious thing oratory is! right in governor swanson's own city of richmond there are four banks owned and operated by negroes; one of the negro bankers sat in the convention to which governor swanson was at that moment speaking. there is a negro insurance company, "the true reformers," in which i saw eighty negro clerks and stenographers at work. it has a surplus of $ , , with a business in thirty states. negroes also own and operate in richmond four clothing stores, five drug stores, many grocery stores (some very small, of course), two hotels, four livery stables, five printing establishments, eight fraternal insurance companies, seven meat markets, fifty eating-places, and many other sorts of business enterprises, small, of course, but growing rapidly. in richmond also, there are ten negro lawyers, fifteen physicians, three dentists, two photographers, eighty-five school teachers, forty-six negro churches. _southerners who see the danger_ when i make the assertion regarding "free speech" and the fear of truth in the south, i am making no statement which has not been far more forcibly put by thoughtful and fearless southerners who see and dread this sinister tendency. the late chancellor hill, of the university of georgia, spoke of the "deadly paralysis of intellect caused by the enforced uniformity of thought within the lines of one party." he said: "before the war the south was in opposition to the rest of civilisation on the question of slavery. it defended itself: its thinking, its political science, even its religion was not directed toward a search for truth, but it was concentrated on the defence of a civil and political order of things. these conditions made impossible a vigorous intellectual life." william preston few, dean of trinity college, north carolina, writes (_south atlantic quarterly_, january, ): "this prevalent lack of first hand thinking and of courage to speak out has brought about an unfortunate scarcity of intellectual honesty." an excellent illustration of this condition grew out of the statement of dr. edwin a. alderman, president of the university of virginia, at a dinner a year or so ago, in which he compared the recent political leadership of the south somewhat unfavourably with the statesmanship of the old south. upon hearing of this remark senator bailey of texas angrily resigned from the alumni committee of the university. chancellor hill said, concerning the incident: "the question whether dr. alderman was right or wrong becomes insignificant beside the larger question whether senator bailey was right or wrong in his method of dealing with a difference of opinion. and this leads to the question: have we freedom of opinion in the south? must every man who thinks above a whisper do so at the peril of his reputation and his influence, or at the deadlier risk of having an injury inflicted upon the institution which he represents?" in giving so much space to the words and position of vardaman, tillman, hoke smith, and others, i have not yet sufficiently emphasised the work and influence of the thoughtful and constructive men of the south. but it must be borne in mind that i am writing of politics, of majorities: and politicians of the tillman type are still the political forces in the south. they are in control: they are elected. yet there is the growing class of new statesmen whose work i shall recount in the next chapter. _whites disfranchised as well as blacks_ but the limitation of intellectual freedom has not been the only result of the political dominance of the negro issue. it is curious to observe that when one class of men in any society is forced downward politically, another is forced up: for so mankind keeps its balances and averages. a significant phase of the movement in the south to eliminate the negro is the sure return to government by a white aristocracy. for disfranchisement of the negro has also served to disfranchise a very large proportion of the white people as well. in every southern state where negro disfranchisement has been forced, the white vote also has been steadily dwindling. to-day in alabama not half the white males of voting age are qualified voters. in mississippi the proportion is still lower. in the last presidential election the state of mississippi was carried by parker with a total vote of only , , out of a total of , citizens (both white and coloured) of voting age. only one-third of the white men voted. it has been found, indeed, in several counties in mississippi, that while the number of white eligibles has been decreasing, the number of negroes on the registration lists has been increasing. in the city of jackson, miss., last year, , voters were registered out of a population of , people. to show the dwindling process, take the single country of tallapoosa in alabama. the last census shows , whites and , blacks of voting age, , in all. after the adoption of the new constitution disfranchising the negro in , the total registration was , . last fall, although the important question of prohibition had arisen and an especial effort was made to get voters out, an investigation showed there were only , qualified voters in the country. this astonishing condition is due primarily to the fact that there is no vital party division on new issues in the south; but it is also due to the franchise tests, which, having been made severe to keep the negro out, operate also to disfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and ignorant white men. i spent much time talking with white workingmen, both in the cities and in the country. i asked them why so many workingmen and farmers did not vote. here is one comprehensive reply of a labour leader: "what's the use? we have to pay two dollars a year poll-tax, and pay it nearly a year before election. and why vote? there are no real issues at stake. an election is merely a personal quarrel in the clique of men who control the democratic party. why should we pay two dollars a year and go to the bother of satisfying the personal ambition of some man we are not interested in?" _a white oligarchy_ so the white vote is dwindling; the political power is being gathered into the hands of fewer and fewer men. and there is actually springing up a large class of non-voting white men not unlike the powerless "poor whites" of ante-bellum times. the white politicians, indeed, in some places do not encourage the poorer white men to qualify, for the fewer voters, the more certain their control. of course the chief fights in mississippi and elsewhere are not at the elections, but in the democratic (white) primaries; but this fact only accentuates the point i wish to make: the limitation of political independence of action. such conditions are deeply concerning the thoughtful men of the south; but while they think, few dare to brave political extinction by speaking out. one would think that the republican party, which ostensibly stands for the opposition in the south, would cry out about conditions. but it does not. the fact is, the republican party, as now constituted in the south, is even a more restricted white oligarchy than the democratic party. in nearly all parts of the south, indeed, it is a close corporation which controls or seeks to control all the federal offices. speak out? of course not. it, too, is attempting to eliminate the negro (in some places it calls itself "lily white"), and it works not inharmoniously with the democratic politicians. for the republican machine in the south really has no quarrel with the democratic machine; it takes the federal offices which the democrats cannot get, and the democrats take local offices which the republicans know they cannot get. _the south a weapon in national conventions_ the republican presidents at washington have, unfortunately, played into the hands of the southern office-holding machine. why? partly because republicans are few in the south and partly because a solid republican delegation from the south, easily handled and controlled and favouring the administration, is a powerful weapon in national conventions. mckinley played almost absolutely into the hands of this southern republican machine, and hanna operated it. indeed, mckinley's nomination was probably due to the skill with which hanna marshaled this solid phalanx of southern delegates. roosevelt has made a number of first-class appointments outside of the machine, even appointing a few democrats of the high type of judge jones of alabama. over and over in this book i have spoken of the negro as a national, not a southern issue; and in politics this is peculiarly true. though having few republicans, the south, through its office-holding republican delegations, has largely influenced the choice of more than one republican president. the "solid south" is as useful to the republican party as to the democratic party. why the certainty expressed by republican politicians of the nomination of taft? because the national organisation felt sure it could control the southern delegations. it counted on the "solid south." thus in a very real sense the government of this entire nation turns upon the despised black man--whether he votes or not! _the negro's political power in the north_ in another way the southern attitude toward the negro affects the nation. owing to disfranchisement and "jim crow" laws, thousands of negroes have moved northward and settled in the great cities, until to-day negro voters, though they may not (as has been claimed) hold the balance of power, yet wield a great influence in the politics of at least four states--indiana, ohio, new jersey, and rhode island--and are also considerable factors in the political destiny of illinois, pennsylvania, new york, and delaware. the potential influence of the negro voter in the north is excellently illustrated in the recent campaign for the republican nomination to the presidency, especially in the fight in ohio between foraker and taft and in the eagerness displayed by taft to placate the negro vote. in still another way the negro affects the entire nation. through its attitude of exclusion the south exercises an influence on national legislation out of all proportion to its voting population. though nearly all negroes are disfranchised, as well as a large number of white voters, all these disfranchised voters are counted in the allotment of congressmen to southern states. out of this has grown a curious condition. in alabama, arkansas, georgia, and mississippi, which have thirty-five members in congress, cast , votes, while massachusetts alone, with only fourteen congressmen, cast , votes. here, for example, is the record of south carolina: total population of voting age, both white and coloured ( ) , total white voting population , total actual vote in for congressmen , total democratic vote which elected seven congressmen , thus in south carolina in an average of about , voters voted at the election for each congressman (in , a presidential year, the average was about , ) while in new york state over , votes are cast in each congressional district and in pennsylvania about , . now, i am not here criticising this condition; i am merely endeavouring to set down the facts as i find them. my purpose is to illustrate the profound and far-reaching effects of the negro issue upon the nation. and is it not curious, when all is said, to observe how this rejected black man, whom the south has attempted to eliminate utterly from politics, has been for years changing and warping the entire government of this nation in the most fundamental ways! did he not cause a civil war, the results of which still curse the country? and though excluded in large measure from the polls, does he not in reality cast his mighty vote for presidents, congressmen, governors? often, looking out across the south, it appears to the observer that the negro has a more far-reaching and real influence on our national life for being excluded from the polls than he would have if he were frankly and justly admitted to the franchise on the same basis as white men. all the real thinkers and statesmen of the south have looked and longed for the hour when the south, free of this dominance of an ugly issue, should again take its great place in national affairs. in , at the close of reconstruction, senator lamar of mississippi predicted in a speech at jackson that the south, having eliminated the negro from politics, would now divide on new economic issues and become politically healthy. but that has not happened; less division on real issues probably exists in mississippi to-day than in . why? is it not possible that the manner of the elimination of the negro from politics is wrong? has it occurred to leaders and statesmen that negroes who are qualified can be eliminated _into_ politics; that the present method in reality makes the negro a more dangerous political factor than he would be if he were allowed to vote regularly and quietly? _southerners who are speaking out_ in spite of the domination of both parties in the south by narrowing groups of leaders there are not wanting men to fight for a new alignment. on the republican side one of these men is joseph c. manning, of alexander city, ala., who publishes a paper called the _southern american_. he has shown how white men are being disfranchised as well as negroes, how the south is controlled by a "bourbon oligarchy" in the democratic party and a "federal-for-revenue" republican party--as he calls them. his paper appears every week with his denunciations in big letters, urging the republican party to reform and become a party of truth and progress. he says: the rallying cry the great body of the people of the white south, the masses of the white people of alabama, are to-day suppressed by the strategy of a political autocracy dominating under the guise and pretence of a democracy. why not throw off the yoke and get in the fight? rise up above this petty delegate getting, patronage manipulating, state chairman squabbling, until this small politics shall become lost in the great and the supreme issue. stop this "lily-white" nonsense. quit being sidetracked by this bourbon wail of negro. recognise this vital force of the immovable truth that an injustice to one american citizen will react upon all. you can't have one law for the white man and another for the negro in our form of government. you know that those who have the most talked of suppressing blacks have really suppressed you, white republicans, and the most of the southern whites. the outcry of negro and social equality and the like is the very essence of political moonshine. a number of men inside the democratic party are not afraid to speak out. ex-congressman fleming of georgia said in a notable address at athens, ga.: "those whose stock in trade is 'hating the nigger' may easily gain some temporary advantage for themselves in our white primaries, where it requires no courage, either physical or moral, to strike those who have no power to strike back--not even with a paper ballot. but these men will achieve nothing permanent for the good of the state or of the nation by stirring up race passion and prejudice. injustice and persecution will not solve any of the problems of the ages. god did not so ordain his universe. "justly proud of our race, we refuse to amalgamate with the negro, but the negro is an american citizen, and is protected as such by guarantees of the constitution that are as irrepealable almost as the bill of rights itself. nor, if such a thing as repealing these guarantees were possible, would it be wise for the south. suppose we admit the oft-reiterated proposition that no two races so distinct as the caucasian and the negro can live together on terms of perfect equality; yet it is equally true that without some access to the ballot, present or prospective, some participation in the government, no inferior race in an elective republic could long protect itself against reduction to slavery in many of its substantial forms--and god knows the south wants no more of that curse." men of the type of mr. fleming are far in the minority in the south; they are so few as yet as to count, politically speaking, for little or nothing. but the fact that they are there, that they are not afraid to speak out, even though it ruins them politically, is significant and hopeful. _ante-bellum aggression_ now it is this way with a party having only one issue: when attacked, it can only become more and more violent and vociferous upon that issue. and this is what we discover in the south: an increasing bitterness of leaders like tillman and vardaman, for they know that their own existence and that of the party which they represent depends upon keeping the negro issue prominent. the very fact that they are violent is significant: it shows that they recognise powerful and growing new elements in the south, which, though not yet apparent politically, are getting hold of the people. in other words, the present group of autocratic leaders is seeking at any length to defend itself. and its work is not only defensive, it is also offensive. it must be. the institution of slavery might have lasted many years longer if the southern leaders had been content with the slave territory they already held. but they were not so content. they tried to extend slavery to the new territories of the union, and it was this aggression that was the chief immediate cause of the civil war. it was the struggle over missouri and kansas, and the policy of the country regarding the new west, whether it should be admitted slave or free, which precipitated hostilities. "continual aggression," john hay once said, "is the necessity of a false position." the ante-bellum southern leaders saw that they must either extend their institution or else face its ultimate extinction. at the present time we have a repetition of the ante-bellum aggression. as it happened then, we have speakers like tillman and others coming north urging the validity of the southern treatment of the negro. writers like thomas dixon rekindle old fires of hatred. at the same moment that tillman is abusing the north for its interest in southern education, he himself is speaking from northern platforms to make sentiment for the southern position. so we have the extension of disfranchisement and "jim crow" laws to the new western state of oklahoma and the agitation for disfranchisement in maryland. so we have the advancing demand by southerners in congress for the repeal of the xv amendment. and just recently congressman heflin of alabama has introduced a bill seeking to provide for "jim crow" distinctions upon the street-cars of washington. how all this recalls the efforts of the ante-bellum southern congressmen to force the united states government to take the southern position on the slavery question! _fighting to put the negro down_ i have recently read some of the voluminous discussions upon the subject of slavery which took place before the civil war, and i have been astonished to find the arguments of the southern political leaders of to-day almost identical in substance (though changed somewhat in form) with the reasoning of the old slave-owning class. one hears the same arguments regarding the physiological and ethnological inferiority of all coloured men to all white men: the argument that "one drop of negro blood makes a negro," and even that the negro is not a human being at all, but a beast. i have before me a book recently published by a bible house (of all places!) in st. louis and widely circulated in the south. it is entitled "is the negro a beast?" and it goes on to prove by biblical quotation that he has no soul! being a beast, it becomes a small matter to kill him. one also hears the argument now, as in slavery times, of the divine right of the white man to rule the negro. "god intended the white man to rule," says vardaman, "and the negro to be a humble servant." and finally there is the frank argument of physical force; that the white man, being strong, will and must rule the negro. hoke smith to-day is supporting much the same position that robert toombs held before the war. of course hoke smith has receded from the belief in the chattel slavery of the negro for which toombs contended; but in many other respects he evidently believes that the negro should be reduced (as ex-congressman fleming of georgia says in the quotation given above) "to slavery in many of its substantial forms." in order to validate its position and keep its place (and make the negro keep his) the white aristocracy has been forced to defend the doctrine of all monarchies and aristocracies--the inequality of men in all respects. hoke smith states the fundamental assumption thus plainly in his address (june , ): "i believe the wise course is to plant ourselves squarely upon the proposition in georgia that the negro is in no respect the equal of the white man, and that he cannot in the future in this state occupy a position of equality." _both the south and the north undemocratic_ thus i have attempted to present the political situation in the south and the reasoning which underlies it. it possesses a large significance for the entire country. here is the fact: the war and the emancipation proclamation did not make the south completely democratic; it merely cut away one bulwark of aristocracy--slavery. the south is still dominated by the aristocratic idea, and more or less frankly so. the south has admitted only grudgingly, and not yet fully, the "poor white" man to democratic political fellowship. there are, as i have shown, hundreds of thousands of disfranchised white americans in the south. moreover many white leaders look askance on the new italian immigrants, though they, too, are white men. the extreme point of view in regard to the foreigner was expressed in a speech by the hon. jeff truly, candidate for governor of mississippi, at magnolia in that state on march , : "i am opposed to any inferior race. the italian immigration scheme does not settle the labour question; italians are a threat and a danger to our racial, industrial, and commercial supremacy. mississippi needs no such immigration. leave your lands to your own children. as governor of the state, i promise that not one dollar of the state shall be spent for the immigration of any such." as for the negro, of course, the south has never believed in a democracy which really includes him. but neither does the north. when we get right down to it, the controlling white men in the north do not believe in an inclusive democracy much more than the south. i have talked with many northerners who go south, and it is astonishing to see how quickly most of them adopt the southern point of view. for it is the doctrine which many of them, down in their hearts, really believe. in reality the north also has an aristocratic government, an oligarchy based upon wealth and property, which dominates politics and governs the country more or less completely. roosevelt has been fighting some of the more boisterous aspects of the rule of this oligarchy--and has showed the country how powerful it is! _the underman fighting all over the world_ it is curious, indeed, when one's attention is awakened to the facts, how strong the parallel is between the south and the north. i mean here a parallel not in laws or even in customs, but in spirit, in the living reality which lies down deep under institutions, which is, after all, the only thing that really counts. the cause of all the trouble in the north is similar to what it is in the south: the underman will not keep his place. he is restless, ambitious, he wants civil, political, and industrial equality. thus we see the growth of labour organisations, and the spread of populists and socialists, who demand new rights and a greater share in the products of labour. they will not, as hoke smith says of the negroes, "content themselves with the place of inferiority." the essential feature of the history of the last five years in this country, and it will go down in history as the beginning of great things, has been the vague, crudely powerful effort of the underman (half his strength wasted because he is blind) to limit in some degree the power of this moneyed aristocracy. such is the meaning of the demand for trust and railroad legislation, such the significance of the insurance investigation, such the effort to curb the power of men like rockefeller, harriman, morgan. so the north, in spirit, also disfranchises its lower class. it does it by the purchase at elections in one form or another of its "poor whites" and its negroes. what else is the meaning of tammany hall and the boss and machine system in other cities? tammany hall is our method of disfranchisement: it is our cunning machine for nullifying the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. while the south is disfranchising by legislation, the north is doing it by cash. _the question we are coming to_ i have spoken of the lack of free speech in the south; but that is not peculiar to the south. though there is undoubtedly a far greater intellectual freedom to-day in the north than in the south, yet the north has disciplined more than one professor for his utterances on the trust or railroad questions. south or north, it is dangerous to attack the entrenched privilege of those in control. we criticise the frankness of vardaman in advocating different standards of justice for white men and negroes, but do we not have the same custom in the north? how extremely difficult it is sometimes to get a rich criminal into jail in the north! in short, we are coming again face to face in this country with the same tremendous (even revolutionary) question which presents itself in every crisis of the world's history: "what is democracy? what does democracy include? does democracy really include negroes as well as white men? does it include russian jews, italians, japanese? does it include rockefeller and the slavonian street-sweeper? and tillman and the negro farmhand?" chapter xiii the new southern statesmanship "democracy is the progress of all through all, under the leadership of the best and the wisest."--_mazzini._ in former chapters i have had much to tell that was unpleasant and perhaps discouraging; but it had to be told, for it is there, and must be honestly met and reckoned with. but the chief pleasure of the present task has been the opportunity it has given me to meet the working idealists of the south, and to see the courageous and unselfish way in which they are meeting the obstacles which confront them. if any man would brighten his faith in human nature, if he would attain a deeper and truer grasp upon the best things of life, let him attend one of the educational rallies of virginia, north carolina, tennessee, georgia, or texas, and hear the talks of dr. s. c. mitchell, president alderman, j. y. joyner, p. p. claxton, chancellor barrow, president houston, and others; or let him spend a few days at hampton with dr. frissell, or at tuskegee with dr. washington, or at calhoun with miss thorne. coming away from a meeting one night at tuskegee after there had been speaking in the chapel by both white and coloured men, i could not help saying to myself: "the negro problem is not unsolvable; it is being solved, here and now, as fast as any human problem can be solved." men may be found straining their vision to see some distant and complex solution to the question (have we not heard talk of deportation, extermination, amalgamation, segregation, and the like?) when the real solution is under their very eyes, going forward naturally and simply. it is this quiet, constructive movement among the white people in the south which i wish to consider here. in a former chapter i showed how the negroes of the country are divided into two parties or points of view, the greater led by booker t. washington, the lesser by w. e. b. dubois. washington's party is the party of the opportunist and optimist, which deals with the world as it is: it is a constructive, practical, cheerful party. it emphasises duties rather than rights. dr. dubois's party, on the other hand, represents the critical point of view. it is idealistic and pessimistic: a party of agitation, emphasising rights rather than duties. but these two points of view are by no means peculiar to negroes: they divide all human thought; and the action and reaction between them is the mode of human progress. _division of white leadership in the south_ white leadership in the south, then, is divided along similar lines with negro leadership--a party of rights and a party of duties. but with this wide difference: among the negroes as i showed, the party of agitation and criticism led by dubois is far inferior both numerically and in influence to the party of opportunity and duties led by washington. for the negroes have been forced to concede the futility of trying to progress by political action and legislation, by rights specified but not earned. washington's preaching has been: "stop thinking about your rights and get down to work. get yourself right and the world will be all right." but among the white people of the south the party of agitation and the emphasis of rights rather than duties is still far in the ascendency. led by such men as tillman, vardaman, jeff davis, hoke smith, and others, it controls, for the present, the policies of the entire south. it has much to say of the rights of the white man, very little about his duties. it is, indeed, doing for the whites by agitation and legislation (often a kind of force) exactly what dr. dubois would like to do for the negro, if he could. "agitate, object, fight," say both tillman and dubois. "work," says washington. now, the same logic of circumstances which produced booker t. washington and his significant movement among the negroes has produced a group of new and highly able white leaders. these new leaders saw that agitation (while most necessary in its place) would not, after all, build up the south; they saw that although the sort of leader typified by tillman and vardaman was passing laws and winning elections, he was not, after all, getting anywhere; that race feeling was growing more bitter, often to the injury of southern prosperty; that progress is not built upon stump speeches. the answer to all this was plain enough. "let us stop talking, forget the race problem, and get to work. it does not matter where we take hold, but let us go to work." and the doctrine of work in the south has become a great propaganda, almost, indeed, a passion. it has found expression in a remarkable growth of industrial activities, cotton-mills, coal-mines, iron and steel industries; in new methods of farming; in spreading railroads. but more than all else, perhaps, it has developed a new enthusiasm for education, not only for education of the old classical sort, but for industrial and agricultural education--the training of workers. all this, indeed, represents the rebound from years of agitation in which the negro has been "cussed and discussed," as one southerner put it to me, beyond the limit of endurance. wherever i went in the south among the new industrial and educational leaders i found an active distaste for the discussion of the negro problem. these men were too busy with fine new enterprises to be bothered with ancient and unprofitable issues. _new prescriptions for solving the negro problem_ when i asked professor dillard of new orleans how he thought the negro question should be treated, he replied: "with silence." "my prescription," says president alderman in his address on "southern idealism," "is 'silence and slow time,' faith in the south, and wise training for both white and black." edgar gardner murphy of alabama, himself one of the new leaders, has thus outlined the position of the rising southern leadership: "the south is growing weary of extremists and of sensational problem-solvers.... our coming leadership will have a sense of proportion which will involve a steady refusal to be stampeded by antique nightmares and ethnological melodrama. it will possess an increasing passion for getting hold of the real things in a real world. and it will ... deal with one task at a time. it will subordinate paper schemes of distant amelioration to duties that will help right now." emphasis here is laid upon "real things in a real world" and "duties that will help right now"; and that is the voice everywhere of the new statesmanship. but let us be clear upon one point at the start. the platforms of these parties are matters of emphasis. one emphasises rights; the other emphasises duties. i have no doubt that booker t. washington believes as firmly in the rights of the negro as any leader of his race; he has merely ceased to emphasise these rights by agitation until his people have gained more education and more property, until by honest achievement they are prepared to exercise their rights with intelligence. in the same way, the views of many of the new southern white leaders of whom i shall speak in this article have not radically changed, so far as the negro is concerned; some of them, i have found, do not differ from tillman upon essential points; but, like washington, they have decided not to emphasise controversial matters, and go to work and develop the south, and the people of the south, for the good of the whole country. if the test has to come in the long run between white men and coloured men, as it will have to come and is coming all the time, they want it to be an honest test of efficiency. the fittest here, too, will survive (there is no escaping the great law!), but these new thinkers wish the test of fitness to be, not mere physical force, not mere brute power, whether expressed in lynching or politics, but the higher test of real capacity. they have supreme confidence that the white man is superior on his merits in any contest; and washington, on his side, is willing to (indeed, he must) take up the gauntlet thus thrown down. [illustration: james h. dillard of new orleans, president jeanes fund board. photograph by hitchler] [illustration: edwin a. alderman president of the university of virginia. photograph by pach bros.] [illustration: a. m. soule president georgia state college of agriculture.] [illustration: d. f. houston president of the university of texas. photograph by the elliotts] [illustration: george foster peabody of new york, member of the southern education and jeanes fund boards. photograph by pach bros.] [illustration: p. p. claxton of the university of tennessee, leader of the educational campaign in tennessee. photograph by knafft & bro.] the condition in the south may be likened to a battle in which the contestants, weary of profitless and wordy warfare, are turning homeward to gather up new ammunition. each side is passionately getting education, acquiring land, developing wealth and industry, preparing for the struggles of the future. and it is a fine and wholesome tendency. in a large sense, indeed, this movement typifies the progressive thought of the entire country for it means a sincere attempt to change the plane of battle (for battle there must be) from one of crude, primitive force, whether physical, political, or, indeed, industrial, to one of intellectual efficiency or usefulness to society. and these working idealists of both races understand one another better than most people think. dr. mitchell and president alderman understand booker t. washington, and he understands them. this is not saying that they agree. but agreement upon every abstract principle is not necessary where both parties are hard at work at practical, definite, and immediate tasks. _self-criticism in the south_ the new southern statesmanship began (as all new movements begin) with self-criticism. henry w. grady, a real statesman, by criticising the old order of things, announced the beginning of the "new south"--an active, working, hopeful south. he saw the faults of the old exclusive agricultural life and the danger of low-class, uneducated labour, and he urged industrial development and a better school system. r. h. edmonds of baltimore, through the _manufacturers' record_, and many other able business leaders have done much to bring about the new industrial order: the day of new railroads, cotton-mills, and coal-mines; the day of cities. but it is in the educational field that the development of the new statesmanship has been most remarkable. although it was unfortunate in one way that so much of the political leadership of the south should have fallen to men of the type of vardaman, jeff davis, and heflin, it is highly fortunate in another way. for it has driven the broadest and ablest minds in the south to seek expression in other lines of activity, in industry and in the church, but particularly in educational leadership. it is not without profound significance that the great american, general lee, turned his attention and gave his highest energies after appomattox, not to politics, but to education. the south to-day has a group of schoolmen who are leaders of extraordinary force and courage. the ministry has also attained an influence in the south which it does not possess in most parts of the north. the influence of bishop galloway of mississippi, dr. john e. white and dr. c. b. wilmer of atlanta, and many others has been notable. for many years after the war the south was passive with exhaustion. young men, who were not afraid, had to grow up to the task of reconstruction. and no one who has not traced the history of the south since the war can form any conception of the magnitude of that task. it was essentially the building of a new civilisation. the leaders were compelled not only to face abject poverty, but they have had to deal constantly with the problem of a labouring class just released from slavery. at every turn, in politics, in industry, in education, they were confronted with the negro and the problem of what to do with him. where one school-house would do in the north, they were compelled to build two school-houses, one for white children, one for black. it took from twenty-five to forty years of hard work after the war before the valuation of wealth in the south had again reached the figures of . the valuations in the year for several of the states were less than in . south carolina in --forty years after the beginning of the war--had only just caught up with the record of . since , however, the increase everywhere has been swift and sure. _courage and vision of new leaders_ well, it required courage and vision in the earlier days to go before a poverty-stricken people, who had not yet enough means for living comfortably, and to demand of them that they build up and support two systems of education in the south. and yet that was exactly the task of the educational pioneers. statesmanship, as i have said, begins with self-criticism. while the mere politician is flattering his followers and confirming them in their errors, the true statesman is criticising them and spurring them to new beliefs and stronger activities. while the politician is pleading rights, the statesman also dares to emphasise duties. while the politicians in the south (not all, but many of them) have been harping on race prejudice and getting themselves elected to office by reviving ancient hatred, these new statesmen have been facing courageously forward, telling the people boldly of the conditions of illiteracy which surround them, and demanding that schools be built and every child, white and black, be educated. in many cases they have had to overcome a settled prejudice against education, especially education of negroes; and after that was overcome they have had to build up a sense of social responsibility for universal education before they could count on getting the money they needed for their work. after the war the north, in one form or another, poured much money into the south for teaching the negroes; lesser sums, like those coming from the peabody fund, were contributed toward white schools. but in the long run there can be no real education which is not self-education; outside influences may help (or indeed hurt), but until a state--like a man--is inspired with a desire for education and a willingness to make sacrifices to get it, the people will not become enlightened. in the middle eighties the fire of this inspiration began to blaze up in many parts of the south. various combustible elements were present: a sense of the appalling condition of illiteracy existing in the south; a pride and independence of character which was hurt by the gifts of money from the north; a feeling that the negroes in some instances were getting better educational opportunities than the white children; and, finally, the splendid idealism of young men who saw clearly that the only sure foundation for democracy is universal education. _inspiration of democracy in north carolina_ not unnaturally the movement found its earliest expression in north carolina, which has been the most instinctively democratic of southern states. from the beginning of the country north carolina, with its population of scotch-presbyterians and quakers, has been inspired with a peculiar spirit of independence. when i was in charlotte i went to see the monument which commemorates the mecklenburg declaration of independence: the work of a group of stout-hearted citizens who decided, before the country at large was ready for it, to declare their independence of british rule. north carolina was among the last of the southern states to secede from the union, and its treatment of its negroes all along has been singularly liberal. for example, in several southern states little or no provision is made for the negro defective classes, but at raleigh i visited a large asylum for negro deaf, dumb, and blind which is conducted according to the most improved methods. and to-day north carolina is freer politically, the state is nearer a new and healthy party alignment, than any other southern state except tennessee and possibly kentucky. such a soil was fertile for new ideas and new movements. in two young men, charles d. mciver and edwin a. alderman, now president of the university of virginia, began a series of educational campaigns under the supervision of the state. they spoke in every county, rousing the people to build better school-houses and to send legislators to raleigh who should be more liberal in educational appropriations. in many cases their rallies were comparable with the most enthusiastic political meetings--only no one was asking to be elected to office, and the only object was public service. as alderman has said: "it was an effort to move the centre of gravity from the court-house to the school-house." and it really moved; the state took fire and has been afire ever since. governor aycock made the educational movement a part of his campaign; governor glenn has been hardly less enthusiastic; and the development of the school system has been little short of amazing. when i was in raleigh last spring j. y. joyner, state superintendent of schools, who was also one of the pioneer campaigners, told me that a new school-house was being built for every day in the year, and new school libraries established at the same rate. between and the total amount of money expended for schools in north carolina more than doubled, and while the school population in the same years had increased only per cent., the daily attendance had increased per cent. _north carolina compared with massachusetts_ to give a graphic idea of the progress in education, i can do no better than to show the increase in public expenditures since : total school expenditures $ , total school expenditures , total school expenditures , total school expenditures , , total school expenditures , , i have looked into the statistics and i find that north carolina spends more per hundred dollars of taxable property for school purposes than massachusetts, which is perhaps the leading american state in educational expenditures. in north carolina raised $. on every one hundred dollars, while massachusetts raised $. . but this does not mean, of course, that north carolina has reached the standard of massachusetts; it only shows how the people, though not rich, have been willing to tax themselves. and they have only just begun; the rate of illiteracy of the state, as in all the south, is still excessive among both white and coloured people. according to the last census, north carolina has more illiterate white people than any other state in the union, a condition due, of course, to its large population of mountaineers. while the progress already made is notable the leaders still have a stupendous task before them. at the present time, although taxing itself more per hundred dollars' worth of property than massachusetts, north carolina pays only $ . each year for the education of each child, whereas massachusetts expends $ . --nearly ten times as much. i do not wish to over-emphasise the work in north carolina; i am merely using conditions there as a convenient illustration of what is going on in greater or less degree all over the south. one of the group of early enthusiasts in north carolina was p. p. claxton, who is now in charge of the educational campaign in tennessee. with president dabney, formerly of the university of tennessee and state superintendent mynders, mr. claxton has conducted a state-wide campaign for education. every available occasion has been utilised: picnics, court-days, decoration days: and often the audiences have been larger and more enthusiastic than political rallies. indeed, the meetings have been carried on much like a political campaign. at one time over one hundred speakers were in the field. every county in the state was stumped, and in two years it was estimated that over half of the entire population of the state actually attended the meetings. labour unions and women's clubs were stirred to activity, resolutions were passed, politicians were called upon to declare themselves, and teachers' organisations were formed. the result was most notable. in the state expended $ , , for educational purposes; in --six years later--the total will exceed $ , , . a similar campaign has been going on in virginia, under the auspices of the coöperative educational association, in which the leaders have been dr. s. c. mitchell, professor bruce payne, president alderman, and others. in this work ex-governor montague has also been a force for good, both while he was governor and since, and governor swanson at present is actively interested. local leagues were formed in every part of the state to the number of . negroes have also organised along the same line and now have ten local associations in five counties. _how the south is taxing itself_ one of the most striking features of the movement has been the development of the system of local taxation for school purposes--which is a long step in the direction of democracy. in the past the people have looked more or less to some outside source for help--to state or national funds, or the private gifts of philanthropists, or they have depended upon private schools--but now they are voting to take the burden themselves. in other words, with the building up of a popular school system, supported by local taxation, education in the south is becoming, for the first time, democratic. it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this movement in stimulating the local pride and self-reliance of the people, or in inspiring each community with educational enthusiasm. another development of profound influence has been going on in the south. as i have already pointed out, the so-called "northern philanthropist" has long been interested in southern education, especially negro education. for years his activities awakened, and indeed still awaken, a good deal of hostility in some parts of the south. many southerners have felt that the northerners, however good their intentions, did not understand southern conditions, and that some of the money was expended in a way that did not help the cause of progress in the south. _south and north work together_ but both the northerners (whatever their mistakes in method may have been) and the new southern leaders were intensely and sincerely interested in the same thing: namely, better education and better conditions in the south. it was natural that these two groups of earnest and reasonable men should finally come together in a spirit of coöperation; and this is, indeed, what has happened. out of a series of quiet conferences held in the south grew what has been called the "ogden movement" and the southern education board. this organisation was made up of three different classes of men: first, a group of the southern leaders of whom i have spoken--mitchell, alderman, dabney, curry, houston, hill, mciver, claxton, edgar gardner murphy, sydney j. bowie, and henry e. fries; second, southern men who, living in the north, were yet deeply interested in the progress of the south--men like walter h. page, george foster peabody, and frank r. chambers; and, finally, the northerners--robert c. ogden, who was president of the board, william h. baldwin, h. h. hanna, dr. wallace buttrick, albert shaw, and dr. g. s. dickerman. one of the inspirers of the movement, also a member of the board, was dr. h. b. frissell, who followed general armstrong as principal of hampton institute. each year conferences have been held in the south, a feature of which has been the "ogden special"--a special train from the north bringing northern citizens to southern institutions and encouraging a more intimate acquaintanceship on both sides. no one influence has been more potent than this in developing a spirit of nationalisation in the southern educational movement. so far in this chapter i have had very little to say about the negro, and especially negro education. it is important to know the view of the new leadership on this question. i have shown in previous articles that the majority view in the south was more or less hostile to the education of the negro, or, at least, to his education beyond the bare rudiments. the new leaders have recognised this feeling, and while without exception they believe that the negro must be educated and most of them have said so openly, the general policy has been to emphasise white education and unite the people on that. "in education," one of the leaders said to me, "it doesn't matter much where we begin. if we can arouse the spirit of the school, the people are going to see that it is as important to the state to have a trained negro as it is to have a trained white man." one of the troubles in the south, one of the reasons for the prejudice against education, and particularly negro education, has arisen from the fact that what has been called education was not really education at all. in the first place many of the schools have been so poor and the teachers so inefficient that the "education" acquired was next to worthless. there was not enough of it, nor was it of a kind to give the negro any real hold upon life, and it often hurt him far more than it helped. much of the prejudice in the south against negro education is unquestionably due to the wretched school system, which in many places has not really educated anybody. but, deeper than all this, the old conception in the south of a school was for a long time the old aristocratic conception--what some one has called "useless culture"--of educating a class of men, not to work, but to despise work. that idea of education has wrought much evil, especially among the negroes. it has taught both white and coloured men, not the doctrine of service, which is necessary to democracy, but it has given them a desire for artificial superiority, which is the characteristic of aristocracies. it has made the negro "uppish" and "bumptious"; it has caused some white men to argue their superiority when they had no basis of accomplishment or usefulness to make them really superior. _the inspiration of hampton institute_ but when the idea of education began to be democratic, when men began to think more of their duties than of their rights, a wholly new sort of school appeared; and it appeared first among the negroes. the country has not yet begun to realise the debt of gratitude which it owes to the promoters of hampton institute--to the genius of general armstrong, its founder and to the organising ability of dr. h. b. frissell who followed him. these men will be more highly honoured a hundred years from now than they are to-day, for americans will then appreciate more fully their service to the democracy. the "hampton idea" is the teaching of work--of service, of humility, of duties to god and to man. it is in the highest sense the democratic idea in education. and it has come, as most great movements have come, from the needs and the struggles of those who are downtrodden and outcast. and how wonderfully the idea has spread! out of hampton sprung tuskegee and calhoun and kowaliga and scores of other negro schools, until to-day nearly all negro institutions for higher training in the south have industrial or agricultural departments. the best southern white people were and are friendly to schools of this new type. they thought at first that hampton and tuskegee were going to train servants in the old personal sense of servants who become only cooks, butlers, and farmers, and many still have that aristocratic conception of service. but the "hampton idea" of servants is a much greater one, for it is the democratic idea of training men who will serve their own people and thereby serve the country. men who graduate from hampton and tuskegee become leaders of their race. they buy and cultivate land, they set up business establishments--in short, they become producers and state-builders in the largest sense. _new world idea of education_ the idea of hampton is the new world idea of education, and white people in the south (and in the north as well) are now applying it everywhere in their educational movements. agricultural and industrial schools for white boys and girls are spreading throughout the south: schools to teach work, just as hampton teaches it. only last year the state of georgia provided for eleven new agricultural schools in various parts of the state, and there is already talk in the south, as in the north, of agricultural training in high schools. these men, white and black, who are educated for democratic service will in time become masters of the state. the new leaders, then, of whom i have spoken, do not oppose negro education: they favour it and will go forward steadily with the task of bring it about. so far, the negro public schools have felt little of the new impulse; in some states and localities, as i have shown in other chapters, the negro schools have actually retrograded, where the white schools have been improving rapidly. but that is the continuing influence of the old leadership; the new men have not yet come fully into their own. i could quote indefinitely from the real statesmen of the south regarding negro education, but i have too little space. senator lamar of mississippi once said: "the problem of race, in a large part, is a problem of illiteracy. most of the evils which have grown up out of the problem have arisen from a condition of ignorance, prejudice and superstition. remove these and the simpler elements of the question will come into play.... i will go with those who will go furthest in this matter." no higher note has been struck in educational ideals than in the declaration of principles adopted last winter ( ) at the meeting of the southern educational association at lexington, ky., an exclusively southern gathering of white men and women. their resolutions, which for lack of space cannot be here printed in full, should be read by every man and woman in the country who is interested in the future of democratic institutions. i copy here only a few of the declarations: . all children, regardless of race, creed, sex, or the social station or economic condition of their parents, have equal right to, and should have equal opportunity for, such education as will develop to the fullest possible degree all that is best in their individual natures, and fit them for the duties of life and citizenship in the age and community in which they live. . to secure this right and provide this opportunity to all children is the first and highest duty of the modern democratic state, and the highest economic wisdom of an industrial age and community. without universal education of the best and highest type, there can be no real democracy, either political or social; nor can agriculture, manufactures, or commerce ever attain their highest development. . education in all grades and in all legitimate directions, being for the public good, the public should bear the burden of it. the most just taxes levied by the state, or with the authority of the state, by any smaller political division, are those levied for the support of education. no expenditures can possibly produce greater returns and none should be more liberal. _the new south on negro education_ concerning negro education, i am publishing the resolutions in full, because they voice the present thought of the best leadership in the south: . we endorse the accepted policy of the states of the south in providing educational facilities for the youth of the negro race, believing that whatever the ultimate solution of this grievous problem may be, education must be an important factor in that solution. . we believe that the education of the negro in the elementary branches of education should be made thorough, and should include specific instruction in hygiene and home sanitation, for the better protection of both races. . we believe that in the secondary education of negro youth emphasis should be placed upon agriculture and the industrial occupations, including nurse training, domestic science, and home economics. . we believe that for practical, economical and psychological reasons negro teachers should be provided for negro schools. . we advise instruction in normal schools and normal institutions by white teachers, whenever possible, and closer supervision of courses of study and methods of teaching in negro normal schools by the state department of education. . we recommend that in urban and rural negro schools there should be closer and more thorough supervision, not only by city and county superintendents, but also by directors of music, drawing, manual training, and other special topics. . we urge upon school authorities everywhere the importance of adequate buildings, comfortable seating, and sanitary accommodations for negro youth. . we deplore the isolation of many negro schools, established through motives of philanthropy, from the life and the sympathies of the communities in which they are located. we recommend the supervision of all such schools by the state, and urge that their work and their methods be adjusted to the civilisation in which they exist, in order that the maximum good of the race and of the community may be thereby attained. . on account of economic and psychological differences in the two races, we believe that there should be a difference in courses of study and methods of teaching, and that there should be such an adjustment of school curricula as shall meet the evident needs of negro youth. . we insist upon such an equitable distribution of the school funds that all the youth of the negro race shall have at least an opportunity to receive the elementary education provided by the state, and in the administration of state laws, and in the execution of this educational policy, we urge patience, toleration, and justice. (signed) g. r. glenn, p. p. claxton, j. h. phillips, c. b. gibson, r. n. roark, j. h. van sickle, _committee_. in this connection also let me call attention to the reports of j. y. joyner, superintendent of education, and charles l. coon of north carolina, for a broad view of negro education. i have already shown how the south and the north came together in educational relationships in the southern education board. i have pointed it out as a tendency toward nationalisation in educational interests. but the southern education board, while it contained both northern and southern white men, was primarily interested in white education and contained no negro members. at the time the board was organised, an active interest in the negro would have defeated, in part at least, its declared purpose. [illustration: s. c. mitchell of richmond college; president of the coöperative education association of virginia.] [illustration: judge emory speer of georgia. after two terms in congress he was appointed to the federal bench. photograph by curtiss studio] [illustration: edgar gardner murphy of alabama, member southern education board; author "problems of the present south." photograph by sol. young] [illustration: dr. h. b. frissell principal hampton institute and member of southern education and jeanes fund boards. photograph by rockwood] [illustration: r. c. ogden of new york, president of the southern education board. copyright, , by pach bros.] [illustration: j. y. joyner superintendent of public instruction of north carolina. photograph by wharton & tyree] _the south, the north, and the negro at last work together_ since that time another highly significant movement has arisen. in miss jeanes, a wealthy quakeress of philadelphia, gave $ , , for the encouragement of negro primary education. she placed it in the hands of dr. h. b. frissell of hampton and dr. booker t. washington of tuskegee. in the organisation of the board for the control of this fund and its work, a further step forward in nationalisation and, indeed, in the direction of democracy, was made. it marks a new development in the coöperation of all the forces for good in the solution of this difficult national problem. the membership of the board includes not only southern and northern white men, but also several leading negroes. the president and general director is a southern white man, coming of an old family, james h. dillard, dean of tulane university of new orleans. it will be of interest to publish here a full list of the members, because they represent, in more ways than one, the new leadership not only in the south, but in the nation: southern white men: james h. dillard, president. david c. barrow, chancellor university of georgia. belton gilreath, manufacturer and mine-owner, alabama. dr. s. c. mitchell, of richmond college, richmond, va. northern white men: robert c. ogden, of new york. andrew carnegie, of new york. talcott williams, of philadelphia. george mcaneny, president of the city club of new york. william h. taft, of ohio. to these must be added: dr. h. b. frissell, of hampton institute, a northerner, whose work and residence has long been in the south. george foster peabody, treasurer, a georgian, trustee of the university of georgia, who resides in the north. walter h. page, the editor of the _world's work_, a north carolinian who has long lived in the north. negro membership: booker t. washington. bishop abraham grant, of kan. r. r. moton, of hampton institute, secretary of the board. j. c. napier, a banker of nashville, tenn. r. d. smith, a farmer of paris, tex. in a true sense the southern education board and the jeanes fund board represent organisations of working idealists. such coöperation as this, between reasonable, broad-minded, and unselfish men of the entire country, is, at the present moment, the real solution of our problems. it is the solution of the negro problem--all the solution there ever will be. for there is no finality in human endeavour: there is only activity; and when that activity is informed with the truth and inspired with faith and courage, it is not otherwise than success, for it is the best that human nature at any given time can do. in making this statement, i do not, of course wish to infer that conditions are as good as can be expected, and that nothing remains to be done. as a matter of fact, the struggle is just beginning; as i have shown in previous chapters, all the forces of entrenched prejudice and ignorance are against the movement, the political leaders who still dominate the south are as hostile as they dare to be. the task is, indeed, too big for the south alone, or the north alone, or the white man alone: it will require all the strength and courage the nation possesses. _universities feel the new impulse_ besides the campaign for better common schools, the educational revival has also renewed and revivified all the higher institutions of learning in the south. the state universities, especially, have been making extraordinary progress. i shall not soon forget my visit to the university of georgia, at athens, nor the impression i received while there of strong men at work, not merely erecting buildings of mortar and brick, but establishing a new sort of university system, which shall unify and direct to one common end all of the educational activities of the state: beginning with the common school and reaching upward to the university itself; including the agricultural and industrial schools, and even the negro college of agriculture. the university of georgia is one of the oldest state colleges in america, and the ambition of its leaders is to make it one of the greatest. mr. hodgson drove me around the campus, which has recently been extended until it contains nearly , acres. he showed me where the new buildings are to be, the drives and the bridges. much of it is yet a vision of the future, but it is the sort of vision that comes true. i spent a day with president soule of the agricultural college, on his special educational train, which covered a considerable part of the state of georgia, stopping at scores of towns where the speakers appeared before great audiences of farmers and made practical addresses on cotton and corn and cattle-raising, and on education generally. and everywhere the practical work of these public educators was greeted with enthusiasm. i heard from professor stewart of his work in organising rural high schools, in encouraging local taxation, and in bringing the work of the public schools into closer correlation with that of the university. seeing the educational work of states like georgia, north carolina, virginia, and others, one cannot but feel that the time is coming shortly when the north will be going south for new ideas and new inspiration in education. in a brief review like this, i have been able, of course, to give only the barest outline of a very great work, and i have mentioned only a few among hundreds of leaders; the work i have described is only illustrative of what is going on in greater or less degree everywhere in the south. many important developments have come from these campaigns for education. the actual building of new school-houses and the expenditure of more money for the struggle with illiteracy is only one of many results. for the crusade for education, supplemented by the new industrial impulse in the south, has awakened a new spirit of self-help. the success with which the public was aroused in the educational campaign has inspired leaders in all lines of activity with new courage and faith. it is a spirit of youthfulness which is not afraid to attempt anything. much printers' ink has been expended in trying to account for the spread of the anti-saloon movement throughout the south. but there is nothing strange about it: it is, indeed, only another manifestation of the new southern spirit, the desire to get things right in the south. and this movement will further stir men's minds, develop self-criticism, and reveal to the people their power of concerted action whether the politicians are with them or not. it is, indeed, significant that the women of the south, perhaps for the first time, have become a powerful influence in public affairs. their organisations have helped, in some instances led, in both the educational and the anti-saloon movement. no leaders in the virginia educational movement have been more useful than mrs. l. r. dashiell and mrs. b. b. munford of richmond. practically all the progress of the south, both industrial and educational, has been made by non-political movements and non-political leaders--often in opposition to the political leaders. indeed, nearly every one of the hopeful movements of the south has had to capture some entrenched stronghold of the old political captains. in several states, for example, the school systems a few years ago were crippled by political domination and nepotism. superintendents, principals, and teachers were frequently appointed not for their ability, but because they were good members of the party or because they were related to politicians. _new statesmen against old politicians_ in alabama i found prominent men attacking the fee system of payment of lesser magistrates. the evil in this system lies in the encouragement it gives to trivial litigation and the arrest of citizens for petty offences. let me give a single example. a negro had another negro arrested for "'sault and battery." both appeared in court. the accused negro was tried, and finally sent to the chain-gang. the justice suggested to the convicted man that if he wanted satisfaction he should turn around and have his accuser arrested; which he did, promptly accusing him of "'busive language." another trial was held; and in the end both negroes found themselves side by side in the chain-gang; the magistrate, the constable, the sheriff, had all drawn liberal fees, and the private contractor who hired the chain-gang, and who also "stood in" with the politicians, had obtained another cheap labourer for his work. it is a vicious circle, which has enabled the politicians and their backers to profit at every turn from the weakness and evil of both negro and low-class white man. in attacking the fee system and the old, evil chain-gang system as the new leaders are doing in many parts of the south, in closing the saloons (always a bulwark of low politics), in building up a new school system free from selfish control, the new leaders are striking squarely at the roots of the old political aristocracy, undermining it and cutting it away. it is sure to fall; and in its place the south will rear a splendid new leadership of constructive ability and unselfish patriotism. there will be a division on matters of vital concern, and a turning from ancient and worn-out issues to new interests and activities. when that time comes the whole nation will again profit by the genius of southern statesmanship and we shall again have southern presidents. already the old type of politician sees the handwriting of fate. he knows not which way to turn. at one moment he harps more fiercely and bitterly than ever before on the issue which has maintained him so long in power, the negro; and at the next moment he seizes frantically on some one of the new issues--education, prohibition, anti-railroad--hoping thereby to maintain himself and his old party control. but he cannot do it; every force in the south is already making for new things, for more democracy, for more nationalisation. chapter xiv what to do about the negro--a few conclusions the deeper one delves into the problem of race, the humbler he becomes concerning his own views. studying a black man, he discovers that he must study human nature. the best he can do, then, is to present his latest and clearest thought, knowing that newer light and deeper knowledge may modify his conclusions. it is out of such expressions of individual thought (no one man has or can have all the truth) and the kindly discussion which follows it (and why shouldn't it be kindly?) that arises finally that power of social action which we call public opinion. together--not otherwise--we may approach the truth. the world to-day is just beginning to meet new phases of the problem of race difference. improved transportation and communication are yearly making the earth smaller. as americans we are being brought every year into closer contact with black and yellow people. we are already disturbed not only by a negro race problem, but on our pacific coast and in hawaii we have a japanese and chinese problem. in the philippine islands we have a tangle of race problems in comparison with which our southern situation seems simple. other nations are facing complexities equally various and difficult. england's problems in both south africa and india are largely racial. the great issue in australia, where chinese labour has become a political question, is expressed in the campaign slogan: "a white australia." _what is the race problem?_ essentially, then, what is the race problem? the race problem is the problem of living with human beings who are not like us, whether they are, in our estimation, our "superiors" or "inferiors," whether they have kinky hair or pigtails, whether they are slant-eyed, hook-nosed, or thick-lipped. in its essence it is the same problem, magnified, which besets every neighbourhood, even every family. in our own country we have , , negroes distributed among , , white people. they did not come here to invade us, or because they wanted to come. we brought them by force, and at a fearful and cruel sacrifice of life. we brought them, not to do them good, but selfishly, that they might be compelled to do the hard work and let us live lazily, eat richly, sleep softly. we treated them as beasts of burden. i say "we," for the north owned slaves, too, at first, and emancipated them (by selling them to the south) because it did not pay to keep them. nor was the anti-slavery sentiment peculiar to the north; voices were raised against the institution of slavery by many southern statesmen from jefferson down--men who knew by familiar observation of the evil of slavery, especially for the white man. _differences between southern and northern attitudes toward the race problem_ but differences are apparent in the outlook of the south and north which must be pointed out before we can arrive at any general conclusions. by understanding the reasons for race feeling we shall be the better able to judge of the remedies proposed. in the first place, the south is still clouded with bitter memories of the war, and especially of the reconstruction period. the north cannot understand how deep and real this feeling is, how it has been warped into the souls of even the third generation. the north, victorious, forgot; but the south, broken and defeated, remembered. until i had been a good while in the south and talked with many people i had no idea what a social cataclysm like the civil war really meant to those who are defeated, how long it echoes in the hearts of men and women. the negro has indeed suffered--suffered on his way upward; but the white man, with his higher cultivation, his keener sensibilities, his memories of a departed glory, has suffered far more. i have tried, as i have listened to the stories of struggle which only the south knows, to put myself in the place of these anglo-saxon men and women, and i think i can understand a little at least of what it must have meant to meet defeat, loss of relatives and friends, grinding poverty, the chaos of reconstruction--and after all that to have, always at elbow-touch, the unconscious cause of all their trouble, the millions of inert, largely helpless negroes who, imbued with a sharp sense of their rights, are attaining only slowly a corresponding appreciation of their duties and responsibilities. the ruin of the war left the south poor, and it has provided itself slowly with educational advantages. it is a long step behind the north in the average of education among white people not less than coloured. but more than all else, perhaps, the south is in the throes of vast economic changes. it is in the transition stage between the old wasteful, semi-feudal civilisation and the sharp new city and industrial life. it is suffering the common pains of readjustment; and, being hurt, it is not wholly conscious of the real reason. for example, many of the troubles between the races attributed to the perversity of the negro are often only the common difficulties which arise out of the relationship of employer and employee. in other words, difficulties in the south are often attributed to the race problem which in the north we know as the labour problem. for the south even yet has not fully established itself on the wage system. payment of negroes in the country is still often a matter of old clothes, baskets from the white man's kitchen or store, with occasionally a little money, which is often looked upon as an indulgence rather than a right. no race ever yet has sprung directly from slavery into the freedom of a full-fledged wage system, no matter what the laws were. it is not insignificant of progress that the "basket habit" is coming to be looked upon as thievery, organised charity in the cities is taking the place of indiscriminate personal gifts, wages are more regularly paid and measure more accurately the value of the service rendered. but the relationships between the races still smack in no small degree, especially in matters of social contact (which are always the last to change), of the old feudal character; they are personal and sentimental. they express themselves in the personal liking for the old "mammies," in the personal contempt for the "smart negro." a large part of the south still believes that the negro was created to serve the white man, and for no other purpose. this is especially the belief in the conservative country districts. "if these negroes become doctors and merchants or buy their own farms," a southern woman said to me as a clinching argument against negro education, "what shall we do for servants?" another reason for the feeling in the south against the negro is that the south has never had any other labouring class of people (to speak of) with which to compare the negro. all the employers have been white; most of the workers have been black. the north, on the other hand, has had a constant procession of ignorant working people of various sorts. the north is familiar with the progress of alien people, wherein the workingman of to-day becomes the employer of to-morrow--which has not happened in the south. _confusion of labour and race problems_ an illustration of the confusion between the race problem and the labour problem is presented in certain southern neighbourhoods by the influx of european immigrants. because the italian does the work of the negro, a tendency exists to treat him like a negro. in louisiana on the sugar plantations italian white women sometimes work under negro foremen and no objection is made. a movement is actually under way in mississippi to keep the children of italian immigrants out of the white schools. in not a few instances white workmen have been held in peonage like negroes; several such cases are now pending in the courts. here is a dispatch showing how new italian immigrants were treated in one part of mississippi--only the italians, unlike the negroes, have an active government behind them: mobile, ala., october .--the italian government has taken notice of the situation at sumrall, miss., where the native whites are endeavouring to keep italian children out of the schools and where a leader of the italians was taken to the woods and whipped. the italian consul at new orleans, count g. morroni, reached mobile this afternoon and began an investigation of the situation. he to-day heard the story of frank seaglioni, the leader of the italian colony at sumrall, who was a few days ago decoyed from his home at night with a bogus message from new orleans and unmercifully whipped by a mob of white men. a decided tendency also exists to charge up to the negro, because he is a negro, all the crimes which are commonly committed by any ignorant, neglected, poverty-stricken people. only last summer we had in new york what the newspaper reporters called a "crime wave." the crime in that case was what is designated in the south as the "usual crime" (offences against women) for which negroes are lynched. but in new york not a negro was implicated. i was struck while in philadelphia by a presentment of a grand jury in judge kinsey's court upon the subject of a "crime wave" which read thus: in closing our duties as jurymen, we wish to call to the attention of this court the large proportion of cases presented to us for action wherein the offences were charged to either persons of foreign birth or those of the coloured race, and we feel that some measures should be taken to the end that our city should be relieved of both the burden of the undesirable alien and the irresponsible coloured person. here, it will be seen, the "undesirable alien" and "irresponsible coloured person" are classed together, although it is significant of the greater prejudice against the coloured man that the newspaper report of the action of the grand jury should be headed "negro crime abnormal," without referring to the alien at all. when i inquired at the prosecutor's office about the presentiment, i was told: "oh, the dagoes are just as bad as the negroes." and both are bad, not because they are negroes or italians, but because they are ignorant, neglected, poverty-stricken. thus in the dust and confusion of the vast readjustments now going on in the south, the discomfort of which both races feel but neither quite understands, we have the white man blindly blaming the negro and the negro blindly hating the white. when they both understand that many of the troubles they are having are only the common gall-spots of the new industrial harness there will be a better living together. i do not wish to imply, of course, that an industrial age or the wage system furnishes an ideal condition for race relationships; for in the north the negro's struggle for survival in the competitive field is accompanied, as i have shown elsewhere, by the severest suffering. the condition of negroes in indianapolis, new york, and philadelphia is in some ways worse than it is anywhere in the south. but, say what we will, the wage system is one step upward from the old feudalism. the negro is treated less like a slave and more like a man in the north. it is for this reason that negroes, no matter what their difficulties of making a living in the north, rarely wish to go back to the south. and as the south develops industrially it will approximate more nearly to northern conditions. in southern cities to-day, because of industrial development, the negro is treated more like a man than he is in the country; and this is one reason why negroes crowd into the cities and can rarely be persuaded to go back into the country--unless they can own their own land. but the south is rapidly shaking off the remnants of the old feudalism. development of mines and forests, the extension of manufacturing, the introduction of european immigrants, the inflow of white northerners, better schools, more railroads and telephones, are all helping to bring the south up to the economic standard of the north. there will be a further break-up of baronial tenant farming, the plantation store will disappear, the ruinous credit system will be abolished, and there will be a widespread appearance of independent farm-owners, both white and black. this will all tend to remove the personal and sentimental attitude of the old southern life; the negro will of necessity be judged more and more as a man, not as a slave or dependent. in short, the country, south and north, will become economically more homogeneous. but even when the south reaches the industrial development of the north the negro problem will not be solved; it is certainly not solved in new york or philadelphia, where industrial development has reached its highest form. the prejudice in those cities, as i have shown, has been growing more intense as negro population increased. what, then, will happen? _two elements in every race problem_ two elements appear in every race problem: the first, race prejudice--the repulsion of the unlike; second, economic or competitive jealousy. both operate, for example, in the case of the irishman or italian, but with the negro and chinaman race prejudice is greater because the difference is greater. the difficulty of the negro in this country is the colour of his skin, the symbol of his difference. in china the difficulty of the white trader is his whiteness, his difference. race lines, in short, are drawn by white men, not because the other race is inferior (the japanese and chinese are in many ways our superiors), nor because of criminality (certain classes of foreigners are more criminal in our large cities than the negroes), nor because of laziness, but because of discernible physical differences--black skin, almond eyes, pigtails, hook noses, a peculiar bodily odour, or small stature. that dislike of a different people is more or less instinctive in all men. a tendency has existed on the part of northern students who have no first-hand knowledge of the masses of negroes to underestimate the force of race repulsion; on the other hand, the southern student who is confronted with the negroes themselves is likely to overestimate racial repulsion and underestimate economic competition as a cause of the difficulty. the profoundest question, indeed, is to decide how much of the so-called problem is due to race repulsion and how much to economic competition. this leads us to the most sinister phase of the race problem. as i have shown, we have the two elements of conflict: instinctive race repulsion and competitive jealousy. what is easier for the race in power, the white race in this country (the yellow race in asia) than to play upon race instinct in order to serve selfish ends? how shrewdly the labour union, whether in san francisco or atlanta, seizes upon that race hatred to keep the black or yellow man out of the union and thereby control all the work for its members! race prejudice played upon becomes a tool in clinching the power of the labour monopoly. how the politician in the south excites race hatred in order that he may be elected to office! vardaman governed because he could make men hate one another more bitterly than his opponent. the rev. thomas dixon has appealed in his books and plays to the same passion. in several places in this country negroes have been driven out by mobs--not because they were criminal, or because they were bad citizens, but because they were going into the grocery and drug business, they were becoming doctors, dentists, and the like, and taking away the trade of their white competitors. so the stores and restaurants of highly efficient japanese were wrecked in san francisco. what is easier or cruder to use as a weapon for crushing a rival than the instinctive dislike of man for man? and that usage is not peculiar to the white man. in africa the black man wastes no time with the different-looking white man; he kills him, if he dares, on the spot. and how ably the chinaman has employed the instinctive hatred of his countrymen for "foreign devils" in order to fight american trade and traders! we hate the chinaman and drive him out, and he hates us and drives us out. _chief danger of race prejudice_ and this is one of the dangers of the race problem in this country--the fostering of such an instinct to make money or to get political office. such a basis of personal prosperty is all the more dangerous because the white man is in undisputed power in this country; the negro has no great navy behind him; he is like a child in the house of a harsh parent. all that stands between him and destruction is the ethical sense of the white man. will the white man's sense of justice and virtue be robust enough to cause him to withhold the hand of unlimited power? will he see, as booker t. washington says, that if he keeps the negro in the gutter he must stay there with him? the white man and his civilisation, not alone the negro, will rise or fall by that ethical test. the negro, on his part, as i have shown repeatedly in former chapters, employs the same methods as the white man, for negro nature is not different from human nature. he argues: "the white man hates you; hate him. trade with negro storekeepers; employ negro doctors; don't go to white dentists and lawyers." out of this condition proceed two tendencies. the first is the natural result of mutual fear and suspicion, and that is, a rapid flying apart of the races. all through my former chapters i have been showing how the negroes are being segregated. so are the chinese segregated, and the blacks in south africa, and certain classes in india. parts of the south are growing blacker. negroes crowd into "coloured quarters" in the cities. more and more they are becoming a people wholly apart--separate in their churches, separate in their schools, separate in cars, conveyances, hotels, restaurants, with separate professional men. in short, we discover tendencies in this country toward the development of a caste system. now, one of the most striking facts in our recent history is the progress of the former slave. and this finds its world parallel in the progress of people whom the vainglorious anglo-saxon once despised: the japanese, chinese, and east indians. in forty years the negro has advanced a distance that would have been surprising in almost any race. in the bare accomplishments--area of land owned, crops raised, professional men supported, business enterprises conducted, books and poetry written, music composed, pictures painted--the slaves of forty years ago have made the most astonishing progress. this leads to the second tendency, which proceeds slowly out of the growing conviction that hatred and suspicion and fear as motives in either national or individual progress will not work; that there must be some other way for different people to work side by side in peace and justice. and thus we discover a tendency toward a friendly living together under the new relationship, in which the negro is not a slave or a dependent, but a man and a citizen. booker t. washington preaches the gospel of this new life. and gradually as race prejudice becomes inconvenient, threatens financial adversity, ruffles the smooth current of comfortable daily existence, the impulse grows to set it aside. men don't keep on fighting when it is no longer profitable to fight. and thus, side by side, these two impulses exist--the one pointing toward the development of a hard caste system which would ultimately petrify our civilisation as it has petrified that of india; and the other looking to a reasonable, kindly, and honourable working together of the races. _what are the remedies for the evil conditions?_ so much for conditions; what of remedies? i have heard the most extraordinary remedies proposed. serious men actually talk of the deportation of the entire negro population to africa, not stopping to inquire whether we have any right to deport them, or calculating the economic revolution and bankruptcy which the deportation of the entire labouring class would cause in the south, without stopping to think that even if we could find a spot in the world for , , negroes, and they all wanted to go, that all the ships flying the american flag, if constantly employed, could probably not transport the natural increase of the negro population, let alone the , , present inhabitants. i have heard talk of segregation in reservations, like the indians--segregation out of existence! i have even heard unspeakable talk of the wholesale extinction of the race by preventing the breeding of children! all quack remedies and based upon hatred, not upon justice. there is no sudden or cut-and-dried solution of the negro problem, or of any other problem. men are forever demanding formulæ which will enable them to progress without effort. they seek to do quickly by medication what can only be accomplished by deliberate hygiene. a problem that has been growing for two hundred and fifty years in america, and for thousands of years before that in africa, warping the very lives of the people concerned, changing their currents of thought as well as their conduct, cannot be solved in forty years. why expect it? and yet there are definite things that can be done which, while working no immediate miracles, will set our faces to the light and keep us trudging toward the true goal. down at the bottom--it will seem trite, but it is eternally true--the cause of the race "problem" and most other social problems is simply lack of understanding and sympathy between man and man. and the remedy is equally simple--a gradual substitution of understanding and sympathy for blind repulsion and hatred. consider, for example, the atlanta riot. increasing misunderstanding and hatred caused a dreadful explosion and bloodshed. what happened? instantly the wisest white men in atlanta invited the wisest coloured men to meet them. they got together: general explanations followed. they found that there had been error on both sides; they found that there were reasonable human beings on both sides. one of the leading white men said: "i did not know there were any such broad-minded negroes in the south." in other words, they tried to understand and sympathise with one another. over and over again men will be found hating negroes, or chinamen, or "dagoes," and yet liking some individual negro, or chinaman, or "dago." when they get acquainted they see that the negro or chinaman is a human being like themselves, full of faults, but not devoid of good qualities. as a fundamental proposition, then, it will be found that the solution of the negro problem lies in treating the negro more and more as a human being like ourselves. treating the negro as a human being, we must judge him, not by his colour, or by any other outward symbol, but upon his worth as a man. nothing that fails of that full honesty and fairness of judgment in the smallest particular will suffice. we disgrace and injure ourselves more than we do the negro when we are not willing to admit virtue or learning or power in another human being because his face happens to be yellow or black. of the soundness of this fundamental standard of judgment there can be no doubt; the difficulty lies in applying it practically to society as it is to-day. in the suggestions which i offer here i am trying to do two things: to outline the present programme, and to keep open a clear view to the future goal. _shall the negro vote?_ let us approach, then, without fear the first of the three groups of problems--political, industrial, and social--which confront us. shall the negro vote? thousands of negroes in this country are fully as well equipped, fully as patriotic, as the average white citizen. moreover, they are as much concerned in the real welfare of the country. the principle that our forefathers fought for, "taxation only with representation," is as true to-day as it ever was. on the other hand, the vast majority of negroes (and many foreigners and "poor whites") are still densely ignorant, and have little or no appreciation of the duties of citizenship. it seems right that they should be required to wait before being allowed to vote until they are prepared. a wise parent hedges his son about with restrictions; he does not authorise his signature at the bank or allow him to run a locomotive; and until he is twenty-one years old he is disfranchised and has no part in the government. but the parent restricts his son because it seems the wisest course for him, for the family, and for the state that he should grow to manhood before he is burdened with grave responsibilities. so the state limits suffrage; and rightly limits it, so long as it accompanies that limitation with a determined policy of education. but the suffrage law is so executed in the south to-day as to keep many capable negroes from the exercise of their rights, to prevent recognition of honest merit, and it is executed unjustly as between white men and coloured. it is no condonement of the southern position to say that the north also disfranchises a large part of the negro vote by bribery, which it does; it is only saying that the north is also wrong. as for the agitation for the repeal of the fifteenth amendment to the federal constitution, which gives the right of suffrage to the coloured man, it must be met by every lover of justice and democracy with a face of adamant. if there were only one negro in the country capable of citizenship, the way for him must, at least, be kept open. no doubt full suffrage was given to the mass of negroes before they were prepared for it, while yet they were slaves in everything except bodily shackles, and the result during the reconstruction period was disastrous. but the principle of a free franchise--fortunately, as i believe, for this country--has been forever established. if the white man is not willing to meet the negro in any contest whatsoever without plugging the dice, then he is not the superior but the inferior of the negro. _what shall be the industrial relation of the races?_ so much for the political relationships of the races. how about the industrial relationships? the same test of inherent worth must here also apply, and the question will not be settled until it does apply. a carpenter must be asked, not "what colour are you?" but "how cunningly and efficiently can you build a house?" of all absurdities, the judgment of the skill of a surgeon by the kink of his hair will certainly one day be looked upon as the most absurd. the same observation applies broadly to the attempt to confine a whole people, regardless of their capabilities, to menial occupations because they are dark-coloured. no, the place of the negro is the place he can fill most efficiently and the longer we attempt to draw artificial lines the longer we shall delay the solution of the race problem. on the other hand, the negro must not clamour for places he cannot yet fill. "the trouble with the negro," says booker t. washington, "is that he is all the time trying to get recognition, whereas what he should do is to get something to recognise." negroes as a class are to-day far inferior in education, intelligence, and efficiency to the white people as a class. here and there an able negro will develop superior abilities; but the mass of negroes for years to come must find their activities mostly in physical and more or less menial labour. like any race, they must first prove themselves in these simple lines of work before they can expect larger opportunities. there must always be men like dr. dubois who agitate for rights; their service is an important one, but at the present time it would seem that the thing most needed was the teaching of such men as dr. washington, emphasising duties and responsibilities, urging the negro to prepare himself for his rights. _social contact_ we come now, having considered the political and industrial relationships of the races, to the most difficult and perplexing of all the phases of the negro question--that of social contact. political and industrial relationships are more or less outward, but social contact turns upon the delicate and deep questions of home life, personal inclinations, and of privileges rather than rights. it is always in the relationships of oldest developments, like those that cling around the home, that human nature is slowest to change. indeed, much of the complexity of the negro problem has arisen from a confusion in people's minds between rights and privileges. everyone recalls the excitement caused--it became almost a national issue--when president roosevelt invited booker t. washington to luncheon at the white house. well, that feeling is deep in the south, as deep almost as human nature. many northern people who go south to live come to share it; indeed, it is the gravest question in ethics to decide at what point natural instincts should be curbed. social contact is a privilege, not a right; it is not a subject for legislation or for any other sort of force. "social questions," as colonel watterson of kentucky says, "create their own laws and settle themselves. they cannot be forced." all such relationships will work themselves out gradually, naturally, quietly, in the long course of the years: and the less they are talked about the better. _jim crow laws_ as for the jim crow laws in the south, many of them, at least, are at present necessary to avoid the danger of clashes between the ignorant of both race. they are the inevitable scaffolding of progress. as a matter of fact, the negro has profited in one way by such laws. for the white man has thus driven the negroes together, forced ability to find its outlet in racial leadership, and by his severity produced a spirit of self-reliance which would not otherwise have existed. dr. frissell of hampton is always talking to his students of the "advantages of disadvantages." as for laws against the intermarriage of the races, they do not prevent what they are designed to prevent: the mixing of white and coloured blood. in many parts of the south, despite the existence of such laws, miscegenation, though decreasing rapidly, still continues. on the other hand, in the north, where negroes and whites may marry, there is actually very little marriage and practically no concubinage. the solution of this question, too, lies far more in education than in law. as a matter of fact, the more education both races receive, the less the amalgamation. in the south, as in the north, the present tendency of the educated and prosperous negroes is to build up a society of their own, entirely apart from and independent of white people. as i have shown in a former chapter, a white woman in the north who marries a negro is declassed--ostracised by both races. the danger of amalgamation lies with ignorant and vicious people, black or white, not with educated and sensitive people. as in the case of the jim crow laws, separate schools in the south are necessary, and in one way i believe them to be of great advantage to the negroes themselves. in northern cities like indianapolis and new york, where there are no separation laws of any kind, separate schools have appeared, naturally and quietly, in districts where the negro population is dense. that the pupils in each should be treated with exact justice in the matter of expenditures by the state is axiomatic. and the negro boy should have the same unbounded opportunity for any sort of education he is capable of using as the white boy; nothing less will suffice. one influence at present growing rapidly will have its profound effect on the separation laws. though a tendency exists toward local segregation of negroes to which i have already referred, there is also a counter-tendency toward a scattering of negroes throughout the entire country. the white population in the south, now , , against , , negroes, is increasing much more rapidly than the negro population. the death-rate of negroes is exceedingly high; and the sharper the conditions of competition with white workers, the greater will probably be the limitation of increase of the more inefficient negro population. as for the predictions of "amalgamation," "a mongrel people," "black domination," and other bogies of prophecy, we must not, as i see it, give them any weight whatsoever. we cannot regulate our short lives by the fear of something far in the future which will probably never happen at all. all we can do is to be right at this moment and let the future take care of itself; it will anyway. there is no other sane method of procedure. much as we may desire it, the future arrangement of this universe is not in our hands. as to the matter of "superiority" or "inferiority," it is not a subject of argument at all; nor can we keep or attain "superiority" by laws or colour lines, or in any other way, except by being superior. if we are right, absolutely right, in the eternal principles, we can rest in peace that the matter of our superiority will take care of itself. _the real solution of the negro problem_ i remember asking a wise southern man i met what, in his opinion, was the chief factor in the solution of the negro problem. "time," he said, "and patience." but time must be occupied with discipline and education--more and more education, not less education, education that will teach first of all the dignity of service not only for negroes but for white men. the white man, south and north, needs it quite as much as the coloured man. and this is exactly the programme of the new southern statesmanship of which i spoke in a former chapter. these wise southerners have resolved to forget the discouragements and complexities of the negro problem, forget even their disagreements, and go to work on present problems: the development of education and industry. whether we like it or not the whole nation (indeed, the whole world) is tied by unbreakable bonds to its negroes, its chinamen, its slum-dwellers, its thieves, its murderers, its prostitutes. we cannot elevate ourselves by driving them back either with hatred or violence or neglect; but only by bringing them forward: by service. for good comes to men, not as they work alone, but as they work together with that sympathy and understanding which is the only true democracy. the great teacher never preached the flat equality of men, social or otherwise. he gave mankind a working principle by means of which, being so different, some white, some black, some yellow, some old, some young, some men, some women, some accomplished, some stupid--mankind could, after all, live together in harmony and develop itself to the utmost possibility. and that principle was the golden rule. it is the least sentimental, the most profoundly practical teaching known to men. index index a alcorn college, . alderman, president edwin a., , , , . amalgamation of races, , , . amos, moses, . atlanta, colour line in, . riot, . atlanta university, , , , , . b barrow, chancellor d. c., , . bassett, professor john spencer, . black belt, . boston, race prejudice in, . prosperous negroes in, . bowie, sydney j., . boycott by negroes, . bradley, rev. h. s., quoted, . brittain, m. l., quoted, . brown, j. pope, . broyles, judge, , . bulkley, william l., quoted, , . "bumptiousness," . buttrick, dr. wallace, . c cable, george w., . cable, george w., the novelist, . carnegie, andrew, , . chain-gang, , , , . chambers, frank r., . charities, attitude toward negroes, , , . churches, negro, , . civil service, negroes in, . "clansman, the," . clark university, . clark, walter, president mississippi cotton association, quoted, . claxton, p. p., , . cocaine, use of by negroes, , , . colour line, drawn by negroes, . concubinage, a case of, . convicts, negro, make profits for georgia, . cooper, w. g., report on atlanta riot, . cotton mill workers, , . courts and the negro, , , , , . credit system, influence on negro, . crime against women, , , . as incentive to riot, , , , , , . condoned to keep negro on farms, . juvenile, , . "crossing the line," . cunningham, acting governor, . currie, j. h., district attorney, quoted, . d danville, ill., lynching, . davis, jefferson, way with negroes, , . davis, senator jeff, , , . death rate among negroes, . dickerman, dr. g. s., . dillard, professor james h., , . dixon, rev. thomas, , , . dubois, dr. w. e. b., , , , , , , . e edmonds, r. h., . education, , . booker t. washington on, . in south, , . negro, . "new south" on negro, . f farmer, negro, , . in the north, , . organization among, . fear of negroes, . prevalence of, in the south, . few, dean william preston, . fifteenth amendment, , . fisk university, . fleming, ex-congressman william h., . fraternal orders, . "free persons of colour" . free speech, . fries, henry e., . frissell, dr. h. b., of hampton, , , , . furniss, dr. s. a., quoted, . g gaines, bishop, j. w., . galloway, bishop c. b., . gammon theological seminary, , . george, p. s., letter, . gilreath, belton, . grady, henry w., . grant, bishop abram, . graves, john temple, . h hampton institute, , . hampton, general wade, . hanna, h. h., . harrah, charles j., president midvale steel company, quoted, . harvard university, colour line at, . hill, walter b., chancellor, . hopkins, charles t., , , . houston, president d. f., . howell, clark, editor atlanta _constitution_, . huntsville, alabama, lynching, . i immigrants in the south, , , . take negroes' places, . intermarriage of races, , , . j jeanes fund, . "jim crow," laws, , , , , , , , , , , . johnson, mayor tom, . joyner, j. y., , , . k ku klux klan, , . l labour problems in north, . in south, , , , , . labour unions, attitude toward negroes, , , . lamar, senator j. q., , . landrum, rev. w. w., . lane, charles p., letter, . lawlessness, as incentive to riot, , , , . leaders of negro race, . legislation against negroes, . lynching, . m mcaneny, george, . mciver, charles d., . manley, charles quoted, . manning, joseph c., . medicines, patent and the negro, , . mertins, george frederick, quoted, . miller, professor kelley, quoted, . millsaps, major r. w., . mims, professor edwin, . miscegenation, , . mitchell, professor s. c., , , , . mob, psychology of, , . mob, rule results of, . money, united states senator, h. d., . moton, r. r., . mulattoes, . leaders of the race, . murphy, edgar gardner, . n napier, j. c., . negroes, boycott by, . domination of, . driven out, . in government service, . in northern cities, . in street cars, . labour unions, . land ownership among, . private schools, . racial consciousness among, . what they talk about, . why they go to cities, . with white blood, . worthless, . (_see_ vagrants) negro business enterprises, . business league, . dramatic efforts, , . in boston, , . story of negro druggist, . story of successful farmer, . newspapers, influence of sensational, , . negro, . niagara movement, . northen, ex-governor w. j., , , . o "ogden movement," . ogden, robert c., , . organised labour and the negro, . orphans, negro, . p page, walter h., , . parties among negroes, . peabody, george foster, , . penn, dr. w. f., , . peonage, . politics, negro in, , , , , . and lynching, , . populism in south, . porters, pullman, . prejudice, race, in north, , , , , . in churches, . negro, . prejudice, race, and economic necessity, . cases of, , . superficial manifestations, , . prohibition movement, . psychology of the south, ; mob, . r race, world problems of, . rape, investigation of cases, . trial of negro for, . a northern case, . reconstruction, . rice, dr. j. a., quoted, . rice, rev. theron h., quoted, . richardson, congressman william, quoted, . riot, atlanta, . riots, effect on crime, ; in northern cities, , ; wilmington, ; lynching riot at danville, ; at huntsville, ala., ; at springfield, o., ; at statesboro, ga., . s saloons, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . schools, appropriations for, . in atlanta, . in bad neighbourhoods, . in north, , . industrial, , . north carolina, . private for negroes, . retrogression of negro, . separate, . why negroes are not in, . secret societies among negroes, . segregation of races, ; natural going on, . settlement work among negroes, , , . shaw, albert, . sickness among negroes, . slade, professor andrew, . slavery, evils of, . smith, governor hoke, , , , , , , , . smith, r. d., . social contact of races, . solution of race problems, . soule, president a. m., . "souls of black folk, the," . south carolina, political struggles in, . southern education board, , . speake, judge paul, . speer, judge emory, . springfield, o., lynching, . and riot, . statesboro, ga., lynching, . stewart, professor j. b., . strikes and negroes, . swanson, governor claude a., , , , . t taft, william h., . tatum, stewart l., . tenant system, , , . thomas, judge william h., . tillman, senator b. r., , , , , , , . trades, negroes in, , . trinity college, . troy, alexander, letter, . tuberculosis among negroes, . tuskegee, , , , . u university of georgia, . v vagrants among negroes, , , , , . vardaman, governor j. k., , , , , , , . vernon, w. t., register of treasury, . vice among negroes, , . vote, shall the negro? . w washington, booker t., , , , , , , , , , , , , , . watterson, henry, . weather and mobs, . white, rev. john e., , , . whitlock, hardy h., sheriff, . wilberforce college, . williams, "pegleg," . williams, talcott, . wilmer, rev. c. b., , . women, negro, arrested in atlanta, . clubs, , . morals of, , . wright, president r. r., . wright, professor r. r., jr., quoted, , , , . footnotes: [ ] since these notes were made, in , the prohibition movement has abolished all the saloons in georgia. [ ] since the closing of the saloons on january , , the number of arrests has largely decreased, but the observations here made still apply to a large number of southern cities. transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. punctuation has been corrected without note. the following misprints have been addressed: "he" corrected to "be" (page ) "thelogical" corrected to "theological" (page ) "take" corrected to "takes" (page ) "childern" corrected to "children" (page ) "on" corrected to "no" (page ) "o-morrow" corrected to "to-morrow" (page ) "negroes" corrected to "negroes" (page ) "whould" corrected to "would" (page ) "wont" corrected to "won't" (page ) missing "and" added (page ) "typsetters" corrected to "typesetters" (page ) "be" corrected to "he" (page ) "weeks" corrected to "week" (page ) "anothern" corrected to "another" (page ) "hightly" corrected to "highly" (page ) "declaractions" corrected to "declarations" (page ) "familar" corrected to "familiar" (page ) "is" corrected to "it" (page ) "govenor" corrected to "governor" (index) book was produced from images made available by the hathitrust digital library.) why colored people in philadelphia are excluded from the street cars. philadelphia: merrihew & son, printers, no. arch street, below third st. . the colored people and the cars. some remarks lately communicated to the new york anti-slavery standard, on the continued exclusion of colored people from our street cars, leave the impression that no efforts have been made here to procure for this class of people admission to these cars. this is incorrect. it will be found on inquiry, that a committee, consisting of some twenty-five or thirty gentlemen, appointed at a public meeting, in january of last year, to effect, if possible, this object, is still in existence. this committee is evidently somewhat slow. no report of its proceedings has yet been published, and the only reason suggested for its silence is, that there has been nothing good to report: an insufficient reason. but these gentlemen have not been entirely idle. it seems that immediately on their appointment, they called on the respective presidents of the nineteen street railway companies, and, in a courteous manner, requested them to withdraw from their list of running regulations the rule excluding colored people. some few favored compliance, more or less conditional, the others not; but all, or nearly all, finally settled on the subterfuge of referring the question to a car-vote of their passengers. the subterfuge answered its purpose, for the self-respecting part of the community did not vote. shortly after this vote was taken, a colored man was ejected from a car by the help of a policeman. the committee called on the late mayor henry, and respectfully inquired if this had been done by his order. his reply was: "not by my order, but with my knowledge and approbation; as the right to exclude colored people has been claimed by the railway companies, and has not been judicially determined, the police assists in maintaining the rules of the companies, to prevent breaches of the peace." and he added: "i am not with you, gentlemen; i do not wish the ladies of my family to ride in the cars with colored people." it is proper to state here, that at the time of this interview, the latest three decisions of the courts of the country, bearing on this question, had been directly against the right of exclusion,--the last being that of judge allison, of our court of quarter sessions. the committee then turned to the legislature. a bill to prevent exclusion from the cars on account of race or color had been introduced into, and passed by the senate, early in the session of , and was referred to the passenger railway committee of the house. here it was smothered. no persuasion could induce this railway committee,--twelve out of its fifteen members being republicans, and eight republicans from philadelphia,--to report the bill to the house in any shape. according to the statement of the chairman, mr. lee, the school-boy trick was resorted to of stealing it from his file, in order that it might be said that there was no such bill in the hands of the committee. this assertion was made to an inquirer, several times over, by mr. freeborn, one of its members. finally, recourse was had to the courts. funds were raised, and within the last sixteen months, the committee has attempted to bring suits for assault in seven different cases of ejection, all of which have been ignored by various grand juries,--the last only a few days ago. in one case, a white man,--a highly respectable physician,--who interposed, by remonstrance only, to prevent the ejection of a colored man, was himself ejected. he brought an action for assault, and his complaint was ignored also. in five of these cases civil actions for damages have been commenced, which are still pending. one of them, by appeal from a verdict, given under a charge of judge thompson, in nisi prius, against the ejected plaintiff, is now on its way to the supreme court in banc, where it is hoped the whole question will be finally and justly settled. the colored people at present rarely make any attempt to enter the cars. as is their wont, they submit peaceably to what they must. the last case of ejection was that of a young woman, so light of color that she was mistaken for white, and invited into a car of the union line by its conductor. when he found she was colored, he ejected her with violence, and somewhat to her personal injury. thus stands this matter at present; and such has been the action of official bodies in it. let us now see what has been the action of the unofficial public, and what spirit that public has manifested towards it indirectly, by its action on kindred matters. the claim of the colored people to enter the cars, though a local question, is inseparable from the great policy of equality before the law, now offering itself to the national acceptance; and any local fact which bears on the one relates also to the other, and is therefore relevant to this subject. and first, it is found that even colored women, when ejected from the cars with insult and violence, seldom meet with sympathy from the casual white passengers, of either sex, who are present, while the conductor often finds active partisans among them. but one white passenger has ever volunteered testimony in any case; and for want of this, generally the only proof possible, several cases have been dropped. events early last year, such as the voting in the cars, the petition of the men working at the navy yard for continued exclusion of colored people on the second and third street line, the "fillibustering" of several hundred women, employed by the government on army clothing, to defeat the fifth and sixth street experiment of admission, and other acts of violence, show clearly that the classes represented by these men and women are bitterly opposed to admission. of our seven daily newspapers, two--the _press_ and _bulletin_--have spoken out manfully and repeatedly in reproof of these outrages and in defence of the rights of the colored people. the others, it is believed, while admitting communications on both sides, have been editorially silent on the subject. in their local items, however, they have generally given a version of these disturbances unfavorable to the ejected colored people, under the heading of "riotous conduct of negroes," or some similar caption. grand juries, from the way in which their members are brought together, may be supposed fairly to represent the average public sentiment on this question, and their uniform action has been shown. colored children have never been admitted to our general public schools, and the associated friends of the freedmen in this city, who have lately adopted, as one of their cardinal rules, the admission of children of both colors, indiscriminately, to their schools in the south, consider that any effort to introduce the same rule here would be vain. only three members--generals owen, tyndale, and collis--of the military committee of arrangements of sixteen, for the late celebration of the fourth of july in this city, favored inviting colored troops to join in it; and the officers of the "california" regiment ( st p. v.) gave notice, that if such troops did parade, their regiment must decline to do so, and would forward its colors to harrisburg by express. on the th of june last there were, distributed through sixteen counties of the state, and supported by state appropriations amounting in all to $ , , twenty-nine school-homes, three being in this city, containing orphans of white soldiers; and, according to the estimate of the superintendent, by the st of december next, the number is expected to reach . but, after careful inquiry, it does not appear that an orphan child of any one of the colored soldiers who lost their lives in the service, out of the belonging, according to official records, to pennsylvania, and enlisted at camp wm. penn, has yet found its way into any of these schools, or been provided for in any manner out of the above fund. you examine the act, and find nothing there to exclude them from these privileges; you ask explanation of the school matrons, and are told that they never before heard the thing mentioned; and in reading the two annual reports of the superintendent, mr. thomas h. burrows, you find not a word implying knowledge of the fact that there was a single colored soldier enlisted in the state. now on the th of july, , at national hall, the hon. wm. d. kelley, a member of the late supervisory committee for recruiting colored regiments, in presence of his colleagues and a large concourse of people, white and colored, asked, addressing his colored auditors: "will you not spring to arms, and march to the higher destiny which awaits your race?" then turning to his colleagues and their white friends, he asked: "will you not see that their orphans are secured such educational opportunities as a great and humane commonwealth should provide for the orphans of patriots?" both these appeals were answered by loud shouts of assent. and the men of color did "spring to arms," and marched--not exactly "to the higher destiny which awaits their race," for that seems to be rather a long march. they, however, kept their pledge; the country admits that. but, men of the late supervisory committee, and the thousands whom you represented, how have you kept yours? again: at the corner of sixteenth and filbert streets, in this city, there is a most comfortable home for disabled soldiers. the state, thus far, has appropriated $ a year and the rent of the building to its support; the balance of its fund, $ , , is chiefly the proceeds of a fair held last october at the academy of music for the benefit of disabled soldiers without regard to color. colored disabled soldiers are of course admitted to this institution, as well as white, and both receive the same kind of fare. but the white inmates eat, sleep, amuse themselves, and attend the four schools of different grades, under hired teachers, in well-aired and well-lighted rooms, distributed through the high main building, separate things, for them, being kept separate. the seven colored disabled soldiers (enlisted at camp william penn) are quartered in a frame appendage to this establishment, built on the pavement of the back yard, to which their privileges are mainly restricted; and here they receive gratuitous lessons from their benevolent volunteer teacher, miss biddle. there is still room in this home for one hundred more white soldiers, but there are present accommodations for no more who are colored. an applicant, formerly of the st u. s. c. t., wounded in the hand, lately requested to be allowed quarters there for a day or two, until he could get work, and was told that the colored ward was full. another colored soldier, his regiment not known, but who had lost an arm in the service, was also lately turned away for the same reason. to the inquiry whether it is absolutely necessary to make the distinction above noted, the prompt answer is, "yes; for otherwise the white soldiers would make a row." but according to all testimony received, the white soldiers most cheerfully accorded the post of danger, during the late war, to the enlisted blacks; and that the latter as cheerfully accepted and bravely maintained this post, many battle-fields--fort wagner, port hudson and petersburg among the rest--testify. and it would seem that this fact might be used as an unanswerable reason for establishing equality of privilege in quarters where these soldiers meet in time of peace. the quarters being free of expense to all, those who might dislike the conditions could be made free to leave them. but it is found that this suggestion, when made, cannot be entertained for a moment. now let us look at the question in its political aspect. and attention may be called first to the fact that several members of the late house passenger railway committee,--the gentlemen who, in their quality of legislative abortionists, prevented the anti-exclusion bill from seeing the light,--were returned to the legislature at the last fall election, by a full party vote, although this transaction had been fully made known through the newspapers. this shows clearly that, by their course in regard to the rights of the colored people, they had not forfeited the confidence of our so-called radicals. one of these gentlemen, the same who reiterated the assertion that "there was no such bill in the hands of the committee," is reputed to be one of the most respectable and useful members of the philadelphia delegation. he is an especial favorite of the union league, of which he has become a member since his services on the above committee were rendered, and he was lately the recipient of a complimentary gift, with appropriate ceremonials, in one of its rooms, as a token of his legislative merit. this incident is mentioned only because it serves to show what manner of spirit the league is of, in regard to this question of admission; and one is constrained to believe that this spirit partakes largely of indifference, tinged with contempt, and therefore of inert opposition. and if anything were wanting to confirm this impression, it is to be found in the fact that the league declines to permit the rare distributing powers of its publication committee to be used in spreading over the state documents which distinctly advocate negro suffrage. next, it will be remembered how, last fall, all classes of republicans, from the most conservative to, with few exceptions, the most radical, united in expressions of the sincerest regret that the late mayor henry positively declined again to be their candidate. now it is the general belief of those who have all along taken an interest in this matter, that, with the assistance of the mayor, our colored people could have gained full admission to the cars more than eighteen months ago, just as similar admission was obtained for the colored people of new york, through the energetic course adopted in their favor by police commissioner ecton. there was then a sort of factitious public feeling still running in favor of colored folks; war-made abolitionism had not all melted away; peace had not come, and we might need more of them to fight for us; these facts had their effect on the public mind, and were reflected on the board of presidents; the fifth and sixth street company tried the experiment of admission for a month; their whole line was beginning to waver, when just then the mayor stepped to their side with his powerful official influence and aid, and turned the scale in their favor. in their battle with the car-invading negroes, he was their needle-gun. and yet, with a full knowledge of these facts, no one doubts that the republicans, last october, would gladly have re-elected mr. henry as their mayor, and that by a larger majority than he ever before received. and it must be admitted that the late mayor is a most respectable man. by almost universal consent, he was as brave and incorruptible in office as he has always been pure in morals and unaffected in piety in private life. possibly, here and there an extremist might be found to object, that, thus openly to set up, as he did, his own prejudices and those of his family, in the place of law, justice and humanity, as his rule of official conduct, to the manifest injury of twenty-seven thousands of innocent people, was a most shameless abuse of power and perversion of authority. but this objection, with the word shameless, cannot be admitted except "with a difference." a young child, rolling upon the carpet and freely exposing its little person, no one calls shameless; it is simply unconscious. just so was the late mayor henry. many great and good men have done gross wrongs unconsciously. paul, when he was "haling men and women," very much as our policemen were permitted to do last year, and with purposes not dissimilar, since both were actuated by the spirit of persecution, "verily thought" that he "ought to do" these things; though it is true, at that time, paul did not pretend to be a christian. we may, however, rest assured that when by such an inverted arrangement of the moral forces as is described above, only negroes are brought within the official vice and made to feel sharp pressure, neither the late mayor, nor the great majority of his friends and supporters, see the matter in any discreditable light. and it may as well be confessed, once for all, that to treat a man's sentiments in respect to negroes as of any importance, in making up your estimate of his character; or to announce, as your own motive, in whatever you may do for colored people, the simple desire to do them good, because it is just, irrespective of any object beyond, such as to save white recruits, to weaken an enemy, or to gain possible future votes,--is to bring upon yourself the contempt, secret or open, strong or mild, of nine-tenths of the people you meet. when mr. charles gibbons, in his stirring address to the union league, shortly after the murder of mr. lincoln, described this murder and other crimes of the south as "representative acts of slavery," and logically referred to the wrongs done to the colored people in this city in the same connection, the conclusion of his address was pronounced "anti-climax." "after electrifying his audience," it was said, "he flatted right down to the small matter of the cars and colored people." now while anything relating to the final position in this country of four millions of its people, a question which has already caused one war, and which may cause another, is contemptuously termed "small" by highly intelligent and influential men, we have much to learn and much to suffer before this question can be settled. another class indication of public feeling on this subject must not be passed by in silence. at a late series of large and excited meetings of our clergy and laity convened to remonstrate against the running of the street cars on sunday, not a word was said by the remonstrants, though their attention was called to the matter, against the exclusion of colored people from these cars on week-days. like the grand juries, they ignored the subject. further, it is believed that only three of the white clergy of this city have spoken, either from pulpit or platform, in reprobation of this gross wrong; and if there are cases in which saying nothing is committing sin, this would seem to be one of them. but fair and reasonable men are tired of hearing clergymen berated for not doing that which, if they would still remain clergymen, they cannot do. it is easy and safe for a pastor to lay before his people a certain set of what may be called sins by common consent, such as over-worldliness, inattention to religion and the like. one portion of his hearers meekly bows to this reproof, and the remainder tacitly accepts it without argument. but when he earnestly calls on them to give up some darling sin, which they hug to their bosoms because they do not admit that it is such, his relations to them are apt, at once, to become such as were those of st. paul to the beasts of ephesus. and to expect a pastor fiercely to throttle each living, vigorous, but unconfessed, if not unconscious sin of his people, as it comes up, for $ a year, (the average clerical pay, it is said, of the wealthiest sect in this state,) and then to lose this small stipend, which he is likely to do by dismissal, as the result of the conflict, is asking more than a fair day's work for less than a fair day's wages. here and there may be found a man who can afford to enter into this fight. one, rich in natural gifts, holds his hearers, by the power of personal magnetism, while he pours into their ears a torrent of unwelcome truths, to which they listen, like the wedding guest, because they "cannot choose but hear," and then, not a few go away, like an awakened medium, uninfluenced by them. another, whose voice neither denouncement nor desertion can silence, or make falter, because its words are but the imperative utterances of a great heart ever flowing in full tide, with good will to man, simply as man, always finds fit audience though few. but these are exceptions, and though courage might add to them, the great body of our clergymen must preach what their people are not unwilling to hear, or cease to earn bread for their families as clergymen. and here is the true reason of their silence, or hesitating speech, on such proposed subjects of reform as, at the time, have found but small acceptance; and as men and things go, this reason is sufficient. their grave fault is that they keep it shut up in that dark, back cell of the heart, to which men never admit each other, and rarely themselves, and put forward such phrases as "secular subjects," "politics in the pulpit," and (a profanation of the holy word) "my kingdom is not of this world," in the place of it. hence the chronic false position in which they stand to society. for from the very nature of their relations either to their people, an aristocracy, or their own order, the clergy are everywhere conservative and not progressive. when luther began to be a reformer he ceased to be a monk. all that can reasonably be expected of them is not to break new soil, but to refrain from upholding old abuses, and (a most important trust) carefully to keep in order in the old way, but with a readiness to accept new principles and improved methods, the ground already fenced in. their true type of reform is that of mr. lincoln. he never professed to move except at the word of the people, but he always watched for and joyfully obeyed the first sure signal to advance. but there are cases in which clergymen are called on to make a direct attack on a social abuse, and in which the practical good sense of all classes will uphold them in so doing, whether that abuse has general countenance or not; and that is where the defence of their own order demands it. such a supposed demand was the true cause of their late loud and unwise protest against the running of the cars on sunday. they mistakenly believed this movement to be an invasion of their special domain, which it was their duty to repel; whereas, if permitted, it would unquestionably here, as it has done elsewhere, not only benefit the poor, but increase church-going. and yet, notwithstanding this readiness to rally in general self-defence, it appears that when the rev. mr. allston, rector of st. thomas' (colored episcopal) church, was expelled from a lombard and south street car, and in such a manner that the strength of his hands alone kept his head from being dashed on the pavement, some of his brethren simply offered to see that any expense which he might incur in case he chose to prosecute, should be made up to him. one feels inclined to ask these gentlemen if they would have contented themselves with this, as sufficient action in the case, had the rector of christ church, or of st. luke's, or even so young a man as the rector of holy trinity, been subjected to such an outrage as this,--one at any time likely to be repeated, and which is, in fact, regularly kept up by continued exclusion. there can hardly be a doubt that, had this been the case of a white clergyman, a meeting would have been called, a protest made, and a deputation, lay and clerical, appointed to wait on mr. dropsie, the president of the company, or some other vigorous measures taken, to exact redress for present, and guarantees against future injuries. this would be due, not only to the outraged brother, but to themselves, outraged in him. the preservation of their influence with, and the respect in which it is necessary they should be held by, society, would imperatively demand such a course; and the only conceivable reason why it was not pursued in the case of the rev. mr. allston is, that except by a sort of ecclesiastical fiction, the episcopal clergy of philadelphia do not consider him of their order, nor feel that, in the eyes of this community, their reputation is in any manner identified with his; and therefore it was not necessary to their common interests that they should pursue it. but there is a symptom of public opinion on this subject worse than the foregoing. the very committee appointed for the special purpose of securing to the colored people their rights, failed to be true to their trust when tried by the test of party politics. at a meeting of the said committee, held not long before the last municipal election, a resolution was offered, the purport of which was, to ask of the present mayor, when a candidate, a statement in writing as to the course he intended to pursue in regard to this question, if elected. but the committee deprecated the very thought of jeopardizing the success of the republican candidate, by a committal on such a question as this. the resolution was voted down by a majority of more than ten to one of the members present. this action is to be regretted, not only on account of its immediate effect on the work in hand,--for it was of course reported to the board of presidents, who naturally concluded that the committee was not in earnest,--but because it established the fact of weakness in that part of society in which, of late, we have most looked for strength; and that is in the part which consists of our able and leading private men of business. if it is true of clergymen that they cannot be our leaders in reform, it is no less so of politicians, even of the best class, in or out of office, and of professional philanthropists, and of managers of the various bodies of benevolent men and women permanently organized for particular purposes relating to the public good. all these are, or in time will be, biassed, either consciously or unconsciously, by private interests, or party ties, or special objects in connection with these associations, whose plans they will seek to shape with a view to their own purposes. but there is another disqualification common to them all. they are not independent. they have somebody to consult besides themselves. they do not act directly from their own convictions, but are constantly striving to ascertain the average conviction of the public, or of their constituents, in order to act from that; and as each of their constituents, to a degree, is independent, and therefore gives fair play to his convictions, they are very apt to under-estimate this average, and fall short of it in action: or, as wendell phillips tersely states it, "representatives are timid, principals are bold." successful private men of business are free from these entanglements and temptations; they alone, as a class, can afford to disregard them, and therefore they and no others are fitted to take the lead in, or be the chief promoters of, new movements for the good of society. the best of this class are earnest, liberal, intelligent, brief in discussion, practical and direct in operation, regardless of official honors and the gains connected therewith, and, above all, they know how to master and use wealth, without being in turn mastered by it. the danger of such men is not in imprudence; the difficulty is to find quite enough of them who are not too prudent; and if there are some working with them who are earnest even to bitterness, and have nothing which they greatly fear to lose, or hope to gain,--not even reputation,--so that uses are performed, truths told and justice satisfied, it will be all the better. not the least valuable effect of the late war was the discovery which it made for us of the great wealth of the country in this kind of men. a few such men, in spite of the covert contempt and inert opposition of president, cabinet, congressmen, generals, and army surgeons, made the sanitary commission an institution, whose great and business-like work of patriotic charity and mercy became the admiration of the civilized world. they first made the necessity and practicability of their plan clear to the people, and then, with them at their back, forced an unwilling government to recognize and accept the commission as a power to do good. similar in character and results was the christian commission, in the president of which is found the most eminent single example that the war afforded, in support of this position; such, also, but more limited in their operations, because less popular, are the freedmen's associations; and such, in its original conception and working during the war, was the union league. the men who led in these movements did not go to politicians and ask if their plans were expedient, party interests considered. but with the desire to do good for their motive and their own native energies for their power, success soon brought the politicians to them. and if private men, or associations of private men, will, this may always be the case. to this end they have but to accept, and act up to these propositions: that this country, with such a people in it as carried through the late war, can never be ruined, politicians to the contrary notwithstanding; that its nearest approach to ruin will come from temporizing; that party management never saved a country nor advanced a just cause; that a country is saved and a just cause advanced only by doing justice and cultivating a right public opinion; that power on any other basis is better lost than kept, even when the party that gains is worse than the party that loses it; that when legitimate means fail, or have not been used, to form this basis by a party in power, then the misdeeds of evil men in power are the only resource left to the country for creating a public opinion against their own evil policy and in favor of justice, which they will do by causing reaction; that this is the chief use of, and necessity for, a second party in the state, and that these propositions are good at all times and in every crisis, not excepting the present. by taking a firm stand on this ground, and refusing absolutely to support for office candidates of inadequate ability, bad personal character, or doubtful firmness of principle, private men may become a power in the state, instead of remaining the mere voting machines which they are at present in the hands of cunning, short-sighted and selfish politicians. the chief political value of such private men, in their associated capacity, and the special advantage they possess over all other bodies convened for consultation with a view to the public good, consist in their being free to discuss and advocate just measures, with simple directness and without side issues, and in their ability to enlighten, advance and fortify public opinion in respect to these measures. when they do this, they furnish to representative bodies--what they most need--firm and well cleared ground to stand and work upon. but they never can do this as mere appendages of state central committees, nor if, while they are free from the representative responsibilities of congressmen, they are more timid than congress and speak only in echo of it, and long after it. and whether they act as political or social reformers, there must be no distrust of justice, as always a safe guide, and no putting her aside for the lead of party hacks, as was unfortunately the case with the aforesaid car committee; and the colored people, when they saw their chosen champions thus postpone justice, in their case, to party expediency, might well ask where they were to look for any real support in this demand for their simple rights. aside then from the action of official and conventional bodies, it has been shown that large numbers of the laboring classes are opposed to the unreserved use of the cars by the colored people; and it must be inferred from the foregoing facts that but a small number of any class earnestly and actively advocate it. between these extremes is the great body of the respectable, intelligent and influential portion of the community, the members of which are generally self-restraining and above violence in speech or act, and who, at first sight, one might suppose to be indifferent on the question, or perhaps torpidly in favor of admission. a little friction, however, brings to the surface unmistakable evidence that this body also is permeated with latent prejudice sufficient to carry it, imperceptibly perhaps and by dead weight only, but still to carry it against the colored people. many belong to this class who would take offence if told so. it is not hard to find old hereditary abolitionists--orthodox and other friends, and members of the late supervisory committee for recruiting colored regiments, who coldly decline all overtures for coöperation in this work. the abolition of slavery away in the south was all very well, but here is a matter of personal contact. they are not opposed, themselves, to riding with colored people--certainly not. the colored people may get into the cars if they can; they will not hinder it. but they do wish there were baths furnished at the public expense, for the use of these friends, in order that they might be made thereby less offensive to ladies. and from these ladies, no doubt, comes an opposition--indirect and partially concealed--apparent perhaps only through the manner and tone of the father, husband or brother, but still most obstinate. it is often curious to observe how the discussion of this subject will set in motion two opposing moral currents in the same religious and cultivated female mind; that of conscience, which calls for the admission of the colored people, and that of prejudice, which hopes they will not get it. and thus the moral nature of many men and women, who in general are friendly to equal rights, on this question is divided. the sense of justice not being quickened by sympathy, their movements in respect to it are like those of a man palsied on one side--hindering rather than helpful. and it is this great, respectable and intelligent portion of the community that is really responsible for these wrongs and disturbances. john swift, a hard, shrewd man, now gone to his place, but in mayor of this city, told a committee of friends who called on him, on the th of may of that year, for protection against men who threatened violence, that "public opinion makes mobs;" and on the same night a mob, so made, after a short, mild speech from the said mayor, counselling order and stating that the military would not be called out, burnt down pennsylvania hall. and every mob that the country has seen, during the last century, has had a similar origin and support, from that of the paxton boys against harmless indians, in , encouraged up to the threshold of murder, and then only opposed, when too late, by the rev. mr. elder and his colleagues, to that of the new york irish rioters against the negroes and the draft, in , that was addressed as "my friends" by gov. seymour, the representative of a great party. and, to bring this subject up to date, may be added the late rebel mob at new orleans, hissed on, in its wholesale work of murder, by the president of the united states through the telegraph. the brain does not more surely impel or restrain the hand, than do the more educated and influential classes, however imperceptibly, those that are less so, in all cases in which premeditated violence is forseen. and had there really existed any considerable degree of this moral restraining power in our community, these outrages against the people of color would long since have ceased. we are forced then to the conclusion that this community, as a body, by long indulgence in the wicked habit of wronging and maltreating colored people, has become, like a moral lunatic, utterly powerless, by the exercise of its own will, to resist or control the propensity. and unless it finds an authoritative and sane guardian and controller in the supreme court--unless this court has itself, by chance, escaped this widely spread moral imbecility of vicious type, there seems to be no cure for the disease, nor end to its wickedness. and philadelphia must still continue to stand, as she now does, alone, among all the cities of the old free states, in the exercise of this most infamous system of class persecution. when lear cries out "let them anatomise regan; see what breeds about her heart," we are made to perceive that his mind was not so wholly absorbed in his wrongs as to prevent it from speculating, in a wild way, on their cause: a touch of nature suggesting that any statement of wrongs which does not enter into the causes and conditions that made their commission possible, is imperfect. and to the question constantly recurring: what is it that has caused the people of philadelphia thus to stand apart from other northern and western free cities, in the disposition to persecute negroes? the true answer seems to be this: philadelphia once owned more slaves than any other northern city, with the possible exception of new york; she retains a greater number of colored people now, in proportion to her white population, than any other such city, with the accidental exception of new bedford,[ ] when emancipation took place the process was left incomplete, and of all cities, north or south, she most fears amalgamation. the evils of slavery are in proportion to its density. in south carolina, which is the part of the united states where it was most dense, these evils, especially in their effect on the whites, were more distinct and apparent than in any other state. the south carolinians were the most despotic of our slave owners, and they were the first to secede in order to remain such undisturbed. but great as were these evils in our slave states, where the whites always outnumbered the blacks, they were infinitely greater in the west indies, and especially in st. domingo, where the blacks, in a much greater degree, outnumbered the whites. the most comprehensive evidence of this is to be found in the fact that, in the united states there was a natural increase in the slave population, while in the west indies the reverse was the case, to a remarkable degree. a slave, when landed in the united states, always found here at least two whites to one black; for before the introduction of the cotton gin, which was not until after the abolition of the slave trade, the temptation was not great to drive plantation work, or to increase the number of slaves. he came at once into such multiplied contact with whites that, though he was taught nothing, he learnt much. his african superstitions soon died out, or became greatly diluted; camp meeting exercises took their place; his games and dances were assimilated to those of white people, and his spontaneous songs, unlike those of the st. domingo negroes, which mostly relate to eating, satire and venery, early became emotional and religious.[ ] the first tincture of christianity which west india slaves received, was communicated to them by slaves from the united states. when dr. coke landed in st. eustatia, in , he found, as his journal says, that "the lord had raised up lately a negro slave named harry, brought here from the continent to prepare our way." the baptists, now the great sect of jamaica, owe their origin there to george lisle, a slave preacher, who was taken thither from georgia, by his tory master, at the evacuation of savannah by the british in . but a cargo of slaves, on being landed in french st. domingo, found there, towards the last days of the colony, nearly twenty of their own to one of the white race. they were at once herded with the former. as their immediate overseers were mostly creole blacks, many of them rarely, except at a distance, saw white people, of whom there were barely enough to conduct the business of the colony. the number of doctors was insufficient. the planters depended on importation rather than personal care to keep up their stock of slaves. this stock was often changed, in consequence of its being worked up. there was a constant renewal of the savage element by slave ships. the new slaves always found in st. domingo the customs and superstitions they had left in africa. they added freshness to them, and then all went on together, as nearly as possible, in the old african way. in fact, it might almost have seemed, had it been possible, as if parts of french st. domingo had been covered with african sod, bearing with it its native life and growth, little disturbed by the transfer. hence _vaudouxism_, or serpent-worship went on, in full vigor, in spite of law and the police, and, to some extent, cannibalism, up to the very moment when the colony was suddenly blown to atoms by the over-generation of its own wickedness,--the whites, who worked it, being thereby destroyed, or scattered to distant lands, with all their means and appliances of civilization. and as the blacks, who remained in possession, shut the door against the return of the whites, from fear of returning slavery, and yet keep it shut, in consequence of a still remaining vague jealousy, thus barring out foreign improvements, it is not surprising that the superstitious and barbarous usages of st. domingo at this day prevail, to no small degree, in hayti. the towns around the coast, where a few white merchants and the educated mulattoes reside, may be considered as tufts of civilization, and the savage traits inseparable from dense slavery have been a good deal softened down among the country people. but we might as reasonably expect to find an advanced state of civilization in the neighborhood of the portuguese trading settlements on the west coast of africa as in the interior of hayti. for want of a proper knowledge of these facts, the non-civilization of hayti has always been a thorn in the side of abolitionists, and from the same cause, the north generally, during the first half of the late war, was constantly looking for a second edition of the "horrors of st. domingo" in the south. but the freedmen of the south have no more in common with the insurrectionary slaves of , in st. domingo, than any other humanized people have with savages. it is fair to admit that this superior moral and physical condition of our southern blacks over those of st. domingo is due, in some degree, to difference of race in the masters. the descendants of french protestants, english wesleyans and baptists, and austrian salzburgers, and even those resulting from a cross between cavaliers and convict-servants, were doubtless less inhuman slave-masters than the progeny of buccaneers and _flibustiers_. still the main difference arose from different degrees of density in slavery. our southern slaves had the best opportunities to learn by looking on. and the most valuable trait in the negro, and that which will most avail to his salvation as a race, is that, whenever he is within reach of civilization, he silently puts forth a tendril and clasps it. on the whites, the most curious effect of dense slavery is that of destroying, or greatly impairing the power of moral vision in all matters relating to blacks. in this respect, the trial for murder of the hon. arthur hodge, planter and member of his majesty's council in the island of tortola, and there hanged, in , is a psychological study. along through the years including and , this gentleman, by cart-whipping at "short quarters," by pouring boiling water down the throat, by burning with hot irons and by dipping in coppers of scalding water, murdered eight of his slaves and one freeman. tortola is twelve miles long by four broad and at the time in question contained about inhabitants. these murders were well known to the slave population, when committed, and as testimony afterwards proved, to many of the whites. but hodge was not brought to trial till , and then formal complaint against him only reached his brother magistrates through a family quarrel about property. john m'donough declined to serve on the jury because "the case would make the negroes saucy." stephen m'keough, a planter and an important witness, who saw some of these cases of flogging which ended in death, described mr. hodge as "a good man, but comical, because he had bad slaves." both the attorney general and the presiding judge, apparently functionaries from england, thought it necessary to go into a set argument to show that killing negro slaves was really murder, and the jury, under the charge, brought hodge in guilty, but recommended him to mercy. here was moral blindness produced by an atmosphere of slavery which can only find its physical counterpart in the eyeless fishes bred in the dark waters of the kentucky cave. probably no case could be found in our southern states equal to this in enormity of crime and corresponding absence of moral vision in respect to it, though that of mrs. abrahams, of virginia, with her four murders, and the alacrity with which "all the richmond lawyers" volunteered in her defence may approach it. in pennsylvania the slaves were never more than a sprinkling compared to the free population, slavery never appeared in these dark colors, and it was early declared to be prospectively abolished. and yet this old, unmistakable characteristic of the slaveholder--defect of moral vision where the black man is concerned, is to this day a distinct feature of our society. we are still unable to see clearly the wickedness of denying him the vote and expelling him from the cars; and the same spirit of outrage and murder, which now shocks us by the terrible energy with which it moves the late slaveholders against the freedmen, is at this moment acting in a small, feeble, mean way within ourselves against our own colored population. the difference is one of degree, not of kind. thus, eighty-six years after the passage of the act for the gradual emancipation of the slaves of pennsylvania, life enough remains in the old institution, long since supposed extinct, still to disturb the peace of society. our fathers made two great mistakes in this matter. first, the process of extinction was to be gradual, which was as if one, instead of a bullet, should give a dose of slow poison to a mad dog and then let him run; and next, it was not only gradual but incomplete. the chain of the slave was broken but not taken off; and any degree of civil disability under which an emancipated slave is left, is just so much slavery left. it not only restrains his movements both of progress and self-defence, but it keeps alive the spirit of oppression in the "master race" as air keeps alive flame. by a natural law, whatever of the slave is left in one race will, while it lasts, always tempt into exercise and encounter a corresponding amount of the slave master in the other. so long as the law degrades a man, his neighbor will degrade him. whoever can call to mind a celebration of our day of independence in philadelphia five and thirty years ago, may remember that the part of the day's exercises which the boys took upon themselves was to stone and club colored people out of independence square, because "niggers had nothing to do with the fourth of july." the fathers of these boys looked on with placid satisfaction, cheerfully and hopefully remarking to each other, how well their sons were learning to perform the duties of free american citizens. twenty years later and a change might be seen. colored people--place and occasion the same--were allowed to carry water about among the crowd, without meeting other insult from the thirsty than words of good-natured contempt. this was an improvement. those whom we formerly drove forth with blows and curses, we had now learned to utilize. twelve more years go by, and on the fourth of july we were enlisting our able bodied colored men to fight for us. but we still were mindful of what was due to ourselves, as belonging to the superior race, and when they came back to us, wounded in our defence, we carefully restricted their wives and sisters to the front platform of the cars, when they visited their husbands and brothers at the hospitals. and now to-day, out of sixteen philadelphia generals and colonels, most of whom are believed to have seen some service in the field, three vote in favor of permitting these returned colored veterans actually to join in the celebration of our great national anniversary. this is progress, but it is slow, and the causes of the obstruction to it must be sought in the incomplete emancipation of . but another cause which gives philadelphia a bad eminence in respect to the treatment of colored people, is the comparatively large numbers of them which she possesses over other northern cities, with the one exception above noted; and this cause seems simply to connect with and form part of another--the fear of amalgamation. this fear greatly disturbs a large portion of our white population. in discussing the car question, an opponent of admission at once urges that it will be a stepping stone to amalgamation. the suggestion that seven disabled colored soldiers might safely be allowed equal privileges in a military hospital with white soldiers, is put aside with the remark that such a rule would countenance amalgamation. the matron, with downcast eyes and timid horror, intimates this objection to the reception, into the same orphan home, of little white and colored children, mostly between the ages of four and ten. all this sounds very illogical. hitherto, there has been little amalgamation of the two races at the north, and as the colored people never make advances to the whites, that little cannot be increased until the whites make advances to them. when is this to begin? let each one answer this question individually. this matter, in its negative aspect, rests entirely within the control of the white population. the broad distinction, so often pointed out, between political and social equality, is still by many of our people persistently confounded, and perhaps it may be necessary to state it once more. political equality everybody has the present or prospective right to demand--social equality nobody; for the barrier which separates the two is made up of private door-steps. each of these, its owner has absolutely at his own command, and no man has a right to prescribe, even by implication, whom he shall permit, or forbid, to pass it. it is not an open question. but supposing the relations, so long sustained at the north, between the two races, and which the blacks do not complain of, when unaccompanied with wrongs, were suddenly to cease; and everywhere, north and south, on both sides, impelled by an irrepressible orgasm, they should rush together. there are, in round numbers, , , of white and , , of colored people in the united states; and after every black had found a white, there would remain , , of whites still unmated. these, by necessity, would carry on the pure white population, and they might safely be left, without help, to sustain themselves in the struggle of race, against the , , of amalgamationists. but here it is asserted, they will receive aid from a distinct source. according to the theory of doctors nott and cartwright, the mixed race rapidly decays, and after three generations dies out. this theory is accepted by those who fear amalgamation, and is often quoted by them, as an argument against the theory of equal rights. they also hate negroes and would be glad to see their numbers less. but pure-blooded negroes, it is generally conceded, possess great vitality of race and are killed off with difficulty. this difficulty, it seems, can be overcome by amalgamation. by this process, in one generation, all these negroes become mulattoes, and this once accomplished, the whole african race is in a fair way to disappear from the land. these advocates for pure white blood have been defeating their own purpose. let them reverse their policy and encourage, for a time, the amalgamation they have hitherto opposed, and, with patience, they can have a white man's government yet. this proposition is less extravagant than are these insane and wicked fears of impending amalgamation;--wicked, because they are made the excuse, by the race that has the entire preventive control of the matter, for maltreating colored people and denying them rights which are accorded, without dispute, to every other man and woman in the country. but these people will never come to such an end as this; and if it is true that amalgamation, here, leads towards it, then here, to any considerable extent, it will never take place. they were never made the valuable element of our population, which they are, simply to die out. the greater part of the work which has yet been done on a large portion of this continent has been done by them, and apparently they ever will be, as they ever have been, absolutely essential to its full development. this statement does not imply that the slave trade and slavery were right or necessary. the sin was not in the bringing of africans to america, but in the manner of bringing them. god has established his own fixed laws to govern the movements of peoples, but he permits men to carry them out according to their will. had men willed to be just and humane, they could have induced africans to come to this continent as free emigrants; but they were selfish and wicked, and therefore forced them to come as slaves. slavery has been, and is, destroying itself everywhere; and in this country, the great system of free labor and equal rights which prevails, without qualification, in some of the northern states, is now being offered, and in spite of all opposition will soon be applied, to every state, north and south. it is not probable that it will stop there. it is believed that the same system is destined, in time, to be extended into our tropics. the so-called anglo-saxon race in england colonizes; in the united states it expands. mr. disraeli lately pronounced england more an asiatic than a european power; and the day may come when we shall be as much a power of south america as we now are of north america. we have a means to facilitate future extension into the tropics in an element of our home population, suited to them, which england never possessed in hers; and after this has been received into our body politic, and is thus enabled to develop its powers, it is not easy to resist the conclusion that its destiny is to carry our civilization into these latitudes. the feeble and imperfect nationalities lying to the south of us are apparently but provisional. they are waiting a better system than their own, and higher powers than they possess, to apply it. the time is likely to come when their ability to furnish the products peculiar to their soil will fall short of the wants of the civilized world without; and should this be the case, it will stimulate us to carry thither our enterprise, and with it our laws and institutions. this has been the process by which they have been carried into california, by whites alone--gold being the lure; but to places farther south our people of color, from their special climatic fitness for it, must assist in being their vehicle; and the two races must go towards the tropics, if at all, together. the african will never leave this country, but he may, in the legitimate pursuit of his own interests and happiness, assist in its expansion beyond its present limits; and, soon or late, should the practical assertion of our "monroe doctrine" make it necessary for us to carry our arms into tropical latitudes, the late war has shown us where to find soldiers. these are speculations, but it would be hard to show that they are without some groundwork of probable reality in the future. meantime it is well to feel assured that these people are here for the good, and not the evil of both races, and that interest as well as justice demands that every right and privilege which we possess should be freely and at once extended to them. let us trust god to do his own justice, not fearing that harm will come of it unless we interpose with our injustice; and let us no longer believe that if we do what is right and humane as a people to-day, we shall be punished for it to-morrow; for this is practical atheism. footnotes: [ ] according to the census of , the proportion of the colored to the white population in the cities named below, was as follows: boston, colored to - / white. new york, " " ½ " philadelphia, " " ½ " in new bedford, at the same census, the proportion was found to be one colored to ½ white. the comparatively large number of colored people in that city is said to be due to the special kindness with which runaway slaves were received there, and to the fact that it afforded them a somewhat safe place of refuge, because it was out of the main line of travel. [ ] our southern negro english, uncouth as it sounds, is pure compared to that of the british islands; and in the french west indies and hayti, the divergence between the creole _patois_ and french is still wider. the negroes actually impressed the use of their dialect deeply upon the whites, and to this day it is the colloquial language of all classes, whether educated or not, in these islands. the same negro ascendancy can be traced in their amusements. the _bamboula_ and the _calenda_ of the french islands and hayti, and certain similar dances in cuba, are, somewhat modified and restrained, still favorites with the white people. they are all african in their origin, and their type is lasciviousness. in the british islands these dances have in a great degree given way before the teachings of the baptist, methodist and moravian missionaries. http://www.archive.org/details/sonsandfathers edwaiala sons and fathers by harry stillwell edwards. published by the j. w. burke company macon, georgia the first-prize story in the chicago record's series of "stories of mystery" this story--out of competing--was awarded the first prize--$ , --in the chicago record's "$ , to authors" competition. copyright , by harry stillwell edwards. copyright , by harry stillwell edwards. contents chapter i. two sons. chapter ii. the stranger on the threshold. chapter iii. a breath from the old south. chapter iv. the mother's room. chapter v. the stranger in the library. chapter vi. "who says there can be a 'too late' for the immortal mind?" chapter vii. "back! would you murder her?" chapter viii. on the back trail. chapter ix. the tragedy in the storm. chapter x. "god pity me! god pity me!" chapter xi. in the crimson of sunset. chapter xii. the old south versus the new. chapter xiii. feeling the enemy. chapter xiv. the old south draws the sword. chapter xv. "in all the world, no fairer flower than this!" chapter xvi. beyond the shadow of a doubt. chapter xvii. "if i meet the man!" chapter xviii. how the challenge was written. chapter xix. brought to bay. chapter xx. in the hands of their friends. chapter xxi. "the witness is dead." chapter xxii. the duel at sunrise. chapter xxiii. the shadow over the hall. chapter xxiv. the profile on the moon. chapter xxv. the midnight search. chapter xxvi. gathering the clews. chapter xxvii. the face that came in dreams. chapter xxviii. the three pictures. chapter xxix. "home sweet home." chapter xxx. the rainbow in the mist. chapter xxxi. the hand of science. chapter xxxii. the flashlight photograph. chapter xxxiii. the trade with slippery dick. chapter xxxiv. the face of the body-snatcher. chapter xxxv. the grave in the past. chapter xxxvi. the pledge that was given. chapter xxxvii. "which of the two was my mother?" chapter xxxviii. under the spell. chapter xxxix. barksdale's warning. chapter xl. the hidden hand. chapter xli. with the woman who loved him. chapter xlii. the song the ocean sang. chapter xliii. the death of gaspard levigne. chapter xliv. the heart of cambia. chapter xlv. the man with the torch. chapter xlvi. what the sheet hid. chapter xlvii. on the margins of two worlds. chapter xlviii. war to the knife. chapter xlix. preparing the mine. chapter l. slippery dick rights a wrong. chapter li. a woman's wit conquers. chapter lii. death of col. montjoy. chapter liii. the escape of amos royson. chapter liv. how a debt was paid. chapter lv. the unopened letter. chapter lvi. "woman, what was he to you?" chapter lvii. fragmentary life records. chapter lviii. "the last scene of all" sons and fathers chapter i. two sons. at a little station in one of the gulf states, where the east and west trains leave and pick up a few passengers daily, there met in the summer of two men who since they are to appear frequently in this record, are worthy of description. one who alighted from the west-bound train was about years of age. tall and slender, he wore the usual four-button cutaway coat, with vest and trousers to match, which, despite its inappropriateness in such a climate, was the dress of the young city man of the south, in obedience to the fashion set by the northern metropolis. his small feet were incased in neat half-moroccos, and his head protected by the regulation derby of that year. there was an inch of white cuffs visible upon his wrists, held with silver link buttons, and an inch and a half of standing collar, points turned down. he carried a small traveling bag of alligator skin swung lightly over his left shoulder, after the english style, and a silk umbrella in lieu of a cane. this man paced the platform patiently. his neighbor was about the same age, dressed in a plain gray cassimer suit. he wore a soft felt traveling hat and the regulation linen. he was, however, of heavier build, derived apparently from free living, and restless, since he moved rapidly from point to point, speaking with train hands and others, his easy, good-fellow air invariably securing him courtesy. his face was full and a trifle florid, but very mobile in expression; while that of the first mentioned was somewhat sallow and softened almost to sadness by gray eyes and long lashes. as they passed each other the difference was both noticed and felt. the impressions that the two would have conveyed to an analyst were action and reflection. perhaps in the case of the man in gray the impression would have been heightened by sight of his two great commercial traveling bags of russia leather, bearing the initials "n. m. jr." there was one other passenger on the platform--a very handsome young woman, seated on her trunk and trying to interest herself in a pamphlet spread upon her lap, but from time to time she lifted her face, and when the eyes of the man glanced her way she lowered hers with a half-smile on her lips. there was something in his tone and manner that disarmed reserve. an officer in uniform came from the little eating-house near by and approached the party. "are there any passengers for the coast here?" he asked. "i am going to charleston," the young lady said. "where are you from, miss?" then, seeing her surprise, he continued: "you must excuse the question but i am a quarantine officer and charleston has quarantined against all points that have been exposed to yellow fever." "that, then, does not include me," she said, confidently. "i am from montgomery, where there is no yellow fever, and a strict quarantine." "have you a health certificate?" "a what?" "a ticket from any of the authorities or physicians in montgomery." "no, sir; i am miss kitty blair, and going to visit friends in charleston." the officer looked embarrassed. the health-certificate regulation and inland quarantine were new and forced him frequently into unpleasant positions. "you will excuse me," he said, finally; "but have you anything that could establish that fact, visiting cards, correspondence--" "i have told you," she replied, flushing a little, "who i am and where i am from." "that would be sufficient, miss, if all that is needed is a lady's word, but i am compelled to keep all persons from the east-bound train who cannot prove their residence in a non-infected district. the law is impartial." "and i cannot go on, then?" there were anxiety and pathos in her eyes and tones. the gentleman in gray approached. "i can fix that, sir," he said, briskly addressing the officer. "i am not personally acquainted with miss blair, but i can testify to what she says as true. i have seen her in montgomery almost daily. my name is montjoy--norton montjoy, jr. here are my letters and my baggage is over yonder." "are you a son of col. norton montjoy of georgia, colonel of the old 'fire-eaters,' as we used to call the regiment?" "yes, indeed," and a happy smile illumined his face. "my name is throckmorton," said the officer. "i followed your father three years during the war, and you are--by jove! you are the brat that they once brought to camp and introduced as the latest infantry recruit! well, i see the likeness now." the two men shook hands fervently. the officer bowed to the lady. "the matter is all right," he said, smiling; "i will give you a paper presently that will carry you through." the new friends then walked aside talking with animation. the quarantine officer soon got into war anecdotes. the other stranger was now left to the amusement of watching the varying expressions of the girl's face. she continued low over her book and began to laugh. presently, with a supreme effort she recovered herself. montjoy had shaken off his father's admirer and was coming her way. she looked up shyly. "i am very much obliged to you for getting me out of trouble; i----" "don't mention it, miss; these fellows haven't much discretion." "but what a fib it was!" "how?" "i haven't been in montgomery in two weeks. i came here from an aunt's in macon." "and i haven't been there in six months!" his laugh was hearty and infectious. "here comes your train; let me put you aboard." he secured her a seat; the repentant quarantine officer supplied her with a ticket, and then, shaking hands again with his father's friend, montjoy hurried to the southwester, which was threatening to get under way. the other traveler was in and had a window open on the shady side. there were men only in the car, and as montjoy entered he drew off his coat and dropped it upon his bags. the motion of the starting train did not add to his comfort. the red dust poured in through the open windows, invading and irritating the lungs. he thought of the moonlit roof gardens in new york with something like a groan. "confound such a road!" and down went the book he was seriously trying to lose himself in. his silent companion's face was lifted toward him: "a railroad company that will run cars like this on such a schedule ought to be abolished, the officers imprisoned, track torn up and rolling stock burned! but then," he continued, "i am the fool. i ought not to have come by this god-forsaken route." "it is certainly not pleasant traveling to-day," his companion remarked, sympathetically, showing even, white teeth under his brown mustache. montjoy had returned to his seat, but the smooth, even, musical tones of the other echoed in his memory. he glanced back and presently came and took a seat near by. "are you a resident of the south?" it was the stranger who spoke first. this delicate courtesy was not lost on montjoy. "yes. that is, i count myself a citizen of this state. but i sell clothing for a new york house and am away from home a great deal." "you delivered the young lady at the junction from quite a predicament." "didn't i, though! well, she is evidently a fine little woman and pretty. lies for a pretty woman don't count. by the way--may i ask? what line of business are you in?" chapter ii. the stranger on the threshold. "i am not in business," said the other. "i am a nephew of john morgan, of macon. i suppose you must have known him." "yes, indeed." "and am going out to wind up his affairs. i have been abroad and have only just returned. the news of his death was quite a surprise to me. i had not been informed that he was ill." "then you are the heir of john morgan?" "i am told so. it is but three days now since i reached this country, and i have no information except as contained in a brief notice from attorneys." "how long since you have seen him?" "i have never seen him--at least not since i was an infant, if then. my parents left me to his care. i have spent my life in schools until six or seven years ago, when, after graduating at harvard and then at columbia college in law, i went abroad. have never seen so much as the picture of my uncle. i applied to him for one through his new york lawyer once, sending a new one of myself, and he replied that he had too much respect for art to have his taken." "that sounds like him," and montjoy laughed heartily. "he was a florid, sandy-haired man, with eyes always half-closed against the light, stout and walked somewhat heavily. he has been a famous criminal lawyer, but for many years has not seemed to care for practice. he was a heavy drinker, but with all that you could rely implicitly upon what he said. he left a large property, i presume?" "so i infer." edward looked out of the window, but presently resumed the conversation. "my uncle stood well in the community, i suppose?" "oh, yes; we have lost a good citizen. do you expect to make your home with us?" "that depends upon circumstances. very likely i shall." "i see! well, sir, i trust you will. the morgan place is a nice one and has been closed to the young people too long." "i am afraid they will not find me very gay." a shadow flitted over his face, blotting out the faint smile. the towns and villages glided away. edward morgan noticed that there was little paint upon the country houses, and that the fences were gone from the neighborhoods. and then the sun sank below the black cloud, painting its peaks with gold, and filling the caverns with yellow light; church spires, tall buildings and electric-light towers filed by with solemn dignity and then stood motionless. the journey was at an end. "my home is six miles out," said montjoy, "and if you will go with me i shall be glad to have you. it is quite a ride, but anything is preferable to the hotels." morgan's face lighted up quickly at this unexpected courtesy. "thank you," he said "but i don't mind the hotels. i have never had any other home, sir, except boarding houses." through his smile there fell the little, destroying shadow. montjoy had not expected him to accept, but he turned now, with his winning manner. "well, then, i insist. we shall find a wagon waiting outside, and to-morrow i am coming in and shall bring you back. we will have to get acquainted some of these days, and there is nothing like making an early start." he was already heading for the sidewalk; his company was as sunlight and morgan was tempted to stay in the sunlight. "then i shall go," he said. "you are very kind." a four-seated vehicle stood outside and by it a little old negro, who laughed as montjoy rapidly approached. "well, isam," he said, tossing his bag in, "how are all at home?" "dey's all well." "by the way, mr. morgan, we shall leave your trunks, but i can supply you with everything for a 'one-night stand.'" "i have a valise that will answer, if there is room." "plenty. let isam have the check and he will get it." while morgan was feeling for his bit of brass isam continued: "miss annie will be mighty glad to see you. sent me in here now goin' on fo' times an' gettin' madder----" "that's all right; here's the check; hurry up." the negro started off rapidly. "drive by the club, isam," he said, when the negro had resumed the lines. "i reckon we'll be too late for supper at home; better get it in town." "miss mary save supper for you, sho', marse norton." "save, the mischief! go ahead!" the single horse moved forward in a dignified trot. as they entered the club several young men were grouped near a center table. there was a vista of open doors, a glimmer of cards and the crash of billiards. montjoy walked up and dropped his hat on the table. there followed a general handshaking. edward morgan noticed that they greeted him with cordiality. then he saw his manner change and he turned with a show of formality. "gentlemen, this is my friend, mr. morgan, a nephew of col. john morgan." he rapidly pronounced the names of those present, and each shook the newcomer's hand. at the same time morgan felt their sudden scrutiny, but it was brief. montjoy rang the bell. "what are you going to have, gentlemen? john," to the old waiter, "how are you, john?" "first rate, marse norton; first rate." the old man bowed and smiled. "take these orders, john. five toddies, one rhine wine, and hurry, john! oh, john!" the worthy came back. "there is only one mistake you can make with mine; take care about the water!" "all right, sah, all right! dare won't be any!" montjoy ordered a tremendous supper, as he called it, and while waiting the half-hour for its preparation, several of the party repeated the order for refreshments, it appeared to the stranger, with something like anxiety. it was as though they feared an opportunity to return the courtesies they had accepted would not be given. none joined them at supper, but when the newcomers were seated one of the gentlemen lounged near and dropping into a seat renewed the conversation that had been interrupted. champagne had been added to the supper and this gentleman yielded at length to montjoy's demand and joined them. the conversation ran upon local politics until morgan began to feel the isolation. he took to studying the new man and presently felt the slight, inexplicable prejudice that he had formed upon the introduction, wearing away. the man was tall, dark and straightly built, probably thirty years of age, with fine eyes and unchanging countenance. he did but little talking, and when he spoke it was with great deliberation and positiveness. if there were an unpleasant shading of character written there it was in the mouth, which, while not ill-formed, seemed to promise a relentless disposition. but the high and noble forehead redeemed it all. this man was now addressing him: "you will remain some time in macon, mr. morgan?" the voice possessed but few curves; it grated a trifle upon the stranger. "i cannot tell as yet," he said; "i do not know what will be required of me." "well, i shall be pleased to see you at my place of business whenever you find an opportunity of calling. norton, bring mr. morgan down to see me." he laid his card by edward and bade them good-evening. looking over his plate, the latter read h. r. barksdale, president a. f. & c. railroad. he had not caught the name in the general introduction. "good fellow," said montjoy, between mouthfuls; "talked more to-night than i ever heard him, and never knew him to pull a card before." the night was dark. the road ran over hills, but sometimes was sandy enough to reduce the horse to his slowest gait. "from this point," said montjoy, looking back, "you can see the city five miles away, rather a good view in the daytime, but now only the scattered electric lights show up." "it looks like the south of france," said morgan. montjoy revealed the direction of his thoughts. "you will find things at home very different from what they once were," he put in. "with free labor the plantations have run down, and it is very hard for the old planters to make anything out of land now. the negroes won't work and it hardly pays to plant cotton. i wish often that father could do something else, but he can't change at his time of life." "could not the young men do better with the plantations?" "young men! my dear sir, the young men can't afford to work the plantations; it is as much as they can do to make a living in town--most of them." "is there room for all?" "no, indeed! they are having a hard time of it, i reckon, and salaries are getting smaller every year." "i have heard," said morgan, slowly, "that labor is the wealth of a country. it seems to me that if they expect to make anything out of this, they must labor in the productive branches. where does the support for all come from?" "from the farms--from cotton, mostly." "the negro is, then, after all, the productive agent." montjoy thought a moment, then replied: "yes, as a rule. manufacturing is increasing and there is some development in mining, but as a matter of fact the negroes and the poor whites of the country keep the balance up. somebody has got to sweat it out between the plow handles, but you can bet your bottom dollar that montjoy is out. i couldn't make $ a year on the best plantation in georgia, but i can make $ , selling clothing." the dignified horse had climbed his last hill for the night and was just turning into an avenue, when a dark form came plunging out of the shadow and collided with him violently. morgan beheld a rider almost unhorsed and heard an oath. for an instant only he saw the man's face, white and malignant, and then it disappeared in the darkness. to montjoy's greeting, good-naturedly hurled into the night, there came no reply. "my wife's cousin," he said, laughing. "i am glad it is not my horse he is riding to-night." they came up in front of a large house with corinthian columns and many lights. there was a sudden movement of chairs upon the long veranda and then a young woman came slowly down to the gate and lifted her face to montjoy's kiss. a pretty boy of five climbed into his arms. morgan stood silent, touched by the scene. he started violently as norton montjoy, remembering his presence, called his name. the woman extended her hand. "i am very glad to see you," she said, accenting the adjective. morgan, sensitive to fine impressions, did not like the voice, although the courtesy was perfect. they advanced to the porch. an old gentleman was standing at the top of the steps. in the light streaming from the hallway morgan saw that he was tall and soldierly and with gray hair pressed back in great waves from the temples. he put one arm around his son and the other around his grandson, but did not remove his eyes from the guest. while he addressed words of welcome and chiding to the former, he was slowly extending his right hand, seeing which the son said gayly: "mr. morgan, father--a nephew of col. john morgan." the light fell upon the half-turned face of the old gentleman and showed it lighted by a mild and benevolent expression and dawning smile. "indeed! come in, mr. morgan, come in; i am glad to see you." the words were cordial and tone of voice perfect, but to edward there seemed a shading of surprise in the prolonged gaze that rested upon him. norton had passed on to the end of the porch, where an elderly lady sat upright, prevented from rising by a little girl asleep in her lap. there were sounds of repeated kisses as she embraced her overgrown boy, and then her voice: "the duchess tried to keep her eyes open for you, but she could not. why are you so late?" her voice was as the winds in the pines, and the hand she gave to morgan a moment later was as cool as chamois and as soft. a young girl had come to the doorway. she was simply dressed in white and her abundant hair was twisted into the grecian knot that makes some women appear more womanly. she put her arms about the big brother and gave her little hand to morgan. for a moment their eyes met, and then, gently disengaging her hand, she went to lean against her father's chair, softly stroking his white hair, while the conversation went 'round. "mary," said the older woman, presently, "mr. morgan and norton have had a long ride and must be hungry." "no," said the latter, checking the girl's sudden movement, "we have had something to eat in town." "you should have waited, my son; it was a needless expense," said the mother, gently. "but i am afraid you will never practice economy." norton laughed and did not dispute the proposition. the young mother and children disappeared, and norton gave a spirited account of the quarantine incident without securing applause. "i understand," said the colonel to his guest presently, when conversation had lulled, "that you are a nephew of john morgan. i did not know that he had brothers or sisters----" "i am not really a nephew," said morgan, quietly, "but a distant relative and always taught to regard him as uncle." something in his voice made the young girl lift her eyes. his figure in the half-light where he sat was immovable. against the white column beyond, his head, graceful in its outlines, was sharply silhouetted. it was bent slightly forward; and while they remained upon the porch, ever at the sound of his voice she would turn her eyes slowly and let them rest upon the speaker. but she was silent. chapter iii. a breath from the old south. the room in which edward morgan opened his eyes next morning was large and the ceiling low. the posts of the bed ran up to within a foot of the latter and supported a canopy. there was no carpet, the curtains were of chintz and the lambrequins evidently home made. the few pictures on the wall were portraits, in frames made of pine cones, with clusters of young cones at the corners. there were home-made brackets, full of swamp grasses. the bureau had two miniature tuscan columns, between which was hung a swivel glass. all was homely but clean and suggestive of a woman's presence. and through the open windows there floated a delicious atmosphere, fresh, cool and odorous, with the bloom-breath of tree and shrub. he stepped out of bed and looked forth. for a mile ran the great fields of cotton and corn, with here and there a cabin and its curl of smoke. a flock of pigeons were walking about the barn doors, and a number of goats waited at the side gate, which led into a broad back yard. in the distance he could see negroes in the fields, hear their songs and the "clank" of a little grist-mill in the valley. but sweeping all other sounds from mind, he heard also another musical voice calling "chick! chick! chickee, chickee!" and caught a glimpse of fowls hurrying from every direction toward the back yard. he plunged his head into a basin of cool water, and presently he was dressed. the front door was open, as it had remained all night, the chairs on the porch, with here and there books and papers, when edward morgan walked out. the yard was spacious and full of plants. sunflowers and poke-berries were growing along the front fence, and mocking birds, cardinals and jays, their animosities suspended, were breakfasting side by side. his walk carried him to the side of the house, and, looking across the low picket fence, he saw mary. her sleeves were rolled up above the elbows and her arms covered with dough from a great pan into which, from time to time, she thrust a hand. a multitude of ducks, chickens, turkeys and guineas scrambled about her, and a dozen white pigeons struggled for standing-room upon her shoulders. "may i come in?" he called. "if you can stand it, mr. morgan." there was not the slightest embarrassment; the brown eyes were frank and encouraging; he placed his hands upon the fence and leaped lightly over. "what a family you have!" he said. she smiled, turning her face to him as she scattered dough and gently pushed away the troublesome birds. "many birds' mouths to fill; and they will have to fill some mouths too, one of these days, poor things." "that is but fair." "i suppose so; but what a mission in life--just to fill somebody's mouth." "the mission of many poor men and women i have seen," he said, "is merely to fill mouths. and sometimes they get so poor they can't do that." "and sometimes chickens get the same way," she said, sagely, at which both laughed outright. her face resumed its placid expression almost instantly. "it must be sad to be very poor; how i wish they could arrange for all of the poor people to come out here and find homes; there seems to be so much land wasted." "they would not stay long anywhere away from the city," he said; "but do you never sigh for city life?" "i prefer it," she replied, simply, "but we cannot afford it. and there is no one to take care of this place. it is harder on annie, brother's wife. she simply detests the country. when i graduated--" "you graduated!" he exclaimed, almost incredulously. she looked at him surprised. "yes, i am young, seventeen this month, but that is not extraordinary. mamma graduated at the same age, sixteen, forty years ago." a servant approached, spoon in hand. "want some more lard, missy." she took her bunch of keys, and selecting one that looked like the bastile memento at mount vernon, unlocked the smoke-house door and waited. "half of that will do, gincy," she said, not looking around as she talked with morgan, and the woman returned half. "now," she continued to him, "i must go see about the milking." "i will go, too, if you do not object! this is all new and enjoyable." they came to where the women were at work. as they stood looking on, a calf came up and stood by the girl's side, letting her rub its sensitive ears. a little kid approached, too, and bleated. "aunt mollie," mary asked, "has its mother come up yet?" "no, ma'am. spec' somep'n done cotch her!" "see if he will drink some cow's milk--give me the cup." she offered him a little, and the hungry animal drank eagerly. "let him stay in the yard until he gets large enough to feed himself." then turning to morgan, laughing, she said: "i expect you are hungry, too; i wonder why papa does not come." "is he up?" "oh, yes; he goes about early in the morning--there he comes now!" the soldierly form of the old man was seen out among the pines. "bring in breakfast, gincy," she called, and presently several negroes sped across the yard, carrying smoking dishes into the cool basement dining-room. then the bell rang. at the top of the stairway morgan had an opportunity to better see his hostess. the lady was slender and moved with deliberation. her gray hair was brightened by eyes that seemed to swim with light and sympathy. the dress was a black silk, old in fashion and texture, but there was real lace at the throat and wrists, and a little lace headdress. she smiled upon the young man and gave him her plump hand as he offered to assist her. "i hope you slept well," she said; "no ghosts! that part of the house you were in is said to be one hundred years old, and must be full of memories." they stood for grace, and then mary took her place behind the coffee pot and served the delicious beverage in thin cups of china. the meal consisted of broiled chicken, hot, light biscuits, bread of cornmeal, and eggs that morgan thought delicious, corn cakes, bacon and fine butter. a little darky behind an enormous apron, but barefooted, stood by the coffee pot and with a great brush of the gorgeous peacock feathers kept the few flies off the tiny caster in the middle of the table, while his eyes followed the conversation around. presently there was a clatter on the stairs and the little boy came down and climbed into his high chair. he was barefooted and evidently ready for breakfast, as he took a biscuit and bit it. the colonel looked severely at him. "put your biscuit down," he said, quietly but sternly, "and wait outside now until the others are through. you came in after grace and you have not said good-morning." the boy's countenance clouded and he began to pick at his knife handle; the grandmother said, gently: "he'll not do it again, grandpa, and he is hungry, i know. let him off this time." grandpa assumed a very severe expression as he replied, promptly: "very well, madam; let him say grace and stay, under those circumstances." the company waited on him, he hesitated, swelled up as if about to cry and said, earnestly: "gimme somep'n to eat, for the lord's sake, amen." grandma smiled benignly, but mary and grandpa were convulsed. then other footfalls were heard on the stairs outside, as if some one were coming down by placing the same foot in front each time. presently in walked a blue-eyed, golden-haired, barefooted girl of three, who went straight to the colonel and held up her arms. he lifted her and pressed the little cheek to his. "ah," he said, "here comes the duchess." he gave her a plate next to his, and taking her fork she ate demurely, from time to time watching morgan. "papa ain't up yet," volunteered the boy. "he told mamma to throw his clothes in the creek as he wouldn't have any more use for them--ain' going to get up any more." "mamma, does your eye hurt you?" said mary, seeing the white hand for the second time raised to her face. "a little. the same old pain." "mamma," she explained to morgan, "has lost the sight of one eye by neuralgia, tho you would never suspect it. she still suffers dreadfully at times from the same trouble." presently the elder lady excused herself, the daughter watching her anxiously as she slowly disappeared. it was nearly noon when norton montjoy and edward morgan reached the law office of ellison eldridge. as they entered morgan saw a clean-shaven man of frank, open expression. norton spoke: "judge, this is mr. edward morgan--you have corresponded with him." morgan felt the sudden penetrating look of the lawyer. montjoy was already saying au revoir and hastening out, waving off edward's thanks as he went. "will see you later," he called back from the stairway, "and don't forget your promise to the old folks." "you got my letter, mr. morgan? please be seated." "yes; three days since, in new york, through fuller & fuller. you have, i believe, the will of the late john morgan." "a copy of it. the will is already probated." he went to his safe and returned with a document and a bunch of keys. "shall i read it to you?" "if you please." the lawyer read, after the usual recitation that begins such documents, as follows: "do create, name and declare edward morgan of the city of new york my lawful heir to all property, real and personal, of which i may die possessed. and i hereby name as executor of this my last will and testament, ellison eldridge of ---- state afore-said, relieving said ellison eldridge of bond as executor and giving him full power to wind up my estate, pay all debts and settle with the heir as named, without the order of or returns to any court, and for his services in this connection a lien of $ , in his favor is hereby created upon said estate, to be paid in full when the residue of property is transferred to the said edward morgan," etc. "the property, aside from ilexhurst, his late home," continued judge eldridge, "consists of $ , in government bonds. these i have in a safety-deposit company. i see the amount surprises you." "yes," said the young man; "i am surprised by the amount." he gave himself up to thought for a few moments. "the keys," said eldridge, "he gave me a few days before his death, stating that they were for you only, and that the desk in his room at home, which they fitted, contained no property." "you knew mr. morgan well, i presume?" said the young man. "yes, and no. i have seen him frequently for a great many years, but no man knew him intimately. he was eccentric, but a fine lawyer and a very able man. one day he came in here to execute this will and left it with me. he referred to it again but once and that was when he came to bring your address and photograph." "was there--anything marked--or strange--in his life?" "nothing beyond what i have outlined. he was a bachelor, and beyond an occasional party to gentlemen in his house, when he spared no expense, and regular attendance upon the theater, he had few amusements. he inherited some money; the balance he accumulated in his practice and by speculation, i suppose. the amount is several times larger than i suspected. his one great vice was drink. he would get on his sprees two or three times a year, but always at home. there he would shut himself up and drink until his housekeeper called in the doctors." morgan waited in silence; there was nothing else and he rose abruptly. "judge, we will wind up this matter in a few days. here are your letters, and john morgan's to me, and letters from fuller & fuller, who have known me for many years and have acted as agents for both col. morgan and myself. if more proof is desired----" "these are sufficient. your photograph is accurate. may i ask how you are related to col. morgan?" "distantly only. the fact is i am almost as nearly alone in the world as he was. i must have your advice touching other matters. i shall return, very likely, in the morning." upon the street edward morgan walked as in a dream. strange to say, the information imparted to him had been depressing. he called a carriage. "take me out to john morgan's," he said, briefly. "de colonel's done dead, sah!" "i know, but the house is still there, is it not?" the driver conveyed the rebuke to his bony horse, in the shape of a sharp lash, and secured a reasonably fair gait. once or twice he ventured observations upon the character of the deceased. "col. morgan's never asked nobody 'how much' when dey drive 'im; he des fling down half er doller an' go long 'bout es business. look to me, young marster, like you sorter got de morgan's eye. is you kinned to 'im?" "i employed you to drive, not to talk," said edward, sharply. "dere now, dat's des what col. morgan say!" the negro gave vent to a little pacifying laugh and was silent. the shadow on the young man's face was almost black when he got out of the hack in front of the morgan house and tossed the old negro a dollar. "oom-hoo!" said that worthy, significantly. "oo-hoo! what i tole you?" chapter iv. the mother's room. the house before which morgan stood overlooked the city two miles away and was the center of a vast estate now run to weeds. it was a fine example of the old style of southern architecture. the spacious roof, embattled, but unbroken by gable or tower, was supported in front by eight massive columns that were intended to be ionic. the space between them and the house constituted the veranda, and opening from the center of the house upon this was a great doorway, flanked by windows. this arrangement was repeated in the story above, a balcony taking the place of the door. the veranda and columns were reproduced on both sides of the house, running back to two one-story wings. the house was of slight elevation and entered in front by six marble steps, flanked by carved newel posts and curved rails; the front grounds were a hundred yards wide and fifty deep, inclosed by a heavy railing of iron. these details came to him afterward; he did not even see at that time the magnolias and roses that grew in profusion, nor the once trim boxwood hedges and once active fountain. he sounded loudly upon the front door with the knocker. at length a woman came around the wing room and approached him. she was middle-aged and wore a colored turban, a white apron hiding her dress. the face was that of an octoroon; her figure tall and full of dignity. she did not betray the mixed blood in speech or manner, but her form of address proclaimed her at once a servant. the voice was low and musical as she said, "good-morning, sir," and waited. morgan studied her in silence a moment; his steady glance seemed to alarm her, for she drew back a step and placed her hand on the rail. "i want to see the people who have charge of this house," said the young man. she now approached nearer and looked anxiously into his face. "i have the care of it," she answered. "well," said he, "i am edward morgan, the new owner. let me have the keys." "edward morgan!" she repeated the name unconsciously. "come, my good woman, what is it? where are the keys?" she bowed her head. "i will get them for you, sir." she went to the rear again, and presently the great doors swung apart and he entered. the hallway was wide and opened through massive folding doors into the dining-room in the rear, and this dining-room, by means of other folding doors, entering the wing-rooms, could be enlarged into a princely salon. the hall floor was of marble and a heavy frieze and centerpiece decorated walls and ceiling. a gilt chandelier hung from the center. antique oak chairs flanked this hallway, which boasted also a hatrack, with looking-glass six feet wide. a semicircular stairway, guarded by a carved oak rail, a newel post and a knight in armor, led to apartments above. a musty odor pervaded the place. "open the house," said edward; "i must have better air." and while this was being done he passed through the rooms into which now streamed light and fresh air. on the right was parlor and guest chamber, the hangings and carpets unchanged in nearly half a century. on the left was a more cheerful living-room, with piano and a rack of yellow sheet music, and the library, with an enormous collection of books. there were also cane furniture, floor matting and easy-chairs. in all these rooms spacious effects were not lessened by bric-a-brac and collections. a few portraits and landscapes, a candelabra or two, a pair of brass fire dogs, one or two large and exquisitely painted vases made up the ornamental features. the dining-room proper differed in that its furnishings were newer and more elaborate. the wing-rooms were evidently intended for cards and billiards. behind was the southern back porch closed in with large green blinds. over all was the chill of isolation and disuse. edward made his way upstairs among the sleeping apartments, full of old and clumsy furniture, the bedding having been removed. two rooms only were of interest; to the right and rear a small apartment connected with the larger one in front by a door then locked. this small room seemed to have been a boy's. there were bows and arrows, an old muzzle-loading gun, a boat paddle, a dip net, stag horns, some stuffed birds and small animals, the latter sadly dilapidated, a few game pictures, boots, shoes and spurs--even toys. a small bed ready for occupancy stood in one corner and in another a little desk with drop lid. on the hearth were iron fire dogs and ashes, the latter holding fragments of charred paper. for the first time since entering the house edward felt a human presence; it was a bright sunny room opening to the western breeze and the berries of a friendly china tree tapped upon the window as he approached it. he placed his hand upon the knob of the door, leading forward, and tried to open it; it was locked. "that," said the woman's low voice, "is col. morgan's mother's room, sir, and nobody ever goes in there. no one has entered that room but him since she died, i reckon more than forty years ago." edward had started violently; he turned to find the sad, changeless face of the octoroon at his side. "and this room?" "there is where he lived all his life--from the time he was a boy until he died." edward took from his pocket the bunch of keys and applied the largest to the lock of the unopened door; the bolt turned easily. as he crossed the threshold a thrill went through him; he seemed to trespass. here had the boy grown up by his mother, here had been his retreat at all times. when she passed away it was the one spot that kept fresh the heart of the great criminal lawyer, who fought the outside world so fiercely and well. edward had never known a mother's room, but the scene appealed to him, and for the first time he felt kinship with the man who preceded him, who was never anything but a boy here in these two rooms. even when he lay dead, back there in that simple bed, over which many a night his mother must have leaned to press her kisses upon his brow, he was a boy grown old and lonely. one day she had died in this front room! what an agony of grief must have torn the boy left behind. in the dim light of the room he had opened, objects began to appear; almost reverently edward raised a window and pushed open the shutters. behind him stood ready for occupancy a snowy bed, with pillows and linen as fresh seemingly as if placed there at morn. by the bedside was a pair of small worn slippers, a rocking chair stood by the east window, and by the chair was a little sewing stand, with a boy's jacket lying near, and threaded needle thrust into its texture. on the little center table was a well-worn bible by a small brass lamp, and a single painting hung upon the wall--that of a little farmhouse at the foot of a hill, with a girl in frock and poke bonnet swinging upon its gate. there was no carpet on the floor; only two small rugs. it had been the home of a girl simply raised and grown to womanhood, and her simplicity had been repeated in her boy. the great house had been the design of her husband, but there in these two rooms mother and son found the charm of a bygone life, delighting in those "vague feelings" which science cannot fathom, but which simpler minds accept as the whispering of heredity. one article only remained unexamined. it was a small picture in a frame that rested upon the mantel and in front of which was draped a velvet cloth. morgan as in a dream drew aside the screen and saw the face of a wondrously beautiful girl, whose eyes rested pensively upon him. a low cry escaped the octoroon, who had noiselessly followed him; she was nodding her head and muttering, all unconscious of his presence. when she saw at length his face turned in wonder upon her she glided noiselessly from the room. he replaced the cloth, closed the window again and tiptoed out, locking the door behind him. he found the octoroon downstairs upon the back steps. she was now calm and answered his questions clearly. she had not belonged to john morgan, she said, but had always been a free woman. her husband had been free, too, but had died early. she had come to keep house at ilexhurst many years ago, before the war, and had been there always since, caring for everything while mr. morgan was in the army, and afterward; when he was away from time to time. no, she did not know anything of the girl in the picture; she had heard it said that he was once to have married a lady, but she married somebody else and that was the end of it. john morgan had kept the room as it was. no, he was never married. he had no cousins or kinfolks that she had heard of except a sister who died, and her two sons had been killed in battle or lost at sea during the war. neither of them was married; she was certain of that. she herself cooked and kept house, and ben, a hired boy, attended to the rest and acted as butler. edward was recalled to the present by feeling her eyes fixed upon him. he caught but one fleeting glance at her face before it was averted; it had grown young, almost beautiful, and the eyes were moistened and tender and sad. he turned away abruptly. "i will occupy an upper room to-night," he said, "and will send new furniture to-morrow." his baggage had come and he went back with the express to the city. he would return, he said, after supper. sometimes the mind, after a long strain imposed upon it, relieves itself by a refusal to consider. so with edward morgan's. that night he stood by his window and watched the lessening moon rise over the eastern hills. but he seemed to stand by a low picket fence beyond which a girl, with bare arms, was feeding poultry. he felt again the power of her frank, brown eyes as they rested upon him, and heard her voice, musical in the morning air, as it summoned her flock to breakfast. in new york, paris and italy, and here there in other lands, were a few who called him friend; it would be better to wind up his affairs and go to them. it did not seem possible that he could endure this new life. already the buoyancy of youth was gone! his ties were all abroad. thoughts of paris connected him with a favorite air. he went to his baggage and unpacked an old violin, and sitting in the window, he played as a master hand had taught him and an innate genius impelled. it was schubert's serenade, and as he played the room was no longer lonely; sympathy had brought him friends. it seemed to him that among them came a woman who laid her hand on his shoulder and smiled on him. her face was hidden, but her touch was there, living and vibrant. on his cheek above the mellow instrument he felt his own tears begin to creep and then--silence. but as he stood calmer, looking down into the night, a movement in the shrubbery attracted him back to earth; he called aloud: "who is there?" a pause and the tall figure of the octoroon crossed the white walk. "rita," was the answer. "the gate was left open." chapter v. the stranger in the library. edward was up early and abroad for exercise. despite his gloom he had slept fairly well and had awakened but once. but that once! he could not rid himself of the memory of the little picture and it had served him a queer trick. he had simply found himself lying with open eyes and staring at the woman herself; it was the same face, but now anxious and harassed. he was not superstitious and this was clearly an illusion; he rubbed his eyes deliberately and looked again. the figure had disappeared. but the mind that entertains such fancies needs something--ozone and exercise, he thought; and so he covered the hills with his rapid pace and found himself an hour later in the city and with an appetite. the day passed in the arrangement of those minor requirements when large estates descend to new owners. there was an accounting, an examination of records. judge eldridge gave him assistance everywhere, but there was no time for private and past histories. in passing he dropped in at barksdale's office and left a card. one of the distinctly marked features of the day was his meeting with a lawyer, amos royson by name. this man held a druggist's claim of several hundred dollars against the estate of john morgan for articles purchased by rita morgan, the charges made upon verbal authority from the deceased. john morgan had been absent many months just previous to his death and the account had not been presented. edward was surprised to find, upon entering this office, that the lawyer was the man who had collided with montjoy's horse the night before. royson saluted him coldly but politely and produced the account already sworn to and ready for filing. it had been withheld at eldridge's request. as edward ran his eye over the list he saw that chemicals had been bought at wholesale, and with them had been sent one or two expensive articles belonging to a chemical laboratory. just what use rita morgan might have for such things he could not imagine. he was about to say that he would inquire into the account when he saw that royson, with a sardonic smile upon his face, was watching him. he had a distinct impression that antipathy to the man was stirring within him; he was about to pay the account and rid himself of the necessity of any further dealings with the man, when, angered by the impudent, irritating manner, he decided otherwise. "have you ever shown this account to rita morgan?" "oh, yes!" "and she pronounced it correct, i suppose?" "she did not examine it; she said that you would pay it now that john morgan is dead." "if the account is a just charge upon the morgan estate i certainly will," said morgan, pocketing the written statement. "i think after you examine into the matter it will be paid," said royson, confidently. edward thought long upon the man's manner and the circumstance, but could make nothing out of them. he would see rita, and with that resolution he let the incident pass from his mind. the shadows were falling when he returned to take his first meal in his new home. he descended to the dining-room to find it lighted by the fifty or more jets in the large gilt chandeliers. the apartment literally blazed with light. the sensation under the circumstances was agreeable, and in better spirits he took the single seat provided. here, as afterward ascertained, had been the lawyer's one point of contact with the social world, and it was here that he had been accustomed, at intervals varying from weeks to years, to entertain his city acquaintances. the room was not american but continental from its louvre ceiling of white and gold to its niched half life-size statuary and pictures of fishing and hunting scenes in gilded frames. but the foreign effects ended in this room. outside all else was american. edward was silently served by the butler and was pleased to find his dinner first class in every respect. then came a box of choice cigars upon a silver tray. passing into the library, he seated himself by the reading light near the little side table where a leather chair had been placed, and sought diversion in the papers; but, alas, the european finds but little of home affairs in one parliament, a regatta, a horse race, a german-army review, a social sensation--these were all. he turned from the papers; the truth is the one great overwhelming fact at that moment was that he, a wanderer all of his life, without family or parents, or knowledge of them, had suddenly been transplanted among a strange people and made the master of a household and a vast fortune. on this occasion, as ever since entering the house, he could not rid himself of a suggestion so indefinite as to belong to the region of subconsciousness that he was an interloper, an inferior, and that jealous, unseen eyes were watching him. the room seemed haunted by an unutterable protest. he was not aware then that this is a peculiarity of all old houses. something like an oppression seized upon him and he was wondering if this should continue, would it be possible for him to endure the situation long? upstairs was the little desk, the keys to which he held, and in it information that would lay bare the secret of his life and reveal the mystery of years ago; which would give him the same chance for happiness that other men have. all that was left now for him to do was to ascend the stairs, open the desk and read. he had put it off for a quiet and convenient moment, and that time had come. but what was contained in that desk? he remembered hamlet and understood his doubts for the first time. it was the gravity of this doubt, the weight of the revelation to come that caused him to smoke on, cigar after cigar, in silence. it flashed upon him that it might be wiser to take his fortune and return to europe as he was. but as he smoked his mind rejected the suggestion as cowardly. it was at this stage in his reverie that edward morgan received the severest shock of his life. without having noticed any sound or movement, he presently became conscious that some one besides himself was in the room, and instantly, almost, his eyes rested on a man standing before the open bookcase. it was a figure, slender and tall, clad in light, well-worn trousers, and short smoking jacket. the face turned from him was lifted toward the shelves, and long black hair fell in shining masses upon his shoulders. the right hand extended upward, touching first one, then another of the volumes as it searched along the line, was white as paraffine and slender as a girl's and a fold of linen, edged with lace, lay upon the wrists. all the other details of the figure were lost in the shadow. while thus edward sat, his brain whirling and eyes riveted upon the strange figure, the visitor paused in his search as if in doubt, turned his profile and listened, then faced about suddenly and the two men gazed into each other's eyes. edward had gained his first full view of the visitor's face. had it been withdrawn from him in an instant he could at any time thereafter have reproduced it in every line, so vividly was it impressed upon his memory. it was new, and yet strangely, dimly, vaguely familiar! it was oval, pale and lighted by eyes with enormously distended pupils. it seemed to him that they were not mirrors at that moment, but scintillating lights burning within their cavities. but the first effect, startling though it was, passed away immediately; nothing could have withstood the gentle pleading entreaty that lurked in all the face lines; an expression childish and girlish. the stranger gazed for a moment only on the man sitting bolt upright now in his chair, his hands clutching the arms, and then went quickly forward. "you are edward morgan?" he said, encouragingly. "my uncle told me you would come some day." the deep, indrawn breath that had made the new master's figure rigid for the moment escaped back slowly between the parted lips. he was ashamed that he should have been so startled. "yes," he said, presently, "i am edward morgan. and you are----" "gerald morgan. but i must say good-bye now. i have a matter of upmost importance to conclude." he smiled again, returned to the shelves and this time without hesitation selected a volume and passed out toward the dining-room. a faint odor of burning material attracted edward's attention. he looked for his cigar; it lay upon the matting, in a circle as large as his hat. he must have sat there watching the door for fifteen minutes after the singular visitor had passed through. he stamped out the creeping circle of fire and rang the bell. the octoroon entered and stood waiting, her eyes cast down. "a young man came here a few minutes since and went out through that door," said he, with difficulty suppressing his excitement: "who is he?" she looked to him astonished. "why, that was mr. gerald, sir. don't you know of him? mr. gerald morgan?" "absolutely nothing. i have never seen him before nor heard of him--no mention of him has been made in my presence." the woman was clearly amazed. "is it possible! your uncle never wrote you about gerald morgan--the lawyers have never told you?" "no one has told me, i say; the man is as new to me as if he had dropped from the clouds." she thought a moment. "he must have left papers----" "oh!" exclaimed edward, starting suddenly; "i have not read the papers! i see! i see!" "you will find it there," she said, relieved. "i thought you knew already. it did not occur to me to tell you about him, sir! we have grown used to not speaking of him. he never goes out anywhere now." edward was puzzled and then an explanation flashed upon him. "he is insane!" he exclaimed. "oh, no, sir! but he has always been delicate--not like other children; and then the medicine they gave him when he had the pains and was a baby--he has been obliged to keep it up. it is the morphine and opium, sir, that has changed him." edward nodded his head; the explanation was sufficient. "he has lived here a long time, i presume?" "yes, sir. he smokes and reads and paints and does many curious things, but he never goes out. sometimes he walks about the place, but generally at night; and once or twice in the last ten years he has gone down-town, but it excites him too much and he is apt to die away." "die away?" "yes, sir; the attacks come on him at any time, and so we let him live on as he wants to and no one sees him. he cannot bear strangers, but he is not insane, sir. one trouble is, he knows more than his head can hold--he studies too much." she said this very tenderly and her voice trembled a little as she finished and turned her face to work nervously. "you have not told me who he is." "i do not know, sir," and then she added: "he was a baby when i came, and i have done my best by him." she did not meet his eyes. her suffering and embarrassment touched edward. "i will read the papers," he said, gently; "they will tell me all." taking this as a dismissal the woman withdrew. chapter vi. "who says there can be a 'too late' for the immortal mind?" something like fear, a superstitious fear, arose in edwards' heart as he turned down the lid of the old-fashioned desk in the little room upstairs and saw the few papers pigeon-holed there with lawyer-like precision. on the top lay a long envelope sealed and bearing his name. his hand shook as he held it and studied the chirography. the moment was one to which he had looked forward for a lifetime and should contain the explanation of the singular mystery that had environed him from infancy. as he held the letter, hesitating over the final act, his life passed in review as, it is said, do the lives of drowning persons. the thought that edward morgan was dying came in that connection. the orphan, the lonely college boy, the wandering youth, the bohemian of a dozen continental capitals, the musician and half-way metaphysicist and theosophist, the unformed man of an unformed age, new sphere, one of quick, earnest, feverish action, the new man, was to spring armed, or hampered by--what? at that moment, by a strange revulsion, the life that he had worn so hardly, so bitterly, even its sadness seemed dear and beautiful. after all it had been a life of ease and many scenes. it had no responsibilities--now it would pass! he tore open the envelope impatiently and read: "edward morgan--sir: when this letter comes to your knowledge you will have been acquainted with the fact that my will has made you heir to all my property, without legacy or restriction. that document was made brief and simple, partly to avoid complications, and partly to conceal facts with which the public has no reasonable interest. i now, assured of your character in every particular, desire that you retain during the lifetime of gerald morgan the residence which has always been his home, providing for his wants and pleasures freely as i have done and leaving him undisturbed in the manner of his life. i direct, further, that you extend the same care and kindness to rita morgan, my housekeeper, seeing that she is not disturbed in her home and the manner of her life. my object is to guard the welfare of the only people intimately connected with me by ties of friendship and association, whom i have not already provided for. carrying out this intention, you will as soon as possible, after coming into possession, take precautions looking to the future of gerald morgan and rita morgan, my housekeeper, in the event of your own death; and the plan to be selected in this connection i leave to your own good sense and judgment, only suggesting as adviser for you ellison eldridge, one of the few lawyers living whose heart is outside of his pocketbook, and whose discretion is perfect. "john morgan." that was all. the young man, dumfounded, turned over the single sheet of paper that contained the whole message, examined again the envelope, read and reread the communication, and finally laid it aside. not one word of explanation of his own (edward's) existence no claim of relationship, no message of sympathy, only the curt voice of an eccentric old man, echoing beyond the black wall of mystery and already sunk into eternal silence. the old life no longer seemed dear or beautiful. it returned upon him with the dull weight of oppression he had known so long. it was a bitter ending, a crushing, overwhelming disappointment. he smiled at length and lighted another cigar. his mind reverted to the singular character whose final expression lay upon the desk. his last act had been to guard against the curious, and that had included the beneficiary. he had succeeded in living a mystery, in dying a mystery, and in covering up his past with a mystery. "it was well done." such was edward's reflection spoken aloud. he recalled the lines: "i now, assured of your character in every particular." every word in that laconic letter, as also every word in the few communications made to him in life by this man, meant something. what did these mean? "assured" by whom? who had spied upon his actions and kept watch over him to such an extent as would justify the sweeping confidences? but he knew that the testator had read him right. a faint wave of pleasure flushed his cheek and warmed his heart when he realized the full significance of this tribute to his true character. he no longer felt like an intruder. and yet, "assured" by whom? and who was gerald morgan? not a relative or he would have said so; he would have said "my nephew, gerald morgan." the same argument shut him (edward) out. why this suspicious absence of relationship terms?--and they, both of them, morgans and heirs to his wealth? again he dragged the papers from the desk and ran them over. manuscripts all, they contained detached accounts of widely separated people and incidents, and moreover they were clearly briefed. "a dramatic trail," "the storm," "a midnight struggle," etc. they had no bearing upon his life; they were the unpublished literary remains of john morgan. every paper lay exposed; the mine was exhausted. he again read the letter slowly, idly lifted each paper and returned all to the desk. the cigar was out again; he tossed it from the window, locked the desk and passed into the mother's room. the action was without forethought, but his new philosophy had taught him the value of instinctive human actions as index fingers. what cause then had drawn him into that long-deserted room? as he reflected, his eyes rested upon the picture of the girl in the little frame on the mantel. he started back, amazed and overwhelmed. it was the face that had been turned to him in the library--the face of gerald morgan! edward was surprised to find himself standing by the open window when he had exhausted the train of thought that the recognition put in motion, and counting his heart-beats, ninety to the minute. by that curious power or weakness of certain minds his thoughts ran entirely from the matter in hand along the lines of a lecture his friend virdow as jean had delivered, the theory of which was that organic heart disease, unless fastened to its victim by inheritance, is always a mental result. if a mere thought or combination of thoughts could excite, a thought could depress. it was plain; he would write to virdow confirming his theory. then he became conscious that the moon hung like a plate of silver in the vast sky space of the east and that her light was flashed back by many little points in the city beneath him--a gilt ball, a vane, a set of window glasses, and the dew-wet slates of a modern roof. one white spot was visible in the yard in front, white and pale as the moon when the vapor had dispersed but set immovably. as he idly sought to unravel its little secret, it simply became a part of the shadow and invisible, but he felt that some one was looking up at him; and suddenly he saw the slender figure of a man pass, cross the gravel walk and vanish in the shrubbery on the left. edward did not cry out; he stood musing upon the fact, and lo, there came a glitter of rosy light along the horizon; the moon had vanished overhead, and sound arose in confused murmurs from the dull heaps of houses in the valley. he saw again at the moment, over the eastern hills, the face of a girl as she stood calling her pets, and felt her eyes upon him. when he awoke that day he found the sun far beyond the zenith and he lay revolving in his mind the events of the night; to his surprise much of the weight was gone and in its place was interest, the like of which he had never before known. an object in life had suddenly been developed and instinctively he felt that the study of this new mystery would lead to a knowledge of himself and his past. the first thing to be done was to again see the stranger who had invaded his library, and carry his investigation as far as this person would permit. this in mind, he dressed himself with care and descended into the dining-room. in a few moments his breakfast was served. upon hearing his inquiry for rita, ben, the butler, retired and presently the woman, grave, and after a few words quiet, took his place. before speaking edward noticed her closely again. about fifty years of age, perhaps less, she stood as erect and rigid as an indian, her black hair without a kink. there was an easy dignity in her attitude, hardly the pose of a slave, or one who had been. but in her face was the sadness of personal suffering, and in her voice a tone he had noticed at first, an echo of some depressing experience, it seemed to him. where was gerald's room? there! he had not noticed the door; it led out from the dining-room. it was the wing intended for billiards, but now the retreat of her poor young master and had been all his life. he did not like to be disturbed, but perhaps the circumstances would make a difference. edward knocked on the door. receiving no answer, he opened it hesitatingly and looked in. then he entered. gerald greeted him with an encouraging smile and closing the door behind him, he viewed the interior with interest. the walls were hung with pictures, swords, guns, pistols and other weapons, and between them on every available spot were books, books, books and periodicals. a broad center table held writing materials and manuscripts, and upon a long table by two open windows were bottles of many colors and all the queer paraphernalia of a chemical laboratory. against the opposite wall was a spacious divan, and seated upon it, wrapped in a singular-looking dressing-gown, fez upon his head and smoking a shibouk as he read, was the strange being for whom edward searched. "i was expecting you," the young man said; "where have you been?" the naturalness of the words confused the visitor for a moment. no seat had been offered him, but he drew one near the divan. "i suppose i may smoke?" he said, smiling, ignoring the query, but the intent look of gerald caused him to add: "i slept late; how did you rest?" "do you know," said gerald, his expression changing, "strange as it may seem, i have seen you before, but where, where----" the long lashes dropped above the eyes; he shook his head sadly, "but where, no man may say." "it hardly seems possible," said edward, gravely. "i have never been here before, and you, i believe, have never been absent." "so they say; so they say. mere old-nurse talk! i have been to many places." edward turned his head in sadness. man or woman the person was crazy. he looked again; it was the face of the girl in the picture frame, grown older, with time and suffering. "it is an odd room," he said, presently; "do you sleep here?" gerald nodded to the other door. "would you like to see? enter." to edward's amazement he found himself in a conservatory, a glass house about forty by twenty feet, arranged for sliding curtains at sides and top. there was little to be seen besides a small bed and necessary furniture. but an easel stood near the center and on it a canvas ready for painting. in a corner was a large portfolio for drawings, closed. "i cannot sleep unless i see the stars," said gerald, joining him. "and there is an entrance to the grounds!" he threw open a glass door, exposing an oleander avenue. "this is my favorite walk." the scene seemed to strike him anew. he stood there lost in thought a moment and returned to his divan. edward found him absorbed in a volume. he had studied him there long and keenly and reached a conclusion that would, he felt, be of value in his future associations with this eccentric mind; it was a mind reversed, living in abstract thought. its visions of real life were only glimpses. therefore, he reasoned, to keep company with such a mind, one must be prepared for its eccentricities and avoid discord. it was a keen diagnosis and he acted upon it. he went about noiselessly examining the furnishings of the room without further speech. the young man was writing as he passed him. looking over his shoulder, edward read a few lines of what was evidently a thesis; "the mind can therefore have no conscious memory. memory being a function of the brain and physical structure, and mind being endowed with a capacity for wandering, it follows that it can bring back no record of its experience since no memory function went with it. it may, indeed, be true that the mind can itself be shaped and biased anew by its detached experiences, but who can ever read its history backwards? unless somewhere arises a mind brilliant enough to find the alphabet, to connect the mind's hidden storehouse with consciousness, the mystery of mind--life (that is, higher dream life)--must remain forever unread." "it has been found," said edward, as though gerald had stated a proposition aloud. "how? where?" gerald did not look up, but merely ceased writing a moment. "music is the connecting link. music is the language of the mind. vibration is the secret of creation and along its lines will all secrets be revealed." the book closed slowly in the reader's hands, his thesis slipped to the floor. he sat in deep thought. then a light gleamed in his face and eyes. "it is true," he said, with agitation, as he arose. "it is a great thought; a great discovery. i must learn once" and rita stood waiting. "bring me musical instruments--what?" he turned impatiently to edward. the latter shook his head. "'tis a lifetime study," he said, sadly, "and then--failure. no man has yet reached the end." "i will reach it." "it calls for labor day and night--for talent--for teachers." "i will have all." "it calls for youth, for a mind young and fresh and responsive. you are old in mind. it is too late." "too late. too late. never, never, never too late. who says there can be a 'too late' for the immortal mind? i will begin. i will labor! i will succeed! if not in this life, then in the next, or the next; aye, at the foot of buddha, if need be, i will press to read all to the strains of music. oh, blind! blind! blind!" he strode about the room in an ecstasy of excitement. "prove to me it is too late here," shrieked the unhappy being, "and i will end this existence; will go back a thousand cycles, if necessary, carrying with me the impression of this truth, and begin, an infant, to lisp in numbers." he had snatched a poniard from the wall and was gesticulating frantically. edward was about to speak when he saw the enthusiast's eyes lose their frenzy and fix upon the woman's. he dropped the weapon and plunged face downward in despair among the pillows. like a statue the woman stood gazing upon him. "my violin," said edward. she disappeared noiselessly. chapter vii. "back! would you murder her?" when edward morgan went to europe from columbia college it was in obedience to a mandate of john morgan through the new york lawyers. he went, began there the life of a bohemian. introduced by a chance acquaintance, he fell in first with the art circles of paris, and, having a fancy and decided talent for painting, he betook himself seriously to study. but the same shadow, the same need of an overpowering motive, pursued him. with hope and ambition he might have become known to fame. as it was, his mind drifted into subtleties and the demon change came again. he closed his easel. rome, athens, constantinople, the occident, all knew him, gave him brief welcome and quick farewells. the years were passing; as he had gone from idleness to art, from art to history, and from history to archaeology by easy steps, so he passed now, successively to religion, to philosophy, and to its last broad exponent, theosophy. the severity of this last creed fitted the crucifixion of his spirit. its contemplation showed him vacancies in his education and so he went to jena for additional study. this decision was reached mainly through the suggestion of a chance acquaintance named abingdon, who had come into his life during his first summer on the continent. they met so often that the face of this man had became familiar, and one day, glad to hear his native tongue, he addressed him and was not repelled. abingdon gave to edward morgan his confidence; it was not important; a barrister in an english interior town, he crossed the channel annually for ramble in the by-ways of europe. it had been his unbroken habit for many years. from this time the two men met often and journeyed much together, the elder seeming to find a pleasure in the gravity and earnestness of the young man, and he in turn a relief in the nervous, jerky lawyer, looking always through small, half-closed eyes and full of keen conceptions. and when apart, occasionally he would get a characteristic note from abingdon and send a letter in reply. he had so much spare time. this man had once surprised him with the remark: "if i were twenty years younger i would go to jena and study vibration. it is the greatest force of the universe. it is the secret of creation." the more edward dwelt upon this remark, in connection with modern results and invention, the more he was struck with it. why go to jena to study vibration was something that he could not fathom, nor in all probability could abingdon. america was really the advanced line of discovery, but nevertheless he went, and with important results; and there in the old town, finding the new hobby so intimately connected with music, to which he was passionately devoted, he took up with renewed energy his neglected violin. with feverish toil he struggled along the border land of study and speculation, until he felt that there was nothing more possible for him--in jena. in jena his solitary friend had been the eminent virdow and to him he became an almost inseparable companion. the confidence and speculations of virdow, extending far beyond the limits of a lecture stand, carried edward into dazzling fields. the intercourse extended through the best part of several years. on leaving jena he was armed with a knowledge of the possibilities of the vast field he had entered upon, with a knowledge of thorough bass and harmony, and with a technique that might have made him famous had he applied his knowledge. he did not apply it! his final stand had been paris. abingdon was there. abingdon had discovered a genius and carried edward to see him. he had been passing through an obscure quarter when he was attracted by the singular pathos of a violin played in a garret. to use his expression, "the music glorified the miserable street." everybody there knew benoni, the blind violinist. and to this man, awed and silent, came edward, a listener. no words can express the meaning that lay in the blind man's improvisations; only music could contain them. and only one man in paris could answer! when having heard the heart language, the heart history and cravings of the player expressed in the solitude of that half-lighted garret, edward took the antique instrument and replied, the answer was overwhelming. the blind man understood; he threw his arms about the player and embraced him. "grand!" he cried. "a master plays, but it is incomplete; the final note has not come; the harmony died where it should have become immortal!" and edward knew it. from that meeting sprang a warm friendship, the most complete that morgan had ever known! it made the old man comfortable, gained him better quarters and broadened the horizon toward which his sun of life was setting. it would go down with some of the colors of its morning. it became edward's custom to take his old friend to hear the best operas and concerts, and one night they heard the immortal cambia sing. it was a charity concert and her first appearance in many years. when the idol of the older paris came to the footlights for the sixth time to bow her thanks for the ovation given her, she smiled and sang in german a love song, indescribable in its passion and tenderness. it was a burst of melody from the heart of some man, great one moment in his life at least. edward found himself standing when the tumult ceased. benoni had sunk from his chair to his knees and was but half-conscious. the excitement had partially paralyzed him. the lithe fingers of the left hand were dead. they would never rest again upon the strings of his great violin--the cremona to which in sickness and poverty, although its sale would have enriched him, he clung with the faith and instinct of the artist. there came the day when edward was ready to depart to america. he went to say good-bye, and this is what happened: the old man held edward's hands long in silence, but his lips moved in prayer; then lifting the instrument, he placed it in the young man's arms. "take it," he said. "i may never meet you again. it is the one thing that i have been true to all my life. i will not leave it to the base and heartless." and so edward, to please him, accepted the trust. he would return some day; many hours should the violin sing for the old man. as he stood he drew the bow and played one strain of cambia's song and the blind man lifted his face in sudden excitement. as edward paused he called the notes until it was complete. "now again," he said, singing: if thou couldst love me as i do love thee, then wouldst thou come to me, come to me. never forsaking me, never, oh, never forsaking me. oceans may roll between, thine home and thee love, if thou lovest me lovest me, what care we, you and i? through all eternity, i love thee, darling one, love me; love me. "you have found the secret," said benoni; "the chords on the lower octaves made the song." and so they had parted! the blind man to wait for the final summons; the young man to plunge into complications beyond his wildest dreams. "a man," said virdow once, "is a tribe made up of himself, his family and his friends." and this was the history in outline of the man to whom rita morgan handed the violin that fateful day when gerald lay face down among the pillows of his divan. recognizing in the delicate and excitable organism before him the possibilities of emotion and imagination, edward prepared to play. without hesitation he drew the bow across the strings and began a solemn prelude to a choral. and as he played he noticed the heaving form below him grow still. then gerald lifted his face and gazed past the player, with an intensity of vision that deepened until he seemed in the grasp of some stupendous power or emotion. edward played the recital; the story of calvary, the crucifixion and the mourning women, and the march of soldiers. finally there came the tumult of bursting storm and riven tombs. the climax of action occurred there; it was to die away into a movement fitted to the resurrection and the peaceful holiness of christ's meeting with mary. but before this latter movement began gerald leaped upon the player with the quickness and fury of a tiger and by the suddenness of the onset nearly bore him to the floor. this mad assault was accompanied by a shriek of mingled fear and horror. "back--would you murder her?" by a great effort edward freed himself and the endangered violin, and forced the assailant to the divan. the octoroon was kneeling by his side weeping. "leave him to me," she said. stunned and inexpressibly shocked edward withdrew. the grasp on his throat had been like steel! the marks remained. "i have," he wrote that night in a letter to virdow, "heard you more than once express the hope that you would some day be able to visit america. come now, at once! i have here entered upon a new life and need your help. further, i believe i can help you." after describing the circumstances already related, the letter continued: "the susceptibility of this mind to music i regard as one of the most startling experiences i have ever known, and it will afford you an opportunity for testing your theories under circumstances you can never hope for again. let me say to you here that i am now convinced by some intuitive knowledge that the assault upon me was based upon a memory stirred by the sound of the violin; that vibration created anew in the delicate mind some picture that had been forgotten and brought back again painful emotions that were ungovernable. i cannot think but that it is to have a bearing upon the concealed facts of my life; the discovery of which is my greatest object now, as in the past. and i cannot but believe that your advice and discretion will guide me in the treatment and care of this poor being, perhaps to the extent of affecting a radical change, and leave him a happier and a more rational being. "come to me, my friend, at once! i am troubled and perplexed. and do not be offended that i have inclosed exchange for an amount large enough to cover expenses. i am now rich beyond the comprehension of your economical german mind, and surely i may be allowed, in the interests of science, of my ward and myself to spend from the abundant store. i look for you early. in the meantime, i will be careful in my experiments. come at once! _the mind has an independent memory and you can demonstrate it._" edward knew that there was more on that concluding sentence than in the rest of the letter and exchange combined, and half-believing it, he stated it as a prophecy. he was preparing to retire, when it occurred to him that the strange occupant of the wing-room might need his attention. something like affection had sprung up in his heart for the unfortunate being who, with chains heavier than his own, had missed the diversion of new scenes, the broadening, the soothing of great landscapes and boundless oceans. a pity moved him to descend and to knock at the door. there was no answer. he entered to find the apartment deserted, but the curtain was drawn from the doorway of the glass-room and he passed in. upon the bed in the yellow light of the moon lay the slender figure of gerald, one arm thrown around the disordered hair, the other hanging listless from his side. he approached and bent above the bed. the face turned upward there seemed like wax in the oft-broken gloom. the sleeper had not stirred. it was the vibration of chords in harmony, that had moved him. would it have power again? he hesitated a moment, then returned quickly to the wing-room and secured his instrument. concealing himself he waited. it was but a moment. the wind brought the branches of the nearest oleanders against the frail walls, and the play of lightning had become continuous. then began in earnest the tumult of the vast sound waves as they met in the vapory caverns of the sky. the sleeper tossed restlessly upon his bed; he was stirred by a vague but unknown power; yet something was wanting. at this moment edward lifted his violin and, catching the storm note, wove a solemn strain into the diapason of the mighty organ of the sky. and as he played, as if by one motion, the sleeper stood alone in the middle of the room. again edward saw that frenzied stare fixed upon vacancy, but there was no furious leap of the agile limbs; by a powerful effort the struggling mind seemed to throw off a weight and the sleeper awoke. the bow was now suspended; the music had ceased. gerald rushed to his easel and, standing in a sea of electric flame, outlined with swift strokes a woman's face and form. she was struggling in the grasp of a man and her face was the face of the artist who worked. but such expression! agony, horror, despair! the figure of the man was not complete from the waist down; his face was concealed. between them, as they contended, was a child's coffin in the arms of the woman. overhead were the bare outlines of an arch. the artist hesitated and added behind the group a tree, whose branches seemed to lash the ground. and there memory failed; the crayon fell from his fingers; he stood listless by the canvas. then with a cry he buried his face in his hands and wept. as he stood thus, the visitor, awed but triumphant, glided through the door and disappeared in the wing-room. he knew that he had touched a hidden chord; that the picture on the canvas was born under the flashlight of memory! was it brain? oh, for the wisdom of virdow! sympathy moved him to return again to the glass-room. it was empty! chapter viii. on the back trail. edward found himself next day feverish and mentally disturbed; but he felt new life in the morning air. there was a vehicle available; a roomy buggy, after the fashion of those chosen by physicians, with covered tops to keep out the sun, and rubber aprons for the rain. and there was a good reliable horse, that had traveled the city road almost daily for ten years. he finished his meal and started out. in the yard he found gerald pale and with the contracted pupils that betrayed his deadly habit. he was taking views with a camera and came forward with breathless interest. "i am trying some experiments with photographs on the line of our conversation," he said. "if the mind pictures can be revived they must necessarily exist. do they? the question with me now is, can any living substance retain a photographic impression? you understand, it seems that the brain can receive these impressions through certain senses, but the brain is transient; through a peculiar process of supply and waste it is always coming and going. if it is true that every atom of our physical bodies undergoes a change at least once in seven years, how can the impressions survive? i have here upon my plate the sensitized film of a fish's eyes; i caught it this morning. i must establish, first, the proposition that a living substance can receive a photographic image; if i can make an impression remain upon this film i have gained a little point--a little one. but the fish should be alive. there are almost insuperable difficulties, you understand! the time will come when a new light will be made, so powerful, penetrating as to illumine solids. then, perhaps, will the brain be seen at work through the skull; then may its tiny impressions even be found and enlarged; then will the past give up its secrets. and the eye is not the brain." he looked away in perplexity. "if i only had brain substance, brain substance--a living brain!" he hurried away and edward resumed his journey to the city, sad and thoughtful. "it was not wise," he said, "it was not wise to start gerald upon that line of thought. and yet why not as well one fancy as another?" he had no conception of the power of an idea in such a mind as gerald's. "you did not mention to me," he said an hour later, sitting in eldridge's office, "that i would have a ward in charge out at ilexhurst. you naturally supposed i knew it, did you not?" "and you did not know it?" eldridge looked at him in unaffected astonishment. "positively not until the day after i reached the house! i had never heard of gerald morgan. you can imagine my surprise, when he walked in upon me one night." "you really astound me; but it is just like old morgan--pardon me if i smile. of all eccentrics he was the most consistent. yes, you have a charge and a serious one. i am probably the only person in the city who knows something of gerald, and my information is extremely limited. with an immense capacity for acquiring information, a remarkable memory and a keen analysis, the young man has never developed the slightest capacity for business. he received everything, but applied nothing. i was informed by his uncle, not long since, that there was no science exact or occult into which gerald had not delved at some time, but his mind seemed content with simply finding out." "gerald has been a most prodigious reader, devouring everything," continued the judge, "ancient and modern, within reach, knows literature and politics equally well, and is master of most languages to the point of being able to read them. i suppose his unfortunate habit--of course you know of that--is the obstacle now. for many years now i believe, the young man has not been off the plantation, and only at long intervals was he ever absent from it. ten or fifteen years ago he used to be seen occasionally in the city in search of a book, an instrument or something his impatience could not wait on." "ten or fifteen years ago! you knew him then before he was grown?" "i have known him ever since his childhood!" an exclamation in spite of him escaped from edward's lips, but he did not give eldridge time to reflect upon it. "is his existence generally known?" asked he, in some confusion. "oh, well, the public knows of his existence. he is the skeleton in morgan's closet, that is all." "and who is he?" asked edward, looking the lawyer straight into the eyes. "that," said eldridge, gravely, "is what i would ask of you." edward was silent. he shook his head; it was an admission of ignorance, confirmed by his next question. "have you no theory, judge, to account for his existence under such circumstances?" "theory? oh, no! the public and myself have always regarded him simply as a fact. his treatment by john morgan was one of the few glimpses we got of the old man's rough, kind nature. but his own silence seemed to beg silence, and no one within my knowledge ever spoke with him upon the subject. it would have been very difficult," he added, with a smile, "for he was the most unapproachable man, in certain respects, that i ever met." "you knew him well? may i ask if ever within your knowledge there was any romance or tragedy in his earlier life?" "i do not know nor have i ever heard of any tragedy in the life of your relative," said the lawyer, slowly; and then, after a pause: "it is known to men of my age, at least remembered by some, that late in life, or when about forty years old, he conceived a violent attachment for the daughter of a planter in this county and was, it is said, at one time engaged to her. the match was sort of family arrangement and the girl very young. she was finishing her education at the north and was to have been married upon her return; but she never returned. she ran away to europe with one of her teachers. the war came on and with it the blockade. no one has ever heard of her since. her disappearance, her existence, were soon forgotten. i remember her because i, then a young lawyer, had been called occasionally to her father's house, where i met and was greatly impressed by her. but i am probably one of the few who have carried in mind her features. she was a beautiful and lovable young woman, but, without a mother's training she had grown up self-willed and the result was as i have told you." edward had risen and was walking the floor. he paused before the speaker. "judge eldridge," he said, his voice a little unsteady, "i am going to ask you a question, which i trust you will be free to answer--will answer, and then forget." an expression of uneasiness dwelt on the lawyer's face, but he answered: "ask it; if i am free to answer, and can, i will." "i will ask it straight," said edward, resolutely: "have you ever suspected that gerald morgan is the son of the young woman who went away?" eldridge's reply was simply a grave bow. he did not look up. "you do not know that to be a fact?" "i do not." "what, then, is my duty?" "to follow the directions left by your relative," said eldridge, promptly. edward reflected a few moments over the lawyer's answer. "i agree with you, but time may bring changes. may i ask what is your theory of this strange situation--as regards my ward?" he could not bring himself to betray the fact of his own mystery. "i suppose," said eldridge, slowly, "that if your guess is correct the adventure of the lady was an unfortunate one, and that, disowned at home, she made john morgan the guardian of her boy. she, more than likely, is long since dead. it would have been entirely consistent with your uncle's character if, outraged in the beginning, he was forgiving and chivalrous in the end." "but why was the silence never broken?" "i do not know that it was never broken. i have nothing to go upon. i believe, however, that it never was. the explanations that suggest themselves to my mind are, first, a pledge of silence exacted from him, and he would have kept such a pledge under any circumstances. second, a difficulty in proving the legitimacy of the boy. you will understand," he added, "that the matter is entirely suppositious. i would prefer to think that your uncle saw unhappiness for the boy in a change of guardianship, and unhappiness for the grandfather, and left the matter open. you know he died suddenly." there was silence of a few moments and eldridge added: "and yet it does seem that he would have left the old man something to settle the doubt which must have rested upon his mind; it is an awful thing to lose a daughter from sight and live out one's life in ignorance of her fate." and then, as edward made no reply, "you found nothing whatever to explain the matter?" "nothing! in the desk, to which his note directed me, i found only a short letter of directions; one of which was that i should arrange with you to provide for gerald's future in case of my death. the desk contained nothing else except some manuscripts--fragmentary narratives and descriptions, they seemed." eldridge smiled. "his one weakness," he said. "years ago john morgan became impressed with the idea that he was fitted for literary work and began to write short stories for magazines, under _nom de plume_. i was the only person who shared his secret and together we told many a good story of bench, bar and practice. neither of us had much invention and our career--you see i claim a share--our career was limited to actual occurrences. when our stock of ammunition was used up we were bankrupt. but it was a success while it lasted. mr. morgan had a rapid, vivid style of presenting scenes; his stories were full of action and dramatic situations and made quite a hit. i did not know he had any writings left over. he used to say, though, as i remember now, speaking in the serio-comic way he often affected, that the great american novel, so long expected, lay in his desk in fragments. you have probably gotten among these. "and by the way," continued the judge, impressively, "he was not far wrong in his estimate of the literary possibilities of this section. the peculiar institutions of the south, its wealth, its princely planters, and through all the tangle of love, romance, tragedy and family secrets. and what a background! the war, the freed slaves, the old regime--courtly, unchanged, impractical and helpless. turgeneff wrote under such a situation in russia, and called his powerful novel 'fathers and sons.' mr. morgan used to say that he was going to call his 'sons and fathers.' hold to his fragments; he was a close observer, and if you have literary aspirations they will be suggestive." edward shook his head. "i have none, but i see the force of your outline. now about gerald; i trust you will think over the matter and let me know what your judgment suggests. i promised mr. montjoy to drop in at the club. i will say good-morning." "no," said eldridge, "it is my lunch hour and i will go with you." together they went to a business club and edward was presented to a group of elderly men who were discussing politics over their glasses. among them was col. montjoy, in town for a day, several capitalists, a planter or two, lawyers and physicians. they regarded the newcomer with interest and received him with perfect courtesy. "a grand man your relative was, mr. morgan, a grand man; perfect type, sir, of the southern gentleman! the community, sir, has met with an irreparable loss. i trust you will make your home here, sir. we need good men, sir; strong, brainy, energetic men, sir." so said the central figure, gen. albert evan. "montjoy, you remember cousin sam pope of the fire-eaters--died in the ditch at marye's heights near cobb? perfect likeness of mr. morgan here; same face same figure--pardon the personal allusion, mr. morgan, but your prototype was the bravest of the brave. you do each other honor in the resemblance, sir! waiter, fill these glasses! gentlemen," cried the general, "we will drink to the health of our young friend and the memory of sam pope. god bless them both." such was edward's novel reception, and he would not have been human had he not flushed with pleasure. the conversation ran back gradually to its original channel. "we have been congratulating col. montjoy, mr. morgan," said one of the party in explanation to morgan, "upon the announcement of his candidacy for congress." "ah," said the latter, promptly bowing to the old gentleman, "let me express the hope that the result will be such as will enable me to congratulate the country. i stand ready, colonel, to lend my aid as far as possible, but i am hampered somewhat by not knowing my own politics yet. are you on the democratic or republican ticket, colonel?" this astonishing question silenced the conversation instantly and drew every eye upon him. but recovering from his shock, col. montjoy smiled amiably, and said: "there is but one party in this state, sir--the democratic. i am a candidate for nomination, but nomination is election always with us." then to the others present he added: "mr. morgan has lived abroad since he came of age--i am right, am i not, mr. morgan?" "quite so. and i may add," continued edward, who was painfully conscious of having made a serious blunder, "that i have never lived in the south and know nothing of state politics." this would have been sufficient, but unfortunately edward did not realize it. "i know, however, that you have here a great problem and that the world is watching to see how you will handle the race question. i wish you success; the negro has my sympathy and i think that much can be safely allowed him in the settlement." he remembered always thereafter the silence that followed this earnest remark, and he had cause to remember it. he had touched the old south in its rawest point and he was too new a citizen. eldridge joined him in the walk back, but edward let him talk for both. the direction of his thoughts was indicated in the question he asked at parting. "judge eldridge, did you purposely withhold the girl's name--my uncle's fiancee? if so, i will not ask it, but----" "no, not purposely, but we handle names reluctantly in this country. she was marion evan, and you but recently met her father." chapter ix. the tragedy in the storm. edward returned to ilexhurst that evening conscious of a mental uneasiness. he could not account for it except upon the hypothesis of unusual excitement. his mind had simply failed to react. and yet to his sensitive nature there was something more. was it the conversation with eldridge and the sudden dissipation of his error concerning gerald, or did it date to the meeting in the club? there was a discord somewhere. he became conscious after awhile that he had failed to harmonize with his new acquaintances and that among these was col. montjoy. he seemed to feel an ache as though a cold wind blew upon his heart. if he had not made that unfortunate remark about the negro! he acquitted himself very readily, but he could not forget that terrible silence. "i have great sympathy for the negro," he had said. what he meant was that, secure in her power and intelligence, her courage and advancement, the south could safely concede much to the lower class. that is what he felt and believed, but he had not said it that way. he would say it to-morrow to col. montjoy and explain. relief followed the resolution. and then, sitting in the little room, which began to exert a strange power over him, he reviewed in mind the strange history of the people whose lives had begun to touch his. the man downstairs, sleeping off the effects of the drug, taken to dull a feverish brain that had all day struggled with new problems; what a life his was! educated beyond the scope of any single university, eldridge had said, and yet a child, less than a child! what romance, what tragedies behind those restless eyes! and sleeping down yonder by the river in that eternal silence of the city of the dead, the old lawyer, a mystery living, a mystery dead! what a depth of love must have stirred the bosom of the man to endure in silence for so many years for the sake of a fickle girl! what forgiveness! or was it revenge? this idea flashed upon edward with the suddenness of an inspiration. revenge! what a revenge! and the woman, was she living or dead? and if living, were her eyes to watch him, edward morgan, and his conduct? where was the father and why was the grandfather ignorant or silent? then he turned to his own problem. that was an old story. as he sat dreaming over these things his eyes fell upon the fragmentary manuscripts, and almost idly he began to read the briefs upon them. one was inscribed, "the storm," and it seemed to be the bulkiest. opening it he began to read; before he knew it he was interested. the chapter read: "not a zephyr stirred the expectant elms. they lifted their arms against the starlit sky in shadowy tracery, and motionless as a forest of coral in the tideless depths of a southern sea. "the cloud still rose. "it was a cloud indeed. it stretched across the west, far into north and south, its base lost in the shadow, its upper line defined and advancing swiftly, surely, flanking the city and shutting out the stars with its mighty wings. far down the west the lightning began to tear the mass, but still the spell of silence remained. when this strange hush is combined with terrific action, when the vast forces are so swift as to outrun sound, then, indeed, does the chill of fear leap forth. "so came on the cloud. now the city was half surrounded, its walls scaled. half the stars were gone. some of the flying battalions had even rushed past! "but the elms stood changeless, immovable, asleep! "suddenly one vivid, crackling, tearing, defending flash of intensest light split the gloom and the thunder leaped into the city! it awoke then! every foundation trembled! every tree dipped furiously. the winds burst in. what a tumult! they rushed down the parallel streets and alleys, these barbarians; they came by the intersecting ways! they fought each other frantically for the spoils of the city, struggling upward in equal conflict, carrying dust and leaves and debris. they were sucked down by the hollow squares, they wept and mourned, they sobbed about doorways, they sung and cheered among the chimneys and the trembling vanes. they twisted away great tree limbs and hurled them far out into the spaces which the lightning hollowed in the night! they drove every inhabitant indoors and tugged frantically at the city's defenses! they tore off shutters and lashed the housetops with the poor trees! "the focus of the battle was the cathedral! it was the citadel! here was wrath and frenzy and despair! the winds swept around and upward, with measureless force, and at times seemed to lift the great pile from its foundations. but it was the lashing trees that deceived the eye; it stood immovable, proud, strong, while the evil ones hurled their maledictions and screamed defiance at the very door of god's own heart. "in vain. in a far up niche stood a weather-beaten saint--the warden. the hand of god upheld him and kept the citadel while unseen forces swung the great bell to voice his faith and trust amid the gloom! "then came the deluge, huge drops, bullets almost, in fierceness, shivering each other until the street-lamps seemed set in driving fog through which the silvered missiles flashed horizontally--a storm traveling within a storm. "but when the tempest weeps, its heart is gone. hark! 'tis the voice of the great organ; how grand, how noble, how triumphant! one burst of melody louder than the rest breaks through the storm and mingles with the thunder's roar. "look! a woman! she has come, whence god alone may know! she totters toward the cathedral; a step more and she is safe, but it is never taken! one other frightened life has sought the sanctuary. in the grasp of the tempest it has traveled with wide-spread wings; a great white sea bird, like a soul astray in the depths of passion. it falls into the eddy, struggles wearily toward the lights, whirls about the woman's head and sinks, gasping, dying at her feet. the god-pity rises within her, triumphing over fear and mortal anguish. she stands motionless a moment; she does not take the wanderer to her bosom, she cannot! the winds have stripped the cover from the burden in her arms! it is a child's coffin, pressed against her bosom. the moment of safety is gone! in the next a man, the seeming incarnation of the storm itself, springs upon her, tears the burden from her and disappears like a shadow within a shadow! "within the cathedral they are celebrating the birth of christ, without, the elements repeat the scene when the veil of the temple was rended. * * * * * "the storm had passed. the lightning still blazed vividly, but silently now, and at each flash the scene stood forth an instant as though some mighty artist was making pictures with magnesium. a tall woman, who had crouched, as one under the influence of an overpowering terror near the inner door, now crept to the outer, beneath the arch, and looked fearfully about. she went down the few steps to the pavement. suddenly in the transient light a face looked up into hers, from her feet; a face that seemed not human. the features were convulsed, the eyes set. with a low cry the woman slipped her arms under the figure on the pavement, lifted it as though it were that of a child and disappeared in the night. the face that had looked up was as white as the lily at noon; the face bent in pity above it was dark as the leaves of that lily scattered upon the sod." edward read this and smiled, as he laid it aside, and continued with the other papers. they were brief sketches and memoranda of chapters; sometimes a single sentence upon a page, just as his friend de maupassant used to jot them down one memorable summer when they had lingered together along the riviera, but they had no connection with "the storm" and the characters therein suggested. if they belonged to the same narrative the connections were gone. wearied at last he took up his violin and began to play. it is said that improvisers cannot but run back to the music they have written. "calvary" was his masterpiece and soon he found himself lost in its harmonies. then by easy steps there rose in memory, as he played, the storm and gerald's sketch. he paused abruptly and sat with his bow idle upon the strings, for in his mind a link had formed between that sketch and the chapter he had just read. he had felt the story was true when he read it. the lawyer had said john morgan wrote from life. here was the first act of a drama in the life of a child, and the last, perhaps, in the life of a woman. and that child under the influence of music had felt the storm scene flash upon his memory and had drawn it. the child was gerald morgan. edward laid aside the violin for a moment, went into the front room, threw open the shutters and loosened his cravat. something seemed to suffocate him, as he struggled against the admission of this irresistible conclusion. overwhelmed with the significance of the discovery, he exclaimed aloud: "it was an inherited memory." but if the boy had been born under the circumstances set forth in the sketch, who was the man, and why should he have assaulted the woman who bore the child's coffin? and what was she doing abroad under such circumstances? the man and the woman's object was hidden perhaps forever. but not so the woman; the artist had given her features, and as for the other woman, the author had said she was dark. there was in gerald's mind picture no dark woman; only the girl with the coffin, the arch above and the faint outlines of bending trees! chapter x. "god pity me! god pity me!" edward was sitting thus lost in the contemplation of the circumstances surrounding him, when by that subtle sense as yet not analyzed he felt the presence of another person in the room, and looked over his shoulder. gerald was advancing toward him smiling mysteriously. edward noticed his burning eyes and saw intense mental excitement gleaming beyond. the man's mood was different from any he had before revealed. "so you have been out among the friends of your family," he said, with his queer smile. "how did you like them?" edward was distinctly offended by the supercilious manner and impertinent question, but he remembered his ward's condition and resentment passed from him. "pleasant people, gerald, but i am not gifted with the faculty of making friends easily. how come on your experiments?" the visitor's expression changed. he looked about him guardedly. "they advance," he replied, in a whisper; "they advance!" whatever his motive for entering that room--a room unfamiliar to him, for his restless eyes had searched it over and over in the few minutes he had been in it--was forgotten in the enthusiasm of the scientist. "i have mapped out a course and am working toward it," he said; and then presently: "you remember that pictures can now be transmitted by electricity across great stretches of space and flashed upon a disc? so goes the scene from the convex surface of the eye along a thread-like nerve, so flashed the picture in the brain. but somewhere there it remains. how to prove it, to prove it, that is the question! oh, for a brain, a brain to dissect!" he glared at edward, who shuddered under the wildness of the eyes bent upon him. "but time enough for that; i must first ascertain if a picture can be imprinted upon any living substance by light, and remain. this i can do in another way." "how?" edward was fascinated. "it is a great idea. the fish's eye will not do; it is itself a camera and the protecting film is impression-proof. it lacks the gelatine surface, but over some fish is spread the real gelatine--in fact, the very stuff that sensitive plates rely upon. in our lake is a great bass, that swims deep. i have caught them weighing ten and twelve pounds. they are pale, greenish white until exposed to the light, when they darken. if the combined action of the light and air did not actually destroy this gelatine, they would turn black. the back, which daily receives the downward ray direct, is as are the backs of most fishes, dark; it is a spoiled plate. but not so the sides. it is upon this fish i am preparing to make pictures." "but how?" gerald smiled and shook his head. "wait. it is too important to talk about in advance." edward regarded him long and thoughtfully and felt rising within him a greater sympathy. it was pitiful that such a mind should die in the embrace of a mere drug, dragged down to destruction by a habit. "beyond the scope of any single university," but not beyond the slavery of a weed. "i have been thinking, gerald," he said, finally, fixing a steady gaze upon the restless eyes of his visitor, "that the day is near at hand when you must bring to your rescue the power of a great will." gerald listened, grew pale and remained silent. presently he turned to the speaker. "you know, then. tell me what to do." "you must cease the use of morphine and opium." gerald drew a deep breath and smiled good-naturedly. "oh, that is it," he said; "some one has told you that i am a victim of morphine and opium. well, what would you think if i should tell you he is simply mistaken?" his face was frank and unclouded. edward gazed upon him, incredulous. after a moment's pause, during which gerald enjoyed his astonishment, he continued: "i was once a victim; there is no doubt of that; but now i am cured. it was a frightful struggle. a man who has not experienced it or witnessed it can form no conception of what it means to break away from habitual use of opium. some day you may need it and my experience will help you. i began by cutting my customary allowance for a day in half, and day after day, week after week, i kept cutting it in half until the time came when i could not divide it with a razor. would you believe it, the habit was as strong in the end as the beginning? i lay awake and thought of that little speck by the hours; i tossed and cried myself to sleep over it! i slept and wept myself awake. the only remedy for this and all habits is a mental victory. i made the fight--i won! "i can never forget that day," and he smiled as he said it; "the day i found it impossible to divide the speck of opium; a breath would have blown it away, but i would have murdered the man who breathed upon it. i swallowed it; the touch of that atom is yet upon my tongue; i swallowed it and slept like a child; and then came the waking! for days i was a maniac--but it passed. "i grew into a new life--a beautiful, peaceful world. it had been around me all the time but i had forgotten how it looked; a blissful world! i was cured. "years have passed since that day, and no taste of the hateful drug has ever been upon my tongue. not for all the gold in the universe, not for any secrets of science, not for a look back into the face of my mother," he cried, hoarsely, rising to his feet; "not for a smile from heaven would i lay hands upon that fiend again!" he closed abruptly, his hand trembling, the perspiration beading his brow. his eyes fell and the woman rita stood before them, a look of ineffable sadness and tenderness upon her face. "will you retire now, master gerald?" she said, gently. without a word he turned and left the room. she was about to follow when edward, excited and touched by the scene he had witnessed and full of discoveries, stopped her with an imperious gesture. for a moment he paced the room. rita was motionless, awaiting with evident nervousness his pleasure. he came and stood before her, and, looking her steadily in the face, said, abruptly: "woman, what is the name of that young man, and what is mine?" she drew back quickly and her lips parted in a gasp. "my god!" he heard her whisper. "i demand an answer! you carry the secret of one of us--probably both. which is the son of marion evans?" she sank upon her knees and hid her face in her apron. it was all true, then. edward felt as though he himself would sink down beside her if the silence continued. "say it," he said, hoarsely; "say it!" "as god is my judge," she answered, faintly, "i do not know." "one is?" "one is." "and the other--who is he?" "mine." the answer was like a whisper from the pines wafted in through the open window. it was loud enough. edward caught the chair for support. the world reeled about him. he suffocated. rita still knelt with covered head, but her trembling form betrayed the presence of the long-restrained emotions. he walked unsteadily to the mantel, and, drawing the cover from the little picture, went to the mirror and placed it again by his face. at length he said in despair: "god pity me! god pity me!" the woman arose then and took the picture and gazed long and earnestly upon it. a sob burst from her lips. lifting it again to the level of the man's face, she looked from one to the other. "enough!" he said, reading it aright. despair had settled over his own face. she handed back the little likeness, and, clasping her hands, stood in simple dignity awaiting his will. he noticed then, as he studied her countenance closely, the lines of suffering there; the infallible record that some faces carry, which, whether it stands for remorse, for patience, for pure, unbroken sorrow, is always a consecration. "master, it must have come some time," she said, at length, "but i have hoped it would not be through me." her voice was just audible. "be seated," said morgan. "if your story is true, and it may be so, you should not stand." he turned away from her and walked to the window; she was seeking for an opening to begin her story. he began for her: "you crouched in a church door to avoid the storm; a woman seeking shelter there appeared just outside. she was attacked by a man and fell to the ground unconscious; you carried her off in your arms; her child was born soon after, and what then?" amazed she stared at him a moment in silence. "and mine was born! the fright, the horror, the sickness! it was a terrible dream; a terrible dream! but a month afterward, i was here alone with two babies at my breast and the mother was gone. god help me, and help her! but in that time master john says i lost the memory of my child! master gerald i claimed, but his face was the face of miss marion, and he was white and delicate like her. and you, sir, were dark. and then i had never been a slave; john morgan's father gave me my liberty when i was born. i lived with him until my marriage, then after my husband's death, which was just before this storm, they brought me here and i waited. she never came back. master gerald was sickly always and we kept him, but they sent you away. master john thought it was best. and the years have passed quickly." "and general evan--did he never know?" "no, sir; i would not let them take master gerald, because i believed he was my child; and master john, i suppose, would not believe in you. the families are proud; we let things rest as they were, thinking miss marion would come back some day. but she will not come now; she will not come!" the miserable secret was out. after a long silence edward lifted his head and said with deep emotion: "then, in your opinion, i am your son?" she looked at him sadly and nodded. "and in the opinion of john morgan, gerald is the son of marion evans?" she bowed. "we have let it stand that way. but you should never have known! i do not think you were ever to have known." the painful silence that followed was broken by his question: "gerald's real name?" "i do not know! i do not know! all that i do know i have told you!" "and the child's coffin?" she pressed her hand to her forehead. "it was a dream; i do not know!" he gazed upon her with profound emotion and pity. "you must be tired," he said, gently. "think no more of these troubles to-night." she turned and went away. he followed to the head of the stairs and waited until he heard her step in the hall below. "good-night," he had said, gravely. and from the shadowy depths below came back a faint, mournful echo of the word. when edward returned to the room he sat by the window and buried his face upon his arm. hour after hour passed; the outer world slept. had he been of the south, reared there and a sharer in its traditions, the secret would have died with him that night and its passing would have been signaled by a single pistol shot. but he was not of the south, in experience, association or education. it was in the hush of midnight that he rose from his seat, took the picture and descended the steps. the wing-room was never locked; he entered. through the drawn curtains of the glass-room he saw the form of gerald lying in the moonlight upon his narrow bed. placing the picture beside the still, white face of the sleeper, he was shocked by the likeness. one glance was enough. he went back to his window again. one, two, three, four o'clock from the distant church steeple. how the solemn numbers have tolled above the sorrow-folds of the human heart and echoed in the dewless valleys of the mind, the depths to which we sink when hope is gone! but with the dawn what shadows flee! so came the dawn at last; the pale, tremulous glimmer on the eastern hills, the white light, the rosy flush and then in the splendor of fading mists the giant sun rolled up the sky. a man stood pale and weary before the open window at ilexhurst. "the odds are against me," he said, grimly, "but i feel a power within me stronger than evidence. i will match it against the word of this woman, though every circumstance strengthened that word. the voice of the caucasian, not the voice of ethiopia, speaks within me! the woman does not believe herself; the mother's instinct has been baffled, but not destroyed!" and yet again, the patrician bearing, the aristocrat! such was gerald. "we shall see," he said, between his teeth. "wait until virdow comes!" nevertheless, when, not having slept, he arose late in the day, he was almost overwhelmed with the memory of the revelation made to him, and the effect it must have upon his future. at that moment there came into his mind the face of mary. chapter xi. in the crimson of sunset. edward left the house without any definite idea of how he would carry on the search for the truth of his own history, but his determination was complete. he did not enter the dining-room, but called for his buggy and drove direct to the city. he wished to see neither rita nor gerald until the tumult within him had been stilled. his mind was yet in a whirl when without previous resolution he turned his horse in the direction of "the hall" and let it choose its gait. the sun was low when he drew up before the white-columned house and entered the yard. mary stood in the doorway and smiled a welcome, but as he approached she looked into his face in alarm. "you have been ill?" she said, with quick sympathy. "do i look it?" he asked; "i have not slept well. perhaps that shows upon me. it is rather dreary work this getting acquainted." he tried to deceive her with a smile. "how ungallant!" she exclaimed, "to say that to me, and so soon after we have become acquainted." "we are old acquaintances, miss montjoy," he replied with more earnestness than the occasion justified. "i knew you in paris, in rome, even in india--i have known you always." she blushed slightly and turned her face away as a lady appeared leading a little girl. "here is mr. morgan, annie; you met him for a moment only, i believe." the newcomer extended her hand languidly. "any one whom norton is so enthusiastic about," she said, without warmth, "must be worth meeting a second time." her small eyes rested upon the visitor an instant. stunned as he had been by large misfortunes, he felt again the unpleasant impression of their first meeting. whether it was the manner, the tone of voice, the glance or languid hand that slipped limply from his own, or all combined, he did not know; he did not care much at that time. the young woman placed the freed hand over the mouth of the child begging for a biscuit, and without looking down said: "mary, get this brat a biscuit, please. she will drive me distracted." mary stooped and the duchess leaped into her arms, happy at once. edward followed them with his eyes until they reached the end of the porch and mary turned a moment to receive additional directions from the young mother. he knew, then, where he had first seen her. she was a little madonna in a roadside shrine in sicily, distinct and different from all the madonnas of his acquaintance, in that she seemed to have stepped up direct from among the people who knelt there; a motherly little woman in touch with every home nestling in those hills. the young mother by him was watching him with curiosity. "i have to thank you for a beautiful picture," he said. "you are an artist, i suppose?" "yes; a dilletante. but the picture of a woman with her child in her arms appeals to most men; to none more than those who never knew a mother nor had a home." he stopped suddenly, the blood rushed to his face and brain, and he came near staggering. he had forgotten for the moment. he recovered, to find the keen eyes of the woman studying him intently. did she know, did she suspect? how this question would recur to him in all the years! he turned from her, pale and angry. fortunately, mary returned at this moment, the little one contentedly munching upon its biscuit. the elder mrs. montjoy welcomed him with her motherly way, inquiring closely into his arrangements for comfort out at ilexhurst. who was caring for him? rita! well, that was fortunate; rita was a good cook and good housekeeper, and a good nurse. he affected a careless interest and she continued: "yes, rita lived for years near here. she was a free woman and as a professional nurse accumulated quite a sum of money, and then her husband dying, john morgan had taken her to his house to look after a young relative who had been left to his care. what has become of this young person?" she asked. "i have not heard of him for many years." "he is still there," said edward, briefly. and then, as they were silent, he continued: "this woman rita had a husband; how did they manage in old times? was he free also? you see, since i have become a citizen your institutions have a deal of interest for me. it must have been inconvenient to be free and have someone else owning the husband." he was not satisfied with the effort; he could not restrain an inclination to look toward the younger mrs. montjoy. she was leaning back in her chair, with eyes half-closed, and smiling upon him. he could have strangled her cheerfully. the elder lady's voice recalled him. "her husband was free also; that is, it was thought that she had bought him," and she smiled over the idea. a slanting sunbeam came through the window; they were now in the sitting-room and mary quickly adjusted the shade to shield her mother's face. "mamma is still having trouble with her eyes," she said; "we cannot afford to let her strain the sound one." "my eyes do pain me a great deal," the elder mrs. montjoy said. "did you ever have neuralgia, mr. morgan? sometimes i think it is neuralgia. i must have dr. campbell down to look at my eyes. i am afraid----" she did not complete the sentence, but the quick sympathy of the man helped him to read her silence aright. mary caught her breath nervously. "mary, take me to my room; i think i will lie down until tea. mr. morgan will be glad to walk some, i am sure; take him down to the mill." she gave that gentleman her hand again; a hand that seemed to him eloquent with gentleness. "good-night, if i do not see you again," she said. "i do not go to the table now on account of the lamp." he felt a lump in his throat and an almost irresistible desire to throw himself upon her sympathy. she would understand. but the next instant the idea of such a thing filled him with horror. it would banish him forever from the portals of that proud home. and ought he not to banish himself? he trembled over the mental question. no! his courage returned. there had been some horrible mistake! not until the light of day shone on the indisputable fact, not until proof irresistible had said: "you are base-born! depart!" when that hour came he would depart! he saw mary waiting for him at the door; the young mother was still watching him, he thought. he bowed and strode from the room. "what is it?" said the girl, quickly; "you seem excited." she was already learning to read him. "do i? well, let me see; i am not accustomed to ladies' society," he said, lightly; "so much beauty and graciousness have overwhelmed me." he was outside now and the fresh breeze steadied him instantly. there was a sun-setting before them that lent a glow to the girl's face and a new light to her eyes. he saw it there first and then in the skies. across a gentle slope of land that came down from a mile away on the opposite side into their valley the sun had gone behind a shower. out on one side a fiery cloud floated like a ship afire, and behind it were the lilac highlands of the sky. the scene brought with it a strange solemnity. it held the last breath of the dying day. the man and girl stood silent for a moment, contemplating the wonderful vision. she looked into his face presently to find him sadly and intently watching her. wondering, she led the way downhill to where a little boat lay with its bow upon the grassy sward which ran into the water. taking one seat, she motioned him to the other. "we have given you a venetian water-color sunset," she said, smiling away her embarrassment, "and now for a gondola ride." lightly and skillfully plying the paddle the little craft glided out upon the lake, and presently, poising the blade she said, gayly: "look down into the reflection, and then look up! tell me, do you float upon the lake or in the cloudy regions of heaven?" he followed her directions. then, looking steadily at her, he said, gently: "in heaven!" she bent over the boat side until her face was concealed, letting her hand cool in the crimson water. "mr. morgan," she said after awhile, looking up from under her lashes, "are you a very earnest man? i do not think i know just how to take you. i am afraid i am too matter-of-fact." he was feverish and still weighed down by his terrible memory. "i am earnest now, whatever i may have been," he said, softly, "and believe me, miss montjoy, something tells me that i will never be less than earnest with you." she did not reply at once, but looked off into the cloudlands. "you have traveled much?" she said at length, to break the awkward silence. "i suppose so. i have never had what i could call a home and i have moved about a great deal. men of my acquaintance," he continued, musingly, "have been ambitious in every line; i have watched them in wonder. most of them sacrifice what would have been my greatest pleasure to possess--mother and sister and home. i cannot understand that phase of life; i suppose i never will." "then you have never known a mother?" "never." there was something in his voice that touched her deeply. "to miss a mother's affection," she said, with a holy light in her brown eyes, "is to miss the greatest gift heaven can bestow here. i suppose a wife somehow takes a mother's place, finally, with every man, but she cannot fill it. no woman that ever lived can fill my mother's place." loyal little mary! he fancied that as she thought upon her own remark her sensitive lips curved slightly. his mind reverted to the sinister face that they had left in the parlor. "your mother!" he exclaimed, fervently; "would to heaven i had such a mother!" he paused, overcome with emotion. she looked upon him with swimming eyes. "you must come often, then," she said, softly, "and be much with us. i will share her with you. poor mamma! i am afraid--i am afraid for her!" she covered her face with her hands suddenly and bowed her head. "is she ill, so ill as all that?" he asked, greatly concerned. "oh, no! that is, her eyesight is failing; she does not realize it, but dr. campbell has warned us to be careful." "what is the trouble?" he was now deeply distressed. "glaucoma. the little nerve that leads from the cornea to the brain finally dies away; there is no connection, and then----" she could not conclude the sentence. edward had never before been brought within the influence of such a circle. her words thrilled him beyond expression. he waited a little while and said: "i cannot tell you how much my short experience here has been to me. the little touch of motherly interest, of home, has brought me more genuine pleasure than i thought the world held for me. you said just now that you would share the dear little mamma with me. i accept the generous offer. and now you must share the care of the little mamma with me. do not be offended, but i know that the war has upset your revenues here in the south, and that the new order of business has not reached a paying basis. by no act of mine i am independent; i have few responsibilities. why may not i, why may not you and i take the little mamma to paris and let the best skill in the world be invoked to save her from sorrow?" he, too, would not, after her failure, say "blindness." she looked at him through tears that threatened to get beyond control, afraid to trust her voice. "you have not answered me," he said, gently. she shook her head. "i cannot. i can never answer you as i would. but it cannot be, it cannot be! if that course were necessary, we would have gone long ago, for, while we are poor, norton could have arranged it--he can can arrange anything. but dr. campbell, you know, is famous for his skill. he has even been called to europe in consultation. he says there is no cure, but care of the general health may avert the blow all her life. and so we watch and wait." "still," he urged, "there may be a mistake. and the sea voyage----" she shook her head. "you are very, very kind, but it cannot be." it flashed over edward then what that journey would have been. he, with that sweet-faced girl, the little madonna of his memory, and the patient mother! in his mind came back all the old familiar places; by his side stood this girl, her hand upon his arm, her eyes upturned to his. and why not! a thrill ran through his heart: he could take his wife and her mother to paris! he started violently and leaned forward in the boat, his glowing face turned full upon her, with an expression in it that startled her. then from it the color died away; a ghastly look overspread it. he murmured aloud: "god be merciful! it cannot be." she smiled pitifully. "no," she said, "it cannot be. but god is merciful. we trust him. he will order all things for the best!" seeing his agitation she continued: "don't let it distress you so, mr. morgan. it may all come out happily. see, the skies are quite clear now; the clouds all gone! i take it as a happy augury!" ashamed to profit by her reading of his feelings, he made a desperate effort to respond to her new mood. she saw the struggle and aided him. but in that hour the heart of mary montjoy went out for all eternity to the man before her. change, disaster, calumny, misfortune, would never shake her faith and belief in him. he had lost in the struggle of the preceding night, but here he had won that which death only could end, and perhaps not death. slowly they ascended the hill together, both silent and thoughtful. he took her little hand to help her up the terraces, and, forgetting, held it until, at the gate, she suddenly withdrew it in confusion and gazed at him with startled eyes. the tall, soldierly form of the colonel, her father, stood at the top of the steps. "see," said edward, to relieve her confusion, "one of the old knights guarding the castle!" and then she called out, gayly: "sir knight, i bring you a prisoner." the old gentleman laughed and entered into the pleasantry. "well, he might have surrendered to a less fair captor! enter, prisoner, and proclaim your colors," edward started, but recovered, and, looking up boldly, said: "an honorable knight errant, but unknown until his vow is fulfilled." they both applauded and the supper bell rang. chapter xii. the old south versus the new. edward had intended returning to ilexhurst after tea, but every one inveighed against the announcement. nonsense! the roads were bad, a storm was possible, the way unfamiliar to him! john, the stable boy, had reported a shoe lost from the horse! and besides, norton would come out and be disappointed at having missed him! and why go? was the room upstairs not comfortable? he should have another! was the breakfast hour too early? his breakfast should be sent to his room! edward was in confusion. it was his first collision with the genuine, unanswerable southern hospitality that survives the wreck of all things. he hesitated and explained and explaining yielded. supper over, the two gentlemen sat upon the veranda, a cool breeze wandering in from the western rain area and rendering the evening comfortable. mary brought a great jar of delicious tobacco, home raised, and a dozen corn-cob pipes, and was soon happy in their evident comfort. as she held the lighter over edward's pipe he ventured one glance upward into her face, and was rewarded with a rare, mysterious smile. it was a picture that clung to him for many years; the girlish face and tender brown eyes in the yellow glare of the flame, the little hand lifted in his service. it was the last view of her that night, for the southern girl, out of the cities, is an early retirer. "the situation is somewhat strained," said the colonel; they had reached politics; "there is a younger set coming on who seem to desire only to destroy the old order of things. they have had the 'new south' dinged into their ears until they had come to believe that the old south holds nothing worth retaining. they are full of railroad schemes to rob the people and make highways for tramps; of new towns and booms, of colonization schemes, to bring paupers into the state and inject the socialistic element of which the north and west are heartily tired. they want to do away with cotton and plant the land in peaches, plums, grapes," here he laughed softly, "and they want to give the nigger a wheeled plow to ride on. it looks as if the whole newspaper fraternity have gone crazy upon what they call intensive and diversified farming. not one of them has ever told me what there is besides cotton that can be planted and will sell at all times upon the market and pay labor and store accounts in the fall. "and now they have started in this country the 'no-fence' idea and are about to destroy our cattle ranges," continued the colonel, excitedly. "in addition to these, the farmers have some of them been led off into a 'populist' scheme, which in its last analysis means that the government shall destroy corporations and pension farmers. in national politics we have, besides, the silver question and the tariff, and a large element in the state is ready for republicanism!" "that is the party of the north, i believe," said edward. "yes, the party that freed the negro and placed the ballot in his hands. we are so situated here that practically our whole issue is 'white against black.' we cannot afford to split on any question. we are obliged to keep the south solid even at the expense of development and prosperity. the south holds the saxon blood in trust. regardless of law, of constitution, of both combined, we say it is her duty to keep the blood of the race pure and uncontaminated. i am not prepared to say that it has been done with entire success; two races cannot exist side by side distinct. but the spaniards kept their blue blood through centuries! "the southern families will always be pure in this respect; they are tenderly guarded," the colonel went on. "other sections are in danger. the white negro goes away or is sent away; he is unknown; he is changed and finds a foothold somewhere. then some day a family finds in its folds a child with a dark streak down its spine--have you dropped your pipe? the cobs really furnish our best smokers, but they are hard to manage. try another--and it was known that somewhere back in the past an african taint has crept in." "you astound me," said edward, huskily; "is that an infallible sign?" "infallible, or, rather, indisputable if it exists. but its existence under all circumstances is not assured." "and what, mr. montjoy, is the issue between you and mr. swearingen--i understand that is his name--your opponent in the campaign for nomination?" "well, it is hard to say. he has been in congress several terms and thinks now he sees a change of sentiment. he has made bids for the younger and dissatisfied vote. i think you may call it the old south versus the new--and i stand for the old south." "where does your campaign open? i was in england once during a political campaign, about my only experience, if you except one or two incipient riots in paris, and i would be glad to see a campaign, in georgia." "we open in bingham. i am to speak there day after to-morrow and will be pleased to have you go with us. a little party will proceed by private conveyance from here--and norton is probably detained in town to-night by this matter. the county convention meets that day and it has been agreed that swearingen and i shall speak in the morning. the convention will assemble at noon and make a nomination. in most counties primary elections are held." "i shall probably not be able to go, but this county will afford me the opportunity i desire. by the way, colonel, your friends will have many expenses in this campaign, will they not? i trust you will number me among them and not hesitate to call upon me for my share of the necessary fund. i am a stranger, so to speak, but i represent john morgan until i can get my political bearings accurately adjusted." the colonel was charmed. "spoken like john himself!" he said. "we are proud, sir, to claim you as one of us. as to the expenses, unfortunately, we have to rely on our friends. but for the war, i could have borne it all; now my circumstances are such that i doubt sometimes if i should in perfect honor have accepted a nomination. it was forced on me, however. my friends named me, published the announcement and adjourned. before heaven, i have no pleasure in it! i have lived here since childhood, barring a term or two in congress before the war and four years with lee and johnston, and my people were here before me. i would be glad to end my days here and live out the intervening ones in sight of this porch. but a man owes everything to his country." edward did not comment upon the information; at that moment there was heard the rumble of wheels. norton, accompanied by a stranger, alighted from a buggy and came rapidly up the walk. the colonel welcomed his son with the usual affection and the stranger was introduced as mr. robley of an adjoining county. the men fell to talking with suppressed excitement over the political situation and the climax of it was that robley, a keen manager, revealed that he had come for $ , to secure the county. he had but finished his information, when norton broke in hurriedly: "we know, father, that this is all outside your style of politics, and i have told mr. robley that we cannot go into any bargain and sale schemes, or anything that looks that way. we will pay our share of legitimate expenses, printing, bands, refreshments and carriage hire, and will not inquire too closely into rates, but that is as far----" "you are right, my son! if i am nominated it must be upon the ballots of my friends. i shall not turn a hand except to lessen their necessary expenses and to put our announcements before the public. i am sure that this is all that mr. robley would consent to." "why, of course," said that gentleman. and then he looked helpless. edward had risen and was pacing the veranda, ready to withdraw from hearing if the conversation became confidential. norton was excitedly explaining the condition of affairs in robley's county, and that gentleman found himself at leisure. passing him edward attracted his attention. "you smoke, mr. robley?" he offered a cigar and nodded toward the far end of the veranda. "i think you had better let mr. montjoy explain matters to his father," he said. robley joined him. "how much do you need?" said edward; "the outside figure, i mean. in other words, if we wanted to buy the county and be certain of getting it, how much would it take?" "twenty-five hundred--well, $ , ." "let the matter drop here, you understand? col. montjoy is not in the trade. i am acting upon my own responsibility. call on me in town to-morrow; i will put up the money. now, not a word. we will go back." they strolled forward and the discussion of the situation went on. robley grew hopeful and as they parted for the night whispered a few words to norton. as the latter carried the lamp to edward's room, he said: "what does this all mean; you and robley----" "simply," said edward, "that i am in my first political campaign and to win at any cost." norton looked at him in amazement and then laughed aloud. "you roll high! we shall win if you don't fail us." "then you shall win." they shook hands and parted. norton passing his sister's room, paused in thought, knocked lightly, and getting no reply, went to bed. edward turned in, not to sleep. his mind in the silent hours rehearsed its horrors. he arose at the sound of the first bell and left for the city, not waiting for breakfast. chapter xiii. feeling the enemy. edward morgan plunged into the campaign with an energy and earnestness that charmed the younger montjoy and astonished the elder. headquarters were opened, typewriters engaged, lists of prominent men and party leaders obtained and letters written. col. montjoy was averse to writing to his many personal friends in the district anything more than a formal announcement of his candidacy over his own signature. "that is all right, father, but if you intend to stick to that idea the way to avoid defeat is to come down now." but the old gentleman continued to use his own form of letter. it read: "my dear sir: i beg leave to call your attention to my announcement in the journal of this city, under date of july , wherein, in response to the demands of friends, i consented to the use of my name in the nomination for congressman to represent this district. with great respect, i am, sir, your obedient servant, "norton l. montjoy." he dictated this letter, gave the list to the typewriter, and announced that when the letters were ready he would sign them. the son looked at him quizzically: "don't trouble about that, father. you must leave this office work to us. i can sign your name better than you can. if you will get out and see the gentlemen about the cotton warehouses you can help us wonderfully. you can handle them better than anybody in the world." the colonel smiled indulgently on his son and went off. he was proud of the success and genius of his one boy, when not grieved at his departure from the old-school dignity. and then norton sat down and began to dictate the correspondence, with the list to guide him. "dear jim," he began, selecting a well-known friend of his father, and a companion in arms. "you have probably noticed in the journal the announcement of my candidacy for the congressional nomination. the boys of the old 'fire-eaters' did eat. i am counting on you; you stood by me at seven pines, fredericksburg, chancellorsville and a dozen other tight places, and i have no fear but that your old colonel will find you with him in this issue. it is the old south against the riffraff combination of carpetbaggers, scalawags and jaybirds who are trying to betray us into the hands of the enemy! my opponent, swearingen, is a good man in his way, but in devilish bad company. see lamar of company c, sims, ellis, smith and all the old guard. tell them i am making the stand of my life! my best respects to the madam and the grandchildren! god bless you. do the best you can. yours fraternally, "n. l. montjoy." "p. s. arrange for me to speak at your court house some day soon. get an early convention called. we fight better on a charge--old stonewall's way. "n. l. m." this letter brought down the house; the house in this instance standing for a small army of committeemen gathered at headquarters. norton was encouraged to try again. "the rev. andrew paton, d. d.--dear andrew: i am out for congress and need you. of course we can't permit you to take your sacred robes into the mire of politics, but, andrew, we were boys together, before you were so famous, and i know that nothing i can bring myself to ask of you can be refused. a word from you in many quarters will help. the madam joins me in regards to you and yours. sincerely. "n. l. montjoy." "p. s. excuse this typewritten letter, but my hand is old, and i cannot wield the pen as i did when we put together that first sermon of yours. "m." this was an addendum in "the colonel's own handwriting" and it closed with "pray for me." the letter was vociferously applauded and passers-by looked up in the headquarters windows curiously. these addenda in the colonel's own handwriting tickled norton's fancy. he played upon every string in the human heart. when he got among the masons he staggered a little, but managed to work in something about "upright, square and level." "if i could only have got a few signals from the old gentleman," he said, gayly, "i would get the lodges out in a body." norton was everywhere during the next ten days. he kept four typewriters busy getting out "personal" letters, addressing circulars and marking special articles that had appeared in the papers. one of his sayings that afterward became a political maxim was: "if you want the people to help you, let them hear from you before election." and in this instance they heard. within a few days a great banner was stretched across the street from the headquarters window, and a band wagon, drawn by four white horses, carried a brass band and flags bearing the legend: "montjoy at the court house saturday night." little boys distributed dodgers. edward, taking the cue, entered with equal enthusiasm into the comedy. he wanted to do the right thing, and he had formed an exaggerated idea of the influence of money in political campaigns. he hung a placard at the front door of the montjoy headquarters that read: "one thousand dollars to five hundred that montjoy is nominated." he placed a check to back it in the secretary's hands. this announcement drew a crowd and soon afterward a quiet-appearing man came in and said: "i have the money to cover that bet. name a stake-holder." one was named. edward was flushed with wine and enthused by the friendly comments his bold wager had drawn out. "make it $ , to $ , ?" he asked the stranger. "well," was the reply, "it goes." "make it $ , to $ , ?" said edward. "no!" "ten thousand to four thousand?" "no!" "ten thousand to three thousand?" "no!" the stranger smiled nervously and, saluting, withdrew. the crowd cheered until the sidewalk was blockaded. the news went abroad: "odds of to have been offered on montjoy, and no takers." edward's bet had the effect of precipitating the campaign in the home county; it had been opening slowly, despite the rush at the montjoy headquarters. the swearingen men were experienced campaigners and worked more by quiet organization than display. such men know when to make the great stroke in a campaign. the man who had attempted to call young morgan's hand had little to do with the management of the swearingen campaign, but was engaged in a speculation of his own, acting upon a hint. but the show of strength at the montjoy headquarters was at once used by the swearingen men to stir their friends to action, lest they be bluffed out of the fight. rival bands were got out, rival placards appeared and handbills were thrown into every yard. and then came the first personalities, but directed at edward only. an evening paper said that "a late citizen, after half a century of honorable service, and although but recently deceased, seemed to have fallen into betting upon mundane elections by proxy." and elsewhere: "a certain class of people and their uncle's money are soon divorced." many others followed upon the same line, clearly indicating edward morgan, and with street-corner talk soon made him a central figure among the montjoy forces. edward saw none of these paragraphs, nor did he hear the gossip of the city. this continued for days; in the meantime edward took norton home with him at night and generally one or two others accompanied them. finally it came to be settled that norton and edward were old friends, and the friends of montjoy senior looked on and smiled. the other side simply sneered, swore and waited. information of these things reached mary montjoy. annie, the sister-in-law, came into the city and met her cousin, amos royson, the wild horseman who collided with the montjoy team upon the night of edward's first appearance. this man was one of the swearingen managers. his relationship to annie montjoy gave him entrance to the family circle, and he had been for two years a suitor for mary's hand. royson took a seat in the vehicle beside his cousin and turned the horse's head toward the park. annie montjoy saw that he was in an ugly mood, and divined the reason. she possessed to a remarkable degree the power of mind-reading and she knew amos royson better than he knew himself. "tell me about this edward morgan, who is making such a fool of himself," he said abruptly. "he is injuring col. montjoy's chances more than we could ever hope to, and is really the best ally we have!" she smiled as she looked upon him from under the sleepy lids, "why, then, are you not pleased?" "oh, well, you know, annie, the unfortunate fact remains that you are one of the family. i hate to see you mixed up in this matter and a sharer in the family's downfall." "you do not think enough of me to keep out of the way." "i cannot control the election, annie. swearingen will be elected with or without my help. but you know my whole future depends upon swearingen. who is edward morgan?" "oh, edward morgan! well, you know, he is old john morgan's heir, and that is all i know; but," and she laughed maliciously, "he is what norton calls 'a rusher,' not only in politics, but elsewhere. he has seen mary, and--now you know why he is so much interested in this election." amos turned fiercely upon her and involuntarily drew the reins until the horse stopped. he felt the innuendo and forgot the thrust. "you cannot mean----" he began, and then paused, for in her eyes was a triumph so devilish, so malicious, that even he, knowing her well, could not bring himself to gratify it. he knew that she had never forgiven him for his devotion to mary. "yes, i mean it! if ever two people were suddenly, hopelessly, foolishly infatuated with each other that same little hypocritical chit and this stranger are the two. he is simply trying to put his intended father-in-law into congress. do you understand?" the man's face was white and only with difficulty could he guide the animal he was driving. she continued, with a sudden exhibition of passion: "and mary! oh, you should just hear her say 'ilexhurst'! she will queen it out there with old morgan's money and heir, and we----" she laughed bitterly, "we will stay out yonder, keep a mule boarding house and nurse sick niggers--that is all it amounts to; they raise corn half the year and hire hands to feed it out the other half; and the warehouses get the cotton. in the meantime, i am stuck away out of sight with my children!" royson thought over this outburst and then said gravely: "you have not yet answered my question. who is edward morgan--where did he come from?" "go ask john morgan," she said, scornfully and maliciously. he studied long the painted dashboard in front of him, and then, in a sort of awe, looked into her face: "what do you mean, annie?" she would not turn back; she met his gaze with determination. "old morgan has educated and maintained him abroad all his life. he has never spoken of him to anybody. you know what stories they used to tell of john morgan. can't you see? challenged to prove his legal right to his name he couldn't do it." the words were out. the jealous woman took the lines from his hands and said, sneeringly: "you are making a fool of yourself, amos, by your driving, and attracting attention. where do you want to get out? i am going back uptown." he did not reply. dazed by the fearful hint he sat looking ahead. when she drew rein at a convenient corner he alighted. there was a cruel light in his gray eyes. "annie," he said, "the defeat of col. montjoy lies in your information." "let it," she exclaimed, recklessly. "he has no more business in congress than a child. and for the other matter, i have myself and my children's name to protect." and yet she was not entirely without caution. she continued: "what i have told you is a mere hint. it must not come back to me nor get in print." she drove away. with eyes upon the ground royson walked to his office. amos royson was of the new south entirely, but not its best representative. his ambition was boundless; there was nothing he would have left undone to advance himself politically. his thought as he walked back to his office was upon the words of his cousin. in what manner could this frightful hint be made effective without danger of reaction? at this moment he met the man he was plotting to destroy, walking rapidly toward the postoffice with norton montjoy. the latter saluted him, gayly, as he passed: "hello, amos! we have you on the run, my boy!" amos made no reply to norton, nor to edward's conventional bow. as they passed he noted the latter's form and poetical face, then somewhat flushed with excitement, and seemed to form a mental estimate of him. "cold-blooded devil, that fellow royson," said norton, as he ran over his letters before mailing them; "stick a knife in you in a minute." but royson walked on. once he turned, looked back and smiled sardonically. "they are both in a bad fix," he said, half-aloud. "the man who has to look out for annie is to be pitied." at home annie gave a highly colored account of all she had heard in town about edward, made up chiefly of boasts of friends who supposed that her interest in col. montjoy's nomination was genuine, of norton's report and the sneers of enemies, including royson. these lost nothing in the way of color at her hands. mary sought her room and after efforts sealed for edward this letter: "you can never know how grateful we all are for your interest and help, but our gratitude would be incomplete if i failed to tell you that there is danger of injuring yourself in your generous enthusiasm. you must not forget that papa has enemies who will become yours. this we would much regret, for you have so much need of friends. do not put faith in too many people, and come out here when you feel the need of rest. i cannot write much that i would like to tell you. your friend, "mary montjoy." "p. s. amos royson is your enemy and he is a dangerous man." when edward received this, as he did next day by the hand of col. montjoy, he was thrilled with pleasure and then depressed with a sudden memory. that day he was so reckless that even norton felt compelled, using his expression, "to call him down." chapter xiv. the old south draws the sword. when royson reached his office he quietly locked himself in, and, lighting a cigar, threw himself into his easy-chair. he recalled with carefulness the minutest facts of his interview with annie montjoy, from the moment he seated himself beside her, until his departure. having established these in mind he began the course of reasoning he always pursued in making an estimate of testimony. the basis of his cousin's action did not call for much attention; he knew her well. she was as ambitious as lucifer and possessed that peculiar defect which would explain so many women if given proper recognition--lack of ability to concede equal merit to others. they can admit no uninvited one to their plane; not even an adviser. they demand flattery as a plant demands nitrogen, and cannot survive the loss of attention. and, reading deeper, royson saw that the steadfast, womanly soul of the sister-in-law had, even in the knowledge of his cousin, over-shadowed hers until she resented even the old colonel's punctilious courtesy; that in her heart she raged at his lack of informality and accused him of resting upon the young girl. if she had been made much of, set up as a divinity, appealed to and suffered to rule, all would have been fair and beautiful. and then the lawyer smiled and said aloud to that other self, with whom he communed: "for a while." such was the woman. long he sat, studying the situation. once he arose and paced the floor, beating his fist into his hand and grinding his teeth. "both or none!" he cried, at last. "if montjoy is nominated i am shelved; and as for mary, there have been sabine women in all ages." that night the leaders of the opposition met in secret caucus, called together by royson. when, curious and attentive, they assembled in his private office, he addressed them: "i have, gentlemen, to-day found myself in a very embarrassing position; a very painful one. you all know my devotion to our friend; i need not say, therefore, that here to-night the one overpowering cause of the action which i am about to take is my loyalty to him. to-day, from a source i am not at liberty to state here, i was placed in possession of a fact which, if used, practically ends this campaign. you must none of you express a doubt, nor must any one question me upon the subject. the only question to be discussed is, shall we make use of the fact--and how?" he waited a moment until the faces of the committee betrayed their deep interest. "whom do you consider in this city the most powerful single man behind the movement to nominate montjoy?" "morgan," said one, promptly. it was their unanimous judgment. "correct! this man, with his money and zeal, has made our chances uncertain if not desperate, and this man," he continued, excitedly, "who is posing before the public and offering odds of three to one against us with old morgan's money, is not a white man!" he had leaned over the table and concluded his remarks in almost a whisper. a painful silence followed, during which the excited lawyer glared inquiringly into the faces turned in horror upon him. "do you understand?" he shouted at last. they understood. a southern man readily takes a hint upon such a matter. these men sat silent, weighing in their minds the final effect of this announcement. royson did not give them long to consider. "i am certain of this, so certain that if you think best i will publish the fact to-morrow and assume the whole responsibility." there was but little doubt remaining then. but the committee seemed weighed upon rather than stirred by the revelation; they spoke in low tones to each other. there was no note of triumph in any voice. they were men. presently the matter took definite shape. an old man arose and addressed his associates: "i need not say, gentlemen, that i am astonished by this information, and you will pardon me if i do say i regret that it seems true. as far as i am concerned i am opposed to its use. it is a very difficult matter to prove. mr. royson's informant may be mistaken, and if proof was not forthcoming a reaction would ruin our friend." no one replied, although several nodded their heads. at length royson spoke: "the best way to reach the heart of this matter is to follow out in your minds a line of action. suppose in a speech i should make the charge--what would be the result?" "you would be at once challenged!" royson smiled. "who would bear the challenge?" "one of the montjoys would be morally compelled to." "suppose i convince the bearer that a member of his family was my authority?" then they began to get a glimpse of the depth of the plot. one answered: "he would be obliged to withdraw!" "exactly! and who else after that would take montjoy's place? or how could montjoy permit the duel to go on? and if he did find a fool to bring his challenge, i could not, for the reason given in the charge, meet his principal!" "a court of honor might compel you to prove your charge, and then you would be in a hole. that is, unless you could furnish proof." "and still," said royson, "there would be no duel, because there would be no second. and you understand, gentlemen," he continued, smiling, "that all this would not postpone the campaign. before the court of honor could settle the matter the election would have been held. you can imagine how that election would go when it is known that montjoy's campaign manager and right-hand man is not white. this man is hail-fellow-well-met with young montjoy; a visitor in his home and is spending money like water. what do you suppose the country will say when these facts are handled on the stump? col. montjoy is ignorant of it, we know, but he will be on the defensive from the day the revelation is made. "i have said my action is compelled by my loyalty to swearingen, and i reiterate it, but we owe something to the community, to the white race, to good morals and posterity. and if i am mistaken in my proofs, gentlemen, why, then, i can withdraw my charge. it will not affect the campaign already over. but i will not have to withdraw." "as far as i am concerned," said another gentleman, rising and speaking emphatically, "this is a matter upon which, under the circumstances, i do not feel called to vote! i cannot act without full information! the fact is, i am not fond of such politics! if mr. royson has proofs that he cannot use publicly or here, the best plan would be to submit them to col. montjoy and let him withdraw, or pull off his lieutenant." he passed out and several with him. royson argued with the others, but one by one they left him. he was bursting with rage. "i will determine for myself!" he said, "the victory shall rest in me!" then came the speech of the campaign at the court house. the relations of col. montjoy, his family friends, people connected with him in the remotest degree by marriage, army friends, members of the bar, merchants, warehousemen and farmers generally, and a large sprinkling of personal and political enemies of swearingen made up the vast crowd. in the rear of the hall, a smile upon his face, was amos royson. and yet the secret glee in his heart, the knowledge that he, one man in all that throng, by a single sentence could check the splendid demonstration and sweep the field, was clouded. it came to him that no other member of the montjoy clan was a traitor. nowhere is the family tie so strong as in the south, and only the power of his ambition could have held him aloof. swearingen had several times represented the district in congress; it was his turn when the leader moved on. this had been understood for years by the political public. in the meantime he had been state's attorney and there were a senatorship, a judgeship and possibly the governorship to be grasped. he could not be expected to sacrifice his career upon the altar of kinship remote. indeed, was it not the duty of montjoy to stand aside for the sake of a younger man? was it not true that a large force in his nomination had been the belief that swearingen's right-hand man would probably be silenced thereby? it had been a conspiracy. these thoughts ran through his mind as he stood watching the gathering. on the stage sat edward morgan, a prominent figure and one largely scanned by the public; and royson saw his face light up and turn to a private box; saw his smile and bow. a hundred eyes were turned with his, and discovered there, half concealed by the curtains, the face of mary montjoy. the public jumped to the conclusion that had previously been forced on him. over royson's face surged a wave of blood; a muttered oath drew attention to him and he changed his position. he saw the advancing figure of gen. evan and heard his introductory speech. the morning paper said it was the most eloquent ever delivered on such an occasion; and all that the speaker said was: "fellow-citizens, i have the honor to introduce to you this evening col. norton montjoy. hear him." his rich bass voice rolled over the great audience; he extended his arm toward the orator of the evening, and retired amid thunders of applause. then came col. montjoy. the old south was famous for its oratory. it was based upon personal independence, upon family pride and upon intellect unhampered by personal toil in uncongenial occupations; and lastly upon sentiment. climate may have entered into it; race and inheritance undoubtedly did. the southern orator was the feature of congressional displays, and back in congressional archives lie orations that vie with the best of athens and of rome. but the flavor, the spectacular effects, linger only in the memory of the rapidly lessening number who mingled deeply in ante-bellum politics. no pen could have faithfully preserved this environment. so with the oration that night in the opening of the montjoy campaign. it was not transmissible. only the peroration need be reproduced here: "god forbid!" he said in a voice now husky with emotion and its long strain, "god forbid that the day shall come when the south will apologize for her dead heroes! stand by your homes; stand by your traditions; keep our faith in the past as bright as your hopes for the future! no stain rests upon the honor of your fathers! transmit their memories and their virtues to posterity as its best inheritance! defend your homes and firesides, remembering always that the home, the family circle, is the fountain head of good government! let none enter there who are unclean. keep it the cradle of liberty and the hope of the english race on this continent, the shrine of religion, of beauty, of purity!" he closed amid a tumult of enthusiasm. men stood on chairs to cheer; ladies wept and waved their handkerchiefs, and then over all arose the strange melody that no southern man can sit quiet under. "dixie" rang out amid a frenzy of emotion. veterans hugged each other. the old general came forward and clasped hands with his comrade, the band changing to "auld lang syne." people crowded on the stage and outside the building the drifting crowd filled the air with shouts. the last man to rise from his seat was edward morgan. lost in thought, his face lowered, he sat until some one touched him on the shoulder and called him back to the present. and out in the audience, clinging to a post, to resist the stream of humanity, passing from the aisles, his eyes strained forward, heedless of the banter and jeers poured upon him, royson watched as best he could every shade upon the stranger's face. a cry burst from his lips. "it was true!" he said, and dashed from the hall. chapter xv. "in all the world, no fairer flower than this!" the city was in a whirl on election day; hacks and carriages darted here and there all day long, bearing flaming placards and hauling voters to the polls. bands played at the montjoy headquarters and everything to comfort the inner patriot was on hand. edward had taken charge of this department and at his own expense conducted it. he was the host. all kinds of wines and liquors and malt drinks, a constantly replenished lunch, that amounted to a banquet, and cigars, were at all hours quickly served by a corps of trained waiters. in all their experience, old election stagers declared never had this feature of election day been so complete. it goes without saying that montjoy's headquarters were crowded and that a great deal of the interest which found expression in the streets was manufactured there. it was a fierce struggle; the swearingen campaign in the county had been conducted on the "still-hunt" plan, and on this day his full strength was polled. it was montjoy's home county, and if it could be carried against him, the victory was won at the outset. on the other hand, the montjoy people sought for the moral effect of an overwhelming victory. there was an expression of general relief in the form of cheers, when the town clocks struck five and the polls windows fell. anxiety followed, and then bonfires blazed, rockets exploded and all night long the artillery squad fired salutes. montjoy had won by an unlooked-for majority and the vote of the largest county was secure. edward had resolutely refused to think upon the discovery unfolded to him. with reckless disregard for the future he had determined to bury the subject until the arrival of virdow. but there are ghosts that will not come down at the bidding, and so in the intervals of sleep, of excitement, of politics, the remembrance of the fearful fate that threatened him came up with all the force and terror of a new experience. ilexhurst was impossible to him alone and he held to norton as long as he could. there was to be a few days' rest after the home election, and the younger montjoy seized this opportunity to run home and, as he expressed it, "get acquainted with the family." edward, without hesitation, accepted his invitation to go with him. they had become firm friends now and edward stood high in the family esteem. reviewing the work that had led up to col. montjoy's magnificent opening and oration, all generously conceded that he had been the potent factor. it was not true, in fact; the younger montjoy had been the genius of the hour, but edward's aid and money had been necessary. the two men were received as conquering heroes. as she held his hand in hers old mrs. montjoy said: "you have done us a great service, mr. morgan, and we cannot forget it," and mary, shy and happy, had smiled upon him and uttered her thanks. there was one discordant note, the daughter-in-law had been silent until all were through. "and i suppose i am to thank you, mr. morgan, that norton has returned alive. i did not know you were such high livers over at ilexhurst," she smiled, maliciously. "were you not afraid of ghosts?" edward looked at her with ill-disguised hatred. for the first time he realized fully that he was dealing with a dangerous enemy. how much did she know? he could make nothing of that serenely tranquil face. he bowed only. she was his friend's wife. but he was not at ease beneath her gaze and readily accepted mary's invitation to ride. she was going to carry a note from her father to a neighbor, and the chance of seeing the country was one he should not neglect. they found a lazy mule and ancient country buggy at the door. he thought of the outfit of the sister-in-law. "annie has a pony phaeton that is quite stylish," said mary, laughingly, as they entered the old vehicle, "but it is only for town use; this is mine and papa's!" "certainly roomy and safe," he said. she laughed outright. "i will remember that; so many people have tried to say something comforting about my turnout and failed; but it does well enough." they were off then, edward driving awkwardly. it was the first time he had ever drawn the reins over a mule. "how do you make it go fast?" he asked, finally, in despair. "oh, dear," she answered, "we don't try. we know the mule." her laugh was infectious. they traveled the public roads, with their borders of wild grape, crossed gurgling streams under festoons of vines and lingered in shady vistas of overhanging boughs. several times they boldly entered private grounds and passed through back yards without hailing, and at last they came to their destination. there were two huge stone posts at the entrance, with carved balls of granite upon them. a thick tangle of muscadine and cherokee roses led off from them right and left, hiding the trail of the long-vanished rail fence. in front was an avenue of twisted cedars, and, closing the perspective, a glimpse of white columns and green blinds. the girl's face was lighted with smiles; it was for her a new experience, this journeying with a man alone; his voice melodious in her hearing; his eyes exchanging with hers quick understandings, for edward was happy that morning--happy in his forgetfulness. he had thrown off the weight of misery successfully, and for the first time in his life there was really a smile in his heart. it was the dream of an hour; he would not mar it. her voice recalled him. "i have always loved 'the cedars.' it wears such an air of gentility and refinement. it must be that something of the lives gone by clings to these old places." "whose is it?" she turned in surprise. "oh, this is where we were bound--gen. evan's. i have a note for him." "ah!" the exclamation was one of awe rather than wonder. she saw him start violently and grow pale. "evan?" he said, with emotion. "you know him?" "not i." he felt her questioning gaze and looked into her face. "that is, i have been introduced to him, only, and i have heard him speak." after a moment's reflection: "sometime, perhaps, i shall tell you why for the moment i was startled." she could not understand his manner. fortunately they had arrived at the house. confused still, he followed her up the broad steps to the veranda and saw her lift the antique knocker. "yes, ma'am, de general's home; walk in, ma'am; find him right back in the liberry." with that delightful lack of formality common among intimate neighbors in the south, mary led the way in. she made a pretty picture as she paused at the door. the sun was shining through the painted window and suffused her form with roseate light. "may i come in?" "well! well! well!" the old man rose with a great show of welcome and came forward. "'may i come in?' how d'ye do, mary, god bless you, child; yes, come clear in," he said, laughing, and bestowed a kiss upon her lips. at that moment he caught sight of the face of edward, who stood behind her, pale from the stream of light that came from a white crest in the window. the two men gazed steadily into each other's eyes a moment only. the girl began: "this is mr. morgan, general, who has been such a friend to father." the rugged face of the old soldier lighted up, he took the young man's hands in both of his and pressed them warmly. "i have already met mr. morgan. the friend of my friend is welcome to 'the cedars'." he turned to move chairs for them. the face of the young man grew white as he bowed gravely. there had been a recognition, but no voice spoke from the far-away past through his lineaments to that lonely old man. during the visit he was distrait and embarrassed. the courtly attention of his host and his playful gallantry with mary awoke no smile upon his lips. somewhere a barrier had fallen and the waters of memory had rushed in. finally he was forced to arouse himself. "john morgan was a warm friend of mine at one time," said the old general. "how was he related to you?" "distantly," said edward quietly. "i was an orphan, and indebted to him for everything." "an eccentric man, but john had a good heart--errors like the rest of us, of course." the general's face grew sad for the moment, but he rallied and turned the conversation to the political campaign. "a grand speech that, mr. morgan; i have never heard a finer, and i have great speakers in my day! our district will be well and honorably represented in congress. now, our little friend here will go to washington and get her name into the papers." "no, indeed. if papa wins i am going to stay with mamma. i am going to be her eyes as well as her hands. mamma would not like the city." "and how is the little mamma?" she shook her head. "not so well and her eyes trouble her very much." "what a sweet woman she is! i can never forget the night norton led her to the altar. i have never seen a fairer sight--until now," he interpolated, smiling and saluting mary with formal bow. "she had a perfect figure and her walk was the exposition of grace." mary surveyed him with swimming eyes. she went up and kissed him lightly. he detained her a moment when about to take her departure. "you are a fortunate man, morgan. in all the world you will find no rarer flower than this. i envy you your ride home. come again, mary, and bring mr. morgan with you." she broke loose from him and darted off in confusion. he had guessed her secret and well was it that he had! the ride home was as a dream. the girl was excited and full of life and banter and edward, throwing off his sadness, had entered into the hour of happiness with the same abandon that marked his campaign with norton. but as they entered the long stretch of wood through which their road ran to her home, edward brought back the conversation to the general. "yes," said mary, "he lives quite alone, a widower, but beloved by every one. it is an old, sad story, but his daughter eloped just before the war broke out and went abroad. he has never heard from her, it is supposed." "i have heard the fact mentioned," said morgan, "and also that she was to have married my relative." "i did not know that," she said, "but it is a great sorrow to the general, and a girl who could give up such a man must have been wrong at heart or infatuated." "infatuated, let us hope." "that is the best explanation," she said gently. he was driving; in a few moments he would arrive at the house. should he tell her the history of gerald and let her clear, honest mind guide him? should he tell her that fate had made him the custodian of the only being in the world who had a right to that honorable name when the veteran back yonder found his last camp and crossed the river to rest in the shade with the immortal jackson? he turned to her and she met his earnest gaze with a winning smile, but at the moment something in his life cried out. the secret was as much his duty as the ward himself and to confess to her his belief that gerald was the son of marion evan was to confess to himself that he was the son of the octoroon. he would not. her smile died away before the misery in his face. "you are ill," she said in quick sympathy. "yes," he replied, faintly; "yes and no. the loss of sleep--excitement--your southern sun----" the world grew black and he felt himself falling. in the last moment of his consciousness he remembered that her arm was thrown about him and that in response to her call for help negroes from the cotton fields came running. he opened his eyes. they rested upon the chintz curtains of the room upstairs, from the window of which he had heard her voice calling the chickens. some one was bathing his forehead; there were figures gliding here and there across his vision. he turned his eyes and saw the anxious face of mrs. montjoy watching him. "what is it?" he spoke in wonder. "hush, now, my boy; you have been very ill; you must not talk!" he tried to lift his hand. it seemed made of lead and not connected with him in any way. gazing helplessly upon it, he saw that it was thin and white--the hand of an invalid. "how long?" he asked, after a rest. the slight effort took his strength. "three weeks." three weeks! this was more than he could adjust in the few working sections of his brain. he ceased to try and closed his eyes in sleep. chapter xvi. beyond the shadow of a doubt. it had been brain fever. for ten days edward was helpless, but under the care of the two loving women he rapidly recovered. the time came when he could sit in the cool of the evening upon the veranda and listen to the voices he had learned to love--for he no longer disguised the truth from himself. the world held for him but one dream, through it and in the spell of his first home life the mother became a being to be reverenced. she was the fulfilled promise of the girl, all the tender experiences of life were pictured in advance for him who should win her hand and heart. but it was only a dream. during the long hours of the night as he lay wakeful, with no escape from himself, he thought out the situation and made up his mind to action. he would go to col. montjoy and confess the ignorance of his origin that overwhelmed him and then he would provide for his ward and go away with virdow to the old world and the old life. the mental conclusion of his plan was a species of settlement. it helped him. time and again he cried out, when the remembrance came back to him, but it was the honorable course and he would follow it. he would go away. the hours of his convalescence were the respite he allowed himself. day by day he said: "i will go to-morrow." in the morning it was still "to-morrow." and when he finally made his announcement he was promptly overruled. col. montjoy and norton were away, speaking and campaigning. all primaries had been held but two. the colonel's enemies had conceded to him of the remaining counties the remote one. the other was a county with a large population and cast four votes in the convention. it was the home of swearingen, but, as frequently happens, it was the scene of the candidate's greatest weakness. there the struggle was to be titanic. both counties were needed to nominate montjoy. the election took place on the day of edward's departure for ilexhurst. that evening he saw a telegram announcing that the large county had given its vote to montjoy by a small majority. the remote county had but one telegraph office, and that at a way station upon its border. little could be heard from it, but the public conceded col. montjoy's nomination, since there had been no doubt as to this county. edward hired a horse, put a man upon it, sent the news to the two ladies and then went to his home. he found awaiting him two letters of importance. one from virdow, saying he would sail from havre on the th; that was twelve days previous. he was therefore really due at ilexhurst then. the other was a letter he had written to abingdon soon after his first arrival, and was marked "returned to writer." he wondered at this. the address was the same he had used for years in his correspondence. although abingdon was frequently absent from england, the letters had always reached him. why, then, was this one not forwarded? he put it aside and ascertained that virdow had not arrived at the house. it was then o'clock in the evening. by his order a telephone had been placed in the house, and he at once rang up the several hotels. virdow was found to be at one of these, and he succeeded in getting that distinguished gentleman to connect himself with the american invention and explained to him the situation. "take any hack and come at once," was the message that concluded their conversation, and virdow came! in the impulsive continental style, he threw himself into edward's arms when the latter opened the door of the carriage. slender, his thin black clothes hanging awkwardly upon him, his trousers too short, the breadth of his round german face, the knobs on his shining bald forehead exaggerated by the puffy gathering of the hair over his ears, his candid little eyes shining through the round, double-power glasses, his was a figure one had to know for a long time in order to look upon it without smiling. long the two sat with their cigars and ran over the old days together. then the professor told of wondrous experiments in sound, of the advance knowledge into the regions of psychology, of the marvels of heredity. his old great theme was still his ruling passion. "if the mind has no memory, then much of the phenomena of life is worse than bewildering. prove its memory," he was wont to say, "and i will prove immortality through that memory." it was the same old professor. he was up now and every muscle working as he struggled and gesticulated, and wrote invisible hieroglyphics in the air about him and made geometrical figures with palms and fingers. but the professor had advanced in speculation. "the time will come, my young friend," he said at last, "when the mind will give us its memories complete. we shall learn the secrets of creation by memory. in its perfection we shall place a man yonder and by vibration get his mind memory to work; theoretically he will first write of his father and then his grandfather, describing their mental lives. he will go back along the lines of his ancestry. he will get into latin, then greek, then hebrew, then chaldean, then into cuneiform inscriptions, then into figure representation. he will be an artist or musician or sculptor, and possibly all if the back trail of his memory crosses such talents. aye," he continued, enthusiastically, "lost nations will live again. the portraits of our ancestors will hang in view along the corridors of all times! this will come by vibratory force, but how?" edward leaned forward, breathless almost with emotion. "you say the time is come; what has been done?" "little and much! the experiments----" "tell me, in all your experiments, have you known where a child, separated from a parent since infancy, without aid of description, or photograph, or information derived from a living person, could see in memory or imagination the face of that parent, see it with such distinctness as to enable him, an artist, to reproduce it in all perfection?" the professor wiped his glasses nervously and kept his gaze upon his questioner. "never." "then," said edward, "you have crossed the ocean to some purpose! i have known such an instance here in this house. the person is still here! you know me, my friend, and you do not know me. to you i was a rich young american, with a turn for science and speculation. you made me your friend and god bless you for it, but you did not know all of that mystery which hangs over my life never to be revealed perhaps until the millennium of science you have outlined dawns upon us. the man who educated me, who enriched me, was not my parent or relative; he was my guardian. he has made me the guardian of a frail, sickly lad whose mystery is, or was, as complete as mine. teach us to remember." the words burst from him. they held the pent-up flood that had almost wrecked his brain. rapidly he recounted the situation, leaving out the woman's story as to himself. not to his savior would he confess that. and then he told how, following his preceptor's hints about vibration, he had accidentally thrown gerald into a trance; its results, the second experiment, the drawing and the woman's story of gerald's birth. during this recital the professor never moved his eyes from the speaker's face. "you wish to know what i think of it? this: i have but recently ventured the proposition publicly that all ideal faces on the artist's canvas are mind memories. prove to me anew your results and if i establish the reasonableness of my theory i shall have accomplished enough to die on." "in your opinion, then, this picture that gerald drew is a mind memory?" "undoubtedly. but you will perceive that the more distant, the older the experience, we may say, the less likelihood of accuracy." "it would depend, then, you think, upon the clearness of the original impression?" "that is true! the vividness of an old impression may also outshine a new one." "and if this young man recalls the face of a woman, who we believe it possible--nay, probable--is his mother, and then the face of one we know to be her father, as a reasonable man, would you consider the story of this negro woman substantiated beyond the shadow of a doubt?" "beyond the shadow of a doubt." "we shall try," said edward, and then, after a moment's silence: "he is shy of strangers and you may find it difficult to get acquainted with him. after you have succeeded in gaining his confidence we shall settle upon a way to proceed. one word more, he is a victim of morphia. did i tell you that?" "no, but i guessed it." "you have known such men before, then?" "i have studied the proposition that opium may be a power to effect what we seek, and, in connection with it, have studied the hospitals that make a specialty of such cases." there was a long silence, and presently edward said: "will you say good-night now?" "good-night." the professor gazed about him. "how was it you used to say good-night, edward? old customs are good. it is not possible that the violin has been lost." he smiled and edward got his instrument and played. he knew the old man's favorites; the little folk-melodies of the rhine country, bits of love songs, mostly, around which the loving players of germany have woven so many beautiful fancies. and in the playing edward himself was quieted. the light from the hall downstairs streamed out along the gravel walk, and in the glare was a man standing with arms folded and head bent forward. a tall woman came and gently laid her hand upon him. he started violently, tossed his arms aloft and rushed into the darkness. she waited in silence a moment and then slowly followed him. chapter xvii. "if i meet the man!" when edward opened the morning paper, which he did while waiting for the return of the professor, who had wandered away before breakfast, he was shocked by the announcement of montjoy's defeat. the result of the vote in the remote county had been secured by horseback service organized by an enterprising journal, and telegraphed. the official returns were given. already the campaign had drifted far into the past with him; years seemed to have gone by when he arose from the sick-bed and now it scarcely seemed possible that he, edward morgan, was the same man who labored among the voters, shouted himself hoarse and kept the headquarters so successfully. it must have been a dream. but mary! that part was real. he wrote her a few lines expressing his grief. and then came the professor, with his adventure! he had met a young man out making photographs and had interested him with descriptions of recent successful attempts to photograph in colors. and then they had gone to the wing-room and examined the results of the young man's efforts to produce pictures upon living substances. "he has some of the most original theories and ideas upon the subject i have heard," said the german. "not wild beyond the possibilities of invention, however, and i am not sure but that he has taught me a lesson in common sense. 'find how nature photographs upon living tissue,' said the young man, 'and when you have reduced your pictures to the invisible learn to re-enlarge them; perhaps you will learn to enlarge nature's invisibles.' "he has discovered that the convolutions of the human brain resemble an embryo infant and that the new map which indicates the nerve lines centering in the brain from different parts of the body shows them entering the corresponding parts of the embryo. he lingers upon the startling idea that the nerve is a formative organ, and that by sensations conveyed, and by impressions, it actually shapes the brain. when sensations are identical and persistent they establish a family form. the brain is a bas-relief composite picture, shaped by all the nerves. theoretically a man's brain carefully removed, photographed and enlarged ought to show the outlines of a family form, with all the modifications. "you will perceive that he is working along hereditary lines and not psychologic. and i am not sure but that in this he is pursuing the wisest course, heredity being the primer." "you believe he has made a new discovery, then?" "as to that, no. the speculative mind is tolerant. it accepts nothing that is not proven; it rejects nothing that has not been disproved. the original ideas in most discoveries in their crude forms were not less wild than this. all men who observe are friends of science." the incident pleased edward. to bring the professor and gerald together he had feared would be difficult. chance and the professor's tact had already accomplished this successfully. "i shall leave you and gerald to get thoroughly acquainted. when you have learned him you can study him best. i have business of importance." he at once went to the city and posted his letter. norton's leave had been exhausted and he had already departed for new york. at the club and at the almost forsaken headquarters of the montjoy party all was consternation and regret. the fatal overconfidence in the backwoods county was settled upon as the cause of the disaster. and yet why should that county have failed them? two companies of evan's old brigade were recruited there; he had been assured by almost every prominent man in the county of its vote. and then came the crushing blow. the morning paper had wired for special reports and full particulars, and at o'clock an extra was being cried upon the streets. everybody bought the paper; the street cars, the hotels, the clubs, the street corners, were thronged with people eagerly reading the announcement. under triple head lines, which contained the words "fraud" and "slander" and "treachery," came this article, which edward read on the street: "the cause of the fatal slump-off of col. montjoy's friends in this county was a letter placed in circulation here yesterday and industriously spread to the remotest voting places. it was a letter from mr. amos royson to the hon. thomas brown of this county. your correspondent has secured and herewith sends a copy: "'my dear sir: in view of the election about to be held in your county, i beg to submit the following facts: against the honor and integrity of col. montjoy nothing can be urged, but it is known here so positively that i do not hesitate to state, and authorize you to use it, that the whole montjoy movement is in reality based upon an effort to crush swearingen for his opposition to certain corporation measures in congress, and which by reason of his position on certain committees, he threatens with defeat! to this end money has been sent here and is being lavishly expended by a tool of the corporation. added to this fact that the man chosen for the business is one calling himself edward morgan, the natural son of a late eccentric bachelor lawyer of this city. the mother of this man is an octoroon, who now resides with him at his home in the suburbs. it is certain that these facts are not known to the people who have him in tow, but they are easy of substantiation when necessary. we look to you and your county to save the district. we were "done up" here before we were armed with this information. respectfully yours, 'amos royson.' "thousands of these circulars were printed and yesterday put in the hands of every voter. col. montjoy's friends were taken by surprise and their enthusiasm chilled. many failed to vote and the county was lost by twenty-three majority. intense excitement prevails here among the survivors of evan's brigade, who feel themselves compromised." then followed an editorial denouncing the outrage and demanding proofs. it ended by stating that the limited time prevented the presentation of interviews with royson and morgan, neither of whom could be reached by telephone after the news was received. there are moments when the very excess of danger calms. half the letter, the political lie alone, would have enraged edward beyond expression. he could not realize nor give expression. the attack upon his blood was too fierce an assault. in fact, he was stunned. he looked up to find himself in front of the office of ellison eldridge. turning abruptly he ascended the steps; the lawyer was reading the article as he appeared, but would have laid aside the paper. "finish," said edward, curtly; "it is upon that publication i have come to advise with you." he stood at the window while the other read, and there as he waited a realization of the enormity of the blow, its cowardliness, its cruelty, grew upon him slowly. he had never contemplated publicity; he had looked forward to a life abroad, with this wearing mystery forever gnawing at his heart, but publication and the details and the apparent truth! it was horrible! and to disprove it--how? the minutes passed! would the man behind him never finish what he himself had devoured in three minutes? he looked back; eldridge was gazing over the paper into space, his face wearing an expression of profound melancholy. he had uttered no word of denunciation; he was evidently not even surprised. "my god," exclaimed edward, excitedly; "you believe it--you believe it!" seizing the paper, he dashed from the room, threw himself into a hack and gave the order for home. and half an hour after he was gone the lawyer sat as he left him, thinking. edward found a reporter awaiting him. "you have the extra, i see, mr. morgan," said he; "may i ask what you will reply to it?" "nothing!" thundered the desperate man. "will you not say it is false?" edward went up to him. "young man, there are moments when it is dangerous to question people. this is one of them!" he opened the door and stood waiting. something in his face induced the newspaper man to take his leave. he said as he departed: "if you write a card we shall be glad to publish it." the sound of the closing door was the answer he received. alone and locked in his room, edward read the devilish letter over and over, until every word of it was seared into his brain forever. it could not be denied that more than once in his life the possibility of his being the son of john morgan had suggested itself to his mind, but he had invariably dismissed it. now it came back to him with the force almost of conviction. had the truth been stated at last? it was the only explanation that fitted the full circumstances of his life--and it fitted them all. it was true and known to be true by at least one other. eldridge's legal mind, prejudiced in his favor by years of association with his benefactor, had been at once convinced; and if the statement made so positively carried conviction to eldridge himself, to his legal friend, how would the great sensational public receive it? it was done, and the result was to be absolute and eternal ruin for edward morgan. such was the conclusion forced upon him. then there arose in mind the face of the one girl he remembered. he thought of the effect of the blow upon her. he had been her guest, her associate. the family had received him with open arms. they must share the odium of his disgrace, and for him now what course was left? flight! to turn his back upon all the trouble and go to his old life, and let the matter die out! and then came another thought. could any one prove the charge? he was in the dark; the cards were held with their backs to him. suppose he should bring suit for libel, what could he offer? his witness had already spoken and her words substantiated the charge against him. not a witness, not a scrap of paper, was to be had in his defense. a libel suit would be the rivet in his irons and he would face the public, perhaps for days, and be openly the subject of discussion. it was impossible, but he could fight. the thought thrilled him to the heart. she should see that he was a man! he would not deal with slander suits, with newspapers; he would make the scoundrel eat his words or he would silence his mouth forever. the man soul was stirred; he no longer felt the humiliation that had rendered him incapable of thought. the truth of the story was not the issue; the injury was its use, false or true. he strode into gerald's room and broke into the experiments of the scientists, already close friends. "you have weapons here. lend me one; the american uses the revolver, i believe?" gerald looked at him in astonishment, but he was interested. "here is one; can you shoot?" "badly; the small sword is my weapon." "then let me teach you." gerald was a boy now; weapons had been his hobby years before. "wait, let me fix a target!" he brushed a chalk drawing from a blackboard at the end of the room and stood, crayon in hand. "what would you prefer to shoot at, a tree, a figure----" "a figure!" gerald rapidly sketched the outlines of a man with white shirt front and stepped aside. five times the man with the weapon sighted and fired. the figure was not touched. gerald was delighted. he ran up, took the pistol and reloaded it and fired twice in succession. two spots appeared upon the shirt front; they were just where the lower and center shirt studs would have been. "you are an artist, i believe," he said to edward. the latter bowed his head. "now, professor, i will show you one of the most curious experiments in physics, the one that explains the chance stroke of billiards done upon the spur of the moment; the one rifle shot of a man's life, and the accurately thrown stone. stand here," he said to edward, "and follow my directions closely. remember, you are a draftsman and are going to outline that figure on the board. draw it quickly with your pistol for a pen, and just as if you were touching the board. say when you have finished and don't lower the pistol." edward drew as directed. "it is done," he said. "you have not added the upper stud. fire!" an explosion followed; a spot appeared just over the heart. "see!" shouted gerald; "a perfect aim; the pistol was on the stud when he fired, but beginners always pull the muzzle to the right, and let the barrel fly up. the secret is this, professor," he continued, taking a pencil and beginning to draw, "the concentration of attention is so perfect that the hand is a part of the eye. an artist who shoots will shoot as he draws, well or badly. now, no man drawing that figure will measure to see where the stud should be; he would simply put the chalk spot in the right place." edward heard no more; loading the pistol he had departed. "if i meet the man!" he said to himself. chapter xviii. how the challenge was written. the search for royson was unavailing. his determined pursuer tried his office door; it was locked. he walked every business street, entered every restaurant and billiard saloon, every hotel lobby. the politician was not to be found. he himself attracted wide-spread attention wherever he went. had he met royson he would have killed him without a word, but as he walked he did a great deal of thinking. he had no friend in the city. the nature of this attack was such that few people would care to second him. the younger montjoy was away and he was unwilling to set foot in the colonel's house again. through him, edward morgan, however innocently it may be, had come the fatal blow. he ran over the list of acquaintances he had formed among the younger men. they were not such as pleased him in this issue, for a strong, clear head, a man of good judgment and good balance, a determined man, was needed. then there came to his memory the face of one whom he had met at supper his first night in town--the quiet, dignified barksdale. he sought this man's office. barksdale was the organizer of a great railroad in process of construction. his reception of edward was no more nor less than would have been accorded under ordinary circumstances. had he come on the day before he would have been greeted as then. "how do you do, mr. morgan? be seated, sir." this with a wave of his hand. then, "what can i do for you?" his manner affected edward in the best way; he began to feel the business atmosphere. "i have called, mr. barksdale, upon a personal matter and to ask your assistance. i suppose you have read to-day's extra?" "i have." "my first inclination, after fully weighing the intent and effect of that famous publication," said edward, "was to seek and kill the author. for this purpose i have searched the town. royson is not to be found. i am so nearly a stranger here that i am forced to come to my acquaintances for assistance, and now i ask that you will advise me as to my next proceeding." "demand a retraction and apology at once!" "and if it is refused?" "challenge him!" "if he refuses to fight?" "punish him. that is all you can do." "will you make the demand for me--will you act for me?" barksdale reflected a moment and then said: "do not misunderstand my hesitation; it is not based upon the publication, nor upon unwillingness to serve you. i am considering the complications which may involve others; i must, in fact, consult others before i can reply. in the meantime will you be guided by me?" "i will." "you are armed and contemplating a very unwise act. leave your weapon here and take a hack home and remain there until i call. it is now : o'clock. i will be there at . if i do not act for you i will suggest a friend, for this matter should not lie over-night. but under no circumstances can i go upon the field; my position here involves interests covering many hundreds of thousands of invested funds, which i have induced. dueling is clearly out of vogue in this country and clearly illegal. for the president of a railroad to go publicly into a duel and deliberately break the law would lessen public confidence in the north in both him and his business character and affect the future of his enterprise, the value of its stocks and bonds. you admit the reasonableness of this, do you not?" "i do. there is my weapon! i will expect you at . good evening, mr. barksdale." the hours wore slowly away at home. edward studied his features in the cheval glass; he could not find in them the slightest resemblance to the woman in the picture. he had not erred in that. the absence of any portrait of john morgan prevented his making a comparison there. he knew from descriptions given by eldridge that he was not very like him in form or in any way that he could imagine, but family likeness is an elusive fact. two people will resemble each other, although they may differ in features taken in detail. he went to gerald's room, moved by a sudden impulse. gerald was demonstrating one of his theories concerning mind pictures and found in the professor a smiling and tolerant listener. he was saying: "now, let us suppose that from youth up a child has looked into its mother's face, felt her touch, heard her voice; that his senses carried to that forming brain their sensations, each nerve touching the brain, and with minute force setting up day by day, month by month, and year by year a model. yes, go back further and remember that this was going on before the child was a distinct individual; we have the creative force in both stages! tell me, is it impossible then that this little brain shall grow into the likeness it carries as its most serious impression, and that forced to the effort would on canvas or in its posterity produce the picture it has made----" "how can you distinguish the mind picture from the memory picture? what is the difference?" "not easily, but if i can produce a face which comes to me in my dreams, which haunts my waking hours, which is with me always, the face of one i have never seen, it must come to me as a mind picture; and if that picture is the feminine of my own, have i not reason to believe that it stands for the creative power from which i sprang? such a picture as this." he drew a little curtain aside and on the wall shone the fair face of a woman; the face from the church sketch, but robbed of its terror, the counterpart of the little painting upstairs. the professor looked grave, but edward gazed on it in awe. "now a simple brain picture," he said, almost in a whisper; "draw me the face of john morgan." the artist made not more than twenty strokes of the crayon upon the blackboard. "such is john morgan, as i last saw him," said gerald; "a mere photograph; a brain picture!" edward gazed from one to the other; from the picture to the artist astounded. the professor had put on his glasses; it was he who broke the silence. "that is herr abingdon," he said. gerald smiled and said: "that is john morgan." without a word edward left the room. under an assumed name, deterred from open recognition by the sad facts of the son's birth, his father had watched over and cherished him. no wonder the letter had come back. abingdon was dead! the front door was open. he plunged directly into the arms of barksdale as he sought the open air. barksdale was one of those men who seem to be without sentiment, because they have been trained by circumstances to look at facts from a business standpoint only. yet the basis of his whole life was sentiment. in the difficulty that had arisen his quick mind grasped at once the situation. he knew royson and was sure that he shielded himself behind some collateral fact, not behind the main truth. in the first place he was hardly in position to know anything of morgan's history more than the general public would have known. in the second, he would not have dared to use it under any circumstances if those circumstances did not protect him. what were these? first there was morgan's isolation; only one family could be said to be intimate with him, and they could not, on account of the younger montjoy, act for edward. the single controlling idea that thrust itself into barksdale's mind was the proposition that royson did not intend to fight. then the position of the montjoy family flashed upon him. the blow had been delivered to crush the colonel politically and upon a man who was his unselfish ally. owing to the nature of the attack col. montjoy could ask no favors of royson, and owing to the relationship, he could not proceed against him in morgan's interest. he could neither act for nor advise, and in the absence of col. montjoy, who else could be found? before replying to edward, a plan of action occurred to him. when he sent that excited individual home he went direct to royson's office. he found the door open and that gentleman serenely engaged in writing. even at this point he was not deceived; he knew that his approach had been seen, as had edward's, and preparations made accordingly. royson had been city attorney and in reality the tool of a ring. his ambition was boundless. through friends he had broached a subject very dear to him; he desired to become counsel for the large corporations that barksdale represented, and there was a surprised satisfaction in his tones as he welcomed the railroad president and gave him a seat. barksdale opened the conversation on this line and asked for a written opinion upon a claim of liability in a recent accident. he went further and stated that perhaps later royson might be relied upon frequently in such cases. the town was talking of nothing else at that time but the royson card. it was natural that barksdale should refer to it. "a very stiff communication, that of yours, about mr. morgan," he said, carelessly; "it will probably be fortunate for you if your informant is not mistaken." "there is no mistake," said royson, leaning back in his chair, glad that the subject had been brought up. "it does seem a rough card to write, but i have reason to think there was no better way out of a very ugly complication." "the name of your informant will be demanded, of course." "yes, but i shall not give it!" "then will come a challenge." "hardly!" royson arose and closed the door. "if you have a few moments and do not mind hearing this, i will tell you in confidence the whole business. who would be sought to make a demand upon me for the name of my informant?" "one of the montjoys naturally, but your relationship barring them they would perhaps find mr. morgan a second." "but suppose that i prove conclusively that the information came from a member of the montjoy family? what could they do? under the circumstances which have arisen their hands are tied. as a matter of fact i am the only one that can protect them. if the matter came to that point, as a last resort i could refuse to fight, for the reason given in the letter." barksdale was silent. the whole devilish plot flashed upon him. he knew in advance the person described as a member of the montjoy family, and he knew the base motives of the man who at that moment was dishonoring him with his confidence. his blood boiled within him. cool and calm as he was by nature, his face showed emotion as he arose and said: "i think i understand." royson stood by the door, his hand upon the knob, after his visitor had gone. "it was a mistake; a great mistake," he said to himself in a whisper. "i have simply acted the fool!" barksdale went straight to a friend upon whose judgment he relied and laid the matter before him. together they selected three of the most honorable and prominent men in the city, friends of the montjoys, and submitted it to them. the main interest was now centered in saving the montjoy family. edward had become secondary. an agreement was reached upon barksdale's suggestion and all was now complete unless the aggrieved party should lose his case in the correspondence about to ensue. barksdale disguised his surprise when he assisted edward at the door to recover equilibrium. "i am here sir, as i promised," he said, "but the complications extend further than i knew. i now state that i cannot act for you in any capacity and ask that i be relieved of my promise." edward bowed stiffly. "you are released." "there is but one man in this city who can serve you and bring about a meeting. gerald morgan must bear your note!" edward repeated the name. he could not grasp the idea. "gerald morgan," said barksdale again. "he will not need to go on the field. good-night. and if that fails you here is your pistol; you are no longer under my guidance. but one word more--my telephone is ; if during the night or at any time i can advise you, purely upon formal grounds, summon me. in the meantime see to it that your note does not demand the name of royson's informant. do not neglect that. the use he has made of his information must be made the basis of the quarrel; if you neglect this your case is lost. good-night." the thought flashed into edward's mind then that the world was against him. this man was fearful of becoming responsible himself. he had named gerald. it was a bruised and slender reed, but he would lean upon it, even if he crushed it in the use. he returned to the wing-room. "professor," he said, "you know that under no possible circumstances would i do you a discourtesy, so when i tell you, as now, that for to-night and possibly a day, we are obliged to leave you alone, you will understand that some vital matter lies at the bottom of it." "my young friend," exclaimed that gentleman, "go as long as you please. i have a little world of my own, you know," he smiled cheerfully, "in which i am always amused. gerald has enlarged it. go and come when you can; here are books--what more does one need?" edward bowed slightly. "gerald, follow me." gerald, without a word, laid aside his crayon and obeyed. he stood in the library a moment later looking with tremulous excitement upon the man who had summoned him so abruptly. by reflection he was beginning to share the mental disturbance. his frail figure quivered and he could not keep erect. "read that!" said edward, handing him the paper. he took the sheet and read. when he finished he was no longer trembling, but to the astonishment of edward, very calm. a look of weariness rested upon his face. "have you killed him?" he asked, laying aside the paper, his mind at once connecting the incident of the pistol with this one. "no, he is in hiding." "have you challenged him?" "no! my god, can you not understand? i am without friends! the whole city believes the story." a strange expression came upon the face of gerald. "we must challenge him at once," he said. "i am, of course, the proper second. i must ask you in the first place to calm yourself. the records must be perfect." he seated himself at a desk and prepared to write. edward was walking the room. he came and stood by his side. "do not demand the name of his informant," he said; "make the publication and circulation of the letter the cause of our grievance." "of course," was the reply. the letter was written rapidly. "sign it if you please," said gerald. edward read the letter and noticed that it was written smoothly and without a break. he signed it. gerald had already rung for the buggy and disappeared. "wait here," he had said, "until i return. in the meantime do not converse with anyone upon this subject." the thought that flashed upon the mind of the man left in the drawing-room was that the race courage had become dominant, and for the time being was superior to ill-health, mental trouble and environment. it was in itself a confirmation of the cruel letter. the manhood of albert evan had become a factor in the drama. chapter xix. brought to bay. col. montjoy was apprised of the unexpected result in the backwoods at an early hour. he read the announcement quietly and went on his usual morning ride undisturbed. then through the family spread the news as the other members made their appearance. mrs. montjoy said, gently: "all happens for the best. if mr. montjoy had been elected he would have been exposed for years to the washington climate, and he is not very well at any time. he complained of his heart several times last night." but mary went off and had a good cry. she could not endure the thought of the slightest affront to her stately father. she felt better after her cry and kissed the old gentleman as he came in to breakfast. "i see you have all heard the news," he said, cheerily. "well, it lifts a load from me. i spent four very trying years up in the neighborhood of washington, and i am not well disposed toward the locality. i have done my duty to the fullest extent in this matter. the people who know me have given me an overwhelming indorsement, and i have been beaten only by people who do not know me! swearingen will doubtless make a good representative, after all. i am sorry for evan," he added, laughing. "it will be news to him to find out that the old fire-eaters have been worsted at last." he went to breakfast with his arms around wife and daughter. "all the honors of public life cannot compensate a man for separation from his home," he said, "and providence knows it." annie was silent and anxious. she made a feeble effort to sympathize with the defeated, but with poor success. during the morning she started at every sound and went frequently to the front door. she knew her cousin, and something assured her that his hand was in this mischief. how would it affect her? in her room she laughed triumphantly. "vain fools!" she exclaimed; "let them stay where they belong!" in the afternoon there was the sound of buggy wheels, and a servant brought to the veranda, where they were sitting, a package. adjusting his glasses, the colonel opened it to find one of the extras. at the head of this was written: "thinking it probable that it may be important for this to reach you to-day, and fearing it might not otherwise, i send it by messenger in buggy. use them as you desire." to this was signed the name of a friend. annie, who watched the colonel as he read, saw his face settle into sternness, and then an expression of anxiety overspread it. "anything serious, norton?" it was the voice of his wife, who sat knitting. "a matter connected with the election calls me to town," he said; "i hope it will be the last time. i shall go in with the driver who brought the note." he went inside and made his few arrangements and departed hurriedly. after he was gone, annie picked up the paper from the hall table, where he had placed it, and read the fatal announcement. although frightened, she could scarcely conceal her exultation. mary was passing; she thrust the paper before her eyes and said: "read that! so much for entertaining strangers!" mary read. the scene whirled about her, and but for the knowledge that her suffering was bringing satisfaction to the woman before her she would have fallen to the floor. she saw in the gleeful eyes, gleaming upon her, something of the truth. with a desperate effort she restrained herself and the furious words that had rushed to her lips, and laid aside the paper with unutterable scorn and dignity. "the lie is too cheap to pass anywhere except in the backwoods," was all she said. a smile curled the thin lips of the other as she witnessed the desperate struggle of the girl. the voice of col. montjoy, who had returned to the gate, was heard calling to mary: "daughter, bring the paper from the hall table." she carried it to him. something in her pale face caused him to ask: "have you read it, daughter?" she nodded her head. he was instantly greatly concerned and began some rambling explanation about campaign lies and political methods. but he could not disguise the fact that he was shocked beyond expression. she detained him but a moment. oh, wonderful power of womanly intuition! "father," she said faintly, "be careful what you do. the whole thing originated back yonder," nodding her head toward the house. she had said it, and now her eyes blazed defiance. he looked upon her in amazement, not comprehending, but the matter grew clearer as he thought upon it. arriving in the city he was prepared for anything. he went direct to royson's office, and that gentleman seeing him enter smiled. the visit was expected and desired. he bowed formally, however, and moving a chair forward locked the door. darkness had just fallen, but the electric light outside the window was sufficient for an interview; neither seemed to care for more light. "amos," said the old man, plunging into the heart of the subject, "you have done a shameful and a cruel thing, and i have come to tell you so and insist upon your righting the wrong. you know me too well to suspect that personal reasons influence me in the least. as far as i am concerned the wrong cannot be righted, and i would not purchase nor ask a personal favor from you. the man you have insulted so grievously is a stranger and has acted the part of a generous friend to those who, although you may not value the connection, are closely bound to you. in the name of god, how could you do it?" he was too full of indignation to proceed, and he had need of coolness. the other did not move nor give the slightest evidence of feeling. he had this advantage; the part he was acting had been carefully planned and rehearsed. after a moment's hesitation, he said: "you should realize, col. montjoy, that i have acted only after a calm deliberation, and the matter is not one to be discussed excitedly. i cannot refuse to talk with you about it, but it is a cold-blooded matter of policy only." the manner and tone of the speaker chilled the elder to the heart. royson continued: "as for myself and you--well, it was an open, impersonal fight. you know my ambition; it was as laudable as yours. i have worked for years to keep in the line of succession; i could not be expected to sit silent and while losing my whole chance see my friend defeated. all is fair in love and war--and politics. i have used such weapons as came to my hand, and the last i used only when defeat was certain." controlling himself with great effort, col. montjoy said: "you certainly cannot expect the matter to end here!" "how can it proceed?" a slight smile lighted the lawyer's face. "a demand will be made upon you for your authority." "who will make it--you?" a light dawned upon the elder. the cool insolence of the man was more than he could endure. "yes!" he exclaimed, rising. "as god is my judge, if he comes to me i shall make the demand! ingratitude was never charged against one of my name. this man has done me a lasting favor; he shall not suffer for need of a friend, if i have to sacrifice every connection in the world." again the lawyer smiled. "i think it best to remember, colonel, that we can reach no sensible conclusion without cool consideration. let me ask you, then, for information. if i should answer that the charges in my letter, so far as morgan's parentage is concerned, were based upon statements made by a member of your immediate family, what would be your course?" "i should denounce you as a liar and make the quarrel my own." royson grew pale, but made no reply. he walked to his desk, and taking from it a letter passed it to the angry man. he lighted the gas, while the colonel's trembling hands were arranging his glasses, and stood silent, waiting. the note was in a feminine hand. col. montjoy read: "my dear amos: i have been thinking over the information i gave you touching the base parentage of the man morgan, and i am not sure but that it should be suppressed so far as the public is concerned, and brought home here in another way. the facts cannot be easily proved, and the affair would create a great scandal, in which i, as a member of this absurd family, would be involved. you should not use it, at any rate, except as a desperate measure, and then only upon the understanding that you are to become responsible, and that i am in no way whatever to be brought into the matter. yours in haste, "annie." the reader let the paper fall and covered his face with his hands a moment. then he arose with dignity. "i did not imagine, sir, that the human heart was capable of such villainy as yours has developed. you have stabbed a defenseless stranger in the back; have broken faith with a poor, jealous, weak woman, and have outraged and humiliated me, to whom you are personally indebted financially and otherwise. unlock your door! i have but one honorable course left. i shall publish a card in the morning's paper stating that your letter was based upon statements made by a member of my family; that they are untrue in every respect, and offer a public apology." "will you name the informant?" "what is that to you, sir?" "a great deal! if you do name her, i shall reaffirm the truth of her statements, as in the absence of her husband i am her nearest relative. if you do not name her, then the public may guess wrong. i think you will not do so rash a thing, colonel. keep out of the matter. circumstances give you a natural right to hands off!" "and if i do!" exclaimed the old man, passionately, "who will act for him?" the unpleasant smile returned to the young man's lips. "no one, i apprehend!" montjoy could have killed him as he stood. he felt the ground slipping from under him as he, too, realized the completeness and cowardliness of the plot. "we shall see; we shall see!" he said, gasping and pressing his hand to his heart. "we shall see, mr. royson! there is a just god who looks down upon the acts of all men, and the right prevails!" royson bowed mockingly but profoundly. "that is an old doctrine. you are going, and there is just one thing left unsaid. at the risk of offending you yet more, i am going to say it." "i warn you, then, to be careful; there is a limit to human endurance and i have persistently ascribed to me the worst of motives in this matter, but i have as much pride in my family as you in yours. there are but few of us left. will you concede that if there is danger, in her opinion, that she will become the sister-in-law of this man, and that she believed the information she has given to be true, will you concede that her action is natural, if not wise, and that a little more selfishness may after all be mixed in mine?" gradually his meaning dawned upon his hearer. for a second he was dumb. and all this was to be public property! "i think," said royson, coolly opening the door, "it will be well for you to confer with friends before you proceed, and perhaps leave to others the task of righting the wrongs of strangers who have taken advantage of your hospitality to offer the deadliest insult possible in this southern country. it may not be well to arm this man with the fact that you vouch for him; he may answer you in the future." he drew back from the door suddenly, half in terror. a man, pale as death itself, with hair curling down upon his shoulders, and eyes that blazed under the face before him, whose eyes never for a moment left his, broke the seal. then he read aloud: "mr. amos royson, i inclose for your inspection a clipping from an extra issue this day, and ask if you are the author of the letter it contains. if you answer yes, i hereby demand of you an unconditional retraction of and apology for the same, for publication in the paper which contained the original. this will be handed to you by my friend, gerald morgan. "edward morgan." royson recovered himself with evident difficulty. "this is not customary--he does not demand the name of my informant!" he said. "we do not care a fig, sir, for your informant. the insult rests in the use you have made of a lie, and we propose to hold you responsible for it!" gerald spoke the words like a sweet-voiced girl and returned the stare of his opponent with insolent coolness. the colonel had paused, as he perceived the completeness of the lawyer's entrapping. amos could not use his cousin's name before the public and the montjoys were saved from interference. he was cornered. the colonel passed out hurriedly with an affectionate smile to gerald, saying: "excuse me, gentlemen; these are matters which you will probably wish to discuss in private. mr. royson, i had friends wiser than myself at work upon this matter, and i did not know it." chapter xx. in the hands of their friends. it was not sunset when col. montjoy left home. mary went to her room and threw herself upon her bed, sick at heart and anxious beyond the power of weeping. unadvised, ignorant of the full significance of the information that had been conveyed to them, she conjured up a world of danger for her father and for edward. tragedy was in the air she breathed. at supper she was laboring under ill-concealed excitement. fortunately for her, the little mother was not present. sitting in her room, with the green glasses to which she had been reduced by the progress of her disease, she did not notice the expression of the daughter's face when she came as usual to look after the final arrangement of her mother's comfort. by o'clock the house was quiet. throwing a light wrap over her shoulders and concealing in its folds her father's army pistol, mary slipped into the outer darkness and whistled softly. a great shaggy dog came bounding around from the rear and leaped upon her. she rested her hand on his collar, and together they passed into the avenue. old isam stood there and by him the pony phaeton and mare. "stay up until i return, please, uncle isam, and be sure to meet me here!" the old man bowed. "i'll be hyar, missy," he said. "don't you want me to go, too?" "no, thank you; i am going to gen. evan's and you must stay and look after things. nero will go with me." the dog had already leaped into the vehicle. she sprang in also, and almost noiselessly they rolled away over the pine straw. the old man listened; first he heard the dogs bark at rich's then at manuel's and then at black henry's, nearly a mile away. he shook his head. "missy got somep'n on her mind! she don't make no hoss move in de night dat way for nothin'! too fast! too fast!" he went off to his cabin and sat outside to smoke. and in the night the little mare sped away. on the public roads the gait was comparatively safe, and she responded to every call nobly. the unbroken shadows of the roadside glided like walls of gloom! the little vehicle rocked and swayed, and, underneath, the wheels sang a monotonous warning rhyme. now and then the little vehicle fairly leaped from the ground, for when norton, a year previous, had bid in that animal at a blooded-stock sale in kentucky, she was in her third summer and carried the blood of wilkes and rysdyk's hambletonian, and was proud of it, as her every motion showed. the little mare had the long route that night, but at last she stood before the doorway of the cedars. the general was descending the steps as mary gave nero the lines. "what! mary--" he feared to ask the question on his lips. she was full of excitement, and her first effort to speak was a dismal failure. "come! come! come!" he said, in that descending scale of voice which seems to have been made for sympathy and encouragment. "calm yourself first and talk later." he had his arms around her now and was ascending the steps. "sit right down here in this big chair; there you are!" "you have not heard, then?" she said, controlling herself with supreme effort. "about your father's defeat? oh, yes. but what of that? there are defeats more glorious than victories, my child. you will find that your father was taken advantage of." she buried her face in her hands. "it is not about that, sir--the means they used!" and then, between sobs, she told him the whole story. he made no reply, no comment, but reaching over to the rail secured his corn-cob pipe and filled it. as he struck a match above the tobacco, she saw that his face was as calm as the candid skies of june. the sight gave her courage. "do you not think it awful?" she ventured. "awful? yes! a man to descend to such depths of meanness must have suffered a great deal on the way. i am sorry for royson--sorry, indeed!" "but mr. morgan!" she exclaimed, excitedly. "that must be attended to," he said, very gravely. "mr. morgan has placed us all under heavy obligations, and we must see him through." "you must, general; you must, and right away! they have sent for poor papa, and he has gone to town, and i--i--just could not sleep, so i came to you." he laughed heartily. "and in a hurry! whew! i heard the mare's feet as she crossed the bridge a mile away. you did just right. and of course the old general is expected to go to town and pull papa and mr. morgan out of the mud, and straighten out things. john!" "put the saddle on my horse at once. and now, how is the little mamma?" he asked, gently. he held her on this subject until the horse was brought, and then they rode off down the avenue, the general following and rallying the girl upon her driving. "don't expect me to hold to that pace," he said. "i once crossed a bridge as fast, and faster, up in virginia, but i was trying to beat the bluecoats. too old now, too old." "but you will get there in time?" she asked, anxiously. "oh, yes; they will be consulting and sending notes and raising points all night. i will get in somewhere along the line. when a man starts out to hunt up trouble he is rarely ever too late to find it." he saw her safely to where isam was waiting, and then rode on to the city. he realized the complication, and now his whole thought was to keep his neighbor from doing anything rash. it did occur to him that there might be a street tragedy, but he shook his head over this when he remembered royson. "he is too much of a schemer for that," he said. "he will get the matter into the hands of a board of honor." the old gentleman laughed softly to himself and touched up his horse. in the meantime affairs were drawing to a focus in the city. after the abrupt departure of gerald, royson stood alone, holding the demand and thinking. an anxious expression had settled upon his face. he read and reread the curt note, but could find no flaw in it. he was to be held responsible for the publication; that was the injury. he was forced to confess that the idea was sound. there was now no way to involve the montjoys and let them hush it up. he had expected to be forced to withdraw the card and apologize, but not until the whole city was informed that he did it to save a woman, and he would have been placed then in the position of one sacrificing himself. now that such refuge was impossible he could not even escape by giving the name of his informant. he could not have given it had there been a demand. he read between the lines that his authority was known; that he was dealing with some master mind and that he had been out-generaled somewhere. to whom had he talked? to no one except barksdale. he gave vent to a profane estimate of himself and left the office. there was no danger now of a street assault. amos royson threw himself into a carriage and went to the residence of marsden thomas, dismissing the vehicle. the family of marsden thomas was an old one, and by reason of its early reputation in politics and at the bar had a sound and honorable footing. marsden was himself a member of the legislature, a born politician, capable of anything that would advance his fortune, the limit only being the dead-line of disgrace. he had tied to royson, who was slightly his elder, because of his experience and influence. he was noted for his scrupulous regard for the code as a basis of settlement between honorable men, and was generally consulted upon points of honor. secure in thomas' room, royson went over the events of the day, including montjoy's and gerald's visits, and then produced the demand that had been served upon him. thomas had heard him through without interruption. when royson described the entrance of gerald, with the unlooked-for note, a slight smile drew his lips; he put aside the note, and said: "you are in a very serious scrape, amos; i do not see how you can avoid a fight." his visitor studied him intently. "you must help me out! i do not propose to fight." thomas gravely studied the note again. "of course, you know the object of the publication," continued royson; "it was political. without it we would have been beaten. it was a desperate move; i had the information and used it." "you had information, then? i thought the whole thing was hatched up. who gave you the information?" royson frowned. "my cousin, mrs. montjoy; you see the complication now. i supposed that no one but the montjoys knew this man intimately, and that their hands would be tied!" "ah!" the exclamation was eloquent. "and the young man had another friend, the morphine-eater; you had forgotten him!" thomas could not restrain a laugh. royson was furious. he seized his hat and made a feint to depart. thomas kindly asked him to remain. it would have been cruel had he failed, for he knew that royson had not the slightest intention of leaving. "come back and sit down, amos. you do us all an injustice. you played for the credit of this victory, contrary to our advice, and now you have the hot end of the iron." "tell me," said royson, reverting to the note, "is there anything in that communication that we can take advantage of?" "nothing! morgan might have asked in one note if you were the author of the published letter and then in another have demanded a retraction. his joining the two is not material; you do not deny the authorship." after a few moments of silence he continued: "there is one point i am not satisfied upon. i am not sure but that you can refuse upon the ground you alleged--in brief, because he is not a gentleman. whether or not the burden of proof would be upon you is an open question; i am inclined to think it would be; a man is not called upon in the south to prove his title to gentility. all southerners with whom we associate are supposed to be gentlemen," and then he added, lazily smiling, "except the ladies; and it is a pity they are exempt. mrs. montjoy would otherwise be obliged to hold her tongue!" royson was white with rage, but he did not speak. secretly he was afraid of thomas, and it had occurred to him that in the event of his humiliation or death thomas would take his place. this unpleasant reflection was interrupted by the voice of his companion. "suppose we call in some of our friends and settle this point." the affair was getting in the shape desired by royson, and he eagerly consented. notes were at once dispatched to several well-known gentlemen, and a short time afterward they were assembled and in earnest conversation. it was evident that they disagreed. while this consultation was going on there was a knock at the door; a servant brought a card. gen. evan had called to see mr. thomas, but learning that he was engaged and how, had left the note. thomas read it silently, and then aloud: "marsden thomas, esq.--dear sir: i have read in to-day's paper the painful announcement signed by mr. royson, and have come into the city hoping that a serious difficulty might thereby be averted. to assist in the settlement of this matter, i hereby state over my own signature that the announcement concerning edward morgan is erroneous, and i vouch for his right to the title and privileges of a gentleman. "respectfully, "albert evan." the silence that followed this was broken by one of the older gentlemen present. "this simplifies matters very greatly," he said. "without the clearest and most positive proof, mr. royson must retract or fight." they took their departure at length, leaving royson alone to gaze upon the open note. thomas, returning, found him in the act of drawing on his gloves. "i am going," said royson, "to send a message to annie. she must, she shall give me something to go on. i will not sit quietly by and be made a sacrifice!" "write your note; i will send it." "i prefer to attend to it myself!" thomas shook his head. "if you leave this room to-night it is with the understanding that i am no longer your adviser. arrest by the police must not, shall not--" "do you mean to insinuate--" "nothing! but i shall take no chances with the name of thomas!" said the other proudly. "you are excited; a word let fall--a suspicion--and we would be disgraced! write your note; i shall send it. we have no time to lose!" royson threw himself down in front of a desk and wrote hurriedly: "annie: i am cornered. for god's sake give me proofs of your statements or tell me where to get them. it is life or death; don't fail me. "a. r." he sealed and addressed this. thomas rang the bell and to the boy he said: "how far is it to col. montjoy's?" "seven miles, sah!" "how quickly can you go there and back?" "on pet?" "yes." "one hour an' a half, sah." "take this note, say you must see mrs. norton montjoy, jr., in person, on important matters, and deliver it to her. here is a $ bill; if you are back in two hours, you need not return it. go!" there was a gleam of ivory teeth and the boy hurried away. it was a wretched wait, that hour and a half. the answer to the demand must go into the paper that night! one hour and thirty-two minutes passed. they heard the horse in the street, then the boy upon the stairway. he dashed to the door. "miss mary was up and at de gate when i got deir! reck'n she hear pet's hoof hit de hard groun' an' hit skeered her. i tole her what you say, and she sen' word dat mrs. montjoy done gone to sleep. i tell her you all mighty anxious for to get dat note; dat mr. royson up here, waitin', an' gentlemen been comin' an' goin' all night. she took de note in den and putty soon she bring back the answer!" he was searching his pockets as he rambled over his experience, and presently the note was found. it was the same one that had been sent by royson, and across the back was written: "mr. thomas: i think it best not to awaken annie. papa is in town; if the matter is of great importance call upon him. i am so certain this is the proper course that it will be useless to write again or call in person to-night. "respectfully, "m. m." he passed the note to royson in silence and saw the look of rage upon his face as he tore it into a thousand pieces. "even your little montjoy girl seems to be against you," he said. "she is!" exclaimed royson; "she knew that my note to annie was not in the interest of edward morgan, and she is fighting for him. she will follow him to the altar or the grave!" "ah," said thomas, aside, drawing a long breath; "'tis the old story, and i thought i had found a new plot! well," he continued aloud, "what next?" "it shall not be the altar! conclude the arrangements; i am at your service!" "he will stick," said thomas to himself; "love and jealousy are stronger then fear and ambition!" chapter xxi. "the witness is dead." in his room at the hotel col. montjoy awaited the return of his friend evan, who had gone to find out how, as he expressed it the boys were getting on with their fight. "i will strike the trail somewhere," he said, lightly. but he was greatly disturbed over col. montjoy's concern, and noticed at once the bad physical effect it had on him. his policy was to make light of the matter, but he knew it was serious. to force royson to back down was now his object; in the event of that failing, to see that morgan had a fair show. the colonel had removed his shoes and coat and was lying on the bed when evan returned. "i think i have given them a basis of settlement," said the general. "i have vouched for the fact that the statements in royson's letter are erroneous. upon my declaration he can retract and apologize, or he must fight. i found him consulting with thomas and others, and i took it for granted he was looking for some way to dodge." the colonel looked at him in surprise. "but how could you?" "upon my faith in john morgan! he was a man of honor! he would never have left his property to this man and put him upon the community if there had been a cloud upon his title to gentility," and then he added, with emotion: "a man who was willing to give his daughter to a friend can risk a great deal to honor that friend's memory." "there is but one albert evan in the world," said montjoy, after a long silence. the general was getting himself a glass of wine. "well, there is but one such montjoy, for that matter, but we two old fellows lose time sitting up to pay each other compliments! there is much to be done. i am going out to see morgan; he is so new here he may need help! you stay and keep quiet. the town is full of excitement over this affair, and people watch me as if i were a curiosity. you can study on politics if you will; consider the proposition that if royson retracts we are entitled to another trial over yonder in the lost county; that or we will threaten them with an independent race." "no! i am too glad to have a chance to stay out honorably. i know now that my candidacy was a mistake. it has weakened me here fatally." col. montjoy placed his hand over his heart wearily. the general brought him the glass of wine he held. "nonsense! too many cigars! here's to long life, old friend, and to the gallant fire-eaters." he laughed lightly over his remembrance of the checkmate he had accomplished, buttoned the blue coat over his broad chest and started. "i am going now to look in upon my outpost and see what arrangements have been made for the night. so far we hold the strong positions. look for me about daylight!" and, lying there alone, his friend drifted back in thought to mary. he was not satisfied. the door stood open at ilexhurst when the general alighted. there was no answer to his summons; he entered the lighted hall and went to the library. edward was sleeping quietly upon a lounge. "what!" exclaimed the general, cheerily, "asleep on guard!" edward sprang to his feet. "gen. evan!" "exactly; and as no one answered my summons to surrender i took possession." apologizing, edward drew a chair, and they became seated. "seriously, my young friend," began the old soldier. "i was in the city to-night and have learned from col. montjoy of the infamy perpetrated upon you. my days of warfare are over, but i could not sit by and see one to whom we all owe so much imposed upon. let me add, also, that i was very much charmed with you, mr. morgan. if there is anything i can do for you in the way of advice and guidance in this matter kindly command me. i might say the same thing for montjoy, who is at the hotel, but unfortunately, as you may not know, his daughter-in-law is mr. royson's cousin, and acting upon my advice he is silent until the necessity for action arises. i know him well enough to add that you can rely upon his sympathy, and if needed, his aid. i have advised him to take no action, as in the first place he is not needed, and in the second it may bring about an estrangement between his son and himself." edward was very grateful and expressed himself earnestly, but his head was in a whirl. he was thinking of the woman's story, and of gerald. "such a piece of infamy as is embraced in that publication," said the general, when finally the conversation went direct to the heart of the trouble, "was never equaled in this state. have they replied to your note?" "not yet. i am waiting for the answer!" "and your--cousin--is he here to receive it?" "gerald? yes, he is here--that is, excuse me, i will see!" somewhat alarmed over the possibility of gerald's absence, he hurried through the house to the wing, and then into the glass-room. gerald was asleep. the inevitable little box of pellets upon his table told the sad story. edward could not awaken him. "it is unfortunate, very," he said, re-entering the library hurriedly, "but gerald is asleep and cannot be aroused. the truth is, he is a victim of opium. the poor fellow is now beyond cure, i am afraid; he is frail, nervous, excitable, and cannot live without the drug. the day has been a very trying one for him, and this is the first time he has been out in years!" "he must be awakened," said the general. "of course he cannot, in the event that these fellows want to fight, go on the field; and then his relationship! but to-night! to-night he must be aroused! let me go with you." edward started almost in terror. "it might not be well, general--it is not necessary--" "on the contrary, a strange voice may have more effect than yours--no ladies about? of course not! lead on, i follow." greatly confused, edward led the way. as they reached the wing he exclaimed the fact of the glass-room, the whim, the fancy of an imaginative mind, and then they entered. gerald was sleeping, as was his habit, with one arm extended, the other under his head; his long hair clustering about his face. the light was burning brightly, and the general approached. thrilled to the heart, edward steeled himself for a shock. it was well he did. the general bent forward and laid his hand on the sleeper's shoulder. then he stepped quickly back, seized edward with the strength of a giant and stood there trembling, his eyes riveted upon the pale face on the pillow. "am i dreaming?" he asked, in a changed voice. "is this--the young man--you spoke of?" "it is gerald morgan." "strange! strange! that likeness! the likeness of one who will never wake again, my friend, never! excuse me; i was startled, overwhelmed! i would have sworn i looked upon that face as i did in the olden time, when i used to go and stand in the moonlight and dream above it!" "ah," said edward, his heart turning to ice within him, "whose was it?" the answer came in a whisper. "it was my wife's face first, and then it was the face of my daughter!" he drew himself up proudly, and, looking long upon the sleeper, said, gently: "they shall not waken you, poor child. albert evan will take your place!" with infinite tenderness he brushed back a lock of hair that fell across the white brow and stood watching him. edward turned from the scene with a feeling that it was too sacred for intrusion. over the sleeping form stood the old man. a generation of loneliness, of silence, of dignified, uncomplaining manhood lay between them. what right had he, an alien, to be dumb when a word might bring hope and interest back to that saddened life? was he less noble than the man himself--than the frail being locked in the deathlike slumber? he glanced once more at gerald. how he had risen to the issue, and in the face of every instinct of a shrinking nature had done his part until the delicate machinery gave way! suppose their positions were reversed; that he lay upon the bed, and gerald stood gazing into the night through the dew-gemmed glass, possessed of such a secret. would he hesitate? no! the answer formed itself instantly--not unless he had base blood in his veins. it was that taint that now held back him, edward morgan; he was a coward. and yet, what would be the effect if he should burst out in that strange place with his fearful secret? there would be an outcry; rita would be dragged in, her story poured forth, and on him the old man's eyes would be turned in horror and pity. then the published card would stand a sentence of social degradation, and he in a foreign land would nurse the memory of a woman and his disgrace. and royson! he ground his teeth. "i will settle that first," he said in a hoarse whisper, "and then if it is true i will prove, god helping me, that his spirit can animate even the child of a slave!" he bowed his head upon his breast and wept. presently there came to him a consciousness that the black shadow pressing against the glass almost at his feet was more than a shadow. it took the form of a human being and moved; then the glass gave way and through the shivered fragments as it fell, he saw the face of rita sink from view. with a loud cry he dashed at the door and sprang into the darkness! her tall form lay doubled in the grass. he drew her into the path of light that streamed out and bent above her. the woman struggled to speak, moving her head from side to side and lifting it. a groan burst from her as if she realized that the end had come and her effort would be useless. he, too, realized it. he pointed upward quickly. "there is your god," he said, earnestly, "waiting! tell me in his name, am i your child? you know! a mother never forgets! answer--close your eyes--give me a sign if they have lied to you!" she half-rose in frantic struggle. her eyes seemed bursting from their sockets, and her lips framed her last sentence in almost a shriek. "they lied!" edward was on his feet in an instant; his lips echoing her words. "they lied!" the gaslight from within illumined his features, now bright with triumph, as he looked upward. the old general rushed out. he saw the prostrate form and fixed eyes of the corpse. "what is it?" he asked, horrified. edward turned to him, dizzily; his gaze followed the old man's. "ah!" he said, "the nurse! she has died of anxiety and watching!" a loud summons from the ponderous knocker echoed in the house. edward, excited, had already begun to move away. "hold!" exclaimed the general, "where now?" "i go to meet the slanderer of my race! god have mercy upon him now, when we come face to face!" his manner alarmed the general. he caught him by the arm. "easy now, my young friend; the poor woman's fate has unnerved you; not a step further." he led edward to the wing-room and forced him down to the divan. "stay until i return!" the summons without had been renewed; the general responded in person and found marsden thomas at the door, who gazed in amazement upon the stately form before him, and after a moment's hesitation said, stiffly: "i have a communication to deliver to gerald morgan. will you kindly summon him, general?" "i know your errand," said evan, blandly, "and you need waste no ceremony on me. gerald is too ill to act longer for edward morgan. i take his place to-night." "you! gen. evan!" "why not? did you ever hear that albert evan left a friend upon the field? come in, come in, thomas; we are mixed up in this matter, but it is not our quarrel. i want to talk with you." thomas smiled; the matter was to end in a farce. without realizing it, these two men were probably the last in the world to whom should have fallen an affair of honor that might have been settled by concessions. the bluff old general defeated thomas' efforts to stand on formal ground, got him into a seat, and went directly at the matter. "it must strike you, thomas, as absurd that in these days men cannot settle their quarrels peacefully. there is obliged to be a right and a wrong side always, and sometimes the right side has some fault in it and the wrong side some justice. no man can hesitate, when this adjustment has been made, to align himself with one and repudiate the other. now, we both represent friends, and neither of us can suffer them to come out of this matter smirched. i would not be willing for royson to do so, and certainly not for morgan. if we can bring both parties out safely, is it not our duty to do so? you will agree with me!" thomas said without hesitation: "i waive a great deal, general, on your account, when i discuss this matter at all; but i certainly cannot enter into the merits of the quarrel unless you withdraw your demand upon us. you have demanded a retraction of a charge made by us or satisfaction. you cannot expect me to discuss the advisability of a retraction when i have here a note--" "which you have not delivered, and which i, an old man sick of war and quarrels, beg that you will not deliver until we have talked over this matter fully. why cannot royson retract, when he has my assurance that he is in error?" "for the reason, probably, general, that he does not believe your statements--although his friends do!" evan arose and paced the room. coming back he stood over the young man. "did he say so? by the eternal--" "general, suppose we settle one affair at a time; i as royson's friend, herewith hand you, his reply to the demand of mr. morgan. now, give me your opinion as to the locality where this correspondence can be quietly and successfully concluded, in the event that your principal wishes to continue it." trembling with rage the old man opened the message; it read: "mr. edward morgan--sir. i have your communication of this date handed to me at o'clock to-night by mr. gerald morgan. i have no retraction or apology to make. "amos royson." gen. evan looked upon the missive sadly and long. he placed it upon the table and resumed his seat, saying: "do you understand, mr. thomas, that what i have said is entirely upon my own responsibility and as a man who thinks his age and record have given him a privilege with his young friends?" "entirely, general. and i trust you understand that i am without the privilege of age and record, and cannot take the same liberties." the general made no reply, but was looking intently upon the face of the young man. presently he said, earnestly: "your father and i were friends and stood together on many a bloody field. i bore him in my arms from shiloh and gazed upon his dead face an hour later. no braver man ever lived than william thomas. i believe you are the worthy son of a noble sire and incapable of any act that could reflect disgrace upon his name." the general continued: "you cannot link yourself to an unjust cause and escape censure; such a course would put you at war with yourself and at war with those who hope to see you add new honors to a name already dear to your countrymen. when you aid and abet amos royson, in his attempt to put a stigma upon edward morgan, you aid and abet him in an effort to do that for which there is no excuse. everything stated in royson's letter, and especially the personal part of it, can be easily disproved." thomas reflected a moment. finally he said: "i thank you, general, for your kind words. the matter is not one within my discretion, but give me the proofs you speak of, and i will make royson withdraw, if possible, or abandon the quarrel myself!" "i have given my word; is that not enough?" "on that only, mr. royson's friends require him to give mr. morgan the recognition of a gentleman; without it he would not. the trouble is, you can be mistaken." evan reflected and a look of trouble settled upon his face. "mr. thomas, i am going to make a revelation involving the honor and reputation of a family very dear to me. i do it only to save bloodshed. give me your word of honor that never in any way, so long as you may live, will you reveal it. i shall not offer my unsupported word; i will produce a witness." "you have my word of honor that your communication will be kept sacred," said thomas, greatly interested. the general bowed his head. then he raised his hand above the call bell; it did not descend. the martial figure for a moment seemed to shrink and age. when the general looked at length toward his visitor, he said in a whisper: "the witness is dead!" then he arose to his feet. "it is too late!" he added, with a slight gesture; "we shall fight!" chapter xxii. the duel at sunrise. from that moment they discussed the arrangements formally. these were soon made and thomas departed. edward, regaining his coolness in the wing-room, with the assistance of virdow, who had been awakened by the disturbance, carried the body of rita to the house in the yard and sent for a suburban physician near at hand. the man of medicine pronounced the woman dead. negroes from the quarters were summoned and took the body in charge. these arrangements completed, he met the general in the hall. "a settlement is impossible," said the latter, sadly. "get your buggy! efforts may be made by arrests to stop this affair. you must go home with me to-night." virdow was put in charge of the premises and an excuse made. alone, edward returned to the side of the dead woman. long and earnestly he studied her face, and at last said: "farewell!" then he went to gerald's room and laid his lips upon the marble brow of the sleeper. upstairs he put certain papers and the little picture in his pocket, closed the mother's room door and locked it. he turned and looked back upon the white-columned house as he rode away. only eight weeks had passed since he first entered its doors. before leaving, the general had stabled his horse and telephoned montjoy at the hotel. taking a rear street he passed with edward through the city and before daylight drew up in front of the cedars. dueling at the time these events transpired was supposed to be dead in the south, and practically it was. the press and pulpit, the changed system of business and labor, state laws, but, above all these, occupation had rendered it obsolete; but there was still an element that resorted to the code for the settlement of personal grievances, and sometimes the result was a bloody meeting. the new order of things was so young that it really took more courage to refuse to fight than to fight a duel. the legal evasion was the invitation to conclude the correspondence outside the state. the city was all excitement. the morning papers had columns and black head lines setting forth all the facts that could be obtained, and more besides. there was also a brief card from edward morgan, denouncing the author of the letter which had appeared in the extra and denying all charges brought against him, both personal and political. at mr. royson's boarding place nothing had been seen of him since the publication of the card, and his office was closed. who it was that acted for edward morgan was a matter of surmise, but col. montjoy and gen. evan were in the city and quartered at the hotel. the latter had gone to ilexhurst and had not returned. peace warrants for morgan and royson had been issued and placed in the hands of deputies, and two of them had watched outside a glass room at ilexhurst waiting for a man who was asleep inside, and who had been pointed out to them by a german visitor as mr. morgan, to awaken. the sleeper, however, proved to be gerald morgan, an invalid. at noon a bulletin was posted to the effect that thomas and royson had been seen on a south carolina train; then another that gen. evan and edward morgan were recognized in alabama; then came tennessee rumors. the truth was, so far as edward morgan was concerned, he was awakened before noon, given a room in a farmhouse, remote from the evan dwelling, and there settled down to write important letters. one of these he signed in the presence of witnesses. the last one contained the picture, some papers and a short note to gen. evan; also edward's surmises as to gerald's identity. the other letters were for virdow, gerald and mary. he had not signed the last when evan entered the room, but was sitting with arms folded above it and his head resting on them. "letter writing!" said the general. "that is the worst feature of these difficulties." he busied himself with a case he carried, turning his back. edward sealed his letter and completed his package. "well," he said, rising. "i am now at your service, gen. evan!" "the horses are ready. we shall start at once and i will give you instructions on the way." the drive was thirty miles, to a remote station upon a branch road, where the horses were left. connection was made with the main line, yet more distant, and the next dawn found them at a station on the florida border. they had walked to the rendezvous and were waiting; edward stood in deep thought, his eyes fixed upon vacancy, his appearance suggesting profound melancholy. the general watched him furtively and finally with uneasiness. after all, the young man was a stranger to him. he had been drawn into the difficulty by his sympathies, and based his own safety upon his ability to read men. experience upon the battle field, however, had taught him that men who have never been under fire sometimes fail at the last moment from a physical weakness unsuspected by even themselves. what if this man should fail? he went up to edward and laid a hand upon his shoulder. "my young friend, when you are as old as i you will realize that in cases like this the less a man thinks the better for his nerves. circumstances have removed you from the realm of intellect and heart. you are now simply the highest type of an animal, bound to preserve self by a formula, and that is the blunt fact." edward seemed to listen without hearing. "general," he said, presently, "i do not want your services in this affair under a misapprehension. i have obeyed directions up to this moment, but before the matter goes further i must tell you what is in my mind. my quarrel with amos royson is because of his injury to me and his injury to my friends through me. he has made charges, and the customs of this country, its traditions, make those charges an injury. i believe the man has a right to resent any injury and punish the spirit behind it." gen. evan was puzzled. he waited in silence. "i did not make these fine distinctions at first, but the matter has been upon my mind and now i wish you to understand that if this poor woman were my mother i would not fight a duel even if i could, simply because someone told me so in print. if it were true, this story, there would be no shame to me in it; there would be no shame to me unless i deserted her. if it were true i should be her son in deed and truth. i would take her by the hand and seek her happiness in some other land. for, as god is my judge, to me the world holds nothing so sacred as a mother, and i would not exchange the affections of such were she the lowliest in the land, for all the privileges of any society. it is right that you should know the heart of the man you are seconding. if i fall my memory shall be clear of the charge of unmanliness." gen. evan's appearance, under less tragic circumstances, would have been comical. for one instant, and for the first time in his life, he suffered from panic. his eyes, after a moment of wide-open amazement, turned helplessly toward the railroad and he began to feel for his glasses. when he got them adjusted he studied his companion critically. but the explosion that should have followed when the situation shaped itself in the old slaveholder's mind did not come. he saw before him the form of his companion grow and straighten, and the dark eyes, softened by emotion, shining fearlessly into his. it was the finest appeal that could have been made to the old soldier. he stretched out his hand impulsively. "unorthodox, but, by heavens, i like it!" he said. the up-train brought royson and thomas and a surgeon from a florida town. evan was obliged to rely upon a local doctor. at sunrise the two parties stood in the shadow of live oaks, not far apart. evan and thomas advanced and saluted each other formally. evan waited sadly for the other to speak; there was yet time for an honorable settlement. men in the privacy of their own rooms think one way, and think another way in the solemn silence of a woodland sunrise. and preceding it all in this instance there had been hours for reflection and hours of nervous apprehension. the latter told plainly upon amos royson. white and haggard, he moved restlessly about his station, watching the seconds and ever and anon stealing side-long glances at morgan. why, he asked himself, did the man stare at him with that fixed, changeless expression? was he seeking to destroy his nerves, to overpower him with superior will? no. the gaze was simply contemplative; the gaze of one looking upon a landscape and considering its features. but it was a never-ending one to all appearances. hope died away from the general's heart at the first words of thomas. "we are here, gen. evan. what is your pleasure as to the arrangements? i would suggest that we proceed at once to end this affair. i notice that we are beginning to attract attention and people are gathering." the general drew him aside and they conversed. the case of pistols was opened, the weapons examined and carefully loaded and then the ground was stepped off--fifteen paces upon a north and south line, with the low, spreading mass of live oaks behind each station. there were no perpendicular lines, no perspective, to influence the aim of either party. there were really no choice of positions, but one had to be chosen. a coin flashed in the sunlight as it rose and descended. "we win," said thomas, simply, "and choose the north stand. take your place." the general smiled grimly. "i have faced north before," he said. he stood upon the point designated, and pointed to edward. then the latter was forced to speak. he still gazed fixedly upon his antagonist. the general looked steadily into his pale face, and, pointing to his own track as he moved aside, said: "keep cool, now, my boy, and fire instantly. these pistols are heavier than revolvers; i chose them because the recoil of a revolver is destructive of an amateur's aim. these will shoot to the spot. keep cool, keep cool, for god's sake, and remember the insult!" "have no fear for me," said morgan. "i will prove that no blood of a slave is here!" he took the weapon and stood in position. he had borne in mind all the morning the directions given by gerald; he knew every detail of that figure facing him in the now bright sunlight; he had sketched it in detail to the mouth that uttered its charge against him. the hour might pass with no disaster to him; he might fall a corpse or a cripple for life; but so long as life lasted this picture would remain. a man with a hard, pale face, a white shirt front, dark trousers, hand clasping nervously a weapon, and behind all the deep green of the oaks, with their chiaroscuro. only one thing would be missing; the picture in mind, clear cut and perfect in every other detail, lacked a mouth! some one is calling to them. "are you ready, gentlemen?" 'twas the hundredth part of a second, but within it he answered "yes," ready to put the pencil to that last feature--to complete the picture for all time! "fire!" he raised his brush and touched the spot; there was a crash, a shock, and--what were they doing? his picture had fallen from its frame and they were lifting it. but it was complete; the carmine was spattered all over the lower face. he heard the general's voice: "are you hurt, edward?" and the pistol was taken from his grasp. "hurt! no, indeed! but i seemed to have spoiled my painting, general. look! my brush must have slipped; the paint was too thin." the general hurried away. "keep your place; don't move an inch! can i be of assistance, gentlemen?" he continued to the opposite party; our surgeon can aid you, my principal being uninjured. he paused; an exclamation of horror escaped him. the mouth and nose of royson seemed crushed in, and he was frantically spitting broken teeth from a bloody gap where his mouth had been. the surgeons worked rapidly to stay the flow of crimson. while thus busy the general in wonder picked up royson's pistol. its trigger and guard were gone. he looked at the young man's right hand; the forefinger was missing. "an ugly wound, gentlemen," he said, "but not fatal, i think. the ball struck the guard, cut away a finger, and drove the weapon against the mouth and nose." the surgeon looked up. "you are right, i think. a bad disfigurement of those features, but not a dangerous wound." thomas saluted. "i have to announce my principal disabled, general." "we are then satisfied." returning to edward, who was quietly contemplating the scene with little apparent interest, he said, almost gayly: "a fine shot, edward; a fine shot! his pistol saved him! if he had raised it an instant later he would have been struck fairly in the mouth by your bullet! let us be going." "it is perhaps fortunate that my shot was fired when it was," said edward. "i have a bullet hole through the left side of my shirt." the general looked at the spot and then at the calm face of the speaker. he extended his hand again. chapter xxiii. the shadow over the hall. col. montjoy returned home early. he rode into the yard and entered the house with as much unconcern as he could affect. annie met him at the door with an unusual display of interest. had he rested well? was not the hotel warm, and--was there anything of interest stirring in the city? to all these questions he responded guardedly and courteously. mary's white face questioned him. he put his arm about her. "and how is the little mamma to-day--have her eyes given her any more trouble?" "she is staying in the darkened room to avoid the light," said the girl. he went to her and the two young women were left alone. annie was smiling and bent upon aggravation. "i think i shall ride in," she said at length. "there is something afoot that is being kept from me. amos royson is my cousin and i have a right to know if he is in trouble." mary did not reply for a moment. at last she said: "a man having written such a letter must expect to find himself in trouble--and danger, too." the other laughed contemptuously. "i did not say danger! amos has little to fear from the smooth-faced, milk-and-water man he has exposed." "wait and see," was the reply. "amos royson is a coward; he will not only find himself in danger, but if necessary to save himself from a cowhiding will involve other people--even a woman!" "what do you mean? you have not always thought him a coward; you have accepted his attentions and would have married him if you had had the chance." mary looked up quickly. "i treated him with politeness because he was your cousin; that is all. as for marriage with him, that is too absurd to have even occurred to me." annie ordered isam to bring her pony carriage, and as she waited mary watched her in silence and with a strange expression upon her face. when her father returned she said, resolutely: "annie, i was awake last night and heard a horse coming. thinking it might be papa, although the pace was rather fast for him, i went out to the gate. there was a negro with a note for you from mr. royson. mamma had just got to sleep and i was afraid of waking her, so i sent mr. royson word to see papa at the hotel." the sister-in-law seized her by the shoulder. "by what right, miss, do you meddle with my business! it may have been a question of a man's life! you have ruined everything!" she was trembling with rage. mary faced her resolutely. "and it may have been a question of a man's honor. in either case, my father is the one to consult!" "sit down, both of you! annie--mary, i desire this matter to end at once!" col. montjoy spoke calmly but firmly. he retained his clasp upon his daughter's hand and gradually as he talked drew her to his knees. "there is a serious difficulty pending between mr. morgan and amos royson, as you both probably know," he said, quietly. "the matter is in good hands, however, and i think will be satisfactorily arranged. i do not know which were better, to have delivered amos' note or not. it was a question mary had to decide upon the spur of the moment. she took a safe course, at least. but it is unseemly, my children, to quarrel over it! drop the matter now and let affairs shape themselves. we cannot take one side or the other." annie made no reply, but her lips wore their ironical smile as she moved away. mary hid her face upon her father's breast and wept softly. she knew that he did not blame her, and she knew by intuition that she had done right, but she was not satisfied. no shadow should come between her father and herself. "i was certain," she said, "that there was something wrong in that note. you remember what i told you. and i was determined that those two people should not hatch up any more mischief in this house. mr. morgan's safety might have depended upon keeping them apart." the colonel laughed and shook his head. but he only said: "if it will help clear up your skies a little, i don't mind telling you that i would not have had that note delivered last night for half this plantation." she was satisfied then. "who ordered the cart, isam?" the negro was at the gate. "young mis', sah. she goin' to town." "well, you can put it back. it will not be necessary for her to go now. annie," he said, turning to that lady, as she appeared in the door, "i have sent the cart back. i prefer that none of my family be seen upon the streets to-day." there was an unwonted tone in his voice which she did not dare disregard. with a furious look, which only mary saw, she returned to her room. a negro upon a mule brought a note. it read: "dear norton: all attempts at settlement have failed. i should like to see you, but think you had better maintain strict neutrality, will wire you to-morrow. "a. e." "there is no answer," he said to the boy. and then, greatly depressed, he went to his room. mary, who read every thought correctly, knew that the matter was unsettled and that her father was hopeless. she went about her duties steadily, but with her heart breaking. the chickens, pigeons, the little kids, the calves--none of them felt the tragedy in their lives. their mistress was grave and unappreciative; nothing more. but her eyes were not closed. she saw little jerry armed with a note go out on the mare across the lower-creek bridge, and the expectant face of annie for two hours or more in every part of the house that commanded a view of that unused approach. then jerry came back and went to the sister-in-law's door. he had not reached his quarters before mary called him to help her catch a fractious hen. then she got him into the dining-room and cut an enormous slice of iced cake. "jerry," she said, "how would you like that?" jerry's white eyes and teeth shone resplendent. he shifted himself to his left foot and laughed. "tell me where you have been and it is yours." jerry looked abashed and studied a silver quarter he held in his hand, then he glanced around cautiously. "honest, missy?" "honest! quick, or i put the cake back." she made a feint. "been to town." "of course. who was the note for?" "mr. royson." "did he answer it?" "no'm. couldn't find him. er nigger tole me he gone ter fight wid mr. morgan, and everybody waitin' ter hear de news." "you can--go--jerry. there," she handed him the cake, and, walking unsteadily, went to her room. she did not come out until supper time and then her face was proof that the "headache" was not feigned. and so into the night. she heard the doors open and shut, the sound of her father's footsteps on the porch as he came and went. she went out and joined him, taking his arm. "papa," she said, after awhile, "you need not keep it from me. i know all. they did not settle it. mr. morgan and mr. royson have gone to fight." she could not proceed. her father laid his hand upon hers. "it will all come out right, mary; it will all come out right." presently he said: "amos used to come here. i hope you are not interested in him." "no," she said bitterly, "i could never think much of annie's relatives. one in the family is enough." "hush, my child; everything must give way now on norton's account. don't forget him. but for norton i would have settled this matter in another way." "yes, and but for him there would never have been a necessity. amos depended upon his relationship to keep you out of it." col. montjoy had long unconsciously relied upon the clear mind of the girl, but he was not prepared for this demonstration of its wisdom. he wondered anew as he paced the floor in silence. she continued: "but amos is only the tool, papa; all of us have an enemy here in the house. annie----" "hush! hush!" he whispered, "don't say it. it seems too awful to think of! annie is foolish! she must never know, on norton's account, that she is in any way suspected of complicity in this matter." and then in silence they waited for dawn. at last the merciful sun rolled away the shadows. breakfast was a sad affair. all escaped from it as soon as possible. it was a fateful day-- , , o'clock. the matter was ended; but how? mary's haggard face questioned her father at every turn. he put his arm about her and went to see her pets and charges, but still no word between them. she would not admit her interest in edward morgan, nor would he admit to himself that she had an interest at stake. and then toward noon there came a horseman, who placed a message in his hands. he read it and handed it to mary. if he had not smiled she could not have read it. one word only was there: "safe!" her father was at the moment unfolding an 'extra.' she read it with him in breathless interest. following an unusual display of headlines came an accurate account of the duel. only a small part of the padded narrative is reproduced here: "royson was nervous and excited and showed the effects of unrest. but morgan stood like a statue. for some reason he never moved his eyes from his adversary a moment after they reached the field. both men fired at the command, their weapons making but one report. some think, however, that morgan was first by the hundredth part of a second, and this is possible, as the single report sounded like a crash or a prolonged explosion. royson fell, and it was supposed was certainly killed. he presented a frightful appearance instantly, being covered with blood. it was quickly ascertained, however, that he was not dangerously hurt, his opponent's shot having cut off a finger and the pistol guard, had hurled the heavy weapon into his face. he escaped with a broken nose and the loss of his front teeth. "morgan, who had preserved his wonderful coolness from the first, received a bullet through a fold of his shirt that darkened the skin to the left of his heart. it was a narrow escape. parties took the up train." the extra went on to say that since the first reading of the original card the public mind had undergone a revulsion in morgan's favor; a feeling greatly stimulated by the fact that gen. evan had come to the rescue of that gentleman; had vouched for him in every respect and was acting as his second. when the colonel had finished the thrilling news he noticed that mary's head was in his lap, and felt tears upon his hand above which her own were clasped. annie was looking on, cold and white. "there has been a duel, my daughter," he said to her kindly, "and, fortunately, without alarming results. mr. royson lost a finger, i believe, and received a bruise in the face; that is all. nothing serious. it might have been much worse. here is the paper," he concluded, "probably an exaggerated account." she took it in silence and returned to her room. she ran her eye through every sentence without reading and at last threw the sheet aside. only those who knew the whole character of annie montjoy would have understood. she was looking for her name; it was not there. her smiling face was proof enough. long they sat, father and daughter, his hand still stroking lightly her bowed head. at last he said, very gently, the hand trembling a little: "this has been a hard trial for us both--for us both! i am glad it is over! morgan is too fine a fellow to have been sacrificed to this man's hatred and ambition." she looked up, her face wet and flushed. "there was more than that, papa." "more? how could there be?" she hesitated, and then said, bravely: "mr. royson has more than once asked me to marry him." the colonel's face grew black with sudden rage. "the scoundrel!" "and he has imagined that because mr. morgan came to help your election--oh, i cannot." she turned hastily and went away in confusion. and still the colonel sat and thought with clouded face. "i must ask evan," he said. "colonel, mis' calline says come deir, please." a servant stood by him. he arose and went into his wife's room. she was standing by the open window, its light flooding the apartment, her bandages removed. "why, caroline, you are imprudent, don't you know? what is it, my dear? she was silent and rigid, a living statue bathed in the glory of the autumn sun. she waited until she felt his hand in hers. "norton," she said, simply, but with infinite pathos, "i am afraid that i have seen your loved face for the last time. i am blind!" he took her in his arms--the form that even age could not rob of its girlishness--and pressed her face to his breast. it had come at last. his tears fell for the first time since boyhood. chapter xxiv. the profile on the moon. virdow felt the responsibility of his position. he had come on a scientific errand and found himself plunged into a tragedy. and there were attendant responsibilities, the most serious of which was the revelation to gerald of what had occurred. the young man precipitated the crisis. the deputies gone, he wanted his coffee; it had not failed him in a lifetime. again and again he rang his bell, and finally from the door of his wing-room called loudly for rita. then the professor saw that the time for action had come. the watchers about the body were consulting. none cared to face that singular being of whom they felt a superstitious dread, but if they did not come to him he would finally go to them. what would be the result of his unexpected discovery of the tragedy? it might be disastrous. as he spoke, he removed his glasses from time to time, carefully wiping and replacing them, his faded eyes beaming in sympathy and anxiety upon his young acquaintance. "herr gerald," he began, "you know the human heart?" gerald frowned and surveyed him with impatience. "sometimes at last the little valve, as you call it--sometimes the little valve grows weak, and when the blood leaps out too quickly and can't run on quickly enough--you understand--it comes back suddenly again and drives the valve lid back the wrong way." "then it is a ruined piece of machinery." "so," said the professor, sadly; "you have stated it correctly. so, rita--she had an old heart--and it is ruined!" gerald gazed upon him in doubt, but fearful. "you mean rita is dead?" "yes," said virdow. "poor rita!" gerald studied the face before him curiously, passed his hand across his brow, as if to clear away a cloud, and then went out across the yard. the watchers fled at his approach. in the little room he came upon the body. the woman, dressed in her best but homely attire, lay with her hands crossed upon her bosom, her face calm and peaceful. upon her lips was that strange smile which sometimes comes back over a gulf of time from forgotten youth. he touched her wrist and watched her. virdow was right; she was dead. as if to converse with a friend, he took a seat upon the couch and lifting one cold hand held it while he remained. this was rita, who had always come to wake him when he slept too late; had brought his meals, had answered whenever he called, and found him when he wandered too long under the stars and guided him back to his room. rita, who, when his moods distracted him, had only to fix her eyes on his and speak his name, and all was peace again. this was rita. dead! how could it be? how could anything be wrong with rita? it was impossible! he put his hand above the heart; it was silent. he spoke her name. she did not reply. gradually, as he concentrated his attention upon the facts, his mind emerged from its shadows. yes, rita, his friend, was dead. and then slowly, his life, with its haunting thoughts, its loneliness, came back, and the significance of these facts overwhelmed him. he knew now who rita was; it was an old, old story. he knelt and laid his cheek upon that yellow chilled hand, the only hand that had ever lovingly touched him. she had been a mother indeed; humoring his every whim. she had never scolded; not rita! the doctors had said he could sleep without his opium; they shut him up and he suffered torments. rita came in the night. her little store of money had been drawn on. they, together, deceived the doctors. for years they deceived them, he and rita, until all her little savings were gone. and then she had worked for the gentlemen down-town; had schemed and plotted and brought him comfort, until the doctors gave up the struggle. now she was gone--forever! strange, but this contingency had never once occurred to him. how egotistical he must have been; how much a child--a spoiled child! he looked about him. rita had years ago told him a secret. in the night she had bent over him and called him fond names; had wept upon his pillow. she had told him to speak the word just once, never again but that one time, and then to forget it. wondering he said it--"mother." he could not forget how she fell upon him then and tearfully embraced him; he the heir and nephew of john morgan. but it pleased good rita and he was happy. dead! rita! would it waken her if he spoke that name again? he bent to her cheek to say it, but first he looked about him cautiously. rita would not like for any one to share the secret. he bent until his lips were touching hers and whispered it again: "mother!" she did not move. he spoke louder and louder. "mother." how strange sounded that one word in the deserted room. a fear seized him; would she never speak again? he dropped on his knees in agony; and, with his hand upon her forehead, almost screamed the word again. it echoed for the last time--"mother!" just then the face of virdow appeared at the door, to be withdrawn instantly. then gerald grew cool. "she is dead," he said, sadly to himself. "she would have answered that!" a change came over him! he seemed to emerge from a dream; virdow stood by him now. drawing himself up proudly he gazed upon the dead face. "she was a good nurse--a better no child ever had. were my uncle living he would build her a great monument. i will speak to edward about it. it is not seemly that people who have served the morgans so long and faithfully should sleep in unmarked graves. farewell, rita; you have been good and true to me." he went to his room. an hour later virdow found him there, crying as a child. with a tenderness that rose superior to the difficulties of language and the differences of race and customs, virdow comforted and consoled him. and then occurred one of those changes familiar to the students of nature but marvelous to the unobservant. to virdow, who had seen the vine of his garden torn from the supporting rod about which it had tied itself with tendrils, attach itself again by the gluey points of new ones to the smooth face of the wall itself, coiling them into springs to resist the winds, the change that came upon gerald was natural. the broken tendrils of his life touched with quick intelligence the sympathetic old german and linked the simple being of the child-man to him. by an intuition, womanly in its swift comprehension, virdow knew at once that he had become in some ways necessary to the life of the frail being, and he was pleased. he gave himself up to the mission without effort, disturbing in no way the new process. watching gerald, he appeared not to watch; present at all times, he seemed to keep himself aloof. virdow called up an undertaker from the city in accordance with the directions left with him and had the body of rita prepared for the burial, which was to take place upon the estate, and then left all to the care of the watchers. during the day from time to time gerald went to the little room, and on such visits those in attendance withdrew. there was little excitement among the negroes. the singing, shouting and violent ecstasies which distinguished the burials of the race were wanting; rita had been one of those rare servants who keep aloof from her color. gradually withdrawn from all contact with the world, her life had shrunk into a little round of duties and the care of the morgan home. it was only natural that the young master should find himself alone with the nurse on each return to her coffin. during one of these visits virdow at a distance beheld a curious thing. gerald had gazed long and thoughtfully into the silent face and returning to his room had secured paper and crayon. kneeling, he drew carefully the profile of his dead friend and went away to his studio. standing in his place a moment later, virdow was surprised to note the change that had come over the face; the relaxing power of death seemed to have rolled back the curtain of age and restored for the hour a glimpse of youth. a woman of twenty-five seemed lying there, her face noble and serene, a glorified glimpse of what had been. the brow was smooth and young, the facial angle high, the hair, now no longer under the inevitable turban, smooth and black, with just a suspicion of frost above the temples. the lips were curved and smiling. why had the young man drawn her profile? what real position did this woman occupy in that strange family? as to the latter he could not determine; he would not try. he had nothing to do with the domestic facts of life. there had been a deep significance in the first scene at the bedside. and yet "mother" under the circumstances might after all mean nothing. he had heard that southern children were taught this, or something like it, by all black nurses. but as to the profile, there was a phenomenon possibly, and science was his life. the young man had drawn the profile because it was the first time he had within his recollections ever seen it. in the analysis of his dreams that profile might be of momentous importance. the little group that had gathered followed the coffin to a clump of trees not far removed. the men who bore it lowered it at once to the open grave. an old negro preacher lifted his voice in a homely prayer, the women sang a weird hymn, and then they filled up the cavity. the face and form of rita were removed from human vision, but only the face and form. for one of that concourse, the young white man who had come bareheaded to stand calm and silent at the foot of the grave, she lived clear and distinct upon the hidden film of memory. virdow was not deceived by that calmness; he knew and feared the reaction which was inevitable. from time to time during the evening he had gone silently to the wing-room and to the outer yard to gaze in upon his charge. always he found him calm and rational. he could not understand it. then, disturbed by the suspense of edward's absence, and the uncertainty of his fate, he would forget himself and surroundings in contemplation of the possible disasters of an american duel--exaggerated accounts of which dwelt in his memory. he resolved to remain up until the crisis came. it was midnight when, for the twentieth time, probably, he went to look in upon gerald. the wing-room, the glass-room, the little house deprived by death of its occupant, the outer premises--he searched them all in vain. greatly troubled, he stood revolving the new perplexity in his mind when his eye caught in the faint glow of the east, where the moon was beginning to show its approach, the outline of the cemetery clump of trees. it flashed upon him then that, drawn by the power of association, the young man might have wandered off to pay a visit to the grave of his friend. he turned his own feet in the same direction, and approached the spot. the grave had been dug under the wide-spread limbs of cedar, and there he found the object of his quest. slowly the moon rose above the level field beyond, outlining a form. in his dressing gown stood gerald, with folded arms, his long hair falling upon his shoulders, lost in deep thought. thrilled by the scene, virdow was about to speak, when, in the twinkling of an eye, there was flashed upon him a vision that sent his blood back to his heart and left him speechless with emotion. for in that moment the half-moon was at the level of the head, and outlined against its silver surface he saw the profile of the face he had studied in the coffin. appalled by the discovery, he turned silently and sought his room. chapter xxv. the midnight search. it was late in the day when virdow awoke. the excitement, the unwonted hours which circumstances forced him to keep, brought at last unbroken rest and restored his physical structure to its normal condition. he dressed himself and descended to find a brief telegram announcing the safety of edward. it was a joyful addition to the conditions that had restored him. the telegram had not been opened. he went quickly to gerald's room and found that young man at work upon a painting of rita as he had seen her last--the profile sketch. his emotional nature had already thrown off its gloom, and with absorbed interest he was pushing his work. already the face had been sketched in and the priming completed. under his rapid and skillful hands the tints and contours were growing, and virdow, accustomed as he was to the art in all its completeness and technical perfection, marveled to see the changed face of the woman glide back into view, the counterpart he knew of the vivid likeness clear cut in the sensitive brain that held it. he let him work undisturbed. a word might affect its correctness. only when the artist ceased and laid aside his brush for a brief rest did he speak. gerald turned to him as to a co-laborer, and took the yellow slip of paper, so potent with intelligent lettering. he read it in silence; then putting it aside went on with his painting. virdow rubbed his brow and studied him furtively. such lack of interest was inconceivable under the conditions. he went to work seriously to account for it and this he did to his own satisfaction. in one of his published lectures on memory, years after, occurred this sentence, based upon that silent reverie: "impressions and forgetfulness are measurable by each other; indeed, the power of the mind to remember vividly seems to be measured by its power to forget." but afterward gerald picked up the telegram, read it intently and seemed to reflect over the information it contained. later in the day the postman brought the mail and with it one of the "extras." virdow read it aloud in the wing-room. gerald came and stood before him, his eyes revealing excitement. when virdow reached the part wherein edward was described as never removing his eyes from his antagonist, his hearer exclaimed: "good! he will kill him!" "no," said virdow, smiling; "fortunately he did not. listen." "fortunately!" cried gerald; "fortunately! why? what right has such a man to live? he must have killed him!" virdow read on. a cry broke from gerald's lips as the explanation appeared. "i was right! the hand becomes a part of the eye when the mind wills it; or, rather, eye and hand become mind. the will is everything. but why he should have struck the guard----" he went to the wall and took down two pistols. handing one to virdow and stepping back he said: "you will please sight at my face a moment; i cannot understand how the accident could have happened." virdow held the weapon gingerly. "but, herr gerald, it may be loaded." "they are empty," said gerald, breeching his own and exposing the cylinder chambers, with the light shining through. "now aim!" virdow obeyed; the two men stood at ten paces, aiming at each other's faces. "your hand," said the young man, "covers your mouth. edward aimed for the mouth." there was a quick, sharp explosion; virdow staggered back, dropping his smoking pistol. gerald turned his head in mild surprise and looked upon a hole in the plastering behind. "i have no recollection of loading that pistol," he said. and then: "if your mind had been concentrated upon your aim i would have lost a finger and had my weapon driven into my face." virdow was shocked at the narrow escape and pale as death. "it is nothing," said gerald, replacing the weapon; "you would not hit me in a dozen trials, shooting as you do." at o'clock that night edward, pale and weary, entered. he returned with emotion the professor's enthusiastic embrace, and thanked him for his care and attention of gerald and the household and for his services to the dead. gerald studied him keenly as he spoke, and once went to one side and looked upon him with new and curious interest. the professor saw that he was examining the profile of the speaker by the aid of the powerful lamp on the table beyond. the discovery set his mind to working in the same direction, and soon he saw the profiles of both. edward's did not closely resemble the other. that this was true, for some reason, the expression that had settled upon gerald's face attested. the portrait had been covered and removed. edward, after concluding some domestic arrangements, went directly to his room and, dressed as he was, threw himself upon his bed and slept. and as he slept there took place about him a drama that would have set his heart beating with excitement could he have witnessed it. the house was silent; the city clock had tolled the midnight hour, when gerald came into the room, bearing a shaded lamp. the sleeper lay on his back, locked in the slumber of exhaustion. the visitor, moving with the noiselessness of a shadow, glided to the opposite side of the bed, and, placing the lamp on a chair, slowly turned up the flame and tilted the shade. in an instant the strong profile of the sleeper flashed upon the wall. with suppressed excitement gerald unwrapped a sheet of cardboard, and standing it on the mantel received upon it the shadow. as if by a supreme effort, he controlled himself and traced the profile on his paper. lifting it from the mantel he studied it for a moment intently and then replaced it. the shadow filled the tracing. taking it slowly from its position he passed from the room. fortunately his distraction was too great for him to notice the face of virdow, or to perceive it in the deep gloom of the little room as he passed out. the german waited a few moments; no sound came back from the broad carpeted stair; taking the forgotten lamp, he followed him silently. passing out into the shrubbery, he made his way to the side of the conservatory and looked in. gerald had placed the two profiles, one on each side of the mirror, and with a duplex glass was studying his own in connection with them. he stood musing, and then, as if forgetting his occupation, he let the hand-glass crash upon the floor, tossed his arms in an abandonment of emotion, and, covering his face with his hands, suddenly threw himself across the bed. virdow was distressed and perplexed. he read the story in the pantomime, but what could he do? no human sympathy could comfort such a grief, nor could he betray his knowledge of the secret he had surreptitiously obtained. he paced up and down outside until presently the moving shadow of the occupant of the room fell upon his path. he saw him then take from a box a little pill and put it in his mouth, and he knew that the troubles of life, its doubts, distress and loneliness, would be forgotten for hours. forgotten? who knows? oh, mystery of creation; that invisible intelligence that vanishes in sleep and in death; gone on its voyage of discovery, appalling in its possibilities; but yet how useless, since it must return with no memory of its experience! and he, virdow, what a dreamer! for in that german brain of subtleties lived, with the clearness of an incandescent light in the depths of a coal mine, one mighty purpose; one so vast, so potent in its possibilities, as to shake the throne of reason, a resolution to follow upon the path of mind and wake a memory never touched in the history of science. it was not an ambition; it was a leap toward the gates of heaven! for what cared he that his name might shine forever in the annals of history if he could claim of his own mind the record of its wanderings? the future was not his thought. what he sought was the memory of the past! he went in now, secure of the possibility of disturbing the sleeper, and stood looking down into the room's appointments; there were the two profiles on either side of the mirror; upon the floor the shivered fragments of the hand-glass. virdow returned to his room, but before leaving he took from the little box one of the pellets and swallowed it. if he was to know that mind, he must acquaint himself with its conditions. he had never before swallowed the drug; he took this as the frenchman received the attenuated virus of hydrophobia from the hands of pasteur--in the interest of science and the human race. as he lay upon his bed he felt a languor steal upon him, saw in far dreams cool meadows and flowery slopes, felt the solace of perfect repose envelop him. and then he stood beside a stream of running water under the shade of the trees, with the familiar hills of youth along the horizon. a young woman came and stood above the stream and looked intently upon its glassy surface. her feature were indistinct. drawing near he, too, looked into the water, and there at his feet was the sad, sweet face of--marion evan. he turned and then looked closer at the woman; he saw in her arms the figure of an infant, over whose face she had drawn a fold of her gown. she shook her head as he extended his hand to remove this and pointed behind her. there the grass ran out and only white sand appeared, with no break to the horizon. toiling on through this, with a bowed head, was a female figure. he knew her; she was rita, and the burden she, too, carried in her arms was the form of a child. the figures disappeared and a leaf floated down the stream; twenty-six in succession followed, and then he saw a man descending the mountains and coming forward, his eyes fixed on something beyond him. it was edward. he looked in the same direction; there was a frail man toiling toward him through the deep sands in the hot sunlight. it was gerald. and then the figures faded away. there memory ceased to record. whatever else was the experience of that eager mind as it wandered on through the mystery, and phantasmagoria has no place in science. he remembered in the morning up to one point only. it was his last experience with the drug. chapter xxvi. gathering the clews. edward drifted for several days upon the tide of the thoughts that came over him. he felt a singular disinclination to face the world again. he knew that as life goes he had acquitted himself manfully and that nothing remained undone that had been his duty to perform. he was sensible of a feeling of deep gratitude to the old general for his active and invaluable backing; without it he realized then that he would have been drawn into a pitfall and the opportunity for defense gone. he did not realize, however, how complete the public reaction had been until card after card had been left at ilexhurst and the postman had deposited congratulatory missives by the score. one of these contained notice of his election to the club. satisfactory as was all this he put aside the social and public life into which he had been drawn, conscious that, while the affront to him had been resented and rendered harmless, he himself was as much in the dark as ever; that as a matter of fact he was without name and family, without right to avail himself of the generous offers laid at his door. despite his splendid residence, his future, his talents and his prestige as a man of honor, he was--nobody; an accident of fate; a whim of an eccentric old man. he should not involve any one else in the possibility of ruin. he should not let another share his danger. there could be no happiness with this mystery hanging over him. soon after his return, while his heart was yet sore and disturbed, he had received a note from mary. she wrote: "we suffer greatly on your account. poor papa was bound down by circumstances with which you are familiar, though he would gone to you at any cost had it been necessary. in addition his health is very delicate and he has been facing a heavy sorrow--now realized at last! poor little mamma's eyesight is gone--forever, probably. we are in deep distress, as you may imagine, for, unused as yet to her misfortune, she is quite helpless and needs our constant care, and it is pitiful to see her efforts to bear up and be cheerful. "i need not tell you how i have sorrowed over the insult and wrongs inflicted upon you by a cowardly connection of our family, nor how anxious i was until the welcome news of your safety reached us. we owe you much, and more now since you were made the innocent victim of a plot aimed to destroy papa's chances. "it is unbearable to think of your having to stand up and be shot at in our behalf; but oh, how glad i am that you had the old general with you. is he not noble and good? he is quite carried away with you and never tires of talking of your coolness and courage. he says everything has ended beautifully but the election, and he could remedy that if papa would consent, but nothing in the world could take papa away from us now, and if he had been elected his resignation would have speedily followed. "i know you are yet weary and bitter, and do not even care to see your friends, but that will pass and none will give you a more earnest welcome when you do come than "mary." he read this many times, and each time found in it a new charm. its simplicity and earnestness impressed him at one reading and its personal interest at another; its quick discerning sympathy in another. it grew upon him, that letter. it was the only letter ever penned by a woman to him. notes he had had by the score; rich young men in the great capitals of europe do not escape nor seek to escape these, but this was straight from the heart of an earnest, self-reliant, sympathetic woman; one of those who have made the south a fame as far as her sons have traveled. it was a new experience and destined to be a lasting one. its effect was in the end striking and happy. gradually he roused himself from the cynical lethargy into which he was sinking and began to look about him. after all he had much to live for, and with peace came new manhood. he would fight for the woman who had faith in him--such a fight as man never dared before. he looked up to find virdow smiling on him through his tears. he stood up. "i am going to make a statement now that will surprise and shock you, but the reason will be sufficient. first i ask that you promise me, as though we stood before our creator, a witness, that never in this life nor the next, if consciousness of this goes with you, will you betray by word or deed anything of what you hear from my lips to-night. i do not feel any uneasiness, but promise." "i promise," said virdow, simply, "but if it distresses you, if you feel bound to me--" "on the contrary, the reason is selfish entirely. i tell you because the possession of this matter is destroying my ability to judge fairly; because i want help and believe you are the only being in the world who can give it." he spoke earnestly and pathetically. "without it, i shall become--a wreck." then virdow seized the speaker's hand. "go on, edward. all the help that virdow can give is yours in advance." edward related to him the causes that led up to the duel--the political campaign, the publication of royson's card, and the history of the challenge. "you call me edward," he said; "the world knows me and i know myself as edward morgan. i have no evidence whatever to believe myself entitled to bear the name. all the evidence i have points to the fact that it was bestowed upon me as was my fortune itself--in pity. the mystery that overspreads me envelops gerald also. but fate has left him superior to misfortune." "it has already done for him what you fear for yourself--it has wrecked his life, if not his mind!" the professor spoke the words sadly and gently, looking into the night through the open window. edward turned toward him in wonder. "i am sure. listen and i will tell you why. to me it seems fatal to him, but for you there is consolation." graphically he described then the events that had transpired during the few days of his stay at ilexhurst; his quick perception that the mind of gerald was working feverishly, furiously, and upon defined lines to some end; that something haunted and depressed him. his secret was revealed in his conduct upon the death of rita. "it is plain," said virdow finally, "that this thought--this uncertainty--which has haunted you for weeks, has been wearing upon him since childhood. of the events that preceded it i have little or no information." edward, thrilled to the heart by this recital and the fact to which it seemed to point, walked the floor greatly agitated. presently he said: "of these you shall judge also." he took from the desk in the adjoining room the fragmentary story and read it. "this," he said, as he saw the face of the old man beam with intelligence, "is confirmed as an incident in the life of gerald or myself; in fact, the beginning of life." he gave the history of the fragmentary story and of rita's confession. "by this evidence," he went on, "i was led to believe that the woman erred in the recognition of her own child; that i am in fact that child and that gerald is the son of marion. this in her last breath she seemed to deny, for when i begged her to testify upon it, as before her god, and asked the question direct, she cried out: 'they lied!' in this it seems to me that her heart went back to its secret belief and that in the supreme moment she affirmed forever his nativity. were this all i confess i would be satisfied, but there is a fatal fact to come!" he took from his pocket the package prepared for gen. evan, and tore from it the picture of marion. "now," he exclaimed excitedly, "as between the two of us, how can this woman be other than the mother of gerald morgan? and, if i could be mistaken as to the resemblance, how could her father fall into my error? for i swear to you that on the night he bent over the sleeping man he saw upon the pillow the face of his wife and daughter blended in those features!" virdow was looking intently upon the picture. "softly, softly," he said, shaking his head; "it is a true likeness, but it does not prove anything. family likeness descends only surely by profiles. if we could see her profile, but this! there is no reason why the child of rita should not resemble another. it would depend upon the impression, the interest, the circumstances of birth, of associations--" he paused. "describe to me again the mind picture which gerald under the spell of music sketched--give it exactly." edward gave it in detail. "that," said virdow, "was the scene flashed upon the woman who gazed from the arch. it seems impossible for it to have descended to gerald, except by one of the two women there--the one to whom the man's back was turned. had this mental impression come from the other source it seems to me he would have seen the face of that man, and if the impression was vivid enough to descend from mother to child it would have had the church for a background, in place of the arch, with storm-lashed trees beyond. this is reasonable only when we suppose it possible that brain pictures can be transmitted. as a man i am convinced. as a scientist i say that it is not proved." edward, every nerve strained to its utmost tension, every faculty of mind engaged, devoured this brief analysis and conclusion. but more proof was given! over his face swept a shadow. "poor gerald! poor gerald!" he muttered. but he became conscious presently that the face of virdow wore a concerned look; there was something to come. he could not resist the temptation to clear up the last vestige of doubt if doubt could remain. "tell me," he said, "what do you require to satisfy you that between the two i am the son of marion evan?" "two things," said virdow, quickly. "first, proof that rita was in no way akin to the evan family, for if she was in the remotest degree, the similarity of profiles could be accounted for. second, that your own and the profile of marion evan were of the same angle. satisfy me upon these two points and you have nothing to fear." a feeling of weakness overwhelmed edward. the general had not seen in his face any likeness to impress him. and yet, why his marked interest? the whole subject lay open again. and marion evan! where was he to obtain such proof? virdow saw the struggle in his mind. "leave nothing unturned," said edward, "that one of us may live free of doubt, and just now, god help me, it seems my duty to strive for him first." "and these efforts--when--" "to-night! let us descend." "we go first to the room of the nurse," said virdow. "we shall begin there." edward led the way and with a lighted lamp they entered the room. the search there was brief and uneventful. on the wall in a simple frame was a portrait of john morgan, drawn years before from memory by gerald. it was the face of the man known only to the two searchers as abingdon, but its presence there might be significant. her furniture and possessions were simple. in her little box of trinkets were found several envelopes addressed to her from paris, one of them in the handwriting of a man, the style of german. all were empty, the letters having in all probability been destroyed. they, however, constituted a clew, and edward placed them in his pocket. in another envelope was a child's golden curl, tied with a narrow black ribbon; and there was a drawer full of broken toys. and that was all. chapter xxvii. the face that came in dreams. virdow was not a scientist in the strict sense of the term. he had been a fairly good musician in youth and had advanced somewhat in art. he was one of those modern scientists, who are not walled in by past conclusions, but who, like morse, leap forward from a vantage point and build back to connect with old results. early in life he had studied the laws of vibration, until it seemed revealed to him that all forms, all fancies, were born of it. gradually as his beautiful demonstrations were made and all art co-ordinated upon this law, he saw in dreams a fulfillment of his hopes that in his age, in his life, might bloom the fairest flower of science, a mind memory opened to mortal consciousness. dreaming further along the lines of wagner, it had come to him that the key to this hidden, dumb and sleeping record of the mind was vibration; that the strains of music which summon beautiful dreams to the minds of men were magic wands lifting the vision of this past; not its immediate past, but the past of ages; for in the brain of the subtle german was firmly fixed the belief that the minds of men were in their last analysis one and indivisible, and older than the molecules of physical creation. he held triumphantly that "then shall you see clearly," was but one way of saying "then shall you remember." to this man the mind picture which gerald had drawn, the church, with its tragic figures, came as a reward of generations of labor. he had followed many a false trail and failed in hospital and asylum. in gerald he hoped for a sound, active brain, combined with the faculty of expression in many languages and the finer power of art; an organism sufficiently delicate to carry into that viewless vinculum between body and soul, vibrations, rhymes and co-ordinations delicate enough to touch a new consciousness and return its reply through organized form. he had found these conditions perfect, and he felt that if failure was the result, while still firmly fixed in his belief, never again would opportunity of equal merit present itself. if in gerald his theory failed of demonstration, the mind's past would be, in his lifetime, locked to his mortal consciousness. in brief he had formed the conditions so long sought and upon these his life's hope was staked. much of this he stated as they sat in the wing-room. gerald lay upon the divan when he began talking, lost in abstraction, but as the theory of the german was gradually unfolded edward saw him fix his bright eye upon the speaker, saw him becoming restless and excited. when the explanation ended he was walking the floor. "experiments with frogs," he said, abruptly; "accidents to the human brain and vivisection have proved the separateness of memory and consciousness. but i shall do better; i shall give to the world a complete picture descended from parent to child--an inherited brain picture of which the mind is thoroughly conscious." his listeners waited in breathless suspense; both knew to what he referred. "but," he added, shaking his head, "that does not carry us out of the material world." his ready knowledge of this subject and its quick grasp of the proposition astonished virdow beyond expression. "go on," he said, simply. "when that fusion of mind and matter occurs," said gerald, positively; "when the consciousness is put in touch with the mind's unconscious memory there will be no pictures seen, no records read; we shall simply broaden out, comprehend, understand, grasp, know! that is all! it will not come to the world, but to individuals, and, lastly, it has already come! every so called original thought that dawns upon a human, every intuitive conception of the truth, marks the point where mind yielded something of a memory to human consciousness." the professor moved uneasily in his seat; both he and edward were overwhelmed with the surprise of the demonstration that behind the sad environment of this being dwelt a keen, logical mind. the speaker paused and smiled; his attention was not upon his company. "so," he said, softly, "come the song into the mind of the poet, so the harmonies to the singer and so the combination of colors to the artist; so the rounded periods of oratory and so the conception that makes invention possible. no facts appear, because facts are the results of laws, the proofs of truths. the mind-memory carries none of these; it carries laws and the truth which interprets it all; and when men can hold their consciousness to the touch of mind without a falling apart, they will stand upon the plane of their creator, because they will then be fully conscious of the eternal laws and in harmony with them." "and you," said virdow, greatly affected, "have you ever felt the union of consciousness and mind-memory?" "yes," he replied; "what i have said is the truth; for it came from an inner consciousness without previous determination and intention. i am right, and you know i am right!" virdow shook his head. "i have hoped," he said, gently, "that in this mind-memory dwelt pictures. we shall see, we shall see." gerald turned away impatiently and threw himself upon his couch. presently in the silence which ensued rose the solemn measure of mendelssohn's heart-beat march from edward's violin. the strange, sad, depressing harmony filled the room; even virdow felt its wonderful power and sat mute and disturbed. suddenly he happened to gaze toward gerald. he lay with ashen face and rigid eyes fixed upon the ceiling, to all appearances a corpse. virdow bounded forward and snatched the bow from edward's hand. "stop!" he cried; "for his sake stop, or you will kill him!" they dragged the inanimate form to the window and bathed the face. a low moan escaped the young man, and then a gleam of intelligence came into his eyes. he tried to speak, but without success; an expression of surprise and distress came upon his face as he rose to his feet. for a moment he stood gasping, but presently his breath came normally. "temporary aphasia," he said, in a low tone. going to the easel he drew rapidly the picture of a woman kneeling above the prostrate form of another, and stood contemplating it in silence. edward and virdow came to his side, the latter pale with excitement. gerald did not notice them. only the back of the kneeling woman was shown, but the face of the other was distinct, calm and beautiful. it was the girl in the small picture. "that face--that face," he whispered. "alas! i see it only as my ancestors saw it." he resumed his lounge dejectedly. "you have seen it before, then?" said virdow, earnestly. "before! in my dreams from childhood! it is a face associated with me always. in the night, when the wind blows, i hear a voice calling gerald, and this vision comes. shall i tell you a secret--" his voice had become lower and now was inaudible. placing his hand upon the white wrist, virdow said: "he sleeps; it is well. come away, my young friend; i have learned much, but the experience might have been dearly bought. sometime i will explain." noiselessly they withdrew to edward's room. edward was depressed. "you have gained, but not i," he said. "the back of the kneeling woman was toward him." "wait," said virdow; "all things cannot be learned in a night. we do not know who witnessed that scene." chapter xxviii. the three pictures. virdow had arisen and been to town when edward made his appearance late in the morning. after tossing on his pillow all night, at daylight he had fallen into a long, dreamless sleep. gerald was looking on, and the professor was arranging an experimental apparatus of some kind. he had suspended a metal drum from the arch of the glass-room by steel wires, and over the upper end of the drum had drawn tightly a sheet of rubber obtained from a toy balloon manufacturer. in the base of this drum he inserted a hollow stem of tin, one end of which was flared like a trumpet. the whole machine when completed presented the appearance of a gigantic pipe; the mouthpiece enlarged. when edward came in the german was spreading upon the rubber surface of the drum an almost impalpable powder, taken from one of the iron nodules which lay about on the surrounding hills and slightly moistened. "i have been explaining to gerald," said virdow, cheerily, "some of my bases for hopes that vibration is the medium through which to effect that ether wherein floats what men call the mind, and am getting ready to show the co-ordinations of force and increasing steadily and evenly. try what you americans call 'a' in the middle register and remember that you have before you a detective that will catch your slightest error." he was closing doors and openings as he spoke. edward obeyed. placing his mouth near the trumpet opening he began. the simple note, prolonged, rang out in the silent room, increasing in strength to a certain point and ending abruptly. then was seen a marvelous thing; animated, the composition upon the disk rushed to the exact center and then tremulously began to take definite shape. a little medallion appeared, surrounded by minute dots, and from these little tongues ran outward. the note died away, and only the breathing of the eager watchers was heard. before them in bas-relief was a red daisy, as perfect, aye, more nearly perfect, than art could supply. gerald after a moment turned his head and seemed lost in thought. "from that we might infer," said virdow, "that the daisy is the 'a' note of the world; that of it is born all the daisy class of flowers, from the sunflower down--all vibrations of a standard." again and again the experiment was repeated, with the same result. "now try 'c,'" said the german, and edward obeyed. again the mass rushed together, but this time it spread into the form of a pansy. and then with other notes came fern shapes, trees and figures that resembled the scale armor of fish. and finally, from a softly sounded and prolonged note, a perfect serpent in coils appeared, with every ring distinctly marked. this form was varied by repetition to shells and cornucopias. so through the musical scale went the experiments, each yielding a new and distinct form where the notes differed. virdow enjoyed the wonder of edward and the calm concentration of gerald. he continued: "thus runs the scale in colors; each of the seven--red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet--is a note, and as there are notes in music that harmonize, so in colors there are the same notes, the hues of which blend harmoniously. what have they to do with the mind memory? this: as a certain number of vibrations called to life in music the shell, in light the color, and in music the note, so once found will certain notes, or more likely their co-ordinations, awaken the memories of the mind, since infallibly by vibrations were they first born. "this is the border land of speculation, you think, and you are partly correct. what vibration could have fixed the form of the daisy and the shape we have found in nature is uncertain, but remember that the earth swings in a hollow drum of air as resonant and infinitely more sensitive than rubber; and the brain--there is a philosophic necessity for the shape of a man's head." "if," said gerald, "you had said these vibrations awakened the memories of the brain instead of the mind, i could have agreed with you. yours are on the order of the london experiments. i am familiar with them, but only through reading." again virdow wondered, but he continued: "the powers of vibration are not understood--in fact, only dreamed of. only one man in the world, your keely, has appreciated its possibilities, and he is involved in the herculean effort to harness it to modern machinery. it was vibration simply that affected gerald so deeply last night; a rhythm co-ordinating with his heart. i have seen vast audiences--and you have, too, edward--painfully depressed by that dangerous experiment of mendelssohn; for the heart, like a clock, will seek to adjust itself to rhythms. your tempo was less than seventy-two to the minute; gerald's delicate heart caught time and the brain lacked blood. a quick march would have sent the blood faster and brought exhilaration. under the influence of march time men cheer and do deeds of valor that they would not otherwise attempt, though the measure is sounded only upon a drum; but when to this time is added a second, a third and a fourth rhythm, and the harmonies of tone against tone, color against color, in perfect co-ordination, they are no longer creatures of reason, but heroes. the whole matter is subject to scientific demonstration. "but back to this 'heart-beat march.' the whole nerve system of man since the infancy of the race has been subject to the rhythm of the heart, every atom of the human body is attuned to it; for while length of life, breadth of shoulders, chest measure and stature have changed since the days of adam we have no evidence that the solemn measure of the heart, sending its seventy-two waves against all the minute divisions of the human machine, has ever varied in the normal man. lessen it, as on last night, and the result is distressing. and as you increase it, or substitute for it vibrations more rapid against those myriad nerves, you exhilarate or intoxicate. "but has any one ever sent the vibration into that 'viewless vinculum' and awakened the hidden mind? as our young friend testifies, yes! there have been times when these lower co-ordinations of song and melodies have made by a momentary link mind and matter one, and of these times are born the world's greatest treasures--jewels wrested from the hills of eternity! what has been done by chance, science should do by rule." gerald had listened, with an attention not hoped for, but the conclusion was anticipated in his quick mind. busy with his portfolio, he did not attend, but upon the professor's conclusion he turned with a picture in his hand. it was the drawing of the previous night. "what is it?" he asked. "a mind picture, possibly," said virdow. "you mean by that a picture never impressed upon the brain, but living within the past experience of the mind?" "exactly." "and i say it is simply a brain picture transmitted to me by heredity." "i deny nothing; all things are possible. but by whom? one of those women?" gerald started violently and looked suspiciously upon his questioner. virdow's face betrayed nothing. "i do not know," said gerald; "you have gaps in your theory, and this is the gap in mine. neither of these women could have seen this picture; there must have been a third person." virdow smiled and nodded his head. "and if there was a third person he is my missing witness. from him comes your vision--a true mind picture." "and this?" gerald drew from the folio a woman's face--the face that edward had shown, but idealized and etherealized. "from whom comes this?" cried the young man with growing excitement. "for i swear to you that i have never, except in dreams, beheld it, no tongue has described it! it is mine by memory alone, not plucked from subtle ether by a wandering mind, but from the walls of memory alone. tell me." virdow shook his head; he was silent for fear of the excitement. gerald came and stood by him with the two pictures; his voice was strained and impassioned, and his tones just audible: "the face in this and the sleeper's face in this are the same; if you were on the stand to answer for a friend's life would you say of me, this man descends from the kneeling woman?" virdow looked upon him unflinchingly. "i would answer, as by my belief in god's creation, that by this testimony you descend from neither, for the brain that held those pictures could belong to neither woman. one could not hold an etherealized picture of her own face, nor one a true likeness of her own back." gerald replaced the sheets. "you have told me what i knew," he said; "and yet--from one of them i am descended, and the pictures are true!" he took his hat and boat paddle and left them abruptly. the portfolio stood open. virdow went to close it, but there was a third drawing dimly visible. idly he drew it forth. it was the picture of a white seagull and above it was an arch; beyond were the bending trees of the first picture. both men studied it curiously, but with varying emotions. chapter xxix. "home sweet home." edward approached the hall that afternoon with misgivings. a charge had been brought against him, denied, and the denial defended with his life; but the charge was not disproved. and in this was the defect of the "code of honor." it died not because of its bloodiness but of inadequacy. a correct aim could not be a satisfactory substitute for good character nor good morals. was it his duty to furnish proof to his title to the name of gentleman? or could he afford to look the world in the face with disdain and hold himself above suspicion? the latter course was really his only choice. he had no proofs. this would do for the world at large, but among intimates would it suffice? he knew that nowhere in the world is the hearthstone more sacred than in the south, and how long would his welcome last, even at the hall, with his past unexplained? he would see! the first hesitancy of host or hostess, and he would be self-banished! there was really no reason why he should remain in america; agents could transact what little business was his and look after gerald's affairs. nothing had changed within him; he was the same edward morgan, with the same capacities for enjoyment. but something had changed. he felt it with the mere thought of absence. what was it? as in answer to his mental question, there came behind him the quick breath of a horse and turning he beheld mary. she smiled in response to his bow. the next instant he had descended from his buggy and was waiting. "may i ride with you?" again the face of the girl lighted with pleasure. "of course. get down, jerry, and change places with mr. morgan." jerry made haste to obey. "now, drop behind," she said to him, as edward seated himself by her side. "you see i have accepted your invitation," he began, "only i did not come as soon as i wished to, or i would have answered your kind note at once in person. all are well, i trust?" her face clouded. "no. mamma has become entirely blind--probably for all time. i have just been to telegraph dr. campbell to come to us. we will know to-morrow." he was greatly distressed. "my visit is inopportune--i will turn back. no, i was going from the hall to the general's; i can keep straight on." "indeed, you shall not, mr. morgan. mamma is bearing up bravely, and you can help so much to divert her mind if you tell her of your travels." he assented readily. it was a novel sensation to find himself useful. "to-morrow morning," she continued, "perhaps i can find time to go to the general's--if you really want to go--" "i do," he said. "my german friend, virdow, has a theory he wishes to demonstrate and has asked me to find the dominate tones in a waterfall; i remembered the general's little cascade, and owing him a visit am going to discharge both duties. what a grand old man the general is!" "oh, indeed, yes. you do not know him, mr. morgan. if you could have seen how he entered into your quarrel--" she blushed and hesitated. "oh, what an outrage was that affair!" "it is past, miss montjoy; think no more upon it. it was i who cost your father his seat in congress. that is the lamentable feature." "that is nothing," said the young girl, "compared with the mortification and peril forced upon you. but you had friends--more than you dreamed of. the general says that the form of your note to mr. royson saved you a grave complication." "you mean that i am indebted to mr. barksdale for that?" "yes. i love mr. barksdale; he is so manly and noble." edward smiled upon her; he was not jealous of that kind of love. "he is certainly a fine character--the best product of the new south, i take it. i have neglected to thank him for his good offices. i shall call upon him when i return." "and," she said in a low tone, "of course you will assure the general of your gratitude to-morrow. you owe him more than you suspect. i would not have you fail there." "and why would you dislike to have me fail?" she blushed furiously when she realized how she had become involved, but she met his questioning gaze bravely. "you forget that i introduced you as my friend, and one does not like for friends to show up in a bad light." he fell into moody silence, from which with difficulty only he could bring himself to reply to questions as she led the way from personal grounds. the hall saved him from absolute disgrace. in the darkened sitting-room was mrs. montjoy when the girl and the young man entered. she lifted her bandaged eyes to the door as she heard their voices in the hall. "mamma, here is mr. morgan," said mary. the family had instinctively agreed upon a cheerful tone; the great oculist was coming; it was but a question of time when blessed sight would return again. the colonel raised himself from the lounge where he had been dozing and came forward. edward could not detect in his grave courtesy the slightest deviation of manner. he welcomed him smilingly and inquired of gerald. and then, continuing into the room, the young man took the soft hand of the elder woman. she placed the other on his and said with that singular disregard of words peculiar to the blind: "i am glad to see you mr. morgan. we have been so distressed about you. i spent a wretched day and night thinking of your worry and danger." "they are all over now, madam; but it is pleasant to know that my friends were holding me up all the time. naturally i was somewhat lonesome," he said, forcing a smile, "until the general came to my rescue." then recollecting himself, he added: "but those hours were as nothing to this, madam. you cannot understand how distressed i was to learn, as i have just now, of your illness." she patted his hand affectionately, after the manner of old ladies. "oh, yes, i can. mary has told us of your offer to take us to paris on that account. i am sure sometimes that one's misfortunes fall heaviest upon friends." "it is not too late," he said, earnestly. "if the colonel will keep house and trust you with me, it is not too late. really, i am almost obliged to visit paris soon, and if--" he turned to the colonel at a loss for words. that gentleman had passed his hand over his forehead and was looking away. "you are more than kind, my young friend," he said, sadly: "more than kind. we will see campbell. if it is necessary mrs. montjoy will go to paris." mary had been a silent witness of the little scene. she turned away to hide her emotion, fearful that her voice, if she spoke, would betray her. the duchess came in and climbed to grandma's lap and wound her arms around the little woman. the colonel had resumed his seat when mary brought in from the hall the precious violin and laid it upon the piano, waiting there until the conversation lagged. "mamma," she said, then, "mr. morgan has his violin; he was on his way through here to the general's when i intercepted him. i know you can rely upon him to play for us." "as much and as often as desired," said edward heartily. "i have a friend at home, an old professor with whom i studied in germany, who is engaged in some experiments with vibration, and he has assigned me rather a novel task--that is, i am to go over to the general's and determine the tone of a waterfall, for everything has its tone--your window glass, your walking stick, even--and these will respond to the vibrations which make that tone. young memories are born of vibration, and old airs bring back old thoughts." he arose and took the violin as he talked. if the presence of the silent sufferer was not sufficient to touch his heart, there were the brown, smiling eyes of the girl whose fingers met his as he took the instrument. he played as never before. something went from him into the ripe, resonant instrument, something that even virdow could not have explained, and through the simple melodies he chose, affected his hearers deeply. was it the loneliness of the man speaking to the loneliness of the silent woman, whose bandaged forehead rested upon one blue-veined hand? or was it a new spring opened up by the breath, the floating hair, the smooth contour of cheeks, the melting depths of brown eyes, the divine sympathy of the girl who played his accompaniments? all the old music of the blind woman's girlhood had been carefully bound and preserved, as should all old music be when it has become a part of our lives; and as this man with his subtle power awoke upon that marvelous instrument the older melodies he gave life to the dreams of her girlish heart. just so had she played them--if not so true, yet feelingly. by her side had stood a gallant black-haired youth, looking down into her face, reading more in her upturned eyes than her tongue had ever uttered; eyes then liquid and dark with the light of love beaming from their depths; alas, to beam now no more forever! love must find another speech. she reached out her hand and in eloquent silence it was taken. silence drew them all back to earth. but behind the players, an old man's face was bent upon the smooth soft hand of the woman, and eyes that must some day see for both of them, left their tender tribute. edward morgan linked himself to others in that hour with strands stronger than steel. even the little duchess felt the charm and power of that violin in the hands of the artist. wondering, she came to him and stretched up her little hands. he took her upon his knee then, and, holding the instrument under her chin and her hands in his, awoke a little lullaby that had impressed him. as he sang the words, the girl smiled into the faces of the company. "look, gamma," she said gleefully; "look!" and she, lifting her face, said gently: "yes, dear; gamma is looking." mary's face was quickly averted; the hands of the colonel tightened upon the hand he held. the duchess had learned to sing "rockaby baby" and now she lifted her thin, piping voice, the player readily following, and sang sweetly all the verses she could remember. mary took her in her arms when tired, and edward let the strains run on slower and softer. the eyes of the little one drooped wearily, and then as the player, his gaze fixed upon the little scene, drifted away into "home, sweet home," they closed in sleep. the blind woman still sat with her hand in her husband's, his head bent forward until his forehead rested upon it. chapter xxx. the rainbow in the mist. mary had lighted his room and handed him the lamp; "sweet sleep and pleasant dreams," she had said, gravely bowing to him as she withdrew--a family custom, as he had afterward learned. but the sleep was not sweet nor the dreams pleasant. excited and disturbed he dozed away the hours and was glad when the plantation bell rang its early summons. he dressed and made his way to the veranda, whence he wandered over the flower garden, intercepting the colonel, who was about to take his morning look about. courteously leaving his horse at the gate that gentleman went on foot with him. it was edward's first experience on a plantation and he viewed with lively interest the beginning of the day's labor. cotton was opening and numbers of negroes, old and young, were assembling with baskets and sacks or moving out with a show of industry, for, as it was explained to him, it is easy to get them early started in cotton-picking time, as the work is done by the hundred pounds and the morning dew counts for a great deal. "many people deduct for that," said montjoy, "but i prefer not to. lazy and trifling as he is, the negro is but poorly paid." "but," said edward, laughing, "you do not sell the dew, i suppose?" "no. generally it evaporates, but if it does not the warehouse deducts for it." "i noticed at one place on the way south that the people were using wheel implements, do you not find them profitable?" the colonel pointed to a shed under which were a number of cultivators, revolving plows, mowing machines and a dirt turner. "i do not, the negro cannot keep awake on the cultivator and the points get into the furrows and so throw out the cotton and corn that they were supposed to cultivate. somehow they never could learn to use the levers at the right place, with the revolving plow, and they wear its axle off. they did no better with the mower; they seemed to have an idea that it would cut anything from blades of grass up to a pine stump, and it wouldn't." "the disk harrow," he continued laughingly, "was broken in a curious way. i sent a hand out to harrow in some peas. he rode along all right to the field and then deliberately wedged the disks to keep them from revolving, not understanding the principle. i sometimes think that they are a little jealous of these machines and do not want them to work well." "you seem to have a great many old negroes." "too many; too many," he said, sadly; "but what can be done? these people have been with me all my life and i can't turn them adrift in their old age. and the men seem bent upon keeping married," he added, good-naturedly. "when the old wives die they get new and young ones, and then comes extravagant living again." "and you have them all to support?" "of course. the men do a little chopping and cotton-picking, but not enough to pay for the living of themselves and families. what is it, nancy?" "pa says please send him some meal and meat. he ain't had er mouthful in four days." the speaker was a little negro girl. "go, see your young mistress. that is a specimen," said the old gentleman, half-laughing, half-frowning. "four days! he would have been dead the second! our system does not suit the new order of things. it seems to me the main trouble is in the currency. our values have all been upset by legislation. silver ought never have been demonetized; it was fatal, sir. and then the tariff." "is not overproduction a factor, colonel? i read that your last crops of cotton were enormous." "possibly so, but the world has to have cotton, and an organization would make it buy at our own prices. there are enormous variations, of course, we can't figure in advance, and whenever a low price rules, the country is broke. the result is the loan associations and cotton factors are about to own us." the two men returned to find mary with the pigeons upon her shoulders and a flock of poultry begging at her feet. "you are going with me to the general's," he said, pleadingly, as he stood by her. she shook her head. "i suppose not this time; mamma needs me." but at the breakfast table, when he renewed the subject, that lady from her little side table said promptly: "yes." mary needed the exercise and diversion, and then there was a little mending to be done for the old general. he always saved it for her. it was his whim. so they started in edward's buggy, riding in silence until he said abruptly: "i am persevering, miss montjoy, as you will some day find out, and i am counting upon your help." "in what?" she was puzzled by his manner. "in getting moreau in paris to look into the little mamma's eyes." she reflected a moment. "but dr. campbell is coming." "it is through him i going to accomplish my purpose; he must send her to paris." "but," she said, sadly, "we can't afford it. norton could arrange it, but papa would not be willing to incur such a debt for him." "his son--her son!" edward showed his surprise very plainly. "you do not understand. norton has a family; neither papa nor mamma would borrow from him, although he would be glad to do anything in the world he could. and there is annie----" she stopped. edward saw the difficulty. "would your father accept a loan from me?" she flushed painfully. "i think not, mr. morgan. he could hardly borrow money of his guest." "but i will not be his guest, and it will be a simple business transaction. will you help me?" she was silent. "it is very hard, very hard," she said, and tears stood in her eyes. "hard to have mamma's chances hang upon such a necessity." "supposing i go to your father and say: 'this thing is necessary and must be done. i have money to invest at per cent. and am going to paris. if you will secure me with a mortgage upon this place for the necessary amount i will pay all expenses and take charge of your wife and daughter.' would it offend him?" "he could not be offended by such generosity, but it would distress him--the necessity." "that should not count in the matter," he said, gravely. "he is already distressed. and what is all this to a woman's eyesight?" "how am i to help?" she asked after a while. "the objection will be chiefly upon your account, i am afraid," he said, after reflection. "you will have to waive everything and second my efforts. that will settle it." she did not promise, but seemed lost in thought. when she spoke again it was upon other things. "ah, truant!" cried the general, seeing her ascending the steps and coming forward, "here you are at last. how are you, morgan? sit down, both of you. mary," he said, looking at her sternly, "if you neglect me this way again i shall go off and marry a grass widow. do you hear me, miss? look at this collar." he pointed dramatically to the offending article; one of the byronic affairs, to which the old south clings affectionately, and which as affectionately clings to the garment it is supposed to adorn, since it is a part of it. "i have buttoned that not less than a dozen times to-day." she laughed and, going in, presently returned with thread and needle and sitting upon his knee restored the buttonhole to its proper size. then she surveyed him a moment. "why haven't you been over to see us?" "because----" "you will have to give the grass widow a better excuse than that. 'tis a woman's answer. but here is mr. morgan, come to see if he can catch the tune your waterfall plays--if you have no objection." edward explained the situation. "go with him, mary. i think the waterfall plays a better tune to a man when there is a pretty girl around." she playfully stopped his mouth and then darted into the house. "general," said edward, earnestly, "i have not written to you. i preferred to come in person to express anew my thanks and appreciation of your kindness in my recent trial. the time may come--" "nonsense, my boy; we take these things for granted here in the south. if you are indebted to anybody it is to the messenger who brought me the news of your predicament, put me on horseback and sent me hurrying off in the night to town for the first time in twenty years." "and who could have done that?" edward asked, overwhelmed with emotion. "from whom?" "from nobody. she summed up the situation, got behind the little mare and came over here in the night. morgan, that is the rarest girl in georgia. take care, sir; take care, sir." he was getting himself indignant over some contingency when the object of his eulogium appeared. "now, general, you are telling tales on me." "am i? ask morgan. i'd swear on a stack of bibles as high as yonder pine i have not mentioned your name." "well, it is a wonder. come on, mr. morgan." the old man watched them as they picked their way through the hedge and concluded his interrupted remark: "if you break that loyal heart--if you bring a tear to those brown eyes, you will meet a different man from royson." but he drove the thought away while he looked affectionately after the pair. down came the little stream, with an emphasis and noise disproportioned to its size, the cause being, as edward guessed, the distance of the fall and the fact that the rock on which it struck was not a solid foundation, but rested above a cavity. mary waited while he listened, turning away to pluck a flower and to catch in the falling mist the colors of the rainbow. but as edward stood, over him came a flood of thoughts; for the air was full of a weird melody, the overtone of one great chord that thrilled him to the heart. as in a dream he saw her standing there, the blue skies and towering trees above her, a bit of light in a desert of solitude. near, but separated from him by an infinite gulf. "forever! forever!" all else was blotted out. she saw on his face the white desperation she had noticed once before. "you have found it," she said. "what is the tone?" "despair," he answered, sadly. "it can mean nothing else." "and yet," she said, a new thought animating her mobile face, as she pointed into the mist above, "over it hangs the rainbow." chapter xxxi. the hand of science. a feeling of apprehension and solemnity pervaded the hall when at last the old family coach deposited its single occupant, dr. campbell, at the gate. the colonel stood at the top of the steps to welcome him. edward and mary were waiting in the sitting-room. the famous practitioner, a tall, shapely figure, entered, and as he removed his glasses he brought sunshine into the room, with his cheery voice and confident manner. to mrs. montjoy he said: "i came as soon as the telegram was received. anxiety and loss of rest in cases like yours are exceedingly undesirable. it is better to be informed--even of the worst. before we discuss this matter, come to the window and let me examine the eye, please." he was assisting her as he spoke. he carefully studied the condition of the now inflamed and sightless organ, and then replaced the bandage. "it is glaucoma," he said, briefly. "you will remember that i feared it when we fitted the glasses some years ago. the slowness of its advance is due to the care you have taken. if you are willing i would prefer to operate at once." all were waiting in painful silence. the brave woman replied: "whenever you are ready i am," and resumed her knitting. he had been deliberate in every word and action, but the occasion was already robbed of its terrors, so potent are confidence, decision and action. edward was introduced and would have taken his leave, but the oculist detained him. "i shall probably need you," he said, "and will be obliged if you remain. the operation is very simple." the room was soon prepared; a window was thrown open, a lounge drawn under it and bandages prepared. mary, pale with emotion, when the slender form of her mother was stretched upon the lounge hurriedly withdrew. the colonel seated himself and turned away his face. there was no chloroform, no lecture. with the simplicity of of a child at play, the great man went to work. turning up the eyelid, he dropped upon the cornea a little cocaine, and selecting a minute scalpel from his case, with two swift, even motions cut downward from the center of the eye and then from the same starting point at right angles. the incisions extended no deeper than the transparent epidermis of the organ. skillfully turning up the angle of this, he exposed a thin, white growth--a minute cloud it seemed to edward. "another drop of cocaine, please," the pleasant voice of the oculist recalled him, and upon the exposed point he let fall from the dropper the liquid. lifting the little cloud with keen pinchers, the operator removed it, restored the thin epidermis to its place, touched it again with cocaine, and replaced the bandage. the strain of long hours was ended; he had not been in the house thirty minutes. "i felt but the scratch of a needle," said the patient; "it is indeed ended?" "all over," he said, cheerfully. he then wrote out a prescription and directions for dressing, to be given to the family physician. mary was already by her mother's side, holding and patting her hand. the famous man was an old friend of the family, and now entered into a cheerful discussion of former times and mutual acquaintances. the little boy had entered, and somehow had got into his lap, where all children usually got who came under his spell. while talking on other subjects he turned down the little fellow's lids. "i see granulation here, colonel. attend to it at once. i will leave a prescription." and then with a few words of encouragement, he went off to the porch to smoke. after dinner the conversation came back to the patient. "she will regain her vision this time," said dr. campbell, "but the disease can only be arrested; it will return. the next time it will do no good to operate. it is better to know these things and prepare for them." the silence was broken by edward. "are you so sure of this, doctor, that you would advise against further consultation? in paris, for instance, is moreau. in your opinion, is there the slightest grounds for his disagreeing with you?" "in my opinion, no. but my opinion never extends to the point of neglecting any means open to us. were i afflicted with this disease i would consult everybody within reach who had had experience." edward glanced in triumph at mary. dr. campbell continued: "i would be very glad if it were possible for mrs. montjoy to see moreau about the left eye. you will remember that i expressed a doubt as to the hopelessness of restoring that one when it was lost. it was not affected with glaucoma; there is a bare possibility that something might be done for it with success. if the disease returns upon the right eye, the question of operating upon the other might then come up again." edward waited a moment and then continued his questions: "do you not think a sea voyage would be beneficial, doctor?" "undoubtedly, if she is protected from the glare and dust while ashore. we can only look to building up her general health now." edward turned away, with throbbing pulses. "but," continued the doctor, "of course nothing of this sort should be attempted until the eye is perfectly well again; say in ten days or two weeks." mary sat with bowed head. she did not see why dr. campbell arose presently and walked to where edward was standing. she looked upon them there. edward was talking with eager face and the other studying him through his glasses. but somehow she connected his parting words with that short interview. "and about the sea voyage and moreau, colonel; i do not know that i ought to advise you, but i shall be glad if you find it convenient to arrange that, and will look to you to have moreau send me a written report. good-bye." but edward stopped him. "i am going back directly, doctor, and can take you and the carriage need not return again. i will keep you waiting a few moments only." he drew col. montjoy aside and they walked to the rear veranda. "colonel," he said, earnestly, "i want to make you an offer, and i do it with hesitancy only because i am afraid you cannot understand me thoroughly upon such short acquaintance. i believe firmly in this trip and want you to let me help you bring it about. without having interested myself in your affairs, i am assured that you stand upon the footing of the majority of southerners whose fortunes were staked upon the confederacy, and that just now it would inconvenience you greatly to meet the expense of this experience. i want you to let me take the place of john morgan and do just as he would have done in this situation--advance you the necessary money upon your own terms." as he entered upon the subject the old gentleman looked away from him, and as he proceeded edward could see that he was deeply affected. he extended his hand impulsively to the young man at last and shook it warmly. tears had gathered in his eyes. edward continued: "i appreciate what you would say, colonel; you think it too much for a comparative stranger to offer, or for you to accept, but the matter is not one of your choosing. the fortunes of war have brought about the difficulty, and that is all. you have risked your all on that issue and have lost. you cannot risk the welfare of your wife upon an issue of pride. you must accept. go to gen. evan, he will tell you so." "i cannot consider the offer, my young friend, in any other than a business way. your generosity has already put us under obligations we can never pay and has only brought you mortification." "not so," was the reply. "in your house i have known the first home feeling i ever experienced. colonel, don't oppose me in this. if you wish to call it business, give it that term." "yours will be the fourth mortgage on this place; i hesitate to offer it. the hall is already pledged for $ , ." "it is amply sufficient." "i will consider the matter, mr. morgan," he said after a long silence. "i will consider it and consult evan. i do not see my way clear to accept your offer, but whether or not, my young friend"--putting his arm over the other's shoulder, his voice trembling--"whether i do or not you have in making it done me an honor and a favor that i will remember for life. it is worth something to meet a man now and then who is worthy to have lived in nobler times. god bless you--and now you must excuse me." he turned away abruptly. thrilled by his tone and words, edward went to the front. as he shook hands with mary he said: "i cannot tell yet. but he cannot refuse. there is no escape for him." at the depot in the city the doctor said: "do not count too hopefully upon paris, my young friend. there is a chance, but in my opinion the greatest good that can be achieved is for the patient to store in memory scenes upon which in other days she may dwell with pleasure. keep this in mind and be governed accordingly." he climbed aboard the train and waved adieu. edward was leaving the depot when he overtook barksdale. putting his buggy in the care of a boy, he walked on with the railroader at his request to the club. barksdale took him into a private room and over a choice cigar edward gave him all the particulars of the duel and then expressed his grateful acknowledgments for the friendly services rendered him. "i am assured by gen. evan," he said, "that had my demand been made in a different form i might have been seriously embarrassed." "royson depended upon the montjoys to get him out of the affair; he had no idea of fighting." "but how could the montjoys have helped him?" "they could have appealed to him to withdraw the charges he had made, and he would have done so because the information came really from a member of the montjoy family. i do not think you will need to ask her name. i mention it to you because you should be informed." edward comprehended his meaning at once. greatly agitated, he exclaimed: "but what object could she have had in putting out such slander? i do not know her nor she me." barksdale waved his hand deprecatingly: "you do not know much of women." "no. i have certainly not met this kind before." barksdale reflected a few moments, and then said, slowly: "slander is a curious thing, mr. morgan. people who do not believe it will repeat it. i think if i were you i would clear up all these matters by submitting to an interview with a reporter. in that you can place your own and family history before the public and end all talk." edward was pale, but this was the suggestion that he had considered more than once. he shook his head quickly. "i disagree with you. i think it beneath the dignity of a gentleman to answer slander by the publication of his family history. if the people of this city require such statements from those who come among them, then i shall sell out my interest here and go abroad, where i am known. this i am, however, loath to do; i have a few warm friends here." barksdale extended his hand. "you will, i hope, count me among them. i spoke only from a desire to see you fairly treated." "i have reason to number you among them. i am going to paris shortly, i think, with mrs. montjoy. her eyesight is failing. i will be glad to see you again before then." "with mrs. montjoy?" exclaimed barksdale. "yes; the matter is not entirely settled yet, but i do not doubt that she will make the trip. miss montjoy will go with us." barksdale did not lift his eyes, but was silent, his hand toying with his glass. "i will probably call upon you before your departure," he said, as he arose. chapter xxxii. the flashlight photograph. twilight was deepening over the hills and already the valleys were in shadow when edward reached ilexhurst. he stood for a moment looking back on the city and the hills beyond. he seemed to be laying aside a sweeter life for something less fair, and the old weight descended upon him. after all was it wise to go forth, when the return to the solitude of a clouded life was inevitable? there was no escape from fate. in the east the hills were darkening, but memory flashed on him a scene--a fair-faced girl, as he had seen her, as he would always see her, floating upon an amethyst stream, smiling upon him, one hand parting the waters and over them the wonders of a southern sunset. in the wing-room virdow and gerald were getting ready for an experiment with flashlight photography. refusing to be hurried in his scientific investigations, gerald had insisted that until it had been proven that a living substance could hold a photographic imprint he should not advance to the consideration of virdow's theory. there must be brain pictures before there could be mind pictures. at least, so he reasoned. none of them knew exactly what his experiment was to be, except that he was going to test the substance that envelopes the body of the bass, the micopterus salmoides of southern waters. that sensitive plate, thinner than art could make it, was not only spoiled by exposure to light, but by light and air combined was absolutely destroyed. and the difficulty of controlling the movements of this fish seemed absolutely insuperable. they could only watch the experimenter. into a thin glass jar gerald poured a quantity of powder, which he had carefully compounded during the day. virdow saw in it the silvery glimmer of magnesium. what the combined element was could not be determined. this compound reached only a third of the distance up the side of the glass. the jar was then stopped with cork pierced by a copper wire that touched the powder, and hermetically sealed with wax. with this under one arm, and a small galvanic battery under the other, and restless with suppressed excitement, gerald, pointing to a small hooded lantern, whose powerful reflector was lighting one end of the room, bade them follow him. virdow and edward obeyed. with a rapid stride gerald set out across fields, through strips of woodlands and down precipitous slopes until they stood all breathless upon the shore of the little lake. there they found the flat-bottom bateau, and although by this time both edward and virdow had begun seriously to doubt the wisdom of blindly following such a character, they resigned themselves to fate and entered. gerald propelled the little craft carefully to a stump that stood up distinct against the gloom under the searchlight in the bow, and reaching it took out his pocket compass. turning the boat's head north-east, he followed the course about forty yards until at the left the reflector showed him two stakes in line. here he brought the little craft to a standstill, and in silence, which he invoked by lifting his hand warningly, turned the lantern downward over the stern of the boat, and with a tube, whose lower end was stubbed with a bit of glass and inserted in the water, examined the bottom of the lake twelve feet below. long and patient was the search, but at last the others saw him lay aside his glass and let the boat drift a few moments. then very gently, only a ripple of the surface marking the action, he lowered the weighted jar until the slackening wire indicated that it was upon the bottom. he reached out his hand quickly and drew the battery to him, firmly grasping the cross-handle lever. the next instant there was a rumbling, roaring sound, accompanied by a fierce, white light, and the end of the boat was in the air. in a brief moment edward saw the slender form of the enthusiast bathed in the flash, his face as white as chalk, his eyes afire with excitement--the incarnation of insanity, it seemed to him. then there was a deluge of spray, a violent rocking of the boat and the water in it went over their shoe-tops. instantly all was inky blackness, except where in the hands of the fearless man in the stern the lantern, its slide changed, was now casting a stream of red light upon the surface of the lake. suddenly gerald uttered a loud cry. "look! look! there he is!" and floating in that crimson path, with small fishes rising around him, was the dead body of a gigantic bass. lifting him carefully by the gills, gerald laid him in a box drawn from under the rear seat. "what is it?" broke from virdow. "we have risked our lives and ruined our clothes--for what?" "for a photograph upon a living substance! on the side of this fish, which was exposed to the flashlight, you will find the outlines of the grasses in this lake, or the whole film destroyed. if the outlines are there then there is no reason why the human brain, infinitely more sensitive and forever excluded from light, cannot contain the pictures of those twin cameras--the human eyes." he turned the boat shoreward and seizing his box disappeared in the darkness, his enlarged pupils giving him the visual powers of a night animal. virdow and edward, even aided by the lantern, found their way back with difficulty. the two men entered the wing-room to find it vacant. virdow, however, pointed silently to the red light gleaming through the glass of the little door to the cabinet. the sound of trickling water was heard. at that instant a smothered half-human cry came from within, and trembling violently, gerald staggered into the room. they took hold of him, fearing he would fall. straining their eyes, they both saw for an instant only the half-developed outlines of a human profile extended along the broad side of the fish. as they watched, the surface grew into one tone and the carcass fell to the floor. gazing into their faces as he struggled for freedom, gerald cast off their hands. the lithe, sinewy form seemed to be imbued at the moment with the strength of a giant. before they could speak he had seized the lantern and was out into the night. without a moment's hesitation, edward, bareheaded, plunged after him. well trained to college athletics though he was, yet unfamiliar with the grounds, it taxed his best efforts to keep him in sight. he divined that the wild race would end at the lake, and the thought that on a few seconds might hang the life of that strange being was all that held him to the prolonged and dangerous strain. he reached the shore just in time, by plunging waist deep into the water, to throw himself into the boat. his own momentum thrust it far out upon the surface. gerald had entered. with unerring skill and incredible swiftness, the young man carried the boat over its former course and turned the glare of the lamp downward. suddenly he uttered a loud cry, and, dropping the lantern in the boat, stood up and leaped into the water. the light was now out and all was as black as midnight. edward slipped off his shoes, seized the paddle and waited for a sound to guide him. it seemed as though nothing human could survive that prolonged submergence; minutes appeared to pass; with a groan of despair he gave up hope. but at that moment, with a gasp, the white face of gerald burst from the waters ten feet away, and the efforts he made showed that he was swimming with difficulty. with one mighty stroke edward sent the boat to the swimmer and caught the floating hair. then with great difficulty he drew him over the side. "home!" the word escaped from gerald between his gasps, but when he reached the shore, with a return of energy and a total disregard of his companion, he plunged into the darkness toward the house, edward this time keeping him in view with less difficulty. they reached the door of the wing-room almost simultaneously and rushed in side by side, gerald dripping with water and exhausted. he leaned heavily against the table. for the first time edward was conscious that he carried a burden in his arms. in breathless silence, he with virdow approached, and then upon the table gerald placed an object and drew shuddering back. it was a half life-size bust of darkened and discolored marble, and for them, though trembling with excitement, it seemed to have no especial significance until they were startled by a cry so loud, so piercing, so heartrending, that they felt the flesh creep upon their bones. looking from the marble to the face of the young man they saw that the whiteness of death was upon every feature. following the direction of his gaze, they beheld a silhouette upon the wall; the clear-cut profile of a woman, cast by the carved face before them. to edward it was an outline vaguely familiar; to virdow a revelation, for it was edward's own profile. had the latter recognized it there would have been a tragedy, for, without a word after that strange, sad, despairing cry, gerald wrenched a dagger from the decorated panel, and struck at his own heart. it was edward's quickness that saved him; the blade made but a trifling flesh wound. seizing him as he did from the rear he was enabled to disturb his equilibrium in time. "morphine," he said to virdow. the latter hurried away to secure the drug. he found with the pellets a little pocket case containing morphine powders and a hypodermic injector. without a struggle, gerald lay breathing heavily. in a few minutes the drug was administered, and then came peace for the sufferer. edward released his hold and looked about him. virdow had moved the bust and was seated lost in thought. "what does it mean?" he asked, approaching, awed and saddened by his experience. virdow held up the little bust. "have you ever seen that face before?" "it is the face of the young woman in the picture!" "and now," said virdow, again placing the marble so as to cast its outlines upon the wall, "you do not recognize it, but the profile is your own!" chapter xxxiii. the trade with slippery dick. amos royson, in the solitude of his room, had full time for reflection upon the events of the week and upon his position. his face, always sinister, had not improved under its contact with the heavy dueling pistol driven so savagely against it. the front teeth would be replaced and the defect concealed under the heavy mustache he wore, and the cut and swollen lips were resuming their normal condition. the missing finger, even, would inconvenience him only until he had trained the middle one to discharge its duties--but the nose! he trembled with rage when for the hundredth time he studied his face in the glass and realized that the best skill of the surgeon had not been able to restore its lines. but this was not the worst. he had carefully scanned the state press during his seclusion and awoke from his personal estimate to find that public opinion was overwhelmingly against him. he had slandered a man for political purposes and forced a fight upon a stranger to whom, by every right of hospitality, the city owed a welcome. the general public could not understand why he had entered upon the duel if his charges were true, and if not true why he had not had the manliness to withdraw them. moreover, he had incurred the deadly enmity of the people who had been deceived in the lost county. one paper alluded to the unpleasant fact that edward morgan was defending and aiding mr. royson's connections at the time of the insult. he had heard no word from swearingen, who evidently felt that the matter was too hot at both ends for him to handle safely. that gentleman had, on the contrary, in a brief card to one of the papers, disclaimed any knowledge of the unfortunate letter and declined all responsibility for it. this was sufficient, it would seem, to render almost any man unhappy, but the climax was reached when he received a letter from annie, scoring him unmercifully for his clumsiness and informing him that edward morgan, so far from being destroyed in a certain quarter, was being received in the house as a friend to whom all were indebted, and was petted and made much of. "so far as i can judge," she added, maliciously, "it seems settled that mary is to marry him. he is much with col. montjoy and is now upon a confidential footing with everyone here. practically he is already a member of the family." it contained a request for him to inform her when he would be in his office. he had not replied to this; he felt that the letter was aimed at his peace of mind and the only satisfaction he could get out of this affair was the recollection that he had informed her father-in-law of her perfidy. "i would be glad to see the old gentleman's mind at work with annie purring around him," he said to himself, and the idea brought the first smile his face had known for many a day. but a glimpse of that face in the glass, with the smile upon it, startled him again. what next? surrender? there was no surrender in the make-up of the man. his legal success had hinged less upon ability than upon dogged pertinacity. in this way he had saved the life of more than one criminal and won a reputation that brought him practice. he had made a charge, had been challenged and had fought. with almost any other man the issue would have been at an end as honorably settled, but his habit of mind was opposed to accepting anything as settled which was clearly unsettled. the duel did not give morgan the rights of a gentleman if the main charge were true, and royson had convinced himself that it was true. he wrote to annie, assured that her visit would develop his next move. so it was that one morning royson found himself face to face with his cousin, in the office. there was no word of sympathy for him. he had not expected one, but he was hardly prepared for the half-smile which came over her face when he greeted her, and which, during their interview, returned from time to time. this enraged him beyond endurance, and nothing but the remembrance that she alone held the key to the situation prevented his coming to an open breach with her. she saw and read his struggle aright, and the display put her in the best of humor. "when shall we see you at the hall again?" she asked, coolly. "never," he said, passionately, "until this man morgan is exposed and driven out." she arched her brows. "never, then, would have been sufficient." "annie, this man must be exposed; you have the proofs--you have information; give it to me." she shook her head, smiling. "i have changed my mind, amos; i do not want to be on bad terms with my brother-in-law of the future; the fact is, i am getting fond of him. he is very kind to everybody. mother is to go to paris to have her eyes attended to, and mary is to accompany her. mr. morgan has been accepted as their escort." the face of the man grew crimson with suppressed rage. by a supreme effort he recovered and returned the blow. "what a pity, annie, it could not have been you! paris has been your hobby for years. when mary returns she can tell you how to dress in the best form and correct your french." it was a successful counter. she was afraid to trust herself to reply. royson drew his chair nearer. "annie," he said, "i would give ten years of life to establish the truth of what you have told me. so far as mary is concerned, we will leave that out, but i am determined to crush this fellow morgan at any cost. something tells me we have a common cause in this matter. give me a starting point--you owe me something. i could have involved you; i fought it out alone." she reflected a moment. "i cannot help you now as much as you may think. i am convinced of what i told you, but the direct proof is wanting. you can imagine how difficult such proof is. the man is thirty years old, probably, and witnesses of his mother's times are old or dead." "and what witnesses could there have been?" "few. john morgan is gone. the next witness would be rita. rita is the woman who kept morgan's house for the last thirty years. she owned a little house in the neighborhood of the hall and was until she went to morgan's a professional nurse. there may be old negroes who can give you points." "and rita--where is she?" "dead!" a shade of disappointment swept over his face. he caught her eyes fixed upon him with the most peculiar expression. "she is the witness on whom i relied," she said, slowly. "she was, i believe, the only human being in the world who could have furnished conclusive testimony as to the origin of edward morgan. she died suddenly the day your letter was published!" she did not look away as she concluded, "your letter was published!" she did not look away as she paused, but continued with her eyes fixed upon his; and gradually, as he watched her, the brows contracted slightly and the lids tightened under them. a gleam of intelligence passed to him. his face grew white and his hands closed convulsively upon the arms of his chair. "but that would be beyond belief," he said, at last, in a whisper. "if what you think is true, he was her son!" she raised her brow as she replied: "there was no tie of association! with him everything was at stake. you can probably understand that when a man is in love he will risk a great deal." royson arose and walked the room. no man knew better than he the worst side of the human heart. there is nothing so true in the history of crime as that reputation is held higher than conscience. and in this case there was the terrible passion of love. he did not reply to her insinuation. "you think, then," he said, stopping in front of the woman, "that, reading my letter, he hurried home--and in this you are correct since i saw him across the street reading the paper, and a few minutes later throw himself into a hack and take that direction--that he rushed into the presence of this woman, demanded the truth, and, receiving it, in a fit of desperation, killed her!" "what i may think, amos, is my right to keep to myself. the only witness died that day! there was no inquest! you asked me for a starting point." she drew her gloves a little tighter, shook out her parasol and rose. "but i am giving you too much of my time. i have some commissions from mary, who is getting ready for paris, and i must leave you." he neither heard her last remark nor saw her go. standing in the middle of the room, with his chin upon his chest, he was lost to all consciousness of the moment. when he looked to the chair she had occupied it was vacant. he passed his hand over his brow. the scene seemed to have been in a dream. but amos royson knew it was real. he had asked for a starting point, and the woman had given it. as he considered it, he unconsciously betrayed how closely akin he was to the woman, for every fact that came to him was in that legal mind, trained to building theories, adjusted in support of the hypothesis of crime. he was again the prosecuting attorney. how natural at least was such a crime, supposing morgan capable of it. and no man knew his history! with one blow he had swept away the witness. that had done a thousand times in the annals of crime. poison, the ambush, the street encounter, the midnight shot through the open window, the fusillade at the form outlined in its own front door; the press had recorded it since the beginning of newspapers. morgan had added one more instance. and if he had not, the suspicion, the investigation, the doubt would remain! at this point by a perfectly natural process the mind of the man reached its conclusion. why need there be any suspicion, any doubt? why might not an inquest develop evidences of a crime? this idea involved action and decision upon his part, and some risk. at last he arose from the desk, where, with his head upon his hand, he had studied so long, and prepared for action. at the lavatory he caught sight of his own countenance in the glass. it told him that his mind was made up. it was war to the knife, and that livid scar upon the pallor of his face was but the record of the first failure. the next battle would not be in the open, with the skies blue above him and no shelter at hand. his victim would never see the knife descend, but it would descend nevertheless, and this time there would be no trembling hand or failure of nerve. from his office he went direct to the coroner's and examined the records. the last inquest was of the day previous; the next in line more than a month before. there was no woman's name upon the list. so far annie was right. outside of cities in the south no burial permits are required. who was the undertaker? inquiry would easily develop the fact, but this time he himself was to remain in the dark. if this crime was fastened upon morgan, the motive would be self-evident and a reaction of public opinion would re-establish royson high in favor. his experience would rank as martyrdom. but a new failure would destroy him forever, and there was not a great deal left to destroy, he felt. in the community, somewhere, was a negro whose only title was "slippery dick," won in many a hotly contested criminal trial. it had been said of this man that the entire penal code was exhausted in efforts to convict him, and always without success. he had been prosecuted for nearly every offense proscribed by state laws. royson's first experience with the man was as prosecuting attorney. afterward and within the preceding year he had defended him in a trial for body-snatching and had secured a verdict by getting upon the jury one man who was closely kin to the person who purchased the awful merchandise. this negro, plausible and cunning, hesitated at nothing short of open murder--or such was his reputation. it was to find him that royson went abroad. nor was it long before he succeeded. that night, in a lonely cabin on the outskirts of the city, a trade was made. ten dollars in hand was paid. if upon an inquest by the coroner it was found that there was a small wound on the back of the head of the woman and the skull fractured, slippery dick was to receive $ more. this was the only risk royson would permit himself to take, and there were no witnesses to the trade. dick's word was worth nothing. discovery could not affect the plot seriously, and dick never confessed. the next day he met annie upon the road, having seen her in the city, and posted himself to intercept her. "i have investigated the death of rita," he said, "and am satisfied that there are no grounds for suspecting murder. we shall wait!" the woman looked him in the face. "amos," she said, "if you were not my cousin, i would say that you are an accomplished liar!" before he replied there was heard the sound of a horse's feet. edward morgan drove by, gravely lifting his hat. chapter xxxiv. the face of the body-snatcher. the methods of royson's emissary were simple and direct. one day he wandered in among the negroes at ilexhurst in search of a lost hound puppy, for dick was a mighty hunter, especially of the midnight 'possum. no one had seen the puppy, but all were ready to talk, and the death of rita had been the latest sensation. from them he obtained every detail from the time edward had carried the body in his arms to the little house, until it had been buried under the crooked cedar in the plantation burying-ground. the body had been dressed by two of the women. there had been a little blood on her head, from a small wound in the left temple, where she had cut herself against the glass when she was "taken with a fit." the coffin was a heavy metal one and the top screwed on. that was all. when royson received the report of the cut in the head and the blood, his breath almost forsook him. morgan might have been innocent, but what a chain of circumstantial evidence! if dick should return to tell him some morning that the false wound he was to make was already on the spot selected, he would not be surprised. so far he could show a motive for the crime, and every circumstance necessary to convict his enemy with it. all he needed was a cause of death. dick's precautions in this venture were novel, from the caucasian standpoint. his superstition was the strongest feature of his depraved mind. the negro has an instinctive dread of dead bodies, but a dead and buried cadaver is to him a horror. in this instance, however, dick's superstition made his sacrilege possible; for while he believed firmly in the reappearance and power of departed spirits, he believed equally in the powers of the voodoo to control or baffle them. before undertaking his commission, he went to one of these voodoo "doctors," who had befriended him in more than one peril, and by the gift of a fat 'possum secured a charm to protect him. the dark hour came, and at midnight to the little clump of trees came also slippery dick. his first act was to bore a hole with an auger in the cedar, insert the voodoo charm and plug the hole firmly. this chained the spirit of the dead. then with a spade and working rapidly, he threw the mound aside and began to toss out the earth from above the coffin. in half an hour his spade laid the wooden case bare. some difficulty was experienced in removing the screws, but down in that cavity, the danger from using matches was reduced to a minimum, and by the aid of these he soon loosened the lid and removed it. to lift this out, and take off the metal top of the burial case, was the work of but a few minutes longer, and the remains of poor rita were exposed to view. in less than an hour after his arrival slippery dick had executed his commission and was filling up the grave. with the utmost care he pressed down the earth and drew up the loosened soil. there had been a bunch of faded flowers upon the mound; he restored these and with a sigh of relief shouldered his spade and auger and took his departure, glad to leave the grewsome spot. but a dramatic pantomime had been enacted near him which he never saw. while he was engaged in marking the head of the lifeless body, the slender form of a man appeared above him and shrank back in horror at the discovery. this man turned and picked up the heavy spade and swung it in air. if it had descended the negro would have been brained. but thought is a monarch! slowly the arm descended, the spade was laid upon the ground, and the form a moment before animated with an overwhelming passion stood silent and motionless behind the cedar. when the negro withdrew, this man followed, gliding from cover to cover, or following boldly in the open, but at all times with a tread as soft as a panther's. down they went, the criminal and his shadow, down into the suburbs, then into the streets and then into the heart of the city. near the office of amos royson the man in front uttered a peculiar whistle and passed on. at the next corner under the electric lamp he turned and found himself confronted by a slender man, whose face shone white under the ghastly light of the lamp, whose hair hung upon his shoulders, and whose eyes were distended with excitement. uttering a cry of fright, the negro sprang from the sidewalk into the gutter, but the other passed on without turning except to cross the street, where in a friendly shadow he stopped. and as he stood there the negro retraced his steps and paused at the door of the lawyer's office. a dimly outlined form was at the window above. they had no more than time to exchange a word when the negro went on and the street was bare, except that a square away a heavy-footed policeman was approaching. the man in the shadow leaned his head against a tree and thought. in his brain, standing out as distinct as if cut from black marble, was the face of the man he had followed. gerald possessed the reasoning faculty to an eminent degree, but it had been trained altogether upon abstract propositions. the small affairs of life were strange and remote to him, and the passions that animate the human breast were forces and agencies beyond his knowledge and calculations. annie montjoy, with the facts in his possession, would have reached instantly a correct conclusion as to their meaning. he could not handle them. his mind was absolutely free of suspicion. he had wandered to the little graveyard, as he had before when sleepless and harassed, and discovered that some one was disfiguring the body of his lifelong friend. to seize the spade and wreak vengeance upon the intruder was his first impulse, but at the moment that it should have fallen he saw that the head of the woman was being carefully replaced in position and the clothing arranged. he paused in wonder. the habitual opium-eater develops generally a cunning that is incomprehensible to the normal mind, and curiosity now controlled gerald. the moment for action had passed. he withdrew behind the tree to witness the conclusion of the drama. his following the retreating figure was but the continuance of his new mood. he would see the affair out and behold the face of the man. succeeding in this he went home, revolving in mind the strange experience he had gained. but the excitement would not pass away from him, and in the solitude of his studio, with marvelous skill he drew in charcoal the scene as it shone in memory--the man in the grave, the sad, dead face of the woman, shrinking into dissolution, and then its every detail perfect, upon a separate sheet the face of the man under the lamp. the memories no longer haunted him. they were transferred to paper. then gerald underwent the common struggle of his existence; he lay down and tossed upon his pillow; he arose and read and returned again. at last came the surrender, opium and--oblivion. standing by the easel next morning, virdow said to edward: "the brain cannot survive this many years. when dreams of memories such as these, vivid enough to be remembered and drawn, come upon it, when the waking mind holds them vivid, it is in a critical condition." he looked sadly upon the sleeper and felt the white wrist that overlay the counterpane. the flesh was cold, the pulse slow and feeble. "vitality small," he said. "it will be sudden when it comes; sleep will simply extend into eternity." edward's mind reverted to the old general. what was his own duty? he would decide. it might be that he would return no more, and if he did not, and gerald was left, he should have a protector. virdow had been silent and thoughtful. now he turned with sudden decision. "my experiments will probably end with the next," he said. "the truth is, i am so thoroughly convinced that the cultivation of this singular power which gerald possesses is destructive of the nervous system i cannot go on with them. in some way the young man has wound himself about me. i will care for him as i would a son. he is all gold." the old man passed out abruptly, ashamed of the feeling which shook his voice. but edward sat upon the bed and taking the white hand in his own, smoothed it gently, and gave himself up to thought. what did it mean? and how would it end? the sleeper stirred slightly. "mother," he said, and a childish smile dwelt for a moment upon his lips. edward replaced the hand upon the counterpane and withdrew. chapter xxxv. the grave in the past. when col. montjoy rode over to gen. evan's, a few mornings after the operation upon his wife's eyes, it was with but ill-defined notions of what he would say or what would be the result of the interview. circumstances had placed him in a strange and unpleasant position. col. montjoy felt that the paris trip could not be well avoided. he realized that the chances of accomplishing any real good for his wife were very small, but dr. campbell had distinctly favored it, and the hesitancy had evidently only been on account of the cost. but could he accept the generous offer made by morgan? that was the embarrassing question. he was not mentally blind; he felt assured that the real question for him to decide then was what he should answer when a demand for the hand of his daughter was made. for in accepting the loan and escort of edward morgan, he accepted him. could he do this? so far as the rumors about the young man were concerned, he never entertained them seriously. he regarded them only as a desperate political move, and so did the public generally. but a shadow ought not to hang over the life of his daughter. the old general was at home and partially read his visitor's predicament in his face as he approached the veranda. "come in, norton," he said without moving from his great rocker; "what is troubling you?" and he laughed maliciously. "but by the way," he added, "how is the madam to-day? mary told me yesterday she was getting along finely." "well, we can't tell, evan," said his visitor, drawing his chair next to the rail; "we can't tell. in fact, nothing will be known until the bandages are removed. i came off without my tobacco--" he was holding his pipe. the general passed him his box. "oh, well, she will come through all right; campbell is never mistaken." "that is true, and that is what troubles me. campbell predicts a return of the trouble and thinks in the near future her only chance for vision will lie in the eye which has been blind for several years. he is willing to admit that moreau in paris is better authority and would be glad for caroline to see him and have his opinion." "ah, indeed!" it was expressive. the colonel knew that evan comprehended the situation, if not the whole of it. if there had been any doubt, it would have been dispelled by the next words: "a great expense, norton, in these days, but it must be attended to." col. montjoy ran his hand through his hair and passed it over his brow nervously. "the trouble is, evan, the matter has been attended to, and too easily. edward morgan was present during the operation and has offered to lend me all the money necessary for the trip with or without security and with or without interest." the general shook with silent laughter and succeeded in getting enough smoke down his throat to induce a disguising cough. "that is a trouble, norton, that hasn't afflicted us old fellows much of late--extra ease in money matters. edward is rich and will not be in any way embarrassed by a matter like this. i think you will do well to make it a business transaction and accept." "you do not understand. i have noticed marked attentions to mary on the part of the young man, and mary," he said, sadly, "is, i am afraid, interested in him." "that is different. before you decide on accepting this offer, you feel that you must decide on the young man himself, i see. what do you think?" "i haven't been able to think intelligently, i am afraid, upon that point. what do you think, evan? mary is about as much your property as mine." "i think," said the general, throwing off his disguise, "that in edward morgan she will get the only man i ever saw to whom i would be willing to give her up. he is as straight and as brave as any man that ever followed me into battle." montjoy was silent awhile. "you know," he said, presently, "i value your opinion more than any man's and i do not wish to express or to intimate a doubt of mr. morgan, who, i see, has impressed you. i believe the letter of royson's was infamous and untrue in every respect, but it has been published--and she is my daughter. why in the name of common sense hasn't he come to me and given me something to go upon?" "it has occurred to me," said the general, dryly, "that he will do so when he comes for mary. in the meantime, a man isn't called upon to travel with a family tree under his arm and show it to every one who questions him. morgan is a gentleman, _sans peur et sans reproche_. if he is not, i do not know the breed. "so far as the charge of royson is concerned," continued the general, "let me calm your mind on that point. i have never entered upon this matter with you because the mistakes of a man's kindred are things he has no right to gossip about, even among friends. the woman, rita morgan, has always been free; she was given her freedom in infancy by john morgan's father. her mother's history is an unfortunate one. it is enough to say that she was sent out from virginia with john morgan's mother, who was, as you know, a blood relative of mine; and i know that this woman was sent away with an object. she looked confoundedly like some of the family. well, john morgan's father was wild; you can guess the result. "rita lived in her own house, and when her husband died john took her to his home. he told me once in so many words that his father left instructions outside his will to that effect, and that rita's claims upon the old man, as far as blood was concerned, were about the same as his. you see from this that the royson story is an absurdity. i knew it when i went in and vouched for our young friend, and i would have proved it to thomas the night he called, but rita dropped dead that day." montjoy drew a long breath. "you astonish me," he said, "and relieve me greatly. i had never heard this. i did not really doubt, but you have cleared up all possibility of error." "nor has any other man heard the story. my conversation with john morgan grew out of his offer to buy of me alec, a very handsome mulatto man i owned, to whom rita had taken a fancy. he wanted to buy him and free him, but i had never bought or sold a slave, and could not bring myself to accept money for alec. i freed him myself. john was not willing for her to marry a slave. they were married and he died in less than a year. that is rita's history. when alec died rita went to john morgan and kept house for him. "when it was that gerald came in i do not know," pursued the general musingly. "the boy was nearly grown before i heard of him. he and edward are children of distant relatives, i am told. john never saw the latter at all, probably, but educated him and, finding gerald incapacitated, very wisely left his property to the other, with gerald in his charge. "no, i have taken the greatest fancy to these two young fellows, although i only have known one a few weeks and the other by sight and reputation." he paused a moment, as though his careless tone had desecrated a sacred scene; the face of the sleeper rose to his mind. "but they are game and thoroughbreds. accept the proposition and shut your eyes to the future. it will all work out rightly." montjoy shook his head sadly. "i will accept it," he said, "but only because it means a chance for caroline which otherwise she would not have. of course you know mary is going with her, and morgan is to be their escort?" the general uttered a prolonged whistle and then laughed. "well, confound the little darling, to think she should come over here and tell me all the arrangements and leave herself out; montjoy, that is the only one of your family born without grit; tell her so. she is afraid of one old man's tongue." "here she comes, with morgan," said montjoy, smiling. "tell her yourself." edward's buggy was approaching rapidly and the flushed and happy face of the girl could be seen within. "plotting against me," she called out, as she descended, "and i dare you to own it." the general said: "on the contrary, i was about telling your father what a brave little woman you are. come in, mr. morgan," he added, seeing from her blushes that she understood him. "mr. morgan was coming over to see the general," said mary, "and i came with him to ride back with papa." and, despite the protests of all the others, he presently got mary into the buggy and carried her off. "you will stop, as you come by, mr. morgan," he called out. "i will be glad to see you on a matter of business." the buggy was yet in sight when edward turned to his old friend and said: "gen. evan, i have come to make a statement to you, based upon long reflection and a sense of justice. i am about to leave the state for france, and may never return. there are matters connected with my family which i feel you should know, and i prefer to speak rather than write them." he paused to collect his thoughts, the general looking straight ahead and recalling the conversation just had with col. montjoy. "if i seem to trespass on forbidden grounds or stir unpleasant memories, i trust you will hear me through before condemning me. many years ago you lost a daughter----" "go on," said the general as edward paused and looked doubtfully toward him. "she was to have married my uncle, i am informed, but she did not. on the contrary, she married a foreigner--her music teacher. is this not true?" "go on." "she went abroad, but unknown to you she came back and her child was born." "ah." the sound that came from the old man's lips was almost a gasp. for the first time since the recital was begun he turned his eyes upon his companion. "at this birth, which took place probably at ilexhurst, possibly in the house of rita morgan, whose death you know of, occurred the birth of rita's child also. your daughter disappeared. rita was delirious, and when she recovered could not be convinced that this child was not her own; and she thought him her son until the day of her death." "where is this child? why was i not informed?" the old general's voice was hoarse and his words scarcely audible. edward, looking him full in the face, replied: "at ilexhurst! his name, as we know it, is gerald morgan." evan, who had half arisen, sank back in his chair. "and this is your belief, mr. morgan?" "that is the fact, as the weight of evidence declares. the woman in health did not claim gerald for her son. in the moment of her death she cried out: 'they lied!' this is what you heard in the yard and i repeated it at that time. i was, as you know, laboring under great excitement. there is a picture of your daughter at ilexhurst and the resemblance it strong. you yourself were struck with the family resemblance. "i felt it my duty to speak, even at the risk of appearing to trespass upon your best feelings. you were my friend when i needed friends, and had i concealed this i would have been ungrateful." edward rose, but the general, without looking up, laid his hand upon his arm. "sit down, mr. morgan. i thank you. you could not have done less. but give me time to realize what this means. if you are correct, i have a grandson at ilexhurst"--edward bowed slightly--"whom my daughter abandoned to the care of a servant." again morgan bowed, but by the faintest motion of his head. "i did not say abandoned," he corrected. "it cannot be true," said the old man; "it cannot be true. she was a good girl and even infatuation would not have changed her character. she would have come back to me." "if she could," said edward. he told him the story of the unfinished manuscript and the picture drawn by gerald. he was determined to tell him all, except as related to himself. that was his own and virdow's secret. "if that story is true, she may not have been able to get to you; and then the war came on; you must know all before you can judge." the old soldier was silent. he got up with apparent difficulty and said formally: "mr. morgan, i will be glad to have you join me in a glass of wine. i am not as vigorous as i may appear, and this is my time o' day. come in." edward noticed that, as he followed, the general's form had lost something of its martial air. no words were exchanged over the little southern ceremony. the general merely lifted his glass slightly and bowed. the room was cool and dark. he motioned edward to a rocker and sank into his leather-covered easy-chair. there was a minute's silence broken by the elder man. "what is your belief, mr. morgan, as to gerald?" "the facts as stated are all----" "nevertheless, as man to man--your belief." "then, in my opinion, the evidence points to gerald as the child of this woman rita. i am sure also that it is his own belief. the only disturbing evidence is the likeness, but virdow says that the children of servants very frequently bear likeness to a mistress. it is a delicate question, but all of our ancestors were not immaculate. is there anything in the ancestry of rita morgan--is there any reason why her child should bear a likeness to--to----" the general lifted his hand in warning. but he said: "what became of the other child?" the question did not disturb or surprise the young man. he expected that it would be asked. it was natural. yet, prepared as he was, his voice was unsteady when he replied: "that i do not know." "you do not know!" the general's tone of voice was peculiar. did he doubt? "i had two objects in view when i brought up this subject," said edward, when the silence grew embarrassing; "one was to acquaint you with the possibilities out at ilexhurst, and to ask your good offices for gerald in the event my absence is prolonged or any necessity for assistance should arise. the other is to find the second child if it is living and determine gerald's status; and, with this as my main object, i venture to ask you if, since her disappearance, you have ever heard of marion evan?" "god help me," said evan, brokenly; "yes. but it was too soon; too soon; i could not forgive her." "and since then?" the old man moved his hand slowly and let it fall. "silence--oblivion." "can you give me the name of her husband?" without reply the veteran went to the secretary and took from a pigeonhole a well-worn letter. "no eye but mine has ever read these lines," he said, simply. "i do not fear to trust them to you! read! i cannot now!" edward's hand trembled as he received the papers. if rita morgan spoke the truth he was about to look upon lines traced by his mother's hand. it was like a message from the dead. chapter xxxvi. the pledge that was given. edward opened the letter with deep emotion. the handwriting was small and unformed, the writing of schoolgirl. it read: "jan. , --. my darling papa: when you read this i will be far away upon the ocean and separated from you by circumstances compared with which leagues are but trifles. you probably know them by telegram before now, but i cannot leave you and my native land without a farewell. papa, i am now the wife of an honorable, loving man, and happy as i could be while remembering you and your loneliness. why i have done this, why i have taken this step without coming to you first and letting you decide, i cannot tell, nor do i know. i only know that i love my husband as i have never loved before; that i have his whole affection; that he wanted me to go with him blindly, and that i have obeyed. that is all. there is no ingratitude in my heart, no lessening of affection for you; you still are to me the one man in my old world; but my husband had come in and made a new world of it all, and i am his. you will blame me, i am afraid, and perhaps disown me. if so, god is merciful to women who suffer for those they love. i would lay down my life for gaspard; i have laid down everything dear to life. we go to his childhood's home in silesia, where with the money he has saved and with his divine art, we hope to be happy and face the world without fear. oh, papa, if you could only forgive me; if you could remember your own love for that beautiful mamma of whom you never tired telling, and who, i am sure, is near me now; if you could remember and forgive me, the world would hold nothing that i would exchange a thought for. gaspard is noble and manly. you would admire him and he would adore you, as do i, your only child. papa, you will write to me; a father can never forsake his child. if i am wrong, you cannot forsake me; if i am right, you cannot. there is no arrangement in all god's providence for such a contingency, and christ did not turn even from the woman whom others would stone. can you turn from me, when if i have erred it is through the divine instinct that god has given me? no! you cannot, you will not! if you could, you would not have been the noble patient, brave man whom all men love. write at once and forgive and bless your child. "marion." on a separate slip, pinned to the letter, was: "my address will be mrs. gaspard levigne, breslau, silesia. if we change soon, i will write to you. god bless and care for you. "m." edward gently replaced the faded letter upon the table; his eyes were wet and his voice changed and unnatural. "you did not write?" the general shook his head. "you did not write?" edward repeated the question; this time his voice almost agonized in the weight of emotion. again the general shook his head, fearing to trust his voice. the young man gazed upon him long and curiously and was silent. "i wrote five years later," said evan, presently. "it was the best i could do. you cannot judge the ante-bellum southern planter by him to-day. i was a king in those times! i had ambition. i looked to the future of my child and my family! all was lost; all perished in the act of a foolish girl, infatuated with a music master. i can forgive now, but over me have rolled waves enough in thirty years to wear away stone. the war came on; i carried that letter from manassas to appomattox and then i wrote. i set inquiries afoot through consuls abroad. no voice has ever raised from the silence. my child is dead." "perhaps not," said edward, gently; "perhaps not. if there is any genius in european detective bureaus that money can command, we shall know--we shall know." "if she lived she would have written. i cannot get around that. i know my child. she could not remain silent nearly thirty years." "unless silenced by circumstances over which she had no control," continued edward, "and every side of this matter has presented itself to me. your daughter had one firm, unchanging friend--my uncle, john morgan. he has kept her secret--perhaps her child. is it not possible that he has known of her existence somewhere; that she has been all along informed of the condition and welfare of the child--and of you?" evan did not reply; he was intently studying the young man. "john offered to find her a year after she was gone. he came and pleaded for her, but i gave him conditions and he came no more." "it is not only possible that she lives," said edward, "but probable. and it is certain that if john morgan knew of her existence and then that she had passed away, that all pledges would have been suspended in the presence of a father's right to know that his child was dead. i go to unravel the mystery. i begin to feel that i will succeed, for now, for the first time i have a starting point. i have name and address." he took down the information in his memorandum book. edward prepared to take his departure, when evan, throwing off his mood, stood before him thoughtful and distressed. "say it," said edward, bravely, reading a change in the frank face. "one moment, and i shall bid you farewell and godspeed." he laid his hand upon edward's shoulder and fixed a penetrating gaze upon him. "young man, my affairs can wait, but yours cannot. i have no questions to ask of yourself; you came among us and earned our gratitude. in time of trouble i stood by you. it was upon my vouching personally for your gentility that your challenge was accepted. we went upon the field together; your cause became mine. now this; i have yet a daughter, the young woman whom you love--not a word now--she is the pride and idol of two old men. she is well disposed toward you, and you are on the point of going upon a journey in her company under circumstances that place her somewhat at a disadvantage. i charge you that it is not honorable to take advantage of this to win from her a declaration or a promise of any kind. man to man, is it not true?" "it is true," said edward, turning pale, but meeting his gaze fearlessly. "it is so true that i may tell you now that from my lips no word of love has ever passed to her; that if i do speak to her upon that subject it will be while she is here among her own people and free from influences that would bias her decision unfairly." the hands of the two men met impulsively. a new light shone in the face of the soldier. "i vouched for you, and if i erred then there is no more faith to be put in manhood, for if you be not a true man i never have seen one. go and do your best for gerald--and for me. i must reflect upon these matters--i must reflect! as yet their full import has failed me. you must send me that manuscript." deeply impressed and touched, edward withdrew. the task was finished. it had been a delicate and trying one for him. at the hall edward went with mary into the darkened room and took the little mother's hand in his and sat beside her to tell of the proposed journey. he pictured vividly the scenes to be enjoyed and life in the gay capital, and all as a certainty for her. she did not doubt; dr. campbell had promised sight; it would return. but this journey, the expense, they could not afford it. but mary came to the rescue there; her father had told her he was entirely able to bear the expense, and she was satisfied. this, however, did not deceive the mother, who was perfectly familiar with the family finances. she knitted away in discreet silence, biding her time. the business to which col. montjoy had referred was soon finished. he formally accepted the very opportune offer and wished to know when they should meet in the city to arrange papers. to this edward objected, suggesting that he would keep an accurate account of expenses incurred and arrange papers upon his return; and to this, the only reasonable arrangement possible, col. montjoy acceded. one more incident closed the day. edward had nearly reached the city, when he came upon a buggy by the roadside, drawn up in the shade of a tree. his own animal, somewhat jaded, was leisurely walking. their approach was practically noiseless, and he was alongside the vehicle before either of the two occupants looked up. he saw them both start violently and the face of the man flush quickly, a scar upon the nose becoming at once crimson. they were royson and his cousin. greatly pained and embarrassed, edward was at a loss how to act, but unconsciously he lifted his hat, with ceremonious politeness. royson did not respond, but annie, with more presence of mind, smiled sweetly and bowed. this surprised him. she had studiously avoided meeting him at the hall. the message of mary, "royson is your enemy," flashed upon him. he had felt intuitively the enmity of the woman. why this clandestine interview and to what did it tend? he knew in after days. arriving at home he found virdow writing in the library and forbore to disturb him. gerald was slumbering in the glass-room, his deep breathing betraying the cause. edward went to the little room upstairs to secure the manuscript and prepare it for sending to gen. evan. opening the desk he was surprised to see that the document was not where he placed it. a search developed it under all the fragmentary manuscript, and he was about to inclose it in an envelope when he noticed that the pages were reversed. the last reader had not slipped the pages one under another, but had placed them one on another, probably upon the desk, thus bringing the last page on top. edward remembered at that moment that in reading the manuscript he had carefully replaced each page in its proper position and had left the package on top of all others. who could have disturbed them? not virdow, and there was none else but gerald! he laid aside the package and reflected. of what use could this unexplained manuscript be to gerald? none that he could imagine; and yet only gerald could have moved it. greatly annoyed, he restored the leaves and placed them in an envelope. he was still thinking of the singular discovery he had made, and idly glancing over the other fragments, when from one of them fell a newspaper clipping. he would not in all probability have read it through, but the name "gaspard," so recently impressed upon his mind, caught his eye. the clipping was printed in french and was headed "from our vienna correspondent." translated, it read as follows: "to-day began the trial of leon gaspard for the murder of otto schwartz in this city on the th ult. the case attracts considerable attention, because of the fact that gaspard has been for a week playing first violin in the orchestra of the imperial theater, where he has won many admirers and because of the peculiar circumstances of the case. schwartz was a stranger and came to this city only upon the day of his death. it seems that gaspard, so it is charged, some years previously had deserted a sister of schwartz after a mock marriage, but this he denies. the men met in a cafe and a scuffle ensued, during which schwartz was stabbed to the heart and instantly killed. gaspard claims that he had been repeatedly threatened by letter, and that schwartz came to vienna to kill him, and that he (schwartz) struck the first blow. he had upon his face a slight cut, inflicted, he claims, by a seal ring worn by schwartz. bystanders did not see the blow, and schwartz had no weapons upon his body. gaspard declares that he saw a knife in the dead man's hand and that it was picked up and concealed by a stranger who accompanied him into the cafe. unless he can produce the threatening letters, and find witnesses to prove the knife incident, the trial will go hard with him." another clew! and the husband of marion evan was a murderer! who sent that clipping to john morgan? probably a detective bureau. edward folded it sadly, and gave it place by the memoranda he had written in his notebook. chapter xxxvii. "which of the two was my mother?" the sleeper lay tranquilly forgetful of the morning hours redolent of perfumes and vocal with the songs of birds. the sunlight was gone, a deep-gray cloud having crept up to shadow the scene. all was still in the glass-room. virdow shook his head. "this," he said, "strange, as it may seem, is his real life. waking brings the dreams. we will not disturb him." edward would have returned his violin to its case, but as he sat looking upon the face of the sleeper and revolving in mind the complications which had enslaved him, there came upon the roof of glass the unheralded fall of rain. as it rose and fell in fine cadences under the fitful discharge of moisture from the uneven cloud drifting past, a note wild but familiar caught his ear; it was the note of the waterfall. unconsciously he lifted his bow, and blending with that strange minor chord, he filled the room with low, sweet melody. and there as the song grew into rapture from its sadness under the spell of a new-found hope, under the memory of that last scene, when the rainbow overhung the waters and the face of the girl had become radiant with the thought she expressed, gerald arose from his couch and stood before the easel. all the care lines were gone from his face. for the first time in the knowledge of the two men he stood a cool, rational being. the strains ran on. the artist drew, lingering over a touch of beauty, a shade of expression, a wave of fine hair upon the brow. then he stood silent and gazed upon his work. it was finished. the song of the violin trembled--died away. he did not for the moment note his companions; he was looking upward thoughtfully. the sun had burst open the clouds and was filling the outer world with yellow light, through the water-seeped air. far away, arching the mellow depths of a cloud abyss, its colors repeated upon the wet grass around him, was a rainbow. then he saw that virdow and edward were watching him. the spell was broken. he smiled a little and beckoned to edward. "here is a new face," he said. "it is the first time it has come to me. it is a face that rests me." edward approached and gazed upon the face of mary! speechless with the rush of feeling that came over him, he turned and left the room. to virdow it meant nothing except a fine ideal, but, impressed with the manner of the musician, he followed to the great hall. the girl of the picture stood in the doorway. before he had time to speak, he saw the martial figure of evan overshadow hers and heard the strong, manly voice asking for edward. edward came forward. confused by his recent experience, and the sudden appearance of the original of the picture, he with difficulty managed to welcome his guest and introduce his friend. "i thought best to come," said evan when virdow, with easy courtesy, was engaging the attention of the lady. "i have passed a sleepless night. where can we speak privately?" edward motioned to the stairway, but hesitated. "never mind mary," said the general, divining his embarrassment. "i took her away from the colonel on the road; she and the professor will take care of themselves." she heard the remark and smiled, replying gayly: "but don't stay too long. i am afraid i shall weary your friend." virdow made his courtliest bow. "impossible," he said. "i have been an untiring admirer of the beautiful since childhood." "bravo!" cried evan. "you will do!" virdow bowed again. "i would be glad to have you answer a question," he said, rather abruptly, gazing earnestly into her eyes. she was astonished, but managed to reply assuringly. "it is this: have you ever met gerald morgan?" "never. i have heard so much of him lately, i should be glad to see him." "has he ever seen you?" "not that i am aware of----" "certainly not face to face--long enough for him to remember your every feature--your expression?" "why, no." the old man looked troubled and began to walk up and down the hall, his head bent forward. the girl watched him nonplussed and with a little uneasiness. "pardon me--pardon me," he said, finally, recalling the situation. "but it is strange, strange!" "may i inquire what troubles you, sir?" she asked, timidly. "yes, certainly, yes." he started, with sudden resolution, and disappeared for a few moments. when he returned, he was holding a large sheet of cardboard. "it is this," he said. "how could a man who has never seen you face to face have drawn this likeness?" he held gerald's picture before her. she uttered an exclamation of surprise. "and did he draw it--did mr. gerald----" "in my presence." "he has never seen me." "yes," said a musical voice; "as you were then, i have seen you." she started with fright. gerald, with pallid face and hair upon his shoulders, stood before her. "so shall i see you forever." she drew nearer to virdow. "this, my young friend, is mary." it was all he could remember. and then to her: "this is gerald." "mary," he said, musingly, "mary? what a pretty name! it suits you. none other would." she had extended her hand shyly. he took it and lifted it to his lips. it was the first time a girl's hand had rested in his. he did not release it; she drew away at last. something in his voice had touched her; it was the note of suffering, of unrest, which a woman feels first. she knew something of his history. he had been edward's friend. her father had pictured the scene wherein he had cornered and defied royson. "i am sure we shall be friends, mr. gerald. mr. morgan is so fond of you." "we shall be more than friends," he said, gently; "more than friends." she misunderstood him. had he divined her secret and did edward promise him that? "never less," she said. he had not removed his eyes from her, and now as she turned to speak to virdow, he came and stood by her side, and lifting gently one of her brown curls gazed wonderingly upon it. she was embarrassed, but her good sense came to the rescue. "see the light upon it come and go," he said. "we call it the reflected light; but it is life itself glimmering there. the eye holds the same ray." "you have imagination," she said, smiling, "and it is fortunate. here you must be lonely." he shook his head. "imagination is often a curse. the world generally is happy, i think, and the happiest are those who touch life through the senses alone and who do not dream. i am never alone! would to god sometimes i were." a look of anguish convulsed his face. she laid her hand upon his wrist as he stood silently struggling for self-possession. "i am so sorry," she said, softly; "i have pained you." the look, the touch, the tender voice--which was it? he shuddered and gazed upon the little hand and then into her eyes. mary drew back, wondering; she read him aright. love in such natures is not a growth. it is born as a flash of light. yet she did not realize the full significance of the discovery. then, oh, wonderful power of nature, she turned upon him her large, melting eyes and gave him one swift message of deepest sympathy. again he shuddered and the faintest crimson flushed his cheeks. they went with virdow to see the wing-room, of which she had heard so much, to look into the little cabinets, where he made his photographs, to handle his weapons, view his favorite books and all the curious little surroundings of his daily life; she went with an old man and a child. her girlish interest was infectious; virdow threw off his speculations and let himself drift with the new day, and gerald was as a smiling boy. they even ventured with unconventional daring to peep into the glass-room. standing on the threshold, the girl gazed in with surprise and delight. "how novel and how simple!" she exclaimed; "and to think of having the stars for friends all night!" he laughed silently and nodded his head; here was one who understood. and then her eyes caught a glimpse of the marble bust, which gerald had polished and cleared of its discolorations. she made them bring it and place it before her. a puzzled look overspread her face as she glanced from gerald to the marble and back again. "strange, strange," she said; "sit here, mr. gerald, sit here, with your head by this one, and let me see." white now as the marble itself, but controlled by the new power that had enthralled, he obeyed; the two faces looked forward upon the girl, feature for feature. even the pose was the same. "it was well done," she said. "i never saw a more perfect resemblance, and yet"--going to one side--"the profile is that of mr. edward!" the young man uttered no sound; he was, in the swift passing of the one bright hour of his life, as the marble itself. but as he remained a moment under the spell of despair that overran him, gen. evan stood in the door. only mary caught the words in his sharp, half-smothered exclamation as he started back. they were: "it is true!" he came forward and, taking up the marble, looked long and tenderly into the face, and bowing his head gave way to his tears. one by one they withdrew--virdow, mary, edward. only gerald remained, gazing curiously into the general's face and thinking. then tenderly the old man replaced the bust upon the table, and, standing above his head, and said with infinite tenderness: "gerald, you do not know me; if god wills it you will know me some day! that marble upon the table is the carved face of my daughter--marion evan." "then you are gen. evan." the young man spoke the words coolly and without emotion. "yes. nearly thirty years ago she left me--without a farewell until too late, with no human being in all the world to love, none to care for me." "so rita told me." the words were little more than a whisper. "i did not curse her; i disowned her and sought to forget. i could not. then i began to cry out for her in the night--in my loneliness--do you know what that word means?" "do i know?" the pathos in the echo was beyond description. "and then i began a search that ended only when ten years had buried all hopes. no tidings, no word after her first letter ever reached me. she is dead, i believe; but recently some of the mystery has been untangled. i begin to know, to believe that there has been an awful error somewhere. she did come back. her child was born and rita cared for it. as god is my judge, i believe that you are that child! tell me, do you remember, have you any knowledge that will help me to unravel this tangled----" "you are simply mistaken, general," said the young man, without moving other than to fold his arms and sink back into his chair. "i am not the son of marion evan." speechless for a moment, the general gazed upon his companion. "i thought i was," continued gerald; "i hoped i was. my god! my god! i tried to be! i have exhausted almost life itself to make the truth a lie, and the lie a truth! i have struggled with this secret here for twenty years or more; i have studied every phase of life; i well-nigh broke rita's heart. poor honest rita! "she told me what they claimed--she was too honest to conceal that--and what she believed; she was too human to conceal that; and then left me to judge. the woman they would have me own as my mother left me, a lonely babe, to the care of strangers; to grow up ill-taught, unguided, frail and haunted with a sickening fear. she has left me twenty-seven years. rita stayed. if i were sick, rita was by me. if i was crazed, rita was there to calm. sleepless by night, sleepless by day, she loved and comforted and blessed me." he had risen in his growing excitement. "i ask you, general, who have known life better than i, which of the two was my mother? let me answer; you will not. the woman of thirty years ago is nothing to me; she was once. that has passed. when rita lay dead in her coffin i kissed her lips at last and called her mother. i would have killed myself afterward--life seemed useless--but not so now. it may be a terrible thing to be rita's son; i suppose it is, but as before god, i thank him that i have come to believe that there are no ties of blood between me and the woman who was false to both father and child, and in all probability deserted her husband." gen. evan turned abruptly and rushed from the room. edward saw his face as he passed out through the hall and did not speak. with courtly dignity he took mary to the buggy and stood with bowed head until they were gone. he then returned to the glass-room. gerald stood among the ruins of a drawing and the fragments of the marble bust lay on the floor. one glance at this scene and the blazing eyes of the man was sufficient. evan had failed. "tell them," exclaimed gerald, "that even the son of a slave is dishonored, when they seek to link him to a woman who abandons her child." "what is it," asked virdow, in a whisper, coming to edward's side. edward shook his head and drew him from the room. "he does not know what he is saying." chapter xxxviii. under the spell. the autumn days ran out and in the depth of the southern woods, here and there, the black gums and sweet gums began to flame. and with them came the day when the bandages were removed from the eyes of the gentle woman at the hall. the family gathered about the little figure in the sitting-room. edward morgan with them, and col. montjoy lowered the bandage. the room had been darkened and all light except what came through one open shutter had been excluded. there was a moment of painful silence; mary tightly clasping her mother's hands. the invalid turned her face to the right and left, and then to the window. "light," she said gently. "i see." "thank god!" the words burst from the old man's lips and his arms went around mother and daughter at once. for quicker than he the girl had glided in between them and was clasping the beloved form. edward said a few words of congratulation and passed outside. the scene was sacred. then came days of practice. the eyes so long darkened must be accustomed to the light and not strained. upon that weak vision, little by little, came back the world, the trees and flowers, the faces of husband and daughter and friends. it was a joyful season at the hall. a little sadder, a little sterner than usual, but with his fine face flushed in sympathetic feeling, the old general came to add his congratulations. now nothing remained but to prepare for paris, and all was bustle. a few more nights and then--departure! mary was at the piano, playing the simple music of the south and singing the songs which were a part of the air she had breathed all her life--the folk songs of the blacks. col. montjoy had the duchess on his lap to hear "the little boy in his watch crack hickory nuts" and the monotonous cracking of the nuts mingling with the melody of the musician had put both asleep. mary and edward went to the veranda, and to them across the field came the measured tread of feet, the call of the fiddler, and now and then strains of music, such as the negro prefers. edward proposed an excursion to witness the dance, and the girl assented gladly. she was herself a born dancer; one whose feet were set to rhythm in infancy. they reached the long house, a spacious one-room edifice, with low rafters but a broad expanse of floor, and stood at the door. couple after couple passed by in the grand promenade, the variety and incongruities of colors amusing edward greatly. every girl in passing called repeatedly to "missy," the name by which mary was known on the plantation, and their dusky escorts bowed awkwardly and smiled. suddenly the lines separated and a couple began to dance. edward, who had seen the dancers of most nations, was delighted with the abandon of these. the man pursued the girl through the ranks, she eluding him with ease, as he was purposely obstructed by every one. his object was to keep as near her as possible for the final scene. at last she reappeared in the open space and hesitating a moment, her dusky face wreathed in smiles, darted through the doorway. there was a shout as her escort followed. if he could catch her before she reëntered at the opposite door she paid the penalty. before edward realized the situation the girl was behind him. he stepped the wrong way, there was a collision, and ere she could recover, her pursuer had her in his arms. there was a moment's struggle; his distinct smack proved his success, and if it had not, the resounding slap from the broad hand of his captive would have betrayed matters. on went the dance. mary stood patting time to the music of the violin in the hands of old morris, the presiding genius of the festival, who bent and genuflected to suit the requirements of his task. as the revel grew wilder, as it always does under the stimulus of a spectator's presence, she motioned to edward, and entering, stood by the player. "in all your skill," she said, "you cannot equal this." for reply the young man, taking advantage of a pause in the rout, reached over and took the well-worn instrument from the hands of the old man. there was a buzz of interest. catching the spirit of the scene he drew the bow and gave them the wild dance music of the hungarians. they responded enthusiastically and the player did not fail. then, when the tumult had reached its climax, there was a crash, and with bow in air edward, flushed and excited, stood gazing upon the crowd. then forty voices shouted: "missy! missy!" on the impulse of the moment they cheered and clapped their hands. all eyes were turned to mary. she looked into the face of the player; his eyes challenged hers and she responded, instinctively the dusky figures shrank to the wall and alone, undaunted, the slender girl stood in the middle of the deserted floor. edward played the gypsy dance, increasing the time until it was a passionate melody, and mary began. her lithe form swayed and bent and glided in perfect response to the player, the little feet twinkling almost unseen upon the sandy boards. such grace, such allurements, he had never before dreamed of. and finally, breathless, she stood one moment, her hand uplifted, the triumphant interpreter of his melody. with mischievous smile, she sprang from the door, her face turned backward for one instant. releasing the instrument, edward followed in perfect forgetfulness of self and situation. but when, puzzled, he appeared alone at the opposite door, he heard her laugh in the distance--and memory overwhelmed him with her tide. he was pale and startled and the company was laughing. he cast a handful of money among them and in the confusion that followed made his escape. mary was waiting demurely in the path. "it was perfect," he said, breaking the awkward silence. "any one could dance to that music," was her reply. silently they began their return. an old woman sat in her cabin door, a fire of chunks making a red spot in the gloom behind. "we go to-morrow, aunt sylla. is it for good or ill?" the woman was old and wrinkled. she was the focus of all local superstition; one of the ante-bellum voodoos. if her pewter spoons had been gold, her few beads diamonds, she might have left the doors unbarred without danger. mary had paused and asked the question to draw out the odd character for her friend. "in the woods the clocks of heaven strike ! jeffers, who was never born, speaks out," was the strange reply. "in the woods," said mary, thoughtfully, "the dew drips tinkling from the leaves; jeffers, the redbird, was never born, but hatched. what does he say, aunt sylla?" the woman was trying to light her pipe. absence of tobacco was the main cause of her failure. edward crushed a cigar and handed it to her. when she had lighted it she lifted the blazing chunk and her faded eyes looked steadily upon the young man. "he says the gentleman will come some day and bring much tobacco." the girl laughed, but the darkness hid her blushes. "in the meantime," said edward cheerfully, placing a silver coin in her hand, "you can tell your friend jeffers that you are supplied." the negro's prophecy is usually based on shrewd guesses. sylla grasped the coin with the eagerness of a child receiving a new doll. she pointed her finger at him and looked to the girl. mary laughed. "keep still a moment, mr. morgan," she said, "i must rob you." she took a strand or two of his hair between her little fingers and plucked them out. edward would not have flinched had there been fifty. "now something you have worn--what can it be? oh, a button." she took his penknife and cut from his coat sleeve one of its buttons. "there, aunt sylla, if you are not successful with them i shall never forgive you." the old woman took the hair and the button and relapsed into silent smoking. "i am a little curious to know what she is going to do with those things," said edward. mary looked at him shyly. "she is going to protect you," she said. "she will mix a little ground glass and a drop of chicken blood with them, and sew all in a tiny bag. no negro alive or dead would touch you then for the universe, and should you touch one of them with that charm it would give them catalepsy. you will get it to-morrow." "she is arming me with a terrible power at small cost," he replied, dryly. "old sylla is a prophetess," said the girl, "as well as a voodoo, and there is with us a tradition that death in the family will follow her every visit to the house. it is strange, but within our memory it has proved true. my infant brother, my only sister, mamma's brother, papa's sister, an invalid northern cousin spending the winter here--all their deaths were preceded by the appearance of old sylla." "and is her success in prophecy as marked?" "yes, so far as i know." she hesitated a moment. "her prediction as to myself has not had time to mature." "and what was the prediction?" "that some day a stranger would carry me into a strange land," she said, smiling; "and--break my heart." they had reached the gate; except where the one light burned in the sitting-room all was darkness and silence. edward said gently, as he stood holding open the gate: "i am a stranger and shortly i will take you into a strange land, but may god forget me if i break your heart." she did not reply, but with face averted passed in. the household was asleep. she carried the lamp to his door and opened it. he took it and then her hand. for a moment they looked into each other's eyes; then, gravely lifting the little hand, he kissed it. "may god forget me," he said again, "if i break your heart." he held the door open until she had passed down the stairs, her flushed face never lifted again to his. and then with the shutting of the door came darkness. but in the gloom a white figure came from the front doorway, stood listening at the stairs and then as noiseless as a sunbeam glided down into the hall below. chapter xxxix. barksdale's warning. edward was awakened by a cowhorn blown just before the peep of day and the frantic baying of the hounds that charlie possum was bringing to the house. as he dressed and came forth the echos of horses' feet were heard in the distance upon the public roads and the cry of other hounds, and as the gray dawn lighted the east the outer yard presented an animated scene. about a dozen riders were dismounting or dismounted were trying to force a place between the multitude of dogs, great and small, that were settling old and new disputes rough and tumble, tooth and toe nail. there was little of the holiday attire that is usually seen at club meets; the riders wore rough clothing and caps and their small slender horses were accoutered with saddles and bridles that had been distinctly "worn." but about all was a business air and promise of genuine sport. many of the dogs were of the old "july" stock, descendants of a famous maryland dog of years before, whose progeny scattered throughout georgia constitute canine aristocracy wherever found--a slender-flanked, fullchested animal, with markings of black and tan. among them were their english rivals of larger form and marked with blotches of red and white. the servants were busy getting light refreshments for the riders. mary was the superintendent of this, but at the same time she was presiding over a ceremony dear to the old south at all hours of the day. into each generous cut glass goblet that lined her little side table she poured a few spoonsful of sweetened water, packing them with crushed ice. down through the little arctic heaps, a wineglassful of each, she poured a ruby liquor grown old in the deep cellar, and planted above the radiated pyramids little forests of mint. nothing but silver is worthy to hold such works of art, and so getting out an old, well-worn montjoy silver, its legend and crest almost faded into the general smoothness of their background, she placed them there and began her ministry in the long dining room. she made a pretty picture as she passed among the men, her short, narrowskirted riding dress and little felt hat setting off her lithe, active form perfectly. the ceremony was simple and short. everybody was eager to be off. just as they mounted and rode out, mary appeared from somewhere, mounted upon a half broken colt, that betrayed a tendency to curve herself into a half-moon, and gallop broadside against fences and trees that were inconveniently located. edward viewed the mount with alarm. though a fairly good rider, he was not up to cross country runs and he questioned his ability to be of much assistance should the half broken animal bolt, with its fair burden. he proposed an exchange, but mary laughed at the idea. "lorna is all right," she said, "but you could never get her out of the yard. she will steady up after awhile, and the best of horses can't beat her in getting round corners and over fences." "daughter," said the colonel, checking his horse as he prepared to follow, "are you sure of lorna?" "perfectly. she is going to do her worst for a while and then her best. steady girl; don't disgrace yourself before company." lorna danced and tossed her head and chewed upon her bit with impatience. at that moment barksdale rode into the yard, mounted upon a tall thoroughbred, his equipments perfect, dress elegant, seat easy and carriage erect. he seemed to edward a perfect horseman. he gravely saluted them both. "i see that i am in the nick of time, miss mary; i was afraid it was late." "it is late," said the girl, "but this time it is a cat and doesn't matter. the scent will lie long after sun-up." they were following then and the conversation was difficult. already the dark line of men was disappearing down the line in its yet unbroken shadow. a mile away the party turned into the low grounds and here the general met them riding his great roan and, as always when mounted, having the appearance of an officer on parade. he came up to the three figures in the rear and saluted them cheerily. his old spirits seemed to have returned. they entered into a broad valley that had been fallow for several years. along the little stream that threaded its way down the middle with zigzag indecision, grew the southern cane from to feet high; the mass a hundred yards broad in places, and at others narrowing down to fords. this cane growing erect is impenetrable for horses. the rest of the valley, half a mile wide, was grown up in sage, broomstraw, little pines and briars. the general shape of the ground was that of the letter y, the stem being the creek, and the arms its two feeders leading in from the hills. to start at the lower end of the letter, travel up and out one arm to its end, and return to the starting point, meant an eight mile ride, if the cat kept to the cane as was likely. it was a mile across from arm to arm, without cover except about an acre of sparse, low cane half way between. when mary came up to the leading riders, with her escort, they were discussing a fact that all seemed to regard as significant. one of the old dogs, "leader," had uttered a sharp, quick yelp. all other dogs were focusing toward her; their dark figures visible here and there as they threaded the tangled way. suddenly an angry, excited baying in shrill falsetto was heard, and evan shouted: "that's my puppy carlo! where are your english dogs?" "wait," said one of the party. "the english dogs will be in at start and finish." suddenly "leader" opened fullmouthed, a second ahead of her puppy, and the next instant, pandemonium broke loose. forty-seven dogs were racing in full cry up the stream. a dozen excited men were following, with as much noise and skill as they could command. "a cat, by ----" exclaimed one of the neighbors. "i saw him!" barksdale led the way for the little group behind. edward could have closed in, but his anxiety for the girl was now developed into genuine fear. the tumult was the signal for lorna to begin a series of equine calisthenics, more distinguished for violence than beauty. for she planted her heels in the face of nature repeatedly, seemingly in an impartial determination to destroy all the cardinal points of the compass. this exercise she varied with agile leaps upward, and bunching of feet as she came down. edward was about to dismount to take hold of her when lorna, probably discerning that it was unnecessary to get rid of her rider before joining the rout, went past him like a leaf upon a hurricane. he planted spurs in his horse's side and followed with equal speed, but she was now far ahead. he saw her skim past barksdale, and that gentleman with but a slight motion of his knees increased his speed. and then lorna and the thoroughbred went straight into the wall of cane, but instead of a headlong plunge and a mixture of human being and struggling animal floundering in the break, he simply saw--nothing. the pair went out of sight like an awkwardly snuffed candle. he had no time to wonder; the next instant he was going through a hog path in the cane, the tall stems rattling madly against his knees, his eyes dazed by the rushing past of so many near and separate points of vision. then he rose in air. there was a flash of water underneath and down he came into the path. the open world burst upon him again like a beautiful picture. he only saw the flying figure of the girl upon a mad colt. was she trying in vain to hold it? would she lose her head? would her nerve forsake her? heavens!! she is plying her whip with might and main, and the man on the thoroughbred at her heels looks back over his shoulder into edward's white face and smiles. then they disappear into the green wall again and again the world is reborn on the other side. the pace tells. one by one edward passes the riders. the old general comes up at last. as mary goes by, he gives what edward supposes to be the old rebel yell of history and then they are out of the end of one arm of the y and heading for the clump of cane. there has been little dodging. with so many dogs plunging up both sides of the creek, and picking up its trail as he crossed and re-crossed, the cat had finally to adopt a straightaway program as the cover would permit. if it dodged once in this little bit of small cane it was lost. it did not dodge. it went straight into the end of the other arm of the y and to the astonishment of all the hunters apparently went out again and across a sedge field toward the hills. it was then a straight race of half a mile and the dogs won. they snarled and pulled and fought around the carcass, when lorna went directly over them and was "sawed up" at the edge of the woods yards further. one of the hunters jumped down and plucked the carcass from the dogs and held it up. it was a gray fox. the dogs had run over him in the little cane and indulged in a view chase. the cat was elsewhere! exclamations of disgust were heard on all sides and evan looked anxiously among the gathering dogs. "where is carlo?" he asked of several. "has anybody seen carlo?" nobody had, apparently; but at that moment in the distance, down the arm of the y which reynard had crossed, they heard a sharp, puppyish cry, interspersed with the fuller voicings of an old dog. "there is carlo!" shouted the old gentleman in a stentorian voice. "and leader," interpolated montjoy. "come on with your english dogs! ha, ha, ha!" and evan was gone. but lorna was done for the day. she distinctly refused to become enthused any more. she had carried her rider first in at the death in one race and the bush had been handed to mary. lorna responded to the efforts to force her, by indulging in her absurd half-moon antics. barksdale and edward turned back. "it will come around on the same circuit," said barksdale, speaking of the cat; "let us ride out into the open space and see it." they took position and listened. two miles away, about at the fork of the y, they could hear the echo of the tumult. if the cat went down the main stem the day was probably spoiled; if it came back up the other branch as before, they were in good position. nearer and nearer came the rout and then the dogs swarmed all over the lone acre of cane. the animal had dodged back from the horsemen standing there and was now surrounded. the dogs ran here and there trotting along outside the cane careless and fagged suddenly became animated again and sprang upon a crouching form, whose eyeballs could even from a distance, be seen to roll and glare frightfully. there was one motion, the yelping puppy went heels over head with a wound from neck to hip, and carlo had learned to respect the wild cat. but the next instant a dozen dogs were rolling in horrid combat with the animal and then a score were pulling at the gray and tan form that offered no more resistance. "thirty-five pounds," said an expert, holding up the dead cat. a front foot was cut off and passed up for examination. it was as large as a man's fist and the claws were like the talons of a condor. the general was down, examining the wound of poor carlo, and, all rivalry cast aside, the experienced hunters closed in to help him. it was not a question now of maryland or england; a puppy that would hold a trail when abandoned by a pack of old dogs whom it was accustomed to follow and rely upon its own judgment as to wherein lay its duty, and first of all, after a mile run, plants its teeth in the quarry--was now more than a puppy. ask any old fox hunter and he will prophesy that from the day of the killing of the cat, whenever carlo opened in a hunt, no matter how much the other dogs might be interested, they would suspend judgment and flock to him. that day made carlo a napoleon among canines. edward was an interested observer of the gentle surgery being practiced upon the dog. at length he ventured to ask a question. "what is his name, general?" "carlo." "and i presume he is not what you call an english dog?" the general looked at him fiercely; then his features relaxed. "go away, edward, go away--and give the dog a chance." barksdale had ridden to one side with mary and was gravely studying the scene. presently he said abruptly: "when is it you leave for europe?" "to-morrow." "there is a matter pending," he said quietly, "that renders it peculiarly unfortunate." she regarded him with surprise. "what i say is for you alone. i know mr. morgan has been out here for several days and has probably not been made aware of what is talked in town." briefly he acquainted her with the rumors afloat and seeing her deep concern and distress added: "the affair is trivial with mr. morgan; he can easily silence the talk, but in his absence, if skillfully managed, it can affect his reputation seriously." "skillfully managed?" "do you suppose that mr. morgan is without enemies?" "who could be his enemy?" she asked quickly, then flushed and was silent. "i will not risk an injustice to innocent people," he said slowly, "but he has enemies, i leave it to you to decide whether to acquaint him with what is going on or not. i do not even advise you. but i came on this hunt to acquaint you with the situation. if the man whom i suspect is guilty in this matter he will not leave a stone unturned to destroy his rival. it is nearer home from this point than from the hall and i have business waiting. good-bye." he saluted morgan, who was approaching, and went rapidly away. mary rode home in silence, returning only monosyllables to her escort. but when she spoke of being doubtful of their ability to get ready by morning and edward proposed to cancel his order for berths, she hesitated. after all the affair was ridiculous. she let it pass from her mind. chapter xl. the hidden hand. it matters little what kind of seed is planted, it finds its proper elements in the soil. so with rumors. there is never a rumor so wild, but that finds a place for its roots. it soon reached the coroner, that zealous officer whose compensation is based upon fees, that his exchequer had been defrauded by the improper burial of a woman out at ilexhurst. she had dropped dead, and there had not been a witness. an inquest was proper; was necessary. he began an investigation. and then appeared in the brevity columns of one of the papers the incipient scandal: "it is whispered that suspicions of foul play are entertained in connection with rita, the housekeeper of the late john morgan at ilexhurst. the coroner will investigate." and the next day the following: "our vigilant coroner has made inquiry into the death and burial of rita morgan, and feels that the circumstances demand a disinterment and examination of the body. so far the rumors of foul play come from negroes only. it seems that mr. edward morgan found the woman lying in his yard, and that she died almost immediately after the discovery. it was upon the night but one preceding his meeting with mr. royson on the field of honor, and during his absence next day the body was hurriedly interred. there is little doubt that the woman came to her death from natural causes, but it is known that she had few if any friends among her race, and other circumstances attending her demise are such that the body will be disinterred and examined for evidence." even this did not especially interest the public. but when next day the morning papers came out with triple headlines the first of which was "murdered," followed by a succinct account of the disinterment of rita morgan, as she was called, with the discovery of a cut on the left temple and a wound in the back of the head that had crushed in the skull, the public was startled. no charge was made against edward morgan, no connection hinted at, but it was stated in the history of the woman, that she was the individual referred to in royson's famous letter on which the duel had been fought, and that she died suddenly upon the day it was published. the paper said that it was unfortunate that mr. morgan had left several days before for paris, and had sailed that morning from new york. then the public tongue began to wag and the public mind to wait impatiently for the inquest. the inquest was held in due form. the surgeons designated to examine the supposed wounds reported them genuine, the cut in the temple trifling, the blow in the back of the head sufficient to have caused death. a violent discussion ensued when the jury came to make up its verdict, but the conservative members carried the day. a verdict of "death by a blow upon the head by a weapon in the hands of a person or persons unknown to the jury" was rendered; the body reinterred and the crowds of curiosity seekers withdrew from ilexhurst. unfortunately during the era of excitement gerald was locked in his room, lost in the contemplation of some question of memory that had come upon him, and he was not summoned as a witness, from the fact that in no way had he been mentioned in the case, except by gen. evan, who testified that he was asleep when the death occurred. the german professor and gen. evan were witnesses and gave their testimony readily. evan explained that, although present at the finding of the body, he left immediately to meet a gentleman who had called, and did not return. when asked as to edward's actions he admitted that they were excited, but stated that other matters, naming them briefly, were engaging them at the same time and that they were of a disturbing nature. the woman, he said, had first attracted edward's attention by falling against the glass, which she was evidently looking through, and which she broke in her fall. if she was struck, it was probably at that moment. he was positive in his belief that at the time the sound of falling glass was heard edward was in the room, but he would not state it under oath as a fact. it was this evidence that carried the day. when asked where was edward morgan and the reason for his absence, he said that he had gone as the escort of mrs. montjoy to paris, where her eyes were to be examined, and that the trip had been contemplated for several weeks. also that he would return in less than a month. nevertheless, the gravest of comments began to be heard upon the streets, and prophecies were plenty that edward would never return. and into these began to creep a word now and then for royson. "he knew more than he could prove," "was the victim of circumstances," "a bold fellow," etc., were fragments of conversation connected with his name. "we fought out that issue once," he said, briefly, when asked directly about the character of the woman rita, "and it is settled so far as i am concerned." and the public liked the answer. no charge, however, had been brought against edward morgan; the matter was simply one that disturbed the public; it wanted his explanation and his presence. but behind it all, behind the hesitancy which the stern, open championship of evan and montjoy commanded, lay the proposition that of all people in the world only edward morgan could have been benefited by the death of the woman; that he was the only person present and that she died a violent death. and people would talk. then came a greater shock. a little paper, the tell-tale, published in an adjoining city and deriving its support from the publication of scandals, in which the victim was described without naming, was cried upon the street. copies were sold by the hundreds, then thousands. it practically charged that edward morgan was the son of rita morgan; that upon finding royson possessed of his secret he first killed the woman and then tried to kill that gentleman in a duel into which morgan went with everything to gain and nothing to lose; that upon seeing the storm gathering he had fled the country, under the pretense of escorting a very estimable young lady and her mother abroad, the latter going to have her eyes examined by a parisian expert, the celebrated moreau. it proceeded further; the young man had completely hoodwinked and deceived the family to which these ladies belonged, and, it was generally understood, would some day become the husband and son-in-law. every sensational feature that could be imagined was brought out--even gerald did not escape. he was put in as the legitimate heir of john morgan; the child of a secret marriage, a _non compos mentis_ whose property was being enjoyed by the other. the excitement in the city reached white heat. col. montjoy and gen. evan came out in cards and denounced the author of the letter an infamous liar, and made efforts to bring the editor of the sheet into court. he could not be found. days slipped by, and then came the climax! one of the sensational papers of new york published a four-column illustrated article headed "a southern tragedy," which pretended to give the history of all the morgans for fifty years or more. in this story the writer displayed considerable literary ability, and the situations were dramatically set forth. pictures of ilexhurst were given; the murder of a negro woman in the night and a fancy sketch of edward. the crowning shame was bold type. no such sensation had been known since the race riots of . in reply to this montjoy and evan also telegraphed fiery denunciations and demanded the author's name. their telegrams were published, and demands treated with contempt. norton montjoy, in new york, had himself interviewed by rival papers, gave the true history of morgan and denounced the story in strong terms. he consulted lawyers and was informed that the montjoys had no right of action. court met and the grand jury conferred. here was evidence of murder, and here was a direct published charge. in vain evan and virdow testified before it. the strong influence of the former could not carry the day. the jury itself was political. it was part of the swearingen ring. when it had completed its labors and returned its batch of bills, it was known in a few hours that edward morgan had been indicted for the murder of rita morgan. grief and distress unspeakable reigned in the houses of gen. evan and col. montjoy, and in his bachelor quarters that night one man sat with his face upon his hands and thought out all of the details of the sad catastrophe. an unspeakable sorrow shone in his big eyes. barksdale had been touched in the tenderest part of his life. morgan he admired and respected, but the name of the woman he loved had been bespattered with mud. with him there rested no duty. had the circumstances been different, there would have been a tragedy at the expense of his last dollar--and he was rich. at the expense even of his enterprise and his business reputation, he would have found the author of those letters and have shot him to death at the door of a church, if necessary. there is one point on which the south has suffered no change. morgan, he felt, would do the same, but now, alas, morgan was indicted for another murder, and afterward it would be too late. too late! he sprang to his feet and gave vent to a frightful malediction; then he grew calm through sheer astonishment. without knock or inquiry his door was thrown open and gerald morgan rushed into the room. when barksdale had last seen this man he doubted his ability to stand the nervous strain put upon him, but here was evidence of an excitement tenfold greater. gerald quivered like an overtaxed engine, and deep in the pale face the blazing eyes shone with a horrible fierceness. the cry he uttered as he paused before barksdale was so unearthly that he unconsciously drew back. the young man was unrolling some papers. upon them were the scenes of the grave as he drew them--the open coffin, the shrunken face of the woman--and then, in all its repulsive exactness, the face of the man who had turned upon the artist under the electric light! "what does it mean, my friend?" said barksdale, seeking by a forced calmness to reduce the almost irrational visitor to reason again. "what?" exclaimed gerald; "don't you understand? the man uncovered that coffin; he struck that blow upon poor dead rita's head! i saw him face to face and drew those pictures that night. there is the date." "you saw him?" barksdale could not grasp the truth for an instant. "i saw him!" "where is he now?" "i do not know; i do not know!" a thrill ran through the now eager man, and he felt that instead of calming the excitement of his visitor he was getting infected by it. he sat down deliberately. "take a seat, mr. morgan, and tell me about it." but gerald dropped the pictures and stood over them. "there was the grave," he said, "and the man was down in it; i stood up here and lifted a spade, but then he had struck and was arranging her hair. if he had struck her again i would have killed him. i wanted to see what it was about. i wanted to see the man. he fled, and then i followed. downtown i saw him under an electric light and got his face. he was the man, the infamous, cowardly scoundrel who struck poor rita in her coffin; but why--why should any one want to strike rita? i can't see. i can't see. and then to charge edward with it!" barksdale's blood ran cold during the recital, the scene so vividly pictured, the uncanny face before him. it was horrible. but over all came the realization that some hidden hand was deliberately striking at the life of edward morgan through the grave of the woman. the cowardliness, the infamy, the cruelty was overpowering. he turned away his face. but the next instant he was cool. it was a frail and doubtful barrier between edward and ruin, this mind unfolding its secret. if it failed there was no other witness. "what became of the man, did you say?" "i do not know. i wanted his face; i got it." "where did you last see him?" "on the street." barksdale arose deliberately. "mr. morgan, how did you come here?" "i suppose i walked. i want you to help me find the man who struck the blow." "you are right, we must find the man. now, i have a request to make. edward trusted to my judgment in the other affair, and it came out right, did it not?" "yes. that is why i have come to you." "trust me again. go home now and take that picture. preserve it as you would your life, for on it may hang the life of edward morgan. you understand? and do not open your lips on this subject to any one until i see you again." gerald rolled up the paper and turned away abruptly. barksdale followed him down the steps and called a hack. "your health," he said to gerald, as he gently forced him into the carriage, "must not be risked." and to the driver, slipping a fee in his hand: "take mr. morgan to ilexhurst. remember, mr. morgan," he called out. "i remember," was the reply. "i never forget. would to god i could." barksdale walked rapidly to the livery stable. chapter xli. with the woman who loved him. edward morgan gave himself up to the dream. the flying train sped onward, out of the pine forest, into the hills and the shadow of mountains, into the broad world of life and great cities. they had the car almost to themselves, for the northward travel is small at that season. before him was the little woman of the motherly face and smooth, soft hand, and behind her, lost in the contemplation of the light literature with which he had surrounded her, was the girl about whom all the tendrils of his hungry life were twining. he could see her half-profile, the contour of the smooth cheek, the droop of eyelid, the fluff of curly hair over her brow, and the shapely little head. he was content. it was a novel and suggestive situation. and yet--only a dream. no matter how far he wandered, how real seemed the vision, it always ended there--it was but a dream, a waking dream. he had at last no part in her life; he would never have. and yet again, why not? the world was large; he felt its largeness as they rushed from center to center, saw the teeming crowds here, the far-stretching farms and dwellings there. the world was large, and they were at best but a man and a woman. if she loved him what did it matter? it meant only a prolonged and indefinite stay abroad in the land he best knew; all its pleasures, its comforts, his--and hers. if only she loved him! he lived over every minute detail of their short companionship, from the hour he saw her, the little madonna, until he kissed her hand and promised unnecessarily that he would never break her heart. a strange comfort followed this realization. come what might, humiliation, disgrace, separation, she loved him! his fixed gaze as he dreamed had its effect; she looked up from her pictures and back to him. a rush of emotions swept away his mood; he rose almost angrily; it was a question between him and his savior only. god had made the world and named its holiest passion love, and if they loved blindly, foolishly, fatally, god, not he, was to blame. he went and sat by her. "you puzzle me sometimes," she said. "you are animated and bright and--well, charming often--and then you seem to go back into your shell and hide. i am afraid you are not happy, mr. morgan." "not happy? hardly. but then no bachelor can be quite happy," he added, returning her smile. "i should think otherwise," she answered. "when i look about among my married friends i sometimes wonder why men ever marry. they seem to surrender so much for so little. i am afraid if i were a bachelor there isn't a woman living whom i would marry--not if she had the wealth of vanderbilt." edward laughed outright. "if you were a bachelor," he answered, "you would not have such thoughts." "i don't see why," she said trying to frown. "because you are not a bachelor." "then," she said, mockingly, "i suppose i never will--since i can't be a bachelor." "the mystery to me," said edward, "is why women ever marry." "because they love," answered the girl. "there is no mystery about that." "but they take on themselves so much care, anxiety, suffering." "love can endure that." "and how often it means--death!" "and that, too, love does not consider. it would not hesitate if it knew in advance." "you speak for yourself?" "yes, indeed. if i loved, i am afraid i would love blindly, recklessly. it is the way of montjoy women--and they say i am all montjoy." "would you follow barefooted and in rags from city to city behind a man, drunken and besotted, to sing upon the streets for a crust and sleep under a hedge, his chances your chances, and you with no claim upon him save that you loved him once? i have seen it." she shook her head. "the man i loved could never sink so low. he would be a gentleman, proud of his name, of his talents, of his honor. if misfortune came he would starve under the first hedge before he would lead me out to face a scornful world. and if it were misfortune only i would sing for him--yes, if necessary, beg, unknown to him for money to help him in misfortune. only let him keep the manliness within him undimmed by act of his." he gazed into her glowing face. "i thank you," he said. "i never understood a true woman's heart before." the express rushed into new and strange scenes. there were battlefields pointed out by the conductor--mere landscapes only the names of which were thrilling. manassas glided by, the birthplace of a great hope that perished. how often she had heard her father and the general tell of that battle! and then the white shaft of the washington monument, and the capitol dome rose in the distance. as they glided over the long bridge across the potomac and touched the soil of the capital city and the street lights went past, the young woman viewed the scenes with intense interest. washington! but for that infamous assault upon her father, through the man who had been by her side, he would have walked the streets again, a southern congressman! they took rooms to give the little mamma a good night's rest, and then, with the same unconventional freedom of the hall, mary wandered out with edward to view the avenue. they went and stood at the foot of that great white pile which closes one end of the avenue, and were awed into silence by its grandeur. she would see grander sights, but never one that would impress her more. she thought of her father alone, away back in georgia, at the old home, sitting just then upon the porch smoking his pipe. perhaps the duchess was asleep in his lap, perhaps the general had come over to keep him company, and if so they were talking of the absent ones. edward saw her little hand lightly laid upon her eyes for a moment, and comprehended. morning! and now the crowded train sweeps northward through the great cities and opens up bits of marine views. for the first time the girl sees a stately ship, with wings unfurled, "go down into the seas," vanishing upon the hazy horizon, "like some strain of sweet melody silenced and made visible," as edward quoted from a far-away poet friend. "and if you will watch it intently," he added, "and forget yourself you will lose sight of the ship and hear again the melody." and then came almost endless streets of villages and towns, the smoke of factories, the clamor and clangor of life massed in a small compass, a lull of the motion, hurrying crowds and the cheery, flushed face of norton pressed to his mother's and to hers. the first stage of the journey was over. across the river rose, in dizzy disorder and vastness, new york. the men clasped hands and looked each other in the eyes, montjoy smiling, morgan grave. it seemed to the latter that the smile of his friend meant nothing; that behind it lay anxiety, questioning. he did not waver under the look, and in a moment the hand that held his tightened again. morgan had answered. half the conversation of life is carried on without words. morgan had answered, but he could not forget his friend's questioning gaze. nor could he forget that his friend had a wife. chapter xlii. the song the ocean sang. the stay of the party in new york was short. norton was busy with trade that could not wait. he stole a part of a day, stuffed the pocketbooks of the ladies with gold, showed them around and then at last they looked from the deck of a "greyhound" and saw the slopes of staten island and the highlands sink low upon the horizon. the first night at sea! the traveler never forgets it. scenes of the past may shine through it like ink renewed in the dimmed lines of a palimpsest through later records, but this night stands supreme as if it were the sum of all. for in this night the fatherland behind and the heart grown tender in the realization of its isolation, come back again the olden experiences. dreams that have passed into the seas of eternity meet it and shine again. old loves return and fold their wings, and hopes grown wrinkled with disappointment throw off dull time's imprints and are young once more. to the impressionable heart of the girl, the vastness and the solemnity brought strange thoughts. she stood by the rail, silenced, sad, but not with the sadness that oppresses. by her was the man who through life's hidden current had brought her all unknowing into harmony with the eternal echos rising into her consciousness. at last she came back to life's facts. she found her hand in his again, and gently, without protest, disengaged it. her face was white and fixed upon nothingness. "of what are you thinking?" she asked, gently. he started and drew breath with a gasp. "i do not know--of you, i suppose." and then, as she was silent and embarrassed: "there is a tone in the ocean, a note i have never heard before, and i have listened on all seas. but here is the new song different from all. i could listen forever." "i have read somewhere," she said, "that all the sound waves escape to the ocean. they jostle and push against each other where men abound, the new crowding out the old; but out at sea there is room for all. it may be that you hear only as your heart is attuned." he nodded his head, pleased greatly. "then i have heard to-night," he said, earnestly, "a song of a woman to the man she loves." "but you could not have heard it unless your heart was attuned to love's melodies. have you ever loved a woman, mr. morgan?" he started and his hand tightened upon the guard. "i was a boy in heart when i went abroad," he said. "i had never known a woman's love and sympathy. in switzerland a little girl gave me a glass of goat's milk at a cottage door in the mountains. she could not have been more than years old. i heard her singing as i approached, her voice marvelous in its power and pathos. her simple dress was artistic, her face frank and eyes confiding. i loved her. i painted her picture and carried her both in my heart and my satchel for three years. i did not love her and yet i believed i did. but i think that i must have loved at some time. as you say, i could not have heard if it were not so." he drew her away and sought the cabin. but when he said good-night he came and walked the deck for an hour, and once he tossed his arms above him and cried out in agony: "i cannot! i cannot! the heart was not made for such a strain!" * * * * * six times they saw the sun rise over the path ahead, ascend to the zenith and sink away, and six times the endless procession of stars glinted on the myriad facets of the sea. the hundreds of strange faces about them grew familiar, almost homelike. the ladies made acquaintances; but edward none. when they were accessible he never left their presence, devoting himself with tender solicitude to their service, reading to them, reciting bits of adventure, explaining the phenomena of the elements, exhibiting the ship and writing in their journals the record for the father at home. when they were gone he walked the deck silent, moody, sad; alone in the multitude. people had ceased to interest him. once only did he break the silence; from the ship's orchestra he borrowed a violin, and standing upon the deck, as at first, he found the love-song again and linked it forever with his life. it was the ocean's gift and he kept it. he thought a great deal, but from the facts at home he turned resolutely. they should not mar the only summer of his heart. "not now," he would say to these trooping memories. "after a while you may come and be heard." but of the future he thought and dreamed. he pictured a life with the woman he loved, in every detail; discounting its pleasures, denying the possibility of sorrow. there were times when with her he found himself wishing to be alone that he might review the dream and enlarge it. it ceased to be a dream, it became a fact, he lived with it and he lived by it. it was possible no longer; it was certain. some day he would begin it; he would tell it to her and make it so beautiful she would consent. all this time the elder lady thought, listened and knitted. she was one of those gentle natures not made for contentions, but for soothing. she was never idle. edward found himself watching the busy needles as they fought for the endless thread, and marveled. what patience! what continuity! what endurance! the needles of good women preach as they labor. he knew the history of these. for forty years they had labored, those bits of steel in the velvet fingers. husband, children, slaves, all had felt upon their feet the soft summings of their calculations. one whole company of soldiers, the gallant company her husband had led into confederate service, had threaded the wilderness in her socks, and died nearly all at malvern hill. down deep under the soil of the old mother state they planted her work from sight, and the storms of winter removed its imprints where, through worn and wasted leather, it had touched virgin soil as the bleeding survivors came limping home. forty years had stilled the thought on which it was based. it was strong and resolute still. some day the needles would rust out of sight, the hands be folded in rest and the thought would be gone. edward glanced from the woman to the girl. "not so," he said, softly; "the thought will live. other hands trained under its sweet ministry will take up the broken threads; the needles will flash again. woman's work is never done, and never will be while love and faith and courage have lodgment upon earth. "did you speak, mr. morgan?" "possibly. i have fallen into the habit of thinking aloud. and i was thinking of you; it must have been a great privilege to call you mother, mrs. montjoy." she smiled a little. "i am glad you think so." "i have never called any by that name," he said, slowly, looking away. "i never knew a mother." "that will excuse a great many things in a man's life," she said, in sympathy. "you have no remembrance, then?" "none. she died when i was an infant, i suppose, and i grew up, principally, in schools." "and your father?" "he also--died." he was reckless for the moment. "sometimes i think i will ask you to let me call you--mother. it is late to begin, but think of a man's living and dying without once speaking the name to a woman." "call me that if you will. you are certainly all that a son could be to me." "mother," he said, reflectively, "mother," and then looking toward mary he saw that, though reading, her face was crimson; "that gives me a sister, does it not?" he added, to relieve the situation. she glanced toward him, smiling. "as you will, brother edward--how natural." "i like the mother better," he said, after a pause. "i have observed that brothers do not wear well. i should hate to see the day when it would not be a pleasure to be with you, miss montjoy." he could not control nor define his mood. "then," she said, with eyes upon the book, "let it not be brother. i would be sorry to see you drift away--we are all your friends." "friends!" he repeated the word contemplatively. "that is another word i am not fond of. i have seen so many friends--not my own, but friends of others! friends steal your good name, your opportunities, your happiness, your time and your salvation. oh, friendship!" "what is the matter with you to-day, mr. morgan?" said mary. "i don't think i ever saw you in just such a frame of mind. what has made you cynical?" "am i cynical? i did not know it. possibly i am undergoing a metamorphosis. such things occur about us every day. have you ever seen the locust, as he is called, come up out of the earth and attach himself to a tree and hang there brooding, living an absolutely worthless life? some day a rent occurs down his own back and out comes the green cicada, with iridescent wings; no longer a dull plodder, but now a swift wanderer, merry and musical. so with the people about you. useless and unpicturesque for years, they some day suffer a change; a piece of good luck, success in business; any of these can furnish sunlight, and the change is born. behold your clodhopper is a gay fellow." "but," said the girl, laughing, "the simile is poor; you do not see the cicada go back from the happy traveler stage and become a cynic." "true. what does become of him? oh, yes; along comes the ichneumon fly and by a skillful blow on the spine paralyzes him and then thrusts under his skin an egg to be warmed into life by its departing heat. that is the conclusion; your gay fellow and careless traveler gets an overwhelming blow; an idea or a fact, or a bit of information to brood upon; and some day it kills him." she was silent, trying to read the meaning in his words. what idea, what fact, what overwhelming blow were killing him? something, she was sure, had disturbed him. she had felt it for weeks. mrs. montjoy expressed a desire to go to her stateroom, and edward accompanied her. the girl had ceased reading and sat with her chin in hand, revolving the matter. after he had resumed his position she turned to find his gaze upon her. they walked to the deck; the air was cold and bracing. "i am sorry you are so opposed to sisters," she said, smiling. "if i were a sister i would ask you to share your trouble with me." "what trouble?" "the trouble that is changing the careless traveler to a cynic--is killing his better self." he ceased to speak in metaphor. "there is a trouble," he said, after reflection; "but one beyond your power to remedy or lighten. some day i will tell it to you--but not now." "you do not trust me." "i do not trust myself." she was silent, looking away. she said no more. pale and trembling with suppressed emotion, he stood up. a look of determination came into his eyes, and he faced her. at that moment a faint, far cry was heard and every one in sight looked forward. "what is it?" asked a passenger, as the captain passed. "the cliffs of england," he said. edward turned and walked away, leaving her leaning upon the rail. he came back smoking. his mood had passed. the excitement had begun at once. on glided the good ship. taller grew the hills, shipping began to appear, and land objects to take shape. and then the deep heart throbbing ceased and the glad voyagers poured forth upon the shore. chapter xliii. the death of gaspard levigne. paris! with emotions difficult to appreciate edward found himself at home, for of all places paris meant that to him. he went at once to his old quarters; a suite of rooms in a quiet but accessible street, where was combined something of both city and suburban life. the concierge almost overwhelmed him with his welcome. in obedience to his letters, everything had been placed in order, books and furniture dusted, the linen renewed, the curtains laundered and stiffened anew, and on the little center table was a vase of crimson roses--a contribution for madame and mademoiselle. his own, the larger room, was surrendered to the ladies; the smaller he retained. there was the little parlor between, for common use. outside was the shady vista of the street and in the distance the murmur of the city. mrs. montjoy was delighted with the arrangement and the scene. mary absorbed all the surroundings of the owner's past life; every picture, every book and bit of bric-a-brac, all were parts of him and full of interest. the very room seemed imbued with his presence. here was his shaded student's lamp, there the small upright piano, with its stack of music and, in place ready for the player, an open sheet. it might have been yesterday that he arose from its stool, walked out and closed the door. it was a little home, and when coming into the parlor from his dressing room, edward saw her slender figure, he paused, and then the old depression returned. she found him watching her, and noted the troubled look upon his face. "it is all so cozy and beautiful," she said. "i am so glad that you brought us here rather than to a hotel." "and i, too, if you are pleased." "pleased! it is simply perfect!" a note lay upon the center table. he noticed that it was addressed to him, and, excusing himself, opened it and read: "m. morgan. benoni, the maestro, is ill and desires monsieur. it will be well if monsieur comes quickly. "annette." he rang the bell hurriedly and the concierge appeared. "this note," said edward, speaking rapidly in french; "has it been long here?" "since yesterday. i sent it back, and they returned it. monsieur is not disappointed, i trust." edward shook his head and was seeking his hat and gloves. "you recall my old friend, the maestro, who gave me the violin," he said, remembering mary. "the note says he is very ill. it was sent yesterday. make my excuses to your mother; i will not stay long. if i do not see you here, i will seek you over yonder in the park, where the band may be playing shortly; and then we will find a supper." walking rapidly to a cab stand he selected one with a promising horse, and gave directions. he was carried at a rapid rate into the region of the quartier latin and in a few moments found the maestro's home. one or two persons were by him when he entered the room, and they turned and looked curiously. "edward!" exclaimed the old man, lifting his sightless eyes toward the door; "there is but one who steps like that!" edward approached and took his hand. the sick man was sitting in his arm-chair, wrapped in his faded dressing-gown. "my friends," he continued, lifting his hand with a slight gesture of dismissal, "you have been kind to benoni; god will reward you; farewell!" the friends, one a woman of the neighborhood, the other the wife of the concierge, came and touched his hand, and, bowing to edward, withdrew, lifting their white aprons to their faces as they passed from the room. "you are very ill," said edward, placing his hand upon the old man's arm; "i have just returned to paris and came at once." "very ill, indeed." he leaned back his head wearily. "it will soon be over." "have you no friends who should know of this, good benoni; no relatives? you have been silent upon this subject, and i have never questioned you. i will bring them if you will let me." benoni shook his head. "never. i am to them already dead." a fit of coughing seized him, and he became greatly exhausted. upon the table was a small bottle containing wine, left by one of the women. edward poured out a draught and placed it to the bloodless lips. "one is my wife," said the dying man, with sudden energy, "my own wife." "i will answer that she comes; she cannot refuse." "refuse? no, indeed! she has been searching for me for a lifetime. many times she has looked upon me without recognition. she would come; she has been here--she has been here!" "and did not know you? it is possible?" "she did not know." "you told her, though?" "no." "you never told her--" there was a pause. the sick man said, gasping: "i am a convict!" a cry of horror broke from the lips of the young man. the old violinist resented his sudden start and exclamation. "but a convict innocent. i swear it before my maker!" edward was deeply touched. "none can doubt that who knows you, benoni." "he threatened my life; he struck at me with his knife; i turned it on him, and he fell dead. i did what i could; i was stanching the wound when they seized me. his ring jewel had cut my face; but for that i would have been executed. i had no friends, even my name was not my own. i went to prison and labor for twenty years." he named the length of his sentence in a whisper. it was a horror he could never understand. he stretched out his hand. "wine." again edward restored something of the fleeting strength. "she came," he said, "searching for me. i was blind then; they had been careless with their blasting--my eyes were gone, my hair white, my face scarred. she did not know me. her voice was divine! her name has been in the mouths of all men. she came and sang at christmas, to the prisoners, the glorious hymns of her church, and she sang to me. it was a song that none there knew but me--my song! had she watched my face, then, she would have known; but how could she suspect me, the blind, the scarred, the gray? she passed out forever. and i, harmless, helpless, soon followed--pardoned. i knew her name; i made my way to paris to be near that voice; and the years passed; i was poor and blind. it cost money to hear her." trembling with emotion, edward whispered: "her name?" benoni shook his head and slowly extended his withered arms. the woolen wristlets had been removed, there were the white scars, the marks of the convict's long-worn irons. "i have forgiven her; i will not bring her disgrace." "cambia?" said edward, unconsciously. there was a loud cry; the old man half-rose and sank back, baffled by his weakness. "hush! hush!" he gasped; "it is my secret; swear to me you will keep it; swear to me, swear!" "i swear it, benoni, i swear it." the old man seemed to have fallen asleep; it was a stupor. "she came," he said, "years ago and offered me gold. it was to be the last effort of her life. she could not believe but that her husband was in paris and might be found. she believed the song would find him. i had been suggested to her because my music and figure were known to all the boulevards. i was blind and could never know her. but i knew her voice. "she went, veiled to avoid recognition; she stood by me at a certain place on the boulevard where people gather in the evening and sang. what a song. the streets were blocked, and men, i am told, uncovered before the sacred purity of that voice, and when all were there who could hear she sang our song; while i, weeping, played the accompaniment, ay, as no man living or dead could have played it. always in the lines-- "oceans may roll between thy home and thee." --her voice gave way. they called it art. "well, i thought, one day i will tell; it was always the next day, but i knew, as she sang, in her mind must have arisen the picture of that husband standing by her side--ah, my god, i could not, i could not; blind, scarred, a felon, i could not; i was dead! it was bitter! "and then she came to me and said: 'good benoni, your heart is true and tender; i thank you; i have wealth and plenty; here is gold, take it in memory of a broken heart you have soothed.' i said: "'the voice of that woman, her song, are better than gold. i have them.' i went and stood in the door as she, weeping, passed out. she lifted her veil and touched the forehead of the old musician with her lips, and then--i hardly knew! i was lying on the floor when annette came to bring my tea." for a long time he sat without motion after this recital. edward loosened the faded cords of his gown. the old man spoke again in a whisper: "come closer; there is another secret. i knew then that i had never before loved her. my marriage had been an outrage of heart-faith. i mistook admiration, sympathy, memory, for love. i was swept from my feet by her devotion, but it is true--as god is my judge, i never loved her until then--until her sad, ruined life spoke to me in that song on the streets of paris." edward still held his hand. "benoni," he said, simply, "there is no guilt upon your soul to have deserved the convict's irons. believe me, it is better to send for her and let her come to you. think of the long years she has searched; of the long years of uncertainty that must follow. you cannot, you cannot pass away without paying the debt; it was your fault in the beginning----" the old man had gradually lifted his head; now he bowed it. "then you owe her the admission. oh, believe me, you are wrong if you think the scars of misfortune can shame away love. you do not know a true woman's heart. you have not much time, i fear; let me send for her." there was no reply. he knelt and took one withered hand in his. "benoni, i plead for you as for her. there will come a last moment--you will relent; and then it will be too late." "send!" it was a whisper. the lips moved again; it was an address. upon a card edward wrote hurriedly: "the blind musician who once played for you is dying. he has the secret of your life. if you would see your husband alive lose no minute. "a friend." he dashed from the room and ran rapidly to a cab stand. "take this," he said, "bring an answer in thirty minutes, and get francs. if the police interfere, say a dying man waits for his friend." the driver lashed his horses, and was lashing them as he faded into the distance. edward returned; he called for hot water and bathed the dying man's feet; he rubbed his limbs and poured brandy down his throat. he laid his watch upon the little table; five, ten, fifteen, twenty, five--would she never come? death had already entered; he was hovering over the doomed man. the door opened; a tall woman of sad but noble countenance stepped in, thrusting back her veil. edward was kneeling by benoni's side. cambia's eyes were fastened upon the face of the dying man. edward passed out, leaving them alone. a name escaped her. "gaspard." slowly, leaning upon the arm of his chair, the old man arose and listened. "it was a voice from the past," he said, clearly. "who calls gaspard levigne?" "oh, god in heaven!" she moaned, dropping to her knees. "is it true? what do you know of gaspard levigne?" "nothing that is good; but i am he, marie!" the woman rushed to his side; she touched his face and smoothed the disordered hair. she held his hand after he had sunk into his chair. "tell me, in god's name," she said. "tell me where are the proofs of our marriage? oh, gaspard, for my sake, for the sake of your posterity! you are dying; do not deny me!" "ah," he said, in a whisper. "i did not know--there--was--another--i did not know. the woman--she wrote that it died!" he rose again to his feet, animated by a thought that gave him new strength. turning his face toward her in horror, he said: "it is for you that you search, then--not for me!" "speak, gaspard, my husband, for my sake, for the sake of your marie, who loved and loves you, speak!" his lips moved. she placed her ear to them: "dear heaven," she cried in despair. "i cannot hear him! i cannot hear him! gaspard! gaspard! gaspard! ah----" the appeal ended in a shriek. she was staring into his glazing eyes. then over the man's face came a change. peace settled there. the eyes closed and he whispered: "freda!" hearing her frantic grief, edward rushed in and now stood looking down in deep distress upon the scene. "he is dead, madame," he said, simply. "let me see you to your home." she arose, white and calm, by a mighty effort. "what was he to you? who are you?" she asked. "he was my friend and master." he laid his hands lovingly on the eyes, closing them. "i am edward morgan!" her eyes never left him. there was no motion of her tall figure; only her hand upon the veil closed tightly and her features twitched. they stood in silence but a moment; it was broken by cambia. she had regained something of the bearing of the dramatic soprano. with a simple dignity she said: "sir, you have witnessed a painful scene. on the honor of a gentleman give me your pledge to secrecy. there are tragedies in all lives; chance has laid bare to you the youth of cambia." he pointed downward to where the still form lay between them. "above the body of your husband--my friend--i swear to you that your secret is safe." "i thank you." she looked a moment upon the form of the sleeper, and then her eyes searched the face of the young man. "will you leave me alone with him a few moments?" he bowed and again withdrew into the little hall. when he was gone she knelt above the figure a long time in prayer, and then, looking for the last time upon the dead face, sadly withdrew. the young man took her to the carriage. a policeman was guarding it. "the driver broke the regulation by my orders," edward said; "he was bringing this lady to the bedside of a dying friend. here is enough to pay his fine." he gave a few napoleons to the cabman and his card on which he placed his address. "adieu, madame. i will arrange everything, and if you will attend the funeral i will notify you." "i will attend," said cambia; "i thank you. adieu." chapter xliv. the heart of cambia. it was a simple burial. edward sent a carriage for cambia, one for the concierge and his wife, and in the other he brought mrs. montjoy and mary, to whom he had related a part of the history of benoni, as he still called him. out in pere la chaise they laid away the body of the old master, placed on it their flowers and the beautiful wreath that cambia brought, and were ready to return. as they approached their carriage, edward introduced the ladies, to whom he had already told of cambia's career. they looked with sympathetic pleasure upon the great singer and were touched by her interest in and devotion to the old musician, "whom she had known in happier days." cambia studied their faces long and thoughtfully and promised to call upon them. they parted to meet again. when edward went to make an engagement for mrs. montjoy with moreau, the great authority on the eye, he was informed that the specialist had been called to russia for professional services in the family of the czar, and would not return before a date then a week off. the ladies accepted the delay philosophically. it would give them time to see something of paris. and see it they did. to edward it was familiar in every feature. he took them to all the art centers, the historical points, the great cathedral, the environments of malmaison and versailles, to the promenades, the palaces and the theaters. this last feature was the delight of both. for the dramatic art in all its perfection both betrayed a keen relish, and just then paris was at its gayest. they were never jostled, harassed, nor disappointed. they were in the hands of an accomplished cosmopolitan. to mary the scenes were full of never-ending delight. the mother had breathed the same atmosphere before, but to mary all was novel and beautiful. throughout all edward maintained the sad, quiet dignity peculiar to him, illumined at times by flashes of life, as he saw and gloried in the happiness of the girl at his side. then came cambia! mary had gone out with edward, for a walk, and mrs. montjoy was knitting in the parlor in silent reverie when a card was brought in, and almost immediately the sad, beautiful face of the singer appeared in the door. "do not arise, madame," she said, quickly, coming forward upon seeing the elderly lady beginning to put aside her knitting, "nor cease your work. i ask that you let me forget we are almost strangers and will sit here by your side. you have not seen moreau yet?" "no," said mrs. montjoy, releasing the white hand that had clasped hers; "he is to return to-day." "then he will soon relieve your anxiety. with moreau everything is possible." "i am sure i hope your trust is not misplaced; success will lift a great weight from my family." cambia was silent, thinking; then she arose and, sinking upon the little footstool, laid her arms upon the knees of her hostess, and with tearful eyes raised to her face she said: "mrs. montjoy, do you not know me? have i indeed changed so much?" the needles ceased to contend and the work slipped from the smooth little hands. a frightened look overspread the gentle face. "who is it speaks? sometime i must have known that voice." "it is marion evan." the visitor bent her head upon her own arms and gave way to her emotion. mrs. montjoy had repeated the name unconsciously and was silent. but presently, feeling the figure bent before her struggling in the grasp of its emotion, she placed both hands upon the shapely head and gently stroked its beautiful hair, now lined with silver. "you have suffered," she said simply. "why did you leave us? why have you been silent all these years?" "for my father's sake. they have thought me cold, heartless, abandoned. i have crucified my heart to save his." she spoke with vehement passion. "hush, my child," said the elder lady; "you must calm yourself. tell me all; let me help you. you used to tell me all your troubles and i used to call you daughter in the old times. do you remember?" "ah, madame, if i did not i would not be here now. indeed you were always kind and good to marion." and so, living over the old days, they came to learn again each other's heart and find how little time and the incidents of life had changed them. and sitting there beneath the sympathetic touch and eyes of her lifetime friend, cambia told her story. "i was not quite , madame, you remember, when it happened. how, i do not know; but i thought then i must have been born for gaspard levigne. from the moment i saw him, the violin instructor in our institution, i loved him. his voice, his music, his presence, without effort of his, deprived me of any resisting power; i did not seek to resist. i advanced in my art until its perfection charmed him. i had often seen him watching me with a sad and pensive air and he once told me that my face recalled a very dear friend, long dead. i sang a solo in a concert; he led the orchestra; i sang to him. the audience thought it was the debutante watching her director, but it was a girl of singing to the only man the world held for her. he heard and knew. "from that day we loved; before, only i loved. he was more than double my age, a handsome man, with a divine art; and i--well, they called me pretty--made him love me. we met at every opportunity, and when opportunities did not offer we made them, those innocent, happy trysts. "love is blind not only to faults but to all the world. we were discovered and he was blamed. the great name of the institution might be compromised--its business suffer. he resigned. "then came the terrible misstep; he asked me to go with him and i consented. we should have gone home; he was afraid of the legal effects of marrying a minor, and so we went the other way. not stopping in new york we turned northward, away from the revengeful south; from police surveillance, and somewhere we were married. i heard them call us man and wife, and then i sank again into my dream. "it does not seem possible that i could not have known the name of the place, but i was no more than a child looking from a car window and taken out for meals here and there. i had but one thought--my husband. "we went to canada, then abroad. gaspard had saved considerable money; his home was in silesia and thither we went; and that long journey was the happiest honeymoon a woman could know." "i spent mine in europe wandering from point to point. i understand," said mrs. montjoy, gently. "oh, you do understand! we reached the home and then my troubles began. my husband, the restraints of his professional engagement thrown off, fell a victim to dissipation again. he had left his country to break up old associations and this habit. "his people were high-class but poor. he was count levigne. their pride was boundless. they disliked me from the beginning. i had frustrated the plans of the family, whose redemption was to come from gaspard. innocent though i was, and soon demanding the tenderness, the love, the gentleness which almost every woman receives under like circumstances, i received only coldness and petty persecution. "soon came want; not the want of mere food, but of clothing and minor comforts. and gaspard had changed--he who should have defended me left me to defend myself. one night came the end. he reproached me--he was intoxicated--with having ruined his life and his prospects." the speaker paused. with this scene had come an emotion she could with difficulty control; but, calm at last, she continued with dignity: "the daughter of gen. albert evan could not stand that. i sold my diamonds, my mother's diamonds, and came away. i had resolved to come back and work for a living in my own land until peace could be made with father. at that time i did not know the trouble. i found out, though. "gaspard came to his senses then and followed me. madame, can you imagine the sorrow of the coming back? but a few months before i had gone over the same route the happiest woman in all the to me beautiful world, and now i was the most miserable; life had lost its beauty! "we met again--he had taken a shorter way, and, guessing my limited knowledge correctly, by watching the shipping register found me. but all eloquence could not avail then; there had been a revulsion. i no longer loved him. he would never reform; he would work by fits and starts and he could not support me. at that time he had but one piece of property in the world--a magnificent stradivarius violin. the sale of that would have brought many thousand francs to spend, but on that one thing he was unchanging. it had come to him by many generations of musicians. they transmitted to him their divine art and the vehicle of its expression. a suggestion of sale threw him into the most violent of passions, so great was the shock to his artistic nature and family pride. if he had starved to death that violin would have been found by his side. "i believe it was this heroism in his character that touched me at last; i relented. we went to paris and gaspard secured employment. but, alas, i had not been mistaken. i was soon penniless and practically abandoned. i had no longer the ability to do what i should have done at first; i could not go home for want of means." "you should have written to us." "i would have starved before i would have asked. had you known, had you offered, i would have received it. and god sent me a friend, one of his noblemen--the last in all the world of whom i could ask anything. when my fortunes were at their lowest ebb john morgan came back into my life." "john morgan!" "he asked no questions. he simply did all that was necessary. and then he went to see my father. i had written him, but he had never replied; he went, as i learned afterward, simply as a man of business and without sentiment. you can imagine the scene. no other man witnessed it. it was, he told me, long and stormy. "the result was that i would be received at home when i came with proofs of my marriage. "i was greatly relieved at first; i had only to find my husband and get them. i found him but i did not get them. it happened to be a bad time to approach him. then john morgan tried, and that was unfortunate. in my despair i had told my husband of that prior engagement. an insane jealousy now seized him. he thought it was a plot to recover my name and marry me to mr. morgan. he held the key to the situation and swore that in action for divorce he would testify there had been no marriage! "then we went forward to find the record. we never found it. if years of search and great expense could have accomplished it, we would have succeeded. it was, however, a fact; i remember standing before the officiating officer and recalled my trembling responses, but that was all. the locality, the section, whether it was the first or second day, i do not recall. but, as god is my judge, i was married." she became passionate. her companion soothed her again. "go on, my child. i believe you." "i cannot tell you a part of this sad story; i have not been perfectly open. some day i will, perhaps, and until that time comes i ask you to keep my secret, because there are good reasons now for silence; you will appreciate them when you know. gaspard was left--our only chance. mr. morgan sought him, i sought him; he would have given him any sum for his knowledge. gaspard would have sold it, we thought; want would have made him sell, but gaspard had vanished as if death itself had carried him off. "in this search i had always the assistance of mr. morgan, and at first his money defrayed all expense; but shortly afterward he influenced a leading opera master to give me a chance, and i sang in paris as cambia, for the first time. from that day i was rich, and marion evan disappeared from the world. "informed weekly of home affairs and my dear father, my separation was lessened of half its terrors. but year after year that unchanging friend stood by me. the time came when the stern face was the grandest object on which my eyes could rest. there was no compact between us; if i could have dissolved the marriage tie i would have accepted him and been happy. but cambia could take no chances with herself nor with gen. evan! divorce could only have been secured by three months' publication of notice in the papers and if that reached gaspard his terrible answer would have been filed and i would have been disgraced. "the american war had passed and then came the french war. and still no news from gaspard. and one day came john morgan, with the proposition that ten years of abandonment gave me liberty, and offered me his hand--and fortune. but--there were reasons--there were reasons. i could not. he received my answer and said simply: 'you are right!' after that we talked no more upon the subject. "clew after clew was exhausted; some led us into a foreign prison. i sang at christmas to the convicts. all seemed touched; but none was overwhelmed; gaspard was not among them. "i sang upon the streets of paris, disguised; all paris came to know and hear the 'veiled singer,' whose voice, it was said, equaled the famous cambia's. a blind violinist accompanied me. we managed it skillfully. he met me at a new place every evening, and we parted at a new place, i alighting from the cab we always took, at some unfrequented place, and sending him home. and now, madame, do you still believe in god?" "implicitly." "then tell me why, when, a few days since, i was called by your friend mr. morgan to the bedside of gaspard levigne, the old musician, who had accompanied me on the streets of paris, why was it that god in his mercy did not give him breath to enable his lips to answer my pitiful question; why, if there is a god in heaven, did he not----" "hush, marion!" the calm, sweet voice of the elder woman rose above the excitement and anguish of the singer. "hush, my child; you have trusted too little in him! god is great, and good and merciful. i can say it now; i will say it when his shadows fall upon my eyes as they must some day." awed and touched, cambia looked up into the glorified face and was silent. neither broke that stillness, but as they waited a violent step was heard without, and a voice: "infamous! infamous!" edward rushed into the room, pale and horrified, his bursting heart finding relief only in such words. "what is it, my son--edward!" mrs. montjoy looked upon him reproachfully. "i am accused of the murder of rita morgan!" he cried. he did not see cambia, who had drawn back from between the two, and was looking in horror at him as she slowly moved toward the door. "you accused, edward? impossible! why, what possible motive----" "oh, it is devilish!" he exclaimed, as he tore the american paper into shreds. "devilish! first i was called her son, and now her murderer. i murdered her to destroy her evidence, is the charge!" the white face of cambia disappeared through the door. chapter xlv. the man with the torch. the startling news had been discussed in all its phases in the little parlor, mary taking no part. she sat with averted face listening, but ever and anon when edward's indignation became unrestrainable she turned and looked at him. she did not know that the paper contained a reference to her. the astounding revelation, aside from the accusation, was the wound. strange that he had not discovered it. who could have murdered poor rita? positively the only person on the immediate premises were virdow, evan and gerald. virdow was of course out of the question, and the others were in the room. it was the blow that had driven her head through the glass. what enemy could the woman have had? so far as he was concerned, the charge could amount to nothing; evan was in the room with him; the general would surely remember that. but the horror, the mortification--he, edward morgan, charged with murder, and the center of a scandal in which the name of mary montjoy was mentioned. the passion left him; depressed and sick from reaction he sat alone in the little parlor, long after the ladies had retired; and then came the climax. a cablegram reached the house and was handed in to him. it was signed by evan and read: "you have been indicted. return." "indicted," and for murder, of course. it gave him no uneasiness, but it thrust all light and sweetness from life. the dream was over. there could now be no search for marion evan. that must pass, and with it hope. he had builded upon that idea castles whose minarets wore the colors of sunrise. they had fallen and his life lay among the ruins. he threw himself upon the bed to sleep, but the gray of dawn was already over the city; there came a rumbling vehicle in the street; he heard the sound of a softly closing door--and then he arose and went out. the early morning air and exercise brought back his physical equipoise. he returned for breakfast, with a good appetite, and though grave, was tranquil again. neither of the ladies brought up the painful subject; they went with him to see the learned oculist and came back silent and oppressed. there was no hope. the diagnosis corresponded with dr. campbell's; the blind eye might have been saved years ago, but an operation would not have been judicious under the circumstances. continued sight must depend upon general health. all their pleasures and hopes buried in one brief day, they turned their backs on paris and started homeward. edward saw cambia no more; mrs. montjoy called alone and said farewell. the next day they sailed from havre. in new york norton met them, grave and embarrassed for once in his life, and assisted in their hurried departure for the far southern home. there was no exchange of views between the two men. the paper norton had sent was acknowledged; that was all. the subject was too painful for discussion. and so they arrived in georgia. they mere met by the montjoy carriage at a little station near the city. it was the : p. m. train. gen. evan was waiting for edward. the handshaking over, they rapidly left the station. evan had secured from the sheriff a temporary exemption from arrest for edward, but it was understood that he was to remain out of sight. they arrived within a couple of miles of the cedars, having only broached commonplace subjects, traveling incidents and the like, when a negro stopped them. in the distance they heard a hound trailing. "boss, kin air one er you gentlemen gi' me a match? i los' my light back yonder, and hit's too putty er night ter go back without a possum." evan drew rein. he was a born sportsman and sympathetic. "i reckon so," he said; "and--well, i can't," he concluded, having tried all pockets. "mr. morgan, have you a match?" edward had one and one only. he drew all the little articles of his pockets into his hand to find it. "now, hold," said the general; "let's light our cigars. if it's to be the last chance." the negro touched the blazing match to splinters of lightwood, as the southern pitch pine is called when dry, and instantly he stood in a circle of light, his features revealed in every detail. edward gazed into it curiously. where had he seen that face? it came back like the lines of some unpleasant dream--the thick lips, the flat nose, the retreating forehead, full eyes and heavy eyelids, and over all a look of infinite stupidity. the negro had fixed his eyes a moment upon the articles in edward's hand and stepped back quickly. but he recovered himself and with clumsy thanks, holding up his flaming torch, went away, leaving only the uncertain shadows dancing across the road. at home gen. evan threw aside all reserve. he drew their chairs up into the sheltered corner of the porch. "i have some matters to talk over," he said, "and our time is short. yours is not a bailable case and we must have a speedy trial. the law winks at your freedom to-night; it will not do to compromise our friends in the court house by unnecessary delay. edward, where was i when you discovered the body of the woman, rita morgan?" edward looked through the darkness at his friend, who was gazing straight ahead. "you were standing by gerald's bed, looking upon him." "how did you discover her? it never occurred to me to ask; were you not in the room also?" "i certainly was. she broke the glass by pressing against it, as i thought at the time, but now i see she was struck. i rushed out and picked her up, and you came when i called." "exactly. and you both talked loudly out there." "why do you ask?" "because," said evan, slowly, "therein lies the defect in our defense. i cannot swear you were in the room upon my own knowledge. i had been astounded by the likeness of gerald to those who had been dear to me--i was absorbed. then i heard you cry out, and found you in the yard." there was a long pause. edward's heart began to beat with sledge-hammer violence. "then," he said with a strange voice, "as the case would be presented, i was found with the body of the woman; she had been murdered and i was the only one who had a motive. is that it?" "that is it." the young man arose and walked the porch in silence. "but that is not all," said gen. evan. "if it were, i would have cabled you to go east from paris. there is more. is there any one on earth who could be interested in your disgrace or death?" "none that i know of--that is, well, no; none that i know of. you remember royson; we fought that out. he cannot cherish enmity against a man who fought him in an open field." "perhaps you are mistaken." "from what do you speak?" "you had been in paris but a few days when one night as i sat here your friend barksdale--great man that barksdale; a trifle heady and confident, but true as steel--barksdale came flying on his sorrel up the avenue and landed here. "'general,' said he, 'i have discovered the most damnable plot that a man ever faced. all this scandal about morgan is not newspaper sensation as you suppose, it is the first step in a great tragedy.' and then he went on to tell me that gerald had invaded his room and shown him pictures of an open grave, the face of a dead woman and also the face of the man who opened that grave, drawn with every detail perfect. gerald declared that he witnessed the disinterment and drew the scene from memory----" "hold a minute," said edward; he was now on his feet, his hand uplifted to begin a statement; "and then--and then----" "the object of that disinterment was to inflict the false wound and charge you with murder." "and the man who did it--who made that wound--was the man who begged a match from us on the road. i will swear it, if art is true. i have seen the picture." evan paused a moment to take in the vital fact. then there rung out from him a half-shout: "thank god! thank god!" the chairs that stood between him and the door were simply hurled out of the way. his stentorian voice called for his factotum. "john!" and john did not wait to dress, but came. "get my horse and a mule saddled and bring that puppy carlo. quick, john, quick!" john fled toward the stable. "edward, we win if we get that negro--we win!" he exclaimed, coming back through the wreck of his furniture. "but why should the negro have disinterred the body and have made a wound upon her head? there can be no motive." "heavens, man, no motive! do you know that you have come between two men and mary morgan?" "i have never suspected it, even." "two have sought her with all the energy of manhood," said evan. "two men as different as the east from the west. royson hates you and will leave no stone unturned to effect your ruin; barksdale loves her and will leave no stone unturned to protect her happiness! there you have it all. only one man in the world could have put that black devil up to his infamous deed--and that man is royson. only one man in the world could have grasped the situation and have read the riddle correctly--and that man is barksdale." edward was dazed. gradually the depth and villainy of the conspiracy grew clear. "but to prove it----" "the negro." "will he testify?" "will he? if i get my hands on him, young man, he will testify! or he will hang by the neck from a limb as his possum hangs by the tail." "you propose to capture him?" "i am going to capture him." he disappeared in the house and when he came out he had on his army belt, with sword and pistol. the mounts were at the door and for the first time in his life edward was astride a mule. to his surprise the animal bounded along after the gray horse, with a smooth and even gait, and kept up without difficulty. evan rode as a cavalryman and carried across his saddle the puppy. with unerring skill he halted at the exact spot where the match had been struck, and lowered the dog gently to the ground. the intelligent, excited animal at once took up the trail of man or dogs, and opening loudly glided into the darkness. they followed. several miles had been covered, when they saw in the distance a glimmer of light among the trees and evan drew rein. "it will not do," he said, "to ride upon him. at the sound of horses' feet he will extinguish his light and escape. the dog, he will suppose, is a stray one led off by his own and will not alarm him." they tied their animals and pressed on. the dog ahead had openel and carlo's voice could be heard with the rest, as they trailed the fleeing possum. the general was exhausted. "i can't do it, edward, my boy--go on. i will follow as fast as possible." without a word edward obeyed. the dogs were now furious, the man himself running. in the din and clamor he could hear nothing of pursuit. the first intimation he had of danger was a grip on his collar and a man's voice exclaiming excitedly: "halt! you are my prisoner!" the torch fell to the ground and lay sputtering. the negro was terrified for the moment, but his quick eye pierced the gloom and measured his antagonist. he made a fierce effort to break away, and failing, threw himself with immense force upon edward. then began a frightful struggle. no word was spoken. the negro was powerful, but the white man was inspired by a memory and consciousness of his wrongs. they fell and writhed, and rose and fell again. slippery dick had got his hand upon edward's throat. suddenly his grasp relaxed and he lay with the white of his eyes rolled upward. the muzzle of a cavalry pistol was against his head and the stern face of the veteran was above him. "get up!" said the general, briefly. "certainly, boss," was the reply, and breathless the two men arose. the defense had its witness! "ef he had'n conjured me," said the negro doggedly, "he couldn't 'er done it." he had recognized among the little things that edward drew from his pocket on the road the voodoo's charm. edward breathless, took up the torch and looked into dick's countenance. "i am not mistaken, general, this is the man." chapter xlvi. what the sheet hid. slippery dick was puzzled as well as frightened. he knew gen. evan by sight, and his terror lost some of its wildness; the general was not likely to be out upon a lynching expedition. but for what was he wanted? he could not protest until he knew that, and in his past were many dark deeds, for which somebody was wanted. so he was silent. his attention was chiefly directed to edward; he could not account for him, nor could he remember to have seen him. royson had long since trained him to silence; most men convict themselves while under arrest. evan stood in deep thought, but presently he prepared for action. "what is your name, boy?" the negro answered promptly: "dick, sah." "dick who?" "just dick, sah." "your other name?" "slippery dick." the general was interested instantly. "oh, slippery dick." the career of the notorious negro was partially known to him. dick had been the reporter's friend for many years and in dull times more than the truth had been told of slippery dick. "well, this begins to look probable, edward; i begin to think you may be right." "i am not mistaken, general. if there is a mistake, it is not mine." "what dey want me for, marse evan? i ain't done nothin'." "a house has been broken into, dick, and you are the man who did it." "who, me? fo' gawd, marse evan, i ain't broke inter no man's house. it warn't me--no sah, no sah." "we will see about that. now i will give you your choice, dick; you can go with me, gen. evan and i will protect you. if the person who accuses you says you are innocent i will turn you loose; if you are not willing to go there i will take you to jail; but, willing or unwilling, if you make a motion to escape, i will put a bullet through you before you can take three steps." "i'll go with you, marse evan; i ain't de man. i'll go whar you want me to go." "get your dogs together and take the road to town. i will show you when we get there." they went with him to where his dogs, great and small, were loudly baying at the root of a small persimmon tree. dick looked up wistfully. "marse evan, deir he sots; you don't spect me ter leave dat possum up dere?" the old man laughed silently. "the ruling passion strong in death," he quoted to edward, and then sternly to dick: "get him and be quick about it." a moment more and they were on the way to the horses. "i had an object," said evan, "in permitting this. as we pass through the city we present the appearance of a hunting party. turn up your coat collar and turn down your hat to avoid the possibility of recognition." they reached the city, passed through the deserted streets, the negro carrying his 'possum and surrounded by the dogs preceding the riders, and, without attracting more than the careless notice of a policeman or two, they reached the limits beyond. still dick was not suspicious; the road was his own way home; but when finally he was ordered to turn up the long route to ilexhurst, he stopped. this was anticipated; the general spurted his horse almost against him. "go on!" he said, sternly, "or by the eternal you are a dead man! edward, if he makes a break, you have the ex----" "marse evan, you said breakin' in 'er house." dick still hesitated. "i did; but it was the house of the dead." the 'possum came suddenly to the ground, and away went dick into an open field, the expectation of a bullet lending speed to his legs. but he was not in the slightest danger from bullets; he was the last man, almost, that either of his captors would have slain, nor was it necessary. the great roan came thundering upon him; he lifted his arm to ward off the expected blow and looked up terrified. the next instant a hand was on his coat collar, and he was lifted off his feet. dragging his prisoner into the road, evan held his pistol over his wet forehead, while, with the rein, edward lashed his elbows behind his back. the dogs were fighting over the remains of the unfortunate 'possum. they left them there. the three men arrived at ilexhurst thoroughly tired; the white men more so than the negro. tying their animals, edward led the way around to the glass-room, where a light was burning, but to his disappointment on entering he found no occupant. slippery dick was placed in a chair and the door locked. evan stood guard over him, while edward searched the house. the wing-room was dark and gerald was not to be found. from the door of the professor's room came the cadenced breathing of a profound sleeper. returning, edward communicated these facts to his companion. they discussed the situation. evan, oppressed by the memory of his last two visits to these scenes, was silent and distrait. the eyes of the negro were moving restlessly from point to point, taking in every detail of his surroundings. the scene, the hour, the situation and the memory of that shriveled face in its coffin all combined to reduce dick to a state of abject terror. had he not been tied he would have plunged through the glass into the night; the pistol in the hands of the old man standing over him would have been forgotten. what was to be done? edward went into the wing-room and lighted the lamps preparatory to making better arrangements for all parties. suddenly his eyes fell upon the lounge. extended upon it was a form outlined through a sheet that covered it from head to foot. so still, so immovable and breathless it seemed, he drew back in horror. an indefinable fear seized him. white, with unexpressed horror, he stood in the door of the glass-room and beckoned to the general. the silence of his appearance, the inexpressible terror that shone in his face and manner, sent a thrill to the old man's heart and set the negro trembling. driving the negro before him, evan entered. at sight of the covered form dick made a violent effort to break away, but, with nerves now at their highest tension and muscles drawn responsive, the general successfully resisted. enraged at last he stilled his captive by a savage blow with his weapon. edward now approached the apparition and lifted the cloth. prepared as he was for the worst, he could not restrain the cry of horror that rose to his lips. before him was the face of gerald, white with the hue of death, the long lashes drooped over half-closed eyes, the black hair drawn back from the white forehead and clustering about his neck and shoulders. he fell almost fainting against the outstretched arm of his friend, who, pale and shocked, stood with eyes riveted upon the fatal beauty of the dead face. it was but an instant; then the general was jerked with irresistible force and fell backward into the room, edward going nearly prostrate over him. there was the sound of shattered glass and the negro was gone. stunned and hurt, the old man rose to his feet and rushed to the glass-room. then a pain seized him; he drew his bruised limb from the floor and caught the lintel. "stop that man! stop that man!" he said in a stentorian voice; "he is your only witness now!" edward looked into his face a moment and comprehended. for the third time that night he plunged into the darkness after slippery dick. but where? carlo was telling! down the hill his shrill voice was breaking the night. abandoned by the negro's dogs accustomed to seek their home and that not far away, he had followed the master's footsteps with unerring instinct and whined about the glass door. the bursting glass, the fleeing form of a strange negro, were enough for his excitable nature; he gave voice and took the trail. the desperate effort of the negro might have succeeded, but the human arms were made for many things; when a man stumbles he needs them in the air and overhead or extended. slippery dick went down with a crash in a mass of blackberry bushes, and when edward reached him he was kicking wildly at the excited puppy, prevented from rising by his efforts and his bonds. the excited and enraged white man dragged him out of the bushes by his collar and brought reason to her throne by savage kicks. the prisoner gave up and begged for mercy. he was marched back, all breathless, to the general, who had limped to the gate to meet him. edward was now excited beyond control; he forced the prisoner, shivering with horror, into the presence of the corpse, and with the axe in hand confronted him. "you infamous villain!" he cried; "tell me here, in the presence of my dead friend, who it was that put you up to opening the grave of rita morgan and breaking her skull, or i will brain you! you have ten seconds to speak!" he meant it, and the axe flashed in the air. gen. evan caught the upraised arm. "softly, softly, edward; this won't do; this won't do! you defeat your own purpose!" it was timely; the blow might have descended, for the reckless man was in earnest, and the negro was by this time dumb. "dick," said the general, "i promised to protect you on conditions, and i will. but you have done this gentleman an injury and endangered his life. you opened rita morgan's grave and broke her skull--an act for which the law has no adequate punishment; but my young friend here is desperate. you can save yourself but i cannot save you except over my dead body. if you refuse i will stand aside, and when i do you are a dead man." he was during this hurried speech still struggling with the young man. "i'll tell, marse evan! hold 'im. i'll tell!" "who, then?" said edward, white with his passion; "who was the infamous villain that paid you for the deed?" "mr. royson, mr. royson, he hired me." the men looked at each other. a revulsion came over edward; a horror, a hatred of the human race, of anything that bore the shape of man--but no; the kind, sad face of the old gentleman was beaming in triumph upon him. and then from somewhere into the scene came the half-dressed form of virdow, his face careworn and weary, amazed and alarmed. virdow wrote the confession in all its details, and the general witnessed the rude cross made by the trembling hand of the negro. and then they stood sorrowful and silent before the still, dead face of gerald morgan! chapter xlvii. on the margins of two worlds. the discovery of gerald's death necessitated a change of plans. the concealment of slippery dick and edward must necessarily be accomplished at ilexhurst. there were funeral arrangements to be made, the property cared for and virdow to be rescued from his solitary and embarrassing position. moreover, the gray dawn was on ere the confession was written, and virdow had briefly explained the circumstances of gerald's death. exhausted by excitement and anxiety and the depression of grief, he went to his room and brought edward a sealed packet which had been written and addressed to him during the early hours of the night. "you will find it all there," he said; "i cannot talk upon it." he went a moment to look upon the face of his friend and then, with a single pathetic gesture, turned and left them. one of the eccentricities of the former owner of ilexhurst had been a granite smoke-house, not only burglar and fireproof but cyclone proof, and with its oaken door it constituted a formidable jail. with food and water, dick, freed of his bonds, was ushered into this building, the small vents in the high roof affording enough light for most purposes. a messenger was then dispatched for barksdale and edward locked himself away from sight of chance callers in his upper room. the general, thoughtful and weary, sat by the dead man. the document that virdow had prepared was written in german. "when your eye reads these lines, you will be grieved beyond endurance; gerald is no more! he was killed to-night by a flash of lightning and his death was instantaneous. i am alone, heartbroken and utterly wretched. innocent of any responsibility in this horrible tragedy i was yet the cause, since it was while submitting to some experiments of mine that he received his death stroke. i myself received a frightful electric shock, but it now amounts to nothing. i would to god that i and not he had received the full force of the discharge. he might have been of vast service to science, but my work is little and now well-nigh finished. "gerald was kneeling under a steel disk, in the glass-room, you will remember where we began our sound experiments, and i did not know that the steel wire which suspended it ran up and ended near a metal strip, along the ridge beam of the room. we had just begun our investigation, when the flash descended and he fell dead. "at this writing i am here under peculiar circumstances; the butler who came to my call when i recovered consciousness assisted me in the attempt at resuscitation of gerald, but without any measure of success. he then succeeded in getting one or two of the old negroes and a doctor. the latter declared life extinct. there was no disfigurement--only a black spot in the crown of the head and a dark line down the spine, where the electric fluid had passed. that was all." edward ceased to read; his chin sank upon his breast and the lines slipped from his unfocused eyes. the dark line down the spine! his heart leaped fiercely and he lifted his face with a new light in his eyes. for a moment it was radiant; then shame bowed his head again. he laid aside the paper and gave himself up to thought, from time to time pacing the room. in these words lay emancipation. he resumed the reading: "we arranged the body on the lounge and determined to wait until morning to send for the coroner and undertaker, but one by one your negroes disappeared. they could not seem to withstand their superstition, the butler told me, and as there was nothing to be done i did not worry. i came here to the library to write, and when i returned, the butler, too, was gone. they are a strange people. i suppose i will see none of them until morning, but it does not matter; my poor friend is far beyond the reach of attention. his rare mind has become a part of cosmos; its relative situation is our mystery. "i will, now, before giving you a minute description of our last evening together, commit for your eye my conclusions as to some of the phenomena and facts you have observed. i am satisfied as far as gerald's origin is concerned, that he is either the son of the woman rita or that they are in some way connected by ties of blood. in either case the similarity of their profiles would be accounted for. no matter how remote the connection, nothing is so common as this reappearance of tribal features in families. the woman, you told me, claimed him as her child, but silently waived that claim for his sake. i say to you that a mother's instinct is based upon something deeper than mere fancy, and that intuitions are so nearly correct that i class them as the nearest approach to mind memory to be observed. "the likeness of his full face to the picture of the girl you call marion evan may be the result of influences exerted at birth. do you remember the fragmentary manuscript? if that is a history, i am of the opinion that it is explanation enough. at any rate, the profile is a stronger evidence the other way. "the reproduction of the storm scene is one of the most remarkable incidents i have ever known, but it is not proof that he inherited it as a memory. it is a picture forcibly projected upon his imagination by the author of the fragment--and in my opinion he had read that fragment. it came to him as a revelation, completing the gap. i am sure that from the day that he read it he was for long periods convinced that he was the son of rita morgan; that she had not lied to him. in this i am confirmed by the fact that as she lay dead he bent above her face and called her 'mother'. i am just as well assured that he had no memory of the origin of that picture; no memory, in fact, of having read the paper. this may seem strange to you, but any one who has had the care of victims of opium will accept the proposition as likely. "the drawing of the woman's face was simple. his hope had been to find himself the son of marion evan; his dreams were full of her. he had seen the little picture; his work was an idealized copy, but it must be admitted a marvelous work. still the powers of concentration in this man exceeded the powers of any one i have ever met. "and that brings me to what was the most wonderful demonstration he gave us. edward, i have divined your secret, although you have never told it. when you went to secure for me the note of the waterfall, the home note, you were accompanied by your friend mary. i will stake my reputation upon it. it is true because it is obliged to be true. when you played for us you had her in your mind, a vivid picture, and gerald drew it. it was a case of pure thought transference--a transference of a mental conception, line for line. gerald received his conception from you upon the vibrating air. to me it was a demonstration worth my whole journey to america. "and here let me add, as another proof of the sympathetic chord between you, that gerald himself had learned to love the same woman. you gave him that, my young friend, with the picture. "you have by this time been made acquainted with the terrible accusation against you--false and infamous. there will be little trouble in clearing yourself, but oh, what agony to your sensitive nature! i tried to keep the matter from gerald, as i did the inquest by keeping him busy with investigations; but a paper fell into his hands and his excitement was frightful. evading me he disappeared from the premises one evening, but while i was searching for him he came to the house in a carriage, bringing the picture of that repulsive negro, which you will remember. since then he has been more calm. mr. barksdale, your friend, i suppose, was with him once or twice. "and now i come to this, the last night of our association upon earth; the night that has parted us and rolled between us the mystery across which our voices cannot reach nor our ears hear. "gerald had long since been satisfied with the ability of living substance to hold a photograph, and convinced that these photographs lie dormant, so to speak, somewhere in our consciousness until awakened again--that is, until made vivid. he was proceeding carefully toward the proposition that a complete memory could be inherited, and in the second generation or even further removed; you know his theory. there were intermediate propositions that needed confirmation. when forms and scenes come to the mind of the author, pure harmonies of color to that of the artist, sweet co-ordinations of harmonies to the musician, whence come they? where is the thread of connection? most men locate the seat of their consciousness at the top of the head; they seem to think in that spot. and strange, is it not, that when life passes out and all the beautiful structure of the body claimed by the frost of death, that heat lingers longest at that point! it is material in this letter, because explaining gerald's idea. he wished me to subject him to the finest vibrations at that point. "the experiment was made with a new apparatus, which had been hung in place of the first in the glass-room; or, rather, to this we made an addition. a thin steel plate was fixed to the floor, directly under the wire and elevated upon a small steel rod. gerald insisted that as the drum and membrane i used made the shapes we secured a new experiment should be tried, with simple vibrations. so we hung in its place a steel disk with a small projection from the center underneath. kneeling upon the lower disk gerald was between two plates subject to the finest vibration, his sensitive body the connection. there was left a gap of one inch between his head and the projection under the upper disk and we were to try first with the gap closed, and then with it opened. "you know how excitable he was. when he took his position he was white and his large eyes flashed fire. his face settled into that peculiarly harsh, fierce expression, for which i have never accounted except upon the supposition of nervous agony. the handle to his violin had been wrapped with fine steel wire, and this, extending a yard outward, was bent into a tiny hook, intended to be clasped around the suspended wire that it might convey to it the full vibrations from the sounding board of the instrument. i made this connection, and, with the violin against my ear, prepared to strike the 'a' note in the higher octave, which if the vibrations were fine enough should suggest in his mind the figure of a daisy. "gerald, his eyes closed, remained motionless in his kneeling posture. suddenly a faint flash of light descended into the room and the thunder rolled. and i, standing entranced by the beauty and splendor of that face, lost all thought of the common laws of physics. a look of rapture had suffused it, his eyes now looked out upon some vision, and a tender smile perfected the exquisite curve of his lips. there was no need of violin outside, the world was full of the fine quiverings of electricity, the earth's invisible envelope was full of vibrations! nature was speaking a language of its own. what that mind saw between the glories of this and the other life as it trembled on the margins of both, is not given to me to know; but a vision had come to him--of what? "ah, edward, how different the awakening for him and me! i remember that for a moment i seemed to float in a sea of flame; there was a shock like unto nothing i had ever dreamed, and lying near me upon the floor, his mortal face startled out of its beautiful expression, lay gerald--dead!" the conclusion of the letter covered the proposed arrangements for interment. edward had little time to reflect upon the strange document. the voice of gen. evan was heard calling at the foot of the stair. looking down he saw standing by him the straight, manly figure of barksdale. the hour of dreams had ended; the hour of action had arrived! chapter xlviii. war to the knife. barksdale heard the events of the night, as detailed by the general, without apparent emotion. he had gone with them to look upon the remains of gerald. he brought from the scene only a graver look in his face, a more gentle tone in his voice. these, however, soon passed. he was again the cold, stern, level-headed man of affairs, listening to a strange story. he lost no detail and his quick, trained mind gave the matter its true position. the death of gerald was peculiarly unfortunate for edward. they had now nothing left but the negro, and negro testimony could be bought for little money. he would undertake to buy just such evidence as dick had given, from a dozen men in ten days and the first man he would have sought was slippery dick, and the public would be thrown into doubt as to royson by the fact of deadly enmity between the men. to introduce dick upon the stand to testify and not support his testimony would be almost a confession of guilt. the negro was too well known. gerald's statement would not be admissible, though his picture might. but of what avail would the picture be without the explanation? barksdale pointed out this clearly but briefly. gen. evan was amazed that such a situation had not already presented itself. the court case would have been dick's word against royson's; the result would have been doubtful. the least that could be hoped for, if the state made out a case against edward, was imprisonment. but there was more; a simple escape was not sufficient; edward must not only escape but also show the conspiracy and put it where it belonged. he, barksdale, had no doubt upon that point. royson was the guilty man. this analysis of the situation, leaving as it did the whole matter open again, and the result doubtful, filled evan with anxiety and vexation. "i thought," said he, walking the floor, "that we had everything fixed; that the only thing necessary would be to hold to the negro and bring him in at the right time. if he died or got away we had his confession witnessed." barksdale smiled and shook his head. "it is of the utmost importance," he said, "to hold the negro and bring him in at the right time, but in my opinion it is vital to the case that the negro be kept from communicating with royson, and that the fact of his arrest be concealed. where have you got him?" "in the stone smoke-house," said edward. "tied." "no." "then," said barksdale, arising at once, "if not too late you must tie him. there is no smoke-house in existence and no jail in this section that can hold slippery dick if his hands are free." thoroughly alarmed, gen. evan led the way and edward followed. barksdale waved the latter back. "don't risk being seen; we can attend to this." they opened the door and looked about the dim interior; it was empty. with a cry the general rushed in. "he is gone!" barksdale stood at the door; the building was a square one, with racks overhead for hanging meat. there was not the slightest chance of concealment. a mound of earth in one corner aroused his suspicions. he went to it, found a burrow and, running his arm into this, he laid hold of a human leg. "just in time, general, he is here!" with a powerful effort he drew the negro into the light. in one hour more he would have been under the foundations and gone. dick rose and glanced at the open door as he brushed the dirt from his eyes, but there was a grip of steel upon his collar, and a look in the face before him that suggested the uselessness of resistance. the general recovered the strap and bound the elbows as before. "i will bring up shackles," said barksdale, briefly. "in the meantime, this will answer. but you know the stake! discharge the house servant, and i will send a man of my own selection. in the meantime look in here occasionally." they returned to the house and into the library, where they found edward and informed him of the arrangements. "now," said barksdale, "this is the result of my efforts in another direction. the publication of libelous article is almost impossible, with absolute secrecy as to the authorship. a good detective, with time and money, can unravel the mystery and fix the responsibility upon the guilty party. i went into this because mr. morgan was away, and the circumstances were such that he could not act in the simplest manner if he found the secret." he had drawn from his pocket a number of papers, and to these, as he proceeded, he from time to time referred. "we got our first clew by purchase. sometimes in a newspaper office there is a man who is keen enough to preserve a sheet of manuscript that he 'set up,' when reflection suggests that it may be of future value. briefly, i found such a man and bought this sheet"--lifting it a moment--"of no value except as to the handwriting. "the first step toward discovering the name of the tell-tale correspondent was a matter of difficulty, from the nature of the paper. there was always in this case the _dernier ressort_; the editor could be forced at the point of a pistol. but that was hazardous. the correspondent's name was discovered in this way. we offered and paid a person in position to know, for the addresses of all letters from the paper's office to persons in this city. one man's name was frequently repeated. we got a specimen of his handwriting and compared it with the sheet of manuscript; the chirography was identical. "a brief examination of the new situation convinced me that the writer did not act independently; he was a young man not long in the city and could not have known the facts he wrote of nor have obtained them on his own account without arousing suspicion. he was being used by another party--by some one having confidential relations or connections with certain families, col. montjoy's included. i then began to suspect the guilty party. "the situation was now exceedingly delicate and i called into consultation mr. dabney, one of our shrewdest young lawyers, and one, by the way, mr. morgan, i will urge upon you to employ in this defense; in fact, you will find no other necessary, but by all means hold to him. the truth is," he added, "i have already retained him for you, but that does not necessarily bind you." "i thank you," said edward. "we shall retain him." "very good. now we wanted this young man's information and we did not wish the man who used him to know that anything was being done or had been done, and last week, after careful consultation, i acted. i called in this young fellow and appointed him agent at an important place upon our road, but remote, making his salary a good one. he jumped at the chance and i did not give him an hour's time to get ready. he was to go upon trial, and he went. i let him enjoy the sensation of prosperity for a week before exploding my mine. last night i went down and called on him with our lawyer. we took him to the hotel, locked the door and terrorized him into a confession, first giving him assurance that no harm should come to him and that his position would not be affected. he gave away the whole plot and conspiracy. "the man we want is amos royson!" the old general was out of his chair and jubilant. he was recalled to the subject by the face of the speaker, now white and cold, fixed upon him. "i did not have evidence enough to convict him of conspiracy, nor would the evidence help mr. morgan's case, standing alone as it did. the single witness, and he in my employ then, could not have convicted, although he might have ruined, royson. i am now working upon the murder case. i came to the city at daylight and had just arrived home when your note reached me. my intention was to go straight to royson's office and give him an opportunity of writing out his acknowledgement of his infamy and retraction. if he had refused i would have killed him as surely as there is a god in heaven." edward held out his hand silently and the men understood each other. "now," continued barksdale, "the situation has changed. there is evidence enough to convict royson of conspiracy, perhaps. we must consult dabney, but i am inclined to believe that our course will be to go to trial ourselves and spring the mine without having aroused suspicion. when slippery dick goes upon the stand he must find royson confident and in my opinion he will convict himself in open court, if we can get him there. the chances are he will be present. the case will attract a great crowd. he would naturally come. but we shall take no chances; he will come! "just one thing more now; you perceive the importance, the vital importance, of secrecy as to your prisoner; under no consideration must his presence here be known outside. to insure this it seems necessary to take one trusty man into our employ. have you considered how we would be involved if mr. morgan should be arrested?" "but he will not be. sheriff----" "you forget royson. he is merciless and alert. if he discovers mr. morgan's presence in this community he will force an arrest. the sheriff will do all in his power for us, but he is an officer under oath, and with an eye, of course, to re-election. i would forestall this; i would let the man who comes to guard dick guard mr. morgan also. in other words, let him go under arrest and accept a guard in his own house. the sheriff can act in this upon his own discretion, but the arrest should be made." edward and the general were for a moment silent. "you are right," said the former. "let the arrest be made." barksdale took his departure. the butler appeared and was summarily discharged for having abandoned virdow during the night. and then came the deputy, a quiet, confident man of few words, who served the warrant upon edward, and then, proceeding with his prisoner to the smoke-house, put shackles upon slippery dick, and supplemented them with handcuffs. chapter xlix. preparing the mine. this time the coroner was summoned. he came, examined the body of gerald, heard virdow's statement and concluded that he could not hold an inquest without subjecting himself to unpleasant criticism and giving candidates for his office something to take hold of. the funeral was very quiet. col. montjoy, mrs. montjoy and mary came in the old family carriage and the general on horseback. the little group stood around the open coffin and gazed for the last time upon the pale, chaste face. the general could not endure more than the one glance. as it lay exposed to him, it was the perfect image of a face that had never dimmed in his memory. mary's tears fell silently as she laid her little cross of white autumn rosebuds upon the silent breast and turned away. edward was waiting for her; she took his arm and went upon the portico. "it is a sad blow to you, mr. morgan," she said. "it removes the only claim upon me," was his answer. "when all is over and this trial ended, i shall very likely return to europe for good!" they were silent for a while. "i came here full of hope," he continued; "i have met distrust, accusation, assaults upon my character and life, the loss of friends, disappointments and now am accused of murder and must undergo a public trial. it is enough to satisfy most men with--the south." "and do you count your real friends as nothing?" "my real friends are few, but they count for much," he said, earnestly; "it will be hard to part with them--with you. but fate has laid an iron hand upon me. i must go." he found her looking at him with something of wonder upon her face. "you know best," she said, quietly. there was something in her manner that reminded him of the calm dignity of her father. "you do not understand me," he said, earnestly, "and i cannot explain, and yet i will go this far. my parents have left me a mystery to unfathom; until i have solved it i shall not come back, i cannot come back." he took her hand in both of his. "it is this that restrains me; you have been a true friend; it grieves me that i cannot share my troubles with you and ask your woman's judgment, but i cannot--i cannot! i only ask that you keep me always in your memory, as you will always be the brightest spot in mine." she was now pale and deeply affected by his tone and manner. "you cannot tell me, mr. morgan?" "not even you, the woman i love; the only woman i have ever loved. ah, what have i said?" she had withdrawn her hand and was looking away. "forgive me; i did not know what i was saying. i, a man under indictment for murder, a possible felon, an unknown!" the young girl looked at him fearlessly. "you are right. you can rely upon friendship, but under the circumstances nothing can justify you in speaking of love to a woman--you do not trust." "do not trust! you cannot mean that!" she had turned away proudly and would have left him. "i have seen so little of women," he said. "let that be my excuse. i would trust you with my life, my honor, my happiness--but i shall not burden you with my troubles. i have everything to offer you but a name. i have feared to tell you; i have looked to see you turn away in suspicion and distrust--in horror. i could not. but anything, even that, is better than reproach and wrong judging. "i tell you now that i love you as no woman was ever loved before; that i have loved you since you first came into my life, and that though we be parted by half a world of space, and through all eternity, i still shall love you. but i shall never, so help me heaven, ask the woman i love to share an unknown's lot! you have my reasons now; it is because i do love you that i go away." he spoke the words passionately. and then he found her standing close to his side. "and i," she said, looking up into his face through tearful but smiling eyes, "do not care anything for your name or your doubts, and i tell you, edward morgan, that you shall not go away; you shall not leave me." he caught his breath and stood looking into her brave face. "but your family--it is proud----" "it will suffer nothing in pride. we will work out this little mystery together." she extended her hand and, taking it, he took her also. she drew back, shaking her head reproachfully. "i did not mean that." he was about to reply, but at that moment a scene was presented that filled them both with sudden shame. how true it is that in the midst of life we are in death. the hearse had passed the gate. silently they entered the house. he led her back to the side of the dead man. "he loved you," he said slowly. "i shall speak the truth for him." mary bent above the white face and left a kiss upon the cold brow. "he was your friend," she said, fearing to look into his eye. he comprehended and was silent. it was soon over. the ritual for the dead, the slow journey to the city of silence, a few moments about the open grave, the sound of dirt falling upon the coffin, a prayer--and gerald, living and dead, was no longer a part of their lives. the montjoys were to go home from the cemetery. edward said farewell to them separately and to mary last. strange paradox, this human life. he came from that new-made grave almost happy. the time for action was approaching rapidly. he went with dabney and the general to see slippery dick for the last time before the trial. there was now but one serious doubt that suggested itself. they took the man at night to the grave of rita and made him go over every detail of his experience there. under the influence of the scene he began with the incident of the voodoo's "conjure bag" and in reply to queries showed where it had been inserted in the cedar. edward took his knife and began to work at the plug, but this action plunged dick into such terror that dabney cautioned edward in a low voice to desist. "dick," said the young man finally, with sudden decision, "if you fail us in this matter not only shall i remove that plug but i shall put you in jail and touch you with the bag." dick was at once voluble with promises. edward, his memory stirred by the incident, was searching his pockets. he had carried the little charm obtained for him by mary because of the tender memories of the night before their journey abroad. he drew it out now and held it up. dick had not forgotten it; he drew back, begging piteously. dabney was greatly interested. "that little charm has proved to be your protector, mr. morgan," he said aloud for the negro's benefit. "you have not been in any danger. neither dick nor anyone else could have harmed you. you should have told me before. see how it has worked. the woman who gave you the bag came to you in the night out on the ocean and showed you the face of this man; you knew him even in the night, although he had never before met you nor you him." a sound like the hiss of a snake came from the negro; he had never been able to guess why this stranger had known him so quickly. he now gazed upon his captor with mingled fear and awe. "befo' gawd, boss," he said, "i ain't goin' back on you, boss!" "going back on him!" said dabney, laughing. "i should think not. i did not know that mr. morgan had you conjured. let us return; dick cannot escape that woman in this world or the next. give me the little bag, mr. morgan--no, keep it yourself. as long as you have it you are safe." edward was a prisoner, but in name only. barksdale had not come again, for more reasons than one, the main reason being extra precaution on account of the watchful and suspicious royson. but he acted quietly upon the public mind. the day following the interview he caused to be inserted in the morning paper an announcement of edward's return and arrest, and the additional fact that although his business in paris had not been finished, he had left upon the first steamer sailing from havre. at the club, he was outspoken in his denunciation of the newspaper attacks and his confidence in the innocence of the man. there was no hint in any quarter that it had been suspected that rita morgan was really not murdered. it was generally understood that the defense would rely upon the state's inability to make out a case. but edward did not suffer greatly from loneliness. the day after the funeral mrs. montjoy and mary, together with the colonel, paid a formal call and stayed for some hours; and the general came frequently with dabney and eldridge, who had also been employed, and consulted over their plans for the defense. arrangements had been made with the solicitor for a speedy trial and the momentous day dawned. chapter l. slippery dick rights a wrong. the prominence of the accused and of his friends, added to the sensational publication, made the case one of immense interest. the court house was crowded to its utmost and room had to be made within the bar for prominent citizens. there was a "color line" feature in the murder, and the gallery was packed with curious black faces. edward, quiet and self-contained, sat by his lawyers, and near him was the old general and col. montjoy. slightly in the rear was barksdale, calm and observant. the state had subpoened royson as a witness, and, smilingly indifferent, he occupied a seat as a member of the bar, inside the rail. the case was called at last. "the state versus edward morgan, murder. mr. solicitor, what do you say for the state?" asked the court. "ready." "what do you say for the defense, gentlemen?" "ready." "mr. clerk, call the jury." the panel was called and sworn. the work of striking the jury then proceeded. eldridge and dabney were clever practitioners and did not neglect any precaution. the jury list was scanned and undesirable names eliminated with as much care as if the prisoner had small chance of escape. this proceeding covered an hour, but at last the panel was complete and sworn. the defendant was so little known that this was a simple matter. the witnesses for the state were then called and sworn. they consisted of the coroner, the physician who had examined the wound, and others, including gen. evan, virdow and royson. gen. evan and virdow had also been summoned by the defense. as royson took the oath it was observed that he was slightly pale and embarrassed, but this was attributed to the fact of his recent conflict and the eager state of the great crowd. no man in the room kept such watch upon him as barksdale; never once did he take his eyes from the scarred face. witnesses for the defense were then called--gen. evan and virdow. they had taken the oath. the defense demanded that witnesses for the state be sent out of the room until called. as royson was rising to comply with the requirement common in such cases, dabney stood up and said: "before mr. royson goes out, may it please your honor, i would respectfully ask of the solicitor what it is expected to prove by him?" "we expect to prove, your honor, that mr. royson wrote a certain letter which charged the prisoner with being a man of mixed blood, and that rita morgan, the woman who was killed, was the woman in question and the only authority; an important point in the case. mr. royson, i should say, is here by subpoena only and occupying a very delicate situation, since he was afterward, by public report, engaged in a conflict with the prisoner, growing out of the publication of that letter." "the solicitor is unnecessarily prolix, your honor. i asked the question to withdraw our demand in his case as a matter of courtesy to a member of the bar." royson bowed and resumed his seat. "i now ask," said dabney, "a like courtesy in behalf of gen. evan and prof. virdow, witnesses for both state and defense." this was readily granted. there was no demurrer to the indictment. the solicitor advanced before the jury and read the document, word for word. "we expect to prove, gentlemen of the jury, that the dead woman, named in this indictment, was for many years housekeeper for the late john morgan, and more recently for the defendant in this case, edward morgan; that she resided upon the premises with him and his cousin, gerald morgan; that on a certain night, to wit, the date named in the indictment, she was murdered by being struck in the head with some blunt implement, and that she was discovered almost immediately thereafter by a witness; that there was no one with the deceased at the time of her death but the defendant, edward morgan, and that he, only, had a motive for her death--namely, the suppression of certain facts, or certain publicly alleged facts, which she alone possessed; that after her death, which was sudden, he failed to notify the coroner, but permitted the body to be buried without examination. and upon these facts, we say, the defendant is guilty of murder. the coroner will please take the stand." the officer named appeared and gave in his testimony. he had, some days after the burial of the woman, rita morgan, received a hint from an anonymous letter that foul play was suspected in the case, and acting under advice, had caused the body to be disinterred and he had held an inquest upon it, with the result as expressed in the verdict which he proceeded to read and which was then introduced as evidence. the witness was turned over to the defense; they consulted and announced "no questions". the next witness was the physician who examined the wound. he testified to the presence of a wound in the back of the head that crushed the skull and was sufficient to have caused death. dabney asked of this witness if there was much of a wound in the scalp, and the reply was "no". "was there any blood visible?" "no." the defense had no other questions for this officer, but announced that they reserved the right to recall him if the case required it. the next witness was virdow. he had seen the body after death, but had not examined the back of the head; had seen a small cut upon the temple, which the defendant had explained to him was made by her falling against the glass in the conservatory. there was a pane broken at the point indicated. and then evan was put up. "gen. evan," asked the solicitor, "where were you upon the night that rita morgan died?" "at the residence of edward morgan, sir." "where were you when you first discovered the death of rita morgan?" "gentlemen of the jury, at the time indicated, i was standing in the glass-room occupied by the late gerald morgan, in the residence of the defendant in this county----" "and state?" interrupted the solicitor. "and state. i was standing by the bedside of gerald morgan, who was ill. i was deeply absorbed in thought and perfectly oblivious to my surroundings, i suppose. i am certain that edward morgan was in the room with me. i was aroused by hearing him cry out and then discovered that the door leading into the shrubbery was open. i ran out and found him near the head of the woman." "did you notice any cuts or signs of blood?" "i noticed only a slight cut upon the forehead." "did you examine her for other wounds?" "i did not. i understood then that she had, in a fit of some kind, fallen against the glass, and that seeing her from within, mr. morgan had run out and picked her up." "did you hear any sound of breaking glass?" "i think i did. i cannot swear to it; my mind was completely absorbed at that time. there was broken glass at the place pointed out by him." "that night--pointed out that night?" "no. i believe some days later." "did you hear voices?" "i heard some one say 'they lied!' and then i heard edward morgan cry aloud. going out i found him by the dead body of the woman." the defense cross-questioned. "you do not swear, general evan, that mr. morgan was not in the room at the time the woman rita was seized with sudden illness?" "i do not. it was my belief then, and is now----" "stop," said the solicitor. "confine yourself to facts only," said the court. "you are well acquainted with mr. morgan?" "as well as possible in the short time i have known him." "what is his character?" "he is a gentleman and as brave as any man i ever saw on the field of battle." there was slight applause as the general came down, but it was for the general himself. "mr. royson will please take the stand," said the solicitor. "you were the author of the letter concerning the alleged parentage of edward morgan, which was published in an extra in this city a few weeks since?" royson bowed slightly. "from whom did you get your information?" "from rita morgan," he said, calmly. there was a breathless silence for a moment and then an angry murmur in the great audience. all eyes were fixed upon edward, who had grown pale, but he maintained his calmness. the astounding statement had filled him with a sickening horror. not until that moment did he fully comprehend the extent of the enmity cherished against him by the witness. on the face of barksdale descended a look as black as night. he did not, however, move a muscle. "you say that rita morgan told you--when?" "about a week previous to her death. she declared that her own son had secured his rights at last. i had been consulted by her soon after john morgan's death, looking to the protection of those rights, she being of the opinion that gerald morgan would inherit. when it was found that this defendant here had inherited she called, paid my fee and made the statement as given." "why did you fight a duel with the defendant, then--knowing, or believing you knew, his base parentage?" "i was forced to do so by the fact that i was challenged direct and no informant demanded; and by the fact that while my friends were discussing my situation, general evan, acting under a mistaken idea, vouched for him." these ingenuous answers took away the general's breath. he had never anticipated such plausible lies. even dabney was for the moment bewildered. edward could scarcely restrain his emotion and horror. as a matter of fact, rita was not dead when the challenge was accepted. royson had lied under oath! "the witness is with you," said the solicitor, with just a tinge of sarcasm in his tones. "were the statements of rita morgan in writing?" asked dabney. "no." "then, may it please your honor, i move to rule them out." a debate followed. the statements were ruled out. royson was suffered to descend, subject to recall. "the state closes," said the prosecuting officer. then came the sensation of the day. the crowd and the bar were wondering what the defense would attempt with no witnesses, when dabney arose. "may it please your honor, we have now a witness, not here when the case was called, whom we desire to bring in and have sworn. we shall decide about introducing him within a few moments and there is one other witness telegraphed for who has just reached the city. we ask leave to introduce him upon his arrival." and then turning to the sheriff, he whispered direction. the sheriff went to the hall and returned with a negro. royson was engaged in conversation, leaning over the back of his chair and with his face averted. the witness was sworn and took the stand facing the crowd. a murmur of surprise ran about the room, for there, looking out upon them, was the well-known face of slippery dick. the next proceedings were irregular but dramatic. little dabney drew himself up to his full height and shouted in a shrill voice: "look at that man, gentlemen of the jury." at the same time his finger was pointed at royson. all eyes were at once fixed upon that individual. his face was as chalk, and the red scar across the nose flamed as so much fiery paint. his eyes were fastened on the witness with such an expression of fear and horror that those near him shuddered and drew back slightly. and as he gazed his left hand fingered at his collar and presently, with sudden haste, tore away the black cravat. then he made an effort to leave, but barksdale arose and literally hurled him back in his chair. the court rapped loudly. "i fine you $ , mr. barksdale. take your seat!" dick, unabashed, met that wild, pleading, threatening, futile gaze of royson, who was now but half-conscious of the proceedings. "tell the jury, do you know this man?" shouted the shrill voice again, the finger still pointing to royson. "yes, sah; dat's mr. royson." "were you ever hired by him?" "yes, sah." "when--the last time?" "'bout three weeks ago." "to do what?" "open 'er grave." "whose grave?" "rita morgan's." "and what else?" there was intense silence; dick twisted uneasily. "and what else?" repeated dabney. "knock her in de head." "did you do it?" "yes, sah." "where did you knock her in the head?" "in de back of de head." "hard?" "hard enough to break her skull." "did you see mr. morgan that night?" "yes, sah." "where?" "downtown, jus' fo' i tole mr. royson 'all right'." "where did you next see him?" "after he was killed by de lightnin'." "the witness is with you," said dabney, the words ringing out in triumph. he faced the solicitor defiantly. his questions had followed each other with astounding rapidity and the effect on every hearer was profound. the solicitor was silent; his eyes were upon royson. some one had handed the latter a glass of water, which he was trying to drink. "i have no questions," said the solicitor gravely. "you can come down, dick." the negro stepped down and started out. he passed close to royson, who was standing in the edge of the middle aisle. their eyes met. it may have been pure devilishness or simply nervous facial contortion, but at that moment the negro's face took on a grin. whatever the cause, the effect was fatal to him. the approach of the negro had acted upon the wretched royson like a maddening stimulant. at the sight of that diabolical countenance, he seized him with his left hand and stabbed him frantically a dozen times before he could be prevented. with a moan of anguish the negro fell dead, bathing the scene in blood. a great cry went up from the spectators and not until the struggling lawyer and the bloody corpse had been dragged out did the court succeed in enforcing order. the solicitor went up and whispered to the judge, who nodded immediately, but before he announced that a verdict of acquittal would be allowed, the defendant's attorneys drew him aside, and made an appeal to him to let them proceed, as a mere acquittal was not full justice to the accused. then the defense put up the ex-reporter and by him proved the procurement by royson of the libels and his authorship and gave his connection with the affair from the beginning, which was the reception of an anonymous card informing him that royson held such information. gen. evan then testified that rita died while royson's second was standing at the front door at ilexhurst, with royson's note in his pocket. the jury was briefly charged by the court and without leaving the box returned a verdict of not guilty. the tragedy and dramatic denouement had wrought the audience to the highest pitch of excitement. the revulsion of feeling was indicated by one immense cheer, and edward found himself surrounded by more friends than he thought he had acquaintances, who shook his hand and congratulated him. barksdale stalked through the crowd and laid $ upon the clerk's desk. smiling up at the court he said: "will your honor not make it a thousand? it is too cheap!" but that good-natured dignitary replied: "the fine is remitted. you couldn't help it." chapter li. a woman's wit conquers. cambia was greatly disturbed by the sudden departure of the montjoys. she shut herself up and refused all visitors. was the great-hearted yet stern cambia ill or distressed? the maid did not know. she had called for the "figaro," to see the passenger list of the steamer. the names were there; the steamer had sailed. and then as she sat gazing upon the sheet another caught her attention in an adjoining column, "gaspard levigne." it was in the body of an advertisement which read: "reward--a liberal reward will be paid for particulars of the death of gaspard levigne, which, it is said, occurred recently in paris. additional reward will be paid for the address of the present owner of the stradivarius violin lately owned by the said gaspard levigne and the undersigned will buy said violin at full value, if for sale." following this was a long and minute description of the instrument. the advertisement was signed by louis levigne, breslau, silesia. cambia read and reread this notice with pale face and gave herself to reflection. she threw off the weight of the old troubles which had swarmed over her again and prepared for action. three hours later she was on her way to berlin; the next day found her in breslau. a few moments later and she was entering the house of the advertiser. in a dark, old-fashioned living-room, a slender, gray-haired man came forward rather cautiously to meet her. she knew his face despite the changes of nearly thirty years; he was the only brother of her husband and one of her chief persecutors in those unhappy days. it was not strange that in this tall, queenlike woman, trained to face great audiences without embarrassment, he should fail to recognize the shy and lonely little american who had invaded the family circle. he bowed, unconsciously feeling the influence of her fine presence and commanding eyes. "you, i suppose, are louis levigne, who advertised recently for information of gaspard levigne?" she said. "yes, madame; my brother was the unfortunate gaspard. we think him dead. know you anything of him?" "i knew him years ago; i was then a singer and he was my accompanist. recently he died." the face of the man lighted up with a strange gleam. she regarded him curiously and continued: "died poor and friendless." "ah, indeed! he should have communicated with us; he was not poor and would not have been friendless." "what do you mean?" "you know, madame, the new age is progressive. some lands we had in northern silesia, worthless for years, have developed iron and a company has purchased." the woman smiled sadly. "too late," she said, "for poor gaspard. this is why you have advertised?" "yes, madame. there can be no settlement until we have proofs of gaspard's death." "you are the only heir aside from gaspard?" "yes, madame." the count grew restless under these questions, but circumstances compelled courtesy to this visitor. "excuse my interest, count, but gaspard was my friend and i knew of his affairs. did he not leave heirs?" the man replied with gesture in which was mingled every shade of careless contempt that could be expressed. "there was a woman--a plaything of gaspard's calling herself his wife--but they parted nearly thirty years ago. he humored her and then sent her back where she came from--america, i believe." "i am more than ever interested, count. gaspard did not impress me as vicious." "oh, well, follies of youth, call them. gaspard was wild; he first left here because of a mock-marriage escapade; when two years after he came back with this little doll we supposed it was another case; at any rate, gaspard was once drunk enough to boast that she could never prove the marriage." cambia could restrain herself only with desperate efforts. these were knife blows. "were there no heirs?" "i have never heard. it matters little here. but, madame, you know of gaspard's death; can you not give me the facts so that i may obtain proofs?" she looked at him steadily. "i saw him die." "ah, that simplifies it all," said the count, pleasantly. "will you be kind enough to go before an attesting officer and complete the proofs? you have answered the advertisement--do i insult you by speaking of reward?" he looked critically at her simple but elegant attire and hesitated. "no. but i do not care for money. i will furnish positive proof of the death of gaspard levigne for the violin mentioned in the advertisement." the man was now much astounded. "but madame, it is an heirloom; that is why i have advertised for it." "then get it. and let me receive it direct from the hands of the present holder or i shall not furnish the proofs." some doubt of the woman's sanity flashed over the count. "i have already explained, madame, that it is an heirloom----" "and i have shown you that i do not consider that as important." "but of what use can it possibly be to you? there are other cremonas i will buy--" "i want this one because it is the violin of gaspard levigne, and he was my husband." the count nearly leaped from the floor. "when did he marry you, madame?" "that is a long story; but he did; we were bohemians in paris. i am heir to his interests in these mines, but i care little for that--very little. i am independent. my husband's violin is my one wish now." the realization of how completely he had been trapped betrayed the forced courtesy of the man. "you married him. i presume you ascertained that the american wife was dead?" "you have informed me that the american was not his wife." "but she was, and if she is living to-day madame's claims are very slender." "you speak positively!" "i do. i saw the proofs. we should not have given the girl any recognition without them, knowing gaspard's former escapade." "then," said the woman, her face lighting up with a sudden joy, and growing stern again instantly, "then you lied just now, you cowardly hound." "madame." the count had retreated behind a chair and looked anxiously at the bell, but she was in the way. "you lied, sir, i say. i am the wife, and now the widow, of gaspard levigne, but not a second wife. i am that 'plaything,' as you called her, the american, armed now with a knowledge of my rights and your treachery. you may well shiver and grow pale, sir; i am no longer the trembling child you terrified with brutality, but a woman who could buy your family with its mines thrown in, and not suffer because of the bad investment. from this room, upon the information you have given, i go to put my case in the hands of lawyers and establish my claim. it is not share and share in this country; my husband was the first born, and i am his heir!" "my god!" "it is too late to call upon god; he is on my side now! i came to you, sir, a woman to be loved, not a pauper. my father was more than a prince in his country. his slaves were numbered by the hundreds, and his lands would have sufficed for a dozen of your counts. i was crushed and my life was ruined, and my husband turned against me. but he repented--he repented. there was no war between gaspard and me when he died." the man looked on and believed her. "madame," he said, humbly, "has been wronged. for myself, it matters little, this new turn of affairs, but i have others." she had been looking beyond him into space. "and yet," she said, "it is the violin i would have. it was the violin that first spoke our love; it is a part of me; i would give my fortune to possess it again." he was looking anxiously at her, not comprehending this passion, but hoping much from it. "and how much will you give?" "i will give the mines and release all claims against you and your father's estate." "alas, madame, i can give you the name of the holder of that violin but not the violin itself. you can make terms with him, and i will pay whatever price is demanded." "how will i know you are not deceiving me?" "madame is harsh, but she will be convinced if she knows the handwriting of her--husband." "it is agreed," she said, struggling to keep down her excitement. count levigne reached the coveted bell and in a few minutes secured a notary, who drew up a formal agreement between the two parties. cambia then gave an affidavit setting forth the death of gaspard levigne in proper form for use in court. count levigne took from his desk an envelope. "you have read my advertisement, madame. it was based on this: "count l. levigne, breslau: when you receive this i will be dead. make no effort to trace me; it will be useless; my present name is an assumed one. we have been enemies many years, but everything changes in the presence of death, and i do not begrudge you the pleasure of knowing that your brother is beyond trouble and want forever and the title is yours. the cremona, to which i have clung even when honor was gone, i have given to a young american named morgan, who has made my life happier in its winter than it was in its summer. "gaspard levigne." the count watched the reader curiously as she examined the letter. her face was white, but her hand did not tremble as she handed back the letter. "it is well," she said. "i am satisfied. good morning, gentlemen." in paris, cambia's mind was soon made up. she privately arranged for an indefinite absence, and one day she disappeared. it was the sensation of the hour; the newspapers got hold of it, and all paris wondered. there had always been a mystery in the life of cambia. no man had ever invaded it beyond the day when she put herself in the hands of a manager and laid the foundation for her world-wide success upon the lyric stage. and then paris forgot; and only the circle of her friends watched and waited. meanwhile the swift steamer had carried mrs. gaspard levigne across the atlantic and she had begun that journey into the south-land, once the dream of her youth--the going back to father and to friends! the swift train carried her by towns and villages gorgeous with new paint and through cities black with the smoke of factories. the negroes about the stations were not of the old life, and the rushing, curt and slangy young men who came and went upon the train belonged to a new age. the farms, with faded and dingy houses, poor fences, and uncared-for fields and hedges, swept past like some bad dream. all was different; not thirty years but a century had rolled its changes over the land since her girlhood. and then came the alighting. here was the city, different and yet the same. but where was the great family carriage, with folding steps and noble bays, the driver in livery, the footman to hold the door? where were father and friends? no human being came to greet her. she went to the hotel, locked herself in her room, and then cambia gave way for the first time in a generation to tears. but she was eminently a practical woman. she had not come to america to weep. the emotion soon passed. at her request a file of recent papers was laid before her, and she went through them carefully. she found that which she had not looked for. chapter lii. death of col. montjoy. it was the morning succeeding the trial, one of those southern days that the late fall steals from summer and tempts the birds to sing in the woodlands. gen. evan had borne virdow and edward in triumph to the cedars and, after breakfast, edward had ridden over to the hall, leaving the two old men together. virdow interested his host with accurate descriptions of the great battles between the germans and the french; and evan in turn gave him vivid accounts of the mighty virginia struggles between federals and confederates. when they finally came to edward as a topic the german was eloquent. he placed him beside himself in learning and ahead of all amateurs as artist and musician. "mr. morgan agreed with me in his estimate of edward," virdow said. "they were warm friends. edward reciprocated the affection bestowed upon him; in europe they traveled much--" "of what mr. morgan do you speak?" the general was puzzled. "the elder, mr. john morgan, i think. but what am i saying? i mean abingdon." "abingdon? i do not know him." virdow reflected a moment. "abingdon was the name by which edward knew john morgan in europe. they met annually and were inseparable companions." "john morgan--our john morgan?" "yes. i am told he was very eccentric, and this was probably a whim. but it enabled him to study the character of his relative. he seems to have been satisfied, and who wouldn't?" "you astound me. i had never heard that john morgan went to europe. i did hear that he went annually to canada, for the summer months; that is all." "edward never knew of the connection until he came here and saw a picture of john morgan, drawn by gerald. we both recognized it instantly." evan was silent, thinking upon this curious information. at last he asked: "was edward mr. morgan's only intimate companion?" "the only one." "did you ever hear why mr. morgan concealed his identity under an assumed name?" "no. we did not connect abingdon with john morgan until letters were returned with information that abingdon was dead; and then gerald drew his picture from memory." and as these two old gentlemen chattered about him, edward himself was approaching the montjoys. he found mary upon the porch; his horse's feet had announced his coming. her face was flushed and a glad light shone in her eyes. she gave him her hand without words; she had intended expressing her pleasure and her congratulations, but when the time came the words were impossible. "you have been anxious," he said, reading her silence. "yes," she replied; "i could not doubt you but there are so many things involved, and i had no one to talk with. it was a long suspense, but women have to learn such lessons," and then she added, seeing that he was silent: "it was the most unhappy day of my life: papa was gone, and poor mamma's eyes have troubled her so much. she has bandaged them again and stays in her room. the day seemed never-ending. when papa came he was pale and haggard, and his face deceived me. i thought that something had gone wrong--some mistake had occurred and you were in trouble, but papa was ill, and the news--" she turned her face away suddenly, feeling the tears starting. edward drew her up to a settee under a spreading oak, and seating himself beside her told her much of his life's story--his doubts, his hopes, his fears. she held her breath as he entered upon his experience at ilexhurst and gerald's life and identity were dwelt upon. "this," said he at last, "is your right to know. it is due to me. i cannot let you misjudge the individual. while i am convinced, that does not make a doubt a fact and on it i cannot build a future. you have my history, and you know that in the heart of edward morgan you alone have any part. the world holds no other woman for me, nor ever will; but there is the end. if i stayed by you the day would come when this love would sweep away every resolution, every sense of duty, every instinct of my mind, except the instinct to love you, and for this reason i have come to say that until life holds no mystery for edward morgan he will be an exile from you." the girl's head was sunk upon her arms as it rested upon the settee. she did not lift her face. what could she answer to such a revelation, such a declaration? after a while he ceased to walk the gravel floor of their arbor, and stood by her. unconsciously he let his hand rest upon the brown curls. "this does not mean," he said, very gently, "that i am going away to mope and wear out life in idle regrets. marion evan lives; i will find her. and then--and then--if she bids me, i will come back, and with a clean record ask you to be my wife. answer me, my love, my only love--let me say these words this once--answer me; is this the course that an honorable man should pursue?" she rose then and faced him proudly. his words had thrilled her soul. "it is. i could never love you, edward, if you could offer less. i have no doubt in my mind--none. a woman's heart knows without argument, and i know that you will come to me some day. god be with you till we meet again--and for all time and eternity. this will be my prayer." without object, the silent couple, busy with their thoughts, entered the living-room. the colonel was sitting in his arm-chair, his paper dropped from his listless hand, his eyes closed. the duchess in his lap had fallen asleep, holding the old open-faced watch and its mystery of the little boy within who cracked hickory nuts. they made a pretty picture--youth and old age, early spring and late winter. mary lifted her hand warningly. "softly," she said; "they sleep; don't disturb them." edward looked closely into the face of the old man, and then to the surprise of the girl placed his arm about her waist. "do not cry out," he said; "keep calm and remember that the little mamma's health--" "what do you mean?" she said, looking with wonder into his agitated face as she sought gently to free herself. "have you forgotten----" "this is sleep indeed--but the sleep of eternity." she sprang from him with sudden terror and laid her hand upon the cold forehead of her father. for an instant she stared into his face, with straining eyes, and then with one frightful scream she sank by his side, uttering his name in agonized tones. edward strove tearfully to calm her; it was too late. calling upon husband and daughter frantically, mrs. montjoy rushed from her room into the presence of death. she was blindfolded, but with unerring instinct she found the still form and touched the dead face. the touch revealed the truth; with one quick motion she tore away the bandages from her face, and then in sudden awe the words fell from her: "i am blind!" mary had risen to her side and was clinging to her, and edward had assisted, fearing she might fall to the floor. but with the consciousness of her last misfortune had soon come calmness. she heeded not the cries of the girl appealing to her, but knelt with her white face lifted and said simply: "dear father, thou art merciful; i have not seen him dead! blest forever be thy holy name!" edward turned his back and stood with bowed head, the silence broken now only by the sobs of the daughter. still sleeping in the lap of the dead, her chubby hand clasping the wonderful toy, was the duchess, and at her feet the streaming sunlight. the little boy came to the door riding the old man's gold-headed cane for a horse and carrying the cow horn, which he had pushed from its nail upon the porch. "grandpa, ain't it time to blow the horn?" he said. "grandma, why don't grandpa wake up?" she drew him to her breast and silenced his queries. and still with a half-smile upon his patrician face--the face that women and children loved and all men honored--sat the colonel; one more leaf from the old south blown to earth. the little girl awoke at last, sat up and caught sight of the watch. "look, gamma. little boy in deir cackin' hickeynut," and she placed the jewel against the ear of the kneeling woman. that peculiarly placid expression, driven away in the moment of dissolution, had returned to the dead man; he seemed to hear the duchess prattle and the familiar demand for music upon the horn. isham had responded to the outcry and rushed in. with a sob he had stood by the body a moment and then gone out shaking his head and moaning. and then, as they waited, there rang out upon the clear morning air the plantation bell--not the merry call to labor and the sweet summons to rest, which every animal on the plantation knew and loved, but a solemn tolling, significant in its measured volume. and over the distant fields where the hands were finishing their labors, the solemn sounds came floating. old peter lifted his head. "who dat ring dat bell dis time er day?" he said, curiously; and then, under the lessening volume of the breeze, the sound fell to almost silence, to rise again stronger than before and float with sonorous meaning. at long intervals they had heard it. it always marked a change in their lives. one or two of the men began to move doubtfully toward the house, and others followed, increasing their pace as the persistent alarm was sounded, until some were running. and thus they came to where old isham tolled the bell, his eyes brimming over with tears. "old marster's gone! old marster's gone!" he called to the first, and the words went down the line and were carried to the "quarters," which soon gave back the death chant from excited women. the negroes edged into the yard and into the hall, and then some of the oldest into the solemn presence of the dead, gazing in silence upon the sad, white face and closed eyes. then there was a tumult in yard and hall; a shuffling of feet announced a newcomer. mammy phyllis, walking with the aid of a staff, entered the room and stood by the side of the dead man. every voice was still; here was the woman who had nursed him and who had raised him; hers was the right to a superior grief. she gazed long and tenderly into the face of her foster-child and master and turned away, but she came again and laid her withered hand upon his forehead. this time she went, to come no more. in the room of the bereaved wife she took her seat, to stay a silent comforter for days. her own grief found never a voice or a tear. one by one the negroes followed her; they passed in front of the sleeper, looked steadily, silently, into his face and went out. some touched him with the tips of their fingers, doubtfully, pathetically. for them, although not realized fully, it was the passing of the old regime. it was the first step into that life where none but strangers dwelt, where there was no sympathy, no understanding. some would drift into cities to die of disease, some to distant cabins, to grow old alone. one day the last of the slaves would lie face up and the old south would be no more. none was left but one. edward came at last and stood before his host. long and thoughtfully he gazed and then passed out. he had place in neither the old nor the new. but the dead man had been his friend. he would not forget it. chapter liii. the escape of amos royson. when amos royson's senses returned to him he was standing in the middle of a room in the county jail. the whirl in his head, wherein had mingled the faces of men, trees, buildings and patches of sky illumined with flashes of intensest light and vocal with a multitude of cries--these, the rush of thoughts and the pressure upon his arteries, had ceased. he looked about him in wonder. was it all a dream? from the rear of the building, where in their cage the negro prisoners were confined came a mighty chorus, "swing low, sweet chariot," making more intense the silence of his own room. that was not of a dream, nor were the bare walls, nor the barred windows. his hands nervously clutching his lapels touched something cold and wet. he lifted them to the light; they were bloody! he made no outcry when he saw this, but stood a long minute gazing upon them, his face wearing in that half shadow a confession of guilt. and in that minute all the facts of the day stood forth, clear cut and distinct, and his situation unfolded itself. he was a murderer, a perjurer and a conspirator. not a human being in all that city would dare to call him friend. the life of this man had been secretly bad; he had deluded himself with maxims and rules of gentility. he was, in fact, no worse at that moment in jail than he had been at heart for years. but now he had been suddenly exposed; the causes he had set in motion had produced a natural but unexpected climax, and it is a fact that in all the world there was no man more surprised to find that amos royson was a villain than royson himself. he was stunned at first; then came rage; a blind, increasing rebellion of spirit unused to defeat. he threw himself against the facts that hemmed him in as a wild animal against its cage, but he could not shake them. they were still facts. he was doomed by them. then a tide of grief overwhelmed him; his heart opened back into childhood; he plunged face down upon his bed; silent, oblivious to time, and to the jailer's offer of food returning no reply. despair had received him! a weapon at hand then would have ended the career of amos royson. time passed. no human being from the outer world called upon him. counsel came at last, in answer to his request, and a line of defense had been agreed upon. temporary insanity would be set up in the murder case, but even if this were successful, trials for perjury and conspiracy must follow. the chances were against his acquittal in any, and the most hopeful view he could take was imprisonment for life. for life! how often, as solicitor, he had heard the sentence descend upon the poor wretches he prosecuted. and not one was as guilty as he. this was the deliberate verdict of the fairest judge known to man--the convicting instincts of the soul that tries its baser self. at the hands of the jailer royson received the best possible treatment. he was given the commodious front room and allowed every reasonable freedom. this officer was the sheriff's deputy, and both offices were political plums. the prisoner had largely shaped local politics and had procured for him the the sheriff's bondsmen. officeholders are not ungrateful--when the office is elective. the front room meant much to a prisoner; it gave him glimpses into the free, busy world outside, with its seemingly happy men and women, with its voices of school children and musical cries of street vendors. this spot, the window of his room, became royson's life. he stood there hour after hour, only withdrawing in shame when he saw a familiar face upon the street. and standing there one afternoon, just before dark, he beheld annie's little vehicle stop in front of the jail. she descended, and as she came doubtfully forward she caught sight of his face. she was dressed in deep black and wore a heavy crepe veil. there was a few minutes' delay, then the room door opened and annie was coming slowly toward him, her veil thrown back, her face pale and her hand doubtfully extended. he looked upon her coldly without changing his position. "are you satisfied?" he said, at length, when she stood silent before him. whatever had been the emotion of the woman, it, too, passed with the sound of his sentence. "i would not quarrel with you, amos, and i might do so if i answered that question as it deserves. i have but a few minutes to stop here and will not waste them upon the past. the question is now as to the future. have you any plan?" "none," he replied, with a sneer. "i am beyond plans. life is not worth living if i were out, and the game is now not worth the candle." the woman stood silent. "what are your chances for acquittal?" she asked, after a long silence. "acquittal! absolutely none! life itself may by a hard struggle be saved. after that, it is the asylum or the mines." "and then?" "and then? well, then i shall again ask my loving cousin to bring me a powder. i will remind her once more that no royson ever wore chains or a halter, however much they may have deserved them. and for the sake of her children she will consent." she walked to the corridor door and listened and then came back to him. he smiled and stretched out his hand. "amos," she whispered, hurriedly; "god forgive me, but i have brought it. i am going to new york to-morrow, and the chance may not come again. remember, it is at your request." she was fumbling nervously at the bosom of her dress. "the morphine i could not get without attracting attention, but the chloroform i had. i give it to you for use only when life--" he had taken the bottle and was quietly looking upon the white liquid. "i thank you, cousin," he said, quietly, with a ghastly little laugh. "i have no doubt but that i can be spared from the family gatherings and that in days to come perhaps some one will occasionally say 'poor amos,' when my fate is recalled. thanks, a thousand thanks! strange, but the thought of death actually gives me new life." he looked upon her critically a moment and then a new smile dawned upon his face. "ah," he said, "your note about morgan; it will be unfortunate if that ever comes to light. you were not smart, annie. you could have bought that with this bottle." she flushed in turn and bit her lip. the old annie was still dominant. "it would have been better since mr. morgan is to be my brother-in-law. still if there is no love between us it will not matter greatly. mary seems to be willing to furnish all the affection he will need." "where is he?" he asked, hoarsely, not attempting to disguise his suffering. she was now relentless. "oh, at ilexhurst, i suppose. the general is to care for the old german until the household is arranged again and everything made ready for the bride." "is the marriage certain?" she smiled cheerfully. "oh, yes. it is to take place soon, and then they are going to europe for a year." and then as, white with rage, he steadied himself against the window, she said: "mary insisted upon writing a line to you; there it is. if you can get any comfort from it, you are welcome." he took the note and thrust it in his pocket, never removing his eyes from her face. a ray had fallen into the blackness of his despair. it grew and brightened until it lighted his soul with a splendor that shone from his eyes and trembled upon every lineament of his face. not a word had indicated its presence. it was the silent expression of a hope and a desperate resolve. the woman saw it and drew back in alarm. a suspicion that he was really insane came upon her mind, and she was alone, helpless and shut in with a maniac. a wild desire to scream and flee overwhelmed her; she turned toward the door and in a minute would have been gone. but the man had read her correctly. he seized her, clapped his hand over her mouth, lifted her as he would a child and thrust her backward on the bed. before she could tear the grip from her mouth, he had drawn the cork with his teeth and drenched the pillow-case with chloroform. there was one faint cry as he moved his hand, but the next instant the drug was in her nostrils and lungs. she struggled frantically, then faintly, and then lay powerless at the mercy of the man bending over her. hardly more than two minutes had passed, but in that time amos royson was transformed. he had a chance for life and that makes men of cowards. he stripped away the outer garments of the woman and arrayed himself in them, adding the bonnet and heavy veil, and then turned to go. he was cool now and careful. he went to the bed and drew the cover over the prostrate form. he had occupied the same place in the same attitude for hours. the jailer would come, offer supper from the door and go away. he would, if he got out, have the whole night for flight. and he would need it. the morn might bring no waking to the silent form. the thought chilled his blood, but it also added speed to his movements. he drew off the pillow-case, rolled it into a ball and dropped it out of the window. he had seen the woman approach with veil down and handkerchief to her face. it was his cue. he bent his head, pressed his handkerchief to his eyes beneath the veil and went below. the jailer let the bent, sob-shaken figure in and then out of the office. the higher class seldom came there. he stood bareheaded until the visitor climbed into the vehicle and drove away. it was with the greatest difficulty only that royson restrained himself and suffered the little mare to keep a moderate pace. fifteen minutes ago a hopeless prisoner, and now free! life is full of surprises. but where? positively the situation had shaped itself so rapidly he had not the slightest plan in mind. he was free and hurrying into the country without a hat and dressed in a woman's garb! the twilight had deepened into gloom. how long would it be before pursuit began? and should he keep on the disguise? he slipped out of it to be ready for rapid flight, and then upon a second thought put it on again. he might be met and recognized. his whole manner had undergone a change; he was now nervous and excited, and the horse unconsciously urged along, was running at full speed. a half-hour at that rate would bear him to the hall. cursing his imprudence, he checked the animal and drove on more moderately and finally stopped. he could not think intelligently. should he go on to the hall and throw himself upon the mercy of his connections? they would be bound to save him. mary! ah, mary! and then the note thrust itself in mind. with feverish haste he searched for and drew it out. he tore off the envelope and helped by a flickering match he read: "you must have suffered before you could have sinned so, and i am sorry for you. believe me, however others may judge you, there is no resentment but only forgiveness for you in the heart of "mary." then the tumult within him died away. no man can say what that little note did for amos royson that night. he would go to her, to this generous girl, and ask her aid. but annie! what if that forced sleep should deepen into death! who could extricate her? how would mary arrange that? she would get morgan. he could not refuse her anything. he could not falter when the family name and family honor were at stake. he could not let his wife--his wife! a cry burst from the lips of the desperate man. his wife! yes, he would go to him, but not for help. amos royson might die or escape--but the triumph of this man should be short-lived. the mare began running again; he drew rein with a violence that brought the animal's front feet high in air and almost threw her to the ground. a new idea had been born; he almost shouted over it. he tore off the woman's garb, dropped it in the buggy, sprang out and let the animal go. in an instant the vehicle was out of sight in the dark woods, and royson was running the other way. for the idea born in his mind was this: "of all the places in the world for me the safest is ilexhurst--if--" he pressed his hand to his breast. the bottle was still safe! and annie! the horse returning would lead to her release. amos royson had a general knowledge of the situation at ilexhurst. at o'clock he entered through the glass-room and made his way to the body of the house. he was familiar with the lower floor. the upper he could guess at. he must first find the occupied room, and so, taking off his shoes, he noiselessly ascended the stairway. he passed first into the boy's room and tried the door to that known as the mother's, but it was locked. he listened there long and intently, but heard no sound except the thumping of his own heart. then he crossed the hall and there, upon a bed in the front room, dimly visible in the starlight, was the man he sought. the discovery of his victim, helpless and completely within his power, marked a crisis in the mental progress of royson. he broke down and trembled violently, not from conscience, but from a realization of the fact that his escape was now an accomplished fact. this man before him disposed of, ilexhurst was his for an indefinite length of time. here he could rest and prepare for a distant flight. no one, probably, would come, but should anyone come, why, the house was unoccupied. the mood passed; he went back to the hall, drew out his handkerchief and saturated it with liquid from the bottle in his pocket. a distant tapping alarmed him, and he drew deeper into the shadow. some one seemed knocking at a rear door. or was it a rat with a nut in the wall? all old houses have them. no; it was the tapping of a friendly tree upon the weather boards, or a ventilator in the garret. so he reasoned. there came a strange sensation upon his brain, a sweet, sickening taste in his mouth and dizziness. he cast the cloth far away and rushed to the stair, his heart beating violently. he had almost chloroformed himself while listening to his coward fears. * * * * * the dizziness passed away, but left him unnerved. he dared not walk now. he crawled to the cloth and thence into the room. near the bed he lifted his head a little and saw the white face of the sleeper turned to him. he raised the cloth and held it ready; there would be a struggle, and it would be desperate. would he fail? was he not already weakened? he let it fall gently in front of the sleeper's face, and then inch by inch pushed it nearer. over his own senses he felt the languor stealing; how was it with the other? the long regular inspirations ceased, the man slept profoundly and noiselessly--the first stage of unconsciousness. the man on the floor crawled to the window and laid his pale cheek upon the sill. how long royson knelt he never knew. he stood up at last with throbbing temples, but steadier. he went up to the sleeper and shook him--gently at first, then violently. the drug had done its work. then came the search for more matches and then light. and there upon the side table, leaning against the wall, was the picture that gerald had drawn; the face of mary, severe and noble, the fine eyes gazing straight into his. he had not thought out his plans. it is true that the house was his for days, if he wished it, but how about the figure upon the bed? could he occupy that building with such a tenant? it seemed to him the sleeper moved. quickly wetting the handkerchief again he laid it upon the cold lips, with a towel over it to lessen evaporation. and as he turned, the eyes of the picture followed him. he must have money to assist his escape; the sleeper's clothing was there. he lifted the garments. an irresistible power drew his attention to the little table, and there, still fixed upon him, were the calm, proud eyes of the girl. angrily he cast aside the clothing. the eyes still held him in their power, and now they were scornful. they seemed to measure and weigh him: amos royson, murderer, perjurer, conspirator--thief! the words were spoken somewhere; they became vocal in that still room. terrified, he looked to the man upon the bed and there he saw the eyes, half-open, fixed upon him and the towel moving above the contemptuous lips. with one bound he passed from the room, down the steps, toward the door. anywhere to be out of that room, that house! chapter liv. how a debt was paid. on went the spirited mare to the hall, skillfully avoiding obstructions, and drew up at last before the big gate. she had not been gentle in her approach, and old isham was out in the night holding her bit and talking to her before she realized that her coming had not been expected. "de lord bless yer, horse, whar you be'n an' what you done wid young missus?" mary was now out on the porch. "what is it, isham?" "for gawd's sake, come hyar, missy. dis hyar fool horse done come erlong back 'thout young missus, an' i spec' he done los' her out in de road somewhar--" mary caught sight of the dress and bonnet and greatly alarmed drew them out. what could have happened? why was annie's bonnet and clothing in the buggy? for an instant her heart stood still. her presence of mind soon returned. her mother had retired, and so, putting the maid on guard, she came out and with isham beside her, turned the horse's head back toward the city. but as mile after mile passed nothing explained the mystery. there was no dark form by the roadside. at no place did the intelligent animal scent blood and turn aside. it was likely that annie had gone to spend the night with a friend, as she declared she would if the hour were too late to enter the jail. but the clothing! the girl drove within sight of the prison, but could not bring herself, at that hour, to stop there. she passed on to annie's friends. she had not been there. she tried others with no better success. and now, thoroughly convinced that something terrible had occurred, she drove on to ilexhurst. as the tired mare climbed the hill and mary saw the light shining from the upper window, she began to realize that the situation was not very much improved. after all, annie's disappearance might be easily explained and how she would sneer at her readiness to run to mr. morgan! it was the thought of a very young girl. but it was too late to turn back. she drew rein before the iron gate and boldly entered, leaving isham with the vehicle. she rapidly traversed the walk, ascended the steps and was reaching out for the knocker, when the door was suddenly thrown open and a man ran violently against her. she was almost hurled to the ground, but frightened as she was, it was evident that the accidental meeting had affected the other more. he staggered back into the hall and stood irresolute and white with terror. she came forward amazed and only half believing the testimony of her senses. "mr. royson!" the man drew a deep breath and put his hand upon a chair, nodding his head. he had for the moment lost the power of speech. "what does it mean?" she asked. "why are you--here? where is mr. morgan?" his ghastliness returned. he wavered above the chair and then sank into it. then he turned his face toward hers in silence. she read something there, as in a book. she did not cry out, but went and caught his arm and hung above him with white face. "you have not--oh, no, you have not--" she could say no more. she caught his hand and looked dumbly upon it. the man drew it away violently as the horror of memory came upon him. "not that way!" he said. "ah, not that way! speak to me, mr. royson--tell me you do not mean it--he is not----" the whisper died out in that dim hall. he turned his face away a moment and then looked back. lifting his hand he pointed up the stairway. she left him and staggered up the steps slowly, painfully, holding by the rail; weighed upon by the horror above and the horror below. near the top she stopped and looked back; the man was watching her as if fascinated. she went on; he arose and followed her. he found her leaning against the door afraid to enter; her eyes riveted upon a form stretched upon the bed, a cloth over its face; a strange sweet odor in the air. he came and paused by her side, probably insane, for he was smiling now. "behold the bridegroom," he said. "go to him; he is not dead. he has been waiting for you. why are you so late?" she heard only two words clearly. "not dead!" "oh, no," he laughed; "not dead. he only sleeps, with a cloth and chloroform upon his face. he is not dead!" with a movement swift as a bounding deer, she sprang across the room, seized the cloth and hurled it from the window. she added names that her maiden cheeks would have paled at, and pressed her face to his, kissing the still and silent lips and moaning piteously. the man at the door drew away suddenly, went to the stairway and passed down. no sound was heard now in the house except the moaning of the girl upstairs. he put on a hat in the hall below, closed the door cautiously and prepared to depart as he had come, when again he paused irresolute. then he drew from his pocket a crumpled paper and read it. and there, under that one jet which fell upon him in the great hall, something was born that night in the heart of amos royson--something that proved him for the moment akin to the gods. the girl had glided down the steps and was fleeing past him for succor. he caught her arm. "wait," he said gently. "i will help you!" she ceased to struggle and looked appealingly into his face. "i have not much to say, but it is for eternity. the man upstairs is now in no immediate danger. mary, i have loved you as i did not believe myself capable of loving anyone. it is the glorious spot in the desert of my nature. i have been remorseless with men; it all seemed war to me, a war of ishmaelites--civilized war is an absurdity. had you found anything in me to love, i believe it would have made me another man, but you did not. and none can blame you. to-night, for every kind word you have spoken to amos royson, for the note you sent him to-day, he will repay you a thousandfold. come with me." he half-lifted her up the steps and to the room of the sleeper. then wringing out wet towels he bathed the face and neck of the unconscious man, rubbed the cold wrists and feet and forced cold water into the mouth. it was a doubtful half-hour, but at last the sleeper stirred and moaned. then royson paused. "he will awaken presently. give me half an hour to get into a batteau on the river and then you may tell him all. that--" he said, after a pause, looking out of the window, through which was coming the distant clamor of bells--"that indicates that annie has waked and screamed. and now good-by. i could have taken your lover's life." he picked up the picture from the table, kissed it once and passed out. mary was alone with her lover. gradually under her hand consciousness came back and he realized that the face in the light by him was not of dreams but of life itself--that life which, but for her and the gentleness of her woman's heart, would have passed out that night at ilexhurst. and as he drifted back again into consciousness under the willows of the creeping river a little boat drifted toward the sea. dawn was upon the eastern hills when mary, with her rescued sister-in-law, crept noiselessly into the hall. it was in new york that the latter read the account of her mortification. norton was not there. she had passed him in her flight. chapter lv. the unopened letter. soon it became known that col. montjoy had gone to his final judgment. then came the old friends of his young manhood out of their retreats; the country for twenty miles about gave them up to the occasion. they brought with them all that was left of the old times--courtesy, sympathy and dignity. there were soldiers among them, and here and there an empty sleeve and a scarred face. there was simply one less in their ranks. another would follow, and another; the morrow held the mystery for the next. norton had returned. he was violently affected, after the fashion of mercurial temperaments. on edward by accident had fallen the arrangements for the funeral, and with the advice of the general he had managed them well. fate seemed to make him a member of that household in spite of himself. the general was made an honorary pall-bearer, and when the procession moved at last into the city and to the church, without forethought it fell to edward--there was no one else--to support and sustain the daughter of the house. it seemed a matter of course that he should do this, and as they followed the coffin up the aisle, between the two ranks of people gathered there, the fact was noted in silence to be discussed later. this then, read the universal verdict, was the sequel of a romance. but edward thought of none of these things. the loving heart of the girl was convulsed with grief. since childhood she had been the idol of her father, and between them had never come a cloud. to her that white-haired father represented the best of manhood. edward almost lifted her to and from the carriage, and her weight was heavy upon his arm as they followed the coffin. but the end came; beautiful voices had lifted the wounded hearts to heaven and the minister had implored its benediction upon them. the soul-harrowing sound of the clay upon the coffin had followed and all was over. edward found himself alone in the carriage with mary, and the ride was long. he did not know how to lead the troubled mind away from its horror and teach it to cling to the unchanging rocks of faith. the girl had sunk down behind her veil in the corner of the coach; her white hands lay upon her lap. he took these in his own firm clasp and held them tightly. it seemed natural that he should; she did not withdraw them; she may not have known it. and so they came back home to where the brave little wife, who had promised "though he slay me yet will i trust in him," sat among the shadows keeping her promise. the first shock had passed and after that the faith and serene confidence of the woman were never disturbed. she would have died at the stake the same way. the days that followed were uneventful, norton had recovered his composure as suddenly as he had lost it, and discussed the situation freely. there was now no one to manage the place and he could not determine what was to be done. in the meantime he was obliged to return to business, and look after his wife. he went first to edward and thanking him for his kindness to mother and sister, hurried back to new york. edward had spent one more day with the montjoys at norton's request, and now he, too, took his departure. when edward parted from mary and the blind mother he had recourse to his sternest stoicism to restrain himself. he escaped an awkward situation by promising to be gone only two days before coming again. at home he found virdow philosophically composed and engaged in the library, a new servant having been provided, and everything proceeding smoothly. edward went to him and said, abruptly: "when is it your steamer sails, herr virdow?" "one week from to-day," said that individual, not a little surprised at his friend's manner. "why do you ask?" "because i go with you, never again in all likelihood to enter america. from to-day, then, you will excuse my absences. i have many affairs to settle." virdow heard him in silence, but presently he asked: "are you not satisfied now, edward." "i am satisfied that i am the son of marion evan, but i will have undoubted and unmistakable proof before i set foot in this community again! there is little chance to obtain it. nearly thirty years--it is a long time, and the back trail is covered up." "what are your plans?" "to employ the best detectives the world can afford, and give them carte blanche." "but why this search? is it not better to rest under your belief and take life quietly? there are many new branches of science and philosophy--you have a quick mind, you are young--why not come with me and put aside the mere details of existence? there are greater truths worth knowing, edward, than the mere truth of one's ancestry." edward looked long and sadly into his face and shook his head. "these mere facts," he said at length, "mean everything with me." he went to his room; there were hours of silence and then virdow heard in the stillness of the old house the sound of gerald's violin, for edward's had been left in mary's care. his philosophy could not resist the fatherland appeal that floated down the great hall and filled the night with weird and tender melody. for the man who played worshipped as he drew the bow. but silence came deep over ilexhurst and virdow slept. not so edward; he was to begin his great search that night. he went to the wing-room and the glass-room and flooded them with light. a thrill struck through him as he surveyed again the scene and seemed to see the wild face of his comrade pale in death upon the divan. there under that rod still pointing significantly down to the steel disk he had died. and outside in the darkness had rita also died. he alone was left. the drama could not be long now. there was but one actor. he searched among all the heaps of memoranda and writings upon the desk. they were memoranda and notes upon experiments and queries. edward touched them one by one to the gas jet and saw them flame and blacken into ashes, and now nothing was left but the portfolio--and that contained but four pictures--the faces of slippery dick, himself and mary and the strange scene at the church. one only was valuable--the face of the girl which he knew he had given to the artist upon the tune he had played. this one he took, and restored the others. he had turned out the light in the glass-room, and was approaching the jet in the wing-room to extinguish it, when upon the mantel he saw a letter which bore the address "h. abingdon, care john morgan," unopened. how long it had been there no one was left to tell. the postman, weary of knocking, had probably brought it around to the glass-room; or the servant had left it with gerald. it was addressed by a woman's hand and bore the postmark of paris, with the date illegible. it was a hurried note: "dear friend: what has happened? when you were called home so suddenly, you wrote me that you had important news to communicate if you could overcome certain scruples, and that you would return immediately, or as soon as pressing litigation involving large interests was settled, and in your postscript you added 'keep up your courage.' you may imagine how i have waited and watched, and read and reread the precious note. but months have passed and i have not heard from you. are you ill? i will come to you. are you still at work upon my interests? write to me and relieve the strain and anxiety. i would not hurry you, but remember it is a mother who waits. yours, "cambia." "cambia!" edward repeated the name aloud. cambia. a flood of thoughts rushed over him. what was cambia--john morgan to him? the veil was lifting. and then came a startling realization. cambia, the wife of gaspard levigne! "god in heaven," he said, fervently, "help me now!" virdow was gone; only the solemn memories of the room kept him company. he sank upon the divan and buried his face in his hands. if cambia was the woman, then the man who had died in his arms--the exile, the iron-scarred, but innocent, convict, the hero who passed in silence--was her husband! and he? the great musician had given him not only the violin but genius! cambia had begged of his dying breath proofs of marriage. the paling lips had moved to reply in vain. the mystery was laid bare; the father would not claim him, because of his scars, and the mother--she dared not look him in the face with the veil lifted! but he would face her; he would know the worst; nothing could be more terrible than the mystery that was crushing the better side of his life and making hope impossible. he would face her and demand the secret. chapter lvi. "woman, what was he to you?" edward had formed a definite determination and made his arrangements at once. there had been a coolness between him and eldridge since the publication of the royson letter, but necessity drove him to that lawyer to conclude his arrangements for departure. it was a different man that entered the lawyer's office this time. he gave directions for the disposition of ilexhurst and the conversion of other property into cash. he would never live on the place again under any circumstances. his business was to be managed by the old legal firm in new york. the memoranda was completed and he took his departure. he had given orders for flowers and ascertained by telephone that they were ready. at o'clock he met mary driving in and took his seat beside her in the old family carriage. her dress of black brought out the pale, sweet face in all its beauty. she flushed slightly as he greeted her. within the vehicle were only the few roses she had been able to gather, with cedar and euonymus. but they drove by a green house and he filled the carriage with the choicest productions of the florist, and then gave the order to the driver to proceed at once to the cemetery. within the grounds, where many monuments marked the last resting-place of the old family, was the plain newly made mound covering the remains of friend and father. at sight if it mary's calmness disappeared and her grief overran its restraints. edward stood silent, his face averted. presently he thought of the flowers and brought them to her. in the arrangement of these the bare sod disappeared and the girl's grief was calmed. she lingered long about the spot, and before she left it knelt in silent prayer, edward lifting his hat and waiting with bowed head. the sad ceremony ended, she looked to him and he led the way to where old isham waited with the carriage. he sent him around toward gerald's grave, under a wide-spreading live oak, while they went afoot by the direct way impassable for vehicles. they reached the parapet and would have crossed it, when they saw kneeling at the head of the grave a woman dressed in black, seemingly engaged in prayer. edward had caused to be placed above the remains a simple marble slab, which bore the brief inscription: gerald morgan. died . they watched until the woman arose and laid a wreath upon the slab. when at last she turned her face and surveyed the scene they saw before them, pale and grief-stricken, cambia. edward felt the scene whirling about him and his tongue paralyzed. cambia, at sight of them gave way again to a grief that had left her pale and haggard, and could only extend the free hand, while with the other she sought to conceal her face. edward came near, his voice scarcely audible. "cambia!" he exclaimed in wonder; "cambia!" she nodded her head. "yes, wretched, unhappy cambia!" "then, madame," he said, with deep emotion, pointing to the grave and touching her arm, "what was he to you?" she looked him fairly in the face from streaming eyes. "he was my son! it cannot harm him now. alas, poor cambia!" "your son!" the man gazed about him bewildered. "your son, madame? you are mistaken! it cannot be!" "ah!" she exclaimed; "how little you know. it can be--it is true!" "it cannot be; it cannot be!" the words of the horrified man were now a whisper. "do you think a mother does not know her offspring? your talk is idle; gerald morgan was my son. i have known, john morgan knew----" "but rita," he said, piteously. "ah, rita, poor rita, she could not know!" the manner, the words, the tone overwhelmed him. he turned to mary for help in his despair. almost without sound she had sunk to the grass and now lay extended at full length. with a fierce exclamation edward rushed to her and lifted the little figure in his arms. cambia was at his side. "what is this? what was she to him?" some explanation was necessary and edward's presence of mind returned. "he loved her," he said. the face of cambia grew soft and tender and she spread her wrap on the rustic bench. "place her here and bring water. daughter," she exclaimed, kneeling by her side, "come, come, this will never do--" the girl's eyes opened and for a moment rested in wonder upon cambia. then she remembered. a strange expression settled upon her face as she gazed quickly upon edward. "take me home, madame," she said; "take me home. i am deathly ill." they carried her to the carriage, and, entering, cambia took the little head in her lap. shocked and now greatly alarmed, edward gave orders to the driver and entered. it was a long and weary ride, and all the time the girl lay silent and speechless in cambia's lap, now and then turning upon edward an indescribable look that cut him to the heart. they would have provided for her in the city, but she would not hear of it. her agitation became so great that edward finally directed the driver to return to the hall. all the way back the older woman murmured words of comfort and cheer, but the girl only wept and her slender form shook with sobs. and it was not for herself that she grieved. and so they came to the house, and mary, by a supreme effort, was able to walk with assistance and to enter without disturbing the household. cambia supported her as they reached the hall to the room that had been mary's all her life--the room opposite her mother's. there in silence she assisted the girl to the bed. from somewhere came molly, the maid, and together using the remedies that women know so well they made her comfortable. no one in the house had been disturbed, and then as mary slept cambia went out and found her way to the side of mrs. montjoy and felt the bereaved woman's arms about her. "you have reconsidered, and wisely," said mrs. montjoy, when the first burst of emotion was over. "i am glad you have come--where is mary?" "she was fatigued from the excitement and long drive and is in her room. i met her in town and came with her. but madame, think not of me; you are now the sufferer; my troubles are old. but you--what can i say to comfort you?" "i am at peace, my child; god's will be done. when you can say that you will not feel even the weight of your sorrows. life is not long, at best, and mine must necessarily be short. some day i will see again." cambia bowed her head until it rested upon the hand that clasped hers. in the presence of such trust and courage she was a child. "my daughter," said mrs. montjoy, after a silence, her mind reverting to her visitor's remark; "she is not ill?" "not seriously, madame, but still she is not well." "then i will go to her if you will lend me your aid. i am not yet accustomed to finding my way. i suppose i will have no trouble after a while." the strong arm of the younger woman clasped and guided her upon the little journey, and the mother took the place of the maid. tea was brought to them and in the half-lighted room they sat by the now sleeping figure on the bed, and whispered of cambia's past and future. the hours passed. the house had grown still and molly had been sent to tell edward of the situation and give him his lamp. but edward was not alone. the general had ridden over to inquire after his neighbors and together they sat upon the veranda and talked, and edward listened or seemed to listen. the rush of thoughts, the realization that had come over him at the cemetery, now that necessity for immediate action had passed with his charge, returned. cambia had been found weeping over her son, and that son was gerald. true or untrue, it was fatal to him if cambia was convinced. but it could not be less than true; he, edward, was an outcast upon the face of the earth; his dream was over; through these bitter reflections the voice of the general rose and fell monotonously, as he spoke feelingly of the dead friend whom he had known since childhood and told of their long associations and adventures in the war. and then, as edward sought to bring himself back to the present, he found himself growing hot and cold and his heart beating violently; the consequences of the revelation made in the cemetery had extended no further than himself and his own people, but cambia was marion evan! and her father was there, by him, ignorant that in the house was the daughter dead to him for more than a quarter of a century. he could not control an exclamation. the speaker paused and looked at him. "did you speak?" the general waited courteously. "did i? it must have been involuntarily--a habit! you were saying that the colonel led his regiment at malvern hill." evan regarded him seriously. "yes, i mentioned that some time ago. he was wounded and received the praise of jackson as he was borne past him. i think montjoy considered that the proudest moment of his life. when jackson praised a man he was apt to be worthy of it. he praised me once," he said, half-smiling over the scene in mind. but edward had again lost the thread of the narrative. cambia had returned; a revelation would follow; the general would meet his daughter, and over the grave of gerald the past would disappear from their lives. what was to become of him? he remembered that john morgan had corresponded with her, and communicated personally. she must know his history. in the coming denouement there would be a shock for him. he would see these friends torn from him, not harshly nor unkindly, but between them and him would fall the iron rule of caste, which has never been broken in the south--the race law, which no man can override. with something like a panic within he decided at once. he would not witness the meeting. he would give them no chance to touch him by sympathetic pity and by--aversion. it should all come to him by letter, while he was far away! his affairs were in order. the next day he would be gone. "general," he said, "will you do me a favor? i must return to the city; my coming was altogether a matter of accident, and i am afraid it will inconvenience our friends here at this time to send me back. let me have your horse and i will send him to you in the morning." the abrupt interruption filled the old man with surprise. "why, certainly, if you must go. but i thought you had no idea of returning--is it imperative?" "imperative. i am going away from the city to-morrow, and there are yet matters--you understand, and virdow is expecting me. i trust it will not inconvenience you greatly. it would be well, probably, if one of us stayed to-night; this sudden illness--the family's condition----" "inconvenience! nonsense! if you must go, why, the horse is yours of course as long as you need him." but still perplexed the general waited in silence for a more definite explanation. edward was half-facing the doorway and the lighted hall was exposed to him, but the shadow of the porch hid him from anyone within. it was while they sat thus that the old man felt a hand upon his arm and a grasp that made him wince. looking up he saw the face of his companion fixed on some object in the hall, the eyes starting from their sockets. glancing back he became the witness of a picture that almost caused his heart to stand still. chapter lvii. fragmentary life records. the records of john morgan's life are fragmentary. it was only by joining the pieces and filling in the gaps that his friends obtained a clear and rounded conception of his true character and knew at last the real man. born about , the only son of a wealthy and influential father, his possibilities seemed almost unlimited. to such a youth the peculiar system of the south gave advantages not at that time afforded by any other section. the south was approaching the zenith of its power; its slaves did the field work of the whole people, leaving their owners leisure for study, for travel and for display. politics furnished the popular field for endeavor; young men trained to the bar, polished by study and foreign travel and inspired by lofty ideals of government, threw themselves into public life, with results that have become now a part of history. at , john morgan was something more than a mere promise. he had graduated with high honors at the virginia university and returning home had engaged in the practice of law--his maiden speech, delivered in a murder case, winning for him a wide reputation. but at that critical period a change came over him. to the surprise of his contemporaries he neglected his growing practice, declined legislative honors and gradually withdrew to the quiet of ilexhurst, remaining in strict retirement with his mother. the life of this gentlewoman had never been a very happy one; refined and delicate she was in sharp contrast to her husband, who, from the handsome, darkhaired gallant she first met at the white sulphur springs, soon developed into a generous liver, with a marked leaning towards strong drink, fox-hunting and cards. as the wife, in the crucible of life, grew to pure gold, the grosser pleasures developed the elder morgan out of all likeness to the figure around which clung her girlish memories. but providence had given to her a boy, and in him there was a promise of happier days. he grew up under her care, passionately devoted to the beautiful mother, and his triumphs at college and at the bar brought back to her something of the happiness she had known in dreams only. the blow had come with the arrival of rita morgan's mother. from that time john morgan devoted himself to the lonely wife, avoiding the society of both sexes. his morbid imagination pictured his mother and himself as disgraced in the eyes of the public, unconscious of the fact that the public had but little interest in the domestic situation at ilexhurst, and no knowledge of the truth. he lived his quiet life by her side in the little room at home, and when at last, hurt by his horse, the father passed away, he closed up the house and took his mother abroad for a stay of several years. when they returned life went on very much as before. but of the man who came back from college little was left, aside from an indomitable will and a genius for work. he threw himself into the practice of his profession again, with a feverish desire for occupation, and, bringing to his aid a mind well stored by long years of reflection and reading, soon secured a large and lucrative practice. his fancy was for the criminal law. no pains, no expense was too great for him where a point was to be made. some of his witnesses in noted cases cost him for traveling expense and detectives double his fee. he kept up the fight with a species of fierce joy, his only moments of elation, as far as the public knew, being the moments of victory. so it was that at years of age john morgan found himself with a reputation extending far beyond the state and with a practice that left him but little leisure. it was about this time he accidentally met marion evan, a mere girl, and felt the hidden springs of youth rise in his heart. marion evan received the attentions of the great criminal lawyer without suspicion of their meaning. when it developed that he was deeply interested in her she was astonished and then touched. it was until the end a matter of wonder to her that john morgan should have found anything in her to admire and love, but those who looked on knowingly were not surprised. of gentle ways and clinging, dependent nature, varied by flashes of her father's fire and spirit, she presented those variable moods well calculated to dazzle and impress a man of morgan's temperament. he entered upon his courtship with the same carefulness and determination that marked his legal practice, and with the aid of his wealth and reborn eloquence carried the citadel of her maiden heart by storm. with misgivings albert evan yielded his consent. but marion evan's education was far from complete. the mature lover wished his bride to have every accomplishment that could add to her pleasure in life; he intended to travel for some years and she was not at that time sufficiently advanced in the languages to interpret the records of the past. her art was of course rudimentary. only in vocal music was she distinguished; already that voice which was to develop such surprising powers spoke its thrilling message to those who could understand, and john morgan was one of these. so it was determined that marion should for one year at least devote herself to study and then the marriage would take place. where to send her was the important question, and upon the decision hinges this narrative. remote causes shape our destinies. that summer john morgan took his mother abroad for the last time and in paris chance gave him acquaintance with gaspard levigne, a man nearly as old as himself. morgan had been touched and impressed by the unchanging sadness of a face that daily looked into his at their hotel, but it is likely that he would have carried it in memory for a few weeks only had not the owner, who occupied rooms near his own, played the violin one night while he sat dreaming of home and the young girl who had given him her promise. he felt that the hidden musician was saying for him that which had been crying out for expression in his heart all his life. upon the impulse of the moment he entered this stranger's room and extended his hand. gaspard levigne took it. they were friends. during their stay in paris the two men became almost inseparable companions. one day gaspard was in the parlor of his new friend, when john morgan uncovered upon the table a marble bust of his fiancee and briefly explained the situation. the musician lifted it in wonder and studied its perfections with breathless interest. from that time he never tired of the beautiful face, but always his admiration was mute. his lips seemed to lose their power. the climax came when john morgan, entering the dim room one evening, found gaspard levigne with his face in his hands kneeling before the marble, convulsed with grief. and then little by little he told his story. he was of noble blood, the elder son of a family, poor but proud and exclusive. unto him had descended, from an italian ancestor, the genius of musical composition and a marvelous technique, while his brother seemed to inherit the pride and arrogance of the silesian side of the house, with about all the practical sense and business ability that had been won and transmitted. he had fallen blindly in love with a young girl beneath him in the social scale, and whose only dowry was a pure heart and singularly perfect beauty. the discovery of this situation filled the family with alarm and strenuous efforts were made to divert the infatuated man, but without changing his purpose. pressure was brought to bear upon the girl's parents, with better success. nothing now remained for gaspard but an elopement, and this he planned. he took his brother into his confidence and was pleased to find him after many refusals a valuable second. the elopement took place and assisted by the brother he came to paris. there his wife had died leaving a boy, then nearly two years old. then came the denouement; the marriage arranged for him had been a mockery. it was a fearful blow. he did not return to his home. upon him had been saddled the whole crime. when the story was ended gaspard went to his room and brought back a little picture of the girl, which he placed by the marble bust. morgan read his meaning there; the two faces seemed identical. the picture would have stood for a likeness of marion evan, in her father's hands. the conduct of gaspard levigne upon the discovery of the cruel fraud was such as won the instant sympathy of the american, whose best years had been sacrificed for his mother. the musician had not returned to breslau and exposed the treachery of the brother who was the idol of his parents; he suffered in silence and cared for the child in an institution near paris. but john morgan went and quietly verified the facts. he engaged the ablest counsel and did his best to find a way to right the wrong. then came good mrs. morgan, who took the waif to her heart. he passed from his father's arms, his only inheritance a mother's picture, of which his own face was the miniature. months passed; gaspard levigne learned english readily, and one more result of the meeting in paris was that john morgan upon returning to america had, through influential friends, obtained for levigne a lucrative position in a popular american institution, where instrumental and vocal music were specialties. it was to this institution that marion evan was sent, with results already known. the shock to john morgan, when he received from marion a pitiful letter, telling of her decision and marriage, well-nigh destroyed him. the mind does not rally and reactions are uncertain at . in the moment of his despair he had torn up her letters and hurled her likeness in marble far out to the deepest part of the lake. pride alone prevented him following it. and in this hour of gloom the one remaining friend, his mother, passed from life. the public never knew his sufferings; he drew the mantle of silence a little closer around him and sank deeper into his profession. he soon became known as well for his eccentricities as for his genius; and presently the inherited tendency toward alcoholic drinks found him an easy victim. another crisis in his life came a year after the downfall of his air castle, and just as the south was preparing to enter upon her fatal struggle. the mother of rita had passed away, and so had the young woman's husband. rita had but recently returned to ilexhurst, when one night she came into his presence drenched with rain and terrorized by the fierceness of an electrical storm then raging. speechless from exhaustion and excitement she could only beckon him to follow. upon the bed in her room, out in the broad back yard, now sharing with its occupant the mud and water of the highway, her face white and her disordered hair clinging about her neck and shoulders, lay the insensible form of the only girl he had ever loved--marion evan, as he still thought of her. he approached the bed and lifted her cold hands and called her by endearing names, but she did not answer him. rita, the struggle over had sunk into semi-consciousness upon the floor. when the family physician had arrived john morgan had placed rita upon the bed and had borne the other woman in his arms to the mother's room upstairs, and stood waiting at the door. while the genial old practitioner was working to restore consciousness to the young woman there, a summons several times repeated was heard at the front door. morgan went in person and admitted a stranger, who presented a card that bore the stamp of a foreign detective bureau. speaking in french the lawyer gravely welcomed him and led the way to the library. the detective opened the interview: "have you received my report of the th inst., m. morgan?" "yes. what have you additional?" "this. mme. levigne is with her husband and now in this city." morgan nodded his head. "so i have been informed." he went to the desk and wrote out a check. "when do you purpose returning?" "as soon as possible, monsieur; to-morrow, if it pleases you." "i will call upon you in the morning; to-night i have company that demands my whole time and attention. if i fail, here is your check. you have been very successful." "monsieur is very kind. i have not lost sight of mme. levigne in nearly a year until to-night. both she and her husband have left their hotel; temporarily only i presume." the two men shook hands and parted. upstairs the physician met morgan returning. "the lady will soon be all right; she has rallied and as soon as she gets under the influence of the opiate i have given and into dry clothes, will be out of danger. but the woman in the servant's house is, i am afraid, in a critical condition." "go to her, please," said morgan quickly. then entering the room he took a seat by the side of the young woman--her hand in his. marion looked upon his grave face in wonder and confusion. neither spoke. her eyes closed at last in slumber. then came mamie hester, the old woman who had nursed him, one of those family servants of the old south, whose lips never learned how to betray secrets. * * * * * the sun rose grandly on the morning that marion left ixlexhurst. she pushed back her heavy veil, letting its splendor light up her pale face and gave her hand in sad farewell to john morgan. its golden beams almost glorified the countenance of the man; or was it the light from a great soul shining through? "a mother's prayers," she said brokenly. "they are all that i can give." "god bless and protect you till we meet again," he said, gently. she looked long and sadly toward the eastern horizon in whose belt of gray woodland lay her childhood home, lowered her veil and hurried away. a generation would pass before her feet returned upon that gravel walk. chapter lviii. "the last scene of all" mary slept. the blind woman, who had for awhile sat silent by her side, slowly stroking and smoothing the girl's extended arm, nodded, her chin resting upon her breast. cambia alone was left awake in the room, her mind busy with its past. the light was strong; noiselessly she went to the little table to lower it. there, before her, lay a violin's antique case. as her gaze fell upon it, the flame sank under her touch, leaving the room almost in the shadow. the box was rounded at the ends and inlaid, the central design being a curiously interwoven monogram. smothering an exclamation, she seized it in her arms and listened, looking cautiously upon her companions. the elder woman lifted her head and turned sightless eyes toward the light, then passed into sleep again. she went back eagerly to the box and tried its intricate fastenings; but in the dim light they resisted her fingers, and she dare not turn up the flame again. from the veranda in front came the murmur of men's voices; the house was silent. bearing the precious burden cambia went quickly to the hallway and paused for a moment under the arch that divided it. overhead, suspended by an invisible wire, was a snow-white pigeon with wings outspread; behind swayed in the gentle breeze the foliage of the trees. she stood for a moment, listening; and such was the picture presented to edward as he clutched the arm of his companion and leaned forward with strained eyes into the light. guided by the adjuncts of the scene he recognized at once a familiar dream. but in place of the girl's was now a woman's face. another caught a deeper meaning at the same instant, as the general's suppressed breathing betrayed. cambia heard nothing; her face was pale, her hand trembling. in the light descending upon her she found the secret fastenings and the lid opened. then the two men beheld a strange thing; the object of that nervous action was not the violin itself. a string accidentally touched by her sparkling ring gave out a single minor note that startled her, but only for a second did she pause and look around. pressing firmly upon a spot near the inner side of the lid she drew out a little panel of wood and from the shallow cavity exposed, lifted quickly several folded papers, which she opened. then, half rising, she wavered and sank back fainting upon the floor. the silence was broken. a cry burst from the lips of the old general. "marion! my child." in an instant he was by her side lifting and caressing her. "speak to me, daughter," he said. "it has been long, so long. that face, that face! child, it is your mother's as i saw it last. marion, look up; it is i, your father." and then he exclaimed despairingly, as she did not answer him, "she is dead!" "it is not serious, general," said edward hurriedly. "see, she is reviving." cambia steadied herself by a supreme effort and thrust back the form that was supporting her. "who calls marion?" she cried wildly. "marion evan is dead! cambia is dead! i am the countess levigne." her voice rang out in the hall and her clenched hand held aloft, as though she feared they might seize them, the papers she had plucked from the violin case. then her eyes met the general's; she paused in wonder and looked longingly into his aged face. her voice sank to a whisper: "father, father! is it indeed you? you at last?" clinging to the hands extended toward her she knelt and buried her face in them, her form shaking with sobs. the old man's tall figure swayed and trembled. "not there, marion, my child, not there. 'tis i who should kneel! god forgive me, it was i who--" "hush, father, hush! the blame was mine. but i have paid for it with agony, with the better years of my life. "but i could not come back until i came as the wife of the man i loved; i would not break your heart. see! i have the papers. it was my husband's violin." she hid her face in his bosom and let the tears flow unchecked. edward was standing, white and silent, gazing upon the scene; he could not tear himself away. the general, his voice unsteady, saw him at last. a smile broke through his working features and shone in his tearful eyes: "edward, my boy, have you no word? my child has come home!" marion lifted her face and drew herself from the sheltering arms with sudden energy. "edward," she said, gently and lovingly. "edward!" her eyes grew softer and seemed to caress him with their glances. she went up to him and placed both hands upon his shoulders. "his child, and your mother!" "my mother, my mother!" the words were whispers. his voice seemed to linger upon them. "yes! cambia, the unhappy marion, the countess levigne and your mother! no longer ashamed to meet you, no longer an exile! your mother, free to meet your eyes without fear of reproach!" she was drawing his cheek to hers as she spoke. the general had come nearer and now she placed the young man's hand in his. "but," said edward, "gerald! you called him your son!" she clasped her hands over her eyes and turned away quickly. "how can it be? tell me the truth?" she looked back to him then in a dazed way. finally a suspicion of his difficulty came to her. "he was your twin brother. did you not know? alas, poor gerald!" "ah!" said the old man, "it was then true!" "mother," he said softly, lifting her face to his, "gerald is at peace. let me fulfill all the hopes you cherished for both!" "god has showered blessings upon me this night," said the general brokenly. "edward!" the two men clasped hands and looked into each other's eyes. and, radiant by their side, was the face of cambia! at this moment, mary, who had been awakened by their excited voices, her hand outstretched toward the wall along which she had crept, came and stood near them, gazing in wonder upon their beaming faces. with a bound edward reached her side and with an arm about her came to cambia. "mother," he said, "here is your daughter." as cambia clasped her lovingly to her bosom he acquainted mary with what had occurred. and then, happy in her wonder and smiles, edward and mary turned away and discussed the story with the now fully awakened little mother. "and now," said he, "i can ask of you this precious life and be your son indeed!" mary's head was in her mother's lap. "she has loved you a long time, edward; she is already yours." presently he went upon the veranda, where father and daughter were exchanging holy confidences, and, sitting by his mother's side, heard the particulars of her life and bitter experience abroad. "when mr. morgan went to you, father, and stated a hypothetical case and offered to find me, and you, outraged, suffering, declared that i could only return when i had proofs of my marriage, i was without them. mr. morgan sent me money to pay our expenses home--gaspard's and mine--and we did come, he unwilling and fearing violence, for dissipation had changed his whole nature. then, he had been informed of my one-time engagement to mr. morgan, and he was well acquainted with that gentleman and indebted to him for money loaned upon several occasions. he came to america with me upon mr. morgan's guaranty, the sole condition imposed upon him being that he should bring proofs of our marriage; and had he continued to rely upon that guaranty, had he kept his word, there would have been no trouble. but on the day we reached this city he gave way to temptation again and remembered all my threats to leave him. in our final interview he became suddenly jealous, and declared there was a plot to separate us, and expressed a determination to destroy the proofs. "it was then that i determined to act, and hazarded everything upon a desperate move. i resolved to seize my husband's violin, not knowing where his papers were, and hold it as security for my proofs. i thought the plan would succeed; did not his love for that instrument exceed all other passions? i had written to rita, engaging to meet her on a certain night at a livery stable, where we were to take a buggy and proceed to ilexhurst. the storm prevented. gaspard had followed me, and at the church door tore the instrument from my arms and left me insensible. rita carried me in her strong arms three miles to ilexhurst, and it cost her the life of the child that was born and died that night. "poor, poor rita! she herself had been all but dead when my boys were born a week later, and the idea that one of them was her own was the single hallucination of her mind. the boys were said to somewhat resemble her. rita's mother bore a strong resemblance to mrs. morgan's family, as you have perhaps heard, and mrs. morgan was related to our family, so the resemblance may be explained in that way. mr. morgan never could clear up this hallucination of rita's, and so the matter rested that way. it could do no harm under the circumstances, and might--" "no harm?" edward shook his head sadly. "no harm. you, edward, were sent away, and it was early seen that poor gerald would be delicate and probably an invalid. for my troubles, my flight, had--. the poor woman gave her life to the care of my children. heaven bless her forever!" gambia waited in silence a moment and then continued: "as soon as i could travel i made a business transaction of it, and borrowed of my friend, john morgan. he had acquainted me with the conditions upon which i should be received at home; and now it was impossible for me to meet them. gaspard was gone. i thought i could find him; i never did, until blind, poor, aged and dying, he sent for me." "john morgan was faithful. he secured vocal teachers for me in paris and then an engagement to sing in public. i sang, and from that night my money troubles ended. "mr. morgan stayed by me in paris until my career was assured. then, in obedience to his country's call he came back here, running the blockade, and fought up to appomattox." "as gallant a fire-eater," said the general, "as ever shouldered a gun. and he refused promotion on three occasions." "i can readily understand that," said cambia. "his modesty was only equaled by his devotion and courage. "he visited me again when the war ended, and we renewed the search. after that came the franco-prussian war, the siege of paris and the commune, destroying all trails. but i sang on and searched on. when i seemed to have exhausted the theaters i tried the prisons. and so the years passed by. "in the meantime mr. morgan had done a generous thing; never for a moment did he doubt me." she paused, struggling with a sudden emotion, and then: "he had heard my statement--it was not like writing, father, he had heard it from my lips--and when the position of my boys became embarrassing he gave them his own name, formally adopting them while he was in paris." "god bless him!" it was the general's voice. "and after that i felt easier. every week, in all the long years that have passed, brought me letters; every detail in their lives was known to me; and of yours, father. i knew all your troubles. mr. morgan managed it. and," she continued softly, "i felt your embarrassments when the war ended. mr. morgan offered you a loan--" "yes, but i could not accept from him--" "it was from me, father; it was mine; and it was my money that cared for my boys. yes," she said, lifting her head proudly, "mr. morgan understood; he let me pay back everything, and when he died it was my money, held in private trust by him, that constituted the bulk of the fortune left by him for my boys. i earned it before the footlights, but honestly! "well, when poor gaspard died--" "he is dead, then?" "ah! of course you do not know. to-morrow i will tell you his story. i stood by his body and at his grave, and i knew edward. i had seen him many times. poor gerald! my eyes have never beheld him since i took him in my arms that day, a baby, and kissed him good--" she broke down and wept bitterly. "oh, it was pitiful, pitiful!" after awhile she lifted her face. "my husband had written briefly to his family just before death, the letter to be mailed after; and thus they knew of it. but they did not know the name he was living under. his brother, to inherit the title and property, needed proof of death and advertised in european papers for it. he also advertised for the violin. it was this that suggested to me the hiding place of the missing papers. before my marriage gaspard had once shown me the little slide. it had passed from my memory. but cambia's wits were sharper and the description supplied the link. i went to silesia and made a trade with the surviving brother, giving up my interest in certain mines for the name of the person who held the violin. gaspard had described him to me in his letter as a young american named morgan. the name was nothing to the brother; it was everything to me. i came here determined, first to search for the papers, and, failing in that, to go home to you, my father. god has guided me." she sat silent, one hand in her father's, the other clasped lovingly in her son's. it was a silence none cared to break. but edward, from time to time, as his mind reviewed the past, lifted tenderly to his lips the hand of cambia. * * * * * steadily the ocean greyhound plowed its way through the dark swells of the atlantic. a heavy bank of clouds covered the eastern sky almost to the zenith, its upper edges paling in the glare of the full moon slowly ascending beyond. the night was pleasant, the decks crowded. a young man and a young woman sat by an elderly lady, hand in hand. they had been talking of a journey made the year previous upon the same vessel, when the ocean sang a new sweet song. they heard it again this night and were lost in dreams, when the voice of a well-known novelist, who was telling a story to a charmed circle, broke in: "it was my first journey upon the ocean. we had been greatly interested in the little fellow because he was a waif from the great parisian world, and although at that time tenderly cared for by the gentle woman who had become his benefactress, somehow he seemed to carry with him another atmosphere, of loneliness--of isolation. think of it, a motherless babe afloat upon the ocean. it was the pathos of life made visible. he did not realize it, but every heart there beat in sympathy with his, and when it was whispered that the little voyager was dead, i think every eye was wet with tears. dead, almost consumed by fever. with him had come the picture of a young and beautiful woman. he took it with him beneath the little hands upon his breast. that night he was laid to rest. never had motherless babe such a burial. gently, as though there were danger of waking him, we let him sink into the dark waters, there to be rocked in the lap of the ocean until god's day dawns and the seas give up their dead. that was thirty years ago; yet to-night i seem to see that little shrouded form slip down and down and down into the depths. god grant that its mother was dead." when he ceased the elder woman in the little group had bent her head and was silently weeping. "it sounds like a page from the early life of gaspard levigne," she said to her companions. and then to the novelist, in a voice brimming over with tenderness: "grieve not for the child, my friend. god has given wings to love. there is no place in all his universe that can hide a baby from its mother. love will find a way, be the ocean as wide and deep as eternity itself." and then, as they sat wondering, the moon rose above the clouds. light flashed upon the waves around them, and a golden path, stretching out ahead, crossed the far horizon into the misty splendors of the sky. the end. writings of harry stillwell edwards "two runaways" and other stories "his defense" and other stories "the marbeau cousins" "sons and fathers" "eneas africanus" "eneas africanus, defendant" "just sweethearts" "how sal came through" "brother sim's mistake" "isam's spectacles" "the adventures of a parrot" "shadow"--a christmas story "the vulture and his shadow" "on the mount" "mam'selle delphine" _others of our interesting books_ not by edwards "another miracle," by john d. spencer "july"--a sketch of a real negro, by bridges smith "sam simple's first trip to new orleans" "b-flat barto"--a saturday evening post story "big-foot wallace"--a texas story "young marooners," for boys and girls "marooner's island," for boys and girls "reminiscences of sidney lanier," by george herbert clarke none huckleberry finn by mark twain part . chapter xi. "come in," says the woman, and i did. she says: "take a cheer." i done it. she looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says: "what might your name be?" "sarah williams." "where 'bouts do you live? in this neighborhood?' "no'm. in hookerville, seven mile below. i've walked all the way and i'm all tired out." "hungry, too, i reckon. i'll find you something." "no'm, i ain't hungry. i was so hungry i had to stop two miles below here at a farm; so i ain't hungry no more. it's what makes me so late. my mother's down sick, and out of money and everything, and i come to tell my uncle abner moore. he lives at the upper end of the town, she says. i hain't ever been here before. do you know him?" "no; but i don't know everybody yet. i haven't lived here quite two weeks. it's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. you better stay here all night. take off your bonnet." "no," i says; "i'll rest a while, i reckon, and go on. i ain't afeared of the dark." she said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in by and by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me. then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better off they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake coming to our town, instead of letting well alone--and so on and so on, till i was afeard i had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was going on in the town; but by and by she dropped on to pap and the murder, and then i was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. she told about me and tom sawyer finding the six thousand dollars (only she got it ten) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot i was, and at last she got down to where i was murdered. i says: "who done it? we've heard considerable about these goings on down in hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed huck finn." "well, i reckon there's a right smart chance of people here that'd like to know who killed him. some think old finn done it himself." "no--is that so?" "most everybody thought it at first. he'll never know how nigh he come to getting lynched. but before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named jim." "why he--" i stopped. i reckoned i better keep still. she run on, and never noticed i had put in at all: "the nigger run off the very night huck finn was killed. so there's a reward out for him--three hundred dollars. and there's a reward out for old finn, too--two hundred dollars. you see, he come to town the morning after the murder, and told about it, and was out with 'em on the ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left. before night they wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. well, next day they found out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn't ben seen sence ten o'clock the night the murder was done. so then they put it on him, you see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old finn, and went boo-hooing to judge thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over illinois with. the judge gave him some, and that evening he got drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them. well, he hain't come back sence, and they ain't looking for him back till this thing blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and fixed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he'd get huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit. people do say he warn't any too good to do it. oh, he's sly, i reckon. if he don't come back for a year he'll be all right. you can't prove anything on him, you know; everything will be quieted down then, and he'll walk in huck's money as easy as nothing." "yes, i reckon so, 'm. i don't see nothing in the way of it. has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?" "oh, no, not everybody. a good many thinks he done it. but they'll get the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him." "why, are they after him yet?" "well, you're innocent, ain't you! does three hundred dollars lay around every day for people to pick up? some folks think the nigger ain't far from here. i'm one of them--but i hain't talked it around. a few days ago i was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to that island over yonder that they call jackson's island. don't anybody live there? says i. no, nobody, says they. i didn't say any more, but i done some thinking. i was pretty near certain i'd seen smoke over there, about the head of the island, a day or two before that, so i says to myself, like as not that nigger's hiding over there; anyway, says i, it's worth the trouble to give the place a hunt. i hain't seen any smoke sence, so i reckon maybe he's gone, if it was him; but husband's going over to see --him and another man. he was gone up the river; but he got back to-day, and i told him as soon as he got here two hours ago." i had got so uneasy i couldn't set still. i had to do something with my hands; so i took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it. my hands shook, and i was making a bad job of it. when the woman stopped talking i looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious and smiling a little. i put down the needle and thread, and let on to be interested --and i was, too--and says: "three hundred dollars is a power of money. i wish my mother could get it. is your husband going over there to-night?" "oh, yes. he went up-town with the man i was telling you of, to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun. they'll go over after midnight." "couldn't they see better if they was to wait till daytime?" "yes. and couldn't the nigger see better, too? after midnight he'll likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up his camp fire all the better for the dark, if he's got one." "i didn't think of that." the woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and i didn't feel a bit comfortable. pretty soon she says" "what did you say your name was, honey?" "m--mary williams." somehow it didn't seem to me that i said it was mary before, so i didn't look up--seemed to me i said it was sarah; so i felt sort of cornered, and was afeared maybe i was looking it, too. i wished the woman would say something more; the longer she set still the uneasier i was. but now she says: "honey, i thought you said it was sarah when you first come in?" "oh, yes'm, i did. sarah mary williams. sarah's my first name. some calls me sarah, some calls me mary." "oh, that's the way of it?" "yes'm." i was feeling better then, but i wished i was out of there, anyway. i couldn't look up yet. well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the place, and so forth and so on, and then i got easy again. she was right about the rats. you'd see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner every little while. she said she had to have things handy to throw at them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace. she showed me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot with it generly, but she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't know whether she could throw true now. but she watched for a chance, and directly banged away at a rat; but she missed him wide, and said "ouch!" it hurt her arm so. then she told me to try for the next one. i wanted to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course i didn't let on. i got the thing, and the first rat that showed his nose i let drive, and if he'd a stayed where he was he'd a been a tolerable sick rat. she said that was first-rate, and she reckoned i would hive the next one. she went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back, and brought along a hank of yarn which she wanted me to help her with. i held up my two hands and she put the hank over them, and went on talking about her and her husband's matters. but she broke off to say: "keep your eye on the rats. you better have the lead in your lap, handy." so she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and i clapped my legs together on it and she went on talking. but only about a minute. then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face, and very pleasant, and says: "come, now, what's your real name?" "wh--what, mum?" "what's your real name? is it bill, or tom, or bob?--or what is it?" i reckon i shook like a leaf, and i didn't know hardly what to do. but i says: "please to don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. if i'm in the way here, i'll--" "no, you won't. set down and stay where you are. i ain't going to hurt you, and i ain't going to tell on you, nuther. you just tell me your secret, and trust me. i'll keep it; and, what's more, i'll help you. so'll my old man if you want him to. you see, you're a runaway 'prentice, that's all. it ain't anything. there ain't no harm in it. you've been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut. bless you, child, i wouldn't tell on you. tell me all about it now, that's a good boy." so i said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer, and i would just make a clean breast and tell her everything, but she musn't go back on her promise. then i told her my father and mother was dead, and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty mile back from the river, and he treated me so bad i couldn't stand it no longer; he went away to be gone a couple of days, and so i took my chance and stole some of his daughter's old clothes and cleared out, and i had been three nights coming the thirty miles. i traveled nights, and hid daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat i carried from home lasted me all the way, and i had a-plenty. i said i believed my uncle abner moore would take care of me, and so that was why i struck out for this town of goshen. "goshen, child? this ain't goshen. this is st. petersburg. goshen's ten mile further up the river. who told you this was goshen?" "why, a man i met at daybreak this morning, just as i was going to turn into the woods for my regular sleep. he told me when the roads forked i must take the right hand, and five mile would fetch me to goshen." "he was drunk, i reckon. he told you just exactly wrong." "well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain't no matter now. i got to be moving along. i'll fetch goshen before daylight." "hold on a minute. i'll put you up a snack to eat. you might want it." so she put me up a snack, and says: "say, when a cow's laying down, which end of her gets up first? answer up prompt now--don't stop to study over it. which end gets up first?" "the hind end, mum." "well, then, a horse?" "the for'rard end, mum." "which side of a tree does the moss grow on?" "north side." "if fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with their heads pointed the same direction?" "the whole fifteen, mum." "well, i reckon you have lived in the country. i thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again. what's your real name, now?" "george peters, mum." "well, try to remember it, george. don't forget and tell me it's elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it's george elexander when i catch you. and don't go about women in that old calico. you do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it; that's the way a woman most always does, but a man always does t'other way. and when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. and, mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don't clap them together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead. why, i spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and i contrived the other things just to make certain. now trot along to your uncle, sarah mary williams george elexander peters, and if you get into trouble you send word to mrs. judith loftus, which is me, and i'll do what i can to get you out of it. keep the river road all the way, and next time you tramp take shoes and socks with you. the river road's a rocky one, and your feet'll be in a condition when you get to goshen, i reckon." i went up the bank about fifty yards, and then i doubled on my tracks and slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. i jumped in, and was off in a hurry. i went up-stream far enough to make the head of the island, and then started across. i took off the sun-bonnet, for i didn't want no blinders on then. when i was about the middle i heard the clock begin to strike, so i stops and listens; the sound come faint over the water but clear--eleven. when i struck the head of the island i never waited to blow, though i was most winded, but i shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started a good fire there on a high and dry spot. then i jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place, a mile and a half below, as hard as i could go. i landed, and slopped through the timber and up the ridge and into the cavern. there jim laid, sound asleep on the ground. i roused him out and says: "git up and hump yourself, jim! there ain't a minute to lose. they're after us!" jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. by that time everything we had in the world was on our raft, and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. we put out the camp fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show a candle outside after that. i took the canoe out from the shore a little piece, and took a look; but if there was a boat around i couldn't see it, for stars and shadows ain't good to see by. then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still--never saying a word. chapter xii. it must a been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. if a boat was to come along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the illinois shore; and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat. we was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. it warn't good judgment to put everything on the raft. if the men went to the island i just expect they found the camp fire i built, and watched it all night for jim to come. anyways, they stayed away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't no fault of mine. i played it as low down on them as i could. when the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a big bend on the illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. a tow-head is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth. we had mountains on the missouri shore and heavy timber on the illinois side, and the channel was down the missouri shore at that place, so we warn't afraid of anybody running across us. we laid there all day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the missouri shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. i told jim all about the time i had jabbering with that woman; and jim said she was a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set down and watch a camp fire--no, sir, she'd fetch a dog. well, then, i said, why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog? jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he believed they must a gone up-town to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or else we wouldn't be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile below the village--no, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. so i said i didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long as they didn't. when it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in sight; so jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry. jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach of steamboat waves. right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being seen. we made an extra steering-oar, too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something. we fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern on, because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming down-stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn't have to light it for up-stream boats unless we see we was in what they call a "crossing"; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still a little under water; so up-bound boats didn't always run the channel, but hunted easy water. this second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. we catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. it was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed--only a little kind of a low chuckle. we had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all--that night, nor the next, nor the next. every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see. the fifth night we passed st. louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. in st. petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in st. louis, but i never believed it till i see that wonderful spread of lights at two o'clock that still night. there warn't a sound there; everybody was asleep. every night now i used to slip ashore towards ten o'clock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes i lifted a chicken that warn't roosting comfortable, and took him along. pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. i never see pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway. mornings before daylight i slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn't anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them any more--then he reckoned it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others. so we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. but towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p'simmons. we warn't feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now. i was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet. we shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening. take it all round, we lived pretty high. the fifth night below st. louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. we stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. when the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high, rocky bluffs on both sides. by and by says i, "hel-lo, jim, looky yonder!" it was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. we was drifting straight down for her. the lightning showed her very distinct. she was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it, when the flashes come. well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so mysterious-like, i felt just the way any other boy would a felt when i see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. i wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there was there. so i says: "le's land on her, jim." but jim was dead against it at first. he says: "i doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack. we's doin' blame' well, en we better let blame' well alone, as de good book says. like as not dey's a watchman on dat wrack." "watchman your grandmother," i says; "there ain't nothing to watch but the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody's going to resk his life for a texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when it's likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?" jim couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn't try. "and besides," i says, "we might borrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom. seegars, i bet you--and cost five cents apiece, solid cash. steamboat captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and they don't care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. stick a candle in your pocket; i can't rest, jim, till we give her a rummaging. do you reckon tom sawyer would ever go by this thing? not for pie, he wouldn't. he'd call it an adventure--that's what he'd call it; and he'd land on that wreck if it was his last act. and wouldn't he throw style into it? --wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing? why, you'd think it was christopher c'lumbus discovering kingdom-come. i wish tom sawyer was here." jim he grumbled a little, but give in. he said we mustn't talk any more than we could help, and then talk mighty low. the lightning showed us the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stabboard derrick, and made fast there. the deck was high out here. we went sneaking down the slope of it to labboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so dark we couldn't see no sign of them. pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight, and clumb on to it; and the next step fetched us in front of the captain's door, which was open, and by jimminy, away down through the texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we seem to hear low voices in yonder! jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come along. i says, all right, and was going to start for the raft; but just then i heard a voice wail out and say: "oh, please don't, boys; i swear i won't ever tell!" another voice said, pretty loud: "it's a lie, jim turner. you've acted this way before. you always want more'n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because you've swore 't if you didn't you'd tell. but this time you've said it jest one time too many. you're the meanest, treacherousest hound in this country." by this time jim was gone for the raft. i was just a-biling with curiosity; and i says to myself, tom sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so i won't either; i'm a-going to see what's going on here. so i dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark till there warn't but one stateroom betwixt me and the cross-hall of the texas. then in there i see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. this one kept pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor, and saying: "i'd like to! and i orter, too--a mean skunk!" the man on the floor would shrivel up and say, "oh, please don't, bill; i hain't ever goin' to tell." and every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and say: "'deed you ain't! you never said no truer thing 'n that, you bet you." and once he said: "hear him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the best of him and tied him he'd a killed us both. and what for? jist for noth'n. jist because we stood on our rights--that's what for. but i lay you ain't a-goin' to threaten nobody any more, jim turner. put up that pistol, bill." bill says: "i don't want to, jake packard. i'm for killin' him--and didn't he kill old hatfield jist the same way--and don't he deserve it?" "but i don't want him killed, and i've got my reasons for it." "bless yo' heart for them words, jake packard! i'll never forgit you long's i live!" says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering. packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail and started towards where i was there in the dark, and motioned bill to come. i crawfished as fast as i could about two yards, but the boat slanted so that i couldn't make very good time; so to keep from getting run over and catched i crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. the man came a-pawing along in the dark, and when packard got to my stateroom, he says: "here--come in here." and in he come, and bill after him. but before they got in i was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry i come. then they stood there, with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. i couldn't see them, but i could tell where they was by the whisky they'd been having. i was glad i didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't made much difference anyway, because most of the time they couldn't a treed me because i didn't breathe. i was too scared. and, besides, a body couldn't breathe and hear such talk. they talked low and earnest. bill wanted to kill turner. he says: "he's said he'll tell, and he will. if we was to give both our shares to him now it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way we've served him. shore's you're born, he'll turn state's evidence; now you hear me. i'm for putting him out of his troubles." "so'm i," says packard, very quiet. "blame it, i'd sorter begun to think you wasn't. well, then, that's all right. le's go and do it." "hold on a minute; i hain't had my say yit. you listen to me. shooting's good, but there's quieter ways if the thing's got to be done. but what i say is this: it ain't good sense to go court'n around after a halter if you can git at what you're up to in some way that's jist as good and at the same time don't bring you into no resks. ain't that so?" "you bet it is. but how you goin' to manage it this time?" "well, my idea is this: we'll rustle around and gather up whatever pickins we've overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide the truck. then we'll wait. now i say it ain't a-goin' to be more'n two hours befo' this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. see? he'll be drownded, and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own self. i reckon that's a considerble sight better 'n killin' of him. i'm unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git aroun' it; it ain't good sense, it ain't good morals. ain't i right?" "yes, i reck'n you are. but s'pose she don't break up and wash off?" "well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can't we?" "all right, then; come along." so they started, and i lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled forward. it was dark as pitch there; but i said, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "jim !" and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a moan, and i says: "quick, jim, it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning; there's a gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and set her drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the wreck there's one of 'em going to be in a bad fix. but if we find their boat we can put all of 'em in a bad fix--for the sheriff 'll get 'em. quick--hurry! i'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. you start at the raft, and--" "oh, my lordy, lordy! raf'? dey ain' no raf' no mo'; she done broke loose en gone i--en here we is!" chapter xiii. well, i catched my breath and most fainted. shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that! but it warn't no time to be sentimentering. we'd got to find that boat now--had to have it for ourselves. so we went a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, too--seemed a week before we got to the stern. no sign of a boat. jim said he didn't believe he could go any further--so scared he hadn't hardly any strength left, he said. but i said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we are in a fix, sure. so on we prowled again. we struck for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in the water. when we got pretty close to the cross-hall door there was the skiff, sure enough! i could just barely see her. i felt ever so thankful. in another second i would a been aboard of her, but just then the door opened. one of the men stuck his head out only about a couple of foot from me, and i thought i was gone; but he jerked it in again, and says: "heave that blame lantern out o' sight, bill!" he flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and set down. it was packard. then bill he come out and got in. packard says, in a low voice: "all ready--shove off!" i couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, i was so weak. but bill says: "hold on--'d you go through him?" "no. didn't you?" "no. so he's got his share o' the cash yet." "well, then, come along; no use to take truck and leave money." "say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?" "maybe he won't. but we got to have it anyway. come along." so they got out and went in. the door slammed to because it was on the careened side; and in a half second i was in the boat, and jim come tumbling after me. i out with my knife and cut the rope, and away we went! we didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly even breathe. we went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the paddle-box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it. when we was three or four hundred yards down-stream we see the lantern show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed by that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to understand that they was in just as much trouble now as jim turner was. then jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft. now was the first time that i begun to worry about the men--i reckon i hadn't had time to before. i begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix. i says to myself, there ain't no telling but i might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would i like it? so says i to jim: "the first light we see we'll land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a place where it's a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and then i'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their time comes." but that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again, and this time worse than ever. the rain poured down, and never a light showed; everybody in bed, i reckon. we boomed along down the river, watching for lights and watching for our raft. after a long time the rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering, and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we made for it. it was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. we seen a light now away down to the right, on shore. so i said i would go for it. the skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole there on the wreck. we hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and i told jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone about two mile, and keep it burning till i come; then i manned my oars and shoved for the light. as i got down towards it three or four more showed--up on a hillside. it was a village. i closed in above the shore light, and laid on my oars and floated. as i went by i see it was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferryboat. i skimmed around for the watchman, a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and by and by i found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his head down between his knees. i gave his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to cry. he stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says: "hello, what's up? don't cry, bub. what's the trouble?" i says: "pap, and mam, and sis, and--" then i broke down. he says: "oh, dang it now, don't take on so; we all has to have our troubles, and this 'n 'll come out all right. what's the matter with 'em?" "they're--they're--are you the watchman of the boat?" "yes," he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like. "i'm the captain and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head deck-hand; and sometimes i'm the freight and passengers. i ain't as rich as old jim hornback, and i can't be so blame' generous and good to tom, dick, and harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he does; but i've told him a many a time 't i wouldn't trade places with him; for, says i, a sailor's life's the life for me, and i'm derned if i'd live two mile out o' town, where there ain't nothing ever goin' on, not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of it. says i--" i broke in and says: "they're in an awful peck of trouble, and--" "who is?" "why, pap and mam and sis and miss hooker; and if you'd take your ferryboat and go up there--" "up where? where are they?" "on the wreck." "what wreck?" "why, there ain't but one." "what, you don't mean the walter scott?" "yes." "good land! what are they doin' there, for gracious sakes?" "well, they didn't go there a-purpose." "i bet they didn't! why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for 'em if they don't git off mighty quick! why, how in the nation did they ever git into such a scrape?" "easy enough. miss hooker was a-visiting up there to the town--" "yes, booth's landing--go on." "she was a-visiting there at booth's landing, and just in the edge of the evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry to stay all night at her friend's house, miss what-you-may-call-her i disremember her name--and they lost their steering-oar, and swung around and went a-floating down, stern first, about two mile, and saddle-baggsed on the wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and the horses was all lost, but miss hooker she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. well, about an hour after dark we come along down in our trading-scow, and it was so dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it; and so we saddle-baggsed; but all of us was saved but bill whipple--and oh, he was the best cretur !--i most wish 't it had been me, i do." "my george! it's the beatenest thing i ever struck. and then what did you all do?" "well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there we couldn't make nobody hear. so pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help somehow. i was the only one that could swim, so i made a dash for it, and miss hooker she said if i didn't strike help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing. i made the land about a mile below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do something, but they said, 'what, in such a night and such a current? there ain't no sense in it; go for the steam ferry.' now if you'll go and--" "by jackson, i'd like to, and, blame it, i don't know but i will; but who in the dingnation's a-going' to pay for it? do you reckon your pap--" "why that's all right. miss hooker she tole me, particular, that her uncle hornback--" "great guns! is he her uncle? looky here, you break for that light over yonder-way, and turn out west when you git there, and about a quarter of a mile out you'll come to the tavern; tell 'em to dart you out to jim hornback's, and he'll foot the bill. and don't you fool around any, because he'll want to know the news. tell him i'll have his niece all safe before he can get to town. hump yourself, now; i'm a-going up around the corner here to roust out my engineer." i struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner i went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out, and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among some woodboats; for i couldn't rest easy till i could see the ferryboat start. but take it all around, i was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would a done it. i wished the widow knowed about it. i judged she would be proud of me for helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in. well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along down! a kind of cold shiver went through me, and then i struck out for her. she was very deep, and i see in a minute there warn't much chance for anybody being alive in her. i pulled all around her and hollered a little, but there wasn't any answer; all dead still. i felt a little bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for i reckoned if they could stand it i could. then here comes the ferryboat; so i shoved for the middle of the river on a long down-stream slant; and when i judged i was out of eye-reach i laid on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for miss hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her uncle hornback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferryboat give it up and went for the shore, and i laid into my work and went a-booming down the river. it did seem a powerful long time before jim's light showed up; and when it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off. by the time i got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east; so we struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in and slept like dead people. chapter xiv. by and by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three boxes of seegars. we hadn't ever been this rich before in neither of our lives. the seegars was prime. we laid off all the afternoon in the woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time. i told jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the ferryboat, and i said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn't want no more adventures. he said that when i went in the texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone he nearly died, because he judged it was all up with him anyway it could be fixed; for if he didn't get saved he would get drownded; and if he did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and then miss watson would sell him south, sure. well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger. i read considerable to jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, 'stead of mister; and jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested. he says: "i didn' know dey was so many un um. i hain't hearn 'bout none un um, skasely, but ole king sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat's in a pack er k'yards. how much do a king git?" "get?" i says; "why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it; they can have just as much as they want; everything belongs to them." "ain' dat gay? en what dey got to do, huck?" "they don't do nothing! why, how you talk! they just set around." "no; is dat so?" "of course it is. they just set around--except, maybe, when there's a war; then they go to the war. but other times they just lazy around; or go hawking--just hawking and sp--sh!--d' you hear a noise?" we skipped out and looked; but it warn't nothing but the flutter of a steamboat's wheel away down, coming around the point; so we come back. "yes," says i, "and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the parlyment; and if everybody don't go just so he whacks their heads off. but mostly they hang round the harem." "roun' de which?" "harem." "what's de harem?" "the place where he keeps his wives. don't you know about the harem? solomon had one; he had about a million wives." "why, yes, dat's so; i--i'd done forgot it. a harem's a bo'd'n-house, i reck'n. mos' likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. en i reck'n de wives quarrels considable; en dat 'crease de racket. yit dey say sollermun de wises' man dat ever live'. i doan' take no stock in dat. bekase why: would a wise man want to live in de mids' er sich a blim-blammin' all de time? no--'deed he wouldn't. a wise man 'ud take en buil' a biler-factry; en den he could shet down de biler-factry when he want to res'." "well, but he was the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told me so, her own self." "i doan k'yer what de widder say, he warn't no wise man nuther. he had some er de dad-fetchedes' ways i ever see. does you know 'bout dat chile dat he 'uz gwyne to chop in two?" "yes, the widow told me all about it." "well, den! warn' dat de beatenes' notion in de worl'? you jes' take en look at it a minute. dah's de stump, dah--dat's one er de women; heah's you--dat's de yuther one; i's sollermun; en dish yer dollar bill's de chile. bofe un you claims it. what does i do? does i shin aroun' mongs' de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill do b'long to, en han' it over to de right one, all safe en soun', de way dat anybody dat had any gumption would? no; i take en whack de bill in two, en give half un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman. dat's de way sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile. now i want to ast you: what's de use er dat half a bill?--can't buy noth'n wid it. en what use is a half a chile? i wouldn' give a dern for a million un um." "but hang it, jim, you've clean missed the point--blame it, you've missed it a thousand mile." "who? me? go 'long. doan' talk to me 'bout yo' pints. i reck'n i knows sense when i sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat. de 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole chile; en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile wid a half a chile doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain. doan' talk to me 'bout sollermun, huck, i knows him by de back." "but i tell you you don't get the point." "blame de point! i reck'n i knows what i knows. en mine you, de real pint is down furder--it's down deeper. it lays in de way sollermun was raised. you take a man dat's got on'y one or two chillen; is dat man gwyne to be waseful o' chillen? no, he ain't; he can't 'ford it. he know how to value 'em. but you take a man dat's got 'bout five million chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt. he as soon chop a chile in two as a cat. dey's plenty mo'. a chile er two, mo' er less, warn't no consekens to sollermun, dad fatch him!" i never see such a nigger. if he got a notion in his head once, there warn't no getting it out again. he was the most down on solomon of any nigger i ever see. so i went to talking about other kings, and let solomon slide. i told about louis sixteenth that got his head cut off in france long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would a been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there. "po' little chap." "but some says he got out and got away, and come to america." "dat's good! but he'll be pooty lonesome--dey ain' no kings here, is dey, huck?" "no." "den he cain't git no situation. what he gwyne to do?" "well, i don't know. some of them gets on the police, and some of them learns people how to talk french." "why, huck, doan' de french people talk de same way we does?" "no, jim; you couldn't understand a word they said--not a single word." "well, now, i be ding-busted! how do dat come?" "i don't know; but it's so. i got some of their jabber out of a book. s'pose a man was to come to you and say polly-voo-franzy--what would you think?" "i wouldn' think nuff'n; i'd take en bust him over de head--dat is, if he warn't white. i wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat." "shucks, it ain't calling you anything. it's only saying, do you know how to talk french?" "well, den, why couldn't he say it?" "why, he is a-saying it. that's a frenchman's way of saying it." "well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en i doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout it. dey ain' no sense in it." "looky here, jim; does a cat talk like we do?" "no, a cat don't." "well, does a cow?" "no, a cow don't, nuther." "does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?" "no, dey don't." "it's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't it?" "course." "and ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us?" "why, mos' sholy it is." "well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a frenchman to talk different from us? you answer me that." "is a cat a man, huck?" "no." "well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. is a cow a man?--er is a cow a cat?" "no, she ain't either of them." "well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of 'em. is a frenchman a man?" "yes." "well, den! dad blame it, why doan' he talk like a man? you answer me dat!" i see it warn't no use wasting words--you can't learn a nigger to argue. so i quit. chapter xv. we judged that three nights more would fetch us to cairo, at the bottom of illinois, where the ohio river comes in, and that was what we was after. we would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the ohio amongst the free states, and then be out of trouble. well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a towhead to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog; but when i paddled ahead in the canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't anything but little saplings to tie to. i passed the line around one of them right on the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she went. i see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared i couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to me--and then there warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards. i jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern, and grabbed the paddle and set her back a stroke. but she didn't come. i was in such a hurry i hadn't untied her. i got up and tried to untie her, but i was so excited my hands shook so i couldn't hardly do anything with them. as soon as i got started i took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right down the towhead. that was all right as far as it went, but the towhead warn't sixty yards long, and the minute i flew by the foot of it i shot out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way i was going than a dead man. thinks i, it won't do to paddle; first i know i'll run into the bank or a towhead or something; i got to set still and float, and yet it's mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. i whooped and listened. away down there somewheres i hears a small whoop, and up comes my spirits. i went tearing after it, listening sharp to hear it again. the next time it come i see i warn't heading for it, but heading away to the right of it. and the next time i was heading away to the left of it--and not gaining on it much either, for i was flying around, this way and that and t'other, but it was going straight ahead all the time. i did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops that was making the trouble for me. well, i fought along, and directly i hears the whoop behind me. i was tangled good now. that was somebody else's whoop, or else i was turned around. i throwed the paddle down. i heard the whoop again; it was behind me yet, but in a different place; it kept coming, and kept changing its place, and i kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me again, and i knowed the current had swung the canoe's head down-stream, and i was all right if that was jim and not some other raftsman hollering. i couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog. the whooping went on, and in about a minute i come a-booming down on a cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared, the currrent was tearing by them so swift. in another second or two it was solid white and still again. i set perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump, and i reckon i didn't draw a breath while it thumped a hundred. i just give up then. i knowed what the matter was. that cut bank was an island, and jim had gone down t'other side of it. it warn't no towhead that you could float by in ten minutes. it had the big timber of a regular island; it might be five or six miles long and more than half a mile wide. i kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, i reckon. i was floating along, of course, four or five miles an hour; but you don't ever think of that. no, you feel like you are laying dead still on the water; and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by you don't think to yourself how fast you're going, but you catch your breath and think, my! how that snag's tearing along. if you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it once--you'll see. next, for about a half an hour, i whoops now and then; at last i hears the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but i couldn't do it, and directly i judged i'd got into a nest of towheads, for i had little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me--sometimes just a narrow channel between, and some that i couldn't see i knowed was there because i'd hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. well, i warn't long loosing the whoops down amongst the towheads; and i only tried to chase them a little while, anyway, because it was worse than chasing a jack-o'-lantern. you never knowed a sound dodge around so, and swap places so quick and so much. i had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times, to keep from knocking the islands out of the river; and so i judged the raft must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it would get further ahead and clear out of hearing--it was floating a little faster than what i was. well, i seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but i couldn't hear no sign of a whoop nowheres. i reckoned jim had fetched up on a snag, maybe, and it was all up with him. i was good and tired, so i laid down in the canoe and said i wouldn't bother no more. i didn't want to go to sleep, of course; but i was so sleepy i couldn't help it; so i thought i would take jest one little cat-nap. but i reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when i waked up the stars was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and i was spinning down a big bend stern first. first i didn't know where i was; i thought i was dreaming; and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come up dim out of last week. it was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as i could see by the stars. i looked away down-stream, and seen a black speck on the water. i took after it; but when i got to it it warn't nothing but a couple of sawlogs made fast together. then i see another speck, and chased that; then another, and this time i was right. it was the raft. when i got to it jim was setting there with his head down between his knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering-oar. the other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt. so she'd had a rough time. i made fast and laid down under jim's nose on the raft, and began to gap, and stretch my fists out against jim, and says: "hello, jim, have i been asleep? why didn't you stir me up?" "goodness gracious, is dat you, huck? en you ain' dead--you ain' drownded--you's back agin? it's too good for true, honey, it's too good for true. lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o' you. no, you ain' dead! you's back agin, 'live en soun', jis de same ole huck--de same ole huck, thanks to goodness!" "what's the matter with you, jim? you been a-drinking?" "drinkin'? has i ben a-drinkin'? has i had a chance to be a-drinkin'?" "well, then, what makes you talk so wild?" "how does i talk wild?" "how? why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all that stuff, as if i'd been gone away?" "huck--huck finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye. hain't you ben gone away?" "gone away? why, what in the nation do you mean? i hain't been gone anywheres. where would i go to?" "well, looky here, boss, dey's sumf'n wrong, dey is. is i me, or who is i? is i heah, or whah is i? now dat's what i wants to know." "well, i think you're here, plain enough, but i think you're a tangle-headed old fool, jim." "i is, is i? well, you answer me dis: didn't you tote out de line in de canoe fer to make fas' to de tow-head?" "no, i didn't. what tow-head? i hain't see no tow-head." "you hain't seen no towhead? looky here, didn't de line pull loose en de raf' go a-hummin' down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in de fog?" "what fog?" "why, de fog!--de fog dat's been aroun' all night. en didn't you whoop, en didn't i whoop, tell we got mix' up in de islands en one un us got los' en t'other one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn' know whah he wuz? en didn't i bust up agin a lot er dem islands en have a turrible time en mos' git drownded? now ain' dat so, boss--ain't it so? you answer me dat." "well, this is too many for me, jim. i hain't seen no fog, nor no islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing. i been setting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and i reckon i done the same. you couldn't a got drunk in that time, so of course you've been dreaming." "dad fetch it, how is i gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?" "well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it happen." "but, huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as--" "it don't make no difference how plain it is; there ain't nothing in it. i know, because i've been here all the time." jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying over it. then he says: "well, den, i reck'n i did dream it, huck; but dog my cats ef it ain't de powerfullest dream i ever see. en i hain't ever had no dream b'fo' dat's tired me like dis one." "oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like everything sometimes. but this one was a staving dream; tell me all about it, jim." so jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it happened, only he painted it up considerable. then he said he must start in and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. he said the first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him. the whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it. the lot of towheads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the free states, and wouldn't have no more trouble. it had clouded up pretty dark just after i got on to the raft, but it was clearing up again now. "oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, jim," i says; "but what does these things stand for?" it was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. you could see them first-rate now. jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. he had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. but when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says: "what do dey stan' for? i'se gwyne to tell you. when i got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en i didn' k'yer no' mo' what become er me en de raf'. en when i wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun', de tears come, en i could a got down on my knees en kiss yo' foot, i's so thankful. en all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole jim wid a lie. dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed." then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that. but that was enough. it made me feel so mean i could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back. it was fifteen minutes before i could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but i done it, and i warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. i didn't do him no more mean tricks, and i wouldn't done that one if i'd a knowed it would make him feel that way. the marrow of tradition by charles w. chestnutt contents i. at break of day ii. the christening party iii. the editor at work iv. theodore felix v. a journey southward vi. janet vii. the operation viii. the campaign drags ix. a white man's "nigger" x. delamere plays a trump xi. the baby and the bird xii. another southern product xiii. the cakewalk xiv. the maunderings of old mrs. ochiltree xv. mrs. carteret seeks an explanation xvi. ellis takes a trick xvii. the social aspirations of captain mcbane xviii. sandy sees his own ha'nt xix. a midnight walk xx. a shocking crime xxi. the necessity of an example xxii. how not to prevent a lynching xxiii. belleview xxiv. two southern gentlemen xxv. the honor of a family xxvi. the discomfort of ellis xxvii. the vagaries of the higher law xxviii. in season and out xxix. mutterings of the storm xxx. the missing papers xxxi. the shadow of a dream xxxii. the storm breaks xxxiii. into the lion's jaws xxxiv. the valley of the shadow xxxv. "mine enemy, o mine enemy!" xxxvi. fiat justitia xxxvii. the sisters the marrow of tradition i like you and your book, ingenious hone! in whose capacious all-embracing leaves the very marrow of tradition's shown. --charles lamb _to the editor of the every-day book_ i at break of day "stay here beside her, major. i shall not he needed for an hour yet. meanwhile i'll go downstairs and snatch a bit of sleep, or talk to old jane." the night was hot and sultry. though the windows of the chamber were wide open, and the muslin curtains looped back, not a breath of air was stirring. only the shrill chirp of the cicada and the muffled croaking of the frogs in some distant marsh broke the night silence. the heavy scent of magnolias, overpowering even the strong smell of drugs in the sickroom, suggested death and funeral wreaths, sorrow and tears, the long home, the last sleep. the major shivered with apprehension as the slender hand which he held in his own contracted nervously and in a spasm of pain clutched his fingers with a viselike grip. major carteret, though dressed in brown linen, had thrown off his coat for greater comfort. the stifling heat, in spite of the palm-leaf fan which he plied mechanically, was scarcely less oppressive than his own thoughts. long ago, while yet a mere boy in years, he had come back from appomattox to find his family, one of the oldest and proudest in the state, hopelessly impoverished by the war,--even their ancestral home swallowed up in the common ruin. his elder brother had sacrificed his life on the bloody altar of the lost cause, and his father, broken and chagrined, died not many years later, leaving the major the last of his line. he had tried in various pursuits to gain a foothold in the new life, but with indifferent success until he won the hand of olivia merkell, whom he had seen grow from a small girl to glorious womanhood. with her money he had founded the morning chronicle, which he had made the leading organ of his party and the most influential paper in the state. the fine old house in which they lived was hers. in this very room she had first drawn the breath of life; it had been their nuptial chamber; and here, too, within a few hours, she might die, for it seemed impossible that one could long endure such frightful agony and live. one cloud alone had marred the otherwise perfect serenity of their happiness. olivia was childless. to have children to perpetuate the name of which he was so proud, to write it still higher on the roll of honor, had been his dearest hope. his disappointment had been proportionately keen. a few months ago this dead hope had revived, and altered the whole aspect of their lives. but as time went on, his wife's age had begun to tell upon her, until even dr. price, the most cheerful and optimistic of physicians, had warned him, while hoping for the best, to be prepared for the worst. to add to the danger, mrs. carteret had only this day suffered from a nervous shock, which, it was feared, had hastened by several weeks the expected event. dr. price went downstairs to the library, where a dim light was burning. an old black woman, dressed in a gingham frock, with a red bandana handkerchief coiled around her head by way of turban, was seated by an open window. she rose and curtsied as the doctor entered and dropped into a willow rocking-chair near her own. "how did this happen, jane?" he asked in a subdued voice, adding, with assumed severity, "you ought to have taken better care of your mistress." "now look a-hyuh, doctuh price," returned the old woman in an unctuous whisper, "you don' wanter come talkin' none er yo' foolishness 'bout my not takin' keer er mis' 'livy. _she_ never would 'a' said sech a thing! seven er eight mont's ago, w'en she sent fer me, i says ter her, says i:-- "'lawd, lawd, honey! you don' tell me dat after all dese long w'ary years er waitin' de good lawd is done heared yo' prayer an' is gwine ter sen' you de chile you be'n wantin' so long an' so bad? bless his holy name! will i come an' nuss yo' baby? why, honey, i nussed you, an' nussed yo' mammy thoo her las' sickness, an' laid her out w'en she died. i wouldn' _let_ nobody e'se nuss yo' baby; an' mo'over, i'm gwine ter come an' nuss you too. you're young side er me, mis' 'livy, but you're ove'ly ole ter be havin' yo' fus' baby, an' you'll need somebody roun', honey, w'at knows all 'bout de fam'ly, an' deir ways an' deir weaknesses, an' i don' know who dat'd be ef it wa'n't me.' "''deed, mammy jane,' says she, 'dere ain' nobody e'se i'd have but you. you kin come ez soon ez you wanter an' stay ez long ez you mineter.' "an hyuh i is, an' hyuh i'm gwine ter stay. fer mis' 'livy is my ole mist'ess's daughter, an' my ole mist'ess wuz good ter me, an' dey ain' none er her folks gwine ter suffer ef ole jane kin he'p it." "your loyalty does you credit, jane," observed the doctor; "but you haven't told me yet what happened to mrs. carteret to-day. did the horse run away, or did she see something that frightened her?" "no, suh, de hoss didn' git skeered at nothin', but mis' 'livy did see somethin', er somebody; an' it wa'n't no fault er mine ner her'n neither,--it goes fu'ther back, suh, fu'ther dan dis day er dis year. does you 'member de time w'en my ole mist'ess, mis' 'livy upstairs's mammy, died? no? well, you wuz prob'ly 'way ter school den, studyin' ter be a doctuh. but i'll tell you all erbout it. "wen my ole mist'ess, mis' 'liz'beth merkell,--an' a good mist'ess she wuz,--tuck sick fer de las' time, her sister polly--ole mis' polly ochiltree w'at is now--come ter de house ter he'p nuss her. mis' 'livy upstairs yander wuz erbout six years ole den, de sweetes' little angel you ever laid eyes on; an' on her dyin' bed mis' 'liz'beth ax' mis' polly fer ter stay hyuh an' take keer er her chile, an' mis' polly she promise'. she wuz a widder fer de secon' time, an' didn' have no child'en, an' could jes' as well come as not. "but dere wuz trouble after de fune'al, an' it happen' right hyuh in dis lib'ary. mars sam wuz settin' by de table, w'en mis' polly come downstairs, slow an' solemn, an' stood dere in de middle er de flo', all in black, till mars sam sot a cheer fer her. "'well, samuel,' says she, 'now dat we've done all we can fer po' 'liz'beth, it only 'mains fer us ter consider olivia's future.' "mars sam nodded his head, but didn' say nothin'. "'i don' need ter tell you,' says she,' dat i am willin' ter carry out de wishes er my dead sister, an' sac'ifice my own comfo't, an' make myse'f yo' housekeeper an' yo' child's nuss, fer my dear sister's sake. it wuz her dyin' wish, an' on it i will ac', ef it is also yo'n.' "mars sam didn' want mis' polly ter come, suh; fur he didn' like mis' polly. he wuz skeered er miss polly." "i don't wonder," yawned the doctor, "if she was anything like she is now." "wuss, suh, fer she wuz younger, an' stronger. she always would have her say, no matter 'bout what, an' her own way, no matter who 'posed her. she had already be'n in de house fer a week, an' mars sam knowed ef she once come ter stay, she'd be de mist'ess of eve'ybody in it an' him too. but w'at could he do but say yas? "'den it is unde'stood, is it,' says mis' polly, w'en he had spoke, 'dat i am ter take cha'ge er de house?' "'all right, polly,' says mars sam, wid a deep sigh. "mis' polly 'lowed he wuz sighin' fer my po' dead mist'ess, fer she didn' have no idee er his feelin's to'ds her,--she alluz did 'low dat all de gent'emen wuz in love wid 'er. "'you won' fin' much ter do,' mars sam went on, 'fer julia is a good housekeeper, an' kin ten' ter mos' eve'ything, under yo' d'rections.' "mis' polly stiffen' up like a ramrod. 'it mus' be unde'stood, samuel,' says she, 'dat w'en i 'sumes cha'ge er yo' house, dere ain' gwine ter be no 'vided 'sponsibility; an' as fer dis julia, me an' her couldn' git 'long tergether nohow. ef i stays, julia goes.' "wen mars sam beared dat, he felt better, an' 'mence' ter pick up his courage. mis' polly had showed her ban' too plain. my mist'ess hadn' got col' yit, an' mis' polly, who'd be'n a widder fer two years dis las' time, wuz already fig'rin' on takin' her place fer good, an' she did n! want no other woman roun' de house dat mars sam might take a' intrus' in. "'my dear polly,' says mars sam, quite determine', 'i couldn' possibly sen' julia 'way. fac' is, i couldn' git 'long widout julia. she'd be'n runnin' dis house like clockwo'k befo' you come, an' i likes her ways. my dear, dead 'liz'beth sot a heap er sto' by julia, an' i'm gwine ter keep her here fer 'liz'beth's sake.' "mis' polly's eyes flash' fire. "'ah,' says she,' i see--i see! you perfers her housekeepin' ter mine, indeed! dat is a fine way ter talk ter a lady! an' a heap er rispec' you is got fer de mem'ry er my po' dead sister!' "mars sam knowed w'at she 'lowed she seed wa'n't so; but he didn' let on, fer it only made him de safer. he wuz willin' fer her ter 'magine w'at she please', jes' so long ez she kep' out er his house an' let him alone. "'no, polly,' says he, gittin' bolder ez she got madder, 'dere ain' no use talkin'. nothin' in de worl' would make me part wid julia.' "mis' polly she r'ared an' she pitch', but mars sam helt on like grim death. mis' polly wouldn' give in neither, an' so she fin'lly went away. dey made some kind er 'rangement afterwa'ds, an' miss polly tuck mis' 'livy ter her own house. mars sam paid her bo'd an' 'lowed mis' polly somethin' fer takin' keer er her." "and julia stayed?" "julia stayed, suh, an' a couple er years later her chile wuz bawn, right here in dis house." "but you said," observed the doctor, "that mrs. ochiltree was in error about julia." "yas, suh, so she wuz, w'en my ole mist'ess died. but dis wuz two years after,--an' w'at has ter be has ter be. julia had a easy time; she had a black gal ter wait on her, a buggy to ride in, an' eve'ything she wanted. eve'ybody s'posed mars sam would give her a house an' lot, er leave her somethin' in his will. but he died suddenly, and didn' leave no will, an' mis' polly got herse'f 'pinted gyardeen ter young mis' 'livy, an' driv julia an' her young un out er de house, an' lived here in dis house wid mis' 'livy till mis' 'livy ma'ied majah carteret." "and what became of julia?" asked dr. price. such relations, the doctor knew very well, had been all too common in the old slavery days, and not a few of them had been projected into the new era. sins, like snakes, die hard. the habits and customs of a people were not to be changed in a day, nor by the stroke of a pen. as family physician, and father confessor by brevet, dr. price had looked upon more than one hidden skeleton; and no one in town had had better opportunities than old jane for learning the undercurrents in the lives of the old families. "well," resumed jane, "eve'ybody s'posed, after w'at had happen', dat julia'd keep on livin' easy, fer she wuz young an' good-lookin'. but she didn'. she tried ter make a livin' sewin', but mis' polly wouldn' let de bes' w'ite folks hire her. den she tuck up washin', but didn' do no better at dat; an' bimeby she got so discourage' dat she ma'ied a shif'less yaller man, an' died er consumption soon after,--an' wuz 'bout ez well off, fer dis man couldn' hardly feed her nohow." "and the child?" "one er de no'the'n w'ite lady teachers at de mission school tuck a likin' ter little janet, an' put her thoo school, an' den sent her off ter de no'th fer ter study ter be a school teacher. w'en she come back, 'stead er teachin' she ma'ied ole adam miller's son." "the rich stevedore's son, dr. miller?" "yas, suh, dat's de man,--you knows 'im. dis yer boy wuz jes' gwine 'way fer ter study ter be a doctuh, an' he ma'ied dis janet, an' tuck her 'way wid 'im. dey went off ter europe, er irope, er orope, er somewhere er 'nother, 'way off yander, an' come back here las' year an' sta'ted dis yer horspital an' school fer ter train de black gals fer nusses." "he's a very good doctor, jane, and is doing a useful work. your chapter of family history is quite interesting,--i knew part of it before, in a general way; but you haven't yet told me what brought on mrs. carteret's trouble." "i'm jes' comin' ter dat dis minute, suh,--w'at i be'n tellin' you is all a part of it. dis yer janet, w'at's mis' 'livy's half-sister, is ez much like her ez ef dey wuz twins. folks sometimes takes 'em fer one ernudder,--i s'pose it tickles janet mos' ter death, but it do make mis' 'livy rippin'. an' den 'way back yander jes' after de wah, w'en de ole carteret mansion had ter be sol', adam miller bought it, an' dis yer janet an' her husban' is be'n livin' in it ever sence ole adam died, 'bout a year ago; an' dat makes de majah mad, 'ca'se he don' wanter see cullud folks livin' in de ole fam'ly mansion w'at he wuz bawn in. an' mo'over, an' dat's de wust of all, w'iles mis' 'livy ain' had no child'en befo', dis yer sister er her'n is got a fine-lookin' little yaller boy, w'at favors de fam'ly so dat ef mis' 'livy'd see de chile anywhere, it'd mos' break her heart fer ter think 'bout her not havin' no child'en herse'f. so ter-day, w'en mis' 'livy wuz out ridin' an' met dis yer janet wid her boy, an' w'en mis' 'livy got ter studyin' 'bout her own chances, an' how she mought not come thoo safe, she jes' had a fit er hysterics right dere in de buggy. she wuz mos' home, an' william got her here, an' you knows de res'." major carteret, from the head of the stairs, called the doctor anxiously. "you had better come along up now, jane," said the doctor. for two long hours they fought back the grim spectre that stood by the bedside. the child was born at dawn. both mother and child, the doctor said, would live. "bless its 'ittle hea't!" exclaimed mammy jane, as she held up the tiny mite, which bore as much resemblance to mature humanity as might be expected of an infant which had for only a few minutes drawn the breath of life. "bless its 'ittle hea't! it's de we'y spit an' image er its pappy!" the doctor smiled. the major laughed aloud. jane's unconscious witticism, or conscious flattery, whichever it might be, was a welcome diversion from the tense strain of the last few hours. "be that as it may," said dr. price cheerfully, "and i'll not dispute it, the child is a very fine boy,--a very fine boy, indeed! take care of it, major," he added with a touch of solemnity, "for your wife can never bear another." with the child's first cry a refreshing breeze from the distant ocean cooled the hot air of the chamber; the heavy odor of the magnolias, with its mortuary suggestiveness, gave place to the scent of rose and lilac and honeysuckle. the birds in the garden were singing lustily. all these sweet and pleasant things found an echo in the major's heart. he stood by the window, and looking toward the rising sun, breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving. all nature seemed to rejoice in sympathy with his happiness at the fruition of this long-deferred hope, and to predict for this wonderful child a bright and glorious future. old mammy jane, however, was not entirely at ease concerning the child. she had discovered, under its left ear, a small mole, which led her to fear that the child was born for bad luck. had the baby been black, or yellow, or poor-white, jane would unhesitatingly have named, as his ultimate fate, a not uncommon form of taking off, usually resultant upon the infraction of certain laws, or, in these swift modern days, upon too violent a departure from established social customs. it was manifestly impossible that a child of such high quality as the grandson of her old mistress should die by judicial strangulation; but nevertheless the warning was a serious thing, and not to be lightly disregarded. not wishing to be considered as a prophet of evil omen, jane kept her own counsel in regard to this significant discovery. but later, after the child was several days old, she filled a small vial with water in which the infant had been washed, and took it to a certain wise old black woman, who lived on the farther edge of the town and was well known to be versed in witchcraft and conjuration. the conjure woman added to the contents of the bottle a bit of calamus root, and one of the cervical vertebrae from the skeleton of a black cat, with several other mysterious ingredients, the nature of which she did not disclose. following instructions given her, aunt jane buried the bottle in carteret's back yard, one night during the full moon, as a good-luck charm to ward off evil from the little grandson of her dear mistress, so long since dead and gone to heaven. ii the christening party they named the carteret baby theodore felix. theodore was a family name, and had been borne by the eldest son for several generations, the major himself being a second son. having thus given the child two beautiful names, replete with religious and sentimental significance, they called him--"dodie." the baby was christened some six weeks after its birth, by which time mrs. carteret was able to be out. old mammy jane, who had been brought up in the church, but who, like some better informed people in all ages, found religion not inconsistent with a strong vein of superstition, felt her fears for the baby's future much relieved when the rector had made the sign of the cross and sprinkled little dodie with the water from the carved marble font, which had come from england in the reign of king charles the martyr, as the ill-fated son of james i. was known to st. andrew's. upon this special occasion mammy jane had been provided with a seat downstairs among the white people, to her own intense satisfaction, and to the secret envy of a small colored attendance in the gallery, to whom she was ostentatiously pointed out by her grandson jerry, porter at the morning chronicle office, who sat among them in the front row. on the following monday evening the major gave a christening party in honor of this important event. owing to mrs. carteret's still delicate health, only a small number of intimate friends and family connections were invited to attend. these were the rector of st. andrew's; old mrs. polly ochiltree, the godmother; old mr. delamere, a distant relative and also one of the sponsors; and his grandson, tom delamere. the major had also invited lee ellis, his young city editor, for whom he had a great liking apart from his business value, and who was a frequent visitor at the house. these, with the family itself, which consisted of the major, his wife, and his half-sister, clara pemberton, a young woman of about eighteen, made up the eight persons for whom covers were laid. ellis was the first to arrive, a tall, loose-limbed young man, with a slightly freckled face, hair verging on auburn, a firm chin, and honest gray eyes. he had come half an hour early, and was left alone for a few minutes in the parlor, a spacious, high-ceilinged room, with large windows, and fitted up in excellent taste, with stately reminiscences of a past generation. the walls were hung with figured paper. the ceiling was whitewashed, and decorated in the middle with a plaster centre-piece, from which hung a massive chandelier sparkling with prismatic rays from a hundred crystal pendants. there was a handsome mantel, set with terra-cotta tiles, on which fauns and satyrs, nymphs and dryads, disported themselves in idyllic abandon. the furniture was old, and in keeping with the room. at seven o'clock a carriage drove up, from which alighted an elderly gentleman, with white hair and mustache, and bowed somewhat with years. short of breath and painfully weak in the legs, he was assisted from the carriage by a colored man, apparently about forty years old, to whom short side-whiskers and spectacles imparted an air of sobriety. this attendant gave his arm respectfully to the old gentleman, who leaned upon it heavily, but with as little appearance of dependence as possible. the servant, assuming a similar unconsciousness of the weight resting upon his arm, assisted the old gentleman carefully up the steps. "i'm all right now, sandy," whispered the gentleman as soon as his feet were planted firmly on the piazza. "you may come back for me at nine o'clock." having taken his hand from his servant's arm, he advanced to meet a lady who stood in the door awaiting him, a tall, elderly woman, gaunt and angular of frame, with a mottled face, and high cheekbones partially covered by bands of hair entirely too black and abundant for a person of her age, if one might judge from the lines of her mouth, which are rarely deceptive in such matters. "perhaps you'd better not send your man away, mr. delamere," observed the lady, in a high shrill voice, which grated upon the old gentleman's ears. he was slightly hard of hearing, but, like most deaf people, resented being screamed at. "you might need him before nine o'clock. one never knows what may happen after one has had the second stroke. and moreover, our butler has fallen down the back steps--negroes are so careless!--and sprained his ankle so that he can't stand. i'd like to have sandy stay and wait on the table in peter's place, if you don't mind." "i thank you, mrs. ochiltree, for your solicitude," replied mr. delamere, with a shade of annoyance in his voice, "but my health is very good just at present, and i do not anticipate any catastrophe which will require my servant's presence before i am ready to go home. but i have no doubt, madam," he continued, with a courteous inclination, "that sandy will be pleased to serve you, if you desire it, to the best of his poor knowledge." "i shill be honored, ma'am," assented sandy, with a bow even deeper than his master's, "only i'm 'feared i ain't rightly dressed fer ter wait on table. i wuz only goin' ter pra'r-meetin', an' so i didn' put on my bes' clo's. ef mis' ochiltree ain' gwine ter need me fer de nex' fifteen minutes, i kin ride back home in de ca'ige an' dress myse'f suitable fer de occasion, suh." "if you think you'll wait on the table any better," said mrs. ochiltree, "you may go along and change your clothes; but hurry back, for it is seven now, and dinner will soon be served." sandy retired with a bow. while descending the steps to the carriage, which had waited for him, he came face to face with a young man just entering the house. "am i in time for dinner, sandy?" asked the newcomer. "yas, mistuh tom, you're in plenty er time. dinner won't be ready till _i_ git back, which won' be fer fifteen minutes er so yit." throwing away the cigarette which he held between his fingers, the young man crossed the piazza with a light step, and after a preliminary knock, for an answer to which he did not wait, entered the house with the air of one thoroughly at home. the lights in the parlor had been lit, and ellis, who sat talking to major carteret when the newcomer entered, covered him with a jealous glance. slender and of medium height, with a small head of almost perfect contour, a symmetrical face, dark almost to swarthiness, black eyes, which moved somewhat restlessly, curly hair of raven tint, a slight mustache, small hands and feet, and fashionable attire, tom delamere, the grandson of the old gentleman who had already arrived, was easily the handsomest young man in wellington. but no discriminating observer would have characterized his beauty as manly. it conveyed no impression of strength, but did possess a certain element, feline rather than feminine, which subtly negatived the idea of manliness. he gave his hand to the major, nodded curtly to ellis, saluted his grandfather respectfully, and inquired for the ladies. "olivia is dressing for dinner," replied the major; "mrs. ochiltree is in the kitchen, struggling with the servants. clara--ah, here she comes now!" ellis, whose senses were preternaturally acute where clara was concerned, was already looking toward the hall and was the first to see her. clad in an evening gown of simple white, to the close-fitting corsage of which she had fastened a bunch of pink roses, she was to ellis a dazzling apparition. to him her erect and well-moulded form was the embodiment of symmetry, her voice sweet music, her movements the perfection of grace; and it scarcely needed a lover's imagination to read in her fair countenance a pure heart and a high spirit,--the truthfulness that scorns a lie, the pride which is not haughtiness. there were suggestive depths of tenderness, too, in the curl of her lip, the droop of her long lashes, the glance of her blue eyes,--depths that ellis had long since divined, though he had never yet explored them. she gave ellis a friendly nod as she came in, but for the smile with which she greeted delamere, ellis would have given all that he possessed,--not a great deal, it is true, but what could a man do more? "you are the last one, tom," she said reproachfully. "mr. ellis has been here half an hour." delamere threw a glance at ellis which was not exactly friendly. why should this fellow always be on hand to emphasize his own shortcomings? "the rector is not here," answered tom triumphantly. "you see i am not the last." "the rector," replied clara, "was called out of town at six o'clock this evening, to visit a dying man, and so cannot be here. you are the last, tom, and mr. ellis was the first." ellis was ruefully aware that this comparison in his favor was the only visible advantage that he had gained from his early arrival. he had not seen miss pemberton a moment sooner by reason of it. there had been a certain satisfaction in being in the same house with her, but delamere had arrived in time to share or, more correctly, to monopolize, the sunshine of her presence. delamere gave a plausible excuse which won clara's pardon and another enchanting smile, which pierced ellis like a dagger. he knew very well that delamere's excuse was a lie. ellis himself had been ready as early as six o'clock, but judging this to be too early, had stopped in at the clarendon club for half an hour, to look over the magazines. while coming out he had glanced into the card-room, where he had seen his rival deep in a game of cards, from which delamere had evidently not been able to tear himself until the last moment. he had accounted for his lateness by a story quite inconsistent with these facts. the two young people walked over to a window on the opposite side of the large room, where they stood talking to one another in low tones. the major had left the room for a moment. old mr. delamere, who was watching his grandson and clara with an indulgent smile, proceeded to rub salt into ellis's wounds. "they make a handsome couple," he observed. "i remember well when her mother, in her youth an ideally beautiful woman, of an excellent family, married daniel pemberton, who was not of so good a family, but had made money. the major, who was only a very young man then, disapproved of the match; he considered that his mother, although a widow and nearly forty, was marrying beneath her. but he has been a good brother to clara, and a careful guardian of her estate. ah, young gentleman, you cannot appreciate, except in imagination, what it means, to one standing on the brink of eternity, to feel sure that he will live on in his children and his children's children!" ellis was appreciating at that moment what it meant, in cold blood, with no effort of the imagination, to see the girl whom he loved absorbed completely in another man. she had looked at him only once since tom delamere had entered the room, and then merely to use him as a spur with which to prick his favored rival. "yes, sir," he returned mechanically, "miss clara is a beautiful young lady." "and tom is a good boy--a fine boy," returned the old gentleman. "i am very well pleased with tom, and shall be entirely happy when i see them married." ellis could not echo this sentiment. the very thought of this marriage made him miserable. he had always understood that the engagement was merely tentative, a sort of family understanding, subject to confirmation after delamere should have attained his majority, which was still a year off, and when the major should think clara old enough to marry. ellis saw delamere with the eye of a jealous rival, and judged him mercilessly,--whether correctly or not the sequel will show. he did not at all believe that tom delamere would make a fit husband for clara pemberton; but his opinion would have had no weight,--he could hardly have expressed it without showing his own interest. moreover, there was no element of the sneak in lee ellis's make-up. the very fact that he might profit by the other's discomfiture left delamere secure, so far as he could be affected by anything that ellis might say. but ellis did not shrink from a fair fight, and though in this one the odds were heavily against him, yet so long as this engagement remained indefinite, so long, indeed, as the object of his love was still unwed, he would not cease to hope. such a sacrifice as this marriage clearly belonged in the catalogue of impossibilities. ellis had not lived long enough to learn that impossibilities are merely things of which we have not learned, or which we do not wish to happen. sandy returned at the end of a quarter of an hour, and dinner was announced. mr. delamere led the way to the dining-room with mrs. ochiltree. tom followed with clara. the major went to the head of the stairs and came down with mrs. carteret upon his arm, her beauty rendered more delicate by the pallor of her countenance and more complete by the happiness with which it glowed. ellis went in alone. in the rector's absence it was practically a family party which sat down, with the exception of ellis, who, as we have seen, would willingly have placed himself in the same category. the table was tastefully decorated with flowers, which grew about the house in lavish profusion. in warm climates nature adorns herself with true feminine vanity. "what a beautiful table!" exclaimed tom, before they were seated. "the decorations are mine," said clara proudly. "i cut the flowers and arranged them all myself." "which accounts for the admirable effect," rejoined tom with a bow, before ellis, to whom the same thought had occurred, was able to express himself. he had always counted himself the least envious of men, but for this occasion he coveted tom delamere's readiness. "the beauty of the flowers," observed old mr. delamere, with sententious gallantry, "is reflected upon all around them. it is a handsome company." mrs. ochiltree beamed upon the table with a dry smile. "i don't perceive any effect that it has upon you or me," she said; "and as for the young people, 'handsome is as handsome does.' if tom here, for instance, were as good as he looks"-- "you flatter me, aunt polly," tom broke in hastily, anticipating the crack of the whip; he was familiar with his aunt's conversational idiosyncrasies. "if you are as good as you look," continued the old lady, with a cunning but indulgent smile, "some one has been slandering you." "thanks, aunt polly! now you don't flatter me." "there is mr. ellis," mrs. ochiltree went on, "who is not half so good-looking, but is steady as a clock, i dare say." "now, aunt polly," interposed mrs. carteret, "let the gentlemen alone." "she doesn't mean half what she says," continued mrs. carteret apologetically, "and only talks that way to people whom she likes." tom threw mrs. carteret a grateful glance. he had been apprehensive, with the sensitiveness of youth, lest his old great-aunt should make a fool of him before clara's family. nor had he relished the comparison with ellis, who was out of place, anyway, in this family party. he had never liked the fellow, who was too much of a plodder and a prig to make a suitable associate for a whole-souled, generous-hearted young gentleman. he tolerated him as a visitor at carteret's and as a member of the clarendon club, but that was all. "mrs. ochiltree has a characteristic way of disguising her feelings," observed old mr. delamere, with a touch of sarcasm. ellis had merely flushed and felt uncomfortable at the reference to himself. the compliment to his character hardly offset the reflection upon his looks. he knew he was not exactly handsome, but it was not pleasant to have the fact emphasized in the presence of the girl he loved; he would like at least fair play, and judgment upon the subject left to the young lady. mrs. ochiltree was quietly enjoying herself. in early life she had been accustomed to impale fools on epigrams, like flies on pins, to see them wriggle. but with advancing years she had lost in some measure the faculty of nice discrimination,--it was pleasant to see her victims squirm, whether they were fools or friends. even one's friends, she argued, were not always wise, and were sometimes the better for being told the truth. at her niece's table she felt at liberty to speak her mind, which she invariably did, with a frankness that sometimes bordered on brutality. she had long ago outgrown the period where ambition or passion, or its partners, envy and hatred, were springs of action in her life, and simply retained a mild enjoyment in the exercise of an old habit, with no active malice whatever. the ruling passion merely grew stronger as the restraining faculties decreased in vigor. a diversion was created at this point by the appearance of old mammy jane, dressed in a calico frock, with clean white neckerchief and apron, carrying the wonderful baby in honor of whose naming this feast had been given. though only six weeks old, the little theodore had grown rapidly, and mammy jane declared was already quite large for his age, and displayed signs of an unusually precocious intelligence. he was passed around the table and duly admired. clara thought his hair was fine. ellis inquired about his teeth. tom put his finger in the baby's fist to test his grip. old mr. delamere was unable to decide as yet whether he favored most his father or his mother. the object of these attentions endured them patiently for several minutes, and then protested with a vocal vigor which led to his being taken promptly back upstairs. whatever fate might be in store for him, he manifested no sign of weak lungs. "sandy," said mrs. carteret when the baby had retired, "pass that tray standing upon the side table, so that we may all see the presents." mr. delamere had brought a silver spoon, and tom a napkin ring. ellis had sent a silver watch; it was a little premature, he admitted, but the boy would grow to it, and could use it to play with in the mean time. it had a glass back, so that he might see the wheels go round. mrs. ochiltree's present was an old and yellow ivory rattle, with a handle which the child could bite while teething, and a knob screwed on at the end to prevent the handle from slipping through the baby's hand. "i saw that in your cedar chest, aunt polly," said clara, "when i was a little girl, and you used to pull the chest out from under your bed to get me a dime." "you kept the rattle in the right-hand corner of the chest," said tom, "in the box with the red silk purse, from which you took the gold piece you gave me every christmas." a smile shone on mrs. ochiltree's severe features at this appreciation, like a ray of sunlight on a snowbank. "aunt polly's chest is like the widow's cruse," said mrs. carteret, "which was never empty." "or fortunatus's purse, which was always full," added old mr. delamere, who read the latin poets, and whose allusions were apt to be classical rather than scriptural. "it will last me while i live," said mrs. ochiltree, adding cautiously, "but there'll not be a great deal left. it won't take much to support an old woman for twenty years." mr. delamere's man sandy had been waiting upon the table with the decorum of a trained butler, and a gravity all his own. he had changed his suit of plain gray for a long blue coat with brass buttons, which dated back to the fashion of a former generation, with which he wore a pair of plaid trousers of strikingly modern cut and pattern. with his whiskers, his spectacles, and his solemn air of responsibility, he would have presented, to one unfamiliar with the negro type, an amusingly impressive appearance. but there was nothing incongruous about sandy to this company, except perhaps to tom delamere, who possessed a keen eye for contrasts and always regarded sandy, in that particular rig, as a very comical darkey. "is it quite prudent, mrs. ochiltree," suggested the major at a moment when sandy, having set down the tray, had left the room for a little while, "to mention, in the presence of the servants, that you keep money in the house?" "i beg your pardon, major," observed old mr. delamere, with a touch of stiffness. "the only servant in hearing of the conversation has been my own; and sandy is as honest as any man in wellington." "you mean, sir," replied carteret, with a smile, "as honest as any negro in wellington." "i make no exceptions, major," returned the old gentleman, with emphasis. "i would trust sandy with my life,--he saved it once at the risk of his own." "no doubt," mused the major, "the negro is capable of a certain doglike fidelity,--i make the comparison in a kindly sense,--a certain personal devotion which is admirable in itself, and fits him eminently for a servile career. i should imagine, however, that one could more safely trust his life with a negro than his portable property." "very clever, major! i read your paper, and know that your feeling is hostile toward the negro, but"-- the major made a gesture of dissent, but remained courteously silent until mr. delamere had finished. "for my part," the old gentleman went on, "i think they have done very well, considering what they started from, and their limited opportunities. there was adam miller, for instance, who left a comfortable estate. his son george carries on the business, and the younger boy, william, is a good doctor and stands well with his profession. his hospital is a good thing, and if my estate were clear, i should like to do something for it." "you are mistaken, sir, in imagining me hostile to the negro," explained carteret. "on the contrary, i am friendly to his best interests. i give him employment; i pay taxes for schools to educate him, and for court-houses and jails to keep him in order. i merely object to being governed by an inferior and servile race." mrs. carteret's face wore a tired expression. this question was her husband's hobby, and therefore her own nightmare. moreover, she had her personal grievance against the negro race, and the names mentioned by old mr. delamere had brought it vividly before her mind. she had no desire to mar the harmony of the occasion by the discussion of a distasteful subject. mr. delamere, glancing at his hostess, read something of this thought, and refused the challenge to further argument. "i do not believe, major," he said, "that olivia relishes the topic. i merely wish to say that sandy is an exception to any rule which you may formulate in derogation of the negro. sandy is a gentleman in ebony!" tom could scarcely preserve his gravity at this characterization of old sandy, with his ridiculous air of importance, his long blue coat, and his loud plaid trousers. that suit would make a great costume for a masquerade. he would borrow it some time,--there was nothing in the world like it. "well, mr. delamere," returned the major good-humoredly, "no doubt sandy is an exceptionally good negro,--he might well be, for he has had the benefit of your example all his life,--and we know that he is a faithful servant. but nevertheless, if i were mrs. ochiltree, i should put my money in the bank. not all negroes are as honest as sandy, and an elderly lady might not prove a match for a burly black burglar." "thank you, major," retorted mrs. ochiltree, with spirit, "i'm not yet too old to take care of myself. that cedar chest has been my bank for forty years, and i shall not change my habits at my age." at this moment sandy reëntered the room. carteret made a warning gesture, which mrs. ochiltree chose not to notice. "i've proved a match for two husbands, and am not afraid of any man that walks the earth, black or white, by day or night. i have a revolver, and know how to use it. whoever attempts to rob me will do so at his peril." after dinner clara played the piano and sang duets with tom delamere. at nine o'clock mr. delamere's carriage came for him, and he went away accompanied by sandy. under cover of the darkness the old gentleman leaned on his servant's arm with frank dependence, and sandy lifted him into the carriage with every mark of devotion. ellis had already excused himself to go to the office and look over the late proofs for the morning paper. tom remained a few minutes longer than his grandfather, and upon taking his leave went round to the clarendon club, where he spent an hour or two in the card-room with a couple of congenial friends. luck seemed to favor him, and he went home at midnight with a comfortable balance of winnings. he was fond of excitement, and found a great deal of it in cards. to lose was only less exciting than to win. of late he had developed into a very successful player,--so successful, indeed, that several members of the club generally found excuses to avoid participating in a game where he made one. iii the editor at work to go back a little, for several days after his child's birth major carteret's chief interest in life had been confined to the four walls of the chamber where his pale wife lay upon her bed of pain, and those of the adjoining room where an old black woman crooned lovingly over a little white infant. a new element had been added to the major's consciousness, broadening the scope and deepening the strength of his affections. he did not love olivia the less, for maternity had crowned her wifehood with an added glory; but side by side with this old and tried attachment was a new passion, stirring up dormant hopes and kindling new desires. his regret had been more than personal at the thought that with himself an old name should be lost to the state; and now all the old pride of race, class, and family welled up anew, and swelled and quickened the current of his life. upon the major's first appearance at the office, which took place the second day after the child's birth, he opened a box of cigars in honor of the event. the word had been passed around by ellis, and the whole office force, including reporters, compositors, and pressmen, came in to congratulate the major and smoke at his expense. even jerry, the colored porter,--mammy jane's grandson and therefore a protégé of the family,--presented himself among the rest, or rather, after the rest. the major shook hands with them all except jerry, though he acknowledged the porter's congratulations with a kind nod and put a good cigar into his outstretched palm, for which jerry thanked him without manifesting any consciousness of the omission. he was quite aware that under ordinary circumstances the major would not have shaken hands with white workingmen, to say nothing of negroes; and he had merely hoped that in the pleasurable distraction of the moment the major might also overlook the distinction of color. jerry's hope had been shattered, though not rudely; for the major had spoken pleasantly and the cigar was a good one. mr. ellis had once shaken hands with jerry,--but mr. ellis was a young man, whose quaker father had never owned any slaves, and he could not be expected to have as much pride as one of the best "quality," whose families had possessed land and negroes for time out of mind. on the whole, jerry preferred the careless nod of the editor-in-chief to the more familiar greeting of the subaltern. having finished this pleasant ceremony, which left him with a comfortable sense of his new dignity, the major turned to his desk. it had been much neglected during the week, and more than one matter claimed his attention; but as typical of the new trend of his thoughts, the first subject he took up was one bearing upon the future of his son. quite obviously the career of a carteret must not be left to chance,--it must be planned and worked out with a due sense of the value of good blood. there lay upon his desk a letter from a well-known promoter, offering the major an investment which promised large returns, though several years must elapse before the enterprise could be put upon a paying basis. the element of time, however, was not immediately important. the morning chronicle provided him an ample income. the money available for this investment was part of his wife's patrimony. it was invested in a local cotton mill, which was paying ten per cent., but this was a beggarly return compared with the immense profits promised by the offered investment,--profits which would enable his son, upon reaching manhood, to take a place in the world commensurate with the dignity of his ancestors, one of whom, only a few generations removed, had owned an estate of ninety thousand acres of land and six thousand slaves. this letter having been disposed of by an answer accepting the offer, the major took up his pen to write an editorial. public affairs in the state were not going to his satisfaction. at the last state election his own party, after an almost unbroken rule of twenty years, had been defeated by the so-called "fusion" ticket, a combination of republicans and populists. a clean sweep had been made of the offices in the state, which were now filled by new men. many of the smaller places had gone to colored men, their people having voted almost solidly for the fusion ticket. in spite of the fact that the population of wellington was two thirds colored, this state of things was gall and wormwood to the defeated party, of which the morning chronicle was the acknowledged organ. major carteret shared this feeling. only this very morning, while passing the city hall, on his way to the office, he had seen the steps of that noble building disfigured by a fringe of job-hunting negroes, for all the world--to use a local simile--like a string of buzzards sitting on a rail, awaiting their opportunity to batten upon the helpless corpse of a moribund city. taking for his theme the unfitness of the negro to participate in government,--an unfitness due to his limited education, his lack of experience, his criminal tendencies, and more especially to his hopeless mental and physical inferiority to the white race,--the major had demonstrated, it seemed to him clearly enough, that the ballot in the hands of the negro was a menace to the commonwealth. he had argued, with entire conviction, that the white and black races could never attain social and political harmony by commingling their blood; he had proved by several historical parallels that no two unassimilable races could ever live together except in the relation of superior and inferior; and he was just dipping his gold pen into the ink to indite his conclusions from the premises thus established, when jerry, the porter, announced two visitors. "gin'l belmont an' cap'n mcbane would like ter see you, suh." "show them in, jerry." the man who entered first upon this invitation was a dapper little gentleman with light-blue eyes and a vandyke beard. he wore a frock coat, patent leather shoes, and a panama hat. there were crow's-feet about his eyes, which twinkled with a hard and, at times, humorous shrewdness. he had sloping shoulders, small hands and feet, and walked with the leisurely step characteristic of those who have been reared under hot suns. carteret gave his hand cordially to the gentleman thus described. "how do you do, captain mcbane," he said, turning to the second visitor. the individual thus addressed was strikingly different in appearance from his companion. his broad shoulders, burly form, square jaw, and heavy chin betokened strength, energy, and unscrupulousness. with the exception of a small, bristling mustache, his face was clean shaven, with here and there a speck of dried blood due to a carelessly or unskillfully handled razor. a single deep-set gray eye was shadowed by a beetling brow, over which a crop of coarse black hair, slightly streaked with gray, fell almost low enough to mingle with his black, bushy eyebrows. his coat had not been brushed for several days, if one might judge from the accumulation of dandruff upon the collar, and his shirt-front, in the middle of which blazed a showy diamond, was plentifully stained with tobacco juice. he wore a large slouch hat, which, upon entering the office, he removed and held in his hand. having greeted this person with an unconscious but quite perceptible diminution of the warmth with which he had welcomed the other, the major looked around the room for seats for his visitors, and perceiving only one chair, piled with exchanges, and a broken stool propped against the wall, pushed a button, which rang a bell in the hall, summoning the colored porter to his presence. "jerry," said the editor when his servant appeared, "bring a couple of chairs for these gentlemen." while they stood waiting, the visitors congratulated the major on the birth of his child, which had been announced in the morning chronicle, and which the prominence of the family made in some degree a matter of public interest. "and now that you have a son, major," remarked the gentleman first described, as he lit one of the major's cigars, "you'll be all the more interested in doing something to make this town fit to live in, which is what we came up to talk about. things are in an awful condition! a negro justice of the peace has opened an office on market street, and only yesterday summoned a white man to appear before him. negro lawyers get most of the business in the criminal court. last evening a group of young white ladies, going quietly along the street arm-in-arm, were forced off the sidewalk by a crowd of negro girls. coming down the street just now, i saw a spectacle of social equality and negro domination that made my blood boil with indignation,--a white and a black convict, chained together, crossing the city in charge of a negro officer! we cannot stand that sort of thing, carteret,--it is the last straw! something must be done, and that quickly!" the major thrilled with responsive emotion. there was something prophetic in this opportune visit. the matter was not only in his own thoughts, but in the air; it was the spontaneous revulsion of white men against the rule of an inferior race. these were the very men, above all others in the town, to join him in a movement to change these degrading conditions. general belmont, the smaller of the two, was a man of good family, a lawyer by profession, and took an active part in state and local politics. aristocratic by birth and instinct, and a former owner of slaves, his conception of the obligations and rights of his caste was nevertheless somewhat lower than that of the narrower but more sincere carteret. in serious affairs carteret desired the approval of his conscience, even if he had to trick that docile organ into acquiescence. this was not difficult to do in politics, for he believed in the divine right of white men and gentlemen, as his ancestors had believed in and died for the divine right of kings. general belmont was not without a gentleman's distaste for meanness, but he permitted no fine scruples to stand in the way of success. he had once been minister, under a democratic administration, to a small central american state. political rivals had characterized him as a tricky demagogue, which may of course have been a libel. he had an amiable disposition, possessed the gift of eloquence, and was a prime social favorite. captain george mcbane had sprung from the poor-white class, to which, even more than to the slaves, the abolition of slavery had opened the door of opportunity. no longer overshadowed by a slaveholding caste, some of this class had rapidly pushed themselves forward. some had made honorable records. others, foremost in negro-baiting and election frauds, had done the dirty work of politics, as their fathers had done that of slavery, seeking their reward at first in minor offices,--for which men of gentler breeding did not care,--until their ambition began to reach out for higher honors. of this class mcbane--whose captaincy, by the way, was merely a polite fiction--had been one of the most successful. he had held, until recently, as the reward of questionable political services, a contract with the state for its convict labor, from which in a few years he had realized a fortune. but the methods which made his contract profitable had not commended themselves to humane people, and charges of cruelty and worse had been preferred against him. he was rich enough to escape serious consequences from the investigation which followed, but when the fusion ticket carried the state he lost his contract, and the system of convict labor was abolished. since then mcbane had devoted himself to politics: he was ambitious for greater wealth, for office, and for social recognition. a man of few words and self-engrossed, he seldom spoke of his aspirations except where speech might favor them, preferring to seek his ends by secret "deals" and combinations rather than to challenge criticism and provoke rivalry by more open methods. at sight, therefore, of these two men, with whose careers and characters he was entirely familiar, carteret felt sweep over his mind the conviction that now was the time and these the instruments with which to undertake the redemption of the state from the evil fate which had befallen it. jerry, the porter, who had gone downstairs to the counting-room to find two whole chairs, now entered with one in each hand. he set a chair for the general, who gave him an amiable nod, to which jerry responded with a bow and a scrape. captain mcbane made no acknowledgment, but fixed jerry so fiercely with his single eye that upon placing the chair jerry made his escape from the room as rapidly as possible. "i don' like dat cap'n mcbane," he muttered, upon reaching the hall. "dey says he got dat eye knock' out tryin' ter whip a cullud 'oman, when he wuz a boy, an' dat he ain' never had no use fer niggers sence,--'cep'n' fer what he could make outen 'em wid his convic' labor contrac's. his daddy wuz a' overseer befo' 'im, an' it come nachul fer him ter be a nigger-driver. i don' want dat one eye er his'n restin' on me no longer 'n i kin he'p, an' i don' know how i'm gwine ter like dis job ef he's gwine ter be comin' roun' here. he ain' nothin' but po' w'ite trash nohow; but lawd! lawd! look at de money he's got,--livin' at de hotel, wearin' di'mon's, an' colloguin' wid de bes' quality er dis town! 'pears ter me de bottom rail is gittin' mighty close ter de top. well, i s'pose it all comes f'm bein' w'ite. i wush ter gawd i wuz w'ite!" after this fervent aspiration, having nothing else to do for the time being, except to remain within call, and having caught a few words of the conversation as he went in with the chairs, jerry, who possessed a certain amount of curiosity, placed close to the wall the broken stool upon which he sat while waiting in the hall, and applied his ear to a hole in the plastering of the hallway. there was a similar defect in the inner wall, between the same two pieces of studding, and while this inner opening was not exactly opposite the outer, jerry was enabled, through the two, to catch in a more or less fragmentary way what was going on within. he could hear the major, now and then, use the word "negro," and mcbane's deep voice was quite audible when he referred, it seemed to jerry with alarming frequency, to "the damned niggers," while the general's suave tones now and then pronounced the word "niggro,"--a sort of compromise between ethnology and the vernacular. that the gentlemen were talking politics seemed quite likely, for gentlemen generally talked politics when they met at the chronicle office. jerry could hear the words "vote," "franchise," "eliminate," "constitution," and other expressions which marked the general tenor of the talk, though he could not follow it all,--partly because he could not hear everything distinctly, and partly because of certain limitations which nature had placed in the way of jerry's understanding anything very difficult or abstruse. he had gathered enough, however, to realize, in a vague way, that something serious was on foot, involving his own race, when a bell sounded over his head, at which he sprang up hastily and entered the room where the gentlemen were talking. "jerry," said the major, "wait on captain mcbane." "yas, suh," responded jerry, turning toward the captain, whose eye he carefully avoided meeting directly. "take that half a dollar, boy," ordered mcbane, "an' go 'cross the street to mr. sykes's, and tell him to send me three whiskies. bring back the change, and make has'e." the captain tossed the half dollar at jerry, who, looking to one side, of course missed it. he picked the money up, however, and backed out of the room. jerry did not like captain mcbane, to begin with, and it was clear that the captain was no gentleman, or he would not have thrown the money at him. considering the source, jerry might have overlooked this discourtesy had it not been coupled with the remark about the change, which seemed to him in very poor taste. returning in a few minutes with three glasses on a tray, he passed them round, handed captain mcbane his change, and retired to the hall. "gentlemen," exclaimed the captain, lifting his glass, "i propose a toast: 'no nigger domination.'" "amen!" said the others, and three glasses were solemnly drained. "major," observed the general, smacking his lips, "_i_ should like to use jerry for a moment, if you will permit me." jerry appeared promptly at the sound of the bell. he had remained conveniently near,--calls of this sort were apt to come in sequence. "jerry," said the general, handing jerry half a dollar, "go over to mr. brown's,--i get my liquor there,--and tell them to send me three glasses of my special mixture. and, jerry,--you may keep the change!" "thank y', gin'l, thank y', marster," replied jerry, with unctuous gratitude, bending almost double as he backed out of the room. "dat's a gent'eman, a rale ole-time gent'eman," he said to himself when he had closed the door. "but dere's somethin' gwine on in dere,--dere sho' is! 'no nigger damnation!' dat soun's all right,--i'm sho' dere ain' no nigger i knows w'at wants damnation, do' dere's lots of 'em w'at deserves it; but ef dat one-eyed cap'n mcbane got anything ter do wid it, w'atever it is, it don' mean no good fer de niggers,--damnation'd be better fer 'em dan dat cap'n mcbane! he looks at a nigger lack he could jes' eat 'im alive." "this mixture, gentlemen," observed the general when jerry had returned with the glasses, "was originally compounded by no less a person than the great john c. calhoun himself, who confided the recipe to my father over the convivial board. in this nectar of the gods, gentlemen, i drink with you to 'white supremacy!'" "white supremacy everywhere!" added mcbane with fervor. "now and forever!" concluded carteret solemnly. when the visitors, half an hour later, had taken their departure, carteret, inspired by the theme, and in less degree by the famous mixture of the immortal calhoun, turned to his desk and finished, at a white heat, his famous editorial in which he sounded the tocsin of a new crusade. at noon, when the editor, having laid down his pen, was leaving the office, he passed jerry in the hall without a word or a nod. the major wore a rapt look, which jerry observed with a vague uneasiness. "he looks jes' lack he wuz walkin' in his sleep," muttered jerry uneasily. "dere's somethin' up, sho 's you bawn! 'no nigger damnation!' anybody'd 'low dey wuz all gwine ter heaven; but i knows better! w'en a passel er w'ite folks gits ter talkin' 'bout de niggers lack dem in yander, it's mo' lackly dey're gwine ter ketch somethin' e'se dan heaven! i got ter keep my eyes open an' keep up wid w'at's happenin'. ef dere's gwine ter be anudder flood 'roun' here, i wants ter git in de ark wid de w'ite folks,--i may haf ter be anudder ham, an' sta't de cullud race all over ag'in." iv theodore felix the young heir of the carterets had thriven apace, and at six months old was, according to mammy jane, whose experience qualified her to speak with authority, the largest, finest, smartest, and altogether most remarkable baby that had ever lived in wellington. mammy jane had recently suffered from an attack of inflammatory rheumatism, as the result of which she had returned to her own home. she nevertheless came now and then to see mrs. carteret. a younger nurse had been procured to take her place, but it was understood that jane would come whenever she might be needed. "you really mean that about dodie, do you, mammy jane?" asked the delighted mother, who never tired of hearing her own opinion confirmed concerning this wonderful child, which had come to her like an angel from heaven. "does i mean it!" exclaimed mammy jane, with a tone and an expression which spoke volumes of reproach. "now, mis' 'livy, what is i ever uttered er said er spoke er done dat would make you s'pose i could tell you a lie 'bout yo' own chile?" "no, mammy jane, i'm sure you wouldn't." "'deed, ma'am, i'm tellin' you de lawd's truf. i don' haf ter tell no lies ner strain no p'ints 'bout my ole mist'ess's gran'chile. dis yer boy is de ve'y spit an' image er yo' brother, young mars alick, w'at died w'en he wuz 'bout eight mont's ole, w'iles i wuz laid off havin' a baby er my own, an' couldn' be roun' ter look after 'im. an' dis chile is a rale quality chile, he is,--i never seed a baby wid sech fine hair fer his age, ner sech blue eyes, ner sech a grip, ner sech a heft. w'y, dat chile mus' weigh 'bout twenty-fo' poun's, an' he not but six mont's ole. does dat gal w'at does de nussin' w'iles i'm gone ten' ter dis chile right, mis' 'livy?" "she does fairly well, mammy jane, but i could hardly expect her to love the baby as you do. there's no one like you, mammy jane." "'deed dere ain't, honey; you is talkin' de gospel truf now! none er dese yer young folks ain' got de trainin' my ole mist'ess give me. dese yer new-fangle' schools don' l'arn 'em nothin' ter compare wid it. i'm jes' gwine ter give dat gal a piece er my min', befo' i go, so she'll ten' ter dis chile right." the nurse came in shortly afterwards, a neat-looking brown girl, dressed in a clean calico gown, with a nurse's cap and apron. "look a-here, gal," said mammy jane sternly, "i wants you ter understan' dat you got ter take good keer er dis chile; fer i nussed his mammy dere, an' his gran'mammy befo' 'im, an' you is got a priv'lege dat mos' lackly you don' 'preciate. i wants you to 'member, in yo' incomin's an' outgoin's, dat i got my eye on you, an' am gwine ter see dat you does yo' wo'k right." "do you need me for anything, ma'am?" asked the young nurse, who had stood before mrs. carteret, giving mammy jane a mere passing glance, and listening impassively to her harangue. the nurse belonged to the younger generation of colored people. she had graduated from the mission school, and had received some instruction in dr. miller's class for nurses. standing, like most young people of her race, on the border line between two irreconcilable states of life, she had neither the picturesqueness of the slave, nor the unconscious dignity of those of whom freedom has been the immemorial birthright; she was in what might be called the chip-on-the-shoulder stage, through which races as well as individuals must pass in climbing the ladder of life,--not an interesting, at least not an agreeable stage, but an inevitable one, and for that reason entitled to a paragraph in a story of southern life, which, with its as yet imperfect blending of old with new, of race with race, of slavery with freedom, is like no other life under the sun. had this old woman, who had no authority over her, been a little more polite, or a little less offensive, the nurse might have returned her a pleasant answer. these old-time negroes, she said to herself, made her sick with their slavering over the white folks, who, she supposed, favored them and made much of them because they had once belonged to them,--much the same reason why they fondled their cats and dogs. for her own part, they gave her nothing but her wages, and small wages at that, and she owed them nothing more than equivalent service. it was purely a matter of business; she sold her time for their money. there was no question of love between them. receiving a negative answer from mrs. carteret, she left the room without a word, ignoring mammy jane completely, and leaving that venerable relic of ante-bellum times gasping in helpless astonishment. "well, i nevuh!" she ejaculated, as soon as she could get her breath, "ef dat ain' de beatinis' pe'fo'mance i ever seed er heared of! dese yer young niggers ain' got de manners dey wuz bawned wid! i don' know w'at dey're comin' to, w'en dey ain' got no mo' rispec' fer ole age--i don' know--i don' know!" "now what are you croaking about, jane?" asked major carteret, who came into the room and took the child into his arms. mammy jane hobbled to her feet and bobbed a curtsy. she was never lacking in respect to white people of proper quality; but major carteret, the quintessence of aristocracy, called out all her reserves of deference. the major was always kind and considerate to these old family retainers, brought up in the feudal atmosphere now so rapidly passing away. mammy jane loved mrs. carteret; toward the major she entertained a feeling bordering upon awe. "well, jane," returned the major sadly, when the old nurse had related her grievance, "the old times have vanished, the old ties have been ruptured. the old relations of dependence and loyal obedience on the part of the colored people, the responsibility of protection and kindness upon that of the whites, have passed away forever. the young negroes are too self-assertive. education is spoiling them, jane; they have been badly taught. they are not content with their station in life. some time they will overstep the mark. the white people are patient, but there is a limit to their endurance." "dat's w'at i tells dese young niggers," groaned mammy jane, with a portentous shake of her turbaned head, "w'en i hears 'em gwine on wid deir foolishniss; but dey don' min' me. dey 'lows dey knows mo' d'n i does, 'ca'se dey be'n l'arnt ter look in a book. but, pshuh! my ole mist'ess showed me mo' d'n dem niggers 'll l'arn in a thousan' years! i 's fetch' my gran'son' jerry up ter be 'umble, an' keep in 'is place. an' i tells dese other niggers dat ef dey'd do de same, an' not crowd de w'ite folks, dey'd git ernuff ter eat, an' live out deir days in peace an' comfo't. but dey don' min' me--dey don' min' me!" "if all the colored people were like you and jerry, jane," rejoined the major kindly, "there would never be any trouble. you have friends upon whom, in time of need, you can rely implicitly for protection and succor. you served your mistress faithfully before the war; you remained by her when the other negroes were running hither and thither like sheep without a shepherd; and you have transferred your allegiance to my wife and her child. we think a great deal of you, jane." "yes, indeed, mammy jane," assented mrs. carteret, with sincere affection, glancing with moist eyes from the child in her husband's arms to the old nurse, whose dark face was glowing with happiness at these expressions of appreciation, "you shall never want so long as we have anything. we would share our last crust with you." "thank y', mis' 'livy," said jane with reciprocal emotion, "i knows who my frien's is, an' i ain' gwine ter let nothin' worry me. but fer de lawd's sake, mars philip, gimme dat chile, an' lemme pat 'im on de back, er he'll choke hisse'f ter death!" the old nurse had been the first to observe that little dodie, for some reason, was gasping for breath. catching the child from the major's arms, she patted it on the back, and shook it gently. after a moment of this treatment, the child ceased to gasp, but still breathed heavily, with a strange, whistling noise. "oh, my child!" exclaimed the mother, in great alarm, taking the baby in her own arms, "what can be the matter with him, mammy jane?" "fer de lawd's sake, ma'am, i don' know, 'less he's swallered somethin'; an' he ain' had nothin' in his han's but de rattle mis' polly give 'im." mrs. carteret caught up the ivory rattle, which hung suspended by a ribbon from the baby's neck. "he has swallowed the little piece off the end of the handle," she cried, turning pale with fear, "and it has lodged in his throat. telephone dr. price to come immediately, philip, before my baby chokes to death! oh, my baby, my precious baby!" an anxious half hour passed, during which the child lay quiet, except for its labored breathing. the suspense was relieved by the arrival of dr. price, who examined the child carefully. "it's a curious accident," he announced at the close of his inspection. "so far as i can discover, the piece of ivory has been drawn into the trachea, or windpipe, and has lodged in the mouth of the right bronchus. i'll try to get it out without an operation, but i can't guarantee the result." at the end of another half hour dr. price announced his inability to remove the obstruction without resorting to more serious measures. "i do not see," he declared, "how an operation can be avoided." "will it be dangerous?" inquired the major anxiously, while mrs. carteret shivered at the thought. "it will be necessary to cut into his throat from the outside. all such operations are more or less dangerous, especially on small children. if this were some other child, i might undertake the operation unassisted; but i know how you value this one, major, and i should prefer to share the responsibility with a specialist." "is there one in town?" asked the major. "no, but we can get one from out of town." "send for the best one in the country," said the major, "who can be got here in time. spare no expense, dr. price. we value this child above any earthly thing." "the best is the safest," replied dr. price. "i will send for dr. burns, of philadelphia, the best surgeon in that line in america. if he can start at once, he can reach here in sixteen or eighteen hours, and the case can wait even longer, if inflammation does not set in." the message was dispatched forthwith. by rare good fortune the eminent specialist was able to start within an hour or two after the receipt of dr. price's telegram. meanwhile the baby remained restless and uneasy, the doctor spending most of his time by its side. mrs. carteret, who had never been quite strong since the child's birth, was a prey to the most agonizing apprehensions. mammy jane, while not presuming to question the opinion of dr. price, and not wishing to add to her mistress's distress, was secretly oppressed by forebodings which she was unable to shake off. the child was born for bad luck. the mole under its ear, just at the point where the hangman's knot would strike, had foreshadowed dire misfortune. she had already observed several little things which had rendered her vaguely anxious. for instance, upon one occasion, on entering the room where the baby had been left alone, asleep in his crib, she had met a strange cat hurrying from the nursery, and, upon examining closely the pillow upon which the child lay, had found a depression which had undoubtedly been due to the weight of the cat's body. the child was restless and uneasy, and jane had ever since believed that the cat had been sucking little dodie's breath, with what might have been fatal results had she not appeared just in the nick of time. this untimely accident of the rattle, a fatality for which no one could be held responsible, had confirmed the unlucky omen. jane's duties in the nursery did not permit her to visit her friend the conjure woman; but she did find time to go out in the back yard at dusk, and to dig up the charm which she had planted there. it had protected the child so far; but perhaps its potency had become exhausted. she picked up the bottle, shook it vigorously, and then laid it back, with the other side up. refilling the hole, she made a cross over the top with the thumb of her left hand, and walked three times around it. what this strange symbolism meant, or whence it derived its origin, aunt jane did not know. the cross was there, and the trinity, though jane was scarcely conscious of these, at this moment, as religious emblems. but she hoped, on general principles, that this performance would strengthen the charm and restore little dodie's luck. it certainly had its moral effect upon jane's own mind, for she was able to sleep better, and contrived to impress mrs. carteret with her own hopefulness. v a journey southward as the south-bound train was leaving the station at philadelphia, a gentleman took his seat in the single sleeping-car attached to the train, and proceeded to make himself comfortable. he hung up his hat and opened his newspaper, in which he remained absorbed for a quarter of an hour. when the train had left the city behind, he threw the paper aside, and looked around at the other occupants of the car. one of these, who had been on the car since it had left new york, rose from his seat upon perceiving the other's glance, and came down the aisle. "how do you do, dr. burns?" he said, stopping beside the seat of the philadelphia passenger. the gentleman looked up at the speaker with an air of surprise, which, after the first keen, incisive glance, gave place to an expression of cordial recognition. "why, it's miller!" he exclaimed, rising and giving the other his hand, "william miller--dr. miller, of course. sit down, miller, and tell me all about yourself,--what you're doing, where you've been, and where you're going. i'm delighted to meet you, and to see you looking so well--and so prosperous." "i deserve no credit for either, sir," returned the other, as he took the proffered seat, "for i inherited both health and prosperity. it is a fortunate chance that permits me to meet you." the two acquaintances, thus opportunely thrown together so that they might while away in conversation the tedium of their journey, represented very different and yet very similar types of manhood. a celebrated traveler, after many years spent in barbarous or savage lands, has said that among all varieties of mankind the similarities are vastly more important and fundamental than the differences. looking at these two men with the american eye, the differences would perhaps be the more striking, or at least the more immediately apparent, for the first was white and the second black, or, more correctly speaking, brown; it was even a light brown, but both his swarthy complexion and his curly hair revealed what has been described in the laws of some of our states as a "visible admixture" of african blood. having disposed of this difference, and having observed that the white man was perhaps fifty years of age and the other not more than thirty, it may be said that they were both tall and sturdy, both well dressed, the white man with perhaps a little more distinction; both seemed from their faces and their manners to be men of culture and accustomed to the society of cultivated people. they were both handsome men, the elder representing a fine type of anglo-saxon, as the term is used in speaking of our composite white population; while the mulatto's erect form, broad shoulders, clear eyes, fine teeth, and pleasingly moulded features showed nowhere any sign of that degeneration which the pessimist so sadly maintains is the inevitable heritage of mixed races. as to their personal relations, it has already appeared that they were members of the same profession. in past years they had been teacher and pupil. dr. alvin burns was professor in the famous medical college where miller had attended lectures. the professor had taken an interest in his only colored pupil, to whom he had been attracted by his earnestness of purpose, his evident talent, and his excellent manners and fine physique. it was in part due to dr. burns's friendship that miller had won a scholarship which had enabled him, without drawing too heavily upon his father's resources, to spend in europe, studying in the hospitals of paris and vienna, the two most delightful years of his life. the same influence had strengthened his natural inclination toward operative surgery, in which dr. burns was a distinguished specialist of national reputation. miller's father, adam miller, had been a thrifty colored man, the son of a slave, who, in the olden time, had bought himself with money which he had earned and saved, over and above what he had paid his master for his time. adam miller had inherited his father's thrift, as well as his trade, which was that of a stevedore, or contractor for the loading and unloading of vessels at the port of wellington. in the flush turpentine days following a few years after the civil war, he had made money. his savings, shrewdly invested, had by constant accessions become a competence. he had brought up his eldest son to the trade; the other he had given a professional education, in the proud hope that his children or his grandchildren might be gentlemen in the town where their ancestors had once been slaves. upon his father's death, shortly after dr. miller's return from europe, and a year or two before the date at which this story opens, he had promptly spent part of his inheritance in founding a hospital, to which was to be added a training school for nurses, and in time perhaps a medical college and a school of pharmacy. he had been strongly tempted to leave the south, and seek a home for his family and a career for himself in the freer north, where race antagonism was less keen, or at least less oppressive, or in europe, where he had never found his color work to his disadvantage. but his people had needed him, and he had wished to help them, and had sought by means of this institution to contribute to their uplifting. as he now informed dr. burns, he was returning from new york, where he had been in order to purchase equipment for his new hospital, which would soon be ready for the reception of patients. "how much i can accomplish i do not know," said miller, "but i'll do what i can. there are eight or nine million of us, and it will take a great deal of learning of all kinds to leaven that lump." "it is a great problem, miller, the future of your race," returned the other, "a tremendously interesting problem. it is a serial story which we are all reading, and which grows in vital interest with each successive installment. it is not only your problem, but ours. your race must come up or drag ours down." "we shall come up," declared miller; "slowly and painfully, perhaps, but we shall win our way. if our race had made as much progress everywhere as they have made in wellington, the problem would be well on the way toward solution." "wellington?" exclaimed dr. burns. "that's where i'm going. a dr. price, of wellington, has sent for me to perform an operation on a child's throat. do you know dr. price?" "quite well," replied miller, "he is a friend of mine." "so much the better. i shall want you to assist me. i read in the medical gazette, the other day, an account of a very interesting operation of yours. i felt proud to number you among my pupils. it was a remarkable case--a rare case. i must certainly have you with me in this one." "i shall be delighted, sir," returned miller, "if it is agreeable to all concerned." several hours were passed in pleasant conversation while the train sped rapidly southward. they were already far down in virginia, and had stopped at a station beyond richmond, when the conductor entered the car. "all passengers," he announced, "will please transfer to the day coaches ahead. the sleeper has a hot box, and must be switched off here." dr. burns and miller obeyed the order, the former leading the way into the coach immediately in front of the sleeping-car. "let's sit here, miller," he said, having selected a seat near the rear of the car and deposited his suitcase in a rack. "it's on the shady side." miller stood a moment hesitatingly, but finally took the seat indicated, and a few minutes later the journey was again resumed. when the train conductor made his round after leaving the station, he paused at the seat occupied by the two doctors, glanced interrogatively at miller, and then spoke to dr. burns, who sat in the end of the seat nearest the aisle. "this man is with you?" he asked, indicating miller with a slight side movement of his head, and a keen glance in his direction. "certainly," replied dr. burns curtly, and with some surprise. "don't you see that he is?" the conductor passed on. miller paid no apparent attention to this little interlude, though no syllable had escaped him. he resumed the conversation where it had been broken off, but nevertheless followed with his eyes the conductor, who stopped at a seat near the forward end of the car, and engaged in conversation with a man whom miller had not hitherto noticed. as this passenger turned his head and looked back toward miller, the latter saw a broad-shouldered, burly white man, and recognized in his square-cut jaw, his coarse, firm mouth, and the single gray eye with which he swept miller for an instant with a scornful glance, a well-known character of wellington, with whom the reader has already made acquaintance in these pages. captain mcbane wore a frock coat and a slouch hat; several buttons of his vest were unbuttoned, and his solitaire diamond blazed in his soiled shirt-front like the headlight of a locomotive. the conductor in his turn looked back at miller, and retraced his steps. miller braced himself for what he feared was coming, though he had hoped, on account of his friend's presence, that it might be avoided. "excuse me, sir," said the conductor, addressing dr. burns, "but did i understand you to say that this man was your servant?" "no, indeed!" replied dr. burns indignantly. "the gentleman is not my servant, nor anybody's servant, but is my friend. but, by the way, since we are on the subject, may i ask what affair it is of yours?" "it's very much my affair," returned the conductor, somewhat nettled at this questioning of his authority. "i'm sorry to part _friends_, but the law of virginia does not permit colored passengers to ride in the white cars. you'll have to go forward to the next coach," he added, addressing miller this time. "i have paid my fare on the sleeping-car, where the separate-car law does not apply," remonstrated miller. "i can't help that. you can doubtless get your money back from the sleeping-car company. but this is a day coach, and is distinctly marked 'white,' as you must have seen before you sat down here. the sign is put there for that purpose." he indicated a large card neatly framed and hung at the end of the car, containing the legend, "white," in letters about a foot long, painted in white upon a dark background, typical, one might suppose, of the distinction thereby indicated. "you shall not stir a step, miller," exclaimed dr. burns wrathfully. "this is an outrage upon a citizen of a free country. you shall stay right here." "i'm sorry to discommode you," returned the conductor, "but there's no use kicking. it's the law of virginia, and i am bound by it as well as you. i have already come near losing my place because of not enforcing it, and i can take no more such chances, since i have a family to support." "and my friend has his rights to maintain," returned dr. burns with determination. "there is a vital principle at stake in the matter." "really, sir," argued the conductor, who was a man of peace and not fond of controversy, "there's no use talking--he absolutely cannot ride in this car." "how can you prevent it?" asked dr. burns, lapsing into the argumentative stage. "the law gives me the right to remove him by force. i can call on the train crew to assist me, or on the other passengers. if i should choose to put him off the train entirely, in the middle of a swamp, he would have no redress--the law so provides. if i did not wish to use force, i could simply switch this car off at the next siding, transfer the white passengers to another, and leave you and your friend in possession until you were arrested and fined or imprisoned." "what he says is absolutely true, doctor," interposed miller at this point. "it is the law, and we are powerless to resist it. if we made any trouble, it would merely delay your journey and imperil a life at the other end. i'll go into the other car." "you shall not go alone," said dr. burns stoutly, rising in his turn. "a place that is too good for you is not good enough for me. i will sit wherever you do." "i'm sorry again," said the conductor, who had quite recovered his equanimity, and calmly conscious of his power, could scarcely restrain an amused smile; "i dislike to interfere, but white passengers are not permitted to ride in the colored car." "this is an outrage," declared dr. burns, "a d----d outrage! you are curtailing the rights, not only of colored people, but of white men as well. i shall sit where i please!" "i warn you, sir," rejoined the conductor, hardening again, "that the law will be enforced. the beauty of the system lies in its strict impartiality--it applies to both races alike." "and is equally infamous in both cases," declared dr. burns. "i shall immediately take steps"-- "never mind, doctor," interrupted miller, soothingly, "it's only for a little while. i'll reach my destination just as surely in the other car, and we can't help it, anyway. i'll see you again at wellington." dr. burns, finding resistance futile, at length acquiesced and made way for miller to pass him. the colored doctor took up his valise and crossed the platform to the car ahead. it was an old car, with faded upholstery, from which the stuffing projected here and there through torn places. apparently the floor had not been swept for several days. the dust lay thick upon the window sills, and the water-cooler, from which he essayed to get a drink, was filled with stale water which had made no recent acquaintance with ice. there was no other passenger in the car, and miller occupied himself in making a rough calculation of what it would cost the southern railroads to haul a whole car for every colored passenger. it was expensive, to say the least; it would be cheaper, and quite as considerate of their feelings, to make the negroes walk. the car was conspicuously labeled at either end with large cards, similar to those in the other car, except that they bore the word "colored" in black letters upon a white background. the author of this piece of legislation had contrived, with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause, that not merely should the passengers be separated by the color line, but that the reason for this division should be kept constantly in mind. lest a white man should forget that he was white,--not a very likely contingency,--these cards would keep him constantly admonished of the fact; should a colored person endeavor, for a moment, to lose sight of his disability, these staring signs would remind him continually that between him and the rest of mankind not of his own color, there was by law a great gulf fixed. having composed himself, miller had opened a newspaper, and was deep in an editorial which set forth in glowing language the inestimable advantages which would follow to certain recently acquired islands by the introduction of american liberty, when the rear door of the car opened to give entrance to captain george mcbane, who took a seat near the door and lit a cigar. miller knew him quite well by sight and by reputation, and detested him as heartily. he represented the aggressive, offensive element among the white people of the new south, who made it hard for a negro to maintain his self-respect or to enjoy even the rights conceded to colored men by southern laws. mcbane had undoubtedly identified him to the conductor in the other car. miller had no desire to thrust himself upon the society of white people, which, indeed, to one who had traveled so much and so far, was no novelty; but he very naturally resented being at this late day--the law had been in operation only a few months--branded and tagged and set apart from the rest of mankind upon the public highways, like an unclean thing. nevertheless, he preferred even this to the exclusive society of captain george mcbane. "porter," he demanded of the colored train attaché who passed through the car a moment later, "is this a smoking car for white men?" "no, suh," replied the porter, "but they comes in here sometimes, when they ain' no cullud ladies on the kyar." "well, i have paid first-class fare, and i object to that man's smoking in here. you tell him to go out." "i'll tell the conductor, suh," returned the porter in a low tone. "i 'd jus' as soon talk ter the devil as ter that man." the white man had spread himself over two seats, and was smoking vigorously, from time to time spitting carelessly in the aisle, when the conductor entered the compartment. "captain," said miller, "this car is plainly marked 'colored.' i have paid first-class fare, and i object to riding in a smoking car." "all right," returned the conductor, frowning irritably. "i'll speak to him." he walked over to the white passenger, with whom he was evidently acquainted, since he addressed him by name. "captain mcbane," he said, "it's against the law for you to ride in the nigger car." "who are you talkin' to?" returned the other. "i'll ride where i damn please." "yes, sir, but the colored passenger objects. i'm afraid i'll have to ask you to go into the smoking-car." "the hell you say!" rejoined mcbane. "i'll leave this car when i get good and ready, and that won't be till i've finished this cigar. see?" he was as good as his word. the conductor escaped from the car before miller had time for further expostulation. finally mcbane, having thrown the stump of his cigar into the aisle and added to the floor a finishing touch in the way of expectoration, rose and went back into the white car. left alone in his questionable glory, miller buried himself again in his newspaper, from which he did not look up until the engine stopped at a tank station to take water. as the train came to a standstill, a huge negro, covered thickly with dust, crawled off one of the rear trucks unobserved, and ran round the rear end of the car to a watering-trough by a neighboring well. moved either by extreme thirst or by the fear that his time might be too short to permit him to draw a bucket of water, he threw himself down by the trough, drank long and deep, and plunging his head into the water, shook himself like a wet dog, and crept furtively back to his dangerous perch. miller, who had seen this man from the car window, had noticed a very singular thing. as the dusty tramp passed the rear coach, he cast toward it a glance of intense ferocity. up to that moment the man's face, which miller had recognized under its grimy coating, had been that of an ordinarily good-natured, somewhat reckless, pleasure-loving negro, at present rather the worse for wear. the change that now came over it suggested a concentrated hatred almost uncanny in its murderousness. with awakened curiosity miller followed the direction of the negro's glance, and saw that it rested upon a window where captain mcbane sat looking out. when miller looked back, the negro had disappeared. at the next station a chinaman, of the ordinary laundry type, boarded the train, and took his seat in the white car without objection. at another point a colored nurse found a place with her mistress. "white people," said miller to himself, who had seen these passengers from the window, "do not object to the negro as a servant. as the traditional negro,--the servant,--he is welcomed; as an equal, he is repudiated." miller was something of a philosopher. he had long ago had the conclusion forced upon him that an educated man of his race, in order to live comfortably in the united states, must be either a philosopher or a fool; and since he wished to be happy, and was not exactly a fool, he had cultivated philosophy. by and by he saw a white man, with a dog, enter the rear coach. miller wondered whether the dog would be allowed to ride with his master, and if not, what disposition would be made of him. he was a handsome dog, and miller, who was fond of animals, would not have objected to the company of a dog, as a dog. he was nevertheless conscious of a queer sensation when he saw the porter take the dog by the collar and start in his own direction, and felt consciously relieved when the canine passenger was taken on past him into the baggage-car ahead. miller's hand was hanging over the arm of his seat, and the dog, an intelligent shepherd, licked it as he passed. miller was not entirely sure that he would not have liked the porter to leave the dog there; he was a friendly dog, and seemed inclined to be sociable. toward evening the train drew up at a station where quite a party of farm laborers, fresh from their daily toil, swarmed out from the conspicuously labeled colored waiting-room, and into the car with miller. they were a jolly, good-natured crowd, and, free from the embarrassing presence of white people, proceeded to enjoy themselves after their own fashion. here an amorous fellow sat with his arm around a buxom girl's waist. a musically inclined individual--his talents did not go far beyond inclination--produced a mouth-organ and struck up a tune, to which a limber-legged boy danced in the aisle. they were noisy, loquacious, happy, dirty, and malodorous. for a while miller was amused and pleased. they were his people, and he felt a certain expansive warmth toward them in spite of their obvious shortcomings. by and by, however, the air became too close, and he went out upon the platform. for the sake of the democratic ideal, which meant so much to his race, he might have endured the affliction. he could easily imagine that people of refinement, with the power in their hands, might be tempted to strain the democratic ideal in order to avoid such contact; but personally, and apart from the mere matter of racial sympathy, these people were just as offensive to him as to the whites in the other end of the train. surely, if a classification of passengers on trains was at all desirable, it might be made upon some more logical and considerate basis than a mere arbitrary, tactless, and, by the very nature of things, brutal drawing of a color line. it was a veritable bed of procrustes, this standard which the whites had set for the negroes. those who grew above it must have their heads cut off, figuratively speaking,--must be forced back to the level assigned to their race; those who fell beneath the standard set had their necks stretched, literally enough, as the ghastly record in the daily papers gave conclusive evidence. miller breathed more freely when the lively crowd got off at the next station, after a short ride. moreover, he had a light heart, a conscience void of offense, and was only thirty years old. his philosophy had become somewhat jaded on this journey, but he pulled it together for a final effort. was it not, after all, a wise provision of nature that had given to a race, destined to a long servitude and a slow emergence therefrom, a cheerfulness of spirit which enabled them to catch pleasure on the wing, and endure with equanimity the ills that seemed inevitable? the ability to live and thrive under adverse circumstances is the surest guaranty of the future. the race which at the last shall inherit the earth--the residuary legatee of civilization--will be the race which remains longest upon it. the negro was here before the anglo-saxon was evolved, and his thick lips and heavy-lidded eyes looked out from the inscrutable face of the sphinx across the sands of egypt while yet the ancestors of those who now oppress him were living in caves, practicing human sacrifice, and painting themselves with woad--and the negro is here yet. "'blessed are the meek,'" quoted miller at the end of these consoling reflections, "'for they shall inherit the earth.' if this be true, the negro may yet come into his estate, for meekness seems to be set apart as his portion." the journey came to an end just as the sun had sunk into the west. simultaneously with miller's exit from the train, a great black figure crawled off the trucks of the rear car, on the side opposite the station platform. stretching and shaking himself with a free gesture, the black man, seeing himself unobserved, moved somewhat stiffly round the end of the car to the station platform. "'fo de lawd!" he muttered, "ef i hadn' had a cha'm' life, i'd 'a' never got here on dat ticket, an' dat's a fac'--it sho' am! i kind er 'lowed i wuz gone a dozen times, ez it wuz. but i got my job ter do in dis worl', an' i knows i ain' gwine ter die 'tel i've 'complished it. i jes' want one mo' look at dat man, an' den i'll haf ter git somethin' ter eat; fer two raw turnips in twelve hours is slim pickin's fer a man er my size!" vi janet as the train drew up at the station platform, dr. price came forward from the white waiting-room, and stood expectantly by the door of the white coach. miller, having left his car, came down the platform in time to intercept burns as he left the train, and to introduce him to dr. price. "my carriage is in waiting," said dr. price. "i should have liked to have you at my own house, but my wife is out of town. we have a good hotel, however, and you will doubtless find it more convenient." "you are very kind, dr. price. miller, won't you come up and dine with me?" "thank you, no," said miller, "i am expected at home. my wife and child are waiting for me in the buggy yonder by the platform." "oh, very well; of course you must go; but don't forget our appointment. let's see, dr. price, i can eat and get ready in half an hour--that will make it"-- "i have asked several of the local physicians to be present at eight o'clock," said dr. price. "the case can safely wait until then." "very well, miller, be on hand at eight. i shall expect you without fail. where shall he come, dr. price?" "to the residence of major philip carteret, on vine street." "i have invited dr. miller to be present and assist in the operation," dr. burns continued, as they drove toward the hotel. "he was a favorite pupil of mine, and is a credit to the profession. i presume you saw his article in the medical gazette?" "yes, and i assisted him in the case," returned dr. price. "it was a colored lad, one of his patients, and he called me in to help him. he is a capable man, and very much liked by the white physicians." miller's wife and child were waiting for him in fluttering anticipation. he kissed them both as he climbed into the buggy. "we came at four o'clock," said mrs. miller, a handsome young woman, who might be anywhere between twenty-five and thirty, and whose complexion, in the twilight, was not distinguishable from that of a white person, "but the train was late two hours, they said. we came back at six, and have been waiting ever since." "yes, papa," piped the child, a little boy of six or seven, who sat between them, "and i am very hungry." miller felt very much elated as he drove homeward through the twilight. by his side sat the two persons whom he loved best in all the world. his affairs were prosperous. upon opening his office in the city, he had been received by the members of his own profession with a cordiality generally frank, and in no case much reserved. the colored population of the city was large, but in the main poor, and the white physicians were not unwilling to share this unprofitable practice with a colored doctor worthy of confidence. in the intervals of the work upon his hospital, he had built up a considerable practice among his own people; but except in the case of some poor unfortunate whose pride had been lost in poverty or sin, no white patient had ever called upon him for treatment. he knew very well the measure of his powers,--a liberal education had given him opportunity to compare himself with other men,--and was secretly conscious that in point of skill and knowledge he did not suffer by comparison with any other physician in the town. he liked to believe that the race antagonism which hampered his progress and that of his people was a mere temporary thing, the outcome of former conditions, and bound to disappear in time, and that when a colored man should demonstrate to the community in which he lived that he possessed character and power, that community would find a way in which to enlist his services for the public good. he had already made himself useful, and had received many kind words and other marks of appreciation. he was now offered a further confirmation of his theory: having recognized his skill, the white people were now ready to take advantage of it. any lurking doubt he may have felt when first invited by dr. burns to participate in the operation, had been dispelled by dr. price's prompt acquiescence. on the way homeward miller told his wife of this appointment. she was greatly interested; she was herself a mother, with an only child. moreover, there was a stronger impulse than mere humanity to draw her toward the stricken mother. janet had a tender heart, and could have loved this white sister, her sole living relative of whom she knew. all her life long she had yearned for a kind word, a nod, a smile, the least thing that imagination might have twisted into a recognition of the tie between them. but it had never come. and yet janet was not angry. she was of a forgiving temper; she could never bear malice. she was educated, had read many books, and appreciated to the full the social forces arrayed against any such recognition as she had dreamed of. of the two barriers between them a man might have forgiven the one; a woman would not be likely to overlook either the bar sinister or the difference of race, even to the slight extent of a silent recognition. blood is thicker than water, but, if it flow too far from conventional channels, may turn to gall and wormwood. nevertheless, when the heart speaks, reason falls into the background, and janet would have worshiped this sister, even afar off, had she received even the slightest encouragement. so strong was this weakness that she had been angry with herself for her lack of pride, or even of a decent self-respect. it was, she sometimes thought, the heritage of her mother's race, and she was ashamed of it as part of the taint of slavery. she had never acknowledged, even to her husband, from whom she concealed nothing else, her secret thoughts upon this lifelong sorrow. this silent grief was nature's penalty, or society's revenge, for whatever heritage of beauty or intellect or personal charm had come to her with her father's blood. for she had received no other inheritance. her sister was rich by right of her birth; if janet had been fortunate, her good fortune had not been due to any provision made for her by her white father. she knew quite well how passionately, for many years, her proud sister had longed and prayed in vain for the child which had at length brought joy into her household, and she could feel, by sympathy, all the sickening suspense with which the child's parents must await the result of this dangerous operation. "o will," she adjured her husband anxiously, when he had told her of the engagement, "you must be very careful. think of the child's poor mother! think of our own dear child, and what it would mean to lose him!" vii the operation dr. price was not entirely at ease in his mind as the two doctors drove rapidly from the hotel to major carteret's. himself a liberal man, from his point of view, he saw no reason why a colored doctor might not operate upon a white male child,--there are fine distinctions in the application of the color line,--but several other physicians had been invited, some of whom were men of old-fashioned notions, who might not relish such an innovation. this, however, was but a small difficulty compared with what might be feared from major carteret himself. for he knew carteret's unrelenting hostility to anything that savored of recognition of the negro as the equal of white men. it was traditional in wellington that no colored person had ever entered the front door of the carteret residence, and that the luckless individual who once presented himself there upon alleged business and resented being ordered to the back door had been unceremoniously thrown over the piazza railing into a rather thorny clump of rosebushes below. if miller were going as a servant, to hold a basin or a sponge, there would be no difficulty; but as a surgeon--well, he wouldn't borrow trouble. under the circumstances the major might yield a point. but as they neared the house the major's unyielding disposition loomed up formidably. perhaps if the matter were properly presented to dr. burns, he might consent to withdraw the invitation. it was not yet too, late to send miller a note. "by the way, dr. burns," he said, "i'm very friendly to dr. miller, and should personally like to have him with us to-night. but--i ought to have told you this before, but i couldn't very well do so, on such short notice, in miller's presence--we are a conservative people, and our local customs are not very flexible. we jog along in much the same old way our fathers did. i'm not at all sure that major carteret or the other gentlemen would consent to the presence of a negro doctor." "i think you misjudge your own people," returned dr. burns, "they are broader than you think. we have our prejudices against the negro at the north, but we do not let them stand in the way of anything that _we_ want. at any rate, it is too late now, and i will accept the responsibility. if the question is raised, i will attend to it. when i am performing an operation i must be _aut caesar, aut nullus_." dr. price was not reassured, but he had done his duty and felt the reward of virtue. if there should be trouble, he would not be responsible. moreover, there was a large fee at stake, and dr. burns was not likely to prove too obdurate. they were soon at carteret's, where they found assembled the several physicians invited by dr. price. these were successively introduced as drs. dudley, hooper, and ashe, all of whom were gentlemen of good standing, socially and in their profession, and considered it a high privilege to witness so delicate an operation at the hands of so eminent a member of their profession. major carteret entered the room and was duly presented to the famous specialist. carteret's anxious look lightened somewhat at sight of the array of talent present. it suggested, of course, the gravity of the impending event, but gave assurance of all the skill and care which science could afford. dr. burns was shown to the nursery, from which he returned in five minutes. "the case is ready," he announced. "are the gentlemen all present?" "i believe so," answered dr. price quickly. miller had not yet arrived. perhaps, thought dr. price, a happy accident, or some imperative call, had detained him. this would be fortunate indeed. dr. burns's square jaw had a very determined look. it would be a pity if any acrimonious discussion should arise on the eve of a delicate operation. if the clock on the mantel would only move faster, the question might never come up. "i don't see dr. miller," observed dr. burns, looking around the room. "i asked him to come at eight. there are ten minutes yet." major carteret looked up with a sudden frown. "may i ask to whom you refer?" he inquired, in an ominous tone. the other gentlemen showed signs of interest, not to say emotion. dr. price smiled quizzically. "dr. miller, of your city. he was one of my favorite pupils. he is also a graduate of the vienna hospitals, and a surgeon of unusual skill. i have asked him to assist in the operation." every eye was turned toward carteret, whose crimsoned face had set in a look of grim determination. "the person to whom you refer is a negro, i believe?" he said. "he is a colored man, certainly," returned dr. burns, "though one would never think of his color after knowing him well." "i do not know, sir," returned carteret, with an effort at self-control, "what the customs of philadelphia or vienna may be; but in the south we do not call negro doctors to attend white patients. i could not permit a negro to enter my house upon such an errand." "i am here, sir," replied dr. burns with spirit, "to perform a certain operation. since i assume the responsibility, the case must be under my entire control. otherwise i cannot operate." "gentlemen," interposed dr. price, smoothly, "i beg of you both--this is a matter for calm discussion, and any asperity is to be deplored. the life at stake here should not be imperiled by any consideration of minor importance." "your humanity does you credit, sir," retorted dr. burns. "but other matters, too, are important. i have invited this gentleman here. my professional honor is involved, and i merely invoke my rights to maintain it. it is a matter of principle, which ought not to give way to a mere prejudice." "that also states the case for major carteret," rejoined dr. price, suavely. "he has certain principles,--call them prejudices, if you like,--certain inflexible rules of conduct by which he regulates his life. one of these, which he shares with us all in some degree, forbids the recognition of the negro as a social equal." "i do not know what miller's social value may be," replied dr. burns, stoutly, "or whether you gain or lose by your attitude toward him. i have invited him here in a strictly professional capacity, with which his color is not at all concerned." "dr. burns does not quite appreciate major carteret's point of view," said dr. price. "this is not with him an unimportant matter, or a mere question of prejudice, or even of personal taste. it is a sacred principle, lying at the very root of our social order, involving the purity and prestige of our race. you northern gentlemen do not quite appreciate our situation; if you lived here a year or two you would act as we do. of course," he added, diplomatically, "if there were no alternative--if dr. burns were willing to put dr. miller's presence on the ground of imperative necessity"-- "i do nothing of the kind, sir," retorted dr. burns with some heat. "i have not come all the way from philadelphia to undertake an operation which i cannot perform without the aid of some particular physician. i merely stand upon my professional rights." carteret was deeply agitated. the operation must not be deferred; his child's life might be endangered by delay. if the negro's presence were indispensable he would even submit to it, though in order to avoid so painful a necessity, he would rather humble himself to the northern doctor. the latter course involved merely a personal sacrifice--the former a vital principle. perhaps there was another way of escape. miller's presence could not but be distasteful to mrs. carteret for other reasons. miller's wife was the living evidence of a painful episode in mrs. carteret's family, which the doctor's presence would inevitably recall. once before, mrs. carteret's life had been endangered by encountering, at a time of great nervous strain, this ill-born sister and her child. she was even now upon the verge of collapse at the prospect of her child's suffering, and should be protected from the intrusion of any idea which might add to her distress. "dr. burns," he said, with the suave courtesy which was part of his inheritance, "i beg your pardon for my heat, and throw myself upon your magnanimity, as between white men"-- "i am a gentleman, sir, before i am a white man," interposed dr. burns, slightly mollified, however, by carteret's change of manner. "the terms should be synonymous," carteret could not refrain from saying. "as between white men, and gentlemen, i say to you, frankly, that there are vital, personal reasons, apart from dr. miller's color, why his presence in this house would be distasteful. with this statement, sir, i throw myself upon your mercy. my child's life is worth more to me than any earthly thing, and i must be governed by your decision." dr. burns was plainly wavering. the clock moved with provoking slowness. miller would be there in five minutes. "may i speak with you privately a moment, doctor?" asked dr. price. they withdrew from the room and were engaged in conversation for a few moments. dr. burns finally yielded. "i shall nevertheless feel humiliated when i meet miller again," he said, "but of course if there is a personal question involved, that alters the situation. had it been merely a matter of color, i should have maintained my position. as things stand, i wash my hands of the whole affair, so far as miller is concerned, like pontius pilate--yes, indeed, sir, i feel very much like that individual." "i'll explain the matter to miller," returned dr. price, amiably, "and make it all right with him. we southern people understand the negroes better than you do, sir. why should we not? they have been constantly under our interested observation for several hundred years. you feel this vastly more than miller will. he knows the feeling of the white people, and is accustomed to it. he wishes to live and do business here, and is quite too shrewd to antagonize his neighbors or come where he is not wanted. he is in fact too much of a gentleman to do so." "i shall leave the explanation to you entirely," rejoined dr. burns, as they reëntered the other room. carteret led the way to the nursery, where the operation was to take place. dr. price lingered for a moment. miller was not likely to be behind the hour, if he came at all, and it would be well to head him off before the operation began. scarcely had the rest left the room when the doorbell sounded, and a servant announced dr. miller. dr. price stepped into the hall and met miller face to face. he had meant to state the situation to miller frankly, but now that the moment had come he wavered. he was a fine physician, but he shrank from strenuous responsibilities. it had been easy to theorize about the negro; it was more difficult to look this man in the eyes--whom at this moment he felt to be as essentially a gentleman as himself--and tell him the humiliating truth. as a physician his method was to ease pain--he would rather take the risk of losing a patient from the use of an anaesthetic than from the shock of an operation. he liked miller, wished him well, and would not wittingly wound his feelings. he really thought him too much of a gentleman for the town, in view of the restrictions with which he must inevitably be hampered. there was something melancholy, to a cultivated mind, about a sensitive, educated man who happened to be off color. such a person was a sort of social misfit, an odd quantity, educated out of his own class, with no possible hope of entrance into that above it. he felt quite sure that if he had been in miller's place, he would never have settled in the south--he would have moved to europe, or to the west indies, or some central or south american state where questions of color were not regarded as vitally important. dr. price did not like to lie, even to a negro. to a man of his own caste, his word was his bond. if it were painful to lie, it would be humiliating to be found out. the principle of _noblesse oblige_ was also involved in the matter. his claim of superiority to the colored doctor rested fundamentally upon the fact that he was white and miller was not; and yet this superiority, for which he could claim no credit, since he had not made himself, was the very breath of his nostrils,--he would not have changed places with the other for wealth untold; and as a gentleman, he would not care to have another gentleman, even a colored man, catch him in a lie. of this, however, there was scarcely any danger. a word to the other surgeons would insure their corroboration of whatever he might tell miller. no one of them would willingly wound dr. miller or embarrass dr. price; indeed, they need not know that miller had come in time for the operation. "i'm sorry, miller," he said with apparent regret, "but we were here ahead of time, and the case took a turn which would admit of no delay, so the gentlemen went in. dr. burns is with the patient now, and asked me to explain why we did not wait for you." "i'm sorry too," returned miller, regretfully, but nothing doubting. he was well aware that in such cases danger might attend upon delay. he had lost his chance, through no fault of his own or of any one else. "i hope that all is well?" he said, hesitatingly, not sure whether he would be asked to remain. "all is well, so far. step round to my office in the morning, miller, or come in when you're passing, and i'll tell you the details." this was tantamount to a dismissal, so miller took his leave. descending the doorsteps, he stood for a moment, undecided whether to return home or to go to the hotel and await the return of dr. burns, when he heard his name called from the house in a low tone. "oh, doctuh!" he stepped back toward the door, outside of which stood the colored servant who had just let him out. "dat's all a lie, doctuh," he whispered, "'bout de operation bein' already pe'fo'med. dey-all had jes' gone in de minute befo' you come--doctuh price hadn' even got out 'n de room. dey be'n quollin' 'bout you fer de las' ha'f hour. majah ca'te'et say he wouldn' have you, an' de no'then doctuh say he wouldn't do nothin' widout you, an' doctuh price he j'ined in on bofe sides, an' dey had it hot an' heavy, nip an' tuck, till bimeby majah ca'te'et up an' say it wa'n't altogether yo' color he objected to, an' wid dat de no'then doctuh give in. he's a fine man, suh, but dey wuz too much fer 'im!" "thank you, sam, i'm much obliged," returned miller mechanically. "one likes to know the truth." truth, it has been said, is mighty, and must prevail; but it sometimes leaves a bad taste in the mouth. in the ordinary course of events miller would not have anticipated such an invitation, and for that reason had appreciated it all the more. the rebuff came with a corresponding shock. he had the heart of a man, the sensibilities of a cultivated gentleman; the one was sore, the other deeply wounded. he was not altogether sure, upon reflection, whether he blamed dr. price very much for the amiable lie, which had been meant to spare his feelings, or thanked sam a great deal for the unpalatable truth. janet met him at the door. "how is the baby?" she asked excitedly. "dr. price says he is doing well." "what is the matter, will, and why are you back so soon?" he would have spared her the story, but she was a woman, and would have it. he was wounded, too, and wanted sympathy, of which janet was an exhaustless fountain. so he told her what had happened. she comforted him after the manner of a loving woman, and felt righteously indignant toward her sister's husband, who had thus been instrumental in the humiliation of her own. her anger did not embrace her sister, and yet she felt obscurely that their unacknowledged relationship had been the malignant force which had given her husband pain, and defeated his honorable ambition. when dr. price entered the nursery, dr. burns was leaning attentively over the operating table. the implements needed for the operation were all in readiness--the knives, the basin, the sponge, the materials for dressing the wound--all the ghastly paraphernalia of vivisection. mrs. carteret had been banished to another room, where clara vainly attempted to soothe her. old mammy jane, still burdened by her fears, fervently prayed the good lord to spare the life of the sweet little grandson of her dear old mistress. dr. burns had placed his ear to the child's chest, which had been bared for the incision. dr. price stood ready to administer the anaesthetic. little dodie looked up with a faint expression of wonder, as if dimly conscious of some unusual event. the major shivered at the thought of what the child must undergo. "there's a change in his breathing," said dr. burns, lifting his head. "the whistling noise is less pronounced, and he breathes easier. the obstruction seems to have shifted." applying his ear again to the child's throat, he listened for a moment intently, and then picking the baby up from the table, gave it a couple of sharp claps between the shoulders. simultaneously a small object shot out from the child's mouth, struck dr. price in the neighborhood of his waistband, and then rattled lightly against the floor. whereupon the baby, as though conscious of his narrow escape, smiled and gurgled, and reaching upward clutched the doctor's whiskers with his little hand, which, according to old jane, had a stronger grip than any other infant's in wellington. viii the campaign drags the campaign for white supremacy was dragging. carteret had set out, in the columns of the morning chronicle, all the reasons why this movement, inaugurated by the three men who had met, six months before, at the office of the chronicle, should be supported by the white public. negro citizenship was a grotesque farce--sambo and dinah raised from the kitchen to the cabinet were a spectacle to make the gods laugh. the laws by which it had been sought to put the negroes on a level with the whites must be swept away in theory, as they had failed in fact. if it were impossible, without a further education of public opinion, to secure the repeal of the fifteenth amendment, it was at least the solemn duty of the state to endeavor, through its own constitution, to escape from the domination of a weak and incompetent electorate and confine the negro to that inferior condition for which nature had evidently designed him. in spite of the force and intelligence with which carteret had expressed these and similar views, they had not met the immediate response anticipated. there were thoughtful men, willing to let well enough alone, who saw no necessity for such a movement. they believed that peace, prosperity, and popular education offered a surer remedy for social ills than the reopening of issues supposed to have been settled. there were timid men who shrank from civic strife. there were busy men, who had something else to do. there were a few fair men, prepared to admit, privately, that a class constituting half to two thirds of the population were fairly entitled to some representation in the law-making bodies. perhaps there might have been found, somewhere in the state, a single white man ready to concede that all men were entitled to equal rights before the law. that there were some white men who had learned little and forgotten nothing goes without saying, for knowledge and wisdom are not impartially distributed among even the most favored race. there were ignorant and vicious negroes, and they had a monopoly of neither ignorance nor crime, for there were prosperous negroes and poverty-stricken whites. until carteret and his committee began their baleful campaign the people of the state were living in peace and harmony. the anti-negro legislation in more southern states, with large negro majorities, had awakened scarcely an echo in this state, with a population two thirds white. even the triumph of the fusion party had not been regarded as a race issue. it remained for carteret and his friends to discover, with inspiration from whatever supernatural source the discriminating reader may elect, that the darker race, docile by instinct, humble by training, patiently waiting upon its as yet uncertain destiny, was an incubus, a corpse chained to the body politic, and that the negro vote was a source of danger to the state, no matter how cast or by whom directed. to discuss means for counteracting this apathy, a meeting of the "big three," as they had begun to designate themselves jocularly, was held at the office of the "morning chronicle," on the next day but one after little dodie's fortunate escape from the knife. "it seems," said general belmont, opening the discussion, "as though we had undertaken more than we can carry through. it is clear that we must reckon on opposition, both at home and abroad. if we are to hope for success, we must extend the lines of our campaign. the north, as well as our own people, must be convinced that we have right upon our side. we are conscious of the purity of our motives, but we should avoid even the appearance of evil." mcbane was tapping the floor impatiently with his foot during this harangue. "i don't see the use," he interrupted, "of so much beating about the bush. we may as well be honest about this thing. we are going to put the niggers down because we want to, and think we can; so why waste our time in mere pretense? i'm no hypocrite myself,--if i want a thing i take it, provided i'm strong enough." "my dear captain," resumed the general, with biting suavity, "your frankness does you credit,--'an honest man's the noblest work of god,'--but we cannot carry on politics in these degenerate times without a certain amount of diplomacy. in the good old days when your father was alive, and perhaps nowadays in the discipline of convicts, direct and simple methods might be safely resorted to; but this is a modern age, and in dealing with so fundamental a right as the suffrage we must profess a decent regard for the opinions of even that misguided portion of mankind which may not agree with us. this is the age of crowds, and we must have the crowd with us." the captain flushed at the allusion to his father's calling, at which he took more offense than at the mention of his own. he knew perfectly well that these old aristocrats, while reaping the profits of slavery, had despised the instruments by which they were attained--the poor-white overseer only less than the black slave. mcbane was rich; he lived in wellington, but he had never been invited to the home of either general belmont or major carteret, nor asked to join the club of which they were members. his face, therefore, wore a distinct scowl, and his single eye glowed ominously. he would help these fellows carry the state for white supremacy, and then he would have his innings,--he would have more to say than they dreamed, as to who should fill the offices under the new deal. men of no better birth or breeding than he had represented southern states in congress since the war. why should he not run for governor, representative, whatever he chose? he had money enough to buy out half a dozen of these broken-down aristocrats, and money was all-powerful. "you see, captain," the general went on, looking mcbane smilingly and unflinchingly in the eye, "we need white immigration--we need northern capital. 'a good name is better than great riches,' and we must prove our cause a righteous one." "we must be armed at all points," added carteret, "and prepared for defense as well as for attack,--we must make our campaign a national one." "for instance," resumed the general, "you, carteret, represent the associated press. through your hands passes all the news of the state. what more powerful medium for the propagation of an idea? the man who would govern a nation by writing its songs was a blethering idiot beside the fellow who can edit its news dispatches. the negroes are playing into our hands,--every crime that one of them commits is reported by us. with the latitude they have had in this state they are growing more impudent and self-assertive every day. a yellow demagogue in new york made a speech only a few days ago, in which he deliberately, and in cold blood, advised negroes to defend themselves to the death when attacked by white people! i remember well the time when it was death for a negro to strike a white man." "it's death now, if he strikes the right one," interjected mcbane, restored to better humor by this mention of a congenial subject. the general smiled a fine smile. he had heard the story of how mcbane had lost his other eye. "the local negro paper is quite outspoken, too," continued the general, "if not impudent. we must keep track of that; it may furnish us some good campaign material." "yes," returned carteret, "we must see to that. i threw a copy into the waste-basket this morning, without looking at it. here it is now!" ix a white man's "nigger" carteret fished from the depths of the waste-basket and handed to the general an eighteen by twenty-four sheet, poorly printed on cheap paper, with a "patent" inside, a number of advertisements of proprietary medicines, quack doctors, and fortune-tellers, and two or three columns of editorial and local news. candor compels the admission that it was not an impressive sheet in any respect, except when regarded as the first local effort of a struggling people to make public expression of their life and aspirations. from this point of view it did not speak at all badly for a class to whom, a generation before, newspapers, books, and learning had been forbidden fruit. "it's an elegant specimen of journalism, isn't it?" laughed the general, airily. "listen to this 'ad':-- "'kinky, curly hair made straight by one application of our specific. our face bleach will turn the skin of a black or brown person four or five shades lighter, and of a mulatto perfectly white. when you get the color you wish, stop using the preparation.' "just look at those heads!--'before using' and 'after using.' we'd better hurry, or there'll be no negroes to disfranchise! if they don't stop till they get the color they desire, and the stuff works according to contract, they'll all be white. ah! what have we here? this looks as though it might be serious." opening the sheet the general read aloud an editorial article, to which carteret listened intently, his indignation increasing in strength from the first word to the last, while mcbane's face grew darkly purple with anger. the article was a frank and somewhat bold discussion of lynching and its causes. it denied that most lynchings were for the offense most generally charged as their justification, and declared that, even of those seemingly traced to this cause, many were not for crimes at all, but for voluntary acts which might naturally be expected to follow from the miscegenation laws by which it was sought, in all the southern states, to destroy liberty of contract, and, for the purpose of maintaining a fanciful purity of race, to make crimes of marriages to which neither nature nor religion nor the laws of other states interposed any insurmountable barrier. such an article in a northern newspaper would have attracted no special attention, and might merely have furnished food to an occasional reader for serious thought upon a subject not exactly agreeable; but coming from a colored man, in a southern city, it was an indictment of the laws and social system of the south that could not fail of creating a profound sensation. "infamous--infamous!" exclaimed carteret, his voice trembling with emotion. "the paper should be suppressed immediately." "the impudent nigger ought to be horsewhipped and run out of town," growled mcbane. "gentlemen," said the general soothingly, after the first burst of indignation had subsided, "i believe we can find a more effective use for this article, which, by the way, will not bear too close analysis,--there's some truth in it, at least there's an argument." "that is not the point," interrupted carteret. "no," interjected mcbane with an oath, "that ain't at all the point. truth or not, no damn nigger has any right to say it." "this article," said carteret, "violates an unwritten law of the south. if we are to tolerate this race of weaklings among us, until they are eliminated by the stress of competition, it must be upon terms which we lay down. one of our conditions is violated by this article, in which our wisdom is assailed, and our women made the subject of offensive comment. we must make known our disapproval." "i say lynch the nigger, break up the press, and burn down the newspaper office," mcbane responded promptly. "gentlemen," interposed the general, "would you mind suspending the discussion for a moment, while i mind jerry across the street? i think i can then suggest a better plan." carteret rang the bell for jerry, who answered promptly. he had been expecting such a call ever since the gentlemen had gone in. "jerry," said the general, "step across to brown's and tell him to send me three calhoun cocktails. wait for them,--here's the money." "yas, suh," replied jerry, taking the proffered coin. "and make has'e, charcoal," added mcbane, "for we're gettin' damn dry." a momentary cloud of annoyance darkened carteret's brow. mcbane had always grated upon his aristocratic susceptibilities. the captain was an upstart, a product of the democratic idea operating upon the poor white man, the descendant of the indentured bondservant and the socially unfit. he had wealth and energy, however, and it was necessary to make use of him; but the example of such men was a strong incentive to carteret in his campaign against the negro. it was distasteful enough to rub elbows with an illiterate and vulgar white man of no ancestry,--the risk of similar contact with negroes was to be avoided at any cost. he could hardly expect mcbane to be a gentleman, but when among men of that class he might at least try to imitate their manners. a gentleman did not order his own servants around offensively, to say nothing of another's. the general had observed carteret's annoyance, and remarked pleasantly while they waited for the servant's return:-- "jerry, now, is a very good negro. he's not one of your new negroes, who think themselves as good as white men, and want to run the government. jerry knows his place,--he is respectful, humble, obedient, and content with the face and place assigned to him by nature." "yes, he's one of the best of 'em," sneered mcbane. "he'll call any man 'master' for a quarter, or 'god' for half a dollar; for a dollar he'll grovel at your feet, and for a cast-off coat you can buy an option on his immortal soul,--if he has one! i've handled niggers for ten years, and i know 'em from the ground up. they're all alike,--they're a scrub race, an affliction to the country, and the quicker we're rid of 'em all the better." carteret had nothing to say by way of dissent. mcbane's sentiments, in their last analysis, were much the same as his, though he would have expressed them less brutally. "the negro," observed the general, daintily flicking the ash from his cigar, "is all right in his place and very useful to the community. we lived on his labor for quite a long time, and lived very well. nevertheless we are better off without slavery, for we can get more out of the free negro, and with less responsibility. i really do not see how we could get along without the negroes. if they were all like jerry, we'd have no trouble with them." having procured the drinks, jerry, the momentary subject of the race discussion which goes on eternally in the south, was making his way back across the street, somewhat disturbed in mind. "o lawd!" he groaned, "i never troubles trouble till trouble troubles me; but w'en i got dem drinks befo', gin'l belmont gimme half a dollar an' tol' me ter keep de change. dis time he didn' say nothin' 'bout de change. i s'pose he jes' fergot erbout it, but w'at is a po' nigger gwine ter do w'en he has ter conten' wid w'ite folks's fergitfulniss? i don' see no way but ter do some fergittin' myse'f. i'll jes' stan' outside de do' here till dey gits so wrop' up in deir talk dat dey won' 'member nothin' e'se, an' den at de right minute i'll ban' de glasses 'roun, an' moa' lackly de gin'l 'll fergit all 'bout de change." while jerry stood outside, the conversation within was plainly audible, and some inkling of its purport filtered through his mind. "now, gentlemen," the general was saying, "here's my plan. that editorial in the negro newspaper is good campaign matter, but we should reserve it until it will be most effective. suppose we just stick it in a pigeon-hole, and let the editor,--what's his name?" "the nigger's name is barber," replied mcbane. "i'd like to have him under me for a month or two; he'd write no more editorials." "let barber have all the rope he wants," resumed the general, "and he'll be sure to hang himself. in the mean time we will continue to work up public opinion,--we can use this letter privately for that purpose,--and when the state campaign opens we'll print the editorial, with suitable comment, scatter it broadcast throughout the state, fire the southern heart, organize the white people on the color line, have a little demonstration with red shirts and shotguns, scare the negroes into fits, win the state for white supremacy, and teach our colored fellow citizens that we are tired of negro domination and have put an end to it forever. the afro-american banner will doubtless die about the same time." "and so will the editor!" exclaimed mcbane ferociously; "i'll see to that. but i wonder where that nigger is with them cocktails? i'm so thirsty i could swallow blue blazes." "here's yo' drinks, gin'l," announced jerry, entering with the glasses on a tray. the gentlemen exchanged compliments and imbibed--mcbane at a gulp, carteret with more deliberation, leaving about half the contents of his glass. the general drank slowly, with every sign of appreciation. "if the illustrious statesman," he observed, "whose name this mixture bears, had done nothing more than invent it, his fame would still deserve to go thundering down the endless ages." "it ain't bad liquor," assented mcbane, smacking his lips. jerry received the empty glasses on the tray and left the room. he had scarcely gained the hall when the general called him back. "o lawd!" groaned jerry, "he's gwine ter ax me fer de change. yas, suh, yas, suh; comin', gin'l, comin', suh!" "you may keep the change, jerry," said the general. jerry's face grew radiant at this announcement. "yas, suh, gin'l; thank y', suh; much obleedzed, suh. i wuz jus' gwine ter fetch it in, suh, w'en i had put de tray down. thank y', suh, truly, suh!" jerry backed and bowed himself out into the hall. "dat wuz a close shave," he muttered, as he swallowed the remaining contents of major carteret's glass. "i 'lowed dem twenty cents wuz gone dat time,--an' whar i wuz gwine ter git de money ter take my gal ter de chu'ch festibal ter-night, de lawd only knows!--'less'n i borried it offn mr. ellis, an' i owes him sixty cents a'ready. but i wonduh w'at dem w'ite folks in dere is up ter? dere's one thing sho',--dey're gwine ter git after de niggers some way er 'nuther, an' w'en dey does, whar is jerry gwine ter be? dat's de mos' impo'tantes' question. i'm gwine ter look at dat newspaper dey be'n talkin' 'bout, an' 'less'n my min' changes might'ly, i'm gwine ter keep my mouf shet an' stan' in wid de angry-saxon race,--ez dey calls deyse'ves nowadays,--an' keep on de right side er my bread an' meat. wat nigger ever give me twenty cents in all my bawn days?" "by the way, major," said the general, who lingered behind mcbane as they were leaving, "is miss clara's marriage definitely settled upon?" "well, general, not exactly; but it's the understanding that they will marry when they are old enough." "i was merely thinking," the general went on, "that if i were you i'd speak to tom about cards and liquor. he gives more time to both than a young man can afford. i'm speaking in his interest and in miss clara's,--we of the old families ought to stand together." "thank you, general, for the hint. i'll act upon it." this political conference was fruitful in results. acting upon the plans there laid out, mcbane traveled extensively through the state, working up sentiment in favor of the new movement. he possessed a certain forceful eloquence; and white supremacy was so obviously the divine intention that he had merely to affirm the doctrine in order to secure adherents. general belmont, whose business required him to spend much of the winter in washington and new york, lost no opportunity to get the ear of lawmakers, editors, and other leaders of national opinion, and to impress upon them, with persuasive eloquence, the impossibility of maintaining existing conditions, and the tremendous blunder which had been made in conferring the franchise upon the emancipated race. carteret conducted the press campaign, and held out to the republicans of the north the glittering hope that, with the elimination of the negro vote, and a proper deference to southern feeling, a strong white republican party might be built up in the new south. how well the bait took is a matter of history,--but the promised result is still in the future. the disfranchisement of the negro has merely changed the form of the same old problem. the negro had no vote before the rebellion, and few other rights, and yet the negro question was, for a century, the pivot of american politics. it plunged the nation into a bloody war, and it will trouble the american government and the american conscience until a sustained attempt is made to settle it upon principles of justice and equity. the personal ambitions entertained by the leaders of this movement are but slightly involved in this story. mcbane's aims have been touched upon elsewhere. the general would have accepted the nomination for governor of the state, with a vision of a senatorship in the future. carteret hoped to vindicate the supremacy of his race, and make the state fit for his son to live in, and, incidentally, he would not refuse any office, worthy of his dignity, which a grateful people might thrust upon him. so powerful a combination of bigot, self-seeking demagogue, and astute politician was fraught with grave menace to the peace of the state and the liberties of the people,--by which is meant the whole people, and not any one class, sought to be built up at the expense of another. x delamere plays a trump carteret did not forget what general belmont had said in regard to tom. the major himself had been young, not so very long ago, and was inclined toward indulgence for the foibles of youth. a young gentleman should have a certain knowledge of life,--but there were limits. clara's future happiness must not be imperiled. the opportunity to carry out this purpose was not long delayed. old mr. delamere wished to sell some timber which had been cut at belleview, and sent tom down to the chronicle office to leave an advertisement. the major saw him at the desk, invited him into his sanctum, and delivered him a mild lecture. the major was kind, and talked in a fatherly way about the danger of extremes, the beauty of moderation, and the value of discretion as a rule of conduct. he mentioned collaterally the unblemished honor of a fine old family, its contemplated alliance with his own, and dwelt upon the sweet simplicity of clara's character. the major was a man of feeling and of tact, and could not have put the subject in a way less calculated to wound the _amour propre_ of a very young man. delamere had turned red with anger while the major was speaking. he was impulsive, and an effort was required to keep back the retort that sprang once or twice to his lips; but his conscience was not clear, and he could not afford hard words with clara's guardian and his grandfather's friend. clara was rich, and the most beautiful girl in town; they were engaged; he loved her as well as he could love anything of which he seemed sure; and he did not mean that any one else should have her. the major's mild censure disturbed slightly his sense of security; and while the major's manner did not indicate that he knew anything definite against him, it would be best to let well enough alone. "thank you, major," he said, with well-simulated frankness. "i realize that i may have been a little careless, more from thoughtlessness than anything else; but my heart is all right, sir, and i am glad that my conduct has been brought to your attention, for what you have said enables me to see it in a different light. i will be more careful of my company hereafter; for i love clara, and mean to try to be worthy of her. do you know whether she will be at home this evening?" "i have heard nothing to the contrary," replied the major warmly. "call her up by telephone and ask--or come up and see. you're always welcome, my boy." upon leaving the office, which was on the second floor, tom met ellis coming up the stairs. it had several times of late occurred to tom that ellis had a sneaking fondness for clara. panoplied in his own engagement, tom had heretofore rather enjoyed the idea of a hopeless rival. ellis was such a solemn prig, and took life so seriously, that it was a pleasure to see him sit around sighing for the unattainable. that he should be giving pain to ellis added a certain zest to his own enjoyment. but this interview with the major had so disquieted him that upon meeting ellis upon the stairs he was struck by a sudden suspicion. he knew that major carteret seldom went to the clarendon club, and that he must have got his information from some one else. ellis was a member of the club, and a frequent visitor. who more likely than he to try to poison clara's mind, or the minds of her friends, against her accepted lover? tom did not think that the world was using him well of late; bad luck had pursued him, in cards and other things, and despite his assumption of humility, carteret's lecture had left him in an ugly mood. he nodded curtly to ellis without relaxing the scowl that disfigured his handsome features. "that's the damned sneak who's been giving me away," he muttered. "i'll get even with him yet for this." delamere's suspicions with regard to ellis's feelings were not, as we have seen, entirely without foundation. indeed, he had underestimated the strength of this rivalry and its chances of success. ellis had been watching delamere for a year. there had been nothing surreptitious about it, but his interest in clara had led him to note things about his favored rival which might have escaped the attention of others less concerned. ellis was an excellent judge of character, and had formed a very decided opinion of tom delamere. to ellis, unbiased by ancestral traditions, biased perhaps by jealousy, tom delamere was a type of the degenerate aristocrat. if, as he had often heard, it took three or four generations to make a gentleman, and as many more to complete the curve and return to the base from which it started, tom delamere belonged somewhere on the downward slant, with large possibilities of further decline. old mr. delamere, who might be taken as the apex of an ideal aristocratic development, had been distinguished, during his active life, as ellis had learned, for courage and strength of will, courtliness of bearing, deference to his superiors, of whom there had been few, courtesy to his equals, kindness and consideration for those less highly favored, and above all, a scrupulous sense of honor; his grandson tom was merely the shadow without the substance, the empty husk without the grain. of grace he had plenty. in manners he could be perfect, when he so chose. courage and strength he had none. ellis had seen this fellow, who boasted of his descent from a line of cavaliers, turn pale with fright and spring from a buggy to which was harnessed a fractious horse, which a negro stable-boy drove fearlessly. a valiant carpet-knight, skilled in all parlor exercises, great at whist or euchre, a dream of a dancer, unexcelled in cakewalk or "coon" impersonations, for which he was in large social demand, ellis had seen him kick an inoffensive negro out of his path and treat a poor-white man with scant courtesy. he suspected delamere of cheating at cards, and knew that others entertained the same suspicion. for while regular in his own habits,--his poverty would not have permitted him any considerable extravagance,--ellis's position as a newspaper man kept him in touch with what was going on about town. he was a member, proposed by carteret, of the clarendon club, where cards were indulged in within reasonable limits, and a certain set were known to bet dollars in terms of dimes. delamere was careless, too, about money matters. he had a habit of borrowing, right and left, small sums which might be conveniently forgotten by the borrower, and for which the lender would dislike to ask. ellis had a strain of thrift, derived from a scotch ancestry, and a tenacious memory for financial details. indeed, he had never had so much money that he could lose track of it. he never saw delamere without being distinctly conscious that delamere owed him four dollars, which he had lent at a time when he could ill afford to spare it. it was a prerogative of aristocracy, ellis reflected, to live upon others, and the last privilege which aristocracy in decay would willingly relinquish. neither did the aristocratic memory seem able to retain the sordid details of a small pecuniary transaction. no doubt the knowledge that delamere was the favored lover of miss pemberton lent a touch of bitterness to ellis's reflections upon his rival. ellis had no grievance against the "aristocracy" of wellington. the "best people" had received him cordially, though his father had not been of their caste; but ellis hated a hypocrite, and despised a coward, and he felt sure that delamere was both. otherwise he would have struggled against his love for clara pemberton. his passion for her had grown with his appreciation of delamere's unworthiness. as a friend of the family, he knew the nature and terms of the engagement, and that if the marriage took place at all, it would not be for at least a year. this was a long time,--many things might happen in a year, especially to a man like tom delamere. if for any reason delamere lost his chance, ellis meant to be next in the field. he had not made love to clara, but he had missed no opportunity of meeting her and making himself quietly and unobtrusively agreeable. on the day after this encounter with delamere on the stairs of the chronicle office, ellis, while walking down vine street, met old mrs. ochiltree. she was seated in her own buggy, which was of ancient build and pattern, driven by her colored coachman and man of all work. "mr. ellis," she called in a shrill voice, having directed her coachman to draw up at the curb as she saw the young man approaching, "come here. i want to speak to you." ellis came up to the buggy and stood uncovered beside it. "people are saying," said mrs. ochiltree, "that tom delamere is drinking hard, and has to be carried home intoxicated, two or three times a week, by old mr. delamere's man sandy. is there any truth in the story?" "my dear mrs. ochiltree, i am not tom delamere's keeper. sandy could tell you better than i." "you are dodging my question, mr. ellis. sandy wouldn't tell me the truth, and i know that you wouldn't lie,--you don't look like a liar. they say tom is gambling scandalously. what do you know about that?" "you must excuse me, mrs. ochiltree. a great deal of what we hear is mere idle gossip, and the truth is often grossly exaggerated. i'm a member of the same club with delamere, and gentlemen who belong to the same club are not in the habit of talking about one another. as long as a man retains his club membership, he's presumed to be a gentleman. i wouldn't say anything against delamere if i could." "you don't need to," replied the old lady, shaking her finger at him with a cunning smile. "you are a very open young man, mr. ellis, and i can read you like a book. you are much smarter than you look, but you can't fool me. good-morning." mrs. ochiltree drove immediately to her niece's, where she found mrs. carteret and clara at home. clara was very fond of the baby, and was holding him in her arms. he was a fine baby, and bade fair to realize the bright hopes built upon him. "you hold a baby very naturally, clara," chuckled the old lady. "i suppose you are in training. but you ought to talk to tom. i have just learned from mr. ellis that tom is carried home drunk two or three times a week, and that he is gambling in the most reckless manner imaginable." clara's eyes flashed indignantly. ere she could speak, mrs. carteret exclaimed:-- "why, aunt polly! did mr. ellis say that?" "i got it from dinah," she replied, "who heard it from her husband, who learned it from a waiter at the club. and"-- "pshaw!" said mrs. carteret, "mere servants' gossip." "no, it isn't, olivia. i met mr. ellis on the street, and asked him point blank, and he didn't deny it. he's a member of the club, and ought to know." "well, aunt polly, it can't be true. tom is here every other night, and how could he carry on so without showing the signs of it? and where would he get the money? you know he has only a moderate allowance." "he may win it at cards,--it's better to be born lucky than rich," returned mrs. ochiltree. "then he has expectations, and can get credit. there's no doubt that tom is going on shamefully." clara's indignation had not yet found vent in speech; olivia had said all that was necessary, but she had been thinking rapidly. even if all this had been true, why should mr. ellis have said it? or, if he had not stated it directly, he had left the inference to be drawn. it seemed a most unfair and ungentlemanly thing. what motive could ellis have for such an act? she was not long in reaching a conclusion which was not flattering to ellis. mr. ellis came often to the house, and she had enjoyed his society in a friendly way. that he had found her pleasant company had been very evident. she had never taken his attentions seriously, however, or regarded his visits as made especially to her, nor had the rest of the family treated them from that point of view. her engagement to tom delamere, though not yet formally ratified, was so well understood by the world of wellington that mr. ellis would, scarcely have presumed to think of her as anything more than a friend. this revelation of her aunt's, however, put a different face upon his conduct. certain looks and sighs and enigmatical remarks of ellis, to which she had paid but casual attention and attached no particular significance, now recurred to her memory with a new meaning. he had now evidently tried, in a roundabout way, to besmirch tom's character and undermine him in her regard. while loving tom, she had liked ellis well enough, as a friend; but he had abused the privileges of friendship, and she would teach him a needed lesson. nevertheless, mrs. ochiltree's story had given clara food for thought. she was uneasily conscious, after all, that there might be a grain of truth in what had been said, enough, at least, to justify her in warning tom to be careful, lest his enemies should distort some amiable weakness into a serious crime. she put this view of the case to tom at their next meeting, assuring him, at the same time, of her unbounded faith and confidence. she did not mention ellis's name, lest tom, in righteous indignation, might do something rash, which he might thereafter regret. if any subtler or more obscure motive kept her silent as to ellis, she was not aware of it; for clara's views of life were still in the objective stage, and she had not yet fathomed the deepest recesses of her own consciousness. delamere had the cunning of weakness. he knew, too, better than any one else could know, how much truth there was in the rumors concerning him, and whether or not they could be verified too easily for him to make an indignant denial. after a little rapid reflection, he decided upon a different course. "clara," he said with a sigh, taking the hand which she generously yielded to soften any suggestion of reproach which he may have read into her solicitude, "you are my guardian angel. i do not know, of course, who has told you this pack of lies,--for i can see that you have heard more than you have told me,--but i think i could guess the man they came from. i am not perfect, clara, though i have done nothing of which a gentleman should be ashamed. there is one sure way to stop the tongue of calumny. my home life is not ideal,--grandfather is an old, weak man, and the house needs the refining and softening influence of a lady's presence. i do not love club life; its ideals are not elevating. with you by my side, dearest, i should be preserved from every influence except the purest and the best. don't you think, dearest, that the major might be induced to shorten our weary term of waiting?" "oh, tom," she demurred blushingly, "i shall be young enough at eighteen; and you are barely twenty-one." but tom proved an eloquent pleader, and love a still more persuasive advocate. clara spoke to the major the same evening, who looked grave at the suggestion, and said he would think about it. they were both very young; but where both parties were of good family, in good health and good circumstances, an early marriage might not be undesirable. tom was perhaps a little unsettled, but blood would tell in the long run, and marriage always exercised a steadying influence. the only return, therefore, which ellis received for his well-meant effort to ward off mrs. ochiltree's embarrassing inquiries was that he did not see clara upon his next visit, which was made one afternoon while he was on night duty at the office. in conversation with mrs. carteret he learned that clara's marriage had been definitely agreed upon, and the date fixed,--it was to take place in about six months. meeting miss pemberton on the street the following day, he received the slightest of nods. when he called again at the house, after a week of misery, she treated him with a sarcastic coolness which chilled his heart. "how have i offended you, miss clara?" he demanded desperately, when they were left alone for a moment. "offended me?" she replied, lifting her eyebrows with an air of puzzled surprise. "why, mr. ellis! what could have put such a notion into your head? oh dear, i think i hear dodie,--i know you'll excuse me, mr. ellis, won't you? sister olivia will be back in a moment; and we're expecting aunt polly this afternoon,--if you'll stay awhile she'll be glad to talk to you! you can tell her all the interesting news about your friends!" xi the baby and the bird when ellis, after this rebuff, had disconsolately taken his leave, clara, much elated at the righteous punishment she had inflicted upon the slanderer, ran upstairs to the nursery, and, snatching dodie from mammy jane's arms, began dancing gayly with him round the room. "look a-hyuh, honey," said mammy jane, "you better be keerful wid dat chile, an' don' drap 'im on de flo'. you might let him fall on his head an' break his neck. my, my! but you two does make a pretty pictur'! you'll be wantin' ole jane ter come an' nuss yo' child'en some er dese days," she chuckled unctuously. mammy jane had been very much disturbed by the recent dangers through which little dodie had passed; and his escape from strangulation, in the first place, and then from the knife had impressed her as little less than miraculous. she was not certain whether this result had been brought about by her manipulation of the buried charm, or by the prayers which had been offered for the child, but was inclined to believe that both had cooperated to avert the threatened calamity. the favorable outcome of this particular incident had not, however, altered the general situation. prayers and charms, after all, were merely temporary things, which must be constantly renewed, and might be forgotten or overlooked; while the mole, on the contrary, neither faded nor went away. if its malign influence might for a time seem to disappear, it was merely lying dormant, like the germs of some deadly disease, awaiting its opportunity to strike at an unguarded spot. clara and the baby were laughing in great glee, when a mockingbird, perched on the topmost bough of a small tree opposite the nursery window, burst suddenly into song, with many a trill and quaver. clara, with the child in her arms, sprang to the open window. "sister olivia," she cried, turning her face toward mrs. carteret, who at that moment entered the room, "come and look at dodie." the baby was listening intently to the music, meanwhile gurgling with delight, and reaching his chubby hands toward the source of this pleasing sound. it seemed as though the mockingbird were aware of his appreciative audience, for he ran through the songs of a dozen different birds, selecting, with the discrimination of a connoisseur and entire confidence in his own powers, those which were most difficult and most alluring. mrs. carteret approached the window, followed by mammy jane, who waddled over to join the admiring party. so absorbed were the three women in the baby and the bird that neither one of them observed a neat top buggy, drawn by a sleek sorrel pony, passing slowly along the street before the house. in the buggy was seated a lady, and beside her a little boy, dressed in a child's sailor suit and a straw hat. the lady, with a wistful expression, was looking toward the party grouped in the open window. mrs. carteret, chancing to lower her eyes for an instant, caught the other woman's look directed toward her and her child. with a glance of cold aversion she turned away from the window. old mammy jane had observed this movement, and had divined the reason for it. she stood beside clara, watching the retreating buggy. "uhhuh!" she said to herself, "it's huh sister janet! she ma'ied a doctuh, an' all dat, an' she lives in a big house, an' she's be'n roun' de worl' an de lawd knows where e'se: but mis' 'livy don' like de sight er her, an' never will, ez long ez de sun rises an' sets. dey ce't'nly does favor one anudder,--anybody mought 'low dey wuz twins, ef dey didn' know better. well, well! fo'ty yeahs ago who'd 'a' ever expected ter see a nigger gal ridin' in her own buggy? my, my! but i don' know,--i don' know! it don' look right, an' it ain' gwine ter las'!--you can't make me b'lieve!" meantime janet, stung by mrs. carteret's look,--the nearest approach she had ever made to a recognition of her sister's existence,--had turned away with hardening face. she had struck her pony sharply with the whip, much to the gentle creature's surprise, when the little boy, who was still looking back, caught his mother's sleeve and exclaimed excitedly:-- "look, look, mamma! the baby,--the baby!" janet turned instantly, and with a mother's instinct gave an involuntary cry of alarm. at the moment when mrs. carteret had turned away from the window, and while mammy jane was watching janet, clara had taken a step forward, and was leaning against the window-sill. the baby, convulsed with delight, had given a spasmodic spring and slipped from clara's arms. instinctively the young woman gripped the long skirt as it slipped through her hands, and held it tenaciously, though too frightened for an instant to do more. mammy jane, ashen with sudden dread, uttered an inarticulate scream, but retained self-possession enough to reach down and draw up the child, which hung dangerously suspended, head downward, over the brick pavement below. "oh, clara, clara, how could you!" exclaimed mrs. carteret reproachfully; "you might have killed my child!" she had snatched the child from jane's arms, and was holding him closely to her own breast. struck by a sudden thought, she drew near the window and looked out. twice within a few weeks her child had been in serious danger, and upon each occasion a member of the miller family had been involved, for she had heard of dr. miller's presumption in trying to force himself where he must have known he would be unwelcome. janet was just turning her head away as the buggy moved slowly off. olivia felt a violent wave of antipathy sweep over her toward this baseborn sister who had thus thrust herself beneath her eyes. if she had not cast her brazen glance toward the window, she herself would not have turned away and lost sight of her child. to this shameless intrusion, linked with clara's carelessness, had been due the catastrophe, so narrowly averted, which might have darkened her own life forever. she took to her bed for several days, and for a long time was cold toward clara, and did not permit her to touch the child. mammy jane entertained a theory of her own about the accident, by which the blame was placed, in another way, exactly where mrs. carteret had laid it. julia's daughter, janet, had been looking intently toward the window just before little dodie had sprung from clara's arms. might she not have cast the evil eye upon the baby, and sought thereby to draw him out of the window? one would not ordinarily expect so young a woman to possess such a power, but she might have acquired it, for this very purpose, from some more experienced person. by the same reasoning, the mockingbird might have been a familiar of the witch, and the two might have conspired to lure the infant to destruction. whether this were so or not, the transaction at least wore a peculiar look. there was no use telling mis' 'livy about it, for she didn't believe, or pretended not to believe, in witchcraft and conjuration. but one could not be too careful. the child was certainly born to be exposed to great dangers,--the mole behind the left ear was an unfailing sign,--and no precaution should be omitted to counteract its baleful influence. while adjusting the baby's crib, a few days later, mrs. carteret found fastened under one of the slats a small bag of cotton cloth, about half an inch long and tied with a black thread, upon opening which she found a few small roots or fibres and a pinch of dried and crumpled herbs. it was a good-luck charm which mammy jane had placed there to ward off the threatened evil from the grandchild of her dear old mistress. mrs. carteret's first impulse was to throw the bag into the fire, but on second thoughts she let it remain. to remove it would give unnecessary pain to the old nurse. of course these old negro superstitions were absurd,--but if the charm did no good, it at least would do no harm. xii another southern product one morning shortly after the opening of the hospital, while dr. miller was making his early rounds, a new patient walked in with a smile on his face and a broken arm hanging limply by his side. miller recognized in him a black giant by the name of josh green, who for many years had worked on the docks for miller's father,--and simultaneously identified him as the dust-begrimed negro who had stolen a ride to wellington on the trucks of a passenger car. "well, josh," asked the doctor, as he examined the fracture, "how did you get this? been fighting again?" "no, suh, i don' s'pose you could ha'dly call it a fight. one er dem dagoes off'n a souf american boat gimme some er his jaw, an' i give 'im a back answer, an' here i is wid a broken arm. he got holt er a belayin'-pin befo' i could hit 'im." "what became of the other man?" demanded miller suspiciously. he perceived, from the indifference with which josh bore the manipulation of the fractured limb, that such an accident need not have interfered seriously with the use of the remaining arm, and he knew that josh had a reputation for absolute fearlessness. "lemme see," said josh reflectively, "ef i kin 'member w'at _did_ become er him! oh, yes, i 'member now! dey tuck him ter de marine horspittle in de amberlance, 'cause his leg wuz broke, an' i reckon somethin' must 'a' accident'ly hit 'im in de jaw, fer he wuz scatt'rin' teeth all de way 'long de street. i didn' wan' ter kill de man, fer he might have somebody dependin' on 'im, an' i knows how dat'd be ter dem. but no man kin call me a damn' low-down nigger and keep on enjoyin' good health right along." "it was considerate of you to spare his life," said miller dryly, "but you'll hit the wrong man some day. these are bad times for bad negroes. you'll get into a quarrel with a white man, and at the end of it there'll be a lynching, or a funeral. you'd better be peaceable and endure a little injustice, rather than run the risk of a sudden and violent death." "i expec's ter die a vi'lent death in a quarrel wid a w'ite man," replied josh, in a matter-of-fact tone, "an' fu'thermo', he's gwine ter die at the same time, er a little befo'. i be'n takin' my own time 'bout killin' 'im; i ain' be'n crowdin' de man, but i'll be ready after a w'ile, an' den he kin look out!" "and i suppose you're merely keeping in practice on these other fellows who come your way. when i get your arm dressed, you'd better leave town till that fellow's boat sails; it may save you the expense of a trial and three months in the chain-gang. but this talk about killing a man is all nonsense. what has any man in this town done to you, that you should thirst for his blood?" "no, suh, it ain' nonsense,--it's straight, solem' fac'. i'm gwine ter kill dat man as sho' as i'm settin' in dis cheer; an' dey ain' nobody kin say i ain' got a right ter kill 'im. does you 'member de ku-klux?" "yes, but i was a child at the time, and recollect very little about them. it is a page of history which most people are glad to forget." "yas, suh; i was a chile, too, but i wuz right in it, an' so i 'members mo' erbout it 'n you does. my mammy an' daddy lived 'bout ten miles f'm here, up de river. one night a crowd er w'ite men come ter ou' house an' tuck my daddy out an' shot 'im ter death, an' skeered my mammy so she ain' be'n herse'f f'm dat day ter dis. i wa'n't mo' 'n ten years ole at de time, an' w'en my mammy seed de w'ite men comin', she tol' me ter run. i hid in de bushes an' seen de whole thing, an' it wuz branded on my mem'ry, suh, like a red-hot iron bran's de skin. de w'ite folks had masks on, but one of 'em fell off,--he wuz de boss, he wuz de head man, an' tol' de res' w'at ter do,--an' i seen his face. it wuz a easy face ter 'member; an' i swo' den, 'way down deep in my hea't, little ez i wuz, dat some day er 'nother i'd kill dat man. i ain't never had no doubt erbout it; it's jus' w'at i'm livin' fer, an' i know i ain' gwine ter die till i've done it. some lives fer one thing an' some fer another, but dat's my job. i ain' be'n in no has'e, fer i'm not ole yit, an' dat man is in good health. i'd like ter see a little er de worl' befo' i takes chances on leavin' it sudden; an', mo'over, somebody's got ter take keer er de ole 'oman. but her time'll come some er dese days, an den _his_ time'll be come--an' prob'ly mine. but i ain' keerin' 'bout myse'f: w'en i git thoo wid him, it won' make no diff'ence 'bout me." josh was evidently in dead earnest. miller recalled, very vividly, the expression he had seen twice on his patient's face, during the journey to wellington. he had often seen josh's mother, old aunt milly,--"silly milly," the children called her,--wandering aimlessly about the street, muttering to herself incoherently. he had felt a certain childish awe at the sight of one of god's creatures who had lost the light of reason, and he had always vaguely understood that she was the victim of human cruelty, though he had dated it farther back into the past. this was his first knowledge of the real facts of the case. he realized, too, for a moment, the continuity of life, how inseparably the present is woven with the past, how certainly the future will be but the outcome of the present. he had supposed this old wound healed. the negroes were not a vindictive people. if, swayed by passion or emotion, they sometimes gave way to gusts of rage, these were of brief duration. absorbed in the contemplation of their doubtful present and their uncertain future, they gave little thought to the past,--it was a dark story, which they would willingly forget. he knew the timeworn explanation that the ku-klux movement, in the main, was merely an ebullition of boyish spirits, begun to amuse young white men by playing upon the fears and superstitions of ignorant negroes. here, however, was its tragic side,--the old wound still bleeding, the fruit of one tragedy, the seed of another. he could not approve of josh's application of the mosaic law of revenge, and yet the incident was not without significance. here was a negro who could remember an injury, who could shape his life to a definite purpose, if not a high or holy one. when his race reached the point where they would resent a wrong, there was hope that they might soon attain the stage where they would try, and, if need be, die, to defend a right. this man, too, had a purpose in life, and was willing to die that he might accomplish it. miller was willing to give up his life to a cause. would he be equally willing, he asked himself, to die for it? miller had no prophetic instinct to tell him how soon he would have the opportunity to answer his own question. but he could not encourage josh to carry out this dark and revengeful purpose. every worthy consideration required him to dissuade his patient from such a desperate course. "you had better put away these murderous fancies, josh," he said seriously. "the bible says that we should 'forgive our enemies, bless them that curse us, and do good to them that despitefully use us.'" "yas, suh, i've l'arnt all dat in sunday-school, an' i've heared de preachers say it time an' time ag'in. but it 'pears ter me dat dis fergitfulniss an' fergivniss is mighty one-sided. de w'ite folks don' fergive nothin' de niggers does. dey got up de ku-klux, dey said, on 'count er de kyarpit-baggers. dey be'n talkin' 'bout de kyarpit-baggers ever sence, an' dey 'pears ter fergot all 'bout de ku-klux. but i ain' fergot. de niggers is be'n train' ter fergiveniss; an' fer fear dey might fergit how ter fergive, de w'ite folks gives 'em somethin' new ev'y now an' den, ter practice on. a w'ite man kin do w'at he wants ter a nigger, but de minute de nigger gits back at 'im, up goes de nigger, an' don' come down tell somebody cuts 'im down. if a nigger gits a' office, er de race 'pears ter be prosperin' too much, de w'ite folks up an' kills a few, so dat de res' kin keep on fergivin' an' bein' thankful dat dey're lef alive. don' talk ter me 'bout dese w'ite folks,--i knows 'em, i does! ef a nigger wants ter git down on his marrow-bones, an' eat dirt, an' call 'em 'marster,' _he's_ a good nigger, dere's room fer _him_. but i ain' no w'ite folks' nigger, i ain'. i don' call no man 'marster.' i don' wan' nothin' but w'at i wo'k fer, but i wants all er dat. i never moles's no w'ite man, 'less 'n he moles's me fus'. but w'en de ole 'oman dies, doctuh, an' i gits a good chance at dat w'ite man,--dere ain' no use talkin', suh!--dere's gwine ter be a mix-up, an' a fune'al, er two fune'als--er may be mo', ef anybody is keerliss enough to git in de way." "josh," said the doctor, laying a cool hand on the other's brow, "you 're feverish, and don't know what you're talking about. i shouldn't let my mind dwell on such things, and you must keep quiet until this arm is well, or you may never be able to hit any one with it again." miller determined that when josh got better he would talk to him seriously and dissuade him from this dangerous design. he had not asked the name of josh's enemy, but the look of murderous hate which the dust-begrimed tramp of the railway journey had cast at captain george mcbane rendered any such question superfluous. mcbane was probably deserving of any evil fate which might befall him; but such a revenge would do no good, would right no wrong; while every such crime, committed by a colored man, would be imputed to the race, which was already staggering under a load of obloquy because, in the eyes of a prejudiced and undiscriminating public, it must answer as a whole for the offenses of each separate individual. to die in defense of the right was heroic. to kill another for revenge was pitifully human and weak: "vengeance is mine, i will repay," saith the lord. xiii the cakewalk old mr. delamere's servant, sandy campbell, was in deep trouble. a party of northern visitors had been staying for several days at the st. james hotel. the gentlemen of the party were concerned in a projected cotton mill, while the ladies were much interested in the study of social conditions, and especially in the negro problem. as soon as their desire for information became known, they were taken courteously under the wing of prominent citizens and their wives, who gave them, at elaborate luncheons, the southern white man's views of the negro, sighing sentimentally over the disappearance of the good old negro of before the war, and gravely deploring the degeneracy of his descendants. they enlarged upon the amount of money the southern whites had spent for the education of the negro, and shook their heads over the inadequate results accruing from this unexampled generosity. it was sad, they said, to witness this spectacle of a dying race, unable to withstand the competition of a superior type. the severe reprisals taken by white people for certain crimes committed by negroes were of course not the acts of the best people, who deplored them; but still a certain charity should be extended towards those who in the intense and righteous anger of the moment should take the law into their own hands and deal out rough but still substantial justice; for no negro was ever lynched without incontestable proof of his guilt. in order to be perfectly fair, and give their visitors an opportunity to see both sides of the question, they accompanied the northern visitors to a colored church where they might hear a colored preacher, who had won a jocular popularity throughout the whole country by an oft-repeated sermon intended to demonstrate that the earth was flat like a pancake. this celebrated divine could always draw a white audience, except on the days when his no less distinguished white rival in the field of sensationalism preached his equally famous sermon to prove that hell was exactly one half mile, linear measure, from the city limits of wellington. whether accidentally or not, the northern visitors had no opportunity to meet or talk alone with any colored person in the city except the servants at the hotel. when one of the party suggested a visit to the colored mission school, a southern friend kindly volunteered to accompany them. the visitors were naturally much impressed by what they learned from their courteous hosts, and felt inclined to sympathize with the southern people, for the negro is not counted as a southerner, except to fix the basis of congressional representation. there might of course be things to criticise here and there, certain customs for which they did not exactly see the necessity, and which seemed in conflict with the highest ideals of liberty but surely these courteous, soft-spoken ladies and gentlemen, entirely familiar with local conditions, who descanted so earnestly and at times pathetically upon the grave problems confronting them, must know more about it than people in the distant north, without their means of information. the negroes who waited on them at the hotel seemed happy enough, and the teachers whom they had met at the mission school had been well-dressed, well-mannered, and apparently content with their position in life. surely a people who made no complaints could not be very much oppressed. in order to give the visitors, ere they left wellington, a pleasing impression of southern customs, and particularly of the joyous, happy-go-lucky disposition of the southern darky and his entire contentment with existing conditions, it was decided by the hotel management to treat them, on the last night of their visit, to a little diversion, in the shape of a genuine negro cakewalk. on the afternoon of this same day tom delamere strolled into the hotel, and soon gravitated to the bar, where he was a frequent visitor. young men of leisure spent much of their time around the hotel, and no small part of it in the bar. delamere had been to the club, but had avoided the card-room. time hanging heavy on his hands, he had sought the hotel in the hope that some form of distraction might present itself. "have you heard the latest, mr. delamere?" asked the bartender, as he mixed a cocktail for his customer. "no, billy; what is it?" "there's to be a big cakewalk upstairs to-night. the no'the'n gentlemen an' ladies who are down here to see about the new cotton fact'ry want to study the nigger some more, and the boss has got up a cakewalk for 'em, 'mongst the waiters and chambermaids, with a little outside talent." "is it to be public?" asked delamere. "oh, no, not generally, but friends of the house won't be barred out. the clerk 'll fix it for you. ransom, the head waiter, will be floor manager." delamere was struck with a brilliant idea. the more he considered it, the brighter it seemed. another cocktail imparted additional brilliancy to the conception. he had been trying, after a feeble fashion, to keep his promise to clara, and was really suffering from lack of excitement. he left the bar-room, found the head waiter, held with him a short conversation, and left in his intelligent and itching palm a piece of money. the cakewalk was a great success. the most brilliant performer was a late arrival, who made his appearance just as the performance was about to commence. the newcomer was dressed strikingly, the conspicuous features of his attire being a long blue coat with brass buttons and a pair of plaid trousers. he was older, too, than the other participants, which made his agility the more remarkable. his partner was a new chambermaid, who had just come to town, and whom the head waiter introduced to the newcomer upon his arrival. the cake was awarded to this couple by a unanimous vote. the man presented it to his partner with a grandiloquent flourish, and returned thanks in a speech which sent the northern visitors into spasms of delight at the quaintness of the darky dialect and the darky wit. to cap the climax, the winner danced a buck dance with a skill and agility that brought a shower of complimentary silver, which he gathered up and passed to the head waiter. ellis was off duty for the evening. not having ventured to put in an appearance at carteret's since his last rebuff, he found himself burdened with a superfluity of leisure, from which he essayed to find relief by dropping into the hotel office at about nine o'clock. he was invited up to see the cakewalk, which he rather enjoyed, for there was some graceful dancing and posturing. but the grotesque contortions of one participant had struck him as somewhat overdone, even for the comical type of negro. he recognized the fellow, after a few minutes' scrutiny, as the body-servant of old mr. delamere. the man's present occupation, or choice of diversion, seemed out of keeping with his employment as attendant upon an invalid old gentleman, and strangely inconsistent with the gravity and decorum which had been so noticeable when this agile cakewalker had served as butler at major carteret's table, upon the occasion of the christening dinner. there was a vague suggestion of unreality about this performance, too, which ellis did not attempt to analyze, but which recurred vividly to his memory upon a subsequent occasion. ellis had never pretended to that intimate knowledge of negro thought and character by which some of his acquaintances claimed the ability to fathom every motive of a negro's conduct, and predict in advance what any one of the darker race would do under a given set of circumstances. he would not have believed that a white man could possess two so widely varying phases of character; but as to negroes, they were as yet a crude and undeveloped race, and it was not safe to make predictions concerning them. no one could tell at what moment the thin veneer of civilization might peel off and reveal the underlying savage. the champion cakewalker, much to the surprise of his sable companions, who were about equally swayed by admiration and jealousy, disappeared immediately after the close of the performance. any one watching him on his way home through the quiet streets to old mr. delamere's would have seen him now and then shaking with laughter. it had been excellent fun. nevertheless, as he neared home, a certain aspect of the affair, hitherto unconsidered, occurred to him, and it was in a rather serious frame of mind that he cautiously entered the house and sought his own room. * * * * * the cakewalk had results which to sandy were very serious. the following week he was summoned before the disciplinary committee of his church and charged with unchristian conduct, in the following particulars, to wit: dancing, and participating in a sinful diversion called a cakewalk, which was calculated to bring the church into disrepute and make it the mockery of sinners. sandy protested his innocence vehemently, but in vain. the proof was overwhelming. he was positively identified by sister 'manda patterson, the hotel cook, who had watched the whole performance from the hotel corridor for the sole, single, solitary, and only purpose, she averred, of seeing how far human wickedness could be carried by a professing christian. the whole thing had been shocking and offensive to her, and only a stern sense of duty had sustained her in looking on, that she might be qualified to bear witness against the offender. she had recognized his face, his clothes, his voice, his walk--there could be no shadow of doubt that it was brother sandy. this testimony was confirmed by one of the deacons, whose son, a waiter at the hotel, had also seen sandy at the cakewalk. sandy stoutly insisted that he was at home the whole evening; that he had not been near the hotel for three months; that he had never in his life taken part in a cakewalk, and that he did not know how to dance. it was replied that wickedness, like everything else, must have a beginning; that dancing was an art that could be acquired in secret, and came natural to some people. in the face of positive proof, sandy's protestations were of no avail; he was found guilty, and suspended from church fellowship until he should have repented and made full confession. sturdily refusing to confess a fault of which he claimed to be innocent, sandy remained in contumacy, thereby falling somewhat into disrepute among the members of his church, the largest in the city. the effect of a bad reputation being subjective as well as objective, and poor human nature arguing that one may as well have the game as the name, sandy insensibly glided into habits of which the church would not have approved, though he took care that they should not interfere with his duties to mr. delamere. the consolation thus afforded, however, followed as it was by remorse of conscience, did not compensate him for the loss of standing in the church, which to him was a social club as well as a religious temple. at times, in conversation with young delamere, he would lament his hard fate. tom laughed until he cried at the comical idea which sandy's plaint always brought up, of half-a-dozen negro preachers sitting in solemn judgment upon that cakewalk,--it had certainly been a good cakewalk!--and sending poor sandy to spiritual coventry. "cheer up, sandy, cheer up!" he would say when sandy seemed most depressed. "go into my room and get yourself a good drink of liquor. the devil's church has a bigger congregation than theirs, and we have the consolation of knowing that when we die, we'll meet all our friends on the other side. brace up, sandy, and be a man, or, if you can't be a man, be as near a man as you can!" hoping to revive his drooping spirits, sandy too often accepted the proffered remedy. xiv the maunderings of old mrs. ochiltree when mrs. carteret had fully recovered from the shock attendant upon the accident at the window, where little dodie had so narrowly escaped death or serious injury, she ordered her carriage one afternoon and directed the coachman to drive her to mrs. ochiltree's. mrs. carteret had discharged her young nurse only the day before, and had sent for mammy jane, who was now recovered from her rheumatism, to stay until she could find another girl. the nurse had been ordered not to take the child to negroes' houses. yesterday, in driving past the old homestead of her husband's family, now occupied by dr. miller and his family, mrs. carteret had seen her own baby's carriage standing in the yard. when the nurse returned home, she was immediately discharged. she offered some sort of explanation, to the effect that her sister worked for mrs. miller, and that some family matter had rendered it necessary for her to see her sister. the explanation only aggravated the offense: if mrs. carteret could have overlooked the disobedience, she would by no means have retained in her employment a servant whose sister worked for the miller woman. old mrs. ochiltree had within a few months begun to show signs of breaking up. she was over seventy years old, and had been of late, by various afflictions, confined to the house much of the time. more than once within the year, mrs. carteret had asked her aunt to come and live with her; but mrs. ochiltree, who would have regarded such a step as an acknowledgment of weakness, preferred her lonely independence. she resided in a small, old-fashioned house, standing back in the middle of a garden on a quiet street. two old servants made up her modest household. this refusal to live with her niece had been lightly borne, for mrs. ochiltree was a woman of strong individuality, whose comments upon her acquaintance, present or absent, were marked by a frankness at times no less than startling. this characteristic caused her to be more or less avoided. mrs. ochiltree was aware of this sentiment on the part of her acquaintance, and rather exulted in it. she hated fools. only fools ran away from her, and that because they were afraid she would expose their folly. if most people were fools, it was no fault of hers, and she was not obliged to indulge them by pretending to believe that they knew anything. she had once owned considerable property, but was reticent about her affairs, and told no one how much she was worth, though it was supposed that she had considerable ready money, besides her house and some other real estate. mrs. carteret was her nearest living relative, though her grand-nephew tom delamere had been a great favorite with her. if she did not spare him her tongue-lashings, it was nevertheless expected in the family that she would leave him something handsome in her will. mrs. ochiltree had shared in the general rejoicing upon the advent of the carteret baby. she had been one of his godmothers, and had hinted at certain intentions held by her concerning him. during mammy jane's administration she had tried the old nurse's patience more or less by her dictatorial interference. since her partial confinement to the house, she had gone, when her health and the weather would permit, to see the child, and at other times had insisted that it be sent to her in charge of the nurse at least every other day. mrs. ochiltree's faculties had shared insensibly in the decline of her health. this weakness manifested itself by fits of absent-mindedness, in which she would seemingly lose connection with the present, and live over again, in imagination, the earlier years of her life. she had buried two husbands, had tried in vain to secure a third, and had never borne any children. long ago she had petrified into a character which nothing under heaven could change, and which, if death is to take us as it finds us, and the future life to keep us as it takes us, promised anything but eternal felicity to those with whom she might associate after this life. tom delamere had been heard to say, profanely, that if his aunt polly went to heaven, he would let his mansion in the skies on a long lease, at a low figure. when the carriage drove up with mrs. carteret, her aunt was seated on the little front piazza, with her wrinkled hands folded in her lap, dozing the afternoon away in fitful slumber. "tie the horse, william," said mrs. carteret, "and then go in and wake aunt polly, and tell her i want her to come and drive with me." mrs. ochiltree had not observed her niece's approach, nor did she look up when william drew near. her eyes were closed, and she would let her head sink slowly forward, recovering it now and then with a spasmodic jerk. "colonel ochiltree," she muttered, "was shot at the battle of culpepper court house, and left me a widow for the second time. but i would not have married any man on earth after him." "mis' ochiltree!" cried william, raising his voice, "oh, mis' ochiltree!" "if i had found a man,--a real man,--i might have married again. i did not care for weaklings. i could have married john delamere if i had wanted him. but pshaw! i could have wound him round"-- "go round to the kitchen, william," interrupted mrs. carteret impatiently, "and tell aunt dinah to come and wake her up." william returned in a few moments with a fat, comfortable looking black woman, who curtsied to mrs. carteret at the gate, and then going up to her mistress seized her by the shoulder and shook her vigorously. "wake up dere, mis' polly," she screamed, as harshly as her mellow voice would permit. "mis' 'livy wants you ter go drivin' wid 'er!" "dinah," exclaimed the old lady, sitting suddenly upright with a defiant assumption of wakefulness, "why do you take so long to come when i call? bring me my bonnet and shawl. don't you see my niece waiting for me at the gate?" "hyuh dey is, hyuh dey is!" returned dinah, producing the bonnet and shawl, and assisting mrs. ochiltree to put them on. leaning on william's arm, the old lady went slowly down the walk, and was handed to the rear seat with mrs. carteret. "how's the baby to-day, olivia, and why didn't you bring him?" "he has a cold to-day, and is a little hoarse," replied mrs. carteret, "so i thought it best not to bring him out. drive out the weldon road, william, and back by pine street." the drive led past an eminence crowned by a handsome brick building of modern construction, evidently an institution of some kind, surrounded on three sides by a grove of venerable oaks. "hugh poindexter," mrs. ochiltree exclaimed explosively, after a considerable silence, "has been building a new house, in place of the old family mansion burned during the war." "it isn't mr. poindexter's house, aunt polly. that is the new colored hospital built by the colored doctor." "the new colored hospital, indeed, and the colored doctor! before the war the negroes were all healthy, and when they got sick we took care of them ourselves! hugh poindexter has sold the graves of his ancestors to a negro,--i should have starved first!" "he had his grandfather's grave opened, and there was nothing to remove, except a few bits of heart-pine from the coffin. all the rest had crumbled into dust." "and he sold the dust to a negro! the world is upside down." "he had the tombstone transferred to the white cemetery, aunt polly, and he has moved away." "esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. when i die, if you outlive me, olivia, which is not likely, i shall leave my house and land to this child! he is a carteret,--he would never sell them to a negro. i can't trust tom delamere, i'm afraid." the carriage had skirted the hill, passing to the rear of the new building. "turn to the right, william," ordered mrs. carteret, addressing the coachman, "and come back past the other side of the hospital." a turn to the right into another road soon brought them to the front of the building, which stood slightly back from the street, with no intervening fence or inclosure. a sorrel pony in a light buggy was fastened to a hitching-post near the entrance. as they drove past, a lady came out of the front door and descended the steps, holding by the hand a very pretty child about six years old. "who is that woman, olivia?" asked mrs. ochiltree abruptly, with signs of agitation. the lady coming down the steps darted at the approaching carriage a look which lingered involuntarily. mrs. carteret, perceiving this glance, turned away coldly. with a sudden hardening of her own features the other woman lifted the little boy into the buggy and drove sharply away in the direction opposite to that taken by mrs. carteret's carriage. "who is that woman, olivia?" repeated mrs. ochiltree, with marked emotion. "i have not the honor of her acquaintance," returned mrs. carteret sharply. "drive faster, william." "i want to know who that woman is," persisted mrs. ochiltree querulously. "william," she cried shrilly, poking the coachman in the back with the end of her cane, "who is that woman?" "dat's mis' miller, ma'am," returned the coachman, touching his hat; "doctuh miller's wife." "what was her mother's name?" "her mother's name wuz julia brown. she's be'n dead dese twenty years er mo'. why, you knowed julia, mis' polly!--she used ter b'long ter yo' own father befo' de wah; an' after de wah she kep' house fer"-- "look to your horses, william!" exclaimed mrs. carteret sharply. "it's that hussy's child," said mrs. ochiltree, turning to her niece with great excitement. "when your father died, i turned the mother and the child out into the street. the mother died and went to--the place provided for such as she. if i hadn't been just in time, olivia, they would have turned you out. i saved the property for you and your son! you can thank me for it all!" "hush, aunt polly, for goodness' sake! william will hear you. tell me about it when you get home." mrs. ochiltree was silent, except for a few incoherent mumblings. what she might say, what distressing family secret she might repeat in william's hearing, should she take another talkative turn, was beyond conjecture. olivia looked anxiously around for something to distract her aunt's attention, and caught sight of a colored man, dressed in sober gray, who was coming toward the carriage. "there's mr. delamere's sandy!" exclaimed mrs. carteret, touching her aunt on the arm. "i wonder how his master is? sandy, oh, sandy!" sandy approached the carriage, lifting his hat with a slight exaggeration of chesterfieldian elegance. sandy, no less than his master, was a survival of an interesting type. he had inherited the feudal deference for his superiors in position, joined to a certain self-respect which saved him from sycophancy. his manners had been formed upon those of old mr. delamere, and were not a bad imitation; for in the man, as in the master, they were the harmonious reflection of a mental state. "how is mr. delamere, sandy?" asked mrs. carteret, acknowledging sandy's salutation with a nod and a smile. "he ain't ez peart ez he has be'n, ma'am," replied sandy, "but he's doin' tol'able well. de doctuh say he's good fer a dozen years yit, ef he'll jes' take good keer of hisse'f an' keep f'm gittin' excited; fer sence dat secon' stroke, excitement is dange'ous fer 'im." "i'm sure you take the best care of him," returned mrs. carteret kindly. "you can't do anything for him, sandy," interposed old mrs. ochiltree, shaking her head slowly to emphasize her dissent. "all the doctors in creation couldn't keep him alive another year. i shall outlive him by twenty years, though we are not far from the same age." "lawd, ma'am!" exclaimed sandy, lifting his hands in affected amazement,--his study of gentle manners had been more than superficial,--"whoever would 'a' s'picion' dat you an' mars john wuz nigh de same age? i'd 'a' 'lowed you wuz ten years younger 'n him, easy, ef you wuz a day!" "give my compliments to the poor old gentleman," returned mrs. ochiltree, with a simper of senile vanity, though her back was weakening under the strain of the effort to sit erect that she might maintain this illusion of comparative youthfulness. "bring him to see me some day when he is able to walk." "yas'm, i will," rejoined sandy. "he's gwine out ter belleview nex' week, fer ter stay a mont' er so, but i'll fetch him 'roun' w'en he comes back. i'll tell 'im dat you ladies 'quired fer 'im." sandy made another deep bow, and held his hat in his hand until the carriage had moved away. he had not condescended to notice the coachman at all, who was one of the young negroes of the new generation; while sandy regarded himself as belonging to the quality, and seldom stooped to notice those beneath him. it would not have been becoming in him, either, while conversing with white ladies, to have noticed a colored servant. moreover, the coachman was a baptist, while sandy was a methodist, though under a cloud, and considered a methodist in poor standing as better than a baptist of any degree of sanctity. "lawd, lawd!" chuckled sandy, after the carriage had departed, "i never seed nothin' lack de way dat ole lady do keep up her temper! wid one foot in de grave, an' de other hov'rin' on de edge, she talks 'bout my ole marster lack he wuz in his secon' chil'hood. but i'm jes' willin' ter bet dat he'll outlas' her! she ain't half de woman she wuz dat night i waited on de table at de christenin' pa'ty, w'en she 'lowed she wuzn' feared er no man livin'." xv mrs. carteret seeks an explanation as a stone dropped into a pool of water sets in motion a series of concentric circles which disturb the whole mass in varying degree, so mrs. ochiltree's enigmatical remark had started in her niece's mind a disturbing train of thought. had her words, mrs. carteret asked herself, any serious meaning, or were they the mere empty babblings of a clouded intellect? "william," she said to the coachman when they reached mrs. ochiltree's house, "you may tie the horse and help us out. i shall be here a little while." william helped the ladies down, assisted mrs. ochiltree into the house, and then went round to the kitchen. dinah was an excellent hand at potato-pone and other culinary delicacies dear to the southern heart, and william was a welcome visitor in her domain. "now, aunt polly," said mrs. carteret resolutely, as soon as they were alone, "i want to know what you meant by what you said about my father and julia, and this--this child of hers?" the old woman smiled cunningly, but her expression soon changed to one more grave. "why do you want to know?" she asked suspiciously. "you've got the land, the houses, and the money. you've nothing to complain of. enjoy yourself, and be thankful!" "i'm thankful to god," returned olivia, "for all his good gifts,--and he has blessed me abundantly,--but why should i be thankful to _you_ for the property my father left me?" "why should you be thankful to me?" rejoined mrs. ochiltree with querulous indignation. "you'd better ask why _shouldn't_ you be thankful to me. what have i not done for you?" "yes, aunt polly, i know you've done a great deal. you reared me in your own house when i had been cast out of my father's; you have been a second mother to me, and i am very grateful,--you can never say that i have not shown my gratitude. but if you have done anything else for me, i wish to know it. why should i thank you for my inheritance?" "why should you thank me? well, because i drove that woman and her brat away." "but she had no right to stay, aunt polly, after father died. of course she had no moral right before, but it was his house, and he could keep her there if he chose. but after his death she surely had no right." "perhaps not so surely as you think,--if she had not been a negro. had she been white, there might have been a difference. when i told her to go, she said"-- "what did she say, aunt polly," demanded olivia eagerly. it seemed for a moment as though mrs. ochiltree would speak no further: but her once strong will, now weakened by her bodily infirmities, yielded to the influence of her niece's imperious demand. "i'll tell you the whole story," she said, "and then you'll know what i did for you and yours." mrs. ochiltree's eyes assumed an introspective expression, and her story, as it advanced, became as keenly dramatic as though memory had thrown aside the veil of intervening years and carried her back directly to the events which she now described. "your father," she said, "while living with that woman, left home one morning the picture of health. five minutes later he tottered into the house groaning with pain, stricken unto death by the hand of a just god, as a punishment for his sins." olivia gave a start of indignation, but restrained herself. "i was at once informed of what had happened, for i had means of knowing all that took place in the household. old jane--she was younger then--had come with you to my house; but her daughter remained, and through her i learned all that went on. "i hastened immediately to the house, entered without knocking, and approached mr. merkell's bedroom, which was on the lower floor and opened into the hall. the door was ajar, and as i stood there for a moment i heard your father's voice. "'listen, julia,' he was saying. 'i shall not live until the doctor comes. but i wish you to know, dear julia!'--he called her 'dear julia!'--'before i die, that i have kept my promise. you did me one great service, julia,--you saved me from polly ochiltree!' yes, olivia, that is what he said! 'you have served me faithfully and well, and i owe you a great deal, which i have tried to pay.' "'oh, mr. merkell, dear mr. merkell,' cried the hypocritical hussy, falling to her knees by his bedside, and shedding her crocodile tears, 'you owe me nothing. you have done more for me than i could ever repay. you will not die and leave me,--no, no, it cannot be!' "'yes, i am going to die,--i am dying now, julia. but listen,--compose yourself and listen, for this is a more important matter. take the keys from under my pillow, open the desk in the next room, look in the second drawer on the right, and you will find an envelope containing three papers: one of them is yours, one is the paper i promised to make, and the third is a letter which i wrote last night. as soon as the breath has left my body, deliver the envelope to the address indorsed upon it. do not delay one moment, or you may live to regret it. say nothing until you have delivered the package, and then be guided by the advice which you receive,--it will come from a friend of mine who will not see you wronged.' "i slipped away from the door without making my presence known and entered, by a door from the hall, the room adjoining the one where mr. merkell lay. a moment later there was a loud scream. returning quickly to the hall, i entered mr. merkell's room as though just arrived. "'how is mr. merkell?' i demanded, as i crossed the threshold. "'he is dead,' sobbed the woman, without lifting her head,--she had fallen on her knees by the bedside. she had good cause to weep, for my time had come. "'get up,' i said. 'you have no right here. you pollute mr. merkell's dead body by your touch. leave the house immediately,--your day is over!' "'i will not!' she cried, rising to her feet and facing me with brazen-faced impudence. 'i have a right to stay,--he has given me the right!' "'ha, ha!' i laughed. 'mr. merkell is dead, and i am mistress here henceforth. go, and go at once,--do you hear?' "'i hear, but i shall not heed. i can prove my rights! i shall not leave!' "'very well,' i replied, 'we shall see. the law will decide.' "i left the room, but did not leave the house. on the contrary, i concealed myself where i could see what took place in the room adjoining the death-chamber. "she entered the room a moment later, with her child on one arm and the keys in the other hand. placing the child on the floor, she put the key in the lock, and seemed surprised to find the desk already unfastened. she opened the desk, picked up a roll of money and a ladies' watch, which first caught her eye, and was reaching toward the drawer upon the right, when i interrupted her:-- "'well, thief, are you trying to strip the house before you leave it?' "she gave an involuntary cry, clasped one hand to her bosom and with the other caught up her child, and stood like a wild beast at bay. "'i am not a thief,' she panted. 'the things are mine!' "'you lie,' i replied. 'you have no right to them,--no more right than you have to remain in this house!' "'i have a right,' she persisted, 'and i can prove it!' "she turned toward the desk, seized the drawer, and drew it open. never shall i forget her look,--never shall i forget that moment; it was the happiest of my life. the drawer was empty! "pale as death she turned and faced me. "'the papers!' she shrieked, 'the papers! _you_ have stolen them!' "'papers?' i laughed, 'what papers? do you take me for a thief, like yourself?' "'there were papers here,' she cried, 'only a minute since. they are mine,--give them back to me!' "'listen, woman,' i said sternly, 'you are lying--or dreaming. my brother-in-law's papers are doubtless in his safe at his office, where they ought to be. as for the rest,--you are a thief.' "'i am not,' she screamed; 'i am his wife. he married me, and the papers that were in the desk will prove it.' "'listen,' i exclaimed, when she had finished,--'listen carefully, and take heed to what i say. you are a liar. you have no proofs,--there never were any proofs of what you say, because it never happened,--it is absurd upon the face of it. not one person in wellington would believe it. why should he marry you? he did not need to! you are merely lying,--you are not even self-deceived. if he had really married you, you would have made it known long ago. that you did not is proof that your story is false.' "she was hit so hard that she trembled and sank into a chair. but i had no mercy--she had saved your father from _me_--'dear julia,' indeed! "'stand up,' i ordered. 'do not dare to sit down in my presence. i have you on the hip, my lady, and will teach you your place.' "she struggled to her feet, and stood supporting herself with one hand on the chair. i could have killed her, olivia! she had been my father's slave; if it had been before the war, i would have had her whipped to death. "'you are a thief,' i said, 'and of that there _are_ proofs. i have caught you in the act. the watch in your bosom is my own, the money belongs to mr. merkell's estate, which belongs to my niece, his daughter olivia. i saw you steal them. my word is worth yours a hundred times over, for i am a lady, and you are--what? and now hear me: if ever you breathe to a living soul one word of this preposterous story, i will charge you with the theft, and have you sent to the penitentiary. your child will be taken from you, and you shall never see it again. i will give you now just ten minutes to take your brat and your rags out of this house forever. but before you go, put down your plunder there upon the desk!' "she laid down the money and the watch, and a few minutes later left the house with the child in her arms. "and now, olivia, you know how i saved your estate, and why you should be grateful to me." olivia had listened to her aunt's story with intense interest. having perceived the old woman's mood, and fearful lest any interruption might break the flow of her narrative, she had with an effort kept back the one question which had been hovering upon her lips, but which could now no longer be withheld. "what became of the papers, aunt polly?" "ha, ha!" chuckled mrs. ochiltree with a cunning look, "did i not tell you that she found no papers?" a change had come over mrs. ochiltree's face, marking the reaction from her burst of energy. her eyes were half closed, and she was muttering incoherently. olivia made some slight effort to arouse her, but in vain, and realizing the futility of any further attempt to extract information from her aunt at this time, she called william and drove homeward. xvi ellis takes a trick late one afternoon a handsome trap, drawn by two spirited bays, drove up to carteret's gate. three places were taken by mrs. carteret, clara, and the major, leaving the fourth seat vacant. "i've asked ellis to drive out with us," said the major, as he took the lines from the colored man who had the trap in charge. "we'll go by the office and pick him up." clara frowned, but perceiving mrs. carteret's eye fixed upon her, restrained any further expression of annoyance. the major's liking for ellis had increased within the year. the young man was not only a good journalist, but possessed sufficient cleverness and tact to make him excellent company. the major was fond of argument, but extremely tenacious of his own opinions. ellis handled the foils of discussion with just the requisite skill to draw out the major, permitting himself to be vanquished, not too easily, but, as it were, inevitably, by the major's incontrovertible arguments. olivia had long suspected ellis of feeling a more than friendly interest in clara. herself partial to tom, she had more than once thought it hardly fair to delamere, or even to clara, who was young and impressionable, to have another young man constantly about the house. true, there had seemed to be no great danger, for ellis had neither the family nor the means to make him a suitable match for the major's sister; nor had clara made any secret of her dislike for ellis, or of her resentment for his supposed depreciation of delamere. mrs. carteret was inclined to a more just and reasonable view of ellis's conduct in this matter, but nevertheless did not deem it wise to undeceive clara. dislike was a stout barrier, which remorse might have broken down. the major, absorbed in schemes of empire and dreams of his child's future, had not become cognizant of the affair. his wife, out of friendship for tom, had refrained from mentioning it; while the major, with a delicate regard for clara's feelings, had said nothing at home in regard to his interview with her lover. at the chronicle office ellis took the front seat beside the major. after leaving the city pavements, they bowled along merrily over an excellent toll-road, built of oyster shells from the neighboring sound, stopping at intervals to pay toll to the gate-keepers, most of whom were white women with tallow complexions and snuff-stained lips,--the traditional "poor-white." for part of the way the road was bordered with a growth of scrub oak and pine, interspersed with stretches of cleared land, white with the opening cotton or yellow with ripening corn. to the right, along the distant river-bank, were visible here and there groups of turpentine pines, though most of this growth had for some years been exhausted. twenty years before, wellington had been the world's greatest shipping port for naval stores. but as the turpentine industry had moved southward, leaving a trail of devastated forests in its rear, the city had fallen to a poor fifth or sixth place in this trade, relying now almost entirely upon cotton for its export business. occasionally our party passed a person, or a group of persons,--mostly negroes approximating the pure type, for those of lighter color grew noticeably scarcer as the town was left behind. now and then one of these would salute the party respectfully, while others glanced at them indifferently or turned away. there would have seemed, to a stranger, a lack, of spontaneous friendliness between the people of these two races, as though each felt that it had no part or lot in the other's life. at one point the carriage drew near a party of colored folks who were laughing and jesting among themselves with great glee. paying no attention to the white people, they continued to laugh and shout boisterously as the carriage swept by. major carteret's countenance wore an angry look. "the negroes around this town are becoming absolutely insufferable," he averred. "they are sadly in need of a lesson in manners." half an hour later they neared another group, who were also making merry. as the carriage approached, they became mute and silent as the grave until the major's party had passed. "the negroes are a sullen race," remarked the major thoughtfully. "they will learn their lesson in a rude school, and perhaps much sooner than they dream. by the way," he added, turning to the ladies, "what was the arrangement with tom? was he to come out this evening?" "he came out early in the afternoon," replied clara, "to go a-fishing. he is to join us at the hotel." after an hour's drive they reached the hotel, in front of which stretched the beach, white and inviting, along the shallow sound. mrs. carteret and clara found seats on the veranda. having turned the trap over to a hostler, the major joined a group of gentlemen, among whom was general belmont, and was soon deep in the discussion of the standing problem of how best to keep the negroes down. ellis remained by the ladies. clara seemed restless and ill at ease. half an hour elapsed and delamere had not appeared. "i wonder where tom is," said mrs. carteret. "i guess he hasn't come in yet from fishing," said clara. "i wish he would come. it's lonesome here. mr. ellis, would you mind looking about the hotel and seeing if there's any one here that we know?" for ellis the party was already one too large. he had accepted this invitation eagerly, hoping to make friends with clara during the evening. he had never been able to learn definitely the reason of her coldness, but had dated it from his meeting with old mrs. ochiltree, with which he felt it was obscurely connected. he had noticed delamere's scowling look, too, at their last meeting. clara's injustice, whatever its cause, he felt keenly. to delamere's scowl he had paid little attention,--he despised tom so much that, but for his engagement to clara, he would have held his opinions in utter contempt. he had even wished that clara might make some charge against him,--he would have preferred that to her attitude of studied indifference, the only redeeming feature about which was that it _was_ studied, showing that she, at least, had him in mind. the next best thing, he reasoned, to having a woman love you, is to have her dislike you violently,--the main point is that you should be kept in mind, and made the subject of strong emotions. he thought of the story of hall caine's, where the woman, after years of persecution at the hands of an unwelcome suitor, is on the point of yielding, out of sheer irresistible admiration for the man's strength and persistency, when the lover, unaware of his victory and despairing of success, seizes her in his arms and, springing into the sea, finds a watery grave for both. the analogy of this case with his own was, of course, not strong. he did not anticipate any tragedy in their relations; but he was glad to be thought of upon almost any terms. he would not have done a mean thing to make her think of him; but if she did so because of a misconception, which he was given no opportunity to clear up, while at the same time his conscience absolved him from evil and gave him the compensating glow of martyrdom, it was at least better than nothing. he would, of course, have preferred to be upon a different footing. it had been a pleasure to have her speak to him during the drive,--they had exchanged a few trivial remarks in the general conversation. it was a greater pleasure to have her ask a favor of him,--a pleasure which, in this instance, was partly offset when he interpreted her request to mean that he was to look for tom delamere. he accepted the situation gracefully, however, and left the ladies alone. knowing delamere's habits, he first went directly to the bar-room,--the atmosphere would be congenial, even if he were not drinking. delamere was not there. stepping next into the office, he asked the clerk if young mr. delamere had been at the hotel. "yes, sir," returned the man at the desk, "he was here at luncheon, and then went out fishing in a boat with several other gentlemen. i think they came back about three o'clock. i'll find out for you." he rang the bell, to which a colored boy responded. "front," said the clerk, "see if young mr. delamere's upstairs. look in or , and let me know at once." the bell-boy returned in a moment. "yas, suh," he reported, with a suppressed grin, "he's in , suh. de do' was open, an' i seed 'im from de hall, suh." "i wish you'd go up and tell him," said ellis, "that--what are you grinning about?" he asked suddenly, noticing the waiter's expression. "nothin', suh, nothin' at all, suh," responded the negro, lapsing into the stolidity of a wooden indian. "what shall i tell mr. delamere, suh?" "tell him," resumed ellis, still watching the boy suspiciously,--"no, i'll tell him myself." he ascended the broad stair to the second floor. there was an upper balcony and a parlor, with a piano for the musically inclined. to reach these one had to pass along the hall upon which the room mentioned by the bell-boy opened. ellis was quite familiar with the hotel. he could imagine circumstances under which he would not care to speak to delamere; he would merely pass through the hall and glance into the room casually, as any one else might do, and see what the darky downstairs might have meant by his impudence. it required but a moment to reach the room. the door was not wide open, but far enough ajar for him to see what was going on within. two young men, members of the fast set at the clarendon club, were playing cards at a small table, near which stood another, decorated with an array of empty bottles and glasses. sprawling on a lounge, with flushed face and disheveled hair, his collar unfastened, his vest buttoned awry, lay tom delamere, breathing stertorously, in what seemed a drunken sleep. lest there should be any doubt of the cause of his condition, the fingers of his right hand had remained clasped mechanically around the neck of a bottle which lay across his bosom. ellis turned away in disgust, and went slowly back to the ladies. "there seems to be no one here yet," he reported. "we came a little early for the evening crowd. the clerk says tom delamere was here to luncheon, but he hasn't seen him for several hours." "he's not a very gallant cavalier," said mrs. carteret severely. "he ought to have been waiting for us." clara was clearly disappointed, and made no effort to conceal her displeasure, leaving ellis in doubt as to whether or not he were its object. perhaps she suspected him of not having made a very thorough search. her next remark might have borne such a construction. "sister olivia," she said pettishly, "let's go up to the parlor. i can play the piano anyway, if there's no one to talk to." "i find it very comfortable here, clara," replied her sister placidly. "mr. ellis will go with you. you'll probably find some one in the parlor, or they'll come when you begin to play." clara's expression was not cordial, but she rose as if to go. ellis was in a quandary. if she went through the hall, the chances were at least even that she would see delamere. he did not care a rap for delamere,--if he chose to make a public exhibition of himself, it was his own affair; but to see him would surely spoil miss pemberton's evening, and, in her frame of mind, might lead to the suspicion that ellis had prearranged the exposure. even if she should not harbor this unjust thought, she would not love the witness of her discomfiture. we had rather not meet the persons who have seen, even though they never mention, the skeletons in our closets. delamere had disposed of himself for the evening. ellis would have a fairer field with delamere out of sight and unaccounted for, than with delamere in evidence in his present condition. "wouldn't you rather take a stroll on the beach, miss clara?" he asked, in the hope of creating a diversion. "no, i'm going to the parlor. _you_ needn't come, mr. ellis, if you'd rather go down to the beach. i can quite as well go alone." "i'd rather go with you," he said meekly. they were moving toward the door opening into the hall, from which the broad staircase ascended. ellis, whose thoughts did not always respond quickly to a sudden emergency, was puzzling his brain as to how he should save her from any risk of seeing delamere. through the side door leading from the hall into the office, he saw the bell-boy to whom he had spoken seated on the bench provided for the servants. "won't you wait for me just a moment, miss clara, while i step into the office? i'll be with you in an instant." clara hesitated. "oh, certainly," she replied nonchalantly. ellis went direct to the bell-boy. "sit right where you are," he said, "and don't move a hair. what is the lady in the hall doing?" "she's got her back tu'ned this way, suh. i 'spec' she's lookin' at the picture on the opposite wall, suh." "all right," whispered ellis, pressing a coin into the servant's hand. "i'm going up to the parlor with the lady. you go up ahead of us, and keep in front of us along the hall. don't dare to look back. i shall keep on talking to the lady, so that you can tell by my voice where we are. when you get to room , go in and shut the door behind you: pretend that you were called,--ask the gentlemen what they want,--tell any kind of a lie you like,--but keep the door shut until you're sure we've got by. do you hear?" "yes, suh," replied the negro intelligently. the plan worked without a hitch. ellis talked steadily, about the hotel, the furnishings, all sorts of irrelevant subjects, to which miss pemberton paid little attention. she was angry with delamere, and took no pains to conceal her feelings. the bell-boy entered room just before they reached the door. ellis had heard loud talking as they approached, and as they were passing there was a crash of broken glass, as though some object had been thrown at the door. "what is the matter there?" exclaimed clara, quickening her footsteps and instinctively drawing closer to ellis. "some one dropped a glass, i presume," replied ellis calmly. miss pemberton glanced at him suspiciously. she was in a decidedly perverse mood. seating herself at the piano, she played brilliantly for a quarter of an hour. quite a number of couples strolled up to the parlor, but delamere was not among them. "oh dear!" exclaimed miss pemberton, as she let her fingers fall upon the keys with a discordant crash, after the last note, "i don't see why we came out here to-night. let's go back downstairs." ellis felt despondent. he had done his utmost to serve and to please miss pemberton, but was not likely, he foresaw, to derive much benefit from his opportunity. delamere was evidently as much or more in her thoughts by reason of his absence than if he had been present. if the door should have been opened, and she should see him from the hall upon their return, ellis could not help it. he took the side next to the door, however, meaning to hurry past the room so that she might not recognize delamere. fortunately the door was closed and all quiet within the room. on the stairway they met the bellboy, rubbing his head with one hand and holding a bottle of seltzer upon a tray in the other. the boy was well enough trained to give no sign of recognition, though ellis guessed the destination of the bottle. ellis hardly knew whether to feel pleased or disappointed at the success of his manoeuvres. he had spared miss pemberton some mortification, but he had saved tom delamere from merited exposure. clara ought to know the truth, for her own sake. on the beach, a few rods away, fires were burning, around which several merry groups had gathered. the smoke went mostly to one side, but a slight whiff came now and then to where mrs. carteret sat awaiting them. "they're roasting oysters," said mrs. carteret. "i wish you'd bring me some, mr. ellis." ellis strolled down to the beach. a large iron plate, with a turned-up rim like a great baking-pan, supported by legs which held it off the ground, was set over a fire built upon the sand. this primitive oven was heaped with small oysters in the shell, taken from the neighboring sound, and hauled up to the hotel by a negro whose pony cart stood near by. a wet coffee-sack of burlaps was spread over the oysters, which, when steamed sufficiently, were opened by a colored man and served gratis to all who cared for them. ellis secured a couple of plates of oysters, which he brought to mrs. carteret and clara; they were small, but finely flavored. meanwhile delamere, who possessed a remarkable faculty of recuperation from the effects of drink, had waked from his sleep, and remembering his engagement, had exerted himself to overcome the ravages of the afternoon's debauch. a dash of cold water braced him up somewhat. a bottle of seltzer and a big cup of strong coffee still further strengthened his nerves. when ellis returned to the veranda, after having taken away the plates, delamere had joined the ladies and was explaining the cause of his absence. he had been overcome by the heat, he said, while out fishing, and had been lying down ever since. perhaps he ought to have sent for a doctor, but the fellows had looked after him. he hadn't sent word to his friends because he hadn't wished to spoil their evening. "that was very considerate of you, tom," said mrs. carteret dryly, "but you ought to have let us know. we have been worrying about you very much. clara has found the evening dreadfully dull." "indeed, no, sister olivia," said the young lady cheerfully, "i've been having a lovely time. mr. ellis and i have been up in the parlor; i played the piano; and we've been eating oysters and having a most delightful time. won't you take me down there to the beach, mr. ellis? i want to see the fires. come on." "can't i go?" asked tom jealously. "no, indeed, you mustn't stir a foot! you must not overtax yourself so soon; it might do you serious injury. stay here with sister olivia." she took ellis's arm with exaggerated cordiality. delamere glared after them angrily. ellis did not stop to question her motives, but took the goods the gods provided. with no very great apparent effort, miss pemberton became quite friendly, and they strolled along the beach, in sight of the hotel, for nearly half an hour. as they were coming up she asked him abruptly,-- "mr. ellis, did you know tom was in the hotel?" ellis was looking across the sound, at the lights of a distant steamer which was making her way toward the harbor. "i wonder," he said musingly, as though he had not heard her question, "if that is the ocean belle?" "and was he really sick?" she demanded. "she's later than usual this trip," continued ellis, pursuing his thought. "she was due about five o'clock." miss pemberton, under cover of the darkness, smiled a fine smile, which foreboded ill for some one. when they joined the party on the piazza, the major had come up and was saying that it was time to go. he had been engaged in conversation, for most of the evening, with general belmont and several other gentlemen. "here comes the general now. let me see. there are five of us. the general has offered me a seat in his buggy, and tom can go with you-all." the general came up and spoke to the ladies. tom murmured his thanks; it would enable him to make up a part of the delightful evening he had missed. when mrs. carteret had taken the rear seat, clara promptly took the place beside her. ellis and delamere sat in front. when delamere, who had offered to drive, took the reins, ellis saw that his hands were shaking. "give me the lines," he whispered. "your nerves are unsteady and the road is not well lighted." delamere prudently yielded the reins. he did not like ellis's tone, which seemed sneering rather than expressive of sympathy with one who had been suffering. he wondered if the beggar knew anything about his illness. clara had been acting strangely. it would have been just like ellis to have slandered him. the upstart had no business with clara anyway. he would cheerfully have strangled ellis, if he could have done so with safety to himself and no chance of discovery. the drive homeward through the night was almost a silent journey. mrs. carteret was anxious about her baby. clara did not speak, except now and then to ellis with reference to some object in or near the road. occasionally they passed a vehicle in the darkness, sometimes barely avoiding a collision. far to the north the sky was lit up with the glow of a forest fire. the breeze from the sound was deliciously cool. soon the last toll-gate was passed and the lights of the town appeared. ellis threw the lines to william, who was waiting, and hastened to help the ladies out. "good-night, mr. ellis," said clara sweetly, as she gave ellis her hand. "thank you for a very pleasant evening. come up and see us soon." she ran into the house without a word to tom. xvii the social aspirations of captain mcbane it was only eleven o'clock, and delamere, not being at all sleepy, and feeling somewhat out of sorts as the combined results of his afternoon's debauch and the snubbing he had received at clara's hands, directed the major's coachman, who had taken charge of the trap upon its arrival, to drive him to the st. james hotel before returning the horses to the stable. first, however, the coachman left ellis at his boarding-house, which was near by. the two young men parted with as scant courtesy as was possible without an open rupture. delamere hoped to find at the hotel some form of distraction to fill in an hour or two before going home. ill fortune favored him by placing in his way the burly form of captain george mcbane, who was sitting in an armchair alone, smoking a midnight cigar, under the hotel balcony. upon delamere's making known his desire for amusement, the captain proposed a small game of poker in his own room. mcbane had been waiting for some such convenient opportunity. we have already seen that the captain was desirous of social recognition, which he had not yet obtained beyond the superficial acquaintance acquired by association with men about town. he had determined to assault society in its citadel by seeking membership in the clarendon club, of which most gentlemen of the best families of the city were members. the clarendon club was a historic institution, and its membership a social cult, the temple of which was located just off the main street of the city, in a dignified old colonial mansion which had housed it for the nearly one hundred years during which it had maintained its existence unbroken. there had grown up around it many traditions and special usages. membership in the clarendon was the _sine qua non_ of high social standing, and was conditional upon two of three things,--birth, wealth, and breeding. breeding was the prime essential, but, with rare exceptions, must be backed by either birth or money. having decided, therefore, to seek admission into this social arcanum, the captain, who had either not quite appreciated the standard of the clarendon's membership, or had failed to see that he fell beneath it, looked about for an intermediary through whom to approach the object of his desire. he had already thought of tom delamere in this connection, having with him such an acquaintance as one forms around a hotel, and having long ago discovered that delamere was a young man of superficially amiable disposition, vicious instincts, lax principles, and a weak will, and, which was quite as much to the purpose, a member of the clarendon club. possessing mental characteristics almost entirely opposite, delamere and the captain had certain tastes in common, and had smoked, drunk, and played cards together more than once. still more to his purpose, mcbane had detected delamere trying to cheat him at cards. he had said nothing about this discovery, but had merely noted it as something which at some future time might prove useful. the captain had not suffered by delamere's deviation from the straight line of honor, for while tom was as clever with the cards as might be expected of a young man who had devoted most of his leisure for several years to handling them, mcbane was past master in their manipulation. during a stormy career he had touched more or less pitch, and had escaped few sorts of defilement. the appearance of delamere at a late hour, unaccompanied, and wearing upon his countenance an expression in which the captain read aright the craving for mental and physical excitement, gave him the opportunity for which he had been looking. mcbane was not the man to lose an opportunity, nor did delamere require a second invitation. neither was it necessary, during the progress of the game, for the captain to press upon his guest the contents of the decanter which stood upon the table within convenient reach. the captain permitted delamere to win from him several small amounts, after which he gradually increased the stakes and turned the tables. delamere, with every instinct of a gamester, was no more a match for mcbane in self-control than in skill. when the young man had lost all his money, the captain expressed his entire willingness to accept notes of hand, for which he happened to have convenient blanks in his apartment. when delamere, flushed with excitement and wine, rose from the gaming table at two o'clock, he was vaguely conscious that he owed mcbane a considerable sum, but could not have stated how much. his opponent, who was entirely cool and collected, ran his eye carelessly over the bits of paper to which delamere had attached his signature. "just one thousand dollars even," he remarked. the announcement of this total had as sobering an effect upon delamere as though he had been suddenly deluged with a shower of cold water. for a moment he caught his breath. he had not a dollar in the world with which to pay this sum. his only source of income was an allowance from his grandfather, the monthly installment of which, drawn that very day, he had just lost to mcbane, before starting in upon the notes of hand. "i'll give you your revenge another time," said mcbane, as they rose. "luck is against you to-night, and i'm unwilling to take advantage of a clever young fellow like you. meantime," he added, tossing the notes of hand carelessly on a bureau, "don't worry about these bits of paper. such small matters shouldn't cut any figure between friends; but if you are around the hotel to-morrow, i should like to speak to you upon another subject." "very well, captain," returned tom somewhat ungraciously. delamere had been completely beaten with his own weapons. he had tried desperately to cheat mcbane. he knew perfectly well that mcbane had discovered his efforts and had cheated him in turn, for the captain's play had clearly been gauged to meet his own. the biter had been bit, and could not complain of the outcome. the following afternoon mcbane met delamere at the hotel, and bluntly requested the latter to propose him for membership in the clarendon club. delamere was annoyed at this request. his aristocratic gorge rose at the presumption of this son of an overseer and ex-driver of convicts. mcbane was good enough to win money from, or even to lose money to, but not good enough to be recognized as a social equal. he would instinctively have blackballed mcbane had he been proposed by some one else; with what grace could he put himself forward as the sponsor for this impossible social aspirant? moreover, it was clearly a vulgar, cold-blooded attempt on mcbane's part to use his power over him for a personal advantage. "well, now, captain mcbane," returned delamere diplomatically, "i've never put any one up yet, and it's not regarded as good form for so young a member as myself to propose candidates. i'd much rather you'd ask some older man." "oh, well," replied mcbane, "just as you say, only i thought you had cut your eye teeth." delamere was not pleased with mcbane's tone. his remark was not acquiescent, though couched in terms of assent. there was a sneering savagery about it, too, that left delamere uneasy. he was, in a measure, in mcbane's power. he could not pay the thousand dollars, unless it fell from heaven, or he could win it from some one else. he would not dare go to his grandfather for help. mr. delamere did not even know that his grandson gambled. he might not have objected, perhaps, to a gentleman's game, with moderate stakes, but he would certainly, tom knew very well, have looked upon a thousand dollars as a preposterous sum to be lost at cards by a man who had nothing with which to pay it. it was part of mr. delamere's creed that a gentleman should not make debts that he was not reasonably able to pay. there was still another difficulty. if he had lost the money to a gentleman, and it had been his first serious departure from mr. delamere's perfectly well understood standard of honor, tom might have risked a confession and thrown himself on his grandfather's mercy; but he owed other sums here and there, which, to his just now much disturbed imagination, loomed up in alarming number and amount. he had recently observed signs of coldness, too, on the part of certain members of the club. moreover, like most men with one commanding vice, he was addicted to several subsidiary forms of iniquity, which in case of a scandal were more than likely to come to light. he was clearly and most disagreeably caught in the net of his own hypocrisy. his grandfather believed him a model of integrity, a pattern of honor; he could not afford to have his grandfather undeceived. he thought of old mrs. ochiltree. if she were a liberal soul, she could give him a thousand dollars now, when he needed it, instead of making him wait until she died, which might not be for ten years or more, for a legacy which was steadily growing less and might be entirely exhausted if she lived long enough,--some old people were very tenacious of life! she was a careless old woman, too, he reflected, and very foolishly kept her money in the house. latterly she had been growing weak and childish. some day she might be robbed, and then his prospective inheritance from that source would vanish into thin air! with regard to this debt to mcbane, if he could not pay it, he could at least gain a long respite by proposing the captain at the club. true, he would undoubtedly be blackballed, but before this inevitable event his name must remain posted for several weeks, during which interval mcbane would be conciliatory. on the other hand, to propose mcbane would arouse suspicion of his own motives; it might reach his grandfather's ears, and lead to a demand for an explanation, which it would be difficult to make. clearly, the better plan would be to temporize with mcbane, with the hope that something might intervene to remove this cursed obligation. "suppose, captain," he said affably, "we leave the matter open for a few days. this is a thing that can't be rushed. i'll feel the pulse of my friends and yours, and when we get the lay of the land, the affair can be accomplished much more easily." "well, that's better," returned mcbane, somewhat mollified,--"if you'll do that." "to be sure i will," replied tom easily, too much relieved to resent, if not too preoccupied to perceive, the implied doubt of his veracity. mcbane ordered and paid for more drinks, and they parted on amicable terms. "we'll let these notes stand for the time being, tom," said mcbane, with significant emphasis, when they separated. delamere winced at the familiarity. he had reached that degree of moral deterioration where, while principles were of little moment, the externals of social intercourse possessed an exaggerated importance. mcbane had never before been so personal. he had addressed the young aristocrat first as "mr. delamere," then, as their acquaintance advanced, as "delamere." he had now reached the abbreviated christian name stage of familiarity. there was no lower depth to which tom could sink, unless mcbane should invent a nickname by which to address him. he did not like mcbane's manner,--it was characterized by a veiled insolence which was exceedingly offensive. he would go over to the club and try his luck with some honest player,--perhaps something might turn up to relieve him from his embarrassment. he put his hand in his pocket mechanically,--and found it empty! in the present state of his credit, he could hardly play without money. a thought struck him. leaving the hotel, he hastened home, where he found sandy dusting his famous suit of clothes on the back piazza. mr. delamere was not at home, having departed for belleview about two o'clock, leaving sandy to follow him in the morning. "hello, sandy," exclaimed tom, with an assumed jocularity which he was very far from feeling, "what are you doing with those gorgeous garments?" "i'm a-dustin' of 'em, mistuh tom, dat's w'at i'm a-doin'. dere's somethin' wrong 'bout dese clo's er mine--i don' never seem ter be able ter keep 'em clean no mo'. ef i b'lieved in dem ole-timey sayin's, i'd 'low dere wuz a witch come here eve'y night an' tuk 'em out an' wo' 'em, er tuk me out an' rid me in 'em. dere wuz somethin' wrong 'bout dat cakewalk business, too, dat i ain' never unde'stood an' don' know how ter 'count fer, 'less dere wuz some kin' er dev'lishness goin' on dat don' show on de su'face." "sandy," asked tom irrelevantly, "have you any money in the house?" "yas, suh, i got de money mars john give me ter git dem things ter take out ter belleview in de mawnin." "i mean money of your own." "i got a qua'ter ter buy terbacker wid," returned sandy cautiously. "is that all? haven't you some saved up?" "well, yas, mistuh tom," returned sandy, with evident reluctance, "dere's a few dollahs put away in my bureau drawer fer a rainy day,--not much, suh." "i'm a little short this afternoon, sandy, and need some money right away. grandfather isn't here, so i can't get any from him. let me take what you have for a day or two, sandy, and i'll return it with good interest." "now, mistuh tom," said sandy seriously, "i don' min' lettin' you take my money, but i hopes you ain' gwine ter use it fer none er dem rakehelly gwines-on er yo'n,--gamblin' an' bettin' an' so fo'th. yo' grandaddy 'll fin' out 'bout you yit, ef you don' min' yo' p's an' q's. i does my bes' ter keep yo' misdoin's f'm 'im, an' sense i b'en tu'ned out er de chu'ch--thoo no fault er my own, god knows!--i've tol' lies 'nuff 'bout you ter sink a ship. but it ain't right, mistuh tom, it ain't right! an' i only does it fer de sake er de fam'ly honuh, dat mars john sets so much sto' by, an' ter save his feelin's; fer de doctuh says he mus'n' git ixcited 'bout nothin', er it mought bring on another stroke." "that's right, sandy," replied tom approvingly; "but the family honor is as safe in my hands as in grandfather's own, and i'm going to use the money for an excellent purpose, in fact to relieve a case of genuine distress; and i'll hand it back to you in a day or two,--perhaps to-morrow. fetch me the money, sandy,--that's a good darky!" "all right, mistuh tom, you shill have de money; but i wants ter tell you, suh, dat in all de yeahs i has wo'ked fer yo' gran'daddy, he has never called me a 'darky' ter my face, suh. co'se i knows dere's w'ite folks an' black folks,--but dere's manners, suh, dere's manners, an' gent'emen oughter be de ones ter use 'em, suh, ef dey ain't ter be fergot enti'ely!" "there, there, sandy," returned tom in a conciliatory tone, "i beg your pardon! i've been associating with some northern white folks at the hotel, and picked up the word from them. you're a high-toned colored gentleman, sandy,--the finest one on the footstool." still muttering to himself, sandy retired to his own room, which was in the house, so that he might be always near his master. he soon returned with a time-stained leather pocket-book and a coarse-knit cotton sock, from which two receptacles he painfully extracted a number of bills and coins. "you count dat, mistuh tom, so i'll know how much i'm lettin' you have." "this isn't worth anything," said tom, pushing aside one roll of bills. "it's confederate money." "so it is, suh. it ain't wuth nothin' now; but it has be'n money, an' who kin tell but what it mought be money agin? de rest er dem bills is greenbacks,--dey'll pass all right, i reckon." the good money amounted to about fifty dollars, which delamere thrust eagerly into his pocket. "you won't say anything to grandfather about this, will you, sandy," he said, as he turned away. "no, suh, co'se i won't! does i ever tell 'im 'bout yo' gwines-on? ef i did," he added to himself, as the young man disappeared down the street, "i wouldn' have time ter do nothin' e'se ha'dly. i don' know whether i'll ever see dat money agin er no, do' i 'magine de ole gent'eman wouldn' lemme lose it ef he knowed. but i ain' gwine ter tell him, whether i git my money back er no, fer he is jes' so wrop' up in dat boy dat i b'lieve it'd jes' break his hea't ter fin' out how he's be'n gwine on. doctuh price has tol' me not ter let de ole gent'eman git ixcited, er e'se dere's no tellin' w'at mought happen. he's be'n good ter me, he has, an' i'm gwine ter take keer er him,--dat's w'at i is, ez long ez i has de chance." * * * * * delamere went directly to the club, and soon lounged into the card-room, where several of the members were engaged in play. he sauntered here and there, too much absorbed in his own thoughts to notice that the greetings he received were less cordial than those usually exchanged between the members of a small and select social club. finally, when augustus, commonly and more appropriately called "gus," davidson came into the room, tom stepped toward him. "will you take a hand in a game, gus?" "don't care if i do," said the other. "let's sit over here." davidson led the way to a table near the fireplace, near which stood a tall screen, which at times occupied various places in the room. davidson took the seat opposite the fireplace, leaving delamere with his back to the screen. delamere staked half of sandy's money, and lost. he staked the rest, and determined to win, because he could not afford to lose. he had just reached out his hand to gather in the stakes, when he was charged with cheating at cards, of which two members, who had quietly entered the room and posted themselves behind the screen, had secured specific proof. a meeting of the membership committee was hastily summoned, it being an hour at which most of them might be found at the club. to avoid a scandal, and to save the feelings of a prominent family, delamere was given an opportunity to resign quietly from the club, on condition that he paid all his gambling debts within three days, and took an oath never to play cards again for money. this latter condition was made at the suggestion of an elderly member, who apparently believed that a man who would cheat at cards would stick at perjury. delamere acquiesced very promptly. the taking of the oath was easy. the payment of some fifteen hundred dollars of debts was a different matter. he went away from the club thoughtfully, and it may be said, in full justice to a past which was far from immaculate, that in his present thoughts he touched a depth of scoundrelism far beyond anything of which he had as yet deemed himself capable. when a man of good position, of whom much is expected, takes to evil courses, his progress is apt to resemble that of a well-bred woman who has started on the downward path,--the pace is all the swifter because of the distance which must be traversed to reach the bottom. delamere had made rapid headway; having hitherto played with sin, his servant had now become his master, and held him in an iron grip. xviii sandy sees his own ha'nt having finished cleaning his clothes, sandy went out to the kitchen for supper, after which he found himself with nothing to do. mr. delamere's absence relieved him from attendance at the house during the evening. he might have smoked his pipe tranquilly in the kitchen until bedtime, had not the cook intimated, rather pointedly, that she expected other company. to a man of sandy's tact a word was sufficient, and he resigned himself to seeking companionship elsewhere. under normal circumstances, sandy would have attended prayer-meeting on this particular evening of the week; but being still in contumacy, and cherishing what he considered the just resentment of a man falsely accused, he stifled the inclination which by long habit led him toward the church, and set out for the house of a friend with whom it occurred to him that he might spend the evening pleasantly. unfortunately, his friend proved to be not at home, so sandy turned his footsteps toward the lower part of the town, where the streets were well lighted, and on pleasant evenings quite animated. on the way he met josh green, whom he had known for many years, though their paths did not often cross. in his loneliness sandy accepted an invitation to go with josh and have a drink,--a single drink. when sandy was going home about eleven o'clock, three sheets in the wind, such was the potent effect of the single drink and those which had followed it, he was scared almost into soberness by a remarkable apparition. as it seemed to sandy, he saw himself hurrying along in front of himself toward the house. possibly the muddled condition of sandy's intellect had so affected his judgment as to vitiate any conclusion he might draw, but sandy was quite sober enough to perceive that the figure ahead of him wore his best clothes and looked exactly like him, but seemed to be in something more of a hurry, a discrepancy which sandy at once corrected by quickening his own pace so as to maintain as nearly as possible an equal distance between himself and his double. the situation was certainly an incomprehensible one, and savored of the supernatural. "ef dat's me gwine 'long in front," mused sandy, in vinous perplexity, "den who is dis behin' here? dere ain' but one er me, an' my ha'nt wouldn' leave my body 'tel i wuz dead. ef dat's me in front, den i mus' be my own ha'nt; an' whichever one of us is de ha'nt, de yuther must be dead an' don' know it. i don' know what ter make er no sech gwines-on, i don't. maybe it ain' me after all, but it certainly do look lack me." when the apparition disappeared in the house by the side door, sandy stood in the yard for several minutes, under the shade of an elm-tree, before he could make up his mind to enter the house. he took courage, however, upon the reflection that perhaps, after all, it was only the bad liquor he had drunk. bad liquor often made people see double. he entered the house. it was dark, except for a light in tom delamere's room. sandy tapped softly at the door. "who's there?" came delamere's voice, in a somewhat startled tone, after a momentary silence. "it's me, suh; sandy." they both spoke softly. it was the rule of the house when mr. delamere had retired, and though he was not at home, habit held its wonted sway. "just a moment, sandy." sandy waited patiently in the hall until the door was opened. if the room showed any signs of haste or disorder, sandy was too full of his own thoughts--and other things--to notice them. "what do you want, sandy," asked tom. "mistuh tom," asked sandy solemnly, "ef i wuz in yo' place, an' you wuz in my place, an' we wuz bofe in de same place, whar would i be?" tom looked at sandy keenly, with a touch of apprehension. did sandy mean anything in particular by this enigmatical inquiry, and if so, what? but sandy's face clearly indicated a state of mind in which consecutive thought was improbable; and after a brief glance delamere breathed more freely. "i give it up, sandy," he responded lightly. "that's too deep for me." "'scuse me, mistuh tom, but is you heared er seed anybody er anything come in de house fer de las' ten minutes?" "why, no, sandy, i haven't heard any one. i came from the club an hour ago. i had forgotten my key, and sally got up and let me in, and then went back to bed. i've been sitting here reading ever since. i should have heard any one who came in." "mistuh tom," inquired sandy anxiously, "would you 'low dat i'd be'n drinkin' too much?" "no, sandy, i should say you were sober enough, though of course you may have had a few drinks. perhaps you'd like another? i've got something good here." "no, suh, mistuh tom, no, suh! no mo' liquor fer me, suh, never! when liquor kin make a man see his own ha'nt, it's 'bout time fer dat man ter quit drinkin', it sho' is! good-night, mistuh tom." as sandy turned to go, delamere was struck by a sudden and daring thought. the creature of impulse, he acted upon it immediately. "by the way, sandy," he exclaimed carelessly, "i can pay you back that money you were good enough to lend me this afternoon. i think i'll sleep better if i have the debt off my mind, and i shouldn't wonder if you would. you don't mind having it in gold, do you?" "no, indeed, suh," replied sandy. "i ain' seen no gol' fer so long dat de sight er it'd be good fer my eyes." tom counted out ten five-dollar gold pieces upon the table at his elbow. "and here's another, sandy," he said, adding an eleventh, "as interest for the use of it." "thank y', mistuh tom. i didn't spec' no in-trus', but i don' never 'fuse gol' w'en i kin git it." "and here," added delamere, reaching carelessly into a bureau drawer, "is a little old silk purse that i've had since i was a boy. i'll put the gold in it, sandy; it will hold it very nicely." "thank y', mistuh tom. you're a gentleman, suh, an' wo'thy er de fam'ly name. good-night, suh, an' i hope yo' dreams 'll be pleasanter 'n' mine. ef it wa'n't fer dis gol' kinder takin' my min' off'n dat ha'nt, i don' s'pose i'd be able to do much sleepin' ter-night. good-night, suh." "good-night, sandy." whether or not delamere slept soundly, or was troubled by dreams, pleasant or unpleasant, it is nevertheless true that he locked his door, and sat up an hour later, looking through the drawers of his bureau, and burning several articles in the little iron stove which constituted part of the bedroom furniture. it is also true that he rose very early, before the household was stirring. the cook slept in a room off the kitchen, which was in an outhouse in the back yard. she was just stretching herself, preparatory to getting up, when tom came to her window and said that he was going off fishing, to be gone all day, and that he would not wait for breakfast. xix a midnight walk ellis left the office of the morning chronicle about eleven o'clock the same evening and set out to walk home. his boarding-house was only a short distance beyond old mr. delamere's residence, and while he might have saved time and labor by a slightly shorter route, he generally selected this one because it led also by major carteret's house. sometimes there would be a ray of light from clara's room, which was on one of the front corners; and at any rate he would have the pleasure of gazing at the outside of the casket that enshrined the jewel of his heart. it was true that this purely sentimental pleasure was sometimes dashed with bitterness at the thought of his rival; but one in love must take the bitter with the sweet, and who would say that a spice of jealousy does not add a certain zest to love? on this particular evening, however, he was in a hopeful mood. at the clarendon club, where he had gone, a couple of hours before, to verify a certain news item for the morning paper, he had heard a story about tom delamere which, he imagined, would spike that gentleman's guns for all time, so far as miss pemberton was concerned. so grave an affair as cheating at cards could never be kept secret,--it was certain to reach her ears; and ellis was morally certain that clara would never marry a man who had been proved dishonorable. in all probability there would be no great sensation about the matter. delamere was too well connected; too many prominent people would be involved--even clara, and the editor himself, of whom delamere was a distant cousin. the reputation of the club was also to be considered. ellis was not the man to feel a malicious delight in the misfortunes of another, nor was he a pessimist who welcomed scandal and disgrace with open arms, as confirming a gloomy theory of human life. but, with the best intentions in the world, it was no more than human nature that he should feel a certain elation in the thought that his rival had been practically disposed of, and the field left clear; especially since this good situation had been brought about merely by the unmasking of a hypocrite, who had held him at an unfair disadvantage in the race for clara's favor. the night was quiet, except for the faint sound of distant music now and then, or the mellow laughter of some group of revelers. ellis met but few pedestrians, but as he neared old mr. delamere's, he saw two men walking in the same direction as his own, on the opposite side of the street. he had observed that they kept at about an equal distance apart, and that the second, from the stealthy manner in which he was making his way, was anxious to keep the first in sight, without disclosing his own presence. this aroused ellis's curiosity, which was satisfied in some degree when the man in advance stopped beneath a lamp-post and stood for a moment looking across the street, with his face plainly visible in the yellow circle of light. it was a dark face, and ellis recognized it instantly as that of old mr. delamere's body servant, whose personal appearance had been very vividly impressed upon ellis at the christening dinner at major carteret's. he had seen sandy once since, too, at the hotel cakewalk. the negro had a small bundle in his hand, the nature of which ellis could not make out. when sandy had stopped beneath the lamp-post, the man who was following him had dodged behind a tree-trunk. when sandy moved on, ellis, who had stopped in turn, saw the man in hiding come out and follow sandy. when this second man came in range of the light, ellis wondered that there should be two men so much alike. the first of the two had undoubtedly been sandy. ellis had recognized the peculiar, old-fashioned coat that sandy had worn upon the two occasions when he had noticed him. barring this difference, and the somewhat unsteady gait of the second man, the two were as much alike as twin brothers. when they had entered mr. delamere's house, one after the other,--in the stillness of the night ellis could perceive that each of them tried to make as little noise as possible,--ellis supposed that they were probably relatives, both employed as servants, or that some younger negro, taking sandy for a model, was trying to pattern himself after his superior. why all this mystery, of course he could not imagine, unless the younger man had been out without permission and was trying to avoid the accusing eye of sandy. ellis was vaguely conscious that he had seen the other negro somewhere, but he could not for the moment place him,--there were so many negroes, nearly three negroes to one white man in the city of wellington! the subject, however, while curious, was not important as compared with the thoughts of his sweetheart which drove it from his mind. clara had been kind to him the night before,--whatever her motive, she had been kind, and could not consistently return to her attitude of coldness. with delamere hopelessly discredited, ellis hoped to have at least fair play,--with fair play, he would take his chances of the outcome. xx a shocking crime on friday morning, when old mrs. ochiltree's cook dinah went to wake her mistress, she was confronted with a sight that well-nigh blanched her ebony cheek and caused her eyes almost to start from her head with horror. as soon as she could command her trembling limbs sufficiently to make them carry her, she rushed out of the house and down the street, bareheaded, covering in an incredibly short time the few blocks that separated mrs. ochiltree's residence from that of her niece. she hastened around the house, and finding the back door open and the servants stirring, ran into the house and up the stairs with the familiarity of an old servant, not stopping until she reached the door of mrs. carteret's chamber, at which she knocked in great agitation. entering in response to mrs. carteret's invitation, she found the lady, dressed in a simple wrapper, superintending the morning toilet of little dodie, who was a wakeful child, and insisted upon rising with the birds, for whose music he still showed a great fondness, in spite of his narrow escape while listening to the mockingbird. "what is it, dinah?" asked mrs. carteret, alarmed at the frightened face of her aunt's old servitor. "o my lawd, mis' 'livy, my lawd, my lawd! my legs is trim'lin' so dat i can't ha'dly hol' my han's stiddy 'nough ter say w'at i got ter say! o lawd have mussy on us po' sinners! w'atever is gwine ter happen in dis worl' er sin an' sorrer!" "what in the world is the matter, dinah?" demanded mrs. carteret, whose own excitement had increased with the length of this preamble. "has anything happened to aunt polly?" "somebody done broke in de house las' night, mis' 'livy, an' kill' mis' polly, an' lef' her layin' dead on de flo', in her own blood, wid her cedar chis' broke' open, an' eve'thing scattered roun' de flo'! o my lawd, my lawd, my lawd, my lawd!" mrs. carteret was shocked beyond expression. perhaps the spectacle of dinah's unrestrained terror aided her to retain a greater measure of self-control than she might otherwise have been capable of. giving the nurse some directions in regard to the child, she hastily descended the stairs, and seizing a hat and jacket from the rack in the hall, ran immediately with dinah to the scene of the tragedy. before the thought of this violent death all her aunt's faults faded into insignificance, and only her good qualities were remembered. she had reared olivia; she had stood up for the memory of olivia's mother when others had seemed to forget what was due to it. to her niece she had been a second mother, and had never been lacking in affection. more than one motive, however, lent wings to mrs. carteret's feet. her aunt's incomplete disclosures on the day of the drive past the hospital had been weighing upon mrs. carteret's mind, and she had intended to make another effort this very day, to get an answer to her question about the papers which the woman had claimed were in existence. suppose her aunt had really found such papers,--papers which would seem to prove the preposterous claim made by her father's mulatto mistress? suppose that, with the fatuity which generally leads human beings to keep compromising documents, her aunt had preserved these papers? if they should be found there in the house, there might be a scandal, if nothing worse, and this was to be avoided at all hazards. guided by some fortunate instinct, dinah had as yet informed no one but mrs. carteret of her discovery. if they could reach the house before the murder became known to any third person, she might be the first to secure access to the remaining contents of the cedar chest, which would be likely to be held as evidence in case the officers of the law forestalled her own arrival. they found the house wrapped in the silence of death. mrs. carteret entered the chamber of the dead woman. upon the floor, where it had fallen, lay the body in a pool of blood, the strongly marked countenance scarcely more grim in the rigidity of death than it had been in life. a gaping wound in the head accounted easily for the death. the cedar chest stood open, its strong fastenings having been broken by a steel bar which still lay beside it. near it were scattered pieces of old lace, antiquated jewelry, tarnished silverware,--the various mute souvenirs of the joys and sorrows of a long and active life. kneeling by the open chest, mrs. carteret glanced hurriedly through its contents. there were no papers there except a few old deeds and letters. she had risen with a sigh of relief, when she perceived the end of a paper projecting from beneath the edge of a rug which had been carelessly rumpled, probably by the burglar in his hasty search for plunder. this paper, or sealed envelope as it proved to be, which evidently contained some inclosure, she seized, and at the sound of approaching footsteps thrust hastily into her own bosom. the sight of two agitated women rushing through the quiet streets at so early an hour in the morning had attracted attention and aroused curiosity, and the story of the murder, having once become known, spread with the customary rapidity of bad news. very soon a policeman, and a little later a sheriff's officer, arrived at the house and took charge of the remains to await the arrival of the coroner. by nine o'clock a coroner's jury had been summoned, who, after brief deliberation, returned a verdict of willful murder at the hands of some person or persons unknown, while engaged in the commission of a burglary. no sooner was the verdict announced than the community, or at least the white third of it, resolved itself spontaneously into a committee of the whole to discover the perpetrator of this dastardly crime, which, at this stage of the affair, seemed merely one of robbery and murder. suspicion was at once directed toward the negroes, as it always is when an unexplained crime is committed in a southern community. the suspicion was not entirely an illogical one. having been, for generations, trained up to thriftlessness, theft, and immorality, against which only thirty years of very limited opportunity can be offset, during which brief period they have been denied in large measure the healthful social stimulus and sympathy which holds most men in the path of rectitude, colored people might reasonably be expected to commit at least a share of crime proportionate to their numbers. the population of the town was at least two thirds colored. the chances were, therefore, in the absence of evidence, at least two to one that a man of color had committed the crime. the southern tendency to charge the negroes with all the crime and immorality of that region, unjust and exaggerated as the claim may be, was therefore not without a logical basis to the extent above indicated. it must not be imagined that any logic was needed, or any reasoning consciously worked out. the mere suggestion that the crime had been committed by a negro was equivalent to proof against any negro that might be suspected and could not prove his innocence. a committee of white men was hastily formed. acting independently of the police force, which was practically ignored as likely to favor the negroes, this committee set to work to discover the murderer. the spontaneous activity of the whites was accompanied by a visible shrinkage of the colored population. this could not be taken as any indication of guilt, but was merely a recognition of the palpable fact that the american habit of lynching had so whetted the thirst for black blood that a negro suspected of crime had to face at least the possibility of a short shrift and a long rope, not to mention more gruesome horrors, without the intervention of judge or jury. since to have a black face at such a time was to challenge suspicion, and since there was neither the martyr's glory nor the saint's renown in being killed for some one else's crime, and very little hope of successful resistance in case of an attempt at lynching, it was obviously the part of prudence for those thus marked to seek immunity in a temporary disappearance from public view. xxi the necessity of an example about ten o'clock on the morning of the discovery of the murder, captain mcbane and general belmont, as though moved by a common impulse, found themselves at the office of the morning chronicle. carteret was expecting them, though there had been no appointment made. these three resourceful and energetic minds, representing no organized body, and clothed with no legal authority, had so completely arrogated to themselves the leadership of white public sentiment as to come together instinctively when an event happened which concerned the public, and, as this murder presumably did, involved the matter of race. "well, gentlemen," demanded mcbane impatiently, "what are we going to do with the scoundrel when we catch him?" "they've got the murderer," announced a reporter, entering the room. "who is he?" they demanded in a breath. "a nigger by the name of sandy campbell, a servant of old mr. delamere." "how did they catch him?" "our jerry saw him last night, going toward mrs. ochiltree's house, and a white man saw him coming away, half an hour later." "has he confessed?" "no, but he might as well. when the posse went to arrest him, they found him cleaning the clothes he had worn last night, and discovered in his room a part of the plunder. he denies it strenuously, but it seems a clear case." "there can be no doubt," said ellis, who had come into the room behind the reporter. "i saw the negro last night, at twelve o'clock, going into mr. delamere's yard, with a bundle in his hand." "he is the last negro i should have suspected," said carteret. "mr. delamere had implicit confidence in him." "all niggers are alike," remarked mcbane sententiously. "the only way to keep them from stealing is not to give them the chance. a nigger will steal a cent off a dead man's eye. he has assaulted and murdered a white woman,--an example should be made of him." carteret recalled very distinctly the presence of this negro at his own residence on the occasion of little theodore's christening dinner. he remembered having questioned the prudence of letting a servant know that mrs. ochiltree kept money in the house. mr. delamere had insisted strenuously upon the honesty of this particular negro. the whole race, in the major's opinion, was morally undeveloped, and only held within bounds by the restraining influence of the white people. under mr. delamere's thumb this sandy had been a model servant,--faithful, docile, respectful, and self-respecting; but mr. delamere had grown old, and had probably lost in a measure his moral influence over his servant. left to his own degraded ancestral instincts, sandy had begun to deteriorate, and a rapid decline had culminated in this robbery and murder,--and who knew what other horror? the criminal was a negro, the victim a white woman;--it was only reasonable to expect the worst. "he'll swing for it," observed the general. ellis went into another room, where his duty called him. "he should burn for it," averred mcbane. "i say, burn the nigger." "this," said carteret, "is something more than an ordinary crime, to be dealt with by the ordinary processes of law. it is a murderous and fatal assault upon a woman of our race,--upon our race in the person of its womanhood, its crown and flower. if such crimes are not punished with swift and terrible directness, the whole white womanhood of the south is in danger." "burn the nigger," repeated mcbane automatically. "neither is this a mere sporadic crime," carteret went on. "it is symptomatic; it is the logical and inevitable result of the conditions which have prevailed in this town for the past year. it is the last straw." "burn the nigger," reiterated mcbane. "we seem to have the right nigger, but whether we have or not, burn _a_ nigger. it is an assault upon the white race, in the person of old mrs. ochiltree, committed by the black race, in the person of some nigger. it would justify the white people in burning _any_ nigger. the example would be all the more powerful if we got the wrong one. it would serve notice on the niggers that we shall hold the whole race responsible for the misdeeds of each individual." "in ancient rome," said the general, "when a master was killed by a slave, all his slaves were put to the sword." "we couldn't afford that before the war," said mcbane, "but the niggers don't belong to anybody now, and there's nothing to prevent our doing as we please with them. a dead nigger is no loss to any white man. i say, burn the nigger." "i do not believe," said carteret, who had gone to the window and was looking out,--"i do not believe that we need trouble ourselves personally about his punishment. i should judge, from the commotion in the street, that the public will take the matter into its own hands. i, for one, would prefer that any violence, however justifiable, should take place without my active intervention." "it won't take place without mine, if i know it," exclaimed mcbane, starting for the door. "hold on a minute, captain," exclaimed carteret. "there's more at stake in this matter than the life of a black scoundrel. wellington is in the hands of negroes and scalawags. what better time to rescue it?" "it's a trifle premature," replied the general. "i should have preferred to have this take place, if it was to happen, say three months hence, on the eve of the election,--but discussion always provokes thirst with me; i wonder if i could get jerry to bring us some drinks?" carteret summoned the porter. jerry's usual manner had taken on an element of self-importance, resulting in what one might describe as a sort of condescending obsequiousness. though still a porter, he was also a hero, and wore his aureole. "jerry," said the general kindly, "the white people are very much pleased with the assistance you have given them in apprehending this scoundrel campbell. you have rendered a great public service, jerry, and we wish you to know that it is appreciated." "thank y', gin'l, thank y', suh! i alluz tries ter do my duty, suh, an' stan' by dem dat stan's by me. dat low-down nigger oughter be lynch', suh, don't you think, er e'se bu'nt? dere ain' nothin' too bad ter happen ter 'im." "no doubt he will be punished as he deserves, jerry," returned the general, "and we will see that you are suitably rewarded. go across the street and get me three calhoun cocktails. i seem to have nothing less than a two-dollar bill, but you may keep the change, jerry,--all the change." jerry was very happy. he had distinguished himself in the public view, for to jerry, as to the white people themselves, the white people were the public. he had won the goodwill of the best people, and had already begun to reap a tangible reward. it is true that several strange white men looked at him with lowering brows as he crossed the street, which was curiously empty of colored people; but he nevertheless went firmly forward, panoplied in the consciousness of his own rectitude, and serenely confident of the protection of the major and the major's friends. "jerry is about the only negro i have seen since nine o'clock," observed the general when the porter had gone. "if this were election day, where would the negro vote be?" "in hiding, where most of the negro population is to-day," answered mcbane. "it's a pity, if old mrs. ochiltree had to go this way, that it couldn't have been deferred a month or six weeks." carteret frowned at this remark, which, coming from mcbane, seemed lacking in human feeling, as well as in respect to his wife's dead relative. "but," resumed the general, "if this negro is lynched, as he well deserves to be, it will not be without its effect. we still have in reserve for the election a weapon which this affair will only render more effective. what became of the piece in the negro paper?" "i have it here," answered carteret. "i was just about to use it as the text for an editorial." "save it awhile longer," responded the general. "this crime itself will give you text enough for a four-volume work." when this conference ended, carteret immediately put into press an extra edition of the morning chronicle, which was soon upon the streets, giving details of the crime, which was characterized as an atrocious assault upon a defenseless old lady, whose age and sex would have protected her from harm at the hands of any one but a brute in the lowest human form. this event, the chronicle suggested, had only confirmed the opinion, which had been of late growing upon the white people, that drastic efforts were necessary to protect the white women of the south against brutal, lascivious, and murderous assaults at the hands of negro men. it was only another significant example of the results which might have been foreseen from the application of a false and pernicious political theory, by which ignorance, clothed in a little brief authority, was sought to be exalted over knowledge, vice over virtue, an inferior and degraded race above the heaven-crowned anglo-saxon. if an outraged people, justly infuriated, and impatient of the slow processes of the courts, should assert their inherent sovereignty, which the law after all was merely intended to embody, and should choose, in obedience to the higher law, to set aside, temporarily, the ordinary judicial procedure, it would serve as a warning and an example to the vicious elements of the community, of the swift and terrible punishment which would fall, like the judgment of god, upon any one who laid sacrilegious hands upon white womanhood. xxii how not to prevent a lynching dr. miller, who had sat up late the night before with a difficult case at the hospital, was roused, about eleven o'clock, from a deep and dreamless sleep. struggling back into consciousness, he was informed by his wife, who stood by his bedside, that mr. watson, the colored lawyer, wished to see him upon a matter of great importance. "nothing but a matter of life and death would make me get up just now," he said with a portentous yawn. "this is a matter of life and death," replied janet. "old mrs. polly ochiltree was robbed and murdered last night, and sandy campbell has been arrested for the crime,--and they are going to lynch him!" "tell watson to come right up," exclaimed miller, springing out of bed. "we can talk while i'm dressing." while miller made a hasty toilet watson explained the situation. campbell had been arrested on the charge of murder. he had been seen, during the night, in the neighborhood of the scene of the crime, by two different persons, a negro and a white man, and had been identified later while entering mr. delamere's house, where he lived, and where damning proofs of his guilt had been discovered; the most important item of which was an old-fashioned knit silk purse, recognized as mrs. ochiltree's, and several gold pieces of early coinage, of which the murdered woman was known to have a number. watson brought with him one of the first copies procurable of the extra edition of the chronicle, which contained these facts and further information. they were still talking when mrs. miller, knocking at the door, announced that big josh green wished to see the doctor about sandy campbell. miller took his collar and necktie in his hand and went downstairs, where josh sat waiting. "doctuh," said green, "de w'ite folks is talkin' 'bout lynchin' sandy campbell fer killin' ole mis' ochiltree. he never done it, an' dey oughtn' ter be 'lowed ter lynch 'im." "they ought not to lynch him, even if he committed the crime," returned miller, "but still less if he didn't. what do you know about it?" "i know he was wid me, suh, las' night, at de time when dey say ole mis' ochiltree wuz killed. we wuz down ter sam taylor's place, havin' a little game of kyards an' a little liquor. den we lef dere an' went up ez fur ez de corner er main an' vine streets, where we pa'ted, an' sandy went 'long to'ds home. mo'over, dey say he had on check' britches an' a blue coat. when sandy wuz wid me he had on gray clo's, an' when we sep'rated he wa'n't in no shape ter be changin' his clo's, let 'lone robbin' er killin' anybody." "your testimony ought to prove an alibi for him," declared miller. "dere ain' gwine ter be no chance ter prove nothin', 'less'n we kin do it mighty quick! dey say dey're gwine ter lynch 'im ter-night,--some on 'em is talkin' 'bout burnin' 'im. my idee is ter hunt up de niggers an' git 'em ter stan' tergether an' gyard de jail." "why shouldn't we go to the principal white people of the town and tell them josh's story, and appeal to them to stop this thing until campbell can have a hearing?" "it wouldn't do any good," said watson despondently; "their blood is up. it seems that some colored man attacked mrs. ochiltree,--and he was a murderous villain, whoever he may be. to quote josh would destroy the effect of his story,--we know he never harmed any one but himself"-- "an' a few keerliss people w'at got in my way," corrected josh. "he has been in court several times for fighting,--and that's against him. to have been at sam taylor's place is against sandy, too, rather than in his favor. no, josh, the white people would believe that you were trying to shield sandy, and you would probably be arrested as an accomplice." "but look a-here, mr. watson,--dr. miller, is we-all jes' got ter set down here, widout openin' ou' mouths, an' let dese w'ite folks hang er bu'n a man w'at we _know_ ain' guilty? dat ain't no law, ner jestice, ner nothin'! ef you-all won't he'p, i'll do somethin' myse'f! dere's two niggers ter one white man in dis town, an' i'm sho' i kin fin' fifty of 'em w'at 'll fight, ef dey kin fin' anybody ter lead 'em." "now hold on, josh," argued miller; "what is to be gained by fighting? suppose you got your crowd together and surrounded the jail,--what then?" "there'd be a clash," declared watson, "and instead of one dead negro there'd be fifty. the white people are claiming now that campbell didn't stop with robbery and murder. a special edition of the morning chronicle, just out, suggests a further purpose, and has all the old shopworn cant about race purity and supremacy and imperative necessity, which always comes to the front whenever it is sought to justify some outrage on the colored folks. the blood of the whites is up, i tell you!" "is there anything to that suggestion?" asked miller incredulously. "it doesn't matter whether there is or not," returned watson. "merely to suggest it proves it. "nothing was said about this feature until the paper came out,--and even its statement is vague and indefinite,--but now the claim is in every mouth. i met only black looks as i came down the street. white men with whom i have long been on friendly terms passed me without a word. a negro has been arrested on suspicion,--the entire race is condemned on general principles." "the whole thing is profoundly discouraging," said miller sadly. "try as we may to build up the race in the essentials of good citizenship and win the good opinion of the best people, some black scoundrel comes along, and by a single criminal act, committed in the twinkling of an eye, neutralizes the effect of a whole year's work." "it's mighty easy neut'alize', er whatever you call it," said josh sullenly. "de w'ite folks don' want too good an opinion er de niggers,--ef dey had a good opinion of 'em, dey wouldn' have no excuse f er 'busin' an' hangin' an' burnin' 'em. but ef dey can't keep from doin' it, let 'em git de right man! dis way er pickin' up de fus' nigger dey comes across, an' stringin' 'im up rega'dliss, ought ter be stop', an' stop' right now!" "yes, that's the worst of lynch law," said watson; "but we are wasting valuable time,--it's hardly worth while for us to discuss a subject we are all agreed upon. one of our race, accused of certain acts, is about to be put to death without judge or jury, ostensibly because he committed a crime,--really because he is a negro, for if he were white he would not be lynched. it is thus made a race issue, on the one side as well as on the other. what can we do to protect him?" "we kin fight, ef we haf ter," replied josh resolutely. "well, now, let us see. suppose the colored people armed themselves? messages would at once be sent to every town and county in the neighborhood. white men from all over the state, armed to the teeth, would at the slightest word pour into town on every railroad train, and extras would be run for their benefit." "they're already coming in," said watson. "we might go to the sheriff," suggested miller, "and demand that he telegraph the governor to call out the militia." "i spoke to the sheriff an hour ago," replied watson. "he has a white face and a whiter liver. he does not dare call out the militia to protect a negro charged with such a brutal crime;--and if he did, the militia are white men, and who can say that their efforts would not be directed to keeping the negroes out of the way, in order that the white devils might do their worst? the whole machinery of the state is in the hands of white men, elected partly by our votes. when the color line is drawn, if they choose to stand together with the rest of their race against us, or to remain passive and let the others work their will, we are helpless,--our cause is hopeless." "we might call on the general government," said miller. "surely the president would intervene." "such a demand would be of no avail," returned watson. "the government can only intervene under certain conditions, of which it must be informed through designated channels. it never sees anything that is not officially called to its attention. the whole negro population of the south might be slaughtered before the necessary red tape could be spun out to inform the president that a state of anarchy prevailed. there's no hope there." "den w'at we gwine ter do?" demanded josh indignantly; "jes' set here an' let 'em hang sandy, er bu'n 'im?" "god knows!" exclaimed miller. "the outlook is dark, but we should at least try to do something. there must be some white men in the town who would stand for law and order,--there's no possible chance for sandy to escape hanging by due process of law, if he is guilty. we might at least try half a dozen gentlemen." "we'd better leave josh here," said watson. "he's too truculent. if he went on the street he'd make trouble, and if he accompanied us he'd do more harm than good. wait for us here, josh, until we 'we seen what we can do. we'll be back in half an hour." in half an hour they had both returned. "it's no use," reported watson gloomily. "i called at the mayor's office and found it locked. he is doubtless afraid on his own account, and would not dream of asserting his authority. i then looked up judge everton, who has always seemed to be fair. my reception was cold. he admitted that lynching was, as a rule, unjustifiable, but maintained that there were exceptions to all rules,--that laws were made, after all, to express the will of the people in regard to the ordinary administration of justice, but that in an emergency the sovereign people might assert itself and take the law into its own hands,--the creature was not greater than the creator. he laughed at my suggestion that sandy was innocent. 'if he is innocent,' he said, 'then produce the real criminal. you negroes are standing in your own light when you try to protect such dastardly scoundrels as this campbell, who is an enemy of society and not fit to live. i shall not move in the matter. if a negro wants the protection of the law, let him obey the law.' a wise judge,--a second daniel come to judgment! if this were the law, there would be no need of judges or juries." "i called on dr. price," said miller, "my good friend dr. price, who would rather lie than hurt my feelings. 'miller,' he declared, 'this is no affair of mine, or yours. i have too much respect for myself and my profession to interfere in such a matter, and you will accomplish nothing, and only lessen your own influence, by having anything to say.' 'but the man may be innocent,' i replied; 'there is every reason to believe that he is.' he shook his head pityingly. 'you are self-deceived, miller; your prejudice has warped your judgment. the proof is overwhelming that he robbed this old lady, laid violent hands upon her, and left her dead. if he did no more, he has violated the written and unwritten law of the southern states. i could not save him if i would, miller, and frankly, i would not if i could. if he is innocent, his people can console themselves with the reflection that mrs. ochiltree was also innocent, and balance one crime against the other, the white against the black. of course i shall take no part in whatever may be done,--but it is not my affair, nor yours. take my advice, miller, and keep out of it.' "that is the situation," added miller, summing up. "their friendship for us, a slender stream at the best, dries up entirely when it strikes their prejudices. there is seemingly not one white man in wellington who will speak a word for law, order, decency, or humanity. those who do not participate will stand idly by and see an untried man deliberately and brutally murdered. race prejudice is the devil unchained." "well, den, suh," said josh, "where does we stan' now? w'at is we gwine ter do? i wouldn' min' fightin', fer my time ain't come yit,--i feels dat in my bones. w'at we gwine ter do, dat's w'at i wanter know." "what does old mr. delamere have to say about the matter?" asked miller suddenly. "why haven't we thought of him before? has he been seen?" "no," replied watson gloomily, "and for a good reason,--he is not in town. i came by the house just now, and learned that he went out to his country place yesterday afternoon, to remain a week. sandy was to have followed him out there this morning,--it's a pity he didn't go yesterday. the old gentleman has probably heard nothing about the matter." "how about young delamere?" "he went away early this morning, down the river, to fish. he'll probably not hear of it before night, and he's only a boy anyway, and could very likely do nothing," said watson. miller looked at his watch. "belleview is ten miles away," he said. "it is now eleven o'clock. i can drive out there in an hour and a half at the farthest. i'll go and see mr. delamere,--he can do more than any living man, if he is able to do anything at all. there's never been a lynching here, and one good white man, if he choose, may stem the flood long enough to give justice a chance. keep track of the white people while i'm gone, watson; and you, josh, learn what the colored folks are saying, and do nothing rash until i return. in the meantime, do all that you can to find out who did commit this most atrocious murder." xxiii belleview miller did not reach his destination without interruption. at one point a considerable stretch of the road was under repair, which made it necessary for him to travel slowly. his horse cast a shoe, and threatened to go lame; but in the course of time he arrived at the entrance gate of belleview, entering which he struck into a private road, bordered by massive oaks, whose multitudinous branches, hung with long streamers of trailing moss, formed for much of the way a thick canopy above his head. it took him only a few minutes to traverse the quarter of a mile that lay between the entrance gate and the house itself. this old colonial plantation, rich in legendary lore and replete with historic distinction, had been in the delamere family for nearly two hundred years. along the bank of the river which skirted its domain the famous pirate blackbeard had held high carnival, and was reputed to have buried much treasure, vague traditions of which still lingered among the negroes and poor-whites of the country roundabout. the beautiful residence, rising white and stately in a grove of ancient oaks, dated from , and was built of brick which had been brought from england. enlarged and improved from generation to generation, it stood, like a baronial castle, upon a slight eminence from which could be surveyed the large demesne still belonging to the estate, which had shrunk greatly from its colonial dimensions. while still embracing several thousand acres, part forest and part cleared land, it had not of late years been profitable; in spite of which mr. delamere, with the conservatism of his age and caste, had never been able to make up his mind to part with any considerable portion of it. his grandson, he imagined, could make the estate pay and yet preserve it in its integrity. here, in pleasant weather, surrounded by the scenes which he loved, old mr. delamere spent much of the time during his declining years. dr. miller had once passed a day at belleview, upon mr. delamere's invitation. for this old-fashioned gentleman, whose ideals not even slavery had been able to spoil, regarded himself as a trustee for the great public, which ought, in his opinion, to take as much pride as he in the contemplation of this historic landmark. in earlier years mr. delamere had been a practicing lawyer, and had numbered miller's father among his clients. he had always been regarded as friendly to the colored people, and, until age and ill health had driven him from active life, had taken a lively interest in their advancement since the abolition of slavery. upon the public opening of miller's new hospital, he had made an effort to be present, and had made a little speech of approval and encouragement which had manifested his kindliness and given miller much pleasure. it was with the consciousness, therefore, that he was approaching a friend, as well as sandy's master, that miller's mind was chiefly occupied as his tired horse, scenting the end of his efforts, bore him with a final burst of speed along the last few rods of the journey; for the urgency of miller's errand, involving as it did the issues of life and death, did not permit him to enjoy the charm of mossy oak or forest reaches, or even to appreciate the noble front of belleview house when it at last loomed up before him. "well, william," said mr. delamere, as he gave his hand to miller from the armchair in which he was seated under the broad and stately portico, "i didn't expect to see you out here. you'll excuse my not rising,--i'm none too firm on my legs. did you see anything of my man sandy back there on the road? he ought to have been here by nine o'clock, and it's now one. sandy is punctuality itself, and i don't know how to account for his delay." clearly there need be no time wasted in preliminaries. mr. delamere had gone directly to the subject in hand. "he will not be here to-day, sir," replied miller. "i have come to you on his account." in a few words miller stated the situation. "preposterous!" exclaimed the old gentleman, with more vigor than miller had supposed him to possess. "sandy is absolutely incapable of such a crime as robbery, to say nothing of murder; and as for the rest, that is absurd upon the face of it! and so the poor old woman is dead! well, well, well! she could not have lived much longer anyway; but sandy did not kill her,--it's simply impossible! why, _i_ raised that boy! he was born on my place. i'd as soon believe such a thing of my own grandson as of sandy! no negro raised by a delamere would ever commit such a crime. i really believe, william, that sandy has the family honor of the delameres quite as much at heart as i have. just tell them i say sandy is innocent, and it will be all right." "i'm afraid, sir," rejoined miller, who kept his voice up so that the old gentleman could understand without having it suggested that miller knew he was hard of hearing, "that you don't quite appreciate the situation. _i_ believe sandy innocent; _you_ believe him innocent; but there are suspicious circumstances which do not explain themselves, and the white people of the city believe him guilty, and are going to lynch him before he has a chance to clear himself." "why doesn't he explain the suspicious circumstances?" asked mr. delamere. "sandy is truthful and can be believed. i would take sandy's word as quickly as another man's oath." "he has no chance to explain," said miller. "the case is prejudged. a crime has been committed. sandy is charged with it. he is black, and therefore he is guilty. no colored lawyer would be allowed in the jail, if one should dare to go there. no white lawyer will intervene. he'll be lynched to-night, without judge, jury, or preacher, unless we can stave the thing off for a day or two." "have you seen my grandson?" asked the old gentleman. "is he not looking after sandy?" "no, sir. it seems he went down the river this morning to fish, before the murder was discovered; no one knows just where he has gone, or at what hour he will return." "well, then," said mr. delamere, rising from his chair with surprising vigor, "i shall have to go myself. no faithful servant of mine shall be hanged for a crime he didn't commit, so long as i have a voice to speak or a dollar to spend. there'll be no trouble after i get there, william. the people are naturally wrought up at such a crime. a fine old woman,--she had some detestable traits, and i was always afraid she wanted to marry me, but she was of an excellent family and had many good points,--an old woman of one of the best families, struck down by the hand of a murderer! you must remember, william, that blood is thicker than water, and that the provocation is extreme, and that a few hotheads might easily lose sight of the great principles involved and seek immediate vengeance, without too much discrimination. but they are good people, william, and when i have spoken, and they have an opportunity for the sober second thought, they will do nothing rashly, but will wait for the operation of the law, which will, of course, clear sandy." "i'm sure i hope so," returned miller. "shall i try to drive you back, sir, or will you order your own carriage?" "my horses are fresher, william, and i'll have them brought around. you can take the reins, if you will,--i'm rather old to drive,--and my man will come behind with your buggy." in a few minutes they set out along the sandy road. having two fresh horses, they made better headway than miller had made coming out, and reached wellington easily by three o'clock. "i think, william," said mr. delamere, as they drove into the town, "that i had first better talk with sandy. he may be able to explain away the things that seem to connect him with this atrocious affair; and that will put me in a better position to talk to other people about it." miller drove directly to the county jail. thirty or forty white men, who seemed to be casually gathered near the door, closed up when the carriage approached. the sheriff, who had seen them from the inside, came to the outer door and spoke to the visitor through a grated wicket. "mr. wemyss," said mr. delamere, when he had made his way to the entrance with the aid of his cane, "i wish to see my servant, sandy campbell, who is said to be in your custody." the sheriff hesitated. meantime there was some parleying in low tones among the crowd outside. no one interfered, however, and in a moment the door opened sufficiently to give entrance to the old gentleman, after which it closed quickly and clangorously behind him. feeling no desire to linger in the locality, miller, having seen his companion enter the jail, drove the carriage round to mr. delamere's house, and leaving it in charge of a servant with instructions to return for his master in a quarter of an hour, hastened to his own home to meet watson and josh and report the result of his efforts. xxiv two southern gentlemen the iron bolt rattled in the lock, the door of a cell swung open, and when mr. delamere had entered was quickly closed again. "well, sandy!" "oh, mars john! is you fell from hebben ter he'p me out er here? i prayed de lawd ter sen' you, an' he answered my prayer, an' here you is, mars john,--here you is! oh, mars john, git me out er dis place!" "tut, tut, sandy!" answered his master; "of course i'll get you out. that's what i've come for. how in the world did such a mistake ever happen? you would no more commit such a crime than i would!" "no, suh, 'deed i wouldn', an' you know i wouldn'! i wouldn' want ter bring no disgrace on de fam'ly dat raise' me, ner ter make no trouble fer you, suh; but here i is, suh, lock' up in jail, an' folks talkin' 'bout hangin' me fer somethin' dat never entered my min', suh. i swea' ter god i never thought er sech a thing!" "of course you didn't, sandy," returned mr. delamere soothingly; "and now the next thing, and the simplest thing, is to get you out of this. i'll speak to the officers, and at the preliminary hearing to-morrow i'll tell them all about you, and they will let you go. you won't mind spending one night in jail for your sins." "no, suh, ef i wuz sho' i'd be 'lowed ter spen' it here. but dey say dey 're gwine ter lynch me ternight,--i kin hear 'em talkin' f'm de winders er de cell, suh." "well, _i_ say, sandy, that they shall do no such thing! lynch a man brought up by a delamere, for a crime of which he is innocent? preposterous! i'll speak to the authorities and see that you are properly protected until this mystery is unraveled. if tom had been here, he would have had you out before now, sandy. my grandson is a genuine delamere, is he not, sandy?" "yas, suh, yas, suh," returned sandy, with a lack of enthusiasm which he tried to conceal from his master. "an' i s'pose ef he hadn' gone fishin' so soon dis mawnin', he'd 'a' be'n lookin' after me, suh." "it has been my love for him and your care of me, sandy," said the old gentleman tremulously, "that have kept me alive so long; but now explain to me everything concerning this distressing matter, and i shall then be able to state your case to better advantage." "well, suh," returned sandy, "i mought's well tell de whole tale an' not hol' nothin' back. i wuz kind er lonesome las' night, an' sence i be'n tu'ned outen de chu'ch on account er dat cakewalk i didn' go ter, so he'p me god! i didn' feel like gwine ter prayer-meetin', so i went roun' ter see solomon williams, an' he wa'n't home, an' den i walk' down street an' met josh green, an' he ax' me inter sam taylor's place, an' i sot roun' dere wid josh till 'bout 'leven o'clock, w'en i sta'ted back home. i went straight ter de house, suh, an' went ter bed an' ter sleep widout sayin' a wo'd ter a single soul excep' mistuh tom, who wuz settin' up readin' a book w'en i come in. i wish i may drap dead in my tracks, suh, ef dat ain't de god's truf, suh, eve'y wo'd of it!" "i believe every word of it, sandy; now tell me about the clothes that you are said to have been found cleaning, and the suspicious articles that were found in your room?" "dat's w'at beats me, mars john," replied sandy, shaking his head mournfully. "wen i lef home las' night after supper, my clo's wuz all put erway in de closet in my room, folded up on de she'f ter keep de moths out. dey wuz my good clo's,--de blue coat dat you wo' ter de weddin' fo'ty years ago, an' dem dere plaid pants i gun mistuh cohen fo' dollars fer three years ago; an' w'en i looked in my closet dis mawnin', suh, befo' i got ready ter sta't fer belleview, dere wuz my clo's layin' on de flo', all muddy an' crumple' up, des lack somebody had wo' 'em in a fight! somebody e'se had wo' my clo's,--er e'se dere'd be'n some witchcraf, er some sort er devilment gwine on dat i can't make out, suh, ter save my soul!" "there was no witchcraft, sandy, but that there was some deviltry might well be. now, what other negro, who might have been mistaken for you, could have taken your clothes? surely no one about the house?" "no, suh, no, suh. it couldn't 'a' be'n jeff, fer he wuz at belleview wid you; an' it couldn't 'a' be'n billy, fer he wuz too little ter wear my clo's; an' it couldn't 'a' be'n sally, fer she's a 'oman. it's a myst'ry ter me, suh!" "have you no enemies? is there any one in wellington whom you imagine would like to do you an injury?" "not a livin' soul dat i knows of, suh. i've be'n tu'ned out'n de chu'ch, but i don' know who my enemy is dere, er ef it wuz all a mistake, like dis yer jailin' is; but de debbil is in dis somewhar, mars john,--an' i got my reasons fer sayin' so." "what do you mean, sandy?" sandy related his experience of the preceding evening: how he had seen the apparition preceding him to the house, and how he had questioned tom upon the subject. "there's some mystery here, sandy," said mr. delamere reflectively. "have you told me all, now, upon your honor? i am trying to save your life, sandy, and i must be able to trust your word implicitly. you must tell me every circumstance; a very little and seemingly unimportant bit of evidence may sometimes determine the issue of a great lawsuit. there is one thing especially, sandy: where did you get the gold which was found in your trunk?" sandy's face lit up with hopefulness. "why, mars john, i kin 'splain dat part easy. dat wuz money i had lent out, an' i got back f'm--but no, suh, i promise' not ter tell." "circumstances absolve you from your promise, sandy. your life is of more value to you than any other thing. if you will explain where you got the gold, and the silk purse that contained it, which is said to be mrs. ochiltree's, you will be back home before night." old mr. delamere's faculties, which had been waning somewhat in sympathy with his health, were stirred to unusual acuteness by his servant's danger. he was watching sandy with all the awakened instincts of the trial lawyer. he could see clearly enough that, in beginning to account for the possession of the gold, sandy had started off with his explanation in all sincerity. at the mention of the silk purse, however, his face had blanched to an ashen gray, and the words had frozen upon his lips. a less discerning observer might have taken these things as signs of guilt, but not so mr. delamere. "well, sandy," said his master encouragingly, "go on. you got the gold from"-- sandy remained silent. he had had a great shock, and had taken a great resolution. "mars john," he asked dreamily, "you don' b'lieve dat i done dis thing?" "certainly not, sandy, else why should i be here?" "an' nothin' wouldn' make you b'lieve it, suh?" "no, sandy,--i could not believe it of you. i've known you too long and too well." "an' you wouldn' b'lieve it, not even ef i wouldn' say one wo'd mo' about it?" "no, sandy, i believe you no more capable of this crime than i would be,--or my grandson, tom. i wish tom were here, that he might help me overcome your stubbornness; but you'll not be so foolish, so absurdly foolish, sandy, as to keep silent and risk your life merely to shield some one else, when by speaking you might clear up this mystery and be restored at once to liberty. just tell me where you got the gold," added the old gentleman persuasively. "come, now, sandy, that's a good fellow!" "mars john," asked sandy softly, "w'en my daddy, 'way back yander befo' de wah, wuz about ter be sol' away f'm his wife an' child'en, you bought him an' dem, an' kep' us all on yo' place tergether, didn't you, suh?" "yes, sandy, and he was a faithful servant, and proved worthy of all i did for him." "and w'en he had wo'ked fer you ten years, suh, you sot 'im free?" "yes, sandy, he had earned his freedom." "an' w'en de wah broke out, an' my folks wuz scattered, an' i didn' have nothin' ter do ner nowhar ter go, you kep' me on yo' place, and tuck me ter wait on you, suh, didn't you?" "yes, sandy, and you have been a good servant and a good friend; but tell me now about this gold, and i'll go and get you out of this, right away, for i need you, sandy, and you'll not be of any use to me shut up here!" "jes' hol' on a minute befo' you go, mars john; fer ef dem people outside should git holt er me befo' you _does_ git me out er here, i may never see you no mo', suh, in dis worl'. w'en mars billy mclean shot me by mistake, w'ile we wuz out huntin' dat day, who wuz it boun' up my woun's an' kep' me from bleedin' ter def, an' kyar'ed me two miles on his own shoulders ter a doctuh?" "yes, sandy, and when black sally ran away with your young mistress and tom, when tom was a baby, who stopped the runaway, and saved their lives at the risk of his own?" "dat wa'n't nothin', suh; anybody could 'a' done dat, w'at wuz strong ernuff an' swif' ernuff. you is be'n good ter me, suh, all dese years, an' i've tried ter do my duty by you, suh, an' by mistuh tom, who wuz yo' own gran'son, an' de las' one er de fam'ly." "yes, you have, sandy, and when i am gone, which will not be very long, tom will take care of you, and see that you never want. but we are wasting valuable time, sandy, in these old reminiscences. let us get back to the present. tell me about the gold, now, so that i may at once look after your safety. it may not even be necessary for you to remain here all night." "jes' one wo'd mo', mars john, befo' you go! i know you're gwine ter do de bes' you kin fer me, an' i'm sorry i can't he'p you no mo' wid it; but ef dere should be any accident, er ef you _can't_ git me out er here, don' bother yo' min' 'bout it no mo', suh, an' don' git yo'se'f ixcited, fer you know de doctuh says, suh, dat you can't stan' ixcitement; but jes' leave me in de han's er de lawd, suh,--_he'll_ look after me, here er hereafter. i know i've fell f'm grace mo' d'n once, but i've done made my peace wid him in dis here jail-house, suh, an' i ain't 'feared ter die--ef i haf ter. i ain' got no wife ner child'n ter mo'n fer me, an' i'll die knowin' dat i've done my duty ter dem dat hi'ed me, an' trusted me, an' had claims on me. fer i wuz raise' by a delamere, suh, an' all de ole delameres wuz gent'emen, an' deir principles spread ter de niggers 'round 'em, suh; an' ef i has ter die fer somethin' i didn' do,--i kin die, suh, like a gent'eman! but ez fer dat gol', suh, i ain' gwine ter say one wo'd mo' 'bout it ter nobody in dis worl'!" nothing could shake sandy's determination. mr. delamere argued, expostulated, but all in vain. sandy would not speak. more and more confident of some mystery, which would come out in time, if properly investigated, mr. delamere, strangely beset by a vague sense of discomfort over and beyond that occasioned by his servant's danger, hurried away upon his errand of mercy. he felt less confident of the outcome than when he had entered the jail, but was quite as much resolved that no effort should be spared to secure protection for sandy until there had been full opportunity for the truth to become known. "take good care of your prisoner, sheriff," he said sternly, as he was conducted to the door. "he will not be long in your custody, and i shall see that you are held strictly accountable for his safety." "i'll do what i can, sir," replied the sheriff in an even tone and seemingly not greatly impressed by this warning. "if the prisoner is taken from me, it will be because the force that comes for him is too strong for resistance." "there should be no force too strong for an honest man in your position to resist,--whether successfully or not is beyond the question. the officer who is intimidated by threats, or by his own fears, is recreant to his duty, and no better than the mob which threatens him. but you will have no such test, mr. wemyss! i shall see to it myself that there is no violence!" xxv the honor of a family mr. delamere's coachman, who, in accordance with instructions left by miller, had brought the carriage around to the jail and was waiting anxiously at the nearest corner, drove up with some trepidation as he saw his master emerge from the prison. the old gentleman entered the carriage and gave the order to be driven to the office of the morning chronicle. according to jerry, the porter, whom he encountered at the door, carteret was in his office, and mr. delamere, with the aid of his servant, climbed the stairs painfully and found the editor at his desk. "carteret," exclaimed mr. delamere, "what is all this talk about lynching my man for murder and robbery and criminal assault? it's perfectly absurd! the man was raised by me; he has lived in my house forty years. he has been honest, faithful, and trustworthy. he would no more be capable of this crime than you would, or my grandson tom. sandy has too much respect for the family to do anything that would reflect disgrace upon it." "my dear mr. delamere," asked carteret, with an indulgent smile, "how could a negro possibly reflect discredit upon a white family? i should really like to know." "how, sir? a white family raised him. like all the negroes, he has been clay in the hands of the white people. they are what we have made them, or permitted them to become." "we are not god, mr. delamere! we do not claim to have created these--masterpieces." "no; but we thought to overrule god's laws, and we enslaved these people for our greed, and sought to escape the manstealer's curse by laying to our souls the flattering unction that we were making of barbarous negroes civilized and christian men. if we did not, if instead of making them christians we have made some of them brutes, we have only ourselves to blame, and if these prey upon society, it is our just punishment! but my negroes, carteret, were well raised and well behaved. this man is innocent of this offense, i solemnly affirm, and i want your aid to secure his safety until a fair trial can be had." "on your bare word, sir?" asked carteret, not at all moved by this outburst. old mr. delamere trembled with anger, and his withered cheek flushed darkly, but he restrained his feelings, and answered with an attempt at calmness:-- "time was, sir, when the word of a delamere was held as good as his bond, and those who questioned it were forced to maintain their skepticism upon the field of honor. time was, sir, when the law was enforced in this state in a manner to command the respect of the world! our lawyers, our judges, our courts, were a credit to humanity and civilization. i fear i have outlasted my epoch,--i have lived to hear of white men, the most favored of races, the heirs of civilization, the conservators of liberty, howling like red indians around a human being slowly roasting at the stake." "my dear sir," said carteret soothingly, "you should undeceive yourself. this man is no longer your property. the negroes are no longer under our control, and with their emancipation ceased our responsibility. their insolence and disregard for law have reached a point where they must be sternly rebuked." "the law," retorted mr. delamere, "furnishes a sufficient penalty for any crime, however heinous, and our code is by no means lenient. to my old-fashioned notions, death would seem an adequate punishment for any crime, and torture has been abolished in civilized countries for a hundred years. it would be better to let a crime go entirely unpunished, than to use it as a pretext for turning the whole white population into a mob of primitive savages, dancing in hellish glee around the mangled body of a man who has never been tried for a crime. all this, however, is apart from my errand, which is to secure your assistance in heading off this mob until sandy can have a fair hearing and an opportunity to prove his innocence." "how can i do that, mr. delamere?" "you are editor of the morning chronicle. the chronicle is the leading newspaper of the city. this morning's issue practically suggested the mob; the same means will stop it. i will pay the expense of an extra edition, calling off the mob, on the ground that newly discovered evidence has shown the prisoner's innocence." "but where is the evidence?" asked carteret. again mr. delamere flushed and trembled. "my evidence, sir! i say the negro was morally incapable of the crime. a man of forty-five does not change his nature over-night. he is no more capable of a disgraceful deed than my grandson would be!" carteret smiled sadly. "i am sorry, mr. delamere," he said, "that you should permit yourself to be so exercised about a worthless scoundrel who has forfeited his right to live. the proof against him is overwhelming. as to his capability of crime, we will apply your own test. you have been kept in the dark too long, mr. delamere,--indeed, we all have,--about others as well as this negro. listen, sir: last night, at the clarendon club, tom delamere was caught cheating outrageously at cards. he had been suspected for some time; a trap was laid for him, and be fell into it. out of regard for you and for my family, he has been permitted to resign quietly, with the understanding that he first pay off his debts, which are considerable." mr. delamere's face, which had taken on some color in the excitement of the interview, had gradually paled to a chalky white while carteret was speaking. his head sunk forward; already an old man, he seemed to have aged ten years in but little more than as many seconds. "can this be true?" he demanded in a hoarse whisper. "is it--entirely authentic?" "true as gospel; true as it is that mrs. ochiltree has been murdered, and that this negro killed her. ellis was at the club a few minutes after the affair happened, and learned the facts from one of the participants. tom made no attempt at denial. we have kept the matter out of the other papers, and i would have spared your feelings,--i surely would not wish to wound them,--but the temptation proved too strong for me, and it seemed the only way to convince you: it was your own test. if a gentleman of a distinguished name and an honorable ancestry, with all the restraining forces of social position surrounding him, to hold him in check, can stoop to dishonor, what is the improbability of an illiterate negro's being at least capable of crime?" "enough, sir," said the old gentleman. "you have proved enough. my grandson may be a scoundrel,--i can see, in the light of this revelation, how he might be; and he seems not to have denied it. i maintain, nevertheless, that my man sandy is innocent of the charge against him. he has denied it, and it has not been proved. carteret, i owe that negro my life; he, and his father before him, have served me and mine faithfully and well. i cannot see him killed like a dog, without judge or jury,--no, not even if he were guilty, which i do not believe!" carteret felt a twinge of remorse for the pain he had inflicted upon this fine old man, this ideal gentleman of the ideal past,--the past which he himself so much admired and regretted. he would like to spare his old friend any further agitation; he was in a state of health where too great excitement might prove fatal. but how could he? the negro was guilty, and sure to die sooner or later. he had not meant to interfere, and his intervention might be fruitless. "mr. delamere," he said gently, "there is but one way to gain time. you say the negro is innocent. appearances are against him. the only way to clear him is to produce the real criminal, or prove an alibi. if you, or some other white man of equal standing, could swear that the negro was in your presence last night at any hour when this crime could have taken place, it might be barely possible to prevent the lynching for the present; and when he is tried, which will probably be not later than next week, he will have every opportunity to defend himself, with you to see that he gets no less than justice. i think it can be managed, though there is still a doubt. i will do my best, for your sake, mr. delamere,--solely for your sake, be it understood, and not for that of the negro, in whom you are entirely deceived." "i shall not examine your motives, carteret," replied the other, "if you can bring about what i desire." "whatever is done," added carteret, "must be done quickly. it is now four o'clock; no one can answer for what may happen after seven. if he can prove an alibi, there may yet be time to save him. white men might lynch a negro on suspicion; they would not kill a man who was proven, by the word of white men, to be entirely innocent." "i do not know," returned mr. delamere, shaking his head sadly. "after what you have told me, it is no longer safe to assume what white men will or will not do;--what i have learned here has shaken my faith in humanity. i am going away, but shall return in a short time. shall i find you here?" "i will await your return," said carteret. he watched mr. delamere pityingly as the old man moved away on the arm of the coachman waiting in the hall. he did not believe that mr. delamere could prove an alibi for his servant, and without some positive proof the negro would surely die,--as he well deserved to die. xxvi the discomfort of ellis mr. ellis was vaguely uncomfortable. in the first excitement following the discovery of the crime, he had given his bit of evidence, and had shared the universal indignation against the murderer. when public feeling took definite shape in the intention to lynch the prisoner, ellis felt a sudden sense of responsibility growing upon himself. when he learned, an hour later, that it was proposed to burn the negro, his part in the affair assumed a still graver aspect; for his had been the final word to fix the prisoner's guilt. ellis did not believe in lynch law. he had argued against it, more than once, in private conversation, and had written several editorials against the practice, while in charge of the morning chronicle during major carteret's absence. a young man, however, and merely representing another, he had not set up as a reformer, taking rather the view that this summary method of punishing crime, with all its possibilities of error, to say nothing of the resulting disrespect of the law and contempt for the time-honored methods of establishing guilt, was a mere temporary symptom of the unrest caused by the unsettled relations of the two races at the south. there had never before been any special need for any vigorous opposition to lynch law, so far as the community was concerned, for there had not been a lynching in wellington since ellis had come there, eight years before, from a smaller town, to seek a place for himself in the world of action. twenty years before, indeed, there had been wild doings, during the brief ku-klux outbreak, but that was before ellis's time,--or at least when he was but a child. he had come of a quaker family,--the modified quakers of the south,--and while sharing in a general way the southern prejudice against the negro, his prejudices had been tempered by the peaceful tenets of his father's sect. his father had been a whig, and a non-slaveholder; and while he had gone with the south in the civil war so far as a man of peace could go, he had not done so for love of slavery. as the day wore on, ellis's personal responsibility for the intended _auto-da-fé_ bore more heavily upon him. suppose he had been wrong? he had seen the accused negro; he had recognized him by his clothes, his whiskers, his spectacles, and his walk; but he had also seen another man, who resembled sandy so closely that but for the difference in their clothes, he was forced to acknowledge, he could not have told them apart. had he not seen the first man, he would have sworn with even greater confidence that the second was sandy. there had been, he recalled, about one of the men--he had not been then nor was he now able to tell which--something vaguely familiar, and yet seemingly discordant to whichever of the two it was, or, as it seemed to him now, to any man of that race. his mind reverted to the place where he had last seen sandy, and then a sudden wave of illumination swept over him, and filled him with a thrill of horror. the cakewalk,--the dancing,--the speech,--they were not sandy's at all, nor any negro's! it was a white man who had stood in the light of the street lamp, so that the casual passer-by might see and recognize in him old mr. delamere's servant. the scheme was a dastardly one, and worthy of a heart that was something worse than weak and vicious. ellis resolved that the negro should not, if he could prevent it, die for another's crime; but what proof had he himself to offer in support of his theory? then again, if he denounced tom delamere as the murderer, it would involve, in all probability, the destruction of his own hopes with regard to clara. of course she could not marry delamere after the disclosure,--the disgraceful episode at the club would have been enough to make that reasonably certain; it had put a nail in delamere's coffin, but this crime had driven it in to the head and clinched it. on the other hand, would miss pemberton ever speak again to the man who had been the instrument of bringing disgrace upon the family? spies, detectives, police officers, may be useful citizens, but they are rarely pleasant company for other people. we fee the executioner, but we do not touch his bloody hand. we might feel a certain tragic admiration for brutus condemning his sons to death, but we would scarcely invite brutus to dinner after the event. it would harrow our feelings too much. perhaps, thought ellis, there might be a way out of the dilemma. it might be possible to save this innocent negro without, for the time being, involving delamere. he believed that murder will out, but it need not be through his initiative. he determined to go to the jail and interview the prisoner, who might give such an account of himself as would establish his innocence beyond a doubt. if so, ellis would exert himself to stem the tide of popular fury. if, as a last resort, he could save sandy only by denouncing delamere, he would do his duty, let it cost him what it might. the gravity of his errand was not lessened by what he saw and heard on the way to the jail. the anger of the people was at a white heat. a white woman had been assaulted and murdered by a brutal negro. neither advanced age, nor high social standing, had been able to protect her from the ferocity of a black savage. her sex, which should have been her shield and buckler, had made her an easy mark for the villainy of a black brute. to take the time to try him would be a criminal waste of public money. to hang him would be too slight a punishment for so dastardly a crime. an example must be made. already the preparations were under way for the impending execution. a t-rail from the railroad yard had been procured, and men were burying it in the square before the jail. others were bringing chains, and a load of pine wood was piled in convenient proximity. some enterprising individual had begun the erection of seats from which, for a pecuniary consideration, the spectacle might be the more easily and comfortably viewed. ellis was stopped once or twice by persons of his acquaintance. from one he learned that the railroads would run excursions from the neighboring towns in order to bring spectators to the scene; from another that the burning was to take place early in the evening, so that the children might not be kept up beyond their usual bedtime. in one group that he passed he heard several young men discussing the question of which portions of the negro's body they would prefer for souvenirs. ellis shuddered and hastened forward. whatever was to be done must be done quickly, or it would be too late. he saw that already it would require a strong case in favor of the accused to overcome the popular verdict. going up the steps of the jail, he met mr. delamere, who was just coming out, after a fruitless interview with sandy. "mr. ellis," said the old gentleman, who seemed greatly agitated, "this is monstrous!" "it is indeed, sir!" returned the younger man. "i mean to stop it if i can. the negro did not kill mrs. ochiltree." mr. delamere looked at ellis keenly, and, as ellis recalled afterwards, there was death in his eyes. unable to draw a syllable from sandy, he had found his servant's silence more eloquent than words. ellis felt a presentiment that this affair, however it might terminate, would be fatal to this fine old man, whom the city could ill spare, in spite of his age and infirmities. "mr. ellis," asked mr. delamere, in a voice which trembled with ill-suppressed emotion, "do you know who killed her?" ellis felt a surging pity for his old friend; but every step that he had taken toward the jail had confirmed and strengthened his own resolution that this contemplated crime, which he dimly felt to be far more atrocious than that of which sandy was accused, in that it involved a whole community rather than one vicious man, should be stopped at any cost. deplorable enough had the negro been guilty, it became, in view of his certain innocence, an unspeakable horror, which for all time would cover the city with infamy. "mr. delamere," he replied, looking the elder man squarely in the eyes, "i think i do,--and i am very sorry." "and who was it, mr. ellis?" he put the question hopelessly, as though the answer were a foregone conclusion. "i do not wish to say at present," replied ellis, with a remorseful pang, "unless it becomes absolutely necessary, to save the negro's life. accusations are dangerous,--as this case proves,--unless the proof, be certain." for a moment it seemed as though mr. delamere would collapse upon the spot. rallying almost instantly, however, he took the arm which ellis involuntarily offered, and said with an effort:-- "mr. ellis, you are a gentleman whom it is an honor to know. if you have time, i wish you would go with me to my house,--i can hardly trust myself alone,--and thence to the chronicle office. this thing shall be stopped, and you will help me stop it." it required but a few minutes to cover the half mile that lay between the prison and mr. delamere's residence. xxvii the vagaries of the higher law mr. delamere went immediately to his grandson's room, which he entered alone, closing and locking the door behind him. he had requested ellis to wait in the carriage. the bed had been made, and the room was apparently in perfect order. there was a bureau in the room, through which mr. delamere proceeded to look thoroughly. finding one of the drawers locked, he tried it with a key of his own, and being unable to unlock it, took a poker from beside the stove and broke it ruthlessly open. the contents served to confirm what he had heard concerning his grandson's character. thrown together in disorderly confusion were bottles of wine and whiskey; soiled packs of cards; a dice-box with dice; a box of poker chips, several revolvers, and a number of photographs and paper-covered books at which the old gentleman merely glanced to ascertain their nature. so far, while his suspicion had been strengthened, he had found nothing to confirm it. he searched the room more carefully, and found, in the wood-box by the small heating-stove which stood in the room, a torn and crumpled bit of paper. stooping to pick this up, his eye caught a gleam of something yellow beneath the bureau, which lay directly in his line of vision. first he smoothed out the paper. it was apparently the lower half of a label, or part of the cover of a small box, torn diagonally from corner to corner. from the business card at the bottom, which gave the name, of a firm of manufacturers of theatrical supplies in a northern city, and from the letters remaining upon the upper and narrower half, the bit of paper had plainly formed part of the wrapper of a package of burnt cork. closing his fingers spasmodically over this damning piece of evidence, mr. delamere knelt painfully, and with the aid of his cane drew out from under the bureau the yellow object which, had attracted his attention. it was a five-dollar gold piece of a date back toward the beginning of the century. to make assurance doubly sure, mr. delamere summoned the cook from the kitchen in the back yard. in answer to her master's questions, sally averred that mr. tom had got up very early, had knocked at her window,--she slept in a room off the kitchen in the yard,--and had told her that she need not bother about breakfast for him, as he had had a cold bite from the pantry; that he was going hunting and fishing, and would be gone all day. according to sally, mr. tom had come in about ten o'clock the night before. he had forgotten his night-key, sandy was out, and she had admitted him with her own key. he had said that he was very tired and was going, immediately to bed. mr. delamere seemed perplexed; the crime had been committed later in the evening than ten o'clock. the cook cleared up the mystery. "i reckon he must 'a' be'n dead ti'ed, suh, fer i went back ter his room fifteen er twenty minutes after he come in fer ter fin' out w'at he wanted fer breakfus'; an' i knock' two or three times, rale ha'd, an' mistuh tom didn' wake up no mo' d'n de dead. he sho'ly had a good sleep, er he'd never 'a' got up so ea'ly." "thank you, sally," said mr. delamere, when the woman had finished, "that will do." "will you be home ter suppah, suh?" asked the cook. "yes." it was a matter of the supremest indifference to mr. delamere whether he should ever eat again, but he would not betray his feelings to a servant. in a few minutes he was driving rapidly with ellis toward the office of the morning chronicle. ellis could see that mr. delamere had discovered something of tragic import. neither spoke. ellis gave all his attention to the horses, and mr. delamere remained wrapped in his own sombre reflections. when they reached the office, they were informed by jerry that major carteret was engaged with general belmont and captain mcbane. mr. delamere knocked peremptorily at the door of the inner office, which was opened by carteret in person. "oh, it is you, mr. delamere." "carteret," exclaimed mr. delamere, "i must speak to you immediately, and alone." "excuse me a moment, gentlemen," said carteret, turning to those within the room. "i'll be back in a moment--don't go away." ellis had left the room, closing the door behind him. mr. delamere and carteret were quite alone. "carteret," declared the old gentleman, "this murder must not take place." "'murder' is a hard word," replied the editor, frowning slightly. "it is the right word," rejoined mr. delamere, decidedly. "it would be a foul and most unnatural murder, for sandy did not kill mrs. ochiltree." carteret with difficulty restrained a smile of pity. his old friend was very much excited, as the tremor in his voice gave proof. the criminal was his trusted servant, who had proved unworthy of confidence. no one could question mr. delamere's motives; but he was old, his judgment was no longer to be relied upon. it was a great pity that he should so excite and overstrain himself about a worthless negro, who had forfeited his life for a dastardly crime. mr. delamere had had two paralytic strokes, and a third might prove fatal. he must be dealt with gently. "mr. delamere," he said, with patient tolerance, "i think you are deceived. there is but one sure way to stop this execution. if your servant is innocent, you must produce the real criminal. if the negro, with such overwhelming proofs against him, is not guilty, who is?" "i will tell you who is," replied mr. delamere. "the murderer is,"--the words came with a note of anguish, as though torn from his very heart,--"the murderer is tom delamere, my own grandson!" "impossible, sir!" exclaimed carteret, starting back involuntarily. "that could not be! the man was seen leaving the house, and he was black!" "all cats are gray in the dark, carteret; and, moreover, nothing is easier than for a white man to black his face. god alone knows how many crimes have been done in this guise! tom delamere, to get the money to pay his gambling debts, committed this foul murder, and then tried to fasten it upon as honest and faithful a soul as ever trod the earth." carteret, though at first overwhelmed by this announcement, perceived with quick intuition that it might easily be true. it was but a step from fraud to crime, and in delamere's need of money there lay a palpable motive for robbery,--the murder may have been an afterthought. delamere knew as much about the cedar chest as the negro could have known, and more. but a white man must not be condemned without proof positive. "what foundation is there, sir," he asked, "for this astounding charge?" mr. delamere related all that had taken place since he had left belleview a couple of hours before, and as he proceeded, step by step, every word carried conviction to carteret. tom delamere's skill as a mimic and a negro impersonator was well known; he had himself laughed at more than one of his performances. there had been a powerful motive, and mr. delamere's discoveries had made clear the means. tom's unusual departure, before breakfast, on a fishing expedition was a suspicious circumstance. there was a certain devilish ingenuity about the affair which he would hardly have expected of tom delamere, but for which the reason was clear enough. one might have thought that tom would have been satisfied with merely blacking his face, and leaving to chance the identification of the negro who might be apprehended. he would hardly have implicated, out of pure malignity, his grandfather's old servant, who had been his own care-taker for many years. here, however, carteret could see where tom's own desperate position operated to furnish a probable motive for the crime. the surest way to head off suspicion from himself was to direct it strongly toward some particular person, and this he had been able to do conclusively by his access to sandy's clothes, his skill in making up to resemble him, and by the episode of the silk purse. by placing himself beyond reach during the next day, he would not be called upon to corroborate or deny any inculpating statements which sandy might make, and in the very probable case that the crime should be summarily avenged, any such statements on sandy's part would be regarded as mere desperate subterfuges of the murderer to save his own life. it was a bad affair. "the case seems clear," said carteret reluctantly but conclusively. "and now, what shall we do about it?" "i want you to print a handbill," said mr. delamere, "and circulate it through the town, stating that sandy campbell is innocent and tom delamere guilty of this crime. if this is not done, i will go myself and declare it to all who will listen, and i will publicly disown the villain who is no more grandson of mine. there is no deeper sink of iniquity into which he could fall." carteret's thoughts were chasing one another tumultuously. there could be no doubt that the negro was innocent, from the present aspect of affairs, and he must not be lynched; but in what sort of position would the white people be placed, if mr. delamere carried out his spartan purpose of making the true facts known? the white people of the city had raised the issue of their own superior morality, and had themselves made this crime a race question. the success of the impending "revolution," for which he and his _confrères_ had labored so long, depended in large measure upon the maintenance of their race prestige, which would be injured in the eyes of the world by such a fiasco. while they might yet win by sheer force, their cause would suffer in the court of morals, where they might stand convicted as pirates, instead of being applauded as patriots. even the negroes would have the laugh on them,--the people whom they hoped to make approve and justify their own despoilment. to be laughed at by the negroes was a calamity only less terrible than failure or death. such an outcome of an event which had already been heralded to the four corners of the earth would throw a cloud of suspicion upon the stories of outrage which had gone up from the south for so many years, and had done so much to win the sympathy of the north for the white south and to alienate it from the colored people. the reputation of the race was threatened. they must not lynch the negro, and yet, for the credit of the town, its aristocracy, and the race, the truth of this ghastly story must not see the light,--at least not yet. "mr. delamere," he exclaimed, "i am shocked and humiliated. the negro must be saved, of course, but--consider the family honor." "tom is no longer a member of my family. i disown him. he has covered the family name--my name, sir--with infamy. we have no longer a family honor. i wish never to hear his name spoken again!" for several minutes carteret argued with his old friend. then he went into the other room and consulted with general belmont. as a result of these conferences, and of certain urgent messages sent out, within half an hour thirty or forty of the leading citizens of wellington were gathered in the morning chronicle office. several other curious persons, observing that there was something in the wind, and supposing correctly that it referred to the projected event of the evening, crowded in with those who had been invited. carteret was in another room, still arguing with mr. delamere. "it's a mere formality, sir," he was saying suavely, "accompanied by a mental reservation. we know the facts; but this must be done to justify us, in the eyes of the mob, in calling them off before they accomplish their purpose." "carteret," said the old man, in a voice eloquent of the struggle through which he had passed, "i would not perjure myself to prolong my own miserable existence another day, but god will forgive a sin committed to save another's life. upon your head be it, carteret, and not on mine!" "gentlemen," said carteret, entering with mr. delamere the room where the men were gathered, and raising his hand for silence, "the people of wellington were on the point of wreaking vengeance upon a negro who was supposed to have been guilty of a terrible crime. the white men of this city, impelled by the highest and holiest sentiments, were about to take steps to defend their hearthstones and maintain the purity and ascendency of their race. your purpose sprung from hearts wounded in their tenderest susceptibilities." "'rah, 'rah!" shouted a tipsy sailor, who had edged in with the crowd. "but this same sense of justice," continued carteret oratorically, "which would lead you to visit swift and terrible punishment upon the guilty, would not permit you to slay an innocent man. even a negro, as long as he behaves himself and keeps in his place, is entitled to the protection of the law. we may be stern and unbending in the punishment of crime, as befits our masterful race, but we hold the scales of justice with even and impartial hand." "'rah f' 'mpa'tial ban'!" cried the tipsy sailor, who was immediately ejected with slight ceremony. "we have discovered, beyond a doubt, that the negro sandy campbell, now in custody, did not commit this robbery and murder, but that it was perpetrated by some unknown man, who has fled from the city. our venerable and distinguished fellow townsman, mr. delamere, in whose employment this campbell has been for many years, will vouch for his character, and states, furthermore, that campbell was with him all last night, covering any hour at which this crime could have been committed." "if mr. delamere will swear to that," said some one in the crowd, "the negro should not be lynched." there were murmurs of dissent. the preparations had all been made. there would be great disappointment if the lynching did not occur. "let mr. delamere swear, if he wants to save the nigger," came again from the crowd. "certainly," assented carteret. "mr. delamere can have no possible objection to taking the oath. is there a notary public present, or a justice of the peace?" a man stepped forward. "i am a justice of the peace," he announced. "very well, mr. smith," said carteret, recognizing the speaker. "with your permission, i will formulate the oath, and mr. delamere may repeat it after me, if he will. i solemnly swear,"-- "i solemnly swear,"-- mr. delamere's voice might have come from the tomb, so hollow and unnatural did it sound. "so help me god,"-- "so help me god,"-- "that the negro sandy campbell, now in jail on the charge of murder, robbery, and assault, was in my presence last night between the hours of eight and two o'clock." mr. delamere repeated this statement in a firm voice; but to ellis, who was in the secret, his words fell upon the ear like clods dropping upon the coffin in an open grave. "i wish to add," said general belmont, stepping forward, "that it is not our intention to interfere, by anything which may be done at this meeting, with the orderly process of the law, or to advise the prisoner's immediate release. the prisoner will remain in custody, mr. delamere, major carteret, and i guaranteeing that he will be proved entirely innocent at the preliminary hearing to-morrow morning." several of those present looked relieved; others were plainly, disappointed; but when the meeting ended, the news went out that the lynching had been given up. carteret immediately wrote and had struck off a handbill giving a brief statement of the proceedings, and sent out a dozen boys to distribute copies among the people in the streets. that no precaution might be omitted, a call was issued to the wellington grays, the crack independent military company of the city, who in an incredibly short time were on guard at the jail. thus a slight change in the point of view had demonstrated the entire ability of the leading citizens to maintain the dignified and orderly processes of the law whenever they saw fit to do so. * * * * * the night passed without disorder, beyond the somewhat rough handling of two or three careless negroes that came in the way of small parties of the disappointed who had sought alcoholic consolation. at ten o'clock the next morning, a preliminary hearing of the charge against campbell was had before a magistrate. mr. delamere, perceptibly older and more wizened than he had seemed the day before, and leaning heavily on the arm of a servant, repeated his statement of the evening before. only one or two witnesses were called, among whom was mr. ellis, who swore positively that in his opinion the prisoner was not the man whom he had seen and at first supposed to be campbell. the most sensational piece of testimony was that of dr. price, who had examined the body, and who swore that the wound in the head was not necessarily fatal, and might have been due to a fall,--that she had more than likely died of shock attendant upon the robbery, she being of advanced age and feeble health. there was no evidence, he said, of any other personal violence. sandy was not even bound over to the grand jury, but was discharged upon the ground that there was not sufficient evidence upon which to hold him. upon his release he received the congratulations of many present, some of whom would cheerfully have done him to death a few hours before. with the childish fickleness of a mob, they now experienced a satisfaction almost as great as, though less exciting than, that attendant upon taking life. we speak of the mysteries of inanimate nature. the workings of the human heart are the profoundest mystery of the universe. one moment they make us despair of our kind, and the next we see in them the reflection of the divine image. sandy, having thus escaped from the mr. hyde of the mob, now received the benediction of its dr. jekyll. being no cynical philosopher, and realizing how nearly the jaws of death had closed upon him, he was profoundly grateful for his escape, and felt not the slightest desire to investigate or criticise any man's motives. with the testimony of dr. price, the worst feature of the affair came to an end. the murder eliminated or rendered doubtful, the crime became a mere vulgar robbery, the extent of which no one could estimate, since no living soul knew how much money mrs. ochiltree had had in the cedar chest. the absurdity of the remaining charge became more fully apparent in the light of the reaction from the excitement of the day before. nothing further was ever done about the case; but though the crime went unpunished, it carried evil in its train. as we have seen, the charge against campbell had been made against the whole colored race. all over the united states the associated press had flashed the report of another dastardly outrage by a burly black brute,--all black brutes it seems are burly,--and of the impending lynching with its prospective horrors. this news, being highly sensational in its character, had been displayed in large black type on the front pages of the daily papers. the dispatch that followed, to the effect that the accused had been found innocent and the lynching frustrated, received slight attention, if any, in a fine-print paragraph on an inside page. the facts of the case never came out at all. the family honor of the delameres was preserved, and the prestige of the white race in wellington was not seriously impaired. * * * * * upon leaving the preliminary hearing, old mr. delamere had requested general belmont to call at his house during the day upon professional business. this the general did in the course of the afternoon. "belmont," said mr. delamere, "i wish to make my will. i should have drawn it with my own hand; but you know my motives, and can testify to my soundness of mind and memory." he thereupon dictated a will, by the terms of which he left to his servant, sandy campbell, three thousand dollars, as a mark of the testator's appreciation of services rendered and sufferings endured by sandy on behalf of his master. after some minor dispositions, the whole remainder of the estate was devised to dr. william miller, in trust for the uses of his hospital and training-school for nurses, on condition that the institution be incorporated and placed under the management of competent trustees. tom delamere was not mentioned in the will. "there, belmont," he said, "that load is off my mind. now, if you will call in some witnesses,--most of my people can write,--i shall feel entirely at ease." the will was signed by mr. delamere, and witnessed by jeff and billy, two servants in the house, neither of whom received any information as to its contents, beyond the statement that they were witnessing their master's will. "i wish to leave that with you for safe keeping, belmont," said mr. delamere, after the witnesses had retired. "lock it up in your safe until i die, which will not be very long, since i have no further desire to live." an hour later mr. delamere suffered a third paralytic stroke, from which he died two days afterwards, without having in the meantime recovered the power of speech. the will was never produced. the servants stated, and general belmont admitted, that mr. delamere had made a will a few days before his death; but since it was not discoverable, it seemed probable that the testator had destroyed it. this was all the more likely, the general was inclined to think, because the will had been of a most unusual character. what the contents of the will were, he of course did not state, it having been made under the seal of professional secrecy. this suppression was justified by the usual race argument: miller's hospital was already well established, and, like most negro institutions, could no doubt rely upon northern philanthropy for any further support it might need. mr. delamere's property belonged of right to the white race, and by the higher law should remain in the possession of white people. loyalty to one's race was a more sacred principle than deference to a weak old man's whims. having reached this conclusion, general belmont's first impulse was to destroy the will; on second thoughts he locked it carefully away in his safe. he would hold it awhile. it might some time be advisable to talk the matter over with young delamere, who was of a fickle disposition and might wish to change his legal adviser. xxviii in season and out wellington soon resumed its wonted calm, and in a few weeks the intended lynching was only a memory. the robbery and assault, however, still remained a mystery to all but a chosen few. the affair had been dropped as absolutely as though it had never occurred. no colored man ever learned the reason of this sudden change of front, and sandy campbell's loyalty to his old employer's memory kept him silent. tom delamere did not offer to retain sandy in his service, though he presented him with most of the old gentleman's wardrobe. it is only justice to tom to state that up to this time he had not been informed of the contents of his grandfather's latest will. major carteret gave sandy employment as butler, thus making a sort of vicarious atonement, on the part of the white race, of which the major felt himself in a way the embodiment, for the risk to which sandy had been subjected. shortly after these events sandy was restored to the bosom of the church, and, enfolded by its sheltering arms, was no longer tempted to stray from the path of rectitude, but became even a more rigid methodist than before his recent troubles. tom delamere did not call upon clara again in the character of a lover. of course they could not help meeting, from time to time, but he never dared presume upon their former relations. indeed, the social atmosphere of wellington remained so frigid toward delamere that he left town, and did not return for several months. ellis was aware that delamere had been thrown over, but a certain delicacy restrained him from following up immediately the advantage which the absence of his former rival gave him. it seemed to him, with the quixotry of a clean, pure mind, that clara would pass through a period of mourning for her lost illusion, and that it would be indelicate, for the time being, to approach her with a lover's attentions. the work of the office had been unusually heavy of late. the major, deeply absorbed in politics, left the detail work of the paper to ellis. into the intimate counsels of the revolutionary committee ellis had not been admitted, nor would he have desired to be. he knew, of course, in a general way, the results that it was sought to achieve; and while he did not see their necessity, he deferred to the views of older men, and was satisfied to remain in ignorance of anything which he might disapprove. moreover, his own personal affairs occupied his mind to an extent that made politics or any other subject a matter of minor importance. as for dr. miller, he never learned of mr. delamere's good intentions toward his institution, but regretted the old gentleman's death as the loss of a sincere friend and well-wisher of his race in their unequal struggle. despite the untiring zeal of carteret and his associates, the campaign for the restriction of the suffrage, which was to form the basis of a permanent white supremacy, had seemed to languish for a while after the ochiltree affair. the lull, however, was only temporary, and more apparent than real, for the forces adverse to the negro were merely gathering strength for a more vigorous assault. while little was said in wellington, public sentiment all over the country became every day more favorable to the views of the conspirators. the nation was rushing forward with giant strides toward colossal wealth and world-dominion, before the exigencies of which mere abstract ethical theories must not be permitted to stand. the same argument that justified the conquest of an inferior nation could not be denied to those who sought the suppression of an inferior race. in the south, an obscure jealousy of the negro's progress, an obscure fear of the very equality so contemptuously denied, furnished a rich soil for successful agitation. statistics of crime, ingeniously manipulated, were made to present a fearful showing against the negro. vital statistics were made to prove that he had degenerated from an imaginary standard of physical excellence which had existed under the benign influence of slavery. constant lynchings emphasized his impotence, and bred everywhere a growing contempt for his rights. at the north, a new pharaoh had risen, who knew not israel,--a new generation, who knew little of the fierce passions which had played around the negro in a past epoch, and derived their opinions of him from the "coon song" and the police reports. those of his old friends who survived were disappointed that he had not flown with clipped wings; that he had not in one generation of limited opportunity attained the level of the whites. the whole race question seemed to have reached a sort of _impasse_, a blind alley, of which no one could see the outlet. the negro had become a target at which any one might try a shot. schoolboys gravely debated the question as to whether or not the negro should exercise the franchise. the pessimist gave him up in despair; while the optimist, smilingly confident that everything would come out all right in the end, also turned aside and went his buoyant way to more pleasing themes. for a time there were white men in the state who opposed any reactionary step unless it were of general application. they were conscientious men, who had learned the ten commandments and wished to do right; but this class was a small minority, and their objections were soon silenced by the all-powerful race argument. selfishness is the most constant of human motives. patriotism, humanity, or the love of god may lead to sporadic outbursts which sweep away the heaped-up wrongs of centuries; but they languish at times, while the love of self works on ceaselessly, unwearyingly, burrowing always at the very roots of life, and heaping up fresh wrongs for other centuries to sweep away. the state was at the mercy of venal and self-seeking politicians, bent upon regaining their ascendency at any cost, stultifying their own minds by vague sophistries and high-sounding phrases, which deceived none but those who wished to be deceived, and these but imperfectly; and dulling the public conscience by a loud clamor in which the calm voice of truth was for the moment silenced. so the cause went on. carteret, as spokesman of the campaign, and sincerest of all its leaders, performed prodigies of labor. the morning chronicle proclaimed, in season and out, the doctrine of "white supremacy." leaving the paper in charge of ellis, the major made a tour of the state, rousing the white people of the better class to an appreciation of the terrible danger which confronted them in the possibility that a few negroes might hold a few offices or dictate the terms upon which white men should fill them. difficulties were explained away. the provisions of the federal constitution, it was maintained, must yield to the "higher law," and if the constitution could neither be altered nor bent to this end, means must be found to circumvent it. the device finally hit upon for disfranchising the colored people in this particular state was the notorious "grandfather clause." after providing various restrictions of the suffrage, based upon education, character, and property, which it was deemed would in effect disfranchise the colored race, an exception was made in favor of all citizens whose fathers or grandfathers had been entitled to vote prior to . since none but white men could vote prior to , this exception obviously took in the poor and ignorant whites, while the same class of negroes were excluded. it was ingenious, but it was not fair. in due time a constitutional convention was called, in which the above scheme was adopted and submitted to a vote of the people for ratification. the campaign was fought on the color line. many white republicans, deluded with the hope that by the elimination of the negro vote their party might receive accessions from the democratic ranks, went over to the white party. by fraud in one place, by terrorism in another, and everywhere by the resistless moral force of the united whites, the negroes were reduced to the apathy of despair, their few white allies demoralized, and the amendment adopted by a large majority. the negroes were taught that this is a white man's country, and that the sooner they made up their minds to this fact, the better for all concerned. the white people would be good to them so long as they behaved themselves and kept their place. as theoretical equals,--practical equality being forever out of the question, either by nature or by law,--there could have been nothing but strife between them, in which the weaker party would invariably have suffered most. some colored men accepted the situation thus outlined, if not as desirable, at least as inevitable. most of them, however, had little faith in this condescending friendliness which was to take the place of constitutional rights. they knew they had been treated unfairly; that their enemies had prevailed against them; that their whilom friends had stood passively by and seen them undone. many of the most enterprising and progressive left the state, and those who remain still labor under a sense of wrong and outrage which renders them distinctly less valuable as citizens. the great steal was made, but the thieves did not turn honest,--the scheme still shows the mark of the burglar's tools. sins, like chickens, come home to roost. the south paid a fearful price for the wrong of negro slavery; in some form or other it will doubtless reap the fruits of this later iniquity. drastic as were these "reforms," the results of which we have anticipated somewhat, since the new constitution was not to take effect immediately, they moved all too slowly for the little coterie of wellington conspirators, whose ambitions and needs urged them to prompt action. under the new constitution it would be two full years before the "nigger amendment" became effective, and meanwhile the wellington district would remain hopelessly republican. the committee decided, about two months before the fall election, that an active local campaign must be carried on, with a view to discourage the negroes from attending the polls on election day. the question came up for discussion one forenoon in a meeting at the office of the morning chronicle, at which all of the "big three" were present. "something must be done," declared mcbane, "and that damn quick. too many white people are saying that it will be better to wait until the amendment goes into effect. that would mean to leave the niggers in charge of this town for two years after the state has declared for white supremacy! i'm opposed to leaving it in their hands one hour,--them's my sentiments!" this proved to be the general opinion, and the discussion turned to the subject of ways and means. "what became of that editorial in the nigger paper?" inquired the general in his blandest tones, cleverly directing a smoke ring toward the ceiling. "it lost some of its point back there, when we came near lynching that nigger; but now that that has blown over, why wouldn't it be a good thing to bring into play at the present juncture? let's read it over again." carteret extracted the paper from the pigeon-hole where he had placed it some months before. the article was read aloud with emphasis and discussed phrase by phrase. of its wording there could be little criticism,--it was temperately and even cautiously phrased. as suggested by the general, the ochiltree affair had proved that it was not devoid of truth. its great offensiveness lay in its boldness: that a negro should publish in a newspaper what white people would scarcely acknowledge to themselves in secret was much as though a russian _moujik_ or a german peasant should rush into print to question the divine right of the lord's anointed. the article was racial _lèse-majesté_ in the most aggravated form. a peg was needed upon which to hang a _coup d'état_, and this editorial offered the requisite opportunity. it was unanimously decided to republish the obnoxious article, with comment adapted to fire the inflammable southern heart and rouse it against any further self-assertion of the negroes in politics or elsewhere. "the time is ripe!" exclaimed mcbane. "in a month we can have the niggers so scared that they won't dare stick their heads out of doors on 'lection day." "i wonder," observed the general thoughtfully, after this conclusion had been reached, "if we couldn't have jerry fetch us some liquor?" jerry appeared in response to the usual summons. the general gave him the money, and ordered three calhoun cocktails. when jerry returned with the glasses on a tray, the general observed him with pointed curiosity. "what, in h--ll is the matter with you, jerry? your black face is splotched with brown and yellow patches, and your hair shines as though you had fallen head-foremost into a firkin of butter. what's the matter with you?" jerry seemed much embarrassed by this inquiry. "nothin', suh, nothin'," he stammered. "it's--it's jes' somethin' i be'n puttin' on my hair, suh, ter improve de quality, suh." "jerry," returned the general, bending a solemn look upon the porter, "you have been playing with edged tools, and your days are numbered. you have been reading the afro-american banner." he shook open the paper, which he had retained in his hand, and read from one of the advertisements:-- "'kinky, curly hair made straight in two applications. dark skins lightened two shades; mulattoes turned perfectly white.' "this stuff is rank poison, jerry," continued the general with a mock solemnity which did not impose upon jerry, who nevertheless listened with an air of great alarm. he suspected that the general was making fun of him; but he also knew that the general would like to think that jerry believed him in earnest; and to please the white folks was jerry's consistent aim in life. "i can see the signs of decay in your face, and your hair will all fall out in a week or two at the latest,--mark my words!" mcbane had listened to this pleasantry with a sardonic sneer. it was a waste of valuable time. to carteret it seemed in doubtful taste. these grotesque advertisements had their tragic side. they were proof that the negroes had read the handwriting on the wall. these pitiful attempts to change their physical characteristics were an acknowledgment, on their own part, that the negro was doomed, and that the white man was to inherit the earth and hold all other races under his heel. for, as the months had passed, carteret's thoughts, centring more and more upon the negro, had led him farther and farther, until now he was firmly convinced that there was no permanent place for the negro in the united states, if indeed anywhere in the world, except under the ground. more pathetic even than jerry's efforts to escape from the universal doom of his race was his ignorance that even if he could, by some strange alchemy, bleach his skin and straighten his hair, there would still remain, underneath it all, only the unbleached darky,--the ass in the lion's skin. when the general had finished his facetious lecture, jerry backed out of the room shamefacedly, though affecting a greater confusion than he really felt. jerry had not reasoned so closely as carteret, but he had realized that it was a distinct advantage to be white,--an advantage which white people had utilized to secure all the best things in the world; and he had entertained the vague hope that by changing his complexion he might share this prerogative. while he suspected the general's sincerity, he nevertheless felt a little apprehensive lest the general's prediction about the effects of the face-bleach and other preparations might prove true,--the general was a white gentleman and ought to know,--and decided to abandon their use. this purpose was strengthened by his next interview with the major. when carteret summoned him, an hour later, after the other gentlemen had taken their leave, jerry had washed his head thoroughly and there remained no trace of the pomade. an attempt to darken the lighter spots in his cuticle by the application of printer's ink had not proved equally successful,--the retouching left the spots as much too dark as they had formerly been too light. "jerry," said carteret sternly, "when i hired you to work for the chronicle, you were black. the word 'negro' means 'black.' the best negro is a black negro, of the pure type, as it came from the hand of god. if you wish to get along well with the white people, the blacker you are the better,--white people do not like negroes who want to be white. a man should be content to remain as god made him and where god placed him. so no more of this nonsense. are you going to vote at the next election?" "what would you 'vise me ter do, suh?" asked jerry cautiously. "i do not advise you. you ought to have sense enough to see where your own interests lie. i put it to you whether you cannot trust yourself more safely in the hands of white gentlemen, who are your true friends, than in the hands of ignorant and purchasable negroes and unscrupulous white scoundrels?" "dere's no doubt about it, suh," assented jerry, with a vehemence proportioned to his desire to get back into favor. "i ain' gwine ter have nothin' ter do wid de 'lection, suh! ef i don' vote, i kin keep my job, can't i, suh?" the major eyed jerry with an air of supreme disgust. what could be expected of a race so utterly devoid of tact? it seemed as though this negro thought a white gentleman might want to bribe him to remain away from the polls; and the negro's willingness to accept the imaginary bribe demonstrated the venal nature of the colored race,--its entire lack of moral principle! "you will retain your place, jerry," he said severely, "so long as you perform your duties to my satisfaction and behave yourself properly." with this grandiloquent subterfuge carteret turned to his next article on white supremacy. jerry did not delude himself with any fine-spun sophistry. he knew perfectly well that he held his job upon the condition that he stayed away from the polls at the approaching election. jerry was a fool-- "the world of fools hath such a store, that he who would not see an ass, must stay at home and shut his door and break his looking-glass." but while no one may be entirely wise, there are degrees of folly, and jerry was not all kinds of a fool. xxix mutterings of the storm events moved rapidly during the next few days. the reproduction, in the chronicle, of the article from the afro-american banner, with carteret's inflammatory comment, took immediate effect. it touched the southern white man in his most sensitive spot. to him such an article was an insult to white womanhood, and must be resented by some active steps,--mere words would be no answer at all. to meet words with words upon such a subject would be to acknowledge the equality of the negro and his right to discuss or criticise the conduct of the white people. the colored people became alarmed at the murmurings of the whites, which seemed to presage a coming storm. a number of them sought to arm themselves, but ascertained, upon inquiring at the stores, that no white merchant would sell a negro firearms. since all the dealers in this sort of merchandise were white men, the negroes had to be satisfied with oiling up the old army muskets which some of them possessed, and the few revolvers with which a small rowdy element generally managed to keep themselves supplied. upon an effort being made to purchase firearms from a northern city, the express company, controlled by local men, refused to accept the consignment. the white people, on the other hand, procured both arms and ammunition in large quantities, and the wellington grays drilled with great assiduity at their armory. all this went on without any public disturbance of the town's tranquillity. a stranger would have seen nothing to excite his curiosity. the white people did their talking among themselves, and merely grew more distant in their manner toward the colored folks, who instinctively closed their ranks as the whites drew away. with each day that passed the feeling grew more tense. the editor of the afro-american banner, whose office had been quietly garrisoned for several nights by armed negroes, became frightened, and disappeared from the town between two suns. the conspirators were jubilant at the complete success of their plans. it only remained for them to so direct this aroused public feeling that it might completely accomplish the desired end,--to change the political complexion of the city government and assure the ascendency of the whites until the amendment should go into effect. a revolution, and not a riot, was contemplated. with this end in view, another meeting was called at carteret's office. "we are now ready," announced general belmont, "for the final act of this drama. we must decide promptly, or events may run away from us." "what do you suggest?" asked carteret. "down in the american tropics," continued the general, "they have a way of doing things. i was in nicaragua, ten years ago, when paterno's revolution drove out igorroto's government. it was as easy as falling off a log. paterno had the arms and the best men. igorroto was not looking for trouble, and the guns were at his breast before he knew it. we have the guns. the negroes are not expecting trouble, and are easy to manage compared with the fiery mixture that flourishes in the tropics." "i should not advocate murder," returned carteret. "we are animated by high and holy principles. we wish to right a wrong, to remedy an abuse, to save our state from anarchy and our race from humiliation. i don't object to frightening the negroes, but i am opposed to unnecessary bloodshed." "i'm not quite so particular," struck in mcbane. "they need to be taught a lesson, and a nigger more or less wouldn't be missed. there's too many of 'em now." "of course," continued carteret, "if we should decide upon a certain mode of procedure, and the negroes should resist, a different reasoning might apply; but i will have no premeditated murder." "in central and south america," observed the general reflectively, "none are hurt except those who get in the way." "there'll be no niggers hurt," said mcbane contemptuously, "unless they strain themselves running. one white man can chase a hundred of 'em. i've managed five hundred at a time. i'll pay for burying all the niggers that are killed." the conference resulted in a well-defined plan, to be put into operation the following day, by which the city government was to be wrested from the republicans and their negro allies. "and now," said general belmont, "while we are cleansing the augean stables, we may as well remove the cause as the effect. there are several negroes too many in this town, which will be much the better without them. there's that yellow lawyer, watson. he's altogether too mouthy, and has too much business. every nigger that gets into trouble sends for watson, and white lawyers, with families to support and social positions to keep up, are deprived of their legitimate source of income." "there's that damn nigger real estate agent," blurted out mcbane. "billy kitchen used to get most of the nigger business, but this darky has almost driven him to the poorhouse. a white business man is entitled to a living in his own profession and his own home. that nigger don't belong here nohow. he came from the north a year or two ago, and is hand in glove with barber, the nigger editor, which is enough of itself to damn him. _he'll_ have to go!" "how about the collector of the port?" "we'd better not touch him. it would bring the government down upon us, which we want to avoid. we don't need to worry about the nigger preachers either. they want to stay here, where the loaves and the fishes are. we can make 'em write letters to the newspapers justifying our course, as a condition of their remaining." "what about billings?" asked mcbane. billings was the white republican mayor. "is that skunk to be allowed to stay in town?" "no," returned the general, "every white republican office-holder ought to be made to go. this town is only big enough for democrats, and negroes who can be taught to keep their place." "what about the colored doctor," queried mcbane, "with the hospital, and the diamond ring, and the carriage, and the other fallals?" "i shouldn't interfere with miller," replied the general decisively. "he's a very good sort of a negro, doesn't meddle with politics, nor tread on any one else's toes. his father was a good citizen, which counts in his favor. he's spending money in the community too, and contributes to its prosperity." "that sort of nigger, though, sets a bad example," retorted mcbane. "they make it all the harder to keep the rest of 'em down." "'one swallow does not make a summer,'" quoted the general. "when we get things arranged, there'll be no trouble. a stream cannot rise higher than its fountain, and a smart nigger without a constituency will no longer be an object of fear. i say, let the doctor alone." "he'll have to keep mighty quiet, though," muttered mcbane discontentedly. "i don't like smart niggers. i've had to shoot several of them, in the course of my life." "personally, i dislike the man," interposed carteret, "and if i consulted my own inclinations, would say expel him with the rest; but my grievance is a personal one, and to gratify it in that way would be a loss to the community. i wish to be strictly impartial in this matter, and to take no step which cannot be entirely justified by a wise regard for the public welfare." "what's the use of all this hypocrisy, gentlemen?" sneered mcbane. "every last one of us has an axe to grind! the major may as well put an edge on his. we'll never get a better chance to have things our way. if this nigger doctor annoys the major, we'll run him out with the rest. this is a white man's country, and a white man's city, and no nigger has any business here when a white man wants him gone!" carteret frowned darkly at this brutal characterization of their motives. it robbed the enterprise of all its poetry, and put a solemn act of revolution upon the plane of a mere vulgar theft of power. even the general winced. "i would not consent," he said irritably, "to miller's being disturbed." mcbane made no further objection. there was a discreet knock at the door. "come in," said carteret. jerry entered. "mistuh ellis wants ter speak ter you a minute, suh," he said. carteret excused himself and left the room. "jerry," said the general, "you lump of ebony, the sight of you reminds me! if your master doesn't want you for a minute, step across to mr. brown's and tell him to send me three cocktails." "yas, suh," responded jerry, hesitating. the general had said nothing about paying. "and tell him, jerry, to charge them. i'm short of change to-day." "yas, suh; yas, suh," replied jerry, as he backed out of the presence, adding, when he had reached the hall: "dere ain' no change fer jerry dis time, sho': i'll jes' make dat _fo_' cocktails, an' de gin'l won't never know de diffe'nce. i ain' gwine 'cross de road fer nothin', not ef i knows it." half an hour later, the conspirators dispersed. they had fixed the hour of the proposed revolution, the course to be pursued, the results to be obtained; but in stating their equation they had overlooked one factor,--god, or fate, or whatever one may choose to call the power that holds the destinies of man in the hollow of his hand. xxx the missing papers mrs. carteret was very much disturbed. it was supposed that the shock of her aunt's death had affected her health, for since that event she had fallen into a nervous condition which gave the major grave concern. much to the general surprise, mrs. ochiltree had left no will, and no property of any considerable value except her homestead, which descended to mrs. carteret as the natural heir. whatever she may have had on hand in the way of ready money had undoubtedly been abstracted from the cedar chest by the midnight marauder, to whose visit her death was immediately due. her niece's grief was held to mark a deep-seated affection for the grim old woman who had reared her. mrs. carteret's present state of mind, of which her nervousness was a sufficiently accurate reflection, did in truth date from her aunt's death, and also in part from the time of the conversation with mrs. ochiltree, one afternoon, during and after the drive past miller's new hospital. mrs. ochiltree had grown steadily more and more childish after that time, and her niece had never succeeded in making her pick up the thread of thought where it had been dropped. at any rate, mrs. ochiltree had made no further disclosure upon the subject. an examination, not long after her aunt's death, of the papers found near the cedar chest on the morning after the murder had contributed to mrs. carteret's enlightenment, but had not promoted her peace of mind. when mrs. carteret reached home, after her hurried exploration of the cedar chest, she thrust into a bureau drawer the envelope she had found. so fully was her mind occupied, for several days, with the funeral, and with the excitement attending the arrest of sandy campbell, that she deferred the examination of the contents of the envelope until near the end of the week. one morning, while alone in her chamber, she drew the envelope from the drawer, and was holding it in her hand, hesitating as to whether or not she should open it, when the baby in the next room began to cry. the child's cry seemed like a warning, and yielding to a vague uneasiness, she put the paper back. "phil," she said to her husband at luncheon, "aunt polly said some strange things to me one day before she died,--i don't know whether she was quite in her right mind or not; but suppose that my father had left a will by which it was provided that half his property should go to that woman and her child?" "it would never have gone by such a will," replied the major easily. "your aunt polly was in her dotage, and merely dreaming. your father would never have been such a fool; but even if he had, no such will could have stood the test of the courts. it would clearly have been due to the improper influence of a designing woman." "so that legally, as well as morally," said mrs. carteret, "the will would have been of no effect?" "not the slightest. a jury would soon have broken down the legal claim. as for any moral obligation, there would have been nothing moral about the affair. the only possible consideration for such a gift was an immoral one. i don't wish to speak harshly of your father, my dear, but his conduct was gravely reprehensible. the woman herself had no right or claim whatever; she would have been whipped and expelled from the town, if justice--blind, bleeding justice, then prostrate at the feet of slaves and aliens--could have had her way!" "but the child"-- "the child was in the same category. who was she, to have inherited the estate of your ancestors, of which, a few years before, she would herself have formed a part? the child of shame, it was hers to pay the penalty. but the discussion is all in the air, olivia. your father never did and never would have left such a will." this conversation relieved mrs. carteret's uneasiness. going to her room shortly afterwards, she took the envelope from her bureau drawer and drew out a bulky paper. the haunting fear that it might be such a will as her aunt had suggested was now removed; for such an instrument, in the light of what her husband had said confirming her own intuitions, would be of no valid effect. it might be just as well, she thought, to throw the paper in the fire without looking at it. she wished to think as well as might be of her father, and she felt that her respect for his memory would not be strengthened by the knowledge that he had meant to leave his estate away from her; for her aunt's words had been open to the construction that she was to have been left destitute. curiosity strongly prompted her to read the paper. perhaps the will contained no such provision as she had feared, and it might convey some request or direction which ought properly to be complied with. she had been standing in front of the bureau while these thoughts passed through her mind, and now, dropping the envelope back into the drawer mechanically, she unfolded the document. it was written on legal paper, in her father's own hand. mrs. carteret was not familiar with legal verbiage, and there were several expressions of which she did not perhaps appreciate the full effect; but a very hasty glance enabled her to ascertain the purport of the paper. it was a will, by which, in one item, her father devised to his daughter janet, the child of the woman known as julia brown, the sum of ten thousand dollars, and a certain plantation or tract of land a short distance from the town of wellington. the rest and residue of his estate, after deducting all legal charges and expenses, was bequeathed to his beloved daughter, olivia merkell. mrs. carteret breathed a sigh of relief. her father had not preferred another to her, but had left to his lawful daughter the bulk of his estate. she felt at the same time a growing indignation at the thought that that woman should so have wrought upon her father's weakness as to induce him to think of leaving so much valuable property to her bastard,--property which by right should go, and now would go, to her own son, to whom by every rule of law and decency it ought to descend. a fire was burning in the next room, on account of the baby,--there had been a light frost the night before, and the air was somewhat chilly. for the moment the room was empty. mrs. carteret came out from her chamber and threw the offending paper into the fire, and watched it slowly burn. when it had been consumed, the carbon residue of one sheet still retained its form, and she could read the words on the charred portion. a sentence, which had escaped her eye in her rapid reading, stood out in ghostly black upon the gray background:-- "all the rest and residue of my estate i devise and bequeath to my daughter olivia merkell, the child of my beloved first wife." mrs. carteret had not before observed the word "first." instinctively she stretched toward the fire the poker which she held in her hand, and at its touch the shadowy remnant fell to pieces, and nothing but ashes remained upon the hearth. not until the next morning did she think again of the envelope which had contained the paper she had burned. opening the drawer where it lay, the oblong blue envelope confronted her. the sight of it was distasteful. the indorsed side lay uppermost, and the words seemed like a mute reproach:-- "the last will and testament of samuel merkell." snatching up the envelope, she glanced into it mechanically as she moved toward the next room, and perceived a thin folded paper which had heretofore escaped her notice. when opened, it proved to be a certificate of marriage, in due form, between samuel merkell and julia brown. it was dated from a county in south carolina, about two years before her father's death. for a moment mrs. carteret stood gazing blankly at this faded slip of paper. her father _had_ married this woman!--at least he had gone through the form of marriage with her, for to him it had surely been no more than an empty formality. the marriage of white and colored persons was forbidden by law. only recently she had read of a case where both the parties to such a crime, a colored man and a white woman, had been sentenced to long terms in the penitentiary. she even recalled the circumstances. the couple had been living together unlawfully,--they were very low people, whose private lives were beneath the public notice,--but influenced by a religious movement pervading the community, had sought, they said at the trial, to secure the blessing of god upon their union. the higher law, which imperiously demanded that the purity and prestige of the white race be preserved at any cost, had intervened at this point. mechanically she moved toward the fireplace, so dazed by this discovery as to be scarcely conscious of her own actions. she surely had not formed any definite intention of destroying this piece of paper when her fingers relaxed unconsciously and let go their hold upon it. the draught swept it toward the fireplace. ere scarcely touching the flames it caught, blazed fiercely, and shot upward with the current of air. a moment later the record of poor julia's marriage was scattered to the four winds of heaven, as her poor body had long since mingled with the dust of earth. the letter remained unread. in her agitation at the discovery of the marriage certificate, olivia had almost forgotten the existence of the letter. it was addressed to "john delamere, esq., as executor of my last will and testament," while the lower left hand corner bore the direction: "to be delivered only after my death, with seal unbroken." the seal was broken already; mr. delamere was dead; the letter could never be delivered. mrs. carteret unfolded it and read:-- my dear delamere,--i have taken the liberty of naming you as executor of my last will, because you are my friend, and the only man of my acquaintance whom i feel that i can trust to carry out my wishes, appreciate my motives, and preserve the silence i desire. i have, first, a confession to make. inclosed in this letter you will find a certificate of marriage between my child janet's mother and myself. while i have never exactly repented of this marriage, i have never had the courage to acknowledge it openly. if i had not married julia, i fear polly ochiltree would have married me by main force,--as she would marry you or any other gentleman unfortunate enough to fall in the way of this twice-widowed man-hunter. when my wife died, three years ago, her sister polly offered to keep house for me and the child. i would sooner have had the devil in the house, and yet i trembled with alarm,--there seemed no way of escape,--it was so clearly and obviously the proper thing. but she herself gave me my opportunity. i was on the point of consenting, when she demanded, as a condition of her coming, that i discharge julia, my late wife's maid. she was laboring under a misapprehension in regard to the girl, but i grasped at the straw, and did everything to foster her delusion. i declared solemnly that nothing under heaven would induce me to part with julia. the controversy resulted in my permitting polly to take the child, while i retained the maid. before polly put this idea into my head, i had scarcely looked at julia, but this outbreak turned my attention toward her. she was a handsome girl, and, as i soon found out, a good girl. my wife, who raised her, was a christian woman, and had taught her modesty and virtue. she was free. the air was full of liberty, and equal rights, and all the abolition claptrap, and she made marriage a condition of her remaining longer in the house. in a moment of weakness i took her away to a place where we were not known, and married her. if she had left me, i should have fallen a victim to polly ochiltree,--to which any fate was preferable. and then, old friend, my weakness kept to the fore. i was ashamed of this marriage, and my new wife saw it. moreover, she loved me,--too well, indeed, to wish to make me unhappy. the ceremony had satisfied her conscience, had set her right, she said, with god; for the opinions of men she did not care, since i loved her,--she only wanted to compensate me, as best she could, for the great honor i had done my handmaiden,--for she had read her bible, and i was the abraham to her hagar, compared with whom she considered herself at a great advantage. it was her own proposition that nothing be said of this marriage. if any shame should fall on her, it would fall lightly, for it would be undeserved. when the child came, she still kept silence. no one, she argued, could blame an innocent child for the accident of birth, and in the sight of god this child had every right to exist; while among her own people illegitimacy would involve but little stigma. i need not say that i was easily persuaded to accept this sacrifice; but touched by her fidelity, i swore to provide handsomely for them both. this i have tried to do by the will of which i ask you to act as executor. had i left the child more, it might serve as a ground for attacking the will; my acknowledgment of the tie of blood is sufficient to justify a reasonable bequest. i have taken this course for the sake of my daughter olivia, who is dear to me, and whom i would not wish to make ashamed; and in deference to public opinion, which it is not easy to defy. if, after my death, julia should choose to make our secret known, i shall of course be beyond the reach of hard words; but loyalty to my memory will probably keep her silent. a strong man would long since have acknowledged her before the world and taken the consequences; but, alas! i am only myself, and the atmosphere i live in does not encourage moral heroism. i should like to be different, but it is god who hath made us, and not we ourselves! nevertheless, old friend, i will ask of you one favor. if in the future this child of julia's and of mine should grow to womanhood; if she should prove to have her mother's gentleness and love of virtue; if, in the new era which is opening up for her mother's race, to which, unfortunately, she must belong, she should become, in time, an educated woman; and if the time should ever come when, by virtue of her education or the development of her people, it would be to her a source of shame or unhappiness that she was an illegitimate child,--if you are still alive, old friend, and have the means of knowing or divining this thing, go to her and tell her, for me, that she is my lawful child, and ask her to forgive her father's weakness. when this letter comes to you, i shall have passed to--the beyond; but i am confident that you will accept this trust, for which i thank you now, in advance, most heartily. the letter was signed with her father's name, the same signature which had been attached to the will. having firmly convinced herself of the illegality of the papers, and of her own right to destroy them, mrs. carteret ought to have felt relieved that she had thus removed all traces of her dead father's folly. true, the other daughter remained,--she had seen her on the street only the day before. the sight of this person she had always found offensive, and now, she felt, in view of what she had just learned, it must be even more so. never, while this woman lived in the town, would she be able to throw the veil of forgetfulness over this blot upon her father's memory. as the day wore on, mrs. carteret grew still less at ease. to herself, marriage was a serious thing,--to a right-thinking woman the most serious concern of life. a marriage certificate, rightfully procured, was scarcely less solemn, so far as it went, than the bible itself. her own she cherished as the apple of her eye. it was the evidence of her wifehood, the seal of her child's legitimacy, her patent of nobility,--the token of her own and her child's claim to social place and consideration. she had burned this pretended marriage certificate because it meant nothing. nevertheless, she could not ignore the knowledge of another such marriage, of which every one in the town knew,--a celebrated case, indeed, where a white man, of a family quite as prominent as her father's, had married a colored woman during the military occupation of the state just after the civil war. the legality of the marriage had never been questioned. it had been fully consummated by twenty years of subsequent cohabitation. no amount of social persecution had ever shaken the position of the husband. with an iron will he had stayed on in the town, a living protest against the established customs of the south, so rudely interrupted for a few short years; and, though his children were negroes, though he had never appeared in public with his wife, no one had ever questioned the validity of his marriage or the legitimacy of his offspring. the marriage certificate which mrs. carteret had burned dated from the period of the military occupation. hence mrs. carteret, who was a good woman, and would not have done a dishonest thing, felt decidedly uncomfortable. she had destroyed the marriage certificate, but its ghost still haunted her. major carteret, having just eaten a good dinner, was in a very agreeable humor when, that same evening, his wife brought up again the subject of their previous discussion. "phil," she asked, "aunt polly told me that once, long before my father died, when she went to remonstrate with him for keeping that woman in the house, he threatened to marry julia if aunt polly ever said another word to him about the matter. suppose he _had_ married her, and had then left a will,--would the marriage have made any difference, so far as the will was concerned?" major carteret laughed. "your aunt polly," he said, "was a remarkable woman, with a wonderful imagination, which seems to have grown more vivid as her memory and judgment weakened. why should your father marry his negro housemaid? mr. merkell was never rated as a fool,--he had one of the clearest heads in wellington. i saw him only a day or two before he died, and i could swear before any court in christendom that he was of sound mind and memory to the last. these notions of your aunt were mere delusions. your father was never capable of such a folly." "of course i am only supposing a case," returned olivia. "imagining such a case, just for the argument, would the marriage have been legal?" "that would depend. if he had married her during the military occupation, or over in south carolina, the marriage would have been legally valid, though morally and socially outrageous." "and if he had died afterwards, leaving a will?" "the will would have controlled the disposition of his estate, in all probability." "suppose he had left no will?" "you are getting the matter down pretty fine, my dear! the woman would have taken one third of the real estate for life, and could have lived in the homestead until she died. she would also have had half the other property,--the money and goods and furniture, everything except the land,--and the negro child would have shared with you the balance of the estate. that, i believe, is according to the law of descent and distribution." mrs. carteret lapsed into a troubled silence. her father _had_ married the woman. in her heart she had no doubt of the validity of the marriage, so far as the law was concerned; if one marriage of such a kind would stand, another contracted under similar conditions was equally as good. if the marriage had been valid, julia's child had been legitimate. the will she had burned gave this sister of hers--she shuddered at the word--but a small part of the estate. under the law, which intervened now that there was no will, the property should have been equally divided. if the woman had been white,--but the woman had _not_ been white, and the same rule of moral conduct did not, _could_ not, in the very nature of things, apply, as between white people! for, if this were not so, slavery had been, not merely an economic mistake, but a great crime against humanity. if it had been such a crime, as for a moment she dimly perceived it might have been, then through the long centuries there had been piled up a catalogue of wrong and outrage which, if the law of compensation be a law of nature, must some time, somewhere, in some way, be atoned for. she herself had not escaped the penalty, of which, she realized, this burden placed upon her conscience was but another installment. if she should make known the facts she had learned, it would mean what?--a division of her father's estate, a recognition of the legality of her father's relations with julia. such a stain upon her father's memory would be infinitely worse than if he had _not_ married her. to have lived with her without marriage was a social misdemeanor, at which society in the old days had winked, or at most had frowned. to have married her was to have committed the unpardonable social sin. such a scandal mrs. carteret could not have endured. should she seek to make restitution, it would necessarily involve the disclosure of at least some of the facts. had she not destroyed the will, she might have compromised with her conscience by producing it and acting upon its terms, which had been so stated as not to disclose the marriage. this was now rendered impossible by her own impulsive act; she could not mention the will at all, without admitting that she had destroyed it. mrs. carteret found herself in what might be called, vulgarly, a moral "pocket." she could, of course, remain silent. mrs. carteret was a good woman, according to her lights, with a cultivated conscience, to which she had always looked as her mentor and infallible guide. hence mrs. carteret, after this painful discovery, remained for a long time ill at ease,--so disturbed, indeed, that her mind reacted upon her nerves, which had never been strong; and her nervousness affected her strength, which had never been great, until carteret, whose love for her had been deepened and strengthened by the advent of his son, became alarmed for her health, and spoke very seriously to dr. price concerning it. xxxi the shadow of a dream mrs. carteret awoke, with a start, from a troubled dream. she had been sailing across a sunlit sea, in a beautiful boat, her child lying on a bright-colored cushion at her feet. overhead the swelling sail served as an awning to keep off the sun's rays, which far ahead were reflected with dazzling brilliancy from the shores of a golden island. her son, she dreamed, was a fairy prince, and yonder lay his kingdom, to which he was being borne, lying there at her feet, in this beautiful boat, across the sunlit sea. suddenly and without warning the sky was overcast. a squall struck the boat and tore away the sail. in the distance a huge billow--a great white wall of water--came sweeping toward their frail craft, threatening it with instant destruction. she clasped her child to her bosom, and a moment later found herself struggling in the sea, holding the child's head above the water. as she floated there, as though sustained by some unseen force, she saw in the distance a small boat approaching over the storm-tossed waves. straight toward her it came, and she had reached out her hand to grasp its side, when the rower looked back, and she saw that it was her sister. the recognition had been mutual. with a sharp movement of one oar the boat glided by, leaving her clutching at the empty air. she felt her strength begin to fail. despairingly she signaled with her disengaged hand; but the rower, after one mute, reproachful glance, rowed on. mrs. carteret's strength grew less and less. the child became heavy as lead. herself floating in the water, as though it were her native element, she could no longer support the child. lower and lower it sank,--she was powerless to save it or to accompany it,--until, gasping wildly for breath, it threw up its little hands and sank, the cruel water gurgling over its head,--when she awoke with a start and a chill, and lay there trembling for several minutes before she heard little dodie in his crib, breathing heavily. she rose softly, went to the crib, and changed the child's position to an easier one. he breathed more freely, and she went back to bed, but not to sleep. she had tried to put aside the distressing questions raised by the discovery of her father's will and the papers accompanying it. why should she be burdened with such a responsibility, at this late day, when the touch of time had well-nigh healed these old sores? surely, god had put his curse not alone upon the slave, but upon the stealer of men! with other good people she had thanked him that slavery was no more, and that those who once had borne its burden upon their consciences could stand erect and feel that they themselves were free. the weed had been cut down, but its roots remained, deeply imbedded in the soil, to spring up and trouble a new generation. upon her weak shoulders was placed the burden of her father's weakness, her father's folly. it was left to her to acknowledge or not this shameful marriage and her sister's rights in their father's estate. balancing one consideration against another, she had almost decided that she might ignore this tie. to herself, olivia merkell,--olivia carteret,--the stigma of base birth would have meant social ostracism, social ruin, the averted face, the finger of pity or of scorn. all the traditional weight of public disapproval would have fallen upon her as the unhappy fruit of an unblessed union. to this other woman it could have had no such significance,--it had been the lot of her race. to them, twenty-five years before, sexual sin had never been imputed as more than a fault. she had lost nothing by her supposed illegitimacy; she would gain nothing by the acknowledgment of her mother's marriage. on the other hand, what would be the effect of this revelation upon mrs. carteret herself? to have it known that her father had married a negress would only be less dreadful than to have it appear that he had committed some terrible crime. it was a crime now, by the laws of every southern state, for white and colored persons to intermarry. she shuddered before the possibility that at some time in the future some person, none too well informed, might learn that her father had married a colored woman, and might assume that she, olivia carteret, or her child, had sprung from this shocking _mésalliance_,--a fate to which she would willingly have preferred death. no, this marriage must never be made known; the secret should remain buried forever in her own heart! but there still remained the question of her father's property and her father's will. this woman was her father's child,--of that there could be no doubt, it was written in her features no less than in her father's will. as his lawful child,--of which, alas! there could also be no question,--she was entitled by law to half his estate. mrs. carteret's problem had sunk from the realm of sentiment to that of material things, which, curiously enough, she found much more difficult. for, while the negro, by the traditions of her people, was barred from the world of sentiment, his rights of property were recognized. the question had become, with mrs. carteret, a question of _meum_ and _tuum_. had the girl janet been poor, ignorant, or degraded, as might well have been her fate, mrs. carteret might have felt a vicarious remorse for her aunt's suppression of the papers; but fate had compensated janet for the loss; she had been educated, she had married well; she had not suffered for lack of the money of which she had been defrauded, and did not need it now. she had a child, it is true, but this child's career would be so circumscribed by the accident of color that too much wealth would only be a source of unhappiness; to her own child, on the contrary, it would open every door of life. it would be too lengthy a task to follow the mind and conscience of this much-tried lady in their intricate workings upon this difficult problem; for she had a mind as logical as any woman's, and a conscience which she wished to keep void of offense. she had to confront a situation involving the element of race, upon which the moral standards of her people were hopelessly confused. mrs. carteret reached the conclusion, ere daylight dawned, that she would be silent upon the subject of her father's second marriage. neither party had wished it known,--neither julia nor her father,--and she would respect her father's wishes. to act otherwise would be to defeat his will, to make known what he had carefully concealed, and to give janet a claim of title to one half her father's estate, while he had only meant her to have the ten thousand dollars named in the will. by the same reasoning, she must carry out her father's will in respect to this bequest. here there was another difficulty. the mining investment into which they had entered shortly after the birth of little dodie had tied up so much of her property that it would have been difficult to procure ten thousand dollars immediately; while a demand for half the property at once would mean bankruptcy and ruin. moreover, upon what ground could she offer her sister any sum of money whatever? so sudden a change of heart, after so many years of silence, would raise the presumption of some right on the part of janet in her father's estate. suspicion once aroused, it might be possible to trace this hidden marriage, and establish it by legal proof. the marriage once verified, the claim for half the estate could not be denied. she could not plead her father's will to the contrary, for this would be to acknowledge the suppression of the will, in itself a criminal act. there was, however, a way of escape. this hospital which had recently been opened was the personal property of her sister's husband. some time in the future, when their investments matured, she would present to the hospital a sum of money equal to the amount her father had meant his colored daughter to have. thus indirectly both her father's will and her own conscience would be satisfied. mrs. carteret had reached this comfortable conclusion, and was falling asleep, when her attention was again drawn by her child's breathing. she took it in her own arms and soon fell asleep. "by the way, olivia," said the major, when leaving the house next morning for the office, "if you have any business down town to-day, transact it this forenoon. under no circumstances must you or clara or the baby leave the house after midday." "why, what's the matter, phil?" "nothing to alarm you, except that there may be a little political demonstration which may render the streets unsafe. you are not to say anything about it where the servants might hear." "will there be any danger for you, phil?" she demanded with alarm. "not the slightest, olivia dear. no one will be harmed; but it is best for ladies and children to stay indoors." mrs. carteret's nerves were still more or less unstrung from her mental struggles of the night, and the memory of her dream came to her like a dim foreboding of misfortune. as though in sympathy with its mother's feelings, the baby did not seem as well as usual. the new nurse was by no means an ideal nurse,--mammy jane understood the child much better. if there should be any trouble with the negroes, toward which her husband's remark seemed to point,--she knew the general political situation, though not informed in regard to her husband's plans,--she would like to have mammy jane near her, where the old nurse might be protected from danger or alarm. with this end in view she dispatched the nurse, shortly after breakfast, to mammy jane's house in the negro settlement on the other side of the town, with a message asking the old woman to come immediately to mrs. carteret's. unfortunately, mammy jane had gone to visit a sick woman in the country, and was not expected to return for several hours. xxxii the storm breaks the wellington riot began at three o'clock in the afternoon of a day as fair as was ever selected for a deed of darkness. the sky was clear, except for a few light clouds that floated, white and feathery, high in air, like distant islands in a sapphire sea. a salt-laden breeze from the ocean a few miles away lent a crisp sparkle to the air. at three o'clock sharp the streets were filled, as if by magic, with armed white men. the negroes, going about, had noted, with uneasy curiosity, that the stores and places of business, many of which closed at noon, were unduly late in opening for the afternoon, though no one suspected the reason for the delay; but at three o'clock every passing colored man was ordered, by the first white man he met, to throw up his hands. if he complied, he was searched, more or less roughly, for firearms, and then warned to get off the street. when he met another group of white men the scene was repeated. the man thus summarily held up seldom encountered more than two groups before disappearing across lots to his own home or some convenient hiding-place. if he resisted any demand of those who halted him--but the records of the day are historical; they may be found in the newspapers of the following date, but they are more firmly engraved upon the hearts and memories of the people of wellington. for many months there were negro families in the town whose children screamed with fear and ran to their mothers for protection at the mere sight of a white man. dr. miller had received a call, about one o'clock, to attend a case at the house of a well-to-do colored farmer, who lived some three or four miles from the town, upon the very road, by the way, along which miller had driven so furiously a few weeks before, in the few hours that intervened before sandy campbell would probably have been burned at the stake. the drive to his patient's home, the necessary inquiries, the filling of the prescription from his own medicine-case, which he carried along with him, the little friendly conversation about the weather and the crops, and, the farmer being an intelligent and thinking man, the inevitable subject of the future of their race,--these, added to the return journey, occupied at least two hours of miller's time. as he neared the town on his way back, he saw ahead of him half a dozen men and women approaching, with fear written in their faces, in every degree from apprehension to terror. women were weeping and children crying, and all were going as fast as seemingly lay in their power, looking behind now and then as if pursued by some deadly enemy. at sight of miller's buggy they made a dash for cover, disappearing, like a covey of frightened partridges, in the underbrush along the road. miller pulled up his horse and looked after them in startled wonder. "what on earth can be the matter?" he muttered, struck with a vague feeling of alarm. a psychologist, seeking to trace the effects of slavery upon the human mind, might find in the south many a curious illustration of this curse, abiding long after the actual physical bondage had terminated. in the olden time the white south labored under the constant fear of negro insurrections. knowing that they themselves, if in the negroes' place, would have risen in the effort to throw off the yoke, all their reiterated theories of negro subordination and inferiority could not remove that lurking fear, founded upon the obscure consciousness that the slaves ought to have risen. conscience, it has been said, makes cowards of us all. there was never, on the continent of america, a successful slave revolt, nor one which lasted more than a few hours, or resulted in the loss of more than a few white lives; yet never was the planter quite free from the fear that there might be one. on the other hand, the slave had before his eyes always the fear of the master. there were good men, according to their lights,--according to their training and environment,--among the southern slaveholders, who treated their slaves kindly, as slaves, from principle, because they recognized the claims of humanity, even under the dark skin of a human chattel. there was many a one who protected or pampered his negroes, as the case might be, just as a man fondles his dog,--because they were his; they were a part of his estate, an integral part of the entity of property and person which made up the aristocrat; but with all this kindness, there was always present, in the consciousness of the lowest slave, the knowledge that he was in his master's power, and that he could make no effectual protest against the abuse of that authority. there was also the knowledge, among those who could think at all, that the best of masters was himself a slave to a system, which hampered his movements but scarcely less than those of his bondmen. when, therefore, miller saw these men and women scampering into the bushes, he divined, with this slumbering race consciousness which years of culture had not obliterated, that there was some race trouble on foot. his intuition did not long remain unsupported. a black head was cautiously protruded from the shrubbery, and a black voice--if such a description be allowable--addressed him:-- "is dat you, doctuh miller?" "yes. who are you, and what's the trouble?" "what's de trouble, suh? why, all hell's broke loose in town yonduh. de w'ite folks is riz 'gins' de niggers, an' say dey're gwine ter kill eve'y nigger dey kin lay han's on." miller's heart leaped to his throat, as he thought of his wife and child. this story was preposterous; it could not be true, and yet there must be something in it. he tried to question his informant, but the man was so overcome with excitement and fear that miller saw clearly that he must go farther for information. he had read in the morning chronicle, a few days before, the obnoxious editorial quoted from the afro-american banner, and had noted the comment upon it by the white editor. he had felt, as at the time of its first publication, that the editorial was ill-advised. it could do no good, and was calculated to arouse the animosity of those whose friendship, whose tolerance, at least, was necessary and almost indispensable to the colored people. they were living, at the best, in a sort of armed neutrality with the whites; such a publication, however serviceable elsewhere, could have no other effect in wellington than to endanger this truce and defeat the hope of a possible future friendship. the right of free speech entitled barber to publish it; a larger measure of common-sense would have made him withhold it. whether it was the republication of this article that had stirred up anew the sleeping dogs of race prejudice and whetted their thirst for blood, he could not yet tell; but at any rate, there was mischief on foot. "fer god's sake, doctuh, don' go no closeter ter dat town," pleaded his informant, "er you'll be killt sho'. come on wid us, suh, an' tek keer er yo'se'f. we're gwine ter hide in de swamps till dis thing is over!" "god, man!" exclaimed miller, urging his horse forward, "my wife and child are in the town!" fortunately, he reflected, there were no patients confined in the hospital,--if there should be anything in this preposterous story. to one unfamiliar with southern life, it might have seemed impossible that these good christian people, who thronged the churches on sunday, and wept over the sufferings of the lowly nazarene, and sent missionaries to the heathen, could be hungering and thirsting for the blood of their fellow men; but miller cherished no such delusion. he knew the history of his country; he had the threatened lynching of sandy campbell vividly in mind; and he was fully persuaded that to race prejudice, once roused, any horror was possible. that women or children would be molested of set purpose he did not believe, but that they might suffer by accident was more than likely. as he neared the town, dashing forward at the top of his horse's speed, he heard his voice called in a loud and agitated tone, and, glancing around him, saw a familiar form standing by the roadside, gesticulating vehemently. he drew up the horse with a suddenness that threw the faithful and obedient animal back upon its haunches. the colored lawyer, watson, came up to the buggy. that he was laboring under great and unusual excitement was quite apparent from his pale face and frightened air. "what's the matter, watson?" demanded miller, hoping now to obtain some reliable information. "matter!" exclaimed the other. "everything's the matter! the white people are up in arms. they have disarmed the colored people, killing half a dozen in the process, and wounding as many more. they have forced the mayor and aldermen to resign, have formed a provisional city government _à la française_, and have ordered me and half a dozen other fellows to leave town in forty-eight hours, under pain of sudden death. as they seem to mean it, i shall not stay so long. fortunately, my wife and children are away. i knew you were out here, however, and i thought i'd come out and wait for you, so that we might talk the matter over. i don't imagine they mean you any harm, personally, because you tread on nobody's toes; but you're too valuable a man for the race to lose, so i thought i'd give you warning. i shall want to sell you my property, too, at a bargain. for i'm worth too much to my family to dream of ever attempting to live here again." "have you seen anything of my wife and child?" asked miller, intent upon the danger to which they might be exposed. "no; i didn't go to the house. i inquired at the drugstore and found out where you had gone. you needn't fear for them,--it is not a war on women and children." "war of any kind is always hardest on the women and children," returned miller; "i must hurry on and see that mine are safe." "they'll not carry the war so far into africa as that," returned watson; "but i never saw anything like it. yesterday i had a hundred white friends in the town, or thought i had,--men who spoke pleasantly to me on the street, and sometimes gave me their hands to shake. not one of them said to me today: 'watson, stay at home this afternoon.' i might have been killed, like any one of half a dozen others who have bit the dust, for any word that one of my 'friends' had said to warn me. when the race cry is started in this neck of the woods, friendship, religion, humanity, reason, all shrivel up like dry leaves in a raging furnace." the buggy, into which watson had climbed, was meanwhile rapidly nearing the town. "i think i'll leave you here, miller," said watson, as they approached the outskirts, "and make my way home by a roundabout path, as i should like to get there unmolested. home!--a beautiful word that, isn't it, for an exiled wanderer? it might not be well, either, for us to be seen together. if you put the hood of your buggy down, and sit well back in the shadow, you may be able to reach home without interruption; but avoid the main streets. i'll see you again this evening, if we're both alive, and i can reach you; for my time is short. a committee are to call in the morning to escort me to the train. i am to be dismissed from the community with public honors." watson was climbing down from the buggy, when a small party of men were seen approaching, and big josh green, followed by several other resolute-looking colored men, came up and addressed them. "dr. miller," cried green, "mr. watson,--we're lookin' fer a leader. de w'ite folks are killin' de niggers, an' we ain' gwine ter stan' up an' be shot down like dogs. we're gwine ter defen' ou' lives, an' we ain' gwine ter run away f'm no place where we 'we got a right ter be; an' woe be ter de w'ite man w'at lays ban's on us! dere's two niggers in dis town ter eve'y w'ite man, an' ef we 'we got ter be killt, we'll take some w'ite folks 'long wid us, ez sho' ez dere's a god in heaven,--ez i s'pose dere is, dough he mus' be 'sleep, er busy somewhar e'se ter-day. will you-all come an' lead us?" "gentlemen," said watson, "what is the use? the negroes will not back you up. they haven't the arms, nor the moral courage, nor the leadership." "we'll git de arms, an' we'll git de courage, ef you'll come an' lead us! we wants leaders,--dat's w'y we come ter you!" "what's the use?" returned watson despairingly. "the odds are too heavy. i've been ordered out of town; if i stayed, i'd be shot on sight, unless i had a body-guard around me." "we'll be yo' body-guard!" shouted half a dozen voices. "and when my body-guard was shot, what then? i have a wife and children. it is my duty to live for them. if i died, i should get no glory and no reward, and my family would be reduced to beggary,--to which they'll soon be near enough as it is. this affair will blow over in a day or two. the white people will be ashamed of themselves to-morrow, and apprehensive of the consequences for some time to come. keep quiet, boys, and trust in god. you won't gain anything by resistance." "'god he'ps dem dat he'ps demselves,'" returned josh stoutly. "ef mr. watson won't lead us, will you, dr. miller?" said the spokesman, turning to the doctor. for miller it was an agonizing moment. he was no coward, morally or physically. every manly instinct urged him to go forward and take up the cause of these leaderless people, and, if need be, to defend their lives and their rights with his own,--but to what end? "listen, men," he said. "we would only be throwing our lives away. suppose we made a determined stand and won a temporary victory. by morning every train, every boat, every road leading into wellington, would be crowded with white men,--as they probably will be any way,--with arms in their hands, curses on their lips, and vengeance in their hearts. in the minds of those who make and administer the laws, we have no standing in the court of conscience. they would kill us in the fight, or they would hang us afterwards,--one way or another, we should be doomed. i should like to lead you; i should like to arm every colored man in this town, and have them stand firmly in line, not for attack, but for defense; but if i attempted it, and they should stand by me, which is questionable,--for i have met them fleeing from the town,--my life would pay the forfeit. alive, i may be of some use to you, and you are welcome to my life in that way,--i am giving it freely. dead, i should be a mere lump of carrion. who remembers even the names of those who have been done to death in the southern states for the past twenty years?" "i 'members de name er one of 'em," said josh, "an' i 'members de name er de man dat killt 'im, an' i s'pec' his time is mighty nigh come." "my advice is not heroic, but i think it is wise. in this riot we are placed as we should be in a war: we have no territory, no base of supplies, no organization, no outside sympathy,--we stand in the position of a race, in a case like this, without money and without friends. our time will come,--the time when we can command respect for our rights; but it is not yet in sight. give it up, boys, and wait. good may come of this, after all." several of the men wavered, and looked irresolute. "i reckon that's all so, doctuh," returned josh, "an', de way you put it, i don' blame you ner mr. watson; but all dem reasons ain' got no weight wid me. i'm gwine in dat town, an' ef any w'ite man 'sturbs me, dere'll be trouble,--dere'll be double trouble,--i feels it in my bones!" "remember your old mother, josh," said miller. "yas, sub, i'll 'member her; dat's all i kin do now. i don' need ter wait fer her no mo', fer she died dis mo'nin'. i'd lack ter see her buried, suh, but i may not have de chance. ef i gits killt, will you do me a favor?" "yes, josh; what is it?" "ef i should git laid out in dis commotion dat's gwine on, will you collec' my wages f'm yo' brother, and see dat de ole 'oman is put away right?" "yes, of course." "wid a nice coffin, an' a nice fune'al, an' a head-bo'd an' a foot-bo'd?" "yes." "all right, suh! ef i don' live ter do it, i'll know it'll be 'tended ter right. now we're gwine out ter de cotton compress, an' git a lot er colored men tergether, an' ef de w'ite folks 'sturbs me, i shouldn't be s'prise' ef dere'd be a mix-up;--an' ef dere is, me an _one_ w'ite man 'll stan' befo' de jedgment th'one er god dis day; an' it won't be me w'at'll be 'feared er de jedgment. come along, boys! dese gentlemen may have somethin' ter live fer; but ez fer my pa't, i'd ruther be a dead nigger any day dan a live dog!" xxxiii into the lion's jaws the party under josh's leadership moved off down the road. miller, while entirely convinced that he had acted wisely in declining to accompany them, was yet conscious of a distinct feeling of shame and envy that he, too, did not feel impelled to throw away his life in a hopeless struggle. watson left the buggy and disappeared by a path at the roadside. miller drove rapidly forward. after entering the town, he passed several small parties of white men, but escaped scrutiny by sitting well back in his buggy, the presumption being that a well-dressed man with a good horse and buggy was white. torn with anxiety, he reached home at about four o'clock. driving the horse into the yard, he sprang down from the buggy and hastened to the house, which he found locked, front and rear. a repeated rapping brought no response. at length he broke a window, and entered the house like a thief. "janet, janet!" he called in alarm, "where are you? it is only i,--will!" there was no reply. he ran from room to room, only to find them all empty. again he called his wife's name, and was about rushing from the house, when a muffled voice came faintly to his ear,-- "is dat you, doctuh miller?" "yes. who are you, and where are my wife and child?" he was looking around in perplexity, when the door of a low closet under the kitchen sink was opened from within, and a woolly head was cautiously protruded. "are you _sho'_ dat's you, doctuh?" "yes, sally; where are"-- "an' not some w'ite man come ter bu'n down de house an' kill all de niggers?" "no, sally, it's me all right. where is my wife? where is my child?" "dey went over ter see mis' butler 'long 'bout two o'clock, befo' dis fuss broke out, suh. oh, lawdy, lawdy, suh! is all de cullud folks be'n killt 'cep'n' me an' you, suh? fer de lawd's sake, suh, you won' let 'em kill me, will you, suh? i'll wuk fer you fer nuthin', suh, all my bawn days, ef you'll save my life, suh!" "calm yourself, sally. you'll be safe enough if you stay right here, i 'we no doubt. they'll not harm women,--of that i'm sure enough, although i haven't yet got the bearings of this deplorable affair. stay here and look after the house. i must find my wife and child!" the distance across the city to the home of the mrs. butler whom his wife had gone to visit was exactly one mile. though miller had a good horse in front of him, he was two hours in reaching his destination. never will the picture of that ride fade from his memory. in his dreams he repeats it night after night, and sees the sights that wounded his eyes, and feels the thoughts--the haunting spirits of the thoughts--that tore his heart as he rode through hell to find those whom he was seeking. for a short distance he saw nothing, and made rapid progress. as he turned the first corner, his horse shied at the dead body of a negro, lying huddled up in the collapse which marks sudden death. what miller shuddered at was not so much the thought of death, to the sight of which his profession had accustomed him, as the suggestion of what it signified. he had taken with allowance the wild statement of the fleeing fugitives. watson, too, had been greatly excited, and josh green's group were desperate men, as much liable to be misled by their courage as the others by their fears; but here was proof that murder had been done,--and his wife and children were in the town. distant shouts, and the sound of firearms, increased his alarm. he struck his horse with the whip, and dashed on toward the heart of the city, which he must traverse in order to reach janet and the child. at the next corner lay the body of another man, with the red blood oozing from a ghastly wound in the forehead. the negroes seemed to have been killed, as the band plays in circus parades, at the street intersections, where the example would be most effective. miller, with a wild leap of the heart, had barely passed this gruesome spectacle, when a sharp voice commanded him to halt, and emphasized the order by covering him with a revolver. forgetting the prudence he had preached to others, he had raised his whip to strike the horse, when several hands seized the bridle. "come down, you damn fool," growled an authoritative voice. "don't you see we're in earnest? do you want to get killed?" "why should i come down?" asked miller. "because we've ordered you to come down! this is the white people's day, and when they order, a nigger must obey. we're going to search you for weapons." "search away. you'll find nothing but a case of surgeon's tools, which i'm more than likely to need before this day is over, from all indications." "no matter; we'll make sure of it! that's what we're here for. come down, if you don't want to be pulled down!" miller stepped down from his buggy. his interlocutor, who made no effort at disguise, was a clerk in a dry-goods store where miller bought most of his family and hospital supplies. he made no sign of recognition, however, and miller claimed no acquaintance. this man, who had for several years emptied miller's pockets in the course of more or less legitimate trade, now went through them, aided by another man, more rapidly than ever before, the searchers convincing themselves that miller carried no deadly weapon upon his person. meanwhile, a third ransacked the buggy with like result. miller recognized several others of the party, who made not the slightest attempt at disguise, though no names were called by any one. "where are you going?" demanded the leader. "i am looking for my wife and child," replied miller. "well, run along, and keep them out of the streets when you find them; and keep your hands out of this affair, if you wish to live in this town, which from now on will be a white man's town, as you niggers will be pretty firmly convinced before night." miller drove on as swiftly as might be. at the next corner he was stopped again. in the white man who held him up, miller recognized a neighbor of his own. after a short detention and a perfunctory search, the white man remarked apologetically:-- "sorry to have had to trouble you, doctuh, but them's the o'ders. it ain't men like you that we're after, but the vicious and criminal class of niggers." miller smiled bitterly as he urged his horse forward. he was quite well aware that the virtuous citizen who had stopped him had only a few weeks before finished a term in the penitentiary, to which he had been sentenced for stealing. miller knew that he could have bought all the man owned for fifty dollars, and his soul for as much more. a few rods farther on, he came near running over the body of a wounded man who lay groaning by the wayside. every professional instinct urged him to stop and offer aid to the sufferer; but the uncertainty concerning his wife and child proved a stronger motive and urged him resistlessly forward. here and there the ominous sound of firearms was audible. he might have thought this merely a part of the show, like the "powder play" of the arabs, but for the bloody confirmation of its earnestness which had already assailed his vision. somewhere in this seething caldron of unrestrained passions were his wife and child, and he must hurry on. his progress was painfully slow. three times he was stopped and searched. more than once his way was barred, and he was ordered to turn back, each such occasion requiring a detour which consumed many minutes. the man who last stopped him was a well-known jewish merchant. a jew--god of moses!--had so far forgotten twenty centuries of history as to join in the persecution of another oppressed race! when almost reduced to despair by these innumerable delays, he perceived, coming toward him, mr. ellis, the sub-editor of the morning chronicle. miller had just been stopped and questioned again, and ellis came up as he was starting once more upon his endless ride. "dr. miller," said ellis kindly, "it is dangerous for you on the streets. why tempt the danger?" "i am looking for my wife and child," returned miller in desperation. "they are somewhere in this town,--i don't know where,--and i must find them." ellis had been horror-stricken by the tragedy of the afternoon, the wholly superfluous slaughter of a harmless people, whom a show of force would have been quite sufficient to overawe. elaborate explanations were afterwards given for these murders, which were said, perhaps truthfully, not to have been premeditated, and many regrets were expressed. the young man had been surprised, quite as much as the negroes themselves, at the ferocity displayed. his own thoughts and feelings were attuned to anything but slaughter. only that morning he had received a perfumed note, calling his attention to what the writer described as a very noble deed of his, and requesting him to call that evening and receive the writer's thanks. had he known that miss pemberton, several weeks after their visit to the sound, had driven out again to the hotel and made some inquiries among the servants, he might have understood better the meaning of this missive. when miller spoke of his wife and child, some subtle thread of suggestion coupled the note with miller's plight. "i'll go with you, dr. miller," he said, "if you'll permit me. in my company you will not be disturbed." he took a seat in miller's buggy, after which it was not molested. neither of them spoke. miller was sick at heart; he could have wept with grief, even had the welfare of his own dear ones not been involved in this regrettable affair. with prophetic instinct he foresaw the hatreds to which this day would give birth; the long years of constraint and distrust which would still further widen the breach between two peoples whom fate had thrown together in one community. there was nothing for ellis to say. in his heart he could not defend the deeds of this day. the petty annoyances which the whites had felt at the spectacle of a few negroes in office; the not unnatural resentment of a proud people at what had seemed to them a presumptuous freedom of speech and lack of deference on the part of their inferiors,--these things, which he knew were to be made the excuse for overturning the city government, he realized full well were no sort of justification for the wholesale murder or other horrors which might well ensue before the day was done. he could not approve the acts of his own people; neither could he, to a negro, condemn them. hence he was silent. "thank you, mr. ellis," exclaimed miller, when they had reached the house where he expected to find his wife. "this is the place where i was going. i am--under a great obligation to you." "not at all, dr. miller. i need not tell you how much i regret this deplorable affair." ellis went back down the street. fastening his horse to the fence, miller sprang forward to find his wife and child. they would certainly be there, for no colored woman would be foolhardy enough to venture on the streets after the riot had broken out. as he drew nearer, he felt a sudden apprehension. the house seemed strangely silent and deserted. the doors were closed, and the venetian blinds shut tightly. even a dog which had appeared slunk timidly back under the house, instead of barking vociferously according to the usual habit of his kind. xxxiv the valley of the shadow miller knocked at the door. there was no response. he went round to the rear of the house. the dog had slunk behind the woodpile. miller knocked again, at the back door, and, receiving no reply, called aloud. "mrs. butler! it is i, dr. miller. is my wife here?" the slats of a near-by blind opened cautiously. "is it really you, dr. miller?" "yes, mrs. butler. i am looking for my wife and child,--are they here?" "no, sir; she became alarmed about you, soon after the shooting commenced, and i could not keep her. she left for home half an hour ago. it is coming on dusk, and she and the child are so near white that she did not expect to be molested." "which way did she go?" "she meant to go by the main street. she thought it would be less dangerous than the back streets. i tried to get her to stay here, but she was frantic about you, and nothing i could say would keep her. is the riot almost over, dr. miller? do you think they will murder us all, and burn down our houses?" "god knows," replied miller, with a groan. "but i must find her, if i lose my own life in the attempt." surely, he thought, janet would be safe. the white people of wellington were not savages; or at least their temporary reversion to savagery would not go as far as to include violence to delicate women and children. then there flashed into his mind josh green's story of his "silly" mother, who for twenty years had walked the earth as a child, as the result of one night's terror, and his heart sank within him. miller realized that his buggy, by attracting attention, had been a hindrance rather than a help in his progress across the city. in order to follow his wife, he must practically retrace his steps over the very route he had come. night was falling. it would be easier to cross the town on foot. in the dusk his own color, slight in the daytime, would not attract attention, and by dodging in the shadows he might avoid those who might wish to intercept him. but he must reach janet and the boy at any risk. he had not been willing to throw his life away hopelessly, but he would cheerfully have sacrificed it for those whom he loved. he had gone but a short distance, and had not yet reached the centre of mob activity, when he intercepted a band of negro laborers from the cotton compress, with big josh green at their head. "hello, doctuh!" cried josh, "does you wan' ter jine us?" "i'm looking for my wife and child, josh. they're somewhere in this den of murderers. have any of you seen them?" no one had seen them. "you men are running a great risk," said miller. "you are rushing on to certain death." "well, suh, maybe we is; but we're gwine ter die fightin'. dey say de w'ite folks is gwine ter bu'n all de cullud schools an' chu'ches, an' kill all de niggers dey kin ketch. dey're gwine ter bu'n yo' new hospittle, ef somebody don' stop 'em." "josh--men--you are throwing your lives away. it is a fever; it will wear off to-morrow, or to-night. they'll not burn the schoolhouses, nor the hospital--they are not such fools, for they benefit the community; and they'll only kill the colored people who resist them. every one of you with a gun or a pistol carries his death warrant in his own hand. i'd rather see the hospital burn than have one of you lose his life. resistance only makes the matter worse,--the odds against you are too long." "things can't be any wuss, doctuh," replied one of the crowd sturdily. "a gun is mo' dange'ous ter de man in front of it dan ter de man behin' it. dey're gwine ter kill us anyhow; an' we're tired,--we read de newspapers,--an' we're tired er bein' shot down like dogs, widout jedge er jury. we'd ruther die fightin' dan be stuck like pigs in a pen!" "god help you!" said miller. "as for me, i must find my wife and child." "good-by, doctuh," cried josh, brandishing a huge knife. "'member 'bout de ole 'oman, ef you lives thoo dis. don' fergit de headbo'd an' de footbo'd, an' a silver plate on de coffin, ef dere's money ernuff." they went their way, and miller hurried on. they might resist attack; he thought it extremely unlikely that they would begin it; but he knew perfectly well that the mere knowledge that some of the negroes contemplated resistance would only further inflame the infuriated whites. the colored men might win a momentary victory, though it was extremely doubtful; and they would as surely reap the harvest later on. the qualities which in a white man would win the applause of the world would in a negro be taken as the marks of savagery. so thoroughly diseased was public opinion in matters of race that the negro who died for the common rights of humanity might look for no meed of admiration or glory. at such a time, in the white man's eyes, a negro's courage would be mere desperation; his love of liberty, a mere animal dislike of restraint. every finer human instinct would be interpreted in terms of savagery. or, if forced to admire, they would none the less repress. they would applaud his courage while they stretched his neck, or carried off the fragments of his mangled body as souvenirs, in much the same way that savages preserve the scalps or eat the hearts of their enemies. but concern for the fate of josh and his friends occupied only a secondary place in miller's mind for the moment. his wife and child were somewhere ahead of him. he pushed on. he had covered about a quarter of a mile more, and far down the street could see the signs of greater animation, when he came upon the body of a woman lying upon the sidewalk. in the dusk he had almost stumbled over it, and his heart came up in his mouth. a second glance revealed that it could not be his wife. it was a fearful portent, however, of what her fate might be. the "war" had reached the women and children. yielding to a professional instinct, he stooped, and saw that the prostrate form was that of old aunt jane letlow. she was not yet quite dead, and as miller, with a tender touch, placed her head in a more comfortable position, her lips moved with a last lingering flicker of consciousness:-- "comin', missis, comin'!" mammy jane had gone to join the old mistress upon whose memory her heart was fixed; and yet not all her reverence for her old mistress, nor all her deference to the whites, nor all their friendship for her, had been able to save her from this raging devil of race hatred which momentarily possessed the town. perceiving that he could do no good, miller hastened onward, sick at heart. whenever he saw a party of white men approaching,--these brave reformers never went singly,--he sought concealment in the shadow of a tree or the shrubbery in some yard until they had passed. he had covered about two thirds of the distance homeward, when his eyes fell upon a group beneath a lamp-post, at sight of which he turned pale with horror, and rushed forward with a terrible cry. xxxv "mine enemy, o mine enemy!" the proceedings of the day--planned originally as a "demonstration," dignified subsequently as a "revolution," under any name the culmination of the conspiracy formed by carteret and his colleagues--had by seven o'clock in the afternoon developed into a murderous riot. crowds of white men and half-grown boys, drunk with whiskey or with license, raged through the streets, beating, chasing, or killing any negro so unfortunate as to fall into their hands. why any particular negro was assailed, no one stopped to inquire; it was merely a white mob thirsting for black blood, with no more conscience or discrimination than would be exercised by a wolf in a sheepfold. it was race against race, the whites against the negroes; and it was a one-sided affair, for until josh green got together his body of armed men, no effective resistance had been made by any colored person, and the individuals who had been killed had so far left no marks upon the enemy by which they might be remembered. "kill the niggers!" rang out now and then through the dusk, and far down the street and along the intersecting thoroughfares distant voices took up the ominous refrain,--"kill the niggers! kill the damned niggers!" now, not a dark face had been seen on the street for half an hour, until the group of men headed by josh made their appearance in the negro quarter. armed with guns and axes, they presented quite a formidable appearance as they made their way toward the new hospital, near which stood a schoolhouse and a large church, both used by the colored people. they did not reach their destination without having met a number of white men, singly or in twos or threes; and the rumor spread with incredible swiftness that the negroes in turn were up in arms, determined to massacre all the whites and burn the town. some of the whites became alarmed, and recognizing the power of the negroes, if armed and conscious of their strength, were impressed by the immediate necessity of overpowering and overawing them. others, with appetites already whetted by slaughter, saw a chance, welcome rather than not, of shedding more black blood. spontaneously the white mob flocked toward the hospital, where rumor had it that a large body of desperate negroes, breathing threats of blood and fire, had taken a determined stand. it had been josh's plan merely to remain quietly and peaceably in the neighborhood of the little group of public institutions, molesting no one, unless first attacked, and merely letting the white people see that they meant to protect their own; but so rapidly did the rumor spread, and so promptly did the white people act, that by the time josh and his supporters had reached the top of the rising ground where the hospital stood, a crowd of white men much more numerous than their own party were following them at a short distance. josh, with the eye of a general, perceived that some of his party were becoming a little nervous, and decided that they would feel safer behind shelter. "i reckon we better go inside de hospittle, boys," he exclaimed. "den we'll be behind brick walls, an' dem other fellows 'll be outside, an' ef dere's any fightin', we'll have de bes' show. we ain' gwine ter do no shootin' till we're pestered, an' dey'll be less likely ter pester us ef dey can't git at us widout runnin' some resk. come along in! be men! de gov'ner er de president is gwine ter sen' soldiers ter stop dese gwines-on, an' meantime we kin keep dem white devils f'm bu'nin' down our hospittles an' chu'ch-houses. wen dey comes an' fin's out dat we jes' means ter pertect ou' prope'ty, dey'll go 'long 'bout deir own business. er, ef dey wants a scrap, dey kin have it! come erlong, boys!" jerry letlow, who had kept out of sight during the day, had started out, after night had set in, to find major carteret. jerry was very much afraid. the events of the day had filled him with terror. whatever the limitations of jerry's mind or character may have been, jerry had a keen appreciation of the danger to the negroes when they came in conflict with the whites, and he had no desire to imperil his own skin. he valued his life for his own sake, and not for any altruistic theory that it might be of service to others. in other words, jerry was something of a coward. he had kept in hiding all day, but finding, toward evening, that the riot did not abate, and fearing, from the rumors which came to his ears, that all the negroes would be exterminated, he had set out, somewhat desperately, to try to find his white patron and protector. he had been cautious to avoid meeting any white men, and, anticipating no danger from those of his own race, went toward the party which he saw approaching, whose path would cross his own. when they were only a few yards apart, josh took a step forward and caught jerry by the arm. "come along, jerry, we need you! here's another man, boys. come on now, and fight fer yo' race!" in vain jerry protested. "i don' wan' ter fight," he howled. "de w'ite folks ain' gwine ter pester me; dey're my frien's. tu'n me loose,--tu'n me loose, er we all gwine ter git killed!" the party paid no attention to jerry's protestations. indeed, with the crowd of whites following behind, they were simply considering the question of a position from which they could most effectively defend themselves and the building which they imagined to be threatened. if josh had released his grip of jerry, that worthy could easily have escaped from the crowd; but josh maintained his hold almost mechanically, and, in the confusion, jerry found himself swept with the rest into the hospital, the doors of which were promptly barricaded with the heavier pieces of furniture, and the windows manned by several men each, josh, with the instinct of a born commander, posting his forces so that they could cover with their guns all the approaches to the building. jerry still continuing to make himself troublesome, josh, in a moment of impatience, gave him a terrific box on the ear, which stretched him out upon the floor unconscious. "shet up," he said; "ef you can't stan' up like a man, keep still, and don't interfere wid men w'at will fight!" the hospital, when josh and his men took possession, had been found deserted. fortunately there were no patients for that day, except one or two convalescents, and these, with the attendants, had joined the exodus of the colored people from the town. a white man advanced from the crowd without toward the main entrance to the hospital. big josh, looking out from a window, grasped his gun more firmly, as his eyes fell upon the man who had murdered his father and darkened his mother's life. mechanically he raised his rifle, but lowered it as the white man lifted up his hand as a sign that he wished to speak. "you niggers," called captain mcbane loudly,--it was that worthy,--"you niggers are courtin' death, an' you won't have to court her but a minute er two mo' befo' she'll have you. if you surrender and give up your arms, you'll be dealt with leniently,--you may get off with the chain-gang or the penitentiary. if you resist, you'll be shot like dogs." "dat's no news, mr. white man," replied josh, appearing boldly at the window. "we're use' ter bein' treated like dogs by men like you. if you w'ite people will go 'long an' ten' ter yo' own business an' let us alone, we'll ten' ter ou'n. you've got guns, an' we've got jest as much right ter carry 'em as you have. lay down yo'n, an' we'll lay down ou'n,--we didn' take 'em up fust; but we ain' gwine ter let you bu'n down ou' chu'ches an' school'ouses, er dis hospittle, an' we ain' comin' out er dis house, where we ain' disturbin' nobody, fer you ter shoot us down er sen' us ter jail. you hear me!" "all right," responded mcbane. "you've had fair warning. your blood be on your"--his speech was interrupted by a shot from the crowd, which splintered the window-casing close to josh's head. this was followed by half a dozen other shots, which were replied to, almost simultaneously, by a volley from within, by which one of the attacking party was killed and another wounded. this roused the mob to frenzy. "vengeance! vengeance!" they yelled. "kill the niggers!" a negro had killed a white man,--the unpardonable sin, admitting neither excuse, justification, nor extenuation. from time immemorial it had been bred in the southern white consciousness, and in the negro consciousness also, for that matter, that the person of a white man was sacred from the touch of a negro, no matter what the provocation. a dozen colored men lay dead in the streets of wellington, inoffensive people, slain in cold blood because they had been bold enough to question the authority of those who had assailed them, or frightened enough to flee when they had been ordered to stand still; but their lives counted nothing against that of a riotous white man, who had courted death by attacking a body of armed men. the crowd, too, surrounding the hospital, had changed somewhat in character. the men who had acted as leaders in the early afternoon, having accomplished their purpose of overturning the local administration and establishing a provisional government of their own, had withdrawn from active participation in the rioting, deeming the negroes already sufficiently overawed to render unlikely any further trouble from that source. several of the ringleaders had indeed begun to exert themselves to prevent further disorder, or any loss of property, the possibility of which had become apparent; but those who set in motion the forces of evil cannot always control them afterwards. the baser element of the white population, recruited from the wharves and the saloons, was now predominant. captain mcbane was the only one of the revolutionary committee who had remained with the mob, not with any purpose to restore or preserve order, but because he found the company and the occasion entirely congenial. he had had no opportunity, at least no tenable excuse, to kill or maim a negro since the termination of his contract with the state for convicts, and this occasion had awakened a dormant appetite for these diversions. we are all puppets in the hands of fate, and seldom see the strings that move us. mcbane had lived a life of violence and cruelty. as a man sows, so shall he reap. in works of fiction, such men are sometimes converted. more often, in real life, they do not change their natures until they are converted into dust. one does well to distrust a tamed tiger. on the outskirts of the crowd a few of the better class, or at least of the better clad, were looking on. the double volley described had already been fired, when the number of these was augmented by the arrival of major carteret and mr. ellis, who had just come from the chronicle office, where the next day's paper had been in hasty preparation. they pushed their way towards the front of the crowd. "this must be stopped, ellis," said carteret. "they are burning houses and killing women and children. old jane, good old mammy jane, who nursed my wife at her bosom, and has waited on her and my child within a few weeks, was killed only a few rods from my house, to which she was evidently fleeing for protection. it must have been by accident,--i cannot believe that any white man in town would be dastard enough to commit such a deed intentionally! i would have defended her with my own life! we must try to stop this thing!" "easier said than done," returned ellis. "it is in the fever stage, and must burn itself out. we shall be lucky if it does not burn the town out. suppose the negroes should also take a hand at the burning? we have advised the people to put the negroes down, and they are doing the job thoroughly." "my god!" replied the other, with a gesture of impatience, as he continued to elbow his way through the crowd; "i meant to keep them in their places,--i did not intend wholesale murder and arson." carteret, having reached the front of the mob, made an effort to gain their attention. "gentlemen!" he cried in his loudest tones. his voice, unfortunately, was neither loud nor piercing. "kill the niggers!" clamored the mob. "gentlemen, i implore you"-- the crash of a dozen windows, broken by stones and pistol shots, drowned his voice. "gentlemen!" he shouted; "this is murder, it is madness; it is a disgrace to our city, to our state, to our civilization!" "that's right!" replied several voices. the mob had recognized the speaker. "it _is_ a disgrace, and we'll not put up with it a moment longer. burn 'em out! hurrah for major carteret, the champion of 'white supremacy'! three cheers for the morning chronicle and 'no nigger domination'!" "hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!" yelled the crowd. in vain the baffled orator gesticulated and shrieked in the effort to correct the misapprehension. their oracle had spoken; not hearing what he said, they assumed it to mean encouragement and coöperation. their present course was but the logical outcome of the crusade which the morning chronicle had preached, in season and out of season, for many months. when carteret had spoken, and the crowd had cheered him, they felt that they had done all that courtesy required, and he was good-naturedly elbowed aside while they proceeded with the work in hand, which was now to drive out the negroes from the hospital and avenge the killing of their comrade. some brought hay, some kerosene, and others wood from a pile which had been thrown into a vacant lot near by. several safe ways of approach to the building were discovered, and the combustibles placed and fired. the flames, soon gaining a foothold, leaped upward, catching here and there at the exposed woodwork, and licking the walls hungrily with long tongues of flame. meanwhile a desultory firing was kept up from the outside, which was replied to scatteringly from within the hospital. those inside were either not good marksmen, or excitement had spoiled their aim. if a face appeared at a window, a dozen pistol shots from the crowd sought the spot immediately. higher and higher leaped the flames. suddenly from one of the windows sprang a black figure, waving a white handkerchief. it was jerry letlow. regaining consciousness after the effect of josh's blow had subsided, jerry had kept quiet and watched his opportunity. from a safe vantage-ground he had scanned the crowd without, in search of some white friend. when he saw major carteret moving disconsolately away after his futile effort to stem the torrent, jerry made a dash for the window. he sprang forth, and, waving his handkerchief as a flag of truce, ran toward major carteret, shouting frantically:-- "majah carteret--_o_ majah! it's me, suh, jerry, suh! i didn' go in dere myse'f, suh--i wuz drag' in dere! i wouldn' do nothin' 'g'inst de w'ite folks, suh,--no, 'ndeed, i wouldn', suh!" jerry's cries were drowned in a roar of rage and a volley of shots from the mob. carteret, who had turned away with ellis, did not even hear his servant's voice. jerry's poor flag of truce, his explanations, his reliance upon his white friends, all failed him in the moment of supreme need. in that hour, as in any hour when the depths of race hatred are stirred, a negro was no more than a brute beast, set upon by other brute beasts whose only instinct was to kill and destroy. "let us leave this inferno, ellis," said carteret, sick with anger and disgust. he had just become aware that a negro was being killed, though he did not know whom. "we can do nothing. the negroes have themselves to blame,--they tempted us beyond endurance. i counseled firmness, and firm measures were taken, and our purpose was accomplished. i am not responsible for these subsequent horrors,--i wash my hands of them. let us go!" the flames gained headway and gradually enveloped the burning building, until it became evident to those within as well as those without that the position of the defenders was no longer tenable. would they die in the flames, or would they be driven out? the uncertainty soon came to an end. the besieged had been willing to fight, so long as there seemed a hope of successfully defending themselves and their property; for their purpose was purely one of defense. when they saw the case was hopeless, inspired by josh green's reckless courage, they were still willing to sell their lives dearly. one or two of them had already been killed, and as many more disabled. the fate of jerry letlow had struck terror to the hearts of several others, who could scarcely hide their fear. after the building had been fired, josh's exhortations were no longer able to keep them in the hospital. they preferred to fight and be killed in the open, rather than to be smothered like rats in a hole. "boys!" exclaimed josh,--"men!--fer nobody but men would do w'at you have done,--the day has gone 'g'inst us. we kin see ou' finish; but fer my part, i ain' gwine ter leave dis worl' widout takin' a w'ite man 'long wid me, an' i sees my man right out yonder waitin',--i be'n waitin' fer him twenty years, but he won' have ter wait fer me mo' 'n 'bout twenty seconds. eve'y one er you pick yo' man! we'll open de do', an' we'll give some w'ite men a chance ter be sorry dey ever started dis fuss!" the door was thrown open suddenly, and through it rushed a dozen or more black figures, armed with knives, pistols, or clubbed muskets. taken by sudden surprise, the white people stood motionless for a moment, but the approaching negroes had scarcely covered half the distance to which the heat of the flames had driven back the mob, before they were greeted with a volley that laid them all low but two. one of these, dazed by the fate of his companions, turned instinctively to flee, but had scarcely faced around before he fell, pierced in the back by a dozen bullets. josh green, the tallest and biggest of them all, had not apparently been touched. some of the crowd paused in involuntary admiration of this black giant, famed on the wharves for his strength, sweeping down upon them, a smile upon his face, his eyes lit up with a rapt expression which seemed to take him out of mortal ken. this impression was heightened by his apparent immunity from the shower of lead which less susceptible persons had continued to pour at him. armed with a huge bowie-knife, a relic of the civil war, which he had carried on his person for many years for a definite purpose, and which he had kept sharpened to a razor edge, he reached the line of the crowd. all but the bravest shrank back. like a wedge he dashed through the mob, which parted instinctively before him, and all oblivious of the rain of lead which fell around him, reached the point where captain mcbane, the bravest man in the party, stood waiting to meet him. a pistol-flame flashed in his face, but he went on, and raising his powerful right arm, buried his knife to the hilt in the heart of his enemy. when the crowd dashed forward to wreak vengeance on his dead body, they found him with a smile still upon his face. one of the two died as the fool dieth. which was it, or was it both? "vengeance is mine," saith the lord, and it had not been left to him. but they that do violence must expect to suffer violence. mcbane's death was merciful, compared with the nameless horrors he had heaped upon the hundreds of helpless mortals who had fallen into his hands during his career as a contractor of convict labor. sobered by this culminating tragedy, the mob shortly afterwards dispersed. the flames soon completed their work, and this handsome structure, the fruit of old adam miller's industry, the monument of his son's philanthropy, a promise of good things for the future of the city, lay smouldering in ruins, a melancholy witness to the fact that our boasted civilization is but a thin veneer, which cracks and scales off at the first impact of primal passions. xxxvi fiat justitia by the light of the burning building, which illuminated the street for several blocks, major carteret and ellis made their way rapidly until they turned into the street where the major lived. reaching the house, carteret tried the door and found it locked. a vigorous ring at the bell brought no immediate response. carteret had begun to pound impatiently upon the door, when it was cautiously opened by miss pemberton, who was pale, and trembled with excitement. "where is olivia?" asked the major. "she is upstairs, with dodie and mrs. albright's hospital nurse. dodie has the croup. virgie ran away after the riot broke out. sister olivia had sent for mammy jane, but she did not come. mrs. albright let her white nurse come over." "i'll go up at once," said the major anxiously. "wait for me, ellis,--i'll be down in a few minutes." "oh, mr. ellis," exclaimed clara, coming toward him with both hands extended, "can nothing be done to stop this terrible affair?" "i wish i could do something," he murmured fervently, taking both her trembling hands in his own broad palms, where they rested with a surrendering trustfulness which he has never since had occasion to doubt. "it has gone too far, already, and the end, i fear, is not yet; but it cannot grow much worse." the editor hurried upstairs. mrs. carteret, wearing a worried and haggard look, met him at the threshold of the nursery. "dodie is ill," she said. "at three o'clock, when the trouble began, i was over at mrs. albright's,--i had left virgie with the baby. when i came back, she and all the other servants had gone. they had heard that the white people were going to kill all the negroes, and fled to seek safety. i found dodie lying in a draught, before an open window, gasping for breath. i ran back to mrs. albright's,--i had found her much better to-day,--and she let her nurse come over. the nurse says that dodie is threatened with membranous croup." "have you sent for dr. price?" "there was no one to send,--the servants were gone, and the nurse was afraid to venture out into the street. i telephoned for dr. price, and found that he was out of town; that he had gone up the river this morning to attend a patient, and would not be back until to-morrow. mrs. price thought that he had anticipated some kind of trouble in the town to-day, and had preferred to be where he could not be called upon to assume any responsibility." "i suppose you tried dr. ashe?" "i could not get him, nor any one else, after that first call. the telephone service is disorganized on account of the riot. we need medicine and ice. the drugstores are all closed on account of the riot, and for the same reason we couldn't get any ice." major carteret stood beside the brass bedstead upon which his child was lying,--his only child, around whose curly head clustered all his hopes; upon whom all his life for the past year had been centred. he stooped over the bed, beside which the nurse had stationed herself. she was wiping the child's face, which was red and swollen and covered with moisture, the nostrils working rapidly, and the little patient vainly endeavoring at intervals to cough up the obstruction to his breathing. "is it serious?" he inquired anxiously. he had always thought of the croup as a childish ailment, that yielded readily to proper treatment; but the child's evident distress impressed him with sudden fear. "dangerous," replied the young woman laconically. "you came none too soon. if a doctor isn't got at once, the child will die,--and it must be a good doctor." "whom can i call?" he asked. "you know them all, i suppose. dr. price, our family physician, is out of town." "dr. ashe has charge of his cases when he is away," replied the nurse. "if you can't find him, try dr. hooper. the child is growing worse every minute. on your way back you'd better get some ice, if possible." the major hastened downstairs. "don't wait for me, ellis," he said. "i shall be needed here for a while. i'll get to the office as soon as possible. make up the paper, and leave another stick out for me to the last minute, but fill it up in case i'm not on hand by twelve. we must get the paper out early in the morning." nothing but a matter of the most vital importance would have kept major carteret away from his office this night. upon the presentation to the outer world of the story of this riot would depend the attitude of the great civilized public toward the events of the last ten hours. the chronicle was the source from which the first word would be expected; it would give the people of wellington their cue as to the position which they must take in regard to this distressful affair, which had so far transcended in ferocity the most extreme measures which the conspirators had anticipated. the burden of his own responsibility weighed heavily upon him, and could not be shaken off; but he must do first the duty nearest to him,--he must first attend to his child. carteret hastened from the house, and traversed rapidly the short distance to dr. ashe's office. far down the street he could see the glow of the burning hospital, and he had scarcely left his own house when the fusillade of shots, fired when the colored men emerged from the burning building, was audible. carteret would have hastened back to the scene of the riot, to see what was now going on, and to make another effort to stem the tide of bloodshed; but before the dread of losing his child, all other interests fell into the background. not all the negroes in wellington could weigh in the balance for one instant against the life of the feeble child now gasping for breath in the house behind him. reaching the house, a vigorous ring brought the doctor's wife to the door. "good evening, mrs. ashe. is the doctor at home?" "no, major carteret. he was called to attend mrs. wells, who was taken suddenly ill, as a result of the trouble this afternoon. he will be there all night, no doubt." "my child is very ill, and i must find some one." "try dr. yates. his house is only four doors away." a ring at dr. yates's door brought out a young man. "is dr. yates in?" "yes, sir." "can i see him?" "you might see him, sir, but that would be all. his horse was frightened by the shooting on the streets, and ran away and threw the doctor, and broke his right arm. i have just set it; he will not be able to attend any patients for several weeks. he is old and nervous, and the shock was great." "are you not a physician?" asked carteret, looking at the young man keenly. he was a serious, gentlemanly looking young fellow, whose word might probably be trusted. "yes, i am dr. evans, dr. yates's assistant. i'm really little more than a student, but i'll do what i can." "my only child is sick with the croup, and requires immediate attention." "i ought to be able to handle a case of the croup," answered dr. evans, "at least in the first stages. i'll go with you, and stay by the child, and if the case is beyond me, i may keep it in check until another physician comes." he stepped back into another room, and returning immediately with his hat, accompanied carteret homeward. the riot had subsided; even the glow from the smouldering hospital was no longer visible. it seemed that the city, appalled at the tragedy, had suddenly awakened to a sense of its own crime. here and there a dark face, emerging cautiously from some hiding-place, peered from behind fence or tree, but shrank hastily away at the sight of a white face. the negroes of wellington, with the exception of josh green and his party, had not behaved bravely on this critical day in their history; but those who had fought were dead, to the last man; those who had sought safety in flight or concealment were alive to tell the tale. "we pass right by dr. thompson's," said dr. evans. "if you haven't spoken to him, it might be well to call him for consultation, in case the child should be very bad." "go on ahead," said carteret, "and i'll get him." evans hastened on, while carteret sounded the old-fashioned knocker upon the doctor's door. a gray-haired negro servant, clad in a dress suit and wearing a white tie, came to the door. "de doctuh, suh," he replied politely to carteret's question, "has gone ter ampitate de ahm er a gent'eman who got one er his bones smashed wid a pistol bullet in de--fightin' dis atternoon, suh. he's jes' gone, suh, an' lef' wo'd dat he'd be gone a' hour er mo', suh." carteret hastened homeward. he could think of no other available physician. perhaps no other would be needed, but if so, he could find out from evans whom it was best to call. when he reached the child's room, the young doctor was bending anxiously over the little frame. the little lips had become livid, the little nails, lying against the white sheet, were blue. the child's efforts to breathe were most distressing, and each gasp cut the father like a knife. mrs. carteret was weeping hysterically. "how is he, doctor?" asked the major. "he is very low," replied the young man. "nothing short of tracheotomy--an operation to open the windpipe--will relieve him. without it, in half or three quarters of an hour he will be unable to breathe. it is a delicate operation, a mistake in which would be as fatal as the disease. i have neither the knowledge nor the experience to attempt it, and your child's life is too valuable for a student to practice upon. neither have i the instruments here." "what shall we do?" demanded carteret. "we have called all the best doctors, and none are available." the young doctor's brow was wrinkled with thought. he knew a doctor who could perform the operation. he had heard, also, of a certain event at carteret's house some months before, when an unwelcome physician had been excluded from a consultation,--but it was the last chance. "there is but one other doctor in town who has performed the operation, so far as i know," he declared, "and that is dr. miller. if you can get him, he can save your child's life." carteret hesitated involuntarily. all the incidents, all the arguments, of the occasion when he had refused to admit the colored doctor to his house, came up vividly before his memory. he had acted in accordance with his lifelong beliefs, and had carried his point; but the present situation was different,--this was a case of imperative necessity, and every other interest or consideration must give way before the imminence of his child's peril. that the doctor would refuse the call, he did not imagine: it would be too great an honor for a negro to decline,--unless some bitterness might have grown out of the proceedings of the afternoon. that this doctor was a man of some education he knew; and he had been told that he was a man of fine feeling,--for a negro,--and might easily have taken to heart the day's events. nevertheless, he could hardly refuse a professional call,--professional ethics would require him to respond. carteret had no reason to suppose that miller had ever learned of what had occurred at the house during dr. burns's visit to wellington. the major himself had never mentioned the controversy, and no doubt the other gentlemen had been equally silent. "i'll go for him myself," said dr. evans, noting carteret's hesitation and suspecting its cause. "i can do nothing here alone, for a little while, and i may be able to bring the doctor back with me. he likes a difficult operation." * * * * * it seemed an age ere the young doctor returned, though it was really only a few minutes. the nurse did what she could to relieve the child's sufferings, which grew visibly more and more acute. the mother, upon the other side of the bed, held one of the baby's hands in her own, and controlled her feelings as best she might. carteret paced the floor anxiously, going every few seconds to the head of the stairs to listen for evans's footsteps on the piazza without. at last the welcome sound was audible, and a few strides took him to the door. "dr. miller is at home, sir," reported evans, as he came in. "he says that he was called to your house once before, by a third person who claimed authority to act, and that he was refused admittance. he declares that he will not consider such a call unless it come from you personally." "that is true, quite true," replied carteret. "his position is a just one. i will go at once. will--will--my child live until i can get miller here?" "he can live for half an hour without an operation. beyond that i could give you little hope." seizing his hat, carteret dashed out of the yard and ran rapidly to miller's house; ordinarily a walk of six or seven minutes, carteret covered it in three, and was almost out of breath when he rang the bell of miller's front door. the ring was answered by the doctor in person. "dr. miller, i believe?" asked carteret. "yes, sir." "i am major carteret. my child is seriously ill, and you are the only available doctor who can perform the necessary operation." "ah! you have tried all the others,--and then you come to me!" "yes, i do not deny it," admitted the major, biting his lip. he had not counted on professional jealousy as an obstacle to be met. "but i _have_ come to you, as a physician, to engage your professional services for my child,--my only child. i have confidence in your skill, or i should not have come to you. i request--nay, i implore you to lose no more time, but come with me at once! my child's life is hanging by a thread, and you can save it!" "ah!" replied the other, "as a father whose only child's life is in danger, you implore me, of all men in the world, to come and save it!" there was a strained intensity in the doctor's low voice that struck carteret, in spite of his own pre-occupation. he thought he heard, too, from the adjoining room, the sound of some one sobbing softly. there was some mystery here which he could not fathom unaided. miller turned to the door behind him and threw it open. on the white cover of a low cot lay a childish form in the rigidity of death, and by it knelt, with her back to the door, a woman whose shoulders were shaken by the violence of her sobs. absorbed in her grief, she did not turn, or give any sign that she had recognized the intrusion. "there, major carteret!" exclaimed miller, with the tragic eloquence of despair, "there lies a specimen of your handiwork! there lies _my_ only child, laid low by a stray bullet in this riot which you and your paper have fomented; struck down as much by your hand as though you had held the weapon with which his life was taken!" "my god!" exclaimed carteret, struck with horror. "is the child dead?" "there he lies," continued the other, "an innocent child,--there he lies dead, his little life snuffed out like a candle, because you and a handful of your friends thought you must override the laws and run this town at any cost!--and there kneels his mother, overcome by grief. we are alone in the house. it is not safe to leave her unattended. my duty calls me here, by the side of my dead child and my suffering wife! i cannot go with you. there is a just god in heaven!--as you have sown, so may you reap!" carteret possessed a narrow, but a logical mind, and except when confused or blinded by his prejudices, had always tried to be a just man. in the agony of his own predicament,--in the horror of the situation at miller's house,--for a moment the veil of race prejudice was rent in twain, and he saw things as they were, in their correct proportions and relations,--saw clearly and convincingly that he had no standing here, in the presence of death, in the home of this stricken family. miller's refusal to go with him was pure, elemental justice; he could not blame the doctor for his stand. he was indeed conscious of a certain involuntary admiration for a man who held in his hands the power of life and death, and could use it, with strict justice, to avenge his own wrongs. in dr. miller's place he would have done the same thing. miller had spoken the truth,--as he had sown, so must he reap! he could not expect, could not ask, this father to leave his own household at such a moment. pressing his lips together with grim courage, and bowing mechanically, as though to fate rather than the physician, carteret turned and left the house. at a rapid pace he soon reached home. there was yet a chance for his child: perhaps some one of the other doctors had come; perhaps, after all, the disease had taken a favorable turn,--evans was but a young doctor, and might have been mistaken. surely, with doctors all around him, his child would not be permitted to die for lack of medical attention! he found the mother, the doctor, and the nurse still grouped, as he had left them, around the suffering child. "how is he now?" he asked, in a voice that sounded like a groan. "no better," replied the doctor; "steadily growing worse. he can go on probably for twenty minutes longer without an operation." "where is the doctor?" demanded mrs. carteret, looking eagerly toward the door. "you should have brought him right upstairs. there's not a minute to spare! phil, phil, our child will die!" carteret's heart swelled almost to bursting with an intense pity. even his own great sorrow became of secondary importance beside the grief which his wife must soon feel at the inevitable loss of her only child. and it was his fault! would that he could risk his own life to spare her and to save the child! briefly, and as gently as might be, he stated the result of his errand. the doctor had refused to come, for a good reason. he could not ask him again. young evans felt the logic of the situation, which carteret had explained sufficiently. to the nurse it was even clearer. if she or any other woman had been in the doctor's place, she would have given the same answer. mrs. carteret did not stop to reason. in such a crisis a mother's heart usurps the place of intellect. for her, at that moment, there were but two facts in all the world. her child lay dying. there was within the town, and within reach, a man who could save him. with an agonized cry she rushed wildly from the room. carteret sought to follow her, but she flew down the long stairs like a wild thing. the least misstep might have precipitated her to the bottom; but ere carteret, with a remonstrance on his lips, had scarcely reached the uppermost step, she had thrown open the front door and fled precipitately out into the night. xxxvii the sisters miller's doorbell rang loudly, insistently, as though demanding a response. absorbed in his own grief, into which he had relapsed upon carteret's departure, the sound was an unwelcome intrusion. surely the man could not be coming back! if it were some one else--what else might happen to the doomed town concerned him not. his child was dead,--his distracted wife could not be left alone. the doorbell rang--clamorously--appealingly. through the long hall and the closed door of the room where he sat, he could hear some one knocking, and a faint voice calling. "open, for god's sake, open!" it was a woman's voice,--the voice of a woman in distress. slowly miller rose and went to the door, which he opened mechanically. a lady stood there, so near the image of his own wife, whom he had just left, that for a moment he was well-nigh startled. a little older, perhaps, a little fairer of complexion, but with the same form, the same features, marked by the same wild grief. she wore a loose wrapper, which clothed her like the drapery of a statue. her long dark hair, the counterpart of his wife's, had fallen down, and hung disheveled about her shoulders. there was blood upon her knuckles, where she had beaten with them upon the door. "dr. miller," she panted, breathless from her flight and laying her hand upon his arm appealingly,--when he shrank from the contact she still held it there,--"dr. miller, you will come and save my child? you know what it is to lose a child! i am so sorry about your little boy! you will come to mine!" "your sorrow comes too late, madam," he said harshly. "my child is dead. i charged your husband with his murder, and he could not deny it. why should i save your husband's child?" "ah, dr. miller!" she cried, with his wife's voice,--she never knew how much, in that dark hour, she owed to that resemblance--"it is _my_ child, and i have never injured you. it is my child, dr. miller, my only child. i brought it into the world at the risk of my own life! i have nursed it, i have watched over it, i have prayed for it,--and it now lies dying! oh, dr. miller, dear dr. miller, if you have a heart, come and save my child!" "madam," he answered more gently, moved in spite of himself, "my heart is broken. my people lie dead upon the streets, at the hands of yours. the work of my life is in ashes,--and, yonder, stretched out in death, lies my own child! god! woman, you ask too much of human nature! love, duty, sorrow, _justice_, call me here. i cannot go!" she rose to her full height. "then you are a murderer," she cried wildly. "his blood be on your head, and a mother's curse beside!" the next moment, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, she had thrown herself at his feet,--at the feet of a negro, this proud white woman,--and was clasping his knees wildly. "o god!" she prayed, in tones which quivered with anguish, "pardon my husband's sins, and my own, and move this man's hard heart, by the blood of thy son, who died to save us all!" it was the last appeal of poor humanity. when the pride of intellect and caste is broken; when we grovel in the dust of humiliation; when sickness and sorrow come, and the shadow of death falls upon us, and there is no hope elsewhere,--we turn to god, who sometimes swallows the insult, and answers the appeal. miller raised the lady to her feet. he had been deeply moved,--but he had been more deeply injured. this was his wife's sister,--ah, yes! but a sister who had scorned and slighted and ignored the existence of his wife for all her life. only miller, of all the world, could have guessed what this had meant to janet, and he had merely divined it through the clairvoyant sympathy of love. this woman could have no claim upon him because of this unacknowledged relationship. yet, after all, she was his wife's sister, his child's kinswoman. she was a fellow creature, too, and in distress. "rise, madam," he said, with a sudden inspiration, lifting her gently. "i will listen to you on one condition. my child lies dead in the adjoining room, his mother by his side. go in there, and make your request of her. i will abide by her decision." the two women stood confronting each other across the body of the dead child, mute witness of this first meeting between two children of the same father. standing thus face to face, each under the stress of the deepest emotions, the resemblance between them was even more striking than it had seemed to miller when he had admitted mrs. carteret to the house. but death, the great leveler, striking upon the one hand and threatening upon the other, had wrought a marvelous transformation in the bearing of the two women. the sad-eyed janet towered erect, with menacing aspect, like an avenging goddess. the other, whose pride had been her life, stood in the attitude of a trembling suppliant. "_you_ have come here," cried janet, pointing with a tragic gesture to the dead child,--"_you_, to gloat over your husband's work. all my life you have hated and scorned and despised me. your presence here insults me and my dead. what are you doing here?" "mrs. miller," returned mrs. carteret tremulously, dazed for a moment by this outburst, and clasping her hands with an imploring gesture, "my child, my only child, is dying, and your husband alone can save his life. ah, let me have my child," she moaned, heart-rendingly. "it is my only one--my sweet child--my ewe lamb!" "this was _my_ only child!" replied the other mother; "and yours is no better to die than mine!" "you are young," said mrs. carteret, "and may yet have many children,--this is my only hope! if you have a human heart, tell your husband to come with me. he leaves it to you; he will do as you command." "ah," cried janet, "i have a human heart, and therefore i will not let him go. _my_ child is dead--o god, my child, my child!" she threw herself down by the bedside, sobbing hysterically. the other woman knelt beside her, and put her arm about her neck. for a moment janet, absorbed in her grief, did not repulse her. "listen," pleaded mrs. carteret. "you will not let my baby die? you are my sister;--the child is your own near kin!" "my child was nearer," returned janet, rising again to her feet and shaking off the other woman's arm. "he was my son, and i have seen him die. i have been your sister for twenty-five years, and you have only now, for the first time, called me so!" "listen--sister," returned mrs. carteret. was there no way to move this woman? her child lay dying, if he were not dead already. she would tell everything, and leave the rest to god. if it would save her child, she would shrink at no sacrifice. whether the truth would still further incense janet, or move her to mercy, she could not tell; she would leave the issue to god. "listen, sister!" she said. "i have a confession to make. you are my lawful sister. my father was married to your mother. you are entitled to his name, and to half his estate." janet's eyes flashed with bitter scorn. "and you have robbed me all these years, and now tell me that as a reason why i should forgive the murder of my child?" "no, no!" cried the other wildly, fearing the worst. "i have known of it only a few weeks,--since my aunt polly's death. i had not meant to rob you,--i had meant to make restitution. sister! for our father's sake, who did you no wrong, give me my child's life!" janet's eyes slowly filled with tears--bitter tears--burning tears. for a moment even her grief at her child's loss dropped to second place in her thoughts. this, then, was the recognition for which, all her life, she had longed in secret. it had come, after many days, and in larger measure than she had dreamed; but it had come, not with frank kindliness and sisterly love, but in a storm of blood and tears; not freely given, from an open heart, but extorted from a reluctant conscience by the agony of a mother's fears. janet had obtained her heart's desire, and now that it was at her lips, found it but apples of sodom, filled with dust and ashes! "listen!" she cried, dashing her tears aside. "i have but one word for you,--one last word,--and then i hope never to see your face again! my mother died of want, and i was brought up by the hand of charity. now, when i have married a man who can supply my needs, you offer me back the money which you and your friends have robbed me of! you imagined that the shame of being a negro swallowed up every other ignominy,--and in your eyes i am a negro, though i am your sister, and you are white, and people have taken me for you on the streets,--and you, therefore, left me nameless all my life! now, when an honest man has given me a name of which i can be proud, you offer me the one of which you robbed me, and of which i can make no use. for twenty-five years i, poor, despicable fool, would have kissed your feet for a word, a nod, a smile. now, when this tardy recognition comes, for which i have waited so long, it is tainted with fraud and crime and blood, and i must pay for it with my child's life!" "and i must forfeit that of mine, it seems, for withholding it so long," sobbed the other, as, tottering, she turned to go. "it is but just." "stay--do not go yet!" commanded janet imperiously, her pride still keeping back her tears. "i have not done. i throw you back your father's name, your father's wealth, your sisterly recognition. i want none of them,--they are bought too dear! ah, god, they are bought too dear! but that you may know that a woman may be foully wronged, and yet may have a heart to feel, even for one who has injured her, you may have your child's life, if my husband can save it! will," she said, throwing open the door into the next room, "go with her!" "god will bless you for a noble woman!" exclaimed mrs. carteret. "you do not mean all the cruel things you have said,--ah, no! i will see you again, and make you take them back; i cannot thank you now! oh, doctor, let us go! i pray god we may not be too late!" together they went out into the night. mrs. carteret tottered under the stress of her emotions, and would have fallen, had not miller caught and sustained her with his arm until they reached the house, where he turned over her fainting form to carteret at the door. "is the child still alive?" asked miller. "yes, thank god," answered the father, "but nearly gone." "come on up, dr. miller," called evans from the head of the stairs. "there's time enough, but none to spare." huckleberry finn by mark twain part . chapter vi. well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for judge thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he went for me, too, for not stopping school. he catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but i went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. i didn't want to go to school much before, but i reckoned i'd go now to spite pap. that law trial was a slow business--appeared like they warn't ever going to get started on it; so every now and then i'd borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised cain around town; and every time he raised cain he got jailed. he was just suited--this kind of thing was right in his line. he got to hanging around the widow's too much and so she told him at last that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. well, wasn't he mad? he said he would show who was huck finn's boss. so he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was. he kept me with him all the time, and i never got a chance to run off. we lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head nights. he had a gun which he had stole, i reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me. the widow she found out where i was by and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till i was used to being where i was, and liked it--all but the cowhide part. it was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and i didn't see how i'd ever got to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book, and have old miss watson pecking at you all the time. i didn't want to go back no more. i had stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it; but now i took to it again because pap hadn't no objections. it was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around. but by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and i couldn't stand it. i was all over welts. he got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. once he locked me in and was gone three days. it was dreadful lonesome. i judged he had got drowned, and i wasn't ever going to get out any more. i was scared. i made up my mind i would fix up some way to leave there. i had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but i couldn't find no way. there warn't a window to it big enough for a dog to get through. i couldn't get up the chimbly; it was too narrow. the door was thick, solid oak slabs. pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; i reckon i had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, i was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. but this time i found something at last; i found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. i greased it up and went to work. there was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. i got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out--big enough to let me through. well, it was a good long job, but i was getting towards the end of it when i heard pap's gun in the woods. i got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in. pap warn't in a good humor--so he was his natural self. he said he was down town, and everything was going wrong. his lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and judge thatcher knowed how to do it. and he said people allowed there'd be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. this shook me up considerable, because i didn't want to go back to the widow's any more and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. then the old man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of, and so called them what's-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing. he said he would like to see the widow get me. he said he would watch out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn't find me. that made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute; i reckoned i wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance. the old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. there was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. i toted up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. i thought it all over, and i reckoned i would walk off with the gun and some lines, and take to the woods when i run away. i guessed i wouldn't stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor the widow couldn't ever find me any more. i judged i would saw out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and i reckoned he would. i got so full of it i didn't notice how long i was staying till the old man hollered and asked me whether i was asleep or drownded. i got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. while i was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again. he had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. a body would a thought he was adam--he was just all mud. whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says: "call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him--a man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. and they call that govment! that ain't all, nuther. the law backs that old judge thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. here's what the law does: the law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. they call that govment! a man can't get his rights in a govment like this. sometimes i've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. yes, and i told 'em so; i told old thatcher so to his face. lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what i said. says i, for two cents i'd leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin. them's the very words. i says look at my hat--if you call it a hat--but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. look at it, says i --such a hat for me to wear--one of the wealthiest men in this town if i could git my rights. "oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. why, looky here. there was a free nigger there from ohio--a mulatter, most as white as a white man. he had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane--the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the state. and what do you think? they said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. and that ain't the wust. they said he could vote when he was at home. well, that let me out. thinks i, what is the country a-coming to? it was 'lection day, and i was just about to go and vote myself if i warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, i drawed out. i says i'll never vote agin. them's the very words i said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me --i'll never vote agin as long as i live. and to see the cool way of that nigger--why, he wouldn't a give me the road if i hadn't shoved him out o' the way. i says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold?--that's what i want to know. and what do you reckon they said? why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the state six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. there, now--that's a specimen. they call that a govment that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the state six months. here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and--" pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language--mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there. he hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. but it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. he said so his own self afterwards. he had heard old sowberry hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but i reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe. after supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens. that was always his word. i judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then i would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or t'other. he drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by and by; but luck didn't run my way. he didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy. he groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time. at last i got so sleepy i couldn't keep my eyes open all i could do, and so before i knowed what i was about i was sound asleep, and the candle burning. i don't know how long i was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and i was up. there was pap looking wild, and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. he said they was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheek--but i couldn't see no snakes. he started and run round and round the cabin, hollering "take him off! take him off! he's biting me on the neck!" i never see a man look so wild in the eyes. pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and saying there was devils a-hold of him. he wore out by and by, and laid still a while, moaning. then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound. i could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. he was laying over by the corner. by and by he raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side. he says, very low: "tramp--tramp--tramp; that's the dead; tramp--tramp--tramp; they're coming after me; but i won't go. oh, they're here! don't touch me --don't! hands off--they're cold; let go. oh, let a poor devil alone!" then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. i could hear him through the blanket. by and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me. he chased me round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling me the angel of death, and saying he would kill me, and then i couldn't come for him no more. i begged, and told him i was only huck; but he laughed such a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. once when i turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and i thought i was gone; but i slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself. pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. he put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who. so he dozed off pretty soon. by and by i got the old split-bottom chair and clumb up as easy as i could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun. i slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then i laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down behind it to wait for him to stir. and how slow and still the time did drag along. chapter vii. "git up! what you 'bout?" i opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where i was. it was after sun-up, and i had been sound asleep. pap was standing over me looking sour and sick, too. he says: "what you doin' with this gun?" i judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so i says: "somebody tried to get in, so i was laying for him." "why didn't you roust me out?" "well, i tried to, but i couldn't; i couldn't budge you." "well, all right. don't stand there palavering all day, but out with you and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. i'll be along in a minute." he unlocked the door, and i cleared out up the river-bank. i noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of bark; so i knowed the river had begun to rise. i reckoned i would have great times now if i was over at the town. the june rise used to be always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comes cordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts--sometimes a dozen logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood-yards and the sawmill. i went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t'other one out for what the rise might fetch along. well, all at once here comes a canoe; just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. i shot head-first off of the bank like a frog, clothes and all on, and struck out for the canoe. i just expected there'd be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd raise up and laugh at him. but it warn't so this time. it was a drift-canoe sure enough, and i clumb in and paddled her ashore. thinks i, the old man will be glad when he sees this--she's worth ten dollars. but when i got to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as i was running her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, i struck another idea: i judged i'd hide her good, and then, 'stead of taking to the woods when i run off, i'd go down the river about fifty mile and camp in one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot. it was pretty close to the shanty, and i thought i heard the old man coming all the time; but i got her hid; and then i out and looked around a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. so he hadn't seen anything. when he got along i was hard at it taking up a "trot" line. he abused me a little for being so slow; but i told him i fell in the river, and that was what made me so long. i knowed he would see i was wet, and then he would be asking questions. we got five catfish off the lines and went home. while we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about wore out, i got to thinking that if i could fix up some way to keep pap and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; you see, all kinds of things might happen. well, i didn't see no way for a while, but by and by pap raised up a minute to drink another barrel of water, and he says: "another time a man comes a-prowling round here you roust me out, you hear? that man warn't here for no good. i'd a shot him. next time you roust me out, you hear?" then he dropped down and went to sleep again; but what he had been saying give me the very idea i wanted. i says to myself, i can fix it now so nobody won't think of following me. about twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. the river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. by and by along comes part of a log raft--nine logs fast together. we went out with the skiff and towed it ashore. then we had dinner. anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch more stuff; but that warn't pap's style. nine logs was enough for one time; he must shove right over to town and sell. so he locked me in and took the skiff, and started off towing the raft about half-past three. i judged he wouldn't come back that night. i waited till i reckoned he had got a good start; then i out with my saw, and went to work on that log again. before he was t'other side of the river i was out of the hole; him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder. i took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then i done the same with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. i took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition; i took the wadding; i took the bucket and gourd; i took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot. i took fish-lines and matches and other things--everything that was worth a cent. i cleaned out the place. i wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only the one out at the woodpile, and i knowed why i was going to leave that. i fetched out the gun, and now i was done. i had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging out so many things. so i fixed that as good as i could from the outside by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the sawdust. then i fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put two rocks under it and one against it to hold it there, for it was bent up at that place and didn't quite touch ground. if you stood four or five foot away and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't never notice it; and besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it warn't likely anybody would go fooling around there. it was all grass clear to the canoe, so i hadn't left a track. i followed around to see. i stood on the bank and looked out over the river. all safe. so i took the gun and went up a piece into the woods, and was hunting around for some birds when i see a wild pig; hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms. i shot this fellow and took him into camp. i took the axe and smashed in the door. i beat it and hacked it considerable a-doing it. i fetched the pig in, and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him down on the ground to bleed; i say ground because it was ground--hard packed, and no boards. well, next i took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it--all i could drag--and i started it from the pig, and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and down it sunk, out of sight. you could easy see that something had been dragged over the ground. i did wish tom sawyer was there; i knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches. nobody could spread himself like tom sawyer in such a thing as that. well, last i pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and stuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner. then i took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn't drip) till i got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the river. now i thought of something else. so i went and got the bag of meal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house. i took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and forks on the place --pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking. then i carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and full of rushes--and ducks too, you might say, in the season. there was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away, i don't know where, but it didn't go to the river. the meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. i dropped pap's whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. then i tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn't leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again. it was about dark now; so i dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. i made fast to a willow; then i took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. i says to myself, they'll follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me. and they'll follow that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things. they won't ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. they'll soon get tired of that, and won't bother no more about me. all right; i can stop anywhere i want to. jackson's island is good enough for me; i know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. and then i can paddle over to town nights, and slink around and pick up things i want. jackson's island's the place. i was pretty tired, and the first thing i knowed i was asleep. when i woke up i didn't know where i was for a minute. i set up and looked around, a little scared. then i remembered. the river looked miles and miles across. the moon was so bright i could a counted the drift logs that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and smelt late. you know what i mean--i don't know the words to put it in. i took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start when i heard a sound away over the water. i listened. pretty soon i made it out. it was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night. i peeped out through the willow branches, and there it was--a skiff, away across the water. i couldn't tell how many was in it. it kept a-coming, and when it was abreast of me i see there warn't but one man in it. think's i, maybe it's pap, though i warn't expecting him. he dropped below me with the current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water, and he went by so close i could a reached out the gun and touched him. well, it was pap, sure enough--and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars. i didn't lose no time. the next minute i was a-spinning down stream soft but quick in the shade of the bank. i made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, because pretty soon i would be passing the ferry landing, and people might see me and hail me. i got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. i laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; not a cloud in it. the sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; i never knowed it before. and how far a body can hear on the water such nights! i heard people talking at the ferry landing. i heard what they said, too--every word of it. one man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights now. t'other one said this warn't one of the short ones, he reckoned--and then they laughed, and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped out something brisk, and said let him alone. the first fellow said he 'lowed to tell it to his old woman--she would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his time. i heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. after that the talk got further and further away, and i couldn't make out the words any more; but i could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off. i was away below the ferry now. i rose up, and there was jackson's island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any lights. there warn't any signs of the bar at the head--it was all under water now. it didn't take me long to get there. i shot past the head at a ripping rate, the current was so swift, and then i got into the dead water and landed on the side towards the illinois shore. i run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that i knowed about; i had to part the willow branches to get in; and when i made fast nobody could a seen the canoe from the outside. i went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked out on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town, three mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. a monstrous big lumber-raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with a lantern in the middle of it. i watched it come creeping down, and when it was most abreast of where i stood i heard a man say, "stern oars, there! heave her head to stabboard!" i heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side. there was a little gray in the sky now; so i stepped into the woods, and laid down for a nap before breakfast. chapter viii. the sun was up so high when i waked that i judged it was after eight o'clock. i laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. i could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. there was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. a couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly. i was powerful lazy and comfortable--didn't want to get up and cook breakfast. well, i was dozing off again when i thinks i hears a deep sound of "boom!" away up the river. i rouses up, and rests on my elbow and listens; pretty soon i hears it again. i hopped up, and went and looked out at a hole in the leaves, and i see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways up--about abreast the ferry. and there was the ferryboat full of people floating along down. i knowed what was the matter now. "boom!" i see the white smoke squirt out of the ferryboat's side. you see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top. i was pretty hungry, but it warn't going to do for me to start a fire, because they might see the smoke. so i set there and watched the cannon-smoke and listened to the boom. the river was a mile wide there, and it always looks pretty on a summer morning--so i was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if i only had a bite to eat. well, then i happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the drownded carcass and stop there. so, says i, i'll keep a lookout, and if any of them's floating around after me i'll give them a show. i changed to the illinois edge of the island to see what luck i could have, and i warn't disappointed. a big double loaf come along, and i most got it with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out further. of course i was where the current set in the closest to the shore--i knowed enough for that. but by and by along comes another one, and this time i won. i took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver, and set my teeth in. it was "baker's bread"--what the quality eat; none of your low-down corn-pone. i got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well satisfied. and then something struck me. i says, now i reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done it. so there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing --that is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and i reckon it don't work for only just the right kind. i lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching. the ferryboat was floating with the current, and i allowed i'd have a chance to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in close, where the bread did. when she'd got pretty well along down towards me, i put out my pipe and went to where i fished out the bread, and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place. where the log forked i could peep through. by and by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could a run out a plank and walked ashore. most everybody was on the boat. pap, and judge thatcher, and bessie thatcher, and jo harper, and tom sawyer, and his old aunt polly, and sid and mary, and plenty more. everybody was talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and says: "look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he's washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge. i hope so, anyway." "i didn't hope so. they all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might. i could see them first-rate, but they couldn't see me. then the captain sung out: "stand away!" and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that it made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and i judged i was gone. if they'd a had some bullets in, i reckon they'd a got the corpse they was after. well, i see i warn't hurt, thanks to goodness. the boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island. i could hear the booming now and then, further and further off, and by and by, after an hour, i didn't hear it no more. the island was three mile long. i judged they had got to the foot, and was giving it up. but they didn't yet a while. they turned around the foot of the island and started up the channel on the missouri side, under steam, and booming once in a while as they went. i crossed over to that side and watched them. when they got abreast the head of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the missouri shore and went home to the town. i knowed i was all right now. nobody else would come a-hunting after me. i got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. i made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn't get at them. i catched a catfish and haggled him open with my saw, and towards sundown i started my camp fire and had supper. then i set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. when it was dark i set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty well satisfied; but by and by it got sort of lonesome, and so i went and set on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the stars and drift logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can't stay so, you soon get over it. and so for three days and nights. no difference--just the same thing. but the next day i went exploring around down through the island. i was boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and i wanted to know all about it; but mainly i wanted to put in the time. i found plenty strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer grapes, and green razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. they would all come handy by and by, i judged. well, i went fooling along in the deep woods till i judged i warn't far from the foot of the island. i had my gun along, but i hadn't shot nothing; it was for protection; thought i would kill some game nigh home. about this time i mighty near stepped on a good-sized snake, and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers, and i after it, trying to get a shot at it. i clipped along, and all of a sudden i bounded right on to the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking. my heart jumped up amongst my lungs. i never waited for to look further, but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever i could. every now and then i stopped a second amongst the thick leaves and listened, but my breath come so hard i couldn't hear nothing else. i slunk along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so on. if i see a stump, i took it for a man; if i trod on a stick and broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and i only got half, and the short half, too. when i got to camp i warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand in my craw; but i says, this ain't no time to be fooling around. so i got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and i put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year's camp, and then clumb a tree. i reckon i was up in the tree two hours; but i didn't see nothing, i didn't hear nothing--i only thought i heard and seen as much as a thousand things. well, i couldn't stay up there forever; so at last i got down, but i kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. all i could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. by the time it was night i was pretty hungry. so when it was good and dark i slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the illinois bank--about a quarter of a mile. i went out in the woods and cooked a supper, and i had about made up my mind i would stay there all night when i hear a plunkety-plunk, plunkety-plunk, and says to myself, horses coming; and next i hear people's voices. i got everything into the canoe as quick as i could, and then went creeping through the woods to see what i could find out. i hadn't got far when i hear a man say: "we better camp here if we can find a good place; the horses is about beat out. let's look around." i didn't wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy. i tied up in the old place, and reckoned i would sleep in the canoe. i didn't sleep much. i couldn't, somehow, for thinking. and every time i waked up i thought somebody had me by the neck. so the sleep didn't do me no good. by and by i says to myself, i can't live this way; i'm a-going to find out who it is that's here on the island with me; i'll find it out or bust. well, i felt better right off. so i took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows. the moon was shining, and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day. i poked along well on to an hour, everything still as rocks and sound asleep. well, by this time i was most down to the foot of the island. a little ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying the night was about done. i give her a turn with the paddle and brung her nose to shore; then i got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the woods. i sat down there on a log, and looked out through the leaves. i see the moon go off watch, and the darkness begin to blanket the river. but in a little while i see a pale streak over the treetops, and knowed the day was coming. so i took my gun and slipped off towards where i had run across that camp fire, stopping every minute or two to listen. but i hadn't no luck somehow; i couldn't seem to find the place. but by and by, sure enough, i catched a glimpse of fire away through the trees. i went for it, cautious and slow. by and by i was close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground. it most give me the fantods. he had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the fire. i set there behind a clump of bushes in about six foot of him, and kept my eyes on him steady. it was getting gray daylight now. pretty soon he gapped and stretched himself and hove off the blanket, and it was miss watson's jim! i bet i was glad to see him. i says: "hello, jim!" and skipped out. he bounced up and stared at me wild. then he drops down on his knees, and puts his hands together and says: "doan' hurt me--don't! i hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'. i alwuz liked dead people, en done all i could for 'em. you go en git in de river agin, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffn to ole jim, 'at 'uz awluz yo' fren'." well, i warn't long making him understand i warn't dead. i was ever so glad to see jim. i warn't lonesome now. i told him i warn't afraid of him telling the people where i was. i talked along, but he only set there and looked at me; never said nothing. then i says: "it's good daylight. le's get breakfast. make up your camp fire good." "what's de use er makin' up de camp fire to cook strawbries en sich truck? but you got a gun, hain't you? den we kin git sumfn better den strawbries." "strawberries and such truck," i says. "is that what you live on?" "i couldn' git nuffn else," he says. "why, how long you been on the island, jim?" "i come heah de night arter you's killed." "what, all that time?" "yes--indeedy." "and ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?" "no, sah--nuffn else." "well, you must be most starved, ain't you?" "i reck'n i could eat a hoss. i think i could. how long you ben on de islan'?" "since the night i got killed." "no! w'y, what has you lived on? but you got a gun. oh, yes, you got a gun. dat's good. now you kill sumfn en i'll make up de fire." so we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in a grassy open place amongst the trees, i fetched meal and bacon and coffee, and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft. i catched a good big catfish, too, and jim cleaned him with his knife, and fried him. when breakfast was ready we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot. jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved. then when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied. by and by jim says: "but looky here, huck, who wuz it dat 'uz killed in dat shanty ef it warn't you?" then i told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart. he said tom sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what i had. then i says: "how do you come to be here, jim, and how'd you get here?" he looked pretty uneasy, and didn't say nothing for a minute. then he says: "maybe i better not tell." "why, jim?" "well, dey's reasons. but you wouldn' tell on me ef i uz to tell you, would you, huck?" "blamed if i would, jim." "well, i b'lieve you, huck. i--i run off." "jim!" "but mind, you said you wouldn' tell--you know you said you wouldn' tell, huck." "well, i did. i said i wouldn't, and i'll stick to it. honest injun, i will. people would call me a low-down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum--but that don't make no difference. i ain't a-going to tell, and i ain't a-going back there, anyways. so, now, le's know all about it." "well, you see, it 'uz dis way. ole missus--dat's miss watson--she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she wouldn' sell me down to orleans. but i noticed dey wuz a nigger trader roun' de place considable lately, en i begin to git oneasy. well, one night i creeps to de do' pooty late, en de do' warn't quite shet, en i hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to orleans, but she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it 'uz sich a big stack o' money she couldn' resis'. de widder she try to git her to say she wouldn' do it, but i never waited to hear de res'. i lit out mighty quick, i tell you. "i tuck out en shin down de hill, en 'spec to steal a skift 'long de sho' som'ers 'bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirring yit, so i hid in de ole tumble-down cooper-shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go 'way. well, i wuz dah all night. dey wuz somebody roun' all de time. 'long 'bout six in de mawnin' skifts begin to go by, en 'bout eight er nine every skift dat went 'long wuz talkin' 'bout how yo' pap come over to de town en say you's killed. dese las' skifts wuz full o' ladies en genlmen a-goin' over for to see de place. sometimes dey'd pull up at de sho' en take a res' b'fo' dey started acrost, so by de talk i got to know all 'bout de killin'. i 'uz powerful sorry you's killed, huck, but i ain't no mo' now. "i laid dah under de shavin's all day. i 'uz hungry, but i warn't afeard; bekase i knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin' to start to de camp-meet'n' right arter breakfas' en be gone all day, en dey knows i goes off wid de cattle 'bout daylight, so dey wouldn' 'spec to see me roun' de place, en so dey wouldn' miss me tell arter dark in de evenin'. de yuther servants wouldn' miss me, kase dey'd shin out en take holiday soon as de ole folks 'uz out'n de way. "well, when it come dark i tuck out up de river road, en went 'bout two mile er more to whah dey warn't no houses. i'd made up my mine 'bout what i's agwyne to do. you see, ef i kep' on tryin' to git away afoot, de dogs 'ud track me; ef i stole a skift to cross over, dey'd miss dat skift, you see, en dey'd know 'bout whah i'd lan' on de yuther side, en whah to pick up my track. so i says, a raff is what i's arter; it doan' make no track. "i see a light a-comin' roun' de p'int bymeby, so i wade' in en shove' a log ahead o' me en swum more'n half way acrost de river, en got in 'mongst de drift-wood, en kep' my head down low, en kinder swum agin de current tell de raff come along. den i swum to de stern uv it en tuck a-holt. it clouded up en 'uz pooty dark for a little while. so i clumb up en laid down on de planks. de men 'uz all 'way yonder in de middle, whah de lantern wuz. de river wuz a-risin', en dey wuz a good current; so i reck'n'd 'at by fo' in de mawnin' i'd be twenty-five mile down de river, en den i'd slip in jis b'fo' daylight en swim asho', en take to de woods on de illinois side. "but i didn' have no luck. when we 'uz mos' down to de head er de islan' a man begin to come aft wid de lantern, i see it warn't no use fer to wait, so i slid overboard en struck out fer de islan'. well, i had a notion i could lan' mos' anywhers, but i couldn't--bank too bluff. i 'uz mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' i found' a good place. i went into de woods en jedged i wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey move de lantern roun' so. i had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg, en some matches in my cap, en dey warn't wet, so i 'uz all right." "and so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time? why didn't you get mud-turkles?" "how you gwyne to git 'm? you can't slip up on um en grab um; en how's a body gwyne to hit um wid a rock? how could a body do it in de night? en i warn't gwyne to show mysef on de bank in de daytime." "well, that's so. you've had to keep in the woods all the time, of course. did you hear 'em shooting the cannon?" "oh, yes. i knowed dey was arter you. i see um go by heah--watched um thoo de bushes." some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and lighting. jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. he said it was a sign when young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was the same way when young birds done it. i was going to catch some of them, but jim wouldn't let me. he said it was death. he said his father laid mighty sick once, and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny said his father would die, and he did. and jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to cook for dinner, because that would bring bad luck. the same if you shook the table-cloth after sundown. and he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but i didn't believe that, because i had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me. i had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them. jim knowed all kinds of signs. he said he knowed most everything. i said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so i asked him if there warn't any good-luck signs. he says: "mighty few--an' dey ain't no use to a body. what you want to know when good luck's a-comin' for? want to keep it off?" and he said: "ef you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's agwyne to be rich. well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur ahead. you see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you might git discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn' know by de sign dat you gwyne to be rich bymeby." "have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, jim?" "what's de use to ax dat question? don't you see i has?" "well, are you rich?" "no, but i ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin. wunst i had foteen dollars, but i tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out." "what did you speculate in, jim?" "well, fust i tackled stock." "what kind of stock?" "why, live stock--cattle, you know. i put ten dollars in a cow. but i ain' gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock. de cow up 'n' died on my han's." "so you lost the ten dollars." "no, i didn't lose it all. i on'y los' 'bout nine of it. i sole de hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents." "you had five dollars and ten cents left. did you speculate any more?" "yes. you know that one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old misto bradish? well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo' dollars mo' at de en' er de year. well, all de niggers went in, but dey didn't have much. i wuz de on'y one dat had much. so i stuck out for mo' dan fo' dollars, en i said 'f i didn' git it i'd start a bank mysef. well, o' course dat nigger want' to keep me out er de business, bekase he says dey warn't business 'nough for two banks, so he say i could put in my five dollars en he pay me thirty-five at de en' er de year. "so i done it. den i reck'n'd i'd inves' de thirty-five dollars right off en keep things a-movin'. dey wuz a nigger name' bob, dat had ketched a wood-flat, en his marster didn' know it; en i bought it off'n him en told him to take de thirty-five dollars when de en' er de year come; but somebody stole de wood-flat dat night, en nex day de one-laigged nigger say de bank's busted. so dey didn' none uv us git no money." "what did you do with the ten cents, jim?" "well, i 'uz gwyne to spen' it, but i had a dream, en de dream tole me to give it to a nigger name' balum--balum's ass dey call him for short; he's one er dem chuckleheads, you know. but he's lucky, dey say, en i see i warn't lucky. de dream say let balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a raise for me. well, balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to de lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times. so balum he tuck en give de ten cents to de po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it." "well, what did come of it, jim?" "nuffn never come of it. i couldn' manage to k'leck dat money no way; en balum he couldn'. i ain' gwyne to len' no mo' money 'dout i see de security. boun' to git yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says! ef i could git de ten cents back, i'd call it squah, en be glad er de chanst." "well, it's all right anyway, jim, long as you're going to be rich again some time or other." "yes; en i's rich now, come to look at it. i owns mysef, en i's wuth eight hund'd dollars. i wisht i had de money, i wouldn' want no mo'." chapter ix. i wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island that i'd found when i was exploring; so we started and soon got to it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide. this place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot high. we had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and the bushes so thick. we tramped and clumb around all over it, and by and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side towards illinois. the cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together, and jim could stand up straight in it. it was cool in there. jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but i said we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time. jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island, and they would never find us without dogs. and, besides, he said them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did i want the things to get wet? so we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern, and lugged all the traps up there. then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. we took some fish off of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner. the door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a good place to build a fire on. so we built it there and cooked dinner. we spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. we put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and i never see the wind blow so. it was one of these regular summer storms. it would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest--fst! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs--where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know. "jim, this is nice," i says. "i wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here. pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread." "well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben for jim. you'd a ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too; dat you would, honey. chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do de birds, chile." the river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last it was over the banks. the water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the illinois bottom. on that side it was a good many miles wide, but on the missouri side it was the same old distance across--a half a mile--because the missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs. daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, it was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside. we went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung so thick we had to back away and go some other way. well, on every old broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things; and when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles--they would slide off in the water. the ridge our cavern was in was full of them. we could a had pets enough if we'd wanted them. one night we catched a little section of a lumber raft--nice pine planks. it was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the top stood above water six or seven inches--a solid, level floor. we could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them go; we didn't show ourselves in daylight. another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before daylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side. she was a two-story, and tilted over considerable. we paddled out and got aboard --clumb in at an upstairs window. but it was too dark to see yet, so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight. the light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. then we looked in at the window. we could make out a bed, and a table, and two old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and there was clothes hanging against the wall. there was something laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man. so jim says: "hello, you!" but it didn't budge. so i hollered again, and then jim says: "de man ain't asleep--he's dead. you hold still--i'll go en see." he went, and bent down and looked, and says: "it's a dead man. yes, indeedy; naked, too. he's ben shot in de back. i reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. come in, huck, but doan' look at his face--it's too gashly." i didn't look at him at all. jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn't done it; i didn't want to see him. there was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. there was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women's underclothes hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too. we put the lot into the canoe--it might come good. there was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor; i took that, too. and there was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. we would a took the bottle, but it was broke. there was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke. they stood open, but there warn't nothing left in them that was any account. the way things was scattered about we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and warn't fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff. we got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and a bran-new barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fishline as thick as my little finger with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on them; and just as we was leaving i found a tolerable good curry-comb, and jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. the straps was broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for jim, and we couldn't find the other one, though we hunted all around. and so, take it all around, we made a good haul. when we was ready to shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty broad day; so i made jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off. i paddled over to the illinois shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it. i crept up the dead water under the bank, and hadn't no accidents and didn't see nobody. we got home all safe. chapter x. after breakfast i wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but jim didn't want to. he said it would fetch bad luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha'nt us; he said a man that warn't buried was more likely to go a-ha'nting around than one that was planted and comfortable. that sounded pretty reasonable, so i didn't say no more; but i couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing i knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for. we rummaged the clothes we'd got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat. jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat, because if they'd a knowed the money was there they wouldn't a left it. i said i reckoned they killed him, too; but jim didn't want to talk about that. i says: "now you think it's bad luck; but what did you say when i fetched in the snake-skin that i found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday? you said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin with my hands. well, here's your bad luck! we've raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides. i wish we could have some bad luck like this every day, jim." "never you mind, honey, never you mind. don't you git too peart. it's a-comin'. mind i tell you, it's a-comin'." it did come, too. it was a tuesday that we had that talk. well, after dinner friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the ridge, and got out of tobacco. i went to the cavern to get some, and found a rattlesnake in there. i killed him, and curled him up on the foot of jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some fun when jim found him there. well, by night i forgot all about the snake, and when jim flung himself down on the blanket while i struck a light the snake's mate was there, and bit him. he jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the varmint curled up and ready for another spring. i laid him out in a second with a stick, and jim grabbed pap's whisky-jug and begun to pour it down. he was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. that all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. jim told me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away, and then skin the body and roast a piece of it. i done it, and he eat it and said it would help cure him. he made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, too. he said that that would help. then i slid out quiet and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for i warn't going to let jim find out it was all my fault, not if i could help it. jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again. his foot swelled up pretty big, and so did his leg; but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so i judged he was all right; but i'd druther been bit with a snake than pap's whisky. jim was laid up for four days and nights. then the swelling was all gone and he was around again. i made up my mind i wouldn't ever take a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that i see what had come of it. jim said he reckoned i would believe him next time. and he said that handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to the end of it yet. he said he druther see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin in his hand. well, i was getting to feel that way myself, though i've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. old hank bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but i didn't see it. pap told me. but anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool. well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. we couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us into illinois. we just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drownded. we found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball, and lots of rubbage. we split the ball open with the hatchet, and there was a spool in it. jim said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it over so and make a ball of it. it was as big a fish as was ever catched in the mississippi, i reckon. jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one. he would a been worth a good deal over at the village. they peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market-house there; everybody buys some of him; his meat's as white as snow and makes a good fry. next morning i said it was getting slow and dull, and i wanted to get a stirring up some way. i said i reckoned i would slip over the river and find out what was going on. jim liked that notion; but he said i must go in the dark and look sharp. then he studied it over and said, couldn't i put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? that was a good notion, too. so we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and i turned up my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it. jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit. i put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove-pipe. jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly. i practiced around all day to get the hang of the things, and by and by i could do pretty well in them, only jim said i didn't walk like a girl; and he said i must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches-pocket. i took notice, and done better. i started up the illinois shore in the canoe just after dark. i started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. i tied up and started along the bank. there was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and i wondered who had took up quarters there. i slipped up and peeped in at the window. there was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by a candle that was on a pine table. i didn't know her face; she was a stranger, for you couldn't start a face in that town that i didn't know. now this was lucky, because i was weakening; i was getting afraid i had come; people might know my voice and find me out. but if this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all i wanted to know; so i knocked at the door, and made up my mind i wouldn't forget i was a girl. races and immigrants in america [illustration: ellis island, immigration station] races and immigrants in america by john r. commons professor of political economy, university of wisconsin new york the macmillan company london: macmillan & co., ltd. _all rights reserved_ copyright, , by the macmillan company. set up and electrotyped. published may, . norwood press j. s. cushing & co.--berwick & smith co. norwood, mass., u.s.a. contents page references vii chapter i. race and democracy ii. colonial race elements iii. the negro iv. nineteenth century additions v. industry vi. labor vii. city life, crime, and poverty viii. politics ix. amalgamation and assimilation index illustrations ellis island, immigrant station _frontispiece_ page "return of the mayflower." painting by boughton, _opposite_ anglo-saxon mountaineers, berea college, kentucky _opposite_ counties having a larger proportion of negroes in than in _opposite_ movement of immigrants, imports of merchandise per capita and immigrants per , population _between_ - aliens awaiting admission at ellis island _opposite_ norwegian, italian, and arabic types " slav, jewish, polack, and lithuanian types " industrial relations of immigrants-- _between_ - american school boys _opposite_ filipino governors " governor johnson of minnesota.--swede " dr. oronhyatekha, mohawk indian. late chief of order of foresters " chinese students, honolulu " faculty of tuskegee institute " slavic home missionaries " aliens awaiting admission at ellis island " references cited in footnotes "america's race problems." a series of discussions on indigenous race elements and the negro. _american academy of political and social science_, vol. xviii, no. ( ). atlanta university publications:-- no. . "mortality among negroes in cities" ( ). no. . "social and physical condition of negroes in cities" ( ). no. . "some efforts of negroes for social betterment" ( ). no. . "the negro common school" ( ). no. . "the negro artisan" ( ). no. . "the negro church" ( ). no. . "notes on negro crime" ( ). no. . "a select bibliography of the negro american" ( ). balch, emily greene, "slav emigration at its source," _charities_, . "introductory," jan. ; "bohemians," feb. ; "slovaks," march , april ; "galicia, austrian poles, ruthenians," may . bluntschli, j. k., _the theory of the state_. new york, . brandenburg, broughton, _imported americans_ ( ). description of trip by author and wife through southern italy and sicily and return by steerage with immigrants. brinton, daniel g., _religions of primitive peoples_. new york, . bureau of labor, seventh special report, _the slums of baltimore, chicago, new york, and philadelphia_ ( ). ninth special report, _the italians in chicago_ ( ). burgess, john w., _reconstruction and the constitution_, - . new york, . bushee, frederick a., "ethnic factors in the population of boston," _american economic association_, d series, vol. iv, pp. - ( ). casson, herbert n., _munsey's magazine_, "the jews in america," : ; "the sons of old scotland in america," : ; "the germans in america," : ; "the scandinavians in america," : ; "the welsh in america," : ; "the italians in america," : ; "the dutch in america," : ; "the spanish in america," : . coman, katherine, "the history of contract labor in the hawaiian islands," _american economic association_, d series, vol. iv, no. ( ). "the negro as peasant farmer," _american statistical association_, june, , pp. - . commissioner of education, _annual reports_, washington. commissioner-general of immigration, _annual reports_, washington. commons, j. r., _proportional representation_. new york, . cutler, james e., _lynch law. an investigation into the history of lynching in the united states_. new york, . de forest and veillier, _the tenement house problem_, vols. new york, . du bois, w. e. b., _the philadelphia negro_. philadelphia, ; _the soul of black folk._ new york, ; "negroes," twelfth census, _supplementary analysis_, pp. - ; "the negro farmer," pp. - . eaton, dorman b., _the civil service in great britain_. new york, . emigration to the united states, special consular reports, vol. xxx. department of commerce and labor, . _facts about immigration._ reports of conferences of the immigration department of the national civic federation, sept. and dec. , . new york, . _federation._ quarterly journal of federation of churches and christian organizations, new york. especially june, july, december, , march, june, october, . also annual reports and sociological canvasses of the federation. fiske, john, _old virginia and her neighbors_, vols. new york, . fleming, walter l., _civil war and reconstruction in alabama_. new york, . franklin, f. j., _the legislative history of naturalization in the united states_. chicago, . grose, howard b., _aliens or americans?_ forward mission study courses. new york, . hall, prescott f., _immigration and its effect upon the united states_. new york, . hampton negro conference, annual, - . hanna, charles a., _the scotch-irish_, vols. new york, . hawaii, reports on, united states bureau of labor, st report, sen. doc. , th congress, st sess., : ; d report, _bulletin_ no. ( ); d report, _bulletin_ no. ( ). hoffman, frederick l., "race traits and tendencies of the american negro," _publications of the american economic association_, vol. xi, nos. , , ( ). huebner, grover g., "the americanization of the immigrant," _american academy of political and social science_, may, , p. . _hull house maps and papers, a presentation of nationalities and wages in a congested district of chicago_, by residents of hull house. new york, . hunter, robert, _poverty_. new york, . chapter vi, "the immigrant." _immigration laws and regulations and chinese exclusion laws_, bureau of immigration and naturalization, washington. immigration restriction league, prescott f. hall, secretary, boston, mass. leaflets. industrial commission, vol. xv, _immigration and education_; vol. xix, _miscellaneous_ ( ). jackson, helen hunt, _a century of dishonor_. new york, . japanese and korean exclusion league, san francisco. leaflets. jenks, j. w., _certain economic questions in the english and dutch colonies in the orient_. war department, bureau of insular affairs, , doc. no. . jewish agricultural and industrial aid society, _annual reports_. new york. kellor, frances a., _out of work_. new york, . kelsey, carl, _the negro farmer_. chicago, . also _annals of the american academy of political and social science_, january, . king and okey, _italy to-day_. london, . kuczynski, r., "the fecundity of the native and foreign born population in massachusetts," _quarterly journal of economics_, november, , february, . "die einwanderungspolitik und die bevölkerungsfrage der vereinigten staaten von amerika," _volkswirthschaftliche zeitfragen_. berlin, . lazare, bernard, _antisemitism, its history and causes_. new york, . library of congress, _select list of references on the negro question ( ). list of works relating to the germans in the united states ( ). select list of references on chinese immigration ( ). fourteenth amendment_. list of discussions of fourteenth and fifteenth amendments with special reference to negro suffrage ( ). _list of references on naturalization ( )._ lodge, henry cabot, _historical and political essays_. boston, . lord, trenor, and barrows, _the italian in america_. new york, . especially italians in american agriculture. mallock, w. h., _aristocracy and evolution_. new york, . marshall, alfred, _principles of economics_. new york, . merriam, g. s., _the negro and the nation_. new york, . muirhead, james f., _the land of contrasts_. london and new york, . mÜnsterberg, hugo, _american traits_. new york, . naturalization, report to the president of the commission on. submitted nov. , , th cong., st sess., h. r. doc. . negro. series of articles on the reconstruction period, _atlantic monthly_. "the reconstruction of the southern states," woodrow wilson, : ; "the conditions of the reconstruction problem," hilary a. herbert, : ; "the freedman's bureau," w. e. b. du bois, : ; "reconstruction in south carolina," daniel h. chamberlain, : ; "the ku-klux movement," william g. brown, : ; "washington during reconstruction," s. w. mccall, : ; "reconstruction and disfranchisement," editors, : ; "new orleans and reconstruction," albert phelps, : ; "the southern people during reconstruction," thomas nelson page, : ; "the undoing of reconstruction," william a. dunning, : . united states bureau of labor, _bulletin_ no. , "the negro in the black belt"; no. , "the negroes of sandy spring, maryland"; no. , "the negro landholder of georgia"; no. , "the negroes of litwalton, virginia"; no. , "negroes of cinclare central factory and calumet plantation, louisiana"; no. , "the negroes of xenia, ohio." "negroes, social interests of, in northern cities." _charities_, special number, oct. , . ripley, w. z., _the races of europe_. new york, . roosevelt, theodore, _the winning of the west_, vols. new york, - . rosenberg, edward, "chinese workers in china," "filipinos as workmen," "labor conditions in hawaii," _american federationist_, august, october, december, . ross, edward a., "the causes of race superiority," _annals of the american academy of political and social science_, july, , pp. - . the notable address in which the term "race suicide" was coined. rowe, leo s., _the united states and porto rico_. new york, . semple, ellen churchill, _american history and its geographic conditions_. new york, . "the anglo-saxons of the kentucky mountains: a study in anthropogeography," _geographical journal_, : ( ). slav in america, the, _charities_, december, . descriptive articles by representatives of the several slav nationalities. smith, r. m., _emigration and immigration_. new york, . "assimilation of nationalities in the united states," _political science quarterly_, vol. ix, pp. - , - ( ). stewart, ethelbert, "influence of trade unions on immigrants," bureau of labor, _bulletin_ no. . stone, a. h., "the negro in the yazoo-mississippi delta," _american economic association_, d series, vol. iii, pp. - ( ). "the mulatto factor in the race problem," _atlantic monthly_, may, . "a plantation experiment," _quarterly journal economics_, : ( ). "the italian cotton grower: the negro's problem," _south atlantic quarterly_, : ( ). suffrage, suppression of the. report of the committee on political reform of the union league club. new york, . thomas, w. h., _the american negro_, . tillinghast, joseph a., "the negro in africa and america," _american economic association_, d series, vol. iii, no. ( ). van vorst, mrs. john and marie, _the woman who toils_. new york, . contains introduction by president roosevelt. walker, francis a., _discussions in economics and statistics_, vols., . ward, robert de c., "sane methods of regulating immigration," _review of reviews_, march, . warne, frank julian, _the slav invasion and the mine workers_, . washington, booker t., _the future of the american negro_, . _up from slavery_, . watson, elkanah, _men and times of the revolution_. edited by his son, winslow c. watson, d edition. new york, . welfare work, conference on, national civic federation. new york, . whelpley, james d., _the problem of the immigrant_, . emigration laws of european countries and immigration laws of british colonies and the united states. woods, r. a., _the city wilderness_, . _americans in process_, . races and immigrants in america chapter i race and democracy "all men are created equal." so wrote thomas jefferson, and so agreed with him the delegates from the american colonies. but we must not press them too closely nor insist on the literal interpretation of their words. they were not publishing a scientific treatise on human nature nor describing the physical, intellectual, and moral qualities of different races and different individuals, but they were bent upon a practical object in politics. they desired to sustain before the world the cause of independence by such appeals as they thought would have effect; and certainly the appeal to the sense of equal rights before god and the law is the most powerful that can be addressed to the masses of any people. this is the very essence of american democracy, that one man should have just as large opportunity as any other to make the most of himself, to come forward and achieve high standing in any calling to which he is inclined. to do this the bars of privilege have one by one been thrown down, the suffrage has been extended to every man, and public office has been opened to any one who can persuade his fellow-voters or their representatives to select him. but there is another side to the successful operations of democracy. it is not enough that equal opportunity to participate in making and enforcing the laws should be vouchsafed to all--it is equally important that all should be capable of such participation. the individuals, or the classes, or the races, who through any mental or moral defect are unable to assert themselves beside other individuals, classes, or races, and to enforce their right to an equal voice in determining the laws and conditions which govern all, are just as much deprived of the privilege as though they were excluded by the constitution. in the case of individuals, when they sink below the level of joint participation, we recognize them as belonging to a defective or criminal or pauper class, and we provide for them, not on the basis of their rights, but on the basis of charity or punishment. such classes are exceptions in point of numbers, and we do not feel that their non-participation is a flaw in the operations of democratic government. but when a social class or an entire race is unable to command that share in conducting government to which the laws entitle it, we recognize at once that democracy as a practical institution has in so far broken down, and that, under the forms of democracy, there has developed a class oligarchy or a race oligarchy. two things, therefore, are necessary for a democratic government such as that which the american people have set before themselves: equal opportunities before the law, and equal ability of classes and races to use those opportunities. if the first is lacking, we have legal oligarchy; if the second is lacking, we have actual oligarchy disguised as democracy. now it must be observed that, compared with the first two centuries of our nation's history, the present generation is somewhat shifting its ground regarding democracy. while it can never rightly be charged that our fathers overlooked the inequalities of races and individuals, yet more than the present generation did they regard with hopefulness the educational value of democracy. "true enough," they said, "the black man is not equal to the white man, but once free him from his legal bonds, open up the schools, the professions, the businesses, and the offices to those of his number who are most aspiring, and you will find that, as a race, he will advance favorably in comparison with his white fellow-citizens." it is now nearly forty years since these opportunities and educational advantages were given to the negro, not only on equal terms, but actually on terms of preference over the whites, and the fearful collapse of the experiment is recognized even by its partisans as something that was inevitable in the nature of the race at that stage of its development. we shall have reason in the following pages to enter more fully into this discussion, because the race question in america has found its most intense expression in the relations between the white and the negro races, and has there shown itself to be the most fundamental of all american social and political problems. for it was this race question that precipitated the civil war, with the ominous problems that have followed upon that catastrophe; and it is this same race problem that now diverts attention from the treatment of those pressing economic problems of taxation, corporations, trusts, and labor organizations which themselves originated in the civil war. the race problem in the south is only one extreme of the same problem in the great cities of the north, where popular government, as our forefathers conceived it, has been displaced by one-man power, and where a profound distrust of democracy is taking hold upon the educated and property-holding classes who fashion public opinion. this changing attitude toward the educational value of self-government has induced a more serious study of the nature of democratic institutions and of the classes and races which are called upon to share in them. as a people whose earlier hopes have been shocked by the hard blows of experience, we are beginning to pause and take invoice of the heterogeneous stocks of humanity that we have admitted to the management of our great political enterprise. we are trying to look beneath the surface and to inquire whether there are not factors of heredity and race more fundamental than those of education and environment. we find that our democratic theories and forms of government were fashioned by but one of the many races and peoples which have come within their practical operation, and that that race, the so-called anglo-saxon, developed them out of its own insular experience unhampered by inroads of alien stock. when once thus established in england and further developed in america we find that other races and peoples, accustomed to despotism and even savagery, and wholly unused to self-government, have been thrust into the delicate fabric. like a practical people as we pride ourselves, we have begun actually to despotize our institutions in order to control these dissident elements, though still optimistically holding that we retain the original democracy. the earlier problem was mainly a political one--how to unite into one self-governing nation a scattered population with the wide diversity of natural resources, climates, and interests that mark a country soon to stretch from ocean to ocean and from the arctics to the subtropics. the problem now is a social one,--how to unite into one people a congeries of races even more diverse than the resources and climates from which they draw their subsistence. that motto, "_e pluribus unum_," which in the past has guided those who through constitutional debate and civil war worked out our form of government, must now again be the motto of those who would work out the more fundamental problem of divergent races. here is something deeper than the form of government--it is the essence of government--for it is that union of the hearts and lives and abilities of the people which makes government what it really is. the conditions necessary for democratic government are not merely the constitutions and laws which guarantee equality, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for these after all are but paper documents. they are not merely freedom from foreign power, for the australian colonies enjoy the most democratic of all governments, largely because they are owned by another country which has protected them from foreign and civil wars. neither are wealth and prosperity necessary for democracy, for these may tend to luxury, inequality, and envy. world power, however glorious and enticing, is not helpful to democracy, for it inclines to militarism and centralization, as did rome in the hands of an emperor, or venice in the hands of an oligarchy. the true foundations of democracy are in the character of the people themselves, that is, of the individuals who constitute the democracy. these are: first, intelligence--the power to weigh evidence and draw sound conclusions, based on adequate information; second, manliness, that which the romans called virility, and which at bottom is dignified self-respect, self-control, and that self-assertion and jealousy of encroachment which marks those who, knowing their rights, dare maintain them; third, and equally important, the capacity for coöperation, that willingness and ability to organize, to trust their leaders, to work together for a common interest and toward a common destiny, a capacity which we variously designate as patriotism, public spirit, or self-government. these are the basic qualities which underlie democracy,--intelligence, manliness, coöperation. if they are lacking, democracy is futile. here is the problem of races, the fundamental division of mankind. race differences are established in the very blood and physical constitution. they are most difficult to eradicate, and they yield only to the slow processes of the centuries. races may change their religions, their forms of government, their modes of industry, and their languages, but underneath all these changes they may continue the physical, mental, and moral capacities and incapacities which determine the real character of their religion, government, industry, and literature. race and heredity furnish the raw material, education and environment furnish the tools, with which and by which social institutions are fashioned; and in a democracy race and heredity are the more decisive, because the very education and environment which fashion the oncoming generations are themselves controlled through universal suffrage by the races whom it is hoped to educate and elevate. =social classes.=--closely connected with race division in its effect upon democracy are the divisions between social classes. in america we are wont to congratulate ourselves on the absence of classes with their accompanying hatred and envy. whether we shall continue thus to commend ourselves depends partly on what we mean by social classes. if we compare our situation with an extreme case, that of india,[ ] where social classes have been hardened into rigid castes, we can see the connection between races and classes. for it is generally held that the castes of india originated in the conquests by an aryan race of an indigenous dark or colored race. and while the clear-cut race distinctions have been blended through many centuries of amalgamation, yet it is most apparent that a gradation in the color of the skin follows the gradation in social position, from the light-colored, high-caste brahman to the dark-colored, low-caste sudra, or outcast pariah. race divisions have been forgotten, but in their place religion has sanctified a division even more rigid than that of race, for it is sacrilege and defiance of the gods when a man of low caste ventures into the occupation and calling of the high caste. india's condition now is what might be conceived for our southern states a thousand years from now, when the black man who had not advanced to the lighter shades of mulatto should be excluded from all professions and skilled trades and from all public offices, and should be restricted to the coarsest kind of service as a day laborer or as a field hand on the agricultural plantations. confined to this limited occupation, with no incentive to economize because of no prospect to rise above his station, and with his numbers increasing, competition would reduce his wages to the lowest limit consistent with the continuance of his kind. such a development is plainly going on at the present day, and we may feel reasonably certain that we can see in our own south the very historical steps by which in the forgotten centuries india proceeded to her rigid system of castes. there is lacking but one essential to the indian system; namely, a religion which ascribes to god himself the inequalities contrived by man. for the indian derives the sacred brahman from the mouth of god, to be his spokesman on earth, while the poor sudra comes from the feet of god, to be forever the servant of all the castes above him. but the christian religion has set forth a different theory, which ascribes to god entire impartiality toward races and individuals. he has "made of one blood all nations." it is out of this doctrine that the so-called "self-evident" assertion in the declaration of independence originated, and it is this doctrine which throughout the history of european civilization has contributed to smoothen out the harsh lines of caste into the less definite lines of social classes. for it must be remembered that europe, like india, is built upon conquest, and the earlier populations were reduced to the condition of slaves and serfs to the conquering races. true, there was not the extreme opposition of white and colored races which distinguished the conquests of india, and this is also one of the reasons why slavery and serfdom gradually gave way and races coalesced. nevertheless, the peasantry of europe to-day is in large part the product of serfdom and of that race-subjection which produced serfdom. herein we may find the source of that arrogance on the one hand and subserviency on the other, which so closely relate class divisions to race divisions. the european peasant, says professor shaler,[ ] "knows himself to be by birthright a member of an inferior class, from which there is practically no chance of escaping.... it is characteristic of peasants that they have accepted this inferior lot. for generations they have regarded themselves as separated from their fellow-citizens of higher estate. they have no large sense of citizenly motives; they feel no sense of responsibility for any part of the public life save that which lies within their own narrow round of action." how different from the qualities of the typical american citizen whose forefathers have erected our edifice of representative democracy! it was not the peasant class of europe that sought these shores in order to found a free government. it was the middle class, the merchants and yeomen, those who in religion and politics were literally "protestants," and who possessed the intelligence, manliness, and public spirit which urged them to assert for themselves those inalienable rights which the church or the state of their time had arrogated to itself. with such a social class democracy is the only acceptable form of government. they demand and secure equal opportunities because they are able to rise to those opportunities. by their own inherent nature they look forward to and aspire to the highest positions. but the peasants of europe, especially of southern and eastern europe, have been reduced to the qualities similar to those of an inferior race that favor despotism and oligarchy rather than democracy. their only avenues of escape from their subordinate positions have been through the army and the church, and these two institutions have drawn from the peasants their ablest and brightest intellects into a life which deprived them of offspring. "among the prosperous folk there have been ever many classes of occupations tempting the abler youths, while among the laborers the church has afforded the easiest way to rise, and that which is most tempting to the intelligent. the result has been, that while the priesthood and monastic orders have systematically debilitated all the populations of catholic europe, their influence has been most efficient in destroying talent in the peasant class."[ ] thus it is that the peasants of catholic europe, who constitute the bulk of our immigration of the past thirty years, have become almost a distinct race, drained of those superior qualities which are the foundation of democratic institutions. if in america our boasted freedom from the evils of social classes fails to be vindicated in the future, the reasons will be found in the immigration of races and classes incompetent to share in our democratic opportunities. already in the case of the negro this division has hardened and seems destined to become more rigid. therein we must admit at least one exception to our claim of immunity from social classes. whether with our public schools, our stirring politics, our ubiquitous newspapers, our common language, and our network of transportation, the children of the european immigrant shall be able to rise to the opportunities unreached by his parents is the largest and deepest problem now pressing upon us. it behooves us as a people to enter into the practical study of this problem, for upon its outcome depends the fate of government of the people, for the people, and by the people. =races in the united states.=--we use the term "race" in a rather loose and elastic sense; and indeed we are not culpable in so doing, for the ethnographers are not agreed upon it. races have been classified on the basis of color, on the basis of language, on the basis of supposed origin, and in these latter days on the basis of the shape of the skull. for our purpose we need consider only those large and apparent divisions which have a direct bearing on the problem of assimilation, referring those who seek the more subtle problems to other books.[ ] mankind in general has been divided into three and again into five great racial stocks, and one of these stocks, the aryan or indo-germanic, is represented among us by ten or more subdivisions which we also term races. it need not cause confusion if we use the term "race" not only to designate these grand divisions which are so far removed by nature one from another as to render successful amalgamation an open question, but also to designate those peoples or nationalities which we recognize as distinct yet related within one of the large divisions. within the area controlled by the united states are now to be found representatives of each of the grand divisions, or primary racial groups, and it would be a fascinating study to turn from the more practical topics before us and follow the races of man in their dispersion over the globe and their final gathering together again under the republic of america. first is the aryan, or indo-germanic race, which, wherever it originated, sent its sanskrit conquerors to the south to plant themselves upon a black race related to the africans and the australians. its western branch, many thousand miles away, made the conquest and settlement of europe. here it sent out many smaller branches, among them the greeks and latins, whose situation on the mediterranean helped in great measure to develop brilliant and conquering civilizations, and who, after twenty centuries of decay and subjection, have within the past twenty years begun again their westward movement, this time to north and south america. north of greece the aryans became the manifold slavs, that most prolific of races. one branch of the slavs has spread the power of russia east and west, and is now crushing the alien hebrew, finn, lithuanian, and german, and even its fellow-slav, the pole, who, to escape their oppressors, are moving to america. the russian himself, with his vast expanse of fertile prairie and steppe, does not migrate across the water, but drives away those whom he can not or will not assimilate. from austria-hungary, with its medley of races, come other branches of the slavs, the bohemians, moravians, slovaks, slovenians, croatians, roumanians, poles, and ruthenians, some of them mistakenly called huns, but really oppressed by the true hun, the magyar, and by the german. to the west of the slavs we find the teutonic branches of the aryans, the germans, the scandinavians, and, above all, the english and scotch-irish with their descent from the angles, saxons, and franks, who have given to america our largest accessions in numbers, besides our language, our institutions, and forms of government. then other branches of the aryans known as celtic, including the irish, scotch, and welsh, formerly driven into the hills and islands by the teutons, have in these latter days vied with the english and germans in adding to our population. the french, a mixture of teuton and celt, a nationality noted above all others for its stationary population and dislike of migration, are nevertheless contributing to our numbers by the circuitous route of canada, and are sending to us a class of people more different from the present-day frenchman in his native home than the italian or portuguese is different from the frenchman. in the fertile valleys of mesopotamia and the tigris the semitic race had separated from its cousins, the aryans, and one remarkable branch of this race, the hebrews, settling on a diminutive tract of land on the eastern shore of the mediterranean and finally driven forth as wanderers to live upon their wits, exploited by and exploiting in turn every race of europe, have ultimately been driven forth to america by the thousands from russia and austria where nearly one-half of their present number is found. another race, the mongolian, multiplying on the plains of asia, sent a conquering branch to the west, scattering the slavs and teutons and making for itself a permanent wedge in the middle of europe, whence, under the name of magyar, the true hungarian, the mongolians come to america. going in another direction from this asiatic home the mongolian race has made the circuit of the globe, and the chinese, japanese, and koreans meet in america their unrecognized cousins of many thousand years ago. last of the immigrants to be mentioned, but among the earliest in point of time, is the black race from the slave coast of africa. this was not a free and voluntary migration of a people seeking new fields to escape oppression, but a forced migration designed to relieve the white race of toil. all of the other races mentioned, the aryan, the semitic, the mongolian, had in early times met one another and even perhaps had sprung from the same stock, so that when in america they come together there is presumably a renewal of former ties. but as far back as we can trace the history of races in the records of archæology or philology, we find no traces of affiliation with the black race. the separation by continents, by climate, by color, and by institutions is the most diametrical that mankind exhibits anywhere. it is even greater than that between the aryan and the native american, improperly called the indian, whose presence on the soil which we have seized from him has furnished us with a peculiar variation in our multiform race problem. for the indian tribes, although within our acquired territory, have been treated as foreign nations, and their reservations have been saved to them under the forms of treaties. only recently has there sprung up a policy of admitting them to citizenship, and therefore the indian, superior in some respects to the negro, has not interfered with our experiment in democracy. last in point of time we have taken into our fold the malay race, with some seven million representatives in the hawaiian and philippine islands. like the indian and the negro, this race never in historic times prior to the discovery of the new world came into close contact with the white races. with its addition we have completed the round of all the grand divisions of the human family, and have brought together for a common experiment in self-government the white, yellow, black, red, and brown races of the earth. =amalgamation and assimilation.=--scarcely another nation in ancient or modern history can show within compact borders so varied an aggregation. it is frequently maintained that a nation composed of a mixed stock is superior in mind and body to one of single and homogeneous stock. but it must be remembered that amalgamation requires centuries. the english race is probably as good an example of a mixed race as can be found in modern history, yet this race, though a mixture of the closely related primitive celt, the conquering teuton, and the latinized scandinavian, did not reach a common language and homogeneity until three hundred years after the last admixture. we know from modern researches that all of the races of europe are mixed in their origin, but we also know that so much of that mixture as resulted in amalgamation occurred at a time so remote that it has been ascribed to the stone age.[ ] the later inroads have either been but temporary and have left but slight impression, or they have resulted in a division of territory. thus the conquest of britain by the teutons and the normans has not produced amalgamation so much as it has caused a segregation of the celts in scotland, wales, and ireland, and of the teutons, with their later but slight infusion of normans, in england. on the continent of europe this segregation has been even more strongly marked. the present stratification of races and nationalities has followed the upheavals and inroads of a thousand years introduced by the decline and fall of the roman empire. two developments have taken place. a conquering race has reduced a native population in part to subjection and has imposed upon the natives its laws, customs, and language. in course of time the subject race becomes a lower social class and slowly assimilates with the upper classes, producing a homogeneous nationality with a new evolution of laws, customs, and language. this is the history of four great nations of europe,--the french, the german, the english, the italian. the other development has been the segregation of a portion of the conquered race, who having fled their conquerors avoid actual subjection by escaping to the mountains and islands. here they preserve their original purity of stock and language. this is the history of austria-hungary, whose earlier population of slavs has been scattered right and left by german and hun and who now constitute separate branches and dialects of the unassimilated races. that austria-hungary with its dozen languages should be able to hold together as a "dual empire" for many years is one of the marvels of history, and is frequently ascribed to that which is the essence of autocracy, the personal hold of the emperor. the little bundle of republics known as switzerland is a federation of french, germans, and italians, who retain their languages and have developed what out of such a conflict of races has elsewhere never been developed, a high grade of democratic government. here in historic times there has been no amalgamation of races or assimilation of languages, but there has been the distinct advantage of a secluded freedom from surrounding feudal lords, which naturally led to a loose federation of independent cantons. it is switzerland's mountains and not her mixed races that have promoted her democracy. at the other end of the world the highest development of democracy is in the colonies of australasia, where a homogeneous race, protected from foreign foes, and prohibiting the immigration of alien races and inferior classes, has worked out self-government in politics and industry. in the roman empire we see the opposite extreme. at first a limited republic, the extension of conquests, and the incorporation of alien races led to that centralization of power in the hands of one man which transformed the republic into the empire. the british empire, which to-day covers all races of the earth, is growingly democratic as regards englishmen, but despotic as regards subject races. taking the empire as a whole, neither amalgamation nor self-government is within the possibilities of its constitutional growth. in america, on the other hand, we have attempted to unite all races in one commonwealth and one elective government. we have, indeed, a most notable advantage compared with other countries where race divisions have undermined democracy. a single language became dominant from the time of the earliest permanent settlement, and all subsequent races and languages must adopt the established medium. this is essential, for it is not physical amalgamation that unites mankind; it is mental community. to be great a nation need not be of one blood, it must be of one mind. racial inequality and inferiority are fundamental only to the extent that they prevent mental and moral assimilation. if we think together, we can act together, and the organ of common thought and action is common language. through the prism of this noble instrument of the human mind all other instruments focus their powers of assimilation upon the new generations as they come forth from the disunited immigrants. the public schools, the newspapers, the books, the political parties, the trade unions, the religious propagandists with their manifold agencies of universal education, the railroads with their inducements to our unparalleled mobility of population, are all dependent upon our common language for their high efficiency. herein are we fortunate in our plans for the americanization of all races within our borders. we are not content to let the fate of our institutions wait upon the slow and doubtful processes of blood amalgamation, but are eager to direct our energies toward the more rapid movements of mental assimilation. race and heredity may be beyond our organized control; but the instrument of a common language is at hand for conscious improvement through education and social environment. chapter ii colonial race elements doubtless the most fascinating topic in the study of races is that of the great men whom each race has produced. the personal interest surrounding those who have gained eminence carries us back over each step of their careers to their childhood, their parents, and their ancestry.[ ] pride of race adds its zest, and each race has its eulogists who claim every great man whose family tree reveals even a single ancestor, male or female, near or remote, of the eulogized race. here is a "conflict of jurisdiction," and the student who is without race prejudice begins to look for causes other than race origin to which should be ascribed the emergence of greatness. mr. henry cabot lodge[ ] attempted, some years ago, to assign to the different races in america the , men eminent enough to find a place in "appleton's encyclopedia of american biography." he prepared a statistical summary as follows:-- eminent americans english , scotch-irish , german huguenot scotch dutch welsh irish french scandinavian spanish italian swiss greek russian polish ------ total , when we inquire into the methods necessarily adopted in preparing a statistical table of this kind we discover serious limitations. mr. lodge was confined to the paternal line alone, but if, as some biologists assert, the female is the conservative element which holds to the type, and the male is the variable element which departs from the type, then the specific contribution of the race factor would be found in the maternal line. however, let this dubious point pass. we find that in american life two hundred years of intermingling has in many if not in most cases of greatness broken into the continuity of race. true, the new england and virginia stock has remained during most of this time of purely english origin, but the very fact that in mr. lodge's tables massachusetts has produced notables, while virginia, of the same blood, has produced only , must lead to the suspicion that factors other than race extraction are the mainspring of greatness. it must be remembered that ability is not identical with eminence. ability is the product of ancestry and training. eminence is an accident of social conditions. the english race was the main contributor to population during the seventeenth century, and english conquest determined the form of government, the language, and the opportunities for individual advancement. during the succeeding century the scotch-irish and the germans migrated in nearly equal numbers, and their combined migration was perhaps as great as that of the english in the seventeenth century. but they were compelled to move to the interior, to become frontiersmen, to earn their living directly from the soil, and to leave to their english-sprung predecessors the more prominent occupations of politics, literature, law, commerce, and the army. the germans, who, according to lodge, "produced fewer men of ability than any other race in the united states," were further handicapped by their language and isolation, which continue to this day in the counties of pennsylvania where they originally settled. on the other hand, the huguenots and the dutch came in the first century of colonization. they rapidly merged with the english, lost their language, and hence contributed their full share of eminence. finally, the irish, scandinavian and other races, inconspicuous in the galaxy of notables, did not migrate in numbers until the middle of the nineteenth century, and, in addition to the restraints of language and poverty, they found the roads to prominence preoccupied. [illustration: "return of the mayflower" painting by boughton, ] besides the accident of precedence in time, a second factor distinct from race itself has contributed to the eminence of one race over another. the huguenots and the french, according to lodge's statistics, show a percentage of ability in proportion to their total immigration much higher than that of any other race. but the huguenots were a select class of people, manufacturers and merchants, perhaps the most intelligent and enterprising of frenchmen in the seventeenth century. furthermore the direct migration from france to this country has never included many peasants and wage-earners, but has been limited to the adventurous and educated. had the french-canadians who represent the peasantry of france been included in these comparisons, the proportion of french eminence would have been materially reduced. the same is true of the english. although sprung from one race, those who came to america represented at least two grades of society as widely apart as two races. the pilgrims and puritans of new england were the yeomen, the merchants, the manufacturers, skilled in industry, often independent in resources, and well trained in the intellectual controversies of religion and politics. the southern planters also sprang from a class of similar standing, though not so strongly addicted to intellectual pursuits. beneath both these classes were the indentured servants, a few of whom were men of ability forced to pay their passage by service. but the majority of them were brought to this country through the advertisements of shipowners and landholders or even forcibly captured on the streets of cities or transported for crimes and pauperism. though all of these classes were of the same race, they were about as widely divergent as races themselves in point of native ability and preparatory training. the third and most important cause of eminence, apart from ancestry, is the industrial and legal environment. an agricultural community produces very few eminent men compared with the number produced where manufactures and commerce vie with agriculture to attract the youth. a state of widely diversified industrial interests is likely to create widely diversified intellectual and moral interests. complicated problems of industry and politics stimulate the mind and reflect their influence in literature, art, education, science, and the learned professions. most of all, equal opportunity for all classes and large prizes for the ambitious and industrious serve to stimulate individuals of native ability to their highest endeavor. it was the deadening effects of slavery, creating inequalities among the whites themselves, that smothered the genius of the southerner whether englishman, huguenot, or scotch-irish, and it was the free institutions of the north that invited their genius to unfold and blossom. these considerations lead us to look with distrust on the claims of those who find in race ancestry or in race intermixture the reasons for such eminence as americans have attained. while the race factor is decisive when it marks off inferior and primitive races, yet, in considering those europeans races which have joined in our civilization, the important questions are: from what social classes is immigration drawn? and, do our social institutions offer free opportunity and high incentive to the youth of ability? in so far as we get a choice selection of immigrants, and in so far as we afford them free scope for their native gifts, so far do they render to our country the services of genius, talent, and industry. =incentives to immigration.=--it is the distinctive fact regarding colonial migration that it was teutonic in blood and protestant in religion. the english, dutch, swedes, germans, and even the scotch-irish, who constituted practically the entire migration, were less than two thousand years ago one germanic race in the forests surrounding the north sea. the protestant reformation, sixteen centuries later, began among those peoples and found in them its sturdiest supporters. the doctrines of the reformation, adapted as they were to the strong individualism of the germanic races, prepared the hearts of men for the doctrines of political liberty and constitutional government of the succeeding century. the reformation banished the idea that men must seek salvation through the intercession of priests and popes, who, however sacred, are only fellow-men, and set up the idea that each soul has direct access to god. with the bible as a guide and his own conscience as a judge, each man was accountable only to one divine sovereign. from the standpoint of the age this doctrine was too radical. it tended to break up existing society into sects and factions, and to precipitate those civil and religious wars which ended in a catholic or aristocratic reaction. when this reaction came, the numerous protestant sects of the extremer types found themselves the objects of persecution, and nothing remained but to seek a new land where the heavy hand of repression could not reach them. thus america became the home of numberless religious sects and denominations of these several races. from england came congregationalists (the "pilgrims"), puritans, quakers, baptists; from scotland and ireland came presbyterians; from germany came quakers, dunkards, pietists, ridge hermits, salzburgers, and moravians. it is not to be inferred that religious persecution alone in the early colonial period caused emigration. in point of numbers commercial enterprise was probably equally influential. in holland all religious sects were welcomed with a liberality far in advance of any other nation, and at the same time the dutch people were the most advanced in the modern pursuits of trade and commerce. the dutch settlement of new amsterdam was therefore a business enterprise, and neither before nor after the conquest by the british was there any religious obstacle to the reception of other races and religions. in this respect new york differed widely from new england, where religious exclusiveness preserved the english race as a peculiar people until the middle of the nineteenth century. so diverse were the races in new york, and so liberal were the opportunities open to all, that governor horatio seymour was able to say that nine men prominent in its early history represented the same number of nationalities. schuyler was of dutch descent, herkimer of german, jay of french, livingston of scotch, clinton of irish, morris of welsh, hoffman of swedish, while hamilton was a west india englishman and baron steuben a prussian.[ ] another colony to which all races and religions were welcomed was pennsylvania. william penn established this colony both as a refuge for the persecuted quakers of england and as a real estate venture. he was the first american to advertise his dominions widely throughout europe, offering to sell one hundred acres of land at two english pounds and a low rental. his advertisements combined humanity and business, for they called attention to popular government and universal suffrage; equal rights to all regardless of race or religious belief; trial by jury; murder and treason the only capital crimes, and reformation, not retaliation, the object of punishment for other offences. thus pennsylvania, although settled a half century later than the southern and northern colonies, soon exceeded them in population. penn sent his agents to germany and persuaded large numbers of german quakers and pietists to cast their lot in his plantation, so that in twenty years the germans numbered nearly one-half the population. again, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when louis xiv overran the palatinate and thousands of germans fled to england, the english government encouraged their migration to america. in one year four thousand of them, the largest single emigration of the colonial period, embarked for new york, but their treatment was so illiberal that they moved to pennsylvania, and thenceforth the german migration sought the latter colony. these people settled at germantown, near philadelphia, and occupied the counties of bucks and montgomery, where they continue to this day with their peculiar language, the "pennsylvania dutch." not only william penn himself, but other landowners in pennsylvania and also the shipowners advertised the country in germany, and thousands of the poorer sort of germans were induced to indenture themselves to the settlers to whom they were auctioned off by the ship captains in payment for transportation. probably one-half of all the immigrants of the colonial period came under this system of postpaid transportation, just as at the present time nearly two-thirds come on prepaid tickets. it was in pennsylvania that the largest portion of the scotch-irish settled, and before the time of the revolution that colony had become the most populous and most diversified of all the colonies. it was the only colony, except maryland, that tolerated roman catholics, and with all phases of the christian religion and all branches of the teutonic and celtic races, pennsylvania set the original type to which all of america has conformed, that of race intermixture on the basis of religious and political equality. =the scotch-irish.=--it has long been recognized that among the most virile and aggressive people who came to america in colonial times, and who have contributed a peculiar share to the american character, are the scotch-irish. their descendants boast of their ancestry and cite long lists of notables as their coderivatives. yet until recent years it has been the misfortune of the scotch-irish to have escaped historical investigation; for american history has been written chiefly in new england, whose colonial puritans forbade them in their midst. in fact, from the earliest settlement, the scotch-irish have been pioneers and men of action. they have contributed to america few writers and artists, but many generals, politicians, and captains of industry. in literature they claim two eminent names, irving and poe; but in the army, navy, politics, and business they claim john paul jones, perry, andrew jackson, winfield scott, zachary taylor, ulysses s. grant, stonewall jackson, george b. mcclellan, alexander hamilton, john c. calhoun, james g. blaine, jefferson davis, thomas benton, hendricks, john g. carlisle, mark hanna, william mckinley, matthew s. quay, andrew carnegie, john d. rockefeller, horace greeley, henry watterson, and hundreds alike famous in the more strenuous movements of american life. a paradoxical fact regarding the scotch-irish is that they are very little scotch and much less irish. that is to say, they do not belong mainly to the so-called celtic race, but they are the most composite of all the people of the british isles. they are called scots because they lived in scotia, and they are called irish because they moved to ireland. geography and not ethnology has given them their name. they are a mixed race through whose veins run the celtic blood of the primitive scot and pict, the primitive briton, the primitive irish, but with a larger admixture of the later norwegian, dane, saxon, and angle. how this amalgamation came about we may learn from the geography of scotland. the highlands of scotland begin at the grampian hills and the lowlands extend south from this line to the british border, and include the cities of glasgow and edinburgh. the scotch-irish came from that southwestern part of the lowlands which bulges out toward ireland north of the solway firth. over these lowland counties, bounded by water and hills on three sides, successive waves of conquest and migration followed. first the primitive caledonian or pict was driven to the highlands, which to this day is the celtic portion of scotland. the briton from the south, pressed on by roman and then by teuton, occupied the country. then irish tribes crossed over and gained a permanent hold. then the norwegian sailors came around from the north, and to this day there are pure scandinavian types on the adjacent islands. then the saxons and angles, driven by the danes and normans, gained a foothold from the east, and lastly the danes themselves added their contingent. here in this lowland pocket of territory, no larger than a good-sized american county, was compounded for five hundred years this remarkable amalgam of races. a thousand years later, after they had become a united people and had shown their metal in the trying times of the reformation, they furnished the emigrants who displaced the irish in the north of ireland. james i, whom scotland gave to england, determined to transform catholic ireland into protestant england, and thereupon confiscated the lands of the native chiefs in ulster and bestowed them upon scottish and english lords on condition that they settle the territory with tenants from scotland and england. this was the "great settlement" of , and from that time to the present ulster has been the protestant stronghold of ireland. in the population of ulster was per cent catholic, per cent episcopalian, and per cent presbyterian, an ecclesiastical division corresponding almost exactly to the racial division of irish, english, and scotch. during the whole of the seventeenth century--the first century of this occupation--the catholics and episcopalians were in a much smaller proportion than these figures show for the present time, and the relative increase in irish and episcopalians during the eighteenth century was closely connected with the migration of the scotch to america. for one hundred years the scotch multiplied in ulster and had no dealings with the remnants of the irish, whom they crowded into the barren hills and whom they treated like savages. they retained their purity of race, and although when they came to america they called themselves irish and were known as irish wherever they settled, yet they had no irish blood except that which entered into their composition through the irish migration to scotia fifteen hundred years before. yet, though they despised the irish, they could not escape the unhappy fate of ireland. the first blow came in , nearly one hundred years after their settlement. english manufacturers complained of irish competition, and the irish parliament, a tool of the british crown, passed an act totally forbidding the exportation of irish woollens, and another act forbidding the exportation of irish wool to any country save england. their slowly growing linen industry was likewise discriminated against in later years. presbyterian ulster had been the industrial centre of ireland, and these acts nearly destroyed her industry. next queen anne's parliament adopted penal laws directed against roman catholics and presbyterians, and the test act, which compelled public officials to take the communion of the established church, deprived the entire scotch population of self-government. nevertheless they were compelled to pay tithes to support the established church to which they were opposed. lastly, the hundred-year leases of the tenants began to run out, and the landlords offered renewals to the highest bidders on short leases. here the poverty-stricken irish gained an unhappy revenge on the scotch who had displaced them of their ancestral lands, for their low standard of living enabled them to offer rack-rents far above what the scotch could afford. no longer did religion, race pride, or gratitude have a part in holding ulster to protestant supremacy. the greed of absentee landlords began to have full sway, and in the resulting struggle for livelihood, hopeless poverty was fitter to survive than ambitious thrift. the scotch tenants, their hearts bitter against england and aristocracy, now sought a country where they might have free land and self-government. in it is stated that of them left for america. after the famine of there were , who left annually. altogether, in the half century just preceding the american revolution, , [ ] persons, or one-third of the protestant population of ulster, are said to have emigrated, and the majority came to america. this was by far the largest contribution of any race to the population of america during the eighteenth century, and the injustice they suffered at the hands of england made them among the most determined and effective recruits to the armies that won our independence. before the scotch-irish moved to america the atlantic coast line had been well occupied. consequently, in order to obtain land for themselves, they were forced to go to the interior and to become frontiersmen. they found in massachusetts a state church to which they must conform in order to be admitted to citizenship. but what they had left ireland to escape they would not consent in a new country to do. the puritans were willing that they should occupy the frontier as a buffer against the indians, and so they took up lands in new hampshire, vermont, western massachusetts, and maine. only a few congregations, however, settled in new england--the bulk of the immigrants entered by way of philadelphia and baltimore and went to the interior of pennsylvania surrounding and south of harrisburg. they spread through the shenandoah valley and in the foothill regions of virginia and north and south carolina. gradually, they pushed farther west, across the mountains into western pennsylvania about pittsburg, and into ohio, kentucky, and tennessee. in all of these regions they fought the indians, protected the older inhabitants from inroads, and developed those pioneer qualities which for one hundred years have characterized the "winning of the west." [illustration: anglo-saxon mountaineers, berea college, kentucky] the scotch-irish occupied a peculiar place in the new world. more than any other race they served as the amalgam to produce, out of divergent races, a new race, the american. the puritans of new england, the quakers of pennsylvania, the cavaliers of virginia, were as radically different as peoples of different races, and they were separated from each other in their own exclusive communities. the germans were localized in pennsylvania and maryland, the dutch in new york, but the scotch-irish "alone of the various races in america were present in sufficient numbers in all of the colonies to make their influence count; and they alone of all the races had one uniform religion; had experienced together the persecutions by state and church which had deprived them at home of their civil and religious liberties; and were the common heirs to those principles of freedom and democracy which had been developed in scotland as nowhere else. at the time of the american revolution there were ... in all above five hundred settlements scattered over practically all the american colonies."[ ] trained as they were in the representative democracy of the scottish kirk, thrown on their own resources in the wilderness, mingling with the pioneers of many other races, they took the lead in developing that western type which in politics and industry became ultimately the american type; yet they retained their original character, and the american to-day is more at home in glasgow than in london. chapter iii the negro although the negro races of africa extend across the continent and from the sudan to cape colony, yet the races which yielded the largest supply of slaves for america were confined to a narrow stretch of the atlantic coast near the equator. for nearly two thousand miles from cape verde the coast of africa runs southeast and easterly, and then for another thousand miles it runs to the south, forming the gulf of guinea, and from a belt of land along this coast practically all the negro immigrants to america have come. here several large rivers, the senegal, the gambia, the niger, and the congo--furnished harbors for slave ships and routes for slave traders from the interior. two circumstances, the climate and the luxuriant vegetation, render this region hostile to continuous exertion. the torrid heat and the excessive humidity weaken the will and exterminate those who are too strenuous; but this same heat and humidity, with the fertile soil, produce unparalleled crops of bananas, yams, and grains. thus nature conspires to produce a race indolent, improvident, and contented. seventy-five per cent of the deaths are said to be executions for supposed witchcraft, which has killed more men and women than the slave trade. formerly cannibalism prevailed, but it has now been largely stamped out by european governments. the native governments are tribal, and the chiefs sustain themselves by their physical prowess and the help of priests and medicine men. property is mainly in women and slaves, and inheritance is through the female, except among the nobility of dahomey, where primogeniture rules. written laws and records are unknown. the people are unstable, indifferent to suffering, and "easily aroused to ferocity by the sight of blood or under great fear." they exhibit aversion to silence and solitude, love of rhythm, excitability, and lack of reserve. all travellers speak of their impulsiveness, strong sexual passion, and lack of will power.[ ] such, in brief, were the land and the people that furnished one-sixth of our total population and two-fifths of our southern population. in shifting such a people from the torrid climate of equatorial africa to the temperate regions of america, and from an environment of savagery to one of civilization, changes more momentous than those of any other migration have occurred. first, it was only the strongest physical specimens who survived the horrible tests of the slave catcher and the slave ship. slavery, too, as a system, could use to best advantage those who were docile and hardy, and not those who were independent and feeble. just as in the many thousand years of man's domestication of animals, the breechy cow and the balky horse have been almost eliminated by artificial selection, so slavery tended to transform the savage by eliminating those who were self-willed, ambitious, and possessed of individual initiative. other races of immigrants, by contact with our institutions, have been civilized--the negro has been only domesticated. democratic civilization offers an outlet for those who are morally and intellectually vigorous enough to break away from the stolid mass of their fellows; domestication dreads and suppresses them as dangerous rebels. the very qualities of intelligence and manliness which are essential for citizenship in a democracy were systematically expunged from the negro race through two hundred years of slavery. and then, by the cataclysm of a war in which it took no part, this race, after many thousand years of savagery and two centuries of slavery, was suddenly let loose into the liberty of citizenship and the electoral suffrage. the world never before had seen such a triumph of dogmatism and partizanship. it was dogmatism, because a theory of abstract equality and inalienable rights of man took the place of education and the slow evolution of moral character. it was partisanship, because a political party, taking advantage of its triumph in civil war, sought to perpetuate itself through the votes of its helpless beneficiaries. no wonder that this fateful alliance of doctrinaires and partizans brought fateful results, and that, after a generation of anarchy and race hatred, the more fundamental task of education has only just begun. true, there was a secondary object in view in granting the freedmen suffrage. the thirteenth amendment, adopted in , legalized and extended the proclamation of emancipation, which had been a war measure. but this was followed by servile and penal laws in all the southern states that looked like peonage in place of slavery.[ ] congress then submitted the fourteenth amendment, which was adopted in , creating a new grade of citizenship--citizenship of the nation--and prohibiting any state from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law" and from denying to any person "the equal protection of the laws." but this was not enough. the next step was the fifteenth amendment adopted in , prohibiting any state from denying the suffrage to citizens of the united states "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." thus equality before the law was to be protected by equality in making the law. this object was a worthy one, and it added the appearance of logical necessity to the theories of doctrinaires and the schemes of partisans. but it failed because based on a wrong theory of the ballot. suffrage means self-government. self-government means intelligence, self-control, and capacity for coöperation. if these are lacking, the ballot only makes way for the "boss," the corruptionist, or the oligarchy. the suffrage must be earned, not merely conferred, if it is to be an instrument of self-protection. but it is the peculiar fate of race problems that they carry contestants to bitter extremes and afford no field for constructive compromise. could the nation have adopted lincoln's project of a hundred years, or even thirty years, of gradual emancipation, it might have avoided both the evils of war and the fallacies of self-government. but the spirit of race aggrandisement that precipitated the one rendered the other inevitable. with the negro suddenly made free by conquest, each fatal step in reconstruction was forced by the one that preceded. the north, the south, and the negro were placed in an impossible situation, and a nation which dreaded negro suffrage in [ ] adopted it in . for eight years the government of the southern states was in the hands of the negroes. the result of turning the states over to ignorant and untried voters was an enormous increase of debt without corresponding public improvements or public enterprises. even the negro governments themselves began to repudiate these debts and they were almost wholly repudiated by the whites after returning to power. it is not necessary to dwell upon the methods by which the white voters regained and kept control of the states. admittedly it was through intimidation, murder, ballot-box "stuffing," and false counting. the negro vote has almost disappeared, and in more recent years that which was accomplished through violence is perpetuated through law. mississippi, louisiana, south carolina, north carolina, alabama, and virginia have adopted so-called "educational" tests with such adroit exceptions that white illiterates may vote, but negroes, whether literate or illiterate, may be excluded from voting. as stated by a prominent white virginian, "the negro can vote if he has $ , or if he is a veteran of the federal or confederate armies, or if he is a profound constitutional lawyer." the fifteenth amendment, by decisions of the united states supreme court, has been rendered inoperative, and the fourteenth amendment, without helping the negro, for whom it was designed,[ ] has raised up government by private corporations which never had been thought of as needing an amendment. with these decisions it may be taken for granted that the negro will not again in the near future enjoy the privilege of a free ballot. this is a situation in which the north is as deeply interested as the south. the south, during the period of slavery, through the privilege of counting three-fifths of the slaves, enjoyed a predominance in congress and in presidential elections beyond its proportion of white voters. the south now enjoys a greater privilege because it counts all the negroes. the fourteenth amendment expressly provides for a situation like this. it says:-- "when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for president and vice-president of the united states, representatives in congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the united states, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state." whether it will be possible under our form of government to carry out this provision of the fourteenth amendment may be doubted, but that it is fast becoming a question of live interest is certain. the educational test is a rational test, but it is rational only when the state makes an honest and diligent effort to equip every man to pass the test. the former slave states spend $ . per child for educating the negroes, and $ . per child for educating the whites.[ ] the great lesson already learned is that we must "begin over again" the preparation of the negro for citizenship. this time the work will begin at the bottom by educating the negro for the ballot, instead of beginning at the top by giving him the ballot before he knows what it should do for him. what shall be the nature of this education? =education and self-help.=--we have argued that democracy must be based upon intelligence, manliness, and coöperation. how can these qualities be produced in a race just emerged from slavery? intelligence is more than books and letters--it is knowledge of the forces of nature and ingenuity enough to use them for human service. the negro is generally acknowledged to be lacking in "the mechanical idea." in africa he hardly knows the simplest mechanical principles. in america the brightest of the negroes were trained during slavery by their masters in the handicrafts, such as carpentry, shoemaking, spinning, weaving, blacksmithing, tailoring, and so on. a plantation became a self-supporting unit under the oversight and discipline of the whites. but the work of the negro artisans was careless and inefficient. the negro blacksmith fastened shoes to the plantation mule, but the horses were taken to the white blacksmith in town. since emancipation the young generation has not learned the mechanical trades to the same extent as the slave generations. moreover, as machinery supplants tools and factories supplant handicrafts, the negro is left still farther behind. "white men," says a negro speaker,[ ] "are bringing science and art into menial occupations and lifting them beyond our reach. in my boyhood the walls and ceilings were whitewashed each spring by colored men; now this is done by a white man managing a steam carpet-cleaning works. then the laundry work was done by negroes; now they are with difficulty able to manage the new labor-saving machinery." even in the non-mechanical occupations the negro is losing where he once had a monopoly. in chicago "there is now scarcely a negro barber in the business district. nearly all the janitor work in the large buildings has been taken away from them by the swedes. white men and women as waiters have supplanted colored men in nearly all the first-class hotels and restaurants. practically all of the shoe polishing is now done by greeks."[ ] individual negroes have made great progress, but what we need to know is whether the masses of the negroes have advanced. the investigators of atlanta university, in summarizing the reports of three hundred and forty-four employers of negroes, conclude: "there are a large number of negro mechanics all over the land, but especially in the south. some of these are progressive, efficient workmen. more are careless, slovenly, and ill-trained. there are signs of lethargy among these artisans, and work is slipping from them in some places; in others they are awakening and seizing the opportunities of the new industrial south."[ ] the prejudice of white workmen has undoubtedly played a part in excluding the negro from mechanical trades, but the testimony of large employers, who have no race prejudice where profits can be made, also shows that low-priced negro labor often costs more than high-priced white labor. the iron and steel mills of alabama have no advantage in labor cost over mills of pennsylvania and ohio. the foundation of intelligence for the modern workingman is his understanding of mechanics. not until he learns through manual and technical training to handle the forces of nature can the workingman rise to positions of responsibility and independence. this is as important in agricultural labor, to which the negro is largely restricted, as in manufactures. intelligence in mechanics leads to intelligence in economics and politics, and the higher wages of mechanical intelligence furnish the resources by which the workman can demand and secure his political and economic rights. the second requisite of democracy is independence and manliness. these are moral qualities based on will power and steadfastness in pursuit of a worthy object. but these qualities are not produced merely by exhortation and religious revivals. they have a more prosaic and secular foundation. history shows that no class or nation has risen to independence without first accumulating property. however much we disparage the qualities of greed and selfishness which the rush for wealth has made obnoxious, we must acknowledge that the solid basis of the virtues is thrift. the improvidence of the negro is notorious. his neglect of his horse, his mule, his machinery, his eagerness to spend his earnings on finery, his reckless purchase of watermelons, chickens, and garden stuff, when he might easily grow them on his own patch of ground,--these and many other incidents of improvidence explain the constant dependence of the negro upon his employer and his creditor. there are, of course, notable exceptions where negroes have accumulated property through diligent attention and careful oversight.[ ] these are all the more notable when it is remembered that the education of the negro has directed his energies to the honors of the learned professions rather than to the commonplace virtues of ownership, and that one great practical experiment in thrift--the freedman's bank--went down through dishonesty and incapacity. with the more recent development of the remarkable institutions of hampton and tuskegee and their emphasis on manual training and property accumulation, it is to be expected that these basic qualities of intelligence and independence will receive practical and direct encouragement. coöperation is the third and capital equipment for attaining the rights of citizenship. there are two forms of coöperation--a lower and a higher. the lower is that of the chief or the boss who marshals his ignorant followers through fear or spoils. the higher is that of self-government where those who join together do so through their own intelligence and mutual confidence. in the lower form there are personal jealousies and factional contests which prevent united action under elected leaders. negro bosses and foremen are more despotic than white bosses. the colored farmers' alliance depended upon a white man for leadership. the white "carpet-baggers" organized the negro vote in the reconstruction period. the negro was in this low stage of coöperation because he was jealous or distrustful of his fellow-negro and could rally together only under the banner of a leader whom he could not depose. with the growth of intelligence and moral character there comes a deepening sense of the need of organization as well as leaders of their own race whom they can trust. the most hopeful indication of progress for the negroes is the large number of voluntary religious, beneficial, and insurance societies whose membership is limited to those of their own color.[ ] liberty has always come through organization. the free cities of europe were simply the guilds of peasants and merchants who organized to protect themselves against the feudal lords and bishops. latterly they gained a voice in parliaments as the "third estate" and established our modern representative democracy. the modern trade unions have become a power far in excess of their numbers through the capacity of the workman to organize. with the modest beginnings of self-organization among negroes the way is opening for their more effective participation in the higher opportunities of our civilization. [illustration: counties having a larger proportion of negroes in than in ] the negro trade unionist has not as yet shown the organizing capacity of other races. only among the mine workers, the longshoremen, and bricklayers are they to be found in considerable numbers, although the carpenters have negro organizers. but in most of these cases the negro is being organized by the white man not so much for his own protection as for the protection of the white workman. if the negro is brought to the position of refusing to work for lower wages than the white man he has taken the most difficult step in organization; for the labor union requires, more than any other economic or business association in modern life, reliance upon the steadfastness of one's fellows. unfortunately, when the negro demands the same wages as white men, his industrial inferiority leads the employer to take white men in his place, and here again we see how fundamental is manual and technical intelligence as a basis for other progress.[ ] it must not be inferred because we have emphasized these qualities of intelligence--manliness and coöperation as preparatory to political rights--that the negro race should be deprived of the suffrage until such time as its members acquire these qualities. many individuals have already acquired them. to exclude such individuals from the suffrage is to shut the door of hope to all. an honest educational test honestly enforced on both whites and blacks is the simplest rough-and-ready method for measuring the progress of individuals in these qualities of citizenship. there is no problem before the american people more vital to democratic institutions than that of keeping the suffrage open to the negro and at the same time preparing the negro to profit by the suffrage. neither should the negro be excluded from the higher education. leadership is just as necessary in a democracy as in a tribe. self-government is not suppression of leaders but coöperation with them. the true leader is one who knows his followers because he has suffered with them, but who can point the way out and inspire them with confidence. he feels what they feel, but can state what they cannot express. he is their spokesman, defender, and organizer. not a social class nor a struggling race can reach equality with other classes and races until its leaders can meet theirs on equal terms. it cannot depend on others, but must raise up leaders from its own ranks. this is the problem of higher education--not that scholastic education that ends in itself, but that broad education that equips for higher usefulness. if those individuals who are competent to become lawyers, physicians, teachers, preachers, organizers, guides, innovators, experimenters, are prevented from getting the right education, then there is little hope for progress among the race as a whole, in the intelligence, manliness, and coöperation needed for self-government. =growth of negro population.=--after the census of it was confidently asserted that the negro population was increasing more rapidly than the white population. but these assertions, since the census of , have disappeared. it then became apparent that the supposed increase from to was based on a defective count in , the first census after emancipation. in reality the negro element, including mulattoes, during the one hundred and ten years of census taking, has steadily declined in proportion to the white element. although negroes in absolute numbers have increased from , in to , , in , and , , in , yet in they were one-fifth of the total population; in they were one-seventh and in only one-ninth. it is naturally suggested that this relative decrease in negro population has been owing to the large immigration of whites, but the inference is unwarranted. in the southern states the foreign element has increased less rapidly than the native white element, yet it is in the southern states that the negro is most clearly falling behind. in the twenty years from to the whites in eighteen southern states without the aid of foreign immigration increased per cent and the negroes only per cent.[ ] in only six southern states, west virginia, florida, alabama, mississippi, oklahoma, and arkansas, have the negroes, during the past ten years, increased more rapidly than the whites, and in only three of these states, alabama, mississippi, and arkansas, was the relative increase significant. in but two states, south carolina and mississippi, does the negro element predominate, and in another state, louisiana, a majority were negroes in , but a majority were whites in . "at the beginning of the nineteenth century the southern negroes were increasing much faster than the southern whites. at the end of it they were increasing only about three-fifths as fast."[ ] this redistribution of negroes is an interesting and significant fact regarding the race and has a bearing on its future. two movements are taking place, first to the fertile bottom lands of the southern states, second to the cities, both north and south. mr. carl kelsey has shown this movement to the lowlands in an interesting way.[ ] he has prepared a geological map of alabama, which with mississippi has received the largest accession of negroes, and has shown the density of negro population according to the character of the soil. in this map it appears that the prairie and valley regions contain a proportion of per cent to per cent negroes, while the sand hill and pine levels contain only per cent to per cent, and the piedmont or foothill region less than per cent. a similar segregation is found in other southern states, especially the alluvial districts of mississippi and arkansas. in these fertile sections toward which the negroes gravitate, the crops are enormous, and mr. kelsey points out a curious misconception in the census summary, wherein the inference is drawn that negroes are better farmers than whites because they raise larger crops. "no wonder the negroes' crops are larger," when the whites farm the hill country and the negroes till the delta, which "will raise twice as much cotton per acre as the hills." furthermore the negro, whether tenant or owner, is under the close supervision of a white landlord or creditor, who in self-protection keeps control of him, whereas the white farmer is left to succeed or fail without expert guidance. the migration of negroes to the cities is extremely significant. in ten southern states the proportion of the colored population was almost exactly the same in as it had been in ,--namely, per cent,--yet in sixteen cities of those states, as shown by mr. hoffman,[ ] the colored proportion increased from per cent in to per cent in . this relative increase, however, did not continue after , for, according to the census of , the proportion of negroes in those cities was still per cent. during the past decade the negroes have increased relatively faster in northern cities. the white population of chicago increased threefold from to , and the colored population fivefold. the white population of philadelphia during the same period increased per cent and the colored population per cent. in the thirty-eight largest cities of the country the negro population in ten years increased per cent and the white population, including foreign immigration, increased per cent. in thirty northern and border cities during the past census decade the negroes gained , , and in twenty southern cities they gained , .[ ] the southern whites also are moving from the south, and in larger proportions than the negroes, though the movement of both is small. in , per cent of the whites of southern birth lived in the north and west and only . per cent of the negroes of southern birth. but the negroes who go north go to the cities, and the whites to the country. three-fifths ( per cent) of these northbound negroes moved to the larger cities and only one-fourth ( per cent) of the northbound whites.[ ] the accompanying map, derived from the census of ,[ ] shows clearly both of these movements of negro population. the shaded areas indicate the counties where negroes formed a larger proportion of the population in than they did twenty years earlier, in . here can be seen the movement to the low and fertile lands of the south and the cities of the north and south. there are but two areas in california and colorado, not included on the map, where the population of negroes has increased, and one of these contains the city of los angeles. were the negroes in the cities to scatter through all the sections, the predominating numbers of the white element might have an elevating influence, but, instead, the negroes congregate in the poorer wards, where both poverty and vice prevail. hoffman has shown that two-thirds of the negroes in chicago live in three wards, which contain all the houses of ill-fame in that part of the city. the same is true of philadelphia, boston, and cincinnati.[ ] in these sections negro prostitution has become an established institution, catering to the italian and other lower grades of immigrants, and supporting in idleness many negro men as solicitors. we have seen that the negro population has not kept pace with the native white population. the reason is found in the smaller excess of births over deaths. statistics of births are almost entirely lacking in the united states. statistics of deaths are complete for only portions of northern states and a few southern cities, containing, in , in all, , , whites and , , negroes. of this number, , , whites and , , negroes lived in cities, so that the showing which the census is able to give is mainly for cities north and south and for rural sections only in the north.[ ] it appears that for every colored persons living in these cities the deaths in were . , while for every white persons the deaths were only . . that is to say, the colored death-rate was per cent greater than the white death-rate. in the rural districts there was much less difference. the colored death-rate was . and the white death-rate . , a colored excess of per cent. =morals and environment.=--in explaining the excessive colored mortality there are two classes of opinions. one explains it by social conditions, the other by race traits. the one points to environment, the other to moral character. the one is socialistic, the other individualistic. these different views exist among colored people themselves, and one of the encouraging signs is the scientific and candid interest in the subject taken by them under the leadership of atlanta university. a colored physician who takes the first view states his case forcibly:[ ]-- "is it any wonder that we die faster than our white brother when he gets the first and best attention, while we are neglected on all sides? they have the best wards and treatment at the hospital, while we must take it second hand or not at all; they have all the homes for the poor and friendless, we have none; they have a home for fallen women, we have none; they have the public libraries where they can get and read books on hygiene and other subjects pertaining to health, we have no such privileges; they have the gymnasiums where they can go and develop themselves physically, we have not; they have all the parks where they and their children can go in the hot summer days and breathe the pure, cool air, but for fear we might catch a breath of that air and live, they put up large signs, which read thus, 'for white people only'; they live in the best homes, while we live in humble ones; they live in the cleanest and healthiest parts of the city, while we live in the sickliest and filthiest parts of the city; the streets on which they live are cleaned once and twice a day, the streets on which we live are not cleaned once a month, and some not at all; besides, they have plenty of money with which they can get any physician they wish, any medicine they need, and travel for their health when necessary; all of these blessings we are deprived of. now, my friends, in the face of all these disadvantages, do you not think we are doing well to stay here as long as we do?" another colored writer, less eloquent, but not less accurate, in summarizing the statistics collected under the guidance of atlanta university concludes:[ ]-- "overcrowding in tenements and houses occupied by colored people does not exist to any great extent, and is less than was supposed. "in comparison with white women, an excess of colored women support their families, or contribute to the family support, by occupation which takes them much of their time from home, to the neglect of their children. "environment and the sanitary condition of houses are not chiefly responsible for the excessive mortality among colored people. "ignorance and disregard of the laws of health are responsible for a large proportion of this excessive mortality." it is pointed out by these colored students and by many others that the excessive mortality of colored people is owing to pulmonary consumption, scrofula, and syphilis, all of which are constitutional; and to infant mortality due also to constitutional and congenital disease. the census of reports for a portion of the northern states that for every white children under five years of age there were . deaths in one year, and for every colored children under five years there were . deaths, an excess of negro infant mortality of per cent.[ ] the census also reports that negro deaths in cities owing to consumption are proportionately . times as many as white deaths,[ ] deaths owing to pneumonia are per cent greater,[ ] while deaths owing to contagious causes, such as measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria,[ ] are but slightly greater or actually less than the white deaths in proportion to population. in the city of charleston, where mortality statistics of negroes were compiled before the war, it has been shown that from to the colored death-rate from consumption was a trifle less than the white, but since the white mortality from that cause has decreased per cent, while the negro mortality has increased per cent.[ ] the death-rates from consumption in charleston in were . for , whites and . for , negroes, an excess of per cent. the lowest negro death-rate reported from consumption in cities is . for memphis, but in that city the white death-rate from the same cause is . , a negro excess of per cent.[ ] at a conference held at atlanta university, professor harris, of fisk university, concluded:[ ]-- "i have now covered the ground to which our excessive death-rate is mainly due; namely, pulmonary diseases, especially consumption and pneumonia, scrofula, venereal diseases, and infant mortality. if we eliminate these diseases, our excessive death-rate will be a thing of the past.... while i do not depreciate sanitary regulations and a knowledge of hygienic laws, i am convinced that a _sine qua non_ of a change for the better in the negro's physical condition is a higher social morality.... from the health reports of all our large southern cities we learn that a considerable amount of our infant mortality is due to inanition, infantile debility, and infantile marasmus. now what is the case in regard to these diseases? the fact is that they are not diseases at all, but merely the names of symptoms due to enfeebled constitutions and congenital diseases, inherited from parents suffering from the effects of sexual immorality and debauchery.... it is true that much of the moral laxity which exists among us to-day arose out of slavery.... but to explain it is not to excuse it. it is no longer our misfortune as it was before the war; it is our sin, the wages of which is our excessive number of deaths.... the presence of tubercular and scrofulous diseases, consumption, syphilis, and leprosy, has caused the weaker nations of the earth to succumb before the rising tide of christian civilization.... the history of nations teaches us that neither war, nor famine, nor pestilence, exterminates them so completely as do sexual vices." chapter iv nineteenth century additions it is only since the year that the government of the united states has kept a record of alien passengers arriving in this country. for several years following the immigration was so slight as to be almost negligible. it was not until that there were more than , arrivals. so accustomed have we become to large figures of immigration that nothing less than , seems worth noting, and this figure was not reached until . since then there have been only four years of less than , , and two of these were years of the civil war. a striking fact which first attracts the attention of one who examines the statistics since is the close sympathy between immigration and the industrial prosperity and depression of this country. indeed, so close is the connection that many who comment on the matter have held that immigration during the past century has been strictly an industrial or economic phenomenon, depending on the opportunities in this country, and that the religious and political causes which stimulated earlier immigration no longer hold good. a curved line on the accompanying chart has been drawn so as to show the relative numbers of immigrants since , and another line shows the movement of imports of merchandise per capita of the population. the latter, except for tariff changes, is a fair index of the cycles of prosperity and depression. by following these two lines on the chart we notice the coincidence is close, except for a few years prior to the civil war. both movements reached high points in , and fell to very low points in ; then rose in and fell in ; then reached another high point in and a low point in ; and finally, the present period of prosperity and heavy imports brings the largest immigration in the history of the country. in following the history of immigration by races we shall see to what extent the alleged coincidence between prosperity and immigration may be counted as a social law. probably in the middle of the century it was not so much the opportunities for employment in this country as it was conditions in europe that drove people to our shores. when we come to inquire as to the nationalities which constituted immigration at that period, we shall find what these causes were. in occurred the unparalleled potato rot in ireland, when the year's crop of what had become the sole food staple of the peasantry of that island was entirely lost. the peasants had been reduced to subsistence on the cheapest of all staples through the operations of a system of landlordism scarcely ever paralleled on a large scale as a means of exploiting tenants. it was found that land used for potatoes would support three times the number of people as the same land sown to wheat, and the small tenants or the cotter peasants paid the landlord a higher rent than could be obtained from larger cultivators. reduced to a diet of potatoes by an economic system imposed by an alien race, the irish people are one of the many examples which we find throughout our studies of a subject people driven to emigration by the economic injustices of a dominant race. we shall find the same at a later time in austria-hungary, whence the conquered slav peoples are fleeing from the discrimination and impositions of the ruling magyar. we shall find it in russia, whence the jew, the finn, and the german are escaping from the oppression of the slav; and we shall find it in turkey, whence the armenian and the syrian flee from the exactions of the turk. just so was it in ireland in the latter half of the decade, to , and the contention of the apologist for england that the famine which drove the irish across the seas was an act of god, is but a weak effort to charge to a higher power the sufferings of a heartless system devised to convert the utmost life and energy of a subject race into gold for their exploiters. much more nearly true of the part played by the divine hand in this catastrophe is the report of the society of friends in ireland, saying that the mysterious dispensation with which their country had been visited was "a means permitted by an all-wise providence to exhibit more strikingly the unsound state of its social condition." [illustration: movement of immigrants, imports of merchandise per capita, and immigrants per , population-- to .] thus we have an explanation of the incentives under which, even in a period of industrial depression in this country, the unfortunate irish flocked hither. it is true that the population of ireland had increased during the century preceding the famine at a rate more rapid than that of any other country of europe. it was , , in , and over , , in the year of the famine. at the present time it is only , , . the potato, above all other crops, enables the cultivator to live from hand to mouth, and coupled with a landlord system which takes away all above mere subsistence, this "de-moralizing esculent" aided the apparent overpopulation. certainly the dependence of an entire people on a single crop was a most precarious condition. during the five years, to , more than a million and a quarter of irish emigrants left the ports of the united kingdom, and during the ten years, to , more than a million and a quarter came to the united states. so great a number could not have found means of transportation had it not been for the enormous contributions of government and private societies for assistance. here began that exportation of paupers on a large scale against which our country has protested and finally legislated. even this enormous migration was not greatly in excess of the number that actually perished from starvation or from the diseases incident thereto. the irish migration since that time has never reached so high a point, although it made a second great advance in , succeeding another famine, and it has now fallen far below that of eastern races of europe. altogether the total irish immigration of over four million since places that race second of the contributors to our foreign-born population, and, compared with its own numbers, it leads the world, for in sixty years it has sent to us half as many people as it contained at the time of its greatest population. scarcely another country has sent more than one-fifth. looking over a period of nearly three centuries, it is probably true that the germans have crossed the ocean in larger numbers than any other race. we have already noted the large migration during the eighteenth century, and the official records show that since there have entered our ports more than , , germans, while ireland was sending , , and great britain , , . the german migration of the nineteenth century was quite distinct in character from that of the preceding century. the colonial migration was largely induced on religious grounds, but that of the past century was political and economic, with at first a notable prominence of materialism respecting religion. from the time of the napoleonic wars to the revolution of , the governments of germany were despotic in character, supporting an established church, while at the same time the marvellous growth of the universities produced a class of educated liberals. in the revolution of these took a leading part, and although constitutional governments were then established, yet those who had been prominent in the popular uprisings found their position intolerable under the reactionary governments that followed. the political exiles sought america, bringing their liberalism in politics and religion, and forming with their descendants in american cities an intellectual aristocracy. they sprang from the middle classes of germany, and latterly, when the wars with austria and france had provoked the spirit of militarism, thousands of peasants looked to emigration for escape from military service. the severe industrial depression of - added a powerful contributing cause. thus there were two periods when german migration culminated; first in , on political grounds, second in , on military and economic grounds. since the latter date a significant decline has ensued, and the present migration of , from germany is mainly the remnants of families seeking here their relatives. a larger number of german immigrants, , , comes from austria-hungary and russia, those from the latter country being driven from the baltic provinces and the volga settlements by the "russianizing" policy of the slav. =the changing character of european immigration.=--besides the germans and the irish, the races which contributed the largest numbers of immigrants during the middle years of the nineteenth century were the english and scandinavian. after the decline during the depression of there was an increase of all those races in , a year when nearly , immigrants arrived. at about that time began a remarkable change in the character of immigration destined to produce profound consequences. this change was the rapid shifting of the sources of immigration from western to eastern and southern europe. a line drawn across the continent of europe from northeast to southwest, separating the scandinavian peninsula, the british isles, germany, and france from russia, austria-hungary, italy, and turkey, separates countries not only of distinct races but also of distinct civilizations. it separates protestant europe from catholic europe; it separates countries of representative institutions and popular government from absolute monarchies; it separates lands where education is universal from lands where illiteracy predominates; it separates manufacturing countries, progressive agriculture, and skilled labor from primitive hand industries, backward agriculture, and unskilled labor; it separates an educated, thrifty peasantry from a peasantry scarcely a single generation removed from serfdom; it separates teutonic races from latin, slav, semitic, and mongolian races. when the sources of american immigration are shifted from the western countries so nearly allied to our own, to eastern countries so remote in the main attributes of western civilization, the change is one that should challenge the attention of every citizen. such a change has occurred, and it needs only a comparison of the statistics of immigration for the year with those of and to see its extent. while the total number of immigrants from europe and asiatic turkey was approximately equal in and , as shown in the accompanying table, yet in western europe furnished per cent of the immigrants and in only per cent, while the share of southeastern europe and asiatic turkey increased from per cent in to per cent in . during twenty years the immigration of the western races most nearly related to those which have fashioned american institutions declined more than per cent, while the immigrants of eastern and southern races, untrained in self-government, increased nearly sixfold. for the year the proportions remain the same, although in the four years the total immigration had increased two-thirds. immigration from europe and asiatic turkey by countries, , , ------------- ------------- ------------- number per number per number per cent cent cent total europe and asiatic turkey , , , , ---------------------------------------------------------------------- great britain and ireland , . , . , . belgium , . , . , . denmark , . , . , . france , . , . , . germany , . , . , . netherlands , . , . , . norway , . , . , . sweden , . , . , . switzerland , . , . , . total western europe , . , . , . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- italy , . , . , . portugal [ ] , . , . spain [ ] . , . austria-hungary , . , . , . russia , . , . , . greece [ ] [ ] , . , . roumania [ ] [ ] , . , . servia, bulgaria, and montenegro [ ] [ ] , . turkey in europe [ ] [ ] [ ] , . turkey in asia [ ] , . , . total southern and eastern europe and asiatic turkey , . , . , . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- =italians.=--it was at this period that italian immigration first became noticeable. prior to this stream had been but the merest trickle, which now has become the greatest of all the foreign tributaries to our population. in the italians for the first time reached in number, but they fell to in and so continued in moderate proportions, but suddenly in jumped to , , and in to , . falling off again with the industrial depression to , in , they reached , in , and then with another depression to , in they have now gone forward by leaps to the high mark of , .[ ] the italians seem destined to rival the germans and irish as the leading contributors to our social amalgam. of course only a small part are as yet women and children, but this is because the immigration is in its early and pioneer stages. the women and children follow rapidly when the men have saved enough money to send for them. one-fourth of the emigration is on tickets and money furnished by friends and relatives in the united states.[ ] the immigrants from italy differ from those from austria, russia, hungary, and ireland, in that they are not driven forth by the oppressions of a dominant race, but as a result of the economic and political conditions of a united people. this does not indeed exclude oppression as a cause of expatriation, but it transfers the oppression from that of one race to that of one class upon another. by far the larger portion of italian immigration comes from the southern provinces and from sicily, where the power of the landlords is greatest. in these provinces of large estates held by the nobility, the rents have been forced to the highest notch, an orange garden paying as high as $ per year per acre, and the leases are short, so that the tenant has little to encourage improvement.[ ] in many cases the land is rented by large capitalist farmers, who raise therefrom cattle, wheat, and olives, and are prosperous men. but their prosperity is extracted from the miserable wages of their laborers. the agricultural laborer gets from cents to cents a day through the year and cents to cents through the summer. unskilled laborers get cents to cents a day, and such skilled trades as masons and carpenters get only cents to $ . a day. this wide range of wages corresponds generally with the south and north, the lowest rates being in the south and the highest toward the north. in france and england wages are two and one-half times higher than in italy, while in germany they are about per cent to per cent higher. nor must it be supposed that the cost of living is low to correspond with the low wages. this is largely owing to the exaggerated system of indirect taxes. although wheat is a staple crop, yet the peasants eat corn in preference, because, for a given expenditure, it gives a stronger sense of repletion. of wheat and corn meal together the italian peasant eats in a year only three-fourths as much as the inmate of an english poorhouse. of meat the peasant in apulia gets no more than ten pounds a year, while the english workhouse pauper gets fifty-seven pounds. the local taxes on flour, bread, and macaroni are as high as or per cent of the value, and the state tax on imported wheat is nearly per cent of its value. the consumption of sugar has decreased one-fourth since heavy duties were imposed to protect native beet sugar, and it averages barely over five pounds per head. the consumption in the united states is sixty-five pounds per head. the iniquitous salt tax raises the price of salt from eleven pounds for two cents to one pound for two cents, and the peasants sometimes cook their corn meal in sea water, although this is smuggling. what the peasants lack in grain and meat they strive to supply by vegetables, and the proportion of vegetables, peas, and beans consumed is greater than that for any other country of europe. the peasants drink no beer, spirits, tea, nor coffee, but the average annual consumption of wine is twenty gallons a head. food alone costs the peasants per cent of their wages, whereas it costs the german peasant per cent and the american workman per cent. the poor and working classes pay over one-half the taxes, amounting, even without wine, to or per cent of their wages. there are in the south and sardinia some , sales of land a year on distress for non-payment of taxes, and the expropriated owners become tenants. several villages in southern italy have been almost wholly abandoned and one village has recently announced its intention of removing itself entire to one of the south american republics.[ ] the rich escape taxation, which is laid largely on consumption. besides the state tax on imports, each city and town has its _octroi_, or import tax, on everything brought into the city. these "protective duties rob the poor to fill the pockets of the rich landlord and manufacturer." since wealth has increased per cent and taxes per cent. taxes are nearly one-fifth of the nation's income, against one-twelfth in germany, one-sixteenth in england, and one-fifteenth in the united states. wages rose from to , but since they have fallen. the army and navy are the greatest drain on the resources of the people. they cost one-fourth more of the national income than do the armies and navies of france and germany. eighty million dollars a year for military expenditures in italy is over per cent of the income of the people, whereas $ , , for the same purpose in the united states is less than per cent of our incomes. in the triple alliance of germany, austria, and italy, the latter country crushes its peasants in order to make a showing by the side of its wealthier partners. the army takes every able-bodied peasant from industry into barracks and drills for two years of his best vigor. but the long line of exposed coast and the general military situation in europe make it unlikely that italy for many years can shake off this incubus. in addition to all these economic and political causes of pressure, there is another cause of a more profound nature, the rapid growth of population. strange as it may seem, the very poverty of italy increases the tendency to a high birth-rate, and the rate is highest in the very districts where illiteracy and poverty are greatest. only the great number of deaths produced by poverty and lack of sanitation prevents the increase of population from exceeding that of the more rapidly growing countries of germany, great britain, and scandinavia. it is not among those classes and nations, like the middle classes and the thrifty people of france, that the largest number of children are born, but it is among those ignorant and low-standard peoples to whom the future offers no better prospect for their children than for themselves. early marriages and large families are both a result and a cause of poverty. parts of lombardy and venetia have a thicker population than any other european country except belgium, which is really not a country, but a manufacturing centre of europe. the density of population in italy is in excess of that of germany, france, india, and even china. it is exceeded only by the islands of great britain and japan, and the states of rhode island and massachusetts.[ ] emigration is the only immediate relief from this congestion. all other remedies which operate through raising the intelligence and the standards of living require years for appreciable results, but meanwhile the persistent birth-rate crowds new competitors into the new openings and multiplies the need of economic and political reforms before they can be put into effect. emigration is a relief ready at hand, but it is not a lessening of population. for many years to come italy will furnish a surplus population to overflow to america.[ ] emigration is also a means of revenue for the mother country. for it is estimated that the peasants in foreign countries send back to their families and relatives $ , , to $ , , each year, and many of them return with what to them is a fortune, and with new ideas of industry and progress, to purchase and improve a farm and cottage for their declining years. it is said that already there are several small country towns in southern italy which have risen from squalor to something of prosperity through the money and influence of those who have come home. this temporary emigration is probably over , each year going abroad or to adjoining countries expecting to return. besides this temporary emigration there is an equally large permanent emigration. this is of two kinds, almost as entirely distinct from each other as the emigration from two separate nations. the north italian is an educated, skilled artisan, coming from a manufacturing section and largely from the cities. he is teutonic in blood and appearance. the south italian is an illiterate peasant from the great landed estates, with wages less than one-third his northern compatriot. he descends with less mixture from the ancient inhabitants of italy. unhappily for us, the north italians do not come to the united states in considerable numbers, but they betake themselves to argentina, uruguay, and brazil in about the same numbers as the south italians come to us. it is estimated that in those three countries there are , , italians in a total population of , , , and they are mainly derived from the north of italy. surrounded by the unenterprising spanish and portuguese, they have shown themselves to be the industrial leaders of the country. some of the chief buildings, banks, flour mills, textile mills, and a majority of the wheat farms of argentina belong to italians. they are one-third of the population of buenos ayres and own one-half of the commercial capital of that city. they become lawyers, engineers, members of parliament, and an italian by descent has been president of the republic of argentina, while other italians have been ministers of war and education.[ ] while these north italians, with their enterprise, intelligence, and varied capacities, go to south america, we receive the south italians, who are nearly the most illiterate of all immigrants at the present time, the most subservient to superiors, the lowest in their standards of living, and at the same time the most industrious and thrifty of all common laborers. [illustration: aliens awaiting admission at ellis island] =austria-hungary.=--next to that from italy the immigration from the austro-hungarian empire in recent decades has reached the largest dimensions. while italy sent , people in , austria-hungary sent , in that year and , the year before. like the immigration from italy, this increase has occurred since . prior to that date the largest number reported from austria-hungary was in . while these figures compare with those of the italians, yet, unlike the italians, they refer to a congeries of races and languages distinct one from another. the significance of austro-hungarian immigration is revealed only when we analyze it by races. the race map of this empire shows at once the most complicated social mosaic of all modern nations. here we see, not that mixture of races and assimilation of language which in our own country has evolved a vigorous, united people, but a juxtaposition of hostile races and a fixity of language held together only by the outside pressure of russia, germany, italy, and turkey. this conflict of races has made the politics of the empire nearly incomprehensible to foreigners, and has aggravated the economic inequalities which drive the unprivileged masses to emigrate. not only are there in austria-hungary five grand divisions of the human family,--the german, the slav, the magyar, the latin, and the jew,--but these are again subdivided. in the northern mountainous and hilly sections are , , slavic peoples, the czechs, or bohemians, with their closely related moravians, and the slavic slovaks, poles, and ruthenians (known also as russniaks); while in the southern hills and along the adriatic are another , , slavs, the croatians, servians, dalmatians, and slovenians. between these divisions on the fertile plains , , magyars and , , germans have thrust themselves as the dominant races. to the southwest are nearly a million italians, and in the east , , latinized slavs, the roumanians. the slavs are in general the conquered peoples, with a german and magyar nobility owning their land, making their laws, and managing their administration. the northern slavs are subject to austria and hungary, and the ruthenians suffer a double subjection, for they were the serfs of their fellow-slavs, the poles, whom they continue to hate, and in whose longings for a reunited poland they do not participate. the southern slavs and roumanians are subject to hungary. the roumanians are a widespread and disrupted nationality of slavs, conquered by the romans, from whom they imperfectly took their language, but now distributed partly in independent kingdoms and partly under the dominion of the magyars. the croatians from the southwest mountains are among the finest specimens of physical manhood coming to our shores. they are a vigorous people, hating hungary which owns them and calling themselves "austrians" to ward off the name "hun," by which americans mistakenly designate them. the magyars are the asiactic conquerors who overran europe ten centuries ago, and being repulsed by the teutons to the west established themselves on the slavs in the valley and plains of the danube. boasting a republican constitution a thousand years old they have not until the past year been compelled to share it with the people whom they subdued. astute politicians and dashing military leaders, they are as careless in business as the slavs, and the supremacy which they maintained in politics has slipped into the hands of the jews in economics. in no other modern country has the jew been so liberally treated, and in no other country have public and private finance come more completely under his control. profiting by the magyars' suppression of the slavs, the jew has monopolized the business opportunities denied to the slovak and the croatian, and with this leverage has quietly elbowed out the magyar himself. no longer is the magyar the dominant race, and in the past year he has contributed to america more immigrants than any branch of his conquered slavs. in the austrian dominions of former poland the jew likewise has become the financier, and both the ruthenian and the pole, unable to rise under their burden of debt, contribute their more enterprising peasants to america. by a perverse system of representative government, based on representation of classes both in austria and in hungary, the great landowners and wealthy merchants have heretofore elected three-fourths of the parliaments, but recently in both countries the emperor has granted universal manhood suffrage. the peasant slavs will henceforth be on equal footing with the german, the magyar, and the jew, and whether out of the belated equality of races there will come equality of economic opportunity remains to be seen. for the past few years the emigration from the unfortunate dual empire has amazingly increased. with all of this confusing medley of races, with this diversity of greek and roman catholicism and judaism, with this history of race oppression and hatred, it is not surprising that the immigrants should break out into factions and feuds wherever thrown together among us. it is the task of america to lift them to a patriotism which hitherto in their native land they could not know. the earliest migration from austria-hungary was that of the bohemians, the most highly educated and ardently patriotic of the slavic people. after the revolution of , when the germans suppressed their patriotic uprising, students, professional men, and well-to-do peasants came to america and settled in new york, st. louis, milwaukee, chicago, and in the rural districts of texas, wisconsin, iowa, minnesota, and california. again, after the austro-prussian war of , skilled laborers were added to the stream, and they captured a large part of the cigar-making industry of new york and the clothing trade of chicago. latterly recruits from the peasants and unskilled laborers sought the sections where the pioneers had located, learned the same trades, or joined the armies of common labor. in chicago the bohemian section is almost a self-governing city, with its own language, industries, schools, churches, and newspapers. after a slight decline there is again an increasing flow of immigrants, the number in being , . those who come bring their families, and few return. in these earlier days the polish and hungarian jews also began their migration, following the steps of their german precursors. in the decade of the eighties the increase of immigration from austria-hungary was first that of the poles, now numbering , , then the magyars, now , , then the slovaks, now , . in the latter part of the nineties the southern slavs--croatians and slovenians--suddenly took up their burden, and , of them came in . following them came the ruthenians from the north, numbering , in . last of all, the latinized slavs, the roumanians, began their flight from the magyar, to the number of less than in the year , but swelling to , in . only additional came from their own proper kingdom--roumania. during all this period there has been also a considerable migration of germans, reaching , in . in the face of this swollen migration the hungarian government has at last taken alarm. they see even their own people, the magyars, escaping. recently the government has attempted to restrict the unrest by prohibiting advertisements or public speeches advocating emigration, by prohibiting the sale of tickets or solicitation by any one not holding a government license for the purpose, by contracting with a steamship line from their own adriatic part of fiume in order to reduce migration across the german and italian frontiers. this may account for the decline of ten thousand immigrants from austria-hungary in . practically the entire migration of the slavic elements at the present time is that of peasants. in croatia the forests have been depleted, and thousands of immigrant wood-choppers have sought the forests of our south and the railway construction of the west. the natural resources of croatia are by no means inadequate, but the discriminating taxes and railway freight rates imposed by hungary have prevented the development of these resources. the needed railways are not obtainable for the development of the mines and minerals of croatia, and the peasants, unable to find employment at home, are allured by the advertisements of american steamships and the agents of american contractors. so it is with the slovak peasants and mine workers of the northern mountains and foothills. with agricultural wages only eighteen cents a day, they find employment in the american mines, rolling-mills, stock-yards, and railroad construction at $ . a day. in addition to race discrimination, the blight of austria-hungary is landlordism. considerable reforms, indeed, have been made in certain sections. the free alienation of landed property was adopted in the austrian dominions in , and in the following twelve years , new holdings were carved out of the existing peasant proprietorships in bohemia. similar transfers have occurred elsewhere, but even where this peasant ownership has gained, the enormous prices are an obstacle to economic independence. they compel the land-owning peasant to content himself with five to twelve acres, the size of four-fifths of the farms in galicia. his eagerness to own land is his dread of the mere wage-earner's lot, which he no longer dreads when he lands in america. "the fear of falling from the social position of a peasant to that, immeasurably inferior, of a day laborer, is the great spur which drives over the seas alike the slovak, the pole, and the ruthenian."[ ] these high rentals and fabulous values can exist only where wages and standards of living are at the bare subsistence level, leaving a heavy surplus for capitalization. they also exist as a result of most economical and minute cultivation, so that, with this training, the bohemian or polish farmer who takes up land in america soon becomes a well-to-do citizen. taxation, too, is unequal. for many years the government suffered deficits, the military expenses increased, and worst of all, the nobility were exempt from taxation. the latter injustice, however, was remedied by the revolution of , and yet at the present time the great landowners pay much less than their proportionate share of the land-tax, to say nothing of the heavy taxes on consumption and industry. as in other countries of low standards, the number of births is large in proportion to the inhabitants. for every one thousand persons in hungary, there are forty-three births each year,[ ] a number exceeded by but one great country of europe, russia. yet, with this large number of births, because the economic conditions are so onerous and the consequent deaths so frequent, the net increase is less than that of any other country except france. in austria the births and deaths are less and the net increase greater, and they run close to those of prolific italy. in each of these countries the figures for births and deaths stand near those of the negroes in america, and like the negroes, two-fifths of the mortality is that of children under five years of age, whereas with other more favored countries and races this proportion is only one-fifth or one-fourth. it is not so much the overpopulation of austria-hungary that incites emigration as it is the poverty, ignorance, inequality, and helplessness that produce a seeming overpopulation. while these conditions continue, emigration will continue to increase, and the efforts of the hungarian government to reduce it will not succeed. =russia.=--the russian empire is at the present time the third in the rank of contributors to american immigration. russian immigration, like that of italy and austria-hungary, is practically limited to the past two decades. in it first reached , . in it was , , and in , , . the significant fact of this immigration is that it is only per cent russian and per cent non-russian. the russian peasant is probably the most oppressed of the peasants of europe, and though his recent uprising has aroused his intellect and disabused the former opinion of his stupidity, yet he has been so tied to the soil by his system of communism, his burden of taxes and debt and his subjection to landlords, that he is as yet immune to the fever of migration. in so far as he has moved from his native soil he has done so through the efforts of a despotic government to russianize siberia and the newly conquered regions of his own vast domain. on the other hand, the races which have abandoned the russian empire have been driven forth because they refused to submit to the policy which would by force assimilate them to the language or religion of the dominant race. even the promises of the aristocracy under the fright of recent revolution have not mitigated the persecutions, and the number taking refuge in flight has doubled in four years. foremost are the jews, , in , an increase from , four years ago; next the poles, , in ; next , lithuanians, , finns, and , germans. the poles and lithuanians are slavic peoples long since conquered and annexed by the russians. the finns are a teutonic people with a mongol language; the germans are an isolated branch of that race settled far to the east on the volga river by invitation of the czar more than one hundred years ago, or on the baltic provinces adjoining germany; while the jews are the unhappy descendants of a race whom the russians found in territory conquered during the past two centuries. =the jews.=--russia, at present, sends us five-sixths of the jewish immigration, but the other one-sixth comes from adjoining territory in austria-hungary and roumania. about six thousand temporarily sojourn in england, and the whitechapel district of east london is a reduced picture of the east side, new york. during american history jews have come hither from all countries of europe. the first recorded immigration was that of dutch jews, driven from brazil by the portuguese and received by the dutch government of new amsterdam. the descendants of these earliest immigrants continue at the present time in their own peculiar congregation in lower new york city. quite a large number of portuguese and spanish jews, expelled from those countries in the time of columbus, have contributed their descendants to america by way of holland. the german jews began their migration in small numbers during colonial times, but their greatest influx followed the napoleonic wars and reached its height at the middle of the century. prior to the last two decades so predominant were the german jews that, to the ordinary american, all jews were germans. strangely enough, the so-called russian jew is also a german, and in russia among the masses of people the words "german" and "jew" also mean the same thing. hereby hangs a tale of interest in the history of this persecuted race. jews are known to have settled at the site of the present city of frankfort in southern germany as early as the third century, when that town was a trading post on the roman frontier. at the present time the region about frankfort, extending south through alsace, contains the major part of the german and french jews. to this centre they flocked during the middle ages, and their toleration in this region throws an interesting light on the reasons for their persecution in other countries. under the catholic polity following the crusades the jew had no rights, and he could therefore gain protection only through the personal favor of emperor, king, or feudal lord. this protection was arbitrary and capricious, but it was always based on a pecuniary consideration. unwittingly the catholic church, by its prohibition of usury to all believers, had thrown the business of money lending into the hands of the jews, and since the jew was neither inclined toward agriculture nor permitted to follow that vocation, his only sources of livelihood were trade and usury. the sovereigns of europe who protected the jews did so in view of the large sums which they could exact from their profits as usurers and traders. they utilized the jews like sponges to draw from their subjects illicit taxes. when, therefore, the people gained power over their sovereigns, and the spirit of nationality arose, the jew, without his former protector, was the object of persecution. england was the first country where this spirit of nationality emerged and the first to expel the jews ( ); france followed a century later ( ); and spain and portugal two centuries later ( and ). but in germany and other parts of the holy roman empire political confusion and anarchy prevailed, and the emperor and petty sovereigns were able to continue their protection of the jews. [illustration: norwegian italian arabic (from _the home missionary_)] the russian people, at that time, were confined to the interior surrounding moscow, but even before the crusades they had expelled the jews. as rapidly as they conquered territory to the south from turkey, or to the west from poland, they carried forward the same hostility. there was only one country, poland, in the centre of europe, where the kings, desiring to build up their cities, invited the jews, and hither the persecuted race fled from the east before the russians, and latterly from the west, driven out by the germans. when finally, a hundred years ago, the remnant of the polish empire was divided between russia, prussia, and austria, the jewish population in this favored area had become the largest aggregation of that people since the destruction of jerusalem. to-day in certain of these provinces belonging to russia the jews number as high as one-sixth of the entire population, and more than half of that of several cities. fifteen provinces taken from poland and turkey, extending miles along the border of germany and austria-hungary and miles in width, constitute to-day the "pale of settlement," the region where jews are permitted to live. here are found one-third of the world's , , jews.[ ] here they formerly engaged in all lines of industry, including agriculture. now we come to the last great national uprising, like that which began in england six hundred years ago. the russian serfs had been freed in . but they were left without land or capital and were burdened by high rents and enormous taxes. the jews became their merchants, middlemen, and usurers. suddenly, in , the peasants, oppressed and neglected by landlord and government, turned in their helplessness upon the intermediate cause of their misery, the jew. the anti-semitic riots of that year have perhaps never been exceeded in ferocity and indiscriminate destruction. then began the migration to america. the next year the russian government took up the persecution, and the notorious "may orders" of were promulgated. these, at the instigation of the greek church, have been followed by orders more stringent, so that to-day, unless relieved by the terrorized promises of the czar, the jew is not permitted to foreclose a mortgage or to lease or purchase land; he cannot do business on sundays or christian holidays; he cannot hold office; he cannot worship or assemble without police permit; he must serve in the army, but cannot become an officer; he is excluded from schools and universities; he is fined for conducting manufactures and commerce; he is almost prohibited from the learned professions. while all other social questions are excluded from discussion, the anti-semitic press is given free play, and the popular hatred of the jew is stirred to frenzy by "yellow" journals. only when this hatred breaks out in widespread riots does the news reach america, but the persecution is constant and relentless. the government and the army join with the peasants, for, true to the character of this versatile race, the jews are leaders of the revolutionary and socialistic patriots who seek to overthrow the government and restore the land to the people. nor is this uprising confined to russia. galician jews in the austrian possessions of former poland, where the slavs bitterly complain of them as saloon-keepers and money-lenders,[ ] have suffered the persecutions of their race, and in the last ten years roumania, a country of peasants adjoining hungary and russia, has adopted laws and regulations even more oppressive than those of her neighbor. thus it is that this marvellous and paradoxical race, the parent of philosophers, artists, reformers, martyrs, and also of the shrewdest exploiters of the poor and ignorant, has, in two decades, come to america in far greater numbers than in the two centuries preceding. it should not be inferred that the jews are a race of pure descent. coming as they do from all sections and nations of europe, they are truly cosmopolitan, and have taken on the language, customs, and modes of thought of the people among whom they live. more than this, in the course of centuries, their physical characteristics have departed from those of their semitic cousins in the east, and they have become assimilated in blood with their european neighbors. in russia, especially in the early centuries, native tribes were converted to judaism and mingled with their proselyters. that which makes the jew a peculiar people is not altogether the purity of his blood, but persecution, devotion to his religion, and careful training of his children. among the jews from eastern europe there are marked intellectual and moral differences. the hungarian jew, who emigrated earliest, is adventurous and speculative: the southern russian keeps few of the religious observances, is the most intellectual and socialistic, and most inclined to the life of a wage-earner; the western russian is orthodox and emotional, saves money, becomes a contractor and retail merchant; the galician jew is the poorest, whose conditions at home were the harshest, and he begins american life as a pedler. that which unites them all as a single people is their religious training and common language. the hebrew language is read and written by all the men and half of the women, but is not spoken except by a few especially orthodox jews on saturday. hebrew is the language of business and correspondence, yiddish the language of conversation, just as latin in the middle ages was the official and international language, while the various peoples spoke each its own vernacular. the yiddish spoken by the russian jews in america is scarcely a language--it is a jargon without syntax, conjugation, or declension. its basis is sixty per cent german of the sixteenth century, showing the main origin of the people, and forty per cent the language of the countries whence they come. that which most of all has made the jew a cause of alarm to the peasants of eastern europe is the highest mark of his virtue, namely, his rapid increase in numbers. a high birth-rate, a low death-rate, a long life, place the jew as far above the average as the negro is below the average. these two races are the two extremes of american race vitality. says ripley:[ ]-- "suppose two groups of one hundred infants each, one jewish, one of average american parentage (massachusetts), to be born on the same day. in spite of the disparity of social conditions in favor of the latter, the chances, determined by statistical means, are that one-half of the americans will die within forty-seven years; while the first half of the jews will not succumb to disease or accident before the expiration of seventy-one years. the death-rate is really but little over half that of the average american population." while the negro exceeds all races in the constitutional diseases of consumption and pneumonia, the jew excels all in immunity from these diseases. his vitality is ascribed to his sanitary meat inspection, his sobriety, temperance, and self-control. of the jew it might be said more truly than of any other european people that the growth of population has led to overcrowding and has induced emigration. yet of no people is this less true, for, were it not for the discrimination and persecution directed against them, the jews would be the most prosperous and least overcrowded of the races of europe. =the finns.=--until the year finland was the freest and best governed part of the russian empire. wrested from sweden in , it became a grand duchy of the czar, guaranteed self-government, and confirmed by coronation oath of each successor. it was the only section of the russian empire with a constitutional government in which the laws, taxes, and army were controlled by a legislature representing the people. here alone in all his empire was the czar compelled to ask the consent of parliament in order to enact laws. but these free institutions within the past seven years were by his decree abrogated. the czar claimed the right to put into force such laws as he chose without discussion or acceptance by the finnish diet. the russian language took the place of swedish and finnish as the official medium, a severe censorship of the press was introduced, the lutheran religion, devoutly adhered to, was subordinated to the "orthodox," the independent finnish army was abolished and finns were distributed throughout the armies of the empire, and a russian governor with absolute powers was placed over all. thus have , , of the sturdiest specimens of humanity been suddenly reduced to the level of asiatic despotism. they had managed by industry and thrift to extort a livelihood from a sterile soil, and had developed a school system with universal education, culminating in one of the noblest universities of europe. their peasants are healthy, intelligent, honest, and sober. in one year, , their emigration increased from to , , and it continues at , , notwithstanding the repentance of the czar and his restoration of their stolen rights. compared with the population of the country, the present immigration from finland is proportionately greater than that of any race except the jews; and famine, adding its horrors to the loss of their liberties, has served to augment the army of exiles. [illustration: slav jewish polack lithuanian (from _the home missionary_)] much dispute has arisen respecting the racial relations of the finns. their language is like that of the magyars, an agglutinative tongue with tendencies towards inflections, but their physical structure allies them more nearly to the teutons. their lutheran religion also separates them from other peoples of the russian empire. their sober industriousness and high intelligence give them a place above that of their intolerant conquerors; and the futile attempts of the slav to "russify" them drove to america many of our most desirable immigrants. =the french canadians.=--when canada was conquered by england in , it contained a french population of , . without further immigration the number had increased in to , , , including , , in canada and , emigrants and their children in the united states. scarcely another race has multiplied as rapidly, doubling every twenty-five years. the contrast with the same race in france, where population is actually declining, is most suggestive. french canada is, as it were, a bit of mediæval france, picked out and preserved for the curious student of social evolution. no french revolution broke down its old institutions, and the english conquest changed little else than the oath of allegiance. language, customs, laws, and property rights remained intact. the only state church in north america is the roman catholic church of quebec, with its great wealth, its control of education, and its right to levy tithes and other church dues. with a standard of living lower than that of the irish or italians, and a population increasing even more rapidly, the french from canada for a time seemed destined to displace other races in the textile mills of new england. yet they came only as sojourners, intending by the work of every member of the family to save enough money to return to canada, purchase a farm, and live in relative affluence. their migration began at the close of the civil war, and during periods of prosperity they swarmed to the mill towns, while in periods of depression they returned to their northern homes. gradually an increasing proportion remained in "the states," and the number in was , born in canada, and , children born on this side of the line. =the portuguese.=--a diminutive but interesting migration of recent years is that of the portuguese, who come, not from portugal, but from the cape verde and azores islands, near equatorial africa. these islands are remarkably overpopulated, and the emigration, nearly souls in , is a very large proportion of the total number of inhabitants. by two methods did they find their way to america. one was almost accidental, for it was the wreck of a portuguese vessel on the new england coast that first directed their attention to that section. they have settled mainly at new bedford, massachusetts, where they follow the fisheries in the summer and enter the mills in the winter. the other method was solicitation, which took several thousand of them to hawaii as contract laborers on the sugar plantations. unlike the oriental importations to these islands the portuguese insisted that their families be imported, and then as soon as their contracts expired they left the planters to become small farmers, and are now the backbone of the coffee industry. they and their children are nearly half of the "caucasian" element of , . in massachusetts they are of two distinct types, the whites from the azores and the blacks from the cape verde islands, the latter plainly a blend of portuguese and africans. their standards of living are similar to those of the italians, though they are distinguished by their cleanliness and the neatness of their homes. =syrians and armenians.=--that the recruiting area of american immigration is extending eastward is no more clearly evident than in the recent migration of syrians and armenians. these peoples belong to the christian races of asiatic turkey, whence they are escaping the oppressions of a government which deserves the name of organized robbery rather than government. within the past thirty years many thousand syrians of mount lebanon have emigrated to egypt and other mediterranean countries, to the dependencies of great britain and south america. six thousand of them came to the united states in . they belong mainly to the greek church or the maronite branch of the roman catholic church, and it is mainly american missionary effort that has diverted them to the united states. unlike other immigrants, they come principally from the towns, and are traders and pedlers. broadly speaking, says an agent of the charity organization society of new york, "the well-intentioned efforts of the missionaries have been abused by their protégés.... it is these alleged proselytes who have contributed largely to bring into relief the intrinsically servile character of the syrian, his ingratitude and mendacity, his prostitution of all ideals to the huckster level.... as a rule they affiliate themselves with some protestant church or mission, abandoning such connections when no longer deemed necessary or profitable."[ ] the armenian migration began with the monstrous kurdish atrocities of recent years, instigated and supported by the turkish government. armenians are a primitive branch of the christian religion, and at an early date became separated from both the greek and roman churches. they are among the shrewdest of merchants, traders, and money-lenders of the orient, and, like the jews, are hated by the peasantry and persecuted by the government. like the jews also, religious persecution has united them to the number of five million in a racial type of remarkable purity and distinctness from the surrounding races. =asiatic immigration.=--utterly distinct from all other immigrants in the nineteenth century are the chinese. coming from a civilization already ancient when europe was barbarian, the chinaman complacently refuses to assimilate with americans, and the latter reciprocate by denying him the right of citizenship. his residence is temporary, he comes without his family, and he accumulates what to him is a fortune for his declining years in china. the gold discoveries of california first attracted him, and the largest migration was , in , the year when congress prohibited further incoming. in , chinamen tried to get in, and were admitted, mainly as united states citizens, returning merchants and returning laborers. one-half of the admitted as "exempt" were believed by the immigration officials to have been coolies in disguise.[ ] within the past ten years the japanese have taken his place, and , of his mongolian cousins arrived in . the immigration of the japanese has taken a peculiar turn owing to the annexation of hawaii. while these islands were yet a kingdom in this immigration began, and in a treaty was concluded with japan for the immigration of japanese contract laborers for the benefit of the sugar planters. many thousand were imported under this arrangement, and "the fear that the islands would be annexed to japan was one of the prime factors in the demand for annexation to the united states."[ ] with annexation in contract labor was abolished, and the japanese, freed from servitude, indulged in "an epidemic of strikes." the japanese government retained paternal oversight of its laborers migrating to foreign lands, which is done through some thirty-four emigrant companies chartered by the government. since opening up korea for settlement japan has granted but a limited number of passports to its citizens destined for the mainland of america, so that almost the entire immigration comes first to honolulu through arrangements made between the emigrant companies and the planters. but the planters are not able to keep them on the island on account of the higher wages on the pacific coast. since the alien contract-labor law does not apply to immigrants from hawaii, a _padroni_ system has sprung up for importing japanese from that island. as a result, the arrivals at honolulu are equalled by the departures to the mainland, and hawaii becomes the american side entrance for the japanese.[ ] this evasion has been stopped by the law of february , . hawaii also is showing another asiatic race the opening to america. the growing independence of the japanese led the planters to seek koreans, since the chinese exclusion law came into force with annexation. in this effort to break down japanese solidarity some eight thousand koreans have been mixed with them during the past five years, and these also have begun the transit to california. although the chinese, japanese, and koreans are the familiar examples often cited of low standards of living, yet their wages in their native countries are higher than those of the south italians and equal to those of the slavs. they earn $ or $ a month and spend $ or $ for living. in hawaii they get $ to $ a month, and on the pacific coast $ to $ . in the past two or three years a tiny dripping of immigration has found its way from another vast empire of asiatic population--india. some two hundred are admitted each year. the populations of that land are growing discontented as they see indians returned from natal, where they earned $ to $ a month, while at home they get only $ to $ under a penal contract system. the american consul at calcutta reports ten sturdy punjab mohammedans inquiring the way to america and telling of their friends at work on american dairy farms. in his judgment they are stronger and more intelligent than the chinese coolies and are preferable for work on the panama canal. the self-governing british colonies have educational restrictions designed to prevent asiatic immigration, whether of british subjects or aliens;[ ] other colonies have contract labor. the unrest of india therefore turns the native eyes towards america. while america has been welcoming the eastward and backward races she has begun to lose her colonial stock and her americanized teutonic stock. these pioneer elements have kept in front of the westward movement, and now that the american frontier is gone they seek a new frontier in canada. the canadian government for several years has sought to fill its vast western plains with teutonic races and to discourage others. it has expended many thousand dollars for advertising and soliciting in the british isles, and has maintained twenty to thirty immigration agents in our western states. the opportunities of british columbia are now well known, and the american farmers, with agricultural land rising enormously in value, sell out to the newcomer or the acclimated immigrant and betake themselves to double or treble the area for cultivation under the flag of england. they push onward by rail and by wagon, and the ingress of millions of immigrants is reflected in the egress of thousands of americans.[ ] =indigenous races.=--it is not enough that we have opened our gates to the millions of divergent races in europe, asia, and africa; we have in these latter days admitted to our fold new types by another process--annexation. the hawaiians are the latest of these oversea races to be brought under our flag, although in the course of eighty years they have been brought under our people. nowhere else in the world has been seen such finished effect on an aboriginal race of the paradoxes of western civilization--christianity, private property, and sexual disease. with a population of some , at the time of discovery they had dwindled by domestic wars and imported disease to , when the missionaries came in , then to , in when private property began its hunt for cheap labor, and now they number but , . a disease eliminating the unfit of a race protected by monogamy decimates this primitive people on a lower stage of morals. missionaries from the most intellectual type of american protestantism converted the diminishing nation to christianity in fifty years. a soil and climate the most favorable in the world for sugar-cane inspired american planters and sons of missionaries to displace the unsteady hawaiians with industrious coolies, and finally to overthrow the government they had undermined and then annex it to america. although acquiring american citizenship and sharing equally the suffrage with caucasians, the decreasing influence of the hawaiians is further diminished by the territorial form of government. the spanish war added islands on opposite sides of the globe, with races resulting from diametrically opposite effects of three centuries of spanish rule. from porto rico the aboriginal carib had long disappeared under the slavery of his conquerors, and his place had been filled by the negro slave in sugar cultivation and by the spaniard and other europeans in coffee cultivation. to-day the negro and mulatto are two-fifths of the million population and the whites three-fifths.[ ] in the philippine islands the native races have survived under a theocratic protectorate and even their tribal and racial subdivisions have been preserved. two-fifths of their population of , , belong to the leading tribe, the visayans, and one-fifth to another, the tagalogs. six other tribes complete the list of "civilized" or christianized peoples, while per cent remain pagan in the mountains and forests. four-fifths of the population are illiterate, a proportion the same as in porto rico, compared with less than half of the negroes and only one-sixteenth of the whites in the united states.[ ] chapter v industry in preceding chapters we have seen the conditions in their foreign homes which spurred the emigrants to seek america. we have seen religious persecution, race oppression, political revolution, militarism, taxation, famine, and poverty conspiring to press upon the unprivileged masses and to drive the more adventurous across the water. but it would be a mistake should we stop at that point and look upon the migration of these dissatisfied elements as only a voluntary movement to better their condition. in fact, had it been left to the initiative of the emigrants the flow of immigration to america could scarcely ever have reached one-half its actual dimensions. while various motives and inducements have always worked together, and it would be rash to assert dogmatically the relative weight of each, yet to one who has carefully noted all the circumstances it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that even more important than the initiative of immigrants have been the efforts of americans and ship-owners to bring and attract them. throughout our history these efforts have been inspired by one grand, effective motive,--that of making a profit upon the immigrants. the desire to get cheap labor, to take in passenger fares, and to sell land have probably brought more immigrants than the hard conditions of europe, asia, and africa have sent. induced immigration has been as potent as voluntary immigration. and it is to this mercenary motive that we owe our manifold variety of races, and especially our influx of backward races. one entire race, the negro, came solely for the profit of ship-owners and landowners. working people of the colonial period were hoodwinked and kidnapped by shippers and speculators who reimbursed themselves by indenturing them to planters and farmers. the beginners of other races have come through similar but less coercive inducements, initiated, however, by the demand of those who held american property for speculation or investment. william penn and his lessees, john law, the dutch east india company, and many of the grantees of lands in the colonies, sent their agents through western europe and the british isles with glowing advertisements, advanced transportation, and contracts for indentured service by way of reimbursement. in the nineteenth century new forms of induced migration appeared. victims of the irish famine were assisted to emigrate by local and general governments and by philanthropic societies, and both the irish and the germans, whose migration began towards the middle of the century, were, in a measure, exceptions to the general rule of induced immigration for profit. several western states created immigration bureaus which advertised their own advantages for intending immigrants, and wisconsin, especially, in this way settled her lands with a wide variety of races. after the civil war, induced migration entered upon a vigorous revival. the system of indenturing had long since disappeared, because legislatures and courts declined to recognize and enforce contracts for service. consequently a new form of importation appeared under the direction of middlemen of the same nativity as that of the immigrant. chinese coolies came under contract with the six companies, who advanced their expenses and looked to their own secret agents and tribunals to enforce repayment with profit.[ ] japanese coolies, much later, came under contract with immigration companies chartered by the japanese government.[ ] italians were recruited by the _padroni_, and the bulk of the new slav immigration from southeastern europe is in charge of their own countrymen acting as drummers and middlemen. industrial relations of immigrants-- [ ] ===============+========+=========+==================+========================== | | sexes | ages | occupations[ ] | +----+----+-----+-----+-----+-------+----+----+----+---- | total, | | | | | | total,|professional race or people | | | |under| - |over | | |commercial |per cent| m | f | |years| | per | | |skilled | | | |years| |years| cent | | | |unskilled ---------------+--------+----+----+-----+-----+-----+-------+----+----+----+---- african (black)| , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . armenian | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . bohemian and | | | | | | | | | | | moravian | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . bulgarian, | | | | | | | | | | | servian, and | | | | | | | | | | | montenegrin | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . chinese | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . croatian and | | | | | | | | | | | slovenian | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . cuban | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . dalmatian, | | | | | | | | | | | bosnian, and | | | | | | | | | | | herzegovinian| , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . dutch and | | | | | | | | | | | flemish | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . east indian | | . | . | . | . | . | | . | . | . | . english | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . finnish | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . french | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . german | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . greek | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . hebrew | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . irish | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . italian (north)| , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . italian (south)| , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . japanese | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . korean | | . | . | . | . | . | | . | . | . | . lithuanian | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . magyar | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . mexican | | . | . | . | . | . | | . | . | . | . pacific | | | | | | | | | | | islander | | . | . | . | . | . | | . | . | . | . polish | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . portuguese | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . roumanian | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . russian | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . ruthenian | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . |[ ]| . | . scandinavian | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . scotch | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . slovak | , | . | . | . | . | . | , |[ ]| . | . | . spanish | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . spanish | | | | | | | | | | | american | , | . | . | . | . | . | | . | . | . | . syrian | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . turkish | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . welsh | , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . west indian | | | | | | | | | | | (except | | | | | | | | | | | cuban) | , | . | . | . | . | . | | . | . | . | . other peoples | , | . | . | . | . | . | | . | . | . | . ---------+----+----+-----+-----+-----+-------+----+----+----+---- total , , | . | . | . | . | . | , | . | . | . | . ===============+========+====+====+=====+=====+=====+=======+====+====+====+==== these labor speculators have perfected a system of inducements and through billing as effective as that by which horse and cattle buyers in kentucky or iowa collect and forward their living freight to the markets of europe. a croatian of the earlier immigration, for example, sets up a saloon in south chicago and becomes an employment bureau for his "greener" countrymen, and also ticket agent on commission for the steamship companies. his confederates are stationed along the entire route at connecting points, from the villages of croatia to the saloon in chicago. in croatia they go among the laborers and picture to them the high wages and abundant work in america. they induce them to sell their little belongings and they furnish them with through tickets. they collect them in companies, give them a countersign, and send them on to their fellow-agent at fiume, thence to genoa or other port whence the american steerage vessel sails. in new york they are met by other confederates, whom they identify by their countersign, and again they are safely transferred and shipped to their destination. here they are met by their enterprising countryman, lodged and fed, and within a day or two handed over to the foreman in a great steel plant, or to the "boss" of a construction gang on a railway, or to a contractor on a large public improvement. after they have earned and saved a little money they send for their friends, to whom the "boss" has promised jobs. again their lodging-house countryman sells them the steamship ticket and arranges for the safe delivery of those for whom they have sent. in this way immigration is stimulated, and new races are induced to begin their american colonization. eventually the pioneers send for their families, and it is estimated that nearly two-thirds of the immigrants in recent years have come on prepaid tickets or on money sent to them from america.[ ] the significance of this new and highly perfected form of inducement will appear when we look back for a moment upon the legislation governing immigration. =immigration legislation.=--at the close of the civil war, with a vast territory newly opened to the west by the railroads, congress enacted a law throwing wide open our doors to the immigrants of all lands. it gave new guaranties for the protection of naturalized citizens in renouncing allegiance to their native countries, declaring that "expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."[ ] in the same year, , the famous burlingame treaty was negotiated with china, by which americans in china and chinese in america should enjoy all the privileges, immunities, and exemptions enjoyed by citizens of the most favored nation. these steps favorable to immigration were in line with the long-continued policy of the country from the earliest colonial times. but a new force had come into american politics--the wage-earner. from this time forth the old policies were violently challenged. high wages were to be pitted against high profits. the cheap labor which was eagerly sought by the corporations and large property owners was just as eagerly fought by the unpropertied wage-earners. of course neither party conceded that it was selfishly seeking its own interest. those who expected profits contended that cheap foreign labor was necessary for the development of the country; that american natural resources were unbounded, but american workmen could not be found for the rough work needed to turn these resources into wealth; that america should be in the future, as it had been in the past, a haven for the oppressed of all lands; and that in no better way could the principles of american democracy be spread to all peoples of the earth than by welcoming them and teaching them in our midst. the wage-earners have not been so fortunate in their protestations of disinterestedness. they were compelled to admit that though they themselves had been immigrants or the children of immigrants, they were now denying to others what had been a blessing to them. yet they were able to set forward one supreme argument which our race problems are every day more and more showing to be sound. the future of american democracy is the future of the american wage-earner. to have an enlightened and patriotic citizenship we must protect the wages and standard of living of those who constitute the bulk of the citizens. this argument had been offered by employers themselves when they were seeking a protective tariff against the importation of "pauper-made" goods. what wonder that the wage-earner should use the same argument to keep out the pauper himself, and especially that he should begin by applying the argument to those races which showed themselves unable rapidly to assimilate, and thereby make a stand for high wages and high standards of living. certain it is that had the white wage-earners possessed the suffrage and political influence during colonial times, the negro would not have been admitted in large numbers, and we should have been spared that race problem which of all is the largest and most nearly insoluble. for it must be observed in general that race antagonism occurs on the same competitive level. what appear often to be religious, political, and social animosities are economic at bottom, and the substance of the economic struggle is the advantage which third parties get when competitors hold each other down. the southern planter was not hostile to the negro slave--he was his friend and protector. his nurse was the negro "mammy," his playmates were her children, and the mulatto throws light on his views of equality. it was the poor white who hated the negro and fled from his presence to the hills and the frontier, or sank below his level, despised by white and black. in times of freedom and reconstruction it is not the great landowner or employer that leads in the exhibition of race hostility, but the small farmer or wage-earner.[ ] the one derives a profit from the presence of the negro--the other loses his job or his farm. with the progress of white democracy in place of the old aristocracy, as seen in south carolina, hostility to the negro may be expected to increase. with the elimination of the white laborer, as seen in the black counties, the relations of negro and planter are harmonious.[ ] so it is in the north. the negro or immigrant strike breaker is befriended by the employer, but hated by the employee. the chinaman or japanese in hawaii or california is praised and sought after by the employer and householder, but dreaded by the wage-earner and domestic. investors and landowners see their properties rise in value by the competition of races, but the competitors see their wages and jobs diminish. the increase of wealth intensifies the difference and raises up professional classes to the standpoint of the capitalists. with both of them the privilege of leisure depends on the presence of servants, but the wage-earners do their own work. as the immigrant rises in the scale, the small farmer, contractor, or merchant feels his competition and begins to join in measures of race protection. this hostility is not primarily racial in character. it is the competitive struggle for standards of living. it appears to be racial because for the most part races have different standards. but where different races agree on their standards the racial struggle ceases, and the negro, italian, slav, and american join together in the class struggle of a trade-union. on the other hand, if the same race has different standards, the economic struggle breaks down even the strongest affinities of race. the russian jew in the sweat-shop turns against the immigrant jew, fleeing from the very persecution that he himself has escaped, and taking his place in the employment of the capitalist german jew.[ ] it is an easy and patriotic matter for the lawyer, minister, professor, employer, or investor, placed above the arena of competition, to proclaim the equal right of all races to american opportunities; to avow his own willingness to give way should even a better chinaman, hindu, or turk come in to take his place; and to rebuke the racial hatred of those who resist this displacement. his patriotism and world-wide brotherhood cost him and his family nothing, and indeed they add to his profits and leisure. could he realize his industrial position, and picture in imagination that of his fellow-citizens, their attitude would not appear less disinterested than his own. the immigrant comes as a wage-earner, and the american wage-earner bears the initial cost of his americanization. before he acquired the suffrage his protest was unheard--after he gained political power he began to protect himself. the first outbreak of the new-found strength of the american wage-earner was directed against a race superior even to the negro immigrants in industry, frugality, intelligence, and civilization--the chinese. and this outbreak was so powerful that, in spite of all appeals to the traditions and liberties of america, the national government felt driven to repudiate the treaty so recently signed with the highest manifestations of faith, good-will, and international comity. very early in the settlement of california the chinaman had encountered hostile legislation. the state election had been carried by the knownothings as early as . discriminating taxes, ordinances, and laws were adopted, and even immigration was regulated by the state legislature. but the state and federal courts declared such legislation invalid as violating treaties or interfering with international relations. then the wage-earning element of california joined as one man in demanding action by the federal government, and eventually, by the treaty of and the law of , chinese laborers were excluded.[ ] thus did the caucasian wage-earner score his first and signal victory in reversing what his opponents proclaimed were "principles coeval with the foundation of our government." the next step was the alien contract labor law of and , placed on the statute books through the efforts of the knights of labor and the trades-unions. as early as congress had prohibited the immigration of paupers, criminal, and immoral persons, but the law of went to the other extreme and was designed to exclude industrial classes. the law is directed against prepayment of transportation, assistance, or encouragement of foreigners to immigrate _under contract_ to perform labor in the united states, and provides for the prosecution of the importer and deportation of the contract immigrant. this law has been enforced against skilled labor, which comes mainly from northwestern europe, but, owing to the new system of _padroni_ and middlemen above described, it cannot be enforced against the unskilled laborers of southern and eastern europe, since it cannot be shown that they have come under contract to perform labor. by the amendment and revised law adopted in , after considerable discussion, and an effort on the part of the labor unions to strengthen the law, it was extended so as to exclude not only those coming under contract but also those coming under _offers_ and _promises_ of employment.[ ] from what precedes we see that there are two exactly opposite points of view from which the subject of immigration is approached. one is the production of wealth; the other is the distribution of wealth. he who takes the standpoint of production sees the enormous undeveloped resources of this country--the mines to be exploited, railroads and highways to be built and rebuilt, farms to be opened up or to be more intensively cultivated, manufactures to be multiplied, and the markets of the world to be conquered by our exports, while there are not enough workmen, or not enough willing to do the hard and disagreeable work at the bottom. he who takes the standpoint of distribution sees the huge fortunes, the low wages, the small share of the product going to labor, the sweat-shop, the slums, all on account of the excessive competition of wage-earner against wage-earner. consider first the bearing of immigration on the production of wealth. [illustration: age groups, foreign and native-born] =immigration and wealth production.=--over four-fifths of the immigrants are in the prime of life--the ages between fourteen and forty-five. in the year only out of every were under fourteen years of age, and only . out of every over forty-five years of age. the census of offers some interesting comparisons between the native-born and the foreign-born in this matter of age distribution. it shows quite plainly that a large proportion of the native-born population is below the age of industrial production, fully per cent, or two-fifths, being under fifteen years of age, while only per cent of the foreign-born are of corresponding ages. on the other hand, the ages fifteen to forty-four include per cent of the native and per cent of the foreign-born. this is shown in the diagram based on five-year age periods. the native born are seen to group themselves in a symmetrical pyramid, with the children under five as the wide foundation, gradually tapering to the ages of eighty and eighty-four, but for the foreign-born they show a double pyramid, tapering in both directions from the ages of thirty-five to thirty-nine, which include the largest five-year group. thus, immigration brings to us a population of working ages unhampered by unproductive mouths to be fed, and, if we consider alone that which produces the wealth of this country and not that which consumes it, the immigrants add more to the country than does the same number of native of equal ability. their home countries have borne the expense of rearing them up to the industrial period of their lives, and then america, without that heavy expense, reaps whatever profits there are on the investment. [illustration: proportion of sexes. native and foreign-born whites, , and immigrants ] in another respect does immigration add to our industrial population more than would be done by an equal increase in native population, namely, by the large excess of men over women. in , over two-thirds of the immigrants were males and less than one-third were females. this is shown on the accompanying diagram, as well as the fact based on the census statistics that among the foreign-born the men predominate over the women in the ratio of to , while among the native-born population the sexes are about equal, being in the proportion of males to females. this small proportion of women and children shows, of course, that it is the workers, not the families, who seek america. yet the proportions widely vary for different nationalities. among the jews per cent are females and per cent children. this persecuted race moves in a body, expecting to make america its home. at the other extreme the greeks send only per cent females and per cent children, the croatians per cent females and per cent children, the south italians per cent females and per cent children. these are races whose immigration has only recently begun, and naturally enough the women and children, except in the case of the jews, do not accompany the workmen. a race of longer migration, like the germans, has per cent females and per cent children. the irish have a peculiar position. alone of all the races do the women equal the men, but only per cent are children. irish girls seeking domestic service explain this preponderance of women. significant and interesting facts regarding other races may be seen by studying the table entitled "industrial relations of immigrants." [illustration: sweden greece germany russia china scotland austria australia canada england italy roumania american school boys (from _world's work_)] such being the proportions of industrial energy furnished by immigration, what is the quality? much the larger proportion of immigrants are classed as unskilled, including laborers and servants. omitting those who have "no occupation," including mainly women and children, who are . per cent of the total, only . per cent of the remainder who are working immigrants are skilled, and . per cent are unskilled. the proportions vary greatly among the different races. the largest element of skilled labor is among the jews, a city people, two-thirds of whom are skilled workmen. nearly the same proportion of the scotch and welsh and over one-half of the english and bohemians are skilled mechanics. nearly one-third of the germans and dutch are skilled, and one-fourth of the scandinavians. at the other extreme, only to per cent of the ruthenians, croatians, roumanians, and slovaks are skilled, and to per cent of the magyars, lithuanians, and poles. one-fifth of the north italians and one-sixth of the south italians are skilled. these and other proportions are shown in the statistical table. the skilled labor which comes to america, especially from northern and western europe, occupies a peculiar position in our industries. in the first place, the most capable workmen have permanent places at home, and it is, in general, only those who cannot command situations who seek their fortunes abroad. the exceptions to this rule are in the beginnings of an industry like that of tin plate, when a large proportion of the industry moved bodily to america, and the highly skilled tin workers of wales brought a kind of industrial ability that had not hitherto existed in this country. as for the bulk of skilled immigrants, they do not represent the highest skill of the countries whence they come. on the other hand, the european skilled workman is usually better trained than the american, and in many branches of industry, especially machinery and ship-building, the english and scotch immigrants command those superior positions where an all-round training is required. this peculiar situation is caused by the highly specialized character of american industry. in no country has division of labor and machinery been carried as far as here. by division of labor the skilled trades have been split up into simple operations, each of which in itself requires little or no skill, and the boy who starts in as a beginner is kept at one operation so that he does not learn a trade. the old-time journeyman tailor was a skilled mechanic who measured his customer, cut the cloth and trimmings, basted, sewed, and pressed the suit. now we have factories which make only coats, others which make only vests, others trousers, and there are children's knee-pants factories and even ladies' tailor establishments where the former seamstress sees her precious skill dissipated among a score of unskilled workers. thus the journeyman tailor is displaced by the factory, where the coat passes through the hands of thirty to fifty different men and women, each of whom can learn his peculiar operation in a month or two. the same is true in greater or less degree in all industries. even in the building trades in the larger cities there are as many kinds of bricklayers as there are kinds of walls to be built, and as many kinds of carpenters as there are varieties of woodwork. so it is with machinery. the american employer does not advertise for a "machinist"--he wants a "lathe hand" or a "drill-press hand," and the majority of his "hands" are perhaps only automatic machine tenders. the employer cannot afford to transfer these hands from one job to another to enable them to "learn the trade." he must keep them at one operation, for it is not so much skill that he wants as cheap labor and speed. consequently, american industry is not producing all-round mechanics, and the employers look to europe for their skilled artisans. in england the trade-unions have made it their special business to see that every apprentice learns every part of his trade, and they have prevented employers from splitting up the trades and specializing machinery and thereby transforming the mechanic into the "hand." were it not for immigration, american industries would ere now have been compelled to give more attention to apprenticeship and the training of competent mechanics. the need of apprenticeship and trade schools is being more seriously felt every year, for, notwithstanding the progress of division of labor and machinery, the all-round mechanic continues to play an important part in the shop and factory. american trade-unions are gaining strength, and one of their most insistent demands is the protection of apprenticeship. the bricklayers' and carpenters' unions of chicago even secure from their employers instruction for apprentices in school. not much headway in this line, however, has yet been made, and american industry has become abnormal, we might almost say suicidal, or at any rate, non-self-supporting. by extreme division of labor and marvellous application of machinery it makes possible the wholesale employment in factories of the farm laborers of europe and their children, and then depends on europe for the better-trained types of the skilled mechanic, who, on account of the farm laborer, have not been able to learn their trade in america. not only does immigration bring to america the strongest, healthiest, and most energetic and adventurous of the work-people of europe and asia, but those who come work much harder than they did at home. migration tears a man away from the traditions, the routine, the social props on which he has learned to rely, and throws him among strangers upon his own resources. he must swim or drown. at the same time he earns higher wages and eats more nourishing food than he had ever thought within reach of one in his station. his ambition is fired, he is stirred by the new tonic of feeling himself actually rising in the world. he pictures to himself a home of his own, he economizes and saves money to send to his friends and family, or to return to his beloved land a person of importance. watch a gang of italians shovelling dirt under an irish boss, or a sweat-shop of jewish tailors under a small contractor, and you shall see such feverish production of wealth as an american-born citizen would scarcely endure. partly fear, partly hope, make the fresh immigrant the hardest, if not the most intelligent, worker in our industries. =industrial capacities of different races.=--but, however hard one may work, he can only exercise the gifts with which nature has endowed him. whether these gifts are contributed by race or by civilization, we shall inquire when we come to the problems of amalgamation and assimilation. at present we are concerned with the varying industrial gifts and capacities of the various races as they actually exist at the time when immigration, annexation, or conquest takes place. the mental and moral qualities suited to make productive workers depend upon the character of the industry. it is not conceivable that the immigrants of the present day from southern europe and from asia could have succeeded as frontiersmen and pioneers in the settlement of the country. in all europe, asia, and africa there was but one race in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that had the preliminary training necessary to plunge into the wilderness, and in the face of the indian to establish homes and agriculture. this was the english and the scotch-irish. the spaniards and the french were pioneers and adventurers, but they established only trading stations. accustomed to a paternal government they had not, as a people, the self-reliance and capacity for sustained exertion required to push forward as individuals, and to cut themselves off from the support of a government across the ocean. they shrank from the herculean task of clearing the forests, planting crops among the stumps, and living miles away from their neighbors. true, the pioneers had among their number several of german, french, and dutch descent, but these belonged to the second and third generations descended from the immigrants and thrown from the time of childhood among their english-scotch neighbors. the french trappers and explorers are famous, and have left their names on our map. but it was the english race that established itself in america, not because it was first to come, not because of its armies and navies, but because of its agriculture. every farm newly carved out of the wilderness became a permanent foothold, and soon again sent out a continuous colony of sons and daughters to occupy the fertile land. based on this self-reliant, democratic, industrial conquest of the new world the military conquest naturally, inevitably followed. but at the present day the character of industry has entirely changed. the last quarter of the nineteenth century saw the vacant lands finally occupied and the tribe of frontiersmen coming to an end. population now began to recoil upon the east and the cities. this afforded to manufactures and to the mining industries the surplus labor-market so necessary for the continuance of large establishments which to-day need thousands of workmen and to-morrow hundreds. moreover, among the american-born workmen, as well as the english and scotch, are not found that docility, obedience to orders, and patient toil which employers desire where hundreds and thousands are brought like an army under the direction of foremen, superintendents, and managers. employers now turn for their labor supply to those eastern and southern sections of europe which have not hitherto contributed to immigration. the first to draw upon these sources in large numbers were the anthracite coal operators of pennsylvania. in these fields the english, scotch, welsh, and irish miners, during and following the period of the civil war, had effected an organization for the control of wages, and the outrages of a secret society known as the molly maguires gave occasion for the importation of new races unaccustomed to unionism, and incapable, on account of language, of coöperation with english-speaking miners. once introduced in the mining industry, these races rapidly found their way into the unskilled parts of manufactures, into the service of railroads and large contractors. on the construction of the erie canal in , of , workmen, , were unnaturalized italians.[ ] the census of showed that while the foreign-born males were one-fourteenth of the laborers in agriculture, they were three-fourths of the tailors, more than one-half of the cabinet makers, nearly one-half of the miners and quarrymen, tannery workers, marble and stonecutters, more than two-fifths of the boot and shoe-makers and textile workers, one-third of the coopers, iron and steel workers, wood-workers and miscellaneous laborers, one-fourth of the carpenters, painters, and plasterers, and one-fifth of the sawmill workers.[ ] the foreign-born females numbered nearly two-fifths of the female cotton-mill operatives and tailors, one-third of the woollen-mill operatives, one-fourth of the tobacco and silk-mill operatives. on the pacific slope the chinese and japanese immigrants have filled the place occupied by the southeast european in the east and the negro in the south. they were the workmen who built the pacific railroads, and without them it is said that these railroads could not have been constructed until several years after their actual completion. the immigration of the chinese reached its highest figures prior to the exclusion laws of , and since that time has been but an insignificant contribution. in their place have come the japanese, a race whose native land, in proportion to its cultivable area, is more densely populated than any other country in the world. the chinese and japanese are perhaps the most industrious of all races, while the chinese are the most docile. the japanese excel in imitativeness, but are not as reliable as the chinese. neither race, so far as their immigrant representatives are concerned, possesses the originality and ingenuity which characterize the competent american and british mechanic. in the hawaiian islands, where they have enjoyed greater opportunities than elsewhere, they are found to be capable workmen of the skilled trades, provided they are under the direction of white mechanics.[ ] but their largest field of work in hawaii is in the unskilled cultivation of the great sugar plantations. here they have been likened to "a sort of agricultural automaton," and it becomes possible to place them in large numbers under skilled direction, and thus to secure the best results from their docility and industry. in the united states itself the plantation form of agriculture, as distinguished from the domestic form, has always been based on a supply of labor from backward or un-americanized races. this fact has a bearing on the alleged tendency of agriculture toward large farms. ten years ago it seemed that the great "bonanza" farms were destined to displace the small farms, just as the trust displaces the small manufacturer. but it is now recognized that the reverse movement is in progress, and that the small farmer can compete successfully with the great farmer. it has not, however, been pointed out that the question is not merely an economic one and that it depends upon the industrial character of the races engaged in agriculture. the thrifty, hard-working and intelligent american or teutonic farmer is able to economize and purchase his own small farm and compete successfully with the large undertaking. he is even beginning to do this in hawaii since the compulsory labor of his large competitors was abolished.[ ] but the backward, thriftless, and unintelligent races succeed best when employed in gangs on large estates. the cotton and sugar fields of the south with their negro workers have their counterpart in the plantations of hawaii with their chinese and japanese, and in the newly developed sugar-beet fields of nebraska, colorado, and california, with their russians, bohemians, japanese, and mexicans. in the domestic or small form of agriculture the bulk of immigrants from southern and eastern europe are not greatly desired as wage-earners, and they do not succeed as proprietors and tenants because they lack oversight and business ability. where they are located in colonies under favorable auspices the italians have achieved notable success, and in the course of americanization they will doubtless rival older nationalities. but in the immigrant stage they are helpless, and it is the immigrants from northwestern europe, the germans and scandinavians, whose thrift, self-reliance, and intensive agriculture have made them from the start the model farmers of america. the jewish immigrant, particularly, is unfitted for the life of a pioneer. remarkably individualistic in character, his field of enterprise is society, and not the land. of the thirty thousand families sent out from new york by industrial and agricultural removal societies, nine-tenths are located in industry and trade, and the bulk of the remainder, who are placed on farms, succeed by keeping summer boarders. depending on boarders, they neglect agriculture and buy their food-stuff. their largest colony of hoped-for agriculturists, woodbine, new jersey, has become a clothing factory.[ ] yet the factory system, with its discipline and regular hours, is distasteful to the jew's individualism. he prefers the sweat-shop, with its going and coming. if possible, he rises through peddling and merchandising. these are a few of the many illustrative facts which might be set forth to show that the changing character of immigration is made possible by the changing character of industry; and that races wholly incompetent as pioneers and independent proprietors are able to find a place when once manufactures, mines, and railroads have sprung into being, with their captains of industry to guide and supervise their semi-intelligent work. chapter vi labor we have seen that the character of the immigrants for whom a place can be found depends upon the character of the industry. it also depends upon the laws governing property in labor. here the industrial problem widens out into the social problem. there are four variations in the treatment of labor as property in the united states, each of which has had its peculiar effect on the character of immigration, or has grown out of the relations between races. they are slavery, peonage, contract labor, and free labor. under slavery the laborer and his children are compelled by law throughout their lifetime to work for an owner on terms dictated and enforced by him. under peonage the laborer is compelled by law to pay off a debt by means of his labor, and under contract labor he is compelled by law to carry out a contract to work. to enforce peonage and contract labor the offence of "running away" is made punishable by imprisonment at forced labor, or by extension of the period of service. under freedom the law refuses to enforce a contract to work, making this an exception to the sacredness of contracts, and refuses to enforce the payment of a debt by specific service. this leaves to the contractor or creditor the usually empty relief of suing for damages. the significance of these varying degrees of servile, semi-servile, and free labor will be seen in the following discussion of the social relations of the superior and inferior races. in the entire circuit of the globe those races which have developed under a tropical sun are found to be indolent and fickle. from the standpoint of survival of the fittest, such vices are virtues, for severe and continuous exertion under tropical conditions bring prostration and predisposition to disease. therefore, if such races are to adopt that industrious life which is a second nature to races of the temperate zones, it is only through some form of compulsion. the negro could not possibly have found a place in american industry had he come as a free man, and at the present time contract labor and peonage with the crime of "running away" are recognized in varying degrees by the laws of southern states. these statutes have been held unconstitutional by the supreme court,[ ] under an act of congress passed in , but the condition of peonage which they contemplate is considered by many planters as essential to the continuance of the cotton industry. one of them, in southwestern georgia, a graduate of columbia college, with five years of business training in the northern states, is quoted in an interview as follows:[ ]-- "we have two ways of handling our plantations. we rent small sections of forty acres each, and with these go a plough and the mule. in addition, i have about hands who work on wages. these men are paid nine dollars a month, in addition to a fixed rate of food, which amounts to four pounds of meat a week, a certain percentage of vegetables, tobacco, sugar, flour, and some other commodities. "these negroes live on the plantation, are given a roof over their heads, have garden patches, and several other more or less valuable privileges. they invariably come to me for small advances of money. "these advances of money and rations and clothing, although there is not much of the latter, are frequently sufficient to put the negro in debt to us. the minute he finds he is in debt he naturally conceives it to be easier to go to work somewhere else and begin all over again, instead of paying his debts. "now, when a negro runs away and violates his contract, leaving us in the lurch, not only short of his labor, but short of the advances we have made to him in money and goods, what would happen if we depended simply and solely on our right to sue? in the first place, with hands we would have suits before the season is out, and if we won them all we would not be able to collect forty-five cents. "the result is, that in georgia and alabama, and i believe in other states, the law recognizes the right of the planter to reclaim the laborer who has left in violation of his contract, whether he be actually in debt or not. "whether judge jones has declared this law constitutional or not, the planters in the black belt will have to maintain their right to claim their contract labor, or else they will have to go out of the business. under any other system you would find it impossible to get in your cotton, because the negroes at the critical time would simply sit down and refuse to work. when they are well, we compel laborers to go to the field by force. this is the truth, and there is no use lying about it." this reasoning is entirely logical from the business standpoint. if production of wealth is the standard, contracts must be fulfilled and debts must be paid. otherwise capital will not embark in business. but the reasoning does not stop with the negro. once established, the practice spreads to other races. instances are cited of white men held in peonage, negroes holding other negroes, and italians forced to work in a phosphate mine.[ ] it is an easy matter to get working men in debt. many thousand rural justices keeping no records of convictions, hundreds of constables with fees depending on convictions, scores of petty crimes with penalties not usually enforced, contractors and planters eager for labor at the convict's rating of cents a day--neither the negro nor the poor white is safe. immigrants avoid a country with such a record. not only the dread of forced labor for themselves but the dread of competition with the low wages that the forced labor of others implies, keep the immigrants away from the south. the fame of peonage is spread among them before they leave their native land. the business that rests on coerced labor damages the whole community for its own temporary gain. the right to quit work is as sacred for the workman as the right to enforce contracts for the capitalist. it is just as necessary to get energetic labor as it is to get abundant capital to embark in business. by recognizing the right of workmen to violate contracts, the employer learns to content himself with contracts that will not hurt when violated. he learns to appeal to the workman's motive to industry by methods that are not coercive. admitting that the bulk of what is said about the negro's fickleness is true, he nevertheless is indiscriminately maligned. the thousands that are unreliable furnish a cloak for suppressing the hundreds that are industrious. i have made comparisons of the pay-rolls of two gas works in southern cities--the one employing negro stokers at cents an hour, the other whites at cents an hour, and both working hours a day seven days a week. the negroes put in as many hours between pay-days as did the whites, and if they "laid off" after pay-day it is no more than any class of white workmen would do after two weeks of such exhausting work. the negro in southern cities can scarcely hope to rise above cents an hour, and white mechanics have a way of working with negro helpers at cents an hour in order to lift their own wages to cents an hour. white wage-earners and white employers in the south speak of the negroes' efforts to get higher wages in the same words and tones as employers in the north speak of white wage-earners who have organized unions and demanded more pay. a foreman condemned his "niggers" for instability when they were leaving him at cents an hour for a railroad job at - / cents an hour. praising the italians in comparison with the negro, he could not think of paying - / cents an hour for pick-and-shovel work, which italians were said to be getting in another section of the state. the right to quit work is the right to get higher wages. if the higher wages are paid and proper treatment accorded, a process of natural selection ensues. the industrious and steady workmen of all races retain the jobs. the gas company referred to above, by a system of graded pay advancing with years of service, had sorted out a more steady and reliable force of negroes than they could have secured of whites at the rate of wages paid. the test is indeed a severe one where a race has always been looked upon as servile. with high wages regarded as "white man's wages," the process of individual selection does not work out, and the dominant race excuses its resort to whipping, beating, and peonage on the ground of the laziness which its methods of remuneration have not learned to counterbalance. even the industrious italians treated in this way would not be industrious--they would leave for other states. the malay races, to which the filipinos belong, are, like the negroes, careless, thriftless, and disinclined to continuous exertion. in order to induce the javanese to work, the dutch government of java sets aside a certain tract of government land for coffee planting, and compels each head of a household to set out and keep in order a certain number of coffee trees. on private estates in java and in other malay and indian colonies, such as burma, ceylon, british india, where the government does not compel the native to take a contract to work, it nevertheless enforces contracts voluntarily made. in certain provinces of the philippines "the tenants are usually in debt, and the old law which permits the creditor to imprison the debtor for non-payment of debt is still in force.... landowners of a district frequently come together shortly before the crops are sold and agree among themselves how much interest to charge the tenants on their debts. this is for the purpose of charging the highest possible rate and at the same time retain tenants, who then could not leave, finding the same conditions prevailing throughout the district."[ ] in densely populated countries like java and southern india, where the native cannot set up for himself, he has no alternative except to work under these contracts, and this is also true in the more thickly populated districts of the philippine islands. but the case is different in sparsely settled countries like burma, east sumatra, and the greater part of the philippines, where wages are so high that natives are not compelled by necessity to work continuously. "speaking generally," says professor jenks, "the unskilled filipino laborer, while intelligent enough, is careless and thriftless. he in most cases wishes to take two or three days a week, on the average, to celebrate as feast days. in individual cases, where his wages have been increased, he has been known to lessen correspondingly the number of days per month which he would work. his income being sufficient to satisfy his modest needs, he could see no reason why he should toil longer than was necessary to earn his income."[ ] hence in these sparsely settled countries the dutch and english governments have adopted, and professor jenks, in his report to the war department, has recommended a limited use of the system of contract labor, not, however, for the native, but for imported chinese. this system has existed in another of our newly acquired possessions, hawaii, since , where it applied to chinese, japanese, portuguese, and german immigrants, and whence it was abolished by the act of annexation in .[ ] [illustration: filipino governors (from census of the philippine islands)] contract labor of this kind is quite different from the peonage and contract labor of the non-industrial races. it is similar to the indentured service of colonial times, in that the term of each contract is limited to a few years, and the contract is made by way of compensation for advanced expenses of immigration. the object is not, as in the case of slavery and peonage, to compel a shiftless race to work, but it is to develop the country by the introduction of an industrious race. the chinese, after the expiration of their contracts, often become skilled laborers and merchants, and in the latter position their frugality and wiliness make them dangerous neighbors for the native malay and filipino races.[ ] for this reason professor jenks recommends that employers be placed under bonds to return each contract chinese coolie to china at the expiration of the period of contract, not to exceed three years, unless the government gives special permission for renewal of the contract. governor taft, in his report for the year , while advocating a limited employment of chinese contract coolies, said, "the truth is that, from a political standpoint, the unlimited introduction of the chinese into these islands would be a great mistake. i believe the objection on the part of the filipinos to such a course to be entirely logical and justified. the development of the islands by chinamen would be at the expense of the filipino people, and they may very well resent such a suggestion."[ ] governor taft's opinion is strongly supported by the special commissioner of the american federation of labor, who, after inquiries in the district surrounding manila, reports as follows:-- "their reluctance to work, continually harped upon by many employers, is simply the natural reluctance of a progressive people to work for low wages under bad treatment. when wages rise above the level of the barest and poorest necessaries of life, and where treatment is fair, there filipinos are at work in any numbers required."[ ] the situation here is similar to that of the negroes. in order to get two hundred steady workers at high wages it is necessary to try out a thousand or more. but the reports of the philippine commission show that with the process of selection which their engineers can pursue by means of the high wages on government work the results are satisfactory.[ ] "of course," continues mr. rosenberg in his report, "the filipino worker cannot successfully compete--cheap as he can live--with the chinese standard of living, hence the unceasing vilification of the filipino workers by those employers and their following, who, seeing near by the unlimited supply of cheap chinese labor, wish these islands to be thrown open to such labor, not only for the purpose of reducing the small wages of the filipinos, but also to reduce that of the chinese laborers now here. as one employer stated to me, 'we want more chinese, to keep them here for one or two years, then ship them back and get another lot, for the chinese i have here now are becoming too independent and want more pay.'" =free labor.=--the free laborer is not compelled by law to work. then why should he work? why does he work? the answer is found within himself. he wants something that he cannot get without working. though this may seem a trifling question and a self-evident answer, the question and answer are the foundation of all questions of free institutions. for the non-working races and classes or the spasmodic and unreliable workers are the savages, paupers, criminals, idiots, lunatics, drunkards, and the great tribe of exploiters, "grafters," despots, and "leisure classes," who live on the work of others. nearly every question of social pathology may be resolved to this, why does he not work? and nearly every social ill would be cured if the non-workers could be brought voluntarily to work. there are just two grand motives which induce the freeman to work--necessity and ambition. necessity is the desire for quantity, quality, and variety of things to be used. the term is elastic. it is psychological, not material. it includes, of course, the wants of mere animal existence--food, clothing, shelter. but this is a small part. the cost of the mere quantity needed to support life is less than the added cost needed to secure the quality and variety that satisfy the taste and habits. a pig enjoys raw corn, but a man requires corn cake at five times the cost. tastes and habits depend on one's childhood, one's training, one's associations, and kind of work. the necessities of a chinese coolie, italian immigrant, or negro plantation hand are less, and cost less, than those of a skilled mechanic or a college graduate, because his associations have been different, and his present work is different. but necessity goes farther. it includes the wants of the family considered as a unit, and not merely the wants of the single man or woman, else the race would not continue to increase. furthermore, social obligations impose added necessity. compulsory education of children compels parents to support their children instead of living on their wages. laws regulating sanitation and tenements compel the tenant to pay more rent. the necessities of a farm-hand on the estates of italy are less than those of the same hand in the cities of america. ambition is the desire for an improved position for one's self and family--for better quality and greater variety of material things. it demands a style of clothing and living suitable to the improved position aspired to. it demands an education for one's children superior to the minimum set by compulsory schooling. it demands thrift and economy for the sake of independence or the ability to hold on until one's demands are conceded. ambition looks to the future--necessity is based on the past. the negro or the malay works three days and loafs three because three days' wages procure his necessities. the chinaman, or italian, or jewish immigrant works six days and saves the wages of three because the future is vivid to his imagination. with similar necessities one is ambitious, the other is content. the scope and possibility of evoking ambition depend upon the institution of private property. property in human beings suppresses it, unless occasionally a slave is permitted to purchase his freedom. the wage system evokes ambition if the way is open for promotion or for escape by becoming an owner. tenancy is on a still higher level, but most of all, for the masses of men, the ownership of his own small property is the keenest spur to ambition, for it rewards the worker with all of his product. this motive is the surest test of an individual's or a race's future. compare the negro and the italian cotton grower as tenants in the new vocation opening up to the latter. "it is always difficult," says the observant planter, mr. stone,[ ] "to get a negro to plant and properly cultivate the outer edges of his field--the extreme ends of his rows, his ditch banks, etc. the italian is so jealous of the use of every foot for which he pays rent that he will cultivate with a hoe places too small to be worked with a plough, and derive a revenue from spots to which a negro would not give a moment's thought. i have seen them cultivate right down to the water's edge the banks of bayous that had never been touched by the plough. i have seen them walk through their fields and search out every skipped place in every row and carefully put in seed to secure a perfect stand. i have seen them make more cotton per acre than the negro on the adjoining cut, gather it from two to four weeks earlier, and then put in the extra time earning money by picking in the negro's field." but ambition has its penalty. it is equivalent to an increase in the supply of labor. as an ambitious proprietor the increase goes into his permanent property, but the ambitious wage-earner accepts a lower rate of pay. his fellows see the reduction and go still lower. the see-saw continues until wages reach the level of necessities, and there is nothing left for ambition. the jewish sweat-shop is the tragic penalty paid by that ambitious race. in the illinois coal mines the wages were reduced one-third during twelve years of italian and slav immigration. the ambitious races are the industrial races. but their ambition and their industry bring the momentous problem of destructive competition. it might seem that this evil would correct itself--that an increase in the products of one industry would be offset by an increase in other industries; that therefore the increased supply in one would not be forced upon the market at lower prices, but would be exchanged on the same terms as before for the increased supply in others. this is indeed the case in prosperous times. all industries advance together, and the increasing supply of one is merely an increasing demand for others. but for some reason, industries do not always harmoniously advance together. and when the disproportion appears, the workers who are blindly but ambitiously pushing ahead endeavor to overcome, by increasing the quantity of output, what they lose by reducing the price. there is but one immediate and practical remedy--the organization of labor to regulate competition. the method of organization is to do in concert through self-sacrifice what the non-industrial races do individually for self-indulgence; namely, refuse to work. where the one loafs the other strikes. while the necessities of the workers set the minimum below which wages cannot fall, and their physical endurance sets the maximum hours beyond which they cannot work, the labor-union, by means of the strike or the threat to strike, sets a higher minimum of wages and a lower maximum of hours, which leaves room for ambition. eventually the higher wage and the shorter hours become habitual and become a higher level of necessities. gifted individuals may, indeed, rise above the wage-earning class by their own efforts, but labor organization alone can raise the class as a whole. the organization of workmen in labor unions has been more difficult in this than in other free countries, owing to the competition of races. heretofore it has been the easiest possible matter for a manager, apprehensive of agitators in forming a union, to introduce a new race and a new language into his works. indeed, almost the only device and symptom of originality displayed by american employers in disciplining their labor force has been that of playing one race against another. they have, as a rule, been weak in methods of conciliation and feelings of consideration for their employees, as well as in the means of safeguarding life and health, but they have been strong with the weapon "divide and conquer." the number of races they have drawn upon is often amazing. the anthracite mine workers comprise nineteen languages and dialects. the employees of the colorado fuel and iron company belong to thirty-two nationalities and speak twenty-seven languages. such a medley of races offers indeed a disheartening prospect to the union organizer. and therefore when these races finally organize, the change in their moral character must be looked upon as the most significant of the social and industrial revolutions of our time. the united mine workers of america, with , members, is very largely composed of recent immigrants from southern and eastern europe. so with the longshoremen, the united garment workers, and the butcher workmen. these are or have been among the strongest and best disciplined of american labor-unions. the newest races of the past twenty years have been coming long enough to have members who speak the english language and act as interpreters and leaders, and this is essential where the speeches at a union meeting must be translated often into four or five languages before the subject can be voted upon. furthermore, the recruiting area for new races has been nearly exhausted, and the races now coming find their fellow-countrymen already in the unions. in the anthracite coal field i saw a dozen slovaks just arrived from hungary, but persuaded by their unionized precursors not to take the places of strikers. in new york a shipload of italians in time of strike has been taken directly into the union. such a sight would have been unlikely a dozen years ago. the competition of races is the competition of standards of living. the reason the chinaman or the italian can save three days' wages is because wages have been previously fixed by the greater necessities of more advanced races. but competition has no respect for superior races. the race with lowest necessities displaces others. the cotton textile industry of new england was originally operated by the educated sons and daughters of american stock. the irish displaced many of them, then the french canadians completed the displacement; then, when the children of the french had begun to acquire a higher standard, contingents of portuguese, greeks, syrians, poles, and italians entered to prevent a rise, and latterly the scotch-irish from the appalachian mountains came down to the valleys of the south, and with their low wages, long hours, and child labor, set another brake on the standard of living. lastly, italians are beginning to be imported to supplement the "poor whites." branches of the clothing industry in new york began with english and scotch tailors, were then captured by irish and germans, then by russian jews, and lastly by italians, while in boston the portuguese took a share, and in chicago the poles, bohemians, and scandinavians. almost every great manufacturing and mining industry has experienced a similar substitution of races. as rapidly as a race rises in the scale of living, and through organization begins to demand higher wages and resist the pressure of long hours and overexertion, the employers substitute another race and the process is repeated. each race comes from a country lower in the scale than that of the preceding, until finally the ends of the earth have been ransacked in the search for low standards of living combined with patient industriousness. europe has been exhausted, asia has been drawn upon, and there remain but three regions of the temperate zones from which a still lower standard can be expected. these are china, japan, and india. the chinese have been excluded by law, the japanese and koreans are coming in increasing numbers, and the indian coolies remain to be experimented upon. that employers will make strenuous efforts to bring in these last remaining races in the progressive decline of standards, to repeal the chinese prohibitive laws and to prevent additions to these laws, naturally follows from the progress toward higher standards and labor organization already made by the italian and the slav. the trade-union is often represented as an imported and un-american institution. it is true that in some unions the main strength is in the english workmen. but the majority of unionists are immigrants and children of immigrants from countries that know little of unionism. ireland and italy have nothing to compare with the trade-union movement of england, but the irish are the most effective organizers of the american unions, and the italians are becoming the most ardent unionists. most remarkable of all, the individualistic jew from russia, contrary to his race instinct, is joining the unions. the american unions, in fact, grow out of american conditions, and are an american product. although wages are two or three times as high as in his european home, the immigrant is driven by competition and the pressure of employers into a physical exertion which compels him to raise his standard of living in order to have strength to keep at work. he finds also that the law forbids his children to work, and compels him to send them to school to maintain a higher standard and to support his children he must earn more wages. this he can do in no other way than by organizing a union. the movement is of course aided by english-speaking outsiders or "agitators," especially by the irish, but it finds a prompt response in the necessities of the recruits. labor organization is essentially the outcome of american freedom, both as a corrective to the evils of free competition and as an exercise of the privilege of free association. when once moved by the spirit of unionism, the immigrants from low-standard countries are the most dangerous and determined of unionists. they have no obligations, little property, and but meagre necessities that compel them to yield. the bituminous coal miners were on strike four months in and the anthracite mine workers five months in . unionism comes to them as a discovery and a revelation. suddenly to find that men of other races whom they have hated are really brothers, and that their enmity has been encouraged for the profit of a common oppressor, is the most profound awakening of which they are capable. their resentment toward employers who have kept them apart, their devotion to their new-found brothers, are terrible and pathetic. with their emotional temperament, unionism becomes not merely a fight for wages but a religious crusade. it is in the nature of retribution that, after bringing to this country all the industrial races of europe and asia in the effort to break down labor organizations, these races should so soon have wiped out race antagonism and, joining together in the most powerful of labor-unions, have wrenched from their employers the greatest advances in wages. there is but one thing that stands in the way of complete unionization in many of the industries; namely, a flood of immigration too great for assimilation. with nearly a million immigrants a year the pressure upon unions seems almost resistless. a few of the unions which control the trade, like the mine workers and longshoremen, with high initiation fees and severe terms of admission, are able to protect themselves by virtue of strength already gained. but in the coast states and on miscellaneous labor this strategic advantage does not exist, and the standards are set by the newest immigrants. [illustration: governor johnson of minnesota.--swede (from _the world to-day_)] =profits and wages.=--we have now stated at some length in this and the preceding chapter the two standpoints from which the immigration of industrial races is viewed. one standpoint is that of the production of wealth, the other the distribution of wealth. one is the development of our natural resources, the other is the elevation of our working population. if we inquire somewhat more critically and take into account all of the circumstances, we shall find that the motives animating this difference of policy are not really the above distinction between production and distribution, but the distinction between two opposing interests in distribution; namely, profits and wages. unfortunately it is too readily assumed that whatever increases profits does so by increasing production. as a matter of fact it is only secondarily the production of wealth and development of resources that is sought by one of the interests concerned--it is primarily increase of profits at the expense of wages. cheap labor, it is asserted, is needed to develop the less productive resources of the country--what the economists call the margin of production. it is needed to develop the less productive industries, like sugar beet, and the less productive branches of other industries, like the construction of railways in undeveloped regions or the reconstruction of railways in older regions, or the extension of a coal mine into the narrow veins, and so on. without cheap labor these marginal resources, it is asserted, could not profitably be exploited, and would therefore not be developed. this argument, within limits, is undoubtedly true, but it overlooks the part played by machinery and inventions where wages are high. the cigar-making machine cannot extensively be introduced on the pacific coast because chinese cheap labor makes the same cigars at less cost than the machines. high wages stimulate the invention and use of machinery and scientific processes, and it is machinery and science, more than mere hand labor, on which reliance must be placed to develop the natural resources of a country. but machinery and science cannot be as quickly introduced as cheap immigrant labor. machinery requires accumulation of capital in advance of production, but labor requires only the payment of daily wages in the course of production. consequently in the haste to get profits the immigrant is more desired than machinery. but excessive profits secured in this way bring reaction and a period of business depression which check the production of wealth even more than the period of prosperity has stimulated production. consider the extreme vacillations of prosperity and depression which characterize american industry. in a period of prosperity the prices of commodities rise rapidly, but the wages of labor, especially unorganized labor, follow slowly, and do not rise proportionately as high as prices. this means an enormous increase in profits and production of commodities. but commodities are produced to be sold, and if the market falls off, then production comes to a standstill with what is known as "overproduction." now, wage-earners are the mass of consumers. if their wages do not rise in proportion to prices and profits, they cannot purchase as large a proportion of the country's products as they did before the period of prosperity began. "overproduction" is mainly the "underconsumption" of wage-earners. immigration intensifies this fatal cycle of "booms" and "depressions." a natural increase in population by excess of births over deaths, continues at practically the same rate year after year, in good times and bad times, but an artificial increase through immigration falls off in hard times and becomes excessive in good times. thus, in , at the lowest point of depression, the number of immigrants was , , but three years later, in the "boom" culminating in , it rose to , . in nine years following the depression of the number increased from , to , , . even this does not tell the story complete, for the effects of free immigration are intensified by the opposite policy of a protective tariff on imports. while labor is admitted practically free, the products of labor are taxed to prevent free ingress. the following table shows the extreme points in the rise and fall of immigration and imports:-- culminating points of immigration and imports of merchandise =================+=========================+======================= | immigration | imports year ending +----------+----------+--------------+------------ june |prosperity|depression| prosperity | depression -----------------+----------+----------+--------------+------------ | , | | $ , , | and [ ]| | , | |$ , , | , | | , , | and [ ]| | , | | , , | , | | , , | and [ ]| | , | | , , | , , | | , , , | -----------------+----------+----------+--------------+------------ by comparing the two sets of columns it will be seen that, owing to the protective tariff, the imports of merchandise vary but slightly in periods of prosperity and depression compared with the variation in number of immigrants. thus in the recent period of prosperity, the imports increased twofold above the lowest point of the preceding depression, while the number of immigrants increased nearly fivefold. the swell of immigration in the above-mentioned periods of prosperity increases the supply of labor, but the protective tariff prevents a similar increase in the supply of products. thus immigration and the tariff together prevent wages from rising with the rise in prices of commodities and cost of living. this permits profits to increase more than wages, to be followed by overproduction and stoppage of business. furthermore, when once the flow of immigrants is stimulated it continues for some time after the pinnacle of prosperity has been reached. in the boom met a check at the beginning of the year, but the number of immigrants continued to increase during the summer and fall at the rate of , per month in excess of the number during the high period of prosperity in . this makes it possible for great corporations to continue their investments by means of cheap labor beyond the probable demands of the country, with the result of overproduction, loss of profits, inability to pay fixed charges, and consequent panics. thus it is that immigration, instead of increasing the production of wealth by a steady, healthful growth, joins with other causes to stimulate the feverish overproduction, with its inevitable collapse, that has characterized the industry of america more than that of any other country. it helps to create fortunes during a period of speculation, and intensifies the reaction during a period of stagnation. chapter vii city life, crime, and poverty statistics are considered by many people as dry and uninteresting, and the fact that a book is statistical is a warning that it should not be read, or that the statistical paragraphs should be passed over for the narrative and historical parts. this is a dilettante and lazy attitude to take, and especially so in the study of social subjects, for in these subjects it is only statistics that tell us the true proportions and relative importance of our facts. the study of statistics leads us to a study of social causes and forces, and when we see that in the year three per cent of our population lived in cities, and in the year thirty-three per cent lived in cities of population and over, we are aroused to the importance of making a serious inquiry into the reasons for this growth of cities and the effects of city life on the future of democracy and the welfare of the nation. more impressive to the student of race problems becomes the inquiry when we realize that while one-fifth of our entire population lives in the thirty-eight cities of over , population, two-fifths of our foreign-born population, one-third of our native offspring of foreign parents, and only one-tenth of our people of native parentage live in such cities. that is to say, the proportion of the foreign-born in great cities is four times as great, and the proportion of the children of foreign parents is three and one-third times as great as that of the colonial and older native stock. these proportions appear in the accompanying table and the upper diagram on page . population in the united states and large cities: =======================+===================+=========================== | | in cities of , | in united states | population and over +-----------+-------+------------+-------------- total for united states| | | | per cent of | | per | | total of | number | cent | number | corresponding | | | | class -----------------------+-----------+-------+------------+-------------- population | , , | . | , , | . native white, native | | | | parents | , , | . | , , | . native white, foreign | | | | parents | , , | . | , , | . foreign white | , , | . | , , | . negroes | , , | . | , | . indian and mongolians | , | . | , | . -----------------------+-----------+-------+------------+-------------- if we present the matter in another form in order to show the full extent of foreign influence in our great cities, we have another diagram, which shows that per cent of the population outside, and only per cent of the population within these cities is of native parentage, while per cent of the population outside, and per cent of the population within these cities is of foreign parentage. the census enumeration carries us back only to the parents, but if we had knowledge of the grandparents we should probably find that the immigrant element of the nineteenth century contributed a goodly portion of those set down as of native parentage. [illustration: distribution of population: ] [illustration: percentage of population in cities: ] [illustration: constituents of the population of cities of more than , inhabitants: ] still more significant becomes the comparison when we take each of these cities separately, as is done in the chart reproduced on page from the statistical atlas of the twelfth census. here it appears that the extreme is reached in the textile manufacturing city of fall river, where but per cent of the population is of native extraction, while in the two greatest cities, new york and chicago, the proportion is per cent, and the only large cities with a predominance of the native element are st. joseph, columbus, indianapolis, and kansas city, with denver equally divided. as already stated, grandparents would still further diminish the proportion of native element. if we carry our comparison down to the cities of , population, we shall find that in such cities is one-half of the foreign-born population,[ ] and we shall also see marked differences among the races. at one extreme, three-fourths of those born in russia, mainly jews, live in these principal cities, and at the other extreme, one-fifth of the norwegians. the other scandinavian countries and the welsh and swiss have about one-third, while the english and scotch are two-fifths, germany, austria, bohemia, and poland, one-half to three-fifths, ireland and italy nearly two-thirds. individual cities suggest striking comparisons. in new york, computations based on the census show , persons of german descent, a number nearly equal to the population of hamburg, and larger than the native element in new york ( , ). new york has twice as many irish ( , ) as dublin, two and one-half times as many jews as warsaw, half as many italians as naples, and , to , first and second generations from scotland, hungary, poland, austria, and england.[ ] chicago has nearly as many germans as dresden, one-third as many bohemians as prague, one-half as many irish as belfast, one-half as many scandinavians as stockholm.[ ] the variety of races, too, is astonishing. new york excels babel. a newspaper writer finds in that city sixty-six languages spoken, forty-nine newspapers published in foreign languages, and one school at mulberry bend with children of twenty-nine nationalities. several of the smaller groups live in colonies, like the syrians, greeks, and chinese. but the colonies of the larger groups are reservoirs perpetually filling and flowing.[ ] the influx of population to our cities, the most characteristic and significant movement of the present generation, has additional significance when we classify it according to the motives of those who seek the cities, whether industrial or parasitic. the transformation from agriculture to manufactures and transportation has designated city occupations as the opportunities for quick and speculative accumulation of wealth, and in the cities the energetic, ambitious, and educated classes congregate. from the farms of the american stock the sons leave a humdrum existence for the uncertain but magnificent rewards of industrialism. these become the business men, the heads of great enterprises, and the millionaires whose example hypnotizes the imagination of the farm lads throughout the land. many of them find their level in clerical and professional occupations, but they escape the manual toil which to them is the token of subordination. these manual portions are the peculiar province of the foreign immigrant, and foreign immigration is mainly a movement from the farms of europe to the cities of america. the high wages of the industries and occupations which radiate from american cities are to them the magnet which fortune-seeking is to the american-born. the cities, too, furnish that choice of employers and that easy reliance on charitable and friendly assistance which is so necessary to the indigent laborer looking for work. thus it is that those races of immigrants the least self-reliant or forehanded, like the irish and the italians, seek the cities in greater proportions than those sturdy races like the scandinavians, english, scotch, and germans. the jew, also, coming from the cities of europe, seeks american cities by the very reason of his racial distaste for agriculture, and he finds there in his coreligionists the necessary assistance for a beginning in american livelihood. at this point we gradually pass over from the industrial motives of city influx to the parasitic motives. the united hebrew charities of new york have asserted that one-fourth of the jews of that city are applicants for charity, and the other charitable societies make similar estimates for the population at large. these estimates must certainly be exaggerated, and a careful analysis of their methods of keeping statistics will surely moderate such startling statements, but we must accept them as the judgment of those who have the best means of knowing the conditions of poverty and pauperism in the metropolis. however exaggerated, they indicate an alarming extent of abject penury brought on by immigration, for it is mainly the immigrant and the children of the immigrant who swell the ranks of this indigent element in our great cities. those who are poverty-stricken are not necessarily parasitic, but they occupy that intermediate stage between the industrial and the parasitic classes from which either of these classes may be recruited. if through continued poverty they become truly parasitic, then they pass over to the ranks of the criminal, the pauper, the vicious, the indolent, and the vagrant, who, like the industrial class, seek the cities. the dangerous effects of city life on immigrants and the children of immigrants cannot be too strongly emphasized. this country can absorb millions of all races from europe and can raise them and their descendants to relatively high standards of american citizenship in so far as it can find places for them on the farms. "the land has been our great solvent."[ ] but the cities of this country not only do not raise the immigrants to the same degree of independence, but are themselves dragged down by the parasitic and dependent conditions which they foster among the immigrant element. [illustration: dr. oronhyatekha mohawk indian, late chief of order of foresters] =crime.=--this fact is substantiated by a study of criminal and pauper statistics. great caution is needed in this line of inquiry, especially since the eleventh census in promulgated most erroneous inferences from the statistics compiled under its direction. it was contended by the census authorities that for each million of the foreign-born population there were prisoners, while for each million of the native-born there were only prisoners, thus showing a tendency to criminality of the foreign-born twice as great as that of the white native-born. this inference was possible through oversight of the important fact that prisoners are recruited mainly from adults, and that the proportion of foreign-born adults to the foreign-born population is much greater than that of the native-born adults to the native population. if comparison be made of the number of male prisoners with the number of males of voting age, the proportions are materially different and more accurate, as follows:-- number of male prisoners per million of voting population, (omitting "unknown")[ ] native white, native parents , native white, foreign parents , native white, total , [ ] foreign white , negro , here the foreign-born show actually a lower rate of criminality ( ) than the total native-born ( ). this inference harmonizes with our general observations of the immigrants, namely, that they belong to the industrial classes, and that our immigration laws are designed to exclude criminals. but this analysis brings out a fact far more significant than any yet adverted to; namely, that the native-born children of immigrants show a proportion of criminality ( per million) much greater than that of the foreign-born themselves ( per million), and per cent greater than that of the children of native parents. this significant fact is further brought out, and with it the obverse of the census mistake above referred to, when we examine the census inferences respecting juvenile criminals. the census calculations show that there are juvenile offenders for every million of the native-born population, and only such offenders for every million of the foreign-born population; but if we remember that the proportion of foreign-born children is small, and then proceed to compare the number of boys who are offenders with the number of boys to years of age rather than with the number of persons of all ages, we shall have the following results, confining our attention to the north atlantic states, where juvenile reformatories are more liberally provided than in other sections:-- male juvenile offenders per million of male population ten to nineteen years of age, north atlantic states, (omitting "unknown")[ ] native white, native parents , native white, foreign parents , foreign white , colored , this table throws a different light on the situation, for it shows that the tendency towards crime among juveniles, instead of being less for the foreign-born than for the native-born, is nearly twice as great as that of the children of american parentage, and that the tendency among native children of foreign parentage ( per million) is more than twice as great as that among children of american parents ( per million). this amazing criminality of the children of immigrants is almost wholly a product of city life, and it follows directly upon the incapacity of immigrant parents to control their children under city conditions. the boys, especially, at an early age lose respect for their parents, who cannot talk the language of the community, and who are ignorant and helpless in the whirl of the struggle for existence, and are shut up during the daytime in shops and factories. on the streets and alleys, in their gangs and in the schools, the children evade parental discipline, and for them the home is practically non-existent. says a well-informed student of race problems in new york,[ ] "example after example might be given of tenement-house families in which the parents--industrious peasant laborers--have found themselves disgraced by idle and vicious grown sons and daughters. cases taken from the records of charitable societies almost at random show these facts again and again." even the russian jew, more devoted and self-sacrificing in the training of his children than any other race of immigrants, sees them soon earning more money than their parents and breaking away from the discipline of centuries. far different is it with those foreigners who settle in country districts where their children are under their constant oversight, and while the youngsters are learning the ways of america they are also held by their parents to industrious habits. children of such immigrants become substantial citizens, while children of the same race brought up in the cities become a recruiting constituency for hoodlums, vagabonds, and criminals. the reader must have observed in the preceding statistical estimates the startling preëminence of the negro in the ranks of criminals. his proportion of prisoners for adult males ( , per million) seems to be four times as great as that of the native stock, and more than twice as great as that of foreign parentage, while for boys his portion in the north atlantic states ( , per million) is ten times as great as that of the corresponding native stock, and four times as great as that of foreign parentage. the negro perhaps suffers by way of discrimination in the number of arrests and convictions compared with the whites, yet it is significant that in proportion to total numbers the negro prisoners in the northern states are nearly twice as many as in the southern states. here, again, city life works its degenerating effects, for the northern negroes are congregated mainly in towns and cities, while the southern negroes remain in the country. did space permit, it would prove an interesting quest to follow the several races through the various classes of crime, noticing the relative seriousness of their offences, and paying attention to the female offenders. only one class of offences can here be noted in detail; namely, that of public intoxication. although classed as a crime, this offence borders on pauperism and the mental diseases, and its extreme prevalence indicates that the race in question is not overcoming the degenerating effects of competition and city life. statistics from massachusetts seem to show that drunkenness prevails to the greatest extent in the order of preëminence among the irish, welsh, english, and scotch, and least among the portuguese, italians, germans, poles, and jews. the italians owe their prominence in the lists of prisoners to their crimes of violence, and very slightly to intoxication, though the latter is increasing among them. in the southern states the ravages of drink among the negroes have been so severe and accompanied with such outbreaks of violence that the policy of prohibition of the liquor traffic has been carried farther than in any other section of the country. probably three-fourths of the southern negroes live in prohibition counties, and were it not for the paternal restrictions imposed by such laws, the downward course of the negro race would doubtless have outrun considerably the speed it has actually attained. besides the crimes which spring from racial tendencies, there is a peculiar class of crimes springing largely from race prejudice and hatred. these are lynchings and mob violence. the united states presents the paradox of a nation where respect for law and constitutional forms has won most signal triumphs, yet where concerted violations of law have been most widespread. by a queer inversion of thought, a crime committed jointly by many is not a crime, but a vindication of justice, just as a crime committed by authority of a nation is not a crime, but a virtue. such crimes have not been continuous, but have arisen at times out of acute racial antagonisms. the knownothing agitation of to , which prevailed among religious and patriotic americans, was directed against the newly arrived flood of immigrants from europe and asia, and was marked by a state of lawlessness and mob rule such as had never before existed, especially in the cities of boston, new york, pittsburg, cincinnati, louisville, and baltimore.[ ] these subsided or changed their object under the oncoming slavery crisis, and the civil war itself was a grand resort to violence by the south on a question of race domination. beginning again with the kuklux and white-cap uprisings in the seventies, mob rule drove the negroes back to a condition of subordination, but the lawless spirit then engendered has continued to show itself in the annual lynching of fifty to one hundred and fifty negroes suspected or convicted of the more heinous crimes.[ ] nor has this crime of the mob been restricted to the south, but it has spread to the north, and has become almost the accepted code of procedure throughout the land wherever negroes are heinously accused. in the northern instances this vengeance of the mob is sometimes wreaked on the entire race, for in the north the negro is more assertive, and defends his accused brother. but in the south the mob usually, though not always, stops with vengeance on the individual guilty, or supposedly guilty, since the race in general is already cowed. other races suffer at the hands of mobs, such as the chinese in wyoming and california at the hands of american mine workers, italians in louisiana and california at the hands of citizens and laborers, slovaks and poles in latimer, pennsylvania, at the hands of a mob militia. with the rise of organized labor these race riots and militia shootings increased in number, often growing out of the efforts of older races of workmen to drive newer and backward races from their jobs, or the efforts of employers to destroy newly formed unions of these immigrant races. many strikes are accompanied by an incipient race war where employers are endeavoring to make substitution, one race for another, of irish, germans, native whites, italians, negroes, poles, and so on. even the long series of crimes against the indians, to which the term "a century of dishonor" seems to have attached itself without protest, must be looked upon as the mob spirit of a superior race bent on despoiling a despised and inferior race. that the frenzied spirit of the mob, whether in strikes, panicky militia, indian slaughter, or civil war, should so often have blackened the face of a nation sincerely dedicated to law and order is one of the penalties paid for experimenting on a problem of political and economic equality with material marked by extreme racial inequality. =poverty and pauperism.=--prior to year the laws of the united states imposed no prohibition upon the immigration of paupers from foreign countries, and not until the federal government took from the states the administration of the law in did the prohibitions of the existing law become reasonably effective. since that year there have been annually debarred, as likely to become public charges, to arrivals, the latter number being debarred in the year . in addition to those debarred at landing, there have been annually returned within one to three years after landing, to immigrants, many of whom had meantime become public charges. from these statements it will be seen that, prior to , it was possible and quite probable that many thousand paupers and prospective paupers were admitted by the immigration authorities, and consequently the proportion of paupers among the foreign-born should appear larger than it would in later years. in the earlier years systematic arrangements were in force in foreign countries, especially great britain, to assist in the deportation of paupers to the united states, and therefore it is not surprising that, apart from race characteristics, there should have come to this country larger numbers of irish paupers than those from any other nationality. since these exportations have been stopped, it is not so much the actual pauper as the prospective pauper who gets admission. per cent of the paupers in almshouses have been in this country ten years or more, showing that the exclusion laws are still defective, in that large numbers of poor physique are admitted. taking the census reports for , and confining our attention to the north atlantic states, where children are generally provided for in separate establishments, we are able to compute the following as the relative extent of pauperism among males:-- male paupers in almshouses per million voting population, north atlantic states, . native white, native parents , native white, foreign parents , foreign white , colored , here we see the counterpart of the estimates on crime, for the natives of foreign parentage show a smaller proportion of paupers than the natives of native parentage, while the foreign-born themselves show more than double the relative amount of pauperism of the native element, and the colored paupers are nearly twice the native stock. the census bureau also furnishes computations showing the contributions of the different races and nationalities to the insane asylums and benevolent institutions.[ ] in general it appears that the foreign-born and the negroes exceed the native classes in their burden on the public. a report of the department of labor of great value and significance, incidentally bearing on this subject, shows for the italians in chicago their industrial and social conditions. according to this report the average earnings of italians in that city in while at work were $ . per week for men and $ . per week for women, and the average time unemployed by the wage-earning element was over seven months. in another report of the department of labor it appears that the slum population of the cities of baltimore, chicago, new york, and philadelphia in was unemployed three months each year. with wages one dollar a day, and employment only five months during the year, it is marvellous that the italians of chicago, during the late period of depression, were not thrown in great numbers upon public relief. yet, with the strict administration of the exclusion laws leading to the deportation of over italians a year as liable to become public charges, it is likely that the immigrants of that race, although low in physique, poverty, and standards of living, are fairly well screened of actual paupers. chapter viii politics american democracy was ushered in on a theory of equality. and no word has been more strangely used and abused. there is the monarchical idea of equality, and mr. mallock begs the question when he gives the title "aristocracy and evolution" to a book on the necessary part played by great men. doubtless, in greek, aristocracy means "government by the best," but in history it means government by the privilege of birth and landed property. democracy may be in philology "government by the mob," but in politics and industry it has been opportunity for great men without blood or property. mr. münsterberg, too, sees the breakdown of american democracy and the reaction towards aristocracy in the prominence of civil-service reform, the preëminence conceded to business ability, the deference to wealth, and the conquest of the philippines.[ ] but civil-service reform is only a device for opening the door to merit that has been shut by privilege. in england it was the means by which the mercantile classes broke into the offices preëmpted by the younger sons of aristocracy.[ ] in america it is an awkward means of admitting ability wherever found to positions seized upon by political usurpers. it appealed to the american democracy only when its advocates learned to call it, not "civil-service reform," but "the merit system." as for the astonishing power of mere wealth in american affairs the testimony of another english observer is based on wider observation when he says, "even the tyranny of trusts is not to be compared with the tyranny of landlordism; for the one is felt to be merely an unhappy and (it is hoped) temporary aberration of well-meant social machinery, while the other seems bred in the very bone of the national existence."[ ] a feeling of disappointment holds true of the conquest and treatment of the philippines. that a war waged out of sympathy for an oppressed island nearby should have shaken down an unnoticed archipelago across the ocean was taken in childlike glee as the unexpected reward of virtue. but serious thinking has followed on seeing that these islands have added another race problem to the many that have thwarted democracy. only a plutocracy sprung from race divisions at home could profit by race-subjection abroad, and the only alternative to race-subjection is equal representation in congress. but to admit another race to partnership without the hope of assimilation is to reject experience. independence or cession to japan is the self-preservation of american democracy. another idea of equality is the socialist idea. infatuated by an "economic interpretation of history," they overlook the racial interpretation. permitting and encouraging plutocracy, they hope to see the dispossessed masses take possession when conditions become intolerable. but the "masses" would not be equal to the task. privileged wealth knows too well how to buy up or promote their leaders, how to weaken them by internal dissensions, how to set race against race. most of all, the inexperienced despotism of the masses is worse than the smooth despotism of wealth. the government of the south by the negro, the government of san francisco by "labor," fell into the hands of the "carpet-bagger" and the "boss." once in power, internal strife and jealousy, struggle for office, or racial antagonism disrupt the rulers, and a reaction throws them back more helpless than before. men are not equal, neither are races or classes equal. true equality comes through equal opportunity. if individuals go forward, their race or class is elevated. they become spokesmen, defenders, examples. no race or class can rise without its own leaders. if they get admitted on equal terms with other leaders, whether it be in the councils of the church, the law-making bodies of the city, state, and nation, or the wage conferences of employers, they then can command the hearing which their abilities justify. they secure for their followers the equal opportunity to which they are entitled. this is exactly the political problem that grows out of the presence of races and immigrants. with these admitted to the suffrage on the basis of mere manhood inspired by a generosity unknown to the people of any other land, the machinery of representative government inherited from england does not, for some reason, permit the free choice of leaders. the difficulties may be seen in cities where the system first broke down. a variety of races and nationalities living in the same ward are asked to elect aldermen and other officers by majority vote. no one nationality has a majority, but each sets up its list of candidates. the nationality with a mere plurality elects all of its candidates, and the other nationalities--a majority of the voters--are unrepresented. this is an extreme case, and has not often been allowed to happen. but the only means of preventing it is the "ward boss." the boss emerges from the situation as inevitably as the survival of the fittest. and the fittest is the irishman. the irishman has above all races the mixture of ingenuity, firmness, human sympathy, comradeship, and daring that makes him the amalgamator of races. he conciliates them all by nominating a ticket on which the offices are shrewdly distributed; and out of the babel his "slate" gets the majority. the boss's problem is not an easy one. his ward may contain business men on the hill and negroes along the canal. to nominate a business man would lose the negro vote--to nominate a negro would lose the business vote. he selects a nondescript somewhere between, and discards him for another at the next election. the representative becomes a tool in the hands of the boss. the boss sells his power to corporations, franchise speculators, and law-evaders. representative democracy becomes bossocracy in the service of plutocracy. the ward system worked well when the suffrage was limited. then the business men elected their business man unimpeded. but a system devised for restricted suffrage breaks down under universal suffrage. could the ward lines be abolished, could the business men come together regardless of residence and elect their choice without the need of a majority vote, could the negroes and other races and classes do the same, then each would be truly represented by their natural leaders. so it is, not only in cities, but in county, state, and nation. universal suffrage, clannish races, social classes, diversified interests, seem to explain and justify the presence of the party "machine" and its boss. otherwise races, classes, and interests are in helpless conflict and anarchy. but the true explanation is an obsolete ward and district system of plurality representation adopted when but one race, class, or interest had the suffrage. forms of government are the essence of government, notwithstanding the poet. an aristocratic form with a democratic suffrage is a plutocratic government. belgium and switzerland have shown that a democratic form is possible and practicable. proportional representation instead of district representation is the corollary of universal suffrage which those countries have worked out as a model for others.[ ] the model is peculiarly adapted to a country of manifold nationalities, interests, and classes. races and immigrants in america have not disproved democracy--they have proved the need of more democracy. this is seen also in the distinction between men and measures. it often has been noted that in american elections the voters are more interested in voting for candidates than they are in voting on issues. the candidate arouses a personal and concrete interest--the issue is abstract and complicated. the candidate calls out a full vote--the issue is decided by a partial vote. this difference is partly the result of organization. the candidate has a political party, campaign funds, and personal workers to bring out the vote. the issue has only its merits and demerits. equally important under american conditions is the race or nationality of the candidate. this feature is often concealed by the ingenuity of political managers in nominating a ticket on which the several nationalities are "recognized." but with the recent progress of the movement to abolish party conventions and to nominate candidates directly at the primaries the racial prejudices of the voters show themselves. the nationalities line up for their own nationality, and the political and economic issues are thrown in the background. it is different when they vote on the issues directly. the vital questions of politics, industry, corporations, and monopoly which menace the country, unless rightly answered, cut across the lines of nationality. the german farmer, manufacturer, wage-earner, merchant, capitalist, and monopolist may all unite to elect a popular german to office, but they do not unite to give a corporation a monopoly. the same is true of other nationalities. wherever the referendum has been fairly tested, in chicago, detroit, oregon, and elsewhere, the sound judgment of all races has prevailed over bias, prejudice, or racial jealousy. there none can claim preëminence, for all have shown their share of patriotism, intelligence, and regard for equal rights. by an automatic self-disfranchisement the ignorant, the corrupt, and the indifferent of all races eliminate themselves by failing to vote. instead of being dismissed on the ground that voters care mainly for men and less for measures, the referendum should be adopted on the ground that it permits those interested in measures to decide the question. those who are not interested enough to vote do thereby proclaim that they are satisfied whichever side wins. the initiative and referendum are, above all other forms of government, the specific remedy for the ills of universal suffrage and conflicting nationalities. race antagonism springs from personalities, race coalescence from community of interest. a vote for candidates intensifies antagonism--a vote on measures promotes community. there are, indeed, some kinds of measures which stir up race antagonism. but the keenest of these have happily been eliminated. more intense than any other source of discord is religious belief. religious differences in america are not so much theological as racial in character. the judaism of the jew, the protestantism of the british and colonial american, the lutheranism of the german, the roman catholicism of the irish, italian, and slav, the greek catholicism of other slavs, all testify to the history and psychology of races. far-sighted indeed were our fathers who separated church and state. were the people taxed to support religion, every election would be a contest of races. all other questions would be subordinate, and democracy impossible. but with religion relegated to private judgment, each race is free to cultivate at will that one of its own peculiarities most fanatically adhered to, but most repellent to other races, while uniting with the others on what is most essential to democracy. religious freedom is more than a private right--it is an american necessity. [illustration: chinese students, honolulu (from _the independent_)] another class of measures running partly along race lines are sumptuary laws, especially those regulating saloons and sunday observance. in the southern states saloon prohibition is largely a race discrimination and a race protection. in the north it often is american puritanism of the country against european liberalism of the cities. here the referendum shows itself as the conciliator of nationalities. upon no other issue has the popular vote been so generally resorted to. this issue comes close to the habits and passions of the masses. it takes precedence of all others except religion, but cannot be evaded like religion. if legislative bodies and executive officials decide the question, then the german or the irishman adds to his zeal for the election of a conationalist his thirst for the election of a candidate with habits like his own. but when left to a popular vote, the saloon question is separated from the choice of candidates, and other issues come forward. a majority vote, too, pacifies the minority of all races, where the act of a legislative body leaves the suspicion of unfair advantage taken by unrepresentative politicians. by the exigencies of the situation the referendum has been invoked to take both the saloon problem and its share of the race problem "out of politics." the lesson is applicable wherever race or nationality conflicts with democracy. with questions of religious belief eliminated by the constitution, and questions of personal habits eliminated by the referendum, other questions of race antagonism will be eliminated by the initiative and the referendum.[ ] =suffrage.=--the climax of liberality in donating the suffrage to all races and conditions was reached with the fifteenth amendment in . at that time not only had the negro been enfranchised; but nearly a score of western and southern states and territories had enfranchised the alien. so liberal were these states in welcoming the immigrant that they allowed him to vote as soon as he declared his intention to take out naturalization papers. this declaration, under the federal law, is made at least two years before the papers are granted, and it may be made as soon as the immigrant has landed. thus in some of those states he could vote as soon as he acquired a legal residence, that is, four or four and one-half years before he acquired citizenship. several of these states have recently changed these laws, but there remain nine that continue to accept the alien as a voter. in the eastern states such generosity was not granted by law but was practised by fraud. naturalization papers are issued by federal courts and by state courts of record. the law gives the judge much discretion, for he is required to refuse the certificate if he is not satisfied that the alien is of good moral character, attached to the constitution, and well disposed. but so careless or crowded are the judges that seldom have they examined the applicants. indeed the political managers have had the option of judges and could take their immigrants to the court that would shut its eyes. many thousands of fraudulent papers have been secured in this way, beginning at the very time when the naturalization law was enacted in , but increasing enormously during the past forty years.[ ] finally, in , congress enacted a law giving to the bureau of immigration control over naturalization. the object is to bring all of the courts under a uniform practice, to provide complete records and means of identification, to establish publicity, to enable the government to appear in court and resist fraudulent naturalization, and to impose severe penalties.[ ] the law also adds something to the qualifications required of the alien. he must not be an anarchist or a polygamist, nor a believer of such doctrines; he must be able to speak the english language, and must intend to reside permanently in the united states.[ ] the language restriction affects but few, since in only . per cent of the naturalized foreign-born males of voting age could not speak english.[ ] the intention of permanent residence, as well as the entire measure, is designed to remove the abuse of foreigners' acquiring citizenship in order to return to their native land and defy their rightful government. on the administrative side this law is of great significance. it marks a serious beginning on the part of the federal government of protecting the citizenship that a generation before it had so liberally bestowed. there are certain races which by law are prohibited from naturalization. for nearly seventy years the law on the subject enacted in admitted to citizenship only free white persons. this was amended in to admit "aliens of african nationality and persons of african descent." but other colored races were not admitted, so that the chinese, japanese, or malay immigrant has never been eligible to citizenship. his children, however, born in this country are citizens, and cannot be excluded from voting on account of race or color. indians living in tribes are foreigners, but if they recognize allegiance by paying taxes or dividing up their land in severalty they are citizens and voters. of the immigrant races eligible to citizenship their importance as possible voters is greater than their importance in the population. this is because men and boys come in greater numbers than women and children. ten million foreign-born population furnishes , , males of voting age, but , , native population furnishes only , , males of voting age. in other words, one-half of the foreign-born, and only one-fourth of the native-born, are potential voters. but not all of the potential voters are actual voters. with a grand total in the year of , , of the proper sex and age, only , , went to the polls. the ratio is five out of seven. two million negroes were excluded, and , , foreign-born had not yet naturalized. this leaves , , natives and foreign-born who might have voted but did not. the foreigner who takes out his citizenship papers does it mainly to vote. two-thirds of them had done so or declared their intention in .[ ] probably the proportion of native whites who did not vote was per cent of their total number, and the proportion of foreign-born who did not, or could not, was over per cent. but this proportion differs greatly among the several races. it is not so much a difference in willingness as a difference in opportunity. five years are required for naturalization, and while per cent of those who have been here six to nine years have not declared their intention nor taken out their papers, only per cent of those who have been here twenty years retain their allegiance to foreign governments.[ ] this increases relatively the political weight of the teutonic and celtic races which are oldest in point of immigration, and reduces relatively the weight of the italian, slav, and jewish races. the figures below make this quite plain. the table shows the proportion of foreign-born who remain aliens, in the sense that they have neither taken out citizenship papers nor declared their intention of doing so. only to per cent of the foreigners from northwestern europe are aliens, compared with to per cent of those from eastern and southern europe. in course of time these differences will diminish, and the italian and slav will approach the irishman and german in their share of american suffrage:-- per cent of aliens among foreign-born males of voting age[ ] wales . germany . norway . ireland . denmark . holland . sweden . scotland . bohemia . england . canada, english . russia (mainly jews) . canada, french . finland . austria (largely slavs) . portugal . italy . hungary (mainly slavs) . greece . austria, poland . the right to vote is not "inalienable," neither is the right to life or liberty. governments give them, refuse them, and take them away. in america this means the state governments. the federal government only declares that the states must follow the "due process of law," and not discriminate on account of race, religion, or servitude. in allowing the right to vote they may and do discriminate on other grounds, such as morals, illiteracy, intelligence, property, and sex. this may result in race or immigrant discrimination, and does so in the case of illiteracy and intelligence. after the irish immigration of the forties, connecticut in and massachusetts in refused thenceforth to enfranchise those who could not read the constitution. since six other northern and western states--wyoming, maine, california, washington, delaware, and new hampshire, in the order named--have erected barriers against those who cannot read or write the english language or the constitution.[ ] six southern states have done the same, but one of them, mississippi, has added another permanent barrier,--intelligence. this is supposed to be measured by ability to "understand" the constitution as read by a white man. southern states have also added vagrancy, poll tax, and property clauses even more exclusive than reading and writing.[ ] the federal courts have refused to interfere because these restrictions in their legal form bear alike on white and black. if in practice they bear unequally, that is a matter for the state courts.[ ] to take away the suffrage from many of those who enjoy it is peacefully impossible under our system. but voters who hold fast to the privilege for themselves may be induced to deny it to the next generation. it was in this way usually that the foregoing restrictions were introduced. massachusetts set the example by retaining all who could vote when the test was adopted, and making the exclusion apply only to those who came after. the southern states did the same by "grandfather" and "understanding" clauses. by either method, in course of time, the favored voters disappear by death or removal, and the restrictions apply in full to the succeeding generation.[ ] the effect of the educational test on the suffrage of the foreign-born is not as great as might be supposed. naturalization itself is almost an educational test. only . per cent of the naturalized foreigners are illiterate, but per cent of those who remain aliens are unable to read. in boston only per cent are excluded from voting through inability to read english, although the corresponding aliens are per cent. probably the educational qualification in massachusetts affects these proportions by lessening the inducement to naturalize, but in chicago and new york, where that qualification is not required, scarcely more than per cent of those who get naturalized would be unable to vote under such a law, compared with less than per cent of the native voters.[ ] in the country at large the disproportion is not so great. five and eight-tenths per cent of the sons of native parents would be excluded by an educational test against . per cent of the naturalized foreigners, and only per cent of the native sons of foreigners. in the several southern states the test, if equally applied, will exclude to per cent of the white voters and to per cent of the colored voters.[ ] in a southern city like memphis it would exclude per cent of the white and per cent of the colored. tested by the standards of democracy, the ability to read and write the english language is a proper qualification. it is perhaps the maximum that can be required, for to test the ability to understand what is read and written is to open the door to partisanship and race discrimination. yet it is intelligence that makes the suffrage an instrument of protection, and it is not a denial of rights to refuse such an instrument to one who injures himself with it. the literacy qualification is one that can be acquired by effort. other tests, especially the property qualification, are an assertion of inequality. yet it is not strange that with the corrupt and inefficient governments that have accompanied universal suffrage there should have occurred a reaction. this has not always expressed itself in the policy of restricting the suffrage, for that can with difficulty be accomplished. it has shown itself rather in withdrawing government as far as possible from the control of the voters. the so-called "business theory" which has so generally been applied to the reform of city governments has converted the city as far as possible to the model of a private corporation, with its general manager, the mayor. the city has been denied its proper functions, and these have been turned over to private parties. but this reaction seems to have reached its limit. it is now understood to have been simply the legal recognition of an incipient plutocracy establishing itself under the forms of democracy. the return movement has begun, and the rescue of democracy is sought, as stated above, in forms and functions of government still more democratic. the way plutocracy looks when it has passed the incipient stage may be seen in hawaii.[ ] it is as though we had annexed those islands in order to watch in our own back yard the fruit of excessive immigration. a population of , furnishes , hawaiians, portuguese, and other caucasians. the chinese, japanese, and koreans have , population and no votes. the american contingent is some , souls and votes. the latter represent four classes or interests: the capitalist planters owning two-thirds of the property; superintendents, engineers, and foremen managing the plantation labor; skilled mechanics; small employers, merchants, and farmers. in order to get plantation labor and to keep the supply too large and diversified for concerted wage demands the planters imported contract chinese in place of hawaiians, then japanese, then koreans. as each race rises in standards and independence it leaves the plantations to enter trades, manufactures, and merchandising. it drives out the wage-earners from the less skilled occupations, then from the more skilled, then the small manufacturers, contractors, and merchants. the american middle classes disappear, partly by emigration to california, partly by abandoning business and relying on the values of real estate which rise through the competition of low standards of wages and profits, and partly by attaching themselves to the best-paid positions offered by the planters. in proportion as they move up in the scale through the entrance of immigrants in the lower positions, they transfer their allegiance from democracy to plutocracy. the planters themselves are caught in a circle. the rising values of their land absorb the high tariff on sugar and prevent rising wages if the values are to be kept up. the japanese, with contract labor abolished, have shown a disposition to strike for higher wages. this has led to advances at the expense of profits, and the resulting "scarcity of labor" compels the planters again to ask for contract chinese coolies. immigration is thus only a makeshift remedy for the exactions of unions and the undevelopment of resources. more immigration requires perpetually more and still more, till the resulting plutocracy seeks to save itself by servile labor. a moderate amount of immigrant labor, assimilated and absorbed into the body politic, stimulates industry and progress, but an excessive and indigestible amount leads to the search for coercive remedies and ends in the stagnation of industry. the protective tariff was supposed to build up free american labor, but in hawaii, with unrestricted immigration, it has handed us american plutocracy. chapter ix amalgamation and assimilation a german statistician,[ ] after studying population statistics of the united states and observing the "race suicide" of the native american stock, concludes: "the question of restriction on immigration is not a matter of higher or lower wages, nor a matter of more or less criminals and idiots, but the exclusion of a large part of the immigrants might cost the united states their place among the world powers." exactly the opposite opinion was expressed in by francis a. walker,[ ] the leading american statistician of his time, and superintendent of the censuses of and . he said: "foreign immigration into this country has, from the time it first assumed large proportions, amounted not to a reinforcement of our population, but a replacement of native by foreign stock.... the american shrank from the industrial competition thus thrust upon him. he was unwilling himself to engage in the lowest kind of day labor with these new elements of population; he was even more unwilling to bring sons and daughters into the world to enter into that competition.... the more rapidly foreigners came into the united states, the smaller was the rate of increase, not merely among the native population separately, but throughout the population of the country as a whole," including the descendants of the earlier foreign immigrants. walker's statements of fact, whatever we may say of his explanations, are easily substantiated. from earliest colonial times until the census of the people of the united states multiplied more rapidly than the people of any other modern nation, not excepting the prolific french canadians. the first six censuses, beginning in , show that, without appreciable immigration, the population doubled every twenty years, and had this rate of increase continued until the present time, the descendants of the colonial white and negro stock in the year would have numbered , , instead of the combined colonial, immigrant, and negro total of , , . indeed, if we take the total immigration from to , exceeding , , people, and apply a slightly higher than the average rate of increase from births, we shall find that in the year one-half of the white population is derived from immigrant stock, leaving the other half, or but , , whites, derived from the colonial stock.[ ] this is scarcely more than one-third of the number that should have been expected had the colonial element continued to multiply from to as it had multiplied from to . an interesting corroboration of these speculations is the prediction made in the year , thirty years before the great migration of the nineteenth century, by the mathematician and publicist, elkanah watson.[ ] on the basis of the increase shown in the first three censuses he made computations of the probable population for each census year to , and i have drawn up the following table, showing the actual population compared with his estimates. superintendent walker, in the essay above quoted, uses watson's figures, and points out the remarkable fact that those predictions were within less than one per cent of the actual population until the year , although, meanwhile, there had come nearly , , immigrants whom watson could not have foreseen. thus the population of , notwithstanding access of the millions of immigrants, was only , , or one per cent less than watson had predicted. and the falling off since has been even greater, for, notwithstanding the immigration of , , persons since , the population in was , , , or per cent less than watson's computations. population and immigration ------+------------+---------------+-------------+----------- | population | watson's | watson's | foreign | (census) | estimate | error |immigration | | | |for decade ------+------------+---------------+-------------+----------- | , , | | | | , , | | | , | , , | | | , | , , | , , | - , | , | , , | , , | - , | , | , , | , , | + , | , | , , | , , | - , | , , | , , | , , | + , | , , | , , | , , | + , , | , , | , , | , , | + , , | , , | , , | , , | + , , | , , | , , | , , | + , , | , , ------+------------+---------------+-------------+----------- total immigration - , , ------------------------------------------------------------- this question of the "race suicide" of the american or colonial stock should be regarded as the most fundamental of our social problems, or rather as the most fundamental consequence of our social and industrial institutions. it may be met by exhortation, as when president roosevelt says, "if the men of the nation are not anxious to work in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of families, and if the women do not recognize that the greatest thing for any woman is to be a good wife and mother, why that nation has cause to be alarmed about its future."[ ] the anxiety of president roosevelt is well grounded; but if race suicide is not in itself an original cause, but is the result of other causes, then exhortation will accomplish but little, while the removal or amelioration of the other causes will of itself correct the resulting evil. where, then, shall we look for the causes of race suicide, or, more accurately speaking, for the reduced proportion of children brought into the world? the immediate circumstances consist in postponing the age of marriage, in limiting the number of births after marriage, and in an increase in the proportion of unmarried people. the reasons are almost solely moral and not physical. those who are ambitious and studious, who strive to reach a better position in the world for themselves and their children, and who have not inherited wealth, will generally postpone marriage until they have educated themselves, or accumulated property, or secured a permanent position. they will then not bring into the world a larger number of children than they can provide for on the basis of the standing which they themselves have attained; for observation shows that those who marry early have large families, and are generally kept on a lower station in life. the real problem, therefore, with this class of people, is the opportunities for earning a living. in the earlier days, when the young couple could take up vacant land, and farming was the goal of all, a large family and the coöperation of wife and children were a help rather than a hindrance. to-day the couple, unless the husband has a superior position, must go together to the factory or mill, and the children are a burden until they reach the wage-earning age. furthermore, wage-earning is uncertain, factories shut down, and the man with a large family is thrown upon his friends or charity. to admonish people living under these conditions to go forth and multiply is to advise the cure of race suicide by race deterioration. [illustration: faculty of tuskegee institute (from _world's work_)] curiously enough, these observations apply with even greater force to the second generation of immigrants than to the native stock, for among the daughters of the foreign-born only per cent of those aged to years are married, while among daughters of native parents per cent are married; and for the men of to only . per cent of the native sons of foreigners are married and . per cent of the sons of natives.[ ] these figures sustain what can be observed in many large cities, that the races of immigrants who came to this country twenty-five or more years ago are shrinking from competition with the new races from southern europe. boston, for example, with its large irish immigration beginning two generations ago, shows a similar disproportion. of the american daughters of foreign parents to years of age, only per cent are married, but of the daughters of native parents per cent are married; of the sons of foreign parents to years of age, only per cent are married, but of the sons of native parents per cent are married. the contrast with the immigrants themselves is striking. in boston, per cent of the foreign-born women aged to are married, and per cent of the foreign-born men aged to .[ ] in other words, the early marriages of immigrant men and women are nearly twice as many as those of the american-born sons and daughters of immigrants, and only one-third more than those of the sons and daughters of native stock. with such a showing as this it would seem that our "place among the world powers" depends indeed on immigration, for the immigrants' children are more constrained to race suicide than the older american stock.[ ] the competition is not so severe in country districts where the native stock prevails; but in the cities and industrial centres the skilled and ambitious workman and workwoman discover that in order to keep themselves above the low standards of the immigrants they must postpone marriage. the effect is noticeable and disastrous in the case of the irish-americans. displaced by italians and slavs, many of the young men have fallen into the hoodlum and criminal element. here moral causes produce physical causes of race destruction, for the vicious elements of the population disappear through the diseases bequeathed to their progeny, and are recruited only from the classes forced down from above. on the other hand, many more irish have risen to positions of foremanship, or have lived on their wits in politics, or have entered the priesthood. the irish-american girls, showing independence and ambition, have refused to marry until they could be assured of a husband of steady habits, and they have entered clerical positions, factories, and mills. thus this versatile race, with distinct native ability, is meeting in our cities the same displacement and is resorting to the same race suicide which itself inflicted a generation or two earlier on the native colonial stock. but the effect is more severe, for the native stock was able to leave the scenes of competition, to go west and take up farms or build cities, but the irish-american has less opportunity to make such an escape. great numbers of irishmen, together with others of english, scotch, german, and american descent, remaining in these industrial centres, have sought to protect themselves and maintain high standards through labor-unions and the so-called "closed shop," by limiting the number of apprentices, excluding immigrants, and giving their sons a preference of admission. but even with the unions they find it necessary also to limit the size of their families, and i am convinced from personal observation, that, were the statistics on this point compiled from the unions of skilled workmen, there would be found even stronger evidences of race suicide than among other classes in the nation. to the well-to-do classes freedom from the care of children is not a necessity, but an opportunity for luxury and indulgence. these include the very wealthy, whose round of social functions would be interrupted by home obligations. to them, of course, immigration brings no need of prudence--it rather helps to bring the enormous fortunes which distract their attention from the home. but their numbers are insignificant compared with the millions who determine the fate of the nation. more significant are the well-to-do farmers and their wives who have inherited the soil redeemed by their fathers, and whose desire to be free for enjoying the fruits of civilization lead them to the position so strongly condemned by president roosevelt. this class of farmers, as shown in the census map of the size of private families,[ ] may be traced across the eastern and northern states, running through new england, rural new york, northern pennsylvania, ohio, and michigan, parts of indiana, illinois, wisconsin, and iowa. in the rich counties of southern michigan, settled and occupied mainly by native stock from new york, the average size of families is less than four persons, as it is in a large area of central new york, whereas for the country at large it is . , and for counties in the mining sections of michigan occupied by immigrants it rises as high as . persons. the census figures showing the size of families do not, however, reveal the number of children born to a family, since they show only those living together and not those who have moved away or died. this especially affects the large-sized families, and does not reveal, for example, a fact shown by kuczynski from the state census of massachusetts that the average number of children of the foreign-born women in that state is . , while for native women it is only . .[ ] this also affects the showing for a state like west virginia, composed almost entirely of native americans of colonial stock, with only per cent foreign-born and per cent colored, where the average size of families is . persons, the highest in the united states, but where in the blue ridge mountains i have come upon two couples of native white americans who claimed respectively eighteen and twenty-two children. throughout the south the reduction in size of families and the postponement of marriage have not occurred to any great extent either among the white or colored races, and these are states to which immigration has contributed less than per cent of their population. yet, if superintendent walker's view is sound in all respects, the southern whites should shrink from competition with the negro in the same way that the northern white shrinks from competition with the immigrant. he does not do so, and the reasons are probably found in the fact that the south has been remote from the struggle of modern competition, and that ignorance and proud contentment fail to spur the masses to that ambitious striving which rises by means of what malthus called the prudential restraints on population. it is quite probable that in the south, with the spread of the factory system and universal education, the growth in numbers through excess of births over deaths will be retarded. on the whole it seems that immigration and the competition of inferior races tends to dry up the older and superior races wherever the latter have learned to aspire to an improved standard of living, and that among well-to-do classes not competing with immigrants, but made wealthier by their low wages, a similar effect is caused by the desire for luxury and easy living.[ ] =americanization.=--a line on the chart opposite page shows the proportions between the number of immigrants and the existing population. from this it appears that the enormous immigration of is relatively not as large as the smaller immigration of the years to , or the year . three hundred thousand immigrants in was as large an addition to a population of , , as , , in to a population of , , . judged by mere numbers, the present immigration is not greater than that witnessed by two former periods. judged by saturation it may be greater, for the former immigrants were absorbed by colonial americans, but the present immigrants enter a solution half colonial and half immigrant. the problem of americanization increases more than the number to be americanized. what is the nature of this problem, and what are the forces available for its solution? the term amalgamation may be used for that mixture of blood which unites races in a common stock, while assimilation is that union of their minds and wills which enables them to think and act together. amalgamation is a process of centuries, but assimilation is a process of individual training. amalgamation is a blending of races, assimilation a blending of civilizations. amalgamation is beyond the organized efforts of government, but assimilation can be promoted by social institutions and laws. amalgamation therefore cannot attract our practical interest, except as its presence or absence sets limits to our efforts toward assimilation. our principal interest in amalgamation is its effect on the negro race. the census statisticians discontinued after the inquiry into the number of mulattoes, but the census of showed that mulattoes were per cent of the total negro population. this was a slightly larger proportion than that of preceding years. the mulatto element of the negro race is almost a race of itself. its members on the average differ but little if at all from those of the white race in their capacity for advancement, and it is the tragedy of race antagonism that they with their longings should suffer the fate of the more contented and thoughtless blacks.[ ] in their veins runs the blood of white aristocracy, and it is a curious psychology of the anglo-saxon that assigns to the inferior race those equally entitled to a place among the superior. but sociology offers compensation for the injustice to physiology. the mulatto is the natural leader, instructor, and spokesman of the black. prevented from withdrawing himself above the fortunes of his fellows, he devotes himself to their elevation. this fact becomes clear in proportion as the need of practical education becomes clear. the effective work of the whites through missionary schools and colleges has not been the elevation of the black, but the elevation of mulattoes to teach the blacks. a new era for the blacks is beginning when the mulatto sees his own future in theirs. apart from the negro we have very little knowledge of the amalgamation of races in america. we only know that for the most part they have blended into a united people with harmonious ideals, and the english, the german, the scotch-irish, the dutch, and the huguenot have become the american. we speak of superior and inferior races, and this is well enough, but care should be taken to distinguish between inferiority and backwardness--between that superiority which is the original endowment of race and that which results from the education and training which we call civilization. while there are superior and inferior races, there are primitive, mediæval, and modern civilizations, and there are certain mental qualities required for and produced by these different grades of civilization. a superior race may have a primitive or mediæval civilization, and therefore its individuals may never have exhibited the superior mental qualities with which they are actually endowed, and which a modern civilization would have called into action. the adults coming from such a civilization seem to be inferior in their mental qualities, but their children, placed in the new environments of the advanced civilization, exhibit at once the qualities of the latter. the chinaman comes from a mediæval civilization--he shows little of those qualities which are the product of western civilization, and with his imitativeness, routine, and traditions, he has earned the reputation of being entirely non-assimilable. but the children of chinamen, born and reared in this country, entirely disprove this charge, for they are as apt in absorbing the spirit and method of american institutions as any caucasian.[ ] the race is superior but backward. the teutonic races until five hundred years after christ were primitive in their civilization, yet they had the mental capacities which made them, like arminius, able to comprehend and absorb the highest roman civilization. they passed through the mediæval period and then came out into the modern period of advanced civilization, yet during these two thousand years their mental capacities, the original endowment of race, have scarcely improved. it is civilization, not race evolution, that has transformed the primitive warrior into the philosopher, scientist, artisan, and business man. could their babies have been taken from the woods two thousand years ago and transported to the homes and schools of modern america, they could have covered in one generation the progress of twenty centuries. other races, like the scotch and the irish, made the transition from primitive institutions to modern industrial habits within a single century, and professor brinton, our most profound student of the american indian, has said,[ ] "i have been in close relations to several full-blood american indians who had been removed from an aboriginal environment and instructed in this manner [in american schools and communities], and i could not perceive that they were either in intellect or sympathies inferior to the usual type of the american gentleman. one of them notably had a refined sense of humor as well as uncommon acuteness of observation." the line between superior and inferior, as distinguished from advanced and backward, races appears to be the line between the temperate and tropical zones. the two belts of earth between the tropics of capricorn and cancer and the arctic and antarctic circles have been the areas where man in his struggle for existence developed the qualities of mind and will--the ingenuity, self-reliance, self-control, strenuous exertion, and will power--which befit the modern industrial civilization. but in the tropics these qualities are less essential, for where nature lavishes food, and winks at the neglect of clothing and shelter, there ignorance, superstition, physical prowess, and sexual passion have an equal chance with intelligence, foresight, thrift, and self-control. the children of all the races of the temperate zones are eligible to the highest american civilization, and it only needs that they be "caught" young enough. there is perhaps no class of people more backward than the , , poor whites of the appalachian mountains, but there is no class whose children are better equipped by heredity to attain distinction in any field of american endeavor. this much cannot be said for the children of the tropical zones. amalgamation is their door to assimilation. before we can intelligently inquire into the agencies of americanization we must first agree on what we mean by the term. i can think of no comprehensive and concise description equal to that of abraham lincoln: "government of the people, by the people, for the people." this description should be applied not only to the state but to other institutions. in the home it means equality of husband and wife; in the church it means the voice of the laity; in industry the participation of the workmen. unhappily it cannot be said that lincoln's description has ever been attained. it is the goal which he and others whom we recognize as true americans have pointed out. greater than any other obstacle in the road toward that goal have been our race divisions. government for the people depends on government by the people, and this is difficult where the people cannot think and act together. such is the problem of americanization. in the earlier days the most powerful agency of assimilation was frontier life. the pioneers "were left almost entirely to their own resources in this great struggle. they developed a spirit of self-reliance, a capacity for self-government, which are the most prominent characteristics of the american people."[ ] frontier life includes pioneer mining camps as well as pioneer farming. next to the frontier the farms of america are the richest field of assimilation. here the process is sometimes thought to be slower than it is in the cities, but any one who has seen it under both conditions cannot doubt that if it is slower it is more real. in the cities the children are more regularly brought under the influence of the public schools, but more profound and lasting than the education of the schools is the education of the street and the community. the work of the schools in a great city like new york cannot be too highly praised, and without such work the future of the immigrant's child would be dark. in fact the children of the immigrant are better provided with school facilities than the children of the americans. less than per cent of their children to years of age are illiterate, but the proportion of illiterates among children of native parents is over per cent. this is not because the foreigner is more eager to educate his child than is the native, but because nearly three-fourths of the foreigners' children and only one-sixth of the natives' children live in the larger cities, where schools and compulsory attendance prevail. were it not for compulsory education, the child of the peasant immigrant would be, like the child of the slav in the anthracite coal fields, "the helpless victim of the ignorance, frugality, and industrial instincts of his parents."[ ] as it is, they drop out of the schools at the earliest age allowed by law, and the hostility of foreigners to factory legislation and its corollary compulsory school legislation is more difficult to overcome than the hostility of american employers, both of whom might profit by the work of their children. the thoroughness with which the great cities of the north enforce the requirements of primary education leaves but little distinction between the children of natives and the children of foreigners, but what difference remains is to the advantage of the natives. in boston in only children of native parents were illiterate, and native children of foreign parents, a ratio of one-twentieth of per cent for the natives and one-tenth of per cent for the foreigners. in new york of the , children of native parents were illiterate, and of the , native children of foreign parents, a ratio insignificant in both cases, but more than twice as great for the foreigners as for the natives.[ ] taking all of the cities of at least , population, more than one-fourth of the foreign-born children to years of age are bread-winners, and only one-tenth of the children of native parents. the influence of residence in america is shown by the fact that of the children of foreigners born in this country the proportion of bread-winners is reduced to one-seventh.[ ] but it is the community more than the school that gives the child his actual working ideals and his habits and methods of life. and in a great city, with its separation of classes, this community is the slums, with its mingling of all races and the worst of the americans. he sees and knows surprisingly little of the america that his school-books describe. the american churches, his american employers, are in other parts of the city, and his americanization is left to the school-teacher, the policeman, and the politician, who generally are but one generation before him from europe. but on the farm he sees and knows all classes, the best and the worst, and even where his parents strive to isolate their community and to preserve the language and the methods of the old country, only a generation or two are required for the surrounding americanism to permeate. meanwhile healthful work, steady, industrious, and thrifty habits, have made him capable of rising to the best that his surroundings exemplify. [illustration: slavic home missionaries (from _the home missionary_)] since the year the immigration bureau has not inquired as to the religious faith of the immigrants. in that year, when the number admitted was , , one-fifth were protestants, mainly from great britain, the scandinavian countries, germany, and finland. one-tenth were jews, per cent were greek catholics, and per cent were roman catholics. with the shifting of the sources toward the east and south of europe the proportion of catholic and jewish faith has increased. during this transition the protestant churches of america have begun to awaken to a serious problem confronting them. the three new england states which have given their religion and political character to northern and western states are themselves now predominantly catholic. in all of the northern manufacturing and industrial states and in their great cities the marvellous organization and discipline of the roman catholic church has carefully provided every precinct, ward, or district with chapels, cathedrals, and priests even in advance of the inflow of population, while the scattered forces of protestantism overlap in some places and overlook other places. two consequences have followed. the protestant churches in much the larger part of their activities have drawn themselves apart in an intellectual and social round of polite entertainment for the families of the mercantile, clerical, professional, and employing classes, while the catholic churches minister to the laboring and wage-earning classes. in a minor and relatively insignificant part of their activities the protestant churches have supported missionaries, colporters, and chapels among the immigrants, the wage-earners, and their children. their home missionary societies, which in the earlier days followed up their own believers on the frontier and enabled them to establish churches in their new homes, have in the past decade or two become foreign missionary societies working at home. nothing is more significant or important in the history of american protestantism than the zeal and patriotism with which a few missionaries in this unaccustomed field have begun to lead the way. by means of addresses, periodicals, books, study classes, they are gradually awakening the churches to the needs of the foreigner at home.[ ] among certain nationalities, especially the italians and slavs, they find an open field, for thousands of those nationalities, though nominally catholic, are indifferent to the church that they associate with oppression at home. among these nationalities already several converts have become missionaries in turn to their own people, and with the barrier of language and suspicion thus bridged over, the influence of the protestant religion is increasing. perhaps more than anything else is needed a federation of the protestant denominations similar to that recently arranged in porto rico. that island has been laid out in districts through mutual agreement of the home missionary societies, and each district is assigned exclusively to a single denomination. while the protestant churches have been withdrawing from the districts invaded by the foreigners, the field has been entered by the "social settlement." this remarkable movement, eliminating religious propaganda, is essentially religious in its zeal for social betterment. its principal service has been to raise up americans who know and understand the life and needs of the immigrants and can interpret them to others. in the "institutional church" is also to be found a similar adaptation of the more strictly religious organization to the social and educational needs of the immigrants and their children. more than any other class in the community, it is the employers who determine the progress of the foreigner and his children towards americanization. they control his waking hours, his conditions of living, and his chances of advancement. in recent years a few employers have begun to realize their responsibilities, and a great corporation like the colorado fuel and iron company establishes its "sociological" department with its schools, kindergartens, hospitals, recreation centres, and model housing, on an equal footing with its engineering and sales departments. other employers are interesting themselves in various degrees and ways in "welfare work," or "industrial betterment," and those who profit most by this awakening interest are the foreign-born and their families. this interest has not yet shown itself in a willingness to shorten the hours of labor, and this phase of welfare work must probably be brought about by other agencies. the influence of schools, churches, settlements, and farming communities applies more to the children of immigrants than their parents. the immigrants themselves are too old for americanization, especially when they speak a non-english language. to them the labor-union is at present the strongest americanizing force. the effort of organized labor to organize the unskilled and the immigrant is the largest and most significant fact of the labor movement. apart from the labor question itself, it means the enlistment of a powerful self-interest in the americanization of the foreign-born. for it is not too much to say that the only effective americanizing force for the southeastern european is the labor-union. the church to which he gives allegiance is the roman catholic, and, however much the catholic church may do for the ignorant peasant in his european home, such instruction as the priest gives is likely to tend toward an acceptance of their subservient position on the part of the workingmen. it is a frequently observed fact that when immigrants join a labor-union they almost insolently warn the priest to keep his advice to himself. universal suffrage admits the immigrant to american politics within one to five years after landing. but the suffrage is not looked upon to-day as the sufficient americanizing force that a preceding generation imagined. the suffrage appeals very differently to the immigrant voter and to the voter who has come up through the american schools and american life. the american has learned not only that this is a free government, but that its freedom is based on constitutional principles of an abstract nature. freedom of the press, trial by jury, separation of powers, independence of the judiciary, equality of opportunity, and several other governmental and legal principles have percolated through his subconscious self, and when he contemplates public questions these abstract principles have more or less influence as a guide to his ballot. but the immigrant has none of these. he comes here solely to earn a better living. the suffrage is nothing to him but a means of livelihood. not that he readily sells his vote for money--rather does he simply "vote for his job." he votes as instructed by his employer or his political "boss," because it will help his employer's business or because his boss will get him a job, or will, in some way, favor him and others of his nationality. there is a noticeable difference between the immigrant and the children of the immigrant in this regard. the young men, when they begin to vote, can be appealed to on the ground of public spirit; their fathers can be reached only on the ground of private interest. now it cannot be expected that the labor-union or any other influence will greatly change the immigrant in this respect. but the union does this much: it requires every member to be a citizen, or to have declared his intention of taking out naturalization papers. the reasons for doing this are not political; they are sentimental and patriotic. the union usually takes pride in showing that its members are americans, and have foregone allegiance to other countries. in a union like the musicians' the reasons for requiring citizenship are also protective, since they serve to exclude transient musical immigrants from american audiences. again, the union frees its members from the dictation of employers, bosses, and priests. politicians, of course, strive to control the vote of organized labor, but so disappointing has been the experience of the unions that they have quite generally come to distrust the leader who combines labor and politics. the immigrant who votes as a unionist has taken the first step, in casting his ballot, towards considering the interests of others, and this is also the first step towards giving public spirit and abstract principles a place alongside private interest and his own job. but there is another way, even more impressive, in which the union asserts the preëminence of principles over immediate self-interest. when the foreigner from southern europe is inducted into the union, then for the first time does he get the idea that his job belongs to him by virtue of a right to work, and not as the personal favor or whim of a boss. these people are utterly obsequious before their foremen or bosses, and it is notorious that nearly always they pay for the privilege of getting and keeping a job. this bribery of bosses, as well as the padrone system, proceed from the deep-seated conviction that despotism is the natural social relation, and that therefore they must make terms with the influential superior who is so fortunate as to have favor with the powers that be. the anthracite coal operators represented such men, prior to joining the union, as disciplined and docile workmen, but in doing so they disregarded the fact that outside the field where they were obsequious they were most violent, treacherous, and factional. before the organization of the union in the coal fields these foreigners were given over to the most bitter and often murderous feuds among the ten or fifteen nationalities and the two or three factions within each nationality. the polish worshippers of a given saint would organize a night attack on the polish worshippers of another saint; the italians from one province would have a knife for the italians of another province, and so on. when the union was organized the antagonisms of race, religion, and faction were eliminated. the immigrants came down to an economic basis and turned their forces against their bosses. "we fellows killed this country," said a polish striker to father curran, "and now we are going to make it." the sense of a common cause, and, more than all else, the sense of individual rights as men, have come to these people through the organization of their labor unions, and it could come in no other way, for the union appeals to their necessities, while other forces appeal to their prejudices. they are even yet far from ideal americans, but those who have hitherto imported them and profited by their immigration should be the last to cry out against the chief influence that has started them on the way to true americanism.[ ] =agricultural distribution of immigrants.=--the congestion and colonizing of immigrants in the cities and their consequent poverty and the deterioration of the second generation have brought forth various proposals for inducing them to settle upon the farms. the commissioners of immigration[ ] at various times have advocated an industrial museum at ellis island, wherein the resources and opportunities of the several states could be displayed before the eyes of the incoming thousands. they and others have gone further and advocated the creation of a bureau of immigrant distribution to help the immigrants out of the crowded cities into the country districts. still others have urged the establishment of steamship lines to southern ports and the gulf of mexico, so that immigrants may be carried directly to the regions that "need them." very little can be expected from projects of this kind,[ ] for the present contingent of immigrants from southeastern europe is too poor in worldly goods and too ignorant of american business to warrant an experiment in the isolation and self-dependence of farming. the farmers of the south and west welcome the settler who has means of purchase, but they distrust the newly arrived immigrant. scandinavians and germans in large numbers find their way to their countrymen on the farms, but the newer nationalities would require the fostering care of government or of wealthy private societies. the jews have, indeed, taken up the matter, and the jewish agricultural and industrial aid society of new york, by means of subventions from the baron de hirsch fund, has distributed many families throughout the country, partly in agriculture, but more generally in trade. the society for the protection of italian immigrants is doing similar work. great railway systems and land companies in the south and west have their agricultural and industrial agents on the lookout for eligible settlers. all of the southern states have established bureaus of immigration, and they are advertising the north and europe for desirable immigrants. but these agencies seek mainly those immigrants who have resided in the country for a time, and have learned the language and american practices, and, in the case of the railroad and land companies, those who have accumulated some property. the immigration bureaus of the southern states and railways, the most urgent applicants at the present time for immigrants, are strongly opposed to the plan of federal distribution. they want farmers who will do their own work. from the standpoint of the immigrant himself this position is correct. to find a place as an agriculturist he must find a place as a farmer and not a harvest hand.[ ] speaking for the southern bureaus, professor fleming says,[ ] "the south decidedly objects to being made the government dumping-ground for undesirable immigrants. it does not want the lower class foreigners who have swarmed into the northern cities. it wants the same sort of people who settled so much of the west." the state board of south carolina officially invites immigration of "white citizens of the united states, citizens of ireland, scotland, switzerland, and france, and all other foreigners of saxon origin." as for those without money who must depend on their daily labor for wages, they must go where employment is most regular and the best wages are paid. this is not on the farms, with a few months' work in summer and no homes in winter. it is unmistakably in the great cities and industrial centres. the commissioner of immigration at ellis island, speaking of the cordon established by his bureau along the canadian frontier from halifax to winnipeg in order to catch those who tried to escape inspection at new york, said, "all those immigrants who had new york, philadelphia, chicago, cleveland, or cincinnati in mind as a destination when they left europe and came to quebec, went all the way around that wall to its western end at winnipeg, and then took trains and came back to the very places they had in mind when they left europe; and if you were to land all the ships that now come to new york at galveston, new orleans, or charleston, every one of the immigrants would come to the place he had in mind when he decided to emigrate."[ ] professor wilcox contends that the immigrants already distribute themselves according to their economic advantage as completely as do the natives. they seem to congest in the cities because the cities are necessarily their places of first arrival. "our foreign-born arrive, in at least nine-tenths of the cases, at some city. our native citizens arrive by birth, in at least three-fourths of the cases, in the country. the foreign-born arrive mainly at seaport cities, and disperse gradually from those cities to and through other interior cities, ultimately reaching in many cases the small towns or open country. it is in no sense surprising, or an evidence of imperfect distribution, that the foreign-born should be massed in the cities when nine-tenths of them arrive there, and the native population massed in the country districts when three-fourths of them arrive there."[ ] artificial distribution would not relieve the pressure as long as the character and amount of immigration continue--it can only be relieved by creating greater economic inducements in the country. natives and foreigners both crowd to the cities because wages and profits are higher than they are in the country. even supposing the congestion in the cities could be relieved by making the inducements in the country greater, the relief could not continue, for it would only invite more immigration. emigration has not relieved the pressure of population in europe. in no period of their history, with the exception of ireland, have the populations of europe increased at a greater rate than during the last half century of migration to america. it is not emigration but improved standards of living that lessens the pressure of numbers, and france with the widest diffusion of property has little emigration and no increase in population. with the redundant millions of europe, increasing thousands would migrate if they got word from their friends that the american government is finding jobs for them. just as we have already seen that the tide of immigration rises with a period of prosperity in america, so would it rise with agricultural distribution of immigrants. both are simply more openings for employment, and the knowledge of such opportunities is promptly carried to the waiting multitudes abroad. consider also the political jeopardy of an administration at washington conducting a bureau for the distribution of immigrants. if it refused to direct immigrants to one section of the country because it found that the wages were low, it would arouse the hostility of employers. if it directed them to another section, where the wages offered were high because the employers were preparing for a lockout, or the unions were on strike, it would lose the votes of workingmen. the administration would soon learn that safely to conduct such a bureau it must not conduct it at all. far better is it that the federal government should leave the distribution of immigrants to private employment agencies. it might then license all such agencies that conduct an interstate business. with the power to take away the license on proof of fraud and misrepresentation, and with the prosecution of agencies and employers that deceive and enslave the immigrant, the government would accomplish all that it could directly do for better distribution. unquestionably the employment agencies, with their _padroni_, their bankers, and their false promises, are the source of miserable abuse to thousands of immigrants.[ ] they require interstate as well as state regulation. by weeding out the dishonest agencies the field would be occupied by the honest ones, and the immigrant could trust himself to their assistance. but such regulation would not be merely for the sake of the immigrant. it would, as it should, aid the american as well. this suggests to us the true nature of the problem of city congestion and the nature of its solution. it is not to be found in special efforts on behalf of the immigrant, but in efforts to better the condition of both americans and immigrants. the congestion of cities is owing to discriminations in favor of cities. if the government gives aid to agriculture as it does to manufactures, if it provides better communication, equalizes taxes, reduces freight rates to the level enjoyed by cities, then agriculture and the small towns will be more attractive. americans will not crowd to the cities, and the more provident of the immigrants will find their way to the country. the proposition of federal distribution of immigrants is merely a clever illusion kept up to lead congress astray from the restriction of immigration. =higher standards of immigration.=--as for the inferior, defective, and undesirable classes of immigrants, there is no protection except stringent selection. the commissioner of immigration at new york estimates that , of the million immigrants in were an injury instead of a benefit to the industries of the country,[ ] and he advocates a physical examination and the exclusion of those who fall below a certain physical standard. during the past ten years the educational, or rather, illiteracy test, has come to the front, and the advantages of this test are its simplicity and its specific application to those races whose standards are lowest. [illustration: aliens awaiting admission at ellis island] much discussion has been carried on respecting this test, and there has been considerable misunderstanding and misrepresentation as to its probable effects. the principal mistake has been the assumption that it is designed to take the place of other tests of admission, and that therefore it would permit, for example, the most dangerous criminals--those who are intelligent--to enter this country. if we examine existing laws, and seek to understand the real nature of immigration restriction, we can see the character of this mistake. all of our legislation governing immigration should be described as _improvement_ of immigration rather than _restriction_ of immigration. the object has always been to raise the average character of those admitted by excluding those who fall below certain standards. and higher standards have been added from time to time as rapidly as the lawmakers perceived the need of bettering the quality of our future citizenship. although in congress had enacted a law prohibiting the shipment of chinese coolies in american vessels,[ ] it was not until that the lawmakers first awoke to the evil of unrestricted immigration. in that year a law was enacted to exclude convicts and prostitutes. this law made an exception in favor of those who had been convicted of political offences. next, in , congress added lunatics, idiots, paupers, and chinese. in laborers under contract were for the first time to be excluded, but an exception was made in order to admit actors, artists, lecturers, singers, domestics, and skilled workmen for new industries. in the list of ineligibles was again extended so as to shut out not only convicts but persons convicted of crime, also "assisted" immigrants, polygamists, and persons with loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases. in the law added epileptics, persons who have had two or more attacks of insanity, professional beggars, and anarchists. notwithstanding these successive additions of excluded classes, the number of immigrants has continually increased until it is greater to-day than in any preceding period, and while the standards have been raised in one direction, the average quality has been lowered in other directions. the educational and physical tests, while not needed for the races from northwestern europe, are now advocated as additions to the existing tests on account of the flood of races from southeastern europe. the question of "poor physique" has come seriously to the front in recent reports of immigration officials. the decline in the average of physical make-up to which they call attention accompanies the increase in numbers of southern and eastern europeans. while the commissioner at ellis island estimates that , immigrants are below the physical standards that should be required to entitle them to admission, the number certified by the surgeons is much less than this. yet nine-tenths of even that smaller number are admitted, since the law excludes them only if other grounds of exclusion appear. that the physical test is practicable is shown by the following description of the qualities taken into account by the medical examiners at the immigrant stations; qualities which would be made even more definite if they were authorized to be acted upon:[ ]-- "a certificate of this nature implies that the alien concerned is afflicted with a body not only but illy adapted to the work necessary to earn his bread, but also but poorly able to withstand the onslaught of disease. it means that he is undersized, poorly developed, with feeble heart action, arteries below the standard size; that he is physically degenerate, and as such not only unlikely to become a desirable citizen, but also very likely to transmit his undesirable qualities to his offspring should he, unfortunately for the country in which he is domiciled, have any. "of all causes for rejection, outside of those for dangerous, contagious, or loathsome diseases, or for mental disease, that of 'poor physique' should receive the most weight, for in admitting such aliens not only do we increase the number of public charges by their inability to gain their bread through their physical inaptitude and their low resistance to disease, but we admit likewise progenitors to this country whose offspring will reproduce, often in an exaggerated degree, the physical degeneracy of their parents." the history of the illiteracy test in congress is a curious comment on lobbying. first introduced in , it passed the house by a vote of to , and the senate in another form by a vote of to . referred to a conference committee, an identical bill again passed both houses by reduced majorities. but irrelevant amendments had been tacked on and the president vetoed it. the house passed it over his veto by to , but it was too late in the session to reach a vote in the senate. introduced again in , it passed the senate by to , but pressure of the spanish war prevented a vote in the house. the bill came up in subsequent congresses but did not reach a vote.[ ] the lobby is directed by the steamship companies, supported by railway companies, the hawaiian sugar planters' association, and other great employers of labor. by misrepresentation, these interested agencies have been able at times to arouse the fears of the older races of immigrants not affected by the measure. their fears were groundless, for the illiteracy test is not a test of the english language, but a test of any language, and it applies only to those who are years of age and over, but does not apply to wife, children, parents, or grandparents of those who are admitted. with these reasonable limitations it would exclude only in of the scandinavians, in of the english, scotch, and finns, or in of the germans, irish, welsh, and french; but it would exclude one-half of the south italians, one-seventh of the north italians, one-third to two-fifths of the several slav races, one-seventh of the russian jews, altogether one-fifth or one-fourth of the total immigration.[ ] but these proportions would not long continue. elementary education is making progress in eastern and southern europe, and a test of this kind would stimulate it still more among the peasants. restrictive at first, it is only selective; it would not permanently reduce the number of immigrants, but would raise their level of intelligence and their ability to take care of themselves. the foregoing principles do not apply to chinese immigration. there the law is strictly one of exclusion and not selection. this distinction is often overlooked in the discussion of the subject. respecting european, japanese, and korean immigration, the law _admits_ all except certain classes definitely described, such as paupers, criminals, and so on. respecting chinese immigration the law _excludes_ all except certain classes described, such as teachers, merchants, travellers, and students. in the case of european immigration the burden of proof is upon the immigration authorities to show that the immigrant should be excluded. in the case of the chinese, the burden of proof is on the immigrant to show that he should be admitted. in the administration of the law the difference is fundamental. if the chinese law is liberalized so as to admit doctors, lawyers, and other professional classes, against whom there is no objection, it can be done in one of two ways. it can name and specify the additional classes to be admitted. to this there is little objection, for it retains the existing spirit of the law. or it can be reversed, and can admit all classes of chinese except coolies, laborers, and the classes now excluded by other laws. if this were done, the enforcement of the law would break down, for the burden of proof would be lifted from the immigrant and placed on the examining board. the law is with great difficulty enforced as it is, but the evasions bear no comparison in number with those practised under the other law. european immigration is encouraged, provided it passes a minimum standard. chinese immigration is prohibited unless it exceeds a maximum standard. one is selection, the other is exclusion. one should be amended by describing new classes _not_ to be admitted, the other by describing classes which _may_ be admitted. this difference between the two laws may be seen in the effects of the restrictions which have from time to time been added to the immigration laws. each additional ground of restriction or selection has not decreased the total amount of immigration, nor has it increased the proportion of those debarred from admission. in , aliens were sent back, and this was . per cent of those who arrived. in , were sent back, but this was only three-fourths of per cent of those arriving. in , , sent back were . per cent of the arrivals. intending immigrants as well as steamship companies learn the standards of exclusion and the methods of evasion, so that the proportion who take their chances and fail in the attempt is very small. nevertheless, this deportation of immigrants, though averaging less than per cent, is a hardship that should be avoided. it has often been proposed that this should be done through examination abroad by american consuls or by agents of the immigration bureau. attractive and humane as this proposal appears, the foreign examination could not be made final. it would remove the examiners from effective control, and would require a large additional force as well as the existing establishment to deport those who might evade the foreign inspection. it does not strike at the root of the evil, which is the business energy of the steamship companies in soliciting immigration, and their business caution in requiring doubtful immigrants to give bonds in advance to cover the cost of carrying them back.[ ] it is not the exclusion law that causes hardship, but the steamship companies that connive at evasions of the law. the law of for the first time adopted the correct principle to meet this evasion, but with a limited application. since , the bureau had debarred increasing numbers on account of loathsome and contagious diseases. but these had already done the injury which their deportation was designed to prevent. in the crowded steerage the entire shipload was exposed to this contagion. congress then enacted the law of , not only requiring the steamship companies to carry them back, as before, but requiring the companies to pay a fine of $ for every alien debarred on that account. in , the companies paid fines of $ , on such deportations. the principle should be extended to all classes excluded by law, and the fine should be raised to $ . then every agent of the steamship companies in the remotest hamlets of europe would be an immigration inspector. their surgeons and officials already know the law and its standards of administration as thoroughly as the immigration officials. it only needs an adequate motive to make them cooperators with the bureau instead of evaders of the law. already the law of has partly had that effect. one steamship company has arranged with the bureau to locate medical officers at its foreign ports of embarkation. however, the penalty is not yet heavy enough, and the commissioner-general recommends its increase to $ . by extending the law to all grounds of deportation in addition to contagious diseases, the true source of hardship to debarred aliens will be dried up.[ ] index a advertising, , , , , , , . age composition of immigrants, . agriculture, , , , . alien contract labor law, . american federation of labor, . americanization, . armenians, , . asiatic immigration, - . assimilation, - , , . atlanta university, , , . australia, , . austria-hungary, , , - . b births, , , . bohemians, , , . boston, , . brinton, daniel g., . burlingame treaty, . butcher workmen, . c california, , , . canada, . (see "french canadians.") carib, . castes, . charity, . charity organization society of new york, . chicago, , , , . child labor, . chinese, , , , , , , , , , , , , . (see "coolies.") chinese exclusion, , , . cities, , , , , , . civil war, , , , , , , . classes in america, , . closed shop, . colorado fuel and iron company, , . colored farmers' alliance, . competition, race, , , , , , , , , , . contract labor, , , , , , , , , , , , , . (see "coolies," "peonage.") coolies, , . (see "chinese," "japanese.") coöperation, , . cost of living, . (see also "standard of living.") crime, , - . croatians, , , , , , , . curran, father, . d death-rate, , , , , . (see "infant mortality.") distribution of immigrants, , - . drunkenness, . dutch, , , , . dutch east india company, . e education, , , , , . (see "illiteracy.") educational tests, , , , , , , . (see "negro.") eminence of races in america, - , , . employment agencies, . english race, , , , . erie canal, . f fifteenth amendment to the constitution, , , . filipinos, , , , . finns, - . fleming, professor w. l., . fourteenth amendment to the constitution, , , . french, , . french canadians, , , , . g galicia, . (see also "austria-hungary.") germans, , , , - , , , , . greeks, , . h hampton institute, . hawaii, , , , , , , , , . hawaiian sugar planters' association, . heredity, . hoffman, fred l., , . huguenots, - . i illiteracy, , , . immigration, - , - . immigration bureaus, , . incentives to immigration, - , - , , , , , - , , , , , , , , . india, , , , , . indigenous races, . industrial capacity of races, - . industrial education, , , . (see "negro.") industrial prosperity and depression, , , , . infant mortality, , , . (see "death-rate.") initiative and referendum, - . irish, , , , , , , , , , . italians, - , , , , , , , , , , , . j japanese, , , , , , , . jefferson, thomas, . jenks, j. w., . jews, , , , - , , , , , , , , , . k kelsey, carl, , . knights of labor, . knownothings, , . koreans, . kuczynski, r. r., , . l labor, , , , , - . (see "wage earners," "trade unions.") labor, department of, , . landlordism, , , , , , . languages, , , . law, john, . leadership, . legislation, , , , , , , . lincoln, abraham, , . lodge, henry cabot, - . longshoremen, . m machinery, , . magyars, , , , , . malay races, , . mallock, w. h., . marriage, . mexicans, . military duties, . miners, , , , . mob violence, , , . molly maguires, . morality, , , . (see "prostitution.") münsterberg, hugo, . n naturalization, , , , , . negro, , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , . new york, , , . norwegians, . (see "scandinavians.") p padroni, , , , , . "pale of settlement," . penn, william, , . pennsylvania, , , . peonage, , , , , , . philippine commission, . philippine islands, , , , . poles, , , . political boss, the, . political exiles, . population, - , , , . (see "births" and "death-rates.") porto rico, , . portuguese, , . poverty and pauperism, , , , , - . primaries, direct, . profits, , . prohibition, . proportional representation, . prostitution, . protective tariff, . q quakers, , . r race problem, , , , , , , . (see "negro.") races, , , , , - , , , - , , . (see individual name of race.) race suicide, , . railroads, , , . reconstruction, , . religion, , , - . (see "incentives to immigration.") restriction of immigration, n., , , , , . ripley, w. z., . roosevelt, theodore, , . rosenberg, edward, . roumanians, , , . russia, , , , . ruthenians, , , . s scandinavians, , , . (see "norwegians.") scotch irish, - , - , , . (see "irish.") self-government, - , , , , . seymour, governor horatio, . shaler, professor n. s., . slavs, , , , , , . slovaks, , , . social settlements, . socialism, . spaniards, . standard of living, , , , , . statistics, , , , - , . (see "population," "births," "death-rate.") steamship lines, , , , , , . stone, a. h., . strikes, , . suffrage, , , , , , , , , , , . (see also "educational tests.") sweatshops, , , . swedes, . syrians, , . t taft, governor, . taxation, , , , . temporary immigration, , , . test act, . thirteenth amendment to the constitution, . trade unions, , , , , , , , , , , , , , . (see "labor" and "wage earners.") triple alliance, . tuskegee institute, . u united garment workers of america, n., . united hebrew charities of new york, . united mine workers of america, . w wage earners, - , .(see "labor.") wages, , , , , , , , , , . (see "labor.") wage system, the, . walker, francis a., , , . watson, elkanah, . wealth production and immigration, , . welfare work, . wilcox, professor, . footnotes: [ ] bluntschli, "theory of the state," pp. - . [ ] _atlantic monthly_, may, , p. . [ ] shaler, p. . [ ] ripley, "the races of europe." [ ] ripley, chs. xvii and xviii. [ ] see the interesting series of articles by h. n. casson, _munsey's_, . [ ] lodge, p. . [ ] "history and topography of new york," address at cornell university, june , . [ ] these figures are probably exaggerated, but authorities agree upon the magnitude of the migration. fiske, "old virginia," vol. ii, p. . [ ] hanna, "the scotch-irish," vol. ii, p. . [ ] tillinghast, "the negro in africa and america." [ ] burgess, pp. , ; fleming, pp. , . [ ] burgess, p. . [ ] see ch. viii, "politics." [ ] commission of education _report_, - , vol. i, p. ci. [ ] hugh m. browne, a.m.e., _zion church quarterly_, april, , quoted by tillinghast, p. . [ ] fannie b. williams, _charities_, october , , p. . [ ] _atlanta university publications_, no. , p. . [ ] bureau of labor, _bulletin_, no. . [ ] _atlanta university publications_, nos. and . [ ] _atlanta university publications_, no. , pp. - . [ ] twelfth census, _supplementary analysis_, p. . [ ] willcox, "census statistics of the negro," _yale review_, : ( ). [ ] "the negro farmer," p. . [ ] pp. , . [ ] dabney, commissioner of education, _report_, , vol. i, p. . [ ] twelfth census, _supplementary analysis_, pp. , . [ ] _supplementary analysis_, p. . [ ] pp. , ; wood, "american in process," p. . [ ] twelfth census, vol. iii, p. lxix. [ ] _atlanta university publications_, no. , p. . [ ] _atlanta university publications_, no. , p. . [ ] twelfth census, vol. iii, p. lxxxii. [ ] p. clxxvi. [ ] p. ccxviii. [ ] pp. cxix, cxxiii, cxxvii. [ ] hoffman, p. . [ ] twelfth census, _supplementary analysis_, pp. , . [ ] _atlanta university publications_, no. , p. . [ ] figures for . [ ] less than one-tenth of one per cent. [ ] this is the number according to race; the table gives the number according to last place of residence. [ ] _review of reviews_, : ( ). [ ] statistics mainly from king and okey, "italy to-day." [ ] _review of reviews_, : ( ). [ ] twelfth census, _supplementary analysis_, p. . [ ] _review of reviews_, : ( ). [ ] king and okey, pp. - . [ ] balch, _charities_, may, , p. . [ ] marshall, "principles of economics," p. . [ ] "jewish encyclopedia," : . [ ] balch, _charities_, may, , p. . [ ] p. . [ ] "industrial commission," : . [ ] commissioner-general, , p. . [ ] coman, "history of contract labor," etc., p. . [ ] reports on hawaii; commissioner-general of immigration. see index. [ ] report of the royal commission on alien immigration, . cd. . [ ] semple, "american history," etc., p. . [ ] rowe, chapter v. [ ] census of the philippine islands. [ ] lalor's "cyclopedia of political economy, political science, and united states history," article on "chinese immigration." [ ] industrial commission, : . [ ] computed from table viii, p. _et seq._, report of commissioner-general of immigration, . "commercial" includes agents, bankers, hotel-keepers, manufacturers, merchants, and dealers, and other miscellaneous. "unskilled" includes draymen, hackmen, and teamsters, farm laborers, farmers, fishermen, laborers, and servants. [ ] two hundred and eighty-five thousand four hundred and sixty immigrants set down as "no occupation," including mainly women and children, are omitted from this computation. [ ] less than one-tenth of one per cent. [ ] industrial commission, vol. xv, see index, "prepaid tickets," p. . [ ] united states revised statutes, , section , act of july , . [ ] fleming, pp. , . [ ] "if i were asked what one factor makes most for the amicable relations between the races in the delta, i should say, without hesitation, the absence of a white laboring class, particularly of field laborers."--stone, "the negro in the yazoo-mississippi delta," p. . "there is comparatively little crime in the black belt and in the white belt. it is in the counties where the races meet on something like numerical equality and in economic competition that the maximum of crime is charged against negroes."--_atlanta university publications_, no. , p. . [ ] in , after losing a strike in new york, the general executive board of the united garment workers of america, consisting with one exception of russian jews, adopted the following resolutions:-- resolved, that the unprecedented movement of the very poor in america from europe in the last three years has resulted in wholly changing the previous social, political, and economic aspects of the immigration question. the enormous accessions to the ranks of our competing wage-workers, being to a great extent unemployed, or only partly employed at uncertain wages, are lowering the standard of living among the masses of the working people of this country, without giving promise to uplift the great body of immigrants themselves. the overstocking of the labor market has become a menace to many trade-unions, especially those of the lesser skilled workers. little or no benefit can possibly accrue to an increasing proportion of the great numbers yet coming; they are unfitted to battle intelligently for their rights in this republic, to whose present burdens they but add others still greater. the fate of the majority of the foreign wage-workers now here has served to demonstrate on the largest possible scale that immigration is no solution of the world-wide problem of poverty. resolved, that we call on american trade unionists to oppose emphatically the proposed scheme of government distribution of immigrants, since it would be an obvious means of directly and cheaply furnishing strike breakers to the combined capitalists now seeking destruction of the trade-unions. resolved, that we condemn all forms of assisted immigration, through charitable agencies or otherwise. resolved, that we warn the poor of the earth against coming to america with false hopes; it is our duty to inform them that the economic situation in this country is changing with the same rapidity as the methods of industry and commerce. resolved, that with respect to immigration we call on the government of the united states for a righteous relief of the wage-workers now in america. we desire that congress should either ( ) suspend immigration totally for a term of years; or ( ) put into force such an illiteracy test as will exclude the ignorant, and also impose such a head tax as will compel immigrants to pay their full footing here and be sufficient to send back all those who within a stated period should become public dependants. [ ] smith, "emigration and immigration," pp. - . [ ] act of march , , sec. . [ ] new york bureau of labor statistics, , p. . [ ] twelfth census, "occupations," p. clxxxvii. [ ] report on hawaii, _bulletin_ no. , pp. - . [ ] report on hawaii, _bulletin_ no. , pp. - . [ ] jewish agricultural and industrial aid society, _annual reports_. [ ] clyatt _v._ u.s., u.s., ( ); peonage cases, fed. . [ ] new york _herald_, june , . [ ] _the nation_, : ( ); durand, herbert, "peonage in america," _cosmopolitan_, : ( ). [ ] rosenberg, _american federationist_, october, , p. . [ ] jenks, "certain economic questions," etc., p. . [ ] coman, and "reports on hawaii." [ ] jenks, pp. , , , . [ ] united states philippine commission, , part i, p. . [ ] rosenberg, p. . [ ] philippine commission, , index, "the labor situation." [ ] "the italian cotton grower," p. . [ ] where two years are given, the first is for immigration and the second for imports. [ ] twelfth census, vol. i, p. clxxvi. [ ] see _federation_, june , p. . [ ] twelfth census, vol. i, pp. - . [ ] new york _sun_, nov. , . [ ] semple, . [ ] prisoners having one parent foreign are apportioned in the ratio of native and foreign parentage. [ ] includes native-born, parentage unknown. [ ] offenders having one parent foreign are apportioned in the ratio of native and foreign parentage. [ ] kate holladay claghorn, "the tenement house problem," vol. ii, p. . [ ] john b. mcmaster, "the riotous career of the knownothings," _forum_, july, , p. . [ ] cutler, "lynch law"; bishop, "lynching," _international quarterly_, september, . [ ] bureau of the census, special reports, "paupers in almshouses, ," "benevolent institutions, ," "insane and feeble-minded in hospitals and institutions, ." [ ] münsterberg, "american traits," p. ff. [ ] eaton, "the civil service in great britain," p. ff. [ ] muirhead, "the land of contrasts," p. . [ ] see description of the belgium system by the author, _review of reviews_, may, ; also, "representation of interests," _independent_, june, ; "proportional representation." [ ] commons, "proportional representation," appendix. publications of the federation for majority rule, washington, d.c. [ ] hunt, gaillard, "federal control of naturalization," _world's work_, : ( ). [ ] "report to the president on naturalization." [ ] "naturalization laws and regulations of october, ," published by the bureau of immigration and naturalization. [ ] twelfth census, vol. i, p. . [ ] twelfth census, "abstract," p. . [ ] twelfth census, "abstract," p. . [ ] twelfth census, vol. i, p. ccxvii. [ ] phillips, j. b., "educational qualifications of voters," _university of colorado studies_, vol. iii, no. ( ). [ ] caffey, francis g., "suffrage limitations at the south," _political science quarterly_, : ( ). report on political reform, union league club, new york, . [ ] williams _v._ mississippi, u.s., ; giles _v._ harris, u.s., ; giles _v._ teasley, u.s., . [ ] this does not apply to the "understanding" clause in mississippi, which is permanent. [ ] twelfth census, vol. i, pp. ccxiii, ccxv. [ ] twelfth census, vol. i, pp. cciv, ccv. [ ] see "reports on hawaii." [ ] kuczynski, "einwanderungspolitik," p. . [ ] _forum_, : - ( ). reprinted in "discussions," etc., pp. - . [ ] professor smith, for the year , estimated the colonial element at , , and the immigrant element at , , , applying to the immigrants the average rate of increase from births. "emigration and immigration," pp. - . [ ] watson, p. . [ ] van vorst, "the woman who toils," p. viii. [ ] computed from the twelfth census, vol. ii, p. lxxxvii, ff. [ ] computed from the twelfth census, vol. ii, p. . [ ] kuczynski concludes from his study of massachusetts statistics that "the native population cannot hold its own. it seems to be dying out." could he have separated the two elements of the native population, he would have found that the immigrant element is dying out faster than the older native element. "the fecundity of the native and foreign born population in massachusetts," p. . [ ] twelfth census, "statistical atlas," plate . [ ] "fecundity," etc., p. . [ ] ross, "causes of race superiority." [ ] see du bois, "the souls of black folk." [ ] report on hawaii, _bulletin_ no. , p. . [ ] "religions of primitive people," p. . [ ] smith, "assimilation of nationalities," p. . [ ] lovejoy, "the slav child," _charities_, july, , p. . [ ] twelfth census, _supplementary analysis_, p. . [ ] "child labor in the united states," p. , bureau of the census. [ ] grose, "aliens or americans?" [ ] see also stewart and huebner. [ ] report, , p. ; , p. ; , p. ; , p. . [ ] industrial commission, : - ; : - . [ ] tosti, gustavo, "the agricultural possibilities of italian immigration," _charities_, may , , p. . [ ] "immigration to the southern states," _political science quarterly_, : ( ). [ ] "facts about immigration," p. . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] kellor, "out of work," pp. , - , ; _charities_, feb. , , p. . [ ] commissioner-general, , p. . [ ] chapter , laws of . [ ] commissioner-general, , p. . [ ] for details of the several measures, see hall, "immigration." [ ] "industrial commission," : - . hall, "immigration." [ ] commissioner-general, , p. . [ ] the national immigration conference, december , , adopted the following resolution: "that the penalty of $ , now imposed on the steamship companies for bringing diseased persons to the united states, be also imposed for bringing in any person excluded by law." _national civic federation review_, january, , p. . poverty by robert hunter paper mo cents net cloth mo $ . net "a book that should be read by every one who has the promotion of social betterment at heart."--_milwaukee sentinel._ "a most interesting, a most startling, and a most instructive book."--_los angeles times._ "his book is largely a result of personal experience, and the aid of such works as his observation has led him to believe are approximately accurate and worthy of credence. 'poverty' seeks to define its subject estimate its extent, describe some of its effects, and point out the necessary remedial action, as seen by a settlement worker. the result is a collection of data of considerable value."--_new york daily people._ "this is in many ways a noteworthy book. the author has long lived face to face with the almost incredible conditions which he here portrays. he has extended his work and observations from the crowded tenement districts of the great cities to the smaller industrial towns, and what he finds reveals conditions in this country--even in times of industrial prosperity--very similar to those found in england by booth and other investigators; namely, that a percentage of poverty exists in the smaller industrial centres not far below that of the great industrial places, and that this percentage is extraordinarily high."--_springfield republican._ "the book is written with earnestness, but without exaggeration. every one familiar with the facts knows that conditions are even more cruel and brutal than as here described. and yet, no one of the great industrial nations is so backward as our own in devising and employing the legislative and other necessary remedies. mr. hunter's presentation of the situation is of the greatest value, and deserves the widest consideration."--_the congregationalist._ the macmillan company - fifth avenue, new york transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. the following misprints have been corrected: "conquerers" corrected to "conquerors" (page ) "amercianized" corrected to "americanized" (page ) "anequal" corrected to "an equal" (page ) " " corrected to " - " (footnote ) "soul" corrected to "souls" (footnote ) internet archive (https://archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original map. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/southernsouth hart the southern south by albert bushnell hart, ph.d., ll.d., litt.d. professor of history, harvard university new york and london d. appleton and company copyright, , by d. appleton and company published april, contents chapter page introduction i.--materials ii.--the southland iii.--the poor white iv.--immigration v.--southern leadership vi.--southern temperament vii.--attitude toward history viii.--negro character ix.--negro life x.--the negro at work xi.--is the negro rising? xii.--race association xiii.--race separation xiv.--crime and its penalties xv.--lynching xvi.--actual wealth xvii.--comparative wealth xviii.--making cotton xix.--cotton hands xx.--peonage xxi.--white education xxii.--negro education xxiii.--objections to education xxiv.--postulates of the problem xxv.--the wrong way out xxvi.--material and political remedies xxvii.--moral remedies map and tables index the southern south introduction the keynote to which intelligent spirits respond most quickly in the united states is americanism; no nation is more conscious of its own existence and its importance in the universe, more interested in the greatness, the strength, the pride, the influence, and the future of the common country. nevertheless, any observer passing through all the parts of the united states would discover that the union is made up not only of many states but of several sections--an east, a middle west, a far west, and a south. of these four regions the three which adhere most strongly to each other and have least consciousness of rivalry among themselves are often classed together as "the north," and they are set in rivalry against "the south," because of a tradition of opposing interests, commercial and political, which culminated in the civil war of , and is still felt on both sides of the line. that the south is now an integral and inseparable part of the union is proved by a sense of a common blood, a common heritage, and a common purpose, which is as lively in the southern as in the northern part of the union. the dominant english race stock is the same in both sections: in religion, in laws, in traditions, in expectation of the future, all sections of the united states are closer together than, for instance, the three components of the kingdom of great britain and ireland. whatever the divergence between southerners and northerners at home, once outside the limits of their common country they are alike; the frenchman may see more difference between a bavarian and a prussian than between a georgian and a vermonter. it is not to the purpose of this book to describe those numerous common traits which belong to people in all sections of the united states, but to bring into relief some of the characteristics of the south which are not shared by the north. for it is certain that the physical and climatic conditions of the south are different from those of the north; and equally sure that as a community the south has certain temperamental peculiarities which affect its views of the world in general and also of its own problems. slavery, which had little permanent effect on the society or institutions of those parts of the north in which it existed up to the revolution, was for two centuries a large factor in southern life, and has left many marks upon both white and negro races. the existence of a formerly servile race now ten millions strong still influences the whole development of the south. unlike the north, which ever since the civil war has felt disposed to consider itself the characteristic united states, the south looks upon itself, and is looked upon by its neighbors, as a unit within a larger unit; as set apart by its traditions, its history, and its commercial interests. the ex-president of the southern confederacy a few years ago at a public meeting declared that he appeared "in a defense of our southland." a southland there is, in the sense of a body of states which, while now yielding to none in loyalty to the union and in participation in its great career, adhere together with such a sense of peculiar life and standards as is not to be found in any group of northern communities except perhaps new england. the northerner who addresses himself to these special conditions of the south must expect to be asked what claim he has to form or express a judgment upon his neighbors. the son of an ohio abolitionist, accustomed from childhood to hear questions of slavery and of nationality discussed, i have for many years sought and accepted opportunities to learn something of these great problems at first hand. as a teacher i have come into contact with some of the brightest spirits of the south, and among former students count at least two of the foremost writers upon the subject--one a white and the other a negro. for some years i have carried on an active correspondence with southern people of every variety of sentiment. i have diligently read southern newspapers and have been honored by their critical and sometimes unflattering attention. in the last twenty-five years i have made a dozen or more visits to various parts of the south ranging in length from a few days to four months, and therein have gained some personal acquaintance with the conditions of all the former slave-holding states except missouri and florida. in the winter of - i took a journey of about a thousand miles through rural parts of the belt of states from texas to north carolina, with the special purpose of coming into closer personal touch with some phases of the problem upon which information was lacking. there need be no illusions as to the extent of the knowledge thus acquired. these various journeys and points of contact with southern people have shown how large is the southern problem, and how hard it is to discover all the factors which make the problem difficult. every year opens out some new unexplored field which must be taken into account if one is to hope for anything like a comprehensive view of the subject. how shall any northerner coming into a slave-holding region set his impressions alongside the experience of men who have lived all their lives in that environment? what is seven months' residence by a visitor, a fly on the wheel, against seventy years' residence by men who are a part of the problem? there are two sides to this question of the value of the observations of an outsider. sometimes he is the only one who thinks investigation worth while; and too much caution in hazarding an opinion would put a stop to all criticism by anybody except the people criticised. the observer over the walls may see more than the dweller within. a southerner coming up to make a study of the government in massachusetts would probably discover queer things about the street department of boston that escape the attention of those who breathe the city's dust; he might learn more about the conditions of mill towns like fall river than the citizen of boston has ever acquired; he might attend a town meeting in villages like barnstable, into the like of which the fall river man never so much as sets his foot; he may find out more about the county commissioners of bristol county than was ever dreamed by the taxpayers of barnstable; he may inform the dairyman on cape cod of the conditions of the tobacco farms on the connecticut; and hear complaints from the factory hands of new bedford which never reach their employers. it is just so in the south, where many people know intimately some one phase of the race problem, while few have thought out its details, or followed it from state to state. a professor in the university of louisiana might tell more about the race and labor conditions of his state than the writer shall ever learn; but perhaps he could not contribute to knowledge of the sea islands of south carolina or the texas truck farms or the mountains of north carolina. the privilege of the outside visitor to the south is to range far afield, to compare conditions in various states, and to make generalizations, subject to the criticism of better qualified investigators who may go over the same area of printed book and open country, but which have a basis of personal acquaintance with the region. if this book make any contribution toward the knowledge and appreciation of southern conditions, it must be by observing throughout two principles. the first is that no statement of fact be made without a basis in printed material, written memoranda, or personal memory of the testimony of people believed to speak the truth. the second is that in the discussion there be no animus against the south as a section or a people. i have found many friends there. i believe that the points of view of the reflective northerner and the reflective southerner are not so far apart as both have supposed; as a union soldier's son i feel a personal warmth of admiration for the heroism of the rival army, and for the south as a whole; and i recognize the material growth, the intellectual uplift, and the moral fervor of the southern people. in one sense i am a citizen of the southland. when a few years ago at a phi beta kappa dinner in cambridge, the president of the university of north carolina said: "i love north carolina, i ought to love that state, because it is my native country!" president eliot replied, when his turn came: "president winston says that north carolina is his native country; gentlemen, it's _our_ native country." for this reason has been chosen as the title of this book, "the southern south." leaving out of account those parts of the south, such as the peninsula of florida, which are really transplanted portions of the north; setting aside also the manifold national characteristics shared by both sections, i shall attempt to consider those conditions and problems which are in a measure peculiar to the south. the aim of the work is not to cavil but to describe, with full realization that many of the things upon which comment is passed are criticised in the south, and have a counterpart in the north. properly to acknowledge the information and impressions gained from friends, and sometimes from persons not so friendly, would require mention of scores of names; but i cannot forbear to recognize the candor and courtesy which, with few exceptions, have met my inquiries even from those who had little sympathy with what they presumed to be my views. the ground covered by the book was traversed in somewhat different analysis and briefer form in a course of lectures which i delivered before the lowell institute in boston during february and march, . parts of the subject have also been summarized in a series of letters to the _boston transcript_, and an article in the _north american review_, published in july, . while a year's reflection and restatement in the light of additional evidence have not changed the essential conclusions, i have found myself continually infused with a stronger sense that the best will and effort of the best elements in the south are hampered and limited by the immense difficulties of those race relations which most contribute to keep alive a southern south. chapter i materials for an understanding of the southern south the materials are abundant but little systematized. in addition to the sources of direct information there is a literature of the southern question beginning as far back as samuel sewall's pamphlet "joseph sold by his brethren," published in . down to the civil war the greater part of this literature was a controversy over slavery, which has little application to present problems, except as showing the temper of the times and as furnishing evidence to test the validity of certain traditions of the slavery epoch. the publications which are most helpful have appeared since , and by far the greater number since . besides the formal books there is a shower of pamphlets and fugitive pieces; and newspapers and periodicals have lately given much space to the discussion of these topics. so multifarious is this literature that clues have become necessary, and there are three or four serviceable bibliographies, some on the negro problem and some on the southern question as a whole. the earliest of these works is "bibliography of the negroes in america" (published in the "reports" of the united states commissioner of education, , vol. i). more searching, and embracing the whole field of the negro's life in america, are two bibliographies by w. e. burghardt dubois, the first being "a select bibliography of the american negro" ("atlanta university publications," ), and "a select bibliography of the negro american" ("atlanta university publications," no. , ). a. p. c. griffin has also published through the library of congress "select list of references on the negro question" ( d ed., ) and "list of discussions of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments" ( ). one of the most useful select bibliographies is that of walter l. fleming in his "reconstruction of the seceded states, - " ( ). the author of this book, in his volume on "slavery and abolition" ("the american nation," vol. xvi, ), has printed a bibliographical chapter upon the general question of negro servitude in america. the study of the southern question would be much lightened were there a systematic general bibliography, with a critical discussion of the various works that may be listed. a part of the problem is the spirit of those who write formal books, and a group of works may be enumerated which take an extreme anti-negro view and seek to throw upon the african race the responsibility for whatever is wrong in the south. dr. r. w. shufeldt (late of the united states army) has published "the negro a menace to american civilization" ( ), of which the theme is sufficiently set forth by the wearisome use of the term "hybrid" for mulatto; he illustrates his book, supposed to be a logical argument on the inferiority of the negro, with reproductions of photographs showing the torture and death of a negro in process of lynching by a white mob; and he sums up his judgment of the negro race in the phrase "the negro in fact has no morals, and it is therefore out of the question for him to be immoral." the most misleading of all the southern writers is thomas dixon, jr., a man who is spending his life in the attempt to persuade his neighbors that the north is passionately hostile to the south; that the black is bent on dishonoring the white race; and that the ultimate remedy is extermination. in his three novels, "the leopard's spots" ( ), "the clansman" ( ), and "the traitor" ( ), he paints a lurid picture of reconstruction, in which the high-toned southern gentleman tells the white lady who wishes to endow a college for negroes that he would like--"to box you up in a glass cage, such as are used for rattlesnakes, and ship you back to boston." one of these novels, "the clansman," has been dramatized, and its production, against the remonstrances of the respectable colored people in a missouri town, led directly to a lynching. no reasonable being would hold the whole south responsible for such appeals to passion; but unfortunately many well-meaning people accept that responsibility. in charlotte, n. c., the most refined and respectable white people went to see "the clansman" played and showed every sign of approval, as appears to have been the case in providence, r. i., in . a recent writer, john c. reed, in his "brothers' war," brackets thomas dixon, jr., with john c. calhoun as exponents of southern feeling and especially lauds dixon as the "exalted glorification" of the ku klux. the volume from dixon's pen which has had most influence is "the leopard's spots," the accuracy of which is marked by such assertions as that congress made a law which gave "to india and egypt the mastery of the cotton markets of the world"; and that it cost $ , , to pay the united states troops in the south in the year . the book has been traversed with great skill by a negro writer. when dixon asks: "can you change the color of the negro's skin, the kink of his hair, the bulge of his lip or the beat of his heart with a spelling-book or a machine?" kelly miller replies: "you need not be so frantic about the superiority of your race. whatever superiority it may possess, inherent or acquired, will take care of itself without such rabid support.... your loud protestations, backed up by such exclamatory outbursts of passion, make upon the reflecting mind the impression that you entertain a sneaking suspicion of their validity." many southern writers are disposed to put their problems into the form of novels, and there are half a dozen other stories nearly all having for their stock in trade the statutes of reconstruction, the negro politician who wants to marry a white woman, and the vengeance inflicted on him by the ku klux. in the latest of these novels the president of the united states is pictured as dying of a broken heart because his daughter has married a man who is discovered to be a negro. a book very widely read and quoted in the south is frederick l. hoffman, "race traits and tendencies" ("am. economic association publications," xi, nos. , , and , ). "race traits" is written by a man of foreign extraction who therefore feels that he is outside the currents of prejudice; it is well studied, scientifically arranged, and rests chiefly on statistical summaries carefully compiled. the thesis of the book is that the africans in america are a dying race, but many of the generalizations are based upon statistics of too narrow a range to permit safe deductions, or upon the confessedly imperfect data of the federal censuses. quite different in its tone is a book which is said to have been widely sold throughout the south, and which seems to be written for no other purpose but to arouse the hostility of the whites against the negroes. the title page reads: "_the negro a beast or in the image of god the reasoner of the age, the revelator of the century! the bible as it is! the negro and his relation to the human family! the negro a beast, but created with articulate speech, and hands, that he may be of service to his master--the white man. the negro not the son of ham, neither can it be proven by the bible, and the argument of the theologian who would claim such, melts to mist before the thunderous and convincing arguments of this masterful book._" this savage work quotes with approval an alleged statement of a northern man that inside the next thirty years the south will be obliged to "re-enslave, kill or export the bulk of its negro population." it insists that the negro is an ape, notwithstanding the fact that he has not four hands; he has no soul; the mulatto has no soul; the expression "the human race" is a false term invented by plato "in the atheistic school of evolution." the serpent in the garden of eden was a negro. cain was also mixed up in the detestable business of miscegenation, for the bible says, "sin lieth at thy door, and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." the writer has taken pains to point out that "the mere fact that the inspired writer refers to it in the masculine gender is no evidence that it was not a female." the mulatto being "doomed by divine edict to instant death ... neither the mulatto nor his ultimate offspring can acquire the right to live. this being true, it follows that these monstrosities have no rights social, financial, political or religious that man need respect." wherever you find the word beast in the bible it means the negro! if such passionate and rancorous books were all that sprang from the south, the problem would end in a race war; but as will be seen throughout this discussion, there are two camps of opinion and utterance among southern white people. on one side the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force; on the other side there is a body of white writers who go deeper into the subject, who recognize the responsibility of the white race as the dominant element, and who preach and expect peace and uplift. such a writer is a. h. shannon in his "racial integrity and other features of the negro problem" (printed in nashville and dallas, ). in good temper and at much length he argues that the negro owes to the white man a debt of gratitude for bringing his ancestors out of african barbarism, though the principal evils of the negro question are due to the inferior race. a widely read book of the same type is thomas nelson page's "the negro: the southerner's problem" ( ). mr. page accepts as a fact the existence of various classes of negroes self-respecting and worthy of the respect of others; and he believes, on the whole, that the colored race deserve commendation. "the negro has not behaved unnaturally," he says; "he has, indeed, in the main behaved well." the main difficulty with mr. page's book is that it fails to go to the bottom of the causes which underlie the trouble; and that while admitting the fact that a considerable fraction of the negro race is improving, he sees no ultimate solution. he suggests but three alternatives: removal, which he admits to be impossible; amalgamation, which is equally unthinkable; and an absolute separation of social and apparently of economic life, which could be accomplished only by turning over definite regions for negro occupation. starting out with undoubted good will to the black race, the writer ends with little hope of a distinct bettering of conditions. quite a different point of view is william benjamin smith's "the color line--a brief in behalf of the unborn" ( ), which is based on the assertion that the negro is no part of the human race and hence that amalgamation is a crime against nature. the general trend of professor smith's book is an argument, somewhat technical and not convincing, that the black man is physically, mentally, and morally so different from the white man that he may be set outside the community. this was of course the argument for slavery, and if it be true, is still an argument for peonage or some other recognized position of dependency. from this deduction, however, smith sheers off; he uses the inferiority of the negro chiefly as an argument against the mixture of the races, which he believes to be a danger; and he makes an ingenious distinction between the present mixture in which the fathers were whites and a possible future amalgamation in which the fathers might be negroes. the most suggestive recent study of the negro question is edgar gardner murphy's "problems of the present south" ( ). mr. murphy is an alabamian, very familiar with southern conditions. while not optimistic--nobody in the south is optimistic on the race question--he recognizes the possibility of a much better race feeling than the present one. it is interesting to see that this man who, as champion of the movement against child labor in the south, has been so successful in relieving children of a terrible burden, feels sure that the worst thing that can be done for the community is to keep the negro ignorant. he is perfectly willing to face the issue that those who show the qualities of manhood should have the reward of manhood, namely, the right to participate in politics; and the acknowledgment of that right he says does not imply race fusion. he gives up nothing of his southern birthright, and courageously asserts the ability of his section to work out its problem for itself. genial in tone, full of the ripe thought of an accomplished writer is william garrott brown, "the lower south" ( ), which is not a discussion of the race question so much as of the character and point of view of the planter before the civil war and the southern gentleman since that time, a plea for a sympathetic understanding of the real difficulties of the south and its sense of responsibility. these five books are proof not only that there is wide divergence of views, but also that genuine southern men, strongly loyal to their own section, can set an example of moderation of speech, breadth of view, and willingness to accept and to promote a settlement of the southern question through the elevation of the people, white and black, who have ultimate power over that question. in slavery days almost all the discussion of race questions came from the whites, southern or northern. now, there is a school of negro controversialists and observers, several of whom have had the highest advantages of education and of a personal acquaintance with the problems which they discuss, and thus possess some advantages over many white writers. about twenty years ago george w. williams published his "history of the negro race in america" ( ), which, though to a large degree a compilation, is a respectable and useful book. another writer, william h. thomas, in his "the american negro" ( ), has made admissions with regard to the moral qualities of his fellow negroes which have been widely taken up and quoted by anti-negro writers. charles w. chesnutt, in several books of collected stories, of which "the conjure woman" ( ) is the liveliest, and in two novels, "the house behind the cedars" ( ) and the "marrow of tradition" ( ), has criticised the rigid separation of races. no man feels more keenly the race distinctions than one like chesnutt, more caucasian than african in his make-up. one of the best of their writers is kelly miller, who has contributed nearly fifty articles to various periodicals upon the race problems; and in humor, good temper, and appreciation of the real issues, shows himself often superior to the writers whom he criticises. the most systematic discussion of the race by one of themselves is william a. sinclair's "the aftermath of slavery" ( ), which, though confused in arrangement and unscientific in form, is an excellent summary of the arguments in favor of the negro race and the negroes' political privileges. the most eminent man whom the african race in america has produced is booker t. washington, the well-known president of tuskegee. in addition to his numerous addresses and his personal influence, he has contributed to the discussion several volumes, partly autobiographic and partly didactic. his "up from slavery" ( ) is a remarkable story of his own rise from the deepest obscurity to a place of great influence. in three other volumes, "character building" ( ), "working with the hands" ( ), and "the negro in business" ( ), he has widened his moral influence upon his race. "the future of the american negro" ( ) is the only volume in which washington discusses the race problem as a whole; and his advice here, as in all his public utterances, is for the negro to show himself so thrifty and so useful that the community cannot get on without him. paul l. dunbar, the late negro poet, contented himself with his irresistible fun and his pathos without deep discussions of problems. the most distinguished literary man of the race is w. e. burghardt dubois, an a.b. and ph.d. of harvard, who studied several years in germany, and as professor of sociology in atlanta university has had an unusual opportunity to study his people. besides many addresses and numerous articles, he has contributed to the discussion his "souls of black folk" ( ), which, in a style that places him among the best writers of english to-day in america, passionately speaks the suffering of the highly endowed and highly educated mulatto who is shut out of the kingdom of kindred spirits only by a shadow of color. witness such phrases as these: "to be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships"; or this, "the sincere and passionate belief that somewhere between men and cattle, god created a _tertium quid_, and called it a negro,--a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable within its limitation, but straitly fore ordained to walk within the veil." the three groups just sketched, the violent southerners, moderate southerners, and negro writers, each from its own point of view has aimed to study the complicated subject, to classify and generalize. nearly all the writers are sources, in that they are conversant with the south and have a personal acquaintance with its problems; but their books are discussions rather than materials. what is now most needed for a solid understanding of the question is monographic first-hand studies of limited scope in selected areas. unfortunately that material is still scanty. professor dubois has made a series of investigations as to the conditions of the negro; first, his elaborate monograph, "the philadelphia negro" (published by the university of pennsylvania, ), then a series of sociological studies in the "atlanta university publications," and several "bulletins" published by the united states department of labor, notably "census bulletin no. : negroes in the united states" ( ). he has thus made himself a leading authority upon the actual conditions, particularly of the negro farmer. at atlanta university and also at hampton, va., are held annual conferences, the proceedings of which are published every year, including a large amount of first-hand material on present conditions. one northern white man, carl kelsey, has addressed himself to this problem in his "the negro farmer" ( ), which is a careful study of the conditions of the negroes in tidewater, virginia. one practical southern cotton planter has devoted much time and attention to the scientific study of the conditions on his own plantation and elsewhere as a contribution toward a judgment of the race problem. this is alfred h. stone, of greenville, miss., who has published half a dozen monographs, several of which are gathered into a volume, under the title "studies in the american race problem" ( ). he is now engaged, under the auspices of the carnegie institution, on a study of the whole question. he has visited several southern states and the west indies, and brings to his inquiries the point of view of an employer of negroes who wishes them well and sees the interest of his country in the improvement of negro labor. perhaps his judgment is somewhat affected by the special conditions of mississippi and of his own neighborhood, in which the negroes are very numerous and perhaps more than usually disturbing. the results of his latest investigations will appear under the title "race relations in america"; and may be expected to be the most thorough contribution to the subject made by any writer. among less formal publications are the negro periodicals, which are very numerous and include _alexander's magazine_ and a few other well-written and well-edited summaries of things of special interest to the race. the whole question has become so interesting that several of the great magazines have taken it up. the _world's work_ devoted its number of june, , almost wholly to the south; and the _american magazine_ published in - a series of articles by ray stannard baker on the subject. in the _outlook_ published a series of seven articles by ernest h. abbott based upon personal study. an interesting contribution is the so-called "autobiography of a southerner," by "nicholas worth," published in the _atlantic monthly_ in . whoever nicholas worth may be, there can be no doubt as to his southern birth, training, and understanding, nor of his excellent style, sense of humor, and power to make clear the growth of race feeling in the south since the civil war. all these and many other printed materials are at the service of the northern as of the southern investigator. among their contradictory and controversial testimony may be discerned various cross currents of thought; and their statements of fact and the results of their researches form a body of material which may be analyzed as a basis for new deductions. but nobody can rely wholly on printed copy for knowledge of such complicated questions. books cannot be cross-examined nor compelled to fill up gaps in their statements. the investigator of the south must learn the region and the people so as to take in his own impressions at first hand. printed materials are the woof; but the warp of the fabric is the geography of the south, the distribution of soil, the character of the crops, the habits of the people, their thrift and unthrift, their own ideas as to their difficulties. yet let no one deceive himself as to what may be learned, even by wide acquaintance or long residence. it is not so long ago that a southern lady who had lived for ten years in the neighborhood of boston was amazed to be told that such massachusetts officers as robert g. shaw, during the civil war, actually came from good families; she had always understood that people of position would not take commissions in the hireling federal army. if such errors can be made as to the north, like misconceptions may arise as to the south. all that has ever been written about the southern question must be read in the light of the environment, the habits of thought, and the daily life of the southern people, white and black. chapter ii the southland in what do the southern states differ as to extent and climate from other parts of the united states? first of all, what does the southland include? previous to the civil war, when people said "the south" they usually meant the fifteen states in which slavery was established. since some inroads and additions to that group have been made. maryland is rather a middle state than a southern; west virginia has been cut off from the south, and is now essentially western, as is missouri; but the new state of oklahoma is a community imbued with a distinct southern spirit. for many reasons the northern tier of former slave-holding states differ from their southern neighbors; and in this book less attention will be given to virginia, north carolina, kentucky, and tennessee than to their south-lying neighbors, because they are becoming to a considerable degree mineral and manufacturing communities, in which the negro problem is of diminishing significance. the true southland, the region in which conditions are most disturbed and an adjustment of races is most necessary, where cotton is most significant, is the belt of seven states from south carolina to texas, to which the term "lower south" has often been applied. physically, the southern states differ much both from their northeastern and their northwestern neighbors. no broken country like new england reaches down to the coast; no rocky headlands flank deep natural harbors; there are, except in central alabama and in texas, no treeless prairies. three of these states, south carolina, georgia, and alabama, include mountain regions which, though interesting in themselves, are little related to the great problem of race relations and of race hostility. physically, they protect the cotton belt from the north, and thus affect the climate; and they are fountains of water power as yet little developed. south of the mountains and thence westward through northern mississippi, louisiana, and texas, is a hill region which is from every point of view one of the parts of the south most interesting and at the same time least known by northerners. this is the traditional home of the poor whites; whose backwardness is in itself a problem; whose industry contributes much more than the world has been prone to allow to the wealth of the south; and whose progress is one of the most encouraging things in the present situation, for they furnish the major part of the southern voters. the hills are still heavily wooded, as was the whole face of the country as far as central texas, when it was first opened up by europeans. the hill region is also the theater of most of the manufacturing in the south, and especially of the cotton mills. below the hills is a stretch of land, much of it alluvial, extending from lower north carolina to central texas, which is the most characteristic part of the south, because it is the approved area of cotton planting, the site of great plantations, and the home of the densest negro population. the central part of it is commonly called the black belt originally because of the color of the soil, more recently as a tribute to the color of the tillers of the soil, for here may be found counties in which the negroes are ten to one, and areas in which they are a hundred to one. it includes some prosperous cities, like montgomery and shreveport, and many thriving and increasing towns; but it is preëminently an agricultural region, in which is to be settled the momentous question whether the negro is to stay on the land, and can progress as an agricultural laborer. the seacoast, along the atlantic and gulf, is again different from the black belt. it abounds in islands, some of which, especially the sea islands of south carolina and georgia, present the most interesting negro conditions to be found in the south. in this strip lie also the southern ports, of which the principal ones are norfolk, wilmington, charleston, savannah, brunswick, jacksonville, pensacola, mobile, new orleans, and galveston. with the exception of atlanta, montgomery, birmingham, and memphis, and the texan cities, this list includes nearly all the populous cities of the lower south. the ports are supported not from the productions of their neighborhood, but as out-ports from the interior. three of them, savannah, new orleans, and galveston, have a large european commerce; the others depend upon the coasting trade, the fruit industry, and the beginnings of the commerce to the isthmus of panama, which everybody in the south expects is to become enormous. in one respect the southland and the northland were originally alike, namely, that they were both carpeted with a growth of heavy timber, the pine and its brethren in some localities, hard woods in others. here a divergence has come about which has many effects on the south; by , outside the mountains, there was little uncleared land in the north, while most of the hill region, and large parts of the black belt and coast, in the south were still untouched by the ax. in the last twenty-five years great inroads have been made on the southern forests, and clearing is going on everywhere on a large scale. nevertheless, a very considerable proportion of the southern whites and many negroes still live in the woods, and have retained some of the habits of the frontier. population is commonly sparse; pretentious names of villages on the map prove to mark hamlets of two or three houses; nearly all the country churches are simply set down at crossroads, as are the schoolhouses and mournful little cemeteries. the good effects of frontier life are there, genuine democracy, neighborhood feeling, hospitality, courage, and honesty; but along with them are seen the drawbacks of the frontier: ignorance, uncouthness, boisterousness, lawlessness, a lack of enterprise, and contempt for the experience of older communities. one of the characteristics not only of the lower classes, but of all sections of the south, is the love of open-air life; the commonest thing on the roads in any part of the south is the man with a sporting gun, and a frequent sight is a pack of dogs escorting men on horseback who are going out to beat up deer. in some parts of the back country and in many parts of the black belt the roads are undrivable several months of the year, and people have to find their way on horseback. so common is the habit of horseback riding that a mountain girl to whom a northern lady lent a book on etiquette returned it with the remark: "hit seems a right smart sort of a book, but hit is so simple; why, hit tells you how to sit on a horse!" as will be seen in the next chapter, the frontier is ceasing to be, but many of its consequences will long be left impressed upon southern character. meanwhile the woods are turning into dollars, and a farming community is emerging not unlike that of the hill regions of western pennsylvania or southern ohio. the physical respects in which the south most differs from the north are its climate and its products. the south enjoys an unusual combination of climatic conditions; it is a subtropical country in which can be raised cotton, rice, sugar, yams, and citrous fruits; it is abundantly watered with copious rainfall and consequent streams; at the same time, it is subject to occasional frosts which, however destructive of the hopes of orange growers, are supposed to be favorable to cotton. not one of the southern crops is a monopoly, even in the united states; they are raising cotton and oranges in california, rice in the philippines, sugar in porto rico, and tobacco in connecticut; but the south is better fitted for these staples than any other section of the union, and in addition can raise every northern crop, except maple sugar, including corn, oats, buckwheat, considerable quantities of wheat, barley, rye, and garden fruits. every year trucking--that is, the raising of vegetables--grows more important in the south; and texas still remains a great cattle state. there is, however, little dairying anywhere, and it cannot be too clearly kept in mind that the great agricultural staple, the dramatic center of southern life, is "making cotton." though agriculture is the predominant interest in the south, it is coming forward rapidly in other pursuits, and is putting an end to differences which for near a century have marked off the two sections. down to the civil war the south hardly touched its subterranean wealth in coal and iron, and knew nothing of its petroleum or its stores of phosphate rock. mining has now become a great industry, especially in alabama, and the states north and northwestward to virginia. the manufacture of iron has kept pace, and indeed has stimulated the development of the mines; and birmingham is one of the world's centers in the iron trade. cotton mills also have sprung up; and, as will be shown later, think they are disputing the supremacy of new england. though the black belt shares little in these industries, or in the city building which comes along with them, it has two local industries, namely, the ginning of cotton and the manufacture of cotton-seed oil, together with a large fertilizer industry. the south is not without drawbacks such as all over the world are the penalty for the fruitfulness of semi-tropical regions. while, with the exception of the lower mississippi, perhaps no day in the summer is as hot as some new york days, the heat in the lower south is steady and unyielding; and though the negroes and white laborers keep on with little interruption and sunstrokes are almost unknown, the heat affects the powers, at least of the whites, to give their best service. colleges and schools find it harder to keep up systematic study throughout the academic year than in similar northern institutions. the south is much more infested by poisonous snakes, ticks, fleas, and other like pests than the north, and though the climate is so favorable for an all-the-year-round outdoor life these creatures put some limitations on free movement. the low country also abounds in swamps, many of them miles in extent, which if drained might make the most fertile soil in the world; but, as they lie, are haunts of mosquitoes, and therefore of malaria. deaths by malarial fever, which are almost unknown in the north, mount up to some hundreds in southern cities, and in the lowlands, particularly of the mississippi and the sea islands, every white new-comer must pay the penalty of fever before he can live comfortably. the people accept these drawbacks good-humoredly and often ignore them, but they make life different from that of most parts of the north. on the other hand, the rivers of the south, flowing from the wide extended mountains with their abundant rainfall, make a series of abundant water powers. in the upper mountains there are a few waterfalls of a height from twenty to two hundred feet, but the great source of power is where the considerable streams reach the "fall line," below which they run unimpeded to the sea. places like spartanburg and columbia in south carolina, and augusta and columbus in georgia, have large powers which are making them great manufacturing centers. no part of the united states east of the rocky mountains is so rich in undeveloped water powers as is the south. this prosperity extends also to the smaller cities which are now springing up in profusion throughout the south. even in the black belt there are centers of local trade; and forwarding points like monroe in louisiana, greenville in mississippi, and americus in georgia, are concentrators of accumulating wealth and also of new means of education and refinement. in this respect, as in many others, the south is going through the experience of the northwestern states forty years ago; and although its urban population is not likely ever to be so large in proportion as in those states, a change is coming over the habits of thought and the means of livelihood of the whole southern people. in southern cities large and small, new and old, the visitor is attracted by the excellent architectural taste of most of the public buildings, of many of the new hotels and modern business blocks, and of the stately colonnaded private houses. texas boasts a superb capitol at austin, one of the most notable buildings of the country, which will perhaps be thought abnormal in some parts of the north, since it was built without jobbery and brought with it no train of criminal suits against the state officers who supervised its erection. the less progressive state of mississippi has a new marble capitol at jackson, which is as attractive as the beautiful statehouse at providence. the same sense of proportion and dignity is shown in many smaller places, such as opelika, alabama, or shreveport, louisiana, which contain beautiful churches and county buildings appropriate and dignified. the cities in many ways affect the white race, chiefly for the better; they furnish the appliances of intellectual growth, tolerable common schools, public high schools, public libraries, and a body of educated and thinking people. in the cities are found most of the new business and professional class who are doing much to rejuvenate the south. the interior cities much more than in former times are centers for the planting areas in their neighborhood; and through the cities are promoted those relations of place with place, of state with state, of section with section, of nation with nation, which broaden human life. unfortunately in the cities, although their negro population is less in proportion than in the open country, the race feeling is bitter; and some of the most serious race disturbances during the last twenty years have been in large places; although the presence of a police force ought to keep such trouble in check. still the south remains a rural community. leaving out of account louisville, baltimore, and st. louis, which, although within the boundaries of slave-holding states, were built up chiefly by middle-state or western state trade, the ante-bellum south contained only three notable cities: richmond, charleston, and new orleans. as late as out of eight million people in the lower south only half a million lived in cities of eight thousand inhabitants and upward. in , though a third of the people of the whole united states lived in cities, the urban population of the states extending from south carolina to texas was only about a ninth. since that time the cities have been going forward more rapidly; but the drift out of the open country is less marked than the similar movement in the northern states, and the influence of foreign immigration is negligible. nevertheless the cities have become a distinct feature of the new south; and their healthy growth is one of the most hopeful tokens of prosperity. the largest is of course new orleans, which has now passed the three hundred thousand mark and, in the estimation of its people, is on the way to surpass new york city. what else does it mean when the southern port in one year ships more wheat than the northern? but new orleans is only the fourteenth in size of the american cities, and the lower south has only one other, atlanta, which goes into the list of the fifty largest cities of the union. though these figures show conclusively that the south is not an urban region, they do not set forth the activity, the civic life, and the prospective growth of the southern cities. charleston is still the most attractive place of pilgrimage on the north american continent, beautiful in situation, romantic in association, abounding in people of mind, and much more active in a business way than the world supposes; savannah is a seaport, with a few incidental manufactures, but one of the busiest places on the atlantic coast; mobile has become metropolitan in its handsome buildings, and in a spirit of enterprise which the yankees have not always been willing to admit to be a southern trait. atlanta is the clearing house of many financial enterprises, such as the great life insurance companies and trust companies, and has become a wholesale center. while three other interior cities of this region, columbia, montgomery, and birmingham, are among the active and progressive places of the country. in texas there is certain to be a large urban population, and houston, san antonio, and dallas have not yet decided among themselves which is to be the chicago of the south. chapter iii the poor white the broad and beautiful southland is peopled by about thirty million human beings ( , , in ), who constitute the "south" as a community conscious of a life separate in many respects from that of the north. what is there in these thirty millions which sets them apart? first of all is the sharp division into two races--two thirds of the people whites and one third negroes, which in uncounted open and obscure ways makes the south unlike any other country in the world. in the second place account must be taken of the subdivision of the white people into social and economic classes--a division common in all lands, but peculiar in the south because of the relations of the strata to each other. an analysis of the elements of white population may begin with the less prosperous and progressive portion commonly called the poor whites. as used in the south the term means lowlanders; and it is necessary to set off for separate treatment the mountaineers, who are, if not typical southerners, at least unlike anything in the north. no other inhabitants of the united states are so near the eighteenth century as the people to whom an observer has given the name of "our contemporary ancestors." for nowhere else in the united states is there a distinct mountain people. the new england mountaineers live nowhere higher than , feet above the sea, and have no traits which mark them from their neighbors in the lower lands; in the rocky mountains the population is chiefly made up of miners; the sierra nevadas are little peopled; in the south alone, where some elevated valleys have been settled for two hundred years, is there an american mountain folk, with a local dialect and social system and character. the mountains and their inhabitants are a numerous and significant part of the population in all the upper tier of the southern states, including oklahoma; and though they are much less numerous in the lower south, they furnish a large body of voters, and their slow progress is in itself a difficult problem. the appalachian range, from canada to alabama, is made up of belts of parallel ridges; in a few places, such as mount washington in new hampshire, and mount mitchell in north carolina, they rise above , feet, but they include comparatively few elevations over , feet, and no lofty plateaus. between the ridges and in pockets or coves of the mountains are lands that are easily cultivated, and in many places the mountains, when cleared, are fertile to their summits. the scenic culmination of the appalachians is blowing rock in north carolina, , feet above the sea, where the rifleman without stirring from one spot may drop his bullets into the catawba flowing into the atlantic, the new, which is a head water of the ohio, and the watauga, a branch of the tennessee. above this spot rises, , feet higher, the mass of grandfather's mountain; and below is an enchanting series of mountains, range after range, breaking off to the eastern foothills. within the appalachians, south of pennsylvania, dwell about two and a half million people of whom but a few thousands are of african or european birth. these are true americans, if there are any, for they are the descendants of people who were already in the country as much as a century and a half ago. in a kentucky churchyard may be found such names as lucinda gentry, john kindred, simeon skinner, and william tudor. side by side stand scotch-irish names, for many of that stock drifted southwestward from pennsylvania into these mountains; and in the oldest burying ground, on the site of daniel boone's watauga settlement, the first interment seems to have been that of a german. just as in central pennsylvania, and the valley of virginia, the english, scotch-irish, and pennsylvania dutch were intermingled. it is an error to suppose that these highlanders are descended from the riffraff of the colonial south; they have been crowded back into the unfavorable parts of the mountains because, as the population increased, there was a lack of good land; and the least vigorous and ambitious of them, though sons or grandsons of stalwart men, have been obliged to accept the worst opportunities. the life of the mountain whites is not very unlike that of new england in the seventeenth century, new york in the eighteenth, and minnesota in the nineteenth century. the people are self-sustaining in that they build their own houses, raise their own food, and make their own clothing. there have been instances where in the early morning a sheep was trotting about wearing a pelt which in the evening a mountaineer was wearing, it having been sheared, spun, woven, dyed, cut, made, and unfitted in that one day. abraham lincoln, as a boy in indiana and a young man in illinois, lived the same kind of life that these people are now going through; for here is the last refuge of the american frontier. these conditions seem not in themselves barbarous, for there are still thousands of northern people who in childhood inhabited intelligent and well-to-do communities with good schools, in which most of the families still made their own soap and sugar, smoked their own hams, molded their own candles, and dyed their own cloth, where the great spinning-wheel still turned and the little wheel whirred. the mountain whites, however, are more than primitive or even colonial, they are early english; at least among them are still sung and handed down from grandmother to child elizabethan ballads. lord thomas still hies him to his mother to know whether i shall marry fair elender, or bring the brown girl home. local bards also compose for themselves such stirring ditties as "sourwood mounting." chickens a-crowin' in the sourwood mountain, ho-de-ing-dang, diddle-lal-la-da. so many pretty girls i can't count 'em, ho-de-ing-dang, diddle-lal-la-da. my true love lives up in the head of a holler, she won't come and i won't call 'er. my true love, she's a black-eyed daisy, if i don't get her, i'll go crazy. the most unfavorable mountain conditions are fairly illustrated by eastern kentucky, a veritable back country. along the roads the traveler passes a number of one-room houses, without glass windows, and is told many tales of the irregular or no-family life of the people. perhaps along a creek he chances on a traditional mountain white family, such as porte crayon drew fifty years ago, when these people were first described as a curiosity. below a dirty and ill-favored house, down under the bank on the shingle near the river, sits a family of five people, all ill-clothed and unclean; a blear-eyed old woman, a younger woman with a mass of tangled red hair hanging about her shoulders, indubitably suckling a baby; a little girl with the same auburn evidence of scotch ancestry; a boy, and a younger child, all gathered about a fire made among some bricks, surrounding a couple of iron saucepans, in which is a dirty mixture looking like mud, but probably warmed-up sorghum syrup, which, with a few pieces of corn pone, makes their breakfast. a counterbalance to the squalor is the plump and pretty girls that appear all along the way, with the usual mountain headdress of the sunbonnet, perched at a killing angle. such people have their own peculiarities of speech like the mountain woman's characterization of a forlorn country-seat: "warn't hit the nighest ter nowhar uv ary place ever you's at?" the miserable family described above are a fair type of what a writer on the subject calls the "submerged tenth among the mountaineers"; but they belong to the lowest type, to which those who know them best give no favorable character; they live in the remotest parts of the mountains, in the rudest cabins, with the smallest provision of accumulated food. most of them are illiterate and more than correspondingly ignorant. some of them had indian ancestors and a few bear evidences of negro blood. the so-called "mountain-boomer," says an observer, "has little self-respect and no self-reliance.... so long as his corn pile lasts the 'cracker' lives in contentment, feasting on a sort of hoe cake made of grated corn meal mixed with salt and water and baked before the hot coals, with addition of what game the forest furnishes him when he can get up the energy to go out and shoot or trap it.... the irregularities of their moral lives cause them no sense of shame.... but, notwithstanding these low moral conceptions, they are of an intense religious excitability.... they license and ordain their own preachers, who are no more intelligent than they are themselves, but who are distinguished by special ability in getting people 'shouting happy,' or in 'shaking the sinner over the smoking fires of hell until he gets religion.'" they are all users of tobacco--men, women, and children. they smoke and chew and "dip snuff."... bathing is unknown among them.... when a garment is put on once it is there to stay until it falls to pieces. the washtub is practically as little known among them as the bathtub.... the same authority has abundant praise for the better type of the mountaineer, who loves the open-air life, cares nothing for luxury, and "has raised the largest average families in america upon the most sterile of 'upright' and stony farms, farms the very sight of which would make an indiana farmer sick with nervous prostration. he has sent his sons out to be leaders of men in all the industries and activities in every part of our country." if there were no improvement in the mountaineer who remains on his land, the south would rue it; but in some parts of the mountains one may have such experiences as those of the writer in on a pedestrian journey across the mountains of north carolina, among what has been supposed to be the most primitive and least hopeful people in the southern mountains. he found beside a lonely creek near the little village of sugar grove the house of the son of a swiss immigrant, the best one for many miles. it is also the telephone exchange in that remote region. the stranger is received hospitably, and sits down to a meal of a dozen good dishes, including the traditional five kinds of sauce. he is not required to sleep in the telephone exchange itself, which is the living room of the family occupied by the husband, wife, two babies, two older children squabbling in a trundle bed, and a space for two more, but receives a clean and comfortable room to himself. the host is justly proud that sugar grove has a good two-story school house put up by the labor of the people of the neighborhood, who tax themselves to increase the school term from the four months supported by the state fund to eight months. in that valley the people are as prosperous as in the average maine village, and for much the same reason; it is lumber that has brought money and prosperity; for railroads were not built thither till the lumber was worth so much that the owners received considerable sums in cash, and the thrifty ones have saved it. a few nights later was tested the hospitality of a young couple newly married, who were running a little mill. they furnished a good room, a capital supper of eggs, bacon, good coffee, corn pone, and the equally delicious wheat pone, and arose in the dark so as to favor a five-o'clock departure; and they "allowed" that the entertainment was worth about twenty-five cents. what has been done in boone county, n. c., is likely to be done in most of the other mountains sooner or later; the coal and the timber draw the railroad, establish the village, make possible the school and start the community upward; but the mountaineers are slow to move, and the boarding schools, established partly by northerners, are a godsend to the people. when in one such school mustering a hundred and fifty boys one hundred and thirty "guns" (that is, pistols) are turned over to the principal upon request, it is clear that the mountaineers need a new standard of personal relations. as you ride through parts of kentucky, people point out to you where bill adams lay in wait to kill sam skinner last fall; or the house of the man who has killed two men and never got a scratch yet. there is good in these mountain people, there is hope, there is potentiality of business man and college president. take, for example, the poor mountain boy who, on a trip across the mountains with a fellow kentuckian, seems to be reading something when he thinks he is not observed, and on closer inquiry reluctantly admits that it is a volume of poetry which some one had left at the house. "hit's robert burns's poems; i like them because it seems to me they are written for people like us. do you know who i like best in those poems? it is that 'highland mary.'" the reason for hope in the future of the mountain whites is that they are going through a process which has been shared at one time or another by all the country east of the rocky mountains. the southern mountaineers are the remnant of the many communities of frontiersmen who cleared the forests, fought the indians, built the first homes, and lived in a primitive fashion. much of the mountains is still in the colonial condition, but railroads, schools, and cities are powerful civilizing agents, and a people of so much native vigor may be expected in course of no long time to take their place alongside their brethren of the lowlands. the more prosperous south is too little interested in these people, and is doing little direct civilizing work among them, in many districts leaving that task to be performed by schools founded by northerners. but there are some good state schools among them, as, for instance, that at boonesboro', n. c.; and numerous small colleges mostly founded before the civil war. the mountain whites ought not to be confused with the poor whites of the lowlands. although there are many similarities of origin and life, the main difference is that the mountaineers have almost no negroes among them and are therefore nearly free from the difficulties of the race problem. in the lowlands as in the mountains, men whose fathers had settled on rich lands, as the country developed were unable to compete with their more alert and successful neighbors, who were always ready to outbid them for land or slaves; therefore they sold out and moved back into the poor lands in the lowlands, or into the belt of thin soil lying between the piedmont and the low country. hence the contemptuous names applied to them by the planting class--"tar heels" in north carolina; "sand hillers" in south carolina; "crackers" in georgia; "clay eaters" in alabama; "red necks" in arkansas; "hill billies" in mississippi; and "mean whites," "white trash," and "no 'count" everywhere. these so-called poor whites are to be found in every state in the south. they are the most numerous element in the southern population. they are the people who are brought into the closest personal relations with the negroes. a survey of their conditions and prospects is therefore essential for any clear understanding of the race question. the present dominant position of the poor whites is different from that of their predecessors in slavery times. distant from the highways of trade, having no crop which they could exchange for store goods, satisfied with primitive conditions from which almost none of them emerged, the poor whites then simply vegetated. with them the negro question was not pressing, for they had little personal relation with the rich planters, even when they lived in their neighborhood; and the free negroes who were crowded back like themselves on poor lands were too few and too feeble to arouse animosity. mountain people have little prejudice against negroes: but in the hills and lowlands, where the two races live side by side, where the free black was little poorer than his white neighbor, the slave on a notable plantation felt himself quite superior to the poor whites, who in turn furnished most of the overseer class, and had their own opportunities of teaching how much better any white man was than any nigger. the isolation of these poor whites was one if the greatest misfortunes of ante-bellum times: it was not wholly caused by slavery, but was aggravated because the slave owner considered himself in a class apart from the man who had nothing but a poor little farm. "joyce," said a northern officer to a poor white in kentucky forty years ago, "what do you think this war is about?" "i reckon that you'uns has come down to take the niggers away from we'uns." "joyce, did you ever own a nigger?" "no." "any of your family ever own a nigger?" "no, sir." "did you ever expect to own a nigger?" "i reckon not." "which did the people that did own niggers like best, you or the nigger?" "well, 'twas this away. if a planter came along and met a nigger, he'd say, 'howdy, pomp! how's the old massa, and how's the young massa, and how's the old missus, and how's the young missus?' but if he met me he'd say, 'hullo, joyce, is that you?'" but joyce and his kind went into the confederate army of which they furnished most of the rank and file, and followed marse robert uncomplainingly to the bitter end; and they had a good sound, logical reason for fighting what was apparently the quarrel of their planter neighbor. a white man was always a white man, and as long as slavery endured, the poorest and most ignorant of the white race could always feel that he had something to look down upon, that he belonged to the lords of the soil. in the war he was blindly and unconsciously fighting for the caste of white men, and could not be brought to realize that slavery helped to keep him where he was, without education for his children, without opportunities for employment, without that ambition for white paint and green blinds which has done so much to raise the northern settler. though a voter, and a possible candidate for office, he was accustomed to accept the candidates set up by the slave-holding aristocracy. stump speakers flattered him and fourth-of-july orators explained to him the blessings of a republican government. the poor white, in his lowest days, had a right to feel that he was a political person of consequence, for did he not furnish three presidents of the united states? jackson was born a poor white, and had some of the objectionable and most of the attractive qualities of those people; andrew johnson came from the upper valley of the tennessee; abraham lincoln was a poor white, the son of a shiftless kentucky farmer. materially the poor whites contributed little to the community, except by clearing the land, and they took care that that process should not go uncomfortably far. let a southern writer describe his own ante-bellum neighbors: "these folk of unmixed english stock could not cook; but held fast to a primitive and violent religion, all believers expecting to go to heaven. what, therefore, did earthly poverty matter? they were determined not to pay more taxes. they were suspicious of all proposed changes; and to have a school or a good school, would be a violent change. they were 'the happiest and most fortunate people on the face of the globe.' why should they not be content?... holding fast to the notion that they are a part of a long-settled life; fixed in their ways; unthinking and standing still; ... unaware of their own discomfort; ignorant of the world about them and of what invention, ingenuity, industry, and prosperity have brought to their fellows, and too proud or too weak to care to learn these things." what is the present condition of the poor white? the greater number of white rural families own their farms, though there is a considerable class of renters; and they till them in the wasteful and haphazard fashion of the frontier. their stock is poor and scanty, except that they love a good horse. most of their food except sugar they raise on their own places, and up to a few years ago they were clad in homespun. there are still areas such as southern arkansas and northern florida in which the life of the poor whites has little changed in half a century. otherwise, if one now seeks to find this primitive and sordid life in the south, he will need to search a long time. after the civil war the disbanded soldiers went back to their cabins, and for a time resumed their old habits, but at present they are undergoing a great and significant change. though there are five or six millions of poor whites scattered through the south, especially in the remote hill country, for the most part away from the rich cotton lands and the great plantations, you may literally travel a thousand miles through the back country without finding a single county in which they do not show a distinct uplift. take a specific example. on january , , on a steamer making its way up the mississippi river, was a family of typical poor whites, undersized, ill-fed, unshaven, anæmic, unprogressive, moving with their household gods, the only deck passengers among the negroes in the engine room. on inquiring into the case, it came out that they could no longer afford to pay the rent on the tenant farm which they had occupied for several years. "how do you expect to get started on a new farm?" "oh, we've got some stock. you see it right over there on the deck. seven head of cows." "that isn't your wagon, i suppose, that good painted wagon?" "oh, yes, that's our wagon, and them's our horses, three of 'em." "is that pile of furniture and household goods yours too?" "yes, that plunder's ours; we've got everything with us. you see i want to take my little boys where they can have some schooling." and this was the lazy, apathetic, and hopeless poor white! he had more property than the average of small southern farmers, and was moving just as the iowa man moves to nebraska, and the nebraska man to idaho, because full of that determination to give his children a better chance than he had himself, which is one of the main props of civilization. wherever the abject poor white may be, a personal search shows that he is not in the hill country of louisiana, mississippi, or alabama, nor in the enormous piney woods district of southern alabama and georgia. visit coosa county, alabama, supposed to be as near the head waters of bitter creek as you can get, lay out a route which will carry you through by-roads, across farms, and into coves where even a drummer is a novelty. you will find many poor people living in cabins which could not be let to a city tenant if the sanitary inspectors knew it, some of them in one-room houses, with a puncheon floor, made of split logs; with log walls chinked with clay and moss, with a firestead of baked clay, and a cob chimney. around that fire all the family cooking is carried on; the room is nearly filled up with bedsteads and chests or trunks, a few pictures, chiefly crude advertising posters, and not enough chairs to seat the family. that is the way perhaps a fifth of the hill whites live, but four fifths of them are in better conditions. the one-room cabins have given way to larger houses, a favorite, though by no means a type, being the double house with the "hall" or open passage from back to front; besides the two rooms there will probably be a lean-to, and perhaps additional rooms built on; and very likely a separate kitchen, used also as a dining room. instead of the three to twelve little out-buildings scattered about, decent shelters begin to appear for the stock, and tight houses for tools and utensils. of the morals of these people it is difficult for a stranger to judge, but the intimate family life in the better cabins is in every way decorous. the pride of the family is the splendid patchwork bed quilt, with magnificent patterns, representing anything from the field of the cloth of gold to the solar system. the children, who may be anywhere from two to fifteen in number, are civil, the spirit of the family hospitable; and though there are none of the books and newspapers which help to furnish both the sitting room and the brains of the northern farmer's family, they are a hopeful people. some embarrassing questions arise when there are nine people, old and young, sleeping in the same room, but even in the one-room houses the people commonly have ways of disposing of themselves which are entirely decent. the poorest families live on "hog and hominy," a locution which does not exclude the invariable salaratus biscuit, corn pone, and real or alleged coffee and string beans. it is hardly fair to compare these people, who are at best only ten or twenty years away from the frontier, with new englanders or middle states or far western farmers. in the southern climate people get on with smaller houses, fewer fireplaces and stoves, and more ventilation through the walls. there is little necessity for large farm buildings, and the country is too rough to use much farm machinery. their outside wants are simple--coffee, sugar, or the excellent cane-syrup, clothing (inasmuch as they no longer make their own), wagons and utensils; these can all be bought with their cotton, and they raise their own corn and "meat" (pork). in comparison with the north a fair standard would be to set a dozen of the coosa county houses alongside a mining village in pennsylvania, and the advantage of cleanliness, decency, and thrift would show itself on the southern side. those people are rising; though still alarmingly behind, both in education and in a sense of the need of education. unusually well-to-do farmers may be found who boast that they are illiterate, and who will not send their children steadily to good schools in the neighborhood; but they are learning one of the first lessons of uplift, namely, that the preparation for later comfort is to save money. saving means work, and perhaps the secret of the undoubted improvement of the poor whites is that there is work that they can do, plenty of it at good wages. that is a marvelous difference from slavery times, when there was nothing going on in their region except farming, and it was thought ignoble to work on anybody else's farm, for that was what niggers did. nowadays some whites are tenants or laborers on large plantations. near monroe, la., for instance, is a plantation carried on by acadians brought up from lower louisiana, with the hope that they will like it and save money enough to buy up the land in small parcels. there are plantations on which white tenants come into houses just vacated by negro tenants, on the same terms as the previous occupants; the women working in the fields, precisely as the negroes do; there are plantations almost wholly manned by white tenants. but there are other more attractive employments, and it is so easy for the white man to buy land that there is no likelihood of the growth of a class of white agricultural laborers in the south. the son of the poor white farmer, or the farmer himself, if he finds it hard to make things go, can usually find employment in his own neighborhood, or at no great distance. large forces of men are employed in clearing new land, a process which is going on in the hills, in the piney woods, and in the richest agricultural belt. little sawmills are scattered widely, and the turpentine industry gives employment to thousands of people. day wages have gone up till a dollar a day is easy to earn, and sometimes more; and the wages of farm laborers have risen from the old eight or ten dollars a month to fifteen dollars a month and upward. the great lumber camps give employment to thousands of people, both white and black, and are on the whole demoralizing, for liquor there flows freely; and though families are encouraged to come, the life is irregular, and sawmill towns may suddenly decay. the great resource of the poor white is work in the cotton mills, for which he furnishes almost the only available supply of the less highly skilled kinds of labor. here the conditions are wholly different from those of half a century ago; he can find work every day for every healthy member of his family, and sometimes prefers adding up the wages of the women and children to making wages for himself. whatever the drawbacks of the mill town, it has schools, the sunday newspaper, and some contact with the outside world; and the man who really loves the farm may always return to it. even in slavery times the ambitious poor white could get out of his environment, and furnished many of the business and political leaders of his time; and there was a class of white farmers working their own land. that class still exists, though no longer set off so sharply from the ordinary poor whites, inasmuch as the lower element is approaching the higher. as an instance, take a farmstead in coosa county, alabama, containing perhaps a hundred acres, and alongside the disused old house is a new and more comfortable one, flanked by a pump house; grouped near it are nine log outhouses, and one frame building intended for cotton seed. the front yard is beaten down flat, for it is very hard to make grass grow in the south near to houses; but it is neat and reasonably tidy; in the foreground stands an old syrup pan with red stone chimney, and near by is the rude horse-mill used for grinding the cane. such a farm is a fair type of the average place, but still better conditions may be seen in new houses of four and even six rooms, with the front yard fenced in, and a gate, and a big barn for the storage of hay, just such as you might find in southern iowa. the evident uplift among the poor whites in their own strongholds is only a part of the story; for ever since the revolution there has been a drift of these people into the more promising conditions of southern ohio, indiana, illinois, and the far west. if from the number of born south carolinians now living in other states be subtracted the natives of other states now living in south carolina, the state will still have contributed , to other communities. georgia has lost , , and there are similar though smaller drifts out of alabama and mississippi; while texas counts more than , people born in other states, principally the south. former poor whites and descendants of poor whites can be found in every northwestern and pacific state, and constitute a valuable element of population. the truth is, as the evidence adduced in this chapter proves, that the term "poor whites" is a misnomer; that a class of poor and backward people which has existed for decades in many parts of the south is now disappearing. there are poor farmers in every part of the south; but poor farmers can be found in every northwestern state. the average of forehandedness and intelligent use of tools and machinery is less among the back country farmers in the south than in other parts of the union; but there is such uplift and progress among them--particularly since the high price of cotton--that the poor whites are ceasing to be an element of the population that needs to be separately treated. chapter iv immigration in every other section of the united states the element of the population descended from english colonists is flanked by, and in some places submerged by, a body of european immigrants; and every state is penetrated by great numbers of people from other states. considering that the south has contributed to other sections of the union about two and a half millions of people, the return current from the north has been comparatively small. "why is it," asks the louisville _courier journal_, "that so few of these home-seekers come south where the lands are cheaper and better, where the climate is more congenial, and where it is much easier to live and become independent from the soil?" among the inhabitants of the southern states were enumerated in only , people born in the north, of whom , originated in the northeastern states from maine to pennsylvania, and , came from the middle western group extending from ohio to kansas; but this , people are so widely scattered that outside of texas and florida there are few groups of northern people. some farmers are said to be coming from the northwestern states into tide-water virginia; others to baldwin county, in southern alabama; others to northern mississippi; and to lake charles, louisiana; chiefly with a view to the trucking industry. two or three communities made up wholly of northern people can be mentioned, such as thorsby in alabama and fitzgerald in georgia, which last is apparently the only flourishing experiment of the kind. of the , northerners in the south the greater number are in the cities and manufacturing towns, as business men, bosses and skilled laborers in the mills, in professions and mechanical trades. as a rule they do not adhere to each other, and many of them seem to wish to hide their origin. why is it that there is a flourishing southern club in new york, and smaller ones in other cities, yet no northern club anywhere in the south? the southern explanation is that the northerner who settles in the south, within a few weeks discovers that the convictions of a lifetime on all southern questions are without foundation; and he takes on the color of the soil upon which he lives. if it be true that the southern man and woman in the north continues to feel himself southern to the end of his days, while the northern man in the south tries to identify himself completely with the community in which he means to stay permanently, perhaps there is some explanation other than the impregnability of the southern position. the southern emigrant to the north finds no door shut to him because he comes from elsewhere; his origin is interesting to the people he meets; and unless very violent in temper and abusive to the section of his adoption, he may criticise his home and set forth the superiority of the southland without making enemies. the south, on the contrary, expects people who are to be elected to clubs and become full members of the community to agree with the majority; and on the negro question insists that all whites stand together. while courteous to the occasional visitor, notwithstanding his presumed difference of view, the south is not hospitable to those who plume themselves upon being northern; and as a community has shown decided hostility to the northern teachers and organizers of negro schools, and even of schools for the poor whites. the northerner who stands out on the question of the negro's rights not only has seven evenings of hot discussion upon his hands every week, but finds himself put into the category of the "nigger lover," which includes not only the white teachers of negroes, but a president of the united states. nevertheless, there is a strong northern influence in the south, exercised partly through southern men who have, either as students or as business men, become familiar with the north; partly through the northern drummers; partly through northern business and professional men, including many northern teachers and college professors, who are scattered through the south, and who in general support the principle of the right of discussion and the privilege of differing from the majority, for which the best element in the south contests with vigor. small as is the number of northerners in the south, the number of aliens is not much larger. in the whole united states there were in , , , foreign-born, of whom only , were in the whole south; while the lower south from north carolina to texas contained , , and the five states from south carolina to mississippi only , . of the , , additional persons of foreign parentage in the union the south had again , , . that is, with a third of the total population of the country, the south contains about one eleventh of the foreigners and children of foreigners. these general figures may be enforced by the statistics of particular cities. baltimore and boston have each a population rising , ; but in there were , foreigners in baltimore against , in the northern city. new orleans and milwaukee are not far apart in total numbers, but milwaukee had , foreigners to , in new orleans. atlanta, with a population of near , , had only about , foreign-born people; saint paul with a similar population had , . this condition and its causes go very far back. when immigration began on a large scale about the northern states were nearer to the old world, had better and more direct communication, and populous cities were already established; hence the foreign current set that way. no doubt the immigrant disliked to go to a region where labor with the hands was thought to be menial, but his real objection to the south was not so much slavery as the lack of opportunity for progressive white people. after the civil war cleared the way and the south began to develop its resources there was a demand for just such people as the foreign immigrants to work in sawmills and shops; and in addition they were eagerly coveted as a source of field labor to compete with and perhaps supplant the negro. all the northern states have encouraged and some have fostered immigration; and the south has recently reached out in the same direction, though with caution. as senator williams, of mississippi, puts it: "nor, last, would i neglect foreigners of the right types. resort would have to be had to them very largely because of the fact that our own country could not furnish immigrants in sufficient numbers." during the last twenty years some systematic effort has been made to attract foreigners to the south; some of the southern railroads, notably the illinois central, have attempted to stimulate immigration, in order to fill up the vacant lands and increase railroad business. private agencies are at work in northern cities, which try to direct immigrants southward. immigration societies have been formed, and a great effort was made in to induce a current of immigration. a southern state immigration commission was established under the chairmanship of the late samuel spencer, president of the southern railroad, and there are several similar local societies. following an example originally set by some of the northwestern states seventy years ago, several states appointed commissioners or bureaus of immigration, particularly north carolina, south carolina, florida, and louisiana. the most active of all these bodies is the state immigration bureau of louisiana, which has busily distributed italians and bulgarians through the state. the federal government has taken a hand in steering foreigners southward, through a bureau in new york which puts before newly arrived immigrants the opportunities of the south. by this bureau and by liberal and even strained construction of the statutes the federal authorities have aided in the effort to bring the south to the attention of the incomer and to facilitate his distribution. in south carolina took a part in the process by agreeing practically to act as the agent of the planters and mill owners of the state, who raised a fund of twenty thousand dollars which, to avoid the federal statute against the coming in of immigrants under contract to find them work, was turned over to the state authorities. they thereupon made a contract with the north german lloyd steamship company to import several immigrants whose passage was paid out of the fund. in consequence, in november, , appeared in the harbor of charleston the steamer _wittekind_, having on board steerage passengers, an arrival which was declared to be the first successful undertaking to promote foreign immigration from europe to the south atlantic section of the united states in half a century. these immigrants-- belgians, austrians, and galicians--were fêted by the charleston people and triumphantly distributed throughout the state. part of them were not mill hands at all; others had been misinformed as to the scale of wages and conditions; one of them thought it monstrous that he should have been a week in south carolina without ever seeing a bottle of beer. they wrote home such accounts of their unhappiness that the steamship company declined to forward any more immigrants, and mr. gadsden was sent by the state as a special commissioner to europe to investigate. he reported in that the people were writing home to say that they did not like their work or housing. he diagnosed the trouble as follows: "our efforts have been almost entirely expended in inducing immigrants to come to the south, and we have thought little or nothing of how the immigrant is to be treated after he has come in our midst; ... it seems to me that we have entirely overlooked our industrial conditions, namely, that the wage scale throughout the south is based on negro labor, which means cheap labor ... our attitude throughout the south to the white laborer will have to be materially altered before we can expect to have the immigrant satisfied to remain as a laborer with us." the only considerable groups of foreigners living together in the south are a small german colony in charleston and a larger one in new orleans, a body of germans in central texas (a settlement dating back to the civil war), and a few thousand italian laborers in the lower mississippi valley who have been brought there chiefly through private agencies in new orleans and new york. some slavs have been introduced into the lower south where they are collectively known as "bohunks"; and a few efforts have been made to bring in the chinese. for the slenderness of the immigrant movement there are two principal reasons: the first is that the south does not like immigrants, and the second is that the immigrants do not like the south. one constantly encounters a sharp hostility to foreigners of every kind. the georgia farmers' union in unanimously voted against foreign immigration, because it would bring undesirable people who would compete with the georgians for factory labor and would raise so much cotton that it would lower the price. a texan lawyer in a pullman car painted for the writer a gloomy picture of the unhappy condition of the north, which is obliged to accept "the scum of the earth" from foreign countries and is thereby overrun with syrians, russian jews, and sicilians, who are not capable of becoming american citizens and fill the slums of the cities; the south, in his judgment, was free from such difficulties. the _manufacturers' record_ of baltimore is fearful of "masses of elements living largely unto themselves, speaking foreign tongues and kept alien to the country through having no contact with its people and its institutions save only through their own leaders. such an immigration, it is easily understood from experience in other parts of the country, might become a dangerous fester upon the body politic." a correspondent of the _richmond times despatch_ objects to immigrants because they will prevent the reëstablishment of the labor conditions which existed before the war, and will interfere with the plantation system; and he especially deprecates any effort "to try any of the races that have become inoculated with union notions, and who are so quick to overestimate their contributions to the success of the enterprises upon which they work and demand wages accordingly." another argument is that of competition. as a southern writer puts it: "the temptation of cheap alien labor from abroad is obvious as one of the ways in which a home population may be dispossessed. when it ceases to fill the rank and file with its own sons ... it ceases to be master or possessor of the country." from another source the negro is warned that: "when the european who has been used to hard work begins to make a bale and a half of cotton to where the negro makes but half a bale, ... then the farm labor will pass from the hands of the negro forever." on this question of immigration, as on many other matters, there is a divergence between the responsible and the irresponsible whites, or rather between the large property owners and people who look to the development of the whole section, and the small farmers and white laborers. the criticism of the foreigner comes chiefly from the people who hardly know him; from the town loafer or the small plantation manager who "hates the dago worse than a nigger." between such people and the few foreigners occasional "scraps" occur, and there have been instances of italians or bohunks who have been driven out by main force because their neighbors did not like them. to be sure the foreigner in the north is not unacquainted with brickbats; but the real question is not whether the southerner likes him, but whether he likes the south. he is under no such restraint as, for instance, in buenos ayres, where, if he is not satisfied, he must steam back six thousand miles to europe; trains leave every part of the south every day bound for the north. hence, as soon as the problem of getting the immigrant to the south is solved, the next point is how to keep him there. of the immigrants brought over by the _wittekind_ in , at the end of a year the larger part had left south carolina. the authorities of the state were guiltless of holding out untrue inducements; but the immigrants did not expect to be charged their rail fares from charleston to the place of labor; they found the wages less than they had supposed; sometimes less than they had received at home; they were obliged to deal with the company's store, instead of being paid in cash. especially they complained that farm hands were not so "intimately received by their employers" as their cousins were in the northwest. when the _wittekind_ was ready to sail from bremen two hundred people who expected to join her refused to go, because they had just heard of the race riot in atlanta and thought the south could not be a pleasant place. rumors of peonage, and a few actual cases, had also a deterring effect. nevertheless, there are a score or more of little agricultural communities in which a considerable part of the people are foreigners. most of these people are italians, that being an immigrating race accustomed to field labor in a warm climate, and traditionally inured to the peasant system. as these people bring little capital, most of them are assembled on some plantation which undertakes on the usual terms to advance them necessities until their crop can be made. it costs in central louisiana about $ per head to get italians, and that is deducted out of their first year's earnings. in some cases the italians come out as railroad and levee hands and afterward bring over their families. at alexandria, la., in the neighborhood of shreveport, at valdese, n. c., and elsewhere, are independent italian villages. the most successful plantation worked by italian labor is undoubtedly sunny side, founded by the late austin corbin on very rich land in southeastern arkansas. it dates back to ; the original plan was to subdivide the estate and sell it to the immigrants; and at one time there were perhaps fifteen hundred to two thousand italians there, many of whom were not farmers and soon grew tired of the place. at one time they were reduced to less than forty families, but people have drifted back and new ones have come in, until in there were over one hundred and twenty families. they are sober, industrious, and profitable both to themselves and to the plantation owners, who have placed the same kind of labor on other plantations and would gladly extend the system if they could get the people. some other race elements are to be found in the south; a few greeks have made their appearance; bulgarians, hungarians, and "austrians" (probably slavs) may be found in louisiana; but the greater number of recent accessions are laborers or small business men, who play a very small part in the economic and social development of the region. this whole question of the foreigner is in close relation to the negro problem. even where the "dagoes" are brought into close contact with the negroes, they neither make nor meddle with them; but the main reason for interest in their coming is the scarcity and the ineffectiveness of negro labor. if the number of foreigners should largely increase, there is little doubt that they would join in the combination of the white race against the negro. on the other hand they furnish a more regular field labor than the planter is otherwise able to employ, and when put alongside the negro sometimes they stimulate him to unwonted effort, as witness the experience of an old cotton hand related to a. h. stone: "i 'lowed to marthy, when i heered dem dagoes had done bought the jinin' tract, dat i was gwine ter show de white folks dat here was one nigger what wouldn' lay down in front er no man livin', when it come to makin' cotton. en i done it, too, plumb till pickin' time. it blowed me, too, sho's you bawn, blowed me mightily. but jis ez i thought i had um bested, what you reckon happened? i'z a natchel-bawn cotton picker, myself, and so is marthy, and right dar is whar i 'lowed i had um. but 'tother night when me and de old 'oman 'uz drivin' back fum church, long erbout o'clock, en er full moon, what you reckon i seen, boss? fo' gawd in heaven, dat dago en his wife en fo' chillum wuz pickin' cotton by de moonlight. i do' 'no how it looks to you, but i calls dat er underhanded trick myself!" chapter v southern leadership immigrants either from the north or from abroad may be ignored as a formative part of the south; but the poor whites are only a part of the rank and file. there are many independent farmers, handicraftsmen, skilled laborers, and small laborers, all parts of a great democracy; and one of the causes of uplift is the coming of this democracy to a consciousness of its own power. nevertheless, in the south as elsewhere in the world, the great affairs are carried on, the great decisions are made, by a comparatively small number of persons; and in no part of the union has a select aristocracy such prestige and influence. before the war this leading element was very distinctly marked off, because it was nearly restricted to slaveholders and their connections by blood and marriage. very few people, except in the mountain districts, ever held important state or national office who did not come from the slaveholding families, which never numbered more than three hundred thousand; and half of those families owned less than five negroes and could hardly claim to belong to the ruling class. the slaveholding aristocracy included nearly all of the professional and commercial men, the ministers, the doctors, the college instructors, especially the lawyers, from whom the ranks of public service were to a great degree recruited. these people were organized into a society of a kind unknown in the north since colonial times. in any one state the well-to-do people, perhaps two to five thousand in all, knew each other, recognized each other as belonging to a kind of gentry, intermarried, furnished nearly all the college and professional students, and were the dignitaries of their localities. in organization, if not in opportunities or in the amenities of life, they were very like the english county gentry of the period. those conditions are now much changed. in the first place, the old ruling families have almost all lost their wealth and their interstate position. deference is still paid to them; a john rutledge is always a john rutledge welcomed anywhere in south carolina, and a claibourne carries the dignity of the family that furnished the first governor of mississippi; but it is a mournful fact that hardly a large plantation in the south is now owned by a descendant of the man who owned it in . some of the most ambitious of the scions of these ancient houses, whose communities no longer give them sufficient opportunities, have found their way to new york and other northern cities, and are there founding new families. many more are upbuilders of the southern cities; some of them are again becoming landed proprietors. still the element dominant in society, in business, and in administration, includes a large number of people who have come up from below or have come in from without since the civil war. distinctly above the traditional poor white, though often confused with him by outsiders, is the southern white farmer. in ante-bellum days there was in every southern state, and particularly in the border states, a large body of independent men, working their own land without slaves, with the assistance of their sons--for white laborers for hire could not be had--and often prosperous. they were on good terms with the planters, had their share of the public honors, and probably furnished a considerable part of the southern whig vote. their descendants still persist, often in debt, frequently unprogressive, but on the whole much resembling the farmer class in the neighboring northern states. the destruction of slavery little disturbed the status of these men, and they are an important element in the progress of the south. the old leaders have lost preëminence, partly because the south now requires additional kinds of leaders. in the modern southern cities may be found classes of wholesale jobbers, attorneys of great corporations, national bank officers, manufacturers, agents of life insurance and investment companies, engineers, and promoters, who were hardly known in the old south. in the social world these people still have to take their chance, for the foundation stones of society in every southern state are the descendants of the leaders of the old régime, including many people whose former back-country farm with its half-dozen slaves has become magnified into a tradition of an old plantation. as a southern writer says: "legends had already begun to build themselves, as they will in a community that entrusts its history to oral transmission. for instance, the fortunes of many of our families before the war became enormous, in our talk and in our beliefs." notwithstanding this presumptive right of the old families to figure in modern society many are shut out by poverty and some by moral disintegration. of course in the south as elsewhere the newcomers have more money and set a difficult standard of social expense; but, measured by new york criterions, there are few wealthy people in the south. leaving out the northern men who play at being southern gentlemen it is doubtful whether there are thirty millionaires in the whole lower south; and it must never be forgotten that nothing in the world is so democratic within its narrow bounds as southern society. the social leaders recognize on equal terms other southern high-class people, and also outsiders whom they reckon as high class. there is a sharp difference between the poor farmer and the well-to-do proprietor or the city magnate; but there is not necessarily a social distinction between the family which has an income of three thousand a year and the family which disposes of thirty thousand a year. furthermore, between all the members of the white race there is an easier relation than in the north; pullman car conductors are on easy and respectful terms with lady passengers who frequently use their line, the poorest white addresses the richest planter or most distinguished railroad man with an assured sense of belonging to the same class; society is distinctly more homogeneous than in the north. it is also more gracious. what is more delightful than the high-bred southern man and woman, courteous, friendly, and interested in high things, bent on bringing to bear all the resources of intellectual training, religion, and social life for the welfare of the community? the high-class southerner believes in education; he has a high sense of public duty; he stands by his friends like a rock; unfortunate is the northerner who does not count among his choicest possessions the friendship of southern men and women! in business the south is developing a body of modern go-ahead men who are alive to the needs of improvement in business methods, who adopt the latest machinery, seek to economize in processes, and have built up a stable and remarkably well-knit commercial system. the south before the war had many safe banks, and no state in the union enjoyed a better banking law than louisiana. all that capital was swept away by the civil war, and for twenty years was not replaced, outside the cities; now little banks are springing up at small railroad stations, and in remote little county seats; and there is a concert and understanding between the country and city bankers which is of great assistance to the material growth of the south. the southern business system calls for prudent and courageous men, and there is no lack of good material. in politics, however, a new type of leaders has in the last twenty years sprung up as a result of the genius of benjamin r. tillman in discovering that there are more voters of the lower class than of the upper, and that he who can get the lower class to vote together may always be reëlected. as a matter of fact tillman comes of a respectable middle-class family; but it is his part to show himself the coarsest and most vituperative of poor whites. such men as ex-governor vardaman of mississippi, and senator jeff davis of arkansas, are also evidences that the hold of the old type of political leader is weakened. some people say that the present system of primary nominations is a sure way to bring mediocrity to the front. on the other hand, the leaders of society and business and politics and intellectual pursuits fit together much more closely than in the north. in part this is the result of a social system in which people of various types imbibe each other's views; in greater part it is due to the influence of slavery, and the half century of contest over slavery, in which the great property owners were also the heads of the state, the pillars of the church, and the formers of opinion. the problem of the leader in the south is also the problem of the led; shall those who concentrate and shape public opinion, who carry on the corporations, write the newspapers, teach the university students, decide law cases, and preach the sermons, shall they also set forth a lofty spirit? will the mass, the voters, the possessors of the physical force of the community, accept their decisions? in general, the tone of the leaders in the south is sane and wholesome; commercial influences are less strong on the press and on state and municipal governments than they are in the north. there is at least a greater sentimental and abstract respect for learning, a larger part of the community is in touch with and molded by the churches. the lower whites, though manifestly advancing, are still on the average far inferior to the similar class of white farmers of kindred english stock in the north; and also to many of the foreigners that have come in and settled the west. education is going to help their children, but can do little for the grown people who are now the source of political power in the south; and there is a turbulence and uncontrolled passion, sometimes a ferocity, among the rural people which is to be matched in the north only in the slums. in some ways the northern visitor is struck by a crudeness of behavior among respectable southern whites such as he is accustomed in the north to experience in a much lower stratum of society. a large proportion of the poor whites in the south and many of the better class go armed and justify it because they expect to have need of a weapon. tobacco juice flows freely in hotel corridors, in railroad stations, and even in the vestibules of ladies' cars; profanity is rife, and fierce talk and unbridled denunciations, principally of black people. there is doubtless just the same thing in northern places, if you look for it, but in the south it follows you. with all the aristocratic feeling classes are more mixed together, and it is a harder thing than in the north to sift your acquaintances. still there is an upward movement in every stratum of society; as murphy puts it: "the real struggle of the south from the date of lee's surrender--through all the accidents of political and industrial revolution--was simply a struggle toward the creation of democratic conditions. the _real_ thing, in the unfolding of the later south, is the arrival of the common man." the north has always had confidence in the average man; in the south the upper and lower strata are in a more hopeful way of mutual understanding than perhaps in the north. chapter vi southern temperament the south has not only its own division of special classes, its own methods of influence, it has also its own way of looking at the problems of the universe, and especially that department of the universe south of mason and dixon's line. to discover the temperament of the south is difficult, for upon the face of things the differences of the two sections are slight. aside from little peculiarities of dialect, probably no more startling than bostonese english is to the southerner when he first hears it, the people whom one meets in southern trains and hotels appear very like their northern kinsfolk. the memphis drummer in the smoker tells the same stories that you heard yesterday from his chicago brother; the members of the charleston club talk about their ancestors just like the habitués of the rittenhouse club in philadelphia; the president of the university of virginia asks for money for the same reasons as the president of western reserve university; northern and southern men, meeting on mutual ground and avoiding the question of the negro, which sometimes does not get into their conversation for half an hour together, find their habits of thought much the same: the usual legal reasoning, economic discussion, and religious controversy all appeal to the same kind of minds. northerners read lanier with the same understanding with which southerners read longfellow. nevertheless there is a subtle difference of temperament hard to catch and harder to characterize, which may perhaps be illustrated by the difference between the northern "hurrah" and the "rebel yell"; between "yankee doodle" and "dixie," each stirring, each lively, yet each upon its separate key. upon many questions, and particularly upon all issues involving the relations of the white and negro races, the southerner takes things differently from the northerner. he looks upon himself from an emotional standpoint. thomas dixon, jr., characterizes his own section as "the south, old-fashioned, medieval, provincial, worshipping the dead, and raising men rather than making money, family-loving, home-building, tradition-ridden. the south, cruel and cunning when fighting a treacherous foe, with brief, volcanic bursts of wrath and vengeance. the south, eloquent, bombastic, romantic, chivalrous, lustful, proud, kind and hospitable. the south, with her beautiful women and brave men." this self-consciousness is doubtless in part a result of external conditions, such as the isolation of many parts of the south; but still more is due to an automatic sensitiveness to all phases of the race question. people in the south often speak of their "two peoples" and "two civilizations"; and at every turn, in every relation, a part of every discussion, is the fact that the population of the south is rigidly divided into two races marked off from each other by an impassable line of color. the north has race questions, but no race question: the foreign elements taken together are numerous enough, and their future is uncertain enough to cause anxiety; but they are as likely to act against each other as against the group of people of english stock; as likely to harmonize with native anglo-saxon people as to oppose them--they are not a combined race standing in a cohort, watchful, suspicious, and resentful. the north has twenty race problems; the south has but one, which for that very reason is twenty times as serious. in every field of southern life, social, political, economic, intellectual, the presence of two races divides and weakens. the blacks and the whites in the south are the two members of a pair of shears, so clumsily put together that they gnash against each other continually. though one side be silver, and the other only bronze, neither can perform its function without the other, but there is a terrible strain upon the rivet which holds them together. this state of tension is not due wholly to the negroes, nor removable by improving them, as though the straightening only the bronze half of the shears you could make them cut truly. if no negroes had ever come over from africa, or if they were all to be expatriated to-morrow, there would still remain a southern question of great import. one of the mistakes of the abolition controversy was to suppose that the south was different from the north simply because it had slaves; and that the two sections would be wholly alike if only the white people felt differently toward the negro. the negro does not make all the trouble, cause all the concern, or attract all the attention of thoughtful men in the south. in every part of that section, from the most remote cove in the tennessee mountains to the stateliest quarter of new orleans, there is a caucasian question, or rather a series of caucasian questions, arising out of the peculiar make-up of the white community, though alongside it is always the shadow of the african. nobody can work out any of the caucasian problems as though they stood by themselves; what now draws together most closely the elements of the white race is a sense of a race issue. the white man cannot build new schoolhouses or improve his cotton seed or open a coal mine without remembering that there is a negro race and a negro problem. this consciousness of a double existence strikes every visitor and confronts every investigator. as du bois says, the stranger "realizes at last that silently, resistlessly, the world about flows by him in two great streams: they ripple on in the same sunshine, they approach and mingle their waters in seeming carelessness,--then they divide and flow wide apart." henry w. grady asserted that "the race problem casts the only shadow that rests on the south." murphy says, "the problems of racial cleavage, like problems of labor and capital, or the problems of science and religion, yield to no precise formulæ; they are problems of life, persistent and irreducible." various as are the opinions in the south with regard to the race problem and the modes of its solution, society is infused with a feeling of uneasiness and responsibility. sometimes the visitor seems to catch a feeling of pervading gloom; sometimes he hears the furious and cruel words of those who would end the problem by putting the negro out of the question; sometimes he listens to the hopeful voice of those who expect a peaceful and a just solution; but all thinking men in the south agree that their section has a special, a peculiar, a difficult and almost insoluble problem in which the north has little or no share. here comes in the first of many difficulties in dealing with the southern question, a diversity of voices such that it is hard to know which speaks for the south, or where the average sentiment is to be found. public opinion on some moral and social questions is less easily concentrated than in the north; though the prohibitionists have recently made a very successful campaign through a general league, all efforts to focus public opinion on the negro question through general societies and public meetings have so far failed. agitation or even discussion of the race problem is not much aided by the press, though in some ways journalism is on a higher plane than in the north. most cities, even small ones, have a newspaper which is edited with real literary skill, and which does not seem to be the servant of any commercial interest. there is a type of southern paper of which the _charleston news and courier_ is the best example, which has for its stock-in-trade, ultra and bourbon sentiments. no paper in the south is more interesting than the _news and courier_, but it represents an age that is past. the conservative, readable, and on the whole, high-toned southern newspapers, do not in general seem to lead public sentiment, and the yellow journal has begun to compete with them. still the paper which by its lurid statement of facts, large admixture of lies, and use of ferocious headlines, was one of the chief agents in bringing about the atlanta riots of afterwards went into the hands of a receiver; and journals of that type have less influence than in the north. a temperamental southern characteristic is an impatience of dissent, a characteristic which has recently been summed up as follows by a foreigner who has lived twelve years in the south and is identified with it. "there are three phases of public sentiment that i must regard as weaknesses, ... the public attitude of southern temper is over-sensitive and too easily resents criticism.... then, i think the southern people are too easily swayed by an apparent public sentiment, the broader and higher conscience of the people gives way too readily to a tin-pan clamor, the depth and real force of which they are not disposed to question.... again, ... the south as a section, does not seem fully to appreciate the importance of the inevitables in civilization--the fixed and unalterable laws of progress." illustrations of this sensitiveness to criticism are abundant. for instance, the affectionate girl in the southern school when a yankee teacher gives her a low mark, bursts into tears, and wants to know why the teacher does not love her. from slavery days down, there has been a disposition to look upon northern writers and visitors with suspicion. still inquirers are in all parts of the south received with courtesy by those whose character and interest in the things that make for the uplift of both the white and the black race furnish the most convincing argument that there is an enlightened public sentiment which will work out the southern problem. in any case there is no public objection to criticism of southerners by other southerners; nothing, for instance, could be more explicit and mutually unfavorable than the opinions exchanged between hoke smith and clark howells in , when rival candidates for the governorship of georgia. in politics one may say what he likes, subject to an occasional rebuke from the revolver's mouth. it is not the same in the discussion of the race question. in half a dozen instances in the last few years, attempts have been made to drive out professors from southern colleges and universities, on the ground that they were not sufficiently southern. in one such case, that of professor bassett, at trinity college, north carolina, who said in print that booker washington was the greatest man except lee, born in the south in a hundred years, it stood by him manfully, and his retention was felt to be a triumph for free speech. other boards of trustees have rallied in like manner, and there is a fine spirit of fearless truth among professors of colleges, ministers, lawyers, and public men. it is no small triumph for the cause of fair play that john sharp williams, of mississippi, in came out in opposition to governor vardaman's violent abuse of the negro, on that issue triumphed over him in the canvass for the united states senate; and then in a public address committed himself to a friendly and hopeful policy toward the negro. in part, this frame of mind is due to a feeling neatly stated by a southern banker: "the southern people are not a bad kind, and a kind word goes a long way with them; they have odd peculiarities; they cannot argue, and as soon as you differ with them, you arouse temper, not on the negro question especially, but on any." this diagnosis is confirmed by "nicholas worth": "few men cared what opinion you held about any subject.... i could talk in private as i pleased with colonel stover himself about jefferson davis or about educating the negro. he was tolerant of all private opinions, privately expressed among men only. but the moment that an objectionable opinion was publicly expressed, or expressed to women or to negroes, that was another matter. then it touched our sacred dead, our hearthstones, etc." this state of feeling has much affected politics in the south and is in part responsible for the phenomenon called the solid south, under which, whatever be its causes, the south is deprived of influence either in nominating or supplying candidates for national office, because its vote may be relied upon in any case for one party and one only. the dislike of the critic is specially strong when criticism comes from foreigners, and aggravated when it comes from northerners. a recent southern speaker says: "now, as since the day the first flagship was legalized in its trade in massachusetts, ... the trouble in the race question is due to the persistent assertion on the part of northern friends and philanthropists that they understand the problem and can devise the means for its solution." that northerners do not all lay claim to such understanding, or hold themselves responsible for race troubles, is admitted by a southerner of much greater weight, edgar gardner murphy, who has recently said: "beneath the north's serious and rightful sense of obligation the south saw only an intolerant 'interference.' beneath the south's natural suspicion and solicitude the north saw only an indiscriminating enmity to herself and to the negro." to these characteristics another is added by "nicholas worth," in his discussion of the "oratorical habit of mind" of a generation ago--"rousing speech was more to be desired than accuracy of statement. an exaggerated manner and a tendency to sweeping generalizations were the results. you can now trace this quality in the mind and in the speech of the great majority of southern men, especially men in public life. we call it the undue development of their emotional nature. it is also the result of a lack of any exact training,--of a system that was mediæval." another form of this habit of mind is the love of round numbers, a fondness for stating a thing in the largest terms; thus the clever but no-wise distinguished professor of latin is "probably the greatest classical scholar in the united states," the siege of vicksburg was "the most terrific contest in the annals of warfare"; the material progress of the south is "the most marvelous thing in human history." this difference of temperament between north and south is not confined to members of the white race. the mental processes of the southern negro differ not only from those of the southern white, but to a considerable degree from those of the northern negro; and the african temperament has, in the course of centuries, in some ways reacted upon the minds of the associated white race. the real standards and aspirations of the negroes are crudely defined and little known outside themselves, and if they were better understood they would still have scant influence upon the white point of view. the "southern temperament," therefore means the temperament of the southern whites, of the people who control society, forum, and legislature. it is always more important to know what people think than what they do, and every phase of the race question in the south is affected by the habits of thought of thinking white people. both sections need to understand each other; and that good result is impeded by the belief of a large number of people in the south that the north as a section feels a personal hostility to the south; that in reconstruction it sought to humiliate the southern whites, and to despoil them of their property; that it planted schools in the south with the express purpose of bringing about a social equality hateful to the whites; that it arouses in the negro a frame of mind which leads to the most hideous of crimes; and that northern observers and critics of the south are little better than spies. the north is doubtless blamable for some past ill feeling and some ill judgment, but it cannot be charged now with prejudice against the south. it is not too much to say that the north as a section is weary of the negro question; that it is disappointed in the progress of the race both in the south and in the north; that it is overwhelmed with a variety of other questions, and less inclined than at any time during forty years to any active interference in southern relations. an annual floodtide carries many northern people into florida and other pleasure resorts, where they see the surface of the negro question and accept without verification the conventional statements that they hear; the same tide on its ebb brings them north with a tone of discouragement and irritation toward the negro, which much affects northern public sentiment. this apathy or disappointment is unfortunate, for from many points of view, the north has both an interest and a responsibility for what goes on in the south. first of all, from its considerable part in bringing about present conditions. besides an original share in drawing slavery upon the colonies, the north by the emancipation of the slaves disturbed the preëxisting balance of race relations, such as it was. then in reconstruction the north attempted to bring about a new political system with the honest expectation that it would solve the race question. surely it has a right to examine the results of its action, with a view either to justify its attitude, or to accept censure for it. if either through want of patience or skill or by sheer force of adverse circumstance a dangerous condition has come about in the south for which the dominant white southerners are not responsible, they are entitled to an understanding of their case and to sympathy, encouragement and aid in overcoming their troubles. no thinking person in the north desires anything but the peaceful removal of the evils which undeniably weigh upon the south. to that end the north might offer something out of its own experience, for it has expert knowledge of race troubles and of ways to solve them. the indian question ever since the civil war has been chiefly in the hands of northern men; and if it has been a botchy piece of work, at least a way out has been found in the present land-in-severalty plan; and from the north in considerable part has proceeded the government of the filipinos. the north carries almost alone a mass of foreigners who contribute difficulties which in diversity much exceed the negro problem, and which so far have been so handled that in few places is there a crisis, acute or threatening. the north has further its own experiences with negroes, beginning in colonial times; it now harbors a million of them; and it has in most places found a peaceful living basis for the two races, side by side. perhaps southern people do not make sufficient allowance for the scientific love of inquiry of the north. it is a region where vassar students of sociology visit the probation courts; where yale men descend upon new york and investigate tammany hall; where race relations are thought a fit subject for intercollegiate debate and scientific monographs, on the same footing with the distribution of immigrants, or the career of discharged convicts. in massachusetts, people are ready to attack any insoluble problem, from the proper authority of the russian douma to the reason why cooks give notice without previous notice. as a study of human nature, as an exercise in practical sociology, the southern race problem has for the north much the same fascination as the preceding slavery question. doubtless the zeal for investigation, and the disposition to give unasked advice, would both be lessened if the southern problem were already solved or on the road to solution by the people nearest to it. the southern whites have had control of every southern state government since and some of them longer; they are dominant in legislature, court and plantation; yet they have not yet succeeded in putting an end to their own perplexities. some of them still defiantly assert themselves against mankind; thus professor smith, of new orleans, says apropos of the controversy over race relations: "the attitude of the south presents an element of the pathetic. the great world is apparently hopelessly against her. three-fourths of the virtue, culture, and intelligence of the united states seems to view her with pitying scorn; the old mother, england, has no word of sympathy, but applauds the conduct that her daughter reprehends; the continent of europe looks on with amused perplexity, as unable even to comprehend her position, so childish and absurd." professor smith's answer to his own question is: "the south cares nothing, in themselves, for the personal friendships or appreciations of high-placed dignitaries and men of light and leading." he does not speak for his section; for most intelligent southern people, however extreme their views, desire to be understood; they want their position to seem humane and logical to their neighbors; they are sure that they are the only people who can be on the right road; but they do not feel that they are approaching a permanent adjustment of race relations. how could such an adjustment be expected now? the negro question has existed ever since the first landing of negro slaves in , became serious in some colonies before , gave rise to many difficulties and complications during the revolution, was reflected in the constitutional convention of , later proved to be the rock of offense upon which the union split, and has during the forty years since the civil war been the most absorbing subject of discussion in the south. it hardly seems likely that it will be put to rest in our day and generation. yet some settlement is necessary for the peace and the prosperity of both races; and one of the means to that end is a frank, free and open discussion in all parts of the union. nothing was so prejudicial to slavery as the attempt to silence the northern abolitionists; for a social system that was too fragile to be discussed was doomed to be broken. one of the most encouraging things at present is the willingness of the south to discuss its problems on its own ground, and to admit that there can be a variety of opinions; and to meet rather than to defy the criticisms of observers. if the thinking people of the south were less willing to share the discussion with the north, it would still be a northern concern; for the southern race problem, like the labor unions of the manufacturing north, the distribution of lands in the far west, and the treatment of mongolians on the pacific coast, is nobody's exclusive property. there must be freedom for the men of every section to discuss every such question; it is the opportunity for mutual helpfulness. for instance, how much might be contributed to an understanding of the decay of the new england hill towns by a southern visitor who should visit them and then report upon them from his point of view. violent, ignorant, and prejudiced discussion of any section of the union by any other section is, of course, destructive of national harmony; but the days have gone by when it could be thought unfriendly, hostile, or condemnatory for northern men to strive to make themselves familiar with the race questions of the south. "we are everyone members of another," and the whole body politic suffers from the disease of any member. the immigrant in the north is the concern of the southerner for he is to become part of america. the status of the plantation hand in alabama is likewise a northern problem; as murphy has recently said: "the nation, including the south as well as the north, and the west as well as the south and the north, has to do with every issue in the south that touches any national right of the humblest of its citizens. too long it has been assumed, both at the north and at the south, that the north is the nation. the north is not the nation. the nation is the life, the thought, the conscience, the authority, of all the land." chapter vii attitude toward history the history of the united states is a rope of many strands, each of which was twisted into form before they were united into one cable. each state marks the sites of its first landings, puts monuments on its battlefields, commemorates its liberty days, and teaches its children to remember the great years of the past. the south has a full share of these memories, which are both local events and foundation stones of the nation's history. jamestown, st. mary's, charleston, fort moultrie, yorktown, mobile, belong to us all, as much as providence, bunker hill, saratoga, and san francisco. the southern mind likes to think of its episodes as contributions to the national history, and at the same time to claim as specifically southern all that has taken place in the south since the foundation of the federal union. school histories are written and prescribed by legislatures to teach children a southern point of view; the south of washington and jefferson, of jackson and calhoun, is looked upon as something apart from the nation. to some extent there is reason for this frame of mind; slavery, or rather the obstinate maintenance of slavery after it had disappeared in other civilized communities, put the south in a position of defiance of the world for near three quarters of a century; hence the history of the south from to can be separated from that of the union as a whole in a manner impossible for new england and the west. this separate history needs, like other eras of human history, to be envisaged in the light of things that actually were. such calm and unbiased approach to the study of past times is difficult in the south because of the exaggeration of one of the fine traits of southern character, of its respect for the past, its veneration for ancestors. in a world of progress a main influence is the conviction that things need to be improved, that the children are wiser than their fathers; but this spirit is out of accord with the southern feeling of loyalty to section, to state, to kindred, and to ancestors. charles francis adams spends years in showing up the inconsistencies of the character of his puritan forbears; but to the southern mind there would be something shocking in a south carolina or virginia writer who should set forth unfavorable views of the courage of general moultrie or the legal skill of patrick henry. for this reason, or for more occult reasons, there is a disposition in the south to hold to local traditional views of the history of the united states as a whole and of the south in particular. for instance, most north carolinians seem addicted to the belief that mecklenburg county drew up certain drastic resolutions of independence, may , ; and the man who is not convinced of it had better live somewhere else than in north carolina. in like manner many southerners suppose it to be an established fact that the aristocracy in the south were descended from english cavaliers, and the leaders in new england from the puritans. yet there is little evidence of permanent cavalier influence in any southern colony. the most recent historian of early virginia, bruce, says: "the principal figures in the history of virginia in the seventeenth century were men of the stamp of samuel mathews, george menefie, robert beverley, adam thoroughgood, ralph wormeley, william fitzhugh, edmund scarborough, and william byrd." are these names more heraldic than those of john winthrop and john endicott and thomas dudley? aside from the titled governors who did not remain in the colonies, lord fairfax possessed the only virginia title, and he may be balanced by sir william phipps, the yankee knight. george washington's ancestors are known to have been respectable english squires, but where are the cavalier forefathers of patrick henry and thomas jefferson, john c. calhoun and jefferson davis? the bone and sinew of the colonial south, as of the north, was made up of the english middle class, yeomen and shopkeepers; and in both sections the descendants of those men chiefly came to eminence. another of the unfortified beliefs which have wide currency in the south is that under slavery the south was a prosperous, happy, and glorious community. robert toombs, of georgia, in a lecture delivered in boston in , said of the slave states: "in surveying the whole civilized world, the eye rests not on a single spot where all classes of society are so well content with their social system, or have greater reason to be so, than in the slaveholding states of this union.... they may safely challenge the admiration of the civilized world." later books of reminiscence carry you back to the delightful days when "the old black mahogany table, like a mirror, was covered with madeira decanters standing in silver casters, and at each plate was a glass finger bowl with four pipe-stem glasses on their sides just touching the water"; when "woman's conquests were made by the charms and graces given them by nature rather than by art of women modistes and men milliners ... and the men prided themselves, above all things, on being gentlemen. this gave tone to society." this system was assumed to be especially happy for the slave; witness a recent southern writer: "hence, to the negro, the institution of slavery, so far from being prejudicial, was actually beneficial in its effects, in that, as a strictly paternal form of government, it furnished that combination of wise control and kind compulsion which is absolutely essential to his development and well-being." minor, in his recent "the real lincoln," urges that "the children of slaveholders may be saved from being betrayed into the error of regarding with reprobation the conduct of their parents in holding slaves"; and justifies slavery on the ground that the slaves had "a more liberal supply of the necessaries of life than was ever granted to any other laboring class in any other place, or other age." reed, in his "brothers' war," holds that "any and every evil of southern slavery to the negro was accidental.... slavery, so far from being wrong morally, was righteousness, justice, and mercy to the slave." no wonder that "nicholas worth" exclaims: "what i discovered was that the people did not know their own history; that they had accepted certain oft-repeated expressions about it as facts; and that the practical denial of free discussion of certain subjects had deadened research and even curiosity to know the truth." this theory that slavery was harmful, if harmful at all, only to the white race, has gone to the extent of insisting that slavery was educational; thus thomas nelson page says that at the end of the war, among the able-bodied negroes there was "scarcely an adult who was not a trained laborer or a skilled artisan. in the cotton section they knew how to raise and prepare cotton; in the sugar belt they knew how to grow and grind sugar; in the tobacco, corn, wheat, and hay belts they knew how to raise and prepare for market those crops. they were the shepherds, cattle-men, horse-trainers and raisers. the entire industrial work of the south was performed by them.... nearly all the houses in the south were built by them. they manufactured most of the articles that were manufactured in the south." and mrs. avary, in her "dixie after the war," thinks that "the typical southern plantation was, in effect, a great social settlement for the uplift of africans." these arguments are perhaps not intended to suggest that the present free laboring population would be better off if reduced to slavery; but they fix upon the present generation the unhappy task of justifying all the mistakes of previous generations. the natural and wholly justifiable pride in the military spirit of the south during the civil war extends over to the constitutional, or rather psychical, question of secession. no issue in the world is deader than the question whether states have a right to secede, for the simple reason that the experience of forty years ago shows that in case any state or group of states hereafter may wish to secede, the other states will infallibly combine to resist by military force: no state or section can ever again assert that it has reason to suppose that secession is a peaceful and constitutional remedy, which should be accepted quietly by the sister states. to justify the doctrine of secession now would mean to pull out the bracing of the union, no part of which is more determined to be a portion of one great and powerful american nation than the southern states. it can hardly be expected that the north, after sacrificing five hundred thousand lives and four billions of treasure, will, half a century later, come round to the point of view of the defeated section. it is equally idle at this period of the world's history to deny to the southern leaders in the civil war sincerity and courage, or to withhold from the nation the credit of such lofty characters as lee and stonewall jackson; but if they are to become world heroes alongside of cromwell and iredell, consistency demands that the corresponding northern leaders shall likewise be accepted as sincere and courageous, and in addition as standing for those permanent national principles to which the children of their adversaries have now given allegiance. it is discouraging to discover such a book as charles l. c. minor's "the real lincoln; from the testimony of his contemporaries," which has gone to a second edition and the purpose of which is, by quoting the harsh and cruel things said of lincoln in the north during his lifetime, to show that he was weak, bad, and demoralized. far more modern the testimony of grady in his new york speech of , when he referred to him "who stands as the first typical american, the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this republic--abraham lincoln. he was the sum of puritan and cavalier; for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. he was greater than puritan, greater than cavalier, in that he was american." if the south looks on the civil war through some favorable haze, it is chiefly in the direction of magnifying genuinely great men, and few of the confederate soldiers retain any bitterness toward the other side. this is not the case with reconstruction--toward which, for a variety of reasons, the south feels the bitterest resentment. only a few months ago a flowery speaker in baltimore, addressing an audience composed chiefly of northern people, declared that "all the ignominy, shame, bloodshed, moral debasement that followed the crowning infamy of the fifteenth amendment must be laid at the door of the north alone.... the whole movement was thoroughly revolutionary--anarchy, chaos, ruin was the inevitable result." thomas dixon, jr., rings all the changes and more on this theme. he makes thaddeus stevens, in the intervals that he can spare from his negro paramour, set out to confiscate the property of all the southern whites; and he supposes that the north sends down as its agents in the south "army cooks, teamsters, fakirs, and broken-down preachers who had turned insurance agents." he charges that by the north the attempt was "deliberately made to blot out anglo-saxon society and substitute african barbarism." the years from to were indeed sorrowful for the southern states, and have planted seeds of hostility between north and south and also between the races in the south; but declamation and exaggeration add nothing to the real hardships of the process. many southerners still believe that their section was impoverished only by emancipation, which they say swept away two thousand million dollars' worth of property; they overlook that the south was politically and economically ruined by the losses of four years of a war which, besides the actual destruction in the track of armies, by its terrible drain took all the accumulated capital of the section. after the war the south still retained the land and the negroes to work it. the community as a whole lost nothing except from the dislocation of industry. inasmuch as the south has recovered its productive capacity, and there is not a man of any standing in the south who, from the point of view of the white man's interest, would go back to slavery if he could, it is time that the charges of spoliation by emancipation were withdrawn. both the duration and the intensity of the reconstruction process have been overestimated. it was a period of general disorganization; the time of the credit mobilier scandals; the exact decade when the people of new york city were paying eighty million dollars for the privilege of being plundered by boss tweed. the southern state governments had previously been economically administered, and the people keenly felt the degradation of corruption from which northern states were also suffering; but the actual period of reconstruction was much shorter than has usually been supposed. after the first attempts to reorganize the governments in , they went back into the hands of the military, and the consensus of testimony is that the military government if harsh was honest. there they remained in all cases until and in georgia until . within little more than a year after the conservatives of virginia regained control; in alabama reconstruction lasted only twenty-eight months; in the tidal wave of the carpetbag and scalawag power was broken in all the southern states except south carolina and louisiana. one year or five years of bad government was too much, but southern lawlessness was not the monopoly of the reconstruction governments. one of the greatest evils of the period was the ku klux klan which reed says "becomes dearer in memory every year." there was reason for recovering white supremacy in the south, even though the conditions of the reconstruction government have been somewhat exaggerated; but the ku klux aroused a spirit of disorder, a defiance of the vested rights of white men as well as of negroes, which has been a malign influence for forty years. the night-riders in kentucky are almost a conscious imitation of the ku klux, and only a few months ago it was suggested that it be reorganized in georgia to deal with negro crime. it is one thing to read of the gallant struggle of the ku klux to protect womanhood and to asert the nobility of the white race; it is quite another to be told, incidentally, that in a certain county of mississippi the ku klux "put a hundred and nineteen niggers into the river." that is what some people call a massacre. the attitude of some southerners toward the civil war and reconstruction suggests the story of the georgia captain who, after three years of honest fighting, reappeared on his farm and was welcomed home by his faithful penelope. "the war is over," said he; "i have come home to stay forever." "is that true, jim? have you licked the yankees at last?" "yes, i have licked them at last, but if they don't stay licked, i don't know but i may have to go up north and lick 'em again." is the north to be "licked again" indefinitely? the suffering, the sacrifice, and the heroism of the civil war were as great on its side of mason and dixon's line as on the other side; and the historical perspective of that period of conflict covers some incidents which the north forgets with difficulty. for instance, the prison of andersonville was hateful to the whole north. after forty years it is easier than at the time to understand the difficulties of an impoverished government guarding thousands of prisoners with a scanty force in a region lacking in food. nevertheless, it is a deep conviction of the survivors among the prisoners and in the minds of many thousand other persons that these inherent difficulties were aggravated by the incompetency and heartlessness of captain wirz, who by accepting command assumed the responsibility for the condition of things. by the best showing of his friends he was an incompetent man, who had the power of life and death over thousands of his fellow-men, and let many of them die for want of humanity and common sense. the only reason for remembering wirz is that he was obnoxious to the northern soldiers in a time of great excitement. yet the south of lee and jackson and sidney johnston has erected a monument to that man who performed no service to the confederacy except to be executed, who led in no heroic action, represents no chivalry, and who did not so much as capture a color or an army wagon. it is an example of what in other parts of the world is thought an emotional disinclination to look facts in the face. as to the period since reconstruction--that is, the last thirty years--the acute sensibility of the south no longer takes the form of accusing the north of an attempt to submerge the white race, but rather is turned toward enlarged news of southern wealth and prestige, which will be examined later in this book. it has been the service of southern writers, teachers, and public men to look facts more squarely in the face. still, one finds now and then an old man of the old benton spirit. about two years ago a mississippi newspaper greeted a visitor who had previously expressed some opinions on the south, as "an object of distaste to all decent people of mississippi.... this blue-abdomened miscreant ... would have the world believe that the south has burnings, lynchings, and such horrors, with special trains, and the children of the public schools to witness. are the people of jackson going to hear this traducer of them; this man who prints broadcast over the country baseless slanders against the people who misguidedly invited him down here? are they going to hear a man filled with venom who will take their good name." and a high-toned southern gentleman, up to that time a personal friend of the northerner, thought it necessary to print a card in a newspaper, setting forth the fact that he at least had no responsibility for the presence of the yankee. chapter viii negro character the social organization of the anglo-saxons in the south, their relations with each other, their strife for leadership, takes little account of the other race, though it is diffused throughout the country; it is everywhere with the whites, but not of them. although to the southern mind the community is made up entirely of white people, numerically almost one third of the inhabitants of the former slaveholding states are negroes, and in the lower south there are five million blacks against seven million whites. the moral and material welfare of the south is intimately affected by their presence, and still more by their character. they are as much children of the soil as the whites; they are everywhere distributed, except in the mountains; their labor is necessary for the prosperity of the section; they have a social organization of their own and many of the appliances of civilization; they own some land, travel, are everywhere in evidence, yet they are distrusted by nearly all the whites, despised by more than half of them, and hated by a considerable and apparently increasing fraction. even the names habitually used by the whites for their neighbors show contempt. "nigger," though often used among the blacks, is felt by them to be depreciatory; "darky" is jocular; "negro" is condescending; "blacks" as a generic term is incorrect in view of the light color of a large fraction of the race. afro-american, the invention of the negroes, is pedantic. the negroes themselves much prefer "colored person," which is also a term used in directories. every southern man and woman consciously or unconsciously makes generalizations as to the whole race from those comparatively few individuals with whom he is acquainted. hence conventional and offhand statements, obviously based upon little direct knowledge of the negro, abound in private conversation, in public addresses and in print. for example, a few months ago the mayor of houston, himself the son of a massachusetts man, who went down to texas before the civil war, was led by an accidental question to deliver an extempore indictment of the whole negro race under twelve heads then and there noted down as follows: ( ) the old negroes in slavery times were a good lot, but negroes nowadays are worthless. ( ) the negro is the best laborer that the south ever had. ( ) education destroys the value of the negro, by making him unwilling to work. ( ) the south makes great sacrifices to educate the negroes. ( ) the negroes on the farms often do well; but those are the old slaves. ( ) the young negroes will not work on the land but drift off, probably to the cities. ( ) the pure negro is much superior in character to the mulattoes, who are the most vicious part of the race. ( ) the mulatto is physically weak and he is rapidly dying out. ( ) five sixths of all the negroes in this city have some white blood. ( ) the educated negroes fill the prisons. ( ) booker t. washington has good ideas. ( ) negroes must be "kept in their place," otherwise there will be general rapine and destruction. some curious errors of perspective are discernible in this picture: the negro is at the same time the best laborer and the worst laborer; the south continues to make great sacrifices to educate blacks who will not work and who fill the prisons; the mulatto is at the same time dying out and furnishing five sixths of the colored population of a large city. such generalizations are the daily food of the south. judge norwood, of georgia, on retiring from the bench of the city court of savannah, where he had tried twelve thousand colored people, recently left on record his formal opinion that the negro never works except from necessity or compulsion, has no initiative, is brutal to his family, recognizes no government except force, knows neither ambition, honor nor shame, possesses no morals; and the judge protests against "the insanity of putting millions of semi-savages under white men's laws for their government." the mayor of winona, miss., publicly announces that "the negro is a lazy, lying, lustful animal, which no conceivable amount of training can transform into a tolerable citizen." senator tillman, of south carolina, on the floor of the senate has said: "so the poor african has become a fiend, a wild beast, seeking whom he may devour, filling our penitentiaries and our jails." governor vardaman, of mississippi, in his farewell message to the legislature, in january, , called the negroes, who are in a majority in his state: "a race inherently unmoral, ignorant and superstitious, with a congenital tendency to crime, incapable unalterably of understanding the meaning of free government, devoid of those qualities of mind and body necessary to self-control, and being unable to control themselves." one of the sources of confusion with regard to the negro is that people speak of "the african race" which they suppose to be pictured on the egyptian monuments, to be briefly mentioned by herodotus, and to be in the same condition now in africa as it was when first described. as a matter of fact, there are several native races, varying in color from the intensely black and uncouth guinea negro of the west coast to the olive-brown arabs of the sahara desert, and in civilization from the primitive dwarf tribes of central africa to the organized kingdoms of the zulus and the thriving states of the central lake region. many arguments as to the negro character are based upon the supposed profound barbarism and cannibalism of all africa. the truth is that the african tribes, with all their ferocity and immorality, had advanced farther in the path of civilization previous to their first contact with the europeans than the north american indians of the atlantic and mississippi regions; they had gone farther in the arts, had built up more numerous communities, and established a more complex society. the curse of africa, from which the indians were not free, was slavery and slave-hunting, which from time immemorial have led to ferocious wars and reckless destruction of life. on the side of religion, the african has built up a weird and emotional system, honeycombed with witchcraft and a belief in magic, stained with bloodshed and human sacrifice. yet all explorers and residents in africa find many attractive traits in the negro; he loves a joke, makes a tolerable soldier, often shows faithful affection for his leaders, and under the supervision of white officials, seems capable of a peaceful and happy life. that the character of the negro should need to be a matter of absorbing interest to the southern whites and a study to northern observers, is the fault of the sixteenth century european. the negroes have for ages been in contact with white races on their northern and eastern borders; ethiopian captives were brought to rome, and the black slave is a favorite character in the "arabian nights." but that this race, situated on the other side of the globe, should affect the commerce and obstruct the political development of america, is one of the oddities of history. the negroes, who have never made a conquest outside their own continent, who were first brought to europe on the same footing as ostrich feathers and elephants, as objects of trade and as curiosities, have, through the greed and cruelty of our ancestors, planted a colony of ten million people in our land; and other groups, mounting up to several millions, in the west indies and brazil. many attempts are made to determine the ability of the negro by what he has done in africa and in latin america. he has not lifted himself out of barbarism in his own continent, though he has founded large and prosperous states carried on solely by africans; and winston spencer churchill, from his recent visit to the heart of africa, sees reason to predict that he will form permanent communities. the curses of africa for centuries have been inhuman superstitions and devastating slave raids, dignified by the name of wars, for which the white and arab slave dealers are partly responsible. torture of captives, sack of towns, murder of infants, coffles of slaves marching to a market, are not so far away from the practice of european nations two or three centuries ago that we can brand them as evidence of irreclaimable barbarism. pappenheim at magdeburg and lannes at the takings of saragossa could match many of the worst crimes of the african impi on a raid, or of a white agent of the congo free state collecting his rubber tax. protestant germany and england left off the cruelest treatment of supposed witches only about two centuries ago. cannibalism and the slave trade seem now on their last legs in africa, and those white men who have lived longest in the heart of africa seem to have the largest hope that the dark continent may be enlightened and a confidence in an african capacity for an existence much above the savage traditions. these hopes are based in most cases on the expectation that white people will furnish the government and direct the industries. whatever africa may do for itself, the one notable effort to create an african state on an anglo-saxon model has been a failure. the republic of liberia was founded nearly a century ago, as a means of regenerating africa by christian civilization diffused from this spot on the coast into the interior; it was to be an outport for tropical products and to furnish africa an example of democratic state building. liberia is the african state in which the united states is especially interested, for it was planted by american missionaries and agents of the colonization society; and has been an offshoot and almost a colony of this country. from the first it has been cursed by malaria, by the inroads and pressure of savages, and by a situation off the world's highways of commerce. to be sure its , civilized people have a public revenue of about $ , , with a total import and export trade of about $ , , ; but all efforts to induce a considerable number of negroes from america to try their fortunes in liberia have been failures. a colored magazine in boston has had the humor and good-temper lately to reprint the following squib upon the opportunities in that country for the american negro: liberia's bridges, mills, and dams, need many thousand afro-ams. liberia's ewes, liberia's lambs, like black sheep, baa for afro-ams. liberia's road, liberia's trams, for steady jobs want afro-ams. the barber shops, like uncle sam's, give hope to myriad afro-ams. there's bacon, hominy, yes, hams, for all industrious afro-ams. with faintest praise liberia damns the slow-arriving afro-ams. unless their woes at home are shams, why don't they go, the afro-ams? the inquiry of the final stanza is to the point, for though the american colonization society is still in existence, and within a few years has tried to send out a shipload of negroes, liberia attracts almost nobody and is a failure, either as a tropical home for the american negro or as a center of christianity and civilization for africa. how is it with the colonies and independent states of americanized africans in the west indies, where there have been blacks for as much as four centuries? of these communities cuba, porto rico, jamaica, trinidad, the windward and leeward islands were, or have been until recently, european colonies. cuba's population is about half negro; and they come nearer social and political equality with the whites than anywhere else in the world; but there the dominant element is the pure spanish or spanish mestizo. in jamaica since the emancipation of the races have had but one conflict, that of , which was at the time thought to be due to the cruelty and panic of governor eyre. the blacks of jamaica, to a large extent small proprietors, support themselves in the easy fashion of the tropics; but the , whites who live among the , blacks seem less able than the like class in the southern states to organize negro labor and make it profitable. the negroes are taught to read and write, they have furnished thousands of acceptable laborers for the panama canal, and their death-rate is nearly down to the normal figures of the white people for their latitude. their illiteracy, however, is about that of their brethren in the united states and nearly two thirds of all the children are illegitimate. their government is practically still, as for two centuries and a half, out of their hands and in control of the english. the negroes in hayti are popularly supposed to have deteriorated intellectually and morally. to be sure the alternating series of despotism and anarchy in that unhappy country are not very different from the course of things in the white community of venezuela; and it would be a great mistake to suppose that the haytian negroes when they became independent a century ago had absorbed the civilization of their spanish and french masters; most of them were still a fierce and intractable folk recently brought from africa. their experience, however, and that of their neighbors in santo domingo, throws light upon the capacity of the african to build up a state, for both these lands are wholly governed by people of the african race. neither has gained stability or improved in education or morals in half a century, though the haytians are trying to set forth one of the arts of civilization by borrowing more money than they are willing to pay. the moral, or rather unmoral, conditions of this and other west indian islands are a fair basis for argument as to the average character of the race. the experience of the race in the northern states leads rather to negative than to positive conclusions as to their intellectual and moral power. time was when there were slaves on beacon hill; when venus, "servant to madam wadsworth," was admitted to the first church of cambridge; and the faculty of harvard college warned the students not to consort with titus, "servant of the late president wadsworth." the colonial negroes, who in no northern colony were more numerous than six or seven per cent of the population, have left an offspring to which, since the civil war, has been added a considerable immigration from the south. in , , africans born in the south were living in the north, and that proportion has since steadily increased. nobody can pretend that this movement has improved the conditions of the northern states, and the negroes themselves encounter many hardships; they can vote, they get some small offices, and would get more if they could settle factional quarrels and unite behind single candidates; they have full and equal rights before the courts; they are commonly admitted to the public schools. on the other hand, separate negro schools have been provided in indianapolis, in some places in new jersey, and are likely to spread farther. partly because many trades unions will not receive them, partly because they are thought to be less effective than whites, partly from sheer race prejudice, they find many avenues of employment closed to them. few people like them as neighbors, and though admitted to most northern high schools and colleges they do not find that free intercourse of mind with mind which is not only one of the joys of living, but is a great upbuilder of character. the situation of the negroes in the north is frankly discouraging, both from their own point of view and that of the northern white. here if anywhere the race ought to show those qualities of determination and thrift and uprightness which its friends desire for it. many of the northern negroes live on the same plane as the white people; many others do well, considering their lesser opportunities; and as a whole they earn their living; for where the men are lazy the women take care of them. but they are the objects of a steady prejudice; the reason for the school separation is that parents do not wish their children to be on such terms of acquaintance that they can learn all that the negro children know. throughout the north there is a distrust of the negro voter, a belief that the negroes furnish more than their share of the criminals. to a large degree this is simply saying that the lowest part of the population is thought to be low; people dislike negroes for the same reason that they object to many other persons, whether foreign or american born; the woeful difference is that any incompetent white individual may pull himself or push his children out of the slums and into association with the best, while color sets the negro apart, no matter what his success in life; and the most respectable of them is treated as though responsible for the worst of his race. the door of opportunity is open in the north, but it does not open wide; the northern colored man enters into what our ancestors called the half-way covenant; he, like his southern brother, walks within the veil. or is the bottom difficulty described by the immigrant from south carolina to the north who said, "yes, dere mought be more chances in new york than dere is in charleston, but, please gawd, 'pears like you ain't so likely to take dem chances." the fundamental reason why race relations in the south are regulated by the white people, and are circumscribed by what they think best for themselves, is the universal white belief that the african is of an inferior race, so inferior that he cannot be trusted to take a part in the political life of the community, or even to manage his own affairs. that opinion is temperately stated by thomas nelson page as follows: "after long, elaborate, and ample trial the negro race has failed to discover the qualities which have inhered in every race of which history gives the record, which has advanced civilization, or has shown capacity to be itself greatly advanced." it is brutally stated by governor vardaman: "god almighty created the negro for a menial--he is essentially a servant.... when left to himself, he has universally gone back to the barbarism of his native jungles. while a few mixed breeds and freaks of the race may possess qualities which justify them to aspire above that station, the fact remains that the race is fit for that and nothing more." the supposed inferiority of the negro race is not a foregone conclusion. first it rests on the tacit assumption that there is a "negro race" which can be distinguished from the white race, not only by color but also by aptitudes, moral standards and habits of mind. some experts in the south, who have studied the race as scientific men study the indians of the amazon, declare that they are unable to find any large body of traits which all negroes possess; that they observe in no colored person characteristics which cannot be found in some whites; and that they possess every variety of intellectual power and moral capacity. then there is the question of the mulatto, who in his race mixture may be more white man than negro. is he to be included in the general indictment of inferiority? and, finally, what is to be argued from the men of power whom the negro race has displayed--a few in slavery days, and many in these later times? the most extravagant statement of negro inferiority is that the worst white man is better than the best negro because of the supernal quality of the white race. a southern writer talks of "the endless creations of art and science and religion and law and literature and every other form of activity, the full-voiced choir of all the muses, the majestic morality, the hundred-handed philosophy, the manifold wisdom of civilization--all of this infinite cloud of witnesses gather swarming upon us from the whole firmament of the past and proclaim with pentacostal tongue the glory and supremacy of caucasian man." judged by their achievements from the dawn of history to the present moment, the white race has indubitably achieved immensely more than the black race, but it has also achieved more than its own ancestors whom taine thus characterizes: "huge white bodies, ... with fierce, blue eyes, ... ravenous stomachs, ... of a cold temperament, slow to love, home stayers, prone to brutal drunkenness: ... pirates at first: ... seafaring, war, and pillage was their whole idea of a freeman's work.... of all barbarians ... the most cruelly ferocious." after all, a race cannot be proved inferior by what it has not done; the united states as a war-making power has so far been inferior to the germans and the japanese, but its strength has not been tested. the real question is, does the negro now, in the things that he is actually doing, show as much power as low and ignorant white people who have had no more than his opportunity? the reconstruction governments, which are the stock in trade of those who decry the negro, are little to the point, because they were to a considerable degree engineered by whites, and because they lasted only from one to eight years. on the other hand, the great powers of a few select members of the race, and the excellent mentality and character of many others, are not proof that its average stamina is up to that of the white man; they must be tested by what they do. the african in america has had little opportunity to work out a civilization of his own, and it certainly cannot be charged against him as a fault that he has accepted the white civilization which was at first forced upon him. as one of their own number says: "the negro has advanced in exactly the same fashion as the white race has advanced, by taking advantage of all that has gone before. other men have labored and we have entered into their labors." yet, having accepted a heritage of literature, law and religion, from his white brother, the negro cannot escape from the standard of the white man among whom he lives who have had like opportunities; and if he does not measure up to it it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the race is inferior. either the negro is a white man with a black skin, who after a reasonable term of probation must now take the responsibilities of equal character (though not as yet of equal performance), or else it must be admitted that, though a man, he is a somewhat different kind of man from the white. a favorite southern phrase is: "the negro is a child," and many considerable people accord him a child's privileges. the ignorant black certainly has a child's fondness for fun, freedom from care for the morrow, and incapacity to keep money in his pocket; but some planters will talk to you all day about the shrewdness with which he manages to get money out of the unsuspecting white man; and when it comes to serious crime, it is not every judge who makes allowance for childishness in the race. the theory that the negro mind ceases to develop after adolescence perhaps has something in it; but there are too many hard-headed and far-sighted persons, both full bloods and mulattoes, who have unusual minds, to permit the problem to be settled by the phrase, "the negro is a child." genuine friends and well-wishers of the negro feel intensely the irresponsibility of the race. a business man who all his life has been associated with them says: "he has all the good qualities of the lazy, thriftless person, he is amiable, generous and tractable. he has no activity in wrongdoing. he has the imitative gift in a remarkable degree, and always i love him for his faults, he is without craftiness, without greed. you will find no rockefellers nor carnegies among them. he is not a scoundrel from calculation.... he takes as his pattern the highest type of white man he is acquainted with. he has no sort of regard for what he thinks the poor white trash.... i don't know how best to help him, but i like him, like him and his careless devil-may-care ways. i like him because his whole soul is not absorbed in this craze for getting money. i like him because he does no evil by premeditation, because he sees no evil in everything he does, then goes and does it. i like him because some day in the distant past i was like him." the main issue must be fairly faced by the friends as well as the enemies of the colored race. measuring it by the white people of the south, or by the correspondingly low populations of southern or northern cities, the negroes as a people appear to be considerably below the whites in mental and moral status. there are a million or two exceptions, but they do not break the force of the eight or nine millions of average negroes. a larger proportion of the mulattoes than of the pure bloods come up to the white race in ability; but if fifty thousand people in the negro quarter of new orleans or on the central alabama plantations be set apart and compared with a similar number of the least promising whites in the same city or counties, fewer remarkable individuals and less average capacity would be found. race measured by race, the negro is inferior, and his past history in africa and in america leads to the belief that he will remain inferior in race stamina and race achievement. chapter ix negro life the negro problem in the south cannot be solved, nor is much light thrown upon it by the conditions of the race elsewhere. the immediate and pressing issue is the widespread belief that the great numbers of them in the south are an unsatisfactory element of the population. the total negroes in the united states in , the last available figures, was , , . they are, however, very unequally distributed throughout the union; in twenty northern states and territories there are only , altogether; in the states from pennsylvania northward there are about , ; from ohio westward about , ; while in the one state of georgia there are over a million; , , lived in the fifteen former slaveholding states; , , in the eleven seceding states; and , , in the seven states of the lower south. at the rate of increase shown during the last forty years there will soon be , , in the south alone. these figures have since been somewhat disturbed by the natural growth of population and by the interstate movement, so that the proportion of blacks in the north is doubtless now a little larger; but the fact remains that the habitat of the black is in the southern states. even there, great variations occur from state to state, and from place to place. in briscoe county, texas, there are , whites and not a single negro; in beaufort county, s. c., there are , whites and , africans; on the island of st. helena in this last county are , colored and white people; and on fenwick's island there are something like negroes and not a white person. as between country and city, the negro is a rural man; the only southern cities containing over , of them in the lower south are new orleans and perhaps atlanta; in the former slaveholding states out of , , negroes only about , , lived in cities of , people and upwards, which is less in proportion than the whites. in a very black district like the delta of the mississippi they form a majority of the city population. in of the southern places having a population of , or more at least half the population is african; but their drift cityward is less marked than that of the white people, eighty-five per cent of all the negroes live outside of cities and towns. the negroes have no race tradition of city life in africa, are no fonder than whites of moving from country to city, and throw no unendurable strain on the city governments. a favorite assertion is that the american negroes are either dying out or nearing the point where the death-rate will exceed the birth-rate. hoffmann, in his "race traits," has examined this question in a painstaking way, and proves conclusively that both north and south the death-rate of the black race is much higher than that of the whites. in philadelphia, for instance, the ratios are to , against to , . upon this point there are no trustworthy figures for the whole country; but an eighth of the negroes live in the so-called "registration area," which includes most of the large cities; and in that area the death-rate in is computed at to , for negroes and to , for the whites. this excess is largely due to the frightful mortality among negro children, which is almost double that among whites in the same community. in washington in one fifth of the white children under a year old died and almost one half of the colored children. when hoffmann attempts to show that the negro death-rate is accelerating, he is obliged to depend upon scanty figures from a few southern cities. in charleston, for instance, the records show in the forties (a period of yellow fever) a white death-rate of and a colored death-rate of , against recent rates of and to the , respectively; but in new orleans mr. hoffmann's own figures show a reduction of the colored death-rate from in the fifties to in the nineties. the only possible conclusion from these conflicting results is that the earlier mortality statistics on which he relies are few and unreliable. nevertheless, the present conditions of negro mortality are frightful. they appear to be due primarily to ignorance and neglect in the care of children, and secondly, to an increase of dangerous diseases. the frequent statement that consumption was almost unknown among negroes in slavery times is abundantly disproved by hoffmann; but the disease is undoubtedly gaining, for much the same reason that it ravages the indians in alaska, namely, that the people now live in close houses which become saturated with the virus of the disease. syphilis is also fearfully prevalent, and the most alarming statements are made by physicians who have practice or hospital service among the negroes; but the testimony as to the extent of the disease is conflicting, and there are other race elements in the united states which are depleted by venereal disease. the blacks also suffer from the use of liquor, though drunkards are little known among the cotton hands; but drugs, particularly cocaine and morphine, are widely used. in one country store a clerk has been known to make up a hundred and fifty packages of cocaine in a single night. notwithstanding the undoubtedly high death-rate, the birth-rate is so much greater that at every census the negro race is shown to be still growing; as murphy says: "whenever the negro has looked down the lane of annihilation he has always had the good sense to go around the other way." the census of was so defective that it must be thrown out of account, but the negro population, which was about , , in , and , , in , had grown to , , in . it is true that the rate of increase is falling off both absolutely and in proportion to the white race. in the south central group of states, which includes most of the lower south, the population increased about forty-eight per cent from to and only thirty-nine per cent in the next double decade; while the white population has in both periods increased at about sixty per cent, with a rising ratio. the urban negro has a high death-rate, not only in the south but in northern cities; in boston and indianapolis the birth-rate of the negroes does not keep pace with the deaths, and they would disappear but for steady accessions from the south. the southern blacks on the land are doing better and are growing steadily; neither statistics nor observations support the theory that the negro is dying out in the south; and comparatively slight changes in resort to skilled physicians, in the spread of trained nurses, in infants' food, may check the child mortality. on the other hand, any increase in thrift and in saving habits will almost certainly affect the size of families and diminish the average birth-rate. the very words "the negro" suggest the misleading idea that there is within the southern states a clearly defined negro race. in fact, physically, intellectually, and morally, it is as much subdivided as the white race. what is supposed to be the pure african type is the guinea negro, very black, very uncouth, and hard to civilize. what these people are is easy to find out, for a great part of the inhabitants of the sea islands of south carolina and georgia are of that race and speak what is called the gullah dialect, which joel chandler harris has preserved in his "daddy jack." besides these children and grandchildren of imported negroes there is near mobile a small group of sturdy people perfectly well known to have been brought into the united states in in the yacht _wanderer_. these may be part of a cargo from which senator tillman's family bought a gang, and he says of them: "these poor wretches, half starved as they have been, were the most miserable lot of human beings--the nearest to the missing link with the monkey i have ever put my eyes on." the whole african problem is immeasurably complicated and contorted by the fact that of the negroes in the united states not more than four fifths at the highest are pure blacks. the remainder are partially caucasian in race, and occupy a midway position, often of unhappiness and sometimes of downright misery. as to the number of mulattoes, there is no trustworthy statistical statement; the census figures for reported that out of the total "negro" population eighteen per cent was mulatto in the northern group of southern states, and about fifteen per cent in the lower south; but these figures are confessedly defective and are probably vitiated by including some members of the lighter negro races as mulattoes. shannon, in his "racial integrity," while unhesitatingly accepting these very imperfect figures, attempts to supplement them by calculations made from an inspection of crowds; and it is his opinion that in the smaller cities, the towns and villages, about twenty-two per cent are mulattoes--"and that unless this amalgamation is effectually checked in some way, this ratio will continue to rise until practically the whole of the negro race will come to be of mixed blood." shufeldt, in his "the negro, a menace," asserts that at least sixty per cent of the negroes have some white blood, and is confident that the proportion is increasing. the census authorities of commit themselves only to the generalization that the mulattoes are most numerous in proportion to the number of whites in any given community. as to the testimony of observers, there is every variety of appearance. you may see crowds of negroes at a railway station in georgia, of whom two thirds are purely mulatto; you may visit islands in south carolina in which not one fortieth part have white blood. the number of mulattoes is less important than their character and general relation to the negro problem. most southerners assert and doubtless believe that the mulatto is physically weak; but you see them working side by side with pure blacks, as roustabouts and plantation hands, and some planters tell you that one is as good as another in the field. people assert that mulattoes are more susceptible to disease, so that they are dying out; and some authorities say that there are no mulatto children after the third or fourth generation. there is no scientific ground for these assertions, and one of the highest medical authorities in the south is of the conviction that except for a somewhat greater liability to tuberculosis they are as healthy as the full bloods. of course, the greater number of mulattoes in the united states are the children of mulattoes, and to what extent the proportion is kept up by further accessions from the white race is absolutely impossible to determine. many statements on the whole subject come from people who hate the mulatto and like to think that he is a poor creature who is going to relieve the world of a disagreeable problem by leaving it. from the same source comes the assertion that the mulatto is fundamentally vicious, frequently made by people who argue in the same breath that the so-called progress of the negro race means nothing, because it is all due to mulattoes. the mulattoes do include a much larger proportion of the educated than the pure bloods, and hence are more likely to furnish such criminals as forgers and embezzlers; but there seems no ground for the widespread belief that the mulattoes are more criminal than the pure blacks. that there is a special temptation more likely to come to some members of the mulatto section than to the pure black was suggested by a southern gentleman when he said: "the black girls won't work and the yellow girls don't have to, they are looked after!" when asked to suggest who it was who looked after them, the conversation languished. the question of the character of the mulatto is a serious one, because most of the spokesmen and markedly successful people of the race are not pure bloods; and because of the unhappy position of thousands of men and women who have the aptitudes, the tastes, and the educations of white people; yet in the common estimation are bracketed with the rudest, most ignorant and lowest of a crude, ignorant and low race. the status of the negroes is in many ways altered by the steady though limited movement from south to north. the negroes are subject to waves of excitement, and in a colored agitator created a furore for colonization by spreading abroad the news that in liberia there was a "bread tree" and another tree which ran lard instead of sap, so that all you had to do was to cut from one and catch from the other. a systematic effort has been made to settle colored people in indiana, in order to hold that state in the republican column; and there are now probably nearly a hundred thousand there, a third of whom are settled in indianapolis, where they furnish a race problem of growing seriousness. the negroes in the city of washington have increased eight times in forty years. they have repeatedly been brought into the north as strike breakers, often with the result of serious riots. in thousands of them left various parts of the south for kansas, and in some cases the river boats refused to take them. as a result some southern states passed statutes requiring heavy license fees (sometimes as much as $ , a year) from labor agents who should induce people to go to other states. nevertheless, there are now over , in kansas and over , in the neighboring new state of oklahoma. at present there are in new york and philadelphia nearly a hundred agents who draw negroes northward, and they bring thousands of people every year, chiefly to enter domestic service. the movement is ill organized and does not by any means include the most thrifty, since passage money is often advanced by the agents. the numbers of the negroes are not in themselves alarming. in most southern states they are fewer in proportion than the foreign element in many northern states. the hostility to the negro is not based on his numbers, but on his supposed inferiority of character. on this point there is a painful lack of accurate knowledge, because there is so little contact between the whites and their negro neighbors. the white opinion of the blacks is founded with little knowledge of the home life of the other race. how many white people in the city of atlanta, for instance, have actually been inside the house of a prosperous, educated negro? how many have actually sat over the fire of a one-room negro cabin? the southern whites, with few exceptions, teach no negroes, attend no negro church services, penetrate into no negro society, and they see the negro near at hand chiefly as unsatisfactory domestic servants, as field hands of doubtful profit, as neglectful and terrified patients, as clients in criminal suits or neighborhood squabbles, as prisoners in the dock, as convicted criminals, as wretched objects for the vengeance of a mob. an encouraging sign is the disposition of both white and colored investigators to study the negro in his home. professor dubois has directed such researches both in southern cities and in the open country; there are also two monographs upon the religious life of the negro, one directed by vanderbilt university and the other by atlanta university; and mr. odum, of the university of mississippi, has prepared a study upon the negro in fifty towns in various states which, still in manuscript, is one of the most instructive inquiries ever made into negro life. naturally, such investigations are easier in the cities, and we know much more about the urban negro, a sixth of the population, than of the rural black, who are five sixths. in the large cities there is an african population, a considerable part of which is prosperous. here are the best colored schools, the greatest demand for african labor, the largest opportunity for building up small businesses among the negroes themselves. here are to be found most of the rich or well-to-do negroes; and there is a large contingent of steady men employed in all kinds of capacities, about whom there is little complaint. on the other hand, a broad fringe of the population lives in houses or rooms actually less spacious and less decent than the one-room cabin in the fields. this floating and unsteady part of the negro race finds a favorable habitat in the towns and small cities, where there is less opportunity for steady employment than in the large cities. from this class come the domestic servants, who will be considered in a later chapter. the typical social life of the negro is that of the field laborer, who lives in a poor and crude way. the most common residence is the one-room house, without a glass window, set in a barren and unfenced waste, with a few wretched outhouses, the worst cabins being on the land of the least progressive and humane planters. you may see on the land of a wealthy white one-room houses with chinks between the logs such that the rain drives into them, the tenant family crowded into the space between the fireplace and the unenticing beds, dirty clothing hanging about, hardly a chair to sit upon, outside the house not a paling or a building of any kind, and pigs rooting on the ground under the floor. on a tolerable mississippi plantation with seventy-four families, seventeen had one-room cabins, and one of those families comprised eleven persons. some southerners have a theory that you can be sure that a cabin with a garden is occupied by a white; but that is a fallacy, for there are many negro gardens, although some planters prohibit them on the ground that they will become weed spots. in the cities the negroes live for the most part in settlements by themselves, in which there are miserable tenements, usually owned by white people and no better than the one-room country house. of course, thrifty colored people in country or city are able to build comfortable houses for themselves. inasmuch as both father and mother work either in the fields or in domestic service, there is little family life either in country or city. the food is poor and monotonous; it is chiefly salt pork, bacon, corn bread (usually pone), and some sort of molasses. fresh meat is almost impossible to get outside of town, chickens are raised though not very plentiful, vegetables are few. for little children this diet is intolerable, and that is why so many of them die in infancy. close observers declare that negroes are brutal to their children, but one may be much among them without seeing any instances. they are also accused of deserting their old people; children often wander away and lose track of their parents, but you will find districts where the old are well looked after by their kindred. the most serious interference in family life is the field work of the women, and the breaking up of families by the desertion of the father; but somehow in all these family jars the children are seldom left without anyone to care for them. public amusements are almost wanting for the negro. they are commonly not admitted to white theaters, concerts, and other similar performances. in the country there is nothing better than to crowd the plantation store of a saturday night in a sort of club. few of them read for pleasure, and there is little to relieve the monotony. perhaps for that reason they are fond of going about the country, and you see them everywhere on horseback, or in little bull carts, or on foot. they will spend their last dollar for an excursion on the railroad, and at the turn of the year, january st, many of them may be seen moving. the circus is one of the greatest delights of the negro; he will travel many miles for this pleasure. the field hand is thrown back on coarse enjoyments; hard drinking is frequent among both men and women, yet the habitual drunkard is rare; the country negro is fond of dances, which often turn out unseemly and lead to affrays and murders. for their social and jovial needs negroes find some satisfaction in their church life. their own statisticians claim , , communicants worshiping in , church buildings, of which the greater part are in the country. contrary to expectation forty years ago, the negroes have been little attracted to the catholic church, which is so democratic in its worship, and possesses a ritual which might be expected to appeal to negro nature. nearly half the church members are some sort of baptists, and half of the rest adhere to the methodist denominations. some city churches have buildings costing twenty, thirty, and even fifty thousand dollars, and they are pertinacious about raising money for construction and other similar purposes. these churches do not represent an advanced type of piety. conversions are violent and lapses frequent, and the minister is not certain to lend the weight of his conduct to his words. there are many genuinely pious and hard-working ministers, but at least half of them in both city and country are distrusted by the whites and discredited by their own people. simply educating the minister does not solve the problem, for what the people want is somebody who will arouse them to a pleasurable excitement. that is, the present type of piety among the negro churches is about that which prevailed among the white people along the frontier fifty years ago, and which has not entirely died out in the backwoods and the mountains. a genuine colored service is extremely picturesque, the preacher working like a locomotive going up a heavy grade, while the hearers assist him with cries of, "talk to um, preacher--great god--ha! ha! you is right, brudder--preaching now--talk 'bout um--holy lord." then the brethren are called upon to pray; in that musical intoning which is so appropriate for the african voice; then the minister lines out the hymns and the congregation bursts out into that combination of different minor keys which is the peculiar gift of the negro race. another negro enjoyment is the secret orders, which are almost as numerous as the churches and probably have as many male members. these societies are first of all burial and benefit orders with dues ranging from fifty cents a month upward, for which sick benefits of four dollars a week are paid and about forty dollars for burial. the societies build lodge houses not only in cities but in plantation regions; and the judgment of those who have most carefully examined them is that they are on the whole a good thing. they give training in public speaking and in common action; they furnish employment to managers and clerks; and their considerable funds are for the most part honestly managed. some of them publish newspapers chiefly devoted to publishing the names of officers and members. in mississippi there are thirty-four licensed orders with , members. they carry $ , , of risks, and in a year paid $ , to policy holders. naturally they have rather high-sounding names, such as "grand court of calanthe," "lone star of race pride," "united brethren of friendship and sisters of mysterious ten," "sons and daughters of i will arise." some efforts are making to build up national societies such as the "royal trust company" and "the ethiopian progressive association of america," which, according to its own statement, is "incorporated with an authorized capital stock a hundred times larger than the next most heavily capitalized negro corporation on earth. it is designed to fraternize, build and cement the vital interests of negroes throughout the world into one colossal union." the order and the church are both social clubs and include a good part of the race both in city and country, and these organizations are the work of the last forty years, for in slavery times the negro churches were closely watched by the whites, and secret societies would have been impossible. chapter x the negro at work nobody accepts church or fraternal orders as the measure of the negro's place in the community, for the gospel which he hears most often is the gospel of work; and that comes less from the preacher than from the reformer; as dubois says: "plain it is to us that what the world seeks through desert and wild we have within our threshold--a stalwart laboring force, suited to the semi-tropics." the labor system and labor ideal of the south are very different from those of the north. first of all, there is the old tradition of slavery times that manual toil is ignoble; that it is menial to handle prime materials, and to buy and sell goods across the counter. but somebody must perform hard labor if the community is to go on; and there is an immense field for uneducated men. besides the so-called "public works"--that is, turpentine, sawmills, building levees and railroads, and clearing land--there is the pulling and hauling and loading in the ports, the rough work of oil mills and furnaces and mines, and above all the raising of cotton, where the demand for labor is always greater than the supply. some of this labor is done by white gangs, and many of the blacks are engaged in other and higher pursuits; but the chief function of the negro in the south is the rough labor which in the north was once chiefly performed by irishmen, later by italians, and now in many places by slavs. this vast industrial system is almost wholly officered by whites, who are the owners, employers, and managers of nearly every piece of property in the south on which laborers are employed. they set, so far as they can, the terms of employment; but what they get in actual work is settled by the negroes, notwithstanding a condition of dependence hard to realize in the north. it is firmly fixed in the average white employer's mind that the negro exists in order to work for him, and that every attempt to raise the negro must steer clear of any suspicion that it will lead him to abandon work for the white man. the slow drift of negroes to the towns and cities cannot be prevented, nor some shifting from plantation to plantation; but the white man's ideal is that the negro is to stay where he is, and hundreds of thousands of them are living within sight of the spot where they were born. therefore, whoever wishes to know the conditions of the typical negro must look for them on the plantation, where he is almost the only laborer, and is at present prodigiously wanted. as a keen southern observer says: "the protection of the negro is the scarcity of labor"; for it is literally true that some plantations could profitably employ more than double the hands that they can get. nevertheless it is an axiom in the south that "the nigger will not work." thus general stephen d. lee gives currency to the declaration that "it is a fact known to those best acquainted with the negro race since the war, that more and more of them are becoming idle, and are not giving us as good work as they used to do." another authority says: "some few of the race are reliable--many hundreds are not. the farmer cannot get his land turned in the winter, because ninety hundredths of these laborers have not made up their minds as to what they want to do in the coming year. all would go to town if fuel was not high and house rent must be paid." an engineer in charge of large gangs in galveston says he never would employ negroes if he could help it, because they cannot be depended upon to rush work in an emergency. a planter met on a mississippi steamer declares that wage hands at a dollar a day would not actually put in more than two thirds of the hours of labor; and would accomplish no more in two weeks than a cropper working on shares would do in two days. a negro who employs large numbers of men says: "if a negro can get what he wants without working he will do it." another standard accusation is that the negro will not work steadily; that he never turns up on monday, and will leave for frivolous reasons; that if he has been working for five dollars a week and you raise his wages to ten dollars he will simply work the three days necessary to earn the five dollars, having adjusted himself to that scale. in this charge there is a good deal of truth, but the difficulty is not confined to the african race. northern employers are well acquainted with the hand who never works on monday; and in the cotton mills of south carolina, which are carried on solely by white labor, it is customary to have a "reserve of labor" of one fourth or one fifth in order to meet the case of the hands who wish to go fishing, or simply are not willing to work six days a week. probably the remedy for the negro is to increase his wants to the point where he cannot satisfy them by less than a whole week's work. as to the general accusation that the negro will not work, many white employers scout the suggestion. a brickmaker in st. louis has for years employed them and likes them better than any other kind of labor. a florida lumberman says: "i would not give one black man in the lumber camps of the south for three italians, or three of any other foreigners. we can't get along without them, and for one, i don't want to try." and planter after planter will tell you that, however it may be with his neighbors, he has no trouble in keeping his people up to their work. another reason for skepticism is what one sees as one goes through the country. in the first place, enormous amounts of cotton are raised where there is nothing but negro labor. in the second place, even in winter, the season of the year when the negro is least busy, there are plenty of evidences that he is at work and likely to keep at it. he may be seen at work on his own little farm, taking care of his stock, picking his cotton, fixing up or adding to his house, his fifteen-year-old girl plowing with one mule. a negro's farm is generally more slovenly than a white man's, but the crops are raised. you see the hired hands on the great plantations, driving four-mule teams, working in the gins, coming for directions about breaking ground. the truth is that the negro on the land is doing well, far better than might be expected from people who have so little outlook and hope of improvement, working more intelligently and doing better than the fellahin of egypt, the ryots of india, the native filipino, quite as well as the lowest end of the mountain whites and the remnants of the lowland poor whites. it is a race-slander, refutable by any honest investigator, that the american negro as a race is unwilling to work. it is another question how far they are competent to act as foremen or independent workers. an iron manufacturer in alabama says he has found that the moment negroes are promoted to anything requiring thinking power they fail disastrously, and ruin all the machinery put in their charge; as miners they handle tools with skill just as long as they are furnished the motive power, but they have little discretion or ambition. on the other hand, the writer has seen in the richmond locomotive works white men working under negro gang bosses without friction; and in many parts of the south the building trades are almost wholly in the hands of blacks. why should the belief of the african's incapacity be so widely disseminated? first, because nineteen twentieths of the people who talk about the lazy negro have no personal knowledge of the field hand at work. their impression of the race is gained from the thriftless and irregular negroes in the towns and cities. if we formed our notions of northern farm industry from the gypsies, the dock loafers, the idle youths shooting craps behind a board fence, we should believe a generalization that northern farmers are lazy. the shiftless population living on odd jobs and the earnings of the women as domestic servants, committing petty crimes and getting into rows with the white youths, cannot be more than one tenth of the negroes, and the poorest tenth at that. domestic service is the most exasperating point of contact between the races. it has been reduced to a system of day labor, for not one in a hundred of the house servants spend the night in the place where they are employed. great numbers of the women are the only wage earners in their family and leave their little children at home day after day so that they may care for the children of white families. some mistresses scold and fume and threaten, some have the patience of angels; in both cases the service is irregular and wasteful. nobody ever feels sure that a servant will come the next morning. most of the well-to-do families in the south feed a second family out of the baskets taken home by the cook; and in thousands of instances the basket goes to some member of a third family favored by the cook. hence the little song taken down from a negro's lips by a friend in mississippi: "i doan' has to wuk so ha'd, 'cause i got a gal in de white folks' ya'd; and ebry ebnin' at half past eight i comes along to de gyarden gate; she gibs me buttah an' sugah an' lard-- i doan' has to wuk so ha'd!" let one story out of a hundred illustrate this trouble. a newly married couple, both accustomed to handsome living, set up their own establishment in a mississippi town, in a new house, well furnished and abounding in heirlooms of mahogany and china; the only available candidate for waitress is a haughty person who begins by objecting to monthly payments, and shortly announces to her mistress: "i ain't sure i want to stay here, but i will give you a week's trial." the patient and good-natured lady accepts the idea of a week's experience on both sides, but before that time expires the girl comes rushing up in a fury to announce that "i'm gwine ter leave just now, kase you don't give yo' help 'nough to eat." it develops that she has had exactly the same breakfast as the white family, except that the particular kind of bacon of which she is fond has run short. there is plenty of bacon of another brand, but that will not satisfy her; she will not stay "where people don't get 'nough to eat." she thereupon shakes the dust of the place off her feet and blacklists the family in the whole place, making it almost impossible for them to find another servant; and probably some other white mistress within a week takes up this hungry person as being the best that she can do. other people have more agreeable tales of good-tempered and humorous servants; and the negro question would be half solved if the people who undertake domestic service and accept wages would show reasonable interest, cleanliness, and honesty; and a million of the race might find steady employment at good wages in the south within the next six months, and another million in the north, if they would only do faithfully what they are capable of doing. there is little hope of regeneration by that means; the difficulty is that capable negroes do not like domestic service and seek to avoid it. the average southerner sighs for the good old household slaves, and harks back to the colored mammy in the kitchen and stately butler in the drawing-room in slavery times, as evidence that the negroes are going backward. he forgets that under slavery the highest honorable position open to a colored woman was to be the owned cook in a wealthy family; that booker t. washington and dubois and kelly miller in those days would have been fortunate if raised to the lofty pinnacle of the trusted butler or general utility man on the plantation. the house servants in slavery times were chosen for their superior appearance and intelligence, and were likely to be mulattoes; the children and grandchildren of such people may now be owners of plantations, professional men, professors in colleges, negro bankers, and heads of institutions; while the domestic servant commonly now comes from the lowest negroes, is descended from field hands, and chosen out of the most incompetent section of the present race. the problem of domestic service is chiefly one of the village and the city, in which only about a seventh of the negroes live. even many southerners have very hazy ideas about the subdivisions of plantation laborers; and do not distinguish between the renters and croppers, who are tenant farmers in their way, and the wage hands who are less ambitious and not so steady. there is complaint on many plantations that negro families do not finish their contracts, though the main outcry is against the day laborer; yet on many of the large plantations there is little complaint that even he does not work steadily, and little trouble in securing from him a fair day's work. another disturbance of the easy generalization that the negro will not work is due to the variations from county to county and from place to place. much more depends than the outside world realizes on the capacity of a plantation manager "to handle niggers"; and the testimony of a perfectly straightforward planter who tells you that he knows that the negroes as a race run away from work because he has seen it, is no more true of the whole people than the assurance of his near neighbor that he knows the blacks are all industrious because they work steadily for him. here we come back to the essential truth that it is unsafe to generalize about any race. there are thousands of good negroes in the towns and thousands of lazy rascals on the plantations; but the great weight of testimony is that the colored man works tolerably well on the land. another of the statements, repeated so often that people believe them without proof, is that the southern negro has lost his skilled trades. two southern writers say: "now, most of the bricklayers are white. the same is true with respect to carpenter work. the trade of the machinist is practically in the hands of white men." "they have been losing ground as mechanics. before the war, on every plantation there were first-class carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, etc. half the houses in virginia were built by negro carpenters. now where are they?" nothing could better illustrate the fact that southerners who reprehend the interference of the north in questions which it does not understand, are themselves myopic guides. if the negro trades have disappeared, how does it come about that in montgomery, ala., there are practically no other laborers of that type? that the bricklayers, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, are all negroes, and no white boys seem to be learning those trades. the census of showed in alabama about , colored men who had some sort of skilled employment, many of them in trades which did not exist in slavery times, such as iron-working, steam fitting, and service on railroads. it is true that they are shut out of most of the callings in which there is authority over others; there are no negro motormen or trolley conductors, no negro engineers, though plenty of firemen; no negro conductors, though negro brakemen are not uncommon, and in meridian, miss., the trains are called in the white waiting room by a buxom negro woman. in some southern cities whites, very often northern men, have absorbed certain trades supposed to be the peculiar province of the negro: barber shops with white barbers are found; the magnificent piedmont hotel in atlanta has a corps of white servants; wherever the trades unions get into the south they are likely to work against the negro; but in some cases he has unions of his own; or there are joint unions of whites and negroes. considering the great opportunity for white men in callings where blacks are not admitted it does not seem likely that they will ever be excluded from skilled trades, though subject to more competition than in the past. another employment for which the african has in many ages and countries been found suited is military service. even in slavery times military companies of free negroes were not unknown, and some of them actually went to the front for the confederacy in the first weeks of the civil war. then came the enlistment of nearly , in the blue uniform, and after the war some thousands of men remained in negro regiments. a brief attempt to educate colored officers in west point and annapolis was, for whatever reason, not a success; and the negro troops are almost wholly under the command of white officers. since reconstruction times negro militia companies have not been encouraged, and in some states have been wholly disbanded. the difficulty in brownsville, texas, in , has tended to prevent negro enlistment in the army and navy. in the spanish war and later in the philippines negro regiments gave a good account of themselves. there are a few negro policemen in the cities, but in the south they are likely to disappear. the white man resents any assertion of authority over him by a negro, and in general considers him unfit to exercise control over people of his own race. even in ante-bellum times there were occasional negro business and professional men, some of whom had the confidence of their white neighbors and made little fortunes. since the civil war these avenues have much widened. the , or , ministers are still to a large degree uneducated persons, as indeed is the case in many white churches. negro physicians are numerous, educated partly in northern institutions, partly in medical colleges of their own, partly in schools officered by white professors, as, for instance, in raleigh, n. c. like the lawyers they cannot practice without the certificate of state officers not very friendly to them or easy to convince of their abilities; and the cream of the practice among colored people goes to the whites. in business, negro merchants, manufacturers, builders, and bankers have become very numerous. recently a negro bankers' convention was held in the south. most of the transactions of these men are carried on with their own people, though they often find customers and credit with whites. so far, there are few or no large negro capitalists, but many promising groups of small capital have been brought together; and at the expositions of charleston and jamestown they showed creditable exhibits of their own industries. two entirely new professions have opened up since the civil war. the first is that of journalist, and there are many negro newspapers, none of which has any national circulation, or extended influence. the other is teaching, which has opened up a livelihood to thousands of young men and women. some of the negro colleges are wholly manned by members of the race, many of them graduates of northern institutions, who seem to make use of the same methods and appeal to the same aspirations as the faculties of white colleges. though often accused by his white neighbor of attempts to unite in hostile organizations, the negroes show little disposition to rally around and support leaders of their own race. booker t. washington, the man of most influence among them, has encountered implacable opposition, and efforts have even been made by hostile members of his own race to break up his meetings in boston. inasmuch as the negroes are excluded from politics in the south, it is hard for any man to get that reputation for bringing things about which is necessary in order to attract a strong following. as dubois points out "if such men are to be effective they must have some power,--they must be backed by the best public opinion of these communities, and able to wield for their objects and aims such weapons as the experience of the world has taught are indispensable to human progress." one of the strong influences is the conferences gathered in part at such institutions as hampton and tuskegee, and atlanta university, in part called in other places. a considerable number of negroes have the money and the inclination to attend these meetings, where they learn to know each other and to express their common wants. chapter xi is the negro rising? that the negro is inferior to the whites among whom he lives is a cause of apprehension to the whole land; that his labor is in steadiness and efficiency much below that of his intelligent white neighbors is a drawback to his section. yet neither deficiencies of character nor of industry really settle his place in the community. a race may be as high as the greeks and yet go to nothingness; a race may be as industrious as the chinese, and have little to show for it. the essential question with regard to the negro is simply: is the race in america moving downward or upward? no matter if it be low, has it the capacity of rising? to answer these questions requires some study both of present and past conditions. a very considerable number of southern whites are sure that physically and morally the negro is both low and declining; and some go so far as to assert that every negro is physically so different from the white man that he ought not to be considered a member of the human race. the argument was familiar in slavery times, and has been recently set forth by f. l. hoffman in his "race traits of the american negro"; from chest measurements, weight, lifting strength, and power of vision, he is convinced that "there are important differences in the bodily structure of the two races, differences of far-reaching influence on the duration of life and the social and economic efficiency of the colored man." professor smith, of louisiana, in his "the color line, a brief for the unborn," goes much farther in an argument intended to show that the brain capacity of the negro, the coarseness of his features, the darkness of his color, the abnormal length of his arm, his thick cranium, woolly hair and early closing of the cranial sutures, prove that he may be left out of consideration as a member of a civilized community. the tendency of scientific investigators during the last forty years has been to minimize the distinctions between races; and the argument that the negro is to be politically and socially disregarded because of structural peculiarities, though the stock in trade of the proslavery writers two generations ago, now seems somewhat forced. to the northern mind there is a kind of unreality in the whole argument of physical inferiority; it is like trying to prove by anatomy, physiology, and hygiene that the hungarian laborer is always going to be an ignorant and degraded element in our population. these technical arguments throw very little light upon the real african problem, which is not, what does the structure of the negro indicate that he must be, but what is he really and what does he perform? if the negro can work all day in the cotton field, save his wages, buy land, bring up his children, send them to school, pay his debts, and maintain a decent life, no cranial sutures or prognathism will prevent his being looked upon as a man; and the whole physical argument, much of which is intended to affect the public mind against amalgamation, cannot do away with the plain fact that the white and the black races are so near to each other that some hundreds of thousands of people come of white fathers and negro or mulatto mothers. the negro is entitled to be measured, not by brain calipers, nor by two-meter rods, but by what he can do in the world. what he can do in the world depends upon the inner man and not the outer; and here we approach one of the most serious problems connected with the race. has the negro character? can he conceive a standard and adhere to it? can he fix his mind on a distant good and for its sake give up present indulgences? can he restrain the primal impulses of human nature? that the negroes as a race are impure and unregulated is the judgment of most white observers whether ill-wishers or fair-minded men. thomas nelson page, for instance, declares that the immorality of the negro race has increased since slavery times. thomas, himself a negro, asserts that the sexual impulse "constitutes the main incitement to the degeneracy of the race, and is the chief hindrance to its social uplifting." kelsey, a northern observer, says: "many matings are consummated without any regular marriage ceremony and with little reference to legal requirements." on this subject as on all others the most preposterous exaggerations are rife; a plantation manager will tell you that not two in a hundred couples on his plantation are married; a stock statement, a thousand times repeated, is that there is no such thing as a virtuous negro woman. yet the truth is gruesome enough; there are plenty of plantations where barely half the families are married; bastard children are very numerous; and this condition applies not only in the cities and towns where people are put into new and trying environments, but everywhere among the negroes upon the land. it is the most discouraging thing about the race, because it saps the foundation of civilization. nor is it an explanation to say that under slavery family ties were disregarded. the race has now had forty years of freedom and undisturbed religious training, such as it is. still they ought to show decided improvement in morals if the race is capable of living on a high moral plane. this is a gloomy and delicate subject, but cannot be allowed to pass without a few positive illustrations. when kelsey suggested to a negro that he might go back to the plantation and board in a negro family, he replied: "niggers is queer folks, boss. 'pears to me they don' know what they gwine do. ef i go out and live in a man's house like as not i run away wid dat man's wife." a girl whose mistress was trying to put before her a higher standard of conduct said: "it's no use talking to us colored girls like we were white. a colored girl that keeps pure ain't liked socially. we just think she has had no chance." a negro boy twelve years old has been known to reel off two hundred different obscene rhymes and songs. divorce is frequent, particularly the easy form which consists of the husband throwing his wife out of doors and bringing in another woman. the negro preachers are universally believed to be the worst of their kind, and very often are. if the things that are regularly told by white people and sometimes admitted by colored people are true, the majority of the southern negroes, rural and urban, are in a horribly low state both physically and morally. the more credit to those members of the race who are pure and upright; who are showing that it is a libel to brand as hopelessly corrupt ten million people, including probably two million mulattoes; to say nothing of the numerous examples of chaste and self-respecting negroes of both sexes in the northern states. the most furious assailant of negro character will usually tell you of one or two negroes that he knows to be perfectly straightforward; and the writer can bear personal testimony to the apparent wholesomeness of family life in negro homes that he has chanced to visit. here, a young mother in her scrupulously clean log house hovering over her little children as affectionately as though she and they were white; there, gathered around the hearth of a new house with good furniture and pretty pictures, a family of seven children, neat, clean, attractive, respectful, intelligent, and apparently attached to father and mother. again, a fine specimen of the thrifty colored man who boasts that he has lived forty-one years with one wife: "i got a good wife, she take keer of me." where such homes are, all is not vile. it is a favorite southern delusion that education and christian teaching have no effect on the animal propensities of negroes; there are thousands of examples to the contrary. it would do no good to anybody to minimize the terrible truth that the negroes as a race are in personal morality far below the anglo-saxons as a race, that the heaviest dead weight upon them is their own passions; but it would be equally futile to blink at the fact that the whites do not set them in this respect a convincing example. anglo-saxons the world over are not unreasonably virtuous; and the divorce cases of pittsburg might not be safe reading for impressionable people like the blacks. if the negro race is depraved it cannot but have a demoralizing effect on the white race, most of whom have colored nurses; and the male half of whom have all their life been exposed to a particularly facile temptation. heaven has somehow shielded the white woman of the south from the noxious influences of a servile race; in slavery times and now there is not a fairer flower that blooms than the white southern girl; although it is a delusion that she is never pursued by men of her own race. no visitor, no clean southern man, knows the abysses in both races or can fix the proportion in which both need to rise if the southland is to be redeemed from its most fearful danger. great numbers of the negroes are immoral, and great numbers of white men can testify to their immorality, for the building up of character is a long and weary process in both races. so far as the future of the negro is concerned, the real problem is whether he can suppress his bad traits and emphasize his higher nature, but that is a question with regard to all other races. the blacks are ignorant, not only of books, but of the world, of life, of the experience of the race. they are untrustworthy, but at the same time faithful; as one of their own number says: "they'll loaf before your face and work behind your back with good-natured honesty. they'll steal a watermelon, and hand you back your lost purse intact." in any case, it may safely be affirmed that the negro is not retrograding. on the sea islands, where it has been reported that the negroes had sunk to savagery, where on one small island a white face had not been seen for ten years, there is undoubtedly a widespread belief in magic, or what a fluent colored preacher, in a discourse apparently intended for white ears, referred to as "hindooism." on such subjects the negroes are reticent; but no evidence of paganism is visible to long-time residents on the islands. when it comes to fortune-telling and charms, and a fetich that will insure you against having your mortgage foreclosed, about the same thing may be found among otherwise intelligent people in any northern city. degradation is frequent; and marital relations are loose on the islands, though no more so than on the plantations of mississippi, or among the negroes of the cities of georgia. the population is in general healthier than on the mainland, though much exposed to severe malaria. two or three of the african superstitions do survive; one is that you must always keep a door open during the day so that you may not shut the bad spirit in with you; but at night doors and shutters must be closed to keep the spirit out. another superstition is the "basket-name," which is the plague of the northern teachers, who are a long time in learning that louisa's basket name is "chug," or that when you call ezra, "mantchey" will come. churches of various denominations are kept up, and, together with the various lodges, furnish the principal social life of the people. to be sure they often have african dances at their religious services; but these are very like the shaker dances, which can hardly be called pagan worship. the error as to the progress of the negro arises both from an unfounded notion of the virtues and the civilization of the negroes under slavery, and an equally unfounded idea that the average conditions of the negro to-day are hopeless. the negro was busier in slavery times than now because there was always the whip in the background, but there is no reason to suppose that his average annual product was as great as that of the present freeman. falsehood, thriftlessness, and immorality are the charges which were constantly brought against the slaves, both by outsiders and by their own masters. judged by the standards which the white man most readily applies to himself--namely, the proportion of educated and progressive men and women, the average amount of property, the interest in the welfare of the race--there is no reason to doubt that the negro is higher up than he was half a century ago. how far does the desire for uplift extend, and how far is it effective? the negro population shows a distinct interest in the future of the race. the field hand who has the ambition to save and improve, to buy his own land, feels that he is benefiting not only himself, but giving an object lesson of the power of his race. some of the leaders have personal ends to gain, but they all expect to gain them by showing a power to improve the conditions of their fellows. yet even though the negro may be working steadily, he may also be gaining nothing from generation to generation; if he gets better wages, he may be squandering them; a small part of the race might conceivably be going forward, while a large part was dropping back. a piece of testimony on the highest phases of negro character which is too often forgotten in the south is that on the occasion when the race had the best opportunity to show black-heartedness it gave the world a noble example of patience, forbearance, and forgiveness. as that great southerner, grady, wrote: "history has no parallel to the faith kept by the negro in the south during the war. often five hundred negroes to a single white man, and yet through these dusky throngs the women and children walked in safety, and the unprotected homes rested in peace. unmarshalled, the black battalions moved patiently to the fields in the morning to feed the armies their idleness would have starved, and at night gathered anxiously at the big house to 'hear the news from marster,' though conscious that his victory made their chains enduring. everywhere humble and kindly. the body guard of the helpless. the rough companion of the little ones. the observant friend. the silent sentry in his lowly cabin. the shrewd counsellor. and when the dead came home, a mourner at the open grave. a thousand torches would have disbanded every southern army, but not one was lighted." that achievement was a vast advance above the savagery of the native african; and why should the capacity for improvement stop there? keeping in mind the fact that with all his patience the slave in the best days of slavery was still a low and vicious type in whom his slavehood strengthened native propensities to lying, theft, and lust, it is undeniable that the greater part of the race has made great advances; even john temple graves, a harmful enemy of the negro, admits that "the leaders of no race in history have ever shown greater wisdom, good temper and conservative discretion than distinguishes the two or three men who stand at the head of the negro race in america to-day." under slavery no such success or influence was possible; there could be no negro orators, or reformers, or leaders in the south. an invariable answer to the plea that the character of the negro leaders is a proof of the capacity for uplift is that they are substantially white men. at the same moment the critics deny to those substantially white men the privileges of actual white men. but may not "substantially white men" have an uplifting influence such as indubitably white men had in earlier times? most candid white observers, however hostile to the race, admit that somewhere from a tenth to a fourth of all the negroes are doing well and moving upward; and this applies to the negro on the land as well as in cities. in many scattered areas in the south, groups of plantation negroes have bought land and are saving money. here are a few examples taken from the writer's notebook: at calhoun, ala., may be found nearly a hundred negroes who have bought or are buying their own farms, and have made $ , of savings to do it. a negro woman on one of those farms said of her new house: "we don't need no rider (overseer) now, dis house is our rider. it will send us into the field, it will make us work, and it will make us plan. we's got to plan. when ise out in the pit i has to stop to look up at dis house, and den ise so pleased i don't know how i am working." near nixburg, ala., is another settlement started by a negro, rev. john leonard, soon after the war, which is called thereabouts "niggerdom," because the blacks have acquired the best tract of land in the region, have put up the best schoolhouse in the county, and as a neighbor said of them: "they have got to the place now where they're no more service to the whites. they want to work for themselves." at kowaliga, ala., is the benson settlement, where a negro has bought his former master's plantation, largely extended it, has built a dam and mill, owns three thousand acres of land with many tenants, and is one of the few large planters of that section who combines cattle raising with cotton. he gave land and assistance to a good school with commodious buildings, carried on entirely by negroes (including tuskegee graduates); is building what is probably the best planter's house in the county, and has plenty of outside investments. at mound bayou, miss., is another purely negro settlement, with a population of about two thousand, among whom not a single white man lives. under the guidance of two brothers named montgomery, they bought their land direct from the railroad company, claim to own , acres, and have paid for considerable parts of it; maintain their own stores, carry on a little bank, and elect a negro municipal government. the results show as much capacity for managing their own affairs as the neighboring white towns. there are two or three settlements of the same kind in the south, on a smaller scale, as at goldsboro, fla., and one in alabama. different in type, but a proof of prosperity, are the negro settlements on the sea islands; here is no personal leader like leonard, or benson, or montgomery; but on several of the islands is a large group of colored landowners who have been there ever since the civil war, and whose houses are much superior to the usual negro cabins. while not progressive, they hold on to their land with great tenacity, and are not running into debt. these specific examples prove beyond question that africans can advance. every one of the settlements above mentioned is planted in an unpromising region, among negroes presumably of a lower type than the average. lowndes county, in which calhoun is situated, is one of the most backward in the south; the sea islands have the densest negro population to be found anywhere. similar instances, on a smaller scale may be found in every state and almost every county of the south. however backward the people, you are everywhere told that a few save money, buy land, and try to give their children better conditions. nor is it the mulattoes only who show this disposition to get on in the world; the pure negroes sometimes are the most industrious and sensible of their race. houses and lands are not the only measure of uplift; and the numerous negroes who, according to the impression of white men not likely to exaggerate, are really thrifty, might be unable to raise the average of their race; but it seems clear that the negro is nowhere reverting to barbarism; that a considerable part of the race, certainly one fourth to one fifth, is doing about as well as the lowest million or two of the southern whites; though perhaps a fifth (of whom a great part are to be found in towns and cities) are distinctly doing ill; that the negroes on the land, though on the average low, ignorant, and degraded, are working well, making cotton, and helping to enrich the south. for, as one of themselves puts it: "the native ambition and aspiration of men, even though they be black, backward, and ungraceful, must not lightly be dealt with." the real negro problem is the question of the character and the future of the laborer. but deep in the breast of the average man the passions of ages are swirled, and the loves and the hates of the average man are old as the heart of the world-- for the thought of the race, as we live and we die, is in keeping the man and the average high. the only real measure of uplift is character, but character cannot be reduced to statistical tables. the accumulation of property, especially by a race nearly pauperized when it first acquired the right to hold property, can be traced and throws much light on the important question whether the negroes are rising or falling. it is difficult to separate out the contribution which the negro makes to the wealth of the south, and to estimate his own savings, because the only available census figures on this subject deal with the three classes of owners, renters, and croppers of land; and do not, and probably cannot, make a separate account of negro wage hands on the plantations, and workmen and jobbers of every description. as nearly as can be judged, more than half the cotton comes off plantations tilled by negro laborers, or tenants; and for the rest, a notable portion is raised by independent negro farmers, chiefly on the hills--some on the lowlands. the wage hands and the town negroes have, in general, little to show for their work at the end of the year. they receive or are credited with wages, live on them, and they are gone. negroes are extravagant, tempted by peddlers and instalment-goods men, and fond of spending for candy, tobacco, and liquor. there are few savings banks in the south, and the failure of the freedman's bank in reconstruction times was a terrible blow to the long process of building up habits of thrift. it seems to be the conviction of the best friends of the negro in the south that the great majority of the day laborers have made little or no advance in habits of saving during the last forty years, although most of them have more to show in the way of clothing and furniture than their fathers had. this is a great misfortune to the race, because, as booker washington never wearies of pointing out, now is the golden time for the negro to acquire land. after the war, good farm land could be bought up at from $ to $ an acre; and to-day a family with $ in cash, and saving habits, can, in most parts of the south, pick up an out-of-the-way corner of land, with a poor house on it, and begin the kind of struggle to support the family and pay for improvements which has been the practice of the northwest. it is true that good land has now become expensive; there are under-drained delta lands which are held at $ to $ an acre, and although planters grumble at the trouble and loss of making cotton with shiftless hands, not one in a hundred wants to break up his plantation and sell it out to the negroes. the successful communities of negro farmers who have acquired land during the last ten years have, with half a dozen exceptions, been organized by northern capitalists, or philanthropists who have bought estates in order to sell them out. the reason for this reluctance of the planter is very simple: his business is to raise cotton on a large scale; if he sells out even at a good figure, he loses his occupation; and the south, as a community, has not yet seized the great principle that the prosperity of everybody is enhanced by an increase in the productive and purchasing power of the laborer. no figures can be found for the city real estate holdings of negroes, but in there were , so-called farms owned by negroes, subject, of course, like white property, to mortgages for part of the purchase money, or for debts afterward incurred. in addition, , negro families were working plots of land, as croppers and renters, and received either a share or the whole of the crop that they made. these people altogether were working , , acres, an average of about acres to a family; and produced $ , , worth of products. these , "farmers" represent something over , , individuals, which figures to an annual output of $ per head; and it is difficult to see how that value could possibly be produced if the negroes were not there. the families of the day laborers count up to at least , , more; and their product was probably somewhere near as large as that of the renters and croppers, although the share of the planter is rather greater. it would seem reasonable to assert that $ , , of the $ , , , of farm products in the south was raised by negro labor; and that by their work in the cities and towns they probably add another $ , , to the annual product. it is not, however, certain that the negroes have accumulated in their own hands so much as the value of one year's output. a. h. stone, a practical planter, says that, on his plantation, negro property was irregularly subdivided; his renters had property accumulated to an average of $ a family, while the share hands did not average $ a family. that is, the greater part of the negro property is owned by the smaller part of the population. that is not peculiar to negroes; in new york city nearly the whole property is said to be owned by , people; and in galveston most of the valuable real estate is said to be in the hands of, or controlled by, a score of individuals. in the cities and towns, many prosperous negroes are rent payers, and own no real estate, but there may be , owners besides the , farm owners. in kentucky half the negroes who are working land independently own their farms. even in mississippi the owners and renters together are more than the share hands. since no negro can successfully rent unless he owns mules and farm tools, and the renters are considerably more numerous than the owners, we may add , more families on the land who have accumulated something. that makes , families, or between a third and a fourth of the southern negroes, who are getting ahead. if the , families averaged $ each of land and personal property they would hold $ , , ; $ is, however, a high figure, and it may be roughly estimated that negro land owners and renters had accumulated in not more than $ , , or $ , , worth of property. the rest of the southern negroes are about , , in number; at the low average of $ a head of accumulations they would count up nearly $ , , more. a fair estimate of negro wealth in the south, therefore, would be something above $ , , , and constantly rising. this estimated proportion is confirmed by investigations into taxes paid by negroes. in the , , negroes in the four states of virginia, north carolina, georgia, and arkansas were assessed for taxes on $ , , . at the same proportion throughout the south, their assessment would have been about $ , , , which by this time has probably increased to over $ , , ; and $ , , is a fortieth of the present total assessment. the sum is great, but the proportion to the wealth of the south is small. at best it can be said that the negroes, who are a third of the population, own a fortieth of the property in the south; and that one fourth of the negroes own four fifths of all the negro property. the taxes do not tell the whole story, and there are probably rich northern cities in which the poorest third of the population does not directly pay more than a fortieth of the taxes. if a race is to be held up as worthless because it is not on the tax books, what will become of some of the most lively members of the boston city council and new york board of aldermen? everybody knows that in every community the poorest people pay the largest proportionate taxes through their rent, and through the increased cost of living which is pushed down upon them by landlords and storekeepers. if the colored people were all to move out of their tenements and farms and to go on general strike and earn nothing with which to buy their supplies, the taxpayers of record would very quickly find out who paid a part of their taxes for them. nevertheless, whatever excuses are made for him, it is undeniable that the negro has no such spirit of acquisition, no such willingness to sacrifice present delight for future good, as the northern immigrant, or even the southern poor white. chapter xii race association in the preceding chapters the effort has been made to analyze and describe the white race and the negro race, each as though it lived by itself, and could work out its own destiny without reference to the other. the white race is faced with the necessity of elevating its lower fourth; the negro race should be equally absorbed in advancing its lower three fourths. in both races there is progress and there is hope; if either one were living by itself it might be predicted that in a generation or two the problems would cease to be specially southern and would come down to those which besiege all civilized communities. but neither race lives alone, neither can live alone. the commercial prosperity of the whites largely depends on negro labor; high standards for the negro race depend on white aid and white example; neither race is free, neither race is independent. they are the positive and negative poles of a dynamo, and terrific is the spark that sometimes leaps from one to the other. in one sense, the southern whites are the south, inasmuch as they have complete control of the state and local governments, of the military, of public education, of business on a large scale, and of society; but the negroes are one third of the population, furnish much more than half the laborers for hire, have schools, property, and aspirations; hence whatever term is used, "southern problem," "race problem," or "negro problem," it refers to the antagonism between those two races. how keen is the southern consciousness of this peculiar condition may be learned from some of the southern critics: thomas nelson page thus states it: "a race with an historic and a glorious past, in a high state of civilization, stands confronted by a race of their former slaves, invested with every civil and political right which they themselves possess, and supported by an outside public sentiment, which if not inimical to the dominant race is at least unsympathetic. the two races ... are suspicious of each other; their interests are in some essential particulars conflicting, and in others may easily be made so; ... the former dominant race is unalterably assertive of the imperative necessity that it shall govern the inferior race and not be governed by it." less drastic is the statement of judge william h. thomas: "the white man and the negro together make up the citizenship of our southern country, and any effort to deal with either ignoring the other will diminish the chances of ultimate success. that religion and sentiment, the fixed ideals and prejudices, if you please, of the south are _substantial facts_ that cannot be ignored and must always be reckoned with." murphy speaks of the "problem presented by the undeveloped forces of the stronger race. these must largely constitute the determining factor, even in the problem presented by the negro; for the negro question is not primarily a question of the negro among negroes, but a question of the negro surrounded by another and a stronger people." to all these attempts to state the case the northerner is tempted to reply that the south has no monopoly of race problems; that he too has prejudices and repulsions and race jealousies resembling those of the south; and that since he sees them melting away around him, those of his southern brethren will also disappear of themselves. that is all true, yet much less than all the truth. in the south every white man is determined that there shall be two races forever. nobody ever stated the southern point of view on this subject better than the late henry grady: "this problem is to carry on within her body politic two separate races, equal in civil and political rights, and nearly equal in numbers. she must carry these races in peace; for discord means ruin. she must carry them separately; for assimilation means debasement. she must carry them in equal justice; for to this she is pledged in honor and in gratitude. she must carry them even unto the end; for in human probability she will never be quit of either." "the south" in grady's mouth really means the white south, for it is not in the purpose of any southern man or woman of influence to permit the negro to take part in deciding race issues. furthermore, to the settlement of these difficult problems the south along with a genuine humanity, a desire to act in all things within justice and christianity, brings habits of mind which have been discussed in an earlier chapter, and which make especially difficult moderate public statements on the race question. as in slavery times the simple assertion that there is a race question seems to some people an offensive attempt to bring ruin on the south: there is still something of the feeling candidly set forth by the old war-time southern school geography: "the yankees are an intelligent people upon all subjects except slavery. on that question they are mad." especially delicate and hazardous is any investigation of the most intimate race relation which in the nature of things is better understood in the south than in the north. the sexual relation between whites and negroes is in such contradiction to much of the indictment against the negro race, and is so abhorrent even to that section of the white race that practices it, that there is no easy or pleasant way of alluding to it. actual race mixture is proven by the presence in the south of two million mulattoes; it is no new thing, for it has been going on steadily ever since the african appeared in the united states, though there are people who insist that there was little or no amalgamation until northern soldiers came down during the war and remained in garrison during reconstruction. every intelligent traveler in the ante-bellum period, every candid observer, is a witness to the contrary. since the earliest settlements there have continuously been, and still exist, two different forms of illicit relations between the races--concubinage and general irregularity. whence came the hundreds of thousands of mulattoes in slavery days? of course the child of a mulatto will be normally light, and of the two million mulattoes now in the country, very likely three fourths are the children of mulattoes. but what are the other five hundred thousand? to that fateful question a reply can be made only on the testimony of southern whites now living down there, and not likely to paint the picture blacker than it is. here are some striking instances of negro concubinage; and the judgment of competent men is that hundreds of like incidents could be collected: case i.--a white business man in a small city of state a has lived twenty years with a mulatto woman. they have eight children, two of whom are successful business men, one of them a banker. the white man says that the woman has always been faithful to him, and though under the laws of the state he cannot marry her, he looks upon her as his wife and does what he can for the children. case ii.--a judge of state b has recently sentenced two different white men for cohabitation, though many whites remonstrated and told him that there was no use in singling out for punishment a few cases among so many. case iii.--in state c a retiring judge suggests that cohabitation be made a hanging offense for the white, as the only way of stopping it. case iv.--in state d one of the leading citizens of a town is known by all his friends to be living with a black mistress. as to irregular relations, in one state a judge renowned for his uprightness proposes that a blacklist be kept and published containing the names of men known by their neighbors to visit negro women. a recent governor of georgia says that "bad white men are destroying the homes of negroes and becoming the fathers of a mongrel people whom nobody will own." a newspaper editor says that he knows negroes of property and character who want to move out of the south so as to get their daughters away from danger. there is no southern city in which there are not negro places of the worst resort frequented by white men. heads of negro schools report that the girls are constantly subject to solicitation by the clerks of stores where they go to buy goods. the presumption in the mind of an average respectable southern man when he sees a light-colored child is that some white man in the neighborhood is responsible. whether the evil is decreasing is a question on which southerners are divided. the number of white prostitutes has much increased since slavery days, when there were very few of them; and the general improvement of the community, the spread of religious and secular instruction, ought to have an effect. but the real difficulty is that, although it is thought disgraceful for a white man to live with a colored mistress, it does not seem to destroy his practice of a profession, or his career as a business man. there seems to be lack of efficient public sentiment. if these statements of fact are true, and every one of them goes back to a responsible southern source, there is something in the white race which in kind, if not in degree, corresponds to the negro immorality which is the most serious defect of his character. it is not an answer to say that the cities and even some of the open country in the north are honeycombed with sexual corruption. that is true, and some southerner might do a service by revealing the real condition of a part of northern society. perhaps to live with a colored mistress to the end of one's life is, from a moral standpoint, less profligate than for a pittsburg business man of wealth and responsibility to drive his good and faithful wife out of the house because she is almost as old as he is, and marry a pretty young actress. the mere ceremony of marriage no more obliterates the offense than would in the minds of the southerner the marriage of the white man with his concubine; and everybody who associates with such a man thereby condones the offense. the point is, however, not only that miscegenation in the south is evil, but that it is the most glaring contradiction of the supposed infallible principles of race separation and social inequality. there are two million deplorable reasons in the south for believing that there is no divinely implanted race instinct against miscegenation; that while a southern author is writing that "the idea of the race is far more sacred than that of the family. it is, in fact, _the most sacred thing_ on earth," his neighbors, and possibly his acquaintances, by their acts are disproving the argument. the north is often accused of putting into the heads of southern negroes misleading and dangerous notions of social equality, but what influence can be so potent in that direction as the well-founded conviction of negro women that they are desired to be the nearest of companions to white men? there is, of course, a universal prohibition in the south against marriage of the two races, and these statutes express the wish of the community; they put such practices to the ban; they make possible the rare cases of prosecution, which commonly break down for lack of testimony. nevertheless the law does not persuade the negro women that there can be any great moral wrong in what so many of the white race practice. the active members of the negro race are in general too busy about other things to discuss the question of amalgamation which there is no prospect of legalizing; but it lies deep in the heart of the race that the prohibition of marriage is for the restraint of the whites rather than of the negroes; that it does not make colored families any safer; and that if there were no legal prohibition many of these irregular unions would become marriages. one of the curious by-currents of this discussion is the preposterous conviction of many southern writers that, inasmuch as these relations are between white men and negro women, there is no "pollution of the anglo-saxon blood;" thus thomas dixon, jr., insists that the present racial mixture "has no social significance ... the racial integrity remains intact. the right to choose one's mate is the foundation of racial life and civilization. the south must guard with flaming sword every avenue of approach to this holy of holies." on the other hand, and just as powerful, is the absolute determination of the whites never to admit the mulattoes within their own circle. the usual legal phrase "person of color" includes commonly everybody who has as much as an eighth of negro blood, and in two states anyone who has a visible trace. but social usage goes far beyond this limit, and no person supposed to have the slightest admixture of negro blood would be admitted to any social function in any southern city. in there was a dramatic trial in north carolina brought about by the exclusion from a public school of six girls, descendants from one jeffrey graham, who lived a hundred years ago and was suspected of having negro blood. the graham family alleged that they had a portuguese ancestor, and brought into court a dark-skinned portuguese to show how the mistake might have arisen; and eventually the court declared them members of the superior race. the reason for the intense southern feeling on race equality is to a large extent the belief that friendly intercourse with the negro on anything but well-understood terms of the superior talking to the inferior is likely to lead to an amalgamation, which may involve a large part of the white race. the evils of the present system are manifest. the most reckless and low-minded whites are preying on what ought to be one of the best parts of the negro race. thousands of children come into the world with an ineffaceable mark of bastardy; the greater part of such children are absolutely neglected by their fathers; the decent negro men feel furious at the danger to their families or the frailness of their sisters. both races have their own moral blemishes, and it is a double and treble misfortune that there should be inter-racial mixtures on such degrading terms. as for a remedy, nobody seems able to suggest anything that has so far worked. a recent writer soberly suggests that a way out is to make a pariah of the mulatto, including that part of the mulattoes who are born of mulatto or negro parents; they are to be shut from the schools, excluded from all missionary efforts, made a race apart; and that action he thinks would be a moral lesson to the full-blooded africans! another method is that of the anti-miscegenation league of vicksburg, miss., which aims to make public the names of offenders and to prosecute them. a better remedy would be the systematic application of the existing laws of the state, with at least as much zeal as is given to the enforcement of the jim crow laws. in the last resort there is no remedy except such an awakening of public sentiment as will drive out of the ranks of respectable men and women those who practice these vices. such a sentiment exists in the churches, the philanthropic societies, and an army of straightforward sensible men and women. the evil is probably somewhat abating; but till it is far reduced how can anybody in the south argue that education and material improvement of the negro are what most powerfully tends to social equality? just so far as the negro man and the negro woman are, by a better station in life, by aroused self-respect and race pride, led to protect themselves, so far will this evil be diminished. the subject cannot be left without taking ground upon the underlying issue. all the faults of the southern men who are practical amalgamators add weight to the bottom contention of the south that a mixture of the races, now or in the future, would be calamitous. that belief rests upon the conviction that the negro race, on the average, is below the white race; that it can never be expected to contribute anything like its proportion of the strength of the community; and hence to fuse the races means slight or no elevation for the negro, and a great decline for the white race. with that belief the writer coincides. the union of the two races means a decline in the rate of civilization; and the fact that so much of it is going on is not a reason for legalizing it, but for sternly suppressing it. if amalgamation is dangerous and would pull down the standard of that higher part of the community which must always be dominant, then such steps must be taken in all justice, in all humanity, with all effort to raise both races, as are necessary to prevent amalgamation. while thus in one way fully recognized as a human being and of like blood with the whites, upon the other side the negro is set aside by a race prejudice which in many respects is fiercer and more unyielding than in the days of slavery. one of the few compensations for slavery was the not infrequent personal friendship between the master and the slave; they were sometimes nursed at the same tawny breast; and played together as children; jonas field, of lady's island, to this day remembers with pride how after the war, when he became free, his old master, whose body servant he had been, took him to his house, presented him to his daughters, and bade them always remember that jonas field had been one of the family, and was to be treated with the respect of a father. the influence of the white mistress on those few slaves who were near to her is one of the brightest things in slavery. she visited the negro cabins, counseled the mothers, cared for the sick, and by life and conversation tried to build up their character. it is almost the universal testimony that such relations are disappearing; rare is the white foot that steps within the negro's cabin. john sharp williams, of mississippi, says: "more and more every year the negro's life--moral, intellectual, and industrial--is isolated from the white man's life, and therefore from his influence. there was a kindlier and more confidential relationship ... when i was a boy than between my children and the present generation of negroes." it is a singular fact that the feeling of race antagonism has sprung up comparatively recently; to this day there are remnants of the old clan idea of the great plantations. thousands of negroes choose some white as a friend and sponsor, and in case of difficulty ask him for advice, for a voucher of character, or for money, and are seldom disappointed. the lower stratum of the whites, which is thrown into close juxtaposition with negroes, finds no difficulty in a kind of rude companionship, provided it is not too much noticed. the sentimental and sometimes artificial love for the old colored "mammy" is a disappearing bond between the races, for though the white children are cared for almost everywhere by negro girls, there seems little affection between the nurse and her charge. some southern authorities assert that race hatred was fomented toward the end of reconstruction. says "nicholas worth": "men whose faithful servants were negroes, negroes who had shined their shoes in the morning and cooked their breakfasts and dressed their children and groomed their horses and driven them to their offices, negroes who were the faithful servants and constant attendants on their families,--such men spent the day declaring the imminent danger of negro 'equality' and 'domination.'" the same genial writer goes on to describe the gloom at the supposed flood of african despotism; they said: "our liberties were in peril; our very blood would be polluted; dark night would close over us,--us, degenerate sons of glorious sires,--if we did not rise in righteous might and stem the barbaric flood." though in all the states the negroes were swept out of political power by , to this day they are popularly supposed to be planning some kind of domination over the whites. this made-up race issue is not yet extinct. nobody knows the inner spirit of a certain section of the south better than thomas e. watson, of georgia, who has recently said: "the politicians keep the negro question alive in the south to perpetuate their hold on public office. the negro question is the joy of their lives. it is their very existence. they fatten on it. with one shout of 'nigger!' they can run the native democrats into their holes at any hour of the day." how does this feeling strike the negro? let an intelligent man, johnson, in his "light ahead for the negro," speak for himself. he complains that the newspapers use inflammatory headlines and urge lynchings--"a wholesale assassination of negro character"; that it is made a social crime to employ negroes as clerks in a white store; that the cultured southern people spread abroad the imputation that the negro as a race is worthless; that the news agents are prejudiced against the negro and give misleading accounts of difficulties with the whites; that people thought to be friendly are hounded out of their positions; that there is a desire to expatriate the negroes from the country of their fathers. kelly miller, a professor in howard university, washington, objects to using physical dissimilarity as a mark of inferiority, and thinks "that the feeling against the negro is of the nature of inspirited animosity rather than natural antipathy"; and that "the dominant south is determined to foster artificial hatred between the races." race prejudice has always existed since the races have lived together; but, whether because taught to the boys of the reconstruction epoch, or whether because the negroes have made slower progress than was hoped, it is sharper now than in the whole history of the question. is it founded on an innate race repulsion? does the white man necessarily fear and dislike the negro? the white child does not, nor the lowest stratum of whites, who are nearest the negro intellectually and morally. john sharp williams says: "if i were to call our race feeling anything etymologically, i would call it a 'post-judice' and not a 'pre-judice.' i notice that nobody has our race feeling or any race feeling indeed until after knowledge. it is a conviction born of experience." right here the champions of the negro discern a joint in the armor; thus, dubois: "men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the 'higher' against the 'lower' races. to which the negro cries amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows down and meekly does obeisance." is not this the crux of the whole matter? is it prejudice against a low race, or a black race? to say that the white southerner looks down upon and despises every black southerner would not be fair, for there is still much personal liking between members of the two races, and the south is right in claiming that it has a warmer feeling for individual negroes than northern people. said a southern judge once: "if my old black mammy comes into the house, she hugs and kisses my little girl. but if she should sit down in the parlor, i should have to knock her down." that is, he liked the mammy, but the nigger must be taught to keep her place. the phrase commonly used to describe this feeling is, "the danger of social equality." here is one of the mysteries of the subject which the northern mind cannot penetrate. southern society, so proud, so exclusive, so efficient in protecting itself from the undesired, is in terror lest it should be found admitting the fearful curse of social equality; and there are plenty of southern writers who insist that the negro shall be deprived of the use of public conveniences, of education, of a livelihood, lest he, the weak, the despised, force social equality upon the white race. what is social equality if not a mutual feeling in a community that each member is welcome to the social intercourse of the other? how is the negro to attain social equality so long as the white man refuses to invite him or to be invited with him? it sounds like a joke! the point of view of the south was revealed in when president roosevelt invited booker washington to his table. the south rang from end to end with invective and alarm; the governor of a southern state publicly insulted the president and his family; a boy in washington wrote a scurrilous denunciation on the school blackboard; the _charleston news and courier_ rolled the incident under its tongue like a sweet morsel; a georgia judge said: "the invitation is a blow aimed not only at the south, but at the whole white race, and should be resented, and the president should be regarded and treated on the same plane with negroes," and from that day to this the invitation has been received as an affront and an injury to the whites in the south. we are told of the terrible consequences; how a black boy refused any longer to call the sixteen-year-old son of his employer "mister"; how the negro from that time on has felt himself a person of consequence. it does not appear that the president's example was followed by any southern governor; or that any negro invited himself to dinner with a white person. to the northern mind the incident was simply a recognition, by the acknowledged leader of all americans, of the acknowledged leader of black americans. the southern mind somehow cannot distinguish between sitting at the same table with a man and making him your children's guardian. the whole argument comes down to the level of the phrase used so constantly when the question of setting the slaves free was before the country: "do you want your daughter to marry a nigger?" what the phrase "social equality" really means is that if anything is done to raise the negro race it will demand to be raised all the way. but demand is a long way short of reality. northerners have their social prejudices and preferences; yet they are not afraid that an arab or a syrian immigrant is going to burst their doors and compel them at the muzzle of the rifle to like him, invite him, make him their intimate; nobody can establish social equality by law or public sentiment. everybody should sympathize with the desire of the south to keep unimpaired the standards of civilization; but the friendliest northerner cannot understand why a southern business man feels such a danger that he writes of social equality: "right or wrong, the southern people will never tolerate it, and will go through the horrors of another reconstruction before they will permit it to be. before they will submit to it, they will kill every negro in the southern states." this ceaseless dwelling on a danger which no thoughtful man thinks impending leads to attacks of popular hysteria in the south. a few months ago in the town of madison, ga., it was reported: "last night great excitement prevailed in madison caused by the appearance on the electric-light poles in the city of a yellow flag about two feet long, with the word 'surrender' printed in large letters in the center of it. women became hysterical and thought it was the sign of a negro uprising. extra police was installed and it was thought of calling out the military company. at the height of the excitement, it was learned that the signs had been posted as an advertisement by a firm here. cases have been made against the members of the firm." the real point with regard to social equality is not that the negro is inferior, but that his inferiority must be made evident at every turn. you may ride beside a negro driver on the front seat of a carriage, because any passerby sees that he is doing your bidding; but you must not sit on the back seat with a negro who might be a fellow-passenger; you may stop at a negro's house, if there is absolutely no other place to stay, sit at his table, eat of his food, but he must stand while you sit; else, as one of the richest negroes in the south said, "the neighbors would burn our house over our heads." the whole south is full of evidence, not so much that the whites think the negroes inferior, as that they think it necessary to fix upon him some public evidence of inferiority, lest mistakes be made. it was against such confusion of the character and the color that governor andrew protested when he said: "i have never despised a man because he was poor, or because he was ignorant, or because he was black." chapter xiii race separation strong and passionate dislike and apprehension such as is set forth in the last chapter is certain to show itself in custom and law set up by that portion of the community which has the power of legislation. the commonest measures of this kind are discriminations between whites and negroes, especially in the use of public conveniences. in some cases the white people shut out negroes altogether. there are perhaps half a dozen towns in the south in which none but negroes live; there are scores in which the negroes are not allowed to settle or stay. two counties in north carolina (mitchell and watauga) undertake to exclude negroes; and people who attempt to go through there with a black driver are confronted by such signs as "nigger, keep out of this county!" if that is not sufficient, a native comes swinging across the fields and remarks: "i don't want to have any trouble, and i don't suppose it makes any difference to you, but if that nigger goes two miles farther, he'll be shot. we don't allow any niggers in this county." such exclusions are not unknown in other states. in the town of syracuse, ohio, for generations no negro has ever been allowed to stay overnight; and the founder of a little city in oklahoma heard his buildings blown up at night because he had ventured to domicile colored servants there. in the two northern settlements of fitzgerald, ga., and cullman, ala., the attempt was made to keep negroes out altogether. in addition to these artificial separations, there is a redistribution of the population going on all the while. few of the owners of good plantations any longer live on them, and the outlying whites move into town, or into counties where negroes are fewer. the places thus vacated are taken up through rent or purchase by colored people; so that we have the striking phenomenon that black counties are getting blacker and white counties whiter. thus in pulaski county, ga., in thirty years the negroes doubled and the whites increased only about twenty per cent. the same thing is true inside the cities and towns; most of them have well-marked negro quarters, near or alongside which none but the lowest whites like to live. in richmond, on one of the main streets, it is tacitly understood that the negroes take the north sidewalk and the whites the south sidewalk. probably no place is now quite so strict in the matter as morristown, tenn., was twenty-five years ago, when white women first came to teach the negroes; they were literally thrown off the sidewalks into the gutter because that was the only place where "niggers or nigger-lovers" were allowed to walk. the principle of race separation extends from civil into religious matters. before the civil war negroes were often acceptable and honored members of white churches, and there are still some cases where old members continue this relation, but they could now hardly sit in the same pews. there are also difficulties in attempts to unite separate black and white churches into one general denomination. the protestant episcopal church is much perplexed over a proposition for separate negro bishops, inferior to the regular bishops. however, not a twentieth of the negroes to-day are members of churches which are in organic relation to white churches; they have their own presbyteries, and conferences, and synods; set their own doctrines and moral standards, and (if the white man is right in thinking the race inferior) they will necessarily develop an inferior christianity. the discriminations so far mentioned have to do with unwritten practices; with customs which differ from community to community; there is another long series upon the statute books. in , in the so-called vagrant laws, special provision was made for the relations of colored people; four states allowed colored children to be "apprenticed," which practically meant a mild slavery; in south carolina "servants," as the negroes were called in the statute, were forbidden to leave their master's place without consent; mississippi forbade people to rent land to negroes outside the towns; south carolina established a special court for the trial of negro offenses; several states forbade blacks to practice any trade or business without a license. these laws, which competent southerners now think to have been a serious mistake, seemed to congress evidence of a purpose to restore a milder form of slavery, and they were swept away by the reconstruction governments. nevertheless, in all the southern states, constitutions or statutes forbid the intermarriage of whites and negroes; and either during reconstruction or since, all the southern states have provided for separate public schools for negroes; and several states prohibit the education of whites and blacks in the same private school. the most striking discrimination is the separate accommodations on railroads and steamboats, which has entirely grown up since the civil war. in slavery times few negroes traveled except as the obvious servants of white people; but in legislation began for separate cars or compartments, and of the former slaveholding states, only two, missouri and delaware, are now without laws on that subject. the term "jim crow" commonly applied to these laws goes back to an old negro song and dance, and was first used in massachusetts, where, in , the races were thus separated. the civil rights act of congress of forbade such distinctions, but was held unconstitutional by the supreme court in . several state and federal cases have given opportunity for the courts to decide that if there is a division between the two races, the accommodations must be equal. hence, most southern trains have a separate jim crow car, with a smoking compartment. the pullman car company, perhaps because its business is chiefly interstate, has hesitated to make distinctions, and commonly will sell a berth to anybody who will show a railroad ticket good on the appropriate train; but in some states there are now demands for separate colored pullmans, or for colored compartments, or for excluding negroes altogether. but nobody who knows the pullman car company will for a moment expect that it will do anything because patrons desire it. the discrimination in many states extends to the stations. for instance, in the beautiful new spanish mission building at mobile, there are separate waiting rooms, separate ticket windows, and two exits--one for whites and one for colored people. in greensboro, n. c., the waiting room, a large and lofty hall, is simply bisected by a brass railing. similar laws apply to steamboats, though here it is not so easy to shut off part of the passengers from the general facilities of the boat. even in the boston steamers running to southern ports there are separate dining rooms, toilet rooms and smoking rooms for colored passengers. eight southern states separate street-car passengers; sometimes they have a separate compartment for negroes--more often, a little movable sign is shifted up and down the car to divide the races. elsewhere, whites sit at one end and negroes at the other, and fill up till they meet. in most of these laws there is an exception, allowing colored nurses with white children and colored attendants of feeble or sick people to enter the white car; and it has been thought necessary to provide that railroad employees, white or black, may circulate through the train. in restaurants and hotels the distinction is still sharper, for except those which are kept only for the accommodations of negroes, there is no provision for tables for colored people in any form outside of the railroad eating houses. it is hence practically impossible for any colored person to get accommodation in a southern hotel. these discriminations on travel have never been desired by the railroad companies, inasmuch as they involve trouble and expense, and are a check on the negro's love for riding on trains and boats, which is an important factor in the passenger receipts. it is everywhere disliked by the negroes, both because they do not, in fact, have accommodations as good as those of the whites, and because it is intended to be a mark of their inferiority. the low-class white man who, in , acted as ticket agent, baggage man and division superintendent and conductor on the three-mile branch road connecting tuskegee with the main line remarked affably: "been to see the nigger school, i suppose? that's all right, booker washington's all right. oh, yes, he's a good man, he often rides on this train. not in this part of the car, you know, but over there in the jim crow. oh, yes, i often set down and talk to booker washington. not on the same seat of course. jest near by." besides these shackles of custom or of law, the negro is in general excluded in the south from every position which might be construed to give him authority over white people. the civil service of the federal government is on a different footing; ever since war times there have always been some negro federal officials, collectors of internal revenue, collectors of ports, postmasters, and the like; but there is a determined effort in the south to get rid of them. at lake city, s. c., in , part of the family of baker, the negro postmaster, was massacred as a hint that his presence was not desired. the people of indianola, miss., in , practically served notice on a colored postmistress that she could not be allowed to officiate any longer; whereupon president roosevelt directed the closing of the indianola office. when in dr. crum was appointed collector of charleston, there was an uproar in south carolina and throughout the south. that episode involved some painful and some comical things; for instance, a white lady who bears one of the most honored names in american history, and who sorely needed the employment, was practically compelled by public sentiment to resign a clerkship in the customhouse when dr. crum came in; and the people who protested against his appointment, on the ground that he was unfit, had previously helped to select him as a commissioner in the charleston exposition. in all these controversies the issue was double; first, that the white people thought it an indignity to transact any public business with a negro representing the united states; and second, that it would somehow bring about race equality to admit that a negro was competent to hold any important office. the president was furiously censured because he did not take into account the preferences of the southern people, by which, of course, was meant the southern white people; that in south carolina there are more african citizens than caucasian seemed to them quite beside the question. for minor offices the lines are not so strictly drawn; there are a few colored policemen in charleston, and perhaps other southern cities; negro towns like mound bayou, miss., have their own set of officials; and there are some small county offices which a few negroes are allowed to hold. nearly two thousand are employed in some capacity in the federal departments at washington; about two thousand more under the district government; and a thousand more elsewhere, mostly in the south. these are chiefly in the postal service; there are some negro letter carriers in all the southern cities, and in mobile there are no others. they get these appointments, and likewise places as railway mail clerks on competitive examination--an especially hard twist to the doctrine of race equality; for what is the world coming to if a nigger gets more marks on an examination than a white man? for the feeling that the negro in authority is overbearing and presumptuous there is some ground, but the attitude of the south is substantially expressed in the common phrase, "this is a white man's government," and is closely allied with the bogy of african domination, which is trotted out from time to time to arouse the jaded energies of race prejudice. one of the most unaccountable things in this whole controversy is the evident apprehension of a large section in the south that unless something immediate and positive is done, the negro will get control of some of the southern states, notwithstanding such protests as the following: "and even where they represent a majority,--where do they rule? or where have they ruled for these twenty years? the south, with all its millions of negroes, has to-day not a single negro congressman, not a negro governor or senator. a few obscure justices of the peace, a few negro mayors in small villages of negro people, and--if we omit the few federal appointees--we have written the total of all the negro officials in our southern states. every possibility of negro domination vanishes to a more shadowy and more distant point with every year." as will be shown a little later, the negro's vote is no longer a factor in most of the southern states, and he shows no disposition to take over the responsibility for southern government. the cry of negro domination has been more unfortunate for the whites than for the blacks because it has thrown the southern states out of their adjustment in national parties; in the state election of for governor of georgia, the issue was between clark howells, who was much against the negro, and the successful candidate, hoke smith, who is mighty against the negro; but neither howells nor smith brought out of the controversy any reputation that dazzled the democratic convention of . no party founded on negro votes or organized to protect negro rights any longer exists in the south. in alabama there are still "black-and-tan republicans"--that is, an organization of negroes and whites, and one of the most rabid negro haters in the south is a dignitary in that organization and helped to choose delegates for the republican national convention of . throughout the south there are also what are called the "lilywhite republicans"--that is, people who are trying to build up their party by disclaiming any partnership with the negro or special interest in his welfare. neither of these factions makes head against the overpowering "white man's party," which is also the democratic party; hence every state in the lower south can be depended upon to vote for any candidate propounded by the national democratic convention; hence the section has little influence in the selection of a candidate, who yet would not have a ghost of a chance without their votes. the net result of the scare cry of negro domination is that the whites are in some states dominated by the loudest and most violent section of their own race. behind this whole question of politics and of office holding stands the more serious question whether a race which, whatever its average character, contains at least two million intelligent and progressive individuals, shall be wholly shut out from public employment. it is on this question that president roosevelt made his famous declaration: "i cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope--the door of opportunity--is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color.... it is a good thing from every standpoint to let the colored man know that if he shows in marked degree the qualities of good citizenship--the qualities which in a white man we feel are entitled to reward--then he will not be cut off from all hope of similar reward." the discrimination between the negro and the white has nowhere been so bitterly contested as with regard to suffrage, inasmuch as the right of the negro to vote on equal terms with the white man is distinctly set forth in the fifteenth amendment of the federal constitution, and as during reconstruction the negro had full suffrage in all the southern states. without going into the history of the negro vote, it may be worth while to notice that at the time of the revolution, negroes who had the property qualification could vote in all the thirteen colonies except two; that they never lost that franchise in massachusetts and some other northern communities, and that as late as about a thousand of them had the ballot in north carolina. then in reconstruction times the suffrage was given to all the negroes in the country; a process of which one of the most bitter enemies of the race to-day says: "to give the negro the right of suffrage and place him on terms of absolute equality with the white man, was the capital crime of the ages against the white man's civilization." in reality the north bestowed the suffrage on the negro because its own experience seemed to have proved that the ballot was an instrument of civilization--for all the foreign immigrants had grown up to it. southerners are never weary of describing the enormities of the governments based on negro suffrage; as a matter of fact, however, nobody north or south knows what would have been the result of negro suffrage, for in no state longer than eight years, and in some states only about three years, did they actually cast votes that determined the choice of state officers, or any considerable number of local officers. their habit of voting for "the regular candidate," without regard to his fitness or character, was not peculiar to the race or to the section. disfranchisement began with the ku klux in , and in most states the larger part of the negroes at once lost their ballots because driven away from the polls by violence or terror. the only community in which they were disfranchised by statute, together with the whites, was the district of columbia. then came the era of fraud, the use of tissue ballots and falsified electoral returns, and confusing systems of ballot boxes; then, in , began a process of disfranchising them by state constitutional amendments which provided qualifications especially difficult for negroes to meet: for instance, special indulgence was given to men who served in the confederate army, or whose fathers or grandfathers were entitled to vote before the war. this movement has already involved six states, and is likely to run through every former slaveholding state. even the comparatively small number of negroes who can meet the requirements of tax, education, or property find trouble in registering, or in voting. in mississippi, where there were nearly , colored voters, there are now , ; in alabama about , are registered out of , men of voting age. sometimes they are simply refused registration, like the highly educated negro in alabama, who was received by the official with the remark: "nigger, get out of here; this ain't our day for registering niggers!" in beaufort county, s. c., where, under the difficult provisions of the law, there are about seven hundred negro voters and about five hundred whites, somehow the white election officials always return a majority for their friends; and in the presidential election of the hundred thousand negro men of voting age in south carolina were credited with only twenty-five hundred votes for theodore roosevelt. it has puzzled the leaders of the conventions to disfranchise the greater part of the negroes without including "some of our own people," and yet without technically infringing upon the fifteenth amendment, which prohibits the withdrawal of the suffrage on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; but they have been successful. as a senator from north carolina put it: "the disfranchising amendment would disfranchise ignorant negroes and not disfranchise any white man. no white man in north carolina has been disfranchised as a result of this amendment." it is impossible not to feel a sympathy with the desire of the south to be free from an ignorant and illiterate electorate; there is not a northern state in which, if the conditions were the same, the effort would not be made to restrict the suffrage; but that is a long way from the southern principle of ousting the bad, low, and illiterate negro, while leaving the illiterate, low, and bad white; and then, in the last resort, shutting out also the good, educated, and capable negro. for there is not a state in the lower south where the colored vote would be faithfully counted if it had a balance of power between two white parties; and senator tillman's great fear at present is that the blacks will make the effort to come up to these complicated requirements, and then must be disenfranchised again. have the southern people confidence in their own race superiority, when for their protection from negro domination and from the great evil of amalgamation they feel it necessary to take such precautions against the least dangerous, most enterprising, and best members of the negro race? nevertheless, the practical disenfranchisement of the negroes has brought about a political peace, and there is little to show that the negroes resent their exclusion. whatever the divergences of feeling in the south on the negro question, it is safe to say that the whites are a unit on the two premises that amalgamation must be resisted, and that the negro must not have political power. all these feelings are buttressed against a passionate objection to race-mixture, which is all the stronger because so much of it is going on; it branches out into the withdrawal of the suffrage, not because the south is in any danger of negro political domination, but because most whites think no member of an inferior race ought to vote; it includes many restrictions on personal relations which seem like precautions where there is no danger. upon these main issues northerners may share some of the sentiments of the south, but none of the terrors. if the negro is inferior, it does not need so many acts of the legislature to prove it; if amalgamation is going on, it is due to the white race, can be checked by the white race, and by no one else; if the negro is unintelligent, he will never, under present conditions, get enough votes to affect elections; if he does acquire the necessary property and education, he thereby shows that he does not share in the inferiority of his race. the south thinks about the negro too much, talks about him too much, abuses him too much. in the nature of things there is no reason why the superior and the inferior race may not live side by side indefinitely. is the negro powerful enough to force his standards and share his disabilities with the superior white man? is it not as the chinese sage says: "the superior man is correctly firm, and not firm merely ... what the superior man seeks is in himself." so far as can be judged, the average frame of mind in the south includes much injustice, and unwillingness to permit the negro race to develop up to the measure of its limitations. here the experience of the north counts, for it has many elements of population which at present are inferior to the average. if there is a low italian quarter in a city, or a slav quarter, or a negro quarter, the aim of the northern community is to give those people the best chance that they can appropriate. woe to the city which permits permanent centers of crime and degradation! by schools, by reformatory legislation, by philanthropic societies, by juvenile courts, by missions, by that great blessing, the care of neglected children, they try to bring up the standard. this is done for the welfare of the community, it is what business men call a dollars and cents proposition. if a man or child has three fourths of the average abilities, the north tries to bring him to the full use of his seventy-five per cent; if he stands at on the scale of , it aims to give him the opportunity to use his superior qualities. this is just the point of view of the southern leaders who are fighting for justice and common sense toward the negro: men like the late chancellor hill, of the university of georgia, like president alderman, of the university of virginia, like rev. edgar gardner murphy, of montgomery; their gospel is that, notwithstanding his limitations, the negro is on the average capable of higher things than he is doing, and that the gifted members of the race can render still larger services to their own color and to the community. that is what dr. s. c. mitchell, of richmond college, meant when he said: "friend, go up higher!" a phrase which part of the southern press has unwarrantably seized upon as a declaration of social equality. every friend of the south must hope that that enlightened view will permeate the community; but, as a matter of fact, a very considerable number of people of power in the south, legislators, professional men, journalists, ministers, governors, either take the ground that the negro is so hopelessly low that it is a waste of effort to try to raise him; or that education and uplift will make him less useful to the white, and therefore he shall not have it; or that you cannot give to the black man a better chance without bringing danger upon the white man. contrary to the experience of mankind, to present upward movement in what has been a very low white element in the south, and to the considerable progress made by the average negro since slavery days, such people hold that intelligence and education do nothing for the actual improvement of the colored race. since the negro is low, they would keep him low; since they think him dangerous, they wish to leave him dangerous; their policy is to make the worst of a bad situation instead of trying to improve it. no northern mind can appreciate the point of view of some men who certainly have a considerable following in the south. here, for instance, is thomas dixon, jr., arguing with all his might that the negro is barely human, but that if he is not checked he will become such an economic competitor of the white man that he will have to be massacred. he protests against booker t. washington's attempt to raise the negro, because he thinks it will be successful. part, at least, of the customary and statutory discriminations against the negro which have already been described are simply an expression of this supposed necessity of keeping the negro down, lest he should rise too far. all such terrors involve the humiliating admission that the negro can rise, and that he will rise if he has the opportunity. chapter xiv crime and its penalties sitting one night in the writing room of a country hotel in south carolina, a young man opposite, with a face as smooth as a baby's and as pretty as a girl's, volunteered to tell where he had just been, a discreditable tale. it soon developed that his business was the sale of goods on instalments, chiefly to negroes, and that in that little town of florence he had no less than five hundred and ninety transactions then going on; that his profits were about fifty per cent on his sales; that nineteen twentieths of the transactions would be paid up; but that sometimes he had a little trouble in making collections. "for instance, only yesterday," said he, "i went to a nigger woman's house where they had bought two skirt patterns. when i knocked at the door, a little girl came, and she says: 'mammy ain't to home,' says she, but i walked right in, and there was a bigger girl, who says, 'mamma has gone down street,' but i says, 'i know better than that, you ---- nigger!' and i pushed right into the kitchen, and there she was behind the door, and i walked right up to her, and i says, 'do you think i'll allow you to teach that innocent child to lie, you ---- nigger? i'll show you,' says i; and i hit her a couple of good ones right in the face. she come back at me with a kind of an undercut right under the jaw. i knew it wouldn't do any good to hit her on the head, but i landed a solid one in the middle of her nose; and i made those women go and get those skirts and give them up before i left the place." once entered on these agreeable reminiscences, he went on in language the tenor of which is fortified by a memorandum made at the time. "but that isn't a circumstance to what happened three weeks ago last tuesday. there's a nigger in this town that bought a cravenette coat from us for thirteen dollars and a half. it costs us about nine dollars, but he only paid instalments of four and a half, and then, for about six months, he dodged me; but my brother and i saw him on the street, and i jumped out of the buggy before he could run away, and says i, 'i want you to pay for that coat.' he had it on. he says, 'i hain't got any money.' says it sarcastic-like. well, of course i wouldn't take any lip from a nigger like that, and i sailed right in. i hit him between the eyes, and he up with a shovel and lambasted me with the flat of it right between the shoulder-blades, but i could have got away with him all right if his wife hadn't have come up with a piece of board and caught me on the side; my brother jumped right out of the buggy, and he hit her square and knocked her down, and we had a regular mix-up. we got the coat, and when we came away, we left the man lying senseless on the ground." "but don't those people ever get out warrants against you?" "warrants against me, i guess not! i lay in bed five days, and when i got up, my brother and i swore out warrants against the nigger and his wife. we brought them up in court and the judge fined them forty-seven dollars, and he says to me, 'all the fault i find with you is that you didn't kill the double adjective nigger. he's the worst nigger in town!'" with all allowances for the lies visibly admixed in this unpleasant tale, it undoubtedly lifts the cover off a kind of thing that goes on every day between the superior and the inferior races. on the one side stand the negro customers, shiftless, extravagant, slinking away from their debts, yet doubtless afterward puffed with pride to be able to boast that they had a knock-down fight with a white man and were not shot; the other actor in this drama of race hatred could not even claim to be a poor white; he was the son of a traveling man, had some education, was successful above the average, and until he began to talk about himself might for a few minutes have passed as a gentleman; yet to save a loss of less than five dollars, and to assert his superiority of race, he was perfectly willing to put himself on the level of the lowest negro, and to engage in fisticuffs with a woman. it is not to be supposed that this thoroughgoing blackguard is a spokesman for the whole south, or that every local court inflicts a heavy penalty upon black people for the crime of having been thrashed by a white man. the story simply illustrates a feeling toward the negroes which is widespread and potent among a considerable class of whites; and it bears witness also to a disposition to settle difficulties between members of the two races by the logic of hard fists. it is a lurid example of race antagonism. no section of the union has a monopoly of violence or injustice. men as coarse and brutal as the man encountered in south carolina could probably be found in every northern city. homicides are no novelty in any state in the union, and it is as serious for a northern crowd to put a man to death because somebody calls him "scab" as for an equally tigerish southern mob to burn a negro because he has killed a white man. the annals of strikes are almost as full of ferocity as the annals of lynching, and it would be hard to find anything worse than the murder, in , of some watchmen in new york city who were thrown down a building by striking workmen, who were allowed by the police to leave the building, and were never brought to justice. nevertheless, there is in the north a strong impression that crime is on a different footing in the south; that assaults, affrays, and homicides are more frequent; that the south has a larger crime record than seems reconcilable with its numerous churches, its moral standards, and its fairly good state and city governments. light may be thrown on the problem of race relations by inquiring whether the south is as much shocked by certain kinds of crime and violence as the north, whether a criminal is as likely to be tried and convicted, whether the superior race, by its practice in such matters, is setting before the inferior race a high standard of conduct. statistics indicate that in desperate crimes against the person, and especially in murder, the south far surpasses other civilized countries, and other parts of the united states. in london, with a population of , , , there were in a year homicides; of the criminals committed suicide, and the others were brought to justice. in new york city, with about two thirds the population of london, there were homicides with only indictments and convictions. in the state of south carolina, with a population about one third that of new york city, there were homicides in a year, and not a single execution of a white man. popular phrases and the press in the south habitually put a gloss upon many of these crimes by calling them "duels"; but a careful study of newspaper cuttings shows that the old-fashioned affairs of honor with seconds and exactly similar weapons, measured distance, and the word to fire, have almost disappeared. nearly all the affrays in which the murdered man is conscious of his danger are simply street fights, in which each man lodges in the body of the other as many shots as he can before he himself sinks down wounded. it can hardly be considered an affair of honor when mr. john d. twiggs, of albany, ga., walks through the streets with a shotgun loaded with buckshot, looking for mr. j. b. palmer, who has gone home to arm himself. even this uneven kind of warfare is less frequent than the outright assassination of one white man by another. where was southern chivalry when gonzales, the editor of the _columbia state_, was in killed in the open street before he could draw his pistol, by lieutenant-governor tillman of south carolina, about whom the editor had been telling unpleasant truths? where do you find the high-toned southern gentleman when a man walks up to a total stranger, seizes him, and with the remark, "you are the man who wanted to fight me last night," plunges his knife into the victim's back. the newspapers are full of the shooting of men through windows, of their disappearance on lonely roads, of the terror that walketh by night, and the pestilence that waiteth at noonday. then there are the numerous murders of friend by friend, on all kinds of frivolous occasions; a man trespasses on another man's land, goes to apologize, and is shot; another makes a joke which his friend does not appreciate, and there is nothing for it but pistols. the feeling that a man must assert his dignity at the end of a revolver was revealed in new orleans in when inspector whittaker, head of the police, with five of his men, walked into the office of the _new orleans world_, which had criticised his enforcement of the liquor laws, struck the editor in the face and several times shot at him. after he had taken such pains to vindicate the majesty of the law, it seems a hardship that his superiors compelled the inspector to resign. there is hardly a part of the civilized world where homicide is so common as in the south, and the crime is quite as frequent in the cities as in the back country. pitched battles by white men with policemen and with sheriffs are not uncommon; and sometimes three or four bodies are picked up after such a fight. in many ways this unhappy state of things is a survival of frontier practices which once were common in the northwest as well as in the south, but which have nearly disappeared there as civilization has advanced; but in the south there is a special element of lawlessness through the negroes. one of the few advantages of slavery was that every slaveholder was police officer and judge and jury on his own plantation; petty offenses were punished by the overseer without further ceremony, serious crimes were easily dealt with, and the escape of the criminal was nearly impossible. freedom, with its opportunity of moving about, with its greatly enlarged area of disputes among the blacks, and between whites and negroes, has combined with the influence of the press in popularizing crime, and perhaps with an innate african savagery, to make the black criminal a terrible scourge in the south. to begin with the less serious offenses, there is no doubt that the negro has a very imperfect realization of property rights, partly because of the training of slavery. the vague feeling that whatever belonged to the plantation was for the enjoyment of those who lived on the plantation is deliciously expressed by paul dunbar: folks ain't got no right to censuah othah folks about dey habits; him dat giv' de squir'ls de bushtails made de bobtails fu' de rabbits. him dat built de gread big mountains hollered out de little valleys, him dat made de streets an' driveways wasn't 'shamed to make de alleys. we is all constructed diff'ent, d' ain't no two of us de same; we cain't he'p ouah likes an' dislikes, ef we'se bad we ain't to blame. if we'se good, we needn't show off, 'case you bet it ain't ouah doin' we gits into su'ttain channels dat we jes' cain't he'p pu'suin'. but we all fits into places dat no othah ones could fill, an' we does the things we has to, big er little, good er ill. john cain't tek de place o' henry, su an' sally ain't alike; bass ain't nuthin' like a suckah, chub ain't nuthin' like a pike. when you come to think about it, how it's all planned out, it's splendid. nuthin's done er evah happens, 'dout hit's somefin' dat's intended; don't keer whut you does, you has to, an' hit sholy beats de dickens,-- viney, go put on de kittle, i got one o' mastah's chickens. not so genial is the usual relation of negro with negro; both in town and city there is an amount of crude and savage violence of which the outside world knows little, and in which women freely engage. jealousy is a frequent cause of fights and murders; and whisky is so potent an excitant that many competent observers assert that whisky and cocaine are at the bottom of almost all serious negro crimes. practically every negro man carries a revolver and many of them bear knives or razors; hence, once engaged in a fracas, nobody knows what will happen. a woman describing a trouble in which a man shot her brother was chiefly aggrieved because "two ladies jumped on me and one lady bit me." there is constant negro violence against the whites, and they occasionally engage in pitched battles with white gangs. here, as in so many other respects, even well-informed people run to exaggeration. thus president winston, of the north carolina agricultural college, declares in public that the negroes are the most criminal element in the population, and are more criminal in freedom than in slavery (both of which propositions are indisputable); that "the negro is increasing in criminality with fearful rapidity"; that "the negroes who can read and write are more criminal than the illiterate"; that they are nearly three times as criminal in the northeast as in the south; that they are more criminal than the white class, and that "more than seven tenths of the negro criminals are under thirty years of age." this statement, like almost all the discussions of criminal statistics, ignores the important point that as communities improve, acts formerly not covered by the law become statutory crimes; and hence that the more civilized a state the more likely it is that criminals will be convicted, and the larger will be the apparent proportion of criminals. in connecticut are enumerated white juvenile delinquents to , people, in georgia only four, but the georgia boys are not seventeen times as good as their brothers in the northern state. it further overlooks the fact that most criminals of all races are under thirty years of age, for crime is the accompaniment of youth with white men as with negroes. to say that the negroes furnish more than their proportion of criminals is no more than to say that the lowest element in the population has the lowest and most criminal members. the excessive criminality of the negroes, which is marked in all the states of the union, is of course a mark of their average inferiority, and a measure of the difficulty of bringing them up to a high standard; and the proportion is often exaggerated. in south carolina where the negroes are three fifths of the population they furnish only four fifths of the convicts. as for the assertion that the educated negroes are specially criminal, the statement is contradicted by the records of the large institutions of negro education, and by the experience of thousands of people. education does not necessarily make virtue, but it is a safeguard. as a matter of fact, white southerners in general know little of the lives or motives of thousands of the immense noncriminal class of negroes, with whom they have no personal relations; but are wide awake to the iniquities of the educated men who fall into crime. the experience of two centuries shows that the negroes are not drawn to crimes requiring previous organization and preparation; no slave insurrection has ever been a success within the boundaries of the united states; and blacks are rarely found in gangs of bandits. the incendiarism of which there is now so much complaint is probably the expression of individual vengeance. the negroes, according to the testimony of those nearest to them, are inveterate gamblers, and many affrays result from consequent quarrels, so that murders may be most frequent where there is the best employment and largest wages and greatest prosperity among the thrifty. murder, manslaughter, and attempts to kill make up three quarters of the recorded crimes of the blacks in the mississippi delta. murders of negroes by negroes are very common and many of the criminals escape altogether. negro crime is much fomented by the low drinking-shops in the city and in country, by the lack of home influence on growing boys and girls, by the brutalizing of young people who are sent to prison with hardened criminals, and in general, by close contact with the lowest element of the white race, which leads to crimes on both sides. it is a striking fact that where the africans are most numerous there is the least complaint of crime. the so-called race riots are usually rows between a few bad negroes and the officers of the law, or a group of aggrieved whites. fights with policemen and sheriffs are frequent, and desperate men not infrequently barricade themselves in houses, and sell their lives as dearly as they can. quarrels over the settlement of accounts are not uncommon, and the negro who feels himself cheated sometimes takes his revenge at the end of a gun. as weapons are ordinarily sold without the slightest check, to men of both races and of every age, there is never any lack of the means to kill. occasionally a cry is raised that proof has been found of the existence of "before day clubs"--that is, of organizations of negroes for purposes of violence. the thing is possible and difficult to disprove, but a sequence of crimes through such an organization seems alien to the negro's habits, and is at least unlikely. the serious charges that the blacks habitually protect any negro criminal who comes to them will be considered farther on. the negro crime about which southern newspapers print most, southern writers say most, and which more than anything else aggravates race hatred, is violence to white women. the crime is a dreadful one, made worse by the spreading abroad of details, but it has such a fateful relation to the whole southern problem that something must here be said, less on the thing itself than on some of the common misunderstandings and misstatements which cluster about it. statistics are unfortunately too available, inasmuch as for twenty years the number of such crimes has been nearly balanced by the number of lynchings for that offense, which have been tabulated from year to year by the _chicago tribune_, and have been thoroughly analyzed by professor cutler in his recent book "lynch law." from to these statistics show an average of thirty-two lynchings per year for violence or attempted violence to white women, though of late they have been reduced to under twenty. this includes some cases of innocent men, probably balanced by assailants who escaped. these figures completely dispose of the allegation that the crime is very frequent. contrary to common belief in the north, some such cases are tried before regular courts; and in missouri the governor in very properly refused to pardon a negro under a sentence of death for that crime. adding in these cases, and the half dozen which perhaps escaped the newspaper reporter, at the utmost there are not over fifty authenticated instances of this crime in the whole south in a twelvemonth. among something like , , adult negro males the ratio of the crime to those who might commit it is about to , ; and out of , , white women, not over fifty become victims, or in , . for this degree of danger to white women ten million human beings are supposed to be sodden with crime and actuated by malice, and the whole south from end to end is filled with terror. the allegation frequently made that these crimes are committed by highly educated negroes, graduates of hampton and tuskegee, is absolutely without foundation. most of them are by men of the lowest type, some undoubtedly maniacs. most of these occurrences take place where the whites and negroes are most closely brought into juxtaposition, sometimes where they are both working in the fields. hence they are of rare occurrence where the whites are fewest and the negroes most numerous. in many places in the black belt, white people have no fear of leaving their families, because sure that their negro neighbors would give their lives, if necessary, for the protection of the white women. the northern white teachers, who are accused of arousing in the negro's mind the belief that he is the equal of the whites, have never in a single instance been attacked; and in communities where the negroes are literally fifty to one, have not the slightest fear of going about alone at any necessary hour of day or night. these statements are not intended to minimize the dreadful effects of a crime which brings such wretchedness upon the innocent. the two worst enemies of the white woman in the south are "the black brute," whom the southern press is never tired of describing in unrepeatable terms, and the white buzzard journalist who spreads her name and her dreadful story abroad to become the seed of another like crime. where is the southern chivalry and respect for white women when every such crime is sought out and flashed abroad, in all the details obtainable, and the victim is doomed to a second wrong in the lifelong feeling that she is known and branded throughout the land? a general and well-grounded complaint is that any fugitive, no matter what his reason for flight, even though he is guilty of rape, is fed and sent on his way by his own people, a practice which goes back to slavery days when there were many strays whose only offense was a love of liberty. "the worst feature," says an observer, "is that other negroes help to conceal them and their crimes. they seem to have entered into a racial agreement that they must help each one of their race to escape the penalties of the white man's law by resorting to every artifice of untruthfulness and concealment." judge cann, of georgia, charges that "as a race, negroes shelter, conceal and protect the criminals of their race; that they produce riots by attacking officers of the law while in the discharge of their duty; that they openly show sympathy with the negro criminal; that they conspire against the enforcement of law; that they have made first a hero, and then a martyr, of a legally convicted and executed murderer." like all such general statements, these allegations go too far. in the first place, it is not altogether a sentiment of race solidarity. negroes have been known to give similar shelter to white vagabonds and criminals. in the second place, black criminals are frequently apprehended through blacks, and large numbers are brought into court, tried and convicted, entirely on negro testimony. something has been done in the way of negro law and order associations, which pledge themselves to give up criminals. still, it is discomposing to know that when a search was making for a particularly odious fellow in monroe, la., who had for a year or two made himself the nuisance of the neighborhood by looking into windows, his father and brothers, who must have known his practices, unhesitatingly signed such a law-and-order pledge. the brownsville incident of also, with the apparent determination of scores of men not to "split" on some ruffians and murderers among them, produced a painful feeling throughout the country. in few respects could the negroes do so much good for themselves as by helping in the detection of the crime of their own people. if negroes are violent to whites and among themselves, they follow an example daily and hourly set them by the members of the superior race. in the first place, the negro listens habitually to rough and humiliating language. you get a new view of race relations when a planter in his store on saturday night calls up for you one after another three specimen negroes. "this man chocolate," he says, "is a full-blooded nigger, the real thing." "chocolate" says nothing, shrugs his shoulders, and looks as he feels, literally like the devil. the next is introduced as "one of your mixed ones--how did that come about, hey!" and the mulatto, who has been the official whipper on the plantation, grins at the superior man's joke. the third is called up and presented as "the preacher, very fond of the sisters." this is a fair sample of what constantly takes place wherever there is a rough, coarse white man among negroes. the office of the whipper is usually performed by the master himself, if he is one of those numerous employers who believe in that method. as one such put it: "i follow up a hand and tell him to do what he ought? if he won't, i just get off and whip him." "suppose he summons you before a magistrate?" "i lick him again before the magistrate and send him home." other planters have given up whipping and charge a fine against the negro's account. of course such fellows would rather be whipped than prosecuted, and think that the riders (that is, the overseers), if they once take it out of them in a thrashing, will harbor no further malice. in some states, as north carolina, whipping is unusual; in others it is frequent. another race trouble is the driving out of blacks who make themselves disliked by the whites. a negro passes an examination for post office clerk, but is warned that if he tries to take the place he will be shot. a colored editor, whose paper is much less offensive than any of the white journals in his neighborhood in bad language and incitement to crime, is thought well treated because he leaves the state alive. a negro who is too conspicuous, who builds a house thought to be above his station, who drives two horses in his buggy, may be warned to leave the place; and if he refuses to sacrifice his little property, may be shot. a black doctor may be warned out of the county because there are enough white doctors. the south is not the only community where people that are obnoxious are hustled out of town, and southern whites sometimes receive the same unofficial "ticket of leave"; but it makes bad blood when irresponsible people, often in no way superior in character to the negroes whom they assail, uproot their neighbors. then comes the long list of homicides of negroes by whites. ever since ku klux times there have been occasional instances of "whitecapping"--that is, of bodies of disguised men riding through the country, pulling people out of their houses and whipping them. such practices are not confined to the south and are condoned sometimes in the north. down on buzzard's bay in massachusetts a few years ago a jury absolutely refused to convict the perpetrators of a similar outrage on a white man; while in alabama, in , five whites were sentenced for twenty years each for killing a negro in that sort of way. still convictions of white men for killing negroes are very unusual. since practically every adult negro man has a gun about him, the theory of the white is that if you get into a quarrel and the negro makes any movement with his hands, you must shoot him forthwith. to this purport is the testimony of a mississippi planter who reproved a hand for severely whipping his child; the black replied that it was his business and nobody should stop it; the white man said he would stop it; whereupon the negro drew, but was met by a bullet in his forehead; and, explained the planter, "a steel bullet will go through a nigger's skull." take another case: an assistant manager on an estate in the delta of mississippi tried to take a pistol away from a new hand and felt himself safe because the man had his hands in his pockets; but the negro fired through the pocket, instantly killed the white man, and decamped. it afterwards was shown that he had previously killed another white man. the responsibility is not always on the negro's side. there are many disputes over labor contracts, in which the negro justly believes that the white man has cheated him, and his attempt to audit is stopped by a quarrel in which the black is killed. even boys under twelve years of age have been known to shoot negroes over trivial disputes, and a young lady in washington recently shot and killed a black boy who was stealing fruit. the negroes complain of harsh treatment by the police. for instance, a good-looking, very black young man is glad to get out of savannah and among the white people on the sea islands. "they like the colored people better; even if they do get drunk and are fierce, they treat them better. in savannah the other day i saw a man going back to his vessel, and a policeman asked him where he was going. he answered up rough like,--i wouldn't do that, i'd go down on my hands and knees to 'em rather than have any trouble with em,--and the policeman broke his club over his head, arrested him, and they sent him to the chain gang. i don't want to be arrested; i never have been arrested in my life." that the police are often in the wrong is shown by such instances as the recent acquittal of a negro by direction of an alabama judge; he had shot a policeman who was arresting him without reason, and the judge who heard the case justified him. perhaps, comparing city with city, the north is as disorderly as the south, but the rural south is a much more desperate region than the farming lands of the north, as is shown by the statistics of homicide and similar crimes. in florida in , with a population of , , there were about murders and assaults with attempt to murder. in alabama in - there were about homicides. in one twelvemonth some years ago there were murders in vermont, in massachusetts, in alabama, and over , in texas. judge thomas, of montgomery, has shown that the homicides in the united states per million of population are against per million in england; and when the sections are contrasted, new england has about per million, against per million in the south. it is not easy to compare the criminal spirit in the north and the south by the records of the courts or the statistics of convictions; acts which are penitentiary offenses in one state may be misdemeanors, or no crime at all, in another. a very recent tabulation, made from statistics of , shows in the lower south , prisoners against , in a group of northwestern states having the same total population; and in the whole south, , prisoners against , in a group aggregating the same number of people in the north and west. of the southern prisoners, about two thirds are negroes, the proportion of criminals to the total numbers of the african race being decidedly less than in the north. the only safe generalization from those statistics is therefore that the southern courts send more people to jail, white and black, than the northern. statistics throw little light on the question of relative crime. a comparison is, however, possible between the ordinary course of justice in the south and in the north. the most notorious defect in the south is the conduct of murder trials, as shown by the evidence of southern jurists. says one, "unreasoning and promiscuous danger stalks in any community where life is held cheap by even a few, and where the laws are enforced by privilege or race. in such a community there is no sufficient defense against a mob, or even a drunken fool." if one credited all the editorials in southern newspapers, he would believe that "a man who kills a man in this community is in much less danger of legal punishment than one who steals a suit of clothes"; and experienced lawyers tell you that they never knew of a white man being convicted for homicide. these statements are exaggerations, for the records of pardons show that a certain number of white men have reached the penitentiary for that offense and leave it by the side door. the reason for the failure of justice in numerous cases is, first of all, the technicalities of the courts, which are probably not very different in that particular from those of the north; and, secondly, the unwillingness of juries to convict. it must be accepted as an axiom that the average plain man in the south feels that if a kills b the presumption is that he has some good reason. counsel for such cases habitually appeal to the emotions of the jury, and ask what they would have done under like circumstances. even conviction may not be uncomforable; take the case of a young white in florida, who killed a policeman, was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment, was then hired out as a convict by his uncle at fifteen dollars a month, and paraded the streets at his pleasure. a general impression in the north is that the southern courts are very severe with colored men; and (if he has not already been lynched) it is true that they are likely to pass heavy sentence on a negro who has killed a white man, and juries are often merciless; but there are many cases where blacks are lightly treated on the express ground that they have had less opportunity to know what is right and wrong. in brookhaven, miss., a very rough region, in a year three white men have been heavily sentenced for killing negroes; while many cases could be cited where a negro was acquitted or let off with a light penalty for a like offense. when it comes to less serious crimes, the negro enjoys a special protection whenever he can call in a respectable white man to vouch for him as in general straightforward; the court is then likely to impose a light sentence. even in serious cases a man is sometimes acquitted or lightly treated at the request of his master, so that he may return to work. that is what the planter meant who boasted: "i never sent a nigger to jail in my life; and i have taken more niggers out of jail than any planter in alabama." that is, he never gave information against one of his own hands, but inflicted such small penalties as he saw fit; and he would pay the fine for his men who came before the courts, or even secure their pardon, so as to get them on his plantation. that principle sometimes goes terribly deep. in the case of a negro who whipped his child to death, the natural inquiry was, "what did they do with him?" to which the nonchalant answer was, "oh, nothing, he was a good cotton hand." the great majority of negro convicts are sentenced for petty crimes, stealing, vagrancy, and the like, and for rather short terms; but the name for this punishment, "the chain gang," points to a system practically unknown in the north. there are literal chain gangs, with real shackles and balls, working in the streets of cities, white and black together; and large bodies of convicts are worked in the open, stockaded, and perhaps literally chained at night. right here comes in one of the worst features of the southern convict system. the men on the chain gang are perhaps employed on city or county work, and if their terms expire too fast, the authorities will run out of labor; hence, the negroes believe, perhaps rightly, that judges and juries are convinced of their guilt just in proportion to the falling off of the number of men in confinement; and that if necessary, innocent people will be arrested for that purpose. that is probably one reason why negroes feel so little shame at having been in prison. "did you know i was in the barracks last night?" is a remark that you may hear at any railroad station in georgia. the whole subject is complicated with vagrant laws. for instance, in savannah negroes not at work, or without reasonable excuse for idleness, shall be arrested; and in alabama if arrested as a vagrant the burden of proof is on the black to show that he is at work. it is a mistake to suppose that colored tramps are common in the south; but irresponsible men, loitering about a city and sponging on the working negroes, are frequent, and furnish many serious criminals. on the whole, one would rather not be a negro convict in a southern state, or even a white convict, for many state and county prisons are simply left-over examples of the worst side of slavery. a northern expert in such matters in atlanta a few years ago, in a public address, congratulated the people on the new jail which he had just visited. at least it looked like the most improved of modern jails, for it had large airy cells provided with running water, and the only defect in it was that it was intended for the state mules and was far better than any provision made there for human prisoners. the first trouble with the southern convict system is that it still retains the notion, from which other communities began to diverge nearly a century ago, that the prisoner is the slave of the state, existing only for the convenience and profit of those whom he serves. in the second place, it has been difficult to find indoor employment for the men, and most of them are worked out of doors, a life which with proper precautions is undoubtedly happier and healthier than that inside. in the third place, whipping is still an ordinary penalty, and very frequently applied. furthermore, a number of states in the lower south have been in the habit of letting out convicts, and that is still done in several states, as florida, alabama, and georgia. they used to be rented to cotton growers, and a planter could get as few as two convicts or even one, over whom he had something approaching the power of life and death. this was a virtual chattel slavery, which long ago ought to have been disallowed by the supreme court of the united states, as contrary to the thirteenth amendment. if still retained on a state or county plantation, the convicts are in the power of wardens whose interest it is to drive the men unmercifully. governor vardaman in a public message in thought it necessary to say that "some of the most atrocious and conscienceless crimes that have been perpetrated in this state are chargeable to the county contractor. i have known the poor convict driven to exhaustion or whipped to death to gratify the greed or anger of the conscienceless driver or contractor. the tears and blood of hundreds of these unfortunate people cry out for this reform." the governor suggests that white men suffer under this system, and there have been recent cases where vagrant whites were sold on the auction block for a period of months. it might perhaps be argued that the south is always more stern in its judicial punishments than the north, inasmuch as five years on a convict farm in mississippi is worse than being decently hanged in massachusetts. the modern and humane methods of reform, of separating the youthful first-term man from the others, of specially treating juvenile crime, are little known in the south. when a twelve-year-old black boy is sent to the chain gang by a white judge, the community suffers. with regard to all those penal institutions one might share the feelings of the good northern lady, when told that her grandson had been sentenced to the penitentiary for ten years: "what did they do that for? why, he won't be contented there three weeks!" this sympathy with the criminal the governors of the southern states appear to feel, as is shown by some astonishing statistics. when governor vardaman went out of office january , , he pardoned white men and negroes, most of them convicted of murder or manslaughter, and of them life men. a memphis paper has tabulated the state pardons for a period of twelve months, and if the results are accurate, they show in wisconsin, in massachusetts, in georgia, in alabama, and over in arkansas. just how the negroes get sufficient political influence to secure pardons is one of the serious questions in southern jurisprudence. for these lavish pardons the whites are wholly responsible, for from them spring all the governors and pardoning boards. the same responsibility rests on the whites for the inefficiency of criminal justice and for the mediæval prison system. the north might fairly plead that its efforts to reform its judicial and punitive system are resisted by the lower elements of society, which have such power through choosing prosecutors and judges and legislators, in framing laws and constitutions, that the better elements cannot have things their own way. not so in the south, where the superior race has absolute control of the making of law and the administering of justice, and the treatment of prisoners. every judge in the south, except a few little justices of the peace, is a white man. negroes, although still eligible to jury service, are rarely impaneled, even for the trial of a negro. negro testimony is received with due caution; hardly any court will accept the testimony of one black against one white man. for failures in the administration of justice, for unwillingness to try men for homicide, for technicalities in procedure, for hesitancy of juries, the superior race is wholly responsible. the system is bad simply because the white people who are in control of the southern state governments are willing that it should be bad. with all the machinery of legislation, and of the courts in its possession, the white race still resorts to forms of violence which sometimes strike an innocent man, and always brutalize the community, and lead to a contempt for the ordinary forms of justice. the place for the white people to begin a real repression of crime is by punishing their criminals without enslaving them. chapter xv lynching the defects in the administration of justice in the south are complicated by a recognized system of punishment of criminals and supposed criminals by other persons than officers of the law--a system to which the term lynch law is often applied. in part it is an effort to supplement the law of the commonwealths; in part it is a protest against the law's delay; in greater part a defiance of law and authority and impartial justice. in its mildest form this system of irresponsible jurisprudence takes the form of notices to leave the country, followed by whipping or other violence less than murderous, if the warning be disregarded. such a method owes all its force to the belief that it proceeds from an organized and therefore a powerful race of people. next in seriousness come the race riots of which there were many examples during the reconstruction era; and occasionally they burst into serious race conflicts, of which half a dozen have occurred in the last decade. the responsibility rests in greater measure on that race which has the habit of calculated and concerted action: reckless negroes can always make trouble by shooting at the whites; but the laws, the officers of justice, the militia, the courts, are in the hands of the white people. since they are always able to protect themselves by their better organization, their command of the police, and the conviction in the minds of both races that the white man will always come out victorious, most troubles that start with the negroes could easily be dealt with, but for a panic terror of negro risings which harks back to slavery times. it is very easy to stampede southern communities by such rumors. when, in , six armed negroes were arrested in muskogee, okla., telegrams went all over the country to the effect that a race war was on, and two companies of militia were ordered out; but apparently there was not a glimmer of real trouble. negroes have repeatedly been driven out of small places. for instance, in august, , in onancock, on the eastern shore of virginia, there was a dispute over a bill for a dollar and a quarter which ended with the banishment of a number of negroes. in the year there was a similar riot in wilmington, n. c., and several thousand negroes were either ejected or left afterwards in terror. the trouble here began in excitement over the elections. by far the most serious of these occurrences was the so-called race riot at atlanta, september , , caused primarily by that intense hostility to the negroes which is to be found among town youths; and secondarily by some aggravated crimes on the part of negroes, and the equally aggravated crime of a newspaper, the _atlanta evening news_, which, by exaggerating the truth and adding lies, inflamed the public mind; on the night before the riot it called upon the people of atlanta to join a league of men who "will endeavor to prevent the crimes, if possible, but failing, will aid in punishing the criminals." the whole affair has been examined by several competent observers, but the essential facts may be taken from the report of a committee of business men of atlanta, who went into the matter at the time, and who declared that of the persons killed, "there was not a single vagrant. they were earning wages in useful work; ... they were supporting themselves and their families.... of the wounded, ten are white and sixty colored. of the dead, two are white and ten are colored." this was not a riot, but a massacre, for which the superior race is responsible; and from every point of view it was damaging to the whole south. it kept back foreign emigrants, it deeply discouraged the best of the negroes in atlanta and elsewhere; it gave rein to the passions of the mob. considering that nobody was killed from among the mob, it seems like a ferocious practical joke that scores of negroes were arrested and charged with murder, while not a single one of the hundreds of real murderers has ever received the slightest punishment. who can wonder at the grief and anguish of dubois's "litany of atlanta!" every large place is liable to disturbance; northern cities have had race riots, and are likely to have more. the recent assaults on and murders of negroes in springfield, ohio, and springfield, ill., are not different in spirit from those in the south; and though there were plenty of indictments, the leader of the latter mob was acquitted on his trial--a result which was reflected in the famous cairo mob of . what progress can be made in breaking up the savage and criminal instincts of the negro when he sees the same instincts in the superior race, which is in a position to do him harm? if the negroes for any cause should in any southern city, where they are in the majority, take possession of the streets and hunt white people to death as was done in atlanta, it would bring on a race war which would devastate the whole south; and the lower race would be severely punished for aspiring to the same fashions in gunshots as its superiors. as a commercial traveler said on the general subject of race relations: "you do not understand how the young fellows in the south feel; when any trouble comes, they want to kill the nigger, whether he has done anything or not." the third and most frequent form of race violence is lynching, a practice obscured by a mass of conventional and improbable statements. the subject has been set in its proper light in an impartial and scientific study by professor cutler entitled "lynch law," based on a compilation of statistics which come down to . he sweeps away three fourths of the usual statements on the subject, first of all disproving the allegation that lynching is a comparatively recent practice brought about by negro crimes since the civil war. the term lynch law has been traced back to colonel charles lynch, of virginia, who, in revolutionary times, presided at rude assemblies which whipped tories until they were willing to shout "hurrah for liberty!" till about lynching never meant killing; it was applied only to whippings or to tarring and feathering. in the frontier conditions of the south and west, the habit grew up of killing desperadoes by mob law, as, for instance, the celebrated clearing out of five gamblers at vicksburg, miss., in . this process was also applied to some murderers, both whites and negroes. professor cutler also disposes of the assertion that the most serious offense for which lynching is applied was unknown previous to emancipation. in , a negro in maryland was badly beaten, though not killed, for a supposed attack upon a white woman. in one was burned at the stake in alabama for killing a white man. from that time on, lynching of blacks continued in every southern state--commonly for murder, in a few cases for insurrection, in at least nine ascertained cases previous to the civil war for violence to white women. it is evident, therefore, that the extremest crime had been sometimes committed, and the extremest punishment exacted by mob violence before the slaves were set free. the lynching of negroes was kept up after the war, and carried into a system by the ku klux klan and later white caps, though usually applied by them for political reasons. about lynching of negroes began to increase, nominally because of more frequent rapes of white women; and to this day one often hears it said: "lynchings never occur except for the one crime." in the twenty-two years from to , cutler has recorded , cases of lynchings, an average of a year, rising to the number of in . in there were persons lynched and executed legally. of these lynchings, , took place in the southern states, in the western states, in the eastern states, and not a single one in new england. of the , lynchings, , were of whites ( for rape) and , were negroes, thus completely disposing of the notion that this practice either began because of negro crime, or was continued as a safeguard against it. of the blacks lynched, were charged with murder; with violence to women; with arson; with theft; and from that on down to such serious crimes as writing a letter, slapping a child, making an insolent reply, giving evidence or refusing to give evidence. a negro was lynched in for killing a constable's horse. the common notion that rape of white women, the most serious crime committed by negroes, is on the increase, is also exploded by these statistics, which show that the proportion, which has been as high as one half of all lynchings, has come down to about one fourth. it may be said, therefore, without fear of contradiction that lynching did not originate in offenses by negroes, is not justified by any increase of crime, and is applied to a multitude of offenses, some of them simply trivial. successful attempts have been made to lynch negroes in northern states, and in one was burned at the stake, in wilmington, del., which, however, is a former slave state, and the last to adhere to the whipping-post. lynching has also much diminished in the west, so that it is becoming more and more a southern crime. in , of the lynchings were in the south, in the total lynchings had come down to , of which were in the four states of louisiana, mississippi, alabama, and georgia, and only in the north. the proportion of causes of lynchings remained about the same: murder, ; violence to women, ; attempted violence, ; miscellaneous causes, . the methods of the lynchers are very simple. in a white man, accused of murdering his brother, on whose case the jury had disagreed, was dragged out of jail and shot. in a great many cases the supposed criminal is hunted down by what is called a "posse"--really a self-appointed body of furious neighbors; and very seldom is there the semblance of investigation. if the offender is lodged in jail, that sanctuary of the law is often invaded. in august, , a mob of three thousand men, incited by a person who afterwards proved to be a released convict, broke open the jail at salisbury, n. c., in despite of addresses by the mayor and united states senator, took out and killed three supposed negro criminals. occasionally, when a criminal has been tried, convicted, and is awaiting execution, he is taken out and lynched, for the excitement of seeing the man die, and perhaps from fear that he will be pardoned. naturally, in this quick method, mistakes sometimes occur. at brookhaven, miss., on january , , a negro was lynched for killing a white man; a few days later they caught the actual murderer, but consoled themselves with the belief that inasmuch as the first negro was wounded when captured, the presumption was that he must have killed some other white man. a few days later, at dothan, ala., a negro was taken out, hanged, and two hundred shots fired at him, but was found the next morning alive and unwounded, and was allowed to escape. in a recent case at atlanta a negro positively identified by the victim of a most serious crime was allowed to go to trial, and was acquitted, because the court believed him innocent, and the woman subsequently identified another man. how does it come about that these mobs, composed invariably of white men and none others, cannot be put down by the white authorities? the first reason is that there are no rural police in the south to make prompt arrests and protect prisoners; the sheriffs upon whom the custody of such persons depends are chosen by popular election, and usually have no backbone; one of them who had actually lodged his prisoners in jail said that he hated to do it, and didn't know how he could meet his neighbors. jailors commonly give up their keys after a little protest; there are few cases where a determined sheriff, armed and ready to do his duty, could not quell a mob; but what can be expected of a sheriff who turns over a prisoner to the mob in order that they may "investigate" his crime? occasionally a sheriff shows some pluck, and in december, , president roosevelt singled out for federal appointment a sheriff who had lost his reëlection because he had opposed a mob. governors are sometimes very weak-kneed; a few years ago the governor of north carolina delivered up to a mob a colored boy who had had such confidence in the superior race as to come to the executive mansion and ask for protection. at annapolis, in , neither the sheriff, jailor, nor municipal authorities made any effort to prevent the taking out of a prisoner; in chattanooga, sheriff shipp, who permitted a negro to be taken out of his hands and lynched, though the sheriff had been served by telegram with an order from a justice of the supreme court directing him to protect the criminal, was reëlected by a large majority; and apparently did not lose popularity when a year later he was sentenced to ninety days' confinement for contempt of court. in all the southern states the last state resort for keeping the peace is the militia, and there have recently been two scandalous instances where these volunteer soldiers have permitted themselves to be overrun by a mob, giving up their guns without an effort to fire a shot. in one of these cases it was recorded that "no effort was made to hurt any of the soldiers however, as it was plain to the crowd that they had gained their point." at brookhaven, miss., in , the officer commanding the militia excused himself because the sheriff had not asked him to order his men to fire. these brave soldiers, these high-toned southern gentlemen, these military heroes, called out for the special purpose of protecting a prisoner, would not draw a trigger! the militia of course are not cowards, they are simply sympathizers with the mob; and throughout the south, in the press, and from the lips of many otherwise high-minded people, lynching is freely justified. witness a coroner's jury in charlotte, n. c.: "we, the ... jury to inquire into the cause of the death of tom jones, find that he came to his death by gunshot wounds, inflicted by parties unknown to the jury, obviously by an outraged public acting in defense of their homes, wives, daughters, and children. in view of the enormity of the crime committed by said tom jones, ... we think they would have been recreant to their duty as good citizens had they acted otherwise." the rector of st. luke's church, jacksonville, says: "i write as an upholder of law and order; as one who deprecates and denounces mob law; but i write as one who holds that law is but the will of the majority in a democracy, and that will is that every time a negro criminally assaults, or attempts to assault, a white woman, he shall be dealt with by mob law, which is law after all. only i would say, let that mob be certain, 'beyond a reasonable doubt,' that they have the right man." listen to the _atlanta georgian_: "some good citizens will say they are shocked, and deplore these evil conditions, and the demoralization they are going to produce, and all that, but they really ain't shocked, although they think they are, and under proper provocation they would be lynchers themselves." even the late d. h. chamberlain, once reconstruction governor of south carolina, says: "practically i come very near to saying that i do not blame the south for resorting to lynching for this crime," and benjamin r. tillman, senator of the united states, has publicly declared: "i will lead a mob to lynch a man at any time who has attacked a woman, whether he be white or black," and that it would probably be necessary "to send some more niggers to hell." the standard published reason for this acquiescence in lynching is that the usual course of law is inadequate; people point to the legal delays and the technicalities of the courts, courts organized by white men, held by white judges, influenced by white counsel, before a white jury. they claim that lynching is a rude sort of primitive justice, "an ultimate sanction" which is simply a speedier form of law, though mobs are notoriously easily confused as to persons and circumstances. they consider lynching necessary in order to prevent the taking of testimony in open court in cases of rape, a necessity which any legislature could obviate. they plead that lynching is the only penalty which will keep the negro in bounds, although there are such strings of lynchings as show conclusively that the publicity given to sickening details makes lynching simply a breeder of crime. in the little town of brookhaven, miss., there were two lynchings in the first eight weeks of . the southern defenders of lynching set forth the solemnity of this form of execution, closing their eyes to the fearful barbarities which have accompanied many cases and are likely to occur any day. the most cogent reason for the practice of lynching is that it gives an opportunity for the exercise of a deep-seated race hostility. most of the murders and other crimes which lead to lynchings happen where whites and negroes are living close together. a lynching is an opportunity for the most furious and brutal passions of which humanity is capable, under cover of a moral duty, and without the slightest danger of a later accountability. spectators go to a lynching, as perhaps they went to the witch trial in salem, or a treason case under lord jeffreys, to get a shuddering sensation. kindred of the injured ones are invited to come to the front with hot irons and gimlets; special trains have repeatedly been furnished, on request to the railroads, in order to carry parties of lynchers; in several instances the burning at the stake of negroes has been advertised by telegraph, and special trains have been put on to bring spectators. after the _auto da fé_ is over, white people scramble in the ashes for bits of bone. within a few months a black woman was burned at the stake by a mob, though everybody knew she had committed absolutely no offense except to accompany her husband when he ran away after committing a murder. these are not incidents of every lynching, they are not condoned by those southerners who disapprove of lynching; but when you have turned a tiger loose and given him a taste of blood, you are not entitled to say that you have no responsibility for innocent people whom he may devour. the whole fabric of defense of lynching, which in some cases and for some crimes is justified by the large majority of educated white men and women in the south, may be exploded into fragments by a single test. if lynching under any circumstances is for the good of the community, why not legalize it? why does not some state come out of the ranks of modern civilized communities in which public courts replace private vengeance and torture has ceased to be a part of judicial process, and enact that in every town the adult men shall constitute a tribunal which--on the suggestion that somebody has committed a crime--shall apprehend the suspect, and, with the hastiest examination of the facts, shall forthwith condemn him to be hanged, shot, or burned, and shall constitute themselves executioners, after due notice to the railroads to bring school children in special trains to witness the proceedings, and with the right to distribute the bones and ashes to their friends as souvenirs? then the whole proceeding may be inscribed on the public records, so that later generations may see the care that has been taken to prevent lawlessness. it would be unjust to leave this subject as though southern people spent their lives in breathing out threatenings and slaughter. with all the conversation about homicide, all the columns of lurid dispatches about lynchings, in which again white people pen the dispatches and white editors vivify them, the everyday atmosphere seems peaceful enough; the traveler, the ordinary business and professional man, feels no sense of insecurity. still one wonders just what was in the mind of the alabamian who, after driving a yankee a hundred miles through a wild part of his state, prepared to return by another way, but remarked: "i wouldn't be afraid to drive right back over the same road that we came." the chance that a respectable man in the south, who attends to his own business, will be shot, is very much greater than in any other civilized country; but powerful influences are at work to bring about better things. there are some indications that the negroes will be compelled to give up carrying weapons, and then, perhaps, some of the whites can also be disarmed. sensible people deplore the insecurity of life. as for race violence, nobody who knows the south can doubt that the feeling of hatred and hostility to the negro as a negro, perhaps to the white man as a white man, is sharper than ever before; but that is the feeling of those members of both races who have no responsibility, of the idle town loafer, of the assistant plantation manager who could make more money if his hands would work better. on the other side stand the upbuilders of the commonwealth, the educators, the professional classes, the plantation owners, the capitalists, most of whom wish the negro well, oppose violence and injustice, and are willing to coöperate with the best element of the negroes in freeing the south from its two worst enemies--the black brute, and the white amateur executioner. chapter xvi actual wealth in every discussion of southern affairs an important thing to reckon with is a fixed belief that the south is the most prosperous part of the country, which fits in with the conviction that it has long surpassed all other parts of the world in civilization, in military ardor, and in the power to rise out of the sufferings of a conquered people. this belief is hard to reconcile with the grim fact that the south under slavery was the poorest section of the country. visitors just before the outbreak of the civil war, such as olmsted, and russell, the correspondent of the _london times_, were struck by the poverty of the south, which had few cities, short and poor railroads, scanty manufacturing establishments, and in general small accumulations of the buildings and especially of the stocks of goods which are the readiest evidences of wealth. some rich families there were with capital not only to buy slaves, but to build railroads and cities; and when the civil war broke out there was in service a quantity of independent banking capital. a delusion of great wealth was created by the listing as taxable property of slaves to the amount of at least two thousand millions. although the legal right to appropriate the proceeds of the labor of the negroes was transferable, it could go only to some of the , slaveholding families; and no bill of sale or tax list could make wealth out of this control of capacity to produce in the future; or if it was wealth, then the north with its larger laboring population of far larger productivity was entitled to add five or six thousand millions to its estimate of wealth. the south was made richer and not poorer by unloosing the bonds of the negro laborer. all the world knows that from to the south was comparatively a poor community, not because of the loss of slaves, but from the exhaustion of capital by the civil war, and the disturbance of productive labor. the opportunity for a fair comparative test did not come till the region settled down again; and then the output in proportion to the working population remained decidedly small when compared with european countries, and still smaller when compared with the northern states. during the last quarter century, however, the south has experienced the greatest prosperity that it has ever known. its progress since has been such that an editorial in a southern newspaper says: "leaving her mines and her mills out of the question, the great south is rich in the products of her fields alone--richer than all the empires of history. she is self-contained, and what is more, she is self-possessed, and she has set her face resolutely against the things which will hurt her." since that statement was printed the material conditions of the south have improved, population has steadily increased; and the resources of the section have more than kept pace with it, manufactures have wonderfully developed, industry has been diversified, railroads and trolley lines are extended by southern capital; the production of coal has been enormously increased; the utilization of the abundant water powers for electrical purposes is beginning; most of the older cities have been enlarged; and new centers of population have sprung up. the traveler by the main highways from washington through atlanta to new orleans, or from cincinnati through chattanooga and memphis to galveston, sees a section abounding in prosperity. what are the sources of this wealth? first of all comes the soil; beginning with the black lands in western georgia and running through the lower mississippi valley to the black lands of texas, lies one of the richest bodies of land in the world, comparable with the plains of eastern china. it is a soil incredibly rich and, once cleared of trees, easy of cultivation; blessed with a large rainfall and abundance of streams. this belt, in which the greater part of the southern cotton is raised, is the foundation of the prosperity of the south, which for that reason is likely to continue permanently a farming community. these rich soils are not to be had for the asking, and fully improved lands, especially the few plantations that are undrained, bring prices up to $ an acre or more, but uncleared land is still very cheap, and away from the black belt may be had at low prices, especially in the piney woods regions, which when fertilized are productive and profitable. among the most valuable southern lands are those under culture for fruits and "truck." this is one of the few methods of intensive agriculture practiced in the south. success in such farming depends on climate, accessibility to market, and skill. a belt of land in eastern texas which has good railroad communication with the north, has suddenly become one of the most prosperous parts of the south because its season is several weeks earlier than that of most of its competitors. truck farming bids fair to change the conditions of the sea islands, of the carolinas and of georgia, since they are in easy and swift communication with the great northern markets. scattered everywhere throughout the south are enormous areas of swamp land, partly in the deltas of the rivers, and partly caught between the hills. under various acts of congress , , acres of so-called "swamp lands" were given to the states including much rich bottom land. the south is now making a demand upon the federal government to assume toward those lands a responsibility akin to that for the irrigated tracts in the far west, and it seems likely that either a federal or state system will undertake the reclamation of large tracts. the legislature of florida, for instance, has authorized the levy of a drainage tax for the drainage of the everglades, where millions of acres could be made available. at present all the federal projects under way, though they involve , , acres and $ , , of expenditure, are in the far west and on the pacific slope. the fundamental fact that the south is mainly agricultural is brought out by the statistics of occupations in . the greater part of the population of both white and black races is on the soil. by the census of , in sixteen states counted southern, thirty-eight per cent of the population were bread-winners. out of the total population of , , there were , , persons engaged in gainful occupations, of whom , were in large cities and the remaining , , in small cities and the country. the rapid growth of towns and small cities is due to the prosperity of the open country; and hence the large city is less important and less likely to absorb the rural population than is the case in the north. except the pacific northwest no part of the union is so rich in timber as the south. until about ten years ago, enormous areas of timber land were so far from railroads that nobody could think of lumbering them; now that the hills of louisiana, mississippi, alabama, georgia, and the carolinas are penetrated with main lines, now that branches are pushed out and that logging trams stretch still farther, few spots lie more than fifteen miles from rails. before sawmills arrive, men can earn fair day wages at cutting railway ties and hauling them as much as fifteen miles, so that the poor land-owners have one unfailing cash resource. up to the financial depression of , lumbering of every kind was very prosperous; new mills were under construction and a large amount of labor found employment. in many concerns were shut down, and planters were rejoiced because negroes were coming back to them for employment. the check to lumbering is only temporary. the south still furnishes more than one third of the total product of the country; and louisiana comes next to the state of washington in the amount of annual cut. but, as a native puts it, "timber is a'gittin' gone"; and in ten years most of the southern states will approach the condition of michigan and wisconsin in the decline of that industry. nevertheless, one may still ride or drive for days through splendid pine forests that have hardly seen an ax. in most places when the timber is cut, farming comes in, and that is the cause of the extraordinary prosperity of the "piney woods" belt, through southern georgia and alabama; where the farmer of a few years ago was making a scanty living, he is now able to sell his timber, to clear the land, and to begin cotton raising on a profitable scale. the south is conscious of the wastage of its timber resources, for the cut is now advancing far up on the highest slopes of the mountain ranges; hence the southern members of congress have joined with new englanders in supporting a bill for an appalachian forest reserve, which would set apart considerable areas at intervals from mount washington in new hampshire to mount mitchell in north carolina, to be administered by the federal government in about the same fashion as the similar reserves in the rocky mountains and the sierra nevada and cascade ranges. this movement is greatly strengthened by the manufacturers, who believe that the water powers require a conservation of the upper forests. growing trees are available not only for lumber and railroad ties, but for turpentine, and any two of these processes, or even all three, may be going on at the same time. on a tract of pine land, no matter where, usually the first process is to box the trees for turpentine, and the men in the business sometimes buy the land outright, but oftener simply pay a royalty. for this privilege the old-fashioned price was a cent a tree, which would be about $ or $ for a -acre tract; but lately farmers have received as much as a thousand dollars for the turpentine on their farms. the box or cut in the trunk can be enlarged upward every year for five years; then if the tree is left untouched for six or seven years it may be back-boxed on the other side and will yield again for five or six years; so that it takes about twenty years to exhaust the turpentine from a given area. the flow from the incision, collected in a hollow cut out of the wood, or by a better modern method of spigots and cups, not unlike that used for maple trees, is periodically collected and carried to the still, where the turpentine is distilled over, and the heavier residue makes the commercial resin. at the prices of the last few years this "naval stores" industry has been profitable and millions of trees are still being tapped. in mining, the south has no such position as in timber. the coal product is respectable and growing--in nearly million tons, which was a ninth of the national product. iron ore is also plentiful; and lead and zinc are abundant in missouri. of the output of more than a hundred millions of precious metals, not half a million can be traced to the south--and there are no valuable copper mines. "varsification, that's what we want," was the dictum of the sage of a country store in the south; and diversification the south has certainly attained. the annual money value of manufactured products has now become considerably greater than of the agricultural products, though of course the crops are the raw materials to many manufactures. in the manufactured products of the south were under million dollars, or one eleventh of the total of the united states; in they had risen to , millions, or about one ninth of the total; and in they were , millions--a seventh of the total. the most striking advance in manufactures has been in iron, the production of pig rising from , , tons in to , , in , a seventh of the national total; a prosperity due in part to the close proximity of excellent ore and coal. but the production in other parts of the union has increased even more rapidly, so that the proportion of iron made in the south is smaller than at any time in twenty years. one difficulty of the manufacture is that it requires besides the crude labor of the negroes a large amount of skilled labor, which cannot be furnished by the poor whites or the mountain whites. another large manufacture is that of tobacco, which is grown in quantities in many of the southern states, particularly in north carolina and kentucky, the great centers of the tobacco industry being richmond, durham (north carolina), and louisville. the tobacco factories are one of the few forms of manufacture in which negroes are employed for anything except crude raw labor. in distilled spirits the south produces nearly a third of the whole annual output--the greater part in kentucky; the lower south does not provide for the slaking of its own thirst; and of the milder alcoholic drinks consumed in the whole country, the south furnishes only about a tenth. this success in manufactures is due in part to cheap power, for both fuel and water power are abundant and easily available; and since the south requires little fuel for domestic purposes, it has the larger store for its factories and railroads. the south has also become a large producer of petroleum, phosphates, and sulphur, and in its bays and adjacent coasts has the material for a valuable fishing industry. for carrying on these various lines of business, the south is indebted in part to northern and foreign capital; but very large enterprises are supported entirely by the accumulations of southern capitalists; and the savings of the region are turned backward through a good banking system into renewed investments. the south before the civil war was probably better supplied with small banks lending to farmers than in any other part of the union, and in the last ten years a similar system has been again worked out. there are nearly , national banks in the south, of which two thirds have been founded since ; and in addition, there are numerous joint stock and private banks. that the business is sound is shown by the fact that practically all the southern banks weathered the crisis of , which was more severe there than in the north. in a very remote rural parish of louisiana, in a small and seedy county seat, is a little bank opened in november, , which, within two months, had accumulated $ , of deposits, and was still enlarging. through these widely distributed banks capital is supplied to small industries and to opportunities of profit which would otherwise be neglected. one needs actually to pass over the face of the south in order to realize how much progress has been made in transportation facilities. that section has always been alive to the necessity of getting its crops to market, and charleston has for a century been at work on communications with the interior; and the pedee canal, the first commercial canal in the united states, was constructed in to bring the crops to that port. the navigable reaches of the southern rivers up to the "fall line" were early utilized for light-draught steamers, of which some still survive. turnpike roads were also built into the interior of the state; and the railroad from charleston to hamburg-- miles--completed in the thirties, was the longest continuous line of railroad then in existence. down to the civil war charleston had an ambitious scheme for a direct line across the mountains to cincinnati. the effort to keep transportation up to the times for various reasons was not successful; settlements were sparse, exports other than cotton scanty, distances great, free capital limited. in the last ten years the south has seen a wonderful advance in railroad transportation. states like louisiana and georgia are fairly gridironed with railroads, and new ones building all the time: indeed, in the "delta" of mississippi a railroad can live on local business if it has a belt of its own twelve miles wide. nevertheless, the present railroad system in the south, comprising about , miles, has been mostly built since . this system includes several lines from the middle west to the seaboard, so that baltimore, the james river ports, new orleans, and galveston are enriched by commerce passing through their ports to regions outside the southern states. nevertheless, as will be seen in the next chapter, this means that the great distributing centers in the union are outside the limits of the south. the progress of the country is measured also by the great improvement in accommodation for travelers. the testimony is general that down to about there were, outside half a dozen cities, no really good hotels to be found in the south; now you may travel from end to end of the region and find clean, comfortable, and modern accommodations in almost every stopping place. the demands of the drummers are in part responsible for this gratifying state of things. the country roads do not share in the advance. nominally the south has over , miles of public highway, but little of it has even been improved. some of the old pikes have gone to ruin, others are still kept up by tolls; but in many regions which have been well settled and thriving for a century and a half there is a dearth of bridges, and in bad weather the roads are almost impassable. so far, the difficulty is not much relieved by trolley lines. the cities are well supplied and some of them have a superior system; but few parts of the south have such a string of populous places as will justify interurban lines, exceptions being the richmond-norfolk and dallas-fort worth systems. the trolley lines have been much developed by a northern syndicate which, under the name of stone & webster, has made a business of buying or building and operating electric plants, many of them with elaborate water power; and the current is distributed for power, light, and transportation. stone & webster's lines can be found all over the union, as in minneapolis and in the state of washington, as well as in the south. the capital of the trolley roads in was , millions, or a fifth of the total trolley investment in the united states. at the best points of contact between rail and water transportation great port enterprises are springing up. galveston is the only port along the whole coast of texas with easily obtainable deep water, and the government has spent great sums in improving it, while the city has made the most gallant effort to rebuild and fortify itself against the invasion of the sea which a few years ago almost destroyed it. new orleans feels itself the natural port of the lower mississippi valley, and the eads system of jetties keeps the mouth of the river open, though there is not water enough to float the great steamers that come into the large atlantic ports, and the wharf charges are heavy; the actual commerce of new orleans--exports and imports together--was in $ , , less than that of galveston. inasmuch as new orleans is a hundred miles from the open sea, an effort has been made to provide capital to build a gulf port about fifty miles to the eastward, but so far little progress has been made. the city of new orleans has shown unusual enterprise in building a public belt line railroad ten miles long, intended to connect with all the roads entering the city; and the city thus steps alongside cincinnati as the owner of a veritable municipal steam railroad. between these ports there is unceasing rivalry, and the depth of water on the bar outside galveston, or at the mouth of the mississippi, is as interesting to the southern business man as the bulletin of a football game is to a northerner. texas will prove to you by science, logic, and prophecy that no deep-draught vessel can get into new orleans, or pay the awful port charges after it arrives; the louisianian is confident that the next typhoon will silt up those texan lagoon harbors which have no great river behind to scour them out. mobile, which is a place with increasing foreign commerce, can never hope to lead deep water to its present wharves, but about twenty-two miles below the city is an opportunity to bring large ships nearly inshore, and that is likely to be the future port of mobile. pensacola is the special favorite of the louisville & nashville railroad, but seems to have no advantages which will bring it ahead of its neighbor mobile. of the lower atlantic ports, fernandina, brunswick, savannah, charleston, and wilmington are all limited in the depth of water, and several of them require difficult river navigation. the deep-water ports of baltimore on the chesapeake, and norfolk, portsmouth, and newport news on the lower james, are on the extreme borders of the south and depend for their prosperity chiefly on western commerce. the transportation business of the south, as in other parts of the union, has drifted into the hands of a comparatively few large corporations. the southern railroad, the atlantic coast line, the seaboard air line, and the louisville & nashville include nearly all the railroads between virginia and mississippi. the baltimore & ohio, chesapeake & ohio, norfolk & western, and the new virginia railroad connect the tide water of virginia and north carolina with the west. the louisville & nashville, illinois central, the missouri pacific and queen and crescent roads stretch southward from the middle western states to the gulf. in texas three or four railway systems compete for the business between the upper trans-mississippi country and the gulf, and there is a bewildering complex of branch lines. the net result is that the south outside the mountains is gridironed with railways. the areas more than ten miles from a railroad line in the south are now comparatively small. for this reason may be expected a more rapid development of the resources and wealth of that section in the next ten years than in the last decade. chapter xvii comparative wealth wealth the south possesses--large wealth, growing wealth, greater wealth than that section has ever before approached. so agreeable is this state of things that southern writers are inclined not only to set forth their prosperity but to claim that theirs is the most prosperous part of the whole country and is soon to become the richest. as edmonds puts it in his "facts about the south": "against the poverty, the inexperience, the discredit and doubt at home and abroad of ourselves and our section of , the south, thrilled with energy and hope, stands to-day recognized by the world as that section which of all others in this country or elsewhere has the greatest potentialities for the creation of wealth and the profitable employment of its people." the southern statements of the poverty of the south from to are more easily verified. the tracks of armies outside virginia and parts of tennessee were narrow; but at the end of the war the south had exhausted all its movable capital; the banks were broken; the state and confederate bonds worthless; the railroads ruined; the cities disconsolate. and the labor system was, for a time, much disturbed, though never disrupted. as henry watterson, of kentucky, puts it: "the south! the south! it is no problem at all. the whole story of the south may be summed up in a sentence: she was rich, she lost her riches; she was poor and in bondage; she was set free, and she had to go to work; she went to work, and she is richer than ever before. you see it was a ground-hog case. the soil was here, the climate was here, but along with them was a curse, the curse of slavery." the immense increase of wealth and productivity since is equally unquestionable. when it comes to the claim that it is the most prosperous part of the world, it cannot be accepted offhand. the fact that the south is well off does not prove that it is better off than its neighbors; the wealth and prosperity of the south are always limited by the character of its labor. calculation of profits, adding of bank balances, cutting of coupons, have to some degree drawn men's minds away from the race question; but on the other hand the demand for labor and the losses of dividends or of opportunities to make money because the labor is inefficient are ever renewed causes of exasperation. at all times the south is subject to reverses like those of other regions. the crisis of hit that section hard by cutting down the demand for timber, minerals, iron, and other staples, and was one of the factors in a decline in cotton which touched the pocket nerve of the south; and the railroads felt the loss of business. still, most southern enterprises weathered the storm, and in the tide of prosperity is mounting again. if it be true that the south is the most prosperous part of the world, a disagreeable responsibility falls upon somebody for having less than the best schools, libraries, buildings, roads, and other appliances of civilization; if it be not true, there must be some defect in the social or industrial system which out of such splendid materials produces less than a fair proportion of the world's wealth. to be sure a section or a state might lag behind in production and yet forge ahead in education, in the harmony of social classes, in respect for law, in good order. switzerland is not a rich country, but it is an advanced country. the claims of superior productiveness can with difficulty be tested. the relative status of the two sections in intellectual and governmental ways has been examined in earlier chapters and the south cannot claim supremacy there. a similar comparison shall now be made as to the relative production and accumulation of the two sections. a criterion of wealth much relied upon by southern writers is the movement of commerce. we are told that two fifths of the inward and outward movement of foreign trade passes through southern ports. the truth is that in that figure was $ , , as against $ , , , in all northern atlantic, lake and pacific ports. the bulk of this southern business, however, is in exports--$ , , --a third of the total. not a tenth of all the imports came into southern ports, and three fourths of that through the three ports of baltimore, galveston, and new orleans, from all which a part goes into non-southern states. the explanation is that through the southern ports pour the staples, but that the return cargoes, especially of manufactures, go to northern ports, even though part of it is later distributed to the south. a second correction is due to the fact that about $ , , of the exports goes through the five ports of baltimore, newport news, norfolk and portsmouth, new orleans, and galveston, all of which are entrepots for immense trade originating beyond the limits of the south. for instance, new orleans and galveston together shipped million bushels of the millions of wheat exports--practically not a southern crop. even in such an unreckoned increment of income as the federal pension lists, the south is less forward than the north, which drew millions a year against millions in the whole south and millions in the seceded states--most of that to colored soldiers. the relative wealth of the two sections is best measured not by foreign trade but by internal production and by public income and expenditure, calculated on a per-capita basis. of course conditions vary greatly from state to state; in alabama there is steady farm work most of the year, while in north dakota the winter is a time of comparative leisure; california uses agricultural machinery, south carolina depends chiefly on hand tools; wyoming is so young that it has had little time to accumulate capital, tennessee has large accumulations. it would be unfair to compare arkansas with connecticut, or illinois with florida, on a strictly per-capita basis. the only way to equalize conditions for a fair comparison is to take groups of states and set them against other groups of equivalent population and of similar interests, so that local errors may neutralize each other. as a basis for such a comparison of resources, three sets of tables have been made up. the first sets apart the group of eleven seceding states with , , people (west virginia not included) as being typically southern; and places against them a group of agricultural states extending from indiana to oklahoma, also containing , , people. the second tables include the whole south--viz., the fifteen former slaveholding states (excluding west virginia), together with the district of columbia, including a population of about , , people; to which is opposed the middle west and pacific states from indiana to the coast, together with vermont and new hampshire, which are added to make up a full , , . to such comparisons the objection has been made that it averages the confessedly inferior rural negro population with the picked immigrants from the east and abroad in the northwest. the objection is a concession of the lower average productive capacity of the south; but in order to compare the white elements of the two sections by themselves, a third set of tables compares the whole south containing , , whites and , , blacks against a group of northern agricultural states with a population of , , whites and , blacks. the materials for such comparisons are various. every traveler has his impressions of the relative prosperity of south and north based on what he sees of stations, public and private buildings, cities and stocks of goods, and on the appearance of farms and work-people throughout the country. for precise indications, the population of the states is estimated year by year in the _bulletins_ of the census bureau; estimates of accumulated wealth are made every few years by the department of commerce; returns of annual crops by the department of agriculture; banking statistics by the treasury department. the annual _statistical abstract_ prints summaries of manufactures and other industry, and on these topics the census bureau issues valuable bulletins. for tax valuations there is no general official publication, but the _world almanac_ collects every year from state auditors a statement of assessments. most of these sources must be accepted as simply a series of liberal estimates, but the factors of error are likely to be much the same in the northern and the southern communities, and at least they furnish the basis for a comparison in round numbers. the tax assessments are significant, because they are revised from year to year, and the methods of assessment are not very different in the various parts of the country and are likely to err by giving too low a value or omitting property, so that comparisons from tax returns are relatively more favorable to the poorer than to the richer communities. _i. the eleven seceding states._ tabulation based upon the principles stated above will be found in the appendix to this volume; and a study of those tables reveals some interesting comparisons between the eleven communities which formed the southern confederacy and nineteen western communities, the two groups each having in about nineteen million inhabitants. the assessed taxable valuation of the southern group in was , millions; in the northern group it was , millions, or more than double. four years later the valuations were , millions as against , millions. since tax assessments are subject to many variations, perhaps a fairer measure of sectional wealth is banking transactions. the bank deposits of the national groups of the southern group were, in , millions, in the northern group, , millions. bank clearings in the same year were respectively billions and - / billions. all the eleven seceding states together in valued their real estate at , millions, their personal at , millions, total , millions. a corresponding northern group (in which the richest state is indiana), counts its real estate worth , millions, its personalty, , millions, a total of , millions. that is, the northern land and buildings are counted nearly thrice as valuable, and personalty about a half more valuable, though everybody knows that there is a vast deal of untaxed personalty in the north. the miles of railroad in the southern group were , ; in the western, , ; the total value of agricultural products in the south was estimated at , millions, in the north at , millions. even the cotton crop of the eleven states, worth millions, was overbalanced by the northern corn crop which brought millions. the manufactures in the south for were , millions; in the northwest , millions. the southern group expended for schools millions, the corresponding northern states expended millions. the value of southern school property was millions, of the northern group it was millions; the average annual expenditure per pupil in daily attendance in the south was $ . ; in the north about $ . . for public benevolent institutions the south expended in net $ , , , the north $ , , ; the southern group had , , illiterate whites, of whom , were foreign born; the northern group had , besides , illiterate foreigners. in the indices of accumulated property the comparison is about the same; the southern deposits in all banks were, in , million dollars, the northern , millions. in manufactures the northern group, with a capital of , million dollars and , hands, produced , millions; against southern capital of , millions, employing , persons and producing , millions. the comparison of valuations brings out one unexpected result, namely, that several of the southern states have actually less taxable property now than they had fifty years ago. this does not mean that they are poorer because they have lost their slaves. leaving slaves out of account, in south carolina had a valuation of $ , , ; in of $ , , ; in mississippi the valuation of real estate in was $ , , ; in , with a population more than twice as great, it was $ , , ; in the rich state of georgia the valuation in , deducting slaves, was $ , , against $ , , in . the southern people feel justly proud of the fact that the valuations of the eleven former members of the confederacy between and increased by millions, from a total of , millions to , millions, that their annual manufactures increased by millions; from millions in to , millions in . this increase in industry is so striking that the southern states suppose they are unique in that respect; but the corresponding northern group of equal population in the same periods gained , millions in valuations and millions in annual manufactures. these figures may be checked off in various ways. take, for instance, the annual value of crops; the south is very certain that with its cotton, its corn and other crops together it is far in advance of the north. in the southern states which were in secession (excepting texas) the value of farms and stock in was , millions, the value in an equivalent northwestern group was , millions. the total farm product in the lower south was , millions, in the northern group of equal population , millions. if texas be compared with a group of pacific states, of equivalent population, the texan farms are worth millions, the far western , millions. the lower south has been saving money of late years and is proud of its growing bank deposits, from millions in to millions in , an increase of per cent; but the equivalent northern population has increased from millions to , millions. the lower south in had national banks with deposits of millions and assets of millions; the similar northern states had deposits of millions and assets of , millions. let us see whether the south makes up this disparity by its state banks. in the lower south, including texas, had deposits of millions in all banks; and total bank clearings of about , millions; the equivalent northern group had deposits of over , millions, with total clearings of about , millions. measured, therefore, by accumulated savings, by bank capital, by clearings, the south is poorer than the least wealthy section of the north. if we were to take the rich eastern and northwestern states, with their immense population, enormous manufactures (new york city contains over twenty thousand factories), and vast transportation lines, the fact that the south is far behind the north in things both material and intellectual would stand out even more clearly. _ii. the whole south_ it might fairly be said that it is unreasonable to compare the former seceding states which have gone through the disruption of their labor by civil war with new western communities in which there has been no destruction of capital. accordingly the second set of tables compares the whole south--fifteen states and the district of columbia--with a northwestern and pacific coast group of equivalent population. since a part of the contention of southern writers is that the south was richer than the north before the civil war and is only returning to her rightful place of supremacy, it is worth while to examine the supposed wealth of the south in . the assessed valuation of the lower south was then , millions, which a southern statistician attempts to show was millions more than the combined wealth of new england and the middle states; out of this sum, , millions was for personal property, including about , millions for slaves; but either the slaves should be left out or a capitalized value of northern laborers should be added on a slavemarket basis. passing by the figures of , which are discredited by all statisticians, in the total property valued for taxes in the lower south was , millions, in the whole south was , millions; while in similar blocks of northwestern population they were respectively , millions and , millions. this is a splendid record for a people who had given their all in a civil war and who had to build up nearly every dollar of their personal property from the bottom. the land, of course, was always there, but was worth much less per acre in than similar good land in . how far has this rate of progress been continued since as shown by the inexorable method of comparing groups of southern states with groups of northwestern states of equal population? the tax valuation shows about the same proportion, so far as can be ascertained, to real values in one section as in the other. the local differences of mode of assessment when averaged would probably not disturb the result by more then ten per cent. the whole south ( communities) as compared with a northern group of the same number of people in showed . billions of assessed property against . billions in the north. it may therefore be set down as proven that the taxable wealth of the lower agricultural south is less than half that of similar agricultural communities in the north; so that while mining and manufacturing states like maryland, kentucky, and missouri have about the same wealth as similar northern communities, the south as a whole has not one half the wealth. take the former slaveholding states all together, including such a rich commonwealth as missouri, and the farm value in the whole region in , with millions of people, was under , millions; while million people in the west and northwest owned farms to the amount of about , millions, or more than double. the total southern crops in , the last year in which the totals are obtainable, were worth , millions, the northern crops counted up to , millions. the value of the southern corn crop in was million dollars; the equivalent population in the northwest raised million dollars' worth of corn. the whole south raises about million dollars' worth of oats; the north raises millions. the southern potato crop is worth millions; the northern, millions. southern hay counts up to millions and northern to millions. even in tobacco, the north furnishes million dollars' worth against million dollars in the south. cotton is the one crop that is exclusively southern, and the crop of , the year that we are considering, including the seed, was worth million dollars. the southern group had , teachers, school property of millions, and total school revenue of millions, against competing northern figures of , , of millions, and of millions. it is difficult in these figures to find justification for the notion that the south as an agricultural region is richer than the north, or is likely ever to rival it. the actual figures for the present conditions of the south are sufficiently attractive. during the four years - the big crops and high price of cotton gave to the south such prosperity as it had never known before, the total output being nearly fifty million bales, which sold, in cash, for about , million dollars. this happy result was reflected in every city and every county of the rural south, for old debts were paid, new houses built, land doubled or even trebled in value, and a spirit of hopefulness pervaded the whole population. a buoyancy is reflected in the press, and particularly in the _manufacturers' record_ of baltimore, the leading southern trade paper. "the south," says the _record_, "is now throughout the world recognized as the predestined center of the earth, based on greater natural advantages that can be found anywhere else on the globe." or as another southern paper put it some years ago: "in the richest part of the country--in the poorest--in signs of improvement--in regaining the position of ." nobody can be more pleased with southern prosperity than new englanders, who have long since found out that the richer other sections of the country become, the more business northerners have with those sections; if there are directions in which the south is making more rapid progress than the north, it should be candidly acknowledged. nobody can visit thriving cities like richmond, atlanta, birmingham, memphis, new orleans, and the galaxy of future centers of population in texas, without hearty pleasure in the increasing evidences of civilization, but it is very unevenly distributed. off the main lines of transportation the towns are still ill-built and unprogressive, and the greater part of the area of the south is no farther along than states like illinois and minnesota were in the late sixties. it is, however, a ticklish thing to make these comparisons, because many southerners, and particularly southern newspapers, consider it an attack upon the south to intimate that it is still much improvable. as the _macon telegraph_ said a few months ago: "after all what does it matter that a harvard professor should consider us lazy and not even excuse us on the ground that we are victims of the hookworm? we still have the right to go on expanding the figures relating to our remarkable industrial upbuilding, until we have driven new england out of the business of cotton manufacturing." the best measure of comparative wealth would be a statistical statement of accumulations. on this subject there are many wild guesses. the _manufacturers' record_ in january, , makes claims for the south which deserve especial examination: "england's wealth, according to the london _express_, is increasing at the rate of $ , , a week. that is less than one seventh of the rate of the increase of wealth in the south. the increase in the true value of southern wealth in the past twelve months was $ , , , , or about $ , , for every day in the year, including sundays and holidays. not only is the speed of increase in the south so much greater than that in england, but the south possesses resources, agricultural and mineral, that make certain in the future even a much greater rate of increase than england." except poor old poverty-stricken new england, all the world will welcome this prodigious accretion of wealth. think how many opera tickets you might buy for two and a half billions of dollars! the only attempt at exact figures of our national wealth is the estimate of the _statistical abstract_, published about every four years, and not based on any exact figures. such as it is, it is relied upon by the southern writers; and it sets forth that in the four years from to the total national wealth increased by less than billions, an average of billions a year; it is hardly likely that a third of the population, which in other respects is below the northwest, was contributing more than half this annual gain. the only ground for the assertion seems to be an alleged increase in the southern tax valuation from billions in to billions in ; assuming that the average proportion of valuation to actual value is forty per cent, you have your two billions and a half. the first comment on this statement, which is selected as typical of the broad claims which float through the southern press, is that the figures furnished the _world almanac_ for by the state authorities show that the southern valuations in were , millions, and in , , millions; so that the increase of assessments is millions instead of , millions. in the second place, the estimated true value by the _statistical abstract_ in was about billions for the whole south; and on a basis of comparison of the valuations of and , the increase in the whole three years would be at best only two and a half billions. in the next place, two and a half billions a year means that every man, woman, and child, black and white, is on the average laying up a hundred dollars, which is an amazing rate of saving. having thus proven that the material progress of the south is exaggerated, the next logical step is to show that perhaps it has foundation, inasmuch as the equivalent , , people in the northwest in are gaining wealth still more rapidly, having increased their estimated "true value" from billions in to at least billions in . the south, which supposes itself to be getting rich faster than any other part of the globe, has in the last few years actually added less to its wealth than a similar northwest agricultural region. in the year - , while the south added millions to its tax duplicate, the north added millions. if, as may be the case, the millions of valuation meant , millions of new wealth, the northwest was adding at least , millions. in all this array of figures there is no criticism of the south, no denial that it is more prosperous than it has ever been before; no desire to minimize its splendid achievements which are helping on the solution of the race problem; but it is essential that the southern people should measure themselves squarely with their neighbors. the single state of new york, with less than a fifth the population of the south, has as much property as the whole south (leaving out missouri), and adds every year to its wealth as much as is added by the whole south (leaving out texas). the south is really at about the same place where the northwest was thirty years ago; it is developing its latent resources; building its cities; perfecting its communications; starting new industries; and in much less than thirty years it will come to the point that the northwest has now reached; but that section is still driving ahead more rapidly, and thirty years hence may be proportionately richer than it is to-day. if the south is saving four millions a day, the northwest is saving five millions; and the middle and new england states, the other third of the country, are saving eight or ten millions a day. if the south is to range up alongside the northwest, to say nothing of the northeast, it must increase its production still faster, and the only way to accomplish that purpose is by improving the average industry, thrift, and output of its people. _iii. comparative efficiency of white populations north and south_ some southern statisticians, while admitting these indubitable figures, contend that the south is improving at a much more rapid rate, and hence must in no long time overtake the north; but it must be remembered that in most of these fields of comparison the north not only shows from two to two and a half times the output, but that its annual or decennial increase is absolutely larger than in the south; that is, that the annual amount which the south must add to its present output, in order to catch up with the north, is larger than it was a year ago, or at any previous time. a conventional explanation of this state of things is that the negroes constitute a large part of the southern working force, and are much below the average of americans in their productive output; but when comparisons are made between similar aggregations of white population, results are not very different. if the whole south (including the district of columbia) be compared, not with a block of about , , northern people, but with a block of about , , white people corresponding to the , , whites in the south (both figures for ), the results are still startling; although the south has all the advantage of the labor and production of , , negroes besides the whites. the debts of the southern communities in were million dollars; of the northern, millions. the total taxes raised in were: south, millions; north, millions. the estimated southern wealth in was . billions; in , . billions, an increase of . billions; in the north the corresponding figures are . billions and . billions, an increase of . billions. the southern assessed valuation of was . billions, of the northern group . billions. what makes these differences? it certainly is not because the south is deficient in natural resources, in fertility, in climate, in access to the world's markets, in the enterprise of its business men. what is the reason for this discrepancy between the resources and the output of the south? some of the southern observers insist that the north is made rich through its manufactures. in order to eliminate that condition the comparisons in this chapter are all with western and northwestern states (vermont being included simply to equalize the numbers); some of these states, as the dakotas and oregon, are very similar in their conditions to the purely agricultural and timber states of the south; in other states, such as indiana and wisconsin, there are large manufactures, which, however, are no more significant in proportion than those of maryland and missouri. the northwestern states have more manufactures than the southern, but they have more of everything, which indicates industry and prosperity. the obvious reason is that laborers in the south, both white and colored, are inferior in average productive power to northern laborers; and the obvious remedy is to use every effort to bring up the intelligence, and the value to the community of every element of the population. while the proof sheets of the foregoing chapter are passing through their revision there appears in _collier's weekly_ for january , , an article by clark howell of the _atlanta constitution_ who makes, in italics, the statement that "_the trend of southern development is incomparably in advance of that of any other section of the continent_." the opportunity to apply the cold bath of statistics to such torrid statements can still be taken, by adding to the tables in the appendix some figures for and , and even , together with some generalizations based on figures not included in the tables. for example, the figures for public school education in show for the ten seceding states , teachers against , in the corresponding northern group; school property to the value of millions as against millions; annual revenue of millions as against millions. the rich state of texas, with , teachers, is balanced by the pacific group with , ; its school property of millions by millions; its annual expenditure of millions by millions. even the richer border state group of five communities, and an average daily attendance of a million school children, has school property of millions against millions in the corresponding northwestern states; and the school revenue of millions must be placed against the revenue in the corresponding group of millions. the assessed valuations of the states, as reported to the _world almanac_ for , are as follows: the whole south in was assessed on , millions--a gain of , millions in three years; in the equal northwestern group it was , millions--a gain in three years of , millions (out of which perhaps , millions should be deducted, on account of a bookkeeping increase in the assessments in kansas and colorado). the cotton crop of sold for millions and the corn crop of the north for millions. the railroads in the south in totaled , miles and in the northwestern group , miles. the south "has just harvested a billion-dollar cotton crop" says clark howell, and he predicts twenty-cent cotton. the actual crop for was probably less than million bales, and at the average price for the season of about cents, it sold for something like million dollars. the corn and wheat crops of the whole north (not the equivalent group) sold in the same year for , million dollars. no good can result to anybody either from belittling or exaggerating the productivity of the south. that section is progressing, and the more it progresses the less become its difficulties of race and labor problems, the greater its connection with neighboring states, the larger the advantage to the whole nation. still, on any basis of comparison with the least wealthy states and sections of the north--whether it be made between the total population of equivalent groups or between the white populations only, leaving out of account the productivity of the negroes, the south is below the national standard of wealth and progress; it grows constantly in accumulations and in productivity, but its yearly additions are less than those of the northwestern states, and much less than those of the northeastern states. chapter xviii making cotton "the south holds a call upon the world's gold to the extent of $ , , to $ , , for the cotton which it will this year furnish to europe.... this money, whether paid in actual gold or in other ways, will so strengthen the financial situation, not only of the south, but of new york and the country at large, as to make the south the saving power in american financial interests. no other crop on earth is of such far-reaching importance to any other great country as cotton is to the united states." this extract from the _manufacturers' record_ is a somewhat grandiloquent statement of the conviction of the south that it possesses a magnificent cotton monopoly which no other part of the world can ever rival; that with proper foresight and with courage, the south may corner the world's market in the staple, and fix a price which will insure prosperity. in a country full of natural resources of many kinds, with a soil on which corn may be grown almost as good as in indiana, where cattle can be raised and dairies may be established, the chief aim and object of life is to "make cotton." the talk of small farmers is cotton; every country merchant of any standing is a cotton buyer; and most of the large wholesale houses and banks are interested in cotton. in all the large cities and some of the small ones are cotton exchanges at which are posted on immense blackboards the day's data for "receipts at ports," "overland to mills and canada," "current stock," "southern mill takings," "total in sight to date," "world's possible supply," and so on. the federal census bureau publishes from time to time estimates of the acreage and condition of cotton, which so affect the markets that great efforts have sometimes been made to bribe the officials to reveal the figures before they are published. the census office issues periodical reports showing the number of bales of cotton ginned throughout the south. this is the more remarkable because cotton is not the principal product of the south, nor even the major crop of the rural sections; but the size and public handling of the crop carry away men's imagination. timber, turpentine, mining, and iron making, taken together, produce a larger annual value than cotton. the total value of all other crops in was $ , , , which was about $ , , more than the value of the cotton crop. the corn alone was over $ , , , or over two thirds the value of the cotton. hay ($ , , ), wheat, tobacco, oats, and potatoes make up $ , , more. though the lower south grew only , , bushels of wheat, rice, cultivated on rather a small scale in south carolina, is a crop of growing importance in louisiana and texas. the south raises no sugar beets, little flaxseed, and not a twentieth of the wool; but the sugar and molasses are worth nearly $ , , . trucking or the raising of vegetables, chiefly for the northern market, is said to employ , freight cars in the season. the south has also about , , cattle, , , sheep, and , , pigs, all of which are independent of cotton except that to some degree cotton seed is the food for stock. when all has been said, however, the typical southern industry is cotton, upon the raising of which certainly nearly half of the population is concentrated, and it constitutes about a fourth of the whole annual product of the south. the field of the cotton industry extends from the foot of the mountains to the atlantic and gulf coasts; and the southern social problem is to a very large degree the problem of cotton raising under a system by which one race includes practically all the masters, and the other furnishes almost all the laborers for hire. the history of cotton is in itself romantic. in , about , bales were raised; in , , ; in , , ; in , over , , . in there was a tremendous crop of nearly , , bales, a figure not reached again until . in the crop was , , bales--an amount not equaled since. the price of cotton has of late ruled much lower than in the first half of the century, when it sometimes ran up as high as cents a pound. the crop brought about cents. in the average price was about cents, and some cotton sold as low as cents, but the enormous crop of brought about cents, and it has ruled higher since. in the slackening of the world's demand caused the price to drop, but it has risen again to the highest point for thirty years. the significance of the cotton crop is to be calculated not by the liverpool market, but by its remarkable effect on the life of the south. one reason for its importance is that it can be grown on a great variety of land. most of the best american long staple, the sea island, comes from a limited area off the coast of south carolina and georgia, in which a seed trust has been formed by the local planters to prevent anybody outside their narrow limits from raising that grade; for if the seed is renewed every few years, the fiber can be profitably raised on land now covered by the piney woods. another variety of the long staple, the floradora, is raised inland. the river bottoms and deltas of the numerous streams flowing into the gulf of mexico are a rich field for cotton, especially along the mississippi river; but the black belt of the interior of georgia and alabama is almost equally productive; and the piney woods district and considerable parts of the uplands may be brought under cotton cultivation. northerners do not understand the significance of the fertilizer in cotton culture. george washington was one of the few planters of his time who urged his people to restore the vitality of their land as fast as they took it out; but rare was the planter up to the civil war who raised cattle, and the imported guano from the rocky islets of the gulf and pacific was little used. then in the seventies discoveries were made of phosphate rocks in the estuaries of the carolina rivers; and later, inland deposits in tennessee. from these, with some admixture of imported materials, are made commercial fertilizers which have become indispensable to a large number of the cotton farmers, so that they are now spending millions a year on that alone, every dollar of which is expected to add at least a dollar and a half to the value of the crop. the word "plantation" has come to have a special meaning in northern ears. it brings to the mind the great colonnaded mansion house with trim whitewashed negro quarters grouped about it, the pickaninnies running to open the gate for the four-in-hand bringing the happy guests, while back in the cotton field the overseer rides to and fro cracking his blacksnake whip. that kind of plantation is not altogether a myth. for instance, at hermitage, just outside of savannah, you see a brick mansion of a few large rooms, built a hundred years ago, surrounded by attractive sunken gardens, and one of the most superb groves of live oaks in the south; and near it are the original little brick slave cabins of one room and a chimney. that kind of elaborate place was rare; in most cases the ante-bellum planter's house was a modest building, and nowadays very few large planters live regularly on the plantation. if the place is profitable enough, the family lives in the nearest town or city; if it is unprofitable, sooner or later the banks get it and the family goes down; even where the old house is preserved, it is likely to be turned over to the manager, or becomes a nest for the colored people. inasmuch as cotton raising is an industrial enterprise, plantations are apt to change hands, or the owners may put in new managers; so that the ante-bellum feeling of personal relation between the owner and the field hand plays little part in modern cotton making. the modern plantation can more easily be described than analyzed; the term is elastic; a young man will tell you that he has "bought a plantation" which upon inquiry comes down to a little place of less than a hundred acres with two houses. the distinction between a "farm" and a "plantation" seems to be that the latter term is applied to a place on which there is a body of laborers (almost universally negroes) managed, with very few exceptions, by white men and devoted principally to one crop. individual plantation holdings vary in size from the thirty thousand acres of bell, the central alabama planter, down to fifty acres. many large owners have scattered plantations, sometimes as many as twenty or thirty, each carried on by itself; or two or three adjacent groups under one manager. you are informed that the x brothers "own thirty-three plantations," which probably means thirty-three different large farms, ranging from two hundred to two thousand acres each. three to five thousand acres of land under cultivation is as large a body of land as seems advantageous to handle together. a fair example of the large plantation in the best cotton lands is the estate managed by mr. dayton near jonesville, la., on the tensas and little rivers. it is an expanse of that incredibly rich land, of which there are millions of acres in this enormous delta, land which has in many places produced fifty to seventy-five successive crops of cotton without an ounce of fertilizer. between the rivers, which are fenced off by levees, lie the fields, originally all wooded, but in these old plantations even the roots have disappeared from the open fields, although wherever the plantation is enlarged the woods have to be cleared, and the gaunt and fire-scarred dead trunks mark the progress of cultivation. the negro houses stand in the middle of the field; for on modern plantations it is very rare to gather the hands in quarters near the great house; their cabins are distributed all over the estate. on the main road is a manager's house, distinctly better than any of the negro cabins. near by a white family is moving in where a black family has moved out, for this plantation (though the thing is uncommon) has a few white hands working alongside the negroes. in this free open, in the breadth of the fields and the width of the turbid streams, alongside the endless procession of scenic forests in the background, one forgets the long hot days of toil, the scanty living, the ignorance and debasement. it may all be as sordid as the mines or the iron works, but it is in pure air. these thousands of broad acres with their mealy brown soil bearing the "cotton-weed" (the common name for the stalk after the cotton is picked) are a type of the lowland south from texas to north carolina. a plantation of somewhat different type is "sunny side" in arkansas, nearly opposite the city of greenville, miss. "sunny side" is supposed by some people to be extravagantly conducted because there are three or four good managers' houses on the estate, and because there is twenty-three miles of light railway track. considering that the plantation runs eight and a half miles along the river, and that all its products and supplies would otherwise need to be hauled, there is a reason for the railroad, whose one little locomotive fetches and carries like a well-trained dog; and it is a special privilege of all the people employed on the estate and of visitors to ride back and forth as their occasions require. "sunny side," with an adjacent estate under the same management, comprises about , acres, of which , acres, including broad hay lands and extensive corn fields, are under cultivation, and the remainder is in timber; considerable areas have been cleared in recent years. the annual cotton crop is about , bales. as on most plantations, the houses of the hands are distributed so that nobody has far to go to his work. twenty to thirty acres is commonly assigned to a family; more to a large family, and the lands rented at from $ to $ an acre, according to quality, with the usual plantation privileges of firewood, a house, and pasture for draft animals. here comes in one of the most important complications in cotton culture. northern wheat is usually grown by farmers tilling moderate-sized farms, either as owners or as money renters; a third or more of the cotton is raised in the same way by farmers or small planters who till for themselves or employ a few families of hands; and like the wheat farmers they look on the land as a tool. on the large plantations, where perhaps as many as a thousand people are busied on the crop, the manager looks upon the laborer simply as an element of production; you must have seed, rain, and the niggers in order to get a crop. even the most kind-hearted and conscientious plantation owner cannot avoid this feeling that the laborers are, like the live-stock, a part of the implements; he houses them, and if humane and far-sighted, he houses them better than the mules; he "furnishes them"--that is, he agrees to feed them and allow them necessities while the crop is making. all this is practically the factory system, with the unfavorable addition that the average plantation hand comes near the category of unskilled labor. a negro brought up on one plantation can do just as well in a plantation ten or a thousand miles away; and there is no subdivision of labor except for the few necessary mechanics. that is, cotton planting on a large plantation is an industrial enterprise requiring considerable capital, trained managers, and a large plant of buildings, tools, animals and negroes. a characteristic of cotton culture is that it requires attention and keeps the hands busy during the greater part of the year. the first process is to break the ground, which begins as early as january st, then about march or april the seed is dropped in long rows, and during the seeding season the rural schools are likely to stop so as to give the children the opportunity to help. in the seed there is great room for improvement; as yet the southern agricultural colleges seem to have made less impression on the cotton grower than their brethren in the northwestern states have made on the corn and wheat farming, for some large and otherwise intelligent planters make very little effort to select their seed. when the cotton is once up, it needs the most patient care, for it must be weeded and thinned and watched, and is gone over time after time. the "riders" or assistant managers are in the saddle all day long, and a prudent manager casts his eye on every plot of cultivated ground on his plantation every day; for it is easy to "get into the grass," and all but the best of the hands need to be kept moving. then comes the picking of the cotton, which lasts from august into february. it is a planter's maxim that no negro family can pick the cotton that it can raise, and extra help has to be found. here is one of the large items of expense in raising cotton, for the fields have to be gone over two, three, and sometimes four times, inasmuch as the cotton does not all mature at the same time, and if it did, no machine has ever been invented which is practical for picking cotton. it is hand work to the end of the year. there is a plantation saying that it takes thirteen months to make a cotton crop, and it is true that plowing for the next crop begins on some parts of the plantation before the last of the two or three pickings is completed on other parts. when picked, the cotton goes into little storehouses or into the cabins, until enough accumulates to keep the gin busy. everybody in the great cotton districts talks about "a bale to the acre" as a reasonable yield, but one of the richest counties of mississippi averages only half a bale, and the whole south averages about a third of a bale. what is a bale? the "seed cotton," so called, as it comes from the field, has the brown seeds in the midst of the fiber, and the first process is to gin it--that is to take out the seed, and at the same time to make it into the standard package for handling. this requires machinery, originally invented by that ingenious yankee schoolmaster, eli whitney. there are about , of these ginneries, some having one poor little old gin, others five or six of the latest machines side by side, with air suction and other labor-saving devices. it is an interesting sight to see the fluffy stuff wafted up into the gin with its row of saw-teeth, and then blown to the press, where a plunger comes down time after time until the man who runs it judges that about five hundred pounds have accumulated; then another plunger comes up from below; the rectangular mass thus formed is enveloped in rough sacking and fastened with iron cotton ties. the completed bale is then turned out, weighed, numbered, stamped, and recorded; and becomes one of the thirteen million units of the year's crop; but the number identifies it, and any particular bale of cotton may be traced back to the plantation from which it came and even to the negro family that raised it. sea island cotton has a much woodier plant, and the seed cotton contains less lint and more numerous although smaller seeds; hence it requires special picking, a special gin, cannot be so compressed, and must be much more carefully bagged. sea island cotton at cents a pound is thought to be no more profitable than the short staple at less than half the price. about a great effort was made to substitute a round bale, weighing about half as much as the standard bale, and in the output reached nearly a million. it is still a question whether that package is not an improvement, but the machinery was more expensive, complaints were made that the round bale was harder to stow for export; the railroad companies refused to give any advantage in freight rates; and the compressor companies, who are closely linked in with the railroads, were opposed to it altogether; and the round bale has almost disappeared from the south. only two per cent of the cotton is thus baled. one of the things remarked by duke bernhard of saxe weimar, when he visited the south in , was that the people seemed unaware that there was any value in cotton seed. some planters put it on the field as a fertilizer, where it has some value; others threw it away. during the last twenty years, however, the cotton seed has become a great factor in the production. about one third the weight of the seed cotton is seed, and its value is over one tenth that of the baled cotton. in the high cotton year of the cotton seed was thought to be worth nearly ninety millions. immense quantities go to the oil mills which are scattered through the south. besides the clear oil they produce oil cake which is used as a food for animals or a fertilizer. the seed practically adds something more than a cent a pound to the value of the product. chapter xix cotton hands so far cotton cultivation has been considered as though it were a crop which came of itself, like the rubber of the brazilian forests, but during a whole century the cultivation of cotton has had a direct influence on the labor system and the whole social organization of the south. such close relations sometimes exist in other commodities; for instance, the election of president mckinley, in , seems to have been determined by a sudden rise in the price of wheat; but cotton is socially and politically important every year, because upon it the greater part of the negro labor is employed, and to it a large portion of the white management and capital is devoted. furthermore, the conditions of the old slavery times are more nearly reproduced in the cotton field than anywhere else in the south. the old idea that the normal function of the african race is field labor is still vital; and the crude and unskilled mass of negroes still find employment in which they succeed tolerably well. as in slavery times, the cotton hands are more fixed in their locality than in other pursuits; they are less ambitious to move about, and find their way more close hedged in if they try to go elsewhere. the relation of the white man as task-master to the negro as a deferential class is still distinctly maintained; while the system of advances to laborers resembles the old methods of feeding the hands. the negro is not the sole cotton maker; fully one third of the cotton in the south is never touched by a black hand, being raised by small white farmers both in the lowlands and in the hill regions, who produce one, two, or more bales a year and depend upon that crop to pay their store bills. something like one sixth of the crop is raised by independent negro land owners or renters working for themselves; this leaves nearly or quite one half the crop to negro labor under the superintendence of white owners or managers. even where the negro is employed on wages, he looks on himself as part of the concern and expects due consideration in return for what stone calls the "proprietary interest he feels in the plantation at large, his sense of being part and parcel of a large plantation. then, too, there is his never-failing assurance of ability to pay his account, no matter how large, by his labor, when it is not too wet or too cold, his respect, and his implicit and generally cheerful obedience." inasmuch as more than half the negroes are raising cotton, and most of the others are working on farms, it is important to know what kind of laborers they make. it is the opinion of their greatest leader, booker washington, that the best place for the negro is in the rural south, and that he is not fitted for the strife of the great cities south or north. is he perfectly fitted for any service? is it true, as one of the employers of negroes alleges, that "their actions have no logical or reasonable basis, that they are notional and whimsical, and that they are controlled far more by their fancies than by their common sense?" in cotton culture there is little to elevate a man. one of the numerous errors flying about is that the slave in the cotton fields was a skilled laborer, and that there is intellectual training in planting, weeding, and picking. the owner or renter must of course accustom his mind to consider the important questions of the times of plowing and seeding, and he must submit to the anxiety which besets the farmer all over the world; but cotton culture is a monotonous thing, the handling of the few tools is at best a matter of dexterity, and the only man who gets an intellectual training out of it is the manager. when cotton is high, a plantation is a more or less speculative investment, and many people who save money put it into land and hire a manager. cotton broking and banking firms sometimes carry on plantations of their own. city bankers and heavy men get plantations on mortgage, or by purchase; and banks sometimes own too much of this kind of property. of course many planters run their own plantations; but on all large estates, and many small ones, there is a manager who is virtually the old overseer over again. commonly he is a good specimen of the lower class of the white population; in a very few cases he is a negro. successful managers command a salary as high as $ , a year or more, and have some opportunity to plant on their own account; business sense such a man must have, but above all he must be able to "handle niggers," an art in which, by common consent, most northern owners of cotton land are wanting. on a large plantation there will also be one or more assistant managers, commonly called "riders"; a bookkeeper, who may be an important functionary; a plantation doctor, sometimes on contract, sometimes times taking patients as they come and charging their bills on the books of the plantation. on one plantation employing a hundred and thirty italian families there is even a plantation priest. the manager subdivides the estate into plots, or "plows"--you hear the expression "he has a fifteen-plow farm"--of from ten to thirty-five acres, according to the number of working hands in the squad that takes it. a "one-mule farm" is about thirty acres. he settles what crop shall be grown; some insist that part of the acreage be planted in corn, others raise all the corn for the estate on land worked by day hands. the secret of success is unceasing watchfulness of all the details, and especially of the labor of the hands. outside of the administrative force and their families there are commonly no white people on a cotton plantation. the occasional white hands make the same kind of contracts, live in the same houses, and accept the same conditions as the negroes; but their number is small and they are likely to drift out either into cotton mills or into sawmill and timber work. the foreign agricultural laborers, as has been shown in the chapter on immigration, are few in number. the germans, the so-called austrians, the few bulgarians, greeks, syrians, and italians, all taken together, are probably less than , , and there seems little reason to suppose that their number will soon increase. the main source of plantation labor has always been the negroes who furnish about two million workers on other people's land, and with their families make up more than half of all the negroes in the united states. with their families--for the unit on the plantation is not a hand, but a family, or where three or four unmarried men or unmarried women work together, a gang. this practice, combined with the child labor in cotton mills, accounts for the large number of persons under fifteen years old--more than half the boys in some states--who are employed in gainful occupations. this is one of the most striking divergences from any kind of northern farming where plenty of farmers' wives ride the mowing machine, and farmers' sisters pick fruit, and farmers' children drop potatoes, where foreign women often work in garden patches, but where people do not habitually employ women and children at heavy field labor. the best negroes, unless they own land of their own, seek the form of contract most advantageous to themselves, paying either a money rent of two dollars to eight dollars an acre, or an equivalent cotton rent. it is generally believed that the renters are the people most likely to save money and buy property for themselves. in dunleith, mississippi, a crew of seven people came in with a hundred dollars' worth of property, and three years later went away with more than a thousand dollars' worth of accumulated stock, tools and personal property. a renter must have animals of his own, and is obliged to feed them and to keep up his tools. some planters find that renters leave them just as they are doing well, and that the land is skinned by them. in general, however, a negro who has the necessary mules can always find a chance to rent land. the share hand or cropper is next in point of thrift; the planter furnishes him house, wood, seed, animals, and implements; and at the end of the year the value of the crop is divided between owner and tenant, either half and half or "three fifths and four fifths," which means that the negro gets three fifths of the cotton and four fifths of the corn. a third class is the wage hands, who in general have not the ability to rent land on any terms; they receive a house and fuel, and wages, from fifteen dollars a month up to a dollar a day. where steady wage hands can be found, this is considered the best arrangement for the planter. renters and croppers may be supplemented by extra work, paid for by them, or charged to them. if they get into a tight place with their cotton, the manager sends wage hands to their aid, and at picking time all available help of all ages is scraped together and sent out according to the needs of the plantation. of course, a renter or a "cropper" may allow members of his family to work for others, if he cannot keep them busy. on some plantations tenants pay on an average nearly a hundred dollars a year for this extra help. during the five years from to there was a phenomenal demand for cotton hands, and planters were eager to get anybody that looked like work; hence the negro had the agreeable sensation of seeing people compete for him. of course, if, at the "change of the year" (january st), the negro moves to one planter, he moves away from another, and the man thus left behind has gloomy view of the fickleness and instability of the negro race. one of the best managed plantations in the delta of mississippi, supposed to be very profitable, has seen such a shift that at the end of five years hardly one of the original hands was on the place. other planters in that region equally successful in making money say that they have little or no trouble with negro families moving, and there seems no good reason to believe that they are more restless than any other laborers. it is, of course, highly discouraging for a planter who has made every effort by improved houses, just treatment and clear accounts, to satisfy his people, to see them slipping away to neighbors who are notoriously hard, unjust, and shifty. while he remains on a plantation, the negro feels, says a planter, "the certainty, in his own mind, that he himself is necessary to its success." it is this dissatisfaction with the negro laborer which has led to the efforts, described above, to bring in foreigners, efforts which have been so far quite unsuccessful, first, because the number of people that could be induced to come is too small to affect the south, and secondly, because few of them mean to remain as permanent day laborers. since the south seems better fitted than any other part of the earth for the cultivation of cotton, since at any price above six cents a pound there is some profit in the business, and at the prices prevailing during the last five years a large profit, it seems certain that the negro will be steadily desired as a cotton hand; and the question comes down to that suggested by nicholas worth: "there ought to be a thousand schools, it seemed to me, that should have the aim of hampton. else how could the negroes--even a small percentage of them--ever be touched by any training at all? and if they were not to be trained in a way that would make the cotton fields cleaner and more productive, how should our upbuilding go on? for it must never be forgotten that the very basis of civilization here is always to be found in cotton." if the master sometimes is dissatisfied with the laborer, the negro in his turn has his own complaints, which booker washington has summed up as follows: "poor dwelling-houses, loss of earnings each year because of unscrupulous employers, high-priced provisions, poor schoolhouses, short school terms, poor school-teachers, bad treatment generally, lynchings and whitecapping, fear of the practice of peonage, a general lack of police protection, and want of encouragement." in this list several of the items refer to the plantation system of accounts, which cannot be understood without some explanation of the advance system. in slavery times plantation owners got into the habit of spending their crop before it was grown, and that is still the practice of by far the greater number of cotton planters and farmers, large and small. in flush times agents of large cotton brokers and wholesale establishments literally press check books into the hands of planters and invite them to use credit or cash to their hearts' content. there is some justification in the system as applied to cotton culture, which over large areas is the only sale crop; and under which (for the same system runs down to the very bottom) the planters themselves are in the habit of making advances to their tenants and hands. the white and negro land owner commonly make arrangements "to be furnished" by the nearest country storekeeper; or by a store or bank, or white friend in the nearest city. on the plantation, the planter himself commonly furnishes his own hands, and has a store or "commissary" for that purpose. neither banker nor planter expects to lose money; both are subject to heavy deductions by the failure of planters and the departure of hands, and hence they recoup themselves from those who will pay. the effect is, of course, that when the cotton is sold and accounted for, the planter and his hand alike may not have any surplus to show, and begin the new year in debt. and the same round may be gone over again year by year during a lifetime. the system is enforced by lien loans, through which the crop is the security for the loan, and in addition it is customary for the small farmer to mortgage mules, tools, and whatever else he may have. as stone explains: "the factor's method of self-protection is to take a deed of trust on the live stock and prospective crop, and is the same whether the applicant be a two-mule negro renter, or the white owner of a thousand acres of land, wanting ten thousand dollars of advances.... there is, however, this difference: the white man gets his advances in cash, available at stated intervals, while the negro gets the most of his in the shape of supplies." many people believe that the whole crop lien system is an incentive to debt, that if it were abolished people would have to depend upon their character and credit; and hence a determined effort was made in south carolina in to repeal the lien law outright. the obvious defects of this system, the tendency to extravagance, the not knowing where you stand, the prevention of saving habits, are aggravated for the negro because the white man keeps the books. the negro is accustomed to be charged prices which in many cases are a half higher than the cash price of the same article in the nearby stores; he knows that there will be an interest charge at the rate of from ten per cent to forty per cent on his running account, and he suspects (sometimes with reason) that the bookkeeping is careless or fraudulent. some planters make a practice of ending the settlement of every account with a row, and the consequent frame of mind of the negro is illustrated by a stock story. a negro has been trading with a local merchant and goes to a new store because they offer twelve pounds of sugar for a dollar instead of ten. on his way back he passes the old place, where they ask him in, weigh up his sugar, and show him that he has actually only nine pounds instead of twelve. "yes, boss, dat's so, but after all, perhaps he didn't get the best of it; while he was weighing out that sugar, i slips dis yere pair of shoes into my basket." the story precisely illustrates the futility of cheating the negro; for whenever he thinks his accounts are juggled, he will see to it that his labor is no more conscientious than the bookkeeper's. many of the really long-headed planters see that the less the relations of employer and hand are matters of favor, and the more they become affairs of business, the easier it will be to get on with their hands. many of them have a fixed basis for advances, not more than about fifteen dollars a month for a family, and that in provisions only; others keep no book accounts for such advances, but issue coupon books of say fifteen dollars every month. a few pay their wage hands and give out the advances in cash, allowing people to buy where they will. a very few decline to have anything to do with advances in any form; but inasmuch as the negroes must eat, in such cases the hands usually get somebody else to furnish them. some planters close up their accounts at the end of the year, compelling the negroes to turn in whatever they have in property to close out their accounts, and then start in afresh. all these are only palliatives; the net effect of the system of advances to hands is to accentuate the industrial character of the cotton plantation. a big plantation in central alabama or the delta of mississippi cannot be compared with any northern farms, nor even with the great ranches of california; it is very like a coal mine back in a cove of the mountains of pennsylvania; the same forlorn houses, the same company store, the same system of store orders and charges; only the coal mine sells its product from day to day and pays any differences in cash at the end of the month, while the cotton hand must wait till his particular bale is sold at the end of the season, before he can draw his profit. the negro is therefore less likely than the miner to lay tip money, and is even more at the mercy of the company's bookkeeper. here is an actual annual account of a plantation family in the delta of mississippi, two adults and one child, poor workers: -------------------------------------------- | debit | | credit ------------|--------|-------------|-------- doctor | $ . | cotton | $ . mule | . | cotton seed | . clothing | . | | rations | . | |-------- feed | . | | $ . rent | . | | extra labor | . | |-------- seed | . | | ginning | . | | cash down | . | debit. | $ . |--------| | | . | | $ . -------------------------------------------- these people got their living and sixty-six dollars in cash and credit during the year; but the charge for extra labor shows that they were shiftless and did not work out their own crop. on the same plantation an industrious family of three adults and one child earned in a year $ , of which $ was net cash. an examination of various plantation accounts reveals the fact that the actual earnings of the negro hands, if industrious, are considerably greater than the average for the pennsylvania miners, but of course the whole family works in the fields. the renters could do still better if they had money enough to carry them through the year; on a prosperous plantation in arkansas, only about one fortieth of all the negro gangs kept off the books of the company and drew their earnings in cash at the end of the year, while two thirds of the italians employed on the same plantation had no store accounts. in fact there is some complaint that the italians club together and buy their provisions at wholesale. the advance system is complicated by a system of "christmas money." you hear planters bitterly cursing the negroes who have demanded $ , $ , or $ to spend at christmas time, as though the money were not charged against the negro to be deducted at the end of the year; and as though it were not so advanced in order to induce the negro to make a contract with them. many planters refuse to give christmas money and yet fill up their plantation houses. it is all part of a vicious system; the wage hands have to be paid somehow, though often not completely paid up till the end of the year; the share hands and renters are carried by the planter because they always have been carried; and because bad planters can take advantage of this opportunity to squeeze their hands. the difficulty is one known in other lands; in ceylon, for instance, the laborers on tea and rubber estates draw advances, carry debts which have to be assumed by a new employer, trade at a "caddy," which is the same thing as a commissary, and complain of the accounts. the system is just as vicious for the small land owners both negro and white. most southern states under their crop lien law allow the growing crop to be mortgaged for cash or advances, and hence any farmer has credit for supplies or loans up to the probable value of the crop when marketed. that value is variable, the advances are clogged with interest and overcharges, and the whole system is a heavy draft on the country. there are money sharks in the southern country as well as in the northern cities, and many scandalous transactions. one man in alabama has , negroes on his books for loans, in some cases for a loan of $ with interest charges of $ . a month. cases have been known where a negro brought to a plantation his mules and stock, worked a season, and at the end saw all his crop of cotton taken, and his property swept up, including the mules, which are exempt by law. many back plantations take the seed for the ginning--that is, they exact more than twice what the service is worth. a negro has been known to borrow say $ ; when it was not paid, the white lender seized on all his possessions, and without going through any legal formality gave him credit for $ , leaving the balance of the debt hanging over his head. a peddler has been known to insist on leaving a clock at the house of a poor colored woman who protested that she did not want a clock, could not afford a clock and would not take a clock. the man drove off, returned some months later, demanded payment for the clock which was just where he left it, never having been started, and when the money was not forthcoming proceeded to take away the woman's chickens--her poor little livelihood. she ran to a white neighbor, who came back with her and turned the scoundrel out. there is first and last much of this advantage taken of the ignorance and poverty of the negro; a certain type of planter declares that he can make more money out of an ignorant black than out of an educated one. as one of the white friends of the colored race in the south says, the negroes must receive at least sufficient education to enable them to protect themselves against such exaction. considering the immense importance of cotton to the south, it is amazing how wasteful is its culture and its distribution. experts say that a great part of the cost of fertilizers could be saved by cultivating the cow pea. about six per cent of the value of the fiber--a trifle of forty million dollars--is seriously injured by ginning. comparatively few farmers or planters select their seed, though several of the southern agricultural colleges have set up cotton schools, and the president of the mississippi agricultural and mechanical college has actually begun to hold farmers' institutes for the negro farmers. the cotton bale is probably the most careless package used for a valuable product. it sometimes literally drops to pieces before it reaches the consumer; and of course the grower, in the long run, loses by the poor quality or the poor packing of his product. the grading of cotton requires that a large quantity be brought together in one place, and the small grower gets little advantage out of improvement in his staple. what the south most needs in cotton is the improvement of the labor. as president hardy, of the mississippi agricultural college, says: "so many of our negroes are directing their own work that their efficiency must be preserved and increased or great injury will result to our whole economic system. the prosperity of our section as a whole is affected by the productive capacity of every individual in our midst. the negro's inefficiency is a great financial drain on the south, and i believe this farmers' institute work for the negro is the beginning of a permanent policy that will be very far-reaching in its results. there is no doubt that this is one of the ways of increasing the cotton production of the country that has heretofore received very little attention." it remains to consider the relation of the race question to cotton manufacture. long before the civil war it was seen that the southern staple was being sent to foreign countries and to the north to be manufactured, and that the south was buying back its own material in cotton goods; therefore some cotton mills were constructed in the south. the labor in these mills seems to have been entirely white, but their product, which was of the coarser qualities, was never large enough to control the market. about came a new era of cotton manufacture, aided first by the extension of the railway system, second by the development of water power, and third by the discovery that the poor whites make a tolerable mill population. hence grew up a chain of flourishing factory towns, most of them on or near the "fall line," so as to take advantage of the water powers, and there has been a steady growth of southern manufactures. in the southern mills worked up only , bales, which was one fifth of the staple used for manufactures in the united states. twenty years later they were making up , , bales, which was one half the consumption. the state of south carolina alone in produced manufactures to the amount of $ , , . the first thing to notice in this manufacture is that the mill hands are still exclusively white. several efforts have been made in columbia, charleston, and elsewhere to carry on cotton mills with negro labor, and a few negro capitalists have built mills in which they expected to employ people of their own race; but every one of these experiments seems to have been a failure, partly because of the ignorance of the average negro who could be drawn into the industry, and partly because of his irregularity. the poor whites do not make by any means the best mill help, and their output of yards per hand is considerably less than that in the northern states. the supply of white labor also shows signs of depletion, though mountain whites are being brought down; it is still a question whether they will settle in the new places, or whether after they have saved money they will return to their mountains. hence the frantic efforts to bring in mill hands from outside the south. northern hands will not accept a lower wage scale and do not like the social conditions. it is plain that the southern cotton manufacture is entirely dependent upon the supply of native white labor. notwithstanding the great growth of cotton manufacture in the south, the fine qualities are still made elsewhere; and the capital employed, the total wages paid, and the value of output are much greater in the north. the value of the product in south carolina rose between and from $ , , to $ , , , but in the same period the value in massachusetts rose from $ , , to $ , , . the output of cotton goods in columbia, $ , , is less than half the output of nashua, new hampshire. the new england states still furnish nearly one half the output of cotton manufactures, measured by value. the northern states as a whole pay $ , , a year for wages against $ , , in the south; and their product is $ , , against $ , , in the south. it is evident, therefore, that the scepter for cotton manufacture has not yet passed into the hands of the south. the discussion of the economic forces and tendencies of the south in the last three chapters may now be briefly recapitulated. the south is a prosperous and advancing region on the highway to wealth, but advancing rather more slowly than other agricultural sections of the country, and in material wealth far behind the west and farther behind the middle states and new england. it will be several decades before the south can possibly have as much accumulation as that now in possession of the region which most resembles it in the united states, the middle west and far west. of its sources of wealth, the timber is temporary, mining and iron making limited in area. the chief employment must always be agriculture, and particularly cotton. cotton culture on a large scale, as now carried on, is an industrial enterprise in which the laborer is likely to be exploited. the advance system is a curse to the south, inciting to extravagance and leading to dreams of wealth not yet created; it is especially bad for the negro, who is at his best as a renter, or still more as the owner of land. economically the progress of the negro laborer is very slow, but he is absolutely necessary to the welfare of the south, for no substitute can be discerned. chapter xx peonage from the earlier chapters on the negroes and on the cotton hands it is plain that the southern agricultural laborer is unsatisfactory to his employer, and not happy in himself; that the two races, though allied, are yet in disharmony. of recent years a new or rather a renewed cause of race hostility has been found, because the great demand for labor, chiefly in the cotton fields, gives rise to the startling abuse of a system of forced labor, commonly called peonage, which at the mildest is the practice of thrashing a hand who misbehaves on the plantation, and in its farthest extent is virtually slavery. for this system the white race is solely accountable, inasmuch as it is the work of white men, sometimes under the protection of laws made by white legislatures, and always because of an insufficient public sentiment among white people. when the slaves were set free, the federal government was careful to protect them against a relapse into bondage. the thirteenth amendment, which went into effect in , absolutely prohibited "slavery or involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." in addition, in , an act of congress formally prohibited "the system known as peonage." a further statue of declared it a crime "to kidnap or carry away any other person with intent to hold him in involuntary servitude." the word "peonage" comes from the mexican system of serfdom, the principle of which is, that if an employee owes his master he must continue to serve him until that debt is paid, the only escape being that if another employer is willing to come forward and assume the debt the employee is allowed to transfer his obligation to the new master. in practice, the system amounts to vassalage, inasmuch as the debt is usually allowed to reach a figure which there is no hope of paying off. the term "involuntary servitude" is clear enough, and it is a curious fact that when the philippine islands were annexed there was a system of slavery in the sulu archipelago which was actually recognized by a treaty made by general bates; but the federal government dropped the treaty, and there is no doubt that the united states courts would uphold any sulu bondman who sought his liberty under the thirteenth amendment. in some of the southern states passed vagrant laws under which negroes were obliged to make a labor contract for a year, and could be compelled to carry out that contract; and the belief in the north that these statutes were virtually intended to reënslave the freedmen was one of the mainsprings of the fourteenth amendment and the other reconstruction legislation. inasmuch as the raising of cotton requires almost continuous labor, it is customary to make voluntary contracts with both renters and wage hands running for a year, commonly from the first of january; and breach of contract is a special grief and loss to the planter, inasmuch as if a negro throws up a crop it is often impossible to find anybody else to finish it. hence has grown up almost unconsciously a practice which closely resembles the mexican peonage. it is unwritten law among some planters that nobody must give employment for the remainder of the year to a hand who is known to have left his crop on another plantation; and still further, that no contract should be made at the beginning of the year with a family which, after accounting for the previous crop, is still in debt to a neighbor, except that the new employer may pay the old debt and charge it as an advance against the hand. there is nowhere any legal sanction of this widespread practice, but the result is that thousands of negroes are practically fastened to their plantation because nobody else in the neighborhood will give them employment; and far too many planters therefore make it a point to keep their hands in debt. this system grew up slowly and attracted little attention till it began to be applied to whites. during the last ten years the south has been opening up sawmills and lumber camps, often far back in the wilderness. in order to get men either from the south or the north, it was necessary to prepay their fare, which was subsequently taken out of their wages. hence the proprietors of those camps felt that they had a claim on the men's service, and in some cases kept them shut up in stockades. for instance, in , a hungarian named trudics went down to lockhart, texas, receiving $ . for railroad fare, on an agreement to work for $ . a day. he did not like the work and thought he had been deceived as to the terms; whereupon he used a freedman's privilege of bolting. he was trailed with bloodhounds by one gallagher, caught, brutally whipped by the boss, and driven back, as he said, "like a steer at the point of a revolver." similar cases have been reported from various parts of the south, involving both native americans and foreigners; the latter have sometimes had the special advantage of aid from the diplomatic representatives of their country. inasmuch as some of the state courts were unwilling to take action, cases were brought before the federal courts under the peonage act of . thus, though the personal abuse of trudics by gallagher was a state offense which seems to have escaped punishment, the violent laying of hands on him and restraint of his liberty was made a case before a federal court; and gallagher was sent to prison for three months. it is plain that if foreigners and white northerners can be practically enslaved, the same thing may happen to white southerners; this and other like convictions have had a good effect. quite beyond the injustice of the practice, it has been a damage to the south because it checks a possible current of immigration. in an attempt was made to show a case of peonage of italians on the sunny side plantation, arkansas. it proved that one of the hands had grown dissatisfied and started to greenville to take a train for the wide world, leaving unpaid a debt of about a hundred dollars at the commissary. one of his employers followed him to the station and told him that if he attempted to leave he would arrest him for breach of contract; whereupon the man returned to the plantation. this was certainly not peonage, and the grand jury consequently refused to indict; but it was an attempt to enforce specific performance of a labor contract. peonage of whites seems to have about come to an end; it was not stopped, however, by public opinion in the south, and it still goes on through the holding in bondage of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of negroes, either in unabashed defiance of law or through the means of cruelly harsh and unjust laws, aided by bad judges. in the first place, many planters assume that a negro who is on the debit side on their books has no right to leave the plantation, even for a few days, and as one of them expressed it to me: "if he goes away, i just go and get him." a case recently occurred in monroe, la., where some colored men were brought from texas by one cole on the assurance that they were to be employed in arkansas. instead they were switched off and set to work in louisiana. one of them departed and made his way to texas, but his master followed him, seized him, brought him back in defiance of all law, and set him at work again. the master was tried for peonage in texas, but was not convicted. one of the worst criminal cases of this kind is that of john w. pace, of dade city, ala., who not only shut in his own people, but would seize any black that chanced along that way and compel him to work for him a few days. judge thomas g. jones, who in was put on the federal bench in that state, made it his business to follow up pace; when a jury declined to convict him, the judge rated them soundly; another case was made out and pace thought it prudent to plead guilty, and was sentenced to fifty-five years in the penitentiary. the supreme court of the united states affirmed the constitutionality of the peonage law and pace threw up his hands; then, on the request of the judge, the president pardoned him. these and some like convictions have shaken the system of confining men because the employer thinks that otherwise they will go away. nevertheless, under cover of iniquitous state laws, peonage of negroes goes on steadily, first by a most unjust enforcement of various special state statutes which require agricultural labor contracts to be made in writing, and to run for a year. the illiterate negro often does not know what he is signing, and if he did know might see no means of helping himself. it is difficult to contrive a legal penalty for a negro who simply leaves his contract and goes off; he might be arrested and held for debt, since almost all such hands owe their employer for supplies or money; but all the southern states have constitutional provisions against imprisonment for debt. the difficulty is ingeniously avoided by most of the states in the lower south, which make it a punishable offense to draw advances on "false pretenses"; thereby a hand who attempts to leave while in debt to his master can be arrested as a petty criminal. but how is it provable that the negro might not intend to return and carry out his contract? in alabama the legislature, with intent to avoid the federal peonage law, has provided that the acceptance of an advance and the subsequent nonperformance of the contract shall be proof presumptive of fraudulent intent _at the time of making the contract_. now the employer can follow his absconding hand by a process thus described by a planter. you arrest him on the criminal charge of false pretenses, which is equivalent to a charge of stealing the money; you get him convicted; he is fined, and in lieu of money to pay the fine he goes to jail; then you pay the fine and costs and the judge assigns him to you to work out the fine, and you have him back on your plantation, backed up by the authority of the state. let a few actual illustrations, all based on southern testimony, show what is done under such a system. a woman borrows six dollars of a neighboring planter, who afterwards makes a demand for the money. as it is not paid, he sets up without further ceremony the pretense that she is obliged to work for him, refuses to receive back the money which her present employer furnishes her, and attempts to compel her to labor. in south carolina a man starts to leave his employer, asserting that he has paid up his debt; the employer denies it; the man is brought into court and fined thirty dollars, and in lieu of the money goes back to the same servitude, this time hopeless. a negro in alabama makes a contract january st and takes $ . earnest money, and works until may; the master refuses to give him a house. he works two months more, and then leaves, is arrested for breach of contract, and the courts hold that the acceptance of that five dollars proves that he did not mean to carry out his contract, although he has worked seven months. a woman makes a labor contract; and before it expires marries a man whom she had never met at the time of making her contract; held, that her marriage proves that she did not mean to carry out the contract when she made it, and she is therefore guilty of false pretenses. even without a contract a negro may be legally obliged to labor for a white man under vagrancy laws, by which negroes who are not visibly supporting themselves may be convicted for that crime, and then sent to the county farm, or hired out to somebody who will pay their fine. once in the hands of a master, they are helpless. for instance, one glenny helms, who was apparently guilty of no offense, was in arrested, fined and sold to one turner, who in this case thought it prudent to plead guilty of peonage. the son of this turner was the agent in the most frightful case of peonage as yet recorded. a woman was accused of a misdemeanor; it is doubtful whether she had committed any; but at any rate she was fined fifteen dollars; turner paid the fine; she was assigned to him and he set her to the severe labor of clearing land. and then what happened? what was a hustling master to do with a woman who would not pile brush as fast as the men brought it, but to whip her, and if she still did not reform, to whip her again, and when she still would not do the work, to string her up by the wrists for two hours, and when she still "shirked," god almighty at last came to the rescue; she was dead! when they tried to prosecute the man for murder in the state courts, the sheriff of the county (who was in the gang) came to the other slaves who had seen this, as they were summoned to the grand jury, and told them that if they gave any damaging testimony "we will put you in the river." such things happen occasionally in all civilized lands. as dreadful a crime was committed in paterson, new jersey, not many years ago; but there are two differences between the bosschieter and the turner cases. those jersey murderers were all convicted; that man turner walks the earth, unmolested, not even lynched. the public sentiment of new jersey was clear that an offense against the humblest foreigner was an offense against the commonwealth; but the blood of that poor black woman cries in vain to the courts of alabama; and the thousands of people down there who feel furious about such matters are so far helpless. the states by their statutes of false pretenses are partners in those iniquities, but the federal government has done its best in prosecutions. between fifty and a hundred indictments have been brought. federal judge boyd, of north carolina, said of his district: "there has been evidence here of cruelty so excessive as to put to shame the veriest barbarian that ever lived." federal judge brawley, of south carolina, has held void an act of that state making breach of labor contract a misdemeanor. convictions have been obtained in half a dozen states, and it is altogether likely that the supreme court of the united states will confirm this good work by holding invalid all state statutes which attempt to enforce a debt by sending a man to prison, or still more by selling his services to a master. here, as in so many other phases of this question, the troublous thing is not that there should be cruelty and oppression or servitude. gangs of italians under a padrone in the north are sometimes little better than bondmen. masters of almshouses and reform schools will sometimes be brutal unless their institutions are frequently and carefully inspected. the real difficulty is that the superior race permits its laws and courts to be used for the benefit of cruel and oppressive men; that public sentiment did not prevent the peonage trials by making the cases impossible; that a federal judge in alabama should be assailed by members of the bar and members of congress because he stopped these practices. peonage is an offense which cannot be committed by negroes; it requires the capital, the prestige, and the commercial influence of white men. the federal government has instituted investigations of these practices, and assistant attorney general russell has urged the passing of such federal statutes as shall distinctly reach these cases of detention; and also the amendment of the state laws so as to take away the authority to transfer the services of anyone from the state to an individual. this last is a reform of which there is especial need. most of the cases of peonage arise out of the practice of selling the specific services of a convict to an individual; and it carries with it practically the right to compel such a person to work by physical force. what is to be done with a bondman who refuses to touch a hoe, except to whip him, and to keep on whipping him till he yields? the guards and wardens of prisons in the south use the lash freely, but they are subject at least to nominal inspection and control. to transfer the distasteful privilege to a contractor or farmer is to restore the worst incidents of slavery. sympathy must be felt for the planters and employers who make their plans, offer good wages, give regular employment, and see their profits reduced or eliminated because they cannot get steady labor. much of the peonage is simply a desperate attempt to make men earn their living. the trouble is that nobody is wise enough to invent a method of compelling specific performance of a labor contract which shall not carry with it the principle of bondage. men enlisted in the army and navy may be tracked, arrested, and punished if they break their contracts--but they cannot be lashed into shouldering a gun or cooking a meal. sailors are, by the peculiar conditions of isolation at sea, subject to being put in irons for refusing to obey an order--but the cat has disappeared from the legal arguments to do their duty. it is the concomitant of freedom that the private laborer shall not be compelled to work by force; there is no way by which the south can cancel that triumph of civilization, the exercise of free will. when will people learn the good old puritan lesson that the power to do well involves the power to refuse well doing? that you cannot offer the incitement of free labor without including the possibility of the laborer preferring to be idle? chapter xxi white education "the most progressive nations have now definitely come to the conclusion that there is no mode of increasing industrial and commercial efficiency so effective as universal education sufficiently prolonged to effect permanent improvement in the observing and reasoning powers of the children." so said that primate of american education, president eliot, in an address at tuskegee, ala. though speaking before an audience chiefly composed of colored people, he was laying down a general principle, for he goes on to say that in the southern states "for both whites and blacks the school time is too short; a large proportion of the children leave school at too early an age; well-trained teachers are lacking; and the range and variety of accessible instruction are too small. hence a large proportion of both the white race and the black race in the south are in urgent need of better facilities for education." this is one point of view; at the other extremity stand such men as a southern editor who has recently written, "as an educational influence the investment of $ , in a cotton mill is worth ten times the $ , given a southern college." what does the south as a whole think on this question of education? what are its needs? what has it so far done? what is it prepared to do? how does education affect the race question? throughout the south there has been and still persists an excellent tradition of reading and of education among the classes which may be presumed to afford such advantages for their children. classical allusions and quotations from scripture and shakespeare are still recognized by all well-educated men. some of the few fine old plantation houses contain elegantly appointed libraries, stopping short, however, at the year , or whenever the owner died. the city of charleston has better bookstores than the city of albany. probably more people in north carolina can comment on shakespeare than in maine; and the man who can read horace without a pony and quote greek without looking at the book is a public character. besides this admiration for an old-fashioned learning that is now passing, the south feels a genuine and lively interest in what goes on in the world. the present generation of fairly well-to-do people travel more, see more, read more that is written in their own time, think more than did their fathers and grandfathers. they feel a genuine interest in education, put intelligent thought on methods, show respect for the colleges, are willing to spend money on schools. like england in the eighteenth century the south abounded in readers of good literature, while the land was full of ignorance. though in early virginia suggestions were made for free common schools, and thomas jefferson strenuously advocated them, though in the forties and fifties several southern states had elaborate paper systems of schools, outside the large cities there were no graded schools open to all white children such as were familiar in the north after . even new orleans waited for good school buildings till the fortunate bequest of mcdonogh; as for free rural schools, not a single southern state had organized and set in operation a system before the civil war. from the first the sparse settlement of the south, the presence of the negro, and the lack of that commercial connection with the rest of the world which so arouses the human mind, made it difficult and perhaps impossible to found a system of general popular education in that region. for the higher education of the dominant class much more was done. beginning with william and mary in --the first colonial college except harvard--many colleges were established. the first state university was north carolina, founded in ; the first american university of the german type was the university of virginia, which began operations in ; the first institution to introduce coeducation was blount college, which, about , conferred the degree of a.b. upon a woman. but for various reasons there never were money enough, students enough, and trained educators enough to man the southern colleges that were founded; and secondary schools to feed the colleges were lacking. the girls had a few boarding schools, some of which were called colleges by courtesy, but their education was superficial. many students who could afford it found their way to northern colleges, and that is why john c. calhoun, the apostle of slavery, was a yale graduate, and barnwell rhett, the protagonist of secession, was a graduate of harvard. after the civil war came a dismal period, when some of the old universities were closed for want of means and of professors who could take the oath of allegiance. the training of the children of the best families at that period has been thus described by one who experienced it: "the schools that i attended--may god forgive the young women who one after another taught the children of the sparsely settled neighborhood--were farces and frauds. there was no public school.... we lived in sort of a secluded training place for southern gentlemen.... we never saw a newspaper.... the professor of mathematics--so a rumor ran--was a freethinker. he was said to have read darwin and become an evolutionist. but the report was not generally believed; for, it was argued, even if he had read darwin, a man of his great intellect would instantly see the fallacy of that doctrine and discard it." one of the few benefits conferred by the reconstruction governments was a system of general public schools nominally open to every child in city or country; but just as the education of negroes and poor whites was beginning, the schools were separated for the two races, and the negroes were cut off from southern white teachers. to start the new system there was no tradition of public school training and management, little sense of public duty in laying sufficient taxes, and the south was very poor. hence it was about before the south put into operation a general educational system, supported by public taxation. the most recent statistics available (for ) show over , , common school pupils in the south, besides , pupils in private schools, , pupils in public high schools, and , more in private secondary schools; , students in public and private universities, colleges and schools of technology. every southern state has now worked out some system of both rural and urban public schools, and several of them have a sizable state school fund which is distributed among the districts. the ordinary type of rural school is practically the district school of the north over again. city schools are graded in the usual fashion. most states have a state superintendent of education, and the more progressive communities like louisiana are introducing county superintendents with power to compel good schools. surely with so many people and so much money, all must be happy in the south. it is an educational army, with common school infantry, secondary school cavalry, and in the institutions of higher learning the heavy artillery and the big guns. yet it is an army in which every division, brigade, and regiment is divided into two camps, in which spear clashes on shield, for hardly anything in the south so brings out into relief the race question as the problem of education, and especially of negro education. the reconstruction governments made no provision for public high schools, but the growth of towns and cities in the south and the need of preparatory schools for the colleges, and the public sense of the value of secondary education, have compelled the founding of a great number of such schools, both for girls and boys. normal schools have also developed till there are with over , students. the colleges are also flourishing; and of professional schools the south has more than , with above , students. a rough measure of the need of education is the statistics of illiteracy, which in the reports of the united states commissioner of education is defined as the status of a person over ten years of age who is able neither to read nor to write. such illiterates in germany are about one per cent of the population; in england about six per cent; in the whole of the united states about ten per cent. the various states of the union show great variations: in nebraska in it was two per cent; and the lowest southern state, missouri, with six per cent, showed a greater proportion of illiterates than any of northern states; while the highest communities on the list, from arkansas with twenty per cent to louisiana with thirty-eight per cent, are all southern but two. of , , persons sufficiently old to be capable of both reading and writing in some language in the united states in , , , were illiterate, of whom about , , lived in the south; of the most illiterate states and territories, are southern, the worst being alabama, south carolina, and louisiana, in all of which more than a third of the population was illiterate. this alarming state of things is not due wholly to the negro race; out of , , blacks at least ten years of age, , , , or forty-eight per cent, were illiterate; out of , , whites, , , , or eleven per cent, were illiterates. the white illiterates, with all the advantages of their superior race, were half as numerous as the negroes! out of , , white children of school age, , , or ten and a half per cent, could not read or write; out of , , colored children of the same age, , were illiterate, which is twenty-five per cent. for both races this proportion of illiterates is steadily diminishing; and that is the effect of the schools and of nothing else. never again will the south see a generation like the present, in which many adults have had no opportunity, or have neglected the opportunity of going to school when children. these figures accord with the experience of other states; for instance, new hampshire in was as illiterate as missouri was in ; and in both states illiteracy is steadily decreasing. as for the southern poor whites, it is true, as murphy says, that they have a potentiality of education. "i find no hopelessness in it, because it is the illiteracy, not of the degenerate, but simply of the unstarted. our unlettered white people are native american in stock, virile in faculty and capacity, free in spirit, unbroken, uncorrupted, fitted to learn." the gross figures of illiteracy are misleading, because the old people who cannot now be taught to read and write reduce the general average against the children who are learning the arts of intelligence. the percentage of colored illiterates in the whole of the united states in was forty-four per cent as against seventy per cent in ; in louisiana the percentage runs up to sixty-one per cent; but the negroes between ten years old and twenty-five show only about thirty per cent of illiteracy, and that proportion is steadily decreasing. in the illiterate children from ten to fourteen years of age were in mississippi only twenty-two per cent. with reasonably good schools and proper laws for compulsory attendance illiteracy may be expected to sink to about the figures of other civilized nations. this raises at once the question of the actual efficiency of the schools in the south, their comparison with other parts of the country, their probable effect upon the future of the region. the ability to write one's name and to read a few words is only the beginning of education; the real educational question in the south is, what are the schools doing beyond the rudiments of the three r's? some light is thrown on that question by comparing the school statistics of the lower south with those of a block of similar western and northwestern agricultural communities from indiana to utah: , , southerners have , , children of school age (five years to eighteen), of whom , , are enrolled and the average daily attendance is , , ; , , northerners with , , children (a million less than the equivalent south) enroll , , and have a daily attendance of , , . the southern group has , teachers; the northern, , . the value of southern school property is $ , , ; of northern, $ , , , or over four times as much. the southern school revenue is $ , , ; the northern, $ , , . the average expenditure per pupil attending in the south is under $ . ; in the north nearly $ . . the south spent about cents on each hundred dollars of valuation; the north spent about cents. when the whole south together, including such rich states as maryland and missouri, is compared with an equivalent population group in the north, the figures are more favorable to that section: , , southerners furnished an average daily attendance of , , children; the same number in the north furnished , , . the south has , teachers; the north, , . the total value of southern school property is $ , , ; of northern, $ , , . a comparison of per-capita expenditure in the year showed an average school tax in the united states of $ . per head; but not a single state south of washington raised above $ . . alabama raised only cents, and even the rich state of texas only about $ . , as against $ . in north dakota. tennessee spent $ , , a year in public education; wisconsin, with an equivalent population, spent $ , , ; south carolina, with a population nine tenths that of california, spent one eighth as much. the state of mississippi spent $ . per pupil annually; the state of vermont spent $ . . inasmuch as the negroes contribute several million school children and not very much in taxes, it will be instructive to compare the , , whites of the lower south with , , northwestern whites, in those forms of education which are referable chiefly to the whites. the lower south, on this basis, furnished in , pupils in public secondary schools against , in the equivalent north; the secondary school plants in the south cost $ , , ; in the north $ , , . the college students in the south were , ; in the north, , . the southern college income was $ , , ; the northern, $ , , . here, again, the comparison of the whole south with million whites against equivalent millions in the northwest is somewhat more favorable. the secondary plant costs $ , , against $ , , in the north. the normal schools of the south have an income of $ , , , those of the north $ , , . the southern college students are , against , ; and the college income, $ , , against $ , , . the inevitable inference from these figures is that the south still needs to bring up its equipment and its expenditure if it is to educate as efficiently as its neighbors; and this presumption is strengthened by observation of schools of various grades. the southern city schools are good, especially in the former border states; st. louis, baltimore, and louisville come close up to cleveland, indianapolis, and st. paul in the outward evidences of educational progress. statistical comparison of a group of southern cities with a group of northern cities of the same aggregate population shows that in externals they are not far apart; the northern schools have more schoolrooms, more teachers and more plant, but the annual expenditures are about as large in the southern as in the northern group. the rural white schools are a different matter. it is, to be sure, nearly thirty years since old bill williams explained why there was no school in the clover bottom district in the kentucky mountains: "they couldn't have no school because there wasn't nary door or winder in the schoolhouse. i've got that door and winder, and i paid a dollar for 'em; but i've been keeping 'em, you see, because there was trouble about the title. jim harris gin us that land, and we 'lowed 'twas all right, because it belonged to his gran'ther and he was the favorite grandson; but when the old man died it 'peared like he had willed it to somebody else; and i wouldn't put no door nor winder into no schoolhouse where there ain't no title, and there hain't been no school there sence. you want to know when all that trouble happened 'bout the title? i reckon it was fifteen or twenty year ago." there are still just such schools or rather such no schools in many parts of the south. even in prosperous regions, buildings, apparatus, and teacher may be alike, dirty and repellent. take, for instance, mt. moriah school in coosa county, alabama. the building is twenty-five feet square, inclosing a single room with two windows and two doorways, one of them blocked up. in the middle is an iron stove, around which on a winter's day are parked four benches in a hollow square, upon which, or studying in the corner, huddle and wriggle twenty-three pupils, ranging from seven up to twenty-one years of age. they are reading physiology aloud, in the midst of the gaunt room, with very little in the way of blackboards or materials. an example of the better district schoolhouse is in a populous region near the mill town of talassee; a new building with eleven windows, well ceiled throughout, with a clean gravel space in front, good desks and plenty of blackboard. the curse of many of the rural schools is their easy money, for all the southern states have a system of state school funds, the income of which is subdivided among the districts, and is in some of them about enough to keep up school three or four months on the usual scale of payment to teachers. when the school fund is exhausted, great numbers of districts close their schoolhouses, and the result is that the average number of school days in a year is far below that of northern schools. in massachusetts, connecticut, and rhode island the public schools are in session about days; in georgia, ; in arkansas, . these are averages; and since the city schools commonly run seven or eight months, there must be many districts in which there are not over fifty or sixty days' school. one of the great educational reforms now going on in the south is to secure from the local governments appropriations to continue the schools after the state fund runs out. when the south is sufficiently aroused to the blessing of education, it will find that it has money enough for its needs. another defect is in the schoolhouses. the southern towns and cities are coming to follow the example of the west and north in putting up imposing school buildings, though there is no such need for elaborate heating apparatus and ventilation as in the north, and they are in general simpler. the country schoolhouse is in many cases a big, dirty hut, often built of logs, wretchedly furnished, and devoid of the commonest appliances of civilization. there seems to be a feeling throughout the south that schoolhouses cannot be built wholly out of taxation, but the people on the ground must contribute at least a part of the cost. you may find neat and tidy rural schoolhouses, actually painted, but they are far from typical. another difficulty is the teachers. the monthly salaries for white teachers in several of the southern states are high. a coosa county farmer complains that a teacher in his district is getting $ . a day for twenty days in the month, which was more than any farmer in the district could earn. but of course her $ . a month would only run while school was in session, which might be five months. in louisiana rural teachers receive higher salaries than in any other state in the union, and no commonwealth is making such determined effort to improve its rural schools. in the remoteness of catahoola parish may be seen a system of wagonettes to bring children to central graded schools, a reform which goes very slowly in new england. a further reason for the backwardness of the southern rural schools is that they are in the hands of county superintendents, whose place until recently has too often been political. now there is a body of trained superintendents who are giving people object lessons in what can be done even with poor buildings by well-trained teachers. the south is also bending its energies on normal schools, and the result is a growing body of teachers with professional spirit, who expect to make the schools their life work. the state superintendents are also improving in their professional power. the worst southern rural schools are not too much behind those that horace mann found in massachusetts when he began his work in ; the wages of the rural teachers are probably not so low as those in maine; and the next decade will see a vast improvement in the rural schools throughout the south. so with the secondary schools, where the number of pupils has astonishingly increased. in there were in the south , schools and , pupils; in there were , schools (texas alone has ), , teachers, and , pupils. a great change has come about in the education of girls. nearly half the teachers and nearly two thirds of the pupils ( , ) in these schools are women, and that means that in connection with the normal schools, in which there are over , women students, the south is now training a body of teachers who are going, to make a great change in the education of the next generation. the growth of secondary schools means further that the south is putting an end to a reproach of many years' standing--namely, that it could not adequately prepare pupils for college. it was a severe lesson when the trustees of the carnegie retiring allowance fund in laid down its principle that no grant would be made to professors in any college which did not come up to the following standard: "an institution to be ranked as a college must have at least six professors giving their entire time to college and university work, a course of four full years in liberal arts and sciences, and should require for admission not less than the usual four years of academic or high school preparation, or its equivalent, in addition to the preacademic or grammar school studies." to the surprise of the lower south, it was discovered that only one institution, tulane university, had insisted on the condition of four years academic or high school preparation. several other organizations are waking the south up to the need of improvements, such as the association of colleges and preparatory schools of the southern states, with nineteen colleges as members; a commission of the southern methodist church; the general education board of new york, with its fund of $ , , ; and the southern education board. in the south as in the north, there are two types of institutions of higher learning, the endowed (in most cases denominational) and the public. the number of southern colleges is considerable; out of in the united states--which is not far from the proportion of the population; but only of these institutions have upward of undergraduate students, as against in the rest of the union; and the total number of undergraduate students in universities, colleges, and technological schools, , , is about a fifth of the total of , in the united states, while the normal proportion would be a third. the property of the southern colleges ($ , , ) is about a fifth of the total college property; the income of $ , , is about a sixth of the whole, the benefactions in ($ , , ) about a seventh. that is, in number, wealth, and students, southern institutions of higher learning represent about the same reduced proportion to the north as in the case of public wealth and public expenditures; that means that an average million of people in the south enjoy less than half the educational advantages possessed by an average million in the northwest. this rather favorable proportion does not obtain in women's education; of the fifteen colleges for women, recognized by the bureau of education as of full collegiate rank, only are in the south; they include less than an eighth of the women students, and their property is less than a tenth. the southern institutions classified as "colleges for women, division b" are practically boarding schools of secondary grade, and are balanced by the greater number of northern girls in high schools; , against , southern high school girls; the , in private high schools and academies are overbalanced by , in the north. one of the great needs of the south at present is high-class colleges for girls, which shall turn out a well-grounded and well-trained body of women, interested in public affairs, and shall be a nursery of high school and college teachers. the southern denominational colleges are open practically to men only. the normal schools receive both sexes, and , women are registered in the southern universities, colleges, and technological schools which are open to both sexes, as against , men. as the southern states grow richer, they are giving more attention and more money to their public institutions, but so far few of their advanced institutions take rank alongside the great northwestern universities. the university of north carolina has students and an excellent tradition; the university of texas counts , men and women, and is in many ways the most flourishing of the southern institutions. the university of virginia, though it has an annual grant from the legislature, is practically an endowed institution with students; the university of georgia has students, though it at one time put forth the whimsical claim that it had the largest attendance in the united states, surpassing harvard and columbia, a result made up by adding in day scholars in affiliated schools below the high school grade. the state university funds, including the federal grants, are usually dispersed among two, or even three or four small institutions. there is a vigorous intellectual movement in the south. the recent graduates, who at one time had a preference for college appointments in their own colleges, are now giving way to a throng of eager young scholars who have enjoyed graduate study in american or foreign universities and hold higher degrees. wherever you fall in with a body of those men, you are impressed with their good training and their broad outlook. politics are yearly less forceful in such institutions; and probably never again will there be such an episode as happened in a border state university about ten years ago. a new president discovered after a time that the janitor of the college buildings was not disposed to take instructions from him, whereupon he appealed to the board of trustees to put the man definitely under his control. the trustees held their meeting, at the end of which the janitor appeared with a bundle of blue envelopes, the first of which he offered to the president with the confidential remark, "you're fired!" the others were addressed to the professors, every one of whom was summarily removed. having thus gone back to first principles, the trustees elected a new president and a new faculty, including some of the old teachers; strange to say, that university has since become one of the most promising in its section. in all institutions of this kind and in the literary faculties of many colleges is a sprinkling of northern professors, for the southern colleges, like the northern, are more tolerant than they were half a century ago. most of the young men now receiving appointments in colleges and scientific institutions have studied in other southern colleges, in the north or in europe; and in all the learned associations they take their places as well-equipped and productive men. professional education has also made great strides in the south. many of the most promising young men are sent to northern law and medical schools, not only because of their supposed educational advantages, but because it is thought well for a young man to have a double horizon; but the greater number find instruction in nearby professional schools either established by practitioners or attached to some university. for the medical students the hospitals which are springing up everywhere furnish clinical material. theological education is less systematized; the older and more settled denominations have good schools, but too many preachers in the back country have no other training than a natural "gift of the gab." in the agricultural and mechanical colleges, and the engineering departments of the endowed public universities, the south is educating her future engineers and scientific men. the educative effects of travel and intercourse with other people are making themselves felt. in ante-bellum times few southerners traveled widely, except the comparatively small number of the richer young men who found their way to northern colleges, or abroad. until ten years ago it was difficult to hold southern conventions and gatherings of intellectual men of kindred aims because people could not afford to travel. now there is more circulation, more knowledge of the world, more willingness to see in what respects the south lags behind, a greater spirit of coöperation between southern states, and with some people of other sections. the norms of common schools, secondary schools, and higher institutions are now laid down on about the same principles as in the north, and it remains to develop them, to make paper systems actual, to get more of the school children registered, more of the registered children in attendance, more months of school for those who attend, better teachers for the longer sessions, new buildings to accommodate the larger numbers, more students to fill the little colleges and to enlarge the universities. white education in the south is in a progressive and hopeful condition. in the means of education outside of schools and colleges the south is still much behind the richer north, and still more behind foreign countries. museums and picture galleries are few, aside from private collections in baltimore, washington, richmond, and new orleans. the fine old paintings that one sees in clubs and public buildings come from an earlier age, for there are few southern artists. nevertheless, the architectural standard is quite as high as in the north, and the tradition of wide spaces and colonnades persists. in its public buildings the south is in general superior to the north; even in remote county seats one may find buildings old and new of classic proportions, dignified and stately. the south has been poor in collections of books, but all the larger universities have fair libraries, and the cities have public libraries, and the numerous gifts of carnegie have stimulated this form of public education. several southern cities, as, for example, galveston, have endowed institutions for lecture courses on the general plan of the lowell courses in boston. the south has never been highly productive in literature, and too much of the southern writing bears evidence of a purpose of speaking for the south or in a southern fashion. a considerable part of the books written by southerners are about the south in one way or another; there is a sense of sectional obligation. this is the less necessary for a region from which have sprung poe, one of the world's acknowledged literary delights, and lanier. there is a school of southern writers, of whom the late joel chandler harris is a type, who have found broader themes of life about them and have given to the world the delightful flavor of a passing and romantic epoch. the principal literary work of the south is now in its newspapers. another intellectual force is found in the southern historical societies, of which there is one in almost every state. they have shown a lively interest in saving the records of the early history of the south and in preserving its memorials from destruction. there are also two or three literary periodicals of distinct literary merit, in which one finds an expression of the newest and most modern south. in every direction, then, the white people of the south are alert. the schools are fair and improving, the community is awake to the need of educating all the children, even in the remote country; and though the taxes for education are still very light, there is a disposition to increase them. in texas, for example, where there is a state tax, the people have by constitutional amendment authorized all school districts to double that amount by local taxation. if the whites were the only people to be educated, and if education were the panacea, if it brought assurance of good government, the southern question would in due time take care of itself. the most hopeful sign of intellectual progress is the association of those most interested for the promotion of their common ends; such is the coöperative education association of virginia which holds annual meetings and general conferences for education. these meetings are means of attracting public attention to the problems and of suggesting the solution. for many years education of the whites in the south has been aided from the north, first, through considerable gifts for the education of the mountain whites, and second through more sparing aid to colleges for whites in the lowlands. recently, however, the attention of wealthy northern givers has been turned to the importance of uplifting the whole white southern community, and after several annual visits to the south under the patronage of mr. robert c. ogden, of new york, a southern education board was formed, the purpose of which is to rouse people to the need of improving their education; following it is the general education board, which makes small gifts to educational institutions usually on the stipulation that they shall raise a conditional amount varying from an equal sum to a sum three times as great. this is the more necessary as there are only two or three institutions in the south that have anything like an adequate endowment. tulane university in new orleans has a property of several millions, and the university of virginia has recently raised a new million outright, but the south has no large body of people with superfluous funds and its giving turns habitually rather in the direction of church construction and foreign mission work than to educational institutions. of $ , , given to the university of virginia during thirty years, $ , came from northerners and $ , more from foreigners living in the south. of late, voices have been raised for some kind of federal aid to southern education on the plea that where there is the greatest intellectual destitution there is the most need for money. the appeal is contrary to the usual instincts of the south in matters of federal and state relations, and is strongly opposed by part of the southern press, particularly the _manufacturers' record_, which has waged a campaign against even the private gifts made through the general education board. chapter xxii negro education however cheering the interest in general public and higher education throughout the south, the whites get most of the benefit; the lower third of the people, the most ignorant, the poorest, the least ambitious, those whose debasement is the greatest menace to the community, are less in the public eye; and the efforts to educate them arouse antagonism of various kinds. all calculations as to numbers of pupils, school expenditures, and public opinion as to education are subject to restatement when the negroes are taken into account. even in states like maryland and kentucky, where they are not a fourth of the population, they disturb the whole educational system, and in the lower south, where they are in many places overwhelming in numbers, the problem of their education becomes alarming. most people suppose that negro education began during the civil war, but it is as old as colonization; free negroes were always allowed some privileges in this respect, and thousands of slaves were taught to read by kind-hearted mistresses and children of the family; the opinion of one who has carefully explored this field of inquiry is that of the adult slaves, about one in ten could read and write. nevertheless, this practice was contrary to the principles and the laws of the south, as is proved by the dramatic prosecution of mrs. margaret douglass, of norfolk, in , for the crime of holding a school for free negro children, in ignorance of the fact that it was forbidden as "against the peace and dignity of the commonwealth of virginia." in due time this person, who had admitted unhallowed light into little dark souls, was duly sentenced to thirty days' imprisonment, a penalty (as the judge explained) intended to be "as a terror to those who acknowledge no rule of action but their own evil will and pleasure." both the teachings and the prosecutions establish a general belief that negroes could easily learn to read and write; and when during the civil war refugees flocked into the union camps at beaufort and hilton head, charitably disposed people in the north sent down teachers; and, the federal government coöperating, schools were started among those sea island people, then rough, uncouth, and not far beyond the savage state, though now a quiet, well-ordered, and industrious folk. from that time till the giving up of the freedman's bureau in , the federal government expended some money and took some responsibility for negro education. it was a pathetic sight to see old gray-headed people crowding into the schools alongside the children, with the inarticulate feeling that reading and writing would carry them upward. the northern missionary societies kept up these elementary schools, and then began to found schools and colleges for the training of the most gifted members of the race. out of their funds, and with the aid of the freedmen, they put up schoolhouses, they collected money to establish institutions like fisk university in nashville, leland and straight universities in new orleans, and atlanta university. such colleges were on the same pattern as other colleges for whites both north and south, adopting the then almost universal curriculum of greek, latin, and mathematics, along with smatterings of other subjects; they included preparatory schools, which, as in some white colleges both north and south, included the larger number of the recorded students. now came the founding of rural schools, for both negroes and whites; all the reconstruction constitutions provided for free public schools; and since that time there has been public organized education for the colored people, such as it is, in every state, in every city, and in most of the rural counties having a considerable black population. the reaction against reconstruction for some time bore against these schools and they have come along slowly. when, about , the south entered upon a new career of education, the negro schools came more into people's minds; but they have not advanced in proportion to the white schools, and they have encountered a lively hostility directed particularly against the higher forms of education. the present status of the negro common schools may be summarized from the report of the commissioner of education for . taking the whole south together, there were, in that year, over , , colored children five to eighteen years old, of whom , , , or little more than half, were enrolled in school, while of the white children of school age nearly three fourths were enrolled. out of , , enrolled, the average attendance was , , or about a third of the children of school age, while of the whites it was , , , or nearly half the children of school age. for the , , enrolled negro children, there were , teachers, or to ; for the , , white children over , teachers, to . the annual expenditures for the , , children enrolled (white and black) were $ , , , but to the negro children (about a third of the whole, and least likely to be educated otherwise) was assigned about a seventh of this sum. to state the same thing in another form, in nearly all the southern states at least twice as much was spent per pupil on whites as on negroes. a part of this disparity is due simply to the fact that the superior race produces the larger number of children capable of secondary and higher training and has more money to carry its children along, to pay their expenses and tuition where necessary, in order to give them a start in life. that consideration does not account either for the very low enrollment or low attendance of negro children. the truth is that the majority of white people, who have the sole power of laying taxes and of appropriating money for education, think that the negroes ought not to have school advantages equal to those of white children, or advancing beyond a common school education. the mere statistics of negro schools and attendance after all carry with them little information. what kind of pupils are they? what kind of school buildings are provided for them? what is the character of their teachers? naturally, among both races, many are at work after twelve or fourteen years, but the percentages of enrollment and attendance are so much less than those of the white people that apparently colored children are less likely than white to be sent to school and to be kept there when started. though every northern state without exception has some kind of compulsory education, not a single southern state, except kentucky and missouri, has enacted it. some personal knowledge of southern schools, both in cities and the country, suggests several reasons why the attendance is small. visit this negro wayside school in the heart of the piney woods near albany, ga. the building is a wretched structure with six glass windows, some of them broken; the sky visible between the weatherboards. there is one desk in the room, the teacher's, made of rough planks; the floor is rough and uneven. of the forty-four children enrolled, none of whom come more than about three miles, thirty-two are present on a pleasant day; six of them appear to be mulattoes. they wear shoes and stockings and are quiet and well-behaved but sit in the midst of dirt on dirty benches. the teacher is a pleasant woman, wife of a well-to-do colored man in the neighboring town, but apparently untrained. she teaches five months at $ a month. last year there was no school at all in this district. enter another school at oak grove, ala. the house is a single room, twenty-five feet square; larger than is needed, like many of the schoolhouses, because it may serve also for church services. there is not a sash in any one of the seven windows, each having a hinged shutter. the teacher has a table, and for the pupils are provided several rude benches with or without backs; the room is furnished with a blackboard and is reasonably clean; the teacher, a young man eager and civil, a graduate of a neighboring school carried on by the negroes for themselves, holds five months' school. take another school near albany, ga., in a tolerably good schoolhouse built by the negroes themselves with some white assistance, for the county commissioners will do no more than offer $ to a district that will spend about $ more on a building. the room overcrowded, four or five at a desk; twice as many girls as boys; a good teacher who has had some normal training; a book for each group of three in the reading class; the lesson about a brutal yankee officer who compels a little southern girl to tell where the confederate officer is hiding. the children read well and with expression. these are probably fairly typical of the rural negro schools throughout the south, and better than some. as a matter of fact, thousands of negro children have no opportunity to go to school, because the commissioners simply refuse to provide school in their district; perhaps because the number of children is thought too few; perhaps merely because they do not wish to spend the money. in a town with perhaps , negroes there is sometimes only one negro teacher. here comes in the effect of the separate school system which prevails in every southern state, in the district of columbia, in indianapolis, and in parts of new jersey. the system was inaugurated just as soon as the whites obtained control of the reconstruction government after the civil war, and it goes all the way through: separate buildings, separate teachers, separate influences, separate accounts. the reasons for it are: first, the belief of white parents that negro children, even the little ones, have a bad influence on the white children; second, the conviction that mixed schools would break down the rigorous separation of races necessary to prevent eventual amalgamation; third, the blacks are niggers. in cities and towns it adds little to the expense to keep up separate buildings and corps of teachers, but in rural districts, where the number of children is small, the expense of double schools may be a serious matter. one reason why the schools are poor is that the pupils are irregular, and one reason why they are irregular is that the schools are poor. the wretched facilities of the rural schools, both white and negro, tend to drive children out; and the incompetent teachers do not make parents or children fonder of school. for the white schools a supply of reasonably intelligent young men and women is now coming forward. as to the negroes, with few exceptions, every teacher is a negro, though appointed by and supervised by some white authority; it is doubtful whether half the negro teachers have themselves gone through a decent common school education. many of them are ignorant and uneducated. the superintendent of the town schools at valdosta, ga., says: "there are to-day outside of the cities, not more than one half dozen teachers in each county in the state, upon an average, who can honestly make a license to teach. the custom in most counties is to license so many as we are compelled to have to fill the schools from among those who make the most creditable show upon examination. school commissioners do not pretend to grade their papers strictly. if they did three-fourths of the negro schools would be immediately closed." conditions are not much better in the towns, where many negro teachers earn only $ to $ a year; but in the cities the negro teachers are more carefully selected, for they can be drawn from the local negro high schools or the normal schools. but the colored people are said to scheme and maneuver to get this teacher out and that one in. they have been known to petition against a capable and unblemished teacher on the ground that she was the daughter of a white man, and it was immoral for her to be teaching black children. if the negro common schools are inferior to the white, this is still more marked in their secondary public schools, such as they are. no principle is more deeply ingrained in the american people than that it is worth while to spend the necessary money to educate up to about the eighteenth year all the young people who show an aptitude, and whose parents can get on without their labor. the southern states accept this principle, but for such education the negroes have few opportunities. out of , southern young people in public and private high schools, , high school pupils and , in the private schools are negroes. that is, a third of the population counts a seventeenth of the secondary pupils. most of the so-called negro colleges are made up of secondary and normal pupils who get a training very like that of the northern academies, and some favored cities have public high schools for the negroes. this is the case in baltimore, and was the case in new orleans until about , when the high schools were discontinued, on the ground that the negro could not profit by so much education, although the lower branches of the high schools were still taught in the upper rooms of the negro grammar schools. it must not be forgotten that there are more than a hundred institutions for training the colored people, which draw nothing from the public funds. these schools, in part supported by the colored people themselves, in part by northern gifts, which during the last forty years have amounted to between thirty and fifty million dollars, are usually better than the public schools, and have more opportunities for those lessons of cleanliness and uprightness which the negro needs quite as much as book learning. those schools are a thorn in the side of the south--so much so that for years it was hardly possible to get any southern man to act as trustee; they are supposed to teach the negro youth a desire for social equality; they are thought to draw the negroes off from cordial relations with the southern whites; above all, they include the higher institutions which are credited with spoiling the race with too much greek and latin. to a considerable degree the schools of this type are mulatto schools, probably because the people of mixed blood are more intelligent and prosperous, and more interested in their children's future; but many of them are planted in the darkest part of the black belt--such as the penn school in the sea islands. wherever they exist, they appeal to the ambition and the conscience of the negro, and help to civilize the race; they are not only schools but social settlements. alongside the earlier schools and colleges planted by northerners in the regular academic type, during the last thirty years have arisen first hampton, then tuskegee, and then many like schools, built up on the principle of industrial training, which will be described in the next chapter. the northern schools for the education of the negroes have brought about one of the unpleasant features of the southern question in the boycotting of the northern teachers, both men and women, who have come down to teach them. this practice is a tradition from reconstruction times when it was supposed that the northern teachers were training colored youth to assert themselves against whites. they expected only to furnish examples and incitements to the southern people themselves; hence a feeling of bewilderment and grief, because from the very beginning the white teachers in these institutions have been under a social ban the relentlessness of which it is hard for a northerner to believe. an educated and cultivated white family has lived in a southern city, superior intellectually and morally to most of the community about it; yet no friendly foot ever crossed its threshold. the beautiful daughter, easily first in the girls' high school, never exchanged a word with her classmates outside the school, except when called upon, as she regularly was, to help out her less gifted fellows, as an unpaid and unthanked tutor--because her father was spending his life in trying to uplift the negro. the attitude of the south toward most of those schools is one of absolute hostility. even an institution so favorably regarded in the south as hampton institute has been prohibited by the legislature of virginia (which makes it a small money grant) from selling the products of its industrial department. the negro colleges in the south are far from prosperous; planted in the day of small things with limited endowments, frequented by people who have little money to pay for tuition, they have been supported from year to year by northern gifts which are not sufficient to keep them up to modern demands. though some of them have tolerable buildings, few have adequate libraries, laboratories, or staff of specialist instructors. the state institutions of this grade open to blacks are nearly all rather low in standards, and offer little inducement for academic training; they are either normal or industrial in type. the better off of the negroes send their sons to northern white colleges where they may receive the best instruction but have little contact with their fellow students. so far from the number of negro college graduates being too great, it is entirely too small for the immediate needs of the race. they must have educated teachers and trained professional men; the negro schools will never flourish without competent teachers and supervisors of the negro race. in many respects the colleges are the weakest part of negro education. one school in which numbers have had good training, berea college, kentucky, has now been abandoned under an act of the state legislature forbidding the teaching of whites and negroes together, but an industrial school of high grade will be provided exclusively for the colored race. as dubois says: "if, while the healing of this vast sore is progressing, the races are to live for many years side by side, united in economic effort, obeying a common government, sensitive to mutual thought and feeling, yet subtly and silently separate in many matters of deeper human intimacy,--if this unusual and dangerous development is to progress amid peace and order, mutual respect and growing intelligence, it will call for social surgery at once the delicatest and nicest in modern history. it will demand broad-minded, upright men, both white and black, and in its final accomplishment american civilization will triumph." dubois calculates that in the twenty-five years from to there were only , or , negro graduates from all the colleges open to them north and south, an average of about fifty a year out of a race numbering during that period, on the average, six millions. out of this amount about half have become teachers or heads of institutions, and most of the rest are professional men. many of the academic and normal training schools of various grades are situated in the midst of large colored populations, and take upon themselves a work similar to that of the college settlements in northern cities. such is the flourishing school at calhoun, ala., which is in the midst of one of the densest and most ignorant negro populations in the south, and besides training the children sent to it, it has supervised the work of breaking up the land, which is sold to negro farmers in small tracts, thereby giving an object lesson of the comfort and satisfaction in owning one's own land. most such schools aim to be centers of moral influence upon the community about them. here, again, they encounter the hostility of their neighbors on the ground that they are putting notions into the heads of the negroes, and are destroying the labor system of the community. on the other hand, many of the whites take a warm interest in these schools, although not a single one has ever received any considerable gift of money from southern white people. the testimony is general that they are well taught, preserve good order, and inculcate decency of person and life. probably the most effective argument in favor of negro education is the success of hampton and tuskegee, two endowed schools, practically kept up by northern benefactors, which are the great exemplifiers of industrial education. they are successful, both in providing for large numbers of students--about , altogether--and in producing an effect upon the whole south. the number of graduates is but a few score a year, and many of them go into professions for which they were not directly prepared in these schools. but great numbers of men and women who have spent only a year or two in these institutions carry out into the community the great lesson of self-help; and hundreds of schools and thousands of individuals are moved by the example of these two famous schools and similar institutions scattered throughout the south. they preach a gospel of work; they hold up a standard of practicality; they are so successful as to draw upon themselves the anathemas of men like thomas dixon, jr., who says: "mr. washington ... is training them _all_ to be masters of men, to be independent.... if there is one thing a southern white man cannot endure it is an educated negro." the question is imperative. with all the efforts at education, notwithstanding the great reduction in the percentage of illiteracy, the number of negro adult men and women in the south who are unable to read and write is actually greater than at any time since by emancipation they were brought within the possibilities of education. the actual task grows greater every day, and if the resources of the south are more than correspondingly increased, it is still a question how much of them will be devoted to this pressing need. education will not do everything; it will not make chaste, honest, and respectable men and women out of wretched children left principally to their own instincts. education is at best a palliative, but the situation is too serious to dispense even with palliatives. perhaps the first necessity is to improve the character and the training of the negro teachers. both in the rural and the city schools appointments are in many cases made by white school board men who have little knowledge and sometimes no interest in the fitness of their appointees. the colleges and industrial schools all have this problem in mind. state normal schools for negroes in many of the southern states try to meet this necessity, but a great many of the country teachers, some of them in the experience of the writer, are plainly unsuited for the task. some of them are themselves ignorant, few have the background of character and intellectual interest which would enable them to transmit a moral uplift. one of the most serious difficulties of negro education is the attendance, or rather nonattendance. within a few weeks after the beginning of school, pupils begin to drop out; often perhaps because the teacher cannot make the work interesting. one of their own number says: "many of our children do not attend school because our teachers are incompetent; because many of the parents simply dislike their teachers; because some parents prefer baptist teachers; because many children have their own way about all they do; because many children do not like a strict teacher; because some parents contend for a fine brick building for the school; because, as a whole, many parents are too ignorant and prejudiced and contentious to do anything, yet we have enrolled about pupils this session in spite of the devil." some of the schools are overcrowded. there have been cases where teachers were assigned for , children, of whom enrolled, yet the average earnings of the six teachers would not be more than $ a year. against these instances must be placed a great number of intelligent, faithful teachers who make up for some deficiencies of knowledge by their genuine interest in their work. for negro education as for white, but perhaps with more reason, it is urged that the federal government ought to come in with its powerful aid. the argument somewhat resembles that of the blind chinese beggar who was sent to the hospital where he recovered his sight, and then insisted that, having lost his livelihood, he must be made porter to the hospital. aside from any claim of right, it is true that the problem of elevating the negroes concerns the whole nation, and is a part of the long process of which emancipation was the beginning. federal aid for colored schools, however, can never be brought about without the consent of the southern states, and they are not likely to ask for or to receive educational funds intended solely for the negroes; while northern members of congress are not likely to vote for taxing their constituents who already pay two or three times as much per capita for education as the south, in order to make up the deficiencies of the other section. it is impossible to discover any way in which federal aid can be given to the negroes without reviving sectional animosity; and it is a fair question whether such gifts could be so hedged about that they would not lead to a corresponding diminution in the amount spent by the southern states. the government grants to state agricultural colleges and experiment stations inure almost wholly to the advantage of the whites; if a part of that money could be devoted to the education of the negro, it might be helpful. several educational trusts created years ago for the benefit of the negroes have now ceased their work. the peabody fund of about three million dollars was much depleted by the repudiation of the mississippi and florida bonds, and has now been entirely distributed. for some years it was devoted to building up primary teaching on condition that the localities benefited should themselves spend larger sums. then it went into normal schools. in the slater fund of one million dollars was given solely for the education of negroes. the general education board in its allocations to southern institutions has liberally remembered several of the negro institutions as well as the white. chapter xxiii objections to education in the two previous chapters white and negro education have been described as parts of the social and governmental system of the south; there, as in the north, the tacit presumption is that education is desirable, that it is essential for moral and material progress, that both the parents and the community must make great sacrifices to secure it. white education hardly needs defense in the south; most of the people wish to see the opportunities of life open to promising young people, believe in the spread of ideas, and look on education as the foundation of the republic. does the principle, as in the north, apply to all the elements of population? is the education of the negro as clearly necessary as that of the white? should the same method apply to the training of the two races? on the contrary, there is in most southern white minds hesitation as to the degree of education suitable for the blacks; and a widespread disbelief in any but rudimentary training, and that to be directed toward industrial rather than intellectual ends. the first objection to negro education is that the race is incapable of any but elementary education and that all beyond is wasted effort. has the negro as a race an inferior intellectual quality, a disability to respond to opportunities? with all the effort to educate the race, and with due regard to the fact that the proportion who can read and write is rapidly rising, the negroes are alarmingly ignorant, the most illiterate group in the whole united states; and therefore they need special attention. in addition, they are subjected to the smallest degree of home training, and enjoy the smallest touch with those concentrated forces of public opinion which force the community upward. some of the negroes seek intellectual life at home, for occasionally you see a family grouped about the fire with the father reading a book to them; but hardly any of the rural people and probably few of the townsmen own a shelf of books and magazines and newspapers. their journalism is in general rather crude. a class of patent inside newspapers is carried on by the heads of one or the other negro order; and they contain good advice, news of the order, advertisements of patent hair dressings which "make harsh, stubborn, kinky, curly hair soft, pliant and glossy"; and descriptions of the experiments of surgeons in making black skin white by the use of x-rays. some of these papers are well edited, and all of them have discovered the great secret of modern journalism, which is to put as many proper names as possible into the paper. one difficulty with the negro newspaper is that it cannot fill up entirely with colored news; and on general questions and the progress of the world the regular white newspapers, with their greater resources, are certain to be more readable. still, few negroes outside the cities read either weekly or daily papers regularly; and one of the necessities for raising the race is to cultivate the newspaper habit. to be sure, there is a type of highly successful white journalism that does not edify the white race. yet even a bad newspaper cannot help telling people what is going on in the world. in spite of its freight of crime, such a paper carries people out of themselves, makes them feel a greater interest for mankind, brings in a throng of new impressions and experiences, helps to educate them. outside of newspapers the negroes have access to the written works of members of their own race, which are at the same time a proof of literary capacity and a means of teaching the people. of course it is always urged that such men as booker washington, the educator and uplifter; dunbar, the pathetic humorist; chesnutt, author of stories of southern life that rival joel chandler harris and thomas nelson page; dubois, who in literary power is one of the most notable americans of this generation; kelly miller, the keen satirist; and sinclair, the defender of his people--prove nothing as to the genius of the races because they are mulattoes; but they and their associates are listed among the negroes, included in the censure on negro colleges, and furnish the most powerful argument for the education of at least a part of the race. few men of genius among the negroes are pure blacks; but it is not true that the lighter the color the more genius they possess. so far as the effects of a prolonged and thorough education are concerned, those men from any point of view prove that the mulattoes, who are perhaps a fifth of the whole, are entitled to a thorough education. has not dubois the right to say: "i sit with shakespeare and he winces not. across the color line i move arm in arm with balzac and dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. from out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, i summon aristotle and aurelius and what soul i will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. so, wed with truth, i dwell above the veil. is this the life you grudge us, o knightly america? is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of georgia? are you so afraid lest peering from this high pisgah, between philistine and amalekite, we sight the promised land?" on the other hand, the history of the last thirty-five years proves conclusively that the great mass of negro children can assimilate the ordinary education of the common schools. mr. glenn, recently superintendent of education in georgia, declares that "the negro is ... teachable and susceptible to the same kind of mental improvement characteristic to any other race," and thomas nelson page admits that the "negro may individually attain a fair, and in uncommon instances a considerable degree, of mental development." about three fourths of the young people have already learned to read. many people intimately acquainted with the race assert that, although about as quick and receptive as white children up to twelve or fourteen years of age, the negro children advance no further; that their minds thenceforward show an arrested development. certainly anyone who visits their schools, city or rural, public or private, is struck with the slowness of the average child of all ages to take in new impressions, and with the intellectual helplessness of many of the older children. whether this is due to the backwardness of the race, or to the uncouthness of home life, or to the want of other kinds of stimulus outside of school, is hard to determine. that there is any general arrested development is contradicted by thousands of capable youths, mulatto and full blood. the very slowness of the black children is a reason for giving them the best educational chance that they can take. that is why the southern education association which met in passed a unanimous resolution that: "we endorse the accepted policy of the states of the south in providing educational facilities for the youth of the negro race, believing that whatever the ultimate solution of this grievous problem may be, education must be an important factor in that solution." another point of view is represented by the statement of thomas nelson page that the great majority of the southern whites "unite further in the opinion that education such as they receive in the public schools, so far from appearing to uplift them, appears to be without any appreciable beneficial effect upon their morals or their standing as citizens." governor vardaman, of mississippi, as late as recommended the legislature to strike out all appropriations for negro schools on the ground that "money spent to-day for the maintenance of the public school for negroes is robbery of the white man and a waste upon the negro. it does him no good, but it does him harm. you take it from the toiling white men and women; you rob the white child of the advantages it would afford him, and you spend it upon the negro in an effort to make of the negro that which god almighty never intended should be made, and which man cannot accomplish." he asserts that the most serious negro crime is due to "the manifestation of the negro's aspiration for social equality, encouraged largely by the character of free education in vogue, which the state is levying tribute upon the white people to maintain." in cordova, s. c., in , a business man who had visited a colored school and spoken encouragingly to the pupils, felt compelled by public sentiment to print an apology and a promise never to do anything so dreadful again. this criticism comes not simply from demagogues like vardaman or weaklings like the cordovan; intelligent planters will tell you that they are opposed to negro education because it makes criminals; and think their accusation proven by instances of forgeries by negroes, which of course they could not have committed had they been unable to write. a superintendent of schools in a southern city holds that even grammar school education unsteadies the boys so that they leave home and drift away; though he candidly acknowledges that it keeps the girls out of trouble and provides a respectable calling as teachers to many negro women. side by side with this feeling of disappointment or hostility, as the case may be, is the conviction of most southern people that enormous sacrifices have been made for the negro schools. thomas dixon, jr., with his accustomed exactness and candor, wrote a few years ago: "we have spent about $ , , on negro education since the war." these figures show a poverty of imagination: it would be just as easy to write "eight thousand millions" as "eight hundred." the estimate of the bureau of education is that in the thirty-five years since about $ , , has been spent to support common schools for the negro race, which is about a fifth of the amount spent on the white common schools in the same period, and not a hundredth of the supposed present wealth of the south; in addition, heavy expenditures are made out of the public treasury for secondary and higher education in which the negro has a slender share. another more specious complaint with regard to negro education is that it is an unreasonable burden on the whites to make them pay for negro education, and repeated attempts have been made to lay it down as a principle that the negroes shall have for their schools only what they pay in taxes. thus governor hoke smith, of georgia, says: "is it not folly to tax the people of georgia for the purpose of conducting a plan of education for the negro which fails to recognize the difference between the negro and the white man? negro education should have reference to the negro's future work, and especially in the rural districts it is practicable to make that education really the training for farm labor. if it is given this direction it will not be necessary to tax the white man's property for the purpose. a distribution of the school fund according to the taxes paid by each race would meet the requirements." in at least two states this idea has been to some extent carried out. in kentucky the state school fund is apportioned among the school children without regard to race, but for local purposes the negroes appear to be thrown on their own payments. and in maryland, under various statutes from to , all the taxes collected from negroes were devoted to negro schools, the state adding a lump sum per annum. this point of view involves a notion of the purpose of education and the reasons for public schools so different from that which animates the north that it is hard to deal with the question impartially. massachusetts makes the largest expenditure per capita of its population in the whole union, almost the largest expenditure per pupil, and certainly the largest aggregate expenditure, except the more populous states of new york, pennsylvania, illinois, and ohio; massachusetts spends on schools two fifths as much every year as all the fifteen former slaveholding states put together. in that state people think that school taxes are not money spent but money saved: that they get back every cent of their $ , , a year, several times over, in the increased efficiency of the people, in the diminution of crime, in the addition to the happiness of life. schooling is insurance, schooling is the savings bank that can't break, schooling is that sane kind of poor relief which prevents poverty. the last thing which any massachusetts community thinks of reducing is school expenditure! furthermore, no principle is so ingrained in the northern mind as that since education is for the public benefit, every taxpayer must contribute in proportion to his property. the rich corporations in new york or pittsburg, childless old couples, bachelor owners of great tracts of real estate, wealthy bondholders educating their children in private schools, never dream of disputing the school tax on the ground that they, as individuals, make no demands on the school fund. still less would it enter the mind of any northern community to divide itself into social classes, each of which should maintain its own schools. such a proposition would go near to bring about a revolution. first of all, the non-taxpayer is a taxpayer; it is the _pons asinorum_ of finance that the poor are more heavily taxed in proportion to their means than any other class of the community, through indirect taxes and the enhanced rents of the real estate which they occupy. as a matter of fact, all the taxes eventually paid by the negroes in the south probably amount only to a third or a half of the three millions or so spent upon their schools. what of that? are the southern states the only communities in the country in which a comparatively small part of the population pays most of the taxes; it is altogether probable that in boston or new york the payers of nine tenths of the taxes do not furnish one tenth of the school children. who educates the irish, german, italian, jewish, greek, and syrian children of those cities? the well-to-do part of the community, and it does it uncomplainingly, with its eyes open, gladly. the south likewise is educating the negroes principally for the advantage of the white race, for the efficiency of the whole region in which the whites have the greatest stake, and from which they derive the greater benefit, material and moral. one of the most obstinate southern conventional beliefs, widely held, constantly asserted, and diametrically contrary to the facts, is that the negroes have been spoiled by classical education which has totally unfitted them for ordinary life. thus even murphy holds that "we have been giving the negro an educational system which is but ill adapted even to ourselves. it has been too academic, too much unrelated to practical life, for the children of the caucasian." the intelligent man on the cars will tell you that the negro college graduates with their greek and latin are spoiling the whole race. never was there such an advertisement of the vigor of college education; since the official statistics show that the actual number of negroes studying greek and latin in , both in the secondary and higher schools (except the public schools), was , men and women, a total of , persons. with some possible additions from those in high schools, and higher institutions, the total number of colored people who are now taking any kind of collegiate training is not above , , of whom only took degrees in ; there are also , normal students, of whom , graduated. of professional students there were in all ( ) about , negroes, a third of whom were in theology and another third in medicine. of negro colleges and technical schools and private academies, are enumerated, ranging all the way from the arkadelphia baptist academy with students, up to tuskegee normal and industrial institute with , students; but in all such colleges those ranked as taking a college course are comparatively few. these figures throw light on the further conventional belief that it is the northern endowed colleges that have made the trouble in the colored race, through efforts to teach the colored youth that they were the equals of the whites. by far the greater number of negroes who are really getting training above the secondary grade in the south are in the state-sustained institutions--many of them, of course, still of low grade; and full credit should be given to the south for developing this type of negro education, of which the north knows little. state agricultural, normal or industrial colleges are to be found in every former slaveholding state, except arkansas and tennessee, and together include more than , students. the attacks, chiefly from southern whites, upon negro college education have of late been transformed into a controversy as to the relative importance of academic and industrial training. the schools of the tuskegee type furnished manual work to their students apparently not in the first instance because it was thought to be educative, but because they had to earn part of their living. this is apparently the main source of the bitter hostility of dixon to the work of tuskegee. the form his criticism takes is that booker washington, instead of teaching the negro to be a good workman, is training him to take independent responsibility; that if he is a good workman he will compete with the whites, and if he is a good leader he will aim to make the negroes a force in the community. this line of objection to education of the black is really based upon the belief that they are a race capable of education, that the negro is not a clod, but may be improved by the systematic efforts of superior men; he has in him the potentiality of vital force. meanwhile throughout the country has been running a current in favor of a more practical education than that furnished by the ordinary schools, and the result has been the technical, manual training, and commercial schools scattered throughout the northern states. the controversy is not at all confined to questions of negro education. the southern white people have been well inclined toward the new type of education for negroes, although on the whole much preferring the academic type for their own children. a hot discussion has raged as to which of the two systems is most necessary to the negro. the champions of the academic side dwell upon the right of the negro to the same type of education as the white man. in many white minds lies a lurking feeling that academic negro training leads to discontent with present conditions; and that industrial training is more likely to bring about contentment with the things that are. in fact, both types are most necessary. the fifty millions poured into the south by northern generosity would have been worth while if they had done no more than maintain a hampton which could train a booker washington. his ideas of thrift, attention to business, building decent houses, putting money into banks, are ideals specially needed by the negro race; but they also need the dubois ideal of a share in the world's accumulated learning; of the development of their minds; of preparation to educate their fellows. that a supply must be kept up of people acquainted with the humanities, having some knowledge of literature, able to express themselves cogently, competent to train the succeeding generations, is as true for the negro race as for any other; if it is a low race it has the greater need for high training for its best members. the two difficulties with manual training for either whites or negroes are, first, that it may be simply practice in handicrafts, without intimate knowledge of tools or processes, possessing no more educative value than the apprenticeship of a carpenter or a blacksmith. the other danger is that the manual part will be dilettante; and anyone who has ever visited any large industrial school for whites realizes how hard it is to keep students busy with things that actually tell. the weekly hours available for shop work where there are large classes are too few to induce skill. hence manual training may be simply a means of keeping young men and women in elevating associations for a series of years, without much positive education. the success of hampton and tuskegee and like institutions is due to a judicious mixture of book learning and hand learning, backed up by the personality of the founders, general armstrong in virginia and booker washington in alabama, and of their successors and aids. against both industrial and academic training many people in the south feel a strong prejudice, because they believe that both tend to produce leaders who may dangerously organize the fellows of their race. a favorite form of slander has been to charge that the graduates of colleges furnish the criminals, and practically the worst criminals, of the negro race. never was there a more senseless or a more persistent delusion. the total number of male graduates of all the southern colleges during the last forty years is not above two thousand, besides perhaps five hundred graduates of northern colleges who have found their way into the south. many of those institutions have kept track of their graduates and are able to assert that the cases of serious crime among them are remarkably few, no more in proportion probably than among the graduates of southern and northern colleges for whites. the moral effect of the colleges among negroes is in the same direction as among whites; the students include the more determined of the race or the children of the more determined. the negro college students are still only about one in one thousand of the children and young people of the race. the total number of living graduates of negro colleges or other institutions of college grade are not one in two thousand of the negroes in the south. it is true that even that number find it hard to establish themselves in professions or callings which can reward them for the sacrifices and efforts of their education. the negro doctors and lawyers have almost no white practice and not the best of negro practice, but there is an opening for thousands of negroes in the development of the education of their people. the thousandth of the race in secondary schools and the two thousandth or more in colleges are enough to prove that a large number of individuals in the race are capable of and ought to have the advantages of higher training. the denial to the negroes of public secondary education at the expense of the state practically means that most of them will not have it at all. it is denied on the ground that it unfits boys and girls for life--exactly the argument which has been unsuccessfully brought against schools of that grade in the northern states. it is denied on the ground that beyond twelve years of age most of the negroes are stationary and cannot profit by a secondary education, a conclusion which does not seem justified by the experience of the few high schools and the numerous private and benevolent schools. still more serious, the denial of secondary education means that the negroes are deprived of the most obvious means of training for teachers of their own race. in the last analysis most of the objections to negro education come down to the assertion that it puts the race above the calling whereunto god hath appointed it. the argument goes back to the unconscious presumption that the negro was created to work the white man's field, and that even a little knowledge makes him ambitious to do something else. one thing is certain: that no community can afford to neglect the academic side of education. the schools are to many people the only and the final appeal to the higher side of life, the only touch with the world's stock of great thoughts. the accusation is brought against the best northern city schools that they are not practical, because they deal too much with literature and history and science. the negro child, like the white child, needs to have its mind aroused to the large things in the world; needs the education of thinking, as well as of learning; as dubois puts it: "to seek to make the blacksmith a scholar is almost as silly as the more modern scheme of making the scholar a blacksmith; almost, but not quite." on the side of the negro there are other complaints. one is that his education has not had a fair trial; that the dominant south which lays and expends the taxes has not dealt with the negro on an equal footing with white children; that the per capita expenditure on the black children in school is probably not more than a third that for white children; that the negro schools have often been exploited by white politicians who have put in their own favorites as teachers; that even where the best intentions prevail, the schools are manned by incompetent teachers; nowhere do the rural colored people enjoy an education to the degree and with the kind of teachers and appliances common in the country districts of the north; the race can hardly be spoiled by education, for it has never had it, not for a single year. only about a third of the negro children are at school on a given school day. few of their rural schools hold more than five months, many not more than three, some not at all; and in from sixty to one hundred days in the year, irregularly placed, with teachers on the average not competent for the exceedingly elementary work that they do, the wonder is that children ever go a second day or acquire the rudiments of learning; yet many of them learn to read fluently, to write a good hand, and to do simple arithmetical problems. a race must have some intellectual quickness to pick up anything out of such a poor system. the arguments in favor of negro education have so far been convincing to every southern community, since negro common schools are maintained and considerable amounts are spent for secondary and higher education. the arguments against negro education destroy each other; they assume both that the negro is too little and too much affected by the education that he receives. on one side we are told that he is incapable of anything more than the rudiments; on the other side, that education is a potent force making the negro dangerous to the world. the incompetent can never be made dangerous by training into competence. education cannot change the race weaknesses of the negro; but it can give a better chance to the best endowed. chapter xxiv postulates of the problem that the south confronts a complexus of problems difficult and almost insoluble is clear to all onlookers, northern or southern, candid or prejudiced. so far this book has undertaken to deal rather with conditions than with remedies, to state questions without trying to answer them, to separate so far as may be the real aspirations and progress of the southern people of both races from conventional beliefs and shop-worn statements which overlie the actualities. such an analysis of the physical and human elements of southern life prepares the way for a discussion of a different nature. shall the thriftless part of the southern community remain at its present low average standard of productivity? are the lower whites and the still lower negroes moving upward, however slowly? can the two races come to an understanding which will mean peace in our time? are there positive remedies for a state of things admittedly alarming? any attempt to answer these questions means some repetition or restatement of things already treated at greater length. a first step may well be to summarize the whole southern problem as it presents itself to the writer's mind. ( ) the south as a whole, on any basis of material advancement, is below the average of other parts of the union and of several foreign countries; it is poor where it ought to be rich; it needs economic regeneration. ( ) measured by intellectual standards also the white south is below the other sections of the union; the high standing of its leaders does not bring up the average of the more numerous elements. any radical improvement, therefore, must include the uplift of the lower stratum of whites. ( ) the south is divided between two races, one of which is distinctly inferior to the other, not only in what it now does, but in the potentialities of the future. ( ) the lower race is so far behind, and so likely to lag indefinitely, that it is necessary for the welfare of the community that the two be kept separate; and this stern edict applies not only to the pure african race, but also to the two millions of mixed bloods, many of whom in aptitude and habits of thought are practically white men. ( ) both these races are improving, the whites in great numbers and rapidly; fewer of the negroes proportionally, and more slowly. ( ) the criminality of both races, and especially the violent criminality of the negroes, brings into the controversy an element of personal rage and fear. ( ) partly by superior abilities, partly by an inherited tradition, partly for the defense of the community, the white race dominates in every department of social, industrial, and political life; it owns most of the property; makes the laws for the black man; furnishes for him the machinery of government and of justice; and inexorably excludes him from both the social and political advantages of the community. ( ) this race division interferes with the american principle of equality--that is, the equal right of every man, woman, and child to do the best thing that his abilities and training allow, the inferior doing the best in his stratum, the superior the better best of his class. ( ) the two races do not live together harmoniously. the whites fear some kind of negro domination--the negroes resent the complete control by the whites; actual collisions are rare, but there is a latent race hostility. ( ) the white people, though they assume sole responsibility for whatever adjustment is made, know little of the private life of the best negroes, and exercise small direct influence on the lower race. hence the ordinary agencies of uplift--the church, the school, and contact with superior minds--are not brought into operation. ( ) the main reason for this want of touch with the negroes is an apprehension that any common understanding will assist a social equality which might lead to miscegenation. the southern problem, therefore, to state it in a sentence, is how twenty million whites and ten million negroes in the southern states shall make up a community in which one race shall hold most of the property, and all the government, and the other race shall remain content and industrious; in which one gets most of the good things of life and the other does most of the disagreeable work; in which the superior members of the inferior race shall accept all its disadvantages; in which one race shall always be at the top and the other forever at the bottom; yet in which there shall be peace and good will. to these conditions, discouraging, hard, implacable to innocent people, out of accord with the usual american principles, any effective remedy must nevertheless adjust itself. practically all southern people agree that the question is alarming, but they are at odds among themselves as to the remedy; and they may be roughly divided into the intolerant, the discouraged, and the moderate. (i) examples of passionate violence are plenty, and professor j. w. garner, a southerner, suggests some reasons for their abundance: "next to the difficulties arising mainly from the changed industrial conditions in the south and their resulting effect upon the character of the black race, the most serious obstacle in the way of maintaining harmonious relations between the two races is the persistent, ill-timed, and often intemperate agitation of the race question by a certain class of politicians lately sprung up in the south, whose chief stock in trade is the race issue. their method consists in working upon the sympathies of a certain class of whites by appealing to their passions and prejudices, by dwelling upon the brutality and savagery of the negro, by conjuring up imaginary dangers of negro supremacy, by exaggerating real dangers and in every conceivable way exalting the negro problem, as a political issue, to a position out of all proportion to its real importance." the truth of this statement may be illustrated from the published conclusions of some writers and speakers who are representative of the most radical type of southern feeling. for instance, hoke smith, governor of georgia in , has declared that "the development made by the negro in the south came through the institution of slavery, from the control of an inferior race by a superior race. i believe that control was absolutely necessary for the development which the negro made. the continuation of control is, in a measure, necessary to retain for the great mass of negroes the progress made by them while in slavery." (ii) hoke smith is far from representing the general or the average view in the south. some of the best spirits there who feel the responsibility of their race are at their wit's end over the whole question and see no way out of the difficulty. thus a lawyer of birmingham, ala., writes: "if my heart did not go out for the negro, as a human being, or i cared less for my god and an earnest wish to walk in his ways, i would kill the negro or die trying. god must intend that time shall work out his ways and not the men of my generation, for after a longer life than most, and all of it spent with and among the negroes, i give it up.... credit the southern people with preserving the negro, with teaching him christ, with good will.... education will do some good--perhaps more than i believe, but i verily believe that we must have the negro all born again before we can teach him what to do." (iii) of the more hopeful group of reflective men in the south there are many spokesmen, who suggest various sorts of remedies not always in accord. ex-congressman william h. fleming, of georgia, puts it that "we do not know what shifting phases this vexing race problem may assume, but we may rest in the conviction that its ultimate solution must be reached along the lines of honesty and justice. let us not in cowardice or want of faith needlessly sacrifice our higher ideals of private and public life. race differences may necessitate social distinction. but race differences cannot repeal the moral law.... the foundation of the moral law is justice. let us solve the negro problem by giving the negro justice and applying to him the recognized principles of the moral law. this does not require social equality. it does not require that we should surrender into his inexperienced and incompetent hands the reins of political government. but it does require that we recognize his fundamental rights as a man." senator john sharp williams, of mississippi, protests against "indiscriminate cursing of the whole negro race, good and bad alike included.... above all, remember this: it is not the educated negro who commits unspeakable crime; he knows the certain result. it is the brute whose avenues of information are totally cut off." leroy percy, of greenville, miss., pleads for protection of the black man: "daily, in recognition of the weakness of human nature, the prayer goes up from millions to a higher power: 'deliver me from temptation--temptation which i cannot face and overcome i pray thee to deliver me from.' there is no greater temptation known to man than the hourly, daily, yearly dealing with ignorant, trusting people.... so justice, self-interest, the duty which we owe to ourselves and those who follow us, all demand that we should not permit to go unchallenged, should not acquiesce in the viciously erroneous idea that the negro should be kept in helpless ignorance." from this summary of general views it is evident that even the most moderate white men pleading for the rights of their black neighbors practically all tacitly accept certain postulates as to any possible remedies, which they believe to be quite beyond discussion and which may be analyzed as follows: (i) the first is the dominance of the white race, which will not surrender any of the present privileges. as page puts it: "the absolute and unchangeable superiority of the white race--a superiority, it appears to him, not due to any mere adventitious circumstances, such as superior educational and other advantages during some centuries, but an inherent and essential superiority, based on superior intellect, virtue, and constancy. he does not believe that the negro is the equal of the white, or ever could be the equal." that means that the low negro is inferior to the low white, the average negro to the average white, and the superior negro, however high his plane, moral and intellectual, is also to be put into a position of permanent inferiority to the higher whites. because inferior morally and mentally, he is held also in political inferiority. the south does not intend that even intelligent and educated negroes shall have a share in making or administering the laws. (ii) partly from a sense of its own superiority, partly from a disdain of a formerly servile race, chiefly from a well-founded belief that amalgamation would be a great misfortune for the community, the south is determined that there shall be no legalized admixture of the races. that miscegenation is still going on in an unknown degree heightens the determination that it shall at least be put under the ban of law; the very danger makes the south more determined that the races shall be kept separate. (iii) the dominant white southerners are further absolutely determined that any settlement of the question shall come from their volition; and that means that the southern negro is not expected to exercise anything more than a mild academic influence. the character of the negroes, their thriftlessness or industry, their crime or virtue, their stupidity or their intelligence, may deflect the white mind one way or another; their preferences, outside the iron fence which the south has erected round the question, will receive some attention; but they will have to accept what the white people assign to them. (iv) the south is as yet little awakened to the idea that the status of the lower whites is a part of the whole race problem. inasmuch as the poor white is emerging from seclusion and poverty, people do not sufficiently realize that he needs education, intellectual and moral; that his passions, his animal instincts, his violence stand in the way of the uplift of both races. (v) the north is expected by the south not to act by legislation or any other active method in behalf of the negro. the southerners in general consider the fifteenth, or suffrage amendment, to be an affront, which they avoid by shifty clauses in their constitutions and would repeal if they could. some southerners resent even inquiry about the south, and apparently remember how their fathers received visiting abolitionists. (vi) it would, however, be a great injustice to the immense number of broad-minded people in the south to leave the impression that nobody down there welcomes investigation or reads criticisms. upon the negro question in general there are two different and opposing southern points of view. the one-sided and arrogant statements of the vardamans, the dixons, the graveses, and the tillmans have no right to call themselves the voice of the south, in the face of the appeals to common justice and american principles of fair play that flow from the pens of the bassetts, the murphys, the mitchells, the flemings, and the percys. it is a happy omen that the south is divided upon its own question; for it means that the taboo has been taken off discussion; that southern men may honestly differ on the question of the rights and the character of the negro. on the one side is a numerous class of whites, some coarse and ignorant, others of power and vitality, including many small farmers and managers of plantations, and also a large element in the towns, who are not much interested in the uplift of the whites and do not wish well to the negro, but are full of a blind hostility to the negro race and take the ground that this is a white man's government, and accept the negro only as a tool for their use. on the other side stand a great part of the high-bred, well-educated and masterful element; the people who count in the church, the club and university, the pulpit and the bench; people who have a material interest and genuine public spirit in providing for the future of their own commonwealth. in general the best people in the south, the most highly trained, most public-spirited, most religious, wealthiest, and most responsible people wish well to the negro. the plantation owner, the manufacturer, the railroad manager, want efficient laborers; the minister wants god-fearing people; the judge wants law-abiding men; the educator wants good schools; they all want to raise the community, the bottom as well as the top. how far is the superior class in the south to control the action of legislatures and the movement of public sentiment, and the behavior of those of a ruder cast? which of these two classes speaks for the south? chapter xxv the wrong way out except within the postulates stated in the last chapter, there can be no rational expectation of improvement of race relations in the south. even within those conditions many suggestions are from time to time made which are out of accord with white and negro character, with the physical conditions, or with the general trend of american life. before coming to practical remedies, it is necessary to examine and set aside these no-thoroughfares. first of all, can the southern race question be solved by any action of the north? the reconstruction amendments with the clause authorizing congress to enforce them by "appropriate legislation" seem intended to give the federal government power to protect the negro against either state legislation or individual action; but the supreme court in the civil rights decision of held that the action of congress under those amendments was confined to meeting positive official action by state governments. the fourteenth amendment provides for a special penalty in case of deprivation of political rights, by reducing the representation in congress of the states which limit their suffrage. any such legislation must be general in terms and would therefore apply to the northern states in which there are educational or tax qualifications. beyond that difficulty is the remembered ill effect of reconstruction laws, and the conviction in the north that the negro problem is not one simply of race hostility and definition of rights--that the negroes are in many ways a menace. to take the matter a second time out of the hands of the people on the ground, even though they are not solving their own problems, would mean a storm in congress, a weight on the administration, possibly a contest with the supreme court, which no responsible northern public man likes to contemplate. through the control of congress over federal elections there is another opportunity to interfere in behalf of the negro, but the federal laws put on the statute book in reconstruction times were repealed in ; and nobody now proposes to renew them. by the recent experience of the nation in the philippines, porto rico, and cuba, a lesson has been taught of the difficulty of handling non-european races. the nation begins to doubt the elevating power of self-government. for whatever reason, there is no evidence of any intention in the north to make the negro the ward of the nation. the writer is one of those who believe that any general federal legislation would revive friction between the sections, would sharpen the race feeling in the south, and in the end could accomplish little for the uplift of the negro; even federal aid to education could hardly be so managed as to keep up the feeling of white responsibility from which alone proper education of the negro can be expected. is there any likelihood of a private propaganda in behalf of the negro like that of the abolitionists? a considerable class of northern people have a warm sense of resentment at what they think the injustice and cruelty of the superior race, especially in the withdrawal of the suffrage by state constitutional amendments; and there is a lively interest in the education of negroes and in work among the poor whites. a propaganda, with societies, public meetings, journals, and a literature is, however, no longer possible--the north has too much on its own hands in curing the political diseases of its cities, in absorbing the foreigners; like congress, it recognizes that the south is sincere, even if somewhat exaggerated, in its nervousness about the negroes. the most that can be expected of northern individuals in the way of bettering southern conditions is attempts like that of this volume to get into the real nature of the problems and to offer good advice. notwithstanding the horror felt toward amalgamation, from time to time in unexpected southern quarters reappears the suggestion that it is impossible for the two races to live alongside each other separate, and that the logical and unavoidable outcome is fusion; that the relentless force of juxtaposition is too much for law or prejudice or race instinct. over and over again one is told that nowhere in history is there an example of two races living side by side indefinitely without uniting. this is not historically true; mohammedans and hindoos (originally of the same race) have lived separate hundreds of years in india; boers and kaffirs have been side by side for near a century; the english colonists and the american indians were little intermixed. amalgamation could only be accomplished by a change in white sentiment about as probable as the mormonization of the northern whites; and if it were possible, it would lead to a new and worse race question, the rivalry of a mixed race occupying the whole south against a white race in the rest of the country, which would make all present troubles seem a pleasant interlude. amalgamation as a remedy welcomed by the southern whites is unthinkable; as a remedy against their convictions, brought about by time, it is highly unlikely. at the other extremity is the idea, now more than a century old, that the way to get rid of the race question is to remove one of the races altogether. this notion of curing the patient by sending him to a hospital for incurables goes back to . jefferson favored it; the colonization society organized it in , and in the forty years from to succeeded in sending about ten thousand negroes to liberia. abraham lincoln favored it. it is often suggested nowadays. this plan, if it could be carried out, would so completely relieve the immediate difficulties that it deserves the most careful consideration. the first objection at the outset is ten million objections--namely, the negroes themselves, who have never taken kindly to expatriation, for the simple reason that it is flying to evils that they know not of. the second difficulty is to find a place to receive the exiles. experiments in the west indies, in central america, and in africa have all been failures. no european country or colonies will welcome people sent away on the ground that they are inimical to white civilization; and the settlements of american negroes in savage africa have been entire failures. as has been shown above, liberia, after nearly ninety years of existence, has no influence on the back country; its trade is scanty, its health is depleted, and its conditions are in every way less favorable to physical and moral well-being than those of the united states. then follows the financial difficulty; to be sure a correspondent of a georgia newspaper suggests: "let the government appropriate $ , , for five successive years each for deportation, judiciously forcing off first the ages from eighteen to forty-five, as far as can be done without too violent a separation of dependent ages, and five years will substantially settle the exodus. all separations can be reunited in a few years and not a negro's heart broken." but a single hundred millions would be only a drop in the bucket. to bring over the ten million foreigners now in the united states, and get them started in a country abounding in work and opportunities, has probably averaged a cost of a hundred dollars a head, or one thousand millions. the thing must be done completely, if at all; for from the point of view of its advocates, to expatriate a part of the race would be like cutting out a portion of a cancer; and where are you going to find, say, a thousand million dollars to carry away ten million people upon the proceeds of whose continued labor in america you must depend for the southern share of the money? in the next place, would a world which still has tears for the acadians deported from nova scotia in , which is aroused by the banishment of political suspects to siberia, be impressed with the high civilization of a nation which would send ten million people to their death in a continent where as yet neither briton, frenchman, portuguese, or german has ever been able to establish any considerable colony of european emigrants? if the superior race, with all its resources, prudence, and medical skill cannot live in africa, what would become of ten million negroes deported on the plea that they were not capable of participating in the white man's civilization? though descended from africans there is no reason to suppose that they have transmitted immunity from the deadly tropical diseases. again, there is not a state, city, or county populous with negroes in the south which would not resent, and if need be resist, the sudden taking away of its laborers. whenever the question is brought to an issue, the southern people admit that, with all the race difficulties, the negro does raise the cotton and drive the mule; and without him the white man must take the hoe and the reins. as john sharp williams puts it: "the white people of the south do not want to hasten the departure of the good negroes; ... whenever you suggest that he leave the southern darky replies in scriptural phrase, 'ask me not to leave thee.' they are here, and they are going to remain here so long as there is a cotton field in sight." the people who preach expatriation, deportation, elimination, or whatever they choose to call it, are not the people who employ the negro or wish him well, or would be pleased to see him succeed in any hemisphere. a milder suggestion is that the essential negro be slowly and quietly replaced by somebody else. what somebody else? shall it be northerners? senator williams, of mississippi, says: "i would like to see established a great land company with a capital of about a million dollars, to buy lands in the cotton states and sell them out to home-seeking immigrants on a ten years' instalment plan." in the southern press was convinced that a great flow of immigration had set in from the north, but in reality outside of florida and texas nearly all colonies of northerners have been unsuccessful, though there is a slow stream of people, partly from the northwest, who take up farms in the south and mix with the southern white population. these people are prone to be dissatisfied with the schools; they are in despair over the wretched domestic service; the women are filled with terror by the lynchings and by the frequent cause of them; the newcomers dislike the negroes more than the southern-born people dislike them, and cannot be depended upon to remain a permanent part of the population. in any case, they do not replace the negro laborer for wages. the only hope of a substitute population of plantation hands is in the foreign immigrants, who have been described in a previous chapter, and of whom, up to , the south seems to have expected a brisk influx. the federal government even set out to build immigrant stations in charleston and savannah. but in all the southern ports (excepting baltimore) together received only , out of , , . to-day the whole scheme is a failure and there is no prospect of importing large numbers of foreigners to work for wages. a member of congress from mississippi recently declared from his seat in the house that there was a conspiracy of federal and italian officials to prevent italians from coming into his state. the first reason for the failure of the promising plan is the many undoubted cases, and the more rumored and reported instances, of peonage of white men. in the second place the italians, who have been chiefly relied upon, have no intention of spending their lives and bringing up their children as plantation laborers; they work so well and are so profitable to both the plantation owners and themselves that after a few years they save money enough to do something that they like better, and that is the end of their service on other people's land. the experience of south carolina in , detailed in the chapter on immigration, seems conclusively to prove that most foreigners prefer the north because they think they are better treated there. the fundamental difficulty with the whole plan of immigration is that a great many people in the south believe that the average foreigner is an undesirable member of the community. they have no familiarity with that grinding-down process by which even unpromising races are transformed into americans. they read of the "black hand," which is not very different from some forms of the old ku klux klan; of the vendetta, which can be paralleled in the southern mountains; and they show little willingness to receive even the better foreign elements on equal terms. it is a fair question whether if the italians, for example, should come to have a majority of votes in louisiana they would ever be permitted to elect and inaugurate a governor out of their own number; whether the phrase "white man's government" does not apply as much against the "dago" as against the negro. if the negroes cannot be replaced, is it not possible to segregate them into districts of their own? for forty years a process has been going on by which the black counties grow blacker and the white counties become whiter; negroes move into the counties where there is most work and therefore the greatest number of laborers, and the whites gradually move out of the districts in which the negroes are very numerous. could not that process be carried still farther? some people in despair predict that the whites will eventually find their way into the west and northwest, leaving the fruitful south to the negro. although there is a steady drift of white people out of the southern states, it is of the same kind as the movement from new england and the middle states to the west, and the whites have not the slightest intention of abandoning their section; buildings go up, mills appear, skyscrapers intensify the city, and in every southern state the whites grow richer and more powerful. the desired result might be brought about if the negroes would move to other parts of the union, and much is made of the present drift into the northern cities, but the conditions of life are not favorable to them there, and their number is only kept up by new immigrations. booker washington advises the negro to stay in the south because "the fact that at the north the negro is confined to almost one line of employment often tends to discourage and demoralize the strongest who go from the south, and to make them an easy prey to temptation." many of the keenest observers in the south desire that the negroes should spread through the country, partly to relieve the pressure in the south, and partly in the conviction that it would furnish an object lesson to the northern people of the disadvantage of the presence of negroes. whatever the number of emigrant negroes out of the south, the number left there goes on steadily increasing from decade to decade; and whenever they show a disposition to leave in large numbers, the southerners oppose and resist, because they see no hope of supplying their place with any other than more negro laborers. could the two races divide the land into districts? such a separation is favored both by bishop turner, a negro leader, and by john temple graves, of atlanta, a negro hater, and there are a few examples of such separate communities. many white counties and a few white towns will not admit negroes; and in perhaps half a dozen colored villages no white man lives. here is perhaps an opportunity for considerably reducing race friction, for there is no reason to suppose that such separate towns go backward in civilization; and they give opportunities for negro business and professional men, which are important for the encouragement of the best members of the race. the most serious practical objection is, however, that such towns take away laborers, actual or potential, from the white plantations; and the industrial cotton system depends on keeping those negroes on other people's land. a broader proposition is phrased by reed in the "brother's war"--"let us give the negro his own state in our union.... we are rich enough and have land enough to give the negro this state, which is due from us. his especial need is to exercise political and civil privileges, in his own community, all the way up from the town meeting to congress." possibly this remedy might have been applied forty years ago, but it is now absolutely unworkable. when reed suggests that the negro be allowed to take over some state and carry it on as a negro community, the instant question is, which state? louisiana will not allow her laborers to go _en masse_ to texas; and texas would drive them back with shotguns from the border if they tried to move. the blackest states have the least disposition to become blacker, the lighter states are just as determined to remain light; and since there is no longer any great area of good land not taken up by anybody, colonization of the negro within the limits of the united states is impossible. could the desired result of keeping whites and negroes from too confining a contact be reached by a less drastic method? a favorite suggestion eloquently championed by grady is "race separation," which he defined to mean: "that the whites and blacks must walk in separate paths in the south. as near as may be, these paths should be made equal--but separate they must be now and always. this means separate schools, separate churches, separate accommodation everywhere--but equal accommodation where the same money is charged, or where the state provides for the citizen." that is, in every city negroes are to occupy separate quarters, go to separate schools, ride in separate sections of the street cars, use separate sidewalks, buy in separate stores, have separate churches, places of amusement, social organizations, banks, and insurance companies. this system, which in many directions has already been carried out, rests upon a conviction of the negro's ability to maintain an economic and intellectual life of his own, without danger to the white race. it has the great disadvantage of cutting off the third of the population which most needs uplift from the influences which bear for progress. it still further diminishes that association of the superior with the inferior race, that kindly interest of employer in employee, that infiltration of culture and moral principles which is the mightiest influence among the white people. furthermore, where is the black man to acquire the skill to carry on his own enterprises, to build cotton gins and oil mills, to stock stores, to found banks, if he is to be separated from the white man? where is he to buy his goods? here the whole system breaks down; the drummer is no respecter of persons, and not only is willing to sell to a solvent negro, but is likely to insist that the negro merchant shall not give all his orders to a colored wholesaler. then what is to be done with the hundreds of thousands of landowners, tenants, croppers, and wage hands, who depend on advances from the whites? there is no such thing as commercial segregation; as in other directions, when any remedy is proposed which means the cutting off of negro labor, or of the profits derived from negro custom, the south invariably draws back. on the other hand, race separation would give greater opportunities to the negroes and reduce the contact with the lower class of the whites, out of which comes most of the race violence in the south. it is substantially the method applied in northern cities, though nowhere to any such degree as in the south. it is a method which, with all its hardship to negroes of the higher class, comes nearest being a _modus vivendi_ between the races. as for white communities without negroes, there are many such in the mountain regions, and an unsuccessful effort was made in the town of fitzgerald, ga., by northern immigrants to keep the negroes out of it, but in such places who will do the odd jobs and perform the necessary rough labor? how shall houses be built, drays be driven and dirt shoveled, if there are no negroes? try which way you may, there seems no method consonant with the interests of the south and the principles of humanity by which negroes can be set apart from the white people. it was not the choice of their ancestors to change their horizon; nor were the africans now in the united states consulted as to their neighbors; but they were born on american soil; they have shared in the toil of conquering the continent; they have their homes, their interests, and their traditions; they have never known any life except in dependence on and close relations with the whites. however happier the south and the whole country might be were there no race question, there seems no possibility of avoiding it by taking away all race contact. a method of supposed relief widely applied, frequently invoked, and strenuously defended, is to terrorize the negro. and the north is not free from that spirit. as mr. dooley philosophizes: "he'll ayther have to go to th' north an' be a subjick race, or stay in th' south an' be an objick lesson. 'tis a har-rd time he'll have, anyhow.... i'm not so much throubled about th' naygur whin he lives among his opprissors as i am whin he falls into th' hands iv his liberators. whin he's in th' south he can make up his mind to be lynched soon or late an' give his attintion to his other pleasures iv composin' rag-time music on a banjo, an' wurrukin' f'r th' man that used to own him an' now on'y owes him his wages. but 'tis the divvle's own hardship ... to be pursooed by a mob iv abolitionists till he's dhriven to seek police protection." still the northern police do give protection against assaults on the negro which southern police sometimes refuse. lawlessness is the plague of the south. attention has already been called to the negro crime against person and life, the shocking frequency of white crime, the weakness and timidity of the courts, and the resort to lynching as an alleged protest against lawlessness. the number of homicides and mob murders is not so serious as the continual appeals to violence by editors and public men who are accepted as leaders by a large minority and sometimes a majority of the white people. thus john temple graves calls for "a firm, stern, and resolute attitude of organization and readiness on the part of the dominant race.... is this black man from savage africa to keep on perpetually disturbing the sections of our common country? is this running sore to be nursed and treated and anodyned and salved and held forever to our breasts?" southern newspapers abound in fierce and exciting headlines: "the burly black brute foiled!" "a ham colored nigger in the hen house!" "the only place for you is behind a mule," and so on--what somebody has called "the wholesale assassination of negro character." senator tillman in a public lecture has said: "on one occasion we killed seven niggers; i don't know how many i killed personally, but i shot to kill and i know i got my share." and in another speech, in november, , in chicago, the same man, who has repeatedly been elected to the senate from a once proud state, said: "no matter what the people in the north may say or do, the white race in the south will never be dominated by the negro, and i want to tell you now that if some state should ever make an attempt to 'save south carolina,' we will show them in their fanaticism that we will make it red before we make it black." observe that this ferocity is not directed against the negro simply because he does ill, but equally if he does well. thus a correspondent in georgia writes: "let me tell you one thing,--every time you people of the north countenance in any way, shape or form any form of social equality, you lay up trouble, not for yourselves, or for us so much, but for the negro. _right or wrong the southern people will never tolerate it, and will go through the horrors of another reconstruction, before they will permit it to be. before we will submit to it, we will kill every negro in the southern states._ this is not idle boasting or fire-eating threats, but the cold, hard facts stated in all calmness." could hate, jealousy, and meanness reach a higher pitch than in the following declaration of thomas dixon, jr., sent broadcast through the country in the _saturday evening post_ two years ago? "does any sane man believe that when the negro ceases to work under the direction of the southern white man, this 'arrogant,' 'rapacious,' and 'intolerant' race will allow the negro to master his industrial system, take the bread from his mouth, crowd him to the wall and place a mortgage on his house? competition is war--the most fierce and brutal of all its forms. could fatuity reach a sublimer height than the idea that the white man will stand idly by and see this performance? what will he do when put to the test? he will do exactly what his white neighbor in the north does when the negro threatens his bread--kill him!" could blind race hostility go farther than in the atlanta riots of , for which not one murderer has ever been subjected to any punishment? these violent utterances come almost wholly from the superior race. the negroes have their grievances; but any intemperate publication toward the white race would almost certainly lead to a lynching. an instance has actually occurred where a negro was driven out of a community, and glad to escape with his life, because he had in his newspaper said with regard to a woman of his own race whose character had been assailed, that she was as virtuous as any white woman. doubtless some of the cruel and incendiary language that has been quoted is intended for home consumption; it is supposed to be a striking way of saying to the negroes that they ought to behave better; and alongside every one of these vindictive utterances could be placed a message of hope and encouragement from southern white men to the blacks. these expressions of white ferocity in condemnation of negro ferocity are overbalanced by such strong words as those of senator williams: "it cannot be escaped by the extermination of either race by the other. that thought is absolutely horrible to a good man, a believer in the divine philosophy of jesus christ, who taught mutual helpfulness, and not mutual hatred to mankind." nevertheless, it remains true that a large number of southern people who are in places of influence and authority advise that the race problem be settled by terrorizing the negro. the commonest form of terror is lynching, a deliberate attempt to keep the race down by occasionally killing negroes, sometimes because they are dreadful criminals, frequently because they are bad, or loose-tongued, or influential, or are acquiring property, or otherwise irritate the whites. a saucy speech by a negro to a white man may be followed by swift, relentless, and tormenting death. in every case of passionate conflict between two races the higher loses most, because it has most to lose; and lynch law as a remedy for the lawlessness of the blacks has the disadvantage of occasionally exposing innocent white men to the uncontrollable passion of other white men, of filling the mind with scenes of horror and cruelty, of lowering the standard of the whole white race. this subject is inextricably connected with the crimes by negroes, for which lynching is held to be an appropriate punishment. the statistics collected by mr. cutler, and stated in a previous chapter, show in the twenty-two years from to a record of , lynchings in the south; of the negroes lynched, were charged with violence to women and with murder. these figures absolutely disprove the habitual statements in the south that lynching is common to all sections of the union; that it is almost always caused by rape; and that rape is a crime confined to negroes. the details of some of these cases would show that the mob not infrequently gets an innocent person; that it is liable to be carried away into the most horrible excesses of burning and torture; that a lynching is really a kind of orgy in which not only the criminal class among the whites, but people who are ordinarily swayed by reason simply let go of themselves and indulge the primeval brutishness of human nature. said confucius: "the master said, 'i hate the manner in which purple takes away the luster of vermilion. i hate the way in which the songs of ch'ing confound the music of gna. i hate those who with their sharp mouths overthrow kingdoms and families.'" professor smith, of tulane university, is spokesman for thousands of respectable and educated men when he says: "atrocious as such forms of rudimentary justice undoubtedly are, and severely reprehensible, to be condemned always and without any reserve, it cannot be denied that they have a certain rough and horrible virtue. great is the insult they wreak on the majesty of the law and brutalizing must be their effect upon human nature, yet they do strike a salutary terror into hearts which the slow and uncertain steps of the courts could hardly daunt. in witness stands the fact that lynch-lightning seldom strikes twice in the same district or community. such frightful incidents tend to repeat themselves at wide intervals, both of time and place." they tend to repeat themselves immediately; it is not an accident that mississippi, in a large part of which the negroes are renowned for their freedom from the crime so much reprehended, nevertheless, has more lynchings than any other state; it is because mississippi has the lynching habit. strange that in a community like the south, so intelligent, so proud of the superiority and the supremacy of the white race, the deeds of fifty abandoned black men each year should throw millions of whites into a frenzy of excitement; and that for the crime of those fifty, ten million innocent people are held responsible. lynching is no remedy for race troubles, and never has been; it intensifies the race feeling a hundredfold; it is a standing indictment of the white people who possess all the machinery of government, yet cannot prevent the fury of their own race. "surely," says president roosevelt, "no patriot can fail to see the fearful brutalization and debasement which the indulgence of such a spirit and such practices inevitably portend.... the nation, like the individual, cannot commit a crime with impunity. if we are guilty of lawlessness and brutal violence, whether our guilt consists in active participation therein or in mere connivance and encouragement, we shall assuredly suffer later on because of what we have done. the corner stone of this republic, as of all free governments, is respect for and obedience to the law." that the south can get on without lynchings is shown by the gradual diminution in the number of instances. in there were , in only , and in this good result the protests of the good people in the south have been aided by the criticism of the north. murders of whites by negroes are probably just as frequent, but they are more likely to go to the courts. some things can still be done to reduce the crime of the individual without increasing the crime of the mob. john temple graves has suggested for the negro that: "upon conviction of his crime he would cross a 'bridge of sighs' and disappear into a prison of darkness and mystery, from which he would never emerge, and in which he would meet a fate known to no man save the government and the excutioners of the law--that the very darkness and mystery of this punishment would strike more terror to the soul of superstitious criminals than all the vengeance of modern legal retribution." a kindred suggestion is that a special court of whites shall be set up to deal with certain aggravated crimes, outside of the technicalities of the ordinary criminal law. if the negroes would deliver up those of their own number whom they suppose to have committed such crimes, they would relieve themselves of the odium of protecting the worst criminals. the whites are right in insisting on a stronger feeling of race responsibility, but where is their own sense of race responsibility when the salisbury lynchers, the atlanta murderers and the scoundrel turner, who practically kidnapped and then tortured to death a negro woman, are protected by public sentiment? extraordinary remedies are not necessary if the white people will make their own courts and sheriffs do their duty, by speedy trials, followed by swift and orderly punishment; and most of all by disgracing and driving out of society men who take upon themselves the hangman's office without the hangman's plea of maintaining the majesty of law. lynching is part of the same spirit as that which inspires peonage, the meanest of all crimes in the calendar; for to steal a poor negro's labor is to rob a cripple of his crutches; to knock down the child for his penny; it is the fleecing of the most defenseless by the most powerful. one of the remedies for the ills of the south is that the white people shall sternly set themselves against the crime of peonage, which exists in every state of the lower south, either with or without the color of law; and which secures the most expensive labor that the south can possibly employ, since it alarms and discourages a thousand for every man whose forced labor is thus stolen. the terrible thing about all the suggestions of violence and hatred as a remedy is that they react upon the white race, which has most to lose in property and in character. "there are certain things," said governor vardaman, of mississippi, in a public proclamation, "that must be done for the control of the negro which need not be done for the government of the white man. in spite of the provisions of the federal constitution the men who are called upon to deal with this great problem must do that which is necessary to be done, even though it may have the appearance at times of going somewhat without the law.... if the people of the respective communities of this state will only come together and resolve to convert every negro into a laborer and self-supporter, even though it be necessary to make him a laborer upon the county's or the state's property, they will serve their communities and their state well." no idea is more futile than that you can drive people with whips into the kingdom of heaven; that you can teach an inferior race to observe laws by yourself breaking them; that you can put one half the community outside the law, while claiming american liberty for the other half. though the negro race has little to urge in public, it feels the degradation and the hurt. violence solves no problems; it does not even postpone the evil day. the race problem must be solved by applying to negroes the same kind of law and justice that the experience of the anglo-saxon has found necessary for its own protection. chapter xxvi material and political remedies the methods of dealing with the race question discussed in the last chapter all go back to the idea that the negro can be improved only by some process distasteful to him. race separation he dislikes, expatriation he shudders at, and violence brings on him more evils than it removes, to say nothing of the effect on the whites. the world has tried many experiments of civilizing people by the police, and they are all failures, from the russian empire to the west side of new york, especially since both the cossacks and the metropolitan police have faults of their own. in the south and in russia alike there is doubtless a feeling that the people at the bottom of the scale are things below the common standard, that force is necessary because they will not listen to reason. none of the forcible remedies meets the most obvious difficulty in the south--that the present condition of the lower race is not a foundation for great wealth and high prosperity. if the negro has reached his pitch, if he is to remain at his present average of morals and industry and productivity, the south may well be in despair, for it is far below that of the low southern white, and farther below that of the northwestern farmer. the condition of the black is a menace to society--if it must stay at the present level. in the chapter on "is the negro rising?" some reasons are given for believing that the status of the race has much improved in the last forty years and is still gaining. upon this critical point numbers of both races testify. kelly miller says of the achievements of his people: "within forty years of only partial opportunity, while playing as it were in the backyard of civilization, the american negro has cut down his illiteracy by over fifty per cent; has produced a professional class some fifty thousand strong, including ministers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, editors, authors, architects, engineers and all higher lines of listed pursuits in which white men are engaged; some three thousand negroes have taken collegiate degrees, over three hundred being from the best institutions in the north and west established for the most favored white youth; ... negro inventors have taken out some four hundred patents as a contribution to the mechanical genius of america; there are scores of negroes who, for conceded ability and achievements, take respectable rank in the company of distinguished americans." this opinion is not confined to members of the negro race; even so cordial an enemy of the negro as john temple graves admits that "the leaders of no race in history have ever shown greater wisdom, good temper and conservative discretion than distinguishes the two or three men who stand at the head of the negro race in america to-day"; and elsewhere he declares that there are two good negroes for every bad negro, a proportion which does not obtain in every race. thomas nelson page is of opinion that, "unquestionably, a certain proportion of the negro race has risen notably since the era of emancipation," and john sharp williams commits himself to the statement that "fully ninety per cent of the negro race is behaving itself as well as could be expected; it is at work in the fields, on the railroads, and in the sawmills, and does not, for the most part, know that there is a fifteenth amendment." a cloud of witnesses confirm the belief that a fourth to a fifth of all the negroes in the south are somewhat improving and slowly saving. some of them have hearkened to the advice of an english writer: "try to realize two things: first, that you are living in a commercial republic; a country whose standard, in all things, is material; second, that you are the greatest economic power in this country." the possibility of a general industrial uplift depends upon several factors which are not easy to fix. it is a question whether the lower four fifths of the negro race has anything like the potentiality of the upper fraction, for it is made up mostly of plantation negroes, who have certainly advanced a long way from slavery times, are better clothed, better fed, better housed, better treated, but are still a long way below most of the whites in their own section. the most appalling thing about the negro problem is, this mass of people on the land who are doing well in the sense that they work, make cotton, yield profits, help to make the community prosperous, but who are ignorant, stupid, and have no horizon outside the cotton field and the cornfield. in spirit they still hark back to whittier's plantation song, de yam will grow, de cotton blow, we'll hab de rice an' corn; o nebber you fear if nebber you hear de driver blow his horn. is there anything stirring in the minds of that great, good-natured, inert and unthinking mass which will bring them up where the reproach now heaped upon them shall fade away? still more, if they try to arise, will the whites permit them? that is no idle question, for rising means that some of them will seek other pursuits, and the white people have already given notice that certain avenues of labor are closed to them. contrary to many assertions confidently made, the negroes are not as a race crowded out of the skilled trades in the south; but the trades union is bound to appear and the effort will be to shut negro mechanics out of the unions altogether, as has been done in some northern places. the negro as he rises to higher possibilities may find those possibilities withdrawn. listen to the philosophy of thomas dixon, jr., a christian minister: "if the negro is made master of the industries of the south he will become the master of the south. sooner than allow him to take the bread from their mouths, the white men will kill him here, as they do north, when the struggle for bread becomes as tragic.... make the negro a scientific and successful farmer, and let him plant his feet deep in your soil, and it will mean a race war.... the ethiopian cannot change his skin, or the leopard his spots. those who think it possible will always tell you that the place to work this miracle is in the south. exactly. if a man really believes in equality, let him prove it by giving his daughter to a negro in marriage. that is the test." this is nothing more nor less than the negro preacher's exhortation to his congregation: "my dear hearers, dar is two roads a-lyin' straight before you, and a-branchin' off de one from de odder at the nex' corners; one of 'em leads to perdition, and de odder to everlastin' damnation. oh, my friends, which will you choose?" if the negro will not rise, argues dixon, he gives nothing to the community, away with him! if he does rise, he may take work that otherwise some white man might do, lynch him! the real argument of competition works just the other way. the inferior negro is not likely to take the bread out of the mouth of the superior white man; but, when relieved from the abnormal conditions of slavery and of reconstruction, he may still be able to hold his own in the struggle for existence. emancipation threw upon the negro the responsibility for his own keeping. the most that he can ask is a fair field without artificial hindrances or limitations; and in such a field a race on the average inferior may nevertheless find tasks in which it excels, and may maintain its race life unimpaired. kelly miller says: "you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, i was born with an iron hoe in my hand"; and the world needs the hoe hand just as much as the silversmith. it would appear that for the uplift of the negro something is needed on the white side: remembrance of the foundations of american liberty, of the workings of christianity, of the economic truth that you are not made poor because your neighbor gets on in the world. the curse of the south is that its people do not more genuinely realize that the more active, industrious, and thrifty a people become, the more their neighbors receive out of the enlarged contribution to the community. if the negroes were all as intelligent as roscoe conkling bruce, as forehanded as benson of kowaliga, as lyric as paul dunbar, the whites in the south might get rich out of the trade of the negro, and some of them see it so. for instance, president winston, of the agricultural college of north carolina: "greater industrial efficiency would prove an everlasting bond between the races in the south. it is the real key to the problem. let the negro make himself indispensable as a workman, and he may rely upon the friendship and affection of the whites.... public sentiment in the south still welcomes the negro to every field of labor that he is capable of performing. the whole field of industry is open to him. the southern whites are not troubled by his efficiency but by his inefficiency." meantime the really industrious negroes, of whom there are a couple of million or more, follow the advice of paul dunbar: i've a humble little motto that is homely, though it's true,-- keep a-pluggin' away. it's a thing when i've an object that i always try to do,-- keep a-pluggin' away. when you've rising storms to quell, when opposing waters swell, it will never fail to tell,-- keep a-pluggin' away. the self-interest of the planter in the efficiency of his labor does not necessarily lead him to see the highest interests either of the negro race or of the south, under the present industrial system, which makes a plantation a workshop rather than a farm. the ownership of rich cotton lands only means wealth if you can find negro laborers and keep them at work. one of the most powerful uplifting agencies in all agricultural countries is the desire to own land, and one of the most frequent texts of booker washington is that now is the time for the negro to acquire land, for it will never again be so cheap; but where is the land to be found? although ownership has almost completely changed since the civil war, good lands are aggregating more and more into large tracts. the white farmer finds it difficult to hold his own against the capitalist and the syndicate, and even the thrifty black is beset by special difficulties. in the first place, the rural negro has, unless by his saving from sawmill and turpentine work, little opportunity to make money with which to buy a farm, except from the farm itself: hence he buys on time, pays a heavy interest charge, and is at every disadvantage. in the second place, few planters are willing to break up their land into small tracts; to do so takes away their livelihood, their only opportunity of making available their knowledge of cotton planting and of dealing with cotton hands. some of them are absolutely opposed to letting the negroes have land. mr. bell, of alabama, one of the largest landowners in the south, is credited with saying that he "has no use for a nigger that pays out." that is to say, he prefer his hands to be unprogressive and in debt. perhaps the south fails to realize that the wealth of the western, middle, and new england states comes from encouraging people to do the best they know how. the more industrious the people are, the more business there is of every kind and for everybody. the south would be happier and more prosperous if it could accept the western system of moderate-sized detached farms, on each of which there is an intelligent owner or tenant. the large number of negro landowners (though many of them perhaps are mortgaged) and the evident prosperity of those communities in which the greatest number of them hold their land, seems to show that landowning is a motive that ought to be strongly set before them. the old notion of reconstruction times that the federal government ought to furnish "forty acres and a mule" was not so far wrong; it would have been perfectly possible for the nation to acquire land in large tracts, to subdivide it, and give or sell it at nominal rates, so as to offer every thrifty negro the chance of proprietorship; but that opportunity, if it ever existed, has long gone by, and the negro must depend upon himself if he wishes to buy land. the present system is not only industrial; it tends to make a peasant out of the negro, and peasant is a term of reproach in the united states, though in france, germany, and italy there are rich peasants as well as poor ones, peasants who employ labor as well as those who have nothing but their hands. the american objection to a peasant system is its fixity; the peasant is an hereditary laborer on the land, usually the land of another; he leaves it to other people to carry on the state, to elevate the community. nevertheless, it is simply the truth that under the present system of tenancy employment and day wages, nearly half of the negro race in the south is in effect a peasantry. perhaps that is their fate. perhaps the alabama lawyer's doctrine, so comfortable for the white man, is to prevail: "it's a question who will do the dirty work. in this country the white man won't: the negro must. there's got to be a mudsill somewhere. if you educate the negroes they won't stay where they belong; and you must consider them as a race, because if you let a few rise it makes the others discontented." the question of who is to do the crude, disagreeable and dirty work, has solved itself in the north which has had one stratum after another of immigrants who were willing to take it, each shoving his predecessor higher up in the scale of employment; but no foreigners will come into the south in order to relieve the negro of hewing of wood and drawing of water. it looks as though the majority of the race would be compelled to accept some condition on the land, without a share in the government and without much prospect of getting into other kinds of life. the prospect is discouraging in itself, and it readily shades into restraint, subjection, and peonage--the worst of remedies for a race low in origin, which has just emerged from a debasing servitude, and which needs all the stimulus of ambition and opportunity. the south has proved its capacity for organizing and directing ignorant labor, but a peasant system has more dangers for the upper than the lower class. the gentlemen of eighteenth-century france, with all their high breeding, did not understand the people under them and were hated of their peasants; the pashas of egypt were degraded by their mastery over thousands of fellahin; the russian boyars have so alienated the peasants that they have almost rent the empire in twain. to accept a peasant system would be a confession that the south must remain in the lower stage of economic progress which goes with such a system. the duty and the privilege of the south is still to seek the way of enlightment; to make the negro a better laborer instead of crystallizing him into a race of dependents. material progress is necessary for the negro and equally for the poor white, not simply that he may be better clad and have better health, but because it brings with it other influences which go to elevate mankind. you cannot make good citizens and virtuous people out of a dirty, ill-fed family in a one-room house; the remedy of intellectual and moral uplift is as important as the material side. thrift works both ways: the man who buys good clothes for his children wants to send them to sunday school; the poor children in sunday school beg their fathers to give them good clothes. such intellectual and moral agencies are at work, though here again some white leaders object to them. for instance, john temple graves asks: "will the negro, with his increasing education and his surely and steadily advancing worth and merit, be content to accept, in peace and humility, anything less than his full and equal share in the government of which he is a part?" here is one of the stumbling blocks in the way of the progress of the race. for thrift and saving habits the south has always lacked one of the approved aids; it has few savings banks, few ordinary banks which attract the deposits of negroes, and few steady investments in small denominations. for this reason the proposed postal savings banks would be a boon to the south, and would help toward the purchase of land and other property. the negroes' own fraternal orders and stock companies furnish some opportunities for savings. regulation of drinking and gambling places will also make saving likelier among the laborers. that difficulties and conflicts of interest would rise between whites and negroes was foreseen at the time of reconstruction, and it was honestly supposed by the thinking people of the north that the ballot would at the same time protect the black against white aggression, and would educate him into the sense of such responsibility that there would not be negro aggression. giving the negro suffrage, however, while at the same time through the reconstruction state constitutions disfranchising his former master, brought about a condition of unstable equilibrium, and the strongest, best organized, and most determined race of course prevailed. for some years after the restoration of white supremacy in the southern states, colored men were still allowed to vote in districts like the sea islands of south carolina, and the delta of mississippi, where they were predominant, but since there has not been any genuine negro suffrage in any state of the south, in the sense that negroes were assured that their votes could be cast and would be counted even if they made a difference in the result. the last remnant of a successful combination of negro voters with a minority of the whites was in the north carolina election of . by the series of constitutional amendments begun in , and since spread through the south, a property or intelligence qualification has practically been established for negroes while not applying to poor or illiterate whites. in the northern states race difficulties, so far as they take form in politics, are settled by the usual course of elections; in the south it is the unalterable intention of the whites that the negroes shall not participate in choosing officials or in making laws either for white men or for themselves. furthermore, the south is bitterly opposed to the holding of offices by negroes except the small local appointments. though negroes are one third in number in the south, and more than one half the population in two states, they have not a single state administrative official, member of legislature, or judge. the opposition to negro office holding extends to federal appointments, although a considerable number of places, some of them important, are still held by negroes. they obtain appointments as railway mail clerks and letter carriers by competitive examination, and a few of them are selected for collectorships of internal revenue and of customs, on the basis that the negroes are part of the community and entitled to some recognition. to exclude them altogether from the public service, as they have been almost excluded from the suffrage, may somewhat diminish race friction, but it is a mark of inferiority which the whole negro race resents. chapter xxvii moral remedies the regeneration of a race, as of mankind, is something that must proceed from within and work outward. hence the most obvious remedy for race troubles is that both races should come up to a higher plane of living. what has been the progress of the negro in that direction; what is the likelihood of further advance? the chance of the blacks is less than it would be if the white race had a larger part in it. the negro is insensibly affected by the spirit of the community in which he lives. he knows that though ruffians threaten him with revolvers or with malignant looks that have a longer range, there are also broad-minded and large-hearted white men who bid him rise; but he is almost cut off from the machinery of civilization set in motion by his white neighbor; he cannot use or draw books from the public library; he practically cannot attend any churches, lectures, or concerts, except those provided directly for him. on the plantation he hardly sees a white face, except those of the managers and their families. he has little opportunity to talk with white men; none for that interchange of thought which is so much promoted by sitting round the same table. he can attend no colleges or schools with white students. in the common schools and in many institutions above, he meets only negro teachers. he is far more cut off from the personal touch and influence of white men and women of high quality than he was in slavery times. within his own race he experiences the influences of some notable minds, and, with few exceptions, the men recognized by the negroes as their chief leaders counsel moderation and preach uplift. many of the lesser leaders are deficient in character, and a large fraction of the ministers of the gospel do not, by their lives or conversation, enforce the lessons which they teach from the pulpit; they also have not the advantage of training by white teachers. in the process of separation of races, the negro mind has gone far toward losing touch with the white mind. the best friends of the race are grieved and humiliated from time to time to find that they had expected something which the negroes did not recognize as due from them--service, loyalty, gratitude. thousands of people believe that the negro makes it the object of his life to cheat a white man. thousands of negroes feel that they are not bound by promises or contracts made to their own hurt. since the white race is not in such friendly relations with the negro as to impress upon him the causes of white superiority, some southern writers would like to see a sort of benevolent state socialism applied to the negro, such as laws under which the coming and going of the blacks should be regulated, their implements secured, and labor distributed where it was needed. like many other suggestions, this remedy would cure the negro's shiftlessness by taking away his self-control, and would apply to the lazy black man a régime which would be abhorrent if employed upon the lazy white man. where the whites appreciate and aid the negroes, the color line cuts them off from making the distinctions which are the rewards of the energetic and successful in other communities. the negro poet, the essayist, and the educator have no fellowship with those neighbors who could appreciate their genius. so far as the south can prevent it, the most energetic and successful negro business man can hope for no public office. the machinery for uplifting the negro through white influence is no longer in operation. the inferior race is thrown back upon members of the inferior race for its moral stimulus; and then is reproached because it does not form higher ideals and advance more rapidly. the successful negro exercising a good influence among his fellows cannot be admitted to the white man's club, cannot be made the intimate of men of kindred aims. as senator williams says: "when we find a good negro we must encourage him to stay good and to grow better. we are doing too little of that. the old adage, 'give a dog a bad name and you have made a bad dog,' is a good one. indiscriminate cursing of the whole negro race, good and bad alike included, is an exemplification of the adage. i have frequently thought how hard it was for a good negro, especially during campaign times, to stay good or to grow better when he could not come within sound of a white speaker's voice without hearing his whole race indiscriminately reviled without mention of him as an exception, even in the neighborhood where he was known to be one." one of the strongest civilizing forces both north and south has been the church, through which has been spread abroad not only the incitements to life on a high plane, but the intellectual stimulus of the preacher's voice, of the association of keen men, of bible study. the negro has the outward sign of this influence, the force of which is recognized by all candid people; but his clergy are not, as a class, moral leaders, and here, as in so many other directions, he is deprived of the leadership of the whites. for similar populations in the north there is an apparatus of missions, and the schools and colleges planted by northerners in the south are almost all substantially missionary movements; but the south dislikes them and makes almost no effort to rival them. the christian church, which is the bearer of civilization to africa, china, the american indians, leaves the negroes in great part to christianize themselves if they can. the white man has another opportunity of helping upward his dark neighbor through his control of legislatures and courts. garner would solve the problem--"not by denying him the advantages of education, but by curbing his criminal instincts through a more rigid enforcement of the law. the laws against carrying concealed weapons, against gambling, and against vagrancy should, if necessary, be increased in severity and enforced with a vigilance and certainty which will root out gambling, force the idle vagrant to work, and send the pistol carrier to prison. the abolition of the saloon and the extirpation of the 'blind tiger' and the cocaine dive would remove the most potent external causes of negro criminality.... conditions could be materially improved by the establishment of a more adequate police surveillance and control and the introduction of a more effective police protection, for it is a well-known fact that in most southern communities this protection is notoriously insufficient. it is also well worth considering whether some reasonable and effective measures might not be taken to prevent the movement of the negroes to the towns and cities and their segregation in particular localities." says an alabamian lawyer: "a different and milder set of laws ought to be enacted for him than for the white man.... his best friends in the south are among our 'gentlemen.' the low white has no use for him. he hates the negro and the negro hates him." from the federal government, as has been shown above, no effective legislation can be expected; but may not something be done by special state action? many observers are alive to the possibility of removing temptations which are thought to be specially alluring to the negro. the ill-disposed country black is a rover, a night-hawk, and has his own kinds of good times, including a supply of whisky; the bad town negro finds his pleasures right at hand, and is frequently abetted in them by the white man. to be sure, low drinking houses, gambling houses and worse places, flourish among all races in new york, and are no more likely to be exterminated in new orleans than in the northern city for such considerations. john sharp williams would resort to "some sort of common-sense remedies of the negro question upon the criminal side, principally in the nature of preventives. in the first place, they suggest the rigid enforcement of vagrant laws by new laws whenever, in justice and right, they need strengthening. in the second place, they suggest a closing of all low dives and brothels where the vagrant, tramp, and idle negroes consort and where their imaginations--they being peculiarly a race of imagination and emotion--are inflamed by whisky, cocaine, and lewd pictures. it must be remembered that that which would not inflame the imagination of a white man will have that effect upon the tropical, emotional nature of the darky.... we ought, like canada and cape colony, to have mounted rural police or constabulary, whose duty it would be to patrol the country districts day and night." the cry in the southern newspapers against negro dives generally ignores the fact that many of them are carried on by white people, and others are partially supported by white custom. at the bottom of humanity race distinctions disappear, and you could find, if you searched for it, in many southern towns, beneath the lowest negro deep a lower white deep. the difficulty with southern legislation is that it is more hostile to negro dives than to white dives. a more promising legislative remedy is an efficient vagrant law, by which the hopelessly idle, the sponges on the industry of their race, should receive the dread punishment of work. northern states which are unable to find statutes and magistrates strict enough to put an end to the intolerable white tramp nuisance, have little cause to criticise the southern loafers, of whom the whites are found in quite as large a proportion as the negroes. several states already have vagrant laws, but they are applied chiefly to negroes, often very inequitably, and play into the iniquitous system by which sheriffs make money in proportion to the number of prisoners that they arrest and keep in jail. the _birmingham age herald_ says that to abolish imprisonment for nonpayment of criminal costs is "as much out of our reach as is a flight to mars.... we must build jails to suit the operations of the collectors of fees. there is no help for it." suggestions that there be a kind of negro court for the less serious negro crimes, have been made by thomas nelson page and others; and negroes could probably administer as good local justice as some of their dominant race. in the island of st. helena, for instance, where seven thousand people for a long time had no local court, a white magistrate was sent over who sat day after day drunk on the bench, finally shot a man (the second homicide on that island in forty years), and was put on his trial, but still held his judicial office. perhaps a special negro court for petty crimes would increase the sense of responsibility; but it collides with the present system of selling petty criminals to the planters. something could be done by an efficient system of rural police such as is needed all over the country, north and south. in georgia and south carolina bills have lately been pending for a state mounted police which would be a sort of revival of the volunteer patrols of slavery times. the suggestion is fought hard, however, on the ground that white men might be obliged to give an account of themselves as well as negroes. the only thoroughgoing legislative measure which seems likely to help the negro is prohibition, which is now sweeping through the lower south. it is a region which suffers from hard drinking, and there has long been a strong sentiment against the traffic; but the tumultuous success of prohibition laws in communities like alabama and mississippi is due in great part to the conviction of employers of labor in cotton mills, in ironworks, in the timber industry, and on the land, that they are losing money because their laborers are made irregular by drunkenness. that objection applies as much to the selling of liquor to whites as to negroes; but the drinking white men have an influence over prosecuting officers that the negroes cannot command; and it looks as though the result would be a kind of prohibition which shuts off the stream from the dusky man's throat while leaving it running for the white man. if the south succeeds in keeping liquor away from the negro in the southern cities, it will show more determination than exists in any northern center of population. in general, legislation is not a remedy for the race question, because breaches of the law come from both sides; and nobody is skillful enough to draft a bill which will, if righteously applied, apply only to criminal and dissolute negroes. the cutting down of drinking shops, the arrest of the drones, a rural police, enforcement of the liquor laws, will help in the south because it will bring about a feeling of responsibility in both races--but race hostility is not caused by laws, is not curable by laws, and relies upon defying laws. perhaps the most striking failure of the whites to exercise an influence over the negroes is through the negro schools. they are, to be sure, carried on under laws made by white men, administered by state and county white officials, but there the relation ends. even from the point of view of an unsympathetic superior race, the schools are badly supervised; and when it comes to the teachers, the lower race is thrown back upon teachers of the lower race. in the north the raw children from the alien families are americanized by their fellows in the public schools, under the influence of teachers taken from the class of the population which has most opportunity for training. not so in the south, where the blind are expected to lead the blind, where negro teachers trained by negroes are expected to inculcate the principles of white civilization. the refusal of the south to permit white people, and especially white women, to teach the negroes, is a plant of recent growth. in slavery times the white mistresses and their daughters habitually taught the household servants their duties and set before them a standard of morals. beyond that, they were often proud of teaching capable slaves to read and write. on every theory of the relation of the races this transmittal of civilization was not only allowable, but a sacred duty. nowadays the mistresses have the smallest control over or influence upon their domestic servants; and, with few exceptions, the south absolutely refuses to improve the low estate of the negroes by permitting the white young people to teach them. the arguments against putting white teachers into negro schools are altogether weak. the first is that it is unsafe for white women, but the northern women who have been for years among negroes as teachers have no fear nor cause for fear; and the influence of a pure and refined white woman would tend to diminish some of the worst crimes of the black race. it is urged, however, that even men could not teach negroes, first, because the negroes would not trust their girls to them; secondly, because it would cut off the field or negro employment; thirdly, because a white man does not wish to teach negroes; and, finally, because none but inferior men would seek such employment. surely the poor little black children are not likely under any circumstances to suppose that they are the equals of the members of the proud families that held their fathers in slavery! the white people sorely need the employment; the negroes still more need the example and admonition of trained and high-minded people. the relation is not unknown. in the public schools of charleston, for forty years, the negro children have been taught by white ladies, and as well taught as the white children. in alabama, and even in virginia, public schools were for a time taught by whites, and you hear of sporadic cases elsewhere, as in a district of louisiana, where the mother of the chairman of the school board was a teacher, and she was so incapable that no white school would have her on any terms, so they compromised by giving her a negro school. with these small exceptions, a relation between the races, through which none of the dreaded evils of race equality could come about, was rejected; and that is the main reason why the negro schools have been poor and continue inferior. the southern woman is not below the northern in a sense of duty; the southern schoolmarm is the equal of her yankee sister in refinement and in pluck; and the southern woman was the only class of people in the south who could at the same time have taught the pickaninnies to read, and the older people to recognize that the whites were their best friends. of all the remedies suggested, education is the most direct and the most practical because it has so far been neglected; education is needed for the safety of the race. as leroy percy, the successful planter, puts it: "you cannot send these men out to fight the battle of life helplessly ignorant. in slavery, he was the slave of one, and around him was thrown the protecting care of the master. in freedom you cannot, through the helplessness of ignorance, make him the slave of every white man with no master's protection to shield him"; and he adds, "the education of the negro, to the extent indicated, is necessary for the preservation of the character and moral integrity of the white men of the south." professor garner roundly declares that "governor vardaman's contention that education increases the criminality of the negro is nothing but bold assertion and has never been supported by adequate proof." education is just as much needed to break windows into dark minds, to open up whatever of the spiritual the negro can take to himself. it is the one remedy in which the north can take direct part, and never was there more need of maintaining the schools in the south, supported chiefly by northern contributions; for they have the opportunity to teach those lessons of cleanliness of body and mind, of respect for authority, of thrift, personal honesty, of human relations, which the public schools are less fitted to inculcate. many of these schools have white teachers, all have white friends; they interfere in no way with the education furnished by the south; they teach no lessons harmful to the negro or the white man; they perform a function which the whites in the south offer to their own race by endowed schools and colleges, and which they do not attempt to provide for the negroes. education is not a cure-all, education is only the bottom step of a long flight of stairs; but neither race nor individual can mount without that step. throughout this book it has been steadily kept in mind that there are two races in the south between which the southern problem is divided; and that there can be no progress without both races taking part. here is the most difficult part of the whole matter: the two races, so closely associated, are nevertheless drifting away from each other. time was when men like wade hampton, of south carolina, and senator lamar, of mississippi, expected that whites and negroes would coöperate in political parties; time was when former slaveholders joined with former slaves in a confident attempt to bring the negroes up higher. those voices of encouragement still are heard, but there is in them a note of weariness. almost everybody in the south would be pleased if the negroes (of course without prejudice to the white domination) would rise or rise faster. it would mean also much to the white race if the cook always came in the morning, and the outside man never got drunk, and the cotton hand would raise a bale to the acre, and the school child would learn to read about how to keep his place toward the white man. every thinking man in the south knows that he is worse off because the negro is not better off. that is the reason of the rising dissatisfaction, wrath and resentment in the minds of many whites. they feel that the negro has no sense of responsibility to the community; they accuse him of sullenness, of a lack of interest in his employment and his employer. just what the negro thinks in return is hard to guess. "brer rabbit, 'e ain't sayin' nuffin"; but it is plain that the races are less friendly to each other, understand each other less, are less regardful of each other's interests, than at any time since freedom was fairly completed. we have the unhappy condition that while both races are doing tolerably well, and likely to do better, race relations are not improving. in other parts of the country where there are such rivalries, efforts are made to come to an understanding. each side has some knowledge of the arguments of the other; they appeal to the same press; the leaders sooner or later are brought together in legislatures or in a social way, and gradually come to understand each other's difficulties. some efforts have been made in the south to study this question in association. the negroes have now several organizations which bring people together for discussion. the agricultural and industrial fairs which they are beginning to carry on are one such influence. the negro schools of the calhoun and talladega type do something; the large annual conferences organized by atlanta, tuskegee, and hampton, with their subsequent publications, are a kind of clearing house of opinions on the conditions of the negro and of sound advice. a few years ago the attempt was made in the so-called niagara movement to organize the negroes in defense of their political rights. on the side of the whites there has been the ogden movement, for the improvement of the southern white education, part of the outcome of which has been the formation of the general education board and southern education board. the _south atlantic quarterly_, published at trinity college, north carolina, encourages a free exchange of views on southern conditions; and though the _manufacturers' record_ lays the responsibility for the atlanta riots upon the southern white people who have been urging moderation in the south, the southern educational movement goes on steadily, and seems to be gaining ground. an effort was made after the riots to bring about a southern commission of three white men from each state, to discuss plans for keeping up the race integrity of the whites, including the negro to stay on the soil, educating both races, and reforming the courts, but it was allowed to fail. some southern newspapers bitterly attacked it on the ground that no discussion was necessary; that everybody knew all the facts that were cogent, and that any such discussion of the negro problem would be likely to bring down criticism from "doctrinaires, theorists and self-constituted proprietors of the universe in the north." to the northern mind this seems one of the most alarming things about the whole matter. the labor question in the northeast, the land question in the northwest, are openly discussed man to man, and newspaper to newspaper. nobody thinks that the conditions in the south are agreeable; everybody would like to see some betterment; and the refusal to discuss it simply makes the crisis worse. this opposition is still stronger against any form of joint discussion between representatives of the white and negro races. the real objection seems to be that it would be a recognition that the negro had a right to some share in adjusting his own future, and that what he thinks about the question ought to have weight with the white people. this is another of the cruel things about the whole situation. the whole south is acquainted with the negro criminal and the shiftless dweller on the borders of the cities; almost no white people are acquainted by personal observation with the houses, with the work, and still less with the character and aims of the best element of the negroes. for this reason, northern investigators have a certain advantage in that they may freely read the statements of both sides, supplement them out of personal experience and conversation, and try to strike a balance. there are plenty of reasonable people in both races, each of whom knows his own side better than anybody else can possibly know it; hence mutual discussion, common understanding, some kind of programme toward which public sentiment might be directed, would seem an obvious remedy, and is upheld by such men as thomas nelson page; yet it is a remedy which is never tried. all the suggestions that have been discussed above may be roughly classified into remedies of push and remedies of pull, and this classification corresponds to the points of view of the two dominant classes of southern whites. in studying the books, the articles and the fugitive utterances on this subject, in talking with men who see the thing at first hand, in noting the complaints of the negroes and the whites alike, it is plain that there is in the south a strong negro-hating element, larger than people like to admit, which appeals to drastic statutes, to unequal judicial punishments, to violence outside of the law; in a word, to "keeping the nigger down." alongside it the thinking class of southern people (which appears to be gaining ground) seeks the elevation of both races, and especially of that one which needs it most. meanwhile the negro sits moodily by, waiting for the superior race to decide whether he shall be sent to the calaboose or to school. the southern problem is thus brought down in its last analysis to the simple question whether the two races can permanently live apart and yet together. that depends, in the first place, on the capacity of the negro to improve far enough to take away the reproach now heaped upon him; and in the second place in the willingness of the whites to accept the deficiencies of the negro character as a part of the natural conditions of the land, like the sterility of parts of the southern soil, and to leave him the opportunity to make the most of himself. the three fundamental duties of the white man, according to judge hammond, of atlanta, are to see "that his own best interest lies in the cultivation of friendly relations with the negro.... to treat the negro with absolute fairness and justice ... advising him and counseling him about the important affairs of his everyday life." these duties lie upon the white man because, as thomas nelson page states it: "unless the whites lift the negroes up, the negroes will drag them down." nobody, white or black, north or south, is able to point out any single positive means by which the two races are both to have their full development and yet to live in peace. every positive and quick-acting remedy when examined is found invalid. violence of language or of behavior of both sides does nothing whatever to remove the real difficulties. the agencies of uplift are slow and uncertain and nobody can positively predict that they will do the work. the south, with all its magnificent resources, is far behind the other sections of the union, both in wealth and productive power. it can only take its proper place in the union by raising the average character and energy of its people--of all its people--for it cannot be done by improving either race while the other remains stationary. in a word, the remedy is patience. dark as things look in the south, it is subject to mighty forces. in many ways the strongest influence for peace and concord in the south is simply self-interest. the most intelligent and thoughtful men in the south see clearly that unless the people can be made to improve, the section will always lag behind. side by side with this force is the spirit of humanity, of practical christianity, which forbids that millions of people shall be cut off from the agencies of evangelization. the south is behind no other part of the country in a sense of the greatness of moral forces. from every point of view, the obvious thing for the south is to make the best of its condition and not the worst, to give opportunities of uplift to all those who can appropriate them, to raise the negro race to as high a point as it is capable of occupying. this is a long, hard process, full of disappointment and perhaps of bitterness. the problem is not soluble in the sense that anyone can foresee a wholly peaceful and contented community divided into two camps; but the races can live alongside, and coöperate, though one be superior to the other. that superiority only throws the greater responsibility on the upper race. nobody has ever given better advice to the south than senator john sharp williams--"in the face of this great problem it would be well that wise men think more, that good men pray more, and that all men talk less and curse less." in that spirit the problem will be solved, because it will be manfully confronted. map and tables [illustration: the south in - ] comparative population ( ) white elements contrasted (_in thousands_) -----------------------------------+------------------------------------ northern groups ( ). | equivalent southern groups ( ). -------------+------+-------+------+--------------+------+--------+----- |whites|colored| total| |whites|colored|total -------------+------+-------+------+--------------+------+-------+------ colorado | | | | alabama | , | | , | | | | | | | indiana | , | | , | arkansas | | | , | | | | | | | indian | | | | florida | | | ter. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | iowa | , | | , | georgia | , | , | , | | | | | | | kansas | , | | , | louisiana | | | , | | | | | | | michigan | , | | , | mississippi| | | , | | | | | | | minnesota | , | | , | north | | | | | | | carolina | , | | , | | | | | | | nebraska | , | | , | south | | | | | | | carolina | | | , | | | | | | | | | | | tennessee | , | | , | | | | | | | | | | | virginia | , | | , | | | | +------+-------+------ | | | | total | | | | | | | states | , | , | , | | | | | | | | | | | texas | , | | , | | | | | | | +------+-------+------+ total +------+-------+------ | | | | seceding | | | total | , | | , | states | , | , | , +======+=======+======+ +======+=======+======= | | | | | | | north | | | | | | | dakota | | ...| | delaware | | | | | | | | | | oklahoma | | | | dist. of | | | | | | | columbia | | | | | | | | | | south | | | | | | | dakota | | ...| | kentucky | , | | , | | | | | | | utah | | | | maryland | | | , | | | | | | | wisconsin | , | | , | missouri | , | | , | | | | | | | california| , | | , | | | | | | | | | | | idaho | | ...| | | | | | | | | | | | montana | | | | | | | | | | | | | | oregon | | | | | | | | | | | | | | vermont | | | | | | | +------+-------+------+ +------+-------+------ double total| , | | , | total south | , | , | , -------------+------+-------+------+--------------+------+-------+------ comparative population ( )--southern groups (_in thousands_) ------------------------+----------------------+---------------+ | races. | distribution. | ------------------------+-------+------+-------+------+--------+ | | | | | | | white.|negro.| total.|urban.| rural. | | | | | | | ------------------------+-------+------+-------+------+--------+ alabama | , | | , | | , | arkansas | | | , | | , | florida | | | | | | georgia | , | , | , | | , | louisiana | | | , | | , | mississippi | | | , | | , | north carolina | , | | , | | , | south carolina | | | , | | , | tennessee | , | | , | | , | virginia | , | | , | | , | | | | | | | +-------+------+-------+------+--------+ total states | , | , | , | , | , | | | | | | | texas | , | | , | | , | +-------+------+-------+------+--------+ total seceding states | , | , | , | , | , | +=======+======+=======+======+========+ delaware | | | | | | district of columbia | | | | | ... | kentucky | , | | , | | , | maryland | | | , | | | missouri | , | | , | | , | | | | | | | +-------+------+-------+------+--------+ total border states | , | | , | , | , | +-------+------+-------+------+--------+ total south | , | , | , | , | , | ------------------------+-------+------+-------+------+--------+ -----------------------+------------------------+-------------- | foreign whites. | estimates. -----------------------+-------+---------+------+------+------- | | native | | | |foreign|[foreign |total.| .| . | born. |parents].| | | -----------------------+-------+---------+------+------+------- alabama | | | | , | , arkansas | | | | , | , florida | | | | | georgia | | | | , | , louisiana | | | | , | , mississippi | | | | , | , north carolina | | | | , | , south carolina | | | | , | , tennessee | | | | , | , virginia | | | | , | , | | | | | +-------+---------+------+------+------- total states | | | | , | , +-------+---------+------+------+------- texas | | | | , | , | | | | | total seceding states | | | | , | , +=======+=========+======+======+======= delaware | | | | | district of columbia| | | | | kentucky | | | | , | , maryland | | | | , | , missouri | | | | , | , | | | | | +-------+---------+------+------+------- total border states | | | , | , | , +-------+---------+------+------+------- total south | | , | , | , | , -----------------------+-------+---------+------+------+------- comparative population ( )--equivalent northern groups (_in thousands_) ---------------------+-----------------------+---------------+ | races. | distribution.| ---------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ | white.| negro.| total.| urban.| rural.| ---------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ colorado | | | | | | indiana | , | | , | | , | indian territory | | | | ... | | iowa | , | | , | | , | kansas | , | | , | | , | michigan | , | | , | | , | minnesota | , | | , | | , | nebraska | , | | , | | | north dakota | | ... | | | | oklahoma | | | | | | south dakota | | ... | | | | utah | | | | | | wisconsin | , | | , | | , | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ total | , | | , | , | , | +=======+=======+=======+=======+=======+ california | , | | , | | | idaho | | ... | | ... | | montana | | | | | | oregon | | | | | | vermont | | | | | | washington | | | | | | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ total | , | | , | , | , | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ double total | , | | , | , | , | +=======+=======+=======+=======+=======+ arizona | | | | ... | | illinois | , | | , | , | , | nevada | | ... | | ...| | new mexico | | | | ...| | new hampshire | | | | | | wyoming | | | | | | west virginia | | | | | | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ total | , | | , | , | , | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ grand total | , | | , | , | , | ---------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ --------------------+-------------------------+-------------- | foreign whites. | estimates. --------------------+-------+---------+-------+------+------- | | native | | | |foreign|[foreign | total.| .| . | born. |parents].| | | --------------------+-------+---------+-------+------+------- colorado | | | | | indiana | | | | , | , indian territory| | | | | iowa | | | | , | , kansas | | | | , | , michigan | | | , | , | , minnesota | | | , | , | , nebraska | | | | , | , north dakota | | | | | oklahoma | | | | | south dakota | | | | | utah | | | | | wisconsin | | | , | , | , +-------+---------+-------+------+------- total | , | , | , | , | , +=======+=========+=======+======+======= california | | | | , | , idaho | | | | | montana | | | | | oregon | | | | | vermont | | | | | washington | | | | | +-------+---------+-------+------+------- total | | | , | , | , +-------+---------+-------+------+------- double total | , | , | , | , | , +=======+=========+=======+======+======= arizona | | | | | illinois | | , | , | , | , nevada | | | | | new mexico | | | | | new hampshire | | | | | wyoming | | | | | west virginia | | | | , | , +-------+---------+-------+------+------- total | , | , | , | , | , +-------+---------+-------+------+------- grand total | , | , | , | , | , --------------------+-------+---------+-------+------+------- comparative valuation of property ( - )--southern groups (_in millions_) column headings: p: population [thousands] av: assessed valuation rv: real valuation -------------+-------------------------+----------------+ | . | . | +--------+-------+--------+--------+-------+ | p | av | p | rv | av | -------------+--------+-------+--------+--------+-------+ alabama | | | , | | | arkansas | | | , | | | florida | | | | | | georgia | , | | , | | | louisiana | | | , | | | mississippi| | | , | | | north | | | | | | carolina | | | , | | | south | | | | | | carolina | | | , | | | tennessee | , | | , | | | virginia | , | | , | | | +--------+-------+--------+--------+-------+ total | , | , | , | , | , | texas | | | , | , | | +--------+-------+--------+--------+-------+ total | | | | | | seceding | | | | | | states. | , | , | , | , | , | +========+=======+========+========+=======+ delaware | | | | | | dist. | | | | | | columbia | | | | | | kentucky | , | | , | , | | maryland | | | , | , | | missouri | , | | , | , | | +--------+-------+--------+--------+-------+ total | , | , | , | , | , | +--------+-------+--------+--------+-------+ total south | , | , | , | , | , | -------------+--------+-------+--------+--------+-------+ -------------+-------------------------+----------------+ | . | . | -------------+--------+--------+-------+----------------+ | p | rv | av | p | av | -------------+--------+--------+-------+--------+-------+ alabama | , | | | , | | arkansas | , | | | , | | florida | | | | | | georgia | , | , | | , | | louisiana | , | , | | , | | mississippi| , | | | , | | north | | | | | | carolina | , | | | , | | south | | | | | | carolina | , | | | , | | tennessee | , | , | | , | | virginia | , | , | | , | | +--------+--------+-------+--------+-------+ total | , | , | , | , | , | texas | , | , | , | , | , | +--------+--------+-------+--------+-------+ total | | | | | | seceding | | | | | | states. | , | , | , | , | , | +========+========+=======+========+=======+ delaware | | | | | | dist. | | | | | | columbia | | , | | | | kentucky | , | , | | , | | maryland | , | , | | , | | missouri | , | , | , | , | , | +--------+--------+-------+--------+-------+ total | , | , | , | , | , | +--------+--------+-------+--------+-------+ total south | , | , | , | , | , | -------------+--------+--------+-------+--------+-------+ -------------+------------+----------+----------+ | . | . | . | | assessed | assessed | asses'd | | valuation. |valuation.|valuation.| -------------+------------+----------+----------+ alabama | | | | arkansas | | | | florida | | | | georgia | | | | louisiana | | | | mississippi| | | | north | | | | carolina | | | | south | | | | carolina | | | | tennessee | | | | virginia | | | | +------------+----------+----------+ total | , | , | , | texas | , | , | , | +------------+----------+----------+ total | | | | seceding | | | | states. | , | , | , | +============+==========+==========+ delaware | | | | dist. | | | | columbia | | | | kentucky | | | | maryland | | | | missouri | , | , | , | +------------+----------+----------+ total | , | , | , | +------------+----------+----------+ total south | , | , | , | -------------+------------+----------+----------+ comparative valuations of property ( - )--equivalent northern groups (_in millions_) column headings: p: population [thousands] av: assessed valuation rv: real valuation ---------------+-------------+--------------------+---------------------+ | . | . | . | +------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ | p | av | p | rv | av | p | rv | av | ---------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ colorado | | ...| | , | | | , | | indiana | , | | , | , | | , | , | , | indian terr.| ...| ...| | ...| ...| | | ... | iowa | | | , | , | | , | , | | kansas | | | , | , | | , | , | | michigan | | | , | , | | , | , | , | minnesota | | | , | , | | , | , | | nebraska | | | , | , | | , | , | | north dakota| ...| ...| | | | | | | oklahoma | ...| ...| | ...| ...| | | ... | south dakota| ...| ...| | | | | | | utah | | | | | | | | | wisconsin | | | , | , | | , | , | , | +------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ total | , | , | , | , | , | , | , | , | +======+======+======+======+======+======+======+=======+ california | | | , | , | , | , | , | , | idaho | ...| ...| | | | | | | montana | ...| ...| | | | | | | oregon | | | | | | | | | vermont | | | | | | | | | washington | | | | | | | , | | +------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ total | | | , | , | , | , | , | , | +------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ double total | , | , | , | , | , | , | , | , | +======+======+======+======+======+======+======+=======+ arizona | ...| ...| | | | | | | illinois | , | | , | , | | , | , | , | nevada | | ...| | | | | | | new mexico | | | | | | | | | new | | | | | | | | | hampshire | | | | | | | | | wyoming | ...| ...| | | | | | | w. virginia | ...| ...| | | | , | | | +------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ total | , | | , | , | , | , | , | , | +======+======+======+======+======+======+======+=======+ grand total | , | , | , | , | , | , | , | , | ---------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ ----------------+---------------+-------+-------+------- | . | . | . | . +-------+-------+-------+-------+------- | p | av | av | av | av ----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- colorado | | | | | indiana | , | , | , | , | , indian terr. | | ...| ...| ...| ... iowa | , | | | | kansas | , | | | , | , michigan | , | , | , | , | , minnesota | , | | , | , | , nebraska | , | | | | north dakota | | | | | oklahoma | | | | | south dakota | | | | | utah | | | | | wisconsin | , | , | , | , | , +-------+-------+-------+-------+------- total | , | , | , | , | , +=======+=======+=======+=======+======= california | , | , | , | , | , idaho | | | | | montana | | | | | oregon | | | | | vermont | | | | | washington | | | | | +-------+-------+-------+-------+------- total | , | , | , | , | , +-------+-------+-------+-------+------- double total | , | , | , | , | , +=======+=======+=======+=======+======= arizona | | | | | illinois | , | , | , | , | , nevada | | | | | new mexico | | | | | new hampshire| | | | | wyoming | | | | | w. virginia | , | | | | , +-------+-------+-------+-------+------- total | , | , | , | , | , +=======+=======+=======+=======+======= grand total | , | , | , | , | , ----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- comparative banking statistics ( - )--southern groups (_in thousands of dollars_) -----------------+------------------------------+----------+ | national banks, . |all banks,| +---+--------+---------+-------+ . | |no.|capital.|deposits.|assets.|deposits. | -----------------+---+--------+---------+-------+----------+ alabama | | ... | ... | ... | , | arkansas | | ... | ... | ... | , | florida | | ... | ... | ... | , | georgia | | | | | , | louisiana | | | , | , | , | mississippi | | | | | , | north carolina| | | | | , | south carolina| | ... | ... | ... | , | tennessee | | | | , | , | virginia | | , | , | , | , | +---+--------+---------+-------+----------+ total | | | | | | states | | , | , | , | , | texas | | ... | ... | ... | , | +---+--------+---------+-------+----------+ total | | | | | | seceding | | | | | | states | | , | , | , | , | +===+========+=========+=======+==========+ delaware | | , | , | , | , | dist. columbia| | , | , | , | , | kentucky | | , | , | , | , | maryland | | , | , | , | , | missouri | | , | , | , | , | +---+--------+---------+-------+----------+ total border | | | | | | states | | , | , | , | , | +---+--------+---------+-------+----------+ whole south | | , | , | , | , | -----------------+---+--------+---------+-------+----------+ -----------------+----------------------------------+-------------------- | national banks, . | all banks, . +-----+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------- | no. |capital.|deposits.| assets. |deposits.|clearings. -----------------+-----+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------- alabama | | , | , | , | , | , arkansas | | , | , | , | , | , florida | | , | , | , | , | ... georgia | | , | , | , | , | , louisiana | | , | , | , | , | , mississippi | | , | , | , | , | ... north carolina| | , | , | , | , | , south carolina| | , | , | , | , | , tennessee | | , | , | , | , | , virginia | | , | , | , | , | , +-----+--------+---------+---------+---------|---------- total | | | | | | states | | , | , | , | , | , , texas | | , | , | , | , | , +-----+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------- total | | | | | | seceding | | | | | | states | | , | , | , | , | , , +=====+========+=========+=========+=========+========== delaware | | , | , | , | , | , dist. columbia| | , | , | , | , | , kentucky | | , | , | , | , | , maryland | | , | , | , | , | , , missouri | | , | , | , | , | , , +-----+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------- total border | | | | | | states | | , | , | , | , | , , +-----+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------- whole south | , | , | , | , , | , , | , , -----------------+-----+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------- comparative banking statistics ( - )--equivalent northern groups (_in thousands of dollars_) ----------------+--------------------------------+----------+ | |all banks.| | national banks, . | . | | |deposits. | +----+--------+---------+--------+ | | no.|capital.|deposits.| assets.| | ----------------+----+--------+---------+--------+----------+ colorado | | | | | , | indiana | | , | , | , | , | indian terr. | | ... | ... | ... | | iowa | | , | , | , | , | kansas | | | , | , | , | michigan | | , | , | , | , | minnesota | | , | , | , | , | nebraska | | | | | , | north dakota | | ... | ... | ... | , | oklahoma | | ... | ... | ... | | south dakota | | ... | ... | ... | , | utah | | ... | ... | ... | , | wisconsin | | | | | , | +----+--------+---------+--------+----------+ total | | , | , | , | , | +====+========+=========+========+==========+ california | | ... | ... | ... | , | idaho | | ... | ... | ... | , | montana | | ... | ... | ... | , | oregon | | ... | ... | ... | , | vermont | | , | , | , | , | washington | | ... | ... | ... | , | +----+--------+---------+--------+----------+ total | | , | , | , | , | +----+--------+---------+--------+----------+ double total | | , | , | , | , | +====+========+=========+========+==========+ arizona | | ... | ... | ... | , | illinois | | , | , | , | , | nevada | | ... | ... | ... | | new mexico | | ... | ... | ... | , | new hampshire| | , | , | , | , | wyoming | | ... | ... | ... | , | west virginia| | , | , | , | , | +----+--------+---------+--------+----------+ total | | , | , | , | , | +----+--------+---------+--------+----------+ grand total | | , | , | , | , , | ----------------+----+--------+---------+--------+----------+ ---------------+----------------------------------+---------------------- | national banks, . | all banks, . +-----+--------+---------+---------+----------+----------- | no. |capital.|deposits.| assets.| deps. |clearings. ---------------+-----+--------+---------+---------+----------+----------- colorado | | , | , | , | , | , indiana | | , | , | , | , | , indian terr. | | , | , | , | , | ... iowa | | , | , | , | , | , kansas | | , | , | , | , | , michigan | | , | , | , | , | , minnesota | | , | , | , | , | , , nebraska | | , | , | , | , | , north dakota | | , | , | , | , | , oklahoma | | , | , | , | , | ... south dakota| | , | , | , | , | , utah | | , | , | , | , | , wisconsin | | , | , | , | , | , +-----+--------+---------+---------+----------+----------- total | , | , | , | , , | , , | , , +=====+========+=========+=========+==========+=========== california | | , | , | , | , | , , idaho | | , | , | , | , | ... montana | | , | , | , | , | , oregon | | , | , | , | , | , vermont | | , | , | , | , | ... washington | | , | , | , | , | , +-----+--------+---------+---------+----------+----------- total | | , | , | , | , | , , +-----+--------+---------+---------+----------+----------- double total| , | , | , | , , | , , | , , +=====+========+=========+=========+==========+=========== arizona | | | , | , | , | ... illinois | | , | , | , | , | , , nevada | | | , | , | , | ... new mexico | | , | , | , | , | ... new | | | | | | hampshire | | , | , | , | , | ... wyoming | | , | , | , | , | ... west | | | | | | virginia | | , | , | , | , | , +-----+--------+---------+---------+----------+----------- total | | , | , | , | , | , , +-----+--------+---------+---------+----------+----------- grand total | , | , | , , | , , | , , | , , ---------------+-----+--------+---------+---------+----------+----------- comparative manufactures ( ) southern groups (_money values in thousands of dollars_) column heading: no.: no. of establishments ----------------+-------+--------+---------+--------+----------+--------- | no. | wage |capital. | annual | cost of |value of | |earners.| | wages. | material.|products. ----------------+-------+--------+---------+--------+----------+--------- alabama | , | , | , | , | , | , arkansas | , | , | , | , | , | , florida | , | , | , | , | , | , georgia | , | , | , | , | , | , louisiana | , | , | , | , | , | , mississippi | , | , | , | , | , | , north carolina| , | , | , | , | , | , south carolina| , | , | , | , | , | , tennessee | , | , | , | , | , | , virginia | , | , | , | , | , | , | | | | | | +-------+--------+---------+--------+----------+--------- total | | | | | | states | , | , | , , | , | , | , , | | | | | | texas | , | , | , | , | , | , | | | | | | +-------+--------+---------+--------+----------+--------- total, | | | | | | seceding | | | | | | states | , | , | , , | , | , | , , +=======+========+=========+========+==========+========= delaware | | , | , | , | , | , dist. | | | | | | of columbia | | , | , | , | , | , kentucky | , | , | , | , | , | , maryland | , | , | , | , | , | , missouri | , | , | , | , | , | , | | | | | | +-------+--------+---------+--------+----------+--------- total border| | | | | | states | , | , | , | , | , | , +-------+--------+---------+--------+----------+--------- whole south | , | , | , , | , | , , | , , ----------------+-------+--------+---------+--------+----------+--------- comparative manufactures ( ) equivalent northern groups (_money values in thousands of dollars_) column heading: no.: no. of establishments ----------------+------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------- | no. | wage | annual |capital.| cost of |value of | | earners.| wages. | | material.|products. ----------------+------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------- colorado | , | , | , | , | , | , indiana | , | , | , | , | , | , indian terr. | | , | , | , | , | , iowa | , | , | , | , | , | , kansas | , | , | , | , | , | , michigan | , | , | , | , | , | , minnesota | , | , | , | , | , | , nebraska | , | , | , | , | , | , north dakota | | , | , | , | , | , oklahoma | | , | , | , | , | , south dakota | | , | , | , | , | , utah | | , | , | , | , | , wisconsin | , | , | , | , | , | , +------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------- total | , | , | , , | , | , , | , , +======+=========+=========+========+==========+========= california | , | , | , | , | , | , idaho | | , | , | , | , | , montana | | , | , | , | , | , oregon | , | , | , | , | , | , vermont | , | , | , | , | , | , washington | , | , | , | , | , | , +------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------- total | , | , | , | , | , | , +------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------- double total | , | , | , , | , | , , | , , +======+=========+=========+========+==========+========= arizona | | , | , | , | , | , illinois | , | , | , | , | , | , , nevada | | | , | | , | , new mexico | | , | , | , | , | , new hampshire| , | , | , | , | , | , wyoming | | , | , | , | , | , west virginia| , | , | , | , | , | , +------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------- total | , | , | , , | , | , | , , +------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------- grand total | , | , , | , , | , | , , | , , ----------------+------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------- comparative charities and corrections ( - )--southern groups -----------------+-----------+-------------------+----------------------+ | | prisoners | insane in hospitals | |delinquents| (june , ). | (jan. , ). | | (june , +-----+------+------+-------+------+-------+ | ). |white|negro |total | white | negro| total | -----------------+-----------+-----+------+------+-------+------+-------+ alabama | | | , | , | , | | , | arkansas | ... | | | | | | | florida | | | , | , | | | | georgia | | | , | , | , | | , | louisiana | | | , | , | , | | , | mississippi | ... | | , | , | | | , | north carolina | ... | | | , | , | | , | south carolina | ... | | | , | | | , | tennessee | | | , | , | , | | , | virginia | | | , | , | , | , | , | | | | | | | | | +-----------+-----+------+------+-------+------+-------+ total states| | , | , | , | , | , | , | texas | ... | , | , | , | , | | , | | | | | | | | | total +-----------+-----+------+------+-------+------+-------+ seceding states| | , | , | , | , | , | , | +===========+=====+======+======+=======+======+=======+ | | | | | | | | delaware | | | | | | | | district of | | | | | | | | columbia | | | | | , | | , | kentucky | | | , | , | , | | , | maryland | , | | , | , | , | | , | missouri | | , | , | , | , | | , | +-----------+-----+------+------+-------+------+-------+ total | | | | | | | | border states | , | , | , | , | , | , | , | +-----------+-----+------+------+-------+------+-------+ total south | , | , | , | , | , | , | , | -----------------+-----------+-----+------+------+-------+------+-------+ ------------------+------------------------ | paupers | (jan. , ). | +--------+------+-------- | white | negro| total ------------------+--------+------+-------- alabama | | | arkansas | | | florida | | | georgia | | | , louisiana | | | mississippi | | | north carolina | | | , south carolina | | | tennessee | , | | , virginia | , | | , | | | +--------+------+-------- total states| , | , | , texas | | | | | | +--------+------+-------- total | | | seceding states| , | , | , +========+======+======== | | | delaware | | | district of | | | columbia | | | kentucky | , | | , maryland | , | | , missouri | , | | , | | | +--------+------+-------- total | | | border states | , | , | , +--------+------+-------- total south | , | , | , ------------------+--------+------+-------- comparative charities and corrections ( - )--equivalent northern groups ----------------+-------------+----------------------+ | | prisoners | | juvenile | (june , ). | |delinquents, +-------+------+-------+ | june , | white.|black.| total.| | . | | | | ----------------+-------------+-------+------+-------+ colorado | | | | , | indiana | | , | | , | indian | | | | | territory | ... | ...| ...| ...| iowa | | , | | , | kansas | | , | | , | michigan | , | , | | , | minnesota | | | | , | nebraska | | | | | north | | | | | dakota | | | | | oklahoma | ... | | ...| | south | | | | | dakota | | | | | utah | | | | | wisconsin | | , | | , | +-------------+-------+------+-------+ total | , | , | , | , | +=============+=======+======+=======+ california | | , | | , | idaho | ... | | | | montana | | | | | oregon | | | | | vermont | | | | | washington | | | | | +-------------+-------+------+-------+ total | | , | | , | +-------------+-------+------+-------+ double total | , | , | , | , | +=============+=======+======+=======+ arizona | | | | | illinois | , | , | | , | nevada | ... | | | | new mexico | ... | | | | wyoming | ... | | | | new | | | | | hampshire | | | | | west | | | | | virginia | | | | , | +-------------+-------+------+-------+ total | , | , | , | , | +-------------+-------+------+-------+ grand total | , | , | , | , | ----------------+-------------+-------+------+-------+ ----------------+----------------------+---------------------- | insane in hospitals | paupers | (jan. , ). | (jan. , ). +-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- | white.|black.| total.| white.|black.| total. | | [ ]| | | [ ]| ----------------+-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- colorado | | | | | | indiana | , | | , | , | | , indian | | | | | | territory | ...| ...| ...| ...| ... | ... iowa | , | | , | , | | , kansas | , | | , | | | michigan | , | | , | , | | , minnesota | , | | , | | | nebraska | , | | , | | | north | | | | | | dakota | | | | | | oklahoma | | | | | | south | | | | | | dakota | | | | | | utah | | | | | | wisconsin | , | | , | , | | , +-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- total | , | | , | , | | , +=======+======+=======+=======+======+======= california | , | | , | , | | , idaho | | | | | | montana | | | | | | oregon | , | | , | | | vermont | | | | | | washington | , | | , | | | +-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- total | , | | , | , | | , +-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- double total | , | | , | , | | , +=======+======+=======+=======+======+======= arizona | | | | | | illinois | , | | , | , | | , nevada | | | | | | new mexico | | | | ...| ... | ... wyoming | | | | ...| ... | ... new | | | | | | hampshire | | | | , | | , west | | | | | | virginia | , | | , | | | +-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- total | , | | , | , | | , +-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- grand total | , | , | , | , | | , ----------------+-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- [ ] not possible for figures of jan. , , to distinguish between blacks and other colored insane and paupers; not important except in california where on dec. , , there were mongolian insane. comparative common school education ( )--southern groups key: pop: estimated population [thousands]. esp: estimated school population [thousands]. npr: number pupils enrolled [thousands]. npa: number pupils attending [thousands]. ads: average days of school num: number avs: average monthly salary. vsp: value of school property [thousands]. anr: annual revenue [thousands]. rpp: revenue per person of school age. ano: annual outgo [thousands]. oaa: outgo per average attendance. opv: outgo per $ , actual property. -----------------+------+-----+-----------+----+-----------+------+ | | |enrollment | | teachers. | | | | | and | | | | | | |attendance.| | | | | | +-----+-----+ +-------+---+ | | pop | esp | npr | npa | ads| num |avs| vsp | -----------------+------+-----+-----+-----+----+-------+---+------+ alabama | , | | | | | , | | , | arkansas | , | | | | | , | | , | florida | | | | | | , | | , | georgia | , | | | | | , | | , | louisiana | , | | | | | , | | , | mississippi | , | | | | | , | | , | north carolina| , | | | | | , | | , | south carolina| , | | | | | , | | , | tennessee | , | | | | | , | | , | virginia | , | | | | | , | | , | +------+-----+-----+-----+----+-------+---+------+ total | | | | | | | | | states | , | , | , | , | ...| , |...| , | | | | | | | | | | texas | , | , | | | | , | | , | +------+-----+-----+-----+----+-------+---+------+ total seceding| | | | | | | | | states | , | , | , | , | ...| , |...| , | +======+=====+=====+=====+====+=======+===+======+ delaware | | | | | | | | , | dist. of | | | | | | | | | columbia | | | | | | , | | , | kentucky | , | | | | | , | | , | maryland | , | | | | | , | | , | missouri | , | | | | | , | | , | +------+-----+-----+-----+----+-------+---+------+ total border | | | | | | | | | states | , | , | , | | ...| , |...| , | +------+-----+-----+-----+----+-------+---+------+ total south | , | , | , | , | ...| , |...| , | -----------------+------+-----+-----+-----+----+-------+---+------+ --------------------+--------------+----------------------- | revenue. | expenditure. +-------+------+-------+-------+------- | anr | rpp | ano | oaa | opv --------------------+-------+------+-------+-------+------- alabama | , | . | , | . | . arkansas | , | . | , | . | . florida | | . | | . | . georgia | , | . | , | . | . louisiana | , | . | , | . | . mississippi | , | . | , | . | . north carolina | , | . | , | . | . south carolina | , | . | , | . | . tennessee | , | . | , | . | . virginia | , | . | , | . | . +-------+------+-------+-------+------- total | | | | | states | , | ...| , | ...| ... | | | | | texas | , | . | , | . | . +-------+------+-------+-------+------- total seceding | | | | | states | , | ...| , | ...| ... +=======+======+=======+=======+======= delaware | | . | | . | . dist. of | | | | | columbia | , | . | , | . | . kentucky | , | . | , | . | . maryland | , | . | , | . | . missouri | , | . | , | . | . +-------+------+-------+-------+------- total border | | | | | states | , | ...| , | ...| ... +-------+------+-------+-------+------- total south | , | ...| , | ...| ... --------------------+-------+------+-------+-------+------- comparative common school education ( )--equivalent northern groups column headings: ep: estimated population [thousands]. esp: estimated school population [thousands]. npe: number pupils enrolled [thousands]. apa: average number pupils attending [thousands]. ads: average days of school. ams: average monthly salary. vsp: value of school property [thousands]. ar: annual revenue [thousands]. rp: revenue per person of school age. ao: annual outgo [thousands]. oaa: outgo per average attendance. oap: outgo per $ , actual property. -------------------+-------+------+-------------+----+------------+ | | | enrollment | | | | ep | esp | and | ads| teachers. | | | | attendance. | | | | | +------+------+ +--------+---+ | | | npe | apa | | number.|ams| -------------------+-------+------+------+------+----+--------+---+ colorado | | | | | | , | | indiana | , | | | | | , | | indian territory| | | | | | , | | iowa | , | | | | | , | | kansas | , | | | | | , | | michigan | , | | | | | , | | minnesota | , | | | | | , | | nebraska | , | | | | | , | | north dakota | | | | | | , | | oklahoma | | | | | | , | | south dakota | | | | | | , | | utah | | | | | | , | | wisconsin | , | | | | | , | | +-------+------+------+------+----+--------+---+ total | , | , | , | , | ...| , |...| +=======+======+======+======+====+========+===+ california | , | | | | | , | | idaho | | | | | | , | | montana | | | | | | , | | oregon | | | | | | , | | vermont | | | | | | , | | washington | | | | | | , | | +-------+------+------+------+----+--------+---+ total | , | | | | ...| , |...| +-------+------+------+------+----+--------+---+ double total | , | , | , | , | ...| , |...| +=======+======+======+======+====+========+===+ arizona | | | | | | | | illinois | , | , | | | | , | | nevada | | | | | | | | new mexico | | | | | | | | new hampshire | | | | | | , | | wyoming | | | | | | | | west virginia | , | | | | | , | | +-------+------+------+------+----+--------+---+ total | , | , | , | , | ...| , |...| +-------+------+------+------+----+--------+---+ grand total | , | , | , | , | ...| , |...| -------------------+-------+------+------+------+----+--------+---+ -------------------+--------+---------------+--------------------- | | | | vsp | revenue. | expenditure. | | | | +--------+------+--------+------+----- | | ar | rp | ao | oaa | oap -------------------+--------+--------+------+--------+------+----- colorado | , | , | . | , | . | . indiana | , | , | . | , | . | . indian territory| | | . | | . | . iowa | , | , | . | , | . | . kansas | , | , | . | , | . | . michigan | , | , | . | , | . | . minnesota | , | , | . | , | . | . nebraska | , | , | . | , | . | . north dakota | , | , | . | , | . | . oklahoma | , | , | . | , | . | . south dakota | , | , | . | , | . | . utah | , | , | . | , | . | . wisconsin | , | , | . | , | . | . +--------+--------+------+--------+------+----- total | , | , | ...| , | ...| ... +========+========+======+========+======+===== california | , | , | . | , | . | . idaho | , | | . | | . | . montana | , | , | . | , | . | . oregon | , | , | . | , | . | . vermont | , | , | . | , | . | . washington | , | , | . | , | . | . +--------+--------+------+--------+------+----- total | , | , | ...| , | ...| ... +--------+--------+------+--------+------+----- double total | , | , | ...| , | ...| ... +========+========+======+========+======+===== arizona | | | . | | . | . illinois | , | , | . | , | . | . nevada | | | . | | . | . new mexico | | | . | | . | . new hampshire | , | , | . | , | . | . wyoming | | | . | | . | . west virginia | , | , | . | , | . | . +--------+--------+------+--------+------+----- total | , | , | ...| , | ...| ... +--------+--------+------+--------+------+----- grand total | , | , | ...| , | ...| ... -------------------+--------+--------+------+--------+------+----- comparative common school education ( ) southern groups key: paa: pupils average attendance [thousands]. vsp: value of school property [thousands]. anr: annual revenue [thousands]. ane: annual expenditure [thousands]. --------------------+--------+------+-------------------------- | | | finances. | | +---------+-------+-------- |teachers| paa | vsp | anr | anx --------------------+--------+------+---------+-------+-------- alabama | , | | , | , | , arkansas | , | | , | , | , florida | , | | , | , | , georgia | , | | , | , | , louisiana | , | | , | , | , mississippi | , | | , | , | , north carolina | , | | , | , | , south carolina | , | | , | , | , tennessee | , | | , | , | , virginia | , | | , | , | , +--------+------+---------+-------+------- total states | , | , | , | , | , | | | | | texas | , | | , | , | , +--------+------+---------+-------+------- total, seceding | | | | | states | , | , | , | , | , +========+======+=========+=======+======= delaware | | | , | | dist. of columbia| , | | , | , | , kentucky | , | | , | , | , maryland | , | | , | , | , missouri | , | | , | , | , +--------+------+---------+-------+------- total south | , | , | , | , | , --------------------+--------+------+---------+-------+------- comparative common school education ( ) equivalent northern groups key: paa = pupils average attendance [thousands]. vsp = value of school property [thousands]. anr = annual revenue [thousands]. ane = annual expenditure [thousands]. ----------------+--------+------+--------------------------- | | | finances. |teachers| paa +--------+--------+--------- | | | vsp | anr | ane ----------------+--------+------+--------+--------+--------- colorado | , | | , | , | , indiana | , | | , | , | , indian terr | , | | , | | iowa | , | | , | , | , kansas | , | | , | , | , michigan | , | | , | , | , minnesota | , | | , | , | , nebraska | , | | , | , | , north dakota | , | | , | , | , oklahoma | , | | , | , | , south dakota | , | | , | , | , utah | , | | , | , | , wisconsin | , | | , | , | , +--------+------+--------+--------+--------- total | , | , | , | , | , | | | | | california | , | | , | , | , idaho | , | | , | , | , montana | , | | , | , | , oregon | , | | , | , | , vermont | , | | , | , | , washington | , | | , | , | , +--------+------+--------+--------+--------- double total| , | , | , | , | , +========+======+========+========+========= arizona | | | , | | illinois | , | | , | , | , nevada | | | | | new mexico | | | , | | new hampshire| , | | , | , | , wyoming | | | | | west virginia| , | | , | , | , +--------+------+--------+--------+--------- grand total | , | , | , | , | , ----------------+--------+------+--------+--------+--------- comparative secondary schools ( )--southern groups ---------------------+----------------------------------------+ | students. | +---------------+---------------+--------+ | public. | private. | | +--------+------+-------+-------+ total. | | white. |negro.| white.| negro.| | ---------------------+--------+------+-------+-------+--------+ alabama | , | | , | | , | arkansas | , | | , | | , | florida | , | | | | , | georgia | , | | , | | , | louisiana | , | | , | | , | mississippi | , | | , | | , | north carolina | , | | , | | , | south carolina | , | | | | , | tennessee | , | | , | | , | virginia | , | | , | | , | | | | | | | +--------+------+-------+-------+--------+ total states | , | , | , | , | , | texas | , | , | , | | , | | | | | | | +--------+------+-------+-------+--------+ total seceding | | | | | | states | , | , | , | , | , | +========+======+=======+=======+========+ delaware | , | | | ... | , | dist. of columbia | , | | , | ... | , | kentucky | , | | , | | , | maryland | , | | , | ... | , | missouri | , | , | , | | , | +--------+------+-------+-------+--------+ | | | | | | total border | | | | | | states | , | , | , | | , | +--------+------+-------+-------+--------+ grand total | , | , | , | , | , | ---------------------+--------+------+-------+-------+--------+ ------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------- | teachers. | value of plant. +-------+--------+------+--------+--------+--------- | | | | public |private | total |public.|private.|total.|[ s].|[ s].|[ s]. ------------------+-------+--------+------+--------+--------+--------- alabama | | | | | | , arkansas | | | | | | , florida | | | | | | georgia | | | | , | , | , louisiana | | | | | | , mississippi | | | | , | | , north carolina | | | | | | , south carolina | | | | | | , tennessee | | | | , | | , virginia | | | | | , | , | | | | | | +-------+--------+------+--------+--------+--------- total states| , | , | , | , | , | , texas | | | , | , | , | , | | | | | | +-------+--------+------+--------+--------+--------- total seceding | | | | | | states | , | , | , | , | , | , +=======+========+======+========+========+========= delaware | | | | | | dist. of | | | | | | columbia | | | | | , | , kentucky | | | | , | | , maryland | | | | , | , | , missouri | , | | , | , | , | , +-------+--------+------+--------+--------+--------- | | | | | | total border | | | | | | states | , | , | , | , | , | , +-------+--------+------+--------+--------+--------- grand total | , | , | , | , | , | , ------------------+-------+--------+------+--------+--------+--------- comparative secondary education ( )--equivalent northern groups key: pub: public. priv: private. --------------+------------------------------------+--------------------+ | students. | teachers. | +--------------+-------------+-------+------+------+------+ | public. | private. | | | | | +-------+------+------+------+ total.| pub | priv |total.| | white.|negro.|white.|negro.| | | | | --------------+-------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+------+ colorado | , | | | ... | , | | | | indiana | , | | , | | , | , | | , | indian | | | | | | | | | territory| | | | ... | | | | | iowa | , | | , | ... | , | , | | , | kansas | , | | | ... | , | | | | michigan | , | | , | ... | , | , | | , | minnesota | , | | , | ... | , | | | | nebraska | , | | , | | , | | | | north | | | | | | | | | dakota | , | | | ... | , | | | | oklahoma | , | | | ... | , | | | | south | | | | | | | | | dakota | , | | | ... | , | | | | utah | , | | , | ... | , | | | | wisconsin | , | | , | ... | , | , | | , | +-------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+------+ total | , | , | , | | , | , | , | , | +=======+======+======+======+=======+======+======+======+ california | , | | , | ... | , | | | , | idaho | | | | ... | , | | | | montana | , | | | ... | , | | | | oregon | , | | | | , | | | | vermont | , | | , | | , | | | | washington | , | | | ... | , | | | | +-------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+------+ total | , | | , | | , | , | | , | +-------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+------+ double total | , | , | , | | , | , | , | , | +=======+======+======+======+=======+======+======+======+ arizona | | | | ... | | | | | illinois | , | | , | | , | , | | , | nevada | | ...| ...| ... | | | ... | | new mexico | | | | ... | | | | | new | | | | | | | | | hampshire | , | | , | | , | | | | wyoming | | | | ... | | | | | west | | | | | | | | | virginia | , | | , | ... | , | | | | +-------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+------+ | , | | , | | , | , | | , | +-------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+------+ total | , | , | , | | , | , | , | , | --------------+-------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+------+ -------------------+-------------------------- | value of plant. +--------+--------+-------- | public |private | total |[ s].|[ s].|[ s]. -------------------+--------+--------+-------- colorado | , | | , indiana | , | | , indian | | | territory | | | iowa | , | | , kansas | , | | , michigan | , | | , minnesota | , | , | , nebraska | , | | , north dakota | | ... | oklahoma | | | south dakota | , | | , utah | | , | , wisconsin | , | , | , +--------+--------+-------- total | , | , | , +========+========+======== california | , | , | , idaho | | | montana | | | , oregon | , | | , vermont | , | | , washington | , | | , +--------+--------+-------- total | , | , | , +--------+--------+-------- double total | , | , | , +========+========+======== arizona | | | illinois | , | , | , nevada | | ... | new mexico | | ... | new hampshire | , | , | , wyoming | | | west virginia | , | | , +--------+--------+-------- | , | , | , +--------+--------+-------- total | , | , | , -------------------+--------+--------+-------- comparative higher education ( )--southern groups key: tea: teachers. ung: undergraduates. grd: graduates. pro: professional. vap: value of plant. prf: productive funds. ben: benefactions. ti: total income. ---------------------+------+------------------------------+ | | students. | | +-------+------+-------+-------+ | tea | ung | grd | pro | total.| ---------------------+------+-------+------+-------+-------+ | | | | | | alabama | | , | | | , | arkansas | | | | | , | florida | | | | | | georgia | | , | | | , | louisiana | | , | | | , | mississippi | | , | | | , | north carolina | | , | | | , | south carolina | | , | | | , | tennessee | | , | | , | , | virginia | | , | | | , | +------+-------+------+-------+-------+ total states | , | , | | , | , | texas | | , | | | , | +------+-------+------+-------+-------+ total seceding states| , | , | | , | , | +======+=======+======+=======+=======+ delaware | | | | ...| | dist. of columbia | | | | , | , | kentucky | | , | | , | , | maryland | | , | | | , | missouri | | , | | , | , | +------+-------+------+-------+-------+ total border states | , | , | | , | , | +------+-------+------+-------+-------+ total south | , | , | , | , | , | ---------------------+------+-------+------+-------+-------+ ---------------------+------+----------------------------- | | finances. | +-------+-------+------+------ | tea | vap | prf | ben | ti ---------------------+------+-------+-------+------+------ | | s | s | s| s alabama | | , | , | | arkansas | | | | | florida | | | | | georgia | | , | , | | louisiana | | , | , | | mississippi | | , | , | | north carolina | | , | , | | south carolina | | , | | | tennessee | | , | , | | virginia | | , | , | | +------+-------+-------+------+------ total states | , | , | , | , | , texas | | , | , | | +------+-------+-------+------+------ total seceding states| , | , | , | , | , +======+=======+=======+======+====== delaware | | | | ...| dist. of columbia | | , | , | | kentucky | | , | , | | maryland | | , | , | | , missouri | | , | , | | , +------+-------+-------+------+------ total border states | , | , | , | | , +------+-------+-------+------+------ total south | , | , | , | , | , ---------------------+------+-------+-------+------+------ comparative higher education ( )--equivalent northern groups key: ung: undergraduates. gra: graduates. pro: professional. vap: value of plant. prf: productive funds. ben: benefactions. ti: total income. -------------------+---------+-----------------------------+ | | students. | |teachers.+-------+------+-------+------+ | | ung | gra | pro |total.| -------------------+---------+-------+------+-------+------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | colorado | | , | | | , | indiana | | , | | | , | indian territory | | | ...| ...| | iowa | | , | | , | , | kansas | | , | | | , | michigan | | , | | , | , | minnesota | | , | | , | , | nebraska | | , | | | , | north dakota | | | | | | oklahoma | | | | | | south dakota | | | | | | utah | | | | ...| | wisconsin | | , | | | , | +---------+-------+------+-------+------+ total. | , | , | , | , | , | +=========+=======+======+=======+======+ california | | , | | | , | idaho | | | | ...| | montana | | | | ...| | oregon | | , | | | , | vermont | | | | | | washington | | , | | | , | +---------+-------+------+-------+------+ total | , | , | | , | , | +---------+-------+------+-------+------+ double total | , | , | , | , | , | +=========+=======+======+=======+======+ arizona | | | | ...| | illinois | , | , | , | , | , | nevada | | | | ...| | new mexico | | | | ...| | new hampshire | | , | | | , | wyoming | | | | ...| | west virginia | | | | | , | +---------+-------+------+-------+------+ total | , | , | , | , | , | +---------+-------+------+-------+------+ grand total | , | , | , | , | , | -------------------+---------+-------+------+-------+------+ -------------------+------------------------------ | finances. +-------+-------+------+------- | vap | prf | ben | ti -------------------+-------+-------+------+------- | s| s| s| s colorado | , | | | indiana | , | , | | , indian territory | | ...| | iowa | , | , | | , kansas | , | , | | michigan | , | , | | , minnesota | , | , | | nebraska | , | , | | north dakota | , | , | | oklahoma | | ...| ...| south dakota | , | | | utah | , | | | wisconsin | , | , | | , +-------+-------+------+------- total. | , | , | , | , +=======+=======+======+======= california | , | , | | , idaho | | | ...| montana | | | ...| oregon | | | | vermont | , | , | | washington | , | | | +-------+-------+------+------- total | , | , | | , +-------+-------+------+------- double total | , | , | , | , +=======+=======+======+======= arizona | | ...| ...| illinois | , | , | , | , nevada | | | | new mexico | | ...| ...| new hampshire | , | , | | wyoming | | | ...| west virginia | , | | | +-------+-------+------+------------ total | , | , | , | , +-------+-------+------+------------ grand total | , | , | , | , -------------------+-------+-------+------+------------ comparative normal and industrial schools ( )--southern groups ---------------------+------------------------------------------- | normal schools (public and private). +----------+----------+----------+---------- | | | | | teachers | number | value of | total |for normal| of normal| plant. | income. | students.| students.| | ---------------------+----------+----------+----------+---------- alabama | | , | , | , arkansas | | | , | , florida | | | , | , georgia | | | , | , louisiana | | | , | , mississippi | | | , | , north carolina | | , | , | , south carolina | | | , | , tennessee | | , | , | , virginia | | , | , , | , +----------+----------+----------+---------- total states | | , | , , | , , texas | | , | , | , +----------+----------+----------+---------- total seceding states| | , | , , | , , +==========+==========+==========+========== delaware | ...| ...| ...| ... dist. of columbia | | | ...| ... kentucky | | | , | , maryland | | | , | , missouri | | , | , , | , +----------+----------+----------+---------- total | | , | , , | , +----------+----------+----------+---------- grand total | | , | , , | , , ---------------------+----------+----------+----------+---------- ---------------------+---------------------------------------------- | reform and industrial schools (public). +----------+----------+------------------------ | | | finances. | teachers.| number of+----------+------------- | | students.| value of | total | | | plant. |expenditures. ---------------------+----------+----------+----------+------------- alabama | | | , | , arkansas | ...| ...| ...| ... florida | | | , | , georgia | | | , | , louisiana | ...| ...| ...| ... mississippi | ...| ...| ...| ... north carolina | ...| ...| ...| ... south carolina | ...| ...| ...| ... tennessee | | , | , | , virginia | | | , | , +----------+----------+----------+------------- total states | | , | , | , texas | | | , | , +----------+----------+----------+------------- total seceding states| | , | , | , +==========+==========+==========+============= delaware | | | , | , dist. of columbia | | | , | , kentucky | | | , | , maryland | | , | , , | , missouri | | , | , | , +----------+----------+----------+------------- total | | , | , , | , +----------+----------+----------+------------- grand total | | , | , , | , ---------------------+----------+----------+----------+------------- comparative normal and industrial schools ( )--equivalent northern groups -------------------+------------------------------------------- | normal schools (public and private). +----------+----------+----------+---------- | | | | | teachers | number of| value of | total |for normal| normal | plant. | income. | students.| students.| | +----------+----------+----------+---------- colorado | | | , | , indiana | | , | , | , indian territory| ...| ...| ...| ... iowa | | , | , | , kansas | | , | , | , michigan | | , | , | , minnesota | | , | , | , nebraska | | , | , | , north dakota | | | , | , oklahoma | | , | , | , south dakota | | | , | , utah | | | , | , wisconsin | | , | , , | , +----------+----------+----------+---------- total | | , | , , | , , +==========+==========+==========+========== california | | , | , , | , idaho | | | , | , montana | | | , | , oregon | | | , | , vermont | | | , | , washington | | | , | , +----------+----------+----------+---------- total | | , | , , | , +----------+----------+----------+---------- double total | , | , | , , | , , +==========+==========+==========+========== arizona | | | , | , illinois | | , | , , | , nevada | ...| ...| ...| ... new mexico | | | , | , new hampshire | | | , | , wyoming | ...| ...| ...| ... west virginia | | , | , | , +----------+----------+----------+---------- total | | , | , , | , +----------+----------+----------+---------- grand total | , | , | , , | , , -------------------+----------+----------+----------+---------- -------------------+---------------------------------------------- | reform and industrial schools (public). +----------+----------+------------------------ | | | finances. | teachers.| number of+----------+------------- | | students.| value of | total | | | plant. |expenditures. +----------+----------+----------+------------- colorado | | | , | , indiana | | , | , | , indian territory| ...| ...| ...| ... iowa | | | , | , kansas | | | , | , michigan | | , | , | , minnesota | | | , | , nebraska | | | , | , north dakota | ...| ...| ...| ... oklahoma | ...| ...| ...| ... south dakota | | | , | , utah | ...| ...| ...| ... wisconsin | | | , | , +----------+----------+----------+------------- total | | , | , , | , +==========+==========+==========+============= california | | | , | , idaho | | | , | , montana | | | , | , oregon | | | , | , vermont | | | , | , washington | | | ...| ... +----------+----------+----------+------------- total | | , | , | , +----------+----------+----------+------------- double total | | , | , , | , , +==========+==========+==========+============= arizona | | | , | , illinois | | , | , , | , nevada | ...| ...| ...| ... new mexico | ...| ...| ...| ... new hampshire | | | , | , wyoming | ...| ...| ...| ... west virginia | | | , | , +----------+----------+----------+------------- total | | , | , , | , +----------+----------+----------+------------- grand total | | , | , , | , , -------------------+----------+----------+----------+------------- index a abbott, e. h., articles by, on southern question, . advance system on cotton plantations, ; lien loans, ; impositions, - , ; specimen accounts, ; christmas money, . africa, negroes in, - . _see also_ colonization. afro-american as name for negro, . agriculture. southern crops, , ; poor white farmers and tenants, , ; foreign laborers, ; white small farmers, ; negro life, - ; negroes as laborers, ; farms owned by negroes, - ; amount of negro products, ; actual wealth of southern states, - ; population ; reclamation of swamps, ; comparative wealth of seceding states, - ; of whole south, ; comparative value of cotton and other southern crops, . _see also_ cotton. alabama. mining, ; republican party, ; negro voters, ; leasing of convicts, ; contract law and peonage, ; illiteracy, ; per-capita school tax, ; comparative statistics, - . albany, ga., negro school near, . alderman, e. a., and negro progress, . _alexander's magazine_, . alexandria, la., italians at, . amalgamation of races. evil of, ; determination against, , . _see also_ miscegenation, mulattoes. american colonization society and liberia, , . _see also_ colonization. _american magazine_, articles in, on race question, . americus, ga., as trade center, . amusements, negro, . andersonville, ga., statue to wirz in, . andrew, j. a., protest of, against class prejudice, . appalachian forest reserve, proposed, . architecture, southern standard of, , . arizona, comparative statistics of, - . arkansas. illiteracy, ; comparative statistics, - . armstrong, s. c., and hampton institute, . _see also_ hampton. art galleries in south, . assessment. _see_ taxation. association of colleges, . atlanta. size, ; progress, , ; foreign population, ; negro population, ; race riot, , . atlanta, university of. conferences, , ; founding, . _see also_ colleges. _atlanta evening news_ and race riot, . _atlanta georgian_, on lynching, . augusta, ga., water power of, . austin. capitol, ; progress, . avary, myrta l., on educational value of slavery, . b baker, r. s., articles by, on race question, . baldwin co., ala., northerners in, . bale, cotton. making, ; round, ; careless construction, . baltimore. foreign population, ; as port, , ; schools, , . banishment of negroes, , , . banking, southern, ; comparative statistics of, , , - ; and cotton culture, ; need of savings banks, . baptist church, negro, . "basket-name," . bassett, j. s., and race problem, , . beaufort county, s. c., negro suffrage in, . _see also_ sea islands. "before day clubs," . bell, of alabama. plantation, ; and negro uplift, . benevolent institutions, comparative statistics of, north and south, , - . benson settlement, , . berea college and negro education, . bernhard of saxe-weimar, duke, on cotton seed, . bibliography of southern problem, - ; bibliographies, ; anti-negro works, - ; conservative southern books, - ; works by negroes, - ; monographic studies, ; magazine articles, ; necessity of first-hand investigation, . birmingham, ala. iron trade, ; progress, , . _birmingham age herald_ on punishment of vagrancy, . black-and-tan republicans, . black belt. extent, ; manufactures, ; trade centers, ; richness of soil, . blount college and coeducation, . blowing rock, n. c., view from, . "bohunks," . "boomer" described, . boyd, j. e., and peonage, . brawley, w. h., and peonage, . brookhaven, miss., violence in, , , , . brown, w. g., "lower south," . brownsville incident, , . bruce, p. a., on virginians of seventeenth century, . bruce, r. c., as leader, . brunswick, ga., as port, , . business. leadership in south, ; negroes in, . c cairo, ill., mob in, . calhoun, j. c., northern education of, . calhoun, ala. negro community, ; school, , . california. school expenditures, ; comparative statistics, - . cann, judge, on concealment of negro criminals, . capital, in south, ; comparative statistics of banking, - ; of manufacturing, - . carnegie educational fund and southern colleges, . catholic church and negroes, . cavaliers, myth of southern descent from, . census bureau, data from, . _see also_ population. ceylon, advance system in, . chain gangs in south, . chamberlain, d. h., on lynching, . charleston. as port, , ; character, ; negro morality, ; crum incident, . _charleston news and courier_, character of, . chattanooga, lynching at, . chesnutt, c. w., as writer, , . child labor in south, . chinese and south, . "christmas money," . churchill, w. s., on negroes in africa, . cities. chief southern, ; growth of smaller southern, ; effect on whites and negroes, ; urban population of south, ; progress of southern, ; negro life, , ; schools, , , , . civil war. poor whites and, ; present southern attitude toward secession, ; towards northern leaders, ; belief in impoverishment through emancipation, ; andersonville and statue of wirz, ; negro soldiers, . clay eaters, name for poor whites, . clearings, bank, comparative statistics of, north and south, - . climate of south, , . coal in south, , . cole, peonage case, . colleges, southern. antebellum, ; present development, , ; comparative statistics, , , - ; for women, , ; ranking institutions, ; state university funds, ; and politics, ; northern instructors, ; endowments, ; postbellum negro, ; character of negro, , ; need of negro, , ; number of negro graduates, ; objections to negro, - ; academic versus industrial training for negroes, - . _collier's weekly_ on southern progress, . colonization of negroes. attempts, - ; not a solution of race problem, - . colorado, comparative statistics of, - . colored person as name for negro, . columbia, s. c. water power, ; progress, ; manufacturing output, . columbus, ga., water power in, . commerce. southern ports, , - ; south and panama canal, ; southern inland centers, ; of liberia, ; southern inland transportation, - ; through southern ports, ; and race separation, . concealed weapons, carrying of, in south, , , , . conferences, negro, , . congress, no interference by, in race problem, - . consumption, negro mortality, . convicts. number, north and south, ; southern treatment, - , . coöperative educational association of virginia, . corbin, austin, sunny side plantation, , , . cordova, s. c., and negro education, . corn, comparative value of crops of, , , , , . cotton. extent of belt, , ; southern manufactures, , , ; poor whites and manufacture, , ; foreign and negro cultivators, ; value of crop, , , ; making of, - ; southern claim of importance, ; monopolizes southern interest, ; compared with other southern crops, - ; and race problem, , , ; history, prices, ; staples, ; fertilizing, ; application of term plantation, - ; types of plantations, - ; white laborers, , , , ; labor system, , ; cultivation, - ; yield per acre, ; ginning and baling, , ; round bale, ; seed as product, ; hands, - ; independent negro raisers, ; relation of negro hands to plantation, , ; character of labor, ; management of plantation, - ; working division of plantations, ; renters, croppers, and wage hands, - ; extra work, ; instability of negro laborers, ; negro monopoly of labor, , ; necessity of training of laborers, , , ; complaints of negro hands, ; advance system and its effect, - ; wastefulness of culture and distribution, ; selection of seed, ; culture and practical peonage, . cotton seed. seed trust of sea island staple, ; value as product, ; selection, . "cotton-weed," . courts. conduct of criminal trials in south, - ; suggestion of negro, . _see also_ crime. crackers, name for poor whites, . crime in south. mountaineer, ; concealed weapons, , , , ; mulattoes and, ; and its penalties, - ; in north, ; northern ideas of southern, ; proportion of homicides, , ; character of white homicides, ; criminality of negroes, - ; negro education and, , , , , , , ; negroes and organized, ; conditions promoting negro, ; before day clubs, ; negro assault on white women, - , ; concealment of negro criminals, ; criminal example of whites, , ; whipping of negroes, , ; banishment of negroes, , , ; homicide of negroes by whites, - ; treatment of negroes by police, ; relative convictions, north and south, ; conduct of murder trials, ; negro trials and protection, ; chain gangs, ; prisons, ; leasing of convicts, , ; prison reform, ; pardons, ; white responsibility for inefficient criminal justice, ; race riots, - ; lynching, - , - ; prevalence, ; influences working against, ; and race animosity, ; preventative measures for negro, - ; comparative statistics of prisoners, north and south, - . _see also_ peonage. croppers on cotton plantations, . crum, w. d., opposition to appointment of, . cuba, negroes in, . cullman, ala., excludes negroes, . cutler, j. e., on lynching, , , . d dallas, progress, . davis, jeff, as political leader, . davis, jefferson, on southland, . dayton plantation, . death-rate, negro, - . debts, comparative public, of south, . delaware, comparative statistics of, - . democratic party, effect of control of, in south, , , . deposits, bank, comparative, statistics of, north and south, - . district of columbia, comparative statistics of, - . divorce, negro, . dixon, thomas, jr. as writer on race question, ; on southern temperament, ; on reconstruction, ; on miscegenation, ; and suppression of negro development, , , ; on booker washington and tuskegee, , ; on cost of negro education, ; on terrorizing negroes, . domestic servants, negro, - . domination, negro, as live question, . "dooley, mr." on terrorizing negroes, . dothan, ala., abortive lynching in, . douglass, margaret, negro school held by, . drink. negroes and, , ; southern manufacture of liquor, ; southern prohibition, . drug habit, negro, . du bois, w. e. b. bibliographies of negro question, ; as writer and investigator of negro question, - , ; literary style, , ; on race problem, ; on gospel of work, ; on suffrage and leadership, ; on race prejudice, ; "litany of atlanta," ; on race separation and progress, ; on right to education, , , . dunbar, p. l. and negro question, ; on unaccountability, ; on industry, . dunleith plantation, . durham, n. c., tobacco manufacture in, . e edmonds, r. h., on southern potential wealth, . education, negro. illiteracy, , , , ; in north, ; negro teachers, , ; and crime, , , , , , , ; race separation, , ; of cotton hands, , ; problem, ; antebellum, ; during and after civil war, ; beginning of public schools, ; present status of public schools, ; white opposition, , - ; typical rural schools, - ; refusal of authorities to provide schools, ; interaction of poor schools and attendance, , ; character of urban schools, ; secondary and higher, ; private schools, white opposition, - , , ; colleges, , - ; boycotting of white teachers, ; influence of private schools, ; hampton and tuskegee and industrial, ; question of federal aid, , ; private funds, ; as help in race problem, , - ; needs, - , - ; questions of negro capability, - ; question of harmful, ; cost to south, ; as unreasonable burden on whites, - ; opposition to academic, ; public industrial training, ; academic versus industrial, - ; contradictory objections, , ; professional, ; opposition to secondary, ; necessity of academic, ; fundamental race objection, ; negro complaints, ; comparative statistics, secondary, north and south, - . education, white, in south. of mountaineers, , ; of poor whites, ; comparative statistics of seceding states, , , , - ; of whole south, , , , - ; on basis of white population, ; divergent views of need, ; tradition of culture, ; antebellum, - ; postbellum, ; development of public schools, ; of secondary and higher systems, ; normal, ; comparative illiteracy, - ; urban schools, ; rural schools, - ; rural superintendence, ; secondary, ; of women, , ; colleges, - ; professional, ; influence of travel, ; hopeful conditions, , ; museums and art galleries, ; libraries, ; literature, ; historical societies, ; taxes, ; promotive associations, ; northern aid, ; federal aid, ; standard, . electric railroads in south, . eliot, c. w. on south and union, ; on education in south, . emancipation, southern belief in impoverishing effect of, , . eyre, j. e., and negro insurrection, . f family life, negro, , . farming. _see_ agriculture, cotton. fenwick's island, inhabitants of, . fernandina as port, . fertilizing in cotton culture, . fifteenth amendment. reason for, , ; present south and, . _see also_ suffrage. fisheries, southern, . fisk university, founding of, . fitzgerald, ga. northern community, ; negroes excluded, , . flaxseed, southern crop, . fleming, w. h., on remedy of race problem, , . florida. and immigration, ; leasing of convicts, ; comparative statistics, - . forests, southern wealth, ; - ; lumbering and advancement of mountaineers, ; lumbering and poor whites, ; efforts for forest reserve, ; naval stores, . fourteenth amendment, enforcement of, and race problem, . freedmen's bureau and negro education, . frontier life of southern mountaineers, , , . g gadsden, on south and immigration, . gallagher peonage case, . galveston. as port, , ; rivalry with new orleans, ; lecture courses, . gambling, negro, . garner, j. w. on agitation of race question, ; on legislative remedy of problem, ; on negro education and crime, . general education board, and southern education, , , , ; and negro schools, . georgia. loss of natives, ; valuations, ; rural police, ; comparative statistics, - . georgia, university of, standing of, . ginning of cotton, , . glenn, g. r., on negro capability, . goldsboro, fla., negro community at, . gonzales, n. g., murder of, . grady, h. w. on race problem, , ; on lincoln, ; on faithfulness of slaves in war time, ; on race separation, . graham, jeffrey, case of descendants of, . graves, j. t. on negro advancement, , , , ; on negro segregation, ; on terrorizing negroes, ; on legal terror, . greenville, miss., as trade center, . griffin, a. p. c., bibliographies of, on negro question, . h hammond, judge, on white duties in race problem, . hampton, wade, on coöperation with negroes, . hampton institute. opposition, ; influence, ; justification, ; basis of success, ; conferences, . hardy, j. c., on training of cotton laborers, . harris, j. c., as writer, . hay, comparative value of southern crop of, , . hayti, negroes in, . health. southern, ; negro death-rate, - ; mulatto, . helms, glenny, peonage case, . hermitage plantation, . hill, w. b., and negro development, . hill billies, name for poor whites, . historical societies, southern, . history. southern attitude, - ; separate, of antebellum south, ; southern adherence to traditional views, ; cavalier myth, ; belief in antebellum prosperity, ; and in advantages of slavery to negroes, ; present attitude towards civil war, - , ; towards reconstruction, - ; towards post-reconstruction times, , . hoffman, f. l. "race traits," ; on negro death-rate, - ; on negro physical inferiority, . home life. _see_ family life. horseback riding in south, . hotels. race separation in south, ; improvement of southern, . houses. of mountaineers, , ; of poor whites, ; negro farm, , - . houston, progress, . howell, clark. gubernational campaign, ; on progress of south, , . i idaho, comparative statistics of, - . illinois, comparative statistics of, - . illiteracy. comparative southern, , ; negro, , ; decreasing, - . _see also_ education. immigration, foreign. and south, - ; foreign population of south, ; and antebellum south, ; southern encouragement, ; south carolina's experiment, , ; foreign groups in south, , - ; obstacles, - ; and negro question, ; and cotton laborers, , ; not remedy of race problem, ; and peonage, ; and crude labor, ; comparative statistics of foreign population, north and south, - . indian question, . indian territory, comparative statistics of, - . indiana. colonization of negroes in, ; comparative statistics, - . indianapolis. negro question, ; negro schools, . indianola, miss., incident of negro postmistress in, . industrial education of negro. hampton and tuskegee. ; public, ; versus academic, - ; dangers, . industry. _see_ agriculture, business, commerce, forests, labor, manufactures, mining, wealth. insane, comparative statistics of, north and south, - . iowa, comparative, statistics of, - . iron, southern mining and manufacture of, , . italians in south, , - , , . j jackson, miss., capitol at, . jacksonville as port, . jamaica, negroes in, . jefferson, thomas, and colonization of negroes, . jim crow cars, - . johnson, e. a., on race antagonism, . jones, t. g., and peonage, , . jones, tom, negro, lynched, . jonesville, la., dayton plantation near, . jury duty, negroes and, . juvenile criminals in south, ; comparative statistics of delinquents, - ; of reform schools, - . k kansas. negro migration, ; comparative statistics, - . kelsey, carl. "negro farmer," ; on negro immorality, , . kentucky. liquor manufacture, ; problem of negro education, ; taxation for negro schools, ; comparative statistics, - . kowaliga, ala., negro community at, . ku-klux klan, evil of, . l labor. of poor whites, ; in cotton mills, , ; foreign and negro, , ; white, on cotton plantations, , , , , ; negro, in north, ; negro, in south, - ; negroes and gospel of work, ; negroes and unskilled, ; white control of negro, ; willingness of blacks, - ; negro managers, ; negro domestic servants, - ; blacks as farm laborers, ; skilled negro, , , ; unions and negro, , ; whipping on plantations, ; manufacture of iron, ; influence of southern, on comparative wealth, , , , , ; system on cotton plantation, , , ; cotton hands, - ; character, on cotton plantation, ; child, in south, ; cotton renters, croppers, and wage hands, - ; instability of negro, ; negro monopoly of cotton culture, , ; necessity of training of cotton hands, , , ; negro complaints, ; advance system and its effect, - ; peonage in south, - ; postbellum vagrant laws, ; negroes as peasants, - ; immigration and crude, ; comparative statistics of manufacturing wages, north and south, - . _see also_ immigration. lake charles, la., northerners at, . lake city, s. c., attack on negro postmaster at, . lamar, l. q. c., on coöperation with negroes, . land, negro ownership of, and uplift, , - . lanier, sidney, as writer, . lawyers, negro, , . lead in south, . leadership in south. antebellum, ; postwar changes, - ; social, ; business, ; political, ; homogeneity, ; tone, ; negroes and negro leaders, , . leasing of convicts in south, , . lee, s. d., on negro labor, . legislation as remedy of race problem, - . leland university, founding of, . leonard. john, negro settlement started by, . liberia, failure of, - , . libraries in south, . lien loans on cotton plantations, . lilywhite republicans, . lincoln, abraham. minor's "real lincoln," ; grady on, ; and colonization of negroes, . liquor. _see_ drink. literature. southern, ; negro, . little river, plantations on, . lockhart, texas, peonage case, . london, murders in, . louisiana. immigration, , , ; school system, ; illiteracy, ; negro illiteracy, ; rural schools, : comparative statistics, - . louisville, tobacco manufacture in, ; schools, . louisville _courier-journal_. on south and immigration, . lower south, extent, . _see also_ south. lumber. _see_ forests. lynching. cutler's researches, ; origin and early practice, ; proportion. north and south, , ; not confined to cases of rape, , ; methods of lynchers, ; mistakes, ; conduct of officials, ; and of militia, ; justified, ; reasons for practice, race hostility, - ; suggestion of legalization, ; as remedy for race problem, - ; reduction, . m mcdonogh, john, educational bequest by, . mckinley, william, price of wheat and election of, . _macon telegraph_ on northern criticism, . madison, ga., popular hysteria in, on negro question, . magic, negro belief in, . malaria in south, . _manufacturers' record._ on immigration, ; on southern wealth, , ; on wealth in cotton, ; opposition to northern educational aid, ; on atlanta riots. . manufactures of south, , - ; cheap power, , ; cotton, , - ; importation of aliens, ; comparative statistics, north and south, , , , - . marriage. _see_ miscegenation. maryland. and south, ; problem of negro education, , ; comparative statistics, - . massachusetts and school tax, . mean whites, name for poor whites, . medicine. negro physicians, , ; schools in south, . memphis, progress, . methodist church. negro, ; educational commission of southern, . michigan, comparative statistics of, - . military service, negro, . militia and lynchings, . miller, kelly. on dixon, ; as writer, , ; on race antagonism, ; on negro advancement, , . mining in south. , . minnesota, comparative statistics of, - . minor, c. l. c. on negroes under slavery, ; "real lincoln," . miscegenation, - ; and principle of social inequality, , ; prohibition of marriage, ; white exclusion of mulattoes, ; remedy, ; and calamity of amalgamation, . mississippi. postbellum vagrant laws, ; negro voters, ; valuations, ; illiteracy, , school statistics, ; lynchings, ; comparative statistics, - . missouri. and south, ; illiteracy, ; comparative statistics, - . mitchell, s. c., and negro development, , . mitchell co., n. c., negroes excluded from, . mobile. as port, , ; progress, . monroe, la., as trade center, . montana, comparative statistics of, - . montgomery, founder of negro community, . montgomery, ala., progress, . morals. mountaineer, ; poor white, ; negro, - , - ; mulatto, ; miscegenation, - . _see also_ crime. morristown, tenn., treatment of negroes in, . mound bayou, miss., negro community at, . mt. moriah, ala., school at, . mountaineers, southern, as frontiersmen, , , ; conditions, - ; uniqueness, ; region, ; descent, - ; self-sustenance, ; lowest type, "boomer," - ; higher type, ; advancement, - ; crime, ; and negro question, ; as laborers in cotton mills, ; northern aid for education, . mulattoes. and negro "race traits," ; proportion, - ; physique, ; character, ; social position, , , ; and private negro schools, ; literature, . murders. proportion in south, ; varieties, ; of negroes by whites, - ; conduct of trials, ; lynchings for, , . murphy, e. g. "present south," ; on democratic development, ; on race problem, , , ; on south and northern criticism, ; on survival of negroes, ; on race association, ; and negro development, ; on poor whites, ; on negro academic training, . museums, southern, . n nashua, n. h., manufacturing output of, . national banks, comparative statistics of, north and south, - . _see also_ banking. naval stores, southern, . nebraska. illiteracy, ; comparative statistics, - . "negro a beast," . negroes. writers, - , ; periodicals, ; of sea islands, , , , , ; effect of urban life, , ; and mountaineers, ; and foreign immigration, , ; temperament of northern and southern, ; present attitude of north on question, ; northern responsibility and interest in question, - ; persistence of question, ; necessity of solution, ; southern belief in benefits of slavery, , ; character, - ; population, , , - ; names for, ; white generalizations on, ; character and capability in africa, - ; failure of liberia, - , ; conditions in west indies, - ; in north, - ; question of inferiority, - , ; "race traits," , ; lack of opportunity, ; and white standards, ; arrested development, , ; irresponsibility, ; life, - ; diffusion, ; ruralness, ; survival and death-rate, - ; divergent types, ; proportion and character of mulattoes, - ; northward drift, , ; white ignorance of negro life, , , , ; investigations of life, ; rural houses, ; family life, , ; amusements, ; religious life, , ; secret societies, ; as managers, ; and military service, ; as business and professional men, - , ; attitude towards leaders, , ; conferences, , ; question of advancement, - ; physical structure and inferiority, - ; morality, - ; not retrograding, , ; morals under slavery, ; faithfulness during civil war, ; evidences of advancement, - ; communities, ; proportion of uplift, , , , - ; accumulation of property, - ; savings, , ; real estate, - , - ; and tax-paying, ; race association, - ; problem of association, - ; miscegenation, - ; remedy for it, ; position of mulattoes, , ; evil of amalgamation, , ; growth of race antagonism, - , , , ; white fear of negro domination, , ; negroes on race antagonism, ; basis of antagonism, ; question of social equality, - , ; race separation, - , - ; exclusion from settlements, ; increasing segregation, ; quarters in cities, ; church separation, ; postbellum vagrant laws, , ; discrimination in travel, - ; and public positions, - , ; disfranchisement, - , - , - ; white suppression of development, - , - ; illustrations of white antagonism, - ; rough language by whites, ; and present vagrant laws, ; and jury duty, ; testimony, ; race riots, - ; thriftlessness, ; and newspapers, ; summary of race problem, - ; race separation and principle of equality, , ; perpetual inferiority and subjection, , , , ; agitation against, ; postulates as to possible remedies of race problem, - ; wrong remedies, - ; no help from congress, - ; nor from northern propaganda, ; nor from colonization - ; nor from substitution of white laborers, - ; nor from segregation, - ; terrorizing as remedy - ; material and political remedies, - ; advantage to whites in negro uplift, , ; as peasant class, - ; moral remedies, - ; influence of race separation on uplift, - , - ; suggestion of socialistic control over, ; need of equitable vagrant laws, ; special courts, ; and prohibition, ; necessity of discussion of race problem, ; essentials of remedy, - ; comparative statistics of insane and paupers, north and south, - . _see also_ cotton, crime, education, labor, lynching, peonage, whites. nevada, comparative statistics of, - . new hampshire, comparative statistics of, - . new mexico, comparative statistics of, - . new orleans. as port, , ; population and trade, ; foreign population, ; negro population, ; negro morality, ; rivalry with galveston, ; belt line, ; progress, ; mcdonogh bequest, ; discontinuance of negro high school, . new york city, murders in, . newport news as port, , . newspapers. _see_ press. niagara movement, . nixburg, ala., negro community near, . no 'count, name for poor whites, . norfolk, va. as port, , , ; mrs. douglass' negro school, . normal schools in south. development, ; comparative statistics, , - . _see also_ teachers. north. extent, ; northerners in south, - ; position of southerners in, ; southern suspicion, , , ; southern belief in hostility, ; present attitude on race problem, ; responsibility and interest in problem, - ; condition of negroes in, - ; negro drift, , ; crime, ; idea of crime in south, ; criminal spirit in, and in south, - ; lynching in, , ; comparative wealth (_see_ wealth); aid for southern white education, ; for negro education, - , ; and solution of southern race problem, , - , ; comparative statistics, - . north carolina. and immigration, ; and mecklenburg declaration, ; early negro suffrage, ; comparative statistics, - . north carolina, university of. founding, ; standing, . north dakota. school statistics, ; comparative statistics, - . norwood, t. m., generalization by, on negroes, . o oak grove, ala., negro school at, . oats, comparative value of crops of, . odum, h. w., negro researches by, . ogden, r. c., and southern education board, , . oklahoma. and south, ; comparative statistics of, - . onancock, va., banishment of negroes from, . opelika, ala., public buildings in, . open-air life in south, , . oregon, comparative statistics of, - . _outlook_, articles in, on southern question, . p pace, j. w., peonage case, . page, t. n. "negro," ; on educational value of slavery, ; on failure of negro, ; on negro immorality, ; on race antagonism, ; on negro capability, , ; on evils of negro education, ; on white dominance, ; on negro court, ; on mutual discussion of race problem, ; on need of negro uplift, . panama canal and southern commerce, . pardon of criminals in south, . paupers, comparative statistics of, north and south, - . peabody fund, . peasant class, negroes as, - . penn school in sea islands, . pensacola as port, , . pensions, southern income, . peonage. and immigration, , ; in south, - ; rise, ; federal law against, ; principle, ; development in cotton culture, ; of whites, - ; restraint of movements of negroes, - ; of negroes under cover of laws, - , ; illustrations, - ; federal prosecutions, ; southern approval, ; federal investigation, ; and leasing of convicts, ; and negro shiftlessness, . percy, leroy. on remedy of race problem, , ; on negro education, . pests, southern, . petroleum in south, . philadelphia, negro mortality in, . phosphates in south, . physical conditions of south, - ; swamps, . physicians, negro, , . physique, negro, and inferiority, - . plantation. application of term, - ; present types, - . _see also_ agriculture, cotton. "plow" division of farms, . poe, e. a., as southern writer, . police. treatment of negroes, ; need of rural, , , . politics. southern leadership, ; cause and effect of solid south, , , ; colonization of negroes in indiana, ; negroes and public positions, - , ; negroes and republican party in south, ; negro suffrage, - , - , - . poor whites. traditional home, ; conditions, - ; names for, ; diffusion, ; antebellum isolation, - ; and civil war, ; as farmers, , , ; advancement, - ; morals, ; education, , ; as wage earners, - ; in cotton mills, , ; northward and westward drift, ; term a misnomer, ; turbulence, ; and southern problem, ; need of uplift, . population. southern urban, ; of south, ; southern, of northern birth, ; foreign, in south, ; negro, , ; negro death-rate, - ; southern agricultural, ; comparative statistics, north and south, - . ports of the south, , , - , . portsmouth, va., as port, , . post-office. negro employees, , ; need of postal savings banks in south, . potatoes, comparative value of crop of, . press, southern. character, ; negro journalists, , ; negroes and newspapers, . price. of farm lands, ; of cotton, . prisons in south, ; reform, ; comparative statistics of prisoners, - . professions. negroes in, , ; schools in south, , . prohibition as remedy of race problem, . property. _see_ land, taxation, wealth. protestant episcopal church and race separation, . pulaski co., ga., increasing negro population of, . pullman car co. and jim crow cars, . r race. _see_ negroes, remedies, whites. railroads of south. race separation, - ; development, - ; new orleans belt road, ; control, ; comparative mileage of seceding states, ; of whole south, . rape, negro, of white women, - ; early examples, ; lynching not confined to, , ; not on increase, ; and justification of lynching, , . real estate, negro, - . reclamation of southern swamps, . reconstruction. present southern attitude, - ; ku-klux, ; and race antagonism, ; negro suffrage, , ; educational measures, , . red necks, name for poor whites, . reed, j. c. on dixon, ; on negroes under slavery, ; on ku-klux, ; on negro segregation, . religion. of mountaineers, ; of negroes in africa, ; negro, in south, , ; question of negro paganism, ; race separation, ; training of southern ministers, ; church and race problem, . remedies of race problem. summary of problem, - ; essential conditions, ; types of altitude of southern whites, - ; postulates, - ; division of whites, - , ; wrong, - ; no congressional interference, - ; no northern private propaganda, ; no amalgamation, ; no colonization, - ; no substitutes for negro laborers, - ; no segregation, - ; possibility of race separation, - ; terrorizing, - ; legalized terror, ; material, - ; possibility and permission of general negro uplift, - ; land-buying by negroes, - ; negroes as peasants, - ; aids for thrift, ; political, - ; moral, - ; influence of race separation, - ; character of negro leaders, ; benevolent state socialism, ; influence of church, ; legislative and judicial, - ; negro education, - ; need of race coöperation and discussion, - ; last analysis of problem, - ; white duties, ; patience, - . renters on cotton plantations, , . restaurants, race separation in, in south, . rhett, barnwell, northern education of, . rice as southern crop, . richmond. race separation, ; tobacco manufacture, ; progress, . _richmond times despatch_ on immigration, . "riders" on cotton plantations, , . riots, race, - , . roads, southern, . roosevelt, theodore. booker washington incident, ; and appointment of negroes, , ; rewards faithful state official, ; on lynchings, . rural life. open-air life, , ; preponderance in south, - ; negro propensity, ; police, , , ; schools, - , - ; relative lack of progress, . _see also_ agriculture. russell, c. w., on peonage, . s st. louis, schools in, . salisbury, n. c., lynching in, . sand hillers, name for poor whites, . santo domingo, negroes in, . savannah as port, , , . savings banks, need of, in south, . saxons, taine on, . sea islands, ; negroes of, , , , ; trucking, ; cotton, seed trust, ; ginning and bagging of cotton, ; war-time negro schools, ; present education, . secession, present southern attitude toward, . secondary education. development of southern, , ; comparative statistics, north and south, , - ; negro, ; hostility to negro, , . secret societies, negro, . shannon, a. h. "racial integrity," ; on mulattoes, . shipp, j. f., and lynching, . shreveport. public buildings, ; italians at, . shufeldt, r. w., "negro a menace," . sinclair, w. a. "aftermath of slavery," ; as writer, . slater fund, . slavery. effect on south, ; and southern attitude towards history, ; traditional belief in prosperity under, , ; and in benefit to negro, , ; domestic servants, ; negro morals under, ; personal race association under, ; chattel, and leasing of convicts, ; in philippines, ; and education of negroes, . _see also_ peonage. smith, hoke. gubernatorial campaign, ; on negro education, ; on white control over negroes, . smith, w. b. "color line," ; on south and outside public opinion, ; on negro inferiority, ; apology for lynching, . social life in south. open-air, ; of northerners, ; leadership, - ; character, ; crudeness of behavior, ; democratic uplift, ; of negroes in north, ; miscegenation and social inequality of negroes, , ; exclusion of mulattoes, ; question of negro equality, - , ; race equality and negro officials, ; negro homes, . socialism and race problem, . solid south, cause and effect of, . south. as part of union, - ; individuality, , ; author's preparation for judging, - ; materials on, - ; physical conditions, - ; extent, ; physical divisions, - ; black belt, ; forests, ; climate, ; mining, ; pests, ; health, ; architecture, , ; rural preponderance, - ; comparative statistics, - . _see also_ agriculture, cities, civil war, commerce, cotton, crime, education, history, immigration, labor, leadership, manufactures, negroes, peonage, politics, population, reconstruction, remedies, slavery, social life, wealth, whites. _south atlantic monthly_ and discussion of race problem, . south carolina. loss of natives, ; immigration experiment, , ; postbellum vagrant laws, ; murders in, ; valuations, ; cotton manufactures, , ; peonage in, ; illiteracy, ; school statistics, ; rural police, ; comparative statistics, - . south dakota, comparative statistics of, - . southern education association and negro education, . southern education board, , , . "southern south," meaning of term, . spartanburg, water-power in, . spencer, samuel, and immigration, . springfield, ill., race riot in, . springfield, ohio, race riot in, . _statistical abstract_, data from, , . steamboat, race separation on southern, . stock, southern, . stone, a. h. studies of negro question, ; on foreign and negro cotton hands, ; on negro accumulation of property, ; on lien loans, . stone and webster, and electric power and transportation, . straight university, founding of, . street railways. race separation on southern, ; inter-urban trolleys, . suffrage. northern distrust of negro, ; effect of disfranchisement on negro leadership, ; negro, - ; negro disfranchisement, - , ; reason for disfranchisement, ; enforcement of fourteenth amendment, ; federal control of elections, . sugar, southern crop of, . sugar beets, southern crop of, . sulphur in south, . sulu archipelago, slavery in, . sunny side. italian labor at, ; plantation, ; alleged peonage case, . superstitions, negro, . swamps, southern, ; reclamation of, . syracuse, ohio, negroes excluded from, . t taine, h. a., on saxons, . talassee, school at, . talladega, school at, . tar heels, name for poor whites, . taxation. negroes and, , ; assessment valuations as comparison of southern wealth, ; comparative valuations of seceding states, ; of whole south, - , , , - ; on basis of white population, ; ante- and post-bellum valuation in south, ; school, in south, , ; burden of, for negro schools, - . teachers, southern. of rural white schools, ; of negro schools, , , ; boycott of northern, of negro schools, ; need of white, for colored schools, - ; comparative statistics, north and south, - . temperament of southern whites, - ; difficulty in determining, ; emotionalism, , ; influence of race problem, - , ; diversity on problem, - ; impatience of dissent, , , ; suspicion of northerners, , , , ; attitude towards criticism, - , ; exaggeration, ; of negroes, ; whites, and outside interest in race problem, - ; attitude towards history, - , ; veneration for ancestors, . tennessee. school statistics, ; comparative statistics, - . tensas river, plantations on, . testimony, negro, . texas. urban population, ; immigration from other states, ; foreign settlement, ; value of farms, ; school statistics, , , ; comparative statistics, - . texas, university of, standing of, . theft, negroes and, . thomas, william hannibal. "american negro," ; on negro morals, . thomas, william holcombe. on race association, ; on homicides, . thorsby, ala., northern community at, . tillman, b. r. as political leader, ; anti-negro generalizations, ; on newly imported slaves, ; attitude on negro disfranchisement, ; on lynching, ; and race problem, , . tillman, j. h., killing of gonzales by, . tobacco. southern manufacture, ; comparative value of crop, . toombs, robert, on south under slavery, . trade. _see_ commerce. transportation. race separation in south, - ; southern conditions, - . trucking in south, , , . trudics peonage case, . tulane university, standing of, , . turner, h. m., on negro segregation, . turner peonage case, , . turpentine, southern industry, . tuskegee institute. conferences, , ; influence, ; number of students, ; opposition, ; basis of success, . u union, south and, , . urban life. _see_ cities. utah, comparative statistics of, - . v vagrant laws, southern. postbellum, , ; present, ; need of equitable, . valdese, n. c., italians at, . valdosta, ga., negro teachers in, . vardaman, j. k. as political leader, ; abuse of negro, , ; on negro inferiority, ; on leasing convicts, ; pardons, ; opposition to negro education, , ; and race problem, ; on illegal control of negroes, . venereal disease, negroes and, . vermont. school statistics, ; comparative statistics, - . vice. _see_ morals. virginia. and hampton institute, ; comparative statistics, - . virginia coöperative education association, . virginia, university of. founding, ; standing of, . w wage hands on cotton plantations, . wages. _see_ labor, teachers. _wanderer_, negroes imported in, . washington, b. t. works on negro problem, ; negro hostility to, ; on acquiring land, , ; incident of lunch with roosevelt, ; dixon on, , , ; on south as home of negro, , ; on treatment of cotton hands, ; influence of tuskegee, ; as writer, ; as leader, , . washington, george, and fertilizing, . washington, state of, comparative statistics of, - . watauga co., n. c., negroes excluded from, . water-power in south, , . waterways, southern, . watson, t. e., on cry of negro domination, . watterson, henry, on southern wealth, . wealth, southern. private, ; enlarged views, , , ; negro accumulation, - ; actual, - ; under slavery, ; postbellum poverty, ; recent great increase, ; agricultural, - ; forests, - ; mineral, ; in manufactures, - : capital and banking, ; commercial, - , ; comparative, north and south, - ; southern claims considered, , , , , ; influence of labor conditions, , , , , ; pensions, ; proper basis for comparison, ; comparative tables, , - ; materials for comparison, ; comparative, of seceding states, - , ; of whole south, - , ; on basis of white population, - ; uneven advance of southern, ; actual and comparative rate of southern accumulation, - . west indies, capacity of negroes in, - . west virginia. and south, ; comparative statistics, - . wheat. as an export, ; southern crop, ; price and election of mckinley, . whipping on plantations, . white trash, name for poor whites, . whitecapping, . whites, southern. effect of city life, ; position of northerners in south, - ; small farmers, ; division on, and discussion of race problem, - , - , ; generalizations on negroes, ; southern exaltation, ; ignorance of negro life, , , , ; race association, - ; problem of association, - ; miscegenation, - ; remedy for it, ; exclusion of mulattoes, ; evil of amalgamation, , , ; growth of race antagonism, - , , , ; fear of negro domination, , ; negroes on race antagonism, ; basis of prejudice, ; race separation, - ; fear of negro social equality, - , ; suppression of negro development by, - ; illustration of race antagonism, - ; responsibility for inefficient criminal justice, ; comparative wealth of south on basis of white inhabitants, , ; laborers on cotton plantations, , , , ; peonage of, - ; advancement, ; domination, , ; perpetual superiority, ; violent agitation of race problem, ; despair over problem, ; to control settlement of problem, ; terrorizing of negroes, - ; advantages to, of negro uplift, , ; necessity of coöperation with negroes, - ; duties in problem, ; comparative statistics of population, - . _see also_ crime, education, history, immigration, leadership, mountaineers, negroes, poor whites, remedies, social life, temperament. whittaker, assault by, . williams, g. w., "negro race in america," . williams, j. s. on immigration, , ; senatorial campaign, ; on increasing race antagonism, , ; on basis of race prejudice, ; on remedy of race problem, , ; on negro emigration, ; on good conduct of negroes, ; on recognizing negro worth, ; on prevention of negro crimes, . wilmington, del., lynching in, . wilmington, n. c. as port, , ; banishment of negroes, . winston, g. t. on south, ; on negro criminality, ; on negro uplift, . wirz, henry, statue to, . wisconsin. school statistics, ; comparative statistics, - . women. labor on cotton plantations, ; school education in south, ; college education, , . wool, southern crop of, . _world almanac_, statistics from, , . _world's work_, articles in, on southern question, . "worth, nicholas." "autobiography," ; on southerners and criticism, ; on southern exaggeration, ; on historical ignorance, ; on race antagonism, ; on training cotton hands, . wyoming, comparative statistics of, - . z zinc in south, . froudacity ( ) j.j. thomas west indian fables by james anthony froude explained by j. j. thomas contents preface by j.j. thomas book i. introduction: - voyage out: - barbados: - st. vincent: - grenada: - book ii. trinidad: - reform in trinidad: - negro felicity in the west indies: - book iii. social revolution: - west indian confederation: - the negro as a worker: - religion for negroes: - book iv. historical summary or résumé: - , end froudacity preface [ ] last year had well advanced towards its middle--in fact it was already april, --before mr. froude's book of travels in the west indies became known and generally accessible to readers in those colonies. my perusal of it in grenada about the period above mentioned disclosed, thinly draped with rhetorical flowers, the dark outlines of a scheme to thwart political aspiration in the antilles. that project is sought to be realized by deterring the home authorities from granting an elective local legislature, however restricted in character, to any of the colonies not yet enjoying such an advantage. an argument based on the composition of the inhabitants of those colonies is confidently relied upon to confirm the inexorable mood of downing street. [ ] over-large and ever-increasing,--so runs the argument,--the african element in the population of the west indies is, from its past history and its actual tendencies, a standing menace to the continuance of civilization and religion. an immediate catastrophe, social, political, and moral, would most assuredly be brought about by the granting of full elective rights to dependencies thus inhabited. enlightened statesmanship should at once perceive the immense benefit that would ultimately result from such refusal of the franchise. the cardinal recommendation of that refusal is that it would avert definitively the political domination of the blacks, which must inevitably be the outcome of any concession of the modicum of right so earnestly desired. the exclusion of the negro vote being inexpedient, if not impossible, the exercise of electoral powers by the blacks must lead to their returning candidates of their own race to the local legislatures, and that, too, in numbers preponderating according to the majority of the negro electors. the negro legislators thus supreme in the councils of the colonies would straightway proceed to pass vindictive and retaliatory laws against their white fellow- [ ] colonists. for it is only fifty years since the white man and the black man stood in the reciprocal relations of master and slave. whilst those relations subsisted, the white masters inflicted, and the black slaves had to endure, the hideous atrocities that are inseparable from the system of slavery. since emancipation, the enormous strides made in self-advancement by the ex-slaves have only had the effect of provoking a resentful uneasiness in the bosoms of the ex-masters. the former bondsmen, on their side, and like their brethren of hayti, are eaten up with implacable, blood-thirsty rancour against their former lords and owners. the annals of hayti form quite a cabinet of political and social object lessons which, in the eyes of british statesmen, should be invaluable in showing the true method of dealing with ethiopic subjects of the crown. the negro race in hayti, in order to obtain and to guard what it calls its freedom, has outraged every humane instinct and falsified every benevolent hope. the slave-owners there had not been a whit more cruel than slave-owners in the other islands. but, in spite of this, how ferocious, how sanguinary, [ ] how relentless against them has the vengeance of the blacks been in their hour of mastery! a century has passed away since then, and, notwithstanding that, the hatred of whites still rankles in their souls, and is cherished and yielded to as a national creed and guide of conduct. colonial administrators of the mighty british empire, the lesson which history has taught and yet continues to teach you in hayti as to the best mode of dealing with your ethiopic colonists lies patent, blood-stained and terrible before you, and should be taken definitively to heart. but if you are willing that civilization and religion--in short, all the highest developments of individual and social life--should at once be swept away by a desolating vandalism of african birth; if you do not recoil from the blood-guiltiness that would stain your consciences through the massacre of our fellow-countrymen in the west indies, on account of their race, complexion and enlightenment; finally, if you desire those modern hesperides to revert into primeval jungle, horrent lairs wherein the blacks, who, but a short while before, had been ostensibly civilized, shall be revellers, as high-priests and [ ] devotees, in orgies of devil-worship, cannibalism, and obeah--dare to give the franchise to those west indian colonies, and then rue the consequences of your infatuation!... alas, if the foregoing summary of the ghastly imaginings of mr. froude were true, in what a fool's paradise had the wisest and best amongst us been living, moving, and having our being! up to the date of the suggestion by him as above of the alleged facts and possibilities of west indian life, we had believed (even granting the correctness of his gloomy account of the past and present positions of the two races) that to no well-thinking west indian white, whose ancestors may have, innocently or culpably, participated in the gains as well as the guilt of slavery, would the remembrance of its palmy days be otherwise than one of regret. we negroes, on the other hand, after a lapse of time extending over nearly two generations, could be indebted only to precarious tradition or scarcely accessible documents for any knowledge we might chance upon of the sufferings endured in these islands of the west by those of our race who have gone before us. death, with undiscriminating hand, had gathered [ ] in the human harvest of masters and slaves alike, according to or out of the normal laws of nature; while time had been letting down on the stage of our existence drop-scene after drop-scene of years, to the number of something like fifty, which had been curtaining off the tragic incidents of the past from the peaceful activities of the present. being thus circumstanced, thought we, what rational elements of mutual hatred should now continue to exist in the bosoms of the two races? with regard to the perpetual reference to hayti, because of our oneness with its inhabitants in origin and complexion, as a criterion for the exact forecast of our future conduct under given circumstances, this appeared to us, looking at actual facts, perversity gone wild in the manufacture of analogies. the founders of the black republic, we had all along understood, were not in any sense whatever equipped, as mr. froude assures us they were, when starting on their self-governing career, with the civil and intellectual advantages that had been transplanted from europe. on the contrary, we had been taught to regard them as most unfortunate in the circumstances under which [ ] they so gloriously conquered their merited freedom. we saw them free, but perfectly illiterate barbarians, impotent to use the intellectual resources of which their valour had made them possessors, in the shape of books on the spirit and technical details of a highly developed national existence. we had learnt also, until this new interpreter of history had contradicted the accepted record, that the continued failure of hayti to realize the dreams of toussaint was due to the fatal want of confidence subsisting between the fairer and darker sections of the inhabitants, which had its sinister and disastrous origin in the action of the mulattoes in attempting to secure freedom for themselves, in conjunction with the whites, at the sacrifice of their darker-hued kinsmen. finally, it had been explained to us that the remembrance of this abnormal treason had been underlying and perniciously influencing the whole course of haytian national history. all this established knowledge we are called upon to throw overboard, and accept the baseless assertions of this conjuror-up of inconceivable fables! he calls upon us to believe that, in spite of being free, educated, progressive, and at peace with [ ] all men, we west indian blacks, were we ever to become constitutionally dominant in our native islands, would emulate in savagery our haytian fellow-blacks who, at the time of retaliating upon their actual masters, were tortured slaves, bleeding and rendered desperate under the oppressors' lash--and all this simply and merely because of the sameness of our ancestry and the colour of our skin! one would have thought that liberia would have been a fitter standard of comparison in respect of a coloured population starting a national life, really and truly equipped with the requisites and essentials of civilized existence. but such a reference would have been fatal to mr. froude's object: the annals of liberia being a persistent refutation of the old pro-slavery prophecies which our author so feelingly rehearses. let us revert, however, to grenada and the newly-published "bow of ulysses," which had come into my hands in april, . it seemed to me, on reading that book, and deducing therefrom the foregoing essential summary, that a critic would have little more to do, in order to effectually exorcise this negrophobic political hobgoblin, than to appeal to [ ] impartial history, as well as to common sense, in its application to human nature in general, and to the actual facts of west indian life in particular. history, as against the hard and fast white-master and black-slave theory so recklessly invented and confidently built upon by mr. froude, would show incontestably--(a) that for upwards of two hundred years before the negro emancipation, in , there had never existed in one of those then british colonies, which had been originally discovered and settled for spain by the great columbus or by his successors, the conquistadores, any prohibition whatsoever, on the ground of race or colour, against the owning of slaves by any free person possessing the necessary means, and desirous of doing so; (b) that, as a consequence of this non-restriction, and from causes notoriously historical, numbers of blacks, half-breeds, and other non-europeans, besides such of them as had become possessed of their "property" by inheritance, availed themselves of this virtual license, and in course of time constituted a very considerable proportion of the slave-holding section of those communities; (c) that these [ ] dusky plantation-owners enjoyed and used in every possible sense the identical rights and privileges which were enjoyed and used by their pure-blooded caucasian brother-slaveowners. the above statements are attested by written documents, oral tradition, and, better still perhaps, by the living presence in those islands of numerous lineal representatives of those once opulent and flourishing non-european planter-families. common sense, here stepping in, must, from the above data, deduce some such conclusions as the following. first that, on the hypothesis that the slaves who were freed in --full fifty years ago--were all on an average fifteen years old, those vengeful ex-slaves of to-day will be all men of sixty-five years of age; and, allowing for the delay in getting the franchise, somewhat further advanced towards the human life-term of threescore and ten years. again, in order to organize and carry out any scheme of legislative and social retaliation of the kind set forth in the "bow of ulysses," there must be (which unquestionably there is not) a considerable, well-educated, and very influential number surviving of those who had actually [ ] been in bondage. moreover, the vengeance of these people (also assuming the foregoing nonexistent condition) would have, in case of opportunity, to wreak itself far more largely and vigorously upon members of their own race than upon whites, seeing that the increase of the blacks, as correctly represented in the "bow of ulysses," is just as rapid as the diminution of the white population. and therefore, mr. froude's "danger-to-the-whites" cry in support of his anti-reform manifesto would not appear, after all, to be quite so justifiable as he possibly thinks. feeling keenly that something in the shape of the foregoing programme might be successfully worked up for a public defence of the maligned people, i disregarded the bodily and mental obstacles that have beset and clouded my career during the last twelve years, and cheerfully undertook the task, stimulated thereto by what i thought weighty considerations. i saw that no representative of her majesty's ethiopic west indian subjects cared to come forward to perform this work in the more permanent shape that i felt to be not only desirable but essential for our self-vindication. [ ] i also realized the fact that the "bow of ulysses" was not likely to have the same ephemeral existence and effect as the newspaper and other periodical discussions of its contents, which had poured from the press in great britain, the united states, and very notably, of course, in all the english colonies of the western hemisphere. in the west indian papers the best writers of our race had written masterly refutations, but it was clear how difficult the task would be in future to procure and refer to them whenever occasion should require. such productions, however, fully satisfied those qualified men of our people, because they were legitimately convinced (even as i myself am convinced) that the political destinies of the people of colour could not run one tittle of risk from anything that it pleased mr. froude to write or say on the subject. but, meditating further on the question, the reflection forced itself upon me that, beyond the mere political personages in the circle more directly addressed by mr. froude's volume, there were individuals whose influence or possible sympathy we could not afford to disregard, or to esteem lightly. so i deemed it right and a patriotic duty to attempt [ ] the enterprise myself, in obedience to the above stated motives. at this point i must pause to express on behalf of the entire coloured population of the west indies our most heartfelt acknowledgments to mr. c. salmon for the luminous and effective vindication of us, in his volume on "west indian confederation," against mr. froude's libels. the service thus rendered by mr. salmon possesses a double significance and value in my estimation. in the first place, as being the work of a european of high position, quite independent of us (who testifies concerning negroes, not through having gazed at them from balconies, decks of steamers, or the seats of moving carriages, but from actual and long personal intercourse with them, which the internal evidence of his book plainly proves to have been as sympathetic as it was familiar), and, secondly, as the work of an individual entirely outside of our race, it has been gratefully accepted by myself as an incentive to self-help, on the same more formal and permanent lines, in a matter so important to the status which we can justly claim as a progressive, law-abiding, and self-respecting section of her majesty's liege subjects. [ ] it behoves me now to say a few words respecting this book as a mere literary production. alexander pope, who, next to shakespeare and perhaps butler, was the most copious contributor to the current stock of english maxims, says: "true ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learnt to dance." a whole dozen years of bodily sickness and mental tribulation have not been conducive to that regularity of practice in composition which alone can ensure the "true ease" spoken of by the poet; and therefore is it that my style leaves so much to be desired, and exhibits, perhaps, still, more to be pardoned. happily, a quarrel such as ours with the author of "the english in the west indies" cannot be finally or even approximately settled on the score of superior literary competency, whether of aggressor or defender. i feel free to ignore whatever verdict might be grounded on a consideration so purely artificial. there ought to be enough, if not in these pages, at any rate in whatever else i have heretofore published, that should prove me not so hopelessly stupid and wanting in [ ] self-respect, as would be implied by my undertaking a contest in artistic phrase-weaving with one who, even among the foremost of his literary countrymen, is confessedly a master in that craft. the judges to whom i do submit our case are those englishmen and others whose conscience blends with their judgment, and who determine such questions as this on their essential rightness which has claim to the first and decisive consideration. for much that is irregular in the arrangement and sequence of the subject-matter, some blame fairly attaches to our assailant. the erratic manner in which lie launches his injurious statements against the hapless blacks, even in the course of passages which no more led up to them than to any other section of mankind, is a very notable feature of his anti-negro production. as he frequently repeats, very often with cynical aggravations, his charges and sinister prophecies against the sable objects of his aversion, i could see no other course open to me than to take him up on the points whereto i demurred, exactly how, when, and where i found them. my purpose could not be attained up without direct mention of, or reference to, certain public [ ] employés in the colonies whose official conduct has often been the subject of criticism in the public press of the west indies. though fully aware that such criticism has on many occasions been much more severe than my own strictures, yet, it being possible that some special responsibility may attach to what i here reproduce in a more permanent shape, i most cheerfully accept, in the interests of public justice, any consequence which may result. a remark or two concerning the publication of this rejoinder. it has been hinted to me that the issue of it has been too long delayed to secure for it any attention in england, owing to the fact that the west indies are but little known, and of less interest, to the generality of english readers. whilst admitting, as in duty bound, the possible correctness of this forecast, and regretting the oft-recurring hindrances which occasioned such frequent and, sometimes, long suspension of my labour; and noting, too, the additional delay caused through my unacquaintance with english publishing usages, i must, notwithstanding, plead guilty to a lurking hope that some small fraction of mr. froude's readers will yet be found, [ ] whose interest in the west indies will be temporarily revived on behalf of this essay, owing to its direct bearing on mr. froude and his statements relative to these islands, contained in his recent book of travels in them. this i am led to hope will be more particularly the case when it is borne in mind that the rejoinder has been attempted by a member of that very same race which he has, with such eloquent recklessness of all moral considerations, held up to public contempt and disfavour. in short, i can scarcely permit myself to believe it possible that concern regarding a popular author, on his being questioned by an adverse critic of however restricted powers, can be so utterly dead within a twelvemonth as to be incapable of rekindling. mr. froude's "oceana," which had been published long before its author voyaged to the west indies, in order to treat the queen's subjects there in the same more than questionable fashion as that in which he had treated those of the southern hemisphere, had what was in the main a formal rejoinder to its misrepresentations published only three months ago in this city. i venture to believe that no serious work in defence of an [ ] important cause or community can lose much, if anything, of its intrinsic value through some delay in its issue; especially when written in the vindication of truth, whose eternal principles are beyond and above the influence of time and its changes. at any rate, this attempt to answer some of mr. froude's main allegations against the people of the west indies cannot fail to be of grave importance and lively interest to the inhabitants of those colonies. in this opinion i am happy in being able to record the full concurrence of a numerous and influential body of my fellow-west indians, men of various races, but united in detestation of falsehood and injustice. j.j.t. london, june, . book i: introduction [ ] like the ancient hero, one of whose warlike equipments furnishes the complementary title of his book, the author of "the english in the west indies; or, the bow of ulysses," sallied forth from his home to study, if not cities, at least men (especially black men), and their manners in the british antilles. james anthony froude is, beyond any doubt whatever, a very considerable figure in modern english literature. it has, however, for some time ceased to be a question whether his acceptability, to the extent which it reaches, has not been due rather to the verbal attractiveness than to the intrinsic value and trustworthiness of his opinions and teachings. in fact, so far as a judgment can be formed from examined specimens of his writings, it appears that our [ ] author is the bond-slave of his own phrases. to secure an artistic perfection of style, he disregards all obstacles, not only those presented by the requirements of verity, but such as spring from any other kind of consideration whatsoever. the doubt may safely be entertained whether, among modern british men of letters, there be one of equal capability who, in the interest of the happiness of his sentences, so cynically sacrifices what is due not only to himself as a public instructor, but also to that public whom he professes to instruct. yet, as the too evident plaything of an over-permeable moral constitution, he might set up some plea in explanation of his ethical vagaries. he might urge, for instance, that the high culture of which his books are all so redolent has utterly failed to imbue him with the nil admirari sentiment, which horace commends as the sole specific for making men happy and keeping them so. for, as a matter of fact, and with special reference to the work we have undertaken to discuss, mr. froude, though cynical in his general utterances regarding negroes-of the male sex, be it noted-is, in the main, all extravagance and self-abandonment whenever he [ ] brings an object of his arbitrary likes or dislikes under discussion. at such times he is no observer, much less worshipper, of proportion in his delineations. thorough-paced, scarcely controllable, his enthusiasm for or against admits no degree in its expression, save and except the superlative. hence mr. froude's statement of facts or description of phenomena, whenever his feelings are enlisted either way, must be taken with the proverbial "grain of salt" by all when enjoying the luxury of perusing his books. so complete is his self-identification with the sect or individual for the time being engrossing his sympathy, that even their personal antipathies are made his own; and the hostile language, often exaggerated and unjust, in which those antipathies find vent, secures in his more chastened mode of utterance an exact reproduction none the less injurious because divested of grossness. of this special phase of self-manifestation a typical instance is afforded at page , under the heading of "dominica," in a passage which at once embraces and accentuates the whole spirit and method of the work. to a eulogium of the professional skill and successful [ ] agricultural enterprise of dr. nichol, a medical officer of that colony, with whom he became acquainted for the first time during his short stay there, our author travels out of his way to tack on a gratuitous and pointless sneer at the educational competency of all the elected members of the island legislature, among whom, he tells us, the worthy doctor had often tried in vain to obtain a place. his want of success, our author informs his readers, was brought about through dr. nichol "being the only man in the colony of superior attainments." persons acquainted with the stormy politics of that lovely little island do not require to be informed that the bitterest animosity had for years been raging between dr. nichol and some of the elected members-a fact which our author chose characteristically to regard as justifying an onslaught by himself on the whole of that section of which the foes of his new friend formed a prominent part. swayed by the above specified motives, our author also manages to see much that is, and always has been, invisible to mortal eye, and to fail to hear what is audible to and remarked upon by every other observer. [ ] thus we find him (p. ) describing the grenada carenage as being surrounded by forest trees, causing its waters to present a violet tint; whilst every one familiar with that locality knows that there are no forest trees within two miles of the object which they are so ingeniously made to colour. again, and aptly illustrating the influence of his prejudices on his sense of hearing, we will notice somewhat more in detail the following assertion respecting the speech of the gentry of barbados:-- "the language of the anglo-barbadians was pure english, the voices without the smallest transatlantic intonation." now it so happens that no barbadian born and bred, be he gentle or simple, can, on opening his lips, avoid the fate of peter of galilee when skulking from the peril of a detected nationality: "thy speech bewrayeth thee!" it would, however, be prudent on this point to take the evidence of other englishmen, whose testimony is above suspicion, seeing that they were free from the moral disturbance that affected mr. froude's auditory powers. g. j. chester, in his "transatlantic sketches" (page ), deposes as follows-- [ ] "but worse, far worse than the colour, both of men and women, is their voice and accent. well may coleridge enumerate among the pains of the west indies, 'the yawny-drawny way in which men converse.' the soft, whining drawl is simply intolerable. resemble the worst northern states woman's accent it may in some degree, but it has not a grain of its vigour. a man tells you, 'if you can speer it, to send a beerer with a bottle of bare,' and the clergyman excruciates you by praying in church, 'speer us, good lord.' the english pronunciation of a and e is in most words transposed. barbados has a considerable number of provincialisms of dialect. some of these, as the constant use of 'mistress' for 'mrs.,' are interesting as archaisms, or words in use in the early days of the colony, and which have never died out of use. others are yankeeisms or vulgarisms; others, again, such as the expression 'turning cuffums,' i.e. summersets, from cuffums, a species of fish, seem to be of local origin." in a note hereto appended, the author gives a list of english words of peculiar use and acceptation in barbados. [ ] to the same effect writes anthony trollope: "but if the black people differ from their brethren of the other islands, so certainly do the white people. one soon learns to know--a bim. that is the name in which they themselves delight, and therefore, though there is a sound of slang about it, i give it here. one certainly soon learns to know a bim. the most peculiar distinction is in his voice. there is always a nasal twang about it, but quite distinct from the nasality of a yankee. the yankee's word rings sharp through his nose; not so that of the first-class bim. there is a soft drawl about it, and the sound is seldom completely formed. the effect on the ear is the same as that on the hand when a man gives you his to shake, and instead of shaking yours, holds his own still, &c., &c." ("the west indies," p. ). from the above and scores of other authoritative testimonies which might have been cited to the direct contrary of our traveller's tale under this head, we can plainly perceive that mr. froude's love is not only blind, but adder-deaf as well. we shall now contemplate him under circumstances where his feelings are quite other than those of a partisan. book i: voyage out [ ] that mr. froude, despite his professions to the contrary, did not go out on his explorations unhampered by prejudices, seems clear enough from the following quotation:-- "there was a small black boy among us, evidently of pure blood, for his hair was wool and his colour black as ink. his parents must have been well-to-do, for the boy had been to europe to be educated. the officers on board and some of the ladies played with him as they would play with a monkey. he had little more sense than a monkey, perhaps less, and the gestures of him grinning behind gratings and perching out his long thin arms between the bars were curiously suggestive of the original from whom we are told now that all of us came. the worst of it was that, being lifted above his own people, he had been taught to despise them. he was spoilt as a black and could not be made into a white, and this i found afterwards was the invariable and dangerous consequence whenever a superior negro contrived to raise himself. he might do well enough himself, but his family feel their blood as degradation. his [ ] children will not marry among their own people, and not only will no white girl marry a negro, but hardly any dowry can be large enough to tempt a west indian white to make a wife of a black lady. this is one of the most sinister features in the present state of social life there." we may safely assume that the playing of "the officers on board and some of the ladies" with the boy, "as they would play with a monkey," is evidently a suggestion of mr. froude's own soul, as well as the resemblance to the simian tribe which he makes out from the frolics of the lad. verily, it requires an eye rendered more than microscopic by prejudice to discern the difference between the gambols of juveniles of any colour under similar conditions. it is true that it might just be the difference between the friskings of white lambs and the friskings of lambs that are not white. that any black pupil should be taught to despise his own people through being lifted above them by education, seems a reckless statement, and far from patriotic withal; inasmuch as the education referred to here was european, and the place from which it was obtained presumably england. at all events, [ ] the difference among educated black men in deportment towards their unenlightened fellow-blacks, can be proved to have nothing of that cynicism which often marks the bearing of englishmen in an analogous case with regard to their less favoured countrymen. the statement that a black person can be "spoilt" for such by education, whilst he cannot be made white, is one of the silly conceits which the worship of the skin engenders in ill-conditioned minds. no sympathy should be wasted on the negro sufferer from mortification at not being able to "change his skin." the ethiopian of whatever shade of colour who is not satisfied with being such was never intended to be more than a mere living figure. mr. froude further confidently states that whilst a superior negro "might do well himself," yet "his family feel their blood as a degradation." if there be some who so feel, they are indeed very much to be pitied; but their sentiments are not entitled to the serious importance with which our critic has invested them. but is it at all conceivable that a people whose sanity has never in any way been questioned would strain every nerve to secure for their offspring a [ ] distinction the consequence of which to themselves would be a feeling of their own abasement? the poor irish peasant who toils and starves to secure for his eldest son admission into the catholic priesthood, has a far other feeling than one of humiliation when contemplating that son eventually as the spiritual director of a congregation and parish. similarly, the laudable ambition which, in the case of a humble scotch matron, is expressed in the wish and exertion to see her jamie or geordie "wag his pow in the pou'pit," produces, when realized, salutary effects in the whole family connection. these effects, which mr. froude would doubtless allow and commend in their case, he finds it creditable to ignore the very possibility of in the experience of people whose cuticle is not white. it is, however, but bare justice to say that, as negroes are by no means deficient in self-love and the tenderness of natural affection, such gratifying fulfilment of a family's hopes exerts an elevating and, in many cases, an ennobling influence on every one connected with the fortunate household. nor, from the eminently sympathetic nature of the african race, are the near friends of a family [ ] unbenefited in a similar way. this is true, and distinctively human; but, naturally, no apologist of negro depreciation would admit the reasonableness of applying to the affairs of negroes the principles of common equity, or even of common sense. to sum up practically our argument on this head, we shall suppose west indians to be called upon to imagine that the less distinguished relations respectively of, say, the late solicitor-general of trinidad and the present chief justice of barbados could be otherwise than legitimately elated at the conspicuous position won by a member of their own household. mr. froude further ventures to declare, in this connection, that the children of educated coloured folk "will not marry among their own people." will he tell us, then, whom the daughters marry, or if they ever do marry at all, since he asserts, with regard to west indian whites, that "hardly any dowry can be large enough to tempt them to make a wife of a black lady"? our author evidently does not feel or care that the suggestion he here induces is a hideous slander against a large body of respectable people of whose affairs he is absolutely ignorant. full [ ] of the "go" imparted to his talk by a consciousness of absolute license with regard to negroes, our dignified narrator makes the parenthetical assertion that no white girl (in the west indies) will "marry a negro." but has he been informed that cases upon cases have occurred in those colonies, and in very high "anglo-west indian" families too, where the social degradation of being married to negroes has been avoided by the alternative of forming base private connections even with menials of that race? the marrying of a black wife, on the other hand, by a west indian white was an event of frequent occurrence at a period in regard to which our historian seems to be culpably uninformed. in slavery days, when all planters, black and white alike, were fused in a common solidarity of interests, the skin-distinction which mr. froude so strenuously advocates, and would fain risk so much to promote, did not, so far as matrimony was concerned, exist in the degree that it now does. self-interest often dictated such unions, especially on the part of in-coming whites desiring to strengthen their position and to increase their influence in [ ] the land of their adoption by means of advantageous creole marriages. love, too, sheer uncalculating love, impelled not a few whites to enter the hymeneal state with the dusky captivators of their affections. when rich, the white planter not seldom paid for such gratification of his laudable impulse by accepting exclusion from "society"--and when poor, he incurred almost invariably his dismissal from employment. of course, in all cases of the sort the dispensers of such penalties were actuated by high motives which, nevertheless, did not stand in the way of their meeting, in the households of the persons thus obnoxious to punishment, the same or even a lower class of ethiopic damsels, under the title of "housekeeper," on whom they lavished a very plethora of caresses. perhaps it may be wrong so to hint it, but, judging from indications in his own book, our author himself would have been liable in those days to enthralment by the piquant charms that proved irresistible to so many of his brother-europeans. it is almost superfluous to repeat that the skin-discriminating policy induced as regards the coloured subjects of the queen since the [ ] abolition of slavery did not, and could not, operate when coloured and white stood on the same high level as slave-owners and ruling potentates in the colonies. of course, when the administrative power passed entirely into the hands of british officials, their colonial compatriots coalesced with them, and found no loss in being in the good books of the dominant personages. in conclusion of our remarks upon the above extracts, it may be stated that the blending of the races is not a burning question. "it can keep," as mr. bright wittily said with regard to a subject of similar urgency. time and nature might safely be left uninterfered with to work out whatever social development of this kind is in store for the world and its inhabitants. book i: barbados [ ] our distinguished voyager visited many of the british west indies, landing first at barbados, his social experience whereof is set forth in a very agreeable account. our immediate business, however, is not with what west indian hospitality, especially among the well-to-do classes, can and does accomplish for [ ] the entertainment of visitors, and particularly visitors so eminent as mr. froude. we are concerned with what mr. froude has to say concerning our dusky brethren and sisters in those colonies. we have, thus, much pleasure in being able at the outset to extract the following favourable verdict of his respecting them--premising, at the same time, that the balcony from which mr. froude surveyed the teeming multitude in bridgetown was that of a grand hotel at which he had, on invitation, partaken of the refreshing beverage mentioned in the citation:-- "cocktail over, and walking in the heat of the sun being a thing not to be thought of, i sat for two hours in the balcony, watching the people, who were as thick as bees in swarming time. nine-tenths of them were pure black. you rarely saw a white face, but still less would you see a discontented one, imperturbable good humour and self-satisfaction being written on the features of every one. the women struck me especially. they were smartly dressed in white calico, scrupulously clean, and tricked out with ribands and feathers; but their figures were so good, and they carried themselves so [ ] well and gracefully, that although they might make themselves absurd, they could not look vulgar. like the greek and etruscan women, they are trained from childhood to carry weights on their heads. they are thus perfectly upright, and plant their feet firmly and naturally on the ground. they might serve for sculptors' models, and are well aware of it." regarding the other sex, mr. froude says:-- "the men were active enough, driving carts, wheeling barrows, and selling flying-fish," &c. he also speaks with candour of the entire absence of drunkenness and quarrelling and the agreeable prevalence of good humour and light-heartedness among them. some critic might, on reading the above extract from our author's account of the men, be tempted to ask--"but what is the meaning of that little word 'enough' occurring therein?" we should be disposed to hazard a suggestion that mr. froude, being fair-minded and loyal to truth, as far as is compatible with his sympathy for his hapless "anglo-west indians," could not give an entirely ungrudging testimony in favour of the possible, nay probable, voters by whose suffrages the supremacy of the dark [ ] parliament will be ensured, and the relapse into obeahism, devil-worship, and children-eating be inaugurated. nevertheless, si sic omnia dixisset--if he had said all things thus! yes, if mr. froude had, throughout his volume, spoken in this strain, his occasional want of patience and fairness with regard to our male kindred might have found condonation in his even more than chivalrous appreciation of our womankind. but it has been otherwise. so we are forced to try conclusions with him in the arena of his own selection--unreflecting spokesman that he is of british colonialism, which, we grieve to learn through mr. froude's pages, has, like the bourbon family, not only forgotten nothing, but, unfortunately for its own peace, learnt nothing also. book i: st. vincent [ ] the following are the words in which our traveller embodies the main motive and purpose of his voyage:-- "my own chief desire was to see the human inhabitants, to learn what they were doing, how they were living, and what they were thinking about...." [ ] but, alas, with the mercurialism of temperament in which he has thought proper to indulge when only negroes and europeans not of "anglo-west indian" tendencies were concerned, he jauntily threw to the winds all the scruples and cautious minuteness which were essential to the proper execution of his project. at barbados, as we have seen, he satisfies himself with sitting aloft, at a balcony-window, to contemplate the movements of the sable throng below, of whose character, moral and political, he nevertheless professes to have become a trustworthy delineator. from the above-quoted account of his impressions of the external traits and deportment of the ethiopic folk thus superficially gazed at, our author passes on to an analysis of their mental and moral idiosyncrasies, and other intimate matters, which the very silence of the book as to his method of ascertaining them is a sufficient proof that his knowledge in their regard has not been acquired directly and at first hand. nor need we say that the generally adverse cast of his verdicts on what he had been at no pains to study for himself points to the "hostileness" of the witnesses whose [ ] testimony alone has formed the basis of his conclusions. throughout mr. froude's tour in the british colonies his intercourse was exclusively with "anglo-west indians," whose aversion to the blacks he has himself, perhaps they would think indiscreetly, placed on record. in no instance do we find that he condescended to visit the abode of any negro, whether it was the mansion of a gentleman or the hut of a peasant of that race. the whole tenor of the book indicates his rigid adherence to this one-sided course, and suggests also that, as a traveller, mr. froude considers maligning on hearsay to be just as convenient as reporting facts elicited by personal investigation. proceed we, however, to strengthen our statement regarding his definitive abandonment, and that without any apparent reason, of the plan he had professedly laid down for himself at starting, and failing which no trustworthy data could have been obtained concerning the character and disposition of the people about whom he undertakes to thoroughly enlighten his readers. speaking of st. vincent, where he arrived immediately after leaving barbados, our author says:-- [ ] "i did not land, for the time was short, and as a beautiful picture the island was best seen from the deck. the characteristics of the people are the same in all the antilles, and could be studied elsewhere." now, it is a fact, patent and notorious, that "the characteristics of the people are" not "the same in all the antilles." a man of mr. froude's attainments, whose studies have made him familiar with ethnological facts, must be aware that difference of local surroundings and influences does, in the course of time, inevitably create difference of characteristic and deportment. hence there is in nearly every colony a marked dissimilarity of native qualities amongst the negro inhabitants, arising not only from the causes above indicated, but largely also from the great diversity of their african ancestry. we might as well be told that because the nations of europe are generally white and descended from japhet, they could be studied one by the light derived from acquaintance with another. we venture to declare that, unless a common education from youth has been shared by them, the hamitic inhabitants of one island have very little in common with [ ] those of another, beyond the dusky skin and woolly hair. in speech, character, and deportment, a coloured native of trinidad differs as much from one of barbados as a north american black does from either, in all the above respects. book i: grenada [ ] in grenada, the next island he arrived at, our traveller's procedure with regard to the inhabitants was very similar. there he landed in the afternoon, drove three or four miles inland to dine at the house of a "gentleman who was a passing resident," returned in the dark to his ship, and started for trinidad. in the course of this journey back, however, as he sped along in the carriage, mr. froude found opportunity to look into the people's houses along the way, where, he tells us, he "could see and was astonished to observe signs of comfort, and even signs of taste--armchairs, sofas, side-boards with cut-glass upon them, engravings and coloured prints upon the walls." as a result of this nocturnal examination, à vol d'oiseau, he has written paragraph upon paragraph about the people's character [ ] and prospects in the island of grenada. to read the patronizing terms in which our historian-traveller has seen fit to comment on grenada and its people, one would believe that his account is of some half-civilized, out-of-the-way region under british sway, and inhabited chiefly by a horde of semi-barbarian ignoramuses of african descent. if the world had not by this time thoroughly assessed the intrinsic value of mr. froude's utterances, one who knows grenada might have felt inclined to resent his causeless depreciation of the intellectual capacity of its inhabitants; but considering the estimate which has been pretty generally formed of his historical judgment, mr. froude may be dismissed, as regards grenada and its people, with a certain degree of scepticism. such scepticism, though lost upon himself, is unquestionably needful to protect his readers from the hallucination which the author's singular contempt for accuracy is but too liable to induce. those who know grenada and its affairs are perfectly familiar with the fact that all of its chief intellectual business, whether official (even in the highest degree, such as temporary [ ] administration of the government), legal, commercial, municipal, educational, or journalistic, has been for years upon years carried on by men of colour. and what, as a consequence of this fact, has the world ever heard in disparagement of grenada throughout this long series of years? assuredly not a syllable. on the contrary, she has been the theme of praise, not only for the admirable foresight with which she avoided the sugar crisis, so disastrous to her sister islands, but also for the pluck and persistence shown in sustaining herself through an agricultural emergency brought about by commercial reverses, whereby the steady march of her sons in self-advancement was only checked for a time, but never definitively arrested. in fine, as regards every branch of civilized employment pursued there, the good people of grenada hold their own so well and worthily that any show of patronage, even from a source more entitled to confidence, would simply be a piece of obtrusive kindness, not acceptable to any, seeing that it is required by none. book ii: trinidad / trinidad and reform+ [ ] mr. froude, crossing the ninety miles of the caribbean sea lying between grenada and trinidad, lands next morning in port of spain, the chief city of that "splendid colony," as governor irving, its worst ruler, truly calls it in his farewell message to the legislature. regarding port of spain in particular, mr. froude is positively exuberant in the display of the peculiar qualities that distinguish him, and which we have already admitted. ecstatic praise and groundless detraction go hand in hand, bewildering to any one not possessed of the key to the mystery of the art of blowing hot and cold, which mr. froude so startlingly exemplifies. as it is our purpose to make what he says concerning this colony the crucial test of his veracity as a writer of travels, [ ] and also of the value of his judgments respecting men and things, we shall first invite the reader's attention to the following extracts, with our discussion thereof:-- "on landing we found ourselves in a large foreign-looking town, port of spain having been built by french and spaniards according to their national tendencies, and especially with a view to the temperature, which is that of a forcing house, and rarely falls below °. the streets are broad, and are planted with trees for shade, each house where room permits having a garden of its own, with palms and mangoes and coffee-plants and creepers. of sanitary arrangements there seemed to be none. there is abundance of rain, and the gutters which run down by the footway are flushed almost every day. but they are all open. dirt of every kind lies about freely, to be washed into them or left to putrify as fate shall direct" (p. ). lower down, on the same page, our author, luxuriating in his contempt for exactitude when the character of other folk only is at stake, continues:--"the town has between thirty and forty thousand people living in it, and the [ ] rain and johnny crows between them keep off pestilence." on page we have the following astounding statement with respect to one of the trees in the garden in front of the house in which mr. froude was sojourning:--"at the gate stood as sentinel a cabbage palm a hundred feet high." the above quotations, in which we have elected to be content with indicating by typographical differences the points on which attention should be mostly directed, will suffice, with any one knowing trinidad, as examples of mr. froude's trustworthiness. but as these are only on matters of mere detail, involving no question of principle, they are dismissed without any further comment. it must not be so, however, with the following remarkable deliverances which occur on page of his too picturesque work:--"the commonplace intrudes upon the imaginative. at moments one can fancy that the world is an enchanted place after all, but then comes generally an absurd awakening. on the first night of my arrival, before we went to bed, there came an invitation to me to attend a political meeting which was to be held in a few days on the savannah. [ ] "trinidad is a purely crown colony, and has escaped hitherto the introduction of the election virus. the newspapers and certain busy gentlemen in port of spain had discovered that they were living under a 'degrading tyranny,' and they demanded a constitution. they did not complain that their affairs had been ill-managed. on the contrary, they insisted that they were the most prosperous of the west indian colonies, and alone had a surplus in their treasury. if this was so, it seemed to me that they had better let well alone. the population, all told, was but , , less by thirty thousand than that of barbados. they were a mixed and motley assemblage of all races and colours, busy each with their own affairs, and never hitherto troubling themselves about politics. but it had pleased the home government to set up the beginning of a constitution again in jamaica; no one knew why, but so it was; and trinidad did not choose to be behindhand. the official appointments were valuable, and had been hitherto given away by the crown. the local popularities very naturally wished to have them for themselves. this was the [ ] reality in the thing, so far as there was a reality. it was dressed up in the phrases borrowed from the great english masters of the art, about privileges of manhood, moral dignity, the elevating influence of the suffrage, &c., intended for home consumption among the believers in the orthodox radical faith." the passages which we have signalized in the above quotation, and which occur with more elaboration and heedless assurance on a later page, will produce a feeling of wonder at the hardihood of him who not only conceived, but penned and dared to publish them as well, against the gentlemen whom we all know to be foremost in the political agitation at which mr. froude so flippantly sneers. an emphatic denial may be opposed to his pretence that "they did not complain that their affairs had been ill-managed." why, the very gist and kernel of the whole agitation, set forth in print through long years of iteration, has been the scandalous mismanagement of the affairs of the colony--especially under the baleful administration of governor irving. the augëan stable, miscalled by him "the public works department," and whose officials he coolly [ ] fastened upon the financial vitals of that long-suffering colony, baffled even the resolute will of a des voeux to cleanse it. poor sir sanford freeling attempted the cleansing, but foundered ignominiously almost as soon as he embarked on that herculean enterprise. sir a. e. havelock, who came after, must be mentioned by the historian of trinidad merely as an incarnate accident in the succession of governors to whom the destinies of that maltreated colony have been successively intrusted since the departure of sir arthur hamilton gordon. the present governor of trinidad, sir william robinson, is a man of spirit and intelligence, keenly alive to the grave responsibilities resting on him as a ruler of men and moulder of men's destinies. has he, with all his energy, his public spirit and indisputable devotion to the furtherance of the colony's interests, been able to grapple successfully with the giant evil? has he effectually gained the ear of our masters in downing street regarding the inefficiency and wastefulness of governor irving's pet department? we presume that his success has been but very partial, for otherwise it is difficult to conceive the motive for [ ] retaining the army of officials radiating from that office, with the chief under whose supervision so many architectural and other scandals have for so long been the order of the day. the public works department is costly enough to have been a warning to the whole of the west indies. it is true that the lavish squandering of the people's money by that department has been appreciably checked since the advent of the present head of the government. the papers no longer team with accounts, nor is even the humblest aesthetic sense, offended now, as formerly, with views of unsightly, useless and flimsy erections, the cost of which, on an average, was five times more than that of good and reputable structures. this, however, has been entirely due to the personal influence of the governor. sir william robinson, not being the tool, as sir henry irving owned that he was, of the director of public works, could not be expected to be his accomplice or screener in the cynical waste of the public funds. here, then, is the personal rectitude of a ruler operating as a safeguard to the people's interests; and we gladly confess our entire agreement with [ ] mr. froude on the subject of the essential qualifications of a crown governor. mr. froude contends, and we heartily coincide with him, that a ruler of high training and noble purposes would, as the embodiment of the administrative authority, be the very best provision for the government of colonies constituted as ours are. but he has also pointed out, and that in no equivocal terms, that the above are far from having been indispensable qualifications for the patronage of downing street. he has shown that the colonial office is, more often than otherwise, swayed in the appointment of colonial governors by considerations among which the special fitness of the man appointed holds but a secondary place. on this point we have much gratification in giving mr. froude's own words (p. ):--"among the public servants of great britain there are persons always to be found fit and willing for posts of honour and difficulty if a sincere effort be made to find them. alas! in times past we have sent persons to rule our baratarias to whom sancho panza was a sage--troublesome members of parliament, younger brothers of powerful families, impecunious peers; favourites, [ ] with backstairs influence, for whom a provision was to be found; colonial clerks bred in the office who had been obsequious and useful!" now then, applying these facts to the political history of trinidad, with which we are more particularly concerned at present, what do we find? we find that in the person of sir a. h. gordon ( - ) that colony at length chanced upon a ruler both competent and eager to advance her interests, not only materially, but in the nobler respects that give dignity to the existence of a community. of course, he was opposed--ably, strenuously, violently, virulently--but the metal of which the man was composed was only fused into greater firmness by being subjected to such fiery tests. on leaving trinidad, this eminent ruler left as legacies to the colony he had loved and worked for so heartily, laws that placed the persons and belongings of the inhabitants beyond the reach of wanton aggression; the means by which honest and laborious industry could, through agriculture, benefit both itself and the general revenue. he also left an educational system that opened (to even the humblest) a free pathway to knowledge, to [ ] distinction, and, if the objects of its beneficence were worthy of the boon, to serviceableness to their native country. above all, he left peace among the jarring interests which, under the badge of englishman and of creole, under the badge of catholic and under the badge of protestant, and so many other forms of sectional divergence, had too long distracted trinidad. this he had effected, not by constituting himself a partisan of either section, but by inquiring with statesmanlike appreciation, and allowing the legitimate claims of each to a certain scope of influence in the furtherance of the colony's welfare. hence the bitter rivalry of jarring interests was transformed into harmonious co-operation on all sides, in advancing the common good of the common country. the colonial office, knowing little and caring less about that noble jewel in the british crown, sent out as successor to so brilliant and successful an administrator--whom? one sir james robert longden, a gentleman without initiative, without courage, and, above all, with a slavish adherence to red-tape and a clerk-like dread of compromising his berth. having served for a long series of years in subordinate posts in [ ] minor dependencies, the habit of being impressed and influenced by colonial magnates grew and gathered strength within him. such a ruler, of course, the serpents that had only been "scotched, but not killed," by the stern procedures of governor gordon, could wind round, beguile, and finally cause to fall. measure after measure of his predecessor which he could in any way neutralize in the interests of the colonial clique, was rendered of none effect. in fact, he was subservient to the wishes of those who had all long objected to those measures, but had not dared even to hint their objections to the beneficent autocrat who had willed and given them effect for the general welfare. after governor longden came sir henry turner irving, a personage who brought to trinidad a reputation for all the vulgar colonial prejudices which, discreditable enough in ordinary folk, are, in the governor of a mixed community, nothing less than calamitous. more than amply did he justify the evil reports with which rumour had heralded his coming. abler, more astute, more daring than sir james longden, who was, on the whole, only a constitutionally timid man, governor irving threw [ ] himself heart and soul into the arms of the sugar interest, by whom he had been helped into his high office, and whose belief he evidently shared, that sugar-growers alone should be possessors of the lands of the west indies. it would be wearisome to detail the methods by which every act of sir arthur gordon's to benefit the whole population was cynically and systematically undone by this his native-hating successor. in short, the policy of reaction which sir james longden began, found in governor irving not only a consistent promoter, but, as it were, a sinister incarnation. it is true that he could not, at the bidding and on the advice of his planter-friends, shut up the crown lands of the colony against purchasers of limited means, because they happened to be mostly natives of colour, but he could annul the provision by which every warden in the rural districts, on the receipt of the statutory fees, had to supply a government title on the spot to every one who purchased any acreage of crown lands. every intending purchaser, therefore, whether living at toco, guayaguayare, monos, or icacos, the four extreme points of the island of trinidad, was compelled to go to port of [ ] spain, forty or fifty miles distant, through an almost roadless country, to compete at the sub-intendant's auction sales, with every probability of being outbid in the end, and having his long-deposited money returned to him after all his pains. lieutenant-governor des voeux told the legislature of trinidad that the monstrous excise imposts of the colony were an incentive to smuggling, and he thought that the duties, licenses, &c., should be lowered in the interest of good and equitable government. sir henry turner irving, however, besides raising the duties on spirituous liquors, also enacted that every distillery, however small, must pay a salary to a government official stationed within it to supervise the manufacture of the spirits. this, of course, was the death-blow to all the minor competition which had so long been disturbing the peace of mind of the mighty possessors of the great distilleries. ahab was thus made glad with the vineyard of naboth. in the matter of official appointments, too, governor irving was consistent in his ostentatious hostility to creoles in general, and to coloured creoles in particular. of the fifty-six appointments which that model governor [ ] made in , only seven happened to be natives and coloured, out of a population in which the latter element is so preponderant as to excite the fears of mr. froude. in educational matters, though he could not with any show of sense or decency re-enact the rule which excluded students of illegitimate birth from the advantages of the royal college, he could, nevertheless, pander to the prejudices of himself and his friends by raising the standard of proficiency while reducing the limit of the age for free admission to that institution--boys of african descent having shown an irrepressible persistency in carrying off prizes. every one acquainted with trinidad politics knows very well the ineffably low dodges and subterfuges under which the arima railway was prevented from having its terminus in the centre of that town. the public was promised a saving of eight thousand pounds by their high-minded governor for a diversion of the line "by only a few yards" from the originally projected terminus. in the end it was found out not only that the terminus of the railway was nearly a whole mile outside of the town of arima, but also that twenty [ ] thousand pounds "miscellaneous" had to be paid up by the good folk of trinidad, in addition to gulping down their disappointment at saving no eight thousand pounds, and having to find by bitter experience, especially in rainy weather, that their governor's few yards were just his characteristic way of putting down yards which he well knew were to be counted by hundreds. then, again, we have the so-called san fernando waterworks, an abortion, a scandal for which there is no excuse, as the head of the public works department went his own way despite the experience of those who knew better than he, and the protests of those who would have had to pay. seventeen thousand pounds represent the amount of debt with which governor irving's pet department has saddled the town of san fernando for water, which half the inhabitants cannot get, and which few of the half who do get it dare venture to drink. summa fastigia rerum secuti sumus. if in the works that were so prominent before the public gaze these enormous abuses could flourish, defiant of protest and opposition, what shall we think of the nooks and corners of that same squandering department, which of [ ] course must have been mere gnats in the eyes of a governor who had swallowed so many monstrous camels! the governor was callous. trinidad was a battening ground for his friends; but she had in her bosom men who were her friends, and the struggle began, constitutionally of course, which, under the leadership of the mayor of san fernando, has continued up to now, culminating at last in the reform movement which mr. froude decries, and which his pupil, mr. s. h. gatty, is, from what has appeared in the trinidad papers, doing his "level best" to render abortive. sir sanford freeling, by the will and pleasure of downing street, was the next successor, after governor irving, to the chief ruler-ship of trinidad. incredible as it may sound, he was a yet more disadvantageous bargain for the colony's £ a year. a better man in many respects than his predecessor, he was in many more a much worse governor. the personal affability of a man can be known only to those who come into actual contact with him--the public measures of a ruler over a community touches it, mediately or immediately, throughout all its sections. the bad boldness of [ ] governor irving achieved much that the people, especially in the outlying districts, could see and appreciate. for example, he erected rest-houses all over the remoter and more sparsely peopled quarters of the colony, after the manner of such provisions in oriental lands. the population who came in contact with these conveniences, and to whom access to them--for a consideration--had never been denied, saw with their own eyes tangible evidence of the governor's activity, and inferred therefrom a solicitude on his part for the public welfare. had they, however, been given a notion of the bill which had had to be paid for those frail, though welcome hostelries, they would have stood aghast at the imbecility, or, if not logically that, the something very much worse, through which five times the actual worth of these buildings had been extracted from the treasury. sir sanford freeling, on the other hand, while being no screener of jobbery and peculation, had not the strength of mind whereof jobbers and peculators do stand in dread. in evidence of that poor ruler's infirmity of purpose, we would only cite the double fact that, whereas in he was the first to enter a practical protest against the housing [ ] of the diseased and destitute in the then newly finished, but most leaky, house of refuge on the st. clair lands, by having the poor saturated inmates carried off in his presence to the colonial hospital, yet his excellency was the very man who, in the very next year, , not only sanctioned the shooting down of indian immigrants at their festival, but actually directed the use of buck-shot for that purpose! evidently, if these two foregoing statements are true, mr. froude must join us in thinking that a man whose mind could be warped by external influences from the softest commiseration for the sufferings of his kind, one year, into being the cold-blooded deviser of the readiest method for slaughtering unarmed holiday-makers, the very next year, is not the kind of ruler whom he and we so cordially desiderate. we have already mentioned above how ignominious governor freeling's failure was in attempting to meddle with the colossal abuses of the public works department. sir arthur elibank havelock next had the privilege of enjoying the paradisaic sojourn at queen's house, st. ann's, as well as the four thousand pounds a year attached to the [ ] right of occupying that princely residence. save as a dandy, however, and the harrier of subordinate officials, the writer of the annals of trinidad may well pass him by. so then it may be seen what, by mere freaks of chance--the ruling deity at downing street--the administrative experience of trinidad had been from the departure of that true king in israel,--sir arthur gordon, up to the visit of mr. froude. first, a slave to red-tape, procrastination, and the caprices of pretentious colonialists; next, a daring schemer, confident of the support of the then dominant sugar interest, and regarding and treating the resources of the island as free booty for his friends, sycophants, and favourites; then, an old woman, garbed in male attire, having an infirmity of purpose only too prone to be blown about by every wind of doctrine, alternating helplessly between tenderness and truculence, the charity of a fry and the tragic atrocity of medea. after this dismal ruler, trinidad, by the grace of the colonial office, was subjected to the manipulation of an unctuous dandy. this successor of gordon, of elliot, and of cairns, durst not oppose high-placed official malfeasants, but [ ] was inexorable with regard to minor delinquents. in the above retrospect we have purposely omitted mentioning such transient rulers as mr. rennie, sir g. w. des voeux, and last, but by no means least, sir f. barlee, a high-minded governor, whom death so suddenly and inscrutably snatched away from the good work he had loyally begun. every one of the above temporary administrators was a right good man for a post in which brain power and moral back-bone are essential qualifications. but the fates so willed it that trinidad should never enjoy the permanent governance of either. in view of the above facts; in view also of the lessons taught the inhabitants of trinidad so frequently, so cruelly, what wonder is there that, failing of faith in a probability, which stands one against four, of their getting another worthy ruler when governor robinson shall have left them, they should seek to make hay while the sun shines, by providing against the contingency of such governors as they know from bitter experience that downing street would place over their destinies, should the considerations detailed by mr. froude or any other equally [ ] unworthy counsellor supervene? that the leading minds of trinidad should believe in an elective legislature is a logical consequence of the teachings of the past, when the colony was under the manipulation of the sort of governors above mentioned as immediately succeeding sir arthur gordon. this brings us to the motives, the sordid motives, which mr. froude, oblivious of the responsibility of his high literary status, has permitted himself gratuitously, and we may add scandalously, to impute to the heads of the reform movement in trinidad. it was perfectly competent that our author should decline, as he did decline, to have anything to do, even as a spectator, at a meeting with the object of which he had no sympathy. but our opinion is equally decided that mr. froude has transgressed the bounds of decent political antagonism, nay, even of common sense, when he presumes to state that it was not for any other object than the large salaries of the crown appointments, which they covet for themselves, that the reform leaders are contending. this is not criticism: it is slander. to make culpatory statements against others, [ ] without ability to prove them, is, to say the least, hazardous; but to make accusations to formulate which the accuser is forced, not only to ignore facts, but actually to deny them, is, to our mind, nothing short of rank defamation. mr. froude is not likely to impress the world (of the west indies, at any rate) with the transparently silly, if not intentionally malicious, ravings which he has indulged in on the subject of trinidad and its politics. here are some of the things which this "champion of anglo-west indians" attempts to force down the throats of his readers. he would have us believe that mr. francis damian, the mayor of port of spain, and one of the wealthiest of the native inhabitants of trinidad, a man who has retired from an honourable and lucrative legal practice, and devotes his time, his talents, and his money to the service of his native country; that mr. robert guppy, the venerable and venerated mayor of san fernando, with his weight of years and his sufficing competence, and with his long record of self-denying services to the public; that mr. george goodwille, one of the most successful merchants in the colonies; that mr. conrad [ ] f. stollmeyer, a gentleman retired, in the evening of his days, on his well-earned ample means, are open to the above sordid accusation. in short, that those and such-like individuals who, on account of their private resources and mental capabilities, as well as the public influence resulting therefrom, are, by the sheer logic of circumstances, forced to be at the head of public movements, are actuated by a craving for the few hundred pounds a year for which there is such a scramble at downing street among the future official grandees of the west indies! but granting that this allegation of mr. froude's was not as baseless as we have shown it to be, and that the leaders of the reform agitation were impelled by the desire which our author seeks to discredit them with, what then? have they who have borne the heat and the burden of the day in making the colonies what they are no right to the enjoyment of the fruits of their labours? the local knowledge, the confidence and respect of the population, which such men enjoy, and can wield for good or evil in the community, are these matters of small account in the efficient government of the colony? our author, in [ ] specifying the immunities of his ideal governor, who is also ours, recommends, amongst other things, that his excellency should be allowed to choose his own advisers. by this mr. froude certainly does not mean that the advisers so chosen must be all pure-blooded englishmen who have rushed from the destitution of home to batten on the cheaply obtained flesh-pots of the colonies. at any rate, whatever political fate mr. froude may desire for the colonies in general, and for trinidad in particular, it is nevertheless unquestionable that he and the scheme that he may have for our future governance, in this year of grace , have both come into view entirely out of season. the spirit of the times has rendered impossible any further toleration of the arrogance which is based on historical self-glorification. the gentlemen of trinidad, who are struggling for political enfranchisement, are not likely to heed, except as a matter for indignant contempt, the obtrusion by our author of his opinion that "they had best let well alone." on his own showing, the persons appointed to supreme authority in the colonies are, more usually than not, entirely unfit for [ ] holding any responsible position whatever over their fellows. now, can it be doubted that less care, less scruple, less consideration, would be exercised in the choice of the satellites appointed to revolve, in these far-off latitudes, around the central luminaries? have we not found, are we not still finding every day, that the brain-dizziness--xenophon calls it kephalalgeia+--induced by sudden promotion has transformed the abject suppliants at the downing street backstairs into the arrogant defiers of the opinions, and violators of the rights, of the populations whose subjection to the british crown alone could have rendered possible the elevation of such folk and their impunity in malfeasance? the cup of loyal forbearance reached the overflowing point since the trickstering days of governor irving, and it is useless now to believe in the possibility of a return of the leading minds of trinidad to a tame acquiescence as regards the probabilities of their government according to the crown system. mr. froude's own remarks point out definitely enough that a community so governed is absolutely at the mercy, for good or for evil, of the man who happens to be invested with [ ] the supreme authority. he has also shown that in our case that supreme authority is very often disastrously entrusted. yet has he nothing but sneers for the efforts of those who strive to be emancipated from liability to such subjection. mr. froude's deftly-worded sarcasms about "degrading tyranny," "the dignity of manhood," &c., are powerless to alter the facts. crown colony government--denying, as it does to even the wisest and most interested in a community cursed with it all participation in the conduct of their own affairs, while investing irresponsible and uninterested "birds of passage" (as our author aptly describes them) with the right of making ducks and drakes of the resources wrung from the inhabitants--is a degrading tyranny, which the sneers of mr. froude cannot make otherwise. the dignity of manhood, on the other hand, we are forced to admit, runs scanty chance of recognition by any being, however masculine his name, who could perpetrate such a literary and moral scandal as "the bow of ulysses." yet the dignity of manhood stands venerable there, and whilst the world lasts shall gain for its possessors the right of record on the roll of [ ] those whom the worthy of the world delight to honour. all of a piece, as regards veracity and prudence, is the further allegation of mr. froude's, to the effect that there was never any agitation for reform in trinidad before that which he passes under review. it is, however, a melancholy fact, which we are ashamed to state, that mr. froude has written characteristically here also, either through crass ignorance or through deliberate malice. any respectable, well-informed inhabitant of trinidad, who happened not to be an official "bird of passage," might, on our author's honest inquiry, have informed him that trinidad is the land of chronic agitation for reform. mr. froude might also have been informed that, even forty-five years ago, that is in , an elective constitution, with all the electoral districts duly marked out, was formulated and transmitted by the leading inhabitants of trinidad to the then secretary of state for the colonies. he might also have learnt that on every occasion that any of the shady governors, whom he has so well depicted, manifested any excess of his undesirable qualities, there has been a movement [ ] among the educated people in behalf of changing their country's political condition. we close this part of our review by reiterating our conviction that, come what will, the crown colony system, as at present managed, is doomed. britain may, in deference to the alleged wishes of her impalpable "anglo-west indians"--whose existence rests on the authority of mr. froude alone--deny to trinidad and other colonies even the small modicum prayed for of autonomy, but in doing so the mother country will have to sternly revise her present methods of selecting and appointing governors. as to the subordinate lot, they will have to be worth their salt when there is at the head of the government a man who is truly deserving of his. notes . +it is not clear from the original text exactly where the brief chapter "trinidad" ends and where the longer one entitled "reform in trinidad" begins. (the copy indicates that the "trinidad" chapter ends at page , but the relevant page contains no subheading.) i have, therefore, chosen to fuse the two chapters since they form a logical unit. . +since there is little greek in this work, i have simply transliterated it. book ii: negro felicity in the west indies [ ] we come now to the ingenious and novel fashion in which mr. froude carries out his investigations among the black population, and to his dogmatic conclusions concerning them. he says:-- "in trinidad, as everywhere else, my own chief desire was to see the human inhabitants, to learn what they were doing, how they were living, and what they were thinking about, and this could best be done by drives about the town and neighbourhood." "drives about the town and neighbourhood," indeed! to learn and be able to depict with faithful accuracy what people "were doing, how they were living, and what they were thinking about"--all this being best done (domestic circumstances, nay, soul-workings and all!) through fleeting glimpses of shifting [ ] panoramas of intelligent human beings! what a bright notion! we have here the suggestion of a capacity too superhuman to be accepted on trust, especially when, as in this case, it is by implication self-arrogated. the modesty of this thaumaturgic traveller in confining the execution of his detailed scrutiny of a whole community to the moderate progression of some conventional vehicle, drawn by some conventional quadruped or the other, does injustice to powers which, if possessed at all, might have compassed the same achievement in the swifter transit of an express train, or, better still perhaps, from the empyrean elevation of a balloon! yet is mr. froude confident that data professed to be thus collected would easily pass muster with the readers of his book! a confidence of this kind is abnormal, and illustrates, we think most fully, all the special characteristics of the man. with his passion for repeating, our author tells us in continuation of a strange rhapsody on negro felicity:-- "once more, the earth does not contain any peasantry so well off, so well-cared for, so happy, so sleek and contented, as the sons [ ] and daughters of the emancipated slaves in the english west indian islands." again:-- "under the rule of england, in these islands, the two millions of these brothers-in-law of ours are the most perfectly contented specimens of the human race to be found upon the planet.... if happiness be the satisfaction of every conscious desire, theirs is a condition that admits of no improvement: were they independent, they might quarrel among themselves, and the weaker become the bondsmen of the stronger; under the beneficent despotism of the english government, which knows no difference of colour and permits no oppression, they can sleep, lounge, and laugh away their lives as they please, fearing no danger," &c. now, then, let us examine for a while this roseate picture of arcadian blissfulness said to be enjoyed by british west indian negroes in general, and by the negroes of trinidad in particular. "no distinction of colour" under the british rule, and, better still, absolute protection of the weaker against the stronger! this latter consummation especially, [ ] mr. froude tells us, has been happily secured "under the beneficent despotism" of the crown colony system. however, let the above vague hyperboles be submitted to the test of practical experience, and the abstract government analysed in its concrete relations with the people. unquestionably the actual and direct interposition of the shielding authority above referred to, between man and man, is the immediate province of the magistracy. all other branches of the government, having in themselves no coercive power, must, from the supreme executive downwards, in cases of irreconcilable clashing of interests, have ultimate recourse to the magisterial jurisdiction. putting aside, then, whatever culpable remissness may have been manifested by magistrates in favour of powerful malfeasants, we would submit that the fact of stipendiary justices converting the tremendous, far-reaching powers which they wield into an engine of systematic oppression, ought to dim by many a shade the glowing lustre of mr. froude's encomiums. facts, authentic and notorious, might be adduced in hundreds, especially with respect to [ ] the port of spain and san fernando magistracies (both of which, since the administration of sir j. r. longden, have been exclusively the prizes of briefless english barristers*), to prove that these gentry, far from being bulwarks to the weaker as against the stronger, have, in their own persons, been the direst scourges that the poor, particularly when coloured, have been afflicted by in aggravation of the difficulties of their lot. only typical examples can here be given out of hundreds upon hundreds which might easily be cited and proved against the incumbents of the abovementioned chief stipendiary magistracies. one such example was a matter of everyday discussion at the time of mr. froude's visit. the inhabitants were even backed in their complaints by the governor, who had, in response to their cry of distress, forwarded their prayer [ ] to the home authorities for relief from the hard treatment which they alleged themselves to be suffering at the hands of the then magistrate. our allusion here is to the chief town, port of spain, the magistracy of which embraces also the surrounding districts, containing a total population of between , and , souls. mr. r. d. mayne filled this responsible office during the latter years of sir j. r. longden's governorship. he was reputed, soon after his arrival, to have announced from the bench that in every case he would take the word of a constable in preference to the testimony of any one else. the barbadian rowdies who then formed the major part of the constabulary of trinidad, and whose bitter hatred of the older residents had been not only plainly expressed, but often brutally exemplified, rejoiced in the opportunity thus afforded for giving effect to their truculent sentiments. at that time the bulk of the immigrants from barbados were habitual offenders whom the government there had provided with a free passage to wherever they elected to betake themselves. the more intelligent of the men flocked to the trinidad [ ] police ranks, into which they were admitted generally without much inquiry into their antecedents. on this account they were shunned by the decent inhabitants, a course which they repaid with savage animosity. perjuries the most atrocious and crushing, especially to the respectable poor, became the order of the day. hundreds of innocent persons were committed to gaol and the infamy of convict servitude, without the possibility of escape from, or even mitigation of, their ignominious doom. a respectable woman (a native of barbados, too, who in the time of the first immigration of the better sort of her compatriots had made trinidad her home) was one of the first victims of this iniquitous state of affairs. the class of people to which she belonged was noted as orderly, industrious and law-abiding, and, being so, it had identified itself entirely with the natives of the land of its adoption. this fact alone was sufficient to involve these immigrants in the same lot of persecution which their newly arrived countrymen had organized and were carrying out against the trinidadians proper. it happened that, on the occasion to which we wish particularly [ ] to refer, the woman in question was at home, engaged in her usual occupation of ironing for her honest livelihood. suddenly she heard a heavy blow in the street before her door, and almost simultaneously a loud scream, which, on looking hastily out, she perceived to be the cry of a boy of some ten or twelve years of age, who had been violently struck with the fist by another youth of larger size and evidently his senior in age. the smaller fellow had laid fast hold of his antagonist by the collar, and would not let go, despite the blows which, to extricate himself and in retaliation of the puny buffets of his youthful detainer, he "showered thick as wintry rain." the woman, seeing the posture of affairs, shouted to the combatants to desist, but to no purpose, rage and absorption in their wrathful occupation having deafened both to all external sounds. seized with pity for the younger lad, who was getting so mercilessly the worst of it, the woman, hastily throwing a shawl over her shoulders, sprang into the street and rushed between the juvenile belligerents. dexterously extricating the hand of the little fellow from the collar of his antagonist, she hurried the former [ ] into her gateway, shouting out to him at the same time to fasten the door on the inside. this the little fellow did, and no doubt gladly, as this surcease from actual conflict, short though it was, must have afforded space for the natural instinct of self-preservation to reassert itself. hereupon the elder of the two lads, like a tiger robbed of his prey, sprang furiously to the gate, and began to use frantic efforts to force an entrance. perceiving this, the woman (who meanwhile had not been idle with earnest dissuasions and remonstrances, which had all proved futile) pulled the irate youngster back, and interposed her body between him and the gate, warding him off with her hands every time that he rushed forward to renew the assault. at length a barbadian policeman hove in sight, and was hastily beckoned to by the poor ironer, who, by this time, had nearly come to the end of her strength. the uniformed "bim" was soon on the spot; but, without asking or waiting to hear the cause of the disturbance, he shouted to the volunteer peacemaker, "i see you are fighting: you are my prisoner!" saying this, he clutched the poor thunderstruck creature by the wrist, and there [ ] and then set about hurrying her off towards the police station. it happened, however, that the whole affair had occurred in the sight of a gentleman of well-known integrity. he, seated at a window overlooking the street, had witnessed the whole squabble, from its beginning in words to its culmination in blows; so, seeing that the woman was most unjustly arrested, he went out and explained the circumstances to the guardian of order. but to no purpose; the poor creature was taken to the station, accompanied by the gentleman, who most properly volunteered that neighbourly turn. there she was charged with "obstructing the policeman in the lawful execution of his duty." she was let out on bail, and next day appeared to answer the charge. mr. mayne, the magistrate, presided. the constable told his tale without any material deviation from the truth, probably confident, from previous experience, that his accusation was sufficient to secure a conviction. on the defendant's behalf, the gentleman referred to, who was well known to the magistrate himself, was called, and he related the facts as we have above given them. even mr. mayne [ ] could see no proof of the information, and this he confessed in the following qualified judgment:-- "you are indeed very lucky, my good woman, that the constable has failed to prove his case against you; otherwise you would have been sent to hard labour, as the ordinance provides, without the option of a fine. but as the case stands, you must pay a fine of £ "!!! comment on this worse than scandalous decision would be superfluous. another typical case, illustrative of the truth of mr. froude's boast of the eminent fair play, nay, even the stout protection, that negroes, and generally, "the weaker," have been wont to receive from british magistrates, may be related. an honest, hard-working couple, living in one of the outlying districts, cultivated a plot of ground, upon the produce of which they depended for their livelihood. after a time these worthy folk, on getting to their holding in the morning, used to find exasperating evidence of the plunder overnight of their marketable provisions. determined to discover the depredator, they concealed themselves [ ] in the garden late one night, and awaited the result. by that means they succeeded in capturing the thief, a female, who, not suspecting their presence, had entered the garden, dug out some of the provisions, and was about to make off with her booty. in spite of desperate resistance, she was taken to the police station and there duly charged with larceny. meanwhile her son, on hearing of his mother's incarceration, hastened to find her in her cell, and, after briefly consulting with her, he decided on entering a countercharge of assault and battery against both her captors. whether or not this bold proceeding was prompted by the knowledge that the dispensing of justice in the magistrate's court was a mere game of cross-purposes, a cynical disregard of common sense and elementary equity, we cannot say; but the ultimate result fully justified this abnormal hardihood of filial championship. on the day of the trial, the magistrate heard the evidence on both sides, the case of larceny having been gone into first. for her defence, the accused confined herself to simple denials of the allegations against her, at the [ ] same time entertaining the court with a lachrymose harangue about her rough treatment at the hands of the accusing parties. finally, the decision of the magistrate was: that the prisoner be discharged, and the plundered goods restored to her; and, as to the countercharge, that the husband and wife be imprisoned, the former for three and the latter for two months, with hard labour! when we add that there was, at that time, no governor or chief justice accessible to the poorer and less intelligent classes, as is now the case (sir henry t. irving and sir joseph needham having been respectively superseded by sir william robinson and sir john gorrie), one can imagine what scope there was for similar exhibitions of the protecting energy of british rule. as we have already said, during mr. froude's sojourn in trinidad the "sleek, happy, and contented" people, whose condition "admitted of no improvement," were yet groaning in bitter sorrow, nay, in absolute despair, under the crushing weight of such magisterial decisions as those which i have just recorded. let me add two more [ ] typical cases which occurred during mr. mayne's tenure of office in the island. l. b. was a member of one of those brawling sisterhoods that frequently disturbed the peace of the town of port of spain. she had a "pal" or intimate chum familiarly known as "lady," who staunchly stood by her in all the squabbles that occurred with their adversaries. one particular night, the police were called to a street in the east of the town, in consequence of an affray between some women of the sort referred to. arriving on the spot, they found the fight already over, but a war of words was still proceeding among the late combatants, of whom the aforesaid "lady" was one of the most conspicuous. a list was duly made out of the parties found so engaged, and it included the name of l. b., who happened not to be there, or even in port of spain at all, she having some days before gone into the country to spend a little time with some relatives. the inserting of her name was an inferential mistake on the part of the police, arising from the presence of "lady" at the brawl, she being well known by them to be the inseparable ally of l. b. on such occasions. [ ] it was not unnatural that in the obscurity they should have concluded that the latter was present with her altera ego, when in reality she was not there. the participants in the brawl were charged at the station, and summonses, including one to l. b., were duly issued. on her return to port of spain a day or two after the occurrence, the wrongly incriminated woman received from the landlady her key, along with the magisterial summons that had resulted from the error of the constables. the day of the trial came on, and l. b. stood before mr. mayne, strong in her innocence, and supported by the sworn testimony of her landlady as well as of her uncle from the country, with whom and with his family she had been uninterruptedly staying up to one or two days after the occurrence in which she had been thus implicated. the evidence of the old lady, who, like thousands of her advanced age in the colony, had never even once had occasion to be present in any court of justice, was to the following effect: that the defendant, who was a tenant of hers, had, on a certain morning (naming days before the affray occurred), [ ] come up to her door well dressed, and followed by a porter carrying her luggage. l. b., she continued, then handed her the key of the apartment, informing her at the same time that she was going for some days into the country to her relatives, for a change, and requesting also that the witness should on no account deliver the key to any person who should ask for it during her absence. this witness further deposed to receiving the summons from the police, which she placed along with the key for delivery to l. b. on the latter's return home. the testimony of the uncle was also decisively corroborative of that of the preceding witness, as to the absence from port of spain of l. b. during the days embraced in the defence. the alibi was therefore unquestionably made out, especially as none of the police witnesses would venture to swear to having actually seen l. b. at the brawl. the magistrate had no alternative but that of acquiescing in the proof of her innocence; so he dismissed the charge against the accused, who stood down from among the rest, radiant with satisfaction. the other defendants were duly [ ] convicted, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment with hard labour. all this was quite correct; but here comes matter for consideration with regard to the immaculate dispensation of justice as vaunted so confidently by mr. froude. on receiving their sentence the women all stood down from the dock, to be escorted to prison, except "lady," who, by the way, had preserved a rigid silence, while some of the other defendants had voluntarily and, it may be added, generously protested that l. b. was not present on the occasion of this particular row. "lady," whether out of affection or from a less respectable motive, cried out to the stipendiary justice. "but, sir, it ain't fair. how is it every time that l. b. and me come up before you, you either fine or send up the two of us together, and to-day you are sending me up alone?" moved either by the logic or the pathos of this objurgation, the magistrate, turning towards l. b., who had lingered after her narrow escape to watch the issue of the proceedings, thus addressed her:--"l. b., upon second thoughts i order you to the same term of hard labour at the royal gaol with the [ ] others." the poor girl, having neither money nor friends intelligent enough to interfere on her behalf, had to submit, and she underwent the whole of this iniquitous sentence. the last typical case that we shall give illustrates the singular application by this more than singular judge of the legal maxim caveat emptor. a free coolie possessed of a donkey resolved to utilize the animal in carting grass to the market. he therefore called on another coolie living at some distance from him, whom he knew to own two carts, a small donkey-cart and an ordinary cart for mule or horse. he proposed the purchase of the smaller cart, stating his reason for wishing to have it. the donkey-cart was then shown to the intending purchaser, who, along with two creole witnesses brought by him to make out and attest the receipt on the occasion, found some of the iron fittings defective, and drew the vendor's attention thereto. he, on his side, engaged, on receiving the amount agreed to for the cart, to send it off to the blacksmith for immediate repairs, to be delivered to the purchaser next morning at the latest. on this understanding the purchase money was paid down, and the [ ] receipt, specifying that the sum therein mentioned was for a donkey-cart, passed from the vendor to the purchaser of the little vehicle. next day at about noon the man went with his donkey for the cart. arrived there, his countryman had the larger of the two carts brought out, and in pretended innocence said to the purchaser of the donkey-cart, "here is your cart." on this a warm dispute arose, which was not abated by the presence and protests of the two witnesses of the day before, who had hastily been summoned by the victim to bear out his contention that it was the donkey-cart and not the larger cart which had been examined, bargained for, purchased, and promised to be delivered, the day before. the matter, on account of the sturdiness of the rascal's denials, had to be referred to a court of law. the complainant engaged an able solicitor, who laid the case before mr. mayne in all its transparent simplicity and strength. the defendant, although he had, and as a matter of fact could have, no means of invalidating the evidence of the two witnesses, and above all of his receipt with his signature, relied upon the fact that the cart which he [ ] offered was much larger than the one the complainant had actually bought, and that therefore complainant would be the gainer by the transaction. incredible as it may sound, this view of the case commended itself to the magistrate, who adopted it in giving his judgment against the complainant. in vain did the solicitor protest that all the facts of the case were centred in the desire and intention of the prosecutor to have specifically a donkey-cart, which was abundantly proved by everything that had come out in the proceedings. in vain also was his endeavour to show that a man having only a donkey would be hopelessly embarrassed by having a cart for it which was entirely intended for animals of much larger size. the magistrate solemnly reiterated his decision, and wound up by saying that the victim had lost his case through disregard of the legal maxim caveat emptor--let the purchaser be careful. the rascally defendant thus gained his case, and left the court in defiant triumph. the four preceding cases are thoroughly significant of the original method in which thousands of cases were decided by this model magistrate, to the great detriment, pecuniary, [ ] social, and moral, during more than ten years, of between , and , of the population within the circle of his judicial authority. what shall we think, therefore, of the fairness of mr. froude or his informants, who, prompt and eager in imputing unworthy motives to gentlemen with characters above reproach, have yet been so silent with regard to the flagrant and frequent abuses of more than one of their countrymen by whom the honour and fair fame of their nation were for years draggled in the mire, and whose misdeeds were the theme of every tongue and thousands of newspaper-articles in the west indian colonies? mr. arthur child, s.j.p. we now take san fernando, the next most important magisterial district after port of spain. at the time of mr. froude's visit, and for some time before, the duties of the magistracy there were discharged by mr. arthur child, an "english barrister" who, of course, had possessed the requisite qualification of being hopelessly briefless. for the ideal justice which mr. froude would have britons believe is meted out to the weaker classes by their fellow-countrymen [ ] in the west indies, we may refer the reader to the conduct of the above-named functionary on the memorable occasion of the slaughter of the coolies under governor freeling, in october, . mr. child, as stipendiary justice, had the duty of reading the riot act to the immigrants, who were marching in procession to the town of san fernando, contrary, indeed, to the government proclamation which had forbidden it; and he it was who gave the order to "fire," which resulted fatally to many of the unfortunate devotees of hosein. this mandate and its lethal consequences anticipated by some minutes the similar but far more death-dealing action of the chief of police, who was stationed at another post in the vicinity of san fernando. the day after the shooting down of a total of more than one hundred immigrants, the protecting action of this magistrate towards the weaker folk under his jurisdiction had a striking exemplification, to which mr. froude is hereby made welcome. of course there was a general cry of horror throughout the colony, and especially in the san fernando district, at the fatal outcome of the proclamation, which had mentioned only "fine" and "imprisonment," [ ] but not death, as the penalty of disregarding its prohibitions. for nearly forty years, namely from their very first arrival in the colony, the east indian immigrants had, according to specific agreement with the government, invariably been allowed the privilege of celebrating their annual feast of hosein, by walking in procession with their pagodas through the public roads and streets of the island, without prohibition or hindrance of any kind from the authorities, save and except in cases where rival estate pagodas were in danger of getting into collision on the question of precedence. on such occasions the police, who always attended the processions, usually gave the lead to the pagodas of the labourers of estates according to their seniority as immigrants. in no case up to , after thirty odd years' inauguration in the colony, was the hosein festival ever pretended to be any cause of danger, actual or prospective, to any town or building. on the contrary, business grew brisker and solidly improved at the approach of the commemoration, owing to the very considerable sale of parti-coloured paper, velvet, calico, and similar articles used in the construction [ ] of the pagodas. governor freeling, however, was, it may be presumed, compelled to see danger in an institution which had had nearly forty years' trial, without a single accident happening to warrant any sudden interposition of the government tending to its suppression. at all events, the only action taken in , in prospect of their usual festival, was to notify the immigrants by proclamation, and, it is said, also through authorized agents, that the details of their fête were not to be conducted in the usual manner; and that their appearance with pagodas in any public road or any town, without special license from some competent local authority, would entail the penalty of so many pounds fine, or imprisonment for so many months with hard labour. the immigrants, to whom this unexpected change on the part of the authorities was utterly incomprehensible, both petitioned and sent deputations to the governor, offering guarantees for the, if possible, more secure celebration of the hosein, and praying his excellency to cancel the prohibition as to the use of the roads, inasmuch as it interfered with the essential part of their religious rite, which was the "drowning," or casting into [ ] the sea, of the pagodas. having utterly failed in their efforts with the governor, the coolies resolved to carry out their religious duty according to prescriptive forms, accepting, at the same time, the responsibility in the way of fine or imprisonment which they would thus inevitably incur. a rumour was also current at the time that, pursuant to this resolution, the head men of the various plantations had authorized a general subscription amongst their countrymen, for meeting the contingency of fines in the police courts. all these things were the current talk of the population of san fernando, in which town the leading immigrants, free as well as indentured, had begun to raise funds for this purpose. all that the public, therefore, expected would have resulted from the intended infringement of the proclamation was an enormous influx of money in the shape of fines into the colonial treasury; as no one doubted the extreme facility which existed for ascertaining exactly, in the case of persons registered and indentured to specific plantations, the names and abodes of at least the chief offenders against the proclamation. accordingly, on the [ ] occurrence of the bloody catastrophe related above, every one felt that the mere persistence in marching all unarmed towards the town, without actually attempting to force their way into it, was exorbitantly visited upon the coolies by a violent death or a life-long mutilation. this sentiment few were at any pains to conceal; but as the poorer and more ignorant classes can be handled with greater impunity than those who are intelligent and have the means of self-defence, mr. justice child, the very day after the tragedy, and without waiting for the pro formâ official inquiry into the tragedy in which he bore so conspicuous a part, actually caused to be arrested, sat to try and sent to hard labour, persons whom the police, in obedience to his positive injunctions, had reported to him as having condemned the shooting down of the immigrants! those who were arrested and thus summarily punished had, of course, no means of self-protection; and as the case is typical of others, as illustrative of "justice-made law" applied to "subject races" in a british colony, mr. froude is free to accept it, or not, in corroboration of his unqualified panegyrics. [ ] mr. grove humphrey chapman, s.j.p. as stipendary magistrate of this self-same san fernando district, grove humphrey chapman, esquire (another english barrister), was the immediate predecessor of mr. child. more humane than mr. mayne, his colleague and contemporary in port of spain, this young magistrate began his career fairly well. but he speedily fell a victim to the influences immediately surrounding him in his new position. his head, which later events proved never to have been naturally strong, began to be turned by the unaccustomed deference which he met with on all hands, from high and low, official and non-official, and he himself soon consummated the addling of his brain by persistent practical revolts against every maxim of the ancient nazarenes in the matter of potations. his decisions at the court, therefore, became perfect emulations of those of mr. mayne, as well in perversity as in harshness, and many in his case also were the appeals for relief made to the head of the executive by the inhabitants of the district--but of course in vain. governor irving was at this time in office, and the unfortunate [ ] victims of perverse judgments--occasionally pronounced by this magistrate in his cups--were only poor negroes, coolies, or other persons whose worldly circumstances placed them in the category of the "weaker" in the community. to these classes of people that excellent ruler unhappily denied--we dare not say his personal sympathy, but--the official protection which, even through self-respect, he might have perfunctorily accorded. bent, however, on running through the whole gamut of extravagance, mr. chapman--by interpreting official impunity into implying a direct license for the wildest of his caprices--plunged headlong with ever accelerating speed, till the deliverance of the naparimas became the welcome consequence of his own personal action. on one occasion it was credibly reported in the colony that this infatuated dispenser of british justice actually stretched his official complaisance so far as to permit a lady not only to be seated near him on the judicial bench, but also to take a part--loud, boisterous and abusive--in the legal proceedings of the day. meanwhile, as the governor could not be induced to interfere, things went [ ] on from bad to worse, till one day, as above hinted, the unfortunate magistrate so publicly committed himself as to be obliged to be borne for temporary refuge to the lunatic asylum, whence he was clandestinely shipped from the colony on "six months' leave of absence," never more to resume his official station. the removal of two such magistrates as those whose careers we have so briefly sketched out--mr. mayne having died, still a magistrate, since mr. froude's departure--has afforded opportunity for the restoration of british protecting influence. in the person of mr. llewellyn lewis, as magistrate of port of spain, this opportunity has been secured. he, it is generally rumoured, strives to justify the expectations of fair play and even-handed justice which are generally entertained concerning englishmen. it is, however, certain that with a governor so prompt to hear the cry of the poor as sir william robinson has proved himself to be, and with a chief justice so vigilant, fearless, and painstaking as sir john gorrie, the entire magistracy of the colony must be so beneficially influenced as to preclude [ ] the frequency of appeals being made to the higher courts, or it may be to the executive, on account of scandalously unjust and senseless decisions. so long, too, as the names of t. s. warner, captain larcom, and f. h. hamblin abide in the grateful remembrance of the entire population, as ideally upright, just, and impartial dispensers of justice, each in his own jurisdiction, we can only sigh at the temporal dispensation which renders practicable the appointment and retention in office of such administrators of the law as were mr. mayne and mr. chapman. the widespread and irreparable mischiefs wrought by these men still affect disastrously many an unfortunate household; and the execration by the weaker in the community of their memory, particularly that of robert dawson mayne, is only a fitting retribution for their abuse of power. notes . *a west indian official superstition professes to believe that a british barrister must make an exceptionally good colonial s.j.p., seeing that he is ignorant of everything, save general english law, that would qualify him for the post! in this, to acquit oneself tolerably, some acquaintance with the language, customs, and habits of thought of the population is everywhere else held to be of prime importance,--native conscientiousness and honesty of purpose being definitively presupposed. book iii: social revolution [ ] never was the knight of la mancha more convinced of his imaginary mission to redress the wrongs of the world than mr. james anthony froude seems to be of his ability to alter the course of events, especially those bearing on the destinies of the negro in the british west indies. the doctrinaire style of his utterances, his sublime indifference as to what negro opinion and feelings may be, on account of his revelations, are uniquely charming. in that portion of his book headed "social revolution" our author, with that mixture of frankness and cynicism which is so dear to the soul of the british esprit fort of to-day, has challenged a comparison between british colonial policy on the [ ] one hand, and the colonial policy of france and spain on the other. this he does with an evident recklessness that his approval of spain and france involves a definite condemnation of his own country. however, let us hear him:-- "the english west indies, like other parts of the world, are going through a silent revolution. elsewhere the revolution, as we hope, is a transition state, a new birth; a passing away of what is old and worn out, that a fresh and healthier order may rise in its place. in the west indies the most sanguine of mortals will find it difficult to entertain any such hope at all." as mr. froude is speaking dogmatically here of his, or rather our, west indies, let us hear him as he proceeds:-- "we have been a ruling power there for two hundred and fifty years; the whites whom we planted as our representatives are drifting into ruin, and they regard england and england's policy as the principal cause of it. the blacks whom, in a fit of virtuous benevolence, we emancipated, do not feel particularly obliged to us. they think, if they think at all, that they were [ ] ill-treated originally, and have received no more than was due to them." thus far. now, as to "the whites whom we planted as our representatives," and who, mr. froude avers, are drifting into ruin, we confess to a total ignorance of their whereabouts in these islands in this jubilee year of negro emancipation. of the representatives of britain immediately before and after emancipation we happen to know something, which, on the testimony of englishmen, mr. froude will be made quite welcome to before our task is ended. with respect to mr. froude's statement as to the ingratitude of the emancipated blacks, if it is aimed at the slaves who were actually set free, it is utterly untrue; for no class of persons, in their humble and artless way, are more attached to the queen's majesty, whom they regard as incarnating in her gracious person the benevolence which mr. froude so jauntily scoffs at. but if our censor's remark under this head is intended for the present generation of blacks, it is a pure and simple absurdity. what are we negroes of the present day to be grateful for to the us, personified by mr. froude and the colonial [ ] office exportations? we really believe, from what we know of englishmen, that very few indeed would regard mr. froude's reproach otherwise than as a palpable adding of insult to injury. obliged to "us," indeed! why, mr. froude, who speaks of us as dogs and horses, suggests that the same kindliness of treatment that secures the attachment of those noble brutes would have the same result in our case. with the same consistency that marks his utterances throughout his book, he tells his readers "that there is no original or congenital difference between the capacity of the white and the negro races." he adds, too, significantly: "with the same chances and with the same treatment, i believe that distinguished men would be produced equally from both races." after this truthful testimony, which pelion upon ossa of evidence has confirmed, does mr. froude, in the fatuity of his skin-pride, believe that educated men, worthy of the name, would be otherwise than resentful, if not disgusted, at being shunted out of bread in their own native land, which their parents' labours and taxes have made desirable, in order to afford room to blockheads, vulgarians, [ ] or worse, imported from beyond the seas? does mr. froude's scorn of the negroes' skin extend, inconsistently on his part, to their intelligence and feelings also? and if so, what has the negro to care--if let alone and not wantonly thwarted in his aspirations? it sounds queer, not to say unnatural and scandalous, that englishmen should in these days of light be the champions of injustice towards their fellow-subjects, not for any intellectual or moral disqualification, but on the simple account of the darker skin of those who are to be assailed and thwarted in their life's career and aspirations. really, are we to be grateful that the colour difference should be made the basis and justification of the dastardly denials of justice, social, intellectual, and moral, which have characterized the régime of those who mr. froude boasts were left to be the representatives of britain's morality and fair play? are the negroes under the french flag not intensely french? are the negroes under the spanish flag not intensely spanish? wherefore are they so? it is because the french and spanish nations, who are neither of them inferior in origin or the [ ] nobility of the part they have each played on the historic stage, have had the dignity and sense to understand the lowness of moral and intellectual consciousness implied in the subordination of questions of an imperial nature to the slaveholder's anxiety about the hue of those who are to be benefited or not in the long run. by spain and france every loyal and law-abiding subject of the mother country has been a citizen deemed worthy all the rights, immunities, and privileges flowing from good and creditable citizenship. those meriting such distinction were taken into the bosom of the society which their qualifications recommended them to share, and no office under the government has been thought too good or too elevated for men of their stamp. no wonder, then, that mr. froude is silent regarding the scores of brilliant coloured officials who adorn the civil service of france and spain, and whose appointment, in contrast with what has usually been the case in british colonies, reflects an abiding lustre on those countries, and establishes their right to a foremost place among nations. mr. froude, in speaking of chief justice [ ] reeves, ventures upon a smart truism which we can discuss for him, but of course not in the sense in which he has meant it. "exceptions," our author remarks, "are supposed proverbially to prove nothing, or to prove the very opposite of what they appear to prove. when a particular phenomenon occurs rarely, the probabilities are strong against the recurrence of it." now, is it in ignorance, or through disingenuousness, that mr. froude has penned this argument regarding exceptions? surely, in the vast area of american life, it is not possible that he could see frederick douglass alone out of the cluster of prominent black americans who are doing the work of their country so worthily and so well in every official department. anyhow, mr. froude's history of the emancipation may here be amended for him by a reminder that, in the british colonies, it was not whites as masters, and blacks as slaves, who were affected by that momentous measure. in fact, found in the british colonies very nearly as many negro and mulatto slave-owners as there were white. well then, these black and yellow planters received their quota, it may be presumed, of [ ] the £ , , sterling indemnity. they were part and parcel of the proprietary body in the colonies, and had to meet the crisis like the rest. they were very wealthy, some of these ethiopic accomplices of the oppressors of their own race. their sons and daughters were sent, like the white planter's children, across the atlantic for a european education. these young folk returned to their various native colonies as lawyers and doctors. many of them were also wealthy planters. the daughters, of course, became in time the mothers of the new generation of prominent inhabitants. now, in america all this was different. no "nigger," however alabaster fair, was ever allowed the privileges of common citizenship, let alone the right to hold property in others. if possessed by a weakness to pass for white men, as very many of them could easily have contrived to do, woe unto the poor impostors! they were hunted down from city to city as few felons would be, and finally done to death--"serve them right!" being the grim commentary regarding their fate for having sought to usurp the ineffable privilege of whitemanship! all this, mr. froude, was [ ] the rule, the practice, in america, with regard to persons of colour up to twenty-five years ago. now, sir, what is the phenomenon which strikes your vision in that mighty republic to-day, with regard to those self-same despised, discountenanced, persecuted and harried descendants of ham? we shall tell you of the change that has taken place in their condition, and also some of the reasons of that beneficent revolution. the proclamation of emancipation on january st, , was, by president lincoln, frankly admitted to have been a war necessity. no abstract principle of justice or of morals was of primary consideration in the matter. the saving of the union at any cost,--that is, the stern political emergency forced forth the document which was to be the social salvation of every descendant of ham in the united states of america. close upon the heels of their emancipation, the enfranchisement of the negroes was pushed forward by the thorough-going american statesmen. they had no sentimentality to defer to. the logic of events--the fact not only of the coloured race being freedmen, but also of their having been effective [ ] comrades on the fields of battle, where the blood of eager thousands of them had flowed on the union side, pointed out too plainly that men with such claims should also be partners in the resulting triumph. mr. froude, being so deferential to skin prejudice, will doubtless find it strange that such a measure as the civil rights bill should have passed a congress of americans. assuredly with the feeling against the coloured race which custom and law had engrafted into the very nature of the vast majority, this was a tremendous call to make on the national susceptibilities. but it has been exactly this that has brought out into such vivid contrast the conduct of the british statesman, loudly professing to be unprejudiced as to colour, and fair and humane, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the dealings of the politicians of america, who had, as a matter of fact, sucked in aversion and contempt towards the negro together with their mother's milk. of course no sane being could expect that feelings so deeply ingrained and nourished could be rooted out by logic or by any legislative enactment. but, indeed, it is sublimely creditable to [ ] the american government that, whatever might be the personal and private sentiments of its individual members as regards race, palmam ferat qui meruit--"let him bear the palm who has deserved it"--has been their motto in dealing generally with the claims of their ethiopic fellow-citizens. hence it is that in only twenty-five years america can show negro public officers as thick as blackberries, while mr. froude can mention only mr. justice reeves in fifty years as a sample of the "exceptional" progress under british auspices of a man of african descent! verily, if in fifty long years british policy can recognize only one single exception in a race between which and the white race there is no original or congenital difference of capacity, the inference must be that british policy has been not only systematically, but also too successfully, hostile to the advancement of the ethiopians subject thereto; while the "fair field and no favour" management of the strong-minded americans has, by its results, confirmed the culpability of the english policy in its relation to "subject races." the very suggestive section of "the english [ ] in the west indies," from which we have already given extracts, and which bears the title "social revolution," thus proceeds:-- "but it does not follow that what can be done eventually can be done immediately, and the gulf which divides the colours is no arbitrary prejudice, but has been opened by the centuries of training and discipline which have given us the start in the race" (p. [froude]). the reference in the opening clause of the above citation, as to what is eventually possible not being immediately feasible, is to the elevation of blacks to high official posts, such as those occupied by judge reeves in barbados, and by mr. f. douglass in the united states. we have already disposed by anticipation of the above contention of mr. froude's, by showing that in only twenty-five years america has found hundreds of eminent blacks to fill high posts under her government. our author's futile mixture of judge reeves' exceptional case with that of fred. douglass, which he cunningly singles out from among so many in the united states, is nothing but a subterfuge, of the same queer and flimsy description with which the literature of the cause now championed [ ] by his eloquence has made the world only too familiar. what can mr. froude conceive any sane man should see in common between the action of british and of american statesmanship in the matter now under discussion? if his utterance on this point is that of a british spokesman, let him abide by his own verdict against his own case, as embodied in the words, "the gulf which divides the two colours is no arbitrary prejudice," which, coupled with his contention that the elevation of the blacks is not immediately feasible, discloses the wideness of divergence between british and american political opinion on this identical subject. mr. froude is pathetically eloquent on the colour question. he tells of the wide gulf between the two colours--we suppose it is as wide as exists between his white horse and his black horse. seriously, however, does not this kind of talk savour only too much of the slave-pen and the auction-block of the rice-swamp and the cotton-field; of the sugar-plantation and the driver's lash? in the united states alone, among all the slave-holding powers, was the difference of race and colour invoked openly and boldly to justify all the enormities that [ ] were the natural accompaniments of those "institutions" of the past. but is mr. froude serious in invoking the ostracizing of innocent, loyal, and meritorious british subjects on account of their mere colour? physical slavery--which was no crime per se, mr. froude tells us--had at least overwhelming brute power, and that silent, passive force which is even more potential as an auxiliary, viz., unenlightened public opinion, whose neutrality is too often a positive support to the empire of wrong. but has mr. froude, in his present wild propaganda on behalf of political and, therefore, of social repression, anything analogous to those two above-specified auxiliaries to rely on? we trow not. then why this frantic bluster and shouting forth of indiscreet aspirations on be half of a minority to whom accomplished facts, when not agreeable to or manipulated by themselves, are a perpetual grievance, generating life-long impotent protestations? presumably there are possibilities the thoughts of which fascinate our author and his congeners in this, to our mind, vain campaign in the cause of social retrogression. but, be the incentives what they may, it might not be amiss on our [ ] part to suggest to those impelled by them that the ignoring of negro opinion in their calculations, though not only possible but easily practised fifty years ago, is a portentous blunder at the present time. verbum sapienti. mr. froude must see that he has set about his negro-repression campaign in too blundering a fashion. he evidently expects to be able to throw dust into the eyes of the intelligent world, juggler-wise, through the agency of the mighty pronoun us, as representing the entire anglo-saxon race, in his advocacy of the now scarcely intelligible pretensions of a little coterie of her majesty's subjects in the west indies. these gentry are hostile, he urges, to the presence of progressive negroes on the soil of the tropics! yet are these self-same negroes not only natives, but active improvers and embellishers of that very soil. we cannot help concluding that this impotent grudge has sprung out of the additional fact that these identical negroes constitute also a living refutation of the sinister predictions ventured upon generally against their race, with frantic recklessness, even within the last three decades, by affrighted slave-holders, of whose ravings mr. froude's book is only a [ ] diluted echo, out of season and outrageous to the conscience of modern civilization. it is patent, then, that the matters which mr. froude has sought to force up to the dignity of genetic rivalship, has nothing of that importance about it. his us, between whom and the negro subjects of great britain the gulf of colour lies, comprises, as he himself owns, an outnumbered and, as we hope to prove later on, a not over-creditable little clique of anglo-saxon lineage. the real us who have started ahead of the negroes, "through the training and discipline of centuries," are assuredly not anything like "represented" by the few pretentious incapables who, instead of conquering predominance, as they who deserve it always do, like men, are whimpering like babies after dearly coveted but utterly unattainable enjoyments--to be had at the expense of the interests of the negroes whom they, rather amusingly, affect to despise. when mr. froude shall have become able to present for the world's contemplation a question respecting which the anglo-saxon family, in its grand world-wide predominance, and the african family, in its yet feeble, albeit promising, incipience of self-adjustment, shall [ ] actually be competitors, then, and only then, will it be time to accept the outlook as serious. but when, as in the present case, he invokes the whole prestige of the anglo-saxon race in favour of the untenable pretensions of a few blasés of that race, and that to the social and political detriment of tens of thousands of black fellow-subjects, it is high time that the common sense of civilization should laugh him out of court. the us who are flourishing, or pining, as the case may be, in the british west indies--by favour of the colonial office on the former hypothesis, or, on the second, through the misdirection of their own faculties--do not, and, in the very nature of things, cannot in any race take the lead of any set of men endowed with virile attributes, the conditions of the contest being on all sides identical. pass we onward to extract and comment on other passages in this very engaging section of mr. froude's book. on the same page ( ) he says:-- "the african blacks have been free enough for thousands, perhaps for ten thousands of years, and it has been the absence of restraint which has prevented them from becoming civilized." [ ] all this, perhaps, is quite true, and, in the absence of positive evidence to the contrary of our author's dogmatic assertions, we save time by allowing him all the benefit he can derive from whatever weight they might carry. "generation has followed generation, and the children are as like their fathers as the successive generations of apes." to this we can have nothing to object; especially in view of what the writer goes on to say, and that on his own side of the hedge--somewhat qualified though his admission may be:--"the whites, it is likely enough, succeeded one another with the same similarity for a series of ages." our speculator grows profoundly philosophic here; and in this mood thus entertains his readers in a strain which, though deep, we shall strive to find clear:-- "it is now supposed that human race has been on the planet for a hundred thousand years at least; and the first traces of civilization cannot be thrown back at furthest beyond six thousand. during all this time mankind went on treading in the same steps, century after century making no more advance than the birds and beasts." [ ] in all this there is nothing that can usefully be taken exception to; for speculation and conjecture, if plausible and attractive, are free to revel whenever written documents and the unmistakable indications of the earth's crust are both entirely at fault. warming up with his theme, mr. froude gets somewhat ambiguous in the very next sentence. says he:-- "in egypt or india or one knows not where, accident or natural development quickened into life our moral and intellectual faculties; and these faculties have grown into what we now experience, not in the freedom in which the modern takes delight, but under the sharp rule of the strong over the weak, of the wise over the unwise." our author, as we see, begins his above quoted deliverance quite at a loss with regard to the agency to which the incipience, growth, and fructification of man's faculties should be attributed. "accident," "natural development," he suggests, quickened the human faculties into the progressive achievements which they have accomplished. but then, wherefore is this writer so forcible, so confident in his prophecies regarding negroes and their future temporal condition [ ] and proceedings, since it is "accident," and "accident" only, that must determine their fulfilment? has he so securely bound the fickle divinity to his service as to be certain of its agency in the realization of his forecasts? and if so, where then would be the fortuitousness that is the very essence of occurrences that glide, undesigned, unexpected, unforeseen, into the domain of fact, and become material for history? so far as we feel capable of intelligently meditating on questions of this inscrutable nature, we are forced to conclude that since "natural development" could be so regular, so continuous, and withal so efficient, in the production of the marvellous results that we daily contemplate, there must be existent and in operation--as, for instance, in the case of the uniformity characterizing for ages successive generations of mankind, as above adduced by our philosopher himself--some controlling law, according and subject to which no check has marred the harmonious progression, or prevented the consummations that have crowned the normal exercise of human energy, intellectual as well as physical. the sharp rule of the strong over the [ ] weak, is the first clause of the carlylean-sounding phrase which embodies the requisite conditions for satisfactory human development. the terms expressive of these conditions, however, while certainly suggesting and embracing the beneficent, elevating influence and discipline of european civilization, such as we know and appreciate it, do not by any means exclude the domination of mr. legree or any other typical man-monster, whose power over his fellow-creatures is at once a calamity to the victims and a disgrace to the community tolerating not only its exercise, but the very possibility of its existence. the sharp rule of "the wise over the unwise," is the closing section of the recommendation to ensure man's effective development. not even savages hesitate to defer in all their important designs to the sought-for guidance of superior judgments. but in the case of us west indian blacks, to whom mr. froude's doctrine here has a special reference, is it suggested by him that the bidders for predominance over us on the purely epidermal, the white skin, ground, are ipso facto the monopolists of directing wisdom? it surely cannot be so; for mr. froude's own chapters regarding both the [ ] nomination by downing street of future colonial office-holders and the disorganized mental and moral condition of the indigenous representatives--as he calls them!--of his country in these climes, preclude the possibility that the reference regarding the wise can be to them. now since this is so, we really cannot see why the pains should have been taken to indite the above truism, to the truth whereof, under every normal or legitimate circumstance, the veriest barbarian, by spontaneously resorting to and cheerfully abiding by it, is among the first to secure practical effect. "our own anglo-saxon race," continues our author, "has been capable of self-government only after a thousand years of civil and spiritual authority. european government, european instruction, continued steadily till his natural tendencies are superseded by higher instincts, may shorten the probation period of the negro. individual blacks of exceptional quality, like frederick douglass in america, or the chief justice of barbados, will avail themselves of opportunities to rise, and the freest opportunity ought to be offered them." here we are reminded of the dogma laid down by a certain [ ] class of ethnologists, to the effect that intellectuality, when displayed by a person of mixed european and african blood, must always be assigned to the european side of the parentage; and in the foregoing citation our author speaks of two personages undoubtedly belonging to the class embraced in the above dogma. three specific objections may, therefore, be urged against the statements which we have indicated in the above quotation. first and foremost, neither judge reeves nor mr. fred douglass is a black man, as mr. froude inaccurately represents each of them to be. the former is of mixed blood, to what degree we are not adepts enough to determine; and the latter, if his portrait and those who have personally seen him mislead us not, is a decidedly fair man. we, of course, do not for a moment imagine that either of those eminent descendants of ham cares a jot about the settlement of this question, which doubtless would appear very trivial to both. but as our author's crusade is against the negro--by which we understand the undiluted african descendant, the pure negro, as he singularly describes chief justice reeves--our anxiety is to show that there exist, both [ ] in the west indies and in the united states, scores of genuine black men to whom neither of these two distinguished patriots would, for one instant, hesitate to concede any claim to equality in intellectual and social excellence. the second exception which we take is, as we have already shown in a previous page, to the persistent lugging in of america by mr. froude, doubtless to keep his political countrymen in countenance with regard to the negro question. we have already pointed out the futility of this proceeding on our author's part, and suggested how damaging it might prove to the cause he is striving to uphold. "blacks of exceptional quality," like the two gentlemen he has specially mentioned, "will avail themselves of opportunities to rise." most certainly they will, mr. froude--but, for the present, only in america, where those opportunities are really free and open to all. there no parasitical non-workers are to be found, eager to eat bread, but in the sweat of other people's brows; no impecunious title-bearers; no importunate bores, nor other similar characters whom the government there would regard it as their duty "to provide for"--by quartering them on the revenues [ ] of colonial dependencies. but in the british crown--or rather "anglo-west indian"--governed colonies, has it ever been, can it ever be, thus ordered? our author's description of the exigencies that compel injustice to be done in order to requite, or perhaps to secure, parliamentary support, coupled with his account of the bitter animus against the coloured race that rankles in the bosom of his "englishmen in the west indies," sufficiently proves the utter hypocrisy of his recommendation, that the freest opportunities should be offered to blacks of the said exceptional order. the very wording of mr. froude's recommendation is disingenuous. it is one stone sped at two birds, and which, most naturally, has missed them both. mr. froude knew perfectly well that, twenty-five years before he wrote his book, america had thrown open the way to public advancement to the blacks, as it had been previously free to whites alone. his use of "should be offered," instead of "are offered," betrays his consciousness that, at the time he was writing, the offering of any opportunities of the kind he suggests was a thing still to be desired under british jurisdiction. the third objection [ ] which we shall take to mr. froude's bracketing of the cases of mr. fred douglass and of judge reeves together, is that, when closely examined, the two cases can be distinctly seen to be not in any way parallel. the applause which our author indirectly bids for on behalf of british colonial liberality in the instance of mr. reeves would be the grossest mockery, if accorded in any sense other than we shall proceed to show. fred douglass was born and bred a slave in one of the southern states of the union, and regained his freedom by flight from bondage, a grown man, and, of course, under the circumstances, solitary and destitute. he reached the north at a period when the prejudice of the whites against men of his race was so rampant as to constitute a positive mania. the stern and cruelly logical doctrine, that a negro had no rights which white men were bound to respect, was in full blast and practical exemplification. yet amidst it all, and despite of it all, this gifted fugitive conquered his way into the temple of knowledge, and became eminent as an orator, a writer, and a lecturer on political and general subjects. hailed abroad [ ] as a prodigy, and received with acclamation into the brotherhood of intelligence, abstract justice and moral congruity demanded that such a man should no longer be subject to the shame and abasement of social, legal, and political proscription. the land of his birth proved herself equal to this imperative call of civilized duty, regardless of customs and the laws, written as well as unwritten, which had doomed to life-long degradation every member of the progeny of ham. recognizing in the erewhile bondman a born leader of men, america, with the unflinching directness that has marked her course, whether in good or in evil, responded with spontaneous loyalty to the inspiration of her highest instincts. shamed into compunction and remorse at the solid fame and general sympathy secured for himself by a son of her soil, whom, in the wantonness of pride and power, she had denied all fostering care (not, indeed, for any conscious offending on his part, but by reason of a natural peculiarity which she had decreed penal), america, like a repentant mother, stooped from her august seat, and giving with enthusiasm both hands to the outcast, she helped him to stand forward and erect, [ ] in the dignity of untrammeled manhood, making him, at the same time, welcome to a place of honour amongst the most gifted, the worthiest and most favoured of her children. chief justice reeves, on the other hand, did not enter the world, as douglass had done, heir to a lot of intellectual darkness and legalized social and political proscription. associated from adolescence with s. j. prescod, the greatest leader of popular opinion whom barbados has yet produced, mr. reeves possessed in his nature the material to assimilate and reflect in his own principles and conduct the salient characteristics of his distinguished mentor. arrived in england to study law, he had there the privilege of the personal acquaintance of lord brougham, then one of the nestors of the great emancipation conflict. on returning to his native island, which he did immediately after his call to the bar, mr. reeves sprung at once into the foremost place, and retained his precedence till his labours and aspirations were crowned by his obtaining the highest judicial post in that colony. for long years before becoming chief justice, mr. reeves had conquered for himself the respect and confidence [ ] of all barbadians--even including the ultra exclusive "anglo-west-indians" of mr. froude--by the manful constitutional stand which, sacrificing official place, he had successfully made against the threatened abrogation of the charter of the colony, which every class and colour of natives cherish and revere as a most precious, almost sacred, inheritance. the successful champion of their menaced liberties found clustering around him the grateful hearts of all his countrymen, who, in their hour of dread at the danger of their time-honoured constitution, had clung in despair to him as the only leader capable of heading the struggle and leading the people, by wise and constitutional guidance, to the victory which they desired but could not achieve for themselves. sir william robinson, who was sent out as pacificator, saw and took in at a glance the whole significance of the condition of affairs, especially in their relation to mr. reeves, and vice versâ. with the unrivalled pre-eminence and predominant personal influence of the latter, the colonial office had possessed more than ample means of being perfectly familiar. what, then, could be more natural and consonant with [ ] sound policy than that the then acknowledged, but officially unattached, head of the people (being an eminent lawyer), should, on the occurrence of a vacancy in the highest juridical post, be appointed to co-operate with the supreme head of the executive? mr. reeves was already the chief of the legal body of the colony; his appointment, therefore, as chief justice amounted to nothing more than an official ratification of an accomplished and unalterable fact. of course, it was no fault of england's that the eminent culture, political influence, and unapproached legal status of mr. reeves should have coincided exactly with her political requirements at that crisis, nor yet that she should have utilized a coincidence which had the double advantage of securing the permanent services, whilst realizing at the same time the life's aspiration, of a distinguished british subject. but that mr. froude should be dinning in our ears this case of benefited self-interest, gaining the amplest reciprocity, both as to service and serviceableness, with the disinterested spontaneity of america's elevation of mr. douglass, is but another proof of the obliquity of the moral medium through [ ] which he is wont to survey mankind and their concerns. the distinction between the two marvellous careers which we have been discussing demands, as it is susceptible of, still sharper accentuation. in the final success of reeves, it is the man himself who confronts one in the unique transcendency and victoriousness of personal merit. on the other hand, a million times the personal merit of reeves combined with his own could have availed douglass absolutely nothing in the united states, legal and social proscript that he was, with public opinion generally on the side of the laws and usages against him. the very little countries of the world are proverbial for the production of very great men. but, on the other hand, narrowness of space favours the concentration and coherence of the adverse forces that might impede, if they fail of utterly thwarting, the success which may happen to be grudged by those possessing the will and the power for its obstruction. in barbados, so far as we have heard, read, and seen ourselves of the social ins and outs of that little sister-colony, the operation of the above mentioned [ ] influences has been, may still be, to a certain extent, distinctly appreciable. although in english jurisprudence there is no law ordaining the proscription, on the ground of race or colour, of any eligible candidate for social or political advancement, yet is it notorious that the ethics and practices of the "anglo-west indians"--who, our author has dared to say, represent the higher type of englishmen--have, throughout successive generations, effectually and of course detrimentally operated, as though by a positive medo-persian edict, in a proscriptive sense. it therefore demanded extraordinary toughness of constitutional fibre, moral, mental, and, let us add, physical too, to overcome the obstacles opposed to the progress of merit, too often by persons in intelligence below contempt, but, in prosperity and accepted pretension, formidable indeed to fight against and overcome. we shudder to think of the petty cabals, the underbred indignities, direct and indirect, which the present eminent judge had to watch against, to brush aside, to smile at, in course of his epic strides towards the highest local pinnacle of his profession. but [ ] with him, as time has shown, it was all sure and safe. providence had endowed him with the powers and temperament that break down, when opportunity offers, every barrier to the progress of the gifted and strong and brave. that opportunity, in his particular case, offered itself in the confederation crisis. distracted and helpless "anglo-west indians" thronged to him in imploring crowds, praying that their beloved charter should be saved by the exertion of his incomparable abilities. save and except dr. carrington, there was not a single member of the dominant section in barbados whom it would not be absurd to name even as a near second to him whom all hailed as the champion of their liberties. in the contest to be waged the victory was not, as it never once has been, reserved to the skin or pedigree of the combatants. the above two matters, which in the eyes of the ruling "bims" had, throughout long decades of undisturbed security, been placed before and above all possible considerations, gravitated down to their inherent insignificance when intellect and worth were destined to fight out the issue. mr. [ ] reeves, whose possession of the essential qualifications was admittedly greater than that of every colleague, stood, therefore, in unquestioned supremacy, lord of the political situation, with the result above stated. to what we have already pointed out regarding the absolute impossibility of such an opportunity ever presenting itself in america to mr. douglass, in a political sense, we may now add that, whereas, in barbados, for the intellectual equipment needed at the crisis, mr. reeves stood quite alone, there could, in the bosom of the union, even in respect of the gifts in which mr. douglass was most brilliant, be no "walking over the course" by him. it was in the country and time of bancroft, irving, whittier, longfellow, holmes, bryant, motley, henry clay, dan webster, and others of the laureled phalanx which has added so great and imperishable a lustre to the literature of the english tongue. we proceed here another step, and take up a fresh deliverance of our author's in reference to the granting of the franchise to the black population of these colonies. "it is," says mr. james anthony froude, who is just as prophetic [ ] as his prototypes, the slave-owners of the last half-century, "it is as certain as anything future can be, that if we give the negroes as a body the political privileges which we claim for ourselves, they will use them only to their own injury." the forepart of the above citation reads very much as if its author wrote it on the principle of raising a ghost for the mere purpose of laying it. what visionary, what dreamer of impossible dreams, has ever asked for the negroes as a body the same political privileges which are claimed for themselves by mr. froude and others of his countrymen, who are presumably capable of exercising them? no one in the west indies has ever done so silly a thing as to ask for the negroes as a body that which has not, as everybody knows, and never will be, conceded to the people of great britain as a body. the demand for reform in the crown colonies--a demand which our author deliberately misrepresents--is made neither by nor for the negro, mulatto, white, chinese, nor east indian. it is a petition put forward by prominent responsible colonists--the majority of whom are whites, and mostly britons besides. [ ] their prayer, in which the whole population in these colonies most heartily join, is simply and most reasonably that we, the said colonies, being an integral portion of the british empire, and having, in intelligence and every form of civilized progress, outgrown the stage of political tutelage, should be accorded some measure of emancipation therefrom. and thereby we--white, black, mulatto, and all other inhabitants and tax-payers--shall be able to protect ourselves against the self-seeking and bold indifference to our interests which seem to be the most cherished expression of our rulers' official existence. it may be possible (for he has attempted it), that our new instructor in colonial ethics and politics, under the impulsion of skin-superiority, and also of confidence in the probable success of experiments successfully tried fifty years before, does really believe in the sensibleness of separating colours, and representing the wearers of them as being generally antagonistic to one another in her majesty's west indian dominions. how is it then, we may be permitted to ask mr. froude, that no complaint of the sort formulated by him as against the blacks has ever been put [ ] forward by the thousands of englishmen, scotchmen, irishmen, and other europeans who are permanent inhabitants, proprietors, and tax-payers of these colonies? the reason is that anglo-west indianism, or rather colonialism, is the creed of a few residents sharply divisible into two classes in the west indies. labouring conjointly under race-madness, the first believes that, as being of the anglo-saxon race, they have a right to crow and dominate in whatever land they chance to find themselves, though in their own country they or their forefathers had had to be very dumb dogs indeed. the colonial office has for a long time been responsible for the presence in superior posts of highly salaried gentry of this category, who have delighted in showing themselves off as the unquestionable masters of those who supply them with the pay that gives them the livelihood and position they so ungratefully requite. these fortunate folk, mr. froude avers, are likely to leave our shores in a huff, bearing off with them the civilizing influences which their presence so surely guarantees. go tell to the marines that the seed of israel flourishing in the borders of [ ] misraim will abandon their flourishing district of goshen through sensitiveness on account of the idolatry of the devotees of isis and osiris! the second and less placable class of "englishmen in the west indies," whose final departure our author would have us to believe would complete the catastrophe to progress in the british antilles, is very impalpable indeed. we cannot feel them. we have failed to even see them. true, mr. froude scouts on their behalf the bare notion of their condescending to meet, on anything like equality, us, whom he and they pretend (rather anachronistically, at least) to have been their former slaves, or servants. but where, in the name of heaven, where are these sortis de la cuisse de jupiter, mr. froude? if they are invisible, mourning in impenetrable seclusion over the impossibility of having, as their fathers had before them, the luxury of living at the negroes' expense, shall we negroes who are in the sunshine of heaven, prepared to work and win our way, be anywise troubled in our jubilee by the drivelling ineptitude which insanely reminds us of the miseries of those who went before us? we have thus arrived at the cardinal, [ ] essential misrepresentation, out of scores which compose "the bow of ulysses," and upon which its phrases mainly hinge. semper eadem--"always the same"--has been the proud motto of the mightiest hierarchy that has controlled human action and shaped the destinies of mankind, no less in material than in ghostly concerns. yet is a vast and very beneficial change, due to the imperious spirit of the times, manifest in the roman church. no longer do the stake, the sword, and the dismal horrors of the interdict figure as instruments for assuring conformity and submission to her dogmas. she is now content to rest her claims on herbeneficence in the past, as attested by noble and imperishable memorials of her solicitude for the poor and the ignorant, and in proclaiming the gospel without those ghastly coercives to its acceptance. surely such a change, however unpalatable to those who have been compelled to make it, is most welcome to the outside world at large. "always the same" is also, or should be, the device of the discredited herd whose spokesman mr. froude is so proud to be. in nothing has their historical character, as shown in the published literature of their [ ] cause up to , exhibited any sign of amelioration. it cannot be affected by the spirit and the lessons of the times. mendacity and a sort of judicial blindness seem to be the two most salient characteristics by which are to be distinguished these implacable foes and would-be robbers of human rights and liberty. but, gracious heavens! what can tempt mortals to incur this weight of infamy? wealth and power? to be (very improbably) a croesus or (still more improbably) a bonaparte, and to perish at the conventional age, and of vulgar disease, like both? turpitudes on the part of sane men, involving the sacrifice of the priceless attributes of humanity, can be rendered intelligible by the supreme temporal gains above indicated, but only if exemption from the common lot of mankind--in the shape of care, disease, and death--were accompaniments of those prizes. in favour of slavery, which has for so many centuries desolated the african family and blighted its every chance of indigenous progress--of slavery whose abolition our author so ostentatiously regrets--only one solitary permanent result, extending in every case over [ ] a natural human life, has been paraded by him as a respectable justification. at page , speaking of negroes met by him during a stroll which he took at mandeville, jamaica, he tells us:-- "the people had black faces; but even they had shaped their manners in the old english models. the men touched their hats respectfully (as they eminently did not in kingston and its environs). the women smiled and curtsied, and the children looked shy when one spoke to them. the name of slavery is a horror to us; but there must have been something human and kindly about it, too, when it left upon the character the marks of courtesy and good breeding"! alas for africa and the sufferings of her desolated millions, in view of so light-hearted an assessment as this! only think of the ages of outrage, misery, and slaughter--of the countless hecatombs that mammon is hereby absolved from having directly exacted, since the sufficing expiatory outcome of it all has been only "marks of courtesy and good breeding"! marks that are displayed, forsooth, by the survivors of the ghastly experiences or by [ ] their descendants! and yet, granting the appreciable ethical value of the hat-touching, the smirking and curtseyings of those blacks to persons whom they had no reason to suspect of unfriendliness, or whose white face they may in the white man's country have greeted with a civility perhaps only prudential, we fail to discover the necessity of the dreadful agency we have adverted to, for securing the results on manners which are so warmly commended. african explorers, from mungo park to livingstone and stanley, have all borne sufficient testimony to the world regarding the natural friendliness of the negro in his ancestral home, when not under the influence of suspicion, anger, or dread. it behoves us to repeat (for our detractor is a persistent repeater) that the cardinal dodge by which mr. froude and his few adherents expect to succeed in obtaining the reversal of the progress of the coloured population is by misrepresenting the elements, and their real attitude towards one another, of the sections composing the british west indian communities. everybody knows full well that englishmen, scotchmen, and irishmen (who are not officials), as [ ] well as germans, spaniards, italians, portuguese, and other nationalities, work in unbroken harmony and, more or less, prosper in these islands. these are no cherishers of any vain hankering after a state of things in which men felt not the infamy of living not only on the unpaid labour, but at the expense of the sufferings, the blood, and even the life of their fellow-men. these men, honourable by instinct and of independent spirit, depend on their own resources for self-advancement in the world--on their capital either of money in their pockets or of serviceable brains in their heads, energy in their limbs, and on these alone, either singly or more or less in combination. these reputable specimens of manhood have created homes dear to them in these favoured climes; and they, at any rate, being on the very best terms with all sections of the community in which their lot is cast, have a common cause as fellow-sufferers under the régime of mr. froude's official "birds of passage." the agitation in trinidad tells its own tale. there is not a single black man--though there should have been many--among the leaders of the movement for reform. nevertheless the honourable [ ] and truthful author of "the english in the west indies," in order to invent a plausible pretext for his sinister labours of love on behalf of the poor pro-slavery survivals, and despite his knowledge that sturdy britons are at the head of the agitation, coolly tells the world that it is a struggle to secure "negro domination." the further allegation of our author respecting the black man is curious and, of course, dismally prophetic. as the reader may perhaps recollect, it is to the effect that granting political power to the negroes as a body, equal in scope "to that claimed by us" (i.e., mr. froude and his friends), would certainly result in the use of these powers by the negroes to their own injury. and wherefore? if mr. froude professes to believe--what is a fact--that there is "no original or congenital difference of capacity" between the white and the african races, where is the consistency of his urging a contention which implies inferiority in natural shrewdness, as regards their own affairs, on the part of black men? does this blower of the two extremes of temperature in the same breath pretend that the average british voter is better informed, can see more clearly what is for his own advantage, [ ] is better able to assess the relative merits of persons to be entrusted with the spending of his taxes, and the general management of his interests? if mr. froude means all this, he is at issue not only with his own specific declaration to the contrary, but with facts of overwhelming weight and number showing precisely the reverse. we have personally had frequent opportunities of coming into contact, both in and out of england, with natives of great britain, not of the agricultural order alone, but very often of the artisan class, whose ignorance of the commonest matters was as dense as it was discreditable to the land of their birth and breeding. are these people included (on account of having his favourite sine quâ non of a fair skin) in the us of this apostle of skin-worship, in the indefeasible right to political power which is denied to blacks by reason, or rather non-reason, of their complexion? the fact is, that, judging by his own sentiments and those of his anglo-west indian friends, mr. froude calculated on producing an impression in favour of their discreditable views by purposely keeping out of sight the numerous european and other sufferers under the yoke [ ] which he sneers at seeing described by its proper appellation of "a degrading tyranny." the prescriptive unfavourable forecast of our author respecting political power in the hands of the blacks may, in our opinion, be hailed as a warrant for its bestowal by those in whose power that bestowal may be. as a pro-slavery prophecy, equally dismal and equally confident with the hundreds that preceded it, this new vaticination may safely be left to be practically dealt with by the race, victimized and maligned, whose real genius and character are purposely belied by those who expect to be gainers by the process. invested with political power, the negroes, mr. froude goes on to assure his readers, "will slide back into their old condition, and the chance will be gone of lifting them to the level to which we have no right to say they are incapable of rising." how touchingly sympathetic! how transcendently liberal and righteous! but, to speak the truth, is not this solicitude of our cynical defamer on our behalf, after all, a useless waste of emotion on his part? timeo danaos et dona ferentes.+ the tears of the crocodile are most copious in close view of the banquet on his prey. this [ ] reiterated twaddle of mr. froude, in futile and unseasonable echo of the congenial predictions of his predecessors in the same line, might be left to receive not only the answer of his own book to the selfsame talk of the slavers fifty years ago, but also that of the accumulated refutations which america has furnished for the last twenty-five years as to the retrograde tendency so falsely imputed. but, taking it as a serious contention, we find that it involves a suggestion that the according of electoral votes to citizens of a certain complexion would, per se and ipso facto, produce a revulsion and collapse of the entire prevailing organization and order of a civilized community. what talismanic virtue this prophet of evil attributes to a vote in the hand of a negro out of barbados, where for years the black man's vote has been operating, harmlessly enough, heaven knows, we cannot imagine. at all events, as sliding back on the part of a community is a matter which would require some appreciable time, however brief, let us hope that the authorities charged "to see that the state receive no detriment" would be vigilant enough and in time to arrest the evil and vindicate [ ] the efficiency of the civilized methods of self-preservation. our author concludes by another reference to chief justice reeves: "let british authority die away, and the average black nature, such as it now is, be left free to assert itself, there will be no more negroes like him in barbadoes or anywhere." how the dying away of british authority in a british colony is to come to pass, mr. froude does not condescend here explicitly to state. but we are left free to infer from the whole drift of "the english in the west indies" that it will come through the exodus en masse said to be threatened by his "anglo-west indians." mr. froude sympathetically justifies the disgust and exasperation of these reputable folk at the presence and progress of the race for whose freedom and ultimate elevation britain was so lavish of the wealth of her noblest intellects, besides paying the prodigious money-ransom of twenty million pounds sterling. with regard to our author's talk about "the average black nature, such as it now exists, being left free to assert itself," and the dire consequences therefrom to result, we can only feel pity at the desperate straits to [ ] which, in his search for a pretext for gratuitous slander, a man of our author's capacity has been so ignominiously reduced. all we can say to him with reference to this portion of his violent suppositions is that "the average black nature, such as it now exists," should not, in a civilized community, be left free to assert itself, any more than the average white, the average brown, the average red, or indeed any average colour of human nature whatsoever. as self-defence is the first law of nature, it has followed that every condition of organized society, however simple or primitive, is furnished with some recognized means of self-protection against the free assertion of itself by the average nature of any of its members. of course, if things should ever turn out according to mr. froude's desperate hypothesis, it may also happen that there will be no more negroes like mr. justice reeves in barbados. but the addition of the words "or anywhere" to the above statement is just another of those suppressions of the truth which, absolutely futile though they are, constitute the only means by which the policy he writes to promote can possibly be made to [ ] appear even tolerable. the assertion of our author, therefore, standing as it actually does, embracing the whole world, is nothing less than an audacious absurdity, for there stand the united states, the french and spanish islands--not to speak of the central and south american republics, mexico, and brazil--all thronged with black, mixed blood, and even half-breed high officials, staring him and the whole world in the face. the above noted suppression of the truth to the detriment of the obnoxious population recalls a passage wherein the suggestion of what is not the truth has been resorted to for the same purpose. at page we read: "the disproportion of the two races--always dangerously large--has increased with ever-gathering velocity since the emancipation. it is now beyond control on the old lines." the use of the expletive "dangerously," as suggestive of the truculence of the people to whom it refers, is critically allowable in view of the main intention of the author. but what shall we say of the suggestion contained in the very next sentence, which we have italicized? we are required by it to understand that in slavery-time the [ ] planters had some organized method, rendered impracticable by the emancipation, of checking, for their own personal safety, the growth of the coloured population. if we, in deference to the superior mental capacity of our author, admit that self-interest was no irresistible motive for promoting the growth of the human "property" on which their prosperity depended, we are yet at liberty to ask what was the nature of the "old lines" followed for controlling the increase under discussion. was it suffocation of the babes by means of sulphur fumes, the use of beetle-paste, or exposure on the banks of the caribbean rivers? in the later case history evidently lost a chance of self-repetition in the person of some leader like moses, the hebra-egyptian spartacus, arising to avenge and deliver his people. we now shall note how he proceeds to descant on slavery itself:--"slavery," says he, "was a survival from a social order which had passed away, and slavery could not be continued. it does not follow that per se it was a crime. the negroes who were sold to the dealers in the factories were most of them either slaves already to worse masters or were servi, servants [ ] in the old meaning of the word, or else criminals, servati or reserved from death. they would otherwise have been killed, and since the slave trade has been abolished, are again killed in the too celebrated customs...." slavery, as mr. froude and the rest of us are bound to discuss it at present, is by no means susceptible of the gloss which he has endeavoured, in the above extract, to put on it. the british nation, in , had to confront and deal with the only species of slavery which was then within the cognizance of public morals and practical politics. doubtless our author, learned and erudite as he is, would like to transport us to those patriarchal ages when, under theocratic decrees, the chosen people were authorized to purchase (not to kidnap) slaves, and keep them as an everlasting inheritance in their posterity. the slaves so purchased, we know, became members of the families to which their lot was attached, and were hedged in from cruel usage by distinct and salutary regulations. this is the only species of slavery which--with the addition of the old germanic self-enslavements and the generally prevailing ancient custom of pledging one's personal services [ ] in liquidation of indebtedness--can be covered by the singular verdict of noncriminality which our author has pronounced. he, of course, knows much better than we do what the condition of slaves was in greece as well as in rome. he knows, too, that the "wild and guilty phantasy that man could hold property in man," lost nothing of its guilt or its wildness with the lapse of time and the changes of circumstances which overtook and affected those reciprocal relations. every possibility of deterioration, every circumstance wherein man's fallen nature could revel in its worst inspirations, reached culmination at the period when the interference of the world, decreed by providence, was rendered imperative by the sufferings of the bondsmen. it is this crisis of the history of human enslavement that mr. froude must talk about, if he wishes to talk to any purpose on the subject at all. his scoffs at british "virtuous benevolence," and his imputation of ingratitude to the negro in respect of that self-same benevolence, do not refer to any theocratic, self-contracted, abstract, or idyllic condition of servitude. they pin his meaning down [ ] to that particular phase when slavery had become not only "the sum," but the very quintessence, "of all human villainies." at its then phase, slavery had culminated into being a menace, portentous and far encroaching, to not only the moral life but the very civilization of the higher types of the human family, so debasing and blighting were its effects on those who came into even tolerating contact with its details. the indescribable atrocities practised on the slaves, the deplorable sapping of even respectable principles in owners of both sexes--all these stood forth in their ineffable hideousness before the uncorrupted gaze of the moral heroes, sons of britain and america, and also of other countries, who, buckling on the armour of civilization and right, fought for the vindication of them both, through every stern vicissitude, and won the first grand, ever-memorable victory of , whereof we so recently celebrated the welcome jubilee! oh! it was a combat of archangels against the legions that mammon had banded together and incited to the conflict. but though it was sharp, clarkson, wilberforce, and the rest [ ] of that illustrious host of cultured, lofty-souled, just, merciful, and beneficent men, who were thus the saviours, as well as the servants, of society, yet have we seen it possible for an englishman of to-day to mouth against their memory the ineptitudes of their long-vanquished foes, and to flout the consecrated dead in their graves, as the boeotian did the living pericles in the market-place of athens! why waste words and time on this defamer of his own countrymen, who, on account of the material gain and the questionable martial glory of the conquest, eulogizes warren hastings, the viceregal plunderer of india, whilst, in the same breath, he denounces edmund burke for upholding the immutable principles of right and justice! these principles once, and indubitably now, so precious in their fullest integrity to the normal british conscience, must henceforth, say mr. froude and his fellow-colonialists, be scored off the moral code of britain, since they "do not pay" in tangible pelf, in self-aggrandisement, or in dazzling prestige. the statement that many negroes who were sold to the dealers in the factories were "slaves [ ] already to worse masters" is, in the face of facts which could not possibly have been unknown to him, a piece of very daring assertion. but this should excite no wonder, considering that precise and scrupulous accuracy would be fatal to the discreditable cause to which he so shamelessly proclaims his adhesion. as being familiar since early childhood with members of almost every tribe of africans (mainly from or arriving by way of the west coast) who were brought to our west indies, we are in a position to contradict the above assertion of mr. froude's, its unfaltering confidence notwithstanding. we have had the madingoes, foulahs, houssas, calvers, gallahs, karamenties, yorubas, aradas, cangas, kroos, timnehs, veis, eboes, mokoes, bibis, and congoes, as the most numerous and important of the tribal contribution of africa to the population of these colonies. now, from what we have intimately learned of these people (excepting the congoes, who always appeared to us an inferior tribe to all the others), we unhesitatingly deny that even three in ten of the whole number were ever slaves in their own country, in the sense of having been born under any organized [ ] system of servitude. the authentic records relating to the enslavement of africans, as a regular systematized traffic, do not date further back than five centuries ago. it is true that a great portion of ancient literature and many monuments bear distinct evidence, all the more impressive because frequently only casual, that, from the earliest ages, the africans had shared, in common with other less civilized peoples, the doom of having to furnish the menial and servile contingents of the more favoured sections of the human family. now, dating from, say, five hundred years ago, which was long indeed after the disappearance of the old leading empires of the world, we have (save and except in the case of arab incursionists into the eastern and northern coasts) no reliable authority for saying, or even for supposing, that the tribes of the african interior suffered from the molestations of professional man-hunters. it was the organization of the west coast slave traffic towards the close of the sixteenth century, and the extermination of the caribbean aborigines by spain, soon after columbus had discovered the western continent, which [ ] gave cohesion, system, impetus, and aggressiveness to the trade in african flesh and blood. then the factory dealers did not wait at their seaboard mart, as our author would have us suppose, for the human merchandize to be brought down to them. the auri sacra fames, the accursed craving for gain, was too imperious for that. from the atlantic border to as far inland as their emissaries could penetrate, their bribes, in every species of exchangeable commodities, were scattered among the rapacious chiefs on the river banks; while these latter, incited as well by native ferocity as by lust of gain, rushed forth to "make war" on their neighbours, and to kidnap, for sale to the white purchaser, every man, woman, and child they could capture amidst the nocturnal flames, confusion, tumult, and terror resulting from their unexpected irruption. that the poor people thus captured and sold into foreign on age were under worse masters than those under whom they, on being actually bought and becoming slaves, were doomed to experience all the atrocities that have thrilled with horror the conscience of the civilized christian world, is a statement of worse than [ ] childish absurdity. every one, except mr. froude and his fellow-apologists for slavery, knows that the cruelty of savage potentates is summary, uncalculating, and, therefore, merciful in its ebullitions. a head whisked off, brains dashed out, or some other short form of savage dispatch, is the preferential method of destruction. with our author's better masters, there was the long, dreary vicissitude, beginning from the horrors of the capture, and ending perhaps years upon years after, in some bush or under the lash of the driver. the intermediate stages of the starvation life of hunger, chains, and hideous exposure at the barancoon, the stowing away like herrings on board the noisome ship, the suffocation, the deck-sores wrought into the body by the attrition of the bonier parts of the system against the unyielding wood--all these, says mr. froude, were more tolerable than the swift doing away with life under an african master! under such, at all events, the care and comfort suitable to age were strictly provided for, and cheered the advanced years of the faithful bondsman. after a good deal of talk, having the same logical value, our author, in his enthusiasm for [ ] slavery, delivers himself thus: "for myself, i would rather be the slave of a shakespeare or a burghley, than the slave of a majority in the house of commons, or the slave of my own folly." of the four above specified alternatives of enslavement, it is to be regretted that temperament, or what is more likely, perhaps, self-interest, has driven him to accept the fourth, or the latter of the two deprecated yokes, his book being an irrefutable testimony to the fact. for, most assuredly, it has not been at the prompting of wisdom that a learned man of unquestionably brilliant talents and some measure of accorded fame could have prostituted those talents and tarnished that fame by condescending to be the literary spokesman of the set for whose miserable benefit he recommends the statesmen of his country to perjure and compromise themselves, regardless of inevitable consequences, which the value of the sectional satisfaction to be thereby given would but very poorly compensate. possibly a house of commons majority, whom this dermatophilist evidently rates far lower than his "anglo-west indians," might, if he were their slave, have protected their own self- [ ] respect by restraining him from vicariously scandalizing them by his effusions. after this curious boast about his preferences as a hypothetic bondsman, mr. froude proceeds gravely to inform his readers that "there may be authority yet not slavery; a soldier is not a slave, a wife is not a slave..." and he continues, with a view of utilizing these platitudes against the obnoxious negro, by telling us that persons sustaining the above specified and similar relations "may not live by their own wills, or emancipate themselves at their own pleasure from positions in which nature has placed them, or into which they have themselves voluntarily entered. the negroes of the west indies are children, and not yet disobedient children.... if you enforce self-government upon them when they are not asking for it, you may ... wilfully drive them back into the condition of their ancestors, from which the slave-trade was the beginning of their emancipation."! the words which we have signalized by italics in the above extract could have been conceived only by a bigot--such an atrocious sentiment being possible only as the product of mind or morals [ ] wrenched hopelessly out of normal action. all the remainder of this hashing up of pointless commonplaces has for its double object a suggestio falsi against us negroes as a body, and a diverting of attention, as we have proved before, from the numerous british claimants of reform, whose personality mr. froude and his friends would keep out of view, provided their crafty policy has the result of effectually repressing the hitherto irrepressible, and, as such, to the "anglo-west indian," truly detestable negro. notes . +translation: "i fear the greeks even when they bear gifts." book iii: west indian confederation [ ] in heedless formulation of his reasons, if such they should be termed, for urging tooth and nail the non-according of reform to the crown-governed colonies, our author puts forth this dogmatic deliverance (p. ):-- "a west indian self-governing dominion is possible only with a full negro vote. if the whites are to combine, so will the blacks. it will be a rule by the blacks and for the blacks." that a constitution for any of our diversely populated colonies which may be fit for it is possible only with "a full negro vote" (to the extent within the competence of such voting), goes without saying, as must be the case with every section of the queen's subjects eligible for the franchise. the duly qualified spaniard, [ ] coolie, portuguese, or man of any other non-british race, will each thus have a vote, the same as every englishman or any other briton. why, then, should the vote of the negro be so especially a bugbear? it is because the negro is the game which our political sportsman is in full chase of, and determined to hunt down at any cost. granted, however, for the sake of argument, that black voters should preponderate at any election, what then? we are gravely told by this latter-day balaam that "if the whites are to combine, so will the blacks," but he does not say for what purpose. his sentence, therefore, may be legitimately constructed in full for him in the only sense which is applicable to the mutual relations actually existing between those two directly specified sections of british subjects who he would fain have the world believe live in a state of active hostility:--"if the whites are to combine for the promotion of the general welfare, as many of the foremost of them have done before and are doing now, so will the blacks also combine in the support of such whites, and as staunch auxiliaries equally interested in the furtherance of the same ameliorative [ ] objects." except in the sense embodied in the foregoing sentence, we cannot, in these days, conceive with what intent persons of one section should so specially combine as to compel combination on the part of persons of any other. the further statement that a confederation having a full black voting-power would be a government "by the blacks and for the blacks," is the logical converse of the now obsolete doctrine of mr. froude's inspirers--"a government by whites should be only for whites." but this formula, however strenuously insisted on by those who gave it shape, could never, since even before three decades from the first introduction of african slaves, be thoroughly put in practice, so completely had circumstances beyond man's devising or control compelled the altering of men's minds and methods with regard to the new interests which had irresistibly forced themselves into importance as vital items in political arrangements. nowadays, therefore, that mr. froude should desire to create a state of feeling which had, and could have had, no existence with regard to the common interests of the inhabitants for upwards of two full centuries, is [ ] evidently an excess of confidence which can only be truly described as amazing. but, after all, what does our author mean by the words "a government by the blacks?" are we to understand him as suggesting that voting by black electors would be synonymous with electing black representatives? if so, he has clearly to learn much more than he has shown that he lacks, in order to understand and appreciate the vital influences at work in west indian affairs. undoubtedly, being the spokesman of few who (secretly) avow themselves to be particularly hostile to ethiopians, he has done no more than reproduce their sentiments. for, conscious, as these hankerers after the old "institutions" are, of being utterly ineligible for the furthering of modern progressive ideas, they revenge themselves for their supersession on everybody and everything, save and except their own arrogant stolidity. white individuals who have part and lot in the various colonies, with their hearts and feelings swayed by affections natural to their birth and earliest associations; and whites who have come to think the land of their adoption as dear to themselves as the land of their birth, entertain no such dread of [ ] their fellow-citizens of any other section, whom they estimate according to intelligence and probity, and not according to any accident of exterior physique. every intelligent black is as shrewd regarding his own interests as our author himself would be regarding his in the following hypothetical case: some fine day, being a youth and a bachelor, he gets wedded, sets up an establishment, and becomes the owner of a clipper yacht. for his own service in the above circumstances we give him the credit to believe that, on the persons specified below applying among others to him for employment, as chamber-maid and house-servant, and also as hands for the vessel, he would, in preference to any ordinarily recommended white applicants, at once engage the two black servant-girls at president churchill's in dominica, the droghermen there as able seamen, and as cabin-boy the lad amongst them whose precocious marine skill he has so warmly and justly extolled. it is not because all these persons are black, but because of the soul-consciousness of the selector, that they each (were they even blue) had a title to preferential consideration, his experience and sense of fitness being [ ] their most effectual supporters. similarly, the negro voter would elect representatives whom he knew he could trust for competency in the management of his affairs, and not persons whose sole recommendation to him would be the possession of the same kind of skin. nor, from what we know of matters in the west indies, do we believe that any white man of the class we have eulogized would hesitate to give his warmest suffrage to any black candidate who he knew would be a fitting representative of his interests. we could give examples from almost every west indian island of white and coloured men who would be indiscriminately chosen as their candidate by either section. but the enumeration is needless, as the fact of the existence of such men is too notorious to require proof. mr. froude states plainly enough (p. ) that, whereas a whole thousand years were needed to train and discipline the anglo-saxon race, yet "european government, european instruction, continued steadily till his natural tendencies are superseded by a higher instinct, may shorten the probation period of the negro." let it be supposed that this period of probation [ ] for the negro should extend, under such exceptionally favourable circumstances, to any period less than that which is alleged to have been needed by the anglo-saxon to attain his political manhood--what then are the prospects held out by mr. froude to us and our posterity on our mastering the training and discipline which he specially recommends for blacks? our author, in view, doubtless, of the rapidity of our onward progress, and indeed our actual advancement in every respect, thus answers (pp. - ):--"let a generation or two pass by and carry away with them the old traditions, and an english governor-general will be found presiding over a black council, delivering the speeches made for him by a black prime minister; and how long could this endure? no english gentleman would consent to occupy so absurd a situation." and again, more emphatically, on the same point (p. ):--"no englishman, not even a bankrupt peer, would consent to occupy such position; the blacks themselves would despise him if he did; and if the governor is to be one of their own race and colour, how long would such a connection endure?" [ ] it is plainly to be seen from the above two extracts that the political ethics of our author, being based on race and colour exclusively, would admit of no conceivable chance of real elevation to any descendant of africa, who, being ethiopian, could not possibly change his skin. the "old traditions" which mr. froude supposes to be carried away by his hypothetical (white) generations who have "passed by," we readily infer from his language, rendered impossible such incarnations of political absurdity as those he depicts. but what should be thought of the sense, if not indeed the sanity, of a grave political teacher who prescribes "european government" and "european education" as the specifics to qualify the negro for political emancipation, and who, when these qualifications are conspicuously mastered by the negro who has undergone the training, refuses him the prize, because he is a negro? we see further that, in spite of being fit for election to council, and even to be prime ministers competent to indite governors' messages, the pigment under our epidermis dooms us to eventual disappointment and a life-long condition of contempt. even so is it [ ] desired by mr. froude and his clients, and not without a spice of piquancy is their opinion that for a white ruler to preside and rule over and accept the best assistance of coloured men, qualified as above stated, would be a self-degradation too unspeakable for toleration by any englishman--"even a bankrupt peer." unfortunately for mr. froude, we can point him to page of this his very book, where, speaking of grenada and deprecating the notion of its official abandonment, our author says:-- "otherwise they [negroes] were quiet fellows, and if the politicians would only let them alone, they would be perfectly contented, and might eventually, if wisely managed, come to some good.... black the island was, and black it would remain. the conditions were never likely to arise which would bring back a european population; but a governor who was a sensible man, who would reside and use his natural influence, could manage it with perfect ease." here, then, we see that the governor of an entirely black population may be a sensible man, and yet hold the post. our author, indeed, gives the blacks over whom this sensible governor would hold rule as being in number [ ] just , souls; and we are therefore bound to accept the implied suggestion that the dishonour of holding supremacy over persons of the odious colour begins just as their number begins to count onward from , ! there is quite enough in the above verbal vagaries of our philosopher to provoke a volume of comment. but we must pass on to further clauses of this precious paragraph. mr. froude's talent for eating his own words never had a more striking illustration than here, in his denial of the utility of native experience as the safest guide a governor could have in the administration of colonial affairs. at page he says:--"among the public servants of great britain there are persons always to be found fit and willing for posts of honour and difficulty, if a sincere effort be made to find them." a post of honour and difficulty, we and all other persons in the british dominions had all along understood was regarded as such in the case of functionaries called upon to contend with adverse forces in the accomplishment of great ends conceived by their superiors. but we find that, according to mr. froude, all the credit that has hitherto redounded to those [ ] who had succeeded in such tasks has been in reality nothing more than a gilding over of disgrace, whenever the exertions of such officials had been put forth amongst persons not wearing a european epidermis. the extension of british influence and dominion over regions inhabited by races not white is therefore, on the part of those who promote it, a perverse opening of arenas for the humiliation and disgrace of british gentlemen, nay, even of those titled members of the "black sheep" family--bankrupt peers! as we have seen, however, ample contradiction and refutation have been considerately furnished by the same objector in this same volume, as in his praises of the governor just quoted. the cavil of mr. froude about english gentlemen reading messages penned by black prime ministers applies with double force to english barristers (who are gentlemen by statute) receiving the law from the lips of black judges. for all that, however, an emergency arose so pressing as to compel even the colonialism of barbados to practically and completely refute this doctrine, by praying for, and submitting with gratitude to, the supreme headship of a [ ] man of the race which our author so finically depreciates. in addition it may be observed that for a governor to even consult his prime minister in the matter of preparing his messages might conceivably be optional, whilst it is obligatory on all barristers, whether english or otherwise, to defer to the judge's interpretation of the law in every case--appeal afterwards being the only remedy. as to the dictum that "the two races are not equal and will not blend," it is open to the fatal objection that, having himself proved, with sympathizing pathos, how the west indies are now well-nigh denuded of their anglo-saxon inhabitants, mr. froude would have us also understand that the miserable remnant who still complainingly inhabit those islands must, by doing violence to the understanding, be taken as the whole of the world-pervading anglo-saxon family. the negroes of the west indies number a good deal more than two million souls. does this suggester of extravagances mean that the prejudices and vain conceit of the few dozens whom he champions should be made to override and overbear, in political arrangements, the serious and solid interests of so many [ ] hundreds of thousands? that "the two races are not equal" is a statement which no sane man would dispute, but acquiescence in its truth involves also a distinct understanding that the word race, as applied in the present case by our author, is a simple accommodation of terms--a fashion of speech having a very restricted meaning in this serious discussion. the anglo-saxon race pervades great britain, its cradle, and the greater britain extending almost all over the face of the earth, which is the arena of its activities and marvellous achievements. to tell us, therefore, as mr. froude does, that the handful of malcontents whose unrespectable grievance he holds up to public sympathy represents the anglo-saxon race, is a grotesque façon de parler. taking our author's "anglo-west indians" and the people of ethiopian descent respectively, it would not be too much to assert, nor in anywise difficult to prove by facts and figures, that for every competent individual of the former section in active civilized employments, the coloured section can put forward at least twenty thoroughly competent rivals. yet are these latter the people whom the classic mr. [ ] froude wishes to be immolated, root and branch, in all their highest and dearest interests, in order to secure the maintenance of "old traditions" which, he tells us, guaranteed for the dominant cuticle the sacrifice of the happiness of down-trodden thousands! referring to his hypothetical confederation with its black officeholders, our author scornfully asks:-- "and how long would this endure?" the answer must be that, granting the existence of such a state of things, its duration would be not more nor less than under white functionaries. for according to himself (p. ): "there is no original or congenital difference of capacity between" the white and black races, and "with the same chances and the same treatment, ... distinguished men would be produced equally from both races." if, therefore, the black ministers whose hue he so much despises do possess the training and influence rendering them eligible and securing their election to the situations we are considering, it must follow that their tenure of office would be of equal duration with that of individuals of the white race under the same conditions. not content with making himself [ ] the mouthpiece of english gentlemen in this matter, our author, with characteristic hardihood, obtrudes himself into the same post on behalf of negroes; saying that, in the event of even a bankrupt peer accepting the situation of governor-general over them, "the blacks themselves would despise him"! mr. froude may pertinently be asked here the source whence he derived his certainty on this point, inasmuch as it is absolutely at variance with all that is sensible and natural; for surely it is both foolish and monstrous to suppose that educated men would infer the degradation of any one from the fact of such a one consenting to govern and co-operate with themselves for their own welfare. he further asks on the same subject:-- "and if the governor is to be one of their own race and colour, how long could such a connection endure?" our answer must be the same as with regard to the duration of the black council and black prime minister carrying out the government under the same conditions. it must be regretted that no indication in his book, so far as it professes to deal with facts and with [ ] persons not within the circle of his clients, would justify a belief that its wanton misstatements have filtrated through a mind entitled to declare, with the authority of self-consciousness, what a gentleman would or would not do under given circumstances. in reiteration of his favourite doctrine of the antagonism between the black and white races, our author continues on the same page to say:-- "no one, i presume, would advise that the whites of the island should govern. the relations between the two populations are too embittered, and equality once established by law, the exclusive privilege of colour over colour cannot be restored. while slavery continued, the whites ruled effectively and economically; the blacks are now as they." as far as could possibly be endeavoured, every proof has been crowded into this book in refutation of this favourite allegation of mr. froude's. it is only an idle waste of time to be thus harping on his colour topic. no one can deserve to govern simply because he is white, and no one is bound to be subject simply because he is black. the whole of west [ ] indian history, even after the advent of the attorney-class, proves this, in spite of the efforts to secure exclusive white domination at a time when crude political power might have secured it. "the relations between the two populations are too embittered," says mr. froude. no doubt his talk on this point would be true, had any such skin-dominancy as he contemplates been officially established; but as at present most officials are appointed (locally at least) according to their merit, and not to their epidermis, nothing is known of the embittered relations so constantly dinned into our ears. whatever bitterness exists is in the minds of those gentry who would like to be dominant on the cheap condition of showing a simple bodily accident erected by themselves into an evidence and proof of superiority. "the exclusive privilege of colour over colour cannot be restored." never in the history of the british west indies--must we again state--was there any law or usage establishing superiority in privileges for any section of the community on account of colour. this statement of fact is also and again an answer to, and refutation of, the succeeding allegation [ ] that, "while slavery continued, the whites ruled effectively and economically." it will be yet more clearly shown in a later part of this essay that during slavery, in fact for upwards of two centuries after its introduction, the west indies were ruled by slave-owners, who happened to be of all colours, the means of purchasing slaves and having a plantation being the one exclusive consideration in the case. it is, therefore, contrary to fact to represent the whites exclusively as ruling, and the blacks indiscriminately as subject. he goes on to say, "there are two classes in the community; their interests are opposite as they are now understood." as regards the above, mr. froude's attention may be called to the fact that classification in no department of science has ever been based on colour, but on relative affinity in certain salient qualities. to use his own figure, no horse or dog is more or less a horse or dog because it happens to be white or black. no teacher marshals his pupils into classes according to any outward physical distinction, but according to intellectual approximation. in like manner there has been wealth for hundreds of men of ethiopic origin, [ ] and poverty for hundreds of men of caucasian origin, and the reverse in both cases. we have, therefore, had hundreds of black as well as white men who, under providential dispensation, belonged to the class, rich men; while, on the other hand, we have had hundreds of white men who, under providential dispensation, belonged to the class, poor men. similarly, in the composition of a free mixed community, we have hundreds of both races belonging to the class, competent and eligible; and hundreds of both races belonging to the class, incompetent and ineligible: to both of which classes all possible colours might belong. it is from the first mentioned that are selected those who are to bear the rule, to which the latter class is, in the very nature of things, bound to be subject. there is no government by reason merely of skins. the diversity of individual intelligence and circumstances is large enough to embrace the possibility of even children being, in emergencies, the most competent influencers of opinion and action. but let us analyse this matter for just a while more. the fatal objection to all mr. froude's advocacy of colour-domination is that [ ] it is futile from being morally unreasonable. in view of the natural and absolute impossibility of reviving the same external conditions under which the inordinate deference and submission to white persons were both logically and inevitably engendered and maintained, his efforts to talk people into a frame of mind favourable to his views on this subject are but a melancholy waste of well-turned sentences. man's estimate of his fellow-man has not and never can have any other standard, save and except what is the outcome of actual circumstances influencing his sentiment. in the primitive ages, when the fruits of the earth formed the absorbing object of attention and interest, the men most distinguished for successful culture of the soil enjoyed, as a consequence, a larger share than others of popular admiration and esteem. similarly, among nomadic tribes, the hunters whose courage coped victoriously with the wild and ferocious denizens of the forest became the idols of those who witnessed and were preserved by such sylvan exploits. when men came at length to venture in ships over the trackless deep in pursuit of commerce and its gains, the mariner grew important in [ ] public estimation. the pursuit of commerce and its gains led naturally to the possession of wealth. this, from the quasi-omnipotence with which it invests men--enabling them not only to command the best energies, but also, in many cases, to subvert the very principles of their fellows--has, in the vast majority of cases, an overpowering sway on human opinion: a sway that will endure till the millennium shall have secured for the righteous alone the sovereignty of the world. likewise, as cities were founded and constitutions established, those who were foremost as defenders of the national interests, on the field of bodily conflict or in the intellectual arena, became in the eyes of their contemporaries worthiest of appreciation--and so on of other circumstances through which particular personal distinctions created claims to preference. in the special case of the negroes kidnapped out of africa into foreign bondage, the crowning item in their assessment of their alien enslavers was the utter superiority, over their most redoubtable "big men," which those enslavers displayed. they actually subjugated and put in chains, like the commonest peasants, native [ ] potentates at whose very names even the warriorhood of their tribes had been wont to blench. but far surpassing even this in awful effect was the doom meted out to the bush-handlers, the medicine-men, the rain-compellers, erewhile so inscrutably potent for working out the bliss or the bale of friend or enemy. "lo, from no mountain-top, from no ceiba-hollow in the forest recesses, has issued any interposing sign, any avenging portent, to vindicate the spirit of darkness so foully outraged in the hitherto inviolate person of his chosen minister! verily, even the powers of the midnight are impotent against these invaders from beyond the mighty salt-water! here, huddled together in confused, hopeless misery and ruin, lie, fettered and prostrate, even priest as well as potentate, undistinguishable victims of crude, unblenching violence, with its climax of nefarious sacrilege. we, common mortals, therefore, can hope for no deliverance from, or even succour in, the woful plight thus dismally contrived for us all by the fair-skinned race who have now become our masters." such was naturally the train of thought that ran through those forlorn bosoms. the formidable death-dealing guns [ ] of the invaders, the ships which had brought them to the african shores, and much besides in startling contrast to their own condition of utter helplessness, the africans at once interpreted to themselves as the manifestation and inherent attributes of beings of a higher order than man. their skin, too, the difference whereof from their own had been accentuated by many calamitous incidents, was hit upon as the reason of so crushing an ascendency. white skin therefore became, in those disconsolate eyes, the symbol of fearful irresistible power: which impression was not at all weakened afterwards by the ineffable atrocities of the "middle-passage." backed ultimately by their absolute and irresponsible masterhood at home over the deported blacks, the european abductors could easily render permanent in the minds of their captives the abject terror struck into them by the enormities of which they had been the victims. now, the impressions we touched upon before bringing forward the case of the negro slaves were mainly produced by pleasurable circumstances. but of a contrary nature and much more deeply graven are those sentiments which are the outcome of hopeless terror [ ] and pain. for whilst impressions of the former character glide into the consciousness through accesses no less normal than agreeable, the infusion of fear by means of bodily suffering is a process too violent to be forgotten by minds tortured and strained to unnatural tension thereby. such tension, oft-recurrent and scarcely endurable, leaves behind it recollections which are in themselves a source of sadness. but time, favoured by a succession of pleasurable experiences, is a sovereign anodyne to remembrances of this poignant class. no wonder, then, from our foregoing detail of facts, that whiteness of skin was both redoubted and tremblingly crouched to by negroes on whom europeans had wrought such unspeakable calamities. time, however, and the action of circumstances, especially in countries subject to catholic dominion, soon began to modify the conditions under which this sentiment of terror had been maintained, and, with those conditions, the very sentiment itself. for it was not long in the life of many of the expatriated africans before numbers of their own race obtained freedom, and, eventually, wealth sufficient for purchasing black slaves on their [ ] own account. in other respects, too (outwardly at least), the prosperous career of such individual blacks could not fail to induce a revulsion of thought, whereby the attribution of unapproachable powers exclusively to the whites became a matter earnestly reconsidered by the africans. centuries of such reconsideration have produced the natural result in the west indies. with the daily competition in intelligence, refinement, and social and moral distinction, which time and events have brought about between individuals of the two races, nothing, surely, has resulted, nor has even been indicated, to re-infuse the ancient colour-dread into minds which had formerly been forced to entertain it; and still less to engender it in bosoms to which such a feeling cannot, in the very nature of things, be an inborn emotion. now, can mr. froude show us by what process he would be able to infuse in the soul of an entire population a sentiment which is both unnatural and beyond compulsion? the foregoing remarks roughly apply to preeminence given to outward distinction, and the conditions under which mainly it impresses and is accepted by men not yet arrived at the [ ] essentially intellectual stage. in the spiritual domain the conditions have ever been quite different. a belief in the supernatural being inborn in man, the professors of knowledge and powers beyond natural attainment were by common consent accorded a distinct and superior consideration, deemed proper to the sacredness of their progression. hence the supremacy of the priestly caste in every age and country of the world. potentate as well as peasant have bowed in reverence before it, as representing and declaring with authority the counsels of that being whom all, priest, potentate and peasant alike, acknowledge and adore, each according to the measure of his inward illumination. book iii: the negro as worker [ ] the laziness, the incurable idleness, of the negro, was, both immediately before their emancipation in , and for long years after that event, the cuckoo-cry of their white detractors. it was laziness, pure and simple, which hindered the negro from exhausting himself under a tropical sun, toiling at starvation wages to ensure for his quondam master the means of being an idler himself, with the additional luxury of rolling in easily come-by wealth. within the last twenty years, however, the history of the black man, both in the west indies and, better still, in the united states of america, has been a succession of achievements which have converted the charge of laziness into a baseless and absurd calumny. the repetition of the charge referred to is, in these [ ] waning days of the nineteenth century, a discredited anachronism, which, however, has no deterring features for mr. froude. as the running down of the negro was his cue, he went in boldly for the game, with what result we shall presently see. at page , our author, speaking of the negro garden-farms in jamaica, says:-- "the male proprietors were lounging about smoking. their wives, as it was market-day, were tramping into kingston with their baskets on their heads. we met them literally in thousands, all merry and light-hearted, their little ones with little baskets trudging at their side. of the lords of the creation we saw, perhaps, one to each hundred of the women, and he would be riding on mule or donkey, pipe in mouth and carrying nothing. he would be generally sulky too, while the ladies, young and old, had a civil word for us, and curtsied under their loads. decidedly if there is to be a black constitution i will give my vote to the women." to the above direct imputation of indolence, heartlessness, and moroseness, mr. froude appends the following remarks on other moral characteristics of certain sable peasants at [ ] mandeville, jamaica, given on the authority of a police official, who, our author says, described them as-- "good-humoured, but not universally honest. they stole cattle, and would not give evidence against each other. if brought into court, they held a pebble in their mouth, being under the impression that when they were so provided, perjury did not count. their education was only skin-deep, and the schools which the government provided had not touched their characters at all." but how could the education so provided be otherwise than futile when the administration of its details is entirely in the hands of persons unsympathizing with and utterly despising the negro? but of this more anon and elsewhere. we resume mr. froude's evidence respecting the black peasantry. our author proceeds to admit, on the same subject, that his informant's duties (as a police official) "brought him in contact with the unfavourable specimens." he adds:-- "i received a far pleasanter impression from a moravian minister.... i was particularly glad to see this gentleman, for of the moravians [ ] every one had spoken well to me. he was not the least enthusiastic about his poor black sheep, but he said that if they were not better than the average english labourer, he did not think them worse. they were called idle; they would work well enough if they had fair wages and if the wages were paid regularly; but what could be expected when women servants had but three shillings a week and found themselves, when the men had but a shilling a day and the pay was kept in arrear in order that if they came late to work, or if they came irregularly, it may be kept back or cut down to what the employer choose to give? under such conditions any man of any colour would prefer to work for himself if he had a garden, or would be idle if he had none." take, again, the following extract regarding the heroism of the emigrants to the canal:-- "i walked forward" (on the steamer bound to jamaica), "after we had done talking. we had five hundred of the poor creatures on their way to the darien pandemonium. the vessel was rolling with a heavy beam sea. i found the whole mass of them reduced to the condition of the pigs who used to occupy the fore decks on the cork and bristol packets. they were [ ] lying in a confused heap together, helpless, miserable, without consciousness, apparently, save a sense in each that he was wretched. unfortunate brothers-in-law! following the laws of political economy, and carrying their labour to the dearest market, where, before a year was out, half of them were to die. they had souls, too, some of them, and honest and kindly hearts." it surely is refreshing to read the revelation of his first learning of the possession of a soul by a fellow-human being, thus artlessly described by one who is said to be an ex-parson. but piquancy is mr. froude's strong point, whatever else he may be found wanting in. still, apart from mr. froude's direct testimony to the fact that from year to year, during a long series of years, there has been a continuous, scarcely ever interrupted emigration of negroes to the spanish mainland, in search of work for a sufficing livelihood for themselves and their families--and that in the teeth of physical danger, pestilence, and death--there would be enough indirect exoneration of the black man from that indictment in the wail of mr. froude and his friends regarding the alarming absorption of the lands of grenada [ ] and trinidad by sable proprietors. land cannot be bought without money, nor can money be possessed except through labour, and the fact that so many tens of thousand blacks are now the happy owners of the soil whereon, in the days so bitterly regretted by our author, their forefathers' tears, nay, very hearts' blood, had been caused to flow, ought to silence for ever an accusation, which, were it even true, would be futile, and, being false, is worse than disgraceful, coming from the lips of the eumolpids who would fain impose a not-to-be-questioned yoke on us poor helots of ethiopia. it is said that lying is the vice of slaves; but the ethics of west indian would-be mastership assert, on its behalf, that they alone should enjoy the privilege of resorting to misrepresentation to give colour, if not solidity, to their pretensions. book iii: religion for negroes [ ] mr. froude's passing on from matters secular to matters spiritual and sacred was a transition to be expected in the course of the grave and complicated discussion which he had volunteered to initiate. it was, therefore, not without curiosity that his views in the direction above indicated were sought for and earnestly scrutinized by us. but worse than in his treatment of purely mundane subjects, his attitude here is marked by a nonchalant levity which excites our wonder that even he should have touched upon the spiritual side of his thesis at all. the idea of the dove sent forth from the ark fluttering over the heaving swells of the deluge, in vain endeavour to secure a rest for the soles of its feet, represents not inaptly the unfortunate predicament of his spirit with regard to a solid [ ] faith on which to repose amid the surges of doubt by which it is so evidently beset. yet although this is his obvious plight with regard to a satisfying belief, he nevertheless undertakes, with characteristic confidence, to suggest a creed for the moralization of west indian negroes. his language is:-- "a religion, at any rate, which will keep the west indian blacks from falling back into devil-worship is still to seek. in spite of the priests, child-murder and cannibalism have re-appeared in hayti, but without them things might have been much worse than they are, and the preservation of white authority and influence in any form at all may be better than none." we discern in the foregoing citation the exercise of a charity that is unquestionably born of fetish-worship, which, whether it be obeah generally, or restricted to a mere human skin, can be so powerful an agent in the formation and retention of beliefs. hence we see that our philosopher relies here, in the domain of morals and spiritual ethics, on a white skin as implicitly as he does on its sovereign potency in secular politics. the curiousness of the matter lies mainly in its application to natives [ ] of hayti, of all people in the world. as a matter of fact we have had our author declaring as follows, in climax to his oft-repeated predictions about west indian negroes degenerating into the condition of their fellow-negroes in the "black republic" (p. ):-- "were it worth while, one might draw a picture of an english governor, with a black parliament and a black ministry, recommending, by advice of his constitutional ministers, some measure like the haytian land law." now, as the west indies degenerating into so many white-folk-detesting haytis, under our prophet's dreaded supremacy of the blacks, is the burden of his book; and as the land law in question distinctly forbids the owning by any white person of even one inch of the soil of the republic, it might, but for the above explanation, have seemed unaccountable, in view of the implacable distrust, not to say hatred, which this stern prohibition so clearly discloses, that our author should, nevertheless, rely on the efficacy of white authority and influence over haytians. in continuation of his religious suggestions, he goes on to descant upon slavery in the [ ] fashion which we have elsewhere noticed, but it may still be proper to add a word or two here regarding this particular disquisition of his. this we are happy in being able to do under the guidance of an anterior and more reliable exponent of ecclesiastical as well as secular obedience on the part of all free and enlightened men in the present epoch of the world's history:-- "dogma and descent, potential twin which erst could rein submissive millions in, are now spent forces on the eddying surge of thought enfranchised. agencies emerge unhampered by the incubus of dread which cramped men's hearts and clogged their onward tread. dynasty, prescription! spectral in these days when science points to thought its surest ways, and men who scorn obedience when not free demand the logic of authority! the day of manhood to the world is here, and ancient homage waxes faint and drear. . . . . . . vision of rapture! see salvation's plan 'tis serving god through ceaseless toil for man!" the lines above quoted are by a west indian negro, and explain in very concise form the attitude of the educated african mind [ ] with reference to the matters they deal with. mr. froude is free to perceive that no special religion patched up from obsolete creeds could be acceptable to those with whose sentiments the thoughts of the writer just quoted are in true racial unison. it is preposterous to expect that the same superstition regarding skin ascendency, which is now so markedly played out in our colonies in temporal matters, could have any weight whatsoever in matters so momentous as morals and religion. but granting even the possibility of any code of worldly ethics or of religion being acceptable on the dermal score so strenuously insisted on by him, it is to be feared that, through sheer respect for the fitness of things, the intelligent negro in search of guidance in faith and morals would fail to recognize in our author a guide, philosopher, and friend, to be followed without the most painful misgivings. the catholic and the dissenting churches which have done so much for the temporal and spiritual advancement of the negro, in spite of hindrance and active persecution wherever these were possible, are, so far as is visible, maintaining their hold on the adhesion of those who belong to them. [ ] and it cannot be pretended that, among enlightened africans as compared with other enlightened people, there have been more grievous failings off from the scriptural standard of deportment. possible it certainly is that considerations akin to, or even identical with, those relied upon by mr. froude might, on the first reception of christianity in their exile, have operated effectually upon the minds of the children of africa. at that time the evangelizers whose converts they so readily became possessed the recommendation of belonging to the dominant caste. therefore, with the humility proper to their forlorn condition, the poor bondsmen requited with intense gratitude such beneficent interest on their behalf, as a condescension to which people in their hapless situation could have had no right. but for many long years, the distinction whether of temporal or of spiritual superiority has ceased to be the monopoly of any particular class. the master and employer has for far more than a century and a half been often represented in the west indies by some born african or his descendant; and so also has the teacher and preacher. it is not too much to say that [ ] the behaviour of the liberated slaves throughout the british antilles, as well as the deportment of the manumitted four million slaves of the southern united states later on, bore glorious testimony to the humanizing effects which the religion of charity, clutched at and grasped in fragments, and understood with childlike incompleteness, had produced within those suffering bosoms. nothing has occurred to call for a remodelling of the ordinary moral and spiritual machinery for the special behoof of negroes. religion, as understood by the best of men, is purely a matter of feeling and action between man and man--the doing unto others as we would they should do unto us; and any creed or any doctrine which directly or indirectly subverts or even weakens this basis is in itself a danger to the highest welfare of mankind. the simple conventional faith in god, in jesus, and in a future state, however modified nowadays, has still a vitality which can restrain and ennoble its votaries, provided it be inculcated and received in a befitting spirit. our critic, in the plenitude of his familiarity with such matters, confidently asks:-- [ ] "who is now made wretched by the fear of hell?" possibly the belief in the material hell, the decadence of which he here triumphantly assumes to be so general, may have considerably diminished; but experience has shown that, with the advance of refinement, there is a concurrent growth in the intensity of moral sensibility, whereby the waning terrors of a future material hell are more than replaced by the agonies of a conscience self-convicted of wilful violation of the right. the same simple faith has, in its practical results, been rich in the records of the humble whom it has exalted; of the poor to whom it has been better than wealth; of the rich whose stewardship of worldly prosperity it has sanctified; of the timid whom it has rendered bold; and of the valiant whom it has raised to a divine heroism--in fine, of miracles of transformation that have impelled to higher and nobler tendencies and uses the powers and gifts inherited or acquired by man in his natural state. they who possess this faith, and cherish it as a priceless possession, may calmly oppose to the philosophic reasoning against the existence of [ ] a deity and the rationalness of entreating him in prayer, the simple and sufficient declaration, "i believe." normal-minded men, sensible of the limitations of human faculties, never aspire to be wise beyond what is revealed. whatever might exist beyond the grave is, so far as man and man in their mutual relations are concerned, not a subject that discussion can affect or speculation unravel. to believers it cannot matter whether the sermon on the mount embodies or does not embody the quality of ethics that the esoteric votaries of mr. froude's "new creed" do accept or even can tolerate. under the old creed man's sense of duty kindled in sympathy towards his brother, urging him to achieve by self-sacrifice every possibility of beneficence; hence the old creed insured an inward joy as well as "the peace which passeth all understanding." there can be no room for desiring left, when receptiveness of blessings overflows; and it is the worthiest direction of human energy to secure for others that fulness of fruition. is not duty the first, the highest item of moral consciousness; and is not promoting, according to our best ability, the welfare of our fellow creatures, the first and [ ] most urgent call of human duty? can the urgency of such responsibility ever cease but with the capacity, on our own or on our brother's part, to do or be done by respectively? contemptuously ignoring his share of this solemn responsibility--solemn, whether regarded from a religious or a purely secular point of view--to observe at least the negative obligation never to wantonly do or even devise any harm to his fellows, or indeed any sentient creature, our new apostle affords, in his light-hearted reversal of the prescriptive methods of civilized ethics, a woful foretaste of the moral results of the "new, not as yet crystallized" belief, whose trusted instruments of spiritual investigation are the telescope and mental analysis, in order to satisfy the carpings of those who so impress the world with their superhuman strong-mindedness. the following is a profound reflection presenting, doubtless, quite a new revelation to an unsophisticated world, which had so long submitted in reverential tameness to the self-evident impossibility of exploring the infinite:-- "the tendency of popular thought is against [ ] the supernatural in any shape. far into space as the telescope can search, deep as analysis can penetrate into mind and consciousness or the forces which govern natural things, popular thought finds only uniformity and connection of cause and effect; no sign anywhere of a personal will which is influenced by prayer or moral motives." how much to be pitied are the gifted esoterics who, in such a quest, vainly point their telescopes into the star-thronged firmament, and plunge their reasoning powers into the abyss of consciousness and such-like mysteries! the commonplace intellect of the author of "night thoughts" was, if we may so speak, awed into an adoring rapture which forced from him the exclamation (may believers hail it as a dogma!)-- "an undevout astronomer is mad!" most probably it was in weak submission to some such sentiment as this that isaac newton nowhere in his writings suggests even the ghost of a doubt of there being a great architect of the universe as the outcome of his telescopic explorations into the illimitable heavens. [ ] it is quite possible, too, that he was, "on insufficient grounds," perhaps, perfectly satisfied, as a host of other intellectual mediocrities like himself have been, and even up to now rather provokingly continue to be, with the very "uniformity and connection of cause and effect" as visible evidence of there being not only "a personal will," but a creative and controlling power as well. in this connection comes to mind a certain old book which, whatever damage semitic scholarship and modern criticism may succeed in inflicting on its contents, will always retain for the spiritual guidance of the world enough and to spare of divine suggestions. with the prescience which has been the heritage of the inspired in all ages, one of the writers in that book, whom we shall now quote, foresaw, no doubt, the deplorable industry of mr. froude and his protégé "popular thought," whose mouth-piece he has so characteristically constituted himself, and asks in a tone wherein solemn warning blends with inquiry: "canst thou by searching find out god; canst thou find out the almighty unto perfection!" the rational among the most loftily endowed of mankind have grasped [ ] the sublime significance of this query, acquiescing reverently in its scarcely veiled intimation of man's impotence in presence of the task to which it refers. but though mr. froude's spiritual plight be such as we have just allowed him to state it, with regard to an object of faith and a motive of worship, yet let us hear him, in his anxiety to furbish up a special negro creed, setting forth the motive for being in a hurry to anticipate the "crystallization" of his new belief:-- "the new creed, however, not having crystallized as yet into a shape which can be openly professed, and as without any creed at all the flesh and the devil might become too powerful, we maintain the old names, as we maintain the monarchy." the allusion to the monarchy seems not a very obvious one, as it parallels the definitive rejection of a spiritual creed with the theoretical change of ancient notions regarding a concrete fact. at any rate we have it that his special religion, when concocted and disseminated, will have the effect of preventing the flesh and the devil from having too much power over negroes. the objection to the [ ] devil's sway seems to us to come with queer grace from one who owes his celebrity chiefly to the production of works teeming with that peculiar usage of language of which the enemy of souls is credited with the special fatherhood. no, sir, in the name of the being regarding whose existence you and your alleged "popular thought" are so painfully in doubt, we protest against your right, or that of any other created worm, to formulate for the special behoof of negroes any sort of artificial creed unbelieved in by yourself, having the function and effect of detective "shadowings" of their souls. away with your criminal suggestion of toleration of the hideous orgies of heathenism in hayti for the benefit of our future morals in the west indies, when the political supremacy which you predict and dread and deprecate shall have become an accomplished fact. were any special standard of spiritual excellence required, our race has, in josiah henson and sojourner truth, sufficing models for our men and our women respectively. their ideal of christian life, which we take to be the true one, is not to be judged of with direct reference to the deity whom we cannot [ ] see, interrogate, or comprehend, but to its practical bearing in and on man, whom we can see and have cognizance of, not only with our physical senses, but by the intimations of the divinity which abides within us.* we can see, feel, and appreciate the virtue of a fellow-mortal who consecrates himself to the divine idea through untiring exertion for the bettering of the condition of the world around him, whose agony he makes it his duty, only to satisfy his burning desire, to mitigate. the fact in its ghastly reality lies before us that the majority of mankind labour and are being crushed under the tremendous trinity of ignorance, vice, and poverty. it is mainly in the succouring of those who thus suffer that the vitality of the old creed is manifested in the person of its professors. under this aspect we behold it moulding men, of all nations, countries, and tongues, whose virtues have challenged and should command on its behalf the unquestioning faith and adhesion of every rational observer. "evidences of christianity," "controversies," "exegetical commentaries," have all proved [ ] more or less futile--as perhaps they ought--with the science and modern criticism which perverts religion into a matter of dialectics. but there is a hope for mankind in the fact that science itself shall have ultimately to admit the limitations of human inquiry into the details of the infinite. meanwhile it requires no technical proficiency to recognize the criminality of those who waste their brief threescore and ten years in abstract speculations, while the tangible, visible, and hideous soul-destroying trinity of vice, ignorance, and poverty, above mentioned, are desolating the world in their very sight. there are possessors of personal virtue, enlightenment, and wealth, who dare stand neutral with regard to these dire exigencies among their fellows. and yet they are the logical helpers, as holders of the special antidote to each of those banes! infinitely more deserving of execration are such folk than the callous owner of some specific, who allows a suffering neighbour to perish for want of it. we who believe in the ultimate development of the christian notion of duty towards god, as manifested in untiring beneficence to man, cling to this faith--starting from the [ ] beginning of the new testament dispensation--because saul of tarsus, transformed into paul the apostle through his whole-souled acceptance of this very creed with its practical responsibilities, has, in his ardent, indefatigable labours for the enlightenment and elevation of his fellows, left us a lesson which is an enduring inspiration; because augustine, bishop of hippo, benefited, in a manner which has borne, and ever will bear, priceless fruit, enormous sections of the human family, after his definite submission to the benign yoke of the same old creed; because vincent de paul has, through the identical inspiration, endowed the world with his everlasting legacy of organized beneficence; because it impelled francis xavier with yearning heart and eager footsteps through thousands of miles of peril, to proclaim to the darkling millions of india what he had experienced to be tidings of great joy to himself; because matthew hale, a lawyer, and of first prominence in a pursuit which materializes the mind and nips its native candour and tenderness, escaped unblighted, through the saving influence of his faith, approving himself in the sight of all [ ] an ideal judge, even according to the highest conception; because john howard, opulent and free to enjoy his opulence and repose, was drawn thereby throughout the whole continent of europe in quest of the hidden miseries that torture those whom the law has shut out, in dungeons, from the light and sympathy of the world; because thomas clarkson, animated by the spirit of its teachings, consecrated wealth, luxury, and the quiet of an entire lifetime on the altar of voluntary sacrifice for the salvation of an alien people; because samuel johnson, shut out from mirthfulness by disease and suffering, and endowed with an intellectual pride intolerant of froward ignorance, was, through the chastening power of that belief, transformed into the cheerful minister and willing slave of the weaklings whom he gathered into his home, and around whom the tendrils of his heart had entwined themselves, waxing closer and stronger in the moisture of his never-failing charity; because henry havelock, a man of the sword, whose duties have never been too propitious to the cultivation and fostering of the gentler virtues, lived and died a blameless hero, constrained by that faith to be one of its most illustrious exemplars; [ ] because david livingstone looms great and reverend in our mental sight in his devotion to a land and race embraced in his boundless fellow-feeling, and whose miseries he has commended to the sympathy of the civilized world in words the pathos whereof has melted thousands of once obdurate hearts to crave a share in applying a balm to the "open sore of africa"--that slave-trade whose numberless horrors beggar description; and finally--one more example out of the countless varieties of types that blend into a unique solidarity in the active manifestation of the christian life--we believe because charles gordon, the martyr-soldier of khartoum, in trusting faith a very child, but in heroism more notable than any mere man of whom history contains a record, gathered around himself, through the sublime attractiveness of his faith-directed life, the united suffrages of all nations, and now enjoys, as the recompense and seal of his life's labours, an apotheosis in homage to which the heathen of africa, the man-hunting arab, the egyptian, the turk, all jostle each other to blend with the exulting children of britain who are directly glorified by his life and history. [ ] here, then, are speaking evidences of the believers' grounds. verily they are of the kind that are to be seen in our midst, touched, heard, listened to, respected, beloved--nay, honoured, too, with the glad worship our inward spirit springs forth to render to goodness so largely plenished from the source of all good. can modern science and criticism explain them away, or persuade us of their insufficiency as incentives to the hearty acceptance of the religion that has received such glorious, yet simply logical, incarnation in the persons of weak, erring men who welcomed its responsibilities conjointly with its teachings, and thereby raised themselves to the spiritual level pictured to ourselves in our conception of angels who have been given the divine charge concerning mankind. religion for negroes, indeed! white priests, forsooth! this sort of arrogance might, possibly, avail in quarters where the person and pretensions of mr. froude could be impressive and influential--but here, in the momentous concern of man with him who "is no respecter of persons," his interference, mentally disposed as he tells us he is with reference to such a matter, is nothing less than profane intrusion. [ ] we will conclude by stating in a few words our notion of the only agency by which, not blacks alone, but every race of mankind, might be uplifted to the moral level which the thousands of examples, of which we have glanced at but a few, prove so indubitably the capacity of man to attain--each to a degree limited by the scope of his individual powers. the priesthood whereof the world stands in such dire need is not at all the confederacy of augurs which mr. froude, perhaps in recollection of his former profession, so glibly suggests, with an esoteric creed of their own, "crystallized into shape" for profession before the public. the day of priestcraft being now numbered with the things that were, the exploitation of those outside of the sacerdotal circle is no longer possible. therefore the religion of mere talk, however metaphysical and profound; the religion of scenic display, except such display be symbolic of living and active verities, has lost whatever of efficacy it may once have possessed, through the very spirit and tendency of to-day. the reason why those few whom we have mentioned, and the thousands who cannot possibly be recalled, have, as [ ] typical christians, impressed themselves on the moral sense and sympathy of the ages, is simply that they lived the faith which they professed. whatever words they may have employed to express their serious thoughts were never otherwise than, incidentally, a spoken fragment of their own interior biography. in fine, success must infallibly attend this special priesthood (whether episcopally "ordained" or not) of all races, all colours, all tongues whatsoever, since their lives reflect their teachings and their teachings reflect their lives. then, truly, they, "the righteous, shall inherit the earth," leading mankind along the highest and noblest paths of temporal existence. then, of course, the obeah, the cannibalism, the devil-worship of the whole world, including that of hayti, which mr. froude predicts will be adopted by us blacks in the west indies, shall no more encumber and scandalize the earth. but mr. froude should, at the same time, be reminded that cannibalism and the hideous concomitants which he mentions are, after all, relatively minor and restricted dangers to man's civilization and moral soundness. they can [ ] neither operate freely nor expand easily. the paralysis of horrified popular sentiment obstructs their propagation, and the blight of the death-penalty which hangs over the heads of their votaries is an additional guarantee of their being kept within bounds that minimize their perniciousness. but there are more fatal and further-reaching dangers to public morality and happiness of which the regenerated current opinion of the future will take prompt and remedial cognizance. foremost among these will be the circulation of malevolent writings whereby the equilibrium of sympathy between good men of different races is sought to be destroyed, through misleading appeals to the weaknesses and prejudices of readers; writings in which the violation of actual truth cannot, save by stark stupidity, be attributed to innocent error; writings that scoff at humanitarian feeling and belittle the importance of achievements resulting therefrom; writings which strike at the root of national manliness, by eulogizing brute force directed against weaker folk as a fit and legitimate mode of securing the wishes of a mighty and enlightened people; writings, in fine, which ignore the divine principle [ ] in man, and implicitly deny the possibility of a divine power existing outside of and above man, thus materializing the mind, and tending to render the earth a worse hell than it ever could have been with faith in the supremacy of a beneficent power. notes . *"est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."--ovid. book iv: historical summary [ ] thus far we have dealt with the main questions raised by mr. froude on the lines of his own choosing; lines which demonstrate to the fullest how unsuited his capacity is for appreciating--still less grappling with--the political and social issues he has so confidently undertaken to determine. in vain have we sought throughout his bastard philosophizing for any phrase giving promise of an adequate treatment of this important subject. we find paraded ostentatiously enough the doctrine that in the adjustment of human affairs the possession of a white skin should be the strongest recommendation. wonder might fairly be felt that there is no suggestion of a corresponding advantage being accorded to the possession of a long nose or of auburn hair. indeed, little [ ] or no attention that can be deemed serious is given to the interest of the blacks, as a large and (out of africa) no longer despicable section of the human family, in the great world-problems which are so visibly preparing and press for definitive solutions. the intra-african negro is clearly powerless to struggle successfully against personal enslavement, annexation, or volunteer forcible "protection" of his territory. what, we ask, will in the coming ages be the opinion and attitude of the extra-african millions--ten millions in the western hemisphere--dispersed so widely over the surface of the globe, apt apprentices in every conceivable department of civilized culture? will these men remain for ever too poor, too isolated from one another for grand racial combinations? or will the naturally opulent cradle of their people, too long a prey to violence and unholy greed, become at length the sacred watchword of a generation willing and able to conquer or perish under its inspiration? such large and interesting questions it was within the province and duty of a famous historian, laying confident claim to prophetic insight, not to propound alone, but also definitely to solve. the sacred power [ ] of forecast, however, has been confined to finical pronouncements regarding those for whose special benefit he has exercised it, and to childish insults of the blacks whose doom must be sealed to secure the precious result which is aimed at. in view of this ill-intentioned omission, we shall offer a few cursory remarks bearing on, but not attempting to answer, those grave inquiries concerning the african people. as in our humble opinion these are questions paramount to all the petty local issues finically dilated on by the confident prophet of "the bow of ulysses," we will here briefly devote ourselves to its discussion. accepting the theory of human development propounded by our author, let us apply it to the african race. except, of course, to intelligences having a share in the councils of eternity, there can be no attainable knowledge respecting the laws which regulate the growth and progress of civilization among the races of the earth. that in the existence of the human family every age has been marked by its own essential characteristics with regard to manifestations of intellectual life, however circumscribed, is a proposition too self-evident [ ] to require more than the stating. but investigation beyond such evidence as we possess concerning the past--whether recorded by man himself in the written pages of history, or by the creator on the tablets of nature--would be worse than futile. we see that in the past different races have successively come to the front, as prominent actors on the world's stage. the years of civilized development have dawned in turn on many sections of the human family, and the anglo-saxons, who now enjoy preeminence, got their turn only after egypt, assyria, babylon, greece, rome, and others had successively held the palm of supremacy. and since these mighty empires have all passed away, may we not then, if the past teaches aught, confidently expect that other racial hegemonies will arise in the future to keep up the ceaseless progression of temporal existence towards the existence that is eternal? what is it in the nature of things that will oust the african race from the right to participate, in times to come, in the high destinies that have been assigned in times past to so many races that have not been in anywise superior to us in the qualifications, physical, moral, and intellectual, [ ] that mark out a race for prominence amongst other races? the normal composition of the typical negro has the testimony of ages to its essential soundness and nobility. physically, as an active labourer, he is capable of the most protracted exertion under climatic conditions the most exhausting. by the mere strain of his brawn and sinew he has converted waste tracts of earth into fertile regions of agricultural bountifulness. on the scenes of strife he has in his savage state been known to be indomitable save by the stress of irresistible forces, whether of men or of circumstances. staunch in his friendship and tender towards the weak directly under his protection, the unvitiated african furnishes in himself the combination of native virtue which in the land of his exile was so prolific of good results for the welfare of the whole slave-class. but distracted at home by the sudden irruptions of skulking foes, he has been robbed, both intellectually and morally, of the immense advantage of peace, which is the mother of progress. transplanted to alien climes, and through centuries of desolating trials, this irrepressible race has [ ] bated not one throb of its energy, nor one jot of its heart or hope. in modern times, after his expatriation into dismal bondage, both britain and america have had occasion to see that even in the paralysing fetters of political and social degradation the right arm of the ethiop can be a valuable auxiliary on the field of battle. britain, in her conflict with france for supremacy in the west indies, did not disdain the aid of the sable arms that struck together with those of britons for the trophies that furnished the motives for those epic contests. later on, the unparalleled struggle between the northern and southern states of the american union put to the test the indestructible fibres of the negro's nature, moral as well as physical. the northern states, after months of hesitating repugnance, and when taught at last by dire defeats that colour did not in any way help to victory, at length sullenly acquiesced in the comradeship, hitherto disdained, of the eager african contingent. the records of port hudson, vicksburg, morris island, and elsewhere, stand forth in imperishable attestation of the fact that the distinction of being laurelled during life as victor, or filling [ ] in death a hero's grave, is reserved for no colour, but for the heart that can dare and the hand that can strike boldly in a righteous cause. the experience of the southern slave-holders, on the other hand, was no less striking and worthy of admiration. every man of the twelve seceding states forming the southern confederacy, then fighting desperately for the avowed purpose of perpetuating slavery, was called into the field, as no available male arm could be spared from the conflict on their side. plantation owner, overseer, and every one in authority, had to be drafted away from the scene of their usual occupation to the stage whereon the bloody drama of internecine strife was being enacted. not only the plantation, but the home and the household, including the mistress and her children, had to be left, not unprotected, it is glorious to observe, but, with confident assurance in their loyalty and good faith, under the protection of the four million of bondsmen, who, through the laws and customs of these very states, had been doomed to lifelong ignorance and exclusion from all moralizing influences. with what result? the protraction of the conflict on the part of the south would [ ] have been impossible but for the admirable management and realization of their resources by those benighted slaves. on the other hand, not one of the thousands of northern prisoners escaping from the durance of a southern captivity ever appealed in vain for the assistance and protection of a negro. clearly the head and heart of those bondsmen were each in its proper place. the moral effect of these experiences of the negroes' sterling qualities was not lost on either north or south. in the north it effaced from thousands of repugnant hearts the adverse feelings which had devised and accomplished so much to the negro's detriment. in the south--but for the blunders of the reconstructionists--it would have considerably facilitated the final readjustment of affairs between the erewhile master and slave in their new-born relations of employer and employed. reverting to the africans who were conveyed to places other than the states, it will be seen that circumstances amongst them and in their favour came into play, modifying and lightening their unhappy condition. first, attention must be paid to the patriotic solidarity existing [ ] amongst the bondsmen, a solidarity which, in the case of those who had been deported in the same ship, had all the sanctity of blood-relationship. those who had thus travelled to the "white man's country" addressed and considered each other as brothers and sisters. hence their descendants for many generations upheld, as if consanguineous, the modes of address and treatment which became hereditary in families whose originals had travelled in the same ship. these adopted uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, were so united by common sympathies, that good or ill befalling any one of them intensely affected the whole connection. mutual support commensurate with the area of their location thus became the order among these people. at the time of the first deportation of africans to the west indies to replace the aborigines who had been decimated in the mines at santo domingo and in the pearl fisheries of the south caribbean, the circumstances of the spanish settlers in the antilles were of singular, even romantic, interest. the enthusiasm which overflowed from the crusades and the moorish wars, upon the discovery and conquest of america, had occasioned [ ] the peopling of the western archipelago by a race of men in whom the daring of freebooters was strangely blended with a fierce sort of religiousness. as holders of slaves, these men recognized, and endeavoured to their best to give effect to, the humane injunctions of bishop las casas. the negroes, therefore, male and female, were promptly presented for admission by baptism into the catholic church, which always had stood open and ready to welcome them. the relations of god-father and god-mother resulting from these baptismal functions had a most important bearing on the reciprocal stations of master and slave. the god-children were, according to ecclesiastical custom, considered in every sense entitled to all the protection and assistance which were within the competence of the god-parents, who, in their turn, received from the former the most absolute submission. it is easy to see that the planters, as well as those intimately connected with them, in assuming such obligations with their concomitant responsibilities, practically entered into bonds which they all regarded as, if possible, more solemn than the natural ties of secular parentage. the duty [ ] of providing for these dependents usually took the shape of their being apprenticed to, and trained in the various arts and vocations that constitute the life of civilization. in many cases, at the death of their patrons, the bondsmen who were deemed most worthy were, according to the means of the testator, provided for in a manner lifting them above the necessity of future dependence. manumission, too, either by favour or through purchase, was allowed the fullest operation. here then was the active influence of higher motives than mere greed of gain or the pride of racial power mellowing the lot and gilding the future prospects of the dwellers in the tropical house of bondage. the next, and even more effectual agency in modifying and harmonizing the relations between owner and bondspeople was the inevitable attraction of one race to the other by the sentiment of natural affection. out of this sprang living ties far more intimate and binding on the moral sense than even obligations contracted in deference to the church. natural impulses have often diviner sources than ecclesiastical mandates. obedience to the former not seldom brings down the penalties of the church; but [ ] the culprit finds solace in the consciousness that the offence might in itself be a protection from the thunders it has provoked. under these circumstances the general body of planters, who were in the main adventurers of the freest type, were fain to establish connections with such of the slave-women as attracted their sympathy, through personal comeliness or aptitude in domestic affairs, or, usually, both combined. there was ordinarily in this beginning of the seventeenth century no vashti that needed expulsion from the abode of a plantation ahasuerus to make room for the african esther to be admitted to the chief place within the portals. one great natural consequence of this was the extension to the relatives or guardians of the bondswoman so preferred of an amount of favour which, in the case of the more capable males, completes the parallel we have been drawing by securing for each of them the precedence and responsibilities of a mordecai. the offspring of these natural alliances came in therefore to cement more intimately the union of interests which previous relations had generated. beloved by their fathers, and in many cases destined by them to a lot superior [ ] to that whereto they were entitled by formal law and social prescription, these young procreations--mulattos, as they were called--were made the objects of special and careful provisions on the fathers' part. they were, according to the means of their fathers in the majority of cases, sent for education and training to european or other superior institutions. after this course they were either formally acknowledged by their fathers, or, if that was impracticable, amply and suitably provided for in a career out of their native colony. to a reflecting mind there is something that interests, not to say fascinates, in studying the action and reaction upon one another of circumstances in the existence of the mulatto. as a matter of fact, he had much more to complain of under the slave system than his pure-blooded african relations. the law, by decreeing that every child of a freeman and a slave woman must follow the fortune of the womb, thus making him the property of his mother exclusively, practically robbed him before his very birth of the nurture and protection of a father. his reputed father had no obligation to be even aware of his procreation, and nevertheless [ ] --so inscrutable are the ways of providence!--the mulatto was the centre around which clustered the outraged instincts of nature in rebellion against the desecrating mandates that prescribed treason to herself. law and society may decree; but in our normal humanity there throbs a sentiment which neutralizes every external impulse contrary to its promptings. in meditating on the varied history of the negro in the united states, since his first landing on the banks of the james river in till the emancipation act of president lincoln in , it is curious to observe that the elevation of the race, though in a great measure secured, proceeded from circumstances almost the reverse of those that operated so favourably in the same direction elsewhere. the men of the slave-holding states, chiefly puritans or influenced by puritanic surroundings, were not under the ecclesiastical sway which rendered possible in the west indies and other catholic countries the establishment of the reciprocal bonds of god-parents and god-children. the self-same causes operated to prevent any large blending of the two races, inasmuch as the immigrant from britain who [ ] had gone forth from his country to better his fortune had not left behind him his attachment to the institutions of the mother-land, among which marrying, whenever practicable, was one of the most cherished. above all, too, as another powerful check at first to such alliances between the ruling and servile races of the states, there existed the native idiosyncracy of the anglo-saxon. that class of them who had left britain were likelier than the more refined of their nation to exhibit in its crudest and cruellest form the innate jealousy and contempt of other races that pervades the anglo-saxon bosom. it is but a simple fact that, whenever he condescended thereto, familiarity with even the loveliest of the subject people was regarded as a mighty self-unbending for which the object should be correspondingly grateful. so there could, in the beginning, be no frequent instances of the romantic chivalry that gilded the quasi-marital relations of the more fervid and humane members of the latin stock. but this kind of intercourse, which in the earlier generation was undoubtedly restricted in north america by the checks above adverted to, and, presumably, also by the mutual unintelligibility [ ] in speech, gradually expanded with the natural increase of the slave population. the american-born, english-speaking negro girl, who had in many cases been the playmate of her owner, was naturally more intelligible, more accessible, more attractive--and the inevitable consequence was the extension apace of that intercourse, the offspring whereof became at length so visibly numerous. among the romans, the grandest of all colonizers, the individual's civis romanus sum--i am a roman citizen--was something more than verbal vapouring; it was a protective talisman--a buckler no less than a sword. yet was the possession of this noble and singular privilege no barrier to roman citizens meeting on a broad humanitarian level any alien race, either allied to or under the protection of that world-famous commonwealth. in the speeches of the foremost orators and statesmen among the conquerors of the then known world, the allusions to subject or allied aliens are distinguished by a decorous observance of the proprieties which should mark any reference to those who had the dignity of rome's [ ] friendship, or the privilege of her august protection. observations, therefore, regarding individuals of rank in these alien countries had the same sobriety and deference which marked allusions to born romans of analogous degree. such magnanimity, we grieve to say, is not characteristic of the race which now replaces the romans in the colonizing leadership of the world. we read with feelings akin to despair of the cheap, not to say derogatory, manner in which, in both houses of parliament, native potentates, especially of non-european countries, are frequently spoken of by the hereditary aristocracy and the first gentlemen of the british empire. the inborn racial contempt thus manifested in quarters where rigid self-control and decorum should form the very essence of normal deportment, was not likely, as we have before hinted, to find any mollifying ingredient in the settlers on the banks of the mississippi. therefore should we not be surprised to find, with regard to many an illicit issue of "down south," the arrogance of race so overmastering the promptings of nature as to render not unfrequent at the auction-block the sight of many a chattel of mixed blood, the offspring [ ] of some planter whom business exigency had forced to this commercial transaction as the readiest mode of self-release. yet were the exceptions to this rule enough to contribute appreciably to the weight and influence of the mixed race in the north, where education and a fair standing had been clandestinely secured for their children by parents to whom law and society had made it impossible to do more, and whom conscience rendered incapable of stopping at less. from this comparative sketch of the history of the slaves in the states, in the west indies and countries adjacent, it will be perceived that in the latter scenes of bondage everything had conspired to render a fusion of interests between the ruling and the servile classes not only easy, but inevitable. in the very first generation after their introduction, the africans began to press upward, a movement which every decade has accelerated, in spite of the changes which supervened as each of the colonies fell under british sway. nearly two centuries had by this time elapsed, and the coloured influence, which had grown with their wealth, education, numbers, and unity, though [ ] circumscribed by the emancipation of the slaves, and the consequent depression in fortune of all slave-owners, never was or could be annihilated. in the government service there were many for whom the patronage of god-parents or the sheer influence of their family had effected an entrance. the prevalence and potency of the influences we have been dilating upon may be gauged by the fact that personages no less exalted than governors of various colonies--of trinidad in three authentic cases--have been sharers in the prevailing usages, in the matter of standing sponsors (by proxy), and also of relaxing in the society of some fascinating daughter of the sun from the tension and wear of official duty. in the three cases just referred to, the most careful provision was made for the suitable education and starting in life of the issues. for the god-children of governors there were places in the public service, and so from the highest to the lowest the humanitarian intercourse of the classes was confirmed. consequent on the frequent abandonment of their plantations by many owners who despaired of being able to get along by paying [ ] their way, an opening was made for the insinuation of absenteeism into our agricultural, in short, our economic existence. the powerful sugar lords, who had invested largely in the cane plantations, were fain to take over and cultivate the properties which their debtors doggedly refused to continue working, under pretext of the entire absence, or at any rate unreliability, of labour. the representatives of those new transatlantic estate proprietors displaced, but never could replace, the original cultivators, who were mostly gentlemen as well as agriculturists. it was from this overseer class that the vituperations and slanders went forth that soon became stereotyped, concerning the negro's incorrigible laziness and want of ambition--those gentry adjusting the scale of wages, not according to the importance and value of the labour done, but according to the scornful estimate which they had formed of the negro personally. and when the wages were fixed fairly, they almost invariably sought to indemnify themselves for their enforced justice by the insulting license of their tongues, addressed to males and females alike. the influence of such men on local legislation, in which they [ ] had a preponderating share, either as actual proprietors or as the attorneys of absentees, was not in the direction of refinement or liberality. indeed, the kind of laws which they enacted, especially during the apprenticeship ( - ), is thus summarized by one, and him an english officer, who was a visitor in those agitated days of the colonies:-- "it is demonstrated that the laws which were to come into operation immediately on expiration of the apprenticeship are of the most objectionable character, and fully established the fact not only of a future intention to infringe the rights of the emancipated classes, but of the actual commencement and extensive progress of a colonial system for that purpose. the object of the laws is to circumscribe the market for free labour--to prohibit the possession or sale of ordinary articles of produce on sale, the obvious intention of which is to confine the emancipated classes to a course of agricultural servitude--to give the employers a monopoly of labour, and to keep down a free competition for wages--to create new and various modes of apprenticeship for the purpose of prolonging predial service, together with many evils of the [ ] late system--to introduce unnecessary restraint and coercion, the design of which is to create a perpetual surveillance over the liberated negroes, and to establish a legislative despotism. the several laws passed are based upon the most vicious principles of legislation, and in their operation will be found intolerably oppressive and entirely subversive of the just intentions of the british legislature." these liberal-souled gentry were, in sooth, mr. froude's "representatives" of britain, whose traditions steadily followed in their families, he has so well and sympathetically set forth. we thus see that the irritation and rancour seething in the breast of the new plantocracy, of whom the majority was of the type that then also flourished in barbados, jamaica, and demerara, were nourished and kept acute in order to crush the african element. harm was done, certainly; but not to the ruinous extent sometimes declared. it was too late for perfect success, as, according to the negroes' own phrase, people of colour had by that time already "passed the lock-jaw"* stage (at which trifling misadventures [ ] might have nipped the germ of their progress in the bud.) in spite of adverse legislation, and in spite of the scandalous subservience of certain governors to the colonial legislatures, the race can point with thankfulness and pride to the visible records of their success wherever they have permanently sojourned. primary education of a more general and undiscriminating character, especially as to race and colour, was secured for the bulk of the west indies by voluntary undertakings, and notably through the munificent provision of lady mico, which extended to the whole of the principal islands. thanks to lord harris for introducing, and to sir arthur gordon for extending to the secondary stage, the public education of trinidad, there has been since emancipation, that is, during the last thirty-seven years, a more effective bringing together in public schools of various grades, of children of all races and ranks. rivals at home, at school and college, in books as well as on the playground, they have very frequently gone abroad together to learn the professions they have selected. in this way there is an intercommunion between all the [ ] intelligent sections of the inhabitants, based on a common training and the subtle sympathies usually generated in enlightened breasts by intimate personal knowledge. in mixed communities thus circumstanced, there is no possibility of maintaining distinctions based on mere colour, as advocated by mr. froude. the following brief summary by the rev. p. h. doughlin, rector of st. clement's, trinidad, a brilliant star among the sons of ham, embodies this fact in language which, so far as it goes, is as comprehensive as it is weighty:-- "who could, without seeming to insult the intelligence of men, have predicted on the day of emancipation that the negroes then released from the blight and withering influence of ten generations of cruel bondage, so weakened and half-destroyed--so denationalized and demoralized--so despoiled and naked, would be in the position they are now? in spite of the proud, supercilious, and dictatorial bearing of their teachers, in spite of the hampering of unsympathetic, alien oversight, in spite of the spirit of dependence and servility engendered by slavery, not only have individual members of the race entered into all the offices of dignity in [ ] church and state, as subalterns--as hewers of wood and drawers of water--but they have attained to the very highest places. here in the west indies, and on the west coast of africa, are to be found surgeons of the negro race, solicitors, barristers, mayors, councillors, principals and founders of high schools and colleges, editors and proprietors of newspapers, archdeacons, bishops, judges, and authors--men who not only teach those immediately around them, but also teach the world. members of the race have even been entrusted with the administration of governments. and it is not mere commonplace men that the negro race has produced. not only have the british universities thought them worthy of their honorary degrees and conferred them on them, but members of the race have won these university degrees. a few years back a full-blooded negro took the highest degree oxford has to give to a young man. the european world is looking with wonder and admiration at the progress made by the negro race--a progress unparalleled in the annals of the history of any race." to this we may add that in the domain [ ] of high literature the blacks of the united states, for the twenty-five years of social emancipation, and despite the lingering obstructions of caste prejudice, have positively achieved wonders. leaving aside the writings of men of such high calibre as f. douglass, dr. hyland garnet, prof. crummell, prof. e. blyden, dr. tanner, and others, it is gratifying to be able to chronicle the ethiopic women of north america as moving shoulder to shoulder with the men in the highest spheres of literary activity. among a brilliant band of these our sisters, conspicuous no less in poetry than in prose, we single out but a solitary name for the double purpose of preserving brevity and of giving in one embodiment the ideal afro-american woman of letters. the allusion here can scarcely fail to point to mrs. s. harper. this lady's philosophical subtlety of reasoning on grave questions finds effective expression in a prose of singular precision and vigour. but it is as a poet that posterity will hail her in the coming ages of our race. for pathos, depth of spiritual insight, and magical exercise of a rare power of self-utterance, it will hardly be questioned that she has surpassed every competitor [ ] among females--white or black--save and except elizabeth barett browning, with whom the gifted african stands on much the same plane of poetic excellence. the above summary of our past vicissitudes and actual position shows that there is nothing in our political circumstances to occasion uneasiness. the miserable skin and race doctrine we have been discussing does not at all prefigure the destinies at all events of the west indies, or determine the motives that will affect them. with the exception of those belonging to the southern states of the union, the vast body of african descendants now dispersed in various countries of the western hemisphere are at sufficient peace to begin occupying themselves, according to some fixed programme, about matters of racial importance. more than ten millions of africans are scattered over the wide area indicated, and possess amongst them instances of mental and other qualifications which render them remarkable among their fellow-men. but like the essential parts of a complicated albeit perfect machine, these attainments and qualifications so widely dispersed await, it is evident, some potential [ ] agency to collect and adjust them into the vast engine essential for executing the true purposes of the civilized african race. already, especially since the late emancipation jubilee, are signs manifest of a desire for intercommunion and intercomprehension amongst the more distinguished of our people. with intercourse and unity of purpose will be secured the means to carry out the obvious duties which are sure to devolve upon us, especially with reference to the cradle of our race, which is most probably destined to be the ultimate resting-place and headquarters of millions of our posterity. within the short time that we had to compass all that we have achieved, there could not have arisen opportunities for doing more than we have effected. meanwhile our present device is: "work, hope, and wait!" finally, it must be borne in mind that the abolition of physical bondage did not by any means secure all the requisite conditions of "a fair field and no favour" for the future career of the freedmen. the remnant of jacob, on their return from the captivity, were compelled, whilst rebuilding their temple, literally to labour with the working tool in one hand [ ] and the sword for personal defence in the other. even so have the conditions, figuratively, presented themselves under which the blacks have been obliged to rear the fabric of self-elevation since , whilst combating ceaselessly the obstacles opposed to the realizing of their legitimate aspirations. mental and, in many cases, material success has been gained, but the machinery for accumulating and applying the means required for comprehensive racial enterprises is waiting on providence, time, and circumstances for its establishment and successful working. notes . *"yo té'ja passé mal machoè"--in metaphorical allusion to new-born infants who have lived beyond a certain number of days. huckleberry finn by mark twain part . chapter xxxi. we dasn't stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along down the river. we was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long ways from home. we begun to come to trees with spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards. it was the first i ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. so now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work the villages again. first they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on. then in another village they started a dancing-school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. another time they tried to go at yellocution; but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing, and made them skip out. they tackled missionarying, and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck. so at last they got just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she floated along, thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate. and at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. jim and me got uneasy. we didn't like the look of it. we judged they was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. we turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money business, or something. so then we was pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake and clear out and leave them behind. well, early one morning we hid the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit of a shabby village named pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told us all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind of the royal nonesuch there yet. ("house to rob, you mean," says i to myself; "and when you get through robbing it you'll come back here and wonder what has become of me and jim and the raft--and you'll have to take it out in wondering.") and he said if he warn't back by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come along. so we stayed where we was. the duke he fretted and sweated around, and was in a mighty sour way. he scolded us for everything, and we couldn't seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing. something was a-brewing, sure. i was good and glad when midday come and no king; we could have a change, anyway--and maybe a chance for the chance on top of it. so me and the duke went up to the village, and hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the back room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers bullyragging him for sport, and he a-cussing and a-threatening with all his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to them. the duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun to sass back, and the minute they was fairly at it i lit out and shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer, for i see our chance; and i made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and jim again. i got down there all out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out: "set her loose, jim! we're all right now!" but there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. jim was gone! i set up a shout--and then another--and then another one; and run this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no use--old jim was gone. then i set down and cried; i couldn't help it. but i couldn't set still long. pretty soon i went out on the road, trying to think what i better do, and i run across a boy walking, and asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says: "yes." "whereabouts?" says i. "down to silas phelps' place, two mile below here. he's a runaway nigger, and they've got him. was you looking for him?" "you bet i ain't! i run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago, and he said if i hollered he'd cut my livers out--and told me to lay down and stay where i was; and i done it. been there ever since; afeard to come out." "well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him. he run off f'm down south, som'ers." "it's a good job they got him." "well, i reckon! there's two hunderd dollars reward on him. it's like picking up money out'n the road." "yes, it is--and i could a had it if i'd been big enough; i see him first. who nailed him?" "it was an old fellow--a stranger--and he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait. think o' that, now! you bet i'd wait, if it was seven year." "that's me, every time," says i. "but maybe his chance ain't worth no more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. maybe there's something ain't straight about it." "but it is, though--straight as a string. i see the handbill myself. it tells all about him, to a dot--paints him like a picture, and tells the plantation he's frum, below newrleans. no-sirree-bob, they ain't no trouble 'bout that speculation, you bet you. say, gimme a chaw tobacker, won't ye?" i didn't have none, so he left. i went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think. but i couldn't come to nothing. i thought till i wore my head sore, but i couldn't see no way out of the trouble. after all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars. once i said to myself it would be a thousand times better for jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd got to be a slave, and so i'd better write a letter to tom sawyer and tell him to tell miss watson where he was. but i soon give up that notion for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. and then think of me! it would get all around that huck finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if i was ever to see anybody from that town again i'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. that's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. thinks as long as he can hide, it ain't no disgrace. that was my fix exactly. the more i studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery i got to feeling. and at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst i was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's one that's always on the lookout, and ain't a-going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, i most dropped in my tracks i was so scared. well, i tried the best i could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying i was brung up wicked, and so i warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "there was the sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you there that people that acts as i'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire." it made me shiver. and i about made up my mind to pray, and see if i couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy i was and be better. so i kneeled down. but the words wouldn't come. why wouldn't they? it warn't no use to try and hide it from him. nor from me, neither. i knowed very well why they wouldn't come. it was because my heart warn't right; it was because i warn't square; it was because i was playing double. i was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me i was holding on to the biggest one of all. i was trying to make my mouth say i would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me i knowed it was a lie, and he knowed it. you can't pray a lie--i found that out. so i was full of trouble, full as i could be; and didn't know what to do. at last i had an idea; and i says, i'll go and write the letter--and then see if i can pray. why, it was astonishing, the way i felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. so i got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote: miss watson, your runaway nigger jim is down here two mile below pikesville, and mr. phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. huck finn. i felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time i had ever felt so in my life, and i knowed i could pray now. but i didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near i come to being lost and going to hell. and went on thinking. and got to thinking over our trip down the river; and i see jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. but somehow i couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. i'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so i could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when i come back out of the fog; and when i come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last i struck the time i saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said i was the best friend old jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then i happened to look around and see that paper. it was a close place. i took it up, and held it in my hand. i was a-trembling, because i'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and i knowed it. i studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "all right, then, i'll go to hell"--and tore it up. it was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. and i let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. i shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said i would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. and for a starter i would go to work and steal jim out of slavery again; and if i could think up anything worse, i would do that, too; because as long as i was in, and in for good, i might as well go the whole hog. then i set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over some considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that suited me. so then i took the bearings of a woody island that was down the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark i crept out with my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. i slept the night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore. i landed below where i judged was phelps's place, and hid my bundle in the woods, and then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into her and sunk her where i could find her again when i wanted her, about a quarter of a mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank. then i struck up the road, and when i passed the mill i see a sign on it, "phelps's sawmill," and when i come to the farm-houses, two or three hundred yards further along, i kept my eyes peeled, but didn't see nobody around, though it was good daylight now. but i didn't mind, because i didn't want to see nobody just yet--i only wanted to get the lay of the land. according to my plan, i was going to turn up there from the village, not from below. so i just took a look, and shoved along, straight for town. well, the very first man i see when i got there was the duke. he was sticking up a bill for the royal nonesuch--three-night performance--like that other time. they had the cheek, them frauds! i was right on him before i could shirk. he looked astonished, and says: "hel-lo! where'd you come from?" then he says, kind of glad and eager, "where's the raft?--got her in a good place?" i says: "why, that's just what i was going to ask your grace." then he didn't look so joyful, and says: "what was your idea for asking me?" he says. "well," i says, "when i see the king in that doggery yesterday i says to myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so i went a-loafing around town to put in the time and wait. a man up and offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a sheep, and so i went along; but when we was dragging him to the boat, and the man left me a-holt of the rope and went behind him to shove him along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and run, and we after him. we didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the country till we tired him out. we never got him till dark; then we fetched him over, and i started down for the raft. when i got there and see it was gone, i says to myself, 'they've got into trouble and had to leave; and they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger i've got in the world, and now i'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property no more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living;' so i set down and cried. i slept in the woods all night. but what did become of the raft, then?--and jim--poor jim!" "blamed if i know--that is, what's become of the raft. that old fool had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every cent but what he'd spent for whisky; and when i got him home late last night and found the raft gone, we said, 'that little rascal has stole our raft and shook us, and run off down the river.'" "i wouldn't shake my nigger, would i?--the only nigger i had in the world, and the only property." "we never thought of that. fact is, i reckon we'd come to consider him our nigger; yes, we did consider him so--goodness knows we had trouble enough for him. so when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke, there warn't anything for it but to try the royal nonesuch another shake. and i've pegged along ever since, dry as a powder-horn. where's that ten cents? give it here." i had considerable money, so i give him ten cents, but begged him to spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the money i had, and i hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday. he never said nothing. the next minute he whirls on me and says: "do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? we'd skin him if he done that!" "how can he blow? hain't he run off?" "no! that old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money's gone." "sold him?" i says, and begun to cry; "why, he was my nigger, and that was my money. where is he?--i want my nigger." "well, you can't get your nigger, that's all--so dry up your blubbering. looky here--do you think you'd venture to blow on us? blamed if i think i'd trust you. why, if you was to blow on us--" he stopped, but i never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before. i went on a-whimpering, and says: "i don't want to blow on nobody; and i ain't got no time to blow, nohow. i got to turn out and find my nigger." he looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. at last he says: "i'll tell you something. we got to be here three days. if you'll promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, i'll tell you where to find him." so i promised, and he says: "a farmer by the name of silas ph--" and then he stopped. you see, he started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped that way, and begun to study and think again, i reckoned he was changing his mind. and so he was. he wouldn't trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of the way the whole three days. so pretty soon he says: "the man that bought him is named abram foster--abram g. foster--and he lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to lafayette." "all right," i says, "i can walk it in three days. and i'll start this very afternoon." "no you wont, you'll start now; and don't you lose any time about it, neither, nor do any gabbling by the way. just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along, and then you won't get into trouble with us, d'ye hear?" that was the order i wanted, and that was the one i played for. i wanted to be left free to work my plans. "so clear out," he says; "and you can tell mr. foster whatever you want to. maybe you can get him to believe that jim is your nigger--some idiots don't require documents--leastways i've heard there's such down south here. and when you tell him the handbill and the reward's bogus, maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting 'em out. go 'long now, and tell him anything you want to; but mind you don't work your jaw any between here and there." so i left, and struck for the back country. i didn't look around, but i kinder felt like he was watching me. but i knowed i could tire him out at that. i went straight out in the country as much as a mile before i stopped; then i doubled back through the woods towards phelps'. i reckoned i better start in on my plan straight off without fooling around, because i wanted to stop jim's mouth till these fellows could get away. i didn't want no trouble with their kind. i'd seen all i wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them. chapter xxxii. when i got there it was all still and sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny; the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering--spirits that's been dead ever so many years--and you always think they're talking about you. as a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead, too, and done with it all. phelps' was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they all look alike. a rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out of logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are going to jump on to a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log-house for the white folks--hewed logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud-stripes been whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smoke-house back of the kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins in a row t'other side the smoke-house; one little hut all by itself away down against the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side; ash-hopper and big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut; bench by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there in the sun; more hounds asleep round about; about three shade trees away off in a corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch; then the cotton fields begins, and after the fields the woods. i went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and started for the kitchen. when i got a little ways i heard the dim hum of a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and then i knowed for certain i wished i was dead--for that is the lonesomest sound in the whole world. i went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for i'd noticed that providence always did put the right words in my mouth if i left it alone. when i got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went for me, and of course i stopped and faced them, and kept still. and such another powwow as they made! in a quarter of a minute i was a kind of a hub of a wheel, as you may say--spokes made out of dogs--circle of fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses stretched up towards me, a-barking and howling; and more a-coming; you could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres. a nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her hand, singing out, "begone you tige! you spot! begone sah!" and she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling, and then the rest followed; and the next second half of them come back, wagging their tails around me, and making friends with me. there ain't no harm in a hound, nohow. and behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung on to their mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way they always do. and here comes the white woman running from the house, about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinning-stick in her hand; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same way the little niggers was going. she was smiling all over so she could hardly stand--and says: "it's you, at last!--ain't it?" i out with a "yes'm" before i thought. she grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, "you don't look as much like your mother as i reckoned you would; but law sakes, i don't care for that, i'm so glad to see you! dear, dear, it does seem like i could eat you up! children, it's your cousin tom!--tell him howdy." but they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and hid behind her. so she run on: "lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away--or did you get your breakfast on the boat?" i said i had got it on the boat. so then she started for the house, leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. when we got there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says: "now i can have a good look at you; and, laws-a-me, i've been hungry for it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come at last! we been expecting you a couple of days and more. what kep' you?--boat get aground?" "yes'm--she--" "don't say yes'm--say aunt sally. where'd she get aground?" i didn't rightly know what to say, because i didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down. but i go a good deal on instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming up--from down towards orleans. that didn't help me much, though; for i didn't know the names of bars down that way. i see i'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got aground on--or--now i struck an idea, and fetched it out: "it warn't the grounding--that didn't keep us back but a little. we blowed out a cylinder-head." "good gracious! anybody hurt?" "no'm. killed a nigger." "well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. two years ago last christmas your uncle silas was coming up from newrleans on the old lally rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. and i think he died afterwards. he was a baptist. your uncle silas knowed a family in baton rouge that knowed his people very well. yes, i remember now, he did die. mortification set in, and they had to amputate him. but it didn't save him. yes, it was mortification--that was it. he turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection. they say he was a sight to look at. your uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you. and he's gone again, not more'n an hour ago; he'll be back any minute now. you must a met him on the road, didn't you?--oldish man, with a--" "no, i didn't see nobody, aunt sally. the boat landed just at daylight, and i left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking around the town and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too soon; and so i come down the back way." "who'd you give the baggage to?" "nobody." "why, child, it 'll be stole!" "not where i hid it i reckon it won't," i says. "how'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?" it was kinder thin ice, but i says: "the captain see me standing around, and told me i better have something to eat before i went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the officers' lunch, and give me all i wanted." i was getting so uneasy i couldn't listen good. i had my mind on the children all the time; i wanted to get them out to one side and pump them a little, and find out who i was. but i couldn't get no show, mrs. phelps kept it up and run on so. pretty soon she made the cold chills streak all down my back, because she says: "but here we're a-running on this way, and you hain't told me a word about sis, nor any of them. now i'll rest my works a little, and you start up yourn; just tell me everything--tell me all about 'm all every one of 'm; and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of." well, i see i was up a stump--and up it good. providence had stood by me this fur all right, but i was hard and tight aground now. i see it warn't a bit of use to try to go ahead--i'd got to throw up my hand. so i says to myself, here's another place where i got to resk the truth. i opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed, and says: "here he comes! stick your head down lower--there, that'll do; you can't be seen now. don't you let on you're here. i'll play a joke on him. children, don't you say a word." i see i was in a fix now. but it warn't no use to worry; there warn't nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck. i had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in; then the bed hid him. mrs. phelps she jumps for him, and says: "has he come?" "no," says her husband. "good-ness gracious!" she says, "what in the warld can have become of him?" "i can't imagine," says the old gentleman; "and i must say it makes me dreadful uneasy." "uneasy!" she says; "i'm ready to go distracted! he must a come; and you've missed him along the road. i know it's so--something tells me so." "why, sally, i couldn't miss him along the road--you know that." "but oh, dear, dear, what will sis say! he must a come! you must a missed him. he--" "oh, don't distress me any more'n i'm already distressed. i don't know what in the world to make of it. i'm at my wit's end, and i don't mind acknowledging 't i'm right down scared. but there's no hope that he's come; for he couldn't come and me miss him. sally, it's terrible--just terrible--something's happened to the boat, sure!" "why, silas! look yonder!--up the road!--ain't that somebody coming?" he sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that give mrs. phelps the chance she wanted. she stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and give me a pull, and out i come; and when he turned back from the window there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire, and i standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. the old gentleman stared, and says: "why, who's that?" "who do you reckon 't is?" "i hain't no idea. who is it?" "it's tom sawyer!" by jings, i most slumped through the floor! but there warn't no time to swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on shaking; and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about sid, and mary, and the rest of the tribe. but if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what i was; for it was like being born again, i was so glad to find out who i was. well, they froze to me for two hours; and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn't hardly go any more, i had told them more about my family--i mean the sawyer family--than ever happened to any six sawyer families. and i explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the mouth of white river, and it took us three days to fix it. which was all right, and worked first-rate; because they didn't know but what it would take three days to fix it. if i'd a called it a bolthead it would a done just as well. now i was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty uncomfortable all up the other. being tom sawyer was easy and comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by i hear a steamboat coughing along down the river. then i says to myself, s'pose tom sawyer comes down on that boat? and s'pose he steps in here any minute, and sings out my name before i can throw him a wink to keep quiet? well, i couldn't have it that way; it wouldn't do at all. i must go up the road and waylay him. so i told the folks i reckoned i would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage. the old gentleman was for going along with me, but i said no, i could drive the horse myself, and i druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me. chapter xxxiii. so i started for town in the wagon, and when i was half-way i see a wagon coming, and sure enough it was tom sawyer, and i stopped and waited till he come along. i says "hold on!" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says: "i hain't ever done you no harm. you know that. so, then, what you want to come back and ha'nt me for?" i says: "i hain't come back--i hain't been gone." when he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite satisfied yet. he says: "don't you play nothing on me, because i wouldn't on you. honest injun, you ain't a ghost?" "honest injun, i ain't," i says. "well--i--i--well, that ought to settle it, of course; but i can't somehow seem to understand it no way. looky here, warn't you ever murdered at all?" "no. i warn't ever murdered at all--i played it on them. you come in here and feel of me if you don't believe me." so he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me again he didn't know what to do. and he wanted to know all about it right off, because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where he lived. but i said, leave it alone till by and by; and told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and i told him the kind of a fix i was in, and what did he reckon we better do? he said, let him alone a minute, and don't disturb him. so he thought and thought, and pretty soon he says: "it's all right; i've got it. take my trunk in your wagon, and let on it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the house about the time you ought to; and i'll go towards town a piece, and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you; and you needn't let on to know me at first." i says: "all right; but wait a minute. there's one more thing--a thing that nobody don't know but me. and that is, there's a nigger here that i'm a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is jim--old miss watson's jim." he says: "what! why, jim is--" he stopped and went to studying. i says: "i know what you'll say. you'll say it's dirty, low-down business; but what if it is? i'm low down; and i'm a-going to steal him, and i want you keep mum and not let on. will you?" his eye lit up, and he says: "i'll help you steal him!" well, i let go all holts then, like i was shot. it was the most astonishing speech i ever heard--and i'm bound to say tom sawyer fell considerable in my estimation. only i couldn't believe it. tom sawyer a nigger-stealer! "oh, shucks!" i says; "you're joking." "i ain't joking, either." "well, then," i says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything said about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that you don't know nothing about him, and i don't know nothing about him." then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way and i drove mine. but of course i forgot all about driving slow on accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so i got home a heap too quick for that length of a trip. the old gentleman was at the door, and he says: "why, this is wonderful! whoever would a thought it was in that mare to do it? i wish we'd a timed her. and she hain't sweated a hair--not a hair. it's wonderful. why, i wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that horse now--i wouldn't, honest; and yet i'd a sold her for fifteen before, and thought 'twas all she was worth." that's all he said. he was the innocentest, best old soul i ever see. but it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too. there was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and done the same way, down south. in about half an hour tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and aunt sally she see it through the window, because it was only about fifty yards, and says: "why, there's somebody come! i wonder who 'tis? why, i do believe it's a stranger. jimmy" (that's one of the children) "run and tell lize to put on another plate for dinner." everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger don't come every year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever, for interest, when he does come. tom was over the stile and starting for the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all bunched in the front door. tom had his store clothes on, and an audience--and that was always nuts for tom sawyer. in them circumstances it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was suitable. he warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no, he come ca'm and important, like the ram. when he got a-front of us he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them, and says: "mr. archibald nichols, i presume?" "no, my boy," says the old gentleman, "i'm sorry to say 't your driver has deceived you; nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more. come in, come in." tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, "too late--he's out of sight." "yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with us; and then we'll hitch up and take you down to nichols's." "oh, i can't make you so much trouble; i couldn't think of it. i'll walk --i don't mind the distance." "but we won't let you walk--it wouldn't be southern hospitality to do it. come right in." "oh, do," says aunt sally; "it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a bit in the world. you must stay. it's a long, dusty three mile, and we can't let you walk. and, besides, i've already told 'em to put on another plate when i see you coming; so you mustn't disappoint us. come right in and make yourself at home." so tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be persuaded, and come in; and when he was in he said he was a stranger from hicksville, ohio, and his name was william thompson--and he made another bow. well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about hicksville and everybody in it he could invent, and i getting a little nervious, and wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last, still talking along, he reached over and kissed aunt sally right on the mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortable, and was going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her hand, and says: "you owdacious puppy!" he looked kind of hurt, and says: "i'm surprised at you, m'am." "you're s'rp--why, what do you reckon i am? i've a good notion to take and--say, what do you mean by kissing me?" he looked kind of humble, and says: "i didn't mean nothing, m'am. i didn't mean no harm. i--i--thought you'd like it." "why, you born fool!" she took up the spinning stick, and it looked like it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. "what made you think i'd like it?" "well, i don't know. only, they--they--told me you would." "they told you i would. whoever told you's another lunatic. i never heard the beat of it. who's they?" "why, everybody. they all said so, m'am." it was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says: "who's 'everybody'? out with their names, or ther'll be an idiot short." he got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says: "i'm sorry, and i warn't expecting it. they told me to. they all told me to. they all said, kiss her; and said she'd like it. they all said it--every one of them. but i'm sorry, m'am, and i won't do it no more --i won't, honest." "you won't, won't you? well, i sh'd reckon you won't!" "no'm, i'm honest about it; i won't ever do it again--till you ask me." "till i ask you! well, i never see the beat of it in my born days! i lay you'll be the methusalem-numskull of creation before ever i ask you --or the likes of you." "well," he says, "it does surprise me so. i can't make it out, somehow. they said you would, and i thought you would. but--" he stopped and looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, "didn't you think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?" "why, no; i--i--well, no, i b'lieve i didn't." then he looks on around the same way to me, and says: "tom, didn't you think aunt sally 'd open out her arms and say, 'sid sawyer--'" "my land!" she says, breaking in and jumping for him, "you impudent young rascal, to fool a body so--" and was going to hug him, but he fended her off, and says: "no, not till you've asked me first." so she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed him over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took what was left. and after they got a little quiet again she says: "why, dear me, i never see such a surprise. we warn't looking for you at all, but only tom. sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him." "it's because it warn't intended for any of us to come but tom," he says; "but i begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too; so, coming down the river, me and tom thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by and by tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger. but it was a mistake, aunt sally. this ain't no healthy place for a stranger to come." "no--not impudent whelps, sid. you ought to had your jaws boxed; i hain't been so put out since i don't know when. but i don't care, i don't mind the terms--i'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here. well, to think of that performance! i don't deny it, i was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack." we had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven families --and all hot, too; none of your flabby, tough meat that's laid in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morning. uncle silas he asked a pretty long blessing over it, but it was worth it; and it didn't cool it a bit, neither, the way i've seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times. there was a considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon, and me and tom was on the lookout all the time; but it warn't no use, they didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid to try to work up to it. but at supper, at night, one of the little boys says: "pa, mayn't tom and sid and me go to the show?" "no," says the old man, "i reckon there ain't going to be any; and you couldn't go if there was; because the runaway nigger told burton and me all about that scandalous show, and burton said he would tell the people; so i reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of town before this time." so there it was!--but i couldn't help it. tom and me was to sleep in the same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid good-night and went up to bed right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the lightning-rod, and shoved for the town; for i didn't believe anybody was going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so if i didn't hurry up and give them one they'd get into trouble sure. on the road tom he told me all about how it was reckoned i was murdered, and how pap disappeared pretty soon, and didn't come back no more, and what a stir there was when jim run away; and i told tom all about our royal nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft voyage as i had time to; and as we struck into the town and up through the--here comes a raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by i see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a rail--that is, i knowed it was the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human--just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes. well, it made me sick to see it; and i was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like i couldn't ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. it was a dreadful thing to see. human beings can be awful cruel to one another. we see we was too late--couldn't do no good. we asked some stragglers about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house rose up and went for them. so we poked along back home, and i warn't feeling so brash as i was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow--though i hadn't done nothing. but that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. if i had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does i would pison him. it takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow. tom sawyer he says the same. chapter xxxiv. we stopped talking, and got to thinking. by and by tom says: "looky here, huck, what fools we are to not think of it before! i bet i know where jim is." "no! where?" "in that hut down by the ash-hopper. why, looky here. when we was at dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?" "yes." "what did you think the vittles was for?" "for a dog." "so 'd i. well, it wasn't for a dog." "why?" "because part of it was watermelon." "so it was--i noticed it. well, it does beat all that i never thought about a dog not eating watermelon. it shows how a body can see and don't see at the same time." "well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it again when he came out. he fetched uncle a key about the time we got up from table--same key, i bet. watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner; and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation, and where the people's all so kind and good. jim's the prisoner. all right--i'm glad we found it out detective fashion; i wouldn't give shucks for any other way. now you work your mind, and study out a plan to steal jim, and i will study out one, too; and we'll take the one we like the best." what a head for just a boy to have! if i had tom sawyer's head i wouldn't trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown in a circus, nor nothing i can think of. i went to thinking out a plan, but only just to be doing something; i knowed very well where the right plan was going to come from. pretty soon tom says: "ready?" "yes," i says. "all right--bring it out." "my plan is this," i says. "we can easy find out if it's jim in there. then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the island. then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the old man's britches after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river on the raft with jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and jim used to do before. wouldn't that plan work?" "work? why, cert'nly it would work, like rats a-fighting. but it's too blame' simple; there ain't nothing to it. what's the good of a plan that ain't no more trouble than that? it's as mild as goose-milk. why, huck, it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory." i never said nothing, because i warn't expecting nothing different; but i knowed mighty well that whenever he got his plan ready it wouldn't have none of them objections to it. and it didn't. he told me what it was, and i see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. so i was satisfied, and said we would waltz in on it. i needn't tell what it was here, because i knowed it wouldn't stay the way, it was. i knowed he would be changing it around every which way as we went along, and heaving in new bullinesses wherever he got a chance. and that is what he done. well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that tom sawyer was in earnest, and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery. that was the thing that was too many for me. here was a boy that was respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody. i couldn't understand it no way at all. it was outrageous, and i knowed i ought to just up and tell him so; and so be his true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself. and i did start to tell him; but he shut me up, and says: "don't you reckon i know what i'm about? don't i generly know what i'm about?" "yes." "didn't i say i was going to help steal the nigger?" "yes." "well, then." that's all he said, and that's all i said. it warn't no use to say any more; because when he said he'd do a thing, he always done it. but i couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing; so i just let it go, and never bothered no more about it. if he was bound to have it so, i couldn't help it. when we got home the house was all dark and still; so we went on down to the hut by the ash-hopper for to examine it. we went through the yard so as to see what the hounds would do. they knowed us, and didn't make no more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in the night. when we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and the two sides; and on the side i warn't acquainted with--which was the north side--we found a square window-hole, up tolerable high, with just one stout board nailed across it. i says: "here's the ticket. this hole's big enough for jim to get through if we wrench off the board." tom says: "it's as simple as tit-tat-toe, three-in-a-row, and as easy as playing hooky. i should hope we can find a way that's a little more complicated than that, huck finn." "well, then," i says, "how 'll it do to saw him out, the way i done before i was murdered that time?" "that's more like," he says. "it's real mysterious, and troublesome, and good," he says; "but i bet we can find a way that's twice as long. there ain't no hurry; le's keep on looking around." betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to that joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank. it was as long as the hut, but narrow--only about six foot wide. the door to it was at the south end, and was padlocked. tom he went to the soap-kettle and searched around, and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with; so he took it and prized out one of the staples. the chain fell down, and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck a match, and see the shed was only built against a cabin and hadn't no connection with it; and there warn't no floor to the shed, nor nothing in it but some old rusty played-out hoes and spades and picks and a crippled plow. the match went out, and so did we, and shoved in the staple again, and the door was locked as good as ever. tom was joyful. he says; "now we're all right. we'll dig him out. it 'll take about a week!" then we started for the house, and i went in the back door--you only have to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don't fasten the doors--but that warn't romantical enough for tom sawyer; no way would do him but he must climb up the lightning-rod. but after he got up half way about three times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most busted his brains out, he thought he'd got to give it up; but after he was rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this time he made the trip. in the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger cabins to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed jim--if it was jim that was being fed. the niggers was just getting through breakfast and starting for the fields; and jim's nigger was piling up a tin pan with bread and meat and things; and whilst the others was leaving, the key come from the house. this nigger had a good-natured, chuckle-headed face, and his wool was all tied up in little bunches with thread. that was to keep witches off. he said the witches was pestering him awful these nights, and making him see all kinds of strange things, and hear all kinds of strange words and noises, and he didn't believe he was ever witched so long before in his life. he got so worked up, and got to running on so about his troubles, he forgot all about what he'd been a-going to do. so tom says: "what's the vittles for? going to feed the dogs?" the nigger kind of smiled around gradually over his face, like when you heave a brickbat in a mud-puddle, and he says: "yes, mars sid, a dog. cur'us dog, too. does you want to go en look at 'im?" "yes." i hunched tom, and whispers: "you going, right here in the daybreak? that warn't the plan." "no, it warn't; but it's the plan now." so, drat him, we went along, but i didn't like it much. when we got in we couldn't hardly see anything, it was so dark; but jim was there, sure enough, and could see us; and he sings out: "why, huck! en good lan'! ain' dat misto tom?" i just knowed how it would be; i just expected it. i didn't know nothing to do; and if i had i couldn't a done it, because that nigger busted in and says: "why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genlmen?" we could see pretty well now. tom he looked at the nigger, steady and kind of wondering, and says: "does who know us?" "why, dis-yer runaway nigger." "i don't reckon he does; but what put that into your head?" "what put it dar? didn' he jis' dis minute sing out like he knowed you?" tom says, in a puzzled-up kind of way: "well, that's mighty curious. who sung out? when did he sing out? what did he sing out?" and turns to me, perfectly ca'm, and says, "did you hear anybody sing out?" of course there warn't nothing to be said but the one thing; so i says: "no; i ain't heard nobody say nothing." then he turns to jim, and looks him over like he never see him before, and says: "did you sing out?" "no, sah," says jim; "i hain't said nothing, sah." "not a word?" "no, sah, i hain't said a word." "did you ever see us before?" "no, sah; not as i knows on." so tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed, and says, kind of severe: "what do you reckon's the matter with you, anyway? what made you think somebody sung out?" "oh, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en i wisht i was dead, i do. dey's awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey sk'yers me so. please to don't tell nobody 'bout it sah, er ole mars silas he'll scole me; 'kase he say dey ain't no witches. i jis' wish to goodness he was heah now --den what would he say! i jis' bet he couldn' fine no way to git aroun' it dis time. but it's awluz jis' so; people dat's sot, stays sot; dey won't look into noth'n'en fine it out f'r deyselves, en when you fine it out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you." tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell nobody; and told him to buy some more thread to tie up his wool with; and then looks at jim, and says: "i wonder if uncle silas is going to hang this nigger. if i was to catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, i wouldn't give him up, i'd hang him." and whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to jim and says: "don't ever let on to know us. and if you hear any digging going on nights, it's us; we're going to set you free." jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it; then the nigger come back, and we said we'd come again some time if the nigger wanted us to; and he said he would, more particular if it was dark, because the witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks around then. chapter xxxv. it would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down into the woods; because tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox-fire, and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place. we fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down to rest, and tom says, kind of dissatisfied: "blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be. and so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan. there ain't no watchman to be drugged--now there ought to be a watchman. there ain't even a dog to give a sleeping-mixture to. and there's jim chained by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of his bed: why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. and uncle silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to the punkin-headed nigger, and don't send nobody to watch the nigger. jim could a got out of that window-hole before this, only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel with a ten-foot chain on his leg. why, drat it, huck, it's the stupidest arrangement i ever see. you got to invent all the difficulties. well, we can't help it; we got to do the best we can with the materials we've got. anyhow, there's one thing--there's more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers, where there warn't one of them furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all out of your own head. now look at just that one thing of the lantern. when you come down to the cold facts, we simply got to let on that a lantern's resky. why, we could work with a torchlight procession if we wanted to, i believe. now, whilst i think of it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we get." "what do we want of a saw?" "what do we want of a saw? hain't we got to saw the leg of jim's bed off, so as to get the chain loose?" "why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off." "well, if that ain't just like you, huck finn. you can get up the infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. why, hain't you ever read any books at all?--baron trenck, nor casanova, nor benvenuto chelleeny, nor henri iv., nor none of them heroes? who ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? no; the way all the best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave it just so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found, and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal can't see no sign of it's being sawed, and thinks the bed-leg is perfectly sound. then, the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip off your chain, and there you are. nothing to do but hitch your rope ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moat --because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know--and there's your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle, and away you go to your native langudoc, or navarre, or wherever it is. it's gaudy, huck. i wish there was a moat to this cabin. if we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one." i says: "what do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under the cabin?" but he never heard me. he had forgot me and everything else. he had his chin in his hand, thinking. pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head; then sighs again, and says: "no, it wouldn't do--there ain't necessity enough for it." "for what?" i says. "why, to saw jim's leg off," he says. "good land!" i says; "why, there ain't no necessity for it. and what would you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?" "well, some of the best authorities has done it. they couldn't get the chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved. and a leg would be better still. but we got to let that go. there ain't necessity enough in this case; and, besides, jim's a nigger, and wouldn't understand the reasons for it, and how it's the custom in europe; so we'll let it go. but there's one thing--he can have a rope ladder; we can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough. and we can send it to him in a pie; it's mostly done that way. and i've et worse pies." "why, tom sawyer, how you talk," i says; "jim ain't got no use for a rope ladder." "he has got use for it. how you talk, you better say; you don't know nothing about it. he's got to have a rope ladder; they all do." "what in the nation can he do with it?" "do with it? he can hide it in his bed, can't he?" that's what they all do; and he's got to, too. huck, you don't ever seem to want to do anything that's regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the time. s'pose he don't do nothing with it? ain't it there in his bed, for a clew, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want clews? of course they will. and you wouldn't leave them any? that would be a pretty howdy-do, wouldn't it! i never heard of such a thing." "well," i says, "if it's in the regulations, and he's got to have it, all right, let him have it; because i don't wish to go back on no regulations; but there's one thing, tom sawyer--if we go to tearing up our sheets to make jim a rope ladder, we're going to get into trouble with aunt sally, just as sure as you're born. now, the way i look at it, a hickry-bark ladder don't cost nothing, and don't waste nothing, and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as any rag ladder you can start; and as for jim, he ain't had no experience, and so he don't care what kind of a--" "oh, shucks, huck finn, if i was as ignorant as you i'd keep still --that's what i'd do. who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a hickry-bark ladder? why, it's perfectly ridiculous." "well, all right, tom, fix it your own way; but if you'll take my advice, you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothesline." he said that would do. and that gave him another idea, and he says: "borrow a shirt, too." "what do we want of a shirt, tom?" "want it for jim to keep a journal on." "journal your granny--jim can't write." "s'pose he can't write--he can make marks on the shirt, can't he, if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel-hoop?" "why, tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one; and quicker, too." "prisoners don't have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull pens out of, you muggins. they always make their pens out of the hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out, too, because they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. they wouldn't use a goose-quill if they had it. it ain't regular." "well, then, what'll we make him the ink out of?" "many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that's the common sort and women; the best authorities uses their own blood. jim can do that; and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. the iron mask always done that, and it's a blame' good way, too." "jim ain't got no tin plates. they feed him in a pan." "that ain't nothing; we can get him some." "can't nobody read his plates." "that ain't got anything to do with it, huck finn. all he's got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out. you don't have to be able to read it. why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else." "well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?" "why, blame it all, it ain't the prisoner's plates." "but it's somebody's plates, ain't it?" "well, spos'n it is? what does the prisoner care whose--" he broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. so we cleared out for the house. along during the morning i borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes-line; and i found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. i called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but tom said it warn't borrowing, it was stealing. he said we was representing prisoners; and prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody don't blame them for it, either. it ain't no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, tom said; it's his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with. he said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when he warn't a prisoner. so we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. and yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when i stole a watermelon out of the nigger-patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for. tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we needed. well, i says, i needed the watermelon. but he said i didn't need it to get out of prison with; there's where the difference was. he said if i'd a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to jim to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right. so i let it go at that, though i couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if i got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every time i see a chance to hog a watermelon. well, as i was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then tom he carried the sack into the lean-to whilst i stood off a piece to keep watch. by and by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile to talk. he says: "everything's all right now except tools; and that's easy fixed." "tools?" i says. "yes." "tools for what?" "why, to dig with. we ain't a-going to gnaw him out, are we?" "ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a nigger out with?" i says. he turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says: "huck finn, did you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with? now i want to ask you--if you got any reasonableness in you at all--what kind of a show would that give him to be a hero? why, they might as well lend him the key and done with it. picks and shovels--why, they wouldn't furnish 'em to a king." "well, then," i says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do we want?" "a couple of case-knives." "to dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?" "yes." "confound it, it's foolish, tom." "it don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the right way--and it's the regular way. and there ain't no other way, that ever i heard of, and i've read all the books that gives any information about these things. they always dig out with a case-knife--and not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid rock. and it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever. why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the castle deef, in the harbor of marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was he at it, you reckon?" "i don't know." "well, guess." "i don't know. a month and a half." "thirty-seven year--and he come out in china. that's the kind. i wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock." "jim don't know nobody in china." "what's that got to do with it? neither did that other fellow. but you're always a-wandering off on a side issue. why can't you stick to the main point?" "all right--i don't care where he comes out, so he comes out; and jim don't, either, i reckon. but there's one thing, anyway--jim's too old to be dug out with a case-knife. he won't last." "yes he will last, too. you don't reckon it's going to take thirty-seven years to dig out through a dirt foundation, do you?" "how long will it take, tom?" "well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't take very long for uncle silas to hear from down there by new orleans. he'll hear jim ain't from there. then his next move will be to advertise jim, or something like that. so we can't resk being as long digging him out as we ought to. by rights i reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but we can't. things being so uncertain, what i recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that, we can let on, to ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years. then we can snatch him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm. yes, i reckon that 'll be the best way." "now, there's sense in that," i says. "letting on don't cost nothing; letting on ain't no trouble; and if it's any object, i don't mind letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. it wouldn't strain me none, after i got my hand in. so i'll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case-knives." "smouch three," he says; "we want one to make a saw out of." "tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to sejest it," i says, "there's an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the weather-boarding behind the smoke-house." he looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says: "it ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, huck. run along and smouch the knives--three of them." so i done it. huckleberry finn by mark twain part . chapter xxi. it was after sun-up now, but we went right on and didn't tie up. the king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after they'd jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal. after breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft, and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went to getting his romeo and juliet by heart. when he had got it pretty good him and the duke begun to practice it together. the duke had to learn him over and over again how to say every speech; and he made him sigh, and put his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he done it pretty well; "only," he says, "you mustn't bellow out romeo! that way, like a bull--you must say it soft and sick and languishy, so--r-o-o-meo! that is the idea; for juliet's a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you know, and she doesn't bray like a jackass." well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of oak laths, and begun to practice the sword fight--the duke called himself richard iii.; and the way they laid on and pranced around the raft was grand to see. but by and by the king tripped and fell overboard, and after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures they'd had in other times along the river. after dinner the duke says: "well, capet, we'll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so i guess we'll add a little more to it. we want a little something to answer encores with, anyway." "what's onkores, bilgewater?" the duke told him, and then says: "i'll answer by doing the highland fling or the sailor's hornpipe; and you--well, let me see--oh, i've got it--you can do hamlet's soliloquy." "hamlet's which?" "hamlet's soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in shakespeare. ah, it's sublime, sublime! always fetches the house. i haven't got it in the book--i've only got one volume--but i reckon i can piece it out from memory. i'll just walk up and down a minute, and see if i can call it back from recollection's vaults." so he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a tear. it was beautiful to see him. by and by he got it. he told us to give attention. then he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through his speech, he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever i see before. this is the speech--i learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king: to be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin that makes calamity of so long life; for who would fardels bear, till birnam wood do come to dunsinane, but that the fear of something after death murders the innocent sleep, great nature's second course, and makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune than fly to others that we know not of. there's the respect must give us pause: wake duncan with thy knocking! i would thou couldst; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the law's delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, in the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn in customary suits of solemn black, but that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, breathes forth contagion on the world, and thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage, is sicklied o'er with care, and all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops, with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action. 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. but soft you, the fair ophelia: ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, but get thee to a nunnery--go! well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so he could do it first-rate. it seemed like he was just born for it; and when he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off. the first chance we got the duke he had some showbills printed; and after that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a most uncommon lively place, for there warn't nothing but sword fighting and rehearsing--as the duke called it--going on all the time. one morning, when we was pretty well down the state of arkansaw, we come in sight of a little one-horse town in a big bend; so we tied up about three-quarters of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our show. we struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that afternoon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. the circus would leave before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. the duke he hired the courthouse, and we went around and stuck up our bills. they read like this: shaksperean revival ! ! ! wonderful attraction! for one night only! the world renowned tragedians, david garrick the younger, of drury lane theatre london, and edmund kean the elder, of the royal haymarket theatre, whitechapel, pudding lane, piccadilly, london, and the royal continental theatres, in their sublime shaksperean spectacle entitled thebalcony scene in romeo and juliet ! ! ! romeo...................mr. garrick juliet..................mr. kean assisted by the whole strength of the company! new costumes, new scenes, new appointments! also: the thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling broad-sword conflict in richard iii. ! ! ! richard iii.............mr. garrick richmond................mr. kean also: (by special request) hamlet's immortal soliloquy ! ! by the illustrious kean! done by him consecutive nights in paris! for one night only, on account of imperative european engagements! admission cents; children and servants, cents. then we went loafing around town. the stores and houses was most all old, shackly, dried up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted; they was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts, so as to be out of reach of the water when the river was over-flowed. the houses had little gardens around them, but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in them but jimpson-weeds, and sunflowers, and ash piles, and old curled-up boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and played-out tinware. the fences was made of different kinds of boards, nailed on at different times; and they leaned every which way, and had gates that didn't generly have but one hinge--a leather one. some of the fences had been white-washed some time or another, but the duke said it was in clumbus' time, like enough. there was generly hogs in the garden, and people driving them out. all the stores was along one street. they had white domestic awnings in front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning-posts. there was empty drygoods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their barlow knives; and chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching--a mighty ornery lot. they generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella, but didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats, they called one another bill, and buck, and hank, and joe, and andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and used considerable many cuss words. there was as many as one loafer leaning up against every awning-post, and he most always had his hands in his britches-pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of tobacco or scratch. what a body was hearing amongst them all the time was: "gimme a chaw 'v tobacker, hank." "cain't; i hain't got but one chaw left. ask bill." maybe bill he gives him a chaw; maybe he lies and says he ain't got none. some of them kinds of loafers never has a cent in the world, nor a chaw of tobacco of their own. they get all their chawing by borrowing; they say to a fellow, "i wisht you'd len' me a chaw, jack, i jist this minute give ben thompson the last chaw i had"--which is a lie pretty much everytime; it don't fool nobody but a stranger; but jack ain't no stranger, so he says: "you give him a chaw, did you? so did your sister's cat's grandmother. you pay me back the chaws you've awready borry'd off'n me, lafe buckner, then i'll loan you one or two ton of it, and won't charge you no back intrust, nuther." "well, i did pay you back some of it wunst." "yes, you did--'bout six chaws. you borry'd store tobacker and paid back nigger-head." store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellows mostly chaws the natural leaf twisted. when they borrow a chaw they don't generly cut it off with a knife, but set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in two; then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when it's handed back, and says, sarcastic: "here, gimme the chaw, and you take the plug." all the streets and lanes was just mud; they warn't nothing else but mud --mud as black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places, and two or three inches deep in all the places. the hogs loafed and grunted around everywheres. you'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way, where folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out and shut her eyes and wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as happy as if she was on salary. and pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "hi! so boy! sick him, tige!" and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more a-coming; and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. then they'd settle back again till there was a dog fight. there couldn't anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog fight--unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death. on the river front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in, the people had moved out of them. the bank was caved away under one corner of some others, and that corner was hanging over. people lived in them yet, but it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house caves in at a time. sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer. such a town as that has to be always moving back, and back, and back, because the river's always gnawing at it. the nearer it got to noon that day the thicker and thicker was the wagons and horses in the streets, and more coming all the time. families fetched their dinners with them from the country, and eat them in the wagons. there was considerable whisky drinking going on, and i seen three fights. by and by somebody sings out: "here comes old boggs!--in from the country for his little old monthly drunk; here he comes, boys!" all the loafers looked glad; i reckoned they was used to having fun out of boggs. one of them says: "wonder who he's a-gwyne to chaw up this time. if he'd a-chawed up all the men he's ben a-gwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year he'd have considerable ruputation now." another one says, "i wisht old boggs 'd threaten me, 'cuz then i'd know i warn't gwyne to die for a thousan' year." boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an injun, and singing out: "cler the track, thar. i'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a-gwyne to raise." he was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year old, and had a very red face. everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now because he'd come to town to kill old colonel sherburn, and his motto was, "meat first, and spoon vittles to top off on." he see me, and rode up and says: "whar'd you come f'm, boy? you prepared to die?" then he rode on. i was scared, but a man says: "he don't mean nothing; he's always a-carryin' on like that when he's drunk. he's the best naturedest old fool in arkansaw--never hurt nobody, drunk nor sober." boggs rode up before the biggest store in town, and bent his head down so he could see under the curtain of the awning and yells: "come out here, sherburn! come out and meet the man you've swindled. you're the houn' i'm after, and i'm a-gwyne to have you, too!" and so he went on, calling sherburn everything he could lay his tongue to, and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and going on. by and by a proud-looking man about fifty-five--and he was a heap the best dressed man in that town, too--steps out of the store, and the crowd drops back on each side to let him come. he says to boggs, mighty ca'm and slow--he says: "i'm tired of this, but i'll endure it till one o'clock. till one o'clock, mind--no longer. if you open your mouth against me only once after that time you can't travel so far but i will find you." then he turns and goes in. the crowd looked mighty sober; nobody stirred, and there warn't no more laughing. boggs rode off blackguarding sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street; and pretty soon back he comes and stops before the store, still keeping it up. some men crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up, but he wouldn't; they told him it would be one o'clock in about fifteen minutes, and so he must go home--he must go right away. but it didn't do no good. he cussed away with all his might, and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode over it, and pretty soon away he went a-raging down the street again, with his gray hair a-flying. everybody that could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober; but it warn't no use--up the street he would tear again, and give sherburn another cussing. by and by somebody says: "go for his daughter!--quick, go for his daughter; sometimes he'll listen to her. if anybody can persuade him, she can." so somebody started on a run. i walked down street a ways and stopped. in about five or ten minutes here comes boggs again, but not on his horse. he was a-reeling across the street towards me, bare-headed, with a friend on both sides of him a-holt of his arms and hurrying him along. he was quiet, and looked uneasy; and he warn't hanging back any, but was doing some of the hurrying himself. somebody sings out: "boggs!" i looked over there to see who said it, and it was that colonel sherburn. he was standing perfectly still in the street, and had a pistol raised in his right hand--not aiming it, but holding it out with the barrel tilted up towards the sky. the same second i see a young girl coming on the run, and two men with her. boggs and the men turned round to see who called him, and when they see the pistol the men jumped to one side, and the pistol-barrel come down slow and steady to a level--both barrels cocked. boggs throws up both of his hands and says, "o lord, don't shoot!" bang! goes the first shot, and he staggers back, clawing at the air--bang! goes the second one, and he tumbles backwards on to the ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out. that young girl screamed out and comes rushing, and down she throws herself on her father, crying, and saying, "oh, he's killed him, he's killed him!" the crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, with their necks stretched, trying to see, and people on the inside trying to shove them back and shouting, "back, back! give him air, give him air!" colonel sherburn he tossed his pistol on to the ground, and turned around on his heels and walked off. they took boggs to a little drug store, the crowd pressing around just the same, and the whole town following, and i rushed and got a good place at the window, where i was close to him and could see in. they laid him on the floor and put one large bible under his head, and opened another one and spread it on his breast; but they tore open his shirt first, and i seen where one of the bullets went in. he made about a dozen long gasps, his breast lifting the bible up when he drawed in his breath, and letting it down again when he breathed it out--and after that he laid still; he was dead. then they pulled his daughter away from him, screaming and crying, and took her off. she was about sixteen, and very sweet and gentle looking, but awful pale and scared. well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and scrouging and pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look, but people that had the places wouldn't give them up, and folks behind them was saying all the time, "say, now, you've looked enough, you fellows; 'tain't right and 'tain't fair for you to stay thar all the time, and never give nobody a chance; other folks has their rights as well as you." there was considerable jawing back, so i slid out, thinking maybe there was going to be trouble. the streets was full, and everybody was excited. everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened, and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows, stretching their necks and listening. one long, lanky man, with long hair and a big white fur stovepipe hat on the back of his head, and a crooked-handled cane, marked out the places on the ground where boggs stood and where sherburn stood, and the people following him around from one place to t'other and watching everything he done, and bobbing their heads to show they understood, and stooping a little and resting their hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his cane; and then he stood up straight and stiff where sherburn had stood, frowning and having his hat-brim down over his eyes, and sung out, "boggs!" and then fetched his cane down slow to a level, and says "bang!" staggered backwards, says "bang!" again, and fell down flat on his back. the people that had seen the thing said he done it perfect; said it was just exactly the way it all happened. then as much as a dozen people got out their bottles and treated him. well, by and by somebody said sherburn ought to be lynched. in about a minute everybody was saying it; so away they went, mad and yelling, and snatching down every clothes-line they come to to do the hanging with. chapter xxii. they swarmed up towards sherburn's house, a-whooping and raging like injuns, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped to mush, and it was awful to see. children was heeling it ahead of the mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every window along the road was full of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence; and as soon as the mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of reach. lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared most to death. they swarmed up in front of sherburn's palings as thick as they could jam together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise. it was a little twenty-foot yard. some sung out "tear down the fence! tear down the fence!" then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like a wave. just then sherburn steps out on to the roof of his little front porch, with a double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm and deliberate, not saying a word. the racket stopped, and the wave sucked back. sherburn never said a word--just stood there, looking down. the stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. sherburn run his eye slow along the crowd; and wherever it struck the people tried a little to out-gaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. then pretty soon sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's got sand in it. then he says, slow and scornful: "the idea of you lynching anybody! it's amusing. the idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? why, a man's safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind--as long as it's daytime and you're not behind him. "do i know you? i know you clear through was born and raised in the south, and i've lived in the north; so i know the average all around. the average man's a coward. in the north he lets anybody walk over him that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. in the south one man all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men in the daytime, and robbed the lot. your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people--whereas you're just as brave, and no braver. why don't your juries hang murderers? because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark--and it's just what they would do. "so they always acquit; and then a man goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back and lynches the rascal. your mistake is, that you didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the other is that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks. you brought part of a man--buck harkness, there--and if you hadn't had him to start you, you'd a taken it out in blowing. "you didn't want to come. the average man don't like trouble and danger. you don't like trouble and danger. but if only half a man--like buck harkness, there--shouts 'lynch him! lynch him!' you're afraid to back down--afraid you'll be found out to be what you are--cowards--and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves on to that half-a-man's coat-tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do. the pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is--a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. but a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness. now the thing for you to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. if any real lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, southern fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a man along. now leave--and take your half-a-man with you"--tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it when he says this. the crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart, and went tearing off every which way, and buck harkness he heeled it after them, looking tolerable cheap. i could a stayed if i wanted to, but i didn't want to. i went to the circus and loafed around the back side till the watchman went by, and then dived in under the tent. i had my twenty-dollar gold piece and some other money, but i reckoned i better save it, because there ain't no telling how soon you are going to need it, away from home and amongst strangers that way. you can't be too careful. i ain't opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain't no other way, but there ain't no use in wasting it on them. it was a real bully circus. it was the splendidest sight that ever was when they all come riding in, two and two, a gentleman and lady, side by side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs easy and comfortable --there must a been twenty of them--and every lady with a lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real sure-enough queens, and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars, and just littered with diamonds. it was a powerful fine sight; i never see anything so lovely. and then one by one they got up and stood, and went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight, with their heads bobbing and skimming along, away up there under the tent-roof, and every lady's rose-leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips, and she looking like the most loveliest parasol. and then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one foot out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and more, and the ringmaster going round and round the center-pole, cracking his whip and shouting "hi!--hi!" and the clown cracking jokes behind him; and by and by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her knuckles on her hips and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how the horses did lean over and hump themselves! and so one after the other they all skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow i ever see, and then scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands and went just about wild. well, all through the circus they done the most astonishing things; and all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people. the ringmaster couldn't ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said; and how he ever could think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat, was what i couldn't noway understand. why, i couldn't a thought of them in a year. and by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring--said he wanted to ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. they argued and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show come to a standstill. then the people begun to holler at him and make fun of him, and that made him mad, and he begun to rip and tear; so that stirred up the people, and a lot of men begun to pile down off of the benches and swarm towards the ring, saying, "knock him down! throw him out!" and one or two women begun to scream. so, then, the ringmaster he made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble he would let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse. so everybody laughed and said all right, and the man got on. the minute he was on, the horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around, with two circus men hanging on to his bridle trying to hold him, and the drunk man hanging on to his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump, and the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing till tears rolled down. and at last, sure enough, all the circus men could do, the horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation, round and round the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging to his neck, with first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side, and then t'other one on t'other side, and the people just crazy. it warn't funny to me, though; i was all of a tremble to see his danger. but pretty soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling this way and that; and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood! and the horse a-going like a house afire too. he just stood up there, a-sailing around as easy and comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his life--and then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. he shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. and, then, there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly hum--and finally skipped off, and made his bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling with pleasure and astonishment. then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled, and he was the sickest ringmaster you ever see, i reckon. why, it was one of his own men! he had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to nobody. well, i felt sheepish enough to be took in so, but i wouldn't a been in that ringmaster's place, not for a thousand dollars. i don't know; there may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but i never struck them yet. anyways, it was plenty good enough for me; and wherever i run across it, it can have all of my custom every time. well, that night we had our show; but there warn't only about twelve people there--just enough to pay expenses. and they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep. so the duke said these arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to shakespeare; what they wanted was low comedy--and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned. he said he could size their style. so next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village. the bills said: at the court house! for nights only! the world-renowned tragedians david garrick the younger! and edmund kean the elder! of the london and continental theatres, in their thrilling tragedy of the king's cameleopard, or the royal nonesuch ! ! ! admission cents. then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said: ladies and children not admitted. "there," says he, "if that line don't fetch them, i don't know arkansaw!" chapter xxiii. well, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was jam full of men in no time. when the place couldn't hold no more, the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about edmund kean the elder, which was to play the main principal part in it; and at last when he'd got everybody's expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring-streaked-and- striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. and--but never mind the rest of his outfit; it was just wild, but it was awful funny. the people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done it over again, and after that they made him do it another time. well, it would make a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut. then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of pressing london engagements, where the seats is all sold already for it in drury lane; and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come and see it. twenty people sings out: "what, is it over? is that all?" the duke says yes. then there was a fine time. everybody sings out, "sold!" and rose up mad, and was a-going for that stage and them tragedians. but a big, fine looking man jumps up on a bench and shouts: "hold on! just a word, gentlemen." they stopped to listen. "we are sold--mighty badly sold. but we don't want to be the laughing stock of this whole town, i reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long as we live. no. what we want is to go out of here quiet, and talk this show up, and sell the rest of the town! then we'll all be in the same boat. ain't that sensible?" ("you bet it is!--the jedge is right!" everybody sings out.) "all right, then--not a word about any sell. go along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy." next day you couldn't hear nothing around that town but how splendid that show was. house was jammed again that night, and we sold this crowd the same way. when me and the king and the duke got home to the raft we all had a supper; and by and by, about midnight, they made jim and me back her out and float her down the middle of the river, and fetch her in and hide her about two mile below town. the third night the house was crammed again--and they warn't new-comers this time, but people that was at the show the other two nights. i stood by the duke at the door, and i see that every man that went in had his pockets bulging, or something muffled up under his coat--and i see it warn't no perfumery, neither, not by a long sight. i smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if i know the signs of a dead cat being around, and i bet i do, there was sixty-four of them went in. i shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for me; i couldn't stand it. well, when the place couldn't hold no more people the duke he give a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door for him a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, i after him; but the minute we turned the corner and was in the dark he says: "walk fast now till you get away from the houses, and then shin for the raft like the dickens was after you!" i done it, and he done the same. we struck the raft at the same time, and in less than two seconds we was gliding down stream, all dark and still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a word. i reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience, but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam, and says: "well, how'd the old thing pan out this time, duke?" he hadn't been up-town at all. we never showed a light till we was about ten mile below the village. then we lit up and had a supper, and the king and the duke fairly laughed their bones loose over the way they'd served them people. the duke says: "greenhorns, flatheads! i knew the first house would keep mum and let the rest of the town get roped in; and i knew they'd lay for us the third night, and consider it was their turn now. well, it is their turn, and i'd give something to know how much they'd take for it. i would just like to know how they're putting in their opportunity. they can turn it into a picnic if they want to--they brought plenty provisions." them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in that three nights. i never see money hauled in by the wagon-load like that before. by and by, when they was asleep and snoring, jim says: "don't it s'prise you de way dem kings carries on, huck?" "no," i says, "it don't." "why don't it, huck?" "well, it don't, because it's in the breed. i reckon they're all alike," "but, huck, dese kings o' ourn is reglar rapscallions; dat's jist what dey is; dey's reglar rapscallions." "well, that's what i'm a-saying; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as i can make out." "is dat so?" "you read about them once--you'll see. look at henry the eight; this 'n 's a sunday-school superintendent to him. and look at charles second, and louis fourteen, and louis fifteen, and james second, and edward second, and richard third, and forty more; besides all them saxon heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise cain. my, you ought to seen old henry the eight when he was in bloom. he was a blossom. he used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. and he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. 'fetch up nell gwynn,' he says. they fetch her up. next morning, 'chop off her head!' and they chop it off. 'fetch up jane shore,' he says; and up she comes, next morning, 'chop off her head'--and they chop it off. 'ring up fair rosamun.' fair rosamun answers the bell. next morning, 'chop off her head.' and he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it domesday book--which was a good name and stated the case. you don't know kings, jim, but i know them; and this old rip of ourn is one of the cleanest i've struck in history. well, henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. how does he go at it --give notice?--give the country a show? no. all of a sudden he heaves all the tea in boston harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on. that was his style--he never give anybody a chance. he had suspicions of his father, the duke of wellington. well, what did he do? ask him to show up? no--drownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. s'pose people left money laying around where he was--what did he do? he collared it. s'pose he contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn't set down there and see that he done it--what did he do? he always done the other thing. s'pose he opened his mouth--what then? if he didn't shut it up powerful quick he'd lose a lie every time. that's the kind of a bug henry was; and if we'd a had him along 'stead of our kings he'd a fooled that town a heap worse than ourn done. i don't say that ourn is lambs, because they ain't, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they ain't nothing to that old ram, anyway. all i say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. it's the way they're raised." "but dis one do smell so like de nation, huck." "well, they all do, jim. we can't help the way a king smells; history don't tell no way." "now de duke, he's a tolerble likely man in some ways." "yes, a duke's different. but not very different. this one's a middling hard lot for a duke. when he's drunk there ain't no near-sighted man could tell him from a king." "well, anyways, i doan' hanker for no mo' un um, huck. dese is all i kin stan'." "it's the way i feel, too, jim. but we've got them on our hands, and we got to remember what they are, and make allowances. sometimes i wish we could hear of a country that's out of kings." what was the use to tell jim these warn't real kings and dukes? it wouldn't a done no good; and, besides, it was just as i said: you couldn't tell them from the real kind. i went to sleep, and jim didn't call me when it was my turn. he often done that. when i waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. i didn't take notice nor let on. i knowed what it was about. he was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his life; and i do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their'n. it don't seem natural, but i reckon it's so. he was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged i was asleep, and saying, "po' little 'lizabeth! po' little johnny! it's mighty hard; i spec' i ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo'!" he was a mighty good nigger, jim was. but this time i somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones; and by and by he says: "what makes me feel so bad dis time 'uz bekase i hear sumpn over yonder on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time i treat my little 'lizabeth so ornery. she warn't on'y 'bout fo' year ole, en she tuck de sk'yarlet fever, en had a powful rough spell; but she got well, en one day she was a-stannin' aroun', en i says to her, i says: "'shet de do'.' "she never done it; jis' stood dah, kiner smilin' up at me. it make me mad; en i says agin, mighty loud, i says: "'doan' you hear me? shet de do'!' "she jis stood de same way, kiner smilin' up. i was a-bilin'! i says: "'i lay i make you mine!' "en wid dat i fetch' her a slap side de head dat sont her a-sprawlin'. den i went into de yuther room, en 'uz gone 'bout ten minutes; en when i come back dah was dat do' a-stannin' open yit, en dat chile stannin' mos' right in it, a-lookin' down and mournin', en de tears runnin' down. my, but i wuz mad! i was a-gwyne for de chile, but jis' den--it was a do' dat open innerds--jis' den, 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine de chile, ker-blam!--en my lan', de chile never move'! my breff mos' hop outer me; en i feel so--so--i doan' know how i feel. i crope out, all a-tremblin', en crope aroun' en open de do' easy en slow, en poke my head in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden i says pow! jis' as loud as i could yell. she never budge! oh, huck, i bust out a-cryin' en grab her up in my arms, en say, 'oh, de po' little thing! de lord god amighty fogive po' ole jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long's he live!' oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, huck, plumb deef en dumb--en i'd ben a-treat'n her so!" chapter xxiv. next day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow towhead out in the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns. jim he spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few hours, because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all day in the wigwam tied with the rope. you see, when we left him all alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on to him all by himself and not tied it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger, you know. so the duke said it was kind of hard to have to lay roped all day, and he'd cipher out some way to get around it. he was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it. he dressed jim up in king lear's outfit--it was a long curtain-calico gown, and a white horse-hair wig and whiskers; and then he took his theater paint and painted jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead, dull, solid blue, like a man that's been drownded nine days. blamed if he warn't the horriblest looking outrage i ever see. then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle so: sick arab--but harmless when not out of his head. and he nailed that shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or five foot in front of the wigwam. jim was satisfied. he said it was a sight better than lying tied a couple of years every day, and trembling all over every time there was a sound. the duke told him to make himself free and easy, and if anybody ever come meddling around, he must hop out of the wigwam, and carry on a little, and fetch a howl or two like a wild beast, and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone. which was sound enough judgment; but you take the average man, and he wouldn't wait for him to howl. why, he didn't only look like he was dead, he looked considerable more than that. these rapscallions wanted to try the nonesuch again, because there was so much money in it, but they judged it wouldn't be safe, because maybe the news might a worked along down by this time. they couldn't hit no project that suited exactly; so at last the duke said he reckoned he'd lay off and work his brains an hour or two and see if he couldn't put up something on the arkansaw village; and the king he allowed he would drop over to t'other village without any plan, but just trust in providence to lead him the profitable way--meaning the devil, i reckon. we had all bought store clothes where we stopped last; and now the king put his'n on, and he told me to put mine on. i done it, of course. the king's duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy. i never knowed how clothes could change a body before. why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he'd take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old leviticus himself. jim cleaned up the canoe, and i got my paddle ready. there was a big steamboat laying at the shore away up under the point, about three mile above the town--been there a couple of hours, taking on freight. says the king: "seein' how i'm dressed, i reckon maybe i better arrive down from st. louis or cincinnati, or some other big place. go for the steamboat, huckleberry; we'll come down to the village on her." i didn't have to be ordered twice to go and take a steamboat ride. i fetched the shore a half a mile above the village, and then went scooting along the bluff bank in the easy water. pretty soon we come to a nice innocent-looking young country jake setting on a log swabbing the sweat off of his face, for it was powerful warm weather; and he had a couple of big carpet-bags by him. "run her nose in shore," says the king. i done it. "wher' you bound for, young man?" "for the steamboat; going to orleans." "git aboard," says the king. "hold on a minute, my servant 'll he'p you with them bags. jump out and he'p the gentleman, adolphus"--meaning me, i see. i done so, and then we all three started on again. the young chap was mighty thankful; said it was tough work toting his baggage such weather. he asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he'd come down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he was going up a few mile to see an old friend on a farm up there. the young fellow says: "when i first see you i says to myself, 'it's mr. wilks, sure, and he come mighty near getting here in time.' but then i says again, 'no, i reckon it ain't him, or else he wouldn't be paddling up the river.' you ain't him, are you?" "no, my name's blodgett--elexander blodgett--reverend elexander blodgett, i s'pose i must say, as i'm one o' the lord's poor servants. but still i'm jist as able to be sorry for mr. wilks for not arriving in time, all the same, if he's missed anything by it--which i hope he hasn't." "well, he don't miss any property by it, because he'll get that all right; but he's missed seeing his brother peter die--which he mayn't mind, nobody can tell as to that--but his brother would a give anything in this world to see him before he died; never talked about nothing else all these three weeks; hadn't seen him since they was boys together--and hadn't ever seen his brother william at all--that's the deef and dumb one--william ain't more than thirty or thirty-five. peter and george were the only ones that come out here; george was the married brother; him and his wife both died last year. harvey and william's the only ones that's left now; and, as i was saying, they haven't got here in time." "did anybody send 'em word?" "oh, yes; a month or two ago, when peter was first took; because peter said then that he sorter felt like he warn't going to get well this time. you see, he was pretty old, and george's g'yirls was too young to be much company for him, except mary jane, the red-headed one; and so he was kinder lonesome after george and his wife died, and didn't seem to care much to live. he most desperately wanted to see harvey--and william, too, for that matter--because he was one of them kind that can't bear to make a will. he left a letter behind for harvey, and said he'd told in it where his money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of the property divided up so george's g'yirls would be all right--for george didn't leave nothing. and that letter was all they could get him to put a pen to." "why do you reckon harvey don't come? wher' does he live?" "oh, he lives in england--sheffield--preaches there--hasn't ever been in this country. he hasn't had any too much time--and besides he mightn't a got the letter at all, you know." "too bad, too bad he couldn't a lived to see his brothers, poor soul. you going to orleans, you say?" "yes, but that ain't only a part of it. i'm going in a ship, next wednesday, for ryo janeero, where my uncle lives." "it's a pretty long journey. but it'll be lovely; wisht i was a-going. is mary jane the oldest? how old is the others?" "mary jane's nineteen, susan's fifteen, and joanna's about fourteen --that's the one that gives herself to good works and has a hare-lip." "poor things! to be left alone in the cold world so." "well, they could be worse off. old peter had friends, and they ain't going to let them come to no harm. there's hobson, the babtis' preacher; and deacon lot hovey, and ben rucker, and abner shackleford, and levi bell, the lawyer; and dr. robinson, and their wives, and the widow bartley, and--well, there's a lot of them; but these are the ones that peter was thickest with, and used to write about sometimes, when he wrote home; so harvey 'll know where to look for friends when he gets here." well, the old man went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied that young fellow. blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and everything in that blessed town, and all about the wilkses; and about peter's business--which was a tanner; and about george's--which was a carpenter; and about harvey's--which was a dissentering minister; and so on, and so on. then he says: "what did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for?" "because she's a big orleans boat, and i was afeard she mightn't stop there. when they're deep they won't stop for a hail. a cincinnati boat will, but this is a st. louis one." "was peter wilks well off?" "oh, yes, pretty well off. he had houses and land, and it's reckoned he left three or four thousand in cash hid up som'ers." "when did you say he died?" "i didn't say, but it was last night." "funeral to-morrow, likely?" "yes, 'bout the middle of the day." "well, it's all terrible sad; but we've all got to go, one time or another. so what we want to do is to be prepared; then we're all right." "yes, sir, it's the best way. ma used to always say that." when we struck the boat she was about done loading, and pretty soon she got off. the king never said nothing about going aboard, so i lost my ride, after all. when the boat was gone the king made me paddle up another mile to a lonesome place, and then he got ashore and says: "now hustle back, right off, and fetch the duke up here, and the new carpet-bags. and if he's gone over to t'other side, go over there and git him. and tell him to git himself up regardless. shove along, now." i see what he was up to; but i never said nothing, of course. when i got back with the duke we hid the canoe, and then they set down on a log, and the king told him everything, just like the young fellow had said it --every last word of it. and all the time he was a-doing it he tried to talk like an englishman; and he done it pretty well, too, for a slouch. i can't imitate him, and so i ain't a-going to try to; but he really done it pretty good. then he says: "how are you on the deef and dumb, bilgewater?" the duke said, leave him alone for that; said he had played a deef and dumb person on the histronic boards. so then they waited for a steamboat. about the middle of the afternoon a couple of little boats come along, but they didn't come from high enough up the river; but at last there was a big one, and they hailed her. she sent out her yawl, and we went aboard, and she was from cincinnati; and when they found we only wanted to go four or five mile they was booming mad, and gave us a cussing, and said they wouldn't land us. but the king was ca'm. he says: "if gentlemen kin afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece to be took on and put off in a yawl, a steamboat kin afford to carry 'em, can't it?" so they softened down and said it was all right; and when we got to the village they yawled us ashore. about two dozen men flocked down when they see the yawl a-coming, and when the king says: "kin any of you gentlemen tell me wher' mr. peter wilks lives?" they give a glance at one another, and nodded their heads, as much as to say, "what d' i tell you?" then one of them says, kind of soft and gentle: "i'm sorry sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he did live yesterday evening." sudden as winking the ornery old cretur went an to smash, and fell up against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his back, and says: "alas, alas, our poor brother--gone, and we never got to see him; oh, it's too, too hard!" then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn't drop a carpet-bag and bust out a-crying. if they warn't the beatenest lot, them two frauds, that ever i struck. well, the men gathered around and sympathized with them, and said all sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about his brother's last moments, and the king he told it all over again on his hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner like they'd lost the twelve disciples. well, if ever i struck anything like it, i'm a nigger. it was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race. chapter xxv. the news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they come. pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march. the windows and dooryards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence: "is it them?" and somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say: "you bet it is." when we got to the house the street in front of it was packed, and the three girls was standing in the door. mary jane was red-headed, but that don't make no difference, she was most awful beautiful, and her face and her eyes was all lit up like glory, she was so glad her uncles was come. the king he spread his arms, and mary jane she jumped for them, and the hare-lip jumped for the duke, and there they had it! everybody most, leastways women, cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have such good times. then the king he hunched the duke private--i see him do it--and then he looked around and see the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs; so then him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and t'other hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, everybody dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping, people saying "sh!" and all the men taking their hats off and drooping their heads, so you could a heard a pin fall. and when they got there they bent over and looked in the coffin, and took one sight, and then they bust out a-crying so you could a heard them to orleans, most; and then they put their arms around each other's necks, and hung their chins over each other's shoulders; and then for three minutes, or maybe four, i never see two men leak the way they done. and, mind you, everybody was doing the same; and the place was that damp i never see anything like it. then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and t'other on t'other side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and let on to pray all to themselves. well, when it come to that it worked the crowd like you never see anything like it, and everybody broke down and went to sobbing right out loud--the poor girls, too; and every woman, nearly, went up to the girls, without saying a word, and kissed them, solemn, on the forehead, and then put their hand on their head, and looked up towards the sky, with the tears running down, and then busted out and went off sobbing and swabbing, and give the next woman a show. i never see anything so disgusting. well, by and by the king he gets up and comes forward a little, and works himself up and slobbers out a speech, all full of tears and flapdoodle about its being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the diseased, and to miss seeing diseased alive after the long journey of four thousand mile, but it's a trial that's sweetened and sanctified to us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so he thanks them out of his heart and out of his brother's heart, because out of their mouths they can't, words being too weak and cold, and all that kind of rot and slush, till it was just sickening; and then he blubbers out a pious goody-goody amen, and turns himself loose and goes to crying fit to bust. and the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the doxolojer, and everybody joined in with all their might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting out. music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash i never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully. then the king begins to work his jaw again, and says how him and his nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family would take supper here with them this evening, and help set up with the ashes of the diseased; and says if his poor brother laying yonder could speak he knows who he would name, for they was names that was very dear to him, and mentioned often in his letters; and so he will name the same, to wit, as follows, vizz.:--rev. mr. hobson, and deacon lot hovey, and mr. ben rucker, and abner shackleford, and levi bell, and dr. robinson, and their wives, and the widow bartley. rev. hobson and dr. robinson was down to the end of the town a-hunting together--that is, i mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to t'other world, and the preacher was pinting him right. lawyer bell was away up to louisville on business. but the rest was on hand, and so they all come and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him; and then they shook hands with the duke and didn't say nothing, but just kept a-smiling and bobbing their heads like a passel of sapheads whilst he made all sorts of signs with his hands and said "goo-goo--goo-goo-goo" all the time, like a baby that can't talk. so the king he blattered along, and managed to inquire about pretty much everybody and dog in town, by his name, and mentioned all sorts of little things that happened one time or another in the town, or to george's family, or to peter. and he always let on that peter wrote him the things; but that was a lie: he got every blessed one of them out of that young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat. then mary jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the king he read it out loud and cried over it. it give the dwelling-house and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls; and it give the tanyard (which was doing a good business), along with some other houses and land (worth about seven thousand), and three thousand dollars in gold to harvey and william, and told where the six thousand cash was hid down cellar. so these two frauds said they'd go and fetch it up, and have everything square and above-board; and told me to come with a candle. we shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag they spilt it out on the floor, and it was a lovely sight, all them yaller-boys. my, the way the king's eyes did shine! he slaps the duke on the shoulder and says: "oh, this ain't bully nor noth'n! oh, no, i reckon not! why, billy, it beats the nonesuch, don't it?" the duke allowed it did. they pawed the yaller-boys, and sifted them through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor; and the king says: "it ain't no use talkin'; bein' brothers to a rich dead man and representatives of furrin heirs that's got left is the line for you and me, bilge. thish yer comes of trust'n to providence. it's the best way, in the long run. i've tried 'em all, and ther' ain't no better way." most everybody would a been satisfied with the pile, and took it on trust; but no, they must count it. so they counts it, and it comes out four hundred and fifteen dollars short. says the king: "dern him, i wonder what he done with that four hundred and fifteen dollars?" they worried over that awhile, and ransacked all around for it. then the duke says: "well, he was a pretty sick man, and likely he made a mistake--i reckon that's the way of it. the best way's to let it go, and keep still about it. we can spare it." "oh, shucks, yes, we can spare it. i don't k'yer noth'n 'bout that--it's the count i'm thinkin' about. we want to be awful square and open and above-board here, you know. we want to lug this h-yer money up stairs and count it before everybody--then ther' ain't noth'n suspicious. but when the dead man says ther's six thous'n dollars, you know, we don't want to--" "hold on," says the duke. "le's make up the deffisit," and he begun to haul out yaller-boys out of his pocket. "it's a most amaz'n' good idea, duke--you have got a rattlin' clever head on you," says the king. "blest if the old nonesuch ain't a heppin' us out agin," and he begun to haul out yaller-jackets and stack them up. it most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear. "say," says the duke, "i got another idea. le's go up stairs and count this money, and then take and give it to the girls." "good land, duke, lemme hug you! it's the most dazzling idea 'at ever a man struck. you have cert'nly got the most astonishin' head i ever see. oh, this is the boss dodge, ther' ain't no mistake 'bout it. let 'em fetch along their suspicions now if they want to--this 'll lay 'em out." when we got up-stairs everybody gethered around the table, and the king he counted it and stacked it up, three hundred dollars in a pile--twenty elegant little piles. everybody looked hungry at it, and licked their chops. then they raked it into the bag again, and i see the king begin to swell himself up for another speech. he says: "friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder has done generous by them that's left behind in the vale of sorrers. he has done generous by these yer poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that's left fatherless and motherless. yes, and we that knowed him knows that he would a done more generous by 'em if he hadn't ben afeard o' woundin' his dear william and me. now, wouldn't he? ther' ain't no question 'bout it in my mind. well, then, what kind o' brothers would it be that 'd stand in his way at sech a time? and what kind o' uncles would it be that 'd rob--yes, rob--sech poor sweet lambs as these 'at he loved so at sech a time? if i know william--and i think i do--he--well, i'll jest ask him." he turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the duke with his hands, and the duke he looks at him stupid and leather-headed a while; then all of a sudden he seems to catch his meaning, and jumps for the king, goo-gooing with all his might for joy, and hugs him about fifteen times before he lets up. then the king says, "i knowed it; i reckon that 'll convince anybody the way he feels about it. here, mary jane, susan, joanner, take the money--take it all. it's the gift of him that lays yonder, cold but joyful." mary jane she went for him, susan and the hare-lip went for the duke, and then such another hugging and kissing i never see yet. and everybody crowded up with the tears in their eyes, and most shook the hands off of them frauds, saying all the time: "you dear good souls!--how lovely!--how could you!" well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that; and before long a big iron-jawed man worked himself in there from outside, and stood a-listening and looking, and not saying anything; and nobody saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was all busy listening. the king was saying--in the middle of something he'd started in on-- "--they bein' partickler friends o' the diseased. that's why they're invited here this evenin'; but tomorrow we want all to come--everybody; for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitten that his funeral orgies sh'd be public." and so he went a-mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke he couldn't stand it no more; so he writes on a little scrap of paper, "obsequies, you old fool," and folds it up, and goes to goo-gooing and reaching it over people's heads to him. the king he reads it and puts it in his pocket, and says: "poor william, afflicted as he is, his heart's aluz right. asks me to invite everybody to come to the funeral--wants me to make 'em all welcome. but he needn't a worried--it was jest what i was at." then he weaves along again, perfectly ca'm, and goes to dropping in his funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before. and when he done it the third time he says: "i say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it ain't --obsequies bein' the common term--but because orgies is the right term. obsequies ain't used in england no more now--it's gone out. we say orgies now in england. orgies is better, because it means the thing you're after more exact. it's a word that's made up out'n the greek orgo, outside, open, abroad; and the hebrew jeesum, to plant, cover up; hence inter. so, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral." he was the worst i ever struck. well, the iron-jawed man he laughed right in his face. everybody was shocked. everybody says, "why, doctor!" and abner shackleford says: "why, robinson, hain't you heard the news? this is harvey wilks." the king he smiled eager, and shoved out his flapper, and says: "is it my poor brother's dear good friend and physician? i--" "keep your hands off of me!" says the doctor. "you talk like an englishman, don't you? it's the worst imitation i ever heard. you peter wilks's brother! you're a fraud, that's what you are!" well, how they all took on! they crowded around the doctor and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how harvey 'd showed in forty ways that he was harvey, and knowed everybody by name, and the names of the very dogs, and begged and begged him not to hurt harvey's feelings and the poor girl's feelings, and all that. but it warn't no use; he stormed right along, and said any man that pretended to be an englishman and couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what he did was a fraud and a liar. the poor girls was hanging to the king and crying; and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on them. he says: "i was your father's friend, and i'm your friend; and i warn you as a friend, and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trouble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his idiotic greek and hebrew, as he calls it. he is the thinnest kind of an impostor--has come here with a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres, and you take them for proofs, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish friends here, who ought to know better. mary jane wilks, you know me for your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too. now listen to me; turn this pitiful rascal out--i beg you to do it. will you?" mary jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome! she says: "here is my answer." she hove up the bag of money and put it in the king's hands, and says, "take this six thousand dollars, and invest for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don't give us no receipt for it." then she put her arm around the king on one side, and susan and the hare-lip done the same on the other. everybody clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his head and smiled proud. the doctor says: "all right; i wash my hands of the matter. but i warn you all that a time 's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this day." and away he went. "all right, doctor," says the king, kinder mocking him; "we'll try and get 'em to send for you;" which made them all laugh, and they said it was a prime good hit.